Soon after the conclusion of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China last month, General Secretary Xi Jinping visited the site of the first national congress of the CPC together with the other members of the newly-elected Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau.

The 19th CPC National Congress drove home the message that China is at a great historic turning point. But Xi cautioned, no matter how far the Party has come, it should never forget where it has come from and what its purpose is.

The CPC has always been a party of deeds, not words. The history of the Party and development of China indicate the Party was created by history, and has been creating history. It has distinguished itself from other political parties in the world with its outstanding ability to make long-term plans, and more importantly, carry out those plans.

The Party's plans serve not only the Chinese people, but also the whole world. The Party has never concealed its global vision since its first national congress in Shanghaithough only 13 delegates attended the meeting in 1921 which was not reported by any mediaafter leading China to become the world's second-largest economy and lifting nearly one-fifth of the world's population out of poverty, it is time for the Party to materialize its vision for the future with actions.

The nation will mark the 40th anniversary of the reform and open-up in 2018, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 2019, the realization of a moderately well-off society in 2020, and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Party in 2021.

These anniversaries serve as milestones to look back on what has been achieved over the past decades and highlight that the bright prospects for the Party and the country in the new era cannot be attained without reform, innovation and determination.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 10:27:43|Editor: Lu Hui

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by Luis Rojas

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- A mix of political uncertainty and slowing economic growth in Latin America may cause investors to take a more cautious approach to investing in the region in 2018, according to experts.

Elections in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico could turn Latin America into a political "minefield," said Marcos Casarin, head of Latin America Macro Research at London-based Oxford Economics.

Similarly, Gabriel Casillas, deputy general director of economic analysis at the Mexican bank Banorte, said all eyes will be on the region's No. 1 and No. 2 economies, Brazil and Mexico.

"Any election will lead to a degree of caution, especially among short-term financial investors," said Casillas.

China Investment Corporation (CIC), a sovereign wealth fund established in 2007, has substantial sums invested in Mexican financial assets.

For the CIC and funds like it, the 2018 presidential race presents a potential risk for short-term investors, although it can also present an opportunity for longer term investments, said Casillas.

A recent survey published by Mexican daily Reforma showed the progressive candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador leading in the polls.

Some worry that the leftist front-runner of July's elections may cause political turbulence and make the markets jittery, despite the fact that as mayor of Mexico City he teamed up with big business, and the likes of business magnates, to promote the rehabilitation of the downtown area.

Also, for the first time, independent candidates not affiliated with any political party will be able to compete in the presidential contest. With lots of contenders and no second round, the winner could triumph with less than 30 percent of the vote.

In Brazil, surveys show left-leaning ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is the favorite ahead of the October 2018 elections, but it is still unknown who his rivals will be or even whether Lula will be able to run given the current corruption cases lined up against him.

The prospect of power changing hands always makes the markets nervous, especially when it's a tight race, said Alicia Puyana, professor of economics at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences.

"Next year, with the elections, since we don't know what is going to happen or who is going to win ... investors will curb their investment and cause chaos," said Puyana.

That's the price of democracy: it has its risks and rewards, she said, adding "If we don't know who is going to win, that is an indication that no one is manipulating them (the elections)."

While the elections present a challenge, South America must define how it plans to become a more strategic partner for China, instead of a mere consumer, said Jose Luis de la Cruz, general director of the Mexican Institute for Industrial Development and Economic Growth.

"2018 will offer China opportunities in Latin America, where the only thing is to get a clear handle on the region's political axis," he said.

Oxford Economics estimates China's gross domestic product (GDP) could grow between 6 and 6.5 percent in 2018 and 2019.

It is projected that Chinese investment flows towards Latin America would reach 250 billion U.S. dollars by 2025.

To safeguard that investment, said the experts, countries in Latin America need to combat the region's two biggest problems, crime and corruption, to establish a more stable climate that can weather the handover of power.@ "The region has failed to create a solid institutional framework that can be somehow insulated against electoral changes," said de la Cruz.

"The construction of institutions that can guarantee the continuity of sound economic growth, programs and a basic agenda is still pending to protect from political ups and downs," the expert said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 10:52:47|Editor: ZD

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SYDNEY, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The fisheries minister of Kiribati has appealed to the international fishing community for better access to fish stocks in the high seas in a bid to ensure sustainable development in the industry.

"We in Kiribati have no land-based natural resources available as a means of stable and secure livelihood for our people as our lands are made of poor coralline soils thus prompting Kiribati to look elsewhere for a sustainable source of revenue," the Pacific Islands News Association quoted Minister Tetabo Nakara as saying.

Nakara, who was speaking during the weekend at the 14th regular session of the Western Central Pacific Commission, stressed the importance of fishing on the high seas for his country's economy.

He also highlighted the economic impact of an annual three-month restriction on devices used to attract fish stocks.

Tuna fishing contributes significantly to Kiribati's annual government revenue "that supports, amongst others, crucial funding for our education system, medical care, other basic needs that the government is obligated to deliver as services to its 110,000 inhabitants", he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 10:52:48|Editor: ZD

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SYDNEY, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Australia's major wool sector looks poised to sustain a return to strong growth, fueled by record high prices and robust demand from increasingly affluent Chinese consumers, latest industry figures and analyses showed.

Scott Carmody, trade consultant for the nonprofit Australian Wool Innovation industry group, told Xinhua recently that demand is now the strongest in three to four decades, with "Chinese influence on the market exerting extreme upward pressure on wool prices in Australia".

In U.S. dollar terms, wool prices are not as high as they were about five years ago, but the weaker Australian dollar against the greenback now meant that Australian producers were getting paid more in the local currency, he said.

Chinese wool buyers were paying about 14 to 15 U.S. dollars a kilogram for the material back then, but the price is about 12.50 U.S. dollars now. Prices have since hit a high of more than 16 Australian dollars a kilogram, industry figures showed.

"The record high prices that everybody's talking about is in Australian dollar terms. That's very important for our wool growers because that's what they like," said Carmody.

"China has the capacity to push the market even higher as long as demand remains strong. And what we're seeing at the retail levels is that there's been so much wool at retail and many different products that people are seeing the capacity for the market to hold at these levels or even improve."

Australia is the world's dominant wool producer, with its top-grade Merino sheep helping fuel annual exports of about 3 billion Australian dollars (about 2.28 billion U.S. dollars).

Chinese demand makes up more than 70 percent of that market, with its businesses manufacturing the raw material into an increasingly wide variety of products such as sportswear and shoes beyond traditional garments, said Carmody.

"China remains our most important customer. Almost 100 percent of what it bought was manufactured and re-exported because the Chinese consumer could not afford to pay the premium price for wool. That was probably 15 to 20 years ago. Today, about 60 percent of wool is staying in China for Chinese consumption. The affluence that has grown very rapidly in China has helped wool prices," he said.

Matt Dalgleish, wool market analyst for Australian agriculture market analysis group Mecardo, told Xinhua recently the Chinese market remains "incredibly important" for Australian wool.

At the same time, the contraction of Australian wool suppliers in the past few years have also affected the higher prices and more producers switching back to the industry to tap the current growth might affect its development moving forward, he said.

There is also a limit to what foreign buyers are prepared to pay for and the danger of wool becoming a "niche" product if it gets too costly, with other fabrics and material offering alternatives, said Dalgleish.

"If we get to a situation where there's a sustainable, long-term, high-price of wool, that would certainly attract other nations and producers in other countries to start investing in the quality of sheep flocks to be able to get to the stage where they can produce wool of a high standard as well," he said.

"Australian wool helps guarantee the quality of our clothing products," Song Jianmin, chief supervisor of Chinese conglomerate Nanshan Group, told Xinhua recently. Other than garments and textiles, the company has businesses ranging from aviation and aluminum to health and education. It processes more than 5,000 tonnes of Australian wool annually for its business.

"There are multiple factors for the high wool prices. Australian wool supply has been slipping and producers have had to adjust ... our group has been keeping close track of the developments."

"We're also working with the industry in terms of technological innovation, product research and other areas. Quality continues to be an important priority for us," Song added.
Source: Xinhuanet| 2017-12-04 11:09:36|Editor: Lu Hui

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by Luigi Gambardella

In Europe, we are used to joke about why women so much appreciate French and Italian men and why Germans produce the best cars in the world. This may sound like stereotypes, but there is a truth behind it. Latin lovers are curious about their partner and her interests. They want to make her feel special and seek to anticipate their wishes: make a remark that tunes in into her thoughts, invite her to a restaurant she will like, give her a present that she was silently dreaming about. In fact, Latin lovers spend a lot of time talking and listening so as to understand and predict their partners wishes. And nothing is more seducing for a women, than a man who can anticipate her wishes. Northern Europeans spend that time at work or designing new products. Their view is that economic success will allow them to afford all commodities that women could dream of.

This reflects the dilemma of mankind: invest time in affective relations or in productive activities?

But the internet will soon allow to overcome the dilemma. The dilemma will be the common threat of the gathering this weekend of the most influential key decision makers and high tech company leaders in Wuzhen for the World Internet Conference.

Open sharing goes together with digital economic development. Open sharing generates consumer data, which on its turn, allows better focusing products and services. This is what is known as the revolution brought about by big data and artificial intelligence. And China is now in the lead for two reasons.

The first is a huge market of more than a billion consumers. The essence of big data is to use data from an as vast as possible population to find correlations and predict future behavior. The size of the Chinese market contributed decisively to the success of Ctrip and Alibaba. These companies collected a massive amount of data about consumer choices. In a second stage, their algorithms deduced from these data, predictions allowing to make targeted proposals to clients, which on its turn, increased sales.

A second reason is the tremendous development of IT processing power. Predictive algorithms are still in their infancy but can be improved and refined by computers on the basis of whether or not the predictions derived from these algorithms materialized. The worlds fastest computers are Chinas Sunway TaihuLight at Chinas National Supercomputing Center and the Tianhe-2 at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou.

At the same time, China can still learn from Europe. Today two paradigms for the development of the internet are competing: the Chinese model, government led, and the US model, Wall Street led. The problem that I see with the US model is that Wall Street has no interest for the rural areas. The digital divide is a hot issue also in Europe. Presidents Xi Jipings October speech for the 19th Party Congress reflected concerns in China, very similar to these in Europe. Avoiding a digital divide at the expense of the rural areas is a priority issue. Like in other areas, China and the EU share very similar concerns.

More than many European countries, China is confronted with massive migration from rural areas to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area. In the digital age, it should no longer matter so much whether you live in the capital town or rural areas. But what we see is massive network investment in the densely populated areas and less or no investment in the poorer, rural areas. Given its geographic size, the problem is even more acute in China than in European countries. But solutions are similar. I think for example that a government led single 5G and fiber network deployment in the rural areas, open for all Chinese telecom operators, would be a best practice of China that would be copied globally.

The global advantage of China is in equipment and services relating to high capacity digital communications. However, opportunities for China will only be maximized if globally fiber to the home networks are deployed, which will also serve as the basis for 5G networks. There is a chicken or egg paradox. If Chinese industry wants to reap the full benefit of its technological leadership, a pre-condition is the global deployment of pervasive fiber to the home networks. Chinese companies should therefore cooperate and create joint-initiatives with European fiber to the home companies, to help the latter in increasing their footprint. Once deployed, fiber networks will be the superfast internet infrastructure on which Chinese artificial intelligence will thrive.

As an Italian, I should likely fear that outcome. Once the Chinese developed artificial intelligence will allow any man in the world to learn and anticipate the wishes of his partner, we latins will lose our current unique advantage.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 11:02:50|Editor: Yang Yi

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by Xinhua writer Liu Chang

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Michel Haese's first visit to Shenzhen was purely a coincidence.

What was more unexpected for the 55-year old German was that this Chinese city would help make his childhood dream come true.

DREAMLAND FOR START-UPS

When he was a kid, Haese loved to build things with whatever he could find -- cans, lids, ribbons, motors, lamps, batteries. Growing up, he tried being a radioman, a photographer, but he never abandoned his dream of becoming an inventor.

Haese first heard about Shenzhen as a special economic zone in China more than 20 years ago at the world's largest computer expo in Hannover, Germany.

In 2011, Haese planned to visit a traditional electronic fair in Hong Kong, but a friend of his dragged him to another one. There he met some Chinese entrepreneurs who later invited him to travel to the southeastern Chinese metropolis to see their factories.

"Shenzhen is a paradise for development," he said. "If you have any requirements or needs for new electronics, I go downstairs and I can find them." He was referring to Huaqiangbei, one of the world's largest and most bustling electronics markets packed with small shops selling all kinds of electronic gadgets.

Haese is now the chief executive officer of his own start-up in Shenzhen. His primary invention, the "Lapscreen," is more of a notion than a product. With a Lapscreen, one can project all the functions of a smartphone onto an A4-paper-sized portable full-HD monitor, like typing a story or watching a movie. With it, Haese hopes to share his "portable office" idea with willing partners from the whole world.

Haese is certainly not the only dream chaser who regards this mega city as his ultimate destination.

Cyril Ebersweiler is the co-founder of HAX Accelerator, a seed accelerator focused on hardware start-ups based in Shenzhen and San Francisco. Together with 10 hardware firms, the 38-year-old Frenchman founded HAX in a garage in Shenzhen in 2011.

"One thing we discovered while leveraging the supply chain for these start-ups was that Shenzhen was a good place to prototype -- and not just consumer electronics hardware, but also extremely complex hardware for the health, robotics, and fabrication spaces," he told Xinhua.

For six years, HAX has sought to speed up business ideas from 3D printers to drones, as well as other consumer product devices for more than 145 start-up companies. It offers guidance and expertise from start to finish.

Every year, Ebersweiler brings teams whose members come from all over the world, more than half of them from the United States or Europe, to Shenzhen. "What we had to develop at the time was an effective way for them to be operating in China," he said.

In Ebersweiler's opinion, it is Shenzhen's unique advantage to have a lot of small factories supporting the big ones. He calls it "the long tail of manufacturing in China." He has also been spearheading a "lean hardware" movement to refashion the way products are made by integrating the prototyping phase and manufacturing phase as much as possible.

He believes the city's prevalent culture of open sources is precisely what start-ups need to do small manufacturing runs effectively with a lot of flexibility and comparatively low cost so as to reduce time to the market.

"It's very difficult, or it's actually impossible to do that in Silicon Valley. You have to go online, order something, waiting for four or five days, get it shipped, play with it, doesn't work, do it again," he said.

NURSERY FOR GLOBAL BRANDS

Shenzhen has not only helped new businesses to break out of the shell, but also nurtured many of China's world-class technological enterprises, especially in the global smartphone industry.

Huawei, China's Shenzhen-based telecommunications giant, was founded in 1987. It has now become a leading global smartphone manufacturer.

According to analysis by consulting firm Counterpoint Research, it has overtaken Apple in terms of global smartphone sales in June and July, the first time in history.

Thanks to designs with large displays and advanced camera functions, Chinese cellphone makers have now become increasingly popular among overseas customers.

Matilda von Sydow leads a local philanthropic group in Oslo, Norway. She now uses Huawei's P10 lite phone.

"I'm very pleased with my purchase ... As an android user I see no reason to choose another brand, the phone has all the qualities I'm after plus more," she said, noting that many of her friends and family members also use Huawei phones.

Elliot Mulley-Goodbarne, a news editor with Mobile News, a leading mobile industry trade newspaper in Britain, told Xinhua that he believes Huawei's success is a testament to high quality and more reasonable prices.

Compared to Huawei's venture in the developed world, Transsion Holdings, also headquartered in Shenzhen, has its eyes locked on the continent of Africa.

The market share of mobile brands under Transsion reached 38 percent in Africa last year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC), a key provider of market intelligence and advisory services for information technology and telecommunications. It means that for every three mobile phones sold in the continent, one is made by Transsion.

Transsion's investments in many of the African countries have not only made it a household brand on the continent, but also brought real benefits to Africans.

In 2011, the company set up a smartphone plant in Ethiopia. It now hires 1,600 local employees.

Alemseged Teka came to work for the Chinese phone maker when the factory opened. In six years, he was promoted from a worker at the assembly line to the chief of the production planning department. Now he earns a pretty handsome income.

"The Chinese company has changed my life," he said, adding that in Ethiopia, many want to find a job there because the cellphone industries offer good pay.

While producing handsets for global customers, Chinese companies from Shenzhen have also ventured into infrastructure for mobile services to get local people connected to the wider world.

Huawei, since 2013, has worked with the Zambian Information and Communications Technology Authority and local carriers to deliver network coverage to remote areas. In 2014, it helped connect more than 500 villages for the first time by installing 169 base stations in remote areas of the country's 10 provinces.

HEART OF INNOVATION

Building up their business from almost ground zero, some of Shenzhen's tech firms used to battle for their share of the market with low-priced copycat products. Cheap, low-end, fake were among the words most commonly used to describe their products.

With years of robust market competition and development, that image has changed. Innovation has been a key factor to help force the change.

At this year's IFA Tech Show in Berlin, Huawei unveiled its own Kirin 970 chipset, which is designed by its subsidiary HiSilicon Technologies. The chip has been built into Huawei's new flagship Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro phones launched last month.

Innovation also blossoms in the development of mobile software and applications.

First released in 2011, Wechat is a social media mobile application software developed by Shenzhen-based Tencent. The company said earlier this month that the app now has 902 million active daily users, among whom hundreds of millions are outside China. For many of them, Wechat has simply become a way of life.

Meanwhile, as more and more foreign countries have approved the use of Chinese mobile payment services, many Chinese tourists have begun to use Wechat Pay instead of cash when they travel abroad. According to Zheng Hongmin, who is in charge of Wechat Pay's operation in the Asia-Pacific, Wechat Pay is now available in 19 countries and regions for payments in 12 currencies.

These technological booms and creative successes have not come lightly.

Seeking to excel in innovation, tech firms like Huawei are investing like crazy.

Huawei now has the biggest research and development (R&D) budget of any Chinese company. Last year alone, it has invested 11 billion U.S. dollars in R&D, and its Kirin 970 chipset is a result of many years of such investment.

Meanwhile, these companies pay great attention to international cooperation when it comes to innovation. Huawei has set up research labs in Russia and France to improve cellphone designs. Tencent has opened an artificial intelligence laboratory in the U.S. city of Seattle.

The local government in Shenzhen has also put forward many preferential policies to make sure that the city can attract more talent, including more generous subsidies and allowances and better scientific research conditions.

In September, Barry Marshall, a Nobel Laureate for Physiology or Medicine, launched a biomedical engineering lab with Shenzhen University. It is the fifth such lab in Shenzhen that has the input of Nobel prize winners.

Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the start of China's reform and opening-up policy. Four decades ago, few could imagine that such a tiny fishing enclave could become a hub for tens of thousands of start-ups and host some of China's most successful tech companies. It is a miracle of collective and continuous endeavor.

Haese, the German inventor, said Shenzhen has given him more inspiration and hope than any other place in the world.

With its spirit of openness and innovation, the city, driven by the hopes of hundreds of thousands of people like Haese, will continue to create miracles.

(Xinhua reporters Yang Jun, Huang Kun, Ma Dan, Jin Zheng, Liu Lina also contributed to the story.)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 11:43:02|Editor: Lu Hui

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Clashes between the Houthis and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh aggravate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. (AFP Photo)

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday expressed concern over the recent escalation of armed conflict in Yemen, with other UN leaders demanding the immediate resumption of commercial shipments to Yemen for the sake of the starving population.

CONCERNS ABOUT NEW FIGHTING IN YEMEN

"The secretary-general is deeply concerned about the sharp escalation of armed clashes and airstrikes in (the capital city of) Sanaa and other parts of Yemen over the past several days," said Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric in a statement.

"This latest outbreak of violence could not come at a worse time for the Yemeni people, who are already caught up in the world's largest humanitarian crisis," said the statement, referring to the clashes between Houthi rebels and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The two forces were previous allies against forces loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

The new clashes, which broke out on Wednesday in Sanaa and then spread to other parts of the country, have resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries, including civilians.

The secretary-general called on all parties to the conflict to cease all air and ground assaults, said the statement.

The new conflict and the blockade imposed on Nov. 6 by the Saudi-led military coalition, which is fighting Houthi rebels, have caused significant shortages of critical supplies, especially food and fuel, and resulted in price hikes, curtailing access to food, safe water and healthcare, said the statement.

"The secretary-general calls for the urgent resumption of all commercial imports, without which millions of children, women and men risk mass hunger, disease and death."

Although the Saudi-led coalition has partially lifted the blockade, UN humanitarian shipments still face impediments.

"Fighting is restricting the movement of people and life-saving services within Sanaa city. Ambulances and medical teams cannot access the injured, and people cannot go outside to buy food and other necessities. Aid workers are unable to travel and implement critical life-saving programs at a time when millions of Yemenis rely on assistance to survive," said the statement.

The secretary-general called on all parties to the conflict to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law. "It is paramount that civilians are protected, that the wounded are afforded safe access to medical care, and that all sides facilitate life-saving humanitarian access."

Guterres reiterated that there is no military solution to the Yemen conflict. He urged all parties to the conflict to engage meaningfully with the United Nations to revitalize inclusive negotiations on a political settlement.

JOINT CALL FOR LIFTING BLOCKADE

In a joint statement on Saturday, leaders of various UN agencies called on the Saudi-led coalition to immediately allow the resumption of commercial imports, especially food, fuel and medicines to Yemen.

"Without the urgent resumption of commercial imports, especially food, fuel and medicines, millions of children, women and men risk mass hunger, disease and death," warned World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, UN Development Programme head Achim Steiner, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, UNICEF chief Anthony Lake, World Food Programme head David Beasley, International Organization for Migration Director General William Lacy Swing, and UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock.

The partial lifting of the blockade of Yemen's Red Sea ports by the Saudi-led coalition in recent days is allowing humanitarian organizations to resume the provision of life-saving assistance to people in desperate need.

Ongoing commercial import restrictions have led to shortages of fuel, food and other essentials, driving up prices and devastating lives and livelihoods. The price of wheat flour has risen by 30 percent, while the price of fuel has doubled and that of trucked water has skyrocketed by 600 percent in some locations, said the statement.

Urban water networks in seven cities have run out of water and now depend on humanitarian organizations to fill in the gap. Other cities will shortly be in a similar situation if the blockade is not lifted, which would leave 11 million people without safe water.

In other areas, people are reducing their food consumption to dangerous levels in order to pay for the rising cost of water trucking, or are turning to contaminated water sources to meet their basic needs. This further compounds the risk of disease, especially among children, said the statement.

Less than half of the health facilities are functioning, and more hospitals and health centers will close should fuel and water supplies not improve. Sewage networks in six main cities are compromised, threatening a renewed spike in the country's cholera outbreak, which has reached almost 1 million suspected cases and killed over 2,200 people, it said.

"Yemen remains on the cusp of one of the largest famines in modern times," it said.

Nearly 400,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition and face an increased risk of death. More than 8 million people could starve without urgent food assistance coming into Yemen. With 90 percent of the country's food imported, the lack of commercial imports through Red Sea ports would alone push a further 3 million people into starvation, said the statement.

"The threat of widespread famine in a matter of months is very real," it warned.

This imminent catastrophe is entirely avoidable, but it requires immediate action by the Saudi-led coalition, said the statement.

While three ships carrying food have been granted permission to berth at Hudaydah seaport in recent days, four fuel tankers and 10 ships carrying food have all been waiting for permission to enter port, it noted.

"Together, we call on the coalition to urgently open up all Yemeni Red Sea ports fully and to facilitate the entry and free flow of humanitarian and vital commercial goods," it said.

UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed on Saturday stressed the need to protect civilians as clashes broke out between the rebel alliance in the Arab world's poorest country.

"We are deeply concerned by the implications of these events on the civilian population," said Ahmed in a statement. "We urge the parties to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law including their obligations to respect the principle of distinction, proportionality and precaution. All sides must exercise restraint and ensure that their attacks are never directed at civilians or civilian objects. We caution against the serious impact of armed violence against civilians."

He called on the parties to urgently come to the negotiating table and to engage in the peace process. A political solution is the only way out of the prolonged conflict in Yemen, said Ahmed.

A civil war has been raging in Yemen since 2015, pitting forces loyal to former President Saleh against his successor Hadi, who was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led military coalition started a military campaign against the forces loyal to Saleh and the Houthi rebels who were fighting alongside them, in a bid to restore the Hadi-led government.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 12:33:11|Editor: Lu Hui

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The parents of a fifth-grade girl in the U.S. state of Colorado said their daughter killed herself after being bullied at school.

Ashawnty Davis, 10, died last Wednesday at a local children's hospital, two weeks after she was found hanging in a closet at home.

At the end of October, the girl was involved in a fight at school. Her parents claimed that her daughter was confronting a bully. The fight was recorded by another student and posted on an app called Musical.ly.

The app company made a statement that they were absolutely heartbroken to hear about that.

The parents insisted that the Cherry Creek School District should have done more to stop the bullying that led to their daughter's death. According to them, bullying incidents have happened in a number of cases involving teens over the past couple of years.

The school district issued a statement that "We do not tolerate bullying of any kind in our schools and we have a comprehensive bullying prevention program in place at all of our schools," according to local media.

The parents are now determined to hold educators accountable in cases of bullying and to figure out an anti-bullying policy that actually works.

"With the last breath in my life I'm going to make sure that the unfortunate kids are able to go to school comfortably and learn," the mother of the girl told local media.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 12:58:15|Editor: Zhou Xin

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HAVANA, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- An aging population and brain drain of professionals to the better-paid private sector are affecting some state-run enterprises in Cuba.

"I used to earn 550 Cuban pesos (CUPs, 22 U.S. dollars) a month. Now I make at least 250 Convertible Pesos (CUCs, 250 dollars) at the same time," Frank, a 27-year-old engineer who only wanted to be known by his first name and left his job at a state-run company to join a new cooperative making metallic structures, told Xinhua.

Each CUC is worth 25 CUPs. The average salary of a college graduate working at a state-owned company is about 500 CUPs a month, far from enough to keep pace with the rising living costs, especially in the capital Havana.

Jorge Cuevas Ramos, member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), also warned of the impact of these trends at the closing of the First National Conference of the Transportation Workers Union.

The party official said the lack of specialists, technicians and operators was undermining the quality of work and ability to meet deadlines in the transportation sector, including airports.

According to the National Statistics Bureau (NSB), 3,201,000 people worked in state-run entities in 2013, while 1,717,800 workers were employed in non-state-managed activities (including agricultural cooperatives).

By 2016, 2,881,500 workers were employed by state companies, and 1,881,100 people were in the private sector, including agricultural and non-agricultural cooperatives, a decline of 319,500 workers in three years for the public sector, while the private sector grew by 163,300 people in the same period.

An aging population is another factor that is affecting Cuba, not just the state-run enterprises.

During his speech to transportation workers, Cuevas urged Cubans to prepare the human resources needed in the immediate, short and medium terms.

In Cuba, 19.8 percent of the population of 11.2 million people is over 60, as reported last August by the NSB.

The proportion of elderly is growing due to low birth rates, youth migrating abroad and increased life expectancy.

Meanwhile, population growth has remained at zero since 2014, according to NSB data released three months ago.

The National Demography Research Center has forecast that by 2030, Cubans aged 60 or more will reach 25 percent of the population, representing a serious economic and social burden on the island's government and health system.

The government has already taken several steps to address the issue, including offering families incentives for having children, delaying the age of retirement to 65, expanding geriatric health services, and building more nursing homes.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 13:24:38|Editor: Yang Yi

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Directors of "Forefinger Town" winning the Bronze Age Experimental and Animation Award, speak at the awarding ceremony of the Hua International Short Film Festival (HISFF) in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 3, 2017. The HISFF is the first and only international short film festival for filmmakers of Chinese descent. It received 2,137 films from 131 countries and regions since it called for entry in August. Together with 3 special screening films, 30 nominated films will go on an international festival tour in New York, London, Tokyo and Sydney. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 13:23:19|Editor: Liangyu

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SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Breakthrough Prize Foundation on Sunday announced here the winners of the 2018 Breakthrough Prizes in fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics, together with several other prizes to encourage young scientists.

The announcement was made at an annual event held in Silicon Valley in San Francisco in the western U.S. state of California.

The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to Charles Bennett from Johns Hopkins University, Gary Hinshaw from the University of British Columbia, and three scientists from Princeton University, Norman Jarosik, Lyman Page Jr. and David N. Spergel, to recognize their major insights into the deepest questions of the universe.

The prize in life sciences went to Joanne Chory from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Don W. Cleveland from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of California, San Diego, Kazutoshi Mori from Kyoto University, Kim Nasmyth from the University of Oxford, and Peter Walter from the University of California, San Francisco.

The prize honors the biologists' transformative advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life, and the work that contributes to the understanding of neurological diseases.

The foundation awarded the prize in mathematics to Christopher Hacon from the University of Utah, and James McKernan from the University of California, San Diego, to recognize their major advances in the field as the best mathematicians in the world.

"It is always the right time to celebrate great scientists," said Internet investor and science philanthropist Yuri Milner, who is one of the sponsors of the Breakthrough Prize. "All of our futures depend on them."

For the sixth year, the Breakthrough Prizes, the most generous science awards, were presented to recognize the contributions of the world's top scientists, with each prize amounting to 3 million U.S. dollars.

"The Breakthrough Prize was created to celebrate the achievements of scientists, physicists, and mathematicians, whose genius help us understand our world, and whose advances shape our future," said Breakthrough Prize co-founder and Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

"The world needs their inspiration, and their reminder that even though it doesn't always feel that way, we are making steady progress toward building a better future for everyone," Zuckerberg said.

In addition, two separate third-prize awards in new horizons in physics and new horizons in mathematics were given to six young researchers to encourage them to explore new scientific progress in their future studies.

The New Horizons in Physics Prize was shared by Christopher Hirata from Ohio State University, Andrea Young from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Douglas Stanford from the Institute for Advanced Study at Stanford University.

The New Horizons in Mathematics Prize was awarded to Aaron Naber from Northwestern University, Maryna Viazovska from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Zhiwei Yun from Yale University, and Wei Zhang from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University.

This year, a total of 22 million dollars was awarded to the recipients of the 2018 Breakthrough Prize.

Since its inception in 2012, the Breakthrough Prizes, dubbed "the Oscars of Science," have awarded close to 200 million dollars to honor paradigm-shifting research in fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics.

Ma Huateng, also known as Pony Ma, chairman of China's Tencent company, will join as one of its founding sponsors, the foundation announced on Dec. 1.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 13:23:21|Editor: ZD

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SEOUL, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The combined air forces of South Korea and the United States on Monday kicked off their biggest-ever joint air force exercise on the Korean Peninsula, mobilizing about 230 fighter jets, bombers and other combat planes, Yonhap news agency reported.

The South Korean air force was quoted as saying that the Vigilant ACE air combat exercise will be jointly conducted with the U.S. Seventh Air Force from Monday to Friday to enhance joint wartime operation capability.

It was the largest-ever air force drill between the two allies as it involved more than some 12,000 personnel.

The massive air combat drill came less than a week after the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) launched Hwasong-15, which it called a newly developed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), on Nov. 29.

It traveled some 1,000 km after being lofted as high as 4,600 km, according to South Korea's military. It said the DPRK missile is fired at a normal angle, and it could fly as long as 13,000 km, reaching Washington D.C. in the United States.

Joining the Vigilant ACE would be 24 U.S. stealth fighter jets, including six F-22 fighters from Okinawa, Japan, six F-35A combat planes and 12 F-35B stealth fighter jets from the U.S. air force base in Japan.

U.S. strategic B-1B Lancer bombers reportedly planned to stage a bombing exercise during the joint air force drill.

In addition, six EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets and dozens of F-15C and F-16 fighters will be mobilized to the air combat drill.

From the South Korean side, F-15K, KF-16 and FA-50 fighter jets will participate in the drill.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 13:33:23|Editor: Yang Yi

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by Xinhua writers Yuan Quan and Cao Yiming

NANNING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- At least once a month they gather on decks or in the red-roofed house at the center of the water, sitting on stools to hear or study the latest theories and policies of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

For the 6,000 residents of Tianshengqiao Township, Longlin County in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the "lecture on water" is the most popular and effective channel to understand Party policies. Speakers are mainly village and township Party chiefs. Local technological advisors are also invited to teach aquaculture.

Liu Jian, Party chief of Tianshengqiao, has been a frequent speaker since he took office in this small remote mountain town in October 2016. He says most of the population belongs to ethnic minorities, including Zhuang, Miao and Gelao.

The villagers used to grow rice. After the construction of a hydropower plant in the 1990s, they farmed fish and began living off the reservoir, which borders Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.

"Most villagers spend all day on water, busy working. They have little time or opportunity to learn about the world outside," says Liu.

Seen from the mountains, the floating fish pens, large and small, checker the green lake like a chessboard.

The red-roofed "lecture room", at the center of the reservoir, is particularly eye-catching. Local people call it the "New Era Institute of Peasants", which is believed to be a nod to the Peasant Movement Training Institute of 90 years ago.

In the 1920s, revolutionary pioneers of the CPC, including Deng Xiaoping, set up peasant movement institutes in remote mountain areas in Guangxi. They publicized revolutionary theory, conducted military training, and organized armed struggles, which laid the foundation for the uprisings and revolutionary bases.

In past decades, local Party officials gathered villagers at the meeting room of a government building in the town center to hear reports. Because of the long distances and worries about their work, few people were willing to go. "The attendance was low and people were not happy," says Liu.

In 2014, the Tianshengqiao Township Committee of the CPC decided to move the meetings "onto the water".

"We used to sit on the podium, waiting for an audience. But now we stand on a boat and get close to villagers, telling them events and policies from Beijing," says Liu.

Villagers travel by boat to the meetings. Lectures usually last 40 to 50 minutes and attract more than 20 boats each time. Audiences can reach a hundred.

Some people wear Party emblems and some come in colorful ethnic costumes. The elderly bring their grandchildren, and women weave while listening. Some people take notes.

Speakers use local dialects and the Zhuang language. Though outsiders do not understand, the locals appreciate it.

Speeches with difficult concepts are "translated" into examples and stories based on simple daily life.

Liu in recent lectures explained the essence conveyed at the 19th National Congress of the CPC, stressing the content about "pursuing a rural vitalization strategy" and "safeguarding the property rights and interests of rural people".

A meeting last month focused on medical insurance. Some villagers thought it was unnecessary, but after half an hour of discussion, they realized the benefits.

Liu convinced them that insurance would save money on treatment: "Without insurance, you will pay more if you go to hospital. Moreover, the local government has offered reimbursement of fish farmers' medical bills. It would not cost much."

On the water, speakers' voices are louder and gestures more frequent. But they no longer fear losing their audience. Laughter often echoes on boats.

It is also a popular class on fish farming. In the early years of the reservoir, people did not understand how to farm fish. Pursuing high production led to fish diseases, severe pollution and huge losses.

Shi Zhongyu, a local aquaculture expert, lectures three or four times a year on the water. "In the past, the fish farmers could hardly make a living, because they lacked knowledge and training," he says.

Every winter, he tells the fish farmers to lower fishing net density and not to feed too much, so as to maintain nutrition levels. He can explain, while demonstrating, how to feed on the water - an impossible task previously.

In 2012, only 15 households were fish farmers, but now the number is 200 - almost half the town's population.

Wei Bin attends every "lecture on water" with his wife. They understand the economic benefits of the classes.

Through lack of knowledge, he lost tens of thousands of yuan in 2012. But his annual income has risen from 1,000 yuan to more than 10,000 yuan over the past four years.

Aquaculture has become a pillar industry in the county. In 2016, two of five poverty-stricken villages were lifted out of poverty.

Longlin County has 31 villages setting up "lecture rooms". Some are known for speakers using folk songs to explain national policies so the less-well-educated can understand.

"We plan to expand the speaking team by inviting ethnic villagers or experienced fish farmers. They will make the lectures on water more attractive," says Liu.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 14:08:30|Editor: Lu Hui

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Palestinians say the U.S. will set off "ticking bomb" if it recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moves US embassy to Jerusalem. (AFP Photo)

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A possible U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital this week ignited regional debates over the impact the move would have on peace efforts in the Middle East.

HISTORIC REVERSAL IN U.S. STANCE

U.S. President Donald Trump's adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said Sunday the president hasn't decided yet whether to make the recognition or to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"He's still looking at a lot of different facts," Kushner said at an event held by the Brookings Institute, a leading think-tank based in Washington, D.C.

Kushner's remarks came after U.S. media reported last week that Trump could announce a decision on Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, reversing the decades-old U.S. stance which upholds the city's status should be decided in negotiations between concerned parties.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the ultimate questions for the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, which was stalled since April 2014 following nine months of U.S.-sponsored talks without major progress.

The status of the city is not settled as the Palestinians want to make East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in 1967, the capital of their future independent state, while Israel declared the integral city of Jerusalem as its capital, a claim not recognized by the international community.

In 1995, former U.S. President Bill Clinton signed a law requiring that the U.S. Embassy in Israel must be relocated from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, unless the president issues a waiver every six months.

Since Clinton, all presidents have signed the waiver, supporting the city's fate should be decided through negotiations between Israel and Palestine.

This week marks a turning point for Trump, who last signed the waiver in June. He vowed during his presidential campaign last year to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel.

However, it is now expected that he may postpone the implementation of his promise.

A TICKING BOMB FOR REGIONAL PEACE

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry on Sunday called for holding urgent meetings of the Arab League (AL) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to discuss the Jerusalem issue.

On the same day, the AL warned against "hazardous consequences" if the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Saeed Abu-Ali, AL assistant secretary general for the occupied Palestinian and Arab lands, said that such U.S. recognition would give Israel the green light to continue its breaches of international resolutions, urging Washington to act as an "impartial broker" of the peace process.

On Twitter, Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said he spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on dangerous consequences of the recognition.

"Such a decision would trigger anger across Arab Muslim worlds, fuel tension & jeopardize peace efforts," he wrote.

Over the past several days, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been having contact with and seeking support from Arab and Western leaders, warning about the potential destructive effects of the likely U.S. move.

The possibility of a U.S. acknowledgment is a "ticking bomb" which will destroy the peace process in the Middle East, analysts said.

Mohammed Daraghmeh, a Ramallah-based writer and political analyst, pointed out that such a decision represented a historic reversal in the U.S. position on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

He said that such a decision was very dangerous, as it "imposes a preemptive stance on one of the most important ultimate questions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Arab-Israeli conflict."

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has lasted for decades.

Israel is blamed by the international community for the deadlock of the peace process since 2014 due to its settlement expansion policy, which is rejected even by its strongest ally, the United States.

The Palestinians seek to establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital in the light of the two-state solution proposed by the United Nations and based on the pre-1967 borders.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 14:13:33|Editor: Lu Hui

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GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- At least three Taliban local commanders were killed and six others injured after Afghan air force conducted airstrikes on militants' vehicles convoy in Ghzni province on Sunday, a local official said Monday.

"Afghan air forces targeted the vehicles, carrying the Taliban militants, as a result their three local commanders were killed and six more insurgents injured," Ghzni police chief Mohammad Zaman told Xinhua.

The militants vehicles were completely destroyed during the strikes, the official added.

Taliban militants have yet to make comment.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 14:33:38|Editor: Jiaxin

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DAVAO CITY, Philippines, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Six people were killed in a clash between government troops and leftist rebels in southern Philippines on Sunday, the military said on Monday.

The latest fighting which erupted in the upland town of Lake Sebu in Mindanao's South Cotabato province happened hours after insurgents stormed a police station in Misamis Oriental province, also in Mindanao that wounded six policemen.

Two soldiers and four New People's Army guerrillas died in the hour-long fighting in the village of Ned, according to Major Ezra Balagtey, spokesperson of the military's Eastern Mindanao Command.

The incident was the latest violent confrontation between Philippine security forces and the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) after President Rodrigo Duterte ordered a halt of talks between the two sides.

The NPA has been staging a leftist insurgency in 60 Philippine provinces since 1969, which resulted in over 40, 000 deaths.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 14:38:40|Editor: Jiaxin

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JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- At least six Islamic States (IS) militants have been killed during drone strikes against the hardliner group in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province, Attaullah Khogiani, spokesman for provincial governor said Monday.

The unmanned aircrafts targeted the hideouts of IS militants in Haska Mina district on Sunday afternoon, killing six fighters on the spot and injuring few others, according to the official.

IS militants are yet to make comment.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 15:28:52|Editor: Mengjie

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LASHKARGAH, Afghanistan, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A total of 500 youths after completion of an eight-week training course have been commissioned to Afghan National Army (ANA) in Helmand province, a military official said Monday.

"A total of 500 people have completed their eight-week training course in the training center of national army in Helmand province on Sunday and joined ANA to serve the nation," a senior army officer in the southern region Gen. Wali Mohammad Ahmadzai told Xinhua.

At the same event, a total of 900 soldiers after completion of military training in northern Balkh province, joined the national army couple of days ago.

The Afghan government and NATO-led Resolute Support mission have speeded up the training process of defense security forces of Afghanistan to bolster the war against militants in the conflict-plagued country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 15:33:53|Editor: Mengjie

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SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A large crowd of Cubans gathered here on Sunday in commemoration of their revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, with a massive gala and vigil, as part of a series of weeklong political and cultural events held across the Caribbean island country.

"I am Fidel," a slogan that came up naturally among Cubans after the death of the late Commander in Chief one year ago, was frequently repeated in chorus by the attendees during a gala at the Jose Maria Heredia Theater.

A video was displayed on the screen at the theater, showing incumbent President Raul Castro's speech on Dec 3, 2016, a day before the ashes of his brother and predecessor were interred in a private ceremony at Santiago De Cuba's Santa Ifigenia Cemetery, 1,000 km east of Havana.

Government and political leaders attended the event on Sunday, including the Second Secretary General of Cuban Communist Party Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, and First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

Broadcasted by the national television, artists and speakers recalled with songs and poems the revolutionary life of Fidel Castro, while a big screen at the back of the stage showed continuously the crucial moments of his life through images and videos.

On the same day, a massive vigil was held at the Antonio Maceo Revolution Square in the city to remember the leader who had led the country for 48 years.

The next morning, there will be a pilgrimage from that place to the Santa Ifigenia cemetery to pay tribute to Castro.

Over the past week, tributes have taken place throughout the country with book presentations, exhibitions, workshops, concerts and vigils, among other activities, held in different cities.

Castro died on Nov. 25 last year at the age of 90. After his death, the State Council decreed nine days of national mourning, and this year although normality reigns, many agree that Fidel's legacy and ideas should be remembered.

Cubans feel as if he were physically present and time hasn't erased an event that shocked this Caribbean nation and the world.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 15:43:59|Editor: Mengjie

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's tweets over the weekend defending himself against the ongoing investigation into possible collusion between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia have further complicated the issue and U.S. lawmakers have warned the president may have obstructed justice.

Trump tweeted before dawn on Sunday that he never asked former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) James Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, the president's then national security adviser who on Friday pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI and pledged cooperation with the bureau, blowing a dramatic turn to the investigation.

Trump's account, however, contradicted the testimony made by Comey -- who was fired by Trump in May -- to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in June in which he said Trump asked him to drop the probe into Flynn's alleged contact with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak last December, weeks before Trump assumed presidency.

The Sunday tweet followed an even more contradictory one sent on Saturday in which the outspoken president wrote: "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

Flynn, a retired lieutenant general of the U.S. Army and one of Trump's most trusted aides during the campaign and transition, was forced out of the White House in February, only acknowledging that he didn't tell Vice President Mike Pence in full about the nature of his conversations with Kislyak.

It later came to light that one of the topics discussed in the Flynn-Kislyak phone call was the sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration. Neither Trump nor Pence expressed concern at the time that the FBI was also misled, according to the Associated Press.

The AP said Sunday that Trump's tweet indicated he knew at the time that Flynn had done something that was against the law. Lawmakers are thus more suspicious that Trump, by demanding that Comey drop the Flynn case after knowing the latter had lied to the FBI, engaged in obstruction of justice.

"The president knew he (Flynn) had lied to the FBI, which means that when he talked to the FBI director and asked him to effectively drop this case, he knew that Flynn had committed a federal crime," Adam Schiff, senior Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was quoted by the Reuters as saying when appearing in the ABC program "This Week".

"Then you get the case of obstruction of justice," Schiff added.

Meanwhile, Diane Feinstein, a Democratic senate and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that she believed the latest development of the investigation and Trump's "continual tweets" pointed toward an obstruction of justice case.

"I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey. And it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. That's obstruction of justice," said the Democrat. Comey refused to "let Flynn go" as he was asked by Trump, and got fired by the president.

In an effort to extinguish the fire fanned up by Trump's seemingly self-destroying tweets, John Dowd, the president's personal lawyer, told the Reuters on Sunday that he drafted the Saturday tweet and "made a mistake."

"The mistake was I should have put the lying to the FBI in a separate line referencing his plea," Dowd said, according to the Reuters. "Instead, I put it together and it made all you guys go crazy. A tweet is a shorthand," he was quoted as saying.

When interviewed by other media outlets, the lawyer declined to answer questions about how and when Trump learned of Flynn's alleged lies to the FBI, but the Reuters quoted him as saying the first time the president knew it for a fact was when Flynn was charged.

The White House has been trying to portray Flynn's contact with Kislyak as an independent move after which he lied to his colleagues, but the New York Times reported Saturday that Flynn was in close contact with other senior members of Trump's transition team both before and after his conversations with Kislyak

An email written by a transition adviser of Trump's that was revealed on Saturday indicated that a number of the president's aides had been informed that Flynn was going to discuss Russian sanctions with Kislyak before he made the December phone call.

The Times, which obtained the full content of the Dec. 29 email written by K.T. McFarland, said McFarland described the sanctions imposed against Russia by the Obama administration as an attempt to delegitimize Trump's election victory.

The paper further quoted McFarland, who was Flynn's deputy during his less-than-one-month tenure as National Security Advisor, as saying in the email that the sanctions, in retaliation to Russia's alleged meddling in the election, could also make it much harder for Trump to ease tensions with Russia, "which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him."

The report said it was unclear whether McFarland really believed Russia swayed the election in Trump's favor, citing a White House lawyer as saying she only meant the Democrats were portraying it that way.

Trump habitually takes to Twitter in his own defense, whether it be explaining his policy decisions or fending off criticisms against himself. However, frequently expressing views on an ongoing criminal investigation is largely seen as inappropriate for a president.

"You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said, "I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. President."

Trump's lawyers were also said to have begged him not to tweet about Russia or the investigation, but the president insisted on responding to the Flynn case, only to see his effort overshadow an otherwise triumphant week for him as the Senate passed a significant tax overhaul.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 15:49:04|Editor: Mengjie

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Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, attends a symposium marking the fourth National Constitution Day in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 4, 2017. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislator has called for better promotion of the principle underlying rule of law that the Constitution and the law are above everything else and that everyone is equal before the law.

Such a principle should become a voluntary act of all people, Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, said at a symposium marking the fourth National Constitution Day on Monday.

At the symposium, Zhang said the major policies of the Communist Party of China Central Committee regarding the implementation of the Constitution and the oversight to ensure compliance with the Constitution should be carried out in a comprehensive manner.

The principles of the Constitution should be firmly observed, the spirit of the Constitution should be promoted, and the obligations mandated in the Constitution should be performed, he said.

He also demanded efforts to integrate the process of sound lawmaking, strict law enforcement, and impartial administration of justice with the cause of developing a socialist culture of rule of law.
Source:Xinhua| 2017-12-04 16:45:30|Editor: Mengjie

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Aerial photo taken on March 9, 2017 shows the Shanghai free trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai, east China. In the first three quarters this year, foreign trade in the Shanghai FTZ rose 16.2 percent year on year to 997.6 billion yuan (150.2 billion U.S. dollars). The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in October 2017 in Beijing, capital of China, ushered in a new era of the socialism with Chinese characteristics. (Xinhua/Ding Ting)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 16:09:15|Editor: Mengjie

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WUZHEN, Zhejiang, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Four sculptures stood in great contrast to the advanced technology on display in Wuzhen Internet International Conference and Exhibition Center; however, they attracted just as much, if not more, attention from visitors.

The "Cyber Cocoon Kids" art installation, presented by UNICEF China at the on-going World Internet Conference, shows the four key online risks for children: cyberbullying, excessive internet use, online child sexual abuse and oversharing personal information.

Artist Xie Yong and creative director Kevin Wang came up with the concept of "Cyber Cocoon Kids" to represent the potential isolation that can occur when children inhabit a cyber world that parents and caregivers do not fully understand.

"Protecting children online is a vital issue in internet governance, and also closely linked to the Sustainable Development Goals," said Fatoumata Ndiaye, UNICEF deputy executive director.

At the conference, UNICEF also co-hosted a Child Online Safety Forum bringing global experts to share learning, experience and practice in this area.

"The internet offers children access to a whole world of possibilities to learn, connect and play," said Rana Flowers, UNICEF Representative to China. "As policy makers, digital industry representatives or as parents and caregivers, we need to protect children from the worst that digital technology has to offer and expand their access to the best."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 16:34:26|Editor: liuxin

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JAKARTA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The number of foreign holiday makers coming into Indonesia from January to October this year picked up on yearly basis, but the volcano eruption in the country's Bali resort island has impacted on the arrivals in October.

The national statistics bureau announced on Monday that total foreign tourist arrivals by October this year grew 23.55 percent to 11.62 million from a year ago.

In October alone, the number of foreign visitors coming into the country was up 11.33 percent to 1.16 million people on yearly basis, head of the bureau Kecuk Suhariyanto said.

However, on monthly basis, the arrivals were down 4.54 percent in October due to Mount Agung volcano eruption in Bali resort island, he added.

"The impact of the volcano eruption in Bali decreased the number of foreign visitors coming into the island," he told a press conference.

The number of holiday makers coming into Bali island contracted 15.99 percent to 462,263 people in October on monthly basis, compared with 550,238 people in September, the official said.

Mount Agung volcano in Karangasem district, some 70 km from tourist hub of Kuta has been on the top alert level since September and forced nearly 144,000 people to evacuate and had led to the closure of the airport in the island for several times over volcanic ash.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 16:34:28|Editor: Yurou

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NEW YORK, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. video streaming service giant Netflix has acquired Day and Night, its first online series produced in the Chinese mainland.

Netflix unveiled a deal last weekend with Alibaba's flagship video service platform Youku to stream the 32-episode detective drama series in 190 countries and regions outside of China, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The drama features a recused police officer who tries to clear his twin brother from an appalling murder case as a special consultant, while at the same time helping his former colleagues solving other mysteries.

Without casting super stars, the show is widely praised for its lead actor Pan Yueming's superb acting as twin brothers with distinct characteristics.

The drama has been a blockbuster in China since its debut in August, securing over 4.6 billion views on Youku alone.

It has also been rated a 9 out 10 on Douban, a Chinese review site on books, movies and dramas, which often gives harsh comments.

"The cultural industry is undergoing robust growth in China, and I believe the export of high-quality content will help people around the world gain a better understanding of the soft power of China," Yang Weidong, president of Youku, told the SCMP.

"I'm delighted that Youku can become a pioneer in driving this initiative," he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 16:39:30|Editor: liuxin

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- As Brussels has become increasingly upset with U.S. president's provocative policies on Europe, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's chance of roping in the U.S. allies during his current visit to Europe seems slimmer than ever.

Tillerson's five-day trip to Europe starting from Monday, his seventh since taking office in February, will take him to Belgium, Austria and France for a group of bilateral and multilateral events.

The purpose of this trip, a senior State Department official requiring anonymity said on a Friday teleconference with media, was to "reiterate America's commitment to the transatlantic alliance" and commitment to the defense of Western institutions and the West as a community of shared interests and values.

ESTRANGEMENT ON VALUES

According to the official, the themes Tillerson will hit on the trip are expected to echo his earlier speech on U.S.-Europe relations, where he said an important part of the ties is about shared values.

However, the two sides across the Atlantic Ocean have been thrust in bitter odd right before Tillerson embarks on the tour.

The Netherlands and Britain have both protested President Donald Trump's earlier decision to retweet anti-Muslim video clips of a Britain-based far-right group, which allegedly depicted violence carried out by Muslims.

"Trump's (re-posting) of anti-Islamic videos has put a great strain on U.S.-UK relationships," Darrell West, a senior fellow with think-tank Brookings Institution said, noting the incident occurred "at a delicate time as Britain is negotiating its exit from the European Union."

Trump's tweets have sparked a row between the White House and British Prime Minister Theresa May, who said Trump was "wrong" to re-tweet what she described as "hateful narratives."

"British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far-right which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents: decency, tolerance and respect," she said in an earlier statement.

For his part, Trump shot back via twitter: "Don't focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom," referring to recent Islamist terror attacks in England.

In Friday's teleconference, the anonymous official said Tillerson himself "feels very strongly about those values."

"I would also say just the scope of the agenda that we're managing with European allies and partners I think speaks for itself," he said, "We're going into this trip focused on those critical areas including in the realm of values."

ALIENATION ON TRUMP POLICIES

Tillerson will also underline the necessity of burden-sharing among the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members, which experts said will put another strain on U.S.-Europe relationships.

Trump has urged European allies to step up their defense spending to 2 percent of the gross domestic product, threatening to consider cutting off the U.S. defense support of those who did not make it.

However, the European nations argued that they have made their share of contribution when supporting the U.S. initiatives in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Asking more from them is "insatiably avaricious."

In the teleconference, the official defended Trump's rhetoric, saying Tillerson in the trip "will continue to make the point that NATO is safer and stronger when all allies are sharing -- are shouldering their fair share of the defense burden."

"The burden-sharing agenda is partly about whether allies are spending more on defense, but it's also about what allies are doing," the official added.

Brussels and Washington have drifted apart over Trump's endorsement of Brexit and tougher immigration law, as well as his rejection of the Paris climate accord, Iran nuclear deal and the United Nations Educational,Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Trump's latest attempt to close the office of Palestine Liberation Organization in Washington and his reported plan to announce Jerusalem the Israeli capital this week have sparked wide resentment and hostility in Europe.

All of these signs, experts said, will make Tillerson's job harder than that of any of his previous trips.

DIFFERENCES ON RUSSIA

Tillerson is expected to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Vienna on the sidelines of the the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ministerial meeting on Dec. 7, when the two chief diplomats will "have a fairly robust set of discussions on a lot of global issues -- DPRK (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea), Ukraine, and certainly Syria," according to the State Department.

Tillerson "feels very strongly about this portion of the agenda," the official said, "It needs to be an outcome that would have a U.N. force encompassing the contested area and not just ratifying the gains that the Russians have made on the ground."

The statement, together with Tillerson's Europe speech which hinted Russia was Europe's most immediate threat, would make his meeting with Lavrov more difficult and largely fruitless.

Analysts argued that Tillerson's effort to underline the Russian threat to Europe was nothing short of a tactic to loop in the U.S. European allies and hence make them more dependent on the U.S. military and financial support.

However, the European nations, still major importers of Russian oil and gas, might find Tillerson's rhetoric unflattering. Moreover, the West, in desperate need of Moscow's cooperation on securing de-escalation zones in Syria, among others, will drift other NATO members further apart from Tillerson's agenda.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 17:09:39|Editor: liuxin

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Photo released by Pakistan's Press Information Department (PID) on Dec. 4, 2017 shows Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi (4th R) attends a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis (3rd L) in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan. (Xinhua/PID)

ISLAMABAD, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis arrived in Pakistan on Monday for talks on bilateral and regional matters with focuses on anti-terrorism cooperation and Pakistan's role in peace in Afghanistan, officials here said.

Mattis is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and the Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa in his day-long visit. It was Mattis' first trip to Pakistan as defense secretary.

The Pentagon said Mattis' visit aimed to continue the dialogue between the two sides about the South Asia strategy that U.S. President Donald Trump announced in August.

"The U.S. remains committed to a pragmatic relationship that expands ... cooperation on shared interests while reinforcing President Trump's call for action against terrorist safe havens," the Pentagon quoted the secretary as saying earlier, adding that the visit is "a continued dialogue, in what our vision is for the Afghan peace process."

Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Muhammad Faisal has said the visit of the U.S. defense chief is part of the continued interaction between the two countries.

"This clearly indicates that dialogue between both the countries to bridge gap in perceptions is ongoing. We are trying to find common grounds and move forward in our bilateral relationship with the U.S. in a positive and cooperative manner," the spokesman said last week at his weekly briefing.

Regarding the U.S. policy on South Asia, the spokesman said "there was a difference in understanding and perceptions on both sides."

He added that thereafter, a dialogue started by a meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this year.

Mattis is the second senior U.S. official to travel to Pakistan after Trump declared strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Pakistan in October for talks over the new policy, which the United States claims will defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan and to pressurize them to join peace process.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 17:14:41|Editor: Mengjie

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DOHA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Qatar has accepted the invitation by Kuwait to attend the upcoming summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Kuwait, Qatar's English newspaper Gulf Times reported Monday.

Speaking at a forum organized by the Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies in Doha Sunday evening, Qatar's Foreign Minister, Mohamed Al Thani stated, Qatar has accepted the invitation to attend the summit, amid the region's worst political crisis in years.

"I will attend the ministerial council tomorrow and the emir will attend the summit," Al-Thani said.

"It is important that the GCC system remains alive," he added.

Al-Thani commented on the accusations of supporting terrorism by its neighbors, saying "they are baseless. These accusations have been only claims and nobody has submitted any proof yet."

Earlier, Kuwait sent out invitations to the GCC member states, but it was not clear whether the other leaders would attend the summit.

The GCC council is a political and economic alliance of countries in the Arabian Peninsula. It's scheduled to hold the ministerial meeting Monday evening and the leaders meeting on December 5.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 17:14:42|Editor: Mengjie

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DHAKA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh's first ever female combat pilots have joined a U.N. mission, authorities have said.

Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR) of Bangladesh Army in a press release Sunday declared the deployment of Flight Lieutenant Nayma Haque and Flight Lieutenant Tamanna-E-Lufty at the peacekeeping mission of United Nations in Congo.

Both Nayma and Tamanna had earlier made history by becoming the first female combat pilots in the Bangladesh Air Force (BAF).

Accordding to the statement, they were selected based on their professional excellences in line with BAF selection procedures.

They performed duties in different BAF squadron after successfully completing 65 hours of basic helicopter conversion training, said the ISPR statement.

Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Abu Esrar had earlier urged them to perform their duties with "honesty, professionalism and sincerity" and to "bring honor for the Air Force as well as for the country".

BAF started its journey to U.N. Mission by sending peacekeepers to Bosnia Herzegovina in 1993.

Some 6,430 BAF members so far reportedly completed their UN peacekeeping missions in countries including Kuwait, Timor-Leste, Cote d'Ivoire and Mali.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 17:19:43|Editor: Yurou

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R back) and visiting Mongolian Foreign Minister Damdin Tsogtbaatar meet the press after their talks in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 4, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Monday called on all parties concerned to abide by relevant UN resolutions on the Korean Peninsula issue.

Wang made the remarks when meeting the press after talks with visiting Mongolian Foreign Minister Damdin Tsogtbaatar. He was asked to comment on the U.S. decision to consider imposing more sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) after its recent missile test.

"After two months of relative quiet, tensions on the Korean Peninsula have increased again," Wang said. He added that it was a regret that the parties involved failed to seize on China's appeals.

"China has always been open-minded to new propositions to resolve the issue, however, the stipulations and spirit of UN Security Council resolutions should be a common principle for all parties to follow," Wang said, adding that UN Security Council resolutions represent the common will of the international community.

Wang said China has fully implemented relevant UN resolutions on the issue and opposed the nuclear and missile programs of the DPRK.

He said China firmly opposes actions to increase the tension on the Korean Peninsula and has always been working to promote peace and dialogue in accordance with all previous UN resolutions.

"Propositions and measures that are against or not included in the resolutions lack international legal support and will jeopardize the execution of UN resolutions," Wang said.

The Republic of Korea and the United States launched a large-scale joint aerial drill Monday. The Vigilant Ace drill will run until Friday.

"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is highly sensitive, and we hope that relevant parties can avoid provocation and do more to ease tension," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said later Monday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 17:19:44|Editor: ZD

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BANGKOK, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's fugitive former premier Yingluck Shinawatra has not obtained a British passport, Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai said on Monday.

His comment followed earlier news reports that Yingluck had been given the British passport after she had reportedly sought political asylum in Britain.

Don said such possibilities were not officially reported by any authorities, Thai or British. Neither has the British embassy in Bangkok filed any report about Yingluck to the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs as yet, he said.

Thai media earlier reported that Yingluck was seeking political asylum in Britain after she had unexpectedly departed Thailand and secretly traveled to the United Arab Emirates in August.

Yingluck reportedly fled the country via Cambodia, which shares border with Thailand, and found her way to the Middle East country after she had failed to show up before the Supreme Court.

In absentia of the former female leader, the Supreme Court delivered a final verdict and sentenced her to a five-year jail term on duty negligence and misconduct charges pertaining to a rice program which had been implemented by her Puea Thai (for the Thais) Party-led government and reportedly incurred an estimated 500 billion baht (about 14.7 billion U.S. dollars) in state losses several years ago.

Yingluck was said to have visited her brother, former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra, in Dubai where he has been taking self-exile since nearly a decade ago.

Thaksin and Yingluck were deposed by military coups in 2006 and 2014 respectively.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 17:24:46|Editor: ZD

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BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong will visit the United Kingdom from Monday to Thursday and co-chair a meeting on people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.

The meeting, the fifth of its kind in the China-UK high-level people-to-People dialogue, will be co-chaired by Liu and British Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, according to foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang.

During the visit, Liu will meet with officials of the British government and members of the royal family, and sign a host of cooperative agreements on people-to-people exchanges, Geng said at a daily press briefing.

He expressed hope that the visit will promote political mutual trust, strengthen cultural and people-to-people exchanges, and further boost bilateral ties.
Source: Xinhuanet| 2017-12-04 17:34:22|Editor: Zhou Xin

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As the highlight of 2017 Hainan International Tourism Island Carnival, 2017 Hainan World Leisure Tourism Expo kicked off recently in south China.

Up to now, exhibitors and guests from more than 30 popular travel destination countries and regions, such as Thailand and Italy, were invited to participate in the expo.

Moreover, famous Chinese travel agencies, international hotel groups and travel transportation services providers attended the event as well.

Activities including China Leisure Tourism Development Forum, Macao Promotion Week, discounted tourism products sale, special themed arts performances and other promotion events for tourist cities were held during the expo.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 17:34:51|Editor: Liu

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NANNING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The number of people who passed through the China-Vietnam border port of Dongxing in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region this year hit a record high of 9 million on Monday, the border control office said.

Dongxing is the third largest land port in China, and the only port connecting China and Vietnam via both land and sea. Since 2013, China has allowed foreigners to apply for visas in Dongxing, which has increased the number of tourists from around the world using the city to enter China from Southeast Asia, according to the local tourism bureau.

Tourism on the China-Vietnam border is booming, thanks to government policies and abundant resources. Meanwhile, easy access and affordable facilities have helped draw Chinese tourists from the north to visit the area during winter, according to an border control officer.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 17:39:52|Editor: ZD

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BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- China and Japan will hold their eighth round of high-level consultations on maritime affairs in Shanghai on Tuesday and Wednesday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Monday.

Officials from the foreign ministries, defense ministries, maritime law enforcement and management departments of both sides will attend the talks, spokesperson Geng Shuang told a routine news briefing.

China expects to fully exchange views with Japan on maritime issues of common concern, in a bid to strengthen understanding and mutual trust, Geng said.

The China-Japan High-level Consultations on Maritime Affairs were set up in 2012. The last round of consultations was held in Fukuoka, Japan in June this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 18:09:57|Editor: Liu

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BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- China's central authorities have called for the setting up of supervisory commissions on village affairs, according to a guideline released Monday.

The village affairs supervision committees will help to "overcome unhealthy tendencies, curb corruption, promote harmony and stability and improve governance in villages," according to the guideline issued by the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council.

The commissions will be made up of three to five people to specialize in management or accounting. They will be voted in at the village meeting or villagers' assembly.

The commissions will be responsible for supervising village affairs and financial management, as well consulting village opinion for suggestions.

The commission will ensure decision making processes are in accordance with standard procedures, and ensure full disclosure in village affairs.

Supervision must also be strengthened on village construction projects, and agriculture and poverty alleviation funds, the guideline said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 18:30:06|Editor: Yamei

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MADRID, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A judge in the Spanish Supreme Court on Monday morning refused to grant a bail to Catalonia's former deputy leader Oriol Junqueras and three others detained for their role in the Oct. 27 independence declaration.

The ruling by Supreme Court magistrate Pablo Llarena also allowed six others detained over the matter to leave prison after paying 100,000 euros each.

Junqueras faces charges of rebellion, sedition and the misuse of public funds, while the two leaders of two Catalan grassroots separatist groups, known as the "two Jordis," face sedition charges and have so far spent 45 days in prison.

Also among those denied bail was Catalan interior spokesperson Joaquim Form.

It had been expected that all 10 Catalan separatists could be allowed to leave prison after accepting the application of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which temporarily suspends Catalan autonomy until the new regional elections scheduled for Dec. 21.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 18:40:09|Editor: liuxin

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NEW DELHI, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A passenger plane of national carrier Air India, on way to the southern city of Chennai from Dubai, was diverted to India's financial capital Mumbai Monday, following a medical emergency on board.

A male passenger complained of chest pain on Air India flight number AI 906, following which the pilot decided to divert the Airbus A321 aircraft to Mumbai, a spokesperson for the airline told the media.

The plane, which was carrying 164 passengers, apart from crew members, landed at Mumbai international airport, where the passenger was disembarked and checked by doctors, before flying for its destination.

The passenger has been checked by airport doctors and certified fit for travelling onward to Chennai, the spokesperson said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 18:40:10|Editor: liuxin

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YANGON, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A total of 155,169 undocumented Myanmar migrant workers returned home from Thailand in the past five months, according to a release of Myanmar's Home Ministry Monday.

The migrant workers, who returned during the period between June 29 and Dec. 3 , include 66,980 women workers.

Undocumented Myanmar migrant workers have been returning home since the end of June although Thai authorities have delayed the full enforcement of a new labor law introduced in late June.

The law originally aimed at tackling human trafficking and regulating foreign workers in Thailand but sparked panic and prompted more than 60,000 foreign workers to leave the country then , many of them from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

The influx has overtaxed social agencies and border crossing as border gates restricted the number of crossing to only 100 people a day, causing hardship for many Myanmar migrants to have enough food and lodging while waiting for the border crossing, reports said.

The new decree in Thailand imposes heavy fine on employers and employees who do not have work permits.

About 4 million legal and 1 million illegal Myanmar workers are reportedly staying in Thailand.

In a bid to solve the problem of undocumented Myanmar migrant workers who are returning home out of fear of the new labor law, authorities of the two countries negotiated on issuing official documents to the workers, the authorities said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 18:50:12|Editor: liuxin

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WELLINGTON, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government on Monday approved the regulations banning microbeads, which are found in personal care products such as facial cleansers, bath scrubs and toothpaste.

Minister for the Environment David Parker said that microbeads get washed down the drain but are too small to be fully captured by the waste water treatment systems.

These minute plastic particles enter the marine environment where they accumulate, do not biodegrade, and are mistaken for food, which causes long-term damage to New Zealand's marine life, Parker said in a statement.

"This ban contributes to global efforts to reduce the amount of plastic ending up in our oceans," said Associate Minister for the Environment Eugenie Sage.

The changes align with similar initiatives in the United States, Britain and Australia, Sage said.

Public consultation on the proposed regulations took place in January this year and drew wide public support, she said, adding that many submitters urged the government to broaden the scope of the proposed ban to include other products containing microbeads.

In response to public opinions, the regulations have been widened to include all "wash-off" microbead-containing products for exfoliating, cleansing or abrasive cleaning purposes, which includes household, car or other cleaning products as well as personal care products, according to the ministry.

"The market for these additional products is minimal, but we want to prevent a future market developing," Sage said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 18:50:13|Editor: Mengjie

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Hi, here is what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours.

SYDNEY -- Australia's major wool sector looks poised to sustain a return to strong growth, fueled by record high prices and robust demand from increasingly affluent Chinese consumers, latest industry figures and analyses showed.

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BEIJING -- China and Japan will hold their eighth round of high-level consultations on maritime affairs in Shanghai on Tuesday and Wednesday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Monday.

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NANNING -- The number of people who passed through the China-Vietnam border port of Dongxing in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region this year hit a record high of 9 million on Monday, the border control office said.

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HONG KONG -- Police of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region on Monday were investigating a robbery of a shop in downtown Hong Kong, where 14 luxury handbags worth 1.4 million Hong Kong dollars (about 180,000 U.S. dollars) were stolen.

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BEIJING -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Monday called on all parties concerned to abide by relevant UN resolutions on the Korean Peninsula issue.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 19:05:17|Editor: Mengjie

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MACAO, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Legislative Assembly of China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) voted on Monday afternoon to suspend legislator Sou Ka Hou from his duty, the first legislator to have his mandate suspended in the Macao SAR.

Among the 33-member Legislative Assembly, 28 legislators voted for and four against the suspension of Sou's mandate.

Sou was accused of the crime of aggravated disobedience. The beginning of the trial was originally scheduled for Nov. 28, but was postponed in response to a request by the Legislative Assembly, according to the First Instance Court of the Macao SAR.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 19:20:21|Editor: liuxin

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LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban district chief Daud Alfat and four others were killed after aircraft pounded militants' vehicle in Nahr-e-Saraj district of southern Afghanistan's Helmand province on Monday, a local official said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 19:25:27|Editor: liuxin

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JERUSALEM, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Israel's Defense Ministry called off a test of its Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile system after a safety failure in the simulated target was found on Monday, the ministry said in a statement.

"The trial was cut short after the target (missile) that was launched did not meet the safety codes of the test, which had been set in advance," the statement read.

The target missile was supposed to simulate a ballistic missile fired at Israel in a joint test by the Israeli Defense Ministry and the United States' Missile Defense Agency.

The Arrow-3 is Israel's most advanced missile-defense system. It is part of the country's multi-layer defense doctrine, which includes Iron Dome, a system aimed at intercepting short-range rockets from Gaza; David's Sling, which can intercept medium-range missiles owned by the Iran-backed Hezbollah organization in southern Lebanon; and the long-range Arrow-3 anti-ballistic-missiles system.

In December 2015, Israel's Ministry of Defense said it successfully test-launched the Arrow-3 interceptor, marking the system's first validation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 19:30:29|Editor: liuxin

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NAIROBI, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- More than 60 delegates are set to meet in Nairobi on Wednesday to discuss ways of fostering business and trade within the supply chain networks along the Eastern and Southern Africa transport corridors, organizers said on Monday.

The meeting organized by the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Business Council (CBC), a private sector association comprising investors involved in exporting and importing across the 19-member bloc, will also validate the study carried out in the transport corridors (north and north south corridors) in 2017.

"The focus of the study has been to show how corridors can generate economies of scale in agriculture and other priority sectors through fostering potential business partnerships that will be identified along the transport corridors," CBC said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

It said the key outputs of the study will be an assessment report and a Business Guide that will facilitate sustainable business partnerships between the potential buyers and existing supplier enterprises operating along the targeted corridors.

The Dec. 6-7 meeting will have the participation of more than 60 regional delegates, where the players in the agro-industry sector will engage in the dialogue to highlight and address various issues affecting the sustainability and growth of the agro-industry sector.

A total of eight countries -- Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda -- participated in the study.

The study comes at a time when there has been very low local sourcing from within the corridors from large corporates especially.

The CBC said the meeting creates a platform for establishing and strengthening regional business linkages in the agro industry in the transport corridors.

"Once sustainable business partnerships are created there will be increased volumes of trade intra- regionally," it said.

According to the CBC, the study has since been concluded and a number key products, potential buyers and suppliers were identified as well as challenges faced by the small and large corporates.

"From the said countries, the meeting will bring together more than 60 participants drawn from horticulture, agro processing, manufacturing companies, dairy companies, corporates and farmers within the agriculture sector, trade institutions and other stakeholders supporting agriculture development in the region," the CBC said.

According to the CBC, the agriculture sector is faced with many challenges such as prohibitive cost of transport, lack of market information, high government taxes, porosity borders, corruption, lack of trade information and so on.

"Despite being hit by these challenges, the sector continues to play a key role towards economic development," it said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 19:45:36|Editor: Mengjie

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by Zhu Junqing

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. opposition to recognizing China as a market economy within the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is in reckless disregard of the relevant WTO rules, and is intended to make an excuse for its trade protectionism by misleading the public.

By submitting a statement of opposition to the WTO as a third-party brief in support of the European Union in a case brought by China, the United States tried to mix the concepts of the surrogate country approach and market economy status to mislead the public for its selfish interests.

Last year, China filed a WTO dispute case over surrogate country approach, arguing the approach should be dropped after the expiration date on Dec. 11, 2016 in accordance with Article 15 of the accession protocol.

In fact, the case has nothing to do with whether China has been granted market economy status or not, as there are no standards in the WTO rules for the status.

As Liang Guoyong, economic affairs officer at the Investment and Enterprise Division of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, said, the case is about "surrogate country approach," not "market economy status," which means the former is within multilateral trade rules, while the latter is regarded as a domestic law issue.

The practice to mix the two things together, he said, apparently contradicts multilateral trade rules and also breaks some countries' international commitments and promises.

Furthermore, it is clear that such behavior is a U.S. planned attempt to protect its trade with China and a part of its efforts to contain China's rise.

According to the General Administration of Customs, China's exports to the United States in the first three quarters increased 18.7 percent over the same period of 2016, and China's trade surplus with the United States in the first 10 month expanded 7.3 percent to reach 225 billion U.S. dollars.

The robust growth in China's exports to the United States and the appreciable trade surplus could be a catalyst for the U.S. administration to maintain a tough stance on China.

Such behavior is just reminiscent of the domestic laws of certain WTO members in the Cold War era, and the refusal would put trade ties with China at risk.

On the other hand, China has established and continuously improved its market economy system, which has earned worldwide recognition. So far, more than 80 economies have recognized China as a market economy.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 19:50:39|Editor: liuxin

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BELGRADE, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Serbian police have uncovered seven drug labs, seizing 128.5 kg narcotics together with weapons and explosives, and detaining 139 suspects during the past week, the country's interior ministry said in a press release on Sunday.

The drug labs were in three different cities -- the capital Belgrade, Sabac in the west and Subotica in the north -- and some of them were designed to grow "especially rare hallucinogenic mushrooms," according to the release.

Among those detained, 96 were for possession of drugs while 43 for illegal possession of weapons.

Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovi commended all police officers who have participated in the week-long operation and highlighted the fact that "14.5 kg of explosives were seized, of which 11 kg were seized...in the Krusik Arms factory."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 19:55:42|Editor: liuxin

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MANILA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have said that 264 armed rebels have been killed or arrested since this February, local media reported on Monday.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer, a major English newspaper, quoted Col. Edgard Arevalo, the AFP Public Affairs chief as saying that besides those killed or arrested, 573 New People's Army (NPA) members had voluntarily surrendered. A total of 622 firearms were recovered from the NPA rebels.

NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and now about 3,800 NPA armed men continue to fight against the central and local governments, mainly in the poorest provinces of the Philippines.

The Philippine military also called on the remaining communist rebels to lay down their arms or be killed.

"While we are hopeful that more NPA (members) will surrender in the coming days, our troops on the ground will continue with our relentless operations against those who remain active in their violent and destructive criminal activities," Arevalo said in a statement.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte signed a proclamation to formally terminate talks with the CPP in November and later told leftist rebel leaders to surrender or face punitive actions.

The rebellion in the Philippines began in 1969 and reached its peak in 1987 when it boasted 26,000 armed guerrillas.

Since 1986, the Philippine government has been trying to reach a peace deal with the leftist rebels but failed to make any headway.

Peace negotiations with the rebels were suspended in 2011.

The Duterte administration revived the talks with the rebels in August last year. But the talks have since bogged down due to a series of attacks launched by the rebels against troops and civilians.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 20:00:44|Editor: liuxin

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BANGKOK, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and 15 injured after a pickup truck collided with a dozen motorbikes in eastern Thailand's famous tourist destination Pattaya on Monday.

The accident happened on Monday morning when the 44-year-old pickup truck driver suddenly fell unconscious. The truck plowed through more than 10 motorcycles taking students to school, resulting in two deaths, according to local media.

The injured had been rushed to hospital.

The truck driver has been attacked by an angry crowd, said police.

Police also said the driver admitted he has been treated for epilepsy. Result of the driver's alcohol test appeared negative.

Police has not charged him yet as the case is under investigation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 20:00:45|Editor: liuxin

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VALLETTA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat announced Monday that authorities have arrested eight people in connection with the recent murder of a journalist.

The arrests came seven weeks after Daphne Caruana Galizia, a blogger and investigative journalist focusing on corruption and organized crime among other subjects, was killed in a car bomb attack near her home.

The suspects were captured in a joint operation by the armed forces, police and security services, and they are all previously known to the police, Muscat said at a press conference, adding that the police now had 24 hours to charge them.

The prime minister stressed that while he felt a need to update the nation on what was ultimately an issue of national security, he could not divulge too many details as the probe was still ongoing.

Asked whether he believes the arrested carried out the attack and whether their arrests could lead to the identification of a mastermind, Muscat refused to elaborate, only insisting that he has "a clear idea" of what their involvement was and that the government is committed to bringing the perpetrators to justice.

The killing of the 53-year-old journalist sent shockwaves throughout the world. The European Commission has called on Malta to get to the bottom of the crime.

The Mediterranean country observed a national day of mourning in her honor and has offered a 1-million-euro (1.19 million U.S. dollar) reward for information about her murder.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 20:05:47|Editor: liuxin

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KIGALI, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank and the Rwandan government on Monday signed a funding deal worth 125 million U.S. dollars toward Rwanda's energy development.

The deal was inked by the Rwandan minister of finance Claver Gatete and the World Bank representative to Rwanda Yasser El-Gammal in Kigali, capital city of Rwanda.

The funding which is in form of a concessional loan is expected to enable fiscally sustainable expansion of electricity services in the central African country. It also aimed to improve the operational efficiency, affordability, and accountability of electricity service, according to the ministry of finance.

The support is part of the World Bank's three year Development Policy Operation (DPO) series project worth 325 million dollars, a continuation of the World Bank's current financing in the energy sector in Rwanda worth 386.7 million dollars, according to the lender.

Monday's funding will be followed by two other series, each worth 100 million dollars, said the bank.

According to the ministry's statement, the DPO will specifically strengthen planning capacity for least-cost access expansion, introduce improved accountability and transparency in implementing electrification programs, among others.

Speaking after the signing event, Gatete said the Development Policy Operation would help Rwanda achieve sustainable development of the power sector.

The program supported by the DPO series is based on a clear set of reforms that will help Rwanda lay the groundwork for successful energy sector development during the implementation of the National Strategy for Transformation for the period of 2017 to 2024, he said.

The proposed operation supports the Rwandan government in taking many of reform measures, initiated in previous World Bank operations, forward in a structured, pragmatic and transformative manner, Yasser El-Gammal said.

Rwanda targets to increase electricity production both on and off grid to ensure that all households have electricity by 2024, from the current 22 percent, Rwandan Prime Minister Edouard told the parliament in September when presenting the government's development strategy up to 2024.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 20:11:10|Editor: Yamei

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Combo photo taken on Sept. 11, 2017 shows models presenting creations designed by Genqoi Tashi, a fashion designer of Tibetan ethnic group, in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. Genqoi Tashi, 34, established his own fashion brand Yeeom, which combines traditional culture of the Tibetan ethnic group and modern fashions, in 2012. Genqoi Tashi has made the fashion brand Yeeom known worldwide and takes orders from India, Nepal and European countries. (Xinhua/Purbu Zhaxi)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 20:25:53|Editor: liuxin

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by Burak Akinci

ANKARA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Turkey is cautiously pleased on the United States pledge to stop arming Syrian Kurdish fighters, that Washington has viewed as a key player against the Islamic State (IS), an issue that has been a major source of tension between the two countries.

With anti-IS operations in Syria coming to an end, the U.S. will focus on holding territory instead of arming the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday.

Turkey considers the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the YPG, to be the Syrian affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a terrorist organization listed by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU. However, the U.S. has supported the PKK and the PYD as its ally on the ground in combating IS in Syria.

MATTIS MAKES CLEAR: U.S. TO STOP ARMING YPG

"The YPG is armed, and as the coalition stops offensive (operations), then obviously you don't need that," Mattis said. "You need security, you need police forces, that's local forces, that's people who make certain that IS doesn't come back."

Mattis did not say if there had already been halt to weapons transfer.

Last week, in a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the former reportedly said Washington will stop supplying weapons to the YPG. Trump promised to stop the "nonsense" of arming Syrian Kurds, according to Turkish officials.

But after this pledge, the Pentagon officials immediately announced that the U.S. will go on cooperating with this militia, profoundly confusing minds in Ankara.

Washington's military support for the YPG has been a major source of tension between the U.S. and Turkey. The main concern is that weapons supplied to the YPG will end up in PKK hands in Turkey.

"US MOVE COMES LATE"

"It is a satisfactory move that comes late. From the outset we said to our American interlocutors that you cannot combat a terrorist organization (IS) with supplying arms to another terrorist movement (YPG)," told a Turkish government source to Xinhua.

"We need to monitor very closely what will happen on the ground. The U.S. has already shipped tens of thousands tons of military material to YPG. We have to make sure that these arms do not continue to fall into the hands of the PKK," explained this source on the condition of anonymity.

Less than 24 hours before the Pentagon's chief statement on the Syrian Kurdish militia, Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told reporters that "any kind of support given to the YPG is a support given directly or indirectly to the PKK and constitutes a threat to Turkey's national security."

Experts think that the U.S. pledges towards Syrian Kurd militia is somewhat aimed at calming the Turkish ally's nerves.

ANKARA DAZED AND CONFUSED

"There was a deep deception in Ankara after confusing statements from the U.S administration," Serkan Demirtas, Hurriyet Daily News Ankara representative told Xinhua.

This expert on international affairs argued that the statement made by the U.S. defense secretary asked more questions than it answered.

With the poor record-keeping to track weapons supplies, denounced in May by Amnesty International, getting weapons returned to the U.S. from the YPG, will be easier than done, added Demirtas.

Experts believe that the heavy weapons will be easier to recollect but that lighter weapons will stay in Syria. The U.S. will also leave civilian construction vehicles, such as cranes, bulldozers and trucks in the region to help locals with reconstruction.

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu recently announced in parliament that Turkish security forces tracked at least 4,000 truck loads of weaponry shipment to Syrian Kurds.

Meanwhile on the ground, the YPG militia said on Sunday it had fully captured Deir al-Zor's Province (bordering Iraq) eastern countryside from the IS with the help of both the U.S.-led coalition and Russia, a military victory that puts even more pressure on Turkey efforts to break international support to the Kurdish fighters.

Since the start of Syria's conflict in 2011, the YPG and its allies have carved an autonomous regions in the north, controlling nearly a quarter of Syria.

Since November a small group of Turkish soldiers have established several observations spots inside the northwestern Idlip Province of Syria and avoided serious clashes with the Kurdish forces.

However, Turkish President Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to launch a full scale offensive against the Afrin region, a strategically sensitive area in Turkish eyes.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 20:40:59|Editor: liuxin

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TUNIS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The 2018 Tunisian state budget, dictated by the 2018 finance law, has shown remarkable rise in education and security, observed some analysts.

The new budget amounts to 35.85 million dinars (14.34 million U.S. dollars), and grows 4.3 percent compared to that of 2017. It is based on certain constants such as growth of 3 percent, an average of 54 dollars for a barrel of oil, and a budget deficit controlled at 4.9 percent against 6.1 percent in 2017.

The Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed said that the government will mitigate the budget deficit to 5 percent by 2020, as forecast of this new finance law 2018 expects a debt ratio of 71.4 percent of GDP, or 76,200 million dinars (30,408 million dollars) against 69.6 percent of GDP for the current fiscal year.

GOV'T FOCUSES ON EDUCATION, SECURITY

The budget of the ministry of education records an increase, which some local observers called "spectacular," of 13 percent in the overall budget, equivalent to 4,925 million dinars (1,970 million dollars).

Approved with 101 votes in favor, three abstentions and six refusals, the budget of the ministry of the interior for 2018 records an increase of 12.6 percent compared to 2017 to reach 2.88 million dinars (1.15 million dollars).

Meanwhile, the budget of ministry of defense stands at 2.233 million dinars (890,000 dollars), with an increase of 10.7 percent compared to 2017.

Some analysts say that this increase in budgets is explained by the "war" waged by the Tunisian government against religious extremism that planned in the last three years a series of attacks in various governorates of the country, even in the capital Tunis.

The Minister of Interior Lotfi Braham confirmed the acquisition of 3,500 vehicles for a cost of 140 million dinars (56 million dollars) between 2015 and 2016. "For the year 2018, an envelope of 122 million dinars (48.8 million dollars) will be injected for the acquisition of security equipments," he said, addressing to the deputies of the Assembly of People's Representatives.

In addition, he announced the intention of his department is to negotiate the necessary financial means to develop 19 border posts with Algeria and Libya, for an envelope of 12 million dinars (4.8 million dollars).

"A TIMID DIPLOMATIC BUDGET"

The budget of the Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was approved with 138 votes in favor and 14 against. In total, this represents 211,324 million dinars (84,529 million dollars) with an increase of 6.8 percent compared to the 2017 budget.

"Such a budget will not achieve the ambitions of Tunisian diplomacy," said Tunisian Minister of Foreign Affairs Khemais Jhinaoui, at the meeting of the approval of the budget of his department.

According to the head of the Tunisian diplomacy, this envelope will serve the coverage of the expenses of the central administration of 90 diplomatic missions, of which only 10 is on the African continent.

"Our representations are still weak in Latin America, and our presence is timid in Asia or even nonexistent in other countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, even in Europe, we have no representations in some Eastern European countries that express an interest in us, including Denmark," the Tunisian minister also regretted.

TOURISM KEY SECTOR OF THE TUNISIAN ECONOMY

Considered as one of the key sectors of the country's economic recovery, Tunisian tourism is registering towards the end of this year, the beginnings of a recovery after three years of mourning by terrorist attacks targeting governorates, known to be a showcase for foreign tourists.

Proof of this is the suspension of travel restrictions to Tunisia from several European countries including Scandinavian countries and recently Britain, in addition to the return of world-renowned tour operators -- including Thomas Cook and TUI -- which have officially resumed activity on the Tunisian destination.

For the year 2018, the budget of the ministry of tourism amounts to 151,032 million dinars (60,412 million dollars), of which 63,032 million dinars (25,212 million dollars) for management expenses, up 7.3 percent while development expenditures are estimated a 2.9 percent growth compared to 2017.

The Tunisian Minister of Tourism Salma Elloumi announced that tourist revenues have reached, until Nov. 20, 2017, an envelope of 2,524 million dinars (1,009 million dollars), which is an increase of 17 percent compared to the same period of last year.

Tunisia has so far welcomed about 6,122,000 tourists, a growth of 24 percent compared to 2016 in the same period. According to Elloumi, this performance is explained by the rise in the European market, including in France, Germany and Britain.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 21:01:08|Editor: Zhou Xin

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File photo taken on Feb. 27, 2012 shows Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh attending the inauguration ceremony of the new President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in Sanaa, capital of Yemen. A senior Houthi official confirmed on Monday that former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, his nephew, relatives and the general secretary of Saleh's party were killed. (Xinhua/Mohammed)

SANAA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A senior Houthi official confirmed to Xinhua on Monday that former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, his nephew, relatives and the general secretary of Saleh's party were killed.

"Saleh and his party's Assistant General Secretary Yasser al-Awadhi were killed on Monday morning while they were trying to escape through Khawlan district on the southeastern outskirts of Sanaa on their way to escape to Saudi-backed government-controlled Marib province, " the official confirmed to Xinhua.

"Saleh's nephew Tarek was killed also early Monday morning in his home in Haddah quarter in the capital Sanaa," the official said.

"Saleh's party's General Secretary Arif al-Zuka was also killed in Sanaa," the official added.

The security situation and clashes in the capital Sanaa and surrounding provinces have eased.

Meanwhile, Saudi-led coalition warplanes were still hovering over the capital.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 21:26:15|Editor: Mengjie

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) holds talks with visiting Mongolian Foreign Minister Damdin Tsogtbaatar in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 4, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- China appreciates Mongolia's reiteration that it will firmly adhere to the one-China policy and respect China's core interests and major concerns on issues related to Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here Monday.

Wang made the remarks during talks with visiting Mongolian Foreign Minister Damdin Tsogtbaatar.

"China and Mongolia are friendly neighbors," said Wang, adding that the new Mongolian government has sent a clear message to the Chinese side on maintaining mutual trust and properly handling sensitive issues, and the country has expressed a strong desire to deepen cooperation with China.

According to Wang, China welcomes Mongolia's attitude and believes bilateral ties will continue in the right direction and benefit the two countries.

He said China will, as always, respect Mongolia's independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity and respect the Mongolian people's choice of development pattern.

"The Mongolian side's declaration is very important. It has increased the two sides' mutual trust," Wang said, emphasizing that trust is a key factor to ensure China-Mongolia relations are healthy and stable.

For his part, Tsogtbaatar said the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which has outlined a blueprint for China's future development and set the goal to promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, makes an important contribution to world development and will bring opportunities to neighboring countries.

He said the Mongolian side firmly adheres to the one-China policy and maintains Tibet and Taiwan are inalienable parts of the Chinese territory. Mongolia is willing to promote the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries to a new high on the basis of respecting each other's independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and core interests.

During the talks, both sides agreed to enhance exchanges at all levels and keep the current momentum in high-level exchanges.

Both sides agreed to coordinate the Belt and Road Initiative with Mongolia's Prairie Road development initiative, build a cross-border economic cooperation zone and begin feasibility research for a China-Mongolia free trade agreement. China will continue to support the Mongolian side to overcome economic difficulties with free assistance and loans programs.

Both sides agreed to facilitate people-to-people exchanges in culture, education, technology, sports, and tourism, and to convene the first meeting of a joint committee on China-Mongolia people-to-people exchanges as soon as possible.

Both sides agreed to push forward the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 21:31:18|Editor: Yamei

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Photo taken on Dec. 4, 2017 shows an aircraft of the Chinese air force taking off for a drill at an airport in China. The Chinese air force said Monday that its surveillance aircraft had recently conducted high-sea drills in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea to improve combat readiness and safeguard the country's "strategic interests." (Xinhua/Zhang Lei)

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese air force said Monday that its surveillance aircraft had recently conducted high-sea drills in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea to improve combat readiness and safeguard the country's "strategic interests."

The aircraft took an air route that was not previously flown to areas where they had never been, said Shen Jinke, spokesman for the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force.

The air force's fighter jets, airborne early warning aircraft and surface-to-air guided missile forces coordinated with surveillance for the training, Shen said.

The Chinese air force will conduct high-sea exercises under combat conditions on a regular basis, the spokesman said.
Yemen's Houthis announced the killing of ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh while he was escaping on Monday. (Reuters Photo)

SANAA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A senior Houthi official confirmed to Xinhua on Monday that former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, his nephew, relatives and the general secretary of Saleh's party were killed.

"Saleh and his party's Assistant General Secretary Yasser al-Awadhi were killed on Monday morning while they were trying to escape through Khawlan district on the southeastern outskirts of Sanaa on their way to escape to Saudi-backed government-controlled Marib province, " the official confirmed to Xinhua.

"Saleh's nephew Tarek was killed also early Monday morning in his home in Haddah quarter in the capital Sanaa," the official said.

"Saleh's party's General Secretary Arif al-Zuka was also killed in Sanaa," the official added.

The security situation and clashes in the capital Sanaa and surrounding provinces have eased.

Meanwhile, Saudi-led coalition warplanes were still hovering over the capital.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 21:36:20|Editor: liuxin

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COLOMBO, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan government on Monday vowed to end impunity for crimes against journalists and expedite investigations into the killing and disappearance of journalists in recent years.

Minister of Finance and Mass Media, Mangala Samaraweera, said that while Sri Lanka was one of the most unsafe places for journalists, the government of Maithripala Sirisena had succeeded, to a large extent, in creating a safe space required for freedom of expression.

"We must keep on working hard to sustain and safeguard this space, and we still have a long way to go in terms of completing investigations into past crimes, including the murder of journalists in the past," Samaraweera said at the opening of the UNESCO Regional Conference on Reinforcing Regional Cooperation to Promote Freedom of Expression and the Rule of Law in Asia through Ending Impunity for Crimes against Journalists,

"This is an important occasion for us locally, to renew our commitment to justice, in memory of all the journalists who have been silenced, and in recognition of the importance of a free and independent media, for advancing peace, development, and good governance in our country," Samaraweera added.

Samaraweera further added that that Sri Lanka remained firm in its commitment to work with the international community, including UNESCO, to work towards ending impunity for crimes against journalists, and to uphold the rights of journalists around the world who place themselves at risk every day, to give voice to the voiceless.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghw said that the government welcomed the UN Plan of Action process to protect the safety of journalists and Sri Lanka would continue to strengthen its democracy to ensure the smooth implementation of the UN Action Plan.

"I am proud to say that we have achieved great global recognition for the steps we have taken in only two years," Wickremesinghe said, adding that those who were responsible for all cases of attacks and harassment on journalists would be brought to justice.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 21:41:21|Editor: liuxin

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COLOMBO, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan Department of Meteorology in its weather forecast on Monday warned its citizens to refrain from fishing and marine activities on Tuesday and Wednesday due to depression in the Bay of Bengal.

The department said the low pressure area in the South-East of Bay of Bengal was located 1,300 km away from Sri Lanka by Monday.

It said it would develop into depression and was likely to move close to Sri Lanka on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"It is expected that the wind speed can increase up to 70 to 80 km per hour in the deep and shallow sea areas around the country, 90 to 100 km per hour over the Bay of Bengal and 50 to 60 km per hour over the island," the department said.

Therefore, the department asked its citizens to refrain from fishing and marine activities in the sea around the country during these days.

Sri Lanka has been battered by inclement weather conditions recently, with 100,000 people affected and 14 people dead.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 21:56:28|Editor: Mengjie

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PARIS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, on Monday revealed the name of the panda baby, the first ever panda cub in the country, at a naming ceremony at a zoo in central France.

Joined by Chinese officials, Brigitte Macron, who is also the new panda's godmother, announced that the four-month-old cub had been named as Yuan Meng.

Born on Aug. 4, the baby Panda He had been referred to as "Mini Yuan Zi" referring to his father Yuan Zi, who arrived with his female partner Huan Huan in central France's Beauval zoo, in January 2012.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 22:01:30|Editor: Mengjie

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ADDIS ABABA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Minister on Monday called for strengthening the socioeconomic partnership between Ethiopia and China.

Workneh Gebeyehu made the call during his meeting with the newly appointed Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia, Tan Jian. The foreign minister has on Monday received copies of credentials of the incoming Chinese ambassador.

According to Gebeyehu, the ties between Ethiopia and China has shown consistent upward trajectory over the past years. Gebeyehu further called on strengthening the socioeconomic relations among the two countries to "a higher level."

Gebeyehu, who noted the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn's visit to China during the Road and Belt Initiative Summit of May 2017, also said that the relationship between the two countries "has grown to an excellent level, where the two countries enjoy a comprehensive cooperation and partnership."

The foreign minister, who has also lauded the previous Ambassador of China to Ethiopia, La Yifan, also expressed his high hopes that the ties between the two countries "will even grow to a higher level during the new ambassador's tenure."

According to the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Tan Jian on his part also commended the success of the bilateral cooperation that the two countries have witnessed in trade, investment, infrastructure, manufacturing and other sectors over the years.

The Ethiopian government has previously indicated that its relation with China is given due emphasis as it remains one among the major priority partnerships both in the diplomatic and other sectors.

Ahmed Shide, Ethiopia's Minister of Transport, had previously told Xinhua that Chinese engagement has benefited the east African country both in business and people-to-people relations.

"In the last 20 years the level of economic cooperation with China has grown very fast. It will facilitate industrial manufacturing development, boost Ethiopia's competitiveness," Shide stressed.

"Chinese engagement in Ethiopia is harmonious, contributing to the development of Ethiopia," Shide said, adding that "Chinese personnel, be it workers and businesspeople, are contributing to the development of Ethiopia."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 22:01:30|Editor: liuxin

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By Abu Hanifah

BALI, Indonesia, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Despite the ongoing visually calming condition in Bali's volcano of Mount Agung, authorities have yet to consider downgrading the alert status as magmatic activities remained high.

The intense movements of magmatic activities were clearly detected by the seismic records, leading the authorities to take extra cautious stance in anticipating the developing condition, an official monitoring the volcano said here on Monday.

"Seismic records show that pressures inside the volcano has not been released by the previous eruptions. The volcano is very active and capable of pressurization to cause the eruptions," Devy Kamil Syahbana, the head of Eastern Region Volcano Mitigation Subdivision at Indonesia's Center for Vulcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) told Xinhua.

Besides the seismic records, the geochemical indicator also showed that sulfur dioxide remains high at present, indicating that magmatic activities inside the volcano were still wildly progressing, he added.

The escalating activities inside the volcano was contradicted with the visual observation with 500 meters of white smoke seen spewing out of the volcano, a view that can be regarded as minor volcanic activities, according to Devy.

Citing the latest results of satellite image, he said that the new lava materials brought up by volcanic process from the previous eruptions have covered one third of the 60-million--cubic-meter volume of Mount Agung crater, making it a huge potential danger for the people should the eruption take place.

"Based on those observations, activities of mount Agung until today is still high, therefore the alert status remains level 4," Devy told Xinhua in an interview conducted in the PVMBG monitoring outpost in Rendang village in Bali's Karangasem regency.

The volcano's latest alert status was imposed since Nov. 27 following an eruption of black smoke and ash towering 1,500 meters above the volcano summit, forcing the airport in the resort island to be shut down.

Reflecting upon Mount Agung's devastating eruption 54 years ago that claimed more than 1,500 lives, Devy said that the calming situation in the surface cannot be used to assume the hazard level in the volcano.

The deadly 1963 eruption took place when people thought that the volcano had already inactive after it did not actively seen of emitting smoke in weeks prior to the final big eruption, he said.

According to him, the condition in Mount Agung is now quite similar to the period prior to its deadly eruption in 1963.

"We can learn a lesson from Mount Agung's eruption in 1963. At this moment we are in a intermittent phase after several eruptions. But there is possible that it may not like the scenario that occurred in 1963," Devy said, adding that the volcano has a specific character which is different from other volcanoes in the country.

"This is the complexity of Mount Agung, which is unpredictable. We can only closely monitor its development so as to minimize the impacts of the disaster for the people," he said.

As of last week over 43,000 refugees were sheltered in over 220 shelters outside the red zone areas, waiting in despair to see the end of their misery related to the raging of the volcano.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 22:06:33|Editor: liuxin

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ANKARA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Turkish border troops detained Sunday 2,222 people for illegal border crossing, the Turkish military said on Monday.

About 2,131 people were held as they were attempting to enter illegally into Turkey from Syria, while 11 others were seized as they tried to cross the border into Syria, according to a statement released by Turkish General Staff.

Another 80 people were detained at the Greek border, 70 of them tried to illegally travel to Greece from Turkey, the military said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 22:11:34|Editor: liuxin

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RAMALLAH, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian senior official called on the United States Monday to avoid taking any move that would affect the status quo of Jerusalem.

Both moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital would be unacceptable and would entail risks, said Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Abu Amr during his meeting with U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem.

The move would be "offensive and contrary to the role of the U.S. administration as a mediator and a sponsor of the peace process," said the Palestinian official.

"It will disqualify the United States from playing a role in the peace process and will close every door to a serious negotiation, as well as will push the entire region into more tension and instability," he added.

The Palestinian leadership would have to break up any previous understandings it had achieved with the United States, should the U.S. administration decided to change its stance on Jerusalem, warned Amr.

The U.S. administration would also be held responsible for any possible consequences of its moves on Jerusalem, he said.

He further urged the United States to reconsider its position and to preserve the "remaining chances" of achieving peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

U.S. media said that U.S. President Donald Trump was considering acknowledging Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and might announce that on Wednesday.

Trump's adviser Jared Kushner said Sunday that the president had not yet made a decision regarding the recognition.

Trump issued an exceptional decision to maintain the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv last June, which is expected to expire this month, but it is not clear whether he will renew his decision or not.

Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is considered by the Palestinians as a provocation and destruction of the peace talks.

The peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel have been stalled since April 2014. The U.S.-sponsored talks that lasted for nine months achieved no tangible results.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 22:11:36|Editor: Yurou

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NEW DELHI, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- India's legendary actor and veteran Bollywood star Shashi Kapoor passed away Monday, at the age of 79, family members said.

"The actor was admitted to the Kokilaben hospital in Mumbai. He was administered several rounds of dialysis at the hospital and today evening he breathed his last," a family member told media.

Born on March 18, 1938 in Kolkata city in India's eastern state of West Bengal, Kapoor made his debut in 1961, as the lead actor, in the Hindi film Dharamputra.

Prior to it, he began his acting career as a child artiste in the 1940s. Reports said he acted in more than 175 films mainly in mainstream Bollywood and art films. Kapoor has worked in English films too.

The actor's performance has been widely acknowledged and has been felicitated with several awards.

Kapoor's death has been widely condoled in India. A number of people took to social networking websites to express condolences and recalled their association with the deceased.

Kapoor earned acclaim for his performance in notable Hindi films which include Deewaar, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Junoon, Shaan, Namak Halaal and others.

He had been suffering from ailments for the past few years. Local media reports said Kapoor will be cremated on Tuesday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 22:16:37|Editor: liuxin

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RIYADH, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Saudi-led coalition issued on Monday a warning to residents of Sanaa to stay away from Houthi militias' sites for their safety, Al Sharq Al Awsan online news reported.

The Arab coalition fighting in Yemen launched several air raids on Houthi military sites on Sunday evening near Sanaa airport and Dulaimi base, sources confirmed to Al Arabiya local news.

The sources confirmed that the coalition raided Houthi militia positions west of the capital Sanaa on Sunday.

The air raids come a day after the coalition made a statement announcing its support for Yemeni uprising against Houthis. The coalition said it is determined that it has maintained its position on all Yemeni ground.

The past three days have witnessed deadly clashes between supporters of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his former Houthi militia allies.

The fighting raged at dawn on Saturday between the two sides, which led to at least 80 supporters from both sides having been killed.

Meanwhile, the elected Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi called upon the staff of the United Nations and international organisations to leave Yemen for their safety.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 22:36:44|Editor: yan

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KAMPALA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The two-week joint East Africa Standby Force (EASF) peacekeeping and security training exercise closed on Sunday in Sudan, Ugandan military spokesperson said here on Monday.

Lt. Col. Deo Akiiki, Ugandan deputy military spokesperson in a statement issued here said that Sudan's minister of defense Lt. Gen Awad Mohamed Amed Ibin Oaf presided over the closing ceremony of the field training exercise, dubbed "Mashariki Salaam II," at Gebeit Training Area in Port Sudan.

The Sudanese minister commended the support and cooperation from 10 EASF partner states in the training, which he described as a clear manifestation of their commitment toward peace and security in the region and the global community.

Uganda's state minister for defense, Charles Engola and Uganda's deputy Chief of Defense Forces Lt. Gen. Wilson Mbadi attended the closing ceremony.

The Ugandan military dispatched a contingent of 106 soldiers led by Brig. Michael Nyarwa, the commander of Marine Brigade to participate in the two weeks training.

The exercise that kicked off on Nov. 25 to Dec. 3 attracted over 1,000 troops from the 10 EASF countries to help boost the capabilities of the forces in peacekeeping, conflict and terrorism management, and combating human trafficking in the region.

The troops were drawn from Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Burundi, Comoros, Somalia and Seychelles.

The exercise is a key benchmark to test the regional organization's ability to respond to crisis situations in the region and beyond when tasked or mandated to do so by the African Union.

The exercise was also attended by military representatives from China, the European Union and the United States.

EASF is a regional force, whose mandate is to enhance peace and security in the eastern Africa region. It is one of the five regional multidimensional forces of the African Standby Force.

EASF was established in 2004 for rapid deployment and intervention, peace support and stability operations and peace enforcement.

It has since conducted a number of field training and command post exercises in Kenya, Djibouti, Sudan, Uganda, and Ethiopia, respectively.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 22:46:46|Editor: Zhou Xin

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ISLAMABAD, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis told Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Monday that his visit aimed at finding common grounds in order to create a positive, consistent and long-term relationship with Pakistan, according to Pakistani Prime Minister's Office.

Mattis paid a day-long visit here for talks on security issues that focused on anti-terror cooperation and peace in Afghanistan.

The office said in a statement that Mattis emphasized that in view of his long association with Pakistan, he was "keenly aware of the sacrifices rendered and the lives lost in Pakistan's fight against terrorism and extremism; and his personal respect and appreciation for the professional abilities of Pakistan's armed forces."

He also underscored the "importance of continuing and deepening cooperation for the common objective of eliminating terrorism from the region, according to the statement.

Abbasi, for his part, underlined the need for a broad based engagement to strengthen partnership and enhance cooperation between the two countries, adding that no other country benefits more from peace and stability in Afghanistan than Pakistan.

"He agreed with Secretary Mattis that both Pakistan and the U.S. have common stakes in securing peace and security in Afghanistan for the long term stability of the broader region," the statement further said.

The prime minister vowed that Pakistan, in its national interest, would continue to conduct intelligence based operations all over the country to consolidate the gains achieved in the last four years, reiterating that there are no safe havens in Pakistan and the entire nation was committed to its resolve on eradicating terrorism in all forms.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 22:46:47|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Bee producers explain to visitors how honey is made during the 9th Festival of Honey and Bee Products held at the Peace and Friendship Indoor Stadium in Neo Faliro, a southern suburb of Athens, Greece, on Dec. 3, 2017. It's a sweet gathering when over 250 bee products makers from across Greece gathered this weekend in Neo Faliro, southern Greece, to exchange their techniques and seek cooperation with traders from Europe and Asia. (Xinhua/Lefteris Partsalis)

by Alexia Vlachou

ATHENS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- It's a sweet gathering when over 250 bee products makers from across Greece gathered this weekend in Neo Faliro, southern Greece, to exchange their techniques and seek cooperation with traders from Europe and Asia.

Under the auspices of the agriculture and food ministry, experts, amateurs, and connoisseurs came together for three days for seminars, honey tastings, bee-keeping demonstrations, and children's shows. Meanwhile, chefs prepared honey-inspired dishes, sweets, and made cocktails.

"Within the nine years of the festival, we have seen small producers expand their small cottage industries to a level where they can export to Europe and other regions," said George Stathis, a member of festival's organizing committee, to Xinhua.

"Producers provide their honey to hotels in Hong Kong. Greek honey is included in hotels' breakfast and restaurants in countries across the world," he noted.

Unique in color, aroma, taste, and thickness, Greek honey -- the beverage and food of the ancient Greek Gods known as nectar and ambrosia -- has been used both as a food and a source of therapy since ancient times.

Greece produces an average of 14,000 tons of honey per year. The small Mediterranean country is the third largest honey producer in Europe behind Spain and France. But Greece has more beehives "per acre" than any other country in Europe, according to Stathis.

There are currently about 27,000 to 30,000 beekeepers across Greece. About 60 percent of them have 50 to 60 hives, but professional beekeepers own more than 200 hives and earn at least 50 percent of their annual income from them.

Meanwhile, the average consumption of honey in a Greek family is 12 kg per year.

"The target is to reach up to 15 to 16 kg per year," Stathis said.

Regarding exports, Stathis stressed that honey should not have a prohibitive cost for consumers abroad. "The pricing is not the same in Greece and China for example, but producers and operators have succeeded in not quadrupling its price when exporting it," he said.

Another advantage of honey is that it is a food source with no expiration date. "You may see raw, pure Greek unprocessed honey crystallize. This is natural with raw unfiltered honey. You can simply place the jar in a bowl of warm water and the crystals will melt," Stathis explained.

As a country with abundant flora in the Mediterranean basin, and more than 7,500 different species of herbs, plants, wildflowers, and trees, Greece has a wide range of honey.

The honey produced in Greece comes mainly from pine and fir trees, while some honey is produced from the flower nectar from thyme, orange blossom, cotton, heather, and sunflower, among others.

Besides honey, by-products like beeswax, propolis, and royal jelly used in the cosmetic industry can boost exports, experts pointed out.

"There are organic products from bees' products at affordable prices," Stathis explained.

During the festival, which is considered one of the most significant industry events in Greece, visitors could also see producers harvest royal jelly, render beeswax from honeycomb, collect bee's venom, which is used in the pharmaceutical sector, among other interesting activities.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:01:50|Editor: Zhou Xin

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BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The United States is throwing cold water on the growing geniality of trade relations between itself and China with its rebuke of the latter's bid for recognition as a market economy in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The U.S. government recently formally opposed to China's bid, citing decades of legal precedent and what it sees as signs the country is moving in the opposite direction.

The truth is that denial of such status for China will give the U.S. government useful tools to launch trade probes into Chinese imports under the excuses of dumping goods at unfair price advantages.

REFUSAL DISTORTS FACTS

The U.S. decision comes as the Trump administration is seeking to bridge the trade deficit with China for the so-called fair and balanced trade. To achieve that end, it is tempting to turn a blind eye to China's concrete moves of market liberalization, international observers said.

Since China has implemented the opening up and reform policy, it has made consistent efforts to improve its market economy system, which has won global recognition. The U.S. refusal distorts facts, according to a spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce.

China is now the world's largest goods trading nation, being the top trading partner of more than 120 countries and regions.

Su Qingyi, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the "non-market economy status" has not held China back from making those achievements.

The United States will not benefit from a battered bilateral trade relationship considering its interwoven interests with China. Protectionist measures also impair the interests of U.S. companies and consumers.

Over the past three decades, bilateral goods trade surged from 2.5 billion to 524.3 billion U.S. dollars. Low-cost and high-quality Chinese products have helped raise the living standard of Americans.

While much of the U.S. political campaign rhetoric focused on jobs leaving the United States, Chinese investment is supporting more jobs on that side of the Pacific.

UNDERMINED INTEGRITY

In response to the U.S. rejection, Chinese commerce ministry official Wang Hejun said it undermines the seriousness and authority of multilateral rules.

Article 15 of the Protocol on China's accession to the WTO in 2001 has clearly dictated that China will automatically switch over to market economy status when the surrogate country approach expires in 15 years, which means, on that day, the legal foundation for treating China as a non-market economy is gone.

The United States is setting a bad example by breaking international rules, Su said.

Honoring contracts is the basic principle of the market economy, and the United States is breaching this principle, said Bai Ming, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

The U.S. rejection reflects its panic and ideological prejudice, said Zhang Jingwei, a researcher with Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies under the Renmin University of China.

Analysts said that China is likely to take legal action at the WTO against members who are not observing the rules, including the United States. Further retaliatory trade measures may also be considered.

Even if an all-out trade war is avoidable, no party will emerge unscathed, Zhang said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:01:51|Editor: yan

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TRIPOLI, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's Hyundai announced it will return to Libya early next year to complete suspended power plant project, according to a Libyan government official.

"South Korean delegation, including South Korean embassy officials and representatives of Hyundai, held talks with officials of the General Electricity Company regarding security arrangements for the Company's sites in Libya, in preparation for the official return of Hyundai," an official of the Libyan state-owned General Electricity Company told Xinhua.

"The Korean delegation visited the municipality of Janzur, just outside of the capital Tripoli, and personally saw the security arrangements necessary to secure the location of the western Tripoli power plant project. It was agreed that the project's contractor Hyundai will return in January or February 2018," the official added.

South Korean companies in November demanded security guarantees for their return to Libya and resuming suspended power plant projects.

Unknown gunmen earlier in November kidnapped four foreign workers, three Turks and one German, who worked in a power plant in the southern Libyan city of Obari, 1,100 km south of the capital Tripoli.

After security forces failed to free the four workers, the remaining 300 foreign workers left the city.

Libya has suffered frequent power blackouts that last as long as 12 hours a day after foreign companies doing regular maintenance pulled out amid violence and chaos.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:11:53|Editor: yan

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TRIPOLI, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- At least two soldiers were killed and three others injured in clashes between army forces and extremists on Monday in the Libyan eastern city of Benghazi.

"The military operations are continuing in Ekhrebish area. Two of our troops were killed and three others were wounded as a result of the clashes with terrorist fighters," Miloud Al-Zwai, spokesman of the army's special forces, told Xinhua.

"Information about the liberation of the last terrorist stronghold is not true," Al-Zwai added, stressing that the military operations would soon be concluded.

A military source told Xinhua on Saturday that conflicts between the Libyan eastern-based army and militants in Benghazi had killed 17 people in November.

Benghazi, Libya's second largest city and the birthplace of the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi, has witnessed a three-year war between the army led by General Khalifa Haftar and extremist groups.

Haftar announced earlier in June the taking over of the entire city of Benghazi and defeating the rival armed groups. However, some militants still remain in the city and mainly use landmines.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:21:55|Editor: Jiaxin

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Brigitte Macron (4th L), wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui (1st R), Former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin (2nd R) and Chinese Ambassador to France Zhai Jun (1st L, Rear) pose for photos during a naming ceremony of a panda baby in Saint-Aignan, France, on Dec. 4, 2017. Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, revealed the name of the panda baby, the first-ever cub born in the country, at a naming ceremony at a zoo in central France on Monday. Joined by Chinese officials, Brigitte Macron, who is also the new panda's godmother, announced that the four-month-old cub's name was Yuan Meng. (Xinhua/Chen Yichen)

PARIS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The first panda cub born in France on Monday got its name from its special godmother, the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, along with the blessing of Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan.

Joined by Chinese officials, Brigitte Macron attended the naming ceremony at the Beauval Zoo south of Paris, and announced that the four-months-old cub will go by the name of Yuan Meng, which means "dream comes true" in Chinese.

In a congratulatory message, Peng said that she was pleased to select the name together with Brigitte and that the name carries the people's best wishes for the little panda and high expectations for the China-France friendship.

Pointing out that the panda is not only a national treasure of China but also an envoy and witness of the China-France friendship, Peng said Yuan Meng's birth embodies the bright future of bilateral relations, which are entering a new stage of development.

She conveyed her wish that the cub will grow up healthy and strong and bring more happiness to the French people, especially the children.

Born on Aug. 4, the baby panda had been referred to as "Mini Yuan Zi" after his father, Yuan Zi, who arrived in France with his female partner, Huan Huan, in January 2012.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:26:59|Editor: yan

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NAIROBI, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations on Monday decried the rising use of mercury in artisanal gold mining.

Ligia Noronha, director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (DTIE), told a media briefing in Nairobi that mercury is a metal that has documented negative health effects on the small-scale miners.

"In order to address the rising use of mercury amongst artisanal gold miners, we are working with other partners to phase out the use of mercury so as to protect human health," Noronha said during the Third Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA).

Noronha said rising demand for gold has increased the use of mercury and this poses a threat to miners. She noted that women are disproportionately affected by the heavy metal.

At the same time, the UN environmental body called for data on the use and environmental impact of mercury in order for governments to make more informed policies.

Mercury is a popular chemical among small-scale gold miners because it is effective in the separation of gold particles from the sand.

The impact of mercury on human health is huge as those who have prolonged contact with the pollutant lose their cognitive abilities while women can give birth to defective babies.

In order to eliminate the threat posed by mercury, the global community signed the Minamata Convention on Mercury in order to protect humans from the adverse effects of mercury.

Noronha said the UN is collaborating with other organizations to look for alternative processes that small-scale miners can use to extract gold.

She noted that there is need to strike a balance between reducing use of mercury and protecting jobs.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:32:00|Editor: yan

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CAIRO, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A total of five terrorists were killed on Monday in a fire exchange with police forces in Egypt's Delta province of Sharqiya, Egyptian Interior Ministry said.

In a statement, the ministry said six terrorists were also arrested in the security operation.

Security forces located the terrorists' hideout in a desert area between the 10th of Ramadan City and Belbis City of Sharqiya province, 60 km north of Cairo, the ministry said, adding the terrorists opened fire at police forces once they realized their presence.

According to the statement, four machine guns, ammunition and three handmade bombs were found at the hiding place, which was also used as a training site by the terrorists.

Egypt has been fighting against a wave of terror activities 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 currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

Terror attacks in Egypt used to be centered in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and killing hundreds of policemen and soldiers over the past few years.

Last month, a terrorist attack against a mosque in the country's North Sinai killed at least 305 Muslim worshippers, including children, and wounded over 120 others.

Although no group has yet claimed responsibility for the mosque attack, fingers are pointed at a Sinai-based group loyal to IS group, which has claimed most of the terrorist activities in Egypt over the past few years.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:32:01|Editor: yan

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KUWAIT CITY, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Kuwait on Monday spoke highly of the intact unity among the Gulf Cooperation Council states amid various kinds of challenges over the years.

The Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) unity and solidarity is still intact, standing against various kinds of challenges and trials over the years, said Kuwaiti First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah Monday.

Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled delivered opening speech to the 144th Foreign Ministers meeting, held ahead of the 38th GCC's Summit on Dec. 5-6. He said the presence of meeting's participants will contribute to the success of the summit.

Stressing the importance of the upcoming summit, the Kuwaiti Foreign Minister said that it will contribute to the continuation of the council's success.

The Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and his fellow GCC leaders hope that the summit will continue to be the venue that serves the people of the region and carries on the rapid development of GCC nations, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled added.

The Kuwaiti Foreign Minister hoped that the summit will meet the aspirations and dreams of the people in the region and continue the GCC's strong stride towards a bright future.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:37:04|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) holds talks with visiting Mongolian Foreign Minister Damdin Tsogtbaatar in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 4, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- China appreciates Mongolia's reiteration that it will adhere to the one-China policy and respect China's core interests and major concerns related to Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Monday.

Wang made the remarks here during talks with visiting Mongolian Foreign Minister Damdin Tsogtbaatar.

"China and Mongolia are friendly neighbors," Wang said. "The new Mongolian government has sent a clear message to the Chinese side on maintaining mutual trust and properly handling sensitive issues, and the country has expressed a strong desire to deepen cooperation with China."

Wang said China welcomed Mongolia's attitude and believed bilateral ties would continue in the right direction.

He said China would always respect Mongolia's independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, and the Mongolian people's choice of development pattern.

"The Mongolian side's declaration is very important. It has increased the two sides' mutual trust," Wang said, emphasizing that trust was a key factor to ensuring healthy and stable China-Mongolia relations.

Tsogtbaatar said the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China had "outlined a blueprint for China's future development and set the goal to promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, as well as making an important contribution to world development that would bring opportunities to neighboring countries."

He said Mongolia "firmly adheres to the one-China policy and maintains Tibet and Taiwan are inalienable parts of the Chinese territory. Mongolia is willing to promote the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries to a new high on the basis of respecting each other's independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and core interests."

During the talks, both sides agreed to enhance exchanges at all levels and keep the current momentum in high-level exchanges.

Both sides agreed to coordinate the Belt and Road Initiative with Mongolia's Prairie Road development initiative, build a cross-border economic cooperation zone and begin feasibility research for a China-Mongolia free trade agreement. China will continue to support the Mongolian side to overcome economic difficulties with free assistance and loans programs.

Both sides agreed to facilitate people-to-people exchanges in culture, education, technology, sports, tourism and among the young people, and to convene the first meeting of a joint committee on China-Mongolia people-to-people exchanges as soon as possible.

Both sides agreed to push forward the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor.

Later in the day, Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi also met with Tsogtbaatar.

Briefing the Mongolian Foreign Minister on the 19th National Congress of the CPC, Yang called on both sides to "respect each other's core interests and major concerns and deepen mutual political trust."

He said China and Mongolia should "seize the opportunities derived from the Belt and Road Initiative to strengthen bilateral ties and benefit people of both sides."

Expressing his congratulations on the success of the 19th CPC National Congress, Tsogtbaatar said his country stood ready to boost the two countries' comprehensive strategic partnership.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:42:06|Editor: yan

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MOGADISHU, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Somalia has agreed to develop a transition plan immediately with support of the international community ahead of exit of African Union troops.

Participants at the day-long Somalia Security Conference agreed that work would begin at once on a realistic, phased, conditions-based transition plan with clear target dates to transfer security responsibility from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) to the Somali security forces.

"As a first step all stakeholders would develop a process to plan for transition by Dec. 31 with a view to completing a draft transition plan before the Joint Review of AMISOM requested by the Security Council in 2018," they said in a joint statement.

The meeting, which brought together representatives of the government and federal member states, the AU, UN, EU and other international partners, said the transition plan will need close cooperation and partnership between the government, federal member states and AMISOM, in order to achieve clear outcomes.

"The transition plan will lay the foundations for activity over the coming months and years and will set out the strategy, priorities, milestones and conditions for transition, including on stabilization and state-building activities as well as military, police and justice plans, in order to ensure a lasting peace," they said.

"These should be affordable, accountable, and acceptable forces, able to provide security across Somalia. They will require transparent and effective financial and human resources systems in place, and frameworks to ensure human rights compliance as a matter of urgency," it added.

The pan African troops are expected to relinquish the security of the key towns, to the Somali forces, through a conditions based transition plan, to allow them take the lead responsibility as part of the planed exit.

Under the exit strategy, some 1,000 soldiers will be withdrawn from Somalia by Dec. 31 and AMISOM will deploy extra 500 police officers who will strengthen training and mentoring for Somali Police.

President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, widely known as Farmajo, who opened the conference, called for donor support to strengthen the capacity of the country's security forces in preparation ahead of exit by AU troops to help secure the gains made.

"The current security requirement far exceeds our economic means and we urgently request the international community to increase its diverse and generous support if we are to protect the gains we have made thus far," Farmajo said.

The Somali leader admitted that financing the security sector presents a huge challenge for which Mogadishu has to find sustainable solution with timely commitment from the donor community.

"We must address the critical security gaps before transitioning security operations and full responsibility to well trained, equipped and supported Somali security forces," Farmajo said.

During the conference, government institutions committed to continue to lead the implementation of the National Stabilization Strategy to tackle the underlying drivers of conflict and set the conditions for economic growth.

They said civilian-led stabilization interventions will remain critical to consolidating security gains and extending the legitimacy and credibility of the authorities.

"All Somali's leaders agreed to continue to initiate local solutions to prevent recruitment and radicalization to violent extremism and enable effective human rights protection, conflict resolution, including through local governance structures and civil society," they said.

Participants also recognized the roles of youth, women and local reconciliation efforts to prevent further recruitment and radicalization and will prevent and counter violent extremism and terrorism as a durable, sustainable and long term solution.

AMISOM promised to continue supporting the transition through the priority tasks including securing main supply routes, securing key population centers, to mentor and assist Somali security forces, both military and police, in close collaboration with the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) and in line with the National Security Architecture.

The pan African body also committed to further degrading Al-Shabaab, and implementing the transition process by continuing joint AMISOM-Somalia National Army (SNA) efforts in executing these tasks.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:42:07|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Martin Schulz (C) arrives for a meeting with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the Bellevue Palace in Berlin, capital of Germany, on Nov. 23, 2017. (Xinhua/Shan Yuqi)

BERLIN, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The seek for a new German government is moving to a new stage, as the leadership of the German Social Democrats (SPD) on Monday gave its approval to a potential relaunch of a "grand coalition" with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU).

German media reported that the SPD leadership was in favor of entry into talks over the formation of a new government without any fixed expectations of the result. Katrin Budde, Governor of Saxony-Anhalt, was the only member of the party's governing committee to abstain from her vote.

The decision cleared a significant hurdle left for Germany to resolve its current political impasse after the collapse of "Jamaica" coalition negotiations.

"Jamaica" refers to the traditional colors of the three parties, the Union (black), the FDP (yellow) and the Greens (green) coincide with that of the Caribbean state's national flag.

However, SPD leader Martin Schulz has announced that a final decision will only be made by the Social Democratic base at the upcoming party conference on Thursday.

The SPD felt "obliged to explore in talks, whether and how the SPD can support a new federal government," a resolution produced by the party leadership on Monday read.

The document further stated that "there was no prior determination (of a political course of action) and no automatism (towards a grand coalition)." Another option that is still being considered alongside a new "grand-coalition" is for the SPD to lend its legislative support to a CDU/CSU minority government.

The SPD governing committee will assess the outcome of discussions with the CDU and CSU and make a subsequent recommendation on the basis. The party base will be able to vote on a blueprint for the start of preliminary talks on Thursday, as well as on the transition to official coalition negotiations thereafter.

The published blueprint lists a number of "essential" points which must be met for the SPD to consider cooperating with a cabinet led by veteran Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). These include harmonizing corporate taxation throughout the European Union (EU) and introducing a system of EU-wide minimum wages, both of which are likely to prove thorny subjects in prospective negotiations.

Furthermore, the SPD is calling for reforms to Germany's pensions and healthcare system, as well as raising taxes on the top income bracket to generate funds for public investment in education, faster internet speeds, roadworks and affordable housing.

Yet even before Schulz has the chance to clash with the CDU and CSU over these issues, the former president of the European Parliament is widely-anticipated to face considerable resistance to a renewal of the "grand-coalition" at Thursday's party conference.

The SPD youth organization has launched a "no grand-coalition" campaign, lending voice to fears that the party could become even further marginalized with regards to its voter share during another official term in the shadow of Merkel. This sentiment is shared by some senior party members, including Manuela Schwesig, governor of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Malu Dreyer, governor of Rhineland-Palatinate.

The conference will also decide Schulz's personal future in the SPD as he seeks another term as party leader.

Immediately after his electoral defeat in September, Schulz originally vowed to return with his party to the opposition benches. He only recently softened his stance after a dramatic appeal by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier after the Free Democratic Party (FDP) triggered the collapse of "Jamaica" coalition negotiations and thrust Germany into a rare moment of political crisis.

A Forsa opinion poll for the broadcasters "RTL" and "ntv" showed on Monday that the FDP has haemorrhaged electoral support since the controversial decision to abandon "Jamaica" talks. Only 8 percent of respondents said they would now cast their vote for the FDP compared to a 10.7 percent voter share secured by the party in September's federal elections.
Photo taken on Nov. 29, 2017 shows the site of a car bombing attack in Aden, Yemen. (Xinhua/Murad)

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday expressed concern over the recent escalation of armed conflict in Yemen, with other UN leaders demanding the immediate resumption of commercial shipments to Yemen for the sake of the starving population.

CONCERNS ABOUT NEW FIGHTING IN YEMEN

"The secretary-general is deeply concerned about the sharp escalation of armed clashes and airstrikes in (the capital city of) Sanaa and other parts of Yemen over the past several days," said Guterres' spokesman Stephane Dujarric in a statement.

"This latest outbreak of violence could not come at a worse time for the Yemeni people, who are already caught up in the world's largest humanitarian crisis," said the statement, referring to the clashes between Houthi rebels and forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The two forces were previous allies against forces loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

The new clashes, which broke out on Wednesday in Sanaa and then spread to other parts of the country, have resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries, including civilians.

The secretary-general called on all parties to the conflict to cease all air and ground assaults, said the statement.

The new conflict and the blockade imposed on Nov. 6 by the Saudi-led military coalition, which is fighting Houthi rebels, have caused significant shortages of critical supplies, especially food and fuel, and resulted in price hikes, curtailing access to food, safe water and healthcare, said the statement.

"The secretary-general calls for the urgent resumption of all commercial imports, without which millions of children, women and men risk mass hunger, disease and death."

Although the Saudi-led coalition has partially lifted the blockade, UN humanitarian shipments still face impediments.

"Fighting is restricting the movement of people and life-saving services within Sanaa city. Ambulances and medical teams cannot access the injured, and people cannot go outside to buy food and other necessities. Aid workers are unable to travel and implement critical life-saving programs at a time when millions of Yemenis rely on assistance to survive," said the statement.

The secretary-general called on all parties to the conflict to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law. "It is paramount that civilians are protected, that the wounded are afforded safe access to medical care, and that all sides facilitate life-saving humanitarian access."

Guterres reiterated that there is no military solution to the Yemen conflict. He urged all parties to the conflict to engage meaningfully with the United Nations to revitalize inclusive negotiations on a political settlement.

JOINT CALL FOR LIFTING BLOCKADE

In a joint statement on Saturday, leaders of various UN agencies called on the Saudi-led coalition to immediately allow the resumption of commercial imports, especially food, fuel and medicines to Yemen.

"Without the urgent resumption of commercial imports, especially food, fuel and medicines, millions of children, women and men risk mass hunger, disease and death," warned World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, UN Development Programme head Achim Steiner, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, UNICEF chief Anthony Lake, World Food Programme head David Beasley, International Organization for Migration Director General William Lacy Swing, and UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock.

The partial lifting of the blockade of Yemen's Red Sea ports by the Saudi-led coalition in recent days is allowing humanitarian organizations to resume the provision of life-saving assistance to people in desperate need.

Ongoing commercial import restrictions have led to shortages of fuel, food and other essentials, driving up prices and devastating lives and livelihoods. The price of wheat flour has risen by 30 percent, while the price of fuel has doubled and that of trucked water has skyrocketed by 600 percent in some locations, said the statement.

Urban water networks in seven cities have run out of water and now depend on humanitarian organizations to fill in the gap. Other cities will shortly be in a similar situation if the blockade is not lifted, which would leave 11 million people without safe water.

In other areas, people are reducing their food consumption to dangerous levels in order to pay for the rising cost of water trucking, or are turning to contaminated water sources to meet their basic needs. This further compounds the risk of disease, especially among children, said the statement.

Less than half of the health facilities are functioning, and more hospitals and health centers will close should fuel and water supplies not improve. Sewage networks in six main cities are compromised, threatening a renewed spike in the country's cholera outbreak, which has reached almost 1 million suspected cases and killed over 2,200 people, it said.

"Yemen remains on the cusp of one of the largest famines in modern times," it said.

Nearly 400,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition and face an increased risk of death. More than 8 million people could starve without urgent food assistance coming into Yemen. With 90 percent of the country's food imported, the lack of commercial imports through Red Sea ports would alone push a further 3 million people into starvation, said the statement.

"The threat of widespread famine in a matter of months is very real," it warned.

This imminent catastrophe is entirely avoidable, but it requires immediate action by the Saudi-led coalition, said the statement.

While three ships carrying food have been granted permission to berth at Hudaydah seaport in recent days, four fuel tankers and 10 ships carrying food have all been waiting for permission to enter port, it noted.

"Together, we call on the coalition to urgently open up all Yemeni Red Sea ports fully and to facilitate the entry and free flow of humanitarian and vital commercial goods," it said.

UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed on Saturday stressed the need to protect civilians as clashes broke out between the rebel alliance in the Arab world's poorest country.

"We are deeply concerned by the implications of these events on the civilian population," said Ahmed in a statement. "We urge the parties to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law including their obligations to respect the principle of distinction, proportionality and precaution. All sides must exercise restraint and ensure that their attacks are never directed at civilians or civilian objects. We caution against the serious impact of armed violence against civilians."

He called on the parties to urgently come to the negotiating table and to engage in the peace process. A political solution is the only way out of the prolonged conflict in Yemen, said Ahmed.

A civil war has been raging in Yemen since 2015, pitting forces loyal to former President Saleh against his successor Hadi, who was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led military coalition started a military campaign against the forces loyal to Saleh and the Houthi rebels who were fighting alongside them, in a bid to restore the Hadi-led government.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:57:14|Editor: Zhou Xin

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TOKYO, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Some 70 business leaders, former senior officials, experts and scholars exchanged views on enhancing bilateral cooperation at the third round of Sino-Japanese Entrepreneurs and Former High-level Officials Dialogue that kicked off in Tokyo on Monday.

Zeng Peiyan, former Chinese vice premier and Chairman of China Center for International Economic Exchanges, and Yasuo Fukuda, former Japanese premier, are among the participants of the dialogue.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and political heavyweights attended a reception of the dialogue Monday evening.

Abe said at the reception that Japan and China are close neighbors, and the two sides have reached an agreement on consolidating and enhancing the momentum for improvement in bilateral ties, deepening bilateral and multilateral cooperation in various areas and jointly exploring third party markets during a meeting of leaders of the two countries last month.

He said that the Sino-Japanese entrepreneurs and former high-level officials dialogue is playing a more and more important role in promoting pragmatic cooperation between the two sides and he hopes the dialogue could continue to provide new impetus to bilateral economic cooperation.

Zeng said that Chinese leaders attach great importance to bilateral relationship with Japan, and China has been constantly advocating pushing for the steady and long-term development of bilateral relations based on the four important political documents between China and Japan and in the spirit of taking history as a mirror while facing forward to the future.

As this year marks the 45th anniversary of the normalization of China-Japan diplomatic ties, leaders of both China and Japan expressed their wishes to enhance bilateral ties, Zeng said.

He added that while the steady development of bilateral ties is in the interests of both sides, economic and trade cooperation is one of the most important mutual interests of the two sides and serves as a bedrock of bilateral relations.

It is sincerely hoped that the two sides could further enhance mutual trust and create a better political environment for bilateral economic and trade cooperation, Zeng added.

The Sino-Japanese entrepreneurs and former high-level officials dialogue, coorganized by China Center for International Economic Exchanges and Japan Business Federation and held in Japan and China alternatively, is aimed at enhancing mutual trust and understanding between entrepreneurs of the two countries and providing positive energy for bilateral relations.

At the third round of dialogue held this year, participants exchanged views on new ideas of economic and trade cooperation, with the focus on trade, investment and industry cooperation as well as third-party market exploration.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 23:57:15|Editor: yan

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SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Two militants and a trooper were killed, while another trooper was wounded Monday in a gunfight in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said.

The gunfight erupted at village Nussu Badergund, Qazigund of Anantnag district, about 75 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

An Indian army spokesman Col. Rajesh Kalia told Xinhua they have killed two militants in the stand-off.

"Two militants were killed this evening in a gunfight at Nussu Badergund, while as a soldier was martyred and another wounded fighting them," Kalia said.

According to Kalia the operation in the area was in progress.

"Initially militants ambushed an army convoy near Bounigam village, during which an Indian army trooper was wounded," a police official said. "The trooper was immediately removed to hospital in Srinagar."

However, army chased the militants, who took refuge inside a residential house and fired upon them, triggering a fierce gunfight.

Locals said they heard heavy gunfire and sound of blasts.

"The gunfight began after contingents of army and police cordoned off the locality especially the suspected house," Ghulam Hassan, a local told Xinhua. "The sound of gunfire and blasts reverberated in entire area."

Police said protests broke out in the village during the gunfight with locals clashing with government forces.

People assembling at gunfight sites in support of militants and attacking government forces with stones has evolved as a new phenomenon of resistance in the region.

Meanwhile, region's Police Chief, Shesh Paul Vaid said they have recovered two bodies of militants.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in the psyche of majority of Kashmiris. Irate residents defying curfew and restrictions took to roads and clash with police.

A guerilla war is going on between militants and Indian troops stationed in Indian-controlled Kashmir since 1989. The gunfight between the two sides takes place intermittently across the region.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:02:17|Editor: Zhou Xin

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HANGZHOU, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- On Nov. 28, Yuan Xiaolin personally handed over the keys to the 100,000th Volvo vehicle owner in the Chinese market in 2017, marking a new annual sales record.

Yuan, senior vice president of Volvo Car Group, said an annual sale of 100,000 vehicles in China will be a normal thing for the company in the future.

In the past three years, Volvo's global sales have seen significant growth, especially in China, which has become its biggest market. In 2015, Volvo sold 81,588 vehicles in the country. A year later, sales jumped to 90,930.

Back in 2010, only 22,000 Volvo cars were sold in China that year. The good performance in the Chinese market has become a strong impetus for reviving Volvo brand glory.

The success is traced to technology and market cooperation between the group and Geely, the company which acquired Volvo in 2010. The powerful supporting ability of Chinese manufacturing industry and the comparatively cheap labor in China also contribute to Volvo's success.

The acquisition has benefited both Volvo and Geely.

For Volvo, China has become a key link in Volvo's manufacturing strategy.

From 2015, Volvo's S60 Inscription models, manufactured in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, started to be exported to the United States. This year, Volvo's S90 models, produced in Daqing, in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, have been transported to Belgium via trains connecting China and Europe.

Volvo Car Group CEO Hakan Samuelsson said that China will play an increasingly important role in the group's global manufacturing strategy.

While Volvo continues to make breakthroughs, Geely has also gone through a transformation. Seven years after the acquisition, it has gained more reputation and stepped up efforts to expand globally.

On the same day that Yuan handed over the keys, the jointly developed LYNK 01 hit the market in Zhejiang Province. The car's manufacturer, Lynk & Co, uses Volvo engines and scalable platform architecture, while employing Geely's compact modular architecture and transmission.

In June, Geely signed an agreement to acquire a 49.9 percent stake in Malaysian automaker Proton. In November, Geely's Belarus factory was completed. Sedans made in the factory will be sold in Belarus, as well as in other Eurasian Economic Union member countries.

Geely plans to make more breakthroughs, cooperate with others and become a leader in the global auto industry, according to Li Shufu, Geely chairman.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:07:19|Editor: Yang Yi

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Brigitte Macron (2nd L), wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, looks at a panda baby before a naming ceremony in Saint-Aignan, France, on Dec. 4, 2017. Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, revealed the name of the panda baby, the first-ever cub born in the country, at a naming ceremony at a zoo in central France on Monday. Joined by Chinese officials, Brigitte Macron, who is also the new panda's godmother, announced that the four-month-old cub's name was Yuan Meng. (Xinhua/Chen Yichen)

PARIS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Brigitte Macron, wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, revealed the name of the panda baby, the first-ever cub born in the country, at a naming ceremony at a zoo in central France on Monday.

Joined by Chinese officials, Brigitte Macron, who is also the new panda's godmother, announced that the four-month-old cub's name was Yuan Meng.

Born on Aug. 4, the baby panda had been called as "Mini Yuan Zi," referring to his father Yuan Zi, who arrived with his female partner Huan Huan in central France's Beauval zoo in January 2012.

"Yuan Meng is the energetic and vigorous fruit of the Franco-Chinese friendship," said Macron.

"Yuan Meng and his parents are the illustration of a dialogue that has always been fruitful between our two countries who, for centuries, have got along and understood each other," she added.

The panda baby who will return home to China at the age of three, can be seen by visitors to the zoo as of Jan. 13.

On Aug. 4, Huan Huan gave birth to twin cubs, the first panda babies born in France. She took care of the first cub immediately after its birth, but abandoned the first after the second cub was born, a common practice among pandas.

In the wild, female pandas raise only one cub, the "strongest", the one that has the most chances of survival.

There are about 2,000 pandas in the world. They are classified as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:07:21|Editor: yan

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KAMPALA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Uganda's ministry of health on Monday appealed to nurses and midwives to call off their planned strike scheduled to start Tuesday.

Minister of Health Ruth Aceng told Xinhua that the government is working to address the demands of nurses and midwives for higher salaries, allowances, health coverage and better working conditions.

"We ask the nurses and midwives to call off the planned strike and continue to work normally as their concerns are already being handled by the government," Aceng said.

In a Nov. 30 circular to over 21,000 nurses and midwives, Paul Byenkya, general secretary of Uganda Nurses and Midwives Union (UNMU), asked the union members to lay down their tools effective Tuesday to protest over low pay, allowances and poor working conditions.

"Following UNMU's submission to government demanding the implementation of schemes of service for nursing and midwifery cadres, salary increment and allowances, the government has not responded," Byenkya said. "Therefore, the scheduled date for laying down tools still remains Tuesday."

The strike comes barely two weeks after doctors on Nov. 25 halted a three-week strike following government commitment to increase salaries and improve working conditions in public hospitals by Dec. 15.

The nationwide nurses and midwives strike is expected to paralyze operations in public hospitals and health facilities.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:07:22|Editor: yan

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BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- You Quan, head of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, met with a visiting delegation of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce (HKGCC) in Beijing Monday.

You, also member of the CPC Central Committee Secretariat, said that he hoped the HKGCC could comprehensively and precisely implement the "one country, two systems" principle and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

He said upholding the principle of "one country, two systems" and promoting national reunification in Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is fundamental guarantee for the practice of "one country, two systems" and maintaining lasting prosperity and stability in Hong Kong.

You also stressed the importance of taking care of Hong Kong's younger generation, noting that the tradition of "loving the motherland and loving Hong Kong" needed to be passed on.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:17:24|Editor: yan

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BUCHAREST, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Over 4,600 people have applied for international protection in Romania since the start of the year, the General Inspectorate for Immigration (IGI) announced Monday in a release.

Most of the applicants are from Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, said the IGI release, adding that the last group of people.

Since the beginning of this year, the number of refugees who entered Romania across the Black Sea has increased noticeably, with frequent news reporting about refugee boats intercepted by the Romanian Coast Guard.

There were 1,886 asylum applications in 2016, up 49 percent from 2015, according to earlier data provided by immigration authorities.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:17:25|Editor: yan

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KAMPALA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Ugandan military said on Monday it has begun the withdrawal of 281 peacekeepers as part of condition-based drawdown of its over 6,000 troops deployed in Somalia.

Ugandan military spokesperson Brig. Richard Karemire told Xinhua that phased withdrawal is in compliance with the African Union- and United Nations-approved reduction of 1,000 uniformed personnel serving under African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) by the Dec. 31 deadline.

"The reduction has already started and UPDF (Uganda People's Defense Force) shall be in compliance by Dec. 31 as required by UN Security Council Resolution 2372," said Karemire.

In August 2017, the UN Security Council extended the mandate of AMISOM until May 31, 2018, and approved a reduction of its uniformed personnel to a maximum 21,626 by Dec. 31, 2017, with an eye toward the gradual handover of responsibilities to Somali security forces.

Special Representative of the African Union Chairperson for Somalia Francisco Madeira announced last month that some 1,000 soldiers from the 22,000 strong regional force will be withdrawn from the Horn of Africa country by Dec. 31.

AMISOM is comprised of troops drawn from Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti who are deployed in six sectors covering south and central Somalia.

Karemire said the phased withdrawal of troops and gradual handover of security responsibilities will be based on the ability of the Somali National Security Forces to ably take over the country's security.

As part of the military drawdown, the pan-African body will deploy an extra 500 police officers to strengthen training and mentoring for Somali police.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:22:27|Editor: yan

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KIGALI, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Rwanda on Monday launched a nationwide campaign for green growth to promote and share experience on green growth and climate resilient strategy.

The five-day Green Growth Week was unveiled during a high-level policy dialogue on the country's Green Growth and Climate Resilience Strategy in the Rwandan capital Kigali. It is in line with the progressive green policy-making around the globe.

The Rwanda's green growth week, set to conclude Friday, will review progress and advance aspirations in implementing the country's green growth and climate resilience strategy, according to the Rwandan ministry of environment.

Rwandan focuses on achieving green economy and this will be done through numerous campaigns geared towards promoting the green growth and climate resilience strategy across the country, said Rwandan minister of environment Vincent Biruta at the launch.

The week will provide a platform for policymakers, practitioners and partners from various sectors to contribute to Rwanda's green growth agenda, strengthen climate services, and promote awareness of green cities and buildings and their development, said the minister.

"The Rwanda's green growth week is timely given the work we have recently undertaken to develop sector strategic plans and the national strategy for transformation. We can only achieve these national development targets if green growth is at the heart of everything we do," he said.

The green growth week will feature the launch of the construction of Mageragere wastewater treatment plant in Mageragere sector, Nyarugenge district in the Kigali city suburbs, and two technical workshops -- one on establishing a national framework for climate services and the other on project development and financing for district officials, according to the Rwandan ministry of environment.

The week will conclude with a "green walk" in Kigali on Friday, according to organizers.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:27:28|Editor: yan

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BERLIN, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- German police launched a regional manhunt on Monday after an unknown suspect sent explosives by post last Friday to a Potsdam pharmacy near a Christmas market in an attempt to blackmail the parcel delivery service DHL.

Spokesperson of the Brandenburg Police Office Torsten Herbst said on public broadcaster ZDF that his forces were looking for a perpetrator active in the region around Potsdam where the suspicious package was delivered.

The recipients became aware of the potentially lethal danger posed by the device due to the discovery of wires and paint marks. Police were subsequently able to defuse the bomb. German civilians have since been warned by Brandenburg's governor Karl-Heinz Schroeter (SPD) not to open suspicious mail and to contact authorities.

The author of a letter addressed to the affected Potsdam pharmacy threatened to send further mail bombs unless DHL gives in to their demands for a payment of millions of euros. Security forces currently assume that an individual perpetrator is responsible for the blackmailing attempt, but haven't ruled out the possibly that a larger group could be behind the attack.

Meanwhile, Thuringia governor Bodo Ramelow told press that a second DHL package which may have contained a live grenade was confiscated at the Thuringian State Chancellery in Erfurt on Monday.

Nevertheless, Ramelow described reports which explicitly linked the separate incidents as "pure speculation" at this point.

Police confirmed on Monday that they had already received two dozen tips from the public about the identity of the mail bomber without yet having found a promising lead. A special investigatory commission of around 50 officers has been formed in an urgent bid to solve the case.

German authorities believe that the same perpetrator also sent an explosive device via mail in November which caught fire when it was opened by an online mail order company in Frankfurt.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:32:30|Editor: yan

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Labor Department on Monday signaled that it would scrap a Barack Obama era legislation that bans employers from pooling workers' tip.

In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the Labor Department said workplaces "would have the freedom to allow sharing of tips among more employees."

"The proposal would help decrease wage disparities between tipped and non-tipped workers -- an option that is currently restricted by a rule promulgated in 2011 that has been challenged in a number of courts," the Labor Department said.

The Labor Department noted that "back of the house" employees, such as cooks and dish washers, contribute to the overall customer experience, but may receive less compensation than their traditionally tipped co-workers.

Tip regulations are included in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, according to the 2011 adjustment, employers were not allowed to pool tips among all employees.

Restaurant advocate groups have been fighting against the tip pooling ban, which they said adds to pay disparity between different restaurant employees, while some worker advocates worry there may not be enough oversight to ensure that employers redistribute the tip fairly.

The notice would be available for public comment for 30 days starting on Dec.5.

Tipping has been a tradition in the U.S. service industry for about a century, where small amount of money is customarily, though not mandatorily, given to waiters, taxi drivers, among others.

There has been increasing discussion in the U.S. media on whether the culture should be observed.

Some argue that in effect tipping does not necessarily improve the standard of service, and service establishments may take advantage of the culture to pay employees less.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:52:38|Editor: yan

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VILNIUS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- A number of imported used cars from Germany, which are considered as waste and can't be used on Lithuanian roads, significantly increased recently, Lithuania's state enterprise Regitra responsible for registering vehicles in the country announced on Monday.

According to a statement released by Regitra, Lithuanian buyers tend to be misled by a friendly price and good external condition of used German cars, however, it appears in Lithuania that the vehicle can't be used due to certain requirements.

"Most often we consider the vehicle inappropriate for exploitation or waste in cases when the car is crashed or mechanically irregular. However, some of the vehicles being transported from Germany to Lithuania might have perfect exterior and nevertheless, be not eligible for registration as they do not meet some standards, such as European Union's carbon emission standards," Darius Jurgutis, director of Regitra, was quoted as saying in the statement.

He warned Lithuanian buyers to be cautious, and underscored that cars, which are considered as waste, are being sold illegally.

According to existing law, vehicles considered as waste in Lithuania or other countries, can't be included into official Regitra's register.

Regitra, however, did not elaborate on specific figures, such as the number of cars considered as waste that have been transported from Germany to Lithuania.

According to Jurgutis, Regitra approached the German's Federal Transport Authority in order to exchange information on possible illegal activities in Germany's used car market.

Regitra advised Lithuanian drivers who plan to acquire a used German car to carefully evaluate the vehicle's documentation and follow certain rules which indicate that the car might be not eligible for exploitation.

Regitra operates under Lithuania's Ministry of the Interior. It keeps the registration of vehicles and vehicle drivers in the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 00:57:40|Editor: yan

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KAMPALA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Ugandan military and police officers on Monday joined their regional counterparts for a two-week joint East Africa Community (EAC) command post exercise on peace support operation, counter terrorism and disaster management.

Lt. Col. Deo Akiiki, Ugandan deputy military spokesperson, told Xinhua that the officers will participate along the other five EAC partner states armies and police in the exercise code named "CPX USHIRIKIANO IMARA 2017" that kicked off on Monday in the Tanzanian city of Dar-es-salaam.

Uganda on Friday dispatched a team of 40 military and police officers for the two-week joint command post exercise that kicked off on Monday until Dec.17.

"The exercise is aimed at improving the skills of the troops to deal with instability and security in the EAC region," said Akiiki.

At least 240 military, police and civilians from the EAC partner states of Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and South Sudan will participate in the command post exercise.

The exercise aims at engaging the EAC armed forces and civilians in the planning and conduct of integrated peace support operation, disaster management, counter-terrorism and counter-piracy in order to improve capabilities to jointly combat complex security challenges.

Security remains a primary concern for the EAC partner states due to instability in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Somalia.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 01:02:41|Editor: Lu Hui

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang holds a welcome ceremony for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before the second meeting of the Annual Dialogue between the Chinese premier and the Canadian prime minister in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 4, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo)

BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- China and Canada Monday agreed to issue a joint statement on climate change and clean growth during the second meeting of the Annual Dialogue between the Chinese premier and the Canadian prime minister.

The two sides also agreed to establish two ministerial-level dialogues between their respective departments of environment and clean energy.

During the talks with visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang affirmed the positive roles of the annual dialogue between prime ministers, the annual meeting of foreign ministers, economic and financial strategic dialogue, as well as the national security and rule of law dialogue.

He called on the two countries to expand common interests on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.

Li suggested the two sides expand two-way investment, encourage enterprises of the two countries to invest in each other and jointly explore third-party markets.

He called on the two sides to tap cooperation potential in areas such as clean technology, aviation and aerospace, civilian nuclear energy and agricultural science.

Li said the two sides should promote cultural exchanges and successfully run the China-Canada "Year of Tourism" next year.

He said he hoped the two countries could strengthen communication and coordination in international and regional affairs and join hands in coping with global challenges including climate change.

"China and Canada, both as important countries in the Asia-Pacific region and major trading countries in the world, should send positive signals on promoting trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, which is also in the common interests of both sides," Li said. "China will open its door even wider to the outside world," he said, promising that "China's business environment will get better and better, and China will continue to be a hot destination for international investments."

Trudeau said he appreciated the achievements of China's economic development and China's role in international affairs.

He said Canada was willing to work with China to maintain high-level exchanges, enhance economic and trade cooperation, expand people-to-people exchanges and promote friendship in the spirit of mutual benefit.

"Canada supports free trade and has actively participated in the globalization process," Trudeau said. "Canada will strengthen communication and coordination with China to jointly advance globalization and free trade to make a contribution to the sustainable development of the world."

After their talks, the two leaders witnessed the signing of three cooperative documents on education, food safety and energy.

Li told the press that both sides had agreed to discuss the feasibility of a China-Canada free trade agreement with a pragmatic and open attitude.

Trudeau called for more closer cooperation in dealing with global challenges such as climate change.

He said Canada was ready to work with China to "push forward cooperation in tourism, education, culture and people-to-people exchanges, in a bid to promote common prosperity and build long-term, stable and dynamic Canada-China ties."

Before their talks, Li held a welcome ceremony for Trudeau at the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 01:52:54|Editor: Zhou Xin

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JUBA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan said on Monday that it hopes to benefit from rising global oil prices to shore up its battered economy in the wake of more than three years of brutal violence that cut off production in its northern oil fields.

Minister of Petroleum Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth told journalists that the market is appreciating after pump price peaked 65 U.S. dollars per barrel a day (bpd) on the global market, which he said benefits the war-torn country to earn more revenue accrued from its oil.

"The oil market is appreciating now very well the oil price is going up its 65 dollars a barrel and yet in South Sudan it's something we need to cerebrate because our economy is driven by oil. We are going very well in the oil industry," Gatkuoth said in Juba after arriving from attending the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting in Vienna.

He added that global oil price is very good and that both OPEC and non-OPEC members like South Sudan have agreed to continue with the oil cap to stabilize the market.

South Sudan depends 98 percent on oil to finance its fiscal budget and the 2017/18 approved budget totaled to 300 million dollars.

Gatkuoth revealed that production has since declined due to conflict and they were working to improve on current output.

"If you look at the production in Dar Petroleum or DPOC in Paloch, we used to produce 270,000 bpd but now we are producing 135-140,000 bpd. Then if you go to GPOC we used to produce close to 200,000 barrels a day but now we are producing zero. So we have agreed with Sudan to resume the production there," he disclosed.

In October, President Salva Kiir and his Sudan counterpart Omar Bashir met in Khartoum and agreed to speed up resumption of oil production.

Gatkuoth also said that oil giants Total and Tullow were coming to invest in some of the country's oil blocks.

"Total is coming back for B1, B2 and you have Tullow being committed to making sure that we are going to seal the deal with them. After the oil conference here in Juba a lot of oil companies are interested to come to South Sudan," he said.

Meanwhile, he also said that they were in talks with regional countries like Kenya and Uganda to construct oil pipeline that will cater for mostly the oil in the southern part of South Sudan, while the oil in the northern part continues to flow through Sudan.

"In the southern part of South Sudan we will have to have an alternative pipeline, but the oil that are actually in the northern part they will continue to go to Sudan. So we are in discussion with Uganda and Kenya to see alternative route that can be used," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 02:23:04|Editor: yan

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NAIROBI, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) on Monday launched a secure digital radio system to help improve its efficiency in wildlife surveillance in the country and thus protect elephants and rhinos from poachers.

KWS said a 7 million U.S. dollars digital radio system extended to Kenya by the French government is capable of covering a wide area compared to the previous analogue system, besides being configured to send audio and text messages.

"The system has the capability of transmitting data as well as GPS tracking among other features that are set to revitalize wildlife protection and management by KWS," the wildlife agency said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

It said radio system will also help improve communication among security personnel in three KWS conservation areas -- Tsavo, Southern and Central Rift where rampant poaching is.

French Minister for Ecological and Inclusive Transition Nicolas Hulot, who commissioned the digital radio system in Nairobi, said the system is secure with inbuilt encryption and the sound is clearer.

The minister said France is encouraged by the stringent efforts KWS is making to conserve and manage wildlife, noting wildlife security is mainly dependent on timely intelligence communication among security personnel.

Wildlife conservationists have decried the entry of organized crime syndicates into the illegal wildlife trade, most notably of rhino horn and elephant ivory, which they said, has created a crisis situation in many African countries.

Kenya says the wanton killing of elephants, rhino and other wildlife species is having a huge impact on the tourism sector and the authorities have stepped up surveillance on traffickers of ivory.

Heavily-armed criminals kill elephants and rhinos for their tusks, which are used for ornaments and in some folk medicines.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 03:18:19|Editor: yan

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TIRANA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Monday announced the launch of a legal initiative to insure households and businesses from floods.

The move aims to provide cover for flood-related damages to businesses and households and serve as a mechanism that would reduce the country's significant fiscal exposure to disasters.

Speaking at the Civil Emergency Coordination Committee meeting, Rama said that Albania was the only country that had not endorsed such a law and this was why flood-hit people were left adrift waiting from the state budget.

"It is needed that all Albanian people and enterprises should be aware, like in any normal country, to insure households and businesses from floods," Rama said at the meeting.

Such proposal is made at a time when most of Albania's territory is under water due to the massive floods that swept Albania in recent days.

Rama said that the past investments proved beneficiary to the diminished results of the disaster, however, he added that it was crucial to make a number of interventions so that river beds and forest green belts were restored.

Meanwhile, referring to the data published by the Albanian Financial Supervisory Authority (AFSA), it turns out that Albanian citizens are not very interested in insuring their house, property or businesses against the natural disaster damages.

AFSA data showed Monday that some 32,725 contracts were issued in insurance against Fire and Natural Forces portfolio for the ten-month period from January through October this year, down from 35,891 insurance contracts issued during the same period of in 2016.
Liu Yunshan (C), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, attends an unveiling ceremony of the Confucius Institute of Kiev State Linguistic University in Kiev, Ukraine, Sept. 6, 2013. (Ma Zhancheng)

KIEV, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Confucius Institute of the Kiev National Taras Shevchenko University (KNU) on Monday was awarded the Order of Glory, a Ukrainian award recognizing individuals and organizations actively involved in promoting Ukrainian ties with other countries.

The Confucius Institute of the KNU won the prize for its "significant contribution to the development of Ukrainian-Chinese cooperation in the field of education, science and culture."

Sun Kewen, the Chinese director of the KNU Confucius Institute, received the award during a ceremony in Kiev from Pavel Kochubinsky, the president of the All-Ukrainian Foundation for International Communication, known as the "Ukrainian People's Embassy", under the patronage of Kraine's first president Leonid Kravchuk.

"On behalf of the first Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, I want to present the Order of Glory to the Confucius Institute of the KNU for its outstanding achievements in raising the level of cultural and scientific cooperation" between Ukraine and China, Kochubinsky told the ceremony.

For his part, Sun said it is an honor for the Confucius Institute of the KNU to receive such an award.

"In 2007, we signed an agreement on the creation of the Confucius Institute at the KNU. For these 10 years, we have trained about 10,000 people. The award that we have received today is recognition and acknowledgement of our merits," Sun said.

The Confucius Institute at the KNU was the second Confucius Institute set up in Ukraine.

Kravchuk was elected the first president of Ukraine after the country gained independence from the former Soviet Union via a referendum in December 1991, and served until July 19, 1994.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 03:33:23|Editor: yan

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ABUJA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Nigerian government on Monday said it will open up opportunities for collaboration among scientists the world over to take part in the study of the Atlantic Ocean, the second largest in the world.

Minister of Science and Technology Ogbonnaya Onu at a ceremony in Abuja told participants at a summit, which coincided with the opening of a fact-finding facility mainly set up for the studying of the Atlantic Ocean, that the West African country will deploy experts and welcome keen interest from scientists across the world to study the ocean with a total area of about 106,460,000 square kilometers.

Onu said the knowledge about space and the oceans is yet very limited, noting "both hold a lot of promise for the future of humanity."

The newly opened Atlantic International Research (AIR) Center placed Nigeria as a founding member of a world group to study the Atlantic Ocean, using science and technology tools, particularly in the application of space science and technology.

Onu, speaking at the summit, tagged "Science, Technology, and Nigeria/Portugal collaborative framework," said Nigeria's involvement in the study of the ocean could not be overemphasized, considering its large coastline bordering the ocean, its economic significance as well as huge population, to mention a few.

"The research facility will provide the opportunity for Nigerian scientists, engineers and allied professionals to join other scientists to study and explore the Atlantic Ocean to the benefit of Nigerians and other citizens in the world," the official added.

The Atlantic Ocean covers approximately 20 percent of the earth's surface and about 29 percent of its water surface area.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 03:33:25|Editor: yan

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JERUSALEM, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Israel signed an agreement to join the U.S.-led Power Africa initiative here on Monday.

The agreement was signed between the Israeli Prime Minister's Office and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Power Africa, led by USAID, aims to connect 60 million African households to the electricity grid and add 30,000 megawatts to the power currently installed in the continent by 2030.

Israel joins the program as part of its campaign to strengthen economic ties and cooperation with African countries.

This is great partnership between Israel, the United States and Africa and this is an initiative that will electrify Africa literally and figuratively, said Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at the singing ceremony.

It is said that the agreement is expected to create numerous business. Israeli companies in the energy field will be given priority in African projects as part of the agreement between Israel and the United States.

Following the agreement, Israeli companies are able to take part in the Power Africa initiative and will receive a diverse toolbox to promote power generation projects and to connect consumers across the continent.

Israel's international position has changed greatly because of Israeli technological prowess in bettering the lives of people in so many areas, said Netanyahu.

Power Africa is comprised of 12 U.S. government departments and agencies, and it is a diverse coalition of more than 140 public-private sector partners, including bilateral and multilateral partners, international organizations, civil-society organizations, and more than 130 private sector companies.

To date, the U.S. government has disbursed about 500 million U.S. dollars and made more than 2.6 billion U.S. dollars in financial commitments towards Power Africa's goals.

Israel helped agriculture in Africa in the 60s and now can help every realm of life in the beginning of the 21st century, said Netanyahu, "It's a remarkably positive development and we are going to continue this step after step."
China's success in bridging the gap between academia and the private sector was the highlight of a lead-up event over the weekend to the third United Nations Environment Assembly, the world's highest-level decision-making body on environmental issues, which is scheduled for Dec 4-6 in Nairobi, Kenya.

The lead-up event - the UN Science Policy Business Forum on the Environment - focused on private-sector green solutions to overcome the planet's pollution crisis and identified opportunities to grow green technology markets, driven by scientific advances.

More than 300 participants met to discuss how to strike a balance between building sustainable businesses and conserving the environment. Recommendations from the event will inform the assembly.

At the two-day event, themed "Science for Green Solutions", Chinese scholars explained how the country's timely response to global market demand is strengthening environmental conservation.

According to Li Fengting, deputy dean of the College of Environmental Science and Engineering at Tongji University in Shanghai, universities are playing a key role in the transformation of businesses located in special economic zones. Those businesses have been hailed as the engines of China's economic fortunes.

The university entered into a joint venture with the private sector in the development of Tongji-Rim Intellectual Economic Zone, currently China's largest industrial design cluster.

"The joint venture started small, at about $151 million. A decade later, cash flow has grown to $5 billion. It contributes about 1 percent to Shanghai's GDP. This model is very successful and we are replicating it here in Africa," Li said, adding that collaborations have been created with universities in Kenya, Zambia and Ethiopia.

Chen Tian, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing municipal government, said in the forum session called "Tackling Beijing's Air Pollution Challenge: Lessons Learned" that Beijing is willing to cooperate with cities in Africa.

"The challenge Beijing is facing today will be the challenge African cities must meet tomorrow," Chen said, "We will be happy to share our experience with African countries through training and some joint research projects."

At the session, Chen shared with academia and enterprises the measures, effects, experience and lessons learned from Beijing's air pollution control efforts. Chen has been involved in crafting environmental protection policies in the capital over the past 20 years.

"Through 20 years of pollution control, Beijing has fostered a great environmental protection industry, which has provided services for economic growth," he said.

Liu Jian, the UN Environment Programme's chief scientist, said environmental issues need to move up the priority list for key stakeholders.

"There are 12.6 million people dying of pollution yearly. Everyone needs to be candid about this conversation and play their part," he said during the opening session of the UN Science Policy Business Forum on the Environment.

He said the need to bridge the gap between academia, entrepreneurs and policymakers is urgent because the consequences of ignorance will be difficult to reverse in the future.

"The private sector needs to take its own initiative. It should be the agent of change," he said.

Contact the writers at panzhongming@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/04/2017 page4)
Ukrainians stand knelt in front of the memorial to victims of anti-government protests at Maidan in Kiev, Ukraine, during the second anniversary of the Euromaidan Revolution on November 22, 2015. (Xinhua/SIPA)

KIEV, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- More than 2,500 civilians were killed and about 9,000 others injured in eastern Ukraine since the start of an armed conflict in April 2014, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Monday.

In its "Ukraine Humanitarian Needs Overview 2018" report published here on Monday, the OCHA said that about 200,000 people living along the contact line between government troops and pro-independence insurgents are regularly experiencing the injury or loss of their loved ones or neighbors.

About 1,500 clashes between the conflicting sides occur near the contact line each month, endangering civilians, the report said.

Landmines and other remnants of war also pose a threat to people, it said.

Later in the day, the special monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which observes the situation in eastern Ukraine, said that at least 400 civilians were either killed or injured in the conflict this year.

In April 2014, the Ukrainian government started a military operation against armed groups, who seized cities and towns in Donbas region and declared independence from Kiev.

The confrontation has snowballed into the violent conflict, which has killed more than 10,000 civilians and combatants and left about 24,000 injured.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 04:03:34|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Palestinians say the U.S. will set off "ticking bomb" if it recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moves US embassy to Jerusalem. (AFP Photo)

By Keren Setton

JERUSALEM, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- In a welcome move to some and a controversial move to others, U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly expected to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital later this week.

Any such announcement has inflammatory potential in an already volatile region.

Israel has controlled the western part of Jerusalem since its inception in 1948. In 1967, after the Mideast war, Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem from Jordan and declared both parts it's united capital.

The move was never recognized by the international community, including Israel's closest ally, the U.S..

The Palestinians see eastern Jerusalem as the future capital of their state.

Jerusalem is home to all of the Israeli government offices and while foreign embassies are situated in Tel Aviv, dealings with the Israeli government are done largely in Jerusalem, the capital that no one recognizes.

Jerusalem is home to sites holy to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, making it a focal point for many people around the globe.

Now, in what seems to be an attempt to appease both Israel and his constituents on the evangelical right, Trump may recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital in order to cushion the blow on an undelivered election promise, transferring the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, another controversial move.

It is still unclear, however, whether the U.S. will make such a move, and if so, will it recognize both sides of Jerusalem as Israel's capital? Or just the western side?

"Trump is a friend of Israel and he thinks that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and recognizing the historic links between the Jews and the city is the right thing to do," Prof. Efraim Inbar, President of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, told Xinhua.

Inbar believed Trump will be "ambiguous" about what part of Jerusalem the U.S. will recognize.

"Nobody really disputes Israeli sovereignty over west Jerusalem," Inbar added. While there is a de-facto recognition of western Jerusalem as Israel's capital, this sovereignty remains unrecognized by the whole of the international community.

Up until now, both Israelis and Americans have repeatedly said that the status of Jerusalem needs to be determined in bilateral negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis.

American media has quoted U.S. Defense officials saying a new policy on Jerusalem would endanger American diplomatic missions worldwide, further highlighting how delicate the matter is.

On Sunday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned that such a move would jeopardize renewed American efforts to promote a deal between Palestinians and Israelis. These efforts come years after stalemate between the sides and have yet to materialize into anything meaningful or concrete.

The Palestinians have also warned of violence in response to any American move.

"The Palestinians...have always been threatening that it will be the end of the world and the end of the peace process and the beginning of war, but there is no peace process and the Middle East is a war zone anyway...so those threats don't really make any sense," Prof. Emmanuel Navon told Xinhua.

Navon is a professor of international relations at the Tel Aviv University and a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies.

"I really do not believe a symbolic declaration from the U.S. government will make any difference in a region that is already falling apart," said Navon, referring to the political instability surrounding Israel, mainly in Syria and Lebanon. "This might be used as an excuse by Hamas (a Gaza-based Palestinian militant organization) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) for a surge in violence as it has done in the past," Navon added.

"Even if there will be some kind of wave of violence as a result of an American decision, it will eventually die down, it will not continue for long," said Prof. Inbar.

But any wave of violence, lengthy or not, will result in loss of life on both sides.

A group of about 25 Israeli activists who have held senior positions in the Israeli government in the past sent an urgent letter on Monday to Trump's senior advisor, Jason Greenblatt.

In it, they warned of the implications of such a recognition.

"(This) will further deepen the asymmetry between the two sides, severely harm the prospects for peace and could ignite the entire region. It could severely harm the prospects for peace for generations to come," the letter signed by former Israeli Ambassador Ilan Baruch, read.

In a statement released by PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) Secretary General ahead of an expected announcement, Saeb Erekat said the move would promote "international anarchy."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained silent on the issue in recent days.

While Israel enjoys improved relations with Egypt recently, Egyptian officials have reportedly also warned of the American move. The flurry of warnings from the Arab world mean they are taking the reports of Trump's intent seriously.

But it is highly unlikely that an American move will result in a severing of ties between the few Arab countries that currently maintain relations, official or not, with Israel.

"These relations are primarily based on interests...this will continue," Prof. Inbar told Xinhua.

In a region accustomed to the cyclical nature of waves of violence, an announcement by the American president may in fact lead to a temporary upsurge. It will add more fuel into an already boiling cauldron.

But with Israel and much of the world treating Jerusalem as its de facto capital, there will unlikely be significant change on the ground.
Bee producers explain to visitors how honey is made and how a bee hive is organized and functions during the 9th Festival of Honey and Bee products in Neo Faliro, a southern suburb of Athens, Greece, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Xinhua/Lefteris Partsalis)

by Alexia Vlachou

ATHENS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- It's a sweet gathering when over 250 bee products makers from across Greece gathered this weekend in Neo Faliro, southern Greece, to exchange their techniques and seek cooperation with traders from Europe and Asia.

Under the auspices of the agriculture and food ministry, experts, amateurs, and connoisseurs came together for three days for seminars, honey tastings, bee-keeping demonstrations, and children's shows. Meanwhile, chefs prepared honey-inspired dishes, sweets, and made cocktails.

"Within the nine years of the festival, we have seen small producers expand their small cottage industries to a level where they can export to Europe and other regions," said George Stathis, a member of festival's organizing committee, to Xinhua.

"Producers provide their honey to hotels in Hong Kong. Greek honey is included in hotels' breakfast and restaurants in countries across the world," he noted.

Unique in color, aroma, taste, and thickness, Greek honey -- the beverage and food of the ancient Greek Gods known as nectar and ambrosia -- has been used both as a food and a source of therapy since ancient times.

Greece produces an average of 14,000 tons of honey per year. The small Mediterranean country is the third largest honey producer in Europe behind Spain and France. But Greece has more beehives "per acre" than any other country in Europe, according to Stathis.

There are currently about 27,000 to 30,000 beekeepers across Greece. About 60 percent of them have 50 to 60 hives, but professional beekeepers own more than 200 hives and earn at least 50 percent of their annual income from them.

Meanwhile, the average consumption of honey in a Greek family is 12 kg per year.

"The target is to reach up to 15 to 16 kg per year," Stathis said.

Regarding exports, Stathis stressed that honey should not have a prohibitive cost for consumers abroad. "The pricing is not the same in Greece and China for example, but producers and operators have succeeded in not quadrupling its price when exporting it," he said.

Another advantage of honey is that it is a food source with no expiration date. "You may see raw, pure Greek unprocessed honey crystallize. This is natural with raw unfiltered honey. You can simply place the jar in a bowl of warm water and the crystals will melt," Stathis explained.

As a country with abundant flora in the Mediterranean basin, and more than 7,500 different species of herbs, plants, wildflowers, and trees, Greece has a wide range of honey.

The honey produced in Greece comes mainly from pine and fir trees, while some honey is produced from the flower nectar from thyme, orange blossom, cotton, heather, and sunflower, among others.

Besides honey, by-products like beeswax, propolis, and royal jelly used in the cosmetic industry can boost exports, experts pointed out.

"There are organic products from bees' products at affordable prices," Stathis explained.

During the festival, which is considered one of the most significant industry events in Greece, visitors could also see producers harvest royal jelly, render beeswax from honeycomb, collect bee's venom, which is used in the pharmaceutical sector, among other interesting activities.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 04:23:42|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Jeffrey Feltman, the United Nations under-secretary-general for political affairs, will visit the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) from Tuesday to Friday, the United Nations said on Monday.

Feltman will meet with DPRK officials to discuss "issues of mutual interest and concern," said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, at the daily news briefing.

"He will also meet with the United Nations Country Team and members of the diplomatic corps, as well as visit UN project sites," said the spokesman, adding that "Mr. Feltman is also visiting China while in the region."

The visit was first raised in September, but was finally confirmed on Nov. 30, Dujarric said.

Shortly after the DPRK's ballistic missile launch on Nov. 29, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting and called for all measures possible to prevent escalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula.

As the United States and South Korean air forces conducted their biggest-ever joint military drill, the DPRK on Monday warned the United States that it was pushing the two countries to the "brink of nuclear war."

"Given the grave risks associated with any military confrontation, in exercise of its primary responsibility the Security Council needs to do all it can to prevent an escalation," Feltman said at the emergency meeting.

Addressing the Security Council meeting, Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, said the top priority in view of the current "grave situation" was for all parties to exercise restraint, implement UN sanctions, and strive for early resumption of dialogue and negotiations.
File Photo: Soldiers attend a military parade in central Pyongyang, April 15, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhu Longchuan)

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Jeffrey Feltman, the United Nations under-secretary-general for political affairs, will visit the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) from Tuesday to Friday, the United Nations said on Monday.

Feltman will meet with DPRK officials to discuss "issues of mutual interest and concern," said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, at the daily news briefing.

"He will also meet with the United Nations Country Team and members of the diplomatic corps, as well as visit UN project sites," said the spokesman, adding that "Mr. Feltman is also visiting China while in the region."

The visit was first raised in September, but was finally confirmed on Nov. 30, Dujarric said.

Shortly after the DPRK's ballistic missile launch on Nov. 29, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting and called for all measures possible to prevent escalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula.

As the United States and South Korean air forces conducted their biggest-ever joint military drill, the DPRK on Monday warned the United States that it was pushing the two countries to the "brink of nuclear war."

"Given the grave risks associated with any military confrontation, in exercise of its primary responsibility the Security Council needs to do all it can to prevent an escalation," Feltman said at the emergency meeting.

Addressing the Security Council meeting, Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, said the top priority in view of the current "grave situation" was for all parties to exercise restraint, implement UN sanctions, and strive for early resumption of dialogue and negotiations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 04:53:53|Editor: Zhou Xin

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LUSAKA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Zambia on Monday launched a strategy aimed at tracking all survivors of gender-based violence.

The Gender-Based Violence Survivors Income Generating Activities Tracking Strategy, launched in collaboration with the International Labor Organization (ILO), will help in keeping a track record of survivors in order to help them with income generating activities.

Ministry of Gender Permanent Secretary Felix Phiri said during the launch that the strategy has been developed due to an increase in gender-based violence cases which was a source of concern to the government.

The strategy, he said, will help the survivors with income generating activities in order to boost income levels as evidence has shown that poverty was one of the causes of gender-based violence.

He further urged victims of gender-based violence to report the cases to relevant authorities as failure to do so has perpetuated the vice.

ILO acting director Ezra Sakala said the organization has developed tools to assist the vulnerable people in society such as survivors of gender-based violence.

He said under the project, 6,500 survivors have been reached with various empowerment activities.

Zambia has seen a rise in gender-based violence, with a week hardly passing without such reports in the local media.

Last month, the government launched 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence whose theme is "Leave No One Behind, End Gender-Based Violence Now."

It is an international campaign to challenge violence against women and girls and it runs from November 25 to December 10.

According to figures from the police, Zambia recorded 16,090 gender-based violence cases from the first to the third quarter of 2017, compared to 13,092 cases during the same period last year, representing 18.6 percent increase.

On the other hand, the police have so far recorded 55 gender-based violence related murder cases.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 05:34:05|Editor: yan

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RABAT, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Three illegal migrants died when their boat sank off northern Morocco Monday, local media reported.

Meanwhile, 40 others were rescued in the boat accident, Hespress.com news site cited local authorities in the northern city of Larache as saying.

The rescued were sent to a local hospital to receive treatment, the same source said, adding that an investigation is underway.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 05:39:08|Editor: yan

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LONDON, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- British Defense Minister Harriett Baldwin unveiled a cutting-edge project Monday that will see lightweight bullet-proof vests protecting soldiers in war zones.

Baldwin was briefed about the new armor project when she visited Ministry of Defense's high-security defense research labs at Porton Down, which, a United Kingdom science park, is situated slightly northeast of Porton near Salisbury, in Wiltshire, England.

She spoke with scientists who are creating a lighter, more flexible body armor for soldiers which uses a unique synthetically adjusted ceramic material that can stop bullets.

"We've spent millions on innovation this year, developing technologies like a new way to uncover insurgents' fingerprints to mini-drones that investigate chemical hazards," she said. "The goal is always to help our armed forces defend the UK, and this next generation of armor will make our troops even more alert and effective on the battlefield."

Research has indicated soldiers wearing the ceramic armor could see a 35 percent weight reduction, which could make them faster and more comfortable in a war zone, whilst maintaining a high level of protection.

The synthetic biology for the eight million U.S. dollars armor project has been running for four years and scientists are now ready to put samples through hardness testing and live-fire testing.

A billion U.S. dollars innovation fund for cutting-edge science and technology has seen a number of exciting projects developed, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) said.

Included are a pocket-sized drone and a mini-detector known as Snake Eyes which are amongst the new high-tech gadgets set to investigate future chemical or bio-hazards.

A world-first has seen British soldiers controlling 4x4 vehicles with Xbox-style controllers, and a British driverless truck leading U.S. military trucks in an unmanned convoy. It provided a glimpse into the future of getting much-needed supplies to the front line, said the MOD.

A new lightning-fast protection system, Icarus, which will be able to detect and defeat threats to armored vehicles within 100 milliseconds has also been developed, add the MOD.

The Defense Accelerator fund has so far seen 630 proposals and innovative ideas for defense and security being assessed, with 147 of the proposals so far winning government funding.
Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai (R) and Ukrainian First Vice Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov sign the meeting minutes of the second meeting of the China-Ukraine Inter-government Cooperation Committee in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 24, 2013. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei)

KIEV, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine wants to join efforts with China to translate their cooperation potential into practical results, a senior Ukrainian official told Xinhua in a recent exclusive interview.

"Our task is to turn the opportunities and the potential, which are being widely discussed now, into concrete practical projects," said Natalia Mykolska, deputy minister of economic development and trade of Ukraine.

Ukraine attaches a great importance to its long-term economic cooperation with China, Mykolska said, adding that the two countries have all opportunities for pushing the partnership forward given the complementary advantages of each others' economies.

"For us, China is a strategic partner in the economic sphere and trade. Ukraine and China can effectively work together on foreign markets. Ukraine can become China's gateway to the European Union (EU), and China for us -- a strategically very important market and a source of investment," Mykolska emphasized.

Mykolska, who headed a Ukrainian delegation to the meeting of the Chinese-Ukrainian Subcommittee on Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing last month, highlighted that the two countries have developed a roadmap to carry forward the economic partnership.

"We have defined a string of very important areas on which Ukraine and China will focus next year. The agriculture sphere, including food and drinks, is among these priority areas." Mykolska said, noting that Ukraine is interested to produce power engineering equipment and electrical appliances jointly with China.

Another important sector Mykolska cares within the partnership is machine-building. "We could produce machine-building products in Ukraine, using the know-how of both -- China and Ukraine," she explained.

Among other areas for joint cooperation, Mykolska named renewable energy and high-tech industry, pointing that the two countries may establish good tandems on the global digital market with the combined advantages of China's powerful hardware facilities and Ukraine's software developments.

While speaking on the business-to-business (B2B) collaboration, Mykolska said more and more Ukrainian companies are preparing to do business with China.

Mykolska said China is defined as a "market in focus" under the "Export Strategy of Ukraine". "We are at the stage when this interest should begin to turn into major projects," she said.

In a move to deepen the B2B cooperation, on Nov. 14-16, Mykolska led a business delegation to China's Global Food and Hospitality Expo in Shanghai.

The trade representative of Ukraine stressed that the Chinese market is very attractive to Ukrainian food producers due to its size.

"Currently, it is important for us to increase the supplies of ready-to-eat products to the Chinese market. Among them, we can name dairy products, which are gaining popularity in China, and healthy food products -- fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables," Mykolska said.

Besides, Ukrainian berries, meat products, juice, beer and wine, confectionery, baby food and organic goods can find specific market niches in China, she added.

According to the official, to gain its foothold on the Chinese market, Ukrainian agri-producers stand ready to manufacture "personalized" products specifically for Chinese consumers and produce goods under the trademarks of Chinese companies.

"We can offer high-quality products at a competitive price. And what is extremely important for the Chinese consumers -- an individual approach," Mykolska said.

Ukraine, which is rich in natural resources and has the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area with the EU and some Western countries, is also interested in attracting Chinese investment to jointly produce various goods for foreign markets, Mykolska said.

She pointed that the bilateral and multilateral cooperation could be carried out under the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.

"This Initiative is very important for us. Ukraine has trade and economic relations with all participants of this initiative. This makes us a natural partner not only for each of these countries but also a natural partner for the entire Initiative," Mykolska emphasized.

Next week, a Chinese delegation headed by Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai is set to visit Kiev to participate in the meeting of the Chinese-Ukrainian intergovernmental commission.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-05 06:39:27|Editor: Zhou Xin

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by Fuad Rajeh

SANAA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The killing of Yemeni former President Ali Abdullah Saleh by Houthi militants on Monday has opened the door for a broader conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, analysts said.

Saleh ruled Yemen for 33 years until protests that erupted during the Arab Spring in 2011 forced him to relinquish power. In late 2014, Saleh allied with the Houthi militants and seized power from the internationally recognized government led by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

But the Houthi-Saleh alliance broke down lately with the two sides fighting each other in the capital Sanaa and other regions under their control in the past week. Prior to the armed clashes, both sides were trading accusations over failing the Yemeni people amid a deepening crisis and looking for foreign support.

The murder of Saleh has a different impact on Saudi Arabia and Iran, some analysts said.

Saudi Arabia has lost a card which could help it eradicate the Iranian threat in Yemen. Before his killing, Saleh withdrew from the alliance with the Houthis and welcomed talks with Saudi Arabia on condition that it halts airstrikes and a blockade.

The latest developments, Saleh's murder in particular, will open the door for a broader conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the country, the analysts said.

Nabil Albukiri, a Yemeni researcher in international affairs, said Saudi Arabia is the target of Iran's projects in the region.

"Iran's influence in Yemen poses a serious threat to Saudi national security. Definitely Saudi Arabia will not allow Iran to threaten it," he said.

Saudi Arabia has been bombing the Houthi militants since they seized power with support from forces loyal to Saleh in late 2014. It accuses Iran of providing weapons to the Houthis including ballistic missiles, some of which were fired into Riyadh, the Saudi capital. But Iran and the Houthis have denied the claims.

The future Saudi-Iran conflict in Yemen could be more complicated as both sides are expected to try to attract and lure tribes to fight on behalf of them.

Many pro-Saleh tribes are now expected to either join the legitimate forces or avoid supporting the Houthis.

Yaseen Al-Tamimi, a Yemeni political writer and analyst, said Iran will seek to keep its successes in Yemen.

"I expect Iran to open direct communication channels with the Houthis in order to provide more support to them," Al-Tamimi said.

In response, Saudi Arabia is expected to mobilize and support all forces and political groups opposing the Houthis, he said.

Nevertheless, the murder of Saleh means that Iran has won in Yemen so far, he added.

Faris Al-Beel, a Yemeni political analyst, also said that, after Saleh's death, Iran has now become the main player in Yemen.

"Iran's win will definitely be reflected on the struggle for regional influence. If Saudi Arabia fails to use the murder of Saleh perfectly, Iran will strengthen its presence and threats. No one will defeat it then," Al-Beel said.

A proxy war in Yemen between the two regional powers will only deepen the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, such as famine.

Yemen is already facing a grave humanitarian crisis aggravated by a large-scale cholera outbreak. Two thirds of the Yemeni population are in need of humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations.
Belgium is swinging to far right politics in dealing with migration and travel visas. The recent anti-Moroccan statements by Belgian Migration Minister Theo Francken show a worrying trend taking place in the home of EU institutions.

In a case of recidivism fueled by animosity to anything Moroccan, Belgian Migration minister has described Morocco along with Tunisia as unsafe countries.

Francken, in 2007, has also sent an email describing Moroccans as little scum. Last October, he compared Morocco to Sudan saying that these are countries where human rights are not respected.

Even worst, in 2011, he spitted his venom on facebook describing Moroccan presence in Belgium as bringing no added value.

Francken hardline stands against migration and asylum are inspired from his belonging to a far-right Flemish nationalist party N-VA that is a relic of the collaborationists with Nazis in the WWII. Hence, the humanitarian approach will give way to nationalistic policies restricting right to international protection and tightening the grip on migrants.
Morocco and Portugal convene in Rabat this Monday their joint high level meeting to look into ways to boost cooperation ties between the two countries in all fields of common interest.

This two-day encounter, chaired by the two countries Prime ministers, Saad Eddine El Othmani and Antonio Costa, is expected to be crowned with the signing of several business deals.

During their last high level meeting held in 2015, the two countries signed nine cooperation agreements in security, energy, shipping, tourism, training and scientific research.

The two countries are currently looking forward to setting up an undersea power connection, which would be the second Europe-Africa link. At present, Portugal exports its excess energy to its neighbor Spain, which then feeds into the European system via France, while Morocco has a growing rate of demand.

Besides the energy sector, the Moroccan-Portuguese cooperation also covers culture, higher education and scientific research, aquaculture, agribusiness, textile and construction.

Some 200 Portuguese companies are installed in Morocco, operating in various sectors such as pharmaceuticals, food industry, building, cork industry

Morocco is a major partner of Portugal in the Arab world and the second in Africa, after Angola (former colony of Portugal). Portuguese exports of goods and services to Morocco increased by 18.5 pc in 2015 while imports grew by 12.2 pc.

To enhance further economic relations and trade exchanges between the two countries, a Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services of Portugal was set up.

According to some experts, the two countries can launch joint cooperation projects in Africa and particularly in Portuguese-speaking African countries as Morocco is expanding its presence in the African continent. Hence, there are huge joint business opportunities for a triangular cooperation and partnership.
Vice  Dean of the University of Mohammed I in Oujda Abdelkader Hakkou denounced in the strongest words his arbitrary and abusive detention by Belgian authorities upon his arrival in Charleroi Airport on Friday evening.

The Professor was invited by the Francophone Free University of Brussels (ULB) but he ended up being locked up at the secure asylum center at Steenokkerzeel in Flemish Brabant.

Belgian authorities justified the arrest on grounds that the Professor did not have the correct visa.

The professor for his part vented his frustration and disappointment at the detention and the conditions in which he was held on a metal chair all night long.

It is dissapointing to see that this degrading treatment takes place in a democratic country that respects human rights, he said.

The Dean of the ULB Yvon Englert deplored the incident saying that Belgium is on the wrong track. We need to stop following the far right.
Reports that US President Donald Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel have received a wary response and warnings of a new Palestinian uprising.

Trumps confirmation of the reports is expected to take place in a speech on Wednesday. If the US happens to announce that it will move its embassy to Jerusalem that would amount to a trigger of a new conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

For Israelis, the US recognition of Jerusalem as their capital- something no US president has done since Israels founding- will give legitimacy to their occupation of eastern Jerusalem and their overall settlements policy.

Such a recognition would also destroy all attempts at relaunching peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians in so far as it prejudges the outcome of the peace process in which Palestinians hope to set up their capital in East Jerusalem.

As soon as reports about this future game-changing announcement emerged, leaders of the Palestinian authority rallied to avert such a decision.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said he was seeking meetings of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League to discuss the issue.

Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, called on Saturday for a new intifada if Washington recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or moves its embassy to the disputed city.

Since 1995, it has been US law that Washingtons embassy in Israel must be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in line with Israeli government wishes.

But every six months since the law was passed, successive US presidents have signed a waiver to hold off on a switch, which would enrage Palestinians and their Arab supporters.

Trump has signed the waiver once after vowing to Jewish-American supporters that he would be the president to finally make the switch permanent.
When the villain flips. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

In the eyes of the law, Michael Flynn is now a convicted felon for lying to the FBI. His sentence is still a ways away, but chances are that his decision to cooperate with Robert Mueller, the special counsel prosecuting crimes related to Russias role in the presidential election, will result in light punishment. Self-interest is always a driving force behind pleading guilty. Family is the most important thing in life, tweeted Flynns son hours after his fathers guilty plea, alongside a picture of Flynns grandson. But for God and Muellers grace, the younger Flynn likely wont be criminally exposed; when all is said and done, the older Flynn could receive only a probation sentence.

But Mueller is not one to give away his game. And unlike Donald Trump, the self-styled master deal-maker, the special counsel is also not one to make deals that wont net him results  and results that are perfectly confined to his mandate to unravel the extent of the Kremlins hold on the Trump campaign. In a statement that shows Flynn will deliver, the retired lieutenant general vowed to set things right  a step he took in the best interests of my family and of my country. By framing his cooperation in terms of the things that matter most to him, including his long career in the military, Flynn has signaled that he wont take a bullet for fools who havent done a thing for him or the country.

There are indications that Flynn is done with the White House, and that the White House is done with him. The Trump administrations official response to Flynns guilty plea casts him as a former Obama administration official, who served as Trumps national security adviser for just 25 days, and is now a proven a liar. Donald McGahn, the White House counsel, reportedly feigned ignorance about Flynns lies to the FBI and shifted blame to an Obama holdover, Sally Yates, for not being candid with him about the crime. Trumps own outrageous weekend tweet essentially admitting to obstruction of justice also throws Flynn under the bus. Its no wonder Flynn now feels abandoned by a president who was once his fierce defender and comforter in the face of mounting legal troubles  even after his unceremonious ouster.

A Brief History of Michael Flynn's Downfall

Its hard to say what changed between Flynn and Trump in the months since Muellers appointment. But when even Fox News begins to sound dire about the presidents prospects in the slow and steady special-counsel investigation, theres reason to believe that the public aint seen nothing yet. Beyond this, the president of the United States has steadfastly, repeatedly, and consistently denied that he had any knowledge of any involvement with the Russians, Andrew Napolitano, a longtime legal analyst, told Fox News Shepard Smith on Friday. If General Flynn contradicts that in a credible way under oath, we have a very serious problem on our hands.

Recall that it was the FBIs open investigation into Flynns dealings with the Russian ambassador, then led by James Comey, that prompted Trump to demand loyalty from the fired FBI director during a private dinner at the White House; by then, Flynn had already lied to the FBI about his liaisons with Russian officials. When Comey refused  and refused to drop the Flynn matter, which was still ongoing  Trump got rid of him. Did the president do this out of impulse and fear that if Comey kept digging, he might discover that his campaign and transition team did, in fact, systematically reach out to and make nice with Russian interests? Could Trump have knowingly deputized Flynn to lead these efforts and not want anyone to find out? Or maybe Flynn was truly behind the search for Hillary Clintons missing emails from Russian hackers.

Muellers probe exists to get to the bottom of these questions. The fact that we know for a fact, through Flynns plea deal, that he actively worked with transition officials to undermine a sitting presidents sanctions against Russia shows that theres much more to this unfolding case than meets the eye. Predictably, as it has done in the past with Paul Manafort and George Papadopoulos, the Trump administration will deny and deflect that it ever had anything to do with those thus far prosecuted. Theyll all be derided as minor players with little access to or influence with the president  never mind that Trump himself once regarded Flynn a strong enough player to be considered a running mate.

Having been rolled over by the Trump train, Flynn now has every incentive to roll over on the Trump team. If that means implicating Jared Kushner, who is in legal jeopardy of his own, or Mike Pence, who appears to be testing out alibis in order to distance himself from lyin Flynn, theres nothing stopping him. The trouble for the administration is that Mueller has proven so adept at keeping his cards close to him that when hes ready to drop the next gauntlet the White House, once again, wont know what hit it. Expect more confusion, plea deals, and offers to cooperate.

As of Saturday morning, Trump seemed unfazed by Flynns disloyalty, insisting that collusion is not a thing to be worried about. Ill go ahead and add that, legalistically speaking, collusion is not even crime. But if his unhinged weekend tweets are any indication, the Russia investigation is no doubt consuming him. What Trump and others in his circle should be worried about is that even efforts to conceal and cover up noncrimes can amount to indictable offenses, including and up to obstruction of justice. Since the Trump administration isnt exactly a model of prudence and backstabbings could be in the offing, Mueller may have his work cut out for him.
Shock me, shock me, shock me with that unpresidential behavior. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Picture it: Hours after FBI Director James Comey reveals that the bureau is reopening its investigation into Hillary Clintons private email server days before the 2016 election, President Obama launches into a public tirade. He calls Comey a liar, suggests that theres a widespread conspiracy within the FBI to get Donald Trump elected, and laments that the FBIs credibility is now garbage.

Now imagine the reaction from Republicans in Congress. Is the harshest criticism a warning that President Obama should choose his words more carefully, for his own sake?

Of course, President Obama said no such thing, and if he had he would have been denounced by Republicans, and probably many Democrats, for threatening the independence of the FBI. Yet, unsurprisingly, GOP lawmakers had little to say after Trump attacked the bureau in a series of tweets on Sunday morning.

So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday interrogation with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times...and nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Many people in our Country are asking what the Justice Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and acid washed 33,000 Emails? No justice!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI agents role in Clinton probe under review. Led Clinton Email probe. @foxandfriends Clinton money going to wife of another FBI agent in charge.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Report: ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE Now it all starts to make sense!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

As the L.A. Times notes, it appears Trump was tweeting along with a Fox & Friends discussion of the news that Peter Strzok, as the FBIs deputy head of counterintelligence, was removed from Special Counsel Robert Muellers team last summer after he and another agent exchanged texts that expressed negative views about Trump. Strzok played a significant role in both the Clinton email investigation and the probe of potential links between the Trump campaign and Russia. Per the Times, the team at Fox News suggested this was proof that Comey colluded with Strzok to make sure Clinton would be cleared, and Trumps associates would be indicted  months after both Comey and Strzok ended their involvement with the probe.

The morning show team also suggested that Strozks alleged bias was evidence that he and Comey had colluded to improperly clear Clinton of criminal charges in the email probe while somehow implicating the presidents associates in wrongdoing related to the special counsels Russia investigation.

Co-host Pete Hegseth summarized his concerns, saying: Comeys being briefed on Hillary Clintons email investigation by a guy whos in the tank for Hillary Clinton, which is the greatest fear that we all have: that the deep state has infiltrated the so-called Justice Department or the FBI.

The only notable Republican rebuttal on Sunday came from Senator Lindsey Graham, who said that while he thinks some of Comeys decisions as director were very, very wrong he does not agree that the FBI has no credibility. Then he offered a warning to the president: Theres an ongoing criminal investigation. Comey may be part of it. You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril.

.@LindseyGrahamSC: You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril, Id be careful if I were you, Mr. President, and Id watch this pic.twitter.com/K8KsfOg7Ri  Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 3, 2017

Graham was probably referencing Trumps earlier tweet that suggested he knew Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI when he fired his national security adviser, then urged Comey to go easy on him. Understandably, Trump potentially admitting to obstruction of justice in a tweet was the main topic of debate on Sunday, but former Justice Department officials  many of whom were fired by Trump  remained hung up on the president attacking the FBIs integrity:

I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.

Me (June 8, 2017) pic.twitter.com/OZ1ZiBrMNL  James Comey (@Comey) December 3, 2017

The FBI is in tatters? No. The only thing in tatters is the Presidents respect for the rule of law. The dedicated men and women of the FBI deserve better.  Sally Yates (@SallyQYates) December 4, 2017

This is true. So many men and women in the FBI put their lives on the line for us around the clock. Every day I worked with the Bureau was an honor. Thank you for your service. https://t.co/bYBrJAMWnm  Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) December 3, 2017

Nope. Not letting this go. The FBIs reputation is not in tatters. Its composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. Youll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now  Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 3, 2017

Every day, FBI Special Agents put their lives on the line to protect the American public from national security and criminal threats, said a statement from Thomas OConnor, president of the FBI Agents Association, which represents 14,000 current and former agents.

Agents perform these duties with unwavering integrity and professionalism and a focus on complying with the law and the Constitution. This is why the FBI continues to be the premier law enforcement agency in the world. FBI Agents are dedicated to their mission; suggesting otherwise is simply false.

The president lashing out at the nations top law-enforcement agency is the type of thing that should get everyone riled up, not just those he attacked. But to be fair to lawmakers, Trump has been picking fights with the intelligence agencies since before his inauguration and at this point one cant be expected to address all of his threats to the rule of law.
When the order is regular. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

On Friday, Senate Republicans rewrote the American tax code over lunch  and passed their (partially handwritten) legislation around 2 a.m. the following morning.

not at all weird, very regular, very normal pic.twitter.com/3D77KMFICm  Dylan Scott (@dylanlscott) December 1, 2017

Mitch McConnell never subjected his blueprint for restructuring the worlds largest economy to a single hearing. His caucus never invited experts to offer insight into the bills implications for housing, health care, higher education, outsourcing, or tax evasion. This haste had an upside for the Senate GOP: It allowed the party to pass deeply unpopular changes to the tax code before the public had time to learn about them.

But approaching major legislation like an Adderall-addled sophomore approaches an overdue term paper came with a minor drawback: It forced the party to pass a tax bill before they had time to read it.

In hindsight, McConnell should have asked for an extension. While Republicans were manically outlining their plans to take from the poor to give to the Trumps, they also, accidentally, nullified all of their corporate donors favorite deductions.

Three Ways Trumps Tax Code Benefits Him And His Family

This screwup  like most of the tax plans oddest features  was born of a math problem. Due to arcane Senate rules, the Trump tax cuts can only add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. Last Thursday, the Senate tax bill already cost about that sum, and then McConnell started making expensive promises to his few holdouts. Susan Collins wanted a $10,000 property tax deduction for Americans in high-tax states; Ron Johnson wanted a 23 percent business-income deduction for the company that his family owns. This left the Senate Majority Leader searching under the tax codes couch cushions for new sources of revenue.

Eventually, he came upon the corporate alternative minimum tax (AMT). At present, most corporations face a 35 percent (statutory) rate on their income. But by availing themselves of various tax credits and deductions, most companies can get their actual rates down far below that figure. To put a limit on just how far, the corporate AMT prevents companies from paying any less than 20 percent on their profits (or, more precisely, on the profits that they fail to hide overseas).

The GOP had originally intended to abolish the AMT. But on Friday, with the clock running out  and money running short  Senate Republicans put the AMT back into their bill. Unfortunately for McConnell, they forgot to lower the AMT after doing so.

This is a big problem. The Senate bill brings the normal corporate rate down to 20 percent  while leaving the alternative minimum rate at  20 percent. The legislation would still allow corporations to claim a wide variety of tax credits and deductions  it just renders all them completely worthless. Companies can either take no deductions, and pay a 20 percent rate  or take lots of deductions  and pay a 20 percent rate.

With this blunder, Senate Republicans have achieved the unthinkable: Theyve written a giant corporate tax cut that many of their corporate donors do not like. As The Wall Street Journal reports:

The biggest consequence could be the research credit, often used by manufacturers, technology firms and pharmaceutical companies, and the National Association of Manufacturers said it was working with policy makers to address the issue.

Under the credit, companies get money back from the government for what they spend on innovation, often for wages of scientists and engineers. Corporations will claim $10.3 billion in research credits in 2018, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

 Murray Energy Corp., an Ohio-based firm and the largest privately held U.S. coal-mining company, complained that the AMT decision and the Senates tougher limits on interest deductions made a mockery out of so-called tax reform. Robert Murray, the companys chief executive officer, said the Senate tax plan would raise his companys tax bill by $60 million.

What the Senate did, in their befuddled mess, is drove me out of business and then bragged about the fact that they got some tax reform passed, Mr. Murray said in an interview Sunday. This is not job creation. This is not stimulating income. This is driving a whole sector of our community into nonexistence.

Graduate Students React to the Republican Tax Plan

McConnells mistake has two big implications. First and foremost, it means the Senate will almost certainly have to vote on a tax bill again before one goes into law. Previously, it looked as though Paul Ryan had enough votes in the House to pass the Senate bill as is. This took pressure off the partys conference committee (the House and Senate leaders tasked with reconciling each chambers bills). Worst-case scenario, the House could just rubber-stamp the Senates work. Now, that option is deeply undesirable. It remains overwhelmingly likely that Republicans will pass a giant tax cut. But their task is now a bit more difficult.

The second implication is that McConnell is going to need new revenue. In all probability, Republicans are going to drop the alternative-minimum tax rate well below 20 percent. That will put the bills price tag over $1.5 trillion. Right now, some of the Houses most heinous revenue raisers  including the infamous tax on graduate student tuition  are not in the Senate bill. Chances are now somewhat higher that these odious provisions will make it into the final legislation, as Republicans will once again be desperate for pay-fors. That said, its also possible that the GOP will simply revise their bills corporate rate up to 22 percent, now that President Trump has given the party permission to do so.

Regardless, the AMT fiasco is bound to be the tip of an iceberg of unintended consequences. Senate Republicans wanted to pass their (indefensible) tax bill before anyone had time to figure out what was in it. They succeeded a bit more literally than theyd planned.
I am certain I can defeat Mr. Bannon in politics, or in sport. Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

A few weeks after Mitt Romney dined on frogs legs with Donald Trump and made meme history, Roger Stone claimed that the president-elect only interviewed Romney for secretary of State because he wanted to torture him. A year later, the former Trump advisers claim seems pretty credible; now that Romney is eyeing a run for the Senate in Utah, both the president and Steve Bannon are reportedly looking to undermine him.

Earlier this year 83-year-old Utah senator Orrin Hatch said hed consider retiring in 2018 if he could find someone really outstanding to run for his seat, and called Romney perfect for the position. Romney has reportedly been gearing up for a run, but now Hatch is dragging his feet  and Trump is encouraging him to run for an eighth term. Politico reports that Trump has been telling friends he doesnt want to see Romney in the Senate, and on Monday hell make a big show of support for Hatch. Trump and the senator will take Air Force One to Salt Lake City, where the president will sign an executive order announcing he will reduce the size of Utahs Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, which Hatch has been pushing for.

Trumps opposition to Senator Romney isnt that surprising. Despite delivering a passionate anti-Trump speech during the primaries, Romney has occasionally praised Trumps work as president. However, hes also criticized Trump enough to get under his skin; Romney called on Trump to stay in the Paris climate agreement, blasted his response to the violence in Charlottesville, and undermined Trumps response to the Roy Moore scandal.

Theres been less coverage of Trumps affinity for Senator Hatch, but its similarly easy to understand. As Senate Finance Committee chairman Hatch helped push Trumps tax cuts through the Senate last week. Hatch has also stood by Trump through some of his most difficult moments. After the Access Hollywood tape, Hatch said, Im not going to judge him by mistakes he made a decade before or more. After Trump retweeted Islamophobic videos last week, Hatch said he wasnt aware of the controversy, then offered some general praise: Ill say this for ya. Hes been one of the best presidents Ive served under, and the reason is hes not afraid to make decisions. Hes not afraid to take on the big boss around here.

Trump is not hindered by ideological considerations, but his former strategist is. According to the Washington Examiner, Bannon is considering endorsing Hatch  a Mitch McConnell loyalist whos been in D.C. since 1976  though he cant stop declaring war on the GOP Establishment.

If Steve had a choice between Orrin Hatch and Mitt Romney, he would pick Hatch ten times out of ten, a source close to Bannon told the Examiner.

It seems unlikely that many Utahns are waiting breathlessly to see who Bannon thinks should be their next senator  or Trump for that matter. Trump received just 46 percent of the vote in the heavily Republican state, with independent Evan McMullin taking 22 percent of the vote. In poll conducted two months ago, 75 percent of Utahns said Hatch should not run again, and Hatch came in third in a theoretical 2018 Senate race. The winner by far: Mitt Romney.
Lets not jump to conclusions with this guy. Photo: Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images

President Trump finally came out and said, via Twitter, what everyone already knew: He supports Roy Moore.

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017

Later on Monday, Trump went one step further and personally called Moore.

"Go get 'em, Roy!" - President Trump



Just got off the phone with President Trump who offered his full support and said he needs a fighter to help him in the US Senate.



I look forward to fighting alongside the President to #MAGA!  Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) December 4, 2017

In a statement, the White House said, The President had a positive call with Judge Roy Moore during which they discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and the President endorsed Judge Moores campaign.

Moore, who is neck and neck in polls with Democrat Doug Jones in the unpredictable special Senate election in Alabama on December 12, has been accused by several women of inappropriate sexual relationships while they were teenagers. Proceeding with a playbook that recalls Trumps after the Access Hollywood tape came out last year, Moore has vehemently denied every allegation, maintaining that every woman who has come forward is lying. In a state consistently hostile to Democrats, this defiant strategy has been at least somewhat effective; a poll released on Sunday showed that 71 percent of Alabama Republicans believe the charges are made up.

After the initial allegations came out, almost every major national Republican disavowed Moore  but not President Trump. The man who has now taken to denying observable reality about his own past with women made it clear to his advisers that he was skeptical of Moores accusers. Roy Moore denies it, he said. And, by the way, he gives a total denial. And I do have to say, 40 years is a long time.

Still, the White House hadnt explicitly offered the divisive Republican its support, though Trump has knocked Doug Jones on Twitter and Kellyanne Conway gave Moore a quasi-endorsement on Fox & Friends in November.

Though Trump has said he will not campaign personally for Moore, he is holding a rally this Friday in Pensacola, Florida, which is close to the Alabama state border, and Moore has encouraged his supporters to attend. It was only a matter of time before Trump stopped playing coy and expressed his true affinity for the man who has been disbarred twice for flouting federal law.

Meanwhile, Establishment Republican disgust for Moore has already waned, just as it did with Trump in 2016. On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had previously called for Moore unfit for office and had entertained the notion of not seating him in the Senate at all, said he would let the people of Alabama make the call.
President Trump. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Republicans have tended to dismiss Donald Trumps attacks on the rule of law as the naive utterances of a political novice. When confronted with evidence that Trump has repeatedly pressured Senate Republicans to end their investigation of the Russia scandal, Republicans told the New York Times that the president merely still has the mind-set of a businessman rather than a politician.

But Trump continues to make it chillingly clear that his unceasing attacks upon the system are neither accidental nor a mistake borne of naivete. Trump believes he commands the government with the same totality he commands his business. His lawyer, John Dowd, has elevated this assumption to official presidential doctrine in an explosive interview with Mike Allen. A president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitutions Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case, he says.

It is easy to hyperventilate about various Trumpian offenses, but Dowd is claiming on Trumps behalf virtual immunity from the law. The powers he is asserting, and the dangers it would bring, have almost no limit.

There are two ways a president could abuse the power of law enforcement. The first is offensive, to direct it as a weapon against his political enemies. The second is defensive, shielding himself and his allies from any accountability, and thereby enabling them to commit crimes without consequence. Trump has expressed frequent interest in both methods. Trump has harangued the FBI and the Department of Justice for failing to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server. Clintons email server was investigated by the FBI in 2016, but the bureau concluded no rational prosecutor could bring charges. Trump has shown no compunction in asserting his belief that, now that he controls the presidency, if Trump demands the FBI lock somebody up, they should lock her up.

More pertinent to Trumps needs of the moment is his demand for immunity from any mechanism of legal accountability. Trump does not accept the legitimacy of any legal restraint. He repeatedly demanded the FBI director pledge personal loyalty to him, and fired him when he failed to demonstrate his obsequience to the presidents satisfaction. He did something similar to the U.S. Attorney in New York, who has legal jurisdiction over much of Trumps financial world. He has publicly attacked Special Counsel Robert Mueller and threatened, publicly and privately, to fire him. (He has reportedly held off because Ty Cobb, another of his lawyers, has unrealistically promised Mueller will conclude his investigation quickly and in Trumps favor.) The new reports of his attempts to quash the Senate investigation fit a pattern that has no exceptions.

It is true, as Trumps Republican defenders say, that he does not grasp the differences between his role as business owner and his role as elected official. But that is not a defense. It is a restatement of the accusation.

Trumps belief that the entire government should operate on his personal behalf in exactly the same way as his employees at the Trump Organization is a worldview incompatible with republican government. Imagine the 2020 election conducted in an atmosphere in which Trump can sic law enforcement upon his opponent, and in which his supporters can commit any crimes they want on his behalf, secure in the knowledge that the president will protect them from prosecution.

Limits on the presidents authority over law enforcement, both formal and informal, are an essential bulwark against authoritarianism. Trump has been testing those limits since he assumed office. He and his agents continue to batter them, and each new attack is met with slightly less incredulity as numbness sets in.
The Uganda Police Force says they have finally made a breakthrough in identifying the people behind the recent serial murders of young women in Entebbe and Nansana areas.



Police detectives have been hunting for the killers of more than 19 women in Entebbe, Katabi and Nansana in Wakiso district between June and September.



The killings which were done in almost similar fashion included; attacking young women in the middle of the night, sexually assaulting them, strangling them to death before inserting sticks in their private parts.



Police, now says, they have finally come to a conclusion of who exactly was behind the killings after forensic evidence pinned two of the 13 suspects arrested two months ago.

Residents of Katabi at the scene where one of the body of the murdered women was found

Police was last week given results of the analysis taken by the government analytical laboratory to compare semen samples picked from the victims to the DNA of two of the suspects.



According to a document which URN has seen, eight of the samples picked from different crime scenes in Nansasa municipality matched the DNA of Ibrahim Kaweesa a boda boda cyclist, while five of the samples picked in Katabi town council matched the DNA of William Ssenoga.



The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kale Kayihura also confirmed the 'breakthrough' and thanked the team of detectives and other security agencies that have been investigating the killings.



"We now have both the confessions and the scientific evidence to back our findings. Unfortunately our criminal justice system says even these guys are innocent until proven guilty by a court of law so we are waiting for our final victory in court, " Kayihura said.



While the samples were collected two months ago from the scenes of crime and from the victims and stored in Wandegeya, nothing had been done to analyse them until last week. The government analytical laboratory did not have reagents to use in analysis of the samples.



Kayihura says police had to find some reagents for the analysts to use and bring the investigation to a conclusion.



"DGAL [Directorate of Government Analytical Laboratory] doesn't have a budget for some reagents and that sometimes interferes with the smooth running of our investigations," Kayihura says.



Most of the arrested suspects, including Ssenoga and Kaweesi, were picked after witnesses testified to police that they had been seen with the victims on the nights they disappeared and were found killed.



Kaweesa was also implicated by a group of boda boda cyclists who claimed to have seen him taking one of the victims into the bush where her body was found three days later.
Former President Robert Mugabe's relatives claim that they severed relations with their daughter-in-law former First Lady Grace Mugabe more than two years ago.

The Mugabe clan, which includes the Mugabe, Jenami and Matibiri families, accuse their daughter-in-law Grace of being allegedly disrespectful to family elders, showing off and sowing seeds of disharmony within the family.

Mrs Mugabe is said to have last visited her husbands Zvimba rural home two years ago due to her alleged bad relations with the in-laws. Mrs Mugabe and her husband now spend most of their time at one of their multiple farms in Mazoe area, Mashonaland Central province.

Robert Mugabe and wife Grace

Mr Mugabe's uncle, Ben Matibiri, told VOA Studio 7 that Mrs Mugabe usually uttered things that are unbecoming of the first family, belittling everyone as she tried to use borrowed powers at every opportunity.

Matibiri said Mrs Mugabe was the complete opposite of the former presidents first wife, the late Sally Hefron Mugabe, who he said was a great daughter to the family who took care of everyone's problems and needs.

"Sally (Mugabe) was more like a daughter to me. She took care of the family unlike the present wife of Mugabe who is talkative and don't know what to say at the appropriate time."

Matibiris sentiments were echoed by his nephew, Clemence, who claimed that Mrs. Mugabe was disrespectful to family elders and had a penchant for exhibiting her power to whoever cares.

"She (Grace) was fond of controlling everyone wherever she is failing to take her role as a daughter-in-law in the family," said Clemence.

Mugabe, Zvimba neighbour, Fidelis Chinyanyi, also made a comparison between Mrs Grace Mugabe and the late Sally Mugabe, saying the former is no longer respected by the Mugabe clan.

Another neighbour of the former president, who declined to be named for fear of being victimized, said Mrs Mugabes behavior is very embarrassing to all of us

Former president Robert Mugabes relatives believe that his wife may have caused his downfall for making unbecoming utterances in public when she attacked former vice president Joice Mujuru and then current president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Mrs Mugabes spokesperson and her relatives were not reachable for comment.
The National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) has closed Iganga-based Busoga University citing unending irregularities at the institution.



According to a General Notice No.1065 of 2017 published in the gazette, dated December 1, the university is not allowed to advertise or recruit any students henceforth.



Take notice that the National Council for Higher Education has revoked the provisional license of Busoga University and it has ceased to operate, reads the notice addressed to the university vice chancellor.



The revocation of the licence does not affect the validity of any certificate, diploma, degree or other academic award granted by the university when still under the provisional license.

Busoga University has been closed

The notice further specifies that the reasons for revocation of the provisional license are; absence of adequately qualified staff, admission of students without the requisite admission criteria, illegal affiliation, poor financial health and teaching of unaccredited programmes.



Others are; lack of up to date student records, failure to conduct progressive student assessment and irregular graduation of students who do not qualify.



NCHE executive director, Prof John Opuda-Asibo, indicates in the notice that, the council shall set up a technical committee to work with the university to support their placement of eligible students to recognised higher institutions.

Last year, complaints were filed to the council that Busoga University awarded suspicious degrees to over 1,000 South Sudan and Nigeria nationals, which led to investigations into the matter by NCHE. It was alleged then that the students had only spent about four months at the university.



The recent closure means that Busoga University can only reapply for a license to operate again after two years from the date of revocation (November 27, 2017), according to Section 98 (3) of the University and Other Tertiary Institutions Act.



nangonzi@observer.ug
The extradition trial of infamous business tycoon Vijay Mallya has just begun and all eyes are on the Westminster Magistrates' Court. The 61-year-old faces charges relating to now defunct Kingfisher Airlines defaulting on loans to the tune of Rs 9,400-crore from a consortium of 17 banks in India & another case involving a Rs 900-crore loan from IDBI Bank.

The judgement, to be delivered in the next 10 days, would decide if he can be legally forced back to India to face trial.

If the judge rules in favour of extradition at the end of the trial, UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd must order Mallya's extradition within two months.

However, in the past, India's attempts to bring back defaulters have failed. Besides Mallya, others whom India has sought to extradite include Lalit Modi, Ravi Sankaran, Nadeem Saifi and Tiger Hanif.

According to data from the Ministry of External Affairs, 121 people who fled India and are being pursued for alleged crimes back home, but the host countries are yet to take a decision in India's favour.

Mallya, who has been staying near London since March 2016, had objected to his extradition to India saying CBI has converted the Kingfisher Airlines loans case into a criminal matter and have no case against him.

His extradition trial will now determine whether he can be legally forced to go back to face the Indian courts.

Source: MEA, news reports
It has been nearly a year since the government implemented demonetisation and the effects of the decision are still being witnessed and analysed. While the move has been hotly debated, it comes as no surprise that it has triggered a massive growth of mobile wallets and its usage in the country.

However, the point of contention with regard to mobile wallet usage was that each individual wallet could only be used in insolation and users could not transfer money between two different mobile wallet operator.

On October 4th 2017, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced that it would allow e-wallets of private firms to interoperate. So, users of one wallet app will now be able to transact with users of a different wallet app. This facility is currently functional under the state-owned Unified Payment Interface (UPI), available only to banks and those e-wallets built on the UPI platform.

This move comes along with other sweeping reforms that the RBI plans on undertaking in order to facilitate a smoother digital payments eco-system which could influence more businesses and customers to adopt digital transactions. The government envisions a Digital India 2.0 and this is just one of the many steps it is taking to ensure that their mission is fulfilled.

In its directive, the RBI set December 31, 2017 as the compliance deadline for the new set of rules which includes stricter Know Your Customer norms for e-wallets. It also added that the operational guidelines on interoperability will be issued separately.

Good news for e-wallet operators

The overarching reaction to this announcement from the digital payments industry so far has been on the positive side. It is speculated that interoperability would inevitably lead to a far greater adoption of mobile wallet technology.

With the implementation of this resolution, it will force mobile wallet companies to work harder in differentiating themselves from the competition. Discounts and incentives alone will not work, these companies will have to build additional differenciators to add customers and retain their loyalty in frequently using their e-wallets.



For the longest time, e-wallet operators have claimed that banks had the upper hand when it comes to mobile transfers because of Unified Payment Interface (UPI) which is a single window mobile payment system launched by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). But once interoperability is in place, it should make transfers between wallets just as simple and convenient.

The new regulations also make India a more conducive market for new players like Amazon Pay, Apple Pay and Google Tez to enter and perhaps bring in newer technologies and intelligence.

Customers laud the decision

Customers too have pointed out in the past that it is cumbersome to keep track of all the different cashbacks in different wallets. Furthermore, it is also draining on smartphones to have multiple payments apps which serve one singular purpose. With this move, customers will finally be able to narrow down their choices and find the app that works best for them.

From a business perspective

Most offline and online businesses are only enabled to accept payments from a few wallets. Offline businesses find it especially difficult to keep up with wallet acceptance from various providers since each wallet has a different acceptance flow.

Thus if wallets become interoperable and payments can be accepted through any wallet, it will make transactions simpler and faster for both the customers and the merchants, and it will increase wallet usage.

In a macro economic sense, interoperability is not just about wallet to wallet, it is also about wallet to service providers, bank to wallet, wallet to merchant and so on. The potential for growth within the industry and in collaboration with other industries is immense. Such a move will definitely help place India in a better position in the digital world.

Now the onus lies on both the government and digital payments companies to ensure that the infrastructure and awareness is sufficient within the eco-system to facilitate these transfers. After all, India is a cash economy at the end of the day and to take the cash away from the Indian is no easy feat.

Article is written by Ajay Adiseshann, Founder & CEO, PayMate India
CIA Director warned Pakistan against safe havens

WASHINGTON: CIA Director Mike Pompeo has warned Pakistan that if it does not eliminate the alleged safe havens inside its territory, the United States will do everything we can to destroy them.



As Defence Secretary Jim Mattis arrives in Islamabad on Monday to persuade Pakistan to support the new US strategy for Afghanistan, the Trump administration is sending mixed signals to its estranged ally. The new strategy seeks Pakistans support to defeat the Taliban in the battlefield as Washington believes that only a defeat will force them to reconcile with the Afghan government.



Talking to journalists aboard his plane on Sunday, Secretary Mattis said he did not plan to prod Pakistan into action because he expected Islamabad to adhere to its promises to combat terrorism.



He disagreed with a journalist who suggested that Mr Mattis might end up butting heads with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa when he meets them in Islamabad on Monday on his first visit as the Pentagon chief.



The VOA radio quoted Mr Mattis as telling the journalist that this was not his style. Thats not the way I deal with issues. I believe that we [can] work hard on finding common ground and then we work together.



But the CIA director sent a harsher message when asked at the Reagan National Defence Forum in Simi, California, on Saturday how would the Trump administration persuade Pakistan to adhere to its new Afghan strategy.



Mr Pompeo said: You begin by seeking their assistance.



The CIA director noted that Secretary Mattis was travelling to Pakistan to make clear the presidents intent and will deliver the message that we would love you to do that. And that the safe haven inside of Pakistan has worked to the detriment of our capacity to do what we needed to do in Afghanistan.



He then explained how the Trump administration would deal with the situation if Pakistan turned down Washingtons request to destroy safe havens. In the absence of the Pakistanis achieving that, we are going to do everything we can to make sure that that safe haven no longer exists, he said.



Since 2004, the CIA has conducted drone strikes in Fata and recent media reports have suggested that the Trump administration may expand those strikes to cover other areas inside Pakistan.



Mr Pompeos predecessor, Leon Panetta, also shared with the forum his experience of dealing with Pakistan as the Obama administrations CIA chief.



Pakistan has always been a problem. It has been a safe haven for terrorists who cross the border and attack in Afghanistan and go back into Pakistan, he said.



We have made every effort possible, during the time I was there, to convince Pakistan to stop it. But Pakistan, as Mike knows, has this kind of two-wedge approach to dealing with terrorism, he added.



On one hand, yes, they do not like terrorism, or attacks from terrorism in their country. But at the same time, they dont mind using terrorism as leverage to deal with Afghanistan and to deal with India.



Mr Panetta claimed that Pakistan has had this policy since his days at the CIA and thats why Pakistan has always been a question mark.



Referring to US efforts to persuade Pakistan to cooperate, he said: I hope that Mike (Pompeo) and Jim Mattis are successful in making clear to the Pakistanis that got to be able to see a little broader and they have to go after terrorists within their own territory. Unless that happens, we are going to continue to have problems in Afghanistan.



The moderator turned to Mr Pompeo and asked if Pakistans approach had changed. Not yet, said the CIA chief.
NAB suspended hearing of Sharif family corruption references

An accountability court in Islamabad on Monday suspended the hearing into corruption references filed against members of the Sharif family as it awaits the Islamabad High Court's decision in connection with a petition filed by ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, which seeks the consolidation of the references.



The high court's decision is expected to be announced in the afternoon today. The hearing at the accountability court will resume after the decision is announced.



Earlier today, Nawaz, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law retired Captain Mohammad Safdar had arrived at the accountability court after landing at Islamabad airport. The former premier was welcomed at the court by a large number of PML-N workers



The bureau's prosecution team and three witnesses had also appeared before the court.



As the hearing had begun, Advocate Khawaja Harris, the counsel representing the Sharifs, had requested the court to suspend proceedings till the high court announces its decision.



In turn, the court suspended proceedings till 1pm as the advocate told the bench that the verdict is expected to be announced at that time.



Harris also told the bench that the hearing at the high court is expected to begin at 11:30am.



As the hearing was suspended, Nawaz, Maryam and her husband left for Punjab House. It is uncertain whether they will appear before the court when the proceedings resume.



On November 24, the high court had reserved its judgement on the petition seeking clubbing of the references filed against the former premier and his close relatives.



Nawaz's lawyer had argued before a two-member bench of the high court that similarities had been noted between the references and sought the consolidation of at least two references  Azizia Steel Mills and Flagship Investment references.



The lawyer pointed out that the references list the same three individuals as accused and added that six out of 13 witnesses in both references were also the same.



During today's hearing, the NAB is expected to declare Ishaq Dar a proclaimed offender, as the 10-day period given to the former finance minister to appear before the court in connection with the reference filed against him expires.



The former finance minister has repeatedly failed to join the trial into the reference filed against him for allegedly possessing assets beyond his known sources of income.



In a previous hearing of the case, the court had declared Dar an absconder and warned his guarantors of the confiscation of surety bonds worth Rs5 million if the accused did not join trial proceedings.



For some time now, the minister has been in London where he is undergoing medical treatment.



A five-member bench of the Supreme Court on July 28 had directed NAB to file references against Nawaz and his children in six weeks in the accountability court and directed the trial court to decide the references within six months.



The Supreme Court also assigned Justice Ijazul Ahsan a supervisory role to monitor the progress of the accountability court proceedings.



NAB had filed three references on Sept 8 against Sharif and his family, and another reference against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. The three references against the Sharif family are related to the Flagship Investment Ltd, the Avenfield (London) properties and Jeddah-based Al-Azizia Company and Hill Metal Establishment.
The Senior Minister, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, has urged the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) to review the criteria used in selecting winners for the prestigious Ghana Club (GC) 100 Awards to break the tradition of the financial sector dominating the list.



Reacting to the continuous dominance of rural banks in the Club 100, he said: The number of rural banks on the list of the GC100 companies is too high and going forward, a separate awards scheme should be developed for banks and financial institutions to make room for companies in other sectors of the economy to feature in the awards.



Mr Osafo-Maafo said this last Thursday at the 16th edition of the Ghana Club 100 Awards in Accra on the theme: Industrialisation A tool for job creation and Accelerated Economic Development. It brought together top players in the private sector, captains of industry, as well as leaders from the public sector.



He said the country was enjoying a lot of goodwill from countries around the world presently and that would translate into economic growth if the private sector could consolidate and expand its businesses to create more jobs and increase governments revenue generation.



When the private sector grows and pays more taxes, that is how the economy will grow so the government will continue to engage the private sector to help it expand for the benefit of the economy, Mr Osafo-Maafo said.



The Senior Minister also hinted that the government was likely to spend more in 2018 to help grow the economy.

Source: Daily Graphic









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LOS REVOLUCIONARIOS NO TOMAN CACA-COLA No se trata solamente de un capricho, sino de una sana actitud en todos los sentidos. Desde la solidaridad con el pueblo colombiano donde la empresa Caca-Cola ha cometido los mas grandes abusos contra sus trabajadores incluyendo el presunto secuestro y asesinato de los dirigentes del sindicato, hasta la proteccion de la salud de nuestros hijos, enviciados por ese jarabe de cola y azucar, que les produce obesidad prematura. Pensemos tambien los revolucionarios, que ese dinero que gastamos en los refrescos es utilizado por esas empresas para financiar el terrorismo en nuestro pais. Es cierto, no se trata solo de la Caca-Cola, sino tambien de la cerveza, de los cigarrillos y todos esos articulos innecesarios y mas que eso, daninos para nuestra salud. Podriamos incluso pensar en un dia de parada para cada uno de ellos. Es cuestion de irnos organizando. Pero para empezar, que tal si dejamos de comprar Caca-Cola y sus similares?



























Cuando lo extraordinario se vuelve cotidiano...



Discurso del Acto de Grado en Barinas en 12 de Febrero del 2005 Queridos Graduandos:



Mas que un discurso, quiero dirigirles algunas palabras que escribi anoche, despues de visitar en las clinicas, a los estudiantes heridos, a consecuencia de los enfrentamientos con la policia de hace apenas dos dias.



Me ha tocado por razones del destino, ser la persona que les otorgue el titulo que bien merecieron con sus estudios. Y me siento sumamente orgulloso de serlo. Me consta que la Universidad de Los Llanos Occidentales Ezequiel Zamora, a pesar de lo dicho por los enemigos de esta universidad, es una universidad de primera.



No tendremos la mejor planta fisica, en los salones hace calor. En el comedor hace calor. Pero no es en lo material que las cosas deben valorarse. El mayor capital es el ser humano. Y en eso, nuestra UNELLEZ, lo digo con conocimiento de causa, esta sobrada. Los llaneros venezolanos son nobles, valientes, de coraje.



En la UNELLEZ hacen vida, en este momento, aproximadamente 67000 personas. El 97% de ellas son estudiantes. Jovenes que, como Ustedes hasta el dia de hoy, buscan ese titulo, que constata los anos de dedicacion y de estudio.



Los jovenes son el rio de la vida, ustedes graduados deben ser los capitanes de esos barcos que naveguen por el rio de la vida.



Nuestra Patria atraviesa momentos muy dificiles porque decidio dejar de ser esa matrona de edad vetusta y complaciente, para ser joven, rebelde y altanera. Nuestra imagen ya no es la de una acaudalada ricachona mayamera. En nuestro rostro brilla ahora la sonrisa del Che Guevara, con su diente delantero torcido, su pelo largo y su boina con la estrella.



Entender esto, a mi me ha tomado practicamente toda la vida. Tengo 53 anos, y ya perdi mi oportunidad de derramar sangre joven a causa de un ideal.



Ustedes son jovenes, estan en la flor de la vida. No cometan por favor el error de renunciar a su instinto de rebelion. El Che Guevara fue Ministro de a Economia en Cuba. Los billetes y las monedas se adornaban con su rostro. Nada de eso le importo. Primero fue a Angola donde paso un penoso ano de combate. Despues se fue a Bolivia, donde encontro la muerte. El Che era el ultimo que comia, el que cargaba la mochila mas pesada. Siempre se sacrificaba por los demas en un estoicismo que mas parecia fervor religioso que ideologia marxista.



Si quieren un modelo de vida. Ahi lo tienen.



Dije hace unos momentos que el 97% de la poblacion de la UNELLEZ es estudiante. Se imaginan Ustedes la Universidad que podriamos tener si todos los estudiantes tuvieran la abnegacion, la combatividad del Che?



Los momentos que se avecinan van a requerir de una gran unidad del pueblo venezolano. La alternativa de continuar siendo libres o regresar a la pobreza se nos planteara en los proximos dias de forma enmascarada, o quizas peor, desenmascarada, vestida con uniforme de soldado del Imperio.



Por nuestra parte podemos esperar lo mejor. La macroeconomia no podria ir mejor, la justicia social ha mejorado notablemente. Las misiones ocupan un papel muy importante en el pago de dicha justicia social. Aqui en Barinas ya hemos cumplido con dos de las misiones, la mision Robinson y la mision Sucre. No hay analfabetismo y no hay exclusion en la educacion superior, en estas tierras de Zamora.



Pero ay malhaya! Son precisamente estos exitos los que nos hacen mas antipaticos al Imperio. Para ellos, somos inclusive un mal ejemplo que se esta contagiando al resto del continente y cuidado sino al resto del mundo.



Nunca venceremos al Imperio. Estara siempre ahi, acechando. Por lo menos hasta que el mismo no se autodestruya. Porque, sepanlo senores, el neoliberalismo es canibal. Cuando le ataque el hambre, se devorara a si mismo.



Ustedes, queridos graduandos, a partir de hoy pasan a conformar la elite profesional que debe sostener este pais en los proximos cuarenta o cincuenta anos. Anos decisivos para el logro de nuestra libertad y del rescate de nuestra Soberania.



No se dejen comprar. No se dejen corromper. No se dejen gritar. No se dejen pisar. Que nadie les diga que comer, o que vestirse, o que leer. Sean siempre autenticos, rebeldes, contestatarios. Pero eso si, profundamente patriotas, dignos de ser hijos de Bolivar.



Muchas gracias y que Dios los bendiga.





Alguna duda?



Medio siglo de Holocausto Palestino



Oscar Zanartu Nacio en Caracas en 1960. Ha realizado exposiciones individuales en las galerias Minotauro, Clave y San Francisco, y en salas de Coro, estado Falcon, y Puerto Ordaz, estado Bolivar. En Paris su obra ha sido exhibida en el Centro Cultural Tanagra, en la Exposicion Cite Internationale des Arts, en las galerias De Mars y Arver Space, al igual que en la Galeria Municipal Levallois, en Levallois Perret (Francia). En muestras colectivas, su obra se ha expuesto en Belgica, Francia, Estados Unidos y Venezuela; en Caracas intervino en la exposicion "Del genesis a la memoria", 1995, organizada por la Fundacion La Previsora. En 1982 obtuvo el Premio Nacional Critven y en 1990 la Mencion de Honor Jose Antonio Paez, en la Embajada de Venezuela en Paris. En 1991 se le concedio el primer premio de Pintura Itinerante, en Levallois Perret, Francia.



OZ1



OZ2



OZ3



OZ4



Homenaje a Jason Galarraga



La Victoria de Samotracia



Odalisca



Mas fotos de la nevada del pasado agosto 2008



























La Sierra Nevada de Merida



Nuestro precioso Churum Meru



Homenaje a Picasso



Autoretrato



Sabes lo que bebes en una Coca-Cola?

La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.

Mi profesion?

Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.

Sal en la Coca Cola?

A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.

De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:

Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gusto

Acido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)

azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)

Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantas

Mucha Cafeina

Conservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o Potasio

Dioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebe

Sal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracion

El uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.

Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.

Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.

En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).

Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.

La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.

Bebidas Light?

Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el

Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.



Publicado por loretahur



En realidad, la formula secreta de la Coca-Cola se puede detallar en 18 segundos en cualquier espectrometro optico, y basicamente la conocen hasta los perros. Lo que ocurre es que no se puede fabricar igual, a no ser que uno disponga de unos cuantos millones de dolares para ganarle la demanda que te metera la Coca-Cola ante la justicia (ellos no perderian).La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gustoAcido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantasMucha CafeinaConservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o PotasioDioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebeSal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracionEl uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el aspartamo , despues de tres semanas mojado, pasa a tener gusto de trapo viejo sucio.Para evitar eso, se agregan una infinidad de otros productos quimicos, uno para alargar la vida del aspartamo, otro para neutralizar el color, otro para mantener el tercer quimico en suspension porque sino el fondo de la gaseosa quedaria oscuro, otro para evitar la cristalizacion del aspartamo, otro para realzar el sabor, dar mas intensidad al acido citrico o fosforito que perderia su sabor por el efecto de los cuatro productos quimicos iniciales... y asi sucesivamente.Un consejo final !!Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.Publicado por loretahur

MARGARINA o MANTEQUILLA La margarina fue producida originalmente para engordar a los pavos; cuandolo que hizo en realidad fue matarlos.Las personas que habian puesto el dinero para la investigacion quisieronrecobrarlo asi que empezaron a pensar en una forma de hacerlo.Tenian una sustancia blanca, que no tenia ningun atractivo como comestible,asi que le anadieron el color amarillo, para venderselo a lagente en lugar de la mantequilla.Que tal esa?... Ahora han sacado algunos nuevos sabores para vender mas alos incautos como usted y yo.CONOCE USTED la diferencia entre la margarina y la mantequilla?Siga leyendo hasta el final... porque se pone bastante interesante!Comparacion entre mantequilla y margarina:

1.- Ambas tienen la misma cantidad de calorias.

2.- La mantequilla es ligeramente mas alta en grasas saturadas: 8 gramos,comparada con los 5 gramos que tiene la margarina.

3.- Comer margarina en vez de mantequilla puede aumentar en 53% el riesgo deenfermedades coronarias en las mujeres, de acuerdo con un estudiomedico reciente de la Universidad de Harvard.

4.- Comer mantequilla aumenta la absorcion de gran cantidad de nutrientesque se encuentran en otros alimentos.

5.- La mantequilla provee beneficios nutricionales propios mientras lamargarina tiene solo los que le hayan sido anadidos al fabricarla.

6.- La mantequilla sabe mucho mejor que la margarina y mejora el sabor deotros alimentos.7.- La mantequilla ha existido durante siglos mientras que la margarinatiene menos de 100 anos.

Ahora... sobre la margarina:

1.- Es muy alta en acidos grasos trans. (Si, esos que recien ahora loscientificos descubrieron que son malisimos y los gobiernoscomenzaron a prohibirlos) .

2.- Triple riesgo de enfermedades coronarias.

3.- Aumenta el colesterol total y el LDL (el colesterol malo) y disminuye elHDL (el colesterol bueno).

4.- Aumenta en cinco veces el riesgo de cancer.

5.- Disminuye la calidad de la leche materna.

6.- Disminuye la reaccion inmunologica del organismo.

7.- Disminuye la reaccion a la insulina.

Y he aqui el factor mas inquietante (AQUI ESTA LA PARTE MAS INTERESANTE! ):A la margarina le falta UNA MOLECULA para ser PLASTICO...!!Solo este hecho es suficiente para evitar el uso de la margarina de porvida, y de cualquier otra cosa que sea hidrogenada (esto significaque se le anade hidrogeno, lo cual cambia la estructura molecular de lassubstancias).Usted puede ensayar lo siguiente:Compre un poco de margarina y dejela en el garaje o en un sitio sombreado.Dentro de unos dias notara dos cosas:

* No habra moscas; ni siquiera esos molestos bichos se le acercaran (esto yale debe decir a usted algo).

* No se pudre ni huele mal o diferente porque no tiene valor nutritivo; nadacrece en ella. Ni siquiera los diminutos microorganismos puedencrecer en ella.Por que? Porque es casi plastico!!



No a la guerra, Si a la Paz



Misterios de la ciencia...



Los costos de la guerra



medicos y capitalismo...



Capitalismo...



medicos (2)



Quien educa a nuestros hijos?



Los Medios...



Sin Palabras...



Chistes feministas

- Cual es el problema, Eva?

- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz...

- Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.

- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...

- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.

- Que es un hombre?

- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.

- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.

- Cual es el truco?.

- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.

- Cual?

- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.





Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas?  Porque todos son unos cerdos

Un dia, en el Paraiso, Eva llamo a Dios: Tengo un problema.- Cual es el problema, Eva?- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz... - Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.- Que es un hombre?- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.- Cual es el truco?.- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.- Cual?- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas?  Porque todos son unos cerdos

Ellas...



Ellas (2)...



Tres venganzas femeninas VENGANZA NUMERO 1

Hoy mi hija cumple 21 anos y estoy muy contento porque es el ultimo pago de pension alimenticia que le doy, asi que llame a mi hijita para que viniera a mi casa y cuando llego le dije:

-Hijita, quiero que lleves este cheque a casa de tu mama y que le digas que: Este es el ultimo maldito cheque que va recibir de mi en todo lo que le queda de su puta vida!!! Quiero que me digas la expresion que pone en su rostro.

Asi que mi hija fue a entregar el cheque. Yo estaba ansioso por saber lo que la bruja tenia que decir y que cara pondria.

Cuando mi hijita entro, le pregunte inmediatamente: -Que fue lo que te dijo tu madre?

-Me dijo que justamente estaba esperando este dia para decirte que no eres mi papa!



VENGANZA NUMERO 2

Un hombre que siempre molestaba a su mujer, paso un dia por la casa de unos amigos para que lo acompanaran al aeropuerto a dejar a su esposa que viajaba a Paris.

A la salida de inmigracion, frente a todo el mundo, el le desea buen viaje y en tono burlon le grita:

- Amor, no te olvides de traerme una hermosa francesita Ja ja ja!!

Ella bajo la cabeza y se embarco muy molesta.

La mujer paso quince dias en Francia.

El marido otra vez pidio a sus amigos que lo acompanasen al aeropuerto a recibirla.

Al verla llegar, lo primero que le grita a toda voz es:

- Y amor me trajiste mi francesita??

- Hice todo lo posible, - contesta ella - ahora solo tenemos que rezar para que nazca nina.



VENGANZA NUMERO 3

El marido, en su lecho de muerte, llama a su mujer. Con voz ronca y ya debil, le dice: - Muy bien, llego mi hora, pero antes quiero hacerte una confesion.

- No, no, tranquilo, tu no debes hacer ningun esfuerzo.

- Pero, mujer, es preciso - insiste el marido - Es preciso morir en paz.

Te quiero confesar algo.

- Esta bien, esta bien. Habla!

- He tenido relaciones con tu hermana, tu mama y tu mejor amiga.

- Lo se, lo se Por eso te envenene, hijo de puta!!!



machismo y cibernetica



Chiste machista La NASA ha enviado al espacio una mision experimental tripulada por dos monos y una mujer.Apenas abandona la atmosfera, se establece comunicacion con Houston.

-Atencion, simio 1, verifique sistemas hidraulicos, controle adecuada presion de los propulsores de arranque. A 60.000 pies disminuya un 25% la velocidad.

El simio hace la sena de OK.

-Atencion, simio 2, nivele al cruzar la estratosfera y active sistemas anticongelantes. No olvide monitorear sistemas de comunicacion e indicadores de presion. Comprendido?.

El simio hace la sena de OK.

-Atencion, Houston llamando a mujer: no se olvide.

-Mujer: Si, si, ya se! -interrumpe enojada- que no me olvide darles de comer a estos monos de mierda y que no se me vaya a ocurrir tocar nada!.



.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti.

Un abogado mantiene un romance con su secretaria.Al poco tiempo, esta queda embarazada y el abogado, que no quiere que su esposa se entere, le da a la secretaria una buena suma de dinero y le pide que se vaya a parir a Italia.Esta pregunta: Y como voy a hacerte saber cuando nazca el bebe ? El abogado responde: Para que mi mujer no se entere, tan solo enviame una postal y escribe por detras: Spaghetti. Y no te preocupes mas, que yo me encargare de todos los gastos.

Pasan los meses y una manana la esposa del abogado lo llama al bufete, algo exaltada: Querido, acabo de recibir el correo y hay una postal muy extrana viene desde Italia. La verdad, no entiendo que significa.El abogado, tratando de ocultar sus nervios, contesta:Espera a que llegue a casa, a ver si yo entiendoCuando el hombre llega a casa y lee la postal, cae al suelo fulminado por un infarto.Llega una ambulancia y se lo lleva. Ya en el hospital, el jefe de cardiologia se queda consolando a la esposa y le pregunta cual ha sido el evento que precipito tan masivo ataque cardiaco.

Entonces la esposa saca la postal y se la muestra diciendole: No me explico, doctor; el solamente leyo esta postal. Vea usted mismo lo que trae escrito.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti."Tres con salchicha y albondigas y dos con almejas



Gol !!!!



Chistes de Borrachos Entra un borracho a su casa todo manchado con lapiz labial por todos lados hecho un desastre, y la mujer le pregunta:-Hombre que te paso?Y el borracho le responde:-No me vas a creer, me pelee con un payaso!



Este es un borracho que entra en un bar y le dice al camarero:-Me da cinco copas de whisky?Al rato:-Me da cuatro?Al rato:-Me da tres copas?Despues:-Me da dos copas?Luego le dice:-Me da una copa?Y le dice al camarero:-Ves? Cuanto menos bebo, mas borracho estoy!


The 95th annual National Christmas Tree display in Washington D.C. features ornaments designed and painted by Girl Scout Troop 3415 in Queensbury.

Girl Scout leader Lisa Wells wrote in an email that six girls, Jayden Abrahamson, Selena Beckwith, Kiera Carpenter, Zayda Seebeck, Nevaeh Howe and Bethany Wells, teamed to research state symbols and paint various attractions or symbols to represent New York state on plastic bulbs.

Wells said the girls painted ornaments the week before Thanksgiving in preparation for the unveiling on Dec. 1. Troop members illustrated the Adirondack Balloon Festival; a blue bird; race horse and jockey; Niagara Falls; NYC skyline including the twin towers of light; Big Apple; a girl hiking; a campsite with fire; baseball for the Hall of Fame; Rockefeller Center Christmas tree; 1980 Olympics and a New York City skyline with a yellow taxi.

The ornaments adorn New Yorks tree on the Pathway of Peace in Presidents Park. It is one of 56 trees that represent each state, territory and the District of Columbia. The ornaments will be on display through Jan. 1 as part of the America Celebrates display.

We are delighted, and honored, to be chosen to participate in the America Celebrates display located in one of our countrys most recognized National Parks, said the members of Troop 3415 in a statement made to the National Park Service. We have the chance to represent our state and showcase the fun and exciting things New York has to offer. We have worked hard to research our states symbols, and Girl Scout traditions, and believe visitors will be proud of our work.

Wells wrote that some members of the troop attended the tree lighting ceremony on Thursday, but were unable to see the tree due to security with President Donald Trumps attendance.

One ornament was taken from the state tree outside and placed inside on the tree at the White House Visitor Center, Wells wrote.
Will Doolittle projects editor Follow Will Doolittle Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

I read "An Unsuitable Job for a Woman" by P.D. James recently. This novel was published in 1972 and was the first in her Cordelia Gray series, which followed her Adam Dalgliesh series.

Dalgliesh is a seasoned police detective and superintendent, while Gray is a young, inexperienced private detective, who in "An Unsuitable Job" has just taken over the agency where she worked after the suicide of her mentor and boss.

James is much freer with this sort of protagonist to put her in dangerous, unpredictable situations. Dalgliesh is smart and careful, and he has the whole police apparatus supporting him. Gray is out on her own, winging it, and her improvisations are exciting and fascinating.

I haven't been a big fan of English mystery writers, but I'm beginning to appreciate their expertise in creating beautifully realized worlds. Gray's exploits are rougher than is usual from English detectives, and that makes her more appealing to American readers like me.

James is a masterful writer  lively and precise and so good that you rarely are aware of her style. As a reader, you inhabit the skin and the sensibilities of Cordelia Gray, realize secrets as she realizes them and panic as she panics, and the experience is thrilling.
GREENWICH  About 15 years ago, doctors told Tiffany Sloan that her daughter Justice wouldnt live past the age of 5. Diagnosed with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, 2-year-old Justice spent more time in the hospital than she did at home as her body battled serious liver and lung disease.

When she was 5, the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted her wish to go to Disney World.

I went right from the ICU to a plane to go to Florida the next day, said Justice White, a now 17-year-old high school senior from Greenwich.

Her seven days in Florida at the Give Kids the World Village was the first time Justice wasnt hooked up to monitors and surrounded by doctors.

I had a pin that got me to the front of every line, Justice said, and thats all I remember.

But Sloan remembers the trip as pure happiness, 24-hour ice cream, daily presents and, of course, Mickey Mouse.

Youre looking at your child like, This is it. Then Make-A-Wish comes in and you have that hope again. You see them laugh and smile. There are no needles being stuck into them and no monitors going off. People need that.

Since 2009, Justice has been giving back to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and helping to grant childrens wishes by collecting letters to Santa and delivering

them to Macys annually. For every letter written to Santa, Macys will donate $1 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation to grant the wishes of children with critical illnesses.

I thought that would be a good way to give back for the wish that they gave me, Justice said. So my first year, my goal was 1,000 letters and I didnt think that I was going to get it. And by the time that we delivered the letters, I had over 10,000 letters.

By collecting letters to Santa, Justice has been able to grant the wishes of at least seven children. Wishes cost about $10,000 each. This is potentially her last year, because she plans to attend college for nursing next year, a career path chosen because of her medical journey.

Justice has already collected nearly 9,000 letters this year, and will make trips to Macys on Friday and again on Dec. 23 to deliver letters personally. The family is also hoping to grant the wish of Lilly Spicer, a first-grader at Greenwich Elementary who lives with the family.

Lilly suffers from neurofibromatosis 1, a brain disorder that causes her to develop tumors throughout her body. Over the summer, a tumor ate through Lillys tibia, requiring surgery. She also has a tumor in her brain.

She wants to go to Mickeys house, Justice said.

Justice will be collecting letters until Dec. 22. Letters can be written by anyone  no age limit  and written on any kind of paper. Letters to Santa can be mailed to Justice White, 2913 State Route 40, Greenwich, NY 12834; or emailed to Justice at justicewhitesloan@gmail.com.
GREENWICH  A proposal for a new cell tower has upset some Bald Mountain residents who are concerned about their view of the hill.

Hudson Valley Wireless wants to expand its broadband coverage by putting a 120-foot permanent wireless internet cell tower on the mountain.

But some residents arent sure they want to sacrifice their view for the service.

The wireless company is looking to replace a temporary 80-foot cell tower with a taller one. The company will seek a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals on Thursday night, because the tower is too tall and too close to adjoining property lines, according to Zoning Board of Appeals Chairman John Farndell.

Town code requires a setback of 1 1/2 times the height of the tower from adjoining properties, which means the setback would have to be 180 feet for the permanent tower, and its not, Farndell said. The site is about 90 feet from one property boundary.

Temporary towers dont always need the same approval that a permanent structure would need, according to code requirements.

Citing concerns about aesthetics, some residents argued at the last Planning Board meeting on Nov. 16 that theyre willing to sacrifice their service for the mountains natural beauty.

The new tower wouldnt be disguised, according to Farndell.

Resident Dave McFee said the tower would be in his backyard and asked for a buffer zone between the tower and his property, according to the Nov. 16 meeting minutes. The buffer request would be handled by the Zoning Board.

Lorraine Ballard told the board last month that she doesnt have great coverage, but its a cost shes willing to pay versus having a tower on a beautiful hill, according to the minutes.

Its a very visible hill. Are you willing to pollute the whole town? she said.

Some residents said they were concerned about the environmental impact. Others wanted more proof that theyll definitely get total coverage by putting up the tower, because the area is hilly and they already have spotty coverage with the temporary tower.

Hudson Valley stated in its application that it reviewed all existing towers and vertical structures within Washington County and determined that the available space for antenna colocation is not suitable for our deployment needs. Thus, Bald Mountain is the only place to have the tower.

If the variance isnt approved, the applicant will either need to move the location or make the tower smaller, Farndell explained. It will go back to the Planning Board regardless of their decision Thursday night.

Farndell said he wasnt sure how he felt about the variance and is waiting to hear the publics input.

Planning Board Chairman William Tomkins said board members decided at the last meeting to bring in a third party to review the submitted work. He said that will be discussed at the next Planning Board meeting at 7 p.m. Dec. 14.

The application, site plan and minutes from the previous meetings are on the Planning Boards webpage.

The public hearing will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at the town office.
HEBRON  Ken Fish Jr. doesnt know who shot him last weekend as he walked across a field in Hebron after an afternoon of hunting.

But he says he is sure the round that clipped off the majority of two middle fingers on his right hand didnt come from his rifle.

Fish was recovering this week from the loss of the majority of the index and middle fingers on his right hand and a cut to his thumb, injuries suffered around dusk Nov. 25 as he and his brother-in-law, another man and another relative walked in a field near county Route 30.

He said he believes someone shot at them, and he has had to hire a lawyer to try to figure out what is going on with the state investigation.

The shooting remained under investigation by the state Department of Environmental Conservation on Monday, and no one has been charged.

Although the Washington County Sheriffs Office report indicated officers initially believed the injury was accidentally self-inflicted, Fish said he knows it was not.

The DEC has refused to discuss the investigation last week or on Monday, saying only that the investigation was ongoing. If DEC officials are looking for a shooter, they have done nothing to alert the public to that fact or to seek information from members of the public for potential assistance.

Until the investigation is completed, we have no information to share, DEC spokesman David Winchell said.

Washington County sheriffs Capt. Tony LeClaire said his agency was only involved in the case for a short period of time before it was determined state conservation officers would be the lead agency. Conservation officers generally enforce hunting, fishing and other environmental laws, including investigating hunting accidents.

Neither the Sheriffs Office nor State Police have been asked for assistance since.

We assisted them until their investigators could get there, and then it was turned over to them, LeClaire said.

Washington County District Attorney Tony Jordan said his office has not heard from investigators since being made aware of the shooting the afternoon it occurred.

Fish, 43, of Moreau, gets choked up and angry as he discusses the incident. He spent nearly four days in Albany Medical Center and lost his two fingers from the first knuckle up.

The trio were hunting on land they have permission to use, having gotten there in the early afternoon. They were walking out around 5 p.m. when the injury occurred.

At first, Fish thought his gun may have gone off accidentally and backfired.

They asked me what happened and I said, My gun must have backfired, but then I checked and my gun hadnt been fired, he said.

When the damage to the stock was noted, it became clear to him the shot came from elsewhere.

It was an incredibly loud bang and the gun jumped away from me, Fish said. It came from behind us. Someone took a shot at us.

He said there is a hole in the wooden stock of his gun where he believes the round entered before hitting his hand. His rifle holds four rounds and all four were still in the gun afterward. Conservation officers checked the guns of the two men with him and concluded they had not been fired, according to Fish.

At one point, an investigator told Fish they found footprints into a swampy area nearby that they werent able to follow.

As he wonders who shot him, Fish said he has been having nightmares and is trying to figure out how to adjust to life with his injuries. He is righthanded and works as a general contractor.

My boss has been great, but its hard. Have you ever tried to write lefthanded? he said. This whole thing is just killing me.

Family members have set up an online fund to help Fish with medical bills at www.gofundme.com/kenny-fish.
Editor's Note: This story was corrected to reflect Mr. Bovair was headed back to the nursing home from a medical appointment.

QUEENSBURY  The Queensbury man who died Friday after he was hurt in the nursing home van in which he was riding suffered broken ribs and a broken back in the incident, but police did not know Monday what caused his death.

The state Department of Health has joined the Warren County Sheriffs Office in investigating the death of Peter D. Bovair, 70, after the van he was in stopped short Friday in traffic on Main Street and he was thrown from his wheelchair.

Bovair was a resident of the Warren Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing and was being taken back to the home from a medical appointment around 5 p.m. for an unspecified reason when he was hurt.

Police said the wheelchair he was in was secured in the van, but he was not wearing a restraint to keep him in the wheelchair. Police said there was a restraint in the vehicle for a passenger such as Bovair, and they were researching whether a belt was legally required.

Warren County sheriffs Lt. Steve Stockdale said the driver of the van told police another vehicle stopped short in front of the Warren Center van. He said the driver of the vehicle ahead of the van did not remain at the scene, as no collision occurred, and had not been located.

An autopsy was performed on Bovair over the weekend at Albany Medical Center, and Stockdale said the cause of death was found to be internal trauma.

Stockdale said it was unclear whether any tickets or criminal charges were going to be filed. He said it is often difficult to tell whether the responsibility lies with the person who stops short in front of a vehicle, or whether the vehicle behind is to blame for a crash or near-crash.

State Vehicle & Traffic Law states that a driver of a motor vehicle shall not follow another vehicle more closely than is reasonable and prudent, having due regard for the speed of such vehicles and the traffic upon and the condition of the highway.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said the agency had no comment on the matter as of Monday.

The Departments investigation into the death of a resident at Warren Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing is ongoing, said agency spokesman Jeffrey Hammond. As this remains an active investigation, we cannot comment further.

Jeffrey Jacomowitz, a spokesman for Centers Health Care, which owns the home, said the companys investigation was ongoing Monday.
QUEENSBURY  A bowl of condoms discretely placed in a bathroom at the town Senior Center is causing an uproar.

The centers new director, who has worked there for a year, put out free condoms in response to frightening statistics from the state Department of Health. In this region, a third of the people who are diagnosed with HIV or AIDS are older than the age of 50.

But the president of the centers board of directors  a retired cardiologist, David Schwenker  said the condoms shouldnt be at the senior center.

It creates difficult discussions, he said.

He also questioned whether the statistics about seniors with HIV and AIDS were true.

Overall, seniors are one of the fastest-growing groups to get sexually transmitted infections, according to the state Department of Health. And, perhaps because they arent as worried about HIV as other groups, senior citizens are more likely to develop full-blown AIDS, doctors are discovering. Thats harder to treat than HIV.

Outside New York City, seniors received 23 percent of the new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in 2015, the latest year for which statistics are available, the report says.

In this region, which includes Albany County, seniors received 33 percent of the new HIV/AIDS diagnoses. In raw numbers, 20 seniors were diagnosed in this region in 2015. The state did not release the ages of each newly diagnosed patient by county, since there are so few - just two new patients in Warren County and one new patient in Washington County. But it is in the population. As of 2015, there were a total of 74 people with HIV or AIDS  in all age groups  in Warren County and 105 patients in Washington County. (Corrected.) The statistics exclude prisoners, who are more likely to have HIV/AIDS than the outside population.

People with HIV/AIDS are living full lives with treatment, which means many patients also live long enough to become senior citizens. In New York, half of all the people who have HIV or AIDS are now age 50 or older, the report says.

Those sobering statistics got the attention of Queensbury Senior Center Director Kathryn Cramer.

No one wants to talk about old people having sex, she said. I discovered horrifically that older women were the highest group of HIV. Theres no material for older people. So the first thing I did was put out the condoms.

She got 1,000 condoms donated to the center, put them in bowls in the bathrooms and added signs with cheerful commentary such as, Has Kathryn lost her mind? The signs direct seniors to look at a red folder on the bulletin board. It can be discretely removed and read at one of the tables or couches at the center and includes information about sexually transmitted infections and the infection rate among seniors.

At first, no one wanted to discuss the condoms. But the folder was well-read. And after 10 months, 750 of the condoms were gone.

For people who didnt want to talk about it, someones taking them, Cramer said.

But she added that people did begin to talk.

At first, their initial reaction for some of them was, why is this relevant? Why is this here? she said. Once I told them why, I told them, I care about you, and any issue I hear about thats affecting you, you bet Im going to address it. Once they knew why, they embraced it.

Some women told her theyd never used a condom, having grown up at a time when sex outside marriage was heavily stigmatized. They married early, had children, and are now widowed and finding themselves in a very different situation.

Boy, the conversations weve had! Cramer said. We joke about it. Phase one was getting them used to it, getting the giggles out.

Next year, she wants to have Public Health do educational programs.

But she was shocked when Schwenker suddenly objected to the condoms last week, upon learning that a reporter had asked about them.

Cramer began calling board members for support, and said she might quit if the board unilaterally removed the condoms. She then took most of this week off.

Schwenker stopped short of saying he would remove the condoms.

Its one of the things Kathryn takes it upon herself to promote, without taking it to the board, he said, but acknowledged there had been a mention of it at a board meeting and that he knew about it.

He said he thought the condoms were removed shortly after being placed in the bathrooms and was surprised to learn they were still there.

Its the board that should be making these decisions. Not me, not any individual, he said. Im not sure the town should be doing public health. I think public health issues, (county) Public Health should be doing it.

Other programs about public health are appropriate, and are offered by the center without special approval of the board, he acknowledged. The center has run programs on long-term care insurance and on picking nursing homes.

Thats not available in the community in other ways, readily, he said.

He added that if condoms are going to be distributed, it should be kept quiet.

It has to be something on the side, he said, adding, This is creating a controversy, believe me. Its promoting something that people are going to be unhappy about.
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Taiwans government in its latest efforts to transform the islands economy has launched a campaign to promote what it calls 5+2 Major Innovative Industries (here referred to as the 5+2 Plan). In support of this campaign, Taiwan Life Insurance Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of CTBC Financial Holding Co. Ltd., announced on November 28 that it will participate in the acquisitions of preferred shares of Taiwania Capital Buffalo Fund Co. Ltd. and common shares of Whole Max Green Power Co. Ltd. These deals are expected to contribute to the governments two key industrial initiatives  the building an Asia Silicon Valley and the development of a domestic green energy sector.

Taiwan Life stated that the investment targets promoted by the government under the 5+2 Plan meet the long-term return expectations of its insurance fund. Taiwan Life may also consider other related targets that turn up in the future if they are suitable to its investment strategy. In the case of Taiwania Capital Buffalo Fund, Taiwan Life has acquired preferred shares that are worth TWD 400 million. This sum will help the venture capital firm in raising funds for projects related to the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart machinery. Taiwania Capital Buffalo Fund is actually a part of Taiwania Capital Management  an operation backed by Taiwans government. The purpose behind the creation of this state-level investment company is to accelerate the upgrading of domestic enterprises and the development of niche technologies unique to the island.

Whole Max Green Power is a team under Giga Solar Materials Corp., a company that specializes in photovoltaic solutions and is a subsidiary of GigaStorage Corp. Currently, Giga Solars assets related to solar power plants in Taiwan and abroad (e.g. Japan and the Philippines) have come to at least 30MW. Furthermore, projects under its development have achieved overall conversion efficiency rates of 80% or above. Taiwan Life has committed TWD 327 million into Whole Max Green Power, and this transaction took place right after Taiwan Life invested in Star Shining Energy Corp., which is another domestic solar energy company. For Taiwans green sector, the cash injections from Taiwan Life will stimulate further development and growth.

Taiwan Life pointed out that the government encourages life insurance companies to invest their funds into the industries affected by the 5+2 Plan because these deals can be legally registered as special projects that advance public utilities and social welfare. The major industries or fields that the 5+2 Plan currently covers include Asia Silicon Valley, biotechnology, green energy, smart machinery, national defense, new agriculture initiatives and circular economy initiatives. Taiwan Life stated that it is focusing on the green energy sector because this area fits into the companys sustainable development strategy and fulfills its corporate social responsibility. By supporting environmental sustainability, Taiwan Life is doing its part in the betterment of the community.
ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Illinois - As part of the Army's ongoing World War I observance and First Army's Centennial commemoration, First Army will host a World War I discussion panel, Wednesday, Dec. 13, at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, beginning at 7 p.m.

The panel will include military historians and authors Dr. Mitchell Yockelson and Col. (Retired) Douglas V. Mastriano, along with George Eaton, Army Sustainment Command and Rock Island Arsenal Historian. The topics discussed will include Gen. John Pershing's role with the American Expeditionary Forces, First Army's involvement in the Meuse Argonne offensive, Sgt. Alvin York's importance to First Army, and the World War I "Christmas Truce."
One of the enduring myths in American legend is Abraham Lincolns first love, a girl from his early Illinois home of New Salem named Ann Rutledge. The subject remains hotly debated among Lincoln scholars today.

The relationship  and its impact on Lincolns life  has been depicted as one of the great love stories of all time and made Ann Rutledge into a folk hero. Her father, one of New Salems founders, owned a tavern where Lincoln boarded for a time when he arrived in the village in 1832. Nineteen-year-old Ann was engaged to John McNamar, who had returned to his native East, apparently on business.

According to the legend, Lincoln and Ann developed a romantic attraction despite her betrothment, but she fell gravely ill and died in 1835. The loss of his first love plunged Lincoln into despair.

However, the legend often goes further, claiming Lincoln loved Ann so deeply that he threw himself on her grave in hysteric sobbing, and could never love another  including his wife, Mary, whom he married in 1842. Anns impact on his life was so sweeping that her memory left him with lifelong melancholy and even drove him to his political greatness, affecting his decisions in the White House.

The story, though, is not supported by definitive proof. No letters between Lincoln and Ann exist, and New Salem settlers, when interviewed decades later, were divided on the possibility of any romance. Some of Anns relatives recalled a relationship, though offered no specific details. In a visit decades later, former New Salem friend Isaac Cogdal claimed that Lincoln described a romance, though many scholars question Cogdals credibility.

A reference to the affair was made in 1862 in a newspaper in nearby Petersburg, Ill., three miles north of New Salem, that many believed was from a political enemy of Lincoln. Many, though, credit William Herndon, Lincolns former law partner, with the origin of the legend.

Herndon came across the story while researching a book on Lincoln in the mid-1860s. Though Herndon offered descriptions of Lincolns everyday life that are invaluable, scholars have discounted many claims made by Herndon, an alcoholic who apparently was motivated by money.

Billy Herndon gave us some wonderful information about Lincoln, said Dr. Wayne Temple, a nationally recognized Lincoln researcher from the Presidents hometown of Springfield, Ill. But when he began to analyze things, he ran into trouble, and his work kind of falls apart.

Many scholars believe Herndon championed the Rutledge story to damage Mary Lincoln, the Presidents widow, whom Herndon despised. The sentimental tale of the beloved fallen Presidents tragic romance with a lovely country girl also appealed to the general public, who were often influenced by the negative perceptions of Mary.

Movies, popular magazines, poets such as Illinoisan Edgar Lee Masters, and folk tales further embellished the story with little regard for existing evidence, solidifying Anns place in American lore.

In the late 1920s, Lincoln scholar Paul Angle ruefully said that ninety-five percent of visitors to Springfield and New Salem are firmly convinced that Ann Rutledge was the only woman Lincoln ever loved. The romance was strongly rebuked in 1945 by James Randall, a foremost Lincoln scholar from the University of Illinois, but still enjoys periodic waves of popularity among historians.

New research in the 1990s, particularly by Knox College professor Douglas Wilson, argued that Herndons informants from New Salem were credible and that a romance was likely. Like many historians, I consider modern research, and I think those studies are very worthy, said Dr. Cullom Davis of Springfield, another acclaimed Lincoln authority. I think the idea of a relationship between Lincoln and Ann is plausible.

However, many modern scholars agree that any romance did not have an encompassing effect on Lincolns later life. Herndon was wrong on that, said Davis, a retired professor from the University of Illinois satellite campus in Springfield. Theres no reason to think that any affair with Ann Rutledge affected Lincolns life in that way.

Critics note that Lincoln was romantically involved with another woman, Mary Owens, mere months after Anns death, casting doubt on the idea of Lincolns deep mourning. In addition, Ann was no longer living in New Salem when she died, as her family had moved to Sand Ridge, seven miles away. Before her grave was moved to Petersburg, Ann was buried at Sand Ridge, which also throws a different light on the image of Lincoln throwing himself on her grave.

Temple points to an often-overlooked fact about the Rutledges Sand Ridge home. Their farm was owned by McNamar, Anns fiancee, said Temple. Its harder to imagine Lincoln and Ann carrying on with her family living on her fiancees property. I cant imagine they would have seen as much of each other anyway, based on the distance to Sand Ridge on horseback.

Skeptics also assert that Lincoln would have not become involved with a woman who belonged to another man, and that his well-documented awkwardness around the opposite sex would have hindered a romance. In addition, Lincoln may have had other things on his mind, as he was elected to the Illinois House in 1834.

Today, there are still plenty of believers in the story. Roger Norton, a Florida-based enthusiast who administers several respected online discussion forums on Lincoln, says that the definite majority of members think Lincoln was involved with Ann.

Norton himself supports the story, but discounts any lasting influence on Lincoln. I dont think there was any extreme impact on the rest of his life, added Norton. After a few months of sadness, I think he was back to normal.

The story remains an indisputable part of American culture. Anns grave in Petersburg remains one of the towns most visited sites, while in Springfield, the Ann Rutledge Pancake House was a popular eatery in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, a train named the Ann Rutledge has carried Midwestern rail passengers on Amtrak and its predecessors for decades.
On the heels of the Trump administration holding steady on the Renewable Fuel Standard last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has asked for a waiver from the law, citing economic worries.

Abbott made the request in a letter dated Friday, a day after the EPA finalized renewable fuel volumes for 2018.

At 19.29 billion gallons, the volumes of renewables that must be blended into the nation's fuel supply are roughly the same as in 2017.

In his letter, Abbott said refiners are having difficulty with the RFS, especially because of the volatility and cost of the credits that demonstrate compliance. He noted that hundreds of thousands of jobs in the state are tied to the refinery and related industries.

"Yet the strength and resiliency of the industry  and by extension, Texas economy  is threatened by a restrictive federal mandate," Abbott wrote.

The credits, called RINs, are the currency of the RFS. Refiners earn them by blending renewables into the fuel supply or they can buy them from others.

Renewable fuels advocates said the request won't withstand scrutiny.

Gov. Abbotts waiver request doesnt come anywhere close to meeting the very high threshold required by the statute for proving severe harm,'" said Bob Dinneen, president and chief executive of the Renewable Fuels Association.

The association said renewables are helping the economy in Texas through ethanol production in the state and lower cost fuels that are now available.

The industry also disputes the idea that high cost credits are hurting the refiners. It says that refiners are recouping costs through higher margins.

The EPA's final renewable figures last week were met with mixed reaction in Iowa and the Midwest. The requirements for conventional renewable fuels, such as ethanol, were maintained but Midwest lawmakers and industry officials complained the biodiesel figure for 2019 fell short of the available capacity.

Refiners were disappointed, saying the Trump administration had caved to farm state political interests.
A Texas woman accused of causing a serious crash in downtown Davenport that left one woman dead earlier this year will soon learn her fate.

In court documents filed Monday, Chief District Judge Marlita Greve said she will render a verdict in the case of Lauria Lee Kelly, 58, of Alvarado, on Friday in Scott County District Court.

Kelly is charged with homicide by vehicle-reckless driving in the death of Cynthia Elaine Jones, 53, of Davenport. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison.

During a bench trial Oct. 25, Assistant Scott County Attorney Kimberly Shepherd called six witnesses who testified about the deadly crash on Jan. 30.

Police say Kelly was driving her blue 2005 Dodge truck east on 2nd Street at a high rate of speed just before 6 p.m. and struck the rear of a red Chevrolet Monte Carlo that was stopped at the red light at 2nd and Brady streets.

The force of the impact caused fatal injuries to Jones.

The driver of the Buick, Jessica Russell, was seven months pregnant at the time of the crash and had to be extricated from her vehicle. She was taken to a local hospital, where she was monitored because she was having contractions.

Russell testified at Kelly's bench trial that she suffered whiplash and was "very worked up emotionally" but was OK. Her unborn son also was OK, she said.

Cpl. Kris Mayer, a crash scene investigator for the Davenport Police Department, testified that while he could not determine exactly how fast Kelly was driving, he estimated that she was driving at "interstate speeds."

The speed limit downtown is 25 mph.

Mike Priester, a concrete driver, testified that he was driving east on 2nd Street between 5:30 and 6 p.m. that night, headed toward the post office, when he heard what sounded like a tornado siren "for a really long time."

He said that he cracked his window and realized that it was a car horn that sounded like it was stuck and that the sound appeared to be coming from a Dodge Ram truck.

Priester said he pulled into the post office parking lot and the truck pulled in behind him. He then jumped out of his truck and walked toward the Dodge Ram.

"I noticed there was a pile of clothes on the passenger side, Texas license plates, kind of threw me off," Priester said at trial. "Then the lady looked at me and she goes King Jesus, I salute you.'"

Kelly was found competent to stand trial earlier this year.

In a brief filed early last month, defense attorney Harlan Giese Jr. said that Kelly at the time of the crash suffered from such a diseased or deranged condition of the mind that she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
INDEPENDENCE  An Independence, Iowa, man who was found frozen in a field with a pistol and bags of meth last winter has pleaded guilty to drug and firearm charges.

Troy Donovan Postel-Vargason, 35, also pleaded guilty to gun charges in connection with a 100-mph chase from LeClaire to Clinton County in August.

Postel-Vargason entered his pleas to charges of possession of meth with intent to distribute, possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking and two counts of felon in possession of a firearm Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. Sentencing will be at a later date.

According to court records, Independence paramedics were called to a field two blocks from Postel-Vargasons home on First Street East on Feb. 9. At the time, Postel-Vargason was shivering and unable to move and suffering from frostbite, and medics were concerned his toes may need to be amputated because of damage from the cold, court records state.

He was holding an Under Armour drawstring bag that contained two gallon-sized bags with an estimated 500 grams of ice meth, court records state.

Medics transferred Postel-Vargason to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City for treatment. Authorities believe he had left his home the prior night following an argument and spent the night in the field, records state.

Officers who responded to the field found about $600 in cash and a 9 mm Hi-Point handgun with an obliterated serial number. Investigators restored the Hi-Points serial number and determined the gun had belonged to an Independence resident whose home was burglarized in November 2016.

A search of Postel-Vargasons own home yielded a .380-caliber Ruger pistol, according to court records.

In April, federal authorities charged Postel-Vargason with gun and drug charges in the field incident, but authorities were unable to locate him at the time.

On Aug. 15, a LeClaire police officer attempted to stop his Ford Escape after a Scott County deputy observed him with a gun and a machete, according to court records. The chase reached speeds of more than 100 mph in 55 and 65 mph zones, and he allegedly threw a 9 mm Ruger handgun with a scratched-off serial number from his vehicle during the chase, records state.

The pursuit continued until his tires were deflated, and he was arrested on state charges of operating while intoxicated, eluding and felon in possession of a firearm in Clinton County in connection with the chase, record state.

Postel-Vargason also is awaiting trial on eluding charges in Black Hawk County stemming from a Dec. 1, 2016, pursuit. A sheriffs deputy attempted to stop him for running a red light at Raymond and Dunkerton roads at 2:45 a.m., and the 120-mph chase lasted about 40 minutes and ended when his vehicle was cornered in a residential yard. He was allegedly carrying a club when he was arrested.
Democrat Fred Hubbell said Monday the state should partner with the private sector to add at least 50 to 75 in-patient mental health beds in Iowa, part of a plan he released to change the way mental health services are provided in the state.

Hubbell, one of seven Democrats running for his party's nomination for governor, released a four-page plan Monday, a day ahead of a forum on the topic in Des Moines.

Hubbell also said he would reverse last year's move to turn management of the state's Medicaid program over to private management and institute a review to determine "the most cost-efficient program that provides the necessary services." All of the Democrats running for governor have criticized the change.

Hubbell, who recently toured the state to talk about mental health issues, said it is a topic that comes up wherever he goes and the state must do better.

"Iowans are paying a high human cost and also high financial costs because of the inadequacies of our mental health system," he said. Hubbell blamed "fiscal mismanagement" under former Gov. Terry Branstad and Gov. Kim Reynolds, as well as the decision to close state-run mental health institutions.

Hubbell cited a study saying Iowa is last in the nation in the number of state-run mental health beds. And his plan called for "at least 50-75 high-intensity mental health beds for in-patient treatment in a public/private partnership."

There were no other details provided.

Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven has defended the state's approach and said the focus on in-patient mental health beds is shortsighted.

Reynolds also has questioned how Democrats will be able to pay for a Medicaid program that goes back under the state's management.

Part of Hubbell's plan also dealt with the shortage of behavioral health providers. He said the state should put more effort into programs like loan forgiveness to lure professionals to the state.

The plan also would more closely coordinate services for mental health and addiction; "empower" local communities to determine their own needs and provide a range of services; encourage more utilization of tele-psychiatric services; create a mental health program for children and provide more help to law enforcement to deal with the opioid problem and incarceration diversion programs.

In response to Hubbell's plan, the Reynolds campaign responded that 150,000 more Iowans are getting mental health coverage than in 2011, when she became lieutenant governor. Also, the campaign said the number of inpatient psychiatric beds have increased since 2016 and so have investments to try to entice behavioral health professionals to the state.

"There's more to do, which is why we are focused on concrete solutions and progress to help Iowans in every corner of the state," said Pat Garrett, a spokesman for the Reynolds campaign.
Last year, billionaire Democrat J.B. Pritzker derided Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for not releasing detailed income tax filings.

The question is who his investors are, and whether there are any in China or Russia that are affecting his personal income, Pritzker said of Trump, adding that the future president was obfuscating in order to avoid being discovered as a liar.

And then last week, Pritzker released only the first two pages of his income tax returns going back three years. Pritzker told reporters for weeks that he hadnt released the returns sooner because the task was so complex. Um, two pages aint complex.

Pritzkers real income appears to come from various private trust funds. He disclosed last week that his trusts paid $25 million in state taxes and $129 million in federal taxes between 2014 and 2016. Pritzkers personal income taxes were a tiny fraction of that amount. During the same time period, he revealed that he paid only $636,000 in state income taxes and $7.7 million in federal income taxes on his personal income.

He refused to divulge the tax returns for those trusts (which really would be complex) because, his campaign claimed, other members of his extended family also benefit from those trusts. OK, fine. But how about divulging the names of his trusts? Tracking down these trusts is a difficult business because theyre shrouded in such secrecy. Names would help.

When a politician refuses to divulge something, particularly after criticizing others for not doing so, you gotta wonder what that person is hiding.

The Pritzker family all but invented off-shore trusts. No family in the US can copy the Pritzkers in using offshore entities to gain tax advantages, claimed Forbes Magazine back in 2003.

But, try as I might, I couldnt convince Pritzkers campaign to release the names of his trust funds.

So, in an attempt to pry Pritzkers information loose, I reached out to Chris Kennedys gubernatorial campaign and asked if they would release the names of the trust funds Kennedy benefits from. They did.

Heres the list: Robert F. Kennedy 1959 Trust; The Christopher G. Kennedy 1987 Trust; The Sheila B. Kennedy 2011 Trust; the Christopher G. Kennedy 2001 Trusts for Children; Trusts U/W George Skakel and Ann Skakel; Trusts U/W Robert F. Kennedy; The Scudder Trust; Christopher G. Kennedy 1997 Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust; [street address deleted by me] Melrose Avenue Resident Trust I and Trust II and [street address deleted by me] Island Avenue Residence Trust I and Trust II.

George Skakel was Kennedys maternal grandfather. He was from Chicago and founded the fabulously successful Great Lakes Carbon Corporation. U/W is an acronym for under the will of and means it was created as part of somebodys last will and testament. The Scudder Trust appears to invest in renewable energy and environmental stuff.

That Island Avenue trust is for a 14-room summer house in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts called Brambletyde, which was recently described by Curbed.com as a stately waterfront mansion with magnificent views of Nantucket Sound and just one neighbor. President John F. Kennedy and his family stayed in the mansion during the summer of 1963. The Zillow website pegs the worth of the four-bedroom, 6.5 bathroom, 3,379 square foot house at $6.3 million. Taxes are $66K per year.

Ah, the rich.

But Kennedys a pauper when compared to Pritzker. As mentioned above, Pritzkers paternal grandfather was a pioneer in using trusts to avoid taxation. AN Pritzker, took the family fortune from $250,000 in the 1920s to an estimated $2 billion at his death in 1986, according to Forbes. But when he died in 1986, his heirs told the IRS that ANs net worth was a mere $25,000. The feds didnt buy it and the Pritzker family ended up paying the government $9.5 million plus interest nine years later, Forbes reported.

JB Pritzkers sister Penny, who served as President Barack Obamas Secretary of Commerce, is mentioned in the so-called Paradise Papers, a massive ongoing research project into the uber-wealthy and mega-corporations conducted by journalists all over the world. Ms. Pritzker transferred shares from two Bermuda companies to a company owned by trusts that benefit her children after she was confirmed for the Cabinet post. Her familys myriad offshore trusts were a big issue during her confirmation hearing.

Alas, Kennedys decision to reveal his trust funds names did not move the Pritzker campaign one iota closer to disclosing the names of Pritzkers trusts.

This aint over.
After he proposed legislation to expose government emails to public review, state senator and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Billie Sutton accepted a challenge from the Journal on Oct. 26 to release the emails from his legislative account.

But he has not yet delivered. His attempts to divulge his emails have been stalled, he has since said, by Legislative Research Council concerns about the potential release of confidential information.

The LRC maintains the email accounts of legislators and has given Sutton a list of 11 kinds of information that should be redacted before his emails are released.

Ensuring these items are not included will require a manual review of the emails I provide to you, and LRC is not able to help with this process, Sutton said in his most recent email correspondence with the Journal. Therefore, I will need time to manually work through the emails reviewing them for any of the issues raised by the LRC.

Sutton, of Burke, added that because of the time involved and the lack of help from the LRC, he will release only a couple of weeks worth of emails.

The Journal sprang the request on Sutton during an interview at the newspapers office for the Mount Podmore political podcast. The full 20-minute interview, which includes Suttons answers to questions on a range of topics including gun laws, abortion, capital punishment and transgender rights, was posted Monday to the Journals website and to iTunes and other podcast apps.

Sutton proposed legislation Oct. 5 to the Legislatures Government Operations and Audit Committee that would, among other things, remove correspondence from the list of records that are exempted from transparency requirements. That change would open access to government emails, which are not currently considered open records in South Dakota.

When asked Oct. 26 if he would release emails from his legislative account to the Journal, Sutton answered with one word: Sure.

Earlier in the interview, he had explained the philosophy behind his proposed legislation.

If youre doing things correctly, you shouldnt have to worry about your emails being public, he said.

Since then, in email correspondence with the Journal, Sutton said the LRC advised him to redact the following from his emails before releasing them: personal information such as Social Security numbers, financial documents, executive session information, juvenile documents, personnel records, transcripts, student records, medical records, proprietary or trade secrets, Revolving Economic Development & Initiative meeting documents, and confidential disclosures.

The Journal contacted the other declared gubernatorial candidates  all Republicans  and also asked for their emails.

Marty Jackley, a Republican and the states current attorney general, said he supports legislation to make government emails public and would release his own existing emails, but only if the Journal could obtain a written waiver of confidential privilege from somebody who has exchanged emails with him. The Journal did not obtain such a waiver.

Justin Brasell, campaign spokesman for U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem, issued the following statement.

Kristi believes transparency in government is essential, and she understands many have concerns, the statement said. As this debate progresses, shell be listening closely to South Dakotans, narrowing in on the best, publicly debated reforms to make sure the state government is genuinely more accountable to the people.

Gubernatorial candidates Terry LaFleur and Lora Hubbel each expressed support for making government emails public records and a willingness to make their own emails public if elected, but both added that because they are not currently in elected office or working in government jobs, they have no government emails to release.
Montana's state auditor on Monday released an advisory memo saying agreements for treatment and payment made between patients and primary care providers without involving insurance are allowed and not regulated by his office.

Direct primary care plans have been advocated for before in Montana, including in a bill passed in the last legislative session and vetoed by Gov. Steve Bullock. They involve a patient paying a monthly fee, similar to a membership, to a provider in exchange for care.

In a press release, state Auditor Matt Rosendale said his memo would help expand health care options but also said people should still have insurance coverage for major or unexpected health care expenses. He called direct primary care a "good alternative for many people seeking routine or basic health care treatment."

Montanans should have as many options on the table as possible to meet their health care needs as they see fit, Rosendale said. Direct primary care is yet another way for consumers to access routine, preventative, or preliminary health care.

Rosendale, a Republican, said there are already some direct primary care providers operating in Montana, but the advisory memo makes things more clear for physicians who want to establish those care practices.

In his release, Rosendale included comments from Carol Bridges, a doctor with CostCare Direct in Missoula, which will transition to a direct primary care model Jan. 1.

CostCare will use a monthly membership mode, Bridges wrote, saying that arrangement would save money and make providers more accessible.

In his veto of a direct primary care bill this year, Bullock wrote the plans "offer little or no added value to most consumers" and "charge fees for treatments already covered by a consumer's health insurance, such as preventative care that insurance covers at no out-of-pocket cost to the consumer."

Direct primary care "is bad for Montanans, because it allows providers to charge unnecessary fees for services already covered by insurance and fails to deliver the administrative savings it promises."

The bill Bullock, a Democrat, vetoed also was "touted as cutting insurance-related administrative expenses," the governor wrote, but did not prevent providers from selling plans to patients while accepting insurance from others, meaning the provider would still have the same insurance-related overhead "but receives another income stream at the consumer's expense."

In 2015, when Rosendale was a state senator, he also carried legislation to allow direct primary care that was vetoed by Bullock. In that veto, Bullock wrote almost exactly the same objections as he did in 2017.
The state of Montana is suing Purdue Pharma, the makers of the opioid drug OxyContin, saying the company has lied to conceal the danger of the drug and created thousands of addicts.

Attorney General Tim Fox announced the lawsuit Monday.

One drug and one company stands above the rest as the most significant purveyor of addictive and all-too-often deadly opioid-based prescription drugs, Fox said. The states complaint alleges that this company has gone to great lengths to conceal the dangers of their product while misleading and exploiting physicians in a way that creates thousands of addicts dependent on their drug.

Since 2000, more than 700 Montanans have died from opioid overdoses, and between 2011-2013 more than 7,000 went to the emergency room because of a prescription drug overdose.

The lawsuit is filed on behalf of all counties in the state. Several Montana counties have recently planned to sue opioid manufactures, and this lawsuit is separate from those actions.

In September the state of Washington announced it was suing Purdue, while the city of Seattle filed its own lawsuit against Purdue and other companies.

In 2007 Purdue admitted to federal charges of mis-branding OxyContin and paid a $634.5 million fine after an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. It also paid a $19.5 million settlement to 26 states and the District of Columbia.

The Associated Press reported Monday that Robert Josephson, a Purdue spokesman, said the company denied the allegations in the lawsuit and is working to be part of the solution to the opioid crisis.

The complaint alleges Purdue misrepresented the likelihood that long-term use of OxyContin would lead to addiction and that the company claimed the drug would improve overall health and did not disclose the long-term side effects of opioid use.

The lawsuit also says Purdue falsely claimed long-term opioid use is safe and effective for pain treatment, told doctors that OxyContin works for 12 hours when it knew it did not for many patients, claimed a new generation of opioid deterred abuse and were safer when the company knew that was not true and falsely claimed opioids are safer than alternative, non-narcotic treatment.

Purdue also has advocated an unsubstantiated concept of "pseudo-addiction" that suggested a patient seeking more medication was not addicted, but their pain was being under-treated, and doctors should prescribe a higher dose of opioids, the complaint alleges.

The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief to stop what it calls deceptive marketing practices by Purdue and damages for the public health epidemic it says the company has created, as well as for what the state has paid for opioid treatment through the Montana Medicaid program and the Montana Healthcare plan, as well other costs of addressing opioid addiction in the state, along with maximum civil penalties. It also asks that Purdue turn over all profits from selling the drug.
Which side may have bombed Mr. Salehs house  Houthis angry at his betrayal or the Saudi-led bombing campaign  and the exact circumstances surrounding his death were not immediately clear. There were unconfirmed reports that he had been killed while trying to flee the city.

The Interior Ministry, which is controlled by Houthi rebels , reported that Mr. Saleh had been killed, and a video circulated online that purported to show the former presidents body, although it could not be independently verified.

Ali al-Bukhaiti, a Yemeni politician who is well connected with Mr. Salehs party, the General Peoples Congress, also said the president had died. The news is 100 percent true, he said.

Ahmad al-Hawati, a resident of Sana, was told by relatives living near Mr. Salehs complex that it had been bombed by rebels, and an official in the General Peoples Congress also said the complex, on a busy street, had been bombed. The official declined to be identified by name because he had not been authorized to speak to reporters.

Saleh had been known for years as a shrewd and dogged survivor of Yemens tangled, tribal politics. He once compared his years in office to dancing on the heads of snakes.

Photo

In the latest fighting, he was initially allied with the Houthis, themselves loosely aligned with Iran, but the relationship became fissured and he seemed to be tilting to the Saudis.

I call upon the brothers in neighboring states and the alliance to stop their aggression, lift the siege, open the airports and allow food aid and the saving of the wounded, he said in the televised speech, and we will turn a new page by virtue of our neighborliness.

The Saudi-led coalition seemed to welcome his remarks. A statement on the Saudi-owned news outlet Al Hadath said the coalition was confident of the will of the leaders and sons of Mr. Salehs political party to effect a rapprochement.
The Angolan authorities recently deported 4,766 illegal immigrants who were mining diamonds illegally in Cambulo, Lunda Norte Province.

More than 20,000 illegal diamond miners had already left the country on a voluntary basis.

Angonoticias quoted a migration and foreign office (EMS) spokesperson inspector Rodrigues Zeca as saying that some of the people deported were from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He said immigrants deported between last Sunday and Monday included 114 women and 65 children.

The drive to push illegal diamond miners out was initiated two months ago and would extended to other municipalities that make up the Lunda Norte Province.

Illegal diamond mining had been a source of headache for Angolan officials despite efforts to put the practice to an end.

Security guards allegedly working for a private company in the diamond-mining region of Lunda-Norte were filmed torturing illegal diamond diggers in June 2016.

Independent news site Maka Angola founded by human rights journalist Rafael Marques posted a clip on YouTube then, which exposed the vicious and sadistic violence against the weeping men.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




Jacobin Magazine, 26 November 2016

by David Seddon

Recent elections in Nepal may further entrench divisions that have stalled democratic progress for a decade.

Between May and September of this year, Nepal held its first local elections in twenty years. Soon, they will elect a new parliament and form new provincial councils, which were created after the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a federal republic in 2007a8.

The local elections unfolded in three stages: three of the seven new federal provinces voted on May 14, 2017; three more followed suit on June 14, and the last province went to the polls on September 18.

The turnout in all seven provinces was high, indicating the enthusiasm with which the Nepali electorate greeted this long overdue opportunity to make their views known to the parties and their candidates. The involvement of the Madhesi parties, which represent the people of Nepalas southern plains, was particularly important, given their effective exclusion from power in Kathmandu.

On September 27, 2017, as most of the results from the last stage of voting had come in, UN General Secretary AntAnio Guteress congratulated Nepal on this major step forward. After years without an elected government at the local or national level, Nepalis regarded these elections as a potential break with the political stasis of the last ten years. But the results, which keep the same three major parties in power, show that the nationas future remains uncertain.

The Erosion and Return of Democracy

In 1997, a year after the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M) launched their insurgency against the monarchy, new local district and village councils took office. Their terms of office ended in 2002, but no new elections were planned, nor were the incumbentsa mandates extended. The escalating conflict between the Maoistsa Peopleas Liberation Army (PLA) and government forces, including the Armed Police and the Royal Nepalese Army, made elections a dangerous prospect, and neither side thought a vote would serve their interests.

In October 2002, King Gyanendra dissolved the national assembly, sacked the prime minister, and appointed his own government. Thanks to what was effectively a royal coup, Nepal had no elected government at either the local or national levels.

For the next four years, local government was conducted a to the extent that it could be a by officials appointed by the central government and the king, or by the Maoists where they held sway. By 2004, the rebels effectively controlled large swaths of the countryside, while government forces held the municipalities and district centers. The military made periodic forays into rural areas, including into the Maoist strongholds, but won little ground.

In February 2005, the king, despairing of his governmentas inability to deal with the insurgency, intervened. He declared a state of emergency, severely restricted the media, banned political parties, and harassed, detained, and jailed many of their leaders, as well as the leaders of civil society and human rights organizations.

The foreign powers with an interest in Nepal a notably India, the United States, and the United Kingdom a had, until this point, supported the monarchyas efforts to crush the Maoist rebellion, which they regarded as a terrorist threat. In 2005, however, the international community turned on the king and called on him to restore normality.

In an effort to grant his new regime some legitimacy, the king held municipal elections. But the main political parties boycotted the vote, and its results were widely regarded as fraudulent. The parties, which had generally supported the king against the Maoists, now formed a seven-party alliance in hopes of restoring some form of democracy to Nepal.

This alliance built support in most of the major towns, including Kathmandu, where they held pro-democratic rallies. Despite international pressure and some leadersa efforts to construct a conservative alliance that would support a constitutional monarchy, the king refused to abandon his position as head of state.

Forced to decide which posed a greater threat to democracy, the king or the Maoists, the alliance eventually concluded that a ceasefire and peace agreement with the Maoists was the better of two bad options. After a flurry of negotiations, it came to terms with the rebels in November 2005.

The next April, the seven parties were involved in a mass peopleas movement that forced the king to cede power and convinced the Maoists to participate in parliamentary democracy. That November, they signed a detailed Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The Maoists then joined the other parties to form an alliance that would bring about the return of democracy.

In 2007, an interim parliament and interim government, headed by veteran Nepali Congress party leader Girija Prasad Koirala, agreed not only that the king should go but that the monarchy should go as well, officially making Nepal a republic. They further decided to elect a Constituent Assembly, charged with drafting a new constitution, and to initiate a restructuring process to create a new government framework organized around new rural and municipal bodies.

In January and February, the Madhesi people rose up across the plains because they felt politically marginalized by mainstream politicians they regarded as ahill elites.a Their actions forced the alliance to recognize Madhesi interests in the new federal state.

Elections for the new Constituent Assembly took place in April 2008 with a mixed system of proportional representation and first-past-the-post races. To the surprise of most commentators a and the revolutionaries themselves a the Maoists won the most seats (229 out of 601), nearly twice the number the Nepali Congress party claimed (115). The United Marxist-Leninist party (UML) came third, with 108 seats.

The two major Madhesi parties a the Madhesi Jana Adhikar Forum Nepal and the Terai-Madhesh Loktantrik Party a secured only seventy-five seats between them.

With some 40 percent of the assembly, the Maoists could drive forward significant change. The newly elected assembly voted that Nepal would become a federal secular republic, and, after considerable maneuvering between the various parties, it elected the Maoist leader, Comrade Prachanda, prime minister. For a short while, Nepal seemed ready to draft a new constitution and hold local and national elections within a new institutional framework.

A Stalled Assembly

A number of serious obstacles soon blocked the way. First, parliament couldnat agree on how to define the new federal structure or identify the federal states and local constituencies. Relatedly, the various factions within Nepali society disagreed over what role regional, caste, and ethnic interests should play in this restructuring process.

For the next three years, the Maoists, who had changed their name to the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (UCPN [M]), the Nepali Congress, and the UML jockeyed for position under constant pressure from the Madhesi parties.

After a bruising clash with President Ram Baran Yadav, who belonged to the Nepali Congress party, over the appointment of the army chief of staff, Comrade Prachanda resigned, and the UMLas Madhav Kumar Nepal took over. The new prime minister led the interim government from May 29, 2009, to February 6, 2011, then gave way to another UML leader, Jhala Nath Khanal, who held the post for only six months until he handed control back over to the Maoists. Dr Baburam Bhattarai became prime minister on August 29, 2011.

During this tumultuous period, the government extended the Constituent Assemblyas term three times, until the Supreme Court set a fourth and final deadline: the assembly had to draft the constitution and establish the new federal framework by May 27, 2012.

When that day arrived with no new constitution, Bhattarai dissolved the house and announced elections for a second Constituent Assembly.

The November 2013 elections yielded significant change. The Nepali Congress party secured the largest number of seats (196 out of 575), and the UML finished in a close second (with 175). The Maoists came third, with only 80 seats a a loss of 149. Voters were punishing the Maoists for their ineffectiveness in government. Undoubtedly, many former supporters turned against the erstwhile revolutionaries for failing to make progress on the major economic and social reforms they had promised. The Maoists lost the substantial backing they had won over years of struggle, and now faced an existential crisis.

The party split into several different factions, with the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) remaining formally committed to parliamentary democracy. Several offshoots sought to regain their revolutionary credentials.

At the same time, the Nepali Congress party and the UML were fraught with internal struggles for power and influence. The Madhesi parties also split, having failed to break into the central nexus of political power and gain the recognition they felt they deserved.

Given this fractured political situation, the Constituent Assembly remained virtually powerless, and Nepal continued to suffer from an ineffective government and an incoherent vision for the countryas future. The interim government remained in place for a year, first under Bhattarai, then under a nonpartisan acting prime minster. On February 11, 2014, the elderly Sushil Koirala of the Nepali Congress party took over, but his health deteriorated, and, on October 12, 2015, the UMLas Khadga Prasad Oli replaced him.

In the meantime, in April and May 2015, a series of earthquakes devastated Nepal, damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of buildings and leaving just as many people without homes, schools, health centers, transport infrastructure, or livelihoods. This disaster, followed by a particularly heavy monsoon that led to landslides and widespread flooding, had a debilitating effect on Nepali politics.

The second Constituent Assembly, held hostage by the major partiesa vested interests, proved no more effective than the first at identifying the new federal states and their constituent rural and urban subdivisions. This, combined with divisions within the government and even within the various parties, made progress towards the promised a and long-awaited a local and parliamentary elections difficult. Indeed, the assembly took until September 2015 to release a draft constitution, which proved highly contentious.

Eventually, in August 2016, Comrade Prachanda, now operating under his civilian name as Pushpa Kamal Dahal and serving as leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), became prime minister again. He announced that, even if the government had not finalized the precise definition of the new federal states, a Local Body Restructuring Commission (LBRC) would identify the constituencies for local elections over the coming months. New bodies would replace the existing structure of municipal-, village-, and district-level committees, and local elections would take place in the seven provinces that had been more or less defined.

New Framework for Elections

The LBRC then initiated a complex process of local engagement to establish a framework for elections. Considerable controversy surrounded these negotiations in almost all of the preexisting districts, village development committees, and municipalities as they determined the borders and names of new local bodies, both rural and urban.

At the beginning of January 2017, the LBRC proposed 719 new local bodies, divided into 6,553 wards, as the framework for the local elections, leaving a number of aautonomous special areasa to be decided later. One dissenting committee member remarked that the proposals did not adequately consider population in the two proposed Madhesi provinces or physical access in the hills and mountains. Despite this disagreement, the government and the Constituent Assembly approved the proposal.

Of the new local entities, 256 (35 percent) are in twenty districts across the Madhesi plains. Overall, the LBRC identified 462 village councils (rural areas), 241 municipalities (small towns), 12 sub-metropolitan centers (large towns), and 4 metropolitan areas (cities). According to the new constitution, these local bodies officially came into existence when the cabinet received the LBRCas report and local media published it at the end of January 2017.

For both logistical and political reasons, the elections took place in three stages: the first, in 283 new local bodies in 34 districts in the central northern provinces on May 14, 2017. The 436 local bodies in provinces 1, 5, and 7 voted on June 14, and, finally, province number 2 went to the polls in September. The vote was delayed there because disagreements over the involvement of the Madhesi parties werenat settled until June.

Across Nepal, the UML emerged as the big winner. This party has long been communist in name only: one faction even allied itself with the monarchy during the Peopleas War. This party has the strongest base in the hill areas and has often opposed Madhesi claims. Unsurprisingly, the UML performed significantly less well on the plains than elsewhere, but it nevertheless won more positions in all categories than its closest rival, the Nepali Congress.

The Nepali Congress had not performed as well as it had hoped in the first two rounds, where it came a poor second to the UML. It had anticipated a better showing on the plains, where Madhesi voters a particularly in province 2 a do not favor the UML. It did get better results there, but these gains were not sufficient to win overall, handing it second place in all categories.

The main Maoist party came a distant third, with fewer than half the number of positions secured by the Nepali Congress. Despite having managed to dominate the Constituent Assembly in 2008 and to elect two prime ministers between 2008 and 2013, the Maoists have now lost significant ground.

The Madhesi parties suffered thanks to disunity in the months leading up to the elections, but they performed best in province 2. However no single Madhesi party could rival the Nepali Congress, which easily won the province.

The UML performed better than expected and even managed to come fifth in province 2. The Maoists gained roughly the same number of positions as the Federal Socialist Forum. All of these parties owed their successes to specific localities. Former Maoist leader Bhattaraias new party, Naya Shakti (New Force), whose agenda is not clear, and is mainly a personal following, barely made a showing at all.

These results, particularly in province 2, will have a major impact on Nepali politics. Local concerns played an important role in determining the electionsa outcomes, and they will not help heal the division between the hills, where the UML performed strongly, and the plains, where the various Madhesi parties proved unable to unite. Nor will it ease the tension between the UML and the Nepali Congress.

New coalitions will undoubtedly emerge as parties prepare for the parliamentary and provincial elections planned to take place soon. The UML and the Maoists first proposed an alliance, then a merger, ostensibly to counter the Nepali Congress but arguably also to ensure the Madhesisa continued marginalization. The alliance included Naya Shakti (New Force), but the merger will probably involve only the two major parties, UML and the Maoist Centre.

It remains to be seen whether these local elections mark a new democratic era for Nepal or simply the birth of a new oligarchy and the continuation of the opportunistic politics that have characterized the past five years. What it does not mean a despite the partiesa names a is a genuine alliance of forces commitment to direly needed social and economic reforms.

About the Author

David Seddon is co-author of Congo: Plunder and Resistance. He is the coordinator of an essay series for the Review of African Political Economy site.
The presence at the 5th AU-EU summit in Abidjan of a high-ranking Moroccan delegation, led by King Mohammed VI in person, has blocked the way to the malevolent schemes of its opponents, including Algeria and South Africa.

These two countries seek to mend fences for the pseudo- Sahrawi Republic SADR after the bitter failures it suffered at the level of Europe and the United Nations.

The Sovereigns accompanying delegation will not miss the opportunity of the AU-EU summit to dismantle the Polisarios separatist theses, particularly to the dozen African English speaking countries that still recognize the pseudo-SADR.

Morocco would actually try to convince these countries to withdraw their recognition of the SADR especially that at present, a number of these countries such as Zimbabwe, Angola, and even South Africa are like Algeria facing socio-economic and political problems.

The ultimate goal is to rally eventually two-thirds of the vote of the 54 AU member countries needed to exclude SADR from the pan-African organization.

Moreover, the Polisario owes its presence in Abidjan only to the president of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat. After the refusal of Cote dIvoire, the host country, to invite the SADR to the AU-EU summit for the simple reason that the Sahrawi entity is not a sovereign state, Moussa Faki Mahamat sent, at the last minute, a formal invitation to SADR as member of the AU not as member state.

The European Union has distanced itself from this formality. The head of EU diplomacy, Federica Mogherini, could not be clearer, when she affirmed on November 22 in Brussels, before Faki Mahamat, that the SADRs presence in the Abidjan summit does not mean that the EU will recognizes it.

It is therefore a new blow to the Polisario and its supporters who have moved heaven and earth to transfer the AU-EU summit to the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, instead of Abidjan, the capital of Cote dIvoire, one of Moroccos major allies.
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 SCOTUS with a set of intriguing big and small cases as it winds down 2017 oral arguments | Main | As one former member of Congress enjoys release from prison after five years, another one gets sentenced to five years in Florida federal court 

December 4, 2017

Two Justices make statement about Alabama capital case in which cert is denied

There was not too much of note in today's order list from the Supreme Court, though sentencing fans might be intrigued by Justice Sotomayor's short statement, joined by Justice Breyer, regarding the denial of certiorari in Floyd v. Alabama. Here is how the statement starts and ends:

Petitioner Christopher Floyd was sentenced to death by an Alabama jury that was selected in a manner that raises serious concerns under our precedent in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127 (1994), and Foster v. Chatman, 578 U.S. ___ (2016). Although the unique context of Floyds case counsels against review by this Court, I find the underlying facts sufficiently troubling to note that in the ordinary course, facts like these likely would warrant a courts intervention.... That we have not granted certiorari should not be construed as complacence or an affirmance of all of the reasoning of the courts below. The unusual posture in which Floyd raised his Batson and J.E.B. claims warrants caution in the exercise of the Courts review here. Yet, courts reviewing claims in circumstances like these must be steadfast in identifying, investigating, and correcting for improper bias in the jury selection process. Such discrimination casts doubt on the integrity of the judicial process, and places the fairness of a criminal proceeding in doubt. Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400, 411 (1991) (citation omitted).

December 4, 2017 at 01:43 PM | Permalink

Comments

Appeals are only for mistakes of law, not of fact. The reasoning is that the original court, the trier of fact, had the competence to assess the evidence.

This philosophy is nowhere in the constitution. It turns the appeal into a nitpicking of irrelevant and pointless mistakes. These are literally infinite and limited only by the creativity of the appellate lawyer. They can make things up, and persuade other nitpickers on the bench of their correctness. They can keep this process going into infinity, along with make work. Once done with violations of federal rules, they can start on ratified treaties, then on international laws to which we have agreed.

This is very 13th Century, and very French. In that time, any defense lawyer who allowed his case to reach substance felt utterly humiliated. It is also very fraudulent, and a form of theft of tax dollars. It brings opprobrium on the justice system, and makes the owners of the law, the public, hate you lawyers.

Posted by: David Behar | Dec 4, 2017 1:59:18 PM

DAVID,

 What about Writs of Error Corum Bob is?

Posted by: Docile the Kind Soul in Oregon | Dec 6, 2017 4:07:23 AM

Meh^100 Coram Vobis

Posted by: Docile the Kind Soul in Oregon | Dec 6, 2017 4:09:45 AM

Post a comment
For instance, in its comparison of 54 cities in Asia, Europe, the US and Australia, the top two markets that offered the highest yields in the world remained Vietnams gateway cities including Hanoi at the first position with 8.65 percent yield and Ho Chi Minh City at the second position with 7.86 percent yield.



Additionally, increasing capital inflows and currency movements have resulted from cap rate compression. However, buoyant demand has inevitably lead to more new prime office completions and vacancy rates are finally beginning to creep up.

Investors have generally adopted a positive outlook for local office markets, their confidence bolstered by strong economic growth expectations.

The most active markets have been China, followed by Japan and Hong Kong (

China) . However, the supply is limited, investors have increasingly turned their attention to development projects in secondary locations.

Savills Vietnam manager said that Vietnams office market had shown excellent performance, especially A-grade segmentation with occupancy rates exceeding 95 percent in downtowns in big cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Because Vietnams economy has grown well lately and it integrated with the world, the Southeast Asian nation welcome more investors.

Accordingly, Savills announced in the third quarter of the year, demand of realty market in Vietnam will increase. Optimism has dominated the Asian office sector as cheap money has continued to flood local markets and rents and capital values have continued to rise across the region. Supply of office in HCMC will soar by 8 percent per year along with growth of rental output.

Savills predicts within three next years, the rate of office rent maintain high and rental cost will leap by 8.4 percent yearly in average.

By MINH HUY  Translated by UYEN PHUONG
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!)
I thought it was a snake at first sight, but when I read the photo caption I learned it is a caterpillar living in the south of Vietnam, said Giang.



Giang was attending an exhibition titled Pulsation  Biological Diversity in Vietnam and Taiwan, which opened on December 1 at the Hanoi Museum. It is divided into two exhibit spaces featuring the natural diversity of Vietnam and Taiwan.



Now I know that the Formosan sambar deer is the largest native animal species in Taiwan and Dahanshan Cookeina sinensis fungus grows in clusters on the floor of humid forests, Giang said. At first glance, they resemble little white cups, adorable in appearance.



The Taiwan section showcases the works of landscape and ecological photographers who have long been recording the mountains, rivers and diverse life-forms of Taiwan, according to Shih-yu Hung, director of the national museum of Taiwan.



Framed as works of art, this collection brings life and new visual style to traditional landscape and ecological photography, he said. Through these images, one can observe the beauty of life arising from the rich ecological system and establish an emotional connection with nature.



The exhibition offers visitors a visual tour to various places in Taiwan such as Da An River, Mutelebu Peak, Xueshan Range and Lanyang River.



It is divided into five major themes exploring Taiwans geographical and biological diversity.



The first one, "Rhythms of Nature", reveals how the diverse terrain of Taiwan combined with its humid climate have nurtured a highly variable ecosystem.



Nearly 60 percent of Taiwan is covered by forests. The interdependency of organisms in this setting is highlighted in "Cosmos in the Forest".



In "Secrets under Water", images taken underneath the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Taiwan reveal a variety of beautiful and mystical life forms.



"Urban Nature" demonstrates the concrete forest, a unique ecosystem present in highly developed areas, maintained by humans and animals together.



"For the Love of Diversity" shares four on-going stories of ecological conservation.



The exhibition also displays Vietnams diversity of landscapes such as deserts, mountains, tropical forests, sub-tropical forests, cave systems, wetlands, rural villages and cities.



Vietnam is home to about 322 species of mammals, 900 birds, 450 reptiles, 250 amphibians, nearly 10,000 species of insects and 700 species of fresh water fishes, according to Nguyen Tien Da, director of the Hanoi Museum.



The exhibition reflects the richness of the local nature through photos of stunning beauty spots, national parks and nature reserves as well as of rare species living in Vietnam such as the red-shanked douc (Pygathrix nemaeus), which is an endangered species living in Son Tra Nature Reserve in Da Nang.



Da said he expected that the exhibitions use of new technology in lighting and video art would bring visitors rare experiences.



Its not only watching photos displayed on easels. We want visitors to feel close to the nature and approach the flora and fauna naturally and emotionally at this exhibition, he said. Visitors can also interact with the nature by choosing photos of beautiful landscapes as backgrounds and taking photos. These photos will appear immediately in a digital album of the exhibition. Above all, we want to evoke the love for nature in peoples hearts.



The exhibition will run until February 25 at the Hanoi Museum, 2 Pham Hung Street, Nam Tu Liem district, Hanoi.

Vietnamplus
PRIMGHAR, Iowa  Precision Agriculture and Animal Science Days, hosted every fall by Iowa State University (ISU) Extension and Outreach staff in Northwest Iowa, was recently awarded the Governors STEM Advisory Council Seal of Approval for 2017.

The Iowa Governors STEM Advisory Council focuses on increasing student interest and achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics throughout the state. Their goal is to prepare youth for career paths in STEM fields.

The Iowa Governors STEM Seal of Approval was created to enculturate, sustain and spread STEM thinking. It indicates that the program or event -- Precision Agriculture and Animal Science Days -- advances Iowas STEM initiatives, and helps spread STEM thinking and education throughout the state.

Precision Agriculture and Animal Science Days was first held in 2015 and has become an annual event that brings together high school agriculture education students and teachers with college and agriculture industry members.
SIOUX CITY | Rick Myers has been playing the grandfather character in "The Nutcracker Ballet" for so long, it's not a big deal if he misses a 
In-store price: $219.95

$219.95 Increase from 2016: 4.7%

4.7% Online price: $269.00

$269.00 Increase from 2016: 9.8%

PNC: "This gift's spike in price can be fully attributed to the Pear Tree's increase (+5.2% from $189.99 to $199.95), while the Partridge remained flat. The Pear Tree spiked due to increased cost of living for workers and limited supply of larger, more mature trees."

DAY 2. TWO TURTLE DOVES

In-store price: $20.00

$20.00 Increase from 2016 : 0.0%

0.0% Online price: $ 95.00

$ 95.00 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

PNC: "These birds had no love lost as prices remained steady, after a hefty increase of 29.3% in 2016."

DAY 3. THREE FRENCH HENS

In-store price: $181.50

$181.50 Increase from 2016 : 0.0%

0.0% Online price: $281.50

$281.50 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

PNC: "Its been a quiet year for the French Hens. There was no change in their price or pecking order, due to steady supply and demand in the past year."

DAY 4. FOUR CALLING BIRDS

In-store price: $599.96

$599.96 Increase from 2016 : 0.0%

0.0% Online price: $370.00

$370.00 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

PNC: "It was business as usual this year for these feathered friends. Their price was unchanged, selling right at market value. No need to call for a discount to stimulate sales."

DAY 5: FIVE GOLD RINGS

In-store price: $825.00

$825.00 Increase from 2016 : 10.0%

10.0% Online price: $899.75

$899.75 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

PNC: "After five years with unchanged pricing, Gold Rings are shining bright, jumping up 10% since last year, due to increased demand and popularity. Ooo la la!"

DAY 6: SIX GEESE-A-LAYING

In-store price: $360.00

$360.00 Increase from 2016 : 0.0%

0.0% Online price: $1,488.00

$1,488.00 Increase from 2016: 10.2%

PNC: "Despite a slight increase in food prices, geese just laid back this year as the goose market remained stable and their pricing, unaffected. In years past, the goose market had fluctuated due to the avian flu."

DAY 7: SEVEN SWANS-A-SWIMMING

In-store price: $ 13,125.00

$ 13,125.00 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

0.0% Online price: $ 15,165.00

$ 15,165.00 Increase from 2016: 0.3%

PNC: "Although historically the most unpredictable gift of the bunch, the swans swam in a straight line in 2017, staying the same price as last year."

DAY 8: EIGHT MAIDS-A-MILKING

In-store price: $58.00

$58.00 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

0.0% Online price: $377.28

$377.28 Increase from 2016: 3.2%

PNC: "The Maids-A-Milking are chugging along at the same price as last year, reflecting the stagnant federal minimum wage, which hasn't changed since 2009."

DAY 9: NINE LADIES DANCING

In-store price: $7,552.84

$7,552.84 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

0.0% Online price: $8,322.55

$8,322.55 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

PNC: "Despite a growing economy and rising demand for dancers, dance companies did not raise wages (and thus, prices) for the fifth year in a row."

DAY 10: TEN LORDS-A-LEAPING

In-store price: $5,618.90

$5,618.90 Increase from 2016: 2.0%

2.0% Online price: $13,373.35

$13,373.35 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

PNC: "The price to hire high-flying men to entertain your true love rose after two years of stagnant growth."

DAY 11: ELEVEN PIPERS PIPING

In-store price: $2,708.40

$2,708.40 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

0.0% Online price: $2,475.00

$2,475.00 Increase from 2016: 12.5%

PNC: "No price increase in the pipeline for these musicians. After their wage increase last year for the first time since 2013, the cost to hire Pipers in 2017 remained the same."

DAY 12: TWELVE DRUMMERS DRUMMING

In-store price: $2,934.10

$2,934.10 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

0.0% Online price: $1,620.00

$1,620.00 Increase from 2016: 0.0%

PNC: "The Drummers kept the beat steady with unchanged pricing after a much anticipated wage and price increase last year."

This covers the cost of buying each gift once. However, if you include the cost of all the repetition throughout the carol, it would cost $157,558 in-store or $204,848.65 online.
STORM LAKE, Iowa | An Alta, Iowa, man was arrested after his vehicle was stopped for a traffic violation Friday.

Storm Lake police arrested Roberto Tarin, 19, after they alleged his driver's license has been revoked. In addition, police alleged they could smell marijuana coming from his vehicle.

After being granted consent to search the vehicle, investigators reportedly located and seized 11 small baggies of marijuana, packaged for street sale, and more than $150 in cash.

Tarin was charged with possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance -- marijuana (class D felony); and driving while revoked (aggravated misdemeanor). He was booked into the Buena Vista County Jail on a $5,000 bond.
SPENCER, Iowa | A man faces felony charges after stealing a tractor and leading officers on a slow-moving chase through a Spencer neighborhood early Saturday morning.

At 1:35 a.m., police checked on a report of a suspicious tractor in the parking lot of First English Lutheran Church, 1311 E. 18th St. When officers attempted to stop the tractor, Jeremy Starkson, 38, drove away.

Officers pursued the tractor into residential areas on the east side of Spencer. During the slow-speed pursuit, Starkson swerved at law enforcement officers several times while they deployed stop sticks.

Starkson eventually drove onto a lawn at 317 E. 10th St. When he attempted to exit the lawn, Starkson allegedly intentionally drove the tractor into a squad car.

Starkson was removed from the tractor, which had been determined to have been stolen from a Spencer residence earlier on Saturday, and was arrested.

He was charged with assault on person with certain occupations (class D felony), theft in the first degree (class C felony), driving while barred (aggravated misdemeanor), eluding (serious misdemeanor), and reckless driving (simple misdemeanor). He was booked into the Clay County Jail.
STORM LAKE, Iowa | Overheated wiring from a portable electric heater is believed to be the cause of a garage fire on Sunday morning.

Upon arrival at 5:23 a.m., firefighters observed an unattached garage at 424 Superior St. was fully engulfed in flames.

Firefighters were able to extinguish the fire without further incident. Estimated at $15,000, the garage and its content were considered total losses.

No injuries were reported at the property, which is owned by Matthew DeWall, of Bellevue, Nebraska.

The Storm Lake Fire Department was assisted by the Storm Lake Police Police Department at the scene.
STORM LAKE, Iowa | A Storm Lake man was arrested Friday following a domestic disturbance at a residence at 533 Oneida St.

When Storm Lake Police arrived, they located Manuel Jovel-Bermudes, 30, and an adult female at the home. Investigators alleged Jovel-Bermudes engaged in an argument, assaulting the female and taking away her phone while preventing her from calling 911.

Jovel-Bermudes was charged with domestic assault, third degree (class D felony), and obstruction of emergency communications (simple misdemeanor). He was booked into the Buena Vista County Jail and was being held without bond.

No injuries were reported.
SIOUX CITY | A Sioux City teenager was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday for a string of burglaries in Sioux City's Leeds neighborhood.

Joseph Tapia, 18, pleaded guilty in Woodbury County District Court to three counts of second-degree burglary from an Aug. 3 crime spree and one count of third-degree burglary for a 2016 burglary.

Tapia admitted to breaking into homes in the 4500 block of Perry Way, the 3900 block of Madison Street and the 3900 block of Monroe Street on Aug. 3. He also admitted to breaking into a garage in the 2500 block of East Solway Street on June 29, 2016, and stealing a $3,000 bicycle, which he tried to sell.

Tapia was ordered to pay restitution in an amount to be determined to the victims jointly with his two co-defendants.

Jeremy Mahaney, 19, of Sioux City, is scheduled to stand trial Jan. 23 on two counts of second-degree burglary and single counts of first- and third-degree burglary, second-degree theft and operating a vehicle without the owner's consent.

Henry Deleon, 17, of Sioux City, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of second-degree burglary and single counts of first- and third-degree burglary and second-degree theft. His attorney has filed a motion to have his case transferred to juvenile court and a January hearing has been scheduled.
SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa | A Spirit Lake man was sentenced Monday to a year in jail for shooting a woman in the leg.

Scott Sidles, 55, had pleaded guilty in Dickinson County District Court in September to a felony charge of reckless use of a firearm and a misdemeanor charge of assault with a dangerous weapon.

District Judge David Lester ordered Sidles to spend a year in jail, minus time already spent in custody, on the misdemeanor assault charge. Lester suspended a 10-year prison sentence and placed Sidles on probation for five years on the felony firearm charge.

Charges of attempted murder, intimidation with a dangerous weapon and willful injury were dismissed.

Sidles admitted during his plea hearing that on Oct. 2, 2016, he fired a .22-caliber pistol recklessly from the driveway of his home in the 1200 block of Fargo Avenue in Spirit Lake and shot his next-door neighbor, who was sitting in a chair on her patio, in the leg.
SIOUX CITY | A midtown neighborhood is changing in the 1900 blocks of Jackson and Nebraska streets.

Homes are being sold along both sides of the street, soon to be demolished.

That is being done in order to get rid of the more-than-century-old Hunt Elementary School in the 2000 blocks of the streets, in order to build a new one just to the south by the year 2022.

Some people living in the area are fine with the changes, even though it means they must move.

"Just on this block alone, they are displacing 20 apartments, and that doesn't include the other street," Carmen Janssen said.

Janssen, who lives in one of six apartments in the chopped-up old Victorian home at 1909 Jackson, supports the new school. Janssen has lived in the rental unit for three years, and is debating whether to stay in Sioux City or move nearer to her hometown of Sheldon, Iowa.

She said the rentals don't get great upkeep, pointing to new upstairs graffiti from Thanksgiving week, while noting there are a lot of police calls to the neighborhood. That's why Janssen said "it is a blessing" to have a new $20.5 million school to in some way freshen up the neighborhood, which is far from an affluent portion of Sioux City.

"It is a godsend, because this place needs to go. It helps improve the community, with the school," Janssen said.

The current Hunt Elementary is at 615 20th St. The school dates to 1906, making it by far the oldest in the citys public school system.

Sioux City School District officials keep hitting early benchmarks in the planning process to construct a new Hunt Elementary School by 2022. They are nearing the quest to buy all needed 11 properties.

Also, the school board members on Monday made the decision not to add a third floor of classrooms, since there won't be enough students to warrant the $2 million cost.

District Director of Operations and Maintenance Brian Fahrendholz said plans are falling into place. A final design of the building is underway.

"We are pleased with our progress at this time...We are on schedule to open a new Hunt Elementary in the fall of 2022," Fahrendholz said.

The Sioux City School Board in August purchased the first of 11 properties needed for clearing, to have enough space to build the school. Properties have been bought on both sides of the 1900 block of Nebraska Street.

The school board on Monday approved the $170,000 purchase of a property owned by Lou and Janice Jackson at 1909 Jackson St., where Janssen lives, in a price that includes relocation and moving expenses. Others have gone for $120,000 and up, and the goal is to have all purchased by spring 2018.

Only three homes and two parking lots are left to buy to have all the land needed for the 80,000-square-foot school, which will house students from grades pre-kindergarten through fifth.

The school district is underway with one other school construction project, as the new Bryant Elementary School about nine blocks north is slated to open in August 2019.

While Hunt comes after Bryant, the details keep getting addressed with frequency. Also in the Monday school board meeting, board members followed the recommendation by the district's Building Oversight Committee to keep the school to two levels and not build a third floor.

Director of Elementary Education Brian Burnight said projected student numbers from the neighborhood did not necessitate building the school with three levels, particularly since that cost would be $2 million. He said there are 434 students now living in the Hunt attendance boundaries.

"A two-story Hunt will have the capacity for 450 students, allowing all students that reside in the neighborhood an opportunity to go to their local school. The addition of a third story would raise the capacity to 575 students, which is not warranted based on current and projected student numbers," Burnight said.
SIOUX CITY | Sioux City's two highest-paid employees could see a 4 percent pay bump next year.

The City Council will vote Monday whether to raise the salaries of city manager Bob Padmore and city attorney Nicole DuBois, effective Jan. 1, based on their performance evaluations.

Under the new proposed salaries, Padmore -- the city's highest-paid employee -- will make an annual salary of about $182,780 next year, along with a $5,200 car allowance. Padmore's salary had previously been $175,750.

DuBois' new salary will be $137,900 next year, up from $132,596 this year.

A survey of city manager salaries in Iowa conducted in April 2017 showed Padmore was the 10th-highest-paid city manager in the state under his previous salary. His new salary would put him at eighth-highest, according to the numbers in the survey. Sioux City is Iowa's fourth-largest city.

Iowa's top-paid city manager position is Cedar Rapids manager Jeff Pomeranz, whose base salary is $292,818, according to the report.

The job responsibilities of city managers and administrators differ due to different styles of government.

Padmore was appointed city manager in 2014 after a stint as assistant city manager. DuBois was hired by the city in November 2008 and was promoted from assistant city attorney to city attorney in October 2011.

Dubois' and Padmore's salaries are the only two directly approved by the council. Their performance reviews are also conducted by the mayor and council.

Old YMCA demolition

In other action, the council will consider the demolition of the former YMCA building at 722 Nebraska St. for the second time this year.

The council had deferred demolition of the vacant structure in July after hearing plans from Paul Bernard -- managing member of Residential Equity Partners LLC, the Concord, California-based company that owns the building -- to invest around $3.3 million in the property to turn the structure into an office building, for which he already has two prospective tenants.

The building has sat vacant since 2009, when the Siouxland YMCA sold it after moving across the river into the Norm Waitt Sr. YMCA building on the South Sioux City riverfront. It has changed hands twice since then, with conditions going downhill following gutting work that landed a former owner in prison for violation of asbestos removal standards.

An earlier version of this story included an incorrect last name of a city employee. The name has been corrected.
Grand Meander

Downtown Spencer, Iowa, comes alive with activity 5 to 7 p.m. on North Grand Avenue. Enjoy free samples of goodies and hot chocolate, children dancing, carolers caroling AND Santa will make his way down Grand starting at 6 p.m. to help light the Jaycees Christmas tree in front of the police station.

Monday Night Jazz

Come join us for an evening of jazz 7 p.m. with the Reggie Schive Big Band at The Marquee, 1225 Fourth St. $5 at the door!

Gloves of Love Program

Storm Lake Police Association invites citizens to join the members of the association in hanging childrens gloves and other items of donated clothing along with non-perishable food items on or near the tree at the Storm Lake Police Station, 401 E. Milwaukee Ave., Storm Lake, Iowa. After collecting the donated items the Police Association will take all of the donated items to the Upper Des Moines Office to be distributed to children and families in need throughout the community. Call 712-732-8010 for more information.
DES MOINES  The only member of the Iowa Senate not affiliated with one of the two major political parties said the 60,000 people he was elected to represent are being denied equal access to the legislative process because majority Republicans have refused to grant him committee assignments.

Sen. David Johnson of Ocheyedan, who changed his voter registration from Republican to No Party in June 2016 over his disagreements with now-President Donald Trump, said he is pressing for full committee participation in the upcoming 2018 legislative session.

Johnson said there is well-established precedent in Iowas legislative archives for Senate and House independent members to serve on committees. The refusal of Senate GOP leaders to grant him the customary committee assignment amounts to legislation without representation, he said.

Like every one of my Senate colleagues, I represent about 60,000 Iowans, yet last session Republican leadership rejected my repeated requests to be appointed to vote on standing committees, Johnson said in a statement Monday. Those are votes denied to my constituents, who have been largely left waiting at the committee altar.

In a Nov. 25 letter to Senate Secretary Charles Smithson, the chambers nonpartisan administrative officer, Johnson contended his independent status creates a third caucus with minority standing. Our chamber rules do not define majority and minority to mean a system of only two political parties, Johnson wrote. Neither does the Iowa Constitution.

Johnson said he has yet to receive an official response. The 2018 session convenes Jan. 8.

Republicans currently hold a 28-20-1 majority in the Senate, pending a Dec. 12 special election in District 3 to fill the vacancy caused by the recent resignation of Sen. Bill Anderson, R-Pearson.

Johnson noted that Senate Democrats gave up one voting seat so he could serve on the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee during the 2017 session. But, he said, that committee slot should go back to a Democrat. Johnson said Senate leaders need to follow a rule allowing him, like any senator, to serve on up to six standing committees, which mostly deal with policy matters.

I can introduce legislation and can vote on the Senate floor, he said. But Republican leaders have blocked that very critical middle step, voting in committee to determine whether proposed legislation advances to the full Senate.

According to Johnsons research, the last independent elected to the Iowa Senate was William Schmedika of Hardin County in 1923.

Included with my letter to the secretary are scores of pages copied from legislative documents showing that Sen. Schmedika was appointed to committees, was given bills to consider in subcommittee and voted in committee, Johnson said. My constituents are entitled to the same.

Johnson said he has not ruled out pursuing legal action if Senate officials do not comply.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix, R-Shell Rock, issued a statement saying Sen. Johnsons criticism is without merit given that as majority leader he only appoints members of the Senate majority to committee assignments.

Since Sen. Johnson chose not to be a Republican, he is not a member of the majority and is a member of the minority. As rule 34 states, Committee appointments shall be made by the majority leader for members of the majority, after consultation with the president, and by the minority leader for members of the minority, after consultation with the president.

His complaints regarding committee assignments should be addressed to the individual with authority to appoint minority members to committee assignments, the minority leader, Dix office said in its statement. The Senate minority leader currently is Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines.

Senate President Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny, issued a similar statement, saying that during the 2017 session, we updated the Senate rules to assure the minority leader will appoint minority members to committees and the majority leader will appoint majority members to Senate committees. We will continue this practice for the 2018 session.
SIOUX CITY | Jacquie Rygh fondly recalls visiting the Little Yellow Dog in his fenced-in doghouse in the lobby of the Martin Hotel, where her father worked.

The year was 1939; and the pup to be auctioned off to raise money for the Journal's Mr. Goodfellow Charity was a black Scottish Terrier named "Zero."

"I sat on the floor and played with that dog," said Rygh, who was 9 years old at the time and crazy about the pooch.

In fact, Rygh's father, Worth Waltermire had founded the Ancient and Effervescent Order of the Little Yellow Dog Auction Club three years earlier in 1936. Proceeds from the auction benefit the Mr. Goodfellow Charity, which provides gifts and books to underprivileged Siouxland children at Christmastime. The first pup, Skippy, was sold for $25.

The origins of the Mr. Goodfellow Charity, however, go back even further to 1914 when a reporter bought a needy boy and his sister a pair of mittens. That act of generosity sparked a desire to help others and the newspaper started a drive to help those in need. Over the years, the charity has grown into a community event spearheaded by the Ancient and Effervescent Order of the Little Yellow Dog Auction Club.

Oscar Hoberg, a Sioux City jeweler, took notice of Rygh's affection for Zero and told her father that he would place a single bid on the dog. If he ended up winning the auction, Hoberg said he would give the dog to Rygh.

"My dad told me all this and I was beyond belief being excited," Rygh said.

On auction day, one week before Christmas, the Martin Hotel lobby was packed with onlookers, many were farmers who had brought their own small farm animals to be put on the auction block, according to Rygh, who remembers the floor being covered with straw. She stood with her mother on a balcony scouring the crowd down below for Hoberg.

"I'm searching and searching for Mr. Hoberg, and I kept saying to my mother, 'I don't see Mr. Hoberg at all in this crowd,'" Rygh said. "I was beside myself. 'He's not down there. He's not down there in that crowd.'"

Five minutes before the close of the hour-long auction, Rygh said she heard a man shout, "$300," from the back of the lobby. The crowd grew silent. That bid was quite the chunk of change during the Great Depression.

"It knocked everybody for a loop," Rygh said of Hoberg's bid. "He walked forward and the action stopped at that point. ... I was presented the dog. He was playful and he never lost his beautiful black, glossy fur."

Decades later, the Mr. Goodfellow Charity remains close to Rygh's heart. Rygh, a longtime volunteer, has collected donations year after year for the charity to purchase Christmas gifts for children. Finally, in 2014, she became one of the first female members of the Auction Club.

"I was just absolutely thrilled by it. I'd been so involved over so many years," she said.

Gregg Lucken, a member of the Auction Club who has been involved with the Mr. Goodfellow Charity for more than 30 years, was among a group of five anonymous donors who bid $14,500 on Truffles, the 2012 Little Yellow Dog.

Lucken, who said he got involved with Mr. Goodfellow because he has a soft spot for children, unexpectedly became the chocolate-colored American water spaniel's owner.

"It kind of happened on the spur of the moment. She came home to live with us and has been a wonderful dog," he said of Truffles, who is a constant reminder of the Mr. Goodfellow Charity. "She likes to run and retrieve. She likes to swim. Other than that, she's just a very loving, cuddly dog that has been just a wonderful companion for us."

Lucken said he thinks the Mr. Goodfellow Charity has endured more than 100 years because it hasn't strayed from its mission and the need for it persists.

"The mission of Mr. Goodfellow is very simple and it's been this way for 100 years -- we feel that every child, no matter what their circumstances, deserves a gift at Christmastime. We don't deviate from that," he said.
Think a minuteWhen she was born in 1874 in the European nation of Hungary, Kincsem did not look at all like a champion racehorse. In fact, she so lacked the strong features of a winner that her owner immediately sold her.

Kincsem became the new owners least valuable horse, so he put her in the smallest, darkest stall at the end of the stable. A few nights later a small gang of gypsies stole Kincsem. The thieves were caught and the horse returned to her owner. He asked the gypsy leader why of all his 59 beautiful horses, the gypies had chosen to steal Kincsem? The gypsy chief answered: Horses, like people, do not have to be beautiful to be great.

Interestingly Kincsems name means My Fortune. Yet her size and features were not right for a race horse, especially her skinny hind legs. But in June of 1876, as a two-year-old she ran her first race...and won. No one was more surprised than her owner. Two weeks later she raced and won again!

Strangely, Kincsem started every race in last place. In those days they did not have starting gates, and she always stood lazily behind the starting line and did not begin running until after the other horses were already racing down the track. Then she would shoot from the starting line, kick in to high gear, and pass them all to win! Eventually Kincsem was entered to run against the winner of the German Derby, Europes biggest horse race. Ten thousand people watched in wonder as this ugly, skinny mare beat bigger, stronger stallions. There had never been a champion like this before...nor since. Incredibly, Kincsem won every race she ran as a two-year-old, and also as a three-year-old! In fact, to our knowledge no race horse in history has ever equaled Kincsems lifetime record. In 54 major races, she won every single race! This unwanted, skinny mare became the Queen of the Sport of Kings. One of the ugliest horses ever born became the greatest horse that ever lived. Maybe you have felt rejected or disrespected and looked down on. But the One Who created you values you as His unique masterpiece who is as important as any other person in the world. Others may see your apparent weaknesses but He sees your special strengths. He loves you the way He made you, and He does not want you to look like or be like anyone else. He designed you with your own special personality, abilities and appearance. If you ask Him to take full charge of your heart, Jesus will help you fully become the one-of-a-kind man or woman He made you to be. Just think a minute
PRINCE FREDERICK, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at so.md/expungeme.

(December 4, 2017)The Prince Frederick Barrack of the Maryland State Police (MSP) today released the following incident and arrest reports.DISORDERLY CONDUCT, RESISTING ARREST: On 11/27/2017 at 8:45 pm, Trooper First Class Costello, Trooper Keyser and Trooper Backus responded to a residence in the 2100 block of Chaneyville Rd. for an attempt to locate a wanted subject to serve an arrest warrant. The wanted subject was located, was cooperative and was placed under arrest. At that time, was walking towards the residence and became aggressive towards the officers while they were placing the arrested subject into the vehicle for transport. After numerous verbal commands to stay back and stop, Harrison continued to cause disruption. He was placed under arrest for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Both subjects were incarcerated in the Calvert County Detention Center.POSSESSION OF BUPRENORPHINE: On 11/28/2017 at 9:38, Trooper Backus responded to the Prince Frederick Walmart Parking Lot for a report of CDS activity being observed by an off-duty officer. A strong odor of marijuana was emitting from inside the vehicle where the activity was observed., was arrested for possession of Buprenorphine for which she did not have a prescription. Cunningham was incarcerated in the Calvert County Detention Center.THEFT: On 11/30/2017 at 8:43 am, Trooper First Class Harrod responded to the 1700 block of Goah Way in Sunderland for a reported theft. The victim reported a Christmas tree, a Candy Cane decoration and an extension cord were all removed from the front porch of the residence. Investigation continues.TELEPHONE MISUSE/HARASSMENT: On 12/1/2017 at 10:00 am, Trooper First Class Matthews received a report of telephone misuse and harassment complaint for a residence in Sunderland. The victim reported receiving threatening messages and repeated text and calls from a relative for over a month.d, was contacted by law enforcement and told to stop texting and calling the victim. Bell continued to leave threatening messages and sending repeated texts. An application for Charges requesting Bell be charged on a Criminal Summons has been completed.POSSESSION OF COCAINE: On 12/3/2017 at 2:06 am, Trooper First Class Costello stopped a vehicle on Rt. 4 near Fox Run Blvd. in Prince Frederick for traffic violations. A K-9 scan was requested and resulted in a positive alert., was found to be in possession of cocaine. He was arrested and incarcerated in the Calvert County Detention Center.DUI ARREST:, was arrested on 12/02/2017 @ 11:36 pm by TPR. R. Backus.
Citing a First Amendment violation, the anti-LGBTQ hate group Liberty Counsel filed a suit in federal court against the city of Tampa for enacting a ban on gay conversion therapy for minors.

Liberty Counsel is representing Robert Vazzo, LMFT, David Pickup, LMFT, and their minor clients and their parents in the case against the city. A noted figure in the gay conversion therapy industry, Pickup raised eyebrows last month when he introduced a flamboyant flag dancer as the opening act at an anti-LGBTQ conference in Texas.

According to a statement released by Liberty Counsel, "Ordinance 2017-47 violates the First Amendment by imposing a viewpoint and content-based prohibition on the speech of licensed professionals in Tampa who offer change counseling." Liberty Counsel further claims that the ordinance violates the rights of clients under the Florida Patient's Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

Tampa's ban on gay conversion therapy was passed by the City Council unanimously last April. The ban, which levies fines on mental health practitioners and counselors who engage who purport to change or curb a minor's sexual orientation or gender identity. Similar bans are in place in Miami Beach, Wilton Manors, Miami, North Bay Village, West Palm Beach, Bay Harbor Islands, Lake Worth, El Portal, Key West, Boynton Beach, Tampa, Delray Beach, Riviera Beach, Wellington, Greenacres, Boca Raton and Oakland Park.

Metro notes that under the ordinance, anyone caught engaging in the practice can be fined up to $1,000. Repeat offenders can face fines as high as $5,000. However, there is an exemption for those affiliated with religious organizations who are not licensed therapists.
At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, Expedition 54-55 prime crewmembers Scott Tingle of NASA (left) Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos, center) and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA, right) pose for pictures Nov. 29 in front of a Soyuz spacecraft simulator as part of their final crew qualification exam activities. They will launch Dec. 17 on the Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a five-month mission on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Elizabeth Weissinger. NASA

The next crew to launch to the International Space Station is in Russia today for traditional ceremonies before heading to the launch site in Kazakhstan. Back in space, the Expedition 53 crew is preparing for the departure and arrival of a pair of cargo ships next week.

Three new crew members from Russia, the United States and Japan are getting ready for their Dec. 14 launch aboard the Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft to the space stations Rassvet module. The Expedition 54-55 crew consists of Soyuz Commander and veteran station resident Anton Shkaplerov and first-time Flight Engineers Scott Tingle and Norishige Kanai.

The trio was in Star City today talking to journalists before heading to Moscow to tour Red Square and lay flowers at the Kremlin Wall where famed cosmonauts are interred. Next, the crew will head to the launch site Dec. 4 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan where they will stay for final launch preparations at the Cosmonaut Hotel.

Meanwhile, the orbiting Expedition 53 crew is packing the Cygnus cargo craft with trash before it ends its mission next week. First, ground controllers will remotely detach Cygnus from the Unity module with the Canadarm2 on Dec. 5. Cygnus will then be maneuvered over the Harmony module for a GPS test to assist NASAs Commercial Crew Program.

Next, astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba will take over the robotics controls and release Cygnus back into space on Dec. 6. It will orbit Earth until Dec. 18 then enter the Earths atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean for a fiery, but safe demise.

SpaceX is getting ready to replenish the station with its Dragon cargo craft scheduled to deliver about 4,800 pounds of crew supplies and science gear. Dragon is targeted to launch Dec. 8 from Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket and take a two-day trip to the station. Vande Hei and Acaba are training to capture Dragon with the Canadarm2 when it reaches a point 10 meters from the station. Ground controllers will them remotely install Dragon to the Harmony module where it will stay until Jan. 6.

On-Orbit Status Report

Probiotics Operations: Today a crewmember conducted the second half of the third sampling phase for the JAXA Probiotic investigation that began on GMT 331 with fecal sample collections. Todays activities included saliva sample collections and a questionnaire. Some species of harmful bacteria such as Salmonella grow stronger and more virulent in the microgravity environment of space. At the same time, the human immune system is weaker in space, leading to increased health risks. The objective of the Probiotics investigation is to study the impact of continuous consumption of probiotics on immune function and intestinal microbiota in astronauts under closed microgravity environment This investigation studies the effects of beneficial bacteria (Probiotics) to improve crew members intestinal microbiota as well as their immune function on long-duration space missions.

TangoLab-1 Transfer from Cygnus (OA-8): After completing the short demonstration of TangoLab-1 operations in Cygnus that began on GMT 326 last week, today the crew powered down and removed TangoLab-1 from Cygnus and returned the facility back to EXPRESS Rack 4. The facility will be powered back up in ER4 and returned to its nominal capability. TangoLab-1 is a reconfigurable general research facility designed for microgravity research and development and pilot manufacturing aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Plant Habitat Sound Level Meter (SLM) Measurements: The crew performed ten Plant Habitat acoustic measurement sets with varying Environmental Control System (ECS) fan speeds between each measurement set. The fan speeds were controlled via ground command. The data from the measurements will be used to assess the environmental factors when the Plant Habitat facility is used in the JEM. The Advanced Plant Habitat Facility (Plant Habitat) is a fully automated facility that will be used to conduct plant bioscience research on the International Space Station (ISS). It occupies the lower half of the EXpedite the PRocessing of Experiments to Space Station (EXPRESS) rack and two International Subrack Interface Standard (ISIS) drawers, providing a large, enclosed, environmentally controlled chamber.

NeuroMapping: Today two 52S crewmembers set up the NeuroMapping hardware and performed their Flight Day 90 tests in strapped in and free floating body configurations. The NeuroMapping investigation studies whether long-duration spaceflight causes changes to brain structure and function, motor control, or multi-tasking abilities. It also measures how long it would take for the brain and body to recover from possible changes. Previous research and anecdotal evidence from astronauts suggests movement control and cognition can be affected in microgravity. The NeuroMapping investigation performs structural and functional magnetic resonance brain imaging (MRI and fMRI) to assess any changes that occur after spending months on the ISS.

Human Research Program (HRP) Collections (Biochemical Profile and Repository): A 51S crewmember conducted his return minus 15 Day (R-15) blood, and urine sample collections to support the Biochemical Profile and Repository experiments. The samples were placed in the Minus Eighty Degree Celsius Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI).

The Biochemical Profile experiment tests blood and urine samples obtained from astronauts before, during, and after spaceflight. Specific proteins and chemicals in the samples are used as biomarkers, or indicators of health. Post-flight analysis yields a database of samples and test results, which scientists can use to study the effects of spaceflight on the body.

Repository is a storage bank used to maintain biological specimens over extended periods of time and under well-controlled conditions. This repository supports scientific discovery that contributes to our fundamental knowledge in the area of human physiological changes and adaptation to a microgravity environment and provides unique opportunities to study longitudinal changes in human physiology spanning many missions.

Earth Imagery from ISS Target Operations: The crew captured images and video footage of the Namib Desert, the Mediterranean at Night, Fishing Boats, along the Gulf of Thailand, and Southern Tip of India. The Earth Imagery from ISS investigation creates a series of videos, showcasing Earth from space. These videos will be taken with cameras on the International Space Station in 6K hi-resolution, then integrated into videos for screensavers for public enjoyment, exploration, and engagement.

Dragon OBT: In preparation for the upcoming arrival of SpaceX-13 Dragon, the crew performed training of the offset grapple case for Dragon capture. The crew performed a series of onboard training (OBT) sessions to maintain proficiency prior to a vehicle arrival.

Cygnus cargo operations: Disposal cargo loading operations continued on the OA-8 Cygnus vehicle. Today, the crew removed TangoLab-1, and loaded disposal cargo on the vehicle. Cargo loading will continue until hatch closure, which is planned for Tuesday, December 5th.

Todays Planned Activities

All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.

Marrow Breath And Ambient Air Sample Collection  Subject

ARED Photo/TV Reminder

HRF Generic Frozen Blood Collection Double Spin Collection

Probiotics Saliva Operations

HRF Generic Refrigerated Centrifuge Double Spin Configuration

Probiotics Salive Sample MELFI Insertion

HRF Generic Urine Collection Male  Subject

Probiotics Question

HRF Generic Sample MELFI Insertion

MORZE. Log Entry of Liquid and Food (Medicine) Intake

Max Cycle Ergometer w/ Vibration Isolation & Stabilization (CEVIS) Portable PFS Partial Set Up

Max Cycle Ergometer w/Vibration Isolation & Stabilization (CEVIS) Portable PFS Power Up

HRF Generic Refrigerated Centrifuge Spin Conclude

ISS HAM Service Module Pass

Environmental Health System (EHS)  Surface Sample Kit (SSK) Collection/Incubation

NeuroMapping Experiment Neurocognitive Test  Subject

Return equipment conference Tagup with specialists

Verification of ??-1 Flow Sensor Position

??? Maintenance

Conference of Search and Rescue (????) specialists with returning crew

HRF Generic Frozen Blood Collection Conclude And Stow

Max Cycle Ergometer w/Vibration Isolation & Stabilization (CEVIS) Portable PFS Subject

Diagnostics of FGB ???? instruments 11?156?. Tagup with specialists

Diagnostics of FGB Power Supply System Filter Units (??-2) and Main Bus Assembly (???-2).

HRF Generic Sample MELFI Retrieval And Insertion Operations

Crew Departure Prep

Waste & Hygiene Compartment (WHC) Water Container (???) Remove and Replace

Max Cycle Ergometer w/Vibration Isolation & Stabilization (CEVIS) Portable PFS Partial Stow

Orthostatic Stability Evaluation with LBNP (without PC)

Environmental Health System (EHS)  Microbial Air Sampler (MAS) Kit Sample Collection

TangoLab-1 From Cygnus Move

Temperature and Humidity Control (THC) Oxygen Generation System (OGS) Avionics Air Assembly (AAA) Flow Measurement

Crew Departure Preparations for Return to Earth

Environmental Health System (EHS)  Sound Level Meter (SLM) Setup and Operations

On-board Training (OBT) Dragon Offset Grapple

Flushing ???

MORZE. Experiment setup

TIMER. Experiment setup and initiation of video recording

MOTOCARD. Experiment Session. Tagup with specialists

Photo/TV Camcorder Setup Verification

MOTOCARD. Operator Assistance with the Experiment

Onboard Training (OBT) SSRMS Debrief Conference

Onboard Training (OBT) Robotics On-board Trainer (ROBoT) Setup

N2 Nadir Hatch to Unlatch Hardstop

Inventory Management System (IMS) Conference

Photography of ??228 mockup temperature sensors on the external surface of MRM2

Countermeasures System (CMS) Max Cycle Ergometer w/Vibration Isolation & Stabilization (CEVIS) Portable PFS Conclude

Multi Omics Item Gathering

Transfer Cygnus Cargo Operations

TIMER. Experiment Ops Video Termination and Cleanup

Manufacturing Device Feedstock Canister, and Extruder Exchange

Acoustic Monitor Setup for Static Measurements

Plant Habitat Sound Level Meter Data Transfer and Stow

Cygnus Cargo Operations Conference

Flight Director/ISS CREW CONFERENCE

Photo T/V (P/TV) Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) Exercise Video Stow

Completed Task List Activities

Orbital ATK-8 Cargo Environment Sensor (CES) Data Download

Ground Activities

All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.

SSRMS ops to support Dragon Offset Grapple OBT

Standard commanding

Three-Day Look Ahead:

Friday, 12/01: Max CEVIS, Sabatier Return, ZBOT Hardware Stow, Circadian Rhythms

Saturday, 12/02: Weekly Housekeeping, Crew Off Duty

Thursday, 11/30: Crew Off Duty

QUICK ISS Status  Environmental Control Group:

Component  Status

Elektron  On

Vozdukh  Manual

[???] 1  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV1)  On

[???] 2  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV2)  Off

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab  Operate

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3  Standby

Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab  Idle

Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3  Operate

Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA)  Shutdown

Urine Processing Assembly (UPA)  Standby

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab  Full Up

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3  Off
Development practitioners and policymakers are increasingly experimenting with public-private partnerships (PPPs) in agricultural value chains. These PPPs aim to bring private sector expertise and market opportunities to marginalised farmers through high quality value chains. But do they work for farmers?

Research Ive carried out on four PPPs in Ghana (maize), Indonesia (cocoa), Rwanda (tea) and Uganda (oil palm), all supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), found clear benefits. Outcomes of the PPPs included new investment in impoverished regions, an increased availability of inputs and finance for farmers, and productivity gains. Despite these results, however, farmers were often dissatisfied with the arrangements. At one level this is perhaps unsurprising, as there is often distrust between farmers and their buyers. However, what was puzzling for me was that where the results in terms of productivity and short-term household gains were the strongest (Uganda), the farmers were the least satisfied.

The conclusion I reached is that farmer satisfaction with value chains is not only determined by tangible results, but also judged on the fairness with which they are being treated, in terms of the decision-making processes within the chain and the related behaviour of chain partners. Relevant factors that affect this include:

Transparency  the sharing of relevant information  on procedures, plans and objectives, alongside price and market information  with farmers who are supported to make sense of it all. A positive example here comes from the PPP in Ghana, where farmers not only had information on prices, crop budgets, loan applications and the selection of input providers, but also support from a local NGO to better understand this information.

 the sharing of relevant information  on procedures, plans and objectives, alongside price and market information  with farmers who are supported to make sense of it all. A positive example here comes from the PPP in Ghana, where farmers not only had information on prices, crop budgets, loan applications and the selection of input providers, but also support from a local NGO to better understand this information. Two-way communication and conflict resolution measures  open communication between farmers and buyers that enables farmers to understand (and contest) decisions, as well as help buyers to better understand the farmers context. Communication mechanisms should also allow farmers to voice complaints and suggestions, and ensure that concerns are acted on. In Ghana, again, district value chain committees meet regularly, providing a forum for exchange and a mechanism for dispute arbitration.

 open communication between farmers and buyers that enables farmers to understand (and contest) decisions, as well as help buyers to better understand the farmers context. Communication mechanisms should also allow farmers to voice complaints and suggestions, and ensure that concerns are acted on. In Ghana, again, district value chain committees meet regularly, providing a forum for exchange and a mechanism for dispute arbitration. Informal but reliable agreements  to purchase crops or provide ongoing support. Such agreements provide stability and security based on mutual understanding, but do not impose limiting conditions on farmers, unlike formal contracts (which are often used to enforce conditions on farmers, rather than protect their interests). In both Rwanda and Uganda, substantial company investment in local processing factories represented a very tangible long-term commitment. However, in Uganda, the enforcement of loan repayments based on poorly understood contracts was a point of grievance.

 to purchase crops or provide ongoing support. Such agreements provide stability and security based on mutual understanding, but do not impose limiting conditions on farmers, unlike formal contracts (which are often used to enforce conditions on farmers, rather than protect their interests). In both Rwanda and Uganda, substantial company investment in local processing factories represented a very tangible long-term commitment. However, in Uganda, the enforcement of loan repayments based on poorly understood contracts was a point of grievance. Farmer empowerment  through strengthening collective action (rather than imposing farmer organisation from the top down) and fostering interdependence between farmers and buyers. In Rwanda, although farmers are dependent on the factory, they also control half of the land producing tea, creating an interdependence between the factory and the farmers.

Building these factors into PPP arrangements enables farmers to participate in decision-making and wield some power in value chains. They are not simple solutions. However, the purpose of governments engaging with and supporting companies through PPPs is not to support private investments that would have happened anyway. PPPs should improve the quality of value chain relationships and create public benefits, which would not be attained through market forces alone.
The majority of food and other agricultural outputs worldwide are produced by smallholder farmers, but they often have problems participating in profitable value chains. Power and information are divided asymmetrically between partners. Producers are often not sure if there will be buyers next season and what the current market prices are, while buyers are not sure that producers will keep their commitment to supply the agreed quantities at the expected quality.

Our experience shows that in order to link smallholder producers to profitable value chains in an inclusive, well-informed and empowered manner, they need to be given special attention and focus in public-private partnerships. For this purpose, the public-private-producer-partnerships (4Ps) approach was developed. Over the last 3 years, the development organisation, SNV, has implemented the Partnering for Value project funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development with the aim to elaborate the 4P approach. We used independent brokering services in five countries (El Salvador, Mozambique, Senegal, Uganda and Vietnam) to bring producers (and their organisations), private enterprises and public-sector actors together.

During this process, we found that a number of dimensions linked to commitment, trust, governance and capacity contribute to the success and sustainability of these partnerships.

Creating trust and commitment

Partners formulated commitments towards each other, which formed the basis for a 4P arrangement. Through a joint process of business plan development, implementation and review, the partners developed trust and confidence in each other.

Smallholders often complain about the price they get for their products: they dont know if the price on offer, or the market price, is a fair price which gives them a good profit. Companies, on the other hand, often grumble that producers are not reliable and side-sell their produce despite prior agreements, even when inputs are supplied in advance by the company.

An effective 4P partnership has partners who show a high level of accountability towards each other based on trust, commitment and discipline. If a group of producers signs an agreement to supply 20 t of grain to a processor, they should keep that agreement. The same holds of course for the buying enterprise, who should keep their off-take commitment and pay as agreed.

Through joint action, individual smallholders have shown to be able to empower themselves, make informed choices and negotiate better deals. The neutral broker often had an important role in facilitating this process and making sure that the voice of producers was heard.

Governance of the partnership

In 4Ps, the producers are not only seen as suppliers of raw materials, but as partners who have an equal say in decision-making on important points, such as who will be responsible for post-harvest storage and warehousing, or how input supply will be organised so that producers can maximise time efficiency.

We learned that regular face-to-face review meetings between the partners, facilitated by the neutral broker, are important to avoid friction or conflict. At the same time, misunderstandings, differences of opinion, or false assumptions are inevitable and every partnership goes through such a phase. The role of the broker is essential in these early stages to mediate between partners and hold the partnership together.

A second important learning is that the partnership should be governed by some sort of written agreement. These should, however, not be exclusive agreements in which one partner forces the other partner to only do business with them. Producers should have the liberty to engage in multiple agreements with different buyers, as long as they respect each agreement and vice versa.

Capacity development

Partnership brokering is more than just bringing partners around the table and facilitating the development of a shared business plan and agreement. The business cycle should be supported by a capacity development trajectory, which enables partners to better understand each others needs.

This capacity strengthening will, in most cases, be focused on improved business practices and management skills. Many rural farm entrepreneurs and rural agro-enterprises do not yet have an established business culture of record keeping, and therefore do not have the records to inform their decision-making or convince potential financiers to invest in the growth of their business venture.

4P as a tool for development

The bottom line of the 4P concept remains, of course, that such a partnership brings benefits to smallholders, such as their increased confidence to operate in high-value markets. We have seen that producers participating in 4P partnerships get access to better inputs and can thus produce a higher value harvest, which sells at a higher price. At the end of the day, the producer needs to make a profit. The fact that partners are working together and are even continuing the 4P partnership beyond the project is a highly valued result for us, in which the producers of these partnerships are taking part in agricultural markets as real entrepreneurs.
Though Puerto Rico has moved off the front pages of the news, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Maria two months ago is nonetheless still very real citizens of the island, and many are still in major need of assistance. If you live in Portland, you can help aid your fellow Americans by taking part in Portland Feeds Puerto Rico, a weeklong pop-up series featuring Puerto Rican-based chefs and barista taking over the kitchens and espresso machines all around town. And the first coffee event takes place tomorrow with 2014 and 2015 Puerto Rico Latte Art Champion and owner of Santruce-based Cafe Comunion Abner Roldan taking over Water Avenue Coffee.

Roldan has been active over the past two months, trying to raise funds to reopen his cafe. Now that his GoFundMe has reached its $5,000 goal, Roldan continues to raise funds for others in Puerto Rico. Starting at Water Avenue tomorrow, Roldan is teaming up with Kali Solackowner of Cafe Regina in Santruceto serve coffee and chocolate-covered churros from Portalnds 180 Xurros, with the proceeds going to the Cosa Nuestra Relief Fund and the Animal Rescue relief fund.

Roldan and Solack will then move on to Foxy Coffee on Wednesday to serve coffee from Puerto Rico with games of dominoes, traditional Puerto Rican music, and more churros. On Friday, the duo will be taking over Stumptown Coffees downtown location for more coffee and more churros. Their last stop will be on Sunday, where they will join forces with visiting chefs Paxx Caraballo and Mario Pagan at Ataula Restaurant for a Puerto Rican brunch service.

Though not hosting Roldan or Solack, Upper Left Roasters is joining a handful of restaurants, cocktail bars, and wine spots featuring specials as part of the fundraising efforts. Just ask for the #PDX4PR special.

For more information on PDX Feeds Puerto Rico and to see a full list of participating locations, visit their official website. And if you are unable to attend but still want to help their cause, #PDX4PR is accepting donations directly through their website.

But Id rather help out by drinking coffee and eating churros.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

*top image via PDX Feeds Puerto Rico
Western Australian Racing Industry Hall of Fame Inductee Fred Kersley met celebrated American trainer Erv Miller at the barrier draw function for the 2017 TABtouch Inter Dominion Final.

Born on December 11, 1966 in the Amish community of Arthur in Illinois, Miller has put together a remarkable record as a trainer, and since the USTA began keeping training records in 1992, Miller has trained 5,100 winners of some $78,691,123 in stakes.

Those figures place Miller in fourth place on the stakes-money won list of American trainers and third on the list of leading trainers by number of races won.

By way of comparison, Western Australias leading trainer, in terms of career wins, Gary Hall Sr., has trained the winners of some 2,446 races and $33,619,313 in the same period. Kersley trained 2,285 winners, including 1,565 in Perth, where he was a 14-time Premiership Trainer before switching to Thoroughbreds where he gained fame as the trainer of the legendary Perth galloper Northerly.

Northerly won 19 of his 37 career starts and stakes of $9,341,850, including nine Group One wins in the Cox Plate (2), Australian Cup (2), Underwood Stakes (2), Caulfield Cup, Yalumba Stakes and Railway Stakes.

In 2004, Miller was honoured by the Illinois Harness Horsemans Association with its Person of the Year Award, and in 2005 Miller was presented with the Brian Pinske Memorial Award for his achievements on the Grand Circuit.

That same year, 2005, Miller won the Glen Garnsey Trainer of the Year Award from the United States Harness Writers Association and the Delvin Miller Trainer of the Year Award from the Grand Circuit.

Among the better horses that Miller has trained are the 2010 Breeders Crown Two-Year-Old Colt and Gelding Trot champion Manofmanymissions, the three-time Dan Patch Award winning pacer Loyal Opposition (56 wins in 98 starts and $2,861,294) and the unbeaten two-year-old pacing filly Incredible Tillie (12 wins from 12 starts as two-year-old for $512,782).

Miller also trained Lis Mara, Shark Gesture and Shadyshark Hanover, and that trio of stallions is currently standing at stud in either New Zealand or Australia.

Erv and his son Marcus like the chances of Western Australias champion Chicago Bull in the Inter Dominion Final, and at the barrier draw they followed their opinion by paying second top price of $2,550 for Chicago Bull in the Inter Dominion Calcutta.

(Australian Harness Racing)
Dresden Agricultural Society President Lucille Laprise has been quoted as saying that Dresden Raceway will continue on, even if the slot machines which are currently located at the track end up being relocated to Chatham in a few years' time.

In an article by Chatham This Week, Laprise conveyed that racing at the track will continue with or without slot-machine gaming.

The raceway will still continue. It was just an added feature to have the slots next door to us, so they complemented one another. The races are forging ahead strong, so well be fine.

Two weeks ago, a spokesman for Gateway Casinos went on the record as saying that slot machines will remain at Dresden Raceway until at least 2020. The statement came amid comments from municipal officials which indicated that Gateway is planning to eventually relocate its Dresden gaming operations to Chatham.

Laprise has echoed the same sentiment.

She told Chatham This Week that a representative from Gateway contacted her directly in regard to the potential move. They just wanted to give us a heads up to what their plans were," Laprise was quoted as saying.

News of the potential relocation comes as Gateway is in discussions with the Western Fair District about the future of gaming and potential expansion at the London, Ont. fairgrounds.

(With files from Chatham This Week)
By Delana Isles

A CASE built entirely around circumstantial evidence and which was said not to be "sure win by the prosecutor, was this week swiftly voided by the Court of Appeal.





The three justices convened on Monday (November 27) to deliberate Cortez Simmons conviction and life sentence for the murder of Kaziah Burke.





But it was quickly evident that the 2013 murder of the young father is not yet solved to the satisfaction of the court, as the judges wasted little time in rejecting the guilty verdict of 11 out of the 12 jurors and a subsequent life sentence by the chief justice.





Representing Simmons were attorney Alvin Garland and Queens Counsel Jacqueline Samuels Brown, who presented arguments in favour of no case submissions on the part of the prosecution as well as whether Simmons should be granted an acquittal or a new trial.





The justices, who presented a swift judgement in quashing the conviction after reviewing written submissions, were however not sold on the arguments for acquittal, and instead ordered that Simmons be retried.





Trinidadian jurist, Evans Welch represented the Crown as a special prosecutor.





Death of a father

Burke was shot multiple times and killed on April 13, 2013, at Uncle Doughs bar on Airport Road in Providenciales.





Simmons was first convicted on March 25, 2015, after an intense three weeks and three days trial.





Following the verdict, the prosecutor had told the press that he did not think it was a sure win as the case was built on circumstantial evidence.





He said: "What I would say, the evidence was not overwhelming but it was sufficient that the conviction was safe and was on good grounds, but it certainly was not an overwhelming or the strongest case I have ever prosecuted but there was enough which warranted the verdict that came back.





Simmons was sentenced to life in prison by Chief Justice Margaret Ramsay-Hale following the verdict by the 12 member jury, of which 11 found him guilty of murder, and one not guilty.





Before delivering their verdict, the jury had requested the transcripts of the two forensic analysis of the gunshot residue (GSR) found on Simmons truck to help in their deliberations.





The transcript they requested related to a single particle of gunshot residue that police had lifted from Simmons truck.





The prosecutions expert from the United States, Michael Martinez, was able to analyse the residue and prove that a firearm was recently fired, hence the transmission of GSR from the defendants hand to the door handle.





The other GSR transcript requested by the jury related to the defences forensic expert from the United Kingdom, Angela Shaw, who testified that such a small amount of residue is not tested in her jurisdiction and that it could have gotten on to the handle by environmental contamination.





However, the chief justice had informed the jury that those transcripts could not be provided, and sent them back to the jury room for further discussions.





Shortly after they came back with a verdict of 10 guilty, two not guilty. But they were sent back by the judge, who instructed them to try to reach a unanimous verdict, or a verdict of 11 to one.





About an hour and a half later, the foreman advised the judge that they could not reach a unanimous verdict; but had managed to reach a verdict of 11 to one.





Ramsay-Hale accepted the verdict and sentenced Simmons to life imprisonment.





GSR evidence

Responding to a query as to the effect the GSR evidence had on the verdict, the lawyer noted that it is very difficult to say.





At the time, the prosecutor had expressed uncertainty as to the effect that the GSR testimony had on the jury.





He had also stated that he would not have pursued a prosecution on the basis of just the GSR alone, a single particle, but with all of the circumstantial evidence taken together, then a different situation arises.





In her directions to the jury, the chief justice had told the jury that they could reject the GSR evidence, but can still consider the rest of the evidence when determining the guilt or innocence of the accused.





One of the most significant testimonies during the 2015 trial came from Booker Odena, who testified that he had given the gun back to Simmons after a shooting incident at the Digicel cinema on Leeward Highway on March 17, 2013.





It was later established by forensic evidence that the same gun used in that shooting was used to kill Burke on April 13.





However, it was later established during the trial that Odena had lied to the police about being the shooter at the cinema shooting, but later confessed after he was shown video footage which showed he was the gunman on March 17.





The court heard that after seeing the footage, Odena admitted to the police that he took the gun from Simmons and fired it while at the cinema, but that he had given the gun back to Simmons following the incident.





The prosecution presented that Simmons was the last known person to have possession of the gun, and that the jury should believe that Odena was telling the truth about that even though he had initially lied to the police.





In further directions to the jury before the verdict, the chief justice had directed them that if they do not accept Odenas testimony then that would be the end of the case.





Simmons girlfriend, Aisha Freitas had testified on behalf of her boyfriend, telling the court that on the night Burke was killed, the accused arrived home and told her that they were leaving as some people would be coming by to make trouble.





Freitas told the court that she and the defendant then drove around in his white Tacoma truck, which video footage presented in court showed had stealthily driven away from the vicinity of the murder scene shortly before.





She testified that they eventually drove to a deserted spot in Discovery Bay where they spent the night, before returning home the following morning where he was arrested by police who arrived at his home.




By Olivia Rose

PREMIER Sharlene Cartwright Robinson has urged the international community to pledge their commitment to help rebuild countries and territories ravaged by hurricanes Irma and Maria.





The TCI leader led a delegation to the Caricom-UN High Level Pledging Conference at the UN headquarters in New York last week.





The two-day event explored how UN and Caricom member states could pool their resources and cultivate a shared vision geared towards Building a more climate-resilient community.





The TCI, as a Caricom associated member state, had the opportunity to deliver a presentation on the territorys recovery needs, priorities and recovery strategies following the impact of the hurricanes.





Premier Cartwright Robinson in her presentation to the UN and Caricom under the theme: Vision for a resilient Caribbean - Building partnership for transformation called on all partners to honor the pledge to the 2030 agenda commitment which states "leave no one behind.





She said: "Collaborate with us in achieving a proactive, climate-smart, community driven, bottom-up approach to a more sustainable and resilient Turks and Caicos Islands.





The premier reminded the gathering that building back better is expensive, and not an easily attainable goal, especially since a high percentage of the territorys population was adversely affected with no insurance benefits.





"Hurricanes Irma and Maria impacted all islands across the Turks and Caicos Islands, she said.





"The immediate challenge, apart from the provision of the basic human needs of food, water and shelter, was to restore communications - most essential in an archipelago, restore electricity, water, and provide support to the hospital and to aid in the safe departure of tourists.





She added: "Humanitarian aid critical assessments have shown that four to five feet of coastal erosion was recorded at the popular Grace Bay beach.





"This paints a lucid picture of the adverse effects on our coastal environment that is hinged on our main bread winner - tourism.





She stressed that there is an urgent need to engage in coastal protection efforts in the TCI.





"Humanitarian aid, particularly development action is also critical for the Turks and Caicos Islands at this time; CDEMAs Initial Damage Assessment Report revealed that 80 percent of the housing stock was damaged due to the impact of hurricane Irma.





"Five hundred and eighty households across the islands received level one through four damage to their homes.





Premier Cartwright Robinson leveraged the opportunity to encourage experts with strong technical experience in urban and land planning and building code application, particularly roofing design, to assist the Turks and Caicos Islands in its rehabilitation process.





She called on the conference to reverse traditional development principles, such as, "relief first and development later.





Delivering the keynote address at the high level meeting, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said: "A new and better deal is needed for Caribbean islands if they are to build climate resilience.





He spoke of seeing a "level of devastation I had never seen in my life in places like Dominica and Barbuda.





It is estimated that $1.1 billion worth of damage was caused by hurricanes in the Caribbean this year, with total economic losses of $400 million.





Guterres called on financial institutions and donors attending the conference to work together to achieve a "new and better deal with coordinated risk sharing and concessional lending terms.





"Today must be about more than speeches and pledges.





He added: "We should not let the people be punished once by nature and twice by outdated economic policies.





He said the meeting should be seen as an opportunity for countries to forge a partnership for a better future.





Former US president Bill Clinton was the special guest at the post-lunch session of the conference.




Arrest order for 1 of Messi's brothers

AP, Buenos Aires :

A prosecutor in Argentina has ordered the arrest of one of Lionel Messi's brothers.

Authorities say that Matias Messi illegally carried a gun. The weapon was found inside a blood-stained boat after he crashed it in the Parana river.Prosecutor Jose Luis Caterina says Messi is being investigated and will eventually be detained for illegally possessing a firearm in "a suspicious context."The 35-year-old is recovering from a fractured jaw and other injuries at a hospital in Argentina's Santa Fe province.
US, South Korea begin largest-ever joint air drill

North Korea has called the US-South Korean exercises an \"all-out provocation\"

AFP :

The US and South Korea on Monday kicked off their largest ever joint air exercise, an operation North Korea has labelled an "all-out provocation", days after Pyongyang fired its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile.

The five-day Vigilant Ace drill-involving 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troops-began Monday morning, Seoul's air force said.

Pyongyang over the weekend blasted the drill, accusing US President Donald's Trump's administration of "begging for nuclear war".

The annual exercise comes five days after the nuclear-armed North test-fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the continental United States within range.

As tensions surged, US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican and foreign policy hawk, warned that the US was moving closer to "preemptive war" with the North.

"If there's an underground nuclear test (by the North), then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States," Graham told the CBS show "Face the Nation".

The isolated and impoverished North has staged six increasingly powerful atomic tests since 2006 -- most recently in September.

In recent years Pyongyang has accelerated its drive to bring together nuclear and missile technology capable of threatening the US, which it accuses of hostility.

"The preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures. Every missile test, every underground test of a nuclear weapon, means the marriage is more likely," Graham said.

His remarks echoed those of Trump's National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who told a security forum on Saturday that the potential for war with the North "is increasing every day".

This year's US and South Korean wargames feature a number of powerful jet fighters newly mobilised for the event, including six F-22s and 18 units of F-35 combat jets, the US air force said.

It also involves simulated precision attacks on the North's military installations, including its missile launch sites and artillery units, Yonhap news agency said, citing unnamed Seoul sources.

The North has boasted that the Hwasong 15 ICBM tested on Wednesday is capable of delivering a "super-large" nuclear warhead anywhere in the US mainland.

Analysts agree that the latest test showed a big improvement in potential range, but say it was likely achieved using a dummy warhead that would have been quite light.

They say a missile carrying a much heavier nuclear warhead would struggle to travel as far.

They are also sceptical that Pyongyang has mastered the sophisticated technology required to protect such a warhead from the extreme temperatures and stresses encountered as the missile hurtles back to Earth.

The latest launch, which saw the missile drop into Japan's economic waters, was condemned by Tokyo's parliament Monday, which slammed the North's rogue weapons programme as an "imminent threat".

"This is a frontal challenge against the international community that must not be tolerated," added the resolution by Japan's upper house, which came as the country's hawish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said talking to the reclusive state was "meaningless".

The North's leader Kim Jong-Un has presided over significant progress in the country's widely-condemned nuclear and missile programmes since taking power in 2011.
Syrian, Russian jets bomb residential areas in eastern Ghouta

People are seen during shelling in the town of Hamoria, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria,

Reuters, Amman :

Jets believed to be Syrian and Russian struck heavily crowded residential areas in a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus, killing at least 27 people and injuring dozens in the third week of a stepped-up assault, residents, aid workers and a war monitor said on Monday.

Civil defense workers said at least 17 were killed in the town of Hamoriya in an aerial strike on a marketplace and nearby residential area after over nearly 30 strikes in the past 24 hours that struck several towns in the densely populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta.

Four other civilians were killed in the town of Arbin, while the rest came from strikes on Misraba and Harasta, the civil defense workers said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said the casualties on Sunday were the biggest daily death toll since the stepped-up strikes began 20 days ago. The monitor said nearly 200 civilians were killed in strikes and shelling, including many women and children, during that period.

The Eastern Ghouta has been besieged by army troops since 2013 in an attempt to force the rebel enclave to submission.

The government has in recent months tightened the siege in what residents and aid workers have said is a deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war, a charge the government denies.

The United Nations says about 400,00 civilians besieged in the region face "complete catastrophe" because aid deliveries by the Syrian government were blocked and hundreds of people who need urgent medical evacuation have not been allowed outside the enclave.

Eastern Ghouta is the last remaining large swathe of rebel-held area around Damascus that has not reached an evacuation deal to surrender weapons in return for allowing fighters to go to other rebel-held areas farther north.

"They are targeting civilians ... a jet hit us there, no rebels or checkpoints," Sadeq Ibrahim, a trader, said by phone in Hamoriya.
Britain's May in Brussels for Brexit moment of truth

AFP :

British Prime Minister Theresa May will try to seal a deal on Brexit divorce terms with EU chiefs on Monday, with the Irish border still the key stumbling block as months of tense talks reach a decisive moment.

May will meet European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and EU president Donald Tusk in Brussels for what the bloc says is the "absolute deadline" for an improved offer from London.

European officials said a deal on separation issues-which would allow the opening of crucial talks on a future post-Brexit trade deal at an EU summit on December 15 -- was "difficult but doable".

But while there has been progress on Britain's Brexit divorce bill and the rights of European citizens living in Britain, the fate of the frontier between Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland risks torpedoing a deal.

"Discussions are in a sensitive place right now," Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Monday morning as the Irish cabinet prepared to hold a special meeting on the issue.

"Hopefully we'll find a way forward today but if we can't do that then the Irish government position isn't going to change."

Tusk effectively backed Ireland's right to veto the unlocking of the next phase of talks when he met Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin last week, saying if Ireland was not satisfied then neither was the EU.

London has however rejected the EU's deadline and, ahead of next week's summit, appears keen to push the talks to the wire.
First use of nuclear weapons would be counterproductive

Daryl G Kimball :

Over the past year, cavalier and reckless statements from President Donald Trump about nuclear weapons and his threat to unleash "fire and fury" against North Korea have heightened fears about Cold War-era policies and procedures that put the authority to launch nuclear weapons in his hands alone.

Partially in response, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for the first time since 1976, held a hearing on the "executive's authority to use nuclear weapons." The Nov. 14 hearing should be just the start of a process that leads to changes that reduce the risk of nuclear miscalculation and establishes that the United States will not be the first to use nuclear weapons.

Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. and Soviet/Russian nuclear arsenals have been slashed through verifiable arms reduction agreements. Yet, each side still deploys 1,550 strategic nuclear weapons as permitted by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which is far more than required to deter a nuclear attack.

Each maintains a significant portion of its land- and sea-based forces on a prompt-launch posture to guard against a "disarming" first strike. The resulting launch procedures would, in some scenarios, give the president only minutes to decide whether to avenge such an attack with hundreds of nuclear-armed missiles.

These policies increase the risk of catastrophic miscalculation. In the nuclear age, there have been several incidents in which false signals of an attack have prompted U.S. and Russian officials to consider, in the dead of the night and under the pressure of time, launching nuclear weapons in retaliation.

Continuing to vest such destructive power in the hands of one person and requiring launch decisions to be made in minutes, and without congressional authorization, is undemocratic and dangerous.

No reliable safeguards are in place to prevent an impulsive and irrational decision by Trump to use nuclear weapons.

Days after the Senate hearing, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, tried to assuage congressional concerns, saying he would push back against a nuclear strike order from the president if it were "illegal." That is cold comfort given the general acknowledged that, if the president insists, "we'll work out a legal option."

Rather than accept such empty assurances, Congress should demand and the Pentagon should provide more information on U.S. nuclear employment strategy, including targeting data, attack options, damage expectancy requirements, and estimated civilian casualties; and it should publicly review the legal rationale for these plans, which are currently not shared with members of Congress.

Despite the dangers, defenders of the status quo argue that altering the current system, including forgoing the first-use option, would undermine the credibility of deterrence and somehow encourage aggressors.

In reality, the current "launch under attack" policy is unnecessary because U.S. nuclear forces and command-and-control systems could withstand even a massive attack, particularly the submarine-based weapons, and remaining nuclear forces would be more than sufficient to deliver a devastating blow to any nuclear aggressor.

Eliminating the requirement to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles under attack would increase the time available for the president and other civilian and military advisers to more soberly weigh the possible use of nuclear weapons in retaliation for a warning of an attack against the United States or its allies.

Furthermore, given the conventional military superiority of the United States and its allies, there is no plausible circumstance that could justify legally, morally, or militarily the use of nuclear weapons to deal with a non-nuclear threat.

Nuclear weapons are not necessary to deter or respond to nuclear terrorism or to a potential chemical or biological weapons attack or cyberattack by state or nonstate actors. Even if there were to be a conventional military conflict with Russia or North Korea, the first use of nuclear weapons would be counterproductive because it would likely trigger an uncontrollable and potentially suicidal nuclear exchange.

As Vice President Joseph Biden said in remarks delivered in January 2017, "Given our non-nuclear capabilities and the nature of today's threats, it's hard to envision a plausible scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States would be necessary or make sense."

Given the indiscriminate, widespread, and long-term consequences of nuclear weapons, it is also hard to envision a nuclear first use scenario that is "legal" despite Pentagon claims that current nuclear weapons employment options meet the principles of "distinction and proportionality and seek to minimize collateral damage to civilian populations" as required by the Law of War.

The Senate's recent hearing on nuclear weapons use policy must not be its last. It is past time to move away from outdated and dangerous, prompt-launch nuclear procedures. The fate of millions of people should not depend on the good judgment of one person, no matter who he or she may be.



(Daryl G. Kimball is Executive Director, Arms Control Association).


Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy

Harun-or-Rashid :

Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (1892-1963) was a politician, Prime Minister of Pakistan. Born of a distinguished family of Midnapur in West Bengal in 1892, H S Suhrawardy obtained BSc (Hons.) and BCL degrees from Oxford University, and later on called to the Bar at the Gray's Inn, London. In 1920 he returned to India and got involved in active politics.

During his political career, Suhrawardy held various important offices including the Deputy Mayoralty of the Calcutta Corporation in 1924, Labour and Commerce Minister in AK Fazlul Huq's Praja-League coalition government formed following the 1937 elections, Civil Supplies Minister in the Khwaja Nazimuddin Ministry during 1943-1945, the Prime Minister (Chief Minister) of undivided Bengal during 1946-1947, Law Minister in Mohammad Ali's Cabinet in Pakistan during 1954-1955 and the Prime Minister of Pakistan during 1956-1957.

Suhrawardy was an able political organiser. He proved his ability while he had been the General Secretary of the Calcutta Khilafat Committee in the 1920s. Starting his practical political life as a labour leader in Calcutta, within a short period of time he succeeded in organising as many as 36 Trade Unions among seamen, railway employees, jute and cotton mills workers, rickshaw pullers, cart drivers, etc.

On the eve of the 1926 Council elections he founded the Independent Muslim Party. At the time of the next Council elections held in 1929, Suhrawardy organised a new body, namely the Bengal Muslim Election Board. He founded the United Muslim Party in Kolkata preceding the 1937 elections with himself as its Secretary.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah initiated a move to reinvigorate the Muslim League in order to contest the ensuing elections as an All India body of the Indian Muslims. At the call of Jinnah, Suhrawardy and his newly founded party joined his fold. It is thought that mostly due to Suhrawardy's organisational ability the Muslim League was able to form a coalition ministry with Fazlul Huq's Krishak Praja Party winning 39 seats on its own out of 121 Muslim seats. As its General Secretary from 1937-1943, Suhrawardy was engaged in organising the Bengal Provincial Muslim League throughout the length and breadth of the province.

Suhrawardy led the campaign against Fazlul Huq causing the collapse of his Ministry (1941-1943). He was the architect of the Muslim League's comprehensive victory in Bengal in the 1946 elections in which it secured 114 seats out of 121 reserved seats. This electoral success was seen by many as a justification of the Muslim demand for Pakistan.

Within a period of seven years from the establishment of Pakistan, the Muslim League was routed from East Bengal at the hands of the United Front in the first provincial elections held in 1954, in which Suhrawardy had a prominent role. He was one the leaders of the anti-Ayub united movement during 1962-63 under the banner of National Democratic Front (NDF).

Before partition, Suhrawardy upheld the interests of the Muslim community. In 1932 he attended the third Round Table Conference in London as a representative of his community. He was an ardent supporter of the Separate Electorate System for the Muslims. Suhrawardy was the mover of official resolution of the Delhi Muslim Legislators' Convention held on 7-9 April 1946 by the initiative of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. During his Chief Ministership there occurred the 'Great Calcutta Killings' on the occasion of the Muslim League's Direct Action Day (16 August 1946) in support of the demand for Pakistan.

On the eve of the 1947 partition Suhrawardy envisioned the establishment of a state in Eastern India comprising the whole of Bengal and Assam and the adjoining districts of Bihar. This came to be known as his scheme for Greater Independent Bengal. As it is widely known, on the eve of the 1947 partition Suhrawardy in collaboration with some Bangali Hindu leaders, namely, Sarat Chandra Bose, Kiran Shankar Roy and Satya Ranjan Bakshi initiated a move for a United Independent Bengal as a third dominion alongside India and Pakistan. Abul Hashim, the then Secretary of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, also extended his full support to the project. However, it was unsuccessful.

Unlike many others, Suhrawardy did not come to Pakistan immediately after partition. Rather he stayed back in Kolkata engaging himself in a peace mission along with Gandhi. On the other hand, his relation with the Muslim League high command, now at the helm of affairs of the new state of Pakistan, was far from cordial. In 1949, his membership of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly was terminated by the Liaquat government on a plea of not being a permanent resident of the country.

Later on when Suhrawardy involved himself in Pakistan politics he was in favour of solving the Bangali-non-Bangali problems within the framework of united Pakistan on the basis of equal rights and power-sharing. Thus, he became a wholehearted supporter of the parity formula between the two wings, and the creation of one unit in West Pakistan.

Suhrawardy was a firm believer in constitutional rule. This led him to join Mohammad Ali's 'Cabinet of Talents' in 1954 as Law Minister ignoring the initial reservation of his party.

He made a significant contribution to the framing of the 1956 Constitution of Pakistan. As Law Minister, he played a leading role in the signing of the 1955 Muree Pact between the leaders of the two wings of Pakistan which paved the way for the formulation of the Constitution.

As a politician, Suhrawardy was reputed for his pragmatism. For instance, in view of the overall backwardness of the Bengal Muslim community, he was a staunch supporter of separate electorate for them. However, as soon as Pakistan was established he opted for joint electorate holding the view that this was essential for the growth of a common nationhood among peoples irrespective of caste, creed, colour and religion. During his Premiership he got a bill adopted to this effect in the National Assembly of Pakistan. Suhrawardy breathed his last on 5 December 1963.

-Banglapedia
Female military pilots join UN Mission for first time

Two female military pilots Flight Lieutenant Nayma Haque and Flight LieutenantTamanna-E-Lutfi are joining The United Nations Peace Keeping Mission in Congo for the first time in Bangladesh.

UNB, Dhaka :

For the first time in the history of Bangladesh two female military pilots are joining the United Nations Peacekeeping mission in Congo.

Flight Lieutenant Nayma Haque and Flight Lieutenant Tamanna-E-Lutfi will leave here for Congo UN Mission on Thursday for one year, said an ISPR press release. Before their departure they spoke to media at BAF Base Bashar, Dhaka Cantonment on Monday. Considering professional risks and challenges for being a combat pilot, after necessary selection process, BAF selected the two female officers for basic helicopter conversion



flying training in Bell-206 helicopter in 18 Squadron of BAF Base Bir Sreshto Matiur Rahman, Jessore.

In the process, they started their ground training on 03 August, 2014 and on successful completion of ground training, they started their flying training on 23 September 2014. After approximate 25hours of training, they were able to fly solo flights successfully. On 17 December, 2014 both the female pilots successfully completed initial phase of primary helicopter flying training which is very important to become a helicopter pilot.

After Completion of 65hours of Basic Helicopter Conversion training, they performed duties in different operational squadron of BAF. They also completed training course on MI-17, MI-171 and MI-171 SH helicopters. They received training in aviation medicine course from India. They both performed as operational pilots in Operation Uttaron in CHT
Suhrawardy`s 54th death anniv today

Staff Reporter :

The 54th death anniversary of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy will be observed in the country today (Tuesday).

The unparallel leader of all Indian politics, who had dedicated his entire life to ensure the welfare of the people by upholding democracy, died at a Beirut hotel in Lebanon on this day (December 5) in 1963. He was alone in the hotel suite at the time of his death.

Suhrawardy was a Bengali politician and statesman in the first half of the 20th-century.

He served as the Premier of Bengal in British India and was the fifth Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Different political, socio-cultural and professional organisations have taken elaborate programmes on the occasion.

The programmes include placing wreaths at the grave of the great leader, discussions, Qurankhwani, Milad and Doa Mahfil.

Meanwhile, President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have issued separate messages on the occasion.

In his message, the President said Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy is a unique name in the history of politics and democracy in the sub-continent.

He said the nation remembers with due respect the contributions of Suhrawardy to establishing and flourishing democracy, and developing socio-economic condition of the people of this region.

The President expressed his belief that the life and works of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy will encourage the future generation to devote themselves in democratic spirit and people's welfare.

In her message, the Prime Minister said Suhrawardy worked throughout his life for establishing democratic rights of the people and flourishing non-communal politics.

He was vociferous in the struggle for socio-economic development of the Muslims in the subcontinent and upholding their political rights, she added.

The Prime Minister said mass people's organisation Awami League had flourished further under the skilled leadership of Suhrawardy.

Under the leadership of his successor Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the greatest Bangalee of All Time, Bangladesh achieved its independence, she added. Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy was born in a respectable Muslim family at Medinipur in West Bengal on September 8 in 1892.
BASIC Bank's ex-chairman Bachchu quizzed by ACC

bdnews24.com :

The Anti-Corruption Commission or ACC has questioned former BASIC Bank Chairman Sheikh Abdul Hye Bachchu over a Tk 35 billion loan fraud accusation.

Bachchu appeared at the ACC offices in Segunbagicha around 9:30am on Monday in answer to a summons. ACC officials began questioning him around 10:45am. The ACC began questioning people in connection with the loan fraud investigation on Oct 22. Bachchu says he believes he is not guilty of the loan fraud. He made the remark in response to a question from the media after the interrogation.

The former directors of BASIC Bank questioned so far are Md Anwarul Islam, Anis Ahmad, Quamrun Naher Ahmed, Prof Kazi Akhtar Hossain, Shakhawat Hossain, Fakhrul Islam, AKM Kamrul Islam, Jahangir Akhand Salim, Shyam Sunder Sikder and AKM Rezaur Rahman. The former BASIC Bank executives are being questioned after several rounds of Supreme Court observations regarding corruption at the bank.

The ACC opened an investigation into the state-run bank after allegations that Tk 35 billion in loans had been illegally distributed from the Gulshan, Dilkusha and Shantinagar branches between 2009 and 2011.

BASIC Bank is accused of giving loans without collateral and using false documents and fictitious names and organisations in violation of rules and regulations. After nearly four years of investigation, the ACC filed 56 cases at three police stations in Dhaka, accusing 156 individuals. Twenty-six are bank officials. The rest are connected to lending institutions and bank oversight organisations. But the absence of Bachchu and other prominent members of the board of directors on the list of suspects prompted controversy.

The ACC claimed they had not found any evidence of Bachchu's involvement.

The parliamentary standing committee on the finance ministry was unhappy with the ACC findings and the central bank opened a separate investigation into the matter. In February 2016, Finance Minister AMA Muhith claimed the investigation into BASIC Bank had found evidence of Bachchu's roles in frauds tied to loans, appointment and promotion. In August, the Supreme Court's Appellate Division expressed its anger that Bachchu and the board of directors had not been named suspects in loan frauds and money laundering.

The court warned the ACC not to 'pick and choose'. Facing criticism, an ACC director told the media that Bachchu would be called in for questioning, even though he was not on the list of suspects.

Bachchu, a former Jatiya Party MP, was appointed the chairman of the bank in 2009. His appointment was renewed in 2012. Bachchu resigned in 2014 amid pressure following the emerging allegations. The finance minister said Bachchu would not be let off the hook.
Acute gas crisis hits Tongi, Gazipur industrial belt

Anisul Islam Noor :

The industrial production in Tongi-Gazipur belt has been affected due to acute gas crisis as Petrobangla diverting of gas to upstream power plants, industrialists and Businessmen alleged.

Following gas crisis many manufacturing industries have been suffering due to damaged material or defect in product's quality. To avert such damage, the industry will be forced to shut down, said Ariful Haque, owner of dyeing factory in Gazipur.

Factories in the industrial belt are now operating at one-third of their capacity, which may lead to labour unrest and default of huge sum of bank loans," owner of a ceramics industry said.

Such disruption of production, he cautions, may even cause sudden shutdown of factories.

Concerned officials of Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Limited (TGTDCL), however, blamed the Petrobangla for gas crunch.



Concerned people said, if the gas crisis or low pressure of gas with poor electricity voltage is being continued for three to four months in the industrial belt, manufacture oriented industries would suffered immensely with poor electricity voltage. It often causes for huge volume of industrial wastage and reduction of production efficiency.

The industry insiders said, a factory in the belt requires 04 PSI (production per square inch) as optimum gas pressure but the pressure, at times, comes down to as low as 0.1 PSI, these days especially during the daytime. "Gas pressure in the area becomes normal around 10pm/11pm and stays for not more than 08 hours until 6am/7am," an entrepreneur of the industrial belt informed.

Asked, an official of Titas said they are at present getting nearly 250 million cubic meters (MCM) less in recent weeks against their current demand of 1,800 MCM gas in Titas franchise.

The downstream Titas franchise area covers greater Dhaka region, which includes Gazipur alongside some other adjoining districts, and greater Mymensingh, he said.

A Petrobangla source said gas supply on priority basis to a number of upstream projects including power plants as reason behind supply shortage.

When asked, Managing Director of Akij Group Sk. Bashir Uddin termed the situation 'really worrisome.'

According to him, two of Akij Group companies situated in the area Akij Printing & Packages Limited and Dhaka Tobacco Industries jointly contributed nearly Tk 35 billion (3,500 crore) to the national exchequer in the 2016-17 fiscal year.

"But we are very much worried about our industrial output this year as production disruption following the twin crises involving gas supply and power supply. Both will eventually disrupt our retail business in every phase," he quipped.

This often results in a high rate of industrial wastage and reduction of production efficiency, he added.

Bangladesh Auto Re-rolling Steel Mills & Association Chairman Manwar Hossain, who is also Anwar Group Managing Director, echoed the same concern.

The businessman, who has a steel factory called Anwar Ispat Limited in the industrial belt, called for immediate introduction of ECM (Electronically Controlled Meters) to check unabated gas engineering in the area, which he deems to be yet another reason for gas supply crunch.

Titas officials, according to him, are encouraging co-generation scheme to help address the severe gas crisis. But he said co-generation will require stable and smooth gas supply.

Government should ensure at least 10-15 years of smooth gas supply to encourage co-generation as, what he said, any industrial investment requires 20 years of payback period.

TGTDCL Deputy Managing Director Engineer Abdul Wahab Talukdar, who is also the Project Director of Sripur-Joydevpur Transmission Pipeline Project, said, "We cannot do anything to address the crisis if there is a lack of adequate gas supply."

He also admitted that priority-based power plants' gas supply being the reason behind the current spell of gas crunch.

Local sources alleged, illegal and unapproved gas connections in various industries in and around the zone are also affecting gas supply badly, among other reasons.
Moving bombs!

Staff Reporter :

Autorickshaw drivers from Dhaka and Chittagong City urged the authorities not to give extension of the expired CNG-run three-wheelers any more.

They termed the expired three-wheelers as 'moving bombs'.

"These old autorickshaws have turned into moving bombs. These vehicles are using expired gas cylinders because replacements are not available. These can explode anytime leading to casualties. So it is not safe for our and passengers lives. We do not want to drive these anymore," said the drivers council chief Sakhawat Hossin Dulal.

The drivers who are demonstrating in demand for new vehicles asked the BUET's Mechanical Engineering Department not to recommend expansions of those expiree vehicles.

They have submitted a memorandum to the department of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology on Sunday with this demand.

Leaders of Dhaka and Chittagong units of CNG Autorickshaw Workers' Unity Council have taken part in demonstration in front of the university's main gate before submitting the memorandum.

They tried to organise a rally at the Central Shaheed Minar but police stopped them.

The protesters alleged that the CNG Autorickshaw Owners' Association was trying to get permission to extend the expiry date of those vehicles submitting application in this regard to the Road Transport and Bridges Ministry.

"The authorities had already extended the expiry date of the autorickshaws in the two city several times from nine years to 15 years," said Sakhawat Hossin Dulal.

He said also, "The owners are now trying to get more extension though these autorickshaws' often cause accidents."

He said that they will go on strike for 48 hours from Dec 27 as they push an eight-point charter of demands. If it is not met, they will stage a nonstop strike from Jan 15.

Their demands are replacing expired autorickshaws with new vehicles in Dhaka and Chittagong.

Distributing 5,000 autorickshaws among the drivers in Dhaka and 4,000 in Chittagong.

Cancelling app-based transport services like Uber and Pathao.

Dropping provisions that go against workers' interests from a draft transport law.

Cancelling practical test for renewing driving licence.

No case for unauthorised parking.

Stopping 'harassment' of drivers.

Allowing registered autorickshaw drivers to travel anywhere in Dhaka district.
Rahul Gandhi likely to head Congress party

NDTV :

Rahul Gandhi, the scion of Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, is expected to be elected unopposed as the President of India's main opposition Congress party marking a generational change of the grand old party with a

contest appearing extremely unlikely. No one else is likely to challenge him by the deadline of filing nominations this afternoon, reports our New Delhi correspondent.

Rahul today filed nomination papers to head the 132-year-old Congress party, India's main opposition, replacing his mother who has held the top organisational post for a record number of 19 years in a row.


Support to resolve Rohingya crisis

UNB, Phnom Penh :

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday sought support from Cambodia for a durable solution to the Rohingya crisis as it threatens the peace and stability of this region.

"As we continue our bilateral negotiations with Myanmar for Rohingyas' safe return to their homeland, I requested Prime Minister Hun Sen for his support for a durable solution to the crisis," she said.

Sheikh Hasina was delivering her joint press statement with the Cambodian Prime Minister at the Peace Palace here after the official talks between the two countries. Hasina said they, during the talks, discussed some of the emerging security challenges facing the region and expressed their common resolve to fight terrorism and extremism. "We've also discussed the Rohingya crisis that threatens peace and stability of our region. Bangladesh continues to shelter more than 1 million Rohingyas, among them around seven lakh Rohingyas fled atrocity in Myanmar and took shelter in Bangladesh recently," she added. Describing Cambodia as a close regional neighbour of Bangladesh, Hasina said the two countries share common aspirations to promote peace, security and development. "We cooperate closely in many regional and global fora, including at ARF, ASEM, ACD and the UN." She said her visit to Cambodia has been extremely fruitful as Prime Minister Hun Sen and she remain committed to taking Bangladesh-Cambodia relations to all new heights and dimensions. The Prime Minister commended her Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen for the robust growth and development of Cambodia. Hasina said a major focus for Bangladesh this time was on intensifying trade, economic and technical cooperation. "We have signed 10 bilateral agreements and MoUs during this visit," she said. The Prime Minister said Bangladesh has proposed holding the first Joint Commission to be headed by two Foreign Ministers in Dhaka next year.

Hasina said, Bangladesh and Cambodia are also considering a proposal for opening resident diplomatic missions in each other's capital. She said the MoUs signed on technical cooperation in the areas of labour and vocational training, ICT, fisheries and aquaculture and tourism will foster multi-dimensional cooperation.

Mentioning that regional cooperation has also received major focus in today's discussions, Hasina said she was happy to receive Prime Minister Hun Sen's assurances of support to Bangladesh's Sectoral Dialogue Partnership aspiration with Asean. "As a Ganges basin country, Bangladesh also looks forward to working with Cambodia towards our membership aspiration at the Mekong-Ganga Cooperation Forum."

She said, the Bengali and the Khmer nations share ancient cultural linkages, a Sanskrit and Pali inspired script, and a common new year in the month of April. About the Rohingya crisis, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said they, during the bilateral talks, discussed it and said it is really a burden to Bangladesh.

"We highly appreciate Bangladesh (for giving shelter to the forcibly displaced Rohingya nationals from Myanmar) even though Bangladesh has a population of over 160 million, but Bangladesh took the refugee issue on its shoulder," he added. Hun Sen also hoped that both Bangladesh and Myanmar will work together smoothly for the safe return of the refugees back to Myanmar. The Cambodian Prime Minister said, "In the bilateral discussions, we've a very fruitful result in which we're looking forward to working together for prosperity."

He said, Cambodia supports the request from Bangladesh to be the sectoral dialogue partner of Asean while Cambodia will also work to achieve this goal.

Hun Sen expressed his heartfelt thanks for all the support that Bangladesh extended to the people of Cambodia.

He also noted that through this 2nd official visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to Cambodia after her first one in 2001, the bilateral relations of the two countries will further be strengthened.

The Cambodian Prime Minister also expressed his gratefulness to Sheikh Hasina for inviting him to visit Bangladesh again saying, "I accepted it with pleasure."
Fund gap widens

Only 34pc of required money realised: Needs are massive, says UN Coordinator

Special Correspondent :

Only 34 per cent of the $434 million fund required to provide assistance for 1.2 million people, including host communities, has so far been raised, says a report on Monday.

The UN agencies earlier appealed for the fund from the global community to response to the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh. There are more than 830,000 Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar: 625,000 of them have poured over the border since August 25.

One hundred days after the start of the most recent influx, the Inter-Sector Coordination Group (ISCG) released the report highlighting the overall status of the humanitarian response to the Rohingya Refugee Crisis in Bangladesh.

"Humanitarian partners are working round the clock to respond, but the reality remains that the needs are massive and urgent, and the gaps are wide. More funding is needed," said Mia Seppo, UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, but more land is needed to improve conditions in the congested camps, said the UN official.

These Rohingyas are now living in ten different camps, and among Bangladeshi host communities.

One of the camps has become the largest and fastest growing refugee camp in the world, where approximately half a million people are living extremely close to each other without access to basic services such as toilets or clinics, said the report.

"The government of Bangladesh is struggling to cope with the world's most rapidly developing humanitarian crisis. We already sought global help to share the burden to the unprecedented crisis," Md Shah Kamal, Secretary to the Disaster Management and Relief Ministry, told The New Nation.

The Monitoring Report, which covers the first two months of the response from August 25 to October 31, highlights the work of the government of Bangladesh, in cooperation with humanitarian partners who are working to provide relief services for the refugee population and Bangladeshi host communities. Of the 1.2 million people in need, around half have been reached with assistance.

The report also explains the challenges and gaps that remain.

The risk of disease outbreak is high, and the impact of a cyclone or heavy rain would be massive.

There is not enough land to provide adequate living conditions for the more than 830,000 Rohingyas that now crowd Cox's Bazar.

The report defines life-saving priorities for the coming months.

These include improving nutrition, preventing and managing disease outbreak, adequate planning for the new camps, and improving protection across all areas of the response.

"It (Rohingya refugee crisis) is one of the most severely underfunded crises in the world. The global community must extent their funding support to save lives and protect the Rohingya people," an official of UN aid agency told The New Nation yesterday.

He added, "Funding is a major constraint. We need more fund to keep pace with intensifying needs of the refugees who arrived Bangladesh's border town Cox's Bazar fleeing violence and persecution in Myanmar."

The mass exodus of refugees into Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh began August 25 after Rohingya insurgents killed nine police officers, triggering vicious reprisal attacks by the Myanmar security forces on Rohingya minority community.

Rohingya refugees earlier described, heart-rending accounts of "killings, arson, rape, torture, and other abuse,"

The UN Aid official, preferring anonymity, warned the arrival of a huge number of displaced people in Cox's Bazar "created massive socio-economic and demographic pressure on Bangladesh" and added that other human security risks exist including "fear of epidemics."
Dhaka, Phnom Penh sign 10 instruments

UNB, Phnom Penh (Cambodia) :

Bangladesh and Cambodiaon Monday signed 10 instruments, including one agreement and nine (MoUs), aiming to enhance cooperation in various fields, including tourism, agriculture, civil aviation, ICT and technical education between the two countries.

The instruments were signed after the official bilateral talks between Bangladesh and Cambodia held at Peace Palace in Phnom Penh here in the morning. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina led the Bangladesh side at the talks, while her Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen led his home side. The two prime ministers witnessed the signing of the documents by ministers and high officials concerned of both the countries.

The agreement signed today is on cooperation between the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) and the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce. The MoUs inked today are on cooperation in the field of tourism, aquaculture and fisheries, ICT and related industry, MoU on cooperation between the governments of Bangladesh and Cambodia over labour and vocational training. An MoU on cooperation and collaboration on preserving war history, war monuments and war relics, MoU on the modalities for Institutional Cooperation Under the Joint Trade Council, MoU on Cooperation and Collaboration on matters related to implementation of SDGs were also signed. Besides, MoUs were inked on academic cooperation between Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies and the International Relations Institute of Cambodia as well as on Institutional Cooperation on promotion of Investment between Bangladesh Investment Authority and the Council for the Development of Cambodia. Civil Aviation and Tourism Minister Rashed Khan Menon, State Minister for ICT Division Junaid Ahmed Palak, Chief Coordinator on Implementation of the SDGs Md Abul Kalam Azad, Foreign Secretary

M Shahidul Haque,Secretary of the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock Maksudul Hasan Khan, Secretary of the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs Aparup Chowdhury, FBCCI President Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin and BIDA Executive Chairman Kazi M Aminul Islam signed the relevant agreement and MoUs for the Bangladesh side. Besides, the ministers and senior officials concerned of the respective ministries and organisations of Cambodia signed the documents for their respective sides.
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Sparta Community Hospital has added to its staff, welcoming Dr. Abdullah Al Sawaf as a neurologist.

Al Sawaf will begin seeing patients Dec. 14 at Bradbury Rural Health Clinic, 211 S. Burns in Sparta. Appointments are available by calling 618-443-1362.

Al Sawaf is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and SIU HealthCare. He is a neurologist who specializes in epilepsy and seizure disorders.

He earned his medical degree at The University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan, and completed his residency in neurology at the University of Kentucky Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky. Dr. Al Sawaf completed his internship at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, then completed a fellowship in neurophysiology/epilepsy at University of Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

 The Southern
A study being done by the S.C. Commission on Minority Affairs is likely to confirm what is already known or suspected  those who spend the most on lottery tickets are the least able to afford them, and that most lottery scholarships are awarded in urban population centers rather than in poor rural areas where per-capita lottery spending is the highest.

Benjamin Washington Jr., the commission's program manager for research, told The Post and Courier's Prentiss Findlay that part of the focus will be on the correlation between counties where people spend more of their income on lottery tickets and the availability of lottery money for higher education.

"I'm thinking about the I-95 corridor in particular," Washington said, referring to the 36 mostly poor school districts along the interstate sometimes called the "Corridor of Shame," after a documentary of that title decried the poor state of public education there.

A previous study showed that residents in poorer counties tended to spend the most on lottery tickets and get less back in scholarships.

In Allendale County, where the state has taken control of the school district in an effort to improve educational outcomes, lottery spending per capita was about $819 per year and 41 percent of residents live in poverty. But only $8.1 million in lottery scholarships were awarded.

Similarly, in Bamberg County, where 32 percent of residents live in poverty, per-capita spending on the lottery was about $1,000 per year. But just $8.8 million in scholarships were awarded there.

By contrast, Richland County residents spent an average of $580 on lottery tickets and received $195 million in scholarship funds. The numbers in Charleston County were about the same  $585 in per capita lottery spending and $173 million in scholarships.

In Greenville County, per-capita spending on the lottery was just $375 on average, but $282.7 million in scholarships were awarded there.

Hopefully, the commission's study will help change attitudes about buying lottery tickets and perhaps inspire changes in how lottery scholarships are awarded.

With a recent change in what constitutes a passing grade  60 instead of 70  about 25,500 more high school students are expected to become eligible for merit-based lottery scholarships over the next four years. The Commission on Higher Education has warned that there won't be adequate lottery funds to pay for the increase, and has recommended raising scholarship standards accordingly.

Lotteries are tantamount to a tax on the poor. And in South Carolina, it appears to be doubly so, with the state's poorest citizens essentially subsidizing scholarships for students in higher-income areas.

This editorial is from The Post and Courier of Charleston via The Associated Press.
By Azernews





By Kamila Aliyeva

The United States continues its way towards withdrawing from major international agreements and initiatives.

Since President Donald Trump took his office, the country has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and UNESCO.

Its next target became an international declaration aimed at improving global migration and refugee issues.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent an official statement to the UN which stated that Washington will no longer participate in the Global Compact on Migration as it doesnt correspond to the immigration policy pursued by the country.

Although we will continue to work in a number of directions in the UN, in this case, we simply cannot faithfully support a process that could undermine the U.S. sovereign right to apply our immigration laws and ensure the security of our borders, the statement said.

According to Tillerson, the U.S. supports international cooperation on migration issues, but sovereign states bear the main responsibility for ensuring that migration is safe and legal.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said the declaration's approach is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.

No country has done more than the United States, and our generosity will continue. But our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country, Haley said in a statement.

The UN General Assembly expressed disappointment over the U.S. latest decision.

The U.S. has been a part of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants since it was unanimously adopted by approved by 193 members of the UN General Assembly in 2016.

The declaration reached last year called for protecting the rights of refugees and migrants and helping them resettle and providing access to education and work.

The decision to withdraw from the declaration is consistent with the efforts of U.S. President Donald Trumps administration to limit immigration and refugee settlement.

In January, Trump signed an executive order that temporarily banned citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the U.S. European leaders, the United Nations and international groups have condemned Trumps order. The UN refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration called on the Trump administration to continue offering asylum to people fleeing war and persecution, saying its resettlement programme was vital.

In October, the ban ended, althouh the White House announced that the U.S. would temporarily delay processing for refugees from eleven high-risk countries.
Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) has partnered with National Health Insurance Company  Daman (Daman), to seek opportunities for the growth of the insurance-related FinTech ecosystem (InsurTech) in Abu Dhabi and the UAE.



The memorandum of understanding (MoU), which marked a new partnership between both organisations, was signed by Dr Michael Bitzer, chief executive officer at Daman, and Richard Teng, chief executive officer of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of ADGM.



The agreement enables ADGM and Daman to collaborate closely on a range of technology-related initiatives that serve to support entrepreneurs, start-ups and technology firms who are active in the InsurTech environment. The Daman and ADGM teams will specifically explore and participate in joint innovation projects on the development and application of technologies related to insurance and insurance management.



Dr Bitzer said: We are proud to support ADGM in creating a global FinTech hub here in Abu Dhabi. We believe that this partnership will support the programmes outlined in the Abu Dhabi Plan concerning the development of a financial services sector that support economic diversification and the promotion of entrepreneurship among SMEs. With Damans unique experience and capabilities; and ADGMs robust regulatory framework, there will be a lot we can do encourage and nurture new types of insurance solutions fit for the 21st century.



Teng added: Based on an industry report, the technology spent in the global insurance industry is expected to reach $205 billion by 2019. Yet the state of InsurTech is still at a stage of infancy. We are pleased that to partner with the leading home-grown insurance company  Daman  to look at how we can both actively contribute towards the development and deployment of technology and innovative solutions in the insurance space.



We look forward to tapping on Damans wealth of experience and extensive market to identify and create initiatives that serve the needs of Abu Dhabi and the UAE. At the same time, ADGM will engage the relevant stakeholders and industry leaders to foster a conducive InsurTech environment and ecosystem.  TradeArabia News Service
Sodic, one of the regions leading real estate development companies, has signed a contract with Greater Cairo Water Company to connect 1,000 houses to the fresh water network in Ezzbet Khair Allah.



The signing comes following a protocol agreement that is already in place between Sodic, Holding Company for Water and Wastewater, Cairo Governorate, the GIZ and under the auspices of The Egyptian Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Development.



The project is planned to be carried out over one year and is fully funded by Sodic at an estimated cost of E1 million ($56,516).



The signing ceremony took place at the premises of the Holding Company for Water and Wastewater and in the presence of Magued Sherif, Sodics managing director, Mostafa El Shimi, the managing director of Holding Company for Water and Wastewater and chairman Mamdouh Raslan.



The scope of work includes connecting the chosen homes to the fresh water and wastewater networks in place in Ezbet Khairallah, installation of a fire fighting network, provision of vocational training on construction besides setting up of water and wastewater connections.



The project will also see employment of youth in the collection of water tariffs and create water consumption awareness programs in the schools of Ezbet Khairallah.



"At Sodic, our CSR initiatives focusing on education and rehabilitation, impact the lives of over 7,000 families every year," stated Magued Sherif, the managing director of Sodic.



"The first phase of the fresh water project in Ezzbet Khair Allah will benefit more than 1,000 families," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Industrial Development & Renovation Organization of Iran (IDRO) has signed an agreement to establish a joint company for building solar panels with the Chinese company Sunshine and Hong Kong-based Konda Energy.



Deputy head of IDRO for promoting advanced industries and energy megaprojects, Fardad Daliri, said that registering the company will begin in a month after finalization of its articles of association, reported Irna.



IDRO will own 30 per cent of shares in the company.



IDRO seeks to establish the industry, use existing capabilities in the country and commission a research and development (R&D) unit in the technology, he said.



Earlier, IDRO conducted feasibility studies on producing solar panels from silicon after signing a cooperation deal with the German company Schmidt.



Seven industrial units producing solar panels are operating in Iran and the countys share of solar electricity is set to increase, the Irna report said.
1. As the new year begins, cyber threats such as ransomware will continue to pose a serious threat to enterprises and individuals around the globe, especially as the method continues to prove profitable, and offers virtual untraceability for cybercriminals. Ransomware provides a 1:1 relationship with the victim, requiring no overhead for production of web-injects, managing money-mules, or cashout - with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin allowing cybercriminals to obfuscate clean funds with dirty money through services like tumbling, mixing and coin laundering.



2. Targeted ransomware attacks on enterprises are also likely to be on the rise, as companies have the capital to pay higher ransoms than individuals. Criminals will continue to become more sophisticated, better resourced, and more patient, and will look to target businesses with higher value ransoms.



3. Business email compromise (BEC) and Business email spoofing (BES) attacks will also continue in 2018. This is where threat actors profit from sending emails to employees who have access to company funds, and from compromising the computer, email account, or email server of the victim organization in order to intercept and alter, or initiate business transactions. We assess that these schemes will likely continue to grow in popularity due to their low barrier to entry and high payout potential.



4. Targeted attacks on banks will likely remain a threat, especially as organized criminal organizations engage in online banking fraud as one of means of generating income. Some organisations will focus on non-European and US banks, which are perceived to have weaker security controls and less robust business processes than most of the major Western banks. However, malware targeting is diverse and not limited to major banks. Wealth management companies and their high-net-worth customers will also be targeted, as are payroll processing portals.



5. The dependability on AI/machine learning in cybersecurity will continue in 2018, as more cybersecurity professionals and companies understand the benefits of an AI/machine learning in the way of streamlining and enhancing threat detection and response, especially when coupled with human threat analysis.



6. Internet of Things vulnerabilities will also be increasingly targeted by criminals, especially as the IoT network is fast expanding its user base with the likes of smart home assistants, smart cars, and all smart things. For example, one Secureworks researcher discovered eight vulnerabilities in his own the smart automobile, which would allow unauthorized users to unlock the doors or gain the vehicles location. Weve also tested several manufacturers secure keycard systems and discovered vulnerabilities which would allow an attacker to lock or unlock doors, as well as add or remove badges to a system. This could potentially allow an attacker to physically enter a company and plug in a device to deliver malware.



7. The shortage of skilled cybersecurity workers will continue, proved by the zero percent unemployment rate, according to Gartner. However, the industry should do more than just attract existing talent in the pool, it must ensure that it is both nurturing and retaining that talent for the long-term future. We also must focus on inspiring young talent, by appealing to students at university and hosting open information days.



8. Cloud security will become a greater priority for businesses, as more companies move their data to the cloud. When companies move IT assets to the cloud, they have an opportunity to realise cost savings, accelerate innovation, and improve IT performance, however, the benefits of cloud usage come with data security dangers. As such, there will be an increased need for cloud security consulting, especially in light of the upcoming GDPR regulation.



9. The imminent arrival of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its subsequent effects will be largely felt across the industry, with those organisations not protecting data and staying compliant with security regulations exposed and fined up to 10 million ($11.88 million) or 2 per cent of worldwide annual turnover. With security risks at an all-time high organisations must be prepared, and have a robust cybersecurity awareness programme, which includes adequate breach monitoring, detection, and reporting processes, that are well documented and accessible to all employees. Worryingly, 22 per cent of large enterprises still do not have a defined incident response and management procedure in place, according to research from Frost & Sullivan, so we predict there to be some major names being made examples of in light of failing to adhere to GDPR next year.



10. Given all of the previous points and potential impact, we expect businesses and security leaders to prioritise cybersecurity investment and insurance in 2018. In fact, trillions of dollars are being poured into cybersecurity over the next four years, covering everything from complete infrastructure overhauls to talent acquisition to basic software defence tools.



About the author



Mahmoud Mounir is the regional director of Secureworks, a top provider of security solutions for organizations to prevent, detect, rapidly respond and predict cyberattacks.
French fashion label ba&sh has marked its entry into Saudi Arabia with the opening of its flagship store in Jeddah at Red Sea Mall.



Founded by best friends Barbara Boccara and Sharon Krief, the contemporary ready-to-wear brand continues its expansion across the GCC region in partnership with Al-Futtaim, following openings at City Walk and Robinsons, Dubai and City Centre Bahrain.



The ba&sh store, which has been designed to look like a Parisian apartment, will showcase the Fall Winter 2017 collection.



Al-Futtaim is one of the most progressive regional business houses headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Al-Futtaim employs in excess of 42,000 people and operates in 29 countries through more than 200 companies.  TradeArabia News Service
Dubai Holding, a global investment conglomerate, and Sevens Holding have announced the signing of a management agreement for Jumeirah Group to operate a luxury hotel in Bahrain.



The 167-key hotel, which will be called Jumeirah Royal Saray - Bahrain, is scheduled to open on February 27, 2018.



The agreement marks Jumeirah Groups entry into the Bahrain hospitality market and is a strategic milestone for the world-renowned luxury hospitality brand.



Edris AlRafi, chief executive officer of Dubai Holding, said: "We have been looking to bring Jumeirah to Bahrain for a number of years and we are delighted to partner with Sevens Holding for Jumeirah Royal Saray - Bahrain. This signing is a significant landmark in achieving our strategic expansion goals worldwide, and this elegant hotel will be an excellent addition to the Jumeirah Group portfolio. We are very much looking forward to welcoming guests from the local community, as well as introducing this stunning destination to international travellers."



Commenting on the agreement, Mohamed Al Kayed, chief executive officer of Sevens Holding said:""The Bahraini tourism industry is increasingly growing, with rising inflows of business and leisure travellers visiting the Kingdom on an annual basis. We are excited about our partnership with Jumeirah Group, and are confident that the Group's global track record of outstanding hospitality, together with our local market expertise will further enrich the regional luxury hospitality market at large."



Jumeirah Group is one of the world's most luxurious hotel groups and operates a world-class portfolio of hotels and resorts of distinctive design, including the flagship Burj Al Arab Jumeirah. The group's portfolio extends globally with hotels and resorts in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Frankfurt, Mallorca, London, Maldives and Shanghai. - TradeArabia News Service
Have an event, trend or general energy happening youd like to see in the Energy Journal newsletter? Send it to Star-Tribune energy reporter Heather Richards at heather.richards@trib.com. Sign up for the newsletter at www.trib.com/energyjournal.

Last week in numbers

Friday oil prices: West Texas Intermediate (WTI) $58.26 Brent (ICE) $63.63

Natural gas weekly averages: Henry Hub $2.93, Wyoming Pool $2.57, Opal $2.62

Baker Hughes rig count: U.S. 929, Wyoming 25

Quote of the week

Before I go through the areas where I would like to see changes, I need to be clear about the things that I do not want to see changed." -- Gov. Matt Mead on proposed changes to federal sage grouse plans

Pushback on EOG wells in Denver Basin

Landowners are worried about proposed injection wells near their subdivision outside Cheyenne. EOG's talent at tapping the Denver Basin has brought the oil and gas field to some unsuspecting locals who are appealing to state regulators to keep the wells at a distance.

Oil prices head towards $60

The nudge up in price has many surprised, others saying the positive trend will continue as supplies tighten faster than predicted.

Coal to solar

Wisconsin's largest utility wants to retire a coal plant that burned coal from five separate Wyoming mines in the last year.

In a related announcement, the group is looking to add solar power.

The trend of closures is a significant concern to operators in the PRB who are holding on to a shrinking market.

Wyoming delivers consistent message on grouse

The closing of a comment period on opening up sage grouse management plans across the West drew comment from a host of Wyoming agencies, the governor and diverse organizations.

The governor repeated a message heard since the summer, that the sage grouse plans don't need major revisions like those floated from the Interior Department.

In kind with a list of updates suggested by the governor, state agencies proffered changes that would eliminate confusion and alleviate some concerns brought by ranchers or industry.

Environmental groups that have been outspoken in their distaste for the Interior's direction on grouse management were joined by industry and agriculture groups in a plea to follow Wyoming's strategy -- prioritize conserving the bird in some areas, development in others.

In other news
A Wyoming man freed after spending nearly a quarter century in prison for a crime he didnt commit is still struggling to make ends meet. Now, his friends are trying to provide the financial help that the state has so far failed to do.

Andrew Johnson was convicted of a 1989 rape and sentenced to life in prison. He spent almost 24 years there. In 2008, state legislators passed a law allowing prisoners to petition for post-conviction DNA testing.

Johnson applied for the testing and the rape kit performed on Johnsons accuser contained her then-fiances semen, not his. She had said at trial that she had not had sex with anyone during the time period of the alleged rape.

Although he was eventually freed from the sentence associated with his wrongful conviction, Johnson has not received restitution from the state for the two-plus decades he spent in prison. Wyoming is one of 18 states that does not pay restitution to people incarcerated for wrongful convictions, according to the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that works to exonerate wrongly convicted people through DNA testing.

Chris and Rebecca Merrill, of Laramie, met Johnson shortly after his exoneration. Their interest in the first Wyoming man to be exonerated on DNA evidence led them to help him financially, Chris Merrill said. After developing a friendship over the course of four years, the Merrills started an online fundraiser to help Johnson with his bills.

We really believe his society, and thats us,  owes him a debt, Chris Merrill said by phone Thursday.

Im part of it.

Upon reading a Star-Tribune article chronicling Johnsons financial woes after his release, Chris and Rebecca Merrill decided they wanted to help him. The couple contacted Johnsons Rocky Mountain Innocence Center lawyer, Jennifer Hare Salem, who put them in touch with another lawyer, and eventually Johnson.

The couple bought Johnson a used Toyota, ensuring he would no longer have to walk to doctors appointments or work.

They have stayed in touch since. Chris Merrill said he talks to Johnson by phone on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. Merrill, who worked for the Star-Tribune from 2008 to 2009, said that although Johnson is working, its nothing to get ahead.

Chris Merrill said that, as a citizen of Wyoming, he owes Johnson a debt. Johnsons society wronged him and Merrill said hes part of it.

After realizing there was only so much they could do for Johnson, the couple started an online fundraiser in an attempt to make restitution on behalf of Wyoming citizens. The fundraiser went live on Wednesday night and had raised $1,950 for Johnson by Friday afternoon. The fundraiser goal was set at $100,000, or which would equate to roughly $4,000 for each year of his incarceration.

When the government fails to do the right thing, Chris Merrill said, Its up to private citizens to pick up the slack.

Legislation that would have provided restitution to wrongfully convicted people has been proposed in Wyoming but has never become law. A 2014 version of the legislation would have provided up to $500,000 to people who were wrongfully incarcerated and then exonerated through DNA evidence. The legislatures two chambers failed to come to a consensus in that years budget session.

Johnson sued the city of Cheyenne in April, alleging police officers had failed to properly investigate the case and withheld evidence, which led to his conviction. In July, a federal judge ruled in favor of the city. Appeals filed in the following four months have not yet yielded a victory for Johnson.

Johnson said through Merrill that his attorneys had advised him not to speak to the press, given the ongoing appeals process. A Friday call to Johnsons Cheynne attorney, Aaron Lyttle, went unanswered.

The fundraiser can be found at https://www.gofundme.com/westandwithandrew.
ACT scores of UW freshmen increase

LARAMIE  The average ACT score of incoming University of Wyoming freshmen increased between fall 2016 and 2017.

The Laramie Boomerang reports the average ACT score for incoming freshmen rose from 24.4 in fall 2016 to 24.7 in 2017, for a five-year high. Thats even as the university increased its first-year class size by 9.3 percent.

The average ACT score for graduating Wyoming high school seniors also rose between 2016 and 2017, from 20 to 20.2.

That score has barely fluctuated since 2011, when the state began administering the ACT to 100 percent of its students.

University of Wyoming admission requirements state a first-year student must have a score of at least 21  or an SAT score of 1060  as well as a 3.0 grade point average.

Authorities say two held on suspicion of Billings slaying

BILLINGS, Mont.  Billings police say two men in custody are under investigation in the killing of a man whose decapitated body was found at an abandoned transient camp.

The Billings Gazette reports that 31-year-old Donald Ray Cherry and 33-year-old Jeffrey Glen Haverty were being held at Yellowstone County Detention Facility.

Police declined further comment, pending a Monday court appearance for the two men.

The body of 41-year-old Myron Wesley Knight was found Nov. 15.

Deputy County Coroner Cliff Mahoney said Knight had been decapitated and suffered multiple blunt force trauma injuries.
Welcome to 307 Politics. This launched as an email newsletter a few weeks ago and for the first time this week is also appearing in print. I still encourage anyone who is not already on the email list to sign-up at trib.com/email to receive a longer version of this column with more coverage of state and federal politics in your inbox on Monday mornings.

***

THRONE FINDS HER BITE  Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former state lawmaker Mary Throne is the only serious candidate to have entered the 2018 race, with Republicans Mark Gordon and Ed Murray yet to announce their plans. But since launching her campaign in August, Throne hasnt really been able to explain what sets her apart. She touts her Wyoming roots and common sense policies like economic diversification, but moderate Republicans like current governor Matt Mead and Gordon can do the same  and Gordon wouldnt have the baggage of a D next to his name on the ballot.

But speaking to me at a downtown Casper cafe Thursday, Throne seemed more passionate about what the state is doing wrong: namely, neglecting its cities and towns. Throne has made support for local governments a key platform point and she doubled-down in the interview.

She attacked the budget passed in 2016, her last year in the Legislature. Throne specifically criticized the decision to slash social services like tax assistance to the elderly while setting aside funds for a new state office building not too far from Metro Coffee Company where we were speaking before a meet-and-greet with voters.

We made a lot of fiscally stupid decisions, she said.

The new state office building is something of a linchpin for the development of Caspers Old Yellowstone District, and attacking its construction seems odd given that if she is going to have a shot at winning the race, Throne will need to capture a large share of the vote in Natrona County, one of the states largest counties and far more friendly to Democrats than other regions. Dave Freudenthal, the last Democratic candidate to win an open governors seat race, won 55 percent of the countys vote compared to just 49 percent statewide.

(For trivia fans, that race was against current Senate President Eli Bebout.)

Throne, who lives in Cheyenne, did say she supported the economic development and jobs a new building might bring and has made support for local governments writ large a key part of her platform.

State government has to change its attitude toward local governments, Throne said. They sort of make them come hat-in-hand to the Legislature and beg for money.

Lawmakers need to recognize that municipalities are important service-delivery providers for state residents and that quality of life in Wyoming communities is a key factor in whether businesses decide to locate or grow here. This still doesnt really separate Throne from, say, Mead, who recently called for the Legislature to continue sending at least $105 million to local governments.

But by latching onto local government funding, Throne may hope to avoid being attached to her partys more abstract national policy positions, many of which are deeply unpopular in the Cowboy State. She also pushed a good government theme in the interview, calling for a clearer budgeting process.

Were the least populated state in the country, she said. We can make this simpler and easier for the public to understand.

While Throne has stepped up travel around the state, her campaign operation remains, in her words, lean and mean, with only campaign manager Bri Jones on staff and no office or significant investment in yard signs or major advertising so far.

***

WYOMING CATCHES A (TAX) BREAK  Wyomings tax code has been criticized as an impediment to economic diversification, but the GOP tax plan offers one bright spot for taxpayers in the Cowboy State. While Republican lawmakers from high-tax states are up in arms over the proposal to eliminate the ability for people to deduct their state and local taxes on federal returns, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said the change could be a boon to Wyoming.

States without income tax are subsidizing those other states, Mead said last week. Wyoming would be in favor of the elimination of that off-set.

***

PRINCE TESTIFIES  Erik Prince, the founder of notorious private security contractor Blackwater, would be an interesting challenger to Sen. John Barrasso in next years Wyoming senate contest.

The brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, Prince has now found himself wrapped up in the weird and amorphous blob of allegations surrounding supposed collaboration between Trumps presidential campaign and Russia. Prince testified Thursday behind closed doors before the House Intelligence Committee regarding a January meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian businessman who has ties to the Kremlin.

While the ranking Democrat on the committee suggested he had more questions, Prince has no plans to return.

Ive already wasted four hours of my life on that, he said after the meeting.

A race between Barrasso and Prince would no doubt be chock full of allegations of carpet-bagging and insufficiently supporting Trump. Prince comes loaded with baggage from both his Blackwater days and, now, the Russian investigation. But if Prince runs against Barrasso on the basis that the Wyoming senator is too close to establishment Republicans, it could be hard to attack his ties to Trump or his past as a tough-guy mercenary.

***

THE BIG ASK  Mead has asked the Legislature to allocate $37.5 million from the states rainy day fund (officially known as the Legislative Stabilization Reserve Account or liz-rah) for... its not quite clear. The Endow executive committee doesnt release its official recommendation until later this month and the request was made as a placeholder for ENDOW initiatives.

Thats an appropriate use of the rainy day fund, Mead told reporters Thursday in Cheyenne.

Meads making quite an ask without anything tangible to peg it to, but even fiscal conservatives in the Legislature like Bebout have agreed that economic diversification efforts are a good use of the rainy day fund. This may be an expenditure that sneaks through in whats expected to be a tight budget session in February. The nearly $40 million sum also shows that Mead is getting serious about Endow, which was created last year with just a $2.5 million stipend. If the Legislature approves his current ask, it will be hard for future governors to abandon the 20-year effort or decide they want a new diversification program after Mead leaves office next year.

***

SAFER REZ ROADS  The Senate approved the John P. Smith Act to improve road safety in Indian Country last week. Its named for the former director of transportation for the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes on Wyomings Wind River Reservation and was co-sponsored by Sen. Mike Enzi. I wrote about Smith when he died last year. He led the tribal transportation department for 27 years and was heavily involved in the national Intertribal Transportation Association.

This legislation couldnt have a better namesake. Wyomings John Smith was a life-long advocate for transportation safety who earned respect across the countryincluding at the White House, Barrasso said. I look forward to the House passing this bill soon and adding to John Smiths already impressive legacy of improving lives across Indian Country.

***

TWO PERCENT COWBOY  Andrew Graham had a good scoop for WyoFile, finding that only 2 percent of Barrassos 2017 fundraising came from Wyoming donors. Yikes.

The campaign is proud of the many supporters Senator Barrasso has from around the country who share our Wyoming priorities to create good jobs, lower taxes, protect American freedom and eliminate federal regulatory overreach, is how his chief of staff Dan Kunsman spun it. Given that arguably Barrassos best bludgeon to attack 2018 challengers with is that they dont have roots in Wyoming or ties to local communities, the lopsided fundraising total could prove problematic.

The roundup

PILING ON CFPB  Enzi co-sponsored a bill last week to rein in the unusually high salaries at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a Republican boogeyman that the Trump administration is doing its best to kill.

 The need for Congress to bring accountability to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is long overdue and the bureaus lavish spending on employee salaries is a key example of why, Enzi said.

NO TRIGGER FOR CHENEY  I wrote a long story about the GOP Senate tax plan last week. Barrasso and Enzi both support the bill but said they did not favor a provision that would automatically raise taxes if the economic growth Republicans expect from the cuts did not materialize. I didnt hear back from Rep. Liz Cheney, who will have to vote on a compromise version of the bill, but she also opposes it.

 We need to cut taxes, not raise them, Cheney spokeswoman Maddy Weast told me by email. Critics of the tax plan worry that a ballooning deficit as a result of the legislation will be used to justify cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security.

MUCH ADO ABOUT?  For all the talk of unreasonably high education spending in Wyoming, consultants hired by the state found that we spend similarly to similar states.

 In only two of ... 12 areas  special education and gifted and talented  did Wyoming spend significantly more than the average, writes Star-Tribune education reporter Seth Klamann. For special education  which is reimbursed fully by the state  Wyomings model pays more than $18,000 per student. In 2017-18, the state will spend about $238 million.

TRUMPS TREE 

Students from Rawlins Middle School were in Washington, D.C. last week to hang handmade decorations on the National Christmas Tree.

 It was pretty fun, sixth-grader Owen Wolfe told the Rawlins Times. It was the first time I have ever made something for a different state.

A COSMETIC FIX?

 Casper City Council is considering a resolution to state its opposition to anti-LGBT discrimination. Casper and other Wyoming cities scored low marks for LGBT-friendliness in the Human Rights Campaigns annual scorecard released earlier this year, and a resolution might help nudge that score upward. But its not an ordinance, meaning it would have no legal weight, and city officials dont seem to think theres any problem with discrimination in Casper to begin with.

 We have an image problem, said Councilman Charlie Powell, per Katie Kings coverage in the Star-Tribune.

A note to online readers: We had some technical difficulties with the online sign-up for this newsletter last week, so if you tried to sign-up your email may not have actually been added to the list. Try one more time at trib.com/email.
An icy winter storm made travel difficult across Wyoming on Monday, closing roads and causing crashes.

Portions of Interstate 25 were closed Monday morning to high profile vehicles between Casper and Buffalo. The Wyoming Department of Transportation advises no unnecessary travel for sections of I-25 from Glendo almost to Kaycee.

Two semi trucks jackknifed along southbound Interstate 25 near Hat Six Road in Casper, blocking the highway for a few hours.

Wyoming Highway Patrol Captain Shawn Dickerson was helping a driver stuck on the side of the road about 8:20 a.m. and watched the crashes occur. A truck was attempting to pull the car out of where it had gotten stuck when a semi truck attempted to slow down as it passed. The driver of the semi lost control, however, and the semi jackknifed and struck the truck, Dickerson said.

Nobody was injured in that crash, Dickerson said, but moments later more vehicles collided while attempting to stop on the blocked interstate. A vehicle failed to stop in time and clipped an SUV before rear ending a trailer being pulled by a pickup. Three people from that crash were transported to the hospital for complaints of pain, Dickerson said.

The crash was cleared about 11 a.m., according to a Wyoming Department of Transportation tweet.

I would encourage drivers to slow down, Dickerson said Monday morning. This was entirely preventable if they had reduced their speed and been a little more careful.

Interstate 80 from Rawlins to Laramie closed at 4 a.m. Monday because of winter conditions. The highway did not reopen for several hours.

Portions of some highways including U.S. 30 and 287 near Laramie and Wyoming Highway 789 also closed along with Highway 59 from Douglas to the Campbell County line. Stretches of other southeastern, central and northern Wyoming highways carried black ice advisories or other travel warnings.

After Wyoming experienced a mild fall, the winter storm brought colder temperatures and high winds to the region. Wind gusts were recorded up to 67 mph north of Kaycee and 54 mph south of Casper, according to the National Weather Service.

Breezy conditions were expected to linger, with wind chills down to 10 degrees below zero.

Gusts were expected to reach up to 60 mph east of the Laramie Range. Slightly warmer temperatures and drier conditions were expected to return to the state by midweek.
JERUSALEM  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday ordered his backers to reword a contentious piece of legislation that could potentially stifle a police investigation against him, in what appeared to be an attempt to defuse rising public anger against the long-ruling Israeli leader.

The so-called recommendations bill would end the polices current practice of recommending to prosecutors whether to indict suspects upon completing their investigations. It also aims to stem leaks from the investigations themselves, stating that no police recommendations be made public and penalizing those found leaking to the media.

The bill has been pushed by Netanyahus staunchest allies in the Likud Party, whipping up criticism that the beleaguered prime minister himself was seeking to pass legislation that would in essence change the current rules for police investigations and protect him from embarrassing revelations they may have discovered.

Unfortunately, the debate over the recommendations bill has turned into a political weapon against an elected government, Netanyahu wrote on Facebook. He said he asked a lawmaker behind the bill to ensure that it be worded in a way that it wont apply to the investigation taking place into my affairs.

On Saturday, tens of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets of Tel Aviv for an anti-corruption rally calling on Netanyahu to resign. It was one of the largest demonstrations yet against Netanyahus lengthy rule. Organizers hope the grassroots movement picks up steam and becomes a regular Saturday night ritual that eventually forces Netanyahu from power.

I think the time has come to change the government. The government is corrupt. Were sick of the corrupt, said protester Avi Elmozlinu.

Earlier Sunday, Israeli police questioned a close Netanyahu ally seen as the driving force behind the bill on separate corruption charges. Coalition whip David Bitan was grilled in relation to accusations that he promoted the interests of criminals in return for debt relief years ago.

The bills future remains unclear. Netanyahus Likud party was set to bring it to a parliamentary vote on Monday, but the bill was removed from a committee agenda Sunday evening.
Consumers search for your services online every single day. Search engines such as Google want to give them the right results. Here are a few simple tips you can do yourself to make it easier for the search engines to promote your business.

Your business has many online profiles, some of which you are not aware of. The information on each of these profiles needs to be accurate. It is especially important that your name, address and contact information are correct. If the search engines detect conflicting data about your company, what are they supposed to do? How do they know which reference is correct? If your competitor has consistent data and yours is not, which profile do you think Google will display to the consumer?

Start by entering your business name into Google. Scroll down and open each reference to verify the information on that site is correct. Pay special attention to sites with star review ratings, since consumers tend to visit these sites regularly.

There are free automated tools from Google that test your website for search engine optimization performance. Simply enter your website address, hit enter and look at the results. A good place to start is Googles PageSpeed Insights. The most powerful one of all is Google Search Console. Your websites performance as outlined in these analytical tools is extremely important.

Any online reference containing information about your business is a potential asset. These include your website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, BBB profile and more.

Most businesses should have these basic online assets: a website, a Google company page, LinkedIn and Facebook pages, a Yelp profile and a YouTube company channel. They should all have the same data and should all point back to your website.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some Dec. 4 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.
A young mountain lion was spotted in the foothills near Tucson over the weekend, according to the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

Apparently the mountain lion was spotted late Saturday morning on the patio of a foothills home.

The department said the animal left the area without any incident after it became aware that humans were nearby.

Although the department said sightings like this are pretty routine in the foothills, residents should still report any sightings to the department as soon as possible so that they can evaluate and track their movement.

To contact the department, call 623-236-2701 or visit https://www.azgfd.com/.

Housecat: A young mtn. lion on a patio in Tucson late Sat. morning. It left the area without incident. Although such sightings are routine in the foothills, report them ASAP to 623-236-2701 24&7 so that we can evaluate risks and track their movement. pic.twitter.com/HEu5O5Zs4z  AZ Game & Fish Dept (@azgfdTucson) December 4, 2017
Thousands of vehicles go through automatic car washes in Tucson each week, but not all of them come out looking better than before, some local consumers say.

Websites such as Yelp and the Better Business Bureau are home to numerous complaints about inferior work or costly damage incidents at several area car washes.

For example, the Mister Car Wash chain  the citys top purveyor of suds and polish with 15 Tucson locations  has a D-minus rating with the BBB.

The company often doesnt respond when customers complain to the BBB about broken windows, dangling door mirrors, scratched side panels and other types of damage allegedly caused by the car-wash machinery or employees, online complaint records indicate.

Mister Car Wash CEO John Lai disputes that the firm is unresponsive and said the number of complaints is tiny compared to the 1.7 million cars washed each year in the Tucson area.

Lai says the firms damage rate in Arizona is less than .03 percent or one in 3,500 cars and said the company willingly pays for repairs when it determines it was at fault.

While one damage claim is too many, we continuously work to provide our customers with a safe wash for their vehicles and operate one of the safest car wash chains in the country, he said.

In addition to the small number of complaints we receive, we also get thousands of rave reviews, he added.

52 COMPLAINTS

Headquartered in Tucson, Mister Car Wash has more than 250 locations across the country, making it Americas largest car-wash chain.

Customers nationwide, including at least five from Tucson, have filed a total of 52 complaints with the Better Business Bureau in the last three years  36 of which the company did not respond to, according to the BBB.

One was from a retired University of Arizona professor who said Mister Car Wash at North Oracle and West River roads broke the passenger window and window mechanisms on her 2012 Fiat in June.

Repairs cost nearly $500, which she paid out of pocket after the company said it wasnt responsible, said the professor, who wasnt named in the BBB complaint.

The location the professor complained about has a Yelp rating of 2.5 stars out of five. Of the 25 Tucsonans who posted reviews, two claimed their vehicles were damaged.

Lai, the CEO, maintained in an email interview that the Better Business Bureau is not a reliable source of information. He pointed to a 2010 news story about a Los Angeles BBB later ejected from the national BBB network  that was accused of giving negative ratings to businesses that were not BBB members.

Asked if thats how Mister Car Wash got its negative rating, Lai did not answer the question.

Susann Miller, spokeswoman for the BBB of Southern Arizona, said the companys D-minus rating is based solely on its failure to respond to complaints. Given its track record, Mister Car Wash does not qualify for BBB accreditation, she said.

Lai said the firm has resolved nearly all the complaints by reaching out to customers directly, rather than through the BBB.

We have elected not to respond to the BBB complaints since we find that very few people use them as a source of relevant reviews, he said.

NEW HEADACHES

New technology aimed at making vehicles safer is causing headaches for car-wash owners and increasing potential for damage claims, according to Professional Carwashing and Detailing, a national industry organization.

Anti-collision features such as automatic braking, for example, can occasionally deploy without warning inside car wash tunnels, setting the stage for collisions.

Sensors, locking systems and more engaging at the wrong time can definitely give owners and customers a thing or two to complain about, the organizations website said.

Soft-cloth car-wash systems, which aim to protect a vehicles finish, can entangle trim and side view mirrors and tear them off if they were loose to begin with, the website said. Even seemingly minor damage like a detached mirror can cost up to $1,000 to fix, it said.

Many car washes now pre-screen vehicles for loose parts and pre-existing damage. Some, including Mister Car Wash, have video cameras inside wash tunnels to help determine what happened if something goes wrong.

But even those safeguards arent foolproof.

Michael Walton, 50, said his 2003 Dodge Ram truck recently sustained $1,000 worth of damage at one of the citys newest car washes, Dynamite Car Wash Hypersonic on East Ajo Way near Interstate 19.

Workers there, who are required by company rules to inspect every vehicle for pre-existing damage, cleared Waltons truck to enter the wash tunnel, he said.

Halfway through, Walton said, the machinery stopped briefly and he heard a real loud pop. The metal housing that secures the trucks antenna was twisted and hanging when the truck emerged, he said.

Employees wouldnt let him see the video of the incident and claimed the problem was pre-existing, he said.

Waltons wife, Nancy, who was with her husband when the incident occurred, said the couple got the runaround when they asked to see the footage.

An assistant manager said to come back the next day when a manager was on duty, but when she came back the manager wasnt there, she said.

Evo DeConcini, who owns the car wash, said management typically shares video footage with customers who complain and said his staff has assured him that occurred in the Waltons case.

We generally side with the customer in a situation like this, and always make genuine efforts to go above and beyond when it comes to customer service, said DeConcini, who stressed that complaints are rare.

Walton, meanwhile, said hes shopping around for somewhere else to take his familys three vehicles and is feeling uneasy about it.

Once youve have a bad experience, he said, its hard to know who you can trust.
Help India!

By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net

Senior advocate Ujjwal Nikam, who was the special public prosecutor(SPP) in Mohsin Sadiq Shaikhs murder case, has opened up for the first time on why he withdrew from his position of the special public prosecutor (SPP).

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While talking to regional news channel ABP Majha, on November 30, Nikam said that it was one Member of Parliament and a journalist who opposed his appearance in the case.

The journalist and the MP who were not named by the Nikam allegedly opposed his appointment as SPP because Nikam had been felicitated by the Hindu outfits.

On May 19, 2017, Maharashtra state government cancelled Nikams appointment as the SPP in Mohsin Shaikhs murder case following a request raised by the Nikam himself. RV Chavan, the Section Officer at Law and Judiciary Department, passed the order regarding the same.

Mohsin Shaikh, a Pune-based engineer in a private firm, was allegedly attacked by the members of Hindu Rashtra Sena (HRS) on June 2, 2014.

In his interview to ABP Majha, Nikam said, One day, I got to know that a journalist and a MP had written to the government, with clippings of media reports, that Ujjwal Nikam has been felicitated by Hindu organisations in the past, due to which he will not be able to do justice.

According to the Nikam, the journalist and the MP had written to Prithviraj Chavan  then the Chief Minister of the state  much earlier before his resignation and government took no cognisance of their complaints.

I have been felicitated at many places in Maharashtra. I am not aware who is in the photographs with me, said Nikam in the interview.

Nikam talked about his apprehension in the case that if the accused were acquitted  even after his all efforts  the journalist and the MP would tell people that they had already informed the government about this.

So with honest intentions, I resigned from the case and did not mention any reason, said Nikam.

If the documents procured by the Indian Express to be believed, it could be Hussain Dalwai, the Rajya Sabha MP and Congress leader, who wrote a letter to Maharashtra CM in 2014 stating that Nikam should not be assigned as SPP in the case.

Another name could be of social activist Anjun Inamdar, the member of Rashtrapremi Kruti Samiti, who wrote to Chavan in the same year of 2014 opposing Nikams appointment as SPP.

TwoCircles.net tried to contact Uwal Nikam on two occasions. One was immediately after his withdrawal from the post of SPP, and second after Nikams interview on November 30. We got no response to the concerned questions from Nikams office.

After Nikams withdrawal from the case, Mohsins father Sadiq Shaikh -who was stunned by this development- tried to contact Ujjwal Nikam and Maharashtra state government showing faith in Nikams intentions and his work with the case.

Unanswered from all sides, Mohsins family applied for the appointment of Rohini Salian as SPP in the case. By the time Rohini Salians appointment could get confirmed, Ujwala Pawar appeared in the case as SPP and has been representing the family of Shaikh ever since.
Help India!

By Mirza Mosaraf Hossain, TwoCircles.net

A decade after the agitations and protests over the Tata factory in Singur and the damage it caused to the then Left government, it seems the Trinamool Congress, which led the protests against the Tata factory has learnt little. The Mamata Banerjee government, which came to power on the back of immense support from the people, is trying to cheat locals of Bengal in a manner similar to the Nano factory, albeit in Bolpur and not Singur.

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In 2001, the then Left government had acquired 294 acres farmland under the West Bengal Land Acquisition Act of 1984 from farmers of Shibpur, a Muslim-dominated locality about two km from Bolpur in Bengals Birbhum district for industry purposes with the promise that each family of the land givers would be offered a job. A total of 1,100 farmers gave their lands for a compensation of Rs 48,000 per bigha. Another 119 farmers denied giving their lands and five farmers refused to take compensation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnsX4RzHRM4&feature=youtu.be%20

TMC leader Anubrata Mondal threatening the DSP to arrest the farmers protesting against the WB government. Video courtesy: News Today, Kolkata

Although the land was taken as early as 2001, it became clear soon that there was little in the name of progress on the front of establishing industries, giving jobs to locals etc. Angered by the lack of any forward movement, in 2008 farmers who had given their land organized a day-long protest with the support of a number of organizations like the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI-ML), Association for Protection and Democratic Rights (APDR) and State Organizing Committee (SOT) in front of the SDO Office of Bolpur demanding either industry or their lands. Since then, the protests have been frequent, although without much results.

In 2010, the then opposition party Trinamool supported the demands of the farmers and Partha Chatterjee, now education minister, in a meeting in the locality assured them that they would bring either industry or return the lands to the farmers if they come in power in the 2011 general election. But when they succeeded in winning Bengal and ousting the Left government, they failed to keep up their promises. Heartbroken, the farmers started to plough their lands after three years of the Trinamool Party in power and continued it for more two to three years.

In January of this year, Mamata Banerjee in a conference in Kolkata declared that a housing industry and a Visva Bangla University would be established at the land acquired in Bolpur. According to sources, HIDCO, West Bengal Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation, has been given the responsibility for the housing project and it has been priced at Rs 70 lakh per bigha. Although this was the first news in years about what the government was planning to do with the acquired land, this news only angered the locals further as they had been made to believe that their children would be employed in the industries set up here. This led to farmers, who had been initially stayed away from protests, to also join their fellow farmers and fed up of the government promises, they formed Shibpur Jamihara Krishak Monch, for taking back their cultivable lands.

In April, a case was filed in the Kolkata High Court by Bikash Bhattacharya, a lawyer in Kolkata HC and a firm supporter of the protesting farmers challenging the governments decision. The HC gave the verdict in favour of the farmers and issued a stay order. The final hearing will be held soon in the forthcoming days.

On November 15, some of the organisations, lawyers and farmers who lost land had a gathering in the Shibpur locality. The petitioner Bikash Bhattacharya, Abdul Mannan, the Opposition Leader of Bengal from Congress Party, Miratun Nahar, an educationist and social activist, were supposed to meet the gatherings of the land looser farmers. But local Trinamool workers under the leadership of Anubrata Mondal, the district President of Birbhum Trinamool Party, held them back. Mondal even threatened the DSP to arrest all who came to join the gathering. A skirmish occurred when the Trinamool workers opened fire and started to beat the farmers present there. Two farmers, Mirza Jasimmudin from Sabirganj village, who gave 25 bighas land each and Anarul Sk from the same village, who also gave 7 bighas for the same cause, were arrested. Although a case was filed against the TMC goons, police did not pick them up instantly as they did with the farmers. The case was filed against them under the non-billable 307 of IPC instead of 325 as their involvement was only with protests.

Shailen Mishra, an advocate at Bolpur Court who has been working with the farmers on the issue, spoke to TwoCircles.net. The government is playing with the lives of the thousands of farmers. When they wanted to come to power, they promised to keep the interests of our people at heart. How can the same people now play with the lives and livelihoods of thousands of farmers? He added,  I dont think a university would take nearly 900 acres land for its establishment. By saying that a housing project would be set up here, the government is working like a broker. The leaders would loot crores of money from this housing project whereas the life of the poor would continue to be so.

Alam Sekh, a 55-year-old who gave his lands for the projects, asked, We gave our land for the industry in the hope that our children would be offered jobs. But what is the point of taking land from us if the proposed industry is not taking place?

Another farmer who pledged his land, Zulfikar SK from Nurpur village, said. The farmlands that we have are the sole means of our livelihood. We gave it to the government even with very low compensation hoping that we will be offered some permanent employment through which we will be able enough to run our families. If we get to know that the government would do business with our land, we would not have given our lands.
Help India!

By Vishal Gulati

Nairobi, (IANS): This year has been the deadliest for environmental women defenders, with 200 assignations reported across the globe, and most of them were killed over land and forest conflicts, rights activists said on Monday.

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Paying a tribute on the inaugural day of the three-day third UN Environment Assembly here, they highlighted the important role of women human rights defenders for a pollution-free future.

Two hundred environmental and women human rights defenders have been assassinated this year, mostly killed over land and forest conflicts. Only last week, we lost Elisa Badayos from the Philippines. But these conflicts are greatly aggravated by pollution, Priscilla Achakpa of the Womens Major Group (WMG) said.

In the Niger Delta, communities continue to resist against the oil spills from Shell, which have devastated their lands.

In Lagos, the waste scavengers resist eviction.

Pollution is not incidental but is a deliberate and inevitable consequence of a profit-oriented economy of mass production of harmful plastics, pesticides and fossil fuels, Achakpa said.

Helen Hakena of Leitana Nehan Womens Development Agency of Papua New Guinea added: We have suffered a 20-year war, which has had a terrible impact on women. Sixty-two per cent of the men confessed to having raped women.

Even though the war has ended, women still face immense aggression from the conflict of resources on our land, where an international mining company operated the largest open pit mine in the world. The Panguna mine has destroyed and polluted our land, forest, rivers and food sources, and seeps all profits away.

In Kenya, the headquarters of the UN Environment Programme, some 5,000 people are exposed to mercury pollution in artisanal and small-scale gold mining sites.

Mercury is banned under the Minamata Convention, negotiated here at the UNEP. In the impoverished community that Im working with they dont have much option. Mining gold and mixing it with mercury is the only knowledge they have and the main source of income, said Griffins Ochieng from the Centre for Environmental Justice and Development.

The WMG was created at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where governments recognized women as one of the nine important groups in society for achieving sustainable development.

The WMG is an official participant in the United Nations processes on Sustainable Development.

Over 4,000 heads of state, ministers, business leaders, UN officials and civil society representatives gathered here to mull ways to tackle the global menace of pollution.
Aussies make technology firms hand over their cash to state coffers. blog

Australia makes multinationals pay more tax. An audit by the the OECD brought to light how much money the big companies owed. With countries toughening up the rules, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the tax avoiders to keep all the profit.  Australia a Hits a Multinationals a With a New a Tax a Rules 

The OECD recommended ways to stop the cash going to tax havens. Nations have taken notice and passed new legislation. Australia's rules are clear: if you earn in Australia you must hand over the tax. Large businesses will have no choice. 3 Australia b Hits b Multinationals b With b New b Tax b Rules 3



Messing around with intercompany transfers between international branches to artificially reduce income will also face obstacles. The mother conpany providing overpriced inputs to outlying branches will end. Microsoft, Apple and Google have had their wings clipped.  Australia c Hits c Multinationals c With c New c Rules 



Like the United States, Australia plans to lower the corporate tax rate. Soon countries like Ireland will lose out as money flows elsewhere. There will be a race to the bottom as governments move the rate lower and lower.

multinationals hits international e cash e oecd e hand  ato government billion public avoidance share fair profits inquiry multinational million cut deals outcome laws settlements report settlement corporations time told king tony apple's photo president agree bills foreign system trump donald revenue funds restructuring sceptical individual naming agreed recommendations secret register senate global worth court chevron commissioner jordan chris ato's paid years issues director managing confidential taxed hearing claims tech cent change greater tested law dpt hit office maal unknown remains audits diverted anti-avoidance  || saved ||  feeds anti-avoidance diverted audits remains unknown maal office hit dpt law tested greater change cent tech claims hearing taxed confidential managing director issues years paid ato's chris jordan commissioner chevron court worth global senate register secret recommendations agreed naming individual sceptical restructuring funds revenue donald trump system foreign bills agree big president photo apple's tony king told time corporations settlement report settlements laws outcome deals cut million multinational inquiry profits fair share avoidance public billion government ato  || australia's audit corporate large firms, business, funds, cash, investment, economics, banks, lending, earth, collateral, ||





 TECHNOLOGY 


With Pembrokeshire County Council proposing to increase council tax by either 5 per cent or 12.5 per cent, it is clear that many local authorities are using Westminster's cuts as an opportunity to squeeze households during a time they have felt the pinch enough. Pro-liberty group Forge Wales said if this county council can afford to award its former chief executive with a 280,000 payment on top of their 190,000 a year salary, why is it Pembrokeshire residents may have to foot the bill for their awful spending habits?

"It is apparent council tax also impacts many households"

Introduced in 1991 to replace Thatcher's hated poll tax, council tax is based on valuations that are 25 years out of date. The eight council tax bands determining this regressive tax that funds local services are still based on 1991 property prices. Families residing in properties worth 320,000 and above pay the highest Band H levy. A house in London worth that much in 1991 would now be priced at 1.6 million, that's according to property agent Savills.

"The entire system is based on a postcode lottery"

The entire system is based on a postcode lottery. Band H homes in Westminster pay an average of 1,400 a year. In Weymouth, that bill would come to 4,000 a year.

The Financial Times argued that by reforming these bands, councils, whose budgets are being squeezed by soaring social care costs, would be able to charge properties based on their value in certain parts of the country.

However, business rates were reformed earlier this year. They were based on 1993 property values and many of them were landed with significant bills that they could not afford at a time of uncertainty caused by Brexit and soaring National Living Wage costs.

Towns have been losing shops since the 2008 Recession and business rate rises are only likely to make that worse as time progresses.

It is the same with council tax reform. Many households' budgets are being squeezed and unless the Government formulates a plan that will compensate families losing out as a result of a reform of this annual levy, they should leave it well alone, as they did in 2005.

The political consequences could be devastating. And many local authorities would use it as an opportunity to charge residents even more than they currently do.

"That does not mean council tax reform should be avoided"

That does not mean council tax reform should be avoided altogether. But Pembrokeshire County Council's plans will impact low-income families the most. They have not explained how they will be compensated. It is guaranteed there are areas of spending they can slash to prevent this rise. The problem is with parties' management of local councils, not a lack of money.

This is the wrong time to change council tax bands and Mr. Hammond was sensible to avoid it this time.
Award-winning documentary filmmaker and fine-art photographer Miguel Gandert shows his work highlighting his mestizaje heritage, and the fusion and tension of the relationship between Spanish Colonial and Native Cultures of the Americas. Runs through 12/29.

Querer means to want, to desire, to be in a place, with its people. In folk terminology, querencia is such a place, the center space of desire, the root of belonging and yearning to belong, that vicinity where you first beheld the light. Querencia, in collective terms, is homeland. ~Enrique Lamadrid, Nuevo Mexico Profundo

Miguel Gandert tells stories. He tells stories of his homeland, New Mexico (and beyond), its people and the cultural practices that distinguish communities from each other while simultaneously revealing their kinship. You will have to form your own words, however. Ganderts stories are told through penetrating, black and white photos. A primary focus of his work is his own mestizaje heritage and the fusion and tension of the relationship between Spanish Colonial and Native Cultures of the Americas.

Miguel Gandert, a native of Espanola, NM, is an award-winning documentary and fine-art photographer and filmmaker. His photographs have been shown in galleries and museums throughout the world and are in numerous public collections including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the National Museum of American History and Art at the Smithsonian.

Querencia: Rituals of the Rio Arriba opens Friday, October 6 at the New Mexico Humanities Council, 4115 Silver Ave SE, Albuquerque. An artists reception will be 6:00 pm  8:00 pm with an artist's discussion at 7:00 pm. The exhibit closes December 29, 2017.
Pembrokeshire County Council is considering hitting residents with a 12.5 per cent rise in council tax this month.

The proposal was leaked to Blasting News by Forge Wales, a pro-liberty and enterprise group in Wales. Pembrokeshire County Council is due to hold a full council meeting in December to debate whether a 5 per cent rise or a 12.5 per cent rise in council tax is necessary to raise any lost revenue.

"It is an option which is being explored"

Unaffiliated Pembrokeshire County Council Leader David Simpson told Blasting News: "The County Council has not decided to introduce a 12.5 per cent council tax rise for residents.

It is an option which is being explored. At a meeting earlier last week, the Council's Cabinet members asked for two alternative budgets to be presented to the meeting of full council in December 2017 for full consideration.

"One will be based on on council tax by raising 5 per cent and the other will be based on a rise of 12.5 per cent."

The proposals have caused an uproar with Forge Wales. Their spokesperson told Blasting News: "Pembrokeshire County Council has also unnecessarily spent 3 million on the purchase and renovation of their Cherry Grove Offices, despite any issues with capacity at County Hall.

"The council needs to ensure it has cut any non-essential spending before looking to take an extra 12.5 per cent from local residents."

The county council is seeking to discover how they can retain 16.7 million in savings in the 2018/19 budget.

Councillor Simpson said the council has already identified 10.7 million worth of funds and that an additional 2.4 million would be raised from a 5 per cent council tax rise.

He said there is still a shortfall of 3.64 million, which is why a potential rise of 12.5 per cent is being explored.

The Council Leader added that no final decisions have been made yet.

"Any amount of council tax that is due to go up is being used to help compensate the huge drop in funding"

Conservative councillor Aaron Carey said any amount of council tax that is due to go up is being used to help compensate the huge drop in funding from the Welsh Government and the cost of supplying services.

He refused to comment on what the Pembrokeshire Conservative Group's position on the council tax proposals is without further information on the consequences to both low income households and the amount of service provision available.

Pembrokeshire County Council came under scrutiny in October 2014 by Wales Online for wasting council tax on paying former chief executive Bryn Parry-Jones with a severance package of around 280,000, which was smaller than the original 330,000 sum being suggested at the time.

The Wales Audit Office objected to the original figure after ruling that any cash payments he received were unlawful in lieu of pension contributions.

Then Labour leader Councillor Paul Miller applied for a High Court injunction against the settlement.

"This is the same county council that treated its former chief executive to a severance package of 277,000 on top of his annual salary of 190,000"

A Forge Wales spokesperson said: "Forge Wales are concerned about Pembrokeshire County Council over the consideration to raise council tax by 12.5 per cent.

This is the same county council that treated its former chief executive to a severance package of 277,000 on top of his annual salary of 190,000."

Labour councillor Josh Beynon said even though he was not a councillor when Bryn Parry Jones was chief executive, he has always been against Mr. Parry-Jones' "ridiculous" severance package and the Porsche he was also awarded with.

He added: "Workers on lower pay scales wouldn't get a car, so why should the chief executive?"

Councillor Simpson defended the council's decision at the time, saying: "Pembrokeshire County Council members approved a settlement figure during a private session, in relation to the departure of Mr. Parry-Jones in October 2014.

We have no comment about the make and model of the car used by him.

"The current Chief Executive is Mr. Ian Westley, who was appointed on an interim basis in October 2014, and a permanent basis in July 2015."
Even though the search for San Juan, the Argentine submarine reported missing on November 15 was officially called off, there are still ongoing attempts to find what may remain of it in the sea. Most recently Panther Plus, a Russian underwater drone, while exploring the search area for the missing sub, photographed a shipwreck lying on the seabed. Yet according to an Associated Press report which referred to the Argentine Navy, the find belonged in fact to a fishing vessel sunken much earlier than San Juan.

According to Enrique Balbi, a navy spokesman, the military regrets that the families of the missing seamen were reassured, as the news of the find was released before blurry photos taken by the Russian apparatus were properly analysed.

One of the images was given priority for review last Saturday as it showed a ship-like object estimated to be about 60m long which was located at 477m (1,565 feet) below sea level within the search area. The object's size first appeared to roughly match that of ARA San Juan which is 66m long.

San Juan, the went missing on 15 November after having successfully completed live torpedoes war games. It had 44 crew members aboard at the time of its disappearance. As Balbi said, These are hours of intense pain and anguish [for relatives] in light of the loss of their loved ones, our 44 comrades.

Argentina's missing submarine confirmed sunken with no survivors

Built in Germany by Thyssen Nordseewerke, the lightweight single-hull design San Juan was laid down in 1982 and launched the following year.

The submarine went missing as it was returning to its permanent base in Mar del Plata from the southern port of Ushuaia. According to the navy, the vessels captain reported water having entered the snorkel which caused one of the subs batteries to short circuit.

Within few hours of San Juan's last radio transmission and in the vicinity of the vessel's last known location an acoustic anomaly compatible with an explosion event was detected.

After an extensive search, some 200 nautical miles (370 km; 230 mi) southeast of San Jorge Gulf hopes of rescuing the crew alive were abandoned on 30 November, as this type of submarine carries oxygen for no more than seven days when submerged.

First female submarine officer aboard

The 44 servicemen on board the missing submarine included Eliana Maria Krawczyk, Argentina's first female submarine officer. Following these events, the Russian Defence Ministry decided to send Panther Plus, a new ship-based submarine drone to assist in search of San Juan.
A baby albatross died from a plastic toothpick. Its mother mistook the item for food and fed it to the young. It stuck in the gullet leading to its death. This has been revealed in the latest documentary BBC series "Blue Planet II" of Sir David Attenborough.

Sky News reports that the 91-year-old iconic TV presenter has expressed concerns about plastic waste that is clogging the world's oceans. He wants people to realize the consequences, and take action to prevent cluttering the Environment with plastic discards so that the future of humanity is not doomed.

The matter is serious, because the survival of marine life, including animals and birds, is at stake. The death toll due to plastics runs into thousands, and the reasons are either ingestion of plastics or getting entangled in them.

Global warming and overfishing

Sir David Attenborough also brought up the importance of checking global warming and controlling overfishing to ensure a healthy environment. Both are harmful to the well-being of our planet Earth and everyone will have to go in for measures to contain these evils that, like the plastic wastes, threaten the world. It is not only about marine lives but also about vegetation that bears the brunt of global warming.

While on the subject, the veteran broadcaster took a dig at US President Donald Trump, who did not sign the Paris accord on climate change.

Sir David Attenborough explained that the accord was to tune the world to a common frequency, and he hoped that the United States would finally sign the accord because it would be for the benefit of the entire planet and not be isolated in tiny sectors.

Positive action is required

Protecting the environment is the responsibility of not only a few groups of like-minded persons but must become a way of life for all.

Plastic waste is a major threat to marine lives as well as land-based animals. According to Sir David Attenborough, in a rough estimate, nearly eight million tons of plastic winds up in the sea annually and a portion sinks to the bottom, while the remaining portion keeps floating around. This is non-biodegradable material and continues to accumulate in the oceans, which is not a desirable situation.

One method to reduce such waste is to go in for alternate material like paper.

It all boils down to the control of various parameters that disturb the ecological balance and result in abnormalities like flash floods, hurricanes, drought conditions, and forest fires. These are creations of man, and he must find remedies to ensure that the world remains healthy for future generations.
The verdict involving the death of Kate Steinle has been announced and the president isn't happy. After hearing the news of a not guilty ruling, Donald Trump took to Twitter.

Trump on Kate Steinle

In 2015, Kate Steinle was walking with her family on the San Francisco waterfront when she was fatally shot by a bullet. The bullet came from the gun of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who had previously been deported five different times. Zarate's defense claimed that he accidentally shot her after aiming for the pier. Due to San Francisco being a sanctuary city, Steinle's death quickly became a hot topic in the world of politics.

After announcing his plan to run for president in 2015, Trump used the tragedy as part of his talking point to push for stricter boarder control and immigration laws, in particular getting rid of all funding for sanctuary cities. Steinle's death became the inspiration behind "Kate's Law," which aims at harsher punishment for illegal immigrants who enter the United States after being previously deported. On Thursday night, a verdict in the trial involving Steinle's death was reached, with the jury in San Francisco finding Zarate not guilty of assault with a firearm. In response, Trump gave his thoughts during a tweet on November 30.

A disgraceful verdict in the Kate Steinle case! No wonder the people of our Country are so angry with Illegal Immigration.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 1, 2017

Taking to Twitter on Thursday night, Donald Trump expressed his frustration with the not guilty verdict of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate.

"A disgraceful verdict in the Kate Steinle case!" Trump tweeted.

Not stopping there, Donald Trump continued with his anger. "No wonder the people of our Country are so angry with Illegal Immigration," Trump concluded. As of press time, it's unknown whether the president or Republicans in congress will push for additional action on immigration in response to the verdict.

I am disappointed and angry at the not guilty verdict for Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an illegal alien who had several felony convictions & was deported from the US five times. Justice must be served for Kate Steinle. https://t.co/IxiL9WCU50  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 1, 2017

GOP reaction

In addition to Donald Trump lashing out at the verdict, other top Republicans expressed their thoughts.

"I am disappointed and angry at the not guilty verdict for Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an illegal alien who had several felony convictions & was deported from the US five times," Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted out.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions expressed displeasure over the Steinle murder trial verdict in a statement that claimed San Francisco's decision to release Zarate "led to the preventable and heartbreaking death of Kate Steinle." Read more: https://t.co/meMWBLyAVc pic.twitter.com/sxTphChdM7  NBC News (@NBCNews) December 1, 2017

Attorney General Jeff Sessions also released a statement, which was in line with the president and Ted Cruz. "When jurisdictions choose to return criminal aliens to the streets rather than turning them over to federal immigration authorities, they put the publics safety at risk," Sessions said. While Zarate was found not guilty of assault with a firearm, he was found guilty of a felony for being in possession of a firearm, and will be sentenced for that crime at a later date.
It looked like Nate and Sheila of "Married at First Sight" were going to be just fine, but it turns out that this isn't the case. Today, Sheila Duhon went to her Twitter page to call Nate out for cheating and say that their marriage is over. A few fans thought she might have been hacked, but it has been up for a while now and it looks like it is all legit.

What did Sheila reveal?

Shelia went to her Twitter and called him out without even thinking twice. She said, "Just got a call from the woman who's been sleeping with my husband...the same woman who he called on the honeymoon." Fans are shocked that she said this on her social network.

She was even responding to fans and saying that Nate did admit to it, so it wasn't like this woman was just trying to get to her. It is true and they are over according to her.

A lot of people feel like she shouldn't have gone to her social network to speak out about this yet, but she doesn't seem to have a problem with her decision. Sheila Duhon explained that she went to Twitter so fast because she is done. She doesn't doubt her decision at all.

After that, she went on to say, "I am so done. I honored my covenant with God. God said adultery is means for divorce." It sounds like she is totally done with her marriage and will be filing for divorce very soon. There doesn't seem to be any way that she will try to work things out with him after what just went down.

What is Nate saying?

So far, Nate isn't saying a word. The fans are watching his Twitter account and hoping for an update, but there isn't one at all. If Sheila was hacked, then you would think that he would be posting about it. For now, everyone is just going to have to wait and see what happens. It sounds like they are over, and if Nate has been with this same girl since they got married it wouldn't be surprising at all if he ends up with this person.

Right now, the fans are waiting on a statement from the couple. It is very likely that they will speak out to a magazine and explain that they are done, but this is all a big shock to everyone. Nate and Sheila really never seemed like they would make it to some and others thought they were the perfect couple.

Are you shocked to hear that Nate and Sheila aren't going to make it?

Do you feel like she will divorce him like she says? Sound off in the comments below on your thoughts and don't miss "Married at First Sight" when the show returns to Lifetime with a new season. They have already been looking for new contestants for the show.
Everyone saw Mark and Nikki on the show "90 Day Fiance." This couple has a really big age difference, but somehow they were able to make their relationship work. Now, Starcasm is sharing that the lawsuit they filed against TLC has now been thrown out. This couple hasn't been on any of the follow-up shows and they also aren't on social networks. They seem to have really moved on from anything to do with reality television. They don't want any part of being on the show or even on any update shows. It is surprising that they would be on the show at all as secretive as they are being now about everything.

How are these two doing now?

There are really no updates on them at all. Back in March, Mark left a review of a restaurant online and he mentioned his wife at the time. That seems to be the latest update from Mark and Nikki. They aren't even talking at all on social networks so it makes it hard for people to get updates on how they are doing. They were spending time together in Hawaii recently. It looked like they were having fun. Mark and Nikki seem to have worked even though a lot of people didn't think that they would.

So what is the deal on the lawsuit?

It turns out that back in May of this year the lawsuit was thrown out. Somehow at the time, Nikki and Mark were able to keep it out of the news.

Basically, the judge decided that they signed a contract to be on a reality show and there is nothing that they can file a lawsuit on. The contract actually says that they can edit things however they want to do it, so they can't sue for that either. The only way that they could have won this lawsuit was if they could prove that they did something on purpose to defame the duo or fraud them, but that wasn't the case either.

One thing that came up in the lawsuit is the fact that they get paid $1,000 per episode. Mark has also filed a lot of lawsuits in the past, so it wasn't like this was something new to him. It didn't work out for him this time around, though. Mark may have won some money in the past, but the one against TLC didn't end up helping him get rich at all.

Are you shocked to hear that Mark and Nikki seem to be still together? Are you shocked to hear that their lawsuit against TLC was thrown out? Sound off in the comments below, and don't miss new episodes of "90 Day Fiance" when they air on Sunday nights on TLC. Nikki and Mark won't be there, but we can continue to get updates on the other couples in the franchise that are willing to keep sharing their stories.
In recent weeks, several reports have revealed that Donald Trump has been telling his aides and select members of congress that it wasn't actually his voice on the now infamous "Access Hollywood" tape. In response, the man who was next to the president when he allegedly made the controversial remarks has decided to speak out.

Billy Bush on Trump

With one month remaining before voters made their way to the polls last year on Election Day, Donald Trump was hit with an October surprise in the form of an audio tape that was recorded prior to an interview with "Access Hollywood" back in 2005.

On the tape, Trump could be heard speaking to then host Billy Bush on a bus where he bragged about being able to use his fame and fortune to touch women as he pleased, stating, "When you're famous, they let you do it. Grab 'em by the pu**y." The tape quickly dominated the news cycle, resulting in a rare public apology by Trump, which was done on national TV. Over the next four weeks, a dozen women came forward to accuse the former host of "The Apprentice" of sexual assault and harassment, putting further pressure on his campaign. Despite this, Trump was able to weather the storm and pulled off the shocking upset over Hillary Clinton, which has since been marred by allegations of possible collusion with Russia.

Fast forward to present day and Trump has been privately telling people that the "Access Hollywood" tape was a fake and that it wasn't his voice on the recording. As seen in an op-ed during the December 3 edition of the New York Times, Bush has come out to correct the record.

Op-Ed Contributor: Billy Bush: Yes, Donald Trump, You Said That https://t.co/T1RB2jlIEe  The New York Times (@nytimes) December 4, 2017

"He said it," Billy Bush writes to start off his New York Times op-ed, in reference to the comments made on the "Access Hollywood" tape.

"Of course he said it. And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America's highest-rated bloviator," Bush continued.

President Trump has questioned the authenticity of the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which he bragged about being able to grope women, despite the fact he immediately apologized when the video surfaced https://t.co/d72OVKIuxX pic.twitter.com/jfjw97ATUu  CNN (@CNN) December 3, 2017

Billy Bush went on to detail his regret, explaining that, along with the others with him at the time, "were guilty of sacrificing a bit of ourselves in the name of success." Bush expressed heartfelt remorse for those who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault ans harassment, referring to them as "culture warriors" during a time of need.

Bush went on to note that his public op-ed was about "reckoning and reawakening," while concluding that he hopes it reaches every one of the men who were on the bus with Trump that day.

Moving forward

With Billy Bush coming out to finally tell his side of the story about what took place during his conversation with Donald Trump, only time will tell if the president decides to respond. In recent days, the commander in chief has expressed his frustration over a variety of issues on social media, and it's expected that he could do so with Bush in the near future.
Metropolitan Opera Music Director Emeritus James Levine led four performances of Giuseppe Verdis Requiem with a dazzling cast between Friday, Nov. 24, and Saturday, Dec. 2 (the performance under review). He helmed the world-class Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the peerless Metropolitan Opera Chorus. The four soloistssoprano Krassimira Stoyanova, mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk, tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko, and bass Ferruccio Furlanettowere stellar standouts. Since its 1901 Metropolitan Opera premiere, this work has now seen the footlights 53 times.

Everything Music and Theatre explains what makes this monumental work so great and points out a few highlights.

Choral high points

So many fantastic moments, so little time. Running the sonic gamut, choral murmurs open and close this colorful work, requiring utmost restraint and control by the massive chorus, numbering 114. At the other extreme, overpowering high-decibel concerted passagesthe recurring Dies irae (Day of wrath) and the grim, growly Rex tremendae (Dreadful King) among themcannot help but envelop the audience in a sonorous tsunami. In the first of four iterations of the Day of wrath, the chorus ominously hisses, accentuating the ess sound in numerous words of the passage: Quantus tremor est futurus, quando judex est venturus, cuncta stricte discussurus (What trembling there will be, when the judge shall come to examine all things thoroughly).

Mezzo moments

Verdis mezzo-soprano takes a leading role among the soloists, intoning arias and leading ensembles. The Russian volcanic vocal voluptuary Ekaterina Semenchuk delivered all her numbers with gorgeous tone and legato, never more-so than the Liber scriptus aria in the Dies irae, where her sturdy, dusky high range made you wish she were a soprano and her powerful burnished lower range made you glad shes notwith contralto characteristics, evocative of the inimitable late Elena Obraztsova.

When darkness shines

Mors stupebit (Stupified Death), the bass spooky, hushed opening solo, comes on the heels of the blazing fanfare of trumpets, trombones and French horns of Tuba mirum (Marvelous trumpet). Verdi veteran Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto succeeded in engaging in the requisite hair-raising quietness, whereas his later superb solo with chorus, Confutatis, became a great showpiece, spun with incredibly gorgeous tone, perfect volume and all the angst the Latin text contains.

Tenor tunes

The tenors is the first soloist whose voice makes a showing. His lyrical Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy on us) intrudes upon the orchestral and choral opening, burning brightly upward. The remaining soloists follow in a brief round. Ingemisco (I tremble), the tenor aria, is everything youd expect from a Verdi opera, in this most operatic of so-called sacred works. Towering Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko ardently dispatched it, having no trouble in the treacherously high passages, executing an unconvincing trill at first, but acquitting himself nicely upon repeat.

Soprano standouts

Verdis soprano, normally the protagonist in his operas, takes a seemingly supporting role at first, singing often in ensemble, as part of the quartet of soloists and in two duets with the mezzo-soprano.

Only in Libera me, Domine (Deliver me, Lord)the final 15 minutesdoes she fully own the stage, interacting with the chorus and singing what could be called a three-part aria: at first frantic, then suppliant and finally sedately resigned. Soprano Krassimira Stoyanova gleamed and glowed at the high end of her register and was frightening in the steely strength of her lowest range. Her three distinct iterations of Salva me (faint and helpless, then stronger, pleading, and finally imperious) in the Rex tremendae section and her ascent to the heights, far above the quartet and resounding clearly over the orchestral and choral tutti, were astounding, utterly moving.

Formidable foursome

The soloists were all well and good in their moments of holding the stage individually.

Teaming up in quartet they were sublime, like when the soprano describes Michael the standard-bearer. Above her sustained (16-second) floated pianissimo, the orchestra and her three colleagues undulated in modulating major-to-minor keys  simply breathtaking. Ms. Stoyanova here deftly, touchingly executed a melting messa di voce (a sustained note that gradually increases, then decreases, in volume)much more difficult than it sounds in words. As mentioned, their concerted work, mostly with repetitions of the phrase Salva me, could not help but move the hardest heart; the desperation conveyed brought tears to the eyes.

Orchestral pearls

The two brass fanfares (in Tuba mirum and the veritable marching-band Sanctus) are the most glaring examples of Verdis mastery of full-throttle orchestration.

But an early passage, in Liber scriptus, takes the ear back in time to Amneris in Aida, three years earlier (1871), and farther still, to Azucena in Il trovatore (The Troubador; 1853). The flute and piccolo flourishes in Libera me bring to mind Amelias Act-II gallows scene in Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball; 1859). On the quiet side, nothing is so ethereal as the shimmering orchestra, created by soft violin tremolos, at the beginning and end of various sections.

Golden silence

Verdis dramatic use of the grand pausea slash of complete silence at the height of full vocal and orchestral volumeis spine-chilling. In the chorus Tuba mirum (Wondrous trumpet), a few seconds lapse before the reverberating ends, following ante thronum (before the throne), creating understated drama when the subsequent bass solo, Mors stupebit (Stupefied Death), begins at an eerie whisper.

The soprano negotiates such an abrupt cut in Libera me, following the line dum veneris judicare saedum per ignem (when you come in flames to judge the world). Sneering, heckling contrabassoons answer.

James Levine Conducts First @MetOpera Performance of Verdis Requiem Since 2008 https://t.co/0n0WtVjzwj with @KrStoyanova  Playbill ClassicArts (@playbillarts) 14 November 2017

Platinum conductor

James Levine has lovingly led the last 17 performances of Verdis Requiem at Metropolitan Opera, last seen there in 2008. As in any work he conducts, he lavishes love on the soloists while creating perfect balance between the magnificent orchestra and Chorus Master Donald Palumbos matchless onstage chorus. Turning in his wheelchair to face the audience, he received their raucous ovation while everyone onstage warmly applauded him and the orchestra. This is truly an event not to miss.
jill zarin shared a heartbreaking update with "RHONY" fans, posting an Instagram message that gave an update on her husband's cancer battle as he reportedly nears the end.

The reality television star celebrated her birthday this week, and posted a picture on Instagram of a beautifully crafted, layered cake. In the update, Jill Zarin noted that she has been trying to take advantage of every moment since her husband was diagnosed with cancer. The "RHONY" star said that he continues to "astound doctors" with his progress against the cancer, but the message itself was bittersweet given his grim prognosis.

"I am most grateful to God who continues to give Bobby and me more time together," she wrote. "When Bobby always said to me 'cherish the moment' I never knew the power of that message until now."

Jill Zarin added that she and Bobby are continuing to fight against his Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer and that Bobby has astounded his doctors with his determination to fight the disease despite long odds against him. The "RHONY" star also thanked friends and fans for their many messages of support, saying she reads all of them to gain strength during the difficult battle ahead of the couple.

Bobby Zarin's cancer progressing

Jill Zarin's husband had originally been diagnosed with thyroid cancer close to eight years ago, but it has recently surged back and now spread into his brain, the "Real Housewives of New York" star shared with fans.

Those close to Jill Zarin said that Bobby's outlook does not look good, but she is trying to remain positive during his cancer battle. It has been a difficult road for Bobby, with People magazine noting that he also had to undergo Gamma Knife Radiosurgery at the noted MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Jill Zarin staying by her husband's side

While Bobby Zarin has a difficult battle ahead still, his wife will be there to support him. A source close to the couple told Radar Online earlier this month that Jill has been hesitant to go to public events as her husband's health declines. The source claimed that Jill Zarin has been by his side constantly, but that Bobby insisted she leave to make a brief appearance at a recent event.

As Bobby Zarin continues to battle cancer, Jill Zarin has pulled back on her other obligations, including appearances on television. Once a staple on "Real Housewives of New York," she has returned only briefly since her firing more than three years ago.
In order to pass on advance information to its people about an impending nuclear attack from North Korea, the authorities in Hawaii have decided to make use of its sirens. It conducted a test that lasted for a minute with the purpose of checking their serviceability because the devices had been put in cold storage after the end of the Cold War.

Sky News reports that the sounding of the warning system would become a regular monthly feature to ensure that the Hawaiians are warned, and their safety is ensured to the extent possible.

However, the testing revealed that some of the 385 odd units installed across the islands either malfunctioned or the required decibel to attract attention was absent.

This was especially true along beaches where the sound of the waves drowned the sound of the sirens. Obviously, these must be fixed, and soon.

Importance of Hawaii

Hawaii is the state located nearest to the Korean peninsula and is also headquarters for the military in the Asia Pacific region. A number of key bases, including Pearl Harbor, are in the vicinity. That is probably the reason why North Korea has selected Hawaii as one of its probable targets. Hence, the authorities have tested the sirens which will be used to inform its population about an approaching aerial threat.

The test had been planned some time ago but was finally carried out when Pyongyang claimed to have launched its most powerful missile to date.

It was labeled as a weapon that could strike the US mainland and is a matter of concern.

Tension rises in the Korean peninsula

The latest ICBM launch of North Korea after nearly two months of apparent quiet has shocked the world. The height attained by the missile and the distance it traveled is significant from Americas point of view because such a weapon could target any location in the United States.

The tension in the Korean peninsula could escalate further since a joint military exercise is scheduled between the US and South Korea, and Pyongyang views this as an act of aggression.

As far as Hawaii is concerned, in the event of an attack, it would get less than 20 minutes time before the missile strikes. Therefore, the sirens will come into action to warn the people who are outdoors to seek out suitable shelters.

In todays fast-moving world, people are always on the move and, any sudden attack could wreak havoc on people and their surroundings.

The state's Governor, David Ige, has tried to reassure the Hawaiians by saying that the possibility of an attack is remote.
State Councilor Yang Jiechi, a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, addresses delegates to an international seminar in Beijing at its closing session on Sunday. FENG YONGBIN/CHINA DAILY

High-level meeting calls on attendees to reject isolationism, support multilateral trade system

The Belt and Road Initiative serves the interests of people of all countries and provides a platform for building a community with a shared future for mankind, political party leaders from more than 120 countries said in a joint statement issued in Beijing on Sunday.

They voiced their "earnest expectations and best wishes" for realizing the Belt and Road in the Beijing Initiative document adopted at the closing session of the Communist Party of China in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting.

In the statement, the leaders from nearly 300 political parties and organizations said forging a new form of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation is imperative to the building of the community with a shared future for mankind and a better world.

They called on countries to stay away from isolationism and exclusionism and support a multilateral trade system, and they commended the CPC's efforts and contribution in promoting the building of the community with a shared future and a better world.

Building the community and a better world requires political parties and leaders to undertake their historic duties and carry forward the spirit of hard work, State Councilor Yang Jiechi said at the closing session.

Also, the leaders should have a sense of innovation, always act with a problem-oriented approach, and create platforms for exchanges, Yang added.

In his keynote speech on Friday, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, elaborated on the CPC's idea of building the community with a shared future, and showed determination to boost world development and prosperity, Yang said.

Various attending political parties spoke highly of Xi's speech hailed the CPC's historical contribution and expect China's further navigating role, Yang added.

Pierre Ngolo, general-secretary of the Congolese Labor Party and president of the Senate of the Republic of Congo, said China fulfills its duties efficiently, promotes unity, friendship and safety among people in the world and works for enabling everyone to benefit from development.

"The Belt and Road is one of the best examples," he said, adding that the unprecedented high-level meeting, transcending the self-interests of the various political parties gathered, charts the course for the community with a shared future.

The meeting will become "a new impetus" for development in the world, he said.

Dashzeveg Amarbayasgalan, general secretary of the ruling Mongolian People's party, said the meeting has had sufficient discussions on co-building the Belt and Road.

Views have been exchanged effectively and the meeting has turned a new page for exchanges among political parties in the world, he said.

Dmitry Novikov, deputy chairman of the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Russian Federation, said the Belt and Road Initiative is promising in reinforcing economic cooperation among countries and will boost the upgrading of political and cultural cooperation among them.

China is the world's second-largest economy, it has huge potential politically and economically, and it benefits the Chinese people and facilitates efforts in building an equitable world of justice and allowing every country to have a share of development, Novikov said.

The Beijing Initiative will also introduce more possibilities to bilateral cooperation, such as those between China and Russia, he added.
Major global challenges such as terrorism and climate change allow no country to sacrifice others for its own self-interests, and political parties should join hands in efforts to tackle the thorny issues, political leaders say.

These recommendations were made by speakers addressing the second plenary session and closing session of the Communist Party of China in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting in Beijing on Sunday.

Marina Sereni, vice-president of Italy's Chamber of Deputies and a member of the leadership of the Democratic Party of Italy, said new threats require "strong cooperation and political dialogue".

"Fighting climate change and poverty...are tasks that no country can face and beat alone," she said.

Nafie Ali Nafie, secretary-general of the Council of African Political Parties, said political parties have great understanding of the actual situation at the local grassroots level, they know best the top concerns of the local community and their operations greatly supplement government efforts.

Political parties should boost the resolution of issues through advancing legislative campaigns in their respective countries, and offer solutions that meet the expectations of people from all walks of life, he said.

Olga Epifanova, deputy chairwoman of Russia's State Duma, warned that terrorism is like a plague in the 21st century and some countries have failed to translate into actions their commitment to fighting terrorism.

Epifanova raised the refugee issue in Europe and noted that some European countries have failed to accept refugees as required by the European Union.

Mohammed Moussaoudja, vice-president of Algeria's People's National Assembly and leader of the National Liberation Front, said that as Africa Union's anti-terror center is located in his country, the fight against terror should transcend borders and become a real worldwide fight.

With peace and tranquillity under threat in the world, the United Nations' fundamental role in resolving the challenges should be reinforced, and South-South cooperation is particularly important, he said.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China is a "major player" on the global stage in this regard, he added.

Jiko Fatafehi Luveni, leader of the Fiji First Party and speaker of Parliament of the Republic of Fiji, called for concerted global efforts in taking on climate change as a clean environment is critical to the island nation in the Pacific Ocean.

The Fijian speaker said China has pushed for the implementation of the agreement approved at the Climate Change Paris Conference, helping offset the impact of climate change on the world.

Choo Mi-ae, head of the ruling Minjoo Party of the Republic of Korea, said no thought could be significant if it is not put into practice, and a resolute fight should be made by all countries against challenges including ecological imbalance and terrorism.

Choo called on attending parties and delegates to build the community with a shared future and reinforce unity within and operations by political parties.
Sunday, Dec 3, was the 26th International Day of Persons with Disabilities since its designation by the United Nations in 1992.

China has made much progress over the past decades in helping its people with disabilities through legislation protecting their rights in education, job opportunities, healthcare and daily life.

In his congratulatory letter last Thursday to the High-Level Intergovernmental Meeting on the Midpoint Review of the Asian and Pacific Decade of Persons with Disabilities (2013-22), President Xi Jinping called for special attention in taking care of people with disabilities, because they are "equal members of the global family".

According to an article by my colleague Liu Xuan from Beijing, Kaveh Zahedi, deputy executive secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, praised China, saying that "in the past five years, a million people with disabilities in China have been absorbed into the labor market. That's because 3,000 employment centers are dedicated to people with disabilities and 30,000 people worked on connecting people with disabilities with job opportunities."

Through rapid and massive urban transformation, Chinese cities have become friendlier and more accessible for people with disabilities. People can probably find more tactile paving on sidewalks in major Chinese cities these days than in New York and Washington.

That is a laudable feat.

However, many problems still need to be fixed, and relevant laws need to be strictly enforced to protect the rights of the vulnerable.

For example, many "blind lanes" on sidewalks often lead to bicycles or obstacles that stand in the way. Some of the tactile ground surface indicators were clearly designed to look decorative rather than practical and user friendly to those who need them.

The definition for someone with a disability must be different in China and the US. There are nearly 83 million Chinese with disabilities, accounting for 6.3 percent of the population. In the US, the rate is 12 to 19 percent, according to various surveys.

With such a large population of people with disabilities, the group is often not as visible in Chinese cities as in US cities.

My sense is that not only should more laws be formulated and strictly enforced to protect their rights, the whole society needs to be educated to show more respect to this group.

The recent case in Beijing of a visually impaired woman being denied entry to the subway system simply because her guide dog was not wearing a muzzle was appalling. It has already triggered a heated debate on the rights of the physically challenged population.

Guide dogs for the visually impaired are still a new phenomenon and in short supply in China. They appeared only after millions of Chinese were deeply moved by the 2004 Japanese movie Quill - The Life of a Guide Dog.

Buses equipped with ramps and lifts are still hard to find. Bus drivers and fellow bus passengers are often not as friendly as they should be towards the handicapped.

I still recall my first trip to the US in 1993 when I spent a year in Honolulu, Hawaii. As I took the No 4 bus between the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus and my apartment in Waikiki, I witnessed numerous occasions of wheelchairs and mobility scooters getting on and off the bus.

The drivers were always very helpful. They lowered the bus and deployed the ramp or lift and then helped secure the wheelchair in the bus. Equally amazing were the passengers, who were always patient and friendly, unlike what's typical in many Chinese cities.

In fact, going back to China after that trip, I kept telling everyone that people in wheelchairs were treated like emperors in Honolulu.

In a recent case, I observed a woman in a wheelchair getting on a DC Circulator bus. As far as I could tell, the driver had done a good job deploying the ramp, but the woman complained it wasn't good enough. So the driver did it over again.

In Washington, I often marvel at the people in wheelchairs and mobility scooters moving freely in supermarkets and bookstores, living a life just like most people.

These are the kind of scenes I hope to see in Chinese cities.

Contact the writer at chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. [File photo/Agencies]

UNITED NATIONS - The United States has quit negotiations on a voluntary pact to deal with migration because the global approach to the issue was "simply not compatible with US sovereignty," said US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.

In a statement released late on Saturday, the US mission to the UN noted that President Donald Trump made the decision.

"No country has done more than the United States, and our generosity will continue," said Haley, whose parents are immigrants from India. "But our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone."

"We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country," she said.

Trump campaigned last year on a promise to deport large numbers of immigrants and build a wall on the US border with Mexico to help tackle illegal immigration and crime in the United States. Since he took office in January, he has also moved to ban US entry by people from select Muslim countries.

With a record 21.3 million refugees globally, the 193-member UN General Assembly adopted a political declaration in September last year in which they also agreed to spend two years negotiating the pact on safe, orderly and regular migration.

Former US President Barack Obama's administration backed the resolution, known as the New York Declaration, which also asked UN High Commissioner for Refugees Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein to propose a global compact on refugees for adoption in 2018.

"The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with US sovereignty," Haley said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regretted the US decision, his spokesman said on Sunday, but expressed hope the United States might re-engage in the talks.

"The positive story of migration is clear: it needs to be better told. Equally, the challenges it throws up need to be tackled with more determination and greater international coordination," UN spokesman Farhan Haq said.

Three days of preparatory talks begin in Mexico on Monday ahead of the start of formal negotiations in February over the non-binding pact.

Haley's predecessor Samantha Power mocked the US move.

"How to further insult your Mexican neighbor, turn your back on humanity's most desperate, and make America irrelevant on a hugely destabilizing global crisis in one easy step," she posted on Twitter.

While former UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said on Twitter: "On migration, national solutions logically do not exist ... Going it alone is a lose-lose proposition."

Agencies
Businesses across Canada will benefit from a strengthened economic relationship with China, the world's second-largest market, according to Mary Ng, member of the Canadian Parliament, who briefed journalists on Friday in Markham.

"The prime minister's trip is an excellent opportunity to explore increased economic ties between China and Canada and how that can create jobs and grow the middle class here at home," said Ng. "This is great news for the business and academic community in Markham and across Canada."

MP Shaun Chen also highlighted the significance of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's visit.

"As the world's second-largest economy, China is a market with significant opportunities for growth," said Chen. "The potential economic benefits of a stronger relationship between our two countries will help Canadian businesses, grow our middle class, create new jobs and increase our shared prosperity."

The MPs will join Trudeau from Dec 3-7 as he meets with Chinese government and business leaders to build on the progress the two countries have made since the prime minister's first official visit to China in September 2016.

As one of Canada's most diverse cities and its high-tech capital, the city of Markham has developed a strong and successful relationship with China. Representatives from Markham's business community and academic institutions also shared their goals of ensuring that the local community remains a beneficiary of strengthened economic ties and partnerships with China.

"Markham has benefited significantly from the large population base of Chinese business owners that call Markham home," said Richard Cunningham, president of the Markham Board of Trade. "We welcome and applaud the opportunity for the Canadian government to continue to explore ways to increase opportunities for large multinational businesses, as well as to grow tourism, which will greatly benefit local small and medium businesses."

"Huawei Canada supports the efforts to promote positive trade business partnerships between Canada and China," said Steve Lu, president of Huawei Canada.

"We are proud of our Canadian footprint, the investments we are making to support Canada's ICT ecosystem and the innovative technologies we are bringing to Canadian consumers and small businesses," he said. "This is helping to create jobs and sustain Canada's leadership in communications."

Rhonda L. Lenton, president and vice-chancellor of York University, which currently has 37 academic agreements with leading Chinese universities, said: "We believe strongly in the value of creating international partnerships with countries like China, which help to facilitate important research and scholarly collaborations and student and faculty exchanges."

The prime minister is expected to promote a progressive trade agenda and tourism initiative that will create good, middle-class jobs and more opportunities for people in both countries.

renali@chinadailyusa.com
A declaration expressing the determination of overseas Chinese to firmly oppose Taiwan independence was adopted at the annual conference of the Association for the Peaceful Unification of China (APUC).

The conference, also known as the Cross-Straits Peaceful Development Forum, was held on Saturday in New York.

The declaration also calls for safeguarding the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations and national reunification.

More than 300 officials from the Chinese mainland, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, along with members of APUC across the US, representatives of Chinese in the US and scholars attended the forum.

Dun Shixin, director-general of the Department of Hong Kong, Macao and Overseas Affairs Related to Taiwan at the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, said that for many years, cross-Straits exchange on culture and economy has developed "from none to present, from less to more, from indirect to direct, and from one-way to two-way".

Cross-Straits trade volume has risen 120 times over the past 30 years, and the number of cross-Straits personnel exchanges has reached nearly 117 million.

"This fully shows that the cross-Straits relations have a profound economic and public opinion foundation," Dun said.

Li Kexin, minister of the Chinese embassy in the US, said that the recently concluded 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which made a clear strategic arrangement for the development of China in the next 30 years, provided an in-depth explanation on settling Taiwan-related affairs in the new era.

Li said he believes "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" isn't a reality without complete national reunification.

"It is the fundamental interest of the Chinese nation as well as the necessary requirement for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation to solve the Taiwan issue and realize the complete reunification of China," he said.

"All Chinese people should actively promote the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations and create and accumulate conditions for the ultimate realization of the reunification of the country."

Guest speakers expressed that the path of cross-Straits peaceful development is welcomed by the international community.

After the forum, Zhao Yumin, acting Chinese consul general in New York, spoke of his appreciation at a reception.

"We are deeply grateful to the 4.5 million Chinese in the US and tens of millions of Chinese overseas. Without your efforts, rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will not be realized completely," Zhao said.

xiaohong@chinadailyusa.com
Vice-Premier Liu Yandong has kicked off an official visit to the United Kingdom that will last from Monday until Thursday and take her to the cities of London, Edinburgh, and Oxford.

Liu will co-chair the fifth-annual UK-China High-Level People-to-People Dialogue  the highest level Sino-UK dialogue to be held in the UK this year. Jeremy Hunt, Britain's secretary of state for health, will also co-chair the event.

While in the UK, Liu will meet with a number of senior figures, including UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and Princess Anne and Prince Andrew at Buckingham Palace.

"The UK-China relationship is strong and continues to deliver benefits for both countries, so I am delighted to welcome Madame Liu to the UK for the People-to-People Dialogue," said Johnson.

Hunt said: "I am delighted to once again co-chair the People-to-People Dialogue, which will reaffirm the strong ties between the UK and China and underline our commitment to working together to solve some of the biggest issues facing the world today."

While on the visit, Liu will witness the launch of the UK-China Joint Science and Innovation Strategy, participate in a forum of CEOs involved in the creative industries, and join a roundtable of young leaders, including young parliamentarians.

The meeting, which is also known as the P2P Dialogue, will cover 10 policy strands. The subjects that will be talked about are: health, education, culture and creative industries, science and innovation, tourism, sport, issues affecting young people, regional cooperation, issues impacting women, and social equity.

This year's P2P theme is the "Spirit of Youth", which connects to a UK government campaign that aims to inspire the next generation of leaders in China and the UK and the promotion of deeper collaboration and exchange.

At the meetings, ministers are expected to agree upon a range of initiatives, including a new joint UK-China health agreement that will advance work to tackle a number of healthcare challenges. The initiatives will also further collaboration on female leadership and empowerment, and strengthen existing collaboration between higher education institutions.

"I think the future for the UK-China relationship is very exciting and we've already established a 'golden era' in UK-China relations," said Barbara Woodward, the UK's ambassador to China ahead of Liu's visit. "I think we'll see a deepening and broadening of our overlapping interests with China, and opportunities for building a very bright future together."
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HA NOI  Standard & Poors (S&P) Global Ratings has upgraded the long-term credit rating for Vingroup from B to B+, the highest rating in Viet Nams real estate industry.

From the beginning of 2017 to now, Vingroup was also the only real estate company in South East Asia to be upgraded by S & P.

According to S & P, Vingroup is rated to have a better market position than some of its peers and the same ranking in Southeast Asia.

Specifically, in real estate, Vingroup is forecast to reach sales of VN74 trillion for the year 2017. Last year, the group sold some 15,000 apartments, villas and townhouses, accounting for some 24 per cent of the high-end market share in major cities.

Vingroups sales is projected to continue growing in the next two years, thanks to the strategy of diversifying products across all segments, from mass to high-end, especially with the establishment of the brand, VinCity. With the positive improvement of Viet Nams economy, S&P forecasts sales of Vingroups real estate will reach VN70-75 trillion between the 2017 and 2019 period, double the groups sales revenue in the previous years.

Besides real estate for sale, Vingroups real estate for lease is also expanding. Vincom Retail is maintaining its position as the biggest commercial centre operator in Viet Nam, accounting for 60 per cent of the market share in Ha Noi and HCM City, with nearly 1.2 million sq.m of retail floor area.

"Vingroup has a much better market share in major operating segments being the leading player and a significantly larger operating scale. The companys operations are also more diversified than peers, with 15-20 per cent of gross profit from the more stable shopping mall leasing, retail, hospitality, and healthcare segments. We therefore assign a positive score to Vingroup in our comparable rating analysis," S&P stated in the report.

With a strong financial status and a well-developed network of operations over the years, S&P forecasts that Vingroup will be able to meet its business expansion, including the auto industry.

Previously, Vingroup was also given a B + rating by Fitch Ratings with stable prospects. Being highly appreciated by international organisations has confirmed the growing credibility of the group and it is the foundation for a belief that Vingroups business will continue do well in the future.  VNS
HA NOI  The increasing number of Vietnamese suppliers who provide parts and components to Samsung would not only help Samsung Viet Nam (SEV) reduce its production costs, but also develop the countrys auxiliary industry, according to Kim Dong Hwan, SEVs deputy general director.

However, SEV has still been hard pressed to search for local vendors who could provide hi-tech spare parts, Hwan told the media at a visit to three firms joining in its consultation programme for vendors - an event held by Samsung South Koreas experts last week in the northern province of Bac Ninh.

He said that half of SEVs 29 Vietnamese tier-1 vendors are providing just simple spare parts and components in its supply chain.

Meanwhile, Samsung has been searching for local support firms in the hi-tech area. Samsung has some 150 support companies, both local and FDI, to maintain its production in Viet Nam. This means that Vietnamese firms accounted for only 20 per cent of SEVs demand for auxiliary products, due to the weak ability of local firms.

To increase the local firms capacity as well as respond to the call of the Vietnamese Government for improving their competitiveness, Samsung organised the consultation programme for 130 local companies with an aim that some 50 Vietnamese companies would become SEVs tier-one vendors by 2020.

The number of Samsungs tier-1 Vietnamese vendors has increased dramatically, from four businesses in 2014 to the current 29 business. These vendors are participating in the supply chain for Samsungs plants in Viet Nam, including SEV, SEVT, SEHC (Samsung Electronics HCM City Complex), Samsung Display Viet Nam (SDV), Samsung SDI Viet Nam and Samsung Electro-Mechanics Viet Nam.

Last week, Samsung Viet Nams management board paid a visit and surveyed six vendors, including Manutronics Viet Nam JSC, Tien Thanh JSC, Bac Viet Technology JSC (Bac Ninh), Nhat Minh Company, Minh Man Manufacturing Trading and Printing Labels Co Ltd, and Vinavit Corporation. The six vendors participating in this consulting programme have gained excellent results in improving production and increasing their competitiveness capabilities.

Samsung has also collaborated with the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) to expand the business consultation programme, by establishing an Advisory Board to build and implement the programme on a large scale.

Chu Thi Thu Phuong, chairman of Manutronics  a tier-2 vendor for SEV, and Samsung Electronics Viet Nam (SEVT), producing compact disc (CD, DVD, CD-R) and hi-tech electronics assembly, said the consultation programme helped them expand production, changing management ideas and working habits. It also helped to reduce the error rate by 63 per cent, thus increasing productivity by 20-35 per cent and decreasing equipment loss rates by up to 82 per cent.

Samsungs 9-month profits

Samsung Group has announced impressive business results during the first three quarter of the year, with a significant contribution by Samsung Viet Nam.

According to the South Koreans integrated financial report in the third quarter of 2017, the groups revenue was $152.45 billion, with a profit of $26.2 billion.

Samsungs four companies in Viet Nam include SEV, SEVT, SDV and SEHC, which contributed total revenues and profits of $45.6 billion and $4.95 billion, respectively. Specifically, SEVs revenues rose 0.5 per cent to $13.4 billion, while profits rose by 44 per cent to $1.64 billion during this period.  VNS
PARIS  Viet Nam and the European Union (EU) are working to finalise legal and language  related issues in the EU-Viet Nam free trade agreement (EVFTA), prior to the official signing and ratification of the trade deal next year, said Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh.

At a workshop on the EVFTA held by the French Business Federation (MEDEF) and the Asia Centre in Paris on December 1, Khanh emphasised the common goal of the two sides to implement the agreement after it is inked, adding that the Vietnamese Government is outlining a specific plan for carrying out the agreement.

For his part, chief of the negotiation delegation of the EVFTA Raffaele Mauro Petriccione noted that the approval process for the agreement could take a long time, since the EU is a trade bloc with many members.

Participants to the workshop appreciated Viet Nams active foreign economic-trade policy and highlighted Viet Nams leading role in recent global events, especially the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum held in a Nang.

According to Marie-Christine Pocin, a senior advisor from Frances Ministry of Economy and Finance, Viet Nam has a consistent policy of integrating its economy into international trade, and France has been developing various fields to promote poverty reduction.

Viet Nam plays a positive role in the process of regional economic integration, she stressed.

Nguyen inh Cung, director of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), highlighted the importance of the EVFTA agreement in Viet Nams integration process.

The trade agreement brings great benefits to the country, as it is estimated it would generate an additional 2.5 per cent to Viet Nams GDP by 2020, and 4.6 per cent by 2025, he said.

The agreement is expected to help increase Viet Nams exports to the union, while creating new jobs for the Vietnamese labour force, especially for those working in rural and agricultural areas.

It would also make it easier for Viet Nam to import advanced technologies, which would help improve the countrys economic rankings.

Viet Nam is the third largest trade partner of the EU in ASEAN, with trade reaching 41 billion euros (US$48.7 billion) in 2016.

Viet Nam mainly exports electronics, textiles, footwear, rice, seafood and coffee to the EU, while imports hi-tech products, industrial machines and pharmaceuticals.  VNS
HA NOI  The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has approved a plan to implement urgent solutions in response to the European Unions (EUs) warning about illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Many solutions have been devised according to the EUs recommendations. They include aligning the legal framework with regional and international regulations, implementing effectively the amended legal regulations for IUU fishing, and implementing effectively the international regulations and management measures through strict punishment.

In addition to this, Viet Nam will address the shortcomings in the monitoring system to serve the certification of the origin of aquatic products, improve the fishing boat management system, enhance cooperation with regional countries, and comply with regulations on fisheries data collection and report.

Viet Nam was served with a yellow card warning by the EU in September for failing to combat IUU fishing, and it has been offered the opportunity to take measures to rectify the situation within six months.

To this end, the EC has proposed an action plan for the country. The yellow card is followed by a green card if issues are resolved or a red card if they are not. A red card can lead to a trade ban on fishery products.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development plans to organise a national conference with 28 coastal cities and provinces to discuss the IUU issue and provide them with technical guidance to ensure their compliance with IUU fishing regulations.

Viet Nam has favourable geographical conditions to develop its seafood industry, thanks to its long coastline of over 3,260km and more than 3,000 islands and islets.

Fisheries is a key sector, whose output has been consistently rising in the recent years.

The country hopes to become a leading seafood exporter by 2020.

Last year, Viet Nam earned US$1.2 billion by exporting aquatic products to the EU, $357.8 million of which was from seafood shipments. The figure hit nearly $1.05 billion in the first nine months this year.  VNS
HA NOI  Algeria is conducting all the necessary procedures to export dates to Viet Nam. In particular, some Algerian enterprises have found Vietnamese partners to negotiate conditions to distribute this fruit to Viet Nam.

The statement was made by a representative of Algerias Ministry of Agriculture at the third international exhibition on dates, which opened on Saturday in Biskra Province -- one of the localities with the strongest agriculture sector in Algeria.

The three-day event introduces high-grade dates harvested in oases in southern Algeria, including the popular one -- Deglet Nour. It also features items made from dates, such as date jam, date honey, handicrafts made from date palm (furniture and jewellery) and the regions agricultural products such as vegetables, fruits, cattle, milk and dairy products. In addition, the exhibition also introduced equipment for agriculture, livestock and cultivation.

Sadek Khalil, director of the Biskra Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the expo drew a lot of enterprises from African, European and Asian nations with the main goal of promoting agri-products and seeking trade partners.

According to statistics, Algeria exports some one million tonnes of dates annually, ranking fourth in the world in terms of total output (making up some 14 per cent), after Iran, Egypt and Tunisia. However, the total output of Algerias export dates ranks only eighth and is equivalent to one-sixth of Tunisias output -- the worlds largest producer and exporter of dates.

The dates exhibition attracted the participation of 160 Algerian and foreign firms, as well as diplomatic organisations, including the Embassy of Viet Nam in Algeria.  VNS
HA NOI  The United States Department of Agricultures Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has given permission for fresh mango fruit imports from Viet Nam to enter the US, effective December 29.

According to the Viet Nam News Agency Television (Vnews), after analysing the potential plant pest risks, APHIS scientists determined that mangos from Viet Nam can be safely imported under a systems approach.

APHIS defines the systems approach as a series of measures taken by growers, packers and shippers that together minimise pest risks prior to import into the United States.

In this case, APHIS explained that the systems approach for mangos from Viet Nam included orchard or packinghouse requirements, irradiation treatment and port of entry inspection, to protect against the introduction of plant pests and diseases.

The agency is also requiring these mangos be imported in commercial shipments and accompanied by phystosanitary certificates verifying the fruit was produced under these conditions. These certificates must include an additional declaration stating the fruit was inspected and found free of black mango spot.  VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nam and Nigeria are seeking to boost co-operation in trade and investment to tap the significant potential between the two countries.

At the Viet Nam-Nigeria Trade and Investment Forum in Ha Noi on Monday, oan Duy Khuong, vice chairman of the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the two countries had significant room to boost co-operation.

Khuong said Viet Nam was entering a new development period in 2016-20 with a stable macro-economy, high gross domestic product growth rate and total trade revenue of US$359 billion.

Viet Nam was an important gateway for Nigerian firms to penetrate other markets, especially ASEAN markets, Khuong said, adding that Nigeria was a potential market for Viet Nam in Africa.

Khuong said the two sides had potential to boost co-operation in agriculture, agricultural processing, garments, mining and building materials.

Nigeria wanted to import products that were Viet Nams strengths and Viet Nam wanted to import raw materials for processing.

Oye Akinsemoyin, president of the Nigeria-Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, expected the two countries would further promote their co-operation in processing agricultural products.

The trade revenue between Viet Nam and Nigeria averaged more than $250 million during the past five years.

In 2016, bilateral trade reached $303.84 million, up by 23.8 per cent over the previous year.

Viet Nam mainly exported ships, phones and components, garment and plastics, as well as chemicals, machinery and electronic products to Nigeria and imported cashew and wood from this African country.  VNS
HA NOI  National carrier Vietnam Airlines (VNA) will enter into a codeshare agreement with Bangkok Airways to operate flights between Viet Nam and Thailand.

This will create travel options for passengers and expand the air network to popular destinations of the two countries.

Under the agreement, passengers can buy Vietnam Airlines tickets from Ha Noi/Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok and then connect to Thailands domestic destinations via Bangkok Airways, including Chiang Mai, Phuket, Koh Samui, Krabi and Chiang Rai. Passengers only need to book seats and make a one-time flight booking with Vietnam Airlines for the entire journey.

Passengers of the two airlines also have more diversified route options between Viet Nam and Thailand, including the Bangkok-a Nang route operated by Bangkok Airways with a frequency of one flight per day and the Ha Noi/Ho Chi Minh City-Bangkok route operated by Vietnam Airlines with a frequency of six flights per day.

According to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA), the Southeast Asian aviation market has high potential, reflected by the strong growth and high demand for travel. Six out of eleven Southeast Asian nations have achieved double digit growth in passenger traffic, of which the route between Thailand and Viet Nam reached total increase of 30 per cent last year, almost double compared with five years ago.

This increasing trend is expected to continue in the coming years, CAPA said.  VNS
HA NOI  Hoa Phat Group has decided to invest VN1 trillion (US$43.9 million) in building a high quality post-tensioning steel factory, Vu Thi Anh Tuyet, deputy director of Hoa Phat Equipment and Accessory Company Limited, said.

The plant is located in Dung Quat Economic Zone in the central province of Quang Ngai and will be the first high-quality steel factory in Viet Nam.

It is built to replace steel imports and add value to its closed production model of the Hoa Phat Dung Quat iron and steel production complex.

The project has a capacity of 160,000 tonnes per year, including three high-end products -- PC bar, PC Strand and PC Wire. These products are used in large-scale infrastructure projects that require high technology, high load capacity and safety, such as towers, viaducts, cross-sea bridges, high buildings and cables. Moreover, these products help optimise space and material costs, shortening the time of construction work.

The post-tensioning plant is located right next to the complex, resulting in significant savings in transportation costs and inventory, as well as meeting the production schedule and delivering the goods quickly. Thus, the advantageous location will lower the cost of products and raise competitiveness compared with imported goods.

The project will make use of opportunities to upgrade the value chain of Hoa Phats steel products. With a modern and synchronous production line from Europe, Hoa Phat post-tensioning steel factory has potential to meet the demand of related products, ensuring the highest quality.

According to Tuyet, Viet Nam imports 100 per cent of post-tensioned steel products from China, Thailand, Indonesia, Republic of Korea and Japan, with annual output of over 70,000 tonnes of PC Bar and PC Strand steel to build infrastructure in the country. In the first nine months of 2017, this figure increased to 85,000 tonnes, an increase of 21 per cent over the entire previous year.

Hoa Phat post-tensioning steel factory is expected to meet 100 per cent of the demand for construction of domestic infrastructure projects, supporting the country in actively investing in development, reducing dependence on the external market, restricting the bleeding of foreign currencies and providing the market with products of high quality and stability.

The plant is scheduled to be implemented within 12 months from the beginning of 2018, right after being allocated land, and officially launched in early 2019.  VNS
Experts said at a conference held in Ha Noi on December 1 that this incorporation was crucial to ensuring sustainable development.  Photo baobaohiemxahoi.vn

HA NOI  Five years after a national green growth strategy was approved, there is still a lack of understanding, particularly at provincial levels, about incorporating it into local development plans.

Experts said at a conference held in Ha Noi on December 1 that this incorporation was crucial to ensuring sustainable development.

Economic institutions should be steered towards greening sectors and areas in all localities, said Phan uc Hieu, deputy head of the Central Institute for Economic Management.

There should be added focus on promoting research and widening application of advanced technology in production in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the natural environment, he said.

A general greening of production, lifestyle and consumption should also happen, he added, explaining that an environmentally-friendly lifestyle should be built, gradually.

However, despite all the talk, green growth still received little attention from ministries, sectors and localities, he stressed.

Tran ai Nghia of the Institute on Rural Development Policy and Strategy also said awareness of the importance of incorporating green growth into development plans of localities remained limited.

Meanwhile, there was overlapping between relevant ministries, agencies and localities as well as a shortage of human resources needed for the incorporation to happen, he added.

He proposed some measures for localities, like restructuring agricultural production towards green growth, increasing connection between production, processing and preservation industries, developing production models in harmony with the environment that match actual conditions in the locality.

Development interventions should be of high feasibility in line with available resources and development strategies of each locality, while leaders of relevant ministries and agencies need to allocate resources effectively and reasonably to localities, he said.

Le Viet Thai of the German International Co-operation Organisation (GIZ), suggested that technological solutions be applied to improve labour productivity and use natural resources effectively and economically.

Economist Nguyen Thi Kim Dung said community participation and capacity as well as financial feasibility should be paid due attention when implementing the national green growth strategy.

Other experts recommended that localities study and assess their environment situation, level of pollution and build roadmaps to deal with issues relating to waste treatment and production in line with green growth targets.

They should also invest tangibly in knowledge-building, communication and advocacy, accelerate regulatory action and promote environmentally-friendly consumer behaviour, they said.

Viet Nam approved a national green growth strategy in 2012. The strategy, which has a vision until 2050, identifies three key tasks  reducing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting clean and renewable energy, and practising environmentally-friendly production and consumption.

The meeting heard that five ministries and 30 cities and provinces in the country had formulated action plans on green growth and were implementing them.  VNS
HA NOI  After three months of being shut for annual restoration, Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum will be reopened for the public tomorrow.

The regular restoration has been made in line with procedures, Major General Nguyen Van Cuong, head of the mausoleums management board, reported to Prime Minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, during his visit to the mausoleum on Sunday.

According to Cuong, the body of President Ho Chi Minh has been kept in the best condition, while the surrounding scenery and infrastructure have been improved to offer a better welcome to both domestic and international visitors. At the same time, the security and order at the mausoleum have also been ensured in the past three months.

With previous annual restorations lasting some two months, this years restoration has taken one month longer as the project includes many important categories.

Phuc highly appreciated the efforts of the mausoleums management board, as well as their dedication to serve visitors, who have kept growing by 12 per cent, as compared to the previous year.

He encouraged them to continue to fulfill next years missions, particularly in strengthening the cooperation with relevant agencies in researching and applying science and technology in preserving the body of President Ho Chi Minh in the best condition.

The Prime Minister also suggested the opening of a tour, which will connect Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to surrounding landmarks such as the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long, Ha Noi Flag Tower, Ho Chi Minh Museum and K9 Relic Area.

The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is an important landmark of the capital city and stands integrated to the political and social history of Viet Nam. President Ho Chi Minh was embalmed after passing away on September 2, 1969. The granite mausoleum, modelled after Lenins tomb in Moscow, was built from 1973 to 1975 with materials donated by people from all over the country. It was opened to the public on August 29, 1975.  VNS
Mai Liem Truc

Dr Mai Liem Truc, former deputy minister of Post and Communications, talks to the newspaper Nong thon ngay nay (Countryside Today) about the need to finalise the draft Law on Cyber Security

The draft Law on Cyber Security has been revised 14 times, but there are still outstanding controversial issues. Do you have any comments on the latest draft edition of the law?

First of all, referring to the adjusted framework of the draft law, much of the contents on safety, security, technology and technique in the 14th draft edition of the law are in line with the Law on Internet Security, which came into force on July 1, 2017. However, there are two major differences concerning the management rules and the State management agencies. These two points will cause difficulties for law enforcement officers and enterprises in implementing the law.

In my opinion, quite a few components on the law contradict some existing laws as well as Viet Nams commitments to a few international laws. For example, the draft law requires foreign suppliers of telecom services or Internet services to establish a representative agency in Viet Nam. Such a requirement is not regulated in any WTO documents or the Europe-Viet Nam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA).

How do you think the component of the draft law that requires foreign suppliers of telecoms and internet services in Viet Nam to have operation licences and to establish mechanisms to verify users personal information when they create accounts aligns with Viet Nams commitments with the WTO, EVFTA or the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement?

I must say the requirement to open the market on telecoms and Internet services across the border has always been a very important and sensitive issue during negotiations for the Viet Nam-US Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) or the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other future free trade agreements.

Viet Nam has officially committed in the WTO and the EVFTA that all cross-border telecoms and internet services are unlimited, neither the requirement of having their representative offices in Viet Nam.

In addition, the Chapter on E Commerce in the TPP agreement, which Viet Nam signed in February 2016, says The proposal on server location violated a commitment relating to Location of Computing Facilities (Article 14.13) in the Electronic Commerce Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Former Vietnamese Minister of Trade Truong inh Tuyen, who participated in many negotiations for the TPP and also was a signatory to the Agreement, said, The topic had been thoroughly discussed before it was written into the TPP treaty.

Thats why Viet Nam should honor its commitment. And that totally conforms to our policy to continue to integrate deeper into the international economy in the course of national development.

Do you have any concerns that locating the main server abroad will complicate the management of Vietnamese agencies?

I should say quite a lot of information on the social network, like Facebook, is biased and incorrect. To minimise the negative impacts of the Internet on our social network over the last 20 years, concerned Vietnamese management agencies and Internet users have used a combination of the technical measures such as firewalls; legal administrative measures; and communication and education campaigns to screen falsified information against the Party, Government and society.

The Government has instructed all public agencies and organisations to practice transparency in their activities and launched movements to combat slanderous campaigns against the nation.

Do you think that once the Law on Cyber Security is passed by the National Assembly it will have negative impacts on business opportunities for Vietnamese enterprises, as well as the general publics access to information?

The Vietnamese Party and Government have committed to simplifying all administrative procedures and promised to offer favourable conditions for all enterprises to develop so that the people can have better lives.

I myself dont think that when the law is passed by the National Assembly it will have negative impacts on our peoples access to information. However, if the law is approved and it has negative impacts on enterprises activities and the peoples access to information, then Viet Nam will surely lag behind other countries and its window of opportunity to succeed in industrial revolution 4.0 will become close.

The location of the servers is not as important as efforts to ensure cyber security for the data that the servers store.  VNS.
A NANG  Asia and Europe need to forge stronger ties in key areas like education and sustainable development to improve connectivity and foster inclusive growth, senior officials said on December 1.

Accordingly, the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF)s Board of Governors (BoG) approved 13 new projects in education, governance, public health and sustainable development for the coming year.

The two-day, 37th BoG meeting also agreed on two projects proposed by Viet Nam: one on Asia-Europe Lifelong Learning and Vocational Training co-operation; and the other on Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals in the Cambodia-Laos-Myanmar-Viet Nam (CLMV) Mekong sub-region.

The governors noted that ASEF had succeeded in promoting mutual understanding between the two continents through cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

They also agreed that the ASEF needs to further strengthen partnership and mutual co-operation in the era of digitalisation for better connectivity and sustainable, inclusive growth.

The BoG meeting also reviewed projects designed to realise ASEAN vision 2025 and implement the ASEM Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.

They agreed that the next meeting would be held in Romania in 2018.

Global influence

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son said "ASEM, with ASEFs unique role, has grown beyond our initial expectations and established itself as a platform for enhanced connectivity between countries, civilisations, peoples and businesses of the two continents."

ASEM has been and continues to be an important factor in shaping the global setting in the 21st century.

Son emphasised that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has created hopes for higher productivity, but there were also growing concerns about its transformative implications, environmental degradation and uneven distribution of the benefits of economic growth and globalisation.

The 13th ASEM Foreign Ministers Meeting in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, last month discussed how best to create a stronger partnership between Asia and Europe for a future of shared, inclusive and sustainable growth and prosperity.

We need to translate commitment into concrete actions on sustainable and inclusive growth, poverty eradication, comprehensive and quality connectivity, sub-regional and remote areas development, quality education and human resources development in the digital age, gender equality and empowerment of women and girls, Son said.

More efforts should be made to deliver on the promise of climate change, disaster risk reduction, sustainable management of natural resources, and food-water-energy security, he added.

Son said the approved projects will serve as a crucial preparatory step for the upcoming 12th ASEM Summit in Brussels next year and foster reflections on a vision for ASEM in the coming decades.

The 37th BoG meeting, which closed on December 1, was held at the Furama Resort in a Nang City.  VNS
By Thu Trang

QUANG NINH  Luu Thi Tan is a happy, relieved mother.

The 26-year-old ethnic Thai woman has given birth to two healthy daughters with minimum fuss, which in itself might not be something extraordinary, but considering that she and her husband are, in her own words, "floating on rivers all day to earn our living," she has reason to be thankful.

It is thanks to the careful support and supervision of local medical workers during her pregnancy and delivery that Tan was able to safely deliver her two children.

The native of the central province of Thanh Hoa used to be worried about many women in her community and hometown give birth at home, exposing themselves to a lot of risk.

After their marriage, Tan and her husband moved to Van Yen Commune, Van on District in the northern province of Quang Ninh.

They fish in rivers for a living and earn about VN2-4 million (US$90-180) per month. Despite this, she was able to receive good, regular care, courtesy the Van Yen Commune Medical Station.

Although my husband and I are on the boat most of the time, the medical workers still call and tell me to return to the mainland for examination, said Tan.

She had four prenatal examinations during her pregnancy, and vaccinations on schedule.

Thanks to the good care, I did not have any problems from when I became pregnant till giving birth to my daughters safely, she said.

When her date drew close, the staff asked her to move to the Van Yen Commune Medical Station and wait for delivery.

Tans first daughter is five years old and her second daughter is two months old. They have also received their vaccinations on schedule.

Luu Thi Tan (right) listens as a staff of the Van Yen Commune Medical Station advises her on taking care of her baby daughter.  VNS Photo Thu Trang

No doctor

Le Thi Chien, head of the Van Yen Commune Medical Station, said that despite a manpower shortage, the staff tried their best to take care local residents health, especially pregnant women and women in the child-bearing age.

The station does not have a doctor. With 338 households in the commune, the two physician assistants and two nurses are kept busy all day.

On average, about 30 women in the commune get pregnant each year, so there is need for constant attention.

We go to different houses in the commune and inform the women how important it is to breastfeed their babies for at least the first six months. We also guide them on the weaning process and try to ensure that vaccinations are administered as scheduled, said Chien.

The station also conducts courses on reproductive health for young persons and women having children under two years old in the commune.

District support

In providing reproductive healthcare for women and girls, the commune station is helped by medical staff at the district level.

Vu Thi Thanh Thuy, deputy director of the Van on District Medical Centre and also head of its Obstetrics Ward, said four doctors and nine nurses in the ward worked with all their heart to fufill their tasks.

All women of child-bearing age are given information and advice related to reproductive health and safe pregnancy, said Thuy.

The medical staff regularly attends professional training courses in the province and also in other localities.

The centre receives a lot of support from upper-level hospitals, said Thuy.

In serious cases, we consult with provincial obstetrics and paediatrics hospitals and ask for guidance, she said.

Thanks to this co-operation, patients do not have to move around much, and are able to save a lot of time and effort.

Midwives, nurses are heroes

Visiting the Van Yen Commune Medical Station and the Van on District Medical Centre, Bjorn Andersson, regional director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Asia Pacific Regional Office, said I have very good impressions of what happens in the clinics and how the patients are treated."

Andersson said that he found that at the medical station and centre in the commune and district, respectively, he found that the staff maintained good contact with patients as they discussed with young pregnant women how they were feeling, and found out if they were getting enough nutrition and food.

The medical staff is doing heroic job. Midwives and nurses who help women deliver safely, they are heroes, he said.

Viet Nam has made progress in reproductive health and reproductive rights, he said.

A doctor examines a newborn at the Van on District Medical Centre.  VNS Photo Thu Trang

Three zeroes

Delegates attending the 9th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights (APCRSHR), which was held in Ha Long City, Quang Ninh Province from Monday to Thursday last week, lauded Viet Nams efforts to affect changes in sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in the country.

The conference was hosted by the Viet Nam Public Health Association with support from the UNFPA and other partners.

It was the first time that the conference is being held in Viet Nam, which has faced big challenges on SRHR-related policies and legislation.

Speaking at the conference, Natalia Kanem, executive director of the UNFPA, said that Asia-Pacific  and the world  have embarked on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, underpinned by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

We seek to achieve a life of dignity for all to truly leave no one behind. At UNFPA, we are about to embark on a strategic plan to fulfill three transformational zero goals for our region and our world: zero maternal deaths, zero unmet family planning needs, and zero gender-based violence and harmful practices, she said.

We applaud Viet Nam as a shining example for having reached Millennium Development Goal 5, improvements in maternal health, ahead of time, she said.

But even before pregnancy and childbirth, every woman and girl should enjoy her right to freely decide when or whether to start a family and how many children she wants to bear. Planning and spacing pregnancies are still key to reducing maternal deaths, said Natalia Kanem.

Health and sustainable development

In a message sent to the conference, Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said that to sustain gains under the Millennium Development Goals and to attain targets of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, especially in mountainous and remote areas, among ethnic minorities and other population groups, Viet Nams health sector will focus on a number of population and reproductive health themes.

She said that the country would continuously develop its reproductive health regulations and policies, and implementation of good practices and replicable models which are responsive to the health challenges and needs of ethnic minorities, adolescents and youth, ageing population, as well as migrants and workers in industrial zones.

She said the health system would be strengthened toward achieving universal healthcare and better access to reproductive health services with priority given to vulnerable populations and disadvantaged areas.

The nation would invest in the expansion and improvement of the quality of adolescent and youth-friendly health services, including the strengthening of comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education and life skills in the school system, and establishing specific contraceptive programmes for young and unmarried people, she said.

In another message, Vice President of Viet Nam ang Thi Ngoc Thinh, said that she was optimistic that this conference in Viet Nam will provide an excellent platform for scientists, researchers and programme officers in Viet Nam to meet, listen, share experiences and come up with comprehensive solutions.

She said that over the last few years, the Vietnamese Communist Party and Government have enacted many policies and legal documents, allocated resources for family planning and SRHR, and have achieved many important outcomes. The indexes in this field are relatively good compared to other countries with the same level of per capita income, she said.

Statistics compiled by the health ministry shows that Viet Nams performance on the health of mother and child is better than many countries at the same per capita income level. The maternal mortality ratio (MMR) declined significantly from 233 in 1990 to 69 per 100,000 live births in 2009.

The United Nations estimates that Viet Nams MMR further declined to 56 per 100,000 live births in 2015. The infant mortality rate has also decreased significantly from 44.4 in 1990 to 14.9 per thousand in 2014. The under-five mortality rate also went down from 58 per thousand in 1990 to 22.4 per thousand in 2014.  VNS
YEN BAI  Two schoolboys, aged 6 and 9 years, reportedly drowned while playing in Khe Dai Stream in the northern mountainous province of Yen Bais ong Tam Ward on Sunday afternoon.

According to an initial investigation, the two boys fell into the stream when they were playing nearby. The six-year-old boy studied at Nguyen Trai Primary School and the nine-year-old boy studied at Yen Ninh Primary School.

Local rescue teams discovered the bodies of the two boys at about 5pm on the same day, after a one-hour-long search.

Representatives from the locality visited the two boys houses to offer condolences to their families.  VNS
HCM CITY  HCM City will adopt the co-operative model to develop its agriculture, the administration has decided.

Speaking at a workshop on December 3, the citys Party Secretary Nguyen Thien Nhan said: To develop the citys agricultural production, besides choosing right plants and animals, the most important factor is choosing the best model.

He pointed out that the ratio of agricultural workers in the city has fallen sharply from 5 per cent in 2000 to 1 per cent last year.

Globally, the co-operative model is the most popular, not households or joint ventures, he said.

Households do not know what the market needs: the market wants high-quality products, a large number of them and with brands, and food quality and safety. All can be addressed through the co-operative model.

Besides, co-operatives would find it easier to approach banks since they have proper production plans and enough customers, can adopt technology and farm more efficiently than households, he said.

If HCM City wants to sustain its agriculture, authorities must switch the production model from household to co-operatives.

Currently, some 77 per cent of the agriculture is carried out by households while co-operatives account for only 5 per cent.

Le Thanh Liem, deputy chairman of the city Peoples Committee, said: Farmers profits at co-operatives are 30  50 per cent and co-operatives are a must for agricultural development.

The city has 230 agricultural production groups and 1020 per cent of them should be upgraded into co-operatives soon, he said.

The city has already issued support policies for newly established co-operatives but related authorities should implement them gradually.

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development along with relevant authorities should educate farmers for them to understand the benefits of the co-operative model and its success.

According to the department, the city has 41 co-operatives with 2,235 members, and plans to set up seven model co-operatives in Cu Chi, Hoc Mon, Binh Chanh, Nha Be and Can Gio districts.

The department has suggested that the city should send well-educated staff to manage co-operatives for the first three years at a salary of over VN11 million (US$500) a month, Tran Ngoc Ho, deputy director of the department, said.  VNS
SEOUL  South Korea and the United States kicked off a major air force exercise here on Monday with two dozen US stealth jets mobilised.

The five-day Vigilant ACE (air combat exercise) comes less than a week after North Korea fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and declared the completion of its "nuclear force".

The annual training has drawn keen media attention.

Its known as the largest-ever combined air force drill between the allies, involving more than 230 warplanes and around 12,000 personnel.

They include six F-22 Raptors and six F-35As, which have been deployed temporarily to Korea for the practice.

It marks the first time that six Raptors, not just a few, have joined an exercise simultaneously in Korea. A dozen F-35Bs operated by the US. Marine Corps will take part in the training, flying from their base in Japan.

Other assets include two B-1B Lancer bombers, six EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets, and dozens of F-15C and F-16 fighter jets.

South Korea has fielded F-15K, KF-16, FA-50 and F-5 fighters, as well as other planes.

"Its aimed at enhancing the all-weather, day and night combined air power operation capabilities of South Korea and the US," South Koreas defense ministry said.

The allies will conduct the drills under various wartime scenarios, it added.

The US Seventh Air Force said, "The realistic air combat exercise is designed to enhance interoperability between US and Republic of Korea forces, and increase the combat effectiveness of both nations."  YONHAP
UNITED NATIONS  The United States has withdrawn from a United Nations pact to improve the handling of migrant and refugee situations, deeming it "inconsistent" with its policies.

"The US Mission to the United Nations informed the UN Secretary-General that the United States is ending its participation in the Global Compact on Migration," the US said in its statement on Saturday.

Though widely seen as a symbolic move, it was condemned by rights group Amnesty International, which slammed it on Sunday as a "devastating abdication of responsibility in the worlds largest refugee crisis."

In September 2016, the 193 members of the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a non-binding political declaration called the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, which pledged to uphold the rights of refugees, help them resettle and ensure they have access to education and jobs.

"The New York Declaration contains numerous provisions that are inconsistent with US immigration and refugee policies and the Trump Administrations immigration principles. As a result, President (Donald) Trump determined that the United States would end its participation in the Compact process that aims to reach international consensus at the UN in 2018," the US statement read.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley said that the United States would continue its "generosity" in supporting migrants and refugees around the world, but added: "our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone."

The United States "will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country. The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with US sovereignty," Haley said.

Miroslav Lajcak of Slovakia, the current UN General Assembly president, said on Sunday that he regretted the decision.

Lajcak "stresses that migration is a global phenomenon that demands a global response and that multilateralism remains the best way to address global challenges," a statement from his office read.

Farhan Aziz Haq, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added: "We regret the decision but there is still plenty of time for US re-engagement. This should not disrupt the clear, unanimous outcome of the New York Declaration for such a global compact."

Under Trump and his "America First" policies, the United States has withdrawn from several global commitments made under the administration of president Barack Obama, including the Paris climate deal.

More recently, the United States pulled out of the Paris-based culture and education body, UNESCO, accusing it of "anti-Israel bias."  AFP
CEDAR FALLS  After 80 years of serving the needs of students and professors, a College Hill business is becoming part of the University of Northern Iowa.

UNI announced Monday it has signed a letter of intent with University Book & Supply Inc. to purchase the bookstore for $2.4 million plus inventory costs at the time of closing. The only bookstore near campus, it has served as a main source for student textbook purchases.

Six stockholders own the store, at 1009 W. 23rd St. Among those are Kathleen Hesse and Doug Johnson, respectively president and vice president of the business, and its largest shareholders.

Kathleen and I are getting pretty close to retirement age, and so we started looking at our options, said Johnson, noting the other stockholders were not willing to buy them out. It was really coming to light the university might be interested. We approached them with the idea.

Store owners have been working on an agreement with UNI over the last several months, he said. Theyve made it public now because the Iowa Board of Regents will consider the request at its meeting Wednesday.

Were excited that they were really willing to work with us, said Johnson.

The university expects the transaction to be complete by March 1, according to a news release. No general education funds will be utilized in the purchase.

Michael Hager, the universitys senior vice president for finance and operations, said there are two primary reasons the acquisition is a fit for UNI.

First and foremost, students will continue to have convenient access to the textbooks and course materials necessary for their educational experience, he said in the news release. With UNI owning the bookstore it will operate as a not-for-profit entity, which will offer UNI students the lowest possible pricing every year. Taking advantage of this opportunity is another element of the ongoing UNI initiative of providing a high-quality education at a reasonable cost.

In addition, the acquisition will keep ownership and control of this business in the Cedar Valley, which we feel is very important, noted Hager.

Johnson said those same reasons are important to the current owners. We knew the university would be able to do some things that we wouldnt be able to if they run it as a nonprofit, he explained.

Textbook sales account for more than 60 percent of University Book & Supplys business. The store, which serves the broader community as well, also sells other books, apparel, teacher resources and school supplies.

The book selling business has gone through massive changes in recent years with the advent of online retailers and electronic books, developments that also have affected textbook sales.

Weve been fortunate that at the University of Northern Iowa weve been the sole bookstore, said Johnson. Weve taken pride in that. We felt weve been fairly competitive, but its a challenge just like anything else.

He called the current situation unique among regents institutions, noting the University of Iowa and Iowa State University already operate their own bookstores. Nationally, most (public universities) have their own or lease out to another company, said Johnson.

The store originated as Lattas Bookstore in 1937 at 909 W. 23rd St. It moved to the current address in 1962, eventually growing to 28,000 square feet. In a renovation completed in 2003, the store expanded to an adjacent building, adding another 24,000 square feet.

The store employs 20 people full time and 15 to 20 people part time. University officials declined to comment on any changes that would be made once the sale is complete.

Its really just an agreement in principle. The final agreement has not been signed, said Scott Ketelsen, a UNI spokesman. It would be premature to say anything in detail.
The holidays are a terrific time of year to share your many talents while helping others. The Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley has listed below a number of great ways to get involved in service.

 Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeast Iowa has the opportunity for community members to give back by adopting a Little or a Little and their family for the holiday season. All ages of Littles are available, and accommodations can be made for the family size if needed. Gifts are needed by the week of Dec. 18 to allow delivering of the gifts.

 The American Red Cross seeks a volunteer driver to deliver blood goods from the Waterloo office to hospitals and sites in Dubuque County. This opportunity exists Monday, Tuesday and Friday beginning at 9:30 a.m. until no later than 4 p.m.

Americans for Independent Living needs volunteers to sort and display donated household items, clothes, linens and towels and more.

The Salvation Army serves lunch Monday through Friday. Volunteers participate from 11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m. by keeping food stocked, serving food and assisting with clean-up.

The ARC of the Cedar Valley will hold its annual Holiday Cookie Walk on Dec. 9. They need homemade, decorated cookies and Christmas candy dropped off at the North Star Community Services between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Dec. 8.

House of Hope needs volunteers between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Dec. 16 to hang drywall. Skilled help will be present so volunteers ages 16 and older are welcome to come, regardless of skill level.

Volunteers will wrap gifts for shoppers at the Crossroads Mall in Waterloo on Dec. 15. Gift wrapping is offered for a donation to the Northeast Iowa Food Bank. Each dollar donated provides four meals to those in need in northeast Iowa. wrapping shifts are available from 2-4 p.m., 4-6 p.m. and 6-9 p.m.

Various volunteer opportunities at the Northeast Iowa Food Bank are available through the holiday season including assisting with the backpack program, Cedar Valley Food Pantry and as an agency shopping worker.

Volunteers are needed through Dec. 23, excluding Sundays, to ring bells for Salvation Army red kettle donations at 20 retail locations throughout the Cedar Valley. Kettle sorters are also needed at the end of each afternoon and evening shift to count and organize donations.

Northeast Iowa Area Agency on Aging is seeking volunteers to deliver meals to home-bound seniors throughout the Cedar Valley from 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The Habitat for Humanity ReStore needs volunteer cashiers, organizers and or customer assistants.

Many of the Cedar Valleys nursing and retirement communities need volunteers to assist with various holiday events and activities planned.

Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois needs a volunteer to manage cookie sales for the Waterloo Service Unit from Jan. 1-March 31.

Contact the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley at information@vccv.org or 272-2087 to get involved.
WATERLOO -- Three people were wounded in two separate shootings Sunday.

It wasnt clear if the shootings are related.

In the latest attack, which took place in the 100 block of Western Avenue around 10:45 p.m. Sunday, 21-year-old Juanrez Jefferson of Waterloo flown to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City.

As of Monday afternoon, he was in critical condition and undergoing surgery, according to police. Police said he was shot numerous times.

Details of the shooting werent immediately available, but several neighbors called 911 after hearing gunfire, said Capt. David Mohlis with the Waterloo Police Department. He said the injured man was taken to Covenant Medical Center by private vehicle.

The shooting happened outside, and a vehicle in the area was also struck by gunfire, Mohlis said.

Earlier on Sunday, at 12:37 a.m., residents in the 800 block of Beech Street called after hearing gunshots.

Officers found spent shell casings in the area, and two people showed up at UnityPoint Health-Allen Hospital with gunshot wounds moments later. He said 18-year-old Daeshon Wright of Waterloo had been shot in the right thigh, and a 17-year-old male had been shot in the right arm. Their injuries arent considered life threatening.
WATERLOO  A Waterloo man has been sentenced to prison for trying to steal a handgun from a downtown pawn shop in 2016.

Judge Leonard Strand sentenced 19-year-old Sahjit Mcyle Phillips to three years and five months in prison during a Thursday hearing in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. Phillips had pleaded guilty to a charge of theft of a firearm from a licensed dealer.

He will serve three years of supervised release following his prison time.

Prosecutors said Phillips was inside Levi Brothers Jewelry and Loan in October 2016, and when the employee who was helping him stepped away, he grabbed a .45-caliber Kahr pistol and ran off. He allegedly entered a home a few blocks away, took a cell phone from the resident and hid the weapons in a closet. He was found a short time later by authorities.

While he was out on bond for the gun theft, Phillips allegedly shot Jeremiah Taylor of Cedar Rapids in the buttocks in the area of West Fourth Street and Western Avenue. He was currently awaiting trial in state court for charges of willful injury and intimidation with a weapon.
DENVER  Wind in the Willows is a classic English childrens fantasy novel that sprung out of bedtime stories author Kenneth Grahame told his son.

Dave Larson, a former Denver City Council member, came up with a similarly named project, Willow Wind. But its no fantasy. It came out of a different dream  that seniors in Denver should have a place to stay in the same town they lived their entire lives  and not be isolated at home alone.

The dream is about to come true.

Willow Wind is a 24-unit assisted living community on the south end of Denver, adjacent to Brothers Market. The $4 million facility will be open and ready for occupancy in January.

It fills a community need, Larson said, and he has a proven track record. He runs the Walnut Court and Colonial Manor senior housing complexes in Waterloo. And he has a partner to make it work  Western Home Communities. Larson owns Willow Wind; Western Home will manage it.

Larson and Western Home worked together before on Walnut Court.

They do a great job, Larson said. Great brand, good people that work there. Outstanding. No need to re-invent the wheel. They pretty much have it figured out. In fact, the building is similar in appearance to many of the Western Home buildings on the South Main campus in Cedar Falls.

Amy Terrill, who grew up in Denver, will manage the facility. She previously worked 20 years at UnityPoint Health-Allen Hospital on the north side of Waterloo, which serves many Denver residents.

Willow Wind has 17 one-bedroom units and seven two-bedroom units. It will have a marketing and activities coordinator, a beauty shop, community living room, transportation and other features. It also has a private dining area for family gatherings.

The big thing I like about it is the social aspects, Larson said. It gives people an opportunity to be social with people in their own age group. Theyre not homebound.

The facility also provides three meals a day and laundry services. Residents also may have priority for higher level of care at other Western Home facilities if and when the need arises. The rooms feature wide doorways, walk-in closets and handicap accessible bathrooms.

The facility is almost done except for finishings and furnishings. We started a year ago last September with dirt moving, Larson said. But the project had been contemplated for a long time.

My grandparents lived in Harmony, Minn., and they went to assisted living, he said, and decided, I had the senior housing with Colonial Manor and Walnut Court, and said, This is something Denver should have.

He said he talked to Western Home and moved ahead with the project. And I would only go ahead and do it if the Western Home would manage it. Theres no way I would do it otherwise. Having that brand in our community, the Western Home brand, is priceless. Very fortunate theyre willing to manage this, and it works on their mission, Larson said.

Western Home manages several other similar facilities around the area, Terrill said, including Cresco, Grundy Center and Jesup. This will be modeled pretty closely to the one in Jesup, she said, which is about 4 years old, with updates based on suggestions from that facilitys staff.

More information about Willow Wind may be obtained at (319) 984-5867.
Democrat Fred Hubbell said Monday the state should partner with the private sector to add at least 50 to 75 in-patient mental health beds in Iowa, part of a plan he released to change the way mental health services are provided in the state.

Hubbell, one of seven Democrats running for his party's nomination for governor, released a four-page plan Monday, a day ahead of a forum on the topic in Des Moines.

Hubbell also said he would reverse last year's move to turn management of the state's Medicaid program over to private management and institute a review to determine "the most cost-efficient program that provides the necessary services." All of the Democrats running for governor have criticized the change.

Hubbell, who recently toured the state to talk about mental health issues, said it is a topic that comes up wherever he goes, and the state must do better.

"Iowans are paying a high human cost and also high financial costs because of the inadequacies of our mental health system," he said. Hubbell blamed "fiscal mismanagement" under former Gov. Terry Branstad and Gov. Kim Reynolds, as well as the decision to close state-run mental health institutes.

Hubbell cited a study saying Iowa is last in the nation in the number of state-run mental health beds. His plan called for "at least 50-75 high-intensity mental health beds for in-patient treatment in a public/private partnership."

No other details were provided.

Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven has defended the state's approach and said the focus on in-patient mental health beds is shortsighted.

Reynolds also has questioned how Democrats will be able to pay for a Medicaid program that goes back under the state's management.

Part of Hubbell's plan also dealt with the shortage of behavioral health providers. He said the state should put more effort into programs like loan forgiveness to lure professionals to the state.

The plan also would more closely coordinate services for mental health and addiction; "empower" local communities to determine their own needs and provide a range of services; encourage more utilization of tele-psychiatric services; create a mental health program for children and provide more help to law enforcement to deal with the opioid problem and incarceration diversion programs.

In response to Hubbell's plan, the Reynolds campaign responded that 150,000 more Iowans are getting mental health coverage than in 2011, when she became lieutenant governor. Also, the campaign said the number of inpatient psychiatric beds have increased since 2016 and so have investments to try to entice behavioral health professionals to the state.

"There's more to do, which is why we are focused on concrete solutions and progress to help Iowans in every corner of the state," said Pat Garrett, a spokesman for the Reynolds campaign.
Anti-bullying

speaker at HCC

WATERLOO  Hawkeye Community College will host anti-bullying and suicide awareness advocate Kirk Smalley for two presentations at 9:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in Tama Hall on Hawkeyes Main Campus, 1501 E. Orange Road, Waterloo.

Smalleys son, Ty Field-Smalley, committed suicide at age 11 after being suspended from school for retaliating against a bully who had bullied him for two years. Stand for the Silent was founded in 2010 by a group of Oklahoma high school students after they heard Tys story. Since then, Kirk and Laura Smalley have taken their message to more than 1,000 schools and spoken to more than 1 million kids.

Both presentations are free and open to the public. This event is organized by Cedar Valley Stand for the Silent; Alive and Running; and the Minds, Action, People, Society Club, a student-run organization at Hawkeye Community College for students with interests in psychology, sociology and social work.

HCC makes best

vet colleges list

WATERLOO  Hawkeye Community College has been selected for the Military Times Best Colleges List, formerly known as Best for Vets. The annual rankings factor in the results of Military Times comprehensive school-by-school survey of veteran and military student offerings and rates of academic achievement.

As with all Military Times rankings, the Best Colleges List is an editorially independent news project that evaluates the many factors that help make colleges and universities a good fit for service members, military veterans, and their families. More than 600 colleges took part in this years detailed survey, with fewer than half making the list.

Hawkeyes Military and Veterans Services office includes a coordinator and resource center providing veterans with a central point of contact and making it easy for a one-stop-shop approach to determining funding and resources. Hawkeye has many resources for veterans, including a personalized approach to transitioning into the academic environment, tutoring, and campus-based disability and counseling services.

Hawkeyes veterans services coordinator, Robin Knight, has many years of experience in working with student veterans. The office of Military and Veterans Services, located in the Brock Student Center, coordinates the colleges services to the military and veteran students and their families.

Waterloo man

wins $10,000

WATERLOO  Mark Burke of Waterloo claimed the 52nd of 72 prizes of $10,000 available in the Iowa Lotterys $250,000 Riches scratch game last week.

He bought the ticket at Hy-Vee Wine & Spirits, 2126 Kimball Ave.

County health

to host forum

WATERLOO  The Black Hawk County Health Department will host a legislative forum from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday in room 201 of the Pinecrest Building, 1407 Independence Ave.

KWWL news anchor Ron Steele will moderate the forum, which is sponsored by the board of health and will include discussion on health care funding, oral health and tobacco prevention and control.

State legislators from the area have been invited to attend and the event is open to the public.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Nov. 30, 2017 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 30, 2017 | 11:00 PM | PADUCAH, KY

The McCracken County Jailer is under investigation for perjury.



A spokesperson for Kentucky State Police confirmed Thursday that there is an ongoing investigation, and they are consulting with a special prosecutor on how to proceed, but could not comment further.



Documents obtained by West Kentucky Star indicate that State Police got a search warrant earlier this month for the McCracken County Jail, and detectives wanted to see personnel files, training materials, policy and procedure manuals, and Jailer Tonya Ray's email account.



Police were looking for evidence against Ray since they believe she lied under oath just before the scheduled trial of former Deputy Jailer Sgt. Ben Green in October. He was facing multiple charges of official misconduct for moving inmates without permission, which led to some inmates saying they were assaulted.



However, detectives say Ray testified that the jail's current manual, which she said was from 2010, didn't include the policy on how inmates were classified and housed at the jail. Based on that information, the charges against Green were dismissed.



In an affidavit, a State Police detective says he later learned that a 2012 version of the policy manual existed, and that Ray knew about it because she received an email copy the day before Green's alleged violation in February. The detective says she updated the name of the jailer on the document and sent it back. That manual included the policy that Green allegedly violated.



The affidavit also cites evidence that former Jailer Bill Adams showed the McCracken Fiscal Court a copy of the 2012 manual at a meeting in February, and it contained the section that Ray claimed she added after becoming Jailer.



Ray was named Jailer from several candidates after Adams retired in March. She recently filed paperwork to run for the office in the November 2018 election. A request for a comment from Ray on the investigation has not been answered.
Dec 4, 2017 | By Tess

Dutch design duo Eric Klarenbeek and Maartje Dros have created a 3D printable biomaterial made from algae. The new filament, which is currently featured in the Change the System exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, could offer an eco-friendly alternative to fossil and oil-based plastics.

Klarenbeek and Dros, both graduates from the Design Academy Eindhoven, have been working towards the development of a sustainable, environmentally friendly polymer material for some time. Klarenbeek, for his part, has been working on the development of 3D printable biomaterials for at least the last six years (he even created the worlds first 3D printed chair made from living fungus).

Now, however, Klarenbeek and Dros have been working with a different type of natural material to create a printable biopolymer: algae. In short, the designers have developed a method for cultivating living algae, drying it out, and transforming it into a 3D printable filament.

According to the designers, this eco-material could be used to manufacture a broad range of commonly used products, including shampoo bottles, garbage bins, tableware, and more. Ultimately, they hope to be able to scale up their algae-growing system in a localized way in order to replace fossil and oil-based plastics completely.

Notably, algae not only presents environmental benefits because it is natural, but it is also capable of filtering out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In fact, algae itself grows through the absorption of CO2.

As the design duo explains, The algae grow by absorbing the carbon and producing a starch that can be used as a raw material for bioplastics or binding agents. The waste product is oxygen, clean air. And what's more eco-friendly than clean air?

As designers, we love nothing more than producing mass: products and materials, they added. So, for us it's the golden formula. Everything that surrounds usour products, houses and carscan be a form of CO2 binding. If we think in these terms, makers can bring about a revolution. It's about thinking beyond the carbon footprint: instead of zero emissions we need negative' emissions.

The innovative materials research, which has been supported for the past three years by Wageningen University, Salga Seaweeds, Avans Biobased Lab in Breda, and other organizations, recently came to the attention of the Luma Foundation in Arles, France.

Now, Klarenbeek and Dros are splitting their research time between their lab in the Netherlands and their open research and algae production lab at the Luma Foundation. In the Netherlands, the duo are working on cultivating seaweed, while the Arles-based lab is growing local algae. Both materials are being used to produce the same products, however.

Both have exactly the same form, but they are made from local materials. This is the change we believe in; designing products that are distributed via the internet but made locally, explained the designers.

Going forward, the team is hoping to establish what they call a 3D Bakery, which would essentially be a local network of biopolymer 3D printers. Kind of like 3D Hubs, but just for environmentally friendly algae-based 3D printing.

"Our idea is that in the future there will be a shop on every street corner where you can 'bake' organic raw materials, just like fresh bread, said Klarenbeek. You won't have to go to remote industrial estates to buy furniture and products from multinational chains. 3D printing will be the new craft and decentralized economy.

Though it may be awhile before we see 3D Bakeries popping up, Klarenbeek seems confident they could become a reality within the next ten years.

The designers are currently exhibiting their 3D printed algae samples at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. As part of the exhibition, Klarenbeek and Dros are even growing algae in the museums pond, which they will transform into a filament and use to 3D print a replica of a glass object from the museum.

If you happen to be in the Rotterdam area, the exhibition is on until January 14, 2018.

(Images: Florent Cardin, Studio Klarenbeek & Dros)

Posted in 3D Printing Materials

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Boris Smith wrote at 4/10/2018 10:03:41 PM:very interesting, keep up with the good work!




Dec 4, 2017 | By David

As concrete 3D printing continues to revolutionize construction projects all over the world and change the way people think about architecture, many companies and research institutions are putting a lot of effort into continuing research in this field, hoping to advance the technology and discover new ways that it can be implemented. The most recent developments have come from the Technical University of Munich, where researchers have been experimenting with a number of different concrete AM processes, the most promising of which is the relatively new 'selective binding' approach.

These research activities are being conducted in a collaborative effort between the TUMs Chair of Timber Stuctures and Building Construction and the Centre for Building Materials. The German Research Foundation (DFG), along with the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) research initiative "Zukunft Bau", provided the funding to support these ongoing research projects, some of which have just recently been launched.

The main advantage that 3D printing offers for construction is improved freedom of design, as well as the increased ease and speed with which prototypes can be put together. As opposed to using formworks and molds, 3D printing processes can create concrete structures by selectively depositing material exactly where it needs to go, which then will solidify in place. This allows for much more complex shapes to be made, which would be impossible with conventional techniques, and these more intricate structures allows for improved properties. For example, a concrete pipe could be made with much thinner walls due to its being supported by an elaborate internal bracing structure, which saves on materials as well as reducing weight without sacrificing strength.

The most common concrete AM technique used has been the standard extrusion method, which extrudes pre-made concrete from a nozzle, similar to how FDM 3D printing creates structures from thermoplastics. Selective binding is a newer method, which extrudes a mixture of water and cement instead of concrete. The build area is primed with layers of sand, and they will gradually set to form concrete shapes after being doused with the extruded material. The excess sand is then removed.

The TUM team had to build a selective binding unit in order to test out this latter concrete additive manufacturing process, which took around three years to perfect. Their over-dimensioned 3D printer fills an entire laboratory room in the basement at their premises. Before initiating the 3D printer, sand is first distributed using an automatic scattering system. A three-dimensional system of tracks moves the print head around, allowing it to be positioned at any specific point in the working space, as required by the project. The nozzle can then apply fluid exactly where it needs to go.

Successful printing depended on getting the right thickness of the layers, the right grain size of the sand, an appropriate speed for the print head to move at, and the right type of nozzle, amongst other things. Engineers from the TUM Centre for Building Materials helped out with optimizing the printing parameters. The team is now developing a 3D printer whose print head will be equipped with several thousand nozzles. which will make it possible to manufacture components with volumes of approximately ten cubic meters, the height of a storey in a building. This will be the first time parts of this size have been made using this selective binding technique, and tests should start next year.

The team also made some advances with the more common extrusion 3D printing method, in terms of the materials used and the system adopted to process them. One project saw wood chips being added to the standard concrete mix, which can provide integrated thermal insulation due to the extra air in the material, protecting buildings from undercooling in the winter or overheating in the summer. This lightweight wood-concrete is just as resilient and insulating as conventional gas-aerated concrete, but its printability means that it can be made into much more elaborate structures. A newly designed computer-controlled robotic arm was used to move the print head and extrude this new material more efficiently, precisely placing the concrete strands on top of one another in order to form the desired structure.

According to Dr. Klaudius Henke of the TUM Chair of Timber Structures and Building Construction, "Additive manufacturing is extremely attractive for construction: It enables a wide range of shapes at high levels of cost-efficiency, even in small batch sizes... (It) will change architecture. The technology not only allows more versatile shaping, but also more variety, since each component can be individually designed without incurring any additional costs."

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Nissim Hasson M. S., M. ASCE, Civil Engineer wrote at 12/6/2017 12:56:58 AM:It is a great innovation to use these 3D printers to make suchs a beautiful concrete work. Plese, receive my congratulations.Salvatore J. Monte wrote at 12/5/2017 9:08:34 PM:Read your 3-D concrete article with interest. We can surface modify the Portland cement surface with 1.5-nanometer organometallics by a patent-filed process to increase the Portland cement reaction with water and reduce the water to cement ratio by one-third or increase the flow (decrease the slump) by making the mortar "more wettable", thus facilitating 3-D processing. The surface modification also makes the mortar more compatible with polymerics and improves bonding and anti-corrosion performance to steel reinforcements. Salvatore J. Monte P.E., B.C.E., M.S.-Polymeric Materials, Fellow (SPE) BOG PIA President Kenrich Petrochemicals, Inc.




by Misha Lepetic

As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart.

~ The Wizard of Oz

There is an old joke that deserves to be made popular again. A CEO is touring the company's newest factory. The manager, with a great deal of pride, points out how everything is automated. As the tour reaches the final room, the CEO notices a man sitting sullenly in the corner, with a leashed dog sitting next to him. Somewhat surprised, the CEO asks why the man is there, to which the manager responds, "It's his job to feed the dog." Stumped, the CEO asks why the factory would need a dog. The manager responds, quite matter-of-factly, "Why, to keep the man from touching the equipment."

At least one telling of the joke can be attributed to Warren G. Bennis, a scholar of organizational psychology and more-or-less originator of the field of leadership studies. But what is more interesting to me is the fact that Bennis's version of the joke goes back to 1991an indication that we have been thinking about technological unemployment for a long time. When I originally heard the joke, probably sometime in the mid-90s, I savored it for its absurdist connotations: man and dog, locked in an eternal, Monty Python-esque loop of feeding and guarding, so as to guarantee no interference in the well-tempered functioning of the machine that has almost entirely replaced them both.

But these days what resonates for me more profoundly is the notion that these two still have jobs, regardless of how marginal such jobs may be; someone still has to feed the dog, and someone still has to keep the man from messing up the machinery that does the actual work. The real subtlety in the joke is that any presence should be needed at all, and yet it is somehow still required. The jobsfor both man and dogare a fig leaf, but ostensibly the owners of the factory have decided that such a fig leaf is necessary, or at least desirable. Why is this?

I was reminded of this joke when recently contemplating the ubiquitous headlines that sensationalize the wholesale replacement of human labor by non-human capital. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media prefers the drama of entire sectors of labor being sidelined. For example, an evergreen topic is the imminent wipe-out of heavy truck driving, which accounts for 1.8 million jobs in the United States, or nearly doubling to 3.5 million jobs, if you include taxis, delivery vans and the like. But paradigms are rarely overturned quite so rapidly, and the story that is already unfolding before us is much trickier to unravel, and more interesting.

*

What's necessary to understand from the start is that automation progresses fitfully and partially. It is driven by firms that seek local optima, and once achieved may remain there for quite some time, since a firm has no incentive to categorically replace all possible jobs if there is no reason to do so. Instead, it will approach automation instrumentally, as a way of limiting its exposure to the risk of existing and budding competitors. This risk-based approach was a cornerstone of JK Galbraith's economic thought, which he termed the technostructure', that I explored more fully earlier this year.

But even this, more measured assessment is still a massive sea change in the way that labor is structured. Nevertheless, there are plenty of commentators who maintain the old chestnut that technological change always creates new opportunities for workers. One of the more reliable standard-bearers in this regard is The Economist, which recently wrote that:

technology is creating demand for work. To take one example, more and more people are supplying digital services online via what is sometimes dubbed the "human cloud". Counter-intuitively, many are doing so in response to artificial intelligence.

Put another way, as automation broadens its interventions from the manufacturing and supply chain industries into services, what we are seeing is a re-emergence of piecework, but in a digital context. What does this look like in practice? Sometimes it is explicit, as evinced by Amazon's Mechanical Turk service, which since 2005 has been doling out human intelligence tasks' that pay meager amounts to home workers for microwork' such as audio transcription, image tagging, and even participation in experiments and surveys run by social scientists.

More interesting is the way in which human work is being concealed behind the facade of automation, or even passed off as the latter. Facebook's personal assistant M made a splash when it debuted in August 2015, as competition to Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. Its selling point was the notion that M could handle a much broader range of requests than either Alexa or Siri, but by November enterprising journalists had deduced that any success M may have had in this brutally competitive field was mostly due to the fact that the technology had an undisclosed number of humans backing it up.

In one case, technology reporter Mat Honan asked M to deliver a parrot to a rival journalist's office. I suppose people do this sort of stuff in the Bay area with some regularity, because M was quickly able to find Happy Birds, a company that rents out birds for events. But Honan's request was built to test what happens "when M ventures in the outside world  which is a large part of its promise. It has to bump up against humans, and when it does, it drops the pretense of AI altogether and becomes just another cog in the gig economy." In this case, M shape-shifted into a human contractor, who called Happy Birds several times in order to negotiate the deal. Additionally, a similar call went out through another gig economy platform to see if anyone could resolve the client's request.

What does this tell us? For one thing, it points out the implicit ways in which we mold ourselves to our toolseven tools as allegedly flexible as virtual personal assistants. If Siri gives up on a request and just searches the web, then we know not to be so complex the next time around. Facebook, however, is hoping to carve out a more decisive market share by addressing a much larger variety of requests. Quoted in MIT's Technology Review two and a half years later, project lead Alex Lebrun noted that:

People try first to ask for the weather tomorrow; then they say Is there an Italian restaurant available?' Next they have a question about immigration, and after a while they ask M to organize their weddingWe knew it would be dangerous, and it's wider than our expectations."

It's also worth remarking that, in that intervening time, M's maximalist approach has allowed its user base to expand only minimally, from a few hundred users in August 2015, to about 10,000 in April 2017, all of whom are based in the same geographic area (guess which one). Obviously, with great scale comes great responsibility.

So here is one scenario where The Economist indeed has a point. As automation seeks to turn all of lived experience into a service, it still needs to have humans behind the curtain, pulling the levers that the software cannot. And even if M gets to the point that it can negotiate a parrot rental via telephone with a human interlocutor, people are still needed to drop off and pick up the birds, and so on; the physical world abides. But at the same time, once M knows how to negotiate for parrots, it need never receive that training again. At a certain point it will be able to translate that knowledge into negotiating for piglets, or hot air balloon rides, or what have you. There will be fewer edge cases, and therefore fewer people needed, although I am convinced that, if M is to maintain its position as the personal assistant that is closest to being a concierge, there will always be a watchful human standing by, ready to catch the occasional request to have my hotel room decorated with pictures of Jeff Goldblum.

*

At least with M, Facebook has admitted the ruse. Other companies have not been so forthcoming. Expensify, a startup that allegedly automates every step of the expense reporting process', would seem to have the perfect solution for this onerous task. Customers scan their receipts, and the company's SmartScan service uses optical character recongition (OCR) to make everything machine-readableexcept for when it's not. Here's a recent tweet I picked up on the matter:

"I just went browsing through @expensify's jobs on MTurk. Found boarding passes, hotel receipts (name, dates, details), medical receipts, addresses, signatures, and a whole lot of burgers and burritos. I also just turned off SmartScan, because that's super creepy."

Expensify knows that too many failures to read a crumpled or blurry receipt will cause customers to abandon its product. You don't sign up for a service that will only be able to handle two-thirds or three-quarters of your month's expenses. So it's sensible to create a backup system to handle the edge cases. But it's no surprise that Expensify, like any other young company, would seek to cut costs and contract out this workin this case, to some random guy sitting at home in his pajamas, willing to sign a flimsy NDA on Mechanical Turk. The consequences of these decisions may range from simply a sketchy regard for privacy, to all-out alarm bells when one realizes that this leaky approach may provoke everything from HIPAA violations (when it comes to medical information) to outright criminality (consider a network that gathers scanned images from multiple Turk contractors, in search of identity information). In the meantime, Expensify played coy to inquiries as to who, exactly, was eyeballing clients' receipts; not a good look, as the kids say these days.

Other manifestations of this behind-the-curtain phenomenon play a far more important role in technology that is coming down the pike. Specifically, driverless cars not only rely on state-of-the-art instrumentation and machine vision processing to sense their environment, but also require small armies of humans to correctly tag the results for training' the neural networks correctly. This human component tends to be underreported, which is a bit odd, given the homogenous nature of most technology reporting. A common example is this CityLab piece, happy to grapple with the ins and outs of signage recognition and such challenges, but doesn't mention the human component in the data preparation strategy of any of several companies in the industry.

More realistically, the Financial Times gathered a whole passel of quotes from leaders, academics and executives in this field that reflected how much work it actually takes to present these systems with clean, useful training data:

"Machine learning is a myth, it's all Wizard of Oz type workThe labelling teams are incredibly important in every company, and will need to be there for some time because the outdoor environment is so dynamic."

"We need hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of hours of data" for self-driving vehicles to go everywhere, requiring "hundreds of thousands of people to get this thing done" globally.

"It is very hard to get people to talk about this.They all like to say it's machine-learning magic'."

What is striking about all three of these casesFacebook M, Expensify, and the autonomous vehicle industryis their reluctance to admit to the continued need for human labor. On the one hand, given the fact that the gig economy is here to stay, one would think this an opportunity for Silicon Valley types to trumpet their job-creating prowess. But this doesn't seem to be happening. Rather, are humans kept behind the curtain because their presence is considered a failure of engineering, code, business execution, or all of the above? Perhaps the world is just not as technologically fungible as we have always been told by these entrepreneurs? Or maybe it's simply that all these jobs just suck, and everyone knows it?

*

But the kingdom of digital piecework is much more extensive than any of these examples indicate. In fact, we may be thinking about it in completely the wrong way. What if we are, all of us, doing this work all the time? A recent book by Hamid Ekbia and Bonnie Nardi proposes the umbrella term heteromation' to encompass not just the sort of digital piecework discussed above, but any sort of offerings we make while online:

Heteromation includes many kinds of self-service (e.g., check your own groceries), volunteer work such as citizen science, creative engagement (e.g., in computer gaming), microwork (Amazon Mechanical Turk), writing online customer reviews, and a wide range of other activities that provide economic value to companies and organizations, but little or no monetary compensation to laborers that is, most of us People are already "working alongside machines"but they are not getting paid for it, or not very much. The debate is a false battle between AI and peoplewhen in fact the critical issue is that people are working, but the terms of labor are radically changing. Seduced into (gaming, social media) or forced into (self-service, gatekeeper apps like Academia.edu) participation in heteromated labor, we supply [that labor]; capitalism has, remarkably, found its way to free or very cheap labor with absolutely no obligations to laborers as human beings with basic needs.

Consider the platforms that would simply not exist without that collective effort: not just Facebook or Twitter, but also review sites like Yelp, or the crowdsourced traffic displays on Google Maps. The question of how little technological progress' would there be if we paid labor more is only a starting point. It yields to a larger question: would we have any of the current stable of technologies if we valued labor at all? And we cannot even begin to consider questions of how to value our labor if we cannot agree on whether to value it. That is, if we consider the conveniences afforded to us by these platforms to be commensurate with the amount of effort we put into collectively building them, then this moots any further discussionwhich seems to be where we are these days. So it is ironic to consider that such a subtle yet thorough restructuring of work is indeed transpiring right before our very eyes, when, at the same time, there are other rumblings that childcare, caregiving and such other, traditionally unpaid activities, should finally be recognized as labor and valued as such.

In the end, it's cold comfort to maintain, however correctly, that workers are rarely shut out of the employment sweepstakes permanently and unconditionally. But as machines learn to do more, labor is relegated to those marginal activities that machines have not yet mastered. Workflows are fragmented and never not under threat. So even if overall automation may take years to encompass an entire process, labor will still lay a claim to it, however diminishing, until its participation is purely administrative, or even incidental. Returning to the place occupied by truck drivers, Flynn Murphy, a truck driver himself and author of The Long Haul , writes:

The only human beings left in the modern supply chain are truck drivers. If you go to a modern warehouse now, say Amazon or Walmart, the trucks are unloaded by machines, the trucks are loaded by machines, they are put into the warehouse by machines. Then there is a guy, probably making $10 an hour, with a load of screens watching these machines. Then what you have is a truckers' lounge with 20 or 30 guys standing around getting paid. And that drives the supply chain people nuts.

Truckers aside, a reader may justifiably grouse that one employee monitoring an otherwise automated process is pretty much an automated process. And while we're not very close to the joke at the beginning of this piece, we're probably not that far off, either. Of course, it would be funnier if there were a dog involved, but there's a slim chance it'll make it through the last round of layoffs.
by Brooks Riley

For most of us, the act of looking at a painting is, and should be, subjective. The baggage we bring to the confrontationhow we see, what we notice, what we know, how we feel, what we like or dont likeis as individual as a finger print, and often highly idiosyncratic. Like the proverbial horse, we can be led to a painting, but we cannot be made to like itif were honest. We may well like it, or appreciate it (divorcing like from value), even if weve been led to it. But we can also be cajoled, or conned, into liking it or appreciating it because weve been told its a masterpiece.

Sometimes I feel Im being stalked by Leonardo da Vinci. He tiptoes in and out of my life at irregular intervals, calling attention to himself and exhorting me to believe in his painterly genius. Its aesthetic harassment, and hes had plenty of enablers over the centuries, telling me I should give in to him.

The first time I saw the Mona Lisa, at 14, the first thing I noticed were her eyebrows, or rather the lack of them. Like a homing pigeon, my attention swiftly bypassed the painting as gestalt and zoomed directly into a detail that delivered a personal shock of recognition. I didnt see the smile, I didnt try to read her expression, I didnt try to see where she was looking, I didnt notice the landscape outside the window behind her. I was fixated on that delicate bone along which her eyebrows might have stretched like a delicate punctuation mark on an expression.

In spite of my dark brown hair, I was born with almost no eyebrows, only a few beige weeds scattered helter-skelter in a landscape of pale skin, invisible even from a short distance. At 14, when all my friends had lovely, well-defined brows, my lack of them was a source of adolescent insecurity that eventually faded when the teasing stopped.

By the time I saw the Mona Lisa for the second time, at 22, Id found out that Lisa shaved off her eyebrows according to Renaissance fashionI was born too late. This may be what led bandleader Mitch Miller to tell me, when we met, that I looked like a few Madonnas hed seen at the Frick. It had to be the eyebrows, or the lack of them.

Da Vinci showed up again while I was living in the tiny principality of Liechtenstein for a few months, just as its prince was selling the familys only da Vinci painting, the Ginevra de Benci, to the National Gallery in Washington for a tidy sum that seems like peanuts today. Seeing it on the front page of the International Herald Tribune, I found it refreshingly different from the Mona Lisa, Ginevras hard sullen stare somehow more intriguing and mysterious than Mona Lisas placid smile over our right shoulder. At the time I was surprised that such a national treasure could be sold away without local protest. When I posed the question, the news dealer in Vaduz shrugged. The prince can do what he wants. As Ive since learned, the prince needed the money.

Back in Washington, I made the pilgrimage to see the Ginevra de Benci. There was something exquisitely delicate and old-fashioned about it, like a painting from an earlier century of someone portrayed as an icon of herself. And I sent a postcard of it to my brilliant, neurotic, decades-older half-sister Jane, a successful songwriter who happened to be obsessed with Leonardo da Vinci. Convinced that a certain painting attributed to someone else was, in fact, a true da Vinci, she plunged into research, hand-wrote an 800-page manuscript and left Texas for the first time in her life to take it to a NY publisher. Told that her theory would need to be vetted by experts, Jane, already in the throes of serious paranoia, took the manuscript back to Texas and burned it. Theres more to this story, but its safe to say that da Vinci ruined her life.

He wasnt done with me, either. A few years ago, approached to translate a German novel in which Mona Lisa comes alive to haunt and taunt a contemporary painterWoody Allens The Kugelmass Episode without the humorI was less than enthusiastic, horrified at the thought of spending serious time with a painting I grudgingly admired whose protagonist I found woefully uninteresting.

Now hes back, with another questionable work, the Salvator Mundi, which just sold last month for $450 million. To try to understand what it is that bothers me about da Vinci, Ive spent the intervening weeks immersing myself in his paintings (I just cant seem to shake this guy.). My conclusions might seem superficial, especially to art historians, but it would take another lifetime to properly prove them. Id rather spend the rest of this life with Albrecht Durer.

In spite of his genius, Leonardo lacked a personal aesthetic sense, or an own style. Not a metteur en scene, he was a bricoleur en scene, tinkering around with elements of a painting without paying much mind to its aesthetic whole. Given his prodigious talent, he could have been a great artist. But as a polymath without equal, his interest in painting was scientific, analytical, experimental, but not necessarily artistic. Its not an accident that he put his ability to paint at the bottom of his qualifications when he applied for a post with the Duke of Milan. He had other things on his mind. As Jean-Pierre Cuzin, a former curator at the Louvre aptly put it, For him the painting doesnt count. What counts is the knowledge.

By the time he became obsessed with sfumatoa technique that renders paintings more realistic by smoking away the lines of demarcation, creating the illusion of reality through a suggestion of 3-dimensionalityhis descent from greatness was precipitate. Sfumato a la Leonardo is a two-dimensional form of embalming that turns everyone into generic figures, like Madonna Barbie dolls against backdrops that often look like back projections. Through his application of sfumato, the faces lose character, becoming waxy figures in a Renaissance Madame Tussauds gallery, or in the case of the Salvator Mundi, the Shroud of Turin. The ragazzo pazzo posing as John the Baptist in his last painting also belongs to this sfumato festival.

Its no wonder that authentication of da Vincis works is so difficult. No two paintings are related in any discernable way unless he painted them twice, which he seems to have done more than once. Hes a painter without a styleessentially a jack-of-all-styles.

It all started well enough. Early works like The Annunciation (in collaboration with Verrocchio) with its cinemascopic one-point perspective seem to suggest a desire to find a style or at least a completed unified image. Early on he also painted my favorite, the Lady with an Ermine, a painting I love in spite of that right hand on steroids (An L.A.M. scan of the painting reveals an earlier hand thats smaller and a scrawny grey weasel instead of the ermine.). Here I recognize a potential for mise-en-scene in the dynamic polyhedron-esque variation on portraiture with a protagonist whose alert curiosity, aimed off-stage left, immediately invites us to wonder, What is she looking at? If theres a masterpiece lurking in da Vincis oeuvre, its this one. That gaze, clear and unsullied by sfumato, could almost stand as a metaphor for the painters own constant distractions, off-stage from painting.

Leonardo da Vinci was not a consummate painter. He was first and foremost a scientist, inventor and experimenter, with an excess of artistic talent to help pay the rent and a trove of notebooks to document his true obsessions. What I admire and envy about him is that thirst and drive to know everything, and his inventive imagination. Id prefer to curl up with his codices, which is how Id probably feel most at ease with him.

Leonardos talent allowed him to delve into the mechanics of life and body, the techniques of a craft, including painting, and bold imagined mechanisms of the future. Its not difficult to detect a case of ADD to a rarified degree. Endowed with extraordinary capabilities, polymaths get easily distracted. They experiment feverishly on one or three things before rushing off to some other new challenge. Da Vinci once said that no painting is ever finished, only abandoned. I rest my case.

Disclaimer: My opinion is defiantly subjective, probably not at all original, and all too brief, but is informed by considerable time and energy spent looking at the forest as well as the trees.
This week's list of happenings includes endless wine, LED-lit flash mobs, jaw-dropping art and more.





Monday, December 4th: Hear Budd MacKenzie Speak on Everyday Humanitarianism @ Commonwealth Club

When: 6:00pm to 7:15pm

Where: 110 The Embarcadero (Embarcadero), commonwealthclub.org

Why: Start off your workweek with an empowering, enlightening, open-hearted fireside chat with Budd MacKenzie, as he discusses his work with women, children and the needy in war-torn Afghanistan. He will also limelight about what we can do to effectively help those who we may not knowbut are an ocean's-length away. Tickets ($20) can be bought on Eventbrite; if you're a student or a member of the Commonwealth Club, the talk is free to attend.





Tuesday, December 5th: Ungulate Like a Jellyfish @ Union Square

When: 7:30pm to 9:30pm

Where: Union Square, airbnb.com

Why: Come this Tuesday evening at Union Square, join a gaggle of other biophilic creatives and create an LED flash mob in an ode to everyone's favorite saline invertebratethe jellyfish. Tickets ($65) can be bought on Airbnb, and each attendee will be given their own illuminated jellyfish puppet to both use at the event and later keep.





Wednesday, December 6th: See 'Prussian Blue' During Its Opening Week @ YBCA

When: 11:00am to 6:00pm (Gallery Hours)

Where: 701 Mission St. (SoMa), ybca.org

Why: Assembled by the celebrated oil painter, Yishai Jusidman, Prussian Blue is a series of paintings using just one colorPrussian blue, one of the earliest pigments artificially developed and used by European paintersto visualize sites of the Holocaust. Tickets ($10) can be bought online at ybca.org or at the door.





Thursday, December 7th: See Golden Gate Park Light-up for the Holidays @ Conservatory of Flowers

When: 6:00pm to TBD

Where: 100 John F Kennedy Dr. (Golden Gate Park), sfrecpark.org

Why: Swing by Golden Gate Park this Thursday night to see the Conservatory of Flowers become a canvass of sorts, danced by an LED light show to help celebrate the start of December. Admission is free, but space will undoubtedly be tight and precious to come by.





Friday, December 8th: Talk, Walk, and Drink Wine @ Fillmore Street

When: 4:00pm to 8:00pm

Where: 2001 Fillmore St. (Pacific Heights), eventbrite.com

Why: Sip and walk at this Friday's Fillmore holiday wine walk. The tasting event will include merchants offering wine samples inside their stores throughout Fillmore Street from Jackson to Eddy. Tickets ($25) can be bought on Eventbrite and include unlimited tasting and some merchandise swag.





Saturday, December 9th: See an Aerial 'Winter of Love' Show @ Circus Center

When: 7:30pm to TBD

Where: 755 Frederick St. (Inner Sunset), circuscenter.org

Why: Featuring Circus Center's faculty, advanced adult recreational students, and pre-professional youth program trainees, this family-friendly show will immerse you in the sights and sounds of high-flying aerialists and impossible acrobatics. Revisit San Francisco's righteous, fun-loving, summer-of-love past. Tickets ($25) can be bought on ovationtix.com.





Sunday, December 10th: Treat Your Eyes and Ears at 'Klimt and Rodin: A Musical Encounter' @ Legion of Honor

When: 3:00pm to 4:30pm

Where: 100 34th Ave. (Sea Cliff), facebook.com

Why: Cap-off a well-spent, diverse weekend with an afternoon of music inspired by Gustav Klimt, Auguste Rodin, and their cultural milieu, organized in collaboration with San Francisco's Opera Parallele. Tickets ($10+) can be bought at legionofhonor.famsf.org, but they're selling quickso jump on it!
Mineral Resource 40.8 Mt @ 1.4% Li20



James Bay Major Resource Upgrade

Perth, Dec 4, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Galaxy Resources Limited ("Galaxy" or the "Company") ( ASX:GXY ) ( GALXF:OTCMKTS ) is pleased to announce a significant mineral resource upgrade resulting from the 2017 drilling campaign at the James Bay Project in Quebec, Canada.



Highlights



- Significant increase in the mineral resource to 40.8 Mt @1.40% Li20, all classified as Indicated (JORC 2012)



- Current mineral resource is west of the James Bay Road and it remains open to the east and in the west at depths greater than - 335m below surface



- Numerous untested pegmatite's outcrop and sub-crop elsewhere within the claim area of the project



- Metallurgical test work for process design already well advanced in Perth, Western Australia



- Further drilling for infrastructure sterilization has commenced



- Mine design and planning work has been awarded to Mining Plus



- Feasibility Study preparation ongoing, upgrade of resources to reserves expected in H1 of 2018.



The current JORC 2012 recoverable mineral resource is reported below in Table 1 (see link below), as is the prior mineral resource in Table 2 (see link below). Factors used to demonstrate "reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction" are listed in Table 3 (see link below). The mineral resource estimate was completed by SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. who are independent of the issuer for both JORC 2012 and Canadian NI-43-101 reporting standards. Additional reporting to the Canadian standard is mandatory in Canada for project development.



Reported at cut-off grade of 0.62 % Li20 and within a conceptual open pit shell formulated to demonstrate "reasonable prospects of eventual economic extraction as tabulated (see Table 3 below). All figures rounded to reflect the relative accuracy of the estimates. Mineral resources are not mining reserves and do not yet have demonstrated economic viability.



Reported at cut-off grade of 0.75% Li20 and within a conceptual open pit shell formulated to demonstrate "reasonable prospects of eventual economic extraction" with factors as tabulated (see Table 3 in link below).



Galaxy Resources' Managing Director, Anthony Tse said the increase in resource confirms the James Bay project as a world class hard rock lithium asset, as highlighted by the grade, quality and scalability of the deposit.



"One of the key attributes of the James Bay project is that due to its high grade, scale, low stripping ratio and superior location, it will be one of the lowest cost hard rock lithium projects in the world. The pegmatite system is substantial in size and the deposit remains open at depth and also open to the east, which offers significant potential for growth, both in terms of the resource and ultimately future ore reserve."



Additional ASX disclosure - Material Changes to Mineral Resources (Section 5.8.1, Chapter 5 ASX listing rules)



Geology and geological interpretation



The spodumene-bearing pegmatite bodies of the James Bay project are irregular dykes up to 60 meters in width and over 200 meters in length. The pegmatite intrusions generally strike south-southwest dipping moderately to the east-northeast (215deg/60deg).



Based on core drilling data, surface geology mapping, and outcrop channel sampling provided by Galaxy, SRK created a three-dimensional model for the main pegmatite dykes. The bodies were modelled from logged pegmatites, not Li2O grades, as implicitly derived intrusions or vein contact surfaces in Leapfrog Geo software (version 4.0.1). The resulting geological model incorporates 18 pegmatite dykes. Sixteen pegmatite bodies were created as intrusion contact surfaces with a spheroidal interpolant. Two smaller pegmatites (550 and 850) were created with the vein modelling tool within the boundaries defined by hanging wall and footwall surfaces.



SRK also modelled the overburden material, consisting of glacial till, using the logged drill intervals and mapped outcrops. The three-dimensional model is clipped to a topography surface created from a Lidar survey provided by Galaxy.



Sampling and sub-sampling techniques



The maiden 2010 mineral resource had been based on 14,457m of diamond drilling and 201.3m of horizontal channel sampling, from 102 drill holes and 45 channel samples. This updated mineral resource estimation is supported by an additional 33,339 m of NQ core drilling in 157 diamond drill holes. (see Figures 1 and 2 in link below). All sampling is half NQ3 sized core. Sample lengths average at 1.290m. A total of 9,194 assays were completed by ALS Canada by the Li 0C63 Open Beaker method. An additional 1,093 standard and blank assays were submitted with the sample stream. These include 514 duplicates and 513 blanks. Results for check assays between ALS and SGS have been received.



Mineral Resource classification criteria



SRK is satisfied that the geological modelling honours the current geological information and knowledge. The location of the samples and the assay data are sufficiently reliable to support resource evaluation. The sampling information was acquired primarily by surface channel sampling and core drilling on sections spaced at twenty-five to fifty metres. The eighteen modelled intrusive pegmatite dykes were investigated by several boreholes providing sampling to approximately twenty-five to forty metre spacing. Most pegmatite dyke domains have been sampled by a sufficient number of boreholes to model the spatial variability of lithium oxide. Accordingly, all block estimates within the conceptual pit shell have been classified as Indicated.



Sample analysis



All samples were weighed, crushed and pulverized at ALS Canada. These were processed at ALS Val d'Or located at 1324 Rue Turcotte, Val d'Or, QC, Canada. Methods used were CRU-31,CRU-QC,LOG-21,SPL-21,WEI-21. Samples were processed at ALS Vancouver located at 2103 Dollarton Hwy, North Vancouver, BC, Canada. This is a four-acid digest method. This is analysis for lithium ore grade by method Li- OC63. This assay is for ore grade Li by specialized four-acid digestion and ICP-AES finish, with Li-specific CRMs. It is best suited to Li-bearing silicate sediments. Li range is 0.01-10%. The method precision is 5%. Assays are within expected tolerance. Umpire assaying has been completed.



This method is suitable for analyzing lithium in geological samples. A ~0.4g sample is first digested with three acids (HCLO4, HF, and HNO3) until dryness. The residue is subsequently re-digested in concentrated HCL, cooled and topped up to volume. The samples are analyzed for Li by ICPAES spectroscopy.



Estimation method



The evaluation of mineral resources involved database compilation and verification, construction of 3D wireframes, the definition of mineral resource domains, sample compositing, capping, sample statistical analysis, block modelling and grade estimation; grade validation, mineral resource classification and mineral resource tabulation.



Estimation was by geostatistical methods with hard geological domain boundaries. Block modelling (10 x 3 x 10m block size) was informed by variography and sample composition using ordinary kriging methods in octant search. Block modelling was validated by nearest neighbour and inverse distance methods.



Cut-off grade and the basis for cut-off grade



The cut-off grade (COG) applied is 0.62 % Li20. The COG is based on metallurgical test work that requires a head feed mineralised to support beneficiation to a spodumene product at grades and qualities that meet market requirements.



Mining and metallurgical factors



Material modifying factors have been applied to demonstrate "reasonable prospects of eventual economic extraction" by open pit, drill, blast, truck & shovel methods. Process recovery is planned to be by crush, optical sort, deslime and DMS recovery at a 2Mtpa (million tonnes per annum) throughput. Factors applied are tabulated (see Table 3 in link below). Mineral resources are not mining reserves and do not yet have demonstrated economic viability.



ABOUT THE JAMES BAY PROJECT



The James Bay Pegmatite swarm is located 10km south of the Eastmain River and 100 kilometers east of James Bay. The property is accessible by paved road from the James Bay Road which cuts through the property close to the 381km road marker on the highway Route/109 from Val d'Or, Quebec, Canada. Val d'Or is approximately 526km westward from Montreal, Quebec. A large, multi-service truck stop is located at marker 381. Discovered in the 1960's and then known as the Cyr property the site consists of a swarm of 33 pegmatite dykes that belong to the rare-element 'class', the LCT (Li-Cs- Ta) 'family' and the albite-spodumene 'type' per the classification by Cerny (1991). Two new major pegmatite dykes have been discovered in this current campaign as well as smaller swarms eastward of the known extents. The mineralised pegmatite is open at depth and to the east. The lithium bearing mineral contained in the pegmatites is spodumene LiAl (Si2O6), a member of the pyroxene group of minerals. The pegmatite swarms have dip direction ~N 125 degrees E., dip steeply at ~60 degrees and form a corridor of discontinuous dykes about ~4km in length and ~300m wide. This outcrop is to about 15-20m above the surrounding muskeg/swamp.



This phase of drilling and mineral resource estimation is complete. Feasibility studies are ongoing and the James Bay Project Notice has been submitted to both the Federal Government of Canada and the Quebec Government for determination.



To view tables and figures, please visit:

http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/D09FLNU8





About Galaxy Resources Limited





Galaxy Resources Limited (ASX:GXY) (OTCMKTS:GALXF) is an international S&P / ASX 200 Index company with lithium production facilities, hard rock mines and brine assets in Australia, Canada and Argentina. It wholly owns and operates the Mt Cattlin mine in Ravensthorpe Western Australia, which is currently producing spodumene and tantalum concentrate, and the James Bay lithium pegmatite project in Quebec, Canada.

Galaxy is advancing plans to develop the Sal de Vida lithium and potash brine project in Argentina situated in the lithium triangle (where Chile, Argentina and Bolivia meet), which is currently the source of 60% of global lithium production. Sal de Vida has excellent potential as a low cost brine-based lithium carbonate production facility.

Lithium compounds are used in the manufacture of ceramics, glass, and consumer electronics and are an essential cathode material for long life lithium-ion batteries used in hybrid and electric vehicles, as well as mass energy storage systems. Galaxy is bullish about the global lithium demand outlook and is aiming to become a major producer of lithium products.


Share Purchase Plan Oversubscribed

Adelaide, Dec 4, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Investigator Resources Limited ( ASX:IVR ) (the Company) is pleased to announce that that the Share Purchase Plan (SPP), announced on 9 November 2017, has closed oversubscribed as a result of strong support from its shareholders.



Applications in excess of $1.18M were received and subject to cleared funds the Directors will scale-back applications. As a result of the proposed scale-back, SPP subscribers will receive approximately 84.38% of the number of SPP Shares applied for.



Up to 45,454,545 fully paid ordinary shares were offered under the SPP at an issue price of $0.022 each to raise $1,000,000 before costs (SPP Shares). Subscribers to the SPP were also offered one free attaching option, exercisable at $0.035 each on or before 31 December 2020, for every one SPP Share subscribed for under the SPP (SPP Options), as approved by Shareholders at the Company's Annual General Meeting held on 30 November 2017. The Company's intention is for the SPP Options to be listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) subject to meeting ASX listing requirements. The SPP Options were offered under a prospectus issued on 9 November 2017.



Allotment of the SPP Shares and SPP Options is scheduled for Thursday 7 December 2017 and refunds will be provided to SPP subscribers by cheque and mailed to their registered address as soon as practicable.



The proceeds from the SPP will be used to advance the Company's exploration projects, primarily to explore for resources extensions of the Paris silver deposit and satellite silver targets with IP geophysics and drilling. Drilling is scheduled to commence this week.



The Board of Directors wishes to thank all Shareholders for their ongoing support.





About Investigator Resources Ltd





Investigator Resources Limited (ASX:IVR) is a metals explorer with a focus on the opportunities for greenfields silver-lead, copper-gold and other metal discoveries in South Australia.

The Company's priority is progressing the development pathway for the Paris silver project with the preparation of a pre-feasibility study. The Paris Mineral Resource Estimate is 9.3Mt @ 139g/t silver and 0.6% lead, comprising 42Moz of contained silver and 55kt of contained lead, at a 50g/t silver cut-off. The resource has been categorised with an Indicated Resource estimate of 4.3Mt @ 163g/t silver and 0.6% lead for 23Moz contained silver and 26kt contained lead, and an Inferred Resource: 5.0Mt @ 119g/t silver and 0.6% lead for 19Moz contained silver and 29kt contained lead.

The Company has applied an innovative strategy that has developed multiple ideas and targets giving Investigator first-mover status. These include: the Paris silver discovery; recognition of other epithermal fields and the associated potential for porphyry copper-gold of Olympic Dam age; extending the ideas developed at Paris-Nankivel and using breakthrough government Magneto-Telluric surveying to rejuvenate targeting with the Maslins IOCG target as the next priority drill target.
Minister for International Trade, Greg Hands and Lord Faulkner, UK Trade Envoy to Taiwan, attended the launch of a vital new trade link from the UK to the Far East in Friday - when the UK's only direct flight to Taipei left Gatwick for the first time.





The majority of UK airfreight is exported in the hold of long haul passenger aircraft and this four times a week China airlines service will provide both UK and Taiwanese businesses with the fastest access to both markets, in addition to carrying business and leisure passengers.



According to the UK Government, approximately 300 UK companies are currently located in Taiwan in financial and business services, ICT, telecommunications, infrastructure, environmental technology, creative industries and marine industries, with around 180 Taiwanese companies currently based in the UK.



The UK is seen by Taiwan as a world leader in the creative industries and cultural and educational links are growing with approximately 30% of all Taiwanese who study overseas - around 8000 students - doing so in the UK. Taiwanese tourism to the UK has also risen sharply since the lifting of the visa regime for visits of under six months in 2009.



The China Airlines service is the latest in Gatwicks flourishing 60+ strong network  the worlds largest for a single runway airport  and one that will soon be followed by new services to Buenos Aires, Chicago and Austin in the New Year.



Guy Stephenson, Chief Commercial Officer, Gatwick Airport, said: We welcome China Airlines to Gatwick for the launch of this new service that will provide a vital link between the UK and Taiwan at a critical time in our economic history. The new route will boost trade between our two enterprising economies and help our businesses to get goods to market as quickly and efficiently as possible.



The airport is increasingly connecting the UK to more and more long haul destinations across the globe and our 60+ long haul network now includes destinations in China, the Far East, Africa, South America and across the US.



International Trade Minister, Greg Hands said: This renewed direct flight between London and Taipei is another vote of confidence in the British economy, and the growing trade links between the UK and Taiwan. I know well the huge opportunities Taiwans vibrant economy presents to British businesses and this flight will make it even easier for firms looking to satisfy the growing Taiwanese demand for quality British goods and services.



Roger Han, VP of Europe for China Airlines said: Were delighted to be back in the UK this year, with the inaugural flight marking the ease of travel between the UK and Taiwan.



As the only non-stop service between the two countries, we want to highlight to travellers the benefits to travelling to Taipei, for business or leisure purposes. In addition, our extensive route network offers destinations throughout Asia and onward to Australia for British travellers to enjoy.



UK Trade Envoy to Taiwan, Lord Faulkner said: Im delighted by the reintroduction of direct flights from London to Taipei. Im a veteran traveller to Taiwan and have been convinced of the huge potential for both economies to benefit from better trade links for some time. Personally I can vouch for the immediate impact on business, as I will be a leading a business delegation over in January and am thrilled we can add some precious hours to our itinerary.




President Muhammadu Buhari and his Ivorian counterpart Alassane Drame Ouattara Wednesday called on Togolese political stakeholders namely the opposition and ruling regime to work towards a solution in order to solve the ongoing political instability before it escalates and puts the region into danger.

Both leaders met on the sidelines of EU-Africa summit in Abidjan to discuss the political crisis which has begun since August 19 and caused the death of over 15 people and an influx of refugees in Ghana.

We must have a solution in Togo. The friends of the opposition and authorities must talk to them on the steps to jointly take to achieve stability. They must work towards gaining the trust of each other.

There will be regional consequences for instability in Togo and this will surely come at a cost to development, President Buhari said.

The region and the African Union (AU) have been closely looking at the crisis unfold. President Buhari received last week Togo President Faure Gnassingbe who also doubles as the Chairperson the regional economic bloc (ECOWAS).

On a visit to President Ouattara also last week, President Gnassingbe indicated that he was opened for dialogue and expected the opposition to make a forward move.

A coalition of 14 opposition parties have risen against the President who has been in power for 12 years after taking over from his father who ruled for 38 years.

They demand the reinstatement of presidential two-term limit.

Ghana and Guinea are mediating the crisis for a genuine dialogue to take place early next month.
The US military has received a go-ahead from the government of Niger fly drones over sub-Saharan country in a region dogged by terror groups.

The agreement between two parties was sealed last week according to the Voice of America (VOA) citing Pentagon spokeswoman, Army Major Audricia Harris.

The government of Niger and the U.S. stand firm in working together to prevent terrorist organizations from using the region as a safe haven. For operational security reasons, I will not comment on specific military authorities, Harris told VOA.

The announcement comes nearly two month after four American soldiers and four of their Nigerian counterparts plus their interpreter were killed in a militant attack on October 4, near the village of Tongo Tongo.

The men died after members of a U.S. Special Operations Task Force accompanied 30 Nigerien forces on a reconnaissance mission from the capital, Niamey, to an area near Tongo Tongo, were attacked after meeting with local leaders.

The US military has been assisting the Nigerien army to gather intelligence, to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

American forces currently man a drone base in the central city of Agadez but the pilotless aircrafts are only used for surveillance, reports say.

Jihadist movements have gathered steam in the Sahel region where Libyan arms have been circulating following fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 in a NATO-backed revolution.

Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and Mali have formed the Sahel G5 group to combat terrorism in their territories and at their borders.
The African Development Bank (AdfB) has agreed to allocate 150 million euro for the Cameroonian government and its partners in the construction of Nachtigal dam, 65 km north of Yaounde expected to produce 420 megawatt.

The future dam will be built on Sanaga river already receiving two other dams.

The Cameroonian government is teaming up with Frances Electricite de France and World Bank subsidiary, SFI, for the project to cost a total of 1.05 billion euro.

The three partners will operate under Nachtigal Hydro Power Company (NHPC), an umbrella company regrouping the three.

Construction works of the future dam will start next year and energy production is slated for 2022.

The project will help the Cameroonian government increase the national electricity accessibility by 30 per cent.

Around 48 per cent of the countrys population has access to energy despite the fact that central African country accounts for the third Southern Saharan country with hydroelectric energy capacity, 12,000 megawatt.
2014, was a different era all together for BJP, they won with majority and people supported them for change, but within three years of BJP ruling, the anger against government started mounting. BJPs own voters turned against them and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to go through lots of criticism. While BJPs rivals, especially in the Hindi heartland, were busy carving and cubing data on caste equations. The opposition, this time, is well placed and planned to give befitting reply to BJP and Modis every claim. Earlier Narendra Modis rallies used to be packed with audiences to know how he will bring Achhe Din. The more his rivals asked the electorate not to trust him, the more Modi talked about development. But entire picture changed now as the voters have stopped trusting Modi and his development and Achhe Din promises. The rallies are going with empty chairs. BJP and its leaders resorted to all sorts of foul language, they have nothing to claim or show the promises that they delivered. Meer attack on Nehru-Gandhi and Congress has flopped and people are not ready to buy Modis jumlas. The anger against BJP is very much evident in Gujarat. The inescapable conclusion seems to be that, in 2014, Modi had a better narrative than his opponents. To the electorate, pushed against the wall by a non-performing government at the Centre, Modis promise of better days made more sense than apocalyptic fear of riots.

BJPs early campaign script for 2017 Assembly polls promised to take off from where Modi had left in 2014. There seemed to be, despite media reports of social engineering and a soft Hindutva line, a renewed and refreshing focus on development. In early January, BJPs campaign language was one of hope, aspiration, fight against black money and a call to rise above caste equations in a mind bogglingly complex demographic. Cut to February. BJPs tone has become angry. There are fewer calls for development. The calls to rise above caste and community equations have lessened. From a positive campaign in early January, it has turned overwhelmingly negative. Leave alone his generals; even Modi seems to have abandoned politics of hope and aspiration for invective rhetoric. Whereas, earlier he would mainly ignore rivals and focus on transformative oratory, of late he replaced it with a personalised campaign against Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi. He invented an acronym, S-C-A-M (SP, Congress, Akhilesh and Mayawati) and asked voters to teach them a lesson. As the days are nearing in Gujarat, Modi and Shah had gone insane with their language; Modi questioning the birth of Indira and Rajiv and Shah calling former PM a Namuna (sample). These are people left with no constructive subject; Gujarat residents were fooled for 15 years trusting Modi but somewhere his shift from Gujarat to Delhi, has cost him a lot. Moreover, BJP still has leadership crises; there is no prominent face like Modi in his party.

Forget about Gujarat, but BJP leaders across the country have foot in mouth on various occasions. BJP MLA Sangeet Som was caught showing video clips of Muzaffarnagar riots, Amit Shah promised anti-Romeo squads, slammed SP and Congress for dynasty politics and held a last-minute mollification meeting with Jats of western UP to address their concerns. The Jats, a crucial BJP vote bank, are widely reported to be disillusioned and angry with the party. In short, BJP seems to have faltered on their strength. Instead of presenting the electorate with a simple yet convincing narrative, they are desperately searching for a better story to trump the one told by Akhilesh. They have been reduced to making the same mistake which Modis rivals did in 2014  run an anti-campaign.

BJPs problem is that notebandi or demonetisation happened at a very wrong time for UP. What we are witnessing now is the second stage where the initial euphoria over fight against black money has been replaced by voter anger at the decimation of the informal economy. This will change, for sure. All metrics suggest that India will witness a V-shaped recovery in the third stage. But till that happens, the job losses and contraction of rural economy will have its repercussions and BJP is feeling the heat. Assuaging the anger of voters, who appear willing to teach BJP a lesson, isnt easy in such a short amount of time. The early campaign language of aspiration of hope has therefore turned into one of desperation for BJP. In every assembly election after 2014, Modi hit the campaign trail well after other party leaders had got into the act. This is not the case in Gujarat. Shah, too, formally kick-started the party campaign from Vallabhbhai Patels birthplace, Karamsad. This may have happened for several reasons. First, Modi did not groom his replacement as Gujarat chief minister. Consequently, his shadow still looms across the state. Second, the local leadership failed to tackle the Patidar agitations, who continue to rage against the administration since mid-2015 demanding reservations in government jobs and education. The Prime Minister might have reminded the audience about the surgical strike ordered by his government in September 2016 on terror camps across the Line of Control in Kashmir after an attack on an Indian Army camp in Uri, and compared the response to the one after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Modi said that the election in his home state is a contest between development and dynastic politics. Modi also hit out at Congress leaders, including the Congress vice-president, over allegations of impropriety in the Rafale fighter aircraft deal. Blaming the Congress for everything, Modi has started and ended his political parries but this time the opposition was equally strong to expose his claims.

Finally, Dalit anguish, in response to the ugly incident in Una in July 2016, has not been addressed. This will be a test for BJP as they cannot take for granted the votes of business community and Patidars. Also AAP is in the fray. Although AAP does not have winning chance but it will divide the vote. This time BJP has failed to disjoint Congress. Rahul Gandhi not only has gained maturity but become very aggressive in Gujarat, people have once again shown acceptance for the Congress.

The two-phase elections to the 182-member Gujarat assembly will be held on 9 and 14 December and the results will be declared on 18 December.

(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
With few days to go for Gujarat assembly polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a jibe at Congress party saying that Congress presidential election is rigged and criticised the party for following dynasty politics. He took potshots at Congress and termed Rahul Gandhis expected elevation to Congress president as Aurangazeb Raj. Modi has always been known for making mockery of the Congress party prior to every election. Often he uses unparliamentary language against opposition party to gain an upper hand over them. While addressing a rally at Dharampur, Modi said that Congress does not have integrity and one family has been looting India for decades.

He criticised the Congress for adopting divide and rule policy and said that the party is following the footsteps of British and dividing the country on communal lines. He attacked Rahul Gandhi for calling GST Gabbar Singh Tax. The PM went a step further by stating that former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had covered her face while addressing a rally at Morbi in Gujarat. Even BJP president Amit Shah is not far behind when it comes to attacking Congress over various issues. Shah had referred Manmohan Singh as Mauni baba. He added that Singh used to undertake foreign tours but people remained unaware about it. Shah said that Congress lacks youth leaders and hence, have outsourced their leadership to divide votes on the basis of caste and communalism.
Turkey Confiscating Christian Property, Prohibiting Christians From Worshiping

St. Gabriel Assyrian Monastery, Tur Abdin, Turkey, established 397 A.D. ( AINA) The government of Turkey is now confiscating Christian property and prohibiting Christians worshipping in their churches, which have also been confiscated. This is happening in certain areas of Turkey, but soon it will be widespread. Here is the report: The severe persecution and widespread "hatred" that Christians and other minorities experience in Turkey has been detailed in a report by a U.S.-based nonprofit international policy council and think tank. The Gatestone Institute wrote in a report released Monday that Christians are persecuted by government officials and are severely abused by the public on social media. It listed a number of articles, such as one from August 2017 in the Armenian-Turkish weekly Agos, which reported that "Armenian, Syriac and Chaldean Christians have not been able to worship in their churches for the last three years."

"This is because virtually the entire town -- and all Christian properties belonging to the indigenous Armenian, Assyrian (Syriac), Chaldean and Protestant communities -- was included in an expropriation plan adopted in March 2016 by the Turkish cabinet," it pointed out. "Among the Christian properties expropriated are the Armenian Catholic, the Chaldean Mor Petyun and the Armenian Surp Giragos churches." What is more, even Muslims who have refused to shun Christians or Kurds have been targeted, the think tank said. "For instance, a 76-year-old Muslim grandmother in Diyarbakir who is active in a Kurdish political movement has been harassed by Turkish police for being a 'hidden Armenian,' simply because she reads the Bible as well as the Quran," Gatestone reported. Christian pastors have been imprisoned, such as the case of American Pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested last October. Watchdog groups, such as the American Center for Law and Justice, have accused the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of keeping him in prison without any cause. Turkish officials finally announced the charges against Brunson at the end of August, however, accusing him of "gathering state secrets for espionage, attempting to overthrow the Turkish parliament and government, and to change the constitutional order." The Gatestone report noted that Yazidis, Alevis and women in the region have also been abused by Turkish authorities, while dozens of Kurdish journalist have been imprisoned. "This hatred of Christians and Kurds in Turkey is not restricted to government officials. It is widespread among the public, as well, and expressed extensively on social media," Gatestone explained. It pointed to Twitter abuse, where Armenians and grandchildren of survivors of the 1914 Armenian Christian genocide are called "infidels," "vile and treacherous," with some saying that all Armenians "must die." "The situation of minorities in Turkey and their persecution by Turkey -- a member of NATO and perpetual candidate for EU membership -- must be told as often and as loudly as possible," the report urged in conclusion. Amnesty International has slammed Erdogan's government as well, accusing the president of having a "human rights meltdown" after the arrest of the group's Turkey director Idil Eser. "This is not a legitimate prosecution," Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary general, said in a statement in July following the arrest. "This is a politically motivated persecution that charts a frightening future for rights in Turkey."
Qatar Airways has gained accreditation to the highest level of IATAs Environmental Assessment programme (IEnvA), becoming the first Middle East airline, and the fifth worldwide, to achieve IEnvA Stage 2.

Qatar Airways group chief executive, Akbar Al Baker, (left) was presented with the certificate by IATA director general and chief executive Alexandre de Juniac, during Mr Al Bakers inaugural meeting as the new chair-elect of IATAs board of governors in Geneva on 1 December.

Qatar Airways initiatives include a systematic approach to aviation fuel efficiency, which has cut its fuel use by 1,800 tonnes fuel  for example by optimising drinking water upload and reducing the use of engines while taxing on arrival at Hamad International Airport.

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A 33-year-old Birmingham man has been arrested and charged with sexual abuse of a child.

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office announced charges Monday against Armando Torres Escobar. Chief Deputy Randy Christian said deputies were called on Aug. 4 to a Pinson Valley home to investigate the reported sex abuse.

The girl had gone to her mother and told her that a family friend had been engaging in inappropriate sexual contact with her, Christian said. Sheriff's detectives immediately launched their investigation.

On Nov. 29, Escobar contacted investigators through his attorney and agreed to turn himself in. He did so the following day, and was booked into the Jefferson County Jail to await formal charges.

On Friday, the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office issued warrants formally charging Escobar with two counts of sexual abuse of a child under 12, and one count of sexual abuse by force.

He remains in the jail with bonds totaling $150,000.
A man is dead in east Alabama and a Georgia teen in custody after a weekend shooting in Cherokee County.

Sheriff Jeff Shaver late Sunday night said the homicide happened overnight Saturday at a home in the Salem community. Deputies and investigators responded to the home where they found the victim - described only as a white male - with a gunshot wound to the head.

Cherokee County Coroner Jeremy Deaton pronounced the man dead at the scene.

Shaver said sheriff's office investigators assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, as well as coroner's officials and the Jacksonville State University Center for Applied Forensics, processed the crime scene.

The suspect - 19-year-old Matthew Gonzalez - was taken into custody early Sunday morning by the Georgia State Patrol on a DUI charge. Cherokee County Chief Investigator Josh Summerford and Investigator Michael Green interviewed Gonzalez at the Paulding County Sheriff's Office in Georgia, Shaver said.

In addition to the DUI, Gonzalez, of Cedartown, Gal., was charged by Georgia troopers with violating the open container law, driving without a license and cited for a taillight violation. He was booked into the Paulding County Jail at 4:07 a.m., and remains jailed on bonds totaling $2,466.50.

Shaver said Gonzalez is charged with capital murder in Alabama and will be extradited back to Cherokee County. No additional information was released.
A Chilton County man is charged with felony corpse abuse in connection with the case of a Clanton mother whose body was found in Shelby County last month.

Anthony Scott Germany, 42, of Jemison, was arrested by the Shelby County Sheriff's Office on Friday, according to court records made public Monday. He is charged with abusing the corpse of Melissa Ann Cleckler, whose body was found Nov. 2 on Egg and Butter Road near Oak Drive in Columbiana.

Authorities have said the 27-year-old victim's body had been at the location for a couple of days before the discovery. Her remains were sent to the Alabama Department of Forensic Science for autopsy. Investigators have not disclosed how she was killed but the case is being investigated as a homicide.

No one has been charged with causing Cleckler's death.

Sheriff John Samaniego on Nov. 21 announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the person or people responsible for Cleckler's death. Samaniego was offering a $5,000 reward for information to help bring the case to a close. Crime Stoppers is offering an additional $5,000.

The arrest warrant for Germany said the crime happened on Oct. 18. It said he did "abuse the corpse of Melissa Ann Cleckler by knowingly treating the corpse in a way that outraged ordinary family sensibilities" by removing the corpse from a house, transporting it by vehicle and dumping it on Egg and Butter Road.

The charging documents do not list the address of the house. It wasn't immediately clear whether anyone else has been charged in connection with the case.

This story will be updated if more information is released by the sheriff's office.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling issued today, refused to hear the appeal of Alabama Death Row inmate Christopher Anthony Floyd, who says prosecutors struck 10 of 11 blacks from the jury pool at his trial.

Floyd appealed earlier this year to the U.S. Supreme Court after a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court last year.

The Alabama Supreme Court's decision came despite a previous U.S. Supreme Court order that told the Alabama court to take another look at Floyd's case in light of a similar case in Georgia - Foster v. Chatman. In the 2016 appeal of that case, SCOTUS reversed a conviction for discriminatory jury selection involving prosecutors' striking blacks from the jury pool.

However, the Alabama Supreme Court in November 2016 concluded that the Foster case did not require a change in the outcome of Floyd's case, and again affirmed Floyd's conviction. Floyd then turned again to SCOTUS.

In 2005, Floyd was convicted in Houston County for the murder and robbery of Waylon Crawford. Floyd was sentenced to death.

In selecting the jury for Floyd's case, the prosecutor and Floyd's lawyers exercised a total of 36 peremptory challenges, according to the state supreme court order. Prosecutors used its 18 challenges to remove 10 of 11 African-American venire members and 12 of 18 female venire members. Floyd's lawyers removed one African-American and seven female venire members. The final jury consisted of six white male jurors, six white female jurors, two alternate white male jurors and one alternate African-American female juror.

Floyd, who is white, did not object to the jury based on Batson v. Kentucky-- a previous U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting racial discrimination in jury selection, court records show.

In Monday's rejection of Floyd's appeal, SCOTUS did not render an opinion. Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, with which Associate Justice Stephen Breyer concurs, issued a statement.

"Although the unique context of Floyd's case counsels against review by this Court, I find the underlying facts sufficiently troubling to note that in the ordinary course, facts like these likely would warrant a court's intervention," Sotomayor wrote. "During voir dire, the Houston County District Attorney's Office exercised peremptory challenges against 10 out of 11 qualified African-American venire members, and used 12 of its 18 strikes against women. The prosecutor also marked the letter "'B,' as in black," next to the name of each potential African-American juror."

"That we have not granted certiorari should not be construed as complacence or an affirmance of all of the reasoning of the courts below," Sotomayor wrote. "The unusual posture in which Floyd raised his Batson and J. E. B. claims warrants caution in the exercise of the Court's review here. Yet, courts reviewing claims in circumstances like these must be steadfast in identifying, investigating, and correcting for improper bias in the jury selection process. Such discrimination "'casts doubt on the integrity of the judicial process,' and places the fairness of a criminal proceeding in doubt."
The Alabama Attorney General's office and Alabama Department of Environmental Management have filed a complaint against the Utilities Board of the city of Daphne, alleging that the utility did not properly report sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) to the department, failed to meet its water monitoring requirements and did not properly notify the public after spills.

The complaint was filed Nov. 16, about two months after environmental group Mobile Baykeeper sent Daphne Utilities a notice of intent to sue under the Clean Water Act for vastly under-reporting sewage overflows from its wastewater treatment plant on Main Street in Daphne.

A public relations firm representing Daphne Utilities issued a news release saying the utility would work with ADEM to address the issues in the complaint.

"Once this notice was received, Daphne Utilities' management reached out to ADEM, in a show of good faith, of its willingness to cooperate with its regulatory agency," the statement reads.

"As a government body, funded by rate payers, Daphne Utilities will always work to ensure compliance with all state and federal regulations and to cooperate with those agencies to correct any deficiencies."

The ADEM complaint, filed this month in Baldwin County Circuit Court, alleges the following:

The utility "discharged pollutants from the aforementioned point source, Outfall Number 0011, to the Blakeley River in violation of the limitations established in the Permit."

The utility "failed to collect and analyze samples in accordance with the Permit requirements."

On three occasions, ADEM said the utility did not meet its requirement to inform the department within five days of a sewer overflow.

The utility "failed to submit accurate SSO Reports to the Department within the timeframe required," by later revising initial submitted reports on how much was spilled and which water body was the "ultimate destination" of the overflow material.

The utility on three occasions did not notify the county health department of sewer overflows, as required by law.

Thirteen SSO reports did not detail any efforts to notify the public of the overflows, another requirement of the utility's permit.

The state complaint cited sewer overflows that took place as far back as July 2013 and as recently as Oct. 22.

The complaint may throw a wrench in the Mobile Baykeeper Clean Water Act case, which has not yet been filed.

Any citizen can file lawsuits for Clean Water Act violations, unless the federal or state agencies are "diligently prosecuting" the same violations, according to one legal scholar. The required 60-day notice of intent to sue gives state agencies time to intervene in Clean Water Act cases.

The news release from Daphne Utilities said ADEM's actions in this case "generally precludes any lawsuit by any environmental group related to the same issues."

Casi Callaway of Mobile Baykeeper said her group was not necessarily blocked from pursuing action against Daphne Utilities, but that the group was evaluating its options going forward.

"We do not trust ADEM to drive this at all," Callaway said. "There have been years of violations and years of bad acting and ADEM only looked at them when we filed the 60-day notice of intent to sue."

Callaway said the utility's decision to under-report or improperly report sewage spills was especially troubling, adding that the utility would have faced few legal consequences if it had simply reported accurately where, when and how much was spilled.

"Every time there's a spill that reaches the water, the public is at risk," she said. "If the public knows about it, they have the opportunity to protect themselves. If they don't, they don't.

"They're putting people's health at risk for no reason."

Daphne Utilities said in the news release that it has made some changes since Mobile Baykeeper filed its notice of intent to sue, including 24-hour staffing at the wastewater treatment plant, upgraded monitoring and alarm systems and additional operator training.

"Following the accusations by the environmental group, Daphne Utilities' board of directors immediately initiated an independent investigation of these allegations and to further demonstrate the board's intent to fully cooperate with ADEM," the release said. "Daphne Utilities, its board, and its management are fully committed to correcting any problems found during this independent investigation."

Daphne Utilities' PR firm said the utility would not have any additional comments on this case due to the ongoing legal actions.
The Alabama Ethics Commission voted today to set aside fines against three candidates and three political action committees that were late in filing campaign finance reports this year.

The Legislature passed a law in 2015 setting up the civil fines for late filers. This year is the first election cycle for the fines to be in effect.

After hearing descriptions of what happened in each of the six cases, the majority of the commission agreed that it was appropriate to drop the fines.

"It seems like in all these cases a lesson has been learned," Commissioner Frank C. "Butch" Ellis of Columbiana said.

Commissioner Charles Price said, "It's not like these folks are not trying to comply."

The commission voted 4-1 to drop the fines. Commissioner Beverlye Brady of Auburn voted against the motion.

Brady said she considered the circumstances unfortunate but did not think the commission had the authority to step into the role of the Legislature and "contort or change the law."

"I find that it's an awkward position to be in," Brady said.

Price noted that the Legislature included the right to appeal in the law.

The PACs that filed late were the Shelby Dems PAC, the Shelby County Republican Party and AL Lenders PAC.

The PACs eventually filed all the late reports.
At a courthouse square rally Sunday in Scottsboro, Frances Taylor spoke in support of Roy Moore after an invitation from organizers, in part, because she is a woman.

That was the rally's sales pitch from Chris Cox, the founder of Bikers for Trump - the event organizers whose rumbling motorcycles shattered the quiet of the largely deserted downtown area on a warm December afternoon.

Taylor's voice, Cox said before the rally, held special significance in light of the allegations of sexual misconduct made against Moore. Taylor is the president of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women.

Moore has repeatedly denied the allegations.

"We're the ones who have worked with him," Taylor said in an interview after the rally. "We have been in the campaign office with him. We've been in the chambers. We worked with him when he was on the (Alabama) Supreme Court. We have worked with him, we have been at church with him. We feel like we know him. He's not a stranger to us.

"This accusation doesn't fall in line with what we've seen and believed."

About 125 people attended the rally - most arriving on motorcycles - and virtually all supporting Moore in his bid to win the Alabama Senate special election on Dec. 12 against Democrat Doug Jones.

Moore was invited to attend and apologized in advance for his absence in a Sunday morning phone call, Cox said. Moore was campaigning in the southern part of the state on Sunday, Cox said, though his campaign announced no public events for Sunday.

Both Jones and Moore spoke at churches on Sunday morning while Jones took part in a fish fry in Tuscaloosa on Sunday afternoon.

"We're not going to use the pulpit to put people down. We're going to bring people together to talk about the issues." - Beulah Baptist Church pic.twitter.com/7IAaM1lVUV  Doug Jones (@DougJones) December 3, 2017

A lone protestor attended the rally. Jenni Carter of Scottsboro, who said she was a Democrat supporting Jones, stood among the Trump supporters holding a "No Moore" sign above her head during the rally.

She caught the eye of state Rep. Ed Henry, another of the rally's speakers.

"Mitch McConnell is here today," Henry said from the stage. "Did y'all know it? He's got a sign right here that says 'No Moore.'"

He pointed at Carter as he spoke.

Henry also took the opportunity to criticize McConnell, the Senate majority leader who has said he believes Moore's accusers and called on him to exit the race. On Sunday, though, McConnell appeared to soften his position on Moore.

"I promise you, Mitch McConnell, the Democrats, the establishment Republicans, they do not want Roy Moore in Washington D.C. because they know full well he is going to be a light, a bright light, a very bright light in Washington D.C.," Henry said. "They will not be able to hide and he will expose them for the traitors and the cowards that they are."

After the rally, Henry tweeted a photo of Carter standing next to another female, who held a poster board that said, "He may be a pedophile but at least he's racist, right?"

In his tweet of the picture, Henry posted, "I bet the press makes it out like these people mattered."

I bet the press makes it out like these people mattered. pic.twitter.com/fFmQF7kDR2  Ed Henry (@Ed_Henry_HD9) December 3, 2017

"I am against Roy Moore," Carter said. "I do not believe he ought to be in the Senate. It's not a Republican or a Democratic problem. It's the fact that he's a liar. He hides behind his Bible. He goes upon his moral principles - he does not have any moral principles. Anybody who is a sexual predator does not belong representing the state of Alabama."

As Carter spoke with reporters, Gerald Miller of Jackson County stood about 20 feet away and shouted, "Democrat baby killer!"

Miller cited his opposition to abortion as cause for his protest of her protest.

"She can protest all she wants to," he said. "She has the right as an American. But she's a baby killer. All Democrats are baby killers. They believe in the baby-killing Democratic Party."

The brief conflict lasted only a few seconds before the rally began and never escalated to any level of concern. Scottsboro police provided security at the rally.

Also attending the rally was Tony Goolesby, an organizer of Moore's rally last week in Henagar who was caught on video shoving a cameraman attempting to video Moore's arrival. Miller said Goolesby was his cousin.

From the stage, both Taylor and Henry made the case for voters to go to the polls and cast their support for Moore.

Afterward, asked if she could understand hesitancy to vote for Moore in the aftermath of the allegations, Taylor said those allegations do not equate with the Roy Moore she knows.

"I understand that terrible things happen to people," she said. "I absolutely understand and I support those men and women who have had something terrible happen to them. But that is not the person we have worked with. It's not as if we've worked with him for a year or two years. We've had 30 years with him and that is a substantial block of time.

"It's hard to take that and say, there's that (dismissing years of knowledge of Moore because of the allegations). The fear is once that sort of thing happens, then everybody becomes guilty - everybody. And that's not the person we see, that's not the person that we know."
Forty-seven year-old Gandhi family scion has emerged as the main challenger to PM Narendra Modi for 2019 polls.

Indias oldest political party, the Indian National Congress, has the decks cleared for electing its new president, Gandhi family scion and current vice president, Rahul Gandhi.

No one challenged his presidency bid on Monday. Forty-seven-year-old Rahul was nominated by former Indian president and senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee and former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Flanked by senior party leaders like Kamal Nath, Moti Lal Vora and Sheila Dixit among others, Gandhi arrived to the beating of drums at party headquarters 24 Akbar Road, in the capital New Delhi on Monday.

Rahul has been the darling of Congress men and Congress women. Today is just one more step in his quest for serving the people of the country by Manmohan Singh, ex-PM

#IndiaWithRahulGandhi was the top trending topic on Twitter in India, as the 47-year-old filed his bid for the top job.

When he formally takes over, he will become the 16th president of the Congress party succeeding his mother, Sonia Gandhi, who served as president of the party for 19 long years.

Three members of the Congress party have been Prime Ministers, including Rahuls father Rajiv, grandmother Indira and great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Indian National Congress party has ruled India for most of the years since independence from British colonial rule in 1947. It was formed in 1885 to foster opposition to the British Raj (rule).

But the party has been in a state of decline for the past few years.

Enormous challenges

With his elevation, Rahul Gandhi faces enormous challenges. His party is facing its biggest crisis since Independence.

Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah have vowed to make India Congress-mukt (Congress-free).

Modi took a dig at Rahuls elevation on Monday at al election rally in the western state of Gujarat.

I congratulate the Congress on their Aurangzeb Raj. For us, the well-being of the people matters and 125 crore [1.25 billion] Indians are our high command, Modi said, obliquely equating Rahul to medieval Muslim ruler Aurangzeb.

The Congress party had delivered its worst performance to date in the 2014 general elections when the party was reduced to 48 members in the 545-seat parliament. They have also lost many state elections since then.

Saeed Naqvi, senior commentator and analyst, said Rahuls elevation was on the cards for a long while.

Naqvi said that there were distinct opinions about Rahul  one based on his public utterances while those who met him privately painted a different picture.

A leader has got to stand on a stage and connect with the public. That electricity, that charisma  he does not have but he might develop these over a period of time.

So far, his record is unsatisfactory, he said.

The party, however, is extremely confident in its leader. Congress leader and a former minister, Shashi Tharoor, described him as the renaissance man.

Rahul has been the darling of Congress men and Congress women. Today is just one more step in his quest for serving the people of the country, the former PM Singh said on Monday.

Senior Party leader Kapil Sibbal told Al Jazeera that Rahul has been extremely effective in countering the BJP and the party will rally behind him.

He worked briefly at a management consulting firm in London before being elected as Member of Parliament from the partys traditional Amethi constituency in 2004.

Rahul was born in 1970 to Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi. He has an MPhil degree from Cambridge Universitys Trinity College.
The 38th summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council starts on Monday with preliminary meetings, and comes as the blockade on Doha imposed by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates reaches six months.

Qatar has been accused of supporting and funding terrorism, charges it vehemently denies.

In June, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain imposed an air, sea and land blockade on Qatar, halting Qatar Airways operations.

Overall, 18 destinations in the region are now out of bounds for Qatar Airways, which has also been forced to close its offices in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The closure of Qatars only land border, with Saudi Arabia, means more of the countrys food has to be brought in by air.

Food was primarily imported from Dohas Gulf Arab neighbours before the shutdown, and is now sourced from Turkey and Iran.

Kuwait, which has played the role of the mediator, is hosting this years summit. Whether or not it will have a positive effect remains unclear.

The agenda of this years summit has not been made public, but there are expectations that the crisis will be at the forefront of discussions.
If your destabilisation is taking place and there is chaos already, I will not hesitate to declare a revolutionary government until the end of my term, warned firebrand Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in October, amid growing domestic opposition to his presidency.

The threat of suspending the countrys democratic constitution was just another iteration in Dutertes long-running flirtation with authoritarian rule. However, over the succeeding weeks, as the Southeast Asian country prepared to host world leaders for the East Asia Summit, the Filipino leader tried to downplay the provocative statement. He insisted that the threat wasnt final policy (yet), but, instead, just an exploration of various scenarios to address the countrys need for order and stability.

Yet this didnt prevent Dutertes supporters from openly calling for the suspension of the countrys democratic constitution in favour of an imperial presidency. On November 30, pro-Duterte civic organizations held rallies in major cities, where they advocated for an outright establishment of a revolutionary government.

Philippine democracy has never looked as brittle in recent memory, with a growing number of Filipinos brazenly expressing their profound disenchantment with democracy and embracing authoritarian fantasies in the person of Duterte. And whats happening in the Philippines is eerily echoed across emerging market democracies, ranging from India to Turkey and Indonesia.

Populist art of governance

Like any modern populist, Duterte has presented himself as the voice of the Filipino people, the knight in shining armour who shields the nation against criminals and foreign threats, and, without lacking a tinge of millenarianism, as the Philippines last hope for national salvation.

As Jan-Werner Muller argues in his latest book, What is Populism?, populists are inherently illiberal and, over the long run, risk sliding into full-fledged authoritarianism as they implement their vision of collective revival. This is precisely because of their exclusive claim to represent what French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau termed as the general will  namely, the collective interest of the people.

In Duterte's conspiratorial narrative, a cabal of oligarchs, liberal civic groups, insurgents and criminal syndicates are hell-bent on unseating him. by

For populists, Muller argues, they and only their supporters have monopoly on the true interest of society, while critics are automatically dismissed as ungrateful citizens or, even worse, treasonous elements opposed to change. Any opposition is dismissed and derided as a plot by the enemy of the republic.

Evidence-based and pluralistic public debate, which German philosopher Jurgen Habermas termed as communicative rationality, is supplanted by a more stridently us-versus-them struggle for the soul of the nation.

No wonder then, for instance, Duterte often lashes out at his critics, accusing them of hatching a destabilisation plot against his government in order to preserve an oligarchic status quo.

The tough-taking president often speaks with moral conviction, accusing his opponents of sabotaging his administrations key policies. In Dutertes conspiratorial narrative, a cabal of oligarchs, liberal civic groups, insurgents and criminal syndicates are hell-bent on unseating him.

Other democratically-elected populist leaders, such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have often deployed similar language against their critics.

The upshot of populism is often the progressive emaciation of liberal institutions, which aim to curb the powers of political leaders based on the rule of law, and the principles of pluralism, which presume no single group or individual has monopoly on truth and public interest.

Autocratic nostalgia

Of crucial importance isnt so much Dutertes rhetoric, but the fact that a growing number of Filipinos are subscribing to what I call the strongman syndrome: the simplistic belief that a decisive leader with strong political will can single-handedly address complex 21st-century problems, which beset rapidly-developing nations like the Philippines.

According to the latest Pew Survey, 50 percent of Filipinos support autocratic rule in their country. In fellow, emerging market democracies such as Indonesia (52 percent) and India (55 percent), the majority support a strong leader who has little respect for democratic checks and balances.

Another, recent study, published earlier this year in the Journal of Democracy, shows that the majority of citizens in the Philippines, as in India and Turkey, prefer a strong leader who doesnt have to bother with elections at all. It is precisely within this context of autocratic nostalgia that thousands of Duterte supporters took to the streets of Metro Manila on November 30, beseeching the president to institute extraordinary measures to fix a failed [political] system.

Democracy has simply lost its currency in the imagination of too many people, gradually paving the way for fulfillment of most pernicious authoritarian fantasies. by

They called for, among other things, legislation of tough internal security measures against enemies of the state, increased spending on national security and law enforcement, as well as suspension of the democratic constitution in favour of a powerful presidency and a federal form of government.

To be fair, attendance at the pro-Duterte rally was relatively poor, with only a few thousand showing up. Also, in an apparent show of force, pro-democracy activists in the country held their own counter-rallies, accusing the Duterte administration of lurching towards full-fledged authoritarianism. More importantly, the powerful Philippine military has, so far, openly opposed the institution of a revolutionary government.

Yet, widespread autocratic nostalgia, as well as the landslide election and enduring popularity of populist leaders such as Duterte, underline growing dissatisfaction with liberal democracy across the post-colonial world. Democracy has simply lost its currency in the imagination of too many people, gradually paving the way for fulfillment of most pernicious authoritarian fantasies.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
In a no mans land along the Syria-Jordan border, an estimated 55,000 Syrians escaped the horrors of Syrias conflict only to languish, abandoned in the desert as one country after another evades responsibility for their safety and wellbeing. Some have been there since at least June 2016.

In a statement to the media on November 9, Jan Egeland, the United Nations humanitarian adviser on Syria, highlighted the complexity of the Syrians situation. Considering Jordans total refusal to provide aid across the border, he said, the UN with the help of Russia and the United States has finalised a plan that would provide aid from inside Syria. Inshallah soon, he said.

Inshallah soon is not good enough for the desperate people stranded there. Their situation is steadily deteriorating, as the winter cold sets in.

The Syrians are living in makeshift tents and mud huts in deplorable conditions in an informal camp known as Rukban, in a desert area just north of a raised sand barrier, or berm near the convergence of the Iraqi, Syrian, and Jordanian borders. They were trapped there when Jordan sealed the border following an attack on its soldiers there that was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in June 2016.

In addition to denying Syrians the right to seek asylum, Jordans border closure has impeded delivery of life-saving humanitarian aid and severely restricted humanitarian agencies capacity to operate there. The last partial aid delivery was almost six months ago and reached only 35,000 people, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

Jordan should not reject any Syrian seeking asylum at its border and send them back to face persecution or worse. by

On October 8, Jordan announced an end to even limited humanitarian assistance to Rukban from its territory. Its foreign affairs minister, Ayman Safadi, said that Rukban camp will never be a Jordanian responsibility. He said that aid must come from the Syrian side. The Syrian government itself has made no promises to deliver aid to the camp and has a long track record of blocking humanitarian assistance to opposition-held areas leaving people there to starve.

When aid groups have tried to deliver aid from government-held areas into rebel-held areas, in addition to the serious difficulties of getting the governments permission, they have experienced ongoing hostilities, removal of life-saving material from aid packages, inconsistent access, and attacks on humanitarian convoys.

We recently spoke to four residents at the berm by phone. Abu Ahmed, a refugee from Palmyra who arrived in the Rukban camp over a year and a half ago, described the chaos, poverty, and suffering that characterises life there. He said his wife has severe kidney problems, which he blamed on polluted water and the lack of adequate medical care.

She is in a lot of pain, he said. It doesnt go away. She is the mother of six, the youngest is only one and a half years old. If something happens to her, it will be a catastrophe for us.

About the closed border, he said, If my wife poses a national security threat, then you can cuff her when you let her in, but please let her in.

Other residents told us they had not had access to drinkable water for 15 days, resulting in diarrhoea and dehydration for children and adults. One resident said that the water is so salty, it is as though we are drinking from the Dead Sea.

Jordan should not reject any Syrian seeking asylum at its border and send them back to face persecution or worse. Tragically, at this point, the issue is not about fundamental principles, but rather about what, at a minimum, Jordan needs to do to prevent deaths in the desert. The immediate need is to allow life-saving aid to cross its border into Syria, but it should also allow in vulnerable individuals and those needing medical care. The plan by the UN, US and Russia to work on a cross-line delivery from Damascus should help to calm any concerns that Jordan has that it will be left to bear the responsibility for Rukban on its own.

Other countries with a stake in the conflict, such as the United States and Russia, also have a role in ensuring the safety and well-being of those at risk. However, international collective action has been consistently marred by diverging interests and backsliding on commitments, even for issues as noncontroversial as access to aid. This failure has spelt catastrophe for people on the ground, with Rukban as only one in a string of horrific examples.

Residents of Rukban need a place where they are safe  where their children do not come under attack or starve to death. The US, Jordan and Russia should stop passing the buck and resolve the serious humanitarian crisis in Rukban camp now. The critical, immediate imperative is for Jordan to re-instate cross-border aid delivery and allow the most vulnerable people to enter the country. The absence of real political will and quick collective action is hampering any solution, and the clock is ticking.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
It comes amid an intensified conflict between Houthi rebels and pro-Saleh forces, who were allies before the ex-president called for dialogue with their rival, the Saudi-led coalition.

Yemens ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh has been killed in Sanaa, the radio station of the Houthi-controlled interior ministry said.

Footage circulating on social media on Monday appeared to display a body resembling Saleh, with one video showing how armed militiamen used a blanket to move the corpse into the back of a pick-up truck.

It comes amid an intensified conflict between Houthi rebels and pro-Saleh forces, who were allies before the ex-president called for dialogue with their rival, the Saudi-led coalition.

Al Jazeeras Marwan Bishara explains why Salehs death was revenge.
Refugees in Greece are attempting to find a secure hiding place aboard trucks, in the hopes of being driven onto one of the ferries bound for Italy.

The number of refugees trying to enter Europe via the Greek city of Patras has grown at least four-fold since borders were closed last January.

Living in abandoned warehouses, mostly single men from Pakistan and Afghanistan fight nightly battles with Moroccans and Algerians to find a way through into Italy.

They attempt to find a secure hiding place aboard a truck, in the hopes of being driven onto one of the ferries bound for Italy.

Al Jazeeras Jonah Hull reports exclusively from Patras, Greece.
Shafik says he is still considering running in 2018 presidential poll but that he will need to explore his bid further.

Ahmed Shafik, former Egyptian prime minister, says he is still considering running in next years presidential elections but that he will need to explore the option further.

Appearing on Egypts Dream TV channel on Sunday evening, Shafik denied that Egyptian authorities had kidnapped him, as was claimed by his family after he vanished upon his arrival in Cairo on Saturday.

Today I am here in the country, so I think I am free to deliberate further on the issue, to explore and go down and talk to people in the street  so theres a chance now to investigate more and see exactly what is needed  to feel out if this is the logical choice, Shafik said.

The presidential hopeful landed in the Egyptian capital on Saturday after he was deported from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he found refuge in 2012 when he narrowly lost the presidential elections against Mohamed Morsi.

While in exile in Abu Dhabi, he was placed on trial in absentia in Egypt and found guilty of corruption charges. He was later acquitted, clearing a path for his potential return to his home country.

It is unclear why Shafik was deported from UAE, but commentators said he may have insulted his Gulf hosts by appearing in a video message, released by Al Jazeera, in which he said he was barred from leaving the country.

Shafik was planning to go on a European tour to campaign for his presidential bid among the Egyptian diaspora.





The UAE is a strong supporter of Egypts incumbent leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

After Shafiks disappearance upon his arrival in Egypt, family members feared he had been kidnapped by Egyptian authorities.

The 76-year old later denied this in his TV appearance on Sunday evening.

Dina Adly, Shafiks lawyer, said on Sunday evening that her client had checked into a hotel and was in good health.

I had a meeting with Shafik an hour ago at one of the hotels in New Cairo and confirmed his health, Adly wrote on Facebook.

He confirmed that his health was good and that he was not subjected to any investigations, she added, without mentioning the name of the hotel where she met Shafik.

It is unclear why Shafik was staying at the hotel and not at his familys residence.

No legal restrictions

A former air force commander, Shafik was prime minister for one month in 2011 during that years Arab Spring uprising.

On Friday, Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said he sees no legal restrictions that could prevent Shafik from running in next years elections against President Sisi.

I see no reason why he should not run. I say that as a layman. I know hes had some issues with the judiciary. I am not sure whether those have been resolved or not, Shoukry said in a meeting in Italy.

But in principle, he is free to represent himself to the electorate. As in any society, its up to the electorate to decide.

Shafik is not the only person planning to challenge Sisi in the presidential election. Khaled Ali, a prominent Egyptian rights lawyer, has also voiced his intent to contest the 2018 elections.
As the 38th Gulf Cooperation Council summit approaches, analysts question whether it can heal the current rift.

It remains unclear whether the upcoming Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Kuwait will have any positive effect on the ongoing fractures between Qatar and a number of Gulf states, analysts say, as the regional body gears into a symbolic rather than functional role.

The 38th summit approaches amid the backdrop of a six-month blockade on Qatar imposed by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, who have accused Doha of supporting and funding terrorism. Qatar has vehemently denied the allegations.

The GCC, a political and economic alliance of countries in the Arabian Peninsula, was established in 1981 to foster socioeconomic, security and cultural cooperation.

Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE gather every year to discuss cooperation and regional affairs.

While this years summit has been marred by questions on whether or not it would go ahead, GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani has arrived in Kuwait and met Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah to discuss preparations.

According to diplomatic sources, foreign ministers of all six member states will meet on Monday in Kuwait City for a preliminary meeting.

The agenda of this years summit has not been made public, but there are expectations that the crisis will be at the forefront of discussions.

There is serious concern [about] the continuity of the crisis and its impact even on the blockading countries, said Mahjoob Zweiri, an associate professor at Qatar University with expertise on Gulf politics, adding that questions will be asked on how long the crisis will last.

Zweiri said that the desire to find a solution is emerging because of the fact that nothing has been achieved.

Qatar has rejected the demands put forth by the Arab quartet, who have also not achieved anything and are losing economically, he said.

War of media

Kuwait has played the role of mediator, but little progress has been made, and media incitement from the Arab quartet against Qatar has continued. Most of the provocation has come from UAE officials, whose government has made it a cybercrime for their citizens to show sympathy to Qatar, an offence that is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Saudi and Bahrain have similarly criminalised expressions of support for Qatar.

Last week, the Emirati head of security, Dhahi Khalfan, called for the headquarters of the Al Jazeera Media Network in Doha to be bombed.

The alliance must bomb the machine of terrorism  the channel of ISIL, al-Qaeda and the al-Nusra front, Al Jazeera the terrorists, Khalfan tweeted.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash also used Twitter to accuse Qatar of playing a role in an attempt to save the Houthi militias in Yemen, at the same time as the alliance between the armed group and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has deteriorated into clashes.

Qatars foreign affairs media director, Ahmed bin Saeed al-Rumaihi, rejected the claim, saying that it is unprecedented for an official source to declare something baseless and rooted in flimsy allegations.

If there is a desire or a good will for reconciliation, one of the things that should be stopped immediately is the war of media, Zweiri said.

If there is serious consideration for reconciliation, this should be stopped immediately as a goodwill gesture so that the environment of the summit can be positive.

Role of GCC today

Whether the GCC still has a relevant function and role in the region is questionable. Though it was created for the purpose of solidifying union ranks, the blockade imposed on Qatar by its neighbours has largely annulled these principles.

The Gulf states have in the past differed in their views on several issues that have unfolded in the region over the past two decades.

Luciano Zaccara, a Gulf politics researcher at Qatar University, says that the role of the GCC has been diminishing ever since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, with the six states illustrating various approaches to the war and its consequences.

This has been enhanced during the wave of protests that swept the Middle East in 2011, known as the Arab Spring, Zaccara noted.

The Arab Spring only stressed those diverse approaches to regional and internal threats, making very difficult for the members to agree on what was considered a priority in terms of threats and challenges and how to tackle them, he said, referencing the Yemen war, the Bahrain crisis and Syrias ongoing civil war.

This has shed light on Saudi Arabias dominant role within the GCC.

Saudi domination

In 2014, a rift between the GCC countries lasted eight months when Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain suspended ties with Doha over Qatars support for the Muslim Brotherhood  a group the blockading countries labelled as a terrorist organisation.

Doha was accused of breaching the 2013 GCC security agreement and of harbouring hostile media, a reference to the Doha-based Al Jazeera network.

By then, Zaccara says, it was made clear that there was one state, Saudi Arabia, that was determined to impose its criteria on the rest of the councils states.

Referencing the current and ongoing crisis, Zaccara says that the rift has demonstrated the councils futility in determining what its priorities are, and how it tackles its challenges as a unit.

I would risk to say the GCC has no role to play nowadays.





Qatar has confirmed its participation in the upcoming summit, implying that Doha will not leave the GCC voluntarily, says Jocelyn Sage Mitchell, a political science professor at Northwestern University in Qatar.

That would be seen as provocative and would worsen a delicate situation. However, it is worth considering whether the council exists beyond a name any more, Mitchell told Al Jazeera.

Since its creation, the council has largely functioned as a protection mechanism for the rulers against internal threats, largely by banding together on a conservative path led by Saudi Arabia, she added.

However, Mitchell believes that the blockade has aided Qatar politically and socially.

The lessening of Saudi influence over Qatari domestic politics and society is an opportunity for the Qatari leadership to move forward on several important issues. We have already seen this movement in the permanent residency law, in increased protections for workers, and most recently with the appointment of four women to the Shura Council and a promise of legislative elections soon, she said.

Following the war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab Sunni states launched an offensive against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, Oman was on the brink of being expelled from the council for not adhering to Saudi Arabias geopolitical agenda.

It is clear to me that as far as the GCC is not following the priorities set by Saudi Arabia, and to some extent the UAE  there is no way the council would be effective if Qatar, and maybe Oman as well, are outside the council, Zaccara told Al Jazeera.

A GCC with five, four or even three states will just be an extension of Saudi policies, he added.

Future prospects

Nobody is satisfied with the current status quo, Zaccara said, and the GCC remains unable to make a move to resolve the crisis.

In this context, the GCC has proven its uselessness, Zaccara said.

He believes that the crisis, if prolonged, will not heavily affect Qatars economy. But Qatar cannot afford being blockaded forever, Zaccara added.

Even though the country [Qatar] is facing the crisis very well, the blockade cannot be sustained permanently by the four states without harming their own economies as well, he said.
Foreign ministers meet in Kuwait City in one of the highest official encounters since the row over Qatar began in June.

Foreign ministers of six Gulf countries have met in Kuwait in one of the highest official encounters since a Saudi Arabia-led quartet of Arab countries severed relations with Qatar.

Mondays gathering came a day before a key summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a regional Arab alliance currently facing its worst diplomatic crisis because of the row over Qatar.

Sheikh Sabah Al Khaled al-Hamad Al Sabah, Kuwaits foreign minister, while opening the preliminary meeting, said the GCCs unity and solidarity remain intact despite various challenges and trials, the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) said.

KUNA said Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, the GCC secretary-general, called for the maintenance of strategic ties between the member states while describing the ministerial meeting as one of the successes of the summit.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatars foreign minister, previously said he hopes the GCC summit would provide a blueprint for ending the regional dispute.

The agenda of this years summit has not been made public, but the crisis is expected to feature at the forefront of discussions.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE cut ties with Qatar on June 5 after accusing it of supporting terrorism. Qatar has strongly denied the allegation.

Kuwait, the main mediator in the standoff, sent out invitations to all GCC member states last week. However, it is not clear if all heads of state will attend the two-day summit.

Qatars Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Kuwaits Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al Sabah are the only heads of state confirmed to attend.

Difficult situation

Al Jazeeras Jamal Elshayyal, reporting from Kuwait City, said the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain find themselves in a difficult situation.

On one hand, if they attend, itll be taken as a sign of weakness by their people after months of accusing Qatar of terrorism, and saying that Qatar should be ostracised, he said.

However, if they dont attend, they will be accused of sowing disunity among the GCC and standing in the way of Kuwaits efforts to bring everyone to the table.

In October, Sheikh Al Sabah warned of the potential collapse of the GCC if the crisis continued.

The last GCC summit was held in Bahrain in 2016.

The GCC was established in 1981 for closer economic, trade and security partnerships on the Arabian Peninsula.
Thousands of people have been demonstrating on the streets of Honduras, as the countrys military prepares to enforce a nationwide curfew for the third night in a row.

Thousands of people have been demonstrating on the streets of Honduras, as the countrys military prepares to enforce a nationwide curfew for the third night in a row.

Violent protests followed last weeks close general election. The electoral commission has not yet declared a winner.

Demonstrators express a general mistrust of the National Elections commission, calling for a fair vote recount.

Al Jazeeras Manuel Rapalo reports from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Rights group says DR Congo drafted ex-M23 fighters last year to crush protests against President Joseph Kabila.

At least 62 people were killed as security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) recruited former rebel fighters to quash protests against President Joseph Kabila last year, a rights group claims.

In a report on Monday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said more than 200 former M23 fighters were mobilised, during country-wide protests that erupted after Kabila refused to step down at the end of his term.

As well as killing scores of people, Congolese security forces and M23 fighters arrested hundreds more between December 19-22, 2016, HRW said.

The accusations come amid renewed fears that DRC could witness a repeat of violence, as Kabila has delayed a new vote until December 2018.

Ida Sawyer, Central Africa director at HRW, said the governments covert operations to recruit fighters from an abusive armed group to suppress any resistance show how far President Kabila and his coterie are willing to go to stay in power.

HRW said its findings were based on more than 120 interviews, including 21 M23 fighters, commanders and political leaders.

Explicit orders to use lethal force

The mainly Tutsi ethnic group was the largest of dozens of armed groups in eastern Congo, until its defeat by Congolese and UN forces in November 2013. Hundreds of fighters fled, taking refuge in Rwanda and Uganda.

Many live in military camps there, awaiting amnesties promised under a peace deal.

Between October and December 2016, as protests against Kabila escalated, senior Congolese officers drafted the former rebels, gave them new uniforms and weapons and deployed them to Congos main cities, Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, and Goma.

To protect the president and quash protests, the M23 fighters were given explicit orders to use lethal force, including at point-blank range if necessary, HRW said.

The rights group renewed calls on the international community for sustained, targeted and well-coordinated pressure on Kabila to step down and allow for credible and peaceful elections.

Kabila had taken power after his father was assassinated in 2001, and was elected in 2006 and 2011.

According to the constitution, Kabila cannot seek a third term.
The vice president of Iraq has accused President Emmanuel Macron of going against Frances constitution by interfering in foreign affairs after he called on Baghdad to disband Shia militias that proved crucial in the fight against ISIL.

Macron met Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), on Saturday in France.

Macron later called on the central government in Baghdad to dissolve the powerful militias  known as Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF)  which have now been integrated into Iraqs military.

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Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi vice president, criticised Macrons comments in a statement late on Sunday.

Frances constitution calls for non-interference in other countrys internal affairs. We are baffled by the French presidents calls for dissolving the Hashd al-Shaabi, which is a legal and official institution in Iraq, he said.

We strongly reject this as interference in our domestic affairs. We reject the imposition of any other states will on the Iraqi government and people.

Hashd al-Shaabi played a major role in defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) after the armed group took over large expanses of the country in a rapid offensive in 2014.

ISIL has now been expelled from the major cities, including Iraqs second largest, Mosul.

Macrons statement was also denounced by the vice president of Iraqs parliament, Humam Hammudi.

We expect the international community, especially France, to show respect for the noble warriors, many of whom have perished in Iraq for the sake of world peace, Hammudi said in a statement on Monday.

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The Daesh [ISIL] terrorist group would have stabbed France in the heart if it hadnt been for the Hashd al-Shaabi.

At a joint news conference in Paris with Iraqi Kurdish leaders, including Barzani, Macron called on Saturday for the demobilisation of all militias in Iraq that fought ISIL, also known as ISIS.

France calls for a constructive national dialogue to engage in Iraq, Macron said.

Having a strong, reconciled, pluralistic Iraq which recognises each of its components is a condition for the immediate and medium-term stability.

The central government in Baghdad has been in a dispute with the KRG since it held an independence referendum that resulted in a yes vote in September.

Iraqi forces backed by militias responded by seizing the oil-rich Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk in October along with other disputed territory.
Thousands of Rohingya refugees have set up camp in an area known as no mans land between Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Thousands of Rohingya refugees have set up camp in an area known as no mans land between Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The Bangladesh military wont allow aid agencies to operate inside the camp, which leaves the refugees in a vulnerable position.

Some of the refugees told Al Jazeera that they feel trapped and afraid.

Al Jazeeras Charles Stratford reports from Tumru, Bangladesh-Myanmar Border.
Infighting between Houthi rebels and former President Ali Abdullah Salehs forces continued for the fifth day.

Yemens Houthi rebels have gained control of the majority of the countrys capital from former President Ali Abdullah Salehs forces, a Sanaa-based activist told Al Jazeera.

Only small pockets remain, Hussain Albukhaiti, who has close ties to the Iranian-backed Houthis, said on Monday.

Albukhaiti spoke to Al Jazeera before the news of Salehs death. The former Yemen president was killed later on Monday in fighting in Sanaa.

Albukhaiti said that fighters had secured key areas south of the capital, including the very strategic Al-Mesbahi residential area, which is approximately 200 metres from Salehs home.

The area around his home is completely surrounded and may be taken over by the Houthis within the next few hours, he said.

Clashes continue

Other key places that have been taken over by the Houthis include a building where Salehs son, Ahmed Abdullah Saleh, resides, and the local al-Saleh mosque.

As clashes continued between the two former allies for the fifth, consecutive day, Albukhaiti noted that infighting was centred on one street.

On Sunday night, the Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes in and around Sanaa, targeting the capitals abandoned airport and the ministry of interior, said Albukhaiti.

Earlier this week, Saleh had expressed his openness to talks with the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi rebels, in what the fighters called a coup against their fragile alliance.





Saleh made the comments on Saturday, as deadly infighting between forces loyal to him and Houthi rebels continued.

The Saudi-led coalition praised Saleh for taking the lead in the conflict.

The former allies have been fighting the Saudi-led coalition for control of the country since March 2015, when Riyadh and several other Arab Sunni states intervened to reinstate the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

According to Albukhaiti, coalition air strikes have been targeting areas that are now under Houthi control.

He noted that the number of those who died and those suffering injuries surpasses 100 people  including fighters on both sides as well as civilians.

The spokesperson for the United Nations Secretary-General voiced his concern over the sharp escalation of armed clashes and air strikes in Sanaa.

In a statement on Sunday, Stephane Dujarric said that the fighting has already resulted in dozens of deaths.

Fighting is restricting the movement of people and life-saving services within Sanaa city. Ambulances and medical teams cannot access the injured and people cannot go outside to buy food and other necessities, he said. The Secretary-General calls on all parties to the conflict to cease all air and ground assaults.

Infighting comes as the residents of the partially blockaded city are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

The Saudi-led coalition imposed a blockade in October on the country, where nearly 80 percent of residents need humanitarian aid to survive.

Last week, amid mounting international pressure over the suffering of millions of Yemenis, some humanitarian aid was allowed to enter the country.

The International Committee of the Red Cross regional director, Robert Mardini, said in a Twitter post that the aid organisations medical warehouse was hit.

Mardini also said civilians were frightened and unable to leave their homes.

The war in Yemen is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, killing at least 10,000 people and leading to widespread hunger and disease.

The night was tough in #Sanaa, #Yemen. Massive urban clashes with heavy artillery & airstrikes. #Yemenis stuck in their homes, too scared to go out. Reduced access to water, health care, food & fuel. Increased vulnerability of #Yemenis put in harm's way.  Robert Mardini (@RMardiniICRC) December 4, 2017
Large-scale military exercises involve stealth fighter jets and thousands of US and South Korean soldiers.

The United States and South Korea have begun large-scale military exercises south of the capital, Seoul, on Monday, involving hundreds of aircraft and thousands of soldiers.

The annual drill takes place amid rising tensions in the region, which saw North Korea test-launch its most advanced Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), allegedly capable of hitting anywhere on the US mainland, a week earlier.

More than 200 aircrafts are involved in the five-day war games, including six F-22 Raptors and six F-35 stealth fighter jets. About 12,000 US military personnel are taking part.

It is the first time that so many Raptors have been deployed simultaneously in an exercise in South Korea.

Al Jazeeras Kathy Novak, reporting from outside Osan Air Base in the South Korean city of Pyeongtaek, said the drills were part-training and part-show of force against North Korea.

They take place every year and always anger North Korea, which calls them a rehearsal for invasion, Novak said.

Before these drills went ahead, the North Korean foreign minister said that the US was begging for nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula, she added.

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The joint war games known as Vigilant air combat exercise (ACE) are aimed at enhancing the all-weather, day and night combined air power operation capabilities of South Korea and the US, South Koreas defence ministry told local news agency Yonhap News.

They followed reports that South Koreas military created a decapitation unit with the aim of neutralising North Koreas leadership and destroying nuclear and missile facilities if war breaks out.

Tensions in the region have escalated in recent months with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump engaging in a war of words over the formers nuclear policy.

On Sunday, US National Security Adviser HR McMaster said Trump was prepared to take care of North Korea over their nuclear weapons programme.

If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it because he has said hes not going to allow this murderous, rogue regime to threaten the United States with the most destructive weapons on the planet, he told Fox News.
Judge rules there was a risk of criminal reiteration, though admits there was little prospect of the defendants fleeing.

The Spanish Supreme Court has refused bail for four leading Catalan separatists, all facing charges of sedition.

Mondays ruling will keep former vice president of Catalonia, Oriol Junqueras, and ex-cabinet member Joaquim Form in jail. Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart, leaders of civic groups Assemblea Nacional Catalana and Omnium Cultural, respectively, were also refused bail.

The judge ruled there was a risk of criminal reiteration, though he admitted there was little prospect of the defendants fleeing the country, according to a court statement.

Six other former members of the regional cabinet, also charged with sedition, were set bail at 100,000 euro ($118,570) each.

Al Jazeeras Karl Penhaul, reporting from Barcelona, said: What the judge has taken into account here  is that he believes the four most senior Catalan politicians that he has ordered remain behind bars wouldnt represent a flight risk. But, he does expect them to continue agitating in favour of Catalonias secession from the rest of Spain.

New round of elections

The pro-separatist parliamentarians  also charged with rebellion and misappropriation of funds  had called for their release in order to participate in Catalonias regional election on December 21.

Catalonias pro-independence parties are predicted to win 67 of the regional parliaments 135 seats but lose their previously held majority, according to a poll by the Sociological Research Centre.

By ruling that six can leave, he [the judge] sees that this is a lesser risk on their part. They could be free anytime today as they post bail, surrender their passports, and report weekly to the Supreme Court, Penhaul reported.

Effectively, they will be free now to continue campaigning for the upcoming regional elections in Catalonia on December 21, because that in a sense is why all this matters so much now. Tonight at midnight marks the official start of campaigning for the regional elections.

Spanish authorities called the vote after they took control of Catalonia following regional politicians declaration of independence on October 27.

The declaration was based on the result of a disputed referendum on independence, held on October 1. More than 90 percent of voters cast a ballot in favour of independence, although turnout was less than 50 percent.

Spain responded by enacting Article 155, a provision in the countrys constitution that permitted Madrid to dismiss the Catalan government and directly administer the northeastern region.

Meanwhile, Carles Puigdemont, Catalonias former president, faced an extradition hearing in Belgium on Monday as the Spanish government seeks to have him returned to the country to face charges of rebellion and sedition.

Puigdemont, who is in self-imposed exile, appeared in court in Brussels along with four other pro-separatists. A ruling was postponed until December 14.
Police detentions made across Malta as part of a joint operation with the armed forces and secret service.

Maltese police have arrested 10 people allegedly connected to the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who died in a car bomb blast two months ago.

Maltas Prime Minister Joseph Muscat announced eight arrests at a press conference on Monday, and he later tweeted that two other individuals were also apprehended.

All eight initial suspects were Maltese nationals, and some were known to the police, Muscat said.

An additional 2 persons have been apprehended in #DaphneCaruanaGalizia murder probe, bringing total to 10 arrests. Authorities have all areas of interest under control since early this morning and searches are underway.  Joseph Muscat (@JosephMuscat_JM) December 4, 2017

Police made arrests in several locations around Malta on Monday morning as part of a joint operation with the armed forces and secret service.

Muscat provided few details about the suspects, stating an unwillingness to say anything that might affect potential prosecutions.

The arrests were the first apparent break in the murder investigation, which is receiving support from the FBI, Europol, and Finnish security services.

Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed on October 16 after a bomb exploded in her car as she drove away from her home in Mosta, a small town outside the capital, Valletta.

She was well-known in the small island country for her popular blog, Running Commentary, where she highlighted alleged high-level corruption by politicians across party lines.

Caruana Galizia also covered criminal gangs and drug trafficking and was responsible for exposing Maltas links with the so-called Panama Papers document leak.

Half an hour before the explosion, Caruana Galizia wrote on her blog: There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

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Investigators now have 48 hours to question the suspects before charging or releasing them.

Muscat was often criticised by Caruana Galizia, who he has described as his greatest adversary.

He has faced criticism from many, including Caruana Galizias sons, for the lack of progress in the investigation.
Fighting intensifying in Damascus suburb being targeted by Syrian and Russian jets despite its de-escalation zone status.

Despite being designated as a so-called de-escalation zone, jet fighters flown by the Syrian government and its Russian allies continue to bomb the besieged Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta.

The UN says fighting is only intensifying, despite a deal between Russia, Iran and Turkey stipulating that there can be no military activity in Eastern Ghouta.

This is supposed to be a safe area, but its not safe. Planes hit all day and all night. Where should we go? a witness told Al Jazeera.

On Sunday, about 30 people were killed by the air raids.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), it was the biggest death toll in a single day in at least three weeks, when pro-government forces escalated their attacks on the area.

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Eastern Ghouta has been besieged by President Bashar al-Assads troops since 2013 in an attempt to force the rebel enclave into submission.

The regime didnt respect the de-escalation agreement. The Russians said they would provide guarantees, but they didnt, Mounther Fares, spokesman for the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group, said.

The UN says about 400,000 civilians who remain trapped there are facing a complete catastrophe because the government has blocked aid deliveries.

The humanitarian situation in the besieged area is getting increasingly worse, the UN has warned.

At least 500 people are in need of immediate medical evacuation, malnutrition is rampant, and babies have died from lack of food.

The regime is trying to force the residents of Ghouta to accept being relocated to the north of Syria. But the people here wont accept this, they wont be forcibly displaced, said Hazem Shami, an activist in Eastern Ghouta.

In April, the government started an offensive on the area. Since then, the people had to smuggle in irregular aid deliveries, Al Jazeeras Zeina Khodr, reported from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon, said.

In the past two months, supplies reached 20 percent of the 400,000 people trapped in Eastern Ghouta.
Abdul Malik al-Houthi lauds ousted leaders death at the hands of his fighters as victory against Saudi-led coalition.

The leader of Yemens Houthi rebels has praised the death of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the countrys overthrown president, as a victory against a Saudi-led military coalition that Yemen has been battling.

Salehs party has confirmed reports that he was killed in a roadside ambush on Monday outside the capital, Sanaa, after switching sides in the civil war, abandoning his Iran-aligned Houthi allies in favour of the Saudi-led coalition.

In a lengthy televised speech aired on the Houthi-run Al Masirah TV network, Abdul Malik al-Houthi said his fighters killed Saleh for his treason and congratulated Yemenis on this historic, exceptional and great day in which the conspiracy of betrayal and treason failed, this black day for the forces of the aggression.

He said the uprising of Salehs loyalists against the Houthi group was the greatest threat the Arabian Peninsula country had faced, but that it was defeated in three days.

He said the Houthi group  officially called Ansar Allah (Partisans of God)  would maintain the countrys republican system and would not seek vengeance against Salehs party.

The problem is not with the General Peoples Congress (GPC) as a party or with its members, Houthi said.

The GPC was Yemens ruling party under Saleh but is now divided.

Several warnings

Without mentioning Saleh by name, Houthi said that he knew about Salehs communication with the coalition and his efforts to turn against the Houthi group.

Houthi also said he had sent several warnings to Saleh.

We have notified the leader of the traitor and criminal militias to retract, be wise, to stop his militias from continuing committing crimes, he said.

Today is the day of the fall of the conspiracy of betrayal and treason. Its a dark day for the forces of the coalition.

Houthi also praised a missile launch announced by the group towards the UAE this week as a message against its enemies, advising against foreign investment in the UAE and Saudi Arabia as their campaign in Yemen continues.

The Houthi rebels had similarly fired a missile towards Saudi Arabias capital Riyadh last month, which official media said had been intercepted by the kingdoms air defence.





The official story was clear: Saudi forces shot down a ballistic missile fired by Yemens Houthi rebel group last month at Saudi Arabias capital, Riyadh. It was a victory for the Saudis and for the United States, which supplied the Patriot missile defense system, New York Times said in a report on Monday.

However, evidence analysed by a research team of missile experts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, indicate that the missiles warhead flew unimpeded over Saudi defences and nearly hit its target, Riyadhs King Khalid International Airport, according to the report.

The Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the November 5 explosion in Riyadh, saying they fired a long-range ballistic missile that travelled more than 800km over the border with Saudi Arabia.

A spokesman for the rebels told Al Jazeera they launched a Burkan 2-H missile  a Scud-type missile with a range of more than 800km  towards Riyadh.

Videos on social media that evening showed smoke rising from an area near the King Khalid International Airport.

The Middlebury Institute analysis found that the warhead detonated so close to the domestic terminal that people jumped out of their seats.

The findings show that the Iranian-backed Houthis, once a ragtag group of rebels, have grown powerful enough to strike major targets in Saudi Arabia, possibly shifting the balance of their years-long war, the New York Times said.

Houthi origins

The Houthi rebels, seen at present as the most powerful political faction in Yemen, emerged in the 1990s as a movement to revive the Zaidi Shia traditions of Yemens historically dominant northern highlands.

The group originated in the northwestern province of Saada to protest at what their followers said was discrimination against them and their stronghold by the central government.

A crackdown by Saleh, then Yemens president, in 2004 led to the killing of founder Hussein al-Houthi, followed by six military campaigns to quell guerrilla warfare in the groups stronghold of Saada.

His younger brother Abdul Malek took over and stepped up the groups rhetoric against the government and its alliance with the US.

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In 2011, the eruption of protests in Yemen against Salehs long rule expanded the Houthis clout beyond Saada. Their populist and anti-corruption rhetoric won them some support in Sunni areas too.

Under a UN-sponsored power transfer deal, Saleh stepped down and was replaced by Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, his deputy, in 2012.

In July 2014, the Houthis took advantage of an unpopular move by the government to cut fuel subsidies and called for mass demonstrations in Sanaa.

In September, Houthi rebels took control of Sanaa and have since swept across the country.

On Monday, Hadi urged Yemenis to unite against the Houthi rebels, describing them as Iranian militias.

Hadi, who has been self-imposed exile in Riyadh in recent past years, delivered his televised speech just hours after the killing of Saleh.

I call on all Yemenis, in all the provinces, which are still under the rule of these criminal and terrorist militias, to rise up in their face and resist them. And our army will be the victor, he said.

We are with you, in the same trench, and with one goal, which is battling for the republic and the revolution, and the expulsion of the Iranian Houthi militias.
The UAE was behind the former presidents decision to turn his back on Houthi rebels, officials say.

Yemens former president, who once said that governing the Arabian Peninsula country was akin to dancing on the heads of snakes, reportedly turned his back on his rebel allies  the Houthis, in a move planned and orchestrated by the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.

After he was toppled from power in 2011, it looked like Ali Abdullah Salehs dancing days might be over  but for more than six years, the 75-year-old, known for his Machiavellian political manoeuvring, continued to be a key player in a conflict that has brought Yemen to its knees.

In a televised speech on Saturday, Saleh formally broke ties with the Houthis, saying he was open to a dialogue with the Saudi-led coalition that has been at war with his rebel alliance since March 2015.

As army units loyal to him clashed with Houthi fighters in the capital for a fourth successive night, Saleh blamed the rebels for the countrys woes, calling on his forces to ignore orders from the Houthi leadership.

Yemeni citizens have tried to tolerate the recklessness of the Houthis over the last two and half years but cannot anymore, he said.

I call on our brothers in neighbouring countries  to stop their aggression and lift the blockade  and we will turn the page.

The Houthis, who are believed to be backed by the kingdoms regional rival, Iran, accused Saleh of staging a coup, vowing to continue their fight against the forces of aggression.

The Saudi-led coalition that has been bombing Yemen since March 2015, said it welcomed Salehs overture, praising him for taking the lead in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The decision by [Salehs] General Peoples Congress (GPC) to take the lead and side with their people, will free Yemen of  militias loyal to Iran, the coalition said.

However on Monday, Salehs long and dominant presence in Yemeni affairs came to an abrupt end after he was brutally killed near Sanaa.

Houthi sources told Al Jazeera that Saleh was killed by the rebels in a rocket-propelled grenade and shooting attack on his car.

Planned in Abu Dhabi

Yemeni officials told Al Jazeera that Salehs decision to sideline the Houthis, which culminated with his death, was planned in Abu Dhabi earlier this year, in consultation with Saudi Arabia.

A Yemeni official told Al Jazeera that the unravelling of the Saleh-Houthi alliance was aimed at carving an exit for the coalition from the conflict.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media, the official said: Mohammed Bin Salman [Saudi Arabias crown prince and heir to the throne] has been influenced by the UAE and thinks switching from [Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour] Hadi to Saleh will help end the war.

Leaked emails written by two former US officials in August suggested that Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, wanted out of the war, which he started in March 2015.

When the conflict began, analysts had initially expected the fighting to last only a few months, but the violence has shown no signs of abating, costing the coalition billions of dollars and claiming the lives of at least 87 Emirati troops and an estimated 200 Saudis.





According to the UN, thousands of Yemenis have been killed in the fighting and millions forced from their homes.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have lost a lot of men in this war and it seems that with the UAEs help, Saleh, or one of his sons, could end it, the official said.

In a year or two from now, his son, Ahmed, or even former Prime Minister Khaled Bahah [who currently resides in the UAE], could be the next man to rule Yemen.

Intelligence Online, a Paris-based news and diplomacy publication, reported that MBS sent Ahmed al-Asiri, the former military spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, to Abu Dhabi in June to meet Salehs son, Ahmed, and discuss the possibility of forming a new government.

Ahmed, a powerful former military chief who once served as ambassador to the Emirates, has been living in the UAE for the last five years.

The publication also said that Mohammed bin Salman was lobbied by the UAEs Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Zayed, to ditch Hadi in favour of Saleh. It added that Mohammed bin Salman had warmed to the idea of a return to power of the former Yemeni president.

The UAEs trump card

Murad Alazzany, a Yemeni political analyst and professor at Sanaa University, told Al Jazeera that Salehs son was the UAEs trump card in the conflict.

The UAE has been keeping a hold of Ahmed should anything happen to his father. In that event, they plan to immediately dispatch him to Yemen to take over his [Salehs] role, Alazzany said.

The UAE has always had plans for him. Hes a tool, just like how former Afghan President Hamid Karzai was used by the US. When the time is right, theyll use him to do whatever they want.

For more than 30 years, Saleh ruled Yemen with an iron fist, setting up a complicated network of alliances between the countrys military, civil and tribal groups.

After handing power to his long-time deputy, Hadi, in 2012, as part of a Gulf and US-brokered deal in exchange for immunity from prosecution, Saleh continued to command several units of the military and chair the powerful GPC party that he founded.

When the Houthis surged south from their northern stronghold of Saada in September 2014, Salehs system of patronage and corruption enabled them to seize control of Sanaa.

Saleh has been playing the Houthis for years ... He did this when the Salafists started growing in power in the north. Initially he backed them, then he switched and supported the Houthis. Then he betrayed the Houthis. This is what he does. by Mohamed Qubaty, a former Yemeni ambassador

In the lightning offensive, the Saleh-linked Bani Sufyan tribe helped facilitated safe passage for the Houthis through the northern province of Amran.

Most of the Yemeni army subsequently fell under the command of Salehs relatives or allies, while those who resisted, such as the 310th Armored Brigade in Amran, were easily crushed.

Huge stockpiles of weapons, including tanks, humvees, machine guns, missile launch pads, and large stockpiles of ammunition were obtained by military units, and later shared among Houthi-supporting tribal leaders.

Facing little to no resistance from the soldiers and police posted by Hadi to protect Sanaa, the Houthis asserted their control on the city with the explicit help from the Republican Guards organised by members of the Saleh family, a UN Security Council report said.

Saudi Arabia, along with several other Sunni Arab countries, then intervened in the conflict, launching an air campaign against the rebels in March 2015, perceiving their advance as an Iranian-orchestrated plot to destabilise the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

In May 2015, following Saudi-led coalition air raids on his home in Sanaa, Saleh officially announced the establishment of his alliance with the Houthis.

A year later, Salehs GPC party signed an agreement with the Houthis to form a political council to run the country.

A shaky alliance

However, cracks would soon emerge. In August, the Houthis condemned Salehs description of them as a militia. Relations would then deteriorate rapidly when Khalid al-Radhi, a senior member of the GPC and close Saleh adviser, was shot dead.

The Houthis, however, told Al Jazeera that they never forged an alliance with Saleh, arguing they had a popular mandate, with most of their fighters coming from historically loyal tribes.

We didnt need any allies to help fight this war, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a spokesman for the Houthis, told Al Jazeera.

We had no relations whatsoever with Ali Abdullah Saleh. The sons of Yemen banded together to join our ranks to fight against this oppressive Saudi-led coalition and Hadis militias.

Despite having fought the Houthis for years while in office, Salehs detractors say his alliance with the Houthis was a marriage of convenience, with both forces seeking to exact revenge on their mutual foes.

Saleh played the Houthis for years, Mohamed Qubaty, a former Yemeni ambassador, told Al Jazeera.

He always used a strategy of playing factions off each other. He did this when the Salafists started growing in power in the north. Initially he backed them, then he switched and supported the Houthis. Then he betrayed the Houthis. This is what he does.





Saleh even played one of his cousins and a member of his Sanhan tribe, the powerful General Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar, Qubaty added.

Ali Mohsin led six sporadic wars against the Houthis before finally defecting from Salehs government in 2011 and joining the opposition.

Saleh wanted to weaken Ali Mohsin and other dissident figures within the military who opposed the idea of Ahmed becoming president, Qubaty said.

Tensions between the two had been simmering for more than a decade, when Saleh began pushing for constitutional amendments, one of which included amending the presidential term of office from five to seven years.

This prompted speculation that Saleh wanted to remain in office until 2013, allowing his son Ahmed to reach the age of 40  the minimum age for a Yemeni president  as per the constitution.

New front in Yemens war

Residents told Al Jazeera that Salehs death opened a new front in the countrys complex civil war, endangering historic tribal relations.

Osama al-Fakih, a human rights activist, said that coalition air attacks offered the only brief pause to the fighting. He said the sound of heavy shelling reverberated through the citys deserted streets into the early hours of Monday.

A journalist based in Amran told Al Jazeera that the Houthis launched a number of attacks on areas where Saleh loyalists are known to live. The source said that the house of Sheikh Mabkhout al-Mashriqi, a Saleh loyalist and member of the powerful Hashid tribal confederation, was shelled and destroyed on Sunday.

The Hashid tribal confederation reportedly allowed the Houthis safe passage through Amran province before the rebels seized the capital Sanaa.

The International Committee for the Red Cross said dozens of Yemenis had been killed in the fighting and hundreds more injured.

Our call to all parties: Civilians are not part of the fight, it said.

The clashes underscore an all-too familiar situation in war-ravaged Yemen, with forces loyal to Hadi seeing similar internal fighting between loyalists and pro-independence forces backed by the UAE.

Hadi has fallen out of favour with the UAE, with Abu Dhabi spending billions of dollars to support Aydarous al-Zubaidi, a prominent southern secessionist and prospective rival to the embattled president.

Emirati-backed forces have engaged in fierce firefights with forces loyal to the 72-year-old, and have been accused of preventing the president from returning to the coalition-held city of Aden.

Despite being at war with Yemen for more than two years, the coalition has failed to achieve its stated aim of restoring the legitimate government of Hadi.

The Houthis continue to hold most of the north, where more than half of Yemens population live.

Follow Faisal Edroos on Twitter: @FaisalEdroos
Uncertainty looms as ousted leader Saleh is killed amid ongoing conflict between Houthi rebels and Saudi coalition.

The death of Yemens former president Ali Abdullah Saleh raises doubts about the future of the war-torn country, as a Saudi-led coalitions fight against Houthi rebels will likely intensify, analysts say.

Saleh was killed on Monday by Houthi fighters  his former allies  and his death is considered a very big blow to his forces, said Hakim al-Masmari, editor-in-chief of the Yemen Post.

His house has been under siege for the last two days and today they attacked the house. He escaped  he was found in a vehicle that had clashed with Houthi checkpoint forces, he told Al Jazeera from Yemens capital, Sanaa.

This is where he was killed along with a number of his senior aides.

Saleh, who ruled Yemen for more than three decades and played a pivotal role in the countrys ongoing civil war, had called on the Saudi-led coalition to lift the siege it imposed on Yemen in a televised speech on Saturday.





He also formally broke ties with the Houthis, saying he was open to dialogue with the military coalition that has been at war with his rebel alliance for more than two years.

While Saudi Arabia praised his remarks, the Houthis declared Salehs move a coup.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia, along with other Sunni Muslim countries, militarily intervened in Yemen to reinstate the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which was overthrown by the Houthi group the year before.

Salehs fragile alliance with the Houthi leadership was largely seen as an integrational one, bringing together his General Peoples Congress (GPC) party and the Houthi Ansar Allah faction, which were at odds with each other in the past.

Masmari noted Salehs death may lead the Saudi-led coalition to further escalate its military operations.

Since the recent split, the coalition has intensified air strikes on Houthi-controlled areas in Sanaa, targeting the abandoned airport and ministry of the interior.

No one wins

Joost Hiltermann, International Crisis Groups Middle East programme director, said the breakdown of the Houthi-Saleh alliance will increase fragmentation and conflict by adding layers of revenge.

Salehs GPC, a critical party of the centre, could fracture further, with many joining anti-Houthi fighters, Hiltermann told Al Jazeera.

No one wins.

The latest development is a major setback for the Saudi-led coalition, which includes the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a key player, he said.

They were staking their hopes on Saleh subduing the Houthis, but things seem to be turning out differently. It shows the bankruptcy of their military approach to the war, Hiltermann said.

Earlier this year, a series of leaked emails revealed Saudi Arabias desire to end the war in Yemen during talks with former US officials.

Though no official steps were taken to withdraw from the conflict, Hiltermann says Riyadh currently has fewer options for a negotiated exit.

If they decide to double down on air bombardments, it is civilians who will suffer  on top of the humanitarian catastrophe we have already seen in Yemen, he said.

The rebel infighting comes as residents of the partially blockaded Sanaa are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.





The Saudi-led coalition imposed a blockade in October on the Arabian Peninsula country, where nearly 80 percent of residents need humanitarian aid to survive.

Last week, amid mounting international pressure over the suffering of millions of Yemenis, some humanitarian relief was allowed to enter Yemen.

Andreas Krieg, a political analyst at Kings College London, said the short term in Yemen will be a state of insecurity worse than before.

Saleh was an integrator. The Houthis killing him takes the glue out of the equation, Krieg told Al Jazeera.

Though it remains unclear if alliances on the ground will shift, Krieg believes it is bound to happen.

Coalition bombing was bad enough, now there will be a new level of civil war, he said.

Saudi Arabia wants to pull out of the expensive conflict, but now there is no way out of the war for the coalition.

GCPs future

Salehs death leaves wide open the question of a successor to lead the GCP.

Analysts question whether his followers will eventually pledge allegiance to the Houthis, or if they will regroup and ally themselves with leading figures of Salehs party.

His son, Ahmed Abdullah Saleh, a former commander of the Yemeni armys Republican Guard, has been residing in the UAE for more than four years.

Salehs nephew, Tareq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, is an army general who has acted as Salehs military adviser for years.

According to Masmari, Tareq is expected to take the lead of military operations against the Houthi rebels.

Gamal Gasim, associate professor of Middle East Studies at Grand Valley State University, said Sanaas security may remain stable if the rebels expedite their control over the city.

However, if Tareq succeeds in rallying support of the Republican Guard as well as Salehs own Sinhan tribes, chaos in Sanaa could prevail.

It remains to be seen if Salehs son, Ahmad Saleh  would go back to Yemen and assume leadership of whats left of his fathers forces, said Gasim, noting this would require the support of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Timing here is critical. If they want to succeed in that effort, they must make their move within a window of 48 hours.
French forces have assaulted the besieged town of Diabaly in central Mali, after an earlier rebel counter-offensive took the town, resident says.

The French bombing campaign, which continued through Monday night, came after the French ambassador to the United Nations said that his country launched the military intervention in the West African country because it believed that the existence of Mali was at stake.

Gerard Araud told a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council that France was responding to calls for help from the government of the former French colony.

A meeting of the 15-nation UN Security Council on Mali expressed unanimous understanding and support for the military intervention, Araud told reporters late on Monday.

On Tuesday morning, Ibrahim Toure told The Associated Press by telephone that he heard explosions throughout the night, coming from the direction of Diabalys military camp.

Francois Heisbourg, special advisor at the Foundation for Strategic Research based in Paris, told Al Jazeera:

Either one of two things will happen; the Malian government, with ECOWAS and the French, will try to use the opportunity to go north, but if they do this they have to do it before the next 6 weeks and the rainy season, or they will have to wait until autumn. I think they are more likely to do the former.

Also Algeria has closed the border from the north, preventing the rebels from moving that way, therefore working in favour of an advancement by the French on the north.

They will never leave

A commander of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, one of the extremist groups controlling northern Mali, taunted the French. He said that his fighters control Diabaly, as well as Konna, the first town bombed by the French last week. He told AP: I would advise France not to sing their victory song too quickly. They managed to leave Afghanistan. They will never leave Mali.

Hours earlier, rebel fighters had responded to French airstrikes and military action with a counter-offensive in Diabaly, French and Malian authorities confirmed.

Araud said France had no other choice but to help the Malian government.

We will defend [the capital] Bamako. We will not let the southern part of the country, with its 13 million inhabitants, fall to terrorist groups, said Araud.

Francois Hollande, the French president, visited French troops stationed in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, confirming that a total of the currrent French military deployment consisted of 750 soldiers, but that number will increase.

Also on Tuesday, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, said that he believed that the presence of foreign troops in Mali would not encourage al-Qaeda recruitment, Reuters news agency reported.

Al-Qaeda-linked rebels overran the garrison village of Diabaly in central Mali, Frances defence minister confirmed in Paris on Monday.

French military forces, who began battling in Mali on Friday, widened their aerial bombing campaign against the rebels occupying northern Mali, launching airstrikes for the first time in central Mali to combat the new threat.

Al Jazeeras correspondent Nazanine Moshiri, reporting from the capital Bamako, said: There are reports of about 60 fighters being killed thus far while Doctors without Borders say they are very concerned about the lives of civilians in the region.

International support

The rebels, who come from several nations besides Mali, had been bottled up in the narrow neck of central Mali. But by now sweeping in from the west, they are now only 400km from Bamako, in southern Mali.

Before France sent its forces in on Friday, the closest known spot the rebels were to the capital was 680km away, although they might have infiltrated closer than that.

France is urging the Africanisation of the conflict, encouraging African nations to send troops to fight the rebels.

Besides France and the US, 11 other nations have pledged troops or logistical support. Over the weekend, Britain authorised the deployment of several C-17 transport planes to help the French military effort.

Malis north, an area the size of France itself, was occupied by al-Qaeda-linked rebels nine months ago, following a coup in the capital.
Dr Christiaan Barnard performed the worlds first human-to-human heart transplant on December 3, 1967.

This week marks a significant milestone in experimental surgery  one that would be cheered, debated, and forever talked about. Fifty years ago, South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard successfully performed the first human-to-human heart transplant.

Since then, thousands of lives have been saved by this groundbreaking technology, mostly in developed nations.

Five decades later, nearly 4,000 people have the surgery each year, with an average wait time of about 191 days.

So how far have we come since that medical milestone? And what heart technology will help shape the future?

Presenter: Laura Kyle

Guests:

Dr Stephen Westaby  Royal Brompton Hospital, Imperial College

Dr Olivia Gilbert  Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

James Styan  author of Heartbreaker: Christiaan Barnard and the First Heart Transplant
The case against Assange is as political as it is legal; where does it go from here? Plus, Kenyas election influencers.
Around North Florida Regional Medical Centers pond, 95,000 lights were lit Friday and outlined with Christmas trees, gingerbread men and snowmen.

About 10,000 people applauded and cheered at 6:15 p.m. when the lights turned on at the 28th Annual Pond Lighting Ceremony, which was hosted by the hospital, located at 6500 W. Newberry Road, and included free activities such as face painting, ornament decorating and pictures with Santa.

Donations from attendees and proceeds from food trucks at the event went to Gainesvilles chapter of Toys for Tots, a national organization run by the U.S. Marine Corps that provides gifts to children whose parents cannot afford them, said Bradley Palmer, the director of marketing and communications at the hospital. Most of the donations at the event were in the form of toys.

Its really part of a Gainesville tradition, Palmer said.

Individuals could exchange an unwrapped gift for a pass with access to all rides, such as a sled ride on a hill of fake snow. Attendees who didnt donate a gift paid for a pass to access the rides. The hospital used 24,000 pounds of ice to make the snow for the hill, which was a new addition to the annual event, Palmer said.

North Florida wanted to do something to really improve, he said. The sled-riding hill was our big addition.

This years ceremony was dedicated to the memory of Lance Cpl. Phillip Paul Clark, one of the hospital employees sons who was hit by an improvised explosive device in the Middle East in 2010, Palmer said.

Gainesville resident Terri McKimmey, 56, who has attended the event for more than 10 years, watched and listened to the Gainesville High School Naval Junior ROTC caroling Christmas songs. Other performers during the night included The Sedoctaves, a UF student a cappella group.

(Previous years) wasnt as good as this, she said about the ceremony. This is much better. I think the singing and lights are the most beautiful part.

Olivia Serrano, an 18-year-old UF business administration and psychology freshman, leads the a cappella group The Sedoctaves in their performance at the 28th Annual Pond Lighting at North Florida Regional Medical Center.

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While hunting for Pokemon in the UF Health Shands Hospital parking garage in June, Tillissa Barcias 6-year-old son, Austin, found a painted rock.

Tillissa noticed Rockin Alachua County FB was written on the back of the rock and searched the group. After the mother of two figured out it was part of a community-wide trend, the family got involved, she said.

These rocks are bringing these people together, she said. Its old people, and its young people. Its really neat.

Rock painting and hiding has become a popular activity around the state and in Gainesville, with at least four Facebook groups dedicated to the activity locally, including Rockin Alachua County, which has more than 1,600 members. The group, started by 42-year-old Gainesville resident Wendy Eckhardt, began in March after she heard about a similar group in Martin County.

Eckhardt and her husband and children were visiting family there and heard about the activity from a friend who had started a rock group. After going on a rock hunt with her two kids, who are 9 and 13 years old, she decided she wanted to see rock painting catch on in Alachua County.

When we got back up to Gainesville (my children) said, Weve got to start this, she said. I hadnt heard of anything up here yet, so I said, Alright, lets paint some rocks.

To kickstart the tradition in Gainesville, the family painted about 70 rocks and went from park to park, hiding them in plain sight, Eckhardt said. Now, members post on Facebook when they hide or find a painted rock.

We have developed this page in the hope that it will spread joy and brighten peoples day just as much as it has in other counties around Florida, Eckhardt wrote on the Facebook groups page.

The groups goal now is to continue to grow and get more people involved, Eckhardt said.

After being a part of the group for more than eight months now, Tillissa, 33, said rock painting is an activity she does with her family. During Hurricane Irma, the family stayed indoors and painted rocks.

Its the only thing they could really do that didnt require fighting or power, Tillissa said.

For her 4-year-old daughter Avery, rock painting is an occupational therapy as she has cerebral palsy, Tillissa said. Avery scribbles on the rocks and decorates them with stickers, with Trolls and Star Wars being her current favorites, her mother said.

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It really helps getting her left hand moving and actually using it, Tillissa said.

Gainesville resident Mischella Proebsting has painted more than 400 rocks with her two sons since she heard about the trend a few months ago.

I got hooked on painting rocks in my downtime and hiding them around town for everyone to find, Proebsting, 36, said. For me, rock painting was kind of therapeutic. (For) the boys, they enjoyed it because they could get their fingers messy and go crazy with the colors.

Proebsting said she heard about a person who was trying to conceive and found a rock with a baby painted on it.

You could paint something and hit close to home for somebody, she said.

Proebsting hosted a rock-painting party during the summer with about 10 other moms and their children.

For those who have never heard of it or never done it, you dont have to be Picasso to rock paint, she said. Its more about getting together and having fun.

Eckhardt said people who get involved with rock painting should write the hashtag #rockinalachuacounty on the back of the rock they paint before they hide it.

Participants can post about where they hid their rocks on the Facebook group, but they dont have to be on Facebook, Eckhardt said.

The whole point is just to encourage being creative and to get out there and enjoy doing something fun for other people, she said.
After a Bluetooth speaker caught fire in a residence hall room on the 10th floor of Beaty Towers West, about 150 residents were evacuated Saturday night.

At about 12:50 a.m., the speaker caught fire in a student room, and the rooms residents immediately moved the speaker into the bathroom before its small flames had a chance of spreading to other furniture, although the smoke alarm still went off throughout the hall, said University Police Sgt. Jeffrey Lamb. The alarm caused the entire residence hall to evacuate.

No damages major damages were reported, and there were no injuries, Lamb said.

Only thing damaged was the speaker, Lamb said.

When Jerry Gonzalez was playing League of Legends in his Beaty Towers West room late Saturday night, the last thing he expected was a fire alarm to send him and his entire dorm to the curb of Museum Road.

But after about 30 minutes waiting outside his on-campus home alongside other student residents, Gonzalez began to worry.

Two UPD cars blocked Museum Road just around the towers. Gainesville Fire Rescue firefighters had been inside the dorm hall for nearly 20 minutes.

Normally when an alarm goes off they send one truck, and were out here for like 10 minutes, the 21-year-old UF biology junior said. Its different this time.

By about 1:25 a.m., the crowd of students slowly huddled back to their residence hall, some laughing that the alarm amounted to nothing.

At the tail end of the crowd, AJ Riggins had remembered his key.

During the last drill at Beaty, which Riggins said happened a few weeks prior, the 18-year-old forgot his key in his 10th-floor room and was locked out. Once the alarm sounded Saturday night, he slipped on his jacket and walked out prepared, key in hand, he said.

After learning the fire was contained and his home was safe, Riggins said he was relieved and his only worry was deciding if he should return to the anime he was binge watching before the alarm.

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It was only a minor inconvenience, the UF psychology freshman said. I might just head back up, change and hit the sack.
When Satchel Raye first started making art, he used paint, stained glass and pencils.

Over the years, his medium shifted to dough, sauce and toppings.

When I make a pizza and its beautiful and crispy and caramelized and perfect, that makes me so happy, he said. I want to do it again.

The longtime Gainesville resident is known for the eccentric pizzeria that is Satchels Pizza, but Raye, 49, hopes that isnt the only legacy he leaves behind.

I would like to be thought of as an artist with a pizza shop, because really my art is what inspires me and drives me, he said.

***

Raye is constantly looking for opportunities to exercise his artistic side and add to his restaurant, which opened in 2003, he said. Sometimes, he doesnt have to go looking.

After a fire at Satchels Pizza in February 2012 left the kitchen in ruins and the restaurant flooded, Raye promised to come back with a restaurant even better than before, according to Alligator archives. Four years later, he found himself making the same promise.

On the night of Dec. 5, 2016, firefighters responded to a fire that had erupted at Satchels Pizza at about 9 p.m. Fifteen-foot-flames licked the roof of Lightnin Salvage Enterprises, according to Alligator archives. Raye arrived in time to watch the building burn to the ground. Denise Prodigo-Herrmann, the office manager for Satchels Pizza, arrived shortly after Raye.

I worked that day in my office in the restaurant, she said. I was here on the property, and I set the alarm before I left, and it seemed like everything was fine.

Standing before the blazing building, hand-in-hand with Raye and other staff, Prodigo-Herrmann knew somehow, everything would be fine.

As she combed through insurance papers and obsessed over the logistical nightmare of rebuilding, Raye was already thinking of ways to transform the building into something new, she said.

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He really treats this place like its an extension of him, Prodigo-Herrmann said. Its not called Satchels Pizza for nothing.

Raye has been putting in 19-hour days to to create the newly built Lightnin Salvage Enterprises, set to open in mid-December, he said.

The two-story building will include a playground, bar, live-music venue and gift shop for customers, as well as two offices and a break room for employees on the second floor. Raye said some of the space will likely not be complete for the opening in December, but he plans to throw a grand opening in the Spring.

The new space will also include a second ATM and two additional bathrooms for customers, he said. As for the interior decorations, Raye said the space will evolve over time, but getting it up and running is his first priority.

I think itll take me another 10 years to really create something as vibrant and as exciting and visually interesting as what we lost, he said.

With the grueling process of rebuilding added to his regular workload, Raye said he could never go about the task alone. But he hasnt just built a business over the past 14 years, hes built a family.

During long days, Raye motivates himself by thinking of his work family and his wife, Caroline, who can always make him crack a smile.

My life is between Satchels Pizza and my home, he said. My energy and my inspiration comes from my family.

Danny Lore has worked for Raye for 10 years. As the manager of Lightnin Salvage Enterprises, Lore looked on with Raye in shock as they watched the flames engulf the space.

Lightnin Salvage was just a big piece of art. It was a huge sculpture, Lore said. For him to watch that thing go up in flames, it was just devastating.

If it were anybody else other than Raye, Lore might be worried, but past experiences remind him that Raye tackles everything headfirst.

Lore recalls sharing an idea with Raye about remodeling the bar in Lightnin Salvage Enterprises. Two days after perusing Lores rough sketch of the design plan, he came into work to find that Raye had already cut a hole in the wall.

Once he gets his mind set that hes going to do something, he gets it done, Lore said.

***

Though rebuilding was hard work, Raye said art is intrinsic to him.

When he was 12 years old, Raye discovered his talent for pencil drawings. His parents enrolled him in an adult drawing class on Saturdays so he could be with artists closer to his skill level. At UF in the late 1980s, he honed his painting skills as an art major before transferring to the Atlanta College of Art.

At Satchels Pizza, Raye has found a way to weave together his two loves: making pizza and creating art. To him, its one in the same.

The pizzas are really mandalas. So when we make a pizza, were spreading these toppings out evenly and making a beautiful piece of art that somebody can eat, he said. I really feel like Im making art when Im making pizza.

When outsiders first catch a glimpse of Satchels Pizza, it might look more like an antique shop full of old knick-knacks than it does a restaurant teeming with art. But the recycled materials that cover nearly every inch of Satchels Pizza is part of what makes it so meaningful, Prodigo-Herrmann said.

I think that theres something very literal like when people touch objects and then they get passed on to be created into something else, she said. All of that energy really does play a part in what our place is all about.

Its an energy that draws customers to the pizzeria, said Mike Hill, 49, a seasoned Satchels Pizza-goer. The Gainesville resident has been frequenting the business for about 12 years. His go-to is a white pie and a chat with Raye.

Everytime we go, it seems theres some new project that Satchel is working on to improve his place, Hill said. Hes one of the most innovative people Ive ever met.

Rayes personality is evident in every corner of the restaurant, Hill said. From the vinyl on the booths to the ingredients in the homemade sodas, a little bit of Raye can be seen in everything.

His fingerprints are all over the entire place, Hill said.

Raye believes that his Satchels Pizza was so warmly received by the Gainesville community because his life was shaped by the town. He always knew it would be the right place to open his business. Although he spent much of his twenties and early thirties traveling to Jamaica, Mexico, Alaska, Europe, Thailand and other worldwide locations, Raye always found himself back in Gainesville.

I just feel like that this is where Im from, and so my art is reflective of this community, and this community can really relate to what I do, he said.

As Lightnin Salvage Enterprises prepares to reopen, Prodrigo-Herrmann said the community gets to be a part of a beautiful new beginning. Once again, Gainesville residents get to watch Raye artfully gather up the charred and smoky pieces of the past and turn it into a communitys treasure.

Over the years, you will now get to watch a new evolution of Satchels Pizza, she said, and it, again, will all come from him.

Satchel Raye, the owner of the pizza restaurant Satchel's, poses for a portrait.
About 15 years ago, nursing student Michael Bumbach put on his scrubs, washed his hands and walked into an open-brain surgery performed by a doctor  another man.

But when he walked into the room, the doctor said, Wow; youre not the person I expected.

Bumbach, now a professor at the UF College of Nursing, said he still remembers the doctors reaction. Hes received the same sentiment throughout his time as a male nurse practitioner. He knows when people think of nurses, they dont always picture him but rather a woman in scrubs.

UFs own nursing college is dominated by women, with an average of about 93 percent of students enrolled being female, according to an analysis of UF enrollment data from the past five years. Other colleges like the UF College of Education and the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions also contain a majority of female students.

While women are prominent in these areas, men maintain a stronghold in the UF Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, the second-largest college at UF. With 6,976 undergraduate students enrolled in the College of Engineering in Fall 2016, only about 27 percent of them were women.

Bumbach said as a male nurse of more than a decade, people still ask him if he plans to become a doctor. Because hes a man, they expect him to move beyond nursing, he said, but he wants to remain in nursing and help diversify the profession.

Theres more and more of a push in nursing to say, Hey, why are we majority homogeneous, why is the nursing force mainly white women? Bumbach said.

When Bruce Qian walks into a class in the College of Education, hes often either alone or accompanied by only one other man.

When the 23-year-old education graduate student enrolled at UF in Fall 2016, he was one of 8,152 men seeking graduate-level degrees in education  compared to 8,665 women.

The College of Education offers graduate-level online degrees, meaning on-campus classes may not reflect the actual ratio of men and women seeking education graduate degrees. But when Qian goes to class in person he said he notices few women.

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Even in China its the same picture, said Qian, who is a Chinese international student. Most teachers there are female.

The disparity is worse for undergraduates in the college  which in the last five years has an average of 94 percent female undergraduate students.

In Fall 2016, there were only 30 men enrolled at the undergraduate level, compared to 380 women.

Tom Dana, the associate dean of academic affairs for the college, said the majority of undergraduate students attending UF for education are women interested in elementary and early childhood education.

It is low; were a female dominated field by and large, Dana said.

A lot of people who become teachers tend to be women.

Dana said he believes every education college has similar gender diversity numbers.

At the University of California, Irvine, which the U.S. News and World Report ranked alongside UF as the ninth best public university, less than 17 percent of undergraduate students enrolled in its College of Education in Fall 2016 were men, according to the universitys website.

Dana said while the College of Educations minors tend to attract male students, due to the minors involving math and science education, the college as a whole doesnt specifically recruit men, but rather looks for candidates interested in the profession.

We recruit for the best students we can locate, he said. We do try to reach out to any group of students that would become good teachers.

In the UF College of Engineering, three in every four students are men.

Curtis Taylor, the associate dean for student affairs in the College of Engineering, said the college is focused on improving the disparity between men and women. He said UFs engineering college went from having a 23 percent female enrollment in 2011 to a 28 percent female enrollment in 2017. UF has not yet added Fall 2017 student enrollment data to its online database.

This is a national problem, its a problem thats been around for a very long time, Taylor said. Theres a need for a cultural shift or a cultural change within engineering, as well as within the society about engineering. There still are many perceptions that contribute to less women going into engineering, engineering being a traditional male role.

At UF, Taylor said the engineering college works to welcome women in the program. Because the college gets no sway over admissions, Taylor said administrators focus on helping students have a better experience while theyre enrolled.

The college hosts different welcoming ceremonies for groups including women, graduate minority students and LGBTQ+ students. They also offer luncheons for women and encourage students to join the Society of Women Engineers, where they can meet mentors and learn from women working in the engineering field.

That goes a long way, having a mentor and being able to see people that look like you and have similar interests that youre aspiring to do, Taylor said.

Taylor said faculty in the college are important in fostering a culture of inclusion. In the past six years, the number of female faculty  which includes professors, administrators and researchers  in the College of Engineering went from 11 percent to 19 percent, and Taylor said theyre continuing to focus on diversifying faculty.

I think the general trend is occurring, one, because our dean, shes very focused on diversity inclusion, something that is extremely important, Taylor said.

The lack of female professors when compared to men is common in most of UFs colleges. From Fall 2011 to Fall 2017, the UF Warrington College of Business Administration had an average of about 29 percent female professors, and the UF College of Design, Construction and Planning had an average of about 31 percent female professors, according to UF faculty data.

Only the UF College of Journalism and Communications, the College of Education and the College of Nursing have had an average majority of female professors since 2011.

The disparity continues into UFs upper-level graduate programs, like the UF College of Veterinary Medicine, where female professors make up less than 30 percent of the faculty despite female students making up more than three-fourths of the veterinary schools population.

May Mansy, the president of WiSE, a club that promotes women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, said its important to have diverse faculty so women can feel welcome in the classroom.

Mansy, 31, said her friends have sat in on mechanical or aerospace engineering courses and found themselves the only woman in the room. They dropped the class shortly after, feeling uncomfortable.

Its a very intangible thing that gets instilled into the psychology of women in general, that if you see a certain field being represented by males most of the time, you dont feel welcome in there anymore, you dont feel like you belong anymore, unless you find yourself represented, she said.

Taylor said its important to have a diverse workforce, and he hopes UFs engineering college can be a model for other schools as they fight the national issue of gender differences in the field.

Its what students want, he said. And its also what companies want. They realize the workforce is a diverse workforce, and if youre going to have leaders in engineering, youve got to have leaders who can inspire people from different backgrounds.
UF researchers have been awarded a $10 million grant to study the red snapper population in the Gulf of Mexico.

Robert Ahrens, an associate professor in the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences fisheries and aquatic sciences program, will join other researchers to assess the fish population. Will Patterson, a UF professor, also received funding.

The grant is funded through an order from Congress and comes from the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Ahrens said.

The study aims to find a better method of determining the number of red snappers in the Gulf of Mexico, Ahrens said.

The red snapper population in the Gulf of Mexico is an iconic species, Ahrens said. It represents some of the biggest challenges we face with respect to the management of fishery resources in the Gulf.

Since traditional assessments are not effective in counting population size, fishers believe the harvest restrictions put on the fish are too high and are having a negative impact on their revenue, Ahrens said.

UFs goal is to provide an alternative assessment of the red snapper population using methods like remote-operated vehicles, which count fish in a specific area. However, this method only works in clear water, so the group is looking into other methods as well.

The project will begin in 2018, Ahrens said. The team hopes to start the actual sampling of the population by late spring or early summer.
Tyler Ellman will never forget how he felt standing at Auschwitz.

It changed my entire perspective on life, on history, on the world and on my faith, Ellman, a UF theatre and telecommunication senior, said.

After returning from the March of the Living trip, where thousands of Jewish teens marched from the Auschwitz concentration camp to the Birkenau camp, Ellman began working on his play, which will debut tonight at High Dive, located at 210 SW 2nd Ave.

The play, Tap Dancing Through Auschwitz, will run today and Tuesday, with doors opening at 7 p.m. and the play beginning at 8 p.m. Ticket prices range from $6 to $12.

Ellman said the play is about six high school students who visit Auschwitz to learn more about their ancestors. The title refers to one characters nervous fidget, expressed through tapping his foot when in an uncomfortable situation.

Before going on the trip, I was going through a lot, Ellman, 22, said. You start to really look at life a different way when youre having issues that are so real, and then youre put into a whirlwind of a crazy absurd place like Auschwitz.

The plays director, Steven Breiter, helped Ellman revise the script during the four years Ellman spent writing. Breiter said the play would be good for the Jewish community.

(Its) a metaphor for how all these kids on this trip are uncomfortable and going through a tough time learning about their ancestors, Breiter said.

Ellman fundraised to rent the High Dive space with support from five different Jewish student organizations, including the UF Jewish Student Union, Lubavitch Chabad Jewish Center, UF Hillel and Alpha Epsilon Phi. He also received support from the Jewish Council of North Central Florida, Ellman said.

All of the proceeds from the play will be donated to the Arab American Community Center of Florida, an organization that helps Iraqi and Syrian refugee families, Ellman said. He said people say never again about the Holocaust, but must also focus on current injustices.

Dont be a bystander, make your voice heard, take action, he said.

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When Madeline Gangnes woke up to a push notification Saturday morning on her smartphone, her heart sank.

News that the Republican Party-led tax bill passed in the U.S. Senate 51-40 just before 2 a.m. Saturday left Gangnes, a 31-year-old UF English doctoral candidate, in a whirlwind of uncertainty, mulling over how shed be able to make ends meet under the new tax policy.

My stomach dropped, basically. I almost had a panic attack, she said. Pretty much all of us were freaking out today.

Doctoral students like Gangnes take issue with the Houses version of the Senate bill from Nov. 16, which would have their tuition waivers be considered taxable income. Graduate students who teach or perform research for their university often have their tuition waived by the federal government, a tax break about 145,000 students across the U.S. rely on, according to NPR.

For Gangnes, the new policy would mean instead of being taxed on her $20,000 annual stipend  equivalent to $9.62 an hour  she would instead be taxed as if she makes $30,700.

The House and Senate now have to reconcile their two separate bills before submitting a final version to President Donald Trumps desk, although only the House bill calls for taxing tuition waivers, according to The New York Times.

If the House bill provision passes, Gangnes said students from low- and middle-income families would have to reconsider graduate school altogether, tanking higher education participation nationwide. She said she fears senators wont fight against the House bill if push comes to shove.

Its definitely this feeling like weve been sold a bill of goods, we were told wed have this system in place for us to pursue this career that we love, she said. Now someones pulling out the rug from underneath.

Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe said the bill would be an affront to local communities, given its proposed corporate tax rate cuts and the $1.4 trillion deficit the Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would add over the next 10 years.

Poe said he thinks its unprofessional how senators pushed for a vote in the middle of the night.

I probably know as much about that bill as the senators who voted for it, which isnt a good thing, he said. Its definitely not good for our community.

Amid student fears, the UF Graduate Assistants United union, which represents about 4,000 teaching and research assistants, is considering how to move forward. GAU spokesperson Josh Papacek said he feels UF should speak out against the bill.

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I think it would have been reassuring to the graduate students that the university is behind them on this issue, Papacek said. Should it pass, (GAU) should be working with the university to come up with solutions to this.

UF has been working with nonprofits like the Association of American Universities to lobby on Capitol Hill with its concerns of taxing tuition waivers, UF spokesperson Janine Sikes said.

UF President Kent Fuchs also wrote to Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson ahead of the Senates vote, speaking out against the bills effect on students, and thereby universities, Sikes said.

We still have to wait on the reconciliation between the House and the Senate bills, Sikes said. Were doing what we can behind the scenes to get some changes.

In the meantime, Papacek said many graduate students will have to grapple with whether they can continue in their programs.

Its going to be difficult for a lot of people, theres already a lot of grad students that are living paycheck to paycheck, Papacek said. Even $1,000 more in their tax budget is going to cause grad students to make some difficult decisions as to whether they can still even be in school.
Potential trigger warning: This column cites anti-LGBTQ+ quotes in an effort to demonstrate how we must vote against anti-LGBTQ+ politicians.

On Thursday, members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community celebrated the news: The New York City Council passed a bill banning conversion therapy, the controversial  and cruel  therapy meant to turn gay people straight. As the bill goes to Mayor Bill de Blasio for signing, it seems as though weve finally got a speck of good news in the turbulent ocean of terrible sound bites weve heard for months on end.

This is certainly a victory. Gay conversion therapy has long been criticized as inhumane and downright wrong. According to the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the techniques associated with conversion therapy are devoid of scientific validity and pose serious dangers to patients  especially to minors, who are often forced to undergo them by their parents or legal guardians. Similarly, both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association have warned of the dangers of conversion therapy.

This therapy rests on the foundation that we must see same-sex attraction as a mental illness, a notion so grossly ancient and awful it boggles my mind people actually continue to think this way. It would be easy for me to think, especially as a white, middle-class woman, that the LGBTQ+ community has mostly emerged victorious from these hard-fought battles, that there is not much left to fight for. It seems simple to dismiss homophobic and transphobic remarks as the words of crazies, certainly not the mainstream and not worth correcting. But this is just not so.

Lets take a look at some contemporary elected officials and political hopefuls, for example. First up: Vice President Mike Pence. In 2016, Time magazine shared a collection of Pences remarks on LGBTQ+ issues throughout his time in the public eye. In 2006, he said in a speech that societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family, in reference of same-sex couples.

Last May, Pence opposed former President Barack Obamas initiative to let students use the bathrooms of their preferred genders. And just this October, while discussing gay rights, President Donald Trump joked that Pence wants to hang them all. (By the way, Mr. President, jokes are supposed to be funny.)

So right off the bat, both our president and vice president have spoken with anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and quite clearly do not serve as allies to the community. Can we even act surprised? Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, now known for horrendous allegations of sexual misconduct and assault made by multiple women, was disgusting even before his terrible actions came to light.

Twelve years ago, Moore compared homosexuality to bestiality. As a judge, Moore refused to acknowledge that the U.S. Supreme Court made same-sex marriage constitutional across the country. Last week, Moore called the sexual misconduct allegations against him part of a conspiracy led by liberals; gay, bisexual and transgender people; and socialists alike.

We must work to ensure people like Moore do not hold elected office. Make sure other people know the dangerous views of those in and running for public positions. Share their views  being sure to warn others of their wrongness and offense. Please, when the time comes, vote against these people. Support the LGBTQ+ community, whether you are a member or an ally. Help create and nurture a society where we are free to love and be loved by whomever we choose.

Mia Gettenberg is a UF criminology and philosophy senior. Her column appears on Mondays.

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House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes has issued an angry demand to the FBI and Department of Justice to explain why they kept the committee in the dark over the reason Special Counsel Robert Mueller kicked a key supervising FBI agent off the Trump-Russia investigation.

How objective can an investigation into Hillary Clintons email investigation be when the FBI agent who played a lead role was removed from it this summer for texting his pro-Hillary and anti-Trump sympathies? And why does House Intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes have to read about it in the New York Times and the Washington Post? As Byron York reports in the Washington Examiner :

Stories in both the Washington Post and New York Times on Saturday reported that Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the original FBI investigation into the Trump-Russia matter, and then a key role in Mueller's investigation, and who earlier had played an equally critical role in the FBI's Hillary Clinton email investigation, was reassigned out of the Mueller office because of anti-Trump texts he exchanged with a top FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair. Strzok was transferred to the FBI's human resources office -- an obvious demotion -- in July.

Are we to believe that Strzok was diligently and impartially examining evidence related to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump while being unable to contain his anti-Trump bias? Is he the only Hillary mole? Just look at Robert Muellers staff and James Comeys exoneration of Hillary Clinton after the infamous tarmac meeting between AG Loretta Lynch and unindicted conspirator in Uranium One William Jefferson Clinton. Stop when you detect a pattern.

This news comes as House Republicans, tired of leaks and finding out about things in the legacy media, are moving to find both the FBI and the DOJ in contempt of Congress for failing to provide requested material:

U.S. House Republicans are moving to bring a Contempt of Congress resolution against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray for stonewalling the production material related to the Russia-Trump probes and other matters. According to Bloomberg, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes and other Republicans decided to move against Rosenstein and Wray after the New York Times reported Saturday about the removal of a top FBI official assigned to Special Counsel Robert Muellers probe of the alleged Russia-Trump election collusion had been removed from the investigation.

If it's hurtful to Team Trump, it gets leaked. If it's damaging to Team Hillary, it's treated like the gold at Fort Knox. Thats not really surprising in a probe where Michael Flynn gets dinged for making false statements to the FBI, the same crime committed by famous Russian colluder Martha Stewart, but Hillary Clinton is not. But then, Hillary was never put under oath in an interview for which no notes were taken, unlike former FBI Director James Comeys meeting with President Trump. Comey did not attend that meeting, nor was a grand jury convened. And where are the Podesta indictments, pray tell?

Comey had the fix in for Hillary. We now know why the FBI made the absurd claim that it would not release its files on the Hillary Clinton email investigation for alleged lack of public interest. The FBI was covering up its obstruction of justice in the, er, matter knowing full well that former Director James Comey had already exonerated Hillary Clinton before the alleged investigation was complete and all witnesses had been interviewed, and months before Comey falsely claimed in his announcement that no competent prosecutor would take Hillarys case.

In withholding the files sought under Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI forgot that it and former Secretary of State Clinton are and were employees of the American taxpayer, taxpayers who have a right to know whether justice is being served or denied. Claims that Hillary had privacy rights that trumped the public interest were absurd:

The FBI is declining to turn over files related to its investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons emails by arguing a lack of public interest in the matter. Ty Clevenger, an attorney in New York City, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in March of 2016 asking for a variety of documents from the FBI and the Justice Department, including correspondence exchanged with Congress about the Clinton email investigation. In July 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey famously called Clintons email arrangement extremely careless though he decided against recommending criminal charges. On Aug. 8, the FBI asked Clevenger to detail why the public would be interested. If you seek disclosure of any existing records on this basis, you must demonstrate that the public interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests, the letter stated. In this regard, you must show that the public interest sought is a significant one, and that the requested information is likely to advance that interest.

Say what? Did it serve the public interest -- or James Comeys interest -- when he publicly detailed all the reasons Hillary Clinton should be criminally charged before saying lack of intent, a criterion which appears nowhere in the law, was the reason Comey was giving Hillary a get out of jail free card, a judgment he did not have the authority to make? Didnt his exoneration announcement violate Hillarys alleged privacy rights by detailing the criminal violations of a subject that was not going to be charged?

If James Comey was seriously looking for evidence of intent, he couldnt have possibly taken a single step without tripping over it. Wasnt having a private server that contained classified information, multiple devices that were later physically smashed, and using Bleach Bit to destroy 33,000 emails that were under subpoena sufficient evidence of intent?

Only a corrupt and complicit FBI director, acting as Hillary Clintons surrogate campaign manager, who months earlier had decided he would exonerate her, could ignore the damning evidence:

As FBI director last year, James Comey began writing drafts of a statement exonerating Hillary Clinton, even before all witnesses in the investigation -- including Clinton herself -- had been interviewed. The Senate Judiciary Committee obtained the Comey memos as part of its investigation into his firing by President Trump, which occurred on May 9. The revelation that Comey had begun drafting memos of his exoneration statement comes from transcripts of interviews given last fall by two FBI officials. James Rybicki, Comeys chief of staff, and Trisha Anderson, the principal deputy general counsel of national security and cyberlaw at the FBI, gave the interviews as part of an investigation conducted by the Office of Special Counsel into the FBIs handling of the Clinton email investigation. In a July 5, 2016, press conference, Comey said that he would not be recommending charges against Clinton for mishandling classified information despite her use of a private email server as secretary of state. While the transcripts of those interviews are heavily redacted, they indicate that Comey started working on an announcement clearing Clinton in April or May of last year, before the FBI interviewed 17 witnesses in the case, including Clinton and some of her top aides.

Having already decided that he would exonerate her regardless of the evidence explains why he did not attended the July 2, 2016 interview of Hillary Clinton, did not put her under oath, or ever impanel a grand jury in the, theres that word again, matter. The fix was in.

Yes, Virginia, this is a witch hunt. Robert Mueller III was appointed special counsel after his friend, the vindictive James Comey, committed a federal crime by leaking a memo which was a government record to the press. Mueller has picked staff and prosecutors as if he were stocking Hillary Clintons Department of Justice. He has picked a bevy of Clinton donors, an attorney who worked for the Clinton Foundation, a former Watergate assistant prosecutor, and even a senior advisor to Eric Holder. Objective professionals all (snarkiness intended).

Mueller is in fact colluding with Comey to enact revenge on President Trump for Comeys firing, something which even Comey said Trump was constitutionally entitled to do. There is no evidence of collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice. It is not obstruction of justice for a President to exercise his legal and constitutional authority.

But the facts and the lack of an actual crime will not stop Robert Mueller. Robert Mueller is following in the proud tradition of Stalins chief of the secret police, Lavrenty Beria. Just show him the man, or woman, and he will show you the crime.

And then theres Hillary mole Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. McCabe was in a key position overseeing the investigation of Hillary Clintons scandalous and treasonous handling of classified emails on her private server, a position from which he could assist FBI Director James Comey in putting the fix in. As Judicial Watch notes:

Judicial Watch today released Justice Department records showing that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe did not recuse himself from the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons unsecure, non-government email server until Tuesday, November 1, 2016, one week prior to the presidential election. The Clinton email probe was codenamed Midyear Exam. While working as Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office, McCabe controlled resources supporting the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons email scandal. An October 2016 internal FBI memorandum labeled Overview of Deputy Director McCabes Recusal Related To Dr. McCabes Campaign for Political Office, details talking points about McCabes various potential conflicts of interest, including the FBIs investigation of Clintons illicit server, which officially began in July 2015: While at [Washington Field Office] did Mr. McCabe provide assistance to the Clinton investigation? After the referral was made, FBI Headquarters asked the Washington Field Office for personnel to conduct a special investigation. McCabe was serving as [Assistant Director] and provided personnel resources. However, he was not told what the investigation was about. In February 2016 McCabe became Deputy Director and began overseeing the Clinton investigation. The Overview also shows if asked whether McCabe played any role in his wifes campaign, the scripted response was: No. Then-[Assistant Director] McCabe played no role, attended no events and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind.

Of course, that statement was a lie. The exposing of Agent Strzok is just another shoe dropping in the course of a corrupt and criminal enterprise masquerading as an investigation in which the FBI, the DOJ, and now the special counsel are all involved.

Lady justice is not blind here. She has been bound and gagged and held for ransom by Robert Mueller and his political cronies.

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.
Did Brits Plant the Hillary Bomb?

Americans generally know nothing about our European "allies" and the nefarious plans they may occasionally hatch against us. But people familiar with history know how the British Foreign Office was a primary mover in getting the United States into World War I. Winston Churchill certainly wanted us to join the Brits in WWII, and after Pearl Harbor, we did. By the 1930s, the Soviets had deeply suborned and penetrated the U.K., and sentimental Marxism is still the main religion of Britain, though the name "Mohammed" is now the most popular name for baby boys. A BBC survey several years ago found that Karl Marx  yes, good old murderous Marx  is widely respected as "the greatest philosopher in history" by the BBC audience. No wonder, because the Beeb has been telling them so ever sing the Cambridge Spies were recruited by the Soviets in the 1930s.

Ian Fleming's famous James Bond series was plausibly written by former spy Fleming to cover up the truth, which was deep subversion by the Soviets of the British espionage apparatus in World War II and after. The public story of the Trump "dossier," bought by the Hillary campaign to discredit Donald Trump and now being used by corruptocrat Robert Mueller  himself the swampiest of swamp creatures  is that the DNC paid Fusion GPS, which paid Christopher Steele, a "former British spy," to write an opposition document on Donald Trump. To spice up that document, Mr. Steele imagined Donald Trump, his wife, and his family going to Moscow and hiring famously sexy Moscow prostitutes to urinate on the bed Obama was alleged to have occupied. Whether anybody bothered to change the sheets is not reported, but then the whole dossier reeks to high heaven. Among the many flaws in this story is Christopher Steele, nominally a "former" GCHQ spy, who was hired to do the deed. But when it comes to keeping the Brits informed of major developments in its biggest ally, the United States, there are no "former" spies. If Steele was hired by the DNC to come up with dirt on Trump, it was his clear obligation to report said hiring to his old bosses, who would naturally send it up the line to Theresa May, the current prime minister of the U.K. Ms. May is currently in a nasty political trap, caught between the will of the British voters, who want to get out of the corrupt and incompetent European Union, and the E.U. swamp itself, which is trying by hook and by crook to sabotage the British exit from that particular quagmire. Let's put it this way: if Chris Steele is an idiot, he might not understand that the DNC was giving him a golden chance to shaft Donald J. Trump, just when Theresa May wanted to (secretly) please the E.U. swamp and thereby also get gold star points from the U.S. swamp. Got that? If Chris hadn't put that Moscow pee-pee story in the "dossier," Theresa May would never have forgiven him. So Christopher Steele claims to be a "retired" spook, when we know damned well there is no such thing. If a former spook gets a golden chance to manipulate U.S. politics, he will be seriously remiss in not telling the May government all about it. And Theresa May will jump at the chance to manipulate our election, in just the way the Brits jumped at the chance to get us into WWI and WWII. Swamp calls to swamp, you might say. OK, so the "Russian attempt to throw the election to Trump" may actually be a British attempt (with E.U. help) to throw the election to Hillary. This is not some weird exception to the rule. Obama tried to throw the Israeli election to the left, last time, against Bibi Netanyahu, whom he hated on sight. The BBC, which occasionally resorts to telling the truth, once ran a wonderful comedy show called Yes, Minister, with the running gag of the elected minister trying to manipulate his purely appointed swamp department, only to be told time and time again by the chief bureaucrat that, alas, it couldn't be done. Yes, Minister is probably on the web today, and it's worth watching, because it served as a great warning that elections in the U.K. meant nothing anymore. No matter who was elected, the swamp would prevail. Now, the BBC is the original swamp propaganda department, always running talking points from the left and, these days, from the forces of jihad. Things got so bad at the BBC swamp that it protected serial child abuser Jimmy Savile, who ran the most popular children's program on the BBC, in spite of the fact that he abused hundreds of children. The U.K. media reported the Jimmy Savile perversion only after he died. The whole thing was shocking beyond belief, but it was consistent with jihad penetration of Europe, which we now see everywhere. Jimmy Savile was obviously protected by the police, the intelligence services, and the upper ranks of the BBC itself. Parents who complained to the cops received no help whatsoever. Pakistani child-"grooming gangs" are still reported today routinely in cities like Rotherham, and they are likely to exist in many other places. In rapefugee centers like Germany and Sweden, an increase in child and female abuse can be expected, because in shari'a law, women are second- or third-class citizens, and infidel children are celebrated targets. The Prophet himself "married" a six-year-old, but he was kind enough to wait until she was nine to consummate the marriage. So Europe is corrupted and suborned even beyond the standards of Washington, D.C. Question: Are we supposed to believe that Christopher Steele really didn't work with his old buds in the British swamp to make up and spread that anti-Trump dossier? The U.K. Guardian  the old Stalinist rag from those times  is now protecting Theresa May against Donald Trump's nasty tweet. But I'll bet it all started with ol' Chris Steele and the pee-pee dossier.
The signs are generally pointing in that general direction, however, so it would be a smart idea to stay informed about the developments.

Predictions by financial and technology experts tell us our world is headed for a cashless society , and thats not for our benefit. There might be merit to the claim, but we probably wont know until it may be too late.

RFID tags were the first signal

At the RFID tags were introduced as a convenient way to keep track of pets, it seemed like a reasonable move. When someone brings a lost dog to the vet, if the owner cant be found, the animal gets sent to a shelter.

If the dog has been microchipped, it can be reunited with its owner fairly easily. But then people began to tag their children and even themselves, which raised some concerns.

Those red flags were subsequently validated when RFID tags became mandatory for employees of Cincinnatis video surveillance company CityWatcher.com. Since then, RFID tags have been pushed as an easy way to manage ones finances: the suggestion has been made that an implant in your body may make your physical bank card superfluous someday.

The idea would be to implant everyone with an RFID chip that not only serves as a locator, but also connects you to your individual bank account wirelessly. If you dont pay your taxes or behave responsibly, access to your funds may simply be shut off.

The second signal: cash is becoming scarce and restricted

Many people assume the Federal Reserve is printing money as if its going out of style. The truth is, its not really printing money but doing something potentially more risky.

The Fed has been allocating $4 trillion to support investment errors and economy-sapping ideas, which some experts have asserted is blocking a true economic recovery. Regardless what the agency is doing, some have noticed its becoming increasingly difficult to use cash in our society.

For example, banks like JPMorgan Chase no longer allow cash deposits unless the person seeking to make the deposit has a Chase account in good standing. If your friend overdraws his account by $20, you cant assist him with a cash infusion unless you have a Chase account as well.

And if your account is in negative numbers, you must make up the deficit before you will be allowed to deposit funds on behalf of your friend.

Though its not yet illegal to possess cash, its almost as if were headed in that direction. Banks are being instructed to file a Suspicious Activity Report when a customer withdraws $5,000 or more from her own account.

The Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017 has inspired even greater concern. According to this bill, its illegal to possess more than $10,000 in unregistered assets of any kind, including cash, Bitcoin, bonds, and even prepaid phones and gift cards.

If you dont fill out a form to report your assets to the government, the authorities can take everything you own, even if your assets were obtained legally.

The one thing all the signs have in common is that, on some level, each was presented initially as a useful idea, and the public accepted it in some form. For example, microchipping pets was accepted, and evolved from there.

Such examples are reasonably obvious to the average person, though. A greater worry is when the signs arent obvious.

One that seems to have slipped below the radar is the rapidly growing popularity of Bitcoin. Profit potential aside, Bitcoin is the embodiment of the cashless society predicted by those who sought to warn citizens for years.

How do we know that Bitcoin and similar cybercurrencies are not being activated to persuade us willingly to accept the final step of moving to a cashless society? The only way to stay on top of coming developments is to pay attention to the cycles.

Everything moves in a cycle, and Bitcoin is no exception. First, it was largely unknown. Now its being embraced in certain circles. Next, it could become mandatory for particular types of transaction. It looks as if Visa may already be on that.

Our lives work in harmony with cycles and rhythms

Every facet of our lives is governed by specific and reliable cycles and rhythms. Food grows in a cycle, and when its eaten, the body breaks down food in a cycle.

For instance, your circadian rhythm -- the cycle that governs the biology of sleep -- adapts to natural fluctuations of available light. Natural sunlight is essential for producing Vitamin D3. The less light youre exposed to, the more your bodys cycles can be altered, and not necessarily for the best.

Similarly, the more we are exposed to mechanisms of control that are implemented in cycles, the more were likely to adapt to those limitations as the new normal. Bitcoin may be the latest and most influential and theres no denying its usefulness (for now).

The question is whether or not it may take an unexpected sharp turn in another direction.
Liberals like to repurpose words with positive connotations, like sanctuary, in order to add a false impression of sanity to liberal positions which are otherwise indefensible. In the case of the now ubiquitous Sanctuary Cities phrase, liberals hope to evoke Americans desire for fairness and our propensity to stick up for the little guy.

A sanctuary is a place where people can go to be safe. Generally speaking we think of good people going to sanctuaries to escape evil; some Jews found sanctuary from the Holocaust in England and the United States, for example.

After all, even if youre some coldhearted racist conservative, liberals reason, your heartstrings will be plucked by the idea of cruel ICE agents swooping in on a hard working undocumented family who pay their taxes, never take government aid, and work hard at jobs where they are underpaid because gringo bosses threaten to call ICE on them; jobs which no citizen would do.

Ignoring for a moment the prevalence, or lack thereof, of such illegals, and also ignoring the blacks who cant find a job because honest illegals will work for less, the reality is that Sanctuary Cities have nothing to do with honest illegals.

The only people who get sanctuary in Sanctuary Cities are criminals. Cities and states cant stop ICE from enforcing the law; laws supported by generations of Democrat politicians, by the way. They cant provide safe haven for honest illegals; not that they need to since honest illegals are not that frequently targeted even by the racist Trump administration.

But what local governments can do is shield illegals who commit additional crimes in the US from being deported. Sanctuary Cities do so by preventing the police from notifying ICE when an illegal has been arrested for a crime. Historically the police would notify ICE, ICE would go to the police station and conduct a safe -- for the illegal and the community -- transfer to ICE so that the criminal could be deported.

In Sanctuary Cities illegals who drive drunk, for example, are simply allowed back into society without ICE having a chance to deport them.

Thats right; Sanctuary Cities exist to ensure that illegals who drive drunk or commit a wide range of other crimes dont risk deportation. While the specific laws that illegals can break and be protected from deportation vary between different Sanctuary Cities they are not restricted to jaywalking, having a taillight out on their car, and littering. In fact, only if the offense is serious enough that the illegal is put in jail, at least temporarily, does the Sanctuary City policy have any role; if the illegal doesnt go to jail the jail cant notify ICE when hes going to be released so that ICE can pick him up.

The net effect of Sanctuary Cities is to ensure that illegals who continue to commit other crimes are shielded from deportation; thats right liberal politicians are working hard to increase the criminal population in Sanctuary Cities.

Havent you ever wished we could just throw drunk drivers out of your city so that they cant kill people you may know the next time they slip up? Well, we cant do that for citizens, including legal immigrants, but we can for those who sneak into our country. Yet the whole purpose of Sanctuary Cities is to ensure that criminals are allowed to stay in the country enabling them to commit more crimes.

Why would any sane person support such a thing?

Maybe its because liberals know that criminals are both likely to not be concerned about illegally voting and likely to vote for liberal candidates who work to make life easy for criminals -- so long as they dont prey on the rich people the politicians schmooze with.

Or maybe its the liberals all or nothing approach to issues; either we let all illegals stay or were going to force all of them out. After all liberals staunchly defend the right of a woman to abort her viable, pain feeling, unborn daughter because she, or her spouse, wants a boy so extremism in the protection of violence is nothing new to liberals.

Or maybe its because illegals provide cheap labor for rich white liberals, and even criminal illegals rarely prey directly on the ruling elites whose safety and prosperity is the main concern of modern liberals.

In any case, Sanctuary Cities do nothing to help illegals whose only crime was breaking into our country. In fact, it wouldnt be surprising if Sanctuary Cites were causing more suffering for the honest illegals.

The man who killed Kate Steinle, for example, doesnt speak English. Given that its not absurd to think that illegals like him, with criminal records and minimal English skills, would tend to prey on honest illegals more than on American citizens. If that is the case, then by protecting illegals who continue to commit crimes Sanctuary Cities are hurting the honest illegals they claim to be trying to help, not to mention the legal Hispanic immigrants.

But words have power, so whenever and wherever you see, hear, or read the phrase Sanctuary City make sure you explain to anyone you can, in a polite way, that the real term should be Sanctuary for Criminals Cities.

It wouldnt be shocking if most of the people who support Sanctuary Cities think that those cities protect honest illegals given the way the media covers the issue. Hence by shining a light into the swamp you might be able to get people who would normally vote for a liberal to realize that theres a huge difference between mass deportation and deporting illegals who drive drunk.

You can read more of toms rants at his blog, Conversations about the obvious and feel free to follow him on Twitter
The current sex crimes dragnet sweeping across the country, pulling in celebrities, media millionaires, and politicians, has yet to reel in a high-profile professor from the hallowed halls of academia

In a 2006 Frontpagemag article entitled "Remembering a Sixties Terrorist," a woman named Donna Ron recounted what she described as "the defining event of my life."

As a sophomore at the University of Michigan in 1965, Ron was caught up in the antiwar movement when she met and dated Ayers. Two months after meeting Ayers, Ron alleges that he locked her in his apartment and told her she couldn't leave until she had sex with his roommate and his brother.

From FrontPageMag (warning graphic language):

Bill Ayers' apartment was around the corner and a half a block away from the sorority house Sometimes I would stop by... What I do recall is that when I was getting ready to leave Ayers told me I couldn't go until I slept with his roommate and his brother. At first I thought Ayers was joking. I got up; and went to the door. He moved quickly to block me at the doorway. He locked the door and put the chain on it. I went to the couch and sat down and told him that I had no intention of having sex with his roommate and his brother or him. He said that I had no choice but to do as he said if I wanted to get out of there. He claimed that I wouldn't sleep with his married roommate because he was black  that I was a bigot. I felt trapped. I had to get out of the situation I was in and because he was so effective a guilt-tripper, I also felt I had to prove to him that I wasn't a bigot. I got up from the couch and walked over to the black roommate's bed and put myself on it and he [f-----] me. I went totally out of my body. I floated beside myself on the outside and above the bed looking at this black stranger [f---] me angrily while I hated myself. After that I had to go lie down on Bill Ayer's bed for his brother to [s----] me. Rick Ayers was a decent person, unlike his brother, and couldn't go through with it He started and stopped and let me go. I also thought I had to let Bill [s----] me but at that point he unbolted the door and I left. I remember going back to the sorority house and talking to my best girlfriend and telling her what had happened. But there were no words yet to describe it. There was no term "date rape" yet in our political vocabulary... I was a mess and felt it was my fault for letting it happen. I was ashamed. Back home at the end of the semester, I got my parents to send me to a psychiatrist.

In 2008, Ron repeated the details of her ordeal to WND, adding, "I was terrified. People underestimate terrorism by psychological intimidation. I felt like I was being held prisoner."

It's been almost ten years since Ron alleged that Ayers set up a gang-rape in his apartment. At the time, her story was confined to a few alternative conservative websites (ironic, considering that Ron was an Obama supporter and committed socialist).

Today, not only are women with similar narratives being heard, but the men they accuse are being held accountable.

The avalanche of accusations in recent weeks, beginning with Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, suggests that Ron's horrific encounter with Ayers could resurface. To date, Ayers's only response to Ron's accusation came in 2001. After discovering that the terrorist had gone on to fame and fortune at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ron emailed him about what happened at his apartment in 1965. Ayers said he "did not remember her."

Ron, who has resided in Israel for many years, may not be aware that the tide has turned here in the U.S., but the timing couldn't be more perfect to subject the terrorist to the same scrutiny as other outed alleged sexual predators. As a co-founder of the Weather Underground, Ayers boasted about the group's willingness to engage in all kinds of deviant sex. His admission makes Donna's story even more credible. Not only that, but her narrative and Ayers's sordid history suggest the real possibility that there may be more of Ayers's victims out there. Now the question is, after aggressively targeting other millionaire males, many of whom have lost their jobs, when will the mainstream media go after Bill Ayers?
The results of the mania surrounding sexual harassment and abuse is likely change both the workplace and dating culture, for good and ill. Instead of underlings fearing to offend lascivious bigshots, the bigshots now fear offending underlings. The people working the best jobs must operate on their best behavior  or else. Is that such a bad thing? And what of a dude making a spontaneous pass at a [gal]? Whether he looks like Harvey Weinstein* or Brad Pitt may determine whether the response involves the police or fireworks. Must Gloria Allred chaperone our dates and Antioch College-style consent forms preface each escalation of physical intimacy? Every abolition of the Bad Old World ushers in a [bad] Brave New World.

The American Spectator has an article on sexual misbehavior in the workplace.

*Whose face, in the immortal words of Weekend Update, looks like chewed bubblegum rolled in cat hair.

NPR interviewed a black female reporter who was one of the few in any mainstream outlet to report on the misbehavior of R. Kelly. She acknowledged that the black community are not willing to discuss the problematic ones in their community. This seems to be true of women and gays also.

The Spectator article, fairly nuanced, discusses what may safely be called "primate behavior." To that extent, it will perhaps never be extirpated from the workplace. Even NPR almost admits that gorilla males can be sexist and that orangutans rape. (The NPR article is amusing, using the same argument as those who explain that blacks can't be racist because they don't have power to oppress. As if that were part of the definition.)

What can be done is to discriminate between Weinstein's predatory coercion and Monica's admission that when she went to D.C., she took her presidential knee pads. The classical Greeks acknowledged that young men needed a mentor and profited by the relationship (e.g., Socrates and Alcibiades, though their relationship was nonphysical and therefore not typical). The British Museum says classical Latin had no word for homosexuality, and indeed, the word "homosexualitatis" is said to have originated in the 19th century.

Relationships that include a power differential, like Monica's, and perhaps Eliza Doolittle's, can be problematic. Even when clearly voluntary, they are suspect. Medical ethics, for example, forbids physical intimacy between doctors and patients even for a time after the professional relationship is ended. There doesn't seem to be any penalty, though, unless the patient objects.

As Flynn points out, the mob's fury is indiscriminate, which makes any behavior modification in society unpredictable. Or perhaps predictably oscillatory, swinging from one extreme to another. How to make the necessary discrimination? Who shall draw the line, and where?

How many workplace romances will be inhibited by the new culture of zero tolerance? Will that be a good thing?

Will this usher in a new civility?

Will banter be tolerated? Flirtation?

Will we wind up missing the '60s?

Why are there no males objecting to female predation on schoolboys  only the mothers?
Journalists are patting themselves on the back a lot these days

I have seen several journalists compliment news networks on their immediate dismissal of network stars these days on sexual abuse, comparing their reactions to the slow reaction in Congress. The blinders, ignorance, and self-adulation are worse than I thought. It seems obvious that NBC has known about Matt Lauer's hobbies for years. CBS and Charlie Rose's producers knew about accusations against Rose also, and Fox News obviously knew about Bill O'Reilly. The networks took their time for dismissal until stories were coming out.

Congress is worse because it has used taxpayer money and intentionally buried the information while congressmen lecture the rest of us and make laws from which they exempt themselves. They feel that they are special as they tell us who is fit for office and always demand more power and money for themselves while there is little or no transparency. People in the private sector, education system, churches, government, and media shouldn't pat themselves on the back. No one acted promptly and transparently on sex abuse. Some journalists and Democrats are also acting as if they should be exonerated by calling the Clintons out now, decades after their abuse of women and one year after wholeheartedly supporting the Clintons' return to the White House. Then I saw on Fox News Sunday morning that journalists have been vindicated in their reporting on the alleged Russian collusion and Trump because of the perjury charge against Michael Flynn. Of all the dishonesty and stupidity in the media these days, I thought this was one of the most ignorant things ever said. Democrats funded a fake Russian dossier to trash Trump; the fake dossier was fed to compliant journalists and Obama administration officials; the fake dossier was used as an excuse to spy on Trump officials; the spying was used to illegally unmask names, which were given to journalists. So what should journalists be proud of? No actual underlying collusion or crimes have been found, so why is Mueller investigating at all? Flynn was charged with perjury when there was no underlying crime, yet Hillary lied about classified emails, which was an actual crime, and Justice and journalists don't care. Journalists, Justice, and Democrats have never cared about Russian collusion at all. They care about destroying Trump and his agenda, nothing more. If Justice, Journalists, and Democrats cared about actual collusion, they would investigate Fusion GPS, the DNC, the Hillary campaign, the Justice Department, the Obama administration officials, and journalists for all using the fake dossier to go after Trump. It is no wonder journalists are held in such low regard when they pat themselves on the back for things they didn't do. It is similar to Al Gore claiming credit for inventing the internet and politicians pretending they can control the climate and sea levels.
And President Trump and his United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley have done it for all the right reasons, making this as applause-worthy as anything the Trump administration team has done.

To considerable pearl - clutching by global elites, the U.S. has pulled out of the United Nations' global framework for migration, known for now as the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants.

Just listen to the kvetching from the Guardian in its lede:

The Trump administration has pulled out of the United Nations' ambitious plans to create a more humane global strategy on migration, saying involvement in the process interferes with American sovereignty, and runs counter to US immigration policies.

More humane? Sorry pal, there's nothing humane about letting United Nations eurocrats and thirdworldocrats decide who comes to the states over the will of the citizens.

The humane policy is the one described by UN Ambassador Nikki Haley in a statement. She does us all proud:

In a statement issued on Saturday, Haley said: "America is proud of our immigrant heritage and our longstanding moral leadership in providing support to migrant and refugee populations across the globe  But our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone." She said: "We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country. The global approach in the New York declaration is simply not compatible with US sovereignty."

Because, arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, that's likely to be a problem despite what the U.N. and its media minions say. It's also just the sort of thing President Obama would sign off on, and did last year, with this framework for a pact. We know he agreed to take thousands of Syrian refugees into our country at the behest of the U.N., and just as bad, he even agreed to take Middle Eastern refugees from terrorist-infested countries denied entry to Australia for breaking their immigration laws, rewarding them with the much bigger prize for their lawbreaking with U.S. green cards.

Because being a citizen or resident of the United States was nothing special to Obama, the U.S. was just one nation as good or bad as others. Only being a citizen of the world was what was exciting. So of course, it was easy to sign off on the U.N. plan for "orderly" migration at our expense.

What Haley and President Trump have likely seen is how the phony claims of respecting sovereignty have come to naught on the question of migration in the European Union. Countries like Hungary and Poland that have sought to limit migration from backward countries brimming with angry, resentful terrorist-recruitment fodder (if not actual terrorists) have been demonized and threatened with sanctions by their overlords in the E.U. Given the heavy overlap between the coercive eurocrats and the U.N. bureaucracy, the U.S. can expect the exact same treatment if the U.S. doesn't agree to feed, house, shelter, pay, educate, and medically treat the millions of third-worlders awaiting the opportunity to pour in, with U.S. taxpayers footing the bill and watching their hospitals and schools crumble. And if we refuse, we will be held up to public scorn and sanctions. This is a losing proposition.

Would a U.N. bureaucrat really care if he let a few terrorists into the States? Given who runs the U.N., some would do it intentionally.

What's really at the back of this suspect framework is Europe's problem right now: that six millions migrants are straining to enter the European Union, drawn by its vast welfare benefits and the welcome mat put out by German chancellor Angela Merkel. Thomas Lifson notes the story here.

The whole obsession with a framework with its German "orderliness" orientation may be because of this very six million and Europe's unwillingness to shut its doors. Instead of taking responsibility for the mess it's made, and telling unsuitable migrants no, it's easier to fob it off on the U.S., insist it take the biggest quota, and Let Gringo Pay as the European elites virtue-signal their goodness.

Right now, the U.N. is trying to wheedle and flatter the U.S. back into the "orderly" (read: German-style) migration framework, citing America's generosity and experience.

The role of the United States in this process is critical as it has historically and generously welcomed people from all across the globe and remains home to the largest number of international migrants in the world. As such, it has the experience and expertise to help ensure that this process leads to a successful outcome.

Experience and expertise? Here's the experience and expertise for United Nations to learn from as it says it wants:

We are a nation of laws, and through our laws, we control our borders ourselves. That's what works. That's the experience, and that's the expertise.

President Trump and Ambassador Haley see the issue far more clearly than they are likely to given credit for.
I wonder who it was who suggested that a major Politico Magazine story on Chelsea Clinton entitled " Clinton Should Run for Cotton's Senate Seat " was a good idea? A reasonable guess would be members of the Clinton Machine who know that its days are numbered, now that Hillary Clinton is embarrassing herself with excuses for her loss and angry Sanders supporters feel the injustice of having the nomination stolen from their guy.

The problem is that there is no possible heir other than Chelsea to build on the name recognition inherent in the Clinton Brand, and Chelsea is...well...not exactly racking up successes that would appeal to Arkansas voters. True, she enjoys a spacious $15-million apartment in a trendy part of Manhattan, but she didn't earn the money for it, and her husband, whose last hedge fund was shut down after making bad bets on Greek sovereign debt, lacked the wherewithal. And I am not certain that fashionable New York digs count for much in Arkansas.

Still, the Clinton crowd sees her as glamorous:

But running for the Senate, she will not have makeup artists, expert lighting, and the option of choosing only the best look for exposure to the bubbas and bubbettes  not that the glam look is necessarily an asset in Arkansas.

Chelsea embarrassed herself with her short but highly lucrative gig on NBC News. She washed out at McKinsey & Company, where brains, ambition, and hard work are essential. The only job she has managed to keep is at the (renamed) Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which is its own bundle of problems. By all means, let's vet Uranium One on the campaign trail.

The opportunities for cosmic justice are so compelling that I hope Chelsea ignores the troglodytes on the right and does listen to the courtiers desperate for another Clinton to unite behind who can feather their nests.

Go, Chelsea!
Europe slowly is realizing that it has seen only the beginning of its invasion by the poor of the Middle East and Africa. With Germany already reeling from a million refugees who flooded in from the Middle East, a classified German government report was leaked to the newspaper Blid.

The report said that one million people are waiting in Libya; another one million are waiting in Egypt, 720,000 in Jordan, 430,000 in Algeria, 160,000 in Tunisia, and 50,000 in Morocco. More than three million others who are waiting in Turkey are currently prevented from crossing into Europe by the EU's migrant deal with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Those 3 million in the care of an Islamist leader of Turkey with ambitions for a caliphate can't help but revive memories of Ottoman invasions and conquests of part of Europe that lasted for centuries. Erdogan can pull the trigger and release 3 million invaders anytime the blackmail payoffs don't satisfy him.

Even more migrants are moving toward Europe from Africa, regardless of the preferences of Europeans:

The former head of the British embassy in Benghazi, Joe Walker-Cousins, warned that as many as a million migrants from countries across Africa are already on the way to Libya and Europe. The EU's efforts to train a Libyan coast guard was "too little and too late," he said. "My informants in the area tell me there are potentially one million migrants, if not more, already coming up through the pipeline from central Africa and the Horn of Africa."

And:

The director of the United Nations office in Geneva, Michael Mller, has warned that Europe must prepare for the arrival of millions more migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In an interview with The Times, Mller, a Dane, said: "What we have been seeing is one of the biggest human migrations in history. And it's just going to accelerate. Young people all have cellphones and they can see what's happening in other parts of the world, and that acts as a magnet." German Development Minister Gerd Muller has echoed that warning: "The biggest migration movements are still ahead: Africa's population will double in the next decades. A country like Egypt will grow to 100 million people, Nigeria to 400 million. In our digital age with the internet and mobile phones, everyone knows about our prosperity and lifestyle." Muller added that only 10% of those currently on the move have reached Europe: "Eight to ten million migrants are still on the way."

The current globalized world may be unsustainable, given that improvements to communications and transportation have shown people in poor countries unable to develop their own modern economies that a better life is available elsewhere and within their reach. The welfare states of the European countries incentivize and facilitate their ambitions to migrate. The unwillingness of all but a couple of Eastern European countries to defend their borders and turn away undesired migrants seals Europe's fate.

There is a lot of wishful thinking about the new arrivals adopting Western values, but those same communications and transportation improvements mean that home country cultures (and religions) are able not only to sustain themselves, but to grow in the European environment. Welfare benefits superior to the living standards of home countries free up young males for mischief of all sorts.

Gatestone calls it an "African exodus of biblical proportions impossible to stop." I would add the condition "under current politically correct delusions" to that.
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

Much has been made of why Special Counsel Robert Mueller prosecuted former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But what about the lie itself, which President Trump has noted on Twitter was a pretty useless lie?

 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017



The conventional wisdom, as UCLA law professor Harry Litman lays out, is that Flynn "knew" that talking with the Russians, or rather, "negotiating" with them, as he extends the term, was "wrong and inimical to U.S. interests." I notice he doesn't use the word "illegal," and from a law professor, that's significant. Just "wrong."

As Jack Posobiec has found, it was actually all right.

I think Flynn lied because he was afraid. And he was afraid because he's a Washington swamp creature, even if a Trump-friendly one.

In the Washington swamp culture, nothing is worse than talking to a Russian.

Russia is our worst enemy, supposedly, and great amounts of spydom and security clearances hinge on keeping Russia as big an enemy as possible. More enemy, more government funds for the bureaucracies that hunt Russian spies. And more specifically, talk to a Russian, lose your security clearance. It no longer matters if you have had five wives and ten mistresses, smoked a ton of pot, have a minor criminal record, live with your girlfriend, practice devil-worship, or have mental health issues. As we have seen in recent years, pretty much anyone can get a security clearance these days; nothing personal will exclude you, no matter how risky. Ed Snowden shacking up with his pole-dancing girlfriend out in Hawaii is Exhibit A. That leaves just mere contact with the Russians as the main taboo, since something has to be taboo, or why else does anyone need a security clearance?

So Flynn, who White House officials have told me was never as pro-Russia as he was portrayed, lived in this swamp culture for years, and he was Russia-phobic like the rest of them.

Meanwhile, out in the business world, where President Trump hailed from, there were no such taboos. Businessmen who have been doing business with Russian firms have often had good experiences, and that has translated to goodwill. It wasn't just Trump; it was many American and European businesspeople. Trump's pro-Russia stance was appealing to people not affiliated with the state for this very reason.

Flynn likely lied to the FBI out of a reflexive swamp culture mentality of it always being bad to talk to the Russians. Had he been fully on board with Trump mentally instead, he would have gladly and loudly told Mueller's team: "Sure, I talked to the Russians, and we discussed sanctions and what we plan to do when in office," which is hardly "negotiating," as the UCLA law professor argues. It's just talking.

It certainly would explain Trump's astonished tweet about Flynn, given that nothing illegal was going on.

The UCLA law professor made some good points about how such discussions with Russians could gum up other diplomatic maneuvers. But that underlines why it's important for the Obama administration, not the incoming Trump team, to brief the Trump group and keep them informed before the inevitable change of power occurs. Obviously, they didn't.

And now poor Flynn is being swallowed by his own swamp. His problem is that he couldn't get out  not even when he joined Team Trump.
WaPo dismisses Jew-hatred

To the Washington Post editors, the fact that more than half of all religious hate crimes in the U.S. are directed against Jews is not particularly troubling...and never has been. But now that Muslim hate crimes have increased to one quarter of all hate crimes, the Post reports that fact as "particularly troubling." Can the Post be any more blatant in its enmity toward Jews? Anti-Semitism in the media has been steady for at least a hundred years. The United States media did minimal if any reporting while 90% of European Jews were viciously murdered during the Holocaust even though they knew full well what was going on.

The Washington Post's "Hate rises year after year" (11/26/17) reveals Jew-hatred but dismisses it as if it were a "given." This egregious reporting has no place in today's society and in fact ends up being complicit in the enhancement of the oldest hatred  by downplaying it. For all the bigotry and hateful claims that have been bandied about, the top media sources would do well if they spent more time in front of the mirror, looking inward.
It was not much of a contest. The ruling party, the PRI, won, with Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado elected and inaugurated president of Mexico. He followed Jose Lopez Portillo , a man so corrupt that most of my Mexican friends couldn't talk about him without using X-rated language. It got to the point that Lopez Portillo lived in seclusion because crowds would literally " howl like a dog " whenever he was around. In fact, I heard those howls myself one day as he walked into an expensive restaurant in Mexico City.

Back in 1982, I was living and working in Mexico City and experienced my first presidential election south of the border.

President de la Madrid turned out to be a decent man. At least his wife (the first lady) was not in the news every week with her extravagant spending. He left office with a decent reputation but couldn't break up the corrupt Mexican bureaucracy. He honestly tried, but those bureaucrats have a way of "leaking on you," as President Trump has learned.

A year ago, the current president, Enrique Pena Nieto, decided to do something about corruption. He named a commission. He tried to reform PEMEX and the super-corrupt teacher union.

Unfortunately, people are unhappy about the speed of the reforms again. It's hard to convince cynical Mexicans who have seen this movie before. This is from the N.Y. Times:

Mexico's landmark anti-corruption drive, inaugurated by President Enrique Pena Nieto under intense pressure to answer the scandals jolting his administration, is being blocked by the government's refusal to cooperate on some of the biggest cases facing the nation, according to members of the commission coordinating the effort. Attempts to look into the use of government surveillance technology against civilians, the embezzlement of tens of millions of dollars through public universities and allegations of widespread bribery to win construction contracts have all been thwarted, commission members say. Marred by scandals that have embroiled his administration, his allies and even his own family, Mr. Pena Nieto agreed to the creation of a broad anti-corruption system last year that was enshrined in the Constitution, a watershed moment in Mexico. But after nine months of pushing to examine the kind of corruption that ignited public outrage and brought the new watchdog into existence, some of its most prominent members say they have been stymied every step of the way, unable to make the most basic headway. After announcing the new system with great fanfare, they say, the government is now refusing to allow any serious investigations into its actions.

As my Mexican friends would say, "nada nuevo," or nothing new!

To be fair, I think President Pena Nieto, like President de la Madrid, did try to "drain the swamp," but it's very hard to do in Mexico.

Unfortunately, all of those decades of one-party PRI rule have made the bureaucracy so powerful that there is no commission or study that will change anything. It will take a Pinochet-like coup, or a strongman who breaks the back of the public-sector unions, or maybe a revolt from the states sick and tired of financing Mexico City.

So Mexico goes on, and Mexicans get more cynical by the minute. Do you think we hate the political class in the U.S.? Talk to any Mexican, and he will tell you what he thinks of politicians. (Warning: Cover your kids' ears when he really gets going!)

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
Affixed to the wall near the city gate in the town of Dubrovnik on Croatias beautiful Dalmatian Coast, is a map showing the scale of damage the city suffered during the Croatian War of Independence (19911995). The black triangles denote damaged roof, the red boxes denote fires, and the black dots denote direct artillery hits. The damage has been repaired today, but from high points around the city one can clearly see where the bombs fell from the brightly coloured new roofs. While Dubrovnik recovered, the memory of the conflict lingers elsewhere, and nowhere more than in Kupari, located just 10 km to the east of the city.

Photo credit: Gzzz/Wikimedia

Kupari was once a hugely popular holiday resort. This holiday village first opened to tourists in 1919 when a Czech investor built the Grand Hotel on the shoreline. In those days Croatia was a part of the newly formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia, having seceded from Austria-Hungary after the end of the First World War. The stuccoed bricked walls, fluted pillars, and neoclassical swirls of the Grand Hotel is a reminder of Croatias Austro-Hungarian connection.

In the 1960s, Josip Broz Tito, the countrys supreme military commander decided that Kupari was the perfect place to send their army officers on holiday. Over the next two decades five more hotels containing over 2,000 beds were built for officers and their families. Nearby, just around the headland, a campsite was built with three more hotels, villas, and residential houses. Altogether, Kuparis hotels could accommodate up to 4,500 guests.

All the hotels are situated close to the waterline, shrouded in typical Mediterranean greenery, and with direct access to the beach. The camp, situated at a walking distance from the hotels, contained the administration building, a clinic, and other auxiliary structures. Further away from the hotels, at the end of a seaside promenade, is a detached group of amenities including residential buildings and villas and an underground structure where high government officials met.

Then, the Croatian War of Independence broke out in 1991. That summer, the Yugoslav Peoples Army moved into Dubrovnik and began bombarding the historic city. The JNA had captured virtually all of the peninsulas on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, with the exception of Dubrovnik itself. Over the months and years that followed, Dubrovnik and Kupari were subjected to heavy shelling and artillery fire, the scars of which remain visible till today in Kupari.

The biggest hotel, Kupari, was devoured in flames. Pelegrin Hotel was directly hit several times, and its interior was devastated when used for temporary accommodation by the Croatian Army servicemen. After capturing Kupari from the Croatian fighters, the JNA stripped the hotels bare, carrying away everything and anything of value.

After the War of Independence, Dubrovnik was rebuilt but Kupari was left bomb-scarred, broken and permanently closed.

Last year, the former military resort town was purchased by a private party. According to The Dubrovnik Times, all the existing hotels in Kupari will be destroyed to make way for a new five-star resort.

Photo credit: Bjoertvedt/Wikimedia

Photo credit: Igor Trklja/Wikimedia

Photo credit: Ben Fredericson/Flickr

Photo credit: Ben Fredericson/Flickr

Photo credit: Ben Fredericson/Flickr

Photo credit: Ben Fredericson/Flickr

Photo credit: Ben Fredericson/Flickr

Photo credit: Harry McGregor/Flickr

Photo credit: Gzzz/Wikimedia
Brexit means we will all starve says Downing Street winer maker

We are all going to starve because of Brexit. Over the newswires we read that the chief executive of Chapel Down, a Kent wine maker that supplies plonk to 10 Downing Street, telling us that Britons will starve if Brexit means an end to cheap fruit pickers imported from overseas.

Frazer Thompson opines: The biggest potential impact of Brexit is on agricultural labour. Kent has had eastern Europeans picking fruit in recent years, but well all starve if the labour issue is not sorted after Brexit.

Dead. All dead. And you thank Brexit for it. But hold on moment, why dont we  and lets just toss this out there  trade with other countries who have lots of fruit? Says Thompson: We want a resolution to allow us to have freedom of movement for labour to pick the fruit. This is something that affects all fruit farmers across the south-east of England. Im hoping it will be sorted out and I hope they wont close the doors, as if theres no one to pick the fruit, well have to import everything.

So British fruit remains unpicked because its too expensive to pick here and because its less expensive to pick over there we import the stuff. So whats the problem? Is that the English wine made from English grapes will be more expensive than the English wine made from Greek, Portuguese, Hungary or Romanian grapes? Or why not go outside the EU and buy grapes from places where labour is even cheaper, like Chile and South Africa?

Or why not get the fruit-pickers from within the EU zone visas?

Once upon a time, of course, fruit was picked by seasonal workers  you know, people who went somewhere to do a job and then moved on. But if the peasants are too expensive for the farmer, why not invest in a machine?

Anorak

Posted: 4th, December 2017 | In: Money, News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
Damian Green: flagrant abuse is what we love best

The Daily Damian: a look at Damian Green in the newspapers. The story so far: the Deputy PM is accused of having porn on his PC and chatting up a younger woman, whose knee she says he touched. The Cabinet Office is investigating. Damian Green say hes innocent. Now read on

The Sun (page 6) says Education Secretary Justine Greening all but called for him to be sacked. Greening told BBC viewers to Andrew Marrs Sunday morning show that most employers would think it unacceptable to watch porn at work. On the other side (ITV) was Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, telling everyone that he trusts Damian Green and I believe what he says.

On Page 10, Trevor Kavanagh says the story is based on a politically motivated vendetta against Green by two bitter former police officers, Bob Quick and co-conspirator Neil Lewis. We learn that Quick led the scandalous raid on Greens office in 2008 over alleged leaks from the Home Office. Quick seized the computers. Lewis fund the porn. And then comes the worrying bit: thousands of perfectly legal images were copied  against orders  and squirrelled away by Lewis for future use. Kavanagh alleges its part of moves to get back at Theresa May for threatening to smash their Mafia-style trade union.

Over in the Mirror (page2 ), Justine Greening is telling Green to fall on your sword. Which isnt a euphemism for masturbation, rather a euphemism for career suicide, or maybe actual suicide. On page 8, Kevin Maguire wonders if the Tories would back an ordinary worker  are MPs made extraordinary in anything but the glorious building they occupy?  if police found thousands of indecent images on his or her desktop. Dunno. Maybe police should all check their PCs and let us know what occurs?

And how is watching porn on your PC any different from watching porn in a magazine or newspaper, say, perhaps one that on Page 41 offers readers the chance to call premium-rate phone numbers and get some X-RATED CHEAP CHAT from 18-94 years olds and REAL HOUSEWIVES? The Mirror does. And it offers no warning against doing so whilst at work, nor displaying the porny images that go with the adverts lest it offend workmates and paymasters.

The Mail (pages 6 and 7), says Lewis could be prosecuted  as watchdog accuses him of flagrant violation of the publics trust in police. New Met commissioner Cressida Dick says the force is thinking about investigating Lewis. Dick, you will recall, was in charge when armed police shot dead innocent Jean Charles de Menezes as he waited for a train on the London Underground. No police employee was disciplined for that.

Speaking on BBC Radio London today, Dick said: All police officers know very well that they have a duty of confidentiality, a duty to protect personal information. That duty in my view clearly endures after you leave the service. And so it is my view that what they have done based on my understanding of what theyre saying what they have done is wrong, and I condemn it.

We also hear in the Mail from Eleanor Laing, who says deputy speaker of the Commons, who says in a letter dated November 14:

A member of my parliamentary staff has told me that, several years ago, before we had effective screening of our parliamentary computers, she used to find pornographic images on her computer every morning when she switched it on She was certainly not accessing pornographic sites deliberately or even accidentally. The material was just there on her computer every day. She simply deleted it. This happened before 2010.Thus, it would appear that material found in the parliamentary computer system can be proved to have been put there by some other means than by the deliberate actions of the person operating the computer.

Lax security in parliament. Who knew?

Over in the Guardian, a columnist thunders: !If Damian Green harassed a woman or lied, he must go. Yeah. If. But do consider it for as long as it takes to read 500-odd words about todays burning issue.

In other news: I took up porn to help me stop smoking, says man looking for five-minute work break.

Anorak

Posted: 4th, December 2017 | In: Broadsheets, News, Politicians, Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
(ANSA) - Strasbourg, December 4 - The European Court of Human Rights has asked the Italian government to assess whether keeping Marcello Dell'Utri in jail is a violation of his rights due to his poor health. The request was made during the conveying to Rome of documents related to an appeal filed in Strasbourg on December 20, 2014, by Dell'Utri.

Dell'Utri, a former right-hand man of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, is not entitled to early release because of the gravity of the mafia-related crimes he was convicted of, Italy's highest court ruled in October.

External collaboration in mafia association is a crime excluded from those where early release can be granted, the court said. Dell'Utri is serving seven years for colluding with the mafia in Palermo.

The 76-year-old former close aide to three-time ex-premier and media mogul Berlusconi and co-founder of Berlusconi's Forza Italia party was convicted in 2014 of acting as an ambassador between the centre-right group and the Cosa Nostra Mafia in his native Sicily.

He was extradited from Beirut to serve his sentence. Dell'Utri is also the former head of the media magnate's advertising arm and is credited with creating the media mogul's Forza Italia party in 1993, six months before it swept to victory in general elections.

In addressing the Strasbourg court, Dell'Utri said he had been convicted on the basis of a law that came into force after he committed the crimes he was convicted of.

He added that the charges against him were vague and imprecise.


(ANSA) - Rome, December 4 - The square around the Colosseum is a 'suk' and its illegal street hawkers must be cleared away from the iconic monument, newly appointed director of the Colosseum Archaeological Park, Alfonsina Russo, said Monday.

"Piazza del Colosseo is a suk, and we'll have to work to reach the goal of legality and also give the impression to those coming to Italy that it is a civilised country," she said.

Russo called for talks between the prefecture, the Rome police office and the city council. "It's clear that I'm not the one who must intervene but the council which, with ordinances, must clear the area and restore legality around the Colosseum.

She also called for a four-year-old accord between then mayor Ignazio Marino and Culture Minister Dario Franceschini to clean up the area to be revived.


BEIRUT - Former Yemeni president Ali Abdallah Saleh was killed on Monday while fleeing from the capital, Sanaa.



Several media outlets confirmed the news and sources near the former leader say that he was killed "by gunfire south of Sanaa". The Arabic version of the Iranian state television, Al-Alam, has published photos of what they claim is his corpse. But the spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Monday that the UN had not yet received independent confirmation of the killing of Yemeni former president
Brussels to rule on Catalan ex-president's extradition 14/12 Announcement by lawyers

(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, DECEMBER 4 - The decision whether to extradite former regional president of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont from Brussels to Spain will be made on December 14.



The announcement was made by his lawyers. "There is no decision", one of his lawyers said after the day's hearing, where "today the prosecutor repeated his request for the execution of the European arrest warrant and that Puigdemont be extradited to Spain to face charges of sedition and misuse of state funds.



Then former regional president's lawyers said that "there should not have been and there will not be any extradition to Spain, because we believe that the accusations against the Catalan government are not punishable in Belgium", and that if Puigdemont and the other members of his former government exiled in Belgium (Antoni Comin, Meritxell Serret, Clara Ponsati and Lluis Puig) "were to be extradited to Catalonia, there would be the risk of violation of basic human rights". Thus, the defense lawyers said, "the judge will reflect and will make his decision on December 14". (ANSAmed).




Catalans Junqueras, Forn stay jailed over 'risk of violence' Together with the 'Jordis'. Magistrate rules against release

(ANSAmed) - MADRID, DECEMBER 4 - A Spanish judge has ruled against the release from jail of Catalonia's former deputy president Oriol Junqueras, of former interior minister Joachim Forn and of separatist leaders Jordi Sanches and Jordi Cixart, over a "risk of reiteration of the crime", on the assumption that "their actions were directly linked to an outburst of violence".



The separatist front has always stressed that the 'process' aimed at making Catalonia independent was entirely peaceful and democratic and considers the 10 jailed leaders as "political detainees" of the Spanish State. Junqueras and the seven ministers were arrested at the beginning of November after the proclamation of the 'Republic' by the Catalan Parliament on October 27.



Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart, leaders of separatist civil society organizations Anc and Omnium, are in preventive detention since mid-October on 'sedition' charges over large, non-violent demonstrations in Barcelona on September 20-21 against a Spanish Guardia Civil operation against the Catalan government headquarters.



Ousted Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four former ministers are in exile in Belgium on the wake of an arrest warrant and extradition request issued by Spain. The Belgian judiciary's procedure should last two months.



Eight out of the 10 'political detainees' and three politicians exiled in Belgium are running in elections scheduled on December 21. They are accused of alleged 'rebellion' for 'promoting Catalonia's independence' as part of their political agenda.



They risk up to 30 years in jail.



Puigdemont and Junqueras, the two leading candidates for Catalonia's presidency - if the separatist front should win, as forecast by polls -, will have to campaign respectively from Brussels and from jail. (ANSAmed)
Houthi rebels blow up ex-president Saleh's home in Sanaa Prior to news of his killing

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, DECEMBER 4 - Gulf media sources reported on Monday prior to the news of his killing that one of the residences of Yemeni former president Ali Abdallah Saleh had been blown up on Monday by Houthi rebels. The source said that the Houthis had broken into several homes and buildings inside and outside of Sanaa that they believed belong to Saleh's supporters. (ANSAmed).




Malta: ten suspects arrested over reporter's murder Premier Joseph Muscat announces

(ANSAmed) - ROME, DECEMBER 4 - Maltese police have arrested ten suspects in connection with the murder of journalist Dephne Caruana Galizia last October, Premier Joseph Muscat was quoted as announcing Monday by the Times of Malta and on Twitter. The suspects are all reportedly Maltese nationals and were arrested following multiple raids.



Caruana Galizia was killed on October 16 in a car bomb attack.



''I have been informed of a security operation that took place this morning'', Muscat said, adding he believed it was in the best national interest to inform the public about the operation. ''The operation was carried out by police, Malta's armed forces and our security services following investigations carried out in the last few weeks'', he continued. The premier said there are ''reasonable suspects'' that they are involved in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.



Police now have 48 hours to question the suspects and decide whether to indict them. The premier then stressed he is involved ''more than ever'' in efforts to solve the case.(ANSAmed).




ISTANBUL - Turkish authorities have apprehended over the past week a reported 4,777 migrants and refugees who were trying to illegally cross its borders with the European Union or to enter the country, the interior ministry has said.

These include 41 migrants who were apprehended at sea.

The ministry said that during the same period security forces arrested 114 alleged human traffickers.


(ANSAmed) - ROME, DECEMBER 4 - The death toll from violent clashes in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, rose on Monday to 125.



The fighting has been underway for the past five days. Al Arabiya quoted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in giving the new toll, noting that at least 238 have also been injured. (ANSAemd).


Yemen: no independent confirmation of Saleh's death, UN Spokesperson wants 'immediate cessation of Sanaa hostilities'

(ANSAmed) - NEW YORK, DECEMBER 4 - Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Monday that the UN had not yet received independent confirmation of the killing of Yemeni former president Ali Abdallah Saleh earlier in the day. He went on to urge all parties involved in the ongoing fighting to protect civilians and for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the Yemeni capital Salaa. (ANSAmed).




Yemen: Saudi Coalition raids to support Saleh Jets bomb positions of Houthi rebels in Sanaa

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, DECEMBER 4 - Saudi-led Arab Coalition jets have bombed overnight positions of Houthi rebels in Yemen's capital Sanaa, in support of the forces of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has broken his alliance with the Houthis over the past few days, local sources were quoted as saying by Arab newspapers.



Suse van Meegen, a manager at humanitarian organization Norwegian Refugee Council, present in Sanaa, told the AP news agency that the new fighting and raids ''completely paralyzed humanitarian operations''.



Fighting between Houthi militias allied with Iran and Saleh's forces started on Wednesday last week in the capital.



Saleh, who was ousted in 2011, had forged an alliance three years ago with Houthi rebels, who are Shiite like him and are close to Iran, to fight the internationally-recognized government of President Abd Rabbo Mansut Hadi, his former deputy who is supported by Saudi Arabia.



In a televised speech broadcast on Saturday, Saleh asked the Saudi-led Coalition to end bombings targeting rebel forces and a blockade on Yemeni ports and airports, promising to ''turn over a new page'' in return.



From the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia's main ally, Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash meanwhile stated that ''the national uprising in Sanaa needs support'' to ''defend the Arabic peninsula against Iranian expansion and Houthi gangs''.



''Regardless of the outcome of the blessed uprising in Sanaa, it is clear that Yemenis have refused Houthi militias backed by Iran'', Gargash was also quoted as saying by Emirati newspaper Gulf News. (ANSAmed).




Yemeni ex-president Saleh killed while fleeing Sanaa Several media outlets confirm

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, DECEMBER 4 - Former Yemeni president Ali Abdallah Saleh was killed on Monday while fleeing from the capital, Sanaa.



Several media outlets confirmed the news and sources near the former leader say that he was killed "by gunfire south of Sanaa". The Arabic version of the Iranian state television, Al-Alam, has published photos of what they claim is his corpse.



(ANSAmed).




Hamas vows another intifada if Jerusalem recognized capital 'It would be an attack on the city by Trump'

(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 4 - Hamas has threatened to start another intifada if the US administration under president Donald Trump recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or if it were to move its embassy to the city. These decisions, Hamas said in a statement, "would be seen as an attack on the city by the US", adding that "we warn against such developments and we will ask the Palestinian population to resume the intifada if these unjust decisions concerning Jerusalem were to be adopted". The recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the transfer of the US embassy there would, Hamas said, guarantee for Israel "coverage to continue committing its crimes, including the 'Jewification' of the city and the emptying out of the Palestinian population". (ANSAmed).




NEW YORK - US President Donald Trump has not taken a decision yet on whether to formally recognize Jerusalem as ''Israel's indivisible capital''.

''He's still looking at a lot of different facts, and then when he makes his decision, he'll be the one to want to tell you, not me'', Trump's advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner said at an annual conference on U.S. policy in the Middle East organized by the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington in his first public outing since the plea deal involving fired national security advisor Michael Flynn.

Kushner said he tried not to mind media allegations and that his ambition was to get things done.

Kushner is alleged, as a leading member of Trump's transition team, to have directed Flynn in his contacts with the Russians - a charge that, if true, would take him at the center of the investigation led by special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

At the Brooking Institute, Kushner only spoke about peace in the Middle East, saying it is attainable.

He said the administration did not see a peace agreement as a piece of paper to be signed in hopes that everything would be all right, noting that it rather focused on the phase after a potential signature.

However, the public opinion's attention has focused on Jerusalem: Trump could announce between Tuesday and Wednesday the recognition of the city as Israel's capital, paving the way for a future move of the US embassy, which is currently located in Tel Aviv.

The announcement is not without tension: the Palestinians would likely consider such a move as a provocation as they want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state.

Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, (Abu Mazen) openly stated this: the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital could destroy nascent peace efforts of the White House in the Middle Eastern area.

''It would threaten the future of the peace process and it is unacceptable'', he said.
The actors called for strict actions against the people calling for such violent threats while talking at an event.

Mumbai: Bollywood stars Hrithik Roshan, Varun Dhawan and Sonakshi Sinha have said death threats being issued to fellow actor Deepika Padukone and 'Padmavati' director Sanjay Leela Bhansali are not "right".

The actors, who were speaking on the sidelines of an award event over the weekend, called for strict actions against the people calling for such violent threats.

"It is a clear indication of our level of evolution. We are still evolving as a society and as individuals. It is a reflection of the fact that we still have a long way to go to evolve into beings, that bereft of these problems and issues of assumptions and attacks. It is not right," Hrithik said, who has worked with Bhansali in 'Guzaarish'.

While Varun said India is a democracy and every one has the right to protest, but things should not turn violent.

"Protesting peacefully is fine. It is a democracy, and everyone should be allowed to voice their opinion and we should totally respect that.

"But making a (death) threat should not be allowed in a democracy. And I believe in our judiciary, I am sure they will manage it," he said.

Sonakshi said the kind of protest film and the cast members are facing is not "correct".

"... Whatever is happening is not right and it shouldn't happen. In our country, if threats are given openly, it is not a correct thing. I think strict action should be taken against it."

'Padmavati' got caught in a controversy after several Rajput groups alleged that history has been "distorted" in the movie.

Bhansali has been accused of filming a romantic dream sequence between Rajput queen Padmini (Deepika) and Sultan Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh), a claim repeatedly denied by the filmmaker.

The movie was earlier scheduled to be released on December 1.

The makers deferred the release till they receive a certificate from the CBFC.

Chief ministers of BJP-ruled states such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat have also called for a ban on the period drama.
Shahid also comes down hard on the Karni Sena for threatening Deepika Padukone with physical harm.

Despite the informal gag order on him, the actor minced no words as he requested those protesting against Padmavati to watch the film before passing a verdict, and wished Deepika well.

Shahid Kapoor cant be kept quiet for long. As one of the most anticipated movies of his career, Padmavati, has fallen into trouble, Shahid forgets he has a gag order on him.

When asked if the situation has become tougher for his film to release, he rattles off, I dont think it has worsened. Its taking longer than what anyone anticipated; in the normal course of things it doesnt take so long. We were all surprised by the turn of events. Everyone is aware that the release date has been deferred. Things arent extremely bad, but its very strange that people are choosing to decide whats in the film without watching it; its very weird. I have been saying all along that you have to watch the film before forming an opinion. Why do you have so many preconceived notions about the film without knowing the facts of its content?

Shahid also comes down hard on the Karni Sena for threatening Deepika Padukone with physical harm. Its in terrible taste. Im surprised there are such things being said about a lady; Im shocked, he says.

Deepika Padukone in a still from film 'Padmavati'

The actor says that the team has had to abandon promotions in the absence of a release date. I had just started promoting the film with a radio trail, and it had to be stopped, sighs Shahid. However, once we get a release date, we will be everywhere.

Despite the troubles, Shahids director Sanjay Leela Bhansali was spotted in a relaxed mood, even as he had to step out with police protection. He was seen at the Mumbai airport with a posse of cops, as he left for New Delhi to appear before the parliamentary committee looking into the Padmavati controversy.

Im glad you feel he is relaxed. Ive not had the chance to meet him recently, Shahid says. My heart goes out to him. Hes probably the finest filmmaker Ive ever worked with and he has tried his level best. Eventually, its all subjective. In a democracy, everyone has a right to their opinion and one needs to respect each others opinions. Do things with love because you have to believe that the person in question isnt trying to deliberately harm us with his film. Sanjay has been at the receiving end of criticism, and he hasnt been able to show his film. For someone of his calibre, its not right for him to not be able to show his film at this stage in his career. Im just wishing and sending a lot of love and prayers to him everyday.

Shahid has been no stranger to release controversies, with Udta Punjab falling into trouble last year too. He, however, feels that the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) should be the one taking calls, and not anyone else, something that happened during Udta Punjab.

It has been a nice big circle, and were back to where we started from. The CBFC should be the right body to take a decision. Im hoping that sooner than later  its already been pretty long  that we should get moving. I saw a lot of problems in Udta Punjab, and the film eventually released. I believe that it will be the same with Padmavati. So, I want people to see the film with an open heart, and I will respect their opinions once they see the movie, concludes Shahid.

 Sanskriti Media
The veteran actor was reportedly admitted to the hospital on August 22.

Mumbai: Acting legend Shashi Kapoor (79) succumbed to a prolonged illness at Kokilaben Hospital, Andheri on Monday. He is survived by his daughter Sanjana, and sons Kunal and Karan. The veteran actor was reportedly admitted to the hospital on August 22.

Dr Ram Narain, executive director of the hospital, said, Kapoor expired at 5.20 pm on Monday. Dr Narain, however, did not reveal the cause of his death.

President Ram Nath Kovind, expressing condolences over the veteran actors death via Twitter, said, Sorry to hear of the demise of Shashi Kapoor, well-known actor, with a repertoire of Indian and international films. His support for meaningful cinema as a producer and pivotal role in the theatre movement in India too are cherished. Condolences to his family (sic).

Stating that Kapoors contribution to the Hindi film industry would be remembered forever, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis tweeted, My deepest condolences to his family, friends and millions of fans.

Kapoor received the Padma Bhushan in 2011 for his contributions to the field of cinema. In 2014, he was conferred the Dadasaheb Phalke Award.
Rubbishing earlier reports, sources say that SLB has no plans to meet chief ministers to convince them to release Padmavati.

A Mumbai tabloid stated that the director intends to hold reconciliatory meetings with chief ministers of states banning Padmavati. However, sources close to Sanjay Leela Bhansali have condemned a report.

Completely denying the veracity of this report, the source said, This is clearly a brainwave of a bored journalist looking for some excitement in his work. There is no plan whatsoever to meet chief ministers or to make potentially reconciliatory gestures with any other group or individual at the moment. SLB went to Delhi to meet the parliamentary committee for an amicable discussion. That was done out of respect for the parliament. Apart from that, the director has no intentions of meeting anyone to convince them to release his films.

Another source close to Padmavati says the plan at the moment is to maintain a low profile. Theyre waiting for the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) to view Padmavati and for the Gujarat elections to be over before locking in on another release date, says a source.

The question now is, why is the CBFC not viewing and certifying Padmavati?

This was the question Prasoon Joshi was repeatedly asked by the parliamentary committee. He doesnt seem to have any tenable answer to that, says the informed source.

Back to the Bhansali rumour, here is a warning from SLB to the speculative fantastical sections of the media: Just because I am not speaking, please do not presume you can get away with anything.
Hussain Haidry is an upcoming lyricist, whose evocative and thoughtful poem has won the hearts of one and all.

Mujhmein Geeta ka saar bhi hai, ek Urdu ka akhbaar bhi hai

Mera ek mahina Ramzan bhi hai, maine kiya toh Ganga snaan bhi hai

Main kaisa Musalman hoon bhai?

These are a few lines from Hussain Haidrys poem Main Hindustani Musalman Hoon, which he first performed at Kommune  a space for artists, on February 10. Since then, the poetry has gone viral.

I got the idea of writing a poem on my own Muslim identity during my time in Kolkata while traveling to Bhutan for a solo trip in 2015. I wrote that poem in a small diary and lost it after returning to Kolkata. However, the first couple of lines stuck with me for over a year, until I was in Mumbai  and I wrote a completely different poem with the same initial lines to be performed at open mics or poetry events held in Mumbai, shares Hussain, a Gujarati-speaking Bohra Muslim from Madhya Pradesh.

When asked whether he was talking about nationalism in the poem, the Bollywood lyricist and screenwriter says, I never really wanted to convey a message. It was just a poem that talked about how I thought of myself as a Muslim  a person born under Islam but living in a country as diverse as India. It was meant to be just a piece that I would perform and get feedback and responses for. I am very grateful to Kommune for putting it up on their channel and to all the people who have liked it and even critiqued it. What touched me the most was that a lot of people across the country related to it and called those words their own.

However, one wonders whether Main Hindustani Musalman Hoon, which mentions several subjects such as the Bhagwad Gita, bathing in the Ganges and smoking and drinking could anger orthodox Muslims? I read a few critiques of the poem, some even from a sociological/ historical/religious angle. I found that some were legitimate arguments that made me read up and learn things, while some I didnt agree to, says the soft-spoken poet, who likes to read Sahir Ludhianvi and Amitav Ghosh.

Interestingly, this Indore-born chartered accountant and Indian IIM-Indore graduate left his job in Kolkata and moved to Mumbai to become a full-time lyricist and screenwriter. Gazal Dhaliwal and Varun Grover, who have been my friends since my open mic days in Mumbai back in 2010, helped me a lot. When I came back to Mumbai in 2016, I felt that I had lost my knack in writing poetry and that I needed at least a year to prepare academically to be able to write lyrics. They were, however, very confident that I could do it right away. But the pessimist in me kept thinking theyre just saying it the way usually friends do so that my hopes are not crushed. I just wanted them to guide me through the struggling phase and help me understand if I was on the right path, but instead they both helped me connect with Tanuja Chandra and Anurag Kashyap for their upcoming films, he recalls.

Obviously, that was a huge step forward for Hussain! It was largely because of their faith in me. The first two songs I ended up writing were for Qarib Qarib Singlle and then I worked for six songs in Mukkabaaz, says the 31-year-old.
In a series of tweets, Congress asked when BJP will respond to its senior leaders like Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha.

The reaction comes in response to Modi mocking the Congress over the upcoming election of its president, alleging the party had a history of rigging organisational polls. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for mocking its presidential election and, raising the issue of "internal democracy" in the BJP, asked him when he would answer questions posed by the leaders of his own party.

Congress communications in-charge Randeep Surjewala raked up the names of former BJP top guns such as L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sanjay Joshi, Keshubhai Patel and Anandiben Patel, alleging they were "victims" of Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah's "internal democracy".

"Dear PM, your love for 'Shahzad', 'Shah-Zada' and 'Shaurya' is now well known, but 'Nation wants to know' when will you reply to the questions raised by senior BJP leaders, 'Shourie' (Arun), Sinha (Yashwant) and Sinha (Shatrughan)," he posted on Twitter.

Surjewala further tweeted, "Blinded by rage and enmity, what unimaginable depths would you fall to?"

He also referred to senior BJP leaders such as Advani and Joshi in another tweet.

"Modiji, do tell Gujarat and country about the victims of yours and Amit Shah's 'internal democracy' in BJP, namely- Lal Krishna Advani, Keshubhai Patel, Hiren Pandya, Kanshiram Rana, Anandiben Patel, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sanjay Joshi, who were compulsorily lost in pages of history," he said.

Earlier, while addressing a poll rally in Gujarat, Modi had mocked the Congress over the upcoming election of its president, alleging the party had a history of rigging organisational polls.

The charge was raised after a Congress leader from Maharashtra, Shehzad Poonawala, alleged that the Congress organisational polls were "rigged" and state party delegates were not elected.

Modi said at the rally the outcome of the election to the top post in the Congress was a foregone conclusion.

"If you do not have democracy in your home (party) how can you practise it in the country," Modi asked.
Survivors have refused to give up even 33 years after the disaster.

Bhopal: The hope of survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, billed as the worlds worst industrial disaster that claimed lives of more than 15,000 people and maimed nearly six lakh others, getting justice has dimmed further following the recent merger of Dow Chemical with DuPont, experts apprehended.

However, the survivors have refused to give up even 33 years after the man-made disaster, and vowed to continue their battle for justice. Around 5000 survivors suffering from various illnesses such as cancer, respiratory problems and deformities following their exposure to the toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the former pesticide factory of the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) in Bhopal on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984, will make a representations to the supreme court appealing for speedy disposal of the case pertaining to the matter to give them justice, Bhopal Gas Peedit Sangarsh Samiti (BGPSS) president Abdul Jabbar, who is one of the survivors of the tragedy, told this newspaper on Sunday.

The matter relating to compensation the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy has been pending before the supreme court for the past 12 years.

Mr Jabbar said the recent development of merger between Dow Chemical and DuPont had not come as a surprise for them since This is the way the corporate work to get rid of their liabilities.

In September this year, the Dow Chemical and DuPont completed the planned $130 billion merger to form DowDuPont.

The UNs special rapporteur on hazardous substance and wastes Bastuk Tuncak has expressed apprehensions that the development might erase any remaining possibility of the victims of the Bhopal disaster seeing an effective remedy.

Dow Chemical had already disowned liabilities of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) after taking over the latter in 2000.

The UCC had paid $470 million dollar as compensation under an agreement settled between the government of India and the company after the tragedy. But, later the Centre had contested the compensation amount describing it meager.

Under the settlement agreement between the UCC and the government of India, the count of deaths and injured persons had been pegged at 3,000 and 1,02,000 respectively whereas the Bhopal claim court had estimated that 15,274 people were killed and 5,74,000 others injured in the tragedy.
The minimum punishment has been enhanced to 20 years rigorous imprisonment for gang rape of girls aged 12 or below in the bill.

As per government data, 12 girls and women are raped in MP and a gang rape is reported in every 32 hours. (Representational image)

Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh Assembly on Monday unanimously passed a historic bill awarding death to rapists of girls aged 12 or below, becoming the first Indian state to introduce capital punishment as a deterrence against child rapists.

Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said, There are people in society who can be set right only by severe punishments. It (the legislation) will deal with them. We will also raise awareness in society against such crimes.

Those who indulge in such heinous crimes are not human beings but devils. They have no right to live. I hope human rights activists will not raise a hue and cry over the provisions of the bill, he added.

As per the exiting penal provisions, a rapist faces a minimum punishment of rigorous imprisonment of seven years, which may extend to imprisonment for life. The new bill provides death penalty or a minimum term of 14 years in jail or life imprisonment till death for raping girls aged 12 or below.

The Madhya Pradesh bill, named the Dand Vidhi (Madhya Pradesh Sansodhan) Vidheyak, 2017, will need the Presidents assent to become law. Under the bill, capital punishment will be awarded to convicts under Section 376 (A), which is related to rape, and Section 376 (D, A), pertaining to gang rape.

The minimum punishment has been enhanced to 20 years rigorous imprisonment for gang rape of girls aged 12 or below in the bill. It also proposes punishment for disrobing a woman, stalking or sex on the pretext of marriage and makes the offence by habitual offenders non-bailable and punishable.

Madhya Pradesh women and child welfare minister Archana Chitnis said, It is a historic bill. The legislation will certainly help check crimes against women, particularly the minors.

The bill comes close to the release of data showing that Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of rapes in the country in 2016.

As per government data, 12 girls and women are raped in MP and a gang rape is reported in every 32 hours. The number of cases of crimes against women has jumped from 22,061 in 2013 to 24,135 in 2015, while the number of rapes has increased from 4,335 to 4,391 during the period.
The hospital authorities had ordered an inquiry on December 1, saying the doctor concerned had been asked to proceed on leave immediately.

New Delhi: Two experts from the Indian Medical Association (IMA) have been included in the investigation team set up by Max Healthcare authorities to investigate the case of a premature baby being wrongly declared dead, the hospital said on Sunday.

The case pertains to the birth of twins (boy and girl) on Nov. 30. Both the babies were declared dead by the Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh. However, the family later found the boy was alive.

The expert group set up by Max Healthcare to investigate the circumstances and protocols followed regarding the premature delivery (23 weeks/5 months) of the twins and the subsequent declaration of death at Max Hospital, Shalimar Bagh, is working towards concluding its detailed probe.

Dr A. Agarwal, chairperson, ethics committee, IMA and Dr Ramesh Datta, joint secretary, IMA, have been included as external experts in the group, Max Healthcare said in a statement.

The investigation is expected to conclude by tomorrow and the findings are expected to be shared thereafter, it said.

The hospital authorities had ordered an inquiry on December 1, saying the doctor concerned had been asked to proceed on leave immediately.

The government ordered its own probe into the incident. On December 2, health minister Satyendar Jain said that if the hospital was found guilty of medical negligence in its probe, its licence could be cancelled.

The mother was brought to the hospital from a nursing home in Paschim Vihar, police said. The parents were earlier told by Max that both the babies were stillborn, and were handed to them in a polythene bag, but just before their last rites, the family found the boy was alive. A case of attempt to commit culpable homicide has already been filed.
During interrogation he confessed to plotting to kill Mr Dey as part of his Jihadi activities, sources revealed.

Kolkata: Arrested ISIS suspect Mohammed Masihuddin alias Musa, who had allegedly planned to carry out an attack at Mother House, the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Kolkata to target foreign national, tried to kill a prison official for jihad inside the Alipore Central Jail on Sunday morning. The injured  Gokul Chandra Dey  is a middle-aged jail warder.

He went to call Musa at his cell during Lock Out, a routine session which allows the prisoners to go out in a compound on the prison premises after the day starts, said director general of police (correctional services) Arun Kumar Gupta. Mr Dey has been posted for the job for the past two years.

Mr Gupta added, As the jail warder asked Musa to come out at around 8 am, Musa made some jihadi comments towards his fellow prisoners to incite them. As the jail warden intervened, he pushed him off to the ground and hit him with a piece of stone. He slit his throat with a small but sharp iron piece used in PWD works in prison. With deep injuries in throat, Mr Dey was rescued by his colleagues.

He was rushed to SSKM Hospital from where he was later shifted to Calcutta Medical Research Institute later. Mr Gupta said, His condition is stable now. A case under section 307 (attempt to murder) has been initiated against Musa. An investigation is underway. Senior prison officials visited the jail later.

Musa has been shifted from his cell no 2 in block 12 to a separate one.

During interrogation he confessed to plotting to kill Mr Dey as part of his Jihadi activities, sources revealed.

Originally from Labhpur in Birbhum, the 25-year-old terror suspect was arrested by the criminal investigation department from the Burdwan railway station in July of 2016 on charges of radicalising youths to join the ISIS.

He also reportedly had links to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), whose leader Abu Suleiman had met Musa at the latters sisters wedding in March 2015.

Later, the National Investigation Agency took him in its custody to unearth the ISIS network and its plots in the state.

Musa was grilled by the Rapid Action Batallion of Bangladesh and the Federal Bureau of Investigation over ISIS network.

He has been lodged at the high security prison over a year. In December last year, the NIA in a chargesheet accused Musa of plotting an attack on the Mother House as a soft target to kill the American, British and Russian citizens  who visit the place on AJC Bose Road in south Kolkata to pay homage to its founder Mother Teresa  as a retaliation to the offensive against the ISIS in the Middleeast.

Musa came under the scanner of Indian investigation agencies after his e-mails and calls were traced to Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Syria. According to the NIA, he stayed in touch with several ISIS operatives, including leader Shafi Arman, in Syria through Facebook and Twitter, and was entrusted with building an ISIS module and recruitment in West Bengal.
US Defense Secretary Mattis says he wants to work with Pakistan; listening to one another without being combative, to address the problems.

Mattis is the first top US official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the new South Asia Strategy that was announced by President Donald Trump on August 21. (Photo: PTI/ File)

Washington: US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has said that he intends to work hard to find common ground with Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, which is necessary to restore the level of stability in South Asia to allow economic development.

Ahead of his visit to Islamabad, Mattis said he wants to work with Pakistan, listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective, and to address the problems.

Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Pakistan, since taking over the charge of the Pentagon. Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest the 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

Saeed is still roaming free, despite vigourous warning from the Trump Administration. "The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," Mattis told reporters travelling with him on his way to Pakistan from Egypt.

Mattis is the first top US official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the new South Asia Strategy that was announced by President Donald Trump on August 21.

"We know we have some common ground. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their innocent people and troops murdered and wounded by terrorists, so we know that there is a common ground," said Mattis.

Similarly, he said, there is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth in order to live in one and attack in the other.

"Now it is about how much more common grounds can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another and listening to others perspective," Mattis added.

"But at the same time, as the (Pakistan Army Chief) General (Qamar Javed Bajwa) has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and we'll find that common ground, if we have the will to, he said.

"And then we'll work on how we address the problems where we can work together," the Defense Secretary said. Responding to a question, he said he would not characterize everything, over the past 16 years, as failures.

"There is clearly an abundance of areas where we have to double down, and I am optimistic at this point that because of what our adversaries, our mutual enemies are doing, that we can find ways to work together," he said.

Mattis said both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military, the NATO-led militaries of 39 nations have all been in fights in Washington.

"We've got to find a way to work together". He said there is "always an urgency to something" when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken.

"These are 39 of the most economically powerful, generally speaking, most long-term democratic institutions in the world. These are powerful nations morally, economically and diplomatically, and certainly militarily," he added.

Mattis said that it was essential in South Asia that all work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economy to build.

"I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We cannot only imagine it; it's a reality right now," Mattis said.

So, the US Defence Secretary said that we have got to work together on this, and there's a sense of urgency about that.

"There are people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries. So as you look at this problem, if you'll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things," he said. Mattis is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and General Bajwa.

"General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting that's characterized the area," he said.
Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait and Pakistan, since taking over the charge of the Pentagon.

Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest the 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding. (Photo: AFP)

Washington: US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said he intends to work hard to find common ground with Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, which is necessary to restore the level of stability in South Asia to allow economic development.

Ahead of his visit to Islamabad, Mattis said he wants to work with Pakistan, listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective, to address the problems.

Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait and Pakistan, since taking over the charge of the Pentagon.

Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest the 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

Saeed is still roaming free, despite tough warning from the Trump Administration.

"The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," Mattis told reporters travelling with him on his way to Pakistan from Egypt.

Mattis is the first top US official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the new South Asia Strategy that was announced by President Donald Trump on August 21.

"We know we have some common ground. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their troops killed and wounded by terrorists. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their innocent people murdered and wounded by terrorists, so we know that there is common ground".

Similarly, he said, there is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth, that do move back and forth in order to live in one and attack in the other, that sort of thing.

"So we know there's common ground; it's how much more common ground can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective," Mattis said.

"But at the same time, as the (Pakistan Army Chief) General (Qamar Javed Bajwa) has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and we'll find that common ground, if we have the will to.

Read: Act against terrorist safe havens or we will: CIA to Pakistan

"And then we'll work on how we address the problems where we can work together," the Defense Secretary said.

Responding to a question, he said he would not characterise everything over the past 16 years as failures.

"There is clearly an abundance of areas where we have to double down, and I am optimistic at this point that because of what our adversaries, our mutual enemies are doing, that we can find ways to work together," he said.

Mattis said both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military, the NATO-led militaries of 39 nations have all been in fights here. "We've got to find a way to work together".

He said there is "always an urgency to something" when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken.

"These are 39 of the most economically powerful, generally speaking, most long-term democratic institutions in the world. These are powerful nations morally, economically and diplomatically, and certainly militarily," he said.

Mattis said that it was essential in South Asia that all work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economy to build.

"I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We can not only imagine it; it's a reality right now," Mattis said.

So, the US Defence Secretary said that we have got to work together on this, and there's a sense of urgency about that.

"There's people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries. So as you look at this problem, if you'll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things," he said.

Mattis is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and General Bajwa.

"General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting that's characterised the area," he said.
The announcement comes days after the Lahore High Court ordered Saeeds release from the house arrest.

Saeed, who continues to be an influential person in Pakistan's certain religious groups despite being an internationally designated terrorist, announced on Saturday that he would contest the general election in 2018. (Photos: AP)

Islamabad: Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, who earlier came in support of the terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), has now said that he would welcome an alliance with global terrorist and 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed for the general election in 2018.

Responding to a question about having an alliance with JuD chief Saeed, Musharraf in an interview to Pakistan based Aaj News channel said, "so far, there has be no talks with them but if they want to be part of the alliance, I would welcome them,"

The former military ruler had in November announced the formation of a grand political alliance after a consultative meeting between representatives of around two dozen political parties, including the Sunni Tehreek, Majlis-i-Wahdatul Muslimeen, Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and Mr Musharraf's own All Pakistan Muslim League (APML).

However, several parties dissociated themselves from Musharraf's Awami Ittehad alliance after he announced the formation of a "grand alliance" of 23 parties.

According to media reports, two major partners of the alliance - the Pakistan Awami Tehrik and the Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen - denied being part of the coalition headed by Musharraf.

Saeed, who continues to be an influential person in Pakistan's certain religious groups despite being an internationally designated terrorist, announced on Saturday that he would contest the general election in 2018.

The announcement comes days after the Lahore High Court ordered his release from the house arrest.

However, the JuD chief did not disclose anything about the constituency he would like to contest from.

Though, the JuD formed Milli Muslim League (MML) in August when Saeed was detained in Lahore, the party yet to be recognised by the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Saeed is a wanted terrorist by India and the United States for his alleged role in masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives.

He even carries a bounty of 10 million USD (approx. Rs 66 crore) on his head for his role in the attack.

Musharraf had recently called himself as the "biggest supporter" of the LeT and its founder Hafiz Saeed.

Speaking on Pakistan's ARY News, Musharraf said, "I am the biggest supporter of the LeT and I know they like me and the JuD also likes me."

The former president added that he was always in favour of terrorist action in Kashmir, and the LeT and the JuD were the biggest forces to take on the Indian Army in the state.
by Nirmala Carvalho

The Syro-Malabar Church held a three-day conference. The work for life reaches the remotest rural villages. For Fr Shenan Boquet, the Indian Church is "an example for everyone". It is necessary to enter into conversations on life to defeat the culture of death.

Panvel (AsiaNews)  The pro-life movement held a three-day seminar (30 November-2 December) in the diocese of Kaylan. The Eva*-Global Symposium focused on the protection of life

"We must invest in human beings by promoting and defending their dignity. It is imperative to protect life and the family through education, closeness, awareness and service," said Fr Shenan Boquet, president of Human Life International.

In the diocese of Kaylan, the pro-life movement is led by Fr Paul Kunduparambil. In addition to members of the India-based Syro-Malabar Church, people from all over the world took part in the conference, including the United States, like Fr Boquet himself and Human Life Internationals director Brain Cowles.

During the symposium, the meetings and cultural activities followed morning prayers and Mass. At its conclusion, Mgr Mar Thomas Elavanal thanked all those made it a success. He explained that its goal was to "promote the culture of life" towards which every "person living in this world has a responsibility".

It is a great joy to see so many people in India support and love life, Fr Boquet told AsiaNews. All across India, I can see that you are living the Gospel of life, he told participants.

The local Church has centres "supporting life in all its forms", even in the smallest villages and remotest rural areas. Some help abandoned children, the sick and elderly people; others rescue unwed women from human trafficking. Others provide marriage counselling, family assistance, or focus on biomedical ethics.

People of all ages are involved in the service of life without discrimination of caste or creed, open to serve every person. In fact, The Church in India is actively involved in defending life at all its stages, with love and acts of care, working for the cause of life. This is an example for everyone."

There are however challenges. Resources are a big one, not to mention the lack of will by political leaders to back the cause.

Maldistribution of resources, [and] lack of clean waters, sanitation, electricity [. . .] are all stifling the needs of families, Fr Boquet went on to say.

We [have to] look at the total spectrum of human life to address all aspects that support human life. Given the fact that some families live without medical care, water and hygiene, A real culture of life must [be designed to] raise the standards of life.

For him, An aggression against the family is an assault of human life. Thus, when resources are not distributed properly, violence is done.

What is more, It is urgent to include various disciplines  medicine, sciences, public policy  to defend life and the dignity of the human person.

Truth transcends political situations. We have to inform and reform minds. The latter are like students, to be taught, guided and given the right knowledge.

For the priest it is necessary "to enter into conversations, in India and elsewhere" to defeat "the culture of death".

"However, I am very encouraged, filled with great joy by the Churchs daily acts of kindness and love, defending and promoting the dignity of the human person and building a culture of life.

* Eva: Mother of the living.
Mgr Francis urges Catholics to reduce, reuse, and recycle through personal, family and community participation in ecological integrity. He calls on people to become "disciples of hope" in a situation that does not have none.

Penang (AsiaNews)  Mgr Sebastian Francis, bishop of Penang and president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei (BCMSB), yesterday issued a pastoral letter for Advent at the start of the new liturgical year.

In it, he writes that We are all accountable for the situation the world is in and the future that will unfold. Let us not leave devastation as our legacy.

"Advent is a time of waiting for the final return of the Lord, who is our Hope and Salvation. And it seems that the world has never needed such hope and salvation as urgently as today," Mgr Francis says with reference to the global climate crisis and its devastating effects.

"Dangerous climate change is already happening; but we can avoid catastrophic climate change by personal, family and community participation in ecological integrity, he adds.

Quoting from the encyclical Laudato Si, the BCMSB president tells the faithful that "The Word of God clearly reminds us that we are responsible for caring for the rest of creation as stewards and not as owners."

The bishop urges Catholics to accept Pope Franciss call for "ecological conversion" and to change their lifestyle. "This means that true transformation of the world must come from within each one of us, not from without.

For this to happen, We must choose sacrifice over want, sharing over greed, and serving the common good of all creation over convenience. Only then can we truly be disciples of hope in a seemingly hopeless situation."

Hence, I call upon each and every one of you to be one in mind, spirit and action in this important mission, Mgr Francis writes.

Be true ecological citizens and disciples of hope. Love and pray constantly for all creation. Stop polluting, reduce the excessive consumption of unnecessary disposable materials such as paper plates, plastic cutlery sets, tissue papers and plastic bags, conserve water, save electricity and plant more trees.

In other words, REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE. Do all you can to build a just, resilient and ecological world from your homes to your communities, parishes and organisations.

Remember who you are: Gods own children.
by Bernardo Cervellera

News coverage overly focused on "saying / not saying" the word Rohingya. The Pope avoids trial by media, opting to outline constructive paths of hope. Full citizenship for dozens of ethnic groups and a development based on human dignity. The unity between the young and the different ethnic groups, admired by Buddhists and Muslims.

Rome (AsiaNews) - At the end of his trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh, Pope Francis said the fateful word: Rohingya. In saying it, he did not "slam the door shut " or tear his clothes, rather he asked forgiveness for the worlds indifference and caressed the faces of men, women and children whose family members were killed, or who had to flee from the military onslaught. The Pope met 16 in Dhaka, and all of them prayed and cried with him. "God - said Francis - is also Rohingya".

The global media were waiting for this word in order to condemn the violence of the Burmese army, denounce the inanity of the leader Aung San Suu Kyi, to plunge Myanmar under the weight of sanctions. In some respects, it gave the impression that this journey's significance hinged on that one word. But in this way, the media failed to show all the richness of the pontiffs message and the impulse that he has given to this region of the world which is both so rich and so poor.

It is true that in Myanmar Francis did not use the word "Rohingya", rather he spoke of all minorities (Kachin, Chin, Karen, Naga, Kaya, ...) who suffer the same things as Rohingya without ever making headlines . And the Roman Pontiff said that citizenship is necessary for all, the distribution of wealth, the collaboration to build peace in Burmese society. The decades of military dictatorship have created almost incurable wounds, violence and wars, but the pope has asked everyone, especially the Christians, to forgive and work for reconciliation to ward off the spectre of a war in which everyone loses.

This is why Pope did not court media praise or condemnation, instead he outlined constructive paths of hope. This is why in both countries, in Myanmar and Bangladesh, he spoke to young people to support their enthusiasm and propose a path of hope for the future. Young people who emigrate, who accept slave-like working conditions, or who take up arms, who risk living like the desperate. Francis asked young Christians to be catalysts of hope.

This means not burying oneself within the folds of one's own ethnic or religious group, nurturing suspicion towards others, remaining inert and sceptical, but opening oneself to encounter, sustained by the common dignity of every person.

The collaboration between religions is the other pillar of this journey: with the Islamic majority in Bangladesh and with the Buddhist one in Myanmar it is important to work so that the economic development under way in these two countries is founded on the mystery of human dignity, and not only on profit, the exploitation of labor and child slaves. Francis has shown that by valuing the religious dimension, one can have the common good more easily at heart.

He wanted to meet with the leaders of the religions both in Myanmar and in Bangladesh and with them he condemned the violence and terrorism that manipulate the name of God, but above all he pushed them to work together for a society of which man is at the center, whatever his ethnicity, because he is made in the image of God.

A final word on the Churches of these two countries, small minorities often in the cyclone of persecution. The Pope praised the Christians who, despite being a "mustard seed", give sustenance to the population and the poor in Bangladesh and Myanmar. The esteem that Christians enjoy is primarily due to their service: schools, hospitals, agricultural and labor cooperatives. But in this service, people discover with wonder the reasons for the love of Christ. It is not by chance that in both Bangladesh and in Myanmar the Church grows every year, there are abundant vocations and these small communities already send missionaries to other lands.

It was perhaps one of the first times that all the Christian ethnic groups of Myanmar and the dozens of Bangladeshi ethnic groups gathered together, arousing the admiration of Buddhists and Muslims. A good promise for the future.
Coopers opens $65 million malting plant



Cooper's new malting plant

Coopers has opened a $65 million malting plant at its Regency Park brewery in Adelaide.

Coopers says the 13, 000sq m plant is considered the most technically advanced malting plant in the world. The facility was officially opened late last week by the Governor of South Australia, the Honourable Hieu Van Le AC.

The project is the largest single investment since Coopers was first established 150 years ago. It was entirely funded by the business and will employ eight new employees.

Coopers Managing Director, Dr Tim Cooper, said at full capacity, the malting house will produce approximately 54, 000 tonnes of malt per year.

South Australian farmers are recognised as producing some of the best malting barley in the world and we will be looking to establish strong relationships with them into the future, Dr Cooper said.

Coopers will use 17, 000 tonnes of the 54, 000 tonnes of malt it plans to produce each year. The remainder is expected to be sold to both domestic and international customers.

The plant was constructed by South Australian building firm, Ahrens Group. The malting equipment was sourced from Buhler in Switzerland.

Some of the innovations we have incorporated include full stainless-steel construction, enclosed conveyors, together with advanced process control and monitoring, Dr Cooper said about the new malt plant.

In terms of water usage, process control and automation, this is the most advanced maltings in the world.

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Metcash feels the effects Aldis expansion into SA and WA





Independent grocery wholesaler Metcash is feeling the effects of Aldis expansion into South Australia and Western Australia.

In announcing its 2018 half-year financial results, Metcashs food pillar sales was $4.36 billion, a 1.4 per cent drop on its 2017 first half year results.

Supermarket sales fell 0.8 per cent on the prior corresponding period and supermarket wholesale sales declined 3.7 per cent.

There was a continued high level of grocery deflation (2.7 per cent) with Metcash attributing this to significant investment in price and promotion among its competitors.

Competitors expansion, particularly into South Australia and Western Australia, were also listed as a challenge.

Over the past two years, Aldi has entered SA and WA for the first time, establishing a number of new stores.

Sales continued to improve on the Eastern seaboard, while South Australia, and Western Australia remained weaker, Metcash reported in its financial update to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

Despite the sales fall, earnings before interested and tax in Metcashs food pillar increased by 5.8 per cent to AUD $89.4 million reflecting positive earnings from convenience.

The Metcash Group as a whole also reported group profit after tax of AUD $92.9 million, a 24 per cent increase on the groups first half results for 2017.

Metcash further benefitted from its acquisition of Home Timber and Hardware from Woolworths with Metcashs hardware earnings before interest and tax increasing from AUD $14.6 million to AUD $27.1 million on the corresponding period..

Metcash liquor sales increased by 5.1 per cent to AUD 41.6 billion and earnings before interested and tax for liquor increased by AUD $0.5million to AUD $27.6 million.

Metcash Group Chief Executive Officer, Ian Morrice, said the first half results were very pleasing despite the continuation of some of the most challenging conditions in our history.

It was good to see earnings growth across all our pillars, as well as strong operating cashflows, Morrice said.

Metcash is currently halfway through its three-year Working Smarter turnaround program which Morrice said is delivering significant benefits, especially in Metcashs supermarkets business.

The savings achieved have been a kay factor in Supermarkets maintaining its earnings, despite the significant headwinds that include a continuing high level of deflation, Morrice said.

The financial results were Ian Morrices last as CEO of Metcash. Morrice will soon be handing over his CEO role to ex-Tesco executive, Jeff Adams.

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(GeorgeRudy/Bigstock.com) (GeorgeRudy/Bigstock.com)

As the number of international students studying in Australia reaches record highs, it is being suggested that institutions need to do more to make sure they offer what is needed to retain numbers.The most up to date figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows that in 2017 there were more than 550,000 students from over 190 different countries in Australia.The majority study in New South Wales and Victoria and while they are generally satisfied it is claimed that universities and colleges need to make sure they offer what students want as Australia needs to compete with higher education institutions in countries such as Canada, the United States, the UK and New Zealand in terms of popularity.The Australian Technical Management College (ATMC), which specialises in courses in business and management at campuses in Melbourne and Sydney, is working to improve the kind of experiences on offer for international students.Chief academic officer Professor Mike Clements said ATMC was working with universities and VET providers such as the University of the Sunshine Coast, Federation University, Charles Darwin University and the Baxter Institute to improve the experience of international students.'Our experience at ATMC is that our international students make a significant contribution to our economy that goes far beyond their initial enrolment fees. Specifically, we find that when we connect our students with meaningful learning opportunities, the economy sees a strong flow-on effect for years after they graduate,' he explained.'The key here is using the unique ATMC managed campus solution that keeps students engaged and connected to Australian business, culture, and education. The concept of delivery is based on a combination of academic excellence and expertise along with a highly focused student centred approach where the student experience is paramount,' he said.'This learning environment, in conjunction with our quality framework delivery mode, provides a very successful partnership with Australian Universities as a true differentiator in the marketplace,' he pointed out.He added that to improve international education, new initiatives such as managed campus solutions seek to maintain student retention rates, provide smaller classes and student services, link students to student placements and help educational institutions stand out in the global market.The aim is to make sure that all degree programmes offered are up to date at all times and relevant to the industry environment nationally and internationally. At the ATMC the class sizes are small, so that students enjoy the learning experience and don't get lost in the crowd.Staff are accessible and resources are put back into the College to develop facilities and services that benefit students with improvements to teaching facilities making sure classrooms are spacious and equipped with technology. Clements also believes that providing student mentors is vital, as is providing job placements.
Photo of Honda Civic courtesy of Honda.

American Honda Motor Co. is recalling 5,404 2017 Honda Civic sedans and coupes because improper heat treatment might have weakened the right halfshafts, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Honda dealers will inspect each halfshafts serial number and replace the part if needed. Dealers will also align the front wheels. There will be no charge for these services.

The recall is expected to begin Dec. 15, NHTSA said. Car owners can reach Honda customer service at (888) 234-2138. Hondas number for this recall is K0E.
Two gay men have been arrested in Uzbekistan and face charges of engaging in illegal sexual relations.

The two men, who are both in their twenties, met in early September and moved into a rented apartment in Tashkent.

Police told media last week that they conducted intrusive, forensic medical examinations to confirm that one of the men had allegedly engaged in repeated sexual intercourse. Consensual sex between men is punishable in Uzbekistan by up to three years in prison.

Potential prosecution is only the least of what gay people in Uzbekistan are liable to face in their daily life. Intimidation  up to and including brutal physical assault  is commonplace.

President Islam Karimov, who remarked in February 2016 that same-sex relationships were a vile phenomenon of Western culture.

If a man lives with a man, or a woman with a women, I think that something there isnt quite right, or some change has happened, Karimov said.

International rights activists have appealed with the Uzbek government to repeal Article 120 of the criminal code, which criminalizes sexual relations between men.

It is unacceptable to persecute people for the fact that they consensually engage in same-sex relations. Every person is free to determine their own relations. This incident is nothing but a demonstrative act of discrimination toward the LGBT community and reflects the policies of the current regime, said Nadezhda Atayeva, president of the Paris-based Association for Human Rights in Central Asia.

It has been reported that officials in Azerbaijan and Tajikistan authorities both areas of the former Soviet Union have sought to impress their conservative credentials by persecuting the LGBT community. Both countries have recently drawn up registries of people they suspected of belonging to their countrys gay and lesbian communities as part of a purported efforts to promote sexual health and moral behavior.

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Former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown was sentenced on Monday to five years in prison for fraud and other charges, according to court records.

Brown will also get a three-year supervised release.

Brown was convicted earlier this year of taking money raised for a charity as well as lying on her taxes and Congressional financial disclosure forms.

Her codefendants, Carla Wiley and Elisa "Ronnie" Simmons, pleaded guilty to the charges they were facing.

Simmons pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and aiding and abetting theft of government funds, and Wiley pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to the U.S. District Court's sentencing order.

Wiley was sentenced to 21 months in prison with a three-year supervised release, while Simmons got four years in prison and a three-year supervised release, the sentencing order stated.

The 71-year-old Brown, who represented a district that at one point stretched from Jacksonville down into Orlando, was found guilty of 18 counts of fraud and tax evasion.

Brown served part of Central Florida in Congress for more than 20 years until she lost the Democratic primary in 2016.

She could spend the rest of her life in prison.
As Seminole Heights starts the holiday season and seeks to regain some normalcy after weeks of being on edge, the Tampa Bay Lightning are lending a helping hand.

Lightning captain Steven Stamkos, defenseman Victor Hedman and forward J.T. Brown will sign autographs as a show of support for local businesses in Seminole Heights on Monday afternoon.

The signings will take place at three separate locations. The locations are:

Steven Stamkos: Brew Bus Brewing - 4101 N Florida Ave

Victor Hedman: Fodder & Shine - 5910 N Florida Ave

J.T. Brown, along with Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan: Ellas Americana Folk Art Cafe - 5119 N Nebraska Ave

There will be a limit of one autograph or posed photo per person.

The area has breathed a collective sigh of relief after the arrest last week of a suspect in the killings of four Seminole Heights residents.

Residents and police had been on edge since Oct. 9, when 22-year-old Benjamin Mitchell was shot to death. Two days later, 32-year-old Monica Hoffa, was slain. And on Oct. 19, Anthony Naiboa, 20, was killed after taking the wrong bus home from his new job. On Nov. 14, 60-year-old Ronald Felton was killed.

The Tampa Police Department will also be participating at all three locations, greeting and welcoming fans, while also helping to collect toy donations.

In order to receive an autograph or photo, fans are encouraged to bring new, unwrapped toys that will be donated to underserved elementary-aged children in Seminole Heights for the holidays.
President Donald Trump is taking aim at the FBI as the investigation continues into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

President Donald Trump says FBI's reputation at its worst in history

Tweet comes as FBI agent removed from investigation

Some speak out in support of FBI

It comes just days after his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

The presidents tweet comes as a senior FBI official was removed from special counsel Robert Mullers investigation into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 election because the agent, Peter Strzok, sent messages that could be interpreted as showing political bias for Hillary Clinton and against Trump.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, said Mueller removed Strzok from the team immediately upon learning of the allegations. He would not elaborate on the nature of the accusations. The person who discussed the matter with The Associated Press was not authorized to speak about it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Strzok also led the investigation into Hillary Clintons email server.

Report: ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE Now it all starts to make sense!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by Trump, responded by tweeting a quote he said back in June.

I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.

Me (June 8, 2017) pic.twitter.com/OZ1ZiBrMNL  James Comey (@Comey) December 3, 2017

Comey was not the only one who reacted to the president's tweet.

Nope. Not letting this go. The FBIs reputation is not in tatters. Its composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. Youll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now  Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 3, 2017

Strzoks removal almost certainly reflected a desire to insulate the investigators from any claims of political bias or favoritism. Trump and many of his supporters have at times sought to discredit the integrity of the investigation, in part by claiming a close relationship between Mueller and Comey and by pointing to political contributions to Democrats made by some lawyers on the team.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
House of Cards will return for its final season without Kevin Spacey.

'House of Cards' to return without Kevin Spacey

Production will resume early 2018

8-episode final season with Robin Wright as lead

The political drama will resume production in early 2018 with eight episodes with Robin Wright as the lead, Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said Monday. Previous seasons consisted of 13 episodes each.

Speaking at UBSs Global Media and Communications Conference in New York, Sarandos said he was happy an agreement had been reached to continue the show and provide closure for fans, according to Variety.

In October, actor Anthony Rapp first told Buzzfeed that Spacey made unwanted advances toward him in 1986  when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26.

Days later, Media Rights Capital  the production company behind "House of Cards"  suspended production of the series after the sexual misconduct allegation against Spacey surfaced.

MRC later suspended Spacey while it investigated what it called serious allegations concerning the Oscar-winning actors behavior on the set of House of Cards.

Spacey is one of a number of high-profile men who have been accused of sexual misconduct following a New York Times expose about Harvey Weinstein.

The decision to continue House of Cards without Spacey comes after director Ridley Scott removed the actor from his completed film All the Money in the World weeks before its theatrical release. Christopher Plummer took over Spaceys role as J. Paul Getty.
The Texas Board of Nursing has suspended the registered nursing license of the the owner of a Nederland clinic raided by federal authorities this fall.

Kevin G. Morgan, 33, owns Optimum Medical Weight Control and Family Wellness, which was searched by officials from the Drug Enforcement Agency in October.
Police do not believe "suspicious" activity contributed to the death of a Liberty County sixth grader, according to information from the Liberty County Sheriff's Office.

Abigail Garcia, 11, was feeling ill when she got off the bus after school, and later had difficulty walking, the department said. She was taken to a Houston hospital where she later died.
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The welcome mat to Tommy Spears' Deweyville home sits about four feet above the ground, on the landing of the stairs leading up to his front door.

From his living room, Spears looks out over the surrounding neighborhood - the trees that use to loom above his house are at eye level outside.

His house, which flooded twice in the past two years, now sits 10 feet off the ground on stilts.

"If you're going to be here, you've got to do something," Spears said.

He said neighbors have joked that now that he's spent the time and money - nine days and $35,000 - to elevate his home, he won't have needed to, and it won't flood again, which he said he's happy to hear. "If raising the house stops the flooding, that's good," he said.

But for residents of the Newton County town, some of whom have flooded three times in as many years, future flooding seems a given rather than a question, fears looming as they continue to repair what the last floods destroyed.

Tired of repairs

After the historic Sabine River flooding in March 2016, Spears and his wife Estelle repaired the home where they've lived for 42 years, drying out walls and replacing floors.

As soon as they moved back in over the summer, they purchased flood insurance, though at the time they didn't expect to need it again, he said.

> > MORE: Thousands still await clean water after Harvey

The expense paid off. A year later, they repeated the process after Tropical Storm Harvey dumped rain across the region, filling Toledo Bend and prompting the Sabine River Authority to open the floodgates, flooding the town of Deweyville a second time.

"I ain't fixing to do that again," Spears said. "It was either move or raise it."

"They're planning to do it again next year," Estelle said of the SRA opening floodgates. The SRA declined to comment, citing pending litigation, but has said in the past that it is not a flood control agency.

The Spears hired a company to lift the home, raising it up with jacks and building supports underneath. Their new insurance coverage made it possible, he said.

"If I could, if I were a millionaire, I'd pay for everybody's house to be lifted up," Spears said.

An expensive fix

If she could, Annette Smart would raise her home too - along with her mother's, father-in-law's and niece's homes, which sit side-by-side near the land where the family blueberry farm used to be.

> > MORE: Future uncertain for Beaumont high school

The first flood wiped out the watering system, and the second took her will to keep it going on top of all the repair work, so they mowed down most of the bushes.

Her family is staying in their old processing facility, a metal building behind her house that they were able to clean out after the storm, while she and her husband stay in a camper outside. She's hoping to finish repairing her mother's home first, she said.

"I would love to raise my house, but its $250,000," Smart said, throwing her hands up in frustration. She said her mother, who is on a fixed income, is hoping to receive money from the federal funds the county received through the Community Block Development Grant program to help elevate her home.

"After two floods in two years, you start looking for the next one," she said.

Funding delayed

The $32.9 million the county was allocated from the 2016 floods won't be available until early 2018, Judge Paul Price said. By the time it makes its way to residents, it will be close to two years since the disaster that prompted it.

Seventy percent will be used for housing projects, including buyouts and home elevation, while the other 30 percent is earmarked for public projects, like bridges and roads. That breakdown is flexible, Price said, based on the community's needs. The Commissioner's Court approved giving $5 million of the money to Deweyville ISD for the replacement of its elementary school.

> > RELATED: Owner says there's 'no hope' for Adventure Kingdom after flood

Price said the county has hired a grant administrator and is "getting ready to sit down with the General Land Office, getting ready to finally start working part on the housing aspect" after months of "bureaucratic process."

Those who have already elevated their homes may be eligible for reimbursements from the grants, if they've documented damages and show receipts for the work, he said.

Fearing the future

Others have decided to leave, rather than fight the river again.

After spending almost a year in a FEMA trailer when her home was flooded and destroyed, Lydia Broussard and her family left Deweyville and moved to Orangefield.

"It was 100 percent totaled," she said of her house, leading to the decision to uproot and relocate. "This is our time to move and God telling us to move," she said.

> > PHOTOS: Most iconic photos from Harvey

When water levels started rising in the Neches River during Harvey, they evacuated to her mother's house in Deweyville, believing they would be safe there - only to be forced out again when the gates on the Sabine River were opened.

Their new home wasn't flooded, she said, but she would have been more prepared this time. The house is at a higher elevation, she said, and like Spears, she now has flood insurance.

"I don't care if I live on a mountain, I'm always going to have flood insurance," she said.

Hoping for change

Smart, who called the family's land "our own piece of heaven," said she's "planning on staying there until they put me in the ground."

"If we would've known this would happen in 2000 when we built it, we could have built it up," she said, but now, the cost of elevating is too high, so she'll continue to repair and rebuild as is, even though it means the family is using money from her husband's retirement savings.

They are considering installing an AquaDam or a retention wall, she said, though she knows that's unlikely to be a match for the intensity of another flood like 2016's.

She's hopeful that officials will speak up for the residents of the southern part of Newton County to implement changes with the SRA and the Kansas City Southern Railroad, which she and many others say has built up their tracks on the southern side of Deweyville, forming a dam that holds water once it's released from Toledo Bend and exacerbates flooding in the town.

> > PHOTOS: Aerial photos show extreme Harvey flooding

Parts of the railroad washed out in the 2016 floods, and some residents say their efforts to repair it and elevate it to avoid future problems have made things worse.

KCS said in a statement that company "showed elected officials that the railroad's restoration efforts after the washouts did not cause additional flooding to the Deweyville community, and that the restoration of the railroad did not bring it to a height greater than what it had been before the washouts."

A company spokeswoman said KCS engineers offered to work with elected officials on installing culverts to improve drainage, but that offer has not yet been accepted or requested.

Price said the county needs to work with the company to open up trestle space under the tracks that would allow water to pass through, rather than holding it in place but said that needs to be done in cooperation with Orange County officials to avoid worsening flooding there.

Officials look for a fix

The fastest way to prevent a future flood would be for the SRA and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which licenses Toledo Bend dam to generate power, to lower the standard water level at the dam, which would lessen the need to open floodgates on the river when the water level rises, Price said.

"We've had three or four rain floodings in three years, we're getting more rain with greater intensity in closer intervals," Price said, which should prompt the Commission to take health and safety concerns into consideration and lower the levels.

"The people up by the lake aren't going to like it, but what's more important, what's the bigger hurt?" he said. He said Southeast Texas officials have also spoken with state legislators about building more dams in the region, which could hold more water and alleviate future flooding.

Spears said that for now, regardless of what changes the SRA does or doesn't make, the elevation has provided a sense of security in a home that's been short on that for the last two years.

Standing on the screened-in porch of his own Noah's Ark, Spears waved his hand outside and said he's prepared for any flooding that isn't apocalyptic.

"If the water gets this high up here, I don't think anyone will be left in Deweyville, in Orange, in this part of the world," he said.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/LizTeitz
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More than three months after Tropical Storm Harvey overflowed drainage districts, cut off water and prompted hundreds of boil-water notices across the Gulf Coast, access to safe water still seems a pipe dream for some.

Thirteen boil-water notices remain in effect across Harvey's affected areas, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality reported Friday.

Seven counties, including Orange, Newton, Matagorda, Liberty, Jim Wells, Harris and Angelina, are struggling to bounce back after Harvey's 50-plus inches swamped water systems, subdivisions and mobile home parks across Southeast Texas.

> > MORE: Parasites, degraded land among post-Harvey threats to local farmers

About 3,750 people in Harvey's affected areas haven't had clean drinking water since late August, according to the TCEQ.

More than 2,200 community water systems were compromised during Harvey. Two in Harris County have been deemed inoperative or destroyed. Of 1,743 wastewater facilities affected, three in Harris County still aren't operational, according to the TCEQ.

Janice Ratcliff, Rose City's water operator, said their boil notice hasn't been lifted because the plant hasn't met TCEQ standards for pH levels and other chemicals.

Running water was returned to the city's 600 residents on Sept. 28, but it still requires a two-minute rolling boil before it's safe to consume.

"It's been so touch-and-go," Ratcliff said. "It will run good for two weeks but then something will happen. It just makes no sense to remove the notice just to have to go right back on it."

> > RELATED: Future uncertain for Beaumont high school

The original goal was to have the order rescinded by Thanksgiving, but red tape and insurance issues have pushed back the installation of necessary equipment, Ratcliff said.

"It's crazy what they put us through," Ratcliff said. "It's just been delay after delay. We understand that insurance companies and FEMA were so overloaded, but a water facility should come first."

The plant has been operating manually, meaning Ratcliff and co-operator Angela Beenen have to do everything by hand.

"The electronic equipment can tell us immediately when there is a problem," Ratcliff said. "So it takes us longer to diagnose a problem, especially when we have to wait a few hours to do all the testing. ... It's just not nearly as accurate."

Testing of water samples used to be done in their lab, which had to be condemned. For now, they have been working out of a temporary wood building with no heat or air conditioning, unstable electricity and none of their equipment.

Rose City's hall, which also flooded, has been serving as a central distribution site.

Faith-based organizations have made sure Rose City is never without enough bottled water, and one Louisiana church brought turkeys for Thanksgiving, Mayor Bonnie Stephenson said.

"We've barely had any complaints from residents," Stephenson said of the recovery process. "They know that they're working as hard as they can to fix it. Nobody has gotten real mad yet."

Ratcliff agreed, saying she's grateful residents are still being gracious about the situation.

Stephenson's own home was one of the 268 structures destroyed in the flood. Living under the boil-water notice has not made life any more difficult, she said.

"My whole life has changed," Stephenson said. "Nothing is the same, it's like day and night. So it hasn't really bothered me personally."

MGstalter@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/morgGstalt
A college student from Spring pleaded guilty on Monday to plotting to join ISIS in Syria in a case that dates to the earliest American news reports about the terrorist group.

Asher Abid Khan, 23, admitted in a Houston courtroom that he conspired with others and attempted to provide "material support" to a foreign terrorist organization. The mechanical engineering student at the University of Houston ultimately ditched his plan en route to joining jihadist forces, but continued to talk of becoming a martyr after he returned home.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes set sentencing for March 5. Khan remains free on bond.

He is the fifth person in Texas to plead guilty to attempting to provide support for ISIS. An unrelated defendant, Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, 25, of Houston, pleaded guilty last year to providing material support to ISIS and is due for sentencing later this month..

According the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, 144 people have been charged in the U.S. with involvement in ISIS. The vast majority are U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

FBI investigators tracked the Klein Oak High School graduate on Facebook saying he wanted to join the violent jihadist network. According to court documents, he traveled to Turkey with plans to enlist in Syria, but he changed his mind after a phone call home in which relatives invented a family emergency to get him to return home.

Now Playing: Michelle Bandur reports. Video: KETV

Khan was indicted in May 2015 for attempting to join ISIS with a friend from high school who he knew from the same local mosque.

Prosecutors said in court filings that Khan was living with relatives in Australia when he exchanged Facebook messages with the friend, Sixto Ramiro Garcia, a Muslim convert. They chatted about their shared faith in the Islamic caliphate and their desire to dedicate their lives to something bigger than themselves.

In early 2014, Khan suggested they head to Iraq or Syria, according to court documents.

Khan is accused of helping Garcia, who was using the name Abdullah Ali, arrange a flight out of Houston and helping him through Facebook connect with a man agents called "a foreign terrorist fighter facilitator" in Turkey. Khan traveled from Australia, but his family persuaded him during a stopover to return to Houston telling him falsely that his mother had been hospitalized.

Khan communicated with Garcia, a.k.a., Ali, so he could find their contact, Mohammad, near the Syrian border, and promising that he'd come later, according to investigators.

An FBI agent testified at a previous hearing that once he returned to Spring, Khan continued to chat online with friends about his support for ISIS and his wish to die as a martyr.

Investigators believe Khan's hometown buddy, Garcia, went through ISIS boot camp. On Christmas Day 2014, the agent said, someone used Garcia's Facebook account to tell family members he had died for ISIS. Federal agents say they learned of Khan through Garcia's account.

Gabrielle Banks covers federal court for the Houston Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter and send news tips at gabrielle.banks@chron.com.
Prisoners at Alipore Central Jail in Kolkata wave to supporters of a local political party, Trinamool Congress, celebrating an electoral win, May 16, 2009.

Indian authorities said Monday they were investigating how an Islamic State (IS) suspect in custody got a weapon he allegedly used to try and slit a guards throat inside a high-security jail in West Bengals capital.

Mohammad Mosihuddin (alias Abu Musa), an inmate at Alipore Central Jail in Kolkata since his arrest in July 2016, attacked jail warder Gobinda Chandra Dey with a sharp iron object early Sunday while shouting extremist slogans, police said. Mosihuddin is being investigated in India for a possible link to an IS-claimed terrorist attack at a cafe in Bangladeshs capital that same month.

We have shifted him [Mosihuddin] to solitary confinement while we probe the attack, Arun Kumar Gupta, the states director general and inspector general of Correctional Services, told BenarNews.

Ujjwal Biswas, West Bengals minister for Correctional Administration, said police had charged Mosihuddin with attempted murder.

[A]n investigation is on. Jail authorities have also initiated an internal enquiry to find out how he got hold of the piece of metal, Biswas told Benar.

Jail guard Dey was attacked when he unlocked Mosihuddins cell during a routine check at about 7 a.m., a prison official told BenarNews on condition of anonymity.

[Mosihuddin] first hit the warder on the head with a stone and then tried to slit his throat while chanting Jihadi slogans. But other prison guards rushed to the spot in time and rescued him, the source said.

Dey was being treated at a private hospital and was out of danger, police said.

Mosihuddin, 26, a West Bengal native, is under investigation by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the countrys top counter-terror agency, in connection with a terrorist siege at the Holey Artisan Bakery cafe in Dhaka that left 29 people dead, including 20 hostages and five gunmen on July 1-2, 2016.

He was arrested in West Bengals Burdwan district two days later, after Indian security agencies traced his calls and emails to Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Syria. He had an improvised gun, a 13-inch dagger and fake currency notes from Afghanistan and Syria, police said.

According to the NIA, Mosihuddin was asked to set up an IS cell in India by Bangladeshi national Abu Suleiman, a Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) operative allegedly linked to the cafe siege, and who remains at large.

Mosihuddin is one of about 100 Indian Muslims who have been arrested and are facing trial for alleged links with the Middle East-based terror outfit.

In its charge-sheet filed against Mosihuddin last December, the NIA accused him of plotting attacks on the Mother Teresa Missionaries of Charity and other locations in Kolkata with the aim of targeting tourists from the United States, United Kingdom and Russia.

Last year, Bangladeshs Rapid Action Battalion and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation sent teams to interrogate Mosihuddin.
Sabah Police Commissioner Ramli Din shows a modified shotgun allegedly used by Abu Paliyak, who was killed in a shootout with Malaysian security forces near Lahad Datu, Dec. 4, 2017.

Malaysian security forces killed a member of a faction of the Philippine militant group Abu Sayyaf during a shootout Monday in waters off Malaysias eastern Sabah state, the local police chief said.

Abu Paliyak or Commander Paliyak (alias Yusof), 31, was shot dead when he opened fire at security forces near Lahad Datu district, Sabah Police Commissioner Ramli Din told a news conference.

Paliyak had been an informant for the Remy Group, an Abu Sayyaf splinter that was involved in kidnappings and cross-border crimes on the states east coast, Ramli said.

We believe Paliyak was out at sea to observe the operations and movements of our security personnel and to relay the information to kidnap-for-ransom groups, Ramli said in Lahad Datu.

The Abu Sayyaf, or Bearers of the Sword, is the most violent of Muslim rebel factions in the southern Philippines and was notorious for beheading hostages. It claimed responsibility for a ferry bombing in Manila Bay that killed more than 100 people in 2004.

The group also was blamed for a spate of kidnappings at sea in recent years, in which Malaysian and Indonesian sailors were taken hostage.

Paliyak, according to Ramli, was involved in maritime hijackings and kidnappings in waters off Sabahs Lahad Datu and Kunak towns in 2014 and 2015. With Paliyaks death, authorities believe they have solved many of those cases, Ramli said, without elaborating.

The shootout occurred when a Malaysian patrol approached Paliyaks boat after it was seen operating in a suspicious manner, police said. The suspect allegedly sped off and fired a shot at the direction of the security forces, forcing them to return fire.

Police said they had recovered a modified shotgun from Paliyaks boat.

Paliyak was part of an 11-member Remy Group, which was involved in kidnap-for-ransom activities in the southern Philippines and Sabahs east coast, Ramli said.

Philippine authorities recently detained five group members and killed four other suspects, he said, adding the last member is believed to be involved in criminal activities in the southern Philippines.
Dr. Ng Su-Peing, the global medical chief of Sanofi Pasteur, addresses a press conference in Manila following a decision by the Philippine government to investigate the French pharmaceutical firms dengue vaccine, Dec. 4, 2017.

Philippine justice officials Monday ordered an investigation into a school-based anti-dengue immunization program after the countrys health department suspended it over a French pharmaceutical firms disclosure that its flagship vaccine could put people with no prior infection at risk.

Department Order 763, signed by Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, directs the National Bureau of Investigation to conduct [an] investigation and case build up into the program in which more than 740,000 Philippine schoolchildren were given shots of Dengvaxia, a vaccine developed by Sanofi Pasteur.

The government is particularly concerned about an alleged irregular procurement deal with Sanofi Pasteur last year valued at 3.5 billion pesos (U.S. $69 million) that made the Philippines the first country in Asia to use the drug, Aguirre said in the order.

Should evidence be found, appropriate charges should be filed, the order said. It did not name individuals to be covered in its probe.

On Sunday, presidential spokesman Harry Roque appealed for parents and relatives of public elementary school children in Manila and nearby provinces, where pilot testing was done last year, to remain calm. He called on people to not spread unverified information that could cause undue panic.

We assure the public that as per the Department of Health there is currently no reported case of severe dengue infection to the individuals who received one dose of dengue vaccine last year, Roque said.

We will leave no stone unturned in making those responsible for this shameless public health scam which puts hundreds of thousands of young lives at risk accountable, he said in a statement.

The Department of Health is coordinating with the Department of Education to monitor thousands of students who have been vaccinated with Dengvaxia, Roque added.

The vaccination program had been hailed by the World Health Organization, which recommended that the government undertake a massive immunization project to combat dengue.

Dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever are acute viral infections known to affect infants, young children and adults. It is transmitted by a bite of an Aedes aegypti mosquito infected with any one of the four dengue strains.

The disease infects about 200,000 Filipinos every year, and the health department had hinted that the suspension was only temporary.

In a statement issued last week, Sanofi said it would propose that national regulatory agencies update labels in their stocks of the drugs to request that healthcare professionals assess the likelihood of prior dengue infection in an individual before vaccinating.

But health advocates had warned that it was too soon to roll out the vaccine in 2016. In December 2015, the Philippines approved the commercial sale of Dengvaxia, the first dengue vaccine developed by Sanofi, and it became commercially available here four months later.

Database

On Monday, Sen. Risa Hontiveros, vice chairwoman of a congressional committee on health and demography, called on government to create a database of all children who had received dosages of the vaccine.

Preliminary studies showed that nearly 10 percent of the nearly three-quarters of a million children who received Dengvaxia could be at risk, she said.

Our primary concern right now should be the health and welfare of all those children exposed to unnecessary risk, Hontiveros said. Laxity is not an option. We are racing against time. We must protect and ensure the good health of the children.

The French firm must be held responsible and culpable health officials accountable, she added.

While vaccination and immunization are protective and essential elements of preventive health care, implementing an immunization program that could do more harm than good to our children is the height of negligence that could border on the criminal, Hontiveros said.

Sanofi: full transparency

In a statement issued in Manila on Monday, Sanofi said it had made the finding public in full transparency with the Philippine Food and Drug Administration and the health department.

Consequently, we are proposing an update to the current vaccine label that physicians can make appropriate vaccination decisions with their patients to enhance the impact of the vaccine in the Philippines, where majority have been infected by dengue by the time they reach adolescence, Sanofi said.

It said Dengvaxia does not contain viruses that can make people ill with dengue or severe dengue, noting that severe dengue dengue infections were common complications.

Severe dengue is characterized as a potentially deadly complication due to plasma leaking, fluid accumulation, respiratory distress, severe bleeding or organ impairment, according to the World Health Organization.

As far as we know, as far as we are made aware, there are no reported deaths that are related to dengue vaccination, said Ruby Dizon, Sanofis medical director in the Philippines.

Former Philippine Health Secretary Janette Garin said the vaccination program was implemented in accordance with internationally set guidelines and that the government had consulted regularly with WHOs Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on immunization.

With the desire to resolve this deadly virus, the department started the vaccination program which has until now been seen to be strongly beneficial to nine out of 10 Filipinos, Garin told BenarNews. I welcome the DOJ (justice department) and Senate investigations. I will answer all questions at the right time, at the appropriate forum.

She said that, should authorities point culpability to her way, I am ready to face consequences.

Froilan Gallardo in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, contributed to this report.
A female guerrilla from the communist New Peoples Army (NPA) commands a fighting unit in a camp on Mindanao island in the southern Philippines, November 2015.

Philippine communist rebels were sending a response to new threats from the government, when they raided a remote southern town and wounded four police officers in a weekend attack, a guerrilla spokesman said Monday.

The attack occurred days after President Rodrigo Duterte called off talks and threatened to officially put the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New Peoples Army (NPA), on a terror watch list.

The attack is a warning to the police and military that the NPA does not fear the threats of all-out war and martial law by the Duterte regime, Nicholas Marino, a local spokesman for the rebels, told BenarNews.

About 100 NPA rebels set up road blocks along the main highway and took over the town of Binuangan, in Misamis Oriental province on southern Mindanao island, before dawn Sunday.

They fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the towns police station, injuring four, including municipal police chief Senior Inspector Dante Hallazago.

The rebels failed in their attack on the police station and failed to get the firearms of the policemen, which was their target, said Superintendent Lemuel Gonda, regional police spokesman. The guerrillas fled after a two-hour battle with police.

Bus passenger Kimbo Velez said he saw three rebels armed with AK-47 rifles stop their bus and tell the driver to turn around. The gunmen also commandeered two trucks as get-away vehicles.

One of the armed men who carried a flashlight identified himself to us as an NPA rebel and warned our driver not to proceed, Velez said, adding that the driver and passengers were not harmed.

Futility of their distorted ideology

On Monday, the military said at least 14 NPA rebels had surrendered to troops in southern Agusan del Sur province and given up a cache of firearms. It said the surrender followed setbacks the group had suffered in recent weeks that decimated its ranks.

We are hopeful that more of them will realize the futility of their distorted ideology, said Lt. Col. Rommel Pagan, local army chief, adding that the military was committed to prevent the NPA terrorists criminal activities against our people and the communities.

Last week, 15 NPA guerrillas were killed in a clash with troops and police outside Manila, including a guerrilla leader and a young woman who was later identified as a university activist who joined the rebel ranks.

The NPA has been waging one of Asias longest running insurgencies since 1969. Thousands of combatants and civilians have died in the fighting, which has also stunted growth prospects especially in the countryside.

The U.S. government long ago placed the CPP-NPA, and its self-exiled founder, Jose Maria Sison, on its terror watch list, making it difficult for the group to receive financial contributions that fund its insurgency.

The group traditionally steps up attacks days before its Dec. 26 anniversary.

Duterte called off the talks in response to a recent NPA attack that left two civilians dead, including a baby girl. Three officers and six civilians were wounded in that clash.

Jeoffrey Maitem in Cotabato City, Philippines, contributed to this report.
For Immediate Release, December 4, 2017 Contact: Noah Greenwald, (503) 484-7495, ngreenwald@biologicaldiversity.org Completion of Northern Rockies Lynx Analysis Discredits Montana Senators' Rationale for Weakening Endangered Species Act WASHINGTON A document recently obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity shows that an analysis of the U.S. Forest Services management of Canada lynx critical habitat in the northern Rockies was completed in a timely manner in mid-October, undermining the pretext for legislation aiming to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) introduced a bill, S. 605, to cripple the Endangered Species Act nationwide, citing delays by the Forest Service in a routine review required by the Act. But the timely completion of the lynx analysis debunks the claims about delays that underpin S. 605, and in fact shows the Endangered Species Act is working exactly as intended. The so-called controversy was always a ginned-up charade to relax environmental protections for endangered species as a favor to the timber industry, said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center. Sadly the Forest Service was complicit in this effort to weaken endangered species protections. The completed assessment shows what a total nothing-burger this whole issue always was. The analysis in question was completed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in less than four months. In contrast, the actual request from the U.S. Forest Service seeking the analysis from the Fish and Wildlife Service took twice as long to complete. The delays by the Forest Service provided the political fodder for Montanas senators to argue for sweeping changes to the Endangered Species Act. For decades the Fish and Wildlife Service has required land-management agencies to reassess their actions if a new species is listed as threatened or endangered or if critical habitat is designated on these lands. The reassessments normally take a few weeks to a few months to complete. Despite the routine nature of these consultations, the Forest Service refused to assess the impacts of its actions on Canada lynx after critical habitat was designated in 2014, losing multiple court cases, including a failed Supreme Court appeal in October 2016. With no recourse available save a congressional bailout, the Forest Service continued dragging its feet in 2017. The Trump administration seems to be deliberately dragging this out to push an agenda for weakening the Endangered Species Act, said Greenwald. Senator Testers and Senator Daines cynical legislation wouldnt solve anything at all in Montana, but it would harm countless animals elsewhere, and thats exactly what the Trump administration wants.
Days after the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs Service, Hameed Ali, accused shipping companies of aiding importation of arms into the country, the federal government has directed all containerised cargoes coming into Nigeria to be on a pallet.

The advocacy for palletisation of cargoes, according to the government, would aid manual examination of consignment while it awaits the installation of functional scanners in both seaports and land border stations.

Also, according to the federal government, it would help in forestalling further importation of illicit goods.

At a sensitisation workshop on revised import and export guidelines organised by the Ministry of Finance in Lagos, the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, directed all stakeholders directly involved in the export and import trade value chains to be acquainted with export and import guidelines to avoid sanction.

In her speech, Adeosun pointed out government's stance on compliance. She posited that any stakeholder found culpable violating the guidelines would be sanctioned.

"Furthermore, in order to ensure quick clearance of import at the Nigerian ports and borders, the additional responsibilities assigned to the relevant government agencies would be carried out in a well-coordinated and collaborated manner, while the sanctions specified for non-compliance with the provisions of the guidelines would be strictly and impartially applied across the board."

The minister, who was represented by the Director of Home Finance, Olubunmi Siyanbola, reiterated government's resolve on cargo scanning machines. She added that "government is working relentlessly to quickly put in order the scanning system so as to eliminate manual examination of goods and the associated delays."

At least, 2,671 firearms illegally imported into the country were intercepted by the Nigerian Customs between January and September 2017; all the arms originated from Turkey.

Last week, Ali had lambasted shipping companies for aiding the importation of the firearms, accusing them of altering the cargo manifest for the arms and changing them, most times, to steel doors.

The customs boss, in his visit to Lagos last week, hinted stakeholders that federal government was planning to enshrine pallet system into the shipment of all containerised cargoes. This, according to Ali, would ease examination and detection of illicit items.

Harping on Ali's position, the Minister of Finance reiterated that government is taking the implementation of palletisation of containerised goods very seriously.

"The plan was for this workshop to take place earlier than today to enable us allow a three-month grace period before full implementation of the guidelines, especially in recognition of the time lag that might be required for the commencement of full implementation of the government policy on mandatory palletisation of all containerised cargo imported into Nigeria."

The minister stated that full implementation of all import and export guidelines, particularly, pallet system would take effect in 2018.

"I wish to announce that the export and import guidelines will be fully implemented with effect from 1/1/2018.

However, goods already loaded for shipment to Nigeria prior to this date will not be affected by the palletisation policy.

"Let me also say that we have examined all concerns expressed by the trading public regarding the palletisation policy of the government. The list of cargoes of goods that may be exempted from palletisation, where it is absolutely necessary will be placed on the website of the Federal Ministry of Finance and Nigeria Customs service shortly."
The fastest and most affordable connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa enables Kenya to punch well above its weight in the IT sector generally. The country's advertising industry is thriving, generating twice as much revenue as in Nigeria.

The Worlds Most Eligible Bachelor campaign.

Kenyas internet advertising market was worth $120 million last year, compared to $65 million in Nigeria and mobile revenue accounted for 94% of the total. But many agencies are not paying enough attention to trends in the digital sphere  which is being driven mainly by rapid growth in mobile internet access.

This year the internet is expected to overtake newspapers as the main source of advertising revenue, although it will still rank third behind radio and TV, according to a 2017 survey by PwC. But it is set to double in the five years leading to 2021, with revenues from the industry overall rising by 34%.

The good thing is we are seeing movement towards social media and digital campaigns, but there is room for more spending and more focus, says Monty Dhariwal, the MD at Express DDB in Nairobi and co-ordinator of the countrys Association of Practitioners in Advertising (APA).

The Worlds Most Eligible Bachelor

Ogilvy Africa grabbed the global limelight in April this year with a personal ad on the dating app Tinder, presenting the last northern white male rhino as the Worlds Most Eligible Bachelor in order to raise money for a breeding programme at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

Within a week, it had garnered two million Tinder swipes in 190 countries and raised $160,000 dollars in donations. It scooped up five awards at Africas regional showcase, the Loeries, and three awards at the Cannes Lions Festival, and made headlines on top TV news outlets including CNN, the BBC and Al-Jazeera.

Industry executives said the campaign was a prime example of how Kenyan creatives can successfully target digital and social media. We decided to take a different approach  instead of making the subject of rhino conservation sad and serious, we made it fun, says Ogilvy Africa CEO Mathieu Plassard.

It was a complete team effort  were always looking at ways of innovating, especially in the social and digital space, bringing fresh ideas through the use of technology.

Research shows that advertisers allocated only 8% of their budgets to digital media in 2015, while Kenyans spent 22% of their media time online. Globally, the share of media budgets allocated to digital channels is steadily increasing  it rose to 43% last year from 38% in 2015.

Untapped space in the creative field

The time which people will spend on their devices will of course increase  according to the Connected Consumer Survey 2016, half of Kenyans used the internet in 2016, up from 45% in 2014 and well above the African average of 25%. It estimates that 44% of Kenyans now use a smartphone, compared with just 27% in 2014.

Data from Google also shows that Kenyans spend more time watching videos  in 2016 there was a monthly average of 7.5 million U-tube views in the country compared with 2.9 million in Nigeria and just 1.0 million in South Africa.

The current approach in our industry is to adapt billboard, print, or TVC for digital by cutting it down, resizing it and so on. This is not enough  we need to be developing interactive creative content for the digital space, in formats that work on mobile and on the go, says Waithera Kabiru, digital marketing specialist at Coca-Cola in Nairobi.

She acknowledges that while the growth of digital media usage in Kenya is significant, some forms of traditional media are still relevant to get the mass reach or brand awareness that most products require. The trend that will continue to grow is to take on an integrated marketing approach where TV, radio, digital, experiential and PR all work together, she adds.

We have seen the growing use of gifs, video, and boomerangs but not enough creative executions of these formats. We also need multiple creative formats for programmatic advertising, and for performance marketing. This is a largely untapped space in the creative field, she says.

Shortage of skilled talent

Jason Nartey, an experienced creative director who plans to set up his own agency in Ghana, says that there is a shortage of skilled talent. We need more specialists  in this industry its not good to be a jack of all trades and master of none, he maintains.

Dhariwal points out that one of the challenges in Kenya is that there is no technical institution which can foster the development of skills in graphics or design for advertising. Its all self-taught so it gets limiting  local talent requires mentoring, he says.

Plassard believes that one of the positive trends in Kenyan advertising is that the industry has developed a more competitive spirit. People are less comfortable with the status quo  everyone is looking now at ways to push the envelope, to make a good idea into an excellent one, he says.

Competing for awards is part of the process. Last year, the Loeries partnered with the APA to relaunch the Kenyan APA awards after a 12-year hiatus and the event took place again this year on 1 December.

Its all very encouraging for our local creative industry  there is now a platform for them to showcase their work, Dhariwal says.
I read an article recently where the reporter said, inter alia that, "internet advertising is up by 13% from 2015 to 2016," and it was based on information from a usually credible source...

But I'm not so sure.

It seems to me that it's open season for just about anyone to make whatever claims they like  and back it up with assumptions like "according to WKRP, radio listenership is up" (you're probably too young to remember the programme WKRP  but you get my drift).

On the other hand, I asked a highly placed source what they thought, and the reply was: I would actually be inclined to believe that digital has grown by 13% year-on-year, I think the digital space is the most unknown, confusing space and many large advertisers believe they must be in this space to succeed. I heard, for instance, that Mercedes Benz is spending about 50% of their ad budget in South Africa on digital and BMW is following suit.

Essentially, there are a lot of large clients throwing money at digital because it is the next "New Big" thing that you have to be in. I think there's a strong element of FOMO here (Fear of missing out).

What's happened, especially in the digital space, is that many surveys have one main goal  to confuse.

For a clever salesman, with lots of big bullsh!t numbers, it is easy to convince a client that if you ain't on digital, you ain't gonna make it, especially when trying to reach millennials.

I'm not necessarily saying that the multitude of surveys available at the moment, across all media, are not to be trusted. But I do believe that many of those looking for the readership holy grail are bumbling around a bit.

I mean, we all know that research is wrong, don't we? It simply has to be  but that that's not the issue. The theory is that, providing you have a number (based on some logic or other) then, although it's essentially wrong the subsequent surveys, using the same criteria, can illustrate the change  and that's the important number.

It's not that you started off with, say, 1,000,000 readers, that's irrelevant in the grander scheme of things. What is important is that if, the next year, your readership is, say, 1,100,000, then you can make a reasonable assumption that your readership has increased by 10% no matter what the true number was to begin with.

It never fails to amaze me how few people in the industry can't seem to grasp that simple concept.

But digital is another animal completely. It's easy to get lost in page impressions, unique viewers, click throughs, session durations and whatever other terminology they think they can impress us with.

The other thing, as an aside, is the quality and functionality of so many websites  many of whom seem to have only one objective, to make your visit as unhelpful as possible. But that's another subject for another time.

The bottom line is, in my opinion anyway, that nobody really knows what digital is and they can't draw meaningful conclusions because they're having serious problems in measuring it.

It's rather like Bitcoin, when you think about it. There are some who believe implicitly that it's the future and they're investing big time. But the majority are so unsure that they really don't know what to do  except miserably watch the price go up and up and up. Then, at the other end of the scale, there are the diehards who refuse to believe anything other than it's a scam.

All very confusing in a confusing world.

So, has digital increased 13% year-on-year?

Well, your guess is as good as mine.
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KINSHASA, DRC - Swiss food giant Nestle announced Sunday that it would close its factory in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a potential market of 80 million people but one beset by poverty and political instability.

"We will close our factory and offices by the end of January and continue developing our economic distribution model through third parties," a spokeswoman for the group told AFP.

The decision affects 120 people and Nestle will offer laid-off employees "a series of compensatory measures more favourable than required by local labour laws," she said.

Nestle has been in the country since 2009 and opened a factory producing Maggi stock cubes, but has posted losses ever since. The food giant's investment of 15 million Swiss francs ($15 million) was a boost to DR Congo, which like other central African nations is seeking to grow its industrial base and move away from being merely an exporter of minerals.

In October the Congolese affiliate of Dutch brewing giant Heineken, Bralima, announced its own restructuring plan, with a company official saying that "a complete overhaul is necessary if the economy is going to function".

Rich in cobalt and coltan - used in electronic products - the country nonetheless suffers from grinding poverty which affects 80% of the population.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is also suffering a political crisis. Much-delayed elections to replace President Joseph Kabila have been scheduled for December 2018, but the opposition is demanding that the veteran leader step down sooner.

The vast African country has seen an outbreak of anti-government demonstrations since Kabila refused to step down in December 2016 on the expiry of his second and final term in office.

Kabila took office after his father Laurent was assassinated in 2001.

Source: AFP
MILAN, Italy - Luciano Benetton, one of the founders of the eponymous Italian clothing company, announced his return on Thursday to the helm of the struggling company.

"In 2008, I left the company with 155 million ($136 million) in assets, and am taking it back now with the 81 million losses from 2016. And this year it will be worse," the 82-year old said in an interview with La Repubblica.

"It is an intolerable pain. That's why I'm going back," he told the Italian daily.

The billionaire, who co-founded the company in 1965 and served as Benetton's chairman from 1978 to 2012, said that "while others imitated us, the United Colors lost their colour.

"We alone are to blame. The shops, which were reservoirs of light, became dark and sad like those in Communist Poland. We closed our doors in South America and the US."

He said the "worst sin" was having "stopped making sweaters: It's as if we removed the water from the aqueduct".

The Italian, who dropped out of school aged 14 and saved money to buy a knitting machine to make sweaters, blamed those who took over from him for the company's decline. The batton first passed to his son, who then handed over the reins to managers outside of the family.

The number of Benetton employees has dropped from 9,766 in 2008 to 7,328 today. Asked if jobs were at risk, Benetton said "we will give everyone a chance, but we must lighten the business".

Source: AFP
Heineken has laid the foundation stone of its first brewery in Mozambique, which will brew beers for the domestic market. The first bottle of beer is expected to come off the production line in the first half of 2019.

Located in the province of Maputo, between the Marracuene and Manhica districts, the brewery represents a $100 million (85 million) investment and will have a production capacity of 0.8 million hectoliters.

Heineken Mozambique started its activities in 2016 through a sales and marketing office, importing international beers including Heineken, Amstel, Amstel Lite and Sagres in the country to offer more choice to Mozambican consumers. The construction of the company's very first brewery is considered a major step forward for the its presence in the country.

With this significant investment, Heineken Mozambique is expected to create 200 direct jobs and support additional indirect jobs through its entire value chain.

Contributing to economic development

Aligned with its ambition of sourcing 60% of its agricultural raw materials in Africa by 2020, Heineken Mozambique says it will explore the possibility of locally sourcing the raw materials it will need to produce its beers. One of the objectives of this project will be to improve crop yields as well as the capabilities and living standards of Mozambican farmers, contributing to the economic development of the country.

Boudewijn Haarsma, Heineken Internationals managing director East & West Africa, stated: We are delighted to enter Mozambique, where we see promising long-term economic perspectives. The project is progressing well thanks to the support of the Mozambican Government and its commitment to bring investments into the country.

"Investing in a new market like Mozambique supports Heinekens ambition to expand its footprint and be the number one or a strong number two in all markets in which it operates. With our extensive experience and existing business in Africa, we also aim to be a partner for growth today in Mozambique as we already are throughout the continent. I am convinced our presence will contribute to the economic and social development that is already underway in Mozambique.
Many thought it would never happen, but Robert Mugabe has left the building. In the past few weeks, a lot has been said about this major change for Zimbabwe and expectations vary from very optimistic to very pessimistic. One thing is sure, however - there will be change.

One such a change that is often spoken about is a possible revival in the countrys agricultural sector. Zimbabwe was once a very productive agricultural country and in the lead in many agricultural industries. It has a strong educational system, a highly competitive spirit and definitely a lot of potential.

The countrys infrastructure is still in relatively good condition and a turnaround in its agricultural sector is a definite possibility if certain factors are put in place, says Theo de Jager, president of the World Farmers Organisation.

A look at the past

It has often been said that Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa and lost this status under the reign of Robert Mugabe. The hope of an agricultural revival then creates the expectation that the country would return to its breadbasket status.

But was Zimbabwe ever truly the breadbasket of Africa?

Without placing doubt on the potential and value of a Zimbabwean agricultural revival, it is important to get the facts of its former agricultural glory straight. In an article on www.africacheck.org, Wandile Sihlobo, head of economic and agribusiness intelligence at Agbiz writes that while Mugabes land reform programme seemingly contributed to a decline in Zimbabwes agricultural output, there is limited evidence to suggest that the country was a dominant player in Africas food production prior to that period, at least from a staple food production perspective.

A country should be able to meet its staple food consumption needs and simultaneously command a notable share in exports of the same food commodity to be considered a food basket, says Sihlobo. Looking at the production data of the key staple foods, maize and wheat, Zimbabwes production of these commodities has never surpassed a 10% share on the continent over the past 55 years. Overall, we view Zimbabwe as having been a self-sufficient food producer prior to its land reform programme. However, there is limited evidence to support the notion of Zimbabwe having ever been the breadbasket of Africa.

Making agriculture work

In an article on www.news24.com, Admos Chimhowu, a senior lecturer in Development Studies at the University of Manchester, identifies making agriculture work as one of four ways in which Zimbabwe can recover from the Mugabe era. Getting agriculture to work ought to be a core priority. Given the nature of structural changes, particularly the emergence of opportunities through global value chains, a key starting point must be an agricultural review commission to investigate current conditions for smallholder agriculture and recommend new policies required to transform in the sector, he writes.

Government policy will be key to achieving this, but according to De Jager there has been a focus on agricultural revival prior to the countrys change in leadership. For the past three years there has been a lot of discussion among the four major Zimbabwean agricultural organisations on getting agriculture back on track and speaking to government as one voice on this matter.

At the end of 2015, these organisations reached common ground about a strategy for revival in agriculture in rural Zimbabwe. They realised that infrastructure is still in relatively good condition and that revival in the industry is possible if the policy environment sees certain changes and if sufficient investment can be attracted. It is crucial that capital is attracted and for this, certainty on land ownership is crucial, hence the importance of policy change.

De Jager explains that the collective suggestion of these organisations to government was that white farmers who lost their land since 2000 and do not want to return, are compensated. They also suggest compensation for black farmers who are currently on the land and not utilising it optimally or do not want to farm further. This will make land commercially available for serious investors and farmers who want to work the land and use it to its full potential. Only then will progress be possible, says De Jager.

The organisations also collectively suggested that focus be placed on those agricultural industries that can, in the shortest term, create jobs and earn foreign currency. These are industries where we see a high level of global competitiveness, a high level of technology being implemented and industries that require a lot of expertise. This is why the organisations deemed it important that farmers who left Zimbabwe and lost their land be attracted back to Zimbabwe to bring a high level of expertise back to the countrys agricultural industry. There is, of course, the realisation that many of these farmers will not return and that other options will have to be considered in order to bring expertise into the industry.

Change in regime

A very positive indication is that the interim president, Emmerson Mnangagwa spoke along the same lines in his inaugural address and placed the focus on agriculture as the mainstay of Zimbabwes economic recovery.

What did Mnangagwa have to say on agriculture and land reform in his address:

We wish the rest of the world to understand that policies and programmes related to land reform were inevitable. Whilst there is a lot that we need to do by way of outcomes, the principle of repossessing our land cannot be challenged or reversed. The dispossession of our ancestral lands was the fundamental reason for waking the liberation struggle. It would be a betrayal of the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives if we were to reverse the gains that we have made in reclaiming our land. Therefore, I want to exhort beneficiaries of the land reform programme to show their value by demonstrating commitment to the utilisation of the land now available to them for national food security and for recovery of our economy. They must take advantage of programmes that my government shall continue to avail to ensure that all land is utilised optimally. To that end my government will capacitate the land commission so that it assists with all outstanding issues related to land redistribution.

My government is committed to compensating those farmers from whom land was taken in terms of our laws of the land. As we go in the future, complex issues of land tenure will be addressed both urgently and definitively. We dare not prevaricate on this key issue. Events leading to this historic day attest to the fact that we are a unique nation, one which is clear about what it wants and what it does not want.

[]

Our economic policy will be predicated on our agriculture, which is the mainstay and will create conditions for investment-led economic recovery that puts a premium on job creation. Key choices will have to be made to attract foreign direct investment to tackle high levels of unemployment while transforming our economy. The many skilled Zimbabweans who have left the country over the years for a variety of reasons must now come into the broad economic plan designed for the recovery and take-off of our nation. Of course, the fiscal and social infrastructure must be repaired and expanded to position our country in readiness for economic growth, employment creation, equity, freedom and democracy.

According to De Jager, he had a list of five issues that he wanted to hear in Mnangagwas address. I was relieved to hear all of these in his address.

This includes:

That he understands that agriculture will be the mainstay of the countrys economic recovery

That he understands that those agricultural industries that are labour and export-intensive will be the anchor of any agricultural revival and will need a lot of focus

That he understands that government will have to create a very investor-friendly environment and that such an environment will depend heavily on certainty

He spoke with his farmers and not about his farmers

He handled the topic of land compensation politically cleverly, speaking about compensation for both white and black famers and placing a lot of focus on land tenure security.

De Jager says a lot will depend on the way land compensations are structured and how much effort will be put into restoring the integrity of title deeds. Rapid revival and recovery is definitely possible, but it all depends on how effectively the new regime can bring certainty of land ownership and general certainty in the business environment back onto the table.

He adds that the reality might be much less of or even a slower revival than what is expected. We might see a political paradigm drag and some roleplayers may cling to the liberation ideology. There might also be inertia in investment appetite and financers may at first be wary of investing and lending. According to De Jager, challenging climatic circumstances may also temper the possible Zimbabwean agricultural revival. This comes at a time that we are wrestling with nature; a year of good rainfall will support such a revival, and poor rainfall will hamper it.

Craig Dealle, CEO of Foundations for Farming in Zimbabwe says he is cautiously optimistic about the future of agriculture in the country. Conditions on the ground will be much more favourable as long as a few basic fundamentals are put in place. And as long as words are put into action. Among these fundamentals is security of tenure, as it will lead to compensation of former farmers which will unlock dead capital as well as collateral for new farmers. I believe increased security of tenure will initiate a natural progression towards gifted farmers occupying the land based on profitability and not political patronage. Dealle also places focus on the importance of realistic producer prices and seeing local production of inputs resuming as the manufacturing sector revives due to the scrapping of detrimental indigenisation laws.

Another fundamental factor, according to Dealle, will be a focus on smallholder farmers. These farmers still hold the key and we have to move them from being subsistence farmers to commercial farmers no matter how small their plot of land is. Small-scale growers can be very profitable.

Everything, he concludes, will, however, be dependent on government will.

Impact on SA

De Jager says there are two sides to the impact a possible revival in Zimbabwean agriculture may hold for South Africa. The one side is that we will see increased competition if Zimbabwe ups its game as South Africa definitely benefited from lower Zimbabwean agricultural production over the years. He does, however, favour a focus on the other, more positive side. A possible Zimbabwean agricultural revival may hold definite opportunities for both South African farmers and agricultural business. Furthermore, the healthier our region is the better. Growth in the region will always be positive. We must just ensure that we benefit from this growth.  Marike Brits, AgriOrbit
While property is a very popular and profitable investment in South Africa, without the right skills it can be a tough market to crack.

Its not easy to leap into property and make a success of it without a plan, says Tony Clarke, MD of the Rawson Property Group. Unless you have a natural instinct for it, a lot of capital, some capital, or a very skilled network of industry professionals, it takes a bit of time and preparation to develop the skills, knowledge and foundation that you need.

Despite the work involved, Clarke firmly believes that anyone with the right drive and determination can make a success of property investment. Here are his top tips on how to do exactly that.

Do your research

Like most things in life, the more you know about property, the better youre likely to do in it, says Clarke. That means taking the time to understand whats happening on the market, both locally and nationally, and getting a feel for trends and pricing that will help you recognise opportunities down the line.

Clarke says a good way to get started is to set up alerts on online property portals that will notify you of new listings in your area of interest.

If you can, keep an eye on properties for rent as well as for sale, he adds, to start familiarising yourself with the balance between purchase price and potential rental returns.

Leverage your network

Studying up on real estate trends is certainly important, but youre unlikely to ever surpass the expertise of someone whos been actively engaged in the industry for many years. For that reason, Clarke highly recommends building a network of specialist contacts who can advise and assist you in your property investment journey.

A lot of people seem to think genuine advice on real estate investment is hard to come by, says Clarke. Theres a lot of residual distrust of estate agents that has its roots in the distant past. In reality, todays agents are highly trained professionals who tend to be well aware of the value of building lasting relationships with clients by providing sound support and advice.

As an added bonus, real estate agents can often connect you with other industry professionals like attorneys, rental managers and even building contractors with whom they have had good, personal experiences.

Its definitely worth your while to visit a few agencies and find a team that you feel understands your needs, and is willing and able to help you do the legwork to launch a solid investment portfolio, says Clarke.

Know your limits

Most of us learn to swim in the shallow end, and Clarke recommends the same strategy for starting a property portfolio.

Dont overextend yourself to begin with, he says. Its far better to ease into things with one or two smaller properties that can form a stable base on which to grow your investment.

As part of this strategy, Clarke also recommends choosing a well-defined target market to begin with, such as student housing or apartments for young professionals.

By limiting yourself to one area, one type of property, or one type of tenant at the outset, you can tailor your investment more effectively, he says. Its a much simpler approach than trying to understand the driving forces behind several different markets at the same time.

Gear up for growth

Gearing is one of the biggest advantages of property as an investment, and is a valuable tool when it comes to growing your portfolio once youve established a stable investment base.

Gearing a property investment usually means using equity from one property to finance another, says Clarke, and can be a very effective way to minimise your finance costs and maximise your growth. It needs to be done mindfully, of course, to control your exposure and risk, but is one of the most powerful tools in any investors toolbox.

Know when to let go

While property is generally considered a low-risk investment, there is a chance that a particular property wont perform as well as expected. In this situation, Clarke says its important to learn the difference between a temporary performance slump and a permanent downward spiral.

Holding on to an underperforming asset isnt going to do you any favours, but neither is cutting the strings on a property thats just having some growing pains, he says. Learning how to tell the difference between these situations is a vital investment skill, and one that could save you more than few headaches over the course of your real estate journey.
The Department of Basic Education (DBE) in partnership with The Training Room Online (TTRO) will be rolling out digital learning into the public school sector of South Africa in the form of the DBE Cloud.

 Karel Joseph Noppe Brooks  123RF.com

TTRO signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Department of Basic Education this year. The agreement sees them managing the learning platform, and aggregating quality Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) aligned digital content into the platform, from multiple content partners. The project combines many great initiatives, lessons learnt and best practices into one constantly evolving ecosystem, which drives true systemic change in South African education.

According to TTRO CEO Kirsty Chadwick: There are four key roles of the DBE Cloud platform  namely: Learner, Teacher, Parent and School Administrator. The reporting of the platform rolls up from the individual learner profile; teacher/class profile; school; district; provincial through to the national DBE, that makes this platform accessible to all valuable stakeholders typically involved in a learners education.

While the platform gives learners access to five major components such as; access to a vast range of rich learning material, the option to view schedules and calendars, the ability to collaborate with their peers, the benefit of access to helpful resources and the mandate to have fun while learning. It also ensures the teacher has their own space to manage their learners development as well as their own professional and personal development. This solution thus has a comprehensive focus on learning  both from the childs and adults perspective.

The DBE is so diverse in its offering that it also includes a Parent Portal which gives the parent access to their childs learning material, the ability to track their childs progress, the opportunity to communicate with the teacher, a view of their childs schedule and calendar, to print all compulsory learning material the teacher loads and the chance to complete courses aimed at adult-learning.

The initial DBE Cloud pilot has concluded, however UAT testing is in full swing until the end of 2017. Implementation of this exciting project starts in January 2018, so if you would like to get involved, contact TTRO.

The DBE Cloud development forms part of a larger vision which ultimately aims to develop the skilled citizen of the future. Using technology and caused based collaboration as the drivers, the DBE, in partnership with TTRO aims to drive systemic changes in education, by providing world class learning for free to its learners and teachers, thereby creating skilled citizens of the future that can complete locally and globally and is so doing, mobilise socio-economic reform.

For more information on how you can get involved with this initiative, contact TTRO.
IBTM World, which took place between 28 - 30 November 2017 in Barcelona, saw South Africa's deputy minister of tourism, Elizabeth Thabethe announce a delegate-boosting plan that seeks to broaden the variety of tourism products on the market, to propel the country's business events industry forward.

During the event, the South African National Convention Bureau (SANCB), a business unit of South African Tourism emphasised that South Africa  and Africa  is open for business and on an accelerated drive to increase our share of the global business events pie.

Thabethe explained that this drive entails bringing more high-value business events delegates to South Africa, aiding economic growth and sustaining much-needed jobs throughout the broader tourism economy  this excludes the contribution that such events make to the local knowledge economy.

Aiding South Africas economic growth

Announcing the results of a three-year study into South Africas business events industry, Thabethe said South Africa hosts about a million business delegates every year and that the local events industry sustains more than 250,000 jobs, directly and indirectly.

She revealed that the business events industry contributes R115bn to South Africas gross domestic product every year.

This research proves what our industry has always suspected  that South Africas business events industry contributes significantly to our broader tourism economy, said Thabethe.

More importantly, she added, the study shows that delegates have an appetite to experience South Africas leisure attractions and that most have the disposable income to enjoy an extended holiday add-on to their business trip.

Armed with this research, we want to entice business events delegates to come to South Africa, stay for longer and bring people with them.

To help achieve this tourism growth, the South African government has allocated R90m for a bidding support programme to enable South Africa to bid more aggressively for international association conferences, meetings, incentives and exhibitions over the next three years. This grant will give South Africa extra muscle to lobby for and attract big-ticket events, added Thabethe.

MICE and growing destination travel

The country is already widely regarded as a go-to destination for hosting international conferences, particularly in the medical and scientific field  last years International Aids Conference being a case in point.

Such high-profile events are putting South Africa on the map as an exciting and cost-effective option for meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions. We have all the infrastructure, technical capacity, expertise and experience thats needed, not to mention extremely welcome, service-oriented and capable people. But more needs to be done for the countrys business events sector to reach its full potential, said Thabethe.

As part of the programme, the SANCB is spearheading a global delegate-boosting campaign, targeting members of the association conferences that are already confirmed to take place in South Africa over the next five years.

We have already started reaping the rewards of this fund, said Thabethe, revealing that since April, the SANCB had submitted 54 bids that could potentially contribute R1.6bn to the economy, attract 57,660 delegates and generate more than 214 combined conference days."

She noted that each time a blue-chip international event was hosted in South Africa, it not only added to the countrys prestige, It also delivers important socio-economic benefits to our people, which is why Africa is the best place to bring your next business event, meeting or conference.
A newly release application dubbed Datally made available free at the Google Play Store lets people see when games, social networks or other programs are using internet connections in the background, and then put a stop to it.

A "Next Billion Users" unit formed by Google chief executive Sundar Pichai set to work on Datally about two years ago, after travelling the world and finding that the cost of mobile data services was a vexation, especially in places where budgets are tight and smartphones are the main way people go online.

While smartphones seemed ubiquitous, it was common for them to be in "aeroplane mode," severing connections to networks out of fear of runaway mobile data costs, according to product manager Josh Woodward.

"Almost every app on your phone will run in the background - whether a game, video app, a chat app - without you knowing about it," Woodward said.

"Data is like money"

"Those living on Wi-Fi or with large data plans may not notice, but for many users around the world data is like money to them so they budget it."

Along with showing real-time smartphone data use, Datally reveals which apps are involved and lets people stop them as they wish.

"It really acts as a speedometer for your mobile data, along with the ability to block data if things are getting out of hand," Woodward said.

Datally also has a feature that helps people find nearby hotspots where they can connect to the internet without using telecom networks.

Google tested Datally earlier this year in the Philippines with half-million users, finding they cut mobile data use by about 30 percent, according to Woodward.

Datally works on Android smartphones with Lollipop (5.0) or newer versions of the Google-backed mobile operating system.

While the inspiration for Datally came from developing countries where smartphones are linking growing numbers of people to the internet but mobile data costs are onerous, the idea of cutting service bills has universal appeal, according to NBU chief business officer Dave Shapiro.

"We want to see as many people access as much of the internet as they can," Shapiro said.
It is often said in the aviation industry that Africa has the lowest number of flights but records the highest number of air crashes in the world.

 anyaberkut

This has been a damning record over the years, but since the last few years, Africa has improved significantly. This was confirmed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

Airline operators in Nigeria were piqued during the recent International Civil Aviation Organisation World Aviation Forum (IWAF) in Abuja when the president of African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina alleged that airlines in Africa do not maintain their aircraft and that explained why there is a high rate of accidents on the continent.

"Also, Africa needs safe skies. Africa is the riskiest of skies to fly in. While Africa accounts for only 3.4% of all flight departures, it represents over nine percent of all air accidents and 37% of total global air fatalities. Among the 200 airlines blacklisted by the EU, more than 50`5 are African! These are shocking and non-acceptable numbers," said Adesina.

"The reasons are several: old, poorly maintained and inefficient aircraft, poor safety standards, weak navigation systems, traffic management and generally weak inspection and oversight, and non-compliance with safety audits. These must change! Air travel must be safe - and safety should never be compromised," he said.

Many industry insiders argued that the figures mentioned by Adesina were from the old records; that African countries have improved their safety rating in the past four years. They insisted that there is improved air safety in the region.

The Chairman and CEO of Air Peace, Allen Onyema reacting to the statement credited to AfDB president said that Nigerian airlines are over-regulated by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and insisted they could compete with any airline in the world.

He explained that such comments affected insurance premiums paid by African airlines, which he said were having negative impacts on their performances and financial resources.

Onyema said that on the average, Nigerian airlines pay at least $2.8m for C-Checks of aircraft while their competitors could carry out such maintenances for a mere $500,000, adding that insurance premiums paid on aircraft is four times more than what legacy airlines pay around the world.

"Nigerian airlines as safe as their counterparts in Europe, America"

Onyema insisted that all Nigerian airlines were as safe as their counterparts in Europe and America despite the harsh operating environment in the country.

"Let me tell you something, which you know, NCAA, in fact, is safety-centric; maybe because of the accidents of the past. They hound the airlines into doing the right thing. We are over-regulated by NCAA. What they can allow in America and Europe, NCAA will not allow it here.

"The money we spend to maintain our fleet, the legacy airlines of this world do not spend it. I have never done any C-check that is less than $2.8m, yet all over the world, people do C-Check with $500,000 because some components that will expire in two or three months are still left on the aircraft because they are very close to source of spares and maintenance facilities unlike here that we have to do everything at a go.

"I disagree with Adesina on that statement because this is the assumptions the foreign countries hinge on. They tell you Nigeria is unsafe in order to add more to insurance premiums for themselves. What I pay as insurance premiums on one aircraft, the legacy airlines of this world would pay it on four aircraft. They tell you Nigeria is unsafe and yet, all of them still scramble to come here. It is what I call international aero politics, which is very bad," he added.

IATA in a recent statement rated the continent's airlines very high in terms of safety and maintenance of their fleet. According to the body, African airlines had significantly improved in safety, which explains why there had not been any commercial air accidents among the carriers in the past two years.

Vice-President, IATA, African Region, Raphael Kuuchi told ThisDay earlier in the year that there has been progressive report on air safety in Africa.

"The good news is that throughout the (IATA) conference, probably for the first time in many, many years you haven't heard Africa mentioned in relation to air accidents, which shows that a lot of things are happening positively in Africa. To start with, traffic is continuing to grow and IATA 20 year forecast indicates that Africa is going to be the fastest growing region in the next 20-35 years and about 5.1 percent growth year in year out. In addition to that; I am sure you all read the media release of IATA about our safety record in Africa which is unprecedented with zero loses for last year.

Kuuchi said Africa also got a number of African airlines which now come onboard IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA).

"I will be taking the message to African governments that much as we have seen safety improvements since the Abuja Declaration (which made IATA Safety Audit mandatory for African airlines) targets were announced in 2012 to the extent that now we are recording zero losses, we do not want to see airlines that are on the IOSA register drop off that register. And so government should help us."

Kuuchi said one of the provisions of the Abuja Declaration was that states should make the Abuja Declaration an integral part of Air Operator Certificate (AOC) renewal for airlines.

"We haven't seen that in many countries, so we will want African government to ensure that when you are renewing airlines AOC, you ensure that they have IOSA and that the IOSA is valid. Now if we do that, then we are going to ensure that once you are on the IOSA registry you must keep on it otherwise you will not get your next IOSA registration," he said.

Both ICAO an IATA have agreed that airline safety has significantly improved in Africa; it is the onus on regulatory authorities and the airline to maintain and improve the safety standard.
#Newsmaker: Kerry Hibberd to 'Change the World' w/ 'goodvertising' and Vodacom

Net#work BBDO strategist Kerry Hibberd is going to be swapping creative strategy for volunteering next year, as part of Vodacom's Change the World (CTW) programme...

Its not often that Boniswa Pezisa, Net#work BBDO group CEO, is proud of a staff members resignation. Im so proud that Kerry is going to be making the world a better place for South African school children. But, its not surprising that Vodacom sees in her what weve all seen over the past few years as colleagues. Our door will always be open! Kerry Hibberd Hibberd has chosen to volunteer at Olico Education, an NGO based in Diepsloot that uses a mix of tutoring and technology to help township school learners improve their maths skills. She looks forward to helping Olico develop and promote its free, Caps-aligned maths content to as many school-going youths as possible. I have been passionate about goodvertising for some time now and have actively sought out opportunities to do purpose-led work for my brands in my advertising role. Id been doing strategic work for Olico focussed on the goodvertising space as well, and when their leadership team told me about the Vodacom CTW opportunity where Vodacom pays your salary to use your specific skills at an NGO of your choice, I jumped at the chance. Here, Hibberd explains how she plans to change the world in 365 days Congratulations on being one of 20 applicants to be selected! What does this recognition and opportunity mean to you, and the agency? Congratulations on being one of 20 applicants to be selected! What does this recognition and opportunity mean to you, and the agency?

I am so excited to be part of the Change the World programme. When I received the call, it suddenly dawned on me that I had signed up for a full 365 days of difference. The opportunity excites and terrifies me  Im joining a sector that wakes up every day to make positive dents in the way our society works. Why maths education and why Olico Education? Why maths education and why Olico Education? Its actually less about maths and more about unlocking the potential of kids who otherwise wouldnt have a chance. If you think about it, mathematics acts as a barrier for thousands of kids: low grades = less choices. Kids with low grades have less chance of unlocking opportunities to study what they want, be what they want and do what they want with their lives. Olico can help them change that through their programmes which use tech and tutoring to get learners where they need to be mathematically. According to a release sent to Bizcommunity, youll be helping Olico develop and promote their maths content to as many school-going youths as possible. How do you plan to do this? According to a release sent to Bizcommunity, youll be helping Olico develop and promote their maths content to as many school-going youths as possible. How do you plan to do this?

Being a strategist, I definitely have a plan! Its documented in a Project Charter and there are Excel sheets aaaahhh, a planners dream!

Essentially, my main goals are to create and promote new content that Olico has begun to work on, called Maths Clubs, which is in collaboration with SA Numeracy Chair Project, Axium, Kellelo and Wits. Then I need to help get them famous so that we can increase their impact and assist with fundraising!

Will you return to Net#work BBDO afterwards, or will you make a decision on your next steps closer to the time? Will you return to Net#work BBDO afterwards, or will you make a decision on your next steps closer to the time?

Ill take each day as it comes! But BBDO have been very supportive of my decision and have said their doors are always open. Thanks Net#work!

What will you miss most at Net#work BBDO? What will you miss most at Net#work BBDO?

Ill miss the crazy, experimental ideas that get thrown around every day. Sometimes we even made some crazy ideas come to life and that was always fun.

According to the release, youre the mastermind behind the Vagina Varsity campaign for Libresse. Why are you proud to be associated with this award-winning campaign in this way? According to the release, youre the mastermind behind the Vagina Varsity campaign for Libresse. Why are you proud to be associated with this award-winning campaign in this way?

I wasnt the only mastermind behind Vagina Varsity  there was a big team behind this incredible campaign and it would never have happened without us all pulling it together. Ill always be proud of this particular piece of work because it was taboo-breaking and started conversations about vaginas, periods and female health that were totally silenced before. Vagina Varsity was also a major goodvertising case study for me  proving that purpose-led work really works.

What change do you hope to see in the world in 2018? What change do you hope to see in the world in 2018?



Less armchair activism, more small, real changes. Dont just tweet about how bad something is. Go onto Thundafund or visit an NGO's website to donate that R50 to the people doing something about it. Its the cost of a burger and it really helps.

Olico currently has programmes and resources for learners from grades 1 to 12, and will soon also offer training to education providers and other partners who are interested in helping learners in their communities. Follow Hibberd and @olicoeducation for updates.
Considered to be one of the world's leading destinations for those wanting to sample cutting-edge cuisine that's steeped in rich history, Cape Town in the Western Cape offers amazing smorgasbord of food heritages, towering mountains, the beautiful and icy Atlantic Ocean to iconic architecture and vibrant culture.

Here is a five-foodie road trop guide to include on your next visit to Cape Town

La Petite Ferme Restaurant - Franschhoek

From Cape Town - 1h 8min (81.4 km) via N1 and R45

The fact that Franschhoek is situated only an hour from Cape Town isnt the only reason to visit this iconic Western Cape town. One of the most celebrated reasons to visit Franschhoek is for its restaurants, and this award-winning restaurant is a great place to start your trip to one of the Western Capes most picturesque and tranquil towns.

The Hussar Grill  Stellenbosch

From Cape Town - 44min (50.5 km) via N2 and R310

The Hussar Grill has a long-standing history of quality food of impeccable standards. If you are a meat-lover, then Hussar should be on your list. It has provided the famous wine-producing town with excellent food since 1964.

Olympia Cafe - Kalk Bay

From Cape Town - 33min (30.1 km) via M3

This iconic Kalk Bay establishment has become a regular for locals and visitors alike. For years it has provided the Southern Peninsula region with quintessential pastries and bistro-style food. They pride themselves in hiring interesting staff members and are also dog friendly. Something to consider: they dont take reservations so you may have to wait for a table.

Cape Town CBD, Addis in Cape Town

This is a definitive Ethiopian dining experience in Cape Towns bustling city centre. It prides itself in everything that is Ethiopian; down to the last decorative ornament on the table. This is the authentic experience you have been looking for, short of visiting Ethiopia.

Bientang's Cave Restaurant  Hermanus

From Cape Town 1h 36min (121 km) via N2 fastest route, the usual traffic

If visiting a restaurant which has literally been carved into an old cave isnt reason enough to venture to this iconic destination, then the fact that its within direct view of one of Africas best whale sanctuaries, should be. Hermanus is one of the most picturesque towns in the whole of the Western Cape for various reasons. This restaurant will help you reconnect with nature and is also a great place to bond and unwind with the whole family.

*Please note: distances from Cape Town to destinations taken from Google Maps.
British tourists have voted Cape Town the best city in the world for the fifth consecutive year.

Unveiling the results of a poll of 90,000 readers in the 2017 Telegraph Travel Awards, the UK media organisation said on Friday: "The world's greatest city? It's a coastal gem in the shadow of an iconic mountain, where fine wine flows and penguins roam. It could only be Cape Town."

The Mother City beat Vancouver and Tokyo to top spot, and the Telegraph said: "With all eyes on SA in 2018, the centenary year of Nelson Mandela's birth, few would bet against it repeating the trick in 12 months' time."

The announcement coincided with Friday's announcement that Joon, part of Air France, will fly direct from Paris to Cape Town three times a week from April 1 2018. Arrivals in Cape Town from France have grown by 35% in the last year, to 74,278.

Cape Town Air Access, a partnership between Wesgro, the Western Cape government, the City of Cape Town, Airports Company SA, South African Tourism and Cape Town Tourism, said the new service would replace Air France flights.

Wesgro CEO Tim Harris said: "This is not only good for our tourism industry, but also for business. Indeed, according to South African Tourism, 41% of travellers from France to Cape Town visit for leisure, and another 39% for business.

"This is precisely why Cape Town Air Access is so important for economic growth and job creation in the Cape. By making it easier for more people to visit our beautiful city and province, we will increase tourism, trade and investment, and most importantly, boost job creation."

Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille said: "We are excited about this news and express our thanks to Joon for their confidence in Cape Town. This will be a welcome boost to our efforts to position Cape Town as a globally competitive business destination. We look forward to welcoming more tourists from France, but also seeing more businesses and investors connect with us with much more ease thanks to these flights."

Economic opportunities MEC Alan Winde said: "Improving air access is a key priority of our Project Khulisa growth strategy, and we've seen the positive impact of increased air routes. International air arrivals have grown by 27% year on year."

Source: BDpro
Sally Burdett returns to e.tv's 8pm news bulletin on Monday 4 December.

Sally Burdett

From 4 December, e.tv is excited to announce a new lineup to its 8pm news, with Sally Burdett returning to the screen to anchor the bulletin.

For nearly 20 years, e.tv has established itself as an independent voice in the broadcast landscape of South Africa. News that is accurate, uncensored and unbiased has consistently drawn viewers to the countrys first independent free-to-air channel.

I am delighted to be back on e.tv, on a bulletin I have always loved, says Burdett. The news at 8pm will be to-the-point and hard-hitting, continuing a fearless tradition of seeking the truth.

As head of the anchor team at eNCA, South Africas most-watched 24 hour news channel, she brings a wealth of experience to this important broadcast. Burdett, who announced the news of Nelson Mandelas death live to e.tv and eNCA audiences in 2013, and who co-anchored the SABCs first post-apartheid radio news show, AMLive, in 1995, says we are living in equally important times. In this era of fake news, state capture and information overload, I see my job primarily as helping audiences navigate a path through a pivotal time in our countrys history.

Head of Terrestrial News Services, Phathiswa Magopeni has worked with Burdett for many years. We are glad to be able to infuse an experienced, authoritative energy into our news offering. Sally has always been a credible and consistent voice on the broadcast news circuit, says Magopeni.

e.tv MD Marlon Davids says that Burdetts return to e.tv screens is an exciting development. Sally is no stranger to South African viewers and we are thrilled to welcome her back to e.tvs lineup. She is a formidable journalist who brings a wealth of experience and gravitas to our news offering. Our prime time English news bulletin has always defined the direction of our news and current affairs programming on the channel and we are confident that our viewers will continue to enjoy the refreshed bulletin, says Davids.

Burdett, who has been part of the senior editorial team for some years now, will continue to work behind the scenes, helping the team develop new talent and produce strong editorial content.

The lunchtime news bulletin on e.tv will continue to be anchored by Duduzile Ramela, Monday to Friday.




Hidetoshi Kaneko, former vice president for Panasonic Corporation of North America, has been appointed as the new managing director of Panasonic South Africa.

Hidetoshi Kaneko

This appointment draws on his experience in logistics, manufacturing, supply chain, engineering, sales, marketing, after service and retail. It is this breadth and diversity of experience which has given Kaneko the uniquely holistic perspective which distinguishes his ability to grasp issues, develop strategies, and effect end-to-end solutions applied to the South African context.

In his three-month tenure thus far, Kaneko has restructured Panasonics internal departments to maximise efficiency, implemented a membership programme and revised Panasonics marketing strategy. Most prominently, his tenure has seen the implementation of Panasonics Finance initiative. According to Kaneko, We believe that all South Africans should have the opportunity to better their lives through Panasonic technology, and our newly-launched Finance Initiative makes this possible. Now everyone can gain access to innovative products for the betterment of their daily lives.

2018 rings in 100 years of technological innovation for the organisation, and it is Kanekos commitment to advancement and quest for zero defect that keeps Panasonic creating high-quality products that consumers love. His vision for the next year is to continue to uphold the company's core principles - contribution to society, fairness and honesty, co-operation and team spirit, untiring effort for improvement, courtesy and humility, adaptability and gratitude - in his endeavour to make products easily accessible to the everyday South African consumer.
After reading Willmar city council member Christianson under scrutiny for liking racist & mean Facebook posts, a reader contacted Bluestem with screenshots of Facebook posts by Vadnais Heights' city council member Craig Johnson's personal Facebook page.

The content Johnson shares is a froth of Hillary Clinton bashing, climate change denying, liberal mocking memes, along with pro-Catholic content. Along the way, Johnson expresses his loathing of a rage of public figures, living and dead, from freshman Minnesota state representative Ilhan Omar, DFL-Minneapolis, to Reformation leader Martin Luther.

Bluestem knows of no other elected official in Minnesota has been so inclusive in his scorn as to bash both Muslims and Lutherans. The screengrab at the top of the post announces Johnson's desire to see Representative Omar sent to prison.

Luther doesn't fare much better in an article Johnson shares from Church Militant, a conservative Catholic publication often critical of Pope Francis.

Johnson frequently bashes climate change, despite the fact of Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical on climate change or news of the Holy Father's recent statements. Example: the CBS News report, Pope Francis denounces climate change deniers:

Pope Francis denounced those who deny global warming and urged negotiators at climate talks in Germany to avoid falling prey to such "perverse attitudes" and instead accelerate efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Francis issued a message Thursday to the Bonn meeting, which is working to implement the 2015 Paris accord aimed at capping global emissions. In the message, Francis called climate change "one of the most worrisome phenomena that humanity is facing," and urged negotiators to ignore special interests and political or economic pressures and instead engage in an honest dialogue about the future of the planet. He denounced that such efforts are often frustrated by those who deny climate change, are indifferent to it, or think it can only be solved by technical solutions.

Here's a post typical of Johnson (we marvel at preferring the Farmer's Almanac over the Holy Father's encyclical):

And then there's Johnson's view of immigrants bringing disease to the New World (and he doesn't mean Lord Jeff Amherst's musing on smallpox blankets, either):

But Bluestem's favorite? Sharing "news" that the recent Keystone pipeline leak--the third significant leak in seven years--was caused by "Trump Haters":

Er, no, Trump-Haters had nothing to do with causing the leak. According to those environmental extremists at the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, the Keystone pipeline leak was likely caused by 2008 damage incurred by the construction of the pipeline itself:

A federal agency says a leak in TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone oil pipeline in South Dakota likely was caused by damage during construction in 2008. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration issued a corrective action report Tuesday on the estimated 210,000-gallon oil spill. The report says a weight installed on the pipeline nearly a decade ago may have damaged the pipeline and coating. According to the report, weights are placed on the pipeline in areas "where water could potentially result in buoyancy concerns."

Curious about whether other members of Vadnais Heights City Council shared Johnson's high standards for evidence and civility, we consulted Mr. Google and the results weren't pretty. On November 9, the Pioneer Press reported in Vadnais Heights council member pleads guilty to disorderly conduct in domestic incident:

A Vadnais Heights City Council member pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct Thursday following allegations that he became violent and threatening toward a woman he was seeing. Terry Nyblom entered the plea in Ramsey County District Court in Maplewood, according to court records. The 53-year-old previously faced charges of disorderly conduct, interfering with a 911 call, misdemeanor-level domestic assault and fifth-degree assault. The other charges were dropped in accordance with Nybloms agreement to plead guilty to the disorderly conduct count, which is a misdemeanor. . . . While he remains a city council member, Nyblom was removed from his position as deputy mayor following the allegations. We didnt want this to distract from the ability of someone to lead our city, Vadnais Heights Mayor Bob Fletcher said. Fletcher added that while the city is disappointed by Nybloms alleged actions, it has no authority to remove him from office.

Yes, it's that Bob Fletcher.

Why Johnson's posts matter

At the West Central Tribune, Shelby Lindrud reported in Concerns raised over Ron Christiansons Facebook account activity; Professor: Elected officials are rightly held to a higher standard:

Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert H. Humphrey School and Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, said that elected officials are rightly held to a higher standard because they represent all citizens of the city and certain speech can divide the community.

Screengrabs: All from Craig Johnson's personal Facebook page.

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The British government is mounting a crackdown on the virtual currency Bitcoin amid rising concerns about money laundering and tax evasion.

The British Treasury has said it intends to regulate the digital currency to bring it in line with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financial legislation.

Under the EU-wide plan, online platforms where Bitcoins are traded will be required to carry out due diligence on customers and report suspicious transactions.

The move is designed to end the anonymity which has made the currency attractive to criminals.

Parts of the NHS and other organisations around the world were brought to a standstill earlier this year by hackers who demand ransoms paid in Bitcoin to unlock their computers.

A British Treasury spokesman said: "We have clear tax rules for people who use crypto-currencies and like all tax rules, these are kept under review.

"We also intend to update regulation to bring virtual currency exchange platforms into anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulation."

Ministers now expect the EU-level negotiations to conclude early in 2018.

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Commons Treasury Committee, said it would probably now want to look into the regulation of virtual currencies.

He told The Daily Telegraph: "These new forms of exchange are expanding rapidly and we've got to make sure we don't get left behind - that's particularly important in terms of money-laundering, terrorism or pure theft.

"It would be timely to have a proper look at what this means. It may be that we want speed up our use of these kinds of thing in this country, but that makes it all the more important that we don't have a regulatory lag."

The plan to regulate Bitcoin was originally set out by British Treasury minister Stephen Barclay in a little-noticed Commons written answer in November.

Mr Barclay said: "The UK Government is currently negotiating amendments to the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive that will bring virtual currency exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers into Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing regulation, which will result in these firms' activities being overseen by national competent authorities for these areas.

"The Government supports the intention behind these amendments. We expect these negotiations to conclude at EU level in late 2017/early 2018."
Repeated warnings by British business chiefs about the huge costs of disruption caused by Brexit may be influencing even hardline Brexiters into changing their stance, writes Kyran Fitzgerald

The time for political posturing is drawing to a close as the talks on the first phase of the Brexit negotiations reach a climax. And amid all the tub-thumping and flag-waving, there are indications of a softening of attitudes among some leading figures in the Brexit camp.

True, there is still plenty of bluster abroad, not least from a few of the usual suspects north of the border, but the tone of some leading figures on the Tory right is noticeably more emollient.

This is particularly apparent when it comes to the ongoing discussions on the so-called divorce bill.

So what could be behind this subtle repositioning, assuming this to be the case?

Relations between the Conservative Party and the business community have long been close, but a distinct chill can now be detected, and with good reason. Put simply, a wave of disquiet is flowing across the business world in Britain and further afield as those in strategic positions ponder the impact on supply chains of a car crash style British departure.

In Dublin, the chief of one of the worlds largest logistics companies, Ceva Group, told a freight transport gathering that disruptions to the supply chain from a hard or disorganised departure could lead to a calamitous situation.

According to Leigh Pomlett, an increase of just two minutes in the average time it takes trucks to clear customs could cause 17-mile tailbacks in the port of Dover.

Car manufacturers and allied suppliers appear to be especially exposed in the event of a no deal scenario.

This is significant given that 1.7m cars were built in Britain last year, with annual industry turnover approaching 100bn. Four out of every five cars produced are sold abroad and manufacturers form part of a highly complex supply chain.

According to The Guardian, 300 trucks arrive each day at the flagship Honda plant in Swindon.

Under the just-in-time production system, just one hours worth of parts is held in reserve for the production line.

Delays at customs alone would have a severe impact on the plants future. Around 1,850 people are directly employed at the Ford plant in Dagenham in East London. These jobs could be on the line in the event of a hard Brexit, according to Stephen Armstrong, head of Fords European operations.

Mr Armstrong said he is spending at least four to five hours a week on Brexit-related matters.

Ford has built up a Europe-wide production chain.

More than 100,000 of its diesel engines are made in Dagenham, using more than 2,000 component parts from across the EU.

The engines are then transported to the huge Ford plant in Cologne for final manufacturing. A third of output is then shipped back to the UK.

Mr Armstrong estimates a hard Brexit could cost it 840m in tariffs alone. He rules nothing out when it comes to the future of Dagenham, predicting that a no-deal outcome under which World Trade Organisation rules apply to trade between the UK and the EU-27 would be a disaster for industry in Britain.

Across the auto industry as a whole, the mood music is bleak.

Investment is down by three quarters in two years as uncertainty grows. Brexit is not the only culprit. Standards on diesel emissions are being tightened, while the industry as a whole faces technology-led transformation.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers has set out its stall, calling for tariff-free trade, frictionless borders, a retention of access to talent, and the harmonisation of regulations.

The irony is that a hard Brexit would mean the effects would be borne by workers in the West Midlands and East London, who voted in their droves for Brexit.

The Brexit process also threatens to massively increase the regulatory burdens borne by businesses.

As a result of EU reforms, exporters no longer have to register for Vat separately in each EU national market, but can simply register in the member state of establishment.

An unravelling of these reforms will lead to a big increase in paper-pushing across the EU.

The Road Haulage Association has warned that food exports could be particularly badly affected by delays at customs.

Small companies could be especially affected by the added administrative burdens, with Intertrade Ireland estimating that the compliance bill for an SME in the North would reach 700,000 (792,600), wiping out its entire annual profit.

The true scale of the cost could be much higher when finance costs are accounted for.

The drop in sterling, combined with a more accommodative monetary policy from the Bank of England helped the UK tap a tourism boom, but the economic picture overall is less rosy.

It may be that the penny is finally beginning to drop at least among those Tory MPs with strong business links and a willingness to toss aside their blinkers.

Speaking in Dublin in recent days, the former Fine Gael leader and ex- finance minister Alan Dukes suggested that attitudes were changing, with the lead British negotiator David Davis showing signs of flexibility.

Mr Dukes suggested that the UK should propose for the day after Brexit takes effect, that a free trade agreement with equivalent effect to the customs union-single market should take effect immediately.

The EU could hardly refuse such an offer and the World Trade Organisation, as a body dedicated to free trade, could hardly obstruct it, he said.

Mr Dukes also called for a dispute resolution procedure to be put in place, designed to minimise the inevitable frictions between the realigned trading partners.

He warned the European Court of Justice to keep out of this process.

Here, we are up against an issue of critical importance.

If, as appears evident, the British are shifting position and appear more open to compromise, is the rest of the EU, from the commission to the member states, to the European Parliament, also willing to play ball?

The EU lead negotiator Michel Barnier has shown himself to be flexible, but the lead national governments, France and Germany, have appeared more rigid, particularly on the issue of the budget.

The EU is rightly concerned about the financial consequences of a British exit, but any desire to limit such consequences as much as possible must be kept in check in the pursuit of the higher objective of a soft Brexit.

One hopes that the Irish Government is, privately, counselling its EU partners to display maximum flexibility.

There is a real concern that the current enfeebled position of Theresa May is now mirrored in Germany, where Angela Merkel finds herself on the back foot, at least for now.

Ms Merkels pragmatism and political skills are needed as never before.

When she is finished with the task of negotiating a new German coalition, she needs to enter into close discussions with business leaders in her export-oriented country.

It takes two to tango, after all.
By Ruth Doris

An Irish clean technology company is developing a product related to the overconsumption of water and chemicals in crop production.

AquaRoot Technologies innovation system uses biodegradable polymers to enable farmers to make customised irrigation pipes on site.

Founder Vincent Farrelly has a technology background, having worked for over 20 years in life sciences and biotechnology in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe.

His idea recently won the Irish heat of 2017 Climate LaunchPad, after AquaRoot travelled to Cyprus to compete in the finals of the competition which looks for the worlds best green business ideas. Mr Farrellys idea stemmed from his interest in polymers and plant biotechnology. He began to look at the use of polymers in irrigation systems to find out if expandable foam could be used to make pipes on site using very basic 3D printing.

The AquaRoot platform will allow pipes for irrigation and drainage to be produced rapidly and more economically than current systems.

Were looking at the typical farmer who wants to create customised tubing or pipes whenever they want to, he said. Having received some funding, the company has worked with Athlone Institute of Technology to develop different types of polymers with different functions.

Like a tree root, it delivers water to and from, and takes water out of the soil. You can print on the surface of the ground, on concrete, asphalt or inject it into the soil, where it expands and behaves like a sponge. You can pull water out and pull water using capillary pressure or a suction pump. Its just a new way of bringing liquids in and out from one place to another, he said.

The system uses a very basic form of 3D printing  extruding out the polymer compound to form a shape.

Once the substance is exposed to air, it expands to about 50 times its size and forms a honeycomb-like structure which the water can flow through like a sponge. You can also create a bore in the pipe into which you can flow fluid or water through. This forms near instantaneously, and within seconds youve got a structure, he said.

AquaRoots first structure is a very simple tube through which water can be drawn.

We provide the equipment for the farmer or irrigation specialist and they actually make the pipes on site. These things form very quickly and the idea is that you can actually plant seeds into them and you can grow plants in them, he said.

As far as Mr Farrelly is aware there is no system like AquaRoot on the market.

The potential environmental benefits are promising, especially in areas prone to drought or water restrictions. As the system allows for targeted watering and fertilisation of plants, it can provide big reductions in the use of water, fertilisers and pesticides.

Lets say a situation where youve got overhead irrigation on a field, youre actually watering the weeds, but with this, the water is going directly into the plants, feeding the roots. Youll be targeting the fertiliser and the pesticide and herbicide spray, he said. The biodegradable polymer can then be ploughed into the land or disposed of.

The potential savings in effort and labour are considerable. The big vision is to be able to modify a crop sprayer and to print, or extrude, the substance into pipe forms and lay an irrigation or drainage system on a large amount of land very quickly, Mr Farrelly said. While AquaRoots ultimate target is the international export market, it will initially focus on glasshouse horticulture.

Trials printing pipes in glasshouses to transport water and grow plants begin in early 2018. Another area hes looking at is hydroponics. One of the biggest problems of that system is the amount of infrastructure needed. What AquaRoot is offering is like an alternative to hydroponics, he said.

You can make structures like pipes, growing pots and chambers for plants. You put the plantlet in or the seedling in and flow through the water with nutrients in it and the plant grows in that, he said.

Getting to the finals of Climate LaunchPad has helped to open a few doors for AquaRoot in terms of making contacts and fine-tuning its pitch. The next step is to find partners and to get an angel investor on board, said Mr Farrelly.
By Padraig Hoare

Health food chain Freshly Chopped is to open five new stores around the country this week.

The Irish-owned firm said it would be opening its first Waterford store today, before increasing its footprint in Cork and Galway as well as opening two new stores in Dublin, creating 75 new jobs.

Freshly Choppeds first store in Waterford opens at City Square Shopping Centre, Arundel Square, while a store in Turvey, Co Dublin opens tomorrow.

The Maxol station on Glasheen Road near Wilton in Cork is one of three new restaurants opening on Wednesday, along with Galways Eyre Square and the IFSC in Dublin.

Brian Lee, co-founder and managing director of Freshly Chopped, said: We are delighted to be finishing the year on such a strong note, achieving what we believe is a first in the Irish food business. Opening five new stores in one week is a highlight of my professional career to date.

He added: Wednesday will be a landmark day in our history, as we travel around the country to open three outlets in three provinces, all in just 24 hours. Since we opened our doors in 2012, we have seen the demand for healthy fast food grow exponentially.

Freshly Chopped first arrived in Cork last July, opening at Spar in Little Island.

Founded in 2012 by Dublin entrepreneurs Brian Lee and Andy Chen, Freshly Chopped emphasises its more than 90 ingredients in its salad bowls, sandwiches and wraps.
By Ann O'Loughlin

A dispute over whether University College Dublin is entitled to a 15% shareholding in a fast-growing company involved in developing commercial processes for global pharmaceutical giants has come before the Commercial Court.

Applied Process Company Ltd, set up in 2011, now employs more than 100 people, expects to double its workforce in the next five years and is set to achieve revenues of almost 18m by the end of this year, it was stated in court documents.

Its primary business is the development of processes enabling pharmaceutical companies to speed up the commercial development of life-saving medical advances.

APC was formed by Professor Brian Glennon and Dr Mark Barrett from UCD's School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering. Each own a 50% shareholding and they dispute UCD's claim of entitlement to a 15% shareholding.

UCD claims it had concluded an agreement with the company and the two shareholders, in return for UCD getting a 15% shareholding, APC would be established and/or approved as a "campus" company and would be permitted to participate in the Nova UCD Campus Company development programme.

APC and the two shareholders dispute that and say APC was not a campus company as it was not set up to commercialise the intellectual property of UCD.

They also say, given the affiliation both have had with UCD, and the "affection" they have for it, APC has been willing to make "very generous" contributions to the university, most recently offering to support it by some 1m over five years.

When the proceedings came before the Commercial Court today, Rossa Fanning SC, for APC and the two shareholders, said his side wanted them fast-tracked and UCD was not objecting to that.

When the judge suggested the case appeared suitable for mediation, counsel said it would want to see a detailed statement of claim before considering whether mediation was appropriate.

APC had been incorporated in 2011 but this claim had only issued almost six years later, counsel said. There was no executed agreement between UCD and the defendants and UCD's claim was "baseless and opportunistic" and arose because of the company's success, he said.

Counsel for UCD denied delay and said its position had been set out in detail for some time.

Mr Justice McGovern agreed to fast-track the proceedings, directed UCD to deliver its statement of claim next week and returned the matter to later this month for further directions.
By Tom Healy

The UK can prepare to exit the single market and the customs union but a hard border cannot be avoided somewhere.

We either have a border running around Slieve Gullion in Co Armagh, or we have a hard border running down the Irish Sea between Cairnryan and Belfast.

No amount of loose talk about cameras, technological solutions, flexibility and random spot checks can get around this very awkward truth.

There is some talk abroad that somehow a customs union would sort out the hard border issue and that the single market could be sacrificed. While preservation of the customs union would mitigate some of the disruptive impacts of Brexit, the effects of leaving the single market would be huge.

Many forget that modern-day trade is as much about compliance and standards as it is about tariffs and duties.

With the single market, we have, more or less, freedom of movement of labour and harmonisation of many rules and standards, but with the customs union, we merely have no tariffs on trade among members of the union and a common external tariff on goods but not on services.

The recent intervention by the British Irish Chamber of Commerce for a Brexit partnership was an heroic attempt to limit the fallout from Brexit. The document offers interesting and possibly feasible ways to unlock some of the impasse over the next two years, and not only over the next two weeks.

It reads as a serious, considered, desperate, well-informed and well-meant effort to retain much of the substance of the customs union and the single market while the UK prepares to formally leave the EU.

If the UK (all of it or some of it) leaves the customs union and the single market, there will be a hard border somewhere. It is merely a question of how and where.

A special arrangement for the North might just be politically heroic but technically possible. Language is one thing and the realities of managing trade and movements of people is another.

The possibility of some form of special status incorporating Northern Ireland after Brexit into a European customs union and single market while it remains part of the UK should not be ruled out. However, it would only work if there was a sufficient level of shared understanding and consensus. This seems very unlikely in the immediate future.

It may be argued that a special carve-out deal would be possible for the agri-food sector ensuring some degree of harmonisation of standards and reciprocal inspections. However, such opt outs (or opt-ins) would be complex, difficult to enforce and politically problematic and, in any case, confined to just one sector.

We should not forget that the bulk of cross-border or cross-island trade is from east to west, affecting

exporters or enterprises on the entire island.

In other words, a hard border running down the Irish Sea would have potentially negative consequences at least in the short-run for producers and exporters in both parts of Ireland.

There are no good options. However, the least-worst option would be continuing UK membership of the single market and customs union for as long as possible.

Failing that, some sort of arrangement for the North would be the least worst in the medium-term.

Would it work politically and would it involve significant short-term upfront economic pain as Northern producers and exporters lose hassle-free and cost-free access to markets in Britain?

Civil servants will be mindful of the saying, there is nothing that drafting cannot resolve.

Tom Healy is director of the Nevin Economic Research Institute
Irish medicinal cannabis refugee Ava Barry, 8, arrived home from The Hague over the weekend with her parents and was reunited with her siblings for a family Christmas, writes Olivia Kelleher.

Ava, who is from Aghabullogue, Co Cork, travelled to Holland last summer with her family to receive medicinal cannabis for a catastrophic form of epilepsy called Dravets Syndrome.

After two years of campaigning, her parents Vera and Paul this week received the news of the granting of the medicinal cannabis licence for Ava.

Paul Barry said it was great to be finally home.

We are delighted. We are going to have a normal boring Christmas. We are going to bring the kids to Santa, eat plenty of turkey and fall asleep in front of the TV. Twas a long road to get to here but it is worth it. But you have to ask where the compassion was?

Supporters, friends, and family turned out at Cork Airport to greet Ava as she was reunited with her brothers and sisters Sophia, Michael, and Elvera Mae.

Vera Twomey says that she is relieved that the familys nightmare is finally over.

We have had no ordinary life whatsoever. As for Christmas we will just have a few people around. But its going to be great to be home for it. I cant believe it has finally happened.

Ava is all smiles with her parents after meeting Santa Claus in the VIP lounge at Cork Airport.

Vera says that Ava has her freedom back now that she has a prescription for medicinal cannabis.

It is freedom for us. We have a medicine that works. We can speak openly and honestly about Ava having the THC form of cannabis. We dont have to hide in the shadows.

We know that CBD oil and THC work. Ava has got better and better every day. She is seizure free. THC has saved Avas life and changed her life and is the most humane form of medication. Now she is just dealing with ordinary childhood illnesses like bugs rather than multiple seizures a night.

Ms Twomey has branded the delay in obtaining a licence a disgrace.

The professionals in Ireland are looking at their professional equivalents in Holland and they want the training. It is a disgrace.

The consultants here are trained [on medicinal cannabis] and the education is provided by the equivalent of their department of health.

We felt such helplessness and powerlessness in Ireland. We landed on our feet here. The paediatric neurologists are extraordinary.

The mother-of-four said she feels a personal responsibility to help other people in similar situations.

It doesnt matter if you are the first, second or 23rd person to get medicinal cannabis. It is your duty to share some of your success and how it is achieved. I feel so sorry for people dealing with things like Lyme disease.

Ms Twomey thanked her supporters for their fundraising which enabled the family to move to Holland to obtain legal medicinal cannabis for Ava. She also paid tribute to friends, relatives and the wider community for contacting TDs and councillors urging them to fight for the family.

It has been going on for so long and I really appreciate what people have done for us. People have been amazing.

Over the course of her long campaign, Vera walked from Cork to Dublin in order to highlight the plight of her daughter. She incurred a knee injury on the trek to Dublin and was pushed in a wheelchair for the last few miles of her journey. She also travelled to Spain to get a prescription for medicinal cannabis only to have the drug confiscated at Dublin Airport.

Prior to using medicinal cannabis, Ava suffered up to 23 seizures a day. Her parents feared that she would lose her life during the course of her seizures and were living through a total nightmare.

This article first appeared on the Irish Examiner.
By Ann O'Loughlin

A doctor who exposed himself to a nurse and a teenage patient in two separate incidents has been struck off the medical register by the High Court.

Dirk Redman, who qualified as a doctor in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2007, and is now living in Namibia, exposed himself to a nurse colleague in Sligo General Hospital around April 19, 2014.

The following June 25, he exposed himself to a 15-year-old girl in the same hospital where he had been working as a registrar in the emergency department.

He was found guilty by a Medical Council fitness to practice committee of disgraceful and dishonourable conduct and found to present a serious risk to both working colleagues and the general public.

The committee recommended his registration as a doctor be cancelled.

The decision was confirmed on October 26 last by the full Medical Council.

Dr Redman, who was not represented and did not appear before the inquiry, did not appeal the matter.

Today, the Council asked the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, to confirm the decision. Dr Redman was not in court or represented.

Mr Justice Kelly confirmed the decision and also noted the Council had also informed his original registering authority of the findings.
It is believed that a caustic substance was used during a serious assault on a woman in Dublin last Friday.

The attack happened the women, aged in her early 30s, shortly after 10pm in the vicinity of a path between Merrion Woods to Seamount Apartments, Blackrock, Co Dublin.
The Irish Blood Transfusion Service is putting out an appeal for extra blood donations between now and Christmas.

Pressure will be greater this year because Christmas and New Year both fall on a Monday - which are usually donor collection days.
By Fiona Ferguson

A man convicted of biting off part of another mans ear in a pub smoking area has been jailed for five years.

Sean Jackson (27), who was highly intoxicated, had no recollection of the events of the night in question and his lawyers submitted it was completely out of character for him.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard the victim was using the outside smoking area of a pub when Jackson bent down and bit part of his ear off. A witness saw part of the ear on the ground and alerted gardai.

Jackson, of Doon Court, Ballymun, Dublin was convicted by a jury following a trial earlier this year of assaulting the man causing him serious harm at Ardlea Inn, Maryfield Avenue, Dublin 5 on August 23, 2014. Jackson has 24 previous convictions.

Judge Martin Nolan noted that there had been a very minor altercation between the victim and Jackson. He said Jackson had been dissatisfied with the interaction and returned outside.

He said it appeared that the victim thought Jackson was going to say something to him but instead Jackson bit a large part of his ear off.

A witness identified Jackson as having committed the assault. He noted Jackson was drunk but said he had been responsible for getting himself into that state.

Judge Nolan said it was a serious assault which had serious consequences for the victim. He said it was reprehensible to bite part of someones ear off. He said he was taking seven years as his starting point for a sentence and noted there was moderate mitigation.

Judge Nolan imposed a five year sentence.

Defence counsel, Colman Fitzgerald SC, said Jackson had been extremely intoxicated at the time and did not remember the events of the night.

He said it was an appalling offence and an act which would revolt anyone.

He noted the contents of the victim impact statement outlined that the top half of one of the injured partys ears was now missing. He noted that the impact had been devastating from the victims point of view. Counsel said the offence was completely out of character for Jackson and drink had been a huge factor.

This appears to be significantly out of character and an anomaly as regards to the rest of his life which has been by and large decent and productive, said Mr Fitzgerald.

He said Jackson was a young man who always made a significant effort to work and had been in employment pretty much all his life. He handed in testimonials on Jacksons behalf.

Marie Torrens BL, prosecuting, handed in a victim impact statement which was not read in open court.
By Ann OLoughlin

A nurse who called a wheelchair-bound patient suffering from dementia "a dirty jew" before slapping him on the arm has had her registration cancelled by the High Court.

Marilyn Rillera (57), who had been working in the Maynooth Community Care Unit in Kildare before returning to her native Philippines, had been bringing the 87-year-old patient of the unit to the toilet in December 2015 when the incident happened.

The court heard the patient was being raised in a hoist to transfer him from his chair to the toilet when he became agitated. He raised his arm to hit Nurse Rillera but she held it and she told him: "You cant do that, you cant hit a woman, what are you, you dirty Jew", before slapping him on the arm.

Under the patients care plan, it was stated that he could have aggressive outbursts and the way to deal with them was to walk away and later talk to him and redirect the conversation.

A fitness to practice inquiry held by the Nursing and Midwifery Board heard she denied saying "dirty Jew" and said she had told him he was dirty. A care assistant who was helping to bring him to the toilet that day said however she was "100 per cent certain" the nurse said "dirty Jew".

The inquiry found her guilty of professional misconduct and recommended her registration as a nurse be cancelled.

The Nursing and Midwifery Board asked the High Court to confirm the decision.

The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, said such conduct was completely unacceptable and completely contrary to the notion of what the nursing profession is.

There was every good reason for confirming the cancellation, he said.
By Ann OLoughlin

A pensioner who fears being made homeless has launched a High Court challenge arising out of a decision by Social Welfare officials to suspend paying her rent allowance.

The action has been brought by Ms Stela Vasile with an address at Malahide Road, Dublin who had been in receipt of State pension as well as rent supplement allowance.

Last December Ms Vasile was informed she was being investigated by the Employment Affairs and Social Protection and the payments were being suspended.

However twelve months on, the investigation has not been completed, arrears in rent have built up, and she now fears being made homeless.

Represented by Fechin McDonagh SC Ms Vasile seeks a High Court order compelling the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection to determine the investigation against her commenced twelve months ago.

She further seeks a declaration the continued suspension of her rent supplement is unlawful.

She claims the failure to complete the investigation is irrational and unreasonable, and the delay is a breach of fair procedure.

Counsel said in January her pension payment was restored, however the rent supplement has not be restored.

In April her landlord informed her that she was in arrears, and that he may have to serve an eviction notice. However the landlord had allowed her stay on, counsel added.

She had asked the Department to progress its investigation.

She was informed last June by the social welfare inspector conducting the investigation he would do his "absolute best to get the investigation done as soon as possible" but "it may be some time" as he had "many similar cases".

Solicitors for Ms Vasile wrote to the Department in October seeking the result of the investigation or the payment of rent allowance till the investigation is complete.

No response has been received, Counsel said.

Counsel said his client believed the investigation may have related to whether she resided full time at her apartment in Malahide Road.

She says she has resided there full time and is entitled to the payments.

Permission to bring the action was granted, on an ex-parte basis, by Mr Justice Charles Meenan yesterday (mon).

The case will come back to court next month.
By Tom Tuite

Prosecutors have dropped the most serious charge brought against businesswoman Deirdre Foley over redundancies at Clerys.

A connected charge brought against Natrium Ltd, which bought out the iconic department store on Dublins OConnell Street in 2015, was also withdrawn today.

Previous owners OCS Operations petitioned the High Court for liquidation on June 12, 2015. This was followed by the collective redundancies in which 460 people lost jobs; 130 of them were directly employed by Clerys, the court has heard.

Ms Foley was due to go on trial in January on a single charge of impeding a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) inspector and three counts of breaking protection of employment laws. However, following legal argument about non-disclosure of earlier drafts of witness statements today the charge against Ms Foley for impeding the WRC on June 12, 2015 was dropped by the prosecution.

Dublin District Court heard this obstruction offence was the only charge against her which carried a potential jail sentence.

Natrium was also charged with obstructing or impeding a WRC inspector on June 27 last year at 25-28 North Wall Quay, the companys address. Deirdre Foley who has a 20% stake in that firm which was also due to go on trial in January as a co-defendant of Ms Foley and others.

During pre-trial legal argument today, Natriums solicitor James McGuill applied for an order to allow a computer expert for the defence examine computer files of the prosecution witness statements.

He said he had applied in accordance with Director of Public Prosecutions guidelines for copies of earlier drafts of statements made by the WRC inspector.

He said that he had been told that the computer documents had been revised 168 times, but it was not possible to access the earlier drafts. The prosecution had engaged in a process of deleting each draft and that, Mr McGuill argued, amounted to a destruction of evidence

A description of the documents properties could also say when they had been printed, but the hard-copies were not available.

He said that he was entitled to these versions which also included any possible emailed versions of the documents or drafts which may still be on computer servers.

He also submitted that the earlier drafts of the statements were essential for cross-examination.

He said disclosure already furnished shows that there had been 78 hours of editing of the statements and the material had been subject to multiple inputs over a protracted period of time.

The application was supported by Ronan Kennedy BL, for Ms Foley who has an address at Hollybank Avenue, Upper Ranelagh, Dublin 6.

Judge Brennan indicated that he would grant the order to allow Natriums computer expert to examine the computer files in question.

Breffni Gordon BL for the prosecution said that would not be a problem. However, following recess, Mr Gordon told the court that obstruction charges against Natrium and Ms Foley were being withdrawn.

No further charges remain against Natrium however, Ms Foley still faces trial on less serious charges under the Protection of Employment Act for failing to initiate consultations with representatives of employees, failing to supply them with all relevant information relating to the redundancies and not notifying the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in writing, on June 12, 2015 which can result, on conviction, in a fine. She is contesting the charges.

Mark Redmond, of Belfry Dale, Citywest Road, Saggart, Co. Dublin is an employee of D2 Private Ltd, a firm owned by Deirdre Foley. He faces the same charges for allegedly failing to notify the Minister or consult with workers representative or provide them with relevant information about the redundancies.

Brendan Cooney, a director of OCS Operations Ltd, with an address at Weirview Drive, Stillorgan, Co. Dublin has the same charges plus an additional one under the Workplace Relations Act for giving false or misleading information to an inspector.

Mr Cooney and Mr Redmond also have a further charge alleging they failed to keep records as required to ensure compliance with Section 18.1 of the Protection of Employment Act.

Mr Cooneys case has been adjourned for mention until December 20 next.

OCS Operations Ltd has four charges. It operated Clerys Department Store and Warehouse, from 2012 until a liquidator was appointed in June 2015, when it ceased trading.

Its alleged offences are under the Protection of Employment Act for failing to initiate consultations with representatives of employees affected by the collective redundancies in OCS Operations Ltd, failing to supply employee representatives with all relevant information relating to the redundancies and not notifying the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in writing, on June 12, 2015  the day of the Clerys takeover.

It is also accused of failing to keep records as required to ensure compliance with Section 18.1 of the Protection of Employment Act.

The case against OCS, Mr Redmond and Ms Foley was adjourned until February 6 next.

All the defendants have indicated that they would be contesting the charges.
The border remains the key stumbling block in the way of Brexit talks proceeding to the next stage. Here are answers to some of the key questions on the thorny impasse that threatens to derail the process.

Q. Why is the border so important to the negotiations?

After Brexit, it will become the UKs only land border with an EU member state. How that frontier is managed is one of the three key issues the EU wants assurances on - along with citizens rights and the "divorce bill" - before allowing Brexit negotiations to proceed to phase two on future trading relations.

It is proving the most difficult of the trio to resolve, with economic and social factors mixing with potent historical and political considerations.

Q. What does the border look like now?

There are almost 300 crossings between north and south along what was, during the Troubles, a heavily-militarised 310-mile frontier. Those checkpoints are either gone or lying derelict today as traffic passes freely from north to south.

Q. Why are there such major concerns that Brexit would change that?

It could be argued that Brexit itself is not the cause of the sticking point, more the type of Brexit envisaged by the UK government.

If the UK left the EU but remained in the single market and customs union the border problem might not be so complex.

But the UKs decision to leave Europes trading and free movement frameworks mean the border is set to become a crossing point between two different regulatory and economic zones.

This has prompted fears of a "hard border", with a return to check points - albeit for very different reasons to those erected during the Troubles.

There have been competing claims on whether such an outcome would undermine the extent of cross-border co-operation enshrined in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Some have even warned that a hardening of the border could reignite violence. Others have dismissed such dire predictions as dangerous scaremongering

Q. What does the EU want?

Brussels insists the retention of a "soft" border can only be achieved if either the whole of the UK, or just Northern Ireland, remain either within the single market and customs union, or some specially-tailored system that complies with EU regulations. This is the Dublin governments preferred option and the EU has made clear that Irelands concerns are its concerns.

Q. Why is this such a problem for the UK?

The British Governments very existence is dependent on its deal with the Democratic Unionists. While 56% of the population in Northern Ireland voted Remain, the DUP campaigned for Brexit and is set against anything that would see the region treated differently to the rest of the UK.

To do otherwise, it claims, would draw a border up the Irish Sea. The DUP has even accused the Irish government of pushing for regulatory alignment across the island as a backdoor bid to achieve a united Ireland.

Reports that No 10 was prepared to give ground and agree that Northern Ireland would continue to adhere to EU regulations post Brexit were met with an emphatic rejection by DUP leader Arlene Foster, in a statement that quickly snuffed out rumours of a Brexit breakthrough.

Q. So does the DUP hold all the cards?

Not quite. If its 10 MPs pulled put of their deal with the Tories, they would lose their new found influence at Westminster - endangering a linked 1 billion of Treasury funding for Northern Ireland - and face the prospect of what they characterise as the "pro Irish republican" Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour prime minister after a snap general election.

Q. Are Mrs Mays problems confined to Northern Ireland.

No. The suggestion of a different regulatory regime for Northern Ireland prompted demands for the same from Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and London mayor Sadiq Khan.

- David Young, Press Association
By Tom Tuite

A religious sect leader, who claimed he imported a hallucinogenic drug to prepare a revered sacrament for his churchs ceremonies, has been spared a jail sentence.

Food producer and Santo Daime church leader in Ireland, Marcus McCabe, 56, from Burdautien, in Clones, Co. Monaghan, appeared at Dublin District Court to contest a charge under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

He said he believed the prosecution was against the fundamental rights of his church which has its origins in Brazil.

But Judge Gerard Jones said it was illegal according to the law of the land. However, he said he was giving the man a chance and struck out the case but warned that does not give you a licence to carry on.

He was accused of unlawfully importing 8.5 kilos of substance called N,N-Dimethyltryptamine at Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport on November 13, 2014. The Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) had directed summary disposal meaning the case should remain in the district court which could impose a 12-month sentence for the offence. The substance is also used in the Santo Daime churchs ayahuasca sacrament.

Defence solicitor Michael French told the court the substance had a nominal value and came from Brazil. He was instructed by his client that it was a sacrament.

Garda Liam Mangan told the court McCabe flew in through Dublin Airport but was stopped by customs officers. He had a bag in his possession which contained a certain item and a package was seized and sent for analysis, Garda Mangan said.

Garda Mangan said McCabe admitted he had it in his possession.

The accused did say he was using this material for a sacrament in his church, Garda Mangan said.

The substance was in a liquid form and no value could be put on it, the garda said.

Judge Jones enquired about the religion and McCabe got into the witness box to give evidence and explain why he had the liquid substance.

When sworn in he blessed himself and told the court he was a member of the Santo Daime faith, a Christian church originally from Brazil. His solicitor Michael French asked him if he could confirm what he did with the substance referred to by the garda.

He told the court that it was made into a tea taken with prayers.

Mr French put it to him that gardai believed it was prohibited and, in reply, McCabe said he felt that this was the result of a misunderstanding. I believe this substance is in everyone in this room and is common, he said, adding, it really is a misunderstanding of the sacrament.

He said it was administered during spiritual and Christian festivals throughout the year. He said people get great benefit in making the spiritual works and the sacrament was a real blessing for anyone who comes and participates.

He told Judge Jones this was done at his special house for church works in Clones and usually the services are attended by 15 to 20 people, possibly 25 for a festival.

Mr McCabe pleaded with the court that the prosecution was an interference with his churchs fundamental rights.

However, Judge Jones replied: According to your law you are acting in the law, but according to the law of the land it is an illegal substance.

It is not my law, this is something that is blessed, McCabe answered.

Judge Jones said he was going to give him a chance and not convict him, but added that he was not setting a precedent or giving Mr McCabe the right to use the substance.

He said he was striking out the case, however, he warned McCabe, that does not give you a licence to carry on.

The judge told Garda Mangan that he would accede to his request to make an order for destruction of the substance. However, the defence solicitor Mr French was instructed to object and said his client was very upset by this.

He said Mr McCabe has deep-rooted opinions and believed it was not illegal, but it was part of his religious beliefs.

The judge said he was giving him a chance and he was concerned about this substance. He asked if it was harmful and Garda Mangan submitted that it was an illegal high and he objected to the substance being handed back to Mr McCabe.

Judge Jones said he would deal with that issue on a later date telling the accused he was a lucky man.
Shashi Kapoor, a leading Bollywood actor and producer from the 1970s and 1980s, has died after a long illness.

A family member, Randhir Kapoor, said he died on Monday at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, where he was being treated for a kidney ailment.

Kapoor, who was 79, acted in more than 100 Hindi films and was also a key theatre personality.

He appeared as well in British and American films produced by Merchant Ivory productions, run by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory.

His English-language movies included The Householder in 1963, Shakespeare Wallah in 1965, Bombay Talkie in 1970 and Heat And Dust, in which he co-starred with his wife, British actress Jennifer Kendal, in 1982.

Some of his popular Bollywood films were Deewar (Wall), Kabhie Kabhie (Sometimes), Namak Hala (Loyal Servant) and Kaala Pathar (Black Rock).

He co-starred with Amitabh Bachchan in each.

India's prime minister Narendra Modi said Kapoor's versatility could be seen in his films as well as in the cinema, which he promoted with great passion.

"His brilliant acting will be remembered for generations to come," he said.

Kapoor was a member of a family dynasty in the Bollywood film industry.

He was the youngest son of Prithviraj Kapoor, a veteran of Bollywood and the theatre.

Shashi Kapoor began acting aged four in plays produced and directed by his father.

He started in films as a child actor in the late 1940s.

He made his debut as a leading actor in movies in 1961.

The Press Trust of India news agency said Kapoor will be cremated on Tuesday.

He is survived by two sons and a daughter.

His wife died in 1984.

AP
President Donald Trump has thrown his full support behind embattled Republican US Senate candidate Roy Moore who faces allegations of historical child sex abuse.

Mr Trump tweeted early today that "Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama".

It was Mr Trump's most vocal endorsement of Mr Moore, who has lost the backing of many top Republicans since he was hit with allegations of sexual misconduct decades ago.

Mr Trump has assailed Democratic candidate Doug Jones and has defended Mr Moore against allegations of child molestation.

But the White House has said he has no plans to make campaign appearances.

Mr Trump tweeted: "We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!"

Mr Moore, contesting the seat created after Jeff Sessions became attorney general, replied to the endorsement by saying he "can't wait to help" Mr Trump "#DrainTheSwamp".

Mr Trump uses that phrase as a derogatory term for what he considers to be a corrupt system in Washington.

After Mr Trump's tweet, Mr Moore tweeted that "The America First agenda will #MAGA", a reference to Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan.

Later it emerged that Mr Trump also spoke with Mr Moore by phone.

White House Spokesman Raj Shah said the two discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and that the president "endorsed Judge Moore's campaign".

AP
President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation to scale back two sprawling national monuments in Utah, pledging to "reverse federal overreach and restore the rights of this land to your citizens".

Mr Trump made his plans official during a speech at the state Capitol, where he was cheered by the state's Republican leaders who lobbied him to undo protections they contend are overly broad and close off the area to energy development and other access.

Environmental and tribal groups plan to sue to preserve monuments they say are vital to protect important archaeological and cultural resources, especially the Bears Ears National Monument, a more than 1.3 million-acre (2,030-square-mile) site in south-eastern Utah that features thousands of Native American artefacts, including ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.

"Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington," Mr Trump said. "And guess what? They're wrong."

Around 3,000 demonstrators lined up near the State Capitol protesting his announcement. They held signs that said, "Keep your tiny hands off our public lands," and they chanted, "Lock him up!"

A smaller group gathered in support of Mr Trump's decision, including some who said they favour potential drilling or mining there that could create jobs.

The Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments were among a group of 27 monuments that Mr Trump ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review this year.

Bears Ears, created last year by President Barack Obama, will be reduced to 201,876 acres (315 square miles).

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, designated in 1996, will be reduced from nearly 1.9 million acres (nearly 3,000 square miles) to 1,003,863 acres (1,569 square miles).

Mr Trump also met with leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and toured Welfare Square, a church-run complex in Salt Lake City that aids the poor.

Mr Zinke accompanied the president aboard Air Force One, as did Utah's Republican senators, Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee. Mr Hatch and other Utah Republican leaders pushed Trump to launch the review, saying the monuments declared by Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton locked up too much federal land.

Mr Zinke has also recommended that Nevada's Gold Butte and Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou monuments be reduced in size, though details remain unclear. The former Montana congressman's plan would allow logging at a newly designated monument in Maine and more grazing, hunting and fishing at two sites in New Mexico.

Democrats and environmentalists have opposed the changes, accusing Mr Trump and Mr Zinke of engaging in a secretive process aimed at helping industry groups that have donated to Republican political campaigns.

AP
A hunter has died after being attacked by the wild boar he was trying to shoot, police in Germany said.

The man, 50, was on a boar hunt with a dozen others near the north-eastern town of Greifswald yesterday when he was attacked by the male boar.
A Spanish judge has ordered that four prominent members of the Catalan independence movement should remain in custody, including the vice-president of the ousted regional government.

He will now campaign in a polarised regional election from a jail near Madrid.

The judge set 100,000 bail for the six other Catalan politicians who had been jailed in early November, and ordered their passports to be confiscated.

The six were expected to leave jails near Madrid later in the day.

Meanwhile, Catalan ex-president Carles Puigdemont and four of his separatist allies heard that they will be judged on whether they can be extradited from Belgium to Spain on December 14, exactly one week before the election.

The group is refusing to return to Spain to face rebellion, sedition and embezzlement charges that can be punished with decades in prison under the country's criminal laws.

Mr Puigdemont's defence lawyer, Paul Bekaert, insisted that the Spanish charges were not punishable in Belgium and thus there were no grounds for extradition.

"We also highlighted the danger for the impediment of their human rights in Spain," he said.

Whatever decision is made on December 14, two appeals will be possible and a final ruling could well come only after the December 21 election called by Spain's central authorities, in which Mr Puigdemont is leading his pro-independence party's campaign.

Mariano Rajoy's conservative Spanish government disbanded Mr Puigdemont's Cabinet when it took control of Catalonia shortly after separatist regional politicians passed a declaration of independence in late October.

The early election is an attempt to find a democratic way out of the nation's worst crisis in nearly four decades.

But the vote is shaping up as a plebiscite between those for and against independence, with polls predicting a close race between the two camps.

Adding to the uncertainty, a Supreme Court judge decided on Monday to uphold the preventive jailing of ousted Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras, who tops the list for the left-republican ERC party.

ERC was part of the former Catalan ruling coalition with Mr Puigdemont's conservative party and is leading the polls before the new election.

Campaigning officially begins at midnight on Monday, and in the hours before that moment Catalan pro-independence groups hope to stage protests in front of town halls across the region against the Supreme Court's decision on the detained separatists.

Mr Junqueras and the other jailed politicians pledged last week to give up on efforts to seek unilateral independence for the wealthy northeastern region, in the hope of being freed.

But judge Pablo Llarena said in his decision on Monday that it remains to be seen if Mr Junqueras' pledge to abide by Spanish law is "truthful and real".

ERC spokeswoman Marta Rovira described the jailing as "a covert attempt" by Spain's central authorities in Madrid to get ERC out of the picture.

"This is a very clear attempt to win these elections without political adversaries," she said.

Carles Puigdemont

Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido was unmoved by the arguments of Mr Junqueras' supporters.

"Those who commit criminal acts must place themselves at the mercy of legal rulings," Mr Zoido said.

The magistrate also upheld custody orders without bail for the former regional interior minister, Joaquim Forn, and the leaders of Assemblea Nacional Catalan and Omnium Cultural, the two Catalan grassroots groups that have been the main drivers of the separatist bid in Catalonia.

A government-run poll published on Monday indicated that pro-independence parties would lose their slim majority in the Catalan regional parliament.

It gave ERC, Mr Puigdemont's Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) and the far-left anti-establishment CUP party 66 or 67 seats out of the parliamentary 135 seats.

The election could be a close race between the left republican ERC party and the opposition business-friendly Ciutadans (Citizens), with 21 and 22.5% share of votes respectively, the CIS survey suggested.

AP
The US Supreme Court has allowed full enforcement of Donald Trump's travel ban affecting residents of six mostly Muslim countries.

The justices, with two dissenting votes, said today that the policy could take full effect even as legal challenges against it make their way through the courts.

The action suggests the high court could uphold the latest version of the ban that US President Donald Trump announced in September.

The ban applies to travellers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Lower courts had said people from those nations with a claim of a "bona fide" relationship with someone in the United States could not be kept out of the country.

Grandparents, cousins and other relatives were among those the courts said could not be excluded.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have left the lower court orders in place.

The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, will be holding arguments on the legality of the ban this week.

Both courts are dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expected those courts to reach decisions "with appropriate dispatch".

Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.
Police in the UK are trying to track down two youths after a teenager was attacked on a train and forced to apologise for being gay.

The 19-year-old man was placed in a headlock and strangled until he eventually did what they said because he was struggling to breathe.

The incident occurred on a westbound Jubilee line train between West Ham and North Greenwich on October 21 at around 11.10am.

The victim and his friends were wearing fancy dress for an event they were attending when they were approached by the two youths who boarded at West Ham.

The two suspects verbally abused the victim for being gay and turned aggressive when they were challenged.

They forced him into a headlock, snatched his phone and threatened to stab him until he apologised for being gay.

Although they returned the phone, the two youths then got into a fight with the victim's friends in which a 25-year-old woman suffered bruising after being punched and pushed to the ground.

The victims left the train at North Greenwich.

The British Transport Police (BTP) released images of the two men on Monday and urged anyone who recognises them to come forward.

The BTP said in a statement: "Hate crime will not be tolerated by the British Transport Police. We believe everyone has the right to travel safely.

"We won't tolerate behaviour where someone is targeted because they are perceived to be different, or made to feel uncomfortable on their journey."
Hundreds of aircraft including two dozen stealth jets began training today as the United States and South Korea launched their biggest-ever combined air force exercise.

The war games come a week after North Korea test-fired its most powerful missile ever, an ICBM that may be able to target the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The five-day drill, called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies' wartime capabilities and preparedness, South Korea's defence ministry said.

The US Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets that include six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets for the annual training exercise in the Korean Peninsula. About 12,000 US military personnel are participating.

In total, 230 aircraft will be flying at eight US and South Korean military installations in the South.

Some local media report that B-1B bombers will also join aerial drills, but officials did not confirm their participation.

The training, held each year in late autumn, is not in response to any incident or provocation, the Seventh Air Force said in a statement.

North Korea's state media said the drill pushes the Korean Peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war". Such language is typical in North Korean propaganda because the country claims US-South Korean drills are preparation for invasion.

Nevertheless, tensions are at a particularly dangerous point as North Korea edges toward its goal of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, and as US President Donald Trump ramps up his rhetoric toward the North, threatening, for instance, to unleash "fire and fury" against the country.

Pyongyang will "seriously consider" counter-measures against the drill, and the US and South Korea will "pay dearly for their provocations", the Korean Central News Agency said yesterday before the start of the exercises.

While many South Koreans typically ignore North Korea's rhetoric, some senior American officials have expressed concern following the ICBM test, North Korea's third.

Yesterday, Lindsey Graham, a Republican US senator from the state of South Carolina, said he believes it is time for US military families in South Korea to leave the country because conflict with North Korea is getting close.

The US government has not announced a formal decision to evacuate American citizens from South Korea, and there were no such signs in the diplomatic community in Seoul.

An evacuation of dependants by Seoul's closest ally and major military defender could prompt a panicked reaction by other countries, and among South Koreans.

In addition to American diplomats and other embassy workers, about 28,500 US troops operate in South Korea, many of whom take their families on their postings and live on huge, well-guarded military bases.

Also yesterday, the White House's national security adviser said Mr Trump will take care of North Korean threats by "doing more ourselves".

"The priorities that the president's given us to move as quickly as we can to resolve this crisis with North Korea," General HR McMaster told Fox News.

"If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it, because he has said he's not going to allow this murderous, rogue regime to threaten the United States."

- AP
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October 31, 2022

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People have been questioning whose side Eugene is on ever since he joined the Saviors. Is he totally loyal to Negan? Or is he secretly working for Rick? This episode of The Walking Dead, titled Time for After, though, shows that Eugene still really is just on Team Eugene.

Will Rick Show Negan Mercy on The Walking Dead?>>>





Will Jadis Take the Deal?

Time for After begins with Rick still trapped in that storage container. Jadis and her people finally let him out, and he offers to make a deal yet again, which seems stupid. She can join Rick and the others, or die. Rather than answer, Jadis just takes pictures of him, which is super creepy. She says she took the pictures for a sculpture after but wont say after what.

Later, Jadis finally takes Rick out and brings out a Walker with melted metal on its head. Time for after, she says. Rick fights back, though, and knocks out some Scavengers and takes down the Walker. Jadis tries to shoot him, but he beats her too. He holds her head near the Walkers mouth. He says hes leaving and they should just run. Jadis tells her people to lower their weapons and agrees to join Rick. He tells her the Sanctuarys surrounded by Walkers. He wants her to come with him. Theyll wait for the other communities leaders and theyll all ask the Saviors lieutenants to surrender together. Then Rick will kill Negan.

Whose Side is Eugene On?

Eugene is super agitated and starts making a list of what he knows and doesnt know. Frustrated, he goes to Dwight. He tells Dwight he knows that hes the traitor. Negan charged Eugene with fixing the mess that Dwight made, so he tells Dwight to stop what hes doing and he wont reveal Dwights secret.

Instead, Dwight grabs Eugene and tells him that the Saviors, Negan and the Sanctuary are finished. The workers are angry, the Saviors are getting scared and it will all fall. All Eugene has to do is say nothing and let it all play out. Dwight says Eugene has seen what happened, heard the screams and smelled the burning skin in the Sanctuary. Eugene hasnt done those things yet, but he will. Once you do those things, you become those things and theres no coming back, no forgetting it, Dwight says. Eugene still believes in the Saviors and Negan, though.

Eugene then goes to check on the situation with the Walkers outside the Sanctuary. And its getting bad. They have a day, maybe two, before the Walkers get in.

On his way down the hall, Eugene is called in to the infirmary because Gabriels getting worse. He has an infection, and its affecting his organs. Gabriel asks him if hes going to help him get Dr. Carson out, but Eugene doesnt see a way to get him out. Plus, Eugene doesnt stick his neck out for other people and only looks out for himself. Gabriel says he should have faith, trust himself and do the right thing. He grabs Eugenes hand, and theres blood on Eugenes hand when he pulls away.

Later, one of Negans wives goes to see Eugene because they had a deal for him to fix a boom box for wine. He hasnt fixed the boom box and says they have more important things to think about because theyre trapped in the Sanctuary, but shes always been trapped in the Sanctuary. She refuses to give him the bottle of wine, but he says he needs it. The woman gives him the wine and says that she and Frankie had asked him for help earlier and he could have changed things for the better, but he only took care of himself and now he feels guilty about it so he cant sleep without wine.

Quiz: Who is your Walking Dead Battle Buddy in the Fight Against Negan?>>>

Is Rebels Mission Worth It?

Morgan has been scoping out the Sanctuary since he left the group. Hes communicating with someone on the radio when he notices Daryl, Tara, Michonne and Rositas truck.

Tara, Daryl, Rosita and Michonne try to formulate a risky plan to attack the Sanctuary when Morgan comes out. He offers to help and says there are other snipers who will help. Now is the time to finish this.

Still, Michonne and Rosita think this is too risky and they should listen to Rick and follow the plan, but Tara and Daryl are pissed at Negan and want to take action now. Ultimately, Rosita decides to leave, but Michonne says she has to see this through. Rosita says it feels better to do something than just sit and wait, but sometimes you have to wait anyway. She leaves by herself, but Michonne looks super conflicted.

Daryl, Tara and Michonne make it to the Sanctuary, while Morgan talks to them via radio. Michonne is clearly having regrets, though. She thinks what theyre about to do isnt right or worth risking themselves. Daryl thinks it is worth it, though. Michonne says she cant do it and heads out.

Can Eugene Save the Saviors?

Eugene, meanwhile, is called over to talk to Negan. Negan says a lot of people will die if the situation with the Walkers doesnt get fixed. The Sanctuary is about organizing strength, and Eugene and his brain are strong. He has to fix this.

Eugene goes back to his room and fixes the boom box. He has an idea when he looks at the speaker, so he goes searching around the Sanctuary for something. He gets emotional when he finds the coffin Sasha died in and takes her iPod.

Eugene comes up with a plan to put the iPod on a kite to drive away the Walkers. When hes about to launch it, though, someone clicks a gun and tells him not to turn around. Its Dwight! Eugene says that hes trying to free the Saviors, but Dwight says if he does that, Negan will kill all of Eugenes old friends. Eugene doesnt care. But Dwight says they can kill Negan, just Negan, and theyre almost there. Eugene says that if he doesnt free the Saviors from the Walkers, Negan will definitely kill him and, if he does, Dwight might kill him. So hell have to go through with his plan and risk Dwight shooting him. He flies the kite, but Dwight shoots it down. Thats when Tara, Daryl and Morgan attack.

Tara and Morgan start shooting, while Daryl puts a cinder block on the trucks gas pedal and has it crash into the Sanctuary. Walkers immediately storm into the Sanctuary and attack people, including the innocent workers.

At first, Eugene is pretty freaked-out, but then he gets furious. He storms over to Gabriel and says he will obey Negan; hell make sure Dr. Carson stays in the Sanctuary, hell survive and he wont feel bad about it.

Eugene then goes to Negan with a plan to get the Saviors out. Negan asks if Eugene realizes what hell do to Rick once theyre out, and Eugene does. Eugene also says he has something else to tell Negan, but then the rest of the inner circle comes in. Negan asks Eugene what his news is, but instead of ratting Dwight out, he says he fixed the intercom system. Eugene goes back to his room and absolutely loses it and starts drinking. He gets a little sick, though. Is the wine poisoned?

Ricks Plan Falls Apart

Rick, Jadis and some of the Scavengers eventually go to the Sanctuary, but its not surrounded by Walkers anymore like Rick thought. Rick grabs a radio and calls to his snipers, but nobody answers. Clearly, Ricks plan has fallen apart. And hes in trouble.

Did Eugene really get the Saviors out? Will Gabriel survive? Why didnt Eugene rat out Dwight? And can Rick really trust Jadis? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

The Walking Dead season 8 airs Sunday nights at 9/8c on AMC. Want more news? Like our Facebook page.

(Image courtesy of AMC)
Setting a precedent for private companies, the Bombay High Court here upheld the order of the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) for a merger of scam-tainted National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) with its parent, 63 moons technologies, earlier named Financial Technologies (India) Ltd).

The two-judge bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and M S Sonak rejected the petition of 63 moons against the order; it, however, agreed to a stay on its operation for 12 weeks, for time to appeal. The company has decided to appeal to Supreme Court.

63 moons' share price closed in the five per cent lower circuit, at Rs 131.1.

The order clears the legal way for a government to order the merger of two private entities. Also noteworthy since NSEL is a limited liability company. Its liabilities, by the order, when confirmed by the court, will become 63 moons' once a merger takes place.

The government exercised its power under Article 396 of the Act.

"We will be moving the Supreme Court. We have full faith in the judiciary," said a 63 moons spokesperson.

MCA had issued a draft merger order in October 2014, followed by a final order in February 2016, citing the public interest. This followed the Rs 5,574 payment crisis in NSEL, involving the money of about 13,000 investors. MCA said its order would ensure the investors would get their money.

To which, 63 moons contended the government order would hit its 60,000-plus investors, for no fault of theirs'.

The payment crisis on NSEL came to light in July 2013, when commodities traded on the tainted exchange were found to be not backed by stocks in its warehouses.

63 moons has 99.9 per cent stake in NSEL. If a merger takes place, all Rs 5,270 crore of pending dues would be transferred on the books of 63 moons.

"It is a welcome judgement. The concept of limited liability allows you to trade and commerce, not to give you licence to commit fraud. The decision has reinvigorated the hopes of NSEL victims, who had almost given up," said Ketan Shah of NSEL Investors Action Group, a body formed to fight for recovery of the said dues.

Venkat Chary, chairman, limited, said in a statement that the order passed through an executive fiat is devastating for corporate India.

Terming it as a 'black day' in the history of Corporate India, Chary said this order has a serious impact on the limited liability concept, which is the cornerstone of the Indian corporate sector.

"This is a worrisome development for corporate India as the aftermath is likely to be chaotic, impacting investment flow into India by way of domestic investments, FDIs, FIIs and also the spirit of entrepreneurship, so vital for the countrys economic development as investors will always be scared to invest in parent with subsidiary companies," he said.
China's two biggest banks said they do not plan to finance a controversial Australian coal mine, in the latest blow to Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises' long delayed project.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China Construction Bank said in separate statements they were not working on the project, after media recently reported that Chinese banks may get involved.

Adani is seeking A$2 billion ($1.5 billion) in financing by March 2018 for the A$4 billion first stage of its proposed Carmichael coal mine in the state of Queensland, a project that has been shrunk from a A$16.5 billion plan to make it more viable.

Adani declined to comment on its financing plans on Monday or the statements from the Chinese banks.

Australian and overseas banks have balked at granting loans for the project, which environmentalists oppose due to climate change and the potential for damage to the Great Barrier Reef.



Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) said on Sunday it has no intention of financing a controversial A$16.5 billion ($12.5 billion) Australian coal mine being built by Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises.

"ICBC has not been, and does not intend to be, engaged in arranging financing for this project," ICBC, China's biggest listed lender by assets, said in a statement on its Australian website.

"ICBC attaches great importance to its social responsibilities and keenly promotes 'green financing' ... This statement is made without any view on or prejudice towards the Carmichael mine project."

The mine's location 400 kms (250 miles) from a Pacific Ocean shipping terminal means financing infrastructure costs has been at the forefront of debate over the project's economic viability.

"China Construction Bank is not involved with, nor considering involvement with, the Adani Carmichael Mine project," an external spokesperson for China Construction Bank in Australia said in an emailed statement on Monday.

CCB in China was not immediately available for comment.

Reuters has previously reported that Adani was in talks with China Machinery Engineering Corp (CMEC) for a loan, which could have involved China Construction Bank or China Export Import Bank.

China Export Import Bank was not immediately available for comment.

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.

Adani hopes to start shipping coal from Carmichael by March 2020 in the first stage of the project, which it bought amid a coal boom in 2010.
Tyre makers have expressed concerns over the availablity of natural rubber (NR) in India, as domestic production levels continue to be less than the existing demand for the raw material in the country.
A bunch of countries will drive 68 per cent of incremental advertising expenditure in calendar year 2018, the worlds largest media agency GroupM said on Monday, with India being one of them. The others include the US, China, Argentina, Japan and the UK, all of which will help push up overall advertising growth in the world to 4.3 per cent in 2018 versus 3.1 per cent this year.
Lava, a multinational mobile handset maker based in Noida, will raise $30 million from a firm backed by a Chinese state-owned technology major, the Economic times reported. The Rs 193 crore-funding is meant to boost manufacturing and set up a local mobile-handset design center,
The Essar Group is planning to pay its dues to lenders so that it can take part in the bidding process for its steel plant in Hazira, Gujarat. Tata Steel, ArcelorMittal and others are reportedly keen to acquire it.
The Shapoorji Pallonji group is seeking opportunities for affordable housing projects in Kochi, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Indore, Ghaziabad and Coimbatore. It plans to develop 10-12 million sq ft in the second phase of its joint investment programme with World Bank arm IFC, Asian Development Bank and Standard Chartered Private Equity.
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An average 15 minutes of taxiing at six of the busiest airports in the country is likely to cost airlines Rs 2,000 crore annually by 2021, compelling them to explore ways to reduce fuel consumption and switch to greener ways of steering the aircraft on the ground.

According to a study, the total fuel burnt is likely to increase by 40 per cent by 2021--going up from 1,67,000 tonnes in 2016 to 2,34,000 tonnes--as airlines expand their operations.

Of the total 85 operational airports in the country, airports at Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Kolkata handle nearly 65 per cent of the total air traffic.

The cost of fuel burnt is likely to go up from Rs 1,400 crore in 2016 to nearly Rs 2,000 crore in 2021, according to the findings of the study carried out by Ashwani Khanna, vice-president, Delhi International Airport Limited.

Khanna, who was sharing his research at an event conducted by the Aeronautical Society of India, has taken into account the taxiing time of aircraft departing from the top six airports and calculated the cost of fuel burnt while taxiing at Rs 1,400 per minute for a narrow body aircraft and Rs 3,100 per minute for a widebody aircraft.

The fuel burn will also take its toll on the environment as carbon emissions register a proportionate increase of 40 per cent by 2021--up from 5,27,000 tonne to 7,39,000 tonne, the study said.

Aviation experts fear that with airport infrastructure failing to keep pace with the growth in traffic, waiting time for aircraft is only bound to increase and there is unlikely to be any respite for airlines in terms of expenditure on fuel.

"Slots are almost over at major airports. This situation will result in an increase in waiting time for both departing and arriving aircraft," said Joint Director General, DGCA, Lalit Gupta.

The experts say alternate ways of taxiing can help airlines save up to six per cent of their total fuel costs. Traditionally, an aircraft taxiing between the main terminal and runway uses jet engines causing a significant fuel burn.

Alternate ways of taxiing deploy an electric system with engines stopped.

WheelTug is one such taxi system which enables airplanes to taxi forward and backward with the help of electric motors installed in the nose wheels. These motors are powered by the aircraft's Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) and don't use the jet engine. It offers $500,000 in savings annually per aircraft, as per the manufacturers.

Full service carrier Jet Airways signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) with WheelTug in 2012.

According to the airline's Senior VP of Flight Operations Captain Sudhir Gaur, once WheelTug is implemented across its entire fleet, the airline aims at saving nearly 20,000 tonnes of fuel annually and reduce CO2 emission by 65,000 tonnes.

There is also the Electric Green Taxiing System (EGTS), which uses motors installed in the main landing gear wheels. Taxibot is a yet another system which involves a semi-robotic, pilot-controlled towing tractor which lifts and holds the aircraft nose wheel and then transports the aircraft from terminal to runway and back without using the aircraft's engine.

Jet fuel represents one of the largest expense items for an airline and accounts for nearly 30 per cent of its total operational costs, according to experts.
Indians who have parked their wealth in secret accounts in Switzerland are under the Income Tax (I-T) department's lens. The tax sleuths are reportedly in a rush to hunt such offenders down, in a move that follows another probe into names and entities involved in the Paradise Papers financial data leak.
Congress leaders, both young and old, were jubilant on Monday after filed his nomination papers for the party president's post and said his ascent to the top will help it regain the lost glory after a string of electoral reverses.

c, asking the ruling party at the Centre not to preach lessons as they cited the grand old party's "long-proven democratic" track-record.

"Rahul ji has been the darling of the Congress...," former prime minister Manmohan Singh told reporters at the Congress headquarters here after Gandhi filed his nomination.

"Congress president Sonia Gandhi has served the Congress party and, through the Congress party, the country for the last 19 years... will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party," Singh added.

Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, hit out at the BJP for questioning Congress' organisational election process. He said it was the saffron party, which does not follow democracy within its fold.

"...those who have trust in machines to win votes, are preaching us on democracy," Azad said, reiterating his party's "EVM tampering" charge against the BJP.

. Photo: PTI

Former Union minister and party leader P Chidambaram took to Twitter to wish Gandhi "very best" as the latter threw his hat in the ring for the top job in the party.

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma stressed that all leaders and workers were in unison when they backed Gandhi. He said it was a "conscious and considered" decision of the party delegates to nominate Gandhi for president's post.

Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, who joined the Congress ahead of the state elections in Punjab earlier this year, hailed Gandhi as a "special leader with character" who, he added, has come to the forefront during hours of crisis.

"He has become matured, showed his character. The general is standing at the forefront alone and on the other hand there is this entire government. This is the sign of a leader," Sidhu told reporters here.

Party MP from Guna, Jyotiraditya Scindia, dubbed Gandhi's imminent elevation to the top post as a "new wave of hope".

Another party leader, Kapil Sibal, congratulated Gandhi on Twitter as he filed the nomination with "full support" from the party and called it a "historic moment".

All India Mahila Congress president Sushmita Dev dubbed Gandhi a "symbol of strength, compassion and integrity" and said it was an honour to be led by him.

According to Congress' central election authority chairman Mullappally Ramachandran, Gandhi is the sole leader in the fray for the party president's post, paving way for the latter's elevation.

Gandhi has been Congress' vice president since January 2013.
We don't know if the residents of beleaguered businessman Vijay Mallya's possible new home, Mumbai's Arthur Road Jail (in the event that he is extradited), will get along with him or not, but the locals of the English village of Tewin, where the fugitive liquor baron currently resides, appear to have taken a shine to him.
New Delhi: Hadiya, a 24-year-old Hindu woman from Kerala who converted to Islam, leaves the Supreme Court in New Delhi after a hearing on the Kerala Love Jehad case on Monday. PTI Photo
Pakistan has violated the ceasefire along the International Border and the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir more than 720 times this year, the highest in past seven years.
The delay by the health ministry in approving the sale of the first-ever dengue vaccine developed by French pharmaceutical major Sanofi Pasteur might seem like another case of red tape, but the health crisis unfolding in the Philippines shows that India might have narrowly avoided a disaster.
Expressing love for the word Hindustan, a Pakistani youth was arrested by police in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Seeing "Hindustan Zindabad" written on the wall of a house in the Nara Amazai area of Haripur infuriated the local community, the daily Express news reported on Monday.

According to police, Sajid Shah had been booked for treason under section 505 of the Pakistani Penal Code. A police officer said that Shah had written Hindustan Zindabad on the outer wall of his home in Nara Amazi.

People told him to remove the slogan as it hurt their pride, the SHO said. Some people took pictures of the wall and emailed them to senior police officials.

"We have booked the young man on orders from the high-ups", he said, refusing to comment further.

Hindustan -- the Persian name for South Asia -- now commonly being referred as India after partition in 1947.
With no other challenger in sight and Shehzad Poonawala, the Congressman who (being married into the Vadra household) was thought to represent some unidentified interest withdrawing the gauntlet, there is hardly any doubt that on December 11 or 12 will become the new President of the Congress.
Hundred days after President Donald Trump announced his South Asia Strategy, the US has said that India "is a player" in Afghanistan and it supports New Delhi's move with regard to transit options to enhance its economic connectivity with the war-torn country.

"India has really shown that it is a player in Afghanistan and that it is interested in supporting Afghanistan in a very constructive way," a senior administration official told PTI.

The official speaking on condition of anonymity was reviewing India's role in the first 100 days of the South Asia Strategy that was announced by Trump in a speech on August 21.

"As you know President Trump in his August 21st speech called on India to play a bigger role in supporting Afghanistan and its economic development. I think India has been answering the call," the official said.

Referring to a very successful trade conference on Afghanistan in New Delhi in September, the official said it resulted in pledging of hundreds of millions in new deals.

India has established air corridor and now the airport door and now has sent its first wheat shipment through Chabahar port in Iran.

"So, the US is supportive of this. We totally support India building up its economic relationship and increasing the transit options so that they can be more economically engaged with Afghanistan. The US has noticed that India has been stepping up its economic engagement with the country," the senior administration official said.

Responding to a specific question on the Chabahar port given Trump Administration's policies with Iran, the official said the US does not want IRGC or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp of Iran to benefit out of any economic activities.

"But again, we understand that India has challenges in getting goods for Afghanistan," and its inability to have economic linkages because of the inability to trade through Pakistan, the official said.

"So, I think that there is an understanding (in the Trump Administration) that if India is to be more economically engaged in Afghanistan there has to be transit options for India," the senior administration official said.

In his South Asia Strategy speech, Trump had envisioned a major role for India in the economic development of Afghanistan.

"Develop its strategic partnership with India -- the world's largest democracy and a key security and economic partner of the United States is a critical part of the new strategy," Trump had said in his speech on August 21.

"We appreciate India's important contributions to stability in Afghanistan, but India makes billions of dollars in trade with the US, and we want them to help us more with Afghanistan, especially in the area of economic assistance and development. We are committed to pursuing our shared objectives for peace and security in South Asia and the broader Indo-Pacific region," Trump had said.
The extradition trial of Vijay Mallya, wanted in India on charges of Rs 9,000 crores fraud and money laundering, today began at a UK court here, with the prosecution asserting that the embattled liquor baron had a "case of fraud" to answer.

The trial, however, was briefly halted as the courtroom had to be evacuated due to a fire alarm. The 61-year-old tycoon and others waited outside the Westminster magistrates court during the fire drill.

The trial began with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), arguing on behalf of the Indian government, presenting its opening arguments in the case which focussed on loans totalling around Rs 2,000 crores sought by the erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines from a consortium of Indian banks.

The CPS admitted that there may have been "irregularities" in the internal processes of the banks sanctioning some of those loans but that would be a question to be dealt with at a later stage in India.

"The focus of our case will be on his (Mallyas) conduct and how he misled the bank and misused the proceeds," said CPS barrister Mark Summers. He then went on to lay out a detailed chronology of events, with specific focus on a loan sought by Kingfisher Airlines from IDBI bank in November 2009.

The loan sought amounted initially to Rs 950 crores but was later reduced to Rs 750 crores, after it had received Rs 200 crores from UCO bank.

Meanwhile, Mallya was also sanctioned a loan of Rs 150 crores from IDBI in advance of the larger loan sought from the state-owned bank to meet "critical obligations to overseas vendors".

The CPS noted that in all the loans sought, "loss-making" Kingfisher Airlines had relied on nearly the same set of security pledges, which included the UB Groups reputation, Kingfishers own "brand value", a promised infusion of equity funds and a projected return to profit by the airline by February 2011.

"The airline had claimed that it had put proactive measures in place to improve performance," the CPS noted.

However, it was also a time when according to an industry analysis, the state of the airline industry was described as "grim" and as being in "intensive care".

"It was not a scenario in which a state bank would have entertained such loan requests," the CPS added.

The first day of the trial is expected to be taken up entirely by the CPS setting out the Indian governments prima facie case against Mallya, a fact that was not welcomed by his defence team.

Mallya's barrister, Clare Montgomery, told the judge that she had hoped to set out the defences opening arguments on the first day as well.

But the CPS said it will "not be rushed" as it lays out the complete chronology of events.

Meanwhile, Mallya watched the proceedings from behind a glass-windowed dock.

His defence team tried to get the judge to allow him to sit outside the dock near his defence team to access some of the complicated paperwork being relied upon, but the judge denied that request saying all defendants are expected to sit in the dock.

However,the judge has directed that a table be provided to Mallya for easier access to his paperwork.

Earlier, Mallya looked relaxed when he entered the court to stand trial on charges of fraud and money laundering related to his erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines owing several Indian banks around Rs 9,000 crores.

"These (allegations against me) are false, fabricated and baseless," Mallya told reporters outside the court ahead of the hearing.

A four-member CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) team from India had also arrived at the court ahead of the trial, one of whom nodded when asked he they were "confident" about their case.

Mallya, who has been out on bail since Scotland Yard executed an extradition warrant in April this year, will be in the dock for the duration of the trial scheduled to end on December 14.

A judgement in the case, being presided over by Judge Emma Louise Arbuthnot, is unlikely until early next year.

The CPS will need to demonstrate a prima facie case by producing evidence to show that the criminal charges against Mallya are justified and that he should be extradited to face the Indian courts.

Prison conditions in India are expected to be at the forefront during the hearing, with the Indian government providing assurances of protection of Mallya's human rights.

The tycoonhas been on self-imposed exile in the UK since he left India on March 2, 2016.

While on strict bailconditions, which includeproviding a bail bond worth 650,000 pounds, surrender of his passport and a ban on possessing any travel documents, the former Rajya Sabha memberhas been based at his Hertfordshire estate Ladywalk in the village of Tewin, nearly 50-km from London.

The CPS had presented "supplemental" charges of money laundering to previous charges of fraud against the businessman at an earlier hearing in October.

The judge had agreed to effectively re-open a fresh case so that all charges can be heard concurrently in court.

If the judge rules in favour of extradition at the end of the trial, the UKhome secretary must orderMallyas extradition within two months.

However, the case can go through a series of appeals in higher UK courts before arriving at a conclusion.

Judge Arbuthnot and her colleague, Rebecca Crane, at Westminster Magistrates Court have recently rejected two other long-pending extradition requests from India.
Bollywood celebrities Aamir Khan, Karan Johar and Ajay Devgn paid tributes to Shashi Kapoor, one of the stalwarts of the Indian cinema industry, who passed away on Monday at the age of 79.

The actor had been suffering from an old-age related illness.

The 'Dangal' star tweeted, "Shashi uncle was not only a great star and a passionate filmmaker, but also a wonderful human being. His work has always given Indian audiences great joy. His contribution to Indian theatre was huge, Prithvi theatre is the favourite venue of both performers and audiences alike. His passing away is a sad day for all of us. My condolences to Sanjana, Kunal, Karan and everyone in the family. May his soul rest in peace. Love and respect. a."

Here's what the other celebs tweeted:

Karan Johar: #RIPShashiKapoor ...the most charming and enigmatic actor ever...a gentleman movie star! His legacy in film and theatre is exceptional...thoughts and prayers with the family....his work will always live on...

#RIPShashiKapoor ...the most charming and enigmatic actor ever...a gentleman movie star! His legacy in film and theatre is exceptional...thoughts and prayers with the family....his work will always live on... pic.twitter.com/U9jsAGxGET  Karan Johar (@karanjohar) December 4, 2017

You won't be forgotten. Rest in peace #ShashiKapoor ji.  Ajay Devgn (@ajaydevgn) December 4, 2017

So sad to hear the passing of the most charming #ShashiKapoor ji, really saddened by this news. Pray for his soul to find peace. Thank him for the amazing memories he gave us all. Condolences to the Kapoor family. #RIP SIR.  arjun rampal (@rampalarjun) December 4, 2017

Ajay Devgn: You won't be forgotten. Rest in peace #ShashiKapoor ji.Arjun Rampal: So sad to hear the passing of the most charming #ShashiKapoor ji, really saddened by this news. Pray for his soul to find peace. Thank him for the amazing memories he gave us all. Condolences to the Kapoor family. #RIP SIR.

Bipasha Basu: RIP Sir. You will be deeply missed by all #ShashiKapoor
Buoyed by a massive electoral win in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh civic polls, the Yogi Adityanath-led state government has given final touches to nearly 12 new policies aimed at improving the industrial landscape of Uttar Pradesh.
Global financial hub Hong Kong is likely to emerge as the new gateway for overseas investors looking to invest in India, piping traditional destinations such as Singapore and Mauritius.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will for the first time attend an annual general meeting (AGM) of a leading business chamber, possibly sending out a signal that he wants to engage with India Inc at a time when the economy has started looking up.
Representatives of around 45 American companies met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at this year's Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in Hyderabad and expressed their commitment to continue investing in India, a top Indian American business leader has said.

These representatives were part of a delegation of the US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), a newly set-up non-profit organisation focused on deepening business relations between the US and India and enhancing the strategic relationship between the two countries.

"I can't talk about the specifics (of the meeting with Modi) because it was off the record. But basically the companies did meet with the Prime Minister and they showed their commitment to continued investment into India," USISPF President Mukesh Aghi told IANS in an interview.





The US looks at building its relationship with India on two broad principles. "One principle is that economic prosperity of India is good for America. And the second principle is a militarily strong India is good for regional stability," Aghi said.

If India became economically more prosperous and there was more disposable income, people would tend to buy more US goods, or send more of their kids for education to the US, he said.

"If you look at this year, the enrollment of Indian students in the US went up by 12 per cent. So we have 186,000 Indian students in the US," he stated.

"That's one. Two, if you look at companies like Amazon, look at Uber, look at WhatsApp or Google, you know they have a tremendous market share in the Indian market. Their businesses grow because consumer spending is growing in India because of economic prosperity."

On the defence side, Aghi said that if India became more prosperous, it would spend more money on defence.

"If you look at the last three years, the procurement with India has gone up to $15 billion," he said.

"We are talking Make in India also from the manufacturing perspective of defence equipment. So, I think those principles are driving this relationship."

On the current business environment in India, Aghi referred to the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings which saw India jumping from the 130th rank to 100th.





"When this government came in 2014, India's ranking was 142. And now it has come to 100. I think that is a positive sign and we will keep on urging the government to go to below 50. That should be the ambition," he stated.

About the economic reforms being undertaken by the Indian government, he said these have been certified by credit rating agency Moody's, which has upgraded India's sovereign rating to Baa2 from its lowest investment grade of Baa after 14 long years.

"What the government is doing is the right stuff -- which seems to send a strong message to investors also. Moody's ranking is a positive sign, very positive," he said.

On what were the key takeaways for USISPF from this year's GES, which was held on the theme "Women First, Priority for All", Aghi said: "I think the number one takeaway is that start-ups and entrepreneurship are important for job creation. That's what India needs".





He also stressed on the involvement and engagement of women entrepreneurs and women workers for the growth of GDP and economy.

"You know, a McKinsey report shows that by 2025, if you engage more women workers, it will have an impact of $12 trillion on the global economy," the USISPF president said.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has recommended telecom companies be allowed test subscribers before the commercial launch of services but their numbers should not exceed 5 per cent of the installed network capacity for a circle. Testing should be completed in 90 days.
PM Narendra Modi launched his two-day campaign for Gujarat Assembly elections 2017 on Sunday and spoke in a host of rallies in his home state driving BJP Gujarat election campaign. He narrated BJPs success stories and took potshot at opposition in his blitzkrieg rallies in the state. Here are the major things that PM Modi mentioned in his rallied throughout the day for Gujarat election polls.
Lakshman Dobariya of Jasdan in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat has seen his realisation drop from Rs 1,200 per 20 kg of groundnut to Rs 600 per 20 kg in the past five years. Although the state government announced a minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 900 per 20 kg right before the Assembly elections in the state, Dobariya is forced to sell his produce at market prices of Rs 500-600 per 20 kg. The queues at government procurement centres are unending.

My costs have risen from Rs 5,000 per bigha to Rs 8,000 while realisations have fallen from Rs 1,000-1,200 per 20 kg to Rs 500-600. This is accentuated by rising pest infestation and an erratic monsoon, says Dobariya.

Dobariyas experience shows how farm distress is brewing discontent among Gujarats rural electorate. The state government has pulled out all the stops to assuage the rural voter in the run-up to a crucial election. Among other things, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government announced a support price of Rs 900 per 20 kg of groundnut (or Rs 4,500 per quintal) last month, after market prices had crashed to Rs 3,250 per quintal.

The state government also unveiled a Rs 500-crore Budget for procuring groundnut. Sagar Rabari, convenor of Jamin Adhikar Andolan Gujarat that works with farmers, says with that kind of Budget, the government will be able to procure 110,000 tonnes of groundnut this season. The output was 2.96 million tonnes last year, and estimates suggest production this year will be 3.2 million tonnes. The majority of Gujarats groundnut farmers will be left in the lurch.

The government cannot procure all the stock because it also has to sell in the open market where prices are low. The roots of the problem lie elsewhere, in the lack of market and support infrastructure, says Rabari. But Chimanbhai Shaparia, Gujarats agriculture minister, says the government has increased the collection centres to 215 this year from last years 87. We are trying to reach where the farmers are, he adds.

Dobariya's woes do not end with low prices for his produce. Add loan repayments and crop insurance, and Dobariyas profits shrink drastically.

Gujarats agriculture grew at an average eight per cent between 2002-03 and 2013-14 and the slowdown since 2014-15 seems has delivered a crushing blow to the farming community. After shrinking by 1 per cent in 2014-15, farm GDP in the state has not recovered much in 2015-16.

Gujarat has faced drought, floods and delayed monsoon in the past five years. Experts say farmers woes have been aggravated by the lack of last-mile connectivity for irrigation with water from the Narmada. This has rendered many regions dependent on the monsoon, especially Saurashtra and north Gujarat.

A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on the Gujarat government has pulled it up for allowing Rs 97 crore worth of irrigation projects to remain incomplete for 14 years. Agricultural expert Hemant Shah says the area under Narmada water irrigation grew from 193,683 hectares in 2011-12 to 209,057 hectares in 2012-13 but remained stagnant over the next two years. At 209,057 hectares, this is 11.67 per cent of the target 1.792 million hectares, Shah points out.

But Shaparia does not think lack of irrigation will be a major issue in this election. This year, not only has rainfall been good but the government has ensured procurement at MSP for key crops. We will continue to work towards taking Narmada water into the hinterlands, he adds.

Not just groundnut, price erosion has affected Gujarats cotton crop as well. Five years ago, cotton yielded Rs 1,400 per bale of 170 kg. This has now declined to Rs 800. As a result, farmers have over the years reluctantly shifted to crops that require less water. A V Barad, dean of Junagadh Agricultural University, attributes the change in cropping in Gujarat to the monsoon and availability of Narmada water. After groundnut, Saurashtra was known for its wheat production. In the last five years, wheat has been replaced by spices such as coriander and cumin and pulses such as chana, he points out.

Debt trap

Just before the elections, the government waived interest on loans up to Rs 3 lakh for farmers. But this may not really help small and marginal farmers in the state, who make up for two-thirds of the total and are still dependent on informal channels of credit.

Agricultural advances in Gujarat stood at Rs 76,232 crore in June, according to the State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC), and gross non-performing assets (NPAs) were 5.76 per cent, or Rs 4,390 crore, of these advances. In fact, the gross NPAs have risen from 2.9 per cent of advances in March 2014 to six per cent now. Experts point out that the level of NPAs in Gujarat is lower than many other states, but this is primarily because farmers in the state borrow from moneylenders in years when the crop realisation is weak to repay banks.

An estimated 4.8 million families in Gujarat depend on agriculture for their livelihood, but agriculture accounted for only 16.6 per cent of the states GDP in 2014-15. Capital-intensive industries in the state have not created enough jobs.

The average monthly income of an agricultural household in Gujarat was Rs 7,926 in 2013. While this is obviously lower than in agrarian states like Punjab (Rs 18,059) and Haryana (Rs 14,434), the average daily income of a farmer in Gujarat (Rs 264) is lower than the daily wage of an unskilled farm labourer nationally (Rs 341).

It is not surprising that only 11 per cent of the crop area in the state was insured until 2014-15. The figure was higher for Rajasthan (49.7 per cent) and Madhya Pradesh (45.91 per cent). But there has been improvement  according to the SLBC data, around 1 million farmers have been covered by the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana till August 2017. Around one-fourth of the states cultivable area has some crop insurance.

The job ahead is to push up Gujarats agriculture GDP. It has remained in a slow growth trajectory for a couple of years, rising from Rs 93,481 crore in 2011-12 to Rs 99,591 crore in 2014-15.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday attacked the Opposition party Congress for the "absence of internal democracy" during his two-day visit to poll-bound Gujarat. The Prime Minister's remarks came a day before Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi was scheduled to file his nomination papers for election to the post of party president.
The Election Commission today issued directions that no newspaper advertisement be published on December 8 and 9 in poll-bound Gujarat without its prior clearance, a policy the poll panel adopted after controversial ads were issued by the BJP during the 2015 Bihar elections.

The first phase of Gujarat election would be held on December 9 for 89 assembly seats.

In a direction to the Chief Electoral Officer of Gujarat, the commission said that instances of "advertisements of offending and misleading nature" were brought to its notice in the past.

"Such advertisements in the last stage of election vitiate the election. The affected candidates and parties will not have any opportunity of providing clarification or rebuttal in such cases," the poll watchdog said.

It said to ensure that no such instance is repeated and no untoward incident takes place because of any "inflammatory, misleading or hate advertisements", no political party, candidate, organisation or person will bring out ads in the print media on December 8 and 9 unless the contents are pre- certified by Media Certification and Monitoring Committee at the district or state level.

The newspapers, the commission said, should also be informed against bringing out advertisements which were not cleared by the committee.

During Bihar polls, the commission had clamped a ban on publication of two controversial advertisements printed by the BJP in the state.

One of the advertisements alleged that RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar were "snatching the plate of Dalits" by planning to transfer the quota meant for Dalits and EBCs to minorities.

Another advertisement dealt with "vote ki kheti" or vote- bank politics. It claimed that the RJD, the JDU and the Congress leaders were "giving sanctuary" to terrorists to appease a particular community for votes.
Global investment firm KKR today announced that an entity wholly-owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) has become a significant minority shareholder in (KIFS), an alternative credit business in India. The NBFC leverages KKR's balance sheet and investment expertise to extend financing solutions to corporations and mid-sized enterprises with long-term capital needs across the country. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
State Bank of India will "redesign" its envelopes used to dispatch tax refund cheques of customers to cover their PAN and contact numbers, after an activist raised that the crucial personal information was visible to anyone which may result in misuse, the bank said.

The move comes nearly 16 months after activist Commodore (retd) Lokesh Batra raised the issue that the window envelopes used by SBI make it easy for someone to glance through permanent account number (PAN) and contact number of the tax payee and misuse it.

Batra wrote to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Urjit Patel, alleging that SBI was violating its directions on 'protection of customer's information' by sending crucial information about customers in "unsecured envelopes".

"...this systemic failures by must be breaching the personal information of very large numbers of People. I had reported this matter at the highest level in SBI..., but as of now no one has even blinked...and breaching of people's personal information is continuing," he wrote to the RBI Governor on November 28.

He said he had been "pleading" with SBI at the highest level for the past 16 months to ensure compliance with RBI directions, but nothing has changed.

After the RBI referred the matter to SBI, the bank responded by saying that "the envelops (window envelops) in which income tax refund orders are being dispatched to various assesses will be redesigned, so that the PAN number is not visible to anyone".
The First Ever International Conference on AYUSH and Wellness Arogya 2017 was inaugurated by the Minister of Commerce and Industry, Shri Suresh Prabhu and Minister of State for AYUSH, Shri Shripad Yesso Naik in New Delhi today. The three day exhibition cum conference is being held at Vigyan Bhawan from 4th to 7th December, 2017. Arogya 2017 has been jointly organized by Ministry of AYUSH and Ministry of Commerce and Industry of Government of India including Pharmexcil in partnership with FICCI to showcase the strength and scientific valuation of traditional system of medicine. Nearly 1500 delegates from India and 60 countries are participating in Arogya 2017. .

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Addressing the delegates, the Commerce and Industry Minister, Shri Suresh Prabhu said that Arogya 2017 is the first of its kind International Conference which has been organized in India. Through Arogya 2017, we have decided to share the traditional medicine knowledge of India with humanity across the world, the Minister explained. India, he said, however is not the only country with traditional medicine knowledge. Through this conference we also hope to learn from participants from other countries of the world and the Government of India will be very happy to work with all the countries in this sector, he said. .

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Minister of State for AYUSH, Shri Shripad Yesso Naik said that Ministry of AYUSH is trying to achieve comprehensive integration of AYUSH in the health services. Through the Ministry of AYUSH, we are not only promoting developmental activities of traditional medicine at National level but also looking at more international cooperation and collaboration opportunities at bilateral, multi lateral, regional and global levels. In this direction, declaration of 21st June as International Day of Yoga by the United Nations has generated global interest for yoga as well as lot of cooperation opportunities for exchange of Yoga information, expertise and qualified, certified and accredited trainers of Yoga. Similarly, through our collaboration agreement with WHO we intend to develop AYUSH technical guidelines and documents for the benefit of member countries, the Minister added. Shri Shripad Naik said that India has signed MoUs with some country Governments and also with International Universities for fostering cooperation in the area. We should build up the institutional mechanisms and the health systems with the evidence-based approaches, shared practical experiences and best practices of traditional medical systems, he added. .

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Secretary AYUSH, Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha said that India is perhaps the only country in the world with a separate ministry of traditional medicine which reflects governments commitment towards development of AYUSH system of medicines. We hope to increase the size of AYUSH sector three fold over the next five years including products and services, the AYUSH Secretary said. It is for this reason that the Government is following a multi prong strategy including signing of MoUs and agreements with large number of countries, collaborative research and academic activities and offering international scholarship in AYUSH among others. .

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DG Pharmxcil, Mr. Udaya Bhaskar; Secretary General FICCI, Dr. Sanjaya Baru; Deputy Secretary General FICCI, Mr. Vinay Mathur; DG Gyan Bharti, A. Jaykumar; AYUSH Expert in WHO, Dr. G Geeta Krishnan; MD Sri Sri Tattva, Shri Arvind Varchaswi also highlighted the steps taken by India in promoting the AYUSH Sector at home and abroad. .

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Aroyga 2017 is a comprehensive exhibition cum conference on Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddhha, Sowa Rigpa, Homoeopathy and wellness. More than 250 manufacturers of alternative medicine are showcasing their products and services at International Arogya 2017. The mega event has brought key stakeholders of AYUSH sector together under one roof to showcase latest research and developments in alternative medicine systems of India and boost exports of AYUSH products. .

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A White Paper "AYUSH for the World" by Frost & Sullivan was launched at the event to offer a roadmap for AYUSH regulations and registration in ASEAN and BIMSTEC countries. It notes that India is the second largest exporter of Ayurvedic and alternate medicine to the world and has a potential to generate 3 million job opportunities. The Indian herbal market is valued at around Rs 5,000 crore currently, with an annual growth rate of 14%. .

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Twenty-two Sarpanchs of Kishwar district of Jammu & Kashmir visited Delhi as part of a Capacity Building Tour organised by the Army. During their two days' visit to Delhi, the Sarpanchs visited the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, PUSA where they were introduced to the latest developments in the field of agriculture. They were also introduced to techniques of polyfarming and Bio gas plants implementation by Dr Nafees Ahmed, officiating Head, CATAT, IARI..

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These 22 Sarpanchs who are farmers by profession and are mostly senior citizens, were also provided an opportunity to get insight into the rich heritage of the country through visits to India Gate, Rashtrapati Bhawan, Parliament House, Jamia Masjid and Red Fort..

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A delegation of journalists from Tripura representing the "Forum for Protection of Journalists" today called on Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh. The Journalists called for a high-level inquiry against violence and oppression on the journalists of the State. The delegation also cited the example of recent daylight killing of journalist Sudip Datta Bhowmik and the killing of another young television journalist Santanu Bhowmik two months earlier. .

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Dr. Jitendra Singh received a memorandum from the journalists and gave a patient hearing to them. .

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The Arab League chief has said a decision by US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital would boost fanaticism and violence, and not serve the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Trump's son-in-law and Middle East peace envoy Jared Kushner told the Saban Forum on Sunday that the President is close to a decision on whether to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"It is unfortunate that some are insisting on carrying out this step without any regard to the dangers it carries to the stability of the Middle East and the whole world," Ahmed Abul Gheit, head of the Arab League, told reporters in Cairo.

Abul Gheit said the Arab League is closely following the issue and is in contact with the Palestinian authorities and Arab states to coordinate the Arab position if Trump takes the step.

Trump must decide on Monday whether to sign a legal waiver that would delay plans to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for another six months.

Every US President has done this since 1995, judging the time not ripe for such a move, and Trump is expected to begrudgingly do so for a second time this week.

But, according to diplomats and observers, he is also now expected to announce in a speech on Wednesday that he supports Israel's claim on Jerusalem as its capital.

Palestinian leaders are lobbying desperately against such a move, fearing it could provoke such fury in the Arab world it could sink peace hopes for a generation.

"Nothing justifies this act... it will not serve peace or stability, instead it will nourish fanaticism and violence," said Abul Gheit.

The move would "benefit only one side, which is the anti-peace Israeli government," he told reporters.

Israel occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967. It later annexed east Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the community.

The Palestinians see the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

The traditional United States position is that the status of Jerusalem must be negotiated between the two sides.
Australian lawmaker Tim Wilson on Monday popped the question to his long-term partner Ryan Bolger on the floor of Parliament, during a debate to legalise same-sex marriage in the country.

The proposal, which came shortly after the same-sex marriage bill was introduced to the Lower House of Parliament, was greeted with applause from all sides of and the public gallery.

Addressing the Parliament in favour of the same-sex marriage bill, Wilson turned to thank Bolger, who was sitting with marriage equality advocates in the public gallery, for his support.

"There's only one thing left to do," he said, choking up slightly. Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me?", The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Wilson as saying.

And the answer came back fast and loud as Bolger responded with a clear "yes".

Earlier in his speech, Wilson recalled when he had first presented Bolger with the rings that the pair has worn on their left hands for seven years.

"I said, 'I don't know what this ring represents, but will you take it as a sign of my commitment'. Thankfully the answer was yes," he said.

Wilson has been engaged to the school teacher for nine years and reaffirmed his proposal during a speech on the issue, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported.

According to ABC, the same-sex marriage legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives on Monday and is expected to pass easily after the debate on proposed religious protection amendments.

The bill was introduced by Liberal MP Warren Entsch, a long-time advocate for same-sex marriage.
Canada will continue to explore a free trade agreement with China, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday, as it weighs its options after the United States threatened to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Speaking after a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Trudeau said if "done properly", such an agreement would benefit both countries and strengthen the middle class.

"It's an opportunity that makes sense for Canadian businesses," he said at the start of a five-day trip to China. "Canada is and always has been a trading nation. But the landscape of trade is shifting and we need to adjust to it."

Li said China remained open to exploring a free trade deal with Canada as part of joint efforts to safeguard world trade liberalisation and advance globalisation.

"We have an open attitude toward the process of negotiations, and an open attitude towards their contents," Li said.

Canada is considering whether to launch talks on a free trade deal with China, which wants a trade pact similar to the ones it has with Australia and New Zealand.

But Trudeau, aware of domestic unease at the idea, is moving slowly. Although polls consistently show Canadians are split over the merits of a trade deal, Canada needs to diversify exports to offset the possible damage done if the United States pulls out of NAFTA.

Trudeau's visit, which began on Sunday, comes as planemaker Bombardier Inc is eager to win a breakthrough order from Chinese carriers for its CSeries jet, whose fuselage is made in China.

But the chance of sealing such deals has become more cloudy after Canada encouraged Bombardier to sell a controlling stake in the CSeries programme to Airbus rather than a Chinese firm.

"On the agricultural front, I'm pleased to announce the Canadian beef and pork will have greater access to the Chinese market," Trudeau said, without elaborating.

China has been loosening restrictions on beef imports this year to feed the appetite of the country's growing middle class for more Western food.

Trudeau said he also agreed with Li a joint statement that affirms a commitment to "mitigating the global threat of climate change" and lays out a plan for closer collaboration.

Earlier on Monday, Trudeau promoted Chinese tourism to Canada at an event held at the headquarters of China's Twitter-like online media company, Sina Weibo.

Canada has said it will co-host a January meeting with the United States of up to 16 foreign ministers in Vancouver to produce "better ideas" to ease tensions over North Korea's nuclear and ballistic tests.

In late November, North Korea tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile yet, putting the continental United States within range and increasing pressure on US President Donald Trump to deal with the nuclear-armed nation.

Li said he discussed and regional issues with Trudeau, but did not elaborate.
The Chinese company, iFlyTek, uses sophisticated AI to power image and voice recognition systems that can help doctors with their diagnoses, aid teachers in grading tests and let drivers control their cars with their voices
With every new North Korean missile  such as the one launched on Tuesday November 28  or nuclear test, all eyes are on China. Like previous American presidents, Donald Trump believes that the road to a diplomatic solution on North Korea runs through Beijing. He holds the view that, of any country, China has the most leverage over North Korea and therefore could quickly and easily solve the problem with the Kim Jung-un regime  but is just not willing to do so.
Representatives from Swedish today met Commerce & Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu here, as the company looks to ramp up its presence in India.

However, IKEA has not sought any relaxation in local sourcing norms from the Union Government, and is confident that by 2022, 30 per cent of the products it sells in India will be sourced locally.

"We are positive about the change that happened over a year ago (on local sourcing norms) when it moved from first investment/first store opening to five years of first store opening," Patrik Antoni, Deputy Country Manager, IKEA India, told PTI after meeting the minister.

The company is set to open its flagship store in India by next year, and is in talks with Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra for sourcing wood for furniture.

The Swedish company earlier said it will recruit about 800 people for the store which will come up in Hyderabad.
Italian tax police have visited the offices of fashion company Gucci for fiscal checks as part of an investigation by Milan prosecutors into suspected tax evasion, a senior source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Saturday.

"Gucci confirms that it is providing its full cooperation to the respective authorities and is confident about the correctness and transparency of its operations," Gucci said in an e-mailed statement in response to a report about the tax police audit published by Italian daily La Stampa on Saturday.

The source with direct knowledge of the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the checks were carried out this week at Gucci's Milan offices and Florence headquarters.

The source said the Milan prosecutors suspected Gucci, which is part of French luxury group Kering, may have paid taxes on profits generated by sales in Italy in another country with a more favourable tax regime. The source did not give more details.

Gucci, the biggest contributor to Kering's profits and revenues, has enjoyed a revival in recent years, and in the third quarter of 2017 reported a 49.4 per cent rise in sales on a like-for-like basis - excluding currency swings.

Contacted by Reuters, a spokeswoman for Kering said the group had no further comment.
The stage was set for high drama when the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) met for its 173rd meeting at Vienna in Austria last week, with the whole world, including crude oil consumers like India, closely tracking the outcome.
Ireland has made "significant progress" in talks with Britain on the future of the Northern Irish border, but the sides are "not there yet", a spokesman for Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Monday.
On Nov. 29, President Trump retweeted a series of videos that purported to depict violence committed by Muslims. They had originated from the account of a far-right British ultranationalist who had been convicted for harassing a Muslim. The backlash was swift, with British Prime Minister Theresa May saying the President is wrong to have done this.
US Defence Secretary James Mattis arrived in Pakistan on Monday for his first visit to the country since taking charge at the Pentagon.

Mattis was received by officials from the Defence Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the US Embassy upon his arrival, a Foreign Office statement said.

During his visit, Mattis is expected to hold meetings with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Army Chief Gen Qamar Jawed Bajwa.

A day earlier, Mattis had told reporters that during his time in Islamabad he would look for "common ground" between America and Washington.

Mattis had also said that his discussions with the leadership in Islamabad will also focus on US President Donald Trump's South Asia policy which was announced in September.

The strategy seeks Pakistan's support to defeat the Taliban as Washington believes that only a defeat will force them to reconcile with the Afghan government.

Soon after the announcement, Pakistan had expressed its reservations about some of the policy decisions made in the strategy and totally rejected the misperception of not taking action against all terrorist groups.

"The US remains committed to a pragmatic relationship that expands cooperation on shared interests," the US secretary had said on Sunday while reinforcing President Trump's call for action against alleged safe havens.
CVS Health said on Sunday that it had agreed to buy Aetna for about $69 billion in a deal that would combine the drugstore giant with one of the biggest health insurers in the United States and has the potential to reshape the nations health care industry.
The United States has announced that it will not participate in the United Nations' Global Compact on Migration as it does not meet the policies and principles of the Trump administration.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said he intends to work hard to find common ground with Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, which is necessary to restore the level of stability in South Asia to allow economic development.

Ahead of his visit to Islamabad, Mattis said he wants to work with Pakistan, listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective, to address the problems.

Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait and Pakistan, since taking over the charge of the Pentagon.

Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest the 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

Saeed is still roaming free, despite tough warning from the Trump Administration.

"The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," Mattis told reporters travelling with him on his way to Pakistan from Egypt.

Mattis is the first top US official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the new South Asia Strategy that was announced by President Donald Trump on August 21.

"We know we have some common ground. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their troops killed and wounded by terrorists. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their innocent people murdered and wounded by terrorists, so we know that there is common ground".

Similarly, he said, there is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth, that do move back and forth in order to live in one and attack in the other, that sort of thing.

"So we know there's common ground; it's how much more common ground can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective," Mattis said.

"But at the same time, as the (Pakistan Army Chief) General (Qamar Javed Bajwa) has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and we'll find that common ground, if we have the will to.

"And then we'll work on how we address the problems where we can work together," the Defense Secretary said.

Responding to a question, he said he would not characterise everything over the past 16 years as failures.

"There is clearly an abundance of areas where we have to double down, and I am optimistic at this point that because of what our adversaries, our mutual enemies are doing, that we can find ways to work together," he said.

Mattis said both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military, the NATO-led militaries of 39 nations have all been in fights here. "We've got to find a way to work together".

He said there is "always an urgency to something" when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken.

"These are 39 of the most economically powerful, generally speaking, most long-term democratic institutions in the world. These are powerful nations morally, economically and diplomatically, and certainly militarily," he said.

Mattis said that it was essential in South Asia that all work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economy to build.

"I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We can not only imagine it; it's a reality right now," Mattis said.

So, the US Defence Secretary said that we have got to work together on this, and there's a sense of urgency about that.

"There's people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries. So as you look at this problem, if you'll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things," he said.

Mattis is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and General Bajwa.

"General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting that's characterised the area," he said.
(formerly Financial Technologies) was locked in lower circuit of 5% at Rs 131, down 7% from intra-day high on the BSE, after the company said the Hon'ble Bombay High Court has dismissed its writ petition on the National Spot Exchange Limited (NSEL) merger.
India is planning its own standards for . Known as Indian responsible mineral sourcing guidelines, these are being worked out on the lines of rules set out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
was up 5% to Rs 729 on the BSE in early noon deals after media report suggested that the companys pesticide project in Gujarat got the green panel nod.
Shares of two pharmaceutical companies Lupin (Rs 810) and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals (Rs 550) hit their respective 52-week lows on the BSE in intra-day trade in an otherwise firm market.
A blast in Nepal's Kathmandu left a candidate and 11 others injured on Monday, the last day of election campaigning for the forthcoming phase of the parliamentary and the provincial council poll.

Gagan Thapa, a Nepali Congress Candidate, was attacked during his campaign and public interaction walk in Chapali, the outskirts of Kathmandu.

Two of the injured people are said to be in critical condition and are undergoing treatment at the Tribhuwan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH).

The police is yet to identify the group behind it as well as the technique and the bomb used in the blast.

The Nepali Congress released a statement condemning the attack and declaring it to be against the democratic norms and values. It claimed the attack to be of an intention of killing the candidate.

"The attack was intended to kill the Nepali Congress leader, candidate and the cadres and we loath this sort of hideous act and we condemn this heinous act," read the statement.

As many as 15 million Nepalis are eligible to vote in the historic elections which are going to be the first one since the 10-year-long civil war that ended in 2006.

While the first round of the first poll under the new constitution adopted in 2015 took place on November 26, the second one is due on December 7.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who also holds the charge of the home minster, has been criticised lately for not being able to appoint a new home minister and putting the nation's internal security at stake after the cabinet reshuffle about a month ago. He himself was targetted in a bomb attack during his election campaign in the Dang district.

Local people, however, seem to be unaffacted by such attacks and excited for the elections.

While talking to ANI, Bhupalman Karmacharya, a local said, "This sort of act is nothing but only an attempt to scare people. We will definitely go and cast our vote and there is no doubt about it."

The splinter group of Maoist Centre is under the suspection of being behind this attack but the base for the assumptions is yet to be cleared.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nine people including four with militancy background have been arrested by the Tripura Police in connection with the kidnapping of four Tripura Gramin Bank (TGB) officials, who returned home on December 1-a week after their abduction.

The police have also recovered about Rs. 50 lakh from them.

Tripura Director General of Police A K Sukla, on Sunday, said, "Yesterday, we conducted raids in three districts, Gomati, Khowai and West district and apprehended nine people involved with this incident.

"Initially in the morning we recovered a sum of Rs 1, 37,870 from two places but after interrogation of the arrested miscreants, later in the evening we again recovered Rs. 47,50,000," he said.

All those arrested were produced in the court on Saturday.

Sukla informed that they were yet to establish links between those arrested and the two banned militant organisations - All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) and Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT).

He added that along with combing operation, helicopters had also been used for the search operations.

TGB's Branch Manager Tanumoy Bhattacharjee, 30, Sujit Chandra Dey, 28, Raktim Bhowmik, 31, and Subrata Debbarma, 32, were abducted on November 24 while they were returning on their two vehicles.

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It seems like a miracle, as a team of researchers has discovered a lost 3,000-year-old castle Turkey's Lake Van.

According to archaeologists from the Van Yuzuncu Yil University, the ruins are thought to be those of a fortress built by the Uratu civilization, which flourished in the Iron Age between the 9th and 6th centuries BC.

Tahsin Ceylan, underwater videographer and head of the diving team, explained that other divers and archaeologists familiar with the lake advised the team they were unlikely to find much in the water, reports the Independent.

"There was a rumour that there might be something under the water, but most archaeologists and museum officials told us that we won't find anything," he added.

But they eventually found that the remarkable ruins are part of an extensive site which stretches roughly a kilometre.

Despite being underwater for centuries, the height of the visible sections of the fortress's remaining walls range between 10 and 13 feet high, the team explained.

Mr Ceylan told a Turkish newspaper that "many civilizations and people had settled around Lake Van. They named the lake the 'upper sea' and believed it had many mysterious things.

"With this belief in mind, we are working to reveal the lake's secrets," Mr Ceylan added that Lake Van had a history of around 600,000 years.

Archaeologists will come here to examine the castle's history and provide information on it, he noted.

Urartu, also known as the Kingdom of Van, was an ancient nation that spanned parts of modern day Turkey, Armenia and Iran.

Lake Van is thought to have been an important focus for the civilisation.

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Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Monday urged Dasab Networks to scale up its present involvement in Andhra Pradesh.

During his meeting with Nam Min-woo, Chairman of Dasan Networks, Naidu said, "In Andhra Pradesh, we are connecting every home with FibreNet connection."

Dasan is a global network solution provider that develops and manufactures network equipment for fixed and mobile broadband services.

The Chief Minister urged him to scale up Dasan Networks' present involvement in Andhra Pradesh.

Andhra Pradesh has provided water, power and food security to the people, he said.

Min-woo said that they plan to soon start a manufacturing unit in India, and are looking for opportunities.

The Chief Minister invited him to come to Andhra Pradesh, for the Investors' Summit to be held in Visakhapatnam.

Earlier, he apprised South Korean business leaders of investment opportunities in the state during his first meeting with ancillary industries of Kia Motors here.

Naidu, who reached here on Monday morning on a three-day visit, said that there are bright opportunities for investments in India and Andhra Pradesh.

"Andhra Pradesh has good and growing infrastructure, well-maintained law and order and abundance of quality human resources".

Expressing that he is impressed with Korea's progress against all odds, the Chief Minister invited them to bring more investors to the state, for the establishment of a South Korea City.

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If the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel then the consequences will be "hazardous", warned the Arab League in a statement released on Sunday.

The statement comes after U.S. media reported that President Donald Trump may recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday.

The league, headquartered here, said such move would further fuel instability in the Middle East, which is already battling with numerous conflicts.

"If implemented, it would mark a change in Washington's historical stance that sees the holy city as an occupied Palestinian city and an integral part of the occupied Palestinian lands," Arab League Assistant Secretary General Saeed Abu-Ali said in the statement.

While campaigning for the top post last year, Trump had announced that if elected, he would move the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognise the latter as the capital of Israel.

Jerusalem, considered holy by Jews, Muslims and Christians, is a disputed holy city.

Palestine considers it as the capital of their future state while the international community does not recognise Israel's claim on the whole city.

The League of Arab States, or Arab League, has 22 members. Palestine, which the League regards as an independent state, is too a member state. The league strives to strengthen the brotherhood among the member states to achieve a common goal.

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To spread awareness, Alzheimer's and Related Disorders Society of India (ARDSI), Mumbai Chapter organised "Awarathon Mumbai 2017" on Sunday at Worli Sea face, which saw participation from all strata of society, medical practitioners, caregiver, corporate people, NGO, volunteers.

Currently, more than 41 lakh Indians suffer from dementia, the most common being Alzheimer's Disease, which causes gradual decrease in ability to remember and think clearly eventually affecting a person's daily functioning. This 3-km Awarathon was organised to create more public awareness.

"This overwhelming response of participants to our Awarathon just shows that we are a sensitive society concerned about elders and senior citizens. ARDSI Mumbai Chapter, is striving to make our city of Mumbai a 'dementia-friendly city', with more awareness. We have received encouragement from Corporates and philanthropists to be a part of it. This event was possible only with the encouragement and support of Alkem Laboratories Limited, Police and Traffic Departments, BMC and of course all walkers present," said the Secretary of the ARDSI Mumbai Chapter.

This event was supported by Alkem Laboratories Ltd, which runs a large social media community 'Dementia and Alzheimer's Community of India' and has launched an awareness video that is currently catching a lot of eyeballs.

An official of Alkem Laboratories Ltd. said, "We are happy to partner with ARDSI, Mumbai Chapter and supporting their initiatives for this social cause as there is a real need to spread awareness and increase screening of Dementia. Due to social stigma, lack of awareness and that people often confuse forgetfulness associated as part of normal aging. Our social media initiative is a step ahead to spread awareness so that people can recognise symptoms early and avail of services of specialised Dementia DayCare Centre to help families lessen the onus of caring in their daily lives. Their counselling and support sessions help tremendously.

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An Army jawan was injured on Monday in an ongoing encounter with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Qazigund.

Earlier, there were reports of terrorists attacking an army convoy that was heading towards Srinagar.

The area has been reportedly cordoned off by the security forces.

Earlier on November 30, the security forces killed four terrorists in two separate encounters in Budgam and Sopore districts of Jammu and Kashmir.

Further details are awaited.

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Bangladesh has called for a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to discuss the human rights issue of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

Recently, Bangladesh had sent a notice along with Saudi Arabia to the UNHRC in this regard, Dhaka Tribune has reported.

Their notice has received support of 33 of the 47 member states, and 40 other non-UNHRC nations.

The move comes just over a week after Sheikh Hasina-led government signed a bilateral agreement with Myanmar on Rohingya repatriation.

According to the national daily, Bangladesh also wants to discuss the human rights condition of other minorities living in Myanmar's Rakhine state with the UNHCR members.

Since the military action began in Rakhine in August, after some militants attacked security forces' post, over 6 lakh Rohingyas have fled the state to neighbouring countries, especially to Bangladesh.

As of now, 6.25 lakh refugees have taken shelter in the country.

According to Myanmar's 1982 Citizenship Act, Rohingyas are not considered naturalised citizens and, repeatedly, have been at the receiving end of the ethnic clashes in the country.

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A bomb, planted near a hotel where Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has been staying for an election campaign in the Far Western region, was defused on Monday by a bomb disposal squad of the national army.

Kathmandu Post quoted the police, as saying, that the bomb was planted at a bridge, some 400 metres away from Hotel Devotee in Dhangadhi.

According to the report, the bomb was detected by a sniffer dog - during a search operation.

The security has been beefed up in Dhangadhi after the discovery of the bomb.

Leaders of various political parties are holding exhaustive election rallies and meetings in favour of their party in different parts of the country as the campaigning for second and final phase of parliament and provincial elections scheduled for December 7 is in full swing.

A 65 per cent voter turnout was recorded in the first phase of the elections.

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Canada signed three trade agreements with China on Monday, as visiting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang formalised the memorandum of understanding (MoU) at a ceremony here.

The two sides signed an action plan on energy cooperation and two MoUs in food sector, according to media reports.

The signing of agreements comes after the two sides, in September last year, when Li was on an official visit to Canada, decided to double their bilateral commerce by 2025.

Trudeau, who is on a five-day (December 3-7) visit to the Asian economic giant, is also scheduled to meet top government and business leaders of the country.

Canada's pivot to other economic powerhouses comes following tough trade negotiations with the United States, which is Ottawa's major commerce partner and under President Donald Trump's administration becoming protectionist.

This is Trudeau's second visit to China since he assumed office in 2015.

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In the wake of recent reports on Aadhaar data breach by various sources, results from a survey revealed that a majority of the respondents were uncomfortable in using their Aadhaar accounts to access e-commerce accounts or digital wallets.

In the recent past, the government has laid a lot of emphasis on consumers to link their Aadhaar with all important documents like PAN, bank account, mobile number, insurance policies and so on. There have also been reports that some e-commerce sites have been asking consumers to link their website accounts with Aadhaar when they are trying to track a lost package. Many other internet-based businesses like payment wallets have also mandated Aadhaar for the consumers to avail their services.

Internet-based companies like AirBnb, Uber and Ola have also been asking the user to upload a copy of their Aadhaar while registering on the site as a safety measure, so that their true identity could be ascertained.

In this regard, a survey was conducted by LocalCircles on around 20,000 people, broadly on the subject of using Aadhaar details on the aforementioned platforms.

The first poll asked if the citizens would feel comfortable in linking their Aadhaar with their e-commerce site accounts. 61 percent said they would not be comfortable while 30 percent said they were fine with it.

When asked if they would be comfortable in linking Aadhaar with their payment wallet accounts, 49 percent refused, while 33 percent agreed, and 18 percent were neutral.

A related poll asked citizens if there should be a financial penalty for banks, telecom providers or any other organisations that compromise their Aadhaar, bank or call/data transaction details, to which 94 percent replied in an affirmative. They said that in case of data leakage, the respective bank or telecom operator should be severely penalised to ensure that they keep the data security measure to the optimum levels.

Recently, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) while responding to some media reports which alleged that "210 Government sites made Aadhaar info public" assured that the Aadhaar data was fully safe and secure, and there has never been a breach or data leak at the UIDAI.

The UIDAI in a notification said the data on these mentioned websites was placed in a public domain as a measure of proactive disclosure under Right to Information (RTI) Act by government and institutional websites, which included the beneficiaries' name, address, bank account, and other details, which also included the Aadhaar number and were collected from the third party/users for various welfare schemes.

Meanwhile, LocalCircles is submitting this report to UIDAI and other stake holders, so that appropriate action could be taken, and cases of data leakage could be minimised.
The woman constable, who had filed a plea in the Bombay High Court seeking permission to undergo sex reassignment surgery, on Monday underwent a medical test at Sir JJ Hospital in Mumbai.

In her plea, the constable had also sought the court's permission to continue to work with the police force after changing her sex.

Earlier, she was denied permission by police officials to continue working after the surgery.

The cop, who has been serving the police force since 2010, took the decision to change her gender after she felt connected more with the masculine gender due to what she describes as hormonal imbalances.

Her lawyer claims that on diagnosis and medical consultation at the hospital in Mumbai, she was told that her hormonal imbalances were incurable and thus, she was adviced to undergo plastic surgery or sexual reassignment.

The lawyer appealed to the authorities to allow her to undergo the surgery saying his client's human rights were at stake.

He says he was seeking necessary orders as per the Maharashtra Police Rules ensuring the cop right to equality and life.

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The Indian Navy on Sunday continued the search and rescue operations for the fourth day over Southeast Arabian Sea and Lakshadweep and Minicoy (L&M) Islands in the aftermath of cyclonic storm Ockhi.

Ten naval ships, including capital ships like Chennai and Kolkata, were deployed over Southeast Arabian Sea and L&M islands.

In addition, eight aircrafts including long range maritime reconnaissance aircraft P8I were deployed throughout the day.

Total 55 persons were rescued on Sunday taking the total rescued persons to 145.

INS Kalpeni rescued fishing vessel (FV) Gracias with thirteen survivours and handed them over to the Kollam district collector.

INS Sharda rescued nine persons from FV Albus at Kavaratti. The ship then continued the rescue operations and saved another 12 persons from FV Infant Jesus off Kavaratti.

INS Chennai rescued 12 persons from FV Lord of Ocean north of Kavaratti and eight more persons from FV Jahova Hosseno off Chetlet island.

Jahovah vessel belonging to L&M islands had been missing for three days and was found after persistent search operations by naval ships. All 20 personnel are being escorted to safety to Kavaratti Island.

INS Shardul has disembarked all HADR material at Minicoy. The ship is equipped with Diving team and a Chetak for carrying out additional SAR operations.

INS Kolkata rescued nine persons from FV Akash 20 miles off Kapeni and personnel were brought to safety to Kavratti by naval Sea King helicopter.

One body was recovered by INS Kalpeni off Kollam and the same was handed over to civil authorities at Kollam by naval Sea King helicopter.

Three survivours rescued by Coast Guard Ship Samar have been air lifted to Kochi by Sea King B Indian Naval ships Chennai, Trikand and Kolkata are stationed around the islands with HADR materials.

The ships are equipped with desalination plants and will be able to provide the islands fresh water as and when required.

The total relief material carried would sustain approximately 5,000 persons for over a period of seven days.

Additionally, all naval units in the vicinity of L&M have been directed to provide fresh water in consultation with local administration.

All other ships at the disposal of the Indian Navy are continuing the Search and Rescue operations along the Kerala coast and around the L&M Islands in a systematic and planned manner to provide immediate aid to any person, vessel or boat in distress.

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Amid the havoc caused by cyclone Ockhi, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said that she will not lose hope and will leave no stone unturned in finding the fishermen stranded in the sea.

"I will not lose hope even for a minute, because if the boats, which went out 15 days back, can come back with the fishermen alive, then we will make every attempt to bring everyone back," Sitharaman told reporters here.

The Defence Minister further informed that 11 fishermen are also accompanying the Navy in the search operations.

"Fishermen were asking if they could join the search operations, and I agreed. Now 11 of them are already in search helicopters, so with the cooperation of fishermen, we will continue our search and rescue teams," she said.

Giving a rundown of the operation carried out by the Indian Navy, the Defence Minister said that she is duly updated every hour by the officers in the navy and the coast guard about the whereabouts of those found.

"I have spoken to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra to ensure that those boats, which have reached there, be given safe care and share of food, clothing and everything. When the seas are calmer, they can come back," Sitharaman added.

The Defence Minister was in the city to meet the families of fishermen affected by .

At the onset of the severe cyclone that jolted the southern part of the country, several naval ships were deployed for rescue operations.

Sitharaman, on Friday, had confirmed that six warships and two coast guard ships were deployed along with additional air effort.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday met the fishermen families affected by cyclone Ockhi at Vizhinjam, Thiruvananthapuram.

The Defence Minister assured them that the search and rescue operations are being conducted with full force.

"The search and rescue operations by the Indian Navy, Coastguard and Air Force will continue with full vigour," she said.

Sitharaman reached Kanyakumari on Sunday to take stock of the situation in the wake of the cyclonic storm, which has tormented the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu and Kerala and now Lakshadweep islands.

She informed that, so far, 357 fishermen, including 71 from Tamil Nadu, who had been stranded in sea due to Cyclone Ockhi, have been rescued.

Earlier on November 2, the Tamil Nadu authorities stated that the total number of deaths caused due to cyclone Ockhi has reached 19.

The state department also said that at least 690 people have been rescued so far, while 96 were still missing.

It further stated that 63 people have been hospitalized, while 74 houses have been fully damaged and 1,122 houses have been partially damaged.

The deadly cyclone, which has claimed many lives, lashed the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu and Kerala on Saturday with torrential rainfall and gusty winds.

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The Delhi High Court on Monday dismissed the interim plea of sidelined All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) T T V Dinakaran to get 'hat' symbol allotted for R K Nagar bypolls.

The High Court has left the decision in the hands of Returning Officer of the Election Commission (EC) to allot the symbol to Dinakaran as an independent candidate for the bypolls.

The court will hear the main plea filed by jailed AIADMK leader V K Sasikala and Dinakran challenging the Election Commission's decision to grant two leaves symbol to EPS faction of the party on February 12.

On November 30, Dinakaran approached the Delhi High Court challenging two leaves symbol order of the Election Commission.

Earlier in November, the election watchdog had ruled that the party's faction led by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister E Palanisamy and his deputy O Panneerselvam (EPS-OPS) would be entitled to use the name of the party and its reserved symbol, holding that it enjoyed majority in the party's legislative and organisational wings.

Following the ruling, Dinakaran, while addressing party workers, said, "I will win in R K Nagar by-election and take back 'two leaves' symbol."

Backed by her aunt Sasikala, Dinakaran had also laid claim over the symbol after a power tussle ensued in the party following the death of Jayalalithaa.

Dinakaran is also facing a two leaves symbol bribery case.

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The Global Network for entrepreneurs was launched during the Global Entrepreneurship Summit GES 2017 in Hyderabad aiming at providing a one-stop solution for assisting start-ups and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to set their feet.

With an aim to accelerate the entrepreneurial journey, the Global Network for Entrepreneurs' is unique in a two-fold manner. Firstly, its support mechanism covers the different stages of entrepreneurship from early growth to growth stage entrepreneurs to SMEs and secondly, it has customised offerings for various levels of the entrepreneurial journey.

This is a flagship initiative of the Wadhwani Foundation which has been known for its initiatives for job creation through entrepreneurship and skill development. This will not only act as a fulcrum to inculcate a culture of entrepreneurship at a time when the best and the brightest are avidly looking at entrepreneurship as their first and preferred career choice, but will also provide the necessary knowledge and networking resources to the start-up ecosystem.

Speaking during the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, Dr Ajay Kela, President and CEO, Wadhwani Foundation said, "We are very excited to roll-out the Wadhwani Global Network for Entrepreneurs. This is a one-stop shop for the entrepreneur looking to grow locally and globally providing all necessary resources, guidance, facilitated technology-led learning and networking opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs and startups to succeed, where the failure rates are abnormally high."

"This is a first-in-world initiative with global operations in Asia, Africa and Latin America. I foresee this as playing a major role in fulfilling the Wadhwani Foundation's efforts towards high-value job creation, globally," he added.

The 'Global Network for Entrepreneurs' is supporting aspiring entrepreneurs, early and growth stage entrepreneurs, curated mentors, advisors and consultants, trusted service providers and investors through the mobile apps and a dedicated site www.wfnen.org.

Wadhwani Foundation has nurtured entrepreneurship in colleges in India for 14 years through student courses and launched hundreds of entrepreneurship clubs in campuses. This programme inspires students and student outliers by providing facilitated learning through www.wfnen.org and Learn wise platform.

From short videos, blogs to events, webinars, bootcamps and case studies, there's plenty for student entrepreneurs keen on arming themselves with formidable skills required for business success.

The long-term goals to help establish vibrant entrepreneur ecosystems in 100 cities around the world to alleviate the global youth unemployment problem.

Wadhwani Foundation was founded in 2000 by Dr RomeshWadhwani with the primary mission of accelerating economic development in emerging economies through large-scale job creation. The Foundation is present in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, East Africa and Latin America operating in association with governments, corporates, mentors, investors and educational institutes.

The Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) inspires, educates, and supports student entrepreneurs, startups, and SMEs for creating high-value jobs. NEN has also ventured into creating city-based entrepreneurial ecosystems consisting of mentors, investors, and incubators supporting startups and SMEs.

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India and Germany on Monday signed a Government to Government Umbrella Agreement concerning Financial Cooperation in 2016 (II) under the Indo-German Development Cooperation.

With this in place, an amount of up to EUR 200 million will be formalised for financial cooperation in the form of loan for the project 'Climate Friendly Urban Mobility III' and EUR 11 million for accompanying measures in the form of grant for four projects.

The agreement was signed by H.E. Dr. Martin Ney, Ambassador on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany, and S. Selvakumar, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance on behalf of India.

Part I of the agreement had already been signed in May this year.

The following agreements were also signed, in addition to the above:

-A loan agreement for the project "Community based sustainable Forest Management - Component I Manipur" for EUR 15 million. The broad objectives of the project are restoration of degraded forests in upper watersheds, reclamation of abandoned shifting cultivation areas, biodiversity conservation, water resources conservation and livelihood improvement of forest dependent rural tribal people in the project area.

-A loan agreement for the project "Madhya Pradesh Urban Sanitation and Environment Programme" for EUR 50 million reduced interest loan and EUR 2.5 million grant. The broad objective of the project is to improve facilities for water supply, sanitation and sewerage treatment plant in selected towns of Madhya Pradesh, improve solid and liquid waste management and disposal systems, improvement of surface drainage systems for flood mitigation in selected towns of Madhya Pradesh.

- Loan Agreement for the project "Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Development Odisha - Phase II for EUR 55 million reduced interest loan with EUR 2 Million as grant. The basic objective of the project is to improve urban infrastructure by linking them with government priority. The broad objective of the project is to improve the urban infrastructure of Odisha and to provide better quality of life to the people.

-Loan Agreement for the project "Green Energy Corridor - Intra-State Transmission System in Maharashtra" for EUR 12 million reduced interest loan. The broad objective of this project is to put in place a transmission system for evacuating renewable energy.

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International experts have come out in support of Prof Naela Quadri Baloch, head of the Baloch Women Forum (WBWF), who had urged the United States to designate former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf as Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).

A German activist and supporter of the Baloch cause, Claudia Heidelberg, told ANI she supported Prof. Quadri Baloch.

"I join Prof. Naela Quadri Baloch in requesting the US to designate Pervez Musharraf as a global terrorist, after coming out openly in media that he supports labeled terrorist organisations by UN Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD)," Heidelberg said.

The German activist called for an investigation by competent authorities in European Union countries to probe Musharraf's association with these terror organisations.

"Musharraf is not a private citizen and his words need to be taken seriously, it is utterly disgraceful on his part for open admiration, and support for a terrorist organisation," Heidelberg said, adding, "His remarks calls for an investigation by competent authorities in EU countries to probe his association-level support that he might have rendered to the LeT till date."

Heidelberg termed Musharraf as "butcher" for his alleged involvement in the murder of Baloch leader Akbar Bugti.

"Musharraf is known as the butcher of Balochistan; his hands are soaked with blood of Baloch. The has not forgotten his role in murder of Baloch leader Akbar Bugti," the German activist said, adding, "His ruthless use of US weapons against the Baloch was admitted in the past by the former governor of Balochistan."

Heidelberg also urged the EU member states to ban Musharraf's entry into their countries.

"I think it makes sense to request on behalf of my NGO BalochistanProject to urge all EU member states to deny him any right to enter into EU. I will inform my foreign minister about this and expect my colleague Reza Hossein Borr will inform the government of the UK as well," the German activist said.

"His comments have shown his criminal mindset that is not only a threat to the regional peace but to the whole international community," Heidelberg further said.

The German activist emphasised that terrorist organisation like the LeT and the JuD were uniting with the IS and the Taliban.

"These terrorist groups are uniting with international terror groups like the IS and the Taliban. Europe must undertake effective measures against such dangerous figures like Musharraf and send a message to all such individuals," Heidelberg

Echoing similar sentiment, a former research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, Dr Robert Darius, said Musharraf must be tried in the International Court of Criminal Justice.

"Gen Musharraf, the butcher of Balochistan, must have a trial in the International Court of Criminal Justice and must give back the money he took out of Pakistan in the form of charity to the poverty stricken people of Balochistan," Dr Darius said.

"The free must teach a lesson to this type of ruthless generals who butcher innocent people and rob their own people," he added.

Dr Darius said that the US State Department would serve the cause of human rights by designating Musharraf a terrorist.

"The US State Department will serve the cause of human rights and counter terrorism by designating the butcher of Balochistan, Gen Musharraf, as a leader in promoting terror and death in Balochistan!" he said.

"Musharraf's actions, while he was in-charge, promoted terrorism beyond Balochistan," he added.

Ealier, responding to a question about having an alliance with JuD chief Saeed, Musharraf, in an interview to Pakistan-based Aaj News channel, had said, "So far, there have been no talks with them but if they want to be part of the alliance, I would welcome them."

The former military ruler had last month announced the formation of a grand political alliance after a consultative meeting between representatives of around two dozen political parties, including the Sunni Tehreek, Majlis-i-Wahdatul Muslimeen, Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and Mr Musharraf's own All Pakistan Muslim League (APML).

However, several parties dissociated themselves from Musharraf's Awami Ittehad alliance after he announced the formation of a "grand alliance" of 23 parties.

According to media reports, two major partners of the alliance - the Pakistan Awami Tehrik and the Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen - denied being part of the coalition headed by Musharraf.

Saeed, who continues to be an influential person in Pakistan's certain religious groups despite being an internationally-designated terrorist, announced on Saturday that he would contest the general election in 2018.

The announcement comes days after the Lahore High Court ordered his release from the house arrest.

However, the JuD chief did not disclose anything about the constituency he would like to contest from.

Though, the JuD formed Milli Muslim League (MML) in August when Saeed was detained in Lahore, the party yet to be recognised by the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Saeed is a wanted terrorist by India and the United States for his alleged role in masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives. He even carries a bounty of 10 million USD (approx. Rs 66 crore) on his head for his role in the attack.

Musharraf had recently called himself as the "biggest supporter" of the LeT and its founder Hafiz Saeed.

Speaking on Pakistan's ARY News, Musharraf said, "I am the biggest supporter of the LeT and I know they like me and the JuD also likes me."

The former president added that he was always in favour of terrorist action in Kashmir, and the LeT and the JuD were the biggest forces to take on the Indian Army in the state.

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All the superhero buffs know that Damon Lindelof has been adapting critically-acclaimed graphic novel 'Watchmen' for the small screen at HBO for some time now.

But the information regarding exactly who will be starring and when the show will eventually debut is still kept under wraps.

But, it looks like we might have found who'll be portraying one of the key members of the team.

WWE Superstar John Cena is a household name across the world, and now it seems he's got his eyes on an exciting new prospect.

Taking to his Instagram account, Cena posted not one, but two different graphics relating to 'Watchmen'.

In the first image, she shared the iconic 'Watchmen' logo, with a blood stain on it, while in the second picture he posted the snap of fan-favourite character Dr. Manhattan.

This has led many to believe that he could be joining Lindelof's series in the leading role.

News of Lindelof's adaptation of 'Watchmen' for HBO first broke in June.

Among his other works, Lindelof is responsible for 'Lost' and 'The Leftovers', both of which which he co-created.

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The Jammu and Kashmir Police on Monday confirmed that Furkan, a Pakistani terrorist who took over as the divisional commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), after the elimination of commander Abu Ismail, was killed in an encounter at Qazikund in Jammu and Kashmir.

Along with Furkan, the other killed Pakistani terrorist, has been identified as Abu Mavia.

Jammu and Kashmir's Director General of Police (DGP) SP Vaid took to Twitter and said, "Furkan, a Pakistani terrorist who took over as Divisional commander of LeT after the elimination of Ismail was killed in today's encounter at Qazikund along with another Pakistani terrorist identified as Abu Mavia. Great success for security forces!"

A security personnel also lost his life during the encounter between the army and terrorists while a security personnel suffered injuries.

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A Delhi court has asked lobbyist Deepak Talwar to appear before it on January 18.

On Monday, Talwar was granted permission from appearance in person before Delhi's Tis Hazari court. However, the court asked him to appear on January 18.

Talwar is under Income Tax (IT) Department lens for Rs 1,000 crore undisclosed income.

Talwar is accused of using his influence to amend civil aviation-related bilateral agreements between India and various countries to directly benefit his clients - mainly Gulf-based international airlines.

He is facing five IT department complaints for receiving kickbacks worth hundreds of crores of rupees in individual and corporate bank accounts controlled by him and his family members in various tax jurisdictions, including tax havens, across the world.

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A team of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers from India will be attending the extradition trial of embattled businessman Vijay Mallya, which begins later today.

The trial will continue on 5th, 6th, 7th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 14th of December.

Over the next ten days, Chief Magistrate at Westminster Magistrate's Court Emma Arbuthnot will hear the case presented by Britain's Crown Prosecution Service on behalf of the Indian government, and the defence on which Mallya will hope to thwart efforts to return him to India to face prosecution.

Mallya, who shifted to the U.K., is wanted in India for financial irregularities involving a total amount of Rs 9,000 crore as well as money laundering.

In an earlier hearing, he appeared before the Chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot at the Westminster Magistrate's Court.

After hearing both the parties, the judge said the trial would begin at 10 am (UK time) on December 4.

One of the main arguments of the defence is that he fears for his life in India, so the prosecution is preparing a submission by the Indian government outlining the security measures that will be in place for Mallya, once he is extradited to India.

Outside the court, Mallya refused to answer questions especially about Diageos' new lawsuit and his fear of Indian jails.

Mallya is out on a 650,000-pound bail bond following his arrest by Scotland Yard over fraud and money laundering charges.

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The Shalimar Bagh Max Hospital that has been hitting the headlines for quite some time now has decided to terminate the services of two of its doctors, who were involved in wrongly declaring a newborn dead last week.

A statement issued by the hospital authorities confirmed the termination of Dr A P Mehta and Dr Vishal Gupta's services.

"While inquiry by the expert group which includes external experts from IMA is still in process, we have decided to terminate the services of the two treating doctors, Dr A P Mehta and Dr Vishal Gupta in the case relating to the twin extreme pre-term babies," read the statement.

"This strict action has been taken on the basis of our initial discussions with the expert group and as a reflection of our commitment to higher standards of care," it added.

Yesterday, the hospital authorities had said that an investigation into the issue is expected to conclude today.

The Shalimar Bagh branch of the hospital was accused of medical negligence after an infant was found alive after being declared 'dead' along with his still-born twin by the hospital.

Following which, the Delhi Police sent a notice to the administration of Max hospital, seeking detailed information in connection with the case and asked the authorities to be present for an interrogation.

On Saturday, Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Kumar Jain warned of cancelling the hospital's license, if it continued with the negligence.

The hospital had handed over the newborns in a plastic bag to the family, but when the twins were brought to the burial ground, realised before performing the last rites, that one of them showed movements inside the bag.

They immediately rushed to a nearby hospital where the doctors confirmed one of them to be alive.

A medical negligence case has been registered under section 308 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) against the hospital.

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Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) leader Sandeep Deshpande and seven other party workers have been sent to judicial custody till December 18 for vandalising the Congress party office.

The MNS worker were arrested for vandalising the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee office near Azad Maidan on Friday morning.

The MNS supporters smashed barged into the office and smashed the windows.

The MNS leader and others were booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Criminal Amendment Act.

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The Madhya Pradesh Assembly on Monday unanimously passed a bill awarding death sentence to accused in cases of rape and gangrape of girls below 12 years.

Speaking at the assembly, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the perpetrators raping the minors have no right to live.

Chouhan's statement comes days after the Madhya Pradesh Cabinet approved death sentence be awarded to rape convicts in cases involving girls of 12 years of age and below.

Speaking at the state assembly, the chief minister said, "One (the accused) who rapes 12-year-old girl or minors is not human but demon and they have no right to live."

Chouhan further said that stalking has been made a non-bailable offence in the state.

On November 26, the cabinet approved amendment of the penal code to intensify the punishment awarded to rape convicts besides increasing the fine amount slapped on them.

The decision was taken in the wake of increasing cases of sexual violence against girl child and women in the state.

As per the data released by the Crime Records Bureau, Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest incidents of rape with 4,882 cases (12.5 per cent).

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Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, who earlier came in support of the terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), has now said that he would welcome an alliance with global terrorist and 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed for the general election in 2018.

Responding to a question about having an alliance with JuD chief Saeed, Musharraf in an interview to Pakistan based Aaj News channel said, "so far, there has be no talks with them but if they want to be part of the alliance, I would welcome them,"

The former military ruler had last month announced the formation of a grand political alliance after a consultative meeting between representatives of around two dozen political parties, including the Sunni Tehreek, Majlis-i-Wahdatul Muslimeen, Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and Mr Musharraf's own All Pakistan Muslim League (APML).

However, several parties dissociated themselves from Musharraf's Awami Ittehad alliance after he announced the formation of a "grand alliance" of 23 parties.

According to media reports, two major partners of the alliance - the Pakistan Awami Tehrik and the Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen - denied being part of the coalition headed by Musharraf.

Saeed, who continues to be an influential person in Pakistan's certain religious groups despite being an internationally designated terrorist, announced on Saturday that he would contest the general election in 2018.

The announcement comes days after the Lahore High Court ordered his release from the house arrest.

However, the JuD chief did not disclose anything about the constituency he would like to contest from.

Though, the JuD formed Milli Muslim League (MML) in August when Saeed was detained in Lahore, the party yet to be recognised by the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Saeed is a wanted terrorist by India and the United States for his alleged role in masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives.

He even carries a bounty of 10 million USD (approx. Rs 66 crore) on his head for his role in the attack.

Musharraf had recently called himself as the "biggest supporter" of the LeT and its founder Hafiz Saeed.

Speaking on Pakistan's ARY News, Musharraf said, "I am the biggest supporter of the LeT and I know they like me and the JuD also likes me."

The former president added that he was always in favour of terrorist action in Kashmir, and the LeT and the JuD were the biggest forces to take on the Indian Army in the state.
Few days ago, Natalie Portman revealed that she has 100 stories of sexual misconduct in Hollywood and has experienced same misconduct in the movie industry many times.

Now, in an interview with Mirror, the Oscar-winning actress has recalled one terrifying encounter that she faced during her initial years of acting.

Portman has revealed that she was lured on to a private jet alone with a Hollywood producer and "just one bed".

She said, "I was like, yeah, why wouldn't I accept a flight on a private plane with a big group of people? And I showed up and it was just the two of us and then one bed was made on the plane."

The 'Black Swan' star said she had "normalized" the behaviour and spoken out after the Harvey Weinstein allegations made her realise it was "super not ok".

She added, "That was really unacceptable and manipulative. I was scared."

The actress, who began acting her acting career aged just 13 in 1994 film 'Leon: The Professional', said people would comment on her body even as a child and admitted that she normalised harassment and discrimination to the extent she did not even realise it was happening.

"I think my first reaction when I heard everybody coming out was, 'Wow, I'm so lucky that I haven't had this,'" noted Portman.

Adding, "And then, on reflection, I was like, 'OK, I definitely have never been assaulted. But I've had discrimination or harassment on almost everything I've ever worked on in some way."

The 'Thor' star also shared that the Weinstein scandal will change Hollywood for good. She said, "There are so many things that we took for granted as part of our world. A lot of things that we just kind of put up with for reasons of maybe just being numb to it. But if you spent all your time reporting what was going on, that's all you would do as it's so pervasive. And yeah, it gets so built into the power struggles in every industry."

More than 50 women have accused Harvey Weinstein of sex abuse. Claims of harassment have also been made against actor Kevin Spacey, who apologised over one incident.

Sylvester Stallone and Ed Westwick have both vehemently denied claims made against them and Dustin Hoffman said of an allegation of harassment, "It is not reflective of who I am.

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Digital payment solution PayPhi, a product of Phi Commerce Pvt. Ltd. announced a strategic initiative that seeks to transform how consumers pay for LPG cylinders.

Cash has been the most predominant mode of payment for refills of LPG cylinder. In a move with far-reaching consequences, HP Gas consumers will have the opportunity to adopt one among several cashless payment options for paying for their LPG cylinder.

Cashless payments will not be restricted those who have cards, wallet and access to net banking but to anyone who has a bank account. Payments can be made using Aadhaar, UPI or BharatQR. The solution does away with need of mPOS as it is tightly integrated with the HP Gas delivery application.

To make payments, consumers have to simply provide their Aadhaar number and finger print at the time of delivery.

Fiscal year of 2016-17 witnessed a record growth of 9.8 percent in LPG sales. As many as 111.3 crore cylinders were sold in 2016-17. The subscriber base in rural India is expected to swell further with the success of Government of India initiatives like the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana.

"Paying for LPG cylinders with cash has for long been a pain point for consumers, gas agencies, and also for the OMCs. Now consumers do not need to keep cash at home waiting for the time of cylinder delivery and gas agencies do not need to waste time and effort in reconciling cash. This has the potential of spreading the digital payments wave to millions of people from India's interiors and this is what will help create the next wave of digitally empowered citizens," said Jose Thattil, Co-founder, and CEO of Phi Commerce.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday took another jibe at the 'dynastic politics' of the Congress Party by dubbing the party's Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's expected 'elevation' as an "Aurangzeb Raj".

"I congratulate the Congress on their Aurangzeb Raj. For us, the well being of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," the Prime Minister said addressing a rally here.

In his comparison of Gandhi family with the Mughal rule, Prime Minister Modi also stated, "Mani Shankar Aiyar asked 'did elections happen during Mughal rule? After Jehangir, Shah Jahan came, was any election held? After Shah Jahan, it was understood Aurangzeb will be the leader' So Congress accepts it's a family party? We don't want this Aurangzeb rule."

The jibe comes following the nomination by Rahul Gandhi for the Congress' presidential election earlier in the day. The post is currently held by Rahul's mother Sonia Gandhi who has been at the helm since 1998.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has, time and again, attacked the Congress Party, accusing it of indulging in dynasty politics and feudalism, but the accusation came full force, when Maharashtra Congress Secretary Shehzad Poonawalla called out the process of electing party president as "rigged" and said he had information that the delegates, who were going to vote for the election, were fixed.

The Prime Minister also accused the Congress Party of defaming the BJP by propagating it is against Muslims.

"Disinformation like BJP does this and that against Muslims has been spread. This family party made it their main agenda to spread disinformation about BJP. But Gujarat people are not so naive, they have now become sensitive and aware to disinformation," he said.

Prime Minister Modi added to the accusation, alleging that the Congress Party has been indulging in divisive politics in a bid to win the upcoming Gujarat assembly elections.

"Earlier, Congress would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing in this election, where they are going. Unfortunately for them, Muslims know their real nature," Modi said, adding that Congress has always defamed Gujarat, and that it can neither tolerate nor accept leaders from the state.

The two-phase Gujarat polls will be held on December 9 and 14.

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President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday mourned the demise of Bollywood veteran Shashi Kapoor.

President Kovind took to Twitter to praise the actor for his contribution to the Indian cinema.

Recalling his role in the Indian cinema, the president said the actor's pivotal role in the theatre movement in India was cherished.

"Sorry to hear of the demise of Shashi Kapoor, well-known actor, with a repertoire of Indian and international films. His support for meaningful cinema as a producer and pivotal role in the theatre movement in India too are cherished. Condolences to his family (sic)," he tweeted.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his brilliant acting would be remembered for generations to come.

"Shashi Kapoor's versatility could be seen in his movies as well as in theatre, which he promoted with great passion. His brilliant acting will be remembered for generations to come. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers (sic)," the prime minister tweeted.

Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani said Shashi Kapoor's contribution to Indian Cinema was 'monumental'.

She further said the actor's passing away marked the end of an era.

"Saddened by the demise of legendary actor Shashi Kapoor ji. His contribution to Indian Cinema is monumental. Shashi ji's passing away marks the end of an era. My deepest condolences to his loved ones, colleagues and fans. May his soul rest in peace. Om Shanti!"

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh also expressed condolence: "With his impressive talent and inimitable mannerism actor Shashi Kapoor charmed a generation of Indians. He was a fine actor and a wonderful human being. Saddened to learn of his demise. May his soul rest in peace (sic)."

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley remembered the veteran actor as a towering personality of the silver screen and for his impeccable acting across the world.

"Condolences on the sad demise of veteran actor #ShashiKapoor ji. He was a towering personality of the silver screen & known for his impeccable acting across the world. My thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved family. May the departed soul rest in peace," the finance minister tweeted.

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi also took to his social media handle to expressed grief on the demise of the veteran actor and said that he would always remain in people's hearts.

"A legend has passed away. Shashi Kapoor will remain in our hearts forever. My condolences to his loved ones and all his fans," he posted.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) general secretary Sitaram Yechury recalled the immense contribution of Shashi Kapoor to the Indian film industry and remembered him for his meaningful films.

"Shashi Kapoor will be remembered for making meaningful films, for his immense contribution to Indian theatre, and more. His was a long and distinguished innings which resonated with millions of viewers. Condolences," he tweeted.

Bollywood veteran Shashi Kapoor breathed his last on Monday evening. He was 79.

The actor had been suffering from an old-age related illness.

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Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani has hailed India's contribution in various sectors of Afghanistan.

Emphasising that India is a good partner of Afghanistan, President Ghani insisted that the Afghan government is committed to further strengthening bilateral cooperation with India.

President Ghani made the remarks during a meeting with the members of the Lower and Upper Houses of the Parliament to brief the lawmakers regarding his recent foreign trips and interactions, Khaama Press reported.

Dismissing misperceptions regarding the presence and role of India in Afghanistan, President Ghani said the Afghan government has no hidden deal with any country and no foreign state will be allowed to use the Afghan soil against the neighbours of the country.

According to Khaama Press, President Ghani further said that Kabul has shared interests with New Delhi and the Afghan government will continue to use the economic opportunities which have been provided by India for the development of the country.

Pakistan has long been opposing presence of India in Afghanistan but Afghan officials have repeatedly rejected such stance and even United States has also endorsed the constructive role of New Delhi in the rehabilitation of Afghanistan.

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Osmania University students on Monday staged a protest and did not allow the police to shift the body of Murli, who allegedly committed suicide in his hostel by hanging.

On Sunday, E Murali (21), a first-year student of MSc Physics, who hails from Doulapur village of Siddipet district, hanged himself in the bathroom of Maneru hostel of the campus.

According to reports, Murali, was missing from his room since Saturday night. He did not join his friends for breakfast and lunch. However, in the evening, they found his body hanging in the bathroom.

The students immediately informed the police who rushed to the hostel and claimed to have recovered a suicide note.

In the suicide note, he, reportedly, cited poor preparations for upcoming examinations as the cause for taking the extreme step.

Speaking to ANI, OU students joint action committee leader and president of the Unemployed Youth Association, K Manavatha Rai said, "Murli committed suicide because of unemployment. The state government is responsible for his suicide. Also, the government should give Rs. 50 lakh compensation to Murli's family or else we will not allow the police to shift the body from the hostel."

"The Telangana government has been sanctioning funds for many things regarding the state.then why they are not providing jobs for us. We will continue the protest and will not allow the police to shift the body until government takes responsibility over the matter," he said.

Meanwhile, the grieving mother Laxmi told ANI, "I struggled a lot working as daily labourer and supported my son in his studies. We did not think his life would end like this."

The South Zone Deputy Commissioner of Police, V. Satyanarayana, informed that a case has been registered, and they have initiated a probe into the matter.

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South Korea and the United States began massive joint aerial drills on Monday amid threats of a nuclear war from North Korea.

North Korea said on Sunday that the joint military drill of the U.S. and South Korea could trigger a nuclear war.

A commentary that appeared in state-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said that the five-day military drill was "all out provocation against" the country, and it may lead to nuclear war "at any moment".

The five-day Vigilant ACE (air combat exercise) is the largest-ever combined air force drill between the allies, involving more than 230 warplanes and around 12,000 personnel, which include six F-22 Raptors and six F-35As that have been deployed temporarily to Korea for the practice, Yonhap news agency reported.

Two B-1B Lancer bombers, six EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets, and dozens of F-15C and F-16 fighter jets have also been deployed for the drill apart from South Korea's F-15K, KF-16, FA-50 and F-5 fighters.

"It's aimed at enhancing the all-weather, day and night combined air power operation capabilities of South Korea and the U.S.," Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korea's defense ministry as saying.

The ministry added that the both sides will conduct the drills under various wartime scenarios, including simulated precision strikes on mock North Korean nuclear and missile targets.

The exercise comes less than a week after Pyongyang fired off a new intercontinental ballistic missile and claimed that it can reach the whole mainland of the United States.

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Simon Cowell, who is best known as a Britain's Got Talent judge and music producer, has recently revealed that after the scary incident at his London house, he is struggling to quit smoking and drinking.

The 58-year-old, who missed the first live shows of the current series after falling down the stairs, told the Sun that his efforts to quit the smoking and booze aren't going according to plan.

In October, the 'X Factor' boss got a shock to the system when he was rushed to hospital after passing out and falling down the stairs at his home.

He said, "I knocked myself out, and when I woke up, I thought, 'Is this heaven?' and then after I realised it wasn't, I thought I had broken my neck because the medics wouldn't let me move."

"I was thinking, 'Christ almighty'. You don't know what's wrong, and neither do they, so it is scary," the 'America's Got Talent' judge added.

Simon, previously revealed he wanted to change his ways of life in order to be a responsible father for his son Eric.

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Japan's Softbank Group Corporation is in expansionist mode with regard to India, investing in such as Ola, Flipkart, Paytm and Oyo Rooms. In the last few months, its investments in the global e-commerce market have been successful in keeping Amazon.com Inc, the world's largest online retailer, at bay.

Group Chairman Masayoshi Son has described acquisitions in Flipkart and Paytm as significant business achievements in the context of India as they are market leaders in their sectors.

Recent data appearing in the public domain indicates that Flipkart has a 60 percent share in India's e-commerce market, while Paytm has a 58 percent share of India's digital payments business.

In its latest earnings report, released last month, SoftBank reported a gain of 10.2 billion Yen ($89.3 million) on its India investments. In the one year since Son last visited India, SoftBank has pumped more than $4 billion into the Indian market, taking its investments in Indian start-ups to more than $6 billion .

Softbank's expansionist moves owed much to Nikesh Arora, its former president, who brought in a considerable foreign expertise and talent while helming the enterprise from October 2014 till June 21, 2016.

Among the talented persons he brought into SoftBank before his exit were Alok Sama (CFO, ARM) and Rajeev Mishra (Vision Fund), Marcelo Claure (Sprint).

Arora and his team were collectively taking Softbank to greater heights, but their proximity to Chairman Son raised eyebrows and reportedly made Japanese board members, including Chief Operating Officer Ken Miyauchi, uncomfortable and insecure. The Japanese were reportedly unhappy with foreign influence in core decision-making, seeing them as loud and disruptive, as also alien in terms of core values and sensitivities. The foreign talent is also paid much more than Japanese .

Nikesh, though, was responsible for making Softbank global in the real sense through key investments in the e-commerce sector. He decided to resign in June 2016. This definitely hit SoftBank for a while since finding a professional like Nikesh wasn't easy

The focus appears to be now on Alok Sama, Marcelo Claure and Rajeev Mishra. They were close to Nikesh and are under tremendous pressure despite their experience and credentials.

Alok Sama is involved in sourcing other deals and supporting transaction agreements related to the group and has been sidelined. Claure is said to be in the dock over alleged failures at Sprint . Rajeev doesn't have technology investing experience credentials and hasn't worked with this size of fund .

The fund has sprinkled money in a wide-ranging group of spread across biotech, bike-sharing and robotics in the hope of it impacting everyone's lives

There is speculation that if this politics continues, the performance of SoftBank may take a hit and it stands to lose much of its dream

The Japanese fear is not uncommon. In India, too, some of the headed by foreigners are said to be unstable. External expertise, therefore, may not be seen as entirely beneficial or rewarding.
India's second largest tractor brand exporter Sonalika ITL has recorded a 17 percent growth in international market in November 2017.

The company exported 1215 units of tractors, compared to 1042 units last year in the same month. The company is expecting 15 to 20 percent annual growth next year as well.

Sonalika, the youngest tractor brand with a strong belief in Make in India has built World's largest integrated tractor manufacturing unit offering customized tractors to suit diverse farming needs.

The company has a tie-up with Yanmar and has expanded its footprint to another 10 new countries in the year 2017. With this, Sonalika has expanded to 90 countries across the globe. By 2018, the company plans to enter 5 new markets. The export range will be equipped with engines complying with future emission standards.

"Our strategy has been to focus across HP segments and our tractors have become the preferred choice of progressive farmers not just in India but globally. To further strengthen our presence in Europe and US market, we have recently unveiled Solis 30 HST (Hydrostatic Transmission) in Agritechnica - Hanover Germany in Nov'17. Solis a well-recognized brand from ITL in Europe was very much appreciated in the exhibition for Solis 30 HST along with Solis22, Solis 28 and other tractors with next generation tractor platform. Through our tie-up with Yanmar, we are targeting five more markets in 2018," said executive director Sonalika ITL, Raman Mittal.

The incremental volumes are underpinned by encouraging response from Europe and Asia. Sonalika's export demand has also received a boost from markets in Africa, where the governments are encouraging agriculture mechanization.

Sonalika International currently has assembly plants in Brazil, Algeria, Iran and Cameroon, and exports semi-knocked-down, completely-knocked-down and fully-built tractors to approximately to 90 countries.

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To ensure security of women in the city, the Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police, Sulkhan Singh, flagged off women safety and awareness week from the IT Girls College, on Monday here.

Under this initiative, the Uttar Pradesh Police will visit various colleges and schools to make the students aware of how to be safe and the steps to be taken at the time of emergency.

The campaign, which will conclude on December 10, has been launched under the Uttar Pradesh Women Power Line 1090 initiative.

While addressing the gathering on the occasion, DGP Singh requested the students to be alert in order to avoid any mishap.

"The safety of women and girls is our prime concern. We assure you we will ensure your safety and help you to every extent. It is important to be aware of one's rights and government's initiatives for them. If a section of a society is unaware of their rights, then it becomes the reason of their downfall," DGP Singh said.

Singh further said it was not good to consider women victims, but it was important to support those who fell prey to any kind of assault.

He also advised the students to deal with a situation with confidence, not with aggression, adding it only invites unwanted enemies.

"We received information that the behaviour of the anti-romeo squad was not right. So, we are providing them training," he said.

Discussing about the measures taken by the police, DGP Singh said they were extending the reach of the 100 helpline number and are now even accepting complaints on Twitter.

We have also launched an E-FIR system and are accepting complaint through websites, he said.

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Police launched a search operation here on Sunday to trace two missing buffaloes of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Suresh Rahi.

The Hargaon MLA had filed a complaint in this regard after which the police began looking for the buffaloes.

"A case has been registered and the search for buffaloes is on," Sitapur Circle Officer Yogendra Singh told ANI.

According to the MLA, the two buffaloes are worth Rs one lakh each and hence he was compelled to file a complaint with the police.

In 2014, in a similar incident, dog squads, crime branch sleuths and police personnel were tasked with a 'buffalo hunt', when Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan filed a complaint after his buffaloes had gone missing.

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United States Defence Secretary James Mattis arrived for his maiden visit to Pakistan since taking charge of the Pentagon, on Monday.

He was received by officials from the defence and foreign ministries at the Nur Khan Airbase, Chaklala.

The US defence secretary is expected to meet Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Mattis had, on Sunday, said he would want to find a common ground to work together with Pakistan.

Reportedly, the defence secretary was asked en route to Kuwait if he would prod Pakistan, to address its alleged support for the militants, when he visits there.

In his response, Mattis said, "That's not the way I deal with issues. I believe that we work hard on finding the common ground and then we work together."

Mattis had, in October, said the US would try "one more time" to work with Islamabad before taking "whatever steps are necessary",

Mattis' visit comes days after the release of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) leader Hafiz Saeed from house arrest in Pakistan following which the United States had strongly condemned Islamabad and called for his immediate re-arrest and prosecution.

The White House, in a statement, had said: "The United States strongly condemns the release of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) leader Haft Saeed from house arrest in Pakistan and calls for his immediate re-arrest and prosecution.

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Women activist on Monday condemned the molestation of a four-year-old girl in Kolkata's GD Birla Centre for Education School and demanded the school principle to be removed.

Speaking to ANI, Women activist Nilanjana Chakraborty said, "It is a proper case of sexual assault; it's totally unfortunate for such incidents to take place in our own city. Also, when an incident happens in a school then the management is held responsible and accountable for it."

"I have heard the interview of the school principle and I'm not satisfied. She has not handled this matter in a proper way. The school principle should be removed and action should also be taken against the management," she said.

Earlier on Dec 1, the West Bengal Police arrested two teachers for sexually assaulting the four-year-old girl.

Also, the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education has formed a three-member committee to investigate the matter and submit a report within 24 hours.

The school came under the ire of its students' guardians after parents of the minor and her doctors said she was sexually assaulted by school's physical education teacher.

Principal Sharmila Nath told that the school was also conducting an internal investigation into the matter.

"We are also doing an internal investigation, and I assure you that safety and security will be given top priority," she said.

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Houthi rebels have blown up the residence of Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Few local media reports have stated Houthi rebels had gained control of the majority of the country's capital from Saleh's forces.

However, close sources have denied the reports that Saleh was killed.

Earlier today, the Iranian embassy in Yemen was set ablaze after the mortar shell struck amid the rebel fighting. The Anadolu Agency quoted sources, as saying, that the mortar shell triggered the fire at the embassy premises.

Reportedly, clouds of smoke could be seen coming from the building amid the clashes between the Houthi rebels and loyalists of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

However, it could not be figured out which party was behind the attack on the Iranian embassy.

Both Saleh forces and the Houthi rebels are battling to capture the capital city. The loyalists of Saleh last week had proposed for the talks with the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis to end the three-year conflict in Yemen.

The fighting has claimed more than 10,000 lives since then. The United Nations has described the Yemen conflict as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

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On 12 December 2017

Austin Engineering Company will hold a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Company on 12 December 2017 To approve Unaudited Financial Results of the company for the second quarter ended on 30th September, 2017 as per Indian Accounting standard ( IND-AS)

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Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmer's Welfare, Shri Radha Mohan Singh has said that it is our main objective to attract youth including school children towards agricultural education. Shri Singh mentioned that Government of India has started celebrating many National and International Days related to agriculture for its integrated and rapid development. It was stated by Shri Radha Mohan Singh.

The Agriculture Minister said that two years back Government of India decided to celebrate National Agricultural Education Day on December 3 because it is the birthday of our first Union Agriculture Minister and Former President of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad Ji. Shri Singh further added that all State Agricultural Universities and ICAR Institutes are celebrating National Agricultural Education Day in a big way since then.

Shri Singh mentioned that the Government of India has started implementing many programmes towards strengthening Agricultural Education, Research and Extension for a long term and sustainable development in agriculture. With the development of new technologies, agricultural trends are changing daily. To maximize the use of advanced technologies, it is important to provide adequate strengthening of agricultural education. He expressed happiness that ICAR has initiated many new programmes to enhance the quality of higher agricultural education in the country. The government of India has increased the budget of Agricultural Education by 47.4% this year as compared to the financial year 2013-14.

The Agriculture Minister further said that in order to adopt quality and holistic approach to higher agricultural education, the Fifth Dean Committee Report has been implemented in all the Agricultural Universities. This is First-of-its-kind that all Graduate Level Courses of Agriculture and its related subject have been declared as Professional Courses, in which agricultural graduates will be able to get a better opportunity from professional work in the future. Agricultural graduates will get more benefit from declaring their professional degrees as this degree has now become similar to the engineering degree.

He also mentioned that agricultural graduates will get more opportunities to go abroad for higher education.

Shri Singh informed that in the Fifth Dean Committee Report, guidelines have been prepared for necessary administrative educational standards for the construction and implementation of contemporary courses for the subjects covered in agricultural education. He said that the Student READY programme has been started for graduates of agriculture and allied subjects to ensure new direction for entrepreneurship development better employability. The main objective of this programme is to provide confidence and complete skills to agricultural Graduates while studying at undergraduate level. Under this programme, there is also a provision for working with the farmers in the fourth year of the bachelor's degree. Apart from this, the system of training has also been widely given in the production industries. The stipends given to students under Student READY have been increased from Rs 750 / - to Rs 3000 / - per month.

Recognizing the immense potential of North-Eastern India, six new colleges have been opened by the Modi Government under the Central Agricultural University, Imphal. This has resulted in the increase in the number of agricultural colleges in North East India by more than 85 percent in the last two years and the number of total colleges has gone up to 13. Out of this, two colleges of Agriculture in Arunachal and Meghalaya State, two colleges of Horticulture in Mizoram and Sikkim, a College of Veterinary Science in Nagaland and a College of Food Technology in Imphal, Manipur have been opened. The Agriculture Minister said that the Central Government has set up two separate Indian Agricultural Research Institute, IARI-Jharkhand and IARI-Assam in Jharkhand and Assam respectively. The task of opening 4 new colleges under the Rani Lakshmibai Central Agricultural University, Jhansi is in full swing in the Bundelkhand region.

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For setting up JV to manufacture fuel pump module and IC connector assembly

Fiem Industries has signed a MoU with Aisan Industry Co., Japan and Toyota Tsusho Corporation, Japan for establishing a joint venture company in India to manufacture Fuel Pump Module and IC connector Assembly for two-wheelers and three-wheelers.

Fuel Pump Module will become mandatory for two-wheelers and three-wheelers w.e.f. April, 2020 under Bharat Stage VI (BS VI) regime. This is an advanced Emission Control System Product, which will have huge market in India under BS VI norms.

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Tata Motors said that its commercial and passenger vehicles sales in domestic market grew by 58% to 52,464 units in November 2017 over November 2016, due to growing demand across segments, introduction of new products and strong customer initiatives. During the above period, the company's sales from exports declined 12% to 4,927 units due to drop in volumes in key commercial vehicles international business markets such as Nepal and Sri Lanka. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 1 December 2017.

Hero MotoCorp said that its total two-wheeler sales grew by 26% to 6.05 lakh units in November 2017 over November 2016. Out of this, motorcycles sales were at 5.25 lakh units and sales of scooters stood at 80,046 units. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 1 December 2017.

Tata Steel said it had on 30 November 2017, executed definitive agreements to acquire the balance of 74% equity shares of Bhubaneshwar Power (BPPL) from JL Power Ventures for a cash consideration of Rs 255 crore. Tata Steel together with its 100% subsidiary TS Alloys held 26% equity shares in BPPL. The acquisition provides Tata Steel an opportunity to increase its captive source of power to meet its growing demand. The announcement was made after market hours on Friday, 1 December 2017.

Infosys announced that its board of directors has appointed Salil S. Parekh as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director (CEO & MD) of the company effective 2 January 2018. U B Pravin Rao will step down as the interim CEO and Managing Director effective 2 January 2018 and will continue as Chief Operating Officer and a whole-time Director of the company. The announcement was made on Saturday, 2 December 2017.

Vijaya Bank's board has accorded its approval for raising Rs 1300 crore by way of additional tier 1 bonds under Basel III for the FY 2017-18. The announcement was made on Sunday, 3 December 2017.

PTC Industries announced that the Advanced Manufacturing & Technology Centre (AMTC) project of company, situated at NH-25A, SaraiSahjadi, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, has commenced the commercial production of phase - I (existing capacity expansion) with effect from 1 December 2017. The announcement was made on Saturday, 2 December 2017.

Mirc Electronics (Onida), leading consumer durables player has informed that the board has approved issue of 1.92 crore equity shares and 1.92 crore warrants convertible into equity shares, on preferential basis at Rs 37.53 to non-promoters to augment its long term working capital and corporate requirements. The announcement was made on Saturday, 2 December 2017.

Alphageo (India) received notification of award of contract from ONGC, Vadodara (Gujarat) for an estimated contract value of Rs 154.77 crore. The announcement was made on Saturday, 2 December 2017.

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Two soldiers were injured on Monday when militants attacked an army patrol on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway in south Kashmir's Kulgam district, a police officer said.

The militants fired at the patrol team in Qazigund area which has been cordoned off for searches, the officer said.

--IANS

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Aditya Birla Health Insurance, a joint venture between Aditya Birla Group and South Africa based MMI Holdings Ltd, is expecting 75 per cent of its businesses to come from retail in the next five to six years, a company official said on Monday.

"In the last year (2016), we primarily started with corporate, while retail was low. In the first quarter of the current fiscal, about eight per cent of our business was from retail and in the second quarter, that became 32 per cent."

"It is growing fast. In the next five to six years we want not less than 75 per cent of our businesses to come from retail," Company's CEO Mayank Bathwal told reporters here.

The health insurer recorded a gross premium income of Rs 150 crore after one year of operation starting from October, 2016.

"Retail business constitutes about 20 per cent of our business currently while the rest comes from corporate," Mayank said.

Its gross premium income during April to September period of the financial year stood at Rs 96.2 crore.

In the corporate segment, the insurer would focus more on small and medium enterprises. "We are not keen to get into the space of large corporate and fight the pricing battle," he said.

The insurer has a pan India distribution presence across 34 cities, five bank assurance partners and over 8,821 direct selling agents.

--IANS

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Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Monday announced setting up of a Cabinet sub-committee with a mandate to carry out feasibility study for inclusion of Rabha, Tiwa and Mising communities under the Constitution's Sixth Schedule which makes special provisions of autonomy for tribal-dominated areas.

The Chief Minister said this while taking part in a meeting with the representatives of Autonomous Councils of the respective communities at Janata Bhawan.

Sonowal also assured the representatives that all the rights of the communities, including land rights, would be protected while executing the State Capital Region.

He said that implementation of the State Capital Region Authority would catapult progress of the areas within its jurisdiction.

"There is no cause to worry for the Rabha and Tiwa people and all their rights would be fully protected," he said.

Sonowal also assured that the Rabha and Tiwa Autonomous Councils would also be included as members in the State Capital Region Authority in a bid to safeguard the interest of the communities.

--IANS

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MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has said that the title suit of the Babri Masjid can be decided only on the basis of evidence and not on 'aastha' (faith) as the Sangh Parivar is demanding.

Addressing a public meeting here on Sunday, he voiced his apprehension that the Sangh Parivar might vitiate the atmosphere in the country on the issue before the 2019 elections to gain political mileage.

The Member of Parliament condemned the statements by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders that the construction of the Ram temple in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya will begin on October 18, 2018.

Owaisi wondered how they could make such a statement when the title suit was still pending in the Supreme Court.

He said such attempts could repeat the violence and bloodshed witnessed in the country in the 1990s during BJP leader L.K. Advani's Rath Yatra and after the demolition of the Babri mosque. He warned that this could weaken the country.

The public meeting was organised by the Joint Action Committee comprising various Muslim organisations just days ahead of the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the mosque on December 6.

In 1992, on that date, a large number of religious volunteers or "Kar Sevaks" gathered in the temple town and demolished the 16th century structure, leading to widespread rioting and political crisis.

Taking strong exception to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat's statement that only a temple could be built in Ayodhya, Owaisi said: "Muslims would not be cowed down by such threats."

"What is pending in the Supreme Court is title suit, which will be decided purely on evidence and not an aastha," he said.

Owaisi said Babri Masjid was not the issue of Muslims but an issue linked to secularism. "This is an issue which will decide the course of this country," he said.

The MP said he supports Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan's suggestion that the title suit should not be taken up for hearing till the criminal case relating to the demolition of the mosque was disposed off.

Owaisi also quoted former Chief Justice A.M. Ahmedi reportedly saying that had Justice Venkata Challaiah not permitted Kar Seva, it would not have led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

He said even 25 years after the demolition, the contempt of court case had not come up for hearing in the apex court.

The MIM president alleged that the BJP is returning to its real agenda as it has failed to provide jobs to the unemployed and demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax has hit the people and dealt a blow to the economy.

Babri Masjid Action Committee convenor Zafaryab Jeelani said it was not an issue of "aastha" but of the political interests of some communal groups. He recalled that even the FIR registered in 1949 states that idols were stealthily kept in the mosque.

He said some elements tried to spread the falsehood that it was the birthplace of Ramchanderji (Lord Ram) but this has nothing to do with facts.

The speakers called up on Muslims to peacefully observe the shutdown on December 6 to demand reconstruction of the mosque at its original place.

--IANS

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Nearly Rs 1 lakh was looted from a bank in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on Monday by Al Qaeda unit chief Zakir Musa and his associates, police said.

Senior Superintendent of Police, Awantipora, Muhammad Zahid Malik said Zakir Musa and his two associates burst into the Noorpora branch of J&K Bank limited in Tral area, fired in the air and looted Rs 97,256 before fleeing.

The incident occurred around 2 p.m., Malik said.

Zakir Musa has become the most wanted militant commander in the Valley after the Al Qaeda announced on its media affiliate, Global Islamic Media Front, that he had been made the chief of its unit, named Ansar Ghazwatul Hind.

Musa was earlier in the Hizbul Mujahideen.

Police had earlier said three unidentified gunmen had looted the bank branch.

--IANS

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A new exhibition in the German capital of Berlin is charting out how CIA-front organisations enlisted the art world in a propaganda war between two ideologies, which came to be known as "the battle for Picassos mind", a media report said on Monday.

The exhibition titled "Parapolitics: Cultural Freedom and the Cold War", is on display at the historic House of World Cultures building until January 8, 2018.

By promoting modern art movements such as abstract expressionism - and artists including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as showcases of America's creativity and freedom of expression, foreign intelligence services ended up shaping the modern world's aesthetic sensibilities, the Guardian report said.

Mixing archive pieces and works by contemporary artists, the Berlin show criticises the gallery's own role in the Cold War period.

"My belief is that public institutions like mine need to take responsibility for what they do," said Bernd Scherer, director of the House of the Cultures of the World.

"It has to be clear what position you are speaking from."

While the Soviet Union professed its belief in the use of art as a class-war weapon from the start, the US' support for liberal left but anti-communist organisations had been covert.

When the Central Intelligence Agency's methods were revealed by the US media in 1967, it caused a scandal and led to resignations, such as the British poet Stephen Spender stepping down as editor of the literary journal Encounter.

"You cannot overestimate the CIA's intelligence and efficiency: making culture part of their strategy required a genuine artistic sensibility. When you examine the individual measures employed, you quickly end up in a grey zone," the Guardian quoted Scherer as saying.

The centre piece of the exhibition is a display of the more than 20 artfully crafted literary magazines that were financed across the globe via the Congress for Cultural Freedom, such as Der Monat in Germany, Jiyu in Japan and Hiwar in Lebanon.

"It's hard not to admire the CIA's employees for their infallibly good taste," wrote the art critic of Berliner Zeitung.

--IANS

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Militants exploded a remote-controlled bomb here on Monday, police said. No one was injured.

The blast in Laingam village near Konthoujam Lamkhai in Imphal west district comes a day after the extension of the Disturbed Areas Act for one year under which the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 is imposed in Manipur.

Police sources said that the bomb was a powerful one. No insurgent group has claimed responsibility for it.

Police said that soon after the explosion, police and central forces rushed at Laingam village for launching a combing operation. However there was no arrest.

Chief minister N. Biren Singh, in charge of the Home Department, said: "Persons who do not want to see development in Manipur are resorting to violence."

Patsoi police station has registered a case.

People's Liberation Army, the military wing of the Revolutionary People's Front, had attacked a column of 31 Assam Rifles on Saturday by exploding three remote controlled bombs and then opening fire in the border district of Kamjong.

Though heavy exchange of fire continued for some minutes there was no casualty among the Assam Rifles troopers.

A few days earlier, one shop was bombed in the heart of the Imphal city. Owner of the shop, Ajit Patni, says that he did not get any extortion notice from the militants.

--IANS

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A joint team of CBI and ED is in London for the extradition hearing on Monday in a London court of liquor baron Vijay Mallya, wanted in India over non-payment of huge bank loans and a case of fraud and money laundering, an official said.

The CBI-ED team will assist their lawyers for securing Mallya's extradition -- the second extradition from the UK after signing an extradition treaty with the country 25 years ago.

The extradition heading is to being later on Monday in a Westminster Magistrates Court.

Indian agencies told IANS they are confident of putting up solid evidence against Mallya and he should get extradited.

According to sources, Mark Summers from Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will lead India's charge for the prosecution while Clare Montgomery will lead Mallya's defence.

A CBI official said they have submitted a 2,000 page dossier on Mallya, detailing how he cheated Indian public sector banks and diverted the loans taken for Kingfisher Airlines over the years.

Additional documentary evidence was also submitted in the Westminster Court recently, he added.

Union Minister of state for Home Kiren Rijiju last month held a discussion over Mally's extradition with visiting UK Minister of State for Immigration Brandon Lewis.

There are serious charges of financial irregularities against Mallya amounting Rs 9,000 crore.

Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel was the first to be extradited from Britain to India in late 2016. He was wanted in connection with the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat.

Mallya was rearrested on October 3 by police in London in connection with a fraud and money laundering case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), and was released on bail by a London court soon after.
Continuing his scathing attacks on the Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday termed the party as "an empire" that can only be ruled by one single family. He also said that the Congress "disliked Gujarat and hated it" and so the people of Gujarat should "punish" the Congress.

Modi, on the second day of his two-day visit to poll-bound Gujarat, addressing a massive crowd at Malanpada in Dharampur, a Congress bastion, said: "The Congress dynasty which has reigned in Uttar Pradesh since five decades, have we ever maligned them, insulted them? Insulted other states? But not a single day passes when every Congress leader curses Gujarat. What is our fault? They cursed Sardar Patel. What was his fault? That he worked for the good of the country?"

Continuing in the same vein, Modi said, "Indira Gandhi had our Morarji Desai jailed for months. Why such animosity for Gujarat? Gujarat should teach them a lesson that they stop insulting Gujarat. Gujarat has never been on anybody's mercy."

Speaking about the election for Congress president, the Prime Minister said, "Congress has now abandoned all shame. Such persons (Rahul) who have been charged by the court, who is on bail, such persons whom we would not entrust the president post of a district, is now being given the president's post in the party. What kind of culture prevails in Congress?"

Citing a statement by senior Congress leader Manishankar Aiyar, who said "Did election exist when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan?", Modi taunted: "This is an empire where only the dynastic heir rules. Whereas for me, the people are my high command. We ask votes on the basis of development. You check out all the previous elections of 2002, 2007, 2012, where the Congress has only tried to paint a non secular picture of BJP."

Referring to the temple visits of the Gandhi scion in Gujarat, Modi said: "Look at the strength of the land of Sardar and Mahatma Gandhi, that after 70 years they have started visiting places. But people won't be fooled by that. There is a conspiracy to insult Gujarat and Gujarat won't tolerate."

Mentioning the recently held local body elections in Uttar Pradesh, Modi said: "The people of UP have now recognized the Congress and have wiped out them out, who ruled the state through five dynasties. Now the Congress has accepted that they cannot harm Modi in 2019 and now they don't have anywhere to go. So their target is to malign Gujarat. The Congress has always made people fight against people, tribal against tribal, educated against uneducated, communities and so on. But the people of Gujarat have rejected such a disruptive party."

And in his interactive style of asking question to the audience, Modi asked, "Have you ever read in newspapers that Modi took away so much money for himself? For his brother, for his relatives? Whereas what was on the other side - scams of loot in coal deal, helicopter deal, why? Since Modi is in Delhi, he has stopped all such loot. Instead now people ask what did Modi bring in."

On demonetization, Modi said, "Congress is angry with me for demonetization. Tell me are you angry with me for demonetization?" But without waiting for an answer from the crowd as he normally does, he continued, "The Congressman are worried that their scam money, corrupt money has gone. They are angry that Modi looted us. But remember all the looters of the country, Modi will extract every penny out from you and use it for the common man of the country. The money belongs to the country."

Alleging the Congress of not doing anything for the Other Backward Castes (OBC), the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), Modi said: "All the previous governments did not do anything for these communities. As soon as our government was formed, we granted constitutional status to the OBC commission. Congress had halted that bill in the Rajya Sabha. I don't have to go and learn what backward living is."

Urging the gathered crowd to vote for BJP, Modi said, "I can see the target of achieving 150 seats for the BJP being fulfilled right in front of my eyes here. You will be deciding the fate of Gujarat on the 9th and you will have to punish the people who have disliked Gujarat."

--IANS

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The Congress on Monday issued its poll manifesto for the Gujarat assembly polls, promising debt waiver for state farmers and an assurance on reservation for the Patidars.

In case the Congress returns to power, farmers' debts will be waived and Minimum Support Price of farm produce at taluka level declared even before sowing starts, the party promised in the manifesto, which was released by the Congress state unit.

The Congress promised that without affecting the present 49 per cent reservation for scheduled castes and tribes as well as Other backward classes, the party's government will introduce a bill in the assembly at the earliest under Article 46 of the Constitution.

"The communities specified under Article 46 but which have not received any benefit under relevant laws will be given equal opportunities for education and economic development. The rights and privileges enjoyed by the OBCs will be extended to the Extremely Backward Classes category," the party said.

"In the next three years, the Congress government will complete all remaining works of micro network the Narmada canal. The farmers will be supplied 16 hours of daytime electricity and reduced connection charges. Farmers will be given three-phase electricity connections of up to two horse power connections," the manifesto said.

"Today, the people of Gujarat are living in constant fear and they cannot express themselves. We want to resurrect their trust in the government through this manifesto, which not only looks to improve the state Gross Domestic Product but also the Human Development Index. The Congress is the only hope for that to happen," Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee President Bharatsinh Solanki told the media here.

He said the Congress will revert amendments/changes brought in by the Bharatiya Janata Party government in land acquisition laws brought in by the then United Progressive Alliance government in 2013.

Besides, the Goods and Services Tax on agricultural equipment, inputs and produce will be exempted, the opposition party promised.

The Congress said a giant statue of Bhim Rao Ambedkar would be installed in the Gulf of Cambay (Khambhat), in a bid to appease the Scheduled Castes. Unutilised government surplus land will be alloted to landless SC families, the party said.

"There's a huge backlog of vacancies in government offices. The Congress will ensure filling of vacancies within six months. The Congress government will also abolish contractual system, fixed-salary jobs and regularised them all."

The Congress manifesto promised to make the state's women feel safer and secure.

"One-stop crisis centres will be set up in all districts to prevent violence against women. Women protection officers up to the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police will be appointed in each districts. The number of women police stations will be increased."

It also promised 25 lakh houses in five years under Indira Awas Yojana for the rural and urban poor and Rajeev Gandhi Awas Yojana for the urban lower and middle income groups.

--IANS

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A court here on Monday reserved its order on the bail plea of arrested meat exporter and alleged hawala dealer Moin Akhtar Qureshi in a money laundering case.

Special Judge Arun Bhardwaj said it will deliver the order on the plea on December 12.

Qureshi was arrested on August 25 after a case was filed against him last year under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act on charges of illegal forex dealings and tax evasion.

--IANS

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A CRPF trooper, who was on leave for his wedding scheduled for this week, died in a road accident near his village in Uttar Pradesh's Ghazipur district, an official said in New Delhi on Monday.

Alok Kumar Singh was returning home from Varanasi on Sunday when the vehicle he was travelling in collided with a tractor near Eshopur village in Ghazipur, the CRPF official said.

Singh, who was to get married on December 9, succumbed to his injuries during treatment in a hospital.

--IANS

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In a generational shift at the top in the Congress, Rahul Gandhi is all set to take over as party President next week after he filed his nomination papers on Monday for the post amid opposition jibes over dynasty in a contest with no one else in the fray.

The 47-year-old Gandhi, who will be the sixth Nehru-Gandhi scion to helm the party, filed papers at the Congress headquarters here amid cheers and celebrations by party leaders and workers. His mother and incumbent party President Sonia Gandhi signed the first nomination paper for election of her son.

Among the proposers was former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who called Rahul Gandhi the "darling" of the party. Manmohan Singh accompanied Gandhi when he filed the nomination paper.

In all over 90 sets of nominations were said to have been filed supporting Gandhi before the deadline expired at 3 p.m. on Monday. The last date for withdrawal is December 11 when he may be declared elected since there is no contest. Scrutiny of the nomination will take place on Tuesday.

However, the filing of nomination was not without controversy stoked by remarks of senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar who invoked the Mughal dynasty in the Congress Presidential election that Prime Minister Narendra Modi latched on to quickly to call it "Aurangzeb Raj".

"When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any election happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go to the heir," Aiyar said, retorting to the "dynasty" jibes of the BJP on Rahul Gandhi's election.

"But in a democracy elections are held. I openly invite (Shehzad) Poonawala to file the nomination and contest," Aiyar said, adding has anyone heard of Poonawala earlier.

Aiyar was replying to a question about BJP's criticism following Maharashtra Congress leader Poonawala alleging that election for Congress President was a sham and Rahul Gandhi's elevation was rigged.

Modi was quick to pounce on Aiyar's remarks. Addressing an election rally in Gujarat, Modi said: "Aiyar, who never shies away from showing loyalty to one family, proudly said -- When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any elections happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen?

"It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go the son. I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the wellbeing of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," he said.

The Prime Minister also said that the Congress leaders admit that it is not a party but a "kunba" (family).

Modi at a poll rally in Gujarat on Sunday lauded Poonawala for exposing lack of internal democracy in the Congress. "Those who have no internal democracy can't work for people. I want to say to this youngster Shehzad - you have done a brave thing but this is sadly what has always happened in Congress."

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said Modi was "suffering from Rahul Gandhi phobia".

Surjewala also said that Modi's "love for Shehzad, Shahzada (BJP chief Amit Shah's son Jai Shah) and Shourya (National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's son)" is well known to the world.

"But will Modiji tell when he will answer the questions of his own senior party leaders like Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha?" he asked.

Gandhi, who became the Congress Vice President in January 2013, will succeed his mother Sonia, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998. He is the sixth in the Gandhi-Nehru family to head the party after his great great grandfather Motilal Nehru, great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi.

Hundreds of Congress workers and leaders from across the country supporters thronged the party office ahead of the filing of nominations.

A large crowd of party workers were seen requesting the guards for a chance to meet their leader as he made his much awaited move.

Earlier Gandhi called on former President Pranab Mukherjee, who applied tilak mark on his head as a way of blessing.

On his elevation, Manmohan Singh said: "Rahul Gandhi is a darling of the Congress and he will carry forward the great traditions of the party."

Noting that Sonia Gandhi served as Congress President for over 19 years, Manmohan Singh said: "It will be yet another chapter for the party."

Among those who signed the various sets of nomination papers for Gandhi were Motilal Vora, Ahmed Patel, Tarun Gogoi, V.Narayansami, Ashok Gehlot, Kamal Nath, Anand Sharma, Jaipal Reddy, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Salman Khursheed, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and Karan Singh.

--IANS

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In a stern warning to Pakistan, the CIA chief has said if Islamabad does not eliminate terrorist "safe havens" in its territory, the US will do "everything" it can to destroy them.

The statement by CIA Director Mike Pompeo came ahead of US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis's visit to Islamabad where he will persuade Pakistan to support the new US strategy on Afghanistan. The Trump administration is sending mixed signals to its estranged ally, Dawn reported.

The CIA director sent a harsh message when asked at the Reagan National Defence Forum in Simi, California, on Saturday how would the Trump administration persuade Pakistan to adhere to its new Afghan strategy.

"Secretary Mattis) will make clear the president's intent. (He) will deliver the message that we would love you to do that. And that the safe haven inside of Pakistan has worked to the detriment of our capacity to do what we needed to do in Afghanistan," the Dawn quoted Pompeo as saying.

He explained how the Trump administration would deal with the situation if Pakistan turned down Washington's request to destroy safe havens. "In the absence of the Pakistanis achieving that, we are going to do everything we can to make sure that that safe haven no longer exists," he said.

Since 2004, the CIA has conducted drone strikes in Fata and recent media reports have suggested that the Trump administration may expand those strikes to cover other areas inside Pakistan.

Pompeo's predecessor, Leon Panetta, also shared with the forum his experience of dealing with Pakistan as the Obama administration's CIA chief.

"Pakistan has always been a problem. It has been a safe haven for terrorists who cross the border and attack in Afghanistan and go back into Pakistan," he said.

"We have made every effort possible, during the time I was there, to convince Pakistan to stop it. But Pakistan, as Mike knows, has this kind of two-wedge approach to dealing with terrorism," he added.

During his Pakistan visit, Mattis is expected to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa.

--IANS

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Sacked Catalan President Carles Puigdemont will hear the final verdict on the European arrest warrant and extradition request against him filed by Spain on December 14, one of his lawyers said on Monday.

Puigdemont, who along with four of his former ministers is in self-imposed exile in the Belgian capital, is wanted in Spain in relation to an ongoing investigation into allegations of sedition and rebellion for his role in Catalonia's unilateral declaration of independence from Spain, which was branded illegal by the Spanish courts.

Puigdemont, along with Antoni Comin, Meritxell Serret, Clara Ponsati and Lluis Puig, who have been with him in Belgium since October 30, have been on probation since November 5 while the Belgian judiciary considers the arrest warrants and their extradition, Efe news reported.

His lawyers insist he will not receive a fair trial in Spain.

This latest development came a day before campaigning is set to begin for Catalonia's regional election, which on December 21 is set to reinstate the local parliament that was dissolved in the wake of the independence bid as Spain sought to take control of the region's autonomous institutions.

Puigdemont is expected to run as the leader of the newly-founded Junts Per Catalunya (JxCat) party, born out of the merger of Catalan European Democratic Party and independents.

Meanwhile in Madrid, Puigdemont's former deputy in the Catalan government, Oriol Junqueras, was refused bail by a Supreme Court judge, as were three other separatist figureheads.

However, six former Cabinet members were ordered to be released, with bail set at 100,000 euros ($118,635).

--IANS

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A Singapore Airlines flight on Monday was about to land on the small Juhu airport, mistaking it for the international airport, before the error was detected in the nick of time for it to land at the scheduled airstrip, officials said.

The Singapore-Mumbai flight SQ422, an Airbus A-350, was cleared to land on Runway 9 of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport at 10.35 a.m. but due to poor visibility, the pilots discontinued approach to Runway 9 at around 1,000 feet in accordance with the standard operating procedures, the airlines said later.

"The Air Traffic Control, Mumbai, then vectored the flight for a subsequent approach onto the same runway and the flight landed uneventfully at 10.48 a.m," it added.

"At no time did the pilots of SQ422 mistake Juhu airport for the international airport," the airline statement said.

Airport sources, however, said after it was noticed that the aircraft was about to land on the wrong airstrip, it was made to go around while landing clearance was awaited, which was granted by the ATC. The plane finally landed safely on Runway 9 a few minutes later.

Both the airports are about 1.5 km apart, regarding which a caution is issued to all pilots.

The Juhu airport, built in 1928, is used for general aviation activities and training purposes.

--IANS

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The war of words between the BJP and the BSP over civic poll results continued on Monday as the latter's supremo Mayawati dared the ruling party to direct all its 14 newly elected Mayors to resign and re-contest through paper ballot voting.

She was responding to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's rejection of her allegations on EVM tampering on Sunday.

"If she is so sure, she should get her party's Mayors in Aligarh and Meerut to quit and contest fresh elections. People who have won seats in elections held through Electronic Voting Machines are now questioning it," Adityanath had said.

Mayawati said his statement not only "smacked of arrogance of power" but also was akin to "ulta chor kotwal ko daante (a thief scolding a police officer)" .

The Bahujan Samaj Party leader also ridiculed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement who dubbed the Bharatiya Janata Party victory in Uttar Pradesh civic polls as "victory of BJP's vision".

"They could not manipulate the polls in Meerut and Aligarh as there was massive anger against the BJP and they feared a backlash in case EVMs were tampered with," the BSP leader said.

The BJP had rigged the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the February-March Uttar Pradesh assembly elections as well, the former Chief Minister claimed.

--IANS

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Global warming is not only posing serious threat to glaciers, it will also result in a loss of 33 per cent of total ice volume in the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region by the end of the century, leading dire consequences for people living there.

"Climate is warming up. If it rises by 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of 21st century, we will see a loss of one-third of total ice volume in HKH region. This will be of glaciers, snow and ice," Dr Philippus Wester, scientist at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), said on Monday.

"It is one of the key findings of the Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP)," he added.

Addressing the "International Conference on Resilient Hindu Kush Himalaya: Developing Solutions towards a Sustainable Future for Asia" here, Wester said several studies have suggested that global climate warming should be kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius until the end of the century. But even this would be too hot for the HKH region, because it would mean 2.1 degrees Celsius rise in temperature there.

More than 400 experts including scientists, environmentalists and policymakers from 26 countries are taking part in the meet that began on Sunday. Over the next two days, the participants will discuss ideas for strengthening the fragile environment and solutions for mountain communities of the Hindu Kush Himalayas, which extends from Afghanistan to Myanmar.

Wester said the full report of the Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP) would be launched in mid-2018.

"HIMAP is an unique initiative, first of its kind for HKH region on the line of AMAP(Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme). It is a part of the HKH science policy dialogue to help policy makers from the region."

According to him, the report is like a mini-IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report specific to HKH region. "It is a long term integrated science policy initiative that aims to support policy change and sustainable solutions for problems in the mountains. It will make a difference as it is a landmark report."

A comprehensive assessment of the HKH region will assess the current state of knowledge of the HKH region, address critical data gaps and increase the understanding of various drivers of change and their impacts.

Based on the assessment, HIMAP will recommend a set of practically-oriented policy recommendations. The assessment process will involve a broad and diverse group of researchers, practitioners and policy makers, and culminate in a major publication with a highly-reputed international publishing house in 2017.

A. Kulkarni, scientist at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, said it was a result of global warming that in most of the HKH region, glaciers were thinning, retreating and losing mass volume.

"It is a trend that is projected to continue with possibly large changes in the timing and magnitude of glacier melt runoff."

Kulkarni, who is attending the conference as part of a team of scientists behind HIMAP said: "In future, the volume of seasonal snow is going to decrease and the peak of stream discharge will come early and many springs will become dry."

Kulkarni told IANS here that if temperature rose by 4 to 5 degrees Celsius, then 70 per cent of glaciers will be lost by the end of century.

"If glaciers retreat, new lakes will be formed and this has already happened in Sikkim in India. There will be flash floods if they burst. This is the new risk for people living in the HKH region."

Another findings of HIMAP is that persistent winter fog would lead to greater air pollution and low visibility throughout the HKH region and the Indo-Gangetic plains. Air pollution has already increased and air quality worsened.

The HKH sources 10 major river systems in Asia that provide water, ecosystem services and livelihoods to more than 210 million people. The region holds and distributes water for more than 1.3 billion people living in the downstream river basins.

Climate change and other drivers of change in the HKH have already begun to impact ecosystems and communities, increasing vulnerability and exposure to natural disasters such as floods, droughts and landslides.

The region is also home to some of the most diverse cultures, languages, religions, and traditional knowledge systems in the world. For these reasons, the HKH region is clearly a major global asset, critical to the planet as a whole.

(Imran Khan is at Kathmandu on the invitation of International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development - ICIMOD to cover the conference. He can be reached at imran.k@ians.in)

--IANS

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A gunfight erupted between militants and the security forces on Monday following an attack on an Army patrol on the Jammu-Srinagar highway, police said.

The gunfight is going on in Kulgam district's Bonigam village after militants entered a building following the patrol attack which resulted in two soldiers being injured.

"Two to three militants are believed to be inside the building," the police added.

--IANS

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Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday called for Cambodias support in developing a sustainable solution to the Rohingya crisis and the minoritys persecution in Myanmars Rakhine state.

Hasina made the remarks during a discussion with her Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen in Phnom Penh on Monday, bdnews24.com reported.

"We have discussed some of the emerging security challenges facing our region and expressed our common resolve to fight terrorism and extremism," Hasina said during a joint statement.

"We have also discussed the Rohingya crisis that threatens the peace and stability of our region. Bangladesh continues to shelter more than 1 million Rohingyas, among them around 630,000 who fled atrocities in Myanmar and took shelter in Bangladesh recently."

Hasina asked for Hun Sen's support for a durable solution as Bangladesh continued bilateral talks to return Rohingyas safely to their homeland.

"We highly appreciate Bangladesh (for giving shelter to the Rohingya refugees)... even though it has a population of over 160 million, it took the issues of refugees on its shoulder," said the Cambodian leader.

Bangladesh let in a wave of Rohingya refugees since late August, when the Myanmar military launched a crackdown in Rakhine state over insurgent attacks.

The refugees in Cox's Bazar said the military and locals shot and killed people indiscriminately, raped women, looted and set fire to Rohingya homes.

Bangladesh and Myanmar signed an agreement on November 23 on the repatriation of recent refugees to their homeland.

The agreement specified the formation of a joint working group to begin the repatriation process within two months.

The Bangladesh government also attempted to enlist international support for the Rohingya crisis. The UN, EU, US, UK and other parties expressed their appreciation for Bangladesh's efforts on the Rohingya crisis.

--IANS

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With agriculture being one of the major pillars of India-Israel cooperation, Gil Haskel, the head of MASHAV - Israel's Agency for International Development Cooperation - is visiting India for the launch of the three-year action plan for the Indo-Israeli Agricultural Project (IIAP).

Haskel is paying an official visit to New Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai from December 4-7.

He will meet with senior officials of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer's Welfare and MEA and also inaugurate a Centre of Excellence for flowers in Thally, Tamil Nadu. Haskel will award two $10,000 grants to MASHAV Alumni to continue their projects in women empowerment and farmer empowerment in India, a press release from the Israeli Embassy said.

Israel Ambassador Daniel Carmon said, "The IIAP is MASHAV's biggest project outside of Israel, and it holds a significant portion of our bilateral relations. The success story of our agricultural cooperation is second to none, and it is only the beginning. We hope to see the same achievements in the fields of water, innovation and academia."

--IANS

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Actor Rajkummar Rao, who has been on an award-winning spree, says that he is not dreaming about the Oscars.

Rajkummar was named the Best Actor (Critics) for "Newton" and also won the Best Supporting Actor honour for "Bareilly Ki Barfi" at the Star Screen Awards here on Sunday. "Newton" is India's official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars.

But the actor said here: "I am not dreaming about Oscars. I know it is better to be just neutral and be happy about the fact that it is India's official entry for the Oscars this year."

In 2017, Rajkummar had six releases in a row, and they were successful. He said it is indeed a "sixer".

"It is kind of a sixer! I am happy about the fact that most of my films did well and people like my efforts and sincerity," he added.

The actor will be attending the Oscars ceremony next year with the "Newton" team.

Next year, Rajkummar will be seen in "Love Sonia", "5 Weddings", "Omerta", "Shimla Mirchi", "Fanney Khan" and "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha To Aisa Laga".

--IANS

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In a contradiction of its own policy, the Indian government has allowed over 1,300 tribal Buddhist refugees from Myanmar's Rakhine region to enter Mizoram. The refugees left their homeland because of the ongoing war between the Myanmarese Army and the Arakan Army, made up of Buddhist insurgents.

This comes nearly a month after the Union Home Ministry had directed the northeastern states to take strict measures to prevent Rohingyas -- who are Muslims -- from entering Indian territory despite persecution by the Myanmar regime.

The new group of refugees, belonging to the Chin and few other communities of Myanmar, have come to four villages in Lawngtlai district.

According to sources in the Mizoram government, the administration is struggling hard to bring down the rising tensions among the refugees and the residents of Laitlang, Dumzautlang, Hmawngbuchhuah and Zochachhuah villages.

According to the state administration, the refugees are being taken care of on humanitarian grounds as all of them came to escape clashes back home.

"It's been some six days since these refugees have arrived on Mizoram territory. They currently are in four villages of the Lawngtlai district and are put up at shelter homes, Buddhist homes, temples and many other places," T. Arun, Deputy Commissioner of Lawngtlai, told IANS over the phone.

He emphasised that the security threat in such a situation cannot be denied.

"We basically have two rules -- one relating to national security and other related to humanitarian assistance. Under the humanitarian rules we are providing food as we do not want any starvation deaths. We also have to guard against the outbreak of diseases," said Arun.

Additional police, health workers and doctors have also been deployed not just to keep a vigil on the new arrivals but also to keep a check on their health condition.

"The problem is that the population of each of the villages is just 200-400. The arrival of such a large number of people is a matter of serious concern," said Arun.

Mizoram's police chief emphasised that though they won't immediately term the arrival of the refugees a security threat, they are waiting for the situation in Myanmar to normalise so that they could be sent back.

"We won't call it a security threat at this juncture. They were alllowed into Indian territory due to the ongoing fighting in Myanmar. We are taking care of it and police forces are there. However, we are making sure there won't be any problem for the villagers due to the refugees. They have been confined to the four villages," Director General of Police Thianghlima Pachuau told IANS over the phone.

The current crisis in Myanmar comes nearly two months after the Myanmar Army had launched operations against the Rohingyas in Rakhine province. While the conflict led to more than 600,000 Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh, the United Nations Human Rights Commission called the strike by the Myanmar Army "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

The Indian government has taken measures, including asking the states in the region to seal their borders with Mayanmar, to prevent Rohingya refugees from entering the country.

Myanmar, the only Southeast Asian country which shares a 1,600-mile-long border with India, serves as its gateway to the other member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Four northeastern states -- Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Manipur (398 km), Nagaland (215 km) and Mizoram (510 km) -- have an unfenced border with Myanmar.

Experts on Indo-Myanmar relations see the current influx as a temporary matter that is different from the Rohingyas issue.

"This is an issue that has emerged in the last few months. The arrival of Buddhist refugees is certainly a matter of concern as it affects people on the Indian side as well. However, this is different from Rohingyas," Khriezo Yhome, senior Research fellow at Observer Research Foundation and an expert on Indo-Myanmar affairs, told IANS.

According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees there are around 21,500 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers in India. The central government, though, has sent a clear message that it would not be willing to accept them "because of security concerns".

The Supreme Court on October 13 asked the Centre to strike a balance between national security, economic interests and humanitarian considerations with regard to Rohingya women, children, old, sick and infirm

(Rupesh Dutta can be contacted at Rupesh.d@ians.in)

--IANS

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An Indian-origin US financier has been killed in a shark attack while scuba diving off a Costa Rican island in the Pacific Ocean, officials said.

Rohina Bhandari, 49, a Wall Street private equity manager from New York City, suffered fatal bites to both her legs during the shark attack last week while she was diving with a group near Cocos Island, a national park about 300 miles off the Costa Rican mainland, New York Post reported on Sunday.

She was a senior director at WL Ross & Co. LL, a firm founded by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and often attended New York City charity events.

She was dragged from the Pacific Ocean but could not be saved. Her 26-year-old diving instructor was also badly injured in last Thursday's attack.

The male instructor, who was conscious and in relatively stable condition, told officials that the shark attacked when his group was surfacing at the tail end of the dive in the waters.

According to the Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion, the guide noticed the shark approaching his group underwater and tried to scare it away. But as they surfaced, the shark went for Bhandari, tearing at her legs. The guide, too, suffered leg injuries.

Authorities said two park rangers and several doctors who were part of the diving tourism group of 18 people on the island trip organised by the Undersea Hunter Group, offered first aid in a desperate bid to save her.

Friends paid tribute to the Manhattan resident on Facebook. "Unbelievably sad and heartbreaking news that Rohina has died," wrote Julie Walker. "She was such a wonderful person who loved life. I will always remember her kindness, friendship and our adventures together."

Another friend wrote: "Your kindness and genuine warmth to those of us lucky enough to call you 'friend' was a blessing to behold."

--IANS

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Senior White House advisor Jared Kushner has said peace between Israel and Palestine was "achievable", although he added that the agreement should come from the countries of the region and not something imposed by the US.

"We do think it's achievable," Kushner said on Sunday, referring to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Looking relaxed and upbeat, President Donald Trump's son-in-law made the remark during a session session with Haim Saban, one of the Democratic Party's biggest pro-Israel donors, at the annual Saban Forum in the Willard InterContinental Washington Hotel, reports Efe news.

Kushner has been working for months to find a solution to the historic conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, a project that led him to make an official trip to the Middle East in where he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Although Kushner said that there was a specific peace plan being developed, he provided no details about it, saying: "We've been deliberate about not setting time-frames.

"The President has a very long career of accomplishing things that a lot of people say weren't possible," Kushner said of the thorny problem of Middle East peace, which none of Trump's presidential predecessors has been able to resolve.

The comments come at a particularly delicate moment, given that the Palestinian National Authority announced on November 21 the suspension of relations with the US over the closure of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's office in Washington.

In addition, controversy has swirled around rumours that the Trump administration could recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital with an eye toward moving the US Embassy there from Tel Aviv to the city sacred to both Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians.

The Palestinians view East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state and oppose any change that legitimises Israeli control over that part of the city, which the Jewish state captured in 1967 during the Six Day War and annexed in 1980.

The seizure of East Jerusalem has not been recognized by the international community and no country has its embassy in Jerusalem.

All foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv, the country's business capital.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A court here on Monday posted to Wednesday the pronouncement of quantum of punishment on eight Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) men, including three Pakistanis, it had convicted of involvement in terrorist activities in the country.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Pawan Garg was slated to sentence, on Monday, the eight, convicted on November 30 of various charges under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, included conspiracy and recruiting persons for terrorist activities. They were also held guilty of being members of a terrorist organisation.

The eight arrested in 2010 by the the Rajasthan Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) were Asgar Ali, Shakkar Ulla and Shahid Iqbal (all Pakistanis) and Babu alias Nishachand Ali, Hafiz Abdul, Pawan Puri, Arun Jain, and Kabil.

They were in constant touch with Pakistan-based LeT commander Walid alias Vicky.

The court found them guilty under Section 13 (abetting unlawful activity), Section 18 (punishment for conspiracy), Section 18 (B) (recruiting for terror act) and Section 20 (punishment for being member of terrorist gang or organisation) of the Act, according to Special ATS Public Prosecutor Mahaveer Jindal.

The punishment for these offences varies from five year jail to life imprisonment.

According to the prosecution, the three Pakistani LeT men, who were lodged in different jails across Rajasthan and Punjab, tried to recruit Indians for anti-national activities, such as acts of terrorism, smuggling of explosives and printing of Indian fake currency.

The Rajasthan ATS had intercepted telephonic conversations among the LeT men lodged in various jails, the LeT commander in Pakistan and their recruits in India in 2010. The case was registered on October 21, 2010 and the chargesheet was filed in court on April 15, 2015. The prosecution presented 69 witnesses during the trial.

--IANS

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Ten people have been arrested in Malta over the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Prime Minister said on Monday.

Galizia, who was a relentless critic of corruption and organised crime in the country, died in October in a powerful car bomb blast yards from her home.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said in an early morning press conference that there was "reasonable suspicion" that the arrested individuals were involved in the murder.

The police have 48 hours to question the suspects and decide whether to prosecute or release them. At least eight of the suspects were Maltese citizens, the Guardian reported.

The arrests followed an operation that lasted several weeks and involved police, the armed forces and security services assisted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the European Police Office.

"I would like to emphasize the commitment of the state and my own personal commitment to bringing the persons who may have commissioned and or executed this crime to justice," Muscat said.

Investigators believed that some of the suspects in custody had helped craft the bomb that killed Galizia, who had also been investigating the links between Maltese politicians and the Panama Papers, cases of government corruption and links drug traffickers had established on the island nation.

Malta's government offered a 1 million euro reward for information relating to the killing.

The crime moved the public both in Malta and abroad, though the journalist's sons, Matthew, Andrew and Paul, criticised the government.

Matthew had called Malta a "Mafia state" in which the government had allowed a culture of impunity to flourish and demanded that Muscat resign.

"He filled his office with crooks, then he filled the police with crooks and imbeciles, then he filled the courts with crooks and incompetents," he had said.

Matthew told the Guardian that his family were "in the dark" about the arrests and had not been offered any information. The family, he said, received a phone call from a magistrate's office after the arrests were known but did not have additional details.

The family have alleged that her murder was a "targeted killing".
Accusing Chief Minister Mukul Sangma of practising "one-upmanship", veteran Congress legislator Comingone Ymbon on Monday resigned as the Meghalaya Power Minister.

Ymbon's resignation came after two Independent legislators -- Robinus Syngkon and Rophul Marak -- withdraw support to the Congress-led Meghalaya United Alliance government last month.

Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, who was in New Delhi along with Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee President D.D. Lapang, to support the candidature of Rahul Gandhi for Congress presidentship, was back in Shillong on Monday evening to take stock of the political developments.

"I have put in my papers since I have lost confidence in the Chief Minister," Ymbon, who was inducted in the Mukul Sangma ministry on August 4, told IANS over phone.

"During my four months, as a Cabinet minister I understood his (Sangma) one-upmanship. He takes unilateral decision on programmes of the department which I was holding. What is the point of being a minister," Ymbon asked.

In fact, Ymbon's resignation is a major embarrassment for the ruling Congress party ahead of the last session of the outgoing Meghalaya Assembly, prior to the state going to polls in February next year.

The three-day session of the 9th Meghalaya Legislative Assembly will commence from December 8.

"In the days to come, I will also be resigning from the Congress party," the former minister said.

The two-time Congress legislator from Raliang Assembly constituency is expected to contest the upcoming Assembly elections on National People's Party ticket.

Four Congress legislators -- Rowell Lyngdoh, Prestone Tynsong, Sniawbhalang Dhar and Ngaitlang Dhar, besides Independent legislators Hopeful Bamon and Stephanson Mukhim are expected to contest the upcoming assembly elections on NPP ticket.

--IANS

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The Metropolitan Opera on Sunday suspended James Levine, its conductor, after three men, including an Indian-origin guy, accused the former music director of sexually abusing them decades ago, when they were teenagers.

Peter Gelb, the General Manager of the Met, announced that the company was suspending its four-decade relationship with the 74-year-old musician and cancelling his upcoming conducting engagements, The New York Times reported.

According to the report, the three men described a series of similar sexual encounters beginning in the late 1960s. The Met has also asked an outside law firm to investigate Levine's behaviour.

"While we await the results of the investigation, based on these news reports the Met has made the decision to act now," Gelb ws quoted as saying.

He added that his actions had the support of the Met's board. "This is a tragedy for anyone whose life has been affected."

The accusations of sexual misconduct stretch back to 1968.

Chris Brown, who played principal bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for more than three decades, said that Levine masturbated him in 1968 -- and then coaxed him to reciprocate -- when Brown was 17.

The incident happened at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, where Levine was a 25-year-old rising star on the summer programme's faculty.

The second man James Lestock levelled similar allegations saying he was a 17-year-old cello student when he was assaulted by Levine.

Ashok Pai, who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Festival, where Levine was music director, said that he was sexually abused by Levine in the summer of 1986, when Pai was 16.

--IANS

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday greeted Indian naval personnel on the ocassion of Navy Day.

"On Navy Day, greetings to all navy personnel and their families," Modi tweeted, attaching a video of the Indian Navy showing its prowess in the sea.

Navy Day is celebrated annually on December 4 to celebrate the Indian Navy's achievements and commemorate the sacrifices made by the personnel.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday will hold four rallies in Gujarat's Dharampur, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar, where polling is scheduled in the first phase on December 9.

"Will continue the campaign across Gujarat. Looking forward to addressing rallies in Dharampur, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar," Modi said in a tweet.

The second-phase of polling for the 182-seats-Gujarat assembly will be on December 14. The counting of votes will take place on December 18.

On Sunday Modi was in Bharuch where he addressed a rally and took a jibe at the Congress for opposing the bullet train project.

Continuing his two-day visit to the state, on Monday, he will visit Dharmapur in Valsad district and then he will be in Saurashtra's Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar.

Gujarat has been under the Bharatiya Janata Party-rule for the last 22 years.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian naval personnel observed the 46th Navy Day on Monday as President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman greeted them and lauded their role in securing the country's borders.

Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba, Army chief General Bipin Rawat and Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa paid homage to martyrs at the Amar Jawan Jyoti here to commemorate the day.

"On Navy Day, my good wishes to all officers and men and women of the Indian Navy. Nation is proud of your commitment in protecting our maritime frontiers, securing our trade routes, and providing assistance in times of civil emergencies," President Kovind tweeted.

Prime Minister Modi also extended greetings to all Navy personnel and their families, in a tweet, attaching a video of the Indian Navy showing its prowess in the sea.

The Defence Minister, meanwhile, shared a graphic on Operation Trident, under which the Indian Navy attacked the Karachi harbour on December 4 during the 1971 India-Pakistan war.

"Let's salute the bravery, sacrifice and courage of our Naval heroes on 46th Navy Day," the Minister said.

Navy Day in India is celebrated to commemorate the attack on the Karachi harbour during the 1971 war by Indian Naval Missile boats. Operation Trident saw the first use of anti-ship missiles in combat in the region.

The day also commemorate the sacrifices made by the personnel of Indian Navy.

--IANS

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Dismissing reports that the was holding talks with them for their return to the party, Swaraj India founders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav on Monday said there was no such possibility.

Bhushan retweeted a media report that quoted Aam Aadmi Party leader Kumar Vishwas as saying so and dubbed it as "absurd".

Kumar Vishwas on Sunday expressed displeasure over the AAP's functioning and said the party needed to go back to the basics.

He said the party workers were in talks with many of their colleagues who had since left the AAP, including Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, and apologised for any wrongs done by the party.

"There are no talks or possibility of our returning to AAP, which has betrayed all the ideals of the anti-corruption movement," Bhushan tweeted.

Yadav took to Twitter and said he was "surprised" on reading what Vishwas had said a day before.

"Really? Must be very secret, since both of us have not heard about it! In my knowledge, there is no possibility of this happening," he said in a series of tweets.

Yadav and Bhushan were sacked from the in March 2015 for alleged anti-party activities. They had hit out at chief Arvind Kejriwal over his "supremo style of functioning" and lack of transparency in the party.

In October 2016, the two launched a new political outfit Swaraj India.
Dismissing reports that the AAP was holding talks with them for their return to the party, Swaraj India national President Yogendra Yadav and its senior leader Prashant Bhushan on Monday said there was no such possibility, and denied any communication with AAP leaders and its founder member Kumar Vishwas.

Speaking to IANS, Yogendra Yadav said: "I was surprised to read the claim that some Swaraj Abhiyan colleagues will join AAP again. I would be happy to know who these people are and what was their status in Swaraj Abhiyan."

"I was very surprised to hear that there are talks going between AAP and us. At least I do not know of such talks. I have not spoken to Kumar Vishwas or any AAP leader for over two years now. I see no point in it. All this is idle speculation," Yadav said.

Bhushan retweeted a media report that quoted Aam Aadmi Party leader Kumar Vishwas as saying that the two were planning to rejoin AAP, terming it as "absurd".

Kumar Vishwas on Sunday expressed displeasure over AAP's functioning and said the party needed to go back to the basic idea of Swaraj, morality and inner democracy in the party.

He said the party workers were in talks with many of their colleagues who had since left the AAP, including Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, and apologised for any wrongs done by the party.

"There are no talks or possibility of our returning to AAP, which has betrayed all the ideals of the anti-corruption movement," Bhushan tweeted.

Yadav also took to Twitter and said he was "surprised" on reading what Vishwas had said a day before.

"Really? Must be very secret, since both of us have not heard about it! In my knowledge, there is no possibility of this happening," he said in a series of tweets.

Yadav and Bhushan were sacked from the AAP in March 2015 for alleged anti-party activities. They had hit out at AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal over his "supremo style of functioning" and "lack of transparency" in the party.

In October 2016, the two launched a new political outfit Swaraj India which also contested civic polls in Delhi.

According to sources, the AAP has decided to sack Vishwas and that the move by him is a bargaining tactic before the senior party leadership. The controversial statements by Vishwas are aimed to grab the attention of AAP leaders and party volunteers for bargaining a Rajya Sabha seat, sources said.

--IANS

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Delhi Labour Minister Gopal Rai on Monday said that workers should not be employed on a contract basis for jobs which are permanent in nature like cleaning, security and clerical work.

Rai said that the Delhi Advisory Contract Labour Board was formed last month to address problems faced by contractual employees and its first meeting will be held on December 20.

The board, headed by Rai, will have representatives from all major workers' unions, employers, two legislators and representatives from the government.

Rai said that the two main agendas of the Board will be similar pay for similar jobs and not hiring workers on a contract basis for jobs that are permanent in nature.

The Minister said that the board will identify all such jobs and develop a new system and also take the opinion of others who work on the issue.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There is no terrorist outfit currently active in Tripura but some of the cadres of the state's extremist groups are hiding in neighbouring Bangladesh, Director General of Police Akhil Kumar Shukla said here.

Also, no militant outfits were involved in the abduction of four Tripura Gramin Bank officials, he told the media late on Sunday.

The four were kidnapped on November 24 by a gang comprising surrendered militants and local miscreants. However, the kidnappers released them on November 30 after taking a ransom of Rs 50,000 from the relatives of the hostages.

The DGP said that nine people, including four surrendered extremists, have been arrested and over Rs 48.85 lakh and a small vehicle recovered from them. "More people likely to be arrested in connection with the abduction," he added.

The United Forums of Bank Unions, a body of various bank employees associations, thanked the police for the hostages' release and the arrest of the culprits and recovering the ransom.

Meanwhile, the outlawed National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) in a statement said the outfit is now in a dialogue with the Government of India for amicable and peaceful solutions to the age-old political problem of Tripura and hence, its normal activities are suspended until further notice.

In its statement, mailed to various media organisations, the NLFT said that its members are not collecting any subscriptions or ransom from any people. "We therefore warn all concerned to refrain from such unlawful activities," the statement added.

Police officials said there was not a single extremist-related incident since 2015 in Tripura, which was earlier ravaged by terrorism for four decades.

However, police and intelligence officials had earlier apprehended that terrorist activities might resurface in the state ahead of the crucial assembly elections in February 2018.

--IANS

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The ladies club of the Pakistan High Commission here participated in an International charity bazaar organized by the Delhi Commonwealth Women's Association (DCWA) that saw a wide range of Pakistani textile products, including some well-known brands, exhibited at the stall.

A large number of people, including foreigners, visited the Pakistan stall on Sunday along with their families, and evinced keen interest and purchased various items, a press release from the Pakistan High Commission said.

Students of the Pakistan High commission School rendered an impressive performance, singing national songs and presented a tableau highlighting Pakistani culture at the event held at a hotel here.

Pakistan High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood and his wife Mahwish Sohail Mahmood lauded the contribution of the ladies club and the school students for their participation.

--IANS

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Pakistani music artists Shafqat Amanat Ali and Salman Ahmad on Monday condoled the sudden demise of veteran actor-filmmaker Shashi Kapoor, remembering how he believed in peace and harmony among neighbours.

Shashi Kapoor -- who earned the epithets of 'the charming man' and 'the brave producer' -- died at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in Mumbai at age 79 after a period of hospitalisation.

"At a loss for words as veteran actor Shashi Kapoor passes away. Spent countless hours watching movies of this legendary and charming actor while growing up. Rest in peace, sir," Ali tweeted.

The younger brother of late Raj and Shammi Kapoor, who were both actors par excellence, Shashi Kapoor started his tryst with acting at the age of four, with plays directed and produced by his father Prithviraj Kapoor.

The Kapoor dynasty has a house in Peshawar, Pakistan. It was constructed between 1918 and 1922 by Dewan Basheswarnath Kapoor, the father of Prithviraj Kapoor, the first member of the family to enter the film industry. The Kapoors shifted to India after the 1947 partition.

Pakistani sufi rock band Junoon's frontman Ahmad also posted: "A very kind man and a great actor. I met Shashi Kapoor in Karachi on the set of the film 'Jinnah'. He was co-starring with Christopher Lee. Shashi always believed in peace and harmony among neighbours. Free at last. (RIP)"

Shashi Kapoor started acting in films as a child in the late 1940s. His best known performances as child artist were in "Aag" (1948) and "Awaara" (1951), where he played the younger version of the character played by his elder brother Raj.

He made his debut as a leading man in the 1961 film "Dharmputra", and went on to appear in more than 150 Hindi films.

Shashi Kapoor, whose nuanced acts in memorable films like "Deewar", "Satyam Shivam Sundaram", "Trishul" and "Kabhi Kabhie" captivated Hindi film buffs, was married to English theatre actress Jennifer Kendal. He had three children -- Kunal, Karan and Sanjana Kapoor.

--IANS

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Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday filed his nomination papers for the post of party chief at its headquarters amid cheers and enthusiasm by party leaders and workers.

Gandhi signed a set of nominations in the presence of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, senior party leaders Kamal Nath, Motilal Vora, Sheila Dikshit, Ahmed Patel and Ashok Gehlot.

He accepted greetings from party leaders and chatted with them as they came to him to get his signatures.

Over 90 sets of nominations are expected to be filed supporting Gandhi whose election is a mere formality now, as there is no other candidate for the party's top post.

Gandhi will succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998.

Hundreds of Congress supporters thronged the party office ahead of the filing of nominations for the party's top post.

A large crowd of party workers were seen requesting the guards for a chance to meet their leader as he made his much awaited move.

Rahul Gandhi became the Congress Vice President in January 2013.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's long-delayed elevation as party chief is eventually taking place at a time when Congress faces an "existential crisis", as a party leader put it, and has huge electoral challenges in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Gandhi, 47, will be the sixth member of Nehru-Gandhi family to take the top position of the 132-year old party.

The change at the top is coming on the eve of assembly polls in Gujarat and the outcome there would be interpreted in terms of Rahul Gandhi's ability as a campaigner and vote getter.

But the next round of assembly polls in 2018 -- first in Karnataka and later in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh -- will be absolutely crucial for Rahul Gandhi for building the momentum to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha polls. The state elections, with Bharatiya Janata Party as the key rival, will also be first major polls directly under Rahul Gandhi's charge as party chief. Assembly polls will also be held early next year in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.

The challenges for Rahul Gandhi include fostering a new energy and enthusiasm in the Congress and evolving a new strategy to galvanise the party after a string of electoral losses since the 2014 Lok Sabha debacle. The Congress has to work hard at the grassroots to take on the relentless election machine of BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party chief Amit Shah.

Gandhi has to take a call on forging a larger opposition alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls under a "collective leadership" or projecting himself as the alternative against Modi with support of different parties. He was the face of Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Gandhi has been perceived as a reluctant politician due to some of his longish trips abroad, the delay in stepping up to the role of party chief, his not taking up a ministerial responsibility in two UPA governments and not properly following through some of the issues he raised.

Of late, he has been able to counter the perception with his sharp and aggressive attacks on Modi and the BJP. A trip to the United States where he had had interactions with think tanks appeared to have done a sea change to the image about him.

In Gujarat, where success will be a big morale-booster for the Congress, Gandhi has sought to create a broad social coalition and has forced Modi to react.

Congress' only major success since its debacle in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls has been Punjab while the BJP, in comparison, has tremendously expanded its footprint by winning states it had never done in the past. The BJP is making efforts to expand its base in states it has been weak including West Bengal, Kerala, Odisha and Tamil Nadu.

Another major challenge for Rahul Gandhi is to revive Congress in Uttar Pradesh, the state that sends the largest contingent of 80 MPs to parliament. Gandhi has twice led the party's campaign in the assembly polls but had come a cropper.

The results of the recent local body polls in Amethi and Rae Bareli, the Lok Sabha constituencies of Rahul Gandhi and his mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, have not been flattering for his image.

Congress has shrunk electorally, being now the fourth player in states such as Bihar, third in states such as West Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu as also Delhi. In the polls held to various assemblies since 2014, it has largely finished third or fourth. Sections, which were strongly with the party including Dalits, have drifted away.

Rahul Gandhi had been projected as a young leader who understands the language and idiom of the youth but Modi has been more successful in weaning away the section that has large electoral presence. The Congress also has to devise ways to woo the large middle class.

Gandhi, who is stepping into shoes of his mother Sonia Gandhi who helmed Congress for 19 years including 10 as the chief of the party heading the ruling coalition at the Centre, will need to be dexterous in his dealings with allies as also other opposition parties such as the CPI-M.

The crumbling of the ruling alliance in Bihar has been a setback for the party.

Senior leaders like Mamata Banerjee and Lalu Prasad have a comfort level with Sonia Gandhi and it remains to be seen how Rahul Gandhi fits into the role.

Within the party, Gandhi has to take several decisions including whether to project chief ministerial candidates in Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan and who they will be.

Bringing about unity in faction-ridden state units and making the balance between the "old guard" and the younger aspirants will be other challenges.

Congress had to project nonagenarian Virbhadra Singh as chief ministerial candidate in Himachal Pradesh in the absence of a younger acceptable option.

Congress is now ruling only five states and a union territory and if it loses Gujarat and Karanataka next year, its chances of staging a comeback in 2019 will be further squeezed.

Though Gandhi's experiments to democratise the party's youth organisations have not entirely succeeded, he has had some political successes, including forcing the Modi government to go back on its proposed changes in the land acquisition Act.

The concerted opposition attack on the "flawed" implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) as also perception of unease among traders in poll-bound Gujarat has apparently forced the government to extend several concessions.

But the Congress or other opposition parties could not reap political dividends on demonetisation though it caused a lot inconvenience to people.

Though Gandhi had promised to "involve people in ways you cannot even imagine now" after the party lost in Delhi in 2013 assembly polls, the party fared far worse in the next polls.

Gandhi, who is into his third term as Lok Sabha MP, was made party vice-president in 2013 as a stepping stone to his eventual elevation.

--IANS

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(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.)
Marking a generational shift, is all set to take over as Congress President next week as he was the only candidate to file nominations before deadline expired on Monday for the post amid opposition jibes over dynasty in a contest with no one else in the fray.

The 47-year-old Gandhi, who will be the sixth Nehru-Gandhi scion to helm the party, filed papers at the Congress headquarters here amid cheers and celebrations by party leaders and workers. His mother and incumbent party President Sonia Gandhi signed the first nomination paper for election of her son.

He has been party Vice President for over four years since 2013.

Among the proposers of 89 nominations -- all in support of Gandhi -- was former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who called the "darling" of the party. Manmohan Singh accompanied Gandhi when he filed the nomination paper.

The last date for withdrawal is December 11 when he may be declared elected since there is no contest. Scrutiny of the nomination will take place on Tuesday.

"Eighty-nine nominations from various states were submitted to the returning officer. Prominent Congress leaders filed nominations (on behalf of Gandhi) including the former Prime Minister, Congress Working Committee members, MPs, state Congress leaders," Returning Officer Mullapally Ramachandran told reporters.

Though Ramachandran did not divulge details, sources said all the nominations were in favour of "one candidate" -- obviously Gandhi.

Originally 90 nomination forms were issued but one could not be filed as there were not enough number of proposers.

However, the filing of nomination was not without controversy stoked by remarks of senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar who invoked the Mughal dynasty in the Congress Presidential election that Prime Minister Narendra Modi latched on to quickly to call it "Aurangzeb Raj".

"When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any election happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go to the heir," Aiyar said, retorting to the "dynasty" jibes of the BJP on Rahul Gandhi's election.

"But in a democracy elections are held. I openly invite (Shehzad) Poonawala to file the nomination and contest," Aiyar said, adding no one had earlier heard of Poonawala.

Aiyar was replying to a question about BJP's criticism following Maharashtra Congress leader Poonawala alleging that election for Congress President was a sham and Rahul Gandhi's elevation was rigged.

Modi was quick to pounce on Aiyar's remarks. Addressing an election rally in Gujarat, Modi said: "Aiyar, who never shies away from showing loyalty to one family, proudly said -- When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any elections happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen?

"It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go the son. I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the wellbeing of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," he said.

The Prime Minister also said that the Congress leaders admit that it is not a party but a "kunba" (family).

Modi at a poll rally in Gujarat on Sunday lauded Poonawala for exposing lack of internal democracy in the Congress. "Those who have no internal democracy can't work for people. I want to say to this youngster Shehzad - you have done a brave thing but this is sadly what has always happened in Congress."

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said Modi was "suffering from phobia".

Surjewala also said that Modi's "love for Shehzad, Shahzada (BJP chief Amit Shah's son Jai Shah) and Shourya ( Security Advisor Ajit Doval's son)" is well known to the world.

"But will Modiji tell when he will answer the questions of his own senior party leaders like Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha?" he asked.

Gandhi, who became the Congress Vice President in January 2013, will succeed his mother Sonia, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998. He is the sixth in the Gandhi-Nehru family to head the party after his great great grandfather Motilal Nehru, great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi.

Hundreds of Congress workers and leaders from across the country supporters thronged the party office ahead of the filing of nominations.

A large crowd of party workers were seen requesting the guards for a chance to meet their leader as he made his much awaited move.

Earlier, Gandhi called on former President Pranab Mukherjee, who applied tilak mark on his head as a way of blessing.

On his elevation, Manmohan Singh said: "Rahul Gandhi is a darling of the Congress and he will carry forward the great traditions of the party."

Noting that Sonia Gandhi served as Congress President for over 19 years, Manmohan Singh said: "It will be yet another chapter for the party."

Among those who signed the various sets of nomination papers for Gandhi were Motilal Vora, Ahmed Patel, Tarun Gogoi, V.Narayansami, Ashok Gehlot, Kamal Nath, Anand Sharma, Jaipal Reddy, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Salman Khursheed, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and Karan Singh.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday called on former President Pranab Mukherjee to seek his blessings ahead of filing nomination for the Congress presidential election.

Mukherjee blessed the Gandhi-Nehru family scion by applying 'tilak' on his forhead and embraced him.

After meeting Mukherjee at his residence here, Gandhi met former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the party headquarters here.

Gandhi signed a set of nomination papers in the presence of Singh, senior party leaders Kamal Nath, Motilal Vora, Sheila Dikshit, Ahmed Patel, and Ashok Gehlot at the All India Congress Committee office here.

He accepted greetings from party leaders and chatted with them as they came up to him to get his signatures.

Over 90 sets of nominations are expected to be filed in support of Gandhi, whose election is a mere formality now, as there is no other candidate for the party's top post.

Gandhi will succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998.

Hundreds of Congress supporters thronged the party office ahead of the filing of nominations.

A large crowd of Congress workers were seen urging security guards at the premises to let them in to meet their party leader.

--IANS

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The much-hyped and controversial Criminal Law (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance 2017 -- which promulgated to protect public servants against probe into on-duty actions and "gagged" the media, triggering national uproar -- met a silent death on Monday.

Senior Cabinet Minister Gulab Chand Kataria confirmed that legally, the ordinance has lapsed. Now its fate will be decided on December 27 when a committee meets to discuss it.

Drafted by the state government on September 6, the ordinance was introduced in the Rajasthan assembly on October 23.

As per the rule book, an ordinance is valid for 42 days after it gets tabled in the assembly, after which it lapses automatically. Going by this, the gag ordinance lapsed on December 4.

"Now, the ball is in the select committee's court. If the committee stops it, it will be dropped, and if the committee considers it to be ok, it will be reintroduced," said Kataria, who heads the select committee.

This committee is expected to submit its report in the first week of the next assembly session.

The announcement for the select committee was made on November 27 and its next meeting is scheduled for December 27.

The ordinance was meant to protect public servants from prosecution for on-duty actions.

The state government, via this ordinance, made it a must for judicial magistrates to seek government approval before taking cognizance against former and sitting judges and public servants on complaints filed under CrPC Section 156(3).

Even media was not spared under this ordinance and there were provisions of jail term of up to two years for journalists publishing or broadcasting such complaints which have not been approved by the government.

However, the government, in its defence, said that the gag ordinance aimed at curbing the misuse of CrPC Section 156(3).

As it was protested against from all corners of the country, the state government had to refer it to the select committee, thereby leading to the silent gagging of the "gag bill".

--IANS

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Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will meet the Chief Ministers of five states, situated on the India-Bangladesh border, on Thursday in Kolkata on the issues of Rohingyas and influx of Bangladeshis and illegal cross-border trade, official sources said on Monday.

He will leave Delhi on Tuesday evening and chair the meeting with the Chief Ministers and Home Ministers of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Tripura, a Home Ministry official said.

It would be the fourth in a series of meeting chaired by the Home Minister. Earlier, Rajnath Singh met with the Chief Ministers of states bordering Pakistan, China, and Myanmar.

Strategies to handle the Rohingyas and Bangladeshi refugees, apart from cross-border smuggling of fake Indian currency, narcotics, cattle and other illegal activities will be discussed.

As per Home Ministry's estimate, there are around 40,000 Rohingya in India, including 5,700 in Jammu. Only 16,000 of them are said to have registered themselves with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

As much as 2,217 km of the India-Bangladesh border is in West Bengal, 262 km in Assam, 443 km in Meghalaya, 856 km in Tripura, and 180 km in Mizoram.

The Chief Secretaries and Directors General of Police of the states concerned and senior Home Ministry officials along with those of Assam Rifles, security agencies and Border Security Force chief are likely to be present in the December 7 meeting.

Rajnath Singh will also inaugurate Thapa indoor sport complex and swimming pool at Dimapur in Nagaland on December 8 before returning to Delhi the same day.

--IANS

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On September 10, as the police lined up 10 Muslim Rohingya refugees in a police station on the outskirts of Jammu and lashed them with a stick and a belt, they had only one question: "Who killed the cow?" multiple refugees, including a minor boy who was detained, told IANS.

"We were crying and told the police that we did not do it, but they kept beating us for about 15 minutes," Hamid Hussain, 29, recalled about his second day in police detention.

Twelve Rohingyas -- including two women with breastfeeding infants -- were detained in Channi Himmat Police Station in south Jammu, for durations ranging from four to 11 days, and the men were allegedly beaten up by police.

A cow's carcass had been found in an empty parcel of land near the Rohingya settlement in Channi Rama in south Jammu. BJP members protested against the killing of the cow.

The detention and brutality that followed were confirmed to IANS by three persons detained by the police, community leaders, neighbours, and family members of two out of three refugees currently in jail for allegedly killing the cow.

"On the second day, police made us sit on the floor and stretch our legs. Then they hit us on our legs, back and hands with a stick and a belt," a scraggy-bearded Hussain said. "They tortured us a lot."

The refugees, who were let off by the police after periods ranging allegedly from "96 to 264 hours", said that they were "never produced in a court". A person cannot be detained for more than 24 hours and must be produced before a magistrate, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure.

"The infants were crying a lot in the police station," said 16-year-old Sayed Noor, who claimed to have been detained for eight days. "One was only four days old."

Vimla, 35, a Hindu woman, who stays in the same plot from where the Rohingyas were arrested, said the police asked her to come to the police station. "But we said that we are Hindu, how can we come? The police then told us to go back to sleep and left," Vimla said outside her shack. "I never went to the police station."

Rohingyas, termed as one of the "world's most persecuted minorities", have been facing military brutality in Myanmar, with the UN urging the government to end the "cruel military operation".

More than 800,000 Rohingyas have fled Myanmar in the last five years as a result of violence, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and there are around 21,500 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers in India.

Jammu, with a large refugee population, has been witnessing protests by the BJP and the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) to "identify and deport Rohingyas".

Noor Hussain is one of the boys who, with others, was taken into custody by policemen as they stepped outside their mosque -- without any explanation. "Before I reached the jeep, an officer slapped me on the cheek," Noor said, adding "he appeared drunk."

The 16-year-old said that at night "they put us in the lock-up and bolted it from outside".

Stuck on the white wall of Channi Himmat Police Station is a list of rules. One of them reads: "Do not take a child/juvenile into police custody or keep them in police station at night."

Hamida Begum, 30, said she and another woman were detained for four days. "I had my seven-month-old son and the other woman had her new born baby girl with her," she said.

Kushnama, 20, wife of Noorullah, 22, one of the three Rohingyas currently in jail, said: "I do not have money to get him out (on bail) or to even visit him in the jail."

Mustaq Ahmad, 51, a Muslim from the Gujjar community, whose cow was found dead on September 9, said that within hours, a crowd, including hundreds of members of the "Shiva Sena and BJP", blocked the nearby highway blaming Rohingyas for "killing the cow".

When asked whether he saw any refugee killing his cow, Ahmed said "No", adding: "Who else would do it? It happened right next to where they live."

BJP's Jammu legal cell member, Hunar Gupta, also confirmed to IANS that "local BJP leaders had blocked the highway" in protest. In February, Gupta had filed a PIL for deportation of Rohingyas from Jammu.

The SHO of the Channi Himmat Police Station, Sajjad Mir, confirmed that many people were called in for questioning, but claimed that "they were sent back and not detained".

"If I get a chance, I want to ask the police: Why did you take him?" Kushnama said in her weak voice from under her burqa. "Every day I think he will come back today."

(Nikhil M Babu can be reached at nikhil.b@ians.in)

--IANS

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Russian strategic bombers continued to strike Islamic State (IS) terrorists in Syria on Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Six Tu-22M3 long-range bombers took off from Russia and destroyed IS ammunition warehouses, equipment and strongholds in the southeast of Deir al-Zour province, Xinhua quoted a statement from the ministry as saying.

The warplanes were covered by Russia's Su-30SM fighters from the Hmeymim airbase in Syria. After completing the mission, the bombers returned to their base airfields.

This was the sixth airstrike by Russian strategic bombers since November 15 as Syrian government troops backed by the Russian air force were finishing expelling IS terrorists from the country.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russian military operations against terrorists in Syria were coming to an end, with the focus shifting to a political process.

To that end, Russia, Iran and Turkey are preparing for a Syrian National Dialogue Congress to be held in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.

--IANS

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The search for the ARA San Juan, the Argentine navy submarine that disappeared 18 days ago, was now focussing on an area where the ocean floor is 950 metres deep, as complaints by the family members of the vessel's 44 crew-members mount.

At his Sunday press briefing, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said that Russia's remote-controlled submersible Pantera Plus will try to descend to the ocean bottom at a spot where a "contact" - that is, a possible metallic object - has been detected, reports Efe news.

The Russian undersea vehicle, which is being transported on board the Argentine vessel Islas Malvinas, on Saturday had descended to 477 and 700 meters at two other locations, but neither target proved to be the missing sub.

The ARA San Juan was sailing northwards some 432 km off Argentina's Atlantic coast when it went missing on November 15 after reporting a battery short-circuit caused by water entering the vessel via the snorkel.

Some three hours after the last communication, a sound consistent with an explosion was detected 27 km from the submarine's reported position, and the huge international search has focused in that region, with six vessels still at sea continuing with that effort.

At Balbi's daily update, the father of one of the missing sailors claimed that the navy had not provided him with any information about his son.

"You said that (the navy) informed the relatives but (I've received) nothing. I haven't received a single call," said Luis Antonio Niz, the father of one of the sub's officers, Luis Alberto Niz.

Balbi offered an immediate apology for the apparent oversight and took Niz's contact information, saying that the navy is not "infallible" and can make "mistakes".

On Sunday, most of the crewmembers' relatives left the Mar del Plata base en masse carrying Argentine flags and photos of their missing loved ones, stopping to speak with reporters and announcing that they were marching to the city's central square to call upon Argentine President Mauricio Macri to order a resumption of the "rescue" phase of the operation.

The rescue operations were discontinued on November 30 since calculations are that, even if the crewmembers were alive in a sunken vessel, they would have exhausted their available oxygen by then.

--IANS

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Veteran actor-filmmaker Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of the 70s and early 80s, died on Monday at a hospital in Mumbai. But Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said he was getting condolence calls.

'"We're getting condolence calls in the office. Reports of my demise are, if not exaggerated, at least premature. #ShashiKapoor," Tharoor tweeted on Monday.

The mistake happened after a news channel's Twitter handle wrote Shashi Tharoor instead of Shashi Kapoor, who was 79.

But the politician has "no problem" as "mistakes happen. Glad to be able to crack a smile at a tragic moment".

Tharoor even paid tribute to the youngest son of late Prithviraj Kapoor and brother of late Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor.

"I feel a part of me is gone. A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome and w/a name that was often confused w/mine. (My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health!) I will miss Shashi Kapoor. Condolences to his family and all his fans," he tweeted.

In Thiruvananthapuram, a close aide of Tharoor told IANS that the MP's office in Delhi has, since Monday evening, hadbeen getting a flurry of telephone calls from several people, including journalists, with all in a hushed voice asking about Tharoor.

The aide said initially all of them were indeed perplexed on how come a common cold and cough that Tharoor had since arriving in Nerw Delhi on Sunday night could lead to so many calls.

"Later, we understood when it surfaced there was a goof up committed by a TV channel who got it wrong after Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor passed away," said the aide.

Tharoor, who was in Kerala apital and was moving around for a few days after Cyclone Ockhi hit the district's coastal villages, had caught a bad cold and cough.

--IANS

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Music mogul Simon Cowell says he is struggling to quit the smoking and his drinking habit.

The music mogul vowed to cut down on alcohol and smoking after being rushed to hospital following a fall at his London home in October.

But he says he hasn't got very far, reports thesun.co.uk.

He said: "I knocked myself out, and when I woke up, I thought, 'Is this heaven?' Then after I realised it wasn't, I thought I had broken my neck because the medics wouldn't let me move. I was thinking, 'Christ almighty.'

"You don't know what's wrong, and neither do they, so it is scary. But I had every test under the sun and all they could find was low blood pressure. It has still been a wake-up call though. Up to that point, I was working flat out. Now I've quietened down a bit and I'm sleeping better.

"I'm not going to lie though -- whenever I'm seen out it's with a cigarette and a beer in my hand. So I think I've been rumbled as far as that goes.

At the moment, Cowell is busy judging "X Factor".

--IANS

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Two militants and a soldier were killed and another soldier injured in a gunfight that erupted on Monday between the security forces and militants holed up in a house in Jammu and Kashmir's Kulgam district, officials said.

Two terrorists were killed and a soldier killed in the gunfight, said Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia.

According to a police official, the gunfight broke out when militants fired at an army patrol on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway in Qazigund area of Kulgam, injuring two soldiers.

After the attack, the militants, said to be two in number, entered a private house which was surrounded immediately by the security forces.

"When the militants were challenged, they fired at the security forces, triggering a gunfight which continued for nearly four hours. Two militants have been killed, but the body of only one, who was a local, has been recovered," police said.

The house in which the militants were hiding was fully destroyed during the gunfight.

Traffic on the Jammu-Srinagar highway remained suspended because of the gunfight. Train service between the Valley and Bannihal town in Jammu region was also disrupted.

Meanwhile, Internet services were also suspended in south immediately after the gunfight started.

--IANS

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Condoling the death of veteran actor-producer Shashi Kapoor, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday called him a "brilliant actor" and said "he has left a void difficult to fill in the world of cinema".

"A brilliant actor, he successfully contributed in paving the way for alternative pathbreaking cinema Nationally and Internationally," said Gandhi.

"He will be fondly remembered by all and has left a void difficult to fill in the world of cinema," she added.

Conveying her sympathies to his family and fans for this irreparable loss, Gandhi prayed for the departed soul.

Veteran actor-producer Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of the 70s and early 80s, died on Monday at a hospital here. He was 79.

--IANS

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Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday signed as the first proposer on the first nomination paper submitted for the election of her son and party Vice President Rahul Gandhi to the post of party chief.

Congress leader Ashok Gehlot said Sonia Gandhi's signatures were at the top of the first nomination form submitted to the returning officer Mullappally Ramachandran in the election being held at the party's central office to elect the party's next chief.

"She (Sonia Gandhi) has signed. Her signatures are the first on the first proposal (nomination form) submitted for Rahul Gandhi," Gehlot told Aaj Tak news channel.

Monday is the last date for filing nominations for the post of Congress chief.

Gehlot, who is party incharge of poll-bound Gujarat, also lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his remarks about the Congress organisational elections.

"The affection that Rahul Gandhi is getting in Gujarat is worth seeing. The Prime Minister is making comments about Congress organisational elections out of frustration. He should not have made such remarks. There is dignity attached to the post of Prime Minister," Gehlot said.

Modi had accused Congress of "lacking internal democracy" during an election rally on Sunday.

Gehlot also said that decisions concerning the BJP leadership are made by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. "I want to ask the Prime Minister, (BJP president) Amit Shah, is there democracy in your party? The RSS decides who will be the BJP president, who will be Chief Minister and who will be the Prime Minister. What right they have to talk like this?"

He said that seats were going empty at Modi rallies in Gujarat.

"Wait for Gujarat election results. Then there are polls in the states and then people will give their verdict in the 2019 polls. The way 'Modi, Modi, Modi' slogans use to be raised in the last election...See the meetings of yesterday, chairs were empty. There is frustration over defeat in Gujarat," he said.

He said the future of the Congress and the country will be bright under Rahul Gandhi and the support he is getting is reflected in Gujarat.

--IANS

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He's young and the hope for millions of islanders across the globe for whom the nutrient-rich water technology for sustainable agriculture instead of soil that he's promoting will help improve human health and resilience to climate change in the low-lying islands.

He's 28-year-old Eritai Kateibwi, a native of low-lying nation Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean that's under threat from climate change. He is winner of a 2017 UN Environment Young Champion of the Earth for his work on a hydroponics system.

Hydroponic is a technique of growing plants without soil in water containing dissolved nutrients.

According to UN Environment, Kateibwi, one of six inaugural winners, each representing a region of the world -- Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and West Asia.

The award gives seed funding of $15,000 and mentorship to outstanding individuals, between the ages of 18 and 30, who have big ideas to protect or restore the environment.

"The problem in my country is that people are not eating healthy food. They don't have enough land to grow their crops. Climate change has made the rains irregular. When they can't grow their own food, they rely on unhealthy processed food," Kateibwi told IANS.

He is in this Kenyan capital to receive the award on Tuesday at the UN Environment Assembly where over 2,000 heads of state, ministers, business leaders, UN officials and civil society representatives are gathered to find new ways to deal with pollution.

"I flew home and got everything what I needed. My goal is to help every family and after training them. In the next 10 years, this project will spread throughout this island," the optimistic UN young achiever said.

"For young people, I would like to say: If they have an idea just do it," he said.

Kateibwi saw problems caused in Kiribati by reliance on imported, often unhealthy, food due to the challenges of growing fresh produce.

He feels that locally grown, nutritious food through hydroponics would reduce the problems as well as provide entrepreneurial opportunities to the local communities.

"The majority of my people live in (capital) Tarawa; they come to find jobs, education and health services, but end up living close to each other," he said.

"With the rising sea level and king tides, their crops are often destroyed. The Te Maeu Project will use hydroponics to allow almost anyone to grow produce at home and sell the surplus through a cooperative," he added.

He embarked on his project when he returned home as a graduate in finance from Utah's Brigham Young University, feeling empowered by his schooling.

Kateibwi's project, which relies on Kiribati's abundant sunshine but uses only 10 per cent of the water of traditional crops, has already been used to produce lettuce, Chinese cabbage and tomatoes within 30 days.

He plans to use the seed financing from the award to build 200 units. Families will receive training and purchase these through micro-financing, the proceeds of which Kateibwi will use to build and make available more units.

The system could have wider uses for other Small Island Developing States that face similar challenges in terms of climate impact and a lack of land to grow sufficient food.

UN Environment head Erik Solheim said: "From boosting food crops in the Pacific to sustainable fashion solutions in North America, it's a delight to announce the first Young Champions of the Earth."

"The breadth of innovation and ambition shown by the inaugural winners is nothing short of exceptional and proof that we must continue to channel support to the world's younger generation for the solutions we need to secure a sustainable future," Solheim added.

The six inaugural Young Champions were selected from more than 600 applicants.

(Vishal Gulati is in Nairobi at the invitation of United Nations Environment to cover its third annual session. He can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)

--IANS

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The Uttar Pradesh Police's Special Task Force (STF) arrested three persons from Noida on Monday in connection with the killing of a BJP leader, police said.

BJP leader Shiv Kumar was shot dead in Noida on November 16 and STF said the contract killing was ordered by Arun Yadav, who had allegedly given Rs 50 lakh to the shooters to kill Kumar, a police officer said.

The reason behind the killing was animosity emanating out of the death of the father of Arun Yadav, which he suspected was the handiwork of Kumar.

Of the arrested trio, Naresh Jaat had shot dead the BJP leader and his gunner, while Dharmdutt Sharma and one more person had tracked the movements of Shiv Kumar and gave detailed information of his whereabouts.

The STF also disclosed that the killings were executed by the shooters of the Anil Bhati gang. Bhati is nephew of dreaded mafiosi Sunder Bharti.

Shiv Kumar was an active BJP member and had canvassed majorly for Union Minister and Noida MP Mahesh Sharma.

--IANS

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A nine-member delegation of Tripura journalists met Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Jitendra Singh on Monday to demand a CBI probe into the murder of two journalists from the state.

The team also plans to hold a demonstration in Delhi on Tuesday in front of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) office, Forum for Protection of Journalists (FFPJ) Convener Pranab Sarkar told IANS over phone from Delhi.

The FFPJ delegation - led by veteran editor Subal Kumar Dey - would also try to meet President Ram Nath Kovind, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Press Council of India Chairman Justice Chandramauli Kumar Prasad to press for their demand.

"After a series of agitations in Tripura we came to the national capital to press for our demand to protect the persons in Tripura," Sarkar added.

A local newspaper journalist Sudip Dutta Bhowmik, 50, was shot dead inside the Tripura State Rifles (TSR) 2nd battalion headquarters at Ramchandra Nagar in West Tripura district on November 21.

Young television journalist Santanu Bhowmik, 28, was hacked to death while he was covering protests of a tribal based political party at Mandai, 25 km from Agartala, on September 20.

PCI chairman, who is likely to visit the state to study both the incidents, took suo-moto cognizance of the journalists murder cases.

To probe the sensational killings, the state government had earlier constituted two separate Special Investigation Teams (SIT) headed by Deputy Inspector General of Police Arindam Nath and Inspector General of Police (IGP) G.S. Rao.

The SIT, led by Nath, has so far arrested four TSR personnel, including TSR second battalion Commandant Tapan Debbarma, who is a senior Tripura Police Service (TPS) officer (1998 batch) and waiting for IPS nomination.

In the Bhowmik murder case too, the SIT led by IGP Rao also arrested four youths.

The Congress has demanded a high-level inquiry into the murder. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded a CBI probe and resignation of Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, who also holds the Home portfolio.

Both parties observed a state-wide shutdown on November 23 to protest the killings.

The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has criticised the BJP for politicising the journalist's killing.

"State government is on the right track in probing the unfortunate killings," CPI-M central committee member Gautam Das told the .

--IANS

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Two militants were killed and two soldiers injured in a gunfight that errupted on Monday between the security forces and holed up militants in Jammu and Kashmir's Kulgam district.

Police said militants first fired at an army patrol in Qazigund area of Kulgam district on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway injuring two soldiers.

After attacking the army, the militants, said to be two in number, entered a private house which was surrounded immediately by the security forces.

"When the militants were challenged, they fired at the security forces triggering a gunfight which continued for nearly four hours, two militants have been killed, but so far, only one slain militant's body has been recovered who was a local," police said.

The house in which the militants were hiding was razed to ground during the gunfight.

Traffic on the Jammu-Srinagar highway remained suspended because of the gunfight. The train service between the Kashmir Valley and the Bannihal town in Jammu region was also disrupted.

Meanwhile, Internet services were also suspended in south Kashmir immediately after the gunfight started.

--IANS

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The state election commission in Uttar Pradesh on Monday strongly refuted an independent candidate's accusations about rigged EVMs used in the just concluded civic body polls.

Independent candidate from Saharanpur, Shabana, who triggered a storm by claiming that she got zero vote despite casting a vote for herself, has been slammed by the poll panel for alleging that the electronic voting machines (EVMs) were "manipulated".

An official of the poll panel on Monday said that the charge was "not only baseless but also mischievous as records show clearly that Shabana polled 87 votes".

Claims by Shabana had gone viral on the social media and were tweeted by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) as proof to back their claims that EVMs had been "tampered with" to help the ruling BJP in the civic polls.

Shabana's husband, Ikram, had initially claimed that there were 11 booths and that the family had voted in booth 388. But the family alleged that there were no votes for her when votes were counted.

Shabana contested from ward number 54 and told the media that EVM tampering had been proved by the fact that she herself did not get her own vote.

In the polls where the Bharatiya Janata Party captured power in 14 of the 16 municipal corporations, the opposition parties have been alleging that the official machinery was misused and the EVMs tampered with to favour the ruling party.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and social activist Prashant Bhushan had cited the case of Shabana in their tweets questioning the electoral process in the urban body polls.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Monday lauded his Uttar Pradesh counterpart Yogi Adityanath for his drive against criminals and said that he will also ask the police in the hill state to emulate the crackdown.

Addressing an event in Gorakhpur, the hometown of Adityanath, Rawat said it was heartening to see that criminals in Uttar Pradesh were being sent to the "right place".

He was referring to the spate of police gunfights in the state in which several criminals have been killed and arrested.

Rawat also urged the parents to keep pace with the changing times. "Technology is changing the way around us. Even though many parents do not like it, we will have to adjust to the change which is also for good," he said.

The Uttarakhand Chief Minister also urged students to focus on their talents so that India could become the country Prime Minister Narendra Modi has envisaged.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, who also attended the event, called for a holistic education system where education was within everyone's reach and there was no discrimination.

Adityanath also said that there should be lesser holidays in schools and exhorted teachers and management of various schools to take part in the 'Swacch Bharat Abhiyan' to make it an even bigger success.

--IANS

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The 14 newly elected mayors of Uttar Pradesh's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will call on Prime Mminister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Tuesday, said a party leader.

According to state leaders, BJP's state Organisation Secretary Sunil Bansal would be part of the delegation.

While the meeting is being termed a courtesy call, the Prime Minister is expected to share with the new mayors, his vision of development of cities. A source told IANS that Modi will also seek and exchange ideas on how to improve the lot of the cities, improve garbage disposal system, and create more awareness about cleanliness.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and state BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey had met these newly elected mayors here on Sunday. Out of the 16 municipal corporations in Uttar Pradesh that went to polls late in November, the BJP candidates won the mayoral seats in 14, including in Lucknow, Agra, Varanasi, Moradabad, Kanpur and Allahabad.

--IANS

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Emphasising that the entire world was benefiting from Yoga, Union Commerce and Industries Minister Suresh Prabhu on Monday said this was possible only because nobody has a patent or proprietary rights over it due to which the practice could spread all over the world.

"No one knows who invented Yoga due to which no one gets royalty for it. This is the reason that knowledge of Yoga is available to all and entire humanity is benefiting. We believe it should be available to the entire world," said Prabhu, addressing the first International Summit on AYUSH and Wellness here.

Noting that India in the recent times had taken initiatives to promote its traditional medicine system, Prabhu questioned patents on matters related to knowledge, which can otherwise benefit the world to a great extent.

"I am happy that we are taking initiatives... In fact it is bounding duty to share knowledge and let the world benefit from it. Knowledge should never be preserved in one country and it should be allowed to spread across the world.

"Just imagine everything that we discover, everything that we can offer as a knowledge is patented or someone has proprietary right on it. How will one benefit from it? How will the world benefit from it?," asked Prabhu

The four-day Yoga event is being held in the backdrop of National Health Policy 2017 strongly advocating mainstreaming the potential of AYUSH within a pluralistic system of Integrative health care.

It will showcase the strength and scientific validation of traditional Indian systems of medicines in the global context, including Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa and Homeopathy (AYUSH), and facilitate their worldwide promotion, development and recognition.

The conference is being attended by 1,500 delegates from 60 countries.

Shripad Naik, the AYUSH Minister, said the government has taken many initiatives to popularise alternatives systems of medicine.

"The National AYUSH Mission was started in 2014. An agreement has been signed with WHO to develop benchmarks for Yoga, Ayurveda, Unani and Panchkarma. Five AYUSH information cells have been set up in Israel, Tajikistan, Peru, Russia, and Tanzania," said Naik in his inaugural speech.

A white paper, titled AYUSH for the World by Frost & Sullivan, was launched to offer insights into the regulatory requirements for herbal medicines in Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation nations.

Among the other senior dignitaries who attended the summit were AYUSH Secretary Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha and business chamber FICCI's Secretary General Sanjaya Baru.

--IANS

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Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Monday said large sections of youth of Gujarat have not accepted BJP and have rallied behind Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mewani.

He said in tweets that the "youth of Punjab accepted Congress. So did youth of Goa and Manipur before the elections were stolen by the BJP. He was referring to the victory of Congress in Punjab and emergence as the largest party in Goa and Manipur in elections earlier this year.

"Why would the youth of Gujarat not acept Congress?," Chidambaram asked.

The former union minister was responding to a reported statement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an election meeting in Gujarat that the youth are not ready to accept the Congress.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday swore in Cabinet ministers, their deputies and ministers of state for provincial affairs at the State House here.

The swearing-in ceremony comes after Mnangagwa appointed a 22-member Cabinet last week.

Speaking to reporters after the ceremony, Mnangagwa said the interim government will be in office for about seven months, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The first 10 days have been hectic but I believe that with my team we will stand the challenge," Mnangagwa said.

He said he wants Zimbabweans to unite and "we must grow our economy". Mnangagwa inherits a faltering economy plagued by cash shortages, low foreign direct investment and massive unemployment.

In his inaugural speech on November 24, the President vowed to stamp out corruption and work to revive the economy so as to create jobs for the people.

--IANS

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Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi for keeping the youth of Gujarat unemployed and not implementing the 7th Pay Commission leading to the plight of contract and fixed salary workers in the state.

Keeping up at his 22 questions in the countdown to the Gujarat Assembly polls, as promised, Gandhi said: "22 salon ka hisaab, Gujarat mange jawaab. Gujarat ke haalat par Pradhanmantri se chatha sawal (as he directed his sixth query at Modi on Gujarat's condition).

"The double whammy of BJP government -- on one side the youths of the state are unemployed, while on other hand lakhs of contract and fixed salary workers condition is miserable.

"Despite Rs 18,000 salary per month as per the 7th Pay Commission, why only Rs 5,500 and Rs 10,000 is being paid to the fix and contract workers?" he asked.

Gandhi's question comes in the wake of the party's strategy to pose one question to Modi every day till the polling day on December 9.

Gandhi on Sunday raised concerns over safety, health, education and crimes against women in the state.

On Saturday, he questioned Modi on "extraction" of high fees from students by government educational institutes in Gujarat.

Polling for the 182-member Gujarat assembly will be held in two phases on December 9 and 14. The counting of votes will take place on December 18.
AAP leader on Sunday said the party was holding dialogue with those who left the outfit, including Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, to facilitate their return to the party fold.

The controversial remarks, however, were refuted by a party leader close to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

"If no one has joined a political party and wants to come here...if one has formed a political party and wants to merge their party with ours...if someone went back for doing social work after being unhappy with us...the list is long. From Subhash Ware to Anjali Damania, Mayank Gandhi, Dharamvira Gandhi to Prashant ji and Yogendra ji.

"We are synchronising the list (of such people). Dialogues are being held with them by volunteers. We will ask for forgiveness for the mistakes we did," Kumar said after an interaction with party volunteers at the AAP office here.

AAP founder members Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were sacked by the party in April, 2015, for "anti-party" activities after they questioned party supremo Arvind Kejriwal's style of functioning.

Subhash Ware, on the other hand, was the party head of Maharashtra state unit, and was considered close to Yadav and Bhushan. Although, Ware continues to be a part of the party, the state unit headed by him was disbanded.

Ware, along with Mayank Gandhi, had opposed dropping of Bhushan and Yadav from the party's Political Affairs Committee (PAC). Gandhi later quit the party.

Dharamvira Gandhi, AAP MP from Patiala, was also suspended for alleged anti-party activities. Damania also quit citing the ugly slug fest between Kejriwal and Yadav-Bhushan.

Nevertheless, Swaraj India, political party formed by Yadav and Bhushan, dismissed Vishwas' claims and said those who drifted away from AAP's ideals were now appealing the activists of the Anna movement to return to the fold.

"Instead of appealing others to come back, they (AAP led by Kejriwal) should come back on the right path," Swaraj India chief spokesperson Anupam said.

Vishwas, who is believed to be "unhappy" with the present coterie around Kejriwal, also spoke about 'Aam Aadmi Party version 2'.

When asked to elaborate, the AAP leader said, "The second version (of the party) will focus on giving more priority to volunteers, who will act as 'anti-virus' in the outfit".

Vishwas' meeting with party volunteers comes a week after his announcement at the Ram Lila Maidan here that he would be interacting with the party cadre more often.

Speaking at the party's fifth anniversary last week, the AAP leader had lamented that the party had drifted away from its core principles and needed "course correction".

Attacking a section of AAP leaders, he had likened himself to 'Abhimanyu', the warrior son of Arjun in Mahabharat, and claimed that he would be victorious even in his death.

Vishwas is also considered one of the strong contenders for three Rajya sabha seats of Delhi, elections for which will be held in January next year.

Party sources said Vishwas was also upset that the AAP was "overlooking" him in the case.
A host of party heavyweights will be present when Congress Vice President files his nomination for the party chief's post at its headquarters here on Monday, with over 90 sets of nomination papers likely to be filed to support his candidature.



Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh will be among proposers for the candidature of for the party chief's post.



Accompanied by her mother Sonia Gandhi, Singh and other senior Congress leaders, will file his nomination papers for the election to the top Congress post tomorrow, the last date for filing of nominations.



According to party sources, there were apprehensions among the party leaders earlier over the incumbent president being among the proposers to Rahul Gandhi's candidature.



The sources said that Sonia Gandhi will be the first proposer in one of the four nominations Rahul Gandhi will file.



The former prime minister will be the lead proposer in another set of nomination form.

Six Chief Ministers -- Punjab's Amarinder Singh, Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Himachal Pradesh's Virbhadra Singh, Puducherry's V. Narayanasamy, Meghalaya's Mukul Sangma and Mizoram's Lal Thanhawla -- are expected to be present when over 90 sets of nomination papers are likely to be filed by various leaders to extend support to Rahul Gandhi's candidature.

Congress state unit chiefs, senior leaders and Pradesh Congress Committee delegates will be present at the party's central office to express support to Rahul Gandhi ahead of his much-awaited elevation.

The Congress Vice President is likely to reach the party headquarters around 10.30 a.m. to file his nomination. He will sign sets of nomination papers to be filed before the Returning Officer.

Mullappally Ramachandran, the Returning Officer for the organisational election, told IANS that 90 nomination forms were taken by different states though not one has been submitted so far.

The process of nominations started on Friday. The last date for filing nominations is December 4.

Reacting to criticism over the election process, Congress Spokesperson Sushmita Dev told the media: "All I want to say is that it is happening under Election Commission supervision. When we talk about electoral democracy, I wish to say, we conduct (internal) elections while adhering to Election Commission rules. It is being done with full transparency. We have not violated any rules."

She said if someone was raising questions, what was the basis on which they were doing so. "I won't be able to comment about it. Only those who have raised the issue can explain."

On Sunday, many senior Congress leaders, its members of Parliament and PCC chiefs arrived at the party headquarters to sign the papers, including Sachin Pilot, Kapil Sibal, Rajeev Shukla, P.C. Chacko, Shobha Oza, Hamdulla Sayeed and others.

Apart from states and union territories, senior leaders on the Congress Working Committee (CWC), including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, A.K. Antony, Ahmed Patel and Ghulam Nabi Azad are likely to submit different sets of nomination papers.

Led by former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan, 30 Maharashtra Congress leaders on Sunday proposed the nomination of party vice president Rahul Gandhi for the post of party president.

This proposal comes days after Maharashtra Congress secretary Shehzad Poonawalla called the election process "rigged", citing he had the information that the delegates, who were going to vote for the party president election, were fixed.

Meanwhile, the proposal was signed by Ashok Chavan, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Patangrao Kadam, Naseem Khan and others. It will be sent to the Central Election Committee conducting the AICC president post elections.

The process for the election began with a notification on November 30.

The last date for filing nominations is December 4 and Rahul Gandhi is also expected to file his nomination on the same day.

The final list of the candidates contesting the election will be published on December 11.

As many as 10 Uttar Pradesh Congress leaders had, on December 3, signed a proposal for the nomination of Rahul Gandhi as the party president.

Sonia Gandhi has been serving as the president of the party for over 19 years.

The elevation of Rahul Gandhi, who is presently spearheading the Congress campaign ahead of the December 9 and 14 Gujarat assembly polls, has been much talked about in party circles for around two years.

With Rahul Gandhi in all likelihood to be the only candidate in the fray, he could be declared the next Congress chief on December 5 after scrutiny of nominations.

He will succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998.

Rahul Gandhi became the Congress Vice President in January 2013.
Maharashtra Congress Secretary Shehzad Poonawalla on Sunday maintained his stance on the presidential election of his party, appropriating Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the party's alleged non-allegiance towards him.



Poonawalla also thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for praising him for his bravery and said, "The person whom I criticised [PM Modi] is supporting me, while the party [Congress] for which I gave my life is criticising me and saying that I am not a member of it."

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Modi endorsed Poonawalla's allegations and called out the rival party for the lack of "internal democracy" within.



Analyse the truth friends: even today I criticised @PMOIndia (like always) yet @narendramodi ji praised me & dynasty slaves of @OfficeOfRG who I served selflessly for 8-9years (who cheer for Yashwant,Shourie) removed me!! Emergency has returned to dynasty's DNA? https://t.co/srpte76NlS  Shehzad Jai Hind (@Shehzad_Ind) December 3, 2017

"A youngster Shehzad has exposed the rigging that is taking place in the Congress president poll. And Shehzad is a senior Congress leader in Maharashtra. The Congress Party has tried to muzzle his voice and wants to even remove him from their social media groups. What tolerance is this!" the prime minister said, addressing a rally in Gujarat.

The prime minister further dubbed the discord thus exposed within the Congress Party as indicative of its ineffectuality to govern a nation.

Speaking to ANI, Poonawalla said, "I did not raise my voice for the party ticket. I don't want the president post in Congress. I only said that we must try to end the dynastic and we must have elections for the president post, not the selection or coronation of . When I raised my voice for this, they said I was not a party member. If Sardar Patel was insulted by Congress leadership back then, I feel the same way today."

Speaking to media in New Delhi, Poonwala said that Congress Party had "no place for Shehzad [himself], but for shehzada [Rahul Gandhi]."

"I have been trying to raise the most important issue of dynastic and fair opportunity to the non-dynasts within the party for the past six to eight years. I also wrote to Rahul ji on this. Instead of answering my claims about delegates being fixed and one family one ticket rule - they are making baseless allegations against me that I am a BJP agent. I have to become a whistle-blower. I am not spineless like the other Congress leaders," he said.

"Main Shehzad hoon, shehzada nahin. [I am Shehzad Poonawalla, not a prince like Rahul Gandhi]. They don't have a place for me," he added.

Rubbishing Congress' claims that he was not a party leader, Poonawalla said, "If I was not a member of the Congress Party, why does my name appear in a letter signed by Ashok Chavan in April 2016 appointing me as Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee secretary?"

He showed the letter to the media as the proof.

On a related note, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been attacking Congress, alleging it of having sidelined Sardar Patel in the party cadres.

The fight over Sardar Patel's legacy escalated on October 31, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi attacked Congress for having tried to "run down and erase" the former's contributions to the unification of the country after Independence.

Meanwhile, Poonawalla claimed many Congress leaders, including Ajay Maken, Sandeep Dikshit, and Manish Tiwari, had termed the process to elect party president "rigged".

"I provided the proof of many Congress leaders calling this election rigged and many called it a proprietorship, but there was no answer from Congress. They humiliated me instead," he added.

The Congress leader further said he even called up Rahul Gandhi's office to stop the process, but they hung up his call.

"Today also I sent a message and made a call to to ask him for time so that I could give a proof before he files his nomination for this coronation; so that he has some morality and stops the process and takes the right decision. But his office insulted me and cut the phone," he added.




The Customs department at the airport here seized 1.2 kg of gold valued at Rs 35 lakh in two incidents and have arrested one person in this regard, officials said today.

Acting on an information that a baggage was lying "unclaimed" near a baggage conveyor belt area, an official release said on scanning the baggage it found 12 units of gold cut bits weighing 399 grams valued at Rs 11 lakh concealed in milk tins.

As the baggage was not claimed by anyone at the airport, the release said, passenger on seeing "tight scrutiny" carried out by the customs officials might have left the bags.

In the second incident, the customs officials intercepted a passenger who arrived from Riyadh to Chennai on December 1, as he was moving in a "suspicious manner".

Upon examination of his baggage, the officials seized seven units of gold bars weighing 815 grams valued at Rs 24 lakh, the release said.

The passenger was arrested under the Customs Act, 1962, the release added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court today admitted for hearing an appeal by Jammu and Kashmir government against a high court order for payment of compensation to the victims of 1991 Kunan-Poshpora mass rape incident allegedly by army personnel.

The top court directed expeditious hearing of the appeals filed by the state gvernment against various orders of the high court.

A bench of Justices J Chelameswar and Sanjay Kishan Kaul granted leave on the appeal of state government and said all the interim orders will continue.

In 2013, a writ petition was filed in Jammu and Kashmir high court alleging that army personnel belonging to the Rajputana Rifles and 68 Mountain Brigade had raided the remote villages of Kunan and Poshpora in Kupwara district and had committed mass-scale rapes and torture of villagers.

The charges have not been proved so far as there has been no progress in trial.

It was alleged that on the intervening night of February 23 and 24, 1991, separate teams of armymen had entered several houses in the villages, removed men of all ages into makeshift interrogation centers and tortured them. The plea alleged that over 30 women of the villages were raped by these personnel.

A SIT probe was sought in the plea for carrying out comprehensive investigation, besides seeking compensation and relief for the victims.

Standing counsel Shoeb Alam, appearing for the state government, said the compensation cannot be given as directed by the high court under provisions of Sections 545 (a)CrPC, which was introduced on April 24, 2012 and notified on April 23, 2013.

He said such a direction to pay compensation under a provision which did not exist at the time of the incident was contrary to law.

The state government also claimed that since the allegation was against army personnel, a direction to the state government for payment of compensation to the victims was without any legal backing.

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A total of 2,604 fishermen from several parts of Tamil Nadu, including 220 from Kanyakumari district, stranded at sea due to cyclone Ockhi, have been rescued, Chief Minister K Palaniswami said here today.

He said 2,570 fishermen from various parts of the state had set out to sea in 284 boats, of which 2,384 in 205 vessels were rescued.

In Kanyakumari district alone, 220 fishermen of the total of 294 who set out to sea were rescued, he said.

"The information (about rescue) is being passed on to their kin," an official release here quoted him as saying.

The Chief Minister deputed top government officials, including police officers, to Kanyakumari to further speed up relief work and ordered them to complete damage assessment in Kanyakumari district and submit a report before December 11.

He said the Navy,Air Force and Coast Guard would continue their efforts to rescue the "remaining 186 fishermen, their 79 boats (from several parts of Tamil Nadu), apart from 74 fishermen of Kanyakumari."



Palaniswami chaired a meeting at the Secretariat here to take stock of relief and rescue efforts in the wake of 'Ockhi' and was briefed by officials about rescue and relief work.

Relief initiatives in Kanyakumari



---------------------------------



The Chief Minister ordered fisheries officials to provide appropriate relief to owners of damaged boats after completion of assessment in this respect.

He also ordered repairing of the damaged walls of Colachel Fishing Harbour in Kanyakumari District.

Out of the 2,391 persons in 29 relief camps in Kanyakumari, only 891 were presently being sheltered in nine centres as normalcy is returning, the release said.

"The Chief Minister ordered that they should be provided food, water, medicine and all amenities till they returned home." Also, he directed immediate relief to damaged hutments.

Out of about 15,000 uprooted trees, 9,252 have been cleared, he said, adding personnel could be deployed, if needed, from neighbouring districts, to clear the rest of it.

He directed immediate repairing of about 200 km of damaged roads, of which 60 km was National Highways, 40 km State Highways and 100 km rural and urban roads.

Out of the damaged 4,157 Low Tension electricity poles, 1,998 have been replaced while of the 2,426 High Tension poles, 972 were replaced.

"The Chief Minister ordered replacement of the rest of the electricity poles on a war footing and restoration of power supply to all areas in the next 48 hours," it said.

He announced a solatium of Rs four lakh to the kin of five victims in Kanyakumari. While three persons died after trees fell on them, two others were fishermen and their bodies were recovered yesterday.

He lauded offcials and government employees for their work and asked them to keep up the tempo till normalcy was fully restored.

Missing Nagapattinam fishermen



------------------------------



A 22-year old fisherman of Nagapattinam district caught in the cyclone fury was killed and his body was washed ashore in Lakshwadeep and it is being brought to Nagapattinam, a fishermen's leader said.

Also, there was no information about 26 other fishermen of Nagapattinam district, who ventured into the sea from Kanyakumari coast last week, leader of fishermen panchayat of Seruthur, Kalaiyarasan said.

Nagapattinam fisheries officials have contacted their counterparts in Kanyakumari and Kerala to get information about the 26 missing fishermen, he said.

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Two persons were killed and five others injured when a driver dozed off and hit a tree in Khagaria district of Bihar this morning.

The seven persons were returning to their native villages in Khagaria district after attending a marriage ceremony at Bakhri in neighbouring Begusarai district, Gangaur Police Station SHO Gajendra Kumar said.

The incident took place on Khagaria-Bakhri road near Pahraja after the driver dozed off, lost control of the four-wheeler and hit the tree, the SHO said.

The deceased have been identified as Dipak Kumar (21), the driver of the vehicle and Sanjiv Kumar (28), the SHO said.

The injured have been admitted to nursing homes at Begusarai and Bakhri.

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Five policemen, including three officers, and a photo journalist were injured in clashes with residents during an anti-encroachment drive in Jammu city today.

Jammu Development Authority (JDA) officials accompanied by police personnel had launched the drive to remove illegal structures constructed by the residents in Gole Gujral area of Jammu, a police officer said.

As they were removing the encroachment, a large number of residents, mainly from the Gujjar community, carrying rods, sticks and bricks, attacked the anti-encroachment team, he said. Five policemen and a photo journalist were injured.

The residents also pelted stones and bricks on the team and the photo journalist covering the drive.

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Five terrorists were killed today in exchange of fire with security forces in Sharqeya governorate, security sources said.

They said that terrorists clashed with security forces during a raid on Belbeis-10th of Ramadan road in Sharqeya.

The raid came over a week after a terrorist attack on a mosque in North Sinai in which more than 300 people were killed.

Terrorist attacks, targeting police and military personnel, have increased following the ouster of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by the military, following massive protests against his rule. Hundreds of police and army personnel have been killed since then.

The military has launched security campaigns in Egypt's restive North Sinai province, arrested suspects and demolished houses that belong to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip.

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A speeding car rammed into pedestrians on the Jammu-Pathankote Highway, leaving six persons injured, police said today.

The car carrying three persons to Jammu lost control and hit three pedestrians on the highway at Barwal Morh in the district last evening, police said today.

The vehicle later hit a tree, they said adding six persons were injured in the accident.

In another mishap last night, a truck carrying apples to New Delhi from Kashmir skidded off the road and rolled down into a canal in Bari Brahmana belt of Samba district, police said.

The driver and conductor of the truck escaped with minor injuries, they said.

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Shares of 63 Moons Technologies today plunged 5 per cent to hit the lower circuit limit after the Bombay High Court dismissed its plea against the government's order for merging NSEL with the company.

The company said it will approach the Supreme Court, while chairman Venkat Chary said the merger order by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) "through an executive fiat is devastating for corporate India".

On the BSE, the stock of 63 Moons Technologies -- formerly known as Financial Technologies India (FTIL) -- plunged 5 per cent and got stuck in its lower circuit limit of Rs 131.10.

Similarly, on the NSE, the stock fell to its lower circuit limit of Rs 131.20, down 5 per cent from the previous closing price.

"The Honourable Bombay High Court has dismissed our writ petition. However, it has granted 12-week stay on the operation of the merger order," a company statement said.

It further said that "we will be moving the Supreme Court during this 12-week period. We have full faith in the judiciary and continue to believe that ultimately the truth and justice shall prevail."



In a separate statement, Chary said that Bombay High Court's "upholding of the merger order of NSEL with 63 moons passed by the MCA through an executive fiat is devastating for corporate India".

Terming it as a "Black Day" in the history of Corporate India, Chary said, this order has a serious impact on the limited liability concept that is the corner stone of the Indian corporate sector, by lifting the corporate veil by an executive order and without running a full evidence-led adjudication.

"This is a worrisome development for corporate India as the aftermath is likely to be chaotic, impacting investment flow into India by way of domestic investments, FDIs, FIIs and also the spirit of entrepreneurship, so vital for the country's economic development as investors will always be scared to invest in parent companies with subsidiary companies," he added.

Chary further said that even in the case of consensual merger of two government companies, the principle of natural justice, constitutional validity and stake holder voting (which are shareholders, creditors and employees) are taken into account; while in this case, where two private companies are involved, the rule book seems to have been thrown away by the MCA and shareholder compensation is also ignored.

"This will have a devastating impact on the Company Law and its foundations. This situation will result in a serious loss of confidence and of investment, and will raise questions as to whether we are really ruled by the company law and limited liability principles," he added.

On February 12, the Corporate Affairs ministry had directed the merger of scam-hit National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) with parent firm FTIL, in a first-ever order to merge the two private companies.

In the wake of Rs 5,600-crore payment crisis at NSEL, the ministry had sought merger of the bourse with FTIL as well as replacement of existing FTIL management.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Seventy seven residents of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) today travelled by the cross-LoC bus to meet their relatives on the two sides of the Line of Control, officials said.

Fourty eight PoK residents arrived here on the cross-LoC bus service via Poonch-Rawalakot in Jammu and Kashmir, a senior official said.

From India, 22 PoK residents returned on the LoC bus, while six freshers from India travelled on the LoC bus to PoK, he said.

The weekly bus service, popularly known as paigam-e-amun or message of peace, resumed on November 6 after remaining suspended for nearly four months owing to heavy Pakistani shelling along the LoC in Poonch district.

Billed as the biggest confidence building measure, the bus service was started on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad route in the Kashmir Valley in April 2005 and the Poonch-Rawalakot route in the Jammu region on June 20, 2006, to facilitate easier trade and travel between the divided families of Jammu and Kashmir and the PoK.

The trade between the two parts of Kashmir started in October 2008 on barter system.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Vice President Venkaiah Naidu today said the issue of including agriculture and culture in school curriculum would be taken up with ministers.

He was addressing the 19th convocation of Chandra Shekhar Azad agriculture and Technical University here.

"Both agriculture and culture should be part of the curriculum in schools...this issue will be taken up with the ministers and others," Naidu said.

He urged agri-scientists to help make the latest technique reach agriculture fields from laboratories.

Naidu stressed that people should never forget their mother-tongue and motherland and cited examples of head of governments of Russia, France, China who mostly speak their own language while visiting India, saying "it does not mean that they do not know English".

"I'm not against English but if we communicate in our mother-tongue it is always better," he said.

"Nationalism means respect to all. Namaskar is the culture of India, similarly Vande Matram means salute to the motherland," the vice president said.

He said if democracy meant independence it also meant complying with the rules and that difference of opinion was okay but the efforts to destabilise the country should never be allowed to succeed.

He emphasised on the importance of teachers, saying children these days are dependent on Google, which was a good source of information, but, he said, it could never take the place of teachers.

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Megastar Amitabh Bachchan paid his tributes to MP-veteran actor Vinod Khanna, saying the untimely death of a friend is a "painful" experience.

The 75-year-old star remembered Khanna in his blog, after he paid homage to him at last night's Star Screen Awards here.

"Remembering a friend that has left us before time is painful and most sad... Our condolences and prayers for his soul..." wrote Bachchan, alongside his picture giving a tribute to Khanna.

The duo had worked together in several films such as "Amar Akbar Anthony", "Here Pheri", "Parvarish", "Muqaddar Ka Sikandar", among others.

Khanna passed away on April 27 due to cancer at the age of 70.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Analysts today welcomed the appointment of Salil Parekh as the managing director and chief executive at country's second largest software exporter Infosys, which has been struggling with leadership issues.

They said Parekh, who joins from French outsourcing major Capgemini, has a challenging job ahead but his association with technology companies with a strong perception on the emerging area of digital technologies is a positive.

"Parekh is yet to give his colour to Infosys story from here on, we believe that Mr. Parekh looks like a sensible choice for the job," domestic brokerage Angel Broking said in a report.

It said his tenure at Capgemini, and with others having a strong digital perception will be "useful".

Its peer Motilal Oswal also pointed to his association with companies with a better digital perception, like Accenture, TCS and Cognizant as a plus.

"Parekh has a strong technology background and rich IT services experience, and is unlikely to feel out of place in his new role," it said, also welcoming the timely appointment.

The 53-year-old was appointed for a five-year term starting January 2 next year by a board that is now led by co-founder Nandan Nilekani.

The announcement was made on Saturday. Speaking of the possible challenges for Parekh, Motilal Oswal flagged the spare of senior level exits in the company in the wake of leadership appointments in the past.

"Under the scanner would be leaders who were internal candidates for the role," it said.

It also said that this is Parekh's biggest assignment as he comes from a services mainstay and led many small and big business units.

It is a transformative time for the industry and "nothing is given", it warned.

The company scrip closed the session 2.80 per cent up at Rs 985.30 a piece on the BSE, as against 0.11 per cent gains on the benchmark.

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Anti-Maoist posters condemning violence have surfaced in various parts of Odisha's Koraput district, in a significant setback to the ultra outfits that are observing People's Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) week.

The posters, signed by Koraput Yubak Jagaran Samiti, have appeared in the Maoist belts of Sunki, Pottangi, Ampabali, Padwa, Lamataput, a police official said.

The development comes days after the rebels made an appeal to the public to cooperate with them during their celebration week.

Charging the Maoists as agents of anti-development, the posters warned the left-wing ultras against killing people by falsely accusing them of being police informers.

"Don't be an obstacle to works of development in the tribal-dominated districts, including Koraput," a poster read.

Some of these posters show Maoists killing villagers, torching vehicles engaged in road construction work, and damaging buildings in remote areas, a police official said.

The anti-Maoist posters are a clear indication that people here are fed up with anti-development activities, said Koraput Superintendent of Police Kanwar Vishal Singh.

"People have realized that the Maoists do no good to the society. They simply make false promises of development, extort money and kill innocent people," Singh said.

They understand that Maoists have been trying to create an atmosphere of terror by unleashing violence and killing innocent locals, the SP said, adding that an inquiry has been launched to ascertain the identity of the people carrying out this anti-Maoist poster drive.

"Already on the back foot with their dwindling tribal support base in the district, the Maoists may try to launch some offensive to terrorise people during the PLGA week. That is why security forces have been put on high alert. The Maoists will not be allowed to regroup in the district," he added.

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Apollo Hospitals today said it has reached a milestone by performing over 100 robot assisted myomectomies.

Dr Rooma Sinha, Senior Consultant Gynaecologist, Minimal Access & Robotic Surgeon, Apollo Health City, accomplished this distinction of performing the "largest series of robot assisted myomectomies, in South Asia", Apollo Hospitals said in a statement.

Removal of symptomatic fibroids with uterine preservation in women who wish to conceive or otherwise retain their uterus is called myomectomy.

Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals, said," Robot assisted surgery enables greater reach, manoeuvrability, very little blood loss and minimises internal disruption. This technique will become the mainstream in due course.

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Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in northwest China might have been under the imperial rule of Chinese emperors much earlier than archaeologists previously thought, according to the recent excavation of a group of 3,000-year-old tombs, official media reported.

Experts from China's top archaeological research institutions, including the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Peking University and Nanjing University, have gathered in Ningxia's Pengyang County to join the excavation of the Yaoheyuan Ruins, where an area of 620,000 square meters has been excavated.

Ma Qiang, who leads the archaeological team, told state- run Xinhua agency today that all of the tombs had been looted prior to the start of the official excavation earlier this year.

However, the team has found the main tomb of a Marquis- level ruler 13 meters underground. Although no bronze burial vessels with inscriptions identifying the owner of the tomb have been located, they have found two jade mantis.

A similar jade mantis was unearthed from China's World Heritage listed Yinxu archaeological site near Anyang in central Henan Province, which was an ancient capital city in the late Shang Dynasty (1300 B.C. to 1046 B.C.)



"The jade item provides strong evidence of the tomb owner's relationship with the imperial governments during the period from the late Shang to the middle of Western Zhou (1046 B.C. - 771 B.C.) dynasties," said Zhang Tian'en from the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute.

Liu Xu, a professor at Peking University, said the discovery of the ruins suggests that Ningxia was part of the imperial empire from the late Shang Dynasty, about 1,000 years earlier than previously believed.

The team has only excavated one quarter of the area, and Liu said it should contain another 40 neighbouring tombs.

Experts believe the area was a Marquis fief in the northern frontier of the dynasties.

Two horse burial pits and a chariot burial pit were excavated near the Marquis tomb. The large horse pit bears remains of 12 horses. There were four carriages found in the chariot pit. Archaeologists expect to find more remains of horses under the chariot pit.

As well as the tombs, the team has also discovered ruins of a bronze casting workshop, moats and water drainage and road networks at the site, the Xinhua reported.

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The Delhi High Court was today informed by the Centre that it has directed internet majors, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo, to shut down in India the 'Blue Whale' challenge game which is linked to the deaths of several children worldwide.

The central government counsel told a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar that it has also issued an advisory in this regard.

The submission was made during the hearing of a petition seeking immediate directions to restrain internet firms from uploading any material pertaining to the challenge game, citing cases of suicide by children in India and abroad.

The court dismissed as withdrawn the petition after petitioner advocate Gurmeet Singh said his grievances have been addressed.

The bench was apprised of the Supreme Court's order directing the Chief Secretaries of all states to issue directions to make school children aware of the dangers posed by virtual dare games like Blue Whale Challenge, saying they must be made aware of the "beauty of life".

The apex court had asked the Union Ministry of Human Resources Development to issue a circular to make school-going children aware of the perils of such dangerous games.

The Centre's counsel informed the high court that it has issued directions to internet majors - Google, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Microsoft and Yahoo to ensure that all links of 'Blue Whale' and of similar games are immediately removed from their platforms.

The sudden popularity of the lethal online game, in which the final task requires the player to commit suicide, had forced the government to issue directions to the internet firms to remove its links.

Yahoo India had said, in its response, that its internal policies and terms of services, already explicitly direct the users and prohibit uploading of any content that is unlawful, harmful, especially any act that could harm a minor.

Google India, which is a party in the case, had earlier told the bench that it was not a necessary party and Google Inc should be impleaded.

Facebook India had also raised a similar plea in its application seeking its deletion from the array of parties, saying that services for users outside USA and Canada was provided by Facebook Ireland.

The Blue Whale Challenge is reportedly a suicide game in which the player is given certain tasks to complete over a period of 50 days and the final task leads him or her to commit suicide. The player is also asked to share photos after finishing each challenge.

More than six children across India in the age group of 12-19 years have taken their lives allegedly while playing this game within a span of two weeks, reports have said.

Deaths of teenagers have also been reported from other countries including Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina, Bulgaria, Chile and Italy, the PIL had said.

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The Babri Masjid Action Committee (BMAC) today called on people to observe the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the 16th-century mosque peacefully and hold special prayers for early resolution of the dispute.

BMAC convener Zafaryab Jilani said the anniversary should be observed peacefully like previous years and all memorandums addressed to the government be handed over to the district magistrate.

Jilani, also a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, asked Muslims to hold special prayers for early resolution of the issue, with all court cases being taken up on priority so that Muslims get the possession of the land.

Prayers should also be held for peace and harmony in the country, Jilani said in a statement.

He added that the memorandums - to be submitted to the district magistrate on December 6 - should also be sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, demanding that the court cases related to the matter be taken up at the earliest and strong action be initiated against anyone harming the communal atmosphere.

He said sit-ins could be held on the day but attention should be paid to ensure peace and amity.

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The BJP is all set to encash its UP civic poll performance in Gujarat by utilising newly elected mayors for campaigning in the poll-bound state.

The BJP has won 14 out of 16 mayoral seats in civic polls in UP and all the newly elected leaders will be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow to seek his blessings.

Thereafter, they will proceed to Gujarat for campaigning for the Assembly elections there on December 9 and 14.

"The newly elected mayors will meet the prime minister over tea tomorrow in Delhi. They are all devoted party workers and will be used where ever the party needs them," BJP state general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak told PTI.

Amethi Nagar Panchyat Chairperson Chandrama Devi and Jais Nagar Palika Parishad Mahesh Pratap will be among those who will be meeting Modi.

Though Congress did not field any candidate in Amethi, the victory of a BJP candidate there is still considered a major blow to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as it is his parliamentary constituency and considered a Congress bastion.

The Congress lost in Jais and Gauriganj where Nagar Palika polls were held. In Amethi and Musafirkhana, where Nagar Panchayat polls were held, the party had not fielded anyone.

With the BJP's extensive campaign in the local polls in UP paying off, the sweeping win is considered as a boost to the saffron party in the midst of the high-decibel campaign for the Gujarat elections.

Counting of votes in Gujarat will be taken up on December 18.

The UP civic elections were touted as the first litmus test of Yogi Adityanath after the BJP stormed to power in March.

The saffron surge routed the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, both of which drew a blank in mayoral polls.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who has been drafted as the key campaigner in Gujarat and went on a nearly 90-day whirlwind tour of the state, described it as a "historic win".

He attributed the victory to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision and BJP chief Amit Shah's able guidance and added that the BJP will now look forward to achieving the goal of one hundred per cent success in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

"The victory of party has sent positive message among the people who are already admirers of Narendra Modiji. There is a significant population of people from east UP in Gujarat," said BJP leader and state spokesman Shalabh Mani Tripathi, who is campaigning in Gujarat for the past one month.

"Yogiji is already a star campaigner and our newly elected mayors with their success stories will add to our ongoing campaigning here," Tripathi said.

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A Delhi court today granted bail to two directors of a private firm, arrested in a money- laundering case relating to the alleged cheating of several banks to the tune of Rs 2,240 crore.

Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma granted relief to the directors of Surya Vinayak Industries Limited -- Sanjay Jain and Rajiv Jain, saying no purpose will be served by keeping them in further custody.

The court noted that both the accused were already granted bail in a case filed by the CBI in the matter, based on which the ED has registered the present complaint.

While seeking bail for the accused persons, advocate Vijay Aggarwal said the Jains were not required for investigation any further and should be granted the relief.

He also cited a recent Supreme Court judgement striking down a stringent condition for securing bail in money laundering cases, besides the order by which the accused were granted bail in the CBI case.

Special public prosecutor Nitesh Rana had opposed the applications of the accused persons on behalf of the ED, saying they might hamper the ongoing investigation if the relief was granted.

He had said the quantum of proceeds of crime was very high and if granted bail, the accused could have divert the crime proceeds which are yet to be attached.

Some of the accused were yet to be arrested, the ED had said.

The accused were arrested on August 22, days after they were granted bail in a related CBI case.

The CBI had earlier told the court that the four accused used more than 100 shell companies for routing and diverting the bank funds. The firm and the shell companies had no genuine business transactions, it had alleged.

The company had allegedly diverted bank funds to the tune of Rs 2,240 crore, which resulted in loss to the consortium. Over Rs 300 crore of working capital was also allegedly moved to six companies set up abroad, the agency had said.

The case was registered by the CBI on the complaint of Punjab National Bank (PNB), alleging that the accused were using over 100 shell companies for routing and diverting the bank funds.

In its complaint, the PNB had alleged that the company had diverted bank funds to the tune of Rs 2,240 crore, which resulted in loss to the consortium. It had alleged that they had cheated 17 nationalised and four private banks. Later, ED also registered a case in this regard.

It was alleged that the 100 shell companies used by the accused for routing and diversion of bank funds had no genuine business transactions.

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The Indian film industry today mourned the death of actor Shashi Kapoor, as friends and admirers -- led by Lata Mangeshkar, Shyam Benegal and Aamir Khan -- recalled his passion for cinema, while paying homage to a man known for his easy charm and good nature.

The actor, aged 79, breathed his last at the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital here at 5.20pm.

Director Shyam Bengal described him as "god's good man" and a beautiful human being.

"He was god's good man and a beautiful human being beyond anything else," Benegal, who worked with the late actor in "Kalyug" and "Junoon", told PTI.

Melody queen Lata Mangeshkar, a close friend of the actor, mourned his death.

"I just received the that Shashi Kapoor ji has passed away. I am really saddened. He was a good human being. My heartfelt condolences," she posted on Twitter.

Actor Aamir paid his respects to the actor, saying he was not just a "great star and a passionate filmmaker", but also a "wonderful human being".

"His work has always given Indian audiences great joy. His contribution to Indian theatre was huge, Prithvi theatre is the favourite venue of both performers and audiences alike. His passing a sad day for all of us. My condolences to Sanjana, Kunal, Karan and everyone in the family. May his soul rest in piece," Aamir wrote on Twitter.

Yesteryear actor Simi Garewal said she was deeply saddened by the demise of her friend.

"Am deeply saddened by the passing away of my co-star Shashi Kapoor. The last of that generation of Kapoors gone. A gentleman and friend gone. An era gone... All that remains are his films and precious memories," she tweeted.

Veteran actor and his co-star in several films, Shabana Azmi, posted on Twitter a black-and-white picture of the actor, with the caption, "We will miss you ...".

Noted film critic Aseem Chhabra, who penned the authorised biography on Shashi, "Shashi Kapoor: The Householder, the Star", tweeted, "I am heartbroken! It was expected but the loss of #ShashiKapoor has left me feeling very low, very empty."



Actor Saira Banu remembered him as a "bubbly person".

"I remember him as a bubbly person. He was full of fun, full of jokes and at the same time he was really a smart person," Banu, legendary actor Dilip Kumar's wife, told PTI.

Veteran actor Moushumi Chatterjee remembered him as a great actor and jovial person.

"He was a gem of a person, a very nice human being. He was a very protective person. He was a very talented hero. I learnt a lot of things from him in the beginning of my career," she told PTI.

Leading Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar recalled the late actor's classic line from "Deewar" and said it inspired aspiring artistes.

"Innumerable Bollywood dreams came to life watching your iconic dialogue, 'Mere paas maa hai.' Your tremendous contribution to cinema will always be remembered," he tweeted.

Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt said Shashi Kapoor revolutionised Indian theatre.

"Shashi ji also contributed to the theatre movement hugely. Prithvi Theatre is like a 'shrine'... His contribution to the alternate cinema movement is also huge," he wrote.

Director Hansal Mehta tweeted, "RIP Shashi Kapoor. The charming man, the brave producer, the lovely actor, my neighbour is no more."



Actor Ajay Devgn wrote, "You won't be forgotten. Rest in peace #ShashiKapoor ji." While Sanjay Dutt said the veteran actor would never be forgotten by his fans.

"Shashi Kapoor ji you will be missed always," the actor tweeted.

Actor-writer Vinay Pathak posted one of the late star's photographs on social media and described him as his personal "Prithvi Theatre genie".

"Nothing but diligence beauty and innocence... He was my Prithvi Theatre Genie! The stage is silent Truly a sad day!" he posted.

Actor Boman Irani tweeted, "Handsome is that handsome does ... He was. He did. He lives on."



Filmmaker Subhash Ghai said working with Shashi Kapoor was a learning experience for him.

"I worked with him in two movies. 'Gautam Govinda' and 'Krodhi' in late '70s. And learnt a lot from him like work ethics, discipline, time planning, compassion and above all his love and passion for good cinema and theatre development," Ghai tweeted.

Actor Shekhar Suman, who made his Bollywood debut with "Utsav", produced by Shashi Kapoor, said he was grateful to the late actor for giving him his first break.

"Saddest day of my life... The man to whom I owe my entire career. I am grateful to him for all my professional achievements, for giving me my first and the biggest break as a lead in 'Utsav' opposite Rekha... I'm heartbroken," Suman said in a statement.

A host of artistes paid homage to the late actor at his residence today. Among them were the Bachchans -- Amitabh, Aishwarya and Abhishek -- Rani Mukerji, Kajol, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, Boney Kapoor and Karisma Kapoor.

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A powerful bomb blast at a poll rally of the ruling Nepali Congress today injured 11 people including the former health minister here, police said, days ahead of the last phase of provincial and parliamentary polls.

The police said that 30 suspects have been arrested in connection with the incident which occurred at Chapali area in Budhanilakantha municipality, 10 kms north of Kathmandu.

The injured including Nepali Congress candidate Gagan Thapa were rushed to the Tribhuvan University Teaching hospital here.

Thapa, a former health minister who is contesting election from the Kathmandu constituency Number 4, has been discharged from the hospital.

The condition of one of the injured people is said to be critical.

Election campaign for Thursday's second phase of parliamentary and provincial elections will end at mid-night tomorrow.

The blast occurred three days before the second phase of the provincial and parliamentary elections on December 7.

Around 65 per cent votes were cast on November 26 in the historic first round of elections that many hope will bring the much-needed political stability to the Himalayan nation.

Of the total 15.4 million voters, 3.19 million were eligible to cast their votes in the first phase while the rest will exercise their franchise during the second phase.

The elections are being seen as the final step in Nepal's transition to a federal democracy following a decade-long civil war till 2006 that claimed more than 16,000 lives.

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A Spanish judge today ordered that four prominent members of the Catalan independence movement should remain in custody, including the No 2 of the ousted regional government, who will campaign in a polarized regional election from a jail near Madrid.

The judge set 100,000-euro (USD 118,000) bail for the six other Catalan politicians who had been jailed in early November, and ordered their passports to be confiscated.

The six were expected to leave jails near Madrid later in the day.

Meanwhile, Catalan ex-president Carles Puigdemont and four of his separatist allies heard that they will be judged on whether they can be extradited from Belgium to Spain on December 14, exactly one week before the election.

The group is refusing to return to Spain to face rebellion, sedition and embezzlement charges that can be punished with decades in prison under the country's criminal laws.

Puigdemont's defense lawyer, Paul Bekaert, insisted that the Spanish charges weren't punishable in Belgium and thus there were no grounds for extradition.

"We also highlighted the danger for the impediment of their human rights in Spain," he said.

Whatever decision is made on December 14, two appeals will be possible and a final ruling could well come only after the December 21 election called by Spain's central authorities, in which Puigdemont is leading his pro- independence party's campaign.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative Spanish government disbanded Puigdemont's Cabinet when it took control of Catalonia shortly after separatist regional lawmakers passed a declaration of independence in late October.

The early election is an attempt to find a democratic way out of the nation's worst crisis in nearly four decades. But the vote is shaping up as a plebiscite between those for and against independence, with polls predicting a close race between the two camps.

Adding to the uncertainty, a Supreme Court judge decided today to uphold the preventive jailing of ousted Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras, who tops the ticket for the left- republican ERC party.

ERC was part of the former Catalan ruling coalition with Puigdemont's conservative party and is leading the polls before the new election.

Campaigning officially begins at midnight today, and in the hours before that moment Catalan pro-independence groups hope to stage protests in front of town halls across the region against the Supreme Court's decision on the detained separatists.

Today's developments once again exposed deep splits among Catalans. Pilar Gonzalez, a 76-year-old housewife walking her dog in Barcelona, said the jailed Catalan political leaders were "political prisoners."



But 53-year-old contractor Jose Luis Aguirre said the attempt to unilaterally break away from Spain "is an act that cannot be allowed."



Junqueras and the other jailed politicians pledged last week to give up on efforts to seek unilateral independence for the wealthy northeastern region, in the hope of being freed. But judge Pablo Llarena said in his decision today that it remains to be seen if Junqueras' pledge to abide by Spanish law is "truthful and real.

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Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific said today that one of its air crews spotted what they believed to be the missile fired by North Korea last week, as they flew between the southern Chinese city and the United States.

The North fired an intercontinental ballistic missile believed capable of hitting the US mainland last Wednesday.

A statement from Cathay said a flight crew had that day sighted "what is suspected to be the re-entry of the recent DPRK test missile".

Cathay did not give the location of the flight at the time of the sighting, but said the crew of the CX893 flight between Hong Kong and San Francisco had notified Japanese air traffic control "according to procedures".

Operations had continued as normal, the statement added.

Pyongyang said the missile reached an altitude of 4,475 kilometres and splashed down 950 kilometres from its launch site.

It also claimed the Hwasong-15 missile fired Wednesday can be tipped with a "super-large heavy warhead" capable of striking the whole US mainland.

Cathay said there is no current plan to change air routes, describing the flight as being "far from the event location".

"We remain alert and review the situation as it evolves," the statement said.

In a message shared with staff, Cathay general manager Mark Hoey said the crew had described seeing the missile "blow up and fall apart", the South China Morning Post reported.

Hoey said that another plane, CX096 which is a freight service between Hong Kong and Mexico, was only a few hundred miles away and could have been closer than the San Francisco flight, according to the report.

Analysts remain unconvinced that North Korea has mastered the advanced technology to allow the rocket to survive re- entry to the Earth's atmosphere.

The months-long nuclear standoff between North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un and US president Donald Trump has fuelled concerns of another conflict, after the 1950-53 Korean War left much of the peninsula in ruin.
A deputy commissioner of police and nine other Haryana Police officers have been booked by the CBI for allegedly abetting the suicide of an assistant sub- inspector.

Mahavir Singh allegedly ended his life by consuming poison in April last year and had left a six-page suicide note accusing a number of officials of harassing him, the agency's FIR said.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court in September this year ordered a CBI probe into the matter.

The CBI in its FIR has named then DCP Traffic Vinod Kaushik, Dy SPs Satya and Atma Ram (who was an inspector at the time of suicide) Inspector/SHOs Jagdish Prasad, Hardip Huda, Babu Lal, head constable Kulwant, an accountant of Gurugram Police Pawan, ASI Vikas and his brother Vijay.

Mahavir Singh's window, Chanchal Devi, had alleged that she was being pressured to drop the case and demanded a CBI probe, which was granted by the high court in September.

She had sought an investigation by the central agency in the case related to abetment to suicide of her husband, registered on May 2, 2016 at Ballabhgarh police station in Faridabad.

She referred to a suicide note left by her husband in which he had levelled specific allegations against several police officials, including high-ranking cops.

Chanchal Devi had said Mahavir Singh was posted at Gurgaon City police station and allegedly committed suicide by consuming poison in his village on April 28, 2016.

The family found his suicide note in an almirah next day in which he had alleged harassment and extortion threats by several police officials to save him from disciplinary action.

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Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today began his three-day tour of the Republic of Korea, urging its industrialists to make the state their second home and invest big in it.

The Chief Minister held meetings with a host of Korean industrialists and told them that AP would like to make rapid strides, inspired by South Korea's success in manufacturing and technology.

Explaining what all his government had been doing to propel growth and prosperity in the sunrise state in the aftermath of bifurcation, Naidu made a strong pitch for Korean investments in different sectors like automobiles, power, textiles, food processing, electronics, etc, an official release issued here said.

"Indias Look East Policy will bear fruit only from our state," Naidu told the Koreans.

He also invited them to attend the Partnership Summit to be held in Visakhapatnam in February, it added.

Showcasing Kia Motors -- which is now setting up its car manufacturing plant in Anantapuramu district of AP -- as a mascot, the Chief Minister asked the South Korean business houses to explore possibilities of investing in AP as both of them shared many similarities like population and (geographical) size, said the release.

A group of 37 South Korean industries already signed Letters of Intent to invest a sum of Rs 3,000 crore in the state, he said.

Many ancillary units of Kia Motors confirmed a total investment of Rs 4,995 crore and provision of employment to 7,171 persons, the Chief Minister added.

A Korean township would soon be developed in the state, he said.

Naidu requested Hwang Chul-joo, CEO of Jusung Engineering that has 3.5 GW of solar power plants in different states of India, to set up a research and development facility in AP.

Jusung is currently developing the next-generation OLED bulbs and also has plans to set up a further one GW of solar power generating plants in India.

The Chief Minister, who is accompanied by Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, Industries Minister N Amarnath Reddy and senior officials, visited the automobile manufacturing plant of Kia Motors.

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Senior Congress leader today accused the of playing communal for terming Gujarat leaders Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani as "HAJ" and said there was no reason why the youths of the state do not accept Congress after Punjab.

In a series of tweets, Chidambaram said Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti leader Hardik Patel, OBC leader Alpesh Thakore and SC/ST leader Jignesh Mevani were articulating the demands of Gujarati youths for jobs and development and their campaign should not be "trivialised".

"Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mevani are sons of the soil of Gujarat. To call them HAJ is playing the communal card and divisive politics," he tweeted.

Chidambaram's comments come after a poster was released on the social media showing upcoming Gujarat elections as a face-off between "HAJ" and "RAM", which stands for (Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay) Rupani, chief Amit (Shah) and (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi.

The former union finance and the home minister said large sections of the youth of Gujarat have rallied behind Patel, Thakor and Mevani and they have not accepted the .

"Youth of Punjab accepted Congress. So did the youth of Goa and Manipur before the elections were stolen by the BJP. Why would the youth of Gujarat not accept Congress?" he asked.

The two-phase assembly elections for the 182-seat Gujarat assembly will be held on December 9 and December 14. The counting of votes will take place on December 18.
The parents of students of the G D Birla Centre for Education organised protests for the fourth consecutive day today against the sexual assault of a four- year-old girl allegedly by two teachers of the institution.

The demonstrators of the Guardians Forum said they would participate in a meeting with the school management committee, to be held in the school premises tomorrow, as demanded by them.

The meeting would be attended by the school managing committee, representatives of the forum, senior police officers and officials of the state education department to resolve the impasse and ensure fool-proof security for their wards, a forum member told PTI.

The forum had turned down a request by the Kolkata Police yesterday to hold the meeting at an auditorium of the force. It stuck to its demand that the school management, including the chairman, come to the school for discussions.

"We are hopeful of a breakthrough as the school authorities have met two of our principal demands - sacking of the two accused teachers and agreeing to hold talks with the Guardians Forum on the main issue of fullproof safety of our children," a Guardians Forum member told PTI.

The forum also demanded that the authorities withdraw the notice of indefinite suspension of classes as the gaurdians are not against the functioning of the school, he said.

Asked about the demand for arrest of the school principal Sharmila Nath for allegedly suppressing facts about the alleged sexual assault, the member said, "We are happy that she has been summoned to the Kolkata Police Headquarters at Lalbazar. We have full faith in the law enforcing authorities and hope the two arrested physical training teachers will be punished in accordance with law."



Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee condemned the alleged sexual abuse of the child. "It was an unfortunate incident. We all condemn this."



Banerjee told reporters here during the day that action should be taken against the perpetrators.

"I don't think that for a particular teacher or for two or three teachers, everybody should be blamed. All teachers are not bad. But there are some bad people. We have to take action against them," she said.

BJP Rajya Sabha MP Roopa Ganguly visited the demonstration site and said, "I have come here as a mother to speak to the mothers of children. I am also in favour of action against the principal and immediate reopening of the school."



As a section of guardians said they did not want to politicise the issue and the forum would continue the protest without any political backing, Ganguly said: "I am not here to do politics. I am here as a resident of the city - a worried citizen. A woman."



To a question by the media present at the spot, Ganguly said "I will raise the incident in parliament."



The West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WBCPCR) sought the medical report of the child from the police. It also sought the principal's arrest in the incident and said it would initiate legal action against the school management for shutting it for an indefinite period.

WBCPCR chairperson Ananya Chatterjee Chakraborti, who visited the school this morning, told PTI that Sharmila Nath could have dealt with the matter in a "sensible manner".

"On the contrary the principal denied the incident first. Under the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act, she is also an offender. The arrest of the principal is much needed. I have spoken to the Kolkata Police commissioner and told him that she must be arrested," Chakraborti said.

The school authorities in a notice yesterday informed "parents and all concerned" that the junior and senior sections of the school would be closed from today.

In another notice, it said the two physical training instructors who were arrested on Saturday for allegedly assaulting the child have been "removed from service".

The school authorities also promised to extend full cooperation to the police in the investigations.

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China today declined to directly comment on the launch of the strategic Chabahar port in Iran but hoped that the project, which enables India to directly trade with Afghanistan besides rivalling Pakistan's Gwadar port, is conducive to regional peace and stability.

The first phase of the Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman coast was inaugurated yesterday by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, opening a new strategic route connecting Iran, India and Afghanistan while bypassing Pakistan, and reflecting growing convergence of interests among the three countries.

The port in Iran's Sistan-Balochistan province on the energy-rich nation's southern coast is easily accessible from India's western coast and is increasingly seen as a counter to Pakistan's Gwadar port, which is being developed with Chinese investment and is located around 80 kms from Chabahar.

Asked how China views the launch of the project, considering that China is investing heavily in Gwadar as part of the USD 50 billion ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang declined to comment on it directly.

"As for the (Chabahar) port, I want to give you a principled answer. We welcome the development of friendly relations between the regional countries and conduct mutually beneficial cooperation," he said.

"We hope the relevant cooperation can be conducive to maintaining regional peace and promoting regional stability and prosperity," he said.

The Chabahar port is being considered a gateway to golden opportunities for trade by India, Iran and Afghanistan with central Asian countries besides ramping up trade among the three countries in the wake of Pakistan denying transit access to New Delhi.

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President Donald Trump will soon unveil a new national security strategy, his top aide has said as he alleged that revisionist powers like Russia and China are subverting the post-World War-II political and economic order to advance their own interest at the expense of America and its allies.

"President Trump will soon unveil the details of his new strategy," National Security Advisor Lt Gen H R McMaster told a gathering of American national security experts over the weekend at the Regan National Defence Forum in California.

The new strategy will focus on protecting homeland, advancing American prosperity, preserving peace through strength, and finally enhancing American influence.

McMaster said the US today is at a crossroads similar to the period of ex-president Ronald Reagan.

"Revisionist powers Russia and China are subverting the post World War II political economic and security orders to advance their own interests at our expense and at the expense of our allies," he said.

"The rogue regimes of Iran and North Korea are violating the sovereignty of their neighbours, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and exporting terror to other nations, jihadist terrorist organizations such as ISIS threaten all civilised people in every corner of the world," McMaster said.

These security challenges require a dramatic rethinking of American foreign policy from previous decades, he said.

America, under President Trump, is reclaiming the strategic confidence necessary for implementing this strategy through understanding in four areas, he said.

"First the values that define our nation. Second the full instruments of our power. Third the threats facing our nation and fourth the dynamic and competitive nature of our security environment," he said.

McMaster said Trump and his national security team have clearly described the threats that emanate from revisionist powers, rogue regimes and jihadist terrorist organisations.

"The administration's approach of principled realism also adopts a realistic view of our security environment. For this reason we do not base national security decisions on a rigid ideology but instead on our core national interests and clearly defined objectives derived from those interests," he said.

"Some threats are more obvious than others. On the recent Asia trip the president spoke out forcefully against unfair trade and economic policies which have disadvantaged American workers and companies. For too long Washington turned a blind eye to cheating and exploitive practices abroad," he said.

"We in large measure vacated the competitive economic space and the American people pay the price. We've also been clear eyed about the more obvious threat from North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development," he said, adding the president is committed to the total denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

"The error of strategic patience is over. We will not repeat failed efforts of the past," he said.

"We want all people to have the opportunity to rise. We will compete but competition must be fair. Our economic relationships will respect our partners sovereignty over their economic destinies while ensuring that American workers and American companies are not unfairly disadvantaged," he said.

McMaster said Trumps new vision for a free and open ended Pacific imagines a community of nations that are strong, independent and thriving and a future of many dreams for the people of the region.

Confronting the security challenges of today will require US to reclaim its strategic confidence, he added.

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Coffee exports from India, Asia's third-largest producer and exporter, rose by 8.08 per cent to 3.61 lakh tonnes in January-November 2017 compared to 3.34 lakh tonnes in the same period of last year, according to the Coffee Board.

Italy, Germany and Russia were the major export destinations for Indian coffee during the period. India ships both robusta and Arabica varieties, besides instant coffee.

Robusta coffee exports rose by 10.80 per cent to 2,11,442 tonnes in January-November 2017 from 1,90,828 tonnes in the year-ago, the board dats showed.

Export of Arabica coffee however declined by 10.81 per cent to 44,084 tonnes from 49,431 tonnes in the said period.

The outbound shipment of instant coffee increased sharply by 86 per cent to 47,734 tonnes in January-November this year from 22,966 tonnes in the same period last year, the data showed.

Of the total exports, India exported 73,705 tonnes to Italy, 38,671 tonnes to Germany and 26,319 tonnes to Russia during the period under review.

Some of the major exporting companies include CCL Products India, Tata Coffee, Olam Agro and Coffee Day Global Ltd.

Coffee production had declined by 10.34 per cent to 3.12 lakh tonnes in 2016-17 crop year (October-September).

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Taking a jibe at Rahul Gandhi hours after he filed his nomination papers for the president's post, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today said the party had become a "burden" which would disappear on its own after the elevation.

The chief minister also said the move in the would have no impact on Assembly elections in Gujarat.

"Hamey lagta hai ki party ek bojh ban chuki hai. Rahul Gandhi ke (adhyaksh) banney se yeh bojh apney aap samapt ho jayega ... (I feel the Congress party has become a burden. After Rahul Gandhi's elevation, this burden will end on its own)," Adityanath told reporters here.

The elevation would not affect the BJP in the ongoing Gujarat polls, he stressed.

"It will have no impact on the BJP's poll prospects in Gujarat, where there is no doubt about our victory," he said.

Gandhi, accompanied by a host of senior party leaders, including former prime minister Manmohan Singh, filed his papers for the party president's post earlier today.

The 47-year-old Gandhi scion is likely to emerge as the lone candidate in the fray, clearing the decks for his elevation and succeeding his mother, who held the post for 19 successive years.

"Rahulji has been the darling of the Congress...," Manmohan Singh told reporters at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in New Delhi.

The last date for withdrawal of candidature is December 11. Polling, if needed, will be held on December 16.
The Congress today released its first list of candidates for the municipal corporation elections in Punjab, choosing to go with its "one family, one ticket" formula with the exception of sitting councillors.

The party, which announced names of 31 candidates for the Patiala Municipal Corporation, has decided to field all the sitting councillors, while taking a tough stand against rebels and deserters, a party spokesperson said in a release.

These decisions were taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh.

Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Sunil Jakhar was present at the meeting held in New Delhi along with AICC secretary and Punjab in-charge Asha Kumari and AICC secretary Harish Chaudhary, the release said.

The meeting decided that those who left the party in 2012 and 2014 will not be accommodated in the matter of ticket allocation for the municipal corporation polls.

However, those who contested and lost the municipal corporation elections earlier but remained steadfast in their loyalty to the party, would be considered for nomination, the spokesperson said.

In another decision aimed at rewarding loyalty and boosting party morale, it was decided to give preference to original Congress members over those who have joined from other parties, according to a party spokesperson.

There was no change in the party's policy with regard to ticket allocation from the one followed during the Punjab Assembly polls, the spokesperson said.

The success of the Congress in the state elections in February had shown that the merit and winnabilty were the right considerations in choosing the best candidates.

Elections to three municipal corporations -- Amritsar, Ludhiana, Patiala, and 32 municipal councils and nagar panchayats in Punjab will be held on December 17.

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Senior BJP leader and Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today claimed that ordinary Congress workers are feeling humiliated and sad with party vice president Rahul Gandhi filing nomination papers for the post of party president.

Sarma, one of the most prominent leaders of the Congress in Assam before joining the saffron party, also said that despite belonging to the 21st century, Gandhi missed a historical opportunity to free the Congress from dynastic and feudal politics.

"By getting ready to file nomination for Congress President in what's a terribly opaque process @OfficeOfRG has humiliated ordinary workers. #ShameYouDynast," Sarma, also the state finance minister, said in his twitter handle.

The 47-year-old Gandhi scion is likely to emerge as the lone candidate in the fray, clearing the decks for his elevation to the party's top post, succeeding his mother, who has held the post for 19 years in a row.

"Those who dedicated their sweat & blood for @INCIndia are today silently sobbing on such treacherous lack of transparency in party. God bless @OfficeOfRG," said another tweet of Sarma.

The Congress, however, hit back saying Sarma does not know the history of the party.

In the long history of the party, only a few Congress presidents were from the Gandhi family, senior Congress leader Pradyut Bordoloi said.

On Rahul Gandhi's nomination, he said the process started about eight months back and it adhered to all democratic norms.

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Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday criticised the election strategy adopted by the Congress in Gujarat and said the party was "veering towards extremism".

The talks of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi being a "janeu-dhari Hindu" (one who wears the sacred thread) and the deliberate sidelining of top leaders like Ahmed Patel indicate a worrying trend in the grand old party, Kumar told reporters on the sidelines of his weekly 'Lok Samvad' programme.

"These trends show the party is veering towards extremism in its quest for votes. This is something it has always accused the BJP of," he said.

The Congress has claimed that Gandhi was a "janeu-dhari Hindu" after a row erupted over the alleged listing of his name in the register for non-Hindus at the Somnath temple in Gujarat.

Kumar took exception to the use of the term "janeu- dhari", saying the sacred thread was a mark of "caste-based inequality, which socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan had once refused to wear and had also asked his followers to discard.

"By proudly flaunting janeu, the party has unwittingly alienated a large section of the society which has been at the receiving end of the rigid caste hierarchy," Kumar alleged.

Asked about Gandhi's nomination for the party president's post, he said: "The person to be elected for the top position in the Congress is predetermined. People may aspire to get a place in the lower rungs but can never assume the leadership of the party."



To a query about an audiotape that surfaced with a purported conversation between two senior Congress party leaders over Gandhi's elevation, Kumar said, "We do not believe in taking advantage of a crisis inside another party. It was their 'sanskar' (values) to have done so when we were going through a rough patch."



Kumar's remark was in reference to the Congress having come out in support of rebel JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav after the Grand Alliance split in Bihar.

The JD(U) president reiterated that he saw the saffron party in a very strong position in Gujarat and that the people there were proud of the fact that a son of their soil, Narendra Modi, has become the prime minister of India.
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today requested Union Minister Nitin Gadkari to direct NHAI to immediately take up construction of a bridge over Brahmani river near Rourkela or allow the state government to build it with its own resources.

"I request your personal intervention to direct the NHAI for immediately taking up the construction of the 2nd bridge over Brahmani river near Panposh on NH-143 or alternatively, allow the state government to construct the six-lane bridge as a stand-alone project in the larger public interest," Patnaik wrote to the Union Road Transport, Highways Minister.

Letter to Gadkari was written barely hours after Patnaik assured a delegation that he would take up the matter with the Central government.

"If they (Centre) are not serious about the project, the state government will construct the bridge from its own resources," Patnaik had told the delegation led by senior BJD leader and MLA Mangala Kissan.

Patnaik in the letter stated that the unusual delay in commencement of the bridge work may result in a "disaster". The chief minister mentioned that he had earlier written two letters to Gadkari for starting the bridge work as a large number of people in the region depend on it.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during a public meeting in Rourkela in April 2015, had announced a second bridge over the river but work has not begun in that direction so far.

Hundreds of BJD youth activists staged a demonstration in Rourkela yesterday to protest against the delay in the project.

BJD leader and former minister Sarada Nayak pointed out that Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had also laid the foundation stone for the project during his visit to the state in July and assured the people that work would begin within 15 days.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the construction of a second bridge in 2015 and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari laid the foundation stone in July this year. But four months have passed and work has not started yet," Nayak said.

Echoing similar sentiments, BJP MLA Dilip Ray, who led several agitations in the past two years for the cause, also expressed his displeasure over the matter today.

"The bridge was announced by the PM two years ago but the National Highway Authority of India has shown no interest in implementing the project," he said.

Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram, however, called Patnaik's announcement a "political gimmick" and said the government was serious about the project.

"Patnaik's announcement about the bridge today was nothing more than a political gimmick. The Union government has already initiated paperwork on the project and construction will begin soon," he added.

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The Madras High Court today directed the state registration department to correct discrepancies in it's website at the earliest without delay.

Disposing a PIL petition by one Sankaralingam, Justices K K Sasidharan and G R Swaminathan also ruled that registration authorities cannot decline to register documents offline since online registration was only in the pilot stage.

They also could not refuse to receive documents for registration by insisting that the registrants pay stamp duty only as per guideline valuation in the website.

The Judges said the statutory function of index creation must be performed only by the sub-registrar and could not be prepared by document writers or registrants.

The Petitioner sought a direction to correct all 'discrepancies' in the website of the registration department, especially in index matters and guideline values.

The judges said introduction and application of technology was imperative and the registration department must embrace e-governance totally though there may be initial glitches.

The registration department should respond with speed and alacrity with issues brought to the notice of the officials for remedial actions, the court said.

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The Coast Guard has rescued 183 fishermen stranded in choppy waters off the coasts of Kerala and Lakshadweep due to Cyclone Ockhi, a top official said here today.

"Till yesterday, 164 fishermen were rescued. Today, 19 more were rescued," Inspector General K R Nautiyal, Commander, Coast Guard Region (West) told reporters.

"The Coast Guard Region (West) at Mumbai is assessing the impact of cyclone in the sea area. It has tasked ships and aircraft for providing critical assistance to the fishermen at sea," he said.

According to Nautiyal, the Coast Guard District Headquarters at Cochin and Kavaratti were directed to provide necessary assistance to the stranded fishermen and shepherd them to shelter areas.

"The Coast Guard tasked 12 ships and deployed three Dornier aircraft and two helicopters for sea-air coordinated search and rescue assistance to the stranded fishermen at sea," the officer said.

"Operations are continuing and deployment of ships and aircraft continues in the affected area to search for those stranded," he added.

During the ongoing search operations, the Coast Guard personnel are braving extremely unfavourable sea conditions, he said.

As per the officer, the Coast Guard stations along the West coast were interacting with fishermen and assisting them with first aid and food as required.

Fishermen were being advised to remain inside harbour and not to venture out at sea till the system dissipates, he said.

Data of fishermen in shelter areas was being shared with the state authorities concerned to convey the same to the next of kin.

He said the Coast Guard Region (West) was disseminating advisories to authorities in Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Daman and Diu in the likelihood of the cyclone re-curving and making landfall along south Gujarat coast near Gulf of Khambat.

"Oil handling agencies in offshore development areas have also been advised to initiate cyclone contingency measures and initiate necessary evacuation of personnel from oil platforms well in time," he signed off.

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After leaving a trail of destruction in the southern coast, Cyclone Ockhi is expected to make landfall in coastal Gujarat tomorrow midnight with squally winds, which may cause heavy rains in several parts of the state during the next two days.

An India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast said, "The severe cyclonic storm Ockhi is now laid centred about 850 km south-southwest of Surat and is likely to cross south Gujarat and adjoining North Maharashtra coasts near Surat as a deep depression by mid-night of December 5."



Following the IMD prediction, Gujarat Chief Secretary J N Singh today took stock of the administrative preparedness to deal with any eventuality.

Revenue department's Principal Secretary Pankaj Kumar told reporters in Gandhinagar that the authorities concerned in the coastal region of the state have been directed to take all precautionary measures.

Two National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams each have been deployed at Surat, Navsari, and Rajkot.

The officer said the Army, Navy, and the Border Security Force (BSF) have been alerted in the view of the cyclone's landfall.

"According to the IMD forecast, Cyclone Ockhi would enter south Gujarat tomorrow midnight. This will the impact coastal areas from Umargam (in south Gujarat) till Gir Somnath district (in Saurashtra).

"We have directed local civic officials as well as the collectors to remain prepared and take all necessary steps for the safety of the people," Kumar said.

The principal secretary said collectors of the coastal districts have been asked to ensure that fishermen do not venture into the sea as it will remain rough.

"Those fishermen who have already gone into sea should return now. Many such fishermen are already on their way to the coast," he said.

Kumar said according to the IMD forecast, wind velocity would remain between 50 KMPH to 70 KMPH when the cyclone would make landfall.

In view of the adverse weather conditions, the RoRo ferry service between Ghogha and Dahej across the Gulf of Khambhat has been suspended. The service, inaugurated recently by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, would resume on December 6 subject if the weather conditions are suitable.

According to the IMD, Gujarat is very likely to experience a wet spell during the next four days.

"Heavy rainfall might occur in Valsad, Surat, Navsari, Bharuch, Dang, Tapi, Amreli, Gir-Sonath and Bhavnagar districts on December 5," it said.

In a port warning issued here, the MeT Centre said, "Sea condition would be rough. Fishermen (have been) advised not to venture into the sea till December 6. Hoist Distant Warning Signal Number 2 at all ports".

According to an official release, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani held an urgent meeting with senior officials to take stock of the preparedness.

During the meeting, he was apprised that as many as 50 boats from Kerala had drifted towards Gujarat's Veraval coast due to the cyclone, it said.

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A 43-year-old Defence Security Corps personnel has been arrested for accidentally firing at three persons and killing one of them in northeast Delhi's Welcome area during a marriage ceremony, police said today.

On November 30, three persons were injured by a gunshot fired from a double-barrelled gun on 100 Foota Road, Durga Puri Chowk, Shiv Mandir.

All the injured men were admitted to GTB Hospital, where two men - Shah Alam and Sharik - were undergoing treatment. The third man, Bhanu Pratap (24), was declared brought dead by doctors.

Pratap worked as a motor mechanic at an automobile repair shop and the two injured persons had come to the shop to get their vehicles repaired.

The police said witnesses told them that a gunshot was fired from a car having an Army logo on both the number plates. The police scanned the footages of the CCTV cameras installed in the area and a dark grey coloured car having the Army logo on both the number plates was seen in Kabir Nagar.

They found that the vehicle was registered in the name of Rajesh Kumar, who had come to Delhi for a relative's wedding.

The police raided Kumar's house in Dastura in Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh, but he was not found there and his house was locked.

He was susbequently arrested on December 2 from Delhi.

He told the police that he had joined the Indian Army, and during his posting in Jammu and Kashmir he had procured an arms license from Doda district.

In 2006, he left Army and was recruited in the Defence Security Corps - which provides security to defence installations of the three services - and at present he is posted at Jat Regiment, Meerut Cantonment as a constable.

He told the police that he had come to Delhi to attend the wedding of a relative. He said he accidentally fired from the gun while putting the gun into its cover, AK Singla, Deputy commissioner of police (Northeast).

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Aimed at abolishing contractual system of employment in certain sectors in the national capital, the newly-constituted Delhi Advisory Contract Labour Board has called a meeting on December 20 to discuss the issue.

Delhi Labour Minister Gopal Rai said the board, which had been formed by the Delhi government on November 14, will address issues related to contractual labours in the national capital.

In his Independence Day speech, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had promised that his government would abolish the contractual system in certain sectors, like sanitation.

Delhi Advisory Contract Labour Board is a 13-member tripartite statutory board with the labour minister as its chairman.

Besides two MLAs, it has representatives from both employers and employees' unions.

"The board has called its meeting on December 20 to discuss various agendas including abolition of contractual system in permanent nature works. It will also ensure equal wages for equal work for contractual employees," Rai said at a press conference here.

He said "large-scale" violations have been reported to the labour department by contractual workers from time to time related to non payment of notified minimum wages, violation of provident fund, employees' state insurance and payment of bonus among others.

In August this year, Kejriwal had said the AAP government would abolish contractual system in areas that require regular employment throughout the year.

"For example, sanitation workers are required to do their job through the year. We will abolish contractual system in regular jobs. However, we will not change this system in areas of temporary employment," the chief minister had said.

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For police assistance, people in Punjab can dial a common emergency number '112', which was launched today on trial basis under the Centre's nationwide emergency response system (NERS) project.

Designed on the lines of 911 operational in the USA, the NERS was conceptualised in the aftermath of the 2012 gang-rape of the woman in a bus in Delhi.

Under the project, '112' will be the single common number for help during emergency situations. All other emergency numbers like 100 for police, 101 for fire brigade, 102 for ambulance will be replaced by the common number.

A centre is being set up in Mohali for receiving calls from people in distress and the state police is expecting to officially begin the emergency number service in the next couple of months.

"The common emergency number '112' is under trial in Punjab and people can dial this number instead of '100' for police help," Inspector General of Punjab Police G S Dhillon, who is handling the project, said.

"We want people to dial this number so that if there is any bottleneck in the system that can be removed," the officer said, adding, "We have done mapping for '112' as per the Government of India instructions."



A majority of the people were still unaware of he emergency number '112'. The common emergency number will be launched in the next six months, he said.

"We will initially have 60 call receivers with a capacity of handling one lakh emergency calls per day," Dhillon said, adding the Centre had provided Rs 9.28 crore for this project.

Currently, Punjab police receive about 50,000 emergency calls per day on the '100' number, out of which just about one and half per cent cases are actionable.

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An inebriated Kolkata-bound passenger today created a ruckus at the domestic airport after being refused boarding pass for a flight as he had tickets of a different airline, sources said.

He also allegedly hit a senior Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) official, who tried to intervene in the matter.

Airport authorities said the drunk man got into a heated argument with an Air India official, who refused to give him a boarding pass as he had a ticket of a different airline.

The man also allegedly assaulted a senior CISF official, who tried to pacify him.

As the passenger was found to be drunk, he was detained by the airport police and his relatives were informed, authorities said.

Police were yet to file a case against him, they added.

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An encounter broke out in Qazigund area of south Kashmir today after militants opened fire on an Army vehicle, resulting in injuries to a soldier.

Militants opened fire on an Army convoy, which was on its way to Srinagar, at Qazigund, resulting in injuries to one jawan, a police official said.

He said the security forces cordoned off the area and launched a hunt for the militants.

The search operation by security forces has turned into an encounter with militants, the official said, adding further details are awaited.

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The European Union and Britain ended a flurry of top-level diplomacy today without a deal on the terms of their divorce, as agreement on how to maintain an open Irish border after Brexit slipped out of the negotiators' grasp.

But the two sides said they were within striking distance of consensus, setting up a hectic negotiating rush ahead of next week's EU summit which must decide whether to broaden the talks to the topic of future relations.

On a day that see-sawed between hope and disappointment, the leaders fell short of reaching what the EU considers "sufficient progress" on the divorce issues: Britain's exit bill, and rights of citizens affected by Brexit, and the status of the currently invisible Irish border, the main sticking point



"We had an agreement this morning," said Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, expressing disappointment at the last- minute glitch.

EU leaders want a deal on divorce terms in time for them to agree at a summit on Dec. 14-15 whether to move the negotiations on to the next stage of talks, including trade.

The lack of progress so far has raised concerns that Britain may not have a deal on key issues by the time it officially leaves on March 29, 2019.

"Despite our best efforts and the significant process we and our teams have made over the past days on the remaining withdrawal issues, it was not possible to reach an agreement," said EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

"This is not a failure," Juncker added after a long negotiating lunch with British Prime Minister Theresa May. May said that "on a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation."



But she said talks would reconvene later this week "and I am also confident we will conclude this positively."



The EU and the UK are nearing agreement on some divorce terms, including the size of the bill that Britain must pay as it leaves and the rights of citizens affected by Brexit. But the border issue has proved more intractable.

After Britain leaves the bloc, the currently invisible 500-kilometer frontier will be the UK's only land border with an EU country.

Britain says it wants to maintain a "frictionless" flow of people and goods with no border posts. But Ireland and the other EU nations are demanding to know how that will work if Britain is outside the EU's borderless single market and its tariff-free customs union, a looser trading bloc that includes non-EU states like Turkey.

Negotiators were discussing an agreement that would commit Britain to maintaining "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and Ireland after Brexit. Both sides would promise to maintain compatible trading rules, keeping the border transparent for trade.

Irish and EU officials indicated that agreement was close. But then Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which props up May's minority government, announced it wouldn't support any deal that made special rules for Northern Ireland. The pro-British Unionist party opposes any special status that could take Northern Ireland further from Britain and closer to the Republic of Ireland.

The DUP has only 10 seats out of 650 in Britain's House of Commons, but without their support May's government would fall.

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A European satellite tracking the levels air pollutants around the world has beamed back new views of the Earth's atmosphere, including images of pollution drifting away from power plants in India.

The worst of this pollution runs from north of Patna in Bihar to south of Raipur in Chhattisgarh, scientists said.

The Sentinel-5P satellite is designed to make daily global maps of the gases and particles that pollute the air.

The first sample images released by mission scientists show plumes of nitrogen dioxide flowing away from power plants and traffic-choked cities.

S5P has even captured the ash and sulphur emissions from Agung volcano on the Indonesian island of Bali, which is in the midst of a big eruption.

Researchers from the Netherlands Met Office (KNMI) still need to complete five months of calibration work to get the satellite's data ready for public use.

When fully operational, the new Sentinel will be an extremely powerful tool to monitor air quality, according to principal investigator Pepijn Veefkind.

"It's been amazing to see how quickly we were able to get the satellite working. This is a big improvement on what we've been able to do before. In just a week, we've got more data out of Sentinel-5P than in several years of operation of a previous mission," Veefkind told 'BBC News'.

Sentinel-5P is the latest spacecraft in a fleet of Earth observers being commissioned by the European Union and the European Space Agency.

It was launched into an 824-kilometre high orbit by a Russian rocket on October 13 this year.

It carries an instrument called Tropomi - a spectrometer that observes the reflected sunlight coming up from the Earth, analysing its many different colours.

This helps detect the presence of trace gases such as nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulphur dioxide, methane, and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere.
The newly-constituted 15th Finance Commission held first meeting today and decided to involve think-tanks in drawing up its report that will primarily deal with devolution of revenue between the Centre and states.

The Commission, headed by former Planning Commission member N K Singh, also discussed the terms of reference of the panel and other procedural issues, a Finance Ministry statement said.

The meeting was attended by former Economic Affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das and other members of the Commission, Anoop Singh, Ashok Lahiri and Ramesh Chand.

"We covered a number of issues which need to be addressed. We went over the terms of reference (ToR) which have been given to us by the President and the best ways of addressing those wide-ranging ToR, procedures for consultation, the broad structure of ensuring that all stakeholders are fully consulted, particularly in respect of state governments," Singh said after the meeting here.

It will be the endeavour of the Commission to reach out to many research organisations in different parts of the country to suitably address the ToR, he said.

"If we look at the terms of reference, these are two frontal issues in the ToR. If you look at Article 280 of the Constitution, Article 281 and Article 282 are precisely on those kinds of issues... the Commission would need to study, analyse, examine and consult before it comes to any conclusion," he said.

Article 280C relates to other issues that cover a wide gamut of subjects that have been very carefully considered before they are referred to the Commission, he said.

On devolution, Singh said, "We did not discuss that, its far too premature to comment on an issue of that kind. That will require very careful deliberations and consideration."



The statement added: "The Commission was cognisant that it has been assigned wide-ranging ToR which needed to be suitably addressed. Towards this objective, it was felt that wide-ranging consultations with all stakeholders, including various ministries of the Union government, all state governments, local bodies, panchayats and political parties of each state government, needed to be expeditiously initiated."



The panel is keen to seek academic inputs from and have interactions with leading think-tanks and domain knowledge experts, which is expected to assist the Commission in its job.

The first meeting of the panel approved the setting up of its office at Jawahar Vyapar Bhawan on Janpath in New Delhi.

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Four persons were killed and five injured after an ambulance collided with a truck on the Amravati road here early today morning, police said.

The accident took place around 4 am when the ambulance, carrying nine people, was heading for a city hospital from Akola, a senior police officer said.

"Akash Bhalerao (12), who had a fractured leg, was being brought to Nagpur for further treatment by his relatives. The ambulance ran into a truck coming from the opposite direction near Power House on the Amravati road," he said.

Akash, his mother Vimal Bhalerao (30), Shriram Dharpawar (34) and Pramod Ban (30) were killed in the accident, the officer said, adding that the injured were taken to Mayo Hospital in the city.

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Hinduja Group firm GOCL Corporation Ltd today posted a 41 per cent decline in consolidated net profit at Rs 6 crore for the quarter ended September 30.

The company had posted consolidated net profit (for the quarter/period after tax) at Rs 10.3 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal, GOCL Corp said in a BSE filing.

The consolidated income of the company during July- September quarter dropped to Rs 119 crore, over Rs 133.8 crore in the year-ago period.

In a statement, the company said that "GOCL Corporation Ltd...has reported a consolidated gross income of Rs 119 crore (previous year Rs 121 crore) for the year Q2 of 2018 and consolidated net profit of Rs 6 crore."



GOCL is part of the international Hinduja Group and has diversified business interests. The current business activities of the company are in energetics, mining, infrastructure services and property development.

It operates through 3 major divisions with independent management structures.

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Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif are reuniting on the screen after five years and the superstar says he is happy to romance the actor in their upcoming film "Tiger Zinda Hai".

The duo, who has previously worked in movies such as "Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya" and "Partner", will reprise their roles in the soon-to-be-released sequel to "Ek Tha Tiger" (2012).

When asked how it was to romance Katrina after a long time, Salman told reporters, "It is good. It is always good to romance. As there's no fight, so it's good to romance."



The actor was speaking on the sidelines of Star Screen Awards here last night.

Katrina recently appeared on "Bigg Boss", which is hosted by Salman, to launch the film's second song "Dil diyaan gallan'.

The 51-year-old star is happy that both the songs of the movie have been well received by the audience.

"Katrina was with me on 'Bigg Boss' when she gave me this information that 'Swag se swagat' has earned some 50 million likes. Now, we have launched a romantic song. Let's see how it is received...

"Both the songs are nice and people are loving them. So, let's see what happens on December 22 and what's the destiny of the film," he said.

The "Dabangg" star also performed some of his biggest dance numbers at the award ceremony.

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The Supreme Court today said guidelines should be framed on the issue of right to protest so as to ensure a balance between the fundamental right of the citizens to protest and the maintenance of law and order.

The apex court's observation came as it issued notice to the Centre and the Delhi Police on a plea seeking to declare as illegal the banning of all assemblies and protests in central Delhi and the New Delhi area.

A bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan observed that it was important to frame a guideline in this regard so that neither the fundamental right to protest was violated, nor any inconvenience caused to the public.

The plea has said that continuous imposition of prohibitory orders under section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) was an "arbitrary and unreasonable restriction" on the fundamental rights of citizens to hold peaceful protest.

The plea filed by an NGO, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan, has challenged the "repeated imposition" of orders by Delhi Police under section 144 of the CrPC, saying it virtually declared the entire Central Delhi as a prohibited area for holding any public meeting, dharna or peaceful protest.

The petition, filed through advocate Prashant Bhushan, has sought directions to formulate guidelines for holding public meetings, dharnas, peaceful demonstrations in parts of New Delhi.

"As per sub-section 4 of Section 144 CrPC, an order can be issued for a maximum period of two months. Therefore, the Delhi Police has adopted the tactic of issuing the same order repeatedly," the plea said.

It also sought to quash several orders passed by police from January to October this year by which the entire Central or New Delhi areas were declared prohibited areas.

The National Green Tribunal had on October 5 this year entirely banned protests at Jantar Mantar near Connaugust Place on the ground that it created nuisance for the local residents and violated environment protection statutes.

The plea before the apex court has claimed that, "With the NGT order banning protests at Jantar Mantar, it is evident that distancing a protest site from where it is most visible to the government and concerned authorities, will have the effect of diluting the impact that the protest seeks to gain.

"Besides the cost of using Ramlila Maidan for protests is Rs 50,000 per day which would make protests at the site practically impossible for the common citizens," it said.

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The Delhi High Court today pulled up the DDA and civic bodies over their failure to examine the feasibility of lands proposed for Mohalla Clinics in the city to provide adequate health facility to the people.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar also warned the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) of contempt action against its counsel for his inability to tell the court about the location of 245 sites proposed by the AAP government for Mohalla (locality) Clinics.

"We had passed a specific direction on the last date of hearing to examine the feasibility of sorting out the difficulties with regard to the Mohalla Clinics on the proposed sites.

"It seems the authorities concerned are not proceeding in the matter," the bench observed and directed the Delhi government's Principal Secretary to convene a meeting with all bodies like the DDA and all MCDs to examine the feasibility of land identified for these clinics.

It directed the agencies to place before it the status report with regard to the meetings and its final outcome and listed the matter for January 5.

The Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board and Delhi Metro informed the court that they have identified 107 and around 20 sites respectively, for which no objection certificate has also been obtained from the authorities.

Delhi government counsel Sanjoy Ghosh said they have undertaken a massive exercise and identified possible sites where local clinics can be located.

He said due to non-availability of land, they were unable to set up these clinics which could provide medical care to every citizen within two kilometres of his or her residence.

The health project was delayed after complaints of irregularities were received by the LG, leading to a probe by the Vigilance Department. The lack of land for the project had also held it up.

The court was hearing NGO Justice for All's plea for direction to the authorities to allot adequate number of plots for construction of these clinics with permission to raise the appropriate temporary structures to run them.

Advocate Khagesh B Jha, appearing for the NGO, had alleged that the LG has now approved the scheme of Mohalla Clinics but due to multiplicity of agencies and difference of opinion among them has led to the scheme working in very slow pace.

Seeking direction to the Centre, DDA and MCD to remove the technical difficulties for construction of the temporary structures and running the clinics, the plea urged that the authorities be asked to depute doctors, staffs and provide proper facilities for their smooth functioning.

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The Delhi High Court today reserved its verdict on low-cost carrier IndiGo's plea against the decision of operator to partially shift its operations along with that of two other airlines, SpiceJet and GoAir, from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2.

"Judgement reserved," Justice A K Chawla said after hearing arguments on behalf of IndiGo, the Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) and the Centre.

In its plea, the airline has challenged DIAL's communication of October 21, asking the three air carriers to shift their flights to and from Delhi to Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, to Terminal 2 (T2) from January 4, 2018.

All other flights of the airlines shall continue to operate from Terminal 1 (T1), had said in its communication.

has challenged the DIAL's decision on the ground that partial shifting of its operations would inconvenience passengers, especially those on hopping flights emanating or ending at those sectors, as T1 and T2 are not connected.

Defending its decision, said that T1 has already exceeded its capacity and if airline operations are not shifted partially, it would lead to overcrowding of the airport.

It also contended that in case of a fire or a terror threat, an overcrowded airport would have serious consequences for which DIAL alone would be answerable.

It also argued that the capacity of the three airlines' flights to and from the three sectors would amount to around eight million persons per annum (MPPA) and be shifting those to T2 would considerably reduce the burden on T1.

DIAL said its decision was not unreasonable as it had given the airlines enough time to arrive at a consensus.

is opposed to the shifting of its operations, saying if the DIAL decision is allowed, the airline would be spread across the three airports -- T1, T2 and T3.

It has sought striking down of the decision claiming that it was "irrational and ad-hoc".

The central government has supported the decision taken by the DIAL and contended that IndiGo's plea was not maintainable.
The Delhi High Court today expressed displeasure over keeping a donation box at Mahatma Gandhi's memorial at Rajghat here, saying this was a "disrespectful" gesture to the Father of the Nation.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar sought to know from the Rajghat Samadhi Committee, which maintains the memorial, who had installed the donation box and where do the funds collected in it go.

To this, the counsel for Central Public Works Department (CPWD) said it was put up by the Harijan Sevak Sangh, founded by Mahatma Gandhi himself, and the money goes to the organisation.

The bench observed that the charity box should not have been kept at the Mahatma Gandhi's memorial.

"Is this the respect we are giving to the memorial of the Father of the Nation which is visited by the citizens of India as well as those from abroad. It deserves every respect and requires to be properly maintained by all concerned," it said.

The bench directed the petitioner's counsel to personally verify the actual position related to the public amenities and maintenance of Rajghat and inform the Chief Engineer of CPWD, who will ensure its restoration.

It ordered that the Rajghat Samadhi Committee's secretary should ensure that the complaints in this regard are addressed at the earliest.

The court sought a compliance report before the next date of hearing, January 30 next year.

The court on November 24 had directed the Chief Engineer, CPWD to personally inspect the Rajghat Samadhi and all related premises.

It had asked the authorities to place the details of the works which were required to be completed at Rajghat as well as the timelines within which these shall be completed.

The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) alleging that the monument set up in the memory of Mahatma Gandhi was not being properly maintained.

Petitioner Shyam Narayan Chouksey has claimed that the memorial "was not at all being properly and cleanly maintained", and despite being brought to the notice of the Committee and Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), there has been no change in the situation.

In the PIL, Chouksey has submitted the photos of various deficiencies that he had come across during his visit to the monument in 2014 and then again in 2015 and 2016, when he claimed the situation had worsened.

Referring to deficiencies, he has alleged there were betel stains at the entrance, broken floor tiles, rubbish lying all around the monument, the white marble has turned black due to lack of cleaning while the green carpet laid for visitors to walk was damaged.

Two toilets were in very poor condition and unclean and at many places sewage lines are exposed and filled with garbage, becoming "breeding place for mosquitoes and other insects".

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President Juan Orlando Hernandez held a lead of more than 52,000 votes in Honduras' hotly disputed presidential race as the long-delayed count wrapped up, eight days after the election.

Hernandez led by a margin of 43 per cent of the votes over opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla's 41.4 per cent, according to the latest results published on the electoral tribunal's website. His edge expanded in the latest count from about 46,000 votes.

Tribunal president David Matamoros said 100 per cent of the ballots had been tabulated although the website still showed 0.04 percent left to count but the court was not declaring a winner yet.

"We will do that later," Matamoros said, adding that parties will have 10 days to challenge the results for the November 26 election.

The last ballot boxes that presented "inconsistencies" were examined without the presence of Nasralla and his Opposition Against Dictatorship alliance, which chose not to send representatives as vote tallying continued. Nasralla has called for a far broader recount as well as a redo of the entire election.

Both Hernandez and Nasralla have claimed victory. Nasralla had led in initial returns before a lengthy delay interrupted reports from electoral officials, feeding opposition complaints of irregularities. Officials blamed the pause on technical problems and denied any manipulation.

Nasralla told a big rally in the capital, Tegucigalpa, on Sunday that the magistrates of the electoral tribunal "are employees of President Hernandez," who ran for re-election despite a constitutional ban on doing so.

"The tribunal is not an independent organism and as such is neither credible nor trustworthy for the people," said Nasralla, a well-known TV personality. On Monday, he alleged that the special count was a "fraud" with "false, fixed, arranged votes."



Hernandez took to social media to urge calm and national unity.

"I extend my hand to all contenders and sectors of the country to build a new Honduras," he tweeted. "The results of this election leave us with a great hope. ... My commitment to working for peace and tranquility in Honduras is more alive than ever."



The US Embassy said in a statement that it was "pleased Honduran election authorities completed the special scrutiny process in a way that maximizes citizen participation and transparency."



It also said it supports international election observers working "to increase the transparency of the process" and called on politicians "to ensure a result that represents the will of the Honduran people."



Marisa Matias of the European Union observer mission urged electoral officials to be flexible and respect a reasonable time frame for parties to present any petitions or challenges. She added that the petitions the mission had seen so far "are reasonable.

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Girls and women are more vulnerable to their own relatives and acquaintances than unknown persons on the issue of sex-related crimes, data from the Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) "Crime in India 2016" report has indicated.

Highlighting rape figures, the report has stated that "in 2016, the accused of rapes in 94.6 cases are none other than the victim's relatives including brother, father, grand-father, sons or acquaintances."



The report showed that in the year 2016, a total of 38,947 cases of rape were registered in the country under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) as well as Section 376 and other related sections of the Indian Penal Code.

Among these 38,947 cases, in 36,859 matters, accused are related to the victims, it said.

Similarly, it said that in 630 cases, victims were allegedly raped by grand-father, father, brother and son while in 1,087 cases the accused were acquaintances.

Besides in 2,174 cases, the accused are relatives and in 10,520 matters, it was neighbours who were facing charges of rape, it said.

In 600 cases, employers and co- workers are accused of rape, the report said.

The NCRB report also stated that in 2016, in 557 cases, the accused are live-in partners, husband and ex-husbands.

Similarly, in 10,068 cases, women were raped on the promise of marriage.

It also states that in the remaining 11,223 cases, the victims in some manner or the other knew the accused.

Expressing concern over these figures, Commission of Women (NCW) chairperson, Rekha Sharma told PTI, "In our society there is lot of restrictions imposed on girls. But now it is enough. Time has come when boys should be taught from childhood how to behave with women as per our social values."



She said that porn material is easily available on internet. In such a scenario, parents should keep a watch on the mobile phones and computers.
The Patidar-dominated Amreli is gearing up for a fight between two strong Patel candidates in the assembly segment, where farm issues are dominating the campaign discourse.

Sitting Congress MLA Paresh Dhanani is pitted against BJP heavyweight Bavkubhai Undhad, the legislator from the nearby Lathi seat who has been fielded from Amreli this time.

There is a talk in political circles here that Dhanani could emerge as a strong contender for the chief minister's post if he retains his seat and the Congress dislodges the BJP from power in Gandhinagar.

Dhanani, 41, is considered close to Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and had accompanied the latter during his campaign tours.

In the 2012 Assembly elections, Dhanani had registered a resounding victory - he won by a margin of more than 18 per cent votes over his nearest rival Dilip Sanghavi, a senior BJP leader and prominent cooperative leader.

The most important issue in this agriculture-dominated constituency, known for cotton cultivation, is farm distress, and the Congress seems to be cashing in on this.

The Patidars form 60 per cent of the population in the Amreli assembly segment followed by Kolis at 15 per cent.

Besides farm matters, issues like the impact of the Centre's demonetisation move and effects of GST on the diamond polishing industry are being raised aggressively by the candidates.

A section of farmers believes that the promises made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding minimum support price (MSP) for farm produce and tackling issues related to agriculture have not been fulfilled.

"Modiji had promised us (MSP of) Rs 2,000 per 20 kg on cotton against Rs 1,500 given by the UPA government. But we are getting Rs 800-900, which is causing us a huge loss. Many of us have not got crop insurance money," said a cotton farmer, Pankaj Chavda.

Chavda added that the PM's pre-Lok Sabha election promise of giving farmers a support price that is 50 per cent more than production cost of a crop, too, remains a pipe dream.

In Amreli, where farmers mainly grow cotton, the crop has seen a sharp decline in prices this year, fuelling anger against the state government.

Amreli district Congress president Pankaj Kanabar said Chief Minister Vijay Rupani recently announced his government would purchase cotton at Rs 100 per 20 kg over and above the MSP.

However, Kanabar alleged only the farmers who were close to the BJP were getting this benefit. "It is a scam in which BJP's commission agents have made a lot of money while genuine farmers have been left out," he said.

The BJP candidate Undhad is trying to douse the anger of the Patidars against the ruling party by listing the efforts made by the Rupani government to address the grievances of the community.

Patidar quota stir spearhead Hardik Patel is expected to address an election rally in Amreli on December 6.

Undhad is battling the image of a politician who has switched sides. He started out as a BJP leader and later joined the Congress and became its MLA from Lathi in 2012.

He came back to the BJP fold in 2014 and was made a minister.

The BJP said it is on a strong wicket in Amreli as its candidate has developed strong links with the constituency, while the sitting MLA is hardly seen here.

"The BJP is strong because Bavkubhai lives here most of the time, while Congress candidate Paresh Dhanani mostly remains outside the constituency and is rarely seen here," said district BJP president Hiren Hilpara.

"As far as farmer issues are concerned, we are making sure all farmers get higher rate than MSP for their produce. The government is making purchases of groundnut and cotton which will continue till March next year," he said.

Voting in Amreli will take place on December 9.

There are a total of nine candidates in the fray, including four independents, but the fight is likely to be between Dhanani and Undhad. The NCP and the BSP have also fielded their nominees.

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Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi today said the bilateral trade between India and Africa will cross USD 100 billion mark in next two years, owing to improvement in business environment in India and better connectivity across the African continent.

The bilateral trade between India and the African nations was recorded around USD 57 billion in 2015-16.

"Africa offers lucrative business opportunities for Indian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) across diverse sectors such as FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), mining and minerals, telecommunications, construction and others," Naqvi said at a conference organised by Assocham.

He observed that India is attracting business leaders and investors from across the globe as the government has been able to build a conducive business environment aimed at inclusive growth, according to a press release issued by Assocham.

The minority affairs minister also said it is due to the various reforms ushered in by the Centre that even global rating agencies and noted economists have impressed upon India as a very 'safe and strong' investment destination.

In apparent reference the previous UPA government led by Congress, the Minority Affairs Minister said, "When we had come to power there was an atmosphere of policy paralysis and corrupt practices were prevalent but we have succeeded in reversing that through various reforms".

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India and Germany today signed several agreements, including a 200 million euro funding pact for climate-friendly urban mobility project.

The 'Government to Government Umbrella Agreement' concerning financial cooperation in 2016 (II) under the Indo- German Development Cooperation was formalised here.

"An amount up to 200 million euro for the financial cooperation in form of loan for project 'Climate Friendly Urban Mobility III' and 11 million euro accompanying measures in form of grant for four projects," was signed, said an official statement.

The Part I of the agreement had already been signed in May.

In addition, four other agreements were signed between Department of Economic Affairs with KfW, Germany under Indo- German Bilateral Development Cooperation.

One loan agreement is for the project 'Community based sustainable Forest Management Component I Manipur'. It was signed with KfW for a loan of 15 million euro.

The broad objectives of the project are restoration of degraded forests in upper watersheds, reclamation of abandoned shifting cultivation areas, biodiversity conservation, water resources conservation and livelihood improvement of forest dependent rural tribal people in the project area.

The other agreements were for projects namely Madhya Pradesh Urban Sanitation and Environment Programme; Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Development Odisha Phase II; and Green Energy Corridor Intra-State Transmission System in Maharashtra.

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The mother of an Indian engineer, who was sentenced after he sneaked into Pakistan from Afghanistan to meet a girl he had befriended on the internet, has appealed to President Mamnoon Hussain to remit the remaining period of her son's prison term.

In a letter to Hussain, the mother of Hamid Ansari said: "Mohtaram Sadar - your government has shown clemency to foreign nationals who have committed far graver offences than Hamid Ansari.

"The country's credit for listening to humanitarian calls will go up and the chances of relief for Pakistani citizens in Indian prisons might improve if you could remit the remaining period of Hamids prison term."



She said the period of Ansari's detention (three years) before conviction may be counted as sentence served, that he may he be released on humanitarian grounds, and that he and that he may be allowed to talk to his family on the phone.

The Indian national was tried in a military court and was awarded three years' vigorous imprisonment that started from December 15, 2015 and will end on December 14 next year.

Ansari, a Mumbai resident, suffered injuries after he was attacked by inmates in the Peshawar Central prison last year.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Ansari, an assistant professor at an Indian management institute, became friendly with a girl belonging to Kohat (in Kyber Pakhtaunkhawa province of Pakistan) through Facebook.

"When she feared the denial of her rights, he decided to come to her rescue. He could not get a Pakistan visa but was able to fly to Afghanistan and enter Pakistan, though without valid papers. He was arrested from a hotel in Kohat on November 14, 2012.

"Thus, for five years he has been in the custody of the Pakistani authorities. Charged with espionage and not with illegal entry into Pakistan, he was sentenced to three years imprisonment by a military court," says known rights activist I A Rehman.

"There is no doubt that Hamid Ansari committed an offence but his motives, love or a desire to help a woman in distress, are strong mitigating circumstances. He has already suffered enough for his naivete," he said and demanded his immediate release.

On the other hand, a Pakistani woman journalist who was allegedly kidnapped while pursuing the case of Ansari two years ago, has gone missing again two months after her return.

President of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances Justice (retd.) Javed Iqbal had said Shahzadi had been recovered from an area on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Thursday night.

"Non-state actors and anti-state agencies had abducted her and she has been recovered from their custody," Iqbal said.

Rehman said Shahzadi has gone missing again. "Missing of Shahzadi two months after her return from two-year captivity is alarming."



He says Shahzadi, a young and poor journalist without any clout, had dreams of helping her fellow human beings.

"When she learnt that an Indian named Hamid Ansari was in trouble for trying to help a Pakistani girl, she thought this was a case that could help her establish herself as a bold human rights defender and a skilful journalist.

"She persuaded Ansaris mother to grant her authority/ permission to pursue the matter before the Peshawar High Court. She also met the Indian high commissioner at a public meeting, probably to seek his help in the case," he said.

The 26-year-old local reporter of Daily Nai Khaber and Metro TV channel had gone missing on August 19, 2015, when some unknown men allegedly kidnapped her while she was en route to her office in an auto-rickshaw from her home in a populated locality of Lahore.

On her return in this October she was not allowed to speak to anyone. Later, her family reported she has gone missing again.

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Infosys Foundation, the philanthropic arm of IT major Infosys, today said it has signed four MoUs with the International Centre for TheoreticalSciences (ICTS), to support research and mentoring activities.

The Foundation has signed an MoU for the grant of Rs 4 crore towards its excellence program at ICTS, it said in a release.

Through this grant, the Infosys Foundation ICTS Visitor Fellowship will provide for 25 academics to travel to India each year for the ICTS programs and will also provide a travelgrant through the Infosys Foundation ICTS Excellence Grant for 20 academic members of the centre to travel abroad.

The grants aim at creating learning experiences for students to participate in academic activities abroad and forge partnerships with renowned educational institutions across the world, it added.

The International Centre for TheoreticalSciences of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bangalore is a multi and interdisciplinary center.

The second MoU is for a grant of Rs 7.5 crore for organizing lecture series by distinguished experts internationally and within India.

This collaboration is aimed at creating an environment to exchange ideas and explore cutting edge research in basic sciences and Mathematics, the foundation said, adding, the lectures will be known as Infosys ICTS Chandrasekhar Ramanujan and Turing Lecture Series.

The Foundation signed the third MoU for a grant of Rs3.35 crore to benefit nearly 200 students, faculty members andpost-doctoral students (who will be referred to as InfosysProfessors and Infosys Fellows in all their publications andevents).

A grant of Rs 85 lakhs was committed for the Homi Bhabha Chair Professorship to support research and mentoring activities.

Under this MoU the Chair will be referred to as the Infosys Homi Bhabha Chair Professor.

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Shares of Infosys today surged four per cent in morning trade on the bourses after the company announced the appointment of new CEO & MD Salil Parekh.

On December 2, Infosys said it has appointed Parekh as its CEO and Managing Director, concluding the three-month high-profile executive search at the country's second largest IT firm.

Following the announcement, shares of the company today opened on a bullish note at Rs 983.00, then gained further ground and surged 4.01 per cent to touch an early-day high of Rs 996.95.

Similar movement was seen on NSE, where the stock opened at Rs 980.00, then surged to an early-high of Rs 996.80, registering a jump of 3.96 per cent over its previous closing price.

The Bengaluru-based firm had initiated the executive search after CEO Vishal Sikka resigned in August following a protracted acrimony between the management and the founders.

UB Pravin Rao, who was filling in the CEO role on an interim basis, will now continue as Chief Operating Officer and a whole-time Director of the company, Infosys said in a statement.

Parekh, who will take over his role at Infosys on January 2, 2018 for a period of five years, was a member of the Group Executive Board at French firm Capgemini.

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Shares of Infosys today settled with gains of nearly 3 per cent on the bourses after the appointment of the new CEO and MD Salil Parekh.

On December 2, Infosys said it has appointed Parekh as its CEO and Managing Director, concluding the three-month high-profile executive search at the country's second largest IT firm.

During the day, the company opened on a bullish note at Rs 983.00 then gained further ground and surged 4.01 per cent to touch an intra-day high of Rs 996.95 on the BSE. The stock however pared some gains and finally ended the day at Rs 985.30, up 2.80 per cent.

Oearly high the stock opened at Rs 980, then surged to an early-high of Rs 996.80, registering a jump of 3.96 per cent over its previous closing price. At the end of today's trading session, the stock was quoted at Rs 984.40, up 2.67 per cent.

Market analysts believe the uptick in the counter was largely because the appointment of CEO reduces succession planning uncertainty in the counter.

"The CEO appointment is faster than our expectation and reduces the uncertainty on succession planning at Infosys," Japanese brokerage firm Nomura said in a research note.

It further added that the current CEO designate has experience across a wide range of areas consulting, application services, cloud infrastructure services, integrating large acquisitions (Kanbay/iGATE) and scaling up the offshore delivery base of Capgemini to more than 100K people currently.

The Bengaluru-based firm had initiated the executive search after CEO Vishal Sikka resigned in August following a protracted acrimony between the management and the founders.

UB Pravin Rao, who was filling in the CEO role on an interim basis, will now continue as Chief Operating Officer and a whole-time director of the company, Infosys said in a statement.

Parekh, who will take over his role at Infosys on January 2, 2018 for a period of five years, was a member of the Group Executive Board at French firm Capgemini.
The Islamabad High Court today dismissed ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's plea to club three corruption cases against him.

A two-member bench issued a short order turning down his appeal and said that a detailed judgment would be issued later.

The cases were registered by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on September 8 against Sharif, his family in the Accountability Court Islamabad, following a verdict by Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case.

The accountability court in Islamabad had on November 8 rejected a plea by 67-year-old Sharif to club his cases, which he challenged in the Islamabad High Court.

The IHC had completed the hearing and reserved the judgment on November 23, which it announced today.

The three cases against the Sharif family are related to the Al-Azizia Company and Hill Metal Establishment, Flagship Investment Ltd and the Avenfield (London) properties.

Earlier, the accountability court postponed hearing of graft cases against Sharif until this afternoon due to the expected verdict of the high court.

Sharif along with his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar appeared in the court.

His lawyer Khawaja Harris requested Judge Mohammad Bashir to suspend proceedings and wait for the Islamabad High Court's (IHC) decision on a petition by Sharif to club his three graft cases into one, as all were related to his alleged amassing of assets beyond the known sources of income.

The court after hearing the argument from the NAB prosecutor postponed hearing till 1 pm and allowed Sharif to go home but ordered him to be present when the hearing would restart.

Sharif and his sons, Hassan and Hussain, have been named in all the three NAB cases, while Maryam and her husband Safdar have been named only in the Avenfield case.

Maryam on November 23 had requested exemption from personal appearance from December 5, 2017 to January 5, 2018, while Sharif sought exemption from December 5-12.

Last month, Sharif was indicted in all three cases while his daughter Maryam and her husband Safdar, co-accused with Sharif in only one case, were also indicted along with Sharif.

Sharif's sons Hassan and Hussain have failed to appear in the court despite repeated summons which prompted the court to separate their cases.

Heavy security arrangements were made and hundreds of security personnel deployed around the court premises.

The cases are based on July 28 verdict by the Supreme Court which disqualified Sharif and ordered to launch three corruption cases against him and his family, and one case against finance minister Ishaq Dar in the Panama Papers case.

Dar had been relieved of his duties after the ailing politician, who was declared a proclaimed absconder by a court in the case, requested leave for three months.

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Gil Haskel, head of Israel's Agency for International Development Cooperation (MASHAV), is on an official visit to India beginning today.

Haskel will highlight the achievements of Indo-Israeli Agricultural Project (IIAP) during his visit to this country from December 4 to December 7.

A statement by the Israeli embassy in Delhi said apart from the national capital, he will visit Bengaluru and Mumbai.

"The IIAP is MASHAV's biggest project outside Israel, and it holds a significant portion of our bilateral relations. The success story of our agricultural cooperation is second to none, and it is only the beginning," Ambassador of Israel in India, Daniel Carmon, said.

Haskel will meet state government officials as well those of Union ministry of agriculture and farmer's welfare, and the external affairs ministry.

He will also inaugurate Center of Excellence for flowers in Thally, Tamil Nadu.

Haskel will award two USD 10,000 grants to MASHAV alumni to continue their projects in women and farmer empowerment in India, the statement added.

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A Jaipur court will pronounce on Wednesday the quantum of punishment to be given to eight Lashkar-e-Taiba members, including three Pakistani nationals, for their involvement in terrorist activities in the country.

The additional district and sessions court today heard arguments on the quantum of punishment to be given to the eight men, special public prosecutor Mahaveer Jindal said.

The eight LeT members were convicted under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act last week.

They were arrested by Rajasthan ATS in 2010 and 2011.

The court found them guilty under various sections of the Act on charges of conspiracy and recruiting persons for terrorist activities. They were also found guilty of being members of a terrorist organisation.

The Pakistani LeT members - Asgar Ali, Shakkar Ulla and Shahid Iqbal - have been lodged in various jails in India.

The other five are: Babu alias Nishachand Ali, Hafiz Abdul, Pawan Puri, Arun Jain, and Kabil.

All of them were in touch with an LeT commander based in Pakistan.

The Rajasthan ATS arrested them after receiving alerts from central intelligence agencies, which had intercepted telephone conversations between the LeT men and the Lashkar commander in Pakistan in 2010.

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Barely few miles away from Jammu city, Chatta farms boom with banana plants as the Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine's biotechnology-driven project to grow the fruit in the region has become successful.

The project has brought commercial cultivation of banana in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time in the history of agriculture.

The state is endowed with all kinds of fruits and is a net exporter to the rest of the country and abroad, but banana is imported here to the tune of Rs 200 crore per year.

"It is a big development for Jammu and Kashmir", Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (IIIM) Director Ram Vishwahkarma told PTI.

"We have created a big economic opportunity for this region. If we can generate production of Rs 50 crore for next two to three years out of annual Rs 250 imports, it will be a big thing. It will create an economy and create employment opportunity," the director said.

In a 2-acre area of Chatta farm, 2,000 plants of Bhim Grand Naine (G-9) banana variety are booming, bringing happiness to a group of scientists led by Dr Rahul, who toiled hard for over a year for the commercial production of banana in Jammu.

"It was a dream come true for us. After facing many challenges and huge hurdles, we have been successful. It has opened a new economy opportunity for the region", Rahul said.

To bring commercial cultivation of banana to J&K, the CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine jointly conceived a new biotechnology driven programme. This work was jointly done by CSIR-IIIM, Jammu, and Cadila Pharmaceutical, Ahmedabad.

After full trial and established tissue culture and agriculture practice, the IIIM director launched the J&K-grown banana fruit last week.

The director said that the productivity in Jammu is more than rest of the states in the country and it is bigger in size and very good in flavour also.

"People can get an economy of Rs 2.50 lakh to Rs 3 lakh per acre after deducting input from it", he said.

"There is huge lands available in Jammu. If people go for cultivation here it will not only generate revenue but will also reduce prices of bananas which are sold double than other states. We will try to introduce it as a social forestry in Shivalik ranges in Jammu with consultation with the forest department. It will also help check monkey menace in Jammu", he said.

While giving details of experimental work in growing the banana by tissue culture technique at IIIM, Vishwakarma said the samplings of the Bhim Grand Naine (G-9) variety were brought from Agro Division of Cadila Pharmaceutical Limited, Ahmedabad.

"This first cultivation trial was done by planting 2000 samplings of banana plants with the narrow spacing 2 X 2 meter in the month of August 2016 and fruit setting commenced in the month of July-August, 2017 while as the maturity and harvesting attained in 13 months", the director said.

"The plant grew to a height of 6.

5 to 7.5 feet and gave yield 20-30 kg per plant and 20-25 tonnes per acre. In term of economy involved, as per market analysis, price of banana in Jammu is approximately Rs 20 per kg. Thus on an average, 20-30 kg yield per plant gives Rs 250-300 per Banana plant", he said.

This crop will be particularly suit to Jammu region", Vishwahkarma said.

The directorsaid that the next target of IIIM is to introduce banana cultivation in Kashmir region through modern biotechnology approach (Polyhouses) which would be done in 2018.

In India, the most edible banana species are widely cultivated in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.

In total, more than 164,000 acres of land in India is under banana cultivation which makes the country first rank in banana production.

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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- CVS Health has agreed to acquire Aetna in a deal that could shake up the health care industry.

The deal, which still requires approval by antitrust regulators, is worth about $69 billion at $207 per share.

CVS Health President and CEO Larry Merlo said in a statement the merger "brings together the expertise of two great companies to remake the consumer health care experience."

"With the analytics of Aetna and CVS Health's human touch, we will create a health care platform built around individuals," he said. "We look forward to working with the talented people at Aetna to position the combined company as America's front door to quality health care, integrating more closely the work of doctors, pharmacists, other health care professionals and health benefits companies to create a platform that is easier to use and less expensive for consumers."

A merger of drugstore giant CVS with Aetna, one of the biggest health insurers in the U.S., could reshape the industry and change the health care experience as Americans face higher medical and prescription costs.

CVS said in a statement the merger will provide a "personalized health care experience" by connecting Aetna's network with more than 9,700 CVS locations and 1,100 walk-in clinics.

The pharmacy giant also said it envisions many locations offering a "community-based health hub dedicated to connecting the pathways needed to improve health and answering patients' questions about their health conditions, as well as prescription drugs and health coverage."

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A Kenyan woman has alleged that she was raped by a Nigerian man in Dwarka after he befriended her, police said today.

The incident was reported to the police late last night, they said.

The woman, in her 20s, told the police that she met the man at a restaurant in Vasant Vihar yesterday and they became friends, the police said.

He brought her to his home in Dwarka where he allegedly raped her and then fled, the police said.

A case was registered in this regard, they said, adding the man is yet to be arrested.

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A well-marked low pressure area over southeast Bay of Bengal is likely to become a depression and move towards Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh by December 6, the Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) said today.

Director of Area Cyclone Warning Centre, S Balachandran said the system was likely to turn into a depression in the next 24 hours.

"Around December 6 (Wednesday), it is likely to move northwestwards towards north Tamil Nadu and south Andhra Pradesh coasts," he told reporters here.

During the next 24 hours, isolated rainfall was likely in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, he said, and advised fishermen not to venture into "deep" parts of southern Bay of Bengal for fishing.

During the last 24 hours ended 8.30 AM today, there were isolated rains in one or two places in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, he said.

Aranmanaiputhur in Theni district in the state recorded the highest of 6 cm of rainfall during this period, he added.

The "very severe cyclonic storm Ockhi" over eastcentral and adjoining southeast Arabian Sea moved further northwards and lay centred at 5.30 AM today over eastcentral Arabian Sea near, about 590 km northnorthwest of Amini Divi, 690 km southsouthwest of Mumbai and 870 km south-southwest of Surat.

Ockhi cyclone, which crippled life in Kanyakumari district in Tamil Nadu, and parts of neighbouring Kerala, was "very likely to move north-northeastwards, weaken gradually and cross south Gujarat and adjoining north Maharashtra coasts near Surat as a deep depression by mid night" of December 5 (tomorrow), the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu government officials said the process of assessing the damage in Kanyakumari was on and that a report will be sent to the Centre later.

On Friday, state Chief Minister K Palaniswami told Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a telephone conversation that the state would soon send a request to Centre seeking financial assistance post-Ockhi damage in the district.

Kanyakumari was battered by Ockhi, damaging standing plantation crops and power infrastructure even as people were rescued from flooded localities last week.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had yesterday said a total of 357 fishermen, including 71 from Tamil Nadu, stranded in sea due to cyclone Ockhi, were rescued.

Earlier today, Palaniswami reviewed the rescue and rehabilitation work in Kanyakumari with senior IAS officials.

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The hit onscreen couple of Madhuri Dixit and Anil Kapoor is set to reteam for a film after a gap of 17 years for Inder Kumar's "Total Dhamaal".

Last seen together in the 2000 film "Pukar", Madhuri and Anil have given several hits films like "Beta", "Parinda", "Tezaab", "Ram Lakhan", among others.

"I will be working with Anil ji after 17 odd years. I am really looking forward to it. It is a comedy, an entertaining film," Madhuri told reporters.

The third installment in the "Dhamaal" series, the film will reportedly also star Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, Arshad Warsi and Jaaved Jaaferi.

Madhuri was speaking on the sidelines of Star Screen Awards here last night.

The veteran actor also said the Priyanka Chopra-backed TV show, based on her life is "definitely in the works" and she is excited about it.

New York-based writer Sri Rao has penned the comedy series about a Bollywood star who settles down in the suburbs of America with her bicultural family.

Madhuri left Mumbai after her marriage to Shriram Nene and moved to Denver, US, where she lived for 12 years. The actor returned to India in 2011, along with her husband and sons.

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The Madras High Court today rejected a plea for a direction to the President's office in New Delhi to consider the immediate release of Justice (retd) CS Karnan, who is serving jail term in the Presidency Prison in Kolkatta in a contempt of court case.

The Supreme Court had on May 9 convicted Justice Karnan, former judge of the Calcutta High Court, under the Contempt of Courts Act of 1971, and sentenced him to six months in jail.

He retired from the service on June 9 and was arrested on June 20.

The bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice R Hemalatha rejected a public interest litigation filed by AP Gowthama Sidharthan, managing director of Dr Ambedkar Educational Foundation, New Delhi, for the release of Justice Karnan.

Sidharthan in the plea had claimed that Justice Karnan, a Dalit, had been victimised and was meted out social injustice.

The judges said they did not find any reference (in the petition) to the circumstances which led to the incarceration of Justice Karnan, who had been a judge of the Madras High Court and transferred to the Calcutta High Court.

At the time of arrest, he was no longer a judge of any high court. The respondents in the PIL - secretaries of the office of the President of India, department of Law and Justice, and secretaries general of the National Commission for Human Rights and the secretary of the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment -- are located in New Delhi, the judges observed.

"No case has arisen within the jurisdiction of the Madras High Court. Hence, the PIL is not maintainable and dismissed," the bench said.

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Four persons of a family were today killed and another injured, after a tanker rammed into their motorcycle at Dahegaon in the district, police said.

The mishap occurred this afternoon on the Manmad-Malegaon road, an official of Chandvad police station said.

All five members of the Chitalkar family were travelling on a motorcycle to Boygaon when the accident took place. While three persons were killed on the spot, another one died in the hospital, the official said, adding the tanker's driver was apprehended.

The deceased have been identified as Santosh Chitalkar, Asha Chitalkar, Savita Chitalkar and Bhooshan Chitalkar, he said.

Kin of the deceased alleged that the driver deliberately rammed the tanker into their motorcycle, as their was some old rivalry between him and the family, another police official said.

A case under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code was registered, he said, adding a probe was on.

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The Maldives is keen to seal a free trade agreement with China despite murmurs of disapproval from the main opposition MDP, as it will aid in economic growth in the Indian Ocean archipelago, a senior minister said today.

"China is eager to sign and the Maldives has seen the opportunity for the Maldivian economy to grow with it," Mohamed Shainee, the Maldives' minister of fisheries and agriculture said here.

He said the Maldives has seen that arrangements like the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) have not worked well in the region.

The landmark deal between the Maldives and China was rushed through parliament last week, hours after President Abdulla Yameen sought approval for its ratification.

The FTA would ensure zero tariff for Maldivian fish exports to China. Maldivians would also benefit in the health care and construction industries with value addition to Chinese imports from the country.

The opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has said it is deeply concerned over the "sudden and rushed" FTA with China.

"The MDP is deeply alarmed that the Yameen government is entering a trade deal that will have immense economic repercussions on the Maldivian economy," a statement said.

The MDP has also urged the government to "suspend the implementation of the FTA to ensure the agreement does not place the Maldives in a geopolitically vulnerable position".

On ties with India, Mohamed Sharif, the Maldivian Ambassador to Sri Lanka, said China's position as Maldives' No 1 tourism market has taken a beating with number of tourist arrivals dropping.

"We are now looking to develop India as a tourism market. We have seen an increase in the number of young Indians travelling to Maldives. Maybe we can attract Bollywood stars to the Maldives," he said.

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The extradition trial of Vijay Mallya, wanted in India on charges of Rs 9,000 crores fraud and money laundering, today began at a UK court here, with the prosecution asserting that the embattled liquor baron had a "case of fraud" to answer.

The trial, however, was briefly halted as the courtroom had to be evacuated due to a fire alarm. The 61-year-old tycoon and others waited outside the Westminster magistrates court during the fire drill.

The trial began with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), arguing on behalf of the Indian government, presenting its opening arguments in the case which focused on loans totalling around Rs 2,000 crores sought by the erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines from a consortium of Indian banks.

It concluded the opening day's proceedings by asserting that they had "shown by virtue of evidence a prima facie case" against Mallya and the hearing should now move to the next phase of whether there were any "bars to extradition".

The CPS detailed "three chapters of dishonesty" by the former Kingfisher Airlines boss the first being misrepresentations to various banks to acquire the loans, then how he misused the money and finally his conduct after the banks recalled the loans.

"Instead of acting as an honest person and doing what he could to meet his obligations, he sets about erecting lines of defence," said CPS barrister Mark Summers.

The Indian government says the reasons why a court can conclude, that these were loans that the "defendant (Mallya) never intended to repay" and that the company and airline industry were in "intensive care" and heading only in one direction, Summers said.

Instead of absorbing those losses, which would "impinge on his lifestyle", Mallya chose to palm it off to banks, in particular state-owned banks. Several internal emails, the government claims, disclose the reality of the position which was misrepresented to the banks, he said.

The judge noted that businessmen in this position would be "hopeful that things will turn around", but the CPS said this was not the case with Kingfisher Airlines.

It went on to add that loans acquired in the name of rescuing the struggling airline were in fact used to pay off other debts, including paying the rent on a corporate jet "owned by Kingfisher but operated for the defendant's (Mallya) own benefit".

The CPS presented an email written by Mallya in December 2009 justifying the use of loans to "achieve round robins", confirming that he was open to using money received from banks for Kingfisher Airlines to repay other banks to settle overdue bills and charges.

This was "expressly prohibited" as part of the agreed terms of the loans provided to the then struggling airline.

He also failed in his obligations as a "personal guarantor" of the loans by failing to use 40 million dollars received from Diageo from the sale of shares in United Spirits Limited to repay some of the debt.

"Instead of honouring his obligations, he squirrelled away the 40 million dollars in trusts for his children," Summers said.

Mallya claimed later that those personal guarantees were secured by the banks under duress, a move the CPS highlighted was not the actions of an honest person.

The judge responded with a chuckle by saying it was "quite inventive though".

The CPS admitted that there may have been "irregularities" in the internal processes of the banks sanctioning some of those loans but that would be a question to be dealt with at a later stage in India.

"The focus of our case will be on his (Mallya's) conduct and how he misled the bank and misused the proceeds," said CPS barrister Mark Summers. He then went on to lay out a detailed chronology of events, with specific focus on a loan sought by Kingfisher Airlines from IDBI bank in November 2009.

The loan sought amounted initially to Rs 950 crores but was later reduced to Rs 750 crores, after it had received Rs 200 crores from UCO bank.

Meanwhile, Mallya was also sanctioned a loan of Rs 150 crores from IDBI in advance of the larger loan sought from the state-owned bank to meet "critical obligations to overseas vendors".

The CPS gave details of how much of this money landed in Mallya's Formula One motor racing team Force India, something the defence has characterised as "legitimate advertising expenses" as the team's cars carried Kingfisher advertisements.

These pertained to the money laundering charges levelled against Mallya, which the CPS said was not a "desperately important issue" for the judge to decide on, with fraud remaining central to the case.

"There is clearly no money laundering case," Mallya said in response to this assertion by the CPS at the end of the hearing.

The CPS noted that in all the loans sought, "loss-making" Kingfisher Airlines had relied on nearly the same set of security pledges, which included the UB Group's reputation, Kingfisher's own "brand value", a promised infusion of equity funds and a projected return to profit by the airline by February 2011.

"The airline had claimed that it had put proactive measures in place to improve performance," the CPS noted.

However, it was also a time when according to an industry analysis, the state of the airline industry was described as "grim" and as being in "intensive care".

"It was not a scenario in which a state bank would have entertained such loan requests," the CPS added.

Court was told that loans acquired in the name of rescuing Kingfisher Airlines were in fact used to pay off other debts, including paying the rent on a corporate jet "owned by Kingfisher but operated for the defendant's (Mallya) own benefit".

The CPS presented an email written by Mallya in December 2009 justifying the use of loans to "achieve round robins", confirming that he was open to using money received from banks for Kingfisher Airlines to repay other banks to settle overdue bills and charges.

This was "expressly prohibited" as part of the agreed terms of the loans provided to the then struggling airline, it said.

The first day of the trial is expected to be taken up entirely by the CPS setting out the Indian government's prima facie case against Mallya, a fact that was not welcomed by his defence team.

Mallya's barrister, Clare Montgomery, told the judge that she had hoped to set out the defence's opening arguments on the first day as well.

But the CPS said it will "not be rushed" as it lays out the complete chronology of events.

Meanwhile, Mallya watched the proceedings from behind a glass-windowed dock.

His defence team tried to get the judge to allow him to sit outside the dock near his defence team to access some of the complicated paperwork being relied upon, but the judge denied that request saying all defendants are expected to sit in the dock.

However,the judge has directed that a table be provided to Mallya for easier access to his paperwork.

Earlier, Mallya looked relaxed when he entered the court to stand trial on charges of fraud and money laundering related to his erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines owing several Indian banks around Rs 9,000 crores.

"These (allegations against me) are false, fabricated and baseless," Mallya told reporters outside the court ahead of the hearing.

A four-member CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) team from India had also arrived at the court ahead of the trial, one of whom nodded when asked if they were "confident" about their case.

Mallya, who has been out on bail since Scotland Yard executed an extradition warrant in April this year, will be in the dock for the duration of the trial scheduled to end on December 14.

A judgement in the case, being presided over by Judge Emma Louise Arbuthnot, is unlikely until early next year.

The CPS will need to demonstrate a prima facie case by producing evidence to show that the criminal charges against Mallya are justified and that he should be extradited to face the Indian courts.

Prison conditions in India are expected to be at the forefront during the hearing, with the Indian government providing assurances of protection of Mallya's human rights.

The tycoonhas been on self-imposed exile in the UK since he left India on March 2, 2016.

While on strict bail conditions, which include providing a bail bond worth 650,000 pounds, surrender of his passport and a ban on possessing any travel documents, the former Rajya Sabha member has been based at his Hertfordshire estate Ladywalk in the village of Tewin, nearly 50-km from London.

The CPS had presented "supplemental" charges of money laundering to previous charges of fraud against the businessman at an earlier hearing in October.

The judge had agreed to effectively re-open a fresh case so that all charges can be heard concurrently in court.

If the judge rules in favour of extradition at the end of the trial, the UKhome secretary must order Mallya's extradition within two months.

However, the case can go through a series of appeals in higher UK courts before arriving at a conclusion.

Judge Arbuthnot and her colleague, Rebecca Crane, at Westminster Magistrates' Court have recently rejected two other long-pending extradition requests from India.

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Liquor baron Vijay Mallya, out on a 650,000-pound bail bond following his arrest by Scotland Yard over fraud and money laundering charges, will return to Westminster Magistrates' Court here today as his extradition trial begins.

The 61-year-old businessman, who has been in self-imposed exile in the UK since March 2016 when he left India, is wanted in India on charges relating to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines defaulting on loans from various Indian banks amounting toRs9,000 crore.

The trial is set to open with opening arguments, followed by the witness statement of Dr B Humphreys, who is an aviation expert.

Others expected to give their statements for the defence include Margaret Sweeney, chief accountant at Force India Formula One racing team, Professor Lau as an expert on the Indian legal system, and Dr Alan Mitchell, a licensed medical practitioner and a former medical officer with the Scottish prison system.

The extradition trial itself, to be presided over by Judge Arbuthnot, is listed for hearings until December 14, with December 6 and 8 so far marked as non-sitting days. A judgement in the case is not expected until early next year.

If the judge rules in favour of extradition at the end of the trial, UKhome secretary Amber Rudd must orderMallya's extradition within two months. However, the case can go through a series of court appeals before the actual extradition order can be issued.

His extradition trial will now determine whether he can be legally forced to go back to face the Indian courts.

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today expressed grief at the passing away of veteran Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor, describing him as a legend.

The actor will be remembered for generations, Banerjee said in a tweet message.

"Saddened at his passing away. Shashi Kapoor a legend and actor will be remembered for generations for his great work in cinema," Banerjee said.

The legendary Bollywood actor, the romantic screen icon of '70s and '80s, died in Mumbai today.

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A 30-year-old Pune resident called up police posing as an aide of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and got himself arrested so he could receive healthcare in prison, an official said today.

Amit Jagannath Kamble, a resident of Navi Peth in Pune, was arrested today for making calls to the Ahmednagar police and jail authorities posing as a personal assistant of Fadnavis, Superintendent of Police Ranjankumar Sharma said.

On November 29, Kamble called the police on phone and asked them to shift all the three convicts in the Kopardi rape and murder case to Pune's Yerwada jail instead of taking them to Nagpur prison, he said.

Sharma told PTI Kamble is suffering from a kidney ailment for the last four years and can't afford treatment due to his poor financial condition.

He commits petty crimes to get arrested and avail free treatment and receive healthcare inside the jail, the police officer said.

Kamble has several pending criminal cases against him in Deccan, Vishrambaug, Faraskhana and other police stations in Pune, police sources said.

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An unidentified person has claimed to be related to Hollywood star Samuel L Jackson, after he was arrested at the airport by the police on possession of weapons.

The man, called Jackson his "uncle", on being taken into custody at the LAX after he was busted for carrying weapons, such as knives, a long piece of rebar and a handful of tools, reported TMZ.

"My uncle's Samuel Jackson. Samuel L Jackson!" he said.

Law enforcement sources say the police was alerted about a suspicious man hanging around the airport with a potential bow and arrow.

When the cops approached, the insider said the man set ran away, setting off a brief chase before being tazed and taken down.

The man was taken to a hospital by ambulance, after apparently having suffered injuries.

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Irked by his wife questioning him over buying a costly mobile phone, a farmer killed her at their house on the city's outskirts, police said.

Balamurugan (38), a habitual drinker, had bought the Rs 9,000 phone and showed it to his wife Muthulakshmi at their house in Kinathukadavu late last night, they added.

When she questioned why he had bought such a costly phone as they were facing financial problems, Balamurugan in a fit of rage hit her on the head with a pickaxe, killing her on the spot, police said.

The farmer was arrested after police rushed to the spot on receiving information about the incident.

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The Delhi High Court today said the issue of marital rape, an act in which a spouse indulges in sexual intercourse without the other's consent, was of huge ramifications and tremendous importance.

The high court fixed January 2 next year to continue hearing arguments in the matter in which some NGOs, espousing the cause of women, have raised the issue of sexual violence in marriage in India.

The matter was listed before a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar which during the brief hearing noted the concern raised by the NGOs, RIT Foundation and the All India Democratic Women's Association.

The court asked senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, who is assisting it as an amicus curiae, to freely express his views on the issue in which the Centre has maintained that marital rape cannot be made a criminal offence as it could become a phenomenon which may destabilise the institution of marriage and become an easy tool to harass the husbands.

Ramachandran told the bench that he will come up with his views after hearing the submissions of the Centre and the NGOs.

Advocate Karuna Nandy, appearing for the two NGOs, tried to impress the bench by citing few studies and research to press for the prayer to declare forcible sexual intercourse between married couple as an offence.

She elaborated by referring to the 2005 data of National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) about the gravity of the situation.

However, without going any further, the bench deferred the hearing with the observation that "the issue has huge ramifications. It is of tremendous importance."



In a related development, the Supreme Court in its historic verdict in October this year, has held that sexual intercourse with a girl below 18 years of age, even by the husband, would amount to rape. It has criminalised sex with a wife who is not a major.

The apex court read down a provision in the Indian Penal Code of 1860 exempting males from being tried for rape if the wives were between the age of 15 and 18 years.

The top court's verdict will have ramification in the petition pending before the high court.

In the original petition before the high court, the petitioners had highlighted that the provision under the IPC did not consider non-consensual sexual intercourse with a wife, above 15 years of age, as rape.

The petitioners submitted that there was a need to strike down the exception clause under Section 375 of IPC that says that sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape.

The court is also hearing two intervention applications, one in support of pleas to make marital rape an offence and the other opposing it.

The Centre had advocated retaining the exception clause in Section 375 saying child marriages were taking place in India and the decision to retain a girl's minimum age as 15 years to marry was taken under the amended rape law to protect a couple against criminalisation of their sexual activity.

The NGOs' counsel had said that they have challenged the constitutionality of section 375 (rape) of the IPC on the ground that it discriminated against married women being sexually assaulted by their husbands.

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US Defence Secretary James Mattis today asked Pakistan to "redouble" efforts to confront militants operating from its soil as he met the country's top leadership here, amid Washington's concerns that Islamabad was not doing enough to dismantle terror safe havens.

Mattis held a meeting with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi after arriving here on his maiden tour to Pakistan to explore ways to effectively eliminate the threat of militancy, days after 2008 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed was released from house arrest.

The US Embassy in Islamabad said in a statement that Mattis told Abbasi to "redouble" efforts to tackle militants operating from Pakistan's territory.

"The secretary reiterated that Pakistan must redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country," Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Dana W White said after Mattis concluded his inaugural trip to Pakistan.

Mattis also met Minister of Defence Khurram Dastigir Khan, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Director General of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lieutenant General Naveed Mukhtar.

"Mattis recognised Pakistan's sacrifices in the war against terrorism," White said, adding that Mattis emphasised the vital role that Pakistan can play in working with the US and others to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that brings stability and security to the region.

Abbasi said Pakistan, in its national interest, would continue to conduct intelligence-based operations all over the country to consolidate the gains achieved in the last four years.

"The prime minister reiterated that there are no safe havens in Pakistan and the entire nation was committed to its resolve on eradicating terrorism once and for all in all its forms and manifestations," according to a statement by the Prime Minister's Office here.

Abbasi said no other country benefits more from peace and stability in Afghanistan than Pakistan.

He agreed with Mattis that both Pakistan and the US have common stakes in securing peace and security in Afghanistan for the long term stability of the broader region.

He also appreciated the US resolve not to allow the use of Afghan soil against Pakistan.

Recalling the longstanding relationship with the US, he underlined the need for a broad-based engagement to strengthen partnership and enhance cooperation between the two countries.

Mattis stated that the "purpose of his visit was to find common grounds in order to create a positive, consistent and long-term relationship with Pakistan," the statement said.

He underscored the importance of continuing and deepening cooperation for the common objective of eliminating terrorism from the region.

Relations between the US and Pakistan plummeted after President Donald Trump announced his new Afghan policy in August and directly blamed Islamabad for supporting the Taliban and the Haqqani network.

"We have heard from Pakistani leaders that they do not support terrorism. So I expect to see that sort of action reflected in their policies," Mattis said ahead of his trip.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo had said Pakistan's policy of using terrorists as leverage against India and Afghanistan has not changed.

"Not yet," he said when asked to comment on the issue even as he warned Islamabad that the US will do "everything it can" to ensure that terror safe havens no longer exist in the country.

Pompeo told the Reagan National Defence Forum in California over the weekend that this is the message that Mattis was tasked to deliver to the Pakistani leadership.

The visit of Mattis comes about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately arrest and charge 26/11 mastermind Saeed, in the absence of which it warned Islamabad of repercussions.

JuD chief Saeed, who has an American bounty of USD 10 million on his head, walked free on November 24 after a court ordered an end to his 10-month detention.

Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in Pakistan and gain their understanding.

"The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," he said earlier, on his way to Pakistan.

Mattis is the first top American official to visit Pakistan after completion of the first 100 days of the US' new South Asia strategy unveiled by Trump on August 21.

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The ruling Congress in Meghalaya has suffered another jolt with state party president and four-time chief minister D D Lapang deciding to opt out of assembly poll race, due early next year.

His announcement came a month after two senior leaders holding cabinet berths - deputy chief minister Roytre C Laloo and Roshan Warjri - expressed similar intentions.

The 85-year-old veteran leader met All India Congress Committee president Sonia Gandhi in Delhi yesterday to inform her about his decision.

"She wished me well and said I should continue to keep the party united and share my experience and advisories with the workers and leaders," Lapang said in a statement.

The former CM also exchanged greetings with Meghalaya party in-charge C P Joshi during a meeting called to discuss the elevation of Rahul Gandhi as Congress president.

He had informed Chief Minister Mukul Sangma about his decision prior to his meeting with Sonia Gandhi yesterday.

Lapang had won the Nongpoh seat in the 1972 assembly elections as an Independent candidate. He later joined the Congress and was elected chief minister in 1992, 2003, 2007 and 2009.

However, he never completed his tenure as the chief minister.

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Meghalaya Power Minister Comingone Ymbon today resigned from the Mukul Sangma cabinet due to personal reasons.

"I hereby tender my resignation as Minister i/c Power, GAD and CnRD w.e.f. from today the 4th December, 2017 on personal grounds," Ymbon said in a letter to Chief Minister Mukul Sangma.

Ymbon was sworn in as Minister in August this year. Sources close to him said that he would not seek re-election on Congress ticket for the state Assembly elections due early next year.

At least six other Congress legislators including former deputy chief minister Rowell Lyngdoh and his cabinet colleagues Prestone Tynsong and Sniawbhalang Dhar have announced that they would not seek Congress party ticket for 2018 Assembly elections.

Three other senior leaders of the party including party president and four times chief minister D D Lapang and two cabinet ministers have also announced they are not contesting next year's assembly elections.

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New York's prestigious Metropolitan Opera has suspended its eminent longtime conductor James Levine after three men, including one of Indian-origin, accused that he sexually abused them decades ago.

The company in a statement said that it was suspending its four-decade relationship with 74-year-old Levine and cancelling his upcoming conducting engagements after knowing about his sexual misconduct that took place from the 1960's to the 1980's, Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met said.

"Levine will not be involved in any Met activities, including conducting scheduled performances at the Met this season," the statement said.

"While we await the results of the investigation, based on these new reports, the Met has made the decision to act now,"



it said.

The move to suspend Levine comes a day after one of Levine's accusers claimed he had sexual contact with Levine as a teenager.

One of Levine's accusers, 48-year-old Ashok Pai, who grew up in Illinois near the Ravinia Festival, where Levine was music director, said that he was sexually abused by him starting in the summer of 1986, when Pai was 16 an accusation he made last year in a report to the Lake Forest Police Department in Illinois, The New York Times reported.

Pai said that he first met Levine when he was four years old and his parents took him backstage after a Ravinia concert.

In 1985, when Pai was 15, he said, Levine gave him a ride home and began holding his hand in an "incredibly sensual way."



"I was vulnerable," said Pai.

"I was under this man's sway, I saw him as a safe, protective person, he took advantage of me, he abused me and it has really messed me up," he added.

Chris Brown, who played principal bass in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra for more than three decades, said that Levine masturbated him in 1986 and then coaxed him to reciprocate when Brown was 17 at the Meadow Brook School of Music in Michigan, the report said.

The third man, James Lestock said that Levine also masturbated him there that summer when Lestock was 17 and a cello student the first of many sexual encounters with Levine that have haunted him.

Levine served as music director of the Met from 1976 to 2016, when he assumed the position of music director emeritus.

Levine has conducted more than 2,500 performances at the Met. He made his debut there in June 1971 with Puccini's Tosca, becoming principal conductor in the 1973-74 season and music director in 1976-77.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi today likened the imminent elevation of Rahul Gandhi to dynastic succession of Mughal rulers, and castigated the Congress for abandoning "public modesty" by deciding to make a person, who is out on bail in a graft case, its president.

The prime minister also targeted the Congress over corruption during its rule, and spoke about the clean governance under him in Gujarat and at the Centre.

"The Congress has abandoned all public modesty. The Congress has gone bankrupt, as it is going to make a person who is out on bail in corruption case its president," Modi told a rally here in Valsad district of election-bound Gujarat, apparently referring to the National Herald case.

Political parties, he said, will think 17 times before making those out on bail even a district unit chief.

Modi said with the Congress deciding to make such a leader its president gave a glimpse of what culture the party will follow and the kind of leadership will emerge there in future.

"Mani Shanker Aiyar, who was a minister in the Congress government said 'did elections happen during Mughal rule? After Jahangir, Shahjahan came, was any election held? After Shahjahan it was understood that Aurangzeb would be the leader'.

"Does the Congress accept that it is a one family party? We don't want this Aurangzebi Raaj (Aurangzeb's rule)....For us, country comes first, 125 crore people of this country are our high-command," Modi said.

Referring to the BJP's resounding victory in the civic polls in Uttar Pradesh, Modi said, people in the Congress also think they would not been able to harm the BJP's prospects in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

So, the prime minister said, the thinking in the Congress is that if they could defeat the BJP in Gujarat, people of other states will listen to them.

"Will you allow that to happen? Will you stop the journey of development in Gujarat?" Modi asked the audience that responded with an emphatic 'no'.

Modi also took potshots at Rahul Gandhi over his frequent visit to temples during the poll campaign.

"In earlier days, there used to be a competition to show how secular they are. If one says that I am secular, the other will say he is four kg more secular, the third will say he is six kg more secular and the fourth would claim he is 10 kg more secular.

"But what is the competition for before 2017 (Gujarat) polls? After 70 years where all they have to go to?" Modi asked the gathering that shouted in one voice "temples".

He said the people of Gujarat were not fools and would see through the "deception" (of visiting temples for Hindu votes).

Asserting that he never faced any allegation of corruption in his long public life as chief minister and prime minister, Modi asked the audience," Have you ever read in any newspaper that I have taken any thing? have you read that Modi's brother or any relative took money? Have you read that son-in-law of our family has taken any money?" he asked, to which the crowd responded in the negative.

On the other hand, he said, the Congress governments were mired in scandals.

The prime minister said even the Congress has accepted that the BJP is not an anti-Muslim party, as unlike in the past elections, it is not branding BJP leaders communal this time.

"If you remember 2002, 2007, 2012 (polls), all Congress leaders would brand us as communal and anti-Muslim. But before the 2017 polls, no leader is saying that BJP is communal. This means the Congress has also accepted that the abuse they were hurling against the BJP was false and was meant for vote bank politics," he said.

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Indian Navy today continued search and rescue (SAR) operations in full swing for the fifth day over Southeast Arabian Sea and Lakshadweep and Minicoy islands in the aftermath of very severe cyclonic storm Ockhi.

The Navy said the whole of Lakshadweep and Minicoy islands are under the cover of its ships and aircraft with rescue and relief operations on in full swing.

The lndian Navy is determined to bring back normalcy to Lakshadweep and Minicoy islands most expeditiously, a Defence release said.

All other ships at the disposal of Indian Navy would continue the search and rescue operations and provide relief till normalcy is restored.

Eight naval ships, including frontline ships from Western Naval Command INS Chennai, Kolkata and Trikand, were deployed for rendering assistance to the affected islands, the release said.

In addition, all aircraft at the disposal of the Southern Naval Command, including long range maritime reconnaissance aircraft P8I of Eastern Naval Command, were deployed throughout the day, it said.

Swift action of the Indian Navy has saved 148 lives at sea, which includes 11 fishermen picked up by the Indian Naval ships Jamuna, Nireekshak and Sagardhwani, the release added.

Disaster relief material was disembarked at Minicoy yesterday and at Kavaratti and Kalpeni today by Indian Naval Ships Sharda and Chennai.

Four tonnes of relief material, including dry provisions (rice,dal, salt, dehydrated potato and onion),water, blankets, raincoats, disposable clothes, mosquito nets and dhurries has been handed over to the local administration, it said.

Disaster relief material of dry provisions and ready-to- eat meals are also being dispatched to Bitra lsland by Indian Naval helicopter from INS Dweeprakshak at Kavaratti.

INS Kolkata rescued nine persons, all from Kochi, from fishing vessel Island Queen 70 miles off Bitra Island, which was reported missing for the last 15 days.

The crew were found to be in satisfactory condition and their request for food, water and seamanship items was immediately met by the ship. Based on their request, the boat was escorted for two hours into fair weather.

A naval Sea King helicopter from Kochi, deployed at Kavaratti island, is being extensively used to transfer men and material between the islands, the release said.

In the meanwhile, INS Kalpeni brought back 11 Kerala fishermen rescued by INS Jamuna and INS Nireekshak to Kochi.

INS Shardul, which disembarked all relief material at Minicoy, is equipped with diving team and a naval helicopter to carry out additional SAR operations, it said.

The material would be enough for 2000 people for seven days, the release said.

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Senior NCP leader Praful Patel today attacked Prime Minister for the comments he had made on the forthcoming election of the Congress president while addressing a poll rally in Gujarat yesterday.

" commented on infighting in the Congress, which was unwarranted. He had termed the election (of Congress president) as a tussle between 'Shezad' and 'Shahzada'," Patel told reporters.

Addressing a rally, Modi had said that if one doesn't have democracy in his home (party), how can the person practice it in the country.

Modi also said that the outcome of the election to the top post in the Congress is a foregone conclusion.

"A youth called Shezad (Poonawala), who is a (Congress) party worker has raised questions over the process of the election and alleged that it is being rigged," the PM had said.

Patel said the Sharad Pawar-led party is contesting 58 out of the total 182 seats in Gujarat elections, to be held in two phases on December 9 and 14.

The senior leader said had the Congress sealed a pre-poll alliance with the NCP in Gujarat, the chances of the BJP's victory would have become remote.

The NCP and the Congress had fought state assembly polls in an alliance in 2002 and 2007.

The tie-up couldn't materialise this time as the Congress was livid with the NCP over its two MLAs in Gujarat purportedly voting for a BJP candidate against Ahmed Patel in Rajya Sabha election this year.

Patel said the BJP was losing the ground in Gujarat since the emergence of Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mevani, who represent Patidars, OBCs and Dalits, respectively.

"After Modi's ascension to Delhi in 2014, the BJP failed to retain power in most of district and tehsil panchayats that went to polls, which reflected resentment against the saffron party," Patel said.

Attacking the prime minister, Patel said Modi was "maintaining silence" on the matters concerning the common people while raking up the "son-of-the-soil" issue in Gujarat.

Patel was referring to Modi's emotional appeals to the people of the state during canvassing.

"Modi should have talked about issues like farmer distress, atrocities on Dalits, discrimination against minorities, the plight of small and medium scale industries, the adverse impact of GST and demonetisation etc," the NCP leader said.

Taking a jibe at the BJP for drafting in senior Union ministers for the poll campaign, Patel said this reflects "nervousness" in the saffron party and that the "parivartan" (transformation) is imminent in Gujarat.
Nepal's first ever billionaire, Binod Chaudhary - who recently joined the ruling Nepali Congress - is set to contest elections even as he canvasses support for the party ahead of provincial and parliamentary polls this week.

Chaudhary, 62, whose ancestors migrated to Nepal from India around 150 years ago, has become a crowd puller on the campaign trail, addressing over 50 election rallies across the Himalayan nation.

He heads the USD 1.1 billion Chaudhary Group which runs 136 companies on five continents.

The second phase of elections to provincial assemblies and the parliament is scheduled for December 7 in 43 districts across Nepal.

Today is the last day of campaigning for the elections before the Election Commission deadline.

He is contesting the election on a Nepali Congress (NC) ticket to become an MP under the proportionate representation system.

In his campaign, Chaudhary has claimed that the economic road map drawn by him on behalf of the Nepali Congress will be the foundation for economic prosperity of the country.

"I have joined the Nepali Congress party to do something concrete for the country in the economic field. I had no more joy in being the only billionaire of a poor country. I would rather want to be a citizen of a country of billionaires," Chaudhary said.

"I would devote my time and energy to make the country prosperous so as to enable it to produce many billionaires like me," he said.

During a recent NC election rally in Nawalparasi district, where Chaudhary Udhyog Gram - an industrial area developed by his Chaudhary Group - is located, a huge number of locals had gathered to see the country's only billionaire.

Chaudhary's name first appeared in Forbes in 2013 on the list of the world's billionaires.

He also appealed to voters to vote for NC general secretary Shashanka Koirala, who is contesting the election to become a Member of Parliament from the district.

Chaudhary said a Nepali Congress-led majority government was essential for attaining political stability and economic prosperity for the country.

His joining the NC is seen as a major blow to the electoral alliance between CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre, in their bid to capture power at the Centre.

Prime Minister and Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba has not only handed the party's general membership to Chaudhary but also appointed him as the chief of its central economic committee.

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Two doctors, whose services were terminated by Max Healthcare, were today questioned by police in connection with the case of a premature baby being wrongly declared dead.

The questioning lasted about two hours.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Northwest) Aslam Khan said the two doctors, AP Mehta and Vishal Gupta, whose services were terminated by the Max Hospital, joined the probe today.

The DCP, however, refused to divulge further details.

Police said another doctor, a gynaecologist, was also questioned along with Mehta and Gupta.

Two nurses of the hospital were also quizzed. All of them were questioned for close to two hours, said an official privy to the probe.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Northern Range) Sagar Preet Hooda said the hospital had been asked to furnish the duty roster.

Police were also seeking opinion of experts in the case, he said.

Investigators had yesterday sent a notice to the hospital to join the probe and share documents and the CCTV footage.

The case pertains to the birth of twins (boy and girl) on November 30. Both the babies were allegedly declared dead by the Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh. However, the family later found the boy was alive.

Police have already registered a case of attempt to commit culpable homicide against two doctors.

Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain had on December 2 said that if the hospital was found guilty of medical negligence in its probe, it's licence could be cancelled.

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The National Investigation Agency today questioned Shafin Jahan, days after the Supreme Court gave its nod to it to continue its probe into his marriage with Hadiya, a Kerala woman at the centre of an alleged love-jihad case.

Jahan was questioned a week after the Apex Court gave its nod to carry on investigation into the conversion of Hadiya and her marriage with him.

NIA sources said the probe team "re-examined" Jahan today for clarifying certain facts from his earlier statement.

They, however, did not elaborate as the matter is sub-judice.

The NIA had earlier investigated Jahan and submitted its statement before the Supreme Court.

The marriage of the couple was annulled by the Kerala High Court last December after her father alleged that his daughter was being indoctrinated and may be taken ISIS territories in Iraq and Syria by extremist Islamic outfits.

"We make it clear that the NIA investigation shall continue in accordance with law," the Supreme Court had said last week while allowing the 24-year-old woman to resume her studies at the homoeopathic college in Tamil Nadu's Salem.

She was placed under her parents' custody since her marriage was annulled by the Kerala High Court.

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Cautioning against knowledge being the exclusive preserve of a few, Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu today made the point that yoga benefits the whole world since the practice has not been patented.

He also highlighted India's belief that traditional knowledge must be shared with the entire humanity.

"Just imagine, the greatest inventor of how lifestyle should be managed is a person whose name we don't know, the person who invented yoga, nobody knows who invented yoga, there is no patent available," Prabhu said while addressing the Arogya 2017' conference here.

"He (the inventor) doesn't get any proprietory rights over it, he doesn't get any royalty for every time you practice yoga, this is a knowledge available to the entire humanity and we believe that such knowledge should be imparted all over the world," Prabhu added.

The minister is of the firm view that traditional knowledge should not be preserved and conserved within the four walls of India, but spread across the world so that people at large must benefit from it.

"In fact, when the world was discussing TRIPS, Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, we were thinking in the country, just imagine, of everything that we discover, everything that we can offer as knowledge. If it has to be patented and therefore it has to have some sort of proprietary rights over it, how will the world benefit?" he asked.

Minister for AYUSH (independent charge) Shripad Yesso Naik elaborated on the government's initiatives to popularise alternative systems of medicine.

"The National AYUSH Mission was started in 2014. An agreement has been signed with the WHO (World Health Organisation) to develop benchmarks for yoga, ayurveda, Unani and Panchkarma. Five AYUSH information cells have been set up in Israel, Tajikistan, Peru, Russia and Tanzania," Naik said.

A white paper titled AYUSH for the World by Frost and Sullivan was unveiled at the conference that offers insights into the regulatory requirements for herbal medicines in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) countries.

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A three-metre-high metal fence topped with razor wire in a North Korean port marks the front line of the United Nations' ban on coal exports by Pyongyang.

A mountain of North Korean coal -- which would once have been bound for China -- is piled up on one side of the barrier in Rajin harbour, stranded by the interdiction.

On the very next dock, around two million tonnes of Russian coal has come in by train and been shipped on to China this year by Russian port operator RasonConTrans.

Its activities are specifically excluded from the UN Security Council's sanctions resolutions -- but attempts have been made to use it as a way to bypass the restrictions.

"They asked but we said no, we don't do it," said RasonConTrans' deputy director Roman Minkevich.

The black mounds on the neighbouring wharf were evidence his firm was complying with the rules, he added.

"Behind the fence it's Korean coal, it's under sanctions now so it's still here," he told AFP.

He declined to elaborate on the source of the requests. "People," he said. "Different people."



The UN Panel of Experts on North Korea said in its midyear report that Pyongyang has been "deliberately using indirect channels to export prohibited commodities".

For years the coal trade was a lucrative earner for Pyongyang -- its main ally and key economic partner China imported 22 million tonnes worth nearly $1.2 billion in 2016.

But while Beijing says North Korean imports have come to a halt, RasonConTrans' business is booming.

Since starting operations in 2015 its volumes have doubled each year, and Minkevich is targeting three million tonnes next year, with a goal of five million in future.

It has between three and six ship movements a month at its pier -- number 3 in the port, which can take vessels up to 180 metres long -- loading 50,000 tonnes of coal on each, most of them heading for Shanghai.

Over a hill at the back of Rajin town stands a sprawling disused oil refinery, originally built to process crude from the Soviet Union, in the days of Communist brotherhood provided Pyongyang with cheap or free materials.

Locals blame sanctions for the closure but it has been inactive for years, its throttled chimneys standing sentinel over an unfulfilled economic dream.

Two large bronze statues of the North Korea's founder Kim Il-Sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-Il look out over Rajin.

Despite the looser economic rules applying in the area, the town is bedecked with propaganda slogans seen throughout the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as the country is officially known.

Using North Korean labour -- North Korean women are particularly skilled crane operators, Minkevich notes, probably due to their care in performing repetitive tasks -- costs at Rajin are 30 to 40 per cent cheaper than at Russian ports.

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Aiming to revamp Lyngdoh committee guidelines and establish a better mechanism to resolve issues of students, National Students' Union of India (NSUI) will draft a bill in consultation with representatives of students union of colleges and universities across the country.

NSUI national president Fairoz Khan said a national convention will be held and students representatives from across the country will be asked attend it.

Resolutions passed in the convention will be part of the draft bill, he said.

"Cutting across party lines, parliamentarians will be invited to the convention and the draft bill will be submitted to them. They will be requested to introduce it as a private member's bill in Parliament," Khan said.

"The proposed law will apply to all students union elections across the country," Khan said.

The NSUI is demanding that direct elections be made compulsory in all colleges and varsities, the age to contest polls be reduced to 18 years and election expenditure be revised.

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Odisha's debt burden was Rs 66,656.56 crore in October, 2017 and is estimated to touch Rs Rs 76,744.12 crore by the end of 2017-18 fiscal, state Finance Minister S B Behera told the Assembly today.

Behera said this while replying to a question. He said the loan is being incurred for capital expenditure on infrastructural projects.

The finance minister said the state's loan burden was Rs 38,666.24 crore, Rs 37,730.04 crore and Rs 27,801 crore in 2014, 2010 and 2003 respectively.

Behera said while the state government has incurred loan of Rs 20,059.45 crore from provident fund, it got credit of Rs 46,597.11 crore from other sources like the Government of India, National Small Savings Fund, Open Market, NABARD, LIC, GIC, National Cooperative Development Corporation and Rural Electrification Corporation.

Official sources said the state government has taken loan worth Rs 5,500 crore from open market during the current financial year.

"The debt burden of the state is around 16 per cent of the gross state domestic product. It is well below the permissible limit of 25 per cent," Finance Secretary T K Pandey said.

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Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today promised to fund the construction of a second bridge over Brahmani river if the Centre delays the project any further.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during a public meeting in Rourkela in April 2015, had announced a second bridge over the river but work has not begun in that direction so far.

A delegation from Sundergarh district, led by senior BJD MLA Mangala Kissan, met the CM this morning to press for their long-standing demand for the bridge.

"The Chief Minister assured the delegation that he would take up the matter with the central government. If they (Centre) are not serious about the project, the state government will construct the bridge from its own resources," an official statement issued by the chief minister's office said.

Hundreds of BJD youth activists staged a demonstration in Rourkela yesterday to protest against the delay in the project.

BJD leader and former minister Sarada Nayak pointed out that Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had also laid the foundation stone for the project during his visit to the state in July and assured the people that work would begin within 15 days.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the construction of a second bridge in 2015 and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari laid the foundation stone in July this year. But four months have passed and work has not started yet," Nayak said.

Echoing similar sentiments, BJP MLA Dilip Ray, who led several agitations in the past two years for the cause, also expressed his displeasure over the matter today.

"The bridge was announced by the PM two years ago but the National Highway Authority of India has shown no interest in implementing the project," he said.

Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram, however, called Patnaik's announcement a political gimmick and said the government was serious about the project.

"Patnaik's announcement about the bridge today was nothing more than a political gimmick. The Union government has already initiated paperwork on the project and construction will begin soon," he added.

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Rajya Sabha MP Sharad Yadav said today that leaders of the opposition parties would be meeting in the next two days to discuss a strategy to prevent the tamepring of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in the forthcoming Gujarat elections.

Talking to the newsmen here late this evening, Yadav said that it follows the outcome of civic polls held in Uttar Pradesh where the ruling BJP bagged 14 of the 16 mayoral seats as well as a sizeable chunk of the Nagar Palika and Panchayat posts.

To support his claim, Yadav circulated a statement giving details of the BJP's performance in the 16 municipal corporations where EVMs were used and the Nagar Parishad and Panchayat seats where ballot papers were used.

"There has been huge noise around the wave of Modi and Yogi being the cause of the BJP's victory in Uttar Pradesh civic polls. Fact is that wherever voting was done through EVMs, BJP has won and wherever ballot papers were used, the BJP has lost," said Yadav.

He criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for comparing the elevation of Rahul Gandhi as Congress president to the rule of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.

Yadav said that Gandh did not run after power. "He could have become PM in 2004 and 2009 if he wanted to. I was witness to it," Yadav said.

He slammed the PM for not being able to provide jobs to seven crore youths as he had promised.

"Three and a half years have passed and only seven lakh jobs have been created. The PM has not provided 150 ppercent more that the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) to farmers nor has he provided a home to a single tribal in the tribal-dominated areas of Gujarat," said Yadav.

He also alleged that tribals were being subjected to police atrocities and cases being registered against them on the eve of the assembly polls.

Meanwhile Congress leaders from Gujarat met Chief Election Commissiner (CEC) AK Joti in Ahmedabad two days ago and urged him to deploy adequate security personnel in the sensitive constituencies in the state.

The Congress has also demanded that jammers should be installed at strong-rooms where EVMs will be stored after the polling.

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Nine persons got a new lease of life after the organs of a 56-year old brain dead woman, a bank employee, were harvested on them.

The woman suddenly fell unconscious at her office here on November 30 and was rushed to K G Hospital, where she was diagnosed to be suffering from high blood pressure, cardio-vascular accident and intra-cerebral hemorrhage.

A team of specialists tried to revive her and her brain became dysfunctional yesterday and also suffered irreversible damage, Hospital chairman Dr G Bhakthavathsalam said.

After two mandatory apnoe tests, the doctors declared her brain dead in the evening, he said.

After getting consent of her son and daughter, the heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, eyes, skin and bones were harvested today.

The Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu has allotted the liver and one kidney to K G Hospital, another kidney to Sri Ramakrishna Hospital, eyes to Aravind Eye Hospital, skin and bones to Ganga Hospital, he said.

The heart and lungs were allotted to Fortis Malar Hospital/Global Hospital, Chennai, Bhakthavathsalam said adding this helped nine persons get a new lease of life.

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Pakistan's high court today questioned the legal standing of the agreement reached between the government and Islamist protest leaders, saying that none of the terms could be legally justified.

Activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLY) and Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) religious groups started protests last month.

After the weeks-long protest that had virtually paralysed the capital, the government and leaders of the TLY reached an agreement on November 26 in which the former conceded to the latter's demands including dropping all the cases against the protesters.

"How can cases filed under the Terrorism Act be dismissed?" Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui asked during the hearing regarding the recent sit-in at the Faizabad Interchange in the capital, Dawn reported.

The Islamabad High Court (IHC), however, had noted a "number of serious objections on the terms of agreement" and expressed its displeasure over the army's role in the settlement made with the protesters.

"Who is the army to adopt a mediator's role?" Justice Siddiqui had inquired in the previous hearing. "Where does the law assign this role to a major general?"



The IHC recommended that the legal standing of the agreement should be discussed in a joint session of parliament.

Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP) Ashtar Ausaf, however, disagreed with the recommendation, saying that since the high court had taken suo motu notice of the matter, the judiciary should oversee it. He had appeared in court on Justice Siddiqui's orders, the report said.

The AGP requested the court to grant him some time to determine the legal position of the army's role as an arbitrator in the negotiations, saying that he was not in the country and needed time to prepare the report.

In a written order on November 27, the IHC bench had directed the attorney general to help the court determine how the armed forces could act as an arbitrator.

The Intelligence Bureau also presented a report on the botched operation against the protesters by the police while the chief commissioner of Islamabad submitted a detailed report on the protest.

The judge remarked that the protesters were guilty of blasphemy, pointing to the language used by the protest leaders and participants during the sit-in.

Pakistan's law minister Zahid Hamid was accused by the protesters of blasphemy after a reference to the Prophet Muhammad was left out of a revised version of the electoral oath. He called it a clerical error.

Hamid's resignation cleared the main hurdle in the lifting of siege of the capital by protesters.

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A Pakistani youth, who wrote 'Hindustan Zindabad' on the wall of his house in Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province, has been booked for treason, a media report said today.

Sajid Shah had written 'Hindustan Zindabad' on the outer wall of his home in Nara Amazi area of the province, Daily Express quoted police as saying.

He has subsequently been booked for treason, they said.

Some local people told him to erase the slogan from the wall as it hurt their national pride, the police said.

Some people took pictures of the wall on their smartphones and emailed them to senior police officials.

"We have booked the young man on orders from the high- ups", the officer said.

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Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police Sulkhan Singh today asked the Anti-Terrorist Squad to assist in the probe initiated into pandrol clips gone missing from a railway track before the arrival of an express train.

As many as 77 pandrol clips, used in holding together railway tracks and concrete sleepers, were yesterday found missing between Badshah Nagar and Daliganj railway stations here just before the arrival of Kaifiat Express heading to Delhi from Azamgarh, North Eastern Railway (NER) PRO Alok Srivastava said.

The missing clips were detected by railway patrol staff Shiv Shankar and Sanjay, who immediately informed higher authorities.

An FIR has been registered in this regard against unidentified persons at Mahanagar police station here.

"The ATS has been asked to assist in the probe," IG (ATS) Asim Arun said.

According to railway officials, timely detection averted a major accident.

Train movement on the line was stopped for an hour.

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A political slugfest has erupted over the arrest of BJP MP Pratap Simha, with the party today holding protests against it, alleging that it was a "political vendetta" by the Congress government headed by Siddaramaiah.

Simha, arrested at Hunsur near Mysuru ahead of a Hamnuman Jayanti procession yesterday, is now out on a station bail which is granted at police station-level.

While the BJP alleged that Simha's arrest was part of a political vendetta and held protests at Bengaluru, Mysuru and other places, the ruling Congress chided him for his conduct.

Accusing Simha of attempting to dictate the police, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah questioned whether his conduct was befitting a person holding the position of an MP.

The chief minister said a case was registered against Simha on charges of assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty, rash driving and endangering life or personal safety of others, which were non-bailable.

"We could have arrested and sent him to jail, but considering that he is an MP I said not to do it," he told reporters in New Delhi.

Simha and others were taken into preventive custody and later arrested after he along with the organisers allegedly insisted on making changes in the specified route for the Hanuman Jayanti procession, ignoring the advice of the administration.

On being stopped by the police for his preventivearrest yesterday, Simha allegedly took the driver's seat of the vehicle he was travelling in and tried to drive off by knocking down barricades in the area.

Questioning the intentions of the government in restricting the procession, BJP state Chief B S Yeddyurappa accused the chief minister of indulging in vendetta politics.

"Do we have to take your (Congress government) permission for celebrating Hanuman Jayanti?" he asked.

Hitting out at Simha, state Home Minister Ramalinga Reddyalleged that the BJP was making such politically motivated statementskeeping in mind the upcoming assembly elections, followinginstructions from party chief Amit Shah.

Noting that the law was same for all, he claimed the BJP leaders, including Yeddyurappa, lacked basic knowledge of law. "It is high time that a workshop is conducted for them about it," he added.

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Congress leader from Maharashtra Shehzad Poonawalla today dubbed the imminent election of Rahul Gandhi as party chief as "Mughal style coronation" and said it is a "black day" in the history of the grand old party.

Poonawalla, who is in the limelight after he alleged that the organisational election in the Congress was "rigged" and gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi a stick to beat the opposition party with, called the polls "unconstitutional and illegal" that will be challenged "from Delhi to Amethi".

"My statement on Rahul Gandhi's Mughal style coronation - Black Day in history of my party...unconstitutional and illegal...will be challenged from Delhi to Amethi," he tweeted.

"Black Day - Rahul Gandhi is not the president of the Congress party but has been anointed like a Mughal king in a line of dynastic hereditory succession.

"As a member of the Congress party, I observe this as a Black Day in the history of my party," he said in a statement.

Poonawalla said the party of Mahatma Gandhi that once saw Maulana Azad become its president at the age of 35 years "is now the proprietorship of a Shehzada where no Shehzad (the Maharashtra Congress leader himself) can even contest a rigged election!".

Poonawalla said some "dynastic cheerleaders" claimed even before the filing of nominations ended at 3 pm that Rahul Gandhi was the president.

"This is because the entire world knows that this was a fixed match and a coronation. Only the crown was missing for the Shehzada!" he said.

The Congress leader said the road ahead may involve challenging (at the appropriate legal forum) the "cornonation" of the "Shehzada" (prince) by many workers who feel insulted, and recalled Sardar Patel who was "once denied his right".

"I believe in taking issues to the court of the people. From Delhi to Amethi it will be taken up. The stolen throne will have to be abdicated soon," he said.

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Rahul Gandhi was today hailed as the "darling" of the Congress by former premier Manmohan Singh after he was poised to become the party president and was also described as a "capable leader" who would make a "very good" prime minister.

As Congress leaders heaped praise on the 47-year-old scion of the country's most fabled political dynasty after he filed his nomination for the post of party president, Anand Sharma and Kapil Sibal described it as a "historic moment."



"Rahul ji has been the darling of the Congress...Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party," the normally taciturn Manmohan Singh told reporters at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters here after Rahul Gandhi filed his papers.

Noting that Sonia Gandhi as Congress president has served the party and through it the country for the last 19 years, Manmohan Singh said Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party.

Terming Rahul Gandhi as a "capable" leader, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad exuded confidence that he will turn out to be a "very successful" leader.

"And under his leadership, the Congress will regain power," Azad added.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said Rahul Gandhi would make a very good prime minister.

"If you ask me, I think he will make a very good prime minister," said Amarinder Singh. Lok Sabha polls are due in 2019.

Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu called Rahul Gandhi a "special leader with character" who, he said has come to the forefront during times of crisis.

"He has become matured, showed his character. The general is standing at the forefront alone and on the other hand there is this entire government. This is the sign of a leader," Sidhu told reporters here.

Jyotiraditya Scindia, a party MP from Madhya Pradesh, dubbed Rahul Gandhi's imminent elevation to the top post as a "new wave of hope". Rahul Gandhi has been Congress' vice president since January 2013.

All India Mahila Congress president Sushmita Dev dubbed Gandhi a "symbol of strength, compassion and integrity" and said it was an honour to be led by him.

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Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi today hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, targeting him for unemployment among youth and poor wages to workers despite the 7th Pay Commission recommendations.

Gandhi has been attacking the prime minister over various issues in "a question a day" series on Twitter in the run up to the Gujarat Assembly elections, demanding answers from him for "unfulfilled promises" made by his party.

"My 6th question to the prime minister. BJP's double whammy - on one side are the unemployed youth, on the other are lakhs of fixed salary and contract workers who are unahappy.

"Despite the 7th Pay Commission fixing Rs 18,000 a month, why the fixed salary and contract workers are getting Rs 5,500 and Rs 10,000?" he asked on Twitter.

He had earlier hit out at Modi on issues concerning women's safety, education and health.

Gandhi has used the tagline "22 salon ka hisaab, Gujarat mange jawaab (Gujarat demands answers for 22 years of BJP rule)" with his posers to the prime minister.

The Congress vice president, who is leading his party's poll campaign in Gujarat, earlier accused the prime minister of "commercialising" education at the cost of government schools and institutions, and hitting students hard with fee hikes.

Gandhi earlier asked Modi why public money was "squandered" for purchasing power at higher rates from private companies in Gujarat.

He also asked why the people of Gujarat should pay for the "financial mismanagement" and publicity by him.

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The Rajasthan government looks to provide air connectivity to all districts either through its inter-state air services or the central scheme UDAAN, a senior official said.

While the Centre is pushing ahead with the ambitious regional air connectivity scheme UDAAN, the Rajasthan government's intra-state air services initiative has been operational for little over a year.

Besides, the state government has plans to start 'Palace on Wings' services to connect heritage properties, forts and palaces by air, according to Captain Keshri Singh, Director of Civil Aviation Rajasthan.

The government has plans to "connect all districts with air services either by intra-state or UDAAN or regular flight operations," he told PTI.

UDAAN or Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik scheme seeks to connect unserved and under-served airports in different parts of the country.

There are 18 state-owned airfields in Rajasthan besides AAI airports, defence airfields and private airstrips.

Among others, the state is working on efforts to bolster the aviation sector. These include "strengthening, extension and licensing of state-owned airstrips to make them compatible for regular commercial flight operations," Singh said.
The influx of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis and cross-border smuggling of fake currencies and drugs would top the agenda at a meeting of chief ministers of eastern states called by Home Minister Rajnath Singh on December 7 in Kolkata.

The chief ministers and home ministers of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram will huddle for the day-long meeting where the influx of Rohingya and Bangladeshi immigrants and how to check it would be discussed threadbare, a Home Ministry official said.

These states share their borders with Bangladesh.

This would be the fourth meeting of the chief ministers of states, which share international borders, called by the home minister. Three separate meetings of chief ministers of states, sharing borders with Pakistan, China and Myanmar, was held earlier.

The meeting in Kolkata on December 7 is expected to chalk out plans on how to check the cross-border smuggling of fake Indian currency notes, narcotics and other illegal activities, the official said.

India shares a 4,096 km long border with Bangladesh of which 2,217 km falls in West Bengal, 262 km in Assam, 443 km in Meghalaya, 856 km in Tripura and 180 km in Mizoram.

As per the official estimate, around 36,000 Rohingyas are currently living in various parts of India.

Director General of BSF K K Sharma had last week said his troops apprehended 87 Rohingya Muslims along the Indo-Bangla border from the beginning of this year till October 31, and 76 were sent back to Bangladesh.

As per latest estimates, 9-10 lakh Rohingya Muslims have migrated to Bangladesh from Myanmar and the possibility of a spillover to India cannot be ruled out, he had said.

Illegal immigration from Bangladesh has also been a big concern for the north-eastern states and West Bengal for many years now, another Home Ministry official said.

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Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Honorary Secretary Judy Evans today expressed desire to accept surgeons from India for training and teaching programmes in the UK and said that there is a lot to learn in India looking at the volume of work in medical science being done here.

The first visit of any member from the prestigious surgical Royal Colleges of UK to the North East region, Evans told reporters here that the 500-year old medical institution has for surgeons one-year and two-year placement schemes, besides short-term courses where surgeons from India can enroll after the General Medical Council in UK registers them.

Evans, who is a globally renowned plastic surgeon visiting, is in Guwahati to attend a seminar-cum-interactive session on 'Training of Surgeons Indo British collaboration' organised by Swagat Academy of Medical Sciences.

Asked about the cost of the training programmes, she said the salary paid in the placement was enough to take care of the period of stay in the UK.

Stating that the College has moved with the times, she said earlier it was involved in conducting exams only but in the past 10 years it has been engaging in making good surgeons in everyday life setting standards, structure and training to surgeons to make patient safety their priority.

Evans also inaugurated the first dedicated eye, nose, throat (ENT) and Head & Neck surgery centre at the Swagat premises that would be operational from January next year.

Dean of the Swagat Academy Subhash Khanna said the team of doctors would be available round-the-clock. Besides providing services for hearing impaired and affordable treatment, the centre will also have a dedicated Vertigo clinic, an allergy clinic with facility of skin prick allergy tests and immunotherapy treatment.

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Russia is and will remain India's key foreign policy priority, and the challenge before the two countries would be to nurture and foster the close ties amid fast unfolding global changes, a senior diplomat in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said today.

Vijay Gokhale, Secretary (Economic Relations) in the MEA, said past relationship between the two countries should not transmute into a "passive" present partnership, insisting there was no room for complacency in Indo-Russia ties.

He was speaking at the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), a leading think-tank.

Observing that the past few years have witnessed unprecedented changes in the world, Gokhale said Indo-Russia ties cannot remain isolated from global changes.

"Therefore, the challenge before all of us, whether in the government or outside, would be how to nurture and foster our 'Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership' amidst these fast unfolding global changes," he said.

The MEA official's comments came amid apparent unease in Moscow over India's growing ties with the United States.

Gokhale said there was a need to expand bilateral engagement between the two countries beyond the traditional fields of energy and defence.

Talking about connectivity projects, he said India supports such regional and international initiatives, but at the same time asserted that due sensitivity in respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity of states was essential, in an apparent reference to China's Belt and Road initiative (BRI).

India has expressed strong reservations over BRI as the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). CPEC is part of the BRI.

Referring to the Chabahar port project, Gokhale said it was the first step to build a sea-land link with Central Asia and Russia, that is both secure and sustainable.

"We appreciate the encouragement given by Russia to the Chabahar project," he said, a day after the first phase of the Chabahar port was inaugurated.

On regional issues, Gokhale said India and Russia have shared interest in peace, security and prosperity in Indo-Pacific, Eurasia and the world at large.

"Whenever we have divergences, these should be bridged in an appropriate way through discussion and better understanding," he noted.

On defence cooperation, Gokhale said India believes it was the opportune time to move from a buyer-seller format to joint production and investments, in order to bring a new dynamism to military co-operation.

"We invite the Russian defence industry to look at our new policies in this regard and to partner us, as India begins its journey to become a defence manufacturer," he said.

On economic cooperation, the MEA (Economic Relations) secretary said the current trade figures do not reflect the real potential.

"Russia could look at new opportunities to invest in India, for instance in infrastructure and logistics sectors. All our economic indicators suggest that ours is a market with long-term potential and stability," he added.

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Russian prosecutors today called for a 10-year prison sentence for former economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev who is accused of extorting a $2 million bribe from a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.

"I ask you to find Alexei Ulyukayev guilty," prosecutor Boris Neporozhny said in a Moscow court, asking for a 10-year prison sentence and a fine of 500 million rubles ($8.5 million).

"The guilt of the defendant in receiving a bribe is completely proven."



Ulyukayev was arrested last year while still a minister, allegedly caught red-handed in a sting operation to greenlight the acquisition by state oil giant Rosneft of a stake in oil company Bashneft.

He is the highest-ranking official arrested during Putin's 17 years in power.

Prosecutor Neporozhny accused Ulyukayev, who has spoken out against state intervention in the economy, of extorting $2 million from Rosneft chief Igor Sechin, who is a confidante of Putin, and is considered by many to be the second-most powerful man in Russia.

Sechin has refused to appear as a witness in the trial despite being summoned repeatedly, citing his busy schedule.

Ulyukayev has denied the charges, saying he has been framed. He says he accepted a basket from Sechin which he thought contained wine and other gifts.

Neporozhny accused the former economy minister of showing Sechin two fingers in an apparent code for $2 million.

"You personally took the bag with $2 million intended as a bribe," he said, adding that the former minister "tried to present himself as a victim of a provocation."



The prosecutor insisted that Ulyukayev had extorted the bribe despite not needing anything and "rolling in money."



In Russia, trials almost always end in a conviction.

Ulyukayev's arrest stunned the country's liberal elites, with Putin sacking him as economy minister in the wake of his detention.

Sechin became one of the most influential figures in Russia after building up Rosneft into the world's largest publicly traded oil company.

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The Supreme Court is likely to commence final hearing in the long-standing Ram Janmabhoomi- Babri Masjid title dispute from tomorrow, a day before the 25th anniversary of the demolition of medieval-era structure.

A specially constituted bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices Ashok Bhushan and Abdul Nazeer will be hearing a total of 13 appeals filed against the 2010 judgement of the Allahabad High Court in four civil suits.

The high court had then ruled a three-way division of the disputed 2.77 acre area at Ayodhya among the parties -- the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Lord Ram Lalla.

A sect of Muslims, under the banner of Shia Central Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh, had earlier approached the court offering a solution that a mosque could be built in a Muslim- dominated area at a "reasonable distance" from the disputed site in Ayodhya.

However, its intervention was opposed by the All India Sunni Waqf Board which had claimed that judicial adjudication between the two sects had already been done in 1946 by declaring the mosque, which was demolished on December 6, 1992, as one which belongs to the Sunnis.

Recently a group of civil rights activists also moved the apex court seeking intervention in the Ayodhya dispute and urged it to consider the issue saying it is not just a dispute over property but has several other aspects which would have far-reaching effects on the "secular fabric of the country".

In pursuance to the apex court's earlier direction, the Yogi Adityanath government has submitted English translation of exhibits and documents likely to be relied upon, as these were in eight different languages.

A battery of high profile lawyers including senior advocates K Parasaran and C S Vaidyanathan and advocate Saurabh Shamsheri will appear for Lord Ram Lalla, the deity, and Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta will represent the Uttar Pradesh government.

Senior advocates Kapil Sibal, Anoop George Chaudhari, Rajeev Dhavan and Sushil Jain will represent other parties including All India Sunni Waqf Board and Nirmohi Akhara.

The top court had on August 11 asked the UP government to complete within 10 weeks the translation of the evidence recorded for adjudication of the title dispute in the high court. It had said it would not allow the matter to take any shape other than the civil appeals and would adopt the same procedure as was done by the high court.

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, an intervenor in the matter, had attempted to raise the issue of fundamental right of religion of the Hindus under Article 25 of the Constitution.

Many of the original plantiffs and defendants in the matter including Mohd Hashim, who was the first person to take the matter to the apex court, have died.

A three-judge bench of the Allahabad High Hourt, in a 2:1 majority ruling, had said the land be partitioned equally among three parties -- the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla.
Schools are responsible for providing a safe environment to children and ensure that adults there do not pose a risk to them, the Delhi High Court has said and expressed shock over the way a private school here handled students' sexual harassment complaints.

A bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Deepa Sharma said a school is where a child is groomed for the society and it is the duty of every such institution to provide safe and healthy atmosphere for the psychological, cognitive and behavioural development of the students.

The court's observations came as it pulled up the management of Modern Public School here for not forwarding to the police the sexual harassment complaints made by some girl students against a male music teacher and brushing it under the carpet.

"In the present case, the manner in which the school authorities have handled the number of sexual harassment complaints received from young girls and their parents, really shocks our conscience.

"Instead of forwarding such complaints to the appropriate authorities for legal action, they felt satisfied by issuing a show cause notice calling upon the explanation probably preparing to take disciplinary action against the appellant (teacher). They must have felt relieved when the appellant submitted his resignation," the bench said.

It said this attitude of the school authorities encouraged the wrongdoers and discouraged the Samaritans - the brave girls who had the courage to make the complaints.

The court said it was an incumbent duty of all to build a protective net around children who have suffered any physical or emotional abuse.

It said that any lenient approach in such cases would adversely affect the psychology of the children who carry the scars of sexual abuse during their childhood to teenage and then to adulthood, without having the satisfaction that the wrongdoer had been punished.

The bench directed the school authorities to forward all the sexual harassment complaints of young girls received by them to the police for necessary action.

"We are aware that much time has elapsed, but the offence still stare stark at our face and we cannot close our eyes just by disposing of this appeal. The school authorities are also directed to extend their full cooperation to the police. The court shall be informed about the action taken within two weeks," it said.

The bench said children spend a considerable amount of time at school and if they face any harassment or untoward behaviour and report it to the administration, it is their duty to deal with such matters strictly.

The court's observations came as it dismissed the plea of Anirudh Kumar Pandey, the music teacher at Modern Public School here, seeking reinstatement. He was accused of outraging the modesty of girl students and misbehaving with women teachers in September 2000.

When the school had sought an explanation from him, he submitted his resignation which was approved by the school management and forwarded to the Directorate of Education (DoE) for approval. DoE accorded the approval and his services were dispensed with by the school.

Though he had later written a letter withdrawing his resignation, the school had already accepted his resignation.

The teacher, in his plea, claimed that the resignation was withdrawn by him before it was approved by DoE and his resignation was not voluntary and was extracted through coercion and duress.

The school, however, contended that it had received several complaints of sexual harassment against the teacher and his resignation had been accepted right away.

The bench said there was no merit in the teacher's appeal challenging an order of a single judge of the high court upholding the termination of his services.

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Catalan separatist parties that tried to break away from Spain would lose their absolute majority in regional parliament in elections later this month, an influential opinion poll showed today.

The central government's Sociological Research Centre (CIS) predicted that the three pro-independence parties would get 44.4 per cent of the votes and 66 to 67 parliamentary seats out of 135, just under the absolute majority of 68.

In the last regional elections in September 2015, they won 72 seats with 47.8 per cent of the votes.

The three parties opposed to independence would get 44.3 per cent of the votes and gain 59 to 60 seats, the poll suggested.

The poll was carried out across Catalonia last month, after the regional parliament declared independence.

Independence never materialised, however, as Madrid sacked the Catalan government after the declaration on October 27, imposed direct rule on the once semi-autonomous region and called elections for December 21 in a bid to "restore normality."



The poll, in which 3,000 people were interviewed, said just over 90 per cent of those questioned were completely certain to vote in the elections while five per cent will "probably" go.

Some 29 per cent of eligible voters, however, are still undecided as to whom they will elect.

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Alleged hawala dealer Mohammad Aslam Wani was today denied bail by a Delhi court in a decade- old money laundering case which also involves Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah.

Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma dismissed the bail application filed by the accused, saying the allegations levelled against him were serious and the stage was not fit for the grant of relief.

In the order, the court also considered the arguments advanced by the ED's special public prosecutor N K Matta, who had said that the only link to unearth the entire terror conspiracy the agency had were Shah and Wani, both currently in judicial custody, and if granted the relief, Wani will vanish and never be caught.

Opposing the application, Matta had also claimed that the allegations against Wani were of very serious economic offences which "could disturb the financial condition of the country".

In his application filed through advocate M S Khan, 36- year-old Wani has claimed that the probe regarding him was complete and he was not required for further investigation.

"They (ED investigators) have been investigating the case for a decade and still they are seeking more time. During this entire period, the accused was always available," Khan said.

The advocate said a 2010 trial court judgement clearing Wani of terror funding charges in 2005 case, based on which the current money laundering case was lodged in 2007, was confirmed by the Delhi High Court on October 31.

"The effect of confirmation of acquittal of the applicant (Wani) is that there is no material left to connect him with the co-accused (Shah) as it was not proved that money was recovered or was meant to be used for any illegal purpose (hawala)," he said.

The ED had in September filed a charge sheet against Wani and Shah, whose bail application in the case was also dismissed on August 22.

Wani was arrested by the ED from Srinagar on August 6 with the help of the state police and is currently in judicial custody. Shabir Shah was arrested by the agency from Srinagar on July 26.

The ED action against the two was in pursuance of an August 2005 case in which the Delhi Police's Special Cell had arrested Wani, who is alleged to have claimed he had passed on Rs 2.25 crore to Shah.

In 2010, a Delhi court had cleared Wani of terror funding charges but convicted him under the Arms Act. The ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act against Shah and Wani.

On August 26, 2005, Wani was apprehended, with the ED claiming to have recovered Rs 63 lakh from him. It was also alleged that the funds were received through hawala channels from the Middle East, along with a large cache of ammunition.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rebel JDU MPs Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar were disqualified from the Rajya Sabha tonight, according to a communication from chairman of the House M Venkaiah Naidu.

Naidu in his communication said they cease to be Rajya Sabha members with immediate effect.

The Rajya Sabha chairman agreed to the JDU's contention that the two senior leaders had "voluntarily given up" their membership by defying their party's directives and attending events of opposition parties.

The JDU had sought their disqualification on the grounds that they had attended a rally of opposition parties in Patna in violation of its direction.

Yadav had joined hands with the opposition after JDU president and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kuamar dumped the Grand Alliance in Bihar and tied up with the BJP.

Yadav was elected to the House last year and his term was scheduled to end in 2022. Anwar's term was to expire early next year.

The former JDU president, who is at present in Gujarat to campaign against the BJP, is expected to respond to his disqualification tomorrow.

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Police have arrested three people in connection with the killing of RSS worker and journalist Rajesh Mishra in Brahmanpura village here, a senior police official said today.

However, gang leader Raju Yadav is still absconding and will be arrested soon, Superintendent of Police Somen Verma said.

"A number of police teams were involved to search the killers. Acting on a tip-off, six miscreants were travelling in two motorcycles yesterday, police intensified checking," the SP said.

"When the police signalled the bikers to stop, they turned away their motorcycle and started firing. However, one motorcycle lost its balance and the bikers fell and were arrested," he said.

They have been identified as Ajit Yadav and Jhanku Yadav (both residents of Bhabhua district in Bihar) and Sunil Yadav of Chandauli, the SP said.

Those who managed to escape are Raju Yadav, Govardhan Yadav and Pawan Yadav, he said.

"Rajesh Mishra used to publish against Raju Yadav and his gang members, who were involved in illegal mining. On October 21, Mishra was shot dead by three motorcycle-borne assailants, who also wounded his brother," Verma said.

The assailants, who came brandishing firearms, shot at Mishra, 40, when he and his brother Amitesh were at their shop in Brahmanpura Chatti area where they sold building material.

Mishra, who was shot in the head, was declared brought dead at the district hospital.

His brother, who was shot in the abdomen, has been referred to a Varanasi hospital for further treatment.

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The Tamil Nadu government has moved the Madras High Court to restrain Nissan Motor Company, which runs its unit here, from proceeding with international arbitration against the Centre in a dispute which involves, among other things, refund of Value Added Tax (VAT).

Opposing arbitration under the Indo-Japanese Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), the state government said it was not the remedy.

The remedy for Nissan and its Joint Venture partner Renault lay in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) entered with it and not the CEPA, to which Tamil Nadu was not a party.

Even under CEPA, the firm cannot go in for arbitration as it has gone to the High Court over a related matter which is pending, the state government contended in its plea.

According to media reports, Nissan initiated international arbitration proceedings against the Indian government seeking USD 770 million.

The Tamil Nadu government contended that Renault Nissan Automotive India Private Limited and Nissan Motor India Private Limited are not entitled to the claim, which is "exaggerated" and not "genuine".

The maximum subsidy (financial incentive/VAT refund) that can be paid was only around Rs 4,500 crore, the Tamil Nadu government said.

Justice Anitha Sumant, before whom the original application from the TN State Industries Department came up today, ordered notice to be issued to the authorities concerned.

According to the state government, it was found that RNAIPL and NMIPL changed their business model from April 1, 2012.

In tune with it, RNAIPL was treated as manufacturer and NMIPL as a marketing firm, thus showing that the entire sales was effected within Tamil Nadu. This change affected the very purpose and object of the MoU, the government said.

A steep increase in the output tax during 2012-13 and 2013-14 led to certain queries.

By changing the business model, a product sold either by Renault or Nissan, gains input value and gets subsidy.

As regards some products, if sold to NMIPL, it may result in subsidy for input as well as on sales to consumers, creating a scope for enjoying double benefit of input as well as output value.

After considering all these aspects, the department issued a Government Order and amended the TN Value Added Tax Act,2006,bringing the legal framework in tune with the change.

The aggrieved companies moved the High Court with writ petitions against the amendment and the related notice to it.

The firms obtained interim orders, the subject matter of dispute in the arbitration.

The petitions are not maintainable as the field was governed by the MoU which had an arbitration clause. Therefore without availing this alternative remedy, the petitions were filed and hence they were not maintainable, the state government said.

The subsidy/financial incentive/tax refund proposed to be given covered a period of 21 years from the date of commercial production and depended on manufacture and sale.

If the incentive was given in a shorter time span against the proposed period, there was a likelihood of the firms getting disinterested and it may affect the state.

In the case of Mahindra and Mahindra, it left the field within a short span after entering into an MoU in 2006, the state government said.

"By changing the business model, the consortium was making an unlawful gain and reached the target (of incentives to be paid by government) within a short span of time and with undue benefits, which were all against the state's interests.

As per CEPA, no investment dispute can be taken for international arbitration if the disputing investor went to a a court or tribunal over it.

If proceedings were withdrawn within 30 days from the date of filing the case, the disputing investor may submit the investment dispute to international arbitration.

However, the companies approached the International Arbitration without reference to this clause, the government said.

Since they challenged the amended provisions before the High Court, they are now disallowed from raising the same dispute before the International Arbitration, which is prohibited under CEPA, the government contended.

So far as the claim was concerned, the issue relates to subsidy under the heads of VAT and CST.

Disputing the claim, Tamil Nadu said it was invoking the arbitration clause in this respect as spelt out in the MoU it enetered with the firm in 2008.

"If at all the two companies are aggrieved...the remedy is to invoke clause 15 of the MoU and not CEPA...there are no obligations cast on the applicant (Tamil Nadu)," under the agreement.

"The companies, with a view to coercing the applicant (Tamil Nadu), are taking all sorts of pressurising tactics by invoking the arbitration clause in CEPA to which the applicant is not a party.

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US President Donald Trump is closely monitoring the progress in his new South Asia Strategy, which gives a major role to India, and is very much engaged in its implementation, a senior administration official has said.

Trump had sought a major role for India in bringing peace in Afghanistan and ruled out a hasty withdrawal of troops from the war-torn nation while announcing his new Afghanistan and South Asia policy in August.

"The president has been very closely monitoring the progress of the South Asia strategy. He's very interested in any progress that has been made," a senior administration official told PTI.

Trump had a meeting with his Defense Secretary Jim Mattis before he left on his visit to Pakistan. The defense Secretary is again likely to brief the president on his return.

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly Session in New York in September, Trump met the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

"That was a good opportunity to hear from President Ghani on how the strategy was being received in Afghanistan," the official said.

Observing that Trump has been getting updates from his national security team on what's happening in Afghanistan, the official said the president is very much engaged and interested in how this strategy is progressing.

Asserting that the things are signs of encouragement in the implementation of the South Asia strategy, the official said it is moving in the right direction.

"We need to give more time for the strategy to take root," the official said.

"It's a multifaceted strategy. We're using all the tools that the US has its disposal military, economic, diplomatic. All these parts of the strategy are important. They all need to work in tandem together. The president is very interested in keeping track of how the strategy is going. And he is receiving regular updates," the senior administration official said.

In his August 21 speech, Trump had said that terrorists who slaughter innocent people will find no glory in this life or the next.

"They are nothing but thugs, and criminals, and predators, and -- that's right -- losers. Working alongside our allies, we will break their will, dry up their recruitment, keep them from crossing our borders, and yes, we will defeat them, and we will defeat them handily," he had said.

"In Afghanistan and Pakistan, America's interests are clear: We must stop the resurgence of safe havens that enable terrorists to threaten America, and we must prevent nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the hands of terrorists and being used against us, or anywhere in the world for that matter," Trump said.

Announcing his strategy, Trump said a core pillar of his new strategy is a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions.

"Another fundamental pillar of our new strategy is the integration of all instruments of American power -- diplomatic, economic, and military -- toward a successful outcome," he said.

Describing Pakistan as an important part of his strategy, Trump had said the US can no longer be silent about Pakistan's safe havens for terrorist organisations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.

Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan. It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists, he had said.

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Two ultras of the outlawed Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA), who had fled during an encounter with the police, have surrendered to the police in Meghalayas South Garo Hills district, police said today.

The duo, who were close to GNLA chief Sohan D Shira, had surrendered in Baghmara police station yesterday evening but did not submit any arms, superintendent of police A Sangma said.

They had escaped along with Shira during the encounter with the police on November 16 at Halwa Atong village.

They got separated during the police combing operations. They trekked for days and arrived at Gittimggre village where they contacted church leaders for their surrender, which took place yesterday, Sangma said.

Shira is still absconding, the SP said.

Formed in 2010, the GNLA is demanding a separate Garoland on the lines of the Bodo Territorial Council in Assam and is involved in killing, kidnapping for ransom and terrorising people in the five western Garo Hills districts in Meghalaya.

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The Bombay High Court today directed that the matters pertaining to noise pollution, caused by the construction of the Metro III project, would be heard by a two-member judicial committee.

The court said this after the parties concerned failed to arrive at an amicable solution.

A division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice M S Sonak was hearing a petition filed by lawyer Robin Jaisinghani, alleging that the construction activities for the project were resulting in noise pollution in the vicinity.

The bench had, last month, directed the parties concerned to hold meetings and arrive at an amicable solution, considering the fact that the metro project was important.

It had also appointed lawyer Zal Andhyarujina as amicus curiae (friend of the court) to assist it on the matter.

The bench was today informed by Andhyarujina that several meetings were held between the parties concerned and while most of the issues had been resolved, the only issue that remained unresolved was the work that was needed to be carried out at night.

"The MMRCL (Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd) wants to carry out certain works at night, which involve the use of tunnel-boring machines and removal of debris from the construction sites. This is creating problems," he said.

The bench noted that certain sacrifices on the part of all the parties concerned were required in the interest of the public and the project.

"We had constituted a committee of justices B R Gavai and S M Kemkar to hear the matters pertaining to tree-cutting for the metro project. We are of the opinion that this committee can be relied upon to resolve the issues arising out of this petition too. We hope that the committee finds an amicable solution," the court said.

The 33-kilometre Colaba-Bandra-SEEPZ Metro Line III project will connect the Cuffe Parade business district in south Mumbai to SEEPZ and the airport in the city's north- central suburbs.

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US Defence Secretary James Mattis today arrived in Pakistan with the issue of terrorist safe havens high on the agenda, after the release from house arrest of 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed last month.

Mattis landed at the Nur Khan Airbase in Rawalpindi where he was received by officials from Pakistan's defence and foreign ministries.

He will hold talks with civilian and military leaders including Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Relations between the US and Pakistan have plummeted after President Donald Trump announced his new Afghan and South Asia policy in August and directly blamed Islamabad for supporting the Afghan Taliban.

Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Pakistan.

Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

JuD chief Saeed, who has an American bounty of USD 10 million on his head, walked free on November 24 after a court ordered an end to his 10-month detention.

The Pakistan government decided against detaining him further in any other case, pushing back against India's efforts to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack to justice.

"The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," Mattis said on his way to Pakistan from Egypt.

Mattis is the first top American official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the US' new South Asia strategy unveiled by Trump on August 21.

"We know we have some common ground. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their troops killed and wounded by terrorists. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their innocent people murdered and wounded by terrorists, so we know that there is common ground," he said, ahead of his visit.

Similarly, he said, there is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth, that do move back and forth in order to live in one country and attack the other.

"So we know there's common ground; it's how much more common ground can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others' perspective," Mattis said.

"But at the same time, as the General (Bajwa) has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and we'll find that common ground, if we have the will to. And then we'll work on how we address the problems where we can work together," he said.

He said he would not characterise everything over the past 16 years as failures.

"There is clearly an abundance of areas where we have to double down, and I am optimistic at this point that because of what our adversaries, our mutual enemies are doing, that we can find ways to work together," he said.

Mattis said both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military, the NATO-led militaries of 39 nations have all been in fights here. "We've got to find a way to work together".

He said there is "always an urgency to something" when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken.

"These are 39 of the most economically powerful, generally speaking, most long-term democratic institutions in the world. These are powerful nations morally, economically and diplomatically, and certainly militarily," he said.

Mattis said that it was essential in South Asia that all countries work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economy to build.

"I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We can not only imagine it, it's a reality right now," Mattis said.

"So we have got to work together on this, and there's a sense of urgency about that," he said.

"There's people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries. So as you look at this problem, if you'll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things," he said.

"General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting that's characterised the area," he said.

Media reports suggested that Mattis faces a difficult task ahead as Pakistan is not happy over repeated US allegations of safe havens for militants in the country.

The Express Tribune yesterday said the civilian-military leadership will adopt a "clear cut and decisive" stance during the visit of Mattis that "only cooperation will get cooperation".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US Defence Secretary James Mattis today met the top Pakistani leadership here and reviewed current state of the bilateral ties and the war on terror, amidst Washington's concern that Islamabad was not doing enough to dismantle terror safe havens on its soil.

Mattis, who arrived today in Pakistan with the issue of terrorists safe havens high on the agenda after the release of 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed from house arrest last month, met Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

According to the state-run Radio Pakistan, they discussed different aspects of Pak-US relations especially the regional security situation.

Defence Minister Khurram Dastgir, Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, National Security Adviser Nasser Khan Janjua, ISI DG Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar and senior officials were present on the occasion, it added.

Mattis is also expected to meet Pakistan Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Relations between the US and Pakistan have plummeted after President Donald Trump announced his new Afghan and South Asia policy in August and directly blamed Islamabad for supporting the Afghan Taliban.

Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Pakistan.

Talking to journalists aboard his plane yesterday, Mattis said he did not plan to "prod" Pakistan into action because he expected Islamabad to adhere to its promises to combat terrorism, Dawn reported.

He disagreed with a journalist who suggested that Mattis might end up "butting heads" with Prime Minister Abbasi and Army Chief Bajwa when he meets them in Islamabad on his first visit as the Pentagon chief, the paper said.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo has said Pakistan's policy of using terrorists as a leverage against India and Afghanistan has not changed and warned Islamabad that the US will do "everything it can" to ensure that terror safe havens no longer exists in the country.

Pompeo told Regan National Defence Forum in California over the weekend that this is the message that Secretary Mattis was tasked to deliver to the Pakistani leadership.

The spy chief said said that nothing has changed with regard to Pakistan when it comes to using terrorist as a leverage to deal with Afghanistan and India.

"Not yet," he said.

Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately arrest and charge 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

JuD chief Saeed, who has an American bounty of USD 10 million on his head, walked free on November 24 after a court ordered an end to his 10-month detention.

"The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," Mattis said earlier on his way to Pakistan.

Mattis is the first top American official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the US' new South Asia strategy unveiled by Trump on August 21.

He said there is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth, that do move back and forth in order to live in one country and attack the other.

"So we know there's common ground; it's how much more common ground can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others' perspective," Mattis said.

"But at the same time, as the General (Bajwa) has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and we'll find that common ground, if we have the will to. And then we'll work on how we address the problems where we can work together," he said.

Mattis said there is "always an urgency to something" when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken.

He said that it was essential in South Asia that all countries work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economy to build.

"I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We can not only imagine it, it's a reality right now," Mattis said.

"So we have got to work together on this, and there's a sense of urgency about that," he said.

"There's people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries. So as you look at this problem, if you'll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things," he said.

"General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting that's characterised the area," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
America's spy chief has said that Pakistan's policy of using terrorists as a leverage against India and Afghanistan has not changed and the US will do everything it can to ensure that terror safe havens no longer exists in Pakistan.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo told Regan National Defence Forum in California over the weekend that this is the message that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis was tasked to deliver to Pakistan during his meetings with the top Pakistani leaders.

"Mattis will deliver the message that says We would love you to do that. That is that safe haven inside of Pakistan has worked to the detriment of our capacity to do what we needed to do in Afghanistan and in the absence of the Pakistanis achieving that we're going to do everything we can to make sure that that safe haven no longer exists," he said.

Appearing on the same panel, former CIA director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that Pakistan has always been a problem.

"It's been a safe haven for terrorists who come across the border and attack in Afghanistan and then go back into Pakistan. We have made every effort possible during the time I was there to convince Pakistan to stop it," he said.

But Pakistan remains unconvinced, he added.

"Pakistan has this kind of two-edged approach to dealing with terrorism. On the one hand yes they don't like terrorism where the attacks from terrorists in their country. But at the same time, they don't mind using terrorists as leverage to deal with Afghanistan and to deal with India. That's the policy that they've been involved with," Panetta said.

"So, Pakistan has always been a question mark," he said and hoped that Mattis and Pompeo are successful in making clear to the Pakistanis that they've got to be able to seal their border and they have to be able to go after the terrorists within their own territory.

"Unless that happens we are going to continue to have problems in it," Panetta said.

Pompeo said that nothing has changed with regard to Pakistan when it comes to using terrorist as a leverage to deal with Afghanistan and India.

"Not yet," he said.

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Legendary Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of '70s and '80s, died this evening. He was 79.

He took his last breath at the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital here.

Actor Randhir Kapoor, son of veteran actor Raj Kapoor, confirmed the .

"Yes he has passed away. He had kidney problem since several years. He was on dialysis for several years," Randhir Kapoor told PTI.

The funeral will be held tomorrow morning, he said.

"Shashi Kapoor expired at 5:20 pm on December 4 at Kokilaben Hospital in Mumbai," Dr Ram Narain fron Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital told PTI.

Born on March 18, 1938, to the illustrious and formidable theatre and film actor Prithviraj Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor hit the spotlight at the age of four, acting in plays directed and produced by his father. He started acting in films as a child artiste in the late '40s.

His best known performances as a child actor were in "Aag" (1948) and "Awaara" (1951), where he played the younger version of the character played by Raj Kapoor. Shashi Kapoor also worked as assistant director in the '50s.

He made his debut as a leading man in the 1961 film "Dharmputra" and went on to appear in more than 116 films during '70s and until the mid '80s.

Some of his memorable films include "Deewar", "Kabhie Kabhie", "Namak Halal", "Kaala Pathar" and others.

He was honoured with Padma Bhushan in 2011 and received the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke award in 2015.

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The Jammu and Kashmir unit of the BJP said today that a well-governed state was the "only guarantee" against militancy, days after Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti asserted insurgency cannot be wiped out by killing militants alone.

BJP spokesperson S S Bijral said Mufti's assertion was a "virtual statement of truth", but he added that the "globally-established fact" that a "well-governed state is the only guarantee against militancy" calls for a careful reading.

At a police training school in Kathua on November 29, Mufti had said that militancy "cannot be wiped out by killing militants alone. We need to understand the reason and the real problem behind militancy".

She had also called for a "humane approach" to tackle militancy.

Brijlal, whose party is a partner in the ruling coalition in Jammu and Kashmir, said the state was the "most corrupt Indian state with governance leaving lot to be desired".

He said her message of "humane approach" was meant for the Indian security forces, who have killed nearly 200 militants in the Valley in 2017.

The BJP spokesperson said the militants in Kashmir "deserve the response they are receiving."



"Let there be no laxity in the resolve to end terrorism," he said.

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Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today said his government will not allow communal violence in the state even if the BJP tried hard for the same ahead of the assembly polls.

His comments come in the wake of the arrest of BJP MP Pratap Simha near Mysuru, ahead of a Hamnuman Jayanti procession yesterday. Simha is out on station bail.

"We will not allow any communal violence in our state, however much the BJP tries, ahead of the (assembly) polls. We will deal it with iron hands," Siddaramaiah told reporters here.

The senior Congress leader condemned the behaviour of Simha for allegedly taking the driver's seat and knocking down barricades, causing injury to some police personnel.

Simha and others were taken into preventive custody and later arrested after he along with the organisers allegedly insisted on making changes in the specified route for the Hanuman Jayanti procession, ignoring the advice of the administration.

On being stopped by the police for his preventivearrest yesterday, Simha allegedly took the driver's seat of the vehicle he was travelling in and tried to drive off by knocking down barricades in the area.

Karnataka BJP chief B S Yeddyurappa, however, accused the chief minister of indulging in vendetta politics.

Siddaramaiah said ensuring law and order was the responsibility of the government.

"Therefore, two different routes were chalked out for smooth conduct of Eid Milad and Hanuma Jayanti processions," he said.

The Karnataka chief minister was in the national capital for showing his solidarity with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, who filed his nomination for the party president's post.

Siddaramaiah later made a courtesy visit to Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu and Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu.

Exhuding confidence of winning the forthcoming 2018 assembly polls, the Congress leader said the party tickets would be given to those with a high potential to win.

"We will discuss with party workers and decide about ticket distribution. The candidates with winning prospects will be given the priority," he said.

Asked if the BJP's massive victory in Uttar Pradesh civic polls would have an impact on Karnataka, Siddaramaiah said, "The election of local bodies is different from assembly polls. There will not be any impact. We are confident of winning with majority seats".

Siddaramaiah also made it clear that he will contest from the Chamundeshwari Assembly constituency next year.

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Xiaomi India, popular for its smartphone brand, has plans to set up more plants and add capacity to manufacture phone and products in other categories.

The company currently has three manufacturing plants -- two for phones in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh and one for power banks in Noida, its Vice-President Manu Jain told reporters here.

"We are definitely exploring. We want to add more capacity. We want to set up more plants, not just for phones, even for other categories like Mi-band. There are many other categories...," he said.

From July 2014 to the beginning of this year, the company has invested more than Rs 3,000 crore in the country, Jain said.

The company is making fresh investments as more factories, service centres, R&D centre are being set up, he said. The investment figures would be known by this year-end.

Xiaomi claimed it is the number one smartphone vendor in India, as per IDC's latest Quarterly Smartphone Tracker, Q3 2017.

With a market share of 23.5 per cent and having shipped 9.2 million smartphones in the quarter, it has become the fastest growing smartphone brand in India, the company said.

Jain, meanwhile, allayed fears over the security of the Xiaomi phones.

"We don't collect any user data. Not at all. We provide some internet services...which means the user has to say, yes I want to use them. Even when the consumer opting these services, the data is sent to servers, they are fully encrypted. There is no security risk".

Xiaomi on Monday launched Redmi 5A in Hyderabad.
Yemen's president has ordered his forces to retake control of Sanaa, a presidential source said today, after the rebel alliance that forced his government from the capital collapsed amid heavy fighting.

Witnesses reported fresh clashes between forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh and Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels, who together seized control of Sanaa from the internationally recognised government three years ago.

Their alliance has unravelled over the last week, with fierce battles breaking out across the capital, accusations of betrayal and Saleh reaching out to the Saudi-led coalition battling the insurgents.

President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, whose government operates from the southern city of Aden, moved to take advantage of the chaos today.

"The president has ordered Vice President Ali Mohsen al- Ahmar, who is in Marib (east of Sanaa), to activate military units and advance towards the capital," an official in the presidency told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The government also reached out to Saleh and his supporters with an offer of amnesty.

"The president will soon announce a general amnesty for all those who collaborated with the Huthis in recent months and who have retracted that allegiance," Prime Minister Ahmad Obaid bin Daghr said.

"We will stand with everyone who stands against the Huthis... in the face of the Iranian threat," he said.

The Saudi-led coalition and the Yemeni government accuse Iran of arming the Huthis, which Iran denies.

The Saleh-Huthi alliance has been fraught since its inception in 2014, when the two ended decades of enmity and joined ranks to capture Sanaa from Hadi's government.

Saudi Arabia, accusing arch-rival Iran of backing the rebels, intervened in the Yemen war on behalf of the government the following year.

A Saudi-led military coalition has been hitting Sanaa with air strikes for months. A fresh wave today targeted areas near Sanaa International Airport and the interior ministry, both under Huthi control, according to residents and a source in the airport.

The coalition today warned Yemeni civilians to avoid rebel areas.

Residents near the airport said multiple air raids had shaken their homes late Sunday night and in the early hours of today.

An airport source said rebel bases near the location appeared to have been targeted, but the airport itself had not been bombed.

Residents reported that the fighting, which erupted Wednesday, had spread outside the capital.

Tribal sources in Saleh's hometown Sanhan, south of Sanaa, today reported intense overnight fighting between the Huthis and Saleh loyalists.

The Huthis today also claimed they were closing in on key members of Saleh's party.

Witnesses said clashes had erupted around the residence of Tarek Saleh, a nephew of the former president and a leader with his forces.

The clashes in the capital had killed some 60 people as of Sunday. There was no immediate information available today on fresh casualties.

Since 2014, Sanaa has been jointly controlled by Saleh and the Huthis, who set up their own government there after ousting Hadi's administration, and for two years fought the Saudi-led coalition together.

Saleh on Saturday announced he was open to talks with Saudi Arabia and its allies on condition they ended their crippling blockade on Yemen's ports and airports.

That dealt a serious blow to his already fragile alliance with rebel chief Abdul Malik al-Huthi.

The Saleh-Huthi split sparked fears of a new front in the Yemen war, which has already claimed more than 8,750 lives since the Saudi-led coalition joined the war.

The conflict has pushed Yemen to the brink of mass starvation and triggered what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Yemen's Huthi rebels today claimed that ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh had been killed as fighting shook the capital Sanaa following the collapse of his alliance with the insurgents.

The claim, which could not be independently confirmed, came as Yemen's long and devastating civil war took a potentially decisive turn.

Heavy clashes were reported in the city between forces loyal to Saleh and the Iran-backed Shiite rebels, who together seized control of Sanaa from the internationally recognised government three years ago.

Moving to take advantage of the chaos, President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, whose government is backed by a Saudi- led military coalition, ordered his forces to advance on the capital.

The Huthi-controlled interior ministry announced Saleh's death on the rebels' Al-Masirah television station.

A statement read on the channel announced the "end of the crisis of militias", referring to Saleh's armed supporters, and "the killing of their leader and a number of his criminal supporters".

A video given to AFP by the rebels showed what appeared to be a dead Saleh with a severe head injury, his body wrapped in a floral-print blanket.

An AFP photographer who approached Saleh's home in southern Sanaa today found it in the hands of the Huthis and was prevented from entering. The house appeared to have been damaged in fighting.

The alliance between Saleh, who ruled Yemen for more than three decades before resigning in 2012, unravelled over the past week, with at least 100 people reported dead in fighting, accusations of betrayal and the former leader reaching out to the Saudi-led coalition.

As witnesses reported continued heavy fighting today, Hadi ordered his forces to launch an offensive to advance on the capital.

"The president has ordered Vice President Ali Mohsen al- Ahmar, who is in Marib (east of Sanaa), to activate military units and advance towards the capital," a presidency official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The government also reached out to Saleh's supporters with an offer of amnesty.

"The president will soon announce a general amnesty for all those who collaborated with the Huthis in recent months and who have retracted that allegiance," Prime Minister Ahmad Obaid bin Daghr said.

The Saleh-Huthi alliance had been fraught since its inception in 2014, when the two ended decades of enmity and joined ranks to capture Sanaa from Hadi's government.

Saudi Arabia, accusing arch-rival Iran of backing the rebels, intervened in the Yemen war on behalf of the government the following year.

The Saudi-led coalition has been hitting Sanaa with air strikes for months, and a fresh wave today targeted areas near Sanaa International Airport and the interior ministry, both under Huthi control, residents and an airport source said.

The coalition today warned Yemeni civilians to avoid rebel areas.

"The coalition urges civilians to evacuate areas near positions held by the Huthis," read a statement published by Saudi Arabia's state-run Al-Ekhbariya TV.

"We ask civilians to remain at least 500 metres away from Huthi military vehicles and gatherings."



Residents near the airport said multiple air raids had shaken their homes late on Sunday night and early today.

An airport source said rebel bases near the location appeared to have been targeted, but the airport itself had not been bombed.

Residents reported that the fighting, which erupted Wednesday, had spread outside the capital.

Tribal sources in Saleh's hometown Sanhan, south of Sanaa, today reported intense overnight fighting between the Huthis and Saleh loyalists.

Witnesses said clashes had erupted around the residence of Tarek Saleh, a nephew of the former president and a leader with his forces.

Saleh on Saturday announced he was open to talks with Saudi Arabia and its allies on condition they ended their crippling blockade of Yemen's ports and airports.

That dealt a serious blow to his already fragile alliance with rebel chief Abdul Malik al-Huthi.

The Saleh-Huthi split sparked fears of a new front in the Yemen war, which has already claimed more than 8,750 lives since the Saudi-led coalition intervened.

The conflict has pushed Yemen to the brink of mass starvation and triggered what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Sankalp Phartiyal and Euan Rocha

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Investors on Monday cheered the appointment of Infosys Ltd's new chief executive, in hopes the Indian IT services firm can move past a costly boardroom spat, though questions remain over how the new boss will navigate strained corporate ties internally.

After well over a decade with Capgemini, Salil Parekh is returning to India to head Infosys, where he is tasked with reinvigorating growth, while keeping the peace.

Parekh joins Infosys, historically a bellwether of India's $154 billion IT services sector, as it attempts to heal following a nasty public spat between its board and founders that led to the dramatic exit of its previous CEO, Vishal Sikka, in August.

Shares in Infosys rose nearly 4 percent on Monday following Parekh's appointment as markets welcomed the board's move to tap an industry veteran with both deep experience in leading a consulting firm and knowledge of the Indian IT model.

But investors remain concerned about how he will deal with potential strains in the relationship with the founders, which cost Infosys billions of dollars in market capitalisation earlier this year.

"The incoming CEO will have to maintain a good rapport with the founders and take care of corporate governance," said R.K. Gupta, managing director at Taurus Asset Management, which owns shares in Infosys. "I believe both the CEO and founders will be cautious in their dealings with one another."

Parekh joins Bengaluru-based Infosys in January from Paris-headquartered Capgemini, where he headed their core application services business in key markets like North America and the United Kingdom, and their cloud services and cloud infrastructure businesses. He also managed Sogeti - a unit of Capgemini focused on digital transformation.

In its most recent quarter, Capgemini's digital and cloud services grew 23 percent in constant currency terms. Capgemini also reported 6.9 percent revenue growth in North America - a market largely under Parekh's watch and one which accounts for nearly a third of its revenues.

Infosys in comparison, saw its North American revenue grow at the pace of just 3.9 percent over that same period.

"We believe Infosys' slowing growth in the past 18 months has more to do with patchy execution rather than strategy," CLSA analyst Ankur Rudra wrote in a note to clients. "Infosys needed a dyed-in-the-wool execution focused leader who understands services and can build consensus."

DELICATE BALANCE

As CEO, Parekh will have to replicate some of his successes at Capgemini while being careful not to antagonise Infosys' founders, who own about 12 percent of the company, but command an outsized say in its direction.

The founders, led by Narayana Murthy, the doyen of India's IT services sector, engaged in a lengthy public feud with Sikka on issues ranging from flights on private jets, to over-spending on a takeover, and on the pricey rent for his U.S. office, to the largesse of payouts given to certain executives following their exits.

The spat culminated with the exit of both Sikka and Infosys' then chairman R. Seshasayee in August, and the return of one of its founders, Nandan Nilekani, as chairman. Nilekani, a highly regarded industry veteran, had remained silent throughout the public confrontation led by Murthy.

Shares fell nearly 10 percent on Aug. 18, the day of Sikka's resignation, hitting it lowest level since the start of his tenure in 2014 and wiping $3.45 billion off Infosys' market capitalisation.

For Parekh, being hand-picked by Nilekani should give him some cover. Two weeks ago, Murthy endorsed Nilekani, saying "absolutely, all is well," with Nilekani at the helm.

In a statement on Saturday, Murthy wrote, "I am happy that Infosys has appointed Mr. Salil Parekh as the CEO. My best wishes to him."

(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal and Euan Rocha; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Sam Holmes)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) - India asked a London court on Monday to extradite tycoon Vijay Mallya to face fraud charges of palming off losses from his failing Kingfisher Airlines onto a state-owned bank.

Mallya denies any wrongdoing, and a court document showed his lawyers planned to argue that the case against him was politically motivated and aimed at quelling public anger in India over the accumulation of bad debts by state lenders.

Mallya, 61, has had business interests ranging from aviation to liquor. He is also the co-owner of the Formula One motor racing team Force India.

Long-haired and bearded, Mallya arrived at Westminster Magistrates Court wearing a dark blue pin-striped suit and gold-rimmed dark glasses.

He was mobbed by a large crowd of Indian reporters on arrival, and again later when the building was briefly evacuated because of a fire alarm and he had to step outside.

The case against Mallya centres on a series of loans Kingfisher obtained from Indian banks, and in particular from state-owned IDBI. Indian banks want to recover a total of about $1.4 billion that the Indian authorities say Kingfisher owes.

Mark Summers, a British lawyer acting for India, told the court at the start of a two-week extradition hearing that it was entitled to conclude that he never intended to repay money borrowed by Kingfisher from IDBI in 2009.

"His company was in intensive care ... it was heading in only one direction," Summers said. "As it went down, it was going to sustain huge losses."

"THE COST OF FAILURE"

Summers said Mallya faced a choice: to take those losses on himself and his lavish lifestyle, or to palm them off.

"The cost of failure could either be borne honestly by the defendant or they could be passed on banks, in particular a state-owned bank," he said.

Summers said the airline had offered the security of its brand name, a further large injection of equity and a commitment to start repaying the capital debt in 2011 when it forecast it would become profitable.

But Summers said these were deliberately misleading or overstated. The loans had been taken out under "false pretensions" which were "supported by valueless securities", he told the court and were then not spent how the bank had been told.

Part was used to clear money owed to other banks, to service a corporate jet used by Mallya, his family and friends, and for cash for Mallya himself, Summers said.

Some was also spent freeing up credit for Kingfisher at another bank. "Ultimately that money ended up in the defendant's motor racing team," Summers told the court.

Despite giving IDBI personal guarantees for the loans, the lawyer said Mallya had been "squirrelling money away to keep it from the bank" including 40 million dollars he received as part of a deal agreed with Diageo Plc (DGE.L).

Mallya's defence team were due to respond orally later in the hearing.

In a written document prepared before the hearing and seen by Reuters, his lawyers argued that the extradition request should be rejected because of a lack of evidence, the "abusive origins" of the case, the impossibility of a fair trial in India and detention conditions there being incompatible with British human rights laws.

"It is a case which has been driven in India not by evidential enquiry, but by a populist and misguided sentiment that the sheer size of the losses involved in the collapse of Kingfisher Airlines Ltd (KFA) must be indicative of some criminality somewhere," the document said.

"That sentiment has been stoked in India by politicians of every stripe, all of whom stand only to gain from the demonisation of KFA's former senior executives, the bankers who lent to it, and - crucially - the man who is now presented as the embodiment of all the ills of capitalism in contemporary India, Dr Mallya."

The judge will have to decide whether there is a prima facie case against Mallya and whether the alleged crimes would be offences in Britain as well as India.

The judge, England's Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot, will have to decide whether there is a prima facie case against Mallya and whether the alleged crimes would be offences in Britain as well as India.

The hearing is due to conclude next week.

(Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Aditya Kalra and Mayank Bhardwaj

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's anti-trust regulator has fined Monsanto Co 15 million rupees ($233,000) for being too slow in replying to questions in a competition probe into the U.S. seeds company.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) last year ordered an investigation into whether Monsanto had abused its dominant position as a supplier of genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds. (http://bit.ly/2AJ39ih)

The CCI, which is yet to complete its investigation, fined Monsanto for delays in filing replies, according to official documents reviewed by .

Monsanto responded to CCI's queries in August, but only after eight reminders issued between April 2016 and May this year, the watchdog's November order showed.

"The commission hopes and trusts that full cooperation shall now be provided," the CCI said in its order dated Nov. 14.

A Monsanto India spokesman said: "Monsanto continues to extensively cooperate with the CCI in the investigation and has been providing information in response to requests received."

"This order is related to a procedural matter and is subject to further orders from the Delhi High Court," he added.

Challenging the role of CCI and the nature of its probe, Monsanto has filed two separate cases with the Delhi High Court.

Monsanto is locked in a battle with Indian seed maker, Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd, one of the complainants at the CCI.

That battle sparked a series of government moves that prompted the world's biggest seed company to withdraw from some businesses in India, one of the world's most important seed markets, reported earlier this year. (http://reut.rs/2jbDq80) (http://reut.rs/2ncBknn)

(Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; Editing by Mark Potter)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two of India's state-owned oil refiners have issued tenders seeking to charter tankers for at least five years while giving preference to Indian companies, tender documents reviewed by Reuters showed, which would boost domestic shipping firms battered by slumping tanker rates.

India's Ministry of Shipping asked the refiners to issue long-term crude import tenders on a pilot basis and include a right of first refusal for Indian shipping lines, a government source familiar with the matter said on Monday.

The shift to the five-year contracts would give millions of dollars in tanker contracts to the Indian carriers, the source said.

This would help companies like Shipping Corp of India (SCI), Mercator Ltd, Great Eastern Shipping Co and Essar Shipping. The global tanker industry is grappling with an oversupply of ships that has depressed rates, with the benchmark Middle East to Japan route for Very Large Crude Carriers dropping 43 percent since the start of the year.

According to the tender documents sent out by Bharat Petroleum Corp, they are only seeking bids from Indian-flagged Suezmax tankers capable of carrying up to 1 million barrels of oil for a five-year period.

Indian Oil Corp's (IOC) tender document includes similar language but is seeking global bids for VLCCs capable of carrying Iraqi Basra Light crude for five years and grants Indian shippers the right of first refusal.

An IOC spokesman confirmed this is the first long-term VLCC tender the company has issued. There was no immediate response from BPCL.

India has in the past two years overtaken Japan to become the world's third-biggest oil consumer.

The country's shippers are pleased with the move.

"Granting five year shipping tenders to Indian companies will help the growth of India's fleet.. It will help us in arranging funds for acquisition of new vessels," said Capt. Anoop Kumar Sharma, chairman of India's top shipper SCI.

However, the companies may struggle to meet the tender requirements which stipulate that the vessels be no more than 10 years old at the time of charter.

SCI only has two VLCCs that are less than a decade old, the Desh Viraat and Desh Vishal, which were built in 2008 and 2009, respectively, according to fleet data on its website.

Great Eastern Shipping does not have any VLCCs in its fleet, according to its website, and Essar Shipping only has one VLCC, which is 12 years old.
Saudi Arabia has invited US firms to take part in developing its civilian nuclear power programme, Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Monday, adding the kingdom was not interested in diverting nuclear technology to military use.

Reuters has reported that Westinghouse is in talks with other US-based companies to form a consortium for a multi-billion-dollar project to build two reactors and that those firms are pushing Washington to restart talks with Riyadh on a civil nuclear cooperation pact.

Falih said Saudi Arabia was committed to restricting nuclear technology to civilian use.

"Not only are we not interested in any way to diverting nuclear technology to military use, we are very active in non-proliferation by others," he said at a joint news conference with US Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

KACARE, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy, is the Saudi government agency tasked with the nuclear plans. It said last month on its website that it was in talks with Toshiba-owned Westinghouse and France's EDF.

"We hope that the two paths will converge - the commercial, technical discussions between KACARE and the American companies, while we work with our counterparts on the American side to address the regulatory and policy issues," Falih said.

Perry, who is on his first official visit to Saudi Arabia and will go on to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar this week, said it was "a bit premature" to comment on the negotiations.

"We are in the early stages of it but I think we both are working from the position of getting to yes," he said.

Washington usually requires a country to sign a peaceful nuclear cooperation pact - known as a 123 agreement - that blocks steps in fuel production with potential bomb-making uses.

In previous talks, Saudi Arabia has refused to sign up to any agreement that would deprive it of the possibility of one day enriching uranium.

The world's top oil exporter says it wants nuclear power to diversify its energy mix allowing it to export more crude rather than burning it to generate electricity. It has not yet acquired nuclear power or enrichment technology.

Reactors need uranium enriched to around 5 percent purity but the same technology in this process can also be used to enrich the heavy metal to a higher, weapons-grade level. This has been at the heart of Western and regional concerns over the nuclear work of Iran, Saudi Arabia's arch-rival which enriches uranium domestically.

Riyadh has said it wants to tap its own uranium resources for "self-sufficiency in producing nuclear fuel".

The kingdom sent a request for information to nuclear reactor suppliers in October, and plans to award the first construction contract in 2018.

Its nuclear plans have gained momentum as part of a reform plan led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to reduce the economy's dependence on oil.

Riyadh wants eventually to install up to 17.6 gigawatts of atomic capacity by 2032 - or up to 17 reactors. This is a promising prospect for the struggling global nuclear industry and the United States is expected to face competition from South Korea, Russia, France and China for the initial tender.
By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) - Indian tycoon Vijay Mallya should be extradited from Britain to his home country to face fraud charges of palming off losses from his failing Kingfisher Airlines onto a state-owned bank, a lawyer acting for India told a London court on Monday.

Mallya denies any wrongdoing, and a court document showed his lawyers planned to argue that the case against him was politically motivated and aimed at quelling public anger in India over the accumulation of bad debts by state lenders.

Mallya, 61, has had business interests ranging from aviation to liquor. He is also the co-owner of the Formula One motor racing team Force India.

Long-haired and bearded, Mallya arrived at Westminster Magistrates Court wearing a dark blue pin-striped suit and gold-rimmed dark glasses.

He was mobbed by a large crowd of Indian reporters on arrival, and again later when the building was briefly evacuated because of a fire alarm and he had to step outside.

The case against Mallya centres on a series of loans Kingfisher obtained from Indian banks, and in particular from state-owned IDBI. Indian banks want to recover a total of about $1.4 billion that the Indian authorities say Kingfisher owes.

Mark Summers, a British lawyer acting for India, told the court at the start of a two-week extradition hearing that it was entitled to conclude that he never intended to repay money borrowed by Kingfisher from IDBI in 2009.

"His company was in intensive care ... it was heading in only one direction," Summers said. "As it went down, it was going to sustain huge losses."

"THE COST OF FAILURE"

Summers said Mallya faced a choice: to take those losses on himself and his lavish lifestyle, or to palm them off.

"The cost of failure could either be borne honestly by the defendant or they could be passed on banks, in particular a state-owned bank," he said.

Summers said the airline had offered the security of its brand name, a further large injection of equity and a commitment to start repaying the capital debt in 2011 when it forecast it would become profitable.

"The issue is whether those projections were honest," Summers said.

Mallya's defence team were due to respond orally later in the hearing.

In a written document prepared before the hearing and seen by Reuters, his lawyers argued that the extradition request should be rejected because of a lack of evidence, the "abusive origins" of the case, the impossibility of a fair trial in India and detention conditions there being incompatible with British human rights laws.

"It is a case which has been driven in India not by evidential enquiry, but by a populist and misguided sentiment that the sheer size of the losses involved in the collapse of Kingfisher Airlines Ltd (KFA) must be indicative of some criminality somewhere," the document said.

"That sentiment has been stoked in India by politicians of every stripe, all of whom stand only to gain from the demonisation of KFA's former senior executives, the bankers who lent to it, and - crucially - the man who is now presented as the embodiment of all the ills of capitalism in contemporary India, Dr Mallya."

The judge will have to decide whether there is a prima facie case against Mallya and whether the alleged crimes would be offences in Britain as well as India.

(Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As the Supreme Court considers setting up a Constitution Bench to hear pleas on making Aadhaar card mandatory for various services such as bank accounts, insurance policies, PAN, mutual funds, PPF etc., a senior official has said that the government will give 3-6 months to link the unique identification number with PAN if the apex court rules in its favour, after which it may cancel all PANs that have not been linked.

The cancellation will weed out all duplicate PANs and make benami transactions void, the official said. Last week, Attorney-General KK Venugopal told the Supreme Court that the Centre was willing to extend the deadline for the linkage to March 31 next year. The current deadline for linking Aadhaar card is December 31, 2017. And the deadline for Aadhaar-Mobile SIM linking is February 6 next year.

The current deadline for linking the 10-digit alphanumeric PAN (Permanent Account Number), issued by the Income Tax Department, with Aadhaar is December 31. The government has indicated to the Supreme Court that it is willing to extend this deadline to March 31, 2018.

The official said that in the event of the apex court upholding the government position of making linking of PAN with Aadhaar mandatory and agreeing with the proposed deadline, a 3-6 month grace period would be given to allow all taxpayers to do the linking.

As of November, 13.28 crore out of 33 crore PANs have been linked to the 12-digit Aadhaar, he said. "The linking exercise is aimed at eliminating duplicate PAN cards which are being used by unscrupulous elements to avoid paying due taxes," the official said.

Not linking PAN with Aadhaar even after the grace period will render the PAN invalid, he said. "We can give 3 to 6-month window after December 31 for the linking," he said.

Last month, the government had told the court, which is hearing petitions against making Aadhaar linking to bank accounts, mobile phone numbers and others mandatory, that it is willing to extend the deadline to March 31, 2018.

This year, the government made the quoting of Aadhaar mandatory for filing income tax returns (ITRs) as well as obtaining a new PAN. "The duplicate PAN cards are the ones which are creating a major danger to the economy. They are the ones who are using this duplicate PAN for opening bank accounts and then they are transacting and they are not filing returns. So we need to worry about them," the official said.

Section 139 AA (2) of the Income Tax Act says that every person having PAN as on July 1, 2017 and eligible to obtain Aadhaar, must intimate his Aadhaar number to the tax authorities.

The government had in August extended by four months the deadline for linking PAN with Aadhaar till December 31, pending the Supreme Court verdict.

As the case is pending in the Supreme Court, the government is not enforcing the provision, the official said.

"There will be a time when, once Supreme Court clears it, we would like to give a date by which all have to link with Aadhaar and remaining will be cancelled.

"We will give a 3-6 month window... But after that the PAN, if it is not linked, will be cancelled. Our purpose is, all duplicate PANs should be eliminated which are not linked to Aadhaar card. So, all the Benami transactions will go," the official said.

The Supreme Court is hearing petitions challenging the government's decision on Aadhaar and has said it may consider setting up a constitution bench to hear pleas challenging the Centre's move to make Aadhaar card mandatory for availing various services and benefits of welfare schemes.

Back on October 25, the Centre had told the apex court that it was willing to extend the deadline for linking Aadhaar to various schemes to March 31, 2018, but only for those who were "willing to enrol for Aadhaar", not those who had already signed up.

with PTI inputs
Normal life might seem a tad bit unimaginable without the constant assistance of Google. But residents of China have a slightly different experience when it comes to Google. Google was shut down in China in 2010 following a showdown with the government over censor policies. Since then Google, Gmail, Youtube and its other products are banned in the world's second largest economy. But Google CEO Sundar Pichai hinting at a better future for the search engine in China said that it is helping Chinese companies gain global access.

"A lot of work Google does is to help Chinese companies", the 45-year-old Indian-born Google CEO, who has a BTech degree from IIT Kharagpur, said at a state-run global internet conference at the Chinese city of Wuzen. The conference was also addressed by Apple CEO Tim Cook and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"Many small and medium-sized businesses in China take advantage of Google to get their products to many other countries outside of China," Pichai told the meeting, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

After the ban, Google subsequently shifted its operations to Hong Kong. However, in its absence, Chinese firms like Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com emerged most powerful players, not only in the country but abroad as well.

Google and its products can be accessed in China through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) over which Beijing has stepped up a crackdown in recent times. Apple this year agreed to the Chinese government's requests to remove dozens of virtual private network (VPN) apps services that allow Chinese users to access blocked websites from its local App Store.

Skype, the calling app, was removed from its mainland App Store this autumn.

Pichai's attendance at the state sponsored internet meeting came after China recently lifted the ban on Google translation services.

Besides Google, a number of global social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter remain banned in China over fears that their presence would open-up to millions of China's social media users marginalising the official media.

The World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, near Shanghai, is an annual gathering of mainly Chinese internet officials and internet company executives as well as bureaucrats from developing countries.

The previous three conferences in 2014, 2015 and 2016 were not attended by top US tech executives including Cook and Pichai, the Post report said.

The Chinese government uses the event to pursue its argument that its censorship and regulation of the internet does not harm the development of technology and business prosperity.

Xi said that online developments were raising many new challenges to sovereignty and security, and China was "willing to work with the international community to respect cyberspace sovereignty and promote partnerships".
Finally Infosys India's second largest IT services company has made its choice. Salil Satish Parekh the man who helped build Capgemini's India operations is the new CEO and MD effective January 2018. Unlike IBM and Accenture, which recognized India's potential early in the late 90's and early part of the 21st century, Capgemini was slow in getting off the ground here. This was critical as having a large number of talented employees in a low-cost destination like India was critical to the success of a number of these multinationals. After a late start, it was under Parekh's leadership that Capgemini began to scale in India.

Today Capgemini which has revenues of about $15 billion and 190,000 employees has roughly a third of its headcount in the Indian operations. It was aided by the iGate acquisition too which had a large India base. Parekh was credited with the smooth scaling of Capgemini in India in spite of a late start and playing a key role in the iGate acquisition.

He was richly rewarded for this. He was eventually made the deputy CEO of the insular French company and even inducted into the group management team. Salil has primarily expertise in the European market where Capgemini has a large footprint.

53-year-old Parekh incidentally came to Capgemini when it acquired the consulting division of Ernst & Young, where he was a key leader in that practice. An IIT Powai aeronautical engineer, he also holds a master's in computer science and mechanical engineering from Cornell University

He takes over at Infosys during a challenging time in the company's 36-year history. His ability to get growth back at Infosys, improve morale, navigate issues with promoters and senior talent at the company, will be what observers will be watching. Parekh clearly has his task cut out.

Industry veterans have hailed Infosys' move to appoint Parekh as the CEO. Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar told PTI that Parekh is well entrenched in the industry and has international experience as well as a good understanding of Indian IT ecosystem. Parekh's appointment as the new Infosys CEO got a thumbs up from Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy. "I'm happy that Infosys has appointed Salil Parekh as the CEO. My best wishes to him," Murthy said.

On August 18, Vishal Sikka, the first non-promoter CEO and MD made a dramatic announcement that he would resign after being at the helm for three years. Sikka had said that he could not carry on his "...job as CEO and continue to create value, while also constantly defending against unrelenting, baseless/malicious and increasingly personal attacks."

The $3.5 trillion global IT services industry is undergoing a seismic shift with automation and Artificial Intelligence commoditising a large chunk of the market. Traditional models which served the $158 billion a year in revenue Indian IT industry well in the past like 'lift and shift' and 'labour arbitrage' have been upended.
The long wait is finally coming to an end for all Xiaomi enthusiasts. The Chinese company will be launching the Redmi 5 and Redmi 5 Plus on December 7 in China. The company confirmed the launch date from its Weibo account.

A new post from the company suggests that the Redmi 5 and Redmi 5 Plus will be launched with the latest MIUI 9 out of the box. So far, leaks have suggested that the Redmi 5 will feature a 5.7inch full display and the Redmi 5 Plus will feature a 5.9 inch display. Earlier, the device was spotted on the listing of Chinese regulator TENAA. So far, most major reports corroborate each other.

Redmi 5 and Redmi 5 Plus will feature a 1.8GHz processor which could be the Snapdragon 625. However, considering previous iterations of the device, Xiaomi might opt for a more budget oriented Snapdragon 450.

The device is expected to feature a much smaller 3200mAH battery in comparison to last year's Redmi 4. The Redmi device will come in three variants with 16GB, 32GB and 64GB variants.

In terms of camera, the device will feature a 12 Megapixel rear camera and a 5 Megapixel front facing camera. The smartphone will also come with MIUI 9 which will be based on Android 7.1.2. The leaks suggest that the device will come with a Hybrid SIM slot in China. However, similar to the Redmi 5A, the Indian variant might come with a dedicated MicroSD card slot.

Coming to the bigger Redmi 5 Plus, the device will come with a bigger 4000mAH battery and stronger Snapdragon 600-series chipset.

The launch is scheduled for December 7 and the company is expected to bring the new devices to India soon after the launch. The new Redmi series will help Xiaomi maintain its stronghold in the budget and mid-range segment.
CAMEROUN :: Cameroon, Anglophone Crisis: What is going on?

Albert Camus writes that "To misnamed things is to add to the misery of the world." Thus, what is going on in Cameroon with the Anglophones crisis where the number of death both from the military forces and the indigenous population continue to grow daily? Is it a rebellion, an insurgency, civil war, counter-insurgency, police operation, indigenous counter-violence, war of liberation?

The CL2P, in its informed expertise on human rights, has documented that the Anglophone-speaking Cameroonians do not feel the enlightened egalitarianism the regime of Yaounde is propagandizing daily. Consequently, rendering all the government politics of inclusion and diversity in Cameroon problematic. More, there is a mounting politics of direct coercion with extra-legal murders, imprisonment, military occupation and curfew which, taken together, turn Anglophone speaking Cameroonians into brutalized subjects of the government. This brutalization of the Anglophone Cameroonians points to a state of emergency which is not saying its name. Something that increasingly appears to be a state sponsored criminal enterprise. The real question, therefore, is it the military solution the best way to handle the Anglophone crisis?

The military approach is contradictory to any form of democratic self-governance and create, instead, a climate of insecurity and violence. The militarization of the Anglophone crisis is in no way an approach to develop transformational politics and democratic consensus.

Furthermore, the regime of Yaounde continues to operate in an archaic model of sovereign rights and failing to note that all the violation of human rights during this Anglophone crisis is more than likely to come up to the International Tribunal of La Hague.

This is where the CL2P is against all forms of escalation of violence in the ANGLOPHONE CRISIS: Particularly, the one that Mr. BIYA AND The Hawk of his regime are planning.

A warlike escalation that benefits first and only Paul Biya, and his obscene obsession with power and his wrongheaded determination to keep power by all means necessary as a celebration of obscene immortality.

This Not at all the United Cameroon we all hold dear. This is a Cameroon inherited and molded by 35 years of dictatorship from Ahmadou Ahidjo.

And it is time that we acknowledge a sad truth: Cameroon is currently fighting its second civil war. The Anglophone crisis is a second civil war - after the one led against the Boko Haram terrorists  wars that could have been avoid if only a real process of inclusive dialogue had been initiated and then continued, and especially if it had not been for the nihilism and Machiavellians calculations of a tyrant and his hawks who find there an unexpected opportunity to indefinitely perpetuate their grips on power, alleging an "indivisibility" to identity, the antipodes of the principle of intangibility of the irritated borders of colonization in which recognize all Africans.

Hence, you cannot make a new Cameroon out of old Cameroonians, for the same reason that you cannot build a new car out of old parts. Likewise, no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.

This is a dangerous moment in our history, about which we ought to be honest. If we follow the course we are on, we will see more unhappiness, more violence, more repressive national-security policies, less prosperity, less freedom, and less of anything that looks less than the few things we already have and many have nothing and found themselves enslaved in Libya or dead in the Mediterranean Sea.

The CL2P will continue to courageously speak truth to power, even at the cost of our lives, and will never give in to the sirens of ethnic cleansing aggrieved by the warlike rhetoric of the Yaounde regime against others Cameroonians minorities who are acting in civil disobedience for more than a year precisely because of their institutionalized marginalization by the Biyas regime.

The CL2P understands that those who oppose President Paul Biya are working to undermine the president, and, therefore, to undermine the country, and that they ought to be arrested as subversives or traitors. The identification of the president with the nation itself is a particularly poisonous and idiotic form of power-worship. But the president is not the country, and opposing the president  irrespective of his agenda  is not treason. It is politics.

Hence, the next time you feel yourself tempted to call one of your fellow Cameroonians a traitor, you should give some serious consideration to the infinitely preferable option of keeping your damned-fool mouth shut.

The Commitee For The Release of Political Prisoners
The amount in the draft budget is to fund two operational programs and a governance and institutional support program.

ADS





The Minister of the Public Service and Administrative Reform has presented the budget of his Ministry to the Committee on Finance and Budget of the National Assembly. Minister Michel Ange Angouin did the presentation on December 2.



The budget stands at 13, 277, 000, 000. Minister Angouin told the Committee that FCFA 600 million of the money will be used for investment. Going by his presentation, the execution of the budget would be implemented in three programs which include two operational programs and a support program.



One of the operational programs entitled Improving the Management of State Human Resources will gulp FCFA 735.9 million. This would cover reinforcement of capacities of personnel of public services, modernisation of career management and improvement of management of disciplinary files as well as reorganization of the management of the state staff. FCFA 306.4 million is allocated for the second operational program dubbed Entrenching Administrative Reform.



The support program known as Governance and Institutional Support is expected to consume FCFA 12, 234, 700, 000. According to the plan, this support program will ensure the implementation of the aforementioned operational programs. It will be implemented through eleven activities outlined by the Ministry.



MBOM Sixtus

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| BY Ricki Green |

amaysim, Australias fourth largest telco, has launched a new campaign via Special Group to introduce its small but mighty $10 unlimited mobile plan.

The new product is being positioned as the low cost plan that gives many Australians true choice and greater value by removing things they may not need like big data inclusions, lock-in contracts and talk & text limits.

Says Hayden Ruawai, marketing director, amaysim.Our exciting new $10 mobile plan gives us the perfect opportunity to talk loud and proud to many Australian consumers in an integrated way. Our campaign is built around the just what you need comms platform that encourages Aussies to liberate themselves from the things they no longer need so they can get on with their lives.

Directed by Matt Devine (Revolver / Will ORourke), the films show scenarios of people getting rid of stuff they no longer need  parents farewelling their 30-year-old-wanna-be- DJ-son, a man finally getting rid of the last few strands of hair and his hair dryer, and a man burning his ride-on lawn mower when he finally realises he no longer needs it for his tiny lawn. We see dramatic moments of liberation as the characters celebrate saying goodbye to the unnecessary things in their lives.

Over the last 18 months, amaysim has pursued a diversification strategy and now offers telco, broadband and energy plans as well as devices.

Says Cade Heyde, Special Group: We really value our relationship with the team at amaysim, working across their mobile team, and more recently partnering with them as they diversify their business and take the amazingly simple proposition to new categories.

The campaign has launched with national TV, radio, online, social and PR. Strategy and creative was led by Special Group, media by Kaimera, PR by Illuminate and performace media by iProspect.

Says Emily Bosler, founding partner at Kaimera: Were excited to work with amaysim as it launches this new product to a previously untapped market. This campaign is part of ongoing work were doing with the business as it looks to offer its loyal customer base additional services while attracting new consumers.

Client: amaysim

CEO  Julian Origin

COO  Isaac Ward

Marketing Director  Hayden Ruawai

Senior Marketing Manager  Rebecca Johnson

Brand Consultant  Heidi Melville

Agency: Special Group Australia

Creatives  Nils Eberhardt, Steven Thomson & Paul Bennell

Strategy Partner  Dave Hartmann

Executive Producer  Paul Johnston & Caroline David

CEO  Lindsey Evans

Managing Partner  Cade Heyde

Account Director  Tori Magill

Account Manager  Stephanie Wilkinson

Production  Revolver / Will ORourke

Director  Matt Devine

Managing Director / EP- Michael Ritchie

EP  Pip Smart

Producer  Alex Kember

Music composition and sound  Rumble

Editor  David Whittaker

Editing Company  ARC Edit

Post Production  Heckler

Project:

Media Agency: Kaimara

Emily Bosler

PR Agency: Illuminate
| BY Ricki Green |

Amid growing debate as to whether brands are overspending on digital media, Zenith research has found that the effectiveness of internet advertising has now caught up with digital ad spend.

Until 2015, brands struggled to make effective use of internet advertising, and their spend was not matched by the resulting brand experience (an accurate proxy of market share*). However, by 2016 internet advertising accounted for 34% of global ad budgets but produced 35% of brand experience. Internet advertising is now therefore working harder than advertising in other media.

For many years Zeniths Advertising Expenditure Forecasts reports have consistently reported sizeable increases in the internet share of advertising budgets. The December 2017 edition of the report is published today. For the first time Zenith has been able to demonstrate the ROI of internet ad spend, not just its scale. We used our proprietary Touchpoints ROI Tracker tool to compare internet ad spend to internet brand experience over the past few years.

In 2014 advertisers spent 27% of their budgets on internet advertising, which produced only 21% of brand experience. By 2015, though, brands were using internet advertising more effectively: it accounted for 30% of both budgets and paid brand experience, before tipping over in 2016, when brand experience exceeded budget share.

We expect internet advertisings share of global ad spend to continue to rise, reaching 40% in 2018 and 44% in 2020. Its value will rise from US$203bn in 2017 to US$225bn in 2020. The share of advertising expenditure allocated to internet advertising varies widely across the world. In the most advanced markets (Sweden and the UK) it will account for more than 60% of total expenditure next year, and it will account for between 50% and 60% in another six (Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Norway and Taiwan).

In Australia, internet ad spend will capture 52.1% of the market in 2017, ahead of the global average. Australia is therefore a leading digital market. Zenith forecasts 9.6% growth in internet advertising in Australia in 2018, compared to 3.4% growth for the advertising market as a whole. By 2020, internet will account for 60.3% of total ad spend in Australia.

The rise of the internet has had huge consequences for the other media, which are covered in detail in the executive summary.

Big platforms are capturing digital growth

The internet is driving the great majority of global growth in advertising  it will account for 94% of the growth in ad spend between 2017 and 2020. And most of this will be captured by just five big platforms  Google and Facebook, plus the Chinese platforms Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Between them these five platforms increased their share of global internet ad spend from 61% to 72% between 2014 and 2016, and captured 83% of the growth in internet ad spend over that time. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent accounted for 54% of the growth in internet ad spend in China, while Google and Facebook accounted for 96% of the growth in internet ad spend in the rest of the world. Between them Google and Facebook accounted for 76% of internet ad spend outside China in 2016.

Big countries are adding most ad dollars

In dollar terms, most of the growth in global ad spend is coming from a few big markets. We forecast that just two countries  the US and China  will contribute 47% of new ad dollars between 2017 and 2020. The five biggest markets  the US, China, Japan, the UK and Germany  will contribute 57%.

Big cities are driving global adspend growth

Big cities are driving global ad spend by concentrating growth in productivity, innovation and trade. Zenith has conducted a unique study that attributes ad spend to individual cities by estimating the value of their inhabitants to local, national and international advertisers. We forecast that the top 10 cities alone will contribute 12% of all global ad spend growth this year, and that the top 725 will contribute 60%.

We predict that between 2016 and 2019, ad spend in the 10 biggest-contributing cities will grow by a total of US$7.5bn, representing 11% of growth over these years. These ten cities will be, in descending order: New York (where ad spend will grow by US$1.4bn), Tokyo, Jakarta, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Houston, Dallas, Beijing, London and Chicago (which will grow by US$0.6bn).

Advertisers feel the pressure from digital transformation and polarisation of growth

Advertisers are feeling pressure from the rapid transformation of their businesses, exemplified by the rapid shift of marketing communications to online media in response to changing consumer behaviour, and the polarisation of growth to big platforms, big countries and big cities. At the end of November Zenith conducted the third in its series of exclusive surveys about brand growth among key Zenith clients. On a scale from 0 to 100  where 0 means everyone expects a decline in 2018, 100 means everyone expects growth, and 50 means the average expectation is for no growth  the average response was 57, down from 67 this time last year. Food and drink brands have been the least affected, with a score of 66 this year, down just a point from 67 last year. Packaged goods, retail and telecom brands have all fallen to 50, expecting no growth, down from positive scores last year.

Says Vittorio Bonori, global brand president, Zenith: We are seeing a battle played out in business, marketing and media between big players and small players. Growth is coming from big countries and big cities, and being captured by big platforms. Brands should focus on upstream strategy, data-informed UX planning and downstream automation.

Says Nickie Scriven (pictured), CEO, Zenith Australia: In Australia we anticipate 3.4% ad spend growth year on year to 2020. In 2017 the highest growing categories were automotive brands  driven by many new car launches and an increase in luxury car advertising; retail  despite the substantial decline in October; and restaurants.

Ad spend growth is predominantly being driven by the ever growing fragmentation of the media landscape, with digital media now accounting for 52% of ad spend in Australia and forecast to grow by a further 10% in 2018. Google and Facebook are the main benefactors of this growth and this is likely to continue to 2020. Out-of-home continues to buck the trend and post year on year growth, buoyed by the digitisation of panels, inventory growth and investment in tech.
| BY Ricki Green |

Ikon has hired Hugh McGilligan (left) and promoted Pia Coyle (centre) to its national team, building its strategy and media investment offers and boosting inter-office collaboration.

McGilligan joins as the new national head of strategy. He joins the agency following a lengthy stint in New York working in strategy roles on brands as such as Verizon, Whirlpool, Mazda, Axe/Lynx, Heineken and Dos Equis. He leads a team of strategists, and works closely with creative, digital and media to raise creative output, drive innovation and ultimately deliver bottom-line results.

Says David Gerrie (pictured above right), CCO, Ikon: Hugh is an outstanding strategist who brings a wealth of diverse experience to this role. He has also demonstrated strong management skills and business development acumen, both of which will be a valuable addition to our national team.

Most recently at Millward Brown Vermeer in New York, McGilligan has also worked at Edelman, Hill & Knowlton, and Y&R Brands.

Coyle, promoted to national head of investment, joins McGilligan on the national team. She first joined Ikon in 2011 and has been promoted through several roles including head of media services and trading director.

Says Gerrie: Pia was an obvious choice to lead Ikons dynamic trading product and teams. Her unrivalled understanding of our clients needs and the rapidly evolving marketplace amplifies our cross-office offer. We are keen for her to take this next step and delighted to welcome her to the national team.

With Hugh and Pia now in their roles our national team is in an even better place to help drive the business across multiple markets. Its an exciting time for Ikon and its growing capabilities.

The new appointment and promotion follow the announcement that Ikon had unveiled a new national structure earlier this year.
| BY Ricki Green |

Creative agency Hunter has partnered with the local Miller Genuine Draft brand team to launch a new campaign. You know those nights that start out ordinary and end up anything but  the nights that kick off with a couple of quiet beers and then turn into one of the best times of your life? Hunter and Miller Genuine Draft have channeled that vibe for the new campaign, reintroducing Miller Genuine Draft to the trendy Melbourne suburb of Windsor, fitting out a pop-up bar for three awesome nights of beer, music and food.

Taking a cue from Miller Genuine Drafts global branding and focus on a premium but approachable nightlife, Hunter hit on the Gold in Windsor concept to elevate the ordinary. That involved decking out a pop-up bar  and a local maxitram in the black-and-gold styling of Miller Genuine Draft bottles, along with the Gold in Windsor message. Invitations were sent to trade and industry people  a major target of the campaign  as well as made available to the public, and patrons were treated to wagyu beef and brisket hors doeuvres, local musician performances (Horns of Leroy, Alice Ivy and The Harpoons), and plenty of Miller Genuine Draft to wash it down with.

The whole idea, from concept to execution, was turned around in eight weeks. Hunters people moved into the Uncommon cafe on Monday to refit it for opening night Thursday, and then had it back to Uncommon on Sunday.

Says Simon Hakim, CEO, Hunter: Were not telling people, hey, drink this beer. Instead were creating a theme with Gold in Windsor and were using it to own a suburb, or own a city, and creating a vibe.

The idea is something you could take anywhere and localise it. It could be Gold in Brisbane or if we were in Sydney, it could be Gold in Surry hills, or Gold in Newtown. The idea is the core  taking something ordinary and finding a way to elevate it in a way that resonates for your brand.
| BY Lynchy |

Natasha Ann Zachariah who led The Straits Times Lifes Design section has joined DDB Group as Senior Writer at Telling Stories, Tribal Worldwides new film and content division.

Zachariah (pictured left) spent seven years at The Straits Times creating integrated content featuring high-profile architects, designers, start-ups owners and C-suite personalities. At Tribal, she will lead a team of scriptwriters and content creators.

Tribal Worldwides Film and Content division has recently produced over 400 films from online videos to TV commercial to 360-degree interactive video to Telemovies and even drama series for all their anchor clients in DDB Group.

We have built a team of agile content creators to create a repertoire of content for a new social environment. Natasha is a master storyteller with solid journalism skills and a Singaporean touch, said Jeff Cheong, President of Tribal Worldwide Asia.
| BY Lynchy |

UnionPay International has launched a new TV commercial featuring Joanna Dong  the second runner-up of the recent Sing! China competition  as one of the voices behind the remake of Frank Sinatras My Way. The commercial is produced by UPIs agency BLK J, Freeflow Productions, and Red Roof Records.

The commercial features the remake of the classic in six different languages  Bahasa Indonesian, Burmese, English, Khmer, Laotian, Thai and Vietnamese. In the film, we see the

people of these countries being empowered by UPI to live life their way.

Vincent Ling, Deputy General Manager, UPI said, We have always taken a differentiated approach to the way we develop our business in Southeast Asia. We were the first global payment brand to partner mall management group AsiaMalls to roll out QR Code payment on a wide scale basis in Singapore, We also collaborated with local switches and partners in Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, sharing our Chip Card technology to upgrade their payment infrastructure, making payments more reliable and secure to foster their transformation into cashless economies. UPI is a company that endeavours to live up to our brand promise of Shared Growth, Mutual Benefits and Win-win cooperation- we do it our way too.

Joji Jacob, Creative Co-Founder of BLK J, added, UPI is a global brand that truly believes in

empowering Southeast Asia. All the creatives who worked on this project are from
Legal advice to the former ACT chief minister from British and Australian barristers says she took every reasonable step to renounce citizenship by descent from her English-born father Charles Gallagher before nominating for the July 2 poll, and that she meets the standard set by the High Court in recent section 44 cases.
"If you're a kid in a school who's not so great at maths or science but you're an amazing athlete, then yes, we should continue to challenge around maths and English, but also then what's the pathway for that particular child if they want to be an athlete of some sort, or a musician or a fashion designer or whatever the hell they want to be - an early childhood educator, a cleaner, who cares," she said.
The magistrate said if the "promise" of the law was fulfilled, there would be a place to send the girl that was both safe for her and those who cared for her.
"The fact that the renunciation did not take effect until a later date, because of the supervening imposition of an unnecessary bureaucratic request for further evidence of the Home Office, and the time it then took for the Home Office to process the request, is not to the point," the advice said.
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.
Elon Musk has somehow found the time to make a bid to build an airport link between Chicago OHare Airport and downtown with The Boring Company.



Late last week, the city of Chicago called for interested parties to submit plans for a high-speed train service from the airport and while The Boring Company has no interest in trains, Musk has thrown his hat into the mix anyway.

Taking to Twitter, the entrepreneur said The Boring Company will compete to fund, build, and operate a high-speed Loop from Chicago OHare. This Loop wouldnt be a version of Musks Hyperloop and instead a development of its rail-car network of tunnels previewed earlier this year.

The Chicago Sun Times reports that Musks solution to Chicagos problems would be an underground public transportation system where 8-12 passengers travel between destinations on autonomous electric skates at speeds of up to 150 mph.

Earlier in the year, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Musk was very interested in creating a solution for the city.

The opportunity for Chicago is endless and boundless It would be a tremendous investment, job creator and economic engine for the city that would pay dividends for decades ahead, Emanuel said.

They are very interested. And were gonna have `em now out to the city to explore further what we are doing and planning to see whether the tunnel approach is an alternative to the ones weve been discussing.

The Boring Company will compete to fund, build & operate a high-speed Loop connecting Chicago OHare Airport to downtown https://t.co/bRqKpzSJjz Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2017

VIDEO
The former Volkswagen executive who pleaded guilty to his involvement in the brands dieselgate scandal says he feels misused by the automaker.



In a letter penned to U.S. Judge Sean Cox a couple of days before his sentencing, Oliver Schmidt looked for mercy after pleading guilty in August to wrongdoing, claiming that was following a script issued by VW management when speaking with California Air Resources board executive Alberto Ayala.

I must say that I feel misused by my own company in the diesel scandal or Dieselgate.

In hindsight, I should never have agreed to meet with Dr Ayala on that day or better yet, I should have gone to that meeting and ignored the instructions given to me and told Dr Ayala that there is a defeat device in the VW diesel engine vehicles and that VW had been cheating for almost a decade. I did not do that and that is why I find myself here today, Schmidt admitted.

Schmidt was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States in early January 2017 having previously served as the head of VWs environmental and engineering office in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Schmidt faces up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to $400,000 for his involvement in the scandal, Reuters reports.

PHOTO GALLERY
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles says it is interested in forming a technical partnership with Hyundai.



Speaking at the launch of the Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 squad, FCA chief executive Sergio Marchionne said the carmaker is searching for a closer relationship with Hyundai but is not seeking a merger.

We already buy components from (Hyundai) . lets see if we can agree on other points, especially for the development of transmissions and hydrogen, he said.

In the meantime, FCA is investigating other ways to make money, including a potential spinoff of Magneti Marelli, the brands major parts manufacturer. Additionally, robotics maker Comau could also be subject to a spin off and venture into the world of artificial intelligence, Reuters reports.

Whether it happens as a spin-off or a distribution to shareholders, or whether we will raise some money in the process  all things to be discussed with the board, we havent made up our mind, Marchionne said.

Word of a potential tie-up between FCA and Hyundai first emerged in September. At the time, Korean media suggested that Hyundai could purchase FCA but it doesnt sound as if FCA is interested in such an arrangement.

PHOTO GALLERY
In the short time that the Opel Ampera-e was sold in Europe under GM ownership, the carmaker was reportedly losing 10,000 euros ($11,900) on every vehicle it sold.



On the back of reports that PSA wants a refund of almost $1 billion from GM following its purchase of the Opel brand, Reuters has uncovered the costs which GM was sustaining when selling the European variant of the Chevrolet Bolt.

As Inside EVs reports, this isnt good for PSA. When negotiating a deal with General Motors, the French multinational manufacturer would have thought the Opel Ampera-e could play an important role in it reducing emissions across Europe to meet stringent standards. However, the company is now left in a position of losing extraordinary amounts of money in continuing to sell the Ampera-e or killing off the vehicle and risk failing to meet EU emissions regulations.

On paper, the Opel Ampera-e has all the right figures to be an exceptionally popular EV available to the masses. In September, a pair of journalists in Germany were able to travel 754.9 km (469 miles) on a single charge with the Ampera-e, despite the hatchback only having a NEDC estimated range of 520 km (323 miles).

PHOTO GALLERY
Toyota recently introduced the FT-AC concept at the Los Angeles Auto Show and a new report is suggesting it could preview a production model.



In an interview with Motor Authority, Toyotas North American Group Vice President and General Manager, Jack Hollis, confirmed the automaker will launch a new subcompact crossover in the next two or three years. Hollis went on to say the model will be based on the TNGA platform that underpins everything from the C-HR to the Prius.

Toyota has introduced a number of crossover concepts in the past year and Hollis said the FT-AC, FT-4X, and TJ Cruiser concepts were all created to test the waters in the market and get feedback from consumers. He didnt say which direction the company is leaning but confirmed the upcoming crossover will be offered with all-wheel drive and have a base price that could start at under $20,000.

If the company is able to hit that price point, the model would be more affordable than the CH-R which starts at $22,500. It would also have the benefit of optional all-wheel drive which is something that is curiously lacking on the CH-R.

Photo Gallery
Photo: Contributed

This week: More on reminders, more on Tablet Mode, and more on Photos and movies.

Thanks for your feedback! You all rock!

More on ReminderFox

The flood of email continues from people horrified about the demise of ReminderFox. (See last weeks column.) In this weeks email, long-time reader Ron passed along some good news for fans of the ReminderFox extension:

"Just discovered that reminder fox works in Mozilla's Thunderbird (which I use for my Telus mail account and access daily). It is superior to the Google app as you can create repeats daily, bi-weekly, monthly and yearly."

Thanks, Ron!

If youre looking for an email program thats not Windows Live Mail or the horrible Mail program built into Windows 10, check this recent column where I mention Thunderbird and a couple of others.

More on Tablet Mode

Several people wrote to say that after an update to Windows 10 they couldnt find the taskbar on their laptops. Just going by the description of the problem by the first correspondent, I thought the problem might be that the taskbar had just been accidentally moved to someplace other than the bottom of the screen.

If that happens to you, follow these instructions to fix it and make it stay put:

Press the Windows Key and the I key (that's the letter i) at the same time to open Settings

Click on Personalization | Taskbar

Under Taskbar location on screen make sure you've selected Bottom

Under Automatically hide the taskbar in desktop mode select Off

Under Automatically hide the taskbar in tablet mode select Off

Under Lock the taskbar select On

Close the Settings window

That should put the taskbar at the bottom of your screen and make is visible all the time.

But that wasnt the problem! It turns out the laptops had been sent into Tablet Mode. If you want to know how to get out and stay out of that dilemma, take a look here.

More on the Photos app features that replace Movie Maker

Windows Live Mail and Movie Maker are part of the same suite of free programs no longer supported by Microsoft. Its now impossible to download Windows Live Essentials from Microsoft. But as I mentioned recently, the Fall Creators Update from Microsoft added some very cool features to the Photos app.

The Photos app is built into Windows 10. There is no charge for it. Once you have the Fall Creators Update installed, open Photos. Close it. Reboot the computer, then open Photos again. Youll see a notification that additional features are being installed.

After a couple of minutes, your Photos app is good to go. And its free. Read more about it here. If you are being asked to pay for this app, you are being scammed. There are excellent alternatives, both free and paid, and I mention a couple in that column. But this app is free.

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to comment and to make suggestions. I appreciate it! Keep your questions and comments coming.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
You need to take a break and watch this dog experience snow for the first time.
Alanna Kelly

The family of a missing couple who took off in a plane from Penticton are pleading for help from the public in searching for their single-engine Mooney aircraft.

Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Victoria has decided to suspend their exhaustive search as of 3:30 p.m. on Monday and will be transferring the case to the RCMP.

Over the last 9 days, Royal Canadian Air Force and Parks Canada aircraft have flown approximately 120 hours in extremely challenging weather and conditions, covering more than 22,000 square kilometres in the areas surrounding the last known location, and likely flight path, of the missing plane, said the JRCC in a statement.

Dominic Neron, 28, and his girlfriend Ashley Bourgeault, 31, left from Penticton Regional Airport at 2:30 p.m. on Nov. 25 and were expected to land in Edmonton, but never arrived.

The two were visiting Bourgeault's cousin for lunch in Penticton and were expected to return home to Edmonton. Neron's cellphone last pinged in the Revelstoke area and search and rescue crews were scouring the area 18km north of Revelstoke.

Parks Canada and CASARA, and the information provided by Telus, Rogers, NavCanada and NORAD, have all been involved in the extensive search.

Samantha McClellan last spoke to her sister the day she went missing when they were at the Penticton airport and Bourgeault said weather conditions were difficult to fly in.

We will be working with local RCMP and their search crews and we are really asking for anybody that has knowledge of that area, that has time and can come help us volunteer, she said.

"We are asking snowmobilers, cross country skiers, snowshoers, trackers," she said. We are pleading that anyone that can search and is knowledgeable of the area donate their time, the more bodies we have out there looking the better."

McClellan has been watching Bourgeault's three children aged nine, five and four years old since she went missing and said they are doing everything they can to stay positive.

The family is also reaching out to anyone who may have been on Highway 1 between 3 and 6 p.m. on Nov. 25 and saw the white and burgundy plane.

McClellan added that her sister used Snap Chat, an image messaging mobile application, when she was in the air on Saturday and they are hoping to gain more information about where it was sent from.

Anyone who can volunteer their time to assist in the search is being asked to contact Kate Sinclair at 780-951-3937.

"Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones during this extremely difficult time," said the JRCC in a statement.
Photo: Jafa Signs

A Penticton branding, design, signage and print company is providing free window signage to one local non-profit a month.



Every month, Jafa Signs will randomly draw from applications and provide a custom window-wrap valued up to $2,000.



As the new sole owners of Jafa Signs, we can now start to give back to our community, with the launch of our new Jafa Community Window Graphics Program, said graphic designer Dallas Fish.

Our work is all about promoting great organizations, business and their stories  we are so excited to help not-for-profits tell their stories of their commitment to our community, a value we share.



The initiative is meant to help an organization deliver any message they want  from fundraising, to celebrating volunteers or promoting an event or program.



More information on the community window program can be found here.
Photo: The Canadian Press

A lawyer for Kinder Morgan Canada says political opposition to the Trans Mountain project in Burnaby, B.C. has "poisoned the well" and disrupted the regulatory review process in the city.

In a hearing at the National Energy Board, Maureen Killoran laid out arguments about how lengthy delays in permit approvals from the city have set back the $7.4-billion pipeline expansion project.

Killoran says strong and vocal opposition by Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan to the project has created an atmosphere of opposition, even if he has not specifically interfered in the process.

She says that more than a year after the federal cabinet approved the project, and months of engagement with Burnaby, the company still has no local approvals in place to begin work on expanding oil storage and loading facilities in the city.

Burnaby, which has yet to present oral arguments, said in its legal filings that Trans Mountain's constitutional question is misguided and premature because the city has yet to make any decisions on the permits.

With no decisions yet made, Burnaby says it's up to Trans Mountain to prove that the city has improperly delayed the process and says the company has not done so.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The B.C. Court of Appeal has dealt a devastating blow to a group of injured veterans engaged in a landmark legal battle with the federal government.

The six veterans involved in the so-called Equitas lawsuit had alleged that they were unfairly treated because of a major overhaul in 2006 to the way the government compensates those injured in the line of service.

Chief among the changes was replacing lifelong disability pensions with a lump-sum payment, career training and targeted income support, which the veterans contended was worth less than the previous pension system.

The case, which was first launched in 2012 under the previous Conservative government but continued with the Liberals, was seen as having major implications for all recently injured veterans.

The Equitas veterans scored a victory in 2014 when a B.C. Supreme Court justice ruled that there was enough merit to the case  which the group planned to turn into a class-action lawsuit  to proceed to trial.

But after the federal government appealed the decision, the B.C. Court of Appeal on Monday struck down the veterans' claim in its entirety, with a three-judge panel saying the case had no chance of success.

Lawyer Don Sorochan, who is representing the Equitas veterans, was preparing to meet with his clients in Vancouver and told The Canadian Press he would have to consult with them to determine their next course of action.

One possible step would be to try to bring the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada.

While Monday's ruling represents a win for the federal government, it could actually represent a double-edged sword for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.

That's because Trudeau campaigned with Equitas members during the last federal election campaign in 2015, and the Liberals were the only party that promised to reinstate the lifelong pensions.

Yet the Liberal government continued to fight the court case after coming to power, and has yet to reinstate the disability pensions for injured veterans.

The government has said it will provide more details by the end of the year, but even then, many veterans are worried that it will fall far short of the previous system of compensation.
Photo: Colin Dacre

An Oliver man was found not guilty of three sex crimes against a minor in Penticton court Monday.

The man, who can only be identified as TB due to a publication ban, was acquitted by Justice Alison Beames due to inconsistencies in the evidence of the now 15-year-old complainant.

I cannot be sure what happened, I do not know who to believe. That means the Crown has failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, she said, provoking exasperated gasps and tears from the family of the alleged victim in the gallery.

Beames said the relationship between TB (age 20 at the time of the allegations) and the complainant (age 9), was undoubtedly unusual and enough to raise suspicions.

It began after the accuseds father died in a 2011 car crash, and the complainant's mother began visiting the widow, bringing her child along.

The accused lived in the basement of his mother's house, the two became friends and were seen in public together at the movies, waterpark and ski hill.

TB has always denied anything sexual ever took place. The court heard he approached the police to give his side of the story shortly he heard a rumour circulating through the small community that he had molested the boy.

He was acquitted of sexual interference of a person under 16, invitation to sexual touching under 16 and sexual assault in connection to incidents that were alleged to have occurred in 2011 and 2012.

Let's hope this is the first day this kid can get his life back after six years, defence lawyer Don Skogstad said to reporters on his way out of the courtroom after the verdict.

His life?! shrieked a family member of the complainant standing in the hallway.

TB declined to comment while leaving out the back door of the courthouse.
Photo: Contributed The RCMP's Counter Attack is underway through December in the North Okanagan.

'Tis the holiday season and Vernon/North Okanagan RCMP will be out looking for impaired drivers.

For the month of December and into the new year, drivers are reminded that the detachment's traffic services and road safety unit will be conducting enhanced enforcement and Counter Attack road checks.



If your holiday festivities include alcohol, please arrange for a designated driver, call a taxi, take transit or use Operation Red Nose where available, said Const. Kelly Brett, RCMP spokesperson. Lets all do our part for a safe holiday season.

Brett said impaired driving is an entirely preventable cause of death and injuries, with immense costs and devastating effects to our communities.

The number of people killed in impaired-related crashes each year has significantly dropped with 40 years of Counter Attack, but impaired driving remains a top contributing factor in B.C.

Theres no excuse to drink and drive. If you plan to drink, leave your car at home.
Photo: Can. Red Cross Vernon resident Cor Zandbergen to receive the Red Cross' highest honour.

Vernon resident Cor Zandbergen is to be presented with the highest honour of the Red Cross.

Zandbergen is being honoured for his 16 years of dedicated service assisting thousands of people impacted by disasters in Canada and around the world, according to a press release.

On Tuesday, Zandbergen will be inducted into the Order of the Red Cross at a ceremony in Kelowna.

Zandbergen has responded to countless disasters including flooding, fires and ice storms across Canada and elsewhere, said the press release.

He currently leads the Red Cross North Okanagan personal disaster assistance team, ensuring emergency social services are available to people living across a land base of more than 7,800 km. His international work has taken him to flood-ravaged parts of Pakistan, as well as New Jersey and Louisiana after major hurricanes.

Zandbergen continues his work, playing a key role by mentoring new leaders in the Red Cross disaster management team.

The ceremony takes place Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. at the Canadian Red Cross Office, 124 Adams Road, Kelowna.
Photo: The Canadian Press

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board says the second mate of a tugboat fell asleep before it ran aground off the coast of British Columbia last year and spilled thousands of litres of fuel.

The American safety agency says records show the second mate relieved the captain of watch duty and missed a scheduled change of course for the Nathan E. Stewart before the articulated tug and barge crashed near Bella Bella on Oct. 13, 2016.

The board's report dated Nov. 21 says the second mate told investigators he missed the change of course because he had fallen asleep, which it says is the probable cause of the vessel running aground.

The vessel owned by Houston-based Kirby Offshore Marine was en route to the Port of Vancouver with an empty barge when it ran aground and partially sank in the Seaforth Channel.

More than 107,000 litres of diesel and 2,240 litres of lubricants, including gear, hydraulic and lube oils, were released into the Pacific Ocean from the 30-metre vessel.

The safety board says a contributing factor to the crash was also the ineffective implementation of Kirby's safety management procedures.

Based on statements from the crew, the board says there was a lack of documentation on safety rounds and no evidence that safety management procedures were implemented on board the Nathan E. Stewart.
Photo: B.C.government/Flickr File photo.

The B.C. government has announced it is funding thousands of new licensed child-care spaces.

Lumby is one area that will benefit from the investment.

The Bridge Educational Society is receiving $500,000 to create 43 spaces  12 spaces for infants and toddlers, 16 spaces for children aged three to five years and 15 school age spaces  at Cedar Bridge School.

"I'm excited to be announcing that we are building thousands of child-care spaces throughout B.C., including more than ever before for Indigenous communities," Katrine Conroy, Minister of Children and Family Development said Monday. "Too many B.C. families are struggling to find child care. These new spaces will offer relief and hope to parents."

The government is spending $33 million in 52 communities on 103 projects that will create more than 3,800 child-care spaces.

Other communities that will benefit include:

Lake Country: The New Beginnings Early Learning Centre to receive $215,429 to create 50 spaces  20 for infants and toddlers and 30 for children aged three to five years.

Salmon Arm: The Kinder Play Child Care Centre to receive $250,000 to create 24 infant and toddler spaces.

Salmon Arm: The Neskonlith Indian Band to receive $500,000 to create 39 spaces  eight infant and toddler spaces, eight spaces for children aged three to five years, eight preschool spaces, and 15 school-age spaces  at the Switzmalph Child Care Centre.

A number of groups in Kelowna will be receiving government funding totally approximately $1 million.
According to dispatch, two people were transported to the hospital following an accident on Faudree Road and Highway 80.

No word yet on the cause of the accident or the severity of injuries.

CBS 7 News will continue to update you as more information becomes available.
The model for the movable components of buildings are cones of coniferous wood, which open (right) or close in dryness due to the different swelling behaviour of their fabric.

Mobile components on buildings such as blinds whose design was copied from naturally occurring solutions -- that is the subject of the research conducted by a team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the University of Freiburg, and the University of Stuttgart. The aim is to outfit them with drive elements that can move without any energy input. Serving as a model here are pine cones, which utilize the varying swelling behaviors of their tissue to open when moist or close when dry.

Worldwide, the use of buildings accounts for 40 percent of total energy consumption. Around half of this is used for climate control. Although blinds and other mobile facade elements can be used to optimize the building shell's transparency to heat and light, their electric motors also require energy to move these systems.

"Sustainable architecture urgently requires new materials if it is to live up to the high energy efficiency and climate protection requirements", says the chemist, forest scientist, and materials researcher Professor Cordt Zollfrank. At the Chair of Biogenic Polymers on the Straubing Campus for Biotechnology and Sustainability of the TUM, he is researching the related basic principles. His goal is to develop drive elements and actuators which are able to convert signals into mechanical movements without consuming energy.

Together with architects, civil engineers, and botanists, he has found futuristic methods that allow natural mechanisms to be used to improve the energy balance of buildings. In a joint article the team reports on the status of the research in this area, and demonstrates the possibilities of the models from the plant world.

Material replaces motor

Ripe pine and fir cones close their scales when it rains in order to protect the seeds. However, when it is dry, they open up and release them. During this movement, the composition of the cell walls plays a crucial role. They are composed primarily of lignin, which does not swell much, and cellulose, which is good at swelling up. Due to the different orientation of the cellulose fibrils in the tissue of the scales, they curve inwards when humidity is high, and outwards when it is dry.

"The exciting thing about this is that the energy for these movements does not come from metabolic processes, but solely from physical mechanisms and material properties", says Professor Zollfrank. Via the combination of materials with varying swelling propensities, he has already succeeded at developing such biomimetic drive elements, called actuators. These elements are also composed of two layers of materials which absorb varying amounts of liquid and behave similarly to their naturally occurring models.

Overcoming physical limits

However, before they can be used on a large scale in architecture, the material researchers still need to solve one problem which affects scalability: The larger the cell or the tissue, the longer the time required for the water to penetrate its pores towards the inside. Something that takes two hours in a pine cone would take several years in a building. Hence, in order to utilize the hydraulics of pine cones for applications in architecture, a physical limit will first need to be overcome.

All a question of the right links

For this purpose, Zollfrank proposes a type of restructuring process at the material level. "We decouple the tissue size and take the whole thing to the magnitude of an individual cell", he explains. Via cleverly chosen cross-links, a loose cell complex is created whose individual components nevertheless still act like individual cells and absorb water extremely rapidly.

"The question now is how such cross-links can be designed as efficiently as possible and how to create them in any size", says Zollfrank. However, for later practical applications, he can also imagine porous biopolymer materials whose pores are filled with an extremely hydrophilic liquid (hydrogel). Material researchers are already working on this. It is only a matter of time before we find out which solution will ultimately make its way into the architecture of the future.
Advocate Sherman Hospital in Elgin is seen in 2016. Advocate Health Care is seeking to merge with Wisconsin's Aurora Health Care, the companies announced Dec. 4, 2017. (Gloria Casas / The Courier-News)

Advocate Health Care is ready to give a merger another try  this time with Wisconsin giant Aurora Health Care, in a proposed deal that would create the 10th largest not-for-profit hospital system in the country.

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Under terms of the planned 50-50 merger announced Monday, neither system would pay the other cash, and the deal could close by the middle of 2018, pending regulatory approval. A combined health system, to be called Advocate Aurora Health, would have 27 hospitals and nearly $11 billion in annual revenue.

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No job cuts are expected as a result of the merger, according to Advocate President and CEO Jim Skogsbergh and Aurora President and CEO Nick Turkal, who would serve as co-CEOs.

Advocates last attempt to merge with a large health system didnt end well. In March, Advocate walked away from a 2-year bid to unite with NorthShore University HealthSystem after a federal judge ruled in favor of the Federal Trade Commission, which had challenged the deal. The failed attempt cost Advocate $15 million.

In that case, however, Advocate and NorthShores hospitals were much closer together geographically, with each having hospitals in Cook and Lake counties. The FTC had argued the combined health systems would have had enough leverage to impose price increases on Illinois insurers.

In this case, Advocates hospitals are in the Chicago area and central Illinois. Auroras hospitals are in Wisconsin, though it operates three health centers in northern Illinois. These markets are very distinct, Skogsbergh said. This is not a series of ZIP codes in the northern area of Chicago.

Skogsbergh said the merger would allow both systems to improve patient outcomes, lower costs and provide better patient services. We think ultimately this provides a more stable, more secure future for our organization, he said.

Like many hospital systems in Illinois and across the country, Downers Grove-based Advocate and Aurora, based in Milwaukee, have faced financial challenges in recent months. Hospitals nationwide have grappled with reimbursement rates from federal programs that dont cover the full costs of care, increases in unpaid medical bills known as bad debt, and reimbursement rates from nongovernmental insurers that no longer offset other costs, among other things. Both systems recorded lower operating income during the first nine months of the this year compared with the same period a year ago, according to unaudited financial statements.

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In May, Advocate announced it planned to make $200 million in cuts after missing revenue targets. In the fall, Advocate laid off about 75 of its 37,000 employees as part of those cuts.

But the CEOs of both systems said in an interview that financial issues didnt drive the deal. I think it would be a mistake to say Aurora or Advocate had a particular (financial) year and that caused them to seek each other out, Skogsbergh said. This is about a long-term play.

Aurora also recently announced it would increase prices for some services by 4.5 percent in 2018. But Skogsbergh said Chicago-area residents neednt fear the same thing happening here.

Youre not going to see price increases as a result of this transaction, Skogsbergh said. He said that in Illinois, health systems are price takers not price makers because of the dominance of insurer Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois. He also said Advocate has a track record of making health care more affordable. Advocate was recently cited by the federal government as saving Medicare the second highest amount of money in the country last year as part of a federal program meant to cut health spending.

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A single board of directors, composed of an equal number of members from Advocate and Aurora, would oversee the new system. The two systems already have jointly owned and operated ACL Laboratories, which has a number of locations in Wisconsin and the Chicago area, for about 20 years. Hospitals in the system would keep their current names.

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If the marriage goes through, Advocate and Aurora would not be the first hospital systems to grow by crossing state lines.

Its unlikely the Federal Trade Commission would challenge the Advocate-Aurora deal, given their mostly separate geographic footprints, said Lisl Dunlop, a partner at law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips who works on antitrust issues.

When you cant do a deal in your existing market like Advocate  becoming a bigger regional system is a kind of logical extension, if youre deal-minded and want to be bigger, Dunlop said.

Research has shown that generally, hospital consolidation results in higher prices for insurance companies, and those costs can be passed along to consumers through higher premiums and other payments. Price increases are possible, but not as certain when it comes to mergers between hospital systems in different states, said Amanda Starc, an associate professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

lschencker@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @lschencker
Airlines are cracking down on so-called smart luggage, like these bags from Bluesmart, with pockets that hold and charge electronic devices, citing concerns about the hazards of placing lithium-ion battery power banks in the cargo hold. (AP)

Planning to give  or give yourself  smart luggage this holiday season? Check the battery compartment first.

Starting Jan. 15, any passenger with battery-powered luggage must be able to remove the battery to bring the bag on an American Airlines flight. The airline announced the policy last week, citing concerns about the hazards of placing lithium-ion battery power banks in the cargo hold.

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We wanted to get out ahead of the holiday season given that its one of the trendy gifts for travelers, said American spokeswoman Leslie Scott.

Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines rolled out similar rules, while United Airlines and Southwest Airlines say theyre reviewing the issue.

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Smart bags have a wide range of features. Bag-maker Away says its $225 carry-on will charge a drained iPhone five times, while G-ROs version, at $374, comes with charging and GPS tracking. At $449, Bluesmarts carry-on includes those features and lets travelers lock their bag from a smartphone or weigh it on a built-in scale.

Many of the bags rely on lithium-ion batteries, which can overheat and pose a fire hazard, Delta said.

Last fall, the U.S. Department of Transportation banned Samsungs Galaxy Note 7 smartphone from flights after defective batteries caused some phones to burst into flames, prompting a recall. Batteries were also blamed for hoverboards that caught fire, also prompting airline bans.

American, Delta and Alaska all say they will require customers to remove batteries from any smart bag they check and pack the batteries in a carry-on  similar to the way passengers are asked to bring spare batteries for other electronics in the cabin, where crew members can more easily identify an overheating device and quickly respond to a fire.

Passengers can leave batteries installed in carry-on smart bags, but must still be able to remove them in case they need to check the bag at the gate or on a later flight.

Tim Ryan, chief marketing officer at Chicago-based smart bag-maker Modobag, said its batteries are removable, though the company may consider making batteries easier to remove in an upcoming line of smart bags that are designed to be checked.

But Ryan took issue with the way airlines new policies treat all smart bags the same. The lithium batteries that power Modobags motorized luggage, which travelers can ride through the airport, use different technology than the lithium-ion batteries blamed for exploding smartphones and hoverboards, according to Ryan.

Its incumbent upon those of us in the luggage space to make sure we make the airline community aware and educate them on what our products are, and are not, Ryan said.

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lzumbach@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @laurenzumbach
Good food is derived from the good ingredient. Which is why the cook practices prejudice.

Her kitchen shows no tolerance for food coloring, bouillon cube, cornstarch or gelatin. Which strike her, respectively, as garish, salty, gluey and wiggly. She has no tolerance for garish, salty, gluey or wiggly.

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Until she attempts panna cotta.

Panna cotta is Italian for cooked cream. She figures any recipe that calls for Italian and cooked and cream must be good. Pint jar in one hand, wooden spoon in the other, she stirs happily, until called on to add gelatin. She shudders.

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The cook substitutes egg white, mindful that her dish might be mistaken for French blanc manger. She switches to whole egg, risking trespass into flan territory. She tries yolk only, offending creme brulee.

She whips the cream, producing something resembling mousse, but not something resembling tasty. She considers the thickening properties of the icebox and the been-there-done-that properties of ice cream.

None of her efforts yield what she seeks: a pure white mound of cold, thick cream. Having exhausted her supply of cream and of patience, she turns to the informed, only to learn that panna cotta can be bolstered by seaweed or fish glue. She sighs. And rips open a packet of gelatin.

Which works. Sprinkled sparingly, the granules bloom and plump, pulling together a pure white mound of cold, thick cream. Each spoonful offers a delicious lesson in tolerance and a convincing argument for wiggle room.

Leah Eskin is a Tribune special contributor.

leahreskin@aol.com

Panna cotta

Prep:

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20 minutes

Chill:

Overnight

Makes:

8 servings

1 cup whole milk

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1 teaspoon gelatin

1

1/2

cups whipping cream

1

1/2

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cups creme fraiche

1 cup sugar

1/2

vanilla bean

1 pint strawberries

1/2

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cup water

1

Soften:

Pour

1/2

cup milk into a bowl. Sprinkle with gelatin. Set aside.

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2

Simmer:

Pour remaining

1/2

cup milk, the cream, creme fraiche and

1/2

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cup sugar into a large heavy saucepan. Split the vanilla bean; scrape seeds and bean into the milk mixture. Heat to a simmer over medium-high heat, whisking constantly.

3

Thicken:

Pour a little of the hot milk mixture over the gelatin. Whisk smooth. Whisk in the remaining milk mixture. Let cool.

4

Chill:

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Discard bean. Pour mixture into eight 4-ounce ramekins or glasses. Cover and chill overnight.

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

5

Serve:

Run a knife around the edge of the ramekins and unmold onto dessert plates or serve panna cotta right in the glasses. Slice strawberries. Heat remaining

1/2

cup sugar with

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1/2

cup water to a boil. Boil 3 minutes. Turn off heat. Stir in berries. Pour hot berries over cool cream. Enjoy.
Golden Globe nominee James Franco is in talks to play the late Chicago poet-author Shel Silverstein in an upcoming biopic he would also direct, Deadline.com reports.

The movie will be based on the 2007 book A Boy Named Shel by Lisa Rogak. Silverstein, who wrote The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, grew up in the Palmer Square neighborhood and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Roosevelt University. He died in 1999 at the age of 68 while living in Key West, Fla. He is buried at Westlawn Cemetery in Norridge.

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It's unclear if the film will be shot in Chicago. Chicago producer Gigi Pritzker's MWM Studios will produce and co-finance the project, according to Deadline.

Franco was nominated last week for a best actor Golden Globe for his role in The Disaster Artist, a movie he also directed about the making of the 2003 cult classic "The Room. The Golden Globe winners are scheduled to be announced Jan. 7 at a ceremony hosted by Seth Meyers. Franco won a Golden Globe in 2002 for his portrayal of James Dean in a TV biopic.

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He was also nominated for the best actor Academy Award in 2011 for playing mountain climber Aron Ralston in 127 Hours.

tswartz@tribpub.com

Twitter @tracyswartz

[ RELATED: FX developing drama about Chicago bank fraud ]

[ Bob Odenkirk returns to Second City and it's like he never left ]

[ Gigi Pritzker on amorous Albert Einstein and that Oscars best picture snafu ]
Travis Scott performs Dec. 1, 2017, in River North for the 35th anniversary of Nike's Air Force 1 sneaker. (Nike Chicago)

Rapper Travis Scott performed a surprise set Friday at Joy District in River North to help Nike celebrate the 35th anniversary of its Air Force 1 sneaker.

Scott is dating Keeping Up with the Kardashians star Kylie Jenner, but she did not attend the free, invite-only party. Scotts 45-minute set included Goosebumps, Pick Up the Phone, Antidote" and Butterfly Effect.

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Scott, 25, is becoming a familiar face in Chicago. He performed at the United Center in July as part of Kendrick Lamars tour. Scott made headlines in 2015 when he encouraged Lollapalooza attendees to jump the barricades into the security pit as he performed. He was sentenced to one year of court supervision after pleading guilty to misdemeanor reckless conduct.

He collaborated with Nike to reimagine the Air Force 1 as part of the new AF-100 collection. Two other collaborators  designer Virgil Abloh and Chicago native Don C  also attended the River North party.

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Nikes four-day anniversary celebration also included a Wicker Park pop-up that featured the AF-100 collection and a retrospective of the most iconic Air Force 1 styles.

tswartz@tribpub.com

Twitter @tracyswartz

[ RELATED: Kanye West returns to Chicago, joins Kid Cudi at Aragon show ]

[ Here's what Kim Kardashian West did instead of appearing at Chicago Ideas Week ]

[ Rapper Travi$ Scott pleads guilty to reckless conduct at Lollapalooza ]
Both the Ravinia Festival and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are withholding comment over allegations of sexual misconduct by famed conductor James Levine, pending the outcome of ongoing investigations by authorities in Lake County and at New Yorks Metropolitan Opera.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported Sunday evening that the Met has suspended Levine after three men came forward with accusations that Levine sexually abused them decades ago, when they were teenagers.

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Met General Manager Peter Gelb announced Sunday that the company was suspending its four-decade relationship with Levine and canceling his upcoming engagements, after receiving questions from The New York Times about the accounts of the three men. The Met also has asked an outside law firm to investigate Levines behavior, according to the Times story.

The Times identified three men, one of whom grew up near Ravinia and said he was sexually abused by Levine starting in the summer of 1985, when he was 15.

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In a statement issued Sunday afternoon, the Ravinia administration said it learned of allegations raised against the Ravinia Festivals former music director (1973-93) late Friday afternoon and in media reports of those allegations the following day.

We understand from these articles that investigations are ongoing, the statement said. Ravinia finds these allegations very disturbing and contrary to its zero-tolerance policies and culture. Ravinia will take any actions that it deems appropriate following the results of these investigations. Ravinia has no other information to share at this time.

Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman did not respond to the Tribunes requests for further comment.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association said in a statement that the orchestra has no comment on this issue at this time.

Levines manager at Columbia Artists Management also did not respond to Tribune questions.

A statement released by the Metropolitan Opera, where Levine was music director from 1976 to 2016 and has led more than 2,500 performances, said the company is working on an investigation with outside sources to determine whether charges of sexual misconduct in the 1980s are true, so that we can take appropriate action.

Levine currently holds the title of music director emeritus at the Met.

One of the worlds most prominent and respected conductors of opera and symphonic music, the 74-year-old Levine is being investigated following a mans report that he had been sexually abused by Levine three decades ago, beginning when the man was a teenager. The abuse continued for several years in Illinois and New York, according to a police report.

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Details of that report first appeared Saturday on the New York Post website. The story has since been reported in news outlets across the nation and abroad.

The Tribune received independent confirmation from the Lake County states attorneys office that the report was made to the Lake Forest Police Department.

Its information were reviewing, Lake County States Attorney Michael Nerheim said Saturday.

According to reports, one of Levines accusers, now 48, contacted Lake Forest police in October 2016 to report that hed had sexual contact with the conductor beginning in 1985, roughly midway through Levines tenure as Ravinia music director.

The complainant, whose name police have not revealed to protect his privacy, told Lake Forest police the abuse started in 1985, when he was 15 and Levine was in his 40s, and continued for several years in Illinois and New York. The young man lived with his parents in their home in Kenilworth.

"(Levine) started holding my hand in a prolonged and incredibly sensual way," the New York Post quoted the man as saying in the police report.

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He told police the abuse took place at the Deer Path Inn in Lake Forest, about 8 miles north of the Ravinia Festival grounds.

The alleged victim told police he was a classical music lover who hoped to become a conductor and that he was 4 years old when his parents first took him to Ravinia to meet Levine.

This spring, Ravinia announced that Levine is scheduled to begin a five-year contract next summer as Ravinia conductor laureate. The post was created specifically for him following the success of his return to the festival in July 2016 to lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony.

The new title would also represent a kind of lifetime achievement award for a much-admired musician whose two decades at Ravinia represented, by any reckoning, an artistic watershed in the history of Americas oldest classical music festival.

It is too early to tell how the current investigation into Levines alleged sexual misbehavior will impact his scheduled return to Ravinia next summer.

The accusations against Levine, along with the several related inquiries, represent the first instance in which claims of sexual misconduct have reached the uppermost levels of the classical music world.

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John von Rhein is a Tribune critic.

Chicago Tribunes Tony Briscoe contributed.

jvonrhein@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @jvonrhein

[ RELATED: Former longtime Ravinia conductor James Levine faces sexual misconduct investigation ]

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Depression afflicts an estimated 16 million Americans every year, many of whom go to their doctors in despair, embarking on an often stressful process about what to do next. These visits may entail filling out forms with screening questions about symptoms such as mood changes and difficulty sleeping. Doctors may ask patients to share intimate details about such issues as marital conflicts and suicidal urges. Some patients may be referred to mental-health specialists for further examination.

Once diagnosed with depression, patients frequently face the question: "Are you interested in therapy, medications or both?"

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As a resident physician in psychiatry, I've seen many patients grapple with this question; the most frequent answer I've heard from patients is "I'm not sure." Deciding between different types of medical treatment can be challenging, especially amid the fog of depression. Moreover, patients rely on doctors to help guide them, and we're often not sure ourselves which is the best approach for a specific patient.

People commonly associate psychotherapy with Freud and couches, but newer, evidence-based treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy have become prominent in the field. CBT helps patients develop strategies to address harmful thoughts, emotions and behaviors that may contribute to depression.

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There are many proposed explanations for how specific psychotherapies treat depression. These possibilities include giving patients social support and teaching coping skills, and researchers are using neuroimaging to study how these treatments affect depressed patients' brains.

Antidepressant medications are thought to work by changing chemical signaling in our brains. For example, one class of commonly used drugs - selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors - is designed to alter levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. These antidepressants may be effective for treating depression in some patients, but the neurochemistry of depression remains poorly understood, and we're still not entirely sure how these drugs alleviate depressive symptoms.

A number of recent studies highlight the uncertainty involved with these treatment decisions. Researchers have dedicated considerable effort to studying the relative effectiveness between psychotherapies and antidepressants, frequently without finding much difference. For instance, a study published in 2012 reviewed data from more than 100 prior trials and included more than 10,000 patients; although psychotherapies and antidepressants each worked better than placebo in blinded trials at reducing depressive symptoms, neither of these treatments was more effective than the other. Furthermore, psychotherapies and antidepressants did no better overall than alternative therapies such as exercise.

In 2014, research presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry suggested that CBT was just as good as, if not better than, antidepressants for the acute treatment of depression. A 2015 systematic review of randomized trials similarly found that antidepressants were no better than CBT across multiple measures for managing depression. And this year, a meta-analysis looking at dozens of studies found psychotherapies and medications were fairly alike at improving quality of life and functioning in people with depression.

If psychotherapy and medication are both used to treat depression, could using them together work even better?

This is a valid question, and one often brought up by patients. But the efficacy of combining these treatments is controversial in medical circles: Studies have come to different conclusions about it. As a result, many patients still receive one or the other first.

In 2016, the American College of Physicians released guidelines about using antidepressants as opposed to non-pharmacologic therapies for depression. After reviewing decades of evidence, a committee concluded that CBT and newer-generation antidepressants are "similarly effective treatments" for adults with major depression. The guidelines recommend that "clinicians select between either cognitive behavioral therapy or second-generation antidepressants" for treating patients with depression.

The authors of these guidelines also raise an important point: Doctors commonly turn first to antidepressants when treating patients with depression, even though evidence suggests alternate therapies are just as effective. The medications can also have side effects including nausea and vomiting as well as dangerous interactions with other drugs.

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Antidepressants rank among the top-prescribed types of medications in the United States, and surveys suggest that more than 250 million antidepressant prescriptions are filled annually nationwide. A 2015 JAMA study found that 13 percent of American adults took antidepressants in 2012, a figure that nearly doubled since 1999.

Does this mean antidepressants are overprescribed?

It depends on how you interpret the question. Antidepressant use has risen considerably in recent years, while psychotherapy use appears to be stable or declining; because these treatments are often equally effective in managing depression, this might suggest we're relying more on these drugs.

Some patients may prefer to take medications for depression. Many people do not have the time to participate in psychotherapies like CBT or psychodynamic therapy - a type of talk therapy that explores the interplay between unconscious feelings and distressing symptoms - which can span multiple hour-long sessions over months. Others may not have access to mental-health specialists who can provide appropriate therapy. Then there are patients who would rather take a pill in the comfort of their own home, instead of opening up about intimate experiences in a doctor's office.

The structure of our health-care system may also be a factor. Higher insurance reimbursements for medications rather than psychotherapies may make physicians quicker to pull out the prescription pad. The crunched time and administrative burdens of today's medical practice can lead to pressured patient visits that are more conducive to quick check-ins and pills than to in-depth conversations.

Patients should be aware that there are treatment options in addition to therapy and medication. Several studies have shown that exercise may be helpful in managing mild to moderate depression. For patients with more severe depression, transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroconvulsive therapy - approaches that use brief electric currents to influence brain activity - can be lifesaving treatments.

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As the ACP guidelines recommend, providers should discuss "treatment effects, adverse effect profiles, cost, accessibility and preferences with the patient" when treating depression. But in today's hurried medical environment, completing that task in a thorough and comprehensive manner can often be difficult, if not impossible.

Researchers are developing tools including brain imaging and genetic testing to help guide this decision-making. Such individualized treatment has long been sought in mental-health care.

These technologies have shown promise, but they remain far from standard clinical practice. And adding more tests to doctors' visits may ignore the central issue when treating depression: Do we have enough time to truly talk with our patients about their options?

Morris is a resident physician in psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine.






Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigans office is investigating a bus company that serves University of Illinois students for potential civil rights violations, the latest fallout in response to the companys racially tinged weekend ad that disparaged Chinese students and the universitys admissions policies.

Madigans office announced Monday it had issued a subpoena for Suburban Express, a bus company based in Champaign that provides shuttle service from various universities to OHare International Airport and Chicago-area suburbs.

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The office is investigating whether the companys policies and practices violate the Illinois Human Rights Act, a probe based upon the weekend email promotion that boasted you wont feel like youre in China when youre on our buses, according to the statement. Madigan is seeking documents, records and other information from the company to evaluate its business operations.

Suburban Express has 30 days to comply with the subpoena, according to a statement from Madigans office.

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I am concerned that this advertisement may reflect that Suburban Express is discriminating against potential customers, Madigan said in the statement. Under the law, access to transportation must not be impacted or based on a persons race or national origin. My office is investigating to determine whether Suburban Express policies and practices violate the law.

Madigans office also encouraged people to file complaints against the company online or call her offices Civil Rights Hotline.

The companys owner, Dennis Toeppen, could not be reached for comment Monday,

The action from the attorney general is the latest in the fierce backlash and fallout for the company.

Earlier Monday, Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th, said he would file a City Council resolution next week to request that a representative of Suburban Express appear before aldermen to explain the ad as well as a second message that accused U. of I. of selling our university to the highest foreign bidder.

This is not acceptable in any way, Pawar said, adding, This is xenophobic, its bigoted, its racist. Its not right.

The alderman said he would also appeal to the citys Department of Aviation and its Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection to investigate Suburban Express business practices. For years, the company has adopted an aggressive stance in criticizing customers it says had violated its policies and toward competing bus companies, which it has disparaged on its website.

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Pawar, who sits on the councils joint committee for aviation and budget and government operations, said the city could exercise some regulatory authority over the company because it provides shuttle service to OHare.

Pawar said he wanted the company to come talk to the City Council about their stance on diversity, how they could have allowed a statement like this to go out knowing that they serve a large number of travelers of various backgrounds, and why they think that we, as city government, should allow them to continue operating out of the airport given their ugly stances. Toeppen would not be required to attend.

The City Council next convenes Dec. 13.

Later Monday, the company posted another statement on Facebook saying it had reached out to Pawar about the issue. The alderman confirmed someone contacted his office, but he said he had not spoken to anyone from the company as of Monday afternoon.

We screwed up and we know it, the statement read. Our apology was inadequate. We hope to open a dialogue with Alderman Pawar about our shortcomings and how to make our services more inclusive in the future.

Lilia Chacon, spokeswoman for Chicagos Business Affairs and Consumer Protection Department, said Suburban Express is licensed by the state, not the city.

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In Chicago this kind of language in marketing would not be tolerated, Chacon said in a statement. Because their service is a one-way transport, typically to OHare or suburban malls, they do not require a city license. However, because of concerns about the companys offensive marketing strategy we are referring this company for review by the Chicago Commission on Human Relations.

The Saturday ad sent via email publicized shuttle services from Urbana-Champaign to various Chicago suburbs throughout the universitys holiday break. Amid the list of perks being offered by the companys services the ad stated:

Passengers like you. You wont feel like youre in China when youre on our buses.

A second email later that day, titled Apology, dismissed those who characterized the ad as being racist. The message then shifted to pointedly criticize U. of I.s admission policies, incorrectly stating that Chinese-born students make up 20 percent of the student body, that the universitys primary motive in enrolling international students was money and that that number of nonnative English speakers places a variety of burdens on domestic students.

There are 5,868 Chinese students enrolled at Urbana-Champaign this fall  12 percent of the population, according to university data.

The messages quickly spurred angry responses from university officials and student groups.

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We cannot prevent a private company from operating in our community, part of the statement from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs read. But we can, loudly and unambiguously, say that the opinions expressed by Suburban Express are offensive, bigoted, insulting and in direct opposition to the values of this university.

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drhodes@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @rhodes_dawn

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[ Bus company serving University of Illinois criticized for 'racist' ad ]
Sen. Dick Durbin said Monday he is hopeful but not confident that Congress will pass the Dream Act and create a path to citizenship for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin on Monday said he is hopeful but not confident that Congress will pass the Dream Act and create a path to citizenship for immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children.

Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat and a top sponsor of the bipartisan bill, is encouraging his colleagues to join him in blocking spending legislation if the legal status of Dreamers isn't resolved, a move that could lead to a government shutdown.

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We have to assert ourselves in the minority and make it clear that we are not going to vote for certain legislation  and our votes are needed  unless this is included as part of the package, Durbin said.

Congress faces a Friday deadline to fund the government through the end of next September.

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The Dream Act would grant "conditional permanent residency" to an estimated 1.8 million immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before age 18 and can meet requirements similar to those under the Obama administrations Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

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President Donald Trump dissolved the DACA program in September and set a March 5 deadline for Congress to act. By then, permits will begin to expire at a rate of nearly 1,000 per day.

So far, Ive gotten good responses. Not enough to say Im confident yet but certainly to say Im hopeful, Durbin said.

He joined business, labor and faith leaders, and Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-3rd,who said he is working with a bipartisan group on immigration reform, at the Illinois Chamber of Commerce on Monday to rally support for the Dream Act.

Its only common sense that DACA recipients are given a real opportunity to become U.S. citizens, Lipinski said. Even President Donald Trump, at a time or two, has agreed with that.

nmoreno@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @nereidamorenos

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A 19-year-old man was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a 22-year-old man the day after Thanksgiving on the Far South Side, officials said Sunday.

Alec Aguilar, of the 10200 block of South Avenue G, was arrested Nov. 30 and ordered held without bail Sunday during a court hearing before Judge David Navarro.

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Prosecutors said Aguilar was captured on surveillance video following the victim, Manuel Salazar, in a gray car.

Salazar was fatally shot Nov. 24 about 10:15 a.m. in the 10000 block of South Avenue M by one of the three passengers in Aguilar's car. He was on his way to work and had no gang affiliation, according to Assistant State's Attorney Craig Taczy.



Aguilar pulled up next to Salazar at a red light and the group began flashing gang signs while covering the bottom half of their faces with their shirts. Aguilar was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with a "unique tribal pattern," Taczy said.



When the light turned green, Salazar and his driver continued down South Chicago Avenue, called 911 and tried to evade the gray sedan that was tailing them. Aguilar would speed up, slow down, brake check and pass other cars in traffic to stay with the victim, prosecutors said.



An unnamed co-offender fired shots from Aguilar's vehicle, shattering the rear windshield and striking Salazar in the back. The driver crashed into another car and assisted Salazar until paramedics arrived.



Salazar was pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. An autopsy Nov. 25 determined he died of a gunshot wound to the back, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. Salazar, whose death was ruled a homicide, lived in the 9600 block of South Avenue N, according to court records and the office.



Aguilar was stopped by Hammond police in the same uniquely patterned sweatshirt worn during the shooting, prosecutors said. He was later identified by a co-offender and by Salazar's driver. The gray sedan is registered to Aguilar's father.



He is scheduled to appear in court Monday.
Attorney Rhonda Crawford talks about what she did and did not do while filling in as a judge. She speaks at her attormey's office in Chicago on Sept. 22, 2016. (Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

A Cook County judge who allowed a law clerk to wear her robe and hear traffic court cases in 2016 has been forced into retirement by a state oversight commission that found the judge was mentally unable to perform her duties.

The Illinois Courts Commission noted that Valarie E. Turner, first elected to the bench in 2002, suffers from Alzheimers disease. The commission said it was sympathetic to Turners mental health issues, adding that its decision was not meant to punish her.

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However, we cannot ignore that the complaint at issue in this matter was initiated based on (Turners) actions in allowing a person who was not elected or sworn in as a judge to preside over formal matters which could only be resolved by a judicial officer, the commission wrote.

Turner, 60, could not be reached for comment Monday. Her lawyer, Gino DiVito, declined to comment.

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The commissions decision, which was handed down Friday, appears to mark the end of Turners once-promising legal career, which began with law school at the University of Chicago, and with positions at the well-known Kirkland & Ellis law firm and the U.S. attorneys office. Under the states constitution, the commissions decision cannot be appealed and is final.

The Courts Commission ruling is another twist in an already tortuous legal path that has embarrassed one of the nations largest court systems. And the matter still is not fully resolved.

A separate criminal case against Rhonda Crawford, the law clerk who put on Turners robe and presided over traffic court cases, is ongoing. Crawford has pleaded not guilty to one court of official misconduct, a felony, and one court of false impersonation, a misdemeanor.

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The Judicial Inquiry Board, which investigates judges, a year ago charged that Turner was mentally unable to do her job. The board, however, made no allegation that Turner engaged in misconduct when she allowed Crawford to put on her robe and hear three traffic cases in the south suburban Markham courthouse. At that time, Crawford had won the Democratic primary for the 1st Judicial Subcircuit and was unopposed in the general election.

The Judicial Inquiry Board investigates and prosecutes allegations of misconduct or incapacity against judges. The board files formal complaints with the Courts Commission, which is made up of five judges and two members of the public. The commission can reprimand, censure, suspend with or without pay, remove from office or  as in the case of Turner  retire a judge.

DiVito, Turners lawyer, at the time was critical of the boards decision to pursue the matter with the Courts Commission, saying it set a terrible precedent for any judge who, like Ms. Turner, has an illness she did not cause and cannot control.

Turner told the Courts Commission that there was no need to take action because she stopped her judicial duties and swore never to return to the bench.

The commission, however, said that Turner chose to pursue temporary disability benefits that keep her in the position as a judge. She has not resigned or retired by accepting permanent disability benefits.

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The commission said that by letting someone who was not a judge hear court cases, Turner had brought the judicial office into disrepute, and diminished the publics confidence in the integrity of Illinois judges.

RELATED:

[ Law clerk in 'fake' judge case wins real judge election ]

[ Fired law clerk says judge urged her to take bench in 'shadowing' process ]

[ Law clerk in judge impersonation case is charged with a felony ]

[ Lawyer fired in judge impersonation case now faces a challenger in election ]
Former President Barack Obama speaks during a leadership summit in New Delhi, India, on Dec. 1, 2017. He is set to address Mayor Rahm Emanuel's climate meeting of mayors on Dec. 5, 2017. (Manish Swarup / AP)

Former President Barack Obama will speak at Mayor Rahm Emanuels climate meeting on Tuesday.

Obamas afternoon speech will unfold as Republican President Donald Trump has said he will pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord in which nations agreed to lower carbon emissions. Trump also has reversed Obama-era domestic climate initiatives, saying he wants to bring back the coal industry.

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Emanuel released a statement welcoming Obama, who will appear in person to address the gathering.

President Obama helped lead the fight against climate change with bold and decisive action, and we are honored he will be joining the North American Climate Summit where local leaders from around the world will make meaningful commitments to climate solutions, Emanuel said.

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The two-day conference of mayors from the U.S. and beyond is the latest in a series of events Emanuel has hosted to try to take the lead on climate issues.

The North American Climate Summit will feature a signing of the Chicago Climate Charter on Tuesday. The charter will commit mayors from North American cities who sign it to reduce emissions and take other steps to help the environments in their cities, though its unclear how the charter would be enforced if signees dont live up to its standards.

Emanuel has hosted prior meetings with mayors to try to take the lead on water quality standards and environmental goals. Its part of what Emanuel has characterized as the leadership role many cities are taking in the face of federal government paralysis or indifference to these kinds of challenges.

jebyrne@chicagotribune.com

bruthhart@chicagotribune.com

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Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner has been Illinois chief executive for nearly three years, but on Monday he offered the observation that hes not in charge, suggesting Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan is.

Following an appearance at an Illinois Farm Bureau conference in Chicago, Rauner was teeing off on Madigan, one of his go-to targets, when a reporter asked him if the speaker has been around for more than three decades, hasnt the governor been in charge for the last three years.

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I wish I had. We would have our problems fixed. Illinois would be on a great future, Rauner said. Wed have 200,000 more jobs in this state, we would have lower property taxes in this state, we would have term limits in this state, if I was in charge. I am not in charge. Im trying to get to be in charge.

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said he didnt know what to make of the governors comments.

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If hes not in charge, wed better figure out who is, Brown said.

The reelection-seeking governors comments came after hed been peppered with questions about Republican state Rep. Jeanne Ives, whose decision to mount a primary challenge against him marks a significant repudiation of him from within his own ranks.

Rauner tried to dismiss Ives as a fringe candidate, saying political attacks, theyre part of the process. He also said hed been the target of a political hit piece by the conservative National Review, which ran a cover story last week that labeled him the Worst Republican Governor in America.

While Rauner cast himself as the candidate with the best chance of anybody in the state to win the general election, his argument for his candidacy on Monday was focused more on Madigan than on any accomplishments of his own since he took office in January 2015.

Rauner accused the veteran speaker of running a mafia protection racket and having rigged the Democratic primary for governor.

We've been a state controlled by one person, one person, for 35 years, Rauner said. And until that changes, we don't have a good future.

Rauner said he couldnt get things done in Springfield because the General Assembly can block the major things. What I can control: Union contracts, incredible. Medicaid reform, incredible. Criminal justice reform, incredible. The things that I can control, were transforming the state.

While Rauner has executed new collective bargaining agreements with more than a dozen trade unions, he has been unable to reach agreement with the states largest public employee union and was barred earlier this year from attempting to impose his own contract terms on the workers.

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Rauners overhaul of the states Medicaid program has been criticized by Democrats as moving too fast and at too great of an expense to the state. And while Rauner has indeed presided over several significant changes to the criminal justice system over the nearly three years hes been in office, much of that work was made possible by lawmakers who sent bills to his desk for approval.

kgeiger@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimgeiger
A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor takes off from a South Korean air base in Gwangju, South Korea, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. The United States and South Korea have started their biggest-ever joint air force exercise with hundreds of aircrafts including two dozen stealth jets. (AP)

SEOUL, South Korea  Hundreds of aircrafts including two dozen stealth jets began training Monday as the United States and South Korea launched their biggest-ever combined air force exercise. The war games come a week after North Korea test-fired its most powerful missile ever, an ICBM that may be able to target the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The five-day drill, which is called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies wartime capabilities, South Korea's defense ministry said.

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The U.S. Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets that include six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets for the annual training exercise in the Korean Peninsula. About 12,000 U.S. military personnel are participating.

Some local media report that B-1B bombers will also join aerial drills, but officials could not confirm the reports.

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North Korea's state media said the joint drill pushes the Korean Peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war." Such language is typical in North Korean propaganda because the country sees U.S.-South Korean drills, which are held regularly, as preparation for invasion.

Still, always bad tensions are at a particularly dangerous point as North Korea edges toward its goal of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, and President Donald Trump uses aggressive rhetoric toward the North, threatening, for instance, "fire and fury" toward the country.

Pyongyang will "seriously consider" countermeasures against the drill, and the U.S. and South Korea will "pay dearly for their provocations," the Korean Central News Agency said on Sunday before the start of the exercises.

While many South Koreans typically ignore North Korea's rhetoric, some senior American officials have expressed worry following the ICBM test, North Korea's third.

On Sunday, Lindsey Graham, a U.S. senator from the state of South Carolina, said he believes that it's time for U.S. military families in South Korea to leave the country because conflict with North Korea is getting close. The U.S. government has not announced a formal decision to evacuate U.S. citizens from South Korea, and there were no such signs in the diplomatic community in Seoul. An evacuation of dependents by Seoul's closest ally and major military defender could prompt a panicked reaction by other countries, and among South Koreans.

In addition to American diplomats and other embassy workers, about 28,500 U.S. troops operate in South Korea, and many come to their posts with their families, who often live on huge, well-guarded military bases.

Also on Sunday, the White House national security adviser said that Trump will take care of North Korean threats by "doing more ourselves."

"The priorities that the president's given us to move as quickly as we can to resolve this crisis with North Korea," General H.R. McMaster told Fox News in an interview.

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"If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it, because he has said he's not going to allow this murderous, rogue regime to threaten the United States."

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"Happy graduation Debbie," it read in slanted cursive handwriting. "I wanted to give you this card myself. I know that you'll be a success in anything you do. Roy."

The inscription, Gibson said, was written by Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican nominee for U.S. Senate who in recent days has repeatedly denied the accounts of five women who told The Washington Post that he pursued them when they were teenagers and he was an assistant district attorney in his 30s. Since those allegations were published last month, four more women have come forward to allege that Moore made unwanted sexual advances. The accounts in The Post included those of Leigh Corfman, who said she was 14 when Moore touched her sexually, and Gibson, who said that she publicly dated Moore when she was 17 and he was 34, a relationship she said she "wore like a badge of honor" until she began reevaluating it in light of the accounts of other women, and now, Moore's own denials.

Shortly after the allegations first surfaced, Moore said in a radio interview with Sean Hannity that he did not know Corfman, but that he remembered Gibson as well as Gloria Thacker Deason, who had told The Post that she dated Moore when she was 18. He called each one "a good girl," and said that he did not remember dating them.

But at two campaign events in recent days, Moore has backtracked.

At a Nov. 27 campaign event in the north Alabama town of Henagar, Moore said, "The allegations are completely false. They are malicious. Specifically, I do not know any of these women."

At a Nov. 29 rally at a church in the south Alabama town of Theodore, Moore said, "Let me state once again: I do not know any of these women, did not date any of these women and have not engaged in any sexual misconduct with anyone."

Gibson said that after finding the scrapbook, she was not sure whether to make it public given the threats she received after publication of the original story. Then she heard what Moore said last week, she said, and contacted The Post.

"He called me a liar," said Gibson, who says she not only openly dated Moore when she was 17 but later joined him in passing out fliers during his campaign for circuit court judge in 1982 and exchanged Christmas cards with him over the years. "Roy Moore made an egregious mistake to attack that one thing  my integrity."

The Moore campaign did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this story.

Two of the other women named in The Post article have also pushed back in recent days against Moore.

In an open letter to Moore published on the Alabama news site Al.com after Moore's Nov. 27 speech, Corfman wrote that "I am done being silent."

"You sent out your spokesman to call me a liar. Day after day. Finally, last night, you did the dirty work yourself ..." she wrote. "What you did to me when I was 14-years old should be revolting to every person of good morals. But now you are attacking my honesty and integrity. Where does your immorality end?"

In a statement to The Post after Moore's Nov. 29 speech, Paula Cobia, a lawyer for Deason, recounted Deason's vivid memories of dating Moore, from specific restaurants she says they frequented, to the velvet-collared dress Deason says she wore when she says Moore took her to a social function at a Ramada Inn. Cobia said,

"No matter what lies Roy Moore may choose to tell now," Cobia said, "the truth was the first thing out of his mouth when it came to remembering Gloria."

Gibson, 54, now lives in Delray Beach, Fla., is a registered Republican, and is the founder of a company that provides sign language interpretation. Though she said the bulk of her work is in educational, medical and legal settings, her clients have included Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and Republicans such as the mayor of Miami. She said that despite requests from dozens of media outlets, she had "very carefully said absolutely nothing" after her account was first published in The Post due to a barrage of threatening hate mail she received, prompting her to notify her local police department. She and the other women have been accused by Moore's surrogates of lying, or being paid to spread false stories, or being part of a larger political conspiracy to defeat Moore.

Then she found the scrapbook and the graduation card with the slanted, cursive handwriting, which she said immediately reminded her of another woman, Beverly Young Nelson, who had come forward after the Post story was published. In an emotional news conference with the attorney Gloria Allred, Nelson accused Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was 16, and produced what she said was her high school yearbook with an inscription to her from Moore.

"I just couldn't imagine him doing something like that," Gibson said. "And then when I saw the interview from Beverly, and I saw his handwriting in her yearbook, my heart just sank. And when I saw what I knew to be Roy Moore's handwriting, I just began to sob openly."

Mark Songer, a former FBI forensic examiner now with the firm Robson Forensic, examined an image of the graduation card at The Post's request and said that it "appears to be naturally prepared." Songer also compared an image of the yearbook inscription to the image of the graduation card and said that "the style of writing, as well as certain letter features, appear to be similar." He stressed the need for a full and comprehensive handwriting examination to arrive at a final conclusion.

Gibson said she remembers Moore handing the card to her at the Etowah High School graduation ceremony in Attalla, Ala., where Gibson grew up about 10 miles from Moore's home. She remembers reading the inscription and writing below it: "Roy Moore inspires me because he is such a successful man himself. Also, he is about the only person I know of who seriously believes in me. I appreciate that. He's got to be one of the nicest people I know."

As she flipped through the scrapbook last week, Gibson said, she realized it contained other indications of her relationship with Moore, which she says began in March 1981, after he came to speak to her high school civics class.

On a page titled "commencement," under "My own guests," she had written "Roy S. Moore," just above "mom" and "dad."

On a page titled "remembrances," she had listed her graduation gifts line by line, including "$10, card" from "Roy S. Moore," and a check mark indicating she had sent a thank-you card.

On a page titled "the best times," she had written: "Wednesday night, 3-4-81. Roy S. Moore and I went out for the first time. We went out to eat at Catfish Cabin in Albertville. I had a great time." She had underlined "great" twice.

The scrapbook also contained a photo of Gibson as a high school senior, and when she saw it, she said, she thought to herself, "That's the age I was when I dated Roy Moore, because my braces were off."

As Gibson previously told The Post, she said that she and Moore dated for a couple of months. She said he kissed her by the swimming pool concession stand at a local country club, that he played his guitar and read his own poetry to her, and that things ended when she went off to college in another part of Alabama, though they still kept in touch.

She said she helped Moore when he was campaigning for circuit court judge in 1982, and remembers tucking fliers under windshield wipers at the Kmart parking lot.

She said that when she became engaged, Moore insisted on meeting her fiance to make sure he was "good enough for me." She said when Moore was first appointed as a circuit court judge in 1992, she sent him a gavel engraved with his name and a congratulatory note, and that her family and his exchanged Christmas cards some years.

She said that she held Moore "in high esteem," despite political differences with him, until she began hearing stories from other women who alleged that Moore pursued them as teenagers. She said that at first she did not want to believe the women.

"It takes what I thought was a very lovely part of my past, and it colors it, and it changes it irrevocably," she said. "It changes it permanently."

What made her decision to share the documents easier, she said, was watching and re-watching a video she has on her cellphone of Moore speaking last week and deciding that supporting the women who have come forward was more important than staying silent.

"At 34 minutes and 56 seconds into the video, he says, unequivocally, I did not know any of them," Gibson said. "In that moment, it changed my perspective. I knew he was a liar."
All votes in the CO-3 election won't be counted until the end of this week
Twenty four students from 16 universities in China and abroad won Chinese literature prizes at Fudan University on Saturday.





Their literature works included free verses, traditional style poems, prose, novelettes, dramatic literature and translated literature.





The Chinese literature award for university students around the world was set up last year by the university with 5 million yuan (US$756,150) of donation from Hu Jiarun, a young entrepreneur in his 20s to promote traditional Chinese culture and Chinese literature. It also aims at encouraging young students to inherit splendid tradition of Chinese culture and learn from excellent foreign literature to explore and innovate in literary creation.





This is the first year for the biennial Jiarun-Fudan Global Chinese Literature Award for University Students to be presented.





It had attracted more than 3,000 literature works and their authors included doctors of literature, science students, freshmen and some students known on campus for writing.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) will consolidate and deepen friendly cooperation with political parties worldwide, Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi said Sunday.





Addressing the closing ceremony of the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting in Beijing, Yang, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, called on the CPC and political parties worldwide to contribute to building a community of a shared future for mankind and a better world.

Referring to the keynote speech made by Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, at the opening ceremony on Friday, Yang said it expressed the CPC's determination to work with political parties worldwide to promote global development, share global prosperity and guide the world's future.

The international community spoke highly of the keynote speech and the contribution made by the CPC, he said.

Yang pointed out that it is a great cause to work together to build a community of a shared future for mankind and a better world.

He called on political parties and leaders to shoulder their historic responsibilities to build a peaceful world, contribute to world development, and safeguard the international order.

The meeting also released the Beijing Initiative at the closing ceremony on Sunday morning.

"We call on political parties around the world to join us in building world peace, contributing to global development and safeguarding the international order," the initiative said.

It also called on political parties to facilitate the building of partnerships, contribute to the building of world peace, promote global development, encourage mutual learning among civilizations, and be the guardians of ecology and the environment.

It proposed that the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-level Meeting should be institutionalized, and become a high-level platform for political dialogue with broad representation and global influence.
Lebanon [File photo]

The recent developments in Lebanon suggest that there are grave dangers lying ahead. It is feared that the Lebanese people could be caught in a conflict driven by the regional "great games" of the countries vying for supremacy at the cost of smaller nations.







The Cold War between Saudi Arabia and Iran is now an open secret. The two have been fighting directly and indirectly through resources and proxies at several places including Yemen, Qatar, Iraq and Syria. The resignation of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri earlier in November while in Saudi Arabia shows that the rivalry has expanded to Lebanon.





The way he read out his resignation on the TV and remained at some secret place in Riyadh away from the world and his people back home suggested that the resignation could be the work of unseen hands.





But luckily he has emerged from hiding and was allowed to travel to Paris. Later he reached Beirut where he was able to resume his duties because Lebanon President Michel Aoun had not accepted the resignation.





Hariris presence in Lebanon will help to unfreeze the domestic political situation. However, the developments shrouding the circumstances of resignation may not become clear any time soon.





The dangerous Saudi-Iran rivalry is driven by religious motivations and geo-strategic considerations. It also has international overtones, as the United States is keenly watching the moves and deftly pushing the deck through different means and methods.





The Sunni-Shiite tussle is part of Islamic history but was previously limited to seminaries and mosques. It became political and later fiercely nationalists after Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979. The ruling House of Saud in the kingdom rivaled it by supporting radical Sunni Islam in the country and elsewhere.





The deadly killing of Shiites and Sunnis witnessed in several Muslim countries is just the tip of the iceberg, i.e. in the mistrust between the two sects of same religious tradition. Countries like Pakistan and Iraq are struggling to maintain sectarian harmony in the face of simmering tension.





The geo-strategic tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia is linked with the efforts to dominate the energy-rich Middle East. Historically, a country remained dominant if it was favorably aligned with the U.S. and its allied nations dependent on the oil.





Iran enjoyed the status until 1979 but lost it after hardline clerics won power. The Saudis are happily shouldering the onerous responsibility of providing free access to oil in the Gulf after Iran lost its previous status.





Another important lynchpin of regional politics is Israel. The security of the Jewish state is of paramount interest to the U.S., which will go to any length to ensure it. Here enters Lebanon which is a rare mix of politics, religion and ethnicity. Bordering Israel makes it both valuable and a prey for political predators.





Iran has successfully created a strategic highway to encircle Israel and Saudi Arabia through proxies in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The last country is more important due to the presence of the powerful Hezbollah, which has a history of direct conflict with Israel.





Both Iran and Hezbollah are also involved in Syria which makes Israel feel more threatened. The threat from a common enemy is bringing Saudi Arabia and Israel closer. There are several indications of this trend, including the recent first ever interview by a top Israeli army general to a Saudi media outlet.





Hariri in his resignation accused Iran of interfering through Hezbollah in the affairs of his country. Since he is also a national of Saudi Arabia, his resignation cannot be taken as an isolated happening. Rather, it shows the increasing involvement of Riyadh and Tehran in domestic issues of Lebanon.





After Yemen, Lebanon could be the new hot front of the regional Cold War, which would shatter the uneasy peace in the country and further destabilize the entire region. Lebanons leaders, especially Hariri, can play a vital role in maintaining the calm. So, his decision to hurry home rather than staying away in the warm company of leaders in Paris is a notable development.





Hariri and his rivals in Hezbollah should realize that in the age of proxy wars and shadowy groups, the countries which can remain at peace, are those which keep a safe distance from powers that seek glory at the expense of weaker nations.





Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm





Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.








People of the Yao ethnic group celebrate the Panwang Festival at Shuibin Village of Gongcheng Yao Autonomous County, southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Dec. 3, 2017. The Panwang Festival is celebrated by the Yao people to pay tribute to the ancestors. [Photo/VCG]




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Innovation leaders and government representatives from around the world said the remarks by Chinese President Xi Jinping in a congratulatory letter to the Fourth World Internet Conference were of great significance and practicality.

Delegates attend the Fourth World Internet Conference in the water town of Wuzhen, east China's Zhejiang Province, Dec. 3, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]





In his letter, Xi said the development of the internet has posed many new challenges for the sovereignty, security, and development interests of the world's countries.

He said China hopes to work with the international community to respect cyberspace sovereignty and carry forward the spirit of partnership to commonly advance development, safeguard security, participate in governance, and share the benefits.

China has welcomed world countries to ride fast train of internet and digital economy, which is inspiring, said Vallobh Muangkeo, Secretary General of National Assembly of Thailand.

"We hope Thailand will share the benefit and happiness brought by the development of internet industry along China's'digital silk road,'" he said.

Luigi Gambardella, President of ChinaEU, the business-led International Association aimed at intensifying business cooperation and mutual investments in Internet, Telecom and Hitech between China and Europe, said the remarks showed Xi's commitment.

"Xi recognizes that there are many challenges ahead of us such as security problem and privacy protection. Today it's not possible to discuss future policy and regulation of the internet without China," he said. "Xi's words show that China is very keen to work with other countries to discuss the challenge and to cooperate."

Tatjana Matic, State Secretary of Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications of Serbia, said common interests can only be realized when all countries become participants of the global cyberspace.

"I think it's critical to have all the countries come together to build a better future for our society," said Mohammed Almeshekah, Deputy Minister for Planning and Development, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of Saudi Arabia.

He said it was amazing to see how hard countries were focusing on bringing more people online. "I think we are all in this together to combat challenge in cyberspace and figure out innovative solutions."

The conference, themed on "Developing digital economy for openness and shared benefits -- building a community of common future in cyberspace," runs from Sunday to Tuesday.

According to the organizing committee, over 1,500 guests from more than 80 countries and regions, including government officials, heads of international organizations, leading figures of internet companies, experts and scholars, attended the conference in the east China town of Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province.
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A fire broke out at the Iranian embassy in Yemen's capital Sanaa after it was hit by a rocket shell on Sunday during clashes between supporters of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthis, who until this week were allies.

The Iranian embassy was attacked at around 4:30 p.m. local time (0130 GMT).

A security official said about 20 staff members of the embassy were trapped inside the building.

The embassy is located near the presidential palace and is close to the residence of a son of Saleh in southwestern Sanaa.

More than 100 dead bodies could be seen lying on the streets leading to the diplomatic complex in the Hadda area.

An official from the Houthi-controlled Interior Ministry told Xinhua that at least 200 militants from both warring sides had been killed and more others were wounded in the clashes near the Iranian embassy.

The embassy is located near the highlands controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, where the Saudi-led coalition launched airstrikes for five times on Saturday midnight.

The Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV reported late Saturday that the coalition attacked the highlands in support of the forces loyal to Saleh, who were fighting the Houthis in Sanaa.

The new change in the course of the Yemeni conflict came after Saleh and his supporters turned their weapons against the Houthi group, who had been an ally of Saleh in the battle against the Saudi-led coalition that supports the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Saleh has voiced his readiness to hold talks with the coalition's leaders to reach a compromise.

Houthi leader Abdul-Malek al-Houthi accused Saleh of "betrayal," vowing to keep fighting against the Saudi-led coalition.

The coalition later welcomed Saleh's new stance and offered to provide support to fight the Houthi rebels, according to Al-Arabiya.

Sunday's clashes had been raging on for hours after the Houthis claimed to have fired a long-range winged cruise missile towards the Barakah nuclear reactor in Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to a statement by the Houthi-controlled Saba news agency.

"The missile hit the target accurately in Abu Dhabi," a Houthi military officer was quoted as saying.

But the UAE on Sunday denied the claims by the Houthis, while reassuring its citizens that the country is safe.

The UAE National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority (NCEMA) said in a statement that the UAE's air defense system "is capable of dealing with any threats."
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China and Japan will hold their eighth round of high-level consultations on maritime affairs in Shanghai on Tuesday and Wednesday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Monday.

Officials from the foreign ministries, defense ministries, maritime law enforcement and management departments of both sides will attend the talks, spokesperson Geng Shuang told a routine news briefing.

China expects to fully exchange views with Japan on maritime issues of common concern, in a bid to strengthen understanding and mutual trust, Geng said.

The China-Japan High-level Consultations on Maritime Affairs were set up in 2012. The last round of consultations was held in Fukuoka, Japan in June this year.


China Aviation Daily | Dec. 04, 2017

Sydney Airport has welcomed China Airlines' new A350-900 service, which is expected to bring tens of thousands of extra tourists to NSW each year.

The first plane touched down yesterday at Sydney Airport, marking Sydney's first passenger Airbus A350 service.

Sydney Airport Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Kerrie Mather said the China Airlines service would help strengthen the NSW economy and support jobs.

"It's incredibly exciting to welcome Sydney's first A350 service with China Airlines," Ms Mather said.

"Not only will passengers be able to enjoy a fantastic product with an impressive new inflight experience, but more services mean a boost for tourism in our state.

"The move to double the number of daily services will mean about an extra 100,000 seats and an estimated additional US$48 million in annual visitor expenditure for NSW."

The A350 will replace China Airlines' current A330 aircraft and has been designed to incorporate fine-tuned mood lighting that conjures images of sunrises, sunsets and aurora within the high ceiling cabin, contributing to an exceptional level of comfort.

China Airlines' Oceania Vice President, Kelvin Chen, said the aircraft upgrade was a win for passengers.

"In its 25th year of operating to Sydney, China Airlines is very pleased to upgrade its Airbus A330-300 services to brand new A350-900 aircraft featuring the latest inflight product," Mr Chen said.

"Not only are we upgrading the passenger experience with these next-generation aircraft, but lifting frequency to offer twice daily departures to Taipei from December 17.

"This allows China Airlines to offer improved connectivity for the significant traffic flows between Sydney, Europe and Asia."

The 306-seat A350-900 brings Sydney into line with new London services and other key international connections, such as Frankfurt, Rome, Amsterdam and Vienna.

Tourism Australia Managing Director John O'Sullivan said growth in visitor numbers from Taiwan reflected the importance of North Asia as a key tourism market for Australia.

"Chinese airlines continue to be a huge driver of growth for our tourism industry, from both mainland and Greater China," Mr O'Sullivan said.

"This latest increase in capacity by China Airlines, as well as the added kudos of the new A350 aircraft now being deployed on the route, should hopefully help maintain that positive momentum."

NSW Tourism Minister Adam Marshall said the new China Airlines A350 service was a welcome addition.

"The aviation indu-stry is a key player in turbocharging to-urism growth in Sydn-ey and throughout rural and re-gional NSW," Mr Marshall said.

"We want to see more tourism dollars flying into Sydney and rural and regional NSW and into the pockets of local economies, and I look forward to welcoming increased visitation to our State as a result of this new service."

Sydney Airport is a leading airport globally for next generation aircraft. The state-of-the-art A350 is quieter and has a reduced carbon footprint compared to previous aircraft.

Contributed by Sydney Airport
China Aviation Daily | Dec. 04, 2017

Budapest Airport has signed a cooperation agreement with STO Express from China, and EKOL, the European 3PL company with a strong presence in Hungary.

The agreement establishes a cargo transportation network to deliver e-commerce products arriving from China to European customers.

STO Express will operate scheduled cargo flights to Budapest Airport, which is likely to generate a significant increase not only in total cargo traffic, but also in the field of e-commerce, the main profile of the Chinese company.

The agreement was signed during the annual conference of the "16+1 cooperation" initiative, comprising China and 16 countries from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, which got under way this week.

At the economic, commercial, and financial forum organised as part of the conference, STO Express, a leading Chinese logistics company, announced that, in line with the efforts of the Chinese government, it is developing its relations with the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region.

As part of this, it has designated Budapest Airport as its preferred hub for air cargo transportation.

STO Express' first Boeing B747 cargo aircraft, filled primarily with e-commerce goods, arrived in the Hungarian capital in November, in the colours of Silkway Italia, initially as a charter flight.

Cargo traffic at Budapest Airport has increased by 36 per cent since December 2015. From January to October 2017, Budapest Airport handled a record of 103,800 tonnes of air cargo, up 14.5 per cent on the same period last year. Budapest has a balanced market share with exports at 52 per cent, and imports at 48 per cent.

The cooperation agreement was signed on behalf of Budapest Airport by Rene Droese, Director Property and Cargo, who commented: "On behalf of Budapest Airport, we warmly welcome this initiative by STO Express. Export-import between China and Hungary, and the entire CEE region, plays an important role in our rapidly developing market."

"We believe that Budapest and Budapest Airport provide the best place for distribution by STO Express in the CEE region, and we will do our best to prove this in the near future. Our new air cargo base, Cargo City, will commence operations in the summer of 2019.

"It is noteworthy that, based on market data, e-commerce accounted for four to five per cent of retail sales in Hungary this year, with 20 per cent growth in this segment from January to June, compared to the same period last year.

"In terms of specific figures, this means online transactions of approximately USD600 million during the first half of 2017. E-commerce is thus clearly one of the areas with the greatest potential in the market, including air cargo."

Contributed by Budapest Airport
PUNTA DEL ESTE - Chinese ride-hailing company DiDi is looking to break into the Latin American market, as indicated by a top leader of the company.

"Latin America is today one of the most important markets given its population of 600 million people," DiDi's vice-president of International Business, Gu Tao, told Xinhua on Saturday.

Gu was in Punta del Este, a resort city on a narrow peninsula in southeast Uruguay, for the 11th China-Latin America and the Caribbean (China-LAC) Business Summit, which ended Saturday.

Currently, DiDi is the "fastest growing company in China," and Latin America is part of its global expansion plans, he said.

"Latin America is really relevant for China, that's why we believe we can use our technology and experience to provide the same product in China and to our users in Latin America," said Gu.

Companies like DiDi, which has 21 million affiliated drivers, fill a need sparked by changing economies, he noted, citing a recent study that analyzed the growing pool of available drivers.

Some four million DiDi drivers were formerly laid off workers from a variety of industrial jobs in such sectors as steel in China.

The ride-hailing service generates 170 yuan ($25.7) per capita in income for some 2.6 million drivers each day, most of whom hold other part time jobs.

Analysts believe that China's sharing economy is on the rise, and high rate of growth is forecast to continue over the next few years.

"The sharing economy is growing rapidly in China and it is an opportunity for Latin America also. In our view, in the next 10 years, a family will no longer need to have its own car. All cars will be shared," said Gu.

"Today, in the larger cities, there are too many vehicles on the streets and they take up space. We believe technology can significantly change the automobile industry," Gu added.

In addition to ride hailing and sharing, DiDi offers chauffeur, test drive and car rental services, among others.

In the near future, "there will be self-driving cars and electric cars, and they will be shared. If one can instantly obtain a car anywhere, then he doesn't need a car" of his own, said Gu.

"I have a vehicle in Beijing and 95 percent of the time it's parked, I only drive it five percent of the time. So in the future, all cars will be shared," he predicted.

DiDi bought out Uber's operations in China last year, and has since dominated the ride-hailing sector.
SYDNEY  Australia's major wool sector looks poised to sustain a return to strong growth, fueled by record high prices and robust demand from increasingly affluent Chinese consumers, latest industry figures and analyses showed.

Scott Carmody, trade consultant for the nonprofit Australian Wool Innovation industry group, told Xinhua recently that demand is now the strongest in three to four decades, with "Chinese influence on the market exerting extreme upward pressure on wool prices in Australia".

In US dollar terms, wool prices are not as high as they were about five years ago, but the weaker Australian dollar against the greenback now meant that Australian producers were getting paid more in the local currency, he said.

Chinese wool buyers were paying about $14 to $15 a kilogram for the material back then, but the price is about $12.50 now. Prices have since hit a high of more than A$16 a kilogram, industry figures showed.

"The record high prices that everybody's talking about is in Australian dollar terms. That's very important for our wool growers because that's what they like," said Carmody.

"China has the capacity to push the market even higher as long as demand remains strong. And what we're seeing at the retail levels is that there's been so much wool at retail and many different products that people are seeing the capacity for the market to hold at these levels or even improve."

Australia is the world's dominant wool producer, with its top-grade Merino sheep helping fuel annual exports of about A$3 billion (about $2.28 billion).

Chinese demand makes up more than 70 percent of that market, with its businesses manufacturing the raw material into an increasingly wide variety of products such as sportswear and shoes beyond traditional garments, said Carmody.

"China remains our most important customer. Almost 100 percent of what it bought was manufactured and re-exported because the Chinese consumer could not afford to pay the premium price for wool. That was probably 15 to 20 years ago. Today, about 60 percent of wool is staying in China for Chinese consumption. The affluence that has grown very rapidly in China has helped wool prices," he said.

Matt Dalgleish, wool market analyst for Australian agriculture market analysis group Mecardo, told Xinhua recently the Chinese market remains "incredibly important" for Australian wool.

At the same time, the contraction of Australian wool suppliers in the past few years have also affected the higher prices and more producers switching back to the industry to tap the current growth might affect its development moving forward, he said.

There is also a limit to what foreign buyers are prepared to pay for and the danger of wool becoming a "niche" product if it gets too costly, with other fabrics and material offering alternatives, said Dalgleish.

"If we get to a situation where there's a sustainable, long-term, high-price of wool, that would certainly attract other nations and producers in other countries to start investing in the quality of sheep flocks to be able to get to the stage where they can produce wool of a high standard as well," he said.

"Australian wool helps guarantee the quality of our clothing products," Song Jianmin, chief supervisor of Chinese conglomerate Nanshan Group, told Xinhua recently. Other than garments and textiles, the company has businesses ranging from aviation and aluminum to health and education. It processes more than 5,000 metric tons of Australian wool annually for its business.

"There are multiple factors for the high wool prices. Australian wool supply has been slipping and producers have had to adjust ... our group has been keeping close track of the developments."

"We're also working with the industry in terms of technological innovation, product research and other areas. Quality continues to be an important priority for us," Song added.
Northern Ireland, once an industrial powerhouse, wants closer ties with China to safeguard against uncertainty as the United Kingdom prepares to leave the European Union.

On Saturday, more than 100 provincial and municipal leaders from China gathered in Belfast, the province's capital, for the third UK-China Regional Leaders Meeting, a gathering created during President Xi Jinping's state visit to the UK in October 2015, at the start of the "golden era" of relations between China and Britain.

"Brexit has prompted us to more actively engage with new markets further afield, and China is a key focus," said Tim Losty, director of the Beijing bureau of Northern Ireland's executive office.

"Up until the last few years, we have looked to the UK, and Europe, and North America as our primary markets. Now, we have a government office in Beijing, we have a Chinese consulate here, some of our businesses have achieved success in China. China is less far away," Losty said.

Decision-makers from the provinces of Hubei, Liaoning, Jilin, and from the cities of Shanghai, Shenyang, Dalian and Benxi were all in Northern Ireland for the gathering. Shenyang and Belfast became sister cities in 2016, and Derry and Dalian became sister-cities this year.

Following the meeting, the Northern Ireland executive office signed agreements with the local governments of Liaoning and Hubei provinces to strengthen collaboration in areas including trade, investment, education, research, and development. Newry and Mourne district also signed similar agreements with the city of Changchun, the capital of Jilin province.

Northern Ireland, which enjoyed its most prosperous time as a shipbuilder in the 19th century, symbolized by the world-famous Titanic, which was launched in 1912, has experienced considerable economic decline in the 20th century as its once-mighty industries have become less needed.

In recent years, it has experienced a structural shift, thanks to newly emerging high technology and knowledge sectors, including creative industries, those involved in health service technology, and agri-food security, which Northern Ireland academics and companies proudly showcased during the summit.

Zhou Jianping, a director-general of the National Development and Reform Commission, said he sees potential for tremendous collaboration and experience-sharing between Northern Ireland and Northeast China, which are both developing new economies to replace declining manufacturing industries.

Such efforts in China's Northeast began in 2003 when the Chinese government launched structured incentive programs to help the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning, and Heilongjiang. The three provinces' per capita GDP grew from $2,000 in 2003 to $8,000 in 2013.

Zhou encouraged Northern Ireland's businesses to explore partnership opportunities with companies in Northeast China because the Chinese government launched a new round of incentive packages last year aimed at revitalizing the region.

"I suggest that, with this meeting as a good start, both sides should enhance communication and experience-sharing between old industrial cities from both countries, promoting overall and multifield cooperation," said Zhou.

The meeting followed October's 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which established China's future strategic direction. The National Congress proclaimed that China is entering a new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics, under which it will further open up its economy, promote cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, and favor extensive consultation, joint efforts, and shared benefits.

Wang Shuying, China's consulate general in Belfast, said the fact that China has entered a new era brings "a new strong drive to the China-UK 'golden era'", and more opportunities for collaboration with Northern Ireland.

The province's big push to strengthen its ties with China started in 2012 when Liu Yandong, who is now vice-premier, visited Belfast and opened the Confucius Institute at Ulster University.

In 2014, the Northern Ireland executive office opened a branch in Beijing. So far, 12 Northern Ireland companies have established offices in China, and four Chinese companies have invested in Northern Ireland through acquisition during the past two years.

China accounts for 1.3 percent of all exports from Northern Ireland, which is worth around 100 million pounds ($135 million) a year. The main exports are animal hides used to make leather, electronic control devices, and power-generating equipment.
BEIJING -- Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang will attend the opening ceremony of the 2017 Fortune Global Forum and deliver a keynote speech, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang announced Monday.

During the forum, Wang will meet with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, Geng said at a press briefing.

The 2017 Fortune Global Forum will be held in Guangzhou from Dec 6 to 8.
A China Airlines passenger plane landed at a London airport on Friday after taking off in China. It was the first such flight for five years, offering what one airport executive described as a "vital trade boost" during a "critical time" for the United Kingdom economy.

The A350 touched down at Gatwick Airport in the afternoon, following a 13-hour non-stop flight from Taipei in Taiwan province. The plane, which can hold 306 passengers as well as freight, departed on the return leg to Taipei's Taoyuan International Airport that night.

The new route is the only non-stop service from the UK to Taiwan. China Airlines previously flew between Taipei and London's Heathrow Airport for two years between 2010 and 2012.

Gatwick Airport is the second-busiest airport in the UK and one of six international airports that serve the London Metropolitan area.

The majority of UK airfreight is exported in the hold of long haul passenger aircraft.

Greg Hands, the UK's international trade minister, said the new service  which will run four times a week  will provide both British and Chinese businesses with fast access to both markets, in addition to carrying business and leisure passengers.

"This renewed direct flight between London and Taipei is another vote of confidence in the British economy," Hands said from Gatwick Airport.

Guy Stephenson, chief commercial officer at Gatwick Airport, said the service will provide a new link between the UK and China during "a critical time in our economic history".

The health and nature of Britain's trading relationships with major economies, including China, is the subject of debate due to the UK's pending exit from the European Union.

"The new route will boost trade between our two enterprising economies and help our businesses to get goods to market as quickly and efficiently as possible," Stephenson said.

The UK economy has benefited from increased air traffic from China in recent years. Hainan Airlines launched a direct route between Beijing and Manchester, in Northern England, in June last year.

Since then, exports from Northern England to China have almost tripled, to 200 million pounds ($270 million) a month, and the amount spent by Chinese tourists in Manchester has doubled to 138 million pounds a year, according to a report by the Manchester China Forum and Manchester Airport.
By He Wei and Fan Feifei in Wuzhen, Zhejiang | China Daily | Updated: 2017-12-04 07:18

Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, visits a self-service supermarket during the 4th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, on Dec 3, 2017. [Photo by Zhu Xingxin/China Daily]

Businesses laud leadership's backing for technology-driven progress

China's growing openness and its digital economy's continuing impetus to social and economic development are big positives, business executives and experts said.

Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder and chairman of Airbnb China, a vacation home-rental platform, said President Xi Jinping's congratulatory message to the 4th World Internet Conference on Sunday showcased the open and supportive attitude of the country's leaders toward the digital economy as well as the increasingly pioneering role China plays in innovation.

"We want to continue working closely with the government, industry, businesses and the public in China, and believe that technology can bring the country and the world closer and promote people-to-people exchange," Blecharczyk said.

The key message from the conference is to bring the world together through candid exchange, dialogue and partnership, said RJ Pittman, chief product officer of eBay Inc.

"We are cheered by this repeated emphasis on creating a fair and just internet environment, with a special focus on international cooperation," said Pittman.

He also underlined the significance of cross-border e-commerce in driving international trade and promoting equality.

It is also a topic that Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, touched upon in his address to the event.

One promising initiative on this frontier is the digital Silk Road. That is, accelerating internet infrastructure to develop artificial intelligence, big data and sharing economy, said Luigi Gambardella, president of ChinaEU, a nonprofit organization promoting digital and internet cooperation.

Xi is a leader who will "make China thrive in the digital age, while his speech touched on strengthening infrastructure networks and developing advanced manufacturing through the integration of the internet, big data and artificial intelligence", Gambardella said.

The government has given digital players space to experiment before enacting regulation and is now becoming an active supporter, said Jonathan Woetzel, a director of the McKinsey Global Institute. He identified China as a "global leader" in the digital economy.

The leaders' speeches are clear signs that Beijing has flagged digital economy as "an intrinsic source" to drive macroeconomy, said Shen Yi, head of the Cyberspace Governance Research Center at Fudan University.

Shen said China's leadership is adding substance to the governance and future of the internet, through introduction of concrete steps, with the private sector exerting a centripetal force.

"The speeches show China's unprecedented level of openness and the commitment to voluntarily abide by international standards," he said.

Agreed Huang Zhixiong, deputy director of the Institute of International Law at Wuhan University. "By respecting cybersovereignty and upholding cybersecurity, the country can bring dividends of internet development to its people and the rest of the world."

Wang Keju contributed to this story.
Winners and presenters of leading internet technology prize pose at a ceremony during the 4th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province on Dec 3, 2017. [Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

Leading tech giants from China and the United States figured among the winners of top awards at the 4th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province.

It was the second year that the World Leading Internet Scientific and Technological Achievement awards had been presented.

This year, Alibaba Group, Baidu, Huawei Technologies and Mobike Technology shared the honors with Amazon, Microsoft and Apple.

Technologies such as the internet of things or IoT, supercomputing, artificial intelligence and virtual reality featured prominently in the selections of the judges.

Few companies have had such a dramatic impact on the physical landscape of China and other cities around the world as Mobike Technology, with millions of consumers now renting its shared bicycles every day.

Wang Xiaofeng, co-founder and chief executive officer of the Beijing-based company, said he was sitting in his office with colleagues three years ago and wondered what the solution was to air pollution and traffic jams.

"We noticed also that the usage of bicycles had declined and wondered whether this could be reversed. We came up with a solution that combined smartphone technology with GPS tracking systems."

Mobike launched in Shanghai in April 2016. Now, it has 8 million bikes in 200 cities across the world.

Huawei Technologies won its award for its next-generation mobile communications 3GPP 5G pre-commercial system. It will launch a smartphone to support the technology in 2019 when its chip will be also launched.

"With the 5G technology, users will be able to download a 6-gigabyte file in less than two seconds," said Xu Zhijun, rotating CEO of the company.

Alibaba Group won the award for ET Brain, its next-generation cloud computing technology.

Zhang Yong, CEO of Alibaba, said developments in the internet field over the next 10 years could transform all sectors.

"They could be as significant as were the moon landings in a similar period of development," he said.

Baidu won its award for its new digital assistant DuerOS, which will take on Apple's Siri and other competitors.

Its digital assistant responds vocally to whatever question is asked of it, even on an emotional level.

Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu, said at a news conference after the awards ceremony that people should not be concerned about artificial intelligence destroying jobs.

"Artificial intelligence is only a computer system. It does not have human consciousness or sense," he said.
Cybercrime is a threat to countries and companies alike, and needs to be dealt with through global cooperation, senior officials and information technology industry engineers said on Sunday.

"This (2017) has been a special year for the internet because it is the first time the number of global web users has surpassed half of the world's total population," said Dominique de Villepin, former prime minister of France.

He made the remarks during his address to the plenary session of the 4th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, which opened on Sunday and will end on Tuesday.

"Cybersecurity is a global challenge  and as the internet blends into our public sectors and daily lives, our privacy is also at risk," he said.

"We are entering a new age of collective responsibility, we need to strengthen multilateral cooperation and take political action to strengthen internet security and connectivity."

Eugene Kaspersky, founder of Kaspersky Lab, an antivirus protection and internet security provider, echoed Villepin's concerns.

In 1997, when Kaspersky Lab was found, its virus database recorded only around 500 malicious codes, he said.

This year, Kaspersky Lab has detected more than 90 million malicious codes already, totaling 500 million computer viruses and malware, he said.

"Cybercrime is an increasingly messy, massive and global issue," Kaspersky said. "Hackers are also becoming more professional, organized and advanced than ever before."

Kaspersky said his firm is currently monitoring more than 100 highly professional, sophisticated and large-scale cyberattacks. This number is 100 times higher than that in 2010.

Most people believe cybersecurity only concerns the virtual world and gadgets like smartphones and computers, he said. "But, in fact, the internet has connected everything in our lives."

From large infrastructure such as power plants and assembly lines to small gadgets like security cameras, traffic lights and hotel doors, "they are all connected to the network in one way or another".

"But they are not designed to withstand sophisticated cyberattacks and could be undermined," he said.

The worst-case scenario is for cyberattacks to seep and affect us in the real world, which is very possible, he said.
People interact with robots at the 301 Hospital in Beijing. The robots provide basic medical consultation services for people. [Photo by Fan Jiashan/for China Daily]

The digital-age marriage of business with high-tech is helping improve services in China's healthcare sector. A shining example is the Anhui Provincial Hospital of Central China.

Doctors there are well served by a smart, well-qualified assistant. 'She' records patients' symptoms, reviews computerized tomography scan images and makes initial diagnosis. Only, she is not human but a robot that runs on artificial intelligence.

Developed by iFlytek Co Ltd, a leading Chinese AI company, the robot aced the written test of China's national medical licensing examinationit is a test that aspiring doctors need to passin November, thus becoming the first device in the world to achieve the feat. It received 456 marks, 96 more than the minimum required to qualify.

The robot is iFlytek's pilot project at the Anhui hospital. It is meant to see how the robot could help in real-life medical cases.

The initiative is part of broader efforts by China to accelerate the application of AI in healthcare. This has become necessary as China's aging society struggles to find adequate number of high-quality medical facilities.

Liu Qingfeng, chairman of iFlytek, said, "We will officially launch the robot in March 2018. It is not meant to replace doctors. Instead, it is meant to promote better people-machine cooperation so as to boost efficiency."

Unlike the AI-enabled Watson system of US tech company IBM, which only focuses on the treatment for cancer and major diseases, iFlytek is exploring how to use AI to both treat cancer and train general practitioners.

"General practitioners are in severe shortage in China's rural areas. We hope AI can help more people access quality medical resources," Liu said.

Jin Xiaotao, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said more efforts are needed to advance the application of AI in the medical sector.

In November, iFlytek was chosen by the central government as one of the four tech heavyweights to build the national AI open innovation platform by leveraging voice computing technologies.

The move put the Hefei-based company on a par with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd, China's "Big Three" internet players.

iFlytek was formed at the University of Science and Technology of China in 1999, and has been focusing on voice recognition technologies for 18 years now.

Its AI-enabled user interface platform has accumulated 460,000 third-party developer teams in the past seven years.

In April, the company started a partnership with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, a premier medical university in the country.

The two sides set up a research center in Beijing to explore how to apply AI in medical treatments and training. Findings of research into brain science, neuroscience and other areas will be first tested in the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences' affiliated hospital before being promoted at other medical institutions.

Cao Xuetao, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said AI can help accelerate medical research by boosting computing capabilities, and it can also efficiently use limited resources by offering partly automated solutions.
A forum on intelligent logistics, held in Hangzhou in May, attracted both logistics robot manufacturers and general public. Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba, employs robots. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Major Chinese online retailers are increasing efforts to build intelligent logistics systems, by deploying robots and drones to enhance work efficiency.

JD.com Inc, China's second largest e-commerce player, has been at the forefront of this push for adopting innovative automation technologies. It has completed the construction of its first unmanned warehouse.

Located at JD's logistics center in Jiading district, Shanghai, the warehouse spans 40,000 square meters of floor space.

JD said all warehouse operationsreceiving goods, storage, packaging and sorting-are fully automatic. Handling capacity is expected to exceed 200,000 orders per day.

In August, JD launched the first unmanned sorting center in Kunshan, Jiangsu province. Again, the whole process, from parcel sorting to loading onto trucks, is fully automatic.

"As e-commerce is growing in China and around the world, robotics and automation will be a necessary solution to meet that explosion in demand," said Wang Zhenhui, CEO of JD Logistics.

"We are investing in this advanced technology, and other automation throughout our supply chain, with an eye on the long term."

During JD's June 18 shopping festival, the firm used unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs that are better known as drones, to deliver packages in Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi province.

Now, it plans to build 150 operational sites for drone deliveries to Sichuan province, using robots and automated cars to speed up the process.

Like JD, its competitor Alibaba Group Holding Ltd uses smart-ware in logistics. Alibaba's smart logistics network Cainiao Network Technology Co Ltd launched a flagship intelligent warehouse in Huiyang, Guangdong province, in October. It is served by a fleet of more than a hundred mobile robots.

The robots are responsible for moving goods in the warehouse. They are activated once a shopper places an order on Alibaba's B2C shopping site Tmall. The robot sends the shelf containing the parcel to a warehouse clerk, who will sort through the parcels and later ship the designated order to the customer.

In a traditional warehouse, a clerk usually sorts through about 1,000 products, and 60,000 to 70,000 steps are required per day to walk around the warehouse.

Now, thanks to the mobile robots, the clerk can sift through 3,000 products in the same shift, while walking only 2,000 to 3,000 steps a day.

Suning Commerce Group Co Ltd, another prominent e-commerce player, also said it would launch intelligent retail robots that can recognize the speech and expressions of consumers.

"E-commerce giants are aware of the significance of intelligent logistics," said Lu Zhenwang, CEO of Wanqing Consultancy in Shanghai.

"They have invested hugely in the intelligent logistics sector, on things like robots, unmanned sorting and handling equipment, drones and driverless cars to gain the upper hand in fierce competition."
Shanghai-based Yitu Technology, a startup engaged in artificial intelligence or AI and facial recognition technologies, is ramping up efforts to expand its presence in overseas markets.

It will apply AI to fields like urban public safety, healthcare and finance.

It plans to set up a research and development hub in Singapore, its first such facility outside of China.

The hub is expected to bolster Singapore's applications of AI in the areas of security and finance. Singapore will likely act as a gateway for the startup to expand across the world.

"Singapore is a strategic location for us to begin our overseas ventures," said Leo Zhu, CEO and founder of Yitu. Europe and Africa will be tapped next, he said.

The company's AI technologies have been used in a wide range of areas like security, finance, transportation and healthcare. It has formed partnerships with leading companies in these fields to provide integrated solutions.

For instance, its advanced facial recognition technology has been adopted by China Merchants Bank at over 1,500 outlets nationwide, enabling cash withdrawals at ATMs.

Similarly, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank has adopted Yitu's technologies in its video teller machines or VTMs for online banking.

Lin Chenxi, co-founder of Yitu, said there is still a long way to go before AI plays a significant role in rejuvenating any industry.

"There is still much potential for AI's applications in the healthcare sector. That will mean an improvement not only in the efficiency of treating illnesses but also the efficiency of doctors learning about how diseases can be cured," said Lin in an interview with Global Times newspaper.

Lin told GT this will require technology breakthroughs not just in computer vision, but in natural language processing, semantic comprehension and healthcare knowledge mapping.

Data accumulated over the course of unleashing the potential in AI's healthcare applications could also influence drug development.

Its intelligent diagnostic assistance system has been under clinical trials in dozens of hospitals in Shanghai and Zhejiang province.
The emerging 5G mobile communications technology is expected to help the global telecoms industry to create $3.5 trillion of output and generate 22 million jobs by 2035, according to a Qualcomm report. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Local groups scramble to gain competitive edge as technology becomes a reality

Chinese companies are scrambling to gain a lead in the race to commercialize 5Gor the next-generation mobile communication technologyas the country evolves from being a follower into a pioneering player in the global telecoms arena.

The super-fast 5G network is expected to allow consumers to download an 8-gigabit movie in seconds and help to make autonomous driving a reality, causing ripples across most industries and sectors in a new internet revolution.

The mobile technology is so important that it was highlighted in the government work report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang during this year's National People's Congress session in March. A report by the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology predicted that 5G will drive 6.3 trillion yuan ($946.8 billion) of economic output in the country by 2030.

China Mobile Communications Corp, the world's largest telecoms carrier by subscribers, said it aims to deploy more than 10,000 5G base stations by 2020 and aims to launch a pre-commercial 5G service in 2018.

Last November, the Beijing-based company outgunned foreign rivals to lead the global 5G System Architecture project, which it said will determine the "structure of 5G networks".

It came shortly after polar coding, a technology backed by Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, was approved as part of the global standards for 5G.

A visitor experiences 5G-based internet of vehicles techology at a communications show in Shanghai in June. [Photo by Long Wei/For China Daily]

"The progress highlights the rising influence of Chinese companies in the global telecommunications arena," said Xiang Ligang, CEO of telecoms industry website Cctime.

"It is a recognition of both their technological prowess and their brand influence." Currently, 5G standards are still under development by 3GPP, or the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, which promotes global wireless communications standards.

But the body announced it will accelerate the process and lock down the first version of global 5G standards around June in 2018signaling that little change would be expected to current technical specifications and vendors can get to work on standardized 5G equipment, experts said.

To pounce on the opportunities, China is rushing to finish its own series of 5G trials. The country's telecoms authority said in November that the country has started the third phase of 5G technical tests, as it aims to get pre-commercial 5G products ready as soon as possible.

Wen Ku, director of the telecoms development department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said developments will be ramped up.

Wen said more efforts will be made to accelerate tests on network planning, systems, chips and other products in the industrial chain, which will help to lay down a sound foundation for the fast development of a 5G network in China.

The country has already established the world's largest 5G test field in Huairou district, Beijing, where about 30 telecom base stations were built and China Mobile, Huawei, ZTE Corp and a string of foreign tech companies have finished China's second phase of 5G research and development tests.

A 5G-connected robot performs at the China Mobile stand during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in February. [Photo provided to China Daily]

To accelerate the path to 5G, MIIT also detailed frequency bandsboth low, medium and high frequencies are involvedfor the development of the super-fast networks in China.

"A frequency band is as important to telecoms carriers as land is in the real estate industry," said Fu Liang, an independent telecom analyst.

"Specifying the designated frequency band for 5G tests will motivate enterprises to channel resources to that band, thus promoting faster development."

Companies are also building up massive financial resources to exploit the opportunities that will come.

US investment bank Jefferies said China's mobile carriers will invest at least $173 billion in 5G construction from 2019-25, an increase of 48 percent on the total spend on 4G from 2013-20.

"5G will no longer be a simple technology or system," said Huang Yuhong, deputy head of the China Mobile Research Institute.

"Instead, it is a platform in which the telecoms industry needs to be deeply linked with other sectors. That is a fundamental difference between 5G and 4G."
A local garment producer in Jiaxing uses internet technologies in its process management. [Photo by Bei Jing/For China Daily]

Fashion designer Lu Lyuzhu spent much of the first two decades of her career traveling around the world for business, attending exhibitions and fashion shows.

"Then I just wanted to settle down somewhere," said Lu, 42, whose hometown is in Baotou in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Lu became a woolen garment designer in 1995 after graduating from Tsinghua University.

The hope for a slower pace of life led her to Wuzhen in Tongxiang, Zhejiang province, a riverside town with a history of more than 1,000 years.

In Wuzhen, which is the permanent host of the annual World Internet Conference, the designer soon found huge opportunities. Tongxiang has long been the country's largest production center for woolen garments and other types of clothes.

Woolen clothes from Tongxiang currently account for about 70 percent of the domestic market share.

"In earlier years, the clothes produced here were considered of high quality mainly because of their wool content," said Lu.

Most of the local garment makers are family firms.

"People didn't pay much attention to design at first because they could still make their businesses profitable without such efforts. In recent years, they realized that design has become increasingly important in their operations," she said.

Some larger companies now attach greater importance to design and have built their own design teams, while most of the small producers cannot afford to employ their own designers, according to Lu.

She came up with an idea to create an online platform last year to help producers to cope with the changing market.

The idea didn't turn into reality until she met Fu Qian, who runs a new type of incubation center for startups, such as Lu's company, Fuhuizizai.

Fu named his incubation center Fengqi Teahouse, which incorporates both a teahouse and an online cloud platform.

"Taking advantage of internet technologies, the incubation center aims to link startups with capital, technology, human resources and other resources at home and abroad, and offers integrated support for entrepreneurship," Fu said.

Since it settled in Wuzhen in October 2015, Fengqi Teahouse has incubated more than 40 companies, with Lu's company being one of them.

Fengqi has been helping those whose business relies on smart technologies.

With Fu's financial support and technological guidance, Lu's company has been operating an online platform that was designed to serve multiple purposes.

"First, it is a platform for educating factory owners about fashion trends and helping to improve their awareness of good design, as many talented designers have been available for the online courses," Lu said.

"Second, it is also an exhibition platform that helps to promote good design to more people, especially in the garment production industry," she said, adding that it is also a platform for marketing.

Other companies incubated by Fengqi include the locally based Huateng Husbandry. The company uses cameras and smartphone apps to track the process of pork production.

"We are glad to see that nowadays there are more people starting their businesses with the help of smart technologies and online platforms, which breaks the limitations of physical locations and distances," Fu said.

The Fengqi Teahouse incubation center has received an investment of 870 million yuan ($131.6 million) from Ping An Real Estate, a subsidiary of Ping An Insurance Co.
Improved legislation and technology innovation in accordance with the changing face of cyber terrorism are key to ridding online social media of terrorists and their nefarious information, experts said at the 4th World Internet Conference on Monday.

Terrorist organizations spread harmful information on social media in new ways, as well as promote online recruitment and training, said Wang Yong, vice-president at the People's Public Security University of China.

"They hire high-level hackers to make their online attacks more difficult to be detected by the government and raise funds though digital currency," he added.

Mei Jianming, chief expert of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization International judicial exchange cooperation training base for anti-terrorism, agreed. Terrorists block investigations with new technology to keep them being active on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, he said.

"Terrorists can post a video link from cloud storage to a password-protected social media chat room without leaving physical evidence, which poses a bigger challenge to the cybersecurity of China," Mei added.

Statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center show that, as of June, China had 751 million internet users.

"As a country with the largest population of internet users and highly developed mobile and fixed network facilities, netizens should be constantly vigilant and on guard against terror-related information," said Zhang Jinping, vice-dean of counter-terrorism department at the Northwest University of Political Science and Law.

Terrorist recruitment and propaganda lie in internet users' receiving their information. The more people that receive their information, the bigger influences they make on others. So the anti-cyberterrorism campaign should focus on netizens' receiving counterterrorism information, Zhang added.

Ufuk Ayhan, vice-president of the Turkish National Police Academy, said, "Exchanges of experts and professionals from Turkey and China should be constantly arranged in order to strengthen the global cooperation to combat cyber terrorism."

Although the two countries have different situations regarding combating cyber-terrorism, the advanced technologies can be shared to maximize counterterrorism ability, he said.
The International Cooperation Along the Digital Silk Road Forum is held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province on Dec 4, 2017, the second day of the 4th World Internet Conference. [Photo by Xiang Wenjian/chinadaily.com.cn]

The ancient Silk Road was a trade route that for centuries connected East and West. In this technological era, it is being revived via synergized government development strategies, interconnected smart cities, and cross-border e-commerce.

The International Cooperation Along the Digital Silk Road Forum was held on Day 2 of the 4th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province, with Chinese government officials, overseas dignitaries and tech heavyweights discussing the challenges and solutions for the digital future.

Hosted by Lin Nianxiu, minister of the National Development and Reform Commission of China, the first discussion centered on how countries can work together to collaborate in terms of digital development and policy strategy.

"Digital is the new driving force of the Chinese economy and growth," Lin said. "It is a great opportunity for countries to work together with a new ecological development mentality."

Former French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, said the digital economy has created "growth, empowerment, and development", and that 2017 is the first time in history in which more than half of the people in the world have access to the internet, compared with less than 20 percent just 10 years ago.

Such worldwide access has allowed China to exploit its advantages in the digital economy on the global market

"There has been a technological shift from the West to the East with the rise of internet champions in China as an alternative to the US monopoly," de Villepin said. "Then we have the opportunity to expand the internet far beyond the borders with the aim of sharing growth and development through international partnerships."

The former French prime minister suggested a Paris-style climate agreement to build a framework by which countries can work together on internet governance, security and development issues.

"The growing commitment of China in the digital economy is a chance for both the region and the world - it is a chance for regional development as the Chinese authorities have proven their willingness to position China as a cyber power expanding internet services from Asia to Europe and Africa along the Digital Silk Road," de Villepin said.

Cooperation on the Digital Silk Road has benefited the economy in Malaysia, according to Wee KaSioog, deputy president of the Malaysian Chinese Association, who cited the country's establishment of the world's first Digital Free Trade Zone outside of China, in cooperation with Alibaba.

Developing inter-connected smart cities

To connect the nodes along the Digital Silk Road, smart cities play a key role  collecting all varieties of electronic data via sensors so that assets and resources can be managed more efficiently.

Peter Young, international partnerships manager at Future Cities Catapult, said that competition and openness was key to trying to build a successful smart city.

"We take the data from the city authorities, from the water systems, energy systems, transport systems, and make that open so that different companies can start to use that to produce new applications to solve city problems," Young said.

The problems faced by many cities wanting to become smart cities is making sure that all the infrastructure, networks and management are in place. For many older cities this is expensive and involves replacing entire systems and ways of management.

That will not be a problem for Neom in Saudi Arabia. The city, which is yet to be built, will install smart city infrastructure from the ground up and serve as an example for all others that follow.

Mohammed Al-Meshekah, deputy minister of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in Saudi Arabia, said that the $500-billion city on the Red Sea coast will be entirely focused around information communication technology.

Trading places in e-commerce

The third session of the Digital Silk Road Forum turned to the role that cross-border e-commerce plays in promoting international cooperation.

RJ Pittman, chief product officer for internet retailer eBay, remarked that the company's first ever online transaction was a cross-border trade back in 1995.

But just because a cross-border e-commerce platform is developed doesn't mean that there will be instant success. Liu Qiangdong, founder of JD.com, said that competition in Europe and the US is fierce and that selling products from that market to that market is nearly impossible.

"Instead we can bring Chinese brands overseas in big batches, such as Huawei and Xiaomi," Liu said. "Through this way, I believe in the future we will be able to compete in the US and in the European market."

Brand building is also key to attracting overseas customers. Xiaomi struggled on the international market for a long time before it became a success. Lei Jun, founder of the company, said that it had lost almost $1 billion before it decided to focus on a single overseas market to build overseas brand allegiance.

"We entered the Indian market and after three years we became number one," Lei said. "We can use the Digital Silk Road as a sample market to enter Europe and the US."

Lei said that Chinese brands have to build themselves up gradually so that they can become international brands, starting in the markets closer to home. India is an ideal market for Chinese companies, according to Lei, with more than 60 percent of all products sold in India coming from China.

"We want to transplant Chinese business models and ideas into other countries," Lei said.
The internet-based traditional Chinese medicine center in Wuzhen town, Tongxiang county of Zhejiang province has been in operation for over a week.

The first of its kind in China, the TMC center opened on Nov 25 in Wuzhen, the permanent host of the World Internet Conference, just in time to welcome the opening of the 4th session of the annual event.

Co-founded by We Doctor Group, Tongxiang county government and several TCM hospitals and universities across the country, the center is garnering attention brought by the World Internet Conference.

Robert Kahn, known as "father of the Internet", visited the TCM center on Dec 4, a day after delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the 4th World Internet Conference. He spent an hour learning about the long-distance diagnose system in the TCM center, with great interest.

The TCM center has also been attracting visitors from the Light of the Internet Exposition. "Visitors are very interested in the TCM center. This is one of the most common topics they would ask me when visiting our exhibits. Many of them go to the TCM center directly after leaving our exhibition area," said Chai Dongkai, staff from the marketing department of We Doctor Group, who has been communicating with visitors at We Doctor Group's exhibition area at the exposition.

"We want to show the world the charm of TCM, and Wuzhen is the perfect location. Tourists from around the world are flocking to the town all year round, not to mention the tech leaders and celebrities gathering in the town for the World Internet Conference every year," said Lai Min, PR manager of We Doctor Group.

Visitors can learn basic knowledge about TCM in the TCM center, through watching the display of TCM's history, introduction of Chinese medical materials and stories about famous Chinese physicians like Hua Tuo and Li Shizhen.

They can even have a test on machines developed by We Doctor, to find out their body habitus and get a free herbal drink based on their health conditions.

The establishment of the TCM center does not only give people around the world new access to learning TCM, but also brings great convenience to local villagers in Wuzhen.

"Many Chinese prefer to treat chronic diseases using TCM. Wuzhen residents used to take two hours' bus ride if they want to see experienced doctors in the Jiaxing Hospital of TCM and the journey is torturing for patients, especially if they have to do that on a regular basis," said Lai.

Now, experienced doctors from the Jaixing Hospital of TCM are invited to work in the TCM center in Wuzhen every day.

"I just started working here this week and haven't treated many local patients yet, but I think this is great. My colleagues in the Jiaxing Hospital of TCM can still contact me and ask me to help diagnose patients through the long-distance diagnose system in the Wuzhen TCM center, meanwhile I can treat patients in Wuzhen face to face," said Fang Shuilin, director of Chinese medicine at the Jiaxing Hospital of TCM.

The TCM industry in China is entering a golden era of development. According to the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the TCM industry in China grew by 20 percent in the past year. To regulate and support the development of the industry, the Law on Traditional Chinese Medicine went into effect on July 1.

Combined with the Internet technologies and great opportunities brought by the World Internet Conference, the TCM center in Wuzhen is striving to become a representative achievement of China's TCM development.
Liu Qiangdong, president of JD.com, addresses the Internet-driven Poverty-alleviation Forum at the 4th World Internet Conference underway in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province on Dec 3. [Photo by Xiang Wenjian/chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com are set to play a big role in the country's drive to alleviate and eliminate poverty in the coming years.

China is pressed for time to lift all people out of poverty by 2020, which is when the central government has pledged to finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

Poor rural logistics is a root problem that has led to poverty in areas in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, according to Liu Qiangdong, president of JD.com.

"A lot of high quality produce from rural areas have no price competitiveness when transported to cities like Beijing and Shanghai because of high logistics costs," Liu said while addressing the Internet-driven Poverty-alleviation Forum, at the 4th World Internet Conference underway in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province on Dec 3.

In a bid to solve the problem, JD.com has been actively building a logistics network to cover the whole country for the past 10 years.

By the year-end, logistics centers run by the company are expected to reach 500, to reach all 600,000 villages in China.

JD.com is also dedicated to exploring cutting-edge technology solutions such as automated warehouses and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to cut logistics costs and increase efficiency in rural areas.

Liu revealed that JD.com is building two large drone delivery systems in Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces.

In Sichuan, a total of 185 drone airports will be established, enabling the transportation of goods from mountainous villages in the province to any part of the country within 24 hours, according to Liu.

Alibaba, on the other hand, is also devoting great efforts to purge poverty.

Just a few days ago, the company set up a special fund to promote prosperity in China's rural areas. In the next five years, Alibaba will invest 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) to explore multiple ways to fight against poverty using internet technologies.

Ant Financial Services Group, an affiliate company of Alibaba, has provided unsecured loan services to more than 2 million rural startups, said Jing Xiandong, the company's chief executive officer.

In addition to business loans, Ant Financial also offers free online medical insurance for impoverished families to prevent them from being devastated by high medical costs if a family member becomes critically ill.

Illness and its related costs are a major cause of poverty among China's rural population. As of the end of 2016, about 40 percent of impoverished people in rural areas suffer from some form of illness, statistics from the National Health and Family Planning Commission show.

"The service allows these families to insure and claim for compensation online," Jing said, adding that more than 350,000 rural people have been insured to date.

He also mentioned Alibaba's other plans to tackle poverty, including subsidizing college students in poor areas and planting trees where desertification hinders local economic development.

JD.com and Alibaba are not only the ones working against poverty, other domestic e-commerce companies such as Vipshop and Yigo have rolled out specific plans to promote the national poverty alleviation campaign, with more expected to join in the future.

China lifted 12.4 million rural residents out of poverty last year. There are still 43.3 million people living below the poverty line with an average annual income less than 2,300 yuan ($340), according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
A minister dialogue on internet inclusiveness and sharing was held on Monday during the three-day 4th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province. The dialogue looked to promote policy coordination and international cooperation on the internet between China and the world, so as to narrow the gap between developed and developing countries and regions, and benefit everybody.

"The internet should be used to create fair opportunities for people to join in and benefit from, to promote the world economy and get it back to the track of prosperity, and to realize a win-win situation for all nations," said Li Wei, president of the Development Research Center of the State Council.

The internet is one of the most important outcomes that humans' technological revolution that has provided a significant and powerful tool for people to generate the wealth of both matter and spirit. Through extensive connection between people and things, the internet is able to create a great amount of new demand, new products, new industries and new business models. In addition, it can remarkably improve the production process and operation mode of traditional industries and help them restore vitality, according to Li.

Internet users in Europe and North America accounted for 85 percent of the global total, which means the rest of the world is still in need of internet development, said Dominique de Villepin, former prime minister of France, urging that all sides should drive cooperation in the internet field and make sure the internet economy develops in a more peaceful way.

"As the digital economy has brought fundamental revolutions to nearly all industries and fields, it is regarded as the important driving force in changing the manufacturing landscape. We've seen some companies are taking the lead, but most enterprises are in the process of transformation," said Xu Lejiang, vice-minister of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and executive vice-chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce.
BEIJING  Michel Haese's first visit to Shenzhen was purely a coincidence.

What was more unexpected for the 55-year old German was that this Chinese city would help make his childhood dream come true.

Dreamland for start-ups

When he was a kid, Haese loved to build things with whatever he could find - cans, lids, ribbons, motors, lamps, batteries. Growing up, he tried being a radioman, a photographer, but he never abandoned his dream of becoming an inventor.

Haese first heard about Shenzhen as a special economic zone in China more than 20 years ago at the world's largest computer expo in Hannover, Germany.

In 2011, Haese planned to visit a traditional electronic fair in Hong Kong, but a friend of his dragged him to another one. There he met some Chinese entrepreneurs who later invited him to travel to the southeastern Chinese metropolis to see their factories.

"Shenzhen is a paradise for development," he said. "If you have any requirements or needs for new electronics, I go downstairs and I can find them." He was referring to Huaqiangbei, one of the world's largest and most bustling electronics markets packed with small shops selling all kinds of electronic gadgets.

Haese is now the chief executive officer of his own start-up in Shenzhen. His primary invention, the "Lapscreen," is more of a notion than a product. With a Lapscreen, one can project all the functions of a smartphone onto an A4-paper-sized portable full-HD monitor, like typing a story or watching a movie. With it, Haese hopes to share his "portable office" idea with willing partners from the whole world.

Haese is certainly not the only dream chaser who regards this mega city as his ultimate destination.

Cyril Ebersweiler is the co-founder of HAX Accelerator, a seed accelerator focused on hardware start-ups based in Shenzhen and San Francisco. Together with 10 hardware firms, the 38-year-old Frenchman founded HAX in a garage in Shenzhen in 2011.

"One thing we discovered while leveraging the supply chain for these start-ups was that Shenzhen was a good place to prototype - and not just consumer electronics hardware, but also extremely complex hardware for the health, robotics, and fabrication spaces," he told Xinhua.

For six years, HAX has sought to speed up business ideas from 3D printers to drones, as well as other consumer product devices for more than 145 start-up companies. It offers guidance and expertise from start to finish.

Every year, Ebersweiler brings teams whose members come from all over the world, more than half of them from the United States or Europe, to Shenzhen. "What we had to develop at the time was an effective way for them to be operating in China," he said.

In Ebersweiler's opinion, it is Shenzhen's unique advantage to have a lot of small factories supporting the big ones. He calls it "the long tail of manufacturing in China." He has also been spearheading a "lean hardware" movement to refashion the way products are made by integrating the prototyping phase and manufacturing phase as much as possible.

He believes the city's prevalent culture of open sources is precisely what start-ups need to do small manufacturing runs effectively with a lot of flexibility and comparatively low cost so as to reduce time to the market.

"It's very difficult, or it's actually impossible to do that in Silicon Valley. You have to go online, order something, waiting for four or five days, get it shipped, play with it, doesn't work, do it again," he said.

Nursery for global brands

Shenzhen has not only helped new businesses to break out of the shell, but also nurtured many of China's world-class technological enterprises, especially in the global smartphone industry.

Huawei, China's Shenzhen-based telecommunications giant, was founded in 1987. It has now become a leading global smartphone manufacturer.

According to analysis by consulting firm Counterpoint Research, it has overtaken Apple in terms of global smartphone sales in June and July, the first time in history.

Thanks to designs with large displays and advanced camera functions, Chinese cellphone makers have now become increasingly popular among overseas customers.

Matilda von Sydow leads a local philanthropic group in Oslo, Norway. She now uses Huawei's P10 Lite phone.

"I'm very pleased with my purchase ... As an android user I see no reason to choose another brand, the phone has all the qualities I'm after plus more," she said, noting that many of her friends and family members also use Huawei phones.

Elliot Mulley-Goodbarne, a news editor with Mobile News, a leading mobile industry trade newspaper in Britain, told Xinhua that he believes Huawei's success is a testament to high quality and more reasonable prices.

Compared to Huawei's venture in the developed world, Transsion Holdings, also headquartered in Shenzhen, has its eyes locked on the continent of Africa.

The market share of mobile brands under Transsion reached 38 percent in Africa last year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC), a key provider of market intelligence and advisory services for information technology and telecommunications. It means that for every three mobile phones sold in the continent, one is made by Transsion.

Transsion's investments in many of the African countries have not only made it a household brand on the continent, but also brought real benefits to Africans.

In 2011, the company set up a smartphone plant in Ethiopia. It now hires 1,600 local employees.

Alemseged Teka came to work for the Chinese phone maker when the factory opened. In six years, he was promoted from a worker at the assembly line to the chief of the production planning department. Now he earns a pretty handsome income.

"The Chinese company has changed my life," he said, adding that in Ethiopia, many want to find a job there because the cellphone industries offer good pay.

While producing handsets for global customers, Chinese companies from Shenzhen have also ventured into infrastructure for mobile services to get local people connected to the wider world.

Huawei, since 2013, has worked with the Zambian Information and Communications Technology Authority and local carriers to deliver network coverage to remote areas. In 2014, it helped connect more than 500 villages for the first time by installing 169 base stations in remote areas of the country's 10 provinces.

Heart of innovation

Building up their business from almost ground zero, some of Shenzhen's tech firms used to battle for their share of the market with low-priced copycat products. Cheap, low-end, fake were among the words most commonly used to describe their products.

With years of robust market competition and development, that image has changed. Innovation has been a key factor to help force the change.

At this year's IFA Tech Show in Berlin, Huawei unveiled its own Kirin 970 chipset, which is designed by its subsidiary HiSilicon Technologies. The chip has been built into Huawei's new flagship Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro phones launched last month.

Innovation also blossoms in the development of mobile software and applications.

First released in 2011, Wechat is a social media mobile application software developed by Shenzhen-based Tencent. The company said earlier this month that the app now has 902 million active daily users, among whom hundreds of millions are outside China. For many of them, Wechat has simply become a way of life.

Meanwhile, as more and more foreign countries have approved the use of Chinese mobile payment services, many Chinese tourists have begun to use Wechat Pay instead of cash when they travel abroad. According to Zheng Hongmin, who is in charge of Wechat Pay's operation in the Asia-Pacific, Wechat Pay is now available in 19 countries and regions for payments in 12 currencies.

These technological booms and creative successes have not come lightly.

Seeking to excel in innovation, tech firms like Huawei are investing like crazy.

Huawei now has the biggest research and development (R&D) budget of any Chinese company. Last year alone, it has invested $11 billion in R&D, and its Kirin 970 chipset is a result of many years of such investment.

Meanwhile, these companies pay great attention to international cooperation when it comes to innovation. Huawei has set up research labs in Russia and France to improve cellphone designs. Tencent has opened an artificial intelligence laboratory in the US city of Seattle.

The local government in Shenzhen has also put forward many preferential policies to make sure that the city can attract more talent, including more generous subsidies and allowances and better scientific research conditions.

In September, Barry Marshall, a Nobel Laureate for Physiology or Medicine, launched a biomedical engineering lab with Shenzhen University. It is the fifth such lab in Shenzhen that has the input of Nobel prize winners.

Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the start of China's reform and opening-up policy. Four decades ago, few could imagine that such a tiny fishing enclave could become a hub for tens of thousands of start-ups and host some of China's most successful tech companies. It is a miracle of collective and continuous endeavor.

Haese, the German inventor, said Shenzhen has given him more inspiration and hope than any other place in the world.

With its spirit of openness and innovation, the city, driven by the hopes of hundreds of thousands of people like Haese, will continue to create miracles.
BEIJING -- Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said the CPC is willing to work with other political parties around the world to promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind and create a better world.

Xi made the remarks while delivering a keynote speech on Friday at the opening ceremony of CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting in Beijing.

BUILDING COMMUNITY WITH SHARED FUTURE FOR MANKIND

Xi said the initiative of building a community with a shared future for mankind is being transformed from a concept into action.

"I'm delighted to see that the friendly cooperation between China and other countries is increasingly expanding and the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind is gaining support and endorsement from an increasing number of people," Xi said.

The concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind was put forth by Xi in 2013.

The Belt and Road Initiative is the practice of the concept, Xi said, adding the initiative has become a huge cooperation platform for countries concerned to realize their common development.

Proposed by Xi in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa via land and maritime routes.

In his speech, Xi said building a community with a shared future for mankind is in essence to connect the prospects and destinies of every nation and country closely together, share weal and woe, and turn planet Earth into a harmonious family.

He said efforts shall be made to build a safe world free of fear, adding a country cannot gain its security at the cost of others'. Threats facing other countries may be challenges to ourselves.

"Facing increasingly complicated and integrated threats, we shall not fight alone, nor shall we worship military force," he said, adding all countries should pursue a new concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.

All countries should create fair, just and shared security to jointly eliminate the root cause of war and rescue people from pains brought about by war, he said.

In the meantime, countries should also strive to eliminate poverty and promote common prosperity, Xi said, citing challenges such as the North-South development gap, poverty, hunger and digital gap.

The old-school winner-takes-all mentality and beggar-thy-neighbor approach would not only block the doors of others, but also barricade one's own path. "They would erode a country's own roots for growth, and impair the future of whole humanity," he said.

The world should push for an economic globalization that is more open and inclusive, more balanced, more equitable and beneficial to all, to bring prosperity to all countries and create comfortable lives for children worldwide, he noted.

Xi went on to emphasize the significance of an open and inclusive world, urging the world to break cultural barriers and let all kinds of civilizations exist and grow in harmony.

Stressing the building of a clean and beautiful world with picturesque scenery, Xi called for efforts to ensure coexistence between man and nature, cherish the environment as we cherish our own lives, respect and protect nature, and safeguard the irreplaceable planet Earth.

NEW MODEL OF PARTY-TO-PARTY RELATIONS

Xi proposed to develop a new model of party-to-party relations, in which political parties seek common grounds while shelving differences, respect and learn from one another.

Political parties of different countries should work together for an international network of cooperation and exchange in various forms and at multiple levels, he said.

With an open vision and broad mind, the CPC is willing to carry out dialogues, exchanges and cooperation with peoples and political parties of other countries, he noted.

In the next five years, the CPC would like to invite 15,000 members of foreign political parties to China for exchanges, Xi said.

Xi also suggested that the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting be institutionalized and developed into a high-level political dialogue platform of broad representation and international influence.

The CPC has kept regular contacts with more than 400 political parties and organizations in about 160 countries and regions.

CHINA WILL NOT "EXPORT" CHINESE MODEL

Xi said the CPC would neither import foreign models of development nor export the Chinese model.

"We will not ask other countries to copy the Chinese practice," he added.

He reiterated that the CPC strives for both the well-being of the Chinese people and human progress.

Therefore, besides taking care of China's internal matters, the CPC will create opportunities for the world through China's development, said Xi.

The CPC, as the biggest political party in the world, will also explore the law of social development for humanity and share it with other countries, according to Xi.

He said that the CPC will, as always, contribute to world peace.

Noting that one of the founding missions of the CPC, established in 1921, was to end the plight of the country which had suffered long period of war and to ensure the people's survival, Xi stressed that the CPC "knows deeply the value of peace and holds firm resolve in maintaining peace."

To date, China has dispatched over 36,000 peacekeeping personnel and the country is acting as a major peacekeeping force and contributor of funds for UN peacekeeping missions.

There are currently more than 2,500 Chinese peacekeepers on UN missions in eight locations, safeguarding local peace and tranquility, despite difficulties and dangers.

He pledged that no matter what stage of development it reaches, China will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion.

Also, the CPC will continue working for common development around the world and contributing to exchanges and mutual learning among the civilizations of the world, Xi said.

EXCHANGES IN VARIOUS FORMS

After the opening ceremony, the first plenary session of the meeting was held, in which foreign delegates spoke highly of Xi's speech and expressed their willingness to work with the CPC to build a better world.

Wang Huning, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and member of the CPC Central Committee Secretariat, attended the opening ceremony and the first plenary session.

Earlier the same day, representatives of attendees paid a visit to the Party School of the CPC Central Committee and visited an exhibition on China's achievements over the past five years.

Guests from Africa and Central Asia also had seminars with the CPC on the role of parties in building a community of shared future and promoting the Belt and Road Initiative, respectively.

Both events were held under the framework of the high-level dialogue, which has attracted over 600 representatives of nearly 300 political parties and organizations from more than 120 countries.
CASIC rolls out latest upgrade for intranet to prevent cyberattacks

China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, a major defense contractor, has deployed the latest wave of technology in the country's largest secure intranet, which is entirely based on domestically developed hardware and software.

As one of the country's biggest arms-makers, CASIC pays great attention to information safety. Since the secure intranet project began in 2014, it has grown to connect about 20,000 computers and is the country's largest domestically sourced system, according to Shen Shiguang, deputy head of the Beijing Institute of Computer Technology and Application.

The institute is part of the CASIC Second Academy and is in charge of building and maintaining the intranet. The project was first aimed at replacing imported computers and software - which had been employed for a long time to handle classified defense information - with domestically developed technology. In September 2015, CASIC expanded the project to include all the company's computers dealing with commercial secrets.

The newly upgraded intranet features a high level of security. It is physically isolated from the internet and other publicly accessible networks, and because it is based on Chinese-designed hardware and software, it essentially eliminates the possibility of technical backdoors that are subject to hacking, Shen said.

He said a number of information security hazards have existed inside the networks and computers used by key Chinese organizations - especially those related to infrastructure and national security - since most of their processors, operating systems and storage devices were developed by foreign enterprises.

"Almost all nations of the world, especially big powers, are sparing no effort to make sure that their classified information is well protected," Shen said. "For China, if we couldn't have our own systems, our information networks would face intimidation or threats from foreign countries, and we wouldn't be able to upgrade or repair them."

Through steady improvements, most software on the CASIC internal system has become easy to use and runs as fast and as smoothly as those based on Intel chips and Microsoft software, he said.

"We will continue to build the network," Shen said. "We plan to take three years to make it connect with at least 50,000 computers within the company."

He added that the institute is leading a national program sponsored by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to promote secure intranet to government departments and enterprises tied to national security.

China's top leadership has repeatedly stressed the significance of information security. In February 2014, the Communist Party of China Central Committee set up the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs, headed by President Xi Jinping.

Developing and adopting indigenous information systems does not go against the country's commitment to an open market, as no nation should be willing to entrust its secrets to foreign platforms, said Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and expert on information technology.

zhaolei@chinadaily.com.cn
Around 1,000 government officials and senior business executives will attend the 2017 Fortune Global Forum, which will open on Wednesday in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Chairman and CEO of Tencent Holdings Ma Huateng, Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma and Foxconn Technology Group Chairman Terry Gou will be among the participants, according to Alan Murray, chief content officer of Time Inc and editor-in-chief of Fortune magazine.

"Guangzhou is the ideal city to hold the 2017 Fortune Global Forum as it is the political, economic and transportation center in Guangdong province and the southern Chinese region," Murray told reporters at a news conference on Sunday.

The forum will last three days. This year's title is "Openness and Innovation: Shaping the Global Economy".

Of the companies to attend, 152 are among the world's top 500, with more than 50 having established their headquarters in Guangzhou. Their combined annual earnings exceed $9 trillion, and together they employ 23.5 million workers, Murray said.

Murray, who arrived in Guangzhou on Sunday morning, said the city looks more beautiful each time he visits. It is his third trip to the southern metropolis.

Zhang Hongbin, deputy director of the International Affairs Bureau at the State Council Information Office, said the Chinese government attaches great importance to the forum, which is expected to promote cooperation between China and foreign nations.

In 2016, Guangzhou's GDP was 1.96 trillion yuan ($296 billion), ranking it third among Chinese cities. Its exports reached 518.59 billion yuan, up 3 percent year-on-year, while total imports grew 3.3 percent to 337.84 billion yuan.

Last year, Guangzhou was the world's sixth-busiest seaport by cargo tonnage, while Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport ranked 15th in passenger volume.
Delegates at a high-level meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday read during a break the second volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, a book that proved popular at the meeting. FENG YONGBIN/CHINA DAILY

President Xi Jinping's new book on governance gained popularity among delegates from more than 120 countries to a high-level political party dialogue that concluded in Beijing on Sunday.

The second volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China was displayed with editions in a variety of languages available for representatives to the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting. The book was published and went on sale last month.

Mahfuz Ullah, a researcher, writer and environmentalist from Bangladesh, said that after reading the first volume of the book, which he got from the Chinese embassy in Dhaka and found wonderful, he was eager to read the second.

"The way he (Xi) is trying to explain the world's situation, especially given Xi's responsibility to the leadership, the community and the whole political process, that is very important," he said on the sidelines of the meeting.

The 19th National Congress of the CPC was very important because it set a new agenda and direction that is important for the whole world, he said.

"China is trying to make the globalization process more life-oriented, human-oriented and development-oriented," he said.

Marko Duric, vice-president of the Serbian Progressive Party and director of the Kosovo Affairs Office of Serbia, said reading Xi's book is a good way to learn from the CPC's experience and will help other political parties increase their own economic and social achievements.

"I took a look at this book, and I hope I will be able to find a lot of inspiring ideas and examples that we can learn from," he said.

The win-win cooperation China proposes got positive feedback during the meeting, he said.

Salvador Heresi Chicoma, general secretary of Peruvians for Change, said the CPC's newly elected leadership has significance not only for Chinese people, but also the world because the CPC is offering solutions on many global issues.

"It is very important for people in South America to have a book about the experience of the political administration here in China because it is a model whose characteristics are innovation and openness," he said.

Peru underscores the importance of developing relations and a very strong friendship with China, he said.

The book, covering 17 topics, collects 99 of Xi's speeches, conversations, instructions and letters between 2014 and 2017. The first volume was published in September 2014 and received widespread attention and praise from readers at home and abroad.

The new volume depicts the practices of the CPC Central Committee with Xi at the core in uniting and leading the Chinese people to uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics in a new era.
Vice-minister says nation 'will take proactive measures' in light of bill

China pledged to keep a close eye on the unfolding impact of the United States' tax overhaul, which was passed by the Senate on Saturday, and it called for more tax policy coordination under the global governance framework.

The US Senate passed a major bill on a party-line vote whose main feature is a drastic tax cut for corporations - a reduction of tax rates down to 20 percent from 35 percent, the lowest level in decades. Taxes for individuals would also be eased modestly in the short run, but would quickly rise for middle-and low-income earners.

The bill still needs to be reconciled with the version passed by the House of Representatives - a final hurdle since some provisions may raise new objections from lawmakers.

Zhu Guangyao, vice-minister of finance, said at a forum on Sunday that China will "take proactive measures" in response to the US tax move, as the world's largest economy's tax policy adjustment is expected to have a major impact on other countries, including China.

The international community needs to pay close attention to the implications of the US tax changes for competition, labor productivity and wages, said Zhu, who stressed that members of the Group of 20 had agreed to set international tax policy coordination as one of the important issues to discuss at the 2018 summit, which will be held in Argentina.

But the bill, if passed, will not create large cash flows out of China and into the US, said Liu Shangxi, head of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences. Many more factors other than the tax rate shape the overall US business environment.

"There is no need for China to make immediate tax cuts and blindly follow what the US does, but it should adjust macroeconomic policies based on an assessment of the real domestic situation," Liu said. "One of our current priorities is to deepen value-added tax reform that targets a more market-oriented scheme for resource allocation and build a fair investment environment for enterprises."

Willem Buiter, an economist with Citi Research, a division of Citigroup Global Markets Inc, calculated in a recent note of Global Economics View that a cut in the tax rate on corporate profits in the US "has no impact on the incentive to invest", which implies "a zero impact" on the capital intensity of production and real wages.

The tax cut will send the US budget deficit skyrocketing by up to $1.5 trillion, which is expected to add a further burden to the already high debt level of the US government.

"Government revenues and social welfare expenditures may be under great pressure in the coming months if the bill is passed," Liu said.
The Communist Party of China's experience in ruling the Party and country are worth learning from, said delegates from African political parties at the Third China-Africa Political Parties Theoretical Seminar.

The seminar, which began on Wednesday in conjunction with the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting, was attended by 60 representatives of political parties from some 20 African countries.

Abdulrahman Omari Kinana, secretary-general of Chama Cha Mapinduzi, currently Tanzania's ruling party, spoke highly of the economic and social achievements China has made in the past years and expressed willingness to cooperate with China and other countries to build a community with a shared future.

Kinana said African countries have adopted similar guiding principles and agendas to work for, rely on and share development achievements with people, as the CPC has done with reducing poverty. African political parties have also proposed and formulated plans on development and poverty reduction.

"It's a huge challenge to improve the quality of life of our people, and we have been working really hard on it in the past decade," he said. "It is our duty to learn from China and the CPC's experience as well as successful examples."

Kinana said poverty reduction and economic development are the priority as Africa is the least developed continent, with over 60 percent of the population living in poverty. "Under the current situation, we must cooperate with China because we are about to go the way China has passed."

As secretary-general, Kinana said his party needs to follow the CPC's example on how to maintain stability as one generation passes the torch to the next and how to maintain political stability and keep solving problems that affect people.

"The key to Africa's prosperity is to realize an orderly succession of our state leaders. We ought to prepare the young generation so that they can take over the country from elder generations," he said.

Kinana also said Cham Cha Mapinduzi should learn from the CPC on fighting corruption, eliminating conceit and self-satisfaction, and improving working efficiency.

Bokary Treta, president of the Rassemblement de Mali party, created by a former Malian prime minister in 2001, agreed to further promote the training program for party members.

"The seminar said that we need to ensure discipline within the party, enhance the governing capability, and boost communications among party members. We can borrow China's democratic centralism to improve our leadership," he said.

The exchange with the CPC gave inspiration to have a policy to make the communication seminar an institutional and regular forum, which will enable multilateral communication on governing methods and leadership. "This is an very important platform that can further strengthen bilateral, even multilateral cooperation."

Treta suggested promoting the concept of building a community with a shared future through politics to raise people's awareness and ultimately reach the goal of gaining national benefit.

Ana Rita Sithole, member of the Polibureau of Mozambique Liberation Front, the ruling party of the country, said the strong desire for cooperation between China and Africa could break through the barrier brought by their great geographical distance.

She said people need to stick to the principle of jointly discussing and building whether they are facing opportunities or challenges.

China has made social and economic improvements under the leadership of the CPC, which also has consequences for the development and progress of Africans, since it shows that China is not walking toward development alone but together with other nations as well, Sithole said.

"Cooperation is the right way to build the community with a shared future," she said. "We will keep our faith and enhance the relationship with China for a better future."
NANNING -- At least once a month they gather on decks or in the red-roofed house at the center of the water, sitting on stools to hear or study the latest theories and policies of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

For the 6,000 residents of Tianshengqiao township, Longlin county in south China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, the "lecture on water" is the most popular and effective channel to understand Party policies. Speakers are mainly village and township Party chiefs. Local technological advisors are also invited to teach aquaculture.

Liu Jian, Party chief of Tianshengqiao, has been a frequent speaker since he took office in this small remote mountain town in October 2016. He says most of the population belongs to ethnic minorities, including Zhuang, Miao and Gelao.

The villagers used to grow rice. After the construction of a hydropower plant in the 1990s, they farmed fish and began living off the reservoir, which borders Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.

"Most villagers spend all day on water, busy working. They have little time or opportunity to learn about the world outside," says Liu.

Seen from the mountains, the floating fish pens, large and small, checker the green lake like a chessboard.

The red-roofed "lecture room", at the center of the reservoir, is particularly eye-catching. Local people call it the "New Era Institute of Peasants", which is believed to be a nod to the Peasant Movement Training Institute of 90 years ago.

In the 1920s, revolutionary pioneers of the CPC, including Deng Xiaoping, set up peasant movement institutes in remote mountain areas in Guangxi. They publicized revolutionary theory, conducted military training, and organized armed struggles, which laid the foundation for the uprisings and revolutionary bases.

In past decades, local Party officials gathered villagers at the meeting room of a government building in the town center to hear reports. Because of the long distances and worries about their work, few people were willing to go. "The attendance was low and people were not happy," says Liu.

In 2014, the Tianshengqiao Township Committee of the CPC decided to move the meetings "onto the water".

"We used to sit on the podium, waiting for an audience. But now we stand on a boat and get close to villagers, telling them events and policies from Beijing," says Liu.

Villagers travel by boat to the meetings. Lectures usually last 40 to 50 minutes and attract more than 20 boats each time. Audiences can reach a hundred.

Some people wear Party emblems and some come in colorful ethnic costumes. The elderly bring their grandchildren, and women weave while listening. Some people take notes.

Speakers use local dialects and the Zhuang language. Though outsiders do not understand, the locals appreciate it.

Speeches with difficult concepts are "translated" into examples and stories based on simple daily life.

Liu in recent lectures explained the essence conveyed at the 19th National Congress of the CPC, stressing the content about "pursuing a rural vitalization strategy" and "safeguarding the property rights and interests of rural people".

A meeting last month focused on medical insurance. Some villagers thought it was unnecessary, but after half an hour of discussion, they realized the benefits.

Liu convinced them that insurance would save money on treatment: "Without insurance, you will pay more if you go to hospital. Moreover, the local government has offered reimbursement of fish farmers' medical bills. It would not cost much."

On the water, speakers' voices are louder and gestures more frequent. But they no longer fear losing their audience. Laughter often echoes on boats.

It is also a popular class on fish farming. In the early years of the reservoir, people did not understand how to farm fish. Pursuing high production led to fish diseases, severe pollution and huge losses.

Shi Zhongyu, a local aquaculture expert, lectures three or four times a year on the water. "In the past, the fish farmers could hardly make a living, because they lacked knowledge and training," he says.

Every winter, he tells the fish farmers to lower fishing net density and not to feed too much, so as to maintain nutrition levels. He can explain, while demonstrating, how to feed on the water - an impossible task previously.

In 2012, only 15 households were fish farmers, but now the number is 200 - almost half the town's population.

Wei Bin attends every "lecture on water" with his wife. They understand the economic benefits of the classes.

Through lack of knowledge, he lost tens of thousands of yuan in 2012. But his annual income has risen from 1,000 yuan to more than 10,000 yuan over the past four years.

Aquaculture has become a pillar industry in the county. In 2016, two of five poverty-stricken villages were lifted out of poverty.

Longlin County has 31 villages setting up "lecture rooms". Some are known for speakers using folk songs to explain national policies so the less-well-educated can understand.

"We plan to expand the speaking team by inviting ethnic villagers or experienced fish farmers. They will make the lectures on water more attractive," says Liu.
BEIJING -- China's top legislator has called for better promotion of the principle underlying rule of law that the Constitution and the law are above everything else and that everyone is equal before the law.

Such a principle should become a voluntary act of all people, Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, said at a symposium marking the fourth National Constitution Day on Monday.

At the symposium, Zhang said the major policies of the Communist Party of China Central Committee regarding the implementation of the Constitution and the oversight to ensure compliance with the Constitution should be carried out in a comprehensive manner.

The principles of the Constitution should be firmly observed, the spirit of the Constitution should be promoted, and the obligations mandated in the Constitution should be performed, he said.

He also demanded efforts to integrate the process of sound lawmaking, strict law enforcement, and impartial administration of justice with the cause of developing a socialist culture of rule of law.
YINCHUAN -- Ningxia Hui autonomous region in Northwest China might have been under the imperial rule of Chinese emperors much earlier than archeologists previously thought, according to the recent excavation of a group of 3,000-year-old tombs.

Experts from China's top archeological research institutions, including the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Peking University and Nanjing University, have gathered in Ningxia's Pengyang County to join the excavation of the Yaoheyuan Ruins, where an area of 620,000 square meters has been excavated.

Ma Qiang, who leads the archeological team, told Xinhua on Monday that all of the tombs had been looted prior to the start of the official excavation earlier this year.

However, the team has found the main tomb of a Marquis-level ruler 13 meters underground. Although no bronze burial vessels with inscriptions identifying the owner of the tomb have been located, they have found two jade mantis.

A similar jade mantis was unearthed from China's World Heritage listed Yinxu archeological site near Anyang in central China's Henan Province, which was an ancient capital city in the late Shang Dynasty (1300 B.C. to 1046 B.C.)

"The jade item provides strong evidence of the tomb owner's relationship with the imperial governments during the period from the late Shang to the middle of Western Zhou (1046 B.C. - 771 B.C.) dynasties," said Zhang Tian'en from the Shaanxi Provincial Archeological Research Institute.

Liu Xu, a professor at Peking University, said the discovery of the ruins suggests that Ningxia was part of the imperial empire from the late Shang Dynasty, about 1,000 years earlier than previously believed.

The team has only excavated one quarter of the area, and Liu said it should contain another 40 neighboring tombs.

Experts believe the area was a Marquis fief in the northern frontier of the dynasties.

Two horse burial pits and a chariot burial pit were excavated near the Marquis tomb. The large horse pit bears remains of 12 horses. There were four carriages found in the chariot pit. Archeologists expect to find more remains of horses under the chariot pit.

As well as the tombs, the team has also discovered ruins of a bronze casting workshop, moats and water drainage and road networks at the site.
Lin Songshu shares her experience and reflections with community residents in Yanji in Northeast China's Jilin province after attending the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China as a delegate. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Since Lin Songshu came back to Yanji in Northeast China's Jilin province after attending the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China as a delegate, she's been busy sharing her experiences and reflections with everyone in her community.

Lin, the Party secretary of the Yuanhui Community, has been working here for 17 years.

In the activity centers, as well as in residents' homes, she's given with great patience detailed explanations to all their questions.

As a Korean Lin cadre, Lin chose the Korean language to communicate with ethnic Korean residents, especially those who are old, to help them better understand the report President Xi Jinping delivered at the congress.

She also chose some residents who are skilled in singing and dancing to integrate the spirit of the congress and cultural programs, which was a success.




China's top court has ordered judges to do more research in environmental cases related to the Yangtze River, to better protect the area and ensure justice is done.

In a guideline issued on Monday, the Supreme People's Court said civil and criminal court judges should pay greater attention when handling trials involving pollution or the killing of endangered wildlife.

Cases related to sustainable development, such as ecological compensation and green finance, should also receive more consideration, "as they are new kinds of environmental disputes", said Jiang Bixin, vice-president of SPC.

He said all judges should see environmental protection as a priority and work with governments to protect the river's diverse ecology.

The Yangtze River Economic Zone covers 11 regions, including Anhui province, Shanghai and Chongqing.

In March 2016, the central government released a development outline for the zone that highlighted the importance of environmental protection and stated that economic activity cannot harm the ecology.
Fu Zhanxiang is a national-level inheritor of intangible cultural heritage and creates pictures and handicrafts with birch bark. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

As a national-level inheritor of intangible cultural heritage, Fu Zhanxiang, 62, knows the skilled techniques to make pictures and various handicrafts using birch bark.

Fu, of the Hezhe ethnic group in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, presents scenes of the group's daily life, such as fishing and hunting, in his works.

Fu began to concentrate his attention on the techniques when he moved to a Hezhe gathering town in Raohe County 35 years ago.

Birch is grown in Northeast China. Strong and water-resistant, it is easily cut, bent or sewn, and has been a valuable building material since prehistoric times.
New York's Bard College Conservatory of Music will teach an undergraduate program in Chinese musical instrument performance starting next fall.

Bard will work with Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music to create the program, said to be the first of its kind at a Western college.

Students will be able to apply in January for a first year that will focus on the erhu, pipa and guzheng, all stringed instruments.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The United Arab Emirates on Sunday denied a claim by Yemen's Houthi rebels that a missile had been fired toward the country's underconstruction nuclear plant.

The rebels claimed they had launched a missile toward the plant in Abu Dhabi in the first such strike toward the country.

"The National Emergency and Crisis and Disasters Management Authority denies the claim that the Houthis fired a missile toward the country," the UAE's state-run WAM news agency said.

"The UAE possesses an air defense system capable of dealing with any threat of any type or kind."

The statement added that the nuclear power plant was well-protected.

The National, a newspaper in Abu Dhabi, also reported that Barakah's operations were "unaffected on Sunday, while sources on the ground confirmed there were no signs of an attack to the structure."

The Houthis last month targeted the Saudi capital, Riyadh, with a ballistic missile that was intercepted by Saudi air defenses. It was the deepest strike inside the kingdom since the war between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis and their allies began in March 2015.

Sunday's claim came amid heavy fighting in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, where the Houthis are facing off with fighters loyal to the country's former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, in the fifth straight day of street fighting as the alliance between the two unravels.

More than 80 people have been killed in the clashes, with about 120 injured.

The Houthis have accused Saleh of striking deals with the Saudi-led coalition, which has been waging an air campaign against the Houthi-Saleh alliance for nearly three years.

The UAE is an active member of the coalition and its forces have mostly focused on securing the southern region of Yemen. The country has lost 100 soldiers in the conflict.

Senior Houthi official Deif-Allah al-Shami said that the missile fired toward Abu Dhabi was a "message to the United Arab Emiratis for its political and financial support to Saleh".

He said that the UAE has hosted members of Saleh's family, including his son who was an ambassador to the UAE and believed to be residing there during the conflict.

The nearly three years of war in Yemen have killed over 10,000 people, mostly civilians, and pushed the Arab country into a humanitarian catastrophe and near mass famine.

Xinhua - AP

(China Daily 12/04/2017 page11)
Fashion designer Lu Lyuzhu spent much of the first two decades of her career traveling around the world for business, attending exhibitions and fashion shows.

"Then I just wanted to settle down somewhere," said Lu, 42, whose hometown is in Baotou in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

Lu became a woolen garment designer in 1995 after graduating from Tsinghua University.
MANAUS, Brazil - The warning from our guide made clear that this "forest walk" would be anything but a leisurely stroll.

"Look before grabbing any branches because the ants bite. You will be in pain for 24 hours," says Jackson Edirley da Silva. "And watch where you step. You don't want to get bitten by a snake."

Our group, about a dozen tourists, got quiet.
The first international sand painting competition featuring idyllic life is held in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu province, Dec 3, 2017. [Photo/IC]

Sand painting is also called "art on the fingertips". Artists use sand to create marvelous pictures accompanied by light and music.

The first international sand painting competition featuring idyllic life was held in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu province, on Dec 3. The competition solicited contributions from September and more than one hundred artists registered to take part in the event. Fifty sand painting artists entered the final competition and brought a feast of art.
Red-braised beef, a h ighly recommended offering by Dan Cha Fan restaurant. [Photo by Gao Erqiang/China Daily]

An eatery in 'China's Venice' is enthralling visitors from different parts of the world. Xu Junqian reports in Wuzhen, Zhejiang.

Wu Xinhua cooks at a restaurant with no more than 50 seats in a town of 50,000 residents. He compares it to serving guests at a United Nations' dining room.

"Basically, I'm feeding and pleasing people from every corner of the world," says the 38-year-old, who has worked in the kitchen for over two decades.

The helmsman of Dan Cha Fan restaurant - the name literally translates as "bland tea and meals" - in Zhejiang province's water town, Wuzhen, means what he says.

He's running one of the most popular restaurants in one of the country's most popular tourist destinations. Wuzhen receives about 8 million annual visits.

The 1,300-year-old settlement is celebrated for its canal network and ancient architecture.

It underwent a major face-lift at the start of the century and became a hot spot on the tourism map about a decade ago. It has since drawn visitors with its waterways, rice paddy fields and traditional white buildings with black-tile roofs.
France, China partner on talents exchange

( chinadaily.com.cn )

Updated: 2017-12-04

The first-ever Forum Franco-Chinois sur L'Innovation (France-China Forum on Innovation) was held successfully in Beijing on Nov 24, discussing methods of high-level talents exchange.

Co-hosted by China's Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation of France, the forum initiated an exchange project involving outstanding scientific researchers in both countries.

A total of 40 young scientific researchers from the two countries will be funded to carry out exchanges and scientific innovation cooperation in mathematics, physics, medicine, and biomedicine.

Ye Dongbai, head of the international collaboration division at the Ministry of Science and Technology, delivers a speech at the first-ever France-China Forum of Innovation in Beijing on Nov 24. [Photo/most.gov.cn]

Ye Dongbai, head of the international collaboration division at the Ministry of Science and Technology, said that France and China are dedicated to strengthening cooperation on projects, talents and bases. The joint laboratories strongly support cooperation on scientific and technological innovation between the two countries.

The head of the international and European affairs department of the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation of France, noted that France has regarded China as the most important partner in scientific research for a long time and is willing to promote taking cooperation to a higher level.

The head of the international and European affairs department of the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation of France, notes the historical partnership between China and France. [Photo/most.gov.cn]

Themed forums were organized as a platform for young researchers to discuss the establishment of talents exchange policies and procedures, expansion of scientific research innovation and cooperation and promotion of sustainable development of France-China joint laboratories.

The event also invited 40 scientific researchers to visit the Exhibition and Exchange Center of Zhongguancun Science Park. The park's cutting-edge innovation achievements in bio-health, intelligent transportation, and artificial intelligence stirred strong interest among the visitors.
On Nov 27, Premier Li Keqiang attended the sixth meeting of the leaders of China and 16 Central and Eastern European countries in Budapest, Hungary.

The 16+1 cooperation mechanism is one of the most significant cross-regional cooperation mechanisms globally. This year is the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the 16+1 cooperation.

Premier Li proposed five initiatives to further advance 16+1 cooperation at the meeting. The key to its fast development is to apply the principles of equality and consultation, mutual benefit, openness and inclusiveness and innovation, he said.

Li also announced that China will provide financial support for cooperation between China and the 16 Central and Eastern European countries.

Li announced the establishment of China-CEEC Inter-Bank Association and the second phase of China-Central and Eastern Europe Investment Cooperation Fund in a keynote speech to the seventh China-CEEC Economic and Trade Forum held in the Hungarian capital city of Budapest.

He said the China Development Bank will provide an equivalent amount of 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) as development-oriented financial cooperation loans for the inter-bank association.

Analysts say that the 16+1 cooperation is a key part of the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Europe and helps promote balanced development in Europe.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will start a trade and tourism dialogue with Chinese officials during his ongoing visit to China. Canada and China began to discuss a free trade agreement more than a year ago, following back-to-back meetings between Trudeau and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing and Ottawa. And from February to August, three rounds of exploratory talks were held between the two sides.

Trudeau's visit to China takes place after the fifth round of talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement ended in Mexico City amid simmering tensions.

Last year, the United States accounted for about three-fourths of Canada's exports, while Canada sourced almost two-thirds of its imports from the US. And while US direct investment in Canada amounts to some $306 billion, Canada's investment in the US is almost $370 billion. But US direct investment in Canada represents almost 20 percent of the latter's GDP, while Canada's direct investment in the US adds up to only 2 percent of the US' GDP. The outcome of the NAFTA talks is thus far more important to Canada than to the US.

If the US withdraws from NAFTA, that would start a six-month legal process before official termination. While the Donald Trump-led US administration may see this as a negotiating tool to force Canada and Mexico to accept its demands, the latter could use the time to complete trade talks with Brazil and the European Union.

Canada and Mexico are hedging their bets against a potential NAFTA collapse by pushing for deals with new partners, particularly China and some other Asian countries. In 2015, China bought 12 percent of Canadian exports, whereas Chinese exports accounted for 4 percent of Canada's total. An FTA between China and Canada could strengthen bilateral trade and investment by a great deal over time.

Last year, the combined investment from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong in Canada soared to $26.4 billion, which is almost half of Asia-Pacific investment in the country. But since the starting point is low, China was only the eighth-largest investor in Canada.

Canada's former ambassador to China Howard Balloch believes Ottawa "should be able to negotiate with China" during the NAFTA talks. Canada has a "huge interest" in China and trade diversification whatever the outcome of the NAFTA talks. Intriguingly, the NAFTA talks are likely to coincide with the period Canada and China would need to finalize an FTA agreement.

With a population of more than 1.3 billion, China is perceived as a lucrative market for Canada's agriculture and natural resources sectors. Last year, the Canadian Cabinet approved the plan to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline mainly to improve Canada's ability to get oil to China.

However, there is an intense debate over the proposed FTA with China. While Trudeau's Liberal Party supports greater bilateral trade, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer opposes a bilateral FTA. Using the "China threat" card, Conservatives have criticized the Liberals for allowing Chinese takeovers of Canadian businesses, while taking advantage of Canadian concerns about human rights and environmental standards.

What about ordinary Canadians? A recent poll conducted by Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada shows a slight majority of 55 percent might support a Canadian-Chinese FTA, but UBC's recent poll indicates that 70 percent of Canadians support the idea and only 20 percent are against it. Such a shift would reflect greater economic interest in a bilateral trade dealbut also growing concern over the Trump administration, rising US protectionism and the potential NAFTA collapse.

While US officials have sought to subdue NAFTA tensions by extending the timetable for renegotiations, that may only end up pouring oil on the simmering fire. In Mexico, tight elections in mid-2018 will complicate the NAFTA talks; in Canada, Conservatives are positioning for the 2019 elections.

Nevertheless, Canada is losing faith in the US. According to UBC, 36 percent of Canadians believe the US is a "more responsible global leader" than China (28 percent). Yet 37 percent of Canadian citizens are "uncertain" about the matter. Moreover, China is seen as doing more to "maintain peace" than the US and two-thirds of Canadians believe China will be the "largest economic power" by the 2020s.

Amid the new uncertainty, Canada is likely to do what it can to sustain NAFTA over time, whileat least under Trudeauit is likely to seek a trade deal with China that would foster diversification, new investment at home and greater presence in Asia.

From China's standpoint, a bilateral deal with Canada would open new doors to North America and pave the way to the Free Trade Agreement of Asia Pacific, which would be broader and more inclusive than the current trade pact efforts.

The author is the founder of Difference Group and has served as research director at the India, China and America Institute (USA) and visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Centre (Singapore).
Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura has vowed to snap his city's six-decade sister-city relationship with San Francisco in protest against the US city accepting a statue of "comfort women" as public property.

"Comfort women", a euphemism for some 200,000 girls and young women who were coerced, kidnapped, sold or captured to be sexually exploited in Japan's military brothels before and during World War II, is a taboo term for many in Japan. And these people have been trying to sweep the issue under the carpet.

The statue in San Francisco features three womena Chinese, a Korean and a Filipinawith the two words, "sex slaves" inscribed on a plaque. Yoshimura has written several letters to his San Francisco counterpart Edwin Lee this year, saying some historians don't recognize the historical facts about "comfort women".

Ikuhiko Hata is one of those historians. In an interview with Yasuo Naito, editor in chief of Japan Forward, Sankei Shimbun's English-language website, Hata said the Republic of Korea uses the "history war" as a weapon and women were not abducted to be sexually exploited. He said that his research shows the women who worked in the "comfort stations" were not "sex slaves" and did not live under the cruel conditions.

Hata also said the wartime newspapers in Seoul carried advertisements for recruiting "comfort women", and the recruiters were not Japanese but Koreans. And he claims that the majority of "comfort women" in Japan and Korea were professional prostitutes. The "comfort women" earned 300 yen ($2.7 now) every month, he said, while Japanese soldiers were paid on average 10 yen.

In 1991, some Japanese lawyers said "comfort women" were "sex slaves" and took the issue to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Hata blamed some Japanese media outlets such as the Asahi Shimbun for spreading "fake news" about "comfort women" with the help of the Japanese lawyers, which was then drummed up into a worldwide issue.

In Hata's words, those women who endured a half century of humiliation and trauma, and yet had the courage to speak up, and those activists who helped dig out the truth and struggled to get the "comfort women" justice and respect were lying for personal or political reasons.

If the "findings" of historians such as Hata are true, Tokyo should not have signed an agreement with Seoul in 2015 to apologize to and compensate Korean "comfort women".

With the agreement, Japan wanted to bury the issue.

The "comfort women" issue, however, is not a "dispute" between Japan and the ROK alone. Jan Ruff-O'Herne, a Dutch Australian, was taken from an Indonesian prisoner-of-war camp where she was living with her family during Japanese occupation. Ruff-O'Herne fought shame to speak up and became an advocate for women's rights.

When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Philippines in January, surviving Filipina "comfort women" asked for a formal apology and compensation from Japan for the atrocities they suffered at the hands of Japanese soldiers during occupation.

Former US congressman Mike Honda took the statue in San Francisco as a physical representation of something that happened in the past that needs to be learned about to prevent violence against women and end human trafficking.

But the Japanese government refuses to look into the country's dark past. After the ROK parliament designated Aug 14 as a day to commemorate Korean "comfort women", Japan criticized the move, saying it violated the spirit of the 2015 agreement. On Aug 14, 1991, Kim Hak-soon, a surviving "comfort woman", became the first to speak about her ordeal. Hundreds of others followed her.

Japan considers any occasion to pay respects to the "comfort women" in other parts of the world as a disgrace to itself. But it allows the country's right-wingers to demean the now elderly survivors and those who died carrying the Japanese insult that "comfort women" were nothing more than professional prostitutes.

Japan's attitude makes the 2015 agreement more like hush money for the ROK than a sincere apology for exploiting innocent women.

The author is China Daily Tokyo bureau chief. caihong@chinadaily.com.cn
ON FRIDAY, US President Donald Trump dismissed reports that he is considering replacing Rex Tillerson as the secretary of state. Beijing Youth Daily commented on Saturday:

The speculation surrounding Tillerson's future as secretary of state and his disagreement with Trump are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the US president's struggles to keep everything together 10 months into his presidency. That could hurt the country's image as a reliable world power and undermine its interests overseas.

Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil chief executive, was chosen to lead the state department for his expertise in "energy diplomacy". He has tried to keep his head down when he disagreed with Trump but he has still been openly confronted by the US president.

While Tillerson was in China looking for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Trump said that he was "wasting his time". The US president has also been an outspoken critic of efforts by Tillerson to salvage the Iran nuclear deal.

The tensions seem to have reached a point where they are beginning to part ways. In a recent Washington speech, Tillerson lambasted Russia while extolling the US-Europe bond, despite Trump being keen to prevent the US' relations with Russia from further deteriorating.

Trump's public endorsement of Saudi Arabia amid the diplomatic crisis between Gulf nations has displeased Qatar, also a US ally, fueling confusion about Washington's Middle East policy and leaving Tillerson's state department in an awkward position. Also baffling is the Trump's about-face after a fruitful state visit to China last month. He relisted the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism and officially denied China's market economy status.

The eventful Trump presidency is a mirror of his lack of diplomatic experience and failure to see the bigger picture in a global perspective. Displaying his political and diplomatic views on Twitter weakens his stance as does his preference for a coterie of family members and confidants.

It is sad but true that the world may have to wait longer for the disorder to end.
The Fourth World Internet Conference opens in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, Dec 3, 2017. [Photo/IC]

MORE THAN 400 ENTERPRISES from some 13 countries and regions are attending the fourth World Internet Conference from Sunday to Tuesday in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province. That number is about 100 more than last year. Beijing News commented on Sunday:

China is now home to about 750 million netizens and has the world's second-largest digital economy. It is also in an advantageous position in developing e-commerce and third-party mobile payments.

The annual Wuzhen conference has become a platform for the exchange of ideas between high-tech leaders from around the world, while the accompanying expo will witness the launch of 118 new products and 113 project signing ceremonies while match more than 1,200 projects with potential investors.

While the country is poised to advance global free trade, the Chinese internet is expected to provide most of the ammunition. The November 11 online shopping gala and the booming cross-border e-commerce aside, China has made notable progress in autonomous driving, building a 5G network for commercial use and the deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6.

But it is the sharing economy that shines the brightest, China is the first country to legalize online car-hailing services, and it has exported its short-hire bike services to overseas markets. Chinese participation in global rules-making has also expanded in the fields of cloud computing, the internet of things and smart manufacturing.

Hosting the Wuzhen meeting is not just about sharing China's success with the rest of the world but also inspiring more countries to tap into the internet through extensive exchanges. As internet companies are playing an increasingly bigger role, China can help them make the most of their ambitions.
Chinese delegates Zhuang Rongwen and Lin Nianxiu and those from Laos, Thailand, Turkey, Serbia, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia at a Belt and Road Initiative event pose at the fourth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, on Sunday. Zhuang (fourth from left) is Cyberspace Administration deputy head. Lin (fourth from right) is National Development and Reform Commission vice-minister.WU ZHIYI / CHINA DAILY

In the early days of the internet during the late 1960s, the technology wasnt purely meant for a worldwide access. It existed among a few interconnected networks in the United States and later joined by others in Europe. Later on came the World Wide Web (www), of which credit is given to Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Today the internet is accessible across the globe, from Wuzhen in China to Timbuktu in Mali, from the Samoan islands in the Pacific to the West Indies, and from Mumbai in India to all of Eastern and Western Europe, leaving it footprints in areas far from where it sprang.To take a cue from President Xi Jinpings 2016 statement, the development of the internet knows no national or sectoral boundaries.

This is true of this year theme for the 4thWorld Internet Conference held in the water town of Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, Developing Digital Economy for Openness and Shared Benefits-Building a Community of Common Future in Cyberspace. And I will add with no boundaries.

I am particularly interested in the keywords, Shared Benefits and Common Future. In our current digitized age of the internet of things (IoT), and high-tech products, the question I ask myself is, what will be the future of the internet with regards to the foundation currently being laid, bearing in mind that a century or two from now, our age of internet would be regarded as primitive?

To answer before I make a deduction, I say the internet today is supreme to what may come after it, simply because this is the foundation. Our generation is in the process of building a community of common future in cyberspace with a strong solid foundation in security, openness, and shared benefits, as themed for this years conference.

When Sir Tim, using the existing internet as foundation, created the web, quite rudimentary from what we see today, he specifically asked his superiors at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) to allow the innovation to be shared freely in order for the web to grow. And so it did. Decades later, that commitment to share has revolutionized the 21st century.

In local parlance, we say sharing is caring- the transfer of internet technology has transformed lives and changed communities across the globe. We are now in the age of big data and internet plus where information is shared across a wide range of platforms such as smart health, e-commerce, and internet finance, smart tourism, agriculture and areas including education and energy which have become 21st century marvels.

In Africa for example, in South Africa there is Snapscan, a mobile payment application, clones of Apple Pay and WeChat Pay that works using QR codes. In Kenya and Nigeria there is Sendy, an Uber-style motorbike delivery service that allows users to track their delivery via a phone application and in Ghana there is Paysail, a unique out-of-the-box payroll management application that organizes employee payroll embedded with Ghanaian tax codes. These are just a few of the innovation superhighway taking place on the continent as a result of shared internet technology.

In the US, China, Japan and South Korea, the internet is shaping technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Both large and small enterprises are adopting these technologies which incorporate the internet as a key element to promote their business and services. Sectors including design, cars, gaming, e-commerce, property and real estate are being transformed to what the future will look like.

These are some of the great advantages of the internet, which far supersedes the challenges we are encountering currently. Although the sophistication of cybercrime and the use computers for espionage remains unabated, the benefits of the internet are enormous.

In building a community of common future in cyberspace, security is of utmost importance, therefore ensuring that cyberwarfare for example is kept at bay is one of the key policies I hope would be strongly mooted at the conference to be attended by experts from fields including cyber security.

In sum, the ultimate purpose of the Wuzhen Conference, the fourth in as many years, is seeking for inclusiveness in the development of the internet for the greater good, which is why the internet should have no national or sectoral boundaries as stated by President Xi.

The author is a former Ghanaian Journalist.
A newlywed couple have their wedding photos taken in Prague, the Czech Republic. [Photo provided to China Daily]

A growing number of middle-class Chinese are opting for bespoke experiences. Xu Lin reports.

Wang Wei will never forget her trip to Italy in June - her first bespoke tour.

The 27-year-old and five friends enjoyed cultural heritage, natural landscapes and luxury shopping.

It enabled them to do what they wanted without having to make arrangements themselves.

"We each had different goals for the trip," Wang explains.

"The travel agency designed an itinerary that satisfied all of us. It was so relaxing."

And it offered convenience, says Wang, who works in a finance company in Beijing.

"We blew a tire. We didn't know what to do. But our experienced guide got another car to send us to the airport."

She also appreciated the guide helping them sample authentic food since they don't speak Italian.

China's National Tourism Administration named 2016 a milestone year for customized tours. A growing number of companies, including many online travel agencies, are emerging. They're attracting both capital and consumers.

"Service is paramount in our business. Customers are willing to pay for it," says Jia Jianqiang, founder and CEO of Beijing-based 6renyou.com, an online travel agency that specializes in domestic and international bespoke tours.

The company targets middle-class families. They're often busy with work and prefer to tailor their own itineraries while someone else makes the arrangements.

"It's more like a small group tour," Jia says.

"We offer a chartered vehicle with a local driver, who will guide them during the trip. It's convenient for those who travel with the elderly or children."

There are no standard products.

Elderly people tend to prefer slower schedules with Chinese meals. Children enjoy zoos, amusement parks, he says.

Customers can contact them during the trips if they encounter problems, such as flight cancelations.

"More customers trust online sales in the e-commerce era," Jia says.

"We can reach them and also lower our costs as the internet increases our efficiency. Prices are reasonable. About half of last year's customers used our services again this year."

Tourism consumption is low frequency, he says.
Vice-minister says nation 'will take proactive measures' in light of bill

China pledged to keep a close eye on the unfolding impact of the United States' tax overhaul, which was passed by the Senate on Saturday, and it called for more tax policy coordination under the global governance framework.

People protest against tax reform on Capitol hill in Washington DC, the United States, on Dec 1, 2017. The US Senate on Saturday morning narrowly passed the Republican bill to overhaul the tax code in decades, moving one step closer to the first major legislative victory of the Trump administration and congressional Republicans. [Photo/Xinhua]

The US Senate passed a major bill on a party-line vote whose main feature is a drastic tax cut for corporationsa reduction of tax rates down to 20 percent from 35 percent, the lowest level in decades. Taxes for individuals would also be eased modestly in the short run, but would quickly rise for middle-and low-income earners.

The bill still needs to be reconciled with the version passed by the House of Representativesa final hurdle since some provisions may raise new objections from lawmakers.

Zhu Guangyao, vice-minister of finance, said at a forum on Sunday that China will "take proactive measures" in response to the US tax move, as the world's largest economy's tax policy adjustment is expected to have a major impact on other countries, including China.

The international community needs to pay close attention to the implications of the US tax changes for competition, labor productivity and wages, said Zhu, who stressed that members of the Group of 20 had agreed to set international tax policy coordination as one of the important issues to discuss at the 2018 summit, which will be held in Argentina.

But the bill, if passed, will not create large cash flows out of China and into the US, said Liu Shangxi, head of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences. Many more factors other than the tax rate shape the overall US business environment.

"There is no need for China to make immediate tax cuts and blindly follow what the US does, but it should adjust macroeconomic policies based on an assessment of the real domestic situation," Liu said. "One of our current priorities is to deepen value-added tax reform that targets a more market-oriented scheme for resource allocation and build a fair investment environment for enterprises."

Willem Buiter, an economist with Citi Research, a division of Citigroup Global Markets Inc, calculated in a recent note of Global Economics View that a cut in the tax rate on corporate profits in the US "has no impact on the incentive to invest", which implies "a zero impact" on the capital intensity of production and real wages.

The tax cut will send the US budget deficit skyrocketing by up to $1.5 trillion, which is expected to add a further burden to the already high debt level of the US government.

"Government revenues and social welfare expenditures may be under great pressure in the coming months if the bill is passed," Liu said.
Students from the Central Conservatory of Music perform at a news conference in Beijing on Sunday. New York's Bard College Conservatory of Music will work with the college to create an undergraduate program in Chinese musical instrument performance. MA GUOHUI/FOR CHINA DAILY

New York's Bard College Conservatory of Music will teach an undergraduate program in Chinese musical instrument performance starting next fall.

Bard will work with Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music to create the program, said to be the first of its kind at a Western college.

Students will be able to apply in January for a first year that will focus on the erhu, pipa and guzheng, all stringed instruments.

Yu Feng, president of the Beijing school, signed a development initiative for the program and other joint efforts with Robert Martin, director of the New York school, on Sunday in Beijing.

Martin, who is a cellist, said he has been coming to China since the 1970s and had the idea of introducing a Chinese instrument performance degree program at Bard two years ago.

"The goal is to create a comprehensive and effective platform for Chinese music in the United States," he said. "I believe our partnership is what diplomats call a win-win situation."

Yu hailed the project as a "trailblazing step" for Chinese music worldwide that would create a new channel for cultural exchange between the two countries.

"Traditional Chinese culture is the basis of Chinese music and Chinese instruments," Yu said. "We will also introduce lessons such as calligraphy, traditional Chinese opera and Chinese poetry to our students."

In a video played for the announcement ceremony, Leon Botstein, president of Bard, said: "There has been much development regarding the absorption of the teaching of Western instruments and Western music. This needs to be balanced by the introduction of the great tradition of Chinese music and Chinese instruments to Western musicians, inspiring young musicians of the next generation."

Bard, a private liberal arts college founded in 1860, launched its music conservatory in 2005. The new program will build on its existing five-year music and liberal arts and science program to combine the professional study of traditional Chinese instruments with a Western-style liberal arts education. According to Yu, three professors from the Beijing school will become primary faculty members.

Outside the program, the initiative will also launch an annual Chinese music festival at Bard and an annual summer school for high school students. Both will focus on music from contemporary China. Seminars and scholarly conferences on Chinese music, art and social development will also be held in the US and China on alternate years.

Chinese conductor Cai Jindong will chair the committee overseeing the initiative. Cai, who was born in Beijing and studied violin and piano, went to the US in 1985 and joined the Stanford University faculty as professor in 2004. He has been guest conductor of major symphony orchestras in both China and the US.

"I have been working and living in the US for more than 30 years, and to me this program is like a dream come true," he said.

He noted that the development of Western music in China has a very long history, starting with Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), the Italian believed to have been the first Jesuit priest to enter Beijing. Ricci gave a clavichord to Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in 1601.

"Chinese music never really developed in the West," Cai said. "We believe this program will make changes in the long run."

chennan@chinadaily.com.cn
BANGKOK - Buddhist monks chant next to a pink coffin where Dollar's small body is nestled among flowers - a $600 final farewell for the Shih Tzu at a Bangkok temple that administers elaborate pet funerals.

Dollar's owner, Pimrachaya Worakijmanotham, fights back tears as she takes a last fond look at her six-year-old pet dog, whose tousled greywhite body rests under jasmine garlands.

"This is the last time I can be with her ... so I want Dollar to receive good things," said Pimrachaya, dressed in black and wearing sunglasses, a framed photo of "her child" Dollar behind her.

Pet cremations, complete with Buddhist rituals, are popping up across Bangkok for dogs, cats and even monkeys.

In a devout Buddhist kingdom where religion and superstitious beliefs entwine, some pet owners believe the monkled send off will boost their pets' chances of being reincarnated as a higher being.

According to Buddhist belief, merit garnered in each life eventually leads to nirvana - the state of non-suffering.

"In this life, she (Dollar) couldn't go to the temples to make merit for herself. This is the only thing we can do for her," said Pimrachaya.

The trend is not unique to Thailand - Japan is particularly fond of lavish goodbyes to its pets.

Catching on fast

But in Bangkok it is catching on fast as Thais increasingly see pets as family members.

At least three temples offer daily services, including a monk-led ceremony, cremation and sprinkling of ashes in rivers - the symbolic ritual of returning earthly remains to nature.

Theerawat Sae-Han, the founder of Pet Funeral Thailand, said his company cremates more than 200 animals each month, from cats and dogs, to monitor lizards, snakes and baboons.

"Successful or famous animals like fighting cocks who won the awards will also be brought for cremation," said Theerawat, a former pet salon owner who jumped into the "good" business of full-blown pet cremation four years ago.

Surging demand for his service also reflects a shortage of public spaces in the capital.

"Before, we buried them in authorised parks or backyards but now it's rare to find ones in Bangkok," said Phrakru Samu Jumpol, a monk at Wat Krathum Suea Pla.

Prices start at around 3,000 baht (around $91) and go up to 100,000 baht for the most elaborate ceremonies.

But for pet lovers, the service provides spiritual succor at a time of great pain.

At the end of a ceremony to spread the ashes of her Siberian husky Maprang in November, teary-eyed Tipaporn Ounsiri found cause for optimism.

"If the next life exists, please come back and be my daughter, don't be born as a pet anymore," she said.

Agence France - presse
Containers are offloaded from a ship in the Tunisian port city of Rades, near the capital Tunis, September 28, 2015. [Photo/VCG]

TUNIS - The launch of a new shipping route will help Tunisia recover its regional positioning and enhance China's presence in the African continent, experts and investors have said.

The Spanish company Transglory inaugurated the maritime trade route that will link Tunisia's Rades port and Qingdao, Shandong province.

"Importing and exporting to and from this Chinese destination are consolidating similar services from other leading ports," said Louis Florensa, chief of Transglory's Development Department.

"Our main challenge, now fulfilled, is to be the preferential partner of Tunisian importers, with four weekly services from Hong Kong, Ningbo and two others in Shanghai."

Khaled Ben Abdallah, the director of foreign trade department at Tunisian Ministry of Industry and Trade, believes the launch of the line could generate a triangular trade platform linking China, East Africa and Tunisia.

He said the route will bring together all kinds of services, including health, tourism, equipment and information and communication technologies.

Tunisia has been trying to keep its African position despite its worsening trade deficit. By the end of October this year, Tunisia's trade deficit rose to 13 billion dinars (about $5 billion), from 10.78 billion dinars during the same period in 2016, according to the National Institute of Statistics of Tunisia (INS).

Imports reached 40.85 billion dinars, but exports were 27.64 billion dinars, according to INS.

The deficit mainly resulted from trade with some partners such as China, Italy and Turkey. With China, the deficit is 3.64 billion dinars, according to the INS of Tunisia.

"In the first 10 months of this year, we have seen a worsening of the trade deficit with China of about 486.8 million dinars," said Abdallah.

With adequate logistics that can link Tunisia and China economically, Abdallah believes the shipping line will give China greater access to North Africa.

"Political stability, security and a long-term strategy are already there to augur a successful future between Tunisia and China in trade and global economic partnership," Abdallah said.

Xinhua
PYONGYANG - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has accused late Saturday US President Donald Trump of "begging for nuclear war" by staging "extremely dangerous" military drills on the Korean Peninsula and simulating real-scenario-attacks upon DPRK.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the United States is planning to carry out the largest-ever joint aerial drill with South Korea targeting the DPRK from Dec 4 to 8, which he said will push the current touch-and-go situation in the peninsula to a possible flare-up.

"More than 230 fighters from the US air force bases in Japan and South Korea including its latest stealth fighters F-22 Raptor and F-35, the US major strategic assets as well as some 12,000 US troops are to participate in the said drill," said the spokesman.

The United States and South Korea hold annual large scale military drills over the alleged threat from the DPRK's nuclear and missile programs.

The DPRK foreign ministry spokesman said this drill would be unprecedented in its size and nature of simulating actual combat situation and have the highest number of US major strategic assets including the F-22 Raptor and F-35 stealth fighters.

"The US is publicly touting the objective of the drill as enhancing the actual combat capability to disable the DPRK's major strategic bases in the early stages of war," the spokesman noted.

He pointed out that Washington has just wound up a large-scale nuclear war drill against the DPRK which involved three nuclear-powered aircraft carrier strike groups. Such exercises are fueling the speculation that a US nuclear attack on the DPRK is indeed possible and plausible.

"The Trump team is begging for a nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean Peninsula," he said.

The tension in the Korean Peninsula is extremely high.

The DPRK test fired a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) - "Hwasong 15 " - last week which it said could hit the entire territory of the United States, thus marking the completion of DPRK's rocket weaponry system, according to Pyongyang's own description of its nuclear and missile system.
BRUSSELS - British Prime Minister Theresa May meets European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for lunch in Brussels on Monday for what could be a breakthrough in Brexit talks.

Here is a timeline of the following 10 days that will determine whether Britain avoids further costly delays in giving business assurances of a smooth exit from the European Union and of free trade with its biggest market in the future:

Phase time

May wants the EU to open the second phase of Brexit negotiations concerning relations after Britain's withdrawal on March 30, 2019. The EU will only do that if there is "sufficient progress" in agreeing "divorce" terms, notably on three key issues: a financial settlement, guaranteed rights for EU citizens in Britain and a "soft border" with Ireland.

One, two, three ... progress

A deal on money is effectively done, EU officials said last week. There were indications of agreement on citizens' rights and of an understanding of how at least to move forward on the Irish issue to avoid holding up the rest of the package.

Brexit dance steps

As part of the "choreography" for a political deal, the EU set May an "absolute deadline" of Monday, Dec 4, to provide new offers in time for the other EU leaders to approve a move to Phase 2 at a summit of the EU-27 on Friday, Dec 15.

May is pushing for a simultaneous, reciprocal guarantee from the EU of a soft transition and future trade deal, which she may use to show Britons what her compromises have secured. The EU wants to have firm British offers which the 27 can discuss before leaders commit. The result is some complex dance steps:

Monday, Dec 4

11 am (1000 GMT) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier meet Guy Verhofstadt and his Brexit team from the European Parliament. The legislature, which must ratify any withdrawal treaty, insists EU judges must have the final say on enforcing citizens' rights.

1:15 pm (1215 GMT) - May joins Juncker and Barnier for lunch at the EU executive's Berlaymont headquarters. The plan is to sign a joint declaration on progress so far in the talks.

Wednesday, Dec 6

10 am - Juncker chairs weekly European Commission meeting at which Barnier will update them on progress. The Commission could then say there is sufficient progress to move to Phase 2.

3 pm - EU-27 envoys meet to prepare formal decision on sufficient progress to be taken at EU-27 summit on Dec 15 and to work on draft negotiating guidelines for future trade deal.

Monday, Dec 11

EU-27 sherpas meet to prepare the summit.

Tuesday, Dec 12

EU affairs ministers of EU-27 meet to prepare summit.

Thursday, Dec 14

4 pm - May attends routine EU summit in Brussels. Defence, social affairs, foreign affairs and migration are on the agenda.

Friday, Dec 15 - After May has left, EU-27 leaders hold Brexit summit. They could take one comprehensive decision on Phase 2 or break it down into separate ones on the transition and future ties.

January - Outline of EU transition offer may be ready, under which Britain retains all rights except voting in the bloc, and meets all its obligations until the end of 2020.

February - After agreeing their negotiating terms, EU-27 may be ready to open talks with London on a free trade pact that Brussels likens to one it has with Canada.

Financial settlement

The EU estimated at some 60 billion euros ($71 billion) what Britain should pay to cover outstanding obligations on leaving. EU officials say there is now agreement after Britain offered to pay an agreed share of most of the items Brussels wanted, especially for committed spending that will go on after 2020.

Both sides say there is no precise figure as much depends on future developments. British newspaper reports that it would cost up to 55 billion euros sparked only muted criticism from May's hardline pro-Brexit allies who once rejected big payments.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Saturday that London would be paying the EU 60 billion euros on Brexit.

Citizens' rights

Barnier is still seeking a commitment that the rights of 3 million EU citizens who stay on in Britain after Brexit will be guaranteed by the European Court of Justice, not just by British judges. May has said the ECJ should play no more role in Britain. But the issue could be vital to ensure ratification of the withdrawal treaty by the European Parliament. A compromise might focus on making clear that the ECJ has a role only for the existing EU residents, whose numbers will shrink over time.

Member states, some of which have taken a tougher line than the Brussels negotiators, are also insisting Britain make concessions on family reunion rules and social benefits.

Irish border

The EU wants more detail on a British pledge to avoid a "hard border" at the new land frontier on the island of Ireland that might disrupt peace in Northern Ireland. London says the detail depends on the future trade agreement.

EU officials say a hard border can be avoided only if rules remain identical on either side. Northern Ireland could stay in a customs union with the EU. But Britain, and May's crucial Northern Irish parliamentary allies, insist there should be no new barriers between Northern Ireland and the British mainland.

The EU says that means the whole of the United Kingdom would then have to follow EU rules, something Brexit campaigners do not want. Dublin says it may not be possible to reach a deal on sufficient progress by Monday but in the days after that.

Ireland, with the blessing of the EU-27, says it will veto any move to Phase 2 if Britain's border offer is unsatisfactory.

Reuters
Wu Jing (right) in a scene from Wolf Warrior 2. The actor will be in London this week for a film festival. [Photo/China Daily]

Wu Jing, the star and director of the Chinese box-office smash Wolf Warrior 2, will be among top actors and other talents on the red carpet in London at the fifth China-Britain Film Festival.

The event aims to showcase some of the best China-made movies, allow for the exchange of movie-related ideas, and act as a platform to promote Chinese culture to an overseas audience.

Kong Xiangxi, president of the China-Britain Film Festival, said: "We are very pleased that this festival can be one of the major events of Sino-British cultural exchange. It means that our past achievements are well-recognized by both governments and we feel that we should take more responsibility in the film industry, in order to tell good Chinese stories and to let Western countries know more about China."

The Great Wall actors Zhang Hanyu and Zheng Kai will also make appearances at the festival.

Yu Nan, who won the best actress award at the Paris International Film Festival for her role in the 2004 film Jingzhe, is expected to attend the London festival, as well as 16-year-old up-and-coming actress Zhang Zifeng.

This year's theme for the festival is "new era for a more modernized, global and prospective China-UK film exchange".

Organizers hope the festival will build bridges and open up a new chapter of film exchanges. The event also marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of ambassadorial-level diplomatic ties between China and the United Kingdom.

Organizers say the event, which was launched in 2013, is one of the largest and most influential international Chinese film festivals outside China.

The festival's awards ceremony will be hosted by Chinese-American actor David Wu and its judging panel will include Chinese directors Zhao Hantang and Zhang Yibai.

Last year's awards saw Duan Yihong named best actor for his role in The Dead End. The movie also scooped the best film prize. Gong Li took home the best actress award for her performance in The Monkey King 2.

The festival also features a series of forums and talks aimed at motivating filmmakers and encouraging collaboration.

The fifth China-Britain Film Festival begins on Wednesday.
A choir of schoolchildren from Northern Ireland sings Chinese songs in Belfast's Parliament Buildings on Friday. [Photo/China Daily]

A group of Northern Ireland schoolchildren warmed the hearts of Chinese guests on a cold December day when they performed Chinese songs. The children had rehearsed for six weeks, with the help of Mandarin teachers from the University of Ulster's Confucius Institute.

The performance on Friday, inside Belfast's elegant and historic Parliament Buildings, preceded a welcome dinner ahead of the third UK-China Regional Leaders Meeting on Saturday that was attended by more than 100 provincial and municipal leaders from China. As trade relations between China and Northern Ireland grow, Mandarin has become more popular in the province. Friday's performance was given by children from Millburn Primary School and Grosvenor Grammar School, which both offer Mandarin lessons, thanks to the local Confucius Institute that was established in 2012. From its start five years ago, which saw two Mandarin teachers support 169 students, the University of Ulster's Confucius Institute has grown to comprise 51 teachers and 19,000 registered students. A quarter of the institute's 161 partner primary and secondary schools have made Mandarin learning compulsory for certain age groups. And students also gain exposure to Chinese culture, including calligraphy and music.

"Our Confucius Institute was established partly in response to existing demand from schools," said Liu Yan, director of the University of Ulster's Confucius Institute. While preparing to open the institute, her team sent out a survey to 1,241 primary and secondary schools in Northern Ireland. Around 500 responded by saying they would like to off er Mandarin lessons.

The Chinese government launched the Confucius Institute concept in 2004 as a way of promoting the Chinese language and culture abroad. Confucius Institutes are nonprofi t organizations and are affiliated with Western academic institutions, including secondary schools and universities. So far, 516 Confucius Institutes have been established in 142 countries and regions.
At the invitation of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Premier Li Keqiang arrived in Sochi on Thursday to attend the 16th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Government (Prime Minister) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Premier Li Keqiang arrives in Sochi on Thursday to attend the 16th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Government (Prime Minister) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. [Photo/Xinhua]

The organization has developed into a vital platform to safeguard regional security and stability and promote shared prosperity, Li said upon arrival. He said he was looking forward to working with other countries to promote cooperation in fields such as security, economics and people-to-people exchanges.

The premier also said he was looking forward to meeting with Medvedev in Sochi to deepen China-Russia ties and cooperation under the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

During the meeting, Premier Li will sign a number of cooperative agreements and meet with leaders from other countries.
One of the great stories in the Bible about community involves a paralyzed man and the friends who brought him to Jesus (Mark 2:1-8).

Imagine what life was like for a paralytic in the ancient world. This man's whole life is lived on a mat three-feet ...
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Image: Gali Tibbon / AFP / Getty Images

Christians United for Israel supporters march in Jerusalem in 2008.

American evangelicals love Israelif theyre older. But many younger evangelicals simply dont care, according to a new survey from Nashville-based LifeWay Research.

Three-quarters (77%) of evangelicals 65 and older say they support the existence, security and prosperity of Israel. That drops to 58 percent among younger evangelicals, those 18 to 34.

Four in 10 younger evangelicals (41%) have no strong views about Israel.

Fewer younger evangelicals (58%) have an overall positive perception of Israel than older evangelicals (76%).

And they are less sure Israels rebirth in 1948 was a good thing.

For the most part, younger evangelicals are indifferent about Israel, said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research.

Most evangelicals support Israel

LifeWay Research asked 2,002 Americans with evangelical beliefs about a wide range of issues involving Israelfrom its place in the Bible to its treatment of Palestinians. The survey focused on Americans with evangelical beliefs, rather than self-identified evangelicals.

Overall, this group was supportive of Israel.

Sixty-seven percent have a positive view of that nation. Nine percent have a negative view. Twenty-four percent are not sure.

One-fourth (24%) support the existence, security and prosperity of Israel, no matter what Israel does. Forty-two percent support Israel, but not everything Israel does. One percent do not support Israel. Thirty-two percent have no strong views about Israel.

Few (14%) agree when asked whether Israels rebirth was an injustice to Arabs in the Middle East. Fifty percent disagree. Thirty-six percent are not sure.

About a quarter (22%) say modern Israel has been unfair to Palestinians. Forty-one percent disagree. Thirty-seven percent are not sure.

Younger evangelicals (19%) are more likely to see the rebirth of Israel as an injustice. Only 34 percent disagree. Forty-seven percent are not sure.

Among older evangelicals, 9 percent see the rebirth of Israel as an injustice, while 62 percent disagree. Twenty-eight percent are not certain.

Older evangelicals (49%) are more likely to disagree that Israel has been unfair to Palestinians. Young evangelicals (32%) are less likely.

Mitch Glaser, president of Chosen People Ministries, which helped underwrite the survey, said he was glad to see that most evangelicals support Israel.

Still, he found the decline of support among younger evangelical believers worrisome.

I am concerned for the obvious decline in support for Israel among millennial followers of Jesus, who either do not know what they believe or do not seem to care, he said.

Darrell L. Bock, a board member for Chosen People Ministries and director of cultural engagement at Dallas Theological Seminary, wonders if Israel is on the back burner for many younger evangelicals.

When they think about the Middle East, theyre more likely to think about Iraq or Iran or the impact of terrorism in the world, he said.

The terror attacks on 9/11 changed the Middle East equation, and young people just arent sure where Israel is supposed to fit, he said.

The Bible plays a big role

Most evangelical believers in the LifeWay Research survey say faith shapes their views on Israel.

Three-quarters (76%) say Christians should support the right of the Jewish people to live in the sovereign State of Israel. Five percent disagree. Twenty percent are not sure.

Sixty-nine percent say the Jewish people have a historic right to the land of Israel. Six percent disagree. Twenty-five percent are not sure.

Only 19 percent say Palestinians have a historic right to Israel. Forty-six percent disagree. Thirty-four percent are not sure.

Forty-one percent say Jewish people have a biblical right to Israel but have to share it.

Twenty-eight percent disagree. Thirty-one percent are not sure.

African-Americans with evangelical beliefs are least likely (54%) to say Jewish people have a biblical right to the land of Israel. They are also least likely (50%) to have a positive view of Israel.

Among other findings:

45% say the Bible has had the biggest influence on their views of Israel.

63% say they support Israel primarily because God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people.

22% are not sure if biblical promises about the land of Israel are still in force.

80% say God promised the land of Israel to Abraham and his descendants for all time.

80% say the rebirth of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Author Joel C. Rosenberg, who also helped underwrite the survey, said most evangelicals see a connection between the Bible and the modern nation of Israel. But he said hes worried thats not the case for younger evangelicals, which could cause evangelical support for Israel to drop in the future.

Unless the church gives younger believers a healthy, balanced, solidly biblical understanding of Gods love and plan for Israel, overall evangelical support for the Jewish state could very well plummet over the next decade as millennials represent an ever-larger percentage of the overall church body, Rosenberg said.

Israel and Palestinians

Evangelical believers are uncertain how to resolve differences between Israelis and Palestinians. A quarter (23%) say Israel should sign a treaty allowing Palestinians to have a sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza. Thirty-one percent disagree. Forty-six percent are unsure.

Six in 10 (59%) say Christians should do more to love and care for Palestinians. Sixteen percent disagree. Twenty-five percent are not sure.

Among younger evangelicals, two-thirds say Christians need to do more to care for Palestinians. That drops to 54 percent among those 65 and older.

Most evangelical believers (73%) agree they are concerned for the safety of Christians in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Five percent disagree. Twenty-two percent are not certain.

Evangelicals are certain God wants the State of Israel to exist, said McConnell. But they think Christian love should include Palestinian people.

They believe God wants Israel to be there, he said, but they also think God cares how the nation of Israel acts.

Bob Smietana is senior writer for Facts & Trends.

Methodology:

LifeWay Research conducted the study Sept. 20-28, 2017. The study was sponsored by Chosen People Ministries and author Joel C. Rosenberg. The survey was conducted using the web-enabled KnowledgePanel, a probability-based panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. Initially, participants are chosen scientifically by a random selection of telephone numbers and residential addresses. People in selected households are then invited by telephone or by mail to participate in the web-enabled KnowledgePanel. For those who agree to participate but do not already have internet access, GfK provides at no cost a laptop and ISP connection.

Sample stratification and weights were used for gender by age, ethnicity, region, education and household income to reflect the most recent U.S. Census data. The completed sample is 2,002 surveys. The sample provides 95 percent confidence that the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 2.7 percent. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.

Respondents were screened to include only adults with evangelical beliefs. Evangelical beliefs are defined using the NAE LifeWay Research Evangelical Beliefs Research Definition based on respondent beliefs. Respondents are asked their level of agreement with four separate statements using a four-point, forced-choice scale (strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree). Respondents are categorized as having evangelical beliefs if they strongly agree with all four statements:

The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.

It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Jesus Christs death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.

Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive Gods free gift of eternal salvation.

LifeWay Research is a Nashville-based, evangelical research firm that specializes in surveys about faith in culture and matters that affect churches.
So much of life is spent waiting.

The mother waits months to hold the babe nestling in her womb. The parent devotes years of love and discipline in hopes of helping the child bloom. The Christian shares the gospel, trusting God to bring forth fruit in future days or months or years. And the farmer anxiously watches sun and rain for weeks to see if seeds will sprout. Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, we read in Ecclesiastes, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.

We know, of course, even as we wait, that many of the returns on our investmentswhether of time, money, teaching, love, or laborwill never be seen in our lifetimes.

The place where God taught me the most about waiting was the abortion clinic.

For ten years, once a week, every week, I waited outside the abortion clinics in the city where I was then living, offering help to the women and men going in and coming out. At most of the clinics, it was nearly impossible to initiate a conversation because the sidewalks were often far from the clinic entrances. But sometimes patients would walk by or even go out of their way to talk to mesometimes out of curiosity, sometimes out of anger, but most often out of desperation.

Most of the hours I spent outside the abortion clinic are now a blur of defeat and despair: an obscenity hurled by a passerby here; a confrontation with an angry boyfriend there; an occasional clash with volunteer escorts, clinic workers, or abortionists; freezing snow; sweltering heat; pouring rain.

However, punctuating all this failure every once in a while, a woman would change her mindquietly, tearfully, joyfully, or all threeand decide not to have an abortion.

I estimate conservatively that, in a span of ten years, over the course of my weekly shifts, I saw at least 2,500 women go into the clinics (quite possibly twice that). Roughly a couple dozen of them told me upon leaving the clinic that they had decided to keep the baby. Some of them accepted the help I offered while others said they didnt need it. And how many more changed their minds without ever speaking to me, I will never know on this side of heaven.

But even as I wait for eternity to reveal its secrets to us, God is gracious and kind in granting meand all of usglimpses now and then of the fruit of efforts performed in faith.

I received such a glimmer not long ago. It arrivedjust a message on Facebook on a lazy Sunday afternoon:

Im not sure you remember me. I met you 20 years ago outside of Women Services on Main St.  I was only 15 years old. You saved my sons life. I was alone, there to start a two-day procedure. Day one of the would-be termination, they instructed me to wait at home come back the next day and have it completed. However, that night I felt my son move. The next day on my way into the building I met you.  I believe you read me some scriptures and made me aware of other options. So I decided to have the laminaria removed and continue with the pregnancy. That day you took me home and you never left my side, took me to your church, linked me to several agencies. You were truly a blessing to me. Today my son is almost 20 years old, away at college beginning his sophomore year. I miss him so muchhes the best thing that ever happened to me. When I think of him I often think of you.

As I read the note, I became utterly undone.

I wasnt sure if I remembered the girl correctly, so I dug out my old journals and flipped through the pages of my entries for that year until I found it. As with many of the other women and girls who changed their mind at the clinics, I kept up with this one for a little while afterward, taking her to church and to lunch and talking to her father when he called to thank me. The pro-life ministry I worked with always threw baby showers for mothers and helped in various ways as long the help was needed and wanted.

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Often in these cases, however, by the time the baby comes, it becomes awkward for the women to be open with others about the decision they almost made, and they quietly move off into new lives birthed along with their babies into the world. (This is why I requested and received permission from the woman to share this story.) A year and a half later, I moved to another state and we lost contact.

Nonetheless, she never forgot me. In our subsequent messages, she confessed to finding and watching me on social media for a while before reaching out. You have always held a place in my heart, she wrote. She told me that as a single parent, she had managed to put her son through private high school and then to send him to a private college. Ive never finished college [but] worked in banking for 15 years, she explained. Every penny and thing I ever had, I saved for my son.  I gave up so much for myself for my sonno regrets.

For most of us, its only human to want to know that somehow weve made a difference, and yet most of the important things in life require us to wait a long time before we see any evidence of that difference.

During those years of waiting in front of abortion clinics, I trusted that God would bring forth from my small efforts the fruit he saw fit. I was content to be obedient and faithful without reward. And yet, being offered just a sliver of that reward now, many years later, I am encouraged all the more to be faithful even in times when I dont see visible fruit.

In contrast to the cycles of karma in Hinduism and Buddhism, the nothingness of nirvana in Buddhism, and the instant access to paradise by the Muslims martyrdom, Christianity requires and rewards faithfulness in waiting. James 5:78 encourages believers:

Be patient  until the Lords coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lords coming is near.

Waiting is the fertile soil of our sanctification and one of the hallmarks of Christian practice. And yet what a joy it is to see at last the blessings God enables us to harvest.

Somewhere out there, a 19-year-old college student is bringing his faithful mother a harvest of love and joy. How much more love and joy we bring our Father as we patiently await the fruit only he can bring.

Karen Swallow Prior is a professor of English at Liberty University and a research fellow with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. She is the author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Meand Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More.
Tampa Change Counseling Ban Faces Legal Challenge

TAMPA, Fla., Dec. 4, 2017 / Christian Newswire / -- Liberty Counsel filed suit in federal court against the City of Tampa for its adoption of Ordinance 2017-47, which prohibits licensed counselors from providing and clients from receiving counseling to reduce or eliminate their unwanted same-sex attractions, behaviors, or identity. The ordinance imposes significant monetary fines on counselors who provide such counseling.

Liberty Counsel represents Robert Vazzo, LMFT, David Pickup, LMFT, and their minor clients and their parents. These counselors provide life-saving counsel to minors and their parents or legal guardians who desperately desire to conform their unwanted same-sex attractions, behaviors, and identity to their religious beliefs or conscious. The sacred trust between counselors and clients establishes a unique relationship that permits the clients to inform the counselors of their goals and receive counseling consistent with such goals. That therapeutic alliance has long been held sacred and inviolable. The City of Tampa, however, has decided to storm the office doors of mental health professionals, thrust itself into the therapeutic alliance, violate the critical privacy inherent in such a relationship, and disregard the fundamental rights of the counselor and the client.

Ordinance 2017-47 violates the First Amendment by imposing a viewpoint and content-based prohibition on the speech on licensed professionals in Tampa who offer change counseling. The ordinance also blatantly violates the rights of clients under the Florida Patient's Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, which permits counselors to offer, and clients to receive, treatment methods that they and their mental or health care practitioner believe is in their best interest. The State of Florida is the only government body with authority to regulate mental health practitioners in the state, and local government bodies are not empowered to contradict state regulations.

The City of Tampa has no authority to enact such a regulation, which is directly contradictory to Florida law. The legislature squarely rejected proposals to enact similar counseling prohibitions state-wide.

"The Tampa law is a gross intrusion into the fundamental rights of counselors and minors, and represents government intrusion into the sacrosanct relationship between a counselor and the client," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. "The City of Tampa has no authority to prohibit a form of counseling simply because it does not like the religious beliefs of a particular client. Tampa's prohibition is blatantly unconstitutional and causes harm to countless minors, and Liberty Counsel will not stand by as authoritarian members of council blatantly ignore the First Amendment," said Staver.

Staver also noted that there are other municipalities in Florida that have enacted or are considering similar change counsel bans. These too are unconstitutional.

Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.
Energy Intelligence Group, the publisher of 15 newsletters for the oil and gas industry, has sued more than a dozen energy companies and investment houses in Houston for violating federal copyright law by buying a handful of subscriptions of its pricey publications and passing them around the office to non-subscribers. With settlements reached in nearly all the cases, one is left.

That case is scheduled to go to trial Monday in U.S. District Court in Houston. The publishing company, which is based in New York City and London, accuses Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors of sharing its five subscriptions of "Oil Daily" with others in the investment firm who did not have their own subscriptions.

Like several other cases, the publishing company was inadvertently tipped off by an employee at Kayne Anderson who revealed passing along copies to others who did not have their own subscriptions.

RELATED: Specialty publisher alleges copyright violations

Kayne Anderson says that it did not violate copyright laws and disputes Energy Intelligence Group's' claims of financial loss, according to court filing. The firm manages $24.5 billion in assets and its specialties include investing in upstream oil and gas companies and energy infrastructure.

"This is a matter that should have been resolved three years ago but hasn't because of their unrealistic and unreasonable position," said Kayne Anderson spokesman Paul Blank.

Energy Intelligence Group alleges the forwarding copies of its publications distributed via email violates copyright laws. The practice is a vexing problem for publications that don't receive advertisements and rely strictly on subscriber sale

When a single copy is passed around something easy to do with email the publication loses that revenue.

"It kind of eats your lunch and takes your milk and bread off the dinner table," said John Hitchcock, managing director and vice president of the Energy Intelligence Group.

The company sells individual articles of "Oil Daily" for $9 and individual issues for $95.

The Energy Intelligence Group uncovered the alleged unauthorized distribution of copies when it received an email from an Kayne Anderson employee who is not on the subscriber list complaining the company did not receive its Feb. 5, 2014 issue of "Oil Daily," according to court documents. Soon after, the employee sent another email saying she received a copy from a co-worker so there was no need to send another.

The publishing company called to follow-up and discovered that one subscription of "Oil Daily" was routinely distributed to 20 or more individuals in the office, according to court documents.

The publishing company settled confidentially with other companies, including Enterprise Partners, Deutsche Bank Securities and Cheniere Energy.

Hitchcock said the settlements typically include an agreement to buy more subscriptions. "We manage to get people to see this is fair and to actually pay for it," he said.

Kayne Anderson began subscribing to "Oil Daily" in 2004, paying for one executive to receive the newsletter. In 2013, the company bought a multi-user license so five employees received the daily bulletin, according to court records.

But Energy Intelligence Group alleged that Kayne Anderson distributed unauthorized copies and sued Kayne for copyright infringement in 2014.

In May, Kayne challenged Energy Intelligence Group's underlying copyright by arguing that the publishing company's copyright registration certificates are invalid because the publishing company used the wrong copyright forms. Kayne asked the court to move the dispute to the federal Copyright office.

Energy Intelligence is seeking unspecified damages, including all profits Kayne Anderson made from using the information it gained by reading "Oil Daily."






EDDIE SEAL

Fitch Ratings warned Monday that Citgo Petroleum is a default risk following the recent arrests of the Houston refining company's top leadership in Venezuela.

The major credit ratings agency downgraded Citgo to a negative watch list with a "CCC" rating that describes Citgo as a substantial credit risk with a real possibility of defaulting. Citgo previously held a "B-" as a highly speculative risk that was still functioning OK financially. (Fitch is majority-owned by the Hearst Corp., the parent company of the Houston Chronicle.)
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Brookfield Property Partners, owner of Allen Center and other downtown skyscrapers, is expected to announce Monday that it has closed on a mega-deal to purchase Houston Center, giving the company control over an even greater portion of urban real estate.

The deal includes 4.2 million square feet of office and retail space in buildings spanning 9.2 acres and several blocks around the intersection of McKinney and San Jacinto on the southeastern part of downtown.

The buildings include the 46-story LyondellBasell Tower, the 51-story Fulbright Tower and the 40-story 2 Houston Center. The smaller 4 Houston Center and Shops at Houston Center are also part of the acquisition.

The purchase price was not disclosed but sources pegged the deal at about $875 million earlier this year.

The new owner said the complex has a "stellar tenant roster" but the building's lobbies, skybridges and plazas need upgrading and the offering of amenities need improving.

"The focus of our redevelopment efforts is going to be on enhancing the overall tenant experience," Travis Overall, executive vice president and head of the Texas region for Brookfield, said in an email.

He said the company is soliciting proposals from designers.

With some 12 million square feet, Brookfield is downtown's largest landlord of commercial space.

On the west side of downtown, Brookfield has undertaken a $48.5 million renovation of its Allen Center development.

Part of the renovations included the development of a one-acre park branded "The Acre." The greenspace has a plaza and lawn that can seat up to 1,500 people for concerts and other events. In late 2016, Brookfield also purchased the adjacent DoubleTree Hotel, where it is planning a renovation and rebranding.

Overall said the acquisition of Houston Center reflects the company's belief in the strength of downtown Houston.

"The combination of Houston Center's premier location, superior amenities, diverse tenant base and underutilized space, together with Brookfield's placemaking expertise and plans for meaningful capital upgrades, creates a significant and unique opportunity," he said in a statement.

Houston Center has changed ownership several times since the development broke ground in the 1970s.

Brookfield purchased the property from institutional investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which became the sole owner in 2011. HFF represented the seller.

The 5 Houston Center building is owned by Spear Street Capital and not part of the deal.

Brookfield, part of Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management, acquired Houston Center on behalf of a private real estate fund.

Bob Eury, executive director of the Houston Downtown Management District, said the property is poised for a redevelopment.

"The office campus of the future is changing," he said in a statement, noting how mixed-use developments are increasingly sought after by office tenants.

In addition to four office buildings, Houston Center has three stories of retail space filling 196,000 square feet.

The complex is 72 percent occupied. Brookfield has hired Transwestern to oversee leasing operations.

Separately, Brookfield is pursuing a deal to acquire national mall operator GGP Inc., which owns multiple properties in the Houston area.

Brookfield, which already owns about 34 percent of GGP Inc. stock, made an unsolicited bid for the rest of the company in a deal valued at $14 billion.

Chicago-based GGP confirmed the proposal in November and said it is being evaluated. Brookfield declined to comment further.

GGP's local properties include Baybrook Mall, Deerbrook Mall, First Colony Mall, The Woodlands Mall and Willowbrook Mall.
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No one disputes the prominence of Houston in the state's burgeoning barbecue scene. But a friendly face-off between Houston barbecue joints and Austin pitmasters on Sunday saw the capital city edge out H-town in smoked meats know-how.

At the HOU-ATX BBQ Throwdown, held Sunday at Saint Arnold Brewing Co., judges gave first place (a tie) to two barbecue joints representing the Austin area: Brotherton's Black Iron Barbecue in Pflugerville, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue of Austin. LeRoy and Lewis also won the People's Choice Award. Brotherton's entry was a "Pigpen and Pasture" banh mi  pulled pork and beef cheek pate on crostini topped with house-made kimchi. LeRoy and Lewis turned in pork bacon ribs with brisket fried rice and house-made kimchi.

Now Playing: These tender, oven-roasted ribs are basted with our Melting Pot Barbecue Sauce, a sweet and tangy mix of several regional Southern sauces. Video: Brandpoint

Austin was represented by Brotherton's, LeRoy and Lewis, Hays Co. Bar-B-Que, Micklethwait Craft Meats and Valentina's Tex Mex BBQ. It was the first time the Austin restaurants served in Houston.

The Houston side of the barbecue battle was represented by Beaver's, the Brisket House, El Burro & the Bull, Gatlin's BBQ, Harlem Road Texas BBQ, Killen's Barbecue, My Yard Reaction BBQ, the Pit Room and Tin Roof BBQ.

There were long lines for Beaver's which served up smoked fried chicken with crackling cornbread; for Killen's pork "three ways" which included a spring roll filled with barbecue pork belly; and for El Burro & the Bull's smoked wild game chile Colorado.

"It's rich on top of rich," the Pit Room owner Michael Sambrooks said of his restaurant's entry of beef burnt ends on a shrimp cracker topped with cold smoked uni butter. "We want to step up our game every time we come to this."

Gary Fountain/For the Chronicle/Gary Fountain

Sambrooks said the competition was less a rivalry and more an appreciation of what Texas' top pitmasters can bring to the table. "We're not talking trash or anything," he said.

John Brotherton, owner of the winning Brotherton's, admitted he was a bit nervous planning for the competition. But also excited to be cooking for a Houston audience that truly appreciated good barbecue, he said.

"It's been really awesome, almost surreal," Brotherton said of his debut into the barbecue world with his Pflugerville outpost, which opened in May. "It's nice after all the hard work to see it paying off."

The HOU-ATX BBQ Throwdown, which attracted a sold-out crowd of 500, was produced by the HOUBBQ Festival.
1791: Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna, Austria, at age 35.

1945: Five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers mysteriously disappeared after taking off from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on a training mission with the loss of all 14 crew members. That fate of "The Lost Squadron" contributed to the mysterious legend of the Bermuda Triangle.
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Just call her Kendra Claus.

Kendra Scott, the Austin-based billionaire and jewelry designer, surprised passengers waiting to board a Southwest Airlines flight headed from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to Chicago's O'Hare last week. Scott, who was looking ever glam in a sweater in her signature yellow, took the microphone from a Southwest employee and announced: "The holidays can be stressful, so today you are in for some big surprises,"according to Texas Monthly.

As passengers got on the plane, Scott handed them each a gift bag full of jewelry, complete with a yellow eye mask that read "and to all a good night" with her logo.

Last year, an investment deal with private equity firm Berkshire Partners valued Scott's jewelry and home accessories line, which she started from her home in 2002, at more than $1 billion.

By the end of this year, Scott will have 75 stores across the United States as well as her first shop overseas, which opened in London in November within the Selfridges department store.

Scott has Houston ties. She's graduate of Klein High School.
A man is dead after he crashed into a flatbed semi-trailer in northeast Houston, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

Jose Torres was driving his Volvo truck westbound in the 13700 block of Beaumont Highway around 9 p.m. Sunday. Nicolas Duarte, the driver of a Chevrolet Cruze, was behind him.
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FORT WORTH, Texas - Coming to grips with never again being able to work because of a debilitating disease or injury can gnaw at one's self-worth.

But 51-year-old John Tovar of Arlington never expected his spiral into full-on depression would come as a result of waiting just for the opportunity to state his case to qualify for Social Security disability benefits.

In Fort Worth, and across the nation, the system is backlogged to the point of near-absurdity. Local applicants can wait up to two years for a hearing before a judge, with many cities facing longer waits. A hearing is scheduled after applicants have already been denied - as most typically initially are - a process in itself that can take up to eight months.

And so as the bureaucratic clock creeps toward a hearing, many applicants are faced with slashed household income, dwindling or drained savings accounts and often no option left but to pile car payments, mortgage payments, prescriptions and groceries on to credit cards.

"Filing for disability was a last resort for me," said Tovar, who suffers from diabetes, nerve damage and carpal tunnel syndrome. "That's really one of the main reasons I did this, because we've been a two-income family for the longest time, and now my wife is the only one working. It makes me feel pretty worthless. What kind of took me aback was when they finally set up the final hearing, they said it would be anywhere from 12 to 18 months.

"Why would it be 12 to 18 months?"

The short answer is a lack of appropriate funding of Social Security by Congress.

"It's just a lack of staff, and it's tied directly to a lack of appropriations," said prominent disability attorney Charles Hall, whose law firm is based in Raleigh, N.C.

Social Security offices nationwide, including the downtown Fort Worth location, are understaffed and underfunded to handle the carousel of thousands of cases submitted each year. In Fort Worth, 10 administrative law judges are tasked with 5,899 pending disability cases, according to figures compiled by the Social Security Administration.

The average wait in Fort Worth for a hearing is 483 business days, or nearly two years. While it seems excessive, it's actually one of the speedier rates in the state and country. San Antonio's average wait is 527 days; the Rio Grade Valley is a whopping 622 days. Applicants in Miami wait for a hearing on average 759 days.

More than 1 million Americans are awaiting a hearing with an average wait of two years.

"In the last couple of years, we've seen applications decline, yet the backlog went from unacceptable to extremely unacceptable," said Mike Stein of Allsup, which represents people attempting to qualify for disability benefits.

Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee where he serves as the chairman of the Social Security Subcommittee and sits on the Health Subcommittee. Since becoming chairman, Johnson has held 18 hearings on the disability benefits program, including as recently as Sept. 6. In February, Johnson called on President Donald Trump to nominate a Social Security Commissioner, a position that remains unfilled.

"To make matters worse, these long wait times make getting back to work even harder for those who don't qualify for benefits. The status quo is unacceptable," Johnson said in a statement to the Star-Telegram. "That's why I recently held a hearing on this issue, where we discussed with the Social Security Administration what actions it's taking to address this issue and what obstacles it's facing."

Tovar and his wife have exhausted their rainy day fund, and then some.

Four years after nerve damage in his feet forced Tovar to leave his job at Poly-America in Grand Prairie - where he worked for 20 years, and where his wife, Mina, 47, continues to work - Tovar reluctantly applied for disability benefits in August 2016.

He just thought he'd surely eventually be able to find a job that didn't require him to be on his feet for hours a time. When the nerve damage spread to his hands and arms, Tovar lost all ability to work.

Tovar was denied disability benefits in July and requested a hearing in August. It could be two years before he gets that hearing.

Meanwhile, watching Mina wake up at 4:30 a.m. for work, then return to take care of the household, all on her salary of about $55,000, preys on his soul.

Along the way, he cashed in his 401(k) to pay off the remainder of the mortgage and clear credit card debt. But with only Mina's salary, rising medical and prescription costs are causing those credit card balances to balloon.

Expedited hardship cases mean a longer wait for those like Tovar.

Some wait so long they die before their hearing. Last year, 7,400 people on wait lists were dead, according to a report by Social Security's inspector general.

Disability benefits are not meant to replace salary. The average benefit is $1,037 a month. It won't help the Tovars pay down their credit cards again, but it could at least help them from piling on excessive debt.

"I've been thinking about that, too; what am I going to do if I get turned down?" Tovar said. "My condition is deteriorating. I'm just wondering what I'm going to do if it doesn't go through. Eighteen months from now, it's going to be worse."

Many claims that finally reach the hearing stage are declined. Of the 4,513 claims that went before a judge last fiscal year, 38 percent were denied.

A Fort Worth woman who has had breast cancer, has undergone heart surgery and suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that limits her lung functionality to 54 percent, filed her initial disability claim two years ago. She isn't scheduled for her hearing until early 2018.

She said she is "appalled at the process" and was too scared to be quoted by name for this story because she feared jeopardizing her chances at winning her claim or delaying the process further. She said she "has always worked and paid my taxes," but is now in "serious financial problems." If not for her ex-husband helping her pay bills, she said she would have lost her house through this process.

Making the system more efficient simply isn't in the cards until Congress chooses to appropriately fund Social Security so it can hire more administrative staff and judges.

"The problem is not enough funding from Congress. The local people work hard and work long days," said a Fort Worth disability attorney who asked not to use her name because she represents clients in front of the judges.

"The local office is trying to do what they can, but Social Security has always been that third wheel. Congress always finds reasons why they don't want to fund it."
ConocoPhillips said Monday that it has reached an agreement to recover more than $300 million from the government of Ecuador, which expropriated two of Conoco's significant oil assets in the country.

The settlement follows a 2012 arbitration finding that Ecuador violated the U.S.-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty. Ecuador will pay $337 million to a ConocoPhillips subsidiary, Burlington.
Don't expect Big Shale to rush and fill the hole left by OPEC in the oil market.

Executives from three of the biggest independent U.S. drillers say they won't increase activity just because prices rise after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies agreed to extend output curbs. The emphasis, instead, will be on maintaining spending discipline and generating profits to return to investors, according to Pioneer Natural Resources Co., Parsley Energy Inc. and Newfield Exploration Co.

While crude is trading near the highest level in more than two years as OPEC and its partners limit supplies in a bid to drain a global glut, investors have been concerned stronger prices would encourage U.S. drilling and undermine those efforts. The biggest oil crash in a generation began in 2014 as a boom in American shale output spawned a race for market share between global producers.

"Higher oil prices can bring in more cash to the balance sheet, and you can enjoy that cushion, but there's no need to chase additional activity," Matt Gallagher, Parsley's chief operating officer, told Bloomberg on the sidelines of Van Eck Associates Corp.'s U.S. Shale Forum in Singapore. "It's paramount that you've got to be disciplined and give visibility on spending."

That's not to say the companies won't grow. Pioneer, which drills in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford shale plays, plans to boost output from about 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day this quarter to more than 1 million by 2026, Chief Financial Officer Richard Dealy said. Parsley also drills in the Permian, while Newfield is focused on the SCOOP and STACK plays in Oklahoma.

Cash Flow

The difference now is that shale drillers want to grow while generating free cash flow to return to investors via dividends or share buy-backs, said Shawn Reynolds, Van Eck's portfolio manager for hard assets. In years past, companies routinely outspent their cash flow by 20 to 30 percent in an attempt to grow production as fast as possible.

"I hope they are more disciplined this time around," Pioneer's Dealy said. "If oil prices are higher, that means our cash flow may turn positive that much sooner, but no real change in activity level."

Last week's decision by OPEC and its partners including Russia could potentially harm shale, Van Eck's Reynolds said. While companies with the most efficient operations and richest acreage can profit at an oil price of $50 a barrel, rising prices may mean hundreds of other small independent drillers with lower-quality sites could begin to break even on production and start drilling again, increasing costs for everyone. West Texas Intermediate futures traded at $57.81 a barrel at 10:20 a.m. London time.

"I don't like $27 oil, but I don't like $80 oil either," Gary Packer, chief operating officer for Newfield, said in an interview. "Inefficiencies get bred into this industry at high commodity prices, and I think we have built efficiencies within the unconventional space to deliver exciting returns for our shareholders in a $50 environment."

Shifting Strategy

As U.S. output increased, OPEC in late 2014 decided to pump at will to defend market share, exacerbating the price collapse that sent several shale companies into bankruptcy.

U.S. production has rebounded since OPEC reversed course last year and decided to cut output to force the world to burn through a glut of global inventories. Thursday's extension, which will prolong curbs from March 31 to the end of 2018, will allow American firms to raise supplies even more and steal market share from OPEC in places like China, Barclays Plc analysts Michael Cohen and Warren Russell said in a Nov. 30 report.

That idea is tied to the past, though, Newfield's Packer said. The shale industry of old was able to generate phenomenal growth at the expense of providing sound financial returns. The focus now is on the bottom line.

"What we're hearing today from our investors is they want to see more discipline," he said. "If investor behaviors change and they start rewarding production growth again, it can be a different outcome, but that's not the narrative that we have today."
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After months of seeking comments for stakeholders, public meetings, and input from as many sources as they could retrieve them, the city council of Dayton has given final approval to the Dayton Comprehensive Plan.

A record turnout for a community meeting last fall was the impetus for the framework of the original draft and since then, additional tweaks to the plan were made and a final draft presented to the community on the city's and the Dayton Community Development Corporation websites.

With no opposition on the plan during the public hearing, Dayton city council voted on the matter on Monday, Nov. 27, and unanimously gave the thumbs up to proceed with enacting the plan.

"The Comprehensive Plan is a major accomplishment for our community," said City Manager Theo Melancon.

"It is the first step in the process of visioning our long-term future. Public input was greatly appreciated and served to mold the final product greatly."

While many of the aspects of the plan will not come until years later, there are plenty of others that can begin in the near future.

"I am excited to begin executing on the plan over the coming months and years," Melancon said.

The city manager said infrastructure is something that will need to be planned out and installed over the long term.

"In the short term, moving forward with revitalizing downtown and having land use standards were strongly suggested by the general public. Those are things we are making strides on as we speak," he said.

Earlier this year, the council approved Kendig Keast Collaborative to continue their work for the city, this time in the Downtown Revitalization Plan, a much closer look into development for that area and keeping it vibrant.

"Another immediate term item is reaching out to industrial companies that may be able to help us expand our capacities in water and sewer services," the city manager said.

"The Comp Plan showed that we have some capacity to grow, but with the massive influx coming, we will need to be flexible in expanding our capabilities," Melancon explained.

Courtland Holman, executive director of the Dayton Community Development Corporation (DCDC), worked closely with Kendig Keast Collaborative representative Luis Nunez.

"This is a big deal because it gives a guideline to our city leaders on how to develop the city and ETJ as it grows," he said.

According to the city website, the plan's findings and strategies focus on the physical and economic aspects of Dayton's growth and development over a 20-year planning horizon.

One goal of the Comprehensive Plan, the site says, is to develop a unified vision, guiding principles, and "big picture" strategies that provide over-arching guidance for current and future decision-makers. The implementation section helps to ground these recommendations in reality by prioritizing short-, mid-, and long-term strategies - with an emphasis on near-term "catalysts" that activate desired change.

"The land use map tells us where we need drainage, where the citizens have asked for an amphitheater, where we want industry to grow and where planned development housing should be," Holman said.

Implementing the plan will also mean updating the outdated codes.

"We will scrape them and redo them and bring them up-to-date," he said.

Holman said one of the most important components of having the plan is it now opens up the door to financing opportunities that the city has not been able to cash in on in the past.

"This is the first step that will help us go for state, federal, and TxDOT funding that we couldn't go for because we didn't even have a base of a plan," he said.

There are funding sources everywhere, he added, that they can look into and know the Grand Parkway will be under construction next year and time is fleeting to get started on these plans.

Last summer, Holman and a delegation of seven others attended the regional International Conference of Shopping Centers (ICSC) in Dallas and they all had the same question.

"Do you have a comprehensive plan? Do you have a land use plan? If not, we're not interested in your community," Holman reported.

He said many of them are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in shopping centers, from small to acres of shopping, but will not invest in an area that does not have protected land use.

"They can't afford to fail," he said. "For two days, from booth to booth, that was the same question we heard over and again. That's why this is so important for the city as the growth comes our way," Holman said.

Since the approval, several of those shopping center developers have now contacted Holman to learn more.

The delegation will attend the larger ICSC conference in Las Vegas next spring, that makes 80 percent of the deals done in the country, in hopes of bringing home more business for the city.

To read the plan, visit the city of Dayton website, http://www.cityofdaytontx.com/
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A Pecan Grove man has pleaded guilty to possessing child porn and trying to skirt the terms of his bond, the Fort Bend County District Attorney's Office said in a press release.

Christopher Paul Cashman, 42, was sentenced to 6 years in prison on Nov. 29.

According to Assistant District Attorney Katie Peterson, Cashman was caught by undercover investigative software downloading child pornography images in 2015.

200-PLUS VIDEOS: Former Texas education employee pleads guilty to child porn

A search warrant also revealed that Cashman was in possession of multiple child porn videos.

While out on bond on the possession of child pornography charge, Cashman forged receipts to show that he had paid his bond supervision fees, when he had actually not paid the fees, according to the Fort Bend County District Attorney's Office.

As a result, Cashman was also charged with forgery and pleaded guilty to that charge as well.

The child pornography investigation was a collaborative effort by the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce, including: the Fort Bend County District Attorney's Office, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office, Missouri City Police Department, and the Needville Police Department.

"This case highlights the importance of undercover internet investigations and reminds us that a child predator can live anywhere," said Peterson. "Law enforcement must remain ever vigilant and proactive to protect our most valuable resource, our children."

Cashman pleaded guilty in the 434th District Court before Presiding Judge James Shoemake. Possession of child pornography and forgery in this case are both third-degree felonies, punishable by two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The defendant was probation eligible.

Peterson and Assistant District Attorney Michael L. Hartman prosecuted the case. Attorney George Parnham represented the defendant.
With the super moon nearly at peak, in a huge, candlelit tent hung with paper orbs, the Menil Collection's "Luminous" ball on Saturday was a glowing universe even without the addition of hundreds of shimmering outfits. Especially in the way that matters most for these things: The event grossed $2.5 million to support the museum.

Honoring chair and life trustee Louisa Stude Sarofim, whom Dominique de Menil hand-picked as her successor to lead the organization, the event drew a glittering crowd of 550, many of whom stayed late to hear awesome songstress Angelique Kidjo perform her African-rhythm-inflected adaptation of the Talking Heads' landmark album "Remain in Light." Talking Heads' keyboardist and guitarist Jerry Harrison joined Kidjo for several songs.

The Menil only hosts a gala every five years or so, and it's worth the wait. Allison Sarofim (Louisa's daughter), Adelaide de Menil (not present), Phoebe and Bobby Tudor and Leigh and Reggie Smith co-chaired. Menil Foundation president Janet Hobby and Menil Collection director Rebecca Rabinow were, well, over the moon.

"Dominique de Menil understood that in order to ensure the Menil Collection's survival she must appoint a successor who believed as deeply as she did in the importance of the arts to human existence. She needed to find someone who had the intellect, sensitivity and will to keep the de Menils' vision alive and relevant  someone courageous enough to alter her own life in order to make the enormous commitment of time, energy, and focus required by the task ahead," Rabinow said, noting how Louisa Stude Sarofim has led the organization "with unwavering grace, determination, and generosity."

Sarofim got chuckles describing how she didn't immediately say yes when Dominique de Menil called her years ago, in the days before cell phones, and asked her to carry on the mission. Sarofim said she was hoping to spend more time in Santa Fe. "Well, you know, there are all sorts of technologies these days," de Menil coaxed. Sarofim said she took the job because she respected the de Menils' approach to art, their spiritual values and their determination to transform Houston.

"The Menil Collection is a beacon of all of these things, a special and beautiful place for everyone to enjoy," she said. "It has the power to change lives."

The gala's theme was inspired by a postcard painting the Surrealist artist Max Ernst sent as a Christmas card in 1955 to Dominique and John De Menil. Guests were invited to roam the museum until midnight, although the drinks and dancing kept the scene hopping in the tent and foyer.

Among the many VIPs: Consul General of France Alexis Andres; Lois and George de Menil; Andee and Aziz Friedrich; Susan and Francois de Menil and their children Sophie, Conrad, and John; Fred Baldwin and Wendy Watriss; Hamish Bowles; JooYoung Choi and Trenton Doyle Hancock; Michael Heizer; Roni Horn; Caroline Huber; Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee; Janie C. Lee and David Warren; Allison Leland; Almine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso; Andrea and Bill White and Doug Lawing and Guy Hagsette.
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It was a wild night for nature lovers in the greater Houston area at the annual Twilight Gala.

On Friday, Nov. 17, nature supporters from across Greater Houston gathered at the Houstonian Hotel for the Nature Discovery Center's 23rd annual Twilight Gala, "A Wild Night for Wild Life." This year's gala - chaired by Rachel and Todd Auwarter, and Meghan and Ken Lutschg - celebrated the impact that natural spaces like the Nature Discovery Center and Russ Pitman Park have on peoples' lives.

Though Board President Ben Cowan acknowledged that the board considered canceling this year's gala "out of respect for those that have been displaced and lost property during the flooding of Hurricane Harvey, including so many in the neighborhood surrounding the Center," he went on to say that "there simply is no escaping the fact that the Twilight Gala is our primary source of community funding."

During his remarks at the dinner, Executive Director Henry Owen highlighted just how imperative that funding is, saying "Harvey left our community devastated and grasping for answers. The need for nature-based education and a deeper understanding of our environment is as important now as it has ever been."

More Information ABOUT THE HANA AND ARTHUR GINZBARG NATURE DISCOVERY CENTER Founded in 1988, the Hana and Arthur Ginzbarg Nature Discovery Center, a 501(c)(3) organization, ignites lifelong curiosity, understanding, and respect for nature through high-quality educational programming and its four-acre outdoor classroom, Russ Pitman Park. See More Collapse

The Center's year-round education programming impacts over 40,000 individuals, mostly kids, each year. Owen told gathered supporters that their donations were "an investment in the future generations of our community." And that they would "Help develop a generation of educated, emotionally-balanced, citizens who are grounded in nature."

Gala attendees supported the Center with a silent auction, a wine pull, and a special donation for nature education.

Funds brought in from the gala, totaling over $122,000, will be used to ensure that the center can continue to offer a diversity of nature-orientated programs for Houston families and schools, creating and strengthening personal connections with nature.

For more information about the Nature Discovery Center and its programs for children and families, and to learn how to support the Center through donations and volunteer service, visit www.naturediscoverycenter.org.
This year's community Thanksgiving celebration, hosted by Holy Covenant United Methodist Church, saw record numbers of guests come through its doors. The weather was deliciously cool and sunny, which set the scene for a beautiful outreach that was taking place both inside and outside the HCKaty campus.

Organizers calculated that in all about 1,600 meals were served. Clothed by Faith documented that they supplied 561 people with a week's worth of clothing.

This year, Randalls provided the Katy Community Feast with all the necessary turkeys and Midway BBQ supplied all the ham. Good Ole boys cooked the turkeys at no charge with a nominal fee for slicing and packaging while Westside Chevrolet contributed financially. Other goods or services contributed by local Katy businesses included: Children's books from Katy Budget Books, Spanish Bibles from Lifeway Christian Store, racks and hangers from Brammers, multiple breads and bagels from Panera Bread, piano music by musician, Steven Jones, and photography services from Photographyfray. Most of these Katy businesses have supplied services, goods, or funds every year since the start of this annual outreach.

The Thanksgiving Feast dates to 2003, when Kaye Brown and the Junior Mission at Antioch Baptist Missionary Church - on Danover Street in Old Town Katy - decided to ensure that no one in their congregation and surrounding church area went without a home cooked Thanksgiving meal. They began cooking out of their homes and small church kitchen. Meals were picked up by those in need and delivered to those who were homebound. Around 2008, people from other parts of Katy discovered what Antioch was doing and asked to join them in their efforts to serve those in need. Donations of coats and blankets were subsequently added to the mix.

In 2011, with Antioch Baptist Church's blessing, the decision was made to open the Thanksgiving Feast to all Katy residents who found themselves in need of a hot holiday meal. It was only through the generosity of some of our Katy businesses, Katy churches and other Katy organizations that the vision became a reality. A steering committee was formed, and the annual Katy Community Thanksgiving Feast was born.

First United Methodist Church in Old Town Katy provided the venue for that first celebration and for those held in 2013 and 2015. Alief Baptist Church of Katy opened its doors to the feast in 2012, and First Baptist Church of Katy hosted the event in 2014 and 2016.

In 2017, 12 Katy churches supplied the funds, side dishes, and volunteers in ministry needed to make the feast possible. Those churches include: Alief Baptist Church, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, The Church at Cane Island, Epiphany of Our Lord Catholic Church, First Baptist Church of Katy, First United Methodist Church of Katy, Grace Fellowship United Methodist Church, Holy Covenant United Methodist Church, Kingsland Baptist Church, New Hope Presbyterian Church, St. Peter's United Methodist Church and Trinity Baptist Church.

Since 2011, Boy Scout Troop 557 those Scouts and their leaders have directed traffic and received side dish donations as they are dropped off at the church and assisted guests with carrying of packages to their cars.

A Kidz Corner was in full swing during the event. Acorn turkeys were crafted, pin the tail on the turkey games were played, and colorful drawings were made by many of the children who dined in or passed through. Two face-painters delighted the younger guests by creating their favorite design atop their smiling faces.

Most people in need of a Thanksgiving meal this year found out about Katy Community Thanksgiving Feast during their visit to Katy Christian Ministries. Others may have learned of it through flyers distributed at Christ Clinic, The St. Vincent de Paul Society at Epiphany of Our Lord Catholic Church and Texas Children's Pediatrics. People were asked to call in and pre-order their meals. Participants were invited to dine in, pick up meals to go, and if homebound, to sign up for meal delivery.

Five Katy non-profit agencies were on site this year to provide information about their services and answer any questions. They included: Christ Clinic, Clothed by Faith, Hope Impacts, Katy Christian Ministries and Pregnancy Help Center.

Tina Hatcher, executive director of Hope Impacts, has been bringing some of Katy's homeless to the feast and distributing meals later in the day since 2013. Rona Lee, with Clothed by Faith, has been a part of the steering committee since 2015. Clothed by Faith sets up its operation at the host church the day before and then on Thanksgiving Day is able to help address the clothing needs of those in attendance.

This Feast Day saw a flurry of activity from start to finish. The first family arrived at 7:30 a.m. and the last ones to be served came at 2:45 p.m. Meal orders exceeded 1.600 this year and the clicker count indicated that there would not be enough food to feed everyone. However, just as with the story of the loaves and fishes, no one left unfed. Leftovers were shared with the Krause Center.

Katy is a special community. What makes it even more special is when businesses, churches, individuals, and organizations unite to serve a common good. People who responded to the invitation for a free Thanksgiving meal, were greeted with hugs, offers of prayer and music that warmed the heart, then their tummies were filled with traditional Thanksgiving favorite foods followed by a distribution of donated books, Bibles, blankets, coats, clothing, diapers/wipes, and non-perishable food items.
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The night air may not have been particularly bracing at this year's official lighting of the Christmas tree outside Katy City Hall, but Juliann Pelton wasn't complaining.

Pelton and her family lived in New Hampshire before moving to Katy and she wasn't mourning the lack of snow drifts.

"It's awesome that they can wear flip flops," Pelton said, motioning toward one of Santa's helpers maneuvering a fidgeting boy toward the waiting lap of the jovial North Pole resident.

This year marked the 45th time the city had staged a formal tree lighting ceremony in front of Katy's city hall. Hundreds of people gathered around the tree to for Christmas performances from Katy choir and dance troupes.

Miles Pelton, 5, seemed to be more interested in how Santa arrived at the tree lighting ceremony - courtesy of the Katy Fire Department- than about seeing the man himself.

"He's a little boy. He was just staring at the fire truck," Juliann Pelton said.

Katy Mayor Chuck Brawner was the host and read "A Visit from St. Nicholas," better known as the "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" poem.

"I think it's great. There are a lot more people here than I expected," Brawner said.

"I'm so pleased this many people came in so they can see what's happening to downtown Katy. It's so important as we try to build these businesses back up."

With Hurricane Harvey still so fresh in the minds of the community, and with some Katy residents still not back in their homes, the importance of something like a simple Christmas event can't be overemphasized, Brawner said.

"This is a community - you look out here and there are families and children," he said. "These are the things that make a community great."

A hush fell over the town square as the countdown began. The crowd erupted into cheers as the Christmas tree suddenly exploded into light.

"This is our first time coming. It's beautiful," Pelton said. "They've really done a nice job."

The line to take a photograph with Santa - and maybe whisper a suggestion for a present into his ear - stretched down the street running in front of City Hall.

Sarah Harrington, who was waiting with her children Ellie, 9 and Anna, 5, was confident of a large crowd for the event - traditionally the start of the Christmas season in Katy.

"It's really great. I was hoping to see how many people turned out," Harrington said.

Her younger daughter enjoyed the lighting but said she really had no interest in take a photograph with Santa. As for Ellie Harrington, she was more than ready to check in with St. Nick.

"I love Christmas," Ellie shouted. "It's the best holiday ever."
Police Chief Art Acevedo called a press conference Monday to report that "actual surveillance video" showed a serial thief that his officers dubbed "the Grinch" was stalking city streets, responsible for breaking into cars and stealing gifts and purses all across Houston.

On the surveillance video, the suspect was wearing a Santa coat, a Santa hat, had greenish-brown fur and was galloping around and clicking his heels while pilfering vehicles.

"He's got a very distinct walking gait," a straight-faced Acevedo said. "Nobody's seen this character?"

Reporters were not quite sure at first whether the chief was serious -- and he wasn't.

Turns out there was no actual serial theft suspect and the fake Grinch video was staged by police, with the furry thief portrayed by an actor. The publicity stunt was aimed at warning shoppers to be vigilant of real thieves who target residents while they are out shopping at the mall during the holidays.

Acevedo warned holiday shoppers in Houston about leaving their shopping bags in the car unattended while they go back inside to continue shopping, saying it would be wiser to just go home and stow the gifts.

"Now, these types of thefts, specifically burglary of motor vehicles, have led to stolen gifts, missing purses and money, sad children and overall killing the holiday spirit," Acevedo said. "(Thieves) are looking for easy victims and easy prey. As you can see by this video, although it is a dramatization, what you saw actually happens in the city of Houston, all year round."

He added: "I hope we didn't give anyone any ideas about going around burglarizing vehicles in a Grinch outfit."

After the news conference, police and communications staff could be heard plotting another staged press event Wednesday in which HPD would demonstrate these holiday-season car thefts in a Target parking lot.

Their plan was to arrest the fake Grinch in the middle of the news conference as the actor tried to steal more gifts, then put him away in a police cruiser and let the media "interview him" from the window.

HPD did not have an update on any leads on the real thieves suspected of stealing holiday packages from more than a dozen neighbors in the Heights area last week, as the Houston Chronicle reported Friday.
The National Weather Service said a severe thunderstorm over Richmond could produce a tornado on Sunday afternoon.

The agency warned north central Fort Bend County and southwestern Harris County -- including Sugar Land, Rosenberg, Richmond, Pecan Grove, Cinco Ranch and Greatwood -- about the impending storm.

Residents are urged to move to a basement or interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building and to avoid windows.

The storm was moving northeast at 10 miles per hour at 3:32 p.m., according to the agency.
The dangers facing deportees, a series delving into brain injuries, and details of foreign bribery cases prosecuted in the Houston area - all in this week's in-depth and investigative reporting.

Deportees often become targets of criminal gangs

By Olivia P. Tallet

The latest flight from Texas loaded with deportees touches down without fanfare. The 87 men and 22 women are taken by bus to the Direccion de Atencion al Migrante looking none too happy as immigration officials drone at intervals: "Welcome to your country."

About three-quarters had been caught by the U.S. Border Patrol trying to cross into the country from Mexico. But about a quarter had been snared by the Trump Administration's roundup of undocumented immigrants -- both those with criminal records, who had been the primary deportation focus of the Obama administration, and anyone else in the country illegally.

Alive Inside:A Four-Part Series

By Mike Hixenbaugh

After deputy Nick Tullier was shot in the head, one doctor suggested removing life support. But he wasn't in a vegetative state, as physicians believed. Like thousands with similar injuries, Tullier was conscious, just unable to show it. Read how a Houston hospital restores patients with severe brain injuries at HoustonChronicle.com/AliveInside.

Harris County jail launches new program to combat opioid addiction

By Keri Blakinger



The Vivitrol is an innovative treatment option that soon will be available for inmates leaving the Harris County Jail. The state's largest county lockup has launched a pilot program that will begin offering the treatment to soon-to-be-released prisoners in hopes of preventing relapse and reducing recidivism.

Godofredo Vasquez

"It's really pretty exciting for us," said Dariel Newman, the jail's head nurse of quality improvement. "We see so many folks in here that their addiction is either the reason they were arrested or a factor."



Houston Marine's military interpreter finally reaches new home in Texas

By St. John Barned-Smith



Mohammed Younus Yousafzoy walked off Lufthansa Flight 440, bleary-eyed and dizzy from the two-day trip from Kabul. Then the 24-year-old arrived at Bush Intercontinental Airport Wednesday after receiving a special immigrant visa available to interpreters and others who helped the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq.



But dwindling visas and delays have left thousands of former interpreters - who risked their lives to help the U.S. military since 2001 - waiting to leave countries where that support has exposed them to additional dangers and violence.

Elizabeth Conley/Chronicle

Houston a center of foreign bribery enforcement

By L.M. Sixel



Houston last year accounted for seven, or about one-fourth of the 26 cases brought by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.



Over the past decade, Houston federal court has become one of the busiest in the nation for cases involving bribes delivered abroad in large part because of the concentration of energy companies that do business worldwide.
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The call to worship came at 11 a.m. on rain slicked streets in downtown Houston.

Francisco Hernandez Lopez led his troupe of 130 feathered folk dancers onto the streets, joining hundreds of others.

Clouds of incense filled the air. Dancers twirled and leapt in unison to the pounding drums, their anklets clacking like angry rattlesnakes. The procession slithered through downtown Houston to acknowledge the annual festival to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico and the Americas.

"It's to transmit the love of the people to the Virgin," said Lopez.

A third generation performer originally from Cuernavaca, Mexico, Lopez has now danced in 14 festivals in Houston honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe. For Sunday's celebration, his troupe - from the Church of the Holy Ghost in southwest Houston - practiced for months.

His wife, Yolanda, led the troupe, carrying a brazier of smoking incense, while behind, their two children - Anthony, 9, and Samira, 6 - shuffled and twirled in time to the beat, pint-sized miniatures of the grown-up dancers.

"I'm amazed at their deep faith," said Fr. William Bueche, pastor of the Church of the Holy Ghost, who was carrying a feather-adorned maraca and walking with his parishioners. "How it's expressed. How much effort they put into it. And such an ancient tradition on our continent. It's a great gift to us in North America."

On December 11, Lopez and other members of the southwest Houston church plan to dance and pray from 7 p.m. to the next morning to celebrate, as they do every year, the miracle of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an icon of Catholic Christianity across the Americas.

More than 800 dancers

The legend of the Virgin of Guadalupe goes like this: in 1531, a Mexican peasant named Juan Diego crossed a hill near Mexico City and he had a vision of the Virgin Mary.

She appeared as a native Mexican woman and spoke to him in Nahuatl, asking him to build a church on the hill in her honor.

Diego told the archbishop of Mexico City the request, but the archbishop didn't believe him and sent him away. Twice more, the Virgin appeared to Diego, who pleaded with the unmoved archbishop. Eventually, the unbelieving archbishop asked for proof of a miracle.

The Virgin sent Diego to a high hillside in the middle of the winter, where he found a thriving patch of Castilian roses - flowers that did not grow in Mexico.

He gathered them in his tilma - or cloak - and took them to the archbishop. When he saw the archbishop - for the fourth time - he let the roses spill from the tilma on to the floor. On the fabric of the cloak remained an image of the Virgin Mary.

The miracle was credited with helping to evangelize the indigenous population of Mexico, and in 1961, Pope John Paul XXIII named the Virgin of Guadalupe "The Mother of the Americas."

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City - the church built on the site where the virgin appeared to Diego - has become the most visited site in Catholic Christendom.

Ever since, Catholics across the world have celebrated the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe in early December.

On Sunday morning, more than 800 dancers from 30 churches across the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston gathered for the celebration, said JoAnn Zuniga, a spokeswoman.

They came from across southeast Texas and one troupe from as far away as Corpus Christi.

The procession represented the struggle between good and evil, said Roberto Chavez, 50, one of the organizers, pointing at a man dressed as a gruesome devil, trailed by a woman bearing crossed wooden swords.

"It's a devotion," he said.

In traditional costume

After the parade to the George R. Brown Convention Center, each troupe performed individual dances. Some were dressed as traditional Aztecas dancers - wearing headdresses (penachos), chest plates, and knee guards and bearing shields, maracas or lances - and "Matachines," dressed in headdresses and "naguillas," intricately embroidered vests and skirts.

At a break after the parade, Lopez's son, 9-year-old Anthony paused to grab a snack.

They'd practiced a lot, Anthony said. He was happy he had not forgotten the dance steps.

"We're going to go to mass," he said. "Then we're going to dance again."

He turned and walked off, his anklets clacking with each step.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Sunday morning lashed out at ABC News, two days after investigative reporter Brian Ross made an erroneous report involving the president.

Ross had incorrectly reported Friday that during Trump's presidential campaign, Trump had directed Michael Flynn to make contact with Russian officials before the election.

Later that night, Ross read a "clarification" on "ABC World News Tonight," saying Trump had actually asked Flynn to make contact with Russia after the election, when he was president-elect.

Flynn, who briefly served as Trump's national security adviser after the election, pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI.

ABC News apologized for the mistake Saturday and issued a full correction. The network also suspended Ross for four weeks without pay.

On Twitter Saturday night, Trump initially offered his "congratulations" to ABC News for "suspending Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt."

Many Trump supporters, including the president's adult children, accused Ross of propagating "fake news" and linked his report to the Dow dropping 350 points.

On Sunday, Trump took aim at the network itself, calling for those affected by the stock market tumble to "consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused."

The network had "broken" Ross' report Friday with a tweet that read: "JUST IN: BrianRoss on ABC News Special Report: Michael Flynn promised "full cooperation to the Mueller team" and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump "directed him to make contact with the Russians."

Later Friday night, ABC then issued a "clarification," in the form of a new tweet and Ross' on-air appearance on "World News Tonight" with host David Muir.

The subsequent tweet, which has also since been deleted, read: "CLARIFICATION of ABC News Special Report: Flynn prepared to testify that President-elect Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians .during the transition. - initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria, confidant now says."

ABC News was widely panned, even by those in the industry, for its bungled handling of Ross's error. Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer called the network's "clarification" a "cop out and just another reason for the decline in trust of the media."

Several lamented that ABC had given ammunition to those who have long accused the mainstream media of "fake news."

"This is not a 'clarification,' this is a huge effing difference," BBC senior reporter Anthony Zucher said on Twitter.

It wasn't until late Saturday afternoon that ABC issued a full correction and characterized Ross' mistake as a "serious error."

"We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error we made yesterday. The reporting conveyed by Brian Ross during the special report had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process," ABC News said in a statement. "As a result of our continued reporting over the next several hours ultimately we determined the information was wrong and we corrected the mistake on air and online."

The statement continued: "It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience - these are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released an active tornado warning for Fort Bend and Harris County at 3:32 p.m. on Sunday.

The administration categorizes the urgency of the warning as "immediate" and is set to expire at 4 p.m. on Sunday, according to the administration's alert page. Locations impacted most by the warning include southwestern Sugar Land, northern Rosenberg, Richmond, Pecan Grove,

southwestern Eldridge / West Oaks, Cumings, New Territory, Cinco

Ranch and Greatwood, according to the warning.
The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p.
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Press issues delay delivery of todays Chronicle Times Due to press issues, print subscribers will not receive the Nov. 16 issue of the Cherokee Chronicle Times in the...

Galva man charged with his brothers murder A Galva man with an extensive criminal history in Storm Lake was arrested on Sunday night for allegedly killing his...

Cherokee enrollment up 10% over 7 years Enrollment at most of Buena Vista and Cherokee Countys school districts increased across-the-board, according to estimates submitted to the Iowa...

Book Basket Project underway at library The 23rd-annual Book Basket Project is up and running at Cherokee Public Library. This silent auction launched on Monday and...
Anda Automation Expands into Hungary Published: 04 December 2017 by Mike Buetow by Mike Buetow

HONG KONG, CHINA  December 2017  Anda Automation, a leading provider of fluid application and custom design manufacturing equipment, is pleased to announce that it has partnered with InterElectronic Hungary, Ltd. as its distributor in Eastern Europe. InterElectronic offers lines for SMT and THT manufacturing for low-, medium- or high-volume production, as well as complete solutions for the automotive industry.

InterElectronic was founded in 2003 with headquarters in Budapest. A leading representative in its territory, the company provides complex turn-key solutions for companies working in the electronic industry. InterElectronic is an official distributor in Hungary and Romania, and offers some brands in Slovakia, Croatia and Slovenia. The company provides professional consultation, guidance and even integration of projects.

Anda offers precision coating, high-speed dispensing, plasma cleaning, high precision laminating, and customized dispensing solutions. The company serves the PCBA, 3D glass, camera module, CCM, fingerprint module and semiconductor industries.

Karoly Peics, Managing Director at InterElectronic, will represent Andas full line of high precision fluid dispensing equipment. He can be reached at +36 30 296-45-05 or karoly.peics@interelectronic.com. For more information about InterElectronic, visit www.interelectronic.com.
A.O. Centrul de Drept al Femeilor anunta concurs pentru selectarea expertilor nationali pentru dezvoltarea conceptului de sprijin psihosocial si a Curriculumului de instruire in acest sens
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Even if the whole movie wasn't awesome, that moment alone would be enough to elevate Se7en from another generic serial killer flick to a classic, and David Fincher from "the guy who botched Alien 3" to "the future director of Fight Club."

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But They Only Included It Because ...

Of course, "another generic serial killer flick" was exactly what the studio wanted when they bought the screenplay. The first thing they did was tell the writer to get rid of that ending to make the movie more marketable, and he did. And that's how it would have stayed, if they hadn't messed up and sent Fincher the wrong version.

According to Fincher, the draft of the screenplay New Line Cinema meant to send him included every cop movie cliche possible. Mills and Somerset were seen "driving on sidewalks to get to the woman, who's drawing a bath while the serial killer sneaks in the back window." That's the movie New Line wanted to make.

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However, when Fincher was offered the script to direct, New Line accidentally sent him the old version they definitely had no intention of making, and he fell in love with the gut-wrenching ending. It took Pitt and Freeman siding with Fincher to finally convince the producers -- Pitt in particular said he wouldn't do the movie unless "the head stays in the box" and they didn't reedit the scene afterward.
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But when Inside Edition had a set of triplets send their spit in to Ancestry.com and 23andMe, they got wildly different results from both services. Neither gave each triplet the same ancestry results -- which, considering they all came from the same womb, is pretty weird.

"Tests can be a crapshoot. For DNA tests, they use genetic markers, which are little variations in the DNA one or several groups may have, but others do not. The more markers there are, the more accurate the test will be."

Some companies may use 12, 37, or 67, while others claim to use more than 700,000 different markers. Any of those numbers can sound impressive with the right marketing spin behind them, but the simple fact of the matter is that nobody's method is perfect. "The best we can do is give a certain range based on those markers (or show who they are most similar to), and sometimes we'll move up a percentage point of an ethnic group if it doesn't add up to 100 percent."

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Inside Edition found differences of over 10 percent between the triplets they tested. That is not a small gap. If you were off by 10 percent on a DNA test, you could technically be a mouse. Maybe it's unreasonable to expect perfect accuracy from saliva you mailed to a lab. But a lot of people do anyway, and Morgan winds up dealing with their complaints.

"At least once a week, we'll get a call from somebody who took two or three other tests and then ours, and complains about how different they are. Usually it's 5-20 percent off, but we got an email from a guy showing how in one test he was 7 percent Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, then on another he was 33 percent, and then on ours 45 percent, and he wanted to know what was wrong with everyone. We wrote to him that each test is different because of the number and types of genetic markers used, which can skew data, but he wrote back and said that we were con men."

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Genetics experts from the University of Texas and the University of North Carolina have gone so far as to say that these companies are preying on people, because they don't truly have the information they need to pinpoint your origins on a map, and that it's not possible to trace unique ancestry that way. As they put it, "That's the beauty of this scam. The companies aren't scamming you. They're not giving you fraudulent information. They are giving you data, real data, and allowing you to scam yourself."
Classes are over, which means that I get to finally open some of the fun books that I've been meaning to read. Most of what I read is too low brow for me to have the courage to mention here. Plus, Mark tells me that the books in question have to have at least a distant relationship to credit and law.

A couple of days ago, Mark and I talked about Barak Richman's wonderful "Stateless Commerce".

Here is my next recommendation: Jeff King, The Doctrine of Odious Debt in International Law: A Restatement.

Jeff, who teaches at University College in London, was one of the pioneers in the rejuvenation of the Odious Debt literature in 2003-04, when Saddam's government in Iraq was overthrown. Indeed, it was his co authored article for a Canadian think tank - the Center for International Sustainable Development Law, that jump-started the literature. Now, thanks to Jeff and his co authors (and to Saddam too, I guess), there is a large and robust modern literature on the topic. Along the way, in the years that have followed, Correa in Ecuador and Maduro in Venezuela have helped keep interest in the Odious Debt idea alive through their shenanigans. Indeed, Mr Maduro may end up rivaling Saddam in his contributions to the revival of this doctrine whose origins go back to the days of the Czarist regime in Russia in the early 1900s. As an illustration, sovereign debt gurus Ugo Panizza and Ricardo Hausmann have a nice recent piece in Project Syndicate on the relevance of Odious Debt concepts in the context of Venezuelan debt (they have an idea for an Odiousness rating system).

Slipsters are familiar with the Odious Debt debate, I suspect, since Anna G was one of its pioneers. Plus, it is fascinating. Basically, it is a doctrine of international law that says that the debts of "odious" regimes that are utilized for the private illicit purposes of the rulers (and where the creditors almost surely knew this was the case), do not have to be repaid by successor governments. The problem with this doctrine though -- to my mind, and to that of many others like Andrew Yianni, Anna, Mark W, Anupam Chander, Adam Feibelman, Sarah Ludington, Lee Buchheit, Eric Posner, Paul Stephan -- is that it simply does not exist anywhere in international law (or that the basis for it is very very thin). There are some bits and pieces of historical precedent that one could arguably cobble together; but it strikes me as implausible that any modern court would accept the existence of a doctrine of Odious Debt today -- it is just too outlandish for them to do so without a more solid signal from the international community. At least, that was my view until Jeff's book showed up.

Jeff, in his superb book, argues otherwise -- he thinks there is much more of a basis for a doctrine of Odious Debt (and he very politely calls me out for having my head up my backside). And while I can't quite bring myself to go over completely to his side, I found myself nodding in agreement with a great deal of his analysis. It is nuanced, careful and thoughtful. Darn it! I don't think I've changed my mind, but that might simply be because I'm too stubborn.
Connecticut could lose a stalwart company founded in 1851, but the outcome for the state might well be better than what we would have seen in an Aetna-Humana merger.

Thats because Aetna and CVS have far less overlap than Aetna and Humana  and Mark T. Bertolini, the Aetna CEO whos no fan of Connecticut, is not calling all the shots this time around.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin sees the deal as an important opportunity for the city and the state to build a relationship with a giant health care company rooted right here in New England.

Aetna has between 5,500 and 6,000 employees in Connecticut, almost all connected with the head office in Hartford, though many of those people work from home. The total number has drifted down from about 7,000 in 2010, even as Aetnas national employment has gone up because of acquisitions.

CVS, with more than 10,000 pharmacy locations in the United States, has more than 50 pharmacies in southwestern Connecticut. A merger might be unlikely to affect those numbers since Aetna does not have retail locations and a main goal of the merger would be to connect health coverage to the public where the public shops.

The announcement by Aetna and CVS Sunday night did not give details or even substantial hints at local employment and an Aetna spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment about it.

But the nature of the deal is to expand offerings to customers, not necessarily to cut costs, though thats part of all mergers. This transaction fills an unmet need in the current health care system, the companies said in a joint statement.

Details that emerge Monday and beyond will be telling.

The administration will continue to monitor this merger as it develops and as details emerge to ensure that the best interests of consumers and Connecticut are protected, Kelly Donnelly, a spokeswoman for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, said in a written statement.

Bronin said he believes the merger gives Hartford a chance to participate rather than see a shrunken Aetna presence  and he said hes had some encouragement that the company wants to be part of Hartfords recovery.

I congratulate both Aetna and CVS Health, and look forward to working with the leadership of both companies as this merger moves forward, Bronin said in a written release. I think this deal could present an important opportunity for Hartford and for Connecticut to build a partnership with what would be the nations leading health care company.

Bronin said hes been in touch with Aetna and has reached out to CVS in Rhode Island. We need to seize that opportunity, and that means working with tremendous urgency to offer a fiscally-stable, business friendly environment with strong, vibrant cities and high quality of life in all of our communities.

The mayor added that Aetna executives  whom he declined to name  have assured me that the companys commitment to being part of a comprehensive, sustainable solution to Hartfords longstanding fiscal challenges remains in place even in the CVS deal.

Thats a reference to the capital citys brush with bankruptcy, which appears to have been averted at least for the time being through a state package that would include refinancing of the citys debt and additional state aid. As a taxpayer, Aetna could see relief through any form of municipal reorganization, in or out of bankruptcy.

Aetna joined with The Hartford and Travelers in pledging a $50 million fund over five years to help stabilize Hartford  but only as part of a comprehensive plan. The city is expected to draw on that as the state aid and refinancing unfold.

Aetna CEO Mark T. Bertolini, who spends much of his time in New York, is the wild card, as he was focused on moving the headquarters to New York before the CVS deal emerged.

In the July 2015 Aetna-Humana deal, Bertolini pointedly assured Louisville, in person, that city, the home of Humana, would keep its local workforce of 12,000 intact. Bertolini made no such assurances in Connecticut, and hinted at possible workforce declines in the event of that merger  which was shot down by a federal judge who agreed with the U.S. Department of Justice in an antitrust case.

Aetna, in fact, has a history of cutting staff in Connecticut after it makes large acquisitions such as Coventry Health Care in 2013.

This time around, the companies will plead with regulators that they have relatively little overlap, which could mean less savings wrung out of Aetnas Hartford base.

Also in mid-2015, Aetna expressed anger at Connecticuts fiscal crisis as the General Aseembly raised business taxes, as General Electric did separately. An increase in the state computing tax, Aetnas main objection, ended up not happening in part because of the companys lobbying.

The corporate headquarters can be expected to see job declines even if a New York move doesnt now happen. But global headquarters functions in Hartford amount to a small number of people, as Aetna has top corporate executives around the nation.

In the end, it seems odd that the company being acquired could leave its home state in better stead than the previous deal when it was the acquirer. But with political and economic logic upside down these days, that shouldnt surprise anyone.
Alex von Kleydorff / Hearst Connecticut Media

General Electric is cutting 80 jobs in Norwalk, its last major office center in southwestern Connecticut, affecting workers in its GE Digital unit that among other goals is attempting to link industrial systems to Internet-based controls.

Last year, GE moved some 500 employees to Norwalk from its former headquarters in Fairfield, after moving 200 senior executives to Boston, where it is now based, also relocating Stamford workers to Norwalk.
In advance of a contract expiration early next year, Sikorsky Aircraft workers ratified a new five-year contract covering the Lockheed Martin subsidiarys main helicopter manufacturing plant in Stratford, as well as a facility in Florida.

More than 1,900 Connecticut members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 1150 voted on the contract, with less than 70 opposing the deal. Sikorsky indicated the deal covers more than 3,100 employees in Stratford, Shelton and Bridgeport, as well as 700 people in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Sikorsky employs 7,730 people in Connecticut today, of 13,500 globally.

The contract marks the first major new labor agreement under Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin, which spent $9 billion in November 2015 to acquire Sikorsky from Farmington-based United Technologies. Last year, Sikorskys union approved concessions as part of Lockheed Martins negotiations with the state of Connecticut for $220 million in state aid to keep Sikorskys headquarters in Stratford.

The negotiating teams for both the company and the union worked hard to reach an agreement acceptable to both sides, said Jay Bennett, vice president of human resources for Sikorsky, in a written statement.

Teamsters 1150 Secretary-Treasurer Rocco Calo could not be reached immediately Monday for comment, with members crediting him in social media posts for leading the negotiations.

Sikorskys labor contract covers the gamut, from compensation and benefits to the processes through which union members can file any grievances over working conditions. Local 1150 received Lockheed Martins last, best offer on Friday, which included wage increases of 3 percent annually over the five years of the deal, not including periodic changes calculated from formulas estimating the cost of living.

Workers will also receive a signing bonus of $5,000 paid in two installments, the first in January and the second in 2021. In 2018, employees age 55 or older can choose one of two early retirement packages that award one weeks pay for every year of employment, plus one-time bonuses of $5,000 or $20,000 and with one or two years of medical insurance coverage.

Employees will pay $124 or $101 weekly for a standard family health insurance plan, at the upper end equating to $6,400 for the year and representing 20 percent of the companys cost, with Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin picking up the balance.

Lower-premium health plans are available for $20, $43 or $76 weekly that carry maximum deductibles starting at $6,000 before claims kick in for care from physicians authorized under the plans, and more than triple that amount for out-of-network care. The new agreement stipulates that beginning in 2023 new hires will be able to choose a high-deductible plan only.

Health care costs were a significant factor in Sikorsky workers going on strike for several weeks in early 2006, with the U.S. Department of Defense later warning United Technologies on the quality of its production as the company attempted to keep pace on orders with remaining staff not on the picket line. To this day, Local 1150 maintains an online Wall of Shame pointing the finger at workers who broke ranks to go back on the job.

Corrected from an earlier version that due to a reporting error misstated the signing bonus in the new Sikorsky contract, which was $5,000 in two installments.

Includes prior reporting by Amanda Cuda.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
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HARTFORD  Consolidating the states 12 community colleges will cut roughly 190 jobs and ultimately  officials hope  save $28 million, a cost analysis released by the system president on Monday shows.

Not consolidating, warned Mark Ojakian, who oversees the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, could result in a doubling of tuition at the two-year colleges within five years.

We cant raise tuition that much, we would lose students, Ojakian said, making a financial case for his Students First plan with reporters in advance of a meeting Wednesday of the finance committee of the Board of Regents for Higher Education.

Ojakian predicted it will ultimately be approved by the full board on Dec. 14, with or without the blessing of faculty.

For two years, I have been talking about the need for change, Ojakian said. I have not seen from anybody another proposal.

Ojakian wants to keep all existing community college campuses  including Norwalk, Housatonic in Bridgeport, and Gateway in New Haven open  but make them branches of a single joint Connecticut Community College, with a single accreditation.

The plan, Ojakian argued, is needed both to provide the systems 53,000 students with better services and address the states dire financial condition.

More Information Crunching the numbers With consolidation Projected annual tuition increases2.5% New college deficit by 2022$13M Without consolidation Deficit in five years$62M See More Collapse

Faculty like Lois Aime, Norwalk Community College Senate president and chairwoman of the Community College Governance Assembly, remain unconvinced.

Norwalk Community Colleges Senate voted 30-0 last month to object to the plan. In addition, Aime said Capital Community College, Three Rivers, Gateway in New Haven and Tunxis have also voted thumbs down.

It is still smoke and mirrors, Aime said, after reviewing the five-year cost projections for the plan issued on Monday. We again have no specifics on the elimination of positions. What positions exactly?

Erika Steiner, chief financial officer for the system, said the position cuts would include no faculty or staff who directly deal with students such as counselors or advisers. Instead, the 6 percent cut in payroll would come from campus administration, facilities, finance, human resources, marketing and Information Technology departments.

In many cases, positions eliminated on the campus level would be consolidated into systemwide positions.

Each campus will still have a go-to person for academics and finance and staffing based on campus size.

That would appear to Aime to satisfy individual accreditation requirements.

Ojakian said it would not. He added even the accrediting body  the New England Association of Schools and Colleges  has questioned the long-term financial solvency of the states two-year colleges on site visits.

Even with the consolidation, and projected annual tuition increases of 2.5 percent, officials estimate the new state community college would be $13 million in the red by 2022. Without consolidation, Steiner projects a deficit of $62 million five years out.

The plan also anticipates flat funding from the state even though it has sustained cuts over the past several years and flat enrollment.

Ojakian said he believes the new model could lead to an increase in enrollment if better services increases student retention.

I think this is the most responsible step to take at this point in time, Ojakian said. This is the best path forward. I want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to cut costs and increase revenue that comes in.

Experts anticipated the consolidation, if approved by the board, would take two years to complete.
The state Department of Public Health has fined three Connecticut nursing homes  including one in Derby  for violations that injured residents or jeopardized their safety.

Birmingham Health Center in Derby was fined $330 after a resident, who is monitored with a WanderGuard ankle sensor, left the facility. A DPH investigation found that the resident had been on a medical absence and returned to the facility on July 19. On return, staff failed to place the WanderGuard ankle sensor on the residents leg. On July 20, the resident, who suffers from vascular dementia and atrial fibrillation, was reported missing at 1:25 a.m. The resident was found down the street and returned to the facility at 1:38 a.m.

Officials at the facility did not respond to a request for comment.

Other facilities facing penalties include Autumn Lake Healthcare at New Britain, which was fined $3,000 after staff incorrectly used a ventilator machine on a resident.

According to the state, on Feb. 2 a resident with chronic respiratory failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease complained of shortness of breath and was put on a trilogy machine, a type of non-invasive ventilator, after other interventions failed to help. The resident was placed on the machine but continued to complain of shortness of breath and subsequently was taken to a hospital for observation and returned to the facility the next day, according to the citation.

An April 3, DPH investigation found the trilogy machines cuff pressure  an indicator that helps ensure the ventilator is working properly  had been not been measured and adjusted correctly and staff had not been trained in how to use the device.

As a result of the incident, DPH ordered and received an immediate action plan from the facility that says it will not admit any residents who require use of a trilogy machine. Also, all licensed staff and respiratory therapists will be taught how to use the machine and other non-invasive ventilators, the citation states.

Officials at the facility did not return a call seeking comment.

Avalon Health Care Center at StoneRidge in Mystic was fined $1,530 after a resident was injured on two separate occasions during wheelchair transfers.

On Sept. 14, 2016, the resident, who was a known risk for skin breakdown, sustained a skin tear on the left leg when the leg hit a wheelchair leg rest as the resident was being transferred in a bathroom. On Nov. 5, 2016, the resident was taken to an emergency department and needed 13 sutures after suffering a 7-centimenter-long leg laceration after hitting a leg on a wheelchair leg rest, according to DPH.

In the second incident, a nurses aide received disciplinary action for folding up the leg rests, rather than removing them in accordance with facility policy.

Officials at the facility did not return a call seeking comment.

This story was reported under a partnership with the Connecticut Health I-Team (c-hit.org).
At the beginning of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, now remembered as a shameful precedent in our nation's history. With Roosevelt's signature, my father, Fred T. Korematsu, and almost 120,000 other Japanese Americans were incarcerated unconstitutionally on the theory that they would be disloyal and engage in espionage against the United States.

My father resisted and stood up for what was right. He was not going to submit to an order rooted in wartime hysteria, racism and xenophobia. Instead, he stayed in San Leandro, California, and tried to hide from authorities. He was arrested and convicted of evading the order, and he eventually appealed to overturn it. His case, Korematsu v. United States, reached the Supreme Court in 1944. Instead of asking probing questions, the court acquiesced to the government's position, failed to scrutinize whether the government's claims had any basis in fact, accepted the government's contention that the incarceration was a "military necessity" and ruled against my father. The court not only abandoned its critical role as a "check" on executive power, but disregarded the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. Justice Robert Jackson dissented, calling the decision a "loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority who could bring forward a plausible claim of urgent need."

In 1981, evidence was discovered that the government had suppressed, altered and destroyed material evidence proving Japanese Americans were not engaging in espionage and the mass incarceration was unnecessary. My father was able to use the evidence of government misconduct to overturn his conviction by the U.S. District Court, utilizing a rare legal action. Today, conservative and liberal legal minds agree that Korematsu and Executive Order 9066 were wrong, and should not be repeated.

Earlier this year, President Trump issued Executive Order 13780 followed by Proclamation 9645, ostensibly for "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States." This order banned visas and U.S.-bound travel from certain countries - all countries that happened to have majority-Muslim populations. Widely known as the Muslim Travel Ban, this executive order echoes the World War II incarceration camps separating those of a different ethnicity under the guise of national security. Both executive orders under Trump and Roosevelt target and discriminate against minorities, tear families apart and preach intolerance. And I believe we will soon see they are found to be unconstitutional.

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Because my father's conviction was vacated, the Supreme Court never had the opportunity to overturn its ruling in his case that upheld the mass incarceration, nor to define the limits of executive orders. This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will have a chance to do just that when it reviews Trump's executive order.

If the courts uphold the travel ban, it will affirm that bigotry and intolerance take precedence over our core constitutional rights. We must stop repeating history by ignoring our past indiscretions. Korematsu is a reminder that while we may sometimes be afraid during times of crisis, fear should not prevail over our fundamental freedoms. The purpose of the Constitution is to protect the liberties that were given at the founding of our country.

In 1995, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg optimistically wrote in a dissent in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena that "a Korematsu-type classification . . . will never again survive scrutiny." In 2014, Justice Antonin Scalia unequivocally stated that the ruling from Korematsu was wrong. And Scalia gave a darker premonition: "But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again . . . In times of war, the laws fall silent."

The courts must not "fall silent" and must act diligently not to repeat the mistake the legal system made in my father's case. His liberties were compromised in 1944. It must not happen again. We need to be vigilant and remember my father's words: "Stand up for what is right!"

- Korematsu is the founder and executive director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute and the daughter of the late Presidential Medal of Freedom awardee Fred T. Korematsu.
MILFORD - Three Staten Island, N.Y. residents have been arrested for allegedly trying to use counterfeit money at the Sears store in the Connecticut Post mall.

Police were called the store around 8:30 p.m. Saturday when they were told that the trio were in possession of numerous fraudelent $100, $50 and 20 bills, according to Officer Joseph Dempsey.
Jumped before he was pushed: Alan Milburn presented his departure as 'social mobility tsar' as a resignation on a matter of principle despite the fact his term had come to an end

How strange it is that Alan Milburn should routinely have been described as the Government's 'social mobility tsar', a grandiose title to which he never objected.

After all, the Russian tsar was the apex of a system of absolute social hierarchy. Now our social mobility 'tsar' has abdicated, protesting that the Government is doing nothing to bring about the more equal country that the Social Mobility Commission was designed to support.

In fact Milburn's abdication is no more voluntary than that of Tsar Nicholas II, 100 years ago. As Justine Greening, the Education Secretary, pointed out yesterday, he'd been doing the job for five years 'and his term had come to an end'.

In other words, Milburn jumped before he was pushed, and presented it as a resignation on a matter of principle.

In one respect, Milburn really did enjoy the status of a tsar: his pronouncements as chairman of the Social Mobility Commission were always accorded complete reverence  not least on the BBC  and were never subjected to any sort of critical review.

When this quango was launched in 2012 by the then coalition top team of David Cameron and Nick Clegg (largely, I suspect, because both men were embarrassed by their own exclusively private education and wealthy backgrounds), Milburn declared: 'We live in a country, where, invariably, if you're born poor, you die poor.'

He repeated this on many occasions  and was never challenged on it by his many TV and radio interviewers.

But it is  and was  completely untrue. Even the Sutton Trust, an organisation dedicated to the cause of increasing the life-chances of the less well-off, has produced research completely refuting Milburn's central proposition.

Feared

Its most recent analysis, dividing society into quartiles by income, revealed that 62 per cent of sons born to fathers in the bottom income quartile, themselves escaped into the higher three quartiles.

Education Secretary Justine Greening pointed out on the Andrew Marr show that Alan Milburn jumped before he was pushed from the role

Moreover, as you would expect, there was social movement (as defined by income) in the opposite direction.

Only 42 per cent of sons born to fathers from the top income bracket managed to retain that position in the highest income quartile  and 16 per cent of those born in the top income category slid all the way to the bottom.

So why did Milburn get away with it? Well, the Conservatives didn't dare criticise him because they feared  especially under David Cameron  that they would be seen as defending 'elitism'. And for Labour, Milburn's position was pleasantly in accord with their own claim that only a Labour government would represent 'the many, not the few'.

Funnily enough, it is within the Labour party  of which the former Cabinet minister Milburn is still a member  that there has been an actual retreat in working-class success.

In 1964, 37 per cent of Labour MPs were from a family background of manual work; by 2015 that figure had plunged to just 7 per cent.

David Cameron's government dare not criticise Milburn because they feared that they would be seen as defending 'elitism'

This process is even accentuated by its current leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as the resoundingly middle-class socialist pressure group Momentum tightens its hold on the selection process.

Ludicrous

On Saturday, the Mail reported 'Labour insiders' as saying that the son of a miner, Kieran Harpham, had been de-selected as a Sheffield councillor because he was 'too authentically working-class' and 'not Left-wing enough': he has been replaced by Janet Ridler, a historian from Sheffield's wealthiest suburb, Dore.

To be fair to Alan Milburn, he is far from a Corbyn fan. He is, to the contrary, a Blairite. And, echoing his former boss, Milburn presented Brexit as a curse on British society, which must somehow be lifted. 'Tough on Brexit, tough on the causes of Brexit,' was Milburn's ludicrous slogan yesterday  which is as much as to say that he thinks the British people's decision to leave the EU was nothing less than a crime.

He went on to argue, confusingly, that if Theresa May didn't do what he said about social mobility, she would be 'betraying the families who voted for Brexit'.

His claim, such as it is, seems to be that those who voted to leave the EU did so as a protest against the nation's lack of social mobility, and its alleged adverse effect on their living standards.

It is an assertion both presumptuous and pompous, based on no evidence. If anything, the pro-Brexit vote in the Labour heartlands was one in favour of greater social cohesion, and against the form of mobility defined by the EU's absolute guarantee of freedom of movement.

Milburn's ludicrous 'tough on Brexit, tough on the causes of Brexit,' slogan suggests that he thinks the British people's decision to leave the EU is nothing less than a crime

The consequent unchecked level of immigration into the UK had many benefits, but the influx of millions of Europeans to work in this country also had a depressing effect on the wages of the unskilled. Such voters would, more likely, argue that the only way Mrs May could 'betray' them over Brexit would be to do what Mr Milburn wants and keep Britain inside the Single Market (which mandates freedom of movement).

But what is it, above anything else, which enables those from less well-off homes to have a chance of prosperity? A first-class quality of free education and the prospect of regular employment at the end of it. By both these measures, Britain has actually been upping its game  and it has nothing to do with Mr Milburn's Social Mobility Commission.

Employment rates have been rising, for year after year, and the proportion of families without anyone in paid work has (thankfully) gone in the opposite direction  down. The latter has much to do with the benefit reforms pioneered by Iain Duncan Smith.

His colleague, Michael Gove, was also instrumental, as Education Secretary, in driving up standards in state schools by demanding a greater level of rigour in both teaching and examinations.

The result of this has been a narrowing of the quality gap  and public exam outcomes  between state schools and private schools.

Again, this was no thanks to the Social Mobility Commission. It had nothing useful to say about improving the standards of teaching, and instead advocated lowering standards of entry at our top universities to those from the poorest homes. What a counsel of despair.

Of course we are an unequal society. As are all societies in all nations, always. But despite the self-serving cliches of the Left, last year in the UK income inequality  defined as the gap between the earnings of the richest and the poorest  fell to its lowest level since 1986.

Benefit reforms pioneered by Iain Duncan Smith, left, and the drive to improve standards in state schools by his colleague Michael Gove had nothing to do with Mr Milburn's Social Mobility Commission

And, as the Chancellor Philip Hammond pointed out in his Budget speech a fortnight ago, since 2010 the incomes of the poorest 10 per cent have grown faster, proportionately, than the richest 10 per cent.

Obsessed

It's true that we are in a long period of earnings stagnation: but this applies across the developed world. And it is simply not the case that Britain is at the bottom of the international league table in terms of social mobility.

We are probably more obsessed with class than any other nation, and accent still plays too much of a role in the way we treat each other.

But as Peter Saunders, emeritus professor of sociology at Sussex University explained in his recent Civitas pamphlet, Social Mobility Delusions: 'Social mobility is the norm in Britain, not the exception, and it covers the range from top to bottom. Politicians say our social mobility rate is one of the lowest in the Western world, but studies of class mobility put Britain around the middle of the international rankings.

'The chances of moving into a different class than the one you were born into are less than in Sweden, the U.S. and Australia, but better than in Germany, France or Italy.'

So do we actually need a quango called the Social Mobility Commission?

We can certainly do without another social mobility 'tsar'.
As a much in-demand celebrity stylist, Rebecca Corbin-Murray is familiar with the all of the red carpet faux pas her A-list clients are anxious to avoid.

And London-based Corbin-Murray, 35, says there's one thing high-profile women fear more than even exposed 'side boob' or a visible foundation line.

She says her clients are most worried about being snapped with an 'armpit vagina'.

The bizarre effect occurs when a star wears a tight dress that pushes their armpits up, creating a crease that resembles an entirely different area of a woman's body.

Red carpet fail: Jennifer Lawrence, seen here displaying the crease between the armpit and torso dubbed the 'armpit vagina', is believed to have coined the phrase at the 2014 SAG awards

Confession: 'I know I have armpit fat, it's OK... it's armpit vaginas,' she said at the time

The phrase is said to have been coined by Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, who complained about it at the 2014 SAG awards.

Famous and afraid: London-based celebrity stylist Rebecca Corbin-Murray, 35, said its one of celebrities' biggest worries

She told reporters at the time: 'I know I have armpit fat, it's OK... it's armpit vaginas.'

When she apparently coined the phrase, Lawrence had appeared on the red carpet in a tight sequin dress to a string of compliments from reporters.

But in her usual deadpan style, the actress said she wasn't feeling comfortable all dolled up.

She said that her dress was 'squeezing her breasts into her armpits.'

And Corbin-Murray, who works with stars like Emma Watson and Sophie Turner, has revealed that it's not just Lawrence who worries about the issue.

The fashionista claims the armpit vagina comes up 'all the time' among the women she works with.

She told The Times: ''Sometimes it's the weirdest part of their body [they worry about].

A-list clients: Corbin-Murray works with Harry Potter star Emma Watson, pictured at the Elle Style Awards in London in February with a so-called 'armpit vagina' in evidence

All smiles: Emma avoided the dreaded armpit vagina in a spaghetti strap dress at The Circle film premiere in Paris in June

The stylist has also worked with Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner, who displayed a bit of armpit vagina at the SAG Awards in 2016

'They say: ''I've got this horrible blah-blah'', and you think ''What are they even talking about?''

'The one that comes up all the time is the arm vagina.'

In May, model Chrissy Teigen revealed that she had gotten liposuction on her armpits nearly a decade ago to avoid the dreaded armpit vagina.

'I had my armpit sucked out,' she said in reply to someone who asked what was the craziest treatment she had ever received during an interview with Byrdie.

The procedure, she said, added 'two inches of length' to her arms and made her feel more confident while wearing sleeveless shirts.

Detailing the liposuction to Refinery29, she said: 'I had an armpit sucked out, which was one of the best things. It's a big secret, but I don't care. It was nine years ago or so.'

Coming clean: In May, Model Chrissy Teigen, pictured in February, revealed that she had gotten liposuction on her armpits nearly a decade ago to avoid the dreaded armpit vagina

Unintentional: The bizarre effect occurs when a star wears a tight dress that pushes their armpits up, like the form-fitting bustier dress worn by Beyonce in 2013

Whoops: Model Sara Sampaio's tight strapless created some unintended armpit bulge while she attended the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show viewing party in New York last month

The Sports Illustrated star further explained the effects of the procedure, calling it the 'dumbest' thing she has ever done. She said the effects turned out not to be permanent and noted she was thinking of getting it done one more time.

'And I had two inches to my armpit. Now it's back though, so now I've gotta pay for [liposuction] again. It was so easy,' she added.

'It made me feel better in dresses; I felt more confident. It was the dumbest, stupidest thing I've ever done. The dumbest, but I like it, whatever. I have no regrets, honestly.'

Beverly Hills-based plastic surgeon Sheila Nazarian told Allure that their has been a slow but steady rise in the number of requests for 'bra bulge' removal surgery over the past few years.

According to the doctor, it is 'young, active' women in their twenties, thirties, and sometimes forties requesting the fat-reduction surgery, which can be achieved through liposuction, CoolSculpting, or Kybella.

Nazarian noted that liposuction is the most common procedure for this type of fat removal, and it can be performed under local anesthetic in just a few hours.
When our children were born, I never thought they would still be living with us in their 20s.

I could just about imagine them starting school, then turning into surly teenagers before reaching the age of reason and waving goodbye for ever on their 18th birthdays. Yet here we are.

Like many parents in their 50s, we find our nest is still full. Fuller than ever, because the grown-up birds take up more space than before.

They havent been here all the time. Three times we packed the car, leaving just enough space for one of them to squeeze between the mini fridge and the portable clothes rail. You unpack them into a bleak student room and cry all the way home because you know things will never be the same  your baby is all grown up.

There have been post-uni absences  a year in South America, a stint at the European Parliament in Brussels, periods of flat-sharing with friends.

Sarah Long (pictured centre with her husband Malcolm and their children) says she never thought her children would be still living with them in their 20s

Tom, 28, studied Economics at LSE, where he also took a Masters in European Government and Politics. He is now an innovation consultant. Ben, 26, is an artist and graduate of the University of the Arts London. Rosie, 22, read Natural Sciences at Durham and is now a maths teacher in a secondary school.

But a parent with a spare room within walking distance of a train or Tube station is a sitting duck. If you were young, would you spend half your salary on renting a pokey room in a flat with an empty fridge if there was a comfy alternative with a stocked freezer? Thought not.

Im not the only midlife parent still with cuckoos in the nest: 3.4 million young men and women live with mum and dad, the highest figure since records began, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Higher house prices, people spending longer in education and many waiting to have children are all factors.

Nearly a third of men aged 20 to 34 still live with their parents, compared with a fifth of women. Its hardly surprising in view of the cost of housing, which has created this boomerang phenomenon and the rather cruel expression failure to launch.

This is the best restaurant in town, said my son recently to a couple of friends who had dropped by and who stayed for supper. And the cheapest, I thought, as they nodded their agreement.

Now our eldest is nudging 30, our dining habits have moved on, of course. We no longer all sit down together as we did when they were biddable kids. You never know who will be in, and when, and who they might bring with them.

Its more like a student house, but where nobody has their shelf in the fridge or writes their name on their milk carton. Theres no need when the fridge magically replenishes itself and there is a moveable feast of dishes. And did I mention the wine?

Pictured left to right, Ben, 26, Tom,28, Malcolm, Sarah and Rosie, 22. Sarah says the territories collapse if she goes away with Malcolm for a weekend

Thats not to say Im the only cook. I am often treated to my kidults offerings, usually involving pasta or fajitas. But their undisputed speciality is the full English breakfast, served at all hours.

We are territorial animals. The kitchen and living areas are open to all, while the boys basement is subject to its own hygiene rules and not to be entered by those of a sensitive disposition.

For historical reasons, because she is the youngest, our daughters room is above stairs, adjacent to ours.

I sometimes panic that weve made them too comfortable

Her clothes and belongings stray on to the landing, perhaps suggesting her wish to push back the boundaries and reclaim the entire floor. She even barges into our bedroom unannounced to inspect herself in our full-length mirror before heading out.

Luckily, we have our own ensuite bathroom, but this can be ransacked for toothpaste and essentials that are too boring for them to buy for themselves. Occasionally, an adult childs room may be requisitioned for our own overnight guests, provoking a martyred look as a sleeping bag is put on the sofa. The territories collapse if we go away for a weekend, which we do as often as possible.

The upside of having a house full of adults is you do not need to put security measures in place. No burglar would dare. The downside is word may get around that there is a free house.

This term came to my attention during the teenage years when a gathering would be planned according to whose parents were vacating their premises. The risks were greater then; you were likely to come home to broken door handles, carpet stains and tales of neighbours seeing young people sitting on your roof. It makes my blood run cold to think of it.

Sarah Long (pictured) says her friends used risky tactics to encourage their children to flee the nest, one decided to take a job in New York leaving the children behind

These days, they are more sedate; the worst you find is the radio tuned to an unfamiliar station and the odd broken cup or depleted bottle of vodka.

But there was once blonde hair on my pillow and an unfamiliar book open on the bedside table, which made me feel like growling, Three Bears style: Whos been sleeping in my bed?

The overnight-guest issue cannot be ignored. They are adults, it is their home and they may invite whomever they like.

I learned this lesson one morning when prowling into my sons darkened room to get his dirty laundry (I know, but the primeval nurturing urge is not to be denied.) While fishing out his shirts and boxers, I noticed a pair of stilettos on the floor and four bare feet sticking out of the bed. Mortified, I crept out unnoticed. He now does his own washing.

As well as the intimate friends, there are the more casual ones. During a phase when we were one child down, my son invited a friend to stay for a couple of nights. When I raised an eyebrow, he said he couldnt see the problem, as we had a spare room. The friend turned out to be a German girl (perfectly pleasant) hed met in Spain, who arrived with a large suitcase and her boyfriend and stayed for two weeks.

Theres no point in doing anything now, might as well wait until theyve left. When were 80

After this, I hit on the idea of taking paying guests  students at an English language school who were grateful and, crucially, out all day. No more spare room, no more passing traffic.

Now we are a full house so the students are consigned to history. Im not too disappointed. While feedback was overwhelmingly positive, one 40-year-old Hungarian felt moved to point out that some shared areas were messy.

Tidiness is not my strong suit, so I cant point the finger of blame. No doubt its my fault for failing to indoctrinate a philosophy of everything in its place.

Where it used to be tripping over Playmobil figures and Lego, its now 20 pairs of shoes cluttering up the hall, headphones tangled up with newspapers on the sofa, the table groaning beneath laptops and files, walls covered in Post-it revision notes, an overspilling ironing basket and everyone helping themselves to everyone elses chargers.

Sarah says she is secretly loving having her children in the house as it creates the illusion of a busy household

You look at the scuffed walls, water stains and gradual decline of the decor and think: Theres no point in doing anything now, might as well wait until theyve left. When were 80.

Are we to blame? I sometimes panic that weve made them too comfortable. We belong to that liberal generation who pretend they are their childrens friends, imposing none of the restrictions we were subjected to at their age. This may backfire  supposing they never leave!

Friends in a similar predicament have told me of interesting solutions. One couple waited until their kidults were travelling, then sold the house and moved into a hotel, transferring all possessions into storage.

Another friend has opted to abandon her full nest by taking a job in New York, but it strikes me as a risky tactic. Whats to stop them changing the locks?

The truth is, I secretly love it. Who wants to be a dreary nuclear couple sinking into quiet middle age when you can be surrounded by young people? Adult children bring friends home, creating the illusion of a busy household that lets you push back growing old.

I like nothing more than cooking giant casseroles of food. What is the point of a family-sized kitchen if you dont have a family to fill it? Theres no way Ill make a cake just for me and my husband  two middle-aged people trying to be careful  but a house full of hungry young people who need the calories is the perfect excuse.

For the time being, Im enjoying being the old sofa they flop back on to. But I hope they move out before theyre, say, 40. Get their own places and settle down. Then we can go and live with them.

I want to be a nightmare mother-in-law in the granny annexe  theres something to look forward to.

Invisible Women by Sarah Long is out now (Zaffre, 7.99).
Time was when winter tights were a necessity rather than a luxury, something worn by people who valued function over fashion. The opaque tight went pretty much unnoticed until it laddered or gave way at the toe.

This winter, however, tights have marched back on to the style agenda with fashion houses including Chanel, Balenciaga, Givenchy and Gucci sending them down the autumn/winter 2017 runways. And things are suddenly very complicated. Never mind colour and denier. What about leg length and waistband depth? Invisible toe seams? Cellulite-reducing crystals woven into the fabric? Has madam considered a silk gusset?

Unsurprisingly, these high-tech tights are gasp-inducingly expensive. Its common for an opaque pair to cost upwards of 20 and many leading brands are stocking styles that pass the 100 mark. The hosiery designers would like you to stop thinking of tights as disposable and consider them as investment pieces. Rather like a pair of designer jeans.

Anna Pursglove rated 6 of the most popular tights available this season with surprising results

But are the new breed of pricey tights worth it? We put six of the fashion-world favourites to the wash-and-wear test . . .

LABEL-FREE LUXURY

Gerbe Futura 40 Tights, 29.50, luxury-legs.com

Appearance: 40-denier

Best for: People (like me) who hate labels in underwear  these opaques have the size woven into the fabric. From luxury French brand Gerbe, theyre all about comfort with a flat waistband to prevent digging and rolling.

Wash test: We put all the tights through a 40c wash to test durability. This pair came through perfectly. You can yank them up by the waistband without damage. Theyre pingy so the fibres just snap back into place  youd be hard pressed to ladder them.

Good fit? Perfect. Im only 5ft 3in, but there was no trace of the dreaded Nora Batty wrinkling around the ankles, nor did the waistband reach my armpits.

Verdict: Although the fit was great and its smart of Gerbe to have removed the labels (I have a minor obsession with ridiculously large and itchy labels in clothing), they dont seem radically different to M&S  just costlier. 2/5

BIT OF A TALL ORDER

Heist The Eighty, 24, heist-studios.com

Appearance: 80-denier

Best for: People who dont like seams. This London-based company caused a stir last month when its ads were banned from the Tube for being overtly sexual.

But among the fashion set the tights are a talking point, primarily because they have no gusset seams and the foot seam is at the base of the foot rather than uncomfortably at the end of the toes.

She says Gerbe Futura 40 Tights (pictured) felt similar to M&S' despite the higher price

In other words, theres nothing to show through your clothes or get annoyingly twisted when youre dressing in a hurry. They also have a 5,000-plus thread count, making them much softer.

Wash test: Passed with ease. They have quite a matte finish so I thought they might rip when I yanked them, but those 5,000 spirals of nylon wind around every inch of elastane (most tights have about 500) so theyre much tougher than they look.

Good fit? No  much too long. The situation may have been improved if I had bought the low-waisted version (22), but the length would still have been wrong.

Verdict: A tall person may well have marked these higher. 4/5

ROLLS ROYCE OF TIGHTS

Wolford Cashmere/Silk, 145, wolfordshop.co.uk

Appearance: Wool

Best for: People with plenty of disposable cash  these are very much the Rolls Royce of tights. They have a clever design feature whereby the back is cut 3cm higher than the front, meaning they stay put when you sit down.

Wash test: You must wash these cold. A friend bought the same pair earlier this year and accidentally washed them at 40c. They came out looking as though they belonged to a five-year-old!

Anna says the tights from Wolford shrunk in the wash and that they don't feel any more luxurious than the cheaper ones available on the High Street

As life is too short for cool washing, I did the same and  you guessed it  they shrunk.

However, they passed my yank test with ease. This cashmere doesnt feel particularly soft, so you dont feel as though youre pulling something delicate.

Good fit? Rather large in the feet . . . before the wash, that is.

Verdict: They dont feel any more luxurious than the soft wool High Street tights that cost a fraction of the price. If theres a reason to pay 145, its lost on me. 1/5

CHIC BUT NOT CHEAP

Falke No. 1 Finest Cashmere Ladies Tight, 170, falke.com

Appearance: Wool

Best for: The sharp intake of breath when you tell people how much they cost!

Wash test: As with the Wolfords, the washing instructions stipulate cool wash only. However, I subjected them to the same 40c cycle and they came out completely unscathed.

She rated Falke No. 1 Finest Cashmere Ladies Tights (pictured) 2/5, as she says you can pick up similar ones at any department store

Good fit? Yes, and these tights feel soft. I was worried I might damage them, but nothing gave way.

Verdict: Softer than the Wolford pair, while clearly made of sterner stuff, but do I love them to the value of 170? I do not.

An extra point is awarded to Falke for producing cashmere you can warm-wash, but despite that, I still dont see how they look or feel radically different from a soft merino wool pair, which you can pick up for a fraction of the price at any department store. 2/5

MARVELS FROM M&S

Autograph Velvet Touch Soft Luxe Seamfree Opaque Tights, 10, marksandspencer.com

Appearance: 60-denier

Best for: People who havent got to grips with the idea of the investment tight.

Wash test: Passed perfectly. Like the Gerbe tights, these have a high ping factor, so no danger of ripping or snagging.

She rated M&S tights the highest as she believes you can get plenty of wear out of them

Good fit? Great. The only thing they dont have (which all the expensive pairs do) is tailored feet, but Im not clear as to why these are necessary. A perfectly serviceable way to render the ends of the tights foot-shaped, I find, is just to put your feet into them.

Verdict: Exactly as described on the packet and youll get plenty of wear out of them. You really dont need to spend any more than this on 60-denier soft opaques. 5/5

SLIM YOUR HIPS

ITEM m6 Beauty Anti-Cellulite Tights, 56, luxury-legs.com

Appearance: 60-denier

Best for: People worried about wobbly hips and thighs. These tights are made by a German company that specialises in medical compression garments  the sort of support-wear doctors prescribe if you suffer from deep vein thrombosis.

Plus, say the designers, woven into the fabric are ceramic crystals that convert body heat to collagen-boosting infrared frequencies, thus reducing cellulite.

The name m6 refers to the pressure point at the ankle which is supposedly stimulated by these tights, making legs feel lighter.

ITEM m6 Beauty Anti-Cellulite Tights also rated highly however she deducted a point as surgeons are sceptical of clothing which can reduce cellulite

Wash test: No problems at all. There is no yanking these things up by the waistband. The extra compression of the fabric means you need to do the old gather-and-pull routine all the way up your leg.

Good fit? The squeeze of these tights is different to anything else Ive found on the market and does slim your silhouette without making you feel as though you cant breathe.

If youre having a can I get away with it? dilemma over that Christmas party dress, these tights might just convince you to give it a go.

Its also worth mentioning that this style comes in two leg lengths  a real bonus for us short-legged women who are tired of tights that bunch around the ankle. Tall women will be similarly pleased by the longer leg, which means the gusset doesnt hover somewhere around your knees.

Verdict: A point deducted for the promise of permanent cellulite reduction. Ive spoken to many a plastic surgeon about whether anti-cellulite clothing works and all of them are sceptical. 4/5
Socialite Basia Briggs recounts her eventful life including her mother's attempt to kill her own husband, her rise and fall among Britain's social elite and how her mother's affair ended her marriage - but gave her a new life

When I was just 13, my mother tried to murder her second husband, Stefan  and I helped her get away with her crime.

Her name was Camilla, and she was exceptionally beautiful. When Stefan first knew her, she could barely walk down the street without attracting attention; even shopkeepers would go misty-eyed when she spoke to them.

On the surface, Stefan had little to recommend him: he was glum, ugly and a man of few words. But hed built up a huge property empire, becoming the richest Pole in Britain  so Mum married him for his money.

Inevitably, the thrill of wearing mink and getting her hair done daily began to pall. Worse, Stefan was always in a bad mood, and kept photographing Mum naked in erotic poses, then showing his favourite pictures to his friends.

I urged her to leave him, but the pull of his money was too strong. Mum didnt see why she should have to leave her luxurious home for some other woman to enjoy.

Instead, she decided to kill him. One night, she crept into the kitchen and turned on all the gas rings without lighting them. Then she opened the connecting door to a small room where Stefan lay sleeping, and went upstairs to bed.

The following morning, I was woken by Mum saying: Come and help, Stefan is almost dead!

Downstairs, the overwhelming smell of gas made my eyes water and my nose run. Spluttering and choking, we dragged an unconscious, blue-faced Stefan out of his room and dialled 999.

After the ambulance had taken him away, Mum admitted shed tried to murder him. Trembling with fear, she said the plan was to say that Stefan had accidentally gassed himself.

I was horrified. And even more so when we found two policemen standing outside Stefans ward.

'I urged her to leave him, but the pull of his money was too strong. Mum didnt see why she should have to leave her luxurious home for some other woman to enjoy. Instead, she decided to kill him. One night, she crept into the kitchen and turned on all the gas rings without lighting them. Then she opened the connecting door to a small room where Stefan lay sleeping, and went upstairs to bed'

Mum was near to collapse, so I piped up and told them that her husband was drunk on a daily basis and often put the kettle on, then forgot to switch off the gas. Hes very absent-minded, I said.

The police seemed satisfied. And, incredibly, so was Stefan when he discharged himself from hospital the next day. Our miserable life resumed, as if nothing of any great significance had ever taken place.

This grim tale may well come as a surprise to those who know me as a London socialite. But the truth is that I had a dysfunctional upbringing  by a mother who was not only silly but totally irresponsible.

My parents had separated the year after I was born. Mum hated me seeing my father, who was a Polish-born aristocrat.

'It didnt help my mother encouraged me: she felt that having a wayward daughter at home would be damaging to her marriage, so she paid for a one-way ticket to Australia. Only days after arriving in the dreary Melbourne suburb where Graham (back, centre) lived with his parents, I realised Id made a huge mistake. The bronzed Adonis had turned into a slob'

Whenever she spoke about him, her eyes would glisten with hatred. Your father has only got one this size, shed say, holding up her little finger. It was years before I had any idea what she meant.

When I was still very young, she met a rich widower called Mr Henryk, who was around 50 and had a face reminiscent of the actor Sid James. I adored him. On my weekends off from boarding school, hed take me to the cinema or the Natural History Museum.

After wed moved in with Mr Henryk, Mum started another affair with a man called Mr Kieconski, who was in his mid 50s and ran an antique furniture shop.

Then aged around 27, Camilla never did go for younger men. At least, not then. Somehow, she managed to keep two lovers on a string, and we seemed like one big, happy family with me at the centre. One summer, we all went to Italy for a week together.'

I knew each man was as desperate as the other to marry Mum. But she miscalculated: each died within six months of the other of a heart attack, leaving her alone for the first time.

'When I wrote in desperation to Mum, however, she told me that Stefan was against me returning. So, aged 18, I married Graham, vowing to myself that Id one day escape'

I was distraught, and even more so when Mum wrote to me at boarding school to announce that shed hastily married Stefan. The next time she wrote, she included a map to show how to get to her new husbands home  where Id live for the next six years. As Stefan didnt like the fact she had a child, I was told to use a separate entrance and have meals in my room. For breakfast, Id walk to a cafe in West London. I was effectively an intruder in what was supposed to be my home.

If youd met me at 14  a year after Mum tried to kill Stefan  youd never have guessed I had such a difficult home life.

Masquerading as a 17-year-old, I flitted through London high society with a pack of public-school boys who drove E-type Jags or Aston Martins. Many were in line to inherit titles and they all had plenty of money. There were hunt balls in Wiltshire, house parties in Gloucestershire, clubbing at Tramp nightclub, dinners at the most fashionable restaurants  and I was an integral part of it all.

My entree had been accidental: Olga, a girl Id known since childhood, introduced me to two of the boys, aged 23, at a coffee bar. it led to a party invitation  and soon I was one of the crowd.

'Every boy I met seemed to fancy me  though no one tried to seduce me; it was accepted that good girls didnt. I felt Id well and truly arrived'

Every boy I met seemed to fancy me  though no one tried to seduce me; it was accepted that good girls didnt. I felt Id well and truly arrived.

When it was time for me to marry, I decided, my husband would have to be titled  preferably a duke. Blimey, I thought, I might even get to marry the Prince of Wales!

My ambition in those days had few bounds. At 17, intrigued by my friends constant talk about sex, I decided that I ought to give it a try. But I wasnt about to compromise my reputation, putting at risk my chance of a top-drawer marriage.

So, idiotically, I decided to go to Spain to lose my virginity.

I travelled alone to a town called Javea, near Benidorm. And one balmy evening, as I was sitting in a bar, I noticed a handsome fellow observing me intently.

He was slim and muscular, with dark hair and fabulous teeth. Later that evening, he asked me to go for a drink with him. His name was Graham, he was 29 and he was an Australian doing Europe. A few nights later, I lost my virginity to him in his campervan.

I couldnt understand what all the fuss was about, but at least I felt grown-up. And more to the point, no one need know; I could still marry well and get the house in Sloane Square that had always figured in my pipe-dreams.

When I got home, however, I was appalled to discover that I was pregnant. My mother, whod probably had plenty of experience of abortions, volunteered to arrange everything.

Unfortunately, I ended up having a botched operation which left me convinced Id never be able to bear a child. I was so tormented with guilt that all I could think about was getting pregnant again.

My old acquaintance Olga, meanwhile, had gossiped about my misfortune to all our friends. And that really marked the end of my dreams, because I knew Id lost my chance of making a splendid marriage.

My only recourse, I decided, was to leave the country, marry Graham and try for a baby. Of course I was being irrational, but I was only a teenager.

These days Basia would rather be at home than mingling with the great and good over canapes and champagne. Pictured: Basia with her husband Dick and the Queen Mother

It didnt help that my mother encouraged me: she felt that having a wayward daughter at home would be damaging to her marriage, so she paid for a one-way ticket to Australia.

Only days after arriving in the dreary Melbourne suburb where Graham lived with his parents, I realised Id made a huge mistake. The strong, bronzed Adonis Id met in Spain had turned into a slob with a beer gut.

When I wrote in desperation to Mum, however, she told me that Stefan was against me returning. So, aged 18, I married Graham, vowing to myself that Id one day escape.

Within weeks, I was wretchedly unhappy. I dont think Graham was interested in anything but women, drink and limbo dancing  having once won a prize for this in a drunken contest.

The more I had sex, the more I hated it. After ceaseless nagging, Id anaesthetise myself with whisky, swallow two Mogadons and brace myself for a mauling. I even bought a chocolate-flavoured laxative and used it to doctor Grahams puddings, which did wonders for suppressing his libido.

The one thing that kept me sane was the conviction that Id one day be free. And then I got pregnant.

After my son Adam was born, I wrote to Mum again. She said a screaming baby would upset Stefan and she didnt want anyone knowing she was a grandmother as she was only 40. Still, I was thrilled with my son and that made up for a great deal. I rocked him and sang to him, glorying in my extraordinary achievement.

I certainly wasnt expecting Mums next move  a sudden announcement that she and Stefan were selling up for a new life in Melbourne.

When they arrived, I wept for the sheer relief of seeing her again. That hot summer, she and Stefan stayed with us while they looked around for a place of their own.

Basia's upper-crust accent betrays just a hint of her Eastern European heritage. Pictured: She meets the Queen

As Mum paraded around in her bikini, Graham would often put his arm around her waist and say: What a lovely mother-in-law Ive got.

It soon became clear that both she and Stefan were drinking themselves into a stupor every day.

Bloody hell, Im going to die out here, I thought. Im going to grow old and ugly with overwork and unhappiness and eventually turn to drink and gulp Valium and die.

By now, I loathed Graham. But my lack of interest merely increased his desire. Not only did he nag me to join a local wife-swapping group but one night he hit me for refusing him, leaving me with a black eye.

Life limped on for another three years. I had another baby, whom I named Camilla after my mother. And Stefans liver began to fail.

Mums newest obsession was to find out when he was going to die. She also started an affair with a married man who lived next door.

Drawing on all my reserves, I took myself in hand. I had highlights put in my hair, started applying make-up and joined a model agency.

For my first job, I had to stand next to a fridge for a local paper advert. Not exactly the cover of Vogue  but I vowed to save every penny for my running-away fund.

Then three momentous things happened. First, Stefan died. Next, I asked Mum to honour her promise to take me home, but she insisted she wasnt ready.

And some months later, she came to me with a funny look on her face and said: Theres something I must tell you. She and my husband, she revealed, were having an affair.

I thought she was joking  until she added: My goodness, hasnt he got a big one!

Mums expression reminded me of a snakes  cold and watchful, waiting for my reaction. It took all my strength to ask her calmly to leave.

Afterwards, I realised I was free. I had money saved up, and my loyalty to Mum had been the one thing keeping me in chains.

I stole Grahams passport to stop him following me. Then, with a child under each arm and just one suitcase, I headed for the airport.

'I was on a mission to change everything about Dick, from how he dressed to the way he behaved and what he ate. I persuaded him there were better things to do each evening than lurch to the pub  like reading books or going to the opera'

In London, my old friend Olga took us in. But I knew Graham might come after me, and I had to find a male protector as quickly as possible. As it turned out, I met him two days after arriving. Olga was doing her make-up when the doorbell rang, and I opened the door to find a beefy, dangerous-looking man leaning against the frame.

He was dressed like a spiv in a bomber jacket and a half-undone shirt. Nestling in his chest hair was a large scorpion medallion. When he said his name was Dick, I detected a strong Cockney accent.

We chatted for 20 minutes, and he told me he was a builder whod once been a nightclub bouncer. As I listened to him talking about how to control fights, I thought: Golly, this alarming man is just what I need.

He invited me for lunch at his flat, a musty basement in Paddington with smelly dustbins at the front. Later, he took me to a pub, where I met his friends  a jovial bunch of small-time crooks, builders, plumbers and electricians.

On learning my name was Basia, they all hooted with laughter: if we ended up getting married, they chortled, Id be Basher Briggs.

Dick drove me home, stopping on the way for cod and chips. He was hardly the entree I needed to high society, and yet there was something special about him: Id detected a sharp mathematical brain.

Basia Briggs is habitually remembered as a socialite, friend of the royals and thrower of some of the capitals most lavish and celebrity-studded parties. She is pictured at the Old Royal Naval College

I moved in with him three days later. We both felt we were above each other: Dick looked down at me for having Polish parents, and I looked down at him for being a small-time, drunken Cockney builder who lived in a Paddington basement.

But somehow it worked  and to show my gratitude for his support, I decided to make him prosperous.

He just needed a few introductions to the rich people Id known in my teens, I thought, and then hed get better contracts.

I was on a mission to change everything about Dick, from how he dressed to the way he behaved and what he ate. I persuaded him there were better things to do each evening than lurch to the pub  like reading books or going to the opera.

My friends didnt like him but were usually too scared to be rude, though, as his temper was, by his own admission, volatile. A well-known estate agent in Bayswater made that mistake once. Dick picked him up, punched him and hurled him through the air. The hapless agent landed in the gutter.

Under Dicks rough exterior, however, was a man with the raw materials to make something of himself. He knew I was trying to remould him, and he wasnt averse. In fact, his business soon began to boom.

After my divorce from Graham came through, we got married. Id have preferred a wedding reception in Claridges, but the manager of his local pub had insisted on giving us a spread as a wedding present.

None of my friends approved of the marriage. My best girlfriend told me: You wont be able to bring yourself down to his level and hes not capable of rising to yours.

I look at Dick now, in his habitual attire of a three-piece pinstripe suit from Savile Row, with a stiff-collared shirt and gentlemans brogues, and laugh at her beastly comment.

After my divorce from Graham came through, we got married [to Dick Briggs, pictured] . Id have preferred a wedding reception in Claridges, but the manager of his local pub had insisted on giving us a spread as a wedding present

As for my treacherous mother, shed returned to London after two years. I dont know how her affair with Graham ended, but it continued for some time after I left Australia.

My son later mentioned that when he stayed at his grandmothers house, he found it confusing to see his father emerge from her bedroom in the morning.

She wasnt yet 70 when she died from sepsis in 2004. Her former lover  my ex-husband  died in the same year from cirrhosis of the liver.

I sat with Mum all that final day, holding her hand. To ease her passing, I told her shed been a very good mother. And although she was unconscious, I saw a large tear trickle down her cheek.

When her will was read, she had left everything to her final lover.

Adapted from Mother Anguish by Basia Briggs, published by Quartet Books on December 5 at 20. To order a copy for 16 (offer valid to December 14, 2017; p&p free), visit www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640.
It's that time of year again. As December 25 edges closer, the drinks start flowing.

With office Christmas parties, get-togethers with friends and long, boozy lunches in full swing, it's hard to avoid a drink - even if you're usually quite abstemious.

However, it is possible to celebrate the festive season and feel merry without expanding your waistline - and with this advice, you might save yourself a few hangovers too.

FEMAIL spoke to leading Australian nutritionist and TV chef, Zoe Bingley-Pullin, for her top tips for what to drink and what to avoid this month at events.

She also shared how you can make that big night out just a touch healthier.

FEMAIL spoke to leading Australian nutritionist and TV chef, Zoe Bingley-Pullin (pictured), for her top tips for what to drink and what to avoid this month at events

According to Zoe (pictured), the best thing to bear in mind when heading towards a bar this Christmas is that the clearer the drink, in general the fewer the calories

THE GOOD

Aperol Spritzers (stock image) can be a good idea, as can any spritzers or champagne

According to Zoe, the best thing to bear in mind when heading towards a bar this Christmas is that the clearer the drink, in general the fewer the calories:

'Cocktails made from a base of soda water, fresh juice and a spirit such as vodka or gin will be the lowest in kilojoules,' Zoe told Daily Mail Australia.

'The fewer the ingredients, the better too, so keeping it simple is the way to go.'

Zoe said it's a good idea to opt for cocktails 'which are not heavily sweetened and contain fresh ingredients such as herbs or cucumber'.

Some examples which fit this criteria include mojitos, Bloody Marys, Martinis, Spritzers including champagne and the perennial summer favourite - Aperol Spritz.

'Cocktails made from a base of soda water, fresh juice and a spirit such as vodka or gin will be the lowest in kilojoules,' Zoe told Daily Mail Australia (stock image)

THE BAD

While it might feel like joyous news that you can sip on spritzers and champagne to your (near) heart's content this Yule, there is also sadly some bad news.

'The cocktails to avoid this festive season are the ones which contain cream, ice cream, condensed milk and flavoured liqueurs,' Zoe said.

'You should especially sound the warning signs if anything sounds like a dessert as these cocktails are full of sugar and kilojoules and the body will opt to process the alcohol first, which means excess energy from the sugar and fat will be stored as fat.'

Among the examples Zoe cites as drinks which will do bad things to your waistline are Long Island ice teas (which, she says, 'usually contain up to five types of alcohol as well as sugar'), Pina Coladas (which are 'made from a base of coconut cream/milk and sweetened with pineapple juice) and Daiquiris - renowned for their huge sugar content.

'The cocktails to avoid this festive season are ones which contain cream, ice cream, condensed milk and flavoured liqueurs' - Espresso Martinis are especially bad (stock image)

She also warned against Espresso Martinis - which contain a potent triangle of sugar, caffeine and alcohol.

'Not only do Espresso Martinis contains flavoured liqueur and additional sugar, but they also have a dose of caffeine,' Zoe said.

'Alcohol is a diuretic, so adding caffeine, which is also a diuretic, to the mix can lead to increased dehydration and blood sugar deregulation.'

Zoe told FEMAIL she recommends one mineral or soda water per alcoholic drink, avoiding drinking on an empty stomach and instead choosing light foods like sushi (stock image)

'Protein-rich meals or snacks pre-drinking can help to regulate blood sugar levels,' Zoe (pictured) said - she also recommends avoiding deep-fried, high fat, sugary foods

TIPS FOR A HEALTHY NIGHT OUT

Finally, Zoe shared her tips for those who want to enjoy a healthy and happy night out over Christmas and the New Year.

Zoe told FEMAIL she recommends one mineral or soda water per alcoholic drink, avoiding drinking on an empty stomach and instead choosing light foods, including sushi, sashimi, salad, rice paper rolls and chicken salad.

'Protein-rich meals or snacks pre-drinking can help to regulate blood sugar levels,' she said.

'Then, avoid deep-fried, high fat, refined sugar foods when drinking - as the body needs to deal with the alcohol before it's able to process the energy from such foods.'

For more from Zoe Bingley-Pullin, please visit her website here.
Olivia Hotschilt (pictured) was born with a rare facial condition

A 22-year-old woman born with a rare facial condition has opened up about her struggles after she was taunted throughout school.

Olivia Hotschilt, from Alstonville in northern NSW, was diagnosed with the genetic disorder craniofrontonasal dysplasia - meaning parts of her skull fused prematurely, leaving her with eyes spaced apart and no nasal bridge.

At the tender age of five, her condition took a crippling toll on her life - and the bullying became so severe, she avoided looking at herself in the mirror.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, the young woman said she didn't realise she was different from other children until she started kindergarten.

'I was called an "alien" on the first day I walked into school,' she said.

'At first, I was so confused about it. I saw Olivia in the mirror but I didn't understand how I could have been an alien.

'I didn't notice it until other people noticed it. It took about a year to understand why they said that name.'

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The young woman was born with the genetic disorder craniofrontonasal dysplasia - meaning parts of her skull fused prematurely, leaving her with eyes spaced apart and no nasal bridge

She said she didn't realise she was different from other children until she started kindergarten at five years old

And everyday was a constant battle for Olivia growing up where she was faced with cruel taunts or stares wherever she was in public.

'Getting on buses to go off to school, kids would turn around in seats just to point and yell insults at me,' she recalled.

'At school, I was spending lunchtimes alone, or running from bullies because I'd get bashed, unless I'd run fast enough to hide in a classroom or toilet block.

'Sometimes, you wouldn't even eat because you're just too nervous in case somebody came up behind you and push you down the stairs.

'I could keep going on forever but if I didn't have any sort of abuse at school it was few and far between.'

Struggling with the condition, Olivia said she was constantly fearing for her safety.

'People would bend around me trying to avoid getting close to me. I was stared at and talked about,' she said.

'I was constantly on the look out in case someone wanted to hurt me.'

The affects of her condition made schooling even difficult because she didn't want to return to the classroom when she was subjected to bullying

Struggling with the condition, Olivia said she was constantly fearing for her safety after she was born with the rare facial condition

The affects of her condition made schooling even difficult because she didn't want to return to the classroom when she was subjected to bullying.

'I had more days off then attending school. I would fake being sick or bribe and negotiate how to get out of school,' she said.

'Because of my condition I had a few learning difficulties making schooling harder by missing so much to avoid bullies.'

The bullying eventually spiralled out of control, and Olivia said she started self-harming after cutting off all her hair.

'I cut my hair off and I started cutting myself... I stopped eating and it just spiralled,' she said.

'The constant torment and the constant reassurance that you are just your condition.'

The constant taunts left her feeling self-conscious to a point where she'd refused to look at herself in the mirror

Looking at her own reflection in mirror now, a confident Olivia said she feels stronger than ever

The taunts left her feeling self-conscious to a point where she'd refused to look at herself in the mirror.

'There was a time in my life where it was pretty hard to even find a photo of me. I would run from cameras and hide from mirrors,' she recalled.

'My face made me angry.'

But she was able to find the strength to love herself again following four life-changing surgeries to reconstruct her face.

Despite the operations, Olivia said she was still taunted by her fellow peers.

'It didn't change much, because my first operation was so major,' she said.

'I almost got bullied worse for being this weird, scared person. I had a big scar and no hair across my head.'

Olivia was born with the rare facial condition - meaning parts of her skull fused prematurely, leaving her with eyes spaced apart and no nasal bridge

Olivia said she didn't realise she was different from other kids until she started kindergarten

But after moving schools, she finally found acceptance following another surgery at the age of 16.

'When I moved school, [the students there] welcomed me and really supported me through schooling,' she said.

'I learnt that I wasn't this monster I would have been about 16 or 17 years old when I started to feel like the person I am today.'

Looking at her own reflection in the mirror now, a confident Olivia said she feels stronger than ever.

'When I see myself, I can see my scars on my face and in my hairline. But I can see the journey I've been on and I feel peaceful about it,' she said.

'I know who I am, I know where I've been and I'm thankful for the lessons and life I've been given.'

For confidential support 24/7, please call Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14.
Rather than musing on what might have been, Prince Harrys former flames Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas hit the town this weekend to show him what hes missing.

Both dazzling in embellished black evening dresses, vivacious law graduate Chelsy, 32, partied at Claridges in Mayfair, while last night actress Cressida, at 28 almost a decade Meghan Markles junior, attended the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

Chelsy and Cressy are understood to have split amicably with Harry, preferring to pursue their careers without the pressure of being a royal consort.

Chelsy recently said she couldnt cope with the attention their relationship attracted.

Rather than musing on what might have been, Prince Harrys former flames Chelsy Davy (left) and Cressida Bonas (right) hit the town this weekend to show him what hes missing

Famous friends: Cressida, right, with Poppy Delevingne at the glamorous awards last night

Dazzling: Cressida Bonas and Skye Hallam practise their poses at the theatre awards

Classic beauty: Cressida wore her short blonde locks in soft waves as she stepped out

Glitz and glamour: Cressida Bonas looked breathtaking in a black gown last night

Car trouble for Hammond

Richard Hamster Hammond is grateful to have survived a life-threatening electric car crash in the Swiss Alps while filming Amazon Primes motoring show The Grand Tour.

But, taken alongside his coma-inducing blow-out in September 2006, it has created a practical challenge  car insurance. They ask, have you had any accidents? he tells me. Er, just a bit. As a show our insurance is quite high and thats my fault.

Hammonds colleague James May quotes his premium as 5,000 a year, which seems cheap at half the price.

Hicks takes the mick out of reality star

Angelica Hicks, whose father is the godson of Prince Philip, poked fun at reality TV star Kim Kardashian with his cheeky snap

Angelica Hickss father, Ashley, is the godson of Prince Philip and her great grandfather was the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, but shes not too grand for jokes.

Illustrator Angelica, 25, posted this picture online of herself wearing a frilly bra and knickers over her jeans and T-shirt.

She was poking fun at the U.S. reality TV star Kim Kardashian, who was praised by a fashion website for turning underwear into outerwear.

Angelica wrote next to the snap: Same.

Meghan Markle is used to star billing, but the American actress must get used to an uncredited role in The Firm.

Although she was the big attraction at her first public engagement on Friday, she failed to gain a mention in the Court Circular, the official record of royal events.

It read merely: Prince Henry of Wales this morning met members of the public outside the National Justice Museum, Nottingham.

A courtier tells me: Ms Markle will not be included until after their wedding.

Harry Potter star Miriam Margolyes complains she has no casting couch scandals to report.

With regret, says the 76-year-old actress, Ive never been asked to go to bed with anybody to get a part.
First there was coffee in a cone, and now one small town bakery is providing the all-important caffeine fix inside one of our favourite breakfast pastries.

Kenilworth Bakery is the mastermind behind the doughnut coffee cup, a concoction sure to delight foodies and caffeine addicts alike.

The $8 creation is a cinnamon-coated doughnut, lined around the rim with Nutella, and a shot of espresso coffee topped with a bit of milk and foam in the middle.

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Kenilworth Bakery is the mastermind behind the doughnut coffee cup, a concoction sure to delight foodies and caffeine addicts alike

The $8 creation is a cinnamon-coated doughnut, lined around the rim with Nutella, and a shot of espresso coffee topped with a bit of milk and foam in the middle

Kenilworth Bakery owner Jenna Sanders told Daily Mail Australia that the doughnut was created with the help of award-winning Melbourne barista Fernando Santi.

'Fernando was looking to relocate and wanted to collaborate with us, and we came up with the idea of the coffee cup,' she said.

With Fernando's barista talent and Jenna and her father Jeff's baking skills, they were able to come up with a formula in which the coffee wouldn't leak through the doughnut.

The Sunshine Coast bakery has even provided a hot chocolate doughnut cup for customers who don't drink coffee.

The Sunshine Coast bakery has even provided a hot chocolate doughut cup for customers who don't drink coffee

Kenilworth Bakery owner Jenna Sanders and award-winning Melbourne barista Fernando Santi (both pictured) created the doughnut coffee cup together

This isn't the first time the internet has gone crazy for a Kenilworth Bakery creation.

Just a month ago the bakery went viral after launching the 1kg doughnut competition.

Customers were challenged to complete the mammoth $20 doughnut - available with jam, nutella, or custard - on their own in just one sitting.

With Fernando's barista skills and Jenna and her father Jeff's baking skills, they were able to come up with a formula in which the coffee wouldn't leak through the doughnut

Jenna estimates that between 150 to 200 people have completed the doughnut - getting their money back and a plaque on the wall - out of 2,000 challengers.

The doughnut, which Jenna said takes about four hours to make, is still available and now a favourite among families who choose to share the giant creation.

Jenna said it has been great watching the bakery's concoctions become a hit on the internet and making more people aware of what Kenilworth has to offer.

'Its really awesome, being from a small country town and getting on the map,' she said. 'We just had to be a bit creative.'

Just a month ago the bakery went viral after launching the 1kg doughnut challenge, a mammoth $20 creation available in jam, nutella, or custard
The weekly supermarket shop is a chore few people look forward to - and it can be even more arduous with kids in tow.

But spare a thought for the children, who have to endure trawling the aisles under the watchful eye of fraught parents, all while being told to 'be quiet' and 'put that back'.

Many of the bored tots captured in these photos shared on social media have resorted to entertaining themselves, either by escaping to the electronics aisle to watch television, or building a fort from cereal boxes.

Some desperate girls and boys were snapped leaning against shop windows in the vain hope a passerby might rescue them from their supermarket hell, while others, resigned to their fate, are seen curling up in trolleys to sleep until the ordeal is over.

Trolley tantrum: Fed up of trawling the supermarket aisles, this little girl hitches a ride

Sure, grocery baskets are a handy way to tote your twins around the supermarket - but where do you put the shopping?

Even a miniature supermarket trolley of his own isn't enough to persuade this little boy that shopping is fun

A bored little girl issues a silent cry for help from the depths of a shopping mall

This brother and sister duo found an entertaining corner of a supermarket and set up camp

A cute little girl adequately sums up the feelings of anyone who has ever found themselves in a branch of IKEA at the weekend

A little boy captures the feelings of every tot trapped in a supermarket on a Saturday morning

Chilling: The weekly 'big shop' would be more bearable if we could approach it like this girl

A little boy is so bored in the Apple store he feigns suffocating himself inside his mother's top

Is it over yet? The motion of the shopping trolley has lulled this fed up tot off to sleep

Crisis point: This boy is ready to leave the supermarket, and his family has probably picked up on it

No, that's not an offbeat window display, it's a desperately bored child
When Celeste Creel walks into a room, with her flowing dark hair, cute nose and sparkling eyes, she could have walked straight off the front page of newspapers worldwide.

Because the 32-year-old from California has a very famous doppelganger - Prince Harry's bride-to-be, Meghan Markle.

Celeste, who lives in Los Angeles, where Meghan is originally from and, like her, is an actress, said: 'I also work as a professional hand and leg model and, at a recent photo-shoot, the crew were talking and I could hear whispering.

'Then someone asked, "Was I her?". They meant Meghan. I had to say no.'

Now, keen to capitalise on her likeness to the future royal, Celeste - who has an 11-month-old daughter, Ruby, with her boyfriend, sketch writer and actor Bobby Quinn Rice, 34 is planning to tout herself as a Meghan Markle lookalike.

Actress Celeste Creel, 32, from California has a very famous doppelganger - Prince Harry's bride-to-be, Meghan Markle

At a recent photoshoot, the crew thought that Celeste was in fact the future royal bride, pictured one her first official royal engagement in Nottingham last week

'I've never even watched Suits, the series that Meghan made her name as an actress in,' she said, also admitting she had not heard of her before all the media hype over her relationship with Prince Harry.

'After I was told by a friend that I looked like her, I tuned in to see her on the show and I can definitely see our similarity.'

Professional hand and leg model Celeste, who was born in New York State, but moved to California to pursue a career in Hollywood a number of years ago, even sent her image to lookalike agencies in the UK who  while impressed  were unable to sign her as she was US-based.

As well as being an actress, Celeste is a professional hand and leg model and is now planning a new endeavour as a Meghan lookalike

'Meghan's come into the public conscious,' Celeste, who also runs a reiki healing school called Celestial Medicine, said. 'Her forthcoming wedding at Windsor Castle in May 2018 will make her even more popular.'

But it's not just their physical appearance which the two women have in common.

Celeste believes she may even have auditioned for some of the same roles as Meghan, 36, in the past.

'I think she won them though,' she laughed. 'We're also both in our 30s and bi-racial. We've had similar experiences of growing up bi-racial in California.'

Meghan's doppelganger with her boyfriend, Bobby, and their daughter, Ruby

Celeste says she can relate to Meghan's experiences of being a bi-racial actress in Hollywood

Like Meghan, whose mother, Doria Ragland, is black, and father, Thomas Markle, is white, Celeste's parents are of mixed racial heritage.

'My father, Bryant Creel, 72, who now lives in Tennessee and is American, is white and originally of Irish, English and Scottish heritage,' Celeste explained. 'My mother, Margaret Washington, 72, is American. Her ancestors were both Choctaw Native Americans and from the Democratic Republic of Congo'

And, like her famous double, Celeste is close to both her parents and considers her mixed race background to be a benefit and a blessing.

'My parents are wonderful. Both university lecturers, they are very bright and very loving,' she explained. 'But being a bi-racial actress in Hollywood is interesting. I wonder if Meghan, too, can relate to these experiences.'

The mother-of-one predicts that Meghan and Harry will make a great team, and would like to see them do more in the US

Although Celeste admits to having a limited knowledge of the British Royal Family, she is a big fan.

'As I understand it, the Royal Family in today's world, is more symbolic than anything else,' she said. 'But don't get me wrong, that's no small thing.

'They represent British heritage, and to some extent, British culture and identity and the history of the British empire.'

She also spoke kindly about Princess Diana, who, had she lived, would have been Meghan's mother-in-law.

Celeste Creel - Meghan Markle lookalike - and her daughter, Ruby

Like Meghan, whose mother, Doria Ragland, is black, and father, Thomas Markle, is white, Celeste's parents are of mixed racial heritage

Celeste predicts that Meghan will follow in the footsteps of Princess Diana by shaking up the monarchy

'Princess Diana brought real opportunities to the monarchy,' she said. 'She did this through her independence, establishing a separate identity tied to humanitarian efforts, divorcing Charles, and dating an Egyptian man.

'I sense that Harry is building upon the tradition of his mother's independent spirit. It is so touching.'

Referring to a television contest in the UK, for Meghan lookalikes, stifling giggles, she added: 'The contestants weren't wonderful.'

But, when it comes to the real deal, she thinks Meghan Markle and Prince Harry will make an indomitable team.

'I think they'll be a great couple. I would even like to see Prince Harry and Princess Meghan run my country, and shake things up over here.' she laughed. 'I think they would be wonderful.'
Pop star Kylie Minogue's ancestor was a thief who was one of the oldest women hanged in Britain, and now images of the spot where she was executed and Australian descendants have emerged.

Kylie's relative Dinah Riddiford was publically put to death aged 69 on top of at Gloucester Jail's gate house in 1816 - in an execution known as 'The Granny Hanging'.

Genealogists have revealed Dinah was Kylie Minogue's great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, and now an image has emerged of the Riddiford Family of Ballarat in Victoria Australia, taken circa 1929, believed to be her descendants.

Court records show 69-year-old Mrs Riddiford and her son Luke were jailed for stealing two sides of bacon and two pigs' cheeks. They also pilfered one piece of tongue, a large pat of butter in an earthenware pot and a small copper tea kettle.

Luke was spared the rope and sent to a penal colony in Australia.

The Riddiford Family of Ballarat circa 1929 - descendants of Dinah Riddiford the oldest woman to be hanged in England. Back row left to right, Cyril Victor, Lillian Ivy, Percy Ronald and Reginald Leonard. Front row left to right, William Thomas Frederick, Thomas William Cooke Riddiford, Stanley Gordon, Caroline 'Queenie', Celia Ann Kirkin and Ernest Arthur Harold

Kylie Minogue is the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Dinah Riddiford, one of the oldest women hanged in Britain

But his mother was hanged on top of at Gloucester Jail's gate house in full view of a jeering crowd on September 7, 1816.

The execution occurred as part of the August Assizes - courts which sat every few months - that saw 17 death sentences issued.

Kylie's great-grandfather Morgan Riddiford was a labourer in Thornbury, a small market town eleven miles north of Bristol, Gloucestershire.

Born in 1824, he is thought to be the illegitimate son of Maria Riddiford.

Maria was the daughter of a Dinah Riddiford, who is thought to be the daughter namesake of the Dinah who hanged at Gloucester jail in 1816.

Little is known of Kylie's paternal heritage aside from that her father is a fifth generation Australian whose family probably originated in County Clare, Ireland.

The old execution chamber at Gloucester Prison, which stands over the gatehouse

Access to birth and marriage records is more restricted in Australia than in the UK.

Lucy Tyndall works for Jailhouse Tours which runs tours and themed events at historic prisons around the UK including the now closed HM Prison Gloucester.

She said: 'We didn't know anything about it until a man came in one day and told us Kylie was related to somebody who was hung here.

'We don't know where Dinah was kept, but we are pretty sure we know where she was executed.'

Gloucester Prison opened as County Gaol in 1792 and was substantially rebuilt in 1840. It is no longer a working prison and is now a tourist attraction

Jailhouse Tours manager Paul Ross said: 'Dinah was executed for something she probably wouldn't go to jail for today.

'It would be great if Kylie and Dannii could come to visit.

'I think in the early days going to a hanging would have been like watching Gloucester Rugby on a Saturday afternoon.'

New information revealed a number of Kylie's relatives did stints inside the notorious Gloucester jail during the early 1800s.

Kylie's great-grandfather George Morgan Riddiford, the father of Kylie's maternal grandmother Millie, spent time in HM Prison Gloucester for indecent assault.

Kylie and her sister Dannii are descended from relatives who were jailed in Gloucester in the early 1800s for a number of crimes, including indecent assault

He assaulted a 14-year-old farm girl as she wandered through a field in Thornbury, near Bristol.

When he was released he relocated to the small town of Nantyffyllon in South Wales where he started a family.

His daughter Millie would later emigrate to Australia after the Second World War as a '10 pom' assisted by a government scheme.

Alongside husband Dennis and children Jean, Carol, Suzette and Noel, she set sail in 1955 on the SS New Australia before settling in Queensland, north east Australia.

Carol, who was just ten at the time, met and married Ron Minogue a decade later. Together they had three children - Kylie, Dannii and Brendan.

HM Prison Gloucester opened as County Gaol in 1792 and was substantially rebuilt in 1840.

It closed in 2013 and is currently managed by Jailhouse Tours.
Meghan Markle will officially become royal in May 2018, and with great power comes great responsibility to follow court protocol.

But while Prince Harry's new fiancee has already mastered some of the rules, she still has some way to go in order to truly be a member of 'the firm'.

Her first official engagement on Friday saw her perfect the dress code, but she was seen striding out in front of her future husband - in a significant breach of royal protocol.

It should be Harry who walks ahead, as a 'blood member' of the royal family, with Meghan walking a few steps behind.

The Suits actress also needs to work on her royal wave, which is currently rather over-enthusiastic.

And after joining the royal family, Meghan will need to ditch her love of ripped jeans - as well as remembering to never cross her legs when in public...

Meghan Markle will officially become a member of the Royal Family in May, but she still has some way to go when it comes to court protocol

Deportment and posture

Meghan has previously been seen crossing her legs in public, ankles splayed apart - such as when seated next to her now fiance at the Invictus Games earlier this year.

Royalty should not cross their legs: something that the Duchess of Cambridge has mastered.

Catherine is usually seen with her legs at one angle with a slight slant, keeping her knees and ankles together.

The Queen and Duchess of Cornwall usually tuck one ankle behind the other, keeping their knees together when seated.

Walking

Meghan breached royal protocol by walking in front of Harry during her first official engagement on Friday

Although the Nottingham excursion last week was a big success, with Meghan handling excitable crowds with aplomb and ease, she did rather get ahead of herself. Literally.

Once she marries into the Royal Family she will need to remember it is her future husband who walks ahead. Non-blood royalty should always be one or two steps (or more) behind blood royalty when on official engagements.

Dress codes

The pre-(second)-marriage Meghan will need to tweak her royal wardrobe.

Although her outfit choice during Fridays walkabout in Nottingham was on point, her penchant for ripped and distressed jeans will need to be abandoned unless she wishes to distress the royal household.

However, the Suits star appears to already be mastering the dress code, William Hanson says

No selfies

Meghan will undoubtedly have given fans the chance for a quick selfie in her previous life, but thankfully she has already realised that royalty do not do selfies.

She very politely rebuffed a few of the crowd who asked on Friday, stating the more recent addition to royal protocol.

Waving

Meghan needs to tweak her waving, too.

When she greeted press photographers on the day the engagement was announced Meghans wave was somewhat clam-like, with her fingers rapidly opening and closing against her palm.

William says Meghan needs to learn the more restrained 'Windsor wave', which is less tiring

She will need to learn the more restrained (and easier on the hand) Windsor wave, which is much more subtle and less tiring.

Her arm should extend upwards at a right angle and the hand then moves from side to side in gentle right-left motions.

How to greet The Queen

Meghan will probably have already learned that The Queen is addressed as Your Majesty when you first see her and then, afterwards, as Maam.

Etiquette expert William Hanson also offers his 'cheat sheet' for Meghan as she prepares to join the royal family

Its entry-level stuff for any student of royal protocol to know that Maam should rhyme with jam not farm.

Prince Harry refers to his grandmother as Granny but I would suggest to Meghan that she sticks to the more formal Your Majesty and Maam. Familiarity does breed contempt, as they say.

As for all other members of the Royal Family, including the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, are called Your Royal Highness and then Sir or Maam (to rhyme with jam), accordingly.

For older members of the family she will probably stick to protocol and call them Your Royal Highness, but for people such as William and Catherine, Beatrice and Eugenie, I suspect she will use their Christian names.

Currently, Meghan is an American citizen and so when she meets any member of the royal family she will not need to curtsey.

When she becomes a UK citizen she will, however, need to start curtseying when she greets The Queen and other senior members of the royal family.

Harry refers to the Queen as 'Granny', but Meghan should stick to the more formal 'Your Majesty' and 'Ma'am'

In essence, Meghan will only take her future husbands position on the pecking order (formerly called order of precedence) when with him.

Although technically she would have to curtsey to Prince George and Princess Charlotte I suspect she wont not until they come of age, anyway.

To curtsey or not to curtsey

Just as when the now Duchess of Cambridge married Prince William, there is a protocol that Meghan will need to learn and remember when it comes to remembering who curtsies to whom once she marries Prince Harry.

When she is walking down a corridor at Kensington Palace on her own, she will need to curtsey to all blood members of the Royal Family.

The Duchess of Cambridge was seen curtseying to the Queen ahead of the Easter service

When she is walking down a corridor at KP with Prince Harry (once married) she will only have to curtsey to more senior members of the British royal family. (In ascending order: New Royal baby, Princess Charlotte, Prince George, Duchess of Cambridge, Duke of Cambridge, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince of Wales, Duke of Edinburgh, The Queen).

Dining etiquette rules

When dining with The Queen, either at state banquets or more intimate family meals, Meghan will need to remember that she should not start eating before Her Majesty.

She should also keep watching the speed of The Queens eating (usually very quick) as she should stop eating when The Queen stops eating even if she still has food left on her plate.

No one should start eating before the Monarch and no one should carry on eating after the Monarch has finished.

The royal bride-to-be will be dining with The Queen, either at state banquets or more intimate family meals. Pictured is the Duchess of Cambridge attending a banquet with the Chinese president and the Queen in 2015

Tiara time

Although royalty are associated with glittering tiaras and jewels, Meghan will not be able to be seen in a tiara until she marries Harry, as only married women wear tiaras.

It is ancient etiquette that the first time a woman wears a tiara is on her wedding day to symbolise the loss of innocence and crowning of love.

Women were not allowed to wear tiaras before they married and it was seen as very gauche for a women to go and buy her own - a woman was instead expected to have tiaras passed down to her by a relative.

Accordingly, the now Duchess of Cambridge was given a 1936 Cartier tiara by The Queen to wear for her wedding to Prince William in 2011 as the Middleton family did not have any tiaras in the family and I suspect theres a tiara shortage in LA, too, so a similar arrangement may be made.

Pronunciation

Although it wont be royal protocol, I would advise Meghan to swat up on the correct British pronunciation of key venues and places.

For example, it is Bucking-um Palace NOT Bucking-HAM Palace. It she will be getting married in SINT Georges Chapel not SAINT Georges Chapel.
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands made a personal connection with one schoolgirl as she visited communities devastated by Hurricane Irma.

The 46-year-old royal was photographed cuddling the little girl as she and husband King Willem-Alexander were given a tour of a village on the island of St. Martin.

The royals finished their three-day tour of the islands of St Eustatius, Saba and St Martin over the weekend, where they saw first-hand how residents are struggling to recover after the hurricane.

Touching moment: Queen Maxima of the Netherlands was photographed hugging a little girl

Devastation: The Dutch royals were given a tour of communities hit by Hurricane Irma

Stylish: The mother-of-three wore a lace blouse and a sand-coloured fedora for the visits

The final day of their tour involved a packed schedule, including a trip to a local school and a home visit to a family whose home was ripped apart in the hurricane.

The mother-of-three showcased her usual flair for fashion in a chic lace blouse keeping her cool in the humid weather.

Rarely seen without head gear Maxima could be seen wearing a jaunty sand coloured fedora for her engagements.

She wore her famous blonde tresses loose, sweeping stray hairs from her face with a pair of sunglasses, allowing her to showcase an ornate pair of sunflower earrings.

Recovery: The Dutch royals met with a woman who lost her home in the hurricane

Raising awareness: Queen Maxima and King Willem-Alexander on their three-day visit

Gentle nature: The queen speaks to a group of schoolchildren on the third day of her visit

She was joined by husband King Willem-Alexander who cut a more casual aesthetic with an open collared shirt and a pair of sunglasses.

The royal couple shared an intimate moment during the musical session where Maxima could be seen whispering into her husband's ear.

Their visit comes three months after Hurricane Irma left a trail of destruction across the the Netherlands island of Sint Maarten.

On Friday the couple enjoyed a scuba session off the coast of Saba Bank, Saba Island.

Festivities: The royal couple also took part in a music lesson and celebrated local culture

The king and queen later inspected reconstruction efforts on the island following the devastating tropical storm.

Thousands of homes across the island were flattened, while luxury yachts moored in marinas have been sunk or driven on shore by the hurricane-force winds.

Locals were forced to queue for basic aid and even water as the island's infrastructure has been utterly destroyed by the hurricane.

The royal couple's first stop on Thursday was St Eustatius, before they arrived at Saba island where they also joined in on Saba Day festivities.

They have been accompanied by the State Secretary for the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Raymond Knops.
Jared Kushner appeared to have a rather carefree start to his week, despite being thrown into the heart of the Mueller probe, having been implicated as the official who told Michael Flynn to contact Russian officials on behalf of the White House.

President Trump's son-in-law, 36, was seen leaving his family's home in the upscale neighborhood of Kalorama in Washington, D.C. shortly before 7:30 on Monday morning.

He smiled as he guided his daughter Arabella, six, towards a parked Secret Service vehicle, on his way to complete the school run.

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All smiles: Jared Kushner appeared to have a serene start of the week, despite having just been named as the mystery official who told then-Trump-adviser Michael Flynn to contact Russia

Greeting the day: The senior White House adviser, 36, was seen leaving his home in the upscale neighborhood of Kalorama in Washington, D.C. a bit before 7:30 this morning

Duo: Jared smiled as he guided his daughter Arabella, six, towards a parked Secret Service vehicle, on his way to complete the school run

Jared, who stuck to his classics in a suit and striped tie, kept his eyes trained on the car and looked relaxed while he seemed to listen to something Arabella was telling him.

Arabella, his and Ivanka Trump's eldest child, carried a multicolored backpack on her way to school.

Jared is currently facing increased scrutiny over actions taken during the transition period between the November election and the January 20 inauguration, due to the former national security adviser Michael Flynn's guilty plea on charges of lying to the FBI.

President Donald Trump's son-in-law was identified as a 'very senior' transition official who directed Flynn to contact foreign governments, including Russia, about a U.N. Security Council resolution last December.

Jared wasn't named in court papers, but a former transition official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss the matter confirmed his involvement.

Outing: Jared, who stuck to his classics in a suit and striped tie, kept his eyes trained on the car and looked relaxed while departing his house

Ready for a day of learning: Arabella, his and Ivanka Trump's eldest child, carried a multicolored backpack on her way to school

Attention: Jared is currently facing increased scrutiny over actions taken during the transition period between the November election and the January 20 inauguration

On Sunday, Ivanka also appeared perfectly relaxed while departing her D.C. home with her two eldest children.

The first daughter, 36, was all smiles as she stepped out of the house, holding the hands of Arabella and Joseph, four.

Meanwhile, her husband, Jared Kushner, appeared at the Saban Forum in town to take part in a question and answer session about the Trump administration's approach to the Middle East.

Jared, making his first public remarks on his efforts to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, said that the president continues to weigh his options on whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, or whether to proceed immediately in moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

'The president is going to make his decision,' Kushner said in a rare public appearance at the event hosted by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. 'He is still looking at a lot of different facts.'

Meanwhile, Ivanka and her children all appeared to be in their Sunday best, with Arabella sporting a black and white dress, white jacket and a bow on her head.

On their way: On Sunday, Ivanka, 36, left her DC home accompanied by her two oldest children Arabella and Joseph, four

At their best: Ivanka was all smiles, with the three all appearing dressed up in formal clothes

Little Joseph appeared to be wearing a dapper little suit, while mom Ivanka braved the December chill with bare legs, wearing a black skirt and cream sweater accessorized with chunky earrings.

The night before, Ivanka shared a touching photo of her youngest son, Theodore, one, bundled up in a baby sleeping bag. 'Best date ever! #SaturdayNight,' she wrote on Instagram.

On Saturday, Jared was seen with a grin on his face as he and Ivanka went for a jog - just hours after his name first surfaced in the former FBI Director Robert Mueller's investigation into possible links or coordination between Trump's campaign and the Russian government.

Kushner looked directly at the camera and grinned while he and Ivanka left their residence around noon wearing matching black sportswear.

The family were keeping up serene appearances, it seemed, even though the situation they are in is anything but.

A rare appearance: Ivanka's husband Jared was busy on Sunday appearing at the Saban Forum 2017 in Washington to discuss the Middle East

'Best date ever!' The night before, Ivanka shared this image of her youngest son, Theodore, one, in a baby sleeping bag

Ivanka and Jared were out and about for about 40 minutes before they returned from their run and it seems it is just what they needed after a chaotic week.

The first daughter had spent the past few days in India where she attended an annual entrepreneurship summit. She co-hosted the event alongside India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

At the speaking engagements and dinners, the First Daughter donned a series of printed gowns that were criticized by an Indian media outlet.

The Daily O, an Indian publication, lambasted Trump for her pricey 'Oriental-style' ensembles which they described as a 'superficial assimilation' of their culture. Ivanka has not commented on the matter.

Meanwhile, following claims that Jared is the mystery official, President Trump has been accused of obstruction of justice.

On Saturday, Trump appeared to tweet that he knew Flynn lied to federal investigators over his contact with Russian officials but that he never needed to lie himself because all his their interactions were 'lawful'.

'I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!' the tweet said.

On the run: Ivanka and Jared were spotted out for a run Saturday, apparently unbothered by the mounting tension over the FBI probe into Russia

Not fussed: Jared flashed a smile to photographers before heading out for a jog

All together: The pair were out and about for the light exercise outing for about 40 minutes

The tweet appeared to be a attempt by the president to defend Flynn and disprove suspicion that there was any collusion between his aides and the Kremlin.

Instead, it placed scrutiny back on him and fueled talk of a different offense entirely.

Stunned political pundits and Democrats quickly linked it to Trump's apparent request of former FBI Director James Comey to go 'easy' on Flynn the day after he was fired.

However, later on Saturday two inside sources told The Washington Post that it was Trump's personal lawyer, John Dowd, who made the tweet. It's not clear if the president saw it before it was posted.

Flynn was fired on February 13. At the time, the president said the decision was based on him misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his interaction with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak on December 22.

He did not admit to knowing Flynn lied in an interview with the FBI in January.

On February 14, Trump met with FBI Director Comey. Comey claims he was asked during this meeting to 'go easy' on Flynn and drop the investigation into Russian collusion.

He was fired on May 9 and says it was because he never complied with this alleged request.

The president has never admitted asking him to 'go easy' on Flynn and said that he fired him over his handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal - which many say won him the election - months earlier.
Two former drug addicts have revealed how they defeated their addictions while living 1,000 miles apart with the help of their dogs, before meeting by chance and later falling in love.

Katelyn Hoglund, (formerly, Katelyn Mae Price), 29, and her husband Jeffrey David Hoglund, 36, got married this year and are now living happily ever after with their beloved dogs - pit bulls Sally, Kilo and Kain, and a Great Dane called Jack.

But until their paths crossed two years ago, they were both battling deadly drug habits and led dark lives of deceit and crime.

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Locked up: Katelyn Hoglund, 29, was hooked on heroin while she was living in Huntington Beach, California, where she was arrested in 2012 for drugs, stolen property and fraud

Jeffrey Hoglund, 30, was abusing painkillers, heroin and meth in Seattle, WA, and in 2011 was arrested and charged with 14 felonies - seven counts of possession and seven of trafficking

Love at first sight: In September 2015, Jeffrey moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Katelyn was living and they met through mutual friends and fell in love over their adoration of animals

Former prostitute Katelyn was hooked on heroin while living in Huntington Beach, California, while in Seattle, Washington, Jeffery was abusing painkillers, heroin and meth.

Both had run-ins with the police, were locked up and ended up getting dogs after being released, which helped them both to stay clean, while giving each of them something to live for.

Katelyn's first pup, Zero, tragically died when she was in rehab but she later got two more - Jack, now two, and Sally, three, while Jeffrey had Kilo, now seven, and Kain, one.

Then, in September 2015, Jeffrey moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Katelyn was living at the time close to her family, and they met through mutual friends.

The recovering addicts bonded over their adoration of animals, fell in love and eventually moved in together with their four-legged friends.

Now he works as director of a drug abuse center, she's a financial analyst, and they've both been clean for four years - but say they couldn't have done it without their dogs.

Dogs: Both recovering drug addicts have always loved animals separately, and they said their dogs gave them something to live for when their lives were at an all-time low

Katelyn said, 'My life before consisted of nothing more than snorting pills and sticking a needle full of dope in my arm as many times as I could. Every single day.

'Death seemed so much more inviting than trying to exist another day. I was hopeless and desperate, but my dogs gave me purpose.

'There have been many times I've wanted to use and literally the only thing that stopped me is knowing that no one can take care of my babies better than me.

'They comfort me when I'm going through a rough time, they lick away tears and it's like they can read my energy - they know when I need a little extra love.

'When I look back at my old life, I get very sad for the little girl that couldn't find her way out of the dark.

'Every morning when I wake up, and every night as I lay my head down, I thank God for this second chance at life I've been given.

'I don't think I could have done it without my dogs.'

Jeffrey added, 'Kilo gave me the opportunity to love and care for something in a way than I never had before.

Puppy love: Jeffrey and Katelyn got married this year and are now living happily ever after with four dogs Sally, Kilo, Kain and Jack

Second chance: Katelyn said she couldn't have beat her heroin addiction without the help of her animals, I was hopeless and desperate, but my dogs gave me purpose'

'Sometimes I have the thought that if it wasn't for the love and caring that I learned through her that possibly I wouldn't have cared enough about me to get and stay clean.

'I'm a drug addict living a life free from the compulsion to actively try to kill myself and that is the most amazing miracle that I have ever witnessed.'

Katelyn fell into heroin addiction after graduating college in 2009 and moved to California where she says she was in an abusive relationship with a dealer.

In 2012, she was arrested and detained over aggravated possession of drugs, receiving stolen property, fraud and misdemeanor drug charges, and eventually went to rehab.

After completing treatment Katelyn broke up with her boyfriend, moved back home to Cincnnati, Ohio close to her family and got two dogs, pit bull Sally and Great Dane Jack.

She began attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings regularly and immediately afterwards would 'go home and snuggle them.'

Jeffrey was also trying to piece his life together, and says his turning point came in March 2010 when he came across a five week old pit bull puppy in a dope house.

Happy ending: Jeffrey described their recovery as 'a miracle' and Katelyn added, 'Now I have more than I could ever wish for, a life greater than I could have imagined'

Recovering: He works as director of a drug abuse center and she's a financial analyst, and they've both been clean for four years - but say they couldn't have done it without their dogs

He said, 'I asked how much for the little white girl, and was asked "What do you got?" "Bro, I got a quarter of weed and an iPod."

'And just like that, me, a low down piece of sh*t junkie was now the owner of the soon to be named Kilo.

'From that moment she began teaching me what it was like to care for something besides myself.'

Still addicted to drugs, Jeffrey hit a low point in 2011 when he was arrested and charged with 14 felonies - seven counts of possession and seven of trafficking.

He faced 15 years behind bars but pleaded guilty and after being granted 90 days of treatment and two years of probation, he managed to get clean.

He said Kilo became his 'rock' in that time, adding: 'She singlehandedly got me through some of my roughest times being clean.'

After two years off drugs, Jeffrey moved from Seattle to Cincinnati and went on to rescue another pit bull, Kain, who had been neglected by his owner.

Then, in September 2015, he and Katelyn met at a meal with mutual friends.

'We started cracking jokes like we had known each other for years. We very shortly found out we both loved dogs. And that's all it took,' Katelyn said.

The couple moved in together in earlier this year and got married in September with their beloved pooches by their sides.

Jeffrey described their recovery as 'a miracle' and Katelyn added, 'Now I have more than I could ever wish for, a life greater than I could have imagined.

'I have the love of four of the sweetest puppies and the man of my dreams all under one roof.'

To learn more about Katelyn and Jeffrey's journeys, visit their blog, Dogs and Other Unsolicited Advice, or visit theirFacebook page.
She is referred to as 'Britain's most beautiful royal' and tonight Lady Amelia Windsor proved she is worthy of her title.

The 22-year-old royal stunned as she arrived on the red carpet of the prestigious awards ceremony in London on Monday night.

The petite blonde showcased her enviable physique in a sheer lace gown as she stepped onto the red carpet at the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington.

Lady Amelia Windsor stunned in a sheer black dress as she arrived at the British Fashion Awards on Monday

Her revealing black lace gown was embroidered with gold and silver stitching representing constellations and featured bodice boning.

Amelia chose to go bra-less opting for a pair of nipple pasties to preserve her modesty and wore a pair of black oversize pants beneath her gown.

The granddaughter of the Duke and Duchess of Kent chose to keep her accessories to a minimum adding a few statement rings to her ensemble and carrying a small mirrored clutch.

Dubbed 'Britain's most beautiful royal' Lady Amelia proved herself to be worthy of her title on the red carpet

The 36th in line to the throne kept her accessories to a minimum in the form of box clutch and paired her gold stiletto heels with a pair of black ankle socks

She added further glamour to her outfit in the form of gold stilettos, which she chose to pair with black ankle socks.

The former Edinburgh University student wore her signature blonde tresses in loose waves, allowing her to showcase as dramatic smokey eye and a slick of berry lipstick.

Lady Amelia, who is 36th in line to the throne, joined other stars such as Holly Willoughby, Millie Mackintosh and Poppy Delevingne for the annual event.

The former Edinburgh University student wore her signature blonde tresses in loose waves

The 22-year-old went bra-less preserving her modesty with a pair of nipple pasties

This year's categories include Designer of the Year, Emerging Talent and Model of the Year with winners decided by a panel of judges.

There will also be three special-recognition awards which will be presented on the night. The awards have set the goal of raising 10 million as a primary fundraiser for the Education Foundation.

It comes as no surprise to see Lady Amelia in attendance this evening with the young royal becoming a regular on London's social scene.

In April last year she was named Britain's 'most beautiful royal' by society magazine Tatler and has been spotted at several high profile fashion events including London Fashion Week in September.

She was hand-picked as a muse by Dolce & Gabbana, and featured in a campaign for the Italian power house alongside another royal; Princess Olympia of Greece.

Other guests in attendance included Holly Willoughby and Millie Mackintosh who both opted for chic black ensembles
Tess Holliday has added another tattoo to her growing collection of body art, and the latest addition features a curvy woman that looks just like her.

The 32-year-old model took to Instagram Stories on Sunday to show off her large tattoo of a red-headed woman wearing a bikini top and matching sarong, which she got inked on her shin just a few days after she shared a sultry photo of herself in a lace bra.

Tess couldn't resist gushing about her 'beautiful new shin tattoo,' which was done by artist Jackie Dunn Smith at Thunderbird Tattoo in Los Angeles.

Strike a pose: Tess Holliday shared a sultry photo of herself in a lace bra a few days before she revealed her new tattoo of a curvy woman that looks just like her

Work of art: The 32-year-old model got a tattoo of a red-headed woman in a bikini and sarong on her shin while visiting Thunderbird Tattoo in Los Angeles this weekend

Although it's unclear if the tattoo was designed in Tess's likeness, the woman on her leg has the same auburn waves and flushed cheeks that she does.

Tess's close-up photo of the tattoo sees the woman posed with her hands behind her head while surrounded by flowers.

The size 22 model is clearly a fan of the ink, but she admitted that the timing of her new tattoo probably wasn't the best.

Tess and her husband, Nick Holliday, are celebrating their six-year anniversary this week with a getaway, but she will be forced to refrain from some vacation activities while her leg is healing.

'No hot tubbin for me': Tess admitted the timing of her new tattoo wasn't great because she and her husband, Nick Holliday, were about to go on vacation

Growing collection: The size 22 model has tattoos all over her arms and legs

'Who gets a giant tattoo right before you leave on a mini vacation?!' she asked while sharing a picture of her leg propped up on a pillow. 'No hot tubbin for me.'

A tattoo typically takes three to four weeks to heal, and while it is okay to shower, continued exposure to water in a bathtub or hot tub could damage the tattoo.

Of course Tess knows the drill; her arms and legs are covered with tattoos, including portraits of Dolly Parton and Miss Piggy.

'My tattoos are like a living journal for me as each one is indicative of where I was at on life,' she told Stylist in 2016. 'I was inspired by everything from other artists to nature and traveling when getting them.'

Making memories: 'My tattoos are like a living journal for me as each one is indicative of where I was at on life,' she once said

Celebration: Tess and Nick are celebrating their six-year anniversary this week

During her trip to the tattoo parlor, Tess and Nick posed for a series of snapshots in a photo booth, which she shared on Instagram on Monday in celebration of her anniversary.

'As most of you know, @nickhollidayco & I got engaged in an old photobooth, & ever since then, its been our thing (but only the chemical photobooths),' she wrote.

'This week we celebrate our 6th anniversary of driving each other nuts & Im grateful for not only him, but the friends in our life like @jackiedunnsmith that make our hearts so full #havelovewilltravel #effyourbeautystandards.'

Nick reached out to Tess on Tumblr in 2012 to tell her he loved her body positive stance, and the two have been together ever since. Together, they are raising their one-year-old son Bowie and her 11-year-old son Rylee from a previous relationship.

Too cute: The couple got engaged in a photo booth, and Tess shared a new strip of snapshots of them on Monday to celebrate their anniversary

Surprise! Tess revealed in July that she and Nick were secretly married for two years while sharing photos from their private nuptials

Tess shocked her fans in July when she revealed that she and Nick had been secretly married for two years while sharing photos from their private nuptials.

A few days before she got her new tattoo, the advocate for body positivity shared a stunning black and white photos of herself in a lace bra while taking a dig at online trolls.

'Maybe its my cold medicine talking, but do you ever notice that the angriest ppl, the ones that are always trying to bring others down to their level are the ones who failed at life?' she asked.

' I say it in my book: No person who is content with their life spends their time b***hing about other people,' she continued. '2018 is gonna be the year all the fed up folks like me come for the ignorant ones & ignite real change. Lets love each other, k?'
A mother-of-two whose ovarian cancer made her stomach so bloated she looked eight-and-a-half months pregnant said she felt 'like Mary expecting a surprise Christmas baby'.

Andrea Oliver, 54, from Teddington, south west London, would often wear baggy clothes to disguise her 'bump', as the bloating eventually became so severe, she could barely eat or breathe.

She initially thought her symptoms were panic or anxiety related, but a string of tests revealed she had stage three ovarian cancer.

Recalling her shock diagnosis last December for the first time, Mrs Oliver, who is speaking to raise awareness about the disease, said: 'Everything I was going through weirdly reminded me of the nativity story.

'Mary learnt very quickly that she was having a baby and I felt the same.

'Id gone from feeling relatively okay to looking eight-and-a-half months pregnant, like I was expecting a Christmas miracle of my own.

'After my diagnosis on December 7, thats when the bloating really got so bad that I looked like I was with child.'

Andrea Oliver, 54, from Teddington, south west London, would often wear baggy clothes to disguise her 'bump' (pictured with her daughter Katie, last Christmas)

And on December 22, she had 5.5 litres of fluid drained from her abdomen, which medics then sent away for testing.

She continued: 'Before my diagnosis, Id made Christmas puddings for the big day.

'I do it every year, its a tradition, and all I could think about, because of my bloating, was not being able to eat them.

'After the fluid was drained, I felt such relief at being able to sit around and eat my Christmas dinner with my family as planned.

'My daughters call it "the weirdest Christmas ever", but, despite everything, we had a fantastic day.

'I laughed so much I ended up with a hematoma  swelling caused by a break in the wall of a blood vessel  at my drain site.

'My doctors told me that, if it was caused by Christmas cheer, it was fine.'

She initially thought her symptoms were panic or anxiety related, but a string of tests revealed she had stage three ovarian cancer (pictured with Katie in May 2016)

Recalling her shock diagnosis for the first time, she said: 'Everything I was going through weirdly reminded me of the nativity story' (pictured with some friends last month)

When did her ordeal begin?

Mrs Oliver's brush with cancer began back in October 2016, when she started going to the toilet more often than usual.

Assuming she had a simple urinary tract infection, such as cystitis, she tried to combat her symptoms by drinking lots of water.

Then, weeks later, she and husband Martin, 53 - who have two daughters, Isabelle, 19, and Katie, 22  visited their eldest girl in Malaga, Spain where she was studying.

But Mrs Oliver, who started experiencing stomach cramps and loss of appetite, recalled: 'I wondered if it may be to do with all the rich food we were eating.

'Then, back home, things got even worse  especially my bladder symptoms.

'Id been asked to cover a big meeting for my boss at work, but just remember thinking, Theres no way my bladder will cope with sitting in that room all day.'

A wake-up call

Deciding to see the doctor, thinking her symptoms indicated panic or anxiety, Mrs Oliver had a harsh wake-up call.

She said: 'As I sat in my GPs office, as she reeled off symptoms for ovarian cancer, I wasnt overly worried.

'Id had a couple of scares before, so thought this would be another storm in a teacup.'

Mrs Oliver said: 'Id gone from feeling relatively okay to looking eight-and-a-half months pregnant, like I was expecting a Christmas miracle of my own' (pictured with her husband Martin, and two daughters Katie and Isabelle)

Mrs Oliver's brush with cancer began back in October 2016, when she started going to the toilet more often than usual (pictured with Isabelle this summer)

String of tests

Her GP immediately sent her for a string of tests at Kingston Hospital in Surrey, where an ultrasound detected pools of fluid around her spleen and abdomen.

After speaking with a consultant, it was agreed she needed a CT scan to investigate further.

She said: 'I asked the doctor exactly what they were checking for and I was told it could be cancer cells in my peritoneum.

'I didnt even know what body part they meant, but they explained it was a thin layer of tissue lining my abdomen.

'On the way home, I Googled it and what I found was awful. It seemed to say any treatment was more about management than cure.'

Days later, the results of Mrs Oliver's CT scan confirmed there were cancer cells in her peritoneum and her omentum  a double layer of fatty tissue covering the lower abdominal area.

She was transferred to Londons Royal Marsden Hospital, where the type of cancer she had was reclassified as gynaecological, and a treatment plan was drawn up.

Beginning treatment

On New Years Eve, she began a six-cycle course of chemotherapy. She recalled: 'It wasnt the way I thought Id see out 2016.

'I was terrified of chemotherapy  probably more than of cancer because of the side effects - but everyone on the ward was so lovely that I soon realised my fears were unfounded.

'We had a slight blip when I developed an allergy to one of the drugs I was given. I could feel my body shutting down bit by bit, before I passed out.

'Thankfully, doctors brought me round. At first, I was terrified of what might happen if I couldnt have the drug that was meant to make me better.

'But the medical team were amazing and managed to tweak my treatment plan to make it work.'

On New Years Eve, she began a six-cycle course of chemotherapy. She recalled: 'It wasnt the way I thought Id see out 2016' (pictured with Katie and Isabelle this summer)

Now, she is working with the charity Target Ovarian Cancer to raise awareness of the signs to look out for (pictured with Katie in Malaga, Spain, just before her diagnosis)

In March this year, Mrs Oliver had a radical hysterectomy and part of her abdominal wall was removed at the Royal Marsden.

HOW TO SPOT OVARIAN CANCER Ovarian cancer is where the disease originates from the cells in and around the ovary. In the majority of cases, ovarian cancer affects women over the age of 50, or postmenopausal women. One in 73 women will develop ovarian cancer in her lifetime. Signs and symptoms: Persistent abdominal pain

Persistent abdominal bloating

Urinary frequency

Acid reflux or heartburn

Feeling full quickly The two main treatment plans are: Surgery, including taking biopsies

Chemotherapy to kill cancer cells, recommended after surgery for most stages of ovarian cancer Ovarian cancer ranks fifth in cancer deaths among women and accounts for more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. Survival rates by stage: Stage I ovarian cancer: 92 percent

Stage II ovarian cancer: 70 percent

Stage III ovarian cancer: 39 percent

Stage IV ovarian cancer: 17 percent Advertisement

A pathology report also confirmed she had ovarian cancer, which doctors believe was the primary cancer which had spread to her peritoneum and her omentum.

And, after her treatment finished in May, she was declared NED  no evidence of disease  in June.

Now, she is working with the charity Target Ovarian Cancer to raise awareness of the signs to look out for.

Working with charity

She said: 'You think with something like cancer, symptoms will be loud and clear, but mine werent.

'Its so important to step out of your busy life for a moment and just consider if everything feels okay, or if anything has changed at all.

'Target Ovarian Cancer have a fantastic symptom diary app that Id encourage anyone to use.'

Mrs Oliver is also in training for a 14-mile walk, called the Marsden March, to raise money for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, as a thank you to everyone who looked after her.

She continued: 'Every Christmas, we have a tradition to go to a carol service.

'I remember last year, sitting there thinking, "How many more Christmases am I going to see?"

'But the human kindness I saw while I was in hospital got me through the holidays.

'This has made me incredibly thankful for NHS staff, and how kind and passionate they are.'

Anyone willing to sponsor Mrs Oliver's walk can do so here.
A prominent vaginal mesh campaigner has died from sepsis which was triggered by her controversial implant, it has been reported.

Christina Brajcic, 42, from Ontario, Canada, passed away on Thursday following a four-year battle with persistent infections - as a result of her mesh.

During her final few months, she posted an array of videos detailing her struggle with the scandal-hit devices on her Facebook page.

Tributes have flooded in for the 'courageous' interior designer, who helped to raise awareness of the 'catastrophic' mesh, which leaves many in crippling pain.

The implants, which can shrink, twist, curl and cut through internal tissue, have ruined the lives of thousands of women, leaving some on the brink of suicide.

Ms Brajcic's death follows landmark moves by English and Australian health officials to recommend the controversial implants should no longer be used.

Christina Brajcic, 42, from Ontario, Canada, passed away on Thursday following a four-year battle with persistent infections - as a result of her mesh

It is expected that the NHS will follow the guidance from Nice, the Government's healthcare adviser - despite not being obligated to do so.

The verdict comes after the Government released its three-year investigation into the mesh scandal last September. It rejected calls for a ban at the time.

Australian watchdogs also banned the use of vaginal mesh implants for prolapse last week after a review found 'the benefits do not outweigh the risks'.

However, vaginal mesh remains a viable option for surgeons operating on women suffering from incontinence in both countries.

When did her problems begin?

Before her operation to have TVT mesh fitted in 2013, Ms Brajcic was 'fit and active', according to a fundraising page created since her death.

Ms Brajcic, who had her own business, endured mild stress incontinence following the birth of her two sons, Ben and Jake.

However, soon after the procedure she suffered debilitating pain - a complaint that has been raised by thousands of other women with the mesh fitted.

She then began to get constant infections - a problem suffered by scores of women that MailOnline has reported on since it backed calls for a ban.

During her final few months, she posted an array of videos detailing her struggle with the scandal-hit devices on her Facebook page

Tributes have flooded in for the 'courageous' interior designer, who helped to raise awareness of the 'catastrophic' mesh, which leaves many in crippling pain

THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF MESH Different types of mesh implants include: Mini-sling: This implant is embedded with a metallic inserter. It sits close to the mid-section of a woman's urethra. The use of an inserter is thought to lower the risk of cutting during the procedure.

This implant is embedded with a metallic inserter. It sits close to the mid-section of a woman's urethra. The use of an inserter is thought to lower the risk of cutting during the procedure. TVT sling : Such a sling is held in place by the patient's body. It is inserted with a plastic tape by cutting the vagina and making two incisions in the abdomen. The mesh sits beneath the urethra.

: Such a sling is held in place by the patient's body. It is inserted with a plastic tape by cutting the vagina and making two incisions in the abdomen. The mesh sits beneath the urethra. TVTO sling : Inserted through the groin and sits under the urethra. This sling was intended to prevent bladder perforation.

: Inserted through the groin and sits under the urethra. This sling was intended to prevent bladder perforation. TOT sling : Involves forming a 'hammock' of fibrous tissue in the urethra. Surgeons often claim this form of implant gives them the most control during implantation.

: Involves forming a 'hammock' of fibrous tissue in the urethra. Surgeons often claim this form of implant gives them the most control during implantation. Ventral mesh rectopexy : Releases the rectum from the back of the vagina or bladder. A mesh is then fitted to the back of the rectum to prevent prolapse. Advertisement

Ms Brajcic eventually became resistant to antibiotics, having been given so many during her four year battle with vaginal mesh complications.

It's reported she would be pumped full of strong medication in her local hospital's emergency department at least once a month.

Fundraising efforts

Kath Sansom, founder of Sling The Mesh, created a JustGiving page to raise 1,000 to send to Ms Brajcic's young sons. So far, it has raised 947.

Writing on the post, Ms Sansom, 49, said: 'Chrissy was a courageous woman who, despite her suffering, remained, calm, strong and beautiful.

'Let her death not be in vain.' Ms Sansom also described her as 'determined to spread the message to stop other women suffering'.

Sling The Mesh has almost quadrupled in members in recent months. Nearly 4,600, mostly sufferers, now support the cause to ban vaginal mesh implants.

When did the scandal come to light?

The scandal came to light in April, when the NHS tried to dodge media attention over the implants that left hundreds of women in agony.

Senior doctors immediately called for a public inquiry into the controversial mesh, with some saying the scandal could be akin to thalidomide.

Before her operation to have TVT mesh fitted in 2013, Ms Brajcic was 'fit and active', according to a fundraising page (pictured with her sons Ben and Jake and husband)

Ms Brajcic eventually became resistant to antibiotics, having been given so many during her four year battle with vaginal mesh complications

NICE RECOMMEND IT SHOULD BE BANNED Controversial vaginal mesh implants should be banned, Nice said last week. The health watchdog recommends the 'gold-standard' implants should not be routinely offered for treating organ prolapse but instead just used for research or after patients are made aware of the risks. In a series of documents about vaginal mesh implants to be published in December, Nice said that 'evidence of long-term efficacy is inadequate in quality and quantity'. It added that 'when complications occur, these can be serious and have life-changing consequences' Yet, Nice also said most women do not report complications after being fitted with such implants. The health watchdog only commented on organ prolapse and not urinary incontinence or hernias, which implants are also used for. Advertisement

At the time, it was reported that at least 800 women were suing the NHS and device manufacturers. However, it is unsure how many women are now looking to take action in Britain.

Mesh, introduced 20 years ago and dubbed 'gold-standard', was promoted as a quick, cheap alternative to complex surgery for incontinence and prolapse.

Because it did not require specialist training to implant, outraged women have since begged for tougher regulations to conduct such surgery.

High-risk device in the US

Vaginal mesh has been considered a high-risk device for nearly a decade in the US, with bodies accepting up to 40 per cent of women may experience injury.

Some studies, published in an array of scientific journals, have shown that pain, erosion and perforation from the surgery can strike up to 75 per cent of women.

The alarming evidence prompted officials in three US states to suspend the practice and saw them call for an urgent review into its safety.

It's reported she would be pumped full of strong medication in her local hospital's emergency department at least once a month

Scottish officials asked for it to be suspended in Scotland in 2014 pending a similar review, but hundreds of women are still believed to be having the surgery.

More than 10,000 women a year are fitted with mesh. But only 4,800 have suffered lacerations and nerve damage from the mesh breaking into tiny fragments.

However, campaigners stress these are just the tip of the iceberg and that actually there are thousands more - but they have been kept silent.

Leading mesh manufacturer Johnson & Johnson was forced to pay out $57 million in September to a woman fitted with the implant.

Ella Ebaugh, 51, from Philadelphia, was awarded the eight-figure sum after a jury found the company to be negligent and its product defective.

Anyone wanting to donate to Ms Brjacic's family can do so here.
Men who experience flu-like symptoms after having an orgasm are allergic to sex, researchers have found.

This rare and understudied phenomenon known as post-orgasmic illness syndrome, or POIS, is believed to be caused by men having an allergy to their own semen, either through contact or due to a rush of hormones released during climax.

Symptoms can develop within seconds, minutes, or hours after sex and cause men to experience extreme fatigue, runny nose, muscle weakness, fever and sweating.

And though the exact cause is unclear, researchers speculate that it may be affecting far more men who don't report their symptoms.

Men who experience flu-like symptoms after sex have post-orgasmic illness syndrome or POIS, a rare and understudied condition that can last between two and seven days

The condition was first reported in 2002 but since then about 50 cases have been examined where men experience a range of flu-like and allergy symptoms after ejaculating.

A study from Tulane University said: 'POIS negatively affects the life of patients by limiting sexual encounters, dampening romantic prospects, creating internal struggles to avoid eroticism, and affecting patients' schedules.'

WHY DO YOU GET A HEADACHE AFTER SEX? The 'sex headaches' - which affect men more than women - come in two forms, according to Dr Margaret Redelman. The first, called pre-orgasmic headache, is triggered by a build-up of pressure that increases as sexual excitement does. And the other, orgasmic headache, has an 'explosive, throbbing quality and appears just before or at the moment of orgasm'. The pain is described, 'as if you've been hit over the head with a cricket bat.' Annabelle Knight, sex and relationship expert at Lovehoney, said those lovers who enjoy the most lively sex are most at risk of the headaches. Advertisement

Other symptoms include mood disturbances, irritability, memory difficulties, concentration lapses and incoherent speech that can last between two and seven days.

The research published in Sexual Medicine Reviews highlighted two suspected causes for the post-sex illness.

The most common theory is that some men may be allergic to their own semen, or something in their semen, which causes an immediate immune reaction.

A semen allergy is an allergic reaction to a protein found in a man's semen that mostly affects women but has been known to also affect men when semen comes in contact with the skin or mouth.

A previous study conducted on 45 Dutch men used a skin-prick test, sticking the men with their own semen, to identify an allergy.

Of the 33 who were pricked, 87 percent of men experienced POIS symptoms that started within 30 minutes after ejaculation.

Complaints of POIS symptoms were reported in their head, eyes, nose, throat, and muscles once their semen came in contact with their skin.

'They didn't feel ill when they masturbated without ejaculating, but as soon as the semen came from the testesafter that they became ill, sometimes within just a few minutes,' Marcel Waldinger, study other and professor of sexual psychopharmacology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, told Reuters.

Another suspected cause, is that some men's opioid receptors, including endorphins, may be affected when released during orgasms.

Their bodies could be unable to cope with the rush of hormones being released when they have sex.

And because the cause of the condition is not fully known, treating it can be difficult.

But some men have been treated with antihistamines, selective serotonin inhibitors and psychoactive drugs including benzodiazepines.

Hyposensitization is also a possible treatment by decreasing men's allergy response through exposure, meaning the more they ejaculated the lesser their symptoms became.

And for some who can't find a proper remedy, abstinence may be their best route at avoiding the uncomfortable symptoms.
Doctors are recommending NHS patients pay up to 9,000 for non-emergency operations, from earwax removal to hip replacements, to beat waiting times as rationing fears rise.

The controversial move tells doctors to push 'self-pay' options, some of which cost nearly 9,000.

It is said to give GPs 'greater options to discuss with patients' but has sparked criticism from doctors and campaigners who brand the move 'shameless'.

This comes after news last week revealed patients are to be denied cough medicines, migraine pills and heartburn remedies under sweeping NHS rationing plans.

GPs will be told to stop routinely funding thousands of treatments for almost 40 conditions when they can be bought cheaply over the counter instead.

Breakthrough medicines for heart disease and arthritis may also be restricted in future, even if they have been approved by the rationing body NICE.

NHS bosses insisted they could no longer afford to pay for routine prescriptions and major new drugs on current budgets.

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GPs have been given a 'shopping list' of non-emergency operations to offer to NHS patients willing to pay privately to beat waiting for procedures in a move branded 'shameless'

THREAT TO HEART DRUGS Doctors could refuse to prescribe blockbuster drugs for heart disease, blindness and arthritis that are routinely offered abroad. NHS bosses said patients may be refused new medicines even though they had been approved by the rationing authority NICE. The body's decisions are meant to be adopted by local trusts known as Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). Yet NHS England said CCGs should not be expected to prescribe the new medicines if they could not afford to. The proposals  outlined in an NHS England board meeting last week  would lead to a huge postcode lottery of promising new drugs. NICE is due to assess dozens of new treatments next year, including those for heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis and a type of blindness known as age-related macular degeneration. NHS England documents say it would be 'unfair' on patients to 'set unattainable goals'. Advertisement

'Blatant marketing around healthcare'

Such 'shopping list' procedures are being offered by the company Care UK for close to 9,000 at a treatment centre in Emersons Green, Bristol, where NHS therapies are also carried out.

At the clinic, earwax removal costs 160, a tonsillectomy 1,935 and a hip replacement 8,994.

NHS patients seeking operations at Emersons Green treatment centre currently face a six to 20-week wait, which 'underperforms against national and/or local standards.'

Yet, some GPs have hit out against the move.

Dr David Porteous, a GP at the Fishponds Family Practice, in Bristol, said: 'To see an actual price list is the most blatant bit of marketing around healthcare I can remember seeing.

'In my memory it's never been as blunt as this, as shameless as this.

'It's part of the wider privatisation, but the more sinister thing is it normalises people paying for the healthcare that is provided free by the NHS - albeit with delays and obstacles.

'I see that as part of the dismantling of healthcare at the time of need. It's about removing the expectation of state provision of services.

He said: 'If a member of the public or a member of staff reads a leaflet like that, coming from an NHS provider saying "pay for your care" - people will just assume "this is what it is now, we have to pay."

'If that becomes the cultural expectation, that the state won't pay, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.'

'Patients will be paying when they should be getting their treatments free'

A spokesman for Care UK say they are using extra capacity at the centre to offer the self-pay operations and NHS patients would not be affected.

The company says the new self-pay scheme will let those who can afford it get around 'the pressure of growing waiting lists' and gives GPs 'greater options to discuss with patients.'

Mike Campbell of the campaign group Protect Our NHS said: 'GP services have experienced almost a decade of under-investment with doctors buckling under the pressures of a huge increase in patient numbers but a shortage of doctors.

'It is totally wrong that hard-pressed GPs are now being encouraged to recommend their patients to a private company where patients will be paying when they should be getting their treatments free.

'More people are having to pay for urgent procedures either by dipping into savings or by taking out health insurance. For those who can't pay, waiting lists grow.'

A Care UK spokesman said: 'Our focus will be on making use of otherwise unused theatre time to give easy, affordable access to procedures which have been restricted or deprioritised by NHS commissioners, but which are nonetheless beneficial to patients' wellbeing and quality of life.'

Patients would receive the same care they would on the NHS and it would help people who wanted to go private but did not have health insurance, the spokesman said.

A spokesman from the NHS Bristol Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) said: 'We commissioned Care UK to provide a number of planned care treatments on the NHS at Emerson's Green Treatment Centre.

'As a private provider of healthcare they are able to offer self-pay treatment for patients, which is completely separate from the NHS.

'We are keen to stress there will continue to be a clear separation from NHS and private treatments.'

Drastic-money saving measures to be enforced

Although the health service was allocated an extra 2.8billion by the Chancellor earlier this month, it was only a third of what bosses asked for.

As a result, executives announced last week a series of drastic money-saving measures to save hundreds of millions of pounds.

In the first instance, GPs will be told to 'restrict' the funding of medications from a list of 36 common conditions.

These include items which can be bought cheaply at supermarkets or pharmacies, such as treatments for coughs and colds, paracetamol and indigestion pills, as well as remedies for dandruff, cold sores and athlete's foot.

Officials also outlined a string of other rationing initiatives that could mean longer waiting times.

However, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt last week appeared to contradict the approach as he insisted the NHS had been given a 'significant' increase in funding.

He also urged hospitals to concentrate on saving money by taking steps to prevent patient neglect.

Among the announcements, health bosses also warned of:

Patients being refused new drugs for heart conditions, diabetes and blindness if their local NHS board decides they are too expensive.

Widespread rationing for cataract surgery, hip and knee replacements and IVF.

Longer waiting times for A&E, cancer treatment, routine operations and scans.

'The NHS should not be paying for low-value treatments'

The NHS is under severe pressure from the ageing population, migration and the growing toll of lifestyle-related conditions such as obesity and diabetes.

Although health funding has been increased by the Government year-on-year, experts say it has not kept pace with demand.

Ahead of this month's Budget, leading health-think tanks  backed by NHS England, which runs the health service  had asked for an extra 8billion for the health service over two years.

Chancellor Philip Hammond allocated 2.8billion last week while stressing that hospitals would need to cut waiting times in A&E and for routine operations.

Officials from NHS England began drafting plans to ration certain prescription medicines and other surgical procedures.

Yet last week they said the Government's refusal to pump in the cash they needed meant many more treatments may be cut. NHS England has drawn up a list of 36 types of treatments which GPs should no longer prescribe.

The restrictions would affect around 3,200 medicines and remedies.

They include cough mixture, migraine pills, anti-dandruff shampoos and paracetamol, which can be bought in supermarkets, chemists and petrol stations. Nappy rash cream, head lice treatment, ibuprofen and medication for athlete's food are also on the list.

Officials said rationing would save 190million a year while freeing up millions of GP appointments that would have been spent writing out prescriptions.

A consultation on the plans begins this month with a final list of 'restricted' medicines expected by next year.

Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said he was 'determined to make taxpayers' money go further'. He added: 'The NHS should not be paying for low-value treatments and it's right that we look at reducing prescriptions for medicines that patients can buy for a fraction of the price the NHS pays.'

'This would risk adversely affecting the most vulnerable'

Yet Rachel Power, from the Patients Association, said many would lose out as a result of political decisions about the funding of health care.

She warned of the 'complex consequences' of the NHS' drive to cut spending, including the relationship between GPs and their patients.

Don Redding from National Voices  a coalition of 160 health and social charities  said: 'If taken forward, these plans could mean that some treatments are only available to those who can afford them.

'This would risk adversely affecting those people who currently get free prescriptions, which includes some of the most vulnerable in our society and those who are just about managing.'

NHS England also announced that 11 less commonly-used treatments such as herbal supplements and homeopathy remedies would be restricted immediately.

Others include muscle-rubs, medicines for joint pain and strong painkillers, which are either expensive or considered ineffective.

Yet last week, the Health Secretary appeared to contradict NHS England's warnings by claiming they had been given a 'significant' increase to their budget.

He also said waiting times would get shorter, not longer, and urged hospitals to save money by taking simple measures to prevent neglect.

Addressing a conference in London, he said: 'The working assumption is that poor quality care is about the most expensive care.

'If someone has a fall that could have been avoided, they stay in hospital, maybe they then get a pressure ulcer and continue to take up a bed for one week, two weeks, three weeks, which is expensive for the NHS.'
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The first American child ever born from a uterus transplant is a 'beautiful baby boy' who is healthy, eating and out of his incubator, the medical team revealed on Monday.

The mother, who remains anonymous, is also healthy and recuperating from the groundbreaking birth a year after she received a womb from a nurse who lives near Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, where the operation was performed.

The hospital confirmed on Friday that the birth had taken place. Speaking at a press conference on Monday morning, Dr Robert Gundy Jr, who delivered the child, wept as he said it was the most special delivery he's ever experienced.

The family said in a statement that they feel 'blessed' to have been part of the study, and they hope the breakthrough demonstrates to their child 'that no matter what obstacles are in your path, with the right team working beside you, anything is possible'.

The team included one of the surgeons from Sweden, who delivered the world's first uterus transplant baby and was on-hand to offer expert advice.

But while Sweden's donors and recipients were all related, Dallas has had an unprecedented amount of 'altruistic' women offered this wombs to strangers, coming close to 200 - with interest soaring after news of this birth broke on Friday.

'This is a great day for medical research': Dr. Giuliano Testa, the leader of the uterus transplant clinical trial at Baylor, hailed the birth as a breakthrough as he held a press conference on Monday morning with the surgical team

Weeping: Dr Robert Gundy Jr (left), who delivered the baby, wept as he said it was one of the most special deliveries he's ever experienced

New pictures: The team also released some new images (including this, above) from the birth, which was first announced on Friday

Unseen: This image captured the team performing the c-section on the woman a year after she received a uterus transplant

The breakthrough comes after years of attempts by various hospitals to perfect the art of womb transplants, which has only been a success in Sweden. The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio made headlines in early 2016 after transplanting a deceased donor's womb into a patient, but it had to be removed days later due to a yeast infection.

In October 2016, Baylor quietly announced it had performed four uterus transplants using living donors - the same approach as the Swedish team. Though three had to be removed due to poor blood flow, one was a success.

'There was something so tremendously special about this delivery,' Dr Gundy, who has delivered thousands of babies in his decades-long career, said tearfully.

'I've delivered thousands of babies but there was something about this that was so special...' he trailed off, adding 'sorry, I'm an emotional person.'

He continued: 'There was something so exciting about this because the patients were so excited and what they were willing to go through was tremendous.'

Dr Gundy explained they were all on tenterhooks throughout the pregnancy and heavily relied on Kristin Wallace, the coordinator between the family and the surgical team, to ensure the mother was having a smooth pregnancy.

'Kristen has shepherded us all through this. Every sniffle she had, every time she fell, we were just panicked about what would happen to the pregnancy, so it was difficult.'

Dr Gregory McKenna, a transplant surgeon at Baylor, added that this transplant was one of the most terrifying he has experienced.

'With a kidney, you know if it's working within seconds. With this, ultimately it's a year before you can find out.' So it's been a long run for us compared to what we normally do.'

On Monday, the team shared the staggering news that close to 200 women have offered up their uterus for other women to have as a transplant.

'When we started this, we were expecting relatives or people who knew the patients. But the number of altruistic donors was overwhelming,' Wallace explained.

'We are still going through all of them. It's going to take a while but we will get back to all of them!'

At the end of the conference the team shared a statement from the family: 'We consider ourselves profoundly blessed to have been a part of this study and we are optimistic that this initial success will lead to many more in the future.

'We humbly hope that our little boy can serve as an inspiration to those struggling with infertility, and demonstrate throughout his life that no matter what obstacles are in your path, with the right team working beside you, anything is possible.'

This is the first American baby born after a uterus transplant in Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. Pictured: Dr Robert T. Gunby Jr holds up the baby to show the mother

The baby's boy's birth was announced on Friday, a year after Baylor performed four womb transplants

On Monday, the new mother and father said they hope the breakthrough demonstrates to their child 'that no matter what obstacles are in your path, with the right team working beside you, anything is possible'

HOW IS A WOMB TRANSPLANT PERFORMED? The first step involves doctors removing some of the patients' eggs in order to fertilize them in a dish to create embryos. These are then frozen, until they are needed. Secondly, a womb, complete with two major arteries and four veins, removed from a from donor in a three-hour operation. The donated womb is then implanted into the patient during an operation that typically takes around six hours. The woman is then, as all organ transplant patients are, prescribed powerful immune-suppressing drugs to stop the transplanted womb being rejected by the body. Around a year later, when doctors are confident the transplant is a success, one of the embryos is thawed and implanted into the donated womb. If the pregnancy is a success, doctors ultimately deliver the baby via C-section. Once a woman has successfully carried one or two babies, the transplanted organ is then removed. Advertisement

Baylor has had a study underway for several years to enroll up to 10 women for uterus transplants.

In October 2016, the hospital said four women had received transplants but that three of the wombs had to be removed because of poor blood flow.

The hospital would give no further information on how many transplants have been performed since then.

But Time magazine, which first reported the US baby's birth, says eight have been done in all, and that another woman is currently pregnant as a result.

The first four cases involved 'altruistic' donors  unrelated and unknown to the recipients. The ones done in Sweden were from live donors, mostly from the recipients' mother or a sister.

While little is known about the new mother, Time spoke to her donor Taylor Siler, 36, who is a registered nurse and mother-of-two in Dallas.

'I have family members who struggled to have babies, and it's not fair,' Siler told the newspaper. 'I just think that if we can give more people that option, that's an awesome thing.'

A doctor in Sweden, Mats Brannstrom, is the first in the world to deliver a baby as a result of a uterus transplant. As of last year, he had delivered five babies from women with donated wombs.

There have been at least 16 uterus transplants worldwide, including one in Cleveland from a deceased donor that had to be removed because of complications. Last month, Penn Medicine in Philadelphia announced that it also would start offering womb transplants.

Womb donors can be dead or alive, and the Baylor study aims to use some of both.

Doctors hope that womb transplants will enable as many as several thousand women born without a uterus to bear children.

To be eligible for the Baylor study, women must be 20 to 35 years old and have healthy, normal ovaries. They will first have in vitro fertilization to retrieve and fertilize their eggs and produce embryos that can be frozen until they are ready to attempt pregnancy.

After the uterus transplant, the embryos can be thawed and implanted, at least a year after the transplant to make sure the womb is working well.

A baby resulting from a uterine transplant would be delivered by cesarean section.

The wombs are not intended to be permanent.

Having one means a woman must take powerful drugs to prevent organ rejection, and the drugs pose long-term health risks, so the uterus would be removed after one or two successful pregnancies.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine issued a statement Friday calling the Dallas birth 'another important milestone in the history of reproductive medicine.'

For women born without a functioning uterus, 'transplantation represents the only way they can carry a pregnancy,' the statement said. The group is convening experts to develop guidelines for programs that want to offer this service.
The best personalities are cultivated in California, according to a new study.

Year-round sunshine and mild temperatures were found to positively affect people's overall personalities based on key traits, while they said residents of colder climates, such as Massachusetts, are more likely to be rude and unpleasant people.

The study also pinpointed the perfect temperature for good personalities - suggesting that growing up in the average San Jose temperature of 71 degrees will produce the most agreeable, emotionally stable and open people.

And good weather not only leads to a spike in positive mood and personality, but those living in warmer areas are also less likely to suffer from seasonal depression.

Average Southern California weather of 71 degrees produces the best personalities, according to an international team of researchers

The hundreds of personality traits used to describe humans are largely captured by five broad dimensions called the Big Five: agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extroversion, and openness to experience.

Now an international team of researchers has examined 1.6million people in a large study spanning areas in the US and China to find out how weather influences those traits.

Researchers from the University of Texas were able to identify a positive association between those who grew up in a mild climate and the Big Five personality characteristics through a psychological assessments.

DO YOU HAVE SAD SYMPTOMS? According to the National Institute of Mental Health, symptoms of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) can include: A persistent low mood and/or low self-esteem Tearfulness, feelings of despair, guilt and worthlessness Carb cravings and weight gain Sleeping for longer than normal and finding it hard to get up in the morning. Nausea upon waking may also be a symptom Feeling lethargic and sleepy during the day Irritability and feeling stressed or anxious Lack of libido and/or loss of pleasure or interest in normal everyday activities Advertisement

Participants in the US ranked themselves from one to five on a 44-question self-reported personality test called the Big Five Inventory.

The study published in Nature found that residents of mild environments, such as California, scored higher on key personality traits including agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability than those living in colder conditions.

'The idea is that, as a warm-blooded species, humans have a basic need for thermal comfort,' Samuel Gosling, study researcher and professor at the University of Texas told Huffington Post.

'Pleasant temperatures encourage individuals to explore the outside environment, where both social interactions and new experiences abound,' he added.

Californians have 12 months to enjoy the outdoors, whereas those in the northeast spend around four months weathering the cold, which can lead to lower interest in socializing.

So while January can be spent on a 65-degree hike in the Hollywood Hills, Bostonians will be shoveling the snow off their car at below freezing temperatures, which could clearly effect personality and mood.

And the study determined that the further temperatures deterred either way from 71 degrees, the lower participants scored.

Researchers said the findings provide a new perspective on how and why personalities vary across geographical regions beyond previous economic theories including subsistence style and selective migration.

The study took into account age, gender and economic status, which proved to not sway the results - concluding that temperature plays a large role in personality traits.

Those who experience colder winters are also more likely to suffer seasonal affective disorder or SAD due to lack of sunlight.

SAD is a form of depression that affects more than three million Americans each year when the clock turns forward an hour and daylight is decreased.

Bostonians who experience temperatures below freezing have the reputation of being unpleasant and blunt, as seen in the gloomy Massachusetts-based movie Manchester by the Sea

It is categorized as a persistent low mood, low self esteem, feelings of despair and worthlessness.

Lack of sunlight can cause a drop in serotonin levels, a brain chemical or neurotransmitter that affects mood. And the winter months can increase melatonin levels, which induces sleep.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, seasonal depression is found in those who live further from the equator.

A study discovered that one percent of Floridians suffered from SAD whereas nine percent suffered in New England.

'When the ambient temperature is either too hot or too cold, individuals are less likely to go outside and therefore less likely to meet up with friends, to try new activities,' said Samuel Gosling.

This lack of interest in socializing due to weather resulted in a drop on the scale.

The NIH recommends getting as much sunlight as possible and exercising regularly to combat the harsh winters.

But if that seems impossible due to your location, maybe it's time to move to San Diego.
Samm Micklethwaite (pictured with her son Roman) was induced at 42 weeks and developed a sepsis infection

At 42 weeks pregnant Samm Micklethwaite was happy to be induced. Eight hours later, she was in labour, but after two hours pushing, and two failed attempts at delivering her baby with forceps, she had to undergo an emergency caesarean, 26 hours after her induction.

Not long after her son Roman was safely delivered, Samm, 33, a supermarket duty manager from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, developed a fever and started vomiting. I felt certain something wasnt right, she recalls.

Six hours later, Samm developed a pain she describes as ten times worse than labour in her abdomen, and begged for a doctor to examine her, only to be told by midwives that her discomfort was to be expected after her surgery.

Three days later, Samms heart rate suddenly dangerously spiked to 215 beats a minute  three times the normal resting rate  and she couldnt pass urine. A CT scan and X-ray revealed she had an abdominal infection, which had sent her body into septic shock.

I was in hospital for ten days, and barely remember any moments with my son, says Samm. Now, 14 months on, I am still suffering severe pain.

Samm and husband Wayne, who have started legal proceedings for medical negligence, are convinced that had she been induced earlier, she would have avoided both the emergency caesarean and the life-threatening infection.

The risk of a woman developing an infection after her waters have broken rises from 0.16 per cent after 37 weeks to 6.15 per cent at over 42 weeks, according to a study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2003.

The risk of a woman developing an infection after her waters have broken rises from 0.16 per cent after 37 weeks to 6.15 per cent at over 42 weeks, according to a study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2003

A prolonged pregnancy also raises the risks of placental abruption  where the placenta separates from the womb, depriving the baby of oxygen and nutrients, and causing life-threatening bleeding: the risk is highest (0.44 per cent) at 42 weeks, according to a study in the same journal a year later.

But could inducing women before they reach 40 weeks reduce such complications? And, perhaps more importantly, could it also cut the number of babies being stillborn?

Last year, 696,271 babies were born safely in England and Wales  but the stillbirth figures remain largely unchanged from the early Nineties and the UK is ranked 24th out of 49 high-income countries for stillbirths (where the baby dies after 24 weeks of pregnancy).

Last week, the health secretary Jeremy Hunt pledged to halve the rates of stillbirths, maternal and newborn deaths by 2025.

Rachael Seddon is tortured by the thought that had her daughter Hope been delivered just a few days earlier, she would not have been stillborn

He announced that all deaths will be referred to a new NHS safety investigator and, within a week of the cause of death being established, the findings will be shared with NHS trusts across the country to avoid a repeat of the same mistake.

But could there be a simpler, more radical way to reduce stillbirths by inducing women before 40 weeks?

Under current NHS guidelines, pregnant women are offered induction at between 41 and 42 weeks gestation.

Contrast this with Denmark, which has one of the lowest stillbirth rates in the world. This has been ascribed to the fact that a quarter of women pregnant beyond 37 weeks are now induced. Very few Danish women go to 42 weeks, following a national effort to prevent prolonged pregnancy, according to a study published in 2014 in the journal BMJ Open.

These findings were controversial, with commentators pointing out there were other factors involved.

But now a major UK study, involving 77,327 low-risk first-time mothers, has found inducing women at 40 weeks could reduce the number of stillbirths or deaths of babies within seven days of birth by a massive 66 per cent  from 26 per 10,000 pregnancies to just eight.

The groundbreaking study, which looked at mothers over the age of 35, represents the strongest evidence yet that moving the offer of induction to 40 weeks might reduce the risk of stillbirth in this specific age group, which we know faces a greater risk of stillbirth and neonatal death, said Hannah Knight, of the National Maternity and Perinatal Audit at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who led the study conducted jointly with the University of Cambridge and published in the journal PLOS Medicine.

In fact there are even suggestions that all women should be induced earlier, not just those aged 35 and older. An ongoing study in the U.S. is looking at inducing labour at 39 weeks as standard to see if it can improve birth outcome statistics.

Why we've got it wrong on 'overdue' babies So why do some babies go overdue in the first place? Research has suggested that higher weight gain in pregnancy, older maternal age and a family history of prolonged pregnancy may contribute. One simple explanation is that some pregnancies may be slightly misdated if the first day of the last period is used to calculate the due date. This method assumes that ovulation, and therefore conception, takes place two weeks later  yet women may ovulate several days after this, or the embryo may take slightly longer to implant in the uterus. In theory, this could mean a woman is labelled overdue when shes not. It may also be that the ideal length of pregnancy varies considerably from woman to woman. A 2013 study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, based on hormone testing found that the length of healthy pregnancies varied by as much as 37 days. The researchers suggested that rather than the conventional due date, a range of dates would be more helpful  while the duration of a womans previous pregnancies should be taken into account too, as that seemed to be a strong indicator of when subsequent babies would arrive. Professor Mark Johnson, an obstetrician at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, describes how this might work: If a womans first baby arrives before 40 weeks, for instance 38 weeks, her second and subsequent babies are either similar or move closer to the median of 40 weeks. The same is true of women who are closer to the other end of the spectrum. Either their subsequent babies will also be late, or they too will move towards the median of 40 weeks. Advertisement

The study, funded by the U.S. National Institute of Health, has recruited 6,000 pregnant women, randomly allocating them either an induction at 39 weeks or waiting for spontaneous labour.

The researchers hope to present their findings in February at the annual Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine conference.

Professor Mark Johnson, an obstetrician at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, says better birth outcomes in other EU countries are due to factors including better monitoring of foetal movement and fundal height (a measurement of the bump which can indicate if the baby is not growing properly and if there may be a risk of stillbirth or placental problems). But he suggests early induction is also key.

My view is that all pregnant women should be told that if they stay pregnant once at full term  37 weeks  their risk of stillbirth increases week by week, says Professor Johnson. The only way to avoid that risk is to be induced earlier.

He told Good Health he thinks women should ideally be induced between 39 and 40 weeks.

But why is 39 weeks the focus, when the risks of stillbirth and infection increase after 37 weeks?

Professor Johnson explains that although 37 weeks has the lowest chance of stillbirth, theres an increased risk of the baby having breathing problems, as at this point the lungs are not mature enough and have more fluid inside them.

As the weeks pass this decreases, lowering the chance of the baby needing help breathing after birth. Roughly, the stats on breathing problems in relation to gestation decrease in this fashion  one in 400 have breathing problems if delivered at 37 weeks, one in 800 at 38 weeks, then one in 1,500 at 39 weeks, says Professor Johnson.

Currently one in five labours in the UK is induced. Typically, prostaglandins (hormones that cause increased blood flow to an area) are administered using vaginal pessaries to soften and dilate the cervix; the next stage may be a drip containing oxytocin, to lead to contractions).

Still, the case for earlier inductions is not black and white. As Hannah Knight pointed out following the new UK study, there are potential downsides to inducing women earlier, not least the greater demand on NHS resources.

Further studies are needed to examine the impact of such a change in policy on NHS costs and womens satisfaction, she said following her report.

And although there may be good medical reasons for induction, it can lead to a more painful labour and is associated with higher risk of having a forceps or Ventouse delivery  often with an episiotomy  and these things can be traumatic, warns Kim Thomas, a spokesman for the Birth Trauma Association and author of Birth Trauma. Also, it can be highly distressing for a woman to be suddenly plunged into the later stages of labour.

While induction is safe and studies have shown no short-term adverse impact on mother or baby, induction of labour represents an intervention, is associated with costs to the service, and can be a more prolonged process than spontaneous labour, Professor Lesley Regan, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, told Good Health.

We welcome any new research which may help to reduce stillbirth and neonatal death rates.

The implications of such a change in policy would be enormous for both the health service and women themselves, so further research to determine the impact of such a change in practice is needed.

Dr Clea Harmer, chief executive of the stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands, says: The decision whether to deliver or not requires good, reliable evidence about both the benefits and risks.

At Sands we hear from too many older bereaved mothers whose babies died after 40 weeks but who had no idea they were at a higher risk  in retrospect they deeply regret that their baby was not induced in time.

She adds that the important thing is for mothers to be able to make genuinely fully-infor-med decisions about their maternity care.

Rachael Seddon is tortured by the thought that had her daughter Hope been delivered just a few days earlier, she would not have been stillborn.

The 28-year-old, who lives in Bolton, Lancashire, with her husband Joshua, 30 and their son Otis, two, was 39 weeks pregnant when she went to her local maternity assessment unit in November 2013 complaining of reduced movements and a feeling that something was wrong.

After a brief examination, where the babys heartbeat was heard, she was sent home.

Three days later, Rachael could no longer feel her baby moving so she returned to hospital, but it was too late. An ultrasound scan confirmed Hopes heart had stopped beating  Rachael had to be induced.

Afterwards, a doctor told Rachael the placenta had been smaller than it should have been, which might have been to blame for Hopes reduced movements and death.

The post-mortem also found meconium  a babys first stool  in her lungs which can be an indicator of foetal distress. Ultimately, however, the exact cause of her death is unknown.

Rachael absolutely believes women should be induced earlier than full-term if they have concerns. The day after the delivery, I was told Hope had died no more than 24 hours earlier and that haunts me, says Rachael.

Perhaps if I had been induced at 39 weeks when I told them I was worried about her moving less, they could have saved my baby.

Visit sands.org.uk for bereavement support for anyone who has been affected by the death of a baby before, during or shortly after birth. Information for pregnant women can be found at saferpregnancy.org.uk
An injection that is commonly used to stop muscle weakness could put an end to snoring.

The jab contains a drug that causes muscles to contract. The theory is that injecting it into the roof of the mouth just above the throat will tighten the tissues in the throat that collapse, causing snoring as air squeezes through the obstructed airway.

In a new trial in the U.S., snorers are being given five jabs of the drug. The researchers say it could also be made into a gel thats directly applied to the roof of the mouth before bed.

An injection that is commonly used to stop muscle weakness could put an end to snoring

The treatment is being tested in people with sleep apnoea, a condition that affects one in five adults in Britain. It occurs when throat tissue collapses repeatedly during sleep, blocking the airway for up to ten seconds at a time.

This means that patients temporarily stop breathing  a drop in blood oxygen levels then triggers signals to the brain, which instruct muscles in the throat to contract in order to reopen the airways.

Left untreated, sleep apnoea can lead to long-term problems, such as heart disease. The standard treatment is with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) devices  masks worn by patients while they sleep. These deliver pressurised air to keep the airway open. Though effective, up to half of users find the masks cumbersome and stop using them.

The injections, being trialled at Emory University in the U.S., contain a drug called neostigmine methylsulphate. This is currently used for myasthenia gravis, a rare, long-term condition where the immune system mistakenly damages the signals between nerves and muscles, leading to muscle weakness.

Pointing a handheld device at joints could help to detect rheumatoid arthritis (RA) faster (stock photo)

The drug works by boosting levels of a brain chemical called acetylcholine, which, in turn, increases the nerve signals to the muscles telling them to contract.

In myasthenia gravis, this reduces such symptoms as droopy eyelids, difficulty swallowing and weak arms and legs.

In sleep apnoea, the theory is that this will make muscles around the throat contract which will pull back the tissues so they dont obstruct the airways, causing snoring.

In the new trial, 20 snorers will be monitored in a laboratory during induced sleep  when they snore, they will be given the jabs.

The number and volume of the snoring sounds will be monitored immediately after and then again 30 days later using an endoscopy (where a camera on a long, thin tube is inserted through the mouth to examine the throat tissue) and with sound and video recordings while they are asleep.

If successful, the researchers say they plan to make a rub-on version of the drug, so that patients can apply it before bedtime.

Commenting on the treatment, Professor Jaydip Ray, an ear, nose and throat (ENT) consultant at Sheffield Teaching Hospital, says: Most snoring treatments are invasive, painful or cumbersome. Hence uptake and compliance are low.

This simple, non-invasive option, if successful, offers tremendous hope to these patients whose lives are blighted with this problem.

 MEANWHILE, a vibrating device worn on the arm may also tackle snoring and sleep apnoea.

The device has a sensor that detects snoring sounds  it then vibrates in three-second bursts to rouse the sleeper enough to stop snoring.

In a recent study at Ataturk University in Turkey, reported in the journal Sensors, when patients used the device  known as Snorap  they snored less often and less noisily.

Cancer treatment without side-effects

Using high temperatures to kill cancer cells  a treatment known as thermotherapy  can be effective, but its use has been restricted as it also carries a greater risk of damage to healthy tissue.

However, scientists from the University of Surrey and Dalian University of Technology in China have devised a new form of thermotherapy that reduces the damage to healthy cells.

The researchers have developed tiny particles (nanoparticles) that can regulate their own temperature. These intelligent particles are placed into the tumour and heat up to 45c  hot enough to weaken or kill cancer cells without disturbing healthy ones. At that point, they then stop heating.

Implant in buttocks to stop constipation

Placing a pacemaker in the buttocks is being tested as a treatment for slow transit constipation (STC), where poor communication between the nerves in the large intestine and the muscular layer of the intestinal walls leads to slow bowel movements.

Scientists at Maastricht University in the Netherlands are running a trial with 60 patients. The patients will have an electrode placed next to the sacral nerves (in the back); the electrode is attached to a matchbox-sized, pacemaker-like generator in the buttocks.

Its thought electrically stimulating the nerves will start communication between the bowel and brain and, therefore, get the muscles moving more effectively.

Why garlic may keep antibiotics working

A compound in garlic can make antibiotic-resistant superbugs respond to the treatment again.

In lab studies, scientists at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark found that the compound ajoene was able to suppress a gene that allows Staphylococcus aureus bacteria  which cause sepsis  to stick to human tissue and multiply.

The findings suggest that the compound could be an effective drug when used with antibiotics.

The researchers are now planning to work with a manufacturer to develop an ajoene drug and test it on patients.

Handheld laser that helps detect arthritis in seconds

Pointing a handheld device at joints could help to detect rheumatoid arthritis (RA) faster.

RA is caused by the immune system attacking the joints, leading to pain and swelling.

The gadget, developed at the University of Twente in Belgium, fires soundwaves and a laser beam into joints such as the wrists, fingers and knees. The way the soundwaves bounce back and the reflections of the laser are converted by a computer program into an image that reveals the amount of inflammation.

This could speed up diagnosis. Early treatment can limit the condition and even put it in remission.

Could endometriosis raise risk of depression?

Women with endometriosis may be more vulnerable to depression and anxiety.

This was the suggestion from a recent study of mice at Yale University in the U.S. In endometriosis, cells that are normally found in the womb occur in other parts of the body, causing pain.

The researchers implanted endometriosis cells in mice and then put them through examinations used to test their mental health, such as picking them up by their tails  depressed mice flop, but healthy mice squirm.

The mice given the endometriosis cells were more anxious and depressed. The researchers say that endometriosis reprogrammes the brain, though its not clear how.

 Drink cherry juice for insomnia, says a Louisiana State University study. Participants who drank it two hours before bed for two weeks spent an average of 84 minutes longer asleep compared to people who had a placebo. It contains compounds thought to boost serotonin, a brain chemical linked to relaxation and sleepiness.
The first phase of the Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman was inaugurated on Sunday by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, opening a new strategic route connecting Iran, India and Afghanistan bypassing Pakistan, and reflecting growing convergence of interests among the three countries.

The port in the Sistan-Balochistan province on the energy-rich nation's southern coast is easily accessible from India's western coast and is increasingly seen as a counter to Pakistan's Gwadar Port, which is being developed with Chinese investment and is located at distance of around 80km from Chabahar.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Minister of State for Shipping, Pon Radhakrishnan represented India at the inauguration ceremony of the Phase 1 of the Shahid Beheshti Port at Chabahar - which was also attended by ambassadors and senior officials.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated the strategic Chabahar Port on the Gulf of Oman

An India-Iran-Afghanistan ministerial-level trilateral meeting on Chabahar also took place on Sunday on the sidelines of the event where the three countries resolved to work towards integrated development of connectivity infrastructure including ports, road and rail networks to open up greater opportunities for regional market access and integration of their economies.

The Chabahar port is being considered a gateway to golden opportunities for trade by India, Iran and Afghanistan with central Asian countries besides ramping up trade among the three countries in the wake of Pakistan denying transit access to New Delhi.

'The routes of the region should be connected on land, sea and air,' Rouhani said at the inauguration ceremony.

President Hassan Rouhani: the new port will mean speedier and cheaper trade with Iran's neighbours

India has been closely working with Afghanistan and Iran to create alternative, reliable access routes for trade.

Under the agreement signed between India and Iran in May last year, India is to equip and operate two berths in Chabahar Port Phase-I with capital investment of USD 85.21 million (Rs 549.76 crore) and annual revenue expenditure of USD 22.95 million (Rs 148 crore) on a 10-year lease.

The MEA, in a statement, said: 'Radhakrishnan also represented India in the second India-Iran-Afghanistan ministerial- level trilateral meeting on Chabahar port in Chabahar today. Iran was represented by its Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi and Afghanistan by its Trade and Commerce Minister Humayoon Rasaw.'

A ship bedecked with foreign flags docked at Chabahar in southeast Iran for the port's inauguration on December 3, 2017

In the meeting, the three countries assessed the progress in the development of the port and reiterated their commitment to complete and operationalise it at the earliest, which they felt would provide alternative access to landlocked Afghanistan to regional and global markets.

A joint statement issued after the meeting said the ministers also deliberated on trilateral pact relating to the mega connectivity project and expressed satisfaction on the completion of the ratification procedures by Afghanistan and India.

They welcomed the steps taken by Iran to complete the ratification process.

In May 2016, India, Iran and Afghanistan had inked a pact which entailed establishment of Transit and Transport Corridor among the three countries using Chabahar Port as one of the regional hubs for sea transportation in Iran, besides multi-modal transport of goods and passengers across the three nations.

The ministers discussed the next steps for full implementation of the agreement and moving towards its operationalisation.

Towards this endeavour, it was decided to finalise protocols related to transport and transit, ports, customs procedures and consular affairs.
Congress president-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi is set to take over the reins of the party next week and is expected to usher in a new era as the chief without a whip.

Highly placed sources in the party told Mail Today that in keeping with Congress tradition, a deputy to the top post is unlikely as Rahul is expected to be far more 'accessible' to the party's leadership, be it at the state or national level.

Senior party functionaries maintained that Rahul was brought in as the vice-president in 2013, almost 15 years after sitting party president Sonia Gandhi served without a deputy.

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi with warty leaders during filing of his nomination papers for the post of party president, at the AICC office in New Delhi on Monday

'He was chosen for the number two spot to prepare and groom him for the top job ahead. He had always shown immense promise and there was consensus in the party that he should eventually take up the mantle of the party chief,' said a senior party leader.

'Congress so far has had just three vice presidents or second-in-command leaders. It is not the norm but exception.'

Late Congress heavyweight Arjun Singh was the last vice-president of the party, appointed to the position in the 1980s when former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi served as party chief.

The current vice president is expected to take over from mother Sonia (pictured) next week

Kamalapati Tripathi served as working president in 1983 when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister, whereas HN Bahuguna became secretary general in 1980.

Several top leaders confirmed that a new vice-president is completely ruled out and appointing one would not only undermine the new chief's position but also create a fresh situation of looking for consensus over the candidate.

'What is the need for a vice-president? It is time for Rahul ji to consolidate the party and bring the old guard and young leadership together. He has already met state unit leaders and the party's senior national leadership one-on-one and intends to be accessible to everyone as the party chief. There is absolutely no need for a go-between or a deputy. He has prepared for and earned the position following years of hard work,' said a senior functionary close to Rahul.

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, accompanied by former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Sushilkumar Shinde, Anand Sharma and other leaders, during filing of his nomination papers for the post of party president

On Monday, 89 sets of nominations backed by 10 proposers each were submitted to the party's central election authority head Mullappally Ramachandran. The party's Constitution rules that nominations can be filed by representatives of candidates on their behalf so that if two rival leaders contest for the post, neither can be asked to back out nor pressurised to withdraw.

'At a time the fairness of these polls are being questioned, it must be clarified that the very process of polling cannot be more above board. Today, as the internal election authority receives 89 nominations, no one knows definitively if any other candidate is in the fray. Only once the nominations are scrutinised tomorrow will we know if polling is needed or not,' said a party source.

Senior leaders maintained that it is highly unlikely that another contestant might have filed a nomination. If all the 89 nominations filed on Monday are for Rahul, the election authority will still not declare him a winner until December 11, which is the last date for withdrawal of nomination.

'Rahul Gandhi is free to change his mind till then,' laughed a senior leader.

If elected unopposed, the party is set to celebrate its new chief's election in a grand show on December 15, after the second phase of polling in Gujarat.

Amidst the fanfare of Rahul filing his nomination at the party headquarters on 24, Akbar Road, on Monday morning, sitting president Sonia was conspicuously missing.

The first set of nomination had Sonia as the main proposer, along with veterans such as Ahmed Patel, Tarun Gogoi, Motilal Vohra, Kamal Nath, Mohsina Kidwai, Ashok Gehlot, Mukul Wasnik and Sheila Dikshit.

It was submitted by Dikshit as Sonia stayed away citing poor health. According to seniority of leaders, they grouped themselves into tens to file nominations backing Rahul, who accompanied former PM Manmohan Singh, the main proposer of the second nomination. The third nomination had CP Joshi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Randeep Surjewala, Amrinder Singh and Ghulam Nabi Azad as proposers.

Congress election process 'makes a mockery of democratic values

The BJP ridiculed the election process appointing Rahul Gandhi the Congress president, terming it mockery of democratic norms.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who led a scathing attack on the Congress, likened Rahul's imminent elevation to dynastic succession of Mughal rulers, and castigated the Congress for abandoning public modesty.

'The Congress has abandoned all public modesty. It has gone bankrupt as it is going to make a person out on bail in a corruption case... Political parties will think many times before making those out on bail, even a district unit chief,' Modi told a rally in Valsad district in election-bound Gujarat, apparently referring to the National Herald case.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pictured here addressing an election campaign rally for state assembly election in Jamnagar on Monday, has hit out at Congress over the election

BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao too said all Congress leaders were forced to toe the line of the Gandhi family and anybody who objected to this dynastic rule run the risk of being removed from their posts.

'The farcical election process and the sycophancy of all family faithfuls in hailing this process is a sad commentary on the grand old party. It shows the Congress' total disconnect with today's India which values meritocracy and not imposition of dynasty,' Rao said.

'It is a great fall for the party that had stalwarts leading it.'

Senior BJP leader and Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma also took a swipe at the Congress, saying ordinary party workers were feeling humiliated with Rahul filing nomination for the post of party president.

Sarma, one of the most prominent leaders of the Congress in Assam before joining the saffron party, also said that despite belonging to the 21st century, Rahul missed a historical opportunity to free the Congress from dynastic and feudal politics.
As the sales of air purifiers and face masks increase by eight to 10 times in a month, and threefold in the last two days, doctors are still in doubt about the effectiveness of the defences  terming them as valueless cosmetic products.

Driven by smog and high levels of pollution in the city, residents are making all sorts of efforts to make the air breathable.

Health experts have said that in India no study has been done to find out how authentic and efficient the respirators and air purifiers are.

Delhi has been chocking in a cloud of thick toxic smog for the past month - but are masks, such as the ones pictured, effective?

School children take out march to express their distress on the alarming levels of pollution in the city. No doctors are warning that face masks may not be effective

However, manufacturing companies claim that their products follow international standard guidelines, since India has set no such guideline so far. Companies thus, are using AHAM (American) and China certification.

'About 99 per cent of masks, available in the market, are made of clothes. These are similar to a cosmetic product. Only N-95 and N-99 respirators can protect us from particulate matters - that too if it is worn very tightly around the mouth and nose 24x7,' Dr Arvind Kumar, chairman of chest surgery at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital told Mail Today.

Sharing his personal experience of using N-95, 99 masks, Dr Kumar said people cannot wear these for more than 45 minutes.

'The pores are so tiny that it creates a lot of resistance to the passage of air. So, one needs to put more effort breathe while wearing it,' he said, adding that people are still not aware of how the masks should be used.

Doctors are not satisfied with the functioning of air purifiers as well. They have pointed out that air purifiers work in a closed room - just like air-conditioners.

Arvind Chabra, country-head of Blue Air, a company selling air purifiers, claimed that in the last month, sales of air purifiers have gone up by eight to 10 times and that they are highly effective, made following international standards guidelines.

Pollution has been smothering the area following crop burning early last month

Accepting the fact that air purifiers should be used according to the size of the room, Chabra told Mail Today: 'Even renowned schools have contacted us for the placement of air purifiers there. A lot of other groups have contacted us for the same.'

Echoing similar views, Dr Vikas Maurya, head of respiratory medicine at Fortis Hospital, said that surgical and cloth masks are meant for one-time use and also not recommended for places, where the pollution levels are high enough.

'It should be noted that the N-95 and N-99 masks are not advisable for asthmatic and COPD patients at all. This is because breathing while having put these on requires lot of pressure,' the doctor informed.

Taking cognigance of what the people in the Capital need, given the poor air quality, the city government has made all necessary arrangements for respiratory patients in hospitals.

Rajiv Yadhuvanshi, Delhi health secretary said: 'All the hospitals have adequate face masks, nebulisers, medicines and dedicated beds for chest patients. We have given health advisory and there is nothing to be in panic as of now.'
The Supreme Court is likely to commence the final hearing in the long-standing Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute from Tuesday, a day before the 25th anniversary of the demolition of medieval-era structure.

A specially constituted bench of CJI Dipak Misra and Justices Ashok Bhushan and Abdul Nazeer will be hearing a total of 13 appeals filed against the 2010 judgement of the Allahabad High Court in four civil suits.

The high court had then ruled a three-way division of the disputed 2.77-acre area at Ayodhya among the parties - the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Lord Ram Lalla.

A sect of Muslims, under the banner of Shia Central Waqf Board of UP, had earlier approached the court offering a solution that a mosque could be built in a Muslim- dominated area at a reasonable distance from the disputed site in Ayodhya.

However, its intervention was opposed by the All India Sunni Waqf Board that had claimed that judicial adjudication between the two sects had already been done in 1946 by declaring the mosque, which was demolished on December 6, 1992, as one which belongs to the Sunnis.

Recently a group of civil rights activists also moved the apex court seeking intervention in the Ayodhya dispute and urged it to consider the issue saying it is not just a dispute over property but has several other aspects which would have farreaching effects on the secular fabric of the country.
The owner of the New York and Chicago mercantile exchanges has warned the pound could face a nightmare scenario if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister.

CME Group told investors and businesses that Theresa Mays Tory government had a weak grip on power and would probably be defeated if a poll was held.

Last week, Morgan Stanley said a Corbyn victory would threaten the economy.

Jeremy Corbyn: CME boss believes if Labour Party leader becomes PM the pound will face 'nightmare scenario'

Erik Norland, CME executive director and senior economist, said the Government was hanging by a thread, adding: Markets should probably be thinking carefully about the next prime minister.

In the event the UK takes a hard Brexit followed by a Labour victory, it could see Britain transform into a more socialist, centrally controlled economy  just one that happens to be outside the EU. This is the nightmare scenario for the pound.
The collapse of Palmer & Harvey is to be investigated by MPs as concern mounts about a huge pension fund deficit.

Frank Field, chairman of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, said he was also massively concerned by news that bosses received millions of pounds from the wholesaler as losses grew.

He said the committee would look into the matter as part of a wider probe into those raiding firms that then need rescuing.

High life: The 4m home of Christopher Adams Inset: Christopher Etherington

His comments came after thousands of staff were laid off by P&H weeks before Christmas, with trustees of its pension scheme warning the Pension Protection Fund of an estimated 80 million black hole.

Even if the fund steps in to rescue the scheme, thousands of former staff face having their nest eggs reduced.

Meanwhile, it has also emerged that a small group of P&H executives received almost 70 million in dividends from 2009 to 2016 after a debt-fueled management buyout.

The payments  of at least 8.2 million a year  continued even as losses at the company rose.

Last night, Field said: Im massively concerned about this. It is not just a one-off.

We are beginning to see a pattern of people raiding companies, then leaving them to be rescued by the Pension Protection Fund.

As a committee, we have got to propose to Government how we can exercise some clawback when it looks as though stewards of a company have fleeced it for their own benefit and left pensioners to face increasing cuts.

Public opinion on this has hardened  people want the Commons to act. It is not just pensioners who have been affected, peoples jobs have gone as well. Its a doubly unforgivable act by people who have a duty of ownership.

You should not have the advantages and wealth that come from a successful business if you have actually failed that business. Struggling P&H, which is based in Hove, East Sussex, had been kept afloat by the tobacco companies that supplied it as bosses tried to negotiate a rescue deal.

Frank Field: Expressed concern after it was revealed that P&H may have 80m pension deficit

Last week, however, it ran out of cash and administrators were called in  leading to an immediate decision to shed 2,500 staff.

Chief executive Tony Reed said he was dreadfully sorry.

But questions are being asked about why the firm continued to pay vast sums in dividends to shareholders even as it struggled.

Latest accounts show that P&H, the fifth-biggest private firm in the UK, paid 8.2 million to preference shareholders, despite losing 17.3 million in the year to April 2016.

It had already paid them the same amount the year before, despite an 8.5m loss.

The payouts began after the firms structure changed following a management buyout in 2008 that valued it at 345 million, led by former chairman Christopher Adams, 65, and former chief executive Christopher Etherington, 64.

Some of the directors, including Etherington, funded their share purchases using interest-free loans from P&Hs staff benefit trust.

P&H had to pay further millions for bank interest payments, refinancing and other fees related to the 2008 buyout.

But administrators will be unable to access millions of pounds in a ring-fenced firm, Buildtrue, that was set up to provide security to preference and dividend shareholders who want to redeem their holdings. It had 42 million last year, according to accounts.

A Change.org petition set up on Saturday to call for an investigation into the firms collapse had nearly 7,000 signatures last night.

Administrators at PwC, who are acting for P&H, did not respond to requests for comment last night.
Most Republicans believe the sexual assault allegations against US Senate hopeful Roy Moore are false, according to a new poll.

The poll, released Sunday by CBS News, shows that the Alabama Republican leads his Democratic opponent Doug Jones by six percentage points.

Moore was leading Democrat Doug Jones 49 to 43 per cent among voters likely to cast ballots in the December 12 special election, CBS said.

Among all registered voters the contest between the two candidates is an even 50/50 chance, the network said.

Moore, 71, has been accused of sexually assaulting nine different women when they were teenagers and he was in his early 30s. Eight of them claim they were teenagers when the then-judge pursued them - one as young as 14-years-old.

Most Republicans believe the sexual assault allegations against US Senate hopeful Roy Moore (pictured Monday November 27) are false, according to a new poll

The poll, released Sunday by CBS News, shows that the Alabama Republican leads his Democratic opponent Doug Jones (pictured on Tuesday November 28) by six percentage points

According to the CBS poll, 71 per cent of Alabama Republicans say the allegations against Moore are false, and believe that Democrats and the media are behind the accusations

Since the women came forward Moore has unleashed vicious attacks against them in an attempt to discredit their statement.

Following the allegations a number of Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, John McCain and even Ivanka Trump have denounced Moore and called for him to step down from the race.

But McConnell said on Sunday that if Moore is elected, the Senate will swear him in and then the Senate ethics committee would decide whether to investigate the allegations.

'We'll swear in whoever's elected and see where we are at that point,' McConnell said on CBS' Face the Nation.

'We can't stop him from being seated,' said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who was also interviewed on CBS.

'If there was an (ethics) investigation and all six members of the committee said they believe he was a child molester, that would be a problem.'

Bikers for Trump are pictured at a rally for Alabama Chief Justice and US Senate hopeful Roy Moore. Though Moore was accused of sexually assaulting nine young women, most Alabama Republicans believe the allegations aren't true

Bikers for Trump are pictured at a rally for Alabama Chief Justice and US Senate hopeful Roy Moore. Though Moore was accused of sexually assaulting nine young women, many believe that Democrats and the media are behind the allegations

According to the CBS poll, 71 per cent of Alabama Republicans say the allegations against Moore are false, and believe that Democrats and the media are behind the accusations.

According to the CBS poll, 71 per cent of Alabama Republicans say the allegations against Moore are false, and believe that Democrats and the media are behind the accusations. He was accused of sexually assault by nine women

Another poll a day earlier had Democrat Jones barely ahead.

The Washington Post-Schar School poll said Jones' support among likely voters stood at 50 per cent, versus Moore's 47 per cent.

President Donald Trump originally backed Moore's opponent in the Republican primary, Senator Luther Strange.

But Trump has since defended Moore, noting Moore has denied allegations of sexual misconduct. The president says he does not want Moore's Democratic opponent to win.

At the White House last week President Trump all but endorsed the Republican nominee when asked about the scandal.

'Well he denies it,' Trump told reporters. 'Look he denies it. He says it didn't happen, and you know, you have to listen to him also.'

Trump is slated to travel to a rally in Pensacola, Florida on Friday - a city just across the state line from Alabama - just days ahead of the Alabama election. The timing and location gives Trump an opportunity to express support for Moore.

Republicans hold a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate and are eager to maintain their advantage to advance Trump's legislative agenda on taxes, healthcare and other priorities.
A Philadelphia 76ers dancer had a heartwarming reunion with her army boyfriend at Saturday night's game.

Video shows the moment 23-year-old Angela is reunited with her 29-year-old beau, Sergeant Elliott Burgos.

She draws her hands to her face in disbelief when she sees him with a bouquet of flowers.

Philadelphia 76ers dancer Angela, 23, was surprised by her boyfriend, Sergeant Elliott Burgos, at last night's game

Burgos had been on an 11-month deployment in Kuwait. Angela had not been expecting him back yet when he surprised her

The couple posed for photos with the rest of the dancing team and the 76ers mascot

The lovebirds run to each other and she jumps into his arms for an extended embrace to the delight of the audience.

They then pose for photographs along with other members of the dance squad and the 76ers team mascot.

Angela was under the impression that her man was in Kuwait, ABC 6 Action News reports.

'Theres not many people who can surprise a loved one in front of 20,000 people, so Im a lucky man,' Burgos told Fox29.

He was on an 11-month deployment and Angela was under the impression that he would be returning the following week.

'Theres not many people who can surprise a loved one in front of 20,000 people, so Im a lucky man,' Burgos told Fox29

The couple has been together since September 2014.

They told Fox29 that they look forward to celebrating the upcoming holidays together.

The 76ers beat the Detroit Pistons 108-103 at last night's game.
President Trump reportedly summons White House staffers to his private quarters in the evenings in order to change assignments given to them by Chief of Staff John Kelly.

A report on Sunday in the Wall Street Journal claims the president often sidesteps the order and discipline Kelly has tried to impose on the West Wing by bypassing the regular scheduling of phone calls between staff and advisers that give Kelly control over the information he receives.

The President then specifically instructs them not to let Kelly know that they have spoken, it is claimed.

Chief of Staff John Kelly has attempted to impose discipline on the White House but a report by the Wall Street Journal suggests President Donald Trump has found the loopholes

According to the report, some of the president's friends have even been known use the First Lady Melania Trump as a way of getting messages directly to the commander-in-chief.

'If I don't want to wait 24 hours for a call from the president, getting to Melania is much easier,' one person said.

A spokeswoman for Mrs Trump said: 'This is more fake news and these are more anonymous sources peddling things that just aren't true. The First Lady is focused on her own work in the East Wing.'

The White House declined to provide comment.

Kelly was named chief of staff in July and has said his job was not to control the president but to bring a sense of order to the White House.

Kelly says he is purely focused on the day-to-day running of the White House, not policy

'I was not brought to this job to control anything but the flow of information to our president so that he can make the best decisions,' he said in an interview in October.

Kelly has managed to control some of the President's behavior and has stopped Trump's friends having their phone calls patched through to the Oval Office, it is claimed. He reportedly now requires them to make an appointment.

White House aides are also no longer allowed to simply barge into the office to speak with the president about whatever is on their minds, the newspaper claims.

However, a White House insider says Trump has developed 'workarounds' to dodge Kelly's rules.

'John has been successful at putting in place a stronger chain of command in the White House, requiring people to go through him to get to the Oval Office,' Leon Panetta, a White House chief of staff under President Clinton who knows Kelly, told the Journal.

There have been times when Kelly, left, has found cause to hold his head in his hands. Trump's friends reportedly now find it easier to communicate with him through his wife, Melania, center

'The problem has always been whether or not the president is going to accept better discipline in the way he operates. He's been less successful at that.'

With Kelly running the White House operations that frees up Trump to concentrate on his agenda.

'This is all just inevitable,' a person close to Trump told the newspaper. 'It's not that Kelly is wrong  we all know he's terribly competent.'

White House staffers say that Trump's working relationship with Kelly remains strong and that the two men appear to have found an equilibrium that suggests Kelly could be in place for a long time.

As for Trump's tweets, Kelly has reportedly told staffers not to be influenced by them.

And the two men seem to have come to an understanding on the extent of their relationship.

'Kelly is too much of a general, and Trump is too much Trump,' a White House official told the newspaper, adding that the president holds his chief of staff in high regard.

At a briefing on Hurricane Maria relief efforts in Puerto Rico earlier in the fall, Trump noted Kelly's presence in the back of the room.

'He likes to keep a low profile; Look at him sitting in the back,' Trump continued. 'But, boy, is he watchingyou have no idea.'
A 12million foreign aid project was halted last night amid fears some of the money has gone to jihadis.

The British taxpayers cash was handed over to set up a civilian police force in Syria.

But one Al Qaeda-backed group has selected officer recruits while another extremist cell siphoned off cash in a protection racket.

It also emerged that a number of employees on the payroll of the Free Syrian Police were either fictitious or dead.

A 12million foreign aid project was halted last night amid fears some of the money has gone to jihadis, such as extremists from the Nour al-Din al-Zanki Movement (pictured)

The British taxpayers cash was handed over to set up a civilian police force in Syria. But one Al Qaeda-backed group - Jabhat al-Nusra (pictured) - has selected officer recruits

And its officers have stood and watched as women were stoned to death.

Boris Johnson pulled the plug on the project yesterday. Back in April however the Foreign Secretary announced it would receive an extra 4million on top of the 8million awarded since 2014.

Much of the money was handed over in bags of cash.

Britain is one of six countries funding the community-led policing scheme in opposition-held regions of Syria.

A Panorama investigation tonight will raise grave concerns about the way it is run by Adam Smith International, a foreign aid contractor which has been accused of making excess profits from handouts to the poor.

One police station at Koknaya near Idlib in north-western Syria was supposed to have 57 officers. But documents obtained by Panorama suggest that when ASI staff visited in September 2016 they could not find a single policeman.

The company said it used cash to fund the police because there was no practical alternative and that on subsequent visits the officers were accounted for.

It said it had identified only a few examples of dead officers staying on the payroll.

It also emerged that a number of employees on the payroll of the Free Syrian Police were either fictitious or dead. Pictured: A member of Jabhat al-Nusra

And its officers have stood and watched as women were stoned to death. Boris Johnson pulled the plug on the project yesterday. Pictured: Free Syrian Army fighter

But its documents also revealed that some police in the Aleppo area were made to hand over cash to an extremist group.

The report  dated July 2016  warned that a fifth of salaries were being diverted to Nour Al Din Al Zinki to pay for the military and security support that Zinki provides to the five stations in areas under its control.

Officers worked with the group even though it is accused of atrocities including beheading prisoners.

ASI said it had strict guidelines to ensure detainees were treated fairly and that payments to the police stations involved were stopped in August 2016.

The Panorama documentary discovered evidence that the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda  Jabhat Al Nusra  chose recruits at a station in Idlib province. The Free Syrian Police has provided support for Al Nusra courts that hand out extreme punishments.

Its officers were present when two women were stoned to death near Sarmin in December 2014.

ASI said the policemen who attended the stoning were not formally under the forces control and have since been removed.

It claimed that at the station where Al Nusra picked officers, only six people with alleged links to extremist networks were employed from a headcount of 3,400 policemen.

The Panorama documentary discovered evidence that the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda  Jabhat Al Nusra (a member of the group is pictured)  chose recruits at a station in Idlib province

The Free Syrian Police has provided support for Al Nusra (members pictured here) courts that hand out extreme punishments. Its officers watched two women get stoned to death

On the diversion of funds, it said there was evidence that only $2,000 had fallen into the hands of extremists and none of it came from British taxpayers.

Tory MP Crispin Blunt said the Free Syrian Police should not be supporting extremist courts.

He said: The idea that British taxpayers money was associated with that would of course be wholly abhorrent.

Kate Osamor, Labours international development spokesman, said: Spent properly, Britains aid budget achieves incredible results and we must not shy away from working in conflict-affected countries.

'But if these allegations are true, British taxpayers will be rightly outraged. This investigation is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg.

ASI pulled out of the bidding process for new contracts with the aid department earlier this year following criticism over poor practices, rising profits and bloated salaries.

Britain is one of six countries funding the community-led policing scheme in opposition-held regions of Syria

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has pulled the plug on the project. The development budget rose to 13.4billion last year.

Interim chief Jonathan Pell last night said: We are incredibly proud of the acumen and dedication of the Access to Justice and Community Security (AJACS) team, delivering practical help and hope to people in one of the most difficult environments in the world.

There are high risks working in a fragile state in civil war. We mitigate those risks under the close control of the donors, and support AJACS because of its success in ending human rights abuses and establishing the rule of law in Syrian society.

'ASI will continue to vigorously refute the BBCs claims and defend the integrity of one of its most important projects.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the project had helped train 3,500 officers across 60 police stations, helping 1.6million Syrians.

The spokesman added: We take any allegations of co-operation with terrorist groups and of human rights abuses extremely seriously and the Foreign Office has suspended this programme while we investigate these allegations.

We believe that such work in Syria is important to protect our national security interest but of course we reach this judgment carefully given that in such a challenging environment no activity is without risk.

Ministers have been under pressure to improve the way Britain spends its foreign budget since Theresa May announced she would keep to David Camerons controversial target of 0.7 per cent of national income.

The development budget rose to 13.4billion last year.

Panorama will be shown tonight at 7:30pm on BBC One.
Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has been slammed over a personal attack on prominent feminist writer Clementine Ford.

Yiannopoulos projected an old photograph of Ms Ford - and the word 'unf***able' - on big screens during talks in Adelaide and Perth on Friday and Saturday.

The attack was blasted by Twitter users - particularly as the photo apparently shows Ms Ford when she was about 19-years-old.

But Ms Ford said the incident 'doesn't bother me ... It's so unoriginal for a start.

'Besides, unlike Milo I got better looking as I aged.'

Milo Yiannopoulos had this image projected on big screens during shows in Adelaide and Perth last week

It was 34 degrees Celsius: Yiannopoulos is pictured here toting Gucci bags during a shopping spree in Perth this week

Musician Urthboy was not impressed: 'Milo crossed the line with the Clem Ford screen grab at his show,' he tweeted.

'Whoever works at his hotel needs to ensure the p**** gets no sleep.

'Penthouse needs to f*** off and die for promoting this s***'.

Another punter tweeted: 'In what universe is this okay?'

A third said: 'His immature desperation for attention never ceases to amaze me'.

A fourth: 'A woman's worth is not measured by whether she is "f***able" or not.

'I don't like Clementine Ford but it's not for reasons that relate to ... unattractivess' (sic).

Ms Ford called for calm from her supporters in a series of tweets, saying: 'To be very clear, calling me unf**kable is the absolute least of his offences.

'Please don't make me a reason for your protests.

'Please don't make me a reason for your protests': Clementine Ford fired off a string of tweets about the incident on Monday morning

'I have previously argued against protesting him or giving him attention but recognise this isn't a solution either'

Clementine Ford tweeted she 'couldn't care less what men think of her and will not be silenced by their disapproval'

'The 19 year old girl in the photo he's using would have cared very deeply about being labelled unworthy of male attention.

'The 36 year old me couldn't care less what men think of her and will not be silenced by their disapproval. What a wonderful thing that is.'

Yiannopoulos has maintained he would debate Ms Ford 'anytime, anywhere.'

The former technology editor of the American website Breitbart flew into Melbourne for the next leg of his speaking tour.

It's understood the venue which was to host his talks cancelled on him last Friday but organisers have found an alternative venue.

Yiannopoulos will attend at Parliament House for an event hosted by Senator David Leyonhjelm on Tuesday.
The extradition to the US of accused computer hacker Lauri Love is an attempt to override the British justice system, the UKs former most senior prosecutor has said.

Lord Macdonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, said that the request from American prosecutors raises questions of sovereignty.

He added that the future looked ghastly for the vicars son, who has Aspergers, if he stands trial in the US where he faces a 99-year prison sentence.

Lord Macdonald, who was in charge of prosecuting policy in England and Wales from 2003-8, told the High Court that the usual practice would be to try Mr Love in the UK.

The extradition to the US of accused computer hacker Lauri Love (pictured) is an attempt to override the British justice system, the UKs former most senior prosecutor has said

Lord Macdonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, said that the request from American prosecutors to extradite Mr Love raises questions of sovereignty'

Yesterday, he went further, saying that Mr Loves case raised questions of sovereignty and arguing that the student should be tried in Britain.

The general policy should be that where an offence is committed in this country, it should be tried in this country. Thats what our courts are for, he told the Mail.

We shouldnt be relying on other countries courts to deal with offences that have been committed here.

Its a question of sovereignty. Were a sovereign country, we have a criminal justice system. If this guy has committed an offence in the UK he should be tried in the UK.

We shouldnt allow foreign courts, American courts, to override our jurisdiction in the UK. Its not appropriate to allow foreign courts to override our courts. Thats whats happening here.

Lord Ken Macdonald QC is a practising lawyer and Warden of Wadham College, Oxford.

Mr Love, 32, is awaiting the outcome of his High Court appeal last week of the decision to extradite him to the US.

His family warn that the vulnerable young man will kill himself rather than face trial in the US on charges of hacking Nasa, the US Army and the FBI, among others.

Lord Macdonald, who was in charge of prosecuting policy in England and Wales from 2003-8, told the High Court that the usual practice would be to try Mr Love in the UK

Mr Love, 32, is awaiting the outcome of his High Court appeal last week of the decision to extradite him to the US

In his statement at court last week, Lord Macdonald said that those accused of similar crimes were generally tried in British courts.

He wrote that there was a general practice of prosecuting those people in the UK, with the notable exception of Mr McKinnon.

Almost all such cases have historically been dealt with by English or other relevant local courts abroad. This seems particularly to occur in the case of vulnerable defendants, he said.

He said extradition would be a breach of that policy, adding: Its a policy about sovereignty and its a policy about taking responsibility ourselves for criminal conduct that takes place in the United Kingdom.

We will arrest, try and, if theyre convicted, punish people who commit criminal offences in the United Kingdom. Were not going give people over to other countries for them to deal with them there.

It almost creates the situation where British justice is subject to American justice and thats not the way it works. Were an independent country.

He added that it was appropriate to try Mr Love in the UK as the British justice system had the resources to deal with him.

Extraditing unwell Mr Love, on the other hand, would not be appropriate as the US justice system was completely ill-equipped to deal with him.

Mr Love, 32, who has Asperger syndrome, lives with his parents, Alexander and Srkka (pictured earlier this year) near Newmarket in Suffolk

They have very poor conditions, very poor medical facilities. As a foreigner suffering from Aspergers syndrome locked in the American penal system I think his prospects look pretty ghastly.

Thats all the more reason for him to be tried here.

Lord Macdonald added: Fundamentally, we should not cede sovereignty over criminal offences committed in the United Kingdom to foreign states. Our own courts should always take precedence over the courts of other countries, particularly where the suspect is British.

We have our own criminal justice system which is perfectly capable of dealing with computer crime. Allowing our courts, rather than foreign judges, to do so is intrinsic part of the UK being an independent sovereign state.

During the two-day appeal hearing last week, the Lord Chief Justice, the most senior judge in England and Wales, heard that extraditing Mr Love was not in the interests of justice.

Mr Loves lawyers said there were overwhelming reasons of justice and humanity for his trial to take place in the UK.

They also said that 12 similar cases had been successfully prosecuted in Britain since the students arrest.

Three of those have been prosecuted since his extradition hearing last year, raising questions about why he has been singled out, they added.

If extradited, Mr Love, 32, would be the first British person to be extradited to face hacking charge in the US

Last year, the Mail revealed that Mr Love is the only one of more than 29 Britons accused of hacking US Government websites to face extradition to America apart from Mr McKinnon.

Every other accused person, many of whom were charged with more serious crimes, has been prosecuted and sentenced in Britain over the last 20 years.

The hackers prosecuted in the UK also faced far more lenient punishments, including community service.

If extradited, Mr Love, 32, would be the first British person to be extradited to face hacking charge in the US.

His case has striking parallels with that of Gary McKinnon who was spared by Theresa May following a Daily Mail campaign.

Following his case, she introduced the Forum Bar, which was designed to ensure British defendants face charges in the UK if that is where their alleged crime was committed.

The application of the bar is at the centre of Mr Loves appeal hearing.

Mr Love allegedly hacked US government websites from his parents home in Stradishall, Suffolk.

The decision of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett and Justice Ousley is expected in a months time.
White House Communications Director Hope Hicks could be the next target in Special Council Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's alleged collusion with Russia.

If a timeline reported by the New York Daily News is correct the 29-year-old will have been interviewed by the special counsel before December 1 to find out what she might know about potential collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia.

She has previously denied that top campaign aids communicated with foreign dignitaries.

'There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign,' she told the Associated Press in November 2016.

'It never happened.'

If a timeline reported by the New York Daily News is correct, the 29-year-old will have been interviewed by the special counsel before December 1 to find out what she might know about potential collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia. Hicks is pictured with Trump on Tuesday Nov 14

She has previously denied that top campaign aids communicated with foreign dignitaries. Mueller is currently looking into whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with Russian operatives to secure a Republican win in the 2016 presidential election - he is pictured in June 2017

Hicks is one of multiple White House officials cooperating with the Mueller probe, along with the president's adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who interviewed with investigators earlier in November.

But Hicks' relationship with the president is unique - having been close with Trump since early on in the campaign - when it has been alleged the then-candidate's team worked with Russian operatives to secure a Republican win in the 2016 presidential election.

The news about her interview comes just after it was announced on Friday that former national security adviser Michael Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI.

Flynn spoke to Russian diplomat Sergey Kislyak while the Obama administration was in power - which is illegal under the 1799 Logan Act - and later lied about doing so to the FBI.

It was also reported that Flynn will be 'cooperating fully' with Mueller's investigation and that he said he will give information on Trump and his family members as part of a plea deal.

Jared Kushner allegedly told Flynn to reach out to Russian officials.

The news about her interview comes just after it was announced on Friday that former national security adviser Michael Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI on Friday, December 1 (pictured)

It was also reported that Flynn will be 'cooperating fully' with Mueller's investigation and that he said he will give information on Trump and his family members as part of a plea deal

Hicks was appointed communications director in September after both Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci were let go from the position.

She has been close to the president since traveling to Iowa at the beginning of the campaign in January 2015. She has now outlasted multiple more experienced staff members and has become one of the president's top confidants.

Hicks is one of multiple White House officials cooperating with the Mueller probe, along with the president's adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. She has been close to Trump since January 2015 when she joined his campaign

'After Ivanka, she knows him best in the White House,' one campaign adviser said, according to New York Magazine.

Since the president was elected it has been revealed that Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Paul Manafort and Carter Page all spoke with Russians in some manner in the time leading up to the campaign.

President Trump has denied that he knew anything about this or that it had anything to do with his electoral college sweep.

On Saturday night Trump said he is not worried about reports that his son-in-law could be dragged further into the Russia probe.

The White House has also said that Flynn went rogue.

But they may need to eat their words as the investigation continues. On Saturday it was revealed that emails - obtained by The New York Times - appear to show Trump's transition team, including Flynn, discussing tactics for keeping Russia on-side before he would enter office.

And at one point then-transition team member KT McFarland, who worked closely with the disgraced adviser, allegedly says that Russia 'has just thrown USA election to [Trump]'.

The emails - some of which were seen by the NYT and some of which were described to it - were sent among Trump's transition team on December 29, just hours after Obama announced sanctions on Russia.

The sanctions were made in response to the Russian campaign to scupper Hillary Clinton's run for the presidency.
Chris Betancourt and Dillon Hill are best friends.

When Dillon, 19, found out that Chris, who has lived with cancer since the fifth grade, had only one year to live, he decided to dedicate that year to his dear friend.

And so the pair will spend the next year completing a bucket list for Chris, 20.

They have created a website called My Best Friend: One List One Life and are documenting some of the bucket list items on a Youtube channel and on other social media sites.

Scroll down for video

Chris Betancourt (left) and Dillon Hill (right) are best friends from Sacramento, California

Chris has lived with chronic myeloid leukemia since the fifth grade. He was told in September 2017 that he has only one year to live

The friends (pictured with another man at right) are devoting the next year to completing a bucket list for Chris. They also hope to find a bone marrow donor

They are raising funds via both GoFundMe and Patreon for their bucket list.

A post on the website by Dillon reads: 'In late October, Chris called and told me his cancer was returning.

'He said: ''I'm afraid I won't be able to experience the things I want to in life."

'I decided to drop out of college to spend time experiencing our bucket list together.

'We are actively looking for a Bone Marrow donor to help Chris win this fight, his last hope to defeat cancer once again.

'My Best Friend is the story of Chris' life. Join us in our journey to document, experience, and inspire all of the amazing things that make life worth living.'

Their website states: 'When Dillon's best friend was diagnosed at such a young age, he didn't quite understand what was happening but he knew he needed to help. He swore to become a doctor so that he could help Chris, but in the meantime Dillon brought as many video games as possible to help distract Chris from his hospital stay'

Chris had been enrolled as Sacramento City College and was studying to become an IT specialist

The duo became friends after Chris moved from North Carolina to California at the age of 10.

Chris was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia.

The website states: 'When Dillon's best friend was diagnosed at such a young age, he didn't quite understand what was happening but he knew he needed to help.

'He swore to become a doctor so that he could help Chris, but in the meantime Dillon brought as many video games as possible to help distract Chris from his hospital stay.'

In high school, Dillon, 'completely breaking best-friend policy,' dated Chris' sister.

When said sister took her own life, it brought the best friends closer.

Eventually, they even found a non-profit organization called Gamers Gift which brings virtual reality experiences to people who otherwise would not be able to experience them (people who are wheelchair-bound or are in a hospital, for example).

Both later went to college; Chris studied at Sacramento City College with the hope of becoming an IT professional.

Dillon told KCRA: 'It really comes down to he needs a bone marrow donor.' He added: 'If we can't do that and it comes to the worst possible case, and we lose Chris - the last year of his life is going to be documented and it's going to be shared with millions of people'

But in September 2017, he learned that the number of cancer cells in his body had dramatically increased and his doctors told him he only had one year to live.

And so, the best friends are doing their best to make the year count.

Dillon has taken a year off from college to experience the bucket list.

One recent video shows them distributing food to the homeless on Thanksgiving.

Also, the duo hopes to find a bone marrow donor to give Chris a fighting chance at survival.

Dillon told KCRA: 'It really comes down to he needs a bone marrow donor.'

He added: 'If we can't do that and it comes to the worst possible case, and we lose Chris - the last year of his life is going to be documented and it's going to be shared with millions of people.'

So far, the pair has completed four of the 79 items on their ever-growing bucket list.

They have 'gone around and given homeless people food and water,' 'yelled really loud in a quiet place,' 'ordered 100 of an item from a fast food place' and 'met someone from Reddit'.

The pair are raising funds for their bucket list on Patreon and GoFundMe are also documenting their experience on Twitter Instagram and YouTube
Brexit Britain received a boost today as Facebook opened its largest engineering hub outside the US in London today - bringing another 800 jobs to the capital.

Facebook chief Nicola Mendelsohn said the investment showed it is 'more committed than ever to the UK' while Philip Hammond said it is a vote of confidence in the country.

Meanwhile, a US investment fund is reportedly set to pump 1billion into creating a large biotech company in Britain.

Tory MP and leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg told Mail Online: 'It is no surprise that as the UK prepares to leave the European Union it becomes and even more attractive place in which to invest.'

Facebook's new 247,000 square foot office has opened today is in Rathbone Place, just off bustling Oxford Street in central London.

Chancellor Philip Hammond and Facebook vice president for Europe Nicola Mendelsohn take a tour of Facebook's new London offices. She said the engineering hub in London shows the social media giant is more committed than ever to the UK and Mr Hammond said it is a vote of confidence in the British economy

The new Facebook offices, which brings 800 new jobs to the capital, includes lots of trendy designs like these giant hand-printed letters

More than half the staff in the new offices will be engineers, providing new high-skilled jobs for Britain.

Ms Mendelsohn, vice president for Facebook Europe, said: 'The UK's flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem and international reputation for engineering excellence makes it one of the best places in the world to build a tech company.

'And we've built our company here  this country has been a huge part of Facebook's story over the past decade, and I look forward to continuing our work to achieve our mission of bringing the world closer together.'

The Chancellor, who visited the offices today on his 62nd birthday, said: 'I want to congratulate Facebook on the opening of their new London office.

'The UK is not only the best place to start a new business, it's also the best place to grow one.

The Facebook offices, pictured, has opened today is in Rathbone Place, just off bustling Oxford Street in central London

The trendy new office, designed by Frank Gehry - the architect behind the Guggenheim Museum in Spain - will also include an 'incubator space' for start-ups

'It's a sign of confidence in our country that innovative companies like Facebook invest here, and it's terrific news that they will be hiring 800 more highly skilled workers next year.'

The trendy new office, designed by Frank Gehry - the architect behind the Guggenheim Museum in Spain - will also include an 'incubator space' for start-ups.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan welcomed the 'fantastic' announcement.

He added: 'The launch of the company's incubator is set to play a crucial role in attracting vital talent to London and will help to pave the way for the next generation of successful start-ups.'

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that a life sciences fund based across the Pond will pay 1bn to set up a biotech company in the UK.

The as yet unnamed investor will move a significant chunk of its operations across the Atlantic to the UK.

The announcement is a major boost for Theresa May's government which has said it wants the UK to be a world leader in the biotech industry.
A teenager has been charged over the terrifying abduction of a nurse who was allegedly shoved into the boot of his own car by masked men armed with knives and a gun.

Police allege the 17-year-old was one of three to attack Joe Brooker, 25, as he walked to his car at Pindara Private Hospital in the Gold Coast suburb of Benowa on Friday.

It's alleged the men, who were wearing balaclavas and armed with knives and a handgun, bundled him into the boot and drove him to an ATM where they forced him to withdraw cash.

A teenager has been charged over the terrifying abduction of Joe Brooker (pictured) who was allegedly shoved into the boot of his own car by masked men armed with knives and a gun

A group of teens allegedly confronted the male nurse at a hospital on Friday before forcing him into a car boot

He was then put back into the boot before his attackers crashed the car into the fence of a house at nearby Ashmore and fled, police said.

Mr Brooker was taken to Gold Coast University Hospital with non-life threatening injuries after neighbours rescued him from the boot.

He was discharged later in the day.

Police said the gang went on to steal a second car that rolled on Ashmore Rd about 4.45am on Saturday.

The teenager will appear in the Southport Magistrates Court on Monday charged with two counts of unlawful use of a motor vehicle, two counts of armed robbery, and one count each of torture and deprivation of liberty.

Investigations are continuing.

Mr Brooker was taken to Gold Coast University Hospital with non-life threatening injuries after neighbours rescued him from the boot
A sweet grandmother with an astonishing 14 grandchildren was asked to name all of them on live television - but she flatly refused.

The Sydney woman appeared on Sunrise alongside her friends as reporter Sam Mac visited an aged care home on Monday.

Speaking on Sunrise, the Sydney woman was put on the spot when a journalist asked the room of grandparents who had the most grandchildren.

Speaking on Sunrise, the Sydney woman (pictured) was put on the spot when a journalist asked the room of grandparents who had the most grandchildren

The Sydney woman appeared on Sunrise alongside her friends as reporter Sam Mac visited an aged care home on Monday

The group of elderly grandparents raised their hands as they told Sam how many grandchildren they had, but it was no contest for one woman who has an unbelievable 14.

When asked if she could name all of her brood, the grandmother suffered from a bout of stage-fright and simply laughed and replied: 'No. Not today.'

'Well at least she's honest,' the reporter replied, before asking the woman if she could name just one.

The doting grandmother then named only one grandchild, Ben, to which the room erupted in laughter.

When asked if she could name all of her brood, the grandmother (pictured) suffered from a bout of stage-fright and simply laughed and replied: 'No. Not today'

'Well at least she's honest,' the reporter replied, before asking the woman if she could name just one (Pictured is Samantha Armytage and David Koch)

'There you go Ben's her favourite,' the Sunrise journalist told Samantha Armytage and David Koch.

Host Samantha then offered up her own family tidbit by telling the audience her Catholic grandmother has 22 grandchildren.

'She would be able to name them all, I reckon,' she added.
Up to 2000 users of dial-a-dealer drug syndicates have been sent a text message by police asking them to come forward with information about the crime groups.

The numbers were obtained from mobile phones seized in a two-month New South Wales Police operation targeting cocaine dealers operating in Sydney.

'This ph no has been ID'd as part of a NSWPF Cocaine investigation in the Sydney area,' the text said. 'If you have any information please contact Crime Stoppers on 1300 333 000.'

Perhaps surprisingly, a police spokeswoman said dozens of those who received the text message had already replied.

About 2000 phone numbers were retrieved from the phones of those arrested in the operation

Police have sent a text message to about 2000 people whose numbers were found in an operation targeting dial-a-dealer cocaine syndicates in the Sydney metropolitan area

Strike Force Northrop was a two-month sting targeting 'dial-a-dealer' cocaine syndicates

Cocaine seized by Strike Force Northrop in an operation targeting dial-a-dealers in Sydney

A total of 36 people - 28 men and eight women - have been arrested by police who seized 468 grams of cocaine, 196 grams of MDMA, $120,000 cash, two loaded firearms and a number of cars.

But it is the location of about 2000 numbers on mobile phones seized by Strike Force Northrop that would have customers of the syndicates worried.

Detective Chief Inspector Stuart Bell said every number found on the phones would be contacted.

'What we'll be doing today is sending SMS text messages to each of those persons to ascertain if they can help us further with our inquiries,' Detective Chief Inspector Bell told reporters last Friday.

'If you are the recipient, it's in your best interest to contact them.'

Detectives and other police arrest a man as part of an operation targeting cocaine dealers

NSW Police arrested 36 people as part of an operation targeting cocaine supply in Sydney

Strike Force Northrop police arrest a suspect as part of a crackdown on cocaine supply

While the recipients were under no legal obligation to reply, dozens had done so by Friday evening.

The syndicates are alleged to have used a central phone number for customers to contact and organise a drug drop at a location of their choice.

Detective Chief Inspector Bell compared it to arranging the delivery of fast food.

'Just like ordering a pizza ... only illegal,' he said.

'These criminal groups have an extensive client base that individuals were contacting for the sole purpose of purchasing cocaine.

'They were operating a dial-a-dealer service.

The cocaine seized would have equated to about 500 street deals.

'It shows that the demand for cocaine is high,' Detective Chief Inspector Bell said.

A Glock 26 pistol seized by Strike Force Northrop in an operation targeting cocaine supply

Cash seized by officers from Strike Force Northrop targeting cocaine dealing in Sydney

The syndicates are alleged to have used a central phone number for customers to contact

'While the demand is high, we'll continue to run these types of investigations.'

The majority of those arrested face charges relating to the ongoing dealing of cocaine and others were picked up for possession.

They came from all walks of life, 'from corporates to unemployed', Detective Chief Inspector Bell said.

Strike Force Northrop was established in September 2017 by detectives attached to Redfern Region Enforcement Squad to target the ongoing supply of cocaine within the central metropolitan region.

Police have laid more than 120 charges in total and most of the defendants will face court in January.

Charges include supply prohibited drug, knowingly participate in criminal group, ongoing drug supply, deal with proceeds of crime and possess prohibited drug.

Police have laid more than 120 charges and most of those accused will face court in January
Theresa May's (pictured) hopes of a Brexit breakthrough are in jeopardy ahead of crunch talks with Ireland and others in Brussels today

Theresa May's hopes of a Brexit breakthrough are in jeopardy ahead of crunch talks in Brussels today after no breakthrough in Dublin over the UK's future border with Ireland.

The Prime Minister will travel to Belgium this morning ahead of a lunch with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and chief EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier.

She will then hold further talks with EU Council president Donald Tusk, who represents the interests of the remaining 27 member states.

The PM is also expected to telephone Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, whose last-minute threat to veto progress over border issues has thrown the careful choreography of a deal into chaos.

A source said the chance of progressing to a possible deal was now only 50/50 - which would be a huge blow to the Prime Minister.

Mr Varadkar and Mrs May were expected to speak by phone before he chaired a special Cabinet meeting at 9am today.

But EU sources have said that after talks through the night have failed to find agreement on four key areas, including a solid commitment to avoid a hard border between North and South when Britain leaves the EU.

If there is no agreement today the best case scenario is that it is sorted this week - the worst case scenario is that any agreement is pushed into the new year.

Mrs May had hoped to secure agreement on moving on to trade talks after persuading her cabinet to back an improved divorce payment worth up to 40billion to the EU.

In return, she is demanding assurances that Brussels will agree a comprehensive trade deal.

But, despite round-the-clock talks this weekend, key differences remain between the two sides, particularly over the Irish border.

The PM is also expected to telephone Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (pictured), whose last-minute threat to veto progress over border issues has thrown the careful choreography of a deal into chaos

A Government spokesman said today's meetings were now seen as no more than a 'staging post' ahead of a summit of EU leaders next week.

The four key demands made by Dublin First: Information around the transition period of the UK exiting the EU.

Information around the transition period of the UK exiting the EU. Second: Agreement on rights associated with the Common Travel Area, and what the arrangements would be on this.

Agreement on rights associated with the Common Travel Area, and what the arrangements would be on this. Third: A commitment that would see the Good Friday Agreement protected.

A commitment that would see the Good Friday Agreement protected. Fourth: A solid commitment to avoid a hard border between North and South  and that rules and regulations of the Single Market and Customs Union cant diverge. Advertisement

The spokesman said there were 'plenty of discussions still to go' before a deal is struck.

Ministers are alarmed by the lack of a breakthrough. Some, including the Brexit Secretary David Davis, are warning privately that Mrs May will have to walk away if there is no agreement at next week's EU summit.

One source familiar with the talks said: 'If we don't make sufficient progress at this stage then the process is over.'

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday warned Eurosceptic MPs not to limit Mrs May's room for manoeuvre. 'The choice we face is not between this Brexit or that Brexit,' he said.

'If we don't back Theresa May we will have no Brexit, and she is doing an unbelievably challenging job amazingly well.'

Mr Hunt's intervention came as 30 Eurosceptics set down seven 'red lines' over Brexit.

The Leave Means Leave group said Mrs May should not make any payment to Brussels unless she received clear pledges in return, including a free trade deal and agreement that the UK would not have to accept any new EU regulations or European court rulings during a two-year transition period.

Signatories of the letter include former cabinet ministers Lord Lawson, John Redwood and Owen Paterson. They urge Mrs May to abandon the talks completely and go for a no-deal Brexit if Brussels refuses to agree terms next week.

The Prime Minister will travel to Belgium this morning ahead of a lunch with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured right) and chief EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. She will then hold further talks with EU Council president Donald Tusk

Today's talks are designed to determine whether 'sufficient progress' has been made on three key issues to persuade the EU to move on to trade talks.

What happens if Britain can't strike a border deal with Three possible outcomes: Best case: Dublin signs off on the joint EU-British 'text' meaning talks move on to Phase 2. Possible case: Dublin cannot agree text but agreement is secured later this week. Worst case: Talks break down and it is pushed into the new year - throwing Theresa May's Brexit timetable into chaos. Advertisement

The issues at the centre of the row are the size of the divorce bill, the rights of EU citizens living in the UK and the status of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The divorce bill is now seen as the most straightforward issue, with EU sources indicating Brussels is ready to accept Mrs May's revised offer.

But differences remain on citizens' rights and Northern Ireland.

The Prime Minister had hoped to offer a 'compromise' on citizens' rights, which would give the European Court of Justice a minor, indirect role. But she has not yet persuaded her cabinet to sign it off.

The deal would allow the UK's Supreme Court to ask the ECJ for guidance in cases brought by EU citizens where there is no existing case law. EU citizens would lose the right to appeal directly to the ECJ  a key Brussels demand.

Nigel Farage was dragged into the divorce bill row yesterday because his 73,000-a-year MEP's pension will be part-funded by Britain's proposed 40billion payment.

The UKIP leader rejected calls to give up the money, saying: 'Why should my family suffer?'

Facebook has backed post-Brexit Britain by opening a London office employing 800 staff. It will be the social networking firm's biggest software engineering hub outside the US.

Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook vice president for Europe, Middle East and Asia, said it was 'more committed than ever to the UK'.
Social media firms should limit access to their sites for vulnerable youngsters, Jeremy Hunt has suggested.

The Health Secretary said sites such as Facebook and Twitter are able to monitor whether young people are risking their mental health by spending hours online.

He suggested mobile phone technology that blocks messages from arriving when people are driving could be a potential solution.

Mr Hunt made the comments as he announced a 300million scheme to provide counselling and mental health support for school pupils.

It follows reports that nearly half of 11 and 12-year-olds have accounts on social media, despite a supposed ban on those under 13.

Appearing on ITV's Peston on Sunday, Jeremy Hunt (pictured) called on social media websites to restrict usage for vulnerable youngsters if their mental health was considered to be at risk

Figures show that in the past year almost a fifth of 12 to 15-year-olds have seen 'worrying' or 'nasty' material on the internet, amid fears social media may be fuelling child mental health problems and a sharp rise in self-harm among teenage girls.

Asked whether the Government should be tougher on social media firms, Mr Hunt told ITV's Peston on Sunday: 'We know there is a correlation between people who have mental health issues and people who spend a very long time online and it's perfectly possible for a social media platform to monitor if a young person is spending hours and hours online.'

On the responsibility of tech firms, added: 'There are different things they can do but we want to hear from them.

'On my iPhone, for example, there is a new feature which actually stops it sending messages to me when it thinks I'm driving, and if you try and get a message in your car  you have to say, 'I'm not driving'.'

The Health Secretary met with social media firms in October and is set to do so again early in the new year.

The Health Secretary (pictured) said sites such as Facebook and Twitter are able to monitor whether young people are risking their mental health by spending hours online

Last month Ofcom reported that one in ten children aged between 12 and 15 have shared live videos of themselves, raising concerns over platforms allowing them to share this footage with strangers.

Mr Hunt said: 'We were very clear with them that if they don't do more to deal with the issue of people lying about their age and then signing up to a Facebook account when they're too young  then we would take action, but we want to give them a chance.'

The Government will today set out in a green paper its plan to bring counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy into the classroom.

Every school will have a mental health 'lead', plus support teams working with school nurses and psychologists.

It is hoped this will encourage children battling anxiety and depression to seek help, as they can talk to professionals in the familiar surroundings of their school rather than an NHS clinic.

But the initiative will reach only a quarter of the country by the end of the current Parliament in 2022.

The Government is also piloting a four-week maximum waiting time for children and young people's mental health services.

He suggested mobile phone technology that blocks messages from arriving when people are driving could be a potential solution

But this will have been rolled out across only a fifth of the country by 2022-23.

Mr Hunt added: 'We have lots of fantastic mental health provision in the NHS but one of the areas we don't do as well as we should is getting help to youngsters, teenagers in particular, who need help urgently  and we know that about half of mental health conditions become established before the age of 14.

'If you have a daughter who has anorexia  a son who has OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder], these are horrific conditions and typically you would have to wait six months before getting proper NHS care. That's not good enough.'

Dr Bernadka Dubicka, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: 'One of the biggest problems we see is that children who don't meet thresholds for mental health treatment often fall through the gaps.

It follows reports that nearly half of 11 and 12-year-olds have accounts on social media, despite a supposed ban on those under 13. Figures also show that in the past year almost a fifth of 12 to 15-year-olds have seen 'worrying' or 'nasty' material on the internet. File image used

'It is really promising to see the Government looking to tackle this. But it is crucial that there is enough resource available for the quality of care to remain consistently high.'

An NSPCC spokesman said: 'We have long called for social media companies to better protect all children using their platforms, and there are a number of ways they can do that, such as default privacy settings, content filters and grooming and bullying alerts.

'These should all be enforced by an independent regulator put in place by Government.

'But we must remember the internet can be a lifeline to children  Many young people who contact Childline about anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide do so via our online channels.'
A hardline Muslim sheikh from western Sydney has declared married women must be banned from socialising with men.

Sunni fundamentalist Mohamad Doar, who preaches Sharia law, told his followers husbands had to 'protect' their wives from 'evil'.

'A loving and understanding husband is not one who allows his wife to free mix with the opposite sex and show off her adornments in public,' he said on Facebook.

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Hardline Sunni sheikh Mohamad Doar says married women should not ever mix with men

The Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah Association urges Muslims to reject Western social values

'Rather the loving and understanding husband is the one who protects his wife from all evil, encourages her to obey her Lord and advises her.'

The sheikh is associated with Roselands Mosque and the Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah Association, which has urged Muslims to reject the western definition of marriage, where there is an implied equality between men and women.

'Islam's definition of a loving and understanding husband is much different to that of the west, let us not be deceived,' he said.

In April Sheikh Doar, who also goes by the name Abu Rashied, told teenage girls at a youth night in Punchbowl they would go to hell if they befriended non-Muslims.

The Salafist Muslim group in western Sydney says married women can't socialise with men

'The reality is, my sisters, any friendship that is not built on the fear of Allah is only going to lead to hell fire so you need to be cautious,' he said.

'With your actions, you distance yourself from the corrupted people.'

He also warned them against plucking their eyebrows.

'You are not allowed the remove the hair of the eyebrow, it's a major sin,' he said.

'The lady who plucks her eyebrows and the one who gets them plucked, they're both cursed by Allah.'

Mohamad Doar, also known as Abu Rashied, urges girls to avoid having non-Muslims friends

He was referring to the hadith, describing the actions of the Prophet Mohammad, as part of a question and answer session organised by Muslim charity Sisters United.

The ASWJ is a fundamentalist group which preaches a Salafist ideology imported from Saudi Arabia.

Its preachers include Nassim Abdi, who has urged Muslims to refrain from listening to music and called on women to cover up their ears in public.

The group also urges Muslims to refrain from participating in non-Muslim events like the Royal Sydney Easter Show and New Year's Eve.
The retired detective who leaked sensitive private information from the Damian Green inquiry could face prosecution, it emerged last night

The retired detective who leaked sensitive private information from the Damian Green inquiry could face prosecution, it emerged last night.

Neil Lewis, 48, is at the centre of an urgent Scotland Yard anti-corruption probe after accusing Theresa Mays deputy of lying.

Mr Lewis sparked a storm of controversy last week after disclosing confidential information gathered during an investigation nine years ago into Mr Green.

He said he found thousands of thumbnail pornographic images on computers in Mr Greens Commons office in 2008 and accused him of being responsible for downloading them, which the First Secretary of State strongly denies.

The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has repeatedly said police officers and staff must never abuse their access to highly sensitive personal information.

Last night, one legal expert said she would be very surprised if a criminal case cannot be brought against Mr Lewis, adding that he may have committed offences under data protection, computer misuse and even theft legislation.

And police watchdog Sir Tom Winsor, Her Majestys Chief Inspector of Constabulary, has accused Mr Lewis of actions which flagrantly violate the trust ordinary people put in officers investigating sensitive crimes.

Sir Tom said the public must be reassured that when sensitive information comes into police hands its private nature will be respected in perpetuity.

He said that if trust between police and public is damaged it may lead to great harm to public safety and justice.

Neil Lewis (pictured), 48, is at the centre of an urgent Scotland Yard anti-corruption probe after accusing Theresa Mays deputy of lying

That trust requires every police officer to respect and keep confidential information which they obtain in the course of their duties and which is irrelevant to their inquiries and discloses no criminal conduct, he said.

If a police officer broke that trust whilst serving as a police officer, he or she would face disciplinary action and could be dismissed. In certain circumstances, such action could also constitute a criminal offence.

The obligation of confidentiality, and the duty not to break trust, is an enduring one. It does not end when a police officer retires.

He added: Almost all police officers  serving and retired  would deprecate actions which flagrantly violate the trust which every citizen should have in the police.

Dozens of police officers have been prosecuted in recent years for breaching the Data Protection Act and other offences by illicitly accessing private information.

Mr Lewis levelled a series of allegations at Mr Green during an extended interview with the BBC.

Police watchdog Sir Tom Winsor, Her Majestys Chief Inspector of Constabulary, has accused Mr Lewis of actions which flagrantly violate the trust ordinary people put in officers

The former detective constable was responsible for seizing and analysing the then shadow immigration ministers computers during a 2008 inquiry which culminated in a raid on his Parliamentary office.

Mr Lewis admitted it was impossible to say who was sitting at the computer as it was used. And he did not bother reporting his concerns to senior officers at the time as they were irrelevant to the wider inquiry into Home Office leaks.

He also confessed to holding on to his police notebook and evidence bags from the inquiry, despite the fact they remained police property.

And he confirmed that he retained a cloned copy of Mr Greens computer hard drive knowing that the pornography data could be recovered, despite being ordered to destroy it. His actions sent shockwaves through policing amid fears they could undermine the publics confidence in police.

Yesterday former Home Secretary Lord Howard said he supported others who have condemned the leaking of information.

Bob Quick is the former senior officer who oversaw the ill-fated 2008 leak inquiry. Mr Quick is accused of harbouring a grudge against Mr Green and other senior Conservatives

I think that is a very serious matter indeed, he told the BBCs Sunday Politics show. Policing in this country is based on trust between the police and the public.

If we have retired police officers leaking confidential information of this kind it will be very damaging to that trust.

Tory MP Dominic Grieve, a former attorney general, lashed out at Mr Lewis and Bob Quick, the former senior officer who oversaw the ill-fated 2008 leak inquiry. Mr Quick is accused of harbouring a grudge against Mr Green and other senior Conservatives.

Mr Grieve said if either man believed they had relevant information they should have gone to Scotland Yard or the Cabinet Office.

Retired top officer Tim Brain, a former Gloucestershire chief constable, said he had no problem with Mr Lewiss actions and he too had retained police paperwork.

The Data Protection Act makes it an offence, punishable by an unlimited fine, to improperly disclose personal information held on police systems.

Last night, the Information Commissioners Office said its officials are ready to advise colleagues at the Metropolitan Police as their inquiry progresses. He said: We are not currently looking into this matter but will consider any complaint or referral if we receive one.
A security flaw in parliament could have allowed pornography to be placed on Damian Greens computer without his involvement, John Bercows deputy has warned.

Eleanor Laing, deputy speaker of the Commons, has revealed that her office assistant found pornographic images had been put on her computer without her knowledge every day when working in parliament before 2010.

The source of the images was never found. But allies of Mr Green believe lax cyber-security at the Commons a decade ago could explain police claims that they found thousands of pornographic pictures on his computer during a botched raid on his office in 2008.

Eleanor Laing has revealed that her office assistant found pornographic images had been put on her computer without her knowledge every day when working in parliament before 2010

Damian Green is battling to save his career after police claimed that they found thousands of pornographic pictures on his computer during a botched raid on his office in 2008

In a letter to Mr Green, a copy of which has been seen by the Daily Mail, Mrs Laing says it was clearly possible at the time for pornography to find its way onto parliamentary computers without the knowledge of the user. She said this appeared to be relevant to Mr Greens case.

In the letter, dated November 14, which has been passed to the Cabinet Office investigation into Mr Greens conduct, she states: A member of my parliamentary staff has told me that, several years ago, before we had effective screening of our parliamentary computers, she used to find pornographic images on her computer every morning when she switched it on.

She was certainly not accessing pornographic sites deliberately or even accidentally. The material was just there on her computer every day. She simply deleted it. This happened before 2010.

Thus, it would appear that material found in the parliamentary computer system can be proved to have been put there by some other means than by the deliberate actions of the person operating the computer.

Mrs Laings intervention came as Cabinet splits emerged over how Theresa May should respond to claims about Mr Greens conduct.

Education Secretary Justine Greening yesterday suggested he should be sacked if a Cabinet Office inquiry concludes that pornography was found on his computer.

Asked whether it was okay for people to view pornography at work, she said: I dont think thats acceptable

Former detective Neil Lewis (pictured), 48, is at the centre of an urgent Scotland Yard anti-corruption probe after accusing Theresa Mays deputy of lying

She declined to comment directly on the investigation into Mr Green, but added: I think it is important that we have high standards in public life.

Mrs Mays influential chief-of-staff, Gavin Barwell, is also said to be urging Mr Green to resign rather than cause any more embarrassment for the government. But other senior Tories weighed in behind Mr Green as he battles to save his career.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he had no doubt Mr Green was telling the truth. Referring to a previous inquiry into his own conduct, he told ITV: I do have confidence in Damian Green and I have actually been in the situation Damian Green was in, where everyone thinks youve done an absolutely terrible thing and what I learnt from that is that you have to wait until an investigation is completed.

The pornography claims were first made last month by former police chief Bob Quick, who ordered the controversial raid on Mr Greens Commons office in 2008

And I was vindicated at the end of that process in my own case I know Damian Green as a colleague and I trust him absolutely and thats why I believe what he says, but there is an investigation and I think we should wait.

Brexit Secretary David Davis has also warned Mrs May not to sack Mr Green  and suggested he could even resign himself if his colleague is ousted as a result of a vendetta by former police officers.

Mr Green has been under investigation for a month over disputed claims that he made unwanted advances towards Tory activist Kate Maltby, who is 30 years his junior.

But Sue Gray, director of ethics and propriety at the Cabinet Office, has also questioned him over the claims about pornography, which he denies.

The claims were first made last month by former police chief Bob Quick, who ordered the controversial raid on Mr Greens Commons office in 2008.

He was backed up on Friday by another former Scotland Yard detective Neil Lewis, who said he had no doubt that Mr Green himself had downloaded the pornography, which he said ran to thousands of images.

Mr Green responded: I have maintained all along and I still maintain  it is the truth  that I did not download or look at pornography on my computer, but obviously while the investigation is going on I cant say any more.

Miss Gray has interviewed a string of staff who have worked with Mr Green during his five years as a minister. This process is not thought to have thrown up any further allegations of impropriety. Her report is due to go to Mrs May for a decision in the coming days.
A 'uniquely vulnerable' network of underwater cables leave the UK security and economy at risk of an 'existential' attack by terrorists, a report says.

The report, written by Conservative MP Rishi Sunak for Policy Exchange think-tank, said that while 97% of global communications were transmitted through fibre-optic carrying cables they remained 'uniquely vulnerable' to sabotage.

Despite their importance, the report said they were often poorly protected, their locations publicly known, with the cables coming ashore at just a few remote 'landing sites' in the UK making them a tempting target for terrorists.

A 'uniquely vulnerable' network of underwater cables leave the UK security and economy at risk of an 'existential' attack by terrorists, a report says (file image)

'Whether from terrorist activity or an increasingly bellicose Russian naval presence, the threat of these vulnerabilities being exploited is growing,' the report said.

'A successful attack would deal a crippling blow to Britain's security and prosperity. The threat is nothing short of existential.

'The result would be to damage commerce and disrupt government-to-government communications, potentially leading to economic turmoil and civil disorder.'

At sea, while the greatest threat was from submarine warfare, a successful attack could be carried out by a fishing trawler equipped with deep-sea grappling hooks.

The report was written by Conservative MP Rishi Sunak for Policy Exchange think-tank

The report highlighted the way that during the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russians 'easily' cut all digital communications from the peninsula.

It said that the Government's next Strategic Defence and Security Review should specifically address threats to Britain's security from attacks on the undersea cable infrastructure.

A Government spokesman said that any threat to Britain's infrastructure was taken 'extremely seriously'.

'We are continuously working with industry to ensure our sub-sea cable network is secure and have a variety of tools to monitor potentially-hostile maritime activity,' the spokesman said.
A tearful openly gay politician has proposed to his partner from the chamber of parliament during the debate on same-sex marriage.

Liberal MP Tim Wilson, 37, was emotional as he spoke during the debate on Monday, as he stood and thanked his long-term partner, primary school teacher Ryan Bolger, 33, for supporting him.

You have had to tolerate more than most because you had to put up with me trust me, he said between tears.

Liberal MP Tim Wilson has proposed to his partner Ryan Bolger during a debate on same-sex marriage

Mr Wilson, 37, became emotional as he addressed his partner before proposing

This debate has been the soundtrack to our relationship. We both know this issue isnt the reason we got involved in politics but in my first speech, I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands and they are the answer to the questions we cannot ask.

Mr Wilson then addressed his partner and popped the question.

So theres only one thing left to do. Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me?

Mr Bolger answered yes, to strong applause.

Mr Wilson was congratulated by other politicians after Mr Bolger accepted his proposal

Deputy speaker Rob Mitchell said the 'resounding yes' should be recorded in the notes, before offering his congratulations to Mr Wilson.

'Well done mate,' Mr Mitchell said.

In his maiden speech to parliament, Mr Wilson became emotional when speaking about Mr Bolger.

'For seven years, a ring has sat on both of our left hands, and they are the answer to a question we still cannot ask,' he said at the time.
Brexit voters may struggle to get their heads around the idea of a female star of Doctor Who, the BBC shows writer has suggested.

In a barbed comment about the millions who voted for Britain to leave the EU, Steven Moffat hinted that liberal Remainers were more comfortable with an actress playing the Doctor.

The 56-year-old suggested that Brexit-voting viewers might be harder to keep on board after Jodie Whittaker takes the role later this month because they do not have progressive views.

Brexit voters may struggle to get their heads around the idea of a female star of Doctor Who, the BBC shows writer Stephen Moffat has suggested

Moffat said that the writers had to worry about these viewers saying: Thats not the same person.

He added: This isnt a show exclusively for progressive liberals, this is also for people who voted Brexit.

Thats not me politically at all, but we have to keep everyone on board.

The writer, who has worked on Doctor Who since 2005, said now was the right time to give the shows lead role to a woman.

Broadchurch actress Miss Whittaker, 35, will take over from Peter Capaldi in the new series. Moffat, who also created the BBCs Sherlock, told the Radio Times: If wed replaced David Tennant with a woman it wouldnt have worked.

It was too early. We could have replaced Matt Smith with a woman, given that his Doctor was more sexless and less of a lad, but then I got obsessed with seeing Peter in the Tardis.

Moffat hinted that liberal Remainers were more comfortable with an actress playing the Doctor. Jodie Whittaker takes the role later this month

Then I turned [villain] the Master into Missy and no one had any problem with that being the same character.

Capaldi, 59, will leave his role as the Doctor after four years during this years Christmas Day special.

It will also be Moffats final episode, with Broadchurch writer Chris Chibnall to take over as head writer. Radio 2s Jo Whiley, who saw some of the special being filmed, said: There was a scene that they had to film and everyone was in tears.

Because of the poignancy of the scene that they were filming, which had less to do with the Doctor himself and more to do with the storyline.

And everyone was in pieces. And when you watch the Christmas Day episode, youll understand. Its really very, very clever, and very laced with emotion.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will have a wedding cake made of bananas when they tie the knot in May, a source has claimed

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will have a wedding cake made of bananas when they tie the knot in May, it has been claimed.

Harry, 33, and Miss Markle are said to have chosen the fruit for their ceremonial showpiece because the Prince loves 'anything with banana'.

Suits star Miss Markle, 36, set tongues wagging when she posted a picture on Instagram of two bananas spooning, with the caption 'sleep tight xx', 13 months ago.

Many interpreted the cryptic post as a symbol of the high profile couple's long distance relationship.

Now it appears the fruit may have a further role to play in their romance.

The couple will marry at St George's Chapel in the grounds of Windsor Castle because it is a place 'close to the couple's hearts', it was revealed last week.

But after the ceremony, the wedding party and guests may end up tucking into more than just the traditional fruit bake.

'This will be the first royal wedding cake made from bananas', a source told the Telegraph.

Darren Grady, former royal chef to Prince Harry and the Duke of Cambridge when they were were children, told Hello! magazine the brothers 'loved banana flan, anything with banana really, banana ice cream.'

The Prince and Miss Markle's unconventional cake will follow the trend set by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at their wedding in 2011.

Suits star Miss Markle, 36, set tongues wagging when she posted a picture on Instagram of two bananas spooning, with the caption 'sleep tight', 13 months ago

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's chocolate biscuit wedding cake, made by McVities from a Royal Family recipe

The royal couple requested a chocolate biscuit creation along with their eight-tiered traditional centrepiece.

The cake was made by McVities, from a Royal Family recipe, and was specially requested by Prince William.

The Prince and Miss Markle have not given an exact date for their 'fun and joyful' wedding yet, but it is likely to be on TV.

The couple have shunned a larger wedding at Westminster Abbey or St Paul's for a more intimate church service at St George's, where Harry's father Charles had a blessing after marrying Camilla in the nearby Guildhall in 2005.

The royal family will pay for the event, the music, the flowers and the reception.




A newly-constructed missile North Korean officials said could reach the 'whole US mainland' failed during testing this week.

The presumed powerful Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) broke apart in the air Wednesday as it re-entered into the Earth's atmosphere, a US official told Fox News.

Eugene Lee, a South Korean spokesperson of the Ministry of Unification, who deals with North Korean affairs, said the Seoul government believes the 'North hasn't crossed the 'red line' in weapons development yet because it hasn't perfected its ICBMs,' according to the report.

North Korea's Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (pictured above during launch) broke apart in the air during testing Wednesday

The 'powerful' missile was predicted to reach across the 'whole US mainland,' officials said

The missile flew 950 kilometers (600 miles) before it splashed down in waters near Japan

Back in July, North Korea also launched its Hwasong-14, which successfully flew 580 miles before it crashed into the Sea of Japan.

Officials confirmed the Hwasong-15 missile was 'significantly more' powerful than the Hwasong-14.

South Korea's military said the latest missile flew 950 kilometers (600 miles) before splashing down in waters near Japan.

South Korean President Moon Jae-In speaks with US President Donald Trump at the presidential Blue House in Seoul on November 29, 2017 following the new North Korean missile test

This Nov. 29, 2017, image shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, third from left, and what the North Korean government calls the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, in North Korea

The new Hwasong-15 missile (shown) was said to be 'significantly more' powerful than the Hwasong-14 which launched in July

It is potentially capable of striking targets as far as 13,000 kilometers (8,100 miles), which would put Washington within reach.

Despite the break, the launch of the new ICBM was celebrated Friday with a massive public rally and fireworks in capital Pyongyang.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un also thanked workers during a visit to a factory that built the tires for a huge vehicle used to transport the ICBM.

Kim Jong-Un is shown visiting the Amnokgang Tire Factory in the Chagang province this week

Kim thanked workers at a factory that built the tires for a huge vehicle used to transport a new intercontinental ballistic missile that was test-launched this week

Kim complimented workers for manufacturing the large-size tires for the 9-axle missile truck without relying on imported equipment.

The leader called for efforts to raise production to 'satisfy the daily-increasing needs in developing the country's economy and beefing up national defense capabilities,' the North's official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.

Kim in September tasked the Amnokgang Tire Factory to make the tires for the 'great event in November,' the agency reported.


As the Government edges closer to agreeing a 50 billion divorce from the EU, the Northern Ireland border issue may yet prove even more troublesome.

But Ive discovered another potential source of conflict. What is going to happen to the Government art collection which is on show in the European Parliament buildings?

Baroness Rawlings, when she was a Tory MEP between 1989 and 1994, chaired a committee which spent 80,000 on 12 paintings to exhibit in Brussels.

By even the most conservative estimate, the collection is now worth at least 15 million  and probably far more.

The pictures include works by the Scottish artist Peter Doig, whose magical landscape paintings have earned millions. In 2015, Doigs Swamped, pictured, a painting of a moonlit white canoe, sold at auction for nearly 20m

Given that an obscure work by Leonardo da Vinci recently sold for 340million, the skys the limit!

The pictures include works by the Scottish artist Peter Doig, whose magical landscape paintings have earned millions.

In 2015, Doigs Swamped, a painting of a moonlit white canoe, sold at auction for nearly 20m.

There are also works by Sir Michael Craig-Martin, who was knighted last year for services to art. He has exhibited all over the world and among his former students is the British artist Damien Hirst.

Lady Rawlings has tabled a question in the Lords saying: Will the British art collection in the European Parliament be repatriated when the UK leaves the EU?

Lord Ashton of Hyde, a Tory culture minister, replied: The Government has not yet made a decision.

However, it will consider these matters carefully in the context of preparations and negotiations for the UKs exit from the EU.

What a typically woolly reply from the Government. Get those paintings back!

Benn and the hush-hush horses

Hilary Benn, chairman of the Brexit select committee, worked himself into a real lather over the Government redacting sensitive facts from papers assessing the impact of Brexit.

But Benn has a short memory. When he was Environment Secretary, he relied on similar exemptions to conceal information from Freedom of Information requests on far more trivial issues.

Such as which zoos giant pandas lived in, the sites in England licensed to hold Welsh Catfish, and a report on the recognition of the United Knabstrupper Association (the Knabstrupper is a horse breed from Denmark known for its eccentric coat).

Hardly subjects that warranted any secrecy at all.

Kezia still lost in the jungle

A classic exchange in Im A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! Stanley Johnson, father of Foreign Secretary Boris, said to Kezia Dugdale, the former leader of Scottish Labour: We must sit down and discuss Labours position on Brexit, to which Dugdale replied: Oh good. Can you explain it to me?

No wonder she jumped ship from her Scottish job if even she doesnt understand it.

Former Tory chairman Baroness Warsi was hosted by Primrose Hill Bookshop in leafy North London to try to shift copies of her book, The Enemy Within: A Tale Of Muslim Britain.

How did she thank her host? At the end of the presentation, she said: And by the way, if you go on Amazon, you can get my book a lot cheaper.

What a way to repay the shops generosity, which had to endure muddy feet and crisps trampled into the carpets.

Former Tory party chairman Baroness Warsi, pictured, was hosted by Primrose Hill Bookshop in leafy North London to try to shift copies of her book

Jeremy doesnt do dinners, explained shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, of the Labour leaders reluctance to break bread with Jewish organisations.

Thats why his deputy is called Tom Two Dinners Watson, joked a Labour MP, of Corbyns rotund No.2.

How Ukip is missing Nigel Farage. Current party leader Henry Bolton reveals: On taking office, I looked in the money bucket and found it entirely empty.

'In fact, it was worse than empty, it had a big hole in the bottom. There is no money: in fact for a year we have been running on an entirely unsustainable monthly deficit.

'The party has very few resources and I have inherited no office and no equipment or staff.

Or support in the polls, which has slumped below 5 per cent.
British smugglers are charging up to 5,000 to help illegal immigrants sneak into the UK from Belgium, according to reports.

Police in the European country say there has been a surge in the number of culprits from the UK at the port of Zeebrugge - with offenders risking jail terms.

One couple from Liverpool were caught with six Africans in their caravan, according to The Sun.

They claimed to police that they were unaware of how the migrants sneaked in at the port, which is just 70 miles from Calais where the Jungle camp housed thousands of refugees attempting to reach Britain.

But detectives discovered they had been given 5,000 to park in a remote area with the caravan door left open.

The port is just 70 miles from Calais (pictured) where the Jungle camp housed thousands of refugees attempting to reach Britain

A Belgian police insider told the newspaper: 'We are seeing an increase in the number of British people held at Zeebrugge. It appears many are on benefits and being tempted by the money on offer.

'They can make 5,000 by leaving the door of their caravan or mobile home open.

'We have seen several cases and are catching around 250 illegal immigrants a month.'

In October last year it emerged that people smugglers were risking the lives of desperate migrants by hiding them on top of the engines of cars and lorries.

Criminal gangs use the 'extremely dangerous' method to sneak people across borders  unconcerned whether or not their victims died.

Criminal gangs use the 'extremely dangerous' method to sneak people across borders  unconcerned whether or not their victims died. Pictured is the port of Calais in France which has been a flashpoint for the migrant crisis

Europol, the EU's law enforcement agency, said at the time that traffickers were 'taking advantage of the space available between the engine and the bonnet' to conceal their human cargo.

It said the ruse was 'potentially life-endangering' as it warned that migrant smuggling was now a major business for criminals across Europe.

Asylum seekers were being charged as much as 6,200 each to be crammed by a vehicle's engine in the hope of evading border guards  despite the risk of death.
An anti-Semitic man barged into a Jewish nursing home Saturday night and threatened to rob and kill an elderly man, police said.

Alen Califano, from Yonkers, broke into University Avenue Assisted Living in the Bronx around 5.30pm Saturday, police told the New York Daily News.

The 41-year-old allegedly asked a security guard to use the bathroom in the home, but immediately started entering different apartments and destroying property.

He eventually ran up to the fourth floor, lit a joint, and entered an 84-year-old Jewish man's apartment, according to police.

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Alen Califano, from Yonkers, broke into University Avenue Assisted Living in the Bronx around 5.30pm Saturday, police told the New York Daily News

He is accused of running up to the fourth floor, lighting a joint, and entering an 84-year-old Jewish man's apartment where he told the victim to give him his money and then assaulted him

Police told the Daily News Califano ordered the victim to give him his money.

When the victim refused, Califano allegedly said 'I will kill you, you f***ing Jew.'

He then is said to have hit the elderly victim with a cardboard tube, cutting his mouth and forehead - and then allegedly picked up a fire extinguisher and threw it at the man, who blocked it.

Police were called and met Califano as he tried to flee the nursing home.

He was handcuffed and arrested and charged with attempted robbery, assault as a hate crime, burglary, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of marijuana, police told the Daily News.

Califano has had 10 prior arrests for crimes such as assault, menacing and criminal mischief.

Friends of the victim told NBC 4 that he is in high spirits despite the attack, and even went out for his birthday on Sunday with family members.

A security guard has been fired for allowing him to enter the nursing home and reach the fourth floor, one of the home's owners said.

'This isolated incident is the result of an unacceptable breach of protocol committed by a guard employed by the private firm contracted to provide security at this assisted-living facility,' the home's director Leslie Hoot told the Daily News.

'The guard was fired immediately. We are relieved that are resident - a wonderful, kind and gentle man - did not sustain serious injury.

'We are providing him with comfort, counseling, and excellent quality care.'


The founder of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery and Grill is said to have feared federal agents would investigate him for evading millions in tax dollars, resulting in him killing himself.

Lowell Hawthorne was 'acting funny' and 'talking to himself' right before killing himself on Saturday night, according to family member's telling to detective reported by the New York Post.

There is surveillance footage showing the beef patty businessman shooting himself in the head at the warehouse located in the Bronx, claimed the source.

Lowell Hawthorne, 57, shot himself inside the Morrisania, The Bronx factory of his Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery and Grill on Saturday night

According to a source who told police, the businessman had been 'acting funny' and 'talking to himself' right before shooting

Prior to the shooting, Hawthorne could be seen allegedly talking with two workers who left the room.

He was said to have been worried that federal agents were going to investigate him for evading millions in tax dollars

The source said that the owner let a letter of apology to his family, dozens of which were employed at the company.

His younger brother, Milton, 55, met police around 5.15pm at the Golden Krust plant. He was responding to a call to police about an emotionally disturbed person armed with a gun.

The father-of-four was found with a single bullet wound in his head and gun nearby.

Lowell, 57, shot himself inside the Morrisania, The Bronx factory of his Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery and Grill on Saturday night, the New York Daily News reported.

Former employees of his told the Daily News that he was 'humble and 'good' and were 'shocked' at hearing he had likely committed suicide.

Hawthorne died inside the Morrisania, The Bronx factory of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery and Grill, of which he served as founder and CEO

Employees said they saw his car - a Tesla 85D - parked between two lanes.

Hawthorne emigrated to the United States from Jamaica and opened his first Golden Krust operation in 1989.

He and his family pooled money to open the modest store.

The operation sold Jamaican beef patties and it gradually evolved into a small fast-food empire.

Hawthorne started Golden Krust in 1989 and today there are more than 100 locations across the United States

There are now more than 100 Golden Krust establishments across the United States selling patties and other foodstuffs such as jerk chicken and plantains.

Golden Krust also produces tens of millions frozen patties to be sold in retail.

It is not clear who will take over the operation of Golden Krust.

For confidential support call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
A horrified homeowner has found eight deadly redback spiders on their windowsill following heavy rains in Victoria over the weekend.

The picture, uploaded to Reddit, shows the dead spiders curled up after they couldn't escape from the wild weather.

The picture was uploaded with the caption: 'When you live in Victoria and the first day of summer brings rain. All these red backs on one windowsill. Make sure your windows are all closed!'

A horrified homeowner has found eight deadly redback spiders on their windowsill following heavy rains in Victoria over the weekend

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.

Head of Spiders at the Australian Reptile Park Kane Christensen said the redback spiders were likely looking for dryer conditions inside the home.

'Spiders like redbacks, white tails and huntsmen prefer dry conditions over moist,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'They don't want their burrows or webs to get wet.

'You'll find a redback in every house in Australia because of dry conditions.'

Mr Christensen said once the spiders set up residence there they reproduce quickly.

'There could be hundreds of eggs in an egg sack,' he said.

Mr Christensen said of all the spiders Australia might see this summer, only two were very dangerous. But do you know what they are?

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.

'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.

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
Police were on alert Sunday afternoon after a small group of self-proclaimed 'alt-right' protesters led by white nationalist Richard Spencer gathered in front of the White House.

The group was met by a group of counter protesters and a heavy police presence.

A video posted by Spencer showed a small number of protesters chanting 'Build Kate's Wall,' a reference to a jury acquitting an undocumented Mexican migrant in the shooting death of Kate Steinle last week.

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White nationalist Richard Spencer, center, marches on a street near the White House with supporters during an anti-immigration in Washington, DC

Tony Hovater, Richard Spencer and white nationalist demonstrators protest

Spencer and alt-right supporters gathered to protest against the verdict in Kate Steinle's case - a woman shot by an undocumented Mexican migrant

White nationalist demonstrators protest in front of the White House in Washington

Counter-protesters were separated from Spencer's rally by police

Police escort White nationalists marching on a street near the White House during an anti-immigration rally in Washington

White nationalists hold placards supporting the building of a wall along the US-Mexico border

A phalanx of Metropolitan Police Department officers escort white nationalists and neo-Nazis as they march away from the White House

White nationalist Traditionalist Workers Party founder Matthew Heinbach (right, in black cap) is pictured as they were marched away from the White House December 3

The facists held an anti-immigration rally in response to this week's acquittal of an undocumented Mexican immigrant in the 2015 shooting death of Kate Steinle in San Francisco

Police presence picked up briefly at the White House on Sunday afternoon as Richard Spencer and other alt-right supporters gathered to protest against the verdict in Kate Steinle's case

Steinle's death ended up becoming a major talking point for President Donald Trump's campaign during the 2016 election and Trump blasted the verdict on Twitter.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, Steinle's accused killer, was found not guilty. Steinle was shot on a San Francisco pier as she was taking a walk with her father.

In Washington, city cops, many in body armor, created a physical barrier between alt-right activists and members of the left wing group 'antifa,' which is short for 'anti-fascist.'

Spencer led alt-right activists as they chanted 'Crush all commies.'

Spencer, who has become the face of the 'alt right' movement, is the president of the National Policy Institute, a think-tank.

White nationalist Richard Spencer (dark glasses) speaks while taunting counter-protesters during a anti-immigration rally in front of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC

The group was met by a group of counter protesters and a heavy police presence

D.C. police said that, to their knowledge, there were no arrests and both groups dispersed rather quickly

The dueling demonstrations appeared to be mostly peaceful

Eventually, Spencer's group was escorted by police to hold their rally at a different location

There were only around 20 white nationalist protesters in total

Counter-protesters shout slogans at white nationalists holding an anti-immigration rally in front of the White House

According to eyewitness accounts on social media, counter-protesters could be heard chanting, 'no Nazis, no KKK, no fascist USA'

Anti-fascist counter-protesters chant 'Nazi scum off our streets!' in response to white nationalists and neo-Nazis that were trying to rally outside the White House

Before he departed, Spencer yelled, 'Build the wall today. We'll be back'

The alt-right are a loosely affiliated collection of groups and individuals characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics that includes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites.

Washington D.C. police said there were no arrests and both groups dispersed quickly.

Counter-protesters were separated from Spencer's rally by police.

According to eyewitness accounts on social media, counter-protesters could be heard chanting, 'no Nazis, no KKK, no fascist USA.'

Fearing violence after showdowns between the two extremist groups in Charlottesville, Virginia and Florida earlier this year, police escorted Spencer's group away and walked with them for several block until they reached a subway station.

A phalanx of Metropolitan Police Department officers escort white nationalists and neo-Nazis, including white nationalist Traditionalist Workers Party founder Matthew Heinbach (C), as they march away from the White House

Tony Hovater and white nationalist demonstrators ride the escalator down to the Washington Metro after protesting in front of the White House
'Business is completely dead,' said Bali shopkeeper Monique Ancora, originally from Melbourne

An Australian shop owner in Bali has slammed Indonesian authorities and says 'over the top' warnings about Mount Agung have left her business 'completely dead'.

Melbourne woman Monique Ancora, 29, packed her bags a year ago and headed to Seminyak to open her shop, The Happiness Journey Leather.

Ms Ancora said advice about the erupting volcano had 'absolutely destroyed tourism' in Bali and urged travellers that most of the holiday island 'is still safe'.

'The businesses over here are really suffering and we all have absolutely no idea what is going on,' Ms Ancora told Yahoo7 News.

'I understand that you can't plan for a volcano but the reality is unless you're in that 10 kilometre danger zone, Bali is still safe.'

Ms Ancora said businesses had suffered ever since the mountain began rumbling in September.

'Literally yesterday from when I opened the store at 3pm until I closed at 9pm, I didn't have a single person enter it's just not Bali,' she said.

She stressed that shops in areas such as Seminyak, on the Island's south and around 75km from the mountain, remain open.

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'It's just not Bali,' said Ms Ancora. 'Literally yesterday ... I didn't have a single person enter'

Ms Ancora said businesses had suffered ever since the mountain began rumbling in September. The volcano is seen erupting last week

Meanwhile, Qantas and Jetstar resumed flights to and from Bali on Monday, as the lingering ash cloud caused by the erupting mountain begins to clear.

Virgin said it would fly out of the Indonesian holiday hot spot, but are still not flying into the island.

Thousands of holidaymakers remained stranded in Bali as visibility conditions deteriorated on Saturday, nearly a week since the volcano's eruption.

Jetstar cancelled all of its Sunday flights departing before 4pm and Qantas cancelled it's Sunday night flight from Denpasar to Sydney.

Thousands of holidaymakers remained stranded in Bali as visibility conditions deteriorated on Saturday. These tourists are pictured at the airport last week

Qantas and Jetstar will resume flights to and from Bali on Monday. Tourists are seen waiting at Denpasar Airport last week amid its closure

While five Jetstar flights were able to depart on Saturday morning, several evening flights were cancelled.

Virgin was forced to cancel its three scheduled recovery flights on Saturday after conditions 'significantly deteriorated,' a spokeswoman told AAP.

All of the airlines continue to monitor the situation and advise travellers flights may be cancelled if conditions worsen again.
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Breathtaking photographs captured in brightened night skies across the world showed the first of three consecutive supermoons to occur this winter - and the only one this year.

Nasa described the incredible lunar sighting the first in a 'supermoon trilogy' over the next two months, with others to come on 1 January and 31 January

Last night's moon, dubbed the 'full cold moon', glowed behind historic national monuments and landmarks all over the world such as London's Shard and the Statue of Liberty in New York.

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A supermoon was seen in front of a replica of the Statue of Liberty sitting atop the Liberty Building in downtown Buffalo, New York last night. Two more supermoons are expected to grace skies across the world again on 1 January and 31 January

The supermoon was seen shining brightly behind the Shard building in London this morning. Last night's moon appeared 14 per cent larger and 30 per cent brighter than usual as it lit up the sky

The vibrant supermoon was seen shining behind the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Nasa says the December sighting will be the third part of a trilogy this winter

The supermoon, dubbed the 'full cold moon', rose over the University of Notre Dame's main building yesterday evening in South Bend, Indiana

A plane was seen crossing in front of the so-called supermoon in Avondale Estates, Georgia. A supermoon describes a moon that is at its closest distance to the Earth with the moon appearing larger than usual

The 'supermoon trilogy' is shown in this graphic. For skygazers who missed last night's supermoon, they'll have two more chances to see them in January next year

The Cold Moon appeared 14 per cent larger and 30 per cent brighter than usual across the planet.

'Supermoons are a great opportunity for people to start looking at the moon, not just that once but every chance they have!' research scientist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, Noah Petro said.

The supermoon made its spectacular appearance over Britain, giving skygazers a treat as it moves closer to Earth.

Tom Kerss, an astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich, said the exact moment of full moon - when the moon sits opposite the sun in the sky, which was 3.47pm (10.47am ET) today in the United Kingdom.

He added: 'This year's Cold Moon is closer to us than the average full moon this year; close enough to qualify as a supermoon, according to the widely accepted definition.

The supermoon was seen shining brightly behind the Shard building in London this morning. This full moon was 222,761 miles from Earth, closer than its average 238,900 miles

December's full moon is traditionally known as the cold moon. It is pictured here behind the Shard in London during the early hours of this morning

The 'supermoon' was captured behind the US Capitol and the Jefferson Memorial on 3 December. The most recent supermoon was around a year ago on November 14, 2016

The moon, pictured here behind the US Capitol in Washington DC, was 222,761 miles (358,500km) from Earth, closer than the average distance of 238,900 miles (384,500km)

December's full moon - traditionally known as the Cold Moon - appeared 14 per cent larger and 30 per cent brighter than usual. It is seen over Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire

A supermoon was pictured in front of a replica of the Statue of Liberty in downtown Buffalo New York. The phenomenon happens when the moon reaches its closest point to Earth, known as a perigee Moon, and is also a full moon

Tom Kerss, an astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich, said the exact moment of full moon is when the moon sits opposite the sun in the sky. It is pictured over the Penshaw Monument near Sunderland yesterday evening

Astronomer Tom Kerss said: 'This year's Cold Moon is closer to us than the average full moon this year; close enough to qualify as a supermoon, according to the widely accepted definition'. Shown here is the supermoon in Warwickshire

The moon is seen behind the Uppatasanti Pagoda seen from Naypyitaw in Myanmar in Southeast Asia

The red-tinted moon appeared to sit on top of the Uppatasanti Pagoda yesterday

The moon is the first of three consecutive supermoons. It reached its peak brightness and size on Monday morning

A statue of The Buddha watches on as the supermoon rose above Yangon, in Myanmar, which is the largest city in the country

The moon was spotted behind a commuter train in Avondale Estates, Georgia. At some points it is about 5 per cent closer to Earth than average, known as perigee, and at others it is 5 per cent further away, known as apogee

For those wanting to see the Earth's natural satellite in greater detail, Mr Kerss advised using binoculars or a telescope and observing the dark maria - large, dark basaltic plains on the surface of the moon. Pictured is the moon next to the Shard

The moon is seen as it rises on December 3, 2017 in Washington. Nasa has called the sighting the first in a 'supermoon trilogy' over the next two months

An aircraft took off from Ronald Reagan National Airport and is seen passing in front of the moon as it rises in Washington yesterday

Although the moon is the biggest and closest it can be to us experts warn supermoons can often be underwhelming. The moon is pictured risingabove a suspension bridge in Yangon, Myanmar

The moon has a slightly elliptical orbit - it does not move round the Earth in a perfect circle.

At some points it is about 5 per cent closer to Earth than average, known as perigee, and at others it is 5 per cent further away, known as apogee.

The full moon will be 222,761 miles (358,500km) from Earth, closer than its average 238,900 miles (384,500km).

The supermoon is pictured setting over the church of Nuestra Senora de la Encarnacion at dawn in Olvera, near Cadiz, southern Spain

A person is seen walking along the 'Puente Nuevo' (New Bridge) as it is silhouetted against the supermoon in Ronda, southern Spain on 3 December

During the moon's closest pass by Earth, the moon was just 225,744 miles (36,3299 kilometres) away. The phenomenon is pictured rising above Naypyitaw, Myanmar yesterday

Traffic buzzes along a busy highway in Naypyitaw, the capitals of Myanmar, as the supermoon rose above the city yesterday

WHAT IS A SUPERMOON? Today, the moon will appear 14 per cent larger and 30 per cent brighter than normal, as it is at its closest point to Earth As the moon orbits the Earth every month, there is a point in every cycle where the moon is closest (perigee) and a point where it's farthest away (apogee). There is also a monthly lunar cycle where we can see varying amounts of the moon depending on it's position relative to Earth and the Sun. For a supermoon to happen, these need to line up. The celestial body became totally full at 3.47pm in the UK and reached its peak brightness this morning. The moon was visible from Earth with the naked eye, just as it always is. Although the moon is the biggest and closest it can be to us, experts warn that supermoons can sometimes be disappointing. Lyle Tavernier, an expert at Nasa, said: 'Keep in mind that a 14 per cent increase in the apparent size of something that can be covered with a fingernail on an outstretched arm won't seem significantly bigger. The moon will be visible from Earth with the naked eye, just as it always is. But although the moon is the biggest and closest it can be to us, don't expect too much 'Comparing a supermoon with a typical full moon from memory is very difficult.' With the moon being as close to Earth as it is, there is a significant impact on the tides. When the moon is closest, the tide will be at its highest, and the same happens with a new or full moon. This happens on a monthly basis, but occasionally the point of perigee aligns with a new or full moon and results in a 'perigean spring tide'. These are particularly high tides that can influence the oceans and raise sea level by a number of inches. Advertisement

An orange-tinted supermoon beamed above in the skies of Yangon, Myanmar. Orange and red tints that the Sun and Moon sometimes take on are caused by the particles in the Earth's atmosphere

The supermoon is seen over a highway near Yangon yesterday. The lunar phenomenon occurs when a full moon is at its closest point to Earth

Fair-goers enjoyed a supermoon-lit Ferris wheel ride in Tokyo Japan. The moon has a slightly elliptical orbit - it does not move round the Earth in a perfect circle

A young child is seen looking out of the Ferris Wheel carriage at the huge-looking supermoon at a fairground yesterday in Tokyo, Japan

A supermoon 'Full Cold Moon' is pictured rising over downtown Los Angeles. The moon was visible from Earth with the naked eye, just as it always is

A supermoon is seen in Singapore. Lyle Tavernier, an expert at Nasa, said: 'Keep in mind that a 14 per cent increase in the apparent size of something that can be covered with a fingernail on an outstretched arm won't seem significantly bigger'

The supermoon was seen next to electric lines near Yangon. 'Comparing a supermoon with a typical full moon from memory is very difficult', said Dr Tavernier

The full moon is pictured behind Christmas lights in Marseille. As the moon orbits the Earth every month, there is a point in every cycle where the moon is closest (perigee) and a point where it's farthest away (apogee)

There is also a monthly lunar cycle where we can see varying amounts of the moon depending on it's position relative to Earth and the Sun. Pictured is the so-called supermoon behind a church steeple in Avondale Estates, US

The supermoon is seen behind plants on a balcony of a residential block in Hong Kong

Mr Kerss said: 'During moonrise and moonset, you might think the moon looks unusually large, but this is an illusion created in the mind when it appears close to the horizon.

'In fact, the change in the moon's apparent size throughout its orbit is imperceptible to the unaided eye.

'Nevertheless, the 'moon illusion' can be a dramatic effect, and with the moon rising so early, there will be ample opportunities to see its apparently huge face juxtaposed with the eastern skyline.'

With the moon being as close to Earth as it is, there is a significant impact on the tides.

When the moon is closest, the tide will be at its highest, and the same happens with a new or full moon.

This happens on a monthly basis, but occasionally the point of perigee aligns with a new or full moon and results in a 'perigean spring tide'.

These are particularly high tides that can influence the oceans and raise sea level by a number of inches.

The supermoon was seen shining brightly behind the Shard building in London this morning. With the moon being as close to Earth as it is, there is a significant impact on the tides

A picture of the supermoon taken in Thorpe Bay, Essex. When the moon is closest, the tide will be at its highest, and the same happens with a new or full moon

High tide happens on a monthly basis, but occasionally the point of perigee aligns with a new or full moon and results in a 'perigean spring tide'. A supermoon brightened the night sky over the southeastern city of Busan, South Korea
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TV journalist Ben McCormack has reported to police for bail for the final time before he is sentenced over his child sex fantasy messages.

The former A Current Affair reporter, 43, pleaded guilty to two counts of using a carriage service to transmit, publish or promote child pornography in September.

McCormack will be sentenced by District Court Judge Paul Conlon on Wednesday morning. The offence carries a maximum punishment of 15 years jail time.

The charges relate to how - using the nom de guerre oz4skinboi - the media personality sent a series of instant messages over Skype to another man where he called himself a 'proud Ped'and described his 'love' for 'young bs'.

McCormack ducked into a Sydney police station in a hoodie on Monday, as family and friends keenly anticipated the imminent end of his long legal nightmare.

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Former TV journalist Ben McCormack reported to police for bail for the final time on Monday morning

McCormack, 43, pleaded guilty to two charges of using a carriage service to transmit, publish or promote child pornography

A recent hearing heard evidence McCormack had typically 'self-medicated' with alcohol when he was writing his sordid correspondence

A recent sentencing hearing heard evidence McCormack had 'self-medicated' with alcohol when he was writing his sordid correspondence and knew what he was doing was 'wrong'.

His lawyer Sam Macedone submitted psychiatric reports to the court which showed McCormack had struggled with alcohol use disorder, depression and paedophilic thoughts.

'The material seems to indicate he had struggled significantly with where he was in his life in that state of depression which he was diagnosed with,' Judge Conlon said.

'Whenever he self-medicated, that is with alcohol, that was when he was most prone to engaging in this sort of behaviour.'

A Crown prosecutor, who declined to be named to media, told the court McCormack should serve a custodial sentence. But the prosecutor said that 'doesn't mean we are saying full-time custody'.

Speaking of his prospects for rehabilitation, the judge said he had 'never seen' someone seeking treatment for their problem before being arrested for the type of charge McCormack was facing.

'This is the first time I have ever seen a case involving this type of charge (where) the offender himself, well before he was arrested .... was seeking professional assistance for what he knew was wrong.'

'He had been seeking that assistance for some years', he said, before asking: 'Am I incorrect in coming to the conclusion that his offending must be viewed down towards the lowest end of the scale?'

The prosecutor told the court a 'potentially negative' factor could be that McCormack had not stopped sending the messages even while he was being treated.

A prominent journalist, McCormack is pictured in an exclusive A Current Affair story

McCormack, his family and friends are awaiting the imminent end of his long, legal nightmare

The court heard evidence McCormack was 'self-loathing' over the behaviour and had twice attempted suicide

During the November hearing, Mr Macedone told the court the former journalist had tried to kill himself twice in the days that followed his April 10, 2017 arrest.

'When it exploded in his mind, he came to realise his worst thoughts had materialized,' Mr Macedone told the court.

'His main concern isn't so much what he has to go through but what he is putting his family through'.

After describing one incident, Mr Macedone told the court: 'I did what I could to satisfy him all would be OK.

'Thankfully he's here today.'

McCormack was well known as the journalist who famously tracked down Hey Dad! paedophile Robert Hughes in Singapore a few years ago.


A man has been arrested and charged after approaching and allegedly attempting to abduct three different children in one afternoon.

The accused man, 41, was allegedly seen watching a small child while at the busy Paddy's Markets in Sydney on Sunday afternoon.

He then made towards a second child, aged 18 months, before the parents intervened and picked up the toddler, police said.

The predator, 41, was seen watching a small child while at the busy Paddy's Markets (pictured) in Sydney on Sunday afternoon, police said

He then allegedly made towards a second child, aged 18 months, before the parents intervened and picked up the toddler (Stock image)

On his third attempt the man was allegedly seen trying to usher a third child, aged four, out onto the street.

Witnesses noticed the man try to lure the toddler away from the marketplace before stepping in and calling security to detain him.

Police from Sydney's local area command were called to the scene and arrested the man on the spot.

Witnesses allegedly noticed the man try to lure the toddler away from the marketplace (pictured) before stepping in and calling security to detain him

Police from Sydney's local area command were called to the scene and arrested the man on the spot

He was taken to Day Street Police Station where he was charged with offensive conduct and breach bail.

He was refused bail to appear at Central Local Court on Monday.

Police are now appealing for the parent of the third child approached to come forward to assist in the investigation.

A spokesperson for Paddy's Markets released a statement to Daily Mail Australia, which read: 'The security team at Paddy's Markets responded to this incident within three minutes and were able to ensure that the offender was appropriately dealt with by police.'
He crashed into Bae Karl-Perry, 26, who was a passenger in her partner's car

David Anthony Kay lost control of his car and drove on the wrong side of the road

A 24-year-old meth driver has been jailed for more than two years after he got behind the wheel of a car and killed a young mother.

David Anthony Kay was driving his mother to work on June 21 last year, when he lost control and slid onto the wrong side of the road in Chain of Ponds, north west of Adelaide, reports The Advertiser.

Bae Karl-Perry, 26, was a passenger in her partner Alex Vickers' car and died at the scene of head injuries.

Bae Karl-Perry had just dropped off her eldest child (pictured with all three) before she died

Ms Karl-Perry (pictured) was killed by the drug driver in a crash at Chain of Ponds in June 2016

Ms Karl-Perry and Mr Vickers had just dropped over their eldest child Lucas, four, at child care.

Their two other children Bailey, three, and 16-month-old Julian were also in the back of the car at the time of the crash.

On Monday, District Court Judge Liesl Chapman sentenced Kay, 24, to two years and eight months jail with a non-parole period of 21 months.

She refused to suspend the sentence or place Kay on home detention, and said driving under the influence of methamphetamine was a serious offence.

'Your consumption of methamphetamine had adversely affected your driving at the time of the collision,' she said during sentencing.

'Fatigue from lack of sleep combined with the rebound affects from your use of methamphetamine did, in fact, affect you at the time.

'The community has zero tolerance for drug drivers and, here, the consequences of your drug taking have been the death of one person and the injury of another.

'People who choose to use methamphetamine need to understand not only that the drug has direct affects which occur at the time of its use but also that it has rebound affects which continue for a long period of time after consumption.

'The consequences of your offending have been devastating.

Four victim impact statements were read to the court.

'She was herself a young person, she had a partner, three children all under the age of five years and had finished her course and got her diploma in advertising.

Mr Vickers described how he has lost the love of his life and his children have lost their mother.

'Their grief and their loss is profound,' District Court Judge Liesl Chapman said.

The 26-year-old mother of three (pictured) was a passenger in the car and died of head injuries

The week after the crash, Ms Karl-Perry's parents Monica Karl and James Perry spoke to the publication about the loss of their beloved daughter and revealed that just two days before the crash, she had completed a business diploma.

'It was the new her  she hadn't reinvented herself but decided she wanted something for when her children were a bit older,' Monica Karl said.

'She was so glad she got her diploma.

'They live day-to-day but the kids have never gone without  she was very dedicated to her motherhood.

'Bae lived for her kids, they were her life and she's left a beautiful legacy,' she added.
Labor frontbencher Katy Gallagher could be referred to the High Court after revealing British authorities did not confirm renunciation of her UK ties until two months after nominations closed for the 2016 election.

Senator Gallagher lodged paperwork, in line with a new parliamentary register of citizenship, on Monday confirming she completed a British citizenship renunciation form, with payment, on April 20, 2016.

But the UK Home Office wrote back on July 1, almost a month after election nominations closed, requesting original copies of her birth certificate and parents' marriage certificate.

Labor frontbencher Katy Gallagher could be referred to the High Court

Senator Gallagher did not receive the formal renunciation document until August 16.

Her father was born in the UK in 1939.

In the mid-1990s she investigated the option of moving to the UK to work.

When she made inquiries at the time, British authorities told her she would need to go through a formal application process and if she did so it was likely she would be granted citizenship although it was not automatic.

The ACT senator told parliament in September that during the 2016 pre-election candidate vetting process Labor officials had advised her 'out of an abundance of caution' she should fill out a form renouncing her British citizenship.

Her disclosure had all of the information available to her over her eligibility, Senator Gallagher said in a statement.

'Legal advice was provided to me by Dr Matthew Collins QC and an expert in British Nationality Law Mr Adrian Berry,' she said.

'Mr Berry finds that '.... Senator Gallagher had, prior to the date for nominations for the 2016 election, taken all of the steps that were required to be taken by her (not just the reasonable steps required) under British law in order to renounce her British citizenship'.'

Australian Conservatives leader Cory Bernardi revealed he held Irish citizenship but had lodged a form renouncing it in 2006, before he filled a Liberal Party casual vacancy in South Australia

Senator Gallagher said based on her legal advice she did not believe she should refer herself to the High Court.

'However ultimately that will be a matter for the Senate to determine.'

Constitutional expert George Williams said there was no categorical answer to whether Senator Gallagher was ineligible.

'Whenever renunciation is received after the close of nomination there is always the question have reasonable steps been taken, for which the High Court has not yet provided any guidance,' Professor Williams told AAP.

Australian Conservatives leader Cory Bernardi revealed he held Irish citizenship but had lodged a form renouncing it in 2006, before he filled a Liberal Party casual vacancy in South Australia.

But he did not provide the Irish government's formal reply to his renunciation.

Prof Williams said Senator Bernardi could fall into the same trap as former One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts, who tried to renounce his British citizenship via email to the wrong address, but did not receive the formal renunciation notification until too late.

This comes as Labor senator Doug Cameron revealed he was potentially eligible for Lithuanian citizenship

'It's obviously not enough just to send information in - you need to be diligent in following it up as well,' Prof William said.

The larger problem with the declaration process was no independent person had been put in place to scrutinise the information and determine what should be taken forward to court.

'It's a really deficient process because who goes to the High Court will largely be determined by political factors and political self-interest ... it's hardly a process to give the community confidence.'

This comes as Labor senator Doug Cameron revealed he was potentially eligible for Lithuanian citizenship, ABC News reported.

He was born in Scotland but renounced his British citizen sip before nominating for parliament.

His citizenship forms revealed his grandparents left Lithuania in 1915.

Lithuania last year changed its law so descendants of citizens that left the country before 1940 could apply for dual citizenship.

Cameron said he would have to formally apply for dual citizenship, which he had not done.
A serial rapist has blamed one of his victims for provoking his attack on a street in Adelaide's CBD in 2012.

Patrick Mark Perkins allegedly told a woman she 'should have known better' than to be walking home alone on the night he raped her, The Advertiser reports.

The 57-year-old left his victim permanently emotionally scarred after telling her she was a 'bad girl' while 'horrendously' raping her, The District Court heard on Monday.

Grim details of the night of the attack along with the devastating toll it has taken on the woman's life were revealed in her victim impact statement.

'(Perkins) kept referring to me as a 'good girl', that I 'should have known better', that 'good girls don't walk home alone at night',' she said.

Patrick Mark Perkins (pictured) allegedly told a woman she 'should have known better' than to be walking home alone on the night he raped her in 2012

'Now I can't make any decision without wondering what a good girl would do...I hear his voice in my head, I don't want to make any decisions because I don't want to hear his voice.

'But I don't want to make a bad decision again and be punished so brutally...I don't want to be a bad girl.'

The woman said she'd lost her soul along with her innocence as a result of being raped, and now welcomed the prospect of death.

Her victim impact statement stated: 'I go from nothing to feeling extreme emotion at once...if I had a soul, I would care and I would love,' she said.

Grim details of the night of the attack along with the devastating toll it has taken on the woman's life were revealed in her victim impact statement

'I've stopped wanting to share with people out of fear I will break them...I just avoid life, I feel like I'm the walking dead and I act like it.

'I'm indifferent to death, it doesn't scare me, I have seen it before...I felt so close to death that it will be like a reunion for me.'

A second victim appeared in court Monday, but chose not to give a statement.

Perkins' QC Mark Griffin offered his client's apology to both women and asked the court to consider the man's guilty plea and lack of prior criminal history.

Mark Norman SC, prosecuting, said a long jail term was an 'inevitable' punishment for the 'extremely disturbing' crimes that 'ruined' two lives.

Judge Julie McIntyre remanded Perkins in custody for sentencing in two weeks.
Uber has accused 13CABS of lying in its campaign against the ride sharing service.

An Uber receipt was posted to the 13CABS Facebook page on Friday, allegedly showing how a user had been charged $350 for a ride between Tullamarine Airport and the Melbourne CBD during the storm which lashed Victoria  a trip that usually costs about $75.

'We want to gift them a $400 13CABS voucher to make up for being surged nearly four times this morning for a trip from the CBD to the airport by a certain 'ride share' company,' the post read.

An Uber receipt was posted to the 13CABS Facebook page on Friday, allegedly showing how a user had been charged $350 for a ride between Tullamarine Airport and the Melbourne CBD

The post was criticised by Facebook users once it was posted, with some claiming the receipt was edited.

In response to those claims, 13CABS posted they believed it was authentic 'to the best of our knowledge'.

'To be 100 per cent honest our small team felt your exact same disbelief that this must be fake, but we've verified the sources and this is in fact correct.

An Uber spokesman told Daily Mail Australia they had investigated the receipt and believe that it was actually from a couple of weeks before Friday's storm.

The spokesman said the receipt is also for a trip using Uber's 'XL' service which offers rides for larger groups.

In response to the claims, 13CABS posted they believed it was authentic 'to the best of our knowledge'

An Uber spokesman told Daily Mail Australia they had investigated the receipt and believe that it was actually from a couple of weeks before Friday's storm

Daily Mail Australia has contacted 13CABS for comment.

A 13CABS spokesperson told Mumbrella the receipt was a genuine document from a ride on Friday.

'The receipt shows what the driver earned, and demonstrated the price surge was 3.9 times the basic fare. We have no reason to believe the receipt is anything but authentic.'
Darnell R. Scott, 37, reportedly stabbed his unnamed relative, 50, as many as 25 times before he partially disemboweled his body

A man was left in critical condition after his brother-in-law brutally assaulted him on a bus ride.

The attacker, Darnell R. Scott, 37, stabbed his unnamed relative, 50, as many as 25 times before he partially disemboweled the man's body during a traffic stop Thursday near the 300 block of West 63rd Street in Chicago, Illinois, police say.

The horrific incident ignited after the 'unfriendly' relatives randomly bumped into one another on the bus.

According to the Chicago Tribune, it seems Scott walked past his brother-in-law on the bus without acknowledging him, when the elder relative approached him about the awkward encounter.

'The men do not share a friendly relationship and hadn't spoken for some time,' Assistant State's Attorney Craig Taczy said in court, as Scott was charged with aggravated battery and great bodily harm.

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The bloody incident took place during a traffic stop near the 300 block of West 63rd Street Thursday

'The men do not share a friendly relationship and hadn't spoken for some time,' Assistant State's Attorney Craig Taczy said of the fight

Witnesses inside the bus filmed the fight on their cell phones. The fight happened near the scene shown above in Chicago, Illinois

During the confrontation, the elder was punched, hit and stabbed multiple times after he asked Scott whether he sent a gang of people to 'jump him' a time prior, the newspaper reported.

Footage of the bloody fight was captured on cell phone video by riders who witnessed the brawl go down.

When the individuals took the tussle to the floor, Scott took out his pocket knife and began stabbing - which he admitted to police during questioning.

It seems Scott walked past his brother-in-law on the bus without acknowledging him

That's when the elder relative approached him about the awkward encounter and Scott initiated the physical violence

The victim was transported to the Stroger Hospital in critical condition, while Scott was also hospitalized with injuries.

He is seen in his mugshot bloodied with what appears to be bruised eyes.

Details on the reasoning behind the brother-in-laws' rocky relationship is not known at this time.

Scott has been jailed. He was denied bail by prosecutors.
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Hundreds of aircrafts including two dozen stealth jets began training Monday as the United States and South Korea launched their biggest-ever combined air force exercise.

The war games come a week after North Korea test-fired its most powerful missile ever, an ICBM that may be able to target the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The five-day drill, which is called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies' wartime capabilities, South Korea's defense ministry said.

The U.S. Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets that include six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets for the annual training exercise in the Korean Peninsula. About 12,000 U.S. military personnel are participating.

A U.S. Air Force U-2s spy plane prepares to land at the Osan U.S. Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea on Monday

Hundreds of aircrafts including two dozen stealth jets began training Monday as the United States and South Korea launched their biggest-ever combined air force exercise

The United States and South Korea have launched their biggest-ever combined air force exercise. Pictured is a US Air Force f-22 Raptor stealth jet on December 4

Some local media report that B-1B bombers will also join aerial drills, but officials could not confirm the reports.

North Korea's state media said the joint drill pushes the Korean Peninsula 'to the brink of nuclear war' and is proof that the U.S. is 'begging' for a nuclear conflict.

'Should the Korean peninsula and the world be embroiled in the crucible of nuclear war because of the reckless nuclear war mania of the U.S., the U.S. will have to accept full responsibility for it,' North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency said Saturday, citing a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Such language is typical in North Korean propaganda because the country sees U.S.-South Korean drills, which are held regularly, as preparation for invasion.

Still, always bad tensions are at a particularly dangerous point as North Korea edges toward its goal of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, and President Donald Trump uses aggressive rhetoric toward the North, threatening, for instance, 'fire and fury' toward the country.

US Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons and F-35A Lightning (R) IIs assigned to the 34th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron Hill Air Force Base, Utah, taxi toward the end of the runway during the biannual Air Component Exercise (Vigilant ACE) at Gunsan Air Base, South Korea

A handout photo made available by the US 7th Air Force, Korea shows US Air Force F-35A Lightning II's from the 34th Fighter Squadron, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, taxi down the runway during Vigilant ACE at Gunsan Air Base,

A U.S. Air Force EA-18G Growler fighter jet prepares to land at the Osan U.S. Air Base in Pyeongtaek

The five-day drill is called Vigilant Ace and about 12,000 US military personnel are participating. Pictured is a South Korean f-15K fighter jet on December 4

A US Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth jet flies over a South Korean air base in Gwangju on day one of the exercise

The show of force, North Korea has said, pushes the Korean peninsula 'to the brink of nuclear war'. Pictured is a US stealth fighter jet f-22 Raptor on December 4

Pyongyang will 'seriously consider' countermeasures against the drill, and the U.S. and South Korea will 'pay dearly for their provocations,' the Korean Central News Agency said on Sunday before the start of the exercises.

While many South Koreans typically ignore North Korea's rhetoric, some senior American officials have expressed worry following the ICBM test, North Korea's third.

On Sunday, Lindsey Graham, a U.S. senator from the state of South Carolina, said he believes that it's time for U.S. military families in South Korea to leave the country because conflict with North Korea is getting close.

The U.S. government has not announced a formal decision to evacuate U.S. citizens from South Korea, and there were no such signs in the diplomatic community in Seoul.

Other side: North Koreans attend one of the civilian-army joint meetings, which were held across South Phyongan, Hwanghae and Hamgyong provinces, to celebrate North Korea's nuclear progress

The meetings were held across the country, reportedly towards the end of last week, following the nuclear test

Seen are North Korean Army personnel applauding during one of the meetings where the test launch was celebrated

The news comes a week after North Korean media broadcast video of the most powerful missile North Korea has ever launched (pictured)

An evacuation of dependents by Seoul's closest ally and major military defender could prompt a panicked reaction by other countries, and among South Koreans.

In addition to American diplomats and other embassy workers, about 28,500 U.S. troops operate in South Korea, and many come to their posts with their families, who often live on huge, well-guarded military bases.

Also on Sunday, the White House national security adviser said that Trump will take care of North Korean threats by 'doing more ourselves.'

'The priorities that the president's given us to move as quickly as we can to resolve this crisis with North Korea,' General H.R. McMaster told Fox News in an interview.

'If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it, because he has said he's not going to allow this murderous, rogue regime to threaten the United States.'
MSNBC host Joy Reid issued an apology on Sunday for blog posts that she wrote a decade ago that resurfaced when a user claimed the pieces were 'anti-gay.'

After a user tweeted a series of posts citing 'homophobic' work authored by the MSNBC host about former Florida governor Charlie Crist from 2007 to 2009, Reid shared her apology.

'This note is my apology to all who are disappointed by the content of blogs I wrote a decade ago, for which my choice of words and tone have legitimately been criticized,' Reid said in a Facebook statement shared with NBC News.

After a user Tweeted a series of posts citing 'homophobic' work that the MSNBC host Joy Reid (right) wrote about former Florida governor Charlie Crist (left) from 2007 to 2009, Reid shared an apology on social media

'This note is my apology to all who are disappointed by the content of blogs I wrote a decade ago, for which my choice of words and tone have legitimately been criticized,' Reid said in a Facebook statement shared with NBC News

On Thursday a Twitter user shared the blog post and offered a scathing critique on the dated pieces that were about Republican Charlie Crist.

'From 2007 to 2009 @joyannreid authored a dozen homophobic posts not only attempting to out Charlie Crist as gay, she attacked & mocked him for being so,' @Jamie_Maz said in the first of nine post.

'She repeatedly referred to him as 'Miss Charlie' and tagged posts about him under 'gay politicians.''

On Thursday a Twitter user shared the blog post and offered a scathing critique on the dated pieces that were about Republican Charlie Crist

'From 2007 to 2009 @joyannreid authored a dozen homophobic posts not only attempting to out Charlie Crist as gay, she attacked & mocked him for being so,' @Jamie_Maz said in the first of nine posts

The user underlines portions they think are problematic, citing here a joke regarding John McCain and claims about male waiters on Crist's honeymoon

Reid would continue her apology by mentioning that she prided herself on the 'facility with language' and admitting that was not always the case, especially highlighting the time she worked in Florida covering politics up until 2011.

She added: 'Among the frequent subjects of my posts was then-governor Charlie Crist, at the time a conservative Republican, whose positions on issues like gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples in Florida shared headlines with widely rumored reports that he was hiding his sexual orientation.'

And the host pointed out that while folks within the LGBTQ community, conservative blogs and even South Park made reference to Crist, it was now her words that were being observed and gave her new light to reflect on.

They even point to a comparison Reid made of Crist and Will from Will and Grace

Reid often referred to the congressman as 'Miss Charlie'

Reid was criticized on her perceived notion on what it means to be a closeted gay man and marry a straight woman

'Let me be clear: at no time have I intentionally sought to demean or harm the LGBT community, which includes people whom I deeply love,' she said.

'My goal, in my ham-handed way, was to call out potential hypocrisy.'

Reid continued by saying that she regretted the way she addressed the issue and felt the 'mocking tone and sarcasm' used were 'insensitive, tone deaf and dumb.'

She added: 'There is no excusing it - not based on the taste-skewing mores of talk radio or the then-blogosphere, and not based on my intentions.'

In relation to Crist, Reid allegedly asserted that the move by the congressman to marry his wife was a 'veep marketing strategy' to possibly run for Vice President

The user highlighted each section that they believed showed insinuations by Reid that Crist was covering up being gay

'More garbage from Joy,' the user said in a post and then shared a link of the entire blog post

The mother-of-three apologized to coworkers, viewers and Congressman Crist 'who was the target of my thoughtfulness.'

'In the years since I went from blogger to opinion journalist, I have also learned, through brilliant friends and allies in the LGBT activist community, how to better frame my critiques of those who challenge people's right to love who they want, marry them, and walk in the world as fully free people,' Reid said

'In the years since I went from blogger to opinion journalist, I have also learned, through brilliant friends and allies in the LGBT activist community, how to better frame my critiques of those who challenge people's right to love who they want, marry them, and walk in the world as fully free people,' Reid said.

'Re-reading those old blog posts, I am disappointed in myself. I apologize to those who also are disappointed in me. Life can be humbling. It often is. But I hope that you know where my heart is, and that I will always strive to use my words for good. I know better and I will do better.'

Christopher Crist was Florida's governor from 2007 to 2011. He was infamously known for having supported a state constitutional amendment ban on same-sex marriage in 2008.

But in a 2013 interview with Watermark Online, an online LGBT publication in Orlando, he said: "Im sorry I did that. It was a mistake. I was wrong. Please forgive me."

When asked why he did it, the former governor claimed that he was trying to be a 'good Republican' until it became harder for him to 'toe the Republican party line' since his views on social issues differed from the norm.

Christopher Crist was Florida's governor from 2007 to 2011. He was infamously known for having supported a state constitutional amendment ban on same-sex marriage in 2008 that he later apologized for in 2013

And when Reid shared the tweet of her apology, with no mention of the former governor, Crist responded and accepted her apology

'Long forgotten, but thank you, Joy. I appreciate you,' he said on Sunday night

Reid added: 'Thank you congressman. Truly. And here's wishing you a wonderful holiday season'

And when Reid shared the tweet of her apology, Crist responded and accepted her apology.

'Long forgotten, but thank you, Joy. I appreciate you,' he said on Sunday night.

Reid added: 'Thank you congressman. Truly. And here's wishing you a wonderful holiday season.'

And people on Twitter seemed pleased that the two were able to have such a discourse that is quite uncommon in today's political climate.

'I just want to say thanks to both of you for acting like adults; it's too rare in the Trump era,' said blogger Charles Johnson.

'I just want to say thanks to both of you for acting like adults; it's too rare in the Trump era,' said blogger Charles Johnson

It was a sentiment shared by another user who added: 'Love you both. Forgiveness. Redemption. Progress. How we move forward together'

It was a sentiment shared by another user who added: 'Love you both. Forgiveness. Redemption. Progress. How we move forward together.'

'Another example of why @JoyAnnReid should be protected at all costs. And kudos to the Congressman for humbly accepting,' said another user.

'As a gay man, apology accepted. Mistakes happen, times were different & it takes a big person to apologize,' said user Jarrod Haggenman.

'Another example of why @JoyAnnReid should be protected at all costs. And kudos to the Congressman for humbly accepting,' said another user
The younger sister of Salim Mehajer is dating a senior member of the Nomads bikie gang who is a decade older than her and was previously convicted of manslaughter.

Sanaa Mehajer is understood to have been in a relationship with Mouhamed 'Moudi' Tajjour, the ex-vice president of the notorious motorcycle club, since late November.

The 23-year-old has been regularly pictured alongside the Nomads enforcer online in recent weeks, with the pair boasting of finding love on both their Instagram pages.

Tajjour and his brother Sleiman Simon Tajjour were convicted of the manslaughter of Robin Nassour in 2006. They are the cousins of Kings Cross identity John Ibrahim.

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Sanaa Mehajer (left), 23, the younger sister of Salim, is dating Mouhamed 'Moudi' Tajjour (right), 33, a senior member of the Nomads bikie gang

Tajjour, the ex-vice president of Nomads (left), is understood to have been dating Ms Mehajer (right) since late November

Just two days ago Ms Mehajer and Tajjour posted a photo together, with the enforcer openly declaring his love for his younger girlfriend.

'When you find that one person that makes you genuinely happy, hold onto them with both arms,' he captioned the image.

A day later the bikie seemingly introduced Ms Mehajer to his Nomads colleagues as they stood arm-in-arm in front of a row of motorcycles.

'My Queen learning the ropes. She steals half my clothes,' Tajjour captioned the shot.

It's believed the pair may have first met just weeks ago at the high-profile wedding of Ms Mehajer's older sister Aisha and Tajjour's cousin Sam.

Tajjour was photographed stepping out of a luxurious blue Audi at the front of the house belonging to John Ibrahim's mother.

The 23-year-old (pictured) has been regularly pictured alongside the Nomads enforcer online in recent weeks, with the pair boasting of finding love on both their Instagram pages

Tajjour (front) and his brother Sleiman Simon Tajjour (back) were both convicted of the manslaughter of Robin Nassour in 2006

'When you find that one person that makes you genuinely happy': Tajjour captioned an image of the pair on his Instagram in recent weeks

Ms Mehajer is believed to be the second youngest of Salim's six sisters. The property developer's other siblings are Kat, Aisha, Mary, Zena and Fatima.

Tajjour, a former vice-president of the motorcycle club, is now a life member having first joined in 1999.

He has been on the radar of the NSW Gangs Squad and earlier this year reportedly led a social media attack on top cop Deb Wallace, according to The Daily Telegraph.

It is claimed he took to social media and posted a photo of Ms Wallace, saying they could 'go on a date, but (she) needs to lose weight first'.

In response the commander of Strike Force Raptor sent a team of officers to Tajjour's house, admitting they 'targetted' him.

Tajjour (left) is the cousin of Kings Cross identity and nightclub owner John Ibrahim (right)

Moudi Tajjour (left) arrives at the wedding of Sanaa's sister Aisha and John Ibrahim's nephew Sam in mid-November

Sanaa (pictured with Tajjour) is believed to have studied beauty and formerly run a beauty salon

Like Salim's ex-wife Aysha, Sanaa is believed to be keen on beauty and have formerly run a beauty salon.

It is understood she has now returned to her studies and is currently a law student at University of Sydney.

Tajjour and his brother both pleaded not-guilty to the murder of Nassour, the brother of Fat Pizza actor George Nassour.

They spent four years in jail over the ambush attack, before being released in March 2010.

Little more than a year after being released their Merrylands home was targetted in a drive by shooting. Weeks later, so was the home of their cousin John Ibrahim.

Sleiman Tajjour is currently the national president of the Nomads.
Dozens of dead sharks have washed up on a North Queensland beach, with mystery surrounding how the animals died.

Concerned resident Lance Payne made the grisly discovery last month while scouring Louisa Creek Beach, south of Mackay.

The 54-year-old said he found an 'alarming number' of carcasses during his first visit, with at least eight more, including juveniles, unearthed on Sunday.

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Dozens of dead sharks have washed up on a North Queensland beach, with mystery surrounding how the animals died

Mr Payne first first came across the dead beasts in early November, while searching the beach for coal.

Taking to Facebook, he stated that there appeared to be only one species that had washed up on the shore.

'The sharks seamed in quite good health with no evident cause of death (and) the corpses had not been predated on by other fish,' he wrote.

Two weeks later he returned to the beach and found more carcasses, which included a 'mixed bag of species and even some poor hammer heads'.

Concerned resident Lance Payne made the grisly discovery last month while scouring Louisa Creek Beach, south of Mackay, finding another eight sharks killed when he returned Sunday

Mr Payne first first came across the dead animals in early November, while searching the beach for coal clumps

Two weeks later he returned to the beach and found more carcasses, which included a 'mixed bag of species and even some poor hammer heads'

'I was so disappointed to see it killed at such a young age,' Mr Payne told Yahoo 7.

His initial suspicious were that the sharks had been killed to be used in the Chinese delicacy shark fin soup.

However, other theories Mr Payne suggested included commercial fishing, as well as a lack of oxygen in the water due to a nearby coal mining facility.

Mr Payne told Daily Mail Australia he had reported the matter to the Pollution Hotline, with it referred on to the Mackay Regional Council for investigation.

Officers from the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection were sent to respond to reports of several small dead sharks washed up on Louisa Creek Beach near Mackay.

'The officers attended the scene Tuesday and did not find any evidence of a pollution event,' a spokesperson said.

'Due to the condition of the sharks an autopsy was unable to be carried out.'

His initial suspicious were that the sharks had been killed to be used in the Chinese delicacy shark fin soup
Rosalie Avila's parents took her off life support on Friday, three days after finding her hanged in her bedroom at their home in Yucapia, California

A 13-year-old girl committed suicide on Tuesday after being bullied about her looks for years.

Rosalie Avila's parents took her off life support on Friday, three days after finding her hanging in her bedroom at their home in Yucapia, California.

'My daughter had the whole world,' her father Freddie Avila told NBC 7 San Diego, choking back tears.

'Now, I just have to think about what she could have done or what she could have become, now it's just a memory.'

Rosalie was in the eighth grade at Mesa View Middle School - and her father described her as a loving and warm individual who wanted to be a lawyer one day so she could make the world a better place.

He said she got good grades and was a great artist and loved singing.

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Mr Avila said that although his daughter's smile could light up a room, he noticed something was off in the recent months. He said he found that she was carrying a journal around with her that had names in it of all of the people who used to bully her. He told ABC 7 that Rosalie would often cut her wrists. She is pictured far left with two other family members

Mr Avila said he found his daughter in the middle of the night when he woke up because he heard screaming.

'I had to find my daughter hanging in her room,' he told the outlet.

Rosalie left behind a letter apologizing, and wrote in it that she did it because she was 'ugly' and a 'loser'.

Her parents rushed her to Loma Linda Children's Hospital, where she was in critical condition for days before being declared brain dead and taken off of life support.

Mr Avila said that although his daughter's smile could light up a room, he noticed something was off in the recent months.

He said he found that she was carrying a journal around with her that had names in it of all of the people who used to bully her.

He told ABC 7 that Rosalie would often cut her wrists.

'I remember a couple nights she'd come home, telling me that the kids are calling her names about her teeth,' he said.

'I go, "You have braces, honey, don't worry. The braces are going to come off," and she said, "Yeah, but my teeth are straight and they're still making fun of me.'"

Mr Avila said that although his daughter's smile could light up a room, he noticed something was off in the recent months. He said he found that she was carrying a journal around with her that had names in it of all of the people who used to bully her

Mesa View Middle School (pictured) was aware Rosalie was being bullied, and she was in counseling. The school released a statement saying that crisis counselors and intervention teams will be available

The middle school was aware she was being bullied and she was in counseling, her aunt said.

'No one can fathom the heartbreak and confusion that we are certain many of our students and families are feeling right now,' the school said in a statement, according to NBC.

'Crisis counselors and intervention teams will be available and supporting our students throughout the district in the coming days.'

Rosalie's aunt Sarah Zebaneh said the family wants to get out the message about how much harm bullying can have.

'It's not right to bully other kids,' Zebaneh told NBC.

'It's not right to call them names, not right to make fun of what they are wearing. It's horrible. Please stop the bullying.'

Her family is now raising money for her funeral expenses with GoFundMe.

For confidential support call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255
Officer Miosotis Familia was killed by Alexander Bonds in July 2017. Her three children are due to receive a debt-free three-bedroom home later this month

The children of the New York Police Department officer who was slain by an emotionally disturbed man have spoken out five months after her tragic death.

They spoke at a press conference attended by the New York Daily News during which it was formally announced that the three children of Officer Miosotis Familia, a single mother, were going to receive a three-bedroom home through donations galvanized by the Daily News, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation and the Skyview Apartments LLC.

The donations totaled $818,000. The family will live in The Bronx. They will be able to move in before the Christmas holiday.

A trust fund for Familia's three children will pay for maintenance fees and property taxes.

Genesis Villella, 20, and twins Delilah and Peter Vega, both 12, lost their 48-year-old mother this past summer.

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Familia's children (left to right) Genesis Villella, 20, and twins Peter and Delilah Vega, will receive the home due to a donation effort galvanized by the New York Daily News, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation and the Skyview Apartments LLC. Donations totaled $818,000

The children are pictured speaking at Familia's funeral on July 11. Genesis said at the recent conference: 'I owe it to my mom to make sure that the three of us will be taken care of... in a loving and healthy environment'

Genesis said at the conference: 'I owe it to my mom to make sure that the three of us will be taken care of... in a loving and healthy environment.'

She added, per a report from ABC New York: 'She was the one who kept us afloat.

'She used to tell us that because she was a single parent, that we shouldn't feel less fortunate, or that we couldn't live the life that we wanted.'

Officer Familia was sitting in her marked vehicle this past July when 34-year-old Alexander Bonds shot at her through the passenger side window near the intersection of 183rd Street and Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

Alexander Bonds was shot dead by police after he killed Familia, the first female NYPD officer to die in the line of duty since the September 11 attacks

Officers caught up with Bonds about a block away and killed him in a hail of about 20 bullets when he pulled a stolen revolver, police said.

Only a few hours earlier, his girlfriend called 911 to report that she was worried about his unstable behavior, police said.

Familia had served in the force for 12 years. Previously, she had worked at New York University Hospital and the American Red Cross.

Friends said she became an officer to help her community, and her family was heartbroken.

Familia was the first female NYPD officer to die in the line of duty since the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Bruno Langley (pictured outside court) was given a 12-month community order for sexually molesting women in a club

A teenager claims shamed Coronation Street actor Bruno Langley attempted to pursue her on social media.

The actor was last week given a 12-month community order for sexually molesting women in a Manchester club while drunk.

Now the youngster has come forward claiming Langley approached her in a gym in 2015, when she was 15, before allegedly asking her on Twitter if she was 'single'.

The girl told The Sun: 'He asked my age. It creeped me out. I walked away but he kept following.'

She alleges he wrote on Twitter: 'You're absolutely beautiful. Are you single?'

Langley told The Sun: 'Over the years as an actor I have had hundreds of people that approach me and want to speak to me, and I also get many messages through social media.

'I have no recollection of an exchange that The Sun state happened over two years ago.

'I would not have conversed with a girl in the manner The Sun alleges, if I knew she was under the age of 16.

'I have never been contacted by any authority about an allegation of this nature.'

The actor molested four women at a Manchester music venue last month, but was only charged with sexually assaulting two of them.

Langley - who played gay character Todd Grimshaw in the soap - wept in the dock last week as he avoided jail after admitting both offences.

His lawyer told the hearing: 'Something happened that night, most possibly in relation to the character he was playing.'

The actor (pictured leaving Manchester Magistrates' Court), molested four women at a Manchester music venue, but was only charged with sexually assaulting two of them

It is understood his comments refer to the stress Langley felt being a straight man playing a gay character.

Langley was in the Band on the Wall club in the early hours of October 1 when he touched the two women.

Instead of a jail term, the 34-year-old was ordered to complete a 12-month community order and submit to a curfew.

He was also ordered to pay 250 to each of his two victims. He must also sign the sex offenders' register for the next five years.

Langley, who is split from the ex-girlfriend with whom he has a son, apologised to his victims after the case and revealed he was getting help for a drinking problem

Langley, who is split from the ex-girlfriend with whom he has a son, apologised to his victims after the case and revealed he was getting help for a drinking problem.

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Mr Langley for comment.

Greater Manchester Police declined to comment.
This is the horrifying moment a New York City driver struck six people, leaving one dead and the remaining five injured in a targeted attack.

A male suspect was taken into custody after he targeted the victims in Queens following a dispute over a parking spot.

He barreled through them with his car around 4.45am Sunday, video footage from the scene shows.

The incident occurred outside a hookah bar on 129th St. and Liberty Ave in South Ozone Park.

Ricardo Chatergoon, 23, was found unconscious following the violent incident and later died from his injuries at the hospital.

Police say the driver targeted the victims in Queens following a dispute over a parking spot

The incident occurred outside a hookah bar on 129th St. and Liberty Ave in South Ozone Park

Police say that they found Ricardo Chatergoon, 23, pictured, unconscious following the violent incident and he later died from his injuries

The injured people were taken to Jamaica Hospital where one is in a critical condition, according to police.

Police also said that two stabbing victims who arrived at the hospital were connected with the dispute.

The male suspect is seen in a white Hyundai Sonata and racing down a sidewalk after jumping the curb and heading towards pedestrians outside the bar at the time.

Seconds later, a silver Nissan SUV appears to be chasing after the first car down the same sidewalk.

Horror: A man who identified himself as the father of Ricardo Chatergoon who was killed stands at the crime scene

An eyewitness said that he drove by the fracas as it erupted and saw a woman trying to hold back one of the brawlers involved in the fight.

'The girl is yelling "Stop, stop. No, no," when this car just comes from nowhere and hits the whole group,' the eyewitness told The New York Daily News.

'The bodies went flying. The car was going really fast, at least 50 mph on the sidewalk.'

'At this point one individual, believed to be the occupant of the white Hyundai sedan is in custody. The vehicle has been recovered in another area of Queens,' Assistant Police Chief David Barrere said.

'Detectives are conducting crime scene examination, interviewing victims and witnesses, and searching for video evidence. Further information will be provided as it becomes available.'

'At this time it appears that this incident originated from a parking dispute which escalated resulting in the death and several serious injuries,' Barrere added.
A Milo Yiannopoulos superfan is getting his upper-lip tattooed with the right-wing firebrand's signature.

In a video posted to his Instagram, the self-described 'troll' and 'provocateur' can be seen scrawling his first name in big letters across the man's upper-lip.

Mr Yiannopoulos proudly posted the video to his 300 thousand Instagram followers on Sunday, day four of his Australian speaking circuit  The Troll Academy Tour.

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In a video posted to his Instagram, the self-described 'troll' and 'provocateur' can be seen scrawling his first name in big letters across the man's upper-lip

The ultra-conservative commentator touched down in Melbourne on Monday, where it's believed he met the superfan willing to offer his face for the inking.

Dressed in his signature gold-studded jacket, Mr Yiannopoulos could be heard telling the man to 'hold super still' as he approached with a permanent marker pen.

After Mr Yiannopoulos scribbled the letters MILO, his recipient could be heard gushing his thanks.

'Awesome, thank you so much, Milo,' he said.

The MILO signature appeared to be the most recent in a string of tattoos decorating the man's face, including the Eye of Horus, an ancient Egyptian symbol for protection, and a dream catcher on his forehead.

The superfan already sported an array of face tattoos including a parrot and the word 'loser' brandished across his forehead

Mr Yiannopoulos proudly posted the video to his 300 thousand Instagram followers on Sunday, day four of his Australian speaking circuit  The Troll Academy Tour

Dressed in his signature gold-studded jacket, Mr Yiannopoulos could be heard telling the man to 'hold super still' as he approached with a permanent marker pen

Mr Yiannopoulos's fans reacted with a mixture of support and criticism, with one man calling out the fan for his choice in tattoos.

'I'm going to take a wild guess and say he is neither Egyptian, African, nor Native American. Identity crisis much?' he said in response to the man's various cultural tattoos.

'Australians are embarrassing.'

Others blasted both the superfan and Mr Yiannopoulos, saying: 'How lovely, a redneck getting tatted by a hypocritical bigot'.

Just days into Mr Yiannopoulas' Australian tour, the details of his ultra-extravagant life-style and upbringing surfaced.

The MILO signature appeared to be the most recent in a string of tattoos decorating the man's face, including the Eye of Horus, an ancient Egyptian symbol for protection, and a dream catcher on his forehead

Right-wing firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos has been pictured wearing a thick fur coat in 34C heat as he heads out shopping in Perth

Mr Yiannopoulos insisted he was a self made man, despite growing up with a 'mafioso' father and living between houses all around the world.

He was born Milo Hanrahan and raised in Kent, England to Greek and Jewish parents.

His family had a chalet in the Austrian Alps and for his fifth birthday he got a pony. It was a lifestyle any child would be in envy of - but that's nothing compared to today.

Now known as Milo Yiannopoulos, the controversy king wears labels like Versace and Gucci, has houses around the world, stays in fancy hotels and only drinks expensive champagne. Put simply, he's living life like a rockstar.

And after flaunting the best of his expensive wardrobe during his visit to Sydney this week, Yiannopoulos told Daily Mail Australia he was offended by estimates he's worth just AUD$5.3 million.

Stepping out in a thick fur jacket on Sunday, Mr Yiannopoulas appeared not bothered he might offend animal rights activists

Taking to his Facebook on Sunday, Mr Yiannopoulas told his two and a half million followers he was 'keeping it low-key'

'Growing up we had a chalet in Australia, a couple of different house and my dad had a few Porsches,' Yiannopoulos recalled.

'I got a pony for my fifth birthday, I could never work out why we lived in nice houses. I didn't know what my dad did but essentially I was your typical Greek Mafioso child.

'But professionally speaking I'm pretty much self-made. My career in London took off pretty quick and I've always had a taste for nice things, so I knew I had to work hard.'

Starting as the tech writer for the Telegraph, he went on to create his own magazine The Kernel and spent time at Breitbart News, before his role as right-wing firebrand.

Mr Yiannopoulos pictured stepping out of Tiffany & Co in Perth this weekend

Mr Yiannopoulos is pictured with Gucci and Tiffany & Co shopping bags in Perth

Milo Yiannopoulos has revealed that an outfit (pictured) he wore in Australia this week is worth close to $150,000

The right-wing firebrand told of his lavish lifestyle to Daily Mail Australia, including his million dollar wardbrobe, designer jewellery collection and his husband's bespoke $300,000 Tesla

Yiannopoulos owns multiple houses in the United States, two in London and bought husband John a $330,000 gold plated Tesla (pictured) this year

While on the surface he seems to be permanently stirring the pot, behind the scenes he lives the high life.

Last year he married his partner John at the Four Seasons in Hawaii in an extravagant wedding ceremony that he for the first time revealed cost AUD$460,000.

There's multiple houses in the United States and two in London, AUD$330,000 cars and a wardrobe supermodels would be jealous of.

And most of it was on show this week during his trip to Australia, as Yiannopoulos hit out at Muslims and 'lefties' while wearing his designer clothes and bespoke jewellery.

Online estimates list Yiannopoulos' worth as being close to AUD$5.3 million, claims he says are 'insulting'

Starting as the tech writer for the Telegraph, he went on to create his own magazine The Kernel and spent time at Breitbart News, before moving on to becoming a right-wing firebrand

'I was wearing a Dolce and Gabbana jacket, the sunglasses are Louis Vuitton, custom made 50 karat gold jewellery from New York, jeans from Balmain and Tiffany earrings worth AUD$40,000,' he said.

'I guess at any time I'm probably wearing AUD$200,000 of stuff - if people came and cut off my hands they'd be able to buy a house.'

Online estimates list Yiannopoulos' worth as being close to AUD$5.3 million, claims he says are 'insulting'.

'I got a AUD$1.3 million signing bonus from Apple last year and my first purchase was a gold chrome Tesla for my husband which cost AUD$330,000,' he revealed.

'It's the only gold chrome model in the world. They didn't even have gold on the drop down box to choose from.

'I'm basically like a cross between a Russian oligarch's wife and a Chinese tourist, lots of gold and plenty of Louis Vuitton.

'I guess at any time I'm probably wearing AUD$200,000 of stuff - if people came and cut off my hands they'd be able to buy a house,' he told Daily Mail Australia

Yiannopoulos has multiple houses across the United States, as well as two homes in London

'A couple of generations back my family had nothing, as often happens with people who come into money, now we're showing off heavily.'

But while wasn't afraid to splurge on a vehicle for his now husband John, he claimed it has been close to a decade since he himself has got behind the wheel.

'I haven't driven for 10 years, there's normally an Escalade waiting out the front  I'm a bit like Hilary Clinton I guess,' Yiannopoulos said with a laugh.

Creating headlines since the moment he stepped out of business class and onto the tarmac, the full-time mischief maker said his tour of Australia had been a success.

Just minutes after chatting with Daily Mail Australia on Friday he was back in the air, jetting off to the first leg of his speaking tour in Adelaide.

'I'm basically like a cross between a Russian oligarch's wife and a Chinese tourist, lots of gold and plenty of Louis Vuitton,' he said

Yiannopoulos began working as a tech correspondent for the Telegraph, before later going to work at Breitbart news

The 33-year-old also revealed that growing up his family had a chalet in the Austrian Alps (like pictured) and that for his fifth birthday he was gifted a pony

So far he's sold out shows in Adelaide, Melbourne and two in Sydney, with a third to be added in the Harbour City next Wednesday, November 6.

Some 12,000 people are expected to watch him in action on his Australian tour, with Yiannopoulos saying he's been left nothing short of chuffed.

'Australia I always knew was going to be a key market for me, people want to see me live and want to read my stuff,'

'What it has proved to me is the lefties and feminists in Australia better get to used to me, because I'm going to be over here causing mayhem every year.'
North Korea's missile tests are an 'imminent threat' to Japan, the Japanese parliament declared on Monday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said talking to the reclusive state was meaningless.

The upper house unanimously adopted a resolution protesting against the North's firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile that dropped into the sea inside Japan's exclusive economic zone last week.

The launch showed Pyongyang was determined to continue its nuclear and missile programs and constituted 'an unprecedented, significant and imminent threat against the safety of the region, including Japan'.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said that talking with North Korea following their most recent missile test is 'meaningless'. Pictured above, Abe during the plenary session of the upper house of parliament in Tokyo on Monday

Japan's upper house of parliament unanimously adopted a resolution protesting against the North's firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile that dropped into the sea inside Japan's exclusive economic zone last week

'This is a frontal challenge against the international community that must not be tolerated,' added the resolution.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula are high after last Wednesday's missile launch.

On Monday the United States and South Korea began their largest-ever joint air exercise, described by Pyongyang as an 'all-out provocation'.

China and Russia had proposed that the United States and South Korea stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programs. Beijing formally calls the idea the "dual suspension" proposal.

The annual US-South Korean drill, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday, with six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part.

Abe vowed to put pressure on North Korea until it changes its ways and gives up its missile and nuclear technology in a 'verifiable' and 'irreversible' fashion.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula are high after last Wednesday's missile launch. On Monday the United States and South Korea began their largest-ever joint air exercise, described by Pyongyang as an 'all-out provocation'

Global anxiety about North Korea has steadily risen this year, and Washington last week called on other UN members to cut ties with it in order to squeeze the secretive regime. Pictured above, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watching the launch of a ICMB on Wednesday

'In order to press North Korea into changing its policies, we shall take a resolute attitude in our diplomacy,' he told the upper house.

'Dialogue for the sake of dialogue is meaningless,' Abe said.

Global anxiety about North Korea has steadily risen this year, and Washington last week called on other UN members to cut ties with it in order to squeeze the secretive regime.

The call, however, has fallen short of persuading key North Korean backers - China and Russia - to take steps to isolate the regime.

The North's KCNA state news agency, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, said on Saturday the Trump administration was "begging for nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula".

North Korea regularly uses its state media to threaten the United States and its allies.

North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

It has said its weapons programs are a necessary defence against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention.
North Korea's latest missile test was witnessed by crew on a passenger plane travelling from San Francisco to Hong Kong.

Staff on the Cathay Pacific flight witnessed the suspected re-entry of last week's missile test while flying over Japan, the BBC reports.

The airline has since warned staff travelling across the North Pacific to keep an eye out when flying in the area.

Spotter: Crew on a Cathay Pacific flight flying over Japan en-route to Hong Kong from San Francisco witnessed the North Korean missile re-enter earth's atmosphere

The November 29 nuclear rocket test proved to have been North Korea's most powerful so far, an ICBM that may be able to target the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The missile did not travel far in terms of distance and landed off the coast of Japan, but officials said it reached an altitude of more than 1, 740miles.

It was reportedly spotted by crew on the Cathay Pacific flight as well as two Korean Air planes flying a similar route.

Pilots on two separate Korean Air flights heading to Seoul reported seeing a flash of light crossing the Sea of Japan.

Cathay Pacific's general manager of operations Mark Hoey later told staff 'today the crew of CX893 reported, "Be advised, we witnessed the DPRK missile blow up and fall apart near our current location",' the BBC reports.

New test: A view of the newly developed intercontinental ballistic rocket Hwasong-15's test seen in this photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency

It comes as the U.S. and South Korea launches their biggest-ever combined air force exercise, a five-day drill is meant to improve the allies wartime capabilities, South Koreas defence ministry said.

The US Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets that include six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets for the annual training exercise in the Korean Peninsula and about 12,000 US military personnel are participating.

North Koreas state media said the joint drill, named Vigilant Ace, pushes the Korean Peninsula 'to the brink of nuclear war'.
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Britain is braced for an 'arctic plunge' this week as forecasters predict high winds and snow showers for much of the country, with temperatures dropping as low as -8C (18F).

While many people enjoyed a relatively mild weekend, with highs of 12.4C (54F) in South Wales yesterday, the weather will become far more wintry by Wednesday.

The Met Office predicts the balmy weather will be replaced by rain and winds of up to 70mph - then temperatures will really plunge and much of the country will see snow on Friday.

The sun begins to rise this morning over Tynemouth Longsands in South Shields, Tyne and Wear

A steam engine powers along the North York Moors Railway where snow covers the ground near Goathland yesterday

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Today, there will still be the odd spot of light rain or drizzle affecting western regions, but elsewhere it will be largely dry - despite being cloudy with some clearer spells for a time, more so in the South and East.

Met Office meteorologist Charles Powell warned temperatures could drop even lower than the -6C (42.8F) recorded last week, as northerly gales blast the UK.

He said: 'It's quite quiet as we start the week, but on Tuesday we will see a small change that will paint a picture, as slightly wet and windy weather develops across north west Scotland.

'On Wednesday there will be gales across the UK with a band of rain working its way across the west.

'By Thursday morning the rain starts to clear and opens the door for some really cold weather, especially across the northern half of the UK. Temperatures will struggle to get much above 5C or 6C (41F to 43F).'

By Friday, the cold is expected to be felt across most of Britain, with hail, sleet and snow all forecast. The showers will spread across most parts of the country, with snow possible in many places even at sea level.

The coldest temperature last week was -6C (42.8F) in Pershore, Worcestershire, on Thursday. The coldest night of autumn, which ended last week, was Saturday, November 25 when Topcliffe in North Yorkshire fell to -6.3C (20.6F).

The coldest night of 2017 so far was January 30 when Braemar, Aberdeenshire, fell as low as -10.1C (13.8F).
Jodie Broad, 30, (pictured) claimed she was a single parent when in fact she was living with her husband in Hyde, Greater Manchester

A charity worker who scrounged over 30,000 in benefits while helping the homeless wept as she walked free from court.

Mother-of-three Jodie Broad, 30, claimed she was a single parent when in fact she was happily married and living with her husband Barry.

Over a three-year period the nursery helper pocketed child tax credits, income support and housing benefit - despite having a joint income with Mr Broad, also 30.

The claim had initially been legitimate as the couple had temporarily split up, but she carried on claiming to be single after the pair got back together in 2012.

Broad, who volunteered with the homelessness charity Shelter, claimed 32,425 in benefits from July 2012 to November 2015 before she was found out.

She later claimed she had financial problems and had 'buried her head in the sand', Minshull Street Crown Court heard.

But inquiries revealed she made fresh claims for benefits when they moved house and she maintained she was single when questioned by welfare officials.

Broad, of Hyde in Greater Manchester, pleaded guilty to three charges of fraud and brought an overnight bag with her in preparation for going to jail.

But Judge John Potter told her: 'The money you pocketed is money you stole from your community, it was money that could have been used in the community.

'But it is clear from the references that you do a lot with the community and not only do you do it you do it in an exemplary fashion.

'You will know the harm taking the money can have on the community, 30,000 could have been used to support people in the community.

Over a three-year period, the nursery helper pocketed child tax credits, income support and housing benefit - despite having a joint income with Mr Broad (pictured together)

'You had financial difficulties and I accept that affected your life. This is an unusual case because you are somebody who committed this fraud for a significant period of time while doing a lot of good work in the community.

'I must juggle those points with a lack of previous convictions, and I am satisfied that I do not have to impose an immediate sentence of imprisonment.'

Earlier Prosecuting Amanda Johnson said: 'The nature of the dishonesty is that she failed to disclose that she in fact was married to Barry Broad and living with him and their children.

'The defendant was interviewed in December 2015 and confirmed that she did not disclose her change in circumstances.

Broad later claimed she had financial problem and had 'buried her head in the sand', Minshull Street Crown Court heard

'She said she had some time separated from her husband and agreed the they had moved back in to the family home together in October 2012.

'They lived together as a family and they shared a joint income. Over the years she was sent a number of claim forms by Tameside Borough Council which gave the defendant the opportunity to explain her change of circumstances but she did not.

'In fact she moved a number of times during the relevant period and fresh claims were made to say that she had no other source of income. She is a defendant of previous good character.'

She was given 12 months jail suspended for two years and was ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid work. She will face a Proceeds of Crime hearing later.
Donald Trump's defence secretary landed in Pakistan today as the US attempts to pressure its ally crack down on terrorist safe havens - just days after Pakistani authorities released one of the alleged masterminds behind the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis arrived at an air force base in the city of Rawalpindi, which borders the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, before heading to the US embassy.

Mattis is set to hold talks with prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and the powerful military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa during his brief stop over.

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Mattis says he's ready to listen during his trip to Pakistan

It is the 67-year-old's first visit to the country as defence secretary and comes amid fraying tensions between the US and Pakistan. America has urged its longtime ally to do more in the battle to stop insurgents allegedly using bases in Pakistan's tribal belt to target NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Relations suffered a further blow when a Pakistani court released the firebrand cleric Hafiz Saeed, who is alleged to have been one of the masterminds of the Mumbai attack which killed 164 people and six US citizens.

The internationally recognised terrorist helped co-found the Jamaat-ud-Dawa group and has a $10 million bounty on his head - yet he was released from his house arrest after a court said there was no evidence of Saeed's role in the deadly Indian massacre.

It comes at the same time that the military has been accused of helping to broker a deal which is said to pander to a small group of Islamist hardliners - which proves that little is being done to stop extremists, critics claim.

Trump launched a scathing attack on Pakistan earlier this year, claiming that the government was harbouring 'agents of chaos' during a speech in August.

This forced a number of high profile diplomatic meetings between the two nations, yet it appears that Washington has been left frustrated by the progress of the talks.

US General John Nicholson said Islamabad had not carried out the 'clear' demands made by Washington, but Mattis said he would be willing to do 'some listening' when meeting with his counterparts.

When quizzed on if he would 'prod' Islamabad to take more action, he said: 'That's not the way I deal with issues. I believe that we work hard on finding the common ground, and then we work together, so that's the approach I want to take.'

Kuwaiti Army Chief of Staff General Lieutenant Mohammad al-Khodhr (C-R) receiving US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis
Scotland Yard chief Cressida Dick today joined condemnation of police hounding of Damian Green.

The Met commissioner said former officers were 'wrong' to be using confidential material from a controversial 2008 raid on the deputy PM's office to try and oust him.

She also confirmed that her force was looking into whether any of the actions could have broken the law.

The damning assessment from the country's most senior police officer came with the verdict of a sleaze inquiry into Mr Green expected within days.

Damian Green (pictured leaving his London home today) flatly denies viewing any pornography on his office computer

Met commissioner Cressida Dick said former officers were 'wrong' to be using confidential material from a controversial 2008 raid on the deputy PM's office to try and oust him

The Tory MP is being probed over allegations pornography was found on his Commons computer in 2008, as well as claims he made a clumsy pass at a Conservative activist while offering her a job.

The raid was highly controversial at the time, as Mr Green - then shadow immigration minister - had been embarrassing the police with a series of leaks.

But the allegations about what was found on his computer were only levelled by former officers after the standards investigation was launched. Mr Green has flatly denied viewing pornography at work, while allies said he was 'gobsmacked' that police were being allowed to make 'outlandish smears' against him.

In a round of interviews this morning, Ms Dick - who was the Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner in 2008 - charge of protection and security in Londosaid she 'condemned' the use of confidential information to put pressure on Mr Green.

GREEN WOULD BE 'TOILETS MINISTER' AND WOULDN'T BE MISSED, EX TORY MP CLAIMS Damian Green would have been 'toilets minister' under Margaret Thatcher and would not be missed if he resigns today, an ex-Tory minister said today. David Mellor said Mr Green - Theresa May's effective deputy - would not be missed if he bows to pressure and quits. Mr Green is the subject of sleaze and porn allegations and is at the centre of a Cabinet Office inquiry that has now been running for a month. The First Secretary of State has denied all wrongdoing and refused to stand aside while he is investigated. But Mr Mellor told GMB today: 'Damian Green should have said, ''I will resign to clear my name'' and he would have had lots of sympathy. 'Damian Green is the sort of guy who under Mrs Thatcher would have been the minister of state for latrines and would have lived in total obscurity. 'Instead of which he becomes Deputy Prime Minister, he rises without trace. 'He would not be missed for a millisecond if he left government. It would be better if he did.' Advertisement

'Police officers have a duty of confidentiality. We come into contact with personal information very regularly, sometimes extremely sensitive,' she told LBC Radio.

'It endures after you leave the service, so I believe that what this officer and, indeed, other retired officers, appears to have done is wrong and my professional standards department will be reviewing what has happened in relation to how information has been handled and if any offences are disclosed, we will investigate them.'

Ms Dick told BBC London: 'It is my view that what they have done, based on my understanding of what they are saying, what they have done is wrong. And I condemn it.'

In a boost for Mr Green, he has also been backed by a Labour frontbencher.

International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner said former officers had acted 'disgracefully' and he did not believe the Cabinet Office investigation into Mr Green would be able to reach a conclusion on the issue of inappropriate material on computers from his office.

'I think the police officers who seem to have blown the gaff on this have behaved disgracefully,' Mr Gardiner told the BBC's Westminster Hour.

'They should not have broken what are clearly the police rules.' Gardiner added the Cabinet Office inquiry will be unlikely to reach a clear conclusion on the matter as Green was not a minister at the time, and so could not have broken the ministerial code.

'The key issue that arises is if he has misused parliamentary computers, like in any job of work, and if he has subsequently lied to the prime minister about whether he did or not.'

Meanwhile, John Bercow's deputy has warned that a security flaw in parliament could have allowed pornography to be placed on Mr Green's computer without his involvement.

Neil Lewis (pictured left), former Scotland Yard detective who examined Damian Green's work PC in 2008, said it contained thousands of pornographic images and says there is 'no doubt whatsoever' it was his. Former Met assistant commissioner Bob Quick (right) was in charge of the leak inquiry that triggered the raid

Mr Lewis' notebook shows how pornography had been found on the computer - he also says there was more on the work laptop

Eleanor Laing, deputy speaker of the Commons, has revealed that her office assistant found pornographic images had been put on her computer without her knowledge 'every day' when working in parliament before 2010.

The source of the images was never found. But allies of Mr Green believe lax cyber-security at the Commons a decade ago could explain police claims that they found 'thousands' of pornographic pictures on his computer during a botched raid on his office in 2008.

Experts suggested today that retired detective Neil Lewis, who claimed last week that he found pornography on Mr Green's computer, could face prosecution.

Mr Lewis, 48, is at the centre of an urgent Scotland Yard anti-corruption probe after accusing Mr Green of lying.

NINE-YEAR GRUDGE MATCH BETWEEN QUICK AND GREEN The Tories put out footage of the 2008 raid on Damian Green's office Damian Green and Bob Quick crossed swords in 2008 when the Met assistant commissioner took dramatic action in an inquiry into leaks from the force. Mr Quick decided to arrest then then shadow immigration minister. The Tory MP was held for nine hours while his Commons office, two homes and constituency office, were searched and computers removed by counter-terrorism officers. The episode sparked a huge inquest at the Commons into whether parliamentary privilege should have protected the material held by an MP. In the ensuing political storm, it emerged Mr Quick's wife was running a car hire firm from their home and details of their address were published on a website. The officer then accused the Tories of being 'wholly corrupt' in leaking the story to intimidate him and his investigation. But he was forced to apologise after then party leader David Cameron said the claim 'Tory machinery' was mobilised against his investigation was 'completely baseless'. Mr Green was later cleared of any wrongdoing. Mr Quick complained bitterly that the investigation cost him his career. He quit in April 2009 after being photographed arriving at Downing Street with documents detailing a counter-terror operation clearly visible. He later claimed he might have survived the gaffe if it had not been for the Green affair. Advertisement

The ex-police officer said he had 'no doubt' the MP was personally responsible for downloading them, which the First Secretary of State strongly denies, and cited his own notes from the time.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has repeatedly said police officers and staff must never abuse their access to highly sensitive personal information.

A legal expert told the Daily Mail said she would be very surprised if a criminal case cannot be brought against Mr Lewis, adding that he may have committed offences under data protection, computer misuse and even theft legislation.

And police watchdog Sir Tom Winsor, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, has accused Mr Lewis of actions which 'flagrantly violate' the trust ordinary people put in officers investigating sensitive crimes.

Sir Tom said the public must be reassured that when sensitive information comes into police hands its 'private nature will be respected in perpetuity'.

He said that if trust between police and public is damaged it may lead to 'great harm' to 'public safety and justice'.

Mr Lewis, who worked as a lead in digital crime after being a leading counter-terrorism officer, was working on Operation Miser in 2008.

This was an investigation into Home Office leaks that led to Mr Green's Commons office being searched by police and his computers being analysed.

The raid sparked an outcry that targeting Mr Green - shadow immigration minister at the time - was a flagrant breach of parliamentary privilege rules.

The leak inquiry was being led by Met assistant commissioner Bob Quick, who has also raised allegations about the pornography find.

The claims have dramatically widened the Cabinet Office inquiry, which was originally looking at accusations Mr Green made a clumsy pass at a Tory activist.
US comedy show Saturday Night Live gave 'Theresa May' a platform to carry on her war of words with Donald Trump this weekend.

The late night comedy show poked fun at the exchanges between the British Prime Minister and the US President, after Mrs May said that Trump was 'wrong' to have retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda from the far-right hate group Britain First.

Saturday Night Live capitalised on the awkward back-and-forth between the two world leaders, with cast member Kate McKinnon performing her best dead-pan 'Maybot' impression.

During a mock interview with fellow SNL star Colin Jost, 'Theresa May' said: 'I saw Trump's offensive retweets and I've put that man on blast.

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SNL cast member Kate McKinnon (left) did her best Theresa May impression with fellow SNL cast member Colin Jost (right)

'Listen to this epic take down: "It is wrong for the president to have done this".

'Savage. Flaming emoji. I am practically a troll now.'

Colin Jost replied: 'Right, but Donald Trump tweeted back at you and told you to back off?'

'May' retorts: 'Yes, but the b**** tagged the wrong Theresa May. It's internet 101, baby. Oh, its thrilling to engage in a flame war. To dunk on the thirsty b****. It's electric, I am hard, I am actually hard.'

She adds that she is 'not afraid of a little social media fisticuffs' and fired warning shots at Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin.

The SNL sketch comes after the US President retweeted three videos from Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen, which has sparked outrage on both sides of the Atlantic.

Piers Morgan, who is one of just 45 people who Trump follows, urged Trump to delete the retweets and apologise.

'Theresa May' also unleashed a brutal attack on Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin

Fransen's anti-Muslim posts were retweeted by Mr Trump although it has since emerged that the attacker in this video is neither a Muslim nor a migrant

The Good Morning Britain host tweeted: 'Good morning, Mr President @realDonaldTrump - what the hell are you doing retweeting a bunch of unverified videos by Britain First, a bunch of disgustingly racist far-right extremists?

'Please STOP this madness & undo your retweets.'

Fransen, 31, is currently facing prosecution for religiously aggravated harassment and a separate trial for using threatening and abusive language.

Donald Trump attacked Theresa May over Twitter after she condemned his retweets of far-right hate group Britain First
Donald Trump's personal lawyer has admitted that he wrote the controversial tweet that suggested the President knew Michael Flynn lied to the FBI.

The post, which appeared on the Commander-in-Chief's Twitter page on Saturday, claimed the former national security adviser was dismissed in February because he had deceived authorities over his conversations with the Russian Ambassador to the US.

It has led to speculation that the President could be prosecuted for obstruction of justice, as he reportedly told former FBI director James Comey to stop investigating Flynn after firing him.

Trump's personal lawyer, John Doyd, pictured, has admitted that he crafted a controversial tweet that appeared on the President's personal account on Saturday

This tweet by Donald Trump led to accusations that the president had obstructed justice after allegedly telling James Comey to back off Michael Flynn while also knowing that Flynn lied to the FBI. But now the White House says his personal lawyer made the tweet

But now Trump's attorney, John Dowd, has claimed that he was the one who crafted the tweet, which has been described as 'sloppy'.

Speaking to ABC News, the lawyer said the social media post was 'my mistake' and that he had not intended 'to break news' in writing it.

Mr Dowd's admission did not clarify if Trump actually knew about Flynn's deception when he dismissed him in February or whether the President knew the tweet had been published on Saturday.

It follows earlier reports that he was responsible for the post, which read: 'I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.

'He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!'

It was sent while Trump's motorcade was stuck in traffic as it left a Republican fundraising event in New York City.

It appeared to be an attempt by the President to defend Flynn and disprove suspicion that there was any collusion between his aides and the Kremlin.

The tweet was posted while Trump was stuck in traffic in a motorcade in New York City, leading to critics accusing him of committing a crime

Instead, it placed scrutiny back on him and fueled talk of a different offense entirely.

Democrats were quick to jump on it, saying that if - as claimed - Trump allegedly asked then-FBI head James Comey to 'go easy' on Flynn after his firing, he had obstructed justice.

The White House, which has said that Trump's tweets should be taken as official statements, has not yet commented on the matter.

Flynn was fired on February 13. At the time, the President said the decision was based on him misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his interaction with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak on December 22.

On Friday Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the conversation and is now said to be cooperating in special counsel Robert Muellers sweeping Russia probe.
A man accused of murdering a woman in her Melbourne home allegedly tried to coax his ex-girlfriend into providing a false alibi, court documents reveal.

Kylie Blackwood, 42, was found bleeding to death in August 2013 by her 11-year-old twin daughters following what may have been a violent murder-robbery.

Police claim Scott Alan Murdoch, 40, approached the mother of his two children for an alibi shortly after he was interviewed by homicide detectives, but he was knocked back.

'I need to ask you something but you can't go blabbering around with your big mouth,' he allegedly said.

His ex-partner then allegedly asked him if he murdered Ms Blackwell.

'No, but I need you to be an alibi for that day ... because I was doing armed burgs and I want you to say I had the kids that day and I met you at 4 o'clock to give the kids back.'

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Kylie Blackwood (pictured), 42, was found bleeding to death in August 2013 by her 11-year-old twin daughters following what may have been a violent murder-robbery

Police claim Scott Alan Murdoch (pictured), 40, approached the mother of his two children for an alibi shortly after he was interviewed by homicide detectives, but he was knocked back

Roof tiler Peter Pratt told Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday he was working in Ms Blackwood's street on the day of her death, and noticed a 'suss-looking' man.

He later provided police with a description of the man he said he saw 'casing' Ms Blackwood's home.

According to court documents, a neighbour said she heard Ms Blackwood screaming inside her home.

Police also claim that following the alleged murder, Murdoch attempted to use Ms Blackwood's bank card at a Pakenham ATM, entering an incorrect PIN three times.

It is alleged he then drove to another bank and deposited money using cash believed to be from Ms Blackwood's purse.

Mrs Blackwood's two young daughters found their mother unresponsive on a couch following the attack

Murdoch (right) was finally arrested on April 2016 after his DNA came up as a possible match to swabs taken from Ms Blackwood's jeans

Later that day, Ms Blackwood's two daughters walked home from school after she failed to collect them.

Walking into the house, the two girls found their mother lying unresponsive on a couch.

A few days later the police appealed for public assistance, with one of Murdoch's ex-girlfriends coming forward.

Police claim that after they interviewed Murdoch, he visited the mother of his children.

However, his suspicious former partner refused to mislead police.

Murdoch was finally arrested on April 2016 after his DNA came up as a possible match to swabs taken from Ms Blackwood's jeans.

However on Monday, forensic officer Erin Pirie told the court it was uncertain whether some DNA samples taken from items of Ms Blackwood's clothing belonged to Murdoch.

His pre-trial committal hearing is expected to continue until Thursday.
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Theresa May's attempt to strike a Brexit deal today was de-railed by a phone call with DUP leader Arlene Foster.

Irish Prime Minster Leo Varadkar last night said Britain had been poised to sign an agreement that was acceptable to him and other EU states at lunchtime today.

But as details of a major concession that critics say would leave Northern Ireland effectively still bound by EU rules leaked, Mrs Foster went on TV to denounce any settlement that split the province from the rest of Britain.

The Prime Minister then spoke to Mrs Foster by telephone during a break in marathon talks in Brussels. After the call, she was no longer able to sign up to language promising 'regulatory alignment' between the Republic and Northern Ireland.

After the breakdown, Mrs May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker appeared in front of the cameras to admit there would not be a deal today. They said talks would resume later in the week - potentially as soon as Wednesday.

Following his own meeting with Mrs May, EU Council President Donald Tusk then said a deal to allow the start of trade talks was still possible before a crucial summit on December 14 but that time was 'tight'.

Mr Varadkar said he had been ready to sign up to what was on the table but that he was told by Brussels Britain was backing off.

At a press conference in Dublin he said he was 'surprised and disappointed' Britain could not sign up to what 'was agreed earlier'. Mr Varadkar stopped short of directly blaming the DUP but said he could comment on UK party politics.

The EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker praised Theresa May as a 'tough negotiator' and both politicians signalled that there would be more talks later this week

The Prime Minister and Mr Juncker left immediately after making their statements, without taking any questions from the press pack

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar (pictured at a press conference in Dublin tonight) said he had been ready to sign up to what was on the table but that he was told by Brussels Britain was backing off

EU Council President Donald Tusk (pictured tonight with Theresa May) said a deal was still possible before the summit on December 14 but that time was 'tight'

Donald Tusk tonight said he had hoped to present his draft guidelines for trade talks tomorrow but that there was a further delay

The Prime Minister had to break off from lunch with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to field the call from Arlene Foster.

Before the lunch, EU diplomats and journalists had been told to expect a 15-page document outlining details of a deal that would clear the way for trade talks to begin this month.

A senior Tory said the DUP had gone ballistic over a proposed compromise which they feared would result in regulatory divergence from the rest of the UK and an effective border in the Irish Sea. The party even threatened to pull out of a deal to prop up the Government at Westminster. They are seething, the source said.

DUP MP Sammy Wilson described the proposals as a unionist nightmare which could lead to the break-up of the UK.

But the British proposals are understood to be more subtle. Mrs May is thought to be proposing an arrangement which would require the whole UK to retain regulatory alignment with the EU on a narrow range of issues that affect the Irish border. These include energy, agriculture and transport.

The UK would commit to the same regulatory outcomes in these areas as the EU, but would be free to achieve them by different routes. Crucially, the UK would be free to diverge from EU rules in all other areas.

The proposed compromise would allow Northern Ireland to retain the same rules as the Republic in critical areas without splitting from the rest of the UK.

But it will prove highly controversial with some Tory MPs.

TICK TOCK: HOW THE COLLAPSE UNFOLDED 10.27am: Jean-Claude Juncker meets with his chief negotiator Michel Barnier and EU Parliament representative Guy Verhofstadt. He says they are working for a 'fair deal'. 11.10am: David Davis says today's talks are the culmination of seven months work by both sides and that Britain hopes to get agreement on 'sufficient progress' on divorce issues at the meeting. 11.16am: Irish broadcaster RTE reports on a leak of the draft agreement suggesting the UK will agree there will be no 'regulatory divergence' between the Republic and Northern Ireland. 12.09pm: European Commission confirms the plan for the May-Juncker lunch is to get 'as close as possible' to a deal. 12.40pm: May arrives at the talks and poses for pictures with Juncker ahead of lunch. 12.44pm: EU Council President Donald Tusk tweets 'Tell me why I like Mondays' and says he was encouraged about the prospects for a deal following talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar. 12.45pm: DUP MP Sammy Wilson accuses the Irish government of leaking claims about regulatory divergence and claims the UK government will not sign up to them. 1.30pm: Nicola Sturgeon seizes on the leaks to demand Scotland gets access to the same terms as Northern Ireland. 2pm: Arlene Foster appears in front of cameras at Stormont to denounce any deal that 'separates Northern Ireland economically or politically' from the UK. 2.30pm: Varadkar postpones a statement in Dublin on Ireland's position in the talks. 3.12pm: Reports emerge Foster and May have spoken by telephone during a break in the May-Juncker lunch. 3.57pm: Juncker appears alongside May to confirm there would be no deal today but that he remains confident. 3.59pm: May insists she is 'confident we will conclude this positively' but announces talks will reconvene later in the week. 4.15pm: DUP MP Sammy Wilson appears on TV again to brand the deal a 'unionist nightmare'. 5.10pm: Tusk tweets a picture of himself and May, warning time is 'tight' but agreement is 'still possible'. 5.20pm: Varadkar finally makes his appearance in Dublin, confirming Britain was ready to sign up to an agreement. He said Ireland was ready to sign and was 'surprised and disappointed' Britain could no longer sign up. Advertisement

Earlier, Ms Foster told journalists at Stormont: 'We have been very clear that Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the UK, and we will not accept any form of regulatory divergence that separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the UK.'

East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson went further by warning that his party had 'leverage', adding that the proposals for regulatory alignment were a 'unionist nightmare'.

'If she gives in on special demands for Northern Ireland then she will be giving in on special demands for Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom,' he said.

Former Ulster Unionist leader Lord Trimble said: 'I think this is a very bad idea.'

Allies of the PM said that, unlike David Cameron, she had not accepted the first deal offered by Brussels. One said Dublin and Brussels had tried to bounce her into a deal by briefing broadcast media that it was all but done.

He added: We need to maintain the integrity of our red lines and  not be like a former prime minister who did take exactly what he was given first time round.

The talks foundered after sources in Dublin and Brussels leaked draft versions of a text they hoped to agree with Mrs May on the status of the Irish border.

The leaks suggested the PM was willing to sign a deal that would allow Northern Ireland no regulatory divergence from Dublin, effectively tying it to the EUs customs union. A later leak said the UK had agreed Northern Ireland would remain in regulatory alignment with the EU in some key areas.

Last night Conservative Eurosceptics warned Mrs May against further compromise over the Irish border and the role of the European Court of Justice in policing EU citizens rights after Brexit.

Tory ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith said: We have to be very careful. Northern Ireland cannot see any regulatory divergence from the UK. And we cannot get into a position where EU citizens have more rights than British citizens.

Jacob Rees-Mogg accused Dublin of spreading propaganda, adding: You cannot align the regulation of one part of the UK with the EU. And if we align the whole of the UK with the regulation of the EU, we havent left the EU.

Pro-Remain Tory Anna Soubry said it was untenable to have one part of the UK diverging from the rest  but said the solution was to keep the whole country in the single market.

Following a meeting of Tory MPs in Westminster tonight a senior Brexiteer said many Conservatives shared DUP concerns about any solution which left Northern Ireland working to different rules than mainland Britain.

The MP said it would 'completely intolerable' and accused the Irish government of leaking 'propaganda' to undermine the talks.

Standing alongside Mr Juncker in Brussels tonight, Mrs May said: 'We have been negotiating hard. And a lot of progress has been made. And on many of the issues there is a common understanding.

'It is clear, crucially, that we want to move forward together.

'But on a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation.

'And those will continue, but we will reconvene before the end of the week and I am also confident that we will conclude this positively.'

In an apparent attempt to bolster her position, Mr Juncker praised her as a 'tough negotiator' and both politicians signalled that there would be more talks later this week.

'I have to say that she's a tough negotiator, and not an easy one, and she's defending the point of view of Britain with all the energy we know she has, and this is the same on the side of the European Union,' he said.

'Despite our best efforts and significant progress we and our teams have made over the past days on the three main withdrawal issues, it was not possible to reach a complete agreement today.'

After their statements the leaders left without taking questions from journalists, as Mrs May headed to another meeting with EU council chief Donald Tusk.

After those talks, Mr Tusk said: 'Met with PM Theresa May. I was ready to present draft EU27 guidelines tomorrow for Brexit talks on transition and future.

'But UK and Commission asked for more time.

'It is now getting very tight but agreement at December EU Council is still possible.'

EU leaders will convene in Brussels on December 14 but realistically an agreed deal must be largely in place in advance.

The dangers of the concession on Northern Ireland had been laid bare by responses from Nicola Sturgeon and London Mayor Sadiq Kha, who seized on the news to argue that Scotland and London respectively should be given similar leeway to 'stay in the single market'.

Downing Street played down the claims and insisted the 'territorial and economic integrity of the UK will be protected'.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn slammed the failure to strike a deal today.

He said: 'The real reason for today's failure is the grubby deal the Government did with the DUP after the election.

'It is disappointing that there has not been progress in the Brexit negotiations after months of delays and grandstanding.'

DUP leader Arlene Foster said the party would 'not not accept any form of regulatory divergence that separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the UK'

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (right) and his deputy Sir Alan Duncan (left) emerged to receive a Christmas tree at the Foreign Office today amid the high stakes diplomacy

Sir Alan appeared in high spirits in the chilly London weather this afternoon while the Prime Minister was battling for a Brexit deal in Brussels

STURGEON DEMANDS SPECIAL DEAL FOR SCOTLAND Nicola Sturgeon claimed today that any deal that effectively keeps Northern Ireland in the single European market should also apply to Scotland. Leaked parts of a deal on the Brexit divorce have suggested arrangements which could effectively allow Northern Ireland to match rules in the single market to prevent the return of a 'hard border' on the island of Ireland. Ms Sturgeon said on Twitter: 'If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can't.' Both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain part of the EU in the referendum which was held in June 2016. The SNP leader stated: 'Right now, Ireland is powerfully demonstrating the importance of being independent when it comes to defending your vital national interests.' The question of how to maintain a soft Irish border had emerged as the key sticking point to getting agreement from the EU to move on to phase two in the Brexit negotiations. Advertisement

The British side was said to have signed up to enough 'continued regulatory alignment' between Northern Ireland and the Republic to 'support North South cooperation and the protection of the Good Friday agreement'.

That left considerably more wriggle room than the initial wording of 'no regulatory divergence'.

Mr Tusk hinted that the move would be enough to secure a deal, tweeting: 'Tell me why I like Mondays! Encouraged after my phone call with Taoiseach @campaignforleo on progress on issue of Ireland.

'Getting closer to sufficient progress at December.'

In his much delayed appearance in Dublin, Mr Varadkar said that he had confirmed Ireland's agreement to the text to both Mr Juncker and European Council president Donald Tusk.

'I am surprised and disappointed that the British Government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today,' he said.

'I accept that the Prime Minister has asked for more time, and I know that she faces many challenges and I acknowledge that she is negotiating in good faith.

'But my position and that of the Irish Government is unequivocal and is supported by all the parties in Dail Eirann and I believe the majority of people on these islands.

'Ireland wants to proceed to phase two - It's very much in our interests to do so. However we cannot agree to do this unless we have firm guarantees that there will not be a hard border in Ireland under any circumstances.'

Since the break-up of talks, Mr Juncker had confirmed that 'Ireland's position remains Europe's position', said Mr Varadkar.

He added: 'I still hope this matter can be concluded in the coming days, as was agreed.'

Earlier in the day, European council president Donald Tusk appeared to hint that a deal was now effectively in place

PM Theresa May arrived in Brussels today for talks with jean-Claude Juncker, who welcomed her warmly

Mrs May, pictured with Mr Juncker in Brussels today, is said to have signed up to enough 'continued regulatory alignment' between Northern Ireland and the Republic to 'support North South cooperation and the protection of the Good Friday agreement'

WHAT ARE THE EU RULES THAT APPLY IN IRELAND? Regulatory convergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit could cover a whole gamut of different rules. As members of the single market, Ireland accepts the free movement of goods, services, capital and people. Financial services companies have the ability to work freely across the continent without jumping through additional bureaucratic hoops. They also have standardised EU rules in areas such as safety, quality standards, and working hours. Ireland's membership of the EU customs union, meanwhile, means there are no tariffs on goods traded within the bloc. And the same tariffs are applied to goods from outside the union. As a result of being in the customs union, Ireland cannot negotiate its own free trade deals with other countries. Advertisement

Striking a jubilant tone, Irish deputy PM Simon Coveney told reporters earlier this afternoon: 'We have now a language that gives us the safeguards we need; that there is reassurance for people there is not going to be a re-emergence of a border.

'Irish concerns are going to be addressed fully.'

Scottish First Minister Ms Sturgeon tweeted: 'If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can't.'

Meanwhile, Mr Khan said: 'Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it's possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market & customs union after Brexit.

'Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs.'

Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones then joined in to insist: 'We cannot allow different parts of the UK to be more favourably treated than others.

'If one part of the UK is granted continued participation in the Single Market and Customs Union, then we fully expect to be made the same offer.'

Regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic would likely mean both sides following the same rules governing trade, to ensure that goods can continue to move freely across a 'soft' border with no checks.

But there are fears among some unionists in Northern Ireland that it could lead to the effective drawing of a new border in the Irish Sea between the province and the rest of the UK, if the Westminster Government decides it wants to diverge from EU rules.

Nicola Sturgeon seized on the news to argue that Scotland should be given similar leeway to 'stay in the single market'.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan leapt on the bandwagon to demand a special deal for London

Ex-Ukip leader NIgel Farage condemned the apparent concession, tweeting that it would damage the integrity of the UK

DEVOLVED POWERS COULD SOLVE IRISH IMPASSE One of the proposed solutions for the Irish border issue is for the Northern Ireland Executive to be handed sweeping new powers. Fresh devolution would hand authority to keep laws in the province close to the EU single market rules and different from the rest of the UK. The set up would allow Northern Ireland to leave the customs union with the rest of Britain but still operate different rules on cross-border trade to the mainland UK. But the details are still hotly disputed and would eventually rely on the restoration of devolution to Belfast - despite the institutions being on ice since January. Advertisement

The dramatic political moves today appear to have been carefully choreographed, and Tory and DUP sources stressed they have been in close contact throughout the process.

Although Ms Foster's words seemed designed to reassure supporters in Northern Ireland, she notably stopped short of condemning it outright.

She insisted Mrs May 'understands the position of this party', adding: 'The prime minister has told the House of Commons that there will be no border in the Irish Sea.

'And the Prime Minister has been clear that the UK is leaving the European Union as a whole, that the territorial and economic integrity of the United Kingdom will be protected.'

Ms Foster said the DUP wanted to see a 'sensible Brexit, a Brexit where the common travel area is continued'.

She added: 'The Republic of Ireland government for their part claim to be guarantors of the Belfast agreement but they are clearly seeking to unilaterally change that Belfast agreement without out input or our consent.

'And of course we will not stand for that.'

Sources in the party initially suggested that the text of the border proposal was being selectively leaked and misinterpreted.

But opinion appeared to slip against Mrs May at the last moment, as the shape became clearer

Michel Barnier (second from left) and Jean-Claude Juncker (second from right) held talks with a European parliament team led by Guy Verhofstadt (right) ahead of the meeting with Mrs May

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (pictured arriving at work in Dublin today ahead of a Cabinet meeting) has thrown fresh doubt on Brexit talks after objecting to Irish border proposals

Ex-Ukip leader NIgel Farage had condemned the concession, tweeting: 'This UK Government's bitter betrayal of 17.4 million people today is a concession too far, for it will lead to endless problems in Scotland and it damages the integrity of the United Kingdom.'

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF BORDER? Hard Border: This would include customs and security checks, border controls, posts and guards to monitor who and what is travelling over from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland, and vice versa. The UK, EU and the Republic of Ireland have all agreed there can be no return to the hard border of the past, fearing this could reignite the sectarian violence of The Troubles. Soft Border: A soft border would mean no security or border checks between the two territories - essentially maintaining the status quo. Under this plan goods and people will be free to cross from one side to the other without any checks or documentation. Third Way: It has been proposed that an 'invisible border' can be erected via a new high-tech system. Under this plan, number plate recognition technology and spot vehicle checks could be used to carry out customs checks. While it has been suggested that Northern Ireland and the Republic both create squads of flying border guards to police potential smuggling routes from the skies. Advertisement

The EU has insisted this week is the last opportunity to reach an agreement that means starting trade talks can be signed off at the bloc's summit in 10 days' time. The next gathering is not until well into next year.

But Downing Street sources have played down the idea that today represents a hard deadline.

Speaking on his way to join the talks today, Mr Davis said: 'We've put seven months of work, both sides, into getting to this point and we are hoping that Mr Juncker today will give us sufficient progress so that we can move on to the trade talks.

'The decision, of course, won't be taken until 15 December but that's what we are hoping for, because trade talks are of enormous importance to the United Kingdom and to Europe.'

Mrs May had hoped to secure agreement on moving on to trade talks after persuading her cabinet to back an improved divorce payment worth up to 40billion to the EU.

In return, she is demanding assurances that Brussels will agree a comprehensive trade deal.

But, despite round-the-clock talks this weekend, key differences remained as of this morning between the two sides, particularly over the Irish border.

Asked about the claims that the UK was committing to 'no regulatory divergence' on the Island of Ireland, the PM's spokesman said: 'The PM has been clear that the UK is leaving the EU as a whole, and the territorial and economic integrity of the UK will be protected.'

Ministers have been alarmed by the lack of a breakthrough. Some, including the Brexit Secretary David Davis, are warning privately that Mrs May will have to walk away if there is no agreement at next week's EU summit.

One source familiar with the talks said: 'If we don't make sufficient progress at this stage then the process is over.'

Ahead of his lunch with Mrs May, Mr Juncker was pictured meeting EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and the European Parliament's Brexit team, led by Guy Verhofstadt.

Mr Juncker's chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas said they were 'working for a fair deal'.

A union flag was raised alongside EU counterparts in Brussels today ahead of the meetings

David Davis was seen leaving Whitehall on his way to the meetings in Brussels today

Senior German MEP Manfred Weber - a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel - said problems remained on citizens' rights and the Irish border.

The leader of the European Parliament's centre-right EPP Group tweeted: 'In Brexit negotiations, money is one of the problems, but it is not the biggest one.

'We are much more concerned about the fact that negotiations are stalled on the protection of EU citizens' rights & on the Irish case.

'We will not change our red lines. The lives of millions of families are at stake. If no clear commitment is made, the @EPPGroup will not be ready to assess the progress made as sufficient to enter a 2nd phase of negotiations.'

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday warned Eurosceptic MPs not to limit Mrs May's room for manoeuvre. 'The choice we face is not between this Brexit or that Brexit,' he said.

'If we don't back Theresa May we will have no Brexit, and she is doing an unbelievably challenging job amazingly well.'

Mr Hunt's intervention came as 30 Eurosceptics set down seven 'red lines' over Brexit.

The Leave Means Leave group said Mrs May should not make any payment to Brussels unless she received clear pledges in return, including a free trade deal and agreement that the UK would not have to accept any new EU regulations or European court rulings during a two-year transition period.

Signatories of the letter include former cabinet ministers Lord Lawson, John Redwood and Owen Paterson. They urge Mrs May to abandon the talks completely and go for a no-deal Brexit if Brussels refuses to agree terms next week.

But Mr Paterson dismissed the prospect of Eurosceptics voting against the government. 'The fact is we have incredibly close relations with the Republic of Ireland, this trade is generally small, as I have just said it's regular, and it can be handled with modern communication techniques, electronic invoicing etc.'

Today's talks are designed to determine whether 'sufficient progress' has been made on three key issues to persuade the EU to move on to trade talks.

The PM was expected to telephone Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (pictured), but the call did not happen and No10 insisted it had not been firmly scheduled

The Prime Minister will travel to Belgium this morning ahead of a lunch with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured right) and chief EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. She will then hold further talks with EU Council president Donald Tusk

The issues at the centre of the row are the size of the divorce bill, the rights of EU citizens living in the UK and the status of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The divorce bill is now seen as the most straightforward issue, with EU sources indicating Brussels is ready to accept Mrs May's revised offer.

But differences remain on citizens' rights and Northern Ireland.

The Prime Minister had hoped to offer a 'compromise' on citizens' rights, which would give the European Court of Justice a minor, indirect role. But she has not yet persuaded her cabinet to sign it off.

The deal would allow the UK's Supreme Court to ask the ECJ for guidance in cases brought by EU citizens where there is no existing case law. EU citizens would lose the right to appeal directly to the ECJ  a key Brussels demand.

Nigel Farage was dragged into the divorce bill row yesterday because his 73,000-a-year MEP's pension will be part-funded by Britain's proposed 40billion payment.

The UKIP leader rejected calls to give up the money, saying: 'Why should my family suffer?'
This is the shocking moment when a father is brutally slapping and stamping on a toddler girl at a bus station in northern China.

Mobile phone footage emerged showing the girl being pressed on the kerb dangerously while onlookers watch from aside.

The man was detained by the police for investigation and the girl was being taken care by her grandmother.

Mobile phone footage shows a father hitting a young girl at a bus station in north China (left). Onlookers are shocked to see him slapping on the girl's face numerous times (right)

According to The Paper, the beating was seen in Langfang, Hebei Province on December 2.

A 39-year-old man, surnamed Zhang, can be seen having a lit cigarette in one hand whilst stamping one foot on a toddler girl's back fiercely.

Zhang then picked the girl up and slapped her face several times.

Onlookers suggested the toddler was under two years old.

He told an onlooker that 'nothing's going on' when being asked for the reasons of beating.

He then stamps onto the girl's back as she dangerously lying on the kerb at the bus stop (left). Onlookers suggested the girl was about two years old (right)

Anci police issued a statement on December 3 that they had successfully identified Zhang and confirmed that the toddler girl's his biological daughter.

The girl was sent to a local hospital for check-up and found to have no injuries.

She is now being looked after by her grandmother.

Anci police will later announce if there will be any penalty for Zhang abusing his daughter in public.
A Texas sheriff has vowed not to hug anyone outside of his family and close friends in order to guard against allegations of sexual assault.

Jim Kaelin, sheriff for Nueces County, 140 miles south of San Antonio, told people to expect a handshake or a fist-bump in a Facebook post uploaded last week.

Kaelin said he was 'sad' about the situation 'but you just don't know when this hug might come back and bite you'.

Sheriff Jim Kaelin, from Texas, has vowed to only give out handshakes or fist bumps to people he meets to protect himself against sex assault allegations

Sheriff Kaelin made the announcement on Facebook on the same day Matt Lauer was fired from Today amid claims he was inappropriate with female members of staff

He penned the note on the same day Matt Lauer was fired from Today amid a flurry of sexual assault complaints from female members of staff.

Kaelin wrote: 'To my Facebook friends let me say this to you, my hugging days (outside family and or close friends) are over.

'Sad, but you just don't know when this hug might come back and bite you.

'The workplace, for one, can become hostile if an employee 'feels' threatened by your hugs...SO IT'S OVER.

'In the future I will offer a hand shake, or knuckle bump, but NO MORE HUGS. It might offend you that I will no longer participate in hugging you, but I have decided to discontinue receiving/giving hugs from anyone outside of my family and close friends. I hope you understand.

Mr Kaelin said 'my hugging days outside friends and family are over' because of fears the intimate gesture could be used against him in future

From now on, hugs will be reserved only for close friends and family members, he said (pictured here with wife Sharon)

'Thanks. I'm from the old school but the time has come for me. No more hugs.'

Sheriff Kaelin seems to have been following the wave of sex assault stories closely as his Facebook page features an image of Democrat senator Al Franken.

Franken has been accused of groping by several women, including one which dates from a time when he was in office, but has refused to resign his post.

Kaelin's profile also includes a picture of Wilson, the volleyball best-friend of Tom Hanks from the movie Castaway, with the caption: 'Tom Hanks touched me.'

Lauer became the latest big name to fall on Wednesday last week when he was sacked by NBC over sex assault allegations centered around the Sochi Winter Olympics.

The avalanche started with dozens of allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein but has since snowballed to include actors, musicians, politicians and other public figures.

Charlie Rose was another high-profile journalist pushed from his perch at 60 Minutes after claims emerged about his allegedly inappropriate behavior.
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An incredible festive exhibit of a tractor covered in more than 11,000 lights has kicked off the Christmas display season in style.

Andrew Wilkinson spent four months building the metal frame and another week setting up two miles worth of wiring for the extravagant spectacle.

The 32-year-old has turned the heads of thousands of passing motorists and pedestrians in Hayton, East Yorkshire, with the display, which includes a Union flag and Santa's plough.

Mr Wilkinson built the tractor display as a tribute to his father David, who worked as a farmer until he died after a cancer battle 11 years ago.

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An incredible festive exhibit of a tractor covered in more than 11,000 lights has kicked off the Christmas display season in style

Andrew Wilkinson (pictured with his partner Emma Lycett) spent four months building the metal frame and another week setting up two miles worth of wiring for the extravagant spectacle

The spirit of Christmas has also made its way to some of the country's most prominent buildings, even those usually associated with high art such as the Tate Britain (pictured)

Tate Britain is covering its facade with off-the-shelf decorations and Santa Stop Here signs for Christmas. The famous London gallery usually commissions artists to design a Christmas tree for the festive season

He told the Hull Daily Mail: 'I built it all completely from scratch. There were no tractor parts involved or anything, I just slowly built up a metal frame for the lights and went from there really.

'It's fairly complex in places but the basics is that it is a metal frame with wire mesh which then has the wire, and the 11,000 LED lights attached to it.

'The reception has been phenomenal,' he said. 'It's visible on the main road from York to Hull so we get a lot of people who talk to us after spotting us from the road.'

Meanwhile, a festive cul-de-sac in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset has burst into colour after the homeowners switched on their lights to mark the count-down to Christmas.

In the now annual tradition, families living in the road lit up their homes and lawns to celebrate the start of the festive period.

The decorative display helps raise money for local cancer charities and thousands of people are expected to visit the street this month.

This neighbourhood in Burnham-On-Sea, Somerset has been dubbed 'Britain's most festive street' as the cul-de-sac twinkles with 100,000 light bulbs

Six festive homes on the street have draped more than 100,000 fairy lights across their roofs, garages and garden fences

Last year the display raised more than 13,329 for a good cause and this year the collection will go towards two local charities

The tradition in Trinity Close started more than a decade ago by Nick Gardner, his wife Hazel and their neighbours Chris Woodberry and his late wife Christine.

The spirit of Christmas has also made its way to some of the country's most prominent buildings, even those usually associated with high art.

Tate Britain is covering its facade with off-the-shelf decorations and Santa Stop Here signs for Christmas. The famous London gallery usually commissions artists to design a Christmas tree for the festive season.

But this year, it has announced that it has taken a break from tradition and imitated the look of homes 'up and down the country'.

The 'show-stopping arrangement' includes LED Santas, reindeer, snowmen and Christmas trees, along with Merry Christmas and Santa Stop Here signs.

Thousands of visitors flock from around the country to view the spectacular display, helping the residents raise thousands of pounds for grateful charities every year

The display will adorn the Victorian porticoed entrance and neo-classical facade, which was created by Sidney RJ Smith 120 years ago.

The arrangement is the creation of Alan Kane, an artist whose previous projects include a series of televised nude life drawing classes and a travelling exhibition of contemporary folk art featuring traditional wrestling costumes, and a 6ft walking mechanical elephant.

Alex Farquharson, Tate Britain director, said: 'We're excited to be giving Tate Britain a whole new face this Christmas with Alan Kane's light commission.

'After 25 years of commissioning artists to design our Christmas tree, we thought we'd give an artist the facade of the building to play with.

'Alan's ultra-festive response is sure to turn heads - of those both young and old. We look forward to unveiling other surprising festive artist commissions in the years to come.'
France has offered to lend Britain its amphibious landing craft if the UK scraps the Royal Navy's own ships as part of sweeping defence cuts.

Britain is considering axing HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark - assault vessels which allow the UK to attack enemy-held beaches - under cost-cutting plans.

And it has emerged France has put forward proposals to let the UK's elite commando unit train and run joint deployments from their three amphibious landing ships.

But Tory MPs warned it would be a 'national embarrassment' if the UK had to go 'begging' to its neighbours for its defence.

Tory MP Andrew Bowie, who served in the Royal Navy before being elected to Parliament, told Mail Online: 'The British and French navies, as close allies have cooperated for many years and I'm sure their offer comes in good faith.

'But it really does stick in the craw.

'To see the Royal Navy, once the most powerful and feared navy in the word, begging and borrowing from our neighbours across the Channel would be a national embarrassment and would demean us in the eyes of our allies and partners.

'I hope the Government can put this to bed once and for all and guarantee the future of our amphibious capability, independent of other nations.'

HMS Bulwark (pictured) and HMS Albion - assault vessels which allow the UK to attack enemy-held beaches - could be ditched under defence cost-cutting plans

Proposals to axe Britain's two amphibious craft are among the proposals for cuts being considered by the Government in the strategic defence review.

Ministers are also considering getting rid of 1,000 Marines under sweeping cost-cutting plans.

Defence chiefs have warned that any move to strip the Royal Navy of its ability to attack enemy-held beaches would harm Britain's defence.

And Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson face a brewing Tory backbench rebellion over the possible looming cuts.

The proposal is still in its early stages and has not been put to British commanders yet, according to a report in the Financial Times.

British and French naval chiefs are reportedly due to meet in the coming weeks to talk about closer cooperation ahead of a joint summit early next year.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, pictured visiting RAF Coninsgby, Lincolnshire, last Thursday, is facing a brewing backbench rebellion over proposals to axe Britain's amphibious landing vessels. HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion could be ditched under cost-cutting plans

Tory MPs Julian Lewis and Andrew Bowie hit out at any move which would leave Britain reliant on its neighbours for its defence capabilities

A French official told the newspaper: 'We have three very capable ships.

'The idea is that in the case of one of the two countries having to reduce certain capabilities because of budgetary constraints we could mitigate the consequences by standing shoulder to shoulder.'

Julian Lewis, Tory MP and chairman of the defence select committee, said that while the offer might be helpful he warned it could be part of a wider push from Paris to build a European defence force.

He said: 'It's fine we should align our sea-based forces.

'It's another matter to abandon our own ability to send land forces from the sea. The idea the UK should lose that capability is totally unacceptable.

The Ministry of Defence said no decisions had been made yet.

A spokesman said: 'In the face of intensifying threats we are contributing to the cross-government review of national security capabilities and looking at how we best spend our rising defence budget.'
A grieving mother who faced jail after her son missed school 20 times in two months was cleared of wrongdoing after it emerged severe asthma attacks caused the absences.

Nicola Newns, who lost her 12-year-old son Ben to brittle asthma, feared for her other son Jacob, 16, when the same condition caused repeated collapses.

As the 39-year-old sat in an ambulance rushing Jacob to intensive care, Salford City Council education officials called her demanding to know why he was not in school.

She said rushing around with medication and oxygen for her son had stopped her reporting the absence.

Jacob, left, was hit by a string of asthma attacks as he suffered through the same condition that killed his brother, Ben, who is pictured, right, in hospital weeks before his death in 2014

Mrs Newns was hit with a 60 fixed penalty notice after the authority said 'no acceptable reason' has been given for Jacobs 'unsatisfactory' attendance at Buile Hill Visual Arts College between January and March this year.

After refusing to pay, Mrs Newns faced up to three months in prison when she appeared at Manchester & Salford Magistrates' Court accused of an offence under the 1996 Education Act.

Her case was thrown out by a district judge when it transpired he was in hospital on all 20 occasions.

Mrs Newns had failed to respond to calls from education officials investigating Jacob's absences, according to an email presented in court.

'We rang her again after half term and when she finally answered she was in an ambulance with Jacob on the way to hospital as hed had an asthma attack,' it said.

'Weve left two voicemails this week and mum hasnt returned our calls as yet.

'In short Jacob hasnt accessed any education with us yet.'

Nicola News was handed a 60 fine after she says she was too terrified to leave her son's side to notify officials in case he died while she was gone

LAW ON TRUANCY Headteachers have been able to fine parents of regular truants under laws introduced by Labour in 2003. The Government axed their discretionary power to allow children up to 10 days off during term time. Now, many schools are targeting children who regularly miss registration. As there is no clarification in the law, schools are able to mark anyone, who is not at registration in time, as absent. In 2015, some schools in England began to fine parents 60 for lateness. The penalty can be doubled if it is not paid within 21 days, and parents who refuse to pay could be prosecuted and even jailed. Advertisement

Mrs Newns, from Salford, said she was too terrified to leave Jacob's side even to call the school after she lost Ben.

Ben - who also attended Buile Hill - was taken ill in March 2014 after he woke up struggling to breathe at 2am.

His mother grabbed his inhaler but he collapsed and died despite paramedics' efforts.

'I am over-protective of Jacob but can anyone blame me after what happened with Ben?' she said.

'The school were fantastic with us when Ben died - but now they seem to forget he died.

'Jacob was really affected by what happened to his brother and was crying and asking if it would be him next.

'He has had anxiety attacks and panic attacks and we have been worried it might a similar attack which killed Ben in 2014.

'I just feel bullied by the school, continually asking me when hes going to be back in school, how long he will be away for.

Ben, right, died in 2014, leaving Jacob, left, who suffers with the same condition, asking his mother if he'd be next during attacks this year. The brothers are pictured in 2003

'I may not have contacted them as soon as I should have done but I wasnt going to leave my sons bedside if he might die.

'Ive sat there with both of my boys wishing them to breathe. Its not like they dont know or understand the situation.

'He has been on life support three or four times this year and Im afraid my child is my main concern - after Ben of course I am more scared.

'I felt as though the school were blaming me, or saying that Im lying. In their documents when it said I "finally" answered it was if i was about to jet off for a holiday to Disneyland rather me taking my son to hospital with a potentially life-threatening asthma attack.'

Her worry for Jacob was worsened by the fact that his attacks had always appeared worse before Ben's death.

'Ben had never had as severe attacks as Jacob, and I always feared something might happen to Jacob - but then Ben passed away,' she said.

'After Ben, I take him worrying about his chest more seriously. If he wakes up and his chest is bad I will keep him off because I know that he can deteriorate quickly and it's a big risk if hes at school.

'One night Jacob had been up multiple times wheezing and unable to breathe and when failed to improve later that morning and his condition deteriorated we called an ambulance - the fact is he couldnt breathe, he was having an attack.

'As I was trying to get his oxygen and his medication my phone just kept going. I was rushing around trying to make sure my boy was okay.

'It was ringing and I had texts saying "your son is not in school". As we got him into the back of the ambulance my phone was still going off, so I felt like I had to answer it and let them know what was going on.

Mrs Newns says despite the school's support when Ben, pictured, died in 2014, she received no support during the attacks that forced Jacob to miss lessons

'I told the school that Jacob had had a bad attack, and I was in the ambulance and he was going to hospital but for me, there was no compassion or empathy. They just said: Well when will he be back in? We need to know when he will be back in.

She says the doctors didn't know when Jacob would be fit for school, meaning she was unable to tell the officials and claims she even missed calls from her mother because she needed to be with Jacob.

'I needed to be with him and make sure he was okay,' she said.

Charlotte Ramsden Strategic Director of Childrens Services at Salford Council wrote to Mrs Newns in February, warning her 60 fine would increase to 120 if it was not paid within 21 days. She was told failure to pay within 28 days would result in a court appearance.

Mrs Newns said the school had not offered 'any support' for Jacob while he was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

'When Jacob was in ICU, the school were calling and calling but didnt ask how he was doing,' she said.

'When he was sick and in hospital I did ask for homework for him so he could keep up but they never sent it.

Nicola Newns was cleared of wrongdoing after she refused to pay a fine for her son missing school when he was struck by the same condition that killed his brother

'Because he has been so ill hes got behind and they didnt try to help him catch up.

'He said to me that he didnt understand anything in lessons and no one had tried to explain to him or give him one to one help.

'He has a genuine, chronic, life-threatening illness and the school know about this because of his brother.

'If I had sent Jacob to school when he was complaining about his chest and something had happened I would never forgive myself.'

A spokesman for the school said: To get any case to court, schools have to go through rigorous systems of checks and consultations which involve multiple agencies and of course, the family.

'It would be inappropriate for us to comment on the range of intervention we adopted with Jacob and his family other than to say that it was extensive.

'Throughout this process the school have put Jacobs safety, welfare and education at the centre of all the decision making. Jacob is a lovely young man who has huge potential, really bright prospects and as a school, we have always endeavoured to support him with all of our available resources.'
Daphne Caruana Galizia, Malta's best-known investigative journalist, was killed on Monday when a powerful bomb blew up her car

Ten suspects have been arrested in the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that the suspects, all Maltese citizens, were arrested Monday morning due to a 'reasonable suspicion' of their involvement in Panama Papers writer Caruana Galizia's slaying in a car bomb attack.

The arrests, made in an operation coordinated among the Police Corps, the Armed Forces of Malta and the Security Services, were the first break in the murder on October 16 that has drawn widespread outrage and condemnation.

Investigators have 48 hours to question the suspects to decide whether to seek charges, in accordance with Maltese law.

Muscat provided no other concrete information about the arrests or suspects, citing concerns that anything he says could derail any prosecution.

Caruana Galizia, whose reporting focused heavily on corruption on the EU island nation, was killed when a bomb destroyed her car as she was driving near her home.

Europol, the European Union's police agency, sent a team of organized crime experts to help Maltese police investigate the assassination, joining the FBI and Dutch forensic experts.

Just before her death, Caruana Galizia, 53, had posted on her closely followed blog, Running Commentary, that there were 'crooks everywhere' in Malta.

The island nation has a reputation as a tax haven in the European Union and has attracted companies and money from outside Europe.

The journalist focused her reporting for years on investigating political corruption and scandals, and reported on Maltese mobsters and drug trafficking.

She also wrote about Maltese links to the so-called Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.

Caruana Galizia, whose reporting focused heavily on corruption on the EU island nation, was killed when a bomb destroyed her car as she was driving near her home

The blackened tarmac shows where the explosion happened and the car's path can be seen heading from the road into the field

Caruana Galizia, 53, ran a hugely popular blog in which she relentlessly highlighted cases of alleged corruption, often involving politicians from the Mediterranean island of Malta.

She was killed as she was driving near the village of Bidnija in northern Malta.

Pictures showed the burnt-out wreck of her car lying in a field metres from the road.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who faced accusations of wrong-doing by Caruana Galizia earlier this year, denounced her killing, calling it a 'barbaric attack on press freedom'.

'I will not rest until I see justice done in this case. Our country deserves justice,' he said in a televised statement at the time, in which he called for national unity.

Malta has a population of 400,000 and is the European Union's smallest state.

'Everyone knows Caruana Galizia was a harsh critic of mine, both politically and personally, but nobody can justify this barbaric act in any way,' Muscat said.

'The only remedy for anyone who felt slandered was through the courts.'

Muscat called early elections in June seeking a vote of confidence to counter Caruana Galizia's allegations of corruption.

She said documents in a small Malta-based bank showed that Muscat's wife was the beneficial owner of a company in Panama, and that large sums of money had been moved between the company and bank accounts in Azerbaijan.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese investigative journalist who exposed her island nation's links with the Panama Papers

Forensic experts walk in a field after a powerful bomb blew up a car (foreground) and killed investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Bidnija, Malta

An ambulance is parked along the road where a car bomb exploded killing the journalist

Police and forensics experts stand behind a road block after a powerful bomb blew up the car

Police said she was killed as she was driving near the village of Bidnija in northern Malta

An ambulance and police vehicles are parked along the road where a car bomb exploded killing investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, in the town of Mosta, Malta. The car can be seen in the field and the blackened tarmac where the explosion appeared to have happened is seen leading to the vehicle

Graffiti on the wall next to a main road. It reads, 'We will not be silenced. RIP Daphne'

Both Muscat and his wife denied the accusation and sued Caruana Galizia for defamation. Muscat easily won reelection.

Recently, Caruana Galizia's outspoken blog had turned its fire on opposition politicians.

'There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate,' she wrote in the last blog published on her site days before she was killed.

In another entry last year, she wrote: 'Malta's public life is afflicted with dangerously unstable men with no principles or scruples.'

Television reported that Caruana Galizia had filed a complaint to the police two weeks ago to say she had received threats. It gave no further information.
More than seven million customers could lose out on the Government's energy price cap because it does not cover green tariffs, it has emerged.

Theresa May announced a cap on bad value tariffs earlier this year saying it will save around 17 million households in Britain up to 100 on their annual bills.

But the Government's proposed legislation states that 'green' tariffs will be exempt - meaning suppliers could remove millions of people from the cap.

Bulb, a green energy supplier who carried out the research, has written to MPs on the energy select committee calling for the loophole to be closed and for all customers to be eligible for the cap.

Some seven million customers could lose out on the Government's energy price cap because it does not cover green tariffs,according to new research (file pic)

Co-founder Hayden Wood said: 'Bulb supports the price cap, but we're disappointed this loophole means companies could continue to overcharge customers.

'This needs to be fixed immediately. We believe a price cap would help customers and the industry, but it must apply to everyone and not allow for spurious exemption claims.

'The argument some make that renewable tariffs must cost more has been thoroughly disproved by Bulb, which offers one of the lowest tariffs in the UK, whilst supplying 100 per cent renewable electricity.'

John Penrose, Tory MP for Weston-super-Mare, said: 'Green tariffs mustn't become a loophole for big six lobbyists to keep on ripping off people who've forgotten to switch when their existing deal comes to an end.

'The advantage of a relative cap is that it's much simpler, and harder to manipulate. It would protect everyone on default tariffs, no matter what kind they are.

'And it would stop the environment being misused for profit by people who want to game the system.'

Bulb said their analysis raises questions a but whether the cap will deliver on the Prime Minister's pledge to help 17 million households.

Announcing her cap earlier this year, Mrs May said the it will protect around 17 million families 'on standard variable tariffs from being exploited with sudden and unjustified increases in bills'.

Theresa May, pictured at church yesterday with her husband Philip, said the energy price cap would ve around 17 million households up to 100 a year

The draft legislation allows for a price cap, but also provides an 'exemption for prepayment meters and tariffs with environmental claims'.

An estimated 7.1 million households could potentially be affected by an exploitation of this loophole - meaning they could overpay by as much as 700 million a year.

The business, energy and industrial strategy select committee is scrutinising the legislation and Bulb is calling for MPs who sit on it to close the loophole.

The cap comes after growing anger at rip-off energy companies which let their customers languish on poor value contracts.

A BEIS spokesman said: 'The Tariff Cap Bill is designed to ensure that a cap applies where a household is on a standard variable or default tariff.

'This will protect millions of consumers from paying too much for their energy due to unfair market practices.

'Signing up to a Green Tariff is a proactive choice. There are rules as to what constitutes a green tariff which all suppliers must abide by, and any attempts to undermine this cap will be dealt with by Ofgem in its role as regulator.'
Sixteen members of the same family are part of a group of 100 holidaymakers suing a tour company after being struck down by illness at a five-star resort.

The family all stayed at the luxurious Jaz Makadi Aquaviva Resort in Egypt but their trip ended up being a holiday from hell after they contracted E.coli and salmonella.

Richard Hornsby, 38, and his wife Natasha, 29, from Hemel Hempstead, have now instructed personal injury lawyers to investigate the outbreak.

They had booked their trip through tour operator TUI UK Limited, trading as First Choice, and arrived in Africa in July.

Richard Hornsby, 38, and his wife Natasha, 29, were pictured at the resort with their children Finley (left) and Jessica (right)

Jake (pictured leftin a British hospital) fell ill just two days before the family was due to fly home and had to undergo several courses of antibiotics. The youngsters (pictured left to right, Finley, Jessica, Jake) were also on the trip

But children as young as three and seven-months-old were among those in the family to suffer severe diarrhoea and sickness during their stay.

Mr and Mrs Hornsby jetted off for their two-week stay at the resort on July 3, with children Jake, then seven months, Jessica, aged nine and three-year-old Finley.

The couple said they both fell ill as did their children and they had to seek medical treatment on their return to the UK.

Mr and Mrs Hornsby took Jake, who was born with one kidney, to their GP after he fell ill two days before the family was due to fly home and had to undergo several courses of antibiotics and had various medical tests.

He was admitted to hospital upon returning home for overnight treatment after he was diagnosed with E.coli - a bacterial infection and more severe cases can lead to serious complications including bloody urine, dehydration and kidney failure.

Mrs Hornsby said she is still continuing to suffer with diarrhoea.

Nichola Blackburn, an International Personal Injury specialist for Irwin Mitchell, is now representing more than 100 holidaymakers in a group action against TUI UK Ltd.

She said: 'Illnesses such as gastroenteritis, to include those caused by E.coli and salmonella can have serious, long-term health implications for those who are struck down.

'We have received and worryingly continue to receive many similar reports that people have fallen ill while staying at the Jaz Makadi Aquaviva Resort over this summer.

'Concerns include instances of poor food hygiene and incidents of faeces in the swimming pool, which some of our clients witnessed and believe were not dealt with swiftly.

'Irwin Mitchell is now representing over 100 people who were affected by illness at the Jaz Makadi Aquaviva Resort.

Ashley Coughtrey, 28, had travelled to the Jaz Makadi Aquaviva Resort with his wife Joanne (pictured with their son Zack) to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

'We would encourage anyone who stayed at the Jaz Makadi Aquaviva Resort this year and has since experienced gastric symptoms, to see their GP at the earliest available opportunity.

'We would also like to speak with them as they may be able to help with our investigations.

'TUI UK Ltd, trading as First Choice, has responded in relation to a number of our clients' claims confirming that they are denying any liability.

'We have urged them to reconsider their stance in light of the vast number of people who have fallen ill during their stay at the Jaz Makadi Aquaviva Resort and the serious cases of illness that have been reported.'

Jake (pictured) was admitted to hospital upon returning home for overnight treatment after he was diagnosed with E.coli

Her brother Ashley Coughtrey, 28, had travelled to the Jaz Makadi Aquaviva Resort with his wife Joanne to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

Mr Coughtrey, also from Hemel Hempstead, fell ill on July 6. Tests showed he had contracted salmonella. He is still suffering ongoing symptoms, including gastric related symptoms and groin pains.

His three-year-old son Zack also suffered sickness and diarrhoea as did his wife Joanne.

Both Natasha and Ashley have told their legal team at Irwin Mitchell that on occasions they saw food left uncovered, they witnessed on occasions raw meat placed next to cooked meat.

They also claim they saw chefs sometimes not changing gloves or washing their hands after handling raw meat and that dishes were a number of times served lukewarm.

The family also said that they witnessed instances of faeces in the swimming pool.

Their grandparents, Joan, 78, and Bob Britton, 73, were initially unable to leave their room much due to suffering with severe diarrhoea.

Natasha said: 'I felt so guilty when the doctor told me Jake's illness had probably been caused by him going abroad.

'To see Jake in the pain he was experiencing was terrible. I felt so helpless and with Jake's past medical history his illness was even more frightening.

'As soon as I was told he had contracted E.coli I blamed myself. To think that Jake could have potentially died because of his illness is gut wrenching.

The family all stayed at the luxurious five-star Jaz Makadi Aquaviva Resort in Egypt (pictured)

'We as a family just want to warn people of the consequences of contracting such illness.'

Her brother Ashley said: 'With my grandparents growing older this was meant to be a dream holiday where all the family would go away for one last time and me and Joanne could celebrate our first anniversary.

'We had been saving for months to afford it, however, what should have been a holiday from which we all went home with lasting memories, turned into a nightmare.

'We are not surprised that other people have been unfortunate and fallen ill at the hotel. We now want to know what caused our illnesses.'

TUI UK Limited told MailOnline: 'We're sorry to hear these customers were unhappy with their holiday experience.

'As these cases are now subject to legal proceedings, it would be inappropriate to comment further.

'We'd like to remind customers that we regularly audit the accommodations we feature in respect of health and safety, including hygiene.'
An Indian soldier who left a woman blind and scarred for life after throwing acid on her in revenge for rejecting his advances has finally been arrested eight years after the attack.

Pramodini Roul, then just 15 years old, was subjected to a vicious acid attack by Santosh Bedanta, 35, as she was walking home from school in Odisha state in 2009.

Ms Roul, now 23 spent four months in ICU after the attack and has since undergone several series of reconstructive surgeries, including one to save a small amount of vision in her left eye.

Scarred for life: Pramodini Roul, then just 15 years old, was subjected to a vicious acid attack by Santosh Bedanta, 35, a man whose marriage proposal she had rejected

Ms Roul, known as Rani or Queen, had lost hope after the case was closed in 2012, but after an order by the chief minister of Odisha state, local police reopened the case in August this year.

Last week, Bedanta, a soldier in Indian army, was arrested along with his friend Anil Biswajit Dalasiharaya who rode the motorbike used in the attack.

A special team of police on November 26 conducted a raid at Santosh's uncle's house in Kolkata where he was hiding.

He was produced in court and was taken into police custody. The motorcycle used in the attack was also seized by the cops.

Bal Ram Nayak, investigating officer in the case said: 'The accused Satosh Vedanta, who was a solider on General Duty, was arrested in Kolkata at around 2am on 26th of November.

Arrests: Santosh Bedanta, 35, right, a soldier in Indian army was arrested along with his friend Anil Biswajit Dalasiharaya who helped him during the attack

Admitting guilt: Bedanta, pictured while serving in the army, has admitted to carrying out the attack that left Ms Roul blind and scarred for life

'We had first arrested Anil Biswajit Dalasiharaya, who had accompanied him for the attack from his house and during interrogation he revealed that Santosh might be hiding in neighbouring Kolkata.

'We conducted raids and found him hiding at his uncle Yoshobanta Behara's house.

'Santosh has confessed of throwing acid upon the victim and confessed that it was a matter pertaining to one sided love and that he will soon be produced for identification parade before the victim.

'The two police officers Inspector Dallai and RK Jaina, involved in the case previously were suspended because of shoddy investigation.'

Santosh remains in custody and police are waiting to record Pramodini's statement in front of the judicial magistrate to make the investigation more concrete.

Jay Narayan Prakash, Superintendent of Police at Jagatisinghpur Police Station said: 'We are waiting to record Pramodini's statement after identification at judicial magistrate.

'We want to be sure about our investigation so he can be convicted.

'Once the statement is recorded we will make sure to file the chargesheet within two months. We will not delay it more than that at any cost.'

Attacked: Ms Roul is pictured before the horrific acid attack in 2009

Bedanta's arrest has given Ms Roul and her family a sense of hope for justice. She is hoping for capital punishment or lifetime imprisonment for Santosh for inflicting torture and pain on her that will also warn future assailants of the fate.

Ms Roul said: 'We feel a sense of victory already now that the case has been reopened and Santosh has been arrested. The arrest has given me hopes for justice.'

'We are happy and pray that he be awarded with either capital punishment or lifetime imprisonment and no less.

'He deserves stringent punishment, however, we believe that justice will be done to us by the court.'

The horrific incident happened when Ms Roul, then a 10th grade student was returning from taking an exam with her cousin.

She had been proposed to several times by Bedanta for marriage but each time, she had turned it down and she wanted to complete her studies first.

Furious with the repeated rejections, the spurned lover allegedly doused her with acid with the threat that 'she will never be anyone else's if she will not be his'.

Ms Roul has had to undergo a long recovery process, but opened up about finding love on the way earlier this year.

Her partner Saroj, who she met while undergoing treatment for infections on her legs in hospital in 2014, proposed last year.

Saroj was the friend of Ms Roul's nurse and had been visiting patients voluntary when he became friends with her and eventually fell for her charms.

The couple now live together in New Delhi, and are contemplating getting married in two years as they are waiting to get further reconstructive surgeries before they take the plunge.

Finding happy: Ms Roul with her fiancee Saroj who she hopes to marry once she has had further reconstructive surgery

Ms Roul's neck is bent as the skin on her back completely melted. She still requires further surgeries on her eyes as she is only able to see a little and needs plastic surgeries on her head as a major portion of skin is missing.

Ms Roul says: 'Saroj really treats me like a princess. He loves me like the way I am. He always encourages me to live life happily.

'I feel very lucky to have him. He is very understanding and is always there for me.

'We met in March 2014 when he had come with his friends to visit the hospital. Initially we didn't speak to each other, even though he had seen me.

'However, after around 15 days he started to speak to me. He would often visit the hospital.

'I believe he saw my mother and observed her and then slowly started extending helping hands. She would always come alone for my physiotherapy.

'One day he heard my mother ask about my improvement and how long would it take for me to recover as my lower body had by then deteriorated. I was not even moving without help, let alone standing on my feet.

'The reply wasn't very positive as the doctors said that it would take at least four years for me to be able to walk. My mother naturally broke down when she heard that. That is when Saroj consoled her and assured her that he would do everything possible to get me walking.'

She said: 'I am hoping to get further surgeries as soon as possible. Doctors say I need at least four more surgeries.'

The surgeries are extremely expensive. Ms Roul's mother has exhausted all her savings on the previous procedures but has no resources to foot the bill for further operations.

She now works with Chhanv Foundation, a support care for acid attack survivors that helps in arranging funds for their surgeries and rehabilitation.

She said: 'I am happy that I am able to restart my life again but it would be wonderful if I can get all the reconstructive surgeries soon.'
A man has miraculously walked away relatively unscathed after his car hit a power pole and flipped onto its roof.

The driver was heading towards Sydney's CBD through Concord when he collided with the pole, causing his ute to roll.

Shocked onlookers rushed to free him from the car and called emergency services, and he was transported to hospital with only cuts to his face.

A man has miraculously walked away relatively unscathed after his car hit a power pole and flipped onto its roof

The driver was heading towards Sydney's CBD through Concord when he collided with the pole, causing his ute to roll

The incident occurred early on Monday morning on Parramatta Road.

The man collided with the power pole at such a speed his Holden ute was flipped upside-down.

Several cars stopped to rush to the aid of the man and help free him from the vehicle.

Two city-bound lanes were closed as debris from the smashed car covered the road.

There were also damaged portions of the ute across the footpath, while firefighters attended the scene to remove leaked oil and petrol.

He was transported to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital to be treated.
Michael Love, pictured, has been jailed for 80 years for attempted murder

A gunman, who ambushed his ex-girlfriend and her brother while dressed as an elderly woman, has been jailed for 80 years.

Michael Love donned a wig, mask and dress before shooting Sultana Reed and Zach Guyton as they loaded children into an SUV to take them to daycare in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The assailant, said to be in his 50s, struck his former partner three times before shooting her brother in the face. None of the children were harmed and both victims survived the attack in July 2015.

He was sentenced on Friday after being convicted of two counts of attempted murder on November 1.

Witnesses reported seeing Love, who was subject to a court order banning him from contacting his ex-girlfriend at the time of the attack, wearing a brown dress and stockings knotted at the knee as he ran at his victims.

He then pulled out a gun from a plastic grocery bag before firing at Ms Reed and Mr Guyton.

Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry told Fox 59: 'We are grateful that the two victims survived this dangerous attack and that the children who were present were not injured.

'We commend the work of the investigators, cooperation of witnesses, and most importantly the courage of the victims who were essential in securing a significant sentence for this violent offender.'
An eight-month pregnant woman is in critical condition after she was hit by a 16-ton lorry while parked at a service station in Johannesburg, South Africa.

CCTV footage from the incident shows the horrified petrol pump assistant running for his life when the out-of-control lorry heads straight for him at over 50mph.

The lorry ploughs across the pavement and into the side of the garage, slamming into the pregnant woman's Mercedes, injuring her and her four passengers.

Shocking: CCTV footage from the incident in Johannesburg, South Africa, shows the moment the 16-ton lorry smashes straight into a parked Mercedes at over 50mph

The driver of the lorry later claimed he was not behind the wheel and was 'teaching a friend how to drive'.

The CCTV footage shows the lorry smashing several petrol pumps clear out of the ground, and pushing the Mercedes some 20 yards into the garage brick wall.

The worker who ran for cover is believed to have been injured by flying debris and a driver in a second badly damaged car escaped injury altogether.

Emergency services were quickly on site along with fire crews who said that it was a miracle that the whole petrol station did not explode in flames.

Med Help EMS spokesman Chris Christodolides said: 'The lorry came around a corner fast and across an island and was totally out of control and destroyed the garage.

Shocking: Emergency service personnel fight to free the pregnant driver and the four others trapped inside the car hit by the lorry

Excuses: The driver of the lorry later claimed he was not behind the wheel and was 'teaching a friend how to drive'

Devastation: Several petrol pumps were ripped out of the ground as the lorry plouged through the petrol station in Johannesburg

'A worker had just finished filling the car with petrol and saw the lorry and just ran for it and was actually clipped by flying debris but escaped serious injury.

'The five in the car were not so lucky as they had nowhere to run as the lorry just smashed into them.

'The driver was an eight-month pregnant mother-to-be and she had four passengers. It took between 40 and 60 minutes to get them out thanks to the jaws of life.

'They are a mechanical cutting device and we took all five to hospital with the passengers seriously injured. The pregnant woman was in a critical condition' he said.

The horrific accident happened in Johannesburg on Saturday night at 11pm.

A South African Police Service spokesman said an investigation is underway.
Zelda de Groen has won an employment tribunal over a grilling she was given by bosses at an orthodox Jewish nursery

A teacher at an orthodox Jewish nursery who was sacked for 'living in sin' with her boyfriend has won her case of religious and sexual discrimination.

Zelda de Groen, 24, said she was subjected to a 'humiliating' interview by bosses at Gan Menachem nursery in Hendon, north London.

She said they probed her private life and told her that, at 23, she should be married and that having kids outside of marriage would 'not be tolerated'.

The tribunal heard she was hauled out of classes for the 'chat' after some parents at the Gan Menachem nursery complained about her living with her boyfriend Oz Waknin.

When she asked for an apology over the hour-long dressing down she had received, she was disciplined and sacked.

Ms de Groen, now 24 and married to Mr Waknin, successfully sued the nursery for direct and indirect religious discrimination, direct sex discrimination and harassment.

In their ruling, the tribunal panel said: 'She was dealing with senior managers who were behaving rather like an overbearing mother and elder sister.

'The effect was undoubtedly humiliating, degrading and offensive. The claimant was distraught during and after the meeting and reasonably so.

'She was being probed about her private life in ways which suggested that she was behaving badly and foolishly.

'The conduct of the [nursery] after that meeting was equally offensive and hurtful to the claimant and continued her humiliation and degradation.'

A tribunal heard parents of children complained after discovering during a nursery barbecue that Ms de Groen was living with a man she wasn't married to

She attended a private barbecue with her boyfriend Oz Waknin on May 26 last year where parents and teachers, and the nursery's founder Mendy Freundlich, chatted, and heard they were living together.

After the barbecue, up to five parents spoke to the nursery about the couple living together out of wedlock, the tribunal heard.

One parent suggested they might not allow their child to return to the over-subscribed nursery the next year if they were to be taught by her.

A month after the barbecue she was taken out of her class for an interview with headteacher Miriam Lieberman and nursery manager Dina Toron.

Miss de Groen said they made 'a continuous personal attack on my life choices', particularly her decision to live with her partner. She described their tone as 'threatening' and added: 'They told me it is not allowed to live with another person prior to marriage and that to do so is against what people in our workplace should do.

She has since married partner Oz Waknin

'I was told that having kids outside of marriage is wrong and will not be tolerated. Their comments, and the personal nature of the meeting, were humiliating.'

Following a disciplinary procedure she was sacked about a month later for bringing the nursery into disrepute, Watford Employment Tribunal heard.

Ms de Groen was brought up in an orthodox Jewish household until she was 16 when she moved to Israel.

She returned three years later but rejected ultra-orthodoxy and was trying to find a way to live as a Jew that suited her beliefs.

She had worked at the nursery for four years, rising to the position of team leader and although the nursery was run on ultra-orthodox lines many of the parents whose children went there held different beliefs within the Jewish spectrum.

During her employment Ms de Groen knew she had to comply with the 'nursery's ultra-orthodox teaching and rules while at work', the hearing was told.

Some of her colleagues and parents knew the couple were living together, but did not express concern or disapproval.

The nursery denied any discrimination and that they acted on the recommendation of their HR company.

Employment Judge Andrew Clarke QC said the couple 'made no secret of their living together' and said she was asked to lie about it.

Bosses at Gan Menachem nursery in north London could be forced to pay compensation

The panel wrote: 'We consider that Mrs Toron and Mrs Lieberman did deliberately indicate at the meeting that this might provide an acceptable solution to the problem.

'However, the claimant failed to understand that this is what the respondent wanted because lying is contrary to Orthodox Jewish beliefs (and her own beliefs) and she simply did not expect either of those two ladies to be asking her to lie. The fact remains that they were.

He added: 'It is repugnant to generally accepted standards of morality to require someone to lie, especially about matters so concerned with their protected human rights.'

The tribunal concluded that a male teacher would not have been treated in such a way and that the root of the problem was interpretation of their religion.

The panel wrote: 'The claimant can properly be said to subscribe to the Jewish faith whilst holding different particular religious beliefs from some other Jewish believers.

'The claimant was dismissed because she had co-habited, something contrary to the beliefs of some (at least) of those responsible for the management of the respondent and because she would not (untruthfully) say that she was no longer co-habiting.'

After her victory in the employment tribunal, a remedy hearing will take place at a later date where compensation will be considered.
A Labour council has been warned to invest some its pension fund offshore to protect against the risks of a Jeremy Corbyn government.

Camden Council, led by Georgia Gould, was advised by fund manager London CIV that moving cash overseas would shield the authority against 'political risks'.

It highlighted Brexit and a change in Government as particular threats to the pension fund.

The report warned Mr Corbyn taking power could mean a 'sharp repricing of assets due to concerns over renationalisation'.

Camden Council, led by Georgia Gould, was advised by fund manager London CIV that moving cash overseas would shield the authority against 'political risks'

A report warned councillors that Mr Corbyn taking power could mean a 'sharp repricing of assets due to concerns over renationalisation'

London CIV is chaired by Bob Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, and was set up to manage 5.6billion of pension funds across the capital.

A spokesman for London CIV told the Guardian, which revealed the report: 'London CIV is responsible for investing significant sums on behalf of the boroughs and therefore has a duty to consider all potential risks.

'In carrying out this duty, we are in discussions with all boroughs as to consider all risks which might potentially impact on infrastructure.

'These discussions are ongoing and the London CIV is continuing to debate with its members the shape of its infrastructure strategy. No decisions on this strategy have been made.'

The advice to Camden Council comes after businesses were told Theresa May is 'hanging by a thread' and they should prepared for a Corbyn Government.

The advice was issued by an influential city trading firm that warned Labour taking power would be a 'nightmare scenario' for the pound.

London CIV is chaired by Bob Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, and was set up to manage 5.6billion of pension funds across the capital

CME Group, an American financial market company with a major office in the City of London, issued the warnings in a briefing last month at the height of the harassment scandal sweeping Westminster.

In the CME paper, Erik Norland, the group's executive director and a senior economist, describes how the Government was 'taking the brunt' of 'allegations of inappropriate conduct within Parliament'.

'Since losing its parliamentary majority in June 2017, British Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative Party has been hanging by a thread, propped up by coalition partner, the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland,' he said.

'Given the fragility of the current government, markets should probably be thinking carefully about the next Prime Minister and the potential impact on the UK economy and currency.

'The Labour Party has moved into a small but consistent polling lead since the June election.

'When new elections take place, they could easily produce a Labour majority or a hung parliament.'
Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been killed in fighting with the Iran-aligned Houthi militia raging in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

The 75-year-old was killed outside the capital Sanaa, along with the assistant secretary-general of his General People's Congress party (GPC), party officials confirmed.

Sources in the Houthi group said fighters stopped Saleh's armoured vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher as he was fleeing the capital, and then shot him dead.

Killed: Houthi rebels reportedly stopped Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's armoured vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher, and then shot him dead near Sanaa

Footage has emerged on social media showing armed militiamen unfurling a blanket containing the dead body of the former president, while shouting, 'Praise God!'

Saleh ruled Yemen for more than three decades until he was forced to resign following an Arab Spring uprising in 2011, but remained as a key player in national politics and the subsequent civil war.

In 2014, his forces allied with the Houthis - despite the fact that as president he had gone to war with them on more than one occasion - to fight the internationally recognised government which has the support of a Saudi-led coalition.

This rebel alliance splintered last week, setting off heavy clashes between the Houthis and Saleh's forces.

After his assassination today, the leader of the Houthis accused Saleh of having joined their opponents, saying he had been killed for his 'treason'.

Civil war: Houthi fighters ride a vehicle amid clashes between the Houthis and forces loyal to ex-president Saleh, in Sanaa on Monday

Abdul-Malek al-Houthi described Saleh's killing by Houthi forces as a 'historic defeat to the forces of the coalition,' referring to the Saudi-led alliance.

Without mentioning Saleh by name, he said that he knew about the ex-President's communication with the Saudis and his efforts to turn against the Houthis. He added that he had sent several warnings to Saleh.

Earlier on Monday, Houthi forces blew up Saleh's house in Sanaa and came under aerial attack by Saudi-led coalition warplanes for a second day, residents said.

The Saudi-led air campaign, backed by U.S. and other Western arms and intelligence, has killed hundreds of civilians but has failed to secure the coalition any major gains in the nearly three-year-old campaign to restore Yemen's internationally recognised president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power.

Saleh's loyalists have lost ground on the sixth day of heavy urban warfare with the Houthis during which the death toll has jumped to at least 125 with 238 wounded, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The United Nations called for a humanitarian pause in Sanaa between the hours of 10 am and 4pm to allow civilians to leave their homes, aid workers to reach them, and the wounded to get medical care.

Houthi rebel fighters are seen riding a tank outside of the residence of Yemen's former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa on Monday

Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, said in a statement that the streets of Sanaa had become 'battlegrounds' and that aid workers 'remain in lockdown'.

McGoldrick warned the warring parties that any deliberate attacks on civilians and against civilian and medical infrastructure are 'clear violations of international humanitarian law and may constitute war crimes'.

Sanaa residents reported intense fighting overnight and into the morning with families cowering in their homes as explosions rocked the city. Coalition air strikes hammered Houthi positions in an apparent bid to shore up Saleh's forces, witnesses said.

The realignment of Saleh's forces with the Saudis would mark a significant turn in a war that is part of a wider struggle between regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Yemen's protracted bloodshed has compounded the woes of one of the Arab world's poorest countries and left at least 10,000 dead as hunger and disease have spread.

Tribesmen loyal to Houthi rebels chant slogans during a gathering aimed at mobilizing more fighters into battlefronts to fight pro-government forces, in Sanaa

At the United Nations, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the warring parties to stop all ground and air assaults. He also called for the resumption of all commercial imports into Yemen, saying millions of children, women and men were at risk of mass hunger, disease and death.

However, in a speech late on Sunday, the day before his assasination, Saleh formally annulled his alliance with the Houthis and pledged to step up his fight.

Saleh and the Shi'ite Muslim Houthis had made common cause against Hadi loyalists.

But they vied for supremacy over the territory they ran together, including Sanaa, which the Houthis seized in September 2014, and their feud burst into open combat on Wednesday.

Residents said the warring sides traded heavy automatic and artillery fire as the Houthis advanced in the central Political District on Monday.

'We lived through days of terror. Houthi tanks have been firing and the shells were falling on our neighbourhood,' said Mohammed al-Madhaji, who lives in the Political District.

'The fighting has been so violent we feel we could die at any moment. We can't get out of our homes.'
Suleyman Yalcin was hit and killed by a police van answering a 999 call

A pedestrian was hit and killed by a police van answering a 999 call.

Suleyman Yalcin, 44, got off a bus in Tottenham, north London, to have a family meal at his brother's house when he was knocked down while crossing Seven Sisters Road.

Mr Yalcin, who was originally from Turkey and lived in the Wood Green area, was hit by a marked police van in the incident at 6.45pm yesterday.

Police and paramedics from the London Ambulance Service tried to save him at the roadside, but Mr Yalcin died shortly after.

His brother Sinasi, 37, a graphic designer, said the family were 'devastated' and demanded answers from the authorities.

He told the Evening Standard: 'He was on his way to eat with us. When he didn't arrive we kept trying his phone. Then we discovered there had been in a fatal accident involving the police, we are heartbroken.

'We understand he had just got off the bus. How could this have happened? We want answers - the police have told us nothing yet.'

'He was a lovely, kind and gentle person. We can't believe he has gone.'

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has been informed and has launched an investigation.

Mr Yalcin, who lived in the Wood Green area, was hit by a marked police van in the incident at 6.45pm yesterday

Police and paramedics from the London Ambulance Service tried to save him at the roadside, but Mr Yalcin died shortly after

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: 'Officers in a marked police vehicle were en route to an emergency call when their vehicle was involved in a collision with a pedestrian in Haringey.

'The collision happened at approximately 6.45pm on Seven Sisters Road close to the junction with Elizabeth Road.

'Officers immediately provided first aid. The London Ambulance Service and London's Air Ambulance attended.

'The pedestrian was pronounced dead at the scene at 7.20pm.

'The Met's Directorate of Professional Standards and the Independent Police Complaints Commission have been informed.'
This is the horrifying moment a machete-wielding gang on mopeds stole thousands of pounds worth of watches as they raided a luxury store today.

The gang used a moped to smash through the glass front door of the Chronext store on Fleet Street in the City of London at about 11am.

Shocking footage shows one member of the gang waving a huge samurai sword while two others brandish a knife and iron bars.

Shocking footage shows one member of the gang waving a huge samurai sword (right)

Two of the gang members could be seen brandishing a knife and iron bars during the raid

Further thieves were said to have been inside the store smashing the cabinets and grabbing lots of watches and stuffing them into bags.

Witnesses claimed the criminals jumped on their scooters and punched the air in victory before driving off towards the law courts nearby.

One witness told the London Evening Standard: 'There was a Vespa inside the shop because they drove it through the front door.

'I saw about five mopeds parked up on the pavement and the street outside and there were three guys walking up and down.'

Another said: 'They came outside with bags. Then they made off towards the Royal Courts of Justice, pumping their fists in the air like some kind of victory.

'There are about 40 people here in my office. It was very frightening  people were crying in the office. It was like something you see on Netflix or in the movies.'

The machete-wielding gang on mopeds stole thousands of pounds worth of watches today

One of the gang can be seen driving off from the Chronext store on Fleet Street in London

Witnesses claimed the criminals jumped on their scooters and drove off towards the law courts

Police are currently battling an epidemic of moped-related crime in the capital

A police spokesman said: 'City of London Police were called at 10.52am on Monday 4 December to reports of suspects on mopeds entering a jewellers on Fleet Street.

'The suspects smashed their way into the jewellers brandishing weapons, including knives, before making off on mopeds. Officers are on scene. No one was injured.'

No one has been arrested following the incident. Police are currently battling an epidemic of moped-related crime in the capital.

More than 8,000 offences were carried out by criminals on mopeds in London last year. The figure is 16 times what is was five years before ago.

Thugs favour the bikes because they are easy to get away on and, if they remove their helmets, police can be reluctant to chase them in case the criminals are hurt.
A 13-year-old girl was found safe in Mexico Sunday night, after running away from home on Friday to meet a 29-year-old man she had been talking to online.

Ashlee Hattermann of Katy, Texas was located with the help of Mexican authorities, though it's unclear where exactly in the country she was found - or how.

Her parents Keith and Tiffany Hattermann said their daughter left behind a note, indicating she was on her way to meet a man she had been speaking to online for the past year.

'We found a note in her room,' Keith Hattermann told KHOU. 'She calls the guy "daddy" and herself "baby girl." (The note read) "Daddy owns my body and my soul," over and over and over again down this sheet of paper.'

Ashlee Hatermann, 13 (pictured), has been found safe after crossing the Mexican border to meet a 29-year-old man she had been talking to online

Surveillance photo showed the teen on Friday, after skipping class to take a bus to Laredo, Texas, on the Mexican border

Her parents took away her phone and limited her internet access in May, after discovering that she was sending graphic texts to the man on social media and covert messaging apps. They say they turned her phone over to the Harris County Sheriff Office's Cyber Crimes Division, but nothing ever came of the investigation.

'There's been an ongoing case since May of last school year when she was talking online with a sexual predator,' her mother told the Houston Chronicle. 'It was investigated by the Harris County Sheriff's Office and unfortunately they never followed up with it.'

A sheriff's office spokesman denied this and said the case was very much still open.

After Ashlee went missing on Friday, one of her friends came forward and said she had continued to text with the man at school on another iPhone. Her parents have no idea where she got the second iPhone.

Sunday night, local authorities in Katy, Texas announced that Ashlee had been found alive and well in Mexico

The teen's mother was the last to see the eighth grader, after dropping her off Friday morning at Thornton Middle School.

'There was nothing wrong when I dropped her off at school,' Tiffany Hattermann said. 'The only thing that threw me off was she told me she loved me when she got out of the car.'

Ashlee attended just one class before skipping school and heading to a greyhound station, where she convinced a stranger to buy a bus ticket for her to Laredo, Texas, on the Mexican border.

Surveillance footage shows her at the bus station, while the woman bought her ticket.

The woman who bought the bus ticket called police Saturday morning, when she saw news reports of the missing girl and realized she had been duped into helping her out.

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told KHOU that Ashlee told her she was trying to get back to her family in Laredo after spending the week with her boyfriend in Katy.

In addition to buying her the bus ticket, the stranger said she also bought the girl lunch.

'I asked her how old she was; she said 18,' the woman said. 'She told me she was here all week, visiting her boyfriend. She told me that [her parents] lived in Laredo and that she had been up here to visit her boyfriend and she was trying to get back to her family.'

Police released a physical description of Ashlee over the weekend and called for the public's help in locating the teen.

Late Sunday night, they got a call from Mexican authorities saying they had spotted the teen and were taking her to her father, who had flown down to Mexico City to find his daughter.

Experts have said that it appears Ashlee was being groomed for sex trafficking.

'Immediately, it had signs of trafficking 101,' Debi Tengler, chief relations officer with Arrow Child & Family ministries, told KHOU. 'Often times it can be a Romeo relationship or a daddy relationship, where they become the caretaker or protector, the one who values and appreciates that child, building a sense of security in them and often times brainwashing them against their healthy, biological family.'
The devastated family of a 15-year-old boy who was killed in a horrific jet ski incident has remembered him as a 'loveable larrikin'.

Luke Powell was killed when he was thrown from an inflatable tube being towed behind a jet ski on the Ross River in Townsville on Sunday afternoon.

Luke's mother Shelly was reportedly driving the jet ski when he was flung off the tube and onto rocks on the riverbank.

Luke's mother Shelly was reportedly driving the jet ski when he was flung off the tube and onto rocks on the riverbank

'He loved riding his motorbike, tubing, knee boarding and anything on the water,' Luke's family said

Luke suffered severe head injuries upon impact and could not be revived.

The Tec-NQ high-school student was remembered fondly by his family who struggled to come to terms with the tragedy.

'Luke was a loveable larrikin and a beautiful young man,' his family said in a statement released to the Townsville Bulletin on Sunday.

'Our family is devastated by his loss and are still trying to come to terms with the tragedy.'

Luke's family said he had a passion for sports, particularly water sports.

'He loved riding his motorbike, tubing, knee boarding and anything on the water,' they said.

According to initial reports, Luke's mother Shelly was driving the jet ski when Luke was killed.

Luke's mother Shelly was reportedly driving the jet ski when he was flung off the tube and onto rocks on the riverbank

Luke Powell was killed when he was thrown from an inflatable tube being towed behind a jet ski (pictured) on the Ross River near Loam Island in Townsville on Sunday afternoon

Inspector Mark Jackson said police investigations were underway, with the help of the Townsville Water Police and the Townsville Forensic Crash Unit.

Insp Jackson said Luke was flipped and thrown from an inflatable tube onto the riverbank when the jet ski he was towed behind attempted to execute a turn.

'As I understand it his mother was driving the jet ski so our thoughts and wishes are with her at the moment,' he said.
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From the prestigious corridors of Eton and Cambridge University to the harsh conditions of Canada's wilderness, these images tell the story of a group eccentric Britons who were among the first Europeans to explore the fabled North-West passage overland to reach the west coast of Canada.

These historic sketches and pictures help tell the story of how explorers Lord William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton, and Walter Butler Cheadle paved the way across parts of Canada previously untouched by their fellow countrymen more than 100 years ago.

Among some of the pictures includes a portrait of a Sioux Chief with teepees in the background, while another image shows the moment a chief is shot by a former Etonian adventurer Charles Alston Messiter, who had his arm broken by a chief.

Other pictures show the contrast between the end of the trail in 1860s and what it looks like today, while other show the trials and tribulations of the explorers who made their way across the country.

The end of the north west trail which led to the west side of Canada in the 1860s. Lord William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton, and Walter Butler Cheadle crossed parts of Canada previously unseen by European adventurers

Milton, Cheadle and The Boy holding weapons come across the headless Native during their search across Canada during the 1860s

The photos have been published in a book titled The Northwest Passage Overland by Ernest Coleman, who served in the Royal Navy for 36 years.

Speaking of the book, which is published by Amberley Publishing, Coleman said: 'Anyone seeking a pair of archetypal Englishmen from the middle of Queen Victoria's reign would be hard pressed to find better examples than Lord William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton, and Walter Butler Cheadle.

'Milton, the eldest son of Earl Fitzwilliam, was aged 23 and of slight build. Educated at Eton and Cambridge University, he was egocentric, delicate in health, temperamental, petulant, indolent, and easily offended.

'At the same time, however, had circumstances so provided, Milton was the type of young aristocrat who have been in the forefront of the Charge of the Light Brigade, or leading his men over the top from the trenches on the Somme or at Passchendaele.'

Milton and Dr Walter Butler Cheadle arrived in Quebec City in July 1862 and hiked up the Athabasca River. A year later, the pair were the first 'tourists' to travel through the mountainous Yellowhead Pass.

Coleman added: 'Cheadle, on the other hand, was no aristocrat, coming instead from the gentle confines of the rectory.

Milton and Dr Walter Butler Cheadle arrived in Quebec City in July 1862 and hiked up the Athabasca River. A year later, the pair were the first 'tourists' to travel through the mountainous Yellowhead Pass

An image of the Athabasca River and Valley as it stands today, around 150 years after the trio of British explorers managed to make the journey

Among some of the pictures includes a portrait of a Sioux Chief in traditional clothing with teepees in the background (left) and a photograph taken in San Francisco of Milton and Cheadle with their lawyer friend, George Walkem (right)

This image shows the adventurers wade their way across a river on horse back. Ernest Coleman, who served in the Royal Navy for 36 years, helped publish the book late last month

Barkerville in the 1860's, and the path to Richfield can be seen in the bottom left of the image. Speaking about the book, Coleman said: 'Anyone seeking a pair of archetypal Englishmen from the middle of Queen Victoria's reign would be hard pressed to find better examples than Lord William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton, and Walter Butler Cheadle'

'Neither man had experienced the rigours of a long overland journey. Milton had paid a short visit to the Canadian Red River settlement (now, Winnipeg, Manitoba), but the trials of an extended - and possibly hazardous - passage through barely explored territory lay beyond both men's experiences.

'Undeterred by this, and adopting the English practice of doing as little preparation as possible (a method that prevailed until after Captain Scott's assault on the South Pole), they set off to find an overland route to the Cariboo goldfields of British Columbia.'

The Northwest Passage Overland was published by Amberley Publishing and is available here.

The chief, who has just broken Etonian adventurer Charles Alston Messiter's arm with a club, is shot in the chest
A British police force says it has no record of a mysterious call allegedly made to a local newspaper just minutes before US President John F Kennedy was assassinated.

Official FBI documents claimed a senior reporter at the Cambridge News received an anonymous tip-off less than half an hour before the assassination on November 22, 1963.

The caller is said to have told the journalist to call the American Embassy in London for 'some big news'.

Police say they have no record of a call alleged made to a British local newspaper befores US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated

A memo, which was declassified on October 26, said the reporter informed the police about the call, and they in turn informed MI5.

But Cambridge Constabulary has today said it has no record of the call after being sent a Freedom of Information request to check its records.

The BBC asked about the call from a newspaper reporter, and any subsequent calls made by police to MI5, but the force could find nothing.

A spokesman for Cambridgeshire Police said: 'Searches were conducted at Cambridgeshire Constabulary for information relating to your request.

'These searches failed to locate any records or documents relevant to the request.'

The force concluded it '[does] not hold the information'.

President Kennedy was shot by Communist sympathiser Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor window of a book depository in Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Documents declassified by the FBI in October revealed a call had been made to the paper

Kennedy was riding in a presidential motorcade at the time of the attack at 12:30 Central Standard Time, which is six hours behind Greenwich Mean Time.

The declassified document linking the incident with Cambridge said the British Security Service had reported a call was made to the senior reporter of the newspaper.

It read: 'The important point is that the call was made, according to MI5 calculations, about 25 minutes before the President was shot.

'The Cambridge reporter had never received a call of this kind before, and MI5 state that he is known to them as a sound and loyal person with no security record.'

Experts on the assassination said Albert Osborne, a suspected Soviet agent and Baptist preacher from Grimsby, was on a bus with Lee Harvey Oswald from Texas to Mexico City in the weeks before JFK was shot dead in Dallas.

Osborne was said to have been in Lincolnshire with his sister when JFK died and researcher Dick Russell said in his book The Man Who Knew Too Much that the Cambridge News call was made 'a short distance from Grimsby'.

It has been suggested Albert Osborne, a suspected Soviet agent from Grimsby, could have made the call. He is said to have been with Lee Harvey Oswald before the killing

But a reporter who worked at the Cambridge News in 1963 previously said the JFK claims were false.

Rodney Tibbs, 83, who was working as a reporter at the time, said the call 'could never have happened'.

A freedom of information request was made to Cambridgeshire police over the call

'The proof is that no story of that nature was ever published at the time,' he said.

'No such call was received as far as I'm concerned. You wouldn't just sit on a story like that.

'If we were onto something it would have been a front page lead. You would have got yourself the best trump page lead you were ever going to get.'

Mr Tibbs said the newspaper received a call a couple of years after the event asking whether they had received a tip-off, but they could 'never stand it up'.

'We asked around the newsroom but no one knew anything about it,' he said.

'It would have been all over the office if something like that had ever happened.'
The boss of T in the Park has hinted the major music festival might not return after three people died at the event last year.

Geoff Ellis has dropped the strongest hint yet that it could be all over for the highlight of Scotland's music calendar.

The DF Concerts boss, who launched the iconic event in 1994, said any replacement camping event would be 'very different'.

It comes after the festival was forced to move out of its traditional home at Balado, near Kinross, amid health and safety fears about a pipeline running underneath the site.

The boss of the T in the Park festival in Scotland (pictured) has hinted that the event might not return

The popular festival attracts thousands of fans and some of the world's most successful artists (Calvin Harris performing on the main stage in 2016)

Thousands of young music fans braved the wet conditions and made their way to the festival's main stage

And in 2016, the body of a father of three was found after he left the festival and two teenagers died. A teenage girl was also raped last year.

James Richardson, 29, from Wishaw, Lanarkshire, was found dead and pathologists judged he had almost certainly taken drugs.

The discovery in July last year came after Megan Bell, 17, and Peter MacCallum, 17, died in separate incidents at the festival. It is believed the deaths were all drug-related.

Hours earlier, an 18-year-old girl was raped following a night in the festival's Slam Tent.

And speaking to Events Base magazine, Mr Ellis said it could at least two years before any decision is made on a new show, which would be aimed at an older audience.

On Friday, his Glasgow-based TRNSMT festival - held on the traditional T in the Park weekend in July - was named best new event at the UK Festival Awards in London.

Last month, it was announced that TRNSMT will return in 2018, spread across two weekends.

However, DF Concerts has so far kept tight-lipped about T in the Park's future.

The long-running festival was shelved after two problematic years at its new home in Strathallan Castle.

Mr Ellis said: 'I think what we come back with will be something very different.

'If you take two years out of the market and you go back in, you probably want to refresh everything.

'That's not to say we won't be back with a camping festival - at some point we will be back with a camping festival - but we're not jumping up and down to do it in 2018.'

He added: 'Whatever we do in the future, I think we will probably aim it at an older market as well.

'With the last three or four years of T in the Park, we were seeing people not coming back year-on-year, whereas people did the surveys and said: 'Yeah I had a great time, I can't wait to be back next year.'

The DF Concerts boss, who launched the iconic event in 1994, said any replacement camping event would be 'very different'

Musicians Alex Turner (left) and Miles Kane of The Last Shadow Puppets performed on the main stage in 2016

DJ Norman Cook, known as Fatboy Slim, was seen performing to thousands of fans in 2015

'It's not because they didn't have a good time, but because they've done it, they've ticked the box and they want to go somewhere else.'

Mr Ellis added: 'As a festival organiser, that's something you've got to learn quickly because it used to be about making sure people had a good time and wanted to come back next year. Now it's about getting a whole new audience (each time).'

But the flit to Strathallan Castle was plagued by traffic and antisocial behaviour problems, as well as the cost of protecting nesting ospreys.

'It's been the most trying time of my professional life,' said Mr Ellis. 'I think that's true of everybody in the company.

'The risk is infinitesimal that the pipeline could blow up. An independent report concluded that there was a likelihood of failure at one-in-four-and-a-half million years, so you are as likely to be eaten by a dinosaur.'

A new music event is being planned for Scone Palace in May 2018.

Organisers Festival Republic, which ran Glastonbury for 10 years, are keeping details of the show under wraps.
The body of a missing four-year-old girl has been found in a pond near her home, police have said.

Chelsea Noel, who had autism, sparked a huge search when she was reported missing after leaving her home in Port St. Lucie, Florida, on Saturday night.

Authorities believe the youngster drowned after becoming disorientated and running straight into the pond.

The body of four-year-old Chelsea Noel has been recovered from a lake near her home

'It is a tremendous tragedy,' Port St. Lucie Police Chief John Bolduc said last night. 'The family is very distraught...It is the biggest tragedy I can think of.

'It looks like the child got out of the house and went right to this lake.'

Chelsea's father Remy called police at around 9:50pm on Saturday after discovering she was no longer at their home.

Dozens of officers, sniffer dogs and a helicopter were involved in the search for the girl, who was described as a non-verbal special needs child.

Her body was recovered from the pond just three blocks from her home by divers, who were called after she was spotted by a US Marshall in a kayak at around 11pm last night.

Divers were called to recover the body after it was spotted by a US Marshall on a kayak

Authorities look for Chelsea's body in the pond. Dozens of officers were involved in the search operation which began on Saturday night

Chief Bolduc told reporters that although investigations were ongoing, Chelsea's death was not being treated as suspicious.

He thanked officers and volunteers who aided the search.

'I can't say enough about the cooperation of the community and law enforcement,' he said.
Arkansas parents are set to be charged after they enlisted the help of their three children to steal jewelry from a store northwest of Little Rock Wednesday.

Authorities reveal at least $30,000 worth of jewelry was stolen from Bella Jeweler's in Rogers.

The couple were caught on a surveillance video urging their young children to break into a case at the shop.

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Arkansas parents (mother pictured here) are set to be charged after they enlisted the help of their three children to steal jewelry from a store northwest of Little Rock

The director of Bella Jewelers was devastated at the situation saying 'it's a real tragedy that they would use their kids to commit this crime,' according to Fox.

'For us, that's the most heartbreaking part,' she continued.

In the video, that the store has released, the woman is seen pointing at items in the display case that her young son allegedly steals from later on.

Authorities reveal at least $30,000 worth of jewelry was stolen from Bella Jeweler's in Rogers, (pictured here) the father is seen here walking away from the store

'The woman kind of kept a look out while her youngest son went around to steal the jewelry,' Martinez said.

'As she realized that nobody was there, and she got more confident, she started directing him to go back multiple times, and steal more and more jewelry.'

The identity of the parents is currently unknown, but authorities say that when they are caught, there will be charges.

Officer Keith Foster said the charge includes contributing to delinquency of a minor and a court will determine the fate of the children.

The mother allegedly checked the coast was clear before urging her son (pictured here) to steal from the jewelry store

'The juvenile system tries to figure out now what's gonna be in the best interest of the kids, how can we help them make sure this type of stuff doesn't happen again, and whatever the adult system decides for the parents,' he stated.

The store asked for help on their official Facebook page: 'REWARD: $1000 for information leading to the arrest of suspects: Man, dark skin, believed to be the father, Woman, light skinned with baby in arms and two young boys.'

'The woman used her young children to steal jewelry from us. Help us identify them or find them and put an end to this child abuse. You will be rewarded,' it said.

Despite the incident Martinez is hopeful: 'We have a lot of pride in our stores, and what we do. So yes, it is a minor setback, but it's a challenge we know we'll overcome,' she said.
Sir David Attenborough has urged Donald Trump not to pull out of the Paris Climate deal because of the devastating effect man is having on the planet.

Sir David, 91, pleaded with the US president, after calling for action to save 'the future of humanity'.

In an episode of Blue Planet II - which came to an end last night - he opened up about the destructive influence of mankind on the natural world.

He described an albatross as it lay dying after its mother accidentally fed it a plastic toothpick.

Sir David Attenborough urged the US president not to pull out of the Paris Climate deal because of the devastating effect plastic is having on the ocean

Referring to the Paris Climate Agreement, the US president said at the time: 'This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States'. The president is pictured yesterday speaking with reporters at the White House

Sir David said: 'Let us hope that Trump will eventually recognise that the Paris Agreement was not about Pittsburgh, or even Paris, but the entire planet.'

He added: 'Never before have we been so aware of what we are doing to our planet - and never before have we had such power to do something about it.

'Surely we have a responsibility to care for the planet on which we live? The future of humanity, and indeed of all life on Earth, now depends on us doing so.

There are concerns that more than a million birds and 100,000 sea mammals and turtles die every year from eating and getting tangled in plastic waste

Sir David described the moment a baby albatross died after eating a plastic toothpick. Pictured: Scientists have discovered the birds are inadvertently feeding their chicks plastic

The Blue Plant crew recreated a scene where 7,000 plastic toys ended up in the water after falling from a ship during a storm in 1992

'Plastic is now found everywhere in the ocean, from its surface to its greatest depths.

'There are fragments of nets so big they entangle the heads of fish, birds and turtles, and slowly strangle them.

'Other pieces of plastic are so small that they are mistaken for food and eaten, accumulating in fishes' stomachs, leaving them undernourished.'

There are concerns that more than a million birds and 100,000 sea mammals and turtles die every year from eating and getting tangled in plastic waste.

KEY GOALS OR THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT A long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels The Paris Agreement on Climate Change has four main goals with regards to reducing emissions: 1) A long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels 2) To aim to limit the increase to 1.5C, since this would significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change 3) Goverments agreed on the need for global emissions to peak as soon as possible, recognising that this will take longer for developing countries 4) To undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with the best available science Advertisement

One of the key goals of the Paris Agreement is to limit the increase in global temperatures to 1.5C.

But Trump, who has expressed doubts that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are the prime cause of global warming, announced in June that he intended to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and instead promote U.S. coal and oil industries.

He said at the time: 'This agreement is less about the climate and more about other countries gaining a financial advantage over the United States.'

And last month it was revealed that the US president was not invited to the Climate Summit next week.

Over a hundred countries, as well as non governmental organizations, have been invited for the December 12 summit.

Sir David added: 'Our wellbeing is inextricably bound up with the health of the oceans.'

He said 'all is not yet lost' and told people to 'reduce the amount of plastic that we use in our everyday lives'.

Sir David praised countries for coming together in 2015 to sign the Paris Agreement, but added: 'It is true that since then the United States has threatened to withdraw from that decision.'
Polish-born Britain First supporter Marek Zakrocki drove at a curry house owner after saying he wanted to 'kill a Muslim'

A Britain First supporter drove his van at a curry house boss hours after telling police: 'I'm going to kill a Muslim, I'm doing this for Britain.'

Marek Zakrocki, 48, aimed his white work van at Kamal Ahmed outside Spicy Nights restaurant in Harrow, north London in June.

The attack came just four days after a suspected terror attack near the Finsbury Park Mosque left a Muslim worshipper dead - and on the anniversary of the Brexit vote.

CCTV cameras filmed Zakrocki making nazi salutes and shouting about 'white power' before he missed Mr Ahmed and crashed into the window of the Tandoori just after 8.30pm on 23 June.

Zakrocki, who had earlier assaulted his wife Ewa Zakrocka at their Harrow home, told a police officer at the scene: 'I'm going to kill a Muslim, I'm doing this for Britain.

'This is the way I will help the country, you people can't do anything.'

Officers later found a Nazi coin and two Britain First magazines at Zakrocki's home.

The incident happened outside this Indian restaurant in Harrow, north London in June

The window fitter admitted donating money to the anti-Muslim group, the group which was thrust into the international spotlight by tweets by US President Donald Trump last week.

Mr Ahmed's brother Taj confronted Zakrocki when he blocked the road outside Spicy Nights with his van and started shouting at a Somalian woman at around 8.30pm.

Prosecutor Denis Barrie told the Old Bailey: 'The defendant went into the van. He then started the engine and mounted the pavement, twice making contact with the front of the restaurant. It's clear he wasn't driving all that fast.

'The prosecution case that is supported by everything else Mr Zakrocki had done during the course of the day is that he wasn't only aiming at the restaurant, he was aiming at Mr Ahmed.'

Mr Barrie said: 'Because of the time that all this took place, the police took what had happened particularly seriously and there was a hard stop by armed police officers.'

He told the court that Britain First, formed by former members of the BNP, was anti-Muslim and held views that were regarded by most people as 'very extreme indeed'.

Police investigating the attack found Britain First literature at Zakrocki's house. The prosecutor told the court the group were considered 'very extreme' by most people. File photo

Zakrocki, of Harrow, admitted one count of battery against Mrs Zakrocka and one of dangerous driving.

Other charges including attempted murder, which he denied, were earlier dropped. He is due to be sentenced later today.

Donald Trump triggered a global backlash last week when he retweeted unverified videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of British First.
Catalonia's pro-independence parties will lose their parliamentary majority in the regional election on December 21, an official poll showed on Monday.

In 2015, the independence parties won 47.8 percent of the vote, which allowed them to form the largest bloc in the region's parliament.

And the latest polls show support for secessionists hovering well below 50 percent, potentially putting another majority out of reach.

It comes as uncertainty surrounds many of the key players in the vote, with leaders incarcerated or abroad.

People attend a concert organised by the pro-independence Catalan National Assembly (ANC) to demand the release of jailed Catalan cabinet members currently in custody, at Plaza Espanya square in Barcelona, Spain, December 3, 2017

Jordi Turull, Oriol Junqueras, Carles Puigdemont, (left to right) are seen during the minute of silence, while a man raising in the air a Catalonia scarf. Both Junqueras and Puigdemont are currently incarcerated

Pro-indepence party Junts per Catalunya was predicted to take 25 to 26 seats, ERC another 32 seats and extreme-left party CUP 9 seats, according to the poll carried out by Sociological Research Centre (CIS).

That would give the pro-independence camp just 67 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament, or 48 percent, stripping them of the previous slim majority.

The government's People's Party (PP) would win just 7 seats while the Socialists would take 21 and the market friendly Ciudadanos 31 or 32 seats, the poll showed.

CatComu-Podem, the Catalan arm of the anti-austerity Podemos party, could win 9 seats, according to the survey.

Unlike 2015, pro-independence parties are running on separate lists.

Catalonia's sacked vice president Oriol Junqueras and three other separatist leaders will remain in prison pending a probe over their role in the region's independence drive, a Spanish judge decided Monday, as the critical Catalan elections approach.

A week before the elections, a Belgian judge will decide whether to grant a European arrest warrant and send axed Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont (pictured) back to Spain on sedition charges

Six other former ministers who were also remanded in custody last month will be released on bail of 100,000 each as an investigation into charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds continues, the Madrid court said in a statement.

Junqueras hopes to lead his ERC party, which is ahead in the polls, to victory on December 21.

A week before the elections, a Belgian judge will decide whether to grant a European arrest warrant and send axed Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont back to Spain on sedition charges, lawyers said on Monday.

Lawyers for Puigdemont and four of his former ministers, who all fled to Belgium in October despite a summons to appear in court in Spain, argued in a Brussels court that they would not get a fair trial.

Puigdemont launched his campaign last month from Brussels with a flurry of high-profile media appearances and a demand that he be returned as the 'legitimate' president of Catalonia.

His lawyer said at the weekend he will remain in Belgium until after the Catalan elections, which indicates he will campaign from there.

'No matter what, they will be (in Brussels) till at least December 21 and according to my calculations this could go on till mid-January,' lawyer Jaume Alonso Cuevillas told Catalan radio Rac1.

'I am convinced that no matter what happens they will have recourse to an appeal.'

Spain is seeking to have Puigdemont and four of his former ministers who also fled with him sent back to face charges over their role in the independence drive.

People attend a concert organised by the pro-independence Catalan National Assembly (ANC) to demand the release of jailed Catalan cabinet members currently in custody

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (pictured) and fellow opponents of Catalan independence have hitched their hopes on a record turnout on December 21 to return a legislature in favour of unity with Spain

The news sparked outrage among independence supporters.

'We want you back home,' tweeted Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell, who is also under investigation over her role in Catalonia's secession drive.

'We will turn sadness into energy and we won't stop until you are free.'

Madrid wants the elections to 'restore normality' to the wealthy northeastern region, which declared independence unilaterally following a referendum that went ahead on October 1 despite a court ban.

Puigdemont, Junqueras and other former ministers are candidates for the elections.

This means the campaign will take an unprecedented turn, with candidates both 'in exile' and in prison.

Separatist parties have repeatedly accused Madrid of taking 'political prisoners' and 'repression' after their independence declaration fell flat, and the decision to keep some Catalan leaders in jail is likely to magnify those claims.

But generally, Catalans remain deeply split on independence, and several polls suggest pro-secession parties might struggle to win enough seats to form a new regional government.

'From now until December 21, the dispute in the pro-independence camp is going to get worse and they will exchange blows,' said Oriol Bartomeus, a political science professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

'They could open up a rift that prevents them returning an overall majority.'

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and fellow opponents of Catalan independence have hitched their hopes on a record turnout on December 21 to return a legislature in favour of unity with Spain.
Barack Obama has called for more female politicians to be elected to office 'because men seem to be having some problems these days'.

The former US president made the comment while talking to media leaders, financiers and academics at a private event in Paris on Saturday.

He appeared to be referring to a recent wave of sexual allegations that have been made against high-profile men in both the politics and showbusiness worlds.

Barack Obama speaks at the private event, organized by Les Napoleons, in Paris on Saturday

'Not to generalize but women seem to have a better capacity than men do, partly because of their socialization,' Mr Obama said at the event, organized by a group called Les Napoleons.

The former Commander-in-Chief also took a shot at his successor Donald Trump's stance on climate change, commenting that there is currently 'a temporary absence of American leadership in the area'.

His remark comes after Mr Trump announced he was pulling the US out of the Paris Climate accord earlier this year.

Mr Obama also criticized the European Union during his speech arguing that the bloc had a tendency to micro-manage.

He said: 'The European Union needs to recognise that micro-managing every single aspect of life within Europe gets people frustrated.

The former US president called for more women to be elected to office 'because men seem to be having some problems these days'

'So there are ways of streamlining and improving the functioning of the European Union, but the European project itself, the Union itself is something that is worth preserving.'

Before speaking at the invitation-only event, Mr Obama had a private lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.

Last week the former president was in India, where he met the Dalai Lama to discuss 'compassion and altruism'.
President Donald Trump rushed to Michael Flynn's defense on Monday morning, accusing the feds of destroying his former national security adviser's life.

Trump told reporters he feels 'very badly' for Flynn, a retired general who served in his White House for a brief period after the inauguration.

The president compared Flynn to Hillary Clinton, his former opponent for president and a former secretary of state, claiming that 'she lied many times, nothing happened to her.'

'Flynn lied, and it's like they ruined his life. It was very unfair,' he said.

The ex-White House official pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the election.

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President Donald Trump rushed to Michael Flynn's defense on Monday morning, accusing the feds of destroying his former national security adviser's life

'Flynn lied, and it's like they ruined his life. It was very unfair,' Trump said on Monday. Flynn is seen on Friday in Washington leaving his plea deal hearing

The ex-White House official pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the election

The plea deal for one count of lying suggests that Mueller believes substantive information on Trump's inner circle can be gleaned from Flynn.

Trump said this weekend in a tweet that he fired Flynn in February because the official lied to Vice President and the FBI. The statement that the White House now claims was the work of Trump's personal lawyer, John Down, offered new insight into Flynn's departure.

Trump compared Flynn to Hillary Clinton , his former opponent for president, claiming that 'she lied many times, nothing happened to her'

Previously, the president argued that Flynn was dismissed for misleading Pence about talks with the Russian government about the easing of sanctions. He did not claim then that Flynn, a director of national intelligence in the Obama administration, was being excised for lying to the FBI, which is a federal crime.

Flynn was known to have had a conversation with the FBI on his way out that raised red flags within the bureau and led acting Department of Justice head Sally Yates to contact the White House's Office of Legal Counsel.

The investigation into payments he received for lobbying work that he did not disclose to the federal government and his conversations during the transition with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak were not publicly reported until later.

Former FBI Director James Comey claims that Trump requested that he drop the inquiry into Flynn just after the retired general's resignation. Trump said this past weekend in tweets that the conversation never happened.

'I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!' Trump said on Sunday.

He said in a Dec. 2 tweet: 'I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!'

Trump said earlier this year that he did not tell Flynn to discuss sanctions with the Russian government but would have told him to engage because that was his national security adviser's job.

'No, I didn't direct him, but I would have directed him if he didn't do it,' he said in his first solo White House press conference on Feb. 16.

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowksi, who was kicked off the team before Flynn was brought in but remains close to the president, told NBC on Monday just before the president's statement to the press that he does not believe the directive to talk about sanctions came from the top.

'I don't think so, and Mike has never said that that's been the case, either,' he said.

ABC News reported last week that Trump personally told Flynn to contact the Russians during the transition, and he was prepared to say so in testimony. The spotty reporting, based on a single source, has since been called into question and the journalist involved has been suspended for erroneously claiming that Trump was a candidate when he gave the order.

Court documents from Flynn's plea deal indicate that a 'very senior member' of the transition was involved in the conversations, however, and they included a plot to undermine the foreign policy of Barack Obama.

Flynn spoke to Kislyak about a United Nations resolution the Israelis wanted to kill, a potential violation of the Logan Act, as Trump was not yet the United States president.

It is a crime under the Logan Act for private citizens to negotiate with foreign governments without U.S. permission.

This tweet by Donald Trump led to accusations that the president had obstructed justice after allegedly telling James Comey to back off Michael Flynn while also knowing that Flynn lied to the FBI. But now the White House says his personal lawyer made the tweet

Trump insisted in weekend tweets that it's Clinton the Department of Justice should be chasing, reigniting a rivalry between himself and the Democrat who challenged him last year for president.

He said a lead agent on the case had 'tainted' the previous probe and was 'very dishonest' as he accused another FBI official's wife of taking cash for a failed bid for elected office from Clinton.

'After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness,' Trump stated.

The tirade came after Mueller dismissed deputy head of counterintelligence, Peter Strzok, from his investigation for sending anti-Trump messages. Strozk had also played a lead role in the Clinton email case.

Trump is on his way to Utah for an event today. He stopped to talk to press this morning on the South Lawn of the White House over the roar of Marine One.

Asked about Flynn as he walked away, Trump stopped to say: 'I feel badly for General Flynn. I feel very badly. He's led a very strong life, and I feel very badly.

'I will say this: Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and they destroyed his life. I think it's a shame.'

Trump said this weekend in a tweet that he fired Flynn in February because the official lied to Vice President and the FBI. The statement that the White House now claims was the work of Trump's personal lawyer, John Dowd, offered new insight into Flynn's departure

Trump wondered at the fact that Clinton was allowed to give testimony in her email case to the FBI in the summer of 2016 when she was not under oath. He accused her of lying to federal agents and getting away with it.

'It was the most incredible thing anyone has ever seen,' Trump said. 'She lied many times. Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and it's like they ruined his life. It's very unfair.'

Clinton was never charged with a crime, despite a finding that she had been reckless with sensitive material. Trump supporters' belief that it was a miscarriage of justice gave way to the rallying cry, 'Lock her up!'

Flynn memorably led the chanting at last year's Republican National Convention - an irony that has not been lost on Democrats in light of his current situation.

Trump fired former FBI chief Comey in May, supposedly on the advice of his deputy attorney general, for bungling Clinton's email case a year prior.

Comey gave Clinton a pass for her unauthorized home-brewed server and private email account, even though he accused her in a July presser of being 'extremely careless' with classified information.

He reopened the case into Clinton days before the election only to slam it shut again, angering voters and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum.

The fired law enforcement official has been a key target of Trump's ire as the federal investigation into election meddling plods on. Trump has repeatedly that no one on his campaign colluded with the Russian government.

Trump said he had Russia on his mind when he fired Comey in May but it was the Clinton investigation that led to the law enforcement official's demise.

The canning of Comey instigated the special counsel probe that's hounding Trump's administration now. Trump faces possible charges of obstruction of justice if it is found that he fired Comey for reasons other than a lack of competency.

Communications director Hope Hicks is the latest aide to Trump to be drawn into the special counsel operation that has Flynn and three other former campaign officials, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, in its cross-hairs. She's believed to have interviewed with Mueller's team sometime before Dec 1.

Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, has also spoken to federal investigators.

Reince Priebus, the former former White House chief of staff, and Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary, have been probed for information, as well.
A 29-year-old teacher was arrested after she allegedly had sex with a 16-year-old student in a park this past spring.

Alyssia Marie Reddy was arrested Friday for institutional sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communication facility and corruption of a minor by Pennsylvania police.

Reddy was an English teacher at the Pennington School in Pennington, New Jersey, an elite school serving grades six through 12, which charges $38,100 per year for tuition.

She and the student allegedly crossed the Delaware River to have sex in a park along Route 32 in Solebury Township, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 2017.

A 29-year-old teacher was arrested after she allegedly had sex with a 16-year-old student in a park this past spring. Alyssia Marie Reddy (left and right) was arrested Friday for institutional sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communication facility and corruption of a minor by Pennsylvania police

According to police records, Reddy gave the student at the Pennington School in Pennington, New Jersey (pictured), her cell phone number and then added him on Snapchat in December 2016. The student said that he received messages from Reddy in February 2017 saying: 'I want your hands on me'

According to police records, Reddy gave the student her cell phone number and then added him on Snapchat in December 2016, reported NBC10.

The student said that he received messages from Reddy in February 2017 saying: 'I want your hands on me.'

About three weeks after that, Reddy picked up the student from a friend's house in Solebury, Pennsylvania, drove him to a nearby park and had sex with him, according to the police report.

A report was filed with police on November 20 of this year and authorities conducted an investigation that determined the teacher had sex with the minor.

Reddy, who currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland, is being held there while waiting to be extradited to Pennsylvania, police say.

About three weeks after that, Reddy picked up the student from a friend's house in Solebury, Pennsylvania, drove him to a nearby park and had sex with him, according to the police report (Pictured, the Pennington School)

A report was filed with police on November 20 of this year and authorities conducted an investigation that determined the teacher had sex with the minor. Reddy, who was working as a history teacher at St Paul's School for Girls in Maryland (pictured), has been fired and banned from campus

The Pennington School said in a letter to parents that it had been 'recently made aware of an alleged inappropriate relationship involving a former Upper School teacher of The Pennington School in the 2016-17 school year,' the Trentonian reported.

The school said that 'the matter was promptly reported to the Mercer County Prosecutor's office.'

Reddy, who was working as a history teacher at St Paul's School for Girls in Maryland, has been fired and banned from campus, Fox 43 reported.

According to the Trentonian, on Reddy's Facebook page, she appeared to post many pictures of who appears to be her husband and her two young children.
If you drive in London, you're at more risk of a parking fine than anywhere else in the UK, with the capital raking in more than 24million from fines in just three months.

Across 10 of its 32 boroughs, 549,009 Parking Charge Notices were issued from July to September this year, with traffic wardens pouncing as quickly as 12 minutes after tickets ran out.

Almost a quarter - 23 per cent - of the fines were slapped on cars parked near West End theatres in Shaftesbury Avenue and Great Windmill Street.

Edinburgh was the second-most likely place for motorists to be fined over parking, with the city's 58,994 penalties accounting for 65 per cent of all those issued in Scotland.

Third was Glasgow, where 33,693 were meted out over the three months as revealed in an interactive map - which can be viewed here - created by insurance comparison site comparethemarket.com

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Their list was compiled after the company submitted Freedom of Information requests to every council in the UK.

The top 10 riskiest areas also included Birmingham, where 32,991 penalties were imposed and drivers were hit as quickly as 21 minutes after tickets expired.

But drivers had up to four hours' leeway in Liverpool, which came eighth in the list despite traffic wardens' comparatively relaxed approach.

Leeds, where 23,734 drivers were fined, also made the list along with Wolverhampton, and Newcastle upon Tyne.

Between them the councils issued 707,000 tickets, with the average fine set at 70.

The interactive map also pinpoints the streets or car parks where the most fines were issued.

Simon McCulloch, Director at comparethemarket.com said: 'Our parking fines hotspots research has revealed that motorists need to be extra vigilant when it comes to something as simple as parking their vehicle correctly, if they want to avoid a hefty fine.

'With Christmas on the horizon, a 70 parking fine would be a very unwelcome present.

'Penalty Charge Notices can be issued for several reasons. It could be for parking somewhere you shouldnt, failing to show a valid parking ticket, or displaying an expired ticket.

'Other offences include breaking traffic rules, such as going against a "no right turn" sign, or driving in a bus lane. With the cost of driving getting more and more expensive, unexpected cost like a parking fine can be difficult to swallow.

'As we embark on the festive period and face unfamiliar roads to visit friends and family, we need to pay extra close attention  street signs can often be discreet and easy to miss, but the information should be clearly stated, and parking payment meters never too far away.

'If you do find yourself with a PCN, its worth checking your ticket, as you can often reduce the fee by half, simply by paying it within seven or 14 days, depending on your local council. You should also consider appealing against the PCN, but only if you feel that you have been unfairly ticketed.'
Former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn's guilty plea Friday  the second among Trump insiders  is leading to heightened concern among White House staff that their own conversations could get recorded by other cooperators.

Flynn struck a plea deal with prosecutors and was charged with a single count of lying to the FBI on Friday.

The plea agreement released by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office states that Flynn could get reduced jail time for 'participating in covert law enforcement activities'  raising the possibility that he already has been assisting authorities in getting former colleagues to talk.

A prior guilty plea, by former campaign foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos, was only reveaeled to the public in October. He had been cooperating with authorities for months, and gave numerous interviews to prosecutors after it was revealed that he had lied to the FBI about his interactions with a professor with Kremlin contacts.

Mike Flynn's guilty plea has rasied concerns among current White House staff who might have been caught up on a wire, after a plea deal where he promised 'full cooperation'

'Everyone is paranoid,' a person close to the White House told Politico. 'Everyone thinks they're being recorded.'

Lawyers representing current and former White House staff told the publication they contacted their clients after the Flynn and Papadopoulos plea deals to ask if they had any conversations with their ex-colleagues that could have been taped.

Providing a measure of reassurance is a prohibition on wiretapping someone being represented by a lawyer on the matter being recorded.

Flynn could get a reduced sentence for ''participating in covert law enforcement activities'

Many of Trump's most trusted aides have lawyered up in connection with Mueller's Russia probe.

White House lawyer Ty Cobb, who has made optimistic predictions about when the probe would end, told the publication he wasn't concerned about Papadopoulos or Flynn being used to tape other officials.

'Mueller is too good a professional and too good a prosecutor to tape represented individuals and he doesn't want his office or his important mission to be tainted,' Cobb said, noting the legal and ethical constraints.

Flynn will provide 'full cooperation' to Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his Russia probe after his stunning guilty plea in federal court Friday morning.

Guilty: Criminal liar Mike Flynn arrives at court in Washington D.C. to plead guilty to lying to the FBI, an offense carrying up to five years in prison

'My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the special counsels office reflect a decision I made in the best interest of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions,' Flynn said in a statement.

Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., in the latest bombshell development in the Russia investigation that has ensnared leading advisors of President Donald Trump.

Although he pleaded guilty to just a single count, it is what Flynn was prepared to tell investigators that immediately exploded across the political landscape.

Flynn said in his statement Friday he was 'working to set things right.'

'After over thirty-three years of military service to our country including five years in combat away from my family and then my decision to continue to serve the United States, it has been extraordinarily painful to endure these many months of false accusations of treason and other outrageous acts,' Flynn said.

'Such false accusations are contrary to everything Ive ever done and stood for,' Flynn said.

'But I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong. Through my faith in God I am working to set things right. My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the special counsels office reflect a decision I made in the best interest of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions,' he continued.
Aisha Francis, 19, pictured at Aylesbury Crown Court today, received an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months

A 19-year-old infatuated young offenders' prison guard who wrote secret love letters and made phone calls to an inmate was spared jail today.

Aisha Francis worked as an operational support guard at Aylesbury Young Offenders' Institution in Buckinghamshire when she began a relationship with inmate Gino Sawyer.

An illegal mobile phone was removed from the 22-year-old's cell and records later revealed the extent of his contact with Francis, of Hillingdon, West London.

But Francis, who admitted misconduct in a public office, received an eight-month jail sentence, suspended for 18 months, after a court heard she was 'gullible'.

Angus Robertson, prosecuting, said love letters were also found in Francis' home and in Sawyer's cell, which the former signed off in Spanish as 'Senorita'.

Between November 10, 2016 and March 31 this year, the pair had exchanged 472 text messages and 197 phone calls - some more than an hour long.

Francis, who was sentenced at Aylesbury Crown Court today, was dismissed from her job in the Prison Service as soon as her love affair came to light.

Sawyer, who began his sentence at the institution on July 14, 2015, had his sentence extended when he admitted possessing the prohibited mobile phone.

Francis (left) wrote secret love letters and made phone calls to an inmate - but was spared jail

Mr Robertson said Francis's role did not generally require face-to-face contact with inmates but she sometimes responded to lags ringing their buzzers late at night at the closed prison, which houses about 450 men aged between 18 and 22 years.

Francis was also ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work and pay costs of 200, plus a 140 victim surcharge.

She started working at the prison on June 16 last year, having embarked on a gap year on leaving school, as she tried to decide upon a future career.

Mr Robertson explained that the incriminating phone was found in Sawyer's cell during a routine search, which was seized and further examinations carried out on it.

Two saved text messages were initially found saved on Sawyer's Sim card - one which said 'My bad ex' and another saying 'That was a long time ago' - both to a number which turned out to belong to Francis.

Francis was arrested on March 31 as police seized her phone and searched her home, where they found two love letters written by Sawyer.

'A further search of Mr Sawyer's cell revealed two letters written to Mr Sawyer and signed off in Spanish, which translated to 'I love you, love Senorita',' said Mr Robertson.

Francis was dismissed from her job in the Prison Service as soon as her love affair came to light

He told the judge that the letter found in Francis' room was also signed off in Spanish, reading 'My angel, love GI [sic].'

Revealing the phone evidence he continued: 'In summary it shows that the defendant had 669 contacts with Mr Sawyer, the majority of those contacts were text messages.

'There were 197 phone calls made from the defendant to Mr Sawyer, some of those exceeded an hour in length.

'It appears most of those calls were made by Ms Francis when she was not in work. In summary the total hours in terms of phones were in November (2016), just under eight hours, in December four and a half hours and in January (this year) about six hours.

'Those are the calls that Ms Francis makes to Mr Sawyer. His phone shows that in November he spoke to her for four hours 41 minutes, December four and a half hours. This is a relationship case, a communications case.'

There was no suggestion that Francis smuggled Mr Sawyer's phone into the prison or brought him any prohibited items, other than the letters.

Nathan Alleyne-Brown, defending, told the court that Francis had got a job as an office administrator since her dismissal from the prison service.

Francis worked as an operational support guard at Aylesbury Young Offenders' Institution (file)

'She was immature and gullible to believe that her actions could be involved with a prisoner,' he said.

'She was clearly young for her age and clearly she accepts that she undertook the actions in a way she should not have, in a way of course contrary to the rules she had signed up to, by virtue of her employment.'

Sentencing, Judge Catherine Tulk said: 'It is clear within a relatively short period of time some form of infatuation had developed between the two of you.

'It is accepted that the offence of misconduct in public office involving inappropriate communications by prison officers is so serious that only a prison sentence will do. It undermines the whole prison system.

'I don't know if you are aware but Aylesbury Young Offenders' Institution has one of the highest levels of violence between prisoners and prison staff in the country although I am not suggesting that you are responsible for any of that.

'But anything which undermines the intrinsic discipline which is needed to keep an institution like Aylesbury Young Offenders' in order, is going to pose a danger to everybody in there.'

Speaking outside the court, Francis said: 'I'm glad it's all over. I want to draw a line under it and move on.'
A Chinese couple had waited over 20 years and finally reunited with their daughter in east China.

The couple had left a note on their daughter, Jingzhi, to meet up at the famous Broken Bridge in Hangzhou, after 10 and 20 years of their daughter's birth.

With the help of local media, the family finally met on the Chinese Valentine's Day after two decades in early August.

Xu Lida and his wife walked to the Broken Bridge in Hanzhou along with their daughter, Jingzhi

According to Zhejiang Television, Xu Lida and his wife, Qian Fenxiang, sent Jingzhi to Suzhou community centre just five days after she was born in 1995.

They left a note stating that they hope to meet their daughter at the Qixi Festival 10 years or 20 years later on the Broken Bridge in Hanzhou.

In 2005, the Xu couple kept their promise and waited for their daughter to show up at the bridge.

They were spotted by a broadcasting crew from Zhejiang Television and were told that a woman was holding a promise letter from the other side of the bridge.

The family is interviewed by a television host at the Broken Bridge in Hanzhou, east China

Mother Qian Fenxiang is happy to see her daughter Jingzhi after 22 years of separation

From then, the couple had learnt that their daughter was adopted by an American family and had a name known as Catherine Su Pohler, or Kati.

According to Zhejiang Television, the woman was a friend of the Pohler family to help Kati look for her biological parents.

Both parties attempted to re-schedule for a second meeting in 2015, but Jinzhi couldn't make it and agreed to meet two years later in 2017.

The family finally reunited on August 28, the Chinese Valentine's Day, as they walked to the Broken Bridge together, video shows.

Jingzhi's parents take their American-raised daughter to Starbucks for breakfast

Jingzhi will stay with her parents in Hanzhou for two days before setting off to America

It's the happiest moment for Xu and his wife, to be able to see their long-lost daughter, Jingzhi.

Being raised in an American family, Jingzhi did not speak any Chinese, but her parents can be seen trying to communicate with her and buying her breakfast from Starbucks.

The television host asked if Jingzhi will call them father and mother, she replied: 'I don't know. I will think about it.'

Xu explained they abandoned Jingzhi due to the one-child policy and they were struggling to raise two children at the same time.

Jingzhi stayed with her parents for a short two days before going back to America.

She told the reporter that she would like to keep in touch with them and meet up more to know more of her Chinese root.
JD Wetherspoon's will today roll out 500,000 beer mats in support of Britain's post-Brexit fishing industry today, accusing leading business and economic experts of misleading the British public about the impact of Brexit.

The beer mats will be rolled out across 893 pubs up and down the country, and states 'big business' has tried to dupe Britons by claiming food prices will rise if a deal between Westminster and Brussels is not struck.

The mat claims the statement is not true and that the EU imposes high tariffs on non-EU food imports, which in turn bumps up the price.

Wetherspoon's owner Tim Martin has been a vocal supporter of Brexit in the past and has now thrown his support behind Fishing For Leave's campaign

The mat claims the statement is not true and that the EU imposes high tariffs on non-EU food imports, which in turn bumps up the price

Wetherspoon's has also urged MPs to eliminate tariffs and reduce food prices by leaving the EU on March 2019 to help the UK save an additional 200 million a week in EU contributions.

Among the top business leaders named-and-shamed on the beer mat include Sainsbury's chairman David Tyler, Whitbreak chairman Richard Baker and CBI director general Carolyn Fairbairn.

The beer mat will also highlight its support for Fishing For Leave, which backs Britain reclaiming control of its fishing waters. It states that in March 2019, parliament can reclaim rights to the UK's historic fishing grounds, ending EU policies which have devastated many coastal communities.

JD Wetherspoon's owner Tim Martin said: 'Brexit is the single biggest issue for the UK and we believe the beer mats are a great way of getting our message over to our customers.

'The "thundering herd" of the CBI, big business and most economists got it wrong over the exchange rate mechanism, the euro and the effect of a leave vote.

'Their latest red herring is that we need a "deal" to avoid a "cliff edge", which will dramatically put up food prices.

'This is untrue  parliament can eliminate food tariffs and reduce prices by about 3.5 pence per meal if the UK avoids a deal and reverts to World Trade Organisation rules. 'Big business should be ashamed of its unscrupulous attempt to mislead the public.'

The beer mats were put in Wetherspoon's on Monday 4 December

The beer mat pledges support for Fishing For Leave's campaign to leave the EU in March 2019

The beer mat also takes aim at three leading 'big business' leaders who have claimed food prices will rise if we leave the EU without a deal

Alan Hastings, from Fishing for Leave, added: 'Fishing for Leave are delighted to have such a major name and institution in public life as Wetherspoons back the campaign to "take back control" of our nations fishing waters.

'A huge thanks must go to Tim Martin and his team for doing so. Fishing is one of our nation's finest natural resources that was sold out to EU control with such devastating consequences for towns synonymous with fishing.

'Brexit gives us a chance to right that wrong and automatically regain national control of all UK waters and resources under international law on 29th March 2019 to be like Norway, Faroe and Iceland.

Brexit gives us a chance to right that wrong and automatically regain national control of all UK waters

'This would see the UK regain the 60 per cent of our fish the EU catches in our waters and see coastal communities rejuvenated by a potential 6.3bn windfall.

'The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has been an environmental and social disaster. The government must scrap the CFP and replacing it with UK policy that works for all fishermen large business or small.

'Most importantly it must end the crazy discards policy of catching and dumping more fish than necessary to match what a quota says you can keep.

'The government must not sell coastal communities short by adopting or continuing the CFP with a transition period - continuing to obey EU laws after Brexit Day in 2019 would be a betrayal of not just fishing but this country as a whole.'
It's not surprising that President Trump would choose to travel to Utah Monday alongside Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican who's represented the state in the Senate for the last 40 years.

But Trump has broader intentions than just taking Hatch for a ride aboard Air Force One and championing one of the senator's causes: shrinking the national monuments of Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase Escalante.

The president wants to keep former GOP nominee Mitt Romney out of the U.S. Senate.

President Trump stopped to speak to reporters as he left the White House Monday for Utah. He's taking Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch with him on board Air Force One, signaling he'd rather see Hatch seek re-election than Mitt Romney run for Hatch's seat

Former GOP nominee Mitt Romney (left) is mulling a Senate run if Sen. Orrin Hatch (right) retires. However, it looks like President Trump is trying to keep Hatch in the upper chamber so he doesn't have a nemesis Republican in that seat

Romney, a Mormon with roots in the state who previously served as the governor of Massachusetts, has been mulling a run for Hatch's seat, if Hatch indeed announces his retirement.

However, Hatch hasn't committed either way, a move that is angering Romney's people, according to Politico.

They believe it's Trump's doing  and they may be right, as Trump has told friends he wasn't into the idea of a Sen. Romney, the publication reported.

If Hatch stays in the Senate, he'll likely continue to be a strong ally for the president.

Even though Romney is a Republican, he's probably act more like Sen. Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who is leaving the Senate after next year, and has sworn to spend his remaining time in the upper chamber calling a certain president of the United States out.

Romney displayed that kind of behavior during last year's presidential campaign.

Mitt Romney (right) famously got dinner at Jean Georges restaurant in New York with President-elect Donald Trump (left) as Trump was considering Romney to be his secretary of state

On March 3, 2016, the ex-GOP nominee appeared at the University of Utah and labeled then-candidate Trump a 'fraud.'

'He's playing the American public for suckers: he gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat,' Romney said.

The former nominee didn't endorse one of the remaining GOP candidates  Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. John Kasich  but suggested to Republican voters that they vote in their state for who would do the most damage to thwart Trump's march to the nomination.

It didn't work.

Fast-forward to the aftermath of Trump's electoral win and the Romney-Trump relationship was back in the news as the president-elect seemed to be courting him to be secretary of state.

The question was whether Trump's overtures were serious or if the president-elect was making Romney dance to simply, eventually embarrass him.

After highly-publicized meetings at Bedminster and then in New York, Trump called Romney to tell him he'd decided to go with ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson instead.

Since then, Romney has contemplated ways to get back in the political game, including testing the waters for this Senate seat.

Meanwhile, President Trump's former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has been threatening to take out incumbent Republican senators in an effort, he says, to get the body to better cooperate with the president's agenda.

While previously eyeing Hatch as a senator who needed to be replaced, according to the Washington Examiner, Bannon is now contemplating endorsing Hatch so that Romney stays out.

'If Steve had a choice between Orrin Hatch and Mitt Romney, he would pick Hatch 10 times out of 10,' a Bannon insider told the Examiner's David Drucker.

Trump is seemingly following suit by taking Hatch to Utah Monday.

The president has invited the Utah senator to take Air Force One to and from Salt Lake City.

The two men will disembark from Air Force One side-by-side and then travel to the Utah state capitol where the president will sign the executive order shrinking Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase Escalante.

'It will be one of the great, really, events in this country in a long time. So important for states' rights and so important for the people of Utah,' Trump pledged as he left the White House Monday.
President Donald Trump unveiled a plan Monday in Utah to dramatically scale back two national monuments  calling it an important move for 'states' rights.'

'Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what? They're wrong,' he said in the cavernous Utah Capitol Rotunda in Salt Lake City.

'The families and communities of Utah know and love this land the best. And you know the best how to take care of your land. You know how to protect it, and you know best how to conserve this land for many, many generations to come,' he said.

'Your timeless bond with the outdoors should not be replaced with the whims of regulators thousands and thousands of miles away. They don't know your land, and truly they don't care for your land like you do.'

The Bears Ears and the Grand-Staircase Escalante national monuments span millions of acres in Utah and are among 27 national monuments that Trump ordered his Interior Secretary to review earlier this year.

The result, he said, is that 'public lands will once again be for public use.'

As Trump signed a proclamation rolling back the Obama- and Clinton-era national monument designations, his audience briefly broke into a chant of 'Four more years!'

President Donald Trump announced plans Monday in Utah to shrink two sprawling Utah national monuments by nearly two-thirds after Barack Obama and Bill Clinton expanded them

'Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what? They're wrong,' Trump said

Trump's audience broke out into a brief chant of 'Four more years!' after he signed the national monument proclamation

'Your timeless bond with the outdoors should not be replaced with the whims of regulators thousands and thousands of miles away,' Trump said in the Utah state capitol's rotunda

Bears Ears, a more than 1.3 million-acre site in southeastern Utah that features thousands of Native American artifacts, including ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs, is to be slashed by 85 per cent

The 'House on Fire" ruins in Mule Canyonare part of Bears Ears National Monument, near Blanding, Utah

'We're going to be doing something that the state of Utah and others have wanted to be done for many, many years,' the president said as he left the White House.

'It will be one of the great, really, events in this country in a long time. So important for states' rights and so important for the people of Utah.'

Trump commented Monday as he left the White House for a trip to Salt Lake City.

Trump previously had condemned the act of creating the Utah monuments as a 'massive federal land grab.'

Utah Republican leaders had complained that the monuments locked up too much federal land.

And Trump said 'this tragic federal overreach' had resulted in 'harmful restrictions on hunting, ranching and responsible economic development.'

The Natural Resources Defense Council, a moneyed liberal advocacy group, promised: 'We'll see Trump in court.'

'We'll stand up for the public lands and waters set aside as a public trust, in the public interest. And we'll stand up for the rule of law.'

The NRDC argued that the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that allows presidents to wall off millions of acres at a time from development, doesn't permit Oval Office occupants to roll those protections back.

President Trump arrived in Utah on Monday, greeting well-wishers ahead of a speech where he will declare a rollback of multimillion-acre plots of federally protected lands

Trump said Monday on his way to Utah that dramatically scaling back the size of two national monuments would be a win for 'state's rights'

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told a crowd in the Utah Capitol Rotunda that the Antiquities Act, an obscure law that Barack Obama used to broaden federal monuments in Utah, 'was never meant to prevent. It was meant to protect.'

'Our public land is for the public to use,' Zinke said.

During his short Utah visit, the president also met with leaders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and toured the Mormon 'Welfare Square,' a facility that provides aid  and jobs  to poor families.

He complimented the LDS leaders for 'the respect you have all over the world' for taking care of people.

But outside, riot police had to disperse a crowd of people jeering the president with shouts of 'Shame on you!'

Other protesters outside the state capitol yelled 'F**k you Trump!' as the president's motorcade sped by

Trump traveled to Utah with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utahan who has been in office since 1977 and faces a decision soon about whether to run for an eighth term.

Asked Monday if he was encouraging Hatch to run again, Trump gave reporters a clear 'yes.'

Trump pushed a shopping cart through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' food distribution center at LDS Welfare Square in Salt Lake City on Monday, accompanied by LDS President Henry B. Eyring (left)

Trump He joked during his speech an hour later in the state capitol rotunda that 'I went around the store. I wanted a nice can of tuna fish and they had plenty!'

Protesters yelled 'Shame on You!' and 'F**k you Trump!' on Monday in front of the Utah state capitol; a different group of activists were dispersed by riot police outside the LDS Welfare Square facility

That's seen as a move to block Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee  who has been openly hostile to Trump  from running.

WHAT'S ALL THE FUSS ABOUT? When Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante were designated national monuments, most public use of the millions of acres  other than hiking  was prohibited. That included hunting and fishing, and allowed the Interior Department to issue only a limited number of livestock grazing permits. It also prohibited Americans from building bathrooms and fire pits. More consequentially, it put most of those lands off-limits for mining, oil and gas drilling, and logging. And most motorized vehicles, including trucks, ATVs and motorbikes were shut out. Returning most of those acres to local control will reverse what oil and gas companies call a federal land grab. National monuments are somewhat like national parks: lands that are protected by law from most development. While Congress creates national parks, howveer, national monuments are created by presidents under the 1906 Antiquities Act, a law that allows the White House to unilaterally mark millions of acres off-limits. The Antiquities Act requires presidents to limit their national monument designations to the 'the smallest area compatible' with the care of the land. Advertisement

Asked if he was sending a message to Romney, Trump would only say: 'He's a good man. Mitt's a good man.'

Hatch introduced Trump on Monday, saying he had the 'redundant task' of introducing the most famous man in the world.

Trump's move to shrink the sprawling Utah national monuments by nearly two-thirds overall has drawn howls from environmentalists and some tribal leaders, who call the move illegal and another affront to Native Americans.

San Juan County, Utah Commissioner Rebecca Benally, a Navajo native, spoke Monday before Trump and said she was outraged by the establishment of the Bears Ears National Monument 'in our own backyard.'

Benally, a Democrat, said her people had been denied access to 'an area larger than Rhode Island and Delaware' where they had harvested medicinal plants and harvested wood for centuries.

She cast the battle over Bears Ears as a struggle between natives who want to stay connected to their ancestral lands and bureaucrats who want to control them.

Trump shrunk Bears Ears by nearly 85 percent and reduce Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by almost half.

The plan would cut the total amount of land in the state's red rock country protected under monument status from more than 3.2 million acres (5,000 square miles) to about 1.2 million acres (1,875 square miles).

Sen. Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat, said after Trump's speech that his decision 'tears at the heart of America's conservation legacy and is a direct assault on sacred lands and tribal sovereignty.'

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch traveled with Trump aboard Air Force One to Salt Lake City

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke rode in the Bears Ears National Monument in Blanding, Utah earlier this year while plans were being drawn up to shrink their scale

'President Trump has denied future generations the opportunity to learn about the past and explore the remote mesas and canyons that have inspired visitors and inhabitants, dating back thousands of years,' he claimed.

'I'm confident that this shameful action will rightly face the same types of legal challenges as others pushed through by a White House hell-bent on appeasing a few extreme interests at the expense of the interests and values of the American people,' Heinrich added.

The proposals prompted an outcry from environmental groups, tribal leaders and others who say Trump's actions threaten important archaeological and cultural resources, especially Bears Ears, a more than 1.3 million-acre site in southeastern Utah that features thousands of Native American artifacts, including ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.

Trump has told Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and other Utah officials that he will follow the recommendation of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to shrink both monuments, but the White House and Zinke's office have not offered details about how they'd redraw the monument boundaries.

How it's expected to happen: The reduced scale of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was revealed in leaked documents

Little left: One leaked document showed how the scale of the Bears Ears National Monument could be reduced

The proposed changes would be the most significant reductions by any president to monument designations made under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives the president wide authority to protect federal sites considered historic or geographically or culturally significant.

Trump ordered Zinke to review 27 monuments created in the past two decades, with Bears Ears the top priority. Trump called some monument designations by his Democratic predecessors a 'massive federal land grab' that 'should never have happened.'

President Barack Obama created the Bears Ears monument last year after tribal leaders and environmental groups clamored for protection of land considered sacred by Native Americans.

Grand Staircase-Escalante was created by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Supporters of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments gathered during a rally on Saturday in Salt Lake City

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department said the newspaper 'has very old, outdated and inaccurate information.'

The spokeswoman, Heather Swift, declined to offer any other details.

But the NRDC called it 'an unprecedented attack on our nation's most cherished public lands.'

'This is unprecedented  and its illegal,' the group's president Rhea Suh said.

'Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante are iconic American lands. In stripping out their needed protections, Trump swept aside the voices of the American people, nearly three million of whom filed formal comments calling for him to leave the monuments alone. Trump is breaking the promise weve made, as a nation  to future Americans and to all Americans  to forever protect these lands,' the group said.

Utah's Republican leaders, including Hatch, have said the monuments declared by Obama and Clinton unnecessarily locked up too much land and asked Trump to shrink or rescind them.

Hatch said in a statement Thursday that 'details of the president's announcement are his and his alone to share,' but added: 'I appreciate his willingness to listen to my advice and even more importantly, to give the people of Utah a voice in this process.'

Trump's action, 'following Secretary Zinke's fair, thorough and inclusive review, will represent a balanced solution and a win for everyone on all sides of this issue,' Hatch said.

Natalie Landreth, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, said her group has already drafted a lawsuit to challenge Trump's action, which she called unprecedented and illegal.

'He will not be able to bask in one day of applause at the Salt Lake City airport' before being sued, she said.

Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, called Trump's actions a disgrace. 'He wants to turn public lands over to corporations to mine, frack, bulldoze and clear-cut until there's nothing left,' she said.
TV star Ferne McCann's ex had been cleared of a second nightclub attack weeks after he was convicted to throwing acid at a venue

The ex-boyfriend of Towie star Ferne McCann was cleared of punching a bouncer in the face at celebrity haunt Chinawhite today as he awaits sentence for throwing acid over 14 clubbers.

Arthur Collins, 25, was said to have thumped doorman Ebrima Sanneh in the mouth outside the exclusive nightclub in Fitzrovia on 3 July last year.

He and a group of five friend were denied VIP entry after failing to book a table and began verbally abusing the security staff when asked to join the general queue, it was said.

The group then allegedly rushed the doormen who struggled to hold them back.

Collins was accused of launching a violent assault against Mr Sanneh, punching him in the jaw before he was restrained by Mr Sanneh's colleagues.

Two of Collins' friends distracted the bouncers allowing him to escape running off down the road, prosecutors claimed.

Mr Sanneh was taken to hospital and left with a permanent scar following the incident.

The court's ruling came on the same day Collins' ex McCann showed off their baby on TV

Collins was charged after a melee outside celebrity venue Chinawhite in July last year

Collins was due to stand trial for assault occasioning actual bodily harm at Southwark Crown Court today but prosecutors offered no evidence against him.

He said that the charge was being dropped 'on the basis that it is no longer in the public interest to continue with this prosecution'.

Judge Joanna Korner lamented 'the amount of time, not to mention public money' that is 'wasted' bringing cases to court and allowing them to progress before offering no evidence on the eve of the trial.

She ordered a not guilty verdict to be recorded against Collins, who was not in court.

Collins was cleared on the same day as Ferne McCann showed off her and his baby in the TV interview on ITV's This Morning.

The reality star discussed how her pregnancy proved to be the distraction she needed as she came to grips with Collins' acid attack.

Collins is awaiting sentence for a nightclub acid attack which left clubbers with terrible burns

She said: 'For me, there was always light at the end of the tunnel. It has been a turbulent seven months for me but I had something to look forward to. That was my focus.

'I needed to focus on keeping healthy, on not being stressed, and by doing that I was surrounding myself with friends and family, being busy, I kept on working.'

Last month Collins was convicted of five counts of GBH with intent and nine of causing actual bodily harm against 14 clubbers.

He faces years behind bars when he is sentenced on December 19 at Wood Green Crown Court after Judge Noel Lucas QC warned him: 'There's no sentence to be passed except for a very significant one.'

Chinawhite, synonymous with celebs such as Kate Moss and Leonardo Di Caprio moved from its original Soho home to Fitzrovia in 2009.

Since the move it has hosted many celebrities including Prince Harry, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, Niall Horan, Usain Bolt, Lindsay Rihanna, Kendall Jenner, Lewis Hamilton, Gigi and Bella Hadid and Justin Bieber.
An Indian beer tycoon dubbed The King Of Good Times claimed billions in loans that he could never repay to try and save his failing airline, a court heard today.

Vijay Mallya, 61, said his struggling airline would be profitable by 2011 and now faces fraud charges in India after the firm collapsed with an estimated $1.3billion of debts.

Mallya came to Britain in March 2016 after Kingfisher Airlines failed due to enormous unpaid loans, bills and wages five years ago, it is said.

The flamboyant magnate defaulted on huge loans from a state-run bank in India and allegedly misused the funds by rerouting them through the Force India F1 team, which he has a stake in.

Vijay Mallya, 61, (pictured outside Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday) has a stake in the Force India F1 team

Mallya (pictured) is known for his lavish lifestyle and has been compared to Virgin billionaire Richard Branson

Mallya appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court today wearing a dark pinstripe suit, rings on his fingers, hair worn in a mullet and chain-smoking cigars.

The tycoon, who is known for his lavish lifestyle, has a stake in India's only Formula One team, Force India, and has been compared to Virgin billionaire Richard Branson.

Mark Summers, prosecuting, told Mallya's extradition hearing: 'This airline was in trouble at this stage which is why it was seeking financial help from a large number of banks for a large amount of money.

'It was claiming that it would emerge profitable in the near future.'

There were two loans from IDBI - a five-year loan for 9.5billion made on October 1, 2009 and a six-month loan for 1.5 billion on October 7, 2009.

Mr Summers said the loans were sanctioned 'on the basis that this is an airline that is going to turn profitable in its business plan by 2011, despite the fact that it had not been profitable at any point.

'That is what emerges from their prognosis as being given to the bank and the bank is then able to sanction these loans - this was just wrong.

'It is no coincidence that the repayment plan was set to begin in February 2011.'

Guarantees were based on the power of the Kingfisher brand as a brewing and spirits mainstay, aircrafts and on the word of Mallya himself, the court heard.

Mallya (right) appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court today wearing a dark pinstripe suit, rings on his fingers, hair worn in a mullet and chain-smoking cigars (left)

He told reporters outside court that doubters in the Force India F1 team would have to 'eat their words.'

Mallya, who is known as the King of Good Times, faces conspiracy to commit fraud charges in relation to the hefty loans.

He allegedly laundered money through a variety of banks across Europe and diverted funds to tax havens.

A Mumbai court issued a warrant for his arrest and sent Metropolitan Police an extradition request in February.

The businessman was arrested in April and paid a 650,000 security to secure his release on conditional bail.

Mallya, of Tewin, Herfordshire, earlier dismissed the allegations on his @TheVijayMallya Twitter account, saying they are 'media hype'.

He added: 'I did not flee from India and neither am I an absconder.'

The businessman was arrested in April and paid a 650,000 security to secure his release on conditional bail

Indian authorities claim that between December 31 2008 and November 28 2009 he conspired together with A.Raghunathan, Yogesh Agarwal and B.K.Batra to defraud IDBI Bank by dishonestly causing or permitting IDBA Bank to loan 9,000million (104million) Rupees to Kingfisher Airlines Limited.

He is further charged with money laundering. The extradition hearing is expected to last for a fortnight.

Mark Summers, for the Indian government, told the hearing: 'The government says that there are three reasons why the court could conclude that this was a loan that the defendant never intended to repay.

'His company was in intensive care, the market was in intensive care, it was heading only in one direction.

'As it went down it was going to sustain large losses and the defendant had a choice - either take these losses yourself and impose on your own lavish lifestyle or try and palm them off to the bank.'

The hearing continues.
President Donald Trump's lawyer has rolled out a new defense that his client couldn't have committed obstruction of justice because he's the president.

The legal argument by Trump lawyer John Dowd comes amid an ongoing probe of Russian election interference where possible obstruction could feature prominently.

The president 'cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case,' Trump's lawyer, John Dowd, told Axios.

Dowd's claim follows a Trump tweet on Saturday about former national security advisor Mike Flynn, using language that some legal observers say amounted to an acknowledgement that he committed obstruction.

The tweet  which Dowd on Sunday says he wrote  contained language saying Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when he fired him in February.

Trump's personal lawyer, John Dowd has admitted that he crafted a controversial tweet that appeared on the President's personal account on Saturday. He said the president 'cannot obstruct justice'

In another key event in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe, former FBI Director James Comey testified that Trump pressured him to back off a probe of Flynn, asking him to 'see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.' Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI.

Dowd's statement immediately brought comparisons to Watergate, where Nixon was in fact facing an article of impeachment based on obstruction.

Trump tweeted on Saturday: 'I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!' Trump wrote.

After the tweet drew immediate controversy, Dowd said it was in fact he who composed it.

MY LAWYER WROTE THIS: This tweet by Donald Trump led to accusations that the president had obstructed justice after allegedly telling James Comey to back off Michael Flynn while also knowing that Flynn lied to the FBI. But now the White House says his personal lawyer made the tweet

Dowd argued that the president cannot commit obstruction because he is the nation's chief law enforcement officer under the Constitution

John Dowd is part of President Trump's legal team, and says he wrote the president's recent tweet about Mike Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI

Speaking to ABC News, the lawyer said the social media post was 'my mistake' and that he had not intended 'to break news' in writing it. He said he used 'sloppy' language.

Dowd's admission did not clarify if Trump actually knew about Flynn's deception when he dismissed him in February or whether the President knew the tweet had been published on Saturday.

He hadn't meant to say Trump had advance knowledge of Flynn lying to the FBI, but had only learned of it recently.

The claim brought comparisons to President Richard Nixon's claim that 'when the president does it, that means it is not illegal'

'The tweet did not admit obstruction. That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion,' Dowd told Axios.

The tweet got sent while Trump's motorcade was stuck in traffic as it left a Republican fundraising event in New York City.

Flynn was fired on February 13. At the time, the President said the decision was based on him misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his interaction with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak on December 22, 2016.

Former Obama White House counsel Bob Bauer told Axios: 'It is certainly possible for a president to obstruct justice. The case for immunity has its adherents, but they based their position largely on the consideration that a president subject to prosecution would be unable to perform the duties of the office, a result that they see as constitutionally intolerable.'

Dowd's statement evoked claims by President Nixon about presidential prerogatives following his decision to resign while facing possible impeachment including on an obstruction charge.

'Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal,' he told David Frost in one their one-on-one interviews.
Scotland, Wales and even London rushed to demand their own special Brexit deal today after it appeared Theresa May was about to agree to special conditions in Northern Ireland.

Leaks from tense talks in Brussels signalled that Northern Ireland would be allowed to maintain 'regulatory alignment' with the rest of the EU.

The intention is to avoid a hard border between the UK and Ireland by ensuring the rules on both sides of the border remain similar after Brexit.

But the idea was seized upon as a way for other parts of Britain which voted Remain to maintain close ties with the EU - and even to effectively stay in the single market.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (pictured last week at Edinburgh Castle) said Scotland should be allowed the same rights to stay close to the EU as apparently proposed for Northern Ireland

London Mayor Sadiq Khan (pictured today in Mumbai) said a separate deal for politicians in Belfast should be matched for London

Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones (file image) said he expected Wales to be offered the same chances as other parts of the UK

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was first with her demand, tweeting: 'If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others cant.'

Amid discussion over whether the agreement for Belfast amounted to either Britain adopting a Norway-style Brexit that stays close to the EU or a special deal for Northern Ireland, Ms Sturgeon intervened again.

She said: 'If its not some kind of Norway status for whole UK, it must mean some kind of special deal for NI. Has to be one or the other.

'And if latter, why not also for Scotland, London and Wales (if it wants it)?'

London Mayor Sadiq Khan - who is on a visit to India this week - was next to intervene.

He went even further, suggesting the deal would leave Northern Ireland in the single market.

He said: 'Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it's possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market and customs union after Brexit.

'Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs.'

Ms Sturgeon said there was no reason for one part of the UK to keep regulatory alignment and not another

Mr Khan said the prospect of agreement on Northern Ireland had 'huge ramifications' for London, which was one of the few parts of Britain to vote Remain

Welsh first minister Mr Jones followed his devolved colleagues and said he expected Wales to be made the 'same offer'

Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones then joined in to insist: 'We cannot allow different parts of the UK to be more favourably treated than others.

'If one part of the UK is granted continued participation in the Single Market and Customs Union, then we fully expect to be made the same offer.'

The British side is said to have signed up to enough 'continued regulatory alignment' between Northern Ireland and the Republic to 'support North South cooperation and the protection of the Good Friday agreement'.

That leaves considerably more wriggle room than the initial wording of 'no regulatory divergence'.

European council president Donald Tusk, who will meet the PM later, hinted that a deal was now effectively in place, tweeting: 'Tell me why I like Mondays! Encouraged after my phone call with Taoiseach @campaignforleo on progress on issue of Ireland.

'Getting closer to sufficient progress at December.'
Last month, like every year, Christy Adams baked a cake for her son Jesses birthday. She gathered up his favorite toys and thought about her dearest memories from his childhood; then she drove to the cemetery, which she has visited every November 5 since 2012.

This is where Jesse now rests; he would have been nine this year. He was stolen from Christy on a horrific night of violence, when her husband fatally shot three-year-old Jesse and then himself  all while she listened on the phone during a desperate drive to reach them.

Hes present every day in everything that we do, says Christy, now 30, who is also mother to Jesses older siblings Christopher, 10, and Faith, 13. She admits, sadly, that she still sometimes sets a place absentmindedly for her youngest child.

I dont know why I do it; it just happens, she tells DailyMail.com. Ill take out the extra plate and fork for him like hes here, and hes not.

The holidays are a particularly difficult time for Christy, who keenly feels Jesses absence, though they do offer an opportunity to fondly remember him.

Theyre hard for me, says Christy, who lives in Oak City, North Carolina. I dont push it on my children; if they want to talk to me about it, they know that they can  and they do, from time to time. I have Jesses pictures and the items that he loved sitting all over the house, so  hes here, but hes not here, I guess is the easiest way to explain it.

Christy Adams, 30, and her son, Christopher, fondly remember her younger son, Jesse - who was fatally shot by his father, CJ, while Christy was on the other end of the phone call

Christy gave birth to Jesse in 2008; he would have turned nine on November 5 - when she visited his grave, as she does every year

Christy keeps Jesse's toy truck and other favorite items in the household; she say she sometimes absentmindedly still sets a place for him at the dinner table

Christy's husband, Carey 'CJ' Adams, was a family friend she had always had a crush on; they got together when she was pregnant with her older son, Christopher - and she said she initially had 'not even the slightest idea' of his dark side

On Christmas, we each give like a memory gift; my mom will give me a memory gift, Ill give my mom one, as far as something that pertains to Jesse or we would think that he would be into this year.

As far as me and Christopher and Faith, we have special ornaments that we put on the Christmas tree every year, Christy says. A couple of them have his name on them; one he got when he finished potty training.

And while its often hard to talk about the loss of Jesse, Christy feels she has a mission to share her familys tragic story and educate others about domestic violence  especially around the holidays.

You have families that are home together more often than not and thats actually when violence of any sort picks up, she tells DailyMail.com.

I hope that my story, Jesses story, our story does help people, she says. I hope that they see the timeline, they see everything that I went through, that my children went through, and they know at that point, once Im done with my story, that there is help. There are people that are standing behind them that will support them in any way, shape or form.

Christys tragic story began in July 2007, when she was heavily pregnant with Christopher. She was at her stepfathers birthday party, and the single mother wasnt looking for love  but she reconnected with a family friend, CJ Adams. Shed always had a crush on him, and he convinced her to go on a date. So started a whirlwind romance; he was present for Christophers birth in September and they got married in November; by February, she was pregnant with their son, Jesse.

Looking back, Christy now realizes that the pace of their relationship should have been an early red flag.

It was extremely quick  and that is one major warning sign: fast-paced, everything moving quickly, she says. Alcohol was involved; he was kind of agitated all the time to begin with  hot-headed, if you want to say. And I didnt think anything of it  thats obviously a warning sign, being angry about little things.

The change in CJs behavior began right before the wedding, she says; before that, she had not even the slightest idea.

He seemed like a nice, normal person, she says.

The emotional and verbal abuse started right before we got married, she says. We got into this huge argument the night before our wedding day, and then it just gradually increased from there. He never really physically abused me, [except] the one time; most of his abuse was emotional and verbal.

The one incident to which she refers  which prompted her to take her children and leave CJ  occurred in January 2010. CJ, a neat freak, got upset that Christy had left a pile of books on the table. Even though she was holding her two sons in her arms, he threw her onto the floor. She hit her head on the air-conditioning unit, and then he smacked her head on the microwave.

Terrified, Christy ran upstairs with the kids and locked them all in a bedroom.

The next morning he acted as if nothing had happened, Christy says. I went to the police and I filed a restraining order against him, then I took the boys to live with my mother Tammy.

I stayed with mom and CJ was devastated. He bombarded me with calls, promised to change, told me it would never happen again So a few months later, I took him back in because I could see the man I had fallen in love with.

They moved into a home next to CJs mother, and everything seemed relatively fine for about a year  until CJ, who worked as an electrician and did landscaping, lost his job. His drinking picked up and Christy, who was studying for her associate degree in healthcare management, worked two jobs to support the family.

I could see things deteriorating at that point, she says. I was working on saving up money to actually leave.

CJ, she says, was depressed; he was always ill and ornery. He was always drinking. He would definitely yell; he wouldnt get violent unless something upset him  but it was also very easy to upset him when he was drinking. If you looked at him wrong, thatd upset him  When he was in a bad mood, he was going to make sure everyone else around him was in a bad mood.

When she eventually had a weekend off, she took her children to visit her father  and CJ started a massive argument over the phone. So she decided enough was enough and didnt return to their shared home; instead, she got started on filing legal paperwork in June 2012. She arranged joint custody of Jesse with CJ.

I never thought he would hurt Jesse, and thats why I was okay with joint custody, she says.

During the last family holiday before the deaths, Christy, right, and CJ, center, took their children to visit the set of a televisions how called Lizard Lick about towing and recovery

Jesse was Christy's third child and her only with CJ, whom she married after only four months of dating; she became pregnant with Jesse three months later

Christopher, right, and Jesse were only 14 months apart; the older brother underwent four years of counseling following Jesse's murder and has 'separation issues,' his mother says

Christy also says she has difficulty trusting following the murder-suicide; she says she's very careful about whose care she leaves her surviving children in

The following month, however, she would be faced with unspeakable tragedy after CJ unraveled. Jesse was staying with his dad and Christopher had been scheduled to be there, too, but he was with Christys mother instead.

I called CJ to say goodnight to Jesse but he was in an argumentative mood, Christy says. He called me a stupid bitch and he was angry that I wouldnt take him back again.

I told him that I wasnt going to talk to him like that and that I would call the next morning, so I hung up. I had two cell phones at the time and my mom called me a few minutes later.

CJ had called Christys mother and threatened to kill himself and Jesse  so Christy jumped in the car and drove furiously to the home they used to share. On the way, she called the police  but then CJ called her back on the other phone.

He told me that if I didnt take him back within a week he was going to kill himself and Jesse. I begged him not to harm our son, Christy says.

Suddenly, Jesse was on the phone. Mommy, Im going to die tonight, he said, and I started screaming down the phone. Jesse, I love you, it will be okay.

Suddenly, there was a loud popping sound and then CJ got on the phone. Ive just killed Jesse and its your fault, he said and I lost it. I was hysterical, screaming for Jesse.

CJ told me that he was on the bed bleeding to death. He was so calm.

She was in disbelief that CJ had actually harmed Jesse, hoping that the noise shed heard was just her husband dropping the phone  and the authorities had warned her not to approach the house when she pulled up.

She heard another loud pop, which she later found out was the gunshot CJ inflicted on himself.

He told me on the phone when he saw the sheriff that he wasnt going to jail as a babykiller, and he shot himself, she says. After that I was just sitting on the side of the road waiting for the deputy to come and get me or bring my child out to me.

When she was approached by an officer, however, he told her to get in his car and rushed her to the hospital.

He told me he was going to try to get me there to say my final goodbyes to my son, she says. I got to the hospital and I was five minutes late. He had already passed.

She says: I remember I sat with him on my lap in the rocking chair, not wanting to let him go. I kept whispering to him how much I loved him and how sorry I was that this had happened to him.

As the sun came up, I went home. All I had of my treasured little boy was his blue teddy bear that the police had given me.

She tells DailyMail.com: After Jesse passed and we were outside the hospital, I promised him that I was not going to let his name die in vain  and thats one of the reasons that I do the work that I do as far as telling my story.

Christy, who has since earned her bachelors degree in healthcare administration, has also learned a huge amount about domestic violence and is determined to use her story  and her loss  to help other families from experiencing the same pain.

Christopher, left, still has a box of Jesses clothes in his wardrobe that he gets out every now and then and he still sleeps with his younger brother's pillow

Christy says that she never imagined that her husband CJ would ever Jesse, center

Christy says that she and Christopher, right, talk about Jesse 'all the time and we can smile now. Christopher wonders what Jesse would be like now, what he would be into, and it breaks my heart to think hes gone forever

Christy initially hoped that a loud sound she heard while on the phone with her husband simply meant that he had dropped the phone; she did not immediately believe that he had shot Jesse

Christy says that many domestic abuse victims hide the violence or feel ashamed - but reminds them they have done nothing wrong and should seek help

Its not easy to get out of a violent situation on your own  and the main thing is for people to know that there are people behind them that are here to help them in any way that they can, says Christy. Ive actually offered a few ladies my home a few times.

At the same time, in most cases, the person doesnt see that theyre in a violent situation or doesnt want to see it. The biggest thing that people do  and they dont realize theyre doing it until after the fact  is they hide the violence. They hide the issues. People are ashamed of it. I was ashamed of it, too, but its okay to be ashamed of it; I mean, theres nothing really to be ashamed of.

Thats the main thing people dont understand  that you have no reason to be ashamed. Youve done nothing wrong.

She says: About two weeks ago, I had a friend of mine contact me. She has a friend that was in a violent situation, but she doesnt see it  so she wanted me to go and talk to this friend and try to get her to see it. And thats, unfortunately, thats really all you can do, is wait for that person thats in that situation to see that they are in it  because you cant help someone that doesnt want help.

As horrible as her story is, she reiterates that there is hope and there is help. Its been difficult for her and her children; Christopher lives with Christy and her new boyfriend, while Faith lives with her biological father but spends every other weekend with the family.

He went through about four years of counseling to help him get through it, she says of Christopher. So he talked with his therapist a lot more about it than he did me, for the simple fact that I was also healing. So every time I talked about it, I would get upset  and he didnt like to upset me. But now me and him talk about it when he wants to talk about it.

While the 30-year-old mother has found a new relationship, she says her history of abuse and the loss of Jesse makes it hard for her to trust.

Its an everyday struggle, she says. Ill put it to you this way: I dont leave my children with anyone at all unless [its] my mom, his grandma on his dads side  because Im very cautious about who my children are around at this point.

Christopher, she says, has separation issues.

He worries that if I leave him anywhere, I wont pick him up, Christy says. He thinks that I will leave him, just like Jesse did.

He has a box of Jesses clothes in his wardrobe that he gets out every now and then and he still sleeps with Jesses pillow.

We talk him about all the time and we can smile now. Christopher wonders what Jesse would be like now, what he would be into, and it breaks my heart to think hes gone forever.
Matt Lauer has been spotted still wearing his wedding ring as he finally ventured out of his Hamptons compound to do the school run on Monday.

The disgraced former talk show host has been staying at his private Sag Harbor home, in Long Island, since he was fired from the Today show last week over sexual misconduct claims.

On Monday, he was seen behind the wheel of his gray Jeep Wrangler, taking his 11-year-old son, Thijs, to school. Page Six reports that Lauer illegally spoke on his cellphone while his son was in the car.

The married 59-year-old stopped off at a gated property in nearby North Haven to pick up a friend of his son's and as he reached out to press the intercom, he flashed his gold wedding band. Lauer later dropped them off at Sag Harbor Elementary School.

He may still be wearing his ring, but sources say his marriage to Annette Roque has been on the rocks for years and they have even been living separately.

The Dutch-born former model is reported to have fled their Hamptons home on Wednesday, just 24 hours after Lauer was fired, and flown to see her family in her native Amsterdam, a source told Page Six.

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Matt Lauer has been spotted still wearing his wedding ring as he finally ventured out of his Long Island compound to do the school run on Monday

The married 59-year-old stopped off at a property just five minutes away from his home to pick up a friend of his son's

He was spotted using the intercom to get into his friends gated home, where he flashed his wedding ring (pictured)

Lauer was fired last Tuesday as host of NBC's flagship morning show after over 20 years as co-anchor. The dismissal came as a result of sexual harassment complaints from an NBC employee.

Last week, his former co-hosts were forced to break the news of his dismissal on the show. However, this morning's Today show made no mention was made of the scandal.

Since news of Lauer's firing, at least seven other women have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct.

While much of the country was shocked by the news given Lauer's squeaky clean image as a wholesome good guy, those who knew the couple say that he was a bad husband.

Lauer's alleged history of infidelity reportedly forced his wife to keep close tabs on him when he took trips abroad because she didn't trust him.

When Roque sought to divorce Lauer years ago, Lauer reportedly offered her $5million in cash to remain in the marriage.

Matt Lauer was later seen driving with his daughter Romy in the same car

Romy appeared to be on her phone as her dad drove to an East Hampton parking lot

The disgraced former talk show host has been staying at his private Sag Harbor home since he was fired from the Today show last week over sexual misconduct claims but was spotted out on Monday during the school run

As he reached out to press the intercom to enter their gated home, he flashed his gold wedding band. Lauer later dropped his son and his friend off at school

The image-conscious Lauer made the cash offer because he was reportedly so concerned about how a divorce might be perceived by his audience.

Lauer and Roque met on a blind date in 1997, the same year he took over as co-anchor of Today in place of the departing Bryant Gumbel.

While Lauer rose to television stardom with his Today show gig, Roque has been featured in Victoria's Secret catalogs as well as in advertisements for J. Crew.

According to Page Six, Lauer, who had a reputation as a philanderer, was urged to settle down and get married by NBC executives who were concerned that his playboy image would hurt the Today show given its heavily female viewership.

Lauer and Roque were married less than a year after they met, but it was reportedly a tumultuous union.

Three years after the birth of their first child, Jack, in 2003, Lauer and Roque separated after the newsman returned from covering the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

Lauer was wearing dark shades while he got behind the wheel of his dark gray Jeep during the school run on Long Island

It is one of the first times he's been spotted since he was fired from the Today show over the sexual misconduct claim

Rumors swirled that Lauer was having an affair with Natalie Moralies, who was then a correspondent for the Today show. Both have vehemently denied the rumors.

Nonetheless, Roque, who was seven months pregnant at the time, filed for divorce from Lauer, whom she accused of 'cruel and inhumane' treatment and 'extremely controlling' behavior.

'Defendant has continuously and repeatedly given higher priority to personal interests than his family obligations to plaintiff, causing plaintiff to feel abandoned, isolated and alone in raising the parties' children,' according to court papers, which were leaked in 2014.

Roque would eventually withdraw her petition for divorce three weeks before giving birth to the couple's second child, Thijs.

There was no explanation given for why Roque had second thoughts about the divorce, though it was reported that Lauer offered her $5million to remain in the marriage.

'Matt needed to stay in the marriage to keep his reputation as America's nicest dad,' according to a source quoted by Page Six.

He may still be wearing his ring, but sources say his marriage to Annette Roque has been on the rocks for years and they have even been living separately, it was reported on Saturday. The couple is seen above in Bridgehampton, New York on September 1, 2013

Lauer's alleged history of infidelity reportedly forced his wife to keep close tabs on him when he took trips abroad because she didn't trust him. When Roque sought to divorce Lauer years ago, Lauer reportedly offered her $5million in cash to remain in the marriage. The couple is seen in Bridgehampton, New York on August 31, 2014

'He is in fact a very doting dad to his kids, but he is also a terrible husband.'

Things appeared to be fine  until Lauer returned from covering the Olympics in Vancouver in early 2010.

After news reports emerged suggesting that Lauer partied hard in Canada, Roque reportedly was so angry that she and her husband began living separately.

Since 2011, Roque and her three children were reportedly living in their home in Sag Harbor, while Lauer stayed in Manhattan during the week.

The Upper East Side apartment at 133 East 64th Street was also the address of Bernie Madoff, the infamous Ponzi schemer.

On weekends, Lauer would reportedly make the trip to Long Island to join them.

'They play happy families at their Hamptons home on weekends, and then she lets him run off to New York to do "Today" - and goodness knows what else,' RadarOnline quoted one source as saying.

Lauer's Sag Harbor estate is one of a number of swanky Long Island properties that the former Today co-host owns

There is an 8,000-square-foot home built in 2001 along with a tennis court and multiple secret gardens on the Sag Harbor estate

Despite her celebrity status, Roque is rarely seen in public.

When she does appear, it is usually to attend the Hampton Classic horse show. Roque and her daughter are avid equestrians.

In 2012, Lauer purchased a 40-acre property near their Long Island home and converted it into a horse farm with stables for 36 animals, 16 paddocks, two outdoor riding rings, cross-country trails, and a climate-controlled indoor ring.

Lauer even owns five horses himself, but it was been widely rumored that the horses were a gift to his wife whenever she caught him cheating.

Locals who see Lauer near his Manhattan apartment say that they cannot recall ever seeing him and his wife together dining.

Lauer is known to be a frequent customer at Donahue's Steak House, a whiskey bar across the street from his apartment.

Neighbors told Page Six they see Lauer there at least three nights a week  but he's on his own.
The family of a Minnesota teen who died after a routine wisdom tooth surgery has reached a $2million legal settlement.

Sydney Galleger, 17, went into cardiac arrest after her blood pressure shot up during the June 2015 procedure and she later died in the hospital.

Sydney's family had filed a wrongful death suit against her dentist, Dr Paul Tompach, alleging that his 'negligent and dangerous' actions during the routine surgery led to the teen's death.

Dr Tompach, who temporarily had his right to practice suspended by a state licensing board, and the family of Sydney had been scheduled to go to trial in May 2018, reported The Star Tribune.

The family of a Minnesota teen who died after a routine wisdom tooth surgery has reached a $2million legal settlement. Sydney Galleger, 17 (pictured, right, with her mother), went into cardiac arrest after her blood pressure shot up during the June 2015 procedure and she later died in the hospital

Galleger's family had filed a wrongful death suit against her dentist, Dr Paul Tompach (pictured), alleging that his 'negligent and dangerous' actions during the routine surgery led to the teen's death. His license was temporarily suspended

Dr Tompachs license to practice was suspended in January 2016 after the death of 17-year-old who was a junior at Eden Prairie High School, a diver on the high school swim team and an Alpine skier.

It was resumed under restrictions put in place about six weeks later by the state Board of Dentistry. The restrictions were lifted in late June of this year.

An investigation revealed that Dr Tompach allowed an uncertified dental assistant to monitor Sydney after administering anesthesia, and failed to respond appropriately when the emergency transpired.

The suit that was filed this past January saw Sydney's family seeking more than $500,000 in damages, according to The Star Tribune.

It's estimated that her death cost the family $200,000 in funeral and medical expenses.

Under terms of the publicly disclosed settlement, parents Diane and Steven Galleger will receive $1,279,600, the law firm representing them $740,000 and the familys health insurer $40,400 for medical expenses related to the death.

The suit that was filed this past January saw Sydney's (pictured left and right) family seeking more than $500,000 in damages, according to The Star Tribune. It's estimated that her death cost the family $200,000 in funeral and medical expenses

The Galleger family originally said they did not foresee taking legal action in Sydney's death, so the legal action represented a change in mindset.

They were left further devastated in September 2016 when a definitive cause of death was not found by the autopsy.

Sydney's mother Diane Galleger told The Star Tribune at the time that she was unsure whether there would be further tests to determine the cause of death.

'We were just hoping for an answer,' she said. 'Could she have had a slight reaction to the medications causing everything to misfire? Unlikely, but we will never know. We just wanted God to give us something, give us an answer why our healthy, happy daughter is no longer with us.'

Medical examiners noted that they were unable to rule out the 'potential contributing role' in her death of a medication that Galleger was receiving during the oral surgery.

Diane said she doesn't foresee a lawsuit against the oral surgeon or his practice.

During the June 9 extraction, Sydney's blood pressure suddenly shot up, her pulse dropped and she went into a cardiac arrest.

The oral surgeon frantically started performing CPR on the teen as emergency crews rushed to the scene.

Sydney was then transported to the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator to help with her breathing.

In subsequent days, she suffered numerous seizures and underwent surgery to fit a drain in her skull to relieve the swelling of her brain. However, her brain continued to swell, cutting off the drain.

During the June 9 extraction, Sydney's blood pressure suddenly shot up, her pulse dropped and she went into a cardiac arrest. In subsequent days, she (pictured with her parents) suffered numerous seizures and underwent surgery to fit a drain in her skull to relieve the swelling of her brain. However, her brain continued to swell, cutting off the drain

In the early hours of June 12, doctors informed Diane and Steve and the teen's younger brother, Jack, that there was nothing more they could do.

'As you can imagine, that was the most devastating news we have ever received,' Diane wrote on the CaringBridge page, where she and her relatives had been providing updates on Sydney.
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The sunken city of the Caesars, lost for 1,700 years beneath waves off of Italy's west coast, has been revealed in stunning new photographs taken by divers who were allowed to explore the area.

Baiae was the Las Vegas for the super-rich of the 1st Century's ancient Rome, covered in sprawling mansions and synonymous with luxury and wickedness, historians claim.

But as time passed, much of it was lost to the sea as volcanic activity caused the coastline to retreat 400metres inland, forcing the entire city underwater into what is now the Gulf of Naples in modern-day Italy.

Baiae was the Las Vegas for the super-rich of the ancient Rome, covered in sprawling mansions and synonymous with luxury and wickedness, historians claim. The 1st Century city has been revealed in stunning new photographs taken by divers who were allowed to explore the area

Much of the city was lost to the sea as volcanic activity caused the coastline to retreat 400metres inland, forcing it underwater into what is now the Gulf of Naples in modern-day Italy

Incredibly, parts of the city are still in-tact 1,700 years later. Pictured above, a diver shows off a tiled floor that was discovered in a search of the city

Antonio Busiello, who lives in Naples, photographed the site and found that roads, walls, mosaics and even statues had survived the ravages of time

Busiello said that the statues and mosaics that are still standing show the opulence that filled the city when it was still livable

In an artist's recreation of what Baiae would have looked 2,000 years ago before it was lost beneath the waves, there are sprawling mansions and squares located right on the water

The site has since been re-discovered, 1,700 years after disappearing beneath the waves on the west coast of Italy.

Divers were allowed to explore the site recently and snapped photos of the treasures that can still be found at the underwater city.

Antonio Busiello, who lives in Naples, photographed the site and found that roads, walls, mosaics and even statues had survived the ravages of time.

The 45-year-old said: 'The beautiful mosaics, and the villas and temples that have reemerged or are still underwater show the opulence and wealth of this area.

'It was considered one of the most important Roman cities for centuries. Pliny the Younger used to live here and from here, across the gulf, he witnessed and described the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum.'

In its heyday, Baiae was frequented by famous Romans including Julius Caesar, Nero, Pompey the Great, Marius, and Hadrian - who died there

Among the sights now visible are the Pisoni and Protiro villas, where intricate white mosaics as well as residential rooms can be seen

There's also the Nymphaeum of Punta Epitaffio, where divers swim among the statues of Ulysses and his helmsman Baius, for whom Baiae was named

This isn't the first time the site has been searched by divers looking for remnants of the Las Vegas-like city. A documentary released earlier this year, titled Rome's Sunken Secrets, followed a series of dives led by underwater archaeologist Dr Barbara Davidde and involving historians and scientists from across the world

Vast villas, priceless statues and breathtaking mosaics, as well as heated spas, cobbled streets and even a nymphaeum  a grotto of pleasure  have all been found in the city beneath the sea

The city sits under water in the Gulf of Naples off of Italy's west coast. It is 150 miles south of Rome and 50 north of Pompeii

One significant find was a section of lead water pipe just a few inches in diameter inscribed 'L Pisonis' (not pictured). This pinpoints the exact location where one of the greatest scandals in Roman history unfolded

Many of the statues that are still in tact are covered in sea creatures who have made the rock figurines their homes after water over took them

He added: 'Diving here is like a dive into history, looking at ancient Roman ruins underwater is something hard to describe, a beautiful experience indeed.'

In its heyday, Baiae was frequented by famous Romans including Julius Caesar, Nero, Pompey the Great, Marius, and Hadrian - who died there.

Among the sights now visible are the Pisoni and Protiro villas, where intricate white mosaics as well as residential rooms can be seen.

There's also the Nymphaeum of Punta Epitaffio, where divers swim among the statues of Ulysses and his helmsman Baius, for whom Baiae was named.

A documentary released earlier this year, titled Rome's Sunken Secrets, followed a series of dives led by underwater archaeologist Dr Barbara Davidde and involving historians and scientists from across the world.

They revealed vast villas, priceless statues and breathtaking mosaics, as well as heated spas, cobbled streets and even a nymphaeum  a grotto of pleasure  in the city that lies 150 miles south of Rome and 50 north of Pompeii.

When the city was in-tact, the famed Piso family had a villa featuring its own jetty and two huge bath complexes. Divers have since found other estates in the sunken city that feature even more opulence

Divers search through what appear to have once been walls of a potential estate or square within the sunken city of the Caesars

Walls of estates in the ancient city sit just below the water's surface off the coast of western Italy. Divers can now explore the region

Divers used flashlights to closely examine the statues like the one above, which has turned into a home for sea creatures over the years

Incredibly, the black-and-white mosaics still covered space on the sea floor. It is unclear how far the tiles go on for, as much of it has been covered by shells, sand and other sea items

In one open space in the sunken city, two large statues still stand side-by-side, with their heads and limbs still nearly fully in-tact

One significant find was a section of lead water pipe just a few inches in diameter inscribed 'L Pisonis'. This pinpoints the exact location where one of the greatest scandals in Roman history unfolded.

As classics professor Kevin Dicus explains, 'L Pisonis was the mark of the Piso family. The villa it was attached to was almost certainly the property of Gaius Calpurnius Piso, who was a close friend of the Emperor Nero.

'Ancient texts tell us that Piso plotted to murder the emperor at his holiday villa in Baiae so he could become emperor instead, but he had a change of heart at the last minute. When Nero learnt about the plan, he ordered Piso to commit suicide.

'So we now know where the assassination attempt would have taken place. For the archaeologists it was like finding the Holy Grail.'

Piso's villa had its own jetty and two huge bath complexes, but that was nothing compared to the opulence at another estate the team discovered.

Slowly revealed over many dives was a mansion so luxurious archaeologists believe it was the Imperial Villa specially built for the Emperor Claudius.

Another statue in the sunken city shows a man from the torso up, apparently lifting a huge object out of the ground below him

Several fish now call the underwater city home, as it lies just under the surface off the coast of the Gulf of Naples in Italy

Despite being eroded by sand throughout the years, one statue's details can still be seen, with creases on its layered clothing

A diver examines one statue up close with a flashlight as fish swim by in the underwater city off the western coast of Italy
A man whose wife drowned when a boat capsized during their honeymoon in Thailand has told of the horrifying moment she and 31 others were killed.

Monica O'Connor, 28, from Sale, Greater Manchester, was on the island of Koh Samui with spouse Tim O'Connor, just three weeks after their wedding, when tragedy struck.

The boat had been taken out in a monsoon despite weather warnings, an inquest at South Manchester Coroner's Court heard.

Mr O'Connor, 31, described to the coroner how the vessel was overcome by the waves during the trip in May last year, capsizing in seconds.

He managed to escape, but Monica was swept away and died.

He said: 'It happened incredibly quickly. The boat tipped onto its left side, so everyone sitting on the right fell onto the people sitting opposite them.

'Within a few seconds it tipped again. I lost my glasses, but it was so dark all you could see were people's bodies.'

Monica O'Connor, 28, from Sale, Greater Manchester, was on her honeymoon in Koh Samui with husband Tim last May

As the upturned boat quickly filled with water he managed to swim out from under it.

'It was quite chaotic,' he said. 'There were bits of the boat and life jackets floating around in the water.'

It was not until Mr O'Connor arrived at the hospital that he was told his wife had died, and he says it has never been clear whether she was found trapped under the boat or in the water.

'The events of that day were terrifying and losing Monica has been devastating,' he said.

'Nothing can bring Monica back or undo the terrible loss I feel. But I hope this inquest can provide answers on whether more could have been done to ensure customer safety on the boat trip, and ultimately save Monica's life.'

Of the 32 passengers on board, there were eight Britons, nine Germans, four Australians, four Romanians, six Chinese and two from Thailand.

The other Brit killed during the tragic incident, was Jason Parnell, 46, from Sileby, Leicestershire.

Mr Parnell was celebrating his first wedding anniversary with wife Puja, when the boat was capsized.

Jason Parnell, 46, pictured above on his wedding day with his wife Puja, 31, who escaped unhurt. They were celebrating their first wedding anniversary at the popular holiday resort

A hearing at South Manchester Coroner's Court today heard they had been among 32 tourists on the boat when it capsized after it was hit by a wave as it returned from a day-long tour

Boat captain Sanan Sridakeow was jailed for a year and operator Limited Partnership Angthong Discovery Tour was fined after admitting recklessness following the crash, in which two people of other nationalities also drowned.

The court heard the boat had been taken out despite a warning for small boats not to sail due to a monsoon.

The boat was travelling from Mu Ko Ang Thong National Park when it was struck by the wave and capsized at 5pm local time.

Some of those on board were thrown into the water and became trapped underneath the boat.

Video and pictures captured the desperate rescue operations by locals and Thai marine police who had to use a hammer to smash through the hull to rescue the trapped victims.

Four tourists  from the UK, Australia, Germany and Romania  were taken to hospital on the island for treatment.

A heartbreaking photograph from the O'Connors' wedding shows them holding hands underneath a cloud of pink blossom, while another shows the pair at the reception

Mrs Parnell told the court she and her husband had booked the trip before arriving in Thailand because of her husband's love of boats.

But she said when they boarded in the morning of May 26 they were forced to disembark and wait while the vessel was moved because it had become stuck.

She said: 'When we were waiting for the boat I knew something wasn't right. Jason said I was being silly so we got back on the boat.'

Mrs Parnell and Mr O'Connor both said no safety briefing was given on board and passengers were only told to wear life jackets when snorkelling or kayaking during stops on the trip.

Mrs Parnell said when the boat started to return to land after the final stop the weather had got worse.

She said: 'If I had a choice I wouldn't have got back on. Something felt really uneasy.'

She described the boat being tipped on its side and then upside down after water came rushing through when it was hit by a wave.

She said: 'I got stuck in the boat and didn't know where anybody else was.'

Boat captain Sanan Sridakeow was jailed for a year and operator Limited Partnership Angthong Discovery Tour was fined after admitting recklessness following the crash, in which two people of other nationalities also drowned

Mrs Parnell was able to get a life jacket, which had been stored under the seats, and move to an air pocket where she was pulled to safety by rescuers

Mrs Parnell was able to get a life jacket, which had been stored under the seats, and move to an air pocket where she was pulled to safety by rescuers.

She said her husband's body was not found until four days later.

Mr O'Connor told the court he and his Romanian-born wife had flown out to Thailand a few days after their wedding.

He said they had laughed with other tourists on the boat about the journey before the crash.

He said: 'We we're saying it wasn't quite what we expected, it wasn't a pleasure cruise - it was a speedboat ride.

'Everyone was laughing but you think just get on with it, I suppose because once you're that far out there's only one way to get back.'

Dozens of tourists watched the aftermath of the speedboat crash as darkness fell

Mr O'Connor said once on land he spoke to a German woman who had told him she had seen his wife.

'She said Monica's face was white in the water,' he said.

'She didn't say she was dead but I guess deep down I probably knew she was dead at that point.'

He said he went to hospital, hoping his wife had been among passengers who swam to another part of the shore, but once there was asked to identify her body.

The inquest is scheduled to last three days.
A 14-year-old girl told her mother she was scared in a chilling text sent shortly before she was raped by a man she met on Facebook, a court heard.

The girl sneaked out of her home in Stroud, Gloucestershire to meet Jordan Maxwell after he flattered her on Facebook, a jury was told.

Her mother, who was travelling home at the time, then got text messages from the girl as Maxwell drove her to a secluded spot, prosecutors said.

Maxwell denies falsely imprisoning the girl in his car and raping her in May this year and is now on trial at Gloucester Crown Court.

A girl was driven to this rural location and raped by a man she met on Facebook, a court heard

Prosecutor Ian Fenny told the jury: 'Our case is that this fourteen year old girl was not quite as grown up or resourceful as she thought she was.

'You may conclude she was flattered by the interest shown in her by an older boy who was at the time just a month short of his 20th birthday.

'She agreed to meet this man at night. He knew how old she was. She had told him.'

He continued: 'There had been a casual meeting between them a couple of weeks before this incident. There had also been Facebook exchanges between them. They began to exchange messages.

'On 21st May this year they were in contact with one another during the day... She agreed to meet him in the evening. She had at least some idea that they would be smoking cannabis.

'She wanted to bring a friend with her because she was frightened about being with him on her own. But he said "No, I want to meet you on your own because I want to get to know you".

'Between 11pm and midnight she slipped out of her home to meet him.

Describing the meeting, the prosecutor said: 'He produced a cannabis spliff and they smoked together. He then produced a second spliff and she says she felt different when she smoked it. She said it felt weird.

'He then drove so fast that it frightened her. He held her leg while he was driving.

'She sent her mum a series of texts at that stage. In the first she said "Sorry Mum, I snuck out. But I'm scared. I will be home by the time you get back but I need to chat with you. I am sorry".'

Her alleged attacker, Jordan Maxwell, is now on trial at Gloucester Crown Court (pictured)

Four minutes later she texted 'Mum, I'm scared.'

Mr Fenny said her mother picked up the messages at 1.17am and replied "Where are you?" then "I will come and get you, where are you", followed by "Answer me please" and finally "Please, we are out looking".'

The girl was forced into the back of Maxwell's car and raped, the prosecutor claimed. The Crown's case it that she was 'submissive' but did not consent.

The girl eventually got home to her mother at 1.30pm.

The prosecutor said: 'By now her mum and her partner were out trying to find her. You can only imagine what was going through mum's mind.'

The jury heard the girl's video recorded police interview in which she said she was 'petrified' as Maxwell raped her.

'He had locked the door so I couldn't get out,' she stated. 'He got me into the back. He forced himself on me. I was telling him to get off me and he wouldn't. I was pushing him and he wouldn't let me go.'

In a statement to police Maxwell said he thought the girl was 16 and she consented to sex, the court heard.

The trial continues.
Bethany Shipsey (pictured), 21, suffered from severe mental health issues after being emotionally abused

A grieving father whose daughter died after bungling medics failed to treat her as a priority has discovered more than 130 'serious incidents' at the same hospital.

Bethany Shipsey, 21, suffered from severe mental health issues after being emotionally abused, sexually assaulted and raped by her ex-boyfriend Barry Finch.

Finch, 23, was convicted of rape and jailed for six years in August last year.

Bethany - on home leave from a psychiatric ward at the time of her death - was rushed to Worcestershire Royal Hospital on February 15 after collapsing at home.

She had taken 2,4-Dinitrophenol weight loss pills, known as DNP, that she bought online from a Ukrainian supplier.

Bethany died on a hospital trolley, having been moved three times in 20 minutes after 'overwhelmed' staff failed to treat her as a priority.

Her devastated parents slammed medics, claiming her life could have been saved if she had been treated sooner.

Bethany - on home leave from a psychiatric ward at the time of her death - was rushed to Worcestershire Royal Hospital on February 15 after collapsing at home

Her devastated parents (pictured) slammed medics, claiming her life could have been saved if she had been treated sooner

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust, which runs the hospital, had been told by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) that it needed to make 'significant improvements' days before Bethany's death.

Her father Doug, 57, has now uncovered a string of blunders at the hospital after he made a Freedom of Information request.

The hospital recorded 136 'serious incidents' there between December 1, 2016 and September 30 this year.

A 'serious incident' is one that can cause harm to a patient, including acts or omissions in care that can result in unexpected or avoidable death or serious harm.

Shockingly, as a result of these incidents, 24 patients died - including Bethany.

Mr Shipsey, who lives in Worcester, said: 'The Worcestershire Royal Hospital already has an unacceptably high mortality rate.

'The CQC's reports and warnings have cited that patients' safety is at risk, particularly in the A&E department. Another winter is almost upon us - so what has been done by the trust to remedy the situation in time for this winter?

'The new management has already had eight months to make changes, but still there is no difference. So, when will this Third World treatment of our most vulnerable citizens end?'

Speaking shortly after her death, Bethany's mum Carol, 57, a nurse with 39 years' experience, said: 'Beth looked at me and just called my name.

'That was the last time she actually spoke and she just called, "Mum, Mum, Mum".

Finch (pictured), 23, was convicted of rape and jailed for six years in August last year

'Unbeknownst to us she had obviously stored some of the pills upstairs and she went upstairs and took them.

'She alerted somebody on the internet that she took them. I'm struggling to even believe it myself that [the hospital] did nothing.

'It was inadequate care, lack of dignity. There was no communication with the parents until Beth had a cardiac arrest.

'She was not seen as a priority. We want answers for Beth.'

Dr Suneil Kapadia, chief medical officer of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: 'We encourage all staff to report any concerns they may have about issues affecting the quality of care we provide for our patients.

'We investigate those concerns thoroughly, and share the lessons learned widely across our trust.

'Sometimes, our investigations reveal issues that are of such concern that we report them as serious incidents.

'While some of these incidents may relate to the care of patients who subsequently die, this does not necessarily mean that their death is directly related to, or caused by, the issue that has been reported.

'We strive to review all cases where patients die while in our hospital, whether or not there have been any concerns raised about their care.

'This is one of a package of measures we have in place to help us continuously improve the quality and safety of the care we provide for our patients.'

For confidential support, call the Samaritans on 116123, visit a local Samaritans branch, or see samaritans.org for details.
A Georgia man faces animal cruelty charges after firefighters discovered dozens of dogs living in poor conditions in a home.

Approximately 85 dogs were discovered as firefighters tried to enter a house to extinguish a blaze Sunday morning.

Authorities say the home was soiled with animal feces and urine, including the outside of the house and the backyard.

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A Georgia man faces animal cruelty charges after firefighters discovered 85 dogs in a home

Firefighters were called to a house fire and found the animals in 'deplorable conditions'

Dozens dogs were discovered as firefighters tried to enter a house to extinguish a blaze Sunday morning

Several dogs were pregnant and at least one dog was dead. The dogs appear to be mixed-breed.

Fulton County Deputy Fire Chief Charles Stubbs said the situation complicated efforts to fight the fire because it was hard to get into the home.

Stubbs says the owner was breeding dogs illegally and didn't have the permit required to have more than four dogs.

The man has not currently been named.

Several dogs were pregnant and at least one dog was dead. The dogs appear to be mixed-breed

The owner was breeding dogs illegally and didn't have the permit required to have more than four dogs

The owner surrendered the dogs and the situation is still under investigation.

Authorities said the dogs would be evaluated to determine which ones can be adopted.

'The dogs are safe and will receive medical care and placement assessments over the next few days, and may go to rescue or be available for adoption based on those assessments,' Fulton County Animal Services said in a post.

The shelter is asking for supplies or donations to help with the sudden influx of animals.

The owner surrendered the dogs and the situation is still under investigation
A 22-year-old Texas woman has been arrested after prosecutors say she attempted to frame her boyfriend on trumped-up charges of domestic violence and bribery in what has been described as a 'nightmare' catfishing conspiracy.

Lisa Marie Garcia, of Baytown, was arrested on Thursday and charged with retaliation and online impersonation.

The woman is accused of creating fake Instagram accounts and using cell phone apps to make it seem as if her boyfriend, 23-year-old Brandon Berrott, was threatening her. It is reported that couple have been locked in a custody battle.

Catfishing conspiracy: Lisa Marie Garcia (left), 22, has been charged with retaliation and online impersonation after prosecutors say she attempted to frame her boyfriend, Brandon Berrott (right), on trumped-up charges of domestic violence

If convicted of the charges against her, the 22-year-old could be looking at up to 10 years in prison.

Investigators say Garcia's elaborate online scheme initially worked, leading to Berrott's first arrest in September on a charge of making terrorist threats.

When his girlfriend continued receiving menacing text messages, Berrott, who had been released on bond, was sent back to jail for violating the terms of his release, which included a prohibition against contacting Garcia.

He didn't do any of this. He was charged with eight criminal cases and is innocent of all of them, prosecutor Britni Cooper told Houston Chronicle. I'm horrified, actually, and can't imagine what this guy went through. It's a nightmare.

The mans lawyer says that Garcias scheming has cost his client his job, in addition to tens of thousands of dollars in bond payments and legal fees.

Berrott was first arrested on September 16 after his girlfriend contacted the Baytown Police Department, telling them that he threatened to kill her. The 23-year-old man has a child with Garcia, and also with another woman, reported KTRK.

According to prosecutors, after Berrott was released on bail, Garcia launched a fake Instagram account in his name and proceeded to send threatening messages to herself and her romantic rival.

She then shared the bogus threats with the Baytown Police Department and the Harris County Sheriffs Office.

Between September 16 and October 31, Berrott was arrested eight times, and each time he made bail.

Determined to keep him behind bars, according to prosecutors, Garcia would send more fake threats to herself and then complain to the police, accusing her boyfriend of violating the conditions of his release by contacting her.

Living a 'nightmare': Berrott, pictured above with his sister, was arrested eight times between mid-September and late October, charged with making terroristic threats and violating a no-contact order and eventually fired from his job

Berrott was eventually fired from his warehouse job, but Garcia did not stop there  and may have overplayed her hand, eventually resulting in her own arrest.

On Thanksgiving weekend, the woman called the mayor of Baytown and claimed that Berrott's mother, who works for Harris County, had bribed District Judge Brad Hart so he would free him on bond.

Officials launched an investigation into the couple, which revealed inconsistencies in Garcias complaints about Berrott. In one instance, according to his lawyer, she claimed to have received a threat from him while he was handcuffed in the back of a police car.

The woman continued getting threatening messages from her boyfriend, even as he was cooperating with the investigation to clear his name, according to prosecutors.

Attorney Carl Moore, whom Berrott hired to try and clear his name, said he believes Garcia concocted the plot because she wanted his client to give up his parental rights, but he was determined to stay involved in his child's life.

His lawyer told the station KHOU he blames the local police department for continuing to file charge after charge against him without getting to the bottom of Garcias litany of complaints sooner.

But the department has sought to defend itself, arguing that Garcia was very convincing, and that their top priority is to protect a person whose life appears to be threatened.

Berrott is considering pursuing legal action against the police department over its handling of the case.

All charges against the man have been dismissed, and both his mother and Judge Hart have been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Berrott's former employer, the Goose Creek Independent School District, said he is welcome to reapply for his old job.
Islamic State militants are planning spectacular attacks from the desert as they morph into an insurgent force, a top US colonel claimed yesterday.

Colonel Ryan Dillon said the barbaric group no longer has an army nor the capability to launch major combat operations in Iraq and Syria following a series of devastating defeats.

But he said as a result they were moving into remote areas such as the desert where they can plot mass casualty attacks on civilians and local forces.

Colonel Ryan Dillon said ISIS no longer has the capability to launch major combat operations following devastating defeats

Despite the defeat of the Islamic State in towns and cities, including in the group's capital Raqqa (pictured), the group remains a threat, Colonel Dillon has warned

Col Dillon, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, the Western coalition against IS said: They are no longer a military threat. They no longer have an army that we saw present itself in 2014.

Speaking during a briefing at the US embassy in London, he said they no longer have the ability to fight in a major combat operations.

He said there were some 3,000 IS fighters remaining in Iraq and Syria.

But these were moving off into uninhibited areas, in areas where they are used to being familiar with, in the desert, in smaller cells, to transition back to how they began with insurgent like tactics and in efforts to conduct spectacular attacks throughout Iraq and Syria.

We are going to make sure we adjust accordingly, whether thats through training or intelligence sharing.

He warned the defeat of IS in major towns and cities did not mark the end of the campaign.

He said: It does not mark the end the end of Daesh.

We are looking at the enemy and seeing how he adapts and we will provide our partners the support that they need to deliver the lasting defeat to Daesh in Iraq and Syria.
Jane Seymour lent her voice to the #metoo movement on Monday as she once again told the story about how she was sexually assaulted by a Hollywood producer.

The British actress appeared on Megyn Kelly Today, where she told the host that after being asked to attend a screening of her film test at the home of a famed Hollywood producer she arrived to find herself alone with the man.

That is when Seymour claims he put his hand on her upper thigh 'in the wrong place' and told her she 'knew what she had to do' if she wanted the role in his film, prompting her to immediately leave his home.

She told Megyn that years later she attended a private dinner for Princess Margaret at the man's home where he offered her the role that would make her a star in Somewhere in Time after not recognizing her from their previous encounter.

That seemed to confirm it was Ray Stark, as in a past interview with Barnes and Noble about how she got the role in Somewhere In Time, Seymour said: 'I was attending a party at the home of [veteran producer] Ray Stark, where he was entertaining a member of the British royal family.'

Seymour also used the interview to reveal her own son was recently roofied by a powerful publicist following a film premiere, claiming that the unnamed man then tried to drive off with the then-20-year-old film student.

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Her too: Jane Seymour appeared on Megyn Kelly Today (above) on Monday and revealed she was sexually assaulted by a Hollywood producer when she started in Hollywood

Revelation: The actress (above in 1978) said a powerful producer put his hand on her upper thigh 'in the wrong place' and told her she 'knew what she needed to do' to get a film role

Clues: Seymour said the same man producer her film Somewhere In Time and had a dinner for Princess Margaret, seeming to confirm it was Ray Stark (above with Barbara Streisand in 1968)

'I came to Hollywood about 22 or 23 years old. I came to do a test for my first Hollywood movie and nd it was a wonderful producer, we had a great experience,' said Seymour, who would not name Stark on account of the fact that he had 'passed.'

'I did the test. And another producer called my agent and said, "I want to test Jane, as well, for another movie." It was like, wow, amazing. The second producer, the one I'm going to talk about, had gotten a copy of the first test and wanted to screen it for me so I could see it. And he told my agent and I was told to go to his house because he was having a big screening of a movie with lots of people.'

Seymour said that when she arrived at the house however, there were no other people to be found.

'And the next thing I know, he says, "you're amazing, you're fantastic. I'm so excited. I've told everyone that you're the perfect person for our movie, the director and everybody. Now, it's your turn,'" said Seymour.

'And I said, "my turn?" He said, "yeah, you know what you've got to do.."'

Seymour revealed that after replying 'give a great screen test, the director shook his head and 'put his hand on my thigh, right up close in the wrong place.'

She immediately ran off, explaining: 'He basically got furious. He called the cab. And he turned to me and he looked me in the eye and he said, "if you ever tell anyone that you were ever here, let alone what happened, you will never work again anywhere, anywhere in the world." And I was shaking.'

Seymour said she decided to tell her team that she did not attend the meeting, adding that two of the men she told this to expressed their relief about her decision to not go to the home due to rumors and stories they had heard over the years.

Stark is the man who launched Barbara Streisand's career after casting her to star in Funny Girl, the play and later film based on the life of his mother-in-law.

He had at the time just married the daughter comedic actress Fanny Brice, famed for playing the character of Baby Snooks.

Stark also produced The Way We Were, The Owl and the Pussycat, Annie, Steel Magnolias, California Suite and The Goodbye Girl, earning two Oscar nominations over the course of his career.

Shocking new claim: Later on the show, Seymour revealed her son Sean Flynn (above in 2004) was roofied by a powerful publicist after a film premiere when he was 20

The actress then found herself back at the same home years later for a dinner in honor of Princess Margaret's visit to Los Angeles.

Stark did not recognize her however, and later that night offered her the chance to audition for Somewhere In Time.

'I was invited to this mans house again. I was not going to go but I was asked because I was British and Princess Margaret was going to be there and they wanted me to be there,' said Seymour, who despite quitting acting after her first encounter with Stark returned to the business over time.

'So, I showed up and sadly being English, I was a little bit early. And there he was and he looked at me, and he said, "dont I know you?" and I am shaking and I went, "not if you dont remember me" and walked away. And he persisted three times, he kept following me, saying "do I know you? do I know you?" and I said  anyway at the end of the thing he said, "Ive got a movie for you and he gives me the whole spiel."

That was not the end of Seymour's experiences of sexual assault in Hollywood however, with her son Sean Flynn suffering an even worse fate she revealed after an encounter with a publicist.

'He was 20 years old, he was at film school. He made a film called Numb, he was at a Hollywood event talking about his film, being a young filmmaker, and a publicist came up to him and said, "come with me, I can take you to some people that will be much better for your career, come with me,"' said Seymour.

'So he grabbed his friend, thank god, and they went into the car with this guy and they were in the car and all of a sudden my son was going all loopy, and he doesnt know whats happened. The guy had roofied him, whatever roofies are. And then started grabbing his private parts and started to make out with him. And his friend mercifully was completely sober and saw what was going on, when the car stopped, he grabbed my son and they ran.'

Seymour was appearing to promote her new book of inspirational stories, The Road Ahead.
A woman who once ran a religious boarding school in Florida has been charged in the 1980s death of a toddler, whom authorities say was tortured and denied food.

Anna Elizabeth Young, 75 was arrested near Atlanta on Friday, reported the Gainvesville Sun.

Young is accused of causing the late 1980s death of Emon Harper, who was two or three years old at the time.

Young, who was known as 'Mother Anna', operated the House of Prayer for All People in Micanopy from about 1985 to 1995.

Police say there may be other child victims linked to Young. In 2001, she was convicted of child abuse for bathing a 12-year-old girl in a tub full of chemicals.

Florida 'cult leader' Anna Elizabeth Young, 75 (pictured), who once ran a religious boarding school, has been charged in the 1980s death of a toddler, whom authorities say was tortured and denied food

Young, who was known as 'Mother Anna', operated the House of Prayer for All People in Micanopy (pictured) from about 1985 to 1995. Young is accused of causing the late 1980s death of Emon Harper, who was two or three years old at the time

Former attendees from the House of Prayer for All People came have come forward after many years, telling Alachua County authorities that they were tortured and abused in a religious cult atmosphere that included exorcism and chemical baths.

'Witnesses came forward from the House of Prayer alleging brutality and even some children being murdered,' Art Forgey, a spokesman with the Alachua County Sheriff's Office, told WCJB.

'It's not just one isolated incident of beatings. There were numerous children that were beaten, locked in solitary confinement, food-withheld.'

In the last year, children who stayed with Young at the House of Prayer, now in their 40s and 50s, have approached authorities with stories of torture, punishment, caging, and starvation. Those allegations led to the charges in the Harper death.

'We think there are many, many more. We can document other states and other missing children that we believe are tied into this,' Forgey told The Sun.

'They ran a religious institution - exorcising demons and other things like that. We have documentation involving her clear back the '60s.'

Young was accused of child abuse in 1992, according to court records. She fled the state and was captured eight years later in the attic of a relative's home in Illinois.

In the last year, children who stayed with Young at the House of Prayer (pictured, location), now in their 40s and 50s, have approached authorities with stories of torture, punishment, caging, and starvation. Those allegations led to the charges in the Harper death

Young was arrested without incident and will be returned to Alachua County to face charges. Authorities say that believe Young may be responsible for 'many, many more' deaths

Authorities in Cobb County, Georgia, described Young in a press release as a former 'cult leader' and said the child abuse case stemmed from Young bathing a 12-year-old girl in a steel tub with chemicals that caused severe burns.

She was sentenced to six months and 12 days in jail in 2001.

Anna and Robert Young bought the property in Micanopy in 1983. In 1985, it was transferred it to the House of Prayer for All People Selah, Inc, a nonprofit.

Officials would not say when they began taking in children and how the children came to be in their care.

Other family members were involved in the House of Prayer operation, including Young's husband, Jonah

Young was arrested without incident and will be returned to Alachua County to face charges.
A mugshot image taken during the early July arrest of Former Donald Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos speaks to the pressure brought to bear before he began cooperating with government prosecutors.

Papadopoulos can be seen looking straight at the camera in the mugshot taken in the early morning hours after he got picked up by the FBI and arrested.

The image shows a thick five-o'clock shadow on the former policy aide's face. It was taken hours before special counsel Robert Mueller's team was able to gain cooperation from the 29-year old former foreign policy aide who received offers of 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI in a charge that had been kept under seal.

Former Donald Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos had his mugshot taken in the early morning hours after he got arrested in July.

His mugshot, taken hours after FBI agents picked him up after his Lufthansa flight landed at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, was obtained by Politico.

'He was arrested before he got to Customs and he was then held at the airport before being brought to a law enforcement office,' attorney Rob Stanley told the publication.

The surprise arrest ensured that Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with authorities, got a taste of what could await him if he ended up on the wrong end of Mueller's investigators.

Arrest records reveal that he was assigned to a cell and then checked out to federal authorities at 8:27 in the morning.

Papadopoulos' image was revealed just days after Mike Flynn, the former White House national security advisor, had to endure a perp walk at a federal courthouse in Virginia where he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI agents

He was arrested in July at a detention center in Alexandria, Virginia

Flynn was reportedly fingerprinted and processed at an FBI office in Washington, D.C.

'My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the special counsels office reflect a decision I made in the best interest of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions,' Flynn said in a statement Friday.

The two guilty pleas have drawn a swirl of media attention, and reported have some White House insiders concerned some of their colleagues or former associates could be wearing a wire.

In a motion filed to seal the initial court proceedings, the government argued that 'public disclosure of the defendant's appearance' would 'significantly undermine his ability to serve as a proactive cooperator'  which could indicate he wore a wire.

The mugshot image rounds out a photo record of Papadopoulos' activities. Another is from a 2016 Trump campaign national security meeting tweeted out by the president that shows him seated not far from now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a meeting headed by Trump.

Another picture shows him in London, where according to a government information Papadopoulos met with a professor who had Kremlin contacts, although he was not initially truthful about how the meeting came about and when it occurred.

The twin guilty pleas of Papadopoulos and Flynn reportedly has some White House staffers fretful about their past interactions with either of the two men and whether their conversations were being recorded.
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Sixteen years after Wall Street financier Ted Ammon was bludgeoned to death in his East Hampton home by his wife's lover, the couple's adopted children have sold the home.

Just two years after the crime, Ammon's wife, Generosa, died of cancer, so the house fell to their two children.

Twins Greg and Alexa Ammon, 28, recently sold their parents' 7,000-square-foot country estate for more than $8million, listing agent Judi A. Desiderio told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

The twins put the house up for sale last year, with an asking price of $12.7milion. They later lowered the price to $10.995million before the anonymous buyer negotiated it down to 'the mid 8s'.

The Ammon twins have not lived in the home since their father's horrific murder, but have rented out the property to several families over the past 16 years.

Their mother's lover, Daniel Pelosi, is serving a 27 years to live in prison sentence for Ted Ammon's death. He is first up for parole in 2031.

A Hamptons mansion that was the scene of a grisly 2001 murder has recently sold for $8million (pictured above)

Wall Street financier Ted Ammon was bludgeoned to death in his bedroom by his wife's handyman lover Daniel Pelosi

The Hamptons murder mansion, which features a stunning, light and airey family room (pictured), was initially put on the market by the couple's adopted twins, Greg and Alexa, last year for $12.7million

The English Manor style home, on Middle Lane, boasts a spacious dining room, with high ceilings and an elaborate chandelier

Ted and Generosa Ammon, pictured with their adopted children, Greg and Alexa Ammon in an undated photo, appeared to be the perfect family. But it all fell apart as the marriage crumbled and Generosa fought for half of his $80 million fortune

When the home was first put up for sale, Desiderio said the murder - which she is required by law to disclose - scared off some potential buyers.

'Fifty percent of people would rule it out because of the history, she said, adding that some 'wouldnt even go in' after hearing about the crime.

The English Manor style home, on Middle Lane, boasts six bedrooms, six-and-a-half baths, as well as a gourmet kitchen, solarium, and library.

The mansion comes also features an exercise room and heated pool, with accompanying pool house, all nestled within 2.2 acres of land with its own pond, in East Hampton Village. The location is just a short walk from the ocean and the famous Maidstone Club, and counts the likes of Katie Couric and Jerry Seinfeld as neighbors.

The home needs a full renovation and the new home owners are still deciding whether to gut the home or tear it all down and start from scratch.

The Ammon twins have not lived in the home since their father's horrific murder, but have rented out the property to several families over the past 16 years

The property, based in East Hampton Village, has an unusual, wood-paneled gourmet kitchen

A his and hers bathroom, with separate sinks and mirrors, as well as a huge walk-in shower, is just one of the six-and-a-half baths

A nautical inspired porthole window overlooks the wooden balustrade on the property's second floor landing

The house, which counts the likes of Katie Couric and Jerry Seinfield as neighbors, has a backyard with its own grill

The multi-million dollar home overlooks its lush, green backyard - part of the 2.2 acres of land it was sold with

An established pond sits on the grounds of the Hamptons house, which was sold to an unnamed buyer recently

The six-bedroom home was once location of the infamous 2001 murder of Wall Street financier Ted Ammon, who was bludgeoned to death in his bedroom by his wife's handyman lover Daniel Pelosi.

The Ammon twins were adopted as toddlers from a Ukrainian orphanage by Ted and his wife Generosa Ammon and for a while, they had the picture perfect family.

But after 17 years of marriage, the relationship began to crumble. Following their separation, as Generosa fought for half of her husband's $80million fortune, things turned ugly.

They were just days from finalizing their divorce when, on October 22, 2001, he was found bludgeoned to death in the bedroom of his weekend Hampton's home. As they were still technically married, Generosa inherited 50 per cent of his estate, while the other 50 per cent went to Ammon's foundation - as stipulated in his will

Generosa's boyfriend Pelosi, a married electrician from Long Island, was convicted of the murder in 2004 and is imprisoned at Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York. He's eligible for parole in 2031. He remarried to Generosa in 2002.

An aerial view reveals the spacious home which also includes a heated pool and a pool house behind it

The listing agent says the new owners are deciding whether to do a gut renovation or the home or tear it down and start all over

The English Manor style home, on Middle Lane, boasts six bedrooms, six-and-a-half baths, as well as a gourmet kitchen, solarium, and library

The mansion also features an exercise room and heated pool, with accompanying pool house, all nestled within 2.2 acres of land with its own pond, in East Hampton Village

The location is just a short walk from the ocean and the famous Maidstone Club

The twins, who were at their father's house in Manhattan when the 52-year-old was bludgeoned to death, was initially told by their mother that he had killed himself, before they learned the truth.

The children were left without parents for a second time when Generosa was diagnosed with breast cancer and died in August 2003. The children went to live with their aunt in Alabama.

Pelosi, who had been battling for a part of the fortune left by his late wife, always maintained that Generosa hired a hit man to kill her husband. But the twins admit they were not convinced he was a killer until he was convicted.

'I still had doubts up until that point,' Alexa told Katie Couric in 2012. 'I was so convinced he was innocent. I don't know what he did to my mind. He's a psychopath.'

Both Alexa and Greg are now certain he was to blame, and say they choose to believe their mother was not a part of their father's death.

Despite enduring such tragedy before they were teenagers, the twins pulled through.

'We had each other so that was one thing,' Greg said. 'It was not easy .'

Greg founded Big Flower, a Hamptons lifestyle brand with a flagship in East Hampton. Alexa recently graduated from USC School of Cinematic Arts and is pursuing a career in film and photography.

In May 2016, Greg married Stacy Volkov, daughter of former Atlanta Hawks basketball player Alexander Volkov, in a lavish ceremony at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, built by the Vanderbilts, that was covered by Brides magazine.

Daniel Pelosi (left in 2003) a married electrician from Long Island, was convicted of Ammon's murder in 2004. His victim's adopted children, Greg and Alexa Ammon (pictured right in 2012) blame him for their father's death but say they choose to believe their mother was innocent

In May 2016, Greg Ammon (right) married wife Stacy in a lavish ceremony at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina

The twins (pictured as children with Ted Ammon) were at their father's house in Manhattan when the 52-year-old was bludgeoned to death
A dangerous fugitive who has been on the run since September has been taunting police on Facebook by posting pictures of him opening an advent calendar.

Lee Mapstone, 36, who is wanted for kidnap and robbery offences, posted a photo of himself holding up a Peppa Pig advent calendar with the first two flaps opened.

In another brazen move, he also sent officers a personalised Christmas Card as he was '100% confident' they will not arrest him.

Brazen: Lee Mapstone, 36, has taunted police with pictures of him holding an advent calendar

In the card sent to Wiltshire Police, the fugitive wrote: 'I hope you have a very merry Christmas because I certainly will be mate. Any ways got things to do.'

The outlaw signed the card 'from ya pal Lee Mapstone', and enclosed a postcard of London.

A Wiltshire Police spokesman said: 'Lee Mapstone is a convicted, violent offender who is wanted for two very serious offences of kidnap and robbery.

'We are reissuing our appeal for the publics help in locating him. We would urge anyone with information to contact us immediately.

In another brazen move, he also sent officers a personalised Christmas Card as he was '100% confident' they will not arrest him

In the card sent to an officer at Wiltshire Police, the fugitive wrote: 'I hope you have a very merry Christmas because I certainly will be mate. Any ways got things to do'

'If you see him please do not approach him but instead call 999 and give police his exact location, a description of what he is wearing and any items he may be carrying. Any other information can be given by calling 101.

'If you would prefer to give information anonymously then you can call Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.'

This comes after Mapstone goaded cops by posting 'holiday snaps' of his visits to London tourist spots while on the run.

In November, Mapstone taunted officers with photos of Buckingham Palace, The Ritz Hotel and other London tourist spots during 'day trips' on Facebook.

The criminal even took a photo outside London's Paddington Green Police Station and said: 'Was going to hand myself in but had change of heart.'

He mocked police officers by saying they were 'sh*t at hide and seek.'

His campaign continued last night as he returned to the capital after posting pictures of a flying weekend visit to his Swindon home town.

He snapped a road sign for a police station and wrote: 'Well was in Swindon yesterday with Brenden Mooney and just to let them know I done a flying visit and took these on the way back to London f*ck the police.'

At the time, Wiltshire Police admitted intelligence showed he 'may now be in London' as he remained on the run for kidnap and robbery offences since September 25.

Fugitive Lee Mapstone has posted a series of mocking pictures while on the run from police. He took a picture of a doughnut shop alongside a foul-mouthed message to officers

Mapstone, 36, has goaded officers with photos of Buckingham Palace, The Ritz Hotel and other London tourist spots during 'day trips' on Facebook

Mapstone (right) is wanted for robbery and kidnap. In November he posted a picture from his flying weekend visit to his Swindon home town (left)

He took a picture of officers in London and added a foul-mouthed caption teasing officers for not being able to catch him

He was also wanted on recall to prison for breaching his licence for grievous bodily harm and burglary two years ago.

On November 10 he posted a photo of the front of Paddington Green Police Station and said: 'Was going to hand my self in but had change of heart see u later boys'.

Five days later Mapstone shared a snap of six uniformed officers standing next to marked motorbikes saying 'all they do is eat doughnuts and drink coffee'.

Later that day he shared a picture of an armed police officer he called 'a barbie girl'.

Friends encouraged him on as he they called him 'soppy' for posting holiday snaps of Christmas lights near Oxford Street the following evening.

Brazen Mapstone posted a picture outside the Ritz in Mayfair, titled with, 'I love this place'

While on the run Mapstone has made the most of his freedom, even posting pictures from Oxford Street captioned with: 'Quite nice lol'

Mapstone took a picture of an armed officer in central London and mocked the policeman

The criminal even took a photo outside London's Paddington Green Police Station and said: 'Was going to hand myself in but had change of heart'

He has shared links to news stories about him mocking police telling his followers: 'They are sh*t at hide and seek I will keep running lol.

'It's all fun and games for me lol.'

Under a picture of China Town, he said: 'Avin a great time in London this is China town wicked place love it.

'Being on the run seeing all this safe bro.'

The fugitive later told police to 'watch this space' as he revealed plans to visit the Eiffel Tower and enjoy Christmas while on the run.

Sharing a selfie of himself in the 'can't see me pose' by WWE wrestler John Cena, he said: 'They are just a bunch of idiots.

'I could do their job ten times better than them.

'Of course I could catch someone like myself - all the information I've put on and they can't get me.

'They've only got to go to certain places in London and I'll be on my tees running from them.'

On another picture of a police officer, the fugitive captioned it: 'Thick c*** lol'

Arrogant: Mapstone has documented his journeys on Facebook and has frequently mocked police

The wanted man added: 'I say hello to them and everything and they walk past me.

'I've been telling the police I'm in London.'

On his future plans and asked if he would visit Eiffel Tower, he said: 'If I had the money I would do that.

'Me and my mates are deciding what to do next.

'I didn't know it would be growing to get this big and it's just blown up. I like it, it's big now and that's why we are doing more and more.

'It proves the police are not doing their jobs. It proves that that they are just idiots, how many chances have they had to get me.'

Mapstone claimed officers had even asked him to 'politely' hand himself in over the phone in October.

'One copper phoned me and asked me would I be prepared to hand myself in and I said not at the moment.

'And he said to me, "when are you available" and I said, "I could be after Christmas".

'He's an idiot, I don't know if he thought I was ever going to, I obviously wasn't.

'I will go finally hand myself in if they don't get me before but it's going to be on my terms.'
A single-engine airplane crashed into the deck and backyard of an Ohio house, and residents discovered the wreckage containing the deceased pilot when they returned home.

The residents weren't there when the plane, a 2017 Titan Tornado II, went down sometime Sunday near Ravenna in Shalersville Township, roughly 30 miles southeast of Cleveland, investigators said.

It wasn't clear how long the debris was in the yard on Nicodemus Road before the residents returned and spotted it Sunday evening.

Scroll down for video

Stephen Paulus (pictured), a pilot and married dad-of-two, was flying his single-engine airplane Sunday when he crashed into the deck and backyard of an Ohio house

Paulus' 2017 Titan Tornado II plane (pictured) dropped out of the sky and destroyed the deck of a house in Shalersville Township

Crash: Paulus' aircrft came to rest in the backyard of this home on Nicodemus Road while the owners of the residence were away

State Highway Patrol Sgt. Scott Louive told WOIO-TV that evidence at the scene indicated the aircraft didn't have a sloped descent.

'From the debris we saw back there, it doesn't appear it was coming from any angle,' he said. 'It appears that it just dropped straight down.'

The cause of the crash is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration.

An autopsy was planned for the pilot, identified as 60-year-old Stephen Paulus, of Rootstown. He was alone in the plane, and no one else was hurt.

Authorities said Paulus may have crashed while returning to the nearby Portage County Regional Airport just down the road, where he had taken off earlier.

The Record-Courier reported that a man who identified himself as a friend of Paulus' told investigators that the pilot had planned to enjoy a brief flight in his homemade aircraft.

A neighbor who lives across the street from the airport said he was stunned to learn of the crash.

'I was home and did not hear a thing,' Dave Shanley told WJW-TV. 'It's very quiet out here.'

The 60-year-old pilot was alone in the home-built aircraft, and no one else was hurt

Twin: The Tornado II (similar to one picutred) is 19 feet long with a 23 1/2 foot wingspan, and takes approximately 150-300 hours to put together

Family members tell WKYC Paulus was a married father-of-two who worked as an electrician.

He was described as an experienced pilot who was passionate about flying.

As Cleveland.com first reported, According to Titan Tornado's website, Paulus' single-engine came from a kit.

The Tornado II is 19 feet long with a 23 1/2 foot wingspan, and takes approximately 150-300 hours to put together.
Bitcoin is a virtual currency, the first of a new form of money held only online that can be used either to spend like cash or as an investment a little like a commodity such as gold.

Bitcoin, like other similar electronic currencies that have followed (Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash and Dash), are stored online in a digital wallet and then spent on goods and services. Alternatively, you can exchange it for a traditional currency such as sterling. This can be done using a special pre-payment card that converts the cryptocurrency when a purchase is made.

HOW DOES IT WORK  AND HOW DO YOU BUY IT?

When Bitcoin was invented in 2009, it was aimed at techies who mined for it using Blockchain technology. Blockchain allows transactions to be managed cheaply, securely and anonymously in a kind of devolved online ledger with records of transactions held on thousands of computers.

To release coins a miner had to verify each transaction by solving a complex maths problem. But today, the Bitcoin revolution has extended beyond the techies and miners. Cryptocurrencies can now be purchased from specialist exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, Bittylicious and Bitstamp.

You can usually pay for the currency by credit or debit card or bank transfer. Exchanges are likely to make a charge for each purchase of cryptocurrency. For example, Coinbase charges 3.99 per cent for card purchases.

Oliver Isaacs, a technology investor and expert in cryptocurrencies, says: You can send a currency to another persons digital wallet so a Christmas present could be on the cards.

WHY HAS BITCOINS VALUE BOOMED?

The number of Bitcoins in circulation will never exceed 21 million. About 16 million have already been mined. The limit was set by a mysterious coding genius with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. This aims to ensure it will always have scarcity value.

The recent price rise  a nine-fold leap since the beginning of this year alone to $11,000 (8,000) at one point last week for a single Bitcoin  is partly due to growing interest from institutional investors and hedge funds.

But it is possible to purchase as little as a one hundred millionth of a Bitcoin (0.00000001 Bitcoin)  called a Satoshi.

WHERE AND HOW TO SPEND IT

A number of online and physical shops accept Bitcoin  from pubs and florists to holiday booking websites and charities.

Shoppers can pay online or use an app on their phone. They need to set up a virtual wallet first to store their coins. This acts like a bank account for receiving or using virtual currency  but without any consumer protection. To find shops accepting the currency visit wheretospendbitcoins.co.uk.

SHOULD YOU BUY? 'One year's winner can be next year's loser'

Warnings abound that investors heated love affair with Bitcoin can only end in tears.

The number of boasts of fortunes made from Bitcoin should ring alarm bells. Remember the rapid rise in share prices ahead of the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000?

Some experts warn of a 30 per cent correction in the Bitcoin price as soon as January. Others believe governments will clamp down because the secretive nature of these currencies makes them popular with criminals and also because they might undermine international currencies.

Justin Urquhart Stewart, of wealth manager Seven Investment Management, says: Bitcoins relentless march has the hallmarks of an investment trap. Investing in something just because it has gone up has never been sensible. One years winner can all too easily become next years loser.

But he is attracted to the technology behind the currency. He adds: Blockchain is more than a mechanism for moving money. It is about secure control of data and information. It could also be used in industries beyond financial services such as retail, healthcare and real estate.

Patrick Connolly, of financial adviser Chase de Vere, is nervous of the hype over an investment that is neither regulated nor offers consumer protection.

He says: We are not recommending any Bitcoin investments to our clients. Many people are investing without understanding the risks.

Benjamin Dives of start-up London Block Exchange says: If you are looking to invest you really need to do your homework.
Baby giant panda 'Mini Yuan Zai' was given a new name, 'Yuan Meng', as announced by French first lady Brigitte Macron today.

The four-month-old giant panda cub was seen growling at his godmother, Mrs Macron, during the naming ceremony at Beauval Zoo, south of Paris.

Yuan Meng made a jump when the French first lady put her hand over a glass wall to pet the cuddly-looking panda.

French first lady Brigitte Macron attends a naming ceremony with students in panda costumes

Yuan Meng can be seen growling at the French first lady, Brigitte Macron, during its naming ceremony (left). Mrs Macron is known as being Yuan Meng's godmother (right)

The new name, which has a meaning of 'accomplishment of a dream', was given by China as a tradition.

Baptiste Mulot, chief veterinarian at Beauval Zoo, said Yuan Meng is now moving on all fours and "he's starting to behave really like a child, so he tries to escape from where he's supposed to be.

"He tries ... to go into the corridor."

The cub was pink and hairless when born, weighing just 142 grammes (5oz), and he spent much of his first month in an incubator.

The four-month-old giant panda cub is seen being naughty during the celebration today

Yuan Meng, originally known as Mini Yuan Zai, has its name given by China as a tradition

Now, he weighs eight kilogrammes (17.6 lbs), his young fur has the black patches pandas are known for and he nurses without a feeding bottle.

Nine-year-old mother Huan Huan was artificially inseminated from partner Yuan Zi this spring.

Both are at Beauval Zoo on a 10-year loan from China, and their offspring officially belongs to the Chinese government.

Recently, adorable pictures emerged capturing the early stages of giant panda Mini Yuan Zai, the first panda to be born in France.

Yuan Meng can be seen growing from palm-size to about 65cm (26 inches) long.

The baby giant panda was looked after by mother Huan Huan carefully since birth.

Mother giant panda Huan Huan is giving her baby cub Yuan Meng a gentle bite in Beauval Zoo

Love bites! Yuan Meng is shot in a picture when mother Huan Huan just gave birth in August

Sina.com reported that the giant panda cub was enjoying the moment in front of camera as it posed and looked into the lens.

The picture collection shows Yuan Meng's growing progress at different stages.

Mother Huan Huan was often seen captured in the photos, cuddling the young cub in her arms.

Yuan Meng is the first ever giant panda born in France, by parents Huan Huan and Yuan Zai
Dr Peter Hutchinson (pictured), who lectured at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, made the comments in tutorials over a period of months in 2014 and 2015

A retired Cambridge University lecturer has apologised for making 'sexual and sexist' comments to 10 of his female students, admitting his behaviour was 'thoughtless, insensitive and offensive'.

Dr Peter Hutchinson, who lectured in the German department, made the comments in tutorials over a period of months in 2014 and 2015.

He retired in 2011, but carried on teaching in a non-stipendiary role at the university's Trinity Hall until 2015 when the comments were reported to staff.

They sparked an internal investigation, which resulted in him being banned from having any contact with undergraduate students.

In a public apology issued through the university and reported by Cambridge News he admitted his comments were 'of an inappropriate sexual and sexist nature'.

It read: 'I said from the start I was sorry for any distress I had caused. I continue to deeply regret the comments I made, and the impact they had on the students concerned. At the time I did not question the comments I made as I was not made aware of the impact they were having.

'Having had time to reflect, to step back and consider how these students said I'd made them feel, I realise these comments were thoughtless, insensitive and caused offence.'

He added that he has 'nothing but utmost respect for women' and expressed his 'deep sorrow and regret for the pain' his comments caused.

Trinity Hall is among Cambridge's most well-known colleges, with alumni including scientist Stephen Hawking, actress Rachel Weisz and journalist Andrew Marr.

Dr Hutchinson is still allowed to have an advisory role as a member of the college's financial committee but has no interaction with students.

A Trinity Hall spokesman said the college maintained a 'zero tolerance approach' to sexual harassment or sexual misconduct.

They said: 'The college welcomes the statement Dr Hutchinson has provided and endorses the outline of events and actions taken.

'he resulting action taken after the informal investigation was communicated directly to the students concerned, and was accepted and welcomed by them as a satisfactory resolution of their complaint against Dr Hutchinson.

He retired in 2011, but carried on teaching in a non-stipendiary role at the university's Trinity Hall until 2015 when comments were reported to staff. An internal investigation took place that saw Dr Hutchinson banned from having any contact with students

'There is no place for any form of harassment or sexual misconduct at Trinity Hall and we maintain a zero tolerance approach to any such incidents.

'Whenever complaints are made to the college, they will be fully investigated and action taken, if that is what the student or staff member chooses.

'Trinity Hall remains committed to keeping student choice at the heart of its complaints procedure, and works closely with students to ensure complaints are handled sensitively and in the manner they direct, whether that is informally, or formally.

'Where cases are dealt with informally, recommended actions will be taken with the agreement of all parties.

'Trinity Hall remains dedicated to maintaining a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment that allows our students to flourish.'

Dr Hutchinson's apology comes after Cambridge pledged to having a 'zero tolerance' approach to sexual harassment at the university.

On October 18 the leading higher education institution introduced a series of measures, which included training staff and hiring a dedicated sexual harassment and assault advisor.

As part of the launch, a Cambridge University Students' Union survey was released showing 77 per cent of respondents had experienced sexual harassment.

A further 30 per cent said they had experienced sexual assault, and that the majority of such assaults went unreported..

Dr Hutchinson said he endorsed the new campaign, which was devised jointly by students and academics, and has received high-profile support from actress Emma Thompson.

Dr Hutchinson added: 'I have learned from this experience and am fully supportive of efforts to ensure this kind of incident never happens again.'
A glamorous PA to one of Londons wealthiest Russian residents wished a judge a good day after she was cleared of fleecing her employer today.

Tatyana Govorov, 31, was said to have used a credit card entrusted to her by top restaurateur Arkady Novikov to rent a London flat and splash out on lavish New Years festivities at the Intercontinental Hotel.

Mr Novikov, a personal friend of Vladimir Putin, owns the famous Novikov restaurant chain, which has a Mayfair branch in Berkeley Square.

Tatyana Govorov was accused of using a card entrusted to her by top restaurateur Arkady Novikov to rent a London flat and splash out on lavish New Years party

Govorov was charged with four counts of fraud but the prosecution offered no evidence and she walked free

Govorov was entrusted with the card by Mr Novikov, 55, who owns a home in Chelsea, to pay for his household bills.

The Russian blonde was said to have spent more than 35,000 on herself and told an estate agents that Mr Novikov had agreed to act as a guarantor for her new home in Brockley, south east London.

It was claimed that in December 2015 she then used the HSBC card to fund a 28,000 New Years eve bash at the luxury Park Lane Hotel, The Intercontinental.

Govorov, who was personal assistant to the family, was given a blank credit card with an account in her name to pay household bills.

Mr Novikov has successful hospitality ventures in London and is worth over 300million. His wife is a successful businesswoman

The restaurateur owns a home in Chelsea is a friend of the Russian President Vladimir Putin

She appeared at Isleworth Crown Court for a plea, trial and preparation hearing wearing a long woolly grey coat, a black dress and a gold necklace where she confirmed her identity and address.

Govorov, of Morrison Court, Tulse Hill, south west London, denied four counts of fraud by abuse of position.

Prosecutor Mark Eldridge announced, however, that he was offering no evidence, though no reason for the charges being dropped was given in court.

Judge Robin Johnson said: Miss Govorov you are discharged - thank you.

The Russian walked out of the dock and said: Thank you very much, have a good day.

Mr Novikov has successful hospitality ventures in London and is worth over 300million.

His wife Nadezdha Advokatova is herself a successful businesswoman, having founded the Moscow florists Studio 55.

They have two daughters and the family regularly holiday to their luxury villas on Lake Como, next to Roman Abramovichs pad, and another home in Sardinia.
The man accused of hiding Mariah Woods' body in a creek in North Carolina had his bond kept at $1 million during his first court appearance.

Earl Kimrey, 32, the live-in boyfriend of Mariah's mother, Kristy Woods, appeared in court on Monday for a hearing in Jacksonville, where a judge ordered that his bond remain at $1 million.

Kimrey is charged with hiding three-year-old Mariah's body, knowing she did not die of natural causes, and obstruction of justice.

Prosecutors did not reveal any details about the case, and Kimrey's lawyer Walter Paramore said nothing in his defense.

Earl Kimrey (pictured in court on Monday), 32, the man accused of withholding information from North Carolina officers about the death of missing toddler, Mariah Woods, has his bond kept at $1 million

Kimrey, the live-in boyfriend of Mariah's mother, Kristy Woods, made his first appearance Monday at a hearing in Jacksonville, where a judge ordered his bond remain at $1 million

Mariah was reported missing on November 27. Onslow County Hans Miller said dive teams found Mariah's body around 5.30pm on Saturday

Mariah was reported missing on November 27. Onslow County Sheriff Hans Miller said dive teams found Mariah's body around 5.30pm on Saturday.

FBI spokeswoman Shelley Lynch said in a statement that the body was in Holly Shelter Creek along Shaw Highway in Pender County creek about 25 miles from the child's home in Jacksonville.

Kimrey was arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning and deputies charged him in connection to the death.

Arrest warrants said Kimrey moved Mariah's body from where she died, knowing her death was not natural.

Authorities have divulged few specifics of the case, including how the girl died.

Kimrey was brought before a magistrate to be charged with concealing a death, obstruction of justice, burglary, larceny and possession of stolen property.

'It was too late to save Mariah the moment the 911 call came in,' FBI agent Stanley Meador said of the call the girl's mother made last Monday to report her missing.

Kimrey (left) was arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning and deputies charged him in the death of Mariah (right). Arrest warrants said Kimrey moved Mariah's body from where she died, knowing her death was not natural

FBI Special Agent Stanley Meador (left) and Onslow County Sheriff Hans Miller (right) Saturday

Mariah's body was found in Holly Shelter Creek (pictured) in Pender County creek about 25 miles from the child's home

A boat is pictured at one of the search locations. Mariah's body was found by divers Saturday

Law enforcement search near the Southwest Creek Bridge for Mariah

'The arrest warrants are public record and the records speaks for themselves. We will not discuss any details related to the homicide investigation.'

One arrest warrant also charges Kimrey with larceny, breaking and entering and possession of stolen goods, according to News Channel 12.

He is accused of stealing two dressers after breaking into a home in Jacksonville between 11pm on Sunday and 3.30am on November 27.

Kimrey has a long criminal history which includes charges for larceny, assault, threats to government and being drunk and disorderly.

The charges date back to 2002. They stretch over several counties and two states.

Police and volunteers turned out in their hundreds on Friday to search for Mariah who, at that time, was still hoped to have been alive

An organizer for the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children speaks to volunteers on Friday before they went out to look for the girl

Social services would not confirm on Friday whether they had ever investigated Kimrey or the home where Mariah was living.

A spokesman refused when asked by DailyMail.com if there had ever been reported concerns about the family and said the information was confidential.

On Saturday, Meador urged people with surveillance footage near where the girl disappeared to call police and share the video as they investigate her death.

He asked businesses or residents who live on US Highway 17 or state Highway 53 in Onslow and Pender counties to call police if they have surveillance cameras.

The toddler had been missing since 6am on November 27. Kimrey and her mother Kristy Woods told police he was the last to have seen her at around midnight on Sunday.

They said he told her to go back to bed and that when they went to her bedroom the next day, she was gone.

Mariah's biological father Alex Woods said he did not believe Kimrey's story that Mariah was abducted by a stranger.

Woods, who has not seen her for a year despite claiming to have visitation rights, said he had been trying to get Mariah out of the home but that he could not afford a lawyer.

The toddler had been missing since 6am on November 27. Kimrey and her mother Kristy Woods (pictured with Mariah) told police he was the last to have seen her at around midnight on Sunday

They said he told Mariah to go back to bed and that when they went to her bedroom the next day, she was gone. Kristy Woods pictured with Kimrey

'Someone just walked right up in there, grabbed the 3-year-old out of the bed and she didn't cry, she didn't scream?

'Nobody heard anything? Four people in the house, two adults and two kids, someone just comes up and snatches the baby and walks out?' Alex Woods said.

Kristy, who last week disabled her Facebook account after posting the missing person's appeal for her daughter, claimed that Mariah was taken by a stranger.

In a tearful television appearance on November 28, she said: 'Please, bring her back.

'I love her. I'll do anything that I can, whatever you want.

'Please just bring her back safe and sound  she's my baby, she's my everything.'

Suspicious: Mariah's biological father Alex, who has not seen her for more than a year, said he did not believe Kimrey's story that his daughter was abducted by a stranger. He is pictured with his wife Heather earlier this week

Kristy made a tearful appeal to her daughter's abductor earlier in the week and begged for her to be brought back

Mariah is pictured with her mother, mother's boyfriend, and her two older brothers. Her biological father says he has been trying to get sole custody of the children for years

On Friday, 700 local volunteers turned out to join in the search for Mariah. At the time, they were still hoping to find the girl alive.

'Items of interest' which the FBI sent to its lab in Quantico earlier last week have still not been revealed.

They were sent straight to the FBI's base in Virginia for testing on November 29.

Earlier that day, agents were seen searching the trailer where Mariah lived with her 29-year-old mother Kristy, her older brothers and Kimrey.
A grieving husband was wrongly labelled a cheat after a detective misunderstood his wife's suicide note to think he was having an affair.

Nicole Putney, 32, hanged herself at a Novotel in Worsley, Manchester, leaving a note which was thought to be partially directed at a lover her husband, Simon Mueller was seeing behind her back.

But in a hearing at the High Court, a senior judge today said there was no evidence her widower was unfaithful or even that she feared he had been.

The note had been misread by Detective Inspector Koran Sellars, of Greater Manchester Police, said the judge, Sir Brian Leveson.

Simon Mueller was wrongly labelled a cheat after a detective misunderstood his Nicole Putney's suicide note to think he was having an affair (pictured together)

Ms Putney died after hanging herself in her room while at a business conference in Manchester in May 2015

Mr Mueller, an internationally renowned physicist, suffered anguish when his 'infidelity' was erroneously reported following an inquest into his wife's death.

The portion of the note which the detective believed to be addressed to another woman was actually written by Miss Putney to herself, he said.

'I have no doubt whatsoever that the note does not bear the meaning that Det Insp Sellars sought to give it,' Sir Brian said in his ruling.

'Whatever other criticisms she might have been making of him, there is no basis for concluding that Ms Putney was complaining - let alone asserting - that her husband was having or may have had an affair.

'It is clear that the second part of the note was, indeed, addressed by Ms Putney to herself.'

The court heard the couple had had a difficult marriage, exacerbated by Ms Putney's long-standing mental health problems.

The portion of the note which the detective believed to be addressed to another woman was actually written by Miss Putney to herself, he said

She had attempted suicide several times and had been treated at the Nightingale Hospital, in Marylebone, London, shortly before her death

She had attempted suicide several times and had been treated at the Nightingale Hospital, in Marylebone, London, shortly before her death.

She died after hanging herself in her room while at a business conference in Manchester in May 2015.

The coroner at the inquest into her death recorded a verdict of suicide, but Mr Mueller applied for a re-run of the hearing after objecting to the way he was portrayed in the evidence.

At the High Court, Sir Brian found that Mr Mueller had valid cause for complaint about the way the note had been misinterpreted and the damage done to his reputation.

However, he decided not to order a fresh inquest, because Mr Mueller's name had been cleared by his findings in the judgment.

The court heard the couple had had a difficult marriage, exacerbated by Ms Putney's long-standing mental health problems

'There is not the slightest challenge to the verdict and neither is there any challenge to any of the evidence that was adduced at the inquest, save only for the interpretation of the note,' he said.

'There is no real risk that justice had not been done; the coroner correctly identified her, and accurately recorded when, where and how she died and as such successfully achieved justice in her name.'

He continued: 'It must be clear that I am not suggesting that Mr Mueller is not and was not entitled to be aggrieved.

'I repeat that there is nothing in the note or any of the other evidence to suggest that Mr Mueller has ever had an affair or was ever unfaithful to his wife.

Nicole Putney, 32, hanged herself at a Novotel in Worsley, Manchester (pictured)

'These facts are of critical importance.

'In the circumstances, however, having regard to what is necessary or desirable, I would not quash the inquest or order that a fresh investigation be held.

'Justice for Mr Mueller has, however, been achieved, by the unequivocal endorsement of his position which I hope will, in this public judgment, serve to repair the damage that has been done by the error made by Det Insp Sellars, repeated at the inquest and so widely published.'
A Berlin art installation dedicated to 'martyrs' has prompted outrage by including one of the Paris jihadist attackers alongside the likes of Martin Luther King and Socrates, with the French embassy calling the display 'deeply shocking'.

The so-called 'Martyr Museum' by a Danish art collective shows the portraits of 20 people throughout history who 'died for their convictions' accompanied by short biographies.

The exhibition includes an image of French jihadist Ismael Omar Mostefai, one of three gunmen and suicide bombers who stormed the Bataclan concert venue in Paris in 2015, killing 90 people.

The so-called 'Martyr Museum' by a Danish art collective shows the portraits of 20 people throughout history who 'died for their convictions' accompanied by short biographies

On display next to his portrait is an entrance ticket to the Bataclan.

Also sharing a wall with US civil rights icon King and Greek philosopher Socrates is Mohammed Atta, the pilot who slammed a passenger plane into one of New York's World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001.

The week long installation by the art group, The Other Eye of the Tiger, was inaugurated last Wednesday at the Kunstquartier Bethanien art centre.

It sparked howls of outrage in German and French media and on social networks.

The French embassy in Berlin expressed 'consternation' and said it found the decision to include the attackers 'deeply shocking'

The French embassy in Berlin expressed 'consternation' and said it found the decision to include the attackers 'deeply shocking'.

'While keeping in mind our attachment to the freedom of artistic creation, we strongly condemn the confusion here between martyrdom and terrorism,' it said in a statement.

But the art collective defended the show, saying that it condemned any kind of violence or terrorism and that it was merely taking a wide look at the usage of the term 'martyr'.

'All the martyrs in the artwork have been appointed martyr by either a state, religion or an organisation. None of the martyrs have been appointed by the artists,' it said in a statement.

Berlin city hall authorities distanced themselves from the project, saying in a statement they did 'not support it' and had not provided any financial assistance.

An earlier version of the 'Martyr Museum' in Copenhagen in 2016 also caused controversy, with critics filing a police complaint accusing the artists of 'encouraging terror'.
The Utah Court of Appeals has dismissed a lawsuit filed against a local school district by a victim of a teacher who has been convicted of having sex with three male students.

The ruling upheld a district court's decision to reject the lawsuit concerning the sexual misconduct of Brianne Altice, who worked as an English teacher at Davis high School.

Judge Ryan Harris wrote in his 21-page opinion, which was released on Friday, that under state law, the Davis County School District was immune from suit.

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The Utah Court of Appeals has dismissed a lawsuit against the Davis County School District over the sexual misconduct case of ex-English teacher Brianne Altice, pictured left in her mugshot in 2013, and right in court in January 2017

The civil suit was filed by a former student who had sex with Altice when he was 16 years old

Altice pleaded guilty in 2015 to felony forcible sexual abuse and was sentenced to up to 30 years in prison, but she could be released as early as 2020.

In January of this year, Altice, 38, made a tearful plea begging the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole to release her, but her request was denied.

Altice admitted in a plea agreement that she had touched the genitals of a 16-year-old boy and two 17-year-old from January to September 2013.

All three teens testified that they had sexual intercourse with the teacher.

Two of the victims later filed lawsuits against Altice and the Davis School District, both of which have now been dismissed.

The lawsuits claimed that Davis High School was aware of Altice's inappropriate relationships with multiple students but did not fire her and protect them.

One of the suits said that the running joke in the high school was: 'Who is Ms Altice sleeping with now?'

Altice (pictured in 2014) pleaded guilty in 2015 to felony forcible sexual abuse and was sentenced to up to 30 years in prison

Altice was first arrested in October 2013 when the 16-year-old victim reported having a relationship with her. The two additional victims then came forward.

The former teacher was defiant following her initial arrest, claiming at the time that the boy 'wore down her defenses' and 'ultimately broke down her resistance'.

Altice's victim claimed the relationship began after they exchanged numbers and flirted during class. They ultimately started kissing and having sex.

Court documents state that the students often skipped class to spend their days with Altice, and that she confided in them about her marital problems.

Altice fired back at the claims from prison with a two-page letter in which she lashed out at the parents of one of her victims, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

In the letter, Altice claimed the parents had failed to attend her parent-teacher conferences and said their son often complained about his strained relationship with them.

She also shot down claims that she wore 'risque' clothing in the classroom saying that there she had never received any complaints about her work attire.

Altice was ordered to jail at the time after it was revealed she had sex with a third victim while out on bail for her 2013 arrest.

Sentencing guidelines suggest Altice remain behind bars until January 2020, but the ultimate decision was left to the parole board.

Sentencing guidelines suggest Altice, pictured in 2015, remain behind bars until January 2020

Altice's husband divorced her following her 2013 arrest and has custody of their two children.

In his ruling last week, the appeals court judge said that the plaintiff, who was 16 years ago at the time of his tryst with Altice, argued that the District knew, or at least should have known, that Teacher had been previously terminated from former employment due to sexual misconduct.

The lawsuit accused the district of being negligent in its hiring, supervision and retention of the English teacher, especially after reprimanding Altice, according to the complaint, for engaging in inappropriate contacts with students.

The school district argued that under the Governmental Immunity Act of Utah, it was not responsible for any damages caused by Altice, and the appeals court sided with the defendant.

It might seem counterintuitive that our law provides no civil remedy against a school district that is alleged to have negligently hired and retained a teacher who has illegal sexual contact with her minor students. But this conclusion is, in our view, compelled by the Act and by Utah Supreme Court precedent, the decision states.
Democratic leaders say they have accepted an invitation from the White House to sit down with President Trump in an effort to prevent a government shutdown.

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi announced the meeting, scheduled for Thursday, in a joint statement. The White House subsequently confirmed the dialogue would take place.

Schumer, the leading Senate Democrat, and Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, suddenly called off a meeting with Trump last week after he derided them in a tweet.

They agreed Monday to a conversation with GOP leaders and the president on immigration reform and other thorny topics.

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Democratic leaders said Monday that they had accepted an invitation from the White House to sit down with President Trump in an effort to prevent a government shutdown. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi announced the meeting, scheduled for Thursday, in a joint statement

Federal funding dries up on Friday unless the majority is able to cobble together the votes for a short-term spending agreement. House Republicans said this afternoon that they expect to pass legislation that does just that on Wednesday.

The continuing resolution would keep the lights on through Dec. 22 - three days before the Christmas holiday.

Trump's party is likely to be at the mercy of Democrats when it comes to approving a long-term agreement.

A faction of Democratic lawmakers, and a Republican senator, are threatening to withhold their votes on an appropriations bill if it is not coupled with legislation addressing the plight of illegal immigrant children.

The Trump administration has likewise said that it will not back any immigration bill that denies the Department of Homeland Security funding for the president's border wall. Trump has also said he wants an immigration overhaul that puts a stop to what is known as chain migration because of the long-reaching familial ties that applicants are able to claim.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday on ABC that a shutdown 'was not going to happen' as he slapped down legislators' push to save the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that Trump has moved to end via the must-pass spending bill.

'That's a ridiculous idea. There is no crisis. The president has given us until March to address the issue of undocumented children,' McConnell said. 'But there's no emergency. The president has given us to March to address it.'

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is supportive of the shutdown threat, said that 'in Congress, anything's possible.'

President Donald Trump, surrounded by empty chairs marked for U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who chose not to meet with him last week at the White House

'The end-of-the-year bill, it is a chance to really do some good for the country as a whole, starting by funding the Defense Department more adequately,' Graham told CNN a week ago. 'I'm not going to vote for a spending bill that doesn't dramatically increase defense spending.'

Graham also told CNN during the appearance, on it's flagship Sunday morning program State of the Union: 'There's a deal to be done...For the DREAM Act, I think you could get strong border security and a break in chain migration. If you can put those three things together and put it on the end-of-the-year spending bill, that would be a heck of an accomplishment for 2017.'

In a joint statement on Monday, Pelosi and Schumer said an agreement that addresses many of those issues is possible.

'We need to reach a budget agreement that equally boosts funds for our military and key priorities here at home including the opioid crisis, pension plans and rural infrastructure,' they said.

'We have to provide funding for community health centers and CHIP, as well as relief for the millions of Americans still reeling from natural disasters. And we must also come together on a bipartisan deal to pass the DREAM Act along with tough border security measures.

The duo assessed: 'There is a bipartisan path forward on all of these items.'

'As negotiations with our Republican counterparts continue, we are hopeful the President will be open to an agreement to address the urgent needs of the American people and keep government open,' the released concluded.

Trump met with McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan last week in Schumer and Pelosi's absence. When he spoke to the press afterward, the president was seated between two large, leather chairs  each in front of a nameplate of the Democratic leader to signify their absence.

'We are very far apart,' he said at one point. 'So they decided not to show up. Theyve been all talk and theyve been no action ... Now its not even talk.'

Trump staged the photo-opportunity designed to embarrass the Democratic leadership after they snubbed a White House meeting where the looming government shutdown was on the table.

He said of the no-show Democrats. 'Im not really that surprised.'

'I'm not really that surprised, we have a lot of differences. They are weak on crime, they're weak on illegal immigration, they want the illegal folks to come pouring into a border and a lot of problems are being caused, although we've stopped it to a large extent without the wall, which we're going to get,' Trump said.

He repeatedly stressed national security, and brought up a Tuesday missile launch by North Korea.

'They, before this meeting and before this missile launch, have been weak on military in terms of spending. They're very hard to get for military. They want it for a lot of other things, but the military is always secondary to them,' Trump said.

'I will say this, in light of the missile launch, probably they'll be here fairly quickly, or at least discussions will start taking place fairly quickly,' Trump added, without explanation. 'We have a lot of differences. Theyre weak on crime, theyre weak on illegal immigration.'

The president, it turned out, was right about one thing - the Democratic leaders agreed 'fairly quickly' to come to the White House this week for talks at second chance. Paul and McConnell will join them in the Thursday meeting with the president.

YOU NEVER VISIT: Trump blasted the Democratic leaders for snubbing a White House meeting

IT'S NOT THE SAME WITHOUT YOU: Trump glances at an empty chair marked 'Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi'

EVERYONE ELSE CAME: The meeting included staff aides to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan

UNCOMFORTABLE: Schumer and Pelosi skipped the meeting after Trump called them 'weak on crime'

The two top Democrats in Congress abruptly canceled a planned White House meeting with Donald Trump last Tuesday in response to the president's angry tweet expressing pessimism about their willingness to cut a deal that would keep the government running.

Trump had thrown shade at Schumer and Pelosi hours earlier, calling them tax-hikers who are 'weak' on crime and favor the 'unchecked' admission of illegal immigrants into the United States.

He also wrote that he doesn't 'see a deal' in the making.

Pelosi and Schumer effectively cut the president out of the conversation late on Tuesday morning, saying in a joint statement that '[g]iven that the President doesn't see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead.'

'We don't have any time to waste in addressing the issues that confront us, so we're going to continue to negotiate with Republican leaders who may be interested in reaching a bipartisan agreement,' they said.

President Donald Trump, center, escorted by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, left, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., right, arrives at the Capitol to meet with GOP lawmakers about moving his agenda and passing the Republican tax bill last week

President Trump tweeted about an upcoming meeting with Sen. Charles Schumer and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi

McConnell  who has also been on the receiving end of Trump twitter attacks  and Ryan hit back with their own statement bashing the 'new excuses' not to meet with the administration.

'We have important work to do, and Democratic leaders have continually found new excuses not to meet with the administration to discuss these issues,' the two leaders said.

'Democrats are putting government operations, particularly resources for our men and women on the battlefield, at great risk by pulling these antics. There is a meeting at the White House this afternoon, and if Democrats want to reach an agreement, they will be there.'

On Tuesday afternoon White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement, 'It's disappointing that Senator Schumer and Leader Pelosi are refusing to come to the table and discuss urgent issues.'

'The President's invitation to the Democrat leaders still stands and he encourages them to put aside their pettiness, stop the political grandstanding, show up and get to work. These issues are too important,' Sanders said.

'The meeting will proceed as scheduled with Speaker Ryan, Leader McConnell and administration officials who are committed to getting things done,' Sanders added. 'If the Democrats believe the American people deserve action on these critical year-end issues as we do, they should attend.'

NO THANKS: Pelosi tweeted that she and Schumer plan to 'continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress'

Trump had also been on Capitol Hill to speak with the Republican Senate Caucus at lunchtime.

Republicans have unified control of government, but leaders will most likely need some Democratic votes to get a funding resolution passed.

A group of Democrats are demanding a fix to help DREAMers who came to the U.S. illegally as immigrant children. The president rescinded their status but set a six-month deadline that ends in March to find a solution.

'Meeting with 'Chuck and Nancy' today about keeping government open and working,' Trump tweeted last Tuesday am. 'Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don't see a deal!'

Pelosi wrote that she and Schumer will negotiate 'in good faith,' regardless of what Trump is doing

Not happening again: Pelosi sat in the Oval Office in September as the White House negotiated hurricane relief funds and a hike in the nation's borrowing limit

Typically in recent years, even as government funding deadlines approach, presidents reassure financial markets and investors that the U.S. government will ultimately remain open and running.

Rump may be trying to use the threat of a shutdown to try to gain negotiating leverage, although usually it is a minority party seeking concessions from the White House who is able to threaten to hold up government funding, rather than the head of the government.

With just a 52 seat majority, Republicans can only afford three defections from their ranks and pass a spending bill in the Senate.
Amazon's Australian arm has finally launched  offering customers the chance to snap up deals just in time for Christmas.

Initially thought to be launching ahead of Black Friday, Amazon said it would start taking orders on Tuesday, ending speculation about the timing of its launch in Australia and likely dashing hopes of a holiday boost for struggling brick-and-mortar rivals.

The global retailer said it would offer free shipping nationwide for purchases over $49, with millions of products available from clothes to sporting goods to consumer electronics.

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Amazon's Australian arm has finally launched on Tuesday  offering customers the chance to snap up deals just in time for Christmas.

Deals available on the website include a 32" Samsung Smart TV for $608.20 and a Kindle E-reader starting from $109.

Gamers can get their hands on a Nintendo Switch console for $399 and the new FIFA 18 game for PlayStation is available for $39.

A VS Sassoon hairdryer can be snapped up for as little as $25. A Lego BB-8 Play set is on offer fro $99.97 - cheaper than buying it from Lego's website, where it costs $159.99.

Gym bunnies can get a Fitbit Charge 2 Heart Rate + Fitness Wristband for Christmas for just $137. On Fitbit's website, the same device is now $179.95, reduced from $249.95.

However, some of the products on Amazon were found to be much cheaper at rival retailers.

Deals available on the website include a 32' Samsung Smart TV (pictured) for $608.20

Gamers can get their hands on a Nintendo Switch console (pictured above) for $399

Amazon customers can get a Kindle E-reader starting from $109 and FIFA 18 for PS4 for $39

A 65" Samsung QLED Series 7 TV was offered for $5,999 on Amazon, but on JB Hi-Fi's website, the same television is on sale for just $3,996.

Amazon are offering a Chanel perfume trio for $199, but on department store David Jones' site, the same set is offered for $139.

Lipstick lovers should head to Mecca's website to get their hands on a Bobbi Brown Art Stick where it's $46 compared to $51.40 on Amazon. On Myer, the lipsticks cost $44 to $46.

A Disney Cars gift set is priced $55 on the newly-launched Amazon Australia website

A VS Sassoon Styling Kit can be snapped up for less than $25 on Amazon Australia

Those who love to pamper themselves with skincare will have to fork out $732.95 for a 100ml jar of La Mer's The Moisturising Soft Cream from La Mer's Amazon page, but at Myer, the same product can be snapped up for $665.

Meanwhile, Amazon didn't say what time of day it would begin taking orders from its Australian warehouse, except to say it would be on December 5.

It also did not comment on any last-minute problems from an order-taking trial which began on November 23.

Under the free delivery offer, Amazon said it estimated delivery times as short as three business days in the cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra - home to half the country's population - while shipping to remote areas could take 10 days.

But shoppers could pay a fee for faster shipping times.

A 65" Samsung QLED Series 7 TV was offered for $5,999 on Amazon Australia's website

On rival retailer JB Hi-Fi's website, the same Samsung television is on sale for just $3,996

Amazon are offering a Chanel Chance Eau Tendre perfume trio for almost $200 on Tuesday

The same Chancel gift set is available from department store David Jones for just $139

Amazon said it planned to offer its rapid-shipping subscription service, Prime, in mid-2018, in a sign it is unperturbed by the geographic challenge posed by one of the world's most sparsely populated countries.

Australia is the size of the mainland United States, but with one-thirteenth its population.

The move establishes the US giant as an aggressive presence in the sluggish Australian retail sector, just as shopkeepers were hoping for a rush of sales over the important Christmas holiday season.

In a statement, Amazon's Australia country manager, Rocco Braeuniger, said the company would 'earn the trust' of Australian shoppers and, over time, create 'thousands of new jobs'.

'Are you ready to make a difference?' a sign at Amazon's fulfillment centre in Melbourne said

Australia has long been home to Amazon-registered sellers, but until Tuesday they were limited to sending goods offshore because the Seattle conglomerate did not have a warehouse in the country of 24 million people.

This also meant Australians had to wait longer times, and pay higher fees, for shipping.

The company has now set up a massive distribution warehouse on the outskirts of Melbourne city, on the country's east coast where four-fifths of the population live, and the company hopes to cut delivery time to as little as a day.

The online retailer will offer one-day delivery to customers in major Australian cities

Australian retail shares have fallen sharply since Amazon confirmed plans for the country in April.

Shares of top department store operator Myer Holdings Ltd are down 30 percent since that time.

Myer has been shutting stores and ramping up online sales, and last month it halved its three-year target for growth in sales per square metre.

Its online sales leapt 68 percent in the 13 weeks to October 28, but remained only a tiny fraction of its total revenue.

Shares of No. 1 electronics retailer Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd are down 7 percent since April, while smaller JB HiFi are off by 6 percent amid fears of competition from Amazon.
In a legal case with profound implications for LGBT rights and religion's place in public life, the opposing sides agree on this: It's not about the cake.

At its core, the case that goes before the U.S. Supreme Court for oral arguments on Tuesday is a showdown between a gay couple from Colorado and a Denver-area baker who in 2012 cited his Christian faith in refusing to make a cake for their wedding celebration.

Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, was judged through multiple phases of litigation to have violated Colorado's anti-discrimination law. Through his lawyers, he now gets to argue before the highest court in the land that he's an artist who should not be compelled to create a cake that contradicts his religious views.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear the case of Jack Phillips (pictured), the Denver-area baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple in 2012

Charlie Craig (left) and David Mullins (right) say they went to Phillips' bakery, Masterpiece Cakes, in July 2012 to get a wedding cake. He refused, citing his Christian faith. They sued and won on the grounds that he violated the state's anti-discrimination law

For Phillips' legion of supporters - including conservative politicians, advocacy groups and religious institutions - the case has ramifications for creative professionals of all kinds.

'Every American should be free to choose which art they will create and which art they won't create without fear of being unjustly punished by the government,' Phillips recently told a rally of local supporters.

For advocates of LGBT rights, the stakes are perilously high. They fear a Supreme Court ruling in Phillips' favor would open the door to discrimination by a wide range of business owners and entrepreneurs.

'Cakes can often have artistic or creative designs. So can sandwiches, legal briefs, bicycles, cars, flowers, medical care,' American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Chase Strangio argued in a recent blog post.

'If a baker can reject LGBTQ people because of who we are, then what about the mechanic, the florist, the doctor, the teacher?' Strangio asked. 'This is not about cake. This is not about art. This is about survival.'

The case reaches the Supreme Court at a stressful time for the LGBT rights movement.

Just two years ago, the high court delivered the movement its greatest victory - a 5-4 decision paving the way for same-sex marriage to become legal nationwide. But that achievement, coming just 11 years after Massachusetts became the first state to recognize gay marriage, has been partly offset by subsequent political developments.

Phillips has continued to fight the decision, taking it all the way to the Supreme court (pictured above at his store in September)

Phillips has argued that, as an artist, he shouldn't have to be forced to make a cake for something he doesn't believe in

The sweeping Republican election victory in November 2016 solidified social conservatives' dominance in Congress and a majority of states and set the stage for President Donald Trump's administration to roll back several LGBT-friendly initiatives undertaken during Barack Obama's two terms in office.

Protections for transgender students have been weakened, and Trump is seeking to ban transgender people from military service. In October, Attorney General Jeff Sessions - a longtime skeptic of LGBT-rights initiatives - issued 'religious exemptions' guidance that could override many anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people and others.

The net result: LGBT activists see little prospect of short-term progress at the federal level, even as they remain heartened by the ever-growing ranks of corporations and local governments that are acting to make LGBT people feel welcome and to curb discrimination against them. The local laws can be important, given that only 21 states have statewide laws barring discrimination against gays and lesbians in public accommodations.

ARGUMENTS IN THE MASTERPIECE CAKES CASE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM Baker Jack Phillips and his supporters say this case is about Phillips' freedom to decline to bake a cake that is in conflict with his religious beliefs. 'This case has always been about one thing: compelling Phillips to create custom wedding cakes,' the baker's lawyers said in their final court filing before Tuesday's argument. Mormon, Lutheran, evangelical and Jewish groups that support Phillips said that the court already has recognized the liberty of same-sex couples to marry. Those groups told the court that 'it is equally important to protect the religious liberty of these conscientious objectors.' Representing Catholic organizations, lawyer John Bursch wrote, 'American citizens should never be forced to choose between their religious faith and their right to participate in the public square.' RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION The other side says the main issue is invoking religion to seek an exemption from anti-discrimination laws. The civil rights group GLAAD says this case is about using religion to deny someone's rights. It distinguishes such claims of religious exemption from cases of religious freedom, where one person's assertion of rights does not harm anyone else. 'The exemption sought ... would expose many more LGBT people to the specter of discrimination and the attendant pressure to hide their identities and their relationships to avoid it,' wrote lawyer Mary Bonauto, who argued the high court's 2015 case that extended same-sex marriage rights nationwide. Bonauto is representing GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. If the Constitution allowed 'religiously motivated denials of service to same-sex couples,' it probably also would allow people to be refused service based on their faith, Americans United for Separation of Church and State said in a brief that also includes other rights groups. Advertisement

Lambda Legal, a prominent LGBT-rights group, was among dozens of organizations submitting briefs to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Colorado couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins.

The group argued that LGBT people, for all their recent civil rights advances, still encounter varied forms of discrimination in the public square. Among its examples: a lesbian couple denied infertility treatment in San Diego, a gay Iowa couple rebuffed in efforts to rent a wedding venue, a transgender man turned away from a New Jersey hospital where he sought a hysterectomy.

'This is why nondiscrimination laws like Colorado's are so important,' wrote Lambda's law and policy director, Jennifer Pizer. 'So that people can live their lives without fearing that, at any moment, they may be turned away or verbally abused just for who they are.'

Oral arguments for Masterpiece Cakeshop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission will be heart on Tuesday. Above, the Supreme court on Monday

The lawyers arguing the case will be fighting over Anthony Kennedy's presumed swing vote. Kennedy, a Republican, has voted in support of LGBT issues before, but is also a firm defender of Freedom of Speech

Craig and Mullins spent only a few moments at the bakery in 2012 before Philipps' rebuff hit home.

'There was horrible pregnant pause,' Mullins recalls. 'It was publicly humiliating and it was painful.'

This will be the first major case dealing with LGBT rights for new Justice Neil Gorsuch, a conservative

'Never in a million years did we think that five years later we'd be going to the Supreme Court,' he said. 'It's been emotionally trying. You sort of have to relive that pain again and again.'

For opponents of same-sex marriage, religious liberty and religious freedom have become watchwords for a broad campaign to carve out more public space for their viewpoints.

There have been defeats. Earlier this year, Washington state's Supreme Court ruled unanimously that florist Barronelle Stutzman broke the state's anti-discrimination law by refusing to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. In October, two women who specialize in hand-lettering and calligraphy for weddings lost the latest round of their challenge of a Phoenix ordinance requiring them to provide their services for same-sex weddings.

There have been some victories as well.

In Michigan, a federal judge recently ordered the city of East Lansing to make room for a farmer who was barred from selling apples at a seasonal market because he doesn't let gay couples get married at his orchard, which is a popular wedding spot. A panel of U.S. appellate judges has allowed a sweeping Mississippi law to take effect that lets government workers and business owners cite religious beliefs to deny services to LGBT people. The law, now the subject of an appeal to the Supreme Court, protects three beliefs: that marriage is only between a man and a woman, that gender cannot be changed and that sex outside of marriage is wrong.

TIMELINE OF THE MASTERPIECE CAKES CASE July 19, 2012: Engaged couple Charlie Craig and David Mullins visit Masterpiece Cakes to buy a wedding cake. Once owner Jack Phillips hears they are gay, he says he won't make them one because of his Christian beliefs May 2013: Craig and Mullins file a complaint to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, saying they believe the state's Anti-Discrimination Act was violated by Phillips. May 2014: The couple's complaint becomes a lawsiut, Craig v. Masterpiece Cakeshop, which is decided in favor of the couple. Phillips is ordered to provide cakes to same-sex couples and to 'change its company policies, provide "comprehensive staff training" regarding public accomodations discrimination, and provide quarterly reports of rthe next two years regarding steps it has taken to come into compliance and whether it has turned away any prospective customers.' August 2015: Phillips appeals the decision with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right Christian legal group. The State's decision was upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals, which said that Phillips refusal to make a cake for a same-sex marriage was 'tantamount to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation'. December 5, 2017: Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case. Advertisement

Back in 2014, the Supreme Court declined to weigh in on a case with similarities to the Colorado dispute. The justices rebuffed a request to review a New Mexico Supreme Court decision holding that a photography studio violated the state's anti-discrimination laws by refusing to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.

Three years later, the high court has opted to wade into the same high-voltage issues, assessing whether Phillips' right to freedom of speech outweighs Colorado's interest in protecting Mullins and Craig from discrimination. It will mark the most important LGBT-rights case for conservative Coloradan Neil Gorsuch since he joined the Supreme Court in April.

However, the outcome could turn on the vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy, as it often does in cases that otherwise break along the court's liberal-conservative divide.

Kennedy's legacy is firmly tied to his authorship of major gay rights rulings dating back to 1996, including the landmark 2015 decision making same-sex marriage legal nationwide. At the same time, Kennedy, 81, has forcefully defended free-speech rights in his nearly 30 years as a justice.

Each side has tailored its arguments to appeal to one of those two strains in hopes of attracting Kennedy's vote.

Phillips still stoutly defends his 2012 rebuff of Mullins and Craig, saying he offered to sell them virtually any of his baked goods except a custom cake for their wedding.

'I don't create custom designs for events or messages that conflict with my conscience,' he said at the recent rally of his supporters. 'I don't create cakes for Halloween, bachelor or bachelorette parties, and anti-American cakes. I've turned down a cake order for an anti-LGBT message.'

To the other side, Phillips' arguments seem like an invitation to intolerance.

'This case is not about a cake. It's not about a baker,' Craig says. 'It's about us being able to be free to be treated equally in the public realm.'
Andre Holder, 25, of Longsight, Greater Manchester, targeted his teenage victim 'over a number of months' before raping him

A teacher has been jailed after grooming a 17-year-old boy for several months, raping him and 'spinning a web of lies' to cover up his crime.

Andre Holder, 25, of Longsight, Greater Manchester, targeted his teenage victim 'over a number of months'.

A jury at the city's Minshull Street Crown Court heard he 'spun a web of lies' when the allegations against him came to light, desperate to cover them up.

He refused to admit what he had done until his trial went to court.

Speaking at the hearing, Detective Constable Sue Gallogly, of Greater Manchester Police, said: 'First of all I would like to commend the bravery of the victim.

'This has understandably been an incredibly difficult time for him.

'Andre Holder refused to admit what he had done right up until his trial, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

'Holder targeted his victim over a number of months and spun a web of lies to cover up what he was doing.

'No one could have predicted the danger the victim was in however.

'Whilst this crime does not relate to his post as a teacher, I would like to encourage anyone with any concerns to come and speak to police.

'Holder will now spend the next five years in prison contemplating the damage he has done.'

Jailing him Judge Paul Lawton said his crime was so serious he will have to sign the Sex Offenders' Register for the rest of his live.

He was sentenced to five years behind bars.
A 78-year-old woman has been viciously mauled by her three pet dingoes after she tried to stop a fatal attack on a pug in Sydney's southwest.

Paramedics described the scene as 'horrific', revealing the woman's arm had been savaged during the attack - with her skin completely torn off from her muscle.

She was taken to Liverpool Hospital in a serious condition with bite wounds to her arms, legs and back following the attack at Greendale about 5pm on Monday.

Police said the dingoes had targeted the pug, which was also owned by the woman, before turning on her.

Woman, 78, (pictured) has been viciously mauled by three dingoes as she tried to protect her pug during a fatal attack

The dingoes, believed to be the woman's pets, targeted the pug but turned on her when she tried to intervene. The skin was torn from her muscle on one of her arms during the attack

Responding paramedic Kay Armstrong told 9 News the woman suffered 'severe injuries to her arms and legs, including puncture wounds and a degloving injury.'

The three dingoes, which have been caged on the property, are due to be seized by council rangers on Tuesday.

Rangers are expected to speak to the woman before making a decision on whether to put down the three dingoes or not.

The woman's pet pug died during the attack and she remained in Liverpool Hospital in a serious condition on Tuesday morning.

The three dingoes, which have been caged on the property, are due to be seized by council rangers on Tuesday

Responding paramedic Kay Armstrong said the woman suffered puncture wounds and a degloving injury'
Donald Trump pushed his own shopping cart through a food pantry in Utah on Monday, something photographers have never witnessed from the billionaire president.

Before a speech at the state capitol in Salt Lake City, Trump toured Welfare Square, a food pantry and relief aid processing center run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

'Good stuff!' the president said as he pushed the cart.

He joked with crowd in the capitol rotunda an hour later that 'I went around the store. I wanted a nice can of tuna fish and they had plenty!'

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'Good stuff!' President Donald Trump pushed his own shopping cart through Welfare Square, a Mormon church-run food pantry, on Monday in Utah

The billionaire didn't fill the cart himself but pushed it as he toured the Salt Lake City facility with church leaders and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch

Trump He joked during his speech an hour later in the state capitol rotunda that 'I went around the store. I wanted a nice can of tuna fish and they had plenty!'

The president took a moment to inspect a can of corn while he spoke with LDS officials about Welfare Square

In addition to being a food bank for the needy, Welfare Square is a food processing and staging ground for packaging food aid destined for more than 120 missions worldwide.

LDS official Henry Eyring told the president that it is 'a place where we have food and materials that we give to the poor.'

'This is simply an example of what we do across the world, the idea being that we think we have an obligation to God to look out for the people who, without our aid, have tragedy in their lives, be it poverty or hunger,' he said.

Welfare Square is a food pantry, a thrift store, and a food processing and staging ground for packaging food aid destined for more than 120 missions worldwide.

Utah's poor  and people in trouble worldwide  get food, clothing and other supplies from Welfare Square

In addition to distributing food to Utah's needy, Welfare Square is a staging point for food and supplies headed for natural disaster sites and at least 120 church missions around the world

The president was in Salt Lake City to sign a proclamation reversing the expansion of two national monuments, whose nearly 3 million acres represented more land than Delaware and Rhode Island

Welfare Square was the staging ground for the LDS church's supply network that brought relief aid to New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Russell Nelson, the LDS president, said he had just returned from China where native-born Mormon converts had brought supplies from Welfare Square 'for schoolchildren who didn't have means of getting what they needed to go to school.'

But Trump stole the show, pushing a shopping cart like an ordinary guy, with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and church leaders in tow.

LDS official Henry Eyring (right) told the president that Welfare Square is 'an example of what we do across the world, the idea being that we think we have an obligation to God to look out for the people who, without our aid, have tragedy in their lives, be it poverty or hunger'

He said in his speech that he had 'just come from touring Welfare Square with Senator Hatch and some amazing people from the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints.'

'Special. I spent a lot of time with them. ... They really help people. Incredible. After our visit I can truly say firsthand that Utah's awesome natural beauty is exceeded only by the warmth and grace and hospitality of its citizens.'

'This state has many natural treasures,' Trump said, 'but its greatest treasure by far is its people. And we will ensure the right of the people to live according to the faith in their hearts  which is why we will always protect your religious liberty.'

Trump was in Utah to sign a proclamation reversing decisions of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama that dramatically expanded a pair of massive national monuments that had locked up nearly 3 million acres of land from virtually any public use.
A euthanasia advocate has sparked outrage after he announced plans to launch the world's first 3D-printed suicide machine next year.

Dr Philip Nitschke, 70, recently unveiled plans for his futuristic death machine, the Sarco.

Nitschke, who has been branded 'Dr Death' following 22 years in the field of euthanasia, developed the Sarco with engineer Alexander Bannick in the Netherlands, with the aim of making it available worldwide.

His non for profit organisation, Exit International, will be placing the printing program on the internet as free open source material once they have been fully tested, which will allow the machine to be 3D-printed and assembled anywhere in the world.

Australian euthanasia advocate Dr Philip Nitschke has launched the world's first 3D-printed machine for committing suicide (pictured)

However, pro-life groups have criticized Dr Nitschke and warn his machine could lead to a huge rise in suicides across the US.

Nurse Nancy Valko, RN ALNC, of St. Louis, Missouri, is a spokesperson for the National Association of Pro-life Nurses and has worked on trauma units and burns. Her own daughter took her life, aged 30, after more than a decade of substance abuse after reading Final Exit.

She warned that any assisted suicide is open to abuse and believes that suicide should be illegal in all cases.

'As a nurse I'm just outraged,' she told DailyMail.com, adding that people have been committing suicide 'forever' but we shouldn't be making it easier.

'It's glamorizing and normalizing suicide.'

Dr Nitschke, who previously published a book which detailed methods of humane suicide, said that people who want to end their lives currently use drugs, which can be difficult to get hold of and illegal, or use other methods, such as inhaling gases in a plastic bag, but people are put off by the 'plastic bag factor.'

He says that the Sarco offers a 'peaceful and I would even say an elegant death.'

The machine - named the Sarco - contains a capsule which can then be detached from the base and used as a coffin (pictured is Dr Nitschke)

Users must complete an online mental questionnaire to establish their mental competency, in order to get a 4-digit access code for the capsule. Once inside, they can start the machine with a click of a button, voice activation or by a series of blinks for paralyzed patients.

Liquid nitrogen then fills the capsule after the user activates the machine, causing a peaceful death within minutes as oxygen drops. While the base is reusable, the pod in which the person end their life can be used as a biodegradable coffin.

'Sarco does not use any restricted drugs, or require any special expertise such as the insertion of an intravenous needle,' he said.

'Anyone who can pass the entry test, can enter the machine and legally end their life.'

He describes the experience as relatively painless, comparing it to an airplane cabin depressurizing.

Dr Nitschke told the DailyMail.com he already has an accurate model and is now working on creating a prototype which he expects to be completed in early 2018 ready for rigorous testing.

Dr Nitschke developed the Sarco (pictured) with engineer Alexander Bannick in the Netherlands, with the aim of making it available worldwide

He hopes to have the final working program available online by the end of next year.

The plans will be available to everyone which means that anyone with the funds to access a 3D printer, or purchase one themselves, will be able to print the machine.

However, he expects that euthanasia clinics, such as those in Switzerland, will be the first to take advantage of the new technology. Since he unveiled the plans at a conference in Canada in October, he told us he'd already had interest from people all over the world.

Crucially, at a time where assisted suicide is still illegal in 44 states and the majority of countries worldwide, he said it offers those wishing to end their lives as way to do so independently - without putting their loved ones at risk of arrest.

The Australian doctor, who now resides in the Netherlands where assisted suicide is legal, said the space age design of the Sarco was no accident.

'It's a vehicle to take you on a trip to the next plane of existence,' he said. 'That was incorporated in the design.'

Dr Nitschke, who said he never plans to charge for the Sarco design, said that if it came to a point in his own life when he needed to consider euthanasia, he would chose to do it in the machine.

'I'm a bit attracted to the nature of the Sarco, and making it a symbolic event,' he said.

The doctor first got involved in euthanasia in 1995 when Australia passed a law allowing a doctor to end the life of a terminally ill patient at the patient's request.

He was one of the few in the medical profession who supported the new legislation and he performed his first assisted death in 1996. Australia repealed the law shortly afterwards, in 1997.

During the brief time it was legal in Australia, Dr Nitschke created his first death machine that he called 'the Deliverance.'

It was a laptop hooked up to an IV that allowed a patient to administer the deadly drugs after answering a few questions. He said that it allowed him to take a step back from the process, so the patient died surrounded by family, not doctors.

Since then, technology has moved on and he hopes that his Sarco design will offer a more 'elegant' solution.

The doctor first got involved in euthanasia in 1995 when Australia passed a law allowing a doctor to end the life of a terminally ill patient at the patient's request

Dr Philip Nitschke is pictured in 1996 displaying his first ever 'death machine' in his home in Darwin, Australia. The machine was used by the first person in the world to die under voluntary euthanasia legislation

Assisted suicide is currently legal in the states of Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Vermont, Montana and California, as well as Washington DC, and several European countries including Switzerland, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands.

Dr Nitschke said his ultimate goal is to help rational people around the globe end their lives peacefully and reliably at times of their choosing.

He insists suicide is a 'human right' and even believes that assisted suicide should not just be restricted to the terminally ill - which is a current requirement for states where it is legal - but should be available to anyone over the age of 70.

'Any rational adult should have the right to die.'

But critics believe that legalized suicide means that terminal patients, who can have a better quality of life than ever before thanks to palliative end of life care, may never even try other medical treatments and chose to take their life prematurely.

'I think it's bad medicine, ethics, and bad public policy,' Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a Georgetown professor of biomedical ethics, told Newsweek. 'It converts killing into a form of healing and doesn't acknowledge that we can now do more for symptoms through palliative than ever before.'

He is also concerned that promoting suicide machines will see an increase in suicide.

He warned that after Derek Humphry published Final Exit, which detailed aspects of planning and carrying out suicide, the number of suicides by asphyxiation in New York City rose by 313 percent that year.

But Dr Nitschke believes the demand for suicide is only going to grow.

'(Baby) boomers want to be in control of their own deaths. They don't like the idea of someone patting them on the head and telling them what to do.'

If you or anyone you know is in need of confidential support, call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255 or visit its website.
The Los Angeles Police Department has refused to confirm reports it is investigating new sex abuse allegations against disgraced director Roman Polanski.

According to a report, the LAPD has opened a new investigation into the director who has lived as a fugitive since fleeing the country in 1978.

'Yes there is an open investigation on Roman Polanski,' an LAPD spokesperson said, according to The Sun.

While the LAPD denied the info came from their spokespeople, the Sun stand by its claims.

The LAPD didn't deny the existence of an investigation, telling DailyMail.com the Sun report may well be accurate but the information not come from their public information office.

'We can't release any other information because it's confidential due to the type of crime it is but he is listed as a suspect in a police report and it's an open investigation,' the Sun-sourced LAPD spokesperson said.

A new report says the LAPD has opened a new investigation into disgraced director Roman Polanski (pictured)

Marianne Barnard, a California artist alleged Polanski raped her on a beach in Malibu when she was 10-years-old (pictured at 10, shortly before the alleged assault, and as an adult)

Attorney Gloria Allred (left) and her client Robin, who alleges she too was assaulted by Polanski and reported it to authorities in Los Angeles county (pictured at her press conference in August)

'Of course anyone that comes forward wanting to make a police report listing him as a suspect - it's always going to be investigated,' they added.

Several woman have come forward claiming Polanski sexually abused them.

Marianne Barnard, a California artist, previously alleged that Polanski raped her on a Malibu beach when she was 10.

And a woman who has only identified herself as Robin M previously reported to authorities in Los Angeles County that she was sexually assaulted by Polanski in 1973 when she was 16.

Back in 1977 in Los Angeles, Polanski was charged with raping 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. He fled the country in 1978 to escape prison.

And five anonymous women alleged they had been sexually abused by Polanski via Imetpolanski.com, a website set up by women's rights organisation Real Women Real Stories where victims can share their stories.

Mallory Millet who acted under the stage name of Mallory Jones (left) claims Roman Polanksi (right in the year of the alleged incident) tried to rape her in 1970 while he was high on LSD

Mallory says she met the director a second time, and he apologized, yet she claims he tried to rape her again after his apology

The women, currently named only as 'Jane Does', were aged between nine and 16 when the alleged assaults took place between 1969 and 1976.

A former actress, Mallory Millet, now 77-years-old, accused Polanksi of trying to rape her when he was high on LSD in 1970, and that he tried a second time as well.

Mallory Millet, 77, who starred in Tootsie under the stage name Mallory Jones, says she was 29 and a struggling actress when she was invited to a dinner with the director and her friends following his wife, pregnant actress Sharon Tate, being murdered by Charles Manson's followers.

'We went up to Roman's suite to have some after-dinner coffee and drinks but (friends) Michael and Minda left and I was suddenly left on my own with Roman.'

One of the women claims Polanski, 84, molested her under the dinner table during a dinner party in Gstaad in 1976 while her parents were present. Polanski is pictured in the Swiss town last month. His alleged victim says it is a 'sanctuary' for well-known pedophiles

'When I had first arrived they told me that Roman was tripping on LSD and he had started behaving quite strangely - whereas I was very sober - so I thought it was time to leave anyway.'

'But as I tried to leave he wouldn't let me and he attempted to rape me very, very forcefully.'

She said despite the alleged encounter, Polanski met up with her again and apologized for his behavior.

'I ended up alone with him, he tried to put his arms around me and hold me down and I had to flee for a second time.'

Mallory came forward through the website imetpolanski.com. Several such websites have popped up over the past two months for various powerful men who are being accused of similar alleged behavior for women to be able to come forward with their own stories.

'I don't care what age he is he needs to be punished,' Mallory adds.

'I'm very extreme about these things and I think rape - particularly of a young girl - is the same as murder and should be punished as such.'

The imetpolanski.com website has been set up by campaign group Real Women Real Stories, who have been encouraging women to come forward and share their stories of abuse by Polanski and other powerful men.

They aim to make a film about Polanski's victims in a bid to bring him to justice.

Some of the alleged attacks happened in 1969, the same year in which Polanski married Sharon Tate. She was murdered by members of the Charles Manson family later that year. It is not known if her death preceded Polanski's alleged attacks on young girls

The women who have accused Polanski described how the convicted child rapist sexually assaulted them in the late 1960s and 70s before he went on the run for the statutory rape of another underage girl.

Of the newest accusers, two say they were attacked by him in 1969, the same year in which his first wife Sharon Tate was murdered by members of the Charles Manson family.

It is not clear whether the alleged attacks happened before or after her slaying. The other alleged attack happened in 1976 when the woman was 12.

Polanski remains on the run after fleeing the US following his 1977 attack on 13-year-old Samantha Geimer.

He has been pleading for years to have the 1978 arrest warrant thrown out so that he can return to America.

He fled to France days before he was due to go to court over the attack. At the time, Polanski had reached a deal with prosecutors which meant he would serve a shorter sentence.

He got cold feet at the last minute and fled, convinced that he was being set up and that they would be tricked into a harsher prison term.

Geimer has long forgiven him for the attack and, earlier this year, she pleaded with authorities in Los Angeles to allow him back into the country. Courts in Switzerland and France have both refused to extradite him.

In Los Angeles, he is protected by California's now outdated statute of limitations which, until 2016, meant sex crimes had to be prosecuted within 10 years of them happening unless new evidence which could be tested with DNA technology emerged.

The law has since changed in rape cases but crimes which none of those allegedly committed by Polanski are recent enough to now be tried.

Polanski now lives in Paris with his 51-year-old wife Emmanuelle Seigner.
This weekend, President Trump took to Twitter and veered between various topics, potentially putting himself in more legal jeopardy over Michael Flynn.

He ended the roller-coaster of a tweetstorm Monday morning with an endorsement of Roy Moore, the Republicans' Alabama Senate hopeful accused by multiple women of preying on them as teens.

From Friday on, Trump knocked down reports he was going to fire his secretary of state, while revealing that he fired his National Security Advisor Michael Flynn because he knew he had lied to the FBI  a concession his lawyer later took credit to penning.

President Trump used Twitter all weekend through Monday - potentially putting himself in more legal jeopardy - while also endorsing a child predator

Trump dredged up his favorite boogeyman Hillary Clinton again, suggesting she was let off by the FBI, as Flynn's reputation was destroyed.

The president also tried to sully Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe, by pointing to the actions of one agent who went rogue and wrote anti-Trump messages.

And, of course, Trump went after the media, pouncing on a correction ABC News had to post after Brian Ross messed up an important detail in the network's special report on the Flynn plea deal.

Here are Trump's weekend tweets by subject and the trouble they could bring him:

Michael Flynn

Throughout Saturday, President Trump griped about Michael Flynn's plea deal, suggesting it was unfair that he got caught and yet Hillary Clinton is free - despite there being no evidence that she lied to the FBI, which Flynn was charged with

It wasn't until Saturday afternoon that Trump expressed some of his thoughts on Flynn's plea deal, announced Friday.

'I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,' Trump said. 'He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!' the president tweeted at 12:14 p.m.

This tweet was the most problematic because it calls into question what Trump knew about Flynn when he pressured now former FBI Director James Comey to go easy on him.

'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,' Comey said the president urged him on February 14, the day after Flynn was fired, according to testimony the ex-FBI head prepared for his June appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On Monday, CNN reported that White House Counsel Don McGahn told Trump in January he believed Flynn had misled the FBI when he spoke to them on January 24 about his conversations with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.

Trying to stave off the storm, Trump's personal lawyer John Dowd took credit for writing the tweet, after the Washington Post first reported he had done so.

'I'm out of the tweeting business,' Dowd told Axios Sunday. 'I did not mean to break news.'

The president, however, continued to tweet about Flynn all through the weekend.

On Saturday night he bemoaned how unfair it was for Flynn to be in legal jeopardy, while Trump's former political rival, Hillary Clinton, was home free.

'So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday "interrogation" with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times...and nothing happens to her?' Trump wrote at 9:06 p.m. 'Rigged system, or just a double standard?' he asked.

Seven minutes later, he tweeted again.

'Many people in our Country are asking what the "Justice" Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and "acid washed" 33,000 Emails?' Trump wrote. 'No justice!'

Comey testified that he had no reason to believe Clinton ever lied to the FBI.

James Comey

President Trump also used Twitter this weekend to smack one of his favorite nemeses, ex-FBI Director James Comey

As an extension to his disappointment over Flynn, President Trump used Twitter to again smack around James Comey, the FBI leader that he fired in May.

First, on Sunday morning, the president objected to what Comey told members of Congress under oath  that Trump had asked him to go easy on Flynn during that Valentine's Day meeting.

'I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn,' Trump wrote at 6:15 a.m. Sunday, his first tweet of the day. 'Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!'

At 8 a.m. he blasted Comey again.

'After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History!' Trump wrote. 'But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.'

This tweet prompted a response from Comey, who recently started using social media under his name.

The ousted FBI leader insisted the bureau 'is, and always will be, independent.'

Peter Strzok

President Trump latched onto news reports that said FBI agent Peter Strzok was pulled off the Mueller probe after anti-Trump text messages were found. Strzok was also a lead investigator on the Hillary Clinton email probe, with Trump now suggesting bias

Trump, however, latched onto reports from the Washington Post and the New York Times that said FBI agent Peter Strzok was removed from the Mueller probe after exchanging text messages with a colleague he was involved with, which were anti-Trump.

Trump wrote at 7:42 a.m. Sunday, 'Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI "agents role in Clinton probe under review." Led Clinton Email probe. @FoxandFriends Clinton money going to wife of another FBI agent in charge.'

Strzok had also been a head FBI investigator on the bureau's Clinton email probe.

He followed that up with 'Report: "ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE Now it all starts to make sense!'

The president also retweeted several tweets that indicated Strzok had been removed from the Mueller probe, in an attempt to suggest that the Russia investigation was biased.

Brian Ross

The president used Twitter Saturday and Sunday to hammer ABC News for having to issue a correction over a report by Brian Ross, who is currently suspended

And in another dent to the mainstream media, Trump commented several times on a screw-up by ABC News.

The network's Brian Ross was suspended after ABC had to correct a report in which he said Trump had instructed Flynn to reach out to the Russians during the election.

Flynn's questionable contact with the Russians occurred during the transition.

'Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News!' Trump applauded Saturday night at 9:22 p.m.

He went after Ross again Sunday morning.

'People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused - many millions of dollars!' Trump wrote.

Roy Moore

Finally, on Monday morning, President Trump used Twitter to officially endorse Roy Moore, the Republican Alabama Senate hopeful accused of being a pedophile

President Trump eschewed the topics of Michael Flynn and James Comey, as Monday morning kicked off.

Instead, he endorsed an accused pedophile for the U.S. Senate.

'Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama,' Trump wrote at 6:17 a.m. 'We need hisvote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more.'

'No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!' Trump added, referencing Democratic hopeful Doug Jones and the Congressional Democratic leadership.

Trump continued to make that point in a tweet he set off at 7 a.m. on the dot.

'Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders...& so much more,' he said. 'Look at your 401-ks since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!'
Milo Yiannopoulos took aim at journalist Waleed Aly's wife, Dr Susan Carland, in an expletive-ridden rant during his three sold-out shows in Melbourne on Monday.

The right-wing commentator, who told the crowd Aly was 'dedicated to the destruction of Western civilisation', joked that Dr Carland's uncles would throw acid on her if she didn't wear her hijab, according to The Age.

'[It] would be a bad look on the red carpet at the Logies,' he said.

'She wears that hijab because she chooses to sister. Not because she is the brainwashed victim of a death cult that oppresses women and kills homosexuals,' he continued.

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Milo Yiannopoulos took aim at journalist Waleed Aly's wife, Dr Susan Carland, in an expletive-ridden rant during his three sold-out shows in Melbourne on Monday

The alt-right commentator, who told the crowd Mr Aly was 'dedicated to the destruction of Western civilisation', joked that Dr Carland's (pictured together) uncles would throw acid on her if she didn't wear her hijab

A violent brawl erupted (pictured) between protesters and Mr Yiannopoulos' supporters ahead of the 33-year-old's speech on Monday after the location of his secret show was leaked to critics

A violent brawl erupted between protesters and Mr Yiannopoulos' supporters ahead of the 33-year-old's speech on Monday after the location of his secret show was leaked to critics.

Anti-fascist and hardline right-wing groups clashed outside the Melbourne Pavilion in inner-city Kensington, with protesters brawling in the streets and wielding crude weapons.

Hundreds of protesters from left-aligned Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and two right-wing groups, Reclaim Australia and the True Blue Crew, rallied with a heavy police presence attempting to maintain order.

Protesters could be heard chanting 'Milo is a w**ker' before the clash turned physical.

Despite dozens of officers working to keep the groups separate, at least two men were pepper sprayed after they started fighting, with others joining in.

At least 10 men were pictured throwing punches, with several brandishing make-shift weapons including wooden clubs and sticks.

Two people were arrested and are expected to be charged with discharging a missile. A police officer received minor injuries, according to 9News.

Despite being slammed for a personal attack on prominent feminist writer Clementine Ford during his shows in Adelaide and Perth (pictured), Mr Yiannopoulos took aim at the 36-year-old again during the third leg of his speaking tour

Left-wing protesters were stationed in Kensington, Melbourne's north-west, on Monday afternoon ahead of the right-wing firebrand's speech

Hundreds of protesters from left-aligned Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and two right-wing groups, Reclaim Australia and the True Blue Crew, rallied with a heavy police presence attempting to maintain order

Police used capsicum spray to subdue some of the more violent demonstrators

Protesters could be heard chanting 'Milo is a w**ker' before the clash turned physical

Victoria Police officers restrained protesters in front of shocked onlookers

A protester throws a street sign towards police officers during the demonstration

Mr Yiannopoulos' first Melbourne event was due to kick off at 6.30pm, with another two scheduled the same night.

Despite being slammed for a personal attack on prominent feminist writer Clementine Ford during his shows in Adelaide and Perth, Mr Yiannopoulos took aim at the 36-year-old again during the third leg of his speaking tour.

He described Ms Ford as a 'human lump of half-melted butter' before also taking aim at Channel 10 TV presenter Jessica Rowe, according to The Age.

Ms Rowe and Mr Yiannopoulos clashed during a heated live interview in October.

Ms Rowe described herself as a proud feminist, prompting the UK-born commentator to suggest she be 'cured with chemotherapy'.

People are seen running from police officers who used pepper spray to control the demonstration

Mr Yiannopoulos' tour has proven controversial since it kicked off in Adelaide on Friday

Mr Yiannopoulos' tour has proven controversial since it kicked off in Adelaide on Friday.

The self-confessed 'troll' and 'provocateur', has offended Muslim groups and women's rights acitivists with his controversial opinions.

A video of the personality went viral last week, when he told a Muslim presenter he thought all Muslim people should be deported to the Middle East.

'Expel Islam from the West,' he told Australian-born Muslim reporter Emma Eros on Wednesday.

'Anyone who describes themselves as a Muslim, send them back to the Middle East.'

While he had his critics, Mr Yiannopoulos also attracted a cult following, with supporters praising him for his opinions.

Extra security measures are expected to be in place as he visits Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday.
Thousands of commuters were plunged into travel chaos after a man was killed by a rush-hour train.

The victim was hit by a carriage at East Croydon, south London, at 5.57pm today as a service headed from London Bridge to Brighton.

Pictures have since emerged on social media of large crowds of stranded travellers staring at departure boards at Gatwick Airport and London Victoria.

Traveller Michael Wu tweeted this picture of passengers at Gatwick Airport this afternoon

Services have been effected for the past three hours, with reports of 30 minute delays out of East Croydon.

Southern rail, Thameslink and Gatwick Express trains are all said to have suffered disruption as a result of the incident this afternoon.

Southern said that services would be 'heavily disrupted as a result of the incident.

The train company wrote: 'Following a person hit by a train, platforms 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 at East Croydon have now reopened.

'Platform 3 is still closed while staff deal with a signal failure.

'Services will be heavily disrupted until the end of service as we work to recover the service.'

Earlier this evening, passenger Michael Wu tweeted a picture of gloomy passengers stuck at Gatwick Airport.

He wrote: 'Thousands passengers stranded at #LGW train station due to major delay between #Gatwick and #London #Victoria stn caused by a fatality at #EastCroydon station.'

Passengers travelling on the Gatwick Express train, which takes you to the airport from London Victoria in 36 minutes, have tweeted about fears of missing flights as a result of the disruption.

One traveller said: '@Ryanair due to Gatwick express delays will there be delays to the 21:30 flight to Dublin from Gatwick? Still on a train here.'

Travellers were left stranded and standing at departure boards at London Victoria

A British Transport Police said officers were yet to identify the man killed by the train.

A spokesman said: 'Medics from the London Ambulance Service also attended and a male was pronounced deceased at the scene.

'Officers are currently working to identify the person and inform his next of kin. A file will be prepared for the coroner

'The train involved was the 17.57 London Bridge to Brighton service and the line was handed back at 19.27.'
The Defence Secretary intervened yesterday to stop two Army dogs that saved thousands of lives in Afghanistan from being put down.

Gavin Williamson held urgent talks with dog handlers at the Ministry of Defence following widespread protest against plans to give them lethal injections.

It is understood he has pledged to try and find a solution that will see Belgian shepherds Kevin and Dazz rehomed instead.

Lance Corporal Kelly Wolstencroft and her dog Kevin on operations in Afghanistan

Two British Army dogs Kevin (pictured) and Dazz which helped save thousands of lives in Afghanistan, faced death by lethal injection

Kevin (pictured) and Dazz worked with troops to locate explosives in Helmand Province and retired four years ago

Former soldiers and handlers called for the decision to put the Belgian shepherds down to be reversed

The dogs sniffed out explosives on several tours of Helmand province.

They were retired from frontline service four years ago and put in the care of trainers at the Defence Animal Centre in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire.

Army chiefs had hoped the nine-year-old dogs would be rehomed.

But the centres commanding officer was leaning towards deciding to have them put down after one dog bit a civilian.

A former police hound named Driver was also due to be euthanised.

Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan, who represents the constituency where the centre is based, had called for the dogs to be reprieved.

Sir Alan had written to the MoD in a bid to save the dogs. Last night he told the Mail: If we end up with good news I will be absolutely cock-a-hoop.

SAS hero Andy McNab also launched a petition to save them, which last night had attracted more than 368,000 signatures.

Dazz (pictured) and Kevin were put in the care of trainers at the Defence Animal Centre in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire

Local MP Sir Alan Duncan wrote to the Defence Animal Centre in a bid to save the pair

A petition was launched by former SAS soldier Andy McNab in a bid to stop the duo being put down, as well as a third canine, a former police dog named Driver

He praised service dogs for saving 'countless lives when I was in the Special Air Service sniffing out explosives'

Almost 400 dogs are currently working in the Army, detecting IEDs, searching buildings and vehicles, and patrolling key sites. Many have served in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Bosnia.

At the end of their service they are sent to highly experienced dog trainers within the Canine Training Squadron at the Defence Animal Centre. Their job is to de-train dogs to prepare them for the possibility of being rehomed into the civilian population.

They use techniques to relax the animals and make them understand that they no longer have to work. They aim to rehabilitate the dogs in a controlled and safe way, continually assessing their suitability for rehoming.

Although not all dogs are suitable, rigorous procedures are followed to find them homes where possible and there is a waiting list of applicants prepared to take them. If, at the end of de-training, dogs are considered too old, dangerous, below standard, ill or unfit, they will be put down.

An Army spokesperson said: Military Working Dogs provide an invaluable service to our troops and, wherever possible, we endeavour to rehome them at the end of their service life.

Sadly, there are some occasions where this is not possible, for example when the dog poses a risk to public safety.
White House counsel Don McGahn told President Donald Trump in January he believed then-National Security Advisor Mike Flynn had lied to the FBI, according to a report.

McGahn spoke to Trump following a conversation with then-acting attorney general Sally Yates, who has testified that she contacted McGahn to warn him on January 26 that Flynn misled the White House about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergei Kislyak.

McGahn, who advised Trump throughout his presidential campaign, then told Trump based on his conversation with Yates that he believed Flynn had not told the truth to the FBI or Vice President Mike Pence, CNN reported.

He also recommended that the president fire Flynn.

McGahn didn't say Flynn had broken the law or was subject to a criminal investigation, according to the report.

Trump fired Flynn weeks later after Pence said the president's top security advisor had assured him he had not discussed sanctions with the Russians.

Flynn pleaded guilty in federal court Friday for having lied to the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak during the presidential transition.

White House counsel Don McGahn told President Donald Trump in January he believed then-National Security Advisor Mike Flynn had lied to the FBI. Trump subsequently fired Flynn

This tweet by Donald Trump led to accusations that the president had obstructed justice after allegedly telling James Comey to back off Michael Flynn while also knowing that Flynn lied to the FBI. But now the White House says his personal lawyer made the tweet

President Trump defended Flynn and attacked Hillary Clinton on Monday

Guilty: Criminal liar Mike Flynn arrives at court in Washington D.C. to plead guilty to lying to the FBI, an offense carrying up to five years in prison

The timeline of the report would to indicate that Trump knew about the legal jeopardy Flynn was under at the time fired FBI Director James Comey testified that Trump asked him to let an investigation of Flynn during a private conversation.

That alleged conversation could be central to any case that the president sought to obstruct justice by firing Comey.

Trump himself told NBC that the FBI's Russia investigation was on his mind at the time he decided to fire Comey.

Trump has nevertheless vigorously denied any obstruction occurred. Trump has repeatedly called Comey a liar.

President Donald Trump approaches members of the media to speak on former national security adviser Michael Flynn's lying to the FBI prior to his Marine One departure from the South Lawn of the White House December 4, 2017 in Washington

'I believe the facts exonerate the President and I'm not going to debate these important issues between the White House and the special counsel in the press," White House lawyer Ty Cobb told CNN.

Pence said Flynn told him he had not discussed sanctions with Kislyak, something that preceded Pence going on national television and denying any such conversation took place.

Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Kislyak about sanctions, which President Barack Obama had imposed in the last days of his presidency to punish Russia for interfering in the presidential elections.

Comey testified, based on his contemporaneous notes, that Trump had asked him about 'letting this go, to letting Flynn go' in February, after he would have already been briefed by McGahn about Flynn.

Trump tweeted Sunday: 'I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!'

Trump issued another tweet on Saturday that brought new discussion of obstruction:

'I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!' Trump wrote.

The tweet raised the possibility that Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI at the time he fired him. After the tweet drew immediate controversy, another Trump lawyer, John Dowd, said it was in fact he who composed it.

Acting attorney general Sally Yates says she warned McGahn January 26 that Flynn misled the White House about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., and could even be susceptible to blackmail.

Speaking to ABC News, the lawyer said the social media post was 'my mistake' and that he had not intended 'to break news' in writing it. He said he used 'sloppy' language.

Dowd's admission did not clarify if Trump actually knew about Flynn's deception when he dismissed him in February or whether the President knew the tweet had been published on Saturday.

He hadn't meant to say Trump had advance knowledge of Flynn lying to the FBI, but had only learned of it recently.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Donald Trump by allowing his latest travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries to go into full effect even as legal challenges continue in lower courts.

The ruling is an indication that the Trump administration's third travel ban could be able to stand.

The court, with two of the nine justices dissenting, granted his administration's request to lift two injunctions imposed by lower courts that had partially blocked the ban, which is the third version of a contentious policy that Trump first sought to implement a week after taking office in January.

The justices, with two dissenting votes, said Monday that the policy can take full effect even as legal challenges against it make their way through the courts.

Meanwhile, Trump has arrived back to Washington after a trip to Utah to announce his plan to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in the southwestern state.

Donald Trump is pictured returning to the White House late Monday night after arriving on Marine One from Utah, where he announced his plan to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments

Trump walks with Marc Short, the White House director for legislative affairs, and Republican senator Mike Lee of Utah after his return

Trump is pictured disembarking from Marine One after arriving at the White House

Victory: The Supreme Court justice handed the president a significant victory on Monday

The action suggests the high court could uphold the latest version of the ban that Trump announced in September.

The ban applies to travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Lower courts had said people from those nations with a claim of a "bona fide" relationship with someone in the United States could not be kept out of the country. Grandparents, cousins and other relatives were among those courts said could not be excluded.

President Donald Trump, alongside US Senator Orrin Hatch (L), Republican of Utah, meets with LDS President Henry B. Eyring (2nd R) and Russel Nelson (R), President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, both of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, at LDS Welfare Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, December 4, 2017. His administration's immigration order targets six Muslim-majority nations

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have left the lower court orders in place.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, will be holding arguments on the legality of the ban this week.

Both courts are dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expects those courts to reach decisions "with appropriate dispatch."

Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.

Lower courts had blocked implementation pending judicial review.

The ban blocks visitors and migrants from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and North Korea.

But the government doesn't expect to get visitors from highly secluded North Korea, the L.A. Times noted.

Under a June Supreme Court ruling, the administration was granted latitude to to deny entry to immigrants from the Muslim-majority nation, but not to those with family here or a 'credible claim of a bona fide relationship with person or entity in the United States.'

The court victory follows earlier struggles for the administration's legal team, which saw lower courts delay implementation of the second version of the ban.

The administration cited the president's broad authority to control immigration and national security.

Federal court judges in Maryland and Hawaii had blocked portions of a ban in October pending legal challenges.
An American student who has accused an Italian police officer of sexual assault is speaking out about her horrifying ordeal.

In an interview on Good Morning America, the 21-year-old student, who asked not to be named, recounted what occurred to her and her 19-year-old friend when they were approached by two cops in the early hours of the morning on September 7.

The student said she went to a night club called Flo' in Florence and that later, she and a friend tried to call a taxi to leave when two Italian police officers, whom they met outside of the club, offered to drive them home instead.

'What's more safe than getting in the back of a police car?' the woman told ABC News.

Two American students, 21 and 19, studying abroad in Italy have accused two police officers of sexually assaulting them. In an interview on Good Morning America, the 21-year-old student (pictured), who asked not to be named, recounted what occurred in the early hours of the morning on September 7

The 21-year-old said she and a friend were looking for a cab home from the night club Flo' in Florence when officers Marco Camuffo, 43 (pictured), and Pietro Costa, 31, offered to give them a ride

When they got to the apartment building Costa got in the elevator with the 19-year-old and Camuffo went up the stairs with the 21-year-old (pictured, Camuffo, right, and Costa, left, meet the girls outside of the club)

The members of Italy's Carabinieri police force, 43-year-old Marco Camuffo and 31-year-old Pietro Costa drove them to their apartment building and, when they arrived, the officers followed them to the front door.

'I didn't think it was that strange, because my friend...she couldn't really stand by herself, she needed assistance,' the student recalled. 'So the one officer was like, "Oh, we'll help you, we'll help you".'

She said because the elevator at their apartment building only fit two people, her friend and Costa took the elevator while she and Camuffo took the stairs.

When the student and Camuffo arrived on the third floor, right in front of her apartment door, she says the officer began to sexually assault her.

'He moved me over to the windowsill, and then assaulted me there. And I was terrified. I mean, he had a gun,' she said. 'He is a trained military police officer, what do you do in that moment?

'I had said 'No,' and he put me up against the wall, and he started pulling at my clothes, and I kept pulling them back up and everything,' she recalled. 'That was probably when I was, like, the most scared.'

She added that during the encounter, she couldn't even understand what Camuffo was saying.

When the student (picturdand Camuffo arrived on the third floor, right in front of her apartment door, she says the officer began to sexually assault her.

'He didn't speak any English,' she said. 'So that was even worse...I mean, "No" is universal' (Pictured, the night club Flo')

'He didn't speak any English,' she said. 'So that was even worse...I mean, "No" is universal.'

Eventually, the student said the elevator doors opened and she grabbed her friend, who she says was bloodied, and dragged her into the apartment.

The police officers have been suspended from the force. They admitted to having sex with the women but both claim that any sex that night was consensual.

Sandro Paterno, an attorney for the student, told ABC News that November testimony of the other officer, Costa, proves that the encounter between her client and Camuffo was not consensual.

Sandro Paterno, an attorney for the student, told ABC News that November testimony of the other officer, Costa, proves that the encounter between her client and Camuffo was not consensual (Pictured, Flo' night club)

The student said that despite everything that she says happened at the hands of authorities in Italy, she has faith in the judicial system (Pictured, a car of the Italian Carabinieri)

He told ABC News: 'This is from the deposition...before the public prosecutor. He says..."I saw Camufo, the other guy, that tried to lower the pants of the girl and she was...with some resistance, she said: "No, no".'

The student said that despite everything that she says happened at the hands of authorities in Italy, she has faith in the judicial system.

'I think the evidence is overwhelming,' she said. 'I think that justice is going to prevail, and they're going to go to jail.'
A police officer has been hit by a rock and two protesters have been arrested for 'discharging a missile' during violent clashes outside Milo Yiannopoulos' Melbourne event.

The mayhem unfolded outside the Melbourne Pavilion in inner-city Kensington on Monday night, with weapon-wielding protesters brawling in the streets.

Scores of protesters from left-aligned Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and two right-wing groups, Reclaim Australia and the True Blue Crew, rallied with a heavy police presence attempting to maintain order.

Convicted stalker and racial vilifier Neil Erikson and fellow right-wing activist Avi Yemeni were among the crowd.

A police officer has been hit by a rock and two protesters have been arrested for 'discharging a missile' during violent clashes outside Milo Yiannopoulos' Melbourne event. A left-wing protester is seen with facial injuries after a violent scuffle

The mayhem unfolded outside the Melbourne Pavilion in inner-city Kensington on Monday night

A protester throws a street sign towards Police officers during a demonstration outside Milo Yiannopoulos's sold out show at the Melbourne Pavilion

A Campaign Against Racism and Fascism supporter and a Yiannopoulos supporter are pepper sprayed by police

Police in riot gear were forced to subdue demonstrators during the ugly scenes on Monday

Dozens of officers worked to keep the groups separated, but still had to use pepper spray.

Protesters could be heard chanting 'Milo is a w**ker' before the clash, which lasted nearly five hours, turned physical.

Yiannopoulos spoke of the ugly scenes on Tuesday morning.

'There was a lot of kerfuffle out front,' he told Alan Jones on 2GB Radio.

'It was not as the newspapers reported ''a clash between the far left and far right'' it was the left, showing up, being violent to stop freedom of speech.

'The left really showed us who they are. They attack the police, they attacked other people, they attacked journalists - they showed us they are petulant babies.'

A Campaign Against Racism and Fascism supporter is held by police during the demonstration

Scores of protesters from left-aligned Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and two right-wing groups, Reclaim Australia and the True Blue Crew, rallied with a heavy police presence

A Campaign Against Racism and Fascism supporter receives aid after being pepper sprayed

Protesters could be heard chanting 'Milo is a w**ker' before the clash turned physical

Extra security measures are expected to be in place when Yiannopoulos visits Parliament House in Canberra

'The left really showed us who they are. They attack the police, they attacked other people, they attacked journalists - they showed us they are petulant babies,' Yiannopoulos said

Australian commentator Andrew Bolt, who was MC at the Melbourne event, described the protests as a scandal.

Extra security measures are expected to be in place when Yiannopoulos visits Parliament House in Canberra.

The self-described 'one-man wrecking crew' and 'internet supervillian' will visit the nation's capital on Tuesday at the invitation of Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm.

The Australian Greens had unsuccessfully attempted to have him banned from the building.

Senator Leyonhjelm flagged security arrangements are likely to be beefed up for the visit.

'I wouldn't call myself a disciple of him by any means,' Senator Leyonhjelm told AAP, adding he didn't agree with all his controversial views.

The Australian Greens unsuccessfully attempted to have Yiannopoulos banned from Parliament House. Protesters are pictured clashing with Victorian Police

Police arrest two protesters during a demonstration outside Milo Yiannopoulos's sold out show

Left-wing protesters were stationed in Kensington, Melbourne's north-west, on Monday afternoon ahead of the right-wing firebrand's speech

Police used capsicum spray to subdue some of the demonstrators on Monday afternoon

Protesters could be heard chanting 'Milo is a w**ker' before the clash turned physical and police used capsicum spray to subdue protesters

Police officers in riot gear are seen dragging protesters away from the scene in an effort to control the demonstration

He expects Yiannopoulos to embark on an 'outrage campaign' to stir up the politically correct.

'I'm expecting to be amused more than anything,' Senator Leyonhjelm said.

Yiannopoulos defended his right to free speech, saying his aim is to entertain, challenge and educate.

'I may not be to your taste and that's OK, don't send your kids to my shows, but I am to plenty of peoples' tastes,' he told Sky News.

A Campaign Against Racism and Fascism supporter receives aid after being pepper sprayed

Yiannopoulos has defended his right to free speech, saying his aim is to entertain, challenge and educate

Campaign Against Racism and Fascism members demonstrate outside the event on Monday

Dozens of police officers were forced to intervene and drag violent protesters away from the scene

People are seen running from police officers who used pepper spray to control the demonstration

'What they leave with... isn't ''he's so rude and tells fat jokes''... what they leave with is ''I never even considered that''.'

Yiannopoulos says he 'blows open the fire doors' in a way that is crass but gains attention.

Yiannopoulos's speeches on university campuses in the US have sparked violent protests, and he was banned from Twitter last year amid a barrage of racist abuse directed at Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones.

He has previously likened feminism to cancer, Islam to AIDS and has spoken out against gay rights and the Black Lives Matter movement - despite being openly homosexual and married to an African American man.

The British-born, US-based commentator lost a book deal after a video emerged in February in which he appeared to suggest it was OK for older men to sleep with teenage boys.

Demonstrators are seen running in the opposite direction of police officers who used pepper spray to control the violent clash

Local residents confront Protesters in Kensington, where Mr Yiannopolous was due to speak

Local residents in Kensington descended on the busy street to watch on

The north-west Melbourne street was packed, with local residents joining the crowds late on Monday

Yiannopoulos' first event was due to kick off at 6.30pm in Kensington, with another one scheduled to start immediately after
A mother and her boyfriend were hit with murder and child abuse charges on Monday, in connection to the death of the woman's three-year-old son.

In September, police found the remains of toddler Evan Brewer, inside the laundry room of his mother's Wichita, Kansas home - concealed in a slab of poured concrete.

The toddler had been missing since July 6, when his biological father was granted full custody and the couple refused to turn the boy over. The last time the boy had been seen alive was a few days earlier, after Independence Day.

Miranda Miller, left, and her boyfriend Stephen Bodine, right, were hit with murder charges on Monday in the death of her three-year-old son Evan Brewer

His mother Miranda Miller, 36, and her boyfriend Stephen Bodine, 40, were arrested a few days before the body was discovered, on other charges. They have remained behind bars since then.

Evan's remains were found inside a concrete slab inside the couple's home on September 2

On Monday, the couple were hit with new charges of felony murder and child abuse in connection to Evan's death.

Evan was the son of Kansas gubernatorial candidate Carl Brewer, who issued a statement on Monday thanking all the 'men and women who worked to investigate Evan's death'.

A family spokesman released another statement, reading: 'Our family sincerely appreciates the efforts of our Homicide Unit to piece together the difficult investigation into Evan's death ... . We also thank the Wichita community for the continued support and love ... . Please understand our silence during the remainder of this holiday season as they prepare for a funeral and a Christmas without Evan.'

Evan's body was discovered on September 2, when Miller's landlord was cleaning out her place after she was arrested.

The landlord 'alerted police to a suspicious concrete structure emitting an odor in the house'.

Evan's body was discovered on September 2, when Miller's landlord was cleaning out her place after she was arrested

'Police removed the concrete structure from the house and later found the remains of a child inside the concrete structure,' police said in a statement.

They added: 'Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the family and friends of the Brewer family, and those affected by this tragic case.'

A few days before her son's body was found, Miller was arrested on a charge of aggravated interference with parental custody.

Her boyfriend faced additional charges for threatening the boy's biological father with a hatchet, when the man came to the couple's rental home looking for Evan.

Both remain in jail on $25,000 bond.
Amazon's Australian customers have taken to social media to blast the online retailer's prices hours after its launch.

The retailer announced it would start taking orders on Tuesday, finally ending speculation about the timing of its launch in Australia.

But although there were some bargains to be had, many products - including a Samsung television that's available on rival retailer JB Hi-Fi's website for thousands of dollars less - were found to be cheaper elsewhere.

'Everything I've looked for on Amazon to compare prices so far is available cheaper elsewhere,' Chris Urguhart wrote on Twitter.

'You can even buy a Kindle cheaper at other stores...and Amazon are the ones that make them!'

Scroll down for video

A 65" Samsung QLED Series 7 TV was offered for $5,999 on Amazon Australia's website

On rival retailer JB Hi-Fi's website, the same Samsung television is on sale for just $3,996

A Kindle E-reader starts from $109 on Amazon Australia's website, but can be snapped up from $99 from other online retailers.

'Amazon Australia is here!' said another Twitter user.

'And it has sweet f*** all sold by Amazon at reasonable prices complimented by a limited selection of highly overpriced marketplace options!'

Another Twitter user dubbed Amazon's launch a 'fail for pricing.'

'More expensive than eBay, longer postage times, no prime, no echos,' he added.

One woman replied to a tweet announcing the launch of Amazon.com.au saying: 'Feeling underwhelmed by your prices.'

Amazon are offering a Chancel Chance Eau Tendre perfume trio for almost $200 on Tuesday

The same Chanel gift set is available from department store David Jones for just $139

All Beats Studio Wireless Headphones are available on the Beats by Dre website for $449.95

But a matte black pair from Amazon's Beats seller will set you back an eye-watering $999

Amazon customers can pre-order the Game of Thrones complete Seasons 1-7 box set for $169, but it's $10 cheaper on Zavvi

Ahead of its launch, the global retailer said it would offer free shipping nationwide for purchases over $49, with millions of products available from clothes to sporting goods to consumer electronics.

Deals available on the website include a 32" Samsung Smart TV for $608.20, a Nintendo Switch console for $399 and the new FIFA 18 game for PlayStation is available for $39. A VS Sassoon hairdryer can be snapped up for as little as $25.

But a comparison of Amazon's prices with rival retailers revealed some of the products can be bought cheaper elsewhere.

Many took to social media on Tuesday morning to blast Amazon Australia's prices

Amazon's Australian arm has finally launched on Tuesday  offering customers the chance to snap up deals just in time for Christmas.

A 65" Samsung QLED Series 7 TV was offered for $5,999 on Amazon, but on JB Hi-Fi's website, the same television is on sale for just $3,996.

All Beats Studio Wireless Headphones are available on the Beats by Dre website for $449.95, but a matte black pair from Amazon's Beats seller will set you back an eye-watering $999.

Game of Thrones fanatics can pre-order the Complete Seasons 1-7 box set on Amazon for $169, but on Zavvi, it is priced $158.38.

Amazon are offering a Chanel perfume trio for $199, but on department store David Jones' site, the same set is offered for $139.

Lipstick lovers should head to Mecca's website to get their hands on a Bobbi Brown Art Stick where it's $46 compared to $51.40 on Amazon. On Myer, the lipsticks cost $44 to $46.

Those who love to pamper themselves with skincare will have to fork out $732.95 for a 100ml jar of La Mer's The Moisturising Soft Cream from La Mer's Amazon page, but at Myer, the same product can be snapped up for $665.

Deals available on the website include a 32' Samsung Smart TV (pictured) for $608.20

Gamers can get their hands on a Nintendo Switch console (pictured above) for $399

Meanwhile, Amazon didn't say what time of day it would begin taking orders from its Australian warehouse, except to say it would be on December 5.

It also did not comment on any last-minute problems from an order-taking trial which began on November 23.

Under the free delivery offer, Amazon said it estimated delivery times as short as three business days in the cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra - home to half the country's population - while shipping to remote areas could take 10 days.

Amazon customers can get a Kindle E-reader starting from $109 and FIFA 18 for PS4 for $39

A Disney Cars gift set is priced $55 on the newly-launched Amazon Australia website

A VS Sassoon Styling Kit can be snapped up for less than $25 on Amazon Australia

But shoppers could pay a fee for faster shipping times.

Amazon said it planned to offer its rapid-shipping subscription service, Prime, in mid-2018, in a sign it is unperturbed by the geographic challenge posed by one of the world's most sparsely populated countries.

Australia is the size of the mainland United States, but with one-thirteenth its population.

The move establishes the US giant as an aggressive presence in the sluggish Australian retail sector, just as shopkeepers were hoping for a rush of sales over the important Christmas holiday season.

In a statement, Amazon's Australia country manager, Rocco Braeuniger, said the company would 'earn the trust' of Australian shoppers and, over time, create 'thousands of new jobs'.

'Are you ready to make a difference?' a sign at Amazon's fulfillment centre in Melbourne said

Australia has long been home to Amazon-registered sellers, but until Tuesday they were limited to sending goods offshore because the Seattle conglomerate did not have a warehouse in the country of 24 million people.

This also meant Australians had to wait longer times, and pay higher fees, for shipping.

The company has now set up a massive distribution warehouse on the outskirts of Melbourne city, on the country's east coast where four-fifths of the population live, and the company hopes to cut delivery time to as little as a day.

The online retailer will offer one-day delivery to customers in major Australian cities

Australian retail shares have fallen sharply since Amazon confirmed plans for the country in April.

Shares of top department store operator Myer Holdings Ltd are down 30 percent since that time.

Myer has been shutting stores and ramping up online sales, and last month it halved its three-year target for growth in sales per square metre.

Its online sales leapt 68 percent in the 13 weeks to October 28, but remained only a tiny fraction of its total revenue.

Shares of No. 1 electronics retailer Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd are down 7 percent since April, while smaller JB HiFi are off by 6 percent amid fears of competition from Amazon.
Aaron Kluger, 20, allegedly bit his parents' Shih Tzu on the head so viciously he removed her right eye

A Long Island man has been arrested after he allegedly bit his parents Shih Tzu on the head so viciously he removed her right eye.

Aaron Kluger, 20, has been charged with charged with torturing and injuring an animal, a misdemeanor offense.

The three-year-old pup named Chloe was rushed to an animal hospital for emergency treatment at around 9pm on November 6.

The hospital immediately notified Nassau County SPCA.

Gary Rogers, a spokesman for the SPCA, said on Monday morning that the veterinarian who treated Chloe is hopeful the pooch will regain her sight with proper care and treatment.

Kluger was arrested on Saturday based on information given to the SPCA detectives by a family member.

Chloe appears to be doing well and is back with her owners.

Kluger has been arrested and charged with torturing and injuring an animal after an attack on his parents' dog removed her eye

'I hate to say I've seen it all because every time I say it I see something else,' said Rogers, who visited the dog this weekend, according to the New York Daily News.

'They're friendly dogs. They're popular dogs. She was wagging her tail and licking me.'

Kluger is due back in court on December 27.
Rescue crews have failed to find the bodies of four missing fishermen who drowned when their trawler sank off the coast of Queensland in October.

The vessel 'Dianne' was salvaged by crews over the weekend but the bodies of Eli Tonks, 39, Adam Bidner, 33, Chris Sammut, 34, and Zach Feeney, were not inside the boat.

Police held slim hope of finding the men underneath the wreckage nearly two months since the Dianne sank.

The trawler sank in stormy seas off the coast of Seventy Seven on October 16, claiming the lives of six of the seven men on board.

The bodies of the four missing fishermen (clockwise from top left): Eli Tonks, 39, Zach Feeney, 28, Chris Sammut, 34 and Adam Bidner, 33

The fishing trawler Dianne (pictured) sank in stormy seas off the coast of Queensland on October 16, claiming the lives of six of the seven men on board

Crewman Ruben McDornan, 32, the sole survivor of the accident, was rescued from the wreckage 12 hours after it sank.

Mr McDornan previously said he did not see any of his crewman emerge from the trawler as he clung to the hull before his rescue.

A massive sea and air search discovered the bodies of skipper Ben Leahy, 45, and Adam Hoffman, 30, inside the vessel days after it capsized and sank.

Mr Leahy was remembered as 'our beautiful pirate' by his family and friends.

A massive sea and air search discovered the bodies of skipper Ben Leahy, 45, (left) and Adam Hoffman, 30, (right) inside the vessel days after it capsized and sank

Police held slim hope of finding the men underneath the wreckage nearly two months since the Dianne sank (pictured: Eli Tonks, 39)

The vessel 'Dianne' was salvaged by crews over the weekend but police failed to find the bodies of the missing men (pictured: Zach Feeney, 28)

Efforts to re-float the 'Dianne' have been hampered by bad weather (pictured: Chris Sammut, 34)

A memorial service for the men was held at Munro Martin Parklands in Cairns to honour the fishermen (pictured: Adam Bidner, 33)

'While his death is an immeasurable loss to us, we do feel so blessed to have had him in our lives,' a statement from his family read.

'He was one in a million with a heart of gold,' they said.

'He will forever be our beautiful pirate who went out doing what he loved.'

Mr Hoffman's family described him as a 'genuine legend'.

'To his family he was our cherished brother who was kind, thoughtful, loving and would always tell it like it is,' they said.

Mr Hoffman leaves behind his five-year-old daughter Evie, his parents and five sisters.

Sole survivor of the accident Ruben McDornan, 32, (pictured with his wife at a memorial service for his missing mates) was rescued from the wreckage 12 hours after it sank

Mr McDornan previously said he did not see any of his crewman emerge from the trawler as he clung to the hull before his rescue

A memorial service for the men was held at Munro Martin Parklands in Cairns to honour the fishermen.

Hundreds turned out to remember the men as Cairns Mayor Bob Manning addressed the community at a candle lighting ceremony.

'In times like this it's proper that the community come together and grieve with those who have lost loved ones,' he told reporters beforehand.

Efforts to re-float the 'Dianne' have been hampered by bad weather but police aim to raise and tow the vessel to a nearby marina for investigation, The Courier reports.

Police Inspector Darren Somerville said the salvage company was able to roll the Dianne on to its side on Sunday.
A Perth backpacker who vanished from a Canadian ski town was 'upset about an issue at work' the day before she disappeared, a friend has revealed.

Alison Raspa, 25, who was holidaying and working in Canada, was last seen on November 22, when she left a bar in Whistler, north of Vancouver about 11.30pm.

A friend of her mother, who asked not to be named said 'something happened at work,' the day before she went missing.

Perth woman Alison Raspa, 25, was last seen on November 22, leaving a bar in Whistler, north of Vancouver on Canada's west coast, about 11.30pm

'Police are looking through the camera footage where Alison works so they can observe her on a day-to-day basis in the days before she disappeared,' the friend told The Daily Telegraph.

'Alison's mother has been told that she was upset about something to do with work so police are looking for clues on the (CCTV) tapes.'

The Perth woman's phone was found in a small lakeside park, some five kilometres away, about 6.30am the following day.

On Friday, Staff Sergeant Paul Hayes, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Whistler, confirmed to AAP that Raspa's family had arrived from Perth.

The search for Raspa was ongoing on Friday, with fire department crews out on a lake near where Raspa's phone was found.

An earlier lake search by divers, and ground searches by police and search and rescue teams, failed to find further clues as to her whereabouts.

Alison is described as caucasian, with long brown hair and blue eyes

She was last seen leaving the Three Below Bar on Blackcomb Way at 11.30pm on November 22

A helicopter had been used in the search but poor weather, including overnight snow, was preventing its use on Friday, Hayes said.

Police are also continuing to inspect Raspa's phone for clues, he said.

Raspa's friends also launched their own search on Friday morning, walking from Whistler's gondolas near Three Below, the bar where she was last seen, to Alpha Lake in Creekside, where her phone was discovered. The walk takes about an hour.

Canadian police found Alison's mobile phone at the near-frozen Alpha Lake park at 6.30am the day after she went missing

Police do not believe Raspa walked the distance because of the late hour and the cold, with temperatures in Whistler dropping to 0C throughout the past week.

Hayes would not confirm if a driver was being sought.

He said police 'had some thoughts' as to how Raspa got to Creekside, but they were yet to confirm whether those were correct.

Hayes earlier told AAP there was no indication of foul play but added police 'have not ruled out any option in terms of what has happened or where Ms Raspa could be.'
The Senate has passed a Greens motion condemning right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos as he prepares to speak at Parliament House in Canberra.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale had wanted the British-born commentator banned from addressing MPs in the Mural Hall as a guest of libertarian Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm.

Failing that, he has succeeded in having a Senate motion passed condemning the 33-year-old gay, alt right author who denounces feminism, fundamentalist Islam and political correctness.

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Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos is due to speak at Parliament House in Canberra

Greens leader Richard Di Natale successfully moved a Senate motion condemning Milo Yiannopoulos ahead of his speaking engagement at Parliament House in Canberra

'Good on the Senate for passing the Greens motion condemning Milo Yiannopolous,' Senator Di Natale tweeted.

'His desperate attempts to seek attention through vile and hateful rhetoric has no place in the Australian Parliament.'

The motion was passed on Monday afternoon, before violent protests erupted at Kensington, in Melbourne's north-west, where Yiannopoulos was performing.

Police in riot gear wielding capsicum spray intervened when verbal clashes turned physical between left-wing protesters and supporters of the U.S.-based entertainer.

The Greens motion was passed on Monday ahead of riots in Melbourne where Milo Yiannopoulos was performing

His right-wing views had seen him banned from Twitter, Western Australian government buildings and a string of high-rating television programs.

The Australian Greens had tried to have Parliament House added to Milo Yiannopoulos' growing list of exclusion zones.

The right-wing provocateur is due to speak in Canberra on Tuesday morning, drawing the ire of the Greens who label him a 'white supremacist' and a 'paedophilia apologist'.

Senator Di Natale last week wrote to the Presiding Officers of the House of Representatives and the Senate to revoke that invitation, from Senator Leyonjhelm.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale (pictured right) has officially requested Milo Yiannopoulos (left) be banned from speaking at Parliament House

Yiannopoulos was invited to speak in Canberra as a guest of Liberal Democrats Senator David Leyonjhelm

Senator Di Natale posted the letter he wrote to the Presiding Officers of the House of Representatives and the Senate along with this caption on Twitter

Senator Di Natale wrote that Yiannopoulos is 'an individual who has become notorious for his racist, sexist and abusive behaviour'.

'I write with regards to the upcoming visit to Parliament by alt-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos,' the one-page letter began.

'The Australian Greens are concerned that Senator David Leyonjhelm is hosting Milo Yiannopoulos for a conversation and an audience Q&A on Tuesday December 5.

'The global reputation of our National Parliament... is at serious risk if we provide a space for those who preach hate and incite abuse and harassment of women, Jews as well as members of the LGBTIQ and multicultural communities.'

The Greens say Yiannopoulos is 'an individual who has become notorious for his racist, sexist and abusive behaviour'

The Australian Greens have officially requested that Parliament House be added to Milo Yiannopoulos' growing list of exclusion zones

'I am requesting that... you revoke permission that has for Mr Yiannopoulos to attend and speak at Parliament House.'

Mr Di Natale accompanied the letter he posted on Twitter with the caption: 'We should not be granting a forum to someone who makes a living by peddling racist, sexist and abusive views.'

The request comes after Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young emailed Senator Leyonjhelm to complain about his invitation to the right-wing firebrand.

'It astounds me that a member of our Parliament would roll out the red carpet to a white supremacist and paedophilia apologist,' she said last week in an exchange obtained by Daily Mail Australia.

'A man who travels the world spreading racist and sexist drivel, who believes there's no such thing as rape culture is not welcome in our safe and respectful house of democracy.'

Yiannoloulos' views have already seen him banned from Twitter, Western Australian government buildings and a string of high-rating television programs

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young previously said Yiannopoulos shoudn't be welcome at Parliament House in Canberra

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young emailed Senator Leyonjhelm to protest about alt-right author Milo Yiannopoulos getting a platform to speak at Parliament House in Canberra

Senator David Leyonjhelm emailed his Greens colleague to accuse her of censoring views she didn't agree with

Senator Leyonjhelm, a libertarian who lives in Sydney, told his Greens Senate colleague she had little regard for free speech.

'This highlights the difference between you and me... Milo has the same right to speak as you. It's not compulsory for you to listen or to agree. Get over it,' he replied.

The publisher of Australian Penthouse Magazine Damien Costas, who is organising Yiannopoulos' Australian tour, said Senator Hanson-Young demonstrated how the political left censored those who they disagreed with.

'No one's going to put her on a leash and drag her there like a little sun bear at a Russian circus. She doesn't have to go,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

Australian Penthouse Magazine says the political left sought to censor those it disagree with like Milo Yiannopoulos

Yiannopoulos holds a press conference down the street from the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando in 2016

Yiannopoulos has previously likened feminism to cancer, Islam to AIDS and has spoken out against gay rights and the Black Lives Matter movement

'This is the problem with the modern left: If you don't agree with them, you're either a bigot or a Nazi or a hate monger or whatever other delicious word conjured up.'

Mr Costas rejected the notion Yiannopoulos is a white supremacist.

'He's not, he's a Western supremacist,' he said. 'He's not a racist.

'The only thing he speaks out against is extreme Islam and last time I checked, Islam is not a race, it's an ideology.'

Yiannopoulos has previously likened feminism to cancer, Islam to AIDS and has spoken out against gay rights and the Black Lives Matter movement despite being openly homosexual and married to an African American.

The right-wing provocateur will start his first ever speaking tour in Australia this week
The judge adjourned Abdallah's case for two weeks, when she will be sentenced

It was revealed she lied to emergency services about tending to Suzie's wounds

37-year-old Abdallah claimed she'd acted in self-defence during a row over a car

She was found guilty of manslaughter in the Supreme Court and her bail revoked

Katherine Abdallah found guilty of fatally stabbing her cousin Suzie in May, 2013

The night before Katherine Abdallah killed her cousin at her Sydney townhouse she told police 'she's going to be in serious trouble when I get her'.

'You guys will probably be called back,' she added in what proved to be an eerily accurate prediction.

Abdallah had been involved in a violent and prolonged argument over her new $184,000 Mercedes before she armed herself with two knives and fatally stabbed 21-year-old Suzie Sarkis.

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Katherine Abdallah (right) arrives at the NSW Supreme Court with her lawyer on November 24

Abdallah (left) stabbed Suzie Sarkis (right) to death in 2013 after an argument over a new car

Justice Julia Longergan on Monday revoked Abdallah's bail following the manslaughter verdict yesterday (left)

The now 37-year-old Abdallah claimed she'd acted in self-defence when she killed her cousin at her Brighton-Le-Sands townhouse in February 2013.

However, after almost five days of deliberations, a NSW Supreme Court jury on Monday found her guilty of manslaughter, echoing the verdict at her first trial.

Abdallah originally faced a murder trial but was found guilty of manslaughter and jailed in May 2015 for at least eight years and three months.

Later that year she successfully challenged her conviction and was ordered to face a second trial. She was released on bail in February 2016.

At the retrial, crown prosecutor John Bowers contended the stabbing wasn't done in self-defence but was a continuation of violence by Abdallah after she became angry at her cousin for using her new Mercedes.

'The crown case is that Ms Abdallah stabbed Ms Sarkis as an act in a series of violent acts that were generated or triggered by ongoing hostility and aggression that Saturday because of the incident of the car,' he said.

Abdallah originally faced a murder trial in May 2015, but was found guilty of manslaughter

Christine (left) and Mary Sarkis, sister and mother of victim Suzie Sarkis, leave court in 2015

Police visited Abdallah on the night of February 8 after clocking Ms Sarkis doing 112km/h.

The younger woman had driven off after police pulled her over during which she slightly damaged the car when hitting the gutter.

Abdallah became frustrated and agitated, telling police: 'I bought that car on finance - do you know how expensive it is to replace parts?'

The next day, a Saturday, she found out her cousin had taken the Mercedes a second time, leading to them fighting in the street.

The jury saw CCTV footage, which did not record sound, from inside the townhouse showing the women verbally fighting before it got physical.

Katherine Abdallah is escorted from a prison transport vehicle into the Supreme Court of NSW

Pictured: Abdallah, 37, slapped and kicker her cousin before stabbing her with a kitchen knife

It included Abdallah slapping her cousin's face before Ms Sarkis smashed a vase onto the floor and kicked Abdallah.

Abdallah used a four-pack of drink bottles to strike Ms Sarkis, before running into the kitchen, grabbing the knives and stabbing her once in the chest.

Mr Bowers noted the lies told by Abdallah immediately after the stabbing including blaming a fat, tall Lebanese woman with a tattoo on her hand.

She also lied to a triple-zero operator saying she was applying pressure to the wound when she was in fact carefully cleaning the two knives.

Justice Julia Longergan on Monday revoked Abdallah's bail and adjourned the case for a week

Abdallah (left) initially lied and said that a Lebanese woman with a tattoo stabbed Suzie (right)

Abdallah (right) fronted NSW Supreme Court where she was found guilty of manslaughter

'The operator gave her instructions to do things for Ms Sarkis which might have made a difference if Ms Abdallah had done them,' he said.

She was not acting in a panic but in 'her own best interests as she saw them', getting rid of evidence linking her to the knives.

Justice Julia Longergan on Monday revoked Abdallah's bail and adjourned the case to December 13.
These heartbreaking images are another reminder of how plastic waste is devastating our oceans.

An albatross chick dies from eating a plastic toothpick that pierced its intestine. And a sperm whale tries to eat a blue plastic bucket  confusing it for food.

The appalling footage will be shown this Sunday in the seventh and final episode of Blue Planet II on the BBC.

Seen by more than 17million Britons, and hundreds of millions of viewers around the world, the nature documentary is helping to pressure governments to tackle the plastic menace.

An albatross chick died from eating a plastic toothpick that pierced its intestine in another heartbreaking example of the devastating impact plastic waste is having on our oceans

In the final episode of Blue Planet II this Sunday, viewers will see a sperm whale try to eat a blue plastic bucket after confusing it for food

The plastic bucket had become lodged inside the mouth of the whale and could prevent it from being able to eat

During the programme, which is watched by 17million Britons every week, researches expose the shocking amount of plastic in our oceans

An earlier installment carried haunting shots of a pilot whale calf believed to have died from plastic pollution.

Lucy Quinn, of the British Antarctic Survey Team, will demonstrate on Sundays Blue Planet II how albatross chicks are suffering from eating our waste.

She will say the population of the birds in South Georgia in the South Atlantic has been falling for four decades, with some of the decline blamed on discarded plastic fishing gear and other rubbish.

Albatrosses have the ability to cough up bits of food that they cant digest, and from that we can tell what they have been eating, Dr Quinn will say.

The researchers found the birds had swallowed plastic food bags among other discarded items.

Explaining how the chick died, Dr Quinn said: Unfortunately there was a plastic toothpick that had actually gone through the stomach. Something just as small as that has managed to kill the bird. Its really sad.

Blue Planet II host Sir David Attenborough walked along a beach and collected plastic items dumped in the sand to emphasise the scale of the problem

This turtle was filmed floating near to a discarded plastic bag near to the surface of the ocean. Plastic is one of the biggest threats to marine life

Researches found that birds had swallowed plastic food bags among other discarded items

Later in the episode, a whale is seen trying to eat a large plastic bucket, which has become lodged in its mouth.

Sir David Attenborough narrates: Industrial pollution and the discarding of plastic waste must be tackled for the sake of all life in the ocean.

I'll install water fountains across the capital says Khan Water fountains should be brought back to combat the waste caused by plastic bottles, according to a report. Sadiq Khan says he intends to bring them back across London and try to encourage businesses to make their tap water available to the public, building on a scheme launched two years ago in Bristol. A spokesman for Mr Khan said: The mayor wants to see a reduction in the amount of single-use plastic bottles and cups across the capital and has asked city hall officers to examine the feasibility of a pilot community water refill scheme, or other interventions. The spokesman said the mayor had written to the Government to discuss a deposit return scheme for bottles. He added: Sadiq supports boroughs in identifying suitable locations for water fountains and bottle-refill stations during the planning process in new or redeveloped public spaces, such as town centres, shopping malls, parks and squares. More than half of the plastic bottles bought in 2016 were not collected for recycling, mainly going to landfill. The proposals in the mayors draft London plan follows comments made by Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, who has said greater access to drinking fountains across the country is being considered as a way to cut plastic waste. Advertisement

Sally Hamilton, director of Orca, which campaigns on behalf of whales and dolphins, launched a report yesterday that said threats such as plastics could put many populations of the sea creatures at serious risk of extinction.

Although it is tragic and upsetting these pieces of footage in Blue Planet II highlight the threat to our seas, she said.

The plastic carrier bag charge has had a huge and positive impact on marine pollution but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of tons of single-use plastic is finding its way into the ocean every year, killing whales and dolphins by the thousand.

Being caught as bycatch, or snagged in fishing gear, results in whales, dolphins and porpoises drowning, sometimes slowly over the course of many months.

Despite this suffering, however, a huge proportion of fishing vessels are not reporting the issue and as a result the deaths we know about may only represent a fraction of the issue.

Orcas report on the state of whales and dolphins also warns that growing pollution could soon mean Britains only pod of killer whales dies off.

Miss Hamilton said: We need a tax to arrest the addiction we have to the single-use plastics that are destroying our environment. She suggested that fishing vessels should report any whale, dolphin or porpoise caught in their nets  not to punish them, but to properly assess the scale of the problem.

She added: We need government and industry to work to stop the millions of tons of toxic material still threatening the environment from causing more damage.

The Daily Mail has led the way with campaigns to banish plastic bags, introduce a plastic bottle deposit scheme and act on the mountain of non-recyclable coffee cups.

- The BBC is releasing Blue Planet II in ultra high definition format on DVD  a format the corporation says is the highest quality yet seen  and which can also be downloaded to be shown on compatible devices.

In devastating scenes, the Blue Planet II team encountered a sperm whale which had a plastic bucket lodged in its mouth after confusing it for food

The albatross population in South Georgia in the South Atlantic has been falling for four decades, with some of the decline blamed on discarded plastic fishing gear and other rubbish

Researches know the birds are eating plastic because they have the ability to cough up bits of food they cannot digest
The extent to which Britains fast-growing network of Bitcoin cash machines is being exploited by drug gangs can be revealed today.

Shopkeepers have described to the Mail how teenagers reeking of drugs deposit wads of 50 notes into their digital currency terminals.

Up to four in five of those using the new ATMs are suspected drug dealers, one said.

Criminals can launder money  and bypass bank checks  by putting high-denomination notes into the machines to convert them into Bitcoin.

It can then be transferred across borders and withdrawn in any currency, and is hard to trace.

A day after Scotland Yard called for a crackdown, warning that criminal gangs are using the machines to launder their dirty cash, a Mail investigation found:

One shop that agreed to close to allow a customer to pay in 14,000;

A gaming bar where staff say up to 60 per cent of ATM users are drug dealers;

Shopkeepers boasting the machines are easy money  they get a fee of up to 1,200 a month, or commission on each deposit.

A fast-growing web of Bitcoin ATMs, owned by a range of operators, has sprung up across the UK from Penzance to Glasgow.

There are now 98, with locations including a cannabis shop in Croydon, a vaping store in Tunbridge Wells, a fish and chip shop in Brighton and a food store in Derby.

The machines, connected to a Bitcoin exchange, are also used by speculators investing in the cryptocurrency, which has increased in value more than tenfold in a year.

Mahalingam Krishna, who owns G7 newsagents in West Norwood, South London said: Its easy money for us. We get 200 a month just to have it sitting in the shop.

'We have had one since May and we get all sorts. Boys wearing hoodies, kids aged 17 or 18. They reek of drugs.

'I dont know if they are criminals, they dont like me to see what they are doing.

Staff at Loading Bar in Dalston, East London, estimate that at least 60 per cent who use its Bitcoin ATM, installed six months ago, are drug dealers.

At first it was about 80 per cent, said a male employee who did not want to be named. The guys who are druggies will bring in massive amounts, a wad of 50 notes.

At a corner shop in Derby, ATM customers yesterday included a man who had travelled from Nottingham and another, in his 20s, who bought three Bitcoin last year for around 350  they are now worth more than 24,000.

Mahalingam Krishna, who owns G7 newsagents in West Norwood, South London said: Its easy money for us. We get 200 a month just to have it sitting in the shop'

Staff said the users were mainly geeks and there are precautions to stop money laundering.

Anyone wanting to buy Bitcoin worth more than 250 in a single transaction has to register using their fingerprints and two forms of ID.

Detectives from Scotland Yards elite Organised Crime Command say Bitcoin is one of the biggest emerging obstacles to tackling major gangs.

Julian Dixon, CEO of Fortytwo Data, specialists in combating money laundering, said: The UK is several steps behind the criminals and playing catch-up. Scare stories about the use of Bitcoin on the Dark Web have been common since its inception. Why has is taken so long for the authorities to decide to act?

Bitcoin emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

It is unregulated, hard to trace and exists only in cyberspace in the form of a numerical code.

It can be exchanged anonymously with anyone in the world at the click of a mouse.

The Bitcoin craze means its value has soared from around 750 at the start of the year to more than 8,200, making the currency worth 140billion  almost as much as the Coca-Cola company.

But as it is not tied to any assets in the real world and the value is driven purely by demand, experts fear the Bitcoin bubble will burst.

'It's not unusual for them to put in 10,000'

Cannabis shop manager Tom Barber is happy to close his doors when customers ask for privacy to deposit huge bundles of cash into his Bitcoin ATM.

His Skunk House store on Croydon High Street sells a range of drug paraphernalia  but the most popular purchase is Bitcoin.

Its been great for business, he said. We get ten to 20 people using the ATM a day.

Its not unusual for people to put in 10,000 in a day. We have had everyone from businessmen trying to hide from the taxman, to college students, to immigrants sending money home.

Ive had to close the shop for half an hour and get the machine emptied and filled again so that one guy could deposit 14,000 in one go.

Booming trade: The Vapour Trail in Tunbridge Wells has one of the ATMs

Skunk House cannabis shop in Croydon is another location with a Bitcoin ATM

There is a 500 limit per transaction on the machine, but the number of transactions you can do a day is limitless.

You dont get to hear what the money is for, but it would not surprise me if drug dealers were using it.

There was one drug dealer I heard that was about to get caught so he put everything he had into Bitcoin. When he came out of prison, the value had gone up so much he bought a house.

He said he believed Bitcoin was used to make purchases on the Dark Web  the secret part of the internet frequented by, among others, pornographers, criminals and terrorists.

Daniel Jenkinson, who owns The Vapour Trail in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, has seen more than 100,000 deposited at his vape stores Bitcoin ATM in the past three months.

He said 90 per cent of users are either business people or curious investors. His machine is provided by Alpha Vend, which pays him 30 per cent of the commission it makes on every deposit.

Mr Jenkinson, 28, insisted he had seen no evidence of criminals using his ATMs to launder money.
Never was there an upper lip stiffer than that of Field Marshal Henry Paget, Earl of Uxbridge and noted British war hero.

When his right knee was shot to smithereens during the very last volleys of the Battle of Waterloo, he turned calmly to his commanding officer, the Duke of Wellington: By God, Sir, Ive lost my leg! he exclaimed.

To which Wellington replied: By God, Sir, so you have!

Henry Cyril Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey thoroughly deserves his reputation as one of the most eccentric aristocrats in British history

Much quoted since, this exchange typified the bravery which in July 1815, less than a month after what remained of his mangled limb was amputated, saw Paget made the 1st Marquess of Anglesey.

That elevation within the ranks of the Georgian aristocracy was an honour hard won. So heaven knows what his lordship would have made of the antics of the great-grandson who inherited his title.

As revealed in How To Win Against History  a musical which opened at Londons Young Vic theatre last week  Henry Cyril Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey, was to flamboyance what his forebear was to stoicism.

With a penchant for dressing up as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, he was known to stroll the streets of Londons Mayfair with a snow-white poodle under his arm, its collar a pink ribbon.

The exhausts of his five cars were specially adapted to spray out perfume, and one newspaper of the day claimed that he bought diamonds in the same way other men bought cigarettes.

Neither did he stint when it came to staging the theatrical spectaculars in which he always starred. These vehicles for his talent involved treating perplexed Victorian audiences to his signature style of choreography, a snake-like writhing which led to him becoming known as The Dancing Marquess. The bejewelled costumes for just one production were said to have cost 43 million in todays money.

All in all, he thoroughly deserves his reputation as one of the most eccentric aristocrats in British history  but there is some doubt as to whether he was blue-blooded at all.

At the time of his birth in London in 1875, there were rumours that his mother, Blanche, had cheated on his father, the 4th Marquess, with a French actor named Benoit-Constant Coquelin.

He was schooled at Eton College and later served as a lieutenant in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers but his unorthodox lifestyle soon came to the fore

This gossip was fuelled further when, just two years after her sons birth, Blanche committed suicide and Henry was sent to Paris, where he was cared for by Coquelins sister.

The reasons for this are unclear, but whats certain is that, at the age of eight, Henry was brought back to live at Plas Newydd, the Paget familys Gothic-style mansion in Anglesey, North Wales.

With only an elderly nanny and his pets for companions, the delicate child got little attention from his father who was, by his own admission, a difficult character.

At first, his son appeared to be following the traditional path for a privileged young man of his era  schooled at Eton College and later serving as a lieutenant in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.

But there were early signs of the unorthodox lifestyle to come when the family arranged for him to marry his cousin, Lily, in 1898. A beautiful young woman with green eyes and Titian hair, she looked as though she had stepped out of a pre-Raphaelite painting and represented everything Henry wanted to be himself. Decidedly girlish in appearance, he wore dozens of rings on his dainty fingers and used make-up to whiten his complexion.

When his father died he was left a fortune, which included the income from the family mines in the Midlands, equivalent to around 55 million a year today

Their honeymoon in Paris was unusual, to say the least. When Lily stopped to admire the gems arrayed in a jewellers window, he went inside and bought the entire display. Each night he insisted she cover her naked body with these treasures, but he made no advance, content with just sitting and staring at her. That was as far as their physical intimacy went.

Exactly what his sexual inclinations were remains unclear, but Professor Viv Gardner, a performance historian at the University of Manchester, has come up with perhaps the most convincing explanation. He was a classic narcissist, she has written.

The only person he could love and make love to was himself.

Later that year, the 4th Marquess died, leaving his 23-year-old son a fortune which included the income from the family mines in the Midlands, equivalent to around 55 million a year today.

One of his first acts as the new Marquess was to get rid of his fathers hounds and replace them with a pack of pampered toy dogs, each with a silk coat, embroidered with the family crest.

With his marriage annulled on the grounds of non-consummation two years later, he indulged his love of performing and converted the chapel at Plas Newydd into a theatre called The Gaiety. For his first production, Aladdin, he tempted professional actors away from London with inflated salaries, and lit a three-mile path of blazing torches to guide audiences from the nearest village.

He lived at Plas Newydd, the Paget familys Gothic-style mansion in Anglesey, North Wales

Tickets were free and spectacle guaranteed with a small army of dressers helping the Marquess change in and out of a succession of costumes which sparkled with real jewels. Eventually, he began touring his productions around Europe. Fifty people together and lorry-loads of luggage, costumes and props were accompanied by the Marquess in his own limousine, decked out to resemble a luxurious Pullman railway carriage.

After each performance the Marquess, who was obsessed with photography, handed out postcards which showed him stretched out on a chaise longue. Besides jewellery, he frittered away millions on horses, furs and yachts. But the spending could not continue for ever and in 1904 he went bankrupt, owing his creditors the equivalent of a quarter of a billion pounds today.

Many got their money back, thanks to an auction of the Marquesss effects, which lasted 40 days as 17,000 lots went under the hammer.

Items on sale included treasure chests of pearls, gold cigarette cases studded with rubies, as well as the worlds largest collection of walking sticks, their handles encrusted with amethysts and emeralds.

Even the Marquesss footwear proved a marvel, with hundreds of pairs of shoes in leather, crocodile-skin and suede, alongside skating boots and silk tapestry slippers.

His sexual inclinations were unclear but one expert described him as 'a classic narcissist'

Perhaps mollified by getting their share of the proceeds, his creditors left him with a sizeable annual allowance of 3,000 (100,000 today), and with this he moved to France.

It was in the suitably ritzy surroundings of Monte Carlos Hotel Royale that he died of tuberculosis the following year, aged 29, his ex-wife Lily at his side. Since they had no children, the title was inherited by his cousin, Charles Paget, who, like the rest of his family, took a dim view of his squandering their fortune.

Immediately turning The Gaiety back into a chapel, Paget destroyed what remained of its creators personal effects.

This anger was understandable. The Marquess had, after all, frittered away around half a billion pounds in todays money in just six short years.

But in one respect at least he might have won the respect of his illustrious ancestor, the 1st Marquess. No one could deny that Henry Cyril Paget had lived life exactly as he pleased. That hardly equates to losing a leg on the battlefield, but it requires courage of a sort, so perhaps the two Marquesses of Anglesey had more in common than their relatives might ever have cared to admit.

How To Win Against History, by Seiriol Davies, is on at the Young Vic, until December 30.
Matthew Leveson's parents have said they wish they could see justice served for their son, but they feel relieved after a coroner delivered an open finding in the 20-year-old's death.

Deputy State Coroner Elaine Truscott's findings on Tuesday came two years after the inquest began and more than eight years after Mr Leveson's boyfriend, Michael Atkins, was acquitted of murder.

His parents Mark and Faye Leveson had mixed feelings after a coroner said she could not make a finding as to the cause and manner of his death in Sydney on September 23, 2007.

But they have the main thing they wanted from an inquest into his death: to bring him home.

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A coroner has made an open finding as to the cause and manner of Matthew Leveson's death

Mark and Faye Leveson (above, on Tuesday) had mixed feelings after a coroner said she could not make a finding as to the cause and manner of their son's death

'There's some relief, there's some frustration, there's some anger, so there's lots of emotions going through us but relief's one of the ones right now,' Mr Leveson told reporters outside Glebe Coroners Court.

The coroner said Atkins was the only person who could provide the answers as to how Matthew died, and he'd been given the opportunity to do so during his protected evidence at the inquest last year.

'For reasons unknown to me, he did not take that opportunity,' Ms Truscott said, later adding that Atkins had not been a 'witness of truth'.

The 54-year-old this year finally led police to Matthew's remains in a south Sydney national park after striking a deal to avoid contempt and perjury charges over lies he told during his inquest evidence.

He told police he panicked and buried his boyfriend's body in bushland after finding him dead from a drug overdose.

But the Levesons don't believe Atkins' latest version of events and still allege he's responsible for their son's death.

Faye Leveson is supported by her husband Mark at the NSW Coroner's Court on Tuesday

Michael Atkins (above) told police he panicked and buried his boyfriend's body in bushland after finding him dead from a drug overdose

Matthew was last seen leaving Darlinghurst's ARQ nightclub with his older boyfriend, Michael Atkins (left), in September 2007

Although they want justice, they say they achieved their main goal from the inquest - to find Matthew and bring him home.

'Our son was the most precious thing to us and to his brothers, why would we worry about Atkins,' Mrs Leveson said on Tuesday.

'We would have loved both but we were forced in this corner, and Matty comes first every time.'

'I was hoping at that stage he might go to jail and with luck might be killed in jail,' Mark Leveson said in an interview with 60 Minutes earlier this year.

When asked whether he wants Aktins dead, he replied: 'Yes. Slowly, painfully.'

During the lengthy inquest, Atkins drew diagrams for police officers about where he buried his younger boyfriend afyer he claimed he found he had overdosed on GHB

He told them he decided to bury him in bushland after finding him dead in their bedroom

And Mrs Leveson earlier stood in court and accused Atkins of possibly smothering, drowning or burying Matthew alive.

'We will always be left worrying, did Matty suffer?' Mrs Leveson said. 'Did he die quickly or was it slow and painful? Was he terrified?'

As she spoke, her son's remains were being held in the morgue under the court.

Mrs Leveson also revealed her son would not be wearing his favourite suit when his family finally bury him. They cannot dress a skeleton, she told the court.

'We had to watch Matty be exhumed from the grave, piece by piece, bit by bit, and then rebuilt and then watched him be packed up into two cardboard boxes and some evidence bags,' she said.

Matthew's parents Mark and Faye Leveson (pictured in October) believe Atkins killed their son

Matthew Leveson was last seen leaving Darlinghurst's ARQ nightclub with Atkins in September 2007.

Atkins, who in 2009 was acquitted of murdering Mr Leveson by a Supreme Court jury, long denied any knowledge of his whereabouts.

He finally led police to his bones at a national park south of Sydney after striking a deal last year to avoid contempt and perjury charges.

Police offered the 54-year-old the deal after he admitted lying during the investigation into Mr Leveson's disappearance and while giving evidence during the inquest.

He told them he decided to bury him in bushland after finding him dead in their bedroom from an overdose of GHB.
Video shows moments after alleged attack as Franklin returned to the kitchen carrying the limp child and casually

An Oklahoma dentist accused of causing fatal skull fractures to his mistress's 19-month-old son was charged Monday in a new felony case- with conspiring to have her killed so she couldn't testify against him.

Bert Franklin, 36, was set to face trial Monday in the death of his mistress Roxanne Lewis's son, Lincoln Von Henry Lewis. Prosecutors allege Franklin caused the deadly head injuries to the child on July 16, 2016, inside the Lewis' Oklahoma City residence, according to OK News.

The trial was continued after prosecutors charged him with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, after they say he solicited fellow inmates to kill the boy's mother. She is the key witness in her son's murder case.

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Roxanne Lewis-Randall, pictured with her now deceased son Lincoln, is the key witness in her son's murder case

Oklahoma dentist Bert Franklin, 35 (left), was charged with killing his lover's 19-month-old son, Lincoln Van Henry Lewis (right), with a blow to the head- and now he's charged with plotting to kill the boy's mother from behind bars

The inmates Franklin allegedly solicited were working with law enforcement as confidential informants in unrelated cases.

He has been held without bail in the Oklahoma County jail since July 2016, as he is considered a flight risk after losing his dental practice over the toddler's murder charge according to Koco News.

In August, Franklin approached the first informant about 'the possibility of killing a witness in the murder case,' an investigator with the Oklahoma County District Attorney's Office wrote in a court affidavit.

This past week, prosecutors allege Franklin gave 'step-by-step driving instructions' to Randall's house to a second informant as well as information on her home security cameras.

Roxanne Lewis-Randall told Dr Phil through tears previously about her son's tragic death

Prosecutors allege Franklin had $300 transferred to a third inmate's account, which was to be used as 'compensation for the murder,' according to the affidavit.

His defense attorney says Franklin denies the new allegations. Franklin also has denied harming Randall's son.

Randall had been in a secret relationship with the married dentist for about a year.

CCTV footage allegedly captured him slamming her son Lincoln's head into the ground, making a kicking motion, then carrying the child while nonchalantly getting himself a piece of pizza.

'My mind knew logically that there was only one explanation,' she told Dr. Phil previously. 'I asked him, said "are you sure Lincoln didnt fall or something whenever you guys were outside or whenever you guys were downstairs" and his exact answer was "no, and I told you that noise was me throwing a ball at the wall..." and that stuck in my mind.'

In the Tulsa hospital where Lincoln was airlifted, it all came together for Randall.

Dr. Phil says: In the hospital that you realized it all came into focus for you, there were two of us there and it damn sure wasnt me.'

Randall says she wanted physically assault him.

'I just was fuming, but I needed to get him away from Lincoln because he was still there, so I went back to the room and I told him that I felt like I needed a minute alone with my son, I whispered to the nurse if she could change the visiting rules to just me. She asked if there was a specific person that I didnt want there and I told her yes, him, but I dont want him to know.'

She tells Dr. Phil what happened in harrowing detail.

'Lincoln was laying on the couch, looking up at the TV, so I went to walk around to give him his pacifier and Burt was on the other couch,' she said.

She didn't know that her child had already been fatally injured.

'He was like "no he's asleep," so I put his pacifier on the arm of the couch and went back upstairs.

'I guess that's whenever he picked up Lincoln and carried his body around. So he carried him into the kitchen, gets another piece of pizza, and eventually takes him to my room and lays him on my bed.'

Roxanne goes on to tell how when she later picked up her son's lifeless body, he was completely limp.

At that point, Lincoln was already brain dead.

Roxanne told Dr Phil when she picked up her son's lifeless body, he was completely limp. At that point, Lincoln was already brain-dead

Bert Franklin, 35, was arrested and charged in 2016 with first-degree murder in the death of 19-month-old Lincoln Van Henry Lewis.

When Roxanne realized her son was unresponsive she took him to Mercy Hospital, where he was diagnosed with skull fractures.

Surveillance video was later released which gives a clue to the horrific last moments of baby Lincoln's life.

The footage showed Franklin walking down the stairs at the home of his Ms Randall, with Lincoln in his arms.

At that point, the baby looked alert and awake.

Franklin then disappeared out of view into the living room.

It is unclear what happened next but an Oklahoma City detective told the court she believes the video showed the dentist slamming the child head first into the ground.

Franklin was then seen kicking towards something on the floor which is not visible.

When he walked back into the kitchen, in view of the camera, the child is limp in his arms. Franklin seems unaffected and casually grabbed a piece of pizza from the box on the side, Lincoln's limp legs dangling.

The boy's mother only noticed something was wrong after she tried to wake Lincoln up around 2am to feed.

At that point, she discovered her son unresponsive and rushed him to hospital.

Due to the severity of his injuries, the child was later flown to a Tulsa hospital where he passed away, according to police.

A doctor who initially treated Lincoln in Oklahoma City called police because the toddler's injuries were consistent with abuse, according to a press release cited by Tulsa World.

An autopsy that was performed in the wake of the child's death found that Lincoln had severe swelling and trauma to his brain, as well as hemorrhaging in both eyes caused by a pair of skull fractures.

Roxanne told police that on July 17, 2016, she was downstairs in her home in the 14800 block of Gravity Falls when she heard a loud 'thud' from an upstairs bedroom, where Franklin and Lincoln were alone at the time.

Franklin later told his girlfriend that the noise she heard was with from a small ball he was throwing to a puppy.

According to Roxanne, her boyfriend hated Lincoln's biological father and had threatened to kill him, 'skin him in Bricktown' and cut off his penis, Fox 25 reported.

She also claimed that Franklin recently had begun to exhibit 'controlling behavior.' Investigators stated in Franklin's arrest warrant that his wife and his mistress were not aware of one another's existence.

Detectives said when they interviewed Bert Franklin, they found his story to be inconsistent with the evidence in the case.

Franklin later surrendered and is set to stand trial for murder starting September 25, 2017.

Prosecutors told the judge at the bail hearing that F ranklin would be a flight risk because he's lost everything after the case - including his Tulsa dental practice.

His Facebook page states that Franklin works at Signature Smiles Dental Spa in Tulsa. He reportedly was with the practice for eight years.

A bio on the dental practice's website states that Franklin graduated from the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, where he received the Dental Wellness Partner Scholarship.

He also holds an undergraduate degree in biomedical chemistry from Oral Roberts University.

The court heard evidence that one of Franklin's biological children had accused him of abuse in the past.

The judge, who also saw violent texts Franklin had sent to Lewis' biological father, was swayed by the arguments and denied him bail.

Posts and photos shared on Roxanne's Facebook account reveal that her son Lincoln was born prematurely in late December 2014 and spent nearly two months in NICU.

She was finally able to take him home in February of 2015, calling him in one status update her 'miracle babe.'
Harvey Weinstein was spotted out to lunch and away from his rehabilitation facility with an unidentified female companion on Monday.

And unlike the last few times the fallen mogul has stepped out into the public eye, this time he did it without any of his clever disguises, TMZ reported.

The 65-year-old was spotted dining in a Los Angeles Dodgers T-shirt, despite being in enemy territory at Babbo Italian Eatery in Glendale, Arizona.

The restaurant is just 40 minutes outside Phoenix where the Arizona Diamondbacks - the Dodgers rival team- plays.

His lady friend was equally casual in a fuchsia workout top and a pair of Nike joggers.

Harvey Weinstein was spotted out to lunch and away from his rehabilitation facility with an unidentified female companion on Monday

And unlike the last few times the fallen mogul has stepped out into the public eye, this time he did it without any of his clever disguises, TMZ reported

The 65-year-old was spotted dining in a Los Angeles Dodgers T-shirt, despite being in enemy territory at Babbo Italian Eatery in Glendale, Arizona (pictured)

Weinstein and the raven-haired woman had the entire restaurant to themselves, and likely dined on lasagna or a calzone, a couple of Babbo's specialties, while watching the Cardinals play the Rams.

TMZ noted that he looked slimmer than he looked before going into rehabilitation - and despite the restaurant's extensive wine list stayed away from all alcoholic beverages.

Weinstein has only been spotted a handful of time since he fled New York City the day after he was first accused of assault and harassment in a New York Times expose.

He was seen slurping on some soup at Chestnut, a farm-to-table restaurant in Phoenix in early November and then in California a week later. Throughout the mean he managed to keep a low profile despite the fact that over 100 women have now accused him of sexual harassment and/or assault.

That feat was accomplished in large part because of his disguise, with Weinstein wearing a blond wig over his bald head and orange makeup covering his face before heading out in public.

His guest also appeared to be wearing a wig, with the man keeping a hand on the side of his head during their meal.

Weinstein has only been spotted a few other times since fleeing New York City the day after he was first accused of assault and harassment, but usually wears some sort of disguise to keep people from noticing him (he is pictured in 2015)

The disgraced mogul looked shockingly calm even though an investigation into sexual assault allegations against him ramped up on Monday.

The investigation is moving forward, NYPD chief detective Robert Boyce said Monday without giving a timeline for possible charges.

TMZ noted that he looked slimmer than he looked before going into rehabilitation - and despite the restaurant's extensive wine list stayed away from all alcoholic beverages. He is pictured in 2015

'This case is going forward right now,' he told a briefing, citing regular communication with Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. though with no details on timing.

'There has been no determination on where its going to go, or what timeline has been done as to when it's going to go to a grand jury,' the New York Police Department staffer explained.

Boyce said he has sent detectives to Los Angeles on the multi-front case.

'I have two detectives in LA right now. I have sent them to Paris. I have sent them pretty much around the world ... More women coming out: its a good thing. We see a decided increase in the people coming forward and having faith,' he stressed.

This news comes almost one month after a report emerged claiming that the district attorney's office was looking to present a case the following week to the the grand jury in hopes of indicting Weinstein on a number of charges stemming from his alleged rapes of actress de la Huerta in 2010.

'We have a credible and detailed narrative, and even though the incident occurred seven years ago there has been corroboration from a number of individuals,' said Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce around that time.

He went on to reveal that investigators contacted the district attorney's office soon after they interviewed de la Huerta and 'started working the case together.'

Weinstein is accused of sexually assaulting the actress on two occasions, but has denied any and all allegations of non-consensual sex through his spokesperson.

The actress reported the incidents to authorities on October 25, and was found to be a strong and credible witness.
A Chinese zoo in southern China is forced to shut down after being slammed for putting up inflatable animal toys as real penguins.

Guishan Zoo organised a two-day event featuring wildlife animals but it failed to impress the visitors as they saw tortoise, chickens and geese when they walked in.

The incident has caused an outcry as web users and tourists being treated as 'fools' and 'idiots'.

'Penguins from the South Pole': A Chinese zoo has shocked visitors with inflatable toys

Pictured: Featuring rare wildlife animals in the zoo's posters, visitors were disappointed to see poultry such as chickens and geese

Pictures of the zoo posted by People's Daily Online since the opening on November 25, showing over 10 inflatable penguins, chickens, geese, and a tortoise with some money sprinkled on.

The zoo also featured a crocodile pond where a warning sign stood up saying the crocodile can hurt people.

However, a live tortoise can be seen living in the pond, along with a pop-up penguin.

Tourists have to pay 15 yuan (1.68) per person to visit the zoo featuring 'penguins from the South Pole' and fortune tortoise.

Located in Yulin, Guangxi Province, the zoo owner spoke to local media, 'Yulin Living' that the exhibition was held by a third party, whose the person-in-charge was known as Mr Wang.

A warning sign is placed in a pond to warn people not to touch the 'crocodile' where it lives two tortoises (left). Another tortoise is being branded as 'fortune and long-living' (right)

Angry visitors slammed the zoo for false advertising and requested a refund of the ticket

The owner, who refused to reveal her name, found it surprise to see fake penguins.

'This is not what we agreed initially, I only found out on the day the zoo opens but there were visitors coming in already, so I did not bother,' she said.

However, she claimed the poultry are not part of the attraction. The chicken and geese are to be fed to the crocodile in the zoo.

Negative reviews swarmed over the Internet since the attraction opened. Guishan zoo is forced to shut down after opening five days for this special exhibition.

Visitors were demanding a refund for being mislead by false advertisement.

The zoo owner told the reporter that she could not contact Mr Wang since the incident came into light.

'I wish he [Mr Wang] can stand up and gives the public an explanation,' she said.

Angry web users commented on Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform, that they were not a fool.

'Do we look like idiots to them? And they think people cannot distinguish a real penguin and an inflatable toy?' asked 'Nhuihaoshen'.

'This is a farm more than a zoo! There are no real animals in the zoo! This is humiliating our intelligence!' said 'Chrilllia'.
Pigeons are smarter than we thought, according to new research.

The birds judge the abstract concepts of space and time in a similar way to humans, the first time a non-primate species has been shown to do so.

Crucially, pigeons use a different region of the brain to process space and time, suggesting they evolved the ability separately to humans.

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The birds judge the abstract concepts of space and time in a similar way to humans, yet use a different region of the brain to process them, a study found. Pictured is one of the pigeons used in the new research

THE STUDY During their study, researchers showed pigeons a static, horizontal line on a computer screen. The birds had to judge the line's length or the amount of time it was visible to them. Pigeons judged longer lines to also have longer duration and judged lines longer in duration to also be longer in length. This means pigeons use a single area of the brain to judge space and time, suggesting the abstract concepts are not processed separately, experts said. Similar results have been found with humans and other primates. Advertisement

'In the same way we might need to estimate the arrival of our pizza delivery, or figure out if there is enough space for us to park our cars, it might be useful for a pigeon to estimate when it is lunchtime so it can get delicious breadcrumbs, or the size of a potential competitor,' study coauthor Dr Victor Navarro, a psychologist at the University of Iowa, told MailOnline.

The research adds to growing evidence that that lower-order animal species such as birds, reptiles, and fish are capable of high-level, abstract decision-making.

'The cognitive prowess of birds is now deemed to be ever closer to that of both human and nonhuman primates,' said study lead author Professor Edward Wasserman.

'Those avian nervous systems are capable of far greater achievements than the pejorative term "bird brain" would suggest.'

During their study, the Iowa team showed pigeons a static, horizontal line on a computer screen.

The birds had to judge the line's length or the amount of time it was visible to them.

Pigeons judged longer lines to also have longer duration and judged lines longer in duration to also be longer in length.

This means pigeons use a single area of the brain to judge space and time, suggesting the abstract concepts are not processed separately, experts said.

Similar results have been found with humans and other primates.

Humans are able to perceive space and time even without the aid of inventions such as a watch or a ruler.

The region of the brain that helps us understand those abstract concepts is the parietal cortex, part of the cerebral cortex and the outermost layer of the brain.

The research adds to growing evidence that that lower-order animal species such as birds, reptiles, and fish are capable of high-level, abstract decision-making

The cerebral cortex is linked with higher thought processes, including speech and complex decision-making.

The four lobes that make up this important region, including the parietal cortex, process different types of sensory information.

But the pigeon brain doesn't have a parietal cortex, meaning the birds must employ another area of the brain to discriminate between space and time.

To investigate this further, the Iowa researchers put pigeons through a series of tasks called the 'common magnitude' test.

Put simply, the birds were shown on a computer screen a horizontal line of varying lengths and for varying amounts of time.

If they correctly reported the length or the duration of the line by pecking one of four visual symbols, they received food.

Pigeons were found to use a single area of the brain to judge space and time, suggesting the abstract concepts are not processed separately, experts said. Humans and other primates also use a single brain region to process space and time

'The task forces pigeons to process time and space simultaneously because they cannot know on which dimension they're going to be tested,' Professor Wasserman said.

The researchers found that the length of the line affected the pigeons' guesses of line duration, and the duration of the line altered the pigeons' guesses of line length.

This interplay of space and time paralleled research done with humans and monkeys and revealed the common brain coding of these two dimensions.

Researchers previously believed that the parietal cortex was the locus of this interplay.

However, because pigeons lack an apparent parietal cortex, Professor Wasserman's findings suggest this isn't always the case.

'The cortex is not unique to judging space and time. The pigeons have other brain systems that allow them to perceive these dimensions,' said study coauthor Mr Benjamin De Corte.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has revealed that he shares China's cyberspace vision of 'developing a digital economy for openness and shared benefits.'

Speaking at a conference in China this week, Cook said that Apple was 'proud to have worked alongside many of our partners in China to help build a community that will join a common future in cyberspace.'

The news comes as Apple faces criticism from rights groups for bowing to pressure from cyber regulators after it removed hundreds of apps from its Chinese store this year.

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Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has revealed that 1.8 million developers have been using the App Store platform in China

CHINESE INTERNET CRACKDOWN While China is home to the world's largest number of internet users, a 2015 report by US think tank Freedom House found that the country had the most restrictive online use policies of 65 nations it studied, ranking below Iran and Syria. But China has maintained that its various forms of web censorship are necessary for protecting its national security. The national VPN crackdown comes after the passing of a controversial cybersecurity bill last November that tightened restrictions on online freedom of speech and imposed new rules on service providers. Since the regulation took effect this June, authorities have closed dozens of celebrity gossip blogs and issued new rules around online video content to eliminate programmes deemed offensive. Advertisement

Cook was speaking at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China this week.

According to Bloomberg, Cook said: 'The theme of this conference - developing a digital economy for openness and shared benefits - is a vision we at Apple share.

'We are proud to have worked alongside many of our partners in China to help build a community that will join a common future in cyberspace.'

Cook also revealed that 1.8 million developers have been using the App Store platform in China.

These developers have earned a total of 112 billion yuan ($16.93 billion/12.6 billion) - representing roughly a quarter of total global App Store earnings.

Earlier this year, Apple said that developers had earned roughly $70 billion (52 billion) in total revenue through the store.

Apple counts China as its third-largest region by sales but it has lost market share in recent years as high-end handsets from local rivals continue to gain traction.

The news comes as Apple faces criticism from local users and rights groups for bowing to pressure from Beijing cyber regulators after it decided to remove hundreds of apps from its Chinese store this year.

The firm is hoping to regain momentum following the release of its iPhone 8 and iPhone X models which shipped in November.

The firm said earlier it had moved its Chinese cloud data onto the servers of a local partner in the Chinese province of Guizhou.

Cook has come to China several times this year, including an October visit where he was among executives that met with President Xi Jinping, who also had prepared remarks read at the conference on Sunday.

Cook's attendance is conspicuous at the conference, marking the first high-level executive to attend in the event's four-year history.

Others included Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, who is also attending the conference for the first time.

Others included Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, who is also attending the conference for the first time

Pichai did not give a speech but appeared on a group panel alongside Xiaomi founder Lei Jun.

Like Apple, he hinted at how Google helps the economy in China.

According to the South China Morning Post, he said: 'A lot of work Google does is to help Chinese companies.

'Many small and medium-sized businesses in China take advantage of Google to get their products to many other countries outside of China.'

Also speaking at the event was Mr Wang Huning, the man known as the brain behind President Xi, who praised China's president for his 'deep understanding' of internet governence.

He said: 'Global cyberspace governance has no onlookers  we are all participants,' adding that 'all parties' should have a say over how the internet is managed across the world.
A mysterious planet that lies 325 light years away from Earth has been found to have one of the most bizarre atmospheres ever observed.

The over-sized planet, called Wasp-18b, is wrapped in a smothering layer of carbon monoxide with absolutely no water - a finding that astronomers say 'defies expectations'.

This is one of the first times that such a combination has been seen, and has led some to nickname Wasp-18b the 'death planet.'

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A mysterious planet that lies 325 light years away from Earth has been found to have one of the most bizarre atmospheres ever observed. The over-sized planet, called Wasp-18b, is wrapped in a smothering layer of carbon monoxide with absolutely no water

WASP-18B'S ATMOSPHERE By analysing the light emitted by the planet's atmosphere, the researchers revealed Wasp-18b's unusual fingerprint. The analysis suggests that Wasp-18b has hot carbon monoxide in the stratosphere and cooler carbon monoxide in the layer of the atmosphere below  called the troposphere. Compared to other gas giants, the researchers suggest that Wasp-18b's atmosphere would contain 300 times more 'metals'  elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This very high metallicity indicates that Wasp-18b may have accumulated greater amounts of solid ices during its formation than Jupiter  suggesting it may have formed in a different way to other gas giants. Advertisement

Researchers from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland used the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to analyse Wasp-18b's stratosphere.

The unusual composition of carbon monoxide with no water suggests that the formation of the planet may have been very different to that of other gas giants.

Dr Kyle Sheppard, lead author of the study, said: 'The composition of WASP-18b defies all expectations.

'We don't know of any other extrasolar planet where carbon monoxide so completely dominates the upper atmosphere.'

On Earth, ozone absorbs UV in the stratosphere, protecting our planet from a lot of the sun's harmful radiation.

And for most other exoplanets with stratospheres, this absorber is usually a molecule such as titanium oxide.

In the study, the researchers analysed data collected for Wasp-18b, including five eclipses from archived Hubble data and two from Spitzer.

By analysing the light emitted by the planet's atmosphere, the researchers revealed Wasp-18b's unusual fingerprint.

Dr Nikku Madhusadhan, co-author of the study, said: 'The only consistent explanation for the data is an overabundance of carbon monoxide and very little water vapor in the atmosphere of WASP-18b, in addition to the presence of a stratosphere.

WASP-18b is a 'hot Jupiter,' a giant exoplanet that orbits very close to its star, located about 330 light years from Earth

WASP-18B WASP-18b is a 'hot Jupiter,' a giant exoplanet that orbits very close to its star, located about 330 light years from Earth. Specifically, the mass of WASP-18b is estimated to be about ten times that of Jupiter, yet it orbits its star about once every 23 hours. By comparison, it takes Jupiter about 12 years to complete one trip around the sun from its great distance. Advertisement

'This rare combination of factors opens a new window into our understanding of physicochemical processes in exoplanetary atmospheres.'

The analysis suggests that Wasp-18b has hot carbon monoxide in the stratosphere and cooler carbon monoxide in the layer of the atmosphere below  called the troposphere.

Compared to other gas giants, the researchers suggest that Wasp-18b's atmosphere would contain 300 times more 'metals'  elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

This very high metallicity indicates that Wasp-18b may have accumulated greater amounts of solid ices during its formation than Jupiter  suggesting it may have formed in a different way to other gas giants.

Dr Avi Mandell, another author of the study, said: 'The expected launch of the James Webb Space Telescope and other future space-based observatories will give us the opportunity to follow up with even more powerful instruments and to continue exploring the amazing array of exoplanets out there.'
Internet users have been left baffled by a silent animation that you can 'hear'.

The Gif shows a huge electricity pylon jumping over power lines like a skipping rope, causing the screen to 'shake' each time it lands.

Thousands of Twitter users, where the soundless Gif was first shared, have reported that they hear a 'thudding' noise each time the pylon lands.

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Does anyone in visual perception know why you can hear this gif? pic.twitter.com/mcT22Lzfkp  Lisa DeBruine  (@lisadebruine) December 2, 2017

The Gif shows an electricity pylon jumping over power lines like a skipping rope, causing the screen to 'shake' each time it lands. Many Twitter users have reported that they hear a thudding noise each time the pylon lands

WHAT CAUSES THE SOUND? The acoustic reflex is an involuntary muscle contraction in the ear when we speak or hear loud noises. Muscles pull tightly within the 'middle ear' to protect the delicate machinery of the inner ear from being damaged. The reflex is mostly used against deeper, low-frequency sounds, such as the noise from a massive object colliding with the floor. Some experts suggest the dull thud people hear when watching the Gif is the sound of this reflex closing up part of our ear as we anticipate a loud noise. Others claim the illusion is not a physical reflex, but the result of our brain tightly linking different sensory responses. Because we closely associate the 'sight' of a big collision with the sound of a loud thud, our brains generate the noise for us, an 'auditory illusion'. Advertisement

Dr Lisa DeBruine, a psychologist at the University of Glasgow, posted the animation, asking: 'Does anyone in visual perception know why you can hear this gif?'

She added a poll asking what people experienced when watching the Gif, with 75 per cent - around 15,000 people - claiming they heard 'a thudding sound'.

Fourteen per cent of respondents, just under 3,000 in total, said they heard no sound, while under a thousand of the 20,000 polled said they heard 'something else'.

The remainder of respondents, around 1,400, chose not to reveal whether they had heard anything.

In the responses to the strange post, Dr DeBruine suggested the effect is caused by the ear's 'acoustic reflex'.

Twitter user Mr Punkin wrote: 'I think you can [hear] it because the visual expresses an implied wave, which your hearing system anticipates and prepares for so the potential sound doesn't deafening you. The ear basically squints like an eye.'

Dr DeBruine tweeted in response: 'That's my perceptual experience, too. I can 'squint' my ears voluntarily and it's a similar feeling.'

The acoustic reflex is an involuntary muscle contraction in the ear when we speak or hear loud noises.

Muscles pull tightly within the 'middle ear' to protect the delicate machinery of the inner ear from being damaged.

The reflex is mostly used against deeper, low-frequency sounds, such as the noise from a massive object colliding with the floor.

A poll asking what people experienced when watching the Gif found 75 per cent - around 15,000 respondents - heard 'a thudding sound'

In the responses to the strange post, Dr DeBruine suggested the effect is caused by the ear's 'acoustic reflex', but illusion researchers have claimed the sound is caused by 'expectation'

Dr DeBruine suggests that the dull thud people hear when watching the Gif is the sound of this reflex closing up part of our ear as we anticipate a loud noise.

Other experts suggest the Gif, created by Twitter user @IAmHappyToast, generates an illusion in which our brains expect a loud sound to accompany the sight of a big collision.

Dr Gustav Khun, a psychologist and human perception expert at Goldsmiths University in London, told MailOnline: 'Perception is not an exact science and in most cases our brain makes an educated guess.

The pylon Gif is not the first animation to trick viewers into 'hearing' a sound that isn't there. The animation above has a similar effect in that our brains think that a loud noise will follow the heavy impacts seen as each elephant hits the ground

'We use past experience and expectations to estimate what the world is truly like, base on the information our senses provide.

'This illusion works, because you have learnt that when larger objects fall to the ground, they result in a thumping sound.

'Some viewers will actually hear the sound, simply because that it what they expect will happen.

It is expectation that is causing some people to hear the thuds, according to Professor Fiona Macpherson, an expert at the University of Glasgow (stock image)

Professor Fiona Macpherson, an expert at the University of Glasgow's Illusion Index, told MailOnline: 'It is expectation that is causing some people to hear the thuds.

'In the GIF of the jumping pylon, there is a cross-modal expectation (that is, involving more than one sense, such as vision and hearing) effect taking place.

'What people see is affecting what they seem to hear.'
Algorithms will be as important as ammunition in the future of warfare, according to a new report.

The US armed services invested $7.4 billion (5.5bn) in AI, big data and cloud computing last year which is set to change modern warfare, the report revealed.

Military chiefs have warned the US 'can either lead the coming revolution, or fall victim to it'.

The report comes as the Pentagon focuses on improving its algorithms amid growing concern powerful Chinese and Russian AI could be set on world domination.

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The US armed services invested $7.4 billion ($5.5bn) in AI, big data and cloud computing last year which is set to change modern warfare, the report revealed. Pictured is someone walking past a poster of Martin's F-35 stealth multirole fighter

CHINESE AND RUSSIAN CYBER THREATS A report from the Centre for a New American Security found China intends to become the 'premier global AI innovation centre' by 2030. Kari Bingen, Secretary of Defence for Intelligence (SDI) warned Chinese and Russian artificial intelligence is speeding ahead of other nations. 'It's a no-brainer, we have to be investing', said Mr Bingen in response to the report. There are currently 180,000 objects hurtling around space and not enough airmen and analysts to keep an eye on them, he told the Express. Last week Nato warned that the world is under a 'considerably' higher threat of war than four years ago, naming artificial intelligence, China's growing military strength and a resurgent Russia as some of the risk factors. Advertisement

According to a data science and analytics firm, Govini, the armed services are changing how they train and fight.

The advancements in technology are so significant they are changing warfare just like the rifle did generations ago, writes Washington Post.

Companies with large presences in Washington such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Leidos are leading the work.

'Rapid advances in AI and the vastly improved Autonomous Systems are pointing towards new and more novel warfighting applications involving human-machine collaboration and combat teaming', wrote former secretary of defence, Robert Work in the introduction to the report.

Virtual reality is being used to simulate battle conditions and complex computer systems could mimic biological systems.

In the future this could be used to create AI-human fighting machines.

'AI applications will be the primary drivers of an emerging military-technical revolution', wrote Dr Work.

'The US can either lead the coming revolution, or fall victim to it'.

A separate report from the Centre for a New American Security found China intends to become the 'premier global AI innovation centre' by 2030.

Kari Bingen, Secretary of Defence for Intelligence (SDI) warned Chinese and Russian artificial intelligence is speeding ahead of other nations.

'It's a no-brainer, we have to be investing', said Mr Bingen in response to the report.

There are currently 180,000 objects hurtling around space and not enough airmen and analysts to keep an eye on them, he told the Express.

Resurgence of Putin: Last week Nato warned that the world is under a 'considerably' higher threat of war than four years ago, naming artificial intelligence, China's growing military strength and a resurgent Russia as some of the risk factors

UK MUST BEEF UP CYBER DEFENCES Last month former CIA director General David Petraeus warned Britain must beef up its cyber defences to stop extremists acquiring virtual weapons of mass destruction. The ex-intelligence chief, one of the most senior post-9/11 US military commanders, said one day soon there would be a stake through the heart of Islamic States leader. But he warned the West could not just play whack a mole when it came to defeating the group online, as he slapped down web giants for not doing enough to stop terror. He urged the UK to step up its cyber capabilities, as well as increase its Special Forces troops and maintain its ability to send a division to war. Gen Petreaus said in a major speech in London: We will defeat the (IS) army. At some point we will put through a stake through the heart of Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State. We are not going to be able to put a stake through the heart of the virtual caliphate, this is ideology that is being propagated on the internet. Advertisement

The Pentagon is also working towards using drones to probe into enemy territory and cargo helicopters that could fly autonomously.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is one example.

It has eight million lines of code and officials consider it part flying computer and part fighter jet.

American company Lockheed Martin is manufacturing the multimillion-pound supersonic aircraft, which the UK has pledged to buy 138 of over the coming decades.

The cutting-edge F-35B warplanes will undertake missions from both Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers and bases such as RAF Marham, with nine set to arrive in Britain next year.

Andrew Linstead, director of strategic engagement at Lockheed Martin UK, said a National Audit Office report published earlier this year showed Britain had spent 3.9 billion ($5.2bn) on the F-35s since the start of the programme.

Last week Nato warned that the world is under a 'considerably' higher threat of war than four years ago, naming artificial intelligence, China's growing military strength and a resurgent Russia as some of the risk factors.

The report, completed by NATO once every four years, identifies 20 global trends that are likely to affect the alliance through 2035.

Easy access to technology and the global nature of cyberspace would make it easier for terrorist networks to expand, challenging the current near-monopoly that state actors have on high-tech weapons, the report said.

The report said defence spending had begun increasing after Russia's annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014, and projections called for further increases through 2045.
It promised to be a futuristic solution to securing your phone but Apple's Face ID is causing problems for some of its users.

Since the release of the latest version of iOS, many iPhone X customers have been unable to activate the facial recognition feature.

Affected handsets display the message 'Unable to activate Face ID on this phone', but a simple trick could help to correct the error.

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It promised to be a futuristic solution to securing your phone but Apple's Face ID is causing problems for some of its users. Affected handsets display the message 'Unable to activate Face ID on this phone', but a simple trick could help to correct the error

HOW TO FIX IT To perform a hard reset, turn off the iPhone X by holding down the side button along with either volume button. Drag the slide to power off slider to shut down the phone, and wait for the screen to go black. Hold down the side button to boot the phone up again. This should resolve the issue, but if Face ID is still not working, you will need to contact Apple Support. Advertisement

The problem emerged with iOS 11.2, itself created to fix another bug in the Apple operating system that was causing some phones to constantly crash.

For some users a 'soft' reset, turning the handset off and then on again, may resolve the issue.

However, there are reports on social media of some frustrated Apple fans who have been unsuccessful with this workaround.

Twitter user Todd Nichols said: 'Seriously @Apple !!! Face ID bug is a huge #FAIL for such an expensive phone. Grrrrr! #alreadyrebootedthephone3times.'

Anyone who is unable to resolve the glitch with a soft reset should try a 'hard' reset instead.

To perform a hard reset, turn off the iPhone X by holding down the side button along with either volume button.

Drag the slide to power off slider to shut down the phone, and wait for the screen to go black.

Hold down the side button to boot the phone up again.

This should resolve the issued, but if Face ID is still not working, you will need to contact Apple Support.

This is not the first time that Face ID has come under fire.

Since the release of the latest version of iOS, some iPhone X customers have been unable to activate the facial recognition feature (pictured)

For some users a simple 'soft' reset, turning the handset off and then on again, may resolve the issue, although a 'hard' reset may be required

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak expressed concerns about whether the Face ID feature would work just days before the smartphone's release.

Since that time, cyber-security researchers claimed in November that they fooled the face recognition technology with a mask that costs just 114 ($150) to make.

The findings suggest that face recognition is not yet mature enough to guarantee security for computers and smartphones, according to experts.

WHAT'S NEW IN IOS 11.2 iOS 11.2 introduces Apple Pay Cash to send, request, and receive money from friends and family with Apple Pay, using messages or by asking Siri. This feature is currently only available to users in the US. MailOnline has contacted Apple for more information on when it might launch globally. The update also includes a number of bug fixes and improvements, including: Adds support for faster wireless charging on iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X with compatible third-party accessories

Introduces three new Live wallpapers for iPhone X

Improves video camera stabilization

Adds support in Podcasts to automatically advance to the next episode from the same show

Adds support in HealthKit for downhill snow sports distance as a data type

Fixes an issue that could cause Mail to appear to be checking for new messages even when a download is complete

Fixes an issue that could cause cleared Mail notifications from Exchange accounts to reappear

Improves stability in Calendar

Resolves an issue where Settings could open to a blank screen

Fixes an issue that could prevent swiping to Today View or Camera from the Lock Screen

Addresses an issue that could prevent Music controls from displaying on the Lock Screen

Fixes an issue that could cause app icons to be arranged incorrectly on the Home Screen

Addresses an issue that could prevent users from deleting recent photos when iCloud storage is exceeded

Addresses an issue where Find My iPhone sometimes wouldnt display a map

Fixes an issue in Messages where the keyboard could overlap the most recent message

Fixes an issue in Calculator where typing numbers rapidly could lead to incorrect results

Addressed an issue where the keyboard could respond slowly

Adds support for real-time text phone calls for the deaf and hard of hearing

Improves VoiceOver stability in Messages, Settings, App Store, and Music

Resolves an issue that prevented VoiceOver from announcing incoming Notifications Advertisement

The mask was made just one week after the iPhone X officially went on sale, by researchers from Ha Noi-based Bkav.

The researchers set up the Face ID feature as normal with a human face, before creating a mask of that face using a 3D printer, with a nose created by an artist from silicone.

The eyes were represented with 2D images, while the 'skin was also hand-made to trick Apple's AI', according to the team.

This is not the first time that Face ID has come under fire. Cyber-security researchers claimed in November that they fooled the face recognition technology with a mask that costs just 114 ($150) to make

WHEN FACE ID FAILS According to Apple, users must enter your passcode for additional security validation when: The device has just been turned on or restarted.

The device hasn't been unlocked for more than 48 hours.

The passcode hasn't been used to unlock the device in the last six and a half days and Face ID hasn't unlocked the device in the last 4 hours.

The device has received a remote lock command.

After five unsuccessful attempts to match a face.

After initiating power off/Emergency SOS by pressing and holding either volume button and the side button simultaneously for 2 seconds. Advertisement

In a video posted to YouTube within days of the finding, Sana Sherwani from New York showed how FaceID registered both her face and that of her son Ammar, giving the youngster instant access to his mother's phone.

Face ID uses a TrueDepth front-facing camera on the iPhone X, which has multiple components.

A Dot Projector projects more than 30,000 invisible dots onto your face to map its structure.

The dot map is then read by an infrared camera and the structure of your face is relayed to the A11 Bionic chip in the iPhone X, where it is turned into a mathematical model.

The A11 chip then compares your facial structure to the facial scan stored in the iPhone X during the setup process.

Face ID uses infrared to scan your face, so it works in low lighting conditions and in the dark.

In a video posted to YouTube within days of the finding, Sana Sherwani from New York showed how FaceID registered both her face and that of her son Ammar, giving the youngster instant access to his mother's phone

It will only unlock your device when you look in the direction of the iPhone X with your eyes open.

Face ID captures both a 3D and 2D image of your face using infrared light while you're looking straight at the camera.

Five unsuccessful attempts at Face ID will force you to enter a passcode - which you'll need anyway just to set up facial recognition.

That requires you to come up with a secure string of digits - or, for extra security, a string of letters and numbers - to protect your privacy.

Face ID also adapts to changes in your appearance over time, so it will continue to recognise you as you grow a beard or grow your hair longer.
Scientists were given the VIP treatment at a star-studded awards show described as the 'Oscars of Science.'

Last night's Breakthrough Prizes saw researchers awarded a total of 16.3 million ($22 million) for their contributions to science this year.

Among the winners were was British researcher Professor Kim Nasmyth from the University of Oxford who was awarded for his work into the mechanism behind the separation of duplicated chromosomes,

British-born Professors James McKernan and Christopher Hacon also took a share o the prize money for their contributions to algebraic geometry.

Scroll down for a full list of winners

Among the winners were three British researchers - Professor Kim Nasmyth from the University of Oxford who was awarded for his work into the mechanism behind the separation of duplicated chromosomes, and Professors James McKernan (pictured left) and Christopher Hacon (pictured right) for their contributions to birational algebraic geometry

BREAKTHROUGH PRIZES The Breakthrough Prizes recognize the contributions of the world's top scientists. The Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin, Pony Ma, Yuri and Julia Milner, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Anne Wojcicki. Each prize is 2.23 million ($3 million) and awarded in the fields of Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics. In addition, up to three New Horizons in Physics and up to three New Horizons in Mathematics Prizes are given out to early-career researchers each year. Selection Committees composed of previous Breakthrough Prize laureates choose the winners. Advertisement

The Breakthrough Prizes were awarded at a gala ceremony in Silicon Valley, hosted by Morgan Freeman last night.

The event was sponsored by many of the biggest names in science and technology - Sergey Brin, Yuri and Julia Milner, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Anne Wojcicki, and Pony Ma.

Seven 2.23 million ($3 million) prizes were awarded, as well as three 74,000 ($100,000) awards to early-career physicists, and three 222,000 ($300,000) to four early-career mathematicians.

Mark Zuckerberg, who co-founded the awards, said: 'The Breakthrough Prize was created to celebrate the achievements of scientists, physicists, and mathematicians, whose genius help us understand our world, and whose advances shape our future.

'The world needs their inspiration, and their reminder that even though it doesn't always feel that way, we are making steady progress toward building a better future for everyone.

The Breakthrough Prizes were awarded at a gala ceremony in Silicon Valley, hosted by Morgan Freeman last night

Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Laureates Kazutoshi Mori and Peter Walter accepted their awards onstage

'Priscilla and I want to congratulate all of tonight's laureates and give our deepest thanks for all that they do.'

More than 11,000 entries from 178 countries were received in the 2017 instalment of the global competition, which kicked off on September 1, 2017.

THE THREE BRITISH WINNERS Three British winners took to the stage to accept awards last night: 1) Professor Kim Nasmyth, Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford Professor Nasmyth was awarded one of the Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences for explaining the mechanism that controls the separation of duplicated chromosomes during cell division and prevents genetic diseases such as cancer. 2) Professor James McKernan, Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, San Diego (born in London) 3) Professor Christopher Hacon, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Utah (born in Manchester) Together, Professor McKernan and Professor Hacon won the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics for their contributions to birational algebraic geometry. As Kerry Dolan describes it in Forbes: 'While it's almost impossible to visualize beyond even 3 dimensions, Hacon and McKernan use algebra to establish the rules for projecting objects from 1000+ dimensions onto lower-dimensional surfaces.' Advertisement

Among the winners was Professor Kim Nasmyth from the University of Oxford, for his work into the mechanism behind the separation of duplicated chromosomes. He is pictured with actress Mila Kunis and actor Ashton Kutcher

The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was shared among the entire 27-member WMAP experimental team, including: Charles L. Bennett, Gary Hinshaw, Norman Jarosik, Lyman Page, Jr, David N. Spergel

2017 BREAKTHROUGH PRIZE WINNERS Prize Winner(s) Prize Money 2018 Breakthrough Prize In Life Sciences Joanne Chory

Don W. Cleveland

Kazutoshi Mori

Kim Nasmyth

Peter Walter 2.23 million ($3 million) each 2018 Breakthrough Prize In Fundamental Physics Shared among the entire 27-member WMAP experimental team, including:Charles L. Bennett, Gary Hinshaw, Norman Jarosik, Lyman Page, Jr, David N. Spergel 2.23 million ($3 million) shared 2018 Breakthrough Prize In Mathematics Shared between:Christopher Hacon and James McKernan 2.23 million ($3 million) shared 2018 New Horizons In Physics Prize Christopher Hirata

Andrea Young

Douglas Stanford 74,000 ($100,000) each 2018 New Horizons In Mathematics Prize Aaron Naber

Maryna Viazovska

Zhiwei Yun

Wei Zhang 222,000 ($300,000) each 2017 Breakthrough Junior Challenge Hillary Diane Andales 300,000 ($400,000) in educational prizes

Tech investor Yuri Milner said: 'It is always the right time to celebrate great scientists. All of our futures depend on them.'

Five of the seven 2.23 million ($3 million) prizes were awarded to scientists for contributions to research into living systems and human life.

This included Dr Don Cleveland from the University of California, San Diego, for his work into the molecular pathogenesis of a type of inherited motor neuron disease, and Dr Kim Nasmyth from the University of Oxford for his work into the separation of duplicated chromosomes.

Dr Joanne Chory was awarded for discovering the molecular mechanisms by which plants extract information from light and shade. She is pictured centre next to Kevin Systrom and Kara McCullough

Several celebrities were in attendance, including ResearchGate CEO Ijad Madisch (pictured left) and Arianna Huffington (pictured right)

Twenty-seven scientists shared the next 2.23 million ($3 million) prize in fundamental physics for their creation of detailed maps of the early universe.

And finally, two British scientists, Professor James McKernan and Professor Christopher Hacon shared the last 2.23 million ($3 million) in mathematics, for contributions to birational algebraic geometry.

One of the most highly-anticipated awards was the 2017 Breakthrough Junior Challenge, which asked applicants to submit a video to inspire creative thinking about fundamental science concepts. The prize was awarded to Hillary Diane Andales, age 18, from the Philippines

Several high profile names in the technology world were in attendance, including investor Yuri Milner (pictured left) and Google co-founder Sergey Brin (pictured right)

One of the most highly-anticipated awards was the 2017 Breakthrough Junior Challenge, which asked applicants to submit a video to inspire creative thinking about fundamental science concepts.

The prize was awarded to Hillary Diane Andales, age 18, from the Philippines.

Ms Andales' submission  which saw her win 300,000 ($400,000) in educational prizes - focused on reference frames in general relativity.
From ET to Spock, we've always toyed with the idea of extra-terrestrial life - but how would humans react if it actually turned out to be true?

Psychologists believe we would be positive about finding out we were not alone, according to a study that looked at people's responses to five key 'alien' announcements since 1967 - and they appeared to be largely positive.

This is despite warnings from scientists such as Stephen Hawking who say we should 'be wary' about answering alien signals.

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Research released last week found there are dozens of likely worlds - including Pluto (pictured) and its moons - that could harbour alien life. Researchers at Arizona State University are trying to anticipate how humans would react if a discovery such as this came back positive

WILL WE FIND ALIEN LIFE? Nasa scientists have claimed alien life could be found within the next few decades. Experts say the search is heavily guided by characteristics of our own planet, helping scientists to weed out inhospitable worlds from those that may have promise for life, such as the icy moons Enceladus and Europa. Nasa scientists are looking for environments that contain both oxygen and methane. When these two gases are found in the same atmosphere, 'you've got something special,' the space agency says. 'There are ways to build up oxygen and methane in a planetary atmosphere, but the only way you could have both in the same atmosphere at the same time is if you produce them both super rapidly,' said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Advertisement

Michael Varnum, a psychologist at Arizona State University is trying to anticipate how humans would react if a discovery like this came back positive.

'One of the initial questions [of the initiative] that we're curious about is how might we respond if we discover evidence of extraterrestrial life', he told Washington Post.

Published online on a preprint server, the paper looks at the psychological reactions to extraterrestrial life in a 'systematic, careful way'.

In the first experiment Dr Varnum and his colleagues looked at five key events; the discovery of pulsars in 1967; the detection of the 'Wow!' radio signal in 1977; the announcement of fossilised microbes on a Martian meteorite in 1996; the behaviour of Tabby's Star in 2005 and the discovery of exoplanets within the Goldilocks zone in 2015.

In astronomy and astrobiology, the habitable zone is the range of orbits around a star in which a planet can support liquid water.

Since the concept was first presented in 1953, many stars have been shown to have a Goldilocks area, and some of them have one or several planets in this zone, like 'Kepler-186f', discovered in 2014.

Psychologists looked at fifteen articles using a program that scans for positive or negative words.

British astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the first person to discover a pulsar in 1967 when she spotted a radio pulsar (artist's impression) which was thought could be alien life

'The reaction seemed to be much more positive than negative,' found Dr Varnum.

Researchers also got 500 people to describe how they would feel if aliens were discovered and how they thought people more generally would react.

Participants said they themselves would feel positive but felt most people would not be so excited about the discovery.

KEY DISCOVERIES IN HUMANITY'S SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE Discovery of pulsars British astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell was the first person to discover a pulsar in 1967 when she spotted a radio pulsar. Since then other types of pulsars that emit X-rays and gamma rays have also been spotted. Pulsars are essentially rotating, highly magnetised neutron stars but when they were first discovered it was believed they could have come from aliens. 'Wow!' radio signal In 1977, an astronomer looking for alien life in the night sky above Ohio spotted a radio signal so powerful that he excitedly wrote 'Wow!' next to his data. In 1977, an astronomer looking for alien life in the night sky above Ohio spotted a radio signal so powerful that he excitedly wrote 'Wow!' next to his data The 72-second blast, spotted by Dr Jerry Ehman through a radio telescope, came from Sagittarius but matched no known celestial object. Conspiracy theorists have since claimed that the 'Wow! signal', which was 30 times stronger than background radiation, was a message from intelligent extraterrestrials. Fossilised Martian microbes In 1996 Nasa and the White House made the explosive announcement that the rock contained traces of Martian bugs. The meteorite, catalogued as Allen Hills (ALH) 84001, crashed onto the frozen wastes of Antarctica 13,000 years ago and was recovered in 1984. Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike. Photographs were released showing elongated segmented objects that appeared strikingly lifelike (pictured) However, the excitement did not last long. Other scientists questioned whether the meteorite samples were contaminated. They also argued that heat generated when the rock was blasted into space may have created mineral structures that could be mistaken for microfossils. Behaviour of Tabby's Star in 2005 The star, otherwise known as KIC 8462852, is located 1,400 light years away and has baffled astronomers since being discovered in 2015. It dims at a much faster rate than other stars, which some experts have suggested is a sign of aliens harnessing the energy of a star. The star, otherwise known as KIC 8462852, is located 1,400 light years away and has baffled astonomers since being discovered in 2015 (artist's impression) Recent studies have 'eliminated the possibility of an alien megastructure', and instead, suggests that a ring of dust could be causing the strange signals. Exoplanets in the Goldilocks zone in 2017 In February 2017 astronomers announced they had spotted a star system with planets that could support life just 39 light years away. Seven Earth-like planets were discovered orbiting nearby dwarf star 'Trappist-1', and all of them could have water at their surface, one of the key components of life. Three of the planets have such good conditions, that scientists say life may have already evolved on them. Researchers claim that they will know whether or not there is life on any of the planets within a decade, and said: 'This is just the beginning.' Advertisement

This could be because 'most Americans tend to think, on any desirable trait or ability, that they're better than the average person,' Dr Varnum said.

In the third part of the experiment researchers presented a 1996 article reporting bacteria on a Martian meteorite.

The consensus is now that they were just mineral deposits but those participating in the experiment were left to believe they were forms of life.

They still described their reactions positively, leading Gordon Pennycook, a Yale University psychologist who was not involved in the experiment to say he was 'pretty confident' humans would be pleased if aliens were discovered.

Dr Varnum warned these results were based on American publications and it is possible the rest of the world would respond differently.

Physicist Stephen Hawking has previously warned we we should 'be wary' about answering alien signals, and suggests an advanced civilization could attempt to colonise Earth.

Hawking said if we were to really meet an advanced civilisation, it could be similar to when the Native Americans first encountered Christopher Columbus  and that didn't turn out so well.

SHOULD WE BE WARY? If there are any intelligent alien life forms out there, Stephen Hawking thinks we're playing a dangerous game by trying to contact them. The physicist believes if aliens discovered Earth, they are likely to want to conquer and colonise our planet. 'If aliens visit us, the outcome could be much like when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans,' he said in an interview. But co-founder and former director of the Seti Institute, Jill Tarter, doesn't think this will be the case. She argues any aliens who have managed to travel across the universe will be sophisticated enough to be friendly and peaceful. 'The idea of a civilisation which has managed to survive far longer than we have...and the fact that that technology remains an aggressive one, to me, doesn't make sense,' she said. Advertisement

Seven Earth-like planets were discovered orbiting nearby dwarf star 'Trappist-1', and all of them could have water at their surface, one of the key components of life (artist's impression)

Last month Nasa scientists claimed alien life could be found within the next few decades.

Experts say the search is heavily guided by characteristics of our own planet, helping scientists to weed out inhospitable worlds from those that may have promise for life, such as the icy moons Enceladus and Europa.

Nasa scientists are looking for environments that contain both oxygen and methane.

When these two gases are found in the same atmosphere, 'you've got something special,' the space agency says.

'There are ways to build up oxygen and methane in a planetary atmosphere, but the only way you could have both in the same atmosphere at the same time is if you produce them both super rapidly,' said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
Under fives should be completely banning from using technology without supervision, a damning new report has claimed.

The research, from technology and child psychology experts, suggests companies and schools should be doing more to help protect young people online.

Other recommendations include giving teenagers 'reputation management' lessons, to protect their chances of future employment.

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Experts have collaborated to publish a report which aims to support children on their journey through the digital world. The report found that while there is an awareness of extreme risks like grooming and child sexual abuse, other aspects tend to be overlooked (stock image)

The Digital Childhood report, led by the University of Southampton, urges the industry to lay out 'child-centred design standards' to improve the response to reports of risk or harm online.

It recommends proper guidance for children getting a smartphone for the first time and encourages schools and colleges to offer more education in areas of technology.

The report also says lessons for teenagers in school should include how to access trusted sexual, psychological and emotional health services.

It has been compiled by a total of 11 clinical experts from institutions which also include the University of Oxford and Imperial College London.

Dr Angharad Rudkin, child clinical psychologist at the University of Southampton, who led the report, said: 'Children and young people need to be supported on their journey through the digital world and should have access to the same privileges, information and rights that they enjoy in the analogue world.

'A child's age and development stage and the impact the digital environment can have on a child's well-being need to be taken into account when we are designing new digital platforms or considering changing policy.

REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS 3-5 years 6-9 years 10-12 years 13-15 years 16-18 years All use should be adult-guided.

Should be taught social norms of interacting with both known and unknown people Children receiving a smartphone for the first time should be taught how to use age-appropriate settings Parents, teachers and adults should acknowledge this as a time of growing autonomy. Education providers should offer career advice and training in automation, the internet of things, machine learning, digital content and design Screen guidelines should be developed. Child-centred design standards should anticipate independent child use Should be taught online skills and competencies. Education should include critical thinking about online experiences and information. Learn about reputation management, use of government and commercial services and financial matters This age-group are poorly served by current provision of online sites and services. Children of this age are particularly susceptible to social pressures. Alert young people as they approach 18 to the differences in the services that will come into place when they reach adulthood. Those entering secondary school should have a year 7 'smart phone literacy reboot'. Should be informed about how to access trusted sexual, psychological and emotional health services.

The research, from leaders in the field of technology and child psychology, suggests companies and schools should be doing more to help protect young people online. Other recommendations include giving teenagers 'reputation management' lessons (stock image)

'There are so many new challenges that parents are facing today to do with the digital world that they did not experience themselves when they were growing up.

'This can make parenting, what can be an already difficult experience, even harder.

'We all need to take more responsibility - government, parents and clinicians - to ensure children and young people are more informed and supported through their digital activity and we hope this report helps to improve things.'

The report was convened by Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE, who said it is essential the government works with tech giants to create a digital environment 'fit for childhood'.

The paper, launched today at the Children's Global Media Summit in Manchester, warns 10 to 12 year olds are 'poorly served by the current provision of online sites and services'.

It adds that young teenagers are 'particularly susceptible to social pressures' online.

Baroness Kidron said: 'If we allow a digital environment that doesn't take account of the needs of childhood, we reject the hard-won privileges and protections that a century and a half of careful consideration, research and lawmaking across the globe has afforded our children.

'If we leave things as they are, we denigrate the status of children, and childhood, in the plain sight of parents, media, civil society and governments.'

The report also outlined how, while there is an awareness of extreme risks like grooming and child sexual abuse, other aspects tend to be overlooked.

ARE PARENTS IGNORANT? More than half of teenagers say they have been victims of cyber-bullying, a study found in October. But parents are ignorant about their children's online behaviour and experiences  largely underestimating what they get up to while on the internet. The survey of 320 teenagers by the Sir John Cass's Foundation revealed that 53 per cent had had their picture posted online to embarrass them. However, only a fifth (22 per cent) of parents believed that their child had this experience online. Nearly one in five teens (17 per cent) reported being threatened online, whilst fewer than 10 per cent of parents believed this had happened to their child. The report, Beyond The School Gates, was put together by University of Buckingham psychologist Dr Masa Popovac and the Sir John Cass's Foundation and was based on detailed interviews with 320 teenagers aged 13-18 years and 130 of their parents. Advertisement

These include insomnia, obesity, low self-esteem and oversharing.

The experts gave the example of sleep deprivation caused by extended tech use affecting concentration, performance at school and general well being.

Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, said: 'If we're going to design an internet fit for children, then we must tailor it for their specific needs and capacities as these develop with age and experience.

'This report is a wonderful resource to help us do exactly that.'
Conspiracy theorists claim to have spotted a 'black triangle' UFO flying over Russia this week.

They claim it is the 'best evidence' for extra-terrestrials ever recorded.

A video shows the mysterious object flying through the night sky at a speed that conspiracy theorists claim is too slow to be an airplane.

But not everyone is convinced that the object is a UFO, and some suggest it is likely to simply be a drone.

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Conspiracy theorists claim to have spotted a 'black triangle' UFO flying over Russia this week. A video shows the mysterious object flying through the night sky at a speed that conspiracy theorists claim is too slow to be an airplane

BLACK TRIANGLE UFOS Black triangles are a class of UFO that are generally described as large, silent, black triangular objects hovering or slowly cruising at low altitudes over cities and highways. Sightings usually take place at night. These objects are often described as having pulsing coloured lights that appear at each corner of the triangle. Black triangle UFOs have been found to be visible to radar. Advertisement

The video, titled 'A TR-3B type UFO was filmed in Russia - Best evidence ever' was posted on YouTube by UFO Today, a Belgium-based channel that regularly posts videos of alleged sightings.

It shows an object flying through the night sky, with three lights in a triangular configuration flickering on and off, that UFO Today suggests is a TR-3B UFO.

In the video description, UFO Today wrote: 'The object is moving at a very slow pace, too slow to be a classic airplane.

'The speed at which this object was moving is physically impossible for any airplane build by mankind.'

The conspiracy theorists claim that the sighting may be a black triangle UFO  a class of UFO with a distinctive triangular layout.

The video was posted on YouTube by UFO Today, a Belgium-based channel that regularly posts videos of alleged sightings. It shows an object flying through the night sky, with three lights in a triangular configuration flickering on and off

UFO Today said: 'Reports generally describe this class of UFOs as large, silent, black triangular objects hovering or slowly cruising at low altitudes over cities and highways.

'Sightings usually take place at night. These objects are often described as having pulsing coloured lights that appear at each corner of the triangle.'

But while UFO Today believes that it is a UFO, not everyone is so convinced.

In the video description, UFO Today wrote: 'The object is moving at a very slow pace, too slow to be classic airplane. The speed at which this object was moving is physically impossible for any airplane build by mankind'

UFO Today said: 'Reports generally describe this class of UFOs as large, silent, black triangular objects hovering or slowly cruising at low altitudes over cities and highways'

Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, told MailOnline: 'At night it is hard to gauge the distance and size of an object or lights, which in turn makes it difficult to judge their speed.

'As this seems to be flying slower than an aircraft I'd say it is a drone with lights on it.

'Drones can hover and move slowly, with little noise.

'So I don't regard this video as evidence for ETs visiting us.'

Black triangles are a class of UFOs that are generally described as large, silent, black triangular objects hovering or slowly cruising at low altitudes over cities and highways (artist's impression pictured)
Peregrine falcons attack their prey on the wing as if they were air-to-air guided missiles, a study has found.

Lessons from the birds' control strategy could help create the 'ultimate drone killer', according to the US Air Force who funded the study.

The research obtained a birds-eye-view of falcons in flight using miniature video cameras attached to the birds' backs.

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Peregrine falcons attack their prey on the wing as if they were air-to-air guided missiles, a study has found. For the study, researchers obtained a birds-eye-view of falcons in flight using miniature video cameras attached to the birds' backs (pictured)

HOW FALCONS ATTACK THEIR PREY The scientists were surprised to find that the peregrine falcon's 'terminal attack' trajectory followed a mathematical guidance law used to steer homing missiles to their targets. Known as 'proportional navigation' (PN), the system does not make it necessary to know a target's speed or distance. Instead it relies on what happens to the missile's line-of-sight as it chases its target. If the line-of-sight does not change direction as the range closes, it means the missile is on a good interception course. When a course correction is needed, the rate of turn is proportional to the speed at which the line-of-sight angle changes. The scientists found that peregrine falcons followed this rule, while making adjustments for their flying speed - a lot slower than that of a guided missile. Advertisement

They also analysed flight patterns using GPS tracking devices carried by the birds.

Eight falcons were tested with dummy prey thrown into the air or towed behind a remotely controlled drone.

The video recordings also showed opportunistic attacks on live targets, including five passes at a duck that was eventually forced to land.

Lead investigator Professor Graham Taylor, from Oxford University's Department of Zoology, said: 'Falcons are classic aerial predators, synonymous with agility and speed.

'Our GPS tracks and on-board videos show how peregrine falcons intercept moving targets that don't want to be caught.

'Remarkably, it turns out that they do this in a similar way to most guided missiles. Our next step is to apply this research to designing a new kind of visually guided drone, able to remove rogue drones safely from the vicinity of airports, prisons and other no-fly zones.'

The scientists were surprised to find that the peregrine falcon's 'terminal attack' trajectory followed a mathematical guidance law used to steer homing missiles to their targets.

Known as 'proportional navigation' (PN), the system does not make it necessary to know a target's speed or distance.

Instead it relies on what happens to the missile's line-of-sight as it chases its target.

If the line-of-sight does not change direction as the range closes, it means the missile is on a good interception course.

The video recordings also showed opportunistic attacks on live targets, including five passes at a duck that was eventually forced to land (pictured)

Eight falcons were tested with dummy prey thrown into the air or towed behind a remotely controlled drone (drone and dummy pictured from view of attacking falcon)

When a course correction is needed, the rate of turn is proportional to the speed at which the line-of-sight angle changes.

The scientists found that peregrine falcons followed this rule, while making adjustments for their flying speed - a lot slower than that of a guided missile.

Peregrine falcon-style PN guidance tuned to low flight speeds could be used to steer visually-guided interceptor drones, said the researchers, writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They could help tackle the growing problem of drones flying drugs and mobile phones into prisons, or posing a danger to planes around airports, the scientists claimed.

The study was conducted in the Black Mountains of south-east Wales.

The scientists were surprised to find that the peregrine falcon's 'terminal attack' trajectory followed a mathematical guidance law used to steer homing missiles to their targets. Pictured is a camera view from the back of one of the drones

Known as 'proportional navigation' (PN), the system does not make it necessary to know a target's speed or distance. Instead it relies on what happens to the missile's line-of-sight as it chases its target (stock image)
Unsightly scaffolding sheds that dominate New York City sidewalks are set to get a sleek new design.

Just outside of a 16-story building in the Flatiron District, Urban Umbrella has installed an 'elegant' new system that combines high-strength recycled steel and translucent plastic panels to protect pedestrians from construction hazards.

The white sidewalk shed is designed to be modern and harmonious, allowing natural light and city views to remain visible while the structure is up.

Just outside of a 16-story building in the Flatiron District, Urban Umbrella has installed an elegant new system that combines high-strength recycled steel and translucent plastic panels to protect pedestrians from construction hazards

URBAN UMBRELLA Urban Umbrellas sidewalk sheds are designed to be modern and harmonious. The structures are equipped with LED lighting, translucent panels, and elegant styling. The Urban Umbrella is made from ultra-rigid high-strength steel allows, made from recycled steel. The panels are made from clear polymer resin, to allow in 90% of light. This aims to keep pedestrians protected from overheard hazards without blocking the city views. The LED lights will keep the structures illuminated day and night. Advertisement

The New York installation follows trials in Toronto, where the umbrellas have been installed at two sites so far, according to Yahoo Finance.

The firm won a design competition sponsored by former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg seven years ago  but, apart from a two-month stint in lower Manhattan, the system was not picked up in the US.

But now, Urban Umbrellas new sleek sidewalk sheds appear to be taking off.

The project is expected to come to two more buildings in New York, along with installations in Boston, Quebec, and Vancouver, according to Yahoo.

Urban Umbrellas sidewalk sheds  as the name implies  use an arching design that sweeps upward and out, like an umbrella.

According to the firm, the umbrellas are made with ultra-rigid high-strength steel alloys, allowing them to achieve a slim profile over a greater distance, while remaining sturdy. The elegant sidewalk sheds are also equipped with LED lights

With translucent panels constructed from clear polymer resin, the firm claims the installations allow 90 percent of light through.

This means sweeping skyward views, incredible amounts of sunlight and an airy feeling, according to the projects website.

Designed for the most extreme environments and applications.

The elegant sidewalk sheds are also equipped with LED lights, to keep the system illuminated even at night.

The white sidewalk shed is designed to be modern and harmonious, allowing natural light and city views to remain visible while the structure is up

According to the firm, the umbrellas are made with ultra-rigid high-strength steel alloys, allowing them to achieve a slim profile over a greater distance, while remaining sturdy.

Despite winning the NYC Design contest back in 2009, the project has remained too expensive to adopt in the city.

But, those involved with the system now say its cost effective, according to Yahoo.

The firm learned lessons from the Installation in Toronto, Andres Cortes, founder of Urban Umbrella, told Yahoo Finance.

Unsightly scaffolding sheds that dominate New York City sidewalks (stock image shown left) are set to get a sleek new design. Urban Umbrella has now installed a new system in the Flatiron District, after a two-month stint in lower Manhattan in 2011 (right)

The project is expected to come to two more buildings in New York, along with installations in Boston, Quebec, and Vancouver, according to Yahoo. It could replace ugly sidewalk sheds (as seen above) with a sleeker system

And, this past January, the company raised $1.5 million in seed funding.

As construction remains an ever-present fixture of New York City streets, the team behind the project said the new design could make the streets look far more pleasant.

There is a lot of opportunity to affect the quality of peoples lives in this project, Cortes explained in the past.

On the walk to work, on coffee breaks, New Yorkers make their way through these dark ugly structures.
Third place went to Bosnian Inga Cvijanovich with an image of a flooded orthodox church in Doboj.

Mark said of the storm shot, taken near his home: 'I was south of Moose Jaw and there was a little something there that kept me chasing and a roll cloud started to develop.

'As I watched, the roll cloud turned into an incredible shelf cloud so I tried to stay ahead of it and position myself along the Trans-Canada Highway and find an anchor or foreground so I raced to a row of granaries at Pense.

'Luckily the shelf cloud was intensifying and at its peak at Pense - major energy - so I parked to use my truck to block the wind and set up my tripod and camera and shot the picture.'

Of his winning picture, he added: 'It was an unusually freezing winter and this had drawn tourists from all over.

'There was ice on everything and parking was impossible, so I walked along the main walkway above the cliff and Niagara River.

'I was trying to find a different composition and at a certain point leaned over the rail and lined-up the Under the Falls Building with the cascading falls.

'The light was soft and added to the feel of the shot.'
He is best known for playing advertising executive Don Draper in the television drama series, Mad Men.

Jon Hamm, 46, looked very smart in a cream jacket, white shirt and black bow tie for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2017 at the Theatre Royal in London on Sunday night.

The award winning American actor - who was dressed head-to-toe in Ralph Lauren - wore his trademark clear glasses and leather black loafers for the event celebrating the capital's West-End stars.

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Dapper dude: Jon Hamm, 46, looked very smart in a Ralph Lauren Purple Label cream jacket, white shirt and black bow tie for the Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2017 at the Theatre Royal in London on Sunday night

Spiderman star, 34, Andrew Garfield also cut a handsome figure, with a traditional black suit, crisp white shirt and a silky black bow tie.

The American born actor wore his usual quiff style bouffant hairstyle and a little stubble on his chiseled features.

The Surrey raised star made his feature-film debut in the 2007 drama Lions for Lamb and has been enjoying a busy film and stage career ever since.

Stud in a suit: Andrew Garfield, 34, cut a handsome figure, with a traditional black suit, crisp white shirt and a silky black bow tie to the star-studded event in the British capital

Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2017 - The Winners Best Actor in partnership with Ambassador Theatre Group Bertie Carvel - Ink, Almeida Theatre and Duke of Yorks Theatre Andrew Garfield - Angels In America, National Theatre (Lyttleton) WINNER Andrew Scott - Hamlet, Almeida Theatre and Harold Pinter Theatre Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress in partnership with Christian Louboutin Laura Donnelly - The Ferryman, Royal Court and Gielgud Theatre Victoria Hamilton - Albion, Almeida Theatre Glenda Jackson - King Lear, Old Vic Theatre WINNER Milton Shulman Award for Best Director Dominic Cooke - Follies, National Theatre Robert Icke - Hamlet, Almeida Theatre and Harold Pinter Theatre Sam Mendes - The Ferryman, Royal Court and Gielgud Theatre WINNER Best Play In partnership with Hiscox, Official Arts Partner of the Evening Standard The Children - Lucy Kirkwood, Royal Court The Ferryman - Jez Butterworth, Royal Court and Gielgud Theatre WINNER Ink - James Graham, Almeida Theatre and Duke of Yorks Theatre Oslo - J T Rogers, National Theatre and Harold Pinter Theatre Best Design Jon Bausor - Bat Out Of Hell  The Musical, Coliseum Bunny - Christie Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle, Wyndhams Theatre/The Red Barn, National Theatre/ Ink, Almeida Theatre and Duke of Yorks Theatre WINNER Soutra Gilmour - Twelfth Night, National Theatre Best Musical Performance Janie Dee - Follies, National Theatre Robert Fairchild - An American In Paris, Dominion Theatre Amber Riley - Dreamgirls, Savoy Theatre WINNER Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright Al Smith - Harrogate, High Tide Festival and Royal Court Branden Jacobs-Jenkins - An Octoroon, Orange Tree Theatre WINNER Katherine Soper - Wish List, Royal Exchange Manchester and Royal Court Emerging Talent Award Sheila Atim Girl - From The North Country, Old Vic Theatre Tom Glynn-Carney - The Ferryman, Royal Court and Gielgud Theatre WINNER Luke Thallon - Albion, Almeida Theatre Evening Standard Radio 2 Audience Award for Best Musical An American in Paris - The Dominion Theatre Bat Out of Hell - The Coliseum WINNER Dreamgirls - The Savoy Theatre Follies - Olivier Theatre, National Theatre School of Rock - New London Theatre The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13  The Musical - Menier Chocolate Factory, Southwark She Loves Me - Menier Chocolate Factory, Southwark Advertisement

Other handsome actors on the red carpet included British star Dominic Cooper who chose a shiny navy blue suit with a matching tie and a contrasting white shirt.

The Mamma Mia! hunk gelled his raven hair into a spiky design with plenty of facial hair on his strong jaw.

Dominic has also enjoyed stage success, starring as John Wilmot, The Second Earl of Rochester in the Libertine.

British star: Dominic Cooper chose a shiny navy blue suit with a matching tie and a contrasting white shirt and his trademark spiky hair gelled up to perfection

Mr Darcy: Colin Firth and his wife Livia Firth looking gorgeous together at the West End bash, with his glamorous partner choosing a red satin outfit with blue accessories

Actor Colin Firth, 57, looked dapper as he sported a classic black tuxedo to the star-studded ceremony later with his stunning wife Livia Firth, 48.

The Italian beauty looked divine in a red satin dress with bold electric blue shoes and a matching blue satin bag.

The founder of Eco-Age stole the limelight off of her famous husband with her timeless beauty and effortless style.

Rising star: Freddie Fox, 28, looked his handsome self with his glamorous companion both dressed to impressed in black classic ball outfits
He made women across the country swoon as Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and later as Bridget Jones' dashing suitor.

But on Sunday all eyes were on Colin Firth's stunning wife Livia as they arrived at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards in London.

The 48-year-old founder of sustainability consultancy Eco Age dazzled in a high-neck red silk gown with frills on the sleeves and keyhole cut-outs which offered glimpses of her decolletage.

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Stunning: Colin Firth was outshone by his stunning wife Livia as they arrived at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards in the capital

The Italian beauty kept her locks scraped back in an elegant chignon, revealing chunky silver hoops.

Livia pulled her look together with a royal blue clutch and matching high-heeled sandals.

She accentuated her pout with a slick of crimson lipstick.

The award-winning actor, 57, looked his usual dapper self in a classic black tuxedo, bow tie and black square glasses.

Lady in red: The 48-year-old founder of sustainability consultancy Eco Age dazzled in a high-neck red silk gown with keyhole cut-outs, offering glimpses of her decolletage

The couple, who have been married for two decades, were in good spirits at the star-studded event, which celebrates London's West-end talent.

There, they joined the likes of Cate Blanchett, Keira Knightley and Anna Wintour, who co-hosts this year's awards.

The actor's appearance follows his announcement earlier this year that he has applied to the Italian embassy in London for dual citizenship - reportedly in reaction to Britain voting to leave the EU.

A source told the Daily Mail's Sebastian Shakespeare: Colin was horrified by Brexit and is worried about the consequences.'

It may come as no surprise to fans however, as his wife Livia, previously Giuggioli, was born in the capital city Rome.

While the couple live in Chiswick, West London with their two sons - Luca, 16, and Matteo, thirteen - they also have a holiday home in Umbria, where they spend plenty of time as a family.

Power couple: Colin and Livia, who have been married for 20 years, were recently pictured together at the mothers2mothers Winter Fundraiser

Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2017 - The Winners Best Actor in partnership with Ambassador Theatre Group Bertie Carvel - Ink, Almeida Theatre and Duke of Yorks Theatre Andrew Garfield - Angels In America, National Theatre (Lyttleton) WINNER Andrew Scott - Hamlet, Almeida Theatre and Harold Pinter Theatre Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress in partnership with Christian Louboutin Laura Donnelly - The Ferryman, Royal Court and Gielgud Theatre Victoria Hamilton - Albion, Almeida Theatre Glenda Jackson - King Lear, Old Vic Theatre WINNER Milton Shulman Award for Best Director Dominic Cooke - Follies, National Theatre Robert Icke - Hamlet, Almeida Theatre and Harold Pinter Theatre Sam Mendes - The Ferryman, Royal Court and Gielgud Theatre WINNER Best Play In partnership with Hiscox, Official Arts Partner of the Evening Standard The Children - Lucy Kirkwood, Royal Court The Ferryman - Jez Butterworth, Royal Court and Gielgud Theatre WINNER Ink - James Graham, Almeida Theatre and Duke of Yorks Theatre Oslo - J T Rogers, National Theatre and Harold Pinter Theatre Best Design Jon Bausor - Bat Out Of Hell  The Musical, Coliseum Bunny - Christie Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle, Wyndhams Theatre/The Red Barn, National Theatre/ Ink, Almeida Theatre and Duke of Yorks Theatre WINNER Soutra Gilmour - Twelfth Night, National Theatre Best Musical Performance Janie Dee - Follies, National Theatre Robert Fairchild - An American In Paris, Dominion Theatre Amber Riley - Dreamgirls, Savoy Theatre WINNER Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright Al Smith - Harrogate, High Tide Festival and Royal Court Branden Jacobs-Jenkins - An Octoroon, Orange Tree Theatre WINNER Katherine Soper - Wish List, Royal Exchange Manchester and Royal Court Emerging Talent Award Sheila Atim Girl - From The North Country, Old Vic Theatre Tom Glynn-Carney - The Ferryman, Royal Court and Gielgud Theatre WINNER Luke Thallon - Albion, Almeida Theatre Evening Standard Radio 2 Audience Award for Best Musical An American in Paris - The Dominion Theatre Bat Out of Hell - The Coliseum WINNER Dreamgirls - The Savoy Theatre Follies - Olivier Theatre, National Theatre School of Rock - New London Theatre The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13  The Musical - Menier Chocolate Factory, Southwark She Loves Me - Menier Chocolate Factory, Southwark Advertisement

Colin is also fluent in Italian, after learning the language in the early days of his relationship with Livia ahead of their wedding in 1997.

Firths spokesman confirmed to Shakespeare: Colin applied for dual citizenship (British and Italian) in order to have the same passports as his wife and children.

'His wife is also applying for British-Italian dual citizenship.'

The actor has built himself a reputation as a true Englishman, thanks to his roles in Pride and Prejudice, The King's Speech, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Importance of Being Earnest.

He was also awarded a CBE for his contributions to drama in 2011, and was made a Freeman of the City of London the following year.
Blue Planet II may be beautiful, brilliant, television but lets face it none of us are ever going snorkelling again - or even paddling after the Shallows episode.

Admittedly David Attenborough may have had a more ecological message in mind but this was the obvious moral so far.

This week it transpired even rockpooling wasnt safe.

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Another chase scene: David Attenborough presented a chase scene as incredible as the iguana vs. the racer snakes

The speed of the crabs and their agility (leaping from rock to rock like mini, free-running, Crustacean Tom Cruises) was bad enough. The creatures they were trying to escape from were the stuff of nightmares: moray eels sliding out of the water, gliding across the rock like anacondas, and even an octopus squelching on to the land like a monster from Doctor Who.

Run for your lives ! When did that start happening?!

It was hard to envisage anyone (even Attenborough himself) could ever match the nail-biting, jaw-dropping, spectacle of the famous chase in his last series: the newly hatched marine iguana being pursued by those racer snakes, descending on it like a seemingly endless, black, swarm.

Revealed: The battle of wits between the strangely named Sally Lightfoot Crab and a moray eel was close though. And not that different either...

The battle of wits between the strangely named Sally Lightfoot Crab and a moray eel was close though. And not that different either...

Like the baby marine iguana the crab could move far faster than I for one ever imagined: sprinting over the land, speeding across the surface of the water using what looked suspiciously like the butterfly stroke, and leaping from rock to rock like an action hero.

Fast moving: Like the baby marine iguana the crab could move far faster than I for one ever imagined: sprinting over the land, speeding across the surface of the water using what looked suspiciously like the butterfly stroke, and leaping from rock to rock like an action hero

Fun fact: Every day the crabs massed on the shores of Brazil waiting for the tide to go so that they could race across the shallow sea

These crabs seem afraid of the water, David Attenborough mused. And for good reason.

As usual, he wasnt wrong. The role of the villainous racer snake was played by the evil moray eel - the only creature with teeth powerful enough to grip and crush its shell.

Every day the crabs massed on the shores of Brazil waiting for the tide to go so that they could race across the shallow sea to reach their favourite feeding ground and graze on the luscious seaweed otherwise covered by water.

The aim? Crabs are racing to reach their favourite feeding ground and graze on the luscious seaweed otherwise covered by water

Attenborough narrated the chase in his trademark staccato sentences.

To feed the crab must keep going, he uttered as one male entered the fray. But nowhere is safe.

Even when the cab perched on a rock en route to his buffet the eel catapulted itself out of the sea with one flick of its huge dragon-like tail to try and snatch it.

When the crab reached the rock pool he seemed to have triumphed.

Lurking danger: The role of the villainous racer snake was played by the evil moray eel - the only creature with teeth powerful enough to grip and crush its shell

But its enemy has other ideas, stated Attenborough simply as  horrifically  the eel simply flopped out of water and slithered across the rocks in hot (or slippery) pursuit.

Even worse, an octopus then did the same: gliding across the rocks looking as alarming as the inside of a Dalek breaking out of its metal dustbin.

An octopus on land ?! When did that become possible, we cried?!

The crab makes a dash for it, Attenborough said and you could hardly blame it.

But the moray eel snapped its jaws and grabbed it too. But miraculously  like that plucky iguana  somehow the crab wriggled free.

Making a move: But its enemy has other ideas, stated Attenborough simply as  horrifically  the eel simply flopped out of water and slithered across the rocks in hot (or slippery) pursuit

Small victories: When the crab reached the rock pool he seemed to have triumphed

The bad news was the feeding time it had so bravely fought for would be over in two hours  smothered again by the returning tide.

The crab would have to run the gauntlet another day (every day): a race against the clock and the moray eels.

With animals like the eels and the octopus coming out of the sea it was hard to take anything for granted anymore.

Rather than their bigger, more exotic, rivals fish have been the real stars of the series throughout Blue Planet II.

Queen of the sea: With animals like the eels and the octopus coming out of the sea it was hard to take anything for granted anymore

Chase: With animals like the eels and the octopus coming out of the sea it was hard to take anything for granted anymore

Fish with little feet, fish devouring birds, fish using tools to open up clams... Not only was there far more to fish than wed realised they were bending the rules of evolution.

The humble Clingfish for example had its own in-built accessory: prizing limpets off the rocks with its mouth by twisting it off like a bottle top. The Clingfish then swallows it shell and all.

Part of you wondered whether all of this was really true  or whether Attenborough had started pranking us for his own amusement.

Not very likely of course but surely equally plausible as the idea of an octopus sliding cross-country or the fish that had abandoned the sea altogether.

Show time: Fish with little feet, fish devouring birds, fish using tools to open up clams... Not only was there far more to fish than wed realised they were bending the rules of evolution

The fish that was afraid of the sea and lived out of the water, well away from the waves, up a rock, sounded more like a character in a childrens story  like The Gruffalo or Moomintroll books.

The Pacific Leaping Blenny Fish was eight centimetres long and the most terrestrial fish on the planet, explained Attenborough not entirely convincingly. They were such poor swimmers, he claimed, they would be easy prey in the water and so nested at the top of tiny cliff, grazing (with no competition) off algae.

Pretty smart.

It just went to show that where Blue Planet II was concerned, basically we knew nothing and nothing was sacred anymore. Not even the phrase a fish out of water.
She's normally wearing a variety of lycra-tight athleisure outfits to fit in an early morning gym session before work.

But PR maven Roxy Jacenko ditched the sneakers for a day of high class dining at Sydney's exclusive five-star hotel, The Langham.

The 37-year-old wore a navy blue Gucci mini dress with silver statement buttons to the event, which was honouring Ortenzia Borre's new book What Women Need.

Beautiful in blue! Roxy Jacenko stuns in designer mini dress and platform wedges while attending a high tea at The Langham in Sydney

Roxy paired her darling ruffled dress with statement black wedges and gold jewellery, as well as a Mrs Darcy Lifestyle clutch purse.

Her golden locks were slicked back with a middle parting and longer than usual given the hair extensions she had added for Paris Hilton's perfume launch at Birkenhead Point a few days prior.

She stood next to Channel Nine presenter Erin Molan, who has recently announced her pregnancy, Eastern Suburbs Social reporter Jo Casamento and former model Ortenzia herself.

Ladies who lunch! She stood next to Channel Nine presenter Erin Molan, who has recently announced her pregnancy, Eastern Suburbs Social reporter Jo Casamento and former model Ortenzia herself

Colour contrasting! Ortenzia and Erin enjoy some down time at the high tea

She's the jack of all trades! Ortenzia Borre is a former June Dally Watkins mentor and certainly knows how to take a photo

It has been a busy week for Roxy, whose company Sweaty Betty PR hosted the Langham event on Friday.

On Thursday she took selfies with American heiress Paris Hilton at her Rose Rush perfume launch - choosing to wear a set of bejeweled high heels to match the notorious diamond-lover.

She also managed to put up the family's Christmas tree with daughter Pixie, six, and Hunter, three, who will be enjoying their father's first holiday season at home since he was released from jail earlier this year.

It's that time of the year! She also managed to put up the family's Christmas tree with daughter Pixie, six, and Hunter, three

Not a bad day for a lunch! The brood took some much-needed time off over the weekend and attended an Indian-themed lunch dressed in traditional outfits

The brood took some much-needed time off over the weekend and attended an Indian-themed lunch dressed in traditional outfits.

One of Roxy's followers even complimented their ability to get the ensembles 'spot on.'

'You look amazing! And p.s - as an Indian, that is definitely an Indian get-up. Well done!' They wrote enthusiastically.
She is a talented actress who has been nominated for five Oscars - but Amy Adams best role seems to be one as a doting mother.

The 43-year-old actress looked happy to be spending bonding time with her seven-year-old daughter Aviana while out in LA on Sunday.

Amy hid her figure beneath a loose-fitting jersey dress and a large cardigan as she made a low-key outing with the family.

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Doting mom: Amy Adams ooked to be happy to be spending bonding time with her seven-year-old daughter Aviana while out in LA on Sunday

The two girls were not alone for the day of bonding as they were also joined by Amy's husband and Aviana's father Darren Le Gallo, 43, for the occasion.

Amy looked fantastic in her grey maxi dress, which featured two slits just above the knee to show off her legs.

She teamed the chic dress with a beige cashmere duster jacket and matching leather clogs with fur lining the heel.

Happy together: The 43-year-old actress looked fantastic in a body-hugging grey maxi dress with two slits just above the knee

Showing her style: She teamed the chic dress with a beige cashmere duster jacket and matching leather clogs with fur lining the heel

The Arrival actress accessorized with clear shades and a brown designer bag draped over her shoulder.

Amy welcomed her first child in May 2010 but since motherhood she has gone on to star in some of her biggest roles.

They announced their pregnancy in December 2009 and decided to keep the sex unknown before chose the name when the baby arrived.

Decade of genius: Since welcoming her daughter Aviana (pictured with husband Darren Le Gallo, left, in March 2010) in May 2010, Amy has been nominated for three Oscars

Since welcoming Aviana, Amy has been nominated for three Academy Awards.

In 2011 and 2013, it was Best Supporting Actress for The Fighter and The Master, and in 2014, she went up for Best Actress for her part in American Hustle.

Last month, Adams celebrated the anniversary of the release of Disney's Enchanted.

This comes shortly after she confessed on ITV's Good Morning Britain that she will be returning to the role of Giselle when the highly anticipated sequel titled Disenchanted. The film begins shooting some time in 2018.

Gorgeous: The Arrival actress accessorized with clear shades and a brown designer bag draped over her shoulder

'They are working on it, it's titled as of now Disenchanted and is set 10 years after [the original] but I don't know all the details, but I look forward to it,' she said on the show.

A couple of weeks later, she spoke to E! News about where the movie is in development.

'I don't know when it's starting, but we definitely have had conversations,' she said.

Family affair: The two girls were not alone for the day of family bonding as they were also joined by Amy's husband and Aviana's father Darren Le Gallo, 43, for the occasion

'I trust that the team they're putting together is gonna put together something that makes it timely. I think that it's a good time in our world for Disenchanted. I think a little singing and dancing, a little laughing at ourselves is good.'

Although not much else is known about the Adam Shankman-directed film, there is a summary of what we can expect to see via IMDb.

'Ten years after her happily ever after, Giselle questions her happiness, inadvertently turning the lives of those in the real world and Andalasia upside down in the process.'
She was spotted buying a Christmas tree with her ex-husband Ben Affleck just the day before.

And Jennifer Garner looked cheery as she arrived to church with her three children in Pacific Palisades, California, on Sunday.

The 45-year-old actress slipped into a charcoal-gray dress as she walked with her little ones into the service.

Hallelujah! Jennifer Garner looked cheery as she arrived to church with her three children in Pacific Palisades, California, on Sunday

Jen teamed her dress with black slip-on shoes and cat-eye frame sunglasses for the outing.

She wore her dark tresses pulled back into a bun, while sporting a fresh face with little make-up.

Jennifer is still negotiating a financial settlement with Ben, after officially filing for divorce in April, according to TMZ.

Ben usually attends church avidly with his estranged wife and kids, but this week he was nowhere to be spotted.

Have mercy: The 45-year-old actress slipped into a charcoal-gray dress as she walked with her little ones into the service

Solo: Ben usually attends church avidly with his estranged wife and kids, but this week he was nowhere to be spotted

The amicable exes spent Thanksgiving together with their children Violet, 11, Seraphina, eight, and five-year-old Samuel.

Jennifer recently said she and Ben still get along great, adding: 'We get along really well and it's not an issue. We are friends; we can manage it.'

Ben spoke about the 'special connection' he and Jennifer have while stopping by The Today Show on Monday.

'You have to be on the same page. You have to cooperate,' the actor said. 'If you recognize that you both have the best interest of the kids at heart, its quite a special connection.

'Were the only two people in the world who care this much about these three kids.'

Family outing: The amicable exes spent Thanksgiving together with their children Violet, 11, Seraphina, eight, and five-year-old Samuel

Doting mom: Jennifer recently said she and Ben still get along great, adding: 'We get along really well and it's not an issue. We are friends; we can manage it'

Jennifer recently shared a scene of her self-destructive, unhinged character cutting Spanx off herself from The Tribes of Palos Verdes, which hit theaters Friday.

'Spanx finally getting what they deserve!' the Wakefield actress - who boasts 1.6M Facebook/Instagram followers - wrote Friday.

'This is Sandy Mason...This film raises some important issues affecting so many young adults and families.'

IFC Films' coming-of-age surf drama also features Cody Fern, Justin Kirk, Maika Monroe, Alicia Silverstone, Goran Visnjic, and Joely Fisher.
She welcomed her daughter Lea De Seine with Hollywood actor Bradley Cooper back in March.

But Irina Shayk had a rare day away from her little girl on Sunday as she embarked on a travel-themed photo shoot in Miami.

The supermodel, 31, showed off her incredible post-baby body in a chic wrap dress just eight months after giving birth, as she worked the camera at Miami International Airport - while Bradley, 42, took care of Lea over in LA.

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Back to work: Irina Shayk had a rare day away from her little girl Lea on Sunday as she embarked on a travel-themed photo shoot in a stunning wrap around dress in Miami

The brunette proved her famous model credentials in the dress - which cinched in at her impressively slim waist before skimming her long legs with its billowing skirt.

The dress plunged into a deep V neckline and followed a vintage wrap-around style, which was mirrored in the retro black and white polka dot print.

She added further height to her frame with white patent heeled boots, and added dark oversized sunglasses in a glamorous finishing touch.

Leading lady: She added further height to her frame with white patent heeled boots, and added dark oversized sunglasses in a glamorous finishing touch

Vintage vibes: Attempting to convey a jet-set lifestyle for the shoot, Irina changed into a number of other ensembles - including trendy high-waisted jeans and a yellow cardigan

Showing her wild side: She later slipped into a more retro look, involving striking leopard print flares and a long-line logo vest, printed with the face of a woman on the front

Sweeping her hair into a loose bun and adding minimal glowing make-up, the Russian beauty proved her striking natural beauty and radiant complexion to all, as she embarked on another stunning shoot.

Attempting to convey a jet-set lifestyle for the shoot, Irina changed into a number of other ensembles on set - including a trendy pair of high-waisted jeans and a vintage yellow cardigan.

She later slipped into a more retro look, involving striking leopard print flares and a long-line logo vest, printed with the face of a woman on the front.

Doting dad: While Irina was back to work however, Bradley embarked on his daddy duties and stepped out with little Lea in Los Angeles

Maintaining the cool vibe throughout, Irina also slung a yellow and black satchel around her waist like a bum bag and tied the look together with white sports trainers.

While Irina was back to work however, Bradley embarked on his daddy duties and stepped out with little Lea in Los Angeles.

The 42-year-old actor cut a casual figure in a light green bomber jacket and Phlidelphia Eagles sweatpants as he carried Lea to their car.

Impress: The American Sniper alum looked every inch the movie star even though he was bundled up

With retro shades and black high tops, the Oscar nominee enjoyed the sunny day out with his newborn daughter that he shares with the supermodel.

Bradley has also been busy in recent weeks, working on his film A Star Is Born with Lady Gaga - which will mark her big screen acting debut.

Bradley will play the alcoholic movie star who helps Gaga's character find fame and fortune.

The movie, which is a remake of the 1976 Barbra Streisand classic, is also the Oscar nominee's directorial debut, and is set for release in September 2018.

Casual:With retro shades and black high tops, the Oscar nominee enjoyed the sunny day out with his newborn daughter that he shares with supermodel Irina Shayk

Meanwhile Bradley himself can next be seen in Deeper, alongside Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot.

The film follows a deep-sea dive which turns into an unexpected psychological exploration for a former astronaut who signed up for the mission.

However, amid their hectic working schedules, the pair are still doting parents to Lea, who they welcomed in March.

The couple were first linked in May 2015 when they were spotted at Broadway's Finding Neverland, after meeting at the Met Gala.
She has been caught up in a bitter split with Love Island's Jonny Mitchell.

Yet Stephanie Pratt put the explosive drama behind her when she celebrated her new found single status at the lavish Boisdale of Canary Wharf in London on Sunday.

The 31-year-old Made In Chelsea star accentuated her fabulous hourglass figure in a sexy form-fitting fishtail gown for her glamorous night out.

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No drama here! Newly-single Stephanie Pratt sparkled in sequinned fishtail gown at lavish bar in London on Sunday as the MIC star continued to move on from bitter split with Jonny Mitchell

Stunning Stephanie was a vision as the sequinned embellishments of her slinky garment dazzled in the light at the glamorous venue.

Letting her hair down, the stunner wore her golden locks tumbling down her shoulders in soft corkscrew curls.

The feisty reality personality wore heavy eye make-up to bring out her youthful features, contrasting with her soft slick of nude lipstick.

Letting her hair down: The stunner wore her golden locks tumbling down her shoulders in soft corkscrew curls

Going for an edgy vibe, The Hills star dared to opt for clashing accessories as she toted a metallic shiny satchel handbag.

Stephanie was flying solo after her short-lived love affair with Jonny came to an end after just three months, with claims of cheating and abuse surfacing.

She had accused her ex-boyfriend of being unfaithful to her in a slew of furious tweets she shared on Monday.

The reality star claimed she was forced to call the police on Sunday evening after she was said to be 'terrified' during a row with Jonny.

Stunning: Stephanie was a vision as the sequinned embellishments of her slinky garment dazzled in the light at the glamorous venue

Jonny, however, told MailOnline he was left baffled by the claims. While he has not directly addressed the cheating allegations, he did appear to hit back at claims he has been unfaithful in a recent interview where he downplayed pictures of himself with female fans that had surfaced on social media and appeared to leave Stephanie speechless.

The Love Island hunk seemingly addressed those photos, claiming they are nothing new, as he spoke about the breakdown of the couple's romance during an interview on FUBAR Radio.

He commented: 'You do find that a lot of people are out to get you. People will try and sting you - the amount of times I've had people take a selfie with me and claim they're on a night out with me.'

Going for an edgy vibe: The Hills star dared to opt for clashing accessories as she toted a metallic shiny satchel handbag

The former flames have parted ways for good following just three months in each other's charming company.

The end of their relationship came shortly after sources close to the couple divulged to MailOnline that an engagement was imminent.

At the time, an insider said: 'Jonny and Steph have become really close since they met and are living their lives as one. Close friends have said that an engagement is on the cards sooner than everyone thought!

'They are inseparable and are taking their first steps as a new couple, nobody saw it coming but an engagement is expected very soon.

'Who would have thought that from their different show backgrounds that they would meet and end up potentially being married.

'Love is the key to their successful relationship and you can see in their body language that they are just so into each other.'

Posing up a storm! The Made In Chelsea beauty made a grand entrance to the lavish Canary Wharf bar which boasts of an eatery and bar area

The lovebirds initially hit it off when Jonny left Love Island's Hidden Hills villa in Majorca.

It was a whirlwind affair with the former flames jetting off to Croatia together within just weeks of meeting each other.

It was on their sun-soaked travels they first courted attention when they were pictured smooching as they frolicked on the beach.

In September, the good-looking pair then took their love story to Bali for a 10-day trip away where they shared their intimate moments with fans on Instagram.
She welcomed Milo Yiannopoulos to Australia with a very friendly exchange at his Adelaide show on Friday.

And Tziporah Malkah (previously known as Kate Fischer) has finally broken her silence after photos of their close exchange went viral.

Taking to Instagram, James Packer's former fiancee joked that she just 'had to' 'sexually harass' Milo, who is in the country on a controversial speaking tour.

'I sexually harassed the newly-wed': Tziporah Malkah breaks her silence after THOSE photos of her with Milo Yiannopoulos emerged online

Tziporah shared a photo of her and Milo's amorous exchange to Instagram, joking about their over the top embrace.

Meeting the right wing provocateur in Adelaide, Tziporah had greeted Milo with a hug and kiss on the lips.

'I sexually harassed the newly-wed. I had to,' she captioned the photo.

Friendly: Meeting the right wing provocateur in Adelaide, Tziporah had greeted Milo with a hug

Getting close: Tziporah shared a photo of her and Milo's amorous exchange to Instagram, joking about their over the top embrace

In October, Milo married his long term partner John in a lavish beachside ceremony in Hawaii.

Meanwhile Tziporah makes no secret of her affection for the controversial commentator, who likens feminism to cancer.

Last week, she shared a selfie to Instagram as she posed with her lanyard for Milo's Adelaide show.

Selfie time: Tziporah makes no secret of her affection for the controversial commentator

Dated in the 1990s: Tziporah previously enjoyed a high profile relationship with billionaire James Packer

'I [love heart emoji] Milo,' she captioned the social media snap.

Tziporah previously enjoyed a high profile relationship with billionaire James Packer, however retreated from the spotlight after their engagement ended in 1998.

She returned to the spotlight this year with a highly-publicized stint on I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!
She's been keeping fans guessing about the state of their relationship.

But Charlotte Crosby seemed to confirm that she is no longer together with on-off boyfriend Stephen Bear despite posting a video together.

The pair are seen larking around in the clip, which seems to have been filmed before the couple decided to call it a day on their romance.

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Out of her hair: Charlotte posted a video on her Instagram page with the caption: 'EX-boyfriend. Because blowdries really are better than boyfriends,' on Sunday evening

The tattooed hunk massages the brunette beauty in the video before attempting to clip the rollers into her long locks.

Some fans question the truthfulness of the caption with one comment saying: 'Everybody knows your back together tho?'

The couple hit a crisis after the former scaffold worker was pictured heading home from a Halloween party with a mystery brunette in tow, amid claims of a reconciliation with Charlotte.

Hairy relationship: the two reality TV stars giggle around in the video clip showcasing Mark Hill hair products for Charlotte's Instagram fans

Last week, Charlotte suggested the relationship was very much back on as the pair visited Hyde Park festive attraction Winter Wonderland.

The stop-start couple shared separate shots from the Christmas theme park, adding further fuel to claims of a romantic reconciliation.

Taking to Instagram, a chilly looking Charlotte is seen eating a hot dog while holding a beverage, her head and ears covered with a fleece hat.

Meanwhile Bear shared a snap of himself from the same venue, in which he wears an identical hat while posing for a selfie.

Charlotte hit the headlines recently after splitting with ex-boyfriend Bear following a tumultuous few months that brought their 11-month romance to and end.

Back together? Charlotte Crosby and Stephen Bear shared separate shots from the Christmas theme park, adding further fuel to claims of a romantic reconciliation

Speculation: Fans were left convinced the duo are now back together after the tattooed hunk shared a shot of himself looking out over a city's skyline from a hotel balcony while wearing a white bathrobe

But fans were left convinced the duo are now back together after the tattooed hunk shared a shot of himself looking out over a city's skyline from a hotel balcony while wearing a white bathrobe.

Their latest appearance at Winter Wonderland comes as Charlotte prepares for a reunion with ex Gaz Beadle, weeks before his current girlfriend Emma McVey gives birth to their first child.

The pair, who ended their relationship in 2015 following Charlotte's ectopic pregnancy, are poised for a face-to-face meeting when former Geordie Shore co-star Aaron Chalmers takes on his next mixed martial arts opponent.

Meanwhile: Charlotte is preparing for a reunion with ex Gaz Beadle, weeks before his current girlfriend Emma McVey gives birth to their first child

'All my Geordie Shore castmates - past and present - will be there,' Aaron told SunOnline. 'Charlotte, Gaz, Chloe, Vicky Pattison, her fiance John who I get on with, everyone.

'I always get good support from the celebrity world. When it comes to the Geordie Shore lot, theyre always there to support me.

'I class them as really good friends because I live with them six weeks at a time.'
Channel Seven has finished the year with a bang, as it's announced the network is the most watched in Australia.

And even though Nine lost out by a mere 0.1 percent for the top spot, Seven can thank shows like The Good Doctor for giving them a welcome boost.

The Sydney Morning Herald has released the top ten most watched programs for the year across all networks, with some surprising contenders.

Tim Robards in action! Australia's top ten regular programs for 2017 have been announced... but can you guess which competitive show made it to number one?

In first place was Nine's debut sport series Australian Ninja Warrior, which saw 50 contestants compete in a series of grueling physical challenges, similar to the US show, Wipeout.

More than 1.64 million Aussies tuned in for each episode, even when there was some controversy surrounding who the eventual winner would be.

At number two was The Block's Sunday night edition, with 1.474 million viewers on average.

Seafolly model Elyse Knowles and her boyfriend Josh Barker came away as the youngest ever winner's on this season, pocketing a cool $547,000 for the sale of their Elsternwick property.

Winner's are grinners! Seafolly model Elyse Knowles and her boyfriend Josh Barker came away as the youngest ever winner's on this season, pocketing a cool $547,000 for the sale of their Elsternwick property

It's top of the list! Meanwhile Seven's The Good Doctor is number three at 1.348 million

The Block's Monday show came in at number four with 1.314 million and Tuesday night was number nine at 1.232 million.

Meanwhile Seven's The Good Doctor is number three at 1.348 million.

It's an American medical-drama that follows the life of a young surgical resident with autism and savant syndrome. His unique skill set offers an almost superhuman ability to know what ailments patients are facing.

Cream of the crop! Brother and sister duo Amy and Tyson were named this year's winners pocketing a whopping $250,000 cash prize

My Kitchen Rules made the list three times: Wednesday night at 1.29 million, Monday at 1.288 million and Tuesday at 1.266 million.

Brother and sister duo Amy and Tyson were named this year's winners pocketing a whopping $250,000 cash prize.

To round out the top ten, Channel Nine's Married At First Sight appeared on Sunday with 1.267 million and Monday night at 1.232 million.

The series is due to return to screens in early 2018, with a new romantic promo already being aired.
Kate Hudson took in some air in Los Angeles this Sunday.

The 38-year-old was seen enjoying a hike that day with her musician beau Danny Fujikawa, who held her Australian shepherd Cody by a blue leash.

Later the short-haired looker revealed on Instagram that the hike marked the anniversary of their first date. In a gushy note the daughter of Goldie Hawn added the enjoy 'so much pure love.'

Sweet: Kate Hudson revealed on Instagram that the hike marked the anniversary of their first date. In a gushy note the daughter of Goldie Hawn added the enjoy 'so much pure love'

The full note had surprising details.

The Almost Famous star began: 'The first time I met Danny I was 23 and enormously pregnant with Ryder. His step sisters are my best friends @sarafoster @erinfoster and so it goes we have been in the same circle for over a decade!'

She added: 'A year ago today Danny took me on a hike and what I thought was just a hike with a family friend turned very quickly into an unexpected first date.

'No moves were made on this first date. In fact, it took months for him to make a first move! And as a kiss on this bridge would have been nice, the kiss a year later was so much sweeter.'

Fine company: Kate Hudson was seen enjoying a Los Angeles hike on Sunday with her musician beau Danny Fujikawa, who held her dog Cody by a blue leash

Hudson then remarked: 'So on our 15th year of knowing each other we were able to open our hearts to each other to feel so much pure love and its been truly incredible.! Happy first date anniversary baby. #LoveThisMan #WhatAYear.'

Kate flashed a bit of midriff beneath a slightly sheer white drop crop, sliding into powder pink leggings and wrapping an off-white sweater round her waist.

Popping on a pair of slightly faded-looking white sneakers, she shielded her eyes from the California rays with a pair of aviator sunglasses. She carried a pale blue Herschel Supply backpack.

The look: Kate flashed a bit of midriff beneath a slightly sheer white drop crop, sliding into powder pink leggings and wrapping an off-white sweater round her waist

Meanwhile, her boyfriend was wearing a sea green, pale blue, white and brown striped tank top over a midnight blue pair of Hurley shorts.

Sporting sunglasses of his own, Danny wore a casual pair of grey shoes.

Danny and Kate made their red carpet debut as a couple this April, attending the premiere of Snatched, a film co-starring Kate's mother Hawn.

At another point on Sunday, Kate was snapped holding a couple of purple beverages whilst outside a shop that sells, among other goodies, juice and smoothies.

Precautions: Popping on a pair of slightly faded-looking white sneakers, she shielded her eyes from the California rays with a pair of aviator sunglasses

Her prior romantic misadventures have given her two sons - Ryder, 13, by her ex-husband Chris Robinson and Bingham, six, by her ex-fiance Matt Bellamy.

This year, Kate's been seen in Los Angeles shooting Sister, the movie that will serve as Australian pop act Sia's feature directorial debut.

Kate's starring in this movie alongside 14-year-old Maddie Ziegler, who rose to fame via Dance Moms and has since had major parts in multiple Sia music videos.

Combo: Meanwhile, that boyfriend of hers was wearing a sea green, pale blue, white and brown striped tank top over a midnight blue pair of Hurley shorts

Hamilton star Leslie Odom, Jr., though listed only as '(rumored)' to be in the cast on the film's IMDb page, has also been spied on its set during filming.

Sia's co-written the movie's screenplay with one Dallas Clayton, and the finished product will also feature Parvesh Cheena, Eric Davis and Abhimanyu Katyal.

Back in 2015, Sia had revealed to a Manila-based broadsheet, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, that Sister will be 'about a sober drug dealer and his autistic sister.'

On the go: Sporting sunglasses of his own, Danny - whom Kate has been dating since earlier this year, wore a casual pair of grey shoes

Goldie has been with Kurt Russell since 1983, and Kurt - whom Kate refers to as 'Pa' - let slip to Harry Connick, Jr. on Harry this April that the movie would be a 'musical.'

Kurt had spilled that 'I mean, I don't know if I'm - cat out of the bag - if the deal's not made or anything, but she's, I think that she's gonna do this musical, with - that Sia is gonna direct that sounds fantastic, so I hope that happens.'

Though Kurt's the one Kate calls 'Pa,' her biological father is 71-year-old Goldie's second ex-husband Bill Hudson, whom Goldie'd been married to from 1976 to 1982.

Refreshments: At another point on Sunday, Kate was snapped holding a couple of purple beverages whilst outside a shop that sells, among other goodies, juice and smoothies
Tom Daley has opened up about his long-distance relationship with husband Dustin Lance Black, admitting it is 'far from perfect'.

Speaking to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK, the champion diver and his Oscar-winning director husband spoke about the past and future of their relationship.

The couple admitted some of the 'dramatic' changes to their relationship after struggling to cope with the distance of Black being based in LA.

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Tough: Tom Daley admitted some of the 'dramatic' changes to their relationship after struggling to cope with the distance of Dustin Lance Black being based in LA

'Our relationship is far from perfect. We have really tough times and struggles,' Daley told Attitude Magazine.

'For example we went long distance for a very, very, long time: he was in LA, I was living in London. We would spend sometimes five weeks apart.

'And it's something that was really, really tough and we've had to make massive and dramatic changes in our lives in order to be able to live together and see each other all the time. So it's not all plain sailing.'

Speaking about the first time they ever met, four years ago, Daley revealed he had to be sneaky because he had not publicly declared he was gay.

Long Distance: 'Our relationship is far from perfect. We have really tough times and struggles,' Daley told Attitude

Making it official: The couple tied the knot in a lavish wedding ceremony at Bovey Castle, near Plymouth, Devon in May this year after getting engaged in October 2015

'I kept getting caught looking at him because obviously I wasn't really out then,' he said.

'And I didn't really expect to have this moment that I did with Lance, but the way that I got around it was talking about the goings on inside the Olympic Village and how it would make a pretty cool film.

'And we traded contact details at the end of the night. I put my number in his phone with the winky face.'

The couple's 20-year age gap has been questioned in some corners, but Black says the pair have vowed to let other people's opinions get in the way of their own relationship.

He said: 'I don't care if someone says something negative about us. Why would I? That's their business. I don't think there's any one way to be is an LGBTQ person.

'I don't want to be heteronormative in every way either; gay people are unique and different. That's fabulous.

'We wanted to get married and that's who we are. But don't be like us, go do your thing, be you, be wild, be as LGBTQ with all of the diversity you can think of, do your thing. I am not about blending in. My heroes are not about blending in.'

Since Daley and Black met in 2013, there has been a secret split and cheating scandals but the couple feel like they are in a good place to move forward in their relationship.

They tied the knot in a lavish wedding ceremony at Bovey Castle, near Plymouth, Devon in May this year after getting engaged in October 2015.

Speaking about the first time they ever met, four years ago, Daley revealed he had to be sneaky because he had not publicly declared he was gay

Troubles: Since Daley and Black met in 2013, there has been a secret split and cheating scandals but the couple feel like they are in a good place to move forward in their relationship

According to The Sun, Tom recreated the scene in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet stood on the balcony in front of guests as he professed his love to his beau.

He is said to have delivered the star-crossed lover's famous lines: 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?'

The lovebirds were happily married in the Cathedral Room at the stately home before guests enjoyed a three-course meal.

Wedding-goers then toasted to the couple's happiness with a glass of champagne.

The after party was hosted in the Dartmoor Suite ballroom where people danced the night away until the early hours of the morning.

The Attitude Heroes podcast is available to download for free from December 4
Erica Rose got married on Sunday in Texas after failing to find love on The Bachelor.

The 34-year-old Houston native and Charles Sanders tied the knot in a traditional Jewish ceremony at Congregation Emanu El in her hometown, according to a report by Us Weekly.

The couple were friends in high school and reunited when she was pregnant with her one-year-old daughter Holland.

Wed: Erica Rose got married on Sunday in Texas to Charles Sanders in a traditional Jewish ceremony at Congregation Emanu El

Erica wore a plunging lace gown, veil and tiara by Ventura Bridal.

She later changed into a custom pink blush lace dress by designer Alex Martinez for the reception.

The reception at the Majestic Metro featured a floral wall with the couple's nickname 'Cherica' spelled out in red, pink and white roses.

Stunning: The TV star was seen with her father as she held her bouquet

The newlyweds are headed to Belize for their honeymoon.

She became engaged to the Texas investor in September while celebrating her daughter's birthday.

Erica gave birth to Holland in September 2016. The father is ex-boyfriend Galen Gentry.

Erica competed for the heart of Prince Lorenzo Borghese in 2006 during season nine of The Bachelor.

Sealed with a kiss: The blonde held her new husband tight as they smooched

So much color: The beauty's wedding flowers were roses and hydrangeas

Newly married: The Bachelor veteran Rose and Sanders, shown in a recent Instagram snap

The reality star also appeared on two seasons of The Bachelor Pad in 2011 and 2012 and the VH1 show You're Cut Off!

Several members of The Bachelor franchise attended the nuptials including Vienna Girardi, AshLee Frazier Williams, Holly Julian and Sadie Murray.

Season nine star Lorenzo, 45, also was in attendance.

Reality star: Erica competed for the heart of Prince Lorenzo Borghese in 2006 during season nine of The Bachelor

In attendance: Lorenzo, shown with Erica in March 2007 in New York City, attended the wedding
Claire Foy and Matt Smith posed together at Sunday's BAFTA screening of The Crown in New York, ahead of its second season dropping on Netflix next Friday.

Claire, 33, cut a stylish figure in a white V-neck top tucked into a bright blue pair of high-waisted trousers, accessorizing with a watch.

Matt, 35, wore a charcoal suit over a dull blue Frame T-shirt he had tucked in, accessorizing with a necklace and standing for the camera with a hand shoved into his pocket.

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Aglow: Claire Foy and Matt Smith posed together at Sunday's BAFTA screening of The Crown in New York, ahead of its second season dropping on Netflix next Friday

The former Doctor Who star recently discussed objectification in the Telegraph Magazine, to which he said`: 'Thats not to say I havent been objectified before by men, because I have, just like women are objectified.'

Said he: 'It is not exclusive to them. This happens to men, too.'

Earlier, discussing the recent sexual misconduct scandals, he had insisted: 'The conversation shouldnt stop at this industry just because these are "celebrities" who we know about who are involved. It has to be broader.

'People in other industries have to have a platform to be heard as well. What happens to the cleaner or the lady who works in a clothes shop?'

Who's who: For the first two seasons of The Crown, Claire has starred as Queen Elizabeth II herself and Matt as her husband, Philip, Duke Of Edinburgh

Camera ready: The pair were later seen at The Crown preview screening hosted by the 92nd Street Y

Getting chic done: Claire swapped her teal look for a chic houndtooth blazer

For the first two seasons of The Crown, Claire has starred as Queen Elizabeth II herself and Matt as her husband, Philip, Duke Of Edinburgh.

It has been revealed that Broadchurch star Olivia Colman will take over as the Queen for the third season, though the future of Prince Philip has not been so clarified.

Season one began just before Elizabeth ascended to the throne on the death of her father George VI, and ended with Britain skidding toward the Suez Crisis.

The new season will carry viewers through 1963, per TV Guide. Which is to say, it'll cover such events as a London visit by John F. Kennedy, played by Michael C. Hall.

Stepping out: She teamed the look with a stylish black polo neck and a light wash jean

Dapper: Matt looked effortlessly dapper in his navy blue suit while signing autographs outside the Bowery Hotel

Wrapped up: He combated the chilly temperatures by wrapping a stylish Burberry scarf around his neck

Handsome: He teamed the suit with a dark brown brogue, white shirt and navy tie

President Kennedy had been accompanied to England by his famously glamorous wife Jacqueline Kennedy, who has been portrayed by Jodi Balfour.

Vanessa Kirby's Princess Margaret will be seen starting up her romance with her ex-husband-to-be, 'society photographer' Antony Armstrong-Jones (Matthew Goode).

'Tony Snowdon,' so-called by dint of his being Earl Of Snowdon, married Margaret in 1960 and notoriously philandered before their 1978 divorce.

His love life is said to have included men and women - in a memoir, decorator Nicky Haslam said he and Tony had 'a very brief romance' before the Margaret marriage.

Incoming: The pair are seen in the trailer for season two, which per TV Guide will carry viewers on through 1963

Ill-starred: Vanessa Kirby's Princess Margaret will be seen starting up her romance with her ex-husband-to-be, 'society photographer' Antony Armstrong-Jones (Matthew Goode)

Hot and heavy: 'Tony Snowdon,' so-called because he was Earl Of Snowdon, married Margaret in 1960 and notoriously philandered before their 1978 divorce

For what it's worth, according to Femail, Tony himself said of Nicky's story: 'It's not true as far as I'm concerned --and I should know.'

Going by the trailer, it appears the new season will also show the Queen's iconic 1961 visit to Ghana, which four years earlier had become independent from Britain.

According to Time, she concurred with the Cabinet's wish that she go, bombing in Accra notwithstanding, by telling her prime minister: 'I am not a film star. I am the head of the Commonwealth - and I am paid to face any risks that may be involved. Nor do I say this lightly. Do not forget that I have three children.'

Moreover, the trailer depicts simmering tension between the Queen and her consort, who fumes about being 'outranked by my eight-year-old son!' - Prince Charles.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones , Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State UniversityAWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog . I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.AWOL is the successor to Abzu , a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.AWOL is syndicated to Facebook and Twitter.
She's best known for her character Pippa Fletcher on Home And Away.

But on Monday, Debra Lawrance looked almost unrecognisable as she attended the AACTA Awards in Sydney.

The 60-year-old defied her years as she graced the red carpet in an elegant black dress with sheer sleeve detailing.

My how you've changed! Former Home And Away actress Debra Lawrance looks unrecognisable from her Pippa days as she attends the AACTA Awards

She teamed her ensemble with a red clutch and simple black heels.

Debra wore her sliver locks out in a neat style and kept her makeup bold with defined lashes and a bright red lip.

The actress left Summer Bay sixteen years ago now, but has returned to The Bay in character from time-to-time - most recently in 2009, but has since admitted she has no plans to return again.

Age defying: The 60-year-old defied her years as she graced the red carpet in an elegant black dress with sheer sleeve detailing

Famous face: Debra is best known for her time in Summer Bay

Debra took on the role as foster mum Pippa from actress Vanessa Downing in 1990 and became a fixture on screens for eight years.

In that time, the actress mentored many of the young actors who came through the show and went on to become big Hollywood names including Isla Fisher, Melissa George and Heath Ledger.

However, Debra is most close to Kate Ritchie, who played her on-screen foster daughter Sally Fletcher, and still see each other on a regular basis.

Foster mum: On the Australian soap, Debra played foster mum to many of Summer Bay's biggest stars, including actress Kate Ritchie, who grew up on the screen

In an interview with TV Week she revealed that she has no plans to return to the show.

'It's a different show from when I was on,' she told the publication.

'We didn't have a lot of drugs and alcohol and riots.'

Debra joined a plethora of celebrities at the AACTAs luncheon.

Erin Holland stunned in a pretty yellow frock while Melina Vidler opted for a plunging cream number with floral detailing which accentuated her curves.

Curves ahead: Melina Vidler opted for a plunging cream number with floral detailing which accentuated her curves

Mellow yellow! Erin Holland stunned in a pretty yellow frock

Susie Porter stepped out in a navy and black dress with crochet detailing.

Isabelle Cornish opted for a white lace mini dress, which showcased her slender pins.

Demure: Susie Porter stepped out in a navy and black dress with crochet detailing

Legs for days! Isabelle Cornish opted for a white lace mini dress, which showcased her slender pins

Emma Booth went for a more casual look in dark denim skinny jeans, a floral shirt and cream faux fur jacket.

Lincoln Younes looked dapper in a dark blue suit and pale blue shirt with matching tie.
Kendall Jenner and Khloe Kardashian got serious about guns as they learned how to shoot on Sunday's episode of the family's reality show.

The sisters learned how to handle guns after Kendall, 22, told Khloe, 33, how she had to deal with a regular stalker turning up at her house.

'I literally once a week have a stalker, someone shows up at my house, they wait outside my house for me and my security won't let me leave, they're like ''These people are weird'',' she explained.

Shooting lesson: Kendall Jenner joined her sister Khloe for a shooting lesson on Sunday's episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians

Kendall explained how her jewelry was robbed from her home in a break-in and Khloe told her that the family 'was now so targeted' by thieves.

'I feel like we're so targeted and people are now breaking into our homes and stalking us,' she said.

Kendall told the cameras that the whole family had to reevaluate their security in the past year.

Khloe quickly moved the conversation on by telling her sister how she had a 'bruised p**s' after taking a Soul Cycle class and had gone to the doctor thinking it was an STD.

Taking aim: Khloe took to shooting quickly and fired away at a target

Feeling targeted: Kendall talked about being robbed and stalked and was considering a firearm for self defense and personal protection

At Kourtney's house the girls played with Kim and Kourtney's new puppies.

'I finally decided to cave and got North a dog,' said Kim as she told the cameras she also bought Kourtney's daughter, Penelope, a dog as well.

'It was priceless. It made everything worth it,' said Kim of her daughter's reaction.

New puppied: Kim Kardashian got her daughter North a dog named Sushi and also bought Honey for Kourtney's daughter Penelope

Worth it: The look on North's face was worth it for Kim

Puppy love: Kim said that North loved her new dog named Sushi

Kim, 37, told Khloe that her dog Sushi had 'tricked' her as it was quiet when they got it but was now energetic and loud.

'She loves this dog,' said Kim of her daughter.

Kris then moved her mom MJ into a home she had bought for her.

New home: Kris moved her mother into MJ into a new home she bought for her

Nice digs: The home brought MJ who used to live in San Diego closer to her family

Loved it: MJ was impressed with her new surroundings

'I have been trying to convince my mom to move up here for as long as I can remember, it has been decades. I think I felt I just needed to take action and surprise her,' said Kris.

'I want it to be the perfect place that she loves, the perfect transition,' she said.

Kim during the episode titled Dog Tired said that Sushi was causing her sleepless nights.

Surprise present: Kris Jenner surprised her mother by buying her the house

'I am being so attentive and going above and beyond and she is being so happy and so loud and Kourtney's dog is as quiet as a mouse and sits there quietly like a stuffed animal. It is wild how in one day they tricked me and now have opposite personalities. Of course this is my luck,' she said.

So Kim then thought about a dog swap so she could have the quieter of the animals.

Kendall and Khloe then talked about protecting themselves and looked at handguns online.

Dog tired: Kim complained of being tired due to Sushi's constant barking

Khloe told Kim that Kendall felt unsafe at home and that she needed to protect herself, and Kim told her that was why she paid her security detail.

Khloe told Kim that in her Paris situation what would she have done if she had been armed.

'I would not have shot them, it was three against one or six or seven, there was no way I was going to get out of there, you know, I am not Lara Croft,' said Kim.

Shopping trip: Kendall told Khloe about her personal safety concerns while shopping

Gun talk: Khloe and Kendall told Kim they were thinking of purchasing guns

'I could not have got away to get the gun.'

Khloe told her she should know how to use a weapon.

'I am not comfortable with it and I don't want my kids around it. I would not want sleepovers going on here and knowing there was a gun here. I personally do not feel comfortable with it,' said Kim.

'I am not a fan of owning guns or having guns in the home. Owning guns has never been my thing and with kids in the house I just don't think it something that I am comfortable with,' she added.

Not a fan: Kim made it clear she was not a fan of either owning guns or having guns in her house

Kris then bought her mother a luxury Mixmaster mixer as she rolled her eyes and did not seem impressed.

'I don't know what is going on, she does not appreciate my vision,' complained Kris as her mother tried to organize her new home.

'Bruce Springsteen is iconic, that is not iconic,' her mother told Kris about the blender.

Deluxe mixer: Kris wanted a deluxe mixer that she got MJ out on display on the counter

Kim then planned her dognapping.

'I was kind of joking about this whole plan but the more I say it out loud and talk it through the more it sounds like a genius idea and I am going to accidentally get the wrong dog and see if anyone notices,' said Kim.

She then did a quick switch and took Honey and left Sushi with Kourtney.

Dog switch: Kim planned a dognapping to switch quiet Honey for barking Sushi

Kourtney, 38, and her ex-boyfriend Scott Disick could then not figure out why the dog was suddenly barking so much.

'This dog is a pain in the a** I have never seen her act like this,' said Scott.

Reign was the first to notice the switch as she told her mom that the dog was in fact North's.

Quickly noticed: Scott Disick noticed that 'Honey' was suddenly barking a lot

Getting suspicious: Kourtney also determined that Kim had switched dogs on her

'I don't think this is your dog,' said Scott as Kourtney agreed that they now had the wrong dog.

Kourtney tried to ring Kim, who refused to answer her phone.

'She is not answering because she stole the damn dog and she is on the run, you don't just take someone's dog,' said Scott.

Nice try: The dog switching didn't get past Kourtney who used her resources to track down Kim and get her dog back

At MJ's condo Kris and her mom continued to fight over her cluttered countertops.

The momager was not impressed to see that MJ had stored the mixer in a cupboard in the bathroom.

'This is ridiculous,' said Kris as her mum called the gift an 'eyesore.'

Mixer battle: MJ and Kris continued to argue over the merits of the mixer

Kourtney finally got hold of Kim who denied she had swapped the dogs.

'OK, whatever,' said Kim as Kourtney refused to look after Sushi for even one night.

Kendall and Khloe then took shooting lessons.

Gun range: Handguns were shown as Kendall and Khloe arrived for their lesson

Natural shooter: Khloe was comfortable firing the weapon

'I know Kim is so against us getting guns but for Kendall and I, it's something we feel that we need to do to sleep better at night and I think Kim will feel better when she sees how much work and effort we have put into this,' said Khloe.

Khloe took to the shooting and was instantly comfortable on the range, but Kendall was less certain.

'Obviously I have been to a shooting range before but it is scaring me so badly that I am literally hiding behind a wall,' she said.

Hiding out: Kendall at first was hiding out but later fired away

But Kendall soon got into the swing of it and impressed her sister.

'I am proud that we did this. I am happy that I feel comfortable around a gun,' said Khloe.

Back at the house Kourtney forced Kim to swap back the dogs, much to Kim's frustration.

Feeling comfortable: Khloe later said she was proud they got the shooting lesson

'Sushi, you bark one time and we are going to have a problem,' Kim told her dog.

MJ then rang Kourtney to talk to her about Kris and her controlling ways in her new home.

'I just want to make it my home,' complained MJ as Kourtney encouraged her to do whatever she wanted.

Keep quiet: Kim warned Sushi to stop barking

'My mom is really controlling about how she thinks a house should be and I understand where MJ is coming from as my mom has been doing this to me her whole life,' said Kourtney.

Kourtney and Kendall then told Kim about their gun course and that they had been in touch with the Everytown For Gun Safety Group who had talked to them about the dangers of guns in the home.

'It was a little overwhelming and dark to think about,' said Khloe as she said that she and Kendall had decided they did not want to add guns to their environment.

Minds changed: Khloe and Kendall after meeting with a gun safety group decided to leave the guns to their security details

Khloe told the cameras that despite their training they were aware that accidents happened.

'I would rather avoid all of this and leave the guns to our security team,' said Khloe and Kim agreed they should leave their protection up to the professionals.

Kim's dog was no quieter upon her return and she decided to seek professional help.

Accident awareness: Kendall and Khloe learned more about owning guns before making their decisions

'I am desperate at this point, I literally kidnapped a dog,' said Kim.

Kourtney then confronted her mother and told her she needed to back off MJ and let her settle down in her new home.

So Kris went to her mother's home and collected her mixer.

Back off: Kourtney confronted Kris and told her to let MJ settle down in her new home

Her way: MJ finally got to arrange the counter to her liking

'I think I got a little excited and territorial,' she told her mother as she urged her to decorate the home however she wanted.

Kim then called in dog behavior expert Cesar Milan famous for his Dog Whisperer TV series to help train Sushi.

'Yep this is pretty bad,' said Cesar, 48, as he watched Sushi steal Kim's furry slippers.

Puppy training: North held Sushi as Kim introduced her to dog behavior expert Cesar Milan

Furry slipper: Sushi had the annoying habit of chewing on Kim's slippers

The expert: Cesar gave Kim some valuable tips on how to handle Sushi

After the session Kim told Cesar that she had learned she needed to be the authority figure.

'It is really exciting that Sushi's issues are fixable and she is just a part of the family now and we just have to work on it,' said Kim.

KUWTK returns next week on the E! network.

Authority figure: The Dog Whisperer told Kim that she had to be the authority figure
Each year, Cosmopolitan releases a list of Australia's 30 most eligible bachelors.

And this year's list features actors, athletes and reality stars - including three ex-Bachelorette contestants.

Michael Turnbull, Jake Ellis, Cam Cranley and more appeared shirtless in the January issue, which hit newsstands on Monday.

Bouncing right to the top of the crop! Real-estate agent Michael, 36, described his ideal mate as someone 'who is driven, motivated and fun'

Cam, 27, who appeared as part of Georgia Love's lineup of suitors, said if he wasn't a firefighter he would be 'a good teacher as I love kids.'

Meanwhile real-estate agent Michael, 36, described his ideal mate as someone 'who is driven, motivated and fun.'

Marketing professional Jake, 31, gave a big thumbs up to sexting, saying it can keep things 'interesting and exciting.'

Buff and a bachelor! Alongside the three still very single reality TV stars is Neighbours actor Matthew Wilson, 29

Can't argue with that! Jackson O'Doherty (left) and Jace Brown (right) are among the other faces in the line up

The inclusion of so many former Bachelorette stars may have had something to do with the women who got to decide the top 30.

The judges included Jen Hawke and Simone Ormesher, who both tried their hand at love on The Bachelor.

Alongside the three still very single reality TV stars is Neighbours actor Matthew Wilson, 29.

He coyly told Cosmo he finds a woman's smile her sexiest asset and would enjoy a weekend away to 'one of the wonders of the world' with his girlfriend-to-be.

Hello there! Tim Anstee, 20, is a handsome Rugby Sevens player on the list

On a competing show, and competing for the same Bachelor title, is Orpheus Pledger, 24, who plays Mason on hit soap drama Home And Away.

The ruggedly handsome actor likened himself to American movie star Matthew McConaughey - and said 'trust, compassion and honesty' were the three most attractive qualities in a person.

Not everyone on the list was famous though, plenty of personal trainers, coal miners, project managers and chef's were included.

Voting commences today on Cosmopolitan.com.au and the winner with be announced in February 2018.
Blac Chyna cradled a tiny little dog on her Snapchat Story this Sunday.

Wearing a sweater that read: 'HUMANS BE WEIRD' and a studded pair of cat-eye shades, the 29-year-old cooed: 'Hi, baby! Awww,' at the pooch.

It is unclear whether she has herself got a new dog, or whether she was merely spending a bit of time with a friend's pet.

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Canine company: Blac Chyna cradled a tiny little dog on her Snapchat Story this Sunday

Chyna, who wore a Playboy bunny pendant, posed for a photo while holding the dog and posted the result to her Story.

Chyna has two children: five-year-old son King Cairo by the rapper Tyga, and one-year-old daughter Dream by reality star Rob Kardashian.

Having split from Tyga in 2014, Chyna had been with her Rob & Chyna co-star off and on since early 2015, and she gave birth to Dream last November.

Rob and Chyna split in December - Rob posting a Snapchat video of himself wandering miserably through their empty house - but reunited soon after.

Who's whose?: It is unclear whether she has herself got a new dog, or whether she was merely spending a bit of time with a friend's pet

This July saw their latest and most dramatic breakup, with Rob posting explicit photos of Chyna to Instagram during a rant that got his account removed.

In short order, Chyna lawyered up with Gloria Allred's daughter Lisa Bloom and won a restraining order against her former partner.

Meanwhile, Rob chose for his attorney Robert Shapiro - who with Rob's father had been a member of O.J. Simpson's defense team during O.J.'s murder trial.

The mother of Rob's child gave a press conference featuring Lisa, who has also co-starred in a press conference with Kathy Griffin, as well as one with Quantasia Sharpton, who claimed Usher exposed her to herpes.

Pals: Chyna, who wore a Playboy bunny pendant, posed for a photo while holding the dog and posted the result to her Story

Though Chyna has accused Rob of abuse, TMZ reported in September that she let that allegation drop as part of a deal that got her $20,000 in child support a month.

A day after reporting that child support figure, TMZ revealed Chyna was still gunning for a payout of at least $1 million by way of the revenge porn case.

In a bizarre twist, Tyga for some time dated Rob's now 20-year-old half-sister Kylie Jenner, who is rumored to be pregnant by her own current beau Travis Scott.

There is a rumor out there that Chyna is being courted for the inaugural season of an American edition of Celebrity Big Brother, per Us Weekly.
Young Ian was seduced by bloody Geillis Duncan on Sunday's episode of Outlander.

The episode titled The Bakra opened with Young Ian's kidnapping by pirates who brought him aboard their ship the Bruja.

He was meant for someone called 'the Bakra' with an appetite for 'young boys'.

Starz series: Young Ian was given truth serum and seduced by Geillis Duncan on Sunday's episode of Outlander

When the Bruja reached Jamaica a slave then lead Young Ian to a woman bathing in blood who identified herself as The Bakra.

The bloody woman when she spun around turned out to be Geillis who was last seen being sentenced for witchcraft in Cranesmuir.

She explained that she bathes in goat's blood to 'keep her skin young'.

Geillis encouraged Young Ian to eat and drink and he obliged while being prodded with questions.

Goat's blood: Geillis said she bathed in goat's blood to keep her skin young

Blood bath: The episode opened with Geillis in a bloody bath

Scared prisoner: Young Ian was terrified at meeting The Bakra who turned out to be Geillis

Young Ian let slip some key information and Geillis explained that the tea he was drinking was a truth serum from a witch doctor.

She then asked him about his uncle and Young Ian blurted out 'James Fraser of Broch Tuarach' and that Jamie was going to rescue him.

'Oh, I'm counting on it, lad,' Geillis said as she then seduced the boy.

Truth serum: Geillis served Ian tea that was laced with truth serum from a witch doctor

Rescue plan: Young Ian blurted out that his uncle Jamie was going to rescue him and Geillis approved of the plan

Claire and Jamie meanwhile looked for Young Ian at Port Royal in Jamaica.

They checked the slave market where Claire's 20th century sensibilities were shocked to see men, women and children caged up.

She flipped out after seeing an auctioneer grab a slave's crotch after being asked about his virility.

Slave auction: Claire was shocked to see a slave auction

For sale: An auctioneer grabbed a slave's crotch when asked about his virility

Claire smacked the auctioneer and started a small riot.

'Do something. Help him, please!,' she begged Jamie, who ended up buying the slave.

Claire was horrified at the idea of being a slave owner and they agreed to set the slave named Temeraire free once they were in a safer area for him.

Too much: Claire was outraged and hit the auctioneer triggering a small brawl

New owners: Jamie purchased the slave named Temeraire to calm things down

They explained their plan and also enlisted Temeraire to go to a ball at the governor's mansion to talk to other slaves in order to find Young Ian.

Claire wore a gorgeous yellow gown for the party and Jamie sported a blonde wig to help hide his identity.

Geillis it turned out has been trying to get the sapphire as three are needed for the prophecy about the rise of the next Scottish king.

Freedom soon: Claire explained how they planned to give Temeraire his freedom soon

Claire then felt like an outsider watching Jamie reunite with Lord John Grey who stills wears the sapphire that Jamie gave him.

Geillis was confronted by Claire and she explained how she escaped being burned for witchcraft.

Jamie also was surprised about seeing Geillis, who noticed the sapphire she's been looking for on Lord John's jacket.

Fancy party: The 20th century surgeon and her 18th century lover got dressed up for the ball

Geillis got fortune teller Margaret to read the governor with all three stones present and she went into a spell.

She predicted the new king will rise in Scotland on the death of a child that is 200 years old on the day of its birth.

Captain Leonard and his men then showed up looking for Jamie.

She's back: Geillis explained how she escaped being burned for witchcraft

Temeraire delivered his information on the location of Young Ian as Jamie was taken into custody.

He pressed the pictures of Bree and the miniature of Willie into Claire's hands.

'After all I did for you and your men?! You bloody bastard. I am the only reason any of your survived,' Claire yelled at Captain Leonard and the Brits after saving them from an outbreak on their ship.

'Go. Find Young Ian!,' Jamie told Claire as he was marched away.

Not happy: Claire yelled at the Brits who she saved for taking Jamie into custody
She's the popular actress who scooped a Logie Award for her role on Home and Away.

And Bonnie Sveen has gushed about her time filming the iconic soap, where she also found love behind the scenes.

The 29-year-old star left the show in 2016, but not before falling for Home and Away's assistant director, Nathan Gooley.

Personal and professional success: Bonnie Sveen has gushed to TV Week about her three-year tenure on Home and Away, where she fell in love with the show's assistant director Nathan Gooley

'I had my happily ever after,' Bonnie gushed to TV Week on Monday.

The beauty told the publication that she has no regrets about leaving the hit series behind.

'I really adored that time of my life,' she stated, adding that she 'gave a lot' to her character, Ricky Sharpe.

Loved-up: Bonnie and Nathan met whilst working together on the iconic soap

And Bonnie is still awed by the fact she was a part of such an influential television program.

'Home and Away is a very important part of the Australian fabric. It was an honour to be part of the show'.

Despite her departure, the actress has continued her relationship with Nathan, who is still believed to be working on the show.

Onward and upward: Bonnie won a Logie Award for her role on Home and Away, but has no regrets about leaving the series

The pair's relationship appears stronger than ever after they moved into a Sydney residence together in August.

But Bonnie recently told New Idea that babies aren't on her immediate agenda, as her professional life continues to go from strength to strength.

'Nath is a bit older. He's 34 in December, so it feels like 29 isn't too bad and we have some time,' she explained.

Bonnie now appears on another hit Channel Seven series, The Secret Daughter, which just wrapped its second season.
She recently made her return to Coronation Street screens after a brief hiatus, when character Bethany Platt took a break from Weatherfield.

And while Lucy Fallon can certainly wow in the style stakes on-screen, she can do the same off-screen as well as the star put on a busty display for her sister's hen party on Saturday.

The 22-year-old actress showed off her ample cleavage in a criss-cross strap crop top, making a statement by teaming the piece with a blue velvet suit as she partied in The Living Room in Manchester.

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Flawless: Actress Lucy Fallon, 22, showed off her incredible figure on Saturday as she rocked a blue velvet suit for her sister's hen party in Manchester

Lucy looked utterly gorgeous in the glamorous ensemble, accessorising the look with a fur chain-strap bag and silver strappy sandals.

The blonde beauty styled her platinum locks in bouncy waves, with her makeup kept simple but stand-out in a smoky eye and perfectly arched brows.

Lucy appeared to be having a fabulous evening at her sister's hen party, posing with the bride-to-be who looked equally stylish in a leopard print faux fur coat.

The Corrie recently returned to soap screens after a brief hiatus, as character Bethany Platt attempted to move on from her horrific grooming ordeal.

Ample: Lucy put on a busty display in the chic ensembe, rocking a criss-cross crop top under the two-piece suit

Fans were delighted when news broke that Bethany would find love again over the festive period, as she strikes up a romance with pal Craig Tinker.

Corrie boss Kate Oates told Radio Times: 'In news that should gladden the heart of even the most Scrooge-like curmudgeon  Bethany will embark on a tentative romance with Craig. Glad tidings indeed!'

Lucy will also be back on screens this Christmas in a musical competition show on ITV, which will be hosted by Freddie Flintoff and Michael Crawford and include a slew of other stars.

Sister sister! Lucy and her sibling both appeared to be having a fabulous time at the bachelorette bash

Busty beauty: Lucy recently made a return to Coronation Street after a brief hiatus, as character Bethany Platt took a break from the street to recover from her grooming ordeal

The celebrities will perform some of the biggest hits in West End history in front of a live audience at the London Palladium, who will then choose their favourite.

Also appearing in the series are actress Sally Phillips, athlete Denise Lewis OBE and presenter Nicky Campbell.

There will even be a bit of friendly soap rivalry as Emmerdale star Michael Parr appears on the lineup.

Dramatic: Lucy was recently at the centre of a dramatic child grooming storyline, which won her several awards and praise for her performance
She recently slammed claims that she was suffering from an eating disorder, after being spotted looking skinnier than ever at an event in Los Angeles earlier this week.

But Tara Reid appeared to be happier than ever on Sunday as she headed out for a spot of lunch with beau Ted Dhanik, walking through the Los Angeles streets hand-in-hand.

The 42-year-old Sharknado star put on a loved-up display with her beau as they strolled along together, even nuzzling into his neck at one point.

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Loved-up: Tara Reid put on a romantic display with beau Ted Dhanik on Sunday as they headed out for lunch together in Los Angeles

Tara looked casual for the relaxed outing, rocking a chic peach satin jacket over a white tank top, along with distressed jeans.

Accessorising with studded trainers and a black chain strap bag, the American Pie star looked totally stylish as she enjoyed an afternoon with her beau.

The couple also brought their pet pooches along for the outing, carrying them along in a black wheely bag.

Ted was also perfectly dressed for the California weather in a pink T-shirt and grey tracksuit shorts, along with white studded plimsolls.

Happy couple: Tara put on a casual display for the outing, rocking a satin peach bomber jacket and distressed jeans, along with peach studded trainers

New man: Tara and Ted have attended several events together in recent weeks, after news broke of their relationship in September

On the up: Tara has had a career resurgence in recent months, with nine movies on the way, as she became a fan favourite again for starring in the Sharknado series

Tara recently has to slam claims that she was suffering from an eating disorder, telling Daily Mail TV that she was at a perfectly healthy weight.

She said: 'I am not anorexic. I have never been anorexic and I don't have an eating disorder.'

She added: 'I am just thin. People are overweight and we don't attack them every time they go out.

Cute companions: Tara and Ted were joined by their adorable pet dogs, who relaxed in a black wheely bag for the outing

In love: Tara recently had to slam claims that she was suffering from an eating disorder, telling Daily Mail TV she was at a perfectly healthy weight

'It's the same weight. I don't fluctuate  it's just who I am. I do eat. I eat all the time. But this is just my natural weight and people need to leave me alone.'

Tara's handsome boyfriend Ted is a successful tech entrepreneur, and the pair have kept their blossoming relationship relatively low-key, claiming that they were 'casually dating' when news emerged of their romance in September.

The pair sparked romance rumours when he accompanied her to pal Christina Milian's birthday party.

Screen star: Tara first won an army of fans as one of the stars of the American Pie series, playing vivacious Victoria "Vicky" Lathum
She has become known for her naturally fashionable flair almost as much as her acting projects.

And Zendaya only upped the style stakes on Sunday night as she joined a host of stars at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

The 21-year-old truly stole the show in a stunning pleated gown, complete with plunging neckline and thigh-high split, as she posed fiercely on the red carpet at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

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Sensational: Zendaya only upped the style stakes on Sunday night as she joined a host of stars at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards

The actress commanded attention in the gown, which was formed of a chic velvet bodice and striking pleated skirt of grey and tan.

While the dress fell into long, billowing sleeves and a demure floor-length hem, the gown upped the sex appeal with a daring V neckline - which plunged all the way to her navel, to tease at her cleavage and flash plenty of skin underneath.

Proving her sensational figure further, the skirt then cut into a thigh-high split on one side, to give a glimpse of her long and slender legs underneath.

Effortless: The actress commanded attention in the gown, which was formed of a chic velvet bodice and striking pleated skirt of grey and tan

Saucy: While the dress fell into long, billowing sleeves and a demure floor-length hem, the gown upped the sex appeal with a daring V neckline - which plunged all the way to her navel

Keeping all eyes on her show-stopping look, Zendaya tied her look together with barely-there black sandal heels and opted to forgo jewellery.

She slicked her hair into a sophisticated up-do and accentuated her radiant complexion with a glowing make-up look and soft pink lip, in a glamorous finishing touch.

The young star exuded confidence as she posed on the red carpet, before heading inside to mingle with her fellow guests, including Glee's Amber Riley.

Pins on parade: Proving her sensational figure further, the skirt then cut into a thigh-high split on one side, to give a glimpse of her long and slender legs underneath

Radiant: She slicked her hair into a sophisticated up-do and accentuated her radiant complexion with a glowing make-up look and soft pink lip

She appeared to be in good spirits as she joked and laughed inside - despite recently admitting she is not keen on nights out like other friends her age.

She told Fashion magazine: 'For me, a Vegas version of my birthday would be like hell.

'I've always been a very old woman inside a younger person's body. Of course, I have my young-people tendencies; we all have those.

Say cheese! The young star exuded confidence as she posed on the red carpet, before heading inside to mingle with her fellow guests, including Glee's Amber Riley

Delighted: Amber (R) beamed with delight at the bash - having picked up the award for Best Musical Performance following her run as Effie White in Dreamgirls

'But at the end of the day, I've always been called a grandma. I don't like going out.'

The brunette is next set to star in the Reese Witherspoon-produced movie A White Lie, as the first black woman to graduate from the elite Vassar College.

It is based on the book The Gilded Years, which tells the true story of a light-skinned, African-American who passed as white so she could attend the college during the 1890s.

She is also preparing for the release of new musical drama The Greatest Showman, which also stars Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron, just before Christmas.

Next up: The brunette is next set to star in a Reese Witherspoon produced movie, where she will appear as the first black woman to graduate from the elite Vassar College
Her busy Our Girl filming schedule has meant she's been abroad for eight months.

And Michelle Keegan, 30, couldn't hide her delight after touching down in the UK on Monday following her laborious trip to Kuala Lumpur.

The Northern beauty - who plays beamed as she was welcomed back to London's Heathrow airport by family members, clad in a low-key ensemble for her jubilant return to home soil.

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Delighted: Michelle Keegan, 30, couldn't hide her delight after touching down in the UK on Monday following her laborious trip to Kuala Lumpur

The fresh-faced actress highlighted her slender pins in a pair of skintight black Pink Soda leggings while she pushed her luggage-stacked trolley through the international arrivals terminal.

She teamed her pin-flaunting look with a cosy khaki-coloured USAF-sloganed hoodie which swamped her petite figure.

Boasting a healthy glow, the former Coronation Street star opted to go make-up free for the long-haul flight, accentuating her flawless complexion as she touched down.

Grinning Michelle accessorised her relaxed look with a number of simple rings and bracelets while she worked her enviable brunette locks into a straight style.

Ringing it in: Michelle's engagement and wedding rings were noticeably absent from her left hand as she landed into the capital, holding onto her phone

Catching up: Michelle made a phonecall as she walked through the terminal

Happy: The Northern beauty beamed as she was welcomed back to London's Heathrow airport by family members

However, Michelle's engagement and wedding rings were noticeably absent from her left hand as she landed into the capital, holding onto her phone.

MailOnline have contacted Michelle Keegan's rep for comment.

Absent: Michelle usually sports an eye-catching diamond on her left-hand

The Stockpot stunner has previously discussed that she removes her wedding ring while filming.

In 2016, She shared on Twitter: 'No wedding ring, no wedding ring blah blah blah sooooo boring!!! Not that I have to explain but I'm SO sick of these stories

'I work on camera so I take it off and put it somewhere safe... SIMPLE. Last night I went straight out after work... Hence the NO ring!!!'.

In recent weeks, both Michelle and Mark have been gushing over one another, sharing how excited they are to reunite in the coming weeks for Christmas.

Her triumphant return comes after she shared a hilarious video of her and the cast singing on the bus as they headed to the last day on set of Our Girl.

Michelle enjoyed her last day of shooting in the Malaysian sunshine, as she shared a video of her dancing with shirtless hunks on the show on her Instagram stories.

Pin-flaunting: The fresh-faced actress highlighted her slender pins in a pair of skintight black Pink Soda leggings

Happy: She pushed her luggage-stacked trolley through the international arrivals terminal

Cosy: She teamed her pin-flaunting look with a cosy khaki-coloured USAF-sloganed hoodie which swamped her petite figure

The post came on the same day that Michelle's husband Mark Wright, 30, congratulated her for the eight months of filming, tweeting a tribute to his 'little trooper.'

Michelle shared the video of walking through the set in Malaysia, with several of her co-stars singing Spice Girls Wannabe behind her.

The actors had all removed their shirts for the appearance on set, clearly to try and keep cool in the sizzling Malaysian heat.

Hugging it out: Michelle hugged a family member after landing in the UK

All in the details: Grinning Michelle accessorised her relaxed look with a number of simple rings and bracelets while she worked her enviable brunette locks into a straight style

All smiles: Michelle couldn't contain her delight at being back in the UK

After eight months of filming Our Girl finally wrapped on Saturday, with Michelle's video showing the cast celebrating in style.

The BBC drama has already aired four of the twelve episodes, with the remaining yet to have a release date.

Michelle also posted a video of the cast singing in unison on a bus heading to the set, clearly thrilled at returning home after a long filming schedule.

Party hard! Her triumphant return comes after she shared a hilarious video of her and the cast singing on the bus as they headed to the last day on set of Our Girl

Support: The post came on the same day that Michelle's husband Mark Wright, 30, congratulated her for the eight months of filming, tweeting a tribute to his 'little trooper.'

Much love: Mark called wife Michelle his 'little trooper' in the adorable tweet, as the couple prepared to spend Christmas together

Michelle's video came as her husband Mark Wright showered the former Coronation Street star with praise for finally finishing Our Girl, after a gruelling filming schedule that saw shooting in Nepal, South Africa and Malaysia.

Tweeting a tribute to his wife, Mark said how excited he was to reunite with Michelle so they could spend Christmas together.

He said: 'Done. 8 months away from home, away from loved ones, working ridiculous hours in ridiculous conditions @michkeegan you amaze me more & more every day. Im so proud of you, words cant even explain. Its going to be the best Christmas ever !! I love you so much my little trooper x'

Mark has been working in Los Angeles as the new host of celebrity series Extra along with Mario Lopez, and it seems he will finally return to blighty to spend the festive season with his family.

Could be worse! In the video, Michelle can be seen singing and dancing to Spice Girls Wannabe with some of the shirtless cast in Malaysia

Smoking! Michelle joked around with some of the cast of the series as filming wrapped after eight months

Funny: Michelle appeared to get into the spirit as she messed around with some of the cast, ahead of reuniting with husband Mark Wright for the festive season

Energetic: The actors appeared to be enjoying the blazing Malaysian sunshine as shooting for the series came to a close

'Little trooper': Michelle's post came on the same day as husband Mark Wright tweeted a tribute to her ahead of them spending Christmas together

Michelle recently revealed that she had no idea she would be away for so long filming Our Girl, as she signed a contract for the third season before it was event commissioned.

Speaking to Radio 1 host Nick Grimshaw she said: 'I wasn't 100% there would be another series but I signed the option for there to be another. Obviously the first time it was for five episodes but this time it was for 12 so it's overly doubled.

'I didn't know that at the time either. It's been a long, long filming schedule. I was away for three months last time and this time I was in South Africa for three months and then I had three weeks off then I was in Malaysia for three months.

'So over all I was away for seven months. It was a long time being away from home. I had to do it, the contract was signed. Book me a flight!'

Reunited: Mark and Michelle have been together for five years, and tied the knot in 2015

Screen star: Michelle has been filming Our Girl's third series, with the first four episodes airing in October
She welcomed her first child Sunday Sky on November 2.

Despite bursting with love, Ferne McCann, 27, has revealed that she feared she wouldn't bond with her newborn daughter on Monday's This Morning.

Although voicing her concern, the former TOWIE star admitted her connection with Sunday was instantaneous and couldn't fathom a life without her being her mother.

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Instant: Ferne McCann, 27, has revealed that she feared she wouldn't bond with her newborn daughter on Monday's This Morning

Glowing during her appearance, she gushed: 'I felt like, imagine if my baby arrives and I dont feel that connection, because everyone speaks about this unconditional gush of love. Imagine if I didnt have that.

'I think its like a natural concern, I dont know, maybe its just me. But as soon as she arrived, and every minute that I spend with her, the love just grows so much.

Adding: 'And I think for me, this year it wasnt part of the plan to have a baby, but you cant plan life. It just happened. I wasnt the most maternal person, but now I feel so maternal. And Im just so in love with her.'

She revealed that Sunday has been a beacon of hope in the midst of a turbulent seven months following her former flame Arthur Collins' conviction while Holly Willoughby cuddled up to the newborn on the couch.

Cuddles: Show host Holly Willougby cuddled up to Ferne's little one Sunday on the couch

Bond: Although voicing her concern, the former TOWIE star admitted her connection with Sunday was instantaneous and couldn't fathom a life without her being her mother

Radiant: Glowing during her appearance, she gushed: 'I felt like, imagine if my baby arrives and I dont feel that connection, because everyone speaks about this unconditional gush of love. Imagine if I didnt have that

The arrival of her first baby on November 2 was a bittersweet moment, due to her ex partner's trial for a horrific acid attack.

The reality star discussed how her pregnancy proved to be the distraction she needed as she came to grips with her former flame Arthur Collins' part in a horrific nightclub acid attack in east London earlier this year.

She began: 'For me, there was always light at the end of the tunnel. It has been a turbulent seven months for me but I had something to look forward to. That was my focus.

'I needed to focus on keeping healthy, on not being stressed, and by doing that I was surrounding myself with friends and family, being busy, I kept on working.'

Hugs: Holly beamed as she cuddled Ferne's daughter

Cute: Both Holly and Phil cooed over the newborn as she made an appearance on Monday's show with Ferne

'Natural': She added: 'I think its like a natural concern, I dont know, maybe its just me. But as soon as she arrived, and every minute that I spend with her, the love just grows so much'

All smiles: She continued: 'And I think for me, this year it wasnt part of the plan to have a baby, but you cant plan life. It just happened. I wasnt the most maternal person, but now I feel so maternal. And Im just so in love with her'

Honest: The reality star discussed how her pregnancy proved to be the distraction she needed as she came to grips with her former flame Arthur Collins' part in a horrific nightclub acid attack in east London earlier this year

Last week, Ferne revealed that she has cried every day since her the baby's father Arthur was arrested for an acid attack in April in a teaser clip for her new reality series, First Time Mum.

Arthur was convicted of five counts of grievous bodily harm with intent and nine of actual bodily harm two weeks ago. He had committed the offence while out celebrating the news of Ferne's pregnancy.

He has been warned he could face life behind bars when he is sentenced on December 19.

According to The Sun, Ferne is understood to have told the father of her newborn daughter that she won't ever see him again after visiting him in prison.

'Focus': She began: 'For me, there was always light at the end of the tunnel. It has been a turbulent seven months for me but I had something to look forward to. That was my focus'

Busy: She added: 'I needed to focus on keeping healthy, on not being stressed, and by doing that I was surrounding myself with friends and family, being busy, I kept on working'

Upset: Last week, Ferne revealed that she has cried every day since her the baby's father Arthur was arrested for an acid attack in April in a teaser clip for her new reality series, First Time Mum

Pal: Ferne's pal Vicky Pattison appeared on Monday's show also

Chit chat: The former Queen of the Jungle was on to discuss I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!

Red alert! The Geordie Shore star looked ravishing in red on the couch

Picture perfect: The pals posed together with Sunday following her appearance

Ferne told Arthur: 'This is the last time you will see either of us' as she held their daughter, Sunday, during a visit to Category A Belmarsh prison in south London.

During the visit, the This Morning host told him: 'You have ruined our lives. This is what you have done. And this is what you are missing out on.'

Speaking about the dramatic visit, she told Sunday People: 'I went to see Arthur and I took Sunday with me. This was because I am very angry about what has happened and I needed to communicate that and wanted to hear what Arthur had to say.

Staying away: According to The Sun, Ferne is understood to have told the father of her newborn daughter that she won't ever see him again after visiting him in prison

Quirky: Now focusing on her beautiful bundle of joy, Ferne hit back at trolls who have criticised her daughter's quirky name while speaking to This Morning hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield

Name: 'Obviously whatever I was going to call her everyone would have their opinion,' she said. '(I) wasnt going to go for an original name, from the beginning I loved it'

'I strongly feel for the innocent people hurt that night and I in no way condone violence as I have already made clear. It was a difficult decision to take Sunday into that environment but I felt I needed to confront him about a number of things, which I have now done.'

Now focusing on her beautiful bundle of joy, Ferne hit back at trolls who have criticised her daughter's quirky name while speaking to This Morning hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield.

'Obviously whatever I was going to call her everyone would have their opinion,' she said. '(I) wasnt going to go for an original name, from the beginning I loved it.'

Thought process: Speaking about how she decided the unique name, the Essex beauty explained her love of actress Nicole Kidman and a face cleanser aided her thought process

Inspiration: She shared: 'There's a face cleanser with that name, know it sounds ridiculous, but I just loved the sound and the tone to it'

Speaking about how she decided the unique name, the Essex beauty explained her love of actress Nicole Kidman and a face cleanser aided her thought process.

She shared: 'There's a face cleanser with that name, know it sounds ridiculous, but I just loved the sound and the tone to it.

'(I) got obsessed with Big Little Lies with Nicole Kidman. (I) started googling her and saw she had a daughter called Sunday, and loved it. Her middle name is Sky so shes Sunday Sky.'
Their blissful five-year marriage is proof that age really is nothing but a number.

And Aaron Taylor-Johnson and his wife Sam continued to defy their age gap critics as they cosied up on the red carpet of The Trevor Project's TrevorLIVE LA Gala, sponsored by Three Olives Vodka at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday night.

Sam, 50, looked sensational in a demure green dress as she and her actor beau, 27, wrapped their arms around one another on their way into the event.

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Smitten kittens! Aaron Taylor-Johnson and his wife Sam continued to defy their age gap critics as they cosied up on the red carpet of The Trevor Project's TrevorLIVE LA Gala at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday night

The Fifty Shades director's ankle-length gown - which is by British fashion house The Vampire's Wife - made for a seriously stylish display with its shimmering fabric and ruffled hem and sleeves.

Sam oozed retro Hollywood glamour by allowing her blonde locks to cascade in elegant waves down one side of her face, before finishing the look with open-toe stilettos.

She injected a welcome pop of colour into the autumnal style with a striking red lipstick.

Fashionista: Sam, 50, looked sensational in a demure green dress as she and her actor beau, 27, wrapped their arms around one another on their way into the event

Her Godzilla star husband made for an equally suave fixture on the red carpet in a dapper grey suit that was offset with a lighter grey shirt and red tie.

The couple - who share daughters Wylda, seven, and Romy, five - appeared besotted with one another as they attended the bash, just months after Sam defended their relationship in a chat with The Hollywood Reporter.

Rightfully retaining that she doesn't care what people think or say about the situation, she said of their romance: 'If I gave a second thought to other people, I would be the unhappiest person, probably still in a miserable marriage,' she explained defiantly.

Fancy seeing you here! The couple mingle with Aaron's Nocturnal Animal's co-star Isla Fisher inside the bash

'People like to talk about it. I'm like, "Yeah, but it works better than my last marriage". It's lasted longer than a lot of my friends' marriages.'

Meanwhile, last night's event saw the couple mingle with Aaron's Nocturnal Animal's co-star Isla Fisher.

TrevorLIVE is a signature semi-annual fundraising event which offers a celebratory evening of impact and awareness for the suicide prevention resources and crisis intervention services offered by The Trevor Project.

Good cause: TrevorLIVE is a signature semi-annual fundraising event which offers a celebratory evening of impact and awareness for the suicide prevention
Joanna Krupa and Aubrey O'Day both sported large sunglasses, grey sweatshirts, and high-top sneakers as they landed at LAX Airport in Los Angeles together on Sunday.

The Polish 38-year-old opted for braids and blue skinny jeans, while the 33-year-old California native wore her extensions down along with black leggings.

The blonde duo are both single following Joanna's divorce from nightclub owner Romain Zago on August 17, and Aubrey's split from Famously Single leading man Pauly D in July.

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Twinning: Aubrey O'Day (L) and Joanna Krupa (R) both sported large sunglasses, grey sweatshirts, and high-top sneakers as they landed at LAX Airport in LA together on Sunday

Jet setters: The 33-year-old California native wore her extensions down along with black leggings, while the Polish 38-year-old opted for braids and blue skinny jeans

Krupa - who boasts 3.3M followers - tweeted an in-flight snap of their seatmates former NSYNC boybander Lance Bass with husband Michael Turchin and The Real's Adrienne Houghton with husband Israel Houghton.

O'Day was next to Shannon Bex, with whom she formed the duo Dumblonde in 2015 after they disbanded Diddy-led Danity Kane for the second time.

It's unclear precisely where the gang had jetted from, but the White Lightning songstress recently shared a snap of herself at La Cantera Resort & Spa in San Antonio.

'My love': The blonde duo are single following Joanna's divorce from nightclub owner Romain Zago on August 17, and Aubrey's split from Famously Single leading man Pauly D in July

'This is how we roll!' Krupa tweeted an in-flight snap of their seatmates former NSYNC boybander Lance Bass with husband Michael Turchin (front) and The Real's Adrienne Houghton with husband Israel Houghton (second row)

Girl group: O'Day was next to Shannon Bex (L), with whom she formed the duo Dumblonde in 2015 after they disbanded Diddy-led Danity Kane for the second time

The Celebrity Big Brother 18 contestant - who now fronts controversial 'teatox' Flat Tummy - struck a sultry pose in a red cut-out Hot Miami Styles jumpsuit and Unekform choker.

Meanwhile, the Battle of the Network Stars contestant will next play a nurse who instructs lifeguards on CPR called Stacy in Jeffery Patterson's 2018 family flick Another Day in Paradise alongside Frankie Muniz and Brendan Robinson.

The Hollywood Medium guest star - who's defended accused sexual harasser Jeremy Piven - also recently opened a beauty retreat The Secret Avenue in Gdansk.

'Waiting for my uber like': It's unclear precisely where the gang had jetted from, but the White Lightning songstress shared a snap of herself at La Cantera Resort & Spa in San Antonio

'Swimin in milk n honey': The Celebrity Big Brother 18 contestant struck a sultry pose in a red cut-out Hot Miami Styles jumpsuit and Unekform choker
They jetted out of Los Angeles for a sun-soaked trip to the Mexican resort of Cabo San Lucas on Saturday.

But it seems it was more than just a romantic getaway for Channing Tatum and his beautiful wife Jenna Dewan-Tatum.

She celebrated her 37th birthday on Sunday and the hunky Magic Mike star took to Twitter and Instagram to send her all his love on her special day.

'Happy life day, my love': Channing Tatum wished his wife Jenna Tatum-Dewan a happy 37th birthday in a touching caption to this beautiful snap he posted on Sunday

He posted a beautiful black and white snap of her captioned: 'This creature is 1 more year beautiful.

'The transformation she invoked this year has been something they only write about in books of fairytale & magic. Your strength & grace ever evolving.

'You make everything around you grow. So grateful for your lessons. Happy life day my love.'

Life's a beach: Tatum took Jenna to the Mexican resort of Cabo San Lucas for her birthday and she woke up on Sunday to see this message in the sand that she posted on social media

Jetting out: They looked relaxed when they arrived at LAX for their flight to Mexico on Saturday

And the actress thanked her husband, also 37, and all her fans for their messages in a snap she posted of herself on the beach with the words Happy Birthday Jenna written in the sand.

She captioned it: 'This year has been 1 ill never forget. Challenging, beautiful & wonderfully expansive all at the same time.

'But I know that every experience you have is here for your own growth. When viewed that way, the magic of life will show you the way. Thx for my birthday wishes!!'

Soaking up the sun: Jenna stripped off to a bikini top and a wrap at the beach resort

Margarita time: She posted this saucy selfie in her Instagram Story

Meanwhile, their four-year-old daughter Everly didn't appear to be on their romantic break with them.

It's 12 year since the couple sizzled in their sexy dance routines for the movie, Step Up.

They began dating shortly after filming had finished and got married on July 11, 2009, at Church Estates Vineyards in Malibu.
He is best known for playing the suited and booted Don Draper in the Emmy award-winning series Mad Men.

But Jon Hamm was worlds away from his famous alter-ego on Monday, as he jogged around Battersea Park as part of filming for new series Good Omens.

The actor, 46, slipped into a casual grey tracksuit as he sprinted around the park in his Archangel Gabriel character - who is soon disturbed by Michael Sheen's Aziraphale in the undoubtedly funny scene.

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Giving him a run for his money: Jon Hamm jogged around Battersea Park with Michael Sheen on Monday, as part of filming for new TV series Good Omens

Jon certainly looked the part in a simple grey jumper and matching tracksuit bottoms, as his character embarked on a fitness session in London.

Adding comfortable white trainers to his feet, the heartthrob was seen picking up speed in front of the cameras - before he was rudely interrupted by the angel Aziraphale, played by Michael Sheen.

As one of the most powerful characters in the TV series, the actor, 48, cut a more formal figure in a waistcoat, suit trousers and bow tie as he joined the Archangel on his run, in order to talk with him privately.

Don Draper no more: Mad Men star Jon certainly looked the part in a simple grey jumper and matching tracksuit bottoms, as his character embarked on a fitness session in London

Working up a sweat: Adding comfortable white trainers to his feet, the heartthrob was seen filming a number of shots of him running for the scene, as his Archangel Gabriel character

Distrubed: He was later interrupted by the angel Aziraphale, played by Michael Sheen (R), who cut a more formal figure in a waistcoat, suit trousers and bow tie

Unrecognisable: Michael had also dyed his hair bright white to transform him into his angel character Aziraphale

Michael had also dyed his hair bright white to transform him into his angel character, to contrast the demon Crowley, played by David Tennant.

The acting duo appeared deep in conversation and pulled a number of animate faces as they jogged around the park for the scene, set to appear in the Good Omens remake next year.

Jon was confirmed to be part of the star-studded cast on Thursday - and gave fans the first glimpse of his exciting Archangel Gabriel character.

Joining the fray: Jon was confirmed to be part of the star-studded cast on Thursday - and gave fans the first glimpse of his exciting Archangel Gabriel character

The 46-year-old heartthrob looked angelic in a pale blue coat and matching polo neck as he smoldered in front of the camera.

The American actor looked his usual dapper self, pairing his outerwear with fitted suit trousers and slung a powder blue scarf casually around his neck.

The all-blue ensemble is no doubt in keeping with his character as the lead angel, who acts as an antithesis to Michael Sheens character, Aziraphale, and David Tennants devillish Crowley.

Star-studded cast: Good Omens is based on the late fantasy author's book, which tells the story of angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley who team up to stop the birth of Satan

His coiffed locks were peppered with a touch of grey as filming got under way for the TV series.

Good Omens co-author Neil Gaman shared the snap on his Twitter page captioning it: 'So for you, for me, for all of us. FOR PEOPLE NOT YET BORN.

'This is what Jon Hamm looks like as the Angel Gabriel in the upcoming TV series of GOOD OMENS. A thing of beauty, and a joy for ever.'

Quite the transformation: From 1960s drama to an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Good Omens, Jon Hamm has made quite the transformation

Best known: He still best known as Donald Draper from the hit TV show

Hamm will join the likes of David Tennant and Jack Whitehall in a star-studded cast for the six-part series, produced for Amazon Prime.

Good Omens is based on the late fantasy author's book, which tells the story of angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley who team up to stop the birth of Satan.

Miranda Richardson and Michael McKean are also starring in the series.

The series is co-produced by BBC Two and Amazon. With filming just starting, the adaptation will not air until 2018.
Earlier this year, she was spotted locking lips with Naomi Watts as they shot passionate scenes for their Netflix show Gypsy.

But on Monday, Sophie Cookson, 27, travelled back in time as she stepped out in period costume for her titular role in the World War II-era spy drama Red Joan.

Clutching a hot water bottle to keep herself warm between scenes, the British actress covered up in a stylish long coat as she got into character on the decidedly chilly streets of Cambridge.

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Busy day at work: Sophie Cookson was spotted on the set of her upcoming film Red Joan in Cambridge on Monday

She was seen wearing a stylish outfit that included a long lilac coat, flowing grey skirt, knitted striped scarp, green gingham blouse and a burgundy beret.

In between takes - which saw her character attend a rally - she shielded her face from the notably chilly climes while walking through the streets and sitting on an outdoor bench as she read through her script.

Clad in a green coat, her co-star Tereza Srbova, 34, also appeared to be struggling with the cold, clutching a water bottle as to her chest while wrapping her body in a powder blue bathrobe and covering her head with a knitted grey beanie hat.

Staving off the chill: The actress wrapped herself up between takes in a bid to stave off the chill

Cover: As she stepped out in 1930s costume, the 27-year-old kept her nose and mouth covered

Mock: She was joined by her co-star Tereza Srbova as they did a mock run of a protest scene

Read-through: As she read through her lines, she sat beside another co-star, Tom Hughes

Warm toes: She threw on a pair of fluffy boots to keep her feet warm during the chilly shoot

Extra warmth: Despite her costume looking warm enough, Sophie threw on a thick overcoat

Friendly chat: She was seen enjoying a friendly chat with a member of the makeup crew on set

In the movie, Oxford School of Drama graduate Sophie plays the young Joan Stanley, a woman who went on to become the KGB's longest-serving British spy.

The script is an adaptation of Jennie Rooneys eponymous 2014 novel, which itself took inspiration from the true story of Melita Norwood, whose role within the Russian organisation wasn't unmasked until she was 87 years old.

Dame Judi Dench, 82, will play the elder Joan, whose peaceful life as a retired physicist is turned upside down when she receives a visit from the MI5 in 2000.

Sophie's portion of the film shows her as a student at Cambridge University, who falls in love with a communist and is later torn between her loyalty to her home country and serving the KGB as she joins Britain's secret nuclear programme.

Bottle: Tereza stepped her efforts up another notch, carrying a hot water bottle on the set

Robe: The 34-year-old actress also wrapped a thick powder blue bathrobe around her waist

Friendly face in the crowd: The Czech beauty beamed as she enjoyed a chat during downtime

Layers: Like Sophie, she also threw a padded coat on over her period costume between takes

Taking direction: The actress was seen chatting with director Trevor Nunn in between takes

While his role in the Trevor Nunn-directed film has not been officially announced, it is believed that Victoria heartthrob Tom Hughes, 31, portrays Joan's love interest.

Despite her busy roster of screen projects - and winning acclaim in her psychological thriller Gypsy - Sussex and Suffolk-raised Sophie recently revealed that she holds a strong desire to tread the boards of London's West End.

'In the next five years, Id absolutely love to do theatre,' she told Interview magazine for its June issue. 'I went to drama school and thats where the focus lies. Id definitely like to do that before the fear sets in.

'We studied so much Shakespeare in drama school and Id like to go back to that. Id really throw myself into something that would probably petrify me. Tennessee Williams. Something juicy.'

Rally: During the shoot, Tom Hughes was seen leading a rally as a crew captured the action

Snap: A touch of modern life crept in on the set when he took some time out to pose for a selfie

Plot: In the movie, Oxford School of Drama graduate Sophie plays the young Joan Stanley, a woman who went on to become the KGB's longest-serving British spy

True story: The script is an adaptation of Jennie Rooneys eponymous 2014 novel, which itself took inspiration from the true story of Melita Norwood

Late unmasking: It tells the story of an elderly woman whose role within the Russian organisation KGB wasn't unmasked until she was 87 years old
She is four months pregnant with her first child - and announced the exciting news just a matter of weeks ago.

And Casey Batchelor looked positively radiant as she flaunted her burgeoning bump at the Quaill pushchair launch in London on Monday.

The 33-year-old nailed maternity chic in a figure-hugging crimson midi-dress, in which she showed off her pregnancy curves.

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Glamorous: Casey Batchelor looked positively radiant as she showed off her burgeoning baby bump in a crimson bodycon dress in London on Monday

The former Celebrity Big Brother star looked every inch of the yummy mummy-to-be as she cradled her bump in the rouge dress, which fell just below the knee, showing off a glimpse of her tanned legs.

She added a boost to her height with a pair of patent black heeled boots and accessorised her glamorous outfit with a cascading gold necklace.

Casey styled her raven black tresses in loose waves and opted for fluttery eyelashes and a nude lip at the pushchair launch.

Maternity chic: The Celebrity Big Brother star looked every inch of the yummy mummy-to-be as she cradled her bump in the rouge dress, which showed off a glimpse of her tanned legs

Braving the November chill, the former glamour model wrapped up in a chic nude coat and completed the look with a Louis Vuitton tote bag.

Casey, who is expecting her first child with boyfriend Dane Goodman, looked like she couldn't wait to be a mum as she searched for the perfect pram.

The reality star recently admitted she didn't know she was pregnant at first.

Speaking to Closer magazine, the former CBB starlet admitted: 'We'd only started trying. I thought I was bloated and I'd been to the doctors for some tests - I cried because I thought something was wrong with me!'

Stylish: Braving the November chill, the former glamour model wrapped up in a chic nude coat and completed the look with a Louis Vuitton tote bag

Blossoming bump: She added a boost to her height with a pair of patent black heeled boots and accessorized her glamorous outfit with a cascading gold necklace

First-time mum: Casey, who is expecting her first child with boyfriend Dane Goodman, searched for the perfect pram for her baby

The busty brunette, who had a breast reduction in 2014 to bring her 32GG bust down to a 32EE, also admitted her 'boobs are out of control' now that she's pregnant as they've been growing at a rapid rate.

Casey, who has kept her romance with her beau tightly under wraps for 18 months, finally believes she has 'found her prince'.

An insider divulged to The Sun that Casey was 'overjoyed' at the prospect of becoming a mum  revealing she had previously considered freezing her eggs as she thought her 'happy ending would never come'.

Of the pregnancy news, a source told the publication: 'Its been a long time coming for Casey whos had such bad luck with guys she was considering freezing her eggs because she thought her happy ending would never happen.

'But it really was love at first sight for her and Dane and a year and a half on they are overjoyed about becoming parents. She really believes shes finally found her prince and loves hes someone completely separate from the industry.'

Surprise: The reality star recently admitted she didn't know she was pregnant at first
Meek Mill will remain in jail after being denied bail by a Philadelphia judge Friday.

The Philly-bred rapper's bid for freedom was refused after judge Genece Brinkley determined the RICO hitmaker a 'flight risk' and 'a danger to the community.'

Mill's attorney says they plan to appeal her ruling, saying it continues a 'long pattern of unfair treatment.'

A legal setback: Meek Mill will remain in jail after being denied bail by a Philadelphia judge Friday (above November 4) who said the rapper 'a danger to the community' and a flight risk

The Whatever You Need rhymer and lawyers are currently trying to overturn the celeb's - real name Robert Rihmeek Williams - two to four year prison sentence for violating his probation.

Fighting back: The rapper is trying to overturn the celeb's 2 to 4 year sentence violating his probation. His mugshot is above

The chart-topping rapper's probation officer and a prosecutor had recommended he not be jailed.

But during the hearing judge Brinkley also suggested that Meek's clean drug test was suspect, explaining the 30-year-old could have had help from a 'detox' product known as 'fast flush.'

Her decision comes after the state Superior Court last week told her to act 'without further delay' on a two-week-old request to free the rapper.

Mill was sentenced last month for violating probation initially stemming from a 2008 drug and gun conviction, for which he served eight months and was put on five-year probation.

Mill breached the terms of this probation in 2015 by booking an out of state concert without getting the court's permission and not giving his probation officer his correct phone number. As a result he was jailed for five months and his probation was extended for five more years.

However this past year he was arrested twice - for allegedly assaulting an airport employee, and reckless endangerment after he was filmed speeding and doing stunts on a motorcycle on a New York street.

Despite both cases being dropped in court, they were taken as evidence of probation violation by the judge.

Even playing field? Mill's attorneys (Brian McMonagle seen with the star above on November 4) say they plan to appeal her ruling, saying it continues a 'long pattern of unfair treatment'

Against recommendations: Though the star's probation officer and the prosecuting attorney had recommended he not be jailed, judge Genece Brinkley denied the rapper's (performing in September above) request for bail

Mill's imprisonment sparked backlash in opinion pieces, rallies, billboards and bus ads.

Many fellow celebs have taken up his cause.

After receiving what many thought to be a wildly unfair sentence on November 4, Jay Z used his 20million follower Facebook page to speak out.

'The sentence handed down by the Judge -- against the recommendation of the Assistant District Attorney and Probation Officer -- is unjust and heavy handed,' he wrote.

'We will always stand by and support Meek Mill, both as he attempts to right this wrongful sentence and then in returning to his musical career,' the message concluded.

Speaking out against injustice: After receiving what many thought to be a wildly unfair sentence on November 4, Jay Z (seen with the rapper in a Monday Instagram) used his 20million follower Facebook page to speak out

#FreeMeekMill: The Black Album rhymer wrote 'We will always stand by and support Meek Mill, both as he attempts to right this wrongful sentence and then in returning to his musical career' in the stirring post

Comedian Kevin Hart was also among the first to send Meek support.

'Praying for my brother @meekmill right now. God sometimes puts the toughest battles on his strongest soldiers. I'm here for you man!!!! My brother for life...Always here for you man!!! This storm will pass...Stay strong & keep your head up,' he wrote on Instagram.

Rapper Nipsey Hussle, Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Torrey Smith, and DJ Envy also spoke out in support of Meek.

The All Eyes On You rapper famously dated rap royalty Nikki Minaj, briefly igniting a high-profiled feud with Canadian superstar Drake which was ostensibly about the Pink Print princess.
She's spent much of the year travelling around Europe and the Middle East.

But Lindsay Lohan touched back down on American soil on Monday, as she landed in NYC from Dubai.

The 31-year-old actress was casually chic in skinny jeans and leather boots as she made her way through the arrivals terminal at JFK Airport.

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She's back! Lindsay Lohan was spotted at JFK airport in New York on Monday after jetting in from Dubai

Lindsay slipped her slim frame into cuffed jeans, which she teamed with a classic padded jacket and sleek leather ankle boots.

The Mean Girls star wrapped up warm with a black scarf, but still donned a pair of large dark sunglasses in a typically glamorous touch.

She wore her long blonde tresses in a low ponytail and opted for minimal make-up to prove her clear complexion to all as she made her way through the terminal with her suitcase.

Jet setter: The 31-year-old actress looked stylish in dark layers, teaming a padded jacket with cuffed jeans and black booties

In the hood: The Mean Girls star donned large dark sunglasses and wore her long blonde tresses in a low ponytail

In an Instagram posted last month, Lindsay revealed that she will be spending Christmas in Thailand.

The blonde beauty posed in a plunging floral swimsuit beside a swimming pool and wrote: 'Such a beautiful experience here in #Phuket excited for Christmas at my favourite resort!!'

Meanwhile, Lindsay recently claimed 'no-one' cared when she accused her former fiance Egor Tarabasov of abusing her.

Brace yourself! New York is considerably colder than Dubai this time of year

Wanderlust: Lindsay has spent much of the year gallivanting around Europe and The Middle East

The Parent Trap star previously alleged that her former partner - whom she split with in 2016 - had hit her, and accused him of attacking her during a vacation on a Greek island, which he later denied.

The star has since slammed Hollywood for turning a blind eye to her allegations, despite actors and actresses banding together to condemn disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, after it was alleged he sexually harassed a number of women over a 30-year period.

Lindsay - who was recently criticised for standing up for 65-year-old Harvey - posted a screenshot of herself from the 1998 movie The Parent Trap on Instagram and wrote 'Whatever anyone says, I am FOR #womenempowerment as if most women in America cared how I was abused by my ex-fiancewhen not one person stood up for me while he was abusing me (sic)'

Just before leaving Dubai Lindsay shared this snap writing 'Happy 46th National Day UAE'

Heading back east: In this Instagram she posted last month, Lindsay revealed that she will be spending Christmas in Thailand

Lindsay has since amended the caption and removed all mentions of abuse allegations, so it now reads: Whatever anyone says, I am FOR #womenempowerment#strongwoman #BESTRONG #karma will always takes its toll #womensrights (sic)'

The star's comments come after she defended Weinstein in a series of now-deleted posts on her Instagram story, in which she blasted his wife Georgina Chapman for announcing she has left him in the wake of the allegations against him.

Lindsay said: 'Hi, this is Lindsay Lohan. I'm in Dubai, I'm home, and I feel very bad for Harvey Weinstein right now, I don't think it's right what's going on.

'I think Georgina needs to take a stand and be there for her husband.

'And he's never harmed me or did anything wrong to me. We've done several movies together, and so I think everyone needs to stop. I think it's wrong. So stand up.'
Ever since she was queened Miss Chelyabinsk 2004 at age 18, Irina Shayk has dreamed of landing her first Italian Vogue cover, which will finally hit newsstands this Tuesday.

'I am beyond excited to reveal our cover!' the Russian 31-year-old - who boasts 17.3M social media followers - wrote.

'[I'm] so [grateful] to everyone who believed in me on this journey, and to the incredibly talented @mertalas & @macpiggott for always bringing out the absolute best in me. Lastly to my agent @alikavoussi for always believing in me no matter what. I love you guys!'

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Table top: Ever since she was queened Miss Chelyabinsk 2004 at age 18, Irina Shayk has dreamed of landing her first Italian Vogue cover, which will finally hit newsstands this Tuesday

The 5ft10in catwalker had her hair coiffed by Odile Gilbert and her make-up applied by Lisa Eldridge for the Mert and Marcus-shot spread.

The Celebration Issue has two alternative covers featuring Irina's Russian rival Natalia Vodianova as well as the fierce foursome - Joan Smalls, Anja Rubik, Cat Mcneil, and Jamie Bochert.

Shayk (born Shaykhlislamova) and four-time Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper will reportedly 'try for a sibling' for their nine-month-old daughter Lea De Seine 'next year.'

'Both her and Bradley want another baby. They will be trying next year. Irina loves being a mother,' a source told E! News on November 9.

The Russian 31-year-old wrote: 'I am beyond excited to reveal our cover! '[I'm] so [grateful] to everyone who believed in me on this journey' (pictured October 18)

Which one is best? The Celebration Issue has two alternative covers featuring Irina's Russian rival Natalia Vodianova (L); as well as (R) Joan Smalls, Anja Rubik, Cat Mcneil, and Jamie Bochert

'Irina's mother and Bradley's mother spend a lot of time with them and they help out [with Lea] when Irina and Bradley are busy with work.'

The Philadelphia-born 42-year-old will next reprise his role as Guardians of the Galaxy's genetically-modified raccoon Rocket in Avengers: Infinity War, which hits UK theaters April 27 and US theaters May 4.

Meanwhile, the brunette bombshell has been this week busy modeling for an unknown clothing company in Miami.

'Both her and Bradley want another baby': Shayk (born Shaykhlislamova) and four-time Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper will reportedly 'try for a sibling' for their nine-month-old daughter Lea De Seine 'next year' (pictured July 10)
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The fate of Netflix hit House Of Cards became uncertain after sexual abuse allegation against lead actor Kevin Spacey caused producers to put shooting of the show on an indefinite hiatus.

But series fans can now rejoice, as production on the sixth season of the political drama is set to start shooting in early 2018 without the 58-year-old star.

The happy HoC news was confirmed by Netflix exec Ted Sarandos Monday at a media conference in NYC.

The final eight-episode season will focus on Robin Wrights character Claire Underwood, according to Variety.

Home sweet home! House Of Cards will begin shooting without star Kevin Spacey in early 2018. The show's return comes after an emergency hiatus put in place after sexual assault allegations against the actor (above with co-star Robin Wright) emerged in late October

The Chief Content Officer for the movie streaming service said that the eight-episode arc will 'bring closure' for fans of the shrewd political series.

Season six will be a bit briefer than its predecessors.

The show's five previous outings were 13 episodes a piece.

Originally producers hoped that shooting of the Emmy winning show would be back in action post-Thanksgiving but it looks like that cameras won't start rolling until the start of 2018.

Pressing pause: The fate of Netflix hit House Of Cards became uncertain after sexual abuse allegation against lead actor Kevin Spacey (above October 27) caused producers to put shooting of the show on an indefinite hiatus

It takes a village! Sarandos (above in October) also explained that it was important for the the show to continue so the some-2000 Baltimore-area workers and artisans who make HoC happen could return to work

While the series is one of Netflix's flagship productions, Sarandos also explained that it was important for the the show to continue so the some-2000 Baltimore-area workers and artisans who make House Of Cards happen could return to their jobs.

House Of Cards is hoping to move on without the shadow cast by the sexual assault scandals surrounding lead Kevin Spacey.

The star, who plays president Frank Underwood in the show, came under scrutiny after a late October expose accused him of forcing himself upon actor Anthony Rapp when he was only 14 years old.

Production on House Of Cards was subsequently paused October 31 following the story, published by Buzzfeed.

A scandal exposed: Spacey came under scrutiny after a late October expose accused him of forcing himself upon actor Anthony Rapp (above October 7) when he was only 14 years old

After the story broke MRC Studios, the company who oversees the show, promptly suspended Spacey.

Netflix followed suit, stating it would 'not be involved with any further production of House Of Cards that includes Kevin Spacey.'

Cards made history back in 2013 when it was the first web-only series to earn an Emmy nod.

Since then the drama has taken home seven statues, including Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series and several categories from the Creative Arts ceremony.
She is the daughter of legendary supermodel Cindy Crawford, and one of the rising stars of the high-fashion world.

And Kaia Gerber dazzled as she made an uber-stylish appearance at the British Fashion Awards 2017 at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Monday.

The catwalk sensation, 16, made a stylish sartorial statement in a powder blue halterneck two-piece which featured dazzling pearl and silver embellishments.

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Model behaviour: Kaia Gerber dazzled as she made an uber-stylish appearance at the British Fashion Awards 2017 at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Monday

The IMG model wowed in the couture outfit, which featured statement flared sleeves on the cold-shoulder top paired with an elegant tiered skirt

She accentuated her height in powder blue pumps with a diamante heel.

Looking the spitting image of her supermodel mother Cindy, Kaia looked fresh-faced with a faint rose blush, a glossy nude lip and lashings of mascara.

She finished her sartorially savvy outfit with oversized stud earrings by Messika jewellery with her brunette mane styled into a deep side parting with subtly curled ends.

Teen catwalk qyeen: The catwalk sensation, 16, made a stylish sartorial statement in a powder blue halterneck two-piece which featured dazzling pearl and silver embellishments

Dazzling display:Looking the spitting image of her supermodel mother Cindy, Kaia looked fresh-faced with a faint rose blush, a glossy nude lip and lashings of mascara

Show-stopper: She finished her dazzling outfit with oversized studs as her brunette mane was styled into a deep side parting with subtly curled ends

Matching the glamour with her fellow attendees, Kaia was joined by pop sensation Selena Gomez, television presenter Caroline Flack and model Poppy Delevingne.

In partnership with Swarovski, the star-studded event centres on the creativity expressed in fashion within the past year.

The fashionable appearance at the awards followed her low-key display at LAX airport on Friday, as she paired cropped bottoms with a plaid jacket and fitted beanie.

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Fresh-faced: Kaia, who made her fashion week debut this year, posed with aplomb

Statement style: Kaia flashed a delighted smile as she posed on the red carpet in glittering heels

Fashion favourites : Kaia posed with glamorous Victoria's Secret Angel Stella Maxwell

Everywhere's a catwalk: Kaia looked relaxed and happy as she left the star-studded event

Glitter: The stunning pearl embellishments on Kaia's dress caught the light as she waited for a ride home

Jet set style: Kaia was spotted in casual wear while arriving at LAX on Friday

The teenager chose classic black bottoms as she layered a white T-shirt with a monochromatic plaid flannel.

Kaia made her way inside the airport while rocking black and white sneakers, as she covered her dark brown tresses in a 'I Love New York' emblazoned beanie.

She added a touch of glam with a black and silver Alexander Wang bag.

Last week, Kaia shared a radiant selfie to her Instagram page, much to the delight of her 2.4 million Instagram followers.

The star also recently shared a gorgeous photo of herself with her supermodel mom Cindy.

She's making the airport her runway: The 16-year-old model paired cropped bottoms with a plaid top and beanie for her flight

Wow factor: Last week, Kaia shared a stunning selfie to her Instagram page, much to the delight of her 2.4 million Instagram followers

Cindy told The Cut in a recent story that her daughter is a fan of her beauty regime.

Adding: 'The good thing is that shes grown up with seeing how I take care of myself, so I dont really have to say that much to her.'

'Shes seen me going to bed early if I have an early call the next day or waking up early to squeeze in a workout,' the 51-year-old legend said.

Cindy concluded: 'Maybe its just my kids, but they act like theyre not listening to what you say, so I have to live by example.'
He looked like he'd been mugged as he walked across a parking lot in Los Angeles with blood pouring from his forehead.

But no need to worry about Chris Pine.

The actor was filming TNT's new six-part drama One Day She'll Darken, based on the real-life of Fauna Hodel.

Great act: Chris Pine looked like he'd been mugged as he walked across a parking lot in Los Angeles with blood pouring from his forehead and splattered all over his white coat

The 33-year-old plays Jay Singletary, a former Marine-turned-hack reporter probing the case of Fauna Hodel, who was given away by her white teenage mother to a black restroom attendant in a Nevada casino in 1949.

The sinister trail leads him to infamous Hollywood gynecologist, Dr. George Hodel, a suspect in the infamous Black Dahlia murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles in 1947.

Chris, wearing a blood-spattered blue shirt and black pants with his tie loosened around his neck, shrugged off an equally gory white hospital coat as he walked back to his car.

All fake: The 33-year-old is filming TNT mini-series One Day She'll Darken about the mysterious early life of Fauna Hodel

More gore: Blood seemed to be streaming from his forehead and both his eyes looked as if they had been beaten shut as he stripped off what appeared to be a hospital coat

Tough case: The actor is playing a Marine-turned-reporter probing the story of Fauna Hodel, who was given away by her white teen mom to a black restroom attendant in a casino in 1949

The Star Trek star is also a producer on the bio series, based on Fauna's bestseller of the same name, due to air next year.

Meanwhile, Chris will next be seen on the big screen in magical mystery A Wrinkle In Time, with Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey and Mindy Kaling, due out on February 3.

He recently wrapped filming on Netflix's Outlaw King, in which he plays the great 14th century Scottish leader Robert The Bruce who fought the English monarchy, which has yet to set a release date.

On the trail: His probe leads him to infamous Hollywood gynecologist, Dr. George Hodel, a suspect in the infamous Black Dahlia murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles in 1947

Time to change: Chris carried his messed up coat back across the parking lot

Chris has thriller All The Old Knives in preproduction in which he stars opposite Michelle Williams as CIA operatives, and former lovers.

They reunite at Carmel-by-the-Sea in California to re-examine an old mission where a fellow agent might have been compromised.

And, of course, he's set to go boldly back into space as Captain James T. Kirk in the as-yet-unnamed third sequel of the rebooted Star Trek film franchise.

Boldly going: Chris is signed up to reprise his role as Captain James T. Kirk in the upcoming Star Trek movie. Here he's seen in 2016's Star Trek: Beyond with the late Anton Yelchin

New movie: The actor will next be seen on the big screen in magical mystery A Wrinkle In Time, with Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey and Mindy Kaling, due out on February 3
She's the stunning model known for her rocking body.

But Natalie Roser has admitted that she has suffered body confidence issues in the past.

Appearing on the January cover of Women's Health magazine, the 27-year-old admitted that she has 'always had doubts' about her physique.

'There have always been doubts': Natalie Roser admits she's had body confidence issues as she stuns on the cover of Women's Health magazine

'My body confidence is good now, but there have always been doubts  if you don't get a job, you think, 'Is it because my measurements are bigger than the girl who did?' Natalie told the publication.

'Little things play on your mind. But I learnt pretty quickly that it's not necessarily me; it's about what the client is looking for to represent their brand.

'Once I realised that perhaps I just didn't fit the bikinis or clothes the way they wanted, I relaxed and started to take care of myself for me,' she continued.

Doubts: 'My body confidence is good now, but there have always been doubts  if you don't get a job, you think, 'Is it because my measurements are bigger than the girl who did?' Natalie told the publication

Not that the model has issues anymore, while holidaying in the Philippines recently Natalie ditched half of her skimpy outfit in favour of her own hands.

The topless picture, which was uploaded to Natalie's Instagram, shows the blonde beauty standing knee-deep in crystal clear water and looking downward seductively.

Suns out, tops off! Natalie recently posted this raunchy snap on her Instagram page

Her washboard abs were on full display with a pair of polka-dot bikini bottoms the only fabric to be seen.

The stunner has been uploading a series of bikini and lingerie images from her latest campaigns in recent days, giving her 880,000 followers something to talk about.

Meanwhile, Natalie recently revealed the secrets behind her incredible figure.

Can't get enough! The stunner has been uploading a series of bikini and lingerie images from her latest campaigns in recent days

She reportedly has had an alkaline cleanse and success in kicking an 'eating and sugar addiction' to thank for her glowing summer-ready body.

Natalie moved to Melbourne earlier this year to spend more time with her Neighbours star beau, Harley Bonner, who often features in her pictures.

The couple confirmed their romance in February and have appeared inseparable ever since.
The Academy put their most embarrassing, awkward mistake from last year's awards at the center of the first preview for the 90th annual ceremony airing March 4 on ABC.

'There's only one season that's better - Oscar season,' the commercial announced.

'We do it better. Better skills. Better thrills. Better chills. The best glamour, movies, sizzle. Bigger moments. Better surprises. The biggest honor.'

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Owning it: The Academy put their most embarrassing, awkward mistake from last year's awards at the center of the first preview for the 90th annual ceremony airing March 4 on ABC

Global accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers took the blame for giving Bonnie and Clyde co-stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the best actress envelope rather than best picture backstage.

When La La Land was mistakenly announced the winner instead of Moonlight, the resulting scramble onstage the Dolby Theatre of the live telecast was arguably more shocking than hilarious.

Oscar envelope guardians Martha Ruiz and Brian Cullinan were not fired, but Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs added a third balloting partner and banned distracting cellphones backstage - according to The Guardian.

The commercial announced: 'There's only one season that's better - Oscar season. We do it better. Better skills. Better thrills. Better chills. The best glamour, movies, sizzle. Bigger moments. Better surprises. The biggest honor'

'Warren, what did you do?' Global accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers took the blame for giving Bonnie and Clyde co-stars Faye Dunaway (L) and Warren Beatty (R) the best actress envelope rather than best picture backstage

Not that funny: When La La Land was mistakenly announced the winner instead of Moonlight, the resulting scramble onstage the Dolby Theatre of the live telecast was arguably more shocking than hilarious

Back for more: Oscar envelope guardians Martha Ruiz (L) and Brian Cullinan (R) were not fired, but Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs added a third balloting partner and banned distracting cellphones backstage

Early contenders earning Oscar buzz includes Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, Steven Spielberg's The Post, Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, and Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name.

And Jordan Peele can expect some love for his critically-lauded directorial debut - the racially-charged horror gem, Get Out.

Best actress frontrunner Frances McDormand will likely receive a nod as grieving divorced mother Mildred Hayes in Martin McDonagh's black dramedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Early contenders: Oscar buzz surrounds Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, Steven Spielberg's The Post, Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, and Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name (pictured)

Rare bid in the horror genre: And Jordan Peele can expect some love for his critically-lauded directorial debut - the racially-charged horror gem, Get Out

Best actress frontrunner: Frances McDormand (R) will likely receive a nod as grieving divorced mother Mildred Hayes in Martin McDonagh's black dramedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best actor frontrunner: Gary Oldman has his make-up/hair team to thank - David Malinowski, Lucy Sibbick, and Kazuhiro Tsuji - if he wins as Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Joe Wright's WWII drama Darkest Hour

And best actor frontman Gary Oldman has his make-up/hair team to thank - David Malinowski, Lucy Sibbick, and Kazuhiro Tsuji - if he wins as Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Joe Wright's WWII drama Darkest Hour.

Nominations will be announced January 23 for the Academy Awards, which brings back last year's host Jimmy Kimmel only at an earlier time slot (5PM PST).
In the iconic 1990 movie, Macaulay Culkin's onscreen parents famously forgot to take him along on their family trip to Paris.

But the former child star was anything but Home Alone as he lived it up with his new girlfriend Brenda Song and his goddaughter Paris Jackson in the City Of Lights.

The foodie pals hit some of the city's most well regarded restaurants, including the fancy Joel Robuchon restaurant L'Atelier, which has two Michelin stars.

PICTURE EXCLUSIVE! Far from Home Alone! Macaulay Culkin and girlfriend Brenda Song live it up with Paris Jackson in the City Of Love

The pair were joined by Culkin's close friends Paris Jackson, who is also his goddaughter, and Seth Green, who brought along wife Clare Grant

The restaurant is one of 13 in the celebrity chef's international portfolio.

The other 12 are in Bangkok, Thailand; New York and Las Vegas, United States; London, United Kingdom; Hong Kong, Shanghai and Macao, China; Monaco; Montreal, Canada; Singapore; Taipei, Taiwan and Tokyo, Japan.

The ritzy restaurant in the French capital's Saint-Germain neighborhood and features an open kitchen at which lucky diners can gawk at the chefs' culinary skills.

The restaurant's chef's tasting menu will set one back a cool 189 and features avant-garde combinations such as gazpacho and gyoza dumplings.

It also has a regular menu featuring nouveau spins on traditional French classics for those not willing to fork over such a large sum.

Reservations are recommended but not required at the celebrity magnet establishment.

Culkin has only been dating Brenda for four months, but he's clearly smitten with her. And her effect on him is obvious.

Since their relationship took off the once shabby actor has ditched the long hair and unkempt beard, for a far smarter appearance - even wearing a suit for his Parisian night out.

And the fine dining is paying off, with the once gaunt star looking well fed and healthy on his night out with Brenda and Paris.

Suits you: The former child star has smartened up his look since he started dating Brenda

As he was: Culkin at his lowest point, in 2012, left when pictures of him looking gaunt set the tabloids alight with rumors of drug abuse, which he denied; he is also pictured in May this year, before he began dating Brenda

Back in 2012 it was a different story - with pictures of Culkin looking skinny and haggard setting the tabloids aflame with rumors of drug abuse, something he has denied.

Culkin, since starring in the iconic Home Alone films, has portrayed legendary New York City 'club kid' Michael Alig (Party Monster) and has a starring role in his friend Seth Green's upcoming film Changeland.

After filling their stomachs at the destination spot, the friends were pictured walking off their meal with a late night stroll along the Seine river on the Pont des Arts.

The group was completed by former child star Seth Green - who introduced his old friend Culkin to Brenda - and his wife Clare Grant.

Post meal smoke: The pals made the most of their time in Paris, dining at the fancy Joel Robuchon restaurant L'Atelier, which has two Michelin stars

Paris in Paris: The young model looked at home as she waited for her friends outside

Now that's a bad habit! Paris and Macaulay shared a cigarette together

During their Parisian getaway - which took place over Thanksgiving - Culkin and Brenda were also spotted enjoying some couple time.

The two were seen splashing the cash on a shopping trip at the Monoprix retail store, where Culkin bought his love a large stuffed teddy bear.

Of course, the actor is no stranger to Paris - he bought a house there in 2013 following his split from Jordan Lane Price.

Paris and pals! Michael's girl chats to her friends outside the two-Michelin starred restaurant

New romance: Macaulay and Brenda struck up their relationship earlier this year

Big year: The two were introduced to one another while shooting Seth's directorial debut, Changeland in Thailand

Macaulay and Brenda struck up their relationship earlier this year when they were introduced to one another while shooting former Austin Paris star Seth's directorial debut, Changeland, in Thailand.

The 29-year-old actress said previously: 'It's been incredible. We spent five weeks in Thailand shooting this.

'Seth directed and wrote and starred in it, and this has been in the making for the last seven years, so he made it happen, it was incredible - it was like, Changeland for me.'

So in love: During their Parisian getaway - which took place over Thanksgiving - the two were also spotted splashing the cash on a shopping trip at the Monoprix retail store, where Macaulay bought his love a large stuffed teddy bear

Family ties: Paris, left, is Macaulay's goddaughter

Matchmaker: Seth, second from left, who found fame as a child star in the Austin Powers movies, cast both Macaulay and Brenda in his directorial debut, Changeland

Matchy matchy: Culkin and his love both wore black rimmed glasses

And she admitted: 'That sounds super cheesy but I came back like a different person.'

Song is a somewhat prolific actress who jump-started her career as a Disney child star.

She was the female lead in both 'The Suite Life of Zack and Cody' and 'The Suite Life on Deck'.

She has since appeared in the Facebook origin story 'The Social Network' and as Raven-Symone's character's best friend in 'College Road Trip'.

Macaulay was previously married to actress Rachel Miner, who he tied the knot with in 1998, but the pair separated in 2000 and divorced two years later.

Brenda, on the other hand, was engaged to Miley Cyrus' brother Trace but called off the engagement in 2012.
She is hot off the Shanghai runway for the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in November.

And Stella Maxwell made a devilishly sexy arrival at The Fashion Awards 2017 at the Royal Albert Hall, London on Monday.

The Victoria's Secret Angel, 27, put on a lavish spectacle in her Swarovski jewel embellished thigh-high boots, drawing attention to her impressive legs.

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The (Victoria's Secret) Angel has landed! Stella Maxwell looked devilishly sexy in Swarovski embellished thigh-high boots and cold shoulder dress at The Fashion Awards 2017 on Monday

Owning the catwalk, the blonde bombshell grabbed attention with the brightly coloured jewels which adorned the boots.

The model put on a busty display in her cold shoulder dress, featuring a low-cut neckline adorned with the very same jewel embellishments to catch the eye.

Wearing her trademark golden locks in a choppy layered style, Stella's locks framed her angelic face which was accentuated with a light dusting of pink make-up.

These boots are made for walking: The blonde bombshell grabbed attention with the brightly coloured jewels which adorned the boots

The lingerie model was every inch the social butterfly when she joined Hailey Baldwin inside the glamorous venue in Kensington.

Stella wowed as she mingled with the great and the good of the showbiz world at the fashion extravaganza.

She was reunited with Victoria's Secret Angel Karlie Kloss at the bash, following their trip to Shanghai, China where they put on a show-stopping parade for the show.

Blonde bombshell: Stella Maxwell also graced the celebrities with her presence in thigh-high stiletto boots which made her legs seem endless

Fashion Awards 2017 - The Winners Outstanding Contribution to British Fashion Award Christopher Bailey British Designer of the Year - Menswear Craig Green for Craig Green British Designer of the Year - Womenswear Jonathan Anderson for JW Anderson Accessories Designer of the Year - Jonathan Anderson for Loewe Swarovski Award For Positive Change - Maria Grazia Chiuri Urban Luxe Brand - Off-White Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator - Pat McGrath British Emerging Talent - Womenswear Michael Halpern for Halpern British Emerging Talent - Menswear Charles Jeffrey for Charles Jeffrey Loverboy Business Leader - Marco Bizzarri for Gucci Special Recognition Award For Innovation - Stella McCartney Style Icon - Donatella Versace Designer of the Year - Raf Simons Model of the Year - Adwoa Aboah Advertisement

Bella Hadid and Elsa Hosk also stormed the runway while Lais Ribeiro was the chosen model to wear this year's coveted Fantasy Bra down the runway.

As for her romance, Stella has been dating Twilight saga star Kristen Stewart.

Kristen and Stella have gone from strength to strength since rumours first surfaced they were an item back in 2016.

Pin-credible: The model put on a busty display in her cold shoulder dress, featuring a low-cut neckline adorned with the very same jewel embellishments to catch the eye

Their relationship status was finally sealed with a kiss when they were spotted smooching in the back of a taxi in Milan at the beginning of this year.

The Hollywood beauty revealed that she keeps her relationships under wraps because she treasures them.

Kristen's relationship with the Victoria's Secret Angel model came after the breakdown of her romance with Robert Pattinson.

The Twilight co-stars' love affair lasted almost four years from 2008 until 2012.

Great pals: The lingerie model was every inch the social butterfly when she joined Hailey Baldwin inside the glamorous venue in Kensington

Incredibly close: Stella wowed as she mingled with the great and the good of the showbiz world at the fashion extravaganza

It came to a dramatic end soon after she was pictured kissing Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders.

In March 2017, Kristen told The Sunday Times: 'When I was dating Rob, the public were the enemyand that is no way to live.

'I didn't talk about my first relationships that went public because I wanted things that are mine to be mine.

'I would have kept my life private for ever. But then I can't walk outside holding somebody's hand, as I'm followed everywhere.'
They're two of Hollywood's hottest young properties following the success of Stranger Things season two.

And show stars Charlie Heaton and Natalia Dyer looked to be enjoying their moment as they walked the red carpet outside of the Fashion Awards 2017 in London.

The pair, who have been official for some time, chose the Royal Albert Hall to make their first red carpet appearance together on.

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All smiles: Stranger Things stars Charlie Heaton and Natalia Dyer looked loved up as they walked the red carpet outside of the Fashion Awards 2017 in London.

The couple, who met on the set of the Netflix smash hit, play Jonathan and Nancy, who form an unlikely bond as the plot progresses.

Charlie cut a dapper figure in an orange Coach 1941 x Keith Haring souvenir varsity jacket and leather belt, paired with a skinny black shirt, and black trousers.

The 23-year-old actor sported his hair high and to the side in a trendy quiff - highlighting his enviably pronounced cheekbones.

80s chic: Charlie cut a dapper figure in an orange Coach x Keith Haring souvenir varsity jacket and leather belt, paired with a skinny black shirt, and black trousers

Meanwhile 20-year-old Natalia wore the Coach 1941 star print tie neck dress, paired with link sandals and carried the Rogue 25 bag from the brand.

Fastened at the neck, the effortlessly elegant number hinted at Natalia's slender figure and enviably long legs.

Letting her blonde hair fall past her shoulders, the star wore a smattering of light makeup to highlight her natural good looks.

Dapper: The 23-year-old actor sported his hair high and to the side in a trendy quiff, highlighting his enviably pronounced cheekbones

Looking relaxed and happy in each other's company, Charlie seemed to have put his airport turbulence from last month behind him.

Charlie was involved in a situation last month where cocaine was detected on him as he made his way through LAX.

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.

Stunning: Meanwhile 20-year-old Natalia wore the Coach 1941 star print tie neck dress, paired with link sandals and carried the Rogue 25 bag from the brand

Fashion Awards 2017 - The Winners Outstanding Contribution to British Fashion Award Christopher Bailey British Designer of the Year - Menswear Craig Green for Craig Green British Designer of the Year - Womenswear Jonathan Anderson for JW Anderson Accessories Designer of the Year - Jonathan Anderson for Loewe Swarovski Award For Positive Change - Maria Grazia Chiuri Urban Luxe Brand - Off-White Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator - Pat McGrath British Emerging Talent - Womenswear Michael Halpern for Halpern British Emerging Talent - Menswear Charles Jeffrey for Charles Jeffrey Loverboy Business Leader - Marco Bizzarri for Gucci Special Recognition Award For Innovation - Stella McCartney Style Icon - Donatella Versace Designer of the Year - Raf Simons Model of the Year - Adwoa Aboah Advertisement

Controversy: Charlie has seen some troubles recently, which involved his situation at the airport last month, where cocaine was detected on him

Feeling good: The pair appeared to be in good spirits as they headed to the event's after-party later on

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Charlie for further comment.

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.

'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.'

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.

Catching up: Charlie chatted to Chris Boustead (L) at the event's after party, held at RUIN on The Strand later on
It's a rare sight to see mum and daughter together.

But supermodel Naomi Campbell, 47, brought her mum Valerie Morris, 66, as her date to the ever-glamorous Fashion Awards.

Proving the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Naomi complemented her mother's sophisticated midnight attire with her own black ensemble.

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Mum's the word: Naomi Campbell, 47, brought her mum Valerie Morris, 66, as her date to the ever-glamorous Fashion Awards

Stylish: Proving the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Naomi complemented her mother's sophisticated midnight attire with her own black ensemble

The modelling heavyweight stunned in a black velvet bodice fitted perfectly to her statuesque frame, allowing the white and black lace skirt to drop gracefully to the floor.

Belted to show her slim waist, Naomi continued to prove that age is just a number as she beamed on the red carpet.

In true Naomi form, the star let her straight raven hair fall over her shoulders, and accented the dark ensemble with a silver statement ring, pendant earrings glittering silver cuff bracelet.

Appearing fresh faced, the Streatham-born model paired her make-up look perfectly, choosing a berry lip and dark smokey eyes.

Mum Valerie also dazzled in black, this time opting for a sharply cut midnight suit with a silk collared shirt.

Classic: The modelling heavyweight stunned in a black velvet bodice fitted perfectly to her statuesque frame, allowing the white and black lace skirt to drop gracefully to the floor

Fashion Awards 2017 - The Winners Outstanding Contribution to British Fashion Award Christopher Bailey British Designer of the Year - Menswear Craig Green for Craig Green British Designer of the Year - Womenswear Jonathan Anderson for JW Anderson Accessories Designer of the Year - Jonathan Anderson for Loewe Swarovski Award For Positive Change - Maria Grazia Chiuri Urban Luxe Brand - Off-White Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator - Pat McGrath British Emerging Talent - Womenswear Michael Halpern for Halpern British Emerging Talent - Menswear Charles Jeffrey for Charles Jeffrey Loverboy Business Leader - Marco Bizzarri for Gucci Special Recognition Award For Innovation - Stella McCartney Style Icon - Donatella Versace Designer of the Year - Raf Simons Model of the Year - Adwoa Aboah Advertisement

Back to blakc: Belted to show her slim waist, Naomi continued to prove that age is just a number as she beamed on the red carpet

Stunning: In true Naomi form, the star let her straight raven hair fall over her shoulders, and accented the dark ensemble with a silver statement ring, pendant earrings glittering silver cuff bracelet

Keeping the cold at bay, Valerie, who also models, made sure to carry a black fur shawl and matching diamante-detailed clutch bag.

Contrasting the dark look, Valerie added a serious touch of glamour by adding a jeweled snake necklace for extra impact.

Mum-of-two Valerie kept her light brunette tresses long and sulty, adding texture with light waves running through.

The one thing not coordinated with daughter Naomi was the make-up, as Valerie added a deep red lip as a pop of colour.

Glowing: Appearing fresh faced, the Streatham-born model paired her make-up look perfectly, choosing a berry lip and dark smokey eyes.

Shine bright: Contrasting the dark look, Valerie added a serious touch of glamour by adding a jeweled snake necklace for extra impact

Radiant: Naomi proved her glowing and youthful complexion as she posed on the red carpet

What a stud! Naomi maintained her chic look by adding a studded cape atop her look, as she made her way home from the event later on

Recently, Naomi paid tribute to her late friend, fashion designer Azzedine Alaia's, who died at the age of 77.

An emotional Naomi was seen paying her respects to the fashion designer, as she attended his funeral at the Sidi Bou Said cemetery in Tunis,Tunisia in November.

Fellow model Bella Hadid shared a photo of Naomi and the designer, expressing her devastation of the news.
She's the personal trainer and psychology graduate who shot to fame after winning the Miss Universe Australia pageant in 2008.

And Laura Dundovic, 30, can now add 'thespian' to her long list of career roles thanks to her new role in upcoming romantic comedy, A Long Night.

While the blonde beauty has remained tight-lipped on the nature of her role, she couldn't help but gush about the project when chatting to The Daily Telegraph this week.

Is there anything she can't do? Laura Dundovic, 30, can now add 'thespian' to her long list of career roles thanks to her new role in upcoming romantic comedy, A Long Night

'It comes out in 2018 so it'll be interesting to see where everything goes from there,' she said.

Laura will star opposite Hey Dad's Rachael Beck and Catching Milat's Mal Kennard in the highly-anticipated project.

She will also be joined by controversial songstress Chantelle Barry, who was famously booted from girl-band Bardot after being accused of theft by fellow band-mates.

Catwalk queen! The personal trainer and psychology graduate shot to fame after winning the Miss Universe Australia pageant in 2008

Star-studded cast: Laura will star alongside Chantelle Barry (pictured), who was famously booted from girl-band Bardot after being accused of theft by fellow band-mates

While A Long Night will see Laura take on her biggest role to date, it's not the first time she has tried her hand at acting.

The leggy glamazon made her acting debut at age 15 on the hit Channel Seven soap Home And Away.

In 2010, Laura returned to the small screen by nabbing a hosting role on Foxtel's short-lived reality show Dating In The Dark.

Woman of many talents: While A Long Night will see Laura take on her biggest role to date, it's not the first time she has tried her hand at acting

She went on to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art before landing a role in an independent Australian film Ruben Guthrie in 2015.

Early in 2015, she took part in the first season of I'm A Celebrity...Get me Out Of Here, lasting 17 days in the South African jungle.

Her foray into reality television proved fruitful for her love life, with the pageant princess striking up romance with fellow contestant Quade Cooper.

Rise to fame: She studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art before landing a role in an independent Australian film Ruben Guthrie in 2015
She's the six-year-old Sydney school girl who boasts a wardrobe most fully-fledged fashionistas can only dream.

And like any fashion fanatic would, Roxy Jacenko's daughter Pixie Curtis already has her holiday look sorted, sharing a photo of a $189 Oleg Cassini dress to Instagram on Monday.

The upmarket Christmas Eve look is just the latest addition to Pixie's extensive wardrobe, which includes designers Dolce & Gabbana and Marco Jacobs, as well as a host of popular Australian brands thrown in for good measure.

Is this the most extravagant six-year-old's wardrobe ever? Inside Pixie Curtis' designer wardrobe as Roxy Jacenko shows off her daughter's lavish Christmas outfit

On Monday, Roxy shared a photo of Pixie's designer dress to the youngster's Instagram account.

Followers of Pixie were quick to comment on the extravagant purchase, gushing that the dress was 'beautiful' and made her look like a 'snow princess'.

Other photos posted to Pixie's account show her wearing a personalised The Daily Edited backpack worth $129.95 and popular Australian brands Peter Alexander and Speedo.

'Snow princess': Followers of Pixie were quick to comment on the extravagant purchase, gushing that the dress was 'beautiful'

Expensive: Other photos posted to Pixie's account show her wearing a personalised The Daily Edited backpack worth $129.95

Stylish: Roxy shared a photo of Pixie clad in activewear from Bec Judd's label Jaggad worth $120

Last month, Roxy shared a photo of Pixie clad in activewear from Bec Judd's label Jaggad worth $120.

Pixie's impressive 109, 000 Instagram followers check in daily to see what the well-known toddler is sporting.

Her designer looks are usually teamed with one of the tot's signature headpieces from Pixie's Bows, which is regularly tagged in social media posts.

Her best ambassador! Her designer looks are usually teamed with one of the tot's signature headpieces from Pixie's Bows , which is regularly tagged in social media posts

The hair accessories are a favourite of celebrity kids, including Tom Cruise's daughter Suri.

During a holiday to Hawaii in January, Pixie wore a $435 Dolce & Gabbana frock, a $107 Marc Jacobs oversized shirt and a $887 Missoni sundress.

Silver sandals by Fussy Feet Children's Shoes, at $125 a pop, finished off the night-wear ensemble.

Stylish tot: In an Instagram post shared during her Hawaiian holiday in January, Pixie was seen sporting a Dolce & Gabbana rose-printed frock, worth approximately $435 AUD

Effortless style: A more casual ensemble for a walk along popular tourist destination Waikiki Beach, saw Pixie in a blue, red and grey oversized Marc Jacobs shirt, priced at $107 AUD

Too cute: Trawling through the picturesque gardens at The Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki Beach, calls for an effortless yet on-trend look. A nautical inspired shirt dress by LM Bambini at $71 AUD is key

For Pixie and Curtis, fashion is in their genes.

Roxy told OK! magazine in April last year, that fashion is 'in our blood' as both her parents Doreen and Nick Jacenko, started out as clothing manufacturers.

The entrepreneur described Pixie as a 'girly girl' who loves to dress in very feminine pieces.

Late 2015, Roxy created an Instagram page titled Pixie Curtis Sale, where people could select some of the tot's second-hand clothes.

The range included top brands such as Burberry, Stella McCartney, Kenzo and Ralph Lauren.
His wife Chezzi revealed to her blog last week, that she's to undergo surgery, just weeks before Christmas, for debilitating migraines.

And following the news, Grant Denyer was pictured looking downcast on a stroll in Queensland's the Gold Coast.

The 40-year-old Family Feud host in a smart ensemble, kept his head bowed for most of the sighting.

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Sighting: Grant Denyer, 40, looked downcast on a stroll in Queensland last week, as wife Chezzi reveals she's to undergo surgery for a debilitating condition just weeks before Christmas

Grant walked along the side of the road, holding onto a large umbrella in one hand.

The Channel Seven personality sported a crisp white dress shirt, tucked into a pair of slim-fitting tan trousers.

Grant accessorised with tan leather dress shoes, a navy suit jacket, a silver statement watch, a pocket square and sunglasses hooked onto the neckline of his shirt.

On the go: The Channel Seven personality walked along the side of the road, holding onto a large umbrella in one hand

Smart: Grant sported a crisp white dress shirt, tucked into a pair of slim-fitting tan trousers, accessorised with a navy suit jacket

Coordinating style: The presenter accessorised with tan leather dress shoes, a navy suit jacket, a silver statement watch, a pocket square and sunglasses hooked onto the neckline of his shirt

Not his usual energetic self, the presenter looked to have a lot on his mind and kept his head bowed.

The sighting comes as wife Chezzi revealed to her blog last week, that she's to undergo surgery, just weeks before Christmas, for debilitating migraines.

'I am left really struggling to just get through my everyday life,' the 38-year-old candidly shared with her online fans.

Low-key: Not his usual energetic self, Grant looked to have a lot on his mind

Distracted: At one stage, the former weatherman looked out into the distance

Family man: Grant's wedding ring was visible as held onto the umbrella

Chezzi began: 'The week of my birthday earlier this month (November), I was sent to hospital with a severe migraine pain in my left hand side of my head. I've not experienced anything like it and thought it was caused by me detoxing?'

With her surgery scheduled for December 6, the media personality went on to describe the debilitating condition.

'In the interim, I am left really struggling to just get through my everyday life. Some days are worse than others. Some days I have such severe vertigo that I nearly fall over if I get up too quickly or if I move my head in a certain way.'

'I'm struggling to get through everyday life': Grant's wife Chezzi, 38, revealed via a blog post last week, that she's to undergo surgery for a debilitating condition just weeks before Christmas

Debilitating: Severe migraines have left the media personality struggling daily, and is scheduled to go into surgery on December 6

Chezzi is relying on the support of her beloved husband Grant, to get her through such challenging times.

'My beautiful and loving husband is my tower of strength and I've been depending on him so much lately.'

Chezzi, a Jeans for Genes ambassador, married Grant, 40, in 2010, and the couple share two daughters, Sailor, six, and Scout, two.

Support network: Chezzi is relying on the support of her beloved husband Grant, to get her through such challenging times

Family: 'My beautiful and loving husband is my tower of strength and I've been depending on him so much lately,' the mother-of-two wrote to her blog last week

Living on a 27 acre farm just outside of Bathurst, the family could welcome another child in the near future.

Speaking to TV WEEK magazine in September, Chezzi revealed that Grant would love a son.

'He'd love a little boy running around the house. Grant's an amazing dad, and we've spoken about it, so who knows.'
Paris Hilton is a busy girl that spends a lot of time on airplanes heading to new and exciting destinations.

After spending a few days in Australia to celebrate the launch of her newest perfume Rose Rush, she's already landed in Miami where she will take over turntables for one night only.

The socialite and beauty entrepreneur will perform at the popular Wall Lounge on December 9.

Mirror, mirror: Paris Hilton has landed in Miami for Art Basel this week

How do I look?: The former reality star shared looks with her fans on social media

The former reality, star who alongside Nicole Richie starred in The Simple Life, has been a staple at the yearly Art Basel events held in the Magic City.

It is the 36-year-old's sixth year attending the event, where she has performed every year.

The international art fair showcases contemporary artwork from both new and established artists.

It's also a magnet for big celebrity talent including Gerard Butler, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Katie Holmes and Rosario Dawson.

On the road again: Hilton shared this photo from her car as she headed to Florida

Party over here: The socialite celebrated Art Basel in 2011

'[It's] the best time to be in Miami,' Hilton told W Magazine in 2015. I love seeing the art and you can't beat these parties!

It's so fun to have all these amazing people in the same room!'

Although she's there to spin, do not think the New York-born star will be all work and no play.

Baseling: It is the 36-year-old's sixth year attending the event, where she has performed every year.

She will be the guest of honor at Ocean Drives and MSC Cruises Art of the Party red carpet event, according to Miami.com. There's no doubt the publication will use the occasion to fete their December cover girl by unveiling the issue.

In the cover story, Hilton shares that she reconnected with current beau Chris Zylka at Art Basel in 2015 when the actor and artist showed her some of her work.

'We were friends for years, and then it was actually Art Basel in Miami Beach two years ago, and he was showing his artwork there,' she told Ocean Drive in her cover story.

True blue: Paris looks beautiful next to boyfriend Chris Zylk; seen in Sydney in November

And my brother said, Oh, Chris Zylkas here. Hes texting me. And Im like, Oh my God! Invite him right now. So he invited him over.

We hung out and then just kept talking and talking, and then had a date in L.A., and ever since that night, we never left each others side.

It all really sparked with Art Basel.

The heiress recently launched her first skincare product named Paris Hilton's Unicorn Mist. The limited edition bottle of rose water facial spray is set to launch in early 2018.

'I am so excited to be able to bring such an amazing product to the market,' Hilton said in a statement. "I have always had a passion for taking care of my skin and I only use products that actually work without harmful chemicals that are only a temporary fix.'

'With this new company I can stand behind my own products and promote a brand that is focused on making products that truly work and can help everyone look and feel their best.'
LafargeHolcim chairman Beat Hess told French daily Le Figaro that the group was going through 'a difficult phase'

The Swiss-French cement company LafargeHolcim should have stopped its operations in war-torn Syria before it did, its chairman said in an interview published Sunday, after three executives were charged with indirectly financing jihadists.

Beat Hess told French daily Le Figaro that the group was going through "a difficult phase" that was "a problem for the company's reputation".

Lafarge is accused of paying the Islamic State group and other militants through a middleman in order to allow the company's factory in Jalabiya, northern Syria, to continue to operate.

It is also suspected of using fake consulting contracts to buy fuel from the Islamic State group, which took control of most of Syria's strategic oil reserves in June 2013.

"Unacceptable errors were made which the company regrets and condemns," Hess said, adding that Lafarge "probably pulled out of Syria too late".

Frederic Jolibois, who took over as manager of the Syria factory in 2014, has been charged with financing terrorism and violating an EU embargo on Syrian oil.

Bruno Pescheux, Jolibois' predecessor as factory chief between 2008 and 2014, and Lafarge security boss Jean-Claude Veillard were also charged with financing terrorism as well as "endangering others' lives".

Hess, who became chairman of the company in May 2016, said that he had "full confidence" in the French legal system, and that "if we can help, we will do so".
An image grab obtained from a handout video provided by the aide of former Egyptian premier Ahmed Shafiq on November 29, 2017, shows him speaking to the camera from the United Arab Emirates

Former Egyptian premier and presidential hopeful Ahmed Shafiq said on Sunday he was reconsidering his intention to run in the 2018 presidential elections, after relatives said his whereabouts were unknown for around 24 hours.

Shafiq had not been seen since an airport official said he landed in Cairo on Saturday evening after aides claimed the Emirati authorities deported him.

The former army general was forced to leave the Gulf country, where he had been living in exile since 2012, after he announced his intention to run in next year's election, lawyer Dina Adly had said in a statement on her Facebook page earlier Sunday.

"I said my intention was based on the information and the general idea I had about the current situation," Shafiq told talk show host Wael El Ebrashy by phone in his first comments since Saturday evening's reported deportation.

But following his return to Egypt, he needs to "look into the situation and check it thoroughly, now I will go out and see the situation on the ground", he told Ebrashy from a Cairo hotel.

"Now I think there is a chance that compels me to verify accurately what exactly is needed," Shafiq said.

Shafiq, appointed premier by Hosni Mubarak shortly before his overthrow in 2011, is seen as a main challenger for Sisi, who is expected to dominate the 2018 vote despite not yet officially announcing his candidacy.

Shafiq had announced his intention to run in the elections in a video sent by an aide on Wednesday, where he stated the country may need "new blood" to face its current "many problems in all aspects of life".

- Feeling better-

Shafiq said he was received well by officials in Cairo and was then taken to a hotel.

"I was surprised truthfully when I was in the car that I was being driven to one of the most distinguished hotels in the area where I live," he said.

"Here I am talking to you and not kidnapped or anything," he told Ebrashy by phone, insisting he was planning to stay at a hotel anyway as his home needed maintenance.

A relative of Shafiq said on Sunday he spoke to his daughter for "a minute", the first time he has called either of his two daughters since leaving the UAE.

Still, "we have no information at all on whether he has freedom of movement," the relative said.

His lawyer Adly said in a statement on her Facebook page that she met her client later on Sunday after appealing to the authorities to allow her to see him.

The two met at a hotel in New Cairo where he "confirmed he is in good health and did not undergo any investigation", Adly said.

Shafiq had angered his Emirati hosts by claiming in a video Al Jazeera initially aired on Wednesday that he was being prevented from leaving the country.

On Sunday, he denied he sent them that video, and declined to specify whether he was deported, saying instead that the Emirati authorities treated him well.

Shafiq narrowly lost out on the presidency in 2012 to Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

After the polls he was tried in absentia on corruption charges, but eventually acquitted.

Sisi, a former army chief, was elected president in 2014, a year after leading the military's ouster of Morsi from power.
Debora Oquendo, 43, prepares breakfast for her and her 10-month-old daughter at the Orlando hotel they have been staying at since arriving from Puerto Rico

Cristina Sanchez is one of thousands of Puerto Ricans fleeing their hurricane-ravaged island for Florida, a mass migration set to shape the southern US state as much as migrants from communist Cuba in the late 20th century.

Sanchez left the island with three suitcases, her small dog -- and no plans to return.

As her flight departed the capital San Juan, she glanced out the window at what she was leaving behind: a sun-drenched Caribbean island turned into a hellhole by Hurricane Maria.

On September 20, powerful Maria tore across Puerto Rico, destroying homes, shattering the island's rickety power grid and phone network, and leaving its 3.4 million residents in the dark and incommunicado. Many remain so today.

"It's a relief to be off the island and to be away from where everything is so difficult," said Sanchez, a 43 year-old bilingual school teacher.

Chico, her Shih Tzu, was given a sedative and slept at her feet during the flight.

After the hurricane, Sanchez's home was left without running water or electricity. A diabetic, she could not keep her life-saving insulin refrigerated without power.

"I'm literally fleeing to get away from it, from everything that's going on there," she told AFP.

"It takes its toll emotionally and mentally."

The official hurricane death toll in Puerto Rico stands at 58, though large areas were isolated for weeks after the storm -- and news reports now place the toll as high as 500.

Since Puerto Rico is a US possession, its residents -- known as 'boricuas' -- are US citizens and have no immigration obstacles.

- Destination: Orlando -

Sanchez headed to Orlando, a central Florida city best known for its amusement parks, including Disney World and Universal Studios.

Central Florida, especially the Orlando area, has long attracted Puerto Rican immigrants fleeing the island's economic woes.

Since the hurricane struck, at least 212,000 people have traveled from Puerto Rico to Florida -- mainly central Florida, according to figures from the State Emergency Response Team (SERT).

Hurricane Maria left Cristina Sanchez's home without running water or electricity -- but as a diabetic, she needs power to refrigerate life-saving insulin

Around one million Puerto Ricans now live in Florida, mostly in the central Tampa-Orlando corridor.

At Orlando's airport Sanchez went straight to one of three special "Welcome Centers" set up by the state government for Puerto Rican immigrants.

There she received information on how to start her new life, how to get a temporary Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) housing subsidy, and how to get a job.

Sanchez was optimistic that she'd be able to find a fresh start before the FEMA hotel subsidy ends in January.

- 'Lost their homes' -

However Debora Oquendo, another 43 year-old Puerto Rican refugee, is anything but optimistic.

"I hope to have work by January," she said, speaking in a listless tone.

Oquendo said she doesn't know what will happen then, when her federal housing subsidy runs out. With a 10-month old baby she can't go to job interviews, let alone work.

Maritza Sanz, president of Latino Leadership, a group that helps Puerto Rican immigrants, worries about the future once FEMA housing subsidies expire.

The first and biggest challenge is to find housing for the new arrivals.

Maritza Sanz, president of immigrant support group Latino Leadership, worries about the future once FEMA housing subsidies expire

"Employment will be the second one. And schools and resources for the family," she said.

"We have been serving families that have been living in the car with the kids," she said.

What makes this wave of migrants unique is that they are fleeing a disaster zone, often bringing little beyond what they can carry, said Luis Martinez-Fernandez at the University of Central Florida.

There is a sense of desperation among these migrants, who have "lost their homes, with no possibilities of rebuilding anytime soon. They've lost their jobs overnight as well," he told AFP.

Also, he noted, there is "an over-representation of elderly people from the island, people who need medical attention."

This is likely to put a strain on services for the elderly in Florida, already a popular destination for US retirees.

- 'Puerto Ricanization' -

"The so-called 'Puerto Ricanization' of Orlando and even Florida could have a larger impact than that of the Cuban immigrants to Miami since '59," said anthropologist Jorge Duany, referencing the year that Cubans began arriving in Florida in droves as they fled the island's communist regime.

The heavy flow of Cuban migrants, mainly to south Florida, lasted into the 1980s. Since then, Cubans have continued to trickle in but migrants from places like Haiti and South America have diversified Miami.

That diversification, however, "is not taking place in Orlando," said Duany, a Florida International University specialist on Puerto Rican migration.

"The growing presence of Puerto Ricans in central Florida is redefining the culture of the area, which used to be mostly Anglo-American," he said.

There is also a political aspect, which could have tremendous national consequences: as US citizens, Puerto Ricans can vote.

Florida is a delegate-rich swing state in US electoral politics, a state that can hold the key to who wins the White House or which party controls Congress.

And Puerto Ricans are overwhelmingly Democrats.
Jorge and Teresa Ramirez hold a portrait of their son, Jorge Ramirez, a former amateur boxing champion killed by police

James de la Rosa was unarmed when four police officers in the rural Californian town of Bakersfield ended his life in a hail of bullets by the roadside.

At the age of 22, he had never picked up a single conviction, but initial police reports justified the killing by saying he had reached into his waistband after being chased by police and crashing.

"I'm broken", sobs his mother Leticia as she visits his grave in a local cemetery three years after the killing, cradling a picture of her beaming son in happier times.

"No money, nothing in this world, will bring me back my son. I think of James everyday. I live in the house he was living in. He was a good kid, he had a bright future."

A family lawsuit alleged that De la Rosa had his hands in the air when an officer first tried to taser him and then other officers opened fire, shooting him five times in the head, groin and other areas.

The family settled on a $400,000 compensation deal after it emerged that an officer had "tickled" De la Rosa's dead body -- but many other victims' families feel they have never seen justice.

Far from the media spotlight on flashpoints like Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, at least 29 people have been shot by police in Kern County, where the oil production hub of Bakersfield is located, since 2013.

"In recent years, Kern County Sheriff's deputies shot and killed considerably more people than law enforcement agencies in areas of equivalent population sizes," the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a recent report.

"And the Bakersfield Police Department had the highest rate of police homicides per capita of the country's 60 largest police departments."

- Shootings, beatings, dog attacks -

The report described "a disturbing pattern of shootings, beatings and canine attacks" by police and sheriff's deputies, especially targeting unarmed suspects.

Families of the dead say the real toll over the period covered by the report is 38 -- and more than one a month in 2015 -- although Mark Nations, a lawyer for the the sheriff's office, told AFP that year was an anomaly.

"We have not had an in-custody death since then. I can tell you there was a spike in incidents in the sense that there was not much going on before that and not much after that," he told AFP.

The Bakersfield Police Department, involved in at least four deaths since 2016, refused to comment, citing an ongoing investigation by California's public prosecutor.

The ACLU says the level of lethal violence directed at Hispanics and African Americans in Bakersfield by the predominently white police force is out of proportion with the level of local crime.

Peter Bibring, the group's director of police practices for California, has noted that a small number of officers in Bakersfield have been involved in two deaths or more.

Leticia De la Rosa places a rose on the grave of her son James, who was killed in 2014 by police in Bakersfield, California

One officer was present during the deaths of De La Rosa and two other victims -- Jorge Ramirez and Jason Alderman.

Alderman, a 29-year-old father of two, met his end after being caught leaving a fast food joint he had just burglarized, in August 2015.

He was about to escape, having found nothing worth stealing, when he was gunned down by police who later said he had raised his car jack, which they thought was a rifle.

- 'Wild West' -

A surveillance video showed he had been crouching to get through a window when he was propelled back by the gunfire.

Ramirez, a 34-year-old father of five, was on probation when he agreed four years ago to lead officers to a suspect. But the operation ended in a bloodbath on a parking lot and he was riddled with police bullets.

"He was expecting the police to take care of him instead of killing him," his father, Jorge Ramirez Sr, told AFP, adding that he was haunted by the image of his son's death.

Academics and campaigners describe Kern County as poverty-stricken and blighted by drug abuse, more the cultural twin of rural Texas than liberal Hollywood or high-tech Silicon Valley.

Oil producers and farm owners, say locals, have disproportiate influence with police, who have a historal culture of impunity.

"It's very Old Wild West here," said Josth Stenner, an activist with civil rights group "Faith in the Valley."

Police in Kern County and Bakersfield have said they are prepared to implement any reforms suggested by the California prosecutor.

But De la Rosa's brother Joe Arambulo says public trust will not be restored until police can prove they are equipped to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

"They don't give these guys the right training. It's a lot of broken families, mothers' lost sons, sons' lost fathers," he told AFP.

"When I see an officer, I worry about my kids."
Pyongyang has called the joint air exercise by the US and South Korea an 'all-out provocation'

An airplane crew flying over Japan saw North Korea's missile as it plunged back through the atmosphere last week, their airline said Monday, as South Korea and the US kicked off their largest ever joint air exercise.

Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific released a statement saying the crew of flight CX893 spotted "what is suspected to be the re-entry" of the missile as they flew from San Francisco to the southern Chinese city.

In a separate message to staff, Cathay general manager Mark Hoey said the crew described seeing the missile "blow up and fall apart", the South China Morning Post reported.

Pyongyang sent tensions soaring on the Korean Peninsula five days ago when it announced it had successfully test fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the continental United States within range.

Analysts say it is unclear whether the missile survived re-entry into the earth's atmosphere or could successfully deliver a warhead to its target -- key technological hurdles for Pyongyang.

The isolated and impoverished North has staged six increasingly powerful atomic tests since 2006 -- most recently in September -- which have rattled Washington and its key regional allies South Korea and Japan.

On Monday the US and South Korea started their largest ever joint air exercise, an operation Pyongyang has labelled an "all-out provocation".

The five-day Vigilant Ace drill involves 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troops, Seoul's air force said.

Pyongyang over the weekend blasted the drill, accusing US President Donald Trump's administration of "begging for nuclear war".

As tensions surged, US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican and foreign policy hawk, warned that the US was moving closer to "preemptive war" with the North.

"If there's an underground nuclear test (by the North), then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States," Graham told the CBS show "Face the Nation".

North Korea has called the US-South Korean exercises an "all-out provocation"

In recent years Pyongyang has accelerated its drive to develop nuclear and missile technology capable of threatening the US, which it accuses of hostility.

"The preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures," Graham said.

His remarks echoed those of Trump's National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who told a security forum on Saturday that the potential for war with the North "is increasing every day".

As well as featuring the latest generation of stealth fighters, this year's wargames involve simulated precision attacks on the North's military installations, including its missile launch sites and artillery units, Yonhap news agency said, citing unnamed Seoul sources.

- Risks of war -

The North has boasted that the Hwasong 15 ICBM tested on Wednesday is capable of delivering a "super-large" nuclear warhead anywhere in the US mainland.

Analysts agree the latest test showed a big improvement in potential range, but say it was likely achieved using a dummy warhead that would have been quite light.

They say a missile carrying a much heavier nuclear warhead would struggle to travel as far.

They are also sceptical that Pyongyang has mastered the sophisticated technology required to protect such a warhead from the extreme temperatures and stresses encountered as the missile hurtles back to Earth.

The latest launch, which saw the missile drop into Japan's economic waters, was condemned by Tokyo's parliament Monday, which slammed the North's rogue weapons programme as an "imminent threat".

Washington has called on China, the North's major ally, to do more to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

On Monday China's foreign ministry on Monday warned that the Korean peninsula remained "highly sensitive" and called on all sides to "do more things to ease the tension and avoid provoking each other".

The North's leader Kim Jong-Un has presided over significant progress in the country's widely-condemned nuclear and missile programmes since taking power in 2011.

A nuclear standoff between Kim and Trump in recent months has seen the pair trade personal insults.

The tensions have fuelled concerns of another conflict, more than six decades after the 1950-53 Korean War that left much of the peninsula in ruins.

But even some Trump advisers say US military options are limited when Pyongyang could launch an artillery barrage on the South Korean capital Seoul -- only around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the heavily-fortified border and home to 10 million people.

Estimates on the potential casualties from another war vary widely.

The North has thousands of conventional artillery units along the border with the South that analysts say could kill tens of thousands.

In one of the latest estimates, Scott Sagan, senior fellow at the Centre for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said the toll could be as high as one million people from just the first day of a conflict.
The term 'Kwaussie' was first used in 2002 to describe actor Russell Crowe

Inspired by a dual citizenship crisis plaguing politics in Australia, the term "Kwaussie" -- a mix of Kiwi and Aussie -- was Monday picked as word of the year.

It had been used sparingly in the past to describe a dual citizen of Australia and New Zealand, but took on a new lease of life when Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce found out he also had Kiwi citizenship in August.

He was the highest profile scalp of a constitutional provision barring dual citizens from serving in federal parliament, with eight lawmakers forced to resign so far.

"In a time of covfefe, fake news, and tweetstorms, the Australian National Dictionary Centre has looked for a word of the year that is both lexically interesting and Australian," the centre's director Amanda Laugesen said in a statement.

Laugesen said "Kwaussie" was first used in 2002 to describe actor Russell Crowe.

"He was described as a Kwaussie -- what you get when you cross a Kiwi who can't decide whether they're a Kiwi or an Aussie," she said.

"Subsequent evidence suggests its use is predominantly Australian, found chiefly in social media, and also found with spelling variants including Kwozzie and Kwozzy.

"Thanks to the two Kwaussies identified as ineligible to sit in parliament -- Barnaby Joyce and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam -- the term is now becoming better known."

Joyce automatically acquired New Zealand citizenship through his father, and was forced to contest a by-election at the weekend, which he won comfortably.

The citizenship crisis has engulfed a number of MPs who claim to have unknowingly held dual citizenship, and threatens more with politicians given a deadline of this week to come clean about their status.

The Australian National Dictionary Centre is a major centre for lexicographical research, conducting research into Australian English and editing dictionaries.
Eighty-one-year-old Anthony Kennedy, who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1987 and is the court's longest serving judge, is widely expected to provide the decisive vote in the so-called "gay wedding cake" case

As the US Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments Tuesday in the highly anticipated "gay wedding cake" case, all eyes are once again on Justice Anthony Kennedy, the fulcrum upon which the bench has turned for a decade.

The case, which pits Christian conservatives against progressives and the LGBT community, concerns a Colorado baker who, due to his religious beliefs, refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

The court will have to decide between three constitutional rights -- sexual equality, freedom of religion and freedom of expression.

The stakes are high, and could open the door for conservative businesses to spurn gay couples.

Eighty-one-year-old Kennedy, who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1987 and is the court's longest serving judge, is widely expected to provide the decisive vote.

Kennedy is to the Supreme Court what swing states are to elections.

Conservative on firearms and election financing, he can be more progressive on issues such as abortion and affirmative action.

On a bench comprising four progressive and four conservative judges, his view often tips the balance.

An example of this came in 2015, when, thanks to him, same-sex marriage was legalized across the United States.

The judge, of Irish origin, then drafted the landmark ruling -- just as he drafted the decision in "Lawrence v Texas" in 2003, which declared a state law forbidding sodomy illegal.

- 'A clash of interests' -

But will the elderly judge, a practicing Catholic, vote in favor of the LGBT community in this latest case? It's a question currently frustrating experts.

The Trump administration, around twenty American states, dozens of members of Congress and countless Christian and conservative pressure groups have backed Jack Phillips, the baker.

These supporters have sent the Supreme Court many arguments, which seem to directly address Kennedy.

Steven Schwinn, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, told AFP he believes the judge will "struggle" with the decision.

"I think he'll see this case as a clash of interests: the dignity and equality interest of the same-sex couple, on the one hand, and the religious freedom and free-speech interests of the cake-baker, on the other," he said.

"I imagine that he'll probably struggle with how to balance these."

"I think he's going to be torn," was the view of Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"He's distracted by the deep faith of Jack Phillips. Jack Phillips is a person of faith and runs his bakery consistent with his faith, he has a small family business. We know that Justice Kennedy will care about that, there is no question," she said.

"On the other hand, Justice Kennedy cares deeply about the LGBT community," Melling added.

- Moral rigor -

Another question is how Kennedy can vote in Phillips' favor, without opening "the floodgates for discrimination against gays and lesbians in marriage services and beyond," says Schwinn.

"I do not think he wants to open that door," Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of Berkeley Law and constitutional law expert, told AFP.

During the hearing on Tuesday, every word uttered by Anthony Kennedy will be under scrutiny -- with supporters from both sides searching for signs of his position.

Reassuring Christian conservatives will be the Harvard Law School graduate's days as a choir boy in California -- not to mention his marriage of over half a century to the same woman, with whom he has three children.

Indeed, Kennedy has a reputation for moral rigor sometimes regarded as prudishness.

While he was a university student, he traveled Europe in a red Volkswagen.

His father offered him a bottle of whiskey for the trip -- but he did not drink it, instead using it only to gargle when he had a sore throat.
When Heather Hyden learned that she was pregnant, she was overjoyed. Hyden wanted to have a child with her partner, Jimmy Earley, and the pair was thrilled to bring a new person into their community in Lexington, Kentucky.

But on December 5, 2016, when Hyden was about nine weeks pregnant, the couple learned that there were complications. During their first ultrasound, they found that their baby had a full body edema: fluid surrounding the entire fetus. The doctor said they could do tests in the coming weeks to find out more.

"The doctor came in and barely explained anything," Hyden said. "I was devastated. I just felt like everything was falling in on us."

Every few weeks brought more tests that gave them some new information but often left the couple feeling like they had even more questions.

At 11 weeks pregnant, the couple learned that their baby had a cystic hygroma, a cyst or large pocket of fluid surrounding its head and back. In early January, at 14 weeks pregnant, they learned that the fluid had moved inside the fetus and was surrounding the heart and lungs. This condition is known as hydrops fetalis, which is a buildup of fluid in two or more areas of the fetus. Hyden said she was told her unborn baby was effectively experiencing heart failure.

From the first indication of complications, the couple wasn't sure whether the baby would make it. Still, they kept testing and hoping for the best. But at the 14-week point, in early January, it became clear that the baby most likely would not survive.

Hyden's doctor presented her with a few options, both of them uncomfortable. She could wait a few weeks to see whether she would have a miscarriage, which would not require an expensive medical procedure and would happen naturally. Or she could have an abortion.

But another unexpected obstacle presented itself: Just as they learned about the hydrops fetalis, Hyden and Earley found that lawmakers in Kentucky had introduced new legislation about abortion. Because Hyden was uncertain of her baby's condition, she began to pay attention.

One piece of legislation, Senate Bill 5, banned abortions at or after 20 weeks and included exemptions only in situations in which the mother's life is at stake. Even in those cases, it required that the doctor providing care consult with two other doctors unrelated to the patient's care before they can move forward with the procedure. It did not include exceptions for cases in which the fetus' life is at stake or cases of rape or incest.

Within days, the bill had passed and was signed into law.

As her pregnancy ticked closer to 20 weeks, Hyden wasn't sure whether she would need an abortion. There were medical costs to consider: Hyden's insurance does not cover abortion procedures, and there's only one open abortion clinic in Kentucky. It's located in Louisville, about 80 miles from where Hyden, 30, and Earley, 43, live.

There were still tests underway too, and the quiet hope that their baby's condition would turn around.

What she did know: If there wasn't a resolution, they would have only weeks to make a decision for themselves.

State senator: 20-week ban 'seems very humane'

Kentucky isn't the first state to pass a law prohibiting abortions at or after a woman is 20 weeks pregnant. Nebraska passed similar legislation in 2010, and 12 states have followed suit over the past six years, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America.

In October, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would criminalize abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy across the country. The House passed similar bills in 2013 and 2015, but they didn't become law. This time around, it has the support of the White House.

The House bill includes some exceptions, such as if the mother's life is at risk or in cases of rape or incest. Still, it would prevent most women from getting abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Legislators behind these bills and anti-abortion advocates argue that 20 weeks, about halfway through the second trimester of a pregnancy, is when a fetus starts feeling pain. The Kentucky legislation noted that "the unborn child is incapable of experiencing pain until a point later in pregnancy than 20 weeks after fertilization."

Kentucky state Sen. Joe Bowen, one of Senate Bill 5's sponsors, found its 20-week limit reasonable.

"The 20-week abortion ban seems very humane to me," he said. "At that stage, you know, from the information that I have, that's when a baby starts to have senses. ... If they could potentially sense pain, at that juncture in a pregnancy, that even compounds my strong feelings of why we would need to do something like this."

Major medical studies largely disprove the claim that fetuses start to feel pain when the mother is 20 weeks pregnant. A 2005 analysis published in the medical journal JAMA concluded that fetal pain before the third trimester, which starts at 28 weeks, was unlikely. A 2010 review by a panel at Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stated that most neuroscientists believe the cortex, an area of the brain, is necessary for a fetus to feel pain; the brain is not formed until 24 weeks.

"The problem is that, number one, we don't have any proof that babies feel pain at 20 weeks, and number two, we aren't taking into consideration the mother's pain," Dr. Elizabeth Case, an OB-GYN who works and lives in Kentucky and testified at hearings for the bills, told CNN.

"Termination of pregnancy is not a black-and-white affair. There are a lot of gray areas, and this law seemed to be very black and white."

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.3% of women who had abortions in the United States in 2013 did so at or after 21 weeks of pregnancy. The women who have abortions after 20 weeks are often those who have pregnancy or health complications, partially because most don't get their first ultrasound until around then, according to Case.

"We routinely don't do our ultrasounds until 20 weeks, and that's going to leave women no option for how to proceed if they have a baby that's not going to survive," Case said.

Kentucky women who find out about complications after 20 weeks may have to carry the baby until it dies in the uterus or deliver a baby who's expected to die after birth, Case said. They can also go out of state to have the procedure in a place where it's still legal.

When Hyden found out that these bills were being introduced and knew that they could directly impact her pregnancy, she wanted to get involved. She testified against Senate Bill 5 at two state Senate committee hearings, explaining how it impacted women like her.

"I thought that if we could explain what we were going through personally, then it could change minds," Hyden said. "You think this is out of context and this is about your religious views or your values, but at the end of the day, it affects people who are struggling on the ground to make these decisions."

Still, less than a week after it was introduced in the Kentucky Legislature, Senate Bill 5 passed, banning abortions 20 weeks after fertilization. Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin signed it into law January 8 with an emergency provision making it effective immediately.

Hyden was anxious and heartbroken, still deciding the future for her family.

"We know that the only thing that was an exception was the medical emergency. I wasn't a medical emergency," Hyden said.

'This was the only choice'

When she was 18 weeks pregnant, Hyden's doctor told her that she would probably miscarry in the next couple of weeks. Her doctor also said that the longer she waited to miscarry, the more likely it was that complications from the pregnancy could impact Hyden's health. But, for fear that she would not miscarry before the 20-week deadline, Hyden and Earley made an appointment at Kentucky's only abortion clinic.

"I was just starting to have an emotional and psychological breakdown about all of this," Hyden said. "We were going up against three weeks since the doctor had told us that our child was not going to make it, and we were just sitting, waiting."

At 19 weeks pregnant, Hyden found another option: She could have an early induction procedure at a hospital instead of having an abortion procedure at a clinic. The early induction would cause Hyden to go into labor and deliver her baby, even though she knew that the baby would not survive past birth.

Hyden was concerned about having the abortion procedure in an clinic separate from a hospital out of concern that something would go wrong in an already complex situation. She got approval from her insurance company for the early induction procedure at the hospital and scheduled an appointment all within one week.

The early induction option is available to other Kentucky women at some hospitals. Hyden was unaware of it earlier in her pregnancy because she was seeing a doctor at a Catholic hospital, which would not allow the procedure unless doctors could no longer detect a heartbeat in the fetus, Hyden said.

At 20 weeks pregnant, Hyden was induced and labored for 12 hours before giving birth to a stillborn girl, River Lee, on February 19. She was able to have the procedure past 20 weeks because of a technicality in how doctors measure pregnancy.

"For us, that was the choice that we wanted to make based on all of the unknown that we had with her diagnosis," Hyden said. "It's part of bringing purpose to her life, even though it was really short."

During the final weeks of Hyden's pregnancy, she worked with an abortion doula to find the doctor who did her final procedure. The doula also helped the couple go through the process of having a stillbirth. These doulas work with women who are experiencing any kind of complication in their pregnancy, including miscarriages, stillbirths and abortions.

Now, Hyden and Earley are working to improve access to these doulas in Kentucky.

"We're focused on the comprehensive health care aspect of this," Hyden said. "We feel like the more restrictive our state legislation is related to abortion care, the more fear there is in prenatal health environments. ... We're trying to increase the full spectrum of care offered to women with any type of pregnancy."

Though Hyden and Earley ultimately found a doctor who would care for them and a procedure that met their needs, Case worries that other women may rush into abortions sooner than they may need as a result of this law.

"I fear that some women are going to choose to terminate the pregnancy before they have all the information they need because of this ban because it's putting a rush on you," Case said. "You have to make a decision by 20 weeks, and maybe you don't have enough information to make an informed decision by 20 weeks."

A new pregnancy, 'a nervous wreck'

Less than eight months after Hyden's stillbirth, she learned that she was pregnant again. She and Earley are excited, but Hyden is feeling a host of other emotions too as she heads further into her pregnancy.

"I'm a nervous wreck, honestly," Hyden said. "I'm just really scared, because it feels like my body is kind of being held hostage, and I know that it's not just my biophysical processes that have control over me right now, but it's also all of the other systems, hospital system and policies."

Hyden is seeing a high-risk OB-GYN for this pregnancy. She is in the second trimester, but has been cautious since the beginning. She's also been open with those around her about how she's feeling.

"I feel like there needs to be more open discussion about ... the fear of miscarriages and the anxiety after you've lost a baby," she said. "I've been very open that I'm scared and going through a lot of different emotions right now."

Hyden and Earley are still processing their past pregnancy experience as they prepare again to bring a baby into the world. Hyden is still working with the doula who helped her through the end of her previous pregnancy.

Though her procedure wasn't in an abortion clinic, Hyden classifies what they went through as a "therapeutic abortion" or "early induction for medical reasons." She believes the issue is more complex than what's now the law in her state -- and what could become the law of the land.

"We can't have blanket judgments on an issue anymore," she said. "You can't. Abortion can be beautiful, I guess. I know that that might sound wild, and I never thought I would say anything like that, but for us, this was the only, this is the only choice, and women need more choices."
A mound of unsold North Korean coal at Rajin harbour in the Rason Special Economic Zone

A three-metre-high metal fence topped with razor wire in a North Korean port marks the front line of the United Nations' ban on coal exports by Pyongyang.

A mountain of North Korean coal -- which would once have been bound for China -- is piled up on one side of the barrier in Rajin harbour, stranded by the interdiction.

On the very next dock, around two million tonnes of Russian coal has come in by train and been shipped on to China this year by Russian port operator RasonConTrans.

Its activities are specifically excluded from the UN Security Council's sanctions resolutions -- but attempts have been made to use it as a way to bypass the restrictions.

"They asked but we said no, we dont do it," said RasonConTrans' deputy director Roman Minkevich.

RasonConTrans deputy director Roman Minkevich in his office which sports a picture of Vladimir Putin and late North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il shaking hands

The black mounds on the neighbouring wharf were evidence his firm was complying with the rules, he added.

"Behind the fence it's Korean coal, it's under sanctions now so it's still here," he told AFP.

He declined to elaborate on the source of the requests. "People," he said. "Different people."

The UN Panel of Experts on North Korea said in its midyear report that Pyongyang has been "deliberately using indirect channels to export prohibited commodities".

For years the coal trade was a lucrative earner for Pyongyang -- its main ally and key economic partner China imported 22 million tonnes worth nearly $1.2 billion in 2016.

But while Beijing says North Korean imports have come to a halt, RasonConTrans' business is booming.

Until sanctions, coal exports were a major earner for North Korea, worth some $1.2 billion in 2016

Since starting operations in 2015 its volumes have doubled each year, and Minkevich is targeting three million tonnes next year, with a goal of five million in future.

It has between three and six ship movements a month at its pier -- number 3 in the port, which can take vessels up to 180 metres (600 feet) long -- loading 50,000 tonnes of coal on each, most of them heading for Shanghai.

- Women crane operators -

Over a hill at the back of Rajin town stands a sprawling disused oil refinery, originally built to process crude from the Soviet Union, in the days of Communist brotherhood provided Pyongyang with cheap or free materials.

Locals blame sanctions for the closure but it has been inactive for years, its throttled chimneys standing sentinel over an unfulfilled economic dream.

Two large bronze statues of the North Korea's founder Kim Il-Sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-Il look out over Rajin.

A Russian worker walking before cranes at Rajin's RasonConTrans coal port in North Korea

Despite the looser economic rules applying in the area, the town is bedecked with propaganda slogans seen throughout the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as the country is officially known.

Using North Korean labour -- North Korean women are particularly skilled crane operators, Minkevich notes, probably due to their care in performing repetitive tasks -- costs at Rajin are 30 to 40 percent cheaper than at Russian ports.

Those competitors on the Russian Pacific coast are also close to capacity, he says, as China and the energy-hungry but resource-poor economies of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan suck coal from Russia's vast reserves.

Moscow and Pyongyang have long had fraternal relations, and a picture of North Korea's late leader Kim Jong-Il meeting Vladimir Putin in the Russian capital in 2001 hangs in a RasonConTrans office.

The public square in the North Korean city of Rason, a key trading hub with nearby Russia and China

The company is 70 percent Russian-owned, with 30 percent held by the port of Rajin.

It is the third-biggest taxpayer in the Rason Special Economic Zone, set up by Pyongyang to try to attract trade and businesses to the area where North Korea, China and Russia meet.

North Koreans need special permits to enter the SEZ, and a large checkpoint at its southern entrance enforces the rules.

RasonConTrans has around 300 North Korean personnel and 110 Russian staff, and brings in much of its needs, such as diesel for its generators, directly from Russia.

It is almost entirely independent of the rickety local electricity supply, which Minkevich said was offline around 30 percent of the time.

Some aspects of the North reminded him of the former Soviet Union, said the Muscovite, but working under the sanctions regime was a "unique experience".

There were difficulties importing parts and building supplies, he said, and "much more paperwork".

"It's interesting but it's hard."
Australia is to introduce new laws targeting foreign interference, with concern heightened by ongoing revelations of Russian meddling in the US political system

Foreign interference in Australian politics has become a "serious problem", a top official said Monday, with tougher laws on espionage and overseas donations to be introduced to parliament.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ordered an inquiry in June after media revelations that the nation's spy agency had warned the country's political elite two years ago about taking donations from two billionaires with links to the Chinese Communist Party.

The probe, by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Fairfax Media, said that despite being cautioned, both the Liberals and Labor continued accepting substantial sums of cash.

It said intelligence agencies had major concerns that China was interfering in Australian institutions and using the political donations system to gain access. Beijing denied the allegations as "totally groundless".

Since then concern over foreign interference has gathered momentum, heightened by ongoing revelations of Russian meddling in the American political system.

"The issue of foreign interference in our politics is an extremely serious problem," Attorney-General George Brandis told parliament on Monday.

"So I can tell the Senate that later this week, the government will introduce a milestone legislative package to reform Australia's espionage and foreign interference legislation."

He said the new laws would strengthen and modernise a range of offences "for the purposes of investigating, disrupting and prosecuting acts of espionage and covert interference in the Australian political process".

There would be a new transparency scheme, providing "visibility of the nature and extent of influence over Australia's government and political processes by foreign interests".

"It will introduce new offences targeting foreign interference and economic espionage, including offences that criminalise covert and deceptive activities that support the intelligence activities of foreign actors," he added.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said in response on Monday that Beijing "always stays committed to following the principle of mutual respect for sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs" of other countries.

"At the same time we urge the relevant people on the Australian side to abandon prejudices," Geng Shuang told a regular press briefing.

Last week, a key Australian Labor MP, Sam Dastyari, was forced to resign as deputy opposition whip after reports that he told a Chinese businessman his phone was likely being tapped by intelligence agencies.

The man, Huang Xiangmo, is a prominent Chinese political donor.
Anti-Kabila protests last December were quelled by the authorities -- Human Rights Watch says a notorious militia group helped carry out the crackdown

Former rebels were recruited by Democratic Republic of Congo authorities for a crackdown on protests against the president that left dozens of people dead last year, a rights group stated Monday in a claim denied by the government.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said President Joseph Kabila's regime had drafted in fighters previously active in the M23 rebel group from neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda to help suppress the December 2016 demonstrations, which erupted when he refused to step down at the end of his constitutional mandate.

The allegations coincide with a flare-up of violence after Kabila pushed back a much-delayed new vote until December 2018, with the opposition demanding that the veteran leader resign before then after 16 years in power.

President Joseph Kabila took office after his father Laurent was assassinated in 2001

"Senior security force officers in the Democratic Republic of Congo mobilised over 200 former M23 rebel fighters from neighboring countries to quash protests against President Joseph Kabila in December 2016," HRW said in a report.

It said Congolese security forces acting with M23 fighters killed at least 62 people and arrested hundreds more as the protests swept through the vast African country between December 19 and 22 last year.

M23, a mostly ethnic Tutsi rebel group, was defeated in November 2013 by Congolese forces and troops of a large UN peacekeeping mission in the country. Hundreds of fighters fled the country but officials and residents in the eastern region of Kivu said they had seen militants return.

Once transferred to DR Congo from military and refugee camps across the border, the M23 fighters were deployed to the capital, Kinshasa, and to Goma and Lubumbashi, where they were integrated into the security forces, including the presidential guard, HRW said in the 69-page report.

"To protect the president and quash protests, the M23 fighters were given explicit orders to use lethal force, including at 'point-blank range' if necessary," the report said.

It cited an M23 fighter who said the ex-rebels were instructed "to shoot immediately at the slightest provocation by civilians."

- 'Chase HRW out of DR Congo' -

Congo's resource-rich eastern provinces have suffered years of brutal conflict, with bordering states backing rebel groups in a war against Kinshasa's authority, and roaming armed militia triggering the mass flight of terrorised civilians.

"These accusations are fantasy to undermine the credibility of the FARDC (the regular army)," Defence Minister Crispin Atama Thabe told AFP in response to the report.

"To repel attacks by these former M23 rebels, we lost officers, helicopters. How can we recruit those who fight us?" he added.

The minister declared that "HRW should no longer operate in DRC.

"I'm going to get involved to see that they are chased off the national territory."

HRW said its findings were based on more than 120 interviews and that during the protests, "M23 fighters patrolled the streets of Congo's main cities, firing on or arresting protesters or anyone else deemed to be a threat to the president."

"Covert operations to recruit fighters from an abusive armed group to suppress any resistance show how far President Kabila and his coterie are willing to go to stay in power," said Ida Sawyer, the organisation's Central Africa director.

"Congolese officials should end all unlawful use of force against protesters and allow peaceful political activities by activists and the political opposition."

M23 leader Bertrand Bisimwa said via Twitter that the DRC government had recruited "deserters and undisciplined men" sacked from the movement and based them in the eastern towns of Kisangani and Goma."

Political opposition forces are demanding that Kabila -- who took office after his father Laurent-Desire was assassinated in 2001 -- step down on December 31, but authorities made several arrests ahead of an opposition march earlier this month.
Huthi fighters sit in the back of a pick-up truck in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on December 2, 2017, during clashes with supporters of Yemeni ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh

A wave of air raids rattled Yemen's crisis-hit capital Monday, witnesses said, as clashes between rebels and supporters of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh also spread beyond Sanaa.

The strikes appeared to hit targets near Sanaa International Airport and the interior ministry, both under the control of the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, according to residents and a source inside the airport.

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, Iran's regional arch-rival, is the only party in the Yemen war known to conduct air strikes on Sanaa.

A spokesman for the coalition did not respond to requests for confirmation of the raids on Monday.

Residents near the airport said multiple air raids had shaken their homes late Sunday night and in the early hours of Monday.

An airport source said rebel bases near the location appeared to have been targeted but the airport itself had not been bombed.

Residents also reported that the fighting, which erupted Wednesday night between armed Saleh supporters and Huthi fighters, had spread outside the capital.

Tribal sources in Saleh's hometown Sanhan, south of Sanaa, on Monday reported intense overnight fighting between the Huthis and Saleh loyalists.

The clashes in the capital had killed some 60 people as of Sunday. There was no immediate information available on fresh casualties.

Yemeni territory is split between the forces and government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in the south, backed by Saudi Arabia and recognised by the international community, the northern Huthi rebels and forces loyal to strongman Saleh.

Since 2014, Sanaa has been ruled under an agreement between Saleh and the Huthis, who drove the Hadi government out of the capital, set up their own government and for two years together fought the Saudi-led coalition.

Saleh on Saturday announced he was open to talks with Saudi Arabia and its allies on condition they ended their crippling blockade on Yemen's ports and airports -- dealing a serious blow to his already fragile alliance with rebel chief Abdul Malik al-Huthi.

The Saleh-Huthi split has sparked fears of a new front in the Yemen war, which has already claimed more than 8,750 lives since the Saudi-led coalition joined the war to support the Hadi government.

The conflict has pushed Yemen to the brink of mass starvation and triggered what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

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Bahraini demonstrators protest against the revocation of the citizenship of top Shiite cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim (portrait), near Qassim's house near Manama on June 20, 2016

Bahrain's leading Shiite cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim, a central opposition figure, has been admitted to hospital in critical condition, his family and a rights group said Monday.

Sheikh Qassim, in his late 70s, is a spearhead of Bahrain's opposition movement demanding an elected government in the Shiite-majority kingdom, which has been ruled for more than two centuries by the Sunni Al-Khalifa dynasty.

Qassim was stripped of his citizenship in 2016 on charges that include "serving foreign interests", an allusion to Shiite-ruled Iran. He has been under de facto house arrest ever since.

Nedal al-Salman, acting president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, and a relative of Qassim who requested anonymity both confirmed Qassim was in critical condition.

Authorities allowed his family to transport him to a hospital of their choosing after they declined state-sanctioned medical care.

The cleric's ailing health has for weeks been a point of contention between authorities and the Qassim family, who had refused the government's offer to transfer him to hospital over fears he may be detained and deported should he leave his residence.

While his family has not made public the details of his condition, rights groups say he has high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.

Located between regional arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, Sunni-ruled Bahrain is home to a Shiite majority that has long complained of political marginalisation.

Protests demanding an elected government have rocked the archipelago since 2011, sparking a state crackdown on political dissent.

Authorities have jailed dozens of high-profile activists and disbanded both religious and secular opposition groups.

They have also stripped hundreds of their citizenship, making many stateless, according to Amnesty International.

The Bahrain government accuses Iran of backing the protests and attempting to overthrow the government. Tehran denies any involvement.
Su-Peing Ng, global medical head for Sanofi Pasteur, addresses a press conference in Manila on the dengue vaccination programme

A world-first dengue vaccination programme in the Philippines that was suspended over safety concerns will not cause anyone who was immunised to die, drug manufacturer Sanofi and local authorities said on Monday.

The Philippines on Friday suspended the programme, after more than 733,000 people had been immunised, in response to a statement from Sanofi that its vaccine could cause "more cases of severe disease" for people who had not previously had the mosquito-borne ailment.

After news outlets and some politicians in the Philippines expressed concern about the welfare of those immunised, the French pharaceutical giant held a press conference in Manila to state the potential cases of "severe dengue" would not be fatal.

"What is this severe (dengue)? When people think of 'severe', this already includes dengue shock that could lead to death, but no," Sanofi Pasteur regional head for dengue Joselito Sta. Ana told reporters.

Sta. Ana said Sanofi's definition of "severe dengue" merely referred to symptoms including two days of fever, a lower platelet count and bruising.

Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque also sought to allay fears, stating there was "no danger" with the Dengvaxia vaccine.

"The worst that can happen is for those who have not had dengue before -- which is one out of 10 (Filipinos) -- they may get infected with dengue but falling under our previous classification of 'mild', having fever and bruises," Roque said.

Nevertheless, the justice department announced Monday that the National Bureau of Investigation would investigate the vaccination programme "over the alleged danger to public health". It warned in a statement that charges could follow.

The previous administration of president Benigno Aquino launched the vaccination programme last year, making the Philippines the first nation to use Dengvaxia on a mass scale.

Although the Philippine programme has been suspended, Dengvaxia remains available on an individual basis in consultation with doctors, the health department said.
A consortium led by France-US petroleum services group TechnipFMC has secured a $4.2 billion (3.5 billion euro) contract to extend capacity at Bahrain's Sitra refinery, the company said Monday.

The contract, awarded by Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco), will extend production capacity at the site on Sitra island in the Gulf of Bahrain from a current 267,000 to 360,000 barrels per day, TechnipFMC said.

The refinery exports some 95 percent of its current production, mainly to India and the Far East.

The consortium includes South Korea's refinery and electrical plants designer Samsung Engineering as well as Spanish petroleum engineering firm Tecnicas Reunidas, TechnipFMC said, adding construction should be completed by 2022.

Nello Uccelletti, head of Onshore Offshore activity at TechnipFMC, hailed the "prestigious" contract as being a "testimonial of the long-term partnership with Bapco and strengthen(ing) our leadership in the refining sector."

Bahrain was the first Arab Gulf state to produce oil, in 1932, but its reserves have all but dried up and the Sunni Muslim kingdom depends primarily on the Abu Safa field it shares with Saudi Arabia for its own supplies which are pumped via a 230,000 bpd capacity subsea pipeline.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche said the US Food and Drug Administration has given the green light for its FoundationOne CDx personalised diagnostic cancer test

The US Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to Roche for its FoundationOne CDx personalised diagnostic cancer test, the Swiss group said Monday.

Roche said the FDA had approved the test helping doctors understand the genetic profile of patients' tumors to enable better-targeted therapies and clinical tests.

"The approval of FoundationOne CDx represents a major advance in the personalisation of cancer care, facilitating access for patients in the US to a comprehensive pan-tumour companion diagnostic that will help identify approved treatment options based on the molecular footprint of each individuals cancer," said Roche's Chief Medical Officer Sandra Horning, also the firm's head of global product development.

"Our belief is that profiling will increasingly become routine in clinical practice, so we have worked closely with Foundation Medicine to develop an extensive clinically and analytically validated platform that can support both existing and future companion diagnostic needs," Horning said in a statement.

Pharmaceutical companies see development of personally tailored treatment as the way ahead to tackle cancer.
Sri Lanka batsman Angelo Mathews plays a shot during the third day of the third Test match against India in New Delhi on December 4, 2017

Skipper Dinesh Chandimal and Angelo Mathews hit defiant centuries in soaring Delhi pollution before Indian bowlers struck back late on day three of the third Test on Monday.

The visitors were 356 for nine when bad light stopped play with Chandimal, on 147, and Lakshan Sandakan on 0, at the crease. They trail by 180 runs in their first innings.

Off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin took three wickets while Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma and left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja picked two each.

Sri Lanka flourished on the back of a 181-run fourth-wicket stand between Mathews (111) and Chandimal after they resumed the day on 131-3 in hazy conditions at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium.

The duo braved the toxic smog for over three sessions after getting together on a dramatic Sunday when Sri Lankan players wearing face masks halted play for about 20 minutes, complaining of foul air.

Mathews, who survived three dropped catches, ended his two-year century drought with a boundary off paceman Ishant Sharma. His last ton had also come against India at Galle.

The former captain played positive cricket during his 268-ball stay that was laced with 11 fours and two sixes. He fell to Ashwin's off-spin a little ahead of tea.

Sadeera Samarawickrama, who came down the order after taking a hit on his helmet on day one, put up some resistance with a 33-run knock before being caught behind off Ishant Sharma.

Ashwin soon combined with the fast bowlers to tear into the Sri Lankan lower-order in the final session after sending back debutant Roshen Silva and Niroshan Dickwella for zero.

Chandimal, who seemed a little uneasy in the morning while calling for his trainer, frustrated the Indian bowlers and helped his team avoid a follow-on situation.

Pollution levels worsened Monday, with concentration of the smallest and most harmful airborne pollutants 18 times the World Health Organization's safe level, just before the players took lunch.

On Sunday it was 15 times the WHO limit, according to the US embassy website.

Sri Lanka, who trail 1-0 in the three-match series after their thrashing in the second game, need a win to draw the series against top-ranked India.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- On December 2nd, SAIC Maxus released the latest sales data. In November the sales were 8,121 new vehicles, an increase of 57% year on year, refreshing the monthly sales record again. During January to November, the cumulative sales were 61,677 vehicles, up 46% year on year.

Through an expansive product layout, which covers light passenger cars, MPV, SUV, pickup trucks, limo and new energy vehicles, SAIC MAXUS further expands the overseas market coverage and makes perfect performance this year.

In terms of specific models, Datong G10 secures the position in this market segment and achieves the sales of 2,735 units in November, an increase of 26%. In the SUV market, Datong D90 has delivered a total of 3,278 vehicles in November, surging 121% from a year earlier. In addition, light passenger car V80 and pickup model T60 sold 2,644 units and 1,039 units respectively.

The overseas market of SAIC Maxus also maintains a strong growth. During the first 11 months of this year, the overseas sales have reached 7,446 units, up 20% year on year. SAIC Maxus has become one of the top Chinese automobile brands in sales and market shares of Australia and New Zealand.

Lan Qingsong, vice president of SAIC MAXUS, says the target for 2018 is to exceed 100 thousand units. At that time, the annual growth rate of SAIC Maxus will reach more than 45%.

Whats more, Maxuss future products will be fully electric vehicles. Electrification is the development trend of automobile market, which SAIC Maxus actively promotes. Last month, at the Auto Guangzhou 2017, SAIC MAXUS launched its first fuel cell wide light passenger car FCV80. Lan Qingsong said, "In pure electric vehicles (EV), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCV) and plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHV), SAIC MAXUS has made great efforts in research and development. In the future, all products will be electric."
Syrians make their way through debris following a reported air strike in the rebel-held town of Beit Sawa, in the Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of Damascus

Three weeks of ferocious bombardment of Syria's Eastern Ghouta have crushed illusions of a lasting truce in the rebel enclave which Damascus appears determined to recapture at all costs.

A blistering air campaign has reduced a "de-escalation" deal in Eastern Ghouta to tatters, just as regime and opposition representatives struggle to progress at sputtering peace talks in Geneva.

At least 193 civilians, including 44 children, have been killed in three weeks of Syrian government raids and artillery fire on the area, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Rebels based in the area have also ramped up rocket fire onto Damascus, killing 29 civilians and wounding more than 200 in the capital.

Eastern Ghouta, the last opposition stronghold near Syria's capital, was one of four "de-escalation zones" agreed in May by powerbrokers Russia, Iran and Turkey.

The deal aimed to pave the way for a nationwide ceasefire and political settlement that would finally put an end to the conflict that has killed 340,000 since 2011.

A reduction in violence has more or less held in the other three zones in Syria's northwest, centre and south.

In mid-November, a relative calm that had prevailed over the Eastern Ghouta area ended with an explosive bombing campaign by regime forces.

"Eastern Ghouta is suffering the fiercest bombing and worst situation since the war began," said Thomas Pierret, a Syria specialist at the University of Edinburgh.

"We're really very far away from a reduction in violence," said Pierret, adding that the de-escalation zone had been reduced to "a big joke".

- 'Half my house standing' -

Eastern Ghouta is home to an estimated 400,000 people struggling to survive under a devastating four-year government siege that has made food and medicine unavailable or too expensive.

The United Nations has warned that 500 of them, mainly women and children, are at risk of dying without immediate medical care.

On November 28, Damascus nominally accepted a new Russian-proposed truce in Eastern Ghouta, to coincide with the resumption of UN-led peace talks in Geneva.

A Syrian man carries the body of a child who was killed in a reported air strike in the rebel-controlled town of Hamouria, in the Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of Damascus

But it has since ratcheted up its bombing.

Maysoun, a nurse living in the large Eastern Ghouta town of Douma, says she can vividly remember the day air strikes picked up again.

"I came back from the market to find half my house was left standing," said the 30-year-old, who has since been staying with a friend.

"I hadn't expected that much destruction. Usually, it's just the doors and windows that are affected," she said.

Rajaa, a mother of four now pregnant with her fifth child, lives in Hammuriyeh -- one of the most heavily-bombed towns in recent weeks.

"When they hear the planes, the children cry and don't want to stay at home anymore. They're traumatised," she told AFP.

- 'On the capital's doorstep' -

President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly pledged his forces would retake all of Syria, and observers point to several reasons he appears to have doubled down on Eastern Ghouta now.

French cartographer and analyst Fabrice Balanche said the de-escalation deal had served as a "temporary" arrangement to allow the regime to redeploy troops elsewhere.

With key battlefronts against rebels frozen, Russian-backed government forces could focus on ousting the Islamic State group from Syria's centre and east, Balanche said.

Now, with IS territory reduced to a tiny sliver, Assad could comfortably resume the push for Eastern Ghouta.

"The regime needs to get rid of this pocket," used by opposition factions to lob rockets on Damascus and launch offensives on nearby troops, Balanche said.

"There's no question for the regime about allowing rebels to constitute little republics in these territories," he said.

For Sam Heller, an expert at The Century Foundation, Eastern Ghouta's location "on the doorstep of the capital" has kept it a priority for Assad.

The Syrian government has worked at "digesting it over time, through a combination of siege (and) periodic military pressure", said Heller.

- Other zones next? -

The other three de-escalation areas -- the south, Homs in central Syria, and northwest Idlib -- are lower on Assad's list and have so far remained relatively quiet.

"The zones' success rate ranges from 20 percent in Eastern Ghouta to 80 percent in the other regions," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

The southern zone borders Israel, making a government push sensitive. The "status quo" would likely prevail there, according to Balanche.

Rebel enclaves in Homs province are smaller and less threatening -- but Idlib presents a major challenge, with most of the province held by jihadists once loyal to Al-Qaeda.

Tens of thousands of rebels who were bussed out of opposition zones under local truce deals were dumped in Idlib, along with thousands of civilians.

An assault to take it would take much preparation, said Balanche. "There are many rebels, battle-hardened men ready for suicide."
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and China's Premier Li Keqiang at the signing ceremony

Visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed three trade agreements on Monday as Ottawa tries to diversify commercial ties amid tough NAFTA negotiations with Washington.

At a ceremony in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, the two leaders signed an action plan on energy cooperation as well as two memoranda of understanding on food products and a "Canada learning initiative."

The details of the agreements are unclear.

The two sides also agreed that Canadian beef and pork will have greater access to the Chinese market and will continue to work on new standards for Canadian exports of canola to China.

"Canada is and always has been a trading nation, but the landscape of trade is shifting and we need to adjust," Trudeau told reporters after the signing ceremony.

"China will soon be the largest market in the world. It's home to one billion potential customers for the high-quality goods and services that Canadians deliver every day."

Li told Trudeau it was rare for China to have such a "close, intimate relationship" with another nation.

"China and Canada are entering ... a golden age in our relationship. We have a lot to offer each other. We are ready for closer cooperation," Li told reporters.

The premier visited Ottawa in September last year, when the two sides agreed to double bilateral commerce by 2025.

During his December 3-7 official visit, Trudeau will meet government and business leaders as part of Canada's push to diversify its trade, the bulk of which is currently with the United States.

Trudeau has said he also plans full and frank discussions on "issues like good governance, human rights, and the rule of law".

The visit to China is Trudeau's second since he came to power two years ago, and comes as trilateral talks with the United States and Mexico to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement appear to be headed towards deadlock.

Canada and Mexico staunchly oppose US proposals for a NAFTA sunset clause, minimum US content in car parts and nixing of the pact's trade dispute mechanism.

The US has adopted a more protectionist tone under President Donald Trump and his "America First" policy.

Beijing, meanwhile, has openly courted increased trade with Canada. Li said the two countries would continue exploratory talks and feasibility studies on a free trade agreement.

China is currently Canada's second-largest trading partner, far behind the United States, with annual bilateral trade worth more than Can$85 billion ($67 billion).

During the visit to Beijing and Guangzhou, Trudeau will also meet President Xi Jinping and Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, or legislature.

The prime minister is popular in China, where citizens have affectionately nicknamed him "Little potato", as his surname sounds similar to the word "potato" in Mandarin.

His father, who established diplomatic ties with China in 1970, was named "senior potato".

Internet users on domestic social media platforms focused on Trudeau's appearance, with one commentator hailing him as "the most handsome foreign leader".
The fall of Iraq's Mosul, pictured here on July 9, 2017, marked a key stage in the collapse of the Islamic State group's so-called "caliphate" before a fall in the country's monthly death toll

The death toll from violence in Iraq has fallen to its lowest monthly level in five years following the Islamic State group's military collapse, the United Nations said Monday.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said new lows were recorded in October and November.

In November, a total of 117 civilians and police were killed and 264 wounded in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict, UNAMI said.

The highest death tolls by province were recorded in Baghdad, at 51, and Salaheddin, with 24 deaths.

"Two bombings in Tuz Khurmatu, Salahaddin governorate, and in Baghdad governorate in November, which caused numerous casualties among civilians, are a horrible reminder that the terrorists can still inflict blows at peaceful citizens," said UN envoy Jan Kubis.

"All measures need to be taken by the authorities to protect civilians against the barbarism of the terrorists."

The UN mission said violence in Iraq cost 114 lives in October and that the total since the start of the year had reached 3,229 dead.

But the figures for October and November were the two lowest monthly death tolls since November 2012.

The highest toll, of 1,775 dead, came in June 2014 as IS jihadists swept across swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

The group has since suffered major military defeats and seen its self-declared "caliphate" collapse.

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US President Donald Trump (L) walks alongside Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before giving a speech at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem on May 23, 2017

US President Donald Trump faces a Monday deadline to decide whether to move the US embassy in Israel to the disputed city of Jerusalem.

Israelis and Palestinians are eagerly watching to see whether he again renews a waiver delaying the move, as his predecessors have done.

There are suggestions he will sign the waiver and decline to move the embassy for now, but later this week declare Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Here are five questions and answers explaining the issue:

- What is the dispute? -

Israel seized control of Palestinian east Jerusalem from Jordan during a 1967 war and later annexed it. The move was never recognised by the international community but Israel declared the city its undivided capital.

The Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

No countries have accepted Israeli sovereignty and have their embassies in the commercial capital Tel Aviv instead.

Moving the embassy would be seen as the United States endorsing Israel's claim to the city and rejecting the Palestinian one.

- What is the waiver? -

In 1995, the US Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act calling on the country to move its embassy to the Holy City.

"Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital of the state of Israel," it said, demanding the government move the embassy.

The act is binding but there was a clause that presidents could delay it for six months at a time to protect "national security interests".

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama signed these waivers routinely every six months.

Trump reluctantly signed the first waiver that came due during his presidency on June 1. He now faces a second deadline.

- Will Trump sign? -

During the election campaign, Trump promised multiple times to move the embassy, and his ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is a strong advocate of the shift.

However, Trump appeared to back away from the idea during his first months in office under pressure from the Palestinians and other Arab leaders.

As he seeks ways to inject new life into moribund peace talks, there have been warnings that such a move would infuriate the Arab world.

But Trump is also faced with trying to keep his campaign promise and pleasing his right-wing base, which wants to see the embassy moved.

There have been suggestions he will not move the embassy now, but instead recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital later this week.

Dan Shapiro, US ambassador to Israel under Obama, told AFP that such a move in practice would not "have a significant effect, but it will be a signal of future intent to follow through on the presidents commitment to actually move the embassy".

"It would be new language for the United States to formally describe Jerusalem as Israels capital. That has not been the traditional US language."

- What happens if he doesn't? -

If Trump chooses not to sign the waiver, the embassy wouldn't move immediately, but there are rapid repercussions.

Under the 1995 act, the US State Department would see a 50-percent cut in all its future budgets for "acquisition and maintenance of buildings abroad" until the new embassy opens.

In 2016, $968 million was spent on embassy security, construction and maintenance, according to State Department figures.

- What would be the impact of the move? -

Alan Baker, a former Israeli ambassador to Canada, said recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital without moving the embassy would amount to a "sort of legal acrobatics -- trying to please both sides and not annoy either".

But Baker said "anything is better than now, where Jerusalem is not recognised by Israel's best friend and supporter".

Palestinians see the issue starkly differently.

Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said Sunday that such recognition would "promote international anarchy and disrespect for global institutions and law".

The United States would "be disqualifying itself to play any role in any initiative towards achieving a just and lasting peace", he said.

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, called Saturday for a new "intifada" if Washington recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or moves its embassy to the disputed city.
Macau's youngest pro-democracy legislator has been suspended

Macau's youngest-ever lawmaker, a leading pro-democracy advocate, has been suspended from the city's legislature in an echo of the disqualification of rebel Hong Kong legislators as China's pressure on political opponents grows.

The government of the semi-autonomous southern Chinese gambling enclave is largely pro-establishment but Sulu Sou, 26, was voted into the legislature in public elections in September.

His party, the New Macau Association, advocates universal suffrage for the territory's parliament, where more than half the representatives are selected by special interest groups or by the pro-Beijing city leader.

The opposition won five of 14 directly elected seats in the 33-strong legislature in September.

Sou's suspension comes as China has spoken up against any challenges to its sovereignty across its territories.

A statement from Macau's parliament said 28 lawmakers had voted to suspend him, with four voting against.

Local media said it meant he could now be investigated on a charge of "aggravated disobedience" over a protest last year. Serving lawmakers are immune from prosecution.

Sou said the move was politically motivated when he addressed a rally before the vote.

"Promise me: don't give up, keep moving forward!" he posted on Facebook after his suspension.

The pro-democracy movement in Macau is far smaller than in nearby Hong Kong, where massive rallies brought several major roads to a standstill in 2014.

But there have been outbursts of frustration against the government.

Sou was among the leaders of one of Macau's largest anti-government protests in 2014, when 20,000 people demonstrated against generous retirement packages for outgoing officials.

Two pro-independence and four pro-democracy lawmakers have been disqualified from Hong Kong's parliament following a special ruling from Beijing last year.

They were ejected for inserting protests into their oaths of office and accused authorities of a political witch-hunt.

Sou's election victory in September was seen as a slap in the face to local officials over Typhoon Hato, which devastated Macau less than two weeks before the vote.

Authorities stood accused of failing to alert the public before the storm, which caused widespread destruction.

Some said the government had hesitated to issue a severe storm alert for fear of affecting the casino business.
Roy Moore, a 70-year-old Christian conservative with a history of controversy stemming from his tenure on Alamaba's supreme court, had been a strong favorite to win the rightwing state's special election on December 12 before the allegations broke

US President Donald Trump on Monday officially endorsed the candidacy of embattled Republican Senate hopeful Roy Moore, who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women including one who was 14 at the time.

Trump had previously characterized the allegations against Moore as "very troubling" before changing tack and warning voters in Moore's home state of Alabama that a victory for his Democratic rival Doug Jones "would be a disaster!"

On Monday he telephoned the 70-year-old Christian conservative to offer his formal backing ahead of the December 12 special election in the right-leaning southern state, the White House said.

"The president had a positive call with Judge Roy Moore during which they discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and the president endorsed Judge Moore's campaign," said principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah.

In spite of a history of controversy stemming from his tenure on Alabama's supreme court, Moore had been a strong favorite to win election before the allegations against him were first reported by The Washington Post.

Most of the reported allegations relate to when Moore was a prosecutor in his mid-30s and sought to pursue relationships with teens.

The Alabama race, which is being held to replace Jeff Sessions who was named US attorney general, has national repercussions because Republicans hold only a slim 52-to-48 majority in the Senate.

Earlier Monday, Trump had cited Democrats' opposition to his legislative agenda -- and Moore's potentially decisive Senate vote on everything from immigration to abortion -- as reasons to support him.

"Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama," Trump tweeted. "We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!"

"Look at your 401-k's since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!" he added, referring to an employer-sponsored retirement savings plan.

- Moore 'Honored' -

In a statement Monday, Moore's campaign said he was "honored" to have received the president's endorsement, in a call placed from on board Air Force One.

"President Trump knows that the future of his conservative agenda in Congress hinges on this election," Moore was quoted as saying.

"I look forward to fighting alongside the president to strengthen our military, secure our border, protect our gun rights, defend the sanctity of life, and confirm conservative judges to courts around this nation."

Moore has denied the allegations against him, and said they are politically motivated.

One of his accusers, Leigh Corfman, now 53, said that when she was 14 Moore took her into his house in the woods near Gadsden, Alabama, removed her shirt and pants, and fondled her over her bra and underpants.

Allegations of sexual harassment have plagued both of America's main political parties in recent weeks.

Democrat John Conyers, a celebrated civil rights activist who is the longest-serving member of Congress, announced he was stepping down from a leadership position last month as he battles harassment claims from members of his staff.

Trump himself has been accused of misconduct by several women, ranging from groping to unwanted advances and kissing, though these did not prevent his election last year.
Trump has publicly criticised Tillerson, saying he was "wasting his time" pursuing contacts with North Korea

The head of NATO on Monday praised embattled US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for his "key role" in the North Korea crisis as rumours swirl that his position is under threat.

Jens Stoltenberg insisted that a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels this week would not be distracted by doubts over Tillerson's future.

Anonymous White House leaks have suggested Tillerson could be out of a job within weeks and even while denying this on Friday, President Donald Trump reminded him: "I call the final shots."

Stoltenberg gave his backing to Tillerson's efforts in tackling the crisis surrounding Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

"Secretary Tillerson has played a key role, both in sending the message of deterrence, the unity and the resolve of the whole alliance, but also when it comes to the need for continuing to work for a peaceful solution," Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels.

Trump has publicly criticised his top diplomat on the issue, saying Tillerson was "wasting his time" pursuing contacts with North Korea.

Tillerson has dismissed reports that Trump aides want him to resign as "laughable", but rumours are set to dog his diplomatic tour of Europe, which also includes visits to Paris and Vienna.

North Korea will be high on the agenda at the NATO meeting after Pyongyang last week tested its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, which it says brings the whole of the continental United States within range.

- 'No change whatsoever' -

Questions have been raised about whether the reported rift with Trump undermines Tillerson's ability to negotiate with allies, but Stoltenberg said he had no concerns.

"We have seen again and again that NATO and NATO ministers are able to focus on the core task, on the job we have to do, despite any speculations and rumours, and I am absolutely certain that this will be the case also now," Stoltenberg said.

"I am absolutely certain that all ministers -- including secretary Tillerson -- will focus on that task and be able to make important decisions."

Rumours about Trump and Tillerson's fractious relationship came to a head on Thursday when several US media outlets -- citing White House sources -- predicted Tillerson's resignation and replacement by CIA chief Mike Pompeo.

Trump rejected the reports as "FAKE NEWS" in a tweet, but acknowledged the pair had policy differences.

The US Ambassador to NATO, Kay Baley Hutchison, also insisted Tillerson still spoke for the president.

"We have been working with Secretary Tillerson and his staff on this meeting for several weeks and there has been no change whatsoever," she told reporters in Brussels on Monday.

The North has staged six increasingly powerful atomic tests since 2006 -- most recently in September -- which have rattled Washington and its key regional allies South Korea and Japan.
The status of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict

A senior Turkish government official on Monday warned of a "major catastrophe" if the United States recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital despite a flood of warnings from the Arab world.

"If the (current) status of Jerusalem is changed and another step is taken ... that would be a major catastrophe," Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said during a televised press conference.

"It would completely destroy the fragile peace process in the region, and lead to new conflicts, new disputes and new unrest."

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

President Donald Trump faces a key decision this week on whether to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, potentially reversing years of United States policy and drawing a furious response from the Palestinian leadership and the Arab world.

Most of the international community, including the US as well as Turkey, does not formally recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved through final status negotiations.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a champion of the Palestinian cause, often criticises Israel over its actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, despite a 2016 reconciliation deal after years of severed ties following Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound ship.

Bozdag, also government spokesman, on Monday said a US step to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital would benefit "neither Israel ... nor the region."

"It would not benefit anything. Rather than open new doors, it would drag the region into a new disaster."
US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at the White House before heading to Utah

US President Donald Trump said Monday he "feels badly" for his former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI, and lamented that his former rival Hillary Clinton "lied many times" and nothing happened.

Trump's comments to reporters were the latest in a series of outbursts over the FBI's sprawling Russia probe after Flynn's guilty plea on Friday and his admission he is cooperating with investigators.

"I feel badly for general Flynn. I feel very badly," Trump said before heading off on a trip to Utah. "He's led a very strong life, and I feel badly about it."

"I will say this -- Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI. Nothing. Flynn lied, and they destroyed his life. I think it's a shame," he said, calling Flynn's treatment "unfair."

Flynn, Trump's first national security advisor, has pledged to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into whether members of Trump's team colluded with covert Russian efforts to sway the 2016 US election in the Republican's favor.

As part of the deal, the retired three-star general pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to Washington during the presidential transition.

Trump lashed out at the FBI over the weekend, accusing it of bias in favor of Clinton during its election-year probe of the former secretary of state's use of a private server for classified email. The FBI declined to bring charges in that case.
Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh addressing loyalists in Sanaa on March 10, 2011

Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was killed on Monday, ruled the Arabian Peninsula country for more than three decades, remaining a key player long after his 2012 resignation.

Adept at navigating Yemen's complex politics, he survived civil war, rebellion in the north, an Al-Qaeda insurgency in the south and a June 2011 bomb attack on his palace that wounded him badly.

In 2014 he allied with his former enemies, Huthi Shiite rebels from Yemen's north, to seek revenge against those who forced him from power.

But the collapse of their alliance was the beginning of the end for the wily leader.

A stocky man with piercing eyes and a moustache, Saleh was for decades Yemen's most powerful man.

In 2015, a UN panel of experts accused him of corruption, saying he may have amassed up to $60 billion the country descended into poverty during his 33 years in power.

A picture from June 1, 2000 shows Ali Abdullah Saleh diving during free time at his private presidential club

Hailing from the same Zaidi minority as the Huthis, Saleh joined the army aged 20 and took part in the 1962 coup against Yemen's Zaidi imamate.

The ensuing six-year civil war ended in victory for Egyptian-backed nationalists who in 1968 formed the Yemen Arab Republic, also known as North Yemen.

A few months earlier, an independent South Yemen had been formed following the British withdrawal. It would eventually become the Communist-ruled People's Democratic Republic of Yemen.

- Reunification -

Saleh showed his leadership skills at an early age and swiftly climbed North Yemen's military and political ladder.

Following the June 1978 assassination of president Ahmad al-Ghashmi, a constituent assembly elected Saleh -- by then a colonel -- president of North Yemen.

He immediately surrounded himself with close aides, notably his brothers, appointing them to key military and security posts.

Saleh deftly steered the country towards reunification in 1990 and four years later crushed a southern secession bid.

Ali Abdullah Saleh addressing parliament in Sanaa in October 2001

He became Yemen's first directly elected president in 1999, winning more than 96 percent of the vote, but elections during his tenure were widely criticised and he was accused of stifling dissent.

Saleh became a US ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda, allowing drone strikes on Yemeni territory, the first of which in 2002 killed the group's Yemen chief, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harithi.

Between 2004 and 2010, Saleh fought several wars against the Huthis, who had long complained of marginalisation.

In the late 2000s he also grappled with growing pro-independence demonstrations in the south.

But the first real challenge to his rule came with the eruption in 2011 of Arab Spring-inspired protests that brought thousands of people onto the streets.

Saleh clung to power amid a deadly crackdown on demonstrators demanding an end to his regime.

He left Yemen for Saudi Arabia in June 2011 to receive medical treatment after being burned in a bomb attack on his presidential compound, but returned less than four months later.

He eventually ceded power in February 2012 under a Gulf-brokered deal that granted him immunity from prosecution.

- 'Dancing on snakes' -

Vice President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi took power after Saleh's resignation but struggled to assert his authority.

The ex-president remained behind the scenes, refusing to go into exile and remaining head of his General People's Congress party.

The Huthis' seizure of Sanaa in September 2014 would have been impossible without support from Saleh loyalists, analysts said.

An expert report to the UN Security Council alleged Saleh provided "direct support" to the Huthis through funding and the backing of elite forces still under his influence.

Hadi in February 2015 fled to the southern city of Aden after escaping house arrest in Sanaa, then to Saudi Arabia as the rebels advanced south.

Yassin Makkawi, an adviser to Hadi, in 2015 described the ex-president as a "tyrant", saying "the Huthis are puppets in the hands of Saleh".

A coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which feared the Huthis would help its arch-rival Iran spread its influence in Yemen, launched air strikes and sent ground troops to Yemen in support of Hadi.

That escalation has since killed more than 8,750 people and dragged Yemen towards what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The intervention helped loyalists win back control of large parts of the south but they were unable to dislodge the Huthis from Sanaa and other key strongholds.

Saleh was reported to have remained in the capital and boasted: "I will never leave Sanaa."

But in mid-2017, his alliance with the Huthis began to collapse amid simmering resentment over money, power-sharing and suspected backdoor dealings.

When Saleh reached out to the Saudi-led coalition last week, the Huthis accused him of "great treason" and staging a "coup" against "an alliance he never believed in".

A smart tactician who had portrayed himself as a "saviour" after his resignation, Saleh once compared ruling Yemen to "dancing on the heads of snakes".

But Saleh's gamble in quitting his alliance with the Huthis proved to be a fatal step.

As gun battles rocked the capital on Monday, the Huthis announced that Saleh had been killed, and a video supplied to AFP by the rebels showed what appeared to be his corpse.

Hours later, his party confirmed the news.

At the age of 75, the man who had shaped much of Yemen's post-independence history was dead.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chinas automaker Lifan expressed its interest in producing new energy products in Uruguay at the 11th China-Latin America and the Caribbean (China-LAC) Business Summit.

On November 3, Chinese reporters gained news from the company that at Uruguay governments invitation, the company decided to introduce new energy products into the Latin American country and promote the localization of its electronic control and battery technology. Whats more, Lifan also plans to launch ride-sharing and taxi services of new energy vehicles in Uruguay and then expand the services to other Latin America countries.

Uruguay President Tabare Vazquez, revealed that the presidential palace will take lead in setting up a work team to support Lifan to carry out new energy projects. The government hopes Lifan to expand local production capacity and build new energy vehicle production lines in Uruguay.

Ever since Lifan started to build engine companies and vehicle assembly plants in Uruguay in 2012, the company managed to sell vehicles in many Latin countries while its motorbikes reached throughout the Latin America.

Mou Gang, president of Lifan Group, said that new energy products and globalization matter much to the company. In product, the company sticks to the combination of charging and swapping battery techonology. Currently, the company is researching how to commercialize autonomous technology to solve the problem of last kilometer.
A Syrian man accused of taking part in a 2016 suicide bombing that killed seven Jordanian soldiers awaits sentencing at a Jordan court on December 4, 2017

A Jordanian court on Monday sentenced a Syrian man to death by hanging for carrying out a "terrorist" attack in 2016 that killed seven soldiers near a border crossing.

Three other Syrians initially given the death penalty were jailed for life and a fifth received a two-year sentence, said an AFP reporter who attended the hearing at the state security court.

All five were arrested and put on trial in March after a June 2016 suicide bombing killed seven soldiers and wounded 13 in no-man's land near the Rukban border crossing with Syria.

Soon after the attack, the army declared Jordan's vast desert regions stretching northeast to Syria and east to Iraq "closed military zones".

The move stranded tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in the area and sparked calls by international relief agencies for Jordan to ease the measure.

The military court sentenced Najm al-Umur, 21, to death by hanging after he was convicted of "terrorist activity leading to the death of individuals".

Umur, considered to be the mastermind behind the attack, was described in the charge sheet as a member of the Islamic State group.

Three other defendants, all in their 20s, were also sentenced to hang but had their sentences commuted to life in prison after the court took into consideration a number of reasons, including that their role had been only to provide support.

The fifth defendant was sentenced to two years in prison for entering Jordan illegally.

The charge sheet said he was sent to the country to plan the attack and had recruited the others.

Jordan is a member of the US-led coalition fighting IS.
Indian Congress Party Vice President Rahul Gandhi (L) walks with party leader Motilal Vora as he arrives to file his nomination papers for the post of party president

He has never held public office, once likened power to "poison", and saw his politician father and grandmother assassinated. Now Rahul Gandhi is poised to take over as leader of the party that has ruled India for much of its history.

The 46-year-old's expected nomination as president of the Congress Party follows years of speculation that he would succeed his mother in the role he has been prepared for since birth.

The son, grandson and great-grandson of prime ministers, Rahul has carried the burden of expectation since his father Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991.

His reputation as a reluctant leader and his lacklustre performance in the 2014 general election campaign, which he fronted, had cast doubt over his suitability for the role.

But analysts say the Gandhi family's tight grip on the party leadership -- dating back to India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru -- made his ascension almost inevitable.

His mother Sonia has led the party for 19 years and has worked tirelessly to ensure her son's eventual succession.

But he faces an immense battle to revive the ailing centre-left party ahead of the next national polls due in 2019.

A Financial Times editorial last month called Rahul an "amiable and pleasant fellow who lacks the will to win power or the killer instinct necessary for the cut and thrust of political battle in India".

Just 58 percent of Indians view him positively, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center earlier this year that put Prime Minister Narendra Modi 30 points ahead of him in the popularity stakes.

- Life of privilege -

"He will be always seen as a dynast. But much will depend on how he delivers results for the party," said Gurpreet Mahajan, political studies professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

"His only shield to criticism will be performance."

Rahul's supporters argue that he has landed some punches in recent months after a lengthy post-election period during which Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appeared unassailable.

Others, however, say a dip in the BJP's popularity has has more to do with a slowing in growth under Modi, the son of a tea-seller who has repeatedly riled Rahul as a "shehzada" or prince.

Rahul was born into a life of privilege, but his younger years were cloaked in tragedy.

He was 14 when his grandmother, prime minister Indira Gandhi, was slain by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 as revenge for the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

Just six years later his father Rajiv was killed by a suicide bomber when campaigning for re-election.

"In my life I have seen my grandmother die, I have seen my father die, I have seen my grandmother go to jail and I have actually been through a tremendous amount of pain as a child," he once said in a TV interview.

"When these things happen to you, what I had to be scared of I lost. There is absolutely nothing I am scared of."

Rahul was educated in India and at Harvard and Cambridge, and first worked in business management in London before winning the family constituency seat of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh state in 2004.

After a stint as head of its youth wing, his profile rose further when he became Congress vice president in January 2013.

But he has struggled to carve out a reputation as a politician in his own right, not helped by the fact his younger sister Priyanka brims with the charisma he is accused of lacking.

He rejected offers to enter the last Congress government, instead promoting causes such as right-to-information legislation he regards as key to curbing rampant corruption and a food security bill that critics say India can ill afford.

He has been at his most impassioned defending the secular tradition personified by his great-grandfather Jawaharal Nehru, India's first prime minister, whose socialist model framed the post-independence economy.
The unelectrified single-line track to Ivory Coast traces its origins back to the late 19th century, when France was looking for ways to link the colonised Sahel to its trading posts on the Atlantic

Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso on Monday began work to overhaul and expand a single-track rail line connecting Abidjan to the Burkinabe capital that is a vital link between the Sahel and Atlantic coast.

Renovating the 1,260-kilometre (782-mile) track -- which had first been announced in 2015 with no work being started -- is expected to take eight years.

All parties involved hope the project will improve traffic and trade between the two West African neighbours.

"Investment for the work, totalling 396 million euros ($470 million)... is the responsibility of the operator," Ivorian Transport Minister Amadou Kone said at the launch ceremony, referring to the giant French transportation company Bollore.

Burkinabe Transport Minister Souleymane Soulama said the project would make the current trains running at 40 kilometres (25 miles) per hour "a distant memory" and that speed and comfort would be the new standards.

Two new passenger trains and a locomotive will be added, 853 kms of track will be relaid, and 31 stations are to be refurbished.

"At the end of the work, Sitarail will be able to transport five million tonnes each year, including two million tonnes of general freight and three million tonnes of ore, and 800,000 passengers," said Eric Melet, chief executive for development at Bollore Transport and Logistics.

This is the third time in two years that the countries have announced these renovations.

The unelectrified single-line track traces its origins back to the late 19th century, when France was looking for ways to link the colonised Sahel to its trading posts on the Atlantic.

After numerous interruptions, the line opened in 1954. After an economic crisis in the 1990s, management of the railways was handed over to Sitarail.

The line plays a key role for landlocked Burkina Faso in transporting cotton and manganese to the coast, and in importing oil, cement and fertiliser, but it suffers from poor tracks and ageing rolling stock, which limits train speed.

In September 2016, all traffic was stopped for two weeks after a bridge on the Ivorian side collapsed as a goods train was passed by, although no one was injured.

Bollore has a 67-percent stake in Sitarail, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast each have 15 percent, and the remaining three percent is owned by the workforce.
More than two-thirds of people around the world infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa -- children and teenage girls are bearing the brunt of the continent's epidemic

The head of the UN's AIDS agency on Monday urged African countries to protect young women and children who are bearing the brunt of the continent's AIDS epidemic.

A sharp rise of people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has now slowed, "but now is not the time to drop our guard," Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, told the start of a six-day conference on HIV/AIDS and sexually-transmitted diseases in Africa.

"The many changes under way in our world should not threaten the sustainability of our great achievements in the AIDS response," he warned.

"We cannot afford to lose our gains. If we want to end this epidemic, we must act now and act differently."

About 36.7 million people in the world lived with HIV in 2016, compared with 36.1 million in 2015 and 35.5 million in 2014, according to UNAIDS figures.

AIDS-related deaths have declined by almost 50 percent since a peak of 1.9 million in 2005, to one million last year, helped by the rollout of HIV drugs, which repress the virus but do not eliminate it.

However more than two-thirds of those infected -- 25.2 million -- live south of the Sahara.

And, among the 1.16 million new infections in Africa last year, more than one in 10 occurred among children aged under 14.

For this highly vulnerable group, "prevention efforts must be stepped up," said Sidibe.

In some parts of east Africa, he said, girls aged 15-19 account for 74 percent of new teenage infections -- a figure that rises to more than 90 percent in southern Africa, he said.

Researchers have pointed the finger in particular at cases in which young girls are married to older, infected men.

The consequences of child marriages are "tragic," said Sidibe. In this group, the infection rate is 50 percent higher than among young girls who are not married.

- 'Fight to live' -

Assita Ouedraogo, who was born with the HIV virus, called on Africa's young people to "fight to live" in the face of AIDS

Around 10,000 people are attending the conference, known by its initials as ICASA, in Ivory Coast's capital Abidjan.

The event, held every two years, was launched to a powerful speech by 20-year-old Asseta Ouedraogo, infected at birth through her mother, who died in 2003.

Ouedraogo called on Africa's young people to "fight to live" in the face of AIDS, telling them that treatment and prevention could help them live a normal life and realise their dreams.

"Our generation must commit itself to being the last to be affected by HIV," she said, to rousing applause.

Ouedraogo, speaking to AFP, said she was training to be a pastry chef as she had no money to take up university studies.

"Until now, my friends didn't know that I had HIV, but I wanted to speak, to get this message across, to persuade those who have the virus to take their treatment," Ouedraogo said.

"You must not give up, there is hope, we have a life expectancy, we can have children and work," she said.
Accusations of 2016 election collusion with Russia and possible obstruction of justice continue to swirl around President Donald Trump

As special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation gains momentum, two major questions loom over the White House:

- Did members of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign collude with Russia to get him elected?

- And did Trump, as president, engage in obstruction of justice?

Here is a look at the two questions:

- Election collusion -

Trump has denied -- repeatedly and heatedly -- that there was any collusion between members of his 2016 presidential election campaign and Russia.

"There's been absolutely no collusion," Trump said over the weekend of a probe he has denounced on multiple occasions as a "political witch hunt."

US intelligence agencies determined with "high confidence" in a report issued in January that Russia had sought to influence the 2016 race in Trump's favor.

But the report by the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency and Director of National Intelligence stopped short of stating that Trump's election campaign had colluded with Russian efforts to get him elected.

That was left to Mueller, a highly respected former director of the FBI, to resolve.

Mueller was named in May by acting attorney general Rod Rosenstein to look into whether there had been "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump."

So far, Mueller's team has charged four people but none of them has been accused of directly colluding with Moscow to get Trump into the White House.

Retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn, Trump's former National Security Adviser, pleaded guilty on Friday of lying to the FBI over his contacts with Russia's ambassador to Washington.

But those conversations occurred in December, after Trump was elected, and do not directly support the charge of collusion with Russia to swing the vote.

In exchange for a single charge and a potentially light sentence, Flynn did agree, however, to fully cooperate with Mueller's team.

This has led to speculation that Flynn may have more information to provide to investigators about any contacts between Trump's campaign and Russia.

"If there was coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians I can't think of a person who would know more about that than Flynn," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told CBS News.

"So it won't be long before we understand, one way or the other, whether Trump people colluded with Russia because I can't imagine it happening and Flynn not know about it," added the senator from South Carolina.

Also charged with lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts -- and also cooperating with Mueller -- is George Papadopoulos, a low-level foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign.

Papadopoulos cultivated Russian contacts during the campaign and tried to arrange a Trump trip to Russia or a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He also told his supervisors that he had been offered "dirt" on Trump's rival, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, and son-in-law Jared Kushner are also believed to be on Mueller's radar because of their contacts with Russians.

But they have not been charged with anything so far and nothing has emerged yet linking Trump himself directly to the Russians.

- Obstruction of justice -

Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey in May is at the heart of the accusations that the president may have engaged in obstruction of justice.

Comey had been conducting an FBI investigation into the allegations of Russian meddling in the election when he was abruptly dismissed by Trump.

The FBI director had also been looking into Flynn, who had been fired as national security adviser in February for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

According to Comey, Trump urged him at a meeting in the Oval Office in February to halt an investigation into Flynn.

Such a request to an FBI director has been described as obstruction of justice by some legal scholars.

But Trump has denied making such a demand of Comey and engaged in a campaign to disparage the former FBI director since dismissing him in May.

"I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn," Trump tweeted on Sunday. "Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!"

That tweet, however, followed one on Saturday which suggested Trump already knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when he asked Comey to drop the investigation.

"I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI," Trump tweeted. "He has pled guilty to those lies."

In an attempt to back away from the tweet, a Trump attorney, John Dowd, told the website Axios that he had drafted the tweet, not the president himself.

Dowd also reportedly claimed that a president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice "because he is the chief law enforcement officer under (the Constitution) and has every right to express his view of any case."

That assertion may be on shaky legal ground.

As part of their impeachment proceedings, former presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were both accused of obstruction of justice and other offenses.
Data from Sierra Leoneans reporting incidents of corruption found the police force to be the country's most graft-riddled institution

Sierra Leone's opposition on Monday said it welcomed the replacement of the country's police chief following his sacking amid accusations of institutional political bias and endemic corruption.

Former Inspector General of Police Francis Munu was reassigned to an ambassadorial post in neighbouring Liberia after being removed from duty last week, and replaced with Richard Moigbe, his deputy.

The decision by President Ernest Bai Koroma -- who has not commented on the matter -- came after pressure by the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) over the arrest of their party spokesman Lahai Lawrence Leema and the detention of several more supporters.

"We are satisfied with the decision to relieve the former police boss who was unprofessional in handling political matters," SLPP chairman Prince Alex Harding told AFP.

Harding alleged that Munu gave orders to police officers to fire tear gas at their party office last month, causing injuries and leading to multiple arrests.

The decision comes with tensions over demonstrations and political activity spiking in the lead-up to March 2018 presidential elections, when Koroma will step down from office.

Data from Sierra Leoneans reporting incidents of corruption to a British-backed anti-bribery platform via mobile phone found the police force to be the country's most graft-riddled institution.

Beyond corruption, the force is also dogged by accusations of using excessive force.

The Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone revealed in a report that police used live ammunition in an August 2016 protest in the town of Kabala, killing two people and wounding several more.

Meanwhile the majority of the police detention facilities in Sierra Leone are overcrowded and have deplorable sanitation, increasing the risk of diseases spreading among inmates.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un -- shown here in an undated picture released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on December 3, 2017 -- has sparked international fury with his dogged pursuit of a weapons program

A top UN official will travel to North Korea this week for talks with officials there, a UN spokesman said Monday, amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The unusual visit by Jeffrey Feltman, which begins Tuesday and runs to Friday, comes less than a week after North Korea test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile believed capable of reaching the United States.

On Monday, the United States and South Korea launched their biggest ever joint air exercise amid warnings by US officials of a growing risk of war in the Korean peninsula.

Feltman, who is the UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, will discuss "issues of mutual interest and concern" with North Korean officials, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

The spokesman was unable to say whether Feltman will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

The UN official will also visit China during his trip to the region, Dujarric said.

He said Feltman's trip was in response to an invitation extended by the North Koreans during the UN General Assembly in September.

Asked whether Feltman would be preparing for a follow-on visit to Pyongyang by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Dujarric would only say that Guterres has always been ready to undertake a "good offices" mission if necessary.
A Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) interceptor missile being launched during a test in the Pacific in 2012

When Shiite rebels blasted a ballistic missile from Yemen toward the Saudi capital last month, Riyadh officials said they had intercepted and destroyed the incoming rocket.

But in an analysis published Monday by the New York Times, an arms expert and a research team examined photo and video evidence and found that Saudi Arabia may actually have missed the missile with interceptors from a US-made Patriot defense system.

The November 4 attack was the first missile Shiite rebels had aimed at the heart of the Saudi capital, underscoring the growing threat posed by the raging conflict in Yemen.

As the missile flew over Riyadh, Patriot interceptors blasted into the sky toward the rocket.

Soon after, large parts of the missile fell to the ground, and officials said this was evidence of a successful shootdown.

But around the same time, a large explosion was felt near the Riyadh airport, which was the intended target of the strike.

The Times and researchers, mainly from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, said the bits of missile Saudi officials collected and put on display were all from the back end of the rocket, believed to be a Scud variant, raising the question that the Patriot system may not have worked.

According to the Times, the Scud was "almost certainly" designed to split into two pieces as it neared the end of its 600-mile (965-kilometer) journey from Yemen.

The missile engine and tube are designed to carry the warhead for most of the flight, allowing the smaller and harder to hit warhead to complete the journey to its target.

The Times said evidence suggests either the Patriot missiles missed their target or only hit the back end of the Yemeni missile after the warhead was unleashed.

"Governments lie about the effectiveness of these systems. Or they're misinformed," Jeffrey Lewis, an analyst who led the research team, told the Times.

"And that should worry the hell out of us."

The Pentagon referred questions to Saudi Arabia, which declined to comment to the Times.

The question of missile defenses and their effectiveness has taken on renewed urgency after North Korea tested a missile with the potential ability to strike anywhere in the United States.

The Pentagon says it is confident it could stop such a missile with a "layered" missile defense system, but the system is not infallible and critics fear it would fail in a real-world setting.
President Donald Trump is to meet Democratic lawmakers to discuss averting a possible government shutdown

Democratic leaders of the House and Senate agreed on Monday to meet with US President Donald Trump later in the week to discuss pressing issues and avert a potential government shutdown.

"We are hopeful the President will be open to an agreement to address the urgent needs of the American people and keep government open," Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi said in a joint statement.

The White House meeting is scheduled for Thursday and comes just one day ahead of the deadline for Congress to vote funding to keep the government functioning.

House and Senate Republicans are proposing a two-week stopgap spending bill.

Senate Democrats have threatened to block the move unless they can win concessions from Republicans on a number of issues, notably the fate of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who came to the United States as children.

Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, protected the so-called "Dreamers" from expulsion through an executive order.

Trump rescinded that order, but then told Congress to craft a legal solution within the next six months.

Trump had been scheduled to meet Schumer and Pelosi last week but they skipped the talks after the president tweeted preemptively that he did not expect them to come to an agreement.

"We're glad the White House has reached out and asked for a second meeting," Schumer and Pelosi said. "We hope the President will go into this meeting with an open mind, rather than deciding that an agreement can't be reached beforehand."

The Democratic leaders said a number of subjects should be on the table at the meeting, which would include the Republican leaders of the House and Senate, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

"We need to reach a budget agreement that equally boosts funds for our military and key priorities here at home including the opioid crisis, pension plans and rural infrastructure," they said.

"We have to provide funding for community health centers and (the Children's Health Insurance Program), as well as relief for the millions of Americans still reeling from natural disasters," they added.

"There is a bipartisan path forward on all of these items," Schumer and Pelosi said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un -- shown here in an undated picture released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on December 3, 2017 -- has sparked international fury with his dogged pursuit of a weapons program

A senior United Nations envoy arrived at Beijing's airport on Tuesday on his way to North Korea for a rare visit aimed at defusing soaring tensions over Pyongyang's intercontinental ballistic missile launch.

The unusual trip by Jeffrey Feltman, which runs to Friday, comes less than a week after North Korea said it test-fired a new ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.

AFP journalists saw Feltman arrive in a UN-flagged car at the Chinese capital's international airport in the morning. North Korea's Air Koryo airline has a 0455 GMT flight to Pyongyang on Tuesday.

His trip comes a day after the United States and South Korea launched their biggest-ever joint air exercise -- manoeuvres slammed by Pyongyang as an "all-out provocation".

The five-day Vigilant Ace drill involves 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troops, Seoul's air force said.

Nuclear warheads

Feltman arrived in China on Monday as Beijing is one of the few transit points to North Korea in the world.

China is Pyongyang's sole major diplomatic and military ally, and its main trade partner.

Once in the North, Feltman will discuss "issues of mutual interest and concern" with officials, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, adding he was unable to say whether Feltman will meet with the reclusive state's leader Kim Jong-Un.

It will be Feltman's first visit to North Korea since he took office five years ago, and the first by a UN under-secretary-general in more than seven years.

The UN envoy is also planning to see foreign diplomats and UN workers in the North on humanitarian missions, Dujarric said.

- 'Vigilant Ace' -

The UN Security Council has hit the isolated and impoverished North with a package of sanctions over its increasingly powerful missile and nuclear tests, which have rattled Washington and its regional allies South Korea and Japan.

US President Donald Trump has leaned heavily on China's President Xi Jinping (L) to do more to rein in North Korea

Pyongyang ramped up already high tensions on the Korean Peninsula five days ago when it announced it had successfully test-fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the continental United States within range.

Analysts say it is unclear whether the missile survived re-entry into the earth's atmosphere or could successfully deliver a warhead to its target -- key technological hurdles for Pyongyang.

A Cathay Pacific crew spotted what was "suspected to be the re-entry" of the missile as they flew from San Francisco to Hong Kong, the airline said.

In a separate message to staff, Cathay general manager Mark Hoey said the crew described seeing the missile "blow up and fall apart," The South China Morning Post reported.

- 'Begging for nuclear war'? -

In recent years, Pyongyang has accelerated its drive to bring together nuclear and missile technology capable of threatening the US, which it accuses of hostility.

US President Donald Trump has engaged in months of tit-for-tat rhetoric with Kim, pejoratively dubbing him "Little Rocket Man" and a "sick puppy".

North Korean state media has hit back with a flurry of its own colourful insults, calling Trump a "dotard", a "frightened dog" and a "gangster."

Over the weekend, Pyongyang countered that Washington was "begging for nuclear war" as the North blasted the joint US-South Korean drills.

As well as featuring the latest generation of stealth fighters, this year's war games involve simulated precision attacks on the North's military installations, including its missile launch sites and artillery units, Yonhap news agency said, citing unnamed Seoul sources.

The five-day Vigilant Ace drill -- involving 230 aircraft and tens of thousands of troops -- began Monday morning, Seoul's air force said

As tensions surged, US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican and foreign policy hawk, warned that the US was moving closer to "preemptive war" if the North continued its nuclear tests.

His remarks echoed those of Trump's National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who told a security forum on Saturday that the potential for war with the North "is increasing every day."

But some Trump advisers say US military options are limited when Pyongyang could launch an artillery barrage on the South Korean capital -- only around 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the heavily-fortified border and home to 10 million people.

Tokyo's parliament on Monday slammed the North's weapons programme as an "imminent threat". Last week's missile landed in Japan's economic waters.

China's foreign ministry warned that the situation on the Korean peninsula remained "highly sensitive" and called on all sides to "do more things to ease the tension and avoid provoking each other."

The North has boasted that the Hwasong 15 ICBM tested on Wednesday is capable of delivering a "super-large" nuclear warhead anywhere in the US mainland.

While analysts agree the latest test showed a big improvement in potential range, they say the North may not have yet mastered all the technology required to successfully hit the US with a nuclear warhead.

burs-bar-lth/jta
US President Donald Trump, seen here visiting the Western Wall, has pledged he will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital

President Donald Trump on Tuesday slapped down warnings of widespread Middle East unrest as he told anxious Arab leaders he still intends to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, on the eve of a much-anticipated policy speech.

Amid a frantic round of telephone diplomacy, Trump told Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah that the deeply controversial move was coming, but crucially did not give a timeframe.

Trump "informed the president (Abbas) on his intention to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," the Palestinian leader's office said in a statement that was echoed from Amman.

Trump missed a Monday deadline to decide whether to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv or fulfill a campaign promise and move it to Jerusalem -- de facto recognizing Israel's claim on the disputed city.

Such a move would delight both Trump's donors and the conservative and evangelical base that is so vital for the embattled president's survival.

But it could also extinguish Trump's much-vaunted efforts to broker Middle East peace and ignite the flames of conflict in a region already reeling from crises in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Qatar.

The 71-year-old president will give a speech on his decision Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said.

Anticipating widespread demonstrations, US government officials have already been ordered to avoid Jerusalem's Old City and the West Bank.

- 'Threading the needle'? -

US officials talk of "threading the needle" -- fulfilling Trump's pledge, while keeping the peace process on the rails -- but critics say Trump's approach is more like "splitting the baby."

Officials say he will hold off on moving the embassy right away, largely for logistical reasons, but may present a timetable for that to go ahead on Wednesday.

Equally controversially, he is also expected to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, while leaving open questions about control of the predominantly Palestinian eastern part of the city.

The White House argues that such a move would not prejudge final talks and would represent the reality that west Jerusalem is and will continue to be part of Israel under any settlement.

All foreign embassies in Israel, including that of the United States, are currently located in Tel Aviv although most countries have consular representation in Jerusalem

But it could upend a decades-old western policy -- observed by both Republican and Democratic presidents -- that stated Jerusalem's status can only be decided by negotiation.

Saudi Arabia's King Salman warned his close ally that moving the US embassy was a "dangerous step" that could rile Muslims around the world.

"Mr Trump! Jerusalem is a red line for Muslims," Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a raucous televised speech, echoing alarm expressed by Palestinian and Arab leaders.

In his address, Erdogan warned that any move to back Israel's claim to the city would mobilize "the entire Islamic world" and even prompt Ankara to sever its recently renewed diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.

Israel's government has largely been silent. It earlier left the Trump administration with the impression that moving the embassy was a "no go," leading to Trump signing the waiver the first time around.

The armed Islamist Hamas movement has threatened to launch a new "intifada" or uprising.

Most of the international community, including the United States, does not formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

- 'A way must be found' -

Jerusalem is home to sites that are holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians

Following talks in Brussels with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, top EU diplomat Federica Mogherini warned that any move which risked undermining efforts to jumpstart moribund peace talks "must absolutely be avoided."

"A way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of both states, so that the aspiration of both parties can be fulfilled," she said.

In Cairo, Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit warned it would be viewed as an act of "clear aggression" against the Arab and Muslim world.

The Palestinians said it would shatter any illusion about Trump's ability to fairly mediate in any talks.

"That totally destroys any chance that he will play a role as an honest broker," said Nabil Shaath, an adviser to Abbas.

- The Jerusalem Embassy Act -

In Israel, however, hardline Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman hailed the moment as a "historic opportunity" for Trump, expressing hope he would see the US embassy in Jerusalem "next week or next month."

Israel seized the largely-Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War, claiming the entire city as its "eternal and undivided capital," but the Palestinians want the eastern sector as capital of a Palestinian state

The US Congress has already made its aim clear in the so-called Jerusalem Embassy Act, which was passed in 1995 and which stated that the city "should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel" and that the US embassy should be moved there.

But an inbuilt waiver, which allows the president to temporarily postpone the move on grounds of "national security," has been repeatedly invoked by successive US presidents, meaning the law has never taken effect.

Israel seized the largely-Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, claiming both sides of the city as its "eternal and undivided capital."

But the Palestinians want the eastern sector as the capital of their future state and fiercely oppose any Israeli attempt to extend sovereignty there.

Several peace plans have unravelled over the issue of how to divide sovereignty or oversee sites in the city that are holy for Christians, Jews and Muslims.

burs-arb/sst
The US Supreme Court says the Trump administration can implement its revised ban on travelers from six Muslim-majority countries while the policy is challenged in appeals courts

The US Supreme Court said Monday that the government could fully enforce a revised ban on travelers from six mainly Muslim countries pending appeal, backing President Donald Trump in the year-long battle over the controversial measure.

The court stayed October rulings from two lower courts that had blocked implementation of the open-ended ban on visitors from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen while legal challenges to it continued.

The third version of Trump's travel ban, unveiled in September, drew immediate challenges in federal appeals courts in Richmond, Virginia and San Francisco, California.

Plaintiffs argued that the measure targets Muslims in violation of the US Constitution and did not advance security goals as the government claimed.

The challengers convinced the lower courts to put implementation on hold while they and government lawyers fight out the case.

But the Trump administration, which says the ban is crucial to protect US national security and deter terror attacks, secured strong support from the Supreme Court in a 7-2 vote by justices to let the government move ahead while the appeals continue.

The justices said they expect the lower appeals courts to expedite their decisions, leaving open the possibility that the policy itself could return to the Supreme Court in yet another legal challenge to the White House.

The Richmond court is expected to hear the case on Friday.

The ban also covers people from North Korea and a selection of high officials from Venezuela, but its main focus is travelers from the six countries.
A huge so-called 'peace diamond' sold by the government of Sierra Leone to discourage crime-tainted 'blood diamonds' was sold for 4.9 million ($6.5 million) on Monday.

The 709-carat stone, which was unearthed in March, is the largest discovered in Sierra Leone in almost a half-century.

The diamond is said to be the 14th-largest ever discovered, according to the Rapaport Group, which auctioned the stone in New York on behalf of Sierra Leone's government.

Found by a company led by evangelical Pastor Momoh, the diamond was given to the government in the hopes it would handle the sale in a way that leaves more profits and development potential in Sierra Leone.

Named the Peace Diamond, 2.8 million ($3.8 million) of the proceeds will directly benefit 250,000 inhabitants of a Sierra Leone region with no school, hospital, clean water or roads

British jewelers Laurence Graff purchased the stone, according to Martin Rapaport, whose group hosted the auction. The government was expecting about 5.25 million ($7 million).

'Perhaps we're dealing with the price of transparency,' Rapaport said.

Illegal mining and sales of so-called blood diamonds have been a major source of strife in many African countries including Sierra Leone. That was the goal of the auction approach of President Ernest Bai Koroma.

Expectations at home were high, yet the price may have seemed a disappointment.

Gibril Sesay, a market seller, said he wanted the government to provide 'water, electricity and good roads for the people' with the proceeds of the gem following the sale.

But Beatrice Cole, a civil servant, told AFP 'the money paid for the diamond was far below what we expected' after watching the auction live on TV in Freetown.
BALTIMORE (AP) - Akai Alston was 13 when he was shot for the first time. It was during a robbery in East Baltimore, in broad daylight.

As he lay in his hospital bed, shaken and frightened, he knew he had a choice to make.

"I put it in my head that I'd rather be a suspect than a victim," he said.

In this March 3, 2017 photo, community outreach worker Kelvin Parker poses for a portrait while walking in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore. Parker is one of three outreach workers at U-TURNS, a fledgling initiative with an ambitious goal: to reach teenagers and young adults in west Baltimore and provide an alternative to the streets. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Ten years later, Alston faced another grim decision. He was dealing crack and hooked on prescription pills. He'd squeezed triggers, and seen friends and family members lose their lives to gunshots. After his last conviction, for accessory to murder, he knew was on the path to die in jail or die in the streets. This time, he rejected both.

Now Alston is a community outreach coordinator for U-TURNS, a project that tries to give Baltimore teenagers and young adults an alternative to the streets. They can find a safe space, food, job training, holistic health practices such as yoga and acupuncture, mental health services and - most important - mentorship.

The initiative's been in operation less than a year and couldn't come at a more pressing time. As of Dec. 3, Baltimore has seen 321 homicides this year, surpassing the 2016 total of 318. At least ninety-eight victims were no older than 25. Gun Violence Archive data show that from January 2014 to June 2016, roughly 7.2 teenagers of every 10,000 were shot. The figure, based on an analysis of news articles and police data, is likely an undercount.

This year, Police Commissioner Kevin Davis announced that he'd dedicate additional officers to street patrol. Two years ago, Davis launched a multiagency initiative called the "war room" to try and map the web of relationships among victims and perpetrators.

Still, the violence continues.

Alston and Kelvin Parker, 34, are both former drug dealers - and both victims and perpetrators of gun violence as teens. Now, in the early afternoons, they head to the same West Baltimore street corners where they used to deal. They try to persuade the corner boys to leave their posts. For about three hours daily, they walk through the Gilmor Homes projects and past blocks of vacant rowhouses in Sandtown, the neighborhood where the 2015 death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray prompted protests and rioting. They wear black jackets with "Outreach" emblazoned in white on the back.

Building trust in a community where it's in short supply is one of their main goals.

One 17-year-old who started dealing at 14 comes to U-TURNS almost daily. Dealing was his only option, he said, after losing his mother at 3.

"The only way I knew that I could be somebody or have money in my pockets or accomplish anything was by turning over to the drug life," he said.

At 15, he was stabbed in the stomach. When he recovered, he decided he needed a change.

Now he's in therapy and helps care for children at Kids Safe Zone, an afterschool center that houses U-TURNS.

"I've learned that not everything revolves around violence, that not everything revolves around you," he said.

Alston and Parker, he said, are "my role models. They've been through what I've been through."

Parker grew up in Sandtown with his grandmother and a dozen others in a two-bedroom apartment. At 7, a gun was pulled on him for the first time, and he saw two men beat another unconscious with a 2-by-4. With his father in jail and mother too busy to raise him, Parker looked up to an older cousin, a notorious dealer.

"Guns on the table, guns in the cabinet, guns in the bathroom - that was my normal," he said. "Coming up in a place where no one else values life, where no one else really cares, it's hard not to become what you're around."

By 12, he'd started selling drugs. The lifestyle had a price - jail time.

"I didn't see a whole year on the street until I was 21," he said.

Alston also grew up fast. Born in 1991, at the height of the crack epidemic, his mother was addicted, leaving him and his sister to fend for themselves.

"I didn't have little army men," he said. "I had colored vials."

Alston said he spent most of his childhood bouncing from one house to another. Although he didn't start selling drugs until after he was shot, he admired neighborhood dealers for their clothes and cars, and ability to provide.

Alston fired his first gun at 14, in retaliation for a punch in the jaw so forceful it made his ear ring.

Parker had never fired a gun before he was struck. After he was shot, he knew he'd have to.

"Retaliation was a must," he said. "It made me feel like a man, or what I thought a man was."

Parker said he didn't realize until he started training as an outreach worker how much of what he endured as a child influenced him. He only recently came to understand trauma, he said, and is working to move past his own.

In group therapy sessions, Alston and Parker use an approach to processing trauma that focuses on safety, emotions, loss and the future. One afternoon, they gathered a half-dozen teens, all boys but one, and screened a "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" clip in which Will Smith's character discusses growing up without a father. Alston and Parker asked the teens to share an experience; almost all said they came from broken homes, with drugs and violence commonplace.

At another session, Alston led a discussion with a dozen teens about fear and danger, and explained how trauma can manifest in the body and mind.

Keeshanna Mobley, 17, bounced her baby nephew on her knee. She'd been coming to U-TURNS for a few months, since an arrest for fighting. She's on probation, and feels safer now that she spends time at the center instead of the streets, she said.

"There was a lot of stuff I was getting into before this, trouble, getting locked up, getting myself into the wrong situation at the wrong time," she said. "Since I joined U-TURNS, it's been a lot less, because I'm here."

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Follow Juliet Linderman at https://twitter.com/JulietLinderman

In this March 2, 2017 photo, Akai Alston, bottom, a community outreach worker at U-TURNS, prepares to lead a group therapy session with young people in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore. Alston is one of three outreach workers at U-Turns, a fledgling initiative with the goal of providing an alternative to the streets to teenagers and young adults in west Baltimore. "When we were coming up we didn't have role models," Alston said. "That's the different between us and them: We're giving them options." (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

In this March 2, 2017 photo, boys participate in a group therapy session led by community outreach workers at U-TURNS in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore. U-TURNS offers teens and young adults in west Baltimore a safe space, food, job training, holistic health practices like yoga and acupuncture, mental health services and most importantly, mentorship. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

In this March 2, 2017 photo, a photo from a Baltimore protest march hangs behind Kelvin Parker, a community outreach worker at U-TURNS, at a community center in Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. Parker and his colleagues hope that by engaging with young people early on and giving them mentors who can relate to their own struggles, they can instill hope that even in Sandtown, not all decisions have to involve drugs, guns and violence. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

In this March 3, 2017 photo, Kelvin Parker, a community outreach worker at U-TURNS, walks past a blighted storefront in west Baltimore. Parker and his colleagues spend part of their shifts walking through a public housing project and past blocks of vacant buildings the same neighborhood where the death of Freddie Gray prompted civil unrest in 2015. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
KODAK, Tenn. (AP) - Authorities say police officers in Tennessee have shot a man during a confrontation at a home.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says in a news release that Sevier County sheriff's deputies shot 41-year-old Timothy McGill on Sunday at the home in Kodak in eastern Tennessee.

The statement says a woman at the home indicated her husband was threatening to harm himself. Upon arriving, a confrontation ensued with McGill that ended with deputies shooting him.

The statement didn't give additional details of the confrontation, identify the deputies or specify McGill's injuries. He was being treated at the University of Tennessee Medical Center.

The TBI says witnesses are being interviewed and evidence is being collected in the investigation. No charges were immediately filed.
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Monday:

1. WHO INSISTS FBI IS 'IN TATTERS'

President Trump attacks the bureau's credibility, following revelations an FBI agent who sent anti-Trump text messages was removed from the team investigating Russian election meddling.

In this March 2, 2017 photo, Akai Alston, bottom, a community outreach worker at U-TURNS, prepares to lead a group therapy session with young people in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore. Alston is one of three outreach workers at U-Turns, a fledgling initiative with the goal of providing an alternative to the streets to teenagers and young adults in west Baltimore. "When we were coming up we didn't have role models," Alston said. "That's the different between us and them: We're giving them options." (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

2. WHY CVS WANTS TO GET INTO INSURANCE BUSINESS

CVS plans to buy insurance giant Aetna in a roughly $69 billion deal that could help the drugstore chain become a one-stop-shop for health care.

3. SENATE DEMOCRATS UNITE TO OPPOSE TAX BILL

Democrats unanimously reject the GOP president's nearly $1.5 trillion revamp of the tax code.

4. WHAT THERAPISTS SAY ABOUT SEX ADDICTION

It's not an officially recognized psychiatric diagnosis, but even mental health professionals who harbor some doubts on compulsive sexual behavior acknowledge it can harm lives.

5. 'I'VE LEARNED THAT NOT EVERYTHING REVOLVES AROUND VIOLENCE'

A social outreach program called U-TURNS helps give Baltimore teens and young adults an alternative to the city's deadly streets.

6. SILVERDOME STILL STANDING AFTER FAILED IMPLOSION

After some explosive charges misfired, the Detroit Lions' former stadium remains upright and will have to be demolished by heavy equipment.

7. ROY MOORE'S SENATE RUN BECOMES DEMOLITION DERBY

The former judge's campaign loses traction after he's hit with decades-old allegations of sexual misconduct.

8. TRUMP MAY ANNOUNCE PLANS TO REDUCE 2 NATIONAL MONUMENTS

Conservationists and outdoor groups intend to file lawsuits if the president seeks to cut down Utah's Grand Staircase and Bears Ears monuments.

9. LL COOL J IS YOUNGEST KENNEDY CENTER HONOREE

The 49-year-old rapper, and TV producer Norman Lear, are among this year's recipients.

10. COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFFS ARE SET

Alabama will join Clemson, Oklahoma and Georgia in postseason, Ohio State falls short.

Customers leave a CVS Pharmacy, Sunday, Dec. 3, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York. CVS will buy insurance giant Aetna in a roughly $69 billion deal that will help the drugstore chain reach deeper into customer health care and protect a key client, a person with knowledge of the matter said Sunday. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
BEIJING (AP) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau began a visit to China focused on trade Monday with a stop at a Chinese social media giant where he talked up the advantages of travel to his homeland.

Accompanied by four Cabinet ministers, Trudeau also met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Great Hall of the People.

"It's rare to have such a close, intimate relationship where we have mutual exchanges of visits along with such dialogues," Li told Trudeau in remarks at the start of their meeting. "China-Canada relations are indeed headed toward a golden stage."

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, poses for photos with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a welcome ceremony held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Trudeau responded that the opportunities for deepening ties between the countries' economies and people are "tremendous."

"Canada is deeply interested in further engagement and trade across the Pacific and I know we're going to continue to have wonderful and fruitful discussions now and in the future as well," Trudeau said.

The two leaders oversaw the signing of three documents related to trade in food products, energy cooperation and education, though no details were provided.

Trudeau is to meet with President Xi Jinping on Tuesday.

At Sina, owner of the popular Twitter-like Weibo microblogging service, Trudeau took part in a panel discussion that touched on Canadian tourism draws, as well as the nation's beer and wine, according to Chinese and Canadian reports.

Next year marks the China-Canada year of tourism and Canada is hoping to double the number of Chinese tourist arrivals.

China and Canada are also in exploratory talks on a framework for a trade agreement, although reports say Ottawa has been pushing for provisions on the environment, governance, labor and gender issues.

Beijing generally seeks to avoid references that might highlight the one-party authoritarian state's human rights record.

China has positioned itself as a leading advocate of free trade, particularly since President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pan-Pacific trade deal. Yet foreign businesses often complain that China closes many key areas to foreign investment, and Xi is known to favor a centralized economic model with special support for state-owned industries.

Canada has remained part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. During recent talks in Danang, Vietnam, Trudeau lobbied for strong provisions for environmental protection, labor rights, and gender issues, and the name of the initiative was altered to be the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

China largely imports wood and agricultural products, ore, fuels and seafood from Canada, while Canada imports machinery, furniture and sporting goods and textiles from China. The trade imbalance has narrowed, but China still ran a surplus of about $17 billion with Canada during the first half of this year, according to the Canadian government.

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This story has been corrected to show that Trudeau met with Li on Monday and will meet with Xi on Tuesday.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, walks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a welcome ceremony held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes part in an event at Sina Weibo headquarters in Beijing, China, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, to promote Canada-China tourism. Trudeau was joined by young professional Chinese who have visited Canada, in order to share their experiences. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The shifting explanations for why President Donald Trump fired national security adviser Michael Flynn have revived questions about whether the president may have obstructed an ongoing investigation of potential contacts between his campaign and Russia.

Pressure on the administration has mounted since Flynn last week pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, with prosecutors revealing that he is now cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. And a muddled White House response, including a problematic presidential tweet, has left some Trump confidants worried that the president is not being well-served by his legal team and believing his lawyers have painted a too-rosy picture of the president's potential plight.

The president's aides and legal advisers have scrambled for 48 hours to explain a presidential tweet that raised the specter of obstruction. It read: "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pleaded guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, before heading to Utah. Trump will be announcing plans to scale back two sprawling national monuments in Utah, responding to what he has condemned as a "massive federal land grab" by the government. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

That tweet appeared to indicate a change in the White House explanation for Flynn's firing, suggesting Trump was aware when the White House dismissed Flynn on Feb. 13 that the national security adviser had lied to the FBI, whose agents had interviewed him weeks earlier. Former FBI Director James Comey has said Trump the following day brought up the Flynn investigation in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could "let this go," raising the possibility he knew Flynn had lied and was looking to cover up the offense.

With questions raised by the tweet, Trump associates tried to put distance between the president and the potentially incriminating message.

One of Trump's attorneys, John Dowd, told CNN on Sunday that he was responsible for crafting the tweet.

Dowd declined to comment to the AP but replied with a Fox News story Monday quoting prominent lawyer Alan Dershowitz as saying Trump couldn't have committed obstruction of justice by urging Comey to drop the FBI investigation of Flynn.

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, backed up Dowd's claim that he wrote the tweet, saying "the lawyers are the ones that understand how to put those tweets together."

"I was with the president on Saturday all day, frankly, and I know that what he said is correct," Conway continued, referring to Dowd. "What he says is that he put it together and sent it to our director of social media."

A White House spokesman declined to answer whether Dowd dictated the tweet word-for-word to the White House director of social media, Dan Scavino, or whether Scavino, who has access to the @RealDonaldTrump account and its 44 million followers, put the sentiment into something resembling Trump's own voice.

The president angrily scolded aides for the tweet over the weekend, according to a person familiar with private conversations but not authorized to discuss them publicly. The White House is considering reviewing how some tweets, particularly related to the Russia probe, get posted.

The episode has rattled some of Trump's outside advisers, who have pressed upon Trump since Flynn's guilty plea that he needs to change legal strategy. White House lawyer Ty Cobb has repeatedly offered public assurances that the investigation into the administration would soon be over, with the president exonerated.

Trump has taken that counsel to heart, telling two close allies over the weekend that he believed he was in the clear and that Mueller's team wouldn't unveil any further charges, according to the advisers who discussed the private conversations under the conditions of anonymity. Both of the confidants said they disputed that assessment and urged Trump to go on the offensive, perhaps by firing his current lawyers or triggering a series of events that could lead to Mueller's dismissal.

Trump did not suggest he was considering that approach. And one of the advisers, who speaks to Trump regularly, said the president had not discussed with him the possibility of issuing any pardons.

The president did lob new criticism at the special counsel investigation Monday, saying he feels "very badly" for Flynn.

"I think it's a shame," Trump said of Flynn's situation, adding that it's "very unfair" and that Flynn had "led a very strong life."

In the wake of the controversial tweet, Trump launched a fresh denial that he had pressured the former FBI director, tweeting Sunday that "I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!"

Trump fired Comey in May, leading to Mueller's appointment.

Any proof that Trump knew before he spoke with Comey in February that Flynn had lied to the FBI could bolster obstruction of justice allegations against the president and raise the prospect that he was trying to protect a key member of his inner circle from probable prosecution, said Jimmy Gurule, a Notre Dame criminal law professor and former federal prosecutor.

Though the president has previously said he was thinking of "this Russia thing" when he fired Comey, Gurule said it was reasonable to infer from the weekend tweet that the dismissal of Comey was done in the hope of terminating the FBI investigation.

"If you have knowledge of a crime, a reasonable person would disclose that information to law enforcement. The president did not," Gurule said.

But David Rivkin Jr., a Washington lawyer specializing in constitutional law who worked in the Justice Department under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said that even if the president knew that Flynn had lied to the FBI, "his authority as the chief executive is perfectly sufficient and appropriate to decide that this matter should not be investigated any further."

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Lemire reported from New York.

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Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire and Tucker at http://twitter.com/@etuckerAP
WASHINGTON (AP) - Bill Clinton once wanted to punch a newspaper columnist in the nose for calling Hillary Clinton a "congenital liar." Ronald Reagan complained about the "bum rap" Nancy Reagan got for buying White House china. George H.W. Bush defended Barbara Bush after female students objected to her as their commencement speaker because she dropped out of college to get married.

There's a long tradition of presidents defending their first ladies, and it's now President Donald Trump's turn.

Trump pushed back recently after Vanity Fair magazine, citing an anonymous source, reported that Melania Trump didn't want to become first lady "come hell or high water" and didn't think it would happen. Trump also took offense at the report's assertion that he also never thought he'd be elected.

FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump board Air Force One at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. There's a long tradition of presidents defending their first ladies, and it's now Trump's turn. Trump pushed back recently after Vanity Fair magazine, citing an anonymous source, reported that Melania Trump didn't want to become first lady "come hell or high water" and didn't think it would happen. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Not known to back away when he feels that he or a loved one has been slighted, the president rose to his wife's defense hours after she pulled off one of the most high-profile first lady projects: decorating the White House for Christmas.

"Melania, our great and very hard working First Lady, who truly loves what she is doing, always thought that 'if you run, you will win,' Trump tweeted Tuesday. "She would tell everyone that, 'no doubt, he will win.' I also felt I would win (or I would not have run) - and Country is doing great!"

It wasn't the first time Trump felt compelled to stand up for his former fashion model spouse.

He complained in an October television interview about the "tremendous abuse" she took for leaving the White House in her signature stilettos as she joined him to survey hurricane damage in Texas. Sharp critiques about her footwear lit up social media as soon as departure photos of the Trumps were posted. Mrs. Trump changed into white sneakers during the flight.

"She's taken tremendous abuse," Trump said in the interview with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on Trinity Broadcasting Network. "She wants to look, out of respect for the White House, wants to look good leaving the front entrance to the White House. So she dresses up and she puts on formal shoes, high heels, and she leaves the White House going to Texas."

Trump said his wife is a private person and "she doesn't need this," meaning the criticism. "But she does like to help people. She sees how important it is."

Katherine Jellison, an Ohio University history professor who studies first ladies, said other presidents' wives had experience in the political spotlight where everything is dissected, unlike Melania Trump, whose professional experience before the White House largely consisted of fashion runways, red carpets and motherhood.

"This kind of scrutiny that Melania Trump is encountering as first lady and follows every first lady is a new experience for her," Jellison said. "And another difference is she's married to a man who is quick to respond to anything he sees as a slight or a criticism. I guess that includes comments regarding his wife."

The first lady is no pushover. Like her husband, Mrs. Trump will fight back and recently did so - albeit through her spokeswoman - after the president's first wife, Ivana, referred to herself as "first lady" while promoting her memoir. Ivana Trump also said she speaks with the president about every two weeks and has a direct line to the White House.

The first lady's spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, blasted Ivana Trump's statement as "attention-seeking and self-serving noise."

Presidents are spouses, too, and some have reacted as any husband would if he thinks his wife is being unfairly criticized, Jellison said.

Reagan complained at a 1981 news conference about the "bum rap" his wife was getting over the purchase of new china settings at the same time the administration was cutting school lunches. Reagan said the White House hadn't had a complete set of china since Harry Truman, some three decades earlier, and that a full table for a state dinner couldn't be set without mixing existing china patterns.

Nancy Reagan had ordered a Lenox service for 220 people, each setting containing 19 pieces, "at cost" or $209,000. Reagan said it was a private gift at no expense to taxpayers.

George H.W. Bush defended Barbara Bush's role as a wife and mother after Wellesley College's invitation for her to speak at commencement in 1990 irritated some members of the all-female student body. The first lady had dropped out of Smith College after two years to get married.

Asked about the dustup, the president joked at a news conference that he wouldn't argue with the students' view that his wife's accomplishments were largely derived from marriage to him. He added that "these young women can have a lot to learn from Barbara Bush and from her unselfishness and from her advocacy of literacy and of being a good mother and a lot of other things."

Clinton had a more forceful reaction in 1996 after New York Times columnist William Safire called Hillary Clinton a "congenital liar" following revelations about her involvement in an Arkansas land deal known as Whitewater, and her role in a controversy involving dismissals at the White House travel office.

Mike McCurry, the White House spokesman, said that Clinton, "if he were not the president, would have delivered a more forceful response to that on the bridge of Mr. Safire's nose."

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Associated Press News Researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

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Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

In this Nov. 30, 2017, photo, President Donald Trump holds first lady Melania Trump's hand as they walk back to the stage during the lighting ceremony for the 2017 National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse near the White House in Washington. There's a long tradition of presidents defending their first ladies, and it's now Trump's turn. Trump pushed back recently after Vanity Fair magazine, citing an anonymous source, reported that Melania Trump didn't want to become first lady "come hell or high water" and didn't think it would happen. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump, center left, kisses first lady Melania Trump as they arrive at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. There's a long tradition of presidents defending their first ladies, and it's now Trump's turn. Trump pushed back recently after Vanity Fair magazine, citing an anonymous source, reported that Melania Trump didn't want to become first lady "come hell or high water" and didn't think it would happen. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) - Soon after she turned 14, Ferah built her own world in her bedroom. A world of paper butterflies, of lights draped in strings from corner to corner, of inspirational messages taped on the wall above her bed.

It had to be special because the Iraqi teen intended to stay there to escape the horror outside in her home city of Mosul. Just a few months earlier, in the summer of 2014, it had been taken over by the Islamic State group, the fanatics that everyone sneeringly referred to by their acronym in Arabic, Daesh.

Her room became her sanctuary for nearly three years, where she wrote a Facebook journal, expressing her fears and hopes.

Ferah studies for an exam in Irbil, Iraq, in this photo taken Nov. 11, 2017. Before the Islamic State group took over her home city of Mosul in 2014, Ferah had just started at a new private school that she loved, with all new friends. After the takeover, she stopped going to school, her friends fled, and the teenager fell deeper into isolation and despair. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

"What is the problem?" she wrote in an imagined dialogue.

"The future is gone. It came crashing down."

"How can I understand your feelings?"

"Be among Daesh. ... Try being a dreamer while sitting among Daesh."

Ferah's story and writings offer a glimpse of the day-to-day struggle to survive under IS. The group's takeover of Mosul plunged her into isolation. Her friends fled the city, as did her two eldest sisters, who were married and had their own families. Ferah stopped going to school, afraid of the girls in her class who identified with Daesh.

Outside was dangerous. IS religious police hunted for the slightest sign of "sin." Outside Ferah's uncle's house, they dragged away a girl when her robes swished open and they spotted something red underneath, a forbidden dash of color in the required all-black garb hiding her entire body and face.

In a nearby neighborhood, a young girl, around 12, went on her roof to catch a breeze in the summer heat. A boy next door was on his roof at the same time. They were seen. Suspicions were raised.

Daesh arrested and killed them both. The girl was stoned to death in front of her house, the punishment for adultery. Everyone in the neighborhood said when the girl's body was taken away, the warm smell of musk lingered, one of the aromas of Paradise, proof she was innocent and God had taken her in.

Ferah, her parents and an older sister stayed inside as much as possible.

"Isn't there a right to the freedom to dream, the freedom to have the best years of my life?" Ferah wrote. "I'd just like to know when I will really live."

She escaped onto the internet, staying online late into the night. Her Facebook postings garnered more than 6,000 followers, who encouraged her, gave her hope and became her friends.

Across Mosul, society rolled up behind closed doors, everyone living nocturnal, virtual lives.

With their kids stuck at home, some parents married them off just to give them something to do. It was ridiculous, Ferah scoffed - girls around her age marrying guys in their early 20s they barely knew. The girls were so excited, in makeup and elaborate dresses, as if it were a real marriage that would last, she thought.

She preferred her own world.

As months dragged on, she decorated her room with paper cutouts of butterflies and flowers. She hung strings of lights. From Instagram and Tumblr, she printed inspirational messages and taped them above her bed. One poster showed a girl wearing fairy wings. "What if I fall?" the picture asked - and then replied, "Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?"

Her "little works," as she called them, gave her solace.

She improved her English watching YouTube videos. She downloaded Arabic translations of self-help books. Twice, she read "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens."

Habit #1: "Be proactive." Tell yourself "I am the captain of my life. I can choose my attitude."

She tried to do positive things. She learned to sew clothes and make gifts out of colored paper and gave them to friends. In times like this, simple things brought people joy. For a time, she and her sister went to a woman's house for lessons in memorizing the Quran. But by the time Ferah learned a third of the holy book, IS decreed that only its clerics could teach the Quran, so the woman stopped the lessons, fearing reprisals.

On her 16th birthday, in July 2016, Daesh organized a bitter surprise: They shut down the internet across Mosul.

Ferah was cut off. So she wrote for herself now - and defied her despair.

"No one can stop you when trust in what's inside you, when survival is in your heart even as your body is drowning, when light is inside you even as darkness is around you," she wrote. "Even when difficulties grow, I will not break. Go on, war, get worse."

It did get worse, even as liberation came in January 2017.

As Iraqi forces battling into Mosul neared Ferah's neighborhood, IS fighters seized her family's home to use as a sniper's post.

Ferah's family took refuge with a neighbor. Huddling in a single room, they heard the battle outside, the rocket fire, the guns hammering. Then a giant blast shook them. The room went black.

The battle ended. The militants fled, and Iraqi troops took control of the district.

As they retreated, the IS fighters had set off explosives in Ferah's home. She watched the flames consume her room. Her little works - the butterflies, the lights, the clothes - were all reduced to ash.

"I saw my dreams ... as they turned to nothing," she wrote. "My trust in tomorrow slipped away ... My heart has burned up."

But it was not the end.

Her family rebuilt their home. Ferah found the confidence to endure.

Now 17, back at school and able to dream of a future again, she looks back at one of her favorite texts. It's a love song to herself, written amid her hopelessness to praise the good she had discovered.

"Good morning to everyone who feels the beauty within - no matter who it angers," she reads. "Glory to the fading light of endings and the burst of new beginnings. Everything else won't last long."

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Ferah and her family spoke to The Associated Press on condition that their full names not be used and that some identifying details not be mentioned out of fear for their safety. Keath reported from Cairo.

Ferah poses for a photo in her home in Mosul, Iraq, in this photo taken Saturday, Nov. 4, 2017. Ferah was just turning 14 and starting to look to the future when the Islamic State group took over Mosul in 2014, throwing her world into darkness. Afraid to leave the house, the teenager had to find some way to endure. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

"No matter how hard you summon your strength ... you won't be able to get over it. You'll feel how horrible it is to have your hands chained and be unable to picture your future." Ferah, posing for a picture in her home in Mosul, Iraq in this Nov. 4, 2014 photo, found an outlet in writing, keeping a Facebook journal during the rule of the Islamic State group over Mosul. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Iraqi teen Ferah, shown studying for an exam in Irbil, Iraq, in this Nov. 11, 2017 photo, says writing helped her endure during the rule of the Islamic State group over her home city of Mosul, giving her an outlet to explore her fears and hopes. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
BRUSSELS (AP) - The European Union and Britain ended a flurry of top-level diplomacy on Monday without a deal on the terms of their divorce, as agreement on how to maintain an open Irish border after Brexit slipped out of the negotiators' grasp.

But the two sides said they were within striking distance of consensus, setting up a hectic negotiating rush ahead of an EU summit next week. Member countries must decide whether to broaden the talks to the topic of future relations.

British Prime Minister Theresa May went to Brussels for a long negotiating lunch with EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. After a day that see-sawed between hope and disappointment, the leaders failed to make what the EU considers "sufficient progress" on three issues: Britain's exit bill, the rights of citizens affected by Brexit and the status of the currently invisible Irish border.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, greets British Prime Minister Theresa May prior to a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will hold a power lunch on Monday, seeking a breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations ahead of a key EU summit the week after. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

The border issue remained the main sticking point.

"We had an agreement this morning," Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, expressing disappointment at the last-minute glitch.

EU leaders want a deal on the breakup terms in time for them to agree at the Dec. 14-15 summit whether to move the negotiations on to the next stage of talks, including trade. The lack of progress so far has raised concerns that Britain may not have a deal by the time it officially leaves on March 29, 2019.

"Despite our best efforts and the significant process we and our teams have made over the past days on the remaining withdrawal issues, it was not possible to reach an agreement," EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said.

"This is not a failure," Juncker added after a long negotiating lunch with British Prime Minister Theresa May.

May said that "on a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation." But she said talks would reconvene later this week "and I am also confident we will conclude this positively."

The EU and the U.K. are nearing agreement on some divorce terms, including the size of the bill that Britain must pay as it leaves and the rights of citizens affected by Brexit. But the border issue has proved more intractable.

After Britain leaves the bloc, the currently invisible 310-mile (500-kilometer) frontier will be the U.K.'s only land border with an EU country.

Britain says it wants to maintain a "frictionless" flow of people and goods with no border posts. But Ireland and the other EU nations are demanding to know how that will work if Britain is outside the EU's borderless single market and its tariff-free customs union, a looser trading bloc that includes non-EU states like Turkey.

Negotiators were discussing an agreement that would commit Britain to maintaining "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and Ireland after Brexit. Both sides would promise to maintain compatible trading rules, keeping the border transparent for trade.

Irish and EU officials indicated that agreement was close. But then Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which props up May's minority government, announced it wouldn't support any deal that made special rules for Northern Ireland. The pro-British Unionist party opposes any special status that could take Northern Ireland further from Britain and closer to the Republic of Ireland.

The DUP has only 10 seats out of 650 in Britain's House of Commons, but without their support May's government would fall.

"We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the U.K.," DUP leader Arlene Foster said. "The economic and constitutional integrity of the U.K. must not be compromised in any way."

Varadkar said he was "surprised and disappointed that the British government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today."

"I still hope this matter can be concluded in the coming days," he said.

Chief European Parliament Brexit official Guy Verhofstadt, who had put the odds of agreement Monday at "50/50," warned that unless all issues are solved "there will be no green light in October 2018."

A decision on any new deals with Britain would have to be reached by the fall of next year to give individual member states enough time to approve all the measures in their parliaments before the final date on March 2019.

European Council President Donald Tusk cautioned that time was running short.

"It is now getting very tight but agreement at December (summit) is still possible," he tweeted.

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Jill Lawless reported from London.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, greets British Prime Minister Theresa May prior to a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will hold a power lunch on Monday, seeking a breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations ahead of a key EU summit the week after. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

A member of protocol puts up the British flag outside EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will hold a power lunch on Monday, seeking a breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations ahead of a key EU summit the week after. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, and British Prime Minister Theresa May address a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker held a power lunch on Monday, seeking a breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations ahead of a key EU summit the week after. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, shakes hands with European Council President Donald Tusk at the Europa building in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker held a power lunch on Monday before meeting European Council President Donald Tusk, seeking a breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations ahead of a key EU summit the week after. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker address a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker held a power lunch on Monday, seeking a breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations ahead of a key EU summit the week after. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, walks with British Prime Minister Theresa May, center, prior to a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will hold a power lunch on Monday, seeking a breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations ahead of a key EU summit the week after. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - A federal judge on Monday sentenced former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown to five years in prison on fraud and other charges related to a purported charity for poor students that she used as a personal slush fund.

Brown, 71, was ordered to turn herself in to authorities no earlier than Jan. 8. She represented a Florida district that included Jacksonville during her nearly 25-year career.

Brown, a Democrat who was one of the first three African-Americans to be elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction, was convicted by a federal jury in May on 18 of the 22 charges against her, which included fraud, lying on her tax returns and on her congressional financial disclosures.

FILE - In this May 5, 2017, file photo, former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown walks to the federal courthouse in Jacksonville, Fla., where she is expected to retake the stand in her trial on federal fraud and tax charges. A federal judge is expected to sentence Brown on Monday, Dec. 4, for fraud and other charges related to a purported charity for poor students that she used as a personal slush fund. (Bob Self/The Florida Times-Union via AP, File)

Prosecutors outlined a pattern of fraud by Brown and her top aide that included using hundreds of thousands of dollars from the One Door for Education Foundation for lavish parties, trips and shopping excursions.

Brown's former chief of staff, Elias "Ronnie" Simmons, and One Door's executive director Carla Wiley had accepted plea deals and testified against Brown. They were also sentenced Monday. Simmons was sentenced to four years in prison, followed by three years of probation, and Wiley received a one-year sentence following by three years of probation. They too were ordered to turn themselves in no earlier than Jan. 8.

Federal prosecutors said the three used One Door to bring in more than $800,000 between 2012 and 2016, including a high-profile golf tournament at TPC Sawgrass. The Virginia-based One Door only gave out one scholarship for $1,200 to an unidentified person in Florida, according to court documents.

Simmons told jurors that his boss ordered him to take cash and checks from One Door's account on dozens of occasions and deposit the money into Brown's personal account.

Brown testified in her own defense, saying she was left in the dark about the details of One Door's money, and blamed the theft on Simmons.

Her attorneys argued for leniency at a hearing last month, saying Brown's community work should mitigate her crimes.
VALLETTA, Malta (AP) - Ten suspects were arrested Monday for the car bomb slaying of a prominent Maltese journalist who covered corruption, the prime minister and other authorities said.

The arrests came seven weeks to the day after the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. They were the first known break in a crime that shocked Malta and motivated European Union officials to look into the EU island nation's laws and government.

Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed Oct. 16 when a bomb destroyed her car as she was driving near her home. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who was among the subjects of the late reporter's investigations, declined to say who the suspects were or why they were arrested.

FILE - This Oct. 16, 2017 file photo shows the wreckage of the car of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia after a car bomb which killed her, next to a road in the town of Mosta, Malta. On Monday, Dec. 4, 2017 Malta's prime minister Joseph Muscat announced the arrest of eight suspects, all Maltese citizens, in the murder of the journalist. (AP Photo/Rene Rossignaud, file)

Eight Maltese citizens were arrested because of "reasonable suspicion" for their involvement in Caruana Galizia's killing, Muscat told reporters at a news conference.

A little while later, Muscat tweeted that two others had been arrested. They also are Maltese, Home Minister Michael Farrugia said. Authorities did not release the names of any of the 10 suspects.

Explaining the reason for staying tight-lipped, Muscat cited concerns that divulging information could compromise the prosecutions. Farrugia said he wouldn't disclose anything because "I have been already threatened by legal action by the Caruana Galizia family."

The journalist's family alleged last month that Farrugia had put the investigation at risk by sharing confidential information with lawmakers. The minister brushed off the allegation, but the family said it was prepared to take legal action to prevent the government from sabotaging the case.

Caruana Galizia's family reacted angrily to how the arrests were announced on Monday, saying police should have informed them before the prime minister. They reiterated their skepticism that justice would be carried out, despite Muscat's public insistence that all would be done to find and punish the killers.

Muscat "appears to view the investigation into Daphne Caruana Galizia's assassination as a marketing exercise for his government and not as a contract killing, which has left surviving family members wondering what happened and how justice can be truly served," the family said in a statement.

They said they had already written to the police commission about "the constant stream of leaks which prejudice the integrity of the investigation," but never received a response.

The family contended the police had leaked information about the identities of seven suspects.

"It is important to ask whether they are not also leaking information to other suspects, some of whom could be in or close to government," the statement continued.

"The blurring of boundaries with the executive - and this in a case which has political implications - is disturbing," the family statement said. "When the handling of an investigation is not sound, it is difficult to have faith in its outcome."

The arrests coordinated among the Police Corps, the Armed Forces of Malta and the Security Services. The investigation appeared to be continuing Monday as police and military members cordoned off an area in Marsa, a small port town close to Valletta, the capital of Malta. Marsa is where most of the arrests were made.

Video released later by Maltese police showed officers and members of the security service and armed forces making some of the arrests. Some officers arrived in Marsa by boat and apprehended suspects in waterfront warehouses.

Maltese media, citing unidentified police sources, said two brothers were among the suspects. One of them was acquitted of a 2015 armed robbery charge for lack of sufficient evidence. The other has been charged with possession of unlicensed weapons and tools used to pick locks.

Investigators have 48 hours to question the suspects to decide whether to seek charges, in accordance with Maltese law.

A court hearing was set for Tuesday, when the police can officially file charges. The suspects then can either plead innocent or guilty. The magistrate will decide whether to set bail or remand them in custody.

Europol, the European Union's police agency, has sent a team of organized crime experts to help Maltese police investigate the assassination, joining the FBI and Dutch forensic experts.

Muscat told reporters Monday that when the evidence is compiled, during court proceedings "all the relevant information will be made public," including input from the FBI and European investigators, including from Finland's National Bureau of Investigation, as well as Maltese investigators.

Just before her death, Caruana Galizia, 53, had posted on her closely followed blog, Running Commentary, that there were "crooks everywhere" in Malta.

Malta has a reputation as a tax haven in the European Union and has attracted companies and money from outside Europe as well.

Last week, a visiting delegation of European Parliament lawmakers left the island expressing concerns over the rule of law in the country and issued a warning that the "perception of impunity in Malta cannot continue."

Low tax rates and a popular government program that allows wealthy foreigners to buy Maltese citizenship have made the country an attractive place for investment, financial and other companies. Authorities, including anti-Mafia investigators in nearby Italy, worry that Malta is eyed by criminals on the lookout for money-laundering schemes.

Caruana Galizia focused her reporting for years on investigating political corruption and scandals, and reported on Maltese mobsters and drug trafficking. She also wrote about Maltese links to the so-called Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.

Many top officials had sued her over her reporting. Caruana Galizia made plain she didn't trust the island's police or judiciary to adequately investigate many of the wrongdoings she alleged.

Muscat said Monday of the slaying: "As I stated as soon as I learned about this barbaric act, we will leave no stone unturned to get this case solved."

FILE -- This April 4, 2016 file photo shows Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in Malta on Oct. 16. On Monday, Dec. 4, 2017 Malta's prime minister Joseph Muscat announced the arrest of eight suspects, all Maltese citizens, in the murder of the journalist. (AP Photo/Jon Borg, files)

Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat gives a statement announcing the arrest of eight suspects in the Oct. 16 murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, in Valletta, Malta, Monday Dec.4, 2017. Muscat said the suspects, all Maltese citizens, were arrested Monday morning in an operation coordinated among the Police Corps, the Armed Forces of Malta and the Security Services. (AP Photo)
KUWAIT CITY (AP) - Qatar's ruling emir will attend a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council this week in Kuwait, his government said Monday, a summit coming amid a boycott of the energy-rich country by three of the council's members.

The ongoing dispute has threatened to tear apart the six-member GCC, all U.S. allies who serve in part as a Gulf Arab counterbalance to Shiite power Iran. Already, the island nation of Bahrain had threatened that it wouldn't take part in any meeting that Qatar attends.

Qatar's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani would fly to Kuwait City for the two-day meeting scheduled to begin Tuesday. It quoted Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani as confirming the emir's attendance and saying he hoped "all parties involved do not need a Western party to intervene."

The seal of the Gulf Cooperation Council and an announcement of its meeting this week is on display in Kuwait City, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. Qatar's ruling emir will attend the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council this week in Kuwait, his government said Monday, a summit coming amid a boycott of the energy-rich country by three of the council's members. (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell)

Later Monday, Kuwait announced Sheikh Tamim had sent a letter to Kuwait's 88-year-old ruler, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, without elaborating.

GCC members Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have cut off Doha over allegations that Qatar supports extremists and has too-friendly relations with Iran. Qatar long has denied supporting extremists, while it shares a massive offshore natural gas field with Iran.

On Monday, both Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir attended a ministerial meeting in Kuwait City ahead of the summit. Bahrain said it sent Assistant Foreign Minister Abdulla bin Faisal al-Doseri to that meeting that the Qatari foreign minister also attended.

Kuwait has been trying to mediate an end to the crisis that began in June. Sheikh Sabah has flown between Gulf capitals carrying messages. Oman, another neutral party, has acknowledged receiving an invitation for the summit for its ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, though a deputy prime minister will attend in his place.

At Sheikh Sabah's ceremonial Bayan Palace, soldiers in machine-gun-mounted SUVs stood guard as the ministerial meeting took place there. Flags of the six GCC nations flew along the road running past it all the way to the airport, with giant billboards also welcoming the GCC countries.

A similar dispute involving Qatar erupted in 2014. But this time positions have hardened against Qatar, whose support for Islamist opposition groups has angered those now boycotting it. The UAE in particular views Islamists as a threat to hereditary rule in its federation of seven sheikhdoms. Egypt, long angered by Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood, is also boycotting Doha.

The U.S., which has some 10,000 troops stationed at Qatar's sprawling al-Udeid Air Base as part of its campaign against the Islamic State group and the war in Afghanistan, also has sought to end the crisis. However, President Donald Trump has made comments seemingly supporting the Arab nations' efforts at isolating Qatar, complicating those efforts.

A Trump-prompted Sept. 9 call between Qatar's Sheikh Tamim and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that offered a chance at negotiations also broke down in mutual recriminations.

Stratfor, a U.S.-based private intelligence firm, said in an analysis Monday that even holding the meeting may signal that the GCC is trying to "sweep its dispute with Qatar under the rug" after rumors circulated for weeks the summit wouldn't be held.

"Holding the GCC summit in any capacity means that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are trying to improve relations with Qatar, or at least keep the dispute behind closed doors," Stratfor said. "Division within the GCC distracts the bloc from its initial role as a security alliance against Iran. As Saudi Arabia ratchets up regional pressure against Iran, Riyadh would prefer to keep the GCC alliance intact."

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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap . His work can be found at http://apne.ws/2galNpz .
MOSCOW (AP) - Two-time defending world figure skating champion Evgenia Medvedeva will address the International Olympic Committee board on Tuesday ahead of a vote on whether to ban Russia from the upcoming Pyeongchang Games.

The 18-year-old Russian is unbeaten in two years and a gold medal favorite for the Olympics in February.

No Russian figure skaters are among the 25 athletes that have been banned so far for doping offenses during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Medvedeva was 14 at the time and competing at the junior level.

FILE - In this Saturday, Oct. 21, 2017 file photo, Evgenia Medvedeva of Russia skates her free program at the Rostelekom Cup ISU Grand Prix figure skating event in Moscow, Russia. Two-time defending world figure skating champion Evgenia Medvedeva will address the International Olympic Committee board on Tuesday Dec. 5, 2017 ahead of a vote on whether to ban Russia from the upcoming Pyeongchang Games. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, file)

Medvedeva will travel to Lausanne, Switzerland, for the meeting despite a fracture in her foot which caused her to pull out of this week's Grand Prix Final in Japan.

The Russian Olympic Committee said Monday that Medvedeva will address the IOC board as part of a delegation along with ROC president Alexander Zhukov and Vitaly Smirnov, the head of an anti-doping commission set up by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
BRUSSELS (AP) - Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno has won the race to be the next voice of the 19-country eurozone, a victory that marks a move away from the austerity mantra that has marked the recent crisis-ridden years in the single currency bloc.

Centeno, the overwhelming favorite, came out on top after two rounds of voting among his peers and will officially succeed Dutchman Jeroen Dijsselbloem on Jan. 13. His term as eurogroup president will last for two and a half years.

Following his victory, Centeno said he hoped to promote "inclusive" growth policies that will help "put an end to a period that was very difficult for Europe." Other priorities include bolstering the resilience of the eurozone, he said.

Portugal's Finance Minister Mario Centeno, left, shakes hands with president of the eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem during a media conference after a meeting of eurozone finance ministers at the Europa building in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. The Eurogroup on Monday elected Portugal's Finance Minister Mario Centeno as the new president of the Eurogroup. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

"We have a very unique time window to further prepare our economies and our societies better," Centeno said after seeing off the challenge from Luxembourg's Pierre Gramegna, Slovakia's Peter Kazimir and Latvia's Dana Reizniece-Ozola.

Centeno will take the helm at an opportune time. Whereas Dijsselbloem's five years in the post were marked by crises largely centered on cash-strapped Greece, Centeno's tenure starts off in relatively benign conditions. The eurozone economy is growing strongly, while worries over Greece's future in the bloc have subsided with the country poised to exit its bailout era next summer.

"We are facing different challenges today from the ones we faced a couple of years ago," he said.

Centeno's victory has the potential to symbolize a new era for the eurozone, all the more so as he comes from less-wealthy southern Europe. While eurozone governments still insist that countries must keep their public finances in shape, there's a greater acknowledgement that the austerity of the past few years has taken a heavy toll on people, particularly in countries like Portugal and Greece.

"We are confident this will represent a turning point for the future development of the eurozone and for the whole of Europe," said Gianni Pittella, leader of the S&D Group in the European Parliament. "We are finally overcoming the era of blind and stupid austerity that has left behind even more poor and divided societies across Europe."

One of those societies is Portugal. The country was one of four eurozone countries, along with Greece, Ireland and Cyprus, that had to be bailed out during the region's debt crisis. In 2011, Portugal required a 78-billion-euro ($93 billion) rescue after its budget deficit grew too large and international investors asked for hefty premiums to lend to the government.

In return for the financial lifeline offered by its partners in the eurozone and by the International Monetary Fund, the then center-right Portuguese government had to enact a series of spending cuts and economic reforms. Portugal exited its bailout program in 2014.

While the austerity strategy had the desired effect of putting Portugal's annual budget into better shape, the austerity demanded by creditors accentuated a deep recession and sharply raised unemployment. Following a backlash against austerity, the Socialist Party came to power in late 2015, with Centeno, a former Bank of Portugal analyst, taking the post of finance minister.

Centeno, who has eased up on austerity in Portugal by pushing more growth-oriented policies, said his aim would be to "generate consensus" among eurozone countries in the "challenging" period ahead.

As well as overseeing the end of Greece's bailout era, Centeno's agenda is likely to be taken up improving the eurozone's architecture. The debt crisis of the past few years clearly exposed the failings of the euro's construct.

Though a series of reforms, such as stricter controls on budgets, have made the eurozone more viable, there is a widespread belief that more needs to be done to prevent a repeat of the recent debt crisis. Achieving a consensus on how to do that is likely to be a key part of Centeno's work.

"This is the only way Europe has advanced in the past," Centeno said.

Achieving consensus isn't easy given that the governments of the eurozone come from a variety of political traditions with differing mandates and economic agendas.

Dijsselbloem, whose Labor Party fared poorly in Dutch elections this year and is no longer part of the coalition government in the Netherlands, was considered a skilled operator in bridging differences and maintaining a consensus, particularly over austerity.

That was especially the case during the Greek crisis of 2015, which saw the country nearly crash out of the euro before the newly elected left-led government in Athens agreed to a last-minute international bailout.

Dijsselbloem's advice to his successor was to keep the eurogroup "together and united" and to urge countries that use the euro to be wary of complacency in light of the recent economic upturn, which is expected to see the region grow at a decade-high rate.

"Particularly in this time, it's very easy to lean back and relax," he said.

___

Pylas reported from London.

Latvia's Finance Minister Dana Reizniece-Ozola, 2nd right, Slovakia's Finance Minister Peter Kazimir, left, Luxembourg's Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna, 2nd left, and Portugal's Finance Minister Mario Centeno pose for photographers as they arrive for a meeting of eurozone finance ministers at the Europa building in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. Eurozone finance ministers meet Monday to elect a new president for the club of 19 nations that share the euro currency. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

The Chair of the Eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem, right, talks with Latvia's Finance Minister Dana Reizniece-Ozola prior to a meeting of eurozone finance ministers at the Europa building in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. Eurozone finance ministers meet Monday to elect a new president for the club of 19 nations that share the euro currency. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Slovakia's Finance Minister Peter Kazimir, right, greets Portugal's Finance Minister Mario Centeno as they arrive for a meeting of eurozone finance ministers at the Europa building in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. Eurozone finance ministers meet Monday to elect a new president for the club of 19 nations that share the euro currency. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Latvia's Finance Minister Dana Reizniece-Ozola, 2nd right, talks with Slovakia's Finance Minister Peter Kazimir, left, Luxembourg's Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna, 2nd left, and Portugal's Finance Minister Mario Centeno as they arrive for a meeting of eurozone finance ministers at the Europa building in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. Eurozone finance ministers meet Monday to elect a new president for the club of 19 nations that share the euro currency. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Luxembourg's Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna, left, talks with Slovakia's Finance Minister Peter Kazimir as they arrive for a meeting of eurozone finance ministers at the Europa building in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. Eurozone finance ministers meet Monday to elect a new president for the club of 19 nations that share the euro currency. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

European Council President Donald Tusk, right, shakes hands with the chair of the Eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem ahead of a meeting of eurozone finance ministers at the Europa building in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. Eurozone finance ministers meet Monday to elect a new president for the club of 19 nations that share the euro currency. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

European Council President Donald Tusk, right, shakes hands with the chair of the Eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem ahead of a meeting of eurozone finance ministers at the Europa building in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. Eurozone finance ministers meet Monday to elect a new president for the club of 19 nations that share the euro currency. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
BRUSSELS (AP) - NATO's chief says he's looking forward to talks with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and that the military alliance is too focused on security issues to be distracted by rumors about Tillerson's future.

Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that the alliance "and NATO ministers are able to focus on the core tasks of the job we have to do despite any speculation and rumors."

Stoltenberg praised Tillerson's "strong personal commitment to the trans-Atlantic bond and to NATO."

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks during a media opportunity with Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj at the State Department in Washington, Friday, Dec. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President Donald Trump denied Friday that he wants to oust Tillerson, calling reports to that effect "fake news."

U.S. envoy to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said that "there has been no change whatsoever" in planning for two days of talks between Tillerson and his NATO counterparts starting Tuesday.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - A woman who says she fell asleep while driving crashed into a Florida home.

Florida Highway Patrol spokeswoman Kim Montes says 60-year-old Ana Perez was cited for careless driving on Monday morning.

She told troopers that she fell asleep while driving her 2009 Infiniti. She went off the road and hit a mailbox before crashing into the garage of a home near Orlando.

No one inside the house injured. Montes said the driver was not injured but her passenger was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

No further details were immediately available.
MASERU, Lesotho (AP) - A brigadier and four other soldiers in Lesotho have been charged with attempted murder for the 2016 shooting of an editor whose newspaper was seen as critical of the military commander at the time.

The five suspects were charged last week and are due in court again on Dec. 13 for the attack on Lesotho Times editor Lloyd Mutungamiri, whose jaw was shattered in the shooting and required reconstructive surgery.

The case reflects efforts by the government of Prime Minister Thomas Thabane to investigate unresolved crimes in the southern African country, which has a history of political turmoil.

Tlali Kamoli, who was military commander at the time of Mutungamiri's shooting, has been charged with crimes including the murder of a police official during an alleged coup attempt in 2014.
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) - The leaders of South Sudan's Roman Catholic Church are calling on the pope to visit this war-torn nation.

"We know his heart is in South Sudan," Samuel Abe, secretary general for the archdiocese of Juba told the Associated Press on Monday. "My wish is if he comes he can be a voice for the voiceless."

Pope Francis had planned to visit to this country in October, but cancelled citing security concerns caused by the country's civil war.

He has donated 25,000 euros ($30,000) to help feed the country's most vulnerable citizens ahead of the upcoming dry season. The money was given to the United Nations' agricultural arm, to alleviate a period of "grave food insecurity and major displacement," said the Vatican in a statement obtained by The Associated Press.

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This story was corrected to show that the pope donated 25,000 euros, not 25 million euros.
The Question is why Jonathan Arkush tolerates Hoffman, the friend of neo-Nazis as a member of the Board of Deputies









Liar, liar former Zionist Vice-Chair Jonathan Hoffman tweets whenever I point to his links with his fascist friends Paul Besser included. Now it seems that Besser is involved in Pegida UK, which Tommy Robinson helped found. One wonders whether that is more kosher than Britain 1st? What is clear is that whatever his fascist links, they are still current and active. The fact that Hoffman and his merry band of Zionists, who go around London trying to disrupt Palestinian events, work with an assortment of fascists throws new light on their claim to oppose anti-Semitism.





One such fascist is Dr.Brian of London who supports the EDL. Dr Brian hosted Tommy Robinson on his trip to Israel last year, as did KAY WILSON who is also on the far-right. Wilson was the main speaker with the President of the Board of Deputies Jonathan Arkush at the Boards and Zionist Federations Al Quds Day counter-demo in July this year.

what is that on the bottom right if not an anti-semitic cartoon from Dr Brian of London

Another Zionist fascist is Simon Harris who attended the LAST DAY OF SILENCE RALLY of UK Pegida on 23 Sept. 2017 in Whitehall.





Ann Marie Waters

Pic showa Waters speaking with Besser on far left. Also in pic Hoffman crony

Ambrosine Shitrit looking at camers.



SIMON HARRIS who runs EDL -EEUROPEAN DEFENCE LEAGUE. Here is a Anne Marie Waters was the main speaker at the rally. Waters was a founder of PEGIDA-UK with Tommy Robinson in early 2017. Robinson apologised for his absence from the rally but he had to attend a wedding. Pegida-UK use "front"names for their demos. The other main speaker was Zionistwho runs EDL -EEUROPEAN DEFENCE LEAGUE. Here is a bit more about Harris. Also in the frame is Hoffman crony Ambrosine Shitrit looking at camera.

Besser with Simon Harris at PEGIDA-UK front rally 23 Sept.2017



Ms Waters seems to have had quite a chequered political career. She stood for Labour in a Lambeth borough council election in 2010 and in 2013 she was shortlisted as a Labour candidate in Brighton Pavilion! She was recently the runner up in the UKIP leadership election. Indeed she was tipped to win the election until Farrage, Banks and others threatened to resign. She has now set up a far-Right party For Britain , which has the support of Tommy Robinson.

Tommy Robinson on tank

in Israel-



You can hear Simon Harris and "Dr. Brian of London" - in their Here is Brian of London hosting Tommy RobinsonIsrael-You can hear Simon Harris and "Dr. Brian of London" - in their own words

Bessser with assorted fascists at their tiny demo on 23rd Sept - Simon Harris is sitting down besides him. Thanks to the owner of the drone!

In this picture Besser is at top left of the picture with Simon Harris sitting down behind him. In got this picture through the use of a surveillance drone. Unfortunately it was not possible to purchase one with hell fire missiles!





"admitted" he is no longer with Britain First. However before Asa published his excellent Besser is apparently crowing that Asa Winstanleyhe is no longer with Britain First. However before Asa published his excellent article which I am copying below, Asa asked Besser and BF to comment on his relationship to Britain First but they did not respond. It seems though that Besser has gone from the Jayda Fransen/Paul Golding frying pan to Pegida and the Anne Marie Waters fire.





Besser professes his Jewishness in touching tones:





i am Jewish, born a Jew and brought up within the Jewish faith and i have never stepped away from my Jewish faith. Everything i have ever seen or researched leads me to one inevitable fact that the region now named the State of Israel, is the Jewish homeland.

Here we see the BF 'Intelligdence' Officer Besser on the far right in the second row marching behind a large cross - very Jewish!

Leaving aside the small fact that Israel is not a region it is noticeable that this doesnt however stop him and Paul Golding from signing off to each other with OCS  Onward Christian Soldiers! Britain First are a fascist group that hark back to the golden days of Christian anti-Semitism. As you will see in the pictures, both Fransen and Golding march with a large cross.





In Europe there were a number of regimes and groups, especially in Eastern Europe whose anti-Semitism was clothed in a Christian guise.

I am bemused that Besser signs off OCS - Onwards Christian Soldiers - that was the slogan that the Crusaders used when they slaughtered 1.5 million Jews before setting off in the 12th century

In Slovakia the Nazi puppet state from 1939-45 was led by a Catholic priest, Father Tiso. Likewise the Ustashi in Croatia where there was the only extermination camp, Jasenovac not run by the Nazis. In Romania the main fascist group the Archangel of St Michael or the Iron Guard was a viciously anti-Semitic group and the Arrow Cross in Hungary, which had the blood of at least 50,000 Jews on their hands was also Christian. For Besser to ally with this group demonstrates the extent of his Jewishness. And for Hoffman to keep company with this neo-Nazi demonstrates exactly what the extent of his opposition to anti-Semitism amounts to.





Besser doesnt seem to have enjoyed all the free publicity I have given him. In Timothy Horgan The Jew Stalkerand the left wing Nazi propaganda machine he bemoans the





goons from the political anti-Israel left wing, (who) have led a coordinated smear campaign about myself. First of all, i am new to this but after certain events have unfolded i feel that i have had to give a written response. Never Again UK has allowed me a platform in which i can tell part of my story, so please do excuse the fact if this blog is not grammatically perfect. (who)





Of course we forgive his lack of good grammar but that is the only thing we forgive this most unintelligent former Intelligence Officer.

It's difficult to get to sleep knowing that Besser is threatening me with a libel suit

I have to say that I am most disappointed that Besser has resorted to personal attacks on me and my friends. I really did think that he was better than that. He writes:





Being politically active and sharing my love and support for the State of Israel, this is where people such as Timothy Horgan, Jacqueline Walker, Tony Greenstein, Asa Winstanley, etc. have decided to co ordinate an attack on my character and demonise me in order to hurt my fellow Jewish advocates for the State Of Israel.





The Labour Party's attempts to expel me for 'anti-Semitism are approved by fascists and holocaust deniers!

Apart from the lack of, well, good grammar it would appear that he doesnt appreciate my associating him with Jonathan Hoffman. Or is it the other way around? Who is the bigger liability these days?

It would seem that Besser is gathering evidence for a libel action against me. Although I dont usually provide free legal advice to fascists, on this occasion I will make an exception. If you go to the libel courts you have to have a character to defend. Bessers is beyond repair. It is noteworthy though that this fascist goon has picked up on my threatened expulsion from the Labour Party. Its a sad state of affairs when fascists and anti-Semites crow about the right-wings expulsion of socialists for anti-Semitism. But maybe I should not be too surprised. Besser signs off Am Yisrael Chai, Long live Israel, the chant of the Israeli settlers and also Tom Watson at the last Labour Friends of Israel reception.





Tony Greenstein

Virulently anti-Muslim Britain First, retweeted by Trump, also backs Israel





Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First, in a still from one of the anti-Muslim hate groups Christian Patrol videos. Behind her is Paul Besser, an anti-Palestinian activist who was Britain Firsts intelligence officer.

The Dutch embassy in Washington responded to the tweet, pointing out that the perpetrator of the violent act in this video was born and raised in the Netherlands and had served a sentence under Dutch law.

Platform for hate

Brian of London, (center) with the Israeli army spokesperson Barak Raz (right) and the Jewish Agencys Avi Mayer. (Source)







I am pissed off that hes being arrested by soldiers in the middle of the night for the umpteenth time. Because he should have been shot and killed already.

This incitement to murder Muhammad Abu Hashem, a 17-year-old from the occupied West Bank village of Beit Ommar , appeared today on a prominent blog which has close ties to the Israeli army and functions as an outlet for its anti-Palestinian propaganda.









The village of Beit Ommar and its people  especially children  are under constant violent assault from the Israeli army and settlers, as Mousa Abu Maria of the Palestine Solidarity Project told The Electronic Intifada in April





This kind of writing, humanising these damn savages with their rock throwing as if its some kind of noble endeavour, sickens me. The only reason they do this with rocks is they know wed shoot them if they had guns. Yet, Brian of London, who also uses the alias Brian John Thomas, added, 









Ties to Israeli army and security establishment





Brian of London wrote his demand that indigenous children living under occupation be killed in cold blood for the benefit of illegal colonial settlers on the blog Israellycool, whose publisher David Lange is invited to special briefings with Israeli security sources.

















This appears to be more than just a fleeting meeting, as Mayer, himself a former Israeli army spokesperson, had tweeted about meeting with Brian of London in February as well.









Times of Israel profile, Brian of London became a settler from the UK in 2009, and as recently as today, According to hisprofile, Brian of London became a settler from the UK in 2009, and as recently as today, according to a check-in , traveled to the colony of Alon Shvut in the occupied West Bank.





With thanks to Benjamin Doherty and Andrew Kadi for additional research.

President Donald Trump shared three tweets Wednesday from a far-right anti-Muslim party with ties to the UKs Zionist movement Trumps account retweeted deputy leader of Britain First Jayda Fransen, sharing three anti-Muslim videos she had posted.Fransen responded by tweeting ,  an acronym for Onward Christian Soldiers.She also boasted that Trumps tweets had led to new interviews with mainstream media outlets.Fransen claimed in one of the tweets shared by Trump that a video portrayed a attacking a disabled Dutch boy.Abhorrent and dangerousPrime Minister Theresa May said Trump was Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn urged the government to condemn Trumps reposting of the tweets, calling them Britain Firsts aims include a total ban on Islam. The group was founded in 2011 by former British National Party activists.In a BBC documentary in 2015, leader Paul Golding warned of  and against Muslims.One opposition Labour lawmaker has called for Britain First to be banned, after fellow MP Jo Cox was murdered by neo-Nazi Thomas Mair last year Although Britain First is thought to have only a small number of active members, and its performance at the ballot box has been dismal, its Facebook page now has 1.9 million likes.This gives it a large platform to spread its often factually questionable and stridently anti-Muslim message.As previously reported by The Electronic Intifada, Britain First is pro-Israel and has links to the UKs Zionist movement.In July, Fransen appeared to endorse Israels violent suppression of what she labeled The video she posted appears to show Israeli occupation forces firing tear gas at Palestinian civilians.Fransen has frequently posted tweets in support of Israels violent tactics against Palestinians. She has also called Palestinians imbeciles for protesting Trump.Paul Besser, once a leading Britain First activist and the groups intelligence officer, is a frequent part of Londons anti-Palestinian scene.Although both he and the Zionist Federation did not reply to requests for comment at the time, months after The Electronic Intifada report on him was published Besser claimed to have left the group In a blog post earlier this month, he said that Britain First videos  some racking up millions of views  often revolve around violent anti-Muslim provocations, such as the groups Christian patrols and invasions of mosques and halal slaughterhouses A Britain First video from last year shows Besser was present at a provocative Christian patrol led by Fransen in Luton.Such invasions are usually led by Fransen and leader Golding, and have often landed them in legal trouble.Just days ago, Fransen was arrested and charged with allegedly using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior at a Belfast rally in August.In October, Fransen was arrested for allegedly breaching bail conditions. She also reportedly gave an interview to a neo-Nazi radio station during a tour of Europe.In November 2016, Fransen was fined $2,500 for religiously aggravated harassment of a Muslim woman.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Prosecutors say a prominent Florida eye doctor accused of bribing U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey should get a 30-year sentence for Medicare fraud.

A three-day sentencing hearing for Dr. Salomon Melgen is scheduled to begin Tuesday in West Palm Beach on 67 counts. Prosecutors say the 63-year-old doctor stole more than $100 million from the federal government. He was convicted in April after a 2 1/2- month trial.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra could give the doctor a life sentence. Melgen's attorneys are arguing for a sentence of less than 10 years.

FILE- In this April 28, 2017 file photo, Dr. Salomon Melgen arrives at the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach, Fla. Prosecutors say Melgen, a prominent Florida eye doctor who was accused of bribing New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, should get a 30-year sentence for Medicare fraud. A three-day sentencing hearing for Melgen is scheduled to begin Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017, in West Palm Beach on 67 counts. Prosecutors say the 63-year-old doctor stole more than $100 million from the federal government. He was convicted in April after a 2 1/2- month trial.(Lannis Water/Palm Beach Post via AP, File)

Melgen and the Democratic senator were tried together on bribery charges in New Jersey, where a federal jury failed to reach a verdict last month. Prosecutors have not said whether they will retry them.
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) - An American couple have returned the cremated remains of a British woman to her relatives in England, nearly 40 years after the woman was killed in South Dakota.

Lena White Hat was attacked and strangled in 1977 in Rapid Valley, but she had no family in the U.S. other than her American husband, who died two years later. Her niece, Sharon Papen, learned about her aunt's ashes while researching her family history.

She claimed the ashes earlier this year but lacked the money to fly them back to England.

Bob and Vikki French, who live in Rapid City, a city about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from Rapid Valley, learned about Papen's plight and volunteered to deliver the ashes during a planned trip to England, the Rapid City Journal reported . The couple returned the ashes to Papen in an airport terminal last month.

Vikki French said the delivery was far more celebratory than she imagined.

"I think that was because of the closure," French said.

Papen said she's grateful to those who helped coordinate the safe return of her aunt's ashes.

"Without you wonderful people, this would not have happened due to my circumstances," Papen told the newspaper. "It's not often you find such good people. You have helped me close this chapter in this book."

Papen said her family may bury the ashes near the graves of White Hat's relatives.

John Thomas Martin was convicted in White Hat's death. Court records show Martin had been under psychiatric care before he attacked White Hat with a rolling pin and a pickax, and strangled her with a belt in his home. Martin is serving a life prison sentence in South Dakota.

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Information from: Rapid City Journal, http://www.rapidcityjournal.com
Interpreter Derlyn Roberts, 53, has a prior fraud conviction. Her signs were gibberish

An American Sign Language interpreter has baffled the hearing impaired by delivering gibberish gestures during a crucial police press conference in the Tampa serial killer case.

As Tampa police Chief Brian Dugan announced the arrest of Howell Donaldson Wednesday night, interpreter Derlyn Roberts was there beside him, making signs that made no sense.

State records reviewed by DailyMail.com show that 53-year-old Roberts, who also goes by the name Derlyn Glover, served a five-year prison sentence on a felony fraud conviction and was released in April of 2016. She also has prior convictions for grand theft and burglary.

'She sat up there and waved her arms like she was singing Jingle Bells,' Rachell Settambrino, who is deaf and teaches American Sign Language at the University of South Florida, told the Tampa Bay Times through an interpreter.

Interpreter Derlyn Roberts (left) made no sense to hearing-impaired viewers during a crucial police press conference on Wednesday, where charges were announced in a serial killer case

Among the things Roberts signed, according to Settambrino, was the following: 'Fifty-one hours ago, zero 12 22 (indecipherable) murder three minutes in 14 weeks ago in old (indecipherable) murder four five 55,000 plea 10 arrest murder bush (indecipherable) three age 24.'

Howell Donaldson, 24, was charged in the four fatal shootings that have rocked Tampa

In fact, the chief was providing a timeline of the four shootings, and describing how his agency had received some 5,000 tips before arresting the 24-year-old suspect.

'I was disappointed, confused, upset and really want to know why the city of Tampa's chief of police, who is responsible for my safety ... did not check her out,' Settambrino said.

The city was just as confused.

Tampa Police Department spokeswoman Janelle McGregor told the Tampa Bay Times officials are conducting a review because they didn't even request an interpreter for the Nov. 28 news conference.

At the next day's follow-up news conference, a different interpreter, Ben Zapata, was beside the chief.

It is the most recent example of an apparently unqualified signer appearing at news conferences.

In September, as Hurricane Irma approached Florida and officials announced a mandatory evacuation, an interpreter in nearby Manatee County began signing words like 'pizza', ''monster' and 'bear', along with other gibberish.

Police say they did not request an interpreter for the press conference, and are baffled as to why Roberts (circled) was there signing gibberish

Manatee County officials later said they were in a pinch and called on a county employee who had an understanding of sign language because he communicates with his deaf brother.

However, it quickly became apparent he was in over his head. The deaf community demanded an apology and the video of the news conference went viral.

In 2013 in South Africa, a fake interpreter appeared beside former President Barak Obama and other world leaders during a memorial service for Nelson Mandela, apparently signing gibberish.

He later said he is schizophrenic and had seen angels descending in the stadium where the event took place.

Settambrino said Florida, unlike some other states, does not require ASL interpreters to be certified through the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, a national nonprofit that 'seeks to uphold standards, ethics, and professionalism' for the field, according to its website.

Florida says only that ASL interpreters have to be 'qualified,' Settambrino said. 'But what is that definition of qualified?'
MADRID (AP) - Lawyers say a former Salvadoran colonel has denied being involved in the massacre of five Spanish priests in El Salvador 28 years ago.

Two lawyers familiar with the proceedings said Inocente Orlando Montano told a Spanish National Court judge Monday that no mention of plans to assassinate the priests was made during a Nov. 15, 1989 meeting he attended.

Father Ignacio Ellacuria and five other Jesuit priests were killed the next day along with their housekeeper and her daughter. Ellacuria was mediating talks at the time to end the Salvadoran civil war.

FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2013, file photo, former El Salvadoran military Col. Inocente Orlando Montano departs federal court in Boston. Spanish authorities said Montano was extradited to Spain on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017, to face charges that he helped plot the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests and two others in El Salvador. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

The lawyers spoke anonymously in line with court rules.

The United States extradited Montano to Spain last week to face charges in the deaths of the five priests who were Spanish citizens.

He was El Salvador's vice minister for public security during the 1980s.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - More than a dozen states banded together Monday to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block a California law requiring any eggs sold there to come from hens that have space to stretch out in their cages.

In a lawsuit filed directly to the high court, the states allege that California's law has cost consumers nationwide up to $350 million annually because of higher egg prices since it took effect in 2015. The lawsuit argues that California's requirements violate the U.S. Constitution's interstate commerce clause and are pre-empted by federal law.

A federal appeals court panel rejected similar claims last year in a separate case brought by six states, ruling that they failed to show California's law would affect more than just individual farmers. The latest lawsuit seeks to address that by citing an economic analysis of the California law. It also asks the Supreme Court to take up the case directly instead of requiring that it first move through the lower courts.

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate in 2018, is leading the lawsuit. Other plaintiff states are Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin. All have Republican attorneys general except Iowa, which has a Democrat.

The California attorney general's office said Monday that it was reviewing the lawsuit.

California produced about 5 billion eggs and imported an additional 4 billion from other states in 2012, according to the lawsuit. Thirty percent of those out-of-state eggs came from Iowa, the nation's top egg producer. About 13 percent of California's egg imports came from Missouri, the second highest percentage cited in the lawsuit.

The number of eggs produced in California dropped to 3.5 billion last year despite rising nationally, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Missouri's egg production was up 60 percent since 2012 to 3.2 billion last year.

Hawley asserted in a statement that California's egg law is "a clear attempt by big-government proponents to impose job-killing regulations" on other states.

California voters approved a ballot initiative in 2008 that requires that hens in cages spend most of their day in spaces large enough that they can lie down, stand up, turn around and fully extend their limbs. The measure gave farmers until 2015 to comply.

After California egg farmers raised concerns that they would be put a competitive disadvantage with those elsewhere, state legislators in 2010 expanded the law to bar the sale of eggs from any hens that weren't raised in compliance with California's standards requiring at least 116 square inches of floor space per chicken. The industry standard had been 67 square inches.

The California law cites concerns about protecting people from salmonella and other illnesses. But the suing states say such health concerns are unmerited and merely a pretext for protecting California's agriculture industry.

The lawsuit cites a study from a University of Missouri economist who concluded that the national price of a dozen eggs has increased between 1.8 percent and 5.1 percent since January 2015 because of the California cage requirements. The study said the price increase has added thousands of dollars annually to states' costs for supplying eggs to prisoners.

The study also estimated that California's egg regulations have cost U.S. households up to $350 million annually, including about $97 million for those whose incomes are in the lowest one-fifth nationally.

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Follow David A. Lieb at: http://twitter.com/DavidALieb
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Convicted of murder in the deadliest attack of the civil rights era, the one-time Ku Klux Klansman glowered when the judge asked if he had anything to say before going to prison for the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls. Bobby Frank Cherry pointed at a prosecution table that included Doug Jones.

"This whole bunch lied all the way through this thing," Cherry said in a deep Southern drawl. "I told the truth. I don't know why I'm going to jail for nothing."

Fifteen years after Cherry snarled at Jones, the bombing is echoing in Alabama's fractious Senate race. Now the Democratic nominee, Jones is touting a record that includes the prosecutions of Cherry and another one-time Klansman, Thomas Blanton Jr., as he asks voters in Republican-run Alabama to turn on GOP nominee Roy Moore and give him a try.

FILE - In this May 6, 2002 file photo, defendant Bobby Frank Cherry exits the rear door of the Jefferson County Criminal Justice Center during a lunch break in his trial. Convicted of murder in the deadliest attack of the civil rights era, the old Ku Klux Klansman didn't hesitate when the judge asked if he had anything to say before going to prison for a church bombing which killed four black girls in 1963. On cue, Bobby Frank Cherry pointed at a prosecution table that included Doug Jones. Fifteen years after Cherry snarled at Jones across a courtroom, the bombing is echoing in Alabama's fractious Senate race. (AP Photo/Dave Martin, File)

"I still believe that those cases were on the right side of history," he told reporters after a stop in Montgomery. "I believe that this campaign is on the right side of history, and that people are ready to move forward rather than backward."

Moore and his supporters are depicting Jones as an out-of-touch, Obama-loving liberal who is soft on issues including crime. The tactic could work based on the state's history: Conservative white Republicans dominate the electorate in Alabama, no Democrat holds statewide office and President Donald Trump carried more than 60 percent of the state vote last year.

The president offered up his unwavering support of Moore in a tweet Monday, despite the sexual assault allegations that have rocked Moore's campaign.

Jones touts his leading role in closing the books on an act so cruel it helped open the nation's eyes to the depth of racial hatred in the Jim Crow South. While Jones is appealing to voters on what he calls "kitchen table issues" including health care, jobs and education, the church bombing prosecution is always in the background.

Jones supporter Michelle Summers-Hines said she learned about the Birmingham church bombing growing up in Chicago, so the black woman was all the more inclined to back the one-time U.S. attorney for Senate.

"When I came here I knew about the four little girls," said Summer-Hines, 47, of Montgomery.

The bombing happened during a year when deeply segregated Birmingham was the epicenter of the campaign to end racial segregation across the South.

Months after protests in which police and firefighters used dogs and fire hoses to turn back black demonstrators trying to march on downtown streets, KKK members under cover of darkness planted a bomb outside the thick, brick wall of the 16th Street Baptist Church, a leading black congregation in a deeply segregated city.

The bomb went off on the morning of Sept. 15, 1963, a Sunday, and blasted a huge hole in the church at almost the exact spot five young women were in a restroom getting ready for worship. The explosion killed 11-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Morris, also known as Cynthia Wesley. Collins' sister, Sarah Collins Rudolph, was seriously injured.

Investigators soon had a list of Klan suspects that included Cherry and Blanton, plus Robert Chambliss and Herman Frank Cash. All were active in a Klan group with a reputation for violence, and Chambliss had a nickname to match - "Dynamite Bob."

The investigation went cold for years until then-Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the probe and led the prosecution of Chambliss, who was convicted in 1977 and died in prison in 1985.

The case went dormant again, and the fact that other known suspects were never prosecuted became an increasingly sore point within Birmingham's black community. Then-FBI agent Robert Langford heard complaints during a meeting with black pastors in 1993, and a renewed investigation was underway by the time then-President Bill Clinton appointed Jones as U.S. attorney in Birmingham in 1997.

Blanton and Cherry, who had moved to Texas from Alabama, were indicted on state murder charges in 2000, and Jones received a special appointment to oversee the prosecution. He led a team of federal and state attorneys during trials that resulted in the convictions of Blanton in 2001 and Cherry the following year.

Prosecutors used both of the men's own words to convict them. Cherry had talked about the bombing through the years, evidence showed, and secretly recorded FBI tapes from decades earlier captured Blanton talking about the bombing with his then-wife and a Klan buddy who turned informant.

Cherry denied that he participated in the bombing. He died in prison within three years of being convicted. Blanton remains behind bars - Alabama's parole board refused to release him in August 2016 after a hearing that included Jones advocating for Blanton to remain incarcerated. Cash died in 1994. He was never charged.

That "fifth little girl" who survived the bombing, Sarah Rudolph, is now among Jones' most ardent supporters, and so is her husband.

"We're going to vote for him. Absolutely. He convicted the church bombers," said George Rudolph.

In this May 30, 2000 photo, Thomas Blanton, left, a suspect in the 1963 bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham Ala., is released on bond from the Jefferson County Jail in Birmingham Ala. Now the Democratic nominee, Doug Jones is touting a record that includes the prosecutions of Bobby Frank Cherry and another one-time Klansman, Blanton, as he asks voters in Republican-run Alabama to turn on GOP nominee Roy Moore and give him a try. ( Charles Nesbitt/The Birmingham News via AP)

FILE - In this Nov. 28, 2017, file photo, Alabama U.S. Senatorial candidate Doug Jones talks with the media after touring the Northport Medical Center, in Northport, Ala. Jones is the democratic candidate facing republican Roy Moore for Alabama's U.S. Senate seat in the Dec. 12 special election. (Vasha Hunt/AL.com via AP, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Reserve's Richmond regional bank is announcing that Thomas Barkin, a senior executive at global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., will be the bank's next president.

He will succeed Jeffrey Lacker, who resigned as the bank's president in April after revealing his involvement in a leak of confidential information in 2012 that had triggered congressional and FBI investigations.

Barkin, 56, who will take over at the Richmond bank on Jan. 1, will be a voting member next year of the Federal Open Market Committee, the panel of Fed board members and regional bank presidents, who set interest-rate policies for the central bank.

Barkins' appointment was announced Monday by Margaret Lewis, who headed the bank's search committee. Barken is currently the chief risk officer at McKinsey & Co.
The Screen Actors Guild Awards will have a host for the first time next year.

Executive producer Kathy Connell said Monday that actress Kristen Bell will preside over the 24th annual ceremony in January.

Bell said in a statement that she's 'a little nervous' about being the show's first host but glad she'll be in the company of her acting colleagues.

First time's a charm! Kristen Bell to be Screen Actors Guild Awards first host ever in ceremony's 24 year history

'I am honored to be part of the SAG Awards, and am a little nervous about being its first-ever host,' Bell said.

'Im so glad that Ill be in the company of my fellow actors, many of whom Ive worked with before, so I know theyll be warm and supportive.'

Bell said in a statement that she's 'a little nervous' about being the show's first host but glad she'll be in the company of her acting colleagues

'Its going to be an amazing night,' she added.

The SAG Awards recognize outstanding performances in TV and film as chosen by members of the actors' union.

Connell said the awards committee wanted to 'capture the cultural mood' of change by breaking with its own tradition and having a host for its gala show.

The 24th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will be held January 21, 2018, and broadcast live on TBS and TNT.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - President Donald Trump earlier this year ordered U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to conduct an unprecedented review of 27 monuments established by former presidents over more than two decades on lands and waters revered for their natural beauty and historical significance.

Trump announced Monday that he will shrink two Utah monuments, but he has not revealed his decision on the others yet. He launched the review after calling the land protections by Democratic former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton federal overreach.

Zinke recommended reducing four large monuments in the U.S. West and modifying rules at six others, according to a memo leaked this fall. He also has said he's recommending the creation of three new monuments.

FILE - This July 15, 2016, file photo, shows the "Moonhouse" in McLoyd Canyon which is part of Bears Ears National Monument, near Blanding, Utah. President Donald Trump is expected to announce plans to shrink Bears Ears National Monument as well as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah that were created by past Democratic presidents. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

He didn't suggest eliminating any monuments, despite urging by some Republicans in Utah and elsewhere.

Here's a breakdown of Zinke's recommendations:

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MONUMENTS TO BE DOWNSIZED

Trump said he will shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments spanning millions of acres in Utah in line with Zinke's recommendation.

Zinke also advised trimming Gold Butte in Nevada and Cascade Siskiyou in Oregon, but the president didn't announce a final decision on those monuments Monday.

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NO DOWNSIZING, BUT RULE CHANGES

Zinke proposed more access for people and industry and other changes at six monuments:

- Katahdin Woods and Waters, Maine: Allow trees to be cut on parts of the monument and ensure that "traditional uses" like snowmobiling and hunting are taken into account in a management plan.

- Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, Maine: Allow commercial fishing in the first marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean.

- Pacific Remote Islands, Pacific Ocean: Allow commercial fishing within the marine monument that covers nearly 87,000 square miles (225,330 square kilometers) near Hawaii.

- Rose Atoll, Pacific Ocean: Allow commercial fishing in the 13,500-square-mile (34,965-square-kilometer) marine monument around the Rose Atoll in American Samoa, a U.S territory.

- Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, New Mexico: Conduct assessment of border-safety risks, prioritize public access and request congressional authority to give tribes co-management.

- Rio Grande Del Norte, New Mexico: - Prioritize public access, request congressional authority to give tribes co-management, and get more funding to protect cultural and historical objects.

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STAYING INTACT

During his travels to visit some of the monuments under review, Zinke said these six monuments would remain untouched: Upper Missouri River Breaks in Montana; Sand to Snow in California; Grand Canyon-Parashant in Arizona; Craters of the Moon in Idaho; Hanford Reach in Washington; and Canyons of the Ancients in Colorado.

Zinke has been silent on the other 11 monuments under review, from Giant Sequoia in California to the Marianas Trench southwest of Guam, but they are presumed to remain intact.

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NEW MONUMENTS

Zinke also recommended Trump create three monuments, including one in his home state of Montana:

- Badger-Two Medicine in an area within the Lewis and Clark National Forest in northwest Montana.

- Medgar Evers' home in Jackson, Mississippi, where the first field secretary for the NAACP was assassinated on June 12, 1963. Evers organized boycotts over segregation during the civil rights movement.

- Camp Nelson near Nicholasville, Kentucky, which was established in 1863 as a 700-bed Union Army hospital, supply depot and recruiting center for African-American troops in the state.

FILE - In this undated file photo, the Upper Gulch section of the Escalante Canyons within Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument features sheer sandstone walls, broken occasionally by tributary canyons. Utah has long stood out for going far beyond other Western states in trying to get back control of its federally protected lands. When President Donald Trump on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, announces he's going to shrink two national monuments in the state, his warm welcome will stand out in a region that is normally protective of its parks and monuments. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac, File)

President Donald Trump speaks at the Utah State Capitol Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Salt Lake City. Trump traveled to Salt Lake City to announce plans to shrink two sprawling national monuments in Utah in a move that will delight the state's GOP politicians and many rural residents who see the lands as prime examples of federal overreach, but will enrage tribes and environmentalist groups who vow to immediately sue to preserve the monuments. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
WASHINGTON (AP)  There was no violence in the midterm elections last week, and many election deniers lost and quietly conceded. Few listened when former President Donald Trump tried to stoke baseless allegations of electoral fraud. For a moment, at least, a familiar sense of normalcy fell over a nation on edge as the extremism that consumed U.S. politics for much of the last two years was replaced by democratic order. The post-election narrative has instead been focused on each partys electoral fate. Republicans are disappointed that a red wave did not materialize, while Democrats are bracing for the likelihood of a House Republican takeover. At least for now, the serious threats that loomed over democracy heading into Election Day have not materialized.

You voted:
BATH, Maine (AP) - The second in the U.S. Navy stealthy Zumwalt class of destroyers headed out to sea for the first time on Monday, departing from Navy shipbuilder Bath Iron Works for builder trials.

The future USS Michael Monsoor carefully navigated the winding Kennebec River before reaching the North Atlantic. It'll be at sea for several days before returning to Bath Iron Works for tweaks and adjustments.

Part of the 610-foot-long (186-meter-long) ship's crew posed for photos at Fort Popham, in Phippsburg, as the ship cruised past.

The future USS Michael Monsoor passes Fort Popham travels down the Kennebec River as it heads out to sea for trials, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Phippsburg, Maine. The ship is the second in the stealthy Zumwalt class of destroyers. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

The Monsoor is the second in a class of three futuristic-looking ships that feature electric-drive propulsion, new radar and sonar, powerful guns and missiles and a stealthy shape.

The first, the USS Zumwalt, has been commissioned into service and is based in San Diego. The third will be the Lyndon B. Johnson, which is under construction.

The Monsoor is named for a Navy SEAL, Michael Monsoor, who died in Iraq in 2006 when he threw himself on an insurgent's grenade to protect his comrades. Monsoor, a 25-year-old California native, was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.

The three warships are the largest and most technologically sophisticated destroyers built for the Navy. They're also the most expensive, with an estimated cost of $12.9 billion for all three, according to Navy budget estimates.

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This story has been corrected to show the second destroyer is named the Michael Monsoor, not the Lyndon B. Johnson.

Sailors that are part of the crew of the future USS Michael Monsoor pose for a photo as the ship passes Fort Popham while heading out to sea for trials, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Phippsburg, Maine. The ship is the second in the stealthy Zumwalt class of destroyers. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

The future USS Michael Monsoor passes homes on the east side of the Kennebec River as it heads out to sea for trials, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Phippsburg, Maine. The ship is the second in the stealthy Zumwalt class of destroyers. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

The future USS Michael Monsoor heads out to sea for trials, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Phippsburg, Maine. The ship is the second in the stealthy Zumwalt class of destroyers. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - It was a scenario that emergency room doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital had discussed but never seen in person - an unconscious patient with a tattoo across his chest that read "Do Not Resuscitate."

The 70-year-old man at the Miami hospital posed a vexing ethical dilemma and a decision needed to be made fast. His blood pressure was dropping and he wasn't breathing well. He had a history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and he had a high blood alcohol level.

"If we didn't do something soon we were going to lose him," said Dr. Gregory Holt, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Miami who worked on the case this summer.

In the end, the doctors followed the directions of the tattoo but not before some hand-wringing and a quick referral to the hospital's ethics team.

Doctors immediately had two questions about the tattoo.

"First, is it legal and second is it truly the man's wishes," Holt recalled Friday during a telephone interview with The Associated Press. He also helped write a case study that was published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Typically when faced with ethical conundrums, doctors don't want to choose an irreversible path. In this case, they tried to wake him, but he was in a delirious state and unable to respond.

Doctors had previously heard of cases of similar DNR tattoos. Some were just a joke. This one didn't seem to be, Holt said. It was written on his chest with what appeared to be his signature tattooed underneath. The word "not" was underlined.

Still, doctors had questions. He came into the hospital without ID or family and they couldn't reach next of kin, further complicating the matter.

"We did enough to keep him alive while we talked to ethics team," said Holt, who said the patient was pumped with antibiotics and IV fluids, along with other measures.

Often in these cases, the patient has a piece of paper at home somewhere also stating their wish not to be resuscitated, but there wasn't time to look.

The ethical team eventually ruled that the tattoo expressed his wishes and told doctors to follow his orders.

"He underlined the word 'not'. He signed it. We think he probably had some medical knowledge. He placed it on his chest where someone would have to do chest compressions ... so we felt like this was a real accurate statement reflecting his wishes," Holt said.

The man's status deteriorated throughout the night and he died without intervention.

The man's written DNR request was later found at his home but doctors wrote in the case study that the tattoo "produced more confusion than clarity, given concerns about its legality and likely unfounded beliefs that tattoos might represent permanent reminders of regretted decisions made while the person was intoxicated."
PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) - The second time was the charm for a partial implosion of the Pontiac Silverdome - the former home of the Detroit Lions.

Demolition company Adamo brought down the upper section of the Silverdome on Monday, one day after some explosive charges failed to detonate. Company officials said wiring issues were the culprit of Sunday's failed attempt, which disappointed thousands of onlookers who'd braved cold temperatures in hopes of seeing a dramatic collapse.

The Lions played at the suburban Detroit facility from 1975 through 2001. The Silverdome also was the home of the NBA's Detroit Pistons and hosted the Super Bowl in 1982.

During its lifetime, the indoor, 80,000-plus seat stadium also hosted Super Bowl XVI, Wrestlemania III, a visit by Pope John Paul II and various motorsport events.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - A female lobbyist said Monday that Assemblyman Matt Dababneh sexually assaulted her in a bathroom - an allegation the Los Angeles Democrat denied and said came "apparently for her own self-promotion."

In the latest development in a burgeoning sex scandal in California's Legislature, Pamela Lopez held a news conference at the office of her lobbying firm, K Street Consulting, to publicly name Dababneh as the perpetrator of an assault she had described to reporters and lawmakers for weeks without attaching a name.

She accused him of following her into a single-stall bathroom during a January 2016 Las Vegas hotel party for mutual friends, slamming the door and masturbating in front of her while asking him to touch her. She also outlined the alleged incident in a letter to the Assembly committee tasked with handling misconduct complaints.

Lobbyist Pamela Lopez makes a public allegation of lewd behavior by Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, D-Encino, during a news conference Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. Lopez alleges that Debabneh followed her into bar bathroom and performed a lewd act in front of her in 2016. Debabneh denies the accusation. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

"I'm choosing to have hope that that process will work," Lopez said. "I am putting this in the hands of the lawmakers who have told me they will act to protect me."

Dababneh, a former aide to U.S. Rep Brad Sherman who was elected to the Assembly in 2013, issued a statement through a public relations firm saying he looks forward clearing his name.

"I affirmatively deny that this event ever happened - at any time," he said. "I am saddened by this lobbyist's effort to create this falsehood and make these inflammatory statements, apparently for her own self-promotion and without regard to the reputation of others."

Dababneh, 36 and not married, has stepped aside as chairman of the Assembly's Banking and Finance Committee while the allegation is under investigation.

He is the third sitting lawmaker to be investigated by the Legislature over sexual misconduct allegations since nearly 150 women at the Capitol came forward in October to allege pervasive harassment in state government. Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra of Los Angeles resigned last week while Sen. Tony Mendoza of Artesia denies wrongdoing. Both are Democrats.

Lopez is the only woman to make a formal claim against Dababneh as a lawmaker, but others allege inappropriate conduct while he worked for Sherman from 2005-2013, including as the district chief of staff.

Jessica Yas Barker joined Lopez at the news conference to allege frequent inappropriate comments by Dababneh when they worked together. Dababneh frequently spoke about sex and his sexual exploits and showed her condoms in his desk drawer, she said.

"It was pretty much an open secret in the San Fernando Valley that this is how Matt behaved," said Barker, who now works for the television network Ovation.

Jonathan Bash, a former president of the college Democrats at the University of California, Los Angeles, said his organization advised its women members not to intern in Sherman's office while Debabneh worked there because he was known for making sexual comments and offering alcohol to underage women. Several other former members of the organization offered similar accounts on social media.

Bash told the AP he did not formally report Dababneh's behavior because he felt it was up to the people who had worked for him to make that choice.

Sherman issued a statement saying he had no knowledge of inappropriate behavior by Dababneh and that he was "surprised and saddened" to hear that Barker felt uncomfortable while working in the office.

"I had never seen or been told of, any inappropriate behavior by Assemblyman Dababneh, or any disparagement of women," Sherman said.

He also noted Dababneh "has been in several contentious political races" and that in none "did his political opponents, some of whom had professional opposition researchers, allege anything regarding sexual harassment in their mailings, handouts, or advertisements."

No one witnessed the alleged assault in Las Vegas but Lopez's lobbying partner, Afrack Vargas, said Lopez told him about what happened when she returned from the weekend in Las Vegas.

Lopez said she never reported the incident or publicly named Dababneh because she feared retribution. She changed her mind after testifying last week before an Assembly committee tasked with fixing the chamber's policies for handling misconduct reports.

"I can't have it on my conscience that this may happen again," she said.

Ken Maxey, a friend of Dababneh's, told the Los Angeles Times he was at the same party and doesn't believe Lopez's allegations are credible given the timeline and setup of the event. Dababneh's attorney organized the interview with Maxey, the Times reported.

He said Dababneh was there for about 90 minutes and he was with him most of the time and does not remember him using the bathroom. The party was held in a room at the Las Vegas hotel where it would have been difficult for both to enter the single-stall bathroom without someone seeing, he said.

Patricia Glaser, an attorney for Dababneh, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Lopez on Friday and threatened to seek damages if she went public with her allegations. Glaser also represents disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein, who faces dozens of sexual abuse allegations.

Jessica Yas Barker, right, makes a public allegation of inappropriate behavior by Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, D-Encino, during a news conference Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. Dababneh denies the allegations. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

FILE - In this May 15, 2017 file photo, assemblyman Matt Dababneh, D-Encino speaks at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. Lobbyist Pamela Lopez alleges that Debabneh followed her into bar bathroom and performed a lewd act in front of her in 2016. Debabneh denies the accusation. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

A reporter questions Jessica Yas Baker, second from left, and Pamela Lopez, third from left, about their allocations of inappropriate behavior by Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, D-Encino during a news conference, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. Dababneh denies the allegations. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Jessica Yas Barker, center, makes a public allegation of inappropriate behavior by Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, D-Encino, during a news conference Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. Dababneh denies the allegations. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - U.S and Russian ships carrying remotely operated vehicles capable of deep seafloor searches are joining other vessels hunting for an Argentine submarine that went missing in the South Atlantic 19 days ago, the navy said Monday.

An explosion occurred near the time and place where the ARA San Juan disappeared Nov. 15. The navy says it is no longer looking for survivors although a multinational operation continues to search for the vessel, which had a crew of 44.

Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said Russia's Yantar oceanographic research ship would arrive in the search area Tuesday. The U.S. Atlantis research vessel is expected to arrive Saturday. They are equipped with deep submergence vehicles that allow them to examine undersea areas nearly 20,000 feet deep (6,000 meters).

FILE - In this undated file photo provided by the Argentina Navy shows an ARA San Juan, a German-built diesel-electric vessel, near Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Navy's spokesman said Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, that U.S and Russian ships carrying remotely operated vehicles capable of deep seafloor searches are joining other vessels hunting for an Argentine submarine that went missing in the South Atlantic 19 days ago. (Argentina Navy via AP File)

The ships will join five vessels from Argentina and a Chilean ship combing an area of some 1,500 square miles (4,000 square kilometers), where sonar detected three unidentified objects on the sea floor to see if they belong to the missing sub.

The San Juan disappeared as it was sailing from the southernmost port of Ushuaia to the coastal city of Mar del Plata after a patrol.

The navy has said the vessel's captain reported that water entered the snorkel and caused one of the submarine's batteries to short circuit. The captain later communicated by satellite phone that the problem had been contained, the navy says.

Some hours later, an explosion was detected near the time and place where the San Juan was last heard from. Balbi has said the blast could have been triggered by a "concentration of hydrogen" caused by the battery problem reported by the captain.

The German-built TR-1700 class submarine was commissioned in the 1980s and was most recently refitted between 2008 and 2014. It was built by a subsidiary of Germany's ThyssenKrupp that is no longer operational.

Balbi said a group of navy officials who traveled to Germany last week to obtain more information about the design of the submarine had returned to Argentina. He said they will submit all documents to a local judge investigating the sub's disappearance.

The spokesman said the information gathered in Germany as well as information from an Argentine submarine from the same model that is under repair at a state-owned shipyard could help provide evidence to find out what happened to the San Juan.

When asked if the refit of the submarine had been certified, Balbi said there are some processes that the Germany company might have been involved in and others where it was not.

"But of those things that it certified, surely there must be a record. Everything was duly registered and I imagine that all these reports made on the activation of batteries and repairs will be subject to investigation," he said, without providing more details.

In a statement, the German company told The Associated Press that that "Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems employees haven't been in operational contact with the Argentinian submarine fleet for more than two decades."

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Associated Press writer Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) - In an attempt to burnish his public image and leave no fingerprints behind, Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort recently enlisted a longtime colleague "assessed to have ties" to Russian intelligence to help him ghostwrite an op-ed, prosecutors said Monday.

Prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller say in court papers that they believe the opinion piece - written while Manafort is on house arrest facing several felonies - would have violated a judge's order that bars him from trying his case in the press.

They are now pushing for Manafort to remain confined to his home on GPS monitoring for the time being.

FILE - In this Nov. 2, 2017, file photo, Paul Manafort accompanied by his lawyers, arrives at U.S. Federal Court, in Washington. Prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller say Manafort has been working on an op-ed with a longtime colleague "assessed to have ties" to a Russian intelligence service. Court papers say that Manafort and the colleague sought to publish the op-ed under someone else's name and intended it to influence public opinion about his work in Ukraine. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

According to the court papers , Manafort and the colleague sought to publish the op-ed to influence public opinion about his political consulting in Ukraine, work at the heart of the criminal case against him. The op-ed was being drafted as late as last week.

Prosecutors did not name Manafort's colleague, who is currently based in Russia, or provide details of how they determined the person had ties to a spy agency. Reached Monday, a spokesman for Manafort declined comment.

Manafort is currently facing several felony charges involving allegations of money laundering and other financial crimes related to his political consulting work in Ukraine. Manafort has denied any wrongdoing. A trial is scheduled for next year.

In the court filing, prosecutors say the op-ed appeared to violate an admonishment from the judge last month to refrain from public statements. An op-ed is an opinion essay written to be published in some form, usually on a website or in a newspaper or magazine. It is usually marked as representing the views of the writer and separated from news content.

"Even if the ghostwritten op-ed were entirely accurate, fair, and balanced, it would be a violation of this Court's November 8 Order if it had been published," the prosecutors wrote. "The editorial clearly was undertaken to influence the public's opinion of defendant Manafort, or else there would be no reason to seek its publication (much less for Manafort and his long-time associate to ghostwrite it in another's name)."

They added, "It compounds the problem that the proposed piece is not a dispassionate recitation of the facts."

Prosecutors said they discovered the efforts to publish the op-ed last Thursday and alerted Manafort's attorney, who assured prosecutors that "steps would be taken to make sure it was no longer going to be published."

At the time, Manafort was working to secure his release from home confinement by posting more than $10 million in bond, and according to court papers, he had reached a tentative agreement with the government. But after discovering the op-ed, Mueller's team is now opposing Manafort's proposed bond agreement.

Prosecutors did not disclose the op-ed in court papers so as to prevent it from becoming public. They also did not disclose what name the ghostwritten op-ed would have been published under.

Manafort and his longtime business associate, Rick Gates, were indicted in October by a grand jury in Washington. They were among the first people to face charges brought by the special counsel's office.

Manafort led the Trump campaign for several months, including during the Republican National Convention. Gates also worked in a senior role on the campaign.

Mueller has been leading a wide-ranging investigation into Russia's election interference and any coordination with Trump associates.

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Follow Chad Day and Eric Tucker on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ChadSDay and https://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

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Read the court filing: http://apne.ws/JtXbTI7
A politician proposed to his partner during a debate on a bill which could soon legalise same-sex marriage in Australia.

The countrys House of Representatives resumed on Monday for its final two-week session of the year, which is giving priority to achieving same-sex marriage reform.

The major parties want the legislation passed this week after a majority of Australians endorsed reform in a postal ballot last month.

Tim Wilson, right, proposes to his partner Ryan Patrick Bolger, who was sitting in the public gallery, at Parliament in Canberra

Last week the Senate approved the bill and rejected all proposed amendments that would have increased legal protections for those who would discriminate against gay couples on religious grounds.

But several politicians, including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, intend to persist with amendments rejected by the Senate.

Mr Turnbull, a gay marriage supporter, says he wants wedding celebrants, not just those affiliated with churches, to have the right to refuse to officiate at same-sex marriages.

Mr Turnbull later told Parliament that nothing in the bill threatened religious freedoms.

Australians overwhelming said YES to marriage equality and now we're making it a reality. Watch my speech in Parliament LIVE. Posted by Malcolm Turnbull on Sunday, December 3, 2017

We must not fail to recognise that there is sincere, heartfelt anxiety about the bills impact on religious freedom, he said.

That is why I will support several amendments to the bill which will provide that additional reassurance in respect of their fundamental rights and freedoms, he added.

If the House of Representatives supported such an amendment, then the altered bill would have to return to the Senate for ratification, delaying the reform.

Tim Wilson, who is part of the conservative coalition, was among the first politicians to join the debate and used his speech to propose to his partner Ryan Bolger, who was watching from the public gallery.

In my first speech I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands, Mr Wilson said. Theres only one thing left to do: Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me?

The 33-year-old primary school teacher responded: yes, which was recorded in the official parliamentary record.

Update: We've dug through Hansard and @timwilsoncomau appears to be the first ever Member to propose on the floor of the House. pic.twitter.com/NLGLxpYIrm  Australian House of Representatives (@AboutTheHouse) December 4, 2017

Warren Entsch, a long-term advocate of marriage equality within the conservative government, helped draft the bill and was the first to speak for it in the House on Monday.

The bill which the Senate passed is a robust bill, a whole range of religious protections are already in place, Mr Entsch said as he introduced the bill.

We have made sure that we have removed any element of discrimination in this bill while ensuring that religious freedoms are protected.

Mr Entsch said related amendments to bolster freedoms of speech and education rights could be debated in a separate bill next year and should not be used to delay the reform.

Australians are sick of excuses and theyre sick of delays, Mr Entsch said.

A nonbinding postal survey found that 62% of Australian respondents wanted reform.

Almost 80% of Australias registered voters took part in the two-month survey. While marriage equality could become law this week, state marriage registries say they would not have the paperwork to proceed with weddings until January.
Airlines Jetstar and Virgin Australia have resumed flights in and out of Bali as gushing ash from Mount Agung has dissipated into a plume of steam.

Indonesias disaster mitigation agency said the volcano remains at its highest alert level but most of Bali is safe for tourists.

The exclusion zone around the volcano still extends six miles (10 kilometres) from the crater in some directions and more than 55,000 people are living in shelters.

[Travel update] We have resumed scheduled services between Bali and Australia today, with flying conditions around Denpasar Airport expected to remain clear for the next 24 hours: https://t.co/ipKqIRVLSf #MountAgung #Agung #volcano  Jetstar Airways (@JetstarAirways) December 4, 2017

BALI UPDATE: Our team of safety experts have deemed it safe to continue operations so we plan to operate today's scheduled services from Bali. If conditions remain favourable we also aim to resume normal operations between Australia and Bali from tomorrow. https://t.co/LD8rC5LZdZ  Virgin Australia (@VirginAustralia) December 4, 2017

The two airlines, which cancelled flights over the weekend even as the ash cloud shrank dramatically, said they were resuming services on Monday.

The regions volcanic ash monitoring center in Darwin, Australia, has stopped issuing advisories for Agung, reflecting that it is currently posing no threat to aircraft.

It would resume advisories if there is another eruption.

Ash clouds rise from Mount Agung in Bali

Tens of thousands of tourists were stranded when ash closed Balis international airport for nearly three days last week.

Indonesian government volcanologists say Agungs crater is about one-third filled by lava and there is still a high risk of more eruptions.

The volcanos last major eruptions in 1963 killed more than 1,100 people and it was active for more than a year.

David Boutelier, a geologist at the University of Newcastle in Australia, said the chance of a violent explosion is still very high but possibly not as high as several weeks ago because pressure is being released.
Two teenagers will go on trial next year accused of plotting a Columbine School-style attack.

The boys, aged 14 and 15, from Northallerton, North Yorkshire, appeared for a hearing at Leeds Crown Court, accused of conspiracy to murder.

The older youth is also charged with unlawful wounding and aggravated burglary.

Leeds Crown Court

Neither teenager entered any pleas.

They stood in the dock of the packed court with two security officers as they each told the clerk their names, dates of birth and their nationalities.

The 15-year-old wore a jumper and buttoned-up shirt while the younger defendant was dressed in a suit.

The Recorder of Leeds, Judge Peter Collier QC, ordered that the boys will go on trial in Leeds on May 3 next year.

Judge Collier said they will appear in court again on February 12.

Both boys, who cannot be named, were remanded in custody. There was no application for bail.
The crew of a Cathay Pacific flight saw what it believes was North Koreas latest missile test last week.

Hong Kongs carrier thus becomes the second airline to report sighting it.

Cathay said on Monday that the flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong reported witnessing the apparent re-entry of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that North Korea launched before dawn on Wednesday.

The missile was far from the plane, and operation was unaffected, Cathay said, adding that it had informed other carriers and relevant authorities.

At the moment, no-one is changing any routes or operating parameters, the Hong Kong-based airline said in a statement.

We remain alert and (will) review the situation as it evolves.

The North Korean missile was fired very high up, reaching an altitude of 2,780 miles before falling back into the Sea of Japan about 600 miles from where it was launched.

It was in the air for 53 minutes.

The Hwasong-15 ICBM demonstrated a greater range than other missiles North Korea has tested.

One expert estimated its range at more than 8,100 miles if launched on a standard trajectory, which would put Washington, DC, within reach.

Korean Air pilots on two different planes also reported seeing flashes of light believed to be the North Korean missile when they were flying over Japan, airline spokesman Cho Hyun-mook said.
An activist investor has claimed shareholders have lost faith in London Stock Exchange (LSE) chairman Donald Brydon as it released a damning dossier ahead of a crunch vote on his future.

Christopher Hohns Childrens Investment Fund Management (TCI) is pressing for the immediate removal of Mr Brydon, who it accuses of pushing out chief executive Xavier Rolet.

TCI, which owns more than 5% of the LSE, has secured a shareholder vote to decide on Mr Brydons fate, but its bid to retain Mr Rolet until 2021 was ended when the Frenchman stood down last week.

Mr Rolet left after more than eight years in the role amid an increasingly bitter dispute that has dogged the exchange operator.

On Monday, TCIs meeting document said Mr Brydon has run a poor process with regards to CEO succession and shareholder engagement, as well as accusing the LSE of dismissing a world class CEO without providing any good reasons.

TCI also said that Mr Brydon has a long track record of dismissing chief executives and it would be difficult to find someone of Mr Rolets calibre to serve under him.

Pre-empting the December 19 shareholder vote on whether to ditch the chairman, TCI added that LSE should begin the succession process immediately for Mr Brydon and named three non-executive directors who would be capable to take up the role on an interim basis.

They are David Nish, Stephen OConnor and Mary Shapiro.

Donald Brydons continuation as chairman until 2019 will be damaging, TCI said.

In the firing line: LSE chairman Donald Brydon (PA)

The LSE confirmed last week that Mr Brydon will not stand for re-election in 2019, but this stopped short of meeting the TCIs demands for his immediate removal.

The raging controversy at the LSE has even drawn comment from the Bank of England, with Governor Mark Carney earlier this week saying he was mystified by the tussle.

Mr Rolets departure comes after more than eight years in the top job, during which time the LSE has seen its stock market value soar from 800 million to nearly 14 billion.

His tenure has seen LSE seal a string of acquisitions, although it was marred by the recent failed attempt at a 21 billion merger with German rival Deutsche Borse after it was blocked by the European Commission in March.
Theresa May pulled out at the last minute from a deal to break the Brexit logjam after meeting fierce resistance from the Democratic Unionist Party, Irelands prime minister has claimed.

Crunch talks between Mrs May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker ended in Brussels without a deal after the DUP  which props up the minority Conservative Government in Westminster  made clear it would not accept any arrangement which saw Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK.

Irish Taioseach Leo Varadkar said he was surprised and disappointed by the break-up of talks just hours after all sides confirmed they were satisfied with a text which would guarantee regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic in order to prevent the imposition of a hard border.

Jean-Claude Juncker, right, greets Theresa May in Brussels (Virginia Mayo/AP)

Downing Street made no response to Mr Varadkars claim.

But it is understood that, as well as the impasse over Ireland, disagreement remains over the role of the European Court of Justice in overseeing EU citizens rights in the UK after Brexit.

Both Mrs May and Mr Juncker said they were confident of reaching agreement in time for a key summit of the European Council on December 14, when it is hoped that leaders of the remaining 27 EU states will give the green light for the start of trade talks.

"I am still confident that we can reach sufficient progress before the #EUCO on 15 December." @JunckerEU #Brexit pic.twitter.com/ugToC5z4Bm  European Commission  (@EU_Commission) December 4, 2017

The Prime Minister is expected back in Brussels for further talks before the end of the week, though sources declined to confirm reports that she would meet Mr Juncker and chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier on Wednesday.

European Council president Donald Tusk later disclosed that he had been preparing to move negotiations on to the second phase  dealing with trade and the transition to the post-Brexit EU/UK relationship  until the last-minute call for more time.

Met with PM @theresa_may. I was ready to present draft EU27 guidelines tomorrow for #Brexit talks on transition and future. But UK and Commission asked for more time. It is now getting very tight but agreement at December #EUCO is still possible. pic.twitter.com/oLQQHs9F8q  Charles Michel (@eucopresident) December 4, 2017

Mrs May arrived for her lunchtime talks with Mr Juncker with expectations high for a breakthrough on remaining divorce issues which might allow Brexit negotiations to move on to their second phase by Christmas, easing the pressure on businesses to activate contingency plans to move staff and activities outside the UK.

But Irish pronouncements over an imminent deal on the border sparked a firm response from the DUP, which has previously warned it could withdraw its support for Tories in Westminster if a deal is proposed which threatens the integrity of the United Kingdom by effectively establishing a customs border in the Irish Sea.

Speaking at Stormont, DUP leader Arlene Foster said: We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom. We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom. pic.twitter.com/uCBVdfVQTJ  Arlene Foster DBE PC #ProudofNI. (@ArleneFosterUK) December 4, 2017

Her comments were swiftly followed by statements from the leaders of devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and London, making clear that any special status for Northern Ireland would prompt demands from other parts of the UK for their own tailor-made Brexit.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that if one part of the UK could stay in the single market, there was no good practical reason why others cannot do the same.

If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others cant.  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) December 4, 2017

Allowing Northern Ireland alone to retain regulatory alignment with the EU would put Scotland at a double disadvantage when it comes to jobs and investment, she said.

Wales would fully expect to be offered the same deal as Northern Ireland to stay in the single market and customs union, said First Minister Carwyn Jones, while Londons Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan said a similar deal could help preserve tens of thousands of jobs in the capital, which voted overwhelmingly to Remain in the EU.

Mrs May broke off from talks with Mr Juncker to speak by phone with Mrs Foster, and it was shortly afterwards confirmed that talks were ending without a deal.

The Prime Minister said a lot of progress had been made, with a common understanding on many of the divorce issues.

But she added: On a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation.

Mr Juncker said that the EU and UK were narrowing our positions to a huge extent, but that two or three issues remained open for discussion.

In a press conference in Dublin, Mr Varadkar said that representatives of the UK Government and Mr Barniers team informed Irish negotiators early in the day that a form of words had been found which might satisfy the Republics demand for a cast-iron guarantee of no hard border after Brexit.

The Irish negotiating team received confirmation from the British Government and the Barnier taskforce that the United Kingdom had agreed a text on the border that met our concerns, said Mr Varadkar, adding that he confirmed Irelands support for the text to Mr Juncker and Mr Tusk.

Addressing the media this evening on progress to date on Phase 1 of the #Brexit negotiations with Tanaiste @simoncoveney and Minister @HMcEntee pic.twitter.com/NAB6QB7T8P  Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) December 4, 2017

I am surprised and disappointed that the British Government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today, he said.

I accept that the Prime Minister has asked for more time, and I know that she faces many challenges and I acknowledge that she is negotiating in good faith.

Ireland wants to proceed to phase two  its very much in our interests to do so. However we cannot agree to do this unless we have firm guarantees that there will not be a hard border in Ireland under any circumstances.

The reason for todays failure in the Brexit talks is the grubby deal the Tories did with the DUP after the election. Each passing day provides further evidence that @Theresa_Mays Government is completely ill-equipped to negotiate a successful deal for our country.  Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) December 4, 2017

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the failure of talks showed Mrs Mays Government was completely ill-equipped to negotiate a successful Brexit deal for our country, while former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said she should leave office now.

But Tory MPs and peers who attended a briefing at Westminster from the PMs chief of staff Gavin Barwell and Brexit minister Steve Baker voiced satisfaction that divisions between Northern Ireland and the mainland had been avoided.
Manchester United close out the group stage of their Champions League campaign at home to CSKA Moscow on Tuesday night.

Here, Press Association Sport looks at the key issues around the match.

Will United release the handbrake?

Jose Mourinho had his game face on in the pre-match press conference, suggesting there was everything to play for with neither qualification nor top spot in the group secured. That is a mathematical concern rather than a realistic one though, with Uniteds place in the next stage only vulnerable to an extreme and unlikely sequence of results and victory margins. In fact, this should be seen as a chance to round out phase one in style and lay down a marker for Sundays Manchester derby. The Red Devils will need to be at their best to see off their rivals and this should represent an opportunity to tune up.

Home comforts

.@VLindelof: "We're all professionals and we're focused on tomorrow. We want to have a good game and get the win." #MUFC  Manchester United (@ManUtd) December 4, 2017

Win or draw and United will equal a club record of 40 successive home games without defeat, the kind of statistic Mourinho would love to add to his collection. Defender Victor Lindelof thanked the Old Trafford faithful for their role in the unbeaten streak, saying: When you are playing at home, we always have confidence. We have our fans behind us. Weve been performing very well at home and we feel confident there.

A Shaw thing

Will Jose Mourinho start Luke Shaw against CSKA Moscow? (Martin Rickett/PA)

Luke Shaws presence, or otherwise, could shed new light on whether the England left-back has any future at Old Trafford. He has been promised a spot in the 18, but with just two substitute appearance in the Carabao Cup to his name this term, Mourinho needs to show Shaw he is a serious member of the first-team squad. Another cursory outing off the bench would instead offer encouragement to any clubs who are eyeing a January move for the 22-year-old.

Three and easy

Mourinho has fielded a three-man defence with wing-backs in the past two matches, securing away wins at Watford and Arsenal in the process. It is unclear whether he is a committed convert to the Premier Leagues de rigeur tactic or if it is an insurance policy of sorts to paper over the absence of first-choice centre-halves Eric Bailly and Phil Jones. Either way it has allowed Lindelof and Marcos Rojo to be reintegrated into the XI without major drama and the added freedom for Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia on the flanks has paid dividends. Will the three-man unit get a third outing against CSKA?

Pogbas winter break

No comment  #millyrock @manchesterunited #mufc A post shared by Paul Labile Pogba (@paulpogba) on Dec 2, 2017 at 5:30pm PST

Paul Pogba will be the fulcrum of the United cause in a game he might otherwise have expected to sit out ahead of the derby. His red card against Arsenal, and the absence of an appeal by the club, means the French midfielder will get the kind of festive feet up most English-based players can only dream of. He will sit out games against City, Bournemouth and West Brom and should be well rested to lead the charge while others are wilting for the spell of three games in a week between December 23-30.
Theresa Mays efforts to secure Brexit progress were labelled a shambles in the Commons as John Bercow sought to avoid a spat between MPs.

Labours Peter Kyle criticised the Prime Minister for returning empty-handed following the conclusion of lunchtime talks in Brussels between her and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

But Conservative David Davies, MP for Monmouth, dismissed this assessment and insisted the Europeans would be empty-handed if they dont get their hands off our 50 billion.

Theresa May has been criticised in the Commons following the latest Brexit talks (Jonathan Brady/PA)

Speaker Mr Bercow urged MPs to remain patient and noted a Commons statement on the latest talks was expected from the Government on Tuesday, as he warned against the exchanges turning into a spat.

Speaker says "very much my expectation" PM will make a statement tomorrow  PARLY (@PARLYapp) December 4, 2017

Raising a point of order, Mr Kyle said of the latest talks: This is a shambles that puts into perspective the constitutional settlement for our country here.

Can we expect her (Mrs May) to make a statement tomorrow?

Mr Bercow replied: It had been very much my expectation in any event that there would be a statement to this House this week.

Though I cannot predict with certainty, I had anticipated and been given reason to believe that it would likely be tomorrow.

After days of upbeat briefing the PM comes home pathetically empty handed.



Surreally theres differences on a "couple of issues"...but theyve only been discussing *three* issues since negotiations started!!!  Peter Kyle MP (@peterkyle) December 4, 2017

Mr Davies, in a further point of order, added: The news is actually that Juncker is confident there will be a deal next week.

Is it not wrong to say shes coming back empty-handed when theres almost certainly going to be a deal?

Is it not the Europeans who are going to be empty-handed if they dont get their hands off our 50 billion?

Mr Bercow replied: I understand the impatience of (Mr Davies) but we mustnt allow this to become a spat between people who want to say all is well and those who want to say all is ill.
A Spanish judge has ordered that four prominent members of the Catalan independence movement should remain in custody, including the vice-president of the ousted regional government.

He will now campaign in a polarised regional election from a jail near Madrid.

The judge set 100,000-euro bail for the six other Catalan politicians who had been jailed in early November, and ordered their passports to be confiscated.

The six were expected to leave jails near Madrid later in the day.

Meanwhile, Catalan ex-president Carles Puigdemont and four of his separatist allies heard that they will be judged on whether they can be extradited from Belgium to Spain on December 14, exactly one week before the election.

Fired Catalan Cabinet member Raul Romeva, centre, is greeted by supporters and friends as he leaves the Estremera jail, south-east of Madrid, Spain

The group is refusing to return to Spain to face rebellion, sedition and embezzlement charges that can be punished with decades in prison under the countrys criminal laws.

Mr Puigdemonts defence lawyer, Paul Bekaert, insisted that the Spanish charges were not punishable in Belgium and thus there were no grounds for extradition.

We also highlighted the danger for the impediment of their human rights in Spain, he said.

Whatever decision is made on December 14, two appeals will be possible and a final ruling could well come only after the December 21 election called by Spains central authorities, in which Mr Puigdemont is leading his pro-independence partys campaign.

Mariano Rajoys conservative Spanish government disbanded Mr Puigdemonts Cabinet when it took control of Catalonia shortly after separatist regional politicians passed a declaration of independence in late October.

The early election is an attempt to find a democratic way out of the nations worst crisis in nearly four decades.

But the vote is shaping up as a plebiscite between those for and against independence, with polls predicting a close race between the two camps.

Adding to the uncertainty, a Supreme Court judge decided on Monday to uphold the preventive jailing of ousted Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras, who tops the list for the left-republican ERC party.

Catalonia

ERC was part of the former Catalan ruling coalition with Mr Puigdemonts conservative party and is leading the polls before the new election.

Campaigning officially begins at midnight on Monday, and in the hours before that moment Catalan pro-independence groups hope to stage protests in front of town halls across the region against the Supreme Courts decision on the detained separatists.

Mr Junqueras and the other jailed politicians pledged last week to give up on efforts to seek unilateral independence for the wealthy northeastern region, in the hope of being freed.

But judge Pablo Llarena said in his decision on Monday that it remains to be seen if Mr Junqueras pledge to abide by Spanish law is truthful and real.

ERC spokeswoman Marta Rovira described the jailing as a covert attempt by Spains central authorities in Madrid to get ERC out of the picture.

This is a very clear attempt to win these elections without political adversaries, she said.

Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido was unmoved by the arguments of Mr Junqueras supporters.

Those who commit criminal acts must place themselves at the mercy of legal rulings, Mr Zoido said.

The magistrate also upheld custody orders without bail for the former regional interior minister, Joaquim Forn, and the leaders of Assemblea Nacional Catalan and Omnium Cultural, the two Catalan grassroots groups that have been the main drivers of the separatist bid in Catalonia.

A government-run poll published on Monday indicated that pro-independence parties would lose their slim majority in the Catalan regional parliament.

It gave ERC, Mr Puigdemonts Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) and the far-left anti-establishment CUP party 66 or 67 seats out of the parliamentary 135 seats.

The election could be a close race between the left republican ERC party and the opposition business-friendly Ciutadans (Citizens), with 21 and 22.5% share of votes respectively, the CIS survey suggested.
By Manolo Serapio Jr and Neil Jerome Morales

MANILA, Dec 4 (Reuters) - The Philippines ordered a probe on Monday into the immunisation of more than 730,000 children with a dengue vaccine that has since been suspended, while French drug company Sanofi said no deaths had been reported as a result of the programme.

"As far as we know, as far as we are made aware, there are no reported deaths that are related to dengue vaccination," Ruby Dizon, medical director at Sanofi Pasteur Philippines, told a news conference in Manila.

"Of course, rest assured, monitoring is continuing, we are working with the Department of Health (DOH), in collaboration, to make sure this is maintained."

Last week, the Philippines' Department of Health halted the use of the Dengvaxia vaccine after Sanofi said it must be strictly limited due to evidence it can worsen the disease in people not previously exposed to the infection.

More than 730,000 children aged 9 and over in the Philippines have received one dose of the vaccine as part of a programme that cost 3.5 billion pesos ($69.54 million).

The Department of Justice on Monday ordered the National Bureau of Investigation to look into "the alleged danger to public health ... and if evidence so warrants, to file appropriate charges thereon."

A spokesman for President Rodrigo Duterte said on Sunday the government would hold accountable those responsible for a programme that had placed thousands of lives at risk.

"We will leave no stone unturned in making those responsible for this shameless public health scam which puts hundreds of thousands of young lives at risk accountable," spokesman Harry Roque said in a statement.

Dengue is a mosquito-borne tropical disease. Although it is not as serious as malaria, it is spreading rapidly in many parts of the world, killing about 20,000 people a year and infecting hundreds of millions.

Besides the Philippines, Dengvaxia has also been approved in Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Guatemala, Peru, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, Sanofi said last year.

While Sanofi's Dengvaxia is the first-ever approved vaccine for dengue, scientists already recognised it was not perfect and did not protect equally against the four different types of the virus in clinical tests.

A new analysis from six years of clinical data showed that Dengvaxia vaccine provides persistent protective benefit against dengue fever in those who had prior infection.

But for those not previously infected by the virus, more cases of severe disease could occur in the long term following vaccination upon a subsequent dengue infection, Sanofi said.

Singapore's Health Sciences Authority said last week it had flagged risks when the vaccine was approved in October last year, and that it was working with Sanofi to strengthen warnings in the packaging of the drug of an increased risk to vaccinated individuals not previously infected by dengue.

Roque, the Philippines spokesman, said there had been no reported case of "severe dengue infection" since the vaccine was administered and called on the public "not to spread information that may cause undue alarm." (Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
ALMATY, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Kazakh upstream company KazMunaigas Exploration Production (KMG EP) plans to launch a tender offer to repurchase all of its outstanding global depositary receipts (GDRs) at $14.00 per GDR, it said on Monday.

If the offer succeeds, KMG EP plans to buy out other outstanding common shares and delist from the London Stock Exchange as well as the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange, it said in a statement.

The move could pave way for the listing of the company's biggest shareholder, state-owned National Company KazMunayGaz (NC KMG).

Kazakhstan plans to privatise NC KMG within the next few years, but it cannot be listed on a major stock exchange alongside its main upstream subsidiary. Previous attempts to restore full control over KMG EP have failed.

Minority shareholders of KMG EP last year rejected NC KMG's proposal to give the parent company more control over its subsidiary and the option to sell their shares to NC KMG.

NC KMG has a 58 percent stake in KMG EP, which currently sits on a $4 billion cash pile. Minority shareholders include Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation, and funds overseen by Western managers such as BlackRock.

The price of the offer represents a premium of 23.7 percent to the 30-day volume-weighted average GDR price of $11.32 at Dec. 1, KMG EP said. The GDR last closed at $11.80. (Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Stephen Coates and Gopakumar Warrier)
SOFIA, Dec 4 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Monday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

-- The leaders of Western Balkan countries will meet in Sofia at a World Bank Forum to discuss infrastructure and other projects in the region. (Trud, Standart)

-- Bulgarian electricity trader Future Energy which is vying to acquire the Bulgarian assets of Czech utility CEZ together with an Indian investor, has asked the electricity grid operator to remove it from the electricity trades in the country due to impossibility to provide power. (24 Chasa, Capital Daily)

-- Police officers and special services said they have uncovered a scam for exports of life-saving medicines and arrested seven people. (Trud, Standart, Telegraph, Sega, Monitor, 24 Chasa)
By Idrees Ali

ISLAMABAD, Dec 4 (Reuters) - U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Islamabad on Monday to ask Pakistan's civilian and military leadership to do more to rein in militants accused of using the country as a base to carry out attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan.

More than 100 days since President Donald Trump announced his South Asia strategy, however, U.S. officials and analysts say there has been only limited success and it is not clear how progress will be made.

U.S. officials have long been frustrated by what they see as Pakistans reluctance to act against groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network that they believe exploit safe haven on Pakistani soil to launch attacks in Afghanistan.

"We have heard from Pakistani leaders that they do not support terrorism ... we expect them to act in their own best interest, and in support of peace and regional stability," Mattis said told reporters travelling with him this week.

Mattis, who is visiting Pakistan for the first time as defence secretary, said the goal for his trip would be to find "common ground" and work together.

In August, Trump outlined a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, chastising Pakistan over its alleged support for Afghan militants. But beyond that, the Trump administration has done little to articulate its strategy, experts say.

Senior U.S. officials say they have not seen a change in Pakistan's support for militants, despite visits by senior U.S. officials, including one by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently.

"We have been very direct and very clear with the Pakistanis ... we have not seen those changes implemented yet," General John Nicholson, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, said this week.

Pakistan says it has done a great deal to help the United States in tracking down militants and Pakistani officials have pushed back on the U.S. claims.

LIMITED LEVERAGE

U.S. official expressed hope that relations between the two countries could improve after a kidnapped U.S.-Canadian couple and their three children were freed in Pakistan in October, after the couple was abducted in Afghanistan.

However, while the Trump administration has used tougher words with Pakistan, it is has yet to change Islamabad's calculus and if the United States is seen as bullying, it is unlikely to succeed, experts say.

While Mattis travelled to the region earlier this year, he did not make a stop in Pakistan, although he did visit its arch rival, India, a relationship that has grown under the Trump administration.

"There is not an effective stick anymore because Pakistan doesn't really care about U.S aid, it has been dwindling anyway and it is getting the money it needs elsewhere ... treat it with respect and actually reward it when it does do something good," Madiha Afzal, with the Brookings Institution, said.

Mattis' brief visit to Islamabad comes a week after a hardline Pakistani Islamist group called off nationwide protests after the government met its demand that a minister accused of blasphemy resign.

Separately, a Pakistani Islamist accused of masterminding a bloody 2008 assault in the Indian city of Mumbai was freed from house arrest. The White House said the release could have repercussions for relations between Washington and Islamabad.

"I think for Pakistan, the timing in very bad. There is talk about progress being made against extremists and here you have a situation where religious hardliners have basically been handed everything they wanted on a silver platter," said Michael Kugelman, with the Woodrow Wilson think-tank in Washington.

Kugelman said that rather than pushing Pakistan, Mattis should explain that not dealing with militants on its border could see those same militants turning on Islamabad. (Editing by Robert Birsel)
SHANGHAI, Dec 4 (Reuters) - China's aviation authority has suspended all flights from the Indonesian holiday island of Bali to Chinese cities until the threat of volcanic ash clears, the state-run People's Daily newspaper reported on Monday.

Clouds of volcanic ash from Bali's erupting Mount Agung volcano disrupted flights to and from the island's airport last week, stranding many thousands of tourists.

Flights began resuming when the airport reopened on Wednesday, after the wind changed and blew the ash away from flight paths. Individual airlines make their own decisions on whether to operate.

Australia's Jetstar resumed flying tourists in to Bali on Monday, while Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd said it planned to do so on Tuesday.

Despite the resumption of some services, China's aviation authority was stopping any more flights after the return on Monday of the last charter flight, bringing to 15,237 the number of stranded Chinese tourists brought home, the People's Daily newspaper said on its Twitter page.

"China's aviation authority has suspended all flights from Bali to Chinese cities until volcanic ash threat clears," it said.

China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines, which stopped flying new tourists into Bali last week, told Reuters that any resumption of flights would depend on the situation.

They declined to comment on the reported directive from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

The CAAC did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.

China Southern, which flies to Bali from the cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, said in an email that "due to volcanic activity in the area, the local airport and associated routes are not airworthy so flights on these two routes have been cancelled in the near term".

China has overtaken Australia this year as the biggest source of international visitors to Bali, representing about a quarter of the 4.9 million arrivals from January to September, according to industry statistics.

Airlines avoid flying through volcanic ash as it can damage aircraft engines, clogging fuel and cooling systems, hampering pilot visibility and even causing engine failure.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency, said on Twitter that Mount Agung was no longer spewing ash but just white smoke that reached a height of 1,000 metres early on Monday. (Reporting by Brenda Goh; Additional reporting by Jamie Freed in SINGAPORE and Jessica Damiana in JAKARTA; Editing by Robert Birsel)
JUBA, Dec 4 (Reuters) - South Sudan launched a closed-circuit television (CCTV) and drone security system on Monday that officials said would help improve safety in the capital Juba where violent crime has spiked on the back of an insurgency.

Kfir Shilder, project manager at Global Group, the Israeli company behind the project, said the surveillance system had 11 cameras installed in Juba and two drones. It would eventually be rolled out across the town.

"It will be safe for everybody residing in Juba," President Salva Kiir said at the system's launch. "Those who snatch things...in the streets can now be traced, they cannot get away from their crime."

Africa's youngest nation has been gripped by a four-year civil war pitting forces loyal to Kiir and his former vice president Riek Machar. Fighting has killed thousands, displaced hundreds of thousands and battered the economy.

In recent months scores of people have been killed in Juba as robbers, sometimes wearing security uniforms, rampage through the town, snatching valuables and attacking homes at night.

Some Juba residents have collected cash to pay police unofficially to patrol their neighbourhoods.

Major General Edward Dimitri Lokak, director of the government's Emergency Call Centre & CCTV, said the system would help "improve our work to detect crimes and especially the crimes committed by those criminals using weapons." (Reporting by Denis Dumo; Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Peter Graff)
DAKAR, Dec 4 (Reuters) - A consortium of the Societe Miniere de Boke (SMB) and Singapore's Winning Shipping plans to build Guinea's first alumina refinery in a $3 billion effort to develop the West African country's bauxite industry, it said on Monday.

Guinea has about a third of the world's bauxite reserves and expects to produce over 30 million tonnes in 2017. However, it has no facilities to transform those reserves into higher-grade alumina, which can fetch higher prices on world markets.

The project will include a 120 km (75 mile) railway connecting SMB's bauxite mines in Boke to the refinery in Dapilon, which will process the raw material for export as alumina, mainly to China, SMB managing director Frederic Bouzigues told Reuters.

Construction of the 1 million tonne per year refinery is due to start in 2019 after the completion of environmental impact and feasibility studies. It is expected to be completed in 2022, Bouzigues said.

"The local processing of raw materials is one of the biggest challenges for a more inclusive growth in Africa because it creates more value locally while leading to economic diversification," said Bouzigues.

The bauxite industry has taken on greater significance for the economy in Guinea, where the development of huge iron ore deposits in its forested interior stalled due to a slump in global commodities prices in 2014.

This year, output has been dented by riots in the mining town of Boke over a perceived failure of the mining industry to raise living standards. At least two people were killed in September as protesters blocked trucks from leaving mine sites.

SMB is owned by Winning Shipping and China's Shandong Weiqiao, along with UMS International Ltd and the Guinean state. (Reporting by Edward McAllister; Editing by Aaron Ross and Mark Potter)
DAKAR, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Christian militiamen killed a Mauritanian U.N. peacekeeper in an attack on a camp for displaced people in a Central African Republic diamond-mining town on Monday, the United Nations mission there said.

Fighters armed with AK-47s and makeshift weapons also wounded one Zambian and two Mauritanian peacekeepers during the 90-minute gunfight at the police checkpoint in the town of Bria, the U.N. added.

The country has been riven by sectarian conflict since 2013 when Muslim Seleka rebels ousted President Francois Bozize. That triggered a backlash by Christian anti-balaka fighters.

As many as 100 people died in Bria in June during a day of clashes between rival factions. The area is coveted by militia for its surrounding diamond mines. It also hosts tens of thousands of people displaced by the conflict.

Even with 13,000 troops, the U.N. mission has struggled to restore order to a country the size of France and has lost 14 peacekeepers in attacks this year alone. (Reporting By Aaron Ross; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
By Kit Rees and Julien Ponthus

LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - The UK's top share index rose from a two-month low on Monday but lagged behing European peers in a broader rally sparked by progress in U.S. tax reforms, as Britain and the EU failed to strike a deal on an initial Brexit divorce package.

The blue chip FTSE 100 index was up 0.55 percent at 7,340.91 points, a modest performance in comparison with France's CAC 40 and Germany's DAX, which were up 1.3 percent and 1.5 percent respectively.

"The late afternoon news about no deal meant that sterling surrendered most of its gains, but there was little help for the FTSE 100," said Chris Beauchamp, Chief market analyst at IG.

British Prime Minister Theresa May failed to strike a Brexit divorce deal with EU negotiators in Brussels despite earlier reports of a breakthrough agreement that would have kept British-ruled Northern Ireland aligned with EU regulations.

Last week's strength in sterling on the back of optimism over Brexit talks weighed on the FTSE 100, which ended the week with a 1.5 percent loss. The index fell to a two-month low as its predominantly dollar-earning constituents were hit by a rise in the currency.

"We are more negative on the UK, we think it will continue to lag. It's felt as if the excitement is elsewhere and we don't see that changing overnight," said Kevin Gardiner, global investment strategist at Rothschild Wealth Management.

Financials across Europe were the biggest boost to gains after U.S. efforts to slash corporate tax rates cleared a major hurdle.

In Britain, shares in Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS rose between 0.4 percent and 2.6 percent.

"For all the other indices around the world, the tax reform is something everyone's been keeping an eye on, so that's definitely the main driver in the U.S. and I think that's trickling over to Europe as well. We're see a bit of a relief rally," John Moore, trader at Berkeley Capital, said.

Banks are seen as the biggest beneficiaries of a cut in the corporate tax rate in the United States, and their shares also tend to see the biggest reactions when investors buy into risky assets.

Conversely, shares in more defensive stocks, such as precious metals miners Fresnillo and Randgold Resources , were among the worst performers, both down 2.7 percent and 1.2 percent respectively.

UK housebuilders got a boost from favourable data showing a a recovery in Britain's construction industry last month.

Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Barrat Developments rose between 0.5 percent and 1 percent.

(Additional reporting by Helen Reid; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
By Daniel Ramos

LA PAZ, Dec 4 (Reuters) - More than half the ballots cast in Bolivia's judicial elections on Sunday were spoiled, or nullified, by voters, a sign that the opposition said showed dwindling support for President Evo Morales.

Tensions are high in Bolivia after the Constitutional Court last week gave Morales the green light to run for a fourth straight term in 2019. Morales' opponents encouraged voters to spoil their ballots in protest of the ruling.

Morales, a former coca farmer in power since 2006, had previously accepted the results of a referendum in 2016, when 51 percent of voters rejected his proposal to end term limits.

"The citizens have defeated Evo Morales, a leader who is trying to impose re-election on Bolivia, along with corruption and the manipulation of the justice system," businessman and former presidential candidate Samuel Doria Medina Tweeted.

The 26 judges elected on Sunday will be seated in January.

Morales said in a news conference on Monday that the high number of spoiled ballots should not be seen as a protest against him, but as an attempt by the opposition to block his plan for a judiciary with elected rather than appointed judges.

"The unpatriotic right wing wanted the election of an organic judiciary to fail, but the people have elected their authorities; judges who answer to the people, not to politicians," Morales said.

The 96 candidates on the ballot were preselected by Congress, where Morales has a majority. Opposition leaders said the vote was a ploy to give Morales supporters control over the electoral court.

Ballots were spoiled by marking more than one candidate, scratching or ripping the papers or doodling on them.

A preliminary report by Bolivia's elections authority said 78 percent of the country's 6.4 million eligible voters participated in the election and that more than 50 percent of the ballots cast were spoiled. (Writing by Hugh Bronstein; Editing by Dan Grebler)
By Tuomas Forsell and Jussi Rosendahl

HELSINKI, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Finland should remain militarily neutral because it helps ensure security in the Baltic Sea region, Prime Minister Juha Sipila said in an interview ahead of celebrations of the country's 100 years of independence.

The EU member state was part of the Russian Empire and won independence during the 1917 Russian revolution but it nearly lost it fighting the Soviet Union in World War Two.

The centre-right government retains the option of seeking NATO membership but remaining non-aligned and increasing defence cooperation with Sweden and the EU was Finland's way, Sipila said.

"At the moment, to have Finland and Sweden forming this militarily non-aligned zone, I think that increases the security and stability in the Baltic Sea region ... I see no reason to change this," Sipila told Reuters by phone.

Finland has stepped up military cooperation with Sweden and forged closer ties with NATO because it is concerned about Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and heightened East-West tensions in the Baltic Sea.

However, the government has opted to stay out of NATO in line with its tradition of avoiding confrontation with Russia.

A report commissioned by the government said last year that if Finland joined NATO it would lead to a crisis with Russia, which is also a major trade partner for Finland.

Moscow has hinted that it could move troops closer to the Finnish-Russian border if Finland joins NATO.

"It is clear that Finland is part of the West and the western community. That is our place," Sipila said.

"We want to be ... at the core of the European Union, influencing EU's future. But the main difference between us and the majority of EU states is our military non-alignment."

Polls show that only 22 percent of Finns support NATO membership, while 62 percent are opposed. Sipila, who leads Finland's Centre party, said any move to join would need public approval via a referendum.

Finance Minister Petteri Orpo from Finland's poll-leading National Coalition party told Reuters last week he believed that joining NATO would improve Finland's security. (Reporting by Tuomas Forsell and Jussi Rosendahl; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
By Amina Ismail and Ahmed Tolba

CAIRO, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Former Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Shafik, who returned home from the United Arab Emirates in mysterious circumstances after announcing his bid for Egypt's presidency, told Reuters on Monday he was "fine" but was prevented from saying much more.

A Reuters reporter approached Shafik at a Marriott Hotel in a Cairo suburb, where he was accompanied by men in civilian clothes who refused to let him talk and quickly sent the reporter away.

"I'm fine, thanks to God," he replied when asked how he was, before three men shouted at the reporter to stop talking to him. "It is okay, leave it at that," Shafik told the reporter.

Reuters was unable to establish the identity of the three men.

The former air force chief and government minister told a private Cairo television station on Sunday that he was still considering contesting next year's election, although Shafik was less categorical than his previous declaration of intent.

"Today, I am here in the country, so I think I'm free to deliberate further on the issue," he told TV channel Dream. "There's a chance now to investigate and see exactly what is needed ... to feel out if this is the logical choice."

Some of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's critics consider 76-year-old Shafik to be the strongest potential challenger to the incumbent, who is widely expected to run for a second term next year.

On Saturday, Shafik's family said he had been taken from their home in the Emirates and deported back to Egypt, where they said they had lost contact with him until late on Sunday.

In Sunday's interview, he dismissed reports that he had been kidnapped.

"I hadn't had a chance to prepare the house myself, so all I thought was I'd go to one of the hotels. I was surprised - suddenly I'm in the car and it's taking me to one of the nicest hotels in my area," he said.

"Here I am talking to you and I am not kidnapped. What are the requirements for being kidnapped?"

Shafik's lawyer met him on Sunday at the hotel, saying only that he was in good health, but not whether he was able to leave the hotel or not.

A source at the hotel said Shafik's reservation had been made by Egypt's armed forces, when asked for his room number to contact him.

"NOT ENTIRELY FREE"

After announcing his intention to run for president, the former aviation minister under ousted president Hosni Mubarak and later prime minister during Egypt's 2011 revolt, began receiving indications of support from some on Cairo's streets.

Pro-state media quickly painted him as a corrupt old regime hand with ties to the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

An interior ministry official said there were no criminal charges pending against Shafik and there had been no order to deport him from the UAE or detain him in Cairo upon his arrival.

But a general intelligence official and a national security official at the hotel said Shafik was "not entirely free", without giving details or further explanation.

A Reuters witness and airport sources said Shafik had been accompanied in a convoy by Egyptian authorities after his arrival in Cairo.

Sisi is an ally of UAE and Saudi Arabia and his supporters say he is key to Egypt's stability. Critics say he has eroded freedoms gained after a 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak and jailed hundreds of dissidents.

Sisi has won backing from Gulf states and has presented himself as a bulwark against Islamist militants since, as army commander, he led the overthrow in 2013 of former president Mohamed Mursi of the now banned Muslim Brotherhood.

After four decades in the military, Shafik touted his military experience as one of his strengths in a 2012 election, which he narrowly lost to Mursi.

Shafik fled to UAE to escape corruption charges in June 2012. He dismissed the charges as politically motivated and was taken off airport watchlists last year.

Sisi has yet to announce his own intentions for the election. His supporters dismiss criticism over rights abuses and say any measures are needed for security in the face of an Islamist insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers.

His government is struggling to crush the insurgency in the North Sinai region and has enacted painful austerity reforms over the last year which critics say have eroded his popularity. (Additional reporting by Eric Knecht and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo and Aziz El Yaakoubi in Dubai; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
From left - Brigadier Rajitha Ampemohotti, Immediate Past President, National Paralympic Committee; Mr. U. R. Rodrigo, President, National Paralympic Committee; Mrs. Surekha Alles, Managing Director, Allianz Insurance Lanka and Mr. Dennis Hewagama, General Manager, Allianz Insurance Lanka Ltd

Allianz Lanka has extended its support to the Sri Lankan Paralympic team by another two years. Allianz, which has been a partner of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) since 2006 and became its first International Partner in 2011, has supported the Sri Lankan team since 2013. The new sponsorship agreement was signed at Allianz Insurance Lanka Ltd, Head Office, Colombo by Mrs. Surekha Alles, Managing Director, Allianz Insurance Lanka and Mr. U.R. Rodrigo, President, National Paralympic Committee.

Commenting on this strong partnership, Mrs. Surekha Alles, Managing Director, Allianz Insurance Lanka said, Allianz is committed to promoting inclusion, diversity, and excellence, both in the workplace and in the world of competitive sports. And through this partnership, we support the athletes passion for what they do, their ambitions to achieve their goals and their remarkable ability to believe in themselves, which mirror Allianzs own values.

At the 2012 summer Paralympics in London Sri Lanka won their first medal when Pradeep Sanjaya placed third in the mens 400m T46 to clinch the bronze. The Rio 2016 summer Paralympics saw Sri Lanka take home their second medal when Dinesh PriyanthaHerath placed third in the mens javelin throw F46.

We are happy to have the continued financial and technical support of Allianz Lanka. Their active promotion of Paralympics and their shared commitment to the core values of the Paralympics  courage, determination, inspiration, and equality  have brought greater prominence to the event and its athletes in Sri Lanka, said Mr. U.R. Rodrigo, President, National Paralympic Committee.

Allianz Insurance Lanka Ltd. and Allianz Life Insurance Lanka Ltd., known together as Allianz Lanka, are fully-owned subsidiaries of Allianz SE, Germany, a world leader in integrated financial services. Having started out as a Greenfield operation in 2005, it has emerged as one of the fastest growing insurance service providers in Sri Lanka. The company prides on supporting its clients business strategy by understanding their risk profile and needs, and providing individual solutions from its world class portfolio of products and services. Around the world, over 140,000 Allianz employees serve some 86.3 million retail and corporate customers in 70 countries, who place their trust on the knowledge, global presence, financial strength and solidity of Allianz to support them in their moment of truth.
Ascot Holdings PLC closed its mandatory offer with the acquirers upping their stake to 67.18 percent from the 45.16 percent they held prior to the offer announcement.

A consortium of local and foreign shareholders on October 24 bought 44.98 percent stake in the property and hospitality group for Rs.241.6 million, giving the firm a valuation of Rs.42.50 a share.



It later transpired that the two leading shareholders  Rohan Iriyagolle and Pasan Madanayake  who together held 43.16 percent stake in the group via their investment vehicles Axis Investments Private Limited and St. Louis Capital (Pvt) Limited on margin provided by a private commercial bank, were the

major sellers.

As the share sale crossed 30 percent stake, it triggered the Securities and Exchange Commissions Company Takeovers and Mergers Code and the consortium of buyers offered to purchase the balance shares of the company from the minority shareholders at Rs.42.50.



The offer was made by Eighth Wonder, a Mauritius-based company and Ian Joseph McVeigh, one of the UK-based individuals to the initial purchase, who held 24.52 percent and 11.63 percent stakes among them.



The other two individuals who participated in the October 24 deal were Archie James Buckland Warman, a UK-based investor with a 3.30 percent stake and Mohamed Hisham Jamaldeen with a 5.51 percent stake.



According to the disclosure to the Colombo Stock Exchange, when the mandatory offer expired on November 29, the holders of approximately 22.02 percent shares had accepted the offer made by the controlling shareholder consortium bringing up their total holding in the group to 67.18 percent.



As of September 30, high net worth investor Nimal Perera held 11.13 percent stake in Ascot Holdings under margin provided by Seylan Bank PLC, but it is still not known whether Perera was among the sellers during the offer period.



An independent advisors report released soon after the mandatory offer was announced on November 7 advised the minority shareholders with short-term investment horizon to take up the offer as the offer price offered a significant premium to industry specific multiples as well as the cash flow based valuation of the company.

It should be noted that the Ascot share is not highly liquid and that disposing of large quantities later-on with the intention that the share price will appreciate in value will be challenging, the independent advisors report said. The valuation report showed that the offer price of Rs.42.50 is a 19 percent discount to the net asset value of the firm but the industry is such that the general trading patterns indicate a trading price that is lower than the net asset value of the firm is a common occurrence.

Ascot Holdings history of dealings is marred by large scale corporate malfeasants and the firm was at the forefront of a suspected pump-and-dump share trading scheme during the market bull run during the 2010-2012 period.



A day prior to the mandatory offer closure announcement, the company disclaimed the liability for a secondary mortgage bond given on its property at T.B. Jayah Mawatha at Colombo 10 for Rs.350 million to a private commercial bank. The Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe making a special statement in parliament last week said investigations into the bond sales between 2008 and 2014 as well as the share market manipulation during the same period, which saw some worthless stocks dumped on the Employees Provident Fund would begin soon after the current probe into the bond scam is completed.
SIMI VALLEY REUTERS Dec 2 - U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo said on Saturday he sent a letter to Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani and Iranian leaders expressing concern regarding Irans increasingly threatening behaviour in Iraq. Speaking during a panel at the annual Reagan National Defence Forum in Southern California, Pompeo said he sent the letter after the senior Iranian military commander had indicated that forces under his control might attack U.S. forces in Iraq. He did not specify the date.



Iranian media earlier quoted Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, a senior aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as saying an unnamed CIA contact had tried to give a letter to Soleimani when he was in the Syrian town of Albu Kamal in November during the fighting against Islamic State.

I will not take your letter nor read it and I have nothing to say to these people, Golpayegani quoted Soleimani as saying, according to the semi-official news agency Fars.
Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.
Ive been a life-long naturalist. And for a naturalist Sri Lanka is a wonderful place to come to  for your coasts, hills, plains, mud-flats and seas.



For your wildlife: your animals, birds, butterflies and sea creatures. For your plants: your flowers and trees. You have 30 species of endemic birds, birds that are only found here and in no other country in the world, 50 endemic snakes, and lots and lots of endemic plants. You wont need me to persuade you that Sri Lanka is a country blessed by nature. And this plays an important part in many tourists decisions to visit.



All these things are precious, and they need protecting. That important part of Sri Lankas wildlife is under threat, and a number of its national parks under unsustainable pressures, is not in doubt. The illegal trade in wildlife is flourishing. In the past few days weve seen reports of hundreds of kilos of pangolin scales being captured by the police, and of tourists stopped at the airport trying to leave with protected plants and animals. We read about illegal logging in Wilpattu, encroachment on the Sinharaja forest, and unauthorised building in park buffer zones. Many of us will have been at Yala National Park when the gates open in the morning and jeeps race in by the hundred. We have all seen the rubbish that collects in drifts on Sri Lankas beautiful beaches. The latest tourism strategic plan candidly admits that the countrys international image is suffering because of this.



Tourism vision



The government recently launched its Tourism Vision 2025, to provide strategic direction to the tourism sector. It envisions Sri Lanka recognised as the worlds finest island for memorable, authentic and diverse experiences. Central to the vision lie concepts of sustainability. At its core is a tourism philosophy that celebrates Sri Lankan heritage, environment, values and people, one that is socially inclusive and environmentally responsible and provides economic benefits to communities and the country.



As I look at Sri Lanka and reflect on your countrys tourism potential and future needs, this emphasis on the environment and on first-class management of your great cultural and natural sites makes good sense and is much needed. It needs to be about more than just the great sites, of course  its how things are all around the island thats as important, to attract foreign visitors yes and, more than this, for the people of Sri Lanka themselves.



When I was at university I spent two of my summers working with a team of scientists producing a sustainable management plan for a cloud forest high in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador. Since then Ive talked with governments about environmental issues and taken an interest in conservation regimes in countries around the world. Some work well; some, though intentions are good, dont. Here are three of my own reflections about how things are going in Sri Lanka.



Rules not enforced



The first is that I see that often the rules are good but they arent being or cant be enforced. Politicians dont always help. Indeed too often they are part of the problem, with self-interest getting in the way of conservation measures that are needed. Nor do businesses always play the part they need to play.



Take the problems being faced by Bolgoda Lake and the surrounding wetlands. Planning laws are sometimes ignored or over-ridden, chemicals and effluent flow in from industry and hotels. There comes a point when ecosystems, even strong ecosystems, break. Rules need to be enforced.

Everyone can support the goals of the parks authorities, the Forest Department and conservation NGOs



Penalties insufficient



My second reflection is that sometimes the rules are good, but the penalties for breaking them insufficient. Take the worrying number of visitors from China who are leaving or trying to leave the country with endangered animals and plants. Recent press reports mention small fines being levied at Bandaranaike International Airport when people are stopped. Penalties that really deter are needed to slow this flourishing trade.



Visitor and vehicle control needed



And my third reflection, that controls on visitor and vehicle numbers in some national parks are much needed and should be an easy win. There are plenty of good examples from around the world of how to make restrictions on numbers work. Controlling vehicle behaviour and enforcing road and other park disciplines need to be priorities too.



Everyone can help by speaking up for good and sustainable conservation practices. The tourism industry, communities that benefit from tourism and the general public all have important parts to play in the conservation effort. Everyone can help to encourage (and sometimes push) central and local government and authorities, and national and local politicians. Everyone can support the goals of the parks authorities, the Forest Department and conservation NGOs.



Sri Lanka is a land of great beauty, extraordinary variety and winning smiles. The greater the number of people who are speaking up today for the conservation practices Sri Lanka needs to have in place, the more confident we can all be that future generations will still be able to enjoy the remarkable beauty and variety that make this island such a special place.

In the past few days weve seen reports of hundreds of kilos of pangolin scales being captured by the police, and of tourists stopped at the airport trying to leave with protected plants and animals





(The writer is the British High Commissioner in Sri Lanka)
The low pressure area South-East of the Bay of Bengal was located nearly 1300km from Sri Lanka by this evening.

The Meteorology Department warns of showers exceeding 75 mm particularly in the Northern, North-Central and Eastern and Uva Provinces and thundershowers in other areas with winds of up to 60 kmph particularly in the Northern and Southern and Eastern Provinces from tomorrow to Friday.

It said winds of up to 80 kmph could be expected over the sea areas off the Island while the districts of Mullaitivu, Kilinochchi, Jaffna, Vavuniya, Batticaloa and Trincomallee and Sabaragamuwa and the Western Provinces could also expect windy conditions during the next few days.

The Met Department said it was likely to move towards Tamil Nadu and south of Andra Pradesh across the Central Bay of Bengal close to the country tomorrow and day after. People living in the Northern and Eastern coastal areas are advised to be vigilant and to be watchful of falling trees because of the heavy winds.

It advised people to trim tree branches and listen to the warnings issued by the Met Department and the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) for the latest updates on the situation through the media and the hot-lines provided.

The Met Department also issued a special warning to those on multi-day trawlers already in the seas in the Bay of Bengal area to travel towards Bangladesh for the protection.

Disaster Management Minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa warned the fishing out at sea to return to the shore as soon as possible while those engaging in naval and fishing activities in the Central Bay of Bengal have been asked to stay on shore until Friday because of the possibility of heavy winds up to 100 kmph over Bay of Bengal.

Steps have been taken to warn the navy and fishing communities out at sea to move to safer locations in case of an emergency.

The minister said the violation of maritime boundaries should be disregarded in case of an emergency in conformity with understanding among the SAARC countries.

Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said today the low pressure area was very likely to become a depression over the southeast Bay of Bengal and the neighbourhood during the next 24 hours and a severe depression during the subsequent 48 hours. It is very likely to move towards north Tamil Nadu.

It said the cyclonic circulation over southwest Bay of Bengal off Tamil Nadu  Sri Lanka coasts extending up to 3.1 km above mean sea level is still persisting. (Thilanka Kanakarathna)
Joint opposition MP Dinesh Gunawardane today asked in parliament why the government had ignored the international warning about the recent tropical storm issued three days ahead of the impending disaster.

He said the government agencies had only issued an advisory to the fishing community.

"This has not only dealt a severe blow to the people and the economy but had also tarnished the country's reputation among the tourist industry and the industrial and commercial sectors," the MP said.

He said the tropical storm had resulted in 14 people killed and several houses and power lines damaged or destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people displaced or homeless.

The MP said the government had not carried out its duty properly in this crisis situation and asked why the people were left in the dark about the impending disaster.

He asked what action the government would take to face future storms.

House Leader and Minister, Lakshman Kiriella said international agencies had not warned of stormy weather between of November 28 and 30 and had predicted that the atmospheric disturbance would result in a storm which was some 400 miles away from Sri Lanka towards West.

He said Meteorology Department had issued weather warnings to naval and fishing communities at the proper time which had prevented a huge disaster.

"We would have had to face a huge disaster if the fishing community was not informed about the strong winds and rough seas," the minister said. (Ajith Siriwardana and Yohan Perera)
Leading non-bank lender LB Finance PLC yesterday said it raised Rs.3 billion by way of a debenture issue.



The offer, which saw the issuance of 20 million debentures with an option to issue up to a further 10 million debentures in the event of an oversubscription of the initial issue, at an issue price of Rs.100 a share, was snapped up on the opening day.



Therefore the said issue will close at 4.30 p.m. today as per the prospects the registrars to the issue PW Corporate Secretarial Pvt. Ltd said in a stock market filing yesterday.



The Colombo Stock Exchange has given its preliminary approval to LB Finance to list the debentures.

Capital Alliance functioned as the mangers to the issue. LB Finance is also a leader in the countrys micro-finance sphere. The company recently announced plans to enter into the micro-finance space in Myanmar.
Straws in the wind suggest

Blanket permission was given to the Tamils to observe Great Heroes Day in the manner the Northern Tamils wanted

The students of Jaffna University were the first to show restiveness

But the Tamils reacted in a calm and understanding manner

The Great Heroes Day (MaaverarNaal) observances this year in the Northern Province was notable, and perhaps path breaking too, in two ways: Firstly, a record number of people participated in the various events in public places including Hindu temples and churches. Secondly, the Government allowed the observances to take place, though the State Minister of Defence Ruwan Wijewardene subsequently stated that participants would be arrested and prosecuted because they had memorialized terrorists belonging to the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).



Opinion is divided on what these might mean. Those of the nationalist bent of mind, mostly in the majority Sinhala community, fear that these might rekindle the fires of militant, armed separatism thought to have been doused by the annihilation of the LTTEs military machine. And they might stymie efforts to bring about Tamil-Sinhalese integration. But others see it as a welcome development because mass public grieving helps bring out suppressed emotions in a non-violent manner which tend to get expended over a period of time. Or it could take up a routinized and therefore harmless form over time.

Cruel to deny opportunity to remember

Such observances held in the open, calm the mind and given time, prepare it to accept the adversary in a new light without anger and vengeance.



The most fundamental thing about tragic events like death and bloody conflict is that their memory cant be erased, as historical experience shows. As the Roman orator Cicero said: The life of the dead consists in being present in the minds of the living.This is why loved ones, famous statesmen, wars and massacres have been memorialized down the ages. It would be cruel to deny a person or a people the right to remember and grieve.

As Radhika Hettiarachchi put it in her monograph: Memorialization and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka, public memorialization acknowledges the sufferers or the victims personal loss. It assuages them by building a connection between people through empathy and fellowship.



However, Hettiarachchi adds that memorialization cant be an end in itself. It has to be part of a multi-pronged and prolonged process aimed at reconciliation between adversaries involving deliverance of justice, psycho-social healing, reparations, and rehabilitation. She very correctly points out out that memory is subjective and fluid. It examines, reinterprets, and addresses the issues of the past, thereby helping the formation of new identities. Therefore, with the passage of time, the Great Heroes Day observances may acquire new meanings especially if accompanied by a multi-dimensional reconciliation process.

Basic demands of Tamils

Something like this may be happening in Sri Lanka with the establishment of the Good Governance regime of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in 2015. Admittedly, the two leaders have been consistently saying that war heroes would never be allowed to be haulled before international tribunals for alleged war crimes (rejecting the Tamils demand that they should be). And the Tamils basic demands are yet to be addressed. But this regime has undeniably been kind in its approach to the Tamils and other minorities.



One of the signs of this was the blanket permission given to the Tamils to observe Great Heroes Day in the manner the Northern Tamils wanted.



This was not the case between 2009 and 2014 during the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime. After the war ended with the annihilation of the LTTEs military machine and the North and the East of Sri Lanka in May 2009, observances of the MaaverarNaal, begun by the LTTE in 1989, ceased, because the Government wouldnt countenance them.



The Government razed the LTTEs memorials, monuments, offices and graveyards to the ground. Prabhakarans underground house, which became a tourist attraction for a while, was dynamited. The State didnt want any symbolic rallying point for a revival of the Tiger cult.

The most fundamental thing about tragic events like death and bloody conflict is that their memory cant be erased

A psychological variant of the systematic destruction of the vestiges of the separatist armed struggle was the rehabilitation of 12,000 captured or surrendered LTTE cadres. The year-long rehabilitation process was meant to cleanse the minds of the cadres of all anti-Sri Lankan and anti-Sinhalese thoughts instilled by the LTTE.

On Great Heroes Day this year, the Sri Lankan Army remained confined to barracks and the police controlled traffic instead of preventing people from indulging in public grieving. They looked on as propaganda songs of the LLTE-era were brazenly played over loudspeakers and posters bearing pictures of the LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran were put up in some places. Red and White coloured flags of the Tamils, popularized by the LTTE, were hoisted everywhere. Churches and Hindu temples performed memorial rites without let or hindrance.



Northern Chief Minister C.V.Wigneswaran put it in his message on this years MaaveerarNaal, the Tamil people were getting increasingly restive and itching to show commitment to their cause and also their collective power.

Mother of a dead LTTE cadre lights the memorial torch on Great Heroes Day, May 27, 2017.Photo. Tamil Guardian

Warning

They also wanted to warn Tamil politicians in parliament that they shouldnt abandon the cause of provincial autonomy and meekly accept the crumbs thrown to them by the powers-that-be in Colombo.



The Great Heroes Day observances this year were part of a new series of agitations to press the Government to meet its election promises to the Tamils who had supported the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe combine in the 2015 elections.



The students of Jaffna University were the first to show restiveness. The Tamil Peoples Council (TPC) headed by Chief Minister Wigneswaran held ElugaTamil (Tamils Arise) rallies on the lines of the PonguTamil (Effervescent Tamils) of the LTTE. The large scale observance of MaaveerarNaal followed logically

True, Minister of Defence Ruwan Wijewardene warned of punitive action. But the Tamils reacted in a calm and understanding manner instead of getting provoked. The Chief Minister of the Northern Province, C.V.Wigneswaran, lost no time in allaying fears of arrest with a statement saying that a Government which had permitted the observances wouldnt arrest participants.

The Great Heroes Day observances this year were part of a new series of agitations

He appealed to the Tamils to understand that Minister Wijewardene had to threaten participants with arrest in order to placate the Sinhalese majority in South Sri Lanka, the political constituency all Sinhalese leaders have to address.



Wigneswaran then went on to cite another example of how Sinhalese politicians, who are friendly with Tamils, have made similar statements only to smother criticism in their principal constituency, the Sinhalese majority. President Maithripala Sirisena, he said, is a good and well-meaning Sinhalese leader wanting to address the grievances of the Tamils. But he too had to repeatedly and publicly assure the majority Sinhalese that he wouldnt allow Sri Lankan soldiers (war heroes in the eyes of the majority community) to be haulled up before an international court for war crimes allegedly committed against the Tamils. But being a Good Governance Government Sirisena had allowed observance MaaveerarNaal this year, Wigneswaran said.



Indications are that the MaaveerarNaal would be allowed in the coming years too. The rituals and other observances, conducted peacefully like this year, might get routinized and lose their cutting edge over time. The Sinhalese majority could get used to it and take it in their stride as another Tamil ritual. And when it does become routinized and gets generally accepted, MaaveerarNaal could pave the way to ethnic reconciliation.
Highlighting the poor turnout of heads of Sri Lankan media organizations at today's UNESCO Regional Conference to End Impunity of Crimes against Journalists in Colombo, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe questioned whether the media organizations are really interested in media rights.

The event inaugurated by the Premier was held parallel to the 2017 International Day to End Impunity of Crimes against Journalists with a theme of Reinforcing regional cooperation to promote freedom of expression and the rule of law in Asia through ending impunity for crimes against Journalists.

The event was organised by the UNESCO and the Ministry of Finance and Mass Media.

Now when you look at this audience, in a country where there have been impunity for crimes against journalists, where you expect a high attendance of all heads of media organizations, there are only two heads of organizations here. They are the people who should be fighting and saying there should be no impunity for crimes against journalists. They should be attacking us and saying we are not looking into the cases and have not prosecuted the offenders. Why arent they here today? Why only politicians and civil society are here? It is because some of them did not stand up or fight for the rights of journalists, Wickremesinghe said.

He further added that some heads of media organizations who didnt attend the event yesterday were more interested in keeping the Rajapaksa regime going and even today they would do anything to topple the current government with the purpose of bringing the Rajapaksa regime back, ensuring they make profits.

He claimed that Sri Lanka was a peculiar country where the government has ensured to end impunity for crimes against journalists, while the editors and owners of media organizations want the Rajapaksa regime back so that there will be impunity for crimes against journalists.

Meanwhile, the Premier said no one questioned him on what happened with the murder of the Former Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickremetunga.

This is the truth. We are making an effort to protect journalists. Do the heads of media organizations make such effort? Previously they used to do business with the blessings of Rajapaksa regime. Now they attack me because we have ensured freedom of expression and democracy. It is apparent that they are fed up with democracy and they want their old business back on track, he said.

He vowed to end impunity for crimes against journalists and expedite investigations into the killings and disappearances of journalists.

Crime against the media is a crime against democracy. As a promise to the media, we will investigate and bring to justice those who have ended the lives of our journalists. I would like to send a very clear message that this government will protect journalists by all measures and I hope this commitment is sufficient to get the heads of media organizations and editors bring all together with us to carry on a fight for the rights of journalists, he said.

Recalling that many journalists were attacked, murdered, and harassed during the previous regime, he said after the establishment of the current government, there is no place for such crimes in todays democracy.

I am proud to say that we have achieved great global recognition for the steps we have taken in only two years. We will continue to strengthen the democracy in Sri Lanka and we will ensure the UN Plan of Actions on Safety smooth implementation," he added. (Piyumi Fonseka)
President Maithripala Sirisena today shot down the budgetary proposal to reduce the tax on beer, saying it was contrary to the policy of his government. However, he hailed the overall budget saying it was developmentoriented.

He said no one could agree with the granting of tax concessions to beer.

"No one can agree with the granting of tax concessions to any type of liquor because the policy of this government is to minimise the consumption of liquor and minimise the smoking habit," the President said at the committee stage debate on the budget.

He said foreign cigarettes could not be permitted into the country. No other country in the world allows it," the President said but however, lauded the budget proposals as a whole saying they are development-oriented. Enhancing and enriching spiritual values of the people is as important as as improving economic indicators such as the per capita income. Similarly maintaining the free health and free education system is important. The Buddha said this when he preached that health is the most valuable resource one could possess. Therefore it is important that we continue with the welfare facilities essentially for the poor."

He stressed the need to allow the ministers to work independently. "I have allowed the Health Minister to work independently as I think it is important. I recall how I suffered mentally during my tenure as the minister of health. I had to face several obstacles when I made an effort to introduce a national health policy," the President said.

He pledged to enhance the facilities provided to kidney patients as pledged during the presidential election. I pledged to use the funds allocated for my posters for a fund for kidney patients and that was done. It is now converted into a national fund for kidney patients. We will open the first kidney hospital in Pollonaruwa shortly. This has been constructed with a US$12 billion grant from the Chinese government," the President said. (Yohan Perera and Ajith Siriwardana)
Alleged Bond Scam:

The alleged Treasury Bond scam is probably the largest financial scam to affect this country in its post-independence history. For sheer impunity and involvement of a wide spectrum of politicians in collusion with a section of the corporate sector and regulatory authorities it is hard to beat. The muted response of the opposition exemplifies the rot in the governance of this country. It is unforgivable it took place under a so-called Yahapalanaya Government which was elected with much hope under trying circumstances to usher in good governance after the traumatic Rajapaksa years.



The expectations included holding those concerned under the Rajapakse regime accountable for alleged (i) egregious corruption (ii) abuse of power (iii) violence to dissenters (iv) undermining democratic governance. Not only has the Yahapalanaya Government blatantly reneged on these undertakings - but worse is its own contribution to alleged corruption and abuse of power which in terms of sheer speed exceeds the Rajapaksa regime! For example, after being elected in January 2015 the first alleged bond scam took place February 2015.



This has given a shot in the arm for a Mahinda Rajapaksa led comeback. A Deputy Minister in a KEY ministry, held by the PM, who while in the opposition was arguably the most virulent critic of alleged wrongdoing under the Rajapaksa presidency, has suddenly after almost 3 years found merit in Gotabaya Rajapaksas efforts in beautifying the City of Colombo! Is this a sign of coming colours?



(http://www.dailymirror.lk/141426/Harsha-praises-Gota-for-beautifying-Colombo)



However, one notable gain under Yahapalanaya must be flagged  its relative openness. This most likely isnt due to altruistic reasons, but compulsions of Realpolitik in the hodgepodge arrangement that passes for governance. If it was genuine, why is their lack of transparency in most things  the alleged bond scam being a prime example?

Popular Imagination

The alleged Bond Scam has caught the popular imagination unlike no other scam in this country  and who knows there have been other egregious scams over the years. Even those who havent heard of Bonds let alone Treasury Bonds sense there has been TERRIBLE CORRUPTION involving the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. This is the reality which doesnt portend well not only for the Yahapalanaya Government, but also for the country at large. As a consequence, if the already PERCEIVED notion of a MEGA COVER-UP is CONFIRMED where its KINGPINS are shielded and only some who have FACILITATED it are exposed, it will create widespread disenchantment like no other and will further undermine the rule of law which already is in a pathetic state. Let us face it, when people get further confirmation that daylight looting of the public purse by high ups in the political, bureaucratic and corporate sectors is tolerated with such brazen impunity, is it reasonable for the masses to have respect for the rule of law? This may well be the tipping point. It is obvious that without the rule of law there can never be any meaningful socio-economic development.



It must be flagged that the rule of law is also undermined if there is no social stability as witnessed on a regular basis due to our collective inability to ensure social justice and ethnic and religious peace in the context of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual country. In its absence it exacerbates intolerance as witnessed recently in Gintota and earlier in Aluthgama and the harassment meted out to the already traumatized Rohingya refugees who were in Sri Lanka merely on transit.

Core of the Alleged Bond Scam

At the CORE of the alleged Bond Scam is:



1) The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), the issuing agency for Treasury Bonds which normally falls under the Ministry of Finance was brought under the purview of the Prime Minister.



2) CONFLICT OF INTEREST arising from then Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendrans son-in-law, Arjun Aloysius - owning/controlling PTL (Perpetual Treasuries Limited) - a Primary Dealer.



3) Arjuna Mahendran - a foreign national was HANDPICKED for the position of Governor, CBSL by the Prime Minister although he was aware of the Conflict of interest. The PM himself CONFIRMED this in his affidavit and while testifying before the Bond Commission (PCoI).



4) The PM continued to have Mahendran as CBSL Governor although he was aware that Mahendran had RENEGED on his assurance to him that his son-in-law (Arjun Aloysius) will sever all links with PTL PRIOR to his appointment as CBSL Governor.



5) The PM robustly defended and endorsed Mahendran for a second term despite the widespread perception of Mahendrans role in the alleged Bond Scam.



6) Sadly, the PMs affirmation in his affidavit to the PCoI: Upon the formation of the new Government in January 2015 there was a general consensus within the Government that Mr Mahendran should be appointed to the post of Governor of CBSL. was NOT PURSUED by the PCoI.



7) Unlike in the case of the other witnesses, the PM was given questions in ADVANCE by the PCoI to enable him to provide answers by way of affidavit.

When people get further confirmation of looting of the public purse by high ups is it reasonable for the masses to respect law?

witnesses, the PCoI decided to invite the AG himself who wasnt involved in the investigation up to that point to personally lead evidence for the FIRST TIME. Up to this time, Messrs. Dappula de Livera and Yasantha Kodagoda - Senior Additional Solicitor General and Additional Solicitor General respectively lead evidence.

9) Unlike in the case of the other witnesses who included former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake who were GRILLED by Messrs. Dappula de Livera and Yasantha Kodagoda, limited questions were posed to the PM. The PM was at the PCoI reportedly for less than an hour to clarify matters arising from his affidavit

To adapt what Lady Macbeth said: All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten these immutable FACTS.

Incidental Issues

Crucial issues of governance INCIDENTAL to the alleged bond scam thrown up by witnesses at the Bond Commission and not even on the radar include:

Tax Evasion/Money Laundering?

PTL

A Senior Dealer of the Arjun Aloysius owned PTL (Perpetual Treasuries Limited) disclosed at the Bond Commission that millions encashed by him were several times left on PTL CEO Kasun Palisenas chair.



Nuwan Salgado, Chief Dealer of PTL disclosed to the PCoI that on the instructions of PTL CEO Kasun Palisena he maintained a record of payments to informants code named as

GTLPL

B.R. Sinniah, Chief Financial Officer of GTLPL (Global Transportation and Logistics Pvt Ltd) said to be controlled by former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayakes family in his testimony to PCoI reportedly disclosed:



The Rs.145 million used in making the initial payment of Rs.16.5 million and thereafter to pay the monthly loan installment of Rs.11 million for the purchase of the Monarch Residency Penthouse in Colombo by a company owned by Minister Ravi Karunanayakes family has no origin nor has it been accounted for

The question arises of the rationale to obtain a loan from Seylan Bank in circumstances where cash was readily available?



Sinniah also reportedly told the Bond Commission:



Chairman Lakshmi Kanthan who resides in Britain had arrived at the Company on two occasions in February 2016 and 2017 and dumped cash amounting to Rs.145 million in the Chairmans safe



it had not been supported by any documentation or receipt issued to Mr. Kanthan neither were there any entries in the GTLPL accounts books regarding these two cash inflows



Should these not concern the Central Bank and the Inland Revenue Department? If not why?



Bank Malpractice?

PABC Bank

It was revealed at the PCoI that PABC (Pan Asia Bank) was an intermediary in secondary market transaction between EPF and PTL



R. A. Benedict Dias, Deputy General Manager of PABC disclosed to the Bond Commission that on the instructions of the former chairman of PABC, Nimal Perera, the decision to act as an intermediary was made



It was also revealed at the PCoI that Saman Kumara, the then dealer for the EPF at the CBSL had allegedly received a personal loan of Rs. 25 million from PABC when Nimal Perera was Chairman. It is relevant to ascertain whether this loan and its settlement (if any) took place in the ordinary course of banking practice or whether any special privileges were afforded.



Should these not be of interest to the Central Banks Bank Supervision Department?

PEPs as Bank Directors?

Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) are at the centre of the worldwide efforts for the prevention of money laundering,



It was revealed at the Bond Commission that B.R. Sinniah, Chief Financial Officer of GTLPL (Global Transportation and Logistics Pvt Ltd) said to be controlled by former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayakes family was appointed to the Board of Directors of the BoC in 2015 by the then Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake for a period of one year.



Ravi Karunanayake being a PEP is a no-brainer. B.R. Sinniah too is clearly a PEP consistent with Sri Lankas definition of a PEP which conforms to the FATF definition:



Sri Lanka is a member of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) which is an Associate Member of The Financial Action Task Force (FATF)

In the context of the Central Bank itself postulating that even the mere Opening of accounts for politically exposed persons (PEP) should have authorization of senior management. how could a PEP be a bank director?



Under no circumstances is it suggested that B.R. Sinniah is engaged in any criminal activities. It must be appreciated that not all PEPs are involved in criminal activities.



The point being made is that laws and guidelines are there for a purpose and must be adhered to. There are also other clear instances of PEPs being directors of banks in Sri Lanka which is not the focus of this article.



Our Central Bank is evidently turning a blind eye to these transgressions.

There are also other clear instances of PEPs being directors of banks in Sri Lanka which is not the focus of this article

Conclusion

Things are so bad in Sri Lanka that the rule of law was SELECTIVELY applied NOT TO COMPEL Arjun Aloysius  owner of PTL to give evidence before the Bond Commission on the basis it would incriminate him since apparently in his own mind there was a high probability he would be prosecuted. The same rule of law was MUTE in taking the next steps that could have been taken INDEPENDENT of the report of the Bond Commission in the context of the damning evidence produced at the PCoI. It also indicates that the relevant regulatory and law enforcement agencies were on SLEEP MODE until the bond commission was appointed. This tardiness in taking necessary legal action has resulted in a situation where as disclosed by the Prime Minister during his testimony at the Bond Commission, Aloysius was even able to be present at one or two parties where he was in a position to converse with the PM himself!



As I see it, the alleged Bond Scam had the MASTERMINDS and the FACILITATORS. I trust those concerned will not miss the wood for the trees! Of course, the facilitators too must be held accountable. What we have still not convincingly seen is the QUANTIFYING of the looted monies which must be RETURNED to the exchequer.



The diplomats and news agencies in Colombo are no doubt taking note of the ground reality in Sri Lanka. Is it any surprise that with the exception of the controversial Chinese investments which are largely driven by geo-political considerations, ethical FDIs are few and far between?
Over the years, I have heard many books touted as the successor to Hunger Games, but Scythe is the first one that I would really, truly stand behind. -

Walker Books Australia is excited to announce the Australia and New Zealand release of Scythe by National Book Award winning author

Neal

Shusterman. Scythe is the first book in Shustermans fantastic new dystopian series the Arc of a Scythe and has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 11 Weeks. Scythe will be published in Australia and New Zealand in February 2018 and the sequel,

Thunderhead,
Sydney: Chinas two biggest banks said they do not plan to finance a controversial Australian coal mine, in the latest blow to Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises long delayed project.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China Construction Bank said in separate statements they were not working on the project, after media recently reported that Chinese banks may get involved.

Adani is seeking A$2 billion ($1.5 billion) in financing by March 2018 for the A$4 billion first stage of its proposed Carmichael coal mine in the state of Queensland, a project that has been shrunk from a A$16.5 billion plan to make it more viable.

Adani declined to comment on its financing plans on Monday or the statements from the Chinese banks.

Australian and overseas banks have balked at granting loans for the project, which environmentalists oppose due to climate change and the potential for damage to the Great Barrier Reef.

ICBC has not been, and does not intend to be, engaged in arranging financing for this project, ICBC, Chinas biggest listed lender by assets, said in a statement on its Australian website.

ICBC attaches great importance to its social responsibilities and keenly promotes green financing ... This statement is made without any view on or prejudice towards the Carmichael mine project.

The mines location 400 kms (250 miles) from a Pacific Ocean shipping terminal means financing infrastructure costs has been at the forefront of debate over the projects economic viability.

China Construction Bank is not involved with, nor considering involvement with, the Adani Carmichael Mine project, an external spokesperson for China Construction Bank in Australia said in an emailed statement on Monday.

CCB in China was not immediately available for comment.

Reuters has previously reported that Adani was in talks with China Machinery Engineering Corp (CMEC) for a loan, which could have involved China Construction Bank or China Export Import Bank.

China Export Import Bank was not immediately available for comment.

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.

Adani hopes to start shipping coal from Carmichael by March 2020 in the first stage of the project, which it bought amid a coal boom in 2010.
ONGC, officials said, has maintained production levels despite most of its prime fields being in production for decades and natural decline setting. (Representational Image)

New Delhi: The government should privatise ONGC rather than give away its prime producing oil and gas fields to private companies for a song and bleed the PSU to death, say company executives. Selling just 18 per cent out of the governments 68.07 per cent shareholding in ONGC will fetch over Rs 41,000 crore at current market price, many times more than the investment commitment it may get from giving away 60 per cent in 11 identified oil and gas fields of the company, they said.

Speaking to PTI on the condition of anonymity, a cross-section of ONGC employees, officials and executives expressed dismay at the move by Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) to handover 11 of the companys fields including Kalok, Ankleshwar, Gandhar and Santhal  the big four oilfields in Gujarat, to private sector on grounds of raising output.

If they think ONGC is inefficient, the company should be privatised. The proposed approach will only drive the company, which is Indias most profitable PSU, the Air India way, one of them said. Cutting the government stake to just one share less than 50 per cent would give the government enough revenues to meet its disinvestment target as well as bring in an efficient private sector management, he said.

India has 0.3 per cent of worlds oil and gas reserves but produces 0.6 per cent of global output, with ONGC accounting for the bulk of it, another official said. He sought to debunk the theory that since the recovery at the state-owned firms fields is low, it warrants involvement of private sector in raising production.

ONGC, officials said, has maintained production levels despite most of its prime fields being in production for decades and natural decline setting. Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan has been touting at public forums ONGCs stagnant production being on the rise, one of them said.

Another official said that if drop in production is a criterion for getting so-called experts for raising production, eastern offshore KG-D6 gas fields in Bay of Bengal and Barmer oilfields in Rajasthan are the fit case. These fields are just 8-10 years old but have seen considerable drop in production, he added.
An IOC spokesman confirmed this is the first long-term VLCC tender the company has issued.

New Delhi: Two of Indias state-owned oil refiners have issued tenders seeking to charter tankers for at least five years while giving preference to Indian companies, tender documents reviewed by Reuters showed, which would boost domestic shipping firms battered by slumping tanker rates.

Indias Ministry of Shipping asked the refiners to issue long-term crude import tenders on a pilot basis and include a right of first refusal for Indian shipping lines, a government source familiar with the matter said on Monday.

The shift to the five-year contracts would give millions of dollars in tanker contracts to the Indian carriers, the source said.

This would help companies like Shipping Corp of India (SCI), Mercator Ltd, Great Eastern Shipping Co and Essar Shipping. The global tanker industry is grappling with an oversupply of ships that has depressed rates, with the benchmark Middle East to Japan route for Very Large crude carriers dropping 43 per cent since the start of the year.

According to the tender documents sent out by Bharat Petroleum Corp, they are only seeking bids from Indian-flagged Suezmax tankers capable of carrying up to 1 million barrels of oil for a five-year period.

Indian Oil Corps (IOC) tender document includes similar language but is seeking global bids for VLCCs capable of carrying Iraqi Basra Light crude for five years and grants Indian shippers the right of first refusal.

An IOC spokesman confirmed this is the first long-term VLCC tender the company has issued. There was no immediate response from BPCL.

India has in the past two years overtaken Japan to become the worlds third-biggest oil consumer.

The countrys shippers are pleased with the move.

Granting five year shipping tenders to Indian companies will help the growth of Indias fleet.. It will help us in arranging funds for acquisition of new vessels, said Capt. Anoop Kumar Sharma, chairman of Indias top shipper SCI.

However, the companies may struggle to meet the tender requirements which stipulate that the vessels be no more than 10 years old at the time of charter.

SCI only has two VLCCs that are less than a decade old, the Desh Viraat and Desh Vishal, which were built in 2008 and 2009, respectively, according to fleet data on its website.

Great Eastern Shipping does not have any VLCCs in its fleet, according to its website, and Essar Shipping only has one VLCC, which is 12 years old.
The extra-ordinary general meeting (EGM) of shareholders of the bank was held on Monday.

New Delhi: Punjab National Bank (PNB) said on Monday that it has got shareholders' approval for raising Rs 5,000 crore either through Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP) or rights issue.

The extra-ordinary general meeting (EGM) of shareholders of the bank was held on Monday, PNB said in a regulatory filing to the stock exchanges.

The shareholders approved raising of common equity Tier I capital of the bank by up to Rs 5,000 crore, including premium by way of follow-on public offer (FPO), QIP, rights issue or Employees Stock Option Plan or any other mode decided by the board, PNB said.

The bank has already appointed merchant bankers for the QIP and is expected to hit the market in the next few days.
Berlin: Volkswagen AG (VW) executive Oliver Schmidt, who is due to be sentenced this week in connection with the emissions scandal, has written to the judge to say he feels misused by the company, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Mr Schmidt pleaded guilty in August in the US District Court in Detroit to wrongdoing connected to a massive diesel emissions scandal that has cost VW as much as $30 billion. He is due to be sentenced on December 6.

I must say that I feel misused by my own company in the diesel scandal or Dieselgate, Mr Schmidt wrote to US judge Sean Cox, according to a letter filed in federal court. The letter was originally published by Bild am Sonntag newspaper. A VW spokesman declined to comment, citing the ongoing proceedings.

Under a plea agreement, Mr Schmidt faces up to seven years in prison and a fine of between $40,000 and $400,000 after admitting to conspiring to mislead the US regulators and violating clean air laws. In March, VW pleaded guilty to three felony counts under a plea agreement to resolve US charges it installed secret software in vehicles to evade emissions tests. US prosecutors have charged eight current and former VW executives.

Mr Schmidt was in charge of the companys environmental and engineering office in Auburn Hills, Michigan, until February 2015, where he oversaw emissions issues. In the letter to the judge, he said he had agreed to follow a script, or talking points, agreed by the VW management and a high-ranking lawyer, at a meeting with Alberto Ayala, a California Air Resources Board executive. In hindsight, I should never have agreed to meet with Dr Ayala on that day, he wrote.
Hyderabad: The Tax Bill passed by the US Senate on Saturday will affect the savings of Indian students studying in US universities. While the Bill is good news for independent students, it will have a serious impact on students studying on scholarships or who get their tuition fees waived by working for the university. Graduate students who study abroad have the option of working as classroom teachers or laboratory researchers for which the university provides a tuition waiver. The waiver was not taxed, but under the new tax bill, the waived fees will be treated as income.

Chartered accountant Vishnu Venugopal said that according to the Indian Income Tax Act, a scholarship granted to meet the cost of education is not included in ones total income.

Generally, scholarships or waived tuition fees, which are considered as monetary help for students, are not taxed as it is purely for a student to continue his/her education. Increasing a students taxable income by including the benefits they receive is placing an additional burden on them, he said.

An official from the US consulate in Hyderabad said, We get a lot of applications from students to study in America and the number increases every year. Hopefully, taxing students on assumed income will not lead to a decline in the numbers.
New Delhi: Consumers will soon be able to change their power suppliers just like telecom services, after proposed amendment to the existing Electricity Act is approved, union minister R.K. Singh said. The power ministry will push Electricity Amendment Bill in forthcoming Budget session, which provides for segregating the distribution network business and the electricity supply business.

We are bringing a lot of amendment in the Electricity Act. It also provides for separation of carriage and content business. The draft would come to me in another week or so. We will try to push it for passage in Budget session of Parliament, the power and new & renewable energy minister told in an interview.

The separation will pave the way for introducing a new system where consumers will have an option to choose from multiple electricity service providers in their areas, similar to that of telecom services. Elaborating further Mr Singh said, Once the Act is amended, we would prepare a roadmap in consultation with states to prepare a roadmap to segregate distribution and supply wings of the discoms. After that monopoly will be eliminated in supply wing by giving franchise to more than one players in an electricity supply area.

He also told that the amendments would also provide for stricter enforcement of Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO). Besides, the bill will also provide for making tariff policy mandatory to keep cross subsidy below 20 per cent. It means that difference between highest and lowest tariff rates should not be more than 20 per cent.

The minister said that it will help to make industrial tariff reasonable which is unsustainable at present. The bill would also provide direct benefit transfer of subsidy to farmers to improve efficiency in power consumption. It also seeks service obligation on part discoms to ensure reliable power supply service by March, 2019.

Power demand growth rate will be good because of two reason. Firstly, we are adding 40 million more consumer under Saubhagya Scheme by December 2018. Besides, industrial growth would create more demand for power consumption, Mr Singh said. The minister was of the view that per capital consumption in the country will also increase in future. It is 1,075 units in India as against 5,000-6,000 units in Europe and around 1,1000 units in the US.

Future increase in energy consumption is going to happen here in India and electricity will be leading it because of change in energy mix. I see that electricity is edging out the fossil fuel. It is easier to transport. Mobility and cooking would become electrical, he said. On village electrification he said that it is snowing in some areas in Jammu & Kashmir, so the work in those areas will start in March or April. And in Arunachal Pradesh, it will be completed by January or February next year, excluding areas affected due to snow fall.
Rise in IPOs presents a good picture for businesses and corporates as it represents a better options to raise money.

Mumbai: A rise in the number of companies using the initial public offering (IPO) route to raise capital so far in this fiscal is likely to spur credit growth in some of the sectors, says a report.

In the current fiscal, domestic companies have raised Rs 49,175 crore between April and October, which is more than the amount raised between FY12-FY16 put together.

"Though there is no direct relation between credit growth and equity raising through IPOs, the years witnessing higher IPOs in general have shown a modest pick-up in credit growth,"

A SBI research report Ecowrap said. After the muted performance till FY15, domestic IPO market picked up with 70 and 106 companies listed in the last two fiscals. It gained further momentum in the current fiscal with 112 companies hitting the IPO market till October 2017.

Notably, the insurance sector has come to the market this fiscal with four companies alone raising Rs 31,320 crore.

"If sector-wise IPOs in various years, and bank credit in those sectors are compared, the results are asymmetric e.g. a positive relation between credit off-take and IPO is visible for some sectors with credit off-take picking-up after IPOs in those sectors," the report noted.

The power sector, which raised huge amount from the equity market in FY10 and FY11 witnessed significant credit growth during this period. Similarly mining and quarrying, metals and minerals went to the IPO market in FY10, FY11 and those years witnessed higher credit disbursement in these sectors, the report said.

However, advances to computer software declined in the FY17 when 8 medium and small software companies raised Rs 2,103 crore through IPO.

"This could be due to such sectors being more determined by global factors rather than domestic and hence a possible pick up in global growth could push domestic credit growth in these sectors with a concomitant lag," the report said.

Even credit in the food processing industry has lower correlation with IPO. One possibility could be that India has a young population, and consumption growth is mostly invariant with the expansionary or recessionary trends in business cycle, it said.

Rise in IPOs presents a good picture for businesses and corporates as it represents a better options to raise money, especially in the current context, the report said.

The current upsurge will last as long as the upswing in market continues. Also, the performance of the companies which got listed in recent years will determine the future course for the IPO market.
Mumbai: Veteran actor Shashi Kapoor breathed his last today. The 79-year-old actor is being remembered by all celebs. Amongst these celebs was filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, who spoke to a leading news channel. The news channel claimed that Madhur said Shashi Tharoor is one producer who got parallel cinema on the front.

This made everybody scratch their heads, and of course, it led to immense trolling of the news channel.

And then finally Shashi also mentioned on Twitter that he has been getting condolence calls and that it was premature of the news channel to tweet so.

We're getting condolence calls in the office! Reports of my demise are, if not exaggerated, at least premature. @TimesNow #ShashiKapoor https://t.co/nbtZGcdQTa  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017

In fact even Omar Abdullah gave a witty reply for the same. Heres what he wrote:

As much as some of these channels dislike me theyve never killed me off. You have a unique distinction here Shashi   Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) December 4, 2017

Shashi, however, also offered his heartfelt condolences.
Vidya in a still from from 'Tumhari Sulu'.

Mumbai: Vidya Balans Tumhari Sulu had met with widespread critical acclaim upon release, also coughing up above average box-office numbers.

However, into its third week, the film seems to be facing a fresh hiccup.

If the latest reports are to be believed, Vidya Balan and the makers of the film could be facing legal action for endorsing a cough syrup. The films production house, T-Series and north India based pharmaceutical company, Torque maybe at the receiving end for not adding an advisory before endorsing.

In an advertisement, Vidya can be seen saying, Sulu ke har safar mein uska saathi, Torex cough syrup ho, toh alvida khasi (Torex cough syrup supports Sulu through every journey of hers, so goodbye to coughs).

FDA commissioner Pallavi Darade said the ad violated basic norm of advisory caution, reported Indian Express.

Helmed by Suresh Triveni, the film also starred Manav Kaul and Neha Dhupia.
Mumbai: Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif are reuniting on the screen after five years, and the superstar says he is happy to romance the actor in their upcoming film 'Tiger Zinda Hai'.

The duo, who has previously worked in movies such as 'Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya?' and 'Partner', will reprise their roles in the soon-to-be-released sequel to 'Ek Tha Tiger' (2012).

When asked how it was to romance Katrina after a long time, Salman told reporters, "It is good. It is always good to romance. As there's no fight, so it's good to romance."

The actor was speaking on the sidelines of Star Screen Awards here on Sunday night.

Katrina recently appeared on 'Bigg Boss', which is hosted by Salman, to launch the film's second song 'Dil Diyaan Gallan'.

The 51-year-old star is happy that both the songs of the movie have been well received by the audience.

"Katrina was with me on 'Bigg Boss' when she gave me this information that 'Swag Se Swagat' has earned some 50 million likes. Now, we have launched a romantic song. Let's see how it is received...

"Both the songs are nice, and people are loving them. So, let's see what happens on December 22, and what's the destiny of the film," he said.

The 'Dabangg' star also performed some of his biggest dance numbers at the award ceremony.
Actor Sathyaraj, who is producing his son Sibirajs movie Sathya, which is a remake of Tollywood hit Kshanam, says that it was Prabhas, who gave him the confidence to go ahead with it, while they were shooting together for Baahubali.

First things first, I am extremely happy to share that I got back whatever I have invested for Sathya. When Sibiraj told me about Kshanam, I was shooting with Prabhas for Baahubali in Hyderabad. When I asked him about the film, he said that Kshanam broke the myth that hit films should have only big heroes. It proved that content is the king and his words gave me more confidence to remake the film. I didnt watch the film even after buying the rights. One of the biggest highlights in Sathya is the selection of actors and they have done a brilliant job. I watched the film and I am gratified that the film has lived up to the expectations of the blockbuster title Sathya, given magnanimously by Kamal sir.

Directed by Pradeep Krishnamoorthy, the film has Remya Nambeesan, Varalaxmi, Satish and Anandaraj, among the others in the cast. Sibi, on his part, said, After buying the remake rights of Kshanam, I announced that on my Twitter account. Seeing this, Vijay Antony sir, who was working with Pradeep in Saithaan, suggested his name. Thats how he was brought on board. And as promised, he has shown me in a different dimension.

We hear you refused doing onscreen lip locks with Remya. Yes it is true! The reason being my little son Dheeran! He sees me as a role model and copies whatever I do. Imagine if he sees one of my lip locks and repeats it at his school (laughs), Sibi responded light-heartedly.
There were rumors that actress Oviya, who shot to fame through Bigg Boss show, walked out of Lawrence's horror-thriller sequel, Muni 3 Kanchana 4.

The makers deny any such thing and released a picture, where Oviya and Lawrence were seen in a romantic mood, which has also gone viral.

Reportedly, 50 per cent of the shoot is completed and Oviyas portions will get over in a couple of weeks.

Vedhika, who was last seen in national award-winning film Kaaviya Thalaivan, is back to Tamil, with the lead role in the Kanchana franchisee.

Meanwhile, Lawrence also clarified that he is not contesting in RK Nagar by-elections as speculated by many. I have nothing to do with politics and I am a person inclined towards service and spiritualism, he clarified.
Washington: A study has recently suggested that doctors and nurses may not be able to reliably tell whether babies being treated in hospital are in pain merely by observing how they behave.

In stressed newborn babies, behaviour alone is not a reliable way of assessing pain, according to new UCL and UCLH research. According to University College London researchers, the hospitalised newborns, who are already stressed by their environment have a much larger pain response in their brain following a routine clinical skin lance than non-stressed babies.

This disconnect between the behaviour of newborn babies under stress and their brain activity in response to pain has not been shown before and suggests that stress is an important factor in influencing how babies perceive and react to pain. Lead author Dr Laura Jones said, "We know that repeated painful and stressful experiences in early life can negatively impact on the development of the central nervous system and our results suggest that controlling the stress levels of hospitalised infants may not only reduce their pain but also contribute to their healthy development."

The team simultaneously measured the behaviour and brain activity of 56 newborn babies before and after a clinically necessary heel prick in their first days of life, while also monitoring their stress. In the babies with the lowest stress levels, brain activity and behaviour were associated with each other in that greater brain activity corresponded to a longer period of crying and/or grimacing.

In the babies with the highest stress levels this association was broken: greater brain activity was not necessarily matched by a more marked behavioural response. "Behaviour such as crying or facial responses is widely used as a measurement of a baby's pain experience. Pain scores used for babies are based on these observations, because babies can't speak. While these methods are very useful, our findings suggest that they may not be appropriate for babies who are already stressed.

We need to explore better ways to monitor pain, reduce stress and tailor our interventions accordingly," added co-author, Dr Judith Meek (University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust).

The researchers measured the background level of stress in the babies using two approaches - heart rate variability and the level of cortisol in saliva.

Each baby had a different level of stress due to natural variability in the population and their environments prior to the test.

The results show that the amplitude of the pain evoked brain waves was greater in babies with high stress compared to those with low stress.

The research appears in journal of Current Biology.
ATHENS: Mortar under a slab at the heart of Jerusalems Church of the Holy Sepulchre dates to the era of Roman Emperor Constantine, confirming historical accounts of the discovery of the place where Christians believe Jesus was entombed, researchers say.

According to historical accounts, Constantine - who was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity - discovered the rocky tomb with assistance from his mother Helena between 325 and 326 AD, buried beneath a temple to the Roman goddess Venus. Today it is visited regularly by millions of pilgrims and tended by priests from several Christian denominations under strict rules still in place from the Ottoman era.

Virtually razed to the ground in 1009, the Holy Sepulchre complex was rebuilt over the centuries by various Christian groups, including the Byzantines and the Crusaders from the 12th century onwards. But a team of scientists and restorers who completed almost nine months of work on the tomb last March said they were able to determine that a slab at the heart of the compound dated from Constantines time.

That was a great moment to validate, said Professor Antonia Moropoulou, Chief Scientific Supervisor from the National Technical University of Athens who directed the restoration project.

The researchers restored a structure inside the church called the Edicule, which is believed to house the tomb itself. Their work included removing a marble slab which covers a ledge where Christ, according to Christian scriptures, was lain after crucifixion and resurrected on the third day. A second fractured slab was found beneath the top slab, attached to the bedrock and engraved with a cross. Analysing gypsum mortar connecting that slab to the bedrock allowed them to determine its age, dating it to 335-345 AD.

When we opened the tomb and saw this broken grey slab with an engraved cross we didnt know from which era it was, Moropoulou told Reuters. We concluded, according to concrete results, that the slab which was adjoined to the bedrock of the tomb of Christ was of the Constantinean era.

Moropoulou said she herself had half expected to find that the slab, like the church around it, dated from a later era. She felt great. Very happy indeed. I did not expect it...but the monument talks, and it says its history.
Mohammed Masihuddin alias Musa had allegedly planned to target foreign nationals at Mother House, the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Kolkata. (Photo: DC)

Kolkata: Arrested ISIS suspect Mohammed Masihuddin alias Musa, who had allegedly planned to target foreign nationals at Mother House, the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Kolkata, allegedly tried to kill a prison official at Alipore Central Jail on Sunday morning.

The injured  Gokul Chandra Dey  is a jail warder in his fifties.

The incident took place when Dey went to take Musa out of his cell as part of 'Lock Out,' a routine session that allows the prisoners to go out in a compound on the prison premises after the day starts, said director general of police (correctional services) Arun Kumar Gupta.

"As the jail warder asked Musa to come out around 8 am, Musa started making Jehadi comments towards his fellow prisoners. As the jail warder intervened, he pushed him off to the ground and hit him with a piece of stone. He slashed his throat with a small but sharp iron rod used in PWD works in prison," Gupta said.

Dey was rescued by his colleagues and was rushed to SSKM Hospital from where he was later shifted to Calcutta Medical Research Institute.

"His condition is stable now. A case under section 307 (attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code has been initiated against Musa. An investigation is underway," Gupta said.

Dey has been posted on the job for the past two years, according to sources.

Originally from Labhpur in Birbhum, the 25-year-old terror suspect was arrested by the criminal investigation department from the Burdwan railway station in July 2016 on charges of radicalising youths to join ISIS. He also reportedly had links to Jamaat-Ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), whose leader Abu Suleiman had met Musa at the latters sisters wedding in March 2015.

Later, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took him in its custody to unearth ISIS network and its plots in the state. Musa was questioned by the Rapid Action Batallion of Bangladesh and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Musa has been lodged at the high security prison for over a year now.

In December last year, the NIA in a chargesheet accused Musa of plotting an attack on the Mother House to kill the American, British and Russian citizens  who visit the place on AJC Bose Road in south Kolkata to pay homage to its founder, Mother Teresa. The attack was planned to retaliate to the offensive against ISIS in the Middle East.

Musa came under the scanner of Indian security agencies after his e-mails and calls were traced to Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Syria. According to the NIA, he had been in touch with several ISIS operatives, including leader Shafi Arman, in Syria through Facebook and Twitter. He was entrusted with building an ISIS module and recruitment base in West Bengal.
Chennai: As the efforts to rescue the fishermen is apace, BJP leaders rushed to the cyclone-hit Kanyakumari district to oversee the rescue and relief operations, putting the R. K. Nagar by-poll on the back burner for now.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman who rushed to the Ockhi-ravaged coastal district in the south on Sunday evening was joined by BJP state president Dr. Tamilisai Soundararajan. The Minister, who reviewed the relief measures, visited Suchindram, Thirupathisaram and Kanyakumari and heard the grievances of the affected people.

According to sources in the BJP here a group of fishermen from neighbouring Tuticorin district who set out to petition the Minister about eight fishermen who went missing from their fishing town, were pleasantly surprised when they were told that the eight missing men were traced in Maldives by the Indian Coast Guard (ICG).

They were told that efforts were on to bring them to Tuticorin they came to petition the Minister but the occasion turned into a thanks giving meeting. They thanked the Minister and also the defence forces and left for home happily, a BJP senior told this correspondent.

Following the calamitous conditions, the Sangh Parivar swung into action, organising themselves in teams, and distributed food, medicines and clothing to the displaced.

The RSS Swayamsevaks too involved in the massive relief operation both in Kanyakumari and Kerala, and the messures would continue for some more days, the leader said.

Meanwhile, with Monday being the last day for filing of nomination for the by-election, BJP candidate Karu Nagarajan will submit his papers in the afternoon.

He would begin his poll campaign from Tuesday. Asserting that the party was doing everything to trace the missing fishermen and also to rehabilitate the cyclone affected people, party senior M. Chakravarthy says, we will have to focus our attention on the by-polls too. We have sizable vote bank in the constituency and we hope to make a mark.
Hyderabad: Rumours of a bomb threat led to widespread panic on the newly launched Metro Rail on Sunday afternoon. A picture taken at Ameerpet Interchange Station, of a police sniffer dog along with a bomb squad, went viral on social media, adding more to the rumours.

The police dressed in black were seen checking bags and inspecting corners at the station, forcing people to believe that there was some sort of threat. However, this did not seem to deter commuters. Trains ran full capacity and the number of commuters at Ameerpet, Miyapur and Nagole was high.

The police, however, dismissed the rumours and said that the bomb squad was performing a routine check.

A senior police official in-charge of Metro Rail security said that a bomb-detection squad would conduct regular checks at the stations.

It is a routine check that will be carried out every day by the local police. Reports of a bomb being found are completely baseless, he said.

Elaborate security arra-ngements were witnessed at all stations on the first Sunday after the launch of commercial operations of the Metro Rail.

N.V.S Reddy, managing director of Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited, said, There was no bomb threat. These are just rumours. A bag was left behind by a passenger and security cameras picked it up. The security staff identified its owner and handed it over to him. The owner of the bag had been looking for it and had approached officials at the ticket counter seeking their help.

Two police officers have been placed at every level of stations to ensure that there is no trouble or breach of rules, such as people going to the far-end of the station to click selfies or performing stunts on the tracks.

Metro stations can be used as FOBs

Pedestrians can use the first floor of the Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR) stations as a foot-over-bridge to cross over to the other side, HMR managing director N.V. S. Reddy said.

Medians have been built between the Metro Rail pillars and there is no gap for pedestrians to cross over. Most of them are seen standing at the edge or sides of the roads.

Mr Reddy said, We want people to know that they can use the escalators and the unpaid area to cross the roads. They will not be charged.

He said L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad Limited had been told that pedestrians must be allowed to use this facility. People can easily move around in the unpaid area and no one will stop them. The staircases, lifts and escalators are considered as the unpaid area.
Kanyakumari: PMK MP Anbumani Ramadoss on Sunday urged the Union government to declare the damage due to Cyclone Ockhi that left a trail of devastation in Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi districts of Tamil Nadu as a national disaster and speed up relief and rehabilitation works.

Speaking to reporters after visiting the cyclone-ravaged parts of Kanyakumari district, Anbumani also asked the Tamil Nadu Government to immediately cancel all MGR Centenary celebrations and spend all its energy on getting back normal life in these three districts.

The Dharmapuri MP and former Union Health Minister also warned the state government that there were chances of communicable diseases spreading in several areas in these districts since many areas are still inundated in rainwater.

Steps should be taken to ensure that electricity is restored immediately and rain water is pumped out using machines and motors from low-lying areas. The Centre should announce the damages caused due to Cyclone Ockhi as a national disaster and immediately sanction funds, the PMK leader said.

Visiting the affected people lodged in camps and distributing food and relief materials to them, Anbumani also told the state government that the Rs 25 crore sanctioned by it for relief works in Kanyakumari district was not enough.

He also demanded that Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami immediately visit the affected areas and assess the damage caused due to the cyclone.

The government should stop holding MGR Centenary events and instead concentrate their energy on relief and rehabilitation in these areas, he said.
Students were allegedly threatened with deducting marks or withholding admit cards, in exchange for silence, the post mentions. In picture: Parents of the G D Birla school students protest outside campus. (Photo: PTI)

Kolkata: A Facebook post by a former student of South Kolkatas GD Birla has gone viral  detailing so-called abusive behaviour of the schools management  following the molestation of a four-year-old girl allegedly by two school teachers on campus last Thursday, November 30.

Ex-student Rupkatha Basu  now studying Psychology in Toronto  mentions in the post - originally shared by her friend Abhishek Mukherjee on her behalf - the harassment and exploitation of students and staff alike, perpetrated by the management of the school.

She has brought up how a similar incident had happened three years ago on the same campus, that made students feel unsafe but they were not allowed to protest or speak up against it.

The student, in her post, has said, "The management of GD Birla is an administrative body that believes that stopping the graduating batch from creating customized batch t-shirts is a more pressing issue than installing CCTVs in classrooms, or proper locks in all the washroom cubicles."

Incidentally, according to West Bengal Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, Chairperson, Ananya Chakraborty, CCTVs were supposed to be installed three years back.

On being questioned about the same after the recent one, the Principal said it would be done in December.

The ex-student's post also states that ailing or sick students were not given any care, but forced to attend classes. However, the school administration was not bothered by the fact that there were not enough classrooms, she says.

Students were allegedly threatened to "silence by things like your marks will be cut, your admit card will be withheld, You will be taken to Manjushree maam, in case they protested when they were abused, insulted or their character was questioned.

"When I was in class 12, my batchmates and I were screamed at, chased, and threatened with physical assault with a metre ruler, all because we wanted to celebrate the last day of school in the field by making a formation of our school acronym. The stick was swung at the faces of begging, crying and unarmed students, who were, as usual, threatened with dire consequences," the post read.

The ex-student has accused the GD Birla authorities to be 'wealthy, powerful' people, who will blackmail and bribe their way out of the chaos, "just like they always have."

Rupkatha also mentioned in her post that in her fourteen years at the school, she has seen some of the best teachers forced to leave the institution because of mistreatment by the school administration.

Rupkatha has also accused the school administration of being a body that "that recruits vice principals who will point out the colour of your bra in front of a bunch of older boys."

The same concern has been voiced by another ex-student, who when contacted over phone, said that character assassination of the students was extremely regular, in addition to counsellor-client privacy violation, as students' personal problems were made topics of tiffin-break conversation'.

G D Birla spokesperson Subhash Mohanty said authorities were grief-stricken at the unfortunate incident and have not had a chance to go through Rupkatha's post. He also said such incidents of abuse are the latest trend, especially against very young children.

Mohanty, however, added that students making claims on Facebook should complain formally to school authorities, for them to take any action.

As for the incident, Mohanty said that if the crime was proven, the accused would be punished. But keeping in mind the safety of 4000 students, the school will no longer hire external Physical Training teachers.

When contacted, Rupkatha said while the anguish of the parents is understandable, 'our innocent senior teachers are being harassed for no reason and it is extremely unfair. People need to protest where the fault lies.'

Two teachers of the school have recently been accused of sexually abusing a four years old student.

The school authorities had earlier denied all allegations, terming the incident 'a small mischief'.

The concerned teachers were sacked on Sunday, according to a statement from the school.

Here is the full post:
Police disperse unruly mob at Bababudangiri near Chikkamagaluru on Sunday. (Right) devotees near Dattatreya Swami Dargah. (Photo: DC)

Chikkamagaluru: Tension prevailed at Dattatreya Swami Dargah premises on Sunday after a few Hindu activists hoisted Bhagavadwaja (saffron flag) at the disputed site, prompting police to resort to a lathicharge to disperse the group from the disputed site at Bababudangiri Hills in Chikkamagaluru.

Hundreds of Hindu activists from various parts of the state had congregated at Bababudangiri Hills for the three-day Datta Jayanti starting from Friday organized by Bajrang Dal and other Hindu outfits and police had made elaborate security arrangements to see that the celebrations went off smoothly.

After the activists were caned by the police, the situation was brought under control. Superintendent of Police K Annamalai is supervising the situation.

Around 2,000 policemen have been deployed for security.

Owing to the heavy influx of devotees, the road leading to Datta Peeta witnessed traffic snarls and vehicular movement was held up for hours. Vehicular movement was affected from Datta Peeta to Attigundi.

Meanwhile, miscreants stoned a private bus at Uppali in Chikkamagaluru town and sensing trouble, commercial establishments in the town downed shutters leading to an undeclared bandh.

It is said that two-bikers were assaulted in the town leading to a tense atmosphere. Mr Annamalai said security has been tightened in sensitive areas as a precautionary measure.
The student was found hanging to the ceiling of a bathroom in Maneur Hostel on Sunday evening resulting in protest. (Photo: DC)

Hyderabad: In a late night operation, the Hyderabad police shifted the body of Osmania University student E Murali, who allegedly committed suicide on the campus on Sunday, to a mortuary.

An autopsy was later performed and the 21-year-old MSc (physics) students body was shifted to his home in Jagdevpur mandal in Siddipet district of Telangana before Monday dawn.

A scuffle ensued between the police and students when the former tried to shift Murali's body out of the campus late Sunday night. The police used mild force to disperse the students, who in retaliation pelted stones at them. Two police officials and a few students were injured in the clash.

We had detained about 50 people, including leaders of political parties apart from other organisations. The body was sent to the native place of the student for final rites, said Hyderabad Commissioner (in-charge) VV Srinivasa Rao.

Murali was found hanging to the ceiling of a bathroom in Maneur Hostel on Sunday evening, triggering protest by the students.

The students' unions and Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) chairman M Kondanda Ram said that Murali, who had completed his BSc and BEd degree, was keen on getting a government job. However, he could not secure one.

The TJAC is holding a Kovula Koi Kotlata meeting on Monday to highlight the unemployment issue in Telangana.

Meanwhile, the Telangana JAC and various students organisations have given a call for bandh on Monday. The police have made elaborate arrangements in and around the Osmania University campus.
Children with disabilities play at the Marina beach on account of celebrations of International Day of disabled persons on Sunday. Greater Chennai Corporation along with various NGOs laid down ramps till the beachside, installed mobile toilets and resting areas to facilitate people with disabilities to be able to access beaches at Marina Beach on the occassion. (Photo: DC)

Chennai: Their child being denied admission yet again was heartbreaking for Radhika and Aman Awasthi, parents of three year-old Akash. Akash was not as fast a learner as other children of his age and his speech was not well developed. It was the fourth time a school had denied him admission and recommended that Akash be admitted to a special school instead of a general school.

Dharinis two twins were diagnosed with autism at the age of three and like any other parent she wanted her children to study in the best schools in the city. It was a huge disappointment when schools refused to admit autistic children.

In another instance, Vignesh, father of 4-year-old Raghul, who was suffering from dyslexia had to admit his son to a small school quite far from his residence as schools in the neighbourhood denied him admission owing to his disability.

Though the government has various provisions for ensuring that children with disabilities are integrated into mainstream schools, parents have to struggle, running from pillar to post to be able to provide the primary need of education to these children.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act provides for enhancing the educational infrastructure to provide comprehensive education to one and all irrespective of their disabilities. It should be a choice for disabled children to get educated in special schools or mainstream schools. Schools need to facilitate teaching for such students by providing them special training, said Vaishnavi Jayakumar, member,

Disability Rights Alliance: While activists emphasise that educational institutions should adopt a universal infrastructure and provide inclusive education, school authorities say that some parents object to their children being taught alongside those with disabilities. Parents do not like their children to talk or interact with children having physical and mental disabilities. We have to act as per the convenience of the majority of the students, said a school principal.

However, psychologists say that students with disabilities can benefit from mainstream schools in many ways. For children with mild disabilities like dyslexia, locomotor disabilities and autism, their social behaviour and basic life skills improve when they study in the same environment as other children. However, children with severe mental retardation that needs special attention can be sent to special schools so that they do not lag behind in learning, said Dr Vivian Kapil, psychiatrist, SIMS hospital. While the law allows children with disabilities in mainstream schools, it is high time government and school authorities acted to ensure equal opportunity.
BENGALURU: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Sunday criticized Mysuru-Kodagu MP Pratap Simha for barging into a police barricade in Mysuru on Sunday and said his behaviour does not suit his status.

The Chief Minister told reporters here on Sunday, "Being a Lok Sabha member, he should have respect for the law of the land. Neither the state government nor the state police banned Hanuma Jayanti, but the state police had asked the procession organizers to take a detour, which should have been respected by him. Instead he chose to drive rashly and barged into police barricades. It speaks volumes about his culture."

An angry Siddaramaiah remarked whether the state BJP President, B. S. Yeddyurappa, will approve of such a behavior from a public representative? "If public representative does not respect law of the land, who will have respect for it?," he added.

"We too celebrate Rama Navami or Hanuma Jayanti, but not by disturbing communal harmony. It seems that the BJP and its leaders seem to have made up their mind to unleash communal disturbances at various levels in the state, ahead of Assembly elections in 2018. We (Congress) will not allow them to succeed in their machinations."
The marriage of the couple was annulled by the Kerala High Court last December after her father alleged that his daughter was being indoctrinated and may be taken ISIS territories in Iraq and Syria by extremist Islamic outfits. (Photo: File)

Kochi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday questioned Shafin Jehan, days after the Supreme Court gave its nod to it to continue its probe into his marriage with Hadiya, a Kerala woman at the centre of an alleged love-jihad case.

Jehan was questioned a week after the Apex Court gave its nod to carry on investigation into the conversion of Hadiya and her marriage with him.

NIA sources said the probe team "re-examined" Jehan on Monday for clarifying certain facts from his earlier statement.

They, however, did not elaborate as the matter is sub-judice.

The NIA had earlier investigated Jahan and submitted its statement before the Supreme Court.

The marriage of the couple was annulled by the Kerala High Court last December after her father alleged that his daughter was being indoctrinated and may be taken ISIS territories in Iraq and Syria by extremist Islamic outfits.

"We make it clear that the NIA investigation shall continue in accordance with law," the Supreme Court had said last week while allowing the 24-year-old woman to resume her studies at the homoeopathic college in Tamil Nadu's Salem.

She was placed under her parents' custody since her marriage was annulled by the Kerala High Court.
The bill will now be sent to the President for his assent after which it will become a law, state Home Minister Bhupendra Singh told reporters outside the Assembly. (Representational image/File)

Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh Assembly on Monday unanimously passed a bill awarding death to those found guilty of raping girls aged 12 and below.

With the passage of the bill, Madhya Pradesh becomes the first state in the country where those convicted of such rapes will face the gallows.

Introduced in the House by Law and Legislative Affairs Minister Rampal Singh, the bill was discussed in detail and then passed by all parties, including the ruling BJP and opposition Congress.

The bill will now be sent to the President for his assent after which it will become a law, state Home Minister Bhupendra Singh told reporters outside the Assembly.

"It was a historic day for Madhya Pradesh as the state Assembly, as per the wish of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, passed a bill making a provision to award capital punishment to those indulging in such crimes (raping girls aged 12 or younger)," Singh said.

Capital punishment will be awarded to convicts under section 376 (A), which is related to rape, and section 376 (D, A), pertaining to gang rape.

Welcoming the bill, Chief Minister Chouhan said, "There are people in society who can be set right only by severe punishments. It (the legislation) will deal with them. We will also raise awareness in society against such crimes.
In what seems to be a masterstroke by Janata Dal (Secular) patriarch Mr H.D. Deve Gowda, he has appointed his grandson Mr Prajwal Revanna as party general secretary, paving way for his daughter-in-law Mrs Anitha Kumaraswamy to contest from Chennapatna. This raises the question whether the 27-year-old rising star of the Gowda clan is happy with this decision. Going by his reactions in an interview with Deccan Chronicle, Prajwal seem unfazed and says he has his task cut- infuse young blood in the party. He feels the JD(S) has failed to market itself, though the party had done good work in the past. Compared to the two national parties  Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress, JD(S) has struck a proper balance between rural and urban needs. However, the national parties scored by branding themselves as champions of development. Here are excerpts from the interview.

Becoming General Secretary of a party at 27 is a big responsibility. How do you plan to handle this responsibility?

It is a big responsibility but I have my task cut out. I have to infuse a lot of young blood into the party organisation.I want to discuss this with MLA, Mr Madhu Bangarappa. Today, in every political party, we see a lot of mature and older politicians in the forefront. Most youngsters take a back seat and probably work on social media. They are not told that they too have their say in politics. I want to convince them that they matter a lot and they would be given due importance. Apart from being on social media, they also have to work in the field and make their presence felt. Then, seniors will start taking them seriously. I am working towards this objective. With election is round the corner, along with drawing youth, we have to engage in other organisational work. I feel, this particular period will be challenging.

You have reservations about the role of social media? You want youth not to rely too much on it.

Social media is an important tool to reach people. We are using it and we will continue to upgrade the technology to cater to the changing environment. But, we cannot just depend on it. Personal interaction is more important in politics. We will use social media to the fullest extent but I will encourage youth to show their faces to people and reach out personally, which will yield better results in electoral politics.

The JD(S) is known to be a party of farmers with a tilt towards particular communities. How are you planning to shed this image?

According to me, JD(S) has been able to strike a perfect balance of the urban and rural, representing all communities and people from all walks of life. However, we have failed to brand it like the Congress or BJP. For the last one decade, FDI has been the mantra for development. If you recall, it was Mr Deve Gowda, as Chief Minister who went to Davos and attracted FDI. He framed policies conducive for investment, triggering the development of Bengaluru. If you consider the Electronics City flyover or other infrastructure projects in the city, they were initiated when Mr Kumaraswamy was Chief Minister. What about the confession by none other than Mr Narayanamurthy of Infosys that Bengaluru received uninterrupted power supply during the coalition era (of JD(S) and BJP)? At that time, Mr Revanna( Prajwals father) was the power minister. Even the Namma Metro project was initiated when Mr Deve Gowda was Prime Minister. He declared five cities as cosmopolitan and sanctioned the Metro service. No one took it forward and Mr Kumaraswamy had to take the initiative again. We have a large number of people living in rural areas, depending on farming. This cuts across caste and community lines. Since Mr Deve Gowda comes from that background, our party gives a lot of importance to them too. I feel, no other party in the state has this kind of balance. Though their contribution to the states development is not great, the Congress and BJP succeeded in branding themselves. They lured peo ple with colourful promises. This is where my role gains importance. I have to put our party achievements together and present it in a proper perspective.

So, you will give the party a brand image?

See, we have to set our priorities right. This cannot be done overnight. We are fighting the elections in six months. So, we have a short term and long term plan for that. First, we have to package what is important for the elections. Later, we have to continue with our long term strategies. The present task is to mobilise youth and put forth our party agenda before the people.

You wanted to contest the elections but you have been assigned party work. Are you unhappy? Did the ' internal bickering in the family force you out of the electoral fray?

To be honest, I am very happy that Mr Deve Gowda has given me such a huge responsibility at this young age. Running a party is no joke and I will be working with very senior leaders. I will be learning a lot of things. When you speak about internal bickering, I have no clue what people are talking about. Most media reports quote sources. I have never spoken to any source. There are a lot of things about my family, which people are ignorant about. Among my generation in the family, I was the first to say I wanted to pursue a political career. I was given the freedom to express it. If my grandfather had no faith in me, would he appoint me general secretary? Secondly, they say I have differences with my uncle Mr Kumaraswamy. If I need to succeed in politics, I need his support. He is the party president and I will be working under him.

It is said that Nikhil Kumaraswamy is waiting in the shadows to enter politics later?

We cousins maintain a very close relationship. I and Nikhil meet up for lunch or dinner. He has never told me that he wants to enter politics and usually advises me to go slow in politics. His reasoning is sensible. He talks more about his movie career. Even if he decides to enter politics, there is space. While I carve out a niche for myself, Nikhil can also create a niche. I don't think it is something anyone should be upset about. We have a long time ahead of us.
As many as 17,812 teachers From Telangana registered for the course, from Karnataka 5,175, Andhra Pradesh 5,022 and Kerala 705.

Chennai: As many as one in seven teachers working in private nursery, primary and matriculation schools in Tamil Nadu are unqualified. This fact is made evident by the statistics on admission to the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), which has started a diploma programme for untrained elementary teachers.

As per the direction from Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD), NIOS is conducting a two-year diploma programme for untrained teachers working in primary and upper primary schools in the country.

The last date for applying for the course was in November. Totally 25,929 teachers working in private schools have applied for the course, which is highest among the southern states. Roughly around 1.75 lakh teachers are working in all private schools in the state.

As many as 17,812 teachers From Telangana registered for the course, from Karnataka 5,175, Andhra Pradesh 5,022 and Kerala 705.

Among the districts, Chennai has 3,696 registrations for the course highest in the state. From Coimbatore 3,441 teachers registered and Thiruvallur district had 2,804 registrations.

"Right to Education Act mandates diploma in elementary education for teaching the primary classes. Due to the huge number of untrained teachers working in the schools, the HRD ministry has decided to give them a chance to get trained and introduced specifically designed diploma programme for in-service teachers," said P. Ravi, regional director, NIOS, Chennai.

As per the HRD ministry's announcement, teachers without the diploma in elementary education will not be allowed to work in primary and nursery schools after March 31, 2019.

Teachers have to study the entire course online and appear for the written test to qualify for the diploma. The candidates have to register themselves at the Swayam portal for accessing video lectures.

"They will study five papers in the first year and four papers in the second year. They will understand important aspects of elementary education such as child psychology, children growth and development and learning disorders like dyslexia," he said.

"Working teachers have the distinct advantage as they can practice in classrooms what they learnt in their lessons," he added. Though the course is conducted online, the students have to write a paper, pen test to get the diploma.

From all over the country, 14,02,962 teachers have registered for the course.

Bihar with 2.82 lakh teachers has the highest registration among the states followed by 1.82 lakhs from Uttar Pradesh and 1.77 lakh from West Bengal.

NIOS also has come up with six-month bridge course for B.Ed graduates who teach in primary classes 1 to 5.

Following the circular from the HRD ministry, the state government has made this course mandatory for BEd graduates employed in primary and nursery schools and for those who take classes for primary students in matriculation schools.

This order has stirred up a controversy among the private school managements who claimed that it has added the burden for private schools and teachers.

"The course fee is Rs.5,000 and a majority of teachers earning less than Rs.10,000 in private schools. We feel that this bridge course is unnecessary and the government should revoke the order," said K.R. Nandakumar, general secretary, Tamil Nadu Nursery, Primary, Matriculation and Higher Secondary Schools Association.

"B.Ed. graduates are only qualified to teach secondary and higher secondary classes. Teaching and understanding elementary students are completely different as they have to teach the language and subjects in a unique way," Mr Ravi said.

The teachers would be taught about pedagogy, learning process and challenges in elementary education in the bridge course. When enquired, officials from school education department said as per the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) guidelines, the elementary teachers should possess a diploma in elementary education. "B.Ed. teachers should use this one time opportunity and enrol themselves in the bridge course as it's only a six months course," an official said. The last date for applying for the course has been extended up to December 15.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi being greeted by former president Pranab Mukherjee before he filed his nomination papers for party presidents post, in New Delhi on Monday. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination papers for the post of Congress president in New Delhi on Monday, setting off the countdown to his unopposed elevation to the partys top post.

Monday was the last date of filing nominations and the last date for withdrawal of names is December 11.

Mr Gandhi, 47, will take over the partys mantle from his mother, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, who has been the longest serving Congress president.

Before filing his nomination papers, Mr Gandhi went to meet former President Pranab Mukherjee and former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

The former Prime Minister, who accompanied Mr Gandhi to 24, Akbar Road, the partys headquarters, said, Rahulji has been the darling of the Congress. Our president Mrs Sonia Gandhi has served the party and, through the Congress Party, the country for the last 19 years. This is yet another step forward in that direction. Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party.
Hyderabad: The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has called for a state-wide bandh on Tuesday to protest the police lathi-charge at the Osmania University (OU) campus, and to demand that the government immediately fill up the over 1 lakh vacancies in government departments.

L. Ayyappa, the state secretary of the ABVP, urged all educational institutions to extend their support to the bandh by declaring a holiday on Tuesday. He said that ABVP activists had already visited educational institutions in the city, met with their management departments, and requested them to participate in the bandh.

Mr Ayyappa alleged that the suicide of OU student E. Murali was a consequence of the government's failure to release job notifications for the over 1 lakh existing vacancies to be filled. He said that the police had manipulated the suicide note to cover up this fact and try to portray that Murali had ended his life due to academic pressure. He demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident.

ABVP has asked the government to issue an annual recruitment calendar, similar to that issued by the UPSC, and to strictly adhere to that calendar. Mr Ayyappa said that students and the unemployed youth were ready to teach the TRS government a lesson ahead of the 2019 elections.
Mysuru: A war of words has broken out between the Mysuru district administration and BJP leaders with sources in the administration asserting that there was no ban on Hanuma Jayanti procession taken out in Hunsur on Sunday, on the route declared by the administration.

Sources revealed that Deputy Commissioner D Randeep had issued an order declaring the procession route for both Eid Milad and Hanuma Jayanti processions in Hunsur, on November 5 itself. The organiser of Hunuma Jayanti had gone on appeal against the procession route announced by the DC but the home department had rejected the appeal saying it could be reviewed next year.

There was a deliber ate attempt by MP Pratap Simha to violate law and order on the procession route and so he was arrested as a preventive measure, the sources claimed. The arrest of Mr Simha has also been communicated to the Lok Sabha Speaker, they said. The sources asserted that with the gathering getting bigger and sensing that the situation was getting out of control, the administration had to disperse the crowd. The situation in Hunsur is peaceful now, Southern range IGP Mr Vipul Kumar said. Mr Simha, however, tweeted, protecting my religion and my tradition is much more important than my political future.

Speaking to the electronic media, he claimed that the Hanuma Jayanti procession was not permitted and this had happened for the first time in 25 years.

Mr Simha also claimed that he did not make any attempt to hit the barricades as claimed by the police.

Rushing to his defence, BJP leader and MP Shobha Karandlaje alleged that CM Siddaramaiah had misused his power in his hometown. As many as 58 devotees of Lord Hanuman have been arrested, and some were students who had come for darshan, she claimed.

Union Minister Mr Ananth Kumar who held a press meet in Mysuru, said, The district administration which had permitted Eid Milad procession, banned Hanuma Jayanti procession, and thus discriminated between the two communities. We will take up the issue in Parliament, he said. Mr Simha was released on Sunday night.

Meanwhile, 58 devotees of lord Hanuma who were arrested in Hunsur as a preventive measure were released from Mysuru Central Jail with Mr Pratap Simha receiving them. He said he was confident of getting permission for the Hanuma Jayanthi procession as per tradition, in Hunsur in future.
Hyderabad: Loud cries of Police down down and Khabardaar KCR were heard on Monday morning as students of Osmania University gathered at the Arts College entrance and staged a protest, alleging that the government was responsible for the suicide of student E. Murali.

Though Muralis suicide note said he was doing it because he was afraid he would fail his exams, students have alleged that he was depressed because the government had not issued recruitment orders. They want the government to pay Rs 50 lakh to Muralis family and give his younger brother a job. Police had to be deployed with several patrol vans and trucks with special officers to control the crowd.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi with former PM Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Monday. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination papers for the post of Congress president in New Delhi on Monday, setting off the countdown to his unopposed elevation to the partys top post.

Mullapally Ramachandran, chairman of the Congress central election authority, told reporters that till Sunday no other nomination had been filed.

Several leaders as well as young turks of the party had accompanied Mr Gandhi for the filing of nomination papers.

Mr Gandhi will be the sixth leader from the Nehru-Gandhi family to occupy the Congress Partys top post. His appointment is being seen as a generational shift that holds hope for the Congress which has been reduced to 46 seats in the 542-member Lok Sabha.

Though Mr Gandhis political engagement and involvement in party work increased tremendously since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, insiders indicate that there will be two advisors who will be directly reporting to the new Congress president.

On several occasions Mr Gandhi has indicated that there will be a judicious mix of young and experienced leaders in the party and nobody will be left out. Mr Gandhi, who began his political career by winning the 2004 Lok Sabha election from the family bastion of Amethi, has already seen several ups and downs.

In 2006, Mr Gandhi became the general secretary of the party in-charge of frontal organisations, including the Indian Youth Congress, and was criticised for introducing internal elections as it encouraged blatant use of money power to bag tickets. The practice has since been discontinued.

Mr Gandhi also wanted to introduce primaries, like in the USA, for contesting Lok Sabha elections, a move that was heavily contested by party leaders.
Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Assembly on Monday unanimously passed a historic Bill awarding death to the rapists of girls aged 12 or below.

Madhya Pradesh is the first state in the country to make legislation to send to gallows those convicted of raping girls of 12 years or below.

Those who indulge in such heinous crimes are not human beings but devils. They have no right to live. I hope human rights activists will not raise a hue and cry over the provisions in the Bill seeking death penalty to those convicted of rape of children aged 12 or below, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, said to be the architect of the Bill, told reporters here. He hoped that the harsh punishments in the Bill would act as a deterrent to curb crimes against women.
Chennai: As many as 2,604 fishermen, including 220 of them from cyclone Ockhi-hit Kanniyakumari district, who went missing in the last few days, have been rescued and efforts to locate the remaining 260 members of the community is on full swing with help from the Union government, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami said on Monday.

Chairing a high-level meeting with Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, electricity minister P Thangamani and fisheries minister D. Jayakumar, the Chief Minister also said he has instructed a high-level team led by additional chief secretary Hans Raj Verma to rush to Kanyakumari district to assess the damages caused by the cyclone and submit a detailed report by December 11.

Listing the relief and rehabilitation work carried out by the Tamil Nadu Government, Palaniswami said in a statement after the meeting that 9,252 trees out of 15,000 uprooted due to Cyclone Ockhi have been removed and efforts to clear traffic and repair parts of national highways, state highways and urban roads at the earliest have been fast-tracked.

In all, 220 fishermen of 294 from Kanyakumari district who ventured into the sea have been rescued. With the help of Indian Air Force, Coast Guard and Indian Navy, 2,384 out of 2,570 fishermen from other areas of Tamil Nadu who went to the sea for fishing have also been rescued. Efforts are on to locate the remaining fishermen, Palaniswami said in the statement here.

He also said only 891 people are at relief centres in Kanyakumari district and that he has instructed officials to ensure that people who had lost their huts be immediately given relief.

The meeting was also told that electricity would be restored in the whole of Kanyakumari district in the next 48 hours and that additional personnel have been roped into repair lamp post and transformers that were affected. The statement said fishermen who have lost their fishing boats would be identified and relief would be disbursed to them immediately. "The Chief Minister also instructed officials to repair damage school buildings on war-footing and re-issue identity cards to people who lost their identity cards due to the cyclone," the statement said.
Hyderabad: Loud cries of Police down down and Khabardaar KCR were heard on Monday morning as students of OU gathered at the Arts College entrance and staged a protest, alleging that the government was responsible for the suicide of student E. Murali.

The students shouted slogans demanding justice, burnt effigies of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and pelted stones at the police. Some of them were taken away in two trucks.

Minister T. Harish Rao had called Muralis mother, Laxmi around midnight on Sunday and told her that the government will provide Rs 5 lakh for the family, said Shiva, a student from OU.

We refused the offered amount and demanded `50 lakh instead and a job for his younger brother. We refused to give the body to the cops, who were convincing the parents to accept the amount. It was then the police did a lathi-charge and stones were pelted, said Shiva.

At 10 am on Monday, a small group gathered at the Physics College demanding the release of students who were detained by the police on Sunday night after they refused to let the police take charge of the body.

The group raised slogans of 'We want justice' and 'Police go back'. Soon a group of students emerged from the Maneru hostel and joined them and together they confronted the police and told them to leave..

"They did not let us near them and started shouting 'Police go back' whenever we tried to approach them. We gave them permission to give condolences to the 21 year old student and not to make a fuss. However, they started marching forward and started pelting stones at us," said the Assistant Commissioner of Police J. Narsaiah.

Some of the stone pelters were loaded into the police vans, but "as per their request, we let them walk till the Arts College" the ACP said.

The by now large gathering before the Arts College started shouting their demands. When they got more aggressive and started pelting stones again, the police moved in, in order to get the situation under control, a cop said..

"We arrested 22 students under several sections of the IPC, including damaging government property," said Police Inspector of Osmania University, Ashok Reddy.

The protesters fled when the police advanced against them. They later burnt an effigy of the Chief Minister in front of Krishnaveni hostel. But the situation was brought under control and the protest stopped.
HYDERABAD: The two-bedroom housing scheme in Old Maredpally is leading to a political slugfest between TRS and Congress parties in Cantonment.

There was mild tension that was created at the area when Congress delegation that went to the site to take stock of the housing scheme was resisted by rival party members and few locals.

Congress leader Krishank Manne, who levelled charges of irregularities in identification of beneficiaries, stated that they went to see extent of land claimed by TRS leader P.L. Nagesh. According to Congress, Nageshs family was allotted three 2BHK houses in beneficiary list prepared by authorities.

The TRS leader claimed that his family owns 200 sq.yards of land. From what we observed it is less than that. Also, it is a housing board land that is being claimed wrongly as private land. We are going to show all documents to court, he said.

Meanwhile, Congress party stated that they are fully supporting the housing scheme, but only want the beneficiary list to be reworked so that only poorer sections get benefited.
Since daughter Ivanka Trump was here, father Donald cant be far behind. Questions about the ethics of Ivankas salesmanship were brushed aside. For all India cares, unpaid convicts in concentration camps can be compelled to keep the Ivanka Trump brand going. India loves celebrities. Remember the mad scramble by parliamentarians to pump presidential flesh in 2000 that left TV viewers around the world agape? A Bihar legislator vowed not to wash for three months the hand that Bill Clinton had shaken. Should Mr Trump, whom a columnist in Britains Guardian newspaper called a racist misogynist megalomaniac, be welcomed to India? Its not easy to be didactic about this. A good painter can be a bad man. A nations interests are eternal and perpetual and governments must follow them. Mr Trump recently enjoyed what were reckoned successful tours of China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines. He got on particularly well with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, whom thousands of Filipino human rights advocates, youth groups, and religious communities condemn for mass killings. Mr Duterte himself confesses to stabbing someone to death when he was only 16. Jail? he said once. Jeez. When I was a teenager, I was in and out of jail! He claims he is fighting a war on drugs.

Each country Mr Trump visited had its own reasons for lionising him. Some regard the US, irrespective of its leader, as vital to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organisation and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations whose deliberations he attended. Vietnam wants trade, the Philippines military backing. Like Japan and South Korea, both seek support against China. North Koreas nuclear programme makes it the regional bogey. For Mr Trump, North Korea is a global menace. The Chinese do not agree, but they want closer understanding with an America they regard as the only global power that is Chinas economic and military equal. Indias reasons for currying favour are less obvious. India needs trade and investment, seeks support against Pakistan (or Pakistani-backed terrorists) and, at one remove, against China. As George W. Bushs historic decision on Indias nuclear programme confirmed, these are also in the American interest. But the talks between Mr Trump and Mr Modi on the sidelines of the Asean summit in Manila, following discussions among Indian, US, Japanese and Australian officials, seem designed to take the relationship farther.

A reiteration of the comprehensive strategic partnership raises echoes of the long-discussed Quadrilateral alliance of four democracies, ostensibly to keep what is now called the Indo-Pacific region free and open but in fact to rein in China. The headlines screamed of rank militarism. According to White House briefings, Mr Trump and Mr Modi pledged to enhance their cooperation as major defence partners, resolving that two of the worlds great democracies should also have the worlds greatest militaries. This is where doubt creeps in. Heavy injections of US weapons did not turn Syngman Rhees South Korea, Reza Shahs Iran, Ferdinand Marcos Philippines or Ayub Khans Pakistan into stable democracies. Will possessing one of the worlds greatest militaries solve Indias problems of poverty and disease, illiteracy and unemployment? Will it provide our towns with dependable urban transport? Will it make a ramshackle rail network safer and comfortable? Will it ease the creaking judiciarys backlog of 27 million cases? Will a powerful military save New Delhi from being the most polluted city on earth? Or revive a moribund postal system that has gone from bad to worse so that it can take a month or more for a letter to travel between Delhi and Kolkata? Visiting India long before he became President, Richard Nixon commented that the wonder was not that India was badly governed, but that it was governed at all. It isnt any longer, unless an intrusive system of controls and surveillance passes for governance.

Mr Trump isnt interested in such essentials. A Trump Tower in Kolkata proclaims his commercial enterprise. Gratified that India bought more than 10 million barrels of US oil in recent months, and plans to spend $2 billion on American crude in the next 12 months, he expects to sell more. No wonder Ivanka Trump laid it on with a trowel in Hyderabad. What you are achieving here is truly extraordinary, she burbled to Mr Modi. From your childhood selling tea to your election as Indias Prime Minister, youve proven that transformational change is possible. Mr Modi gave her dinner at the Falaknuma Palace, whose fountains once splashed champagne for King George V while pins-and-needles showers sprayed Queen Mary with French perfume. Much can be justified on bilateral grounds but there are also domestic and international dimensions to the Trump presidency. The positions occupied by his daughter and son-in-law are hardly readily compatible with Abraham Lincolns dream of government of the people, by the people, for the people.

The FBI inquiry into the Russian connection is unearthing what looks like a can of worms. By withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, undermining the Iran nuclear deal, rejecting scope for a settlement with North Korea, and urging Japan and South Korea (perhaps also India) to greater militarism, Mr Trump may be increasing the threats to world peace. Faced with this situation and the prospect of disruptive street protests against the Trump state visit that Theresa May impetuously proposed, a British Labour Party politician said the other day that 91-year-old Queen Elizabeth II has a busy year ahead with another great-grandchild expected and Prince Harrys wedding with Meghan Markle. Dont those facts alone justify the government announcing a postponement of the state visit by at least, say, three years? he asked. Meanwhile, theres nothing to stop Mr Trump slipping into Britain on business trips. India can take note.
It is an interesting coincidence that the governments approval to a Bill that will enable banks to use the money deposited by citizens to save a bank on the verge of collapse and the news that PSU banks have written off loans worth Rs 55,356 crore in six months have come out almost simultaneously. These items expose the bitter truth of the possibility of an organised loot of the depositors hard-earned money and this will hopefully not go unnoticed by the depositors organisations. Bank deposits are to be used for productive purposes and not to bail out defaulters. This decision comes close on the heels of demonetisation which former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called organised loot.

When this latest permitted loot comes into force through the Resolution Corporation, it will surely be challenged in the courts but before that it is hoped that the government shows good sense and withdraws this bill. Most of the major defaulters are big corporates and it is a traversty of justice that the ordinary depositor should pay up for their defaults, even if they are genuine. There are hardly any cases wherein the properties of the defaulters have been taken over and moneys recovered through a quick sale of the same. In many cases the defaulters can afford to pay but dont and this was pointed out by former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan who said these defaulters throw lavish parties and buy lavish yachts but dont repay their loans. In the case of defaulters who are poor, particularly in rural areas, their cattle and utensils etc are taken over ruthlessly.

Additionally bank officials in charge of sanctioning loans are rarely taken to task even if they indulged in deliberate mismanagement. Many a times banks get calls from politicians to oblige their friends, and when these loans go bad, it is unfair that the common man should be made to pay. Surely there are several other ways in which banks can be bailed out without picking the money in the bank accounts of trusting depositors. In India, it is a well-known fact that a majority of people trust the government and prefer to put their money in nationalised banks rather than in risky assets like shares. If this Bill goes through, it would be a criminal betrayal of the trust of the depositors. The government has already infused nearly Rs 1 lakh crore of the peoples money in the banks over the last few years and has infused over Rs 25,000 crore this year as a first instalment. There is a grave need for the government to take this issue of bad loans seriously and bring in reforms that could eliminate, to a large extent, the issue of loans going sour. Any solution should be through the use of some separate fund. If loans have gone bad because of a government decision for instance, then the government should be made to pay for this and if it is the bank managers then they should be held accountable.
Dr. V. Sridhar, a professor at the Centre for IT and Public Policy at International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, has authored two books on telecom. He has been a member of Government of India committees on spectrum allocation and pricing. Dr Sridhar, an authority on Net neutrality, spoke to Mini Tejaswi on the recent controversy around the topic. Excerpts:

What are the key issues involved in the Net neutrality (NN) debate?

In its simplest form, Net neutrality means that the Internet Service Provider (ISP) has to treat all data bits in the same manner, irrespective of their source, destination and application that generated it. There should not be any discrimination of such data bits in terms of price or priority. While the opponent camp includes telcos and ISPs, the proponents are the Content Providers (CPs). While the opponents say that strict enforcement of NN reduces their incentives to improve the underlying telecom and Internet infrastructure due to limited monetising opportunities, the proponents indicate that without NN, the small CPs will not be able to compete against larger ones thus killing innovation and business prospects of small entrepreneurs.

How will Net neutrality impact netizens and enterprises in India?

Net neutrality will provide a level-playing field for smaller as well as larger CPs and hence will provide an opportunity for the Indian start-ups in the Internet content and application space to compete with global giants such as Google and Facebook. For netizens, it can have mixed results. For example, programmes such as Free Basics of Facebook could possibly provide netizens free access to the content and applications.However, it will not provide them access to Internet in its entirety.

TRAI has recently spoken about forming a regulatory body to monitor and deal with any violation of Net neutrality. What should be the broader objective of such a body?

Though TRAI has come with detailed recommendations on NN recently, monitoring and enforcement are big challenges. We need to have large amount of granular data on access speed, pricing plans, across both access and backhaul networks, plus a detailed analysis of the same before any violation of NN is detected.

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in favour of Net neutrality in the US but the new regime has a change of mind and plans to repeal the existing rules. What do you think is the reason for this change and what could be the impact?

As mentioned earlier, monitoring and enforcement of NN is a big challenge for regulators. The argument of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is that NN amounts to micromanaging the operations and business models of the ISPs. It also curtails the ISPs in terms of monetisation of their assets such as radio spectrum and infrastructure and hence provides a barrier for further investment. This could potentially impact quality of service delivery. Under the Obama administration, the Title II provisions of the Communications Act of 1934 reclassifies Internet service offerings as telecommunication service (as opposed to information service as stated earlier) and empower the regulatory authority to scrutinise the conduct of broadband service providers and take penal actions if violations are found. Mr Pai is also against this provision as he says it will lead to over-regulation of the ISPs.

Are service providers in India following Net neutrality guidelines in true sense?

After TRAI notified Prohib-ition of discriminatory tariffs for data services regulation in February 2016 principally against zero rating (free data) of Free Basics programme offered by Facebook, the ISPs have been cautious about discriminatory pricing. While it is easy to notice any form of discriminatory pricing, prioritisation is difficult to observe. That is whether ISPs have been accelerating one application/content (e.g. Hike Messa-ging) compared to others (e.g. WhatsApp) is difficult to monitor and regulate.

TRAI in its recent recommendations has focussed only on ISPs. I and Prof. Rohit Prasad at Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, have always argued and submitted our response to TRAI consultation process that NN advocates must examine its applicability not only to ISPs but also to CPs and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) who are the intermediaries between ISPs and CPs. The recent TRAI recommendation clearly has absolved CDNs and not even mentioned CPs under NN regulation. Hence, any vertical integration between CPs, CDNs and ISPs might escape the scrutiny of the NN regulation.

Is Internet functioning with-out prejudice or preferential treatment to any particular sites or services or do you see compromises happening?

We need to understand that ISPs are just one part of the Net neutrality puzzle. While the focus has been traditionally on ISPs discriminatory practices, no one talks about Googles sponsored search or Facebooks advertisements which are also one form of discrimination. While it is difficult to detect and enforce such discrimination, we need to be conscious of the fact that some of the CPs with valuations which are multiple times that of the ISPs could discriminate and distort the equity of the Internet. Hence, apart from the ISPs, Content Providers also need to be brought under close watch!
Researchers think up to 300 eggs may be present, some buried under the exposed fossils.

A dazzling discovery in northwestern China of hundreds of fossilized pterosaur eggs is providing a fresh understanding of these flying reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs including evidence that their babies were born flightless and needed parental care.

Scientists said on Thursday they unearthed 215 eggs of the fish-eating Hamipterus tianshanensis  a species whose adults had a crest atop an elongated skull, pointy teeth and a wingspan of more than 11 feet (3.5 meters)  including 16 eggs containing partial embryonic remains.

Fossils of hundreds of male and female adult Hamipterus individuals were found alongside juveniles and eggs at the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region site, making this Cretaceous Period species that lived 120 million years ago perhaps the best understood of all pterosaurs.

We want to call this region Pterosaur Eden,' said palaeontologist Shunxing Jiang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. Pterosaurs were Earths first flying vertebrates. Birds and bats appeared later.

Until now, no pterosaur eggs had been found with embryos preserved in three dimensions. Researchers think up to 300 eggs may be present, some buried under the exposed fossils. The embryonic bones indicated the hind legs of a baby Hamipterus developed more rapidly than crucial wing elements like the humerus bone, said palaeontologist Alexander Kellner of Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro.

Some birds can fly on the same day they break out from the egg, while some others will need a long period of parental care. Our conclusion is that a baby Hamipterus can walk but cant fly, Jiang said an unexpected finding.

The researchers believe these pterosaurs lived in a bustling colony near a large freshwater lake. Kellner cited evidence that females gathered together to lay eggs in nesting colonies and returned over the years to the same nesting site. They suspect the eggs and some juvenile and adult individuals were washed away from a nesting site in a storm and into the lake, where they were preserved and later fossilized.

The oblong eggs, up to about 3 inches (7.2 cm) long, were pliable with a thin, hard outer layer marked by cracking and crazing covering a thick membrane inner layer, resembling soft eggs of some modern snakes and lizards. There had been a paucity of pterosaur eggs and embryos in the paleontological record because it is difficult for soft-shelled eggs to fossilize. The research was published in the journal Science.

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Terrorist attacks, targeting police and military personnel, have increased following the ouster of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by the military. (Photo:PTI/ File)

Cairo: Five terrorists were killed Monday in exchange of fire with security forces in Sharqeya governorate, security sources said. They said that terrorists clashed with security forces during a raid on Belbeis-10th of Ramadan road in Sharqeya.

The raid came over a week after a terrorist attack on a mosque in North Sinai in which more than 300 people were killed.

Terrorist attacks, targeting police and military personnel, have increased following the ouster of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by the military, following massive protests against his rule. Hundreds of police and army personnel have been killed since then.

The military has launched security campaigns in Egypts restive North Sinai province, arrested suspects and demolished houses that belong to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip.
In the lawsuit, the National Venture Capital Association argued that the Trump administration bypassed proper procedures when it delayed the International Entrepreneur Rule. (Photo: File/ Representational)

Washington: A federal judge on Friday ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to rescind its delay of a rule that allows some foreign entrepreneurs to stay in the United States to grow their companies, court documents show.

Judge James Boasberg of US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in favour of a lawsuit filed by a US venture capitalist group in September challenging a delay by DHS of the International Entrepreneur Rule.

In the lawsuit, the National Venture Capital Association argued that the Trump administration bypassed proper procedures when it delayed the International Entrepreneur Rule, which had been due to go into effect in July 2017.

The trade group was later joined by several tech start-ups active in the United States that were founded by foreign entrepreneurs who wanted to stay in the country and work with their businesses through the entrepreneur rule but are now unable to.

The rule, proposed by the administration of President Barack Obama, would allow some foreign start-up founders to stay in the United States for up to five years to develop their businesses.

Instead, in July the administration of President Donald Trump pushed back implementation to March 2018, and said it was "highly likely" to ultimately rescind the rule.

Boasberg, in his ruling issued on Friday, agreed with the lawsuit's claim that the government's actions violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires advance notice of new rules.

"This decision is an important reminder that this administration must comply with the law and allow the public to have a voice during the agency rule-making process," Leslie Dellon, an attorney at the American Immigration Council, said in a statement.
Mr Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about a discussion with the former Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, in late December 2016 regarding sanctions. (Photo: AP)

Washington: Backers of a US-Russian plan to build nuclear reactors across the Middle East bragged after the US election they had backing from Donald Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn for a project that required lifting sanctions on Russia, documents reviewed by Reuters show.

The documents, which have not previously been made public, reveal new aspects of the plan, including the proposed involvement of a Russian company currently under US sanctions to manufacture nuclear equipment. That company, major engineering and construction firm OMZ OAO, declined to comment.

The documents do not show whether Mr Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, took concrete steps to push the proposal with Mr Trump and his aides.

But they do show that Washington-based nuclear power consultancy ACU Strategic Partners believed that both Mr Flynn, who had worked as an adviser to the firm as late as mid 2016, and Mr Trump were firmly in its corner.

"Donald Trump's election as president is a game changer because Trump's highest foreign policy priority is to stabilize US relations with Russia which are now at a historical low-point," ACU's managing director, Alex Copson, wrote in a November 16, 2016 email to potential business partners, eight days after the election.

White House officials did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. ACU declined comment and also declined to make Mr Copson available for an interview. Previously they told a congressional committee that they had not had any dealings with Flynn since May 2016, before Mr Trump became the Republican Party's presidential candidate.

Mr Flynn's lawyer, Robert Kelner, did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about a discussion with the former Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, in late December 2016 regarding sanctions.

The documents also show that ACU proposed ending Ukraine's opposition to lifting sanctions on Russia by giving a Ukrainian company a USD billion contract to provide turbine generators for reactors to be built in Saudi Arabia and other Mideast nations.

The contract to state-owned Turboatom, and loans to Ukraine from Gulf Arab states, would "require Ukraine to support lifting US and EU sanctions on Russia," Copson wrote in the November 16 email.

A Turboatom spokeswoman said she did not have an immediate comment on the matter.

The email was titled "TRUMP/PUTIN ME Marshall plan CONCEPT." ME stands for Middle East. The title, evoking the post-World War Two plan to rebuild Western European economies, reflected the hopes of the plan's backers that Mr Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin could cooperate on a project that would boost Middle East economies.

The email can be seen here.

The ACU documents reviewed by Reuters include emails, business presentations and financial estimates and date from late autumn 2016.

Ready to go

As part of their investigation into the Trump election campaign's ties to Russia, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Democrats on the House of Representatives' Oversight Committee are probing whether Mr Flynn promoted the Middle East nuclear power project as national security adviser in Mr Trump's White House.

Mr Flynn resigned after just 24 days as national security adviser after it became known he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence by telling him he had not discussed US sanctions on Russia with Kislyak in late December.

Read: Former Trump adviser Flynn pleads guilty to lying to FBI in Russia probe

In response to questions about the emails and documents, ACU referred Reuters to letters written in June and September by ACU scientist Thomas Cochran to the House Oversight Committee.

In those letters, Cochran had laid out the project's strategy, describing a "ready-to-go" consortium that included French, Russian, Israeli and Ukrainian interests, without naming specific companies.

Representative Elijah Cummings, the committee's top Democrat, said the panel's Republican chairman, Trey Gowdy, has for months rejected Democrats' requests to ask the White House for documents pertaining to the ACU proposal.

Mr Gowdy "has blocked all efforts to allow committee members to vote on issuing subpoenas," Cummings said.

Mr Gowdy did not respond to requests for comment.

The ACU's nuclear reactor plan aimed to provide Washington's Middle East allies with nuclear power in a way that didn't risk nuclear weapons proliferation and also helped counter Iranian influence, improve dismal US-Russian relations, and revive the moribund US nuclear industry, according to the documents.

The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post reported this week that Mr Flynn pushed a version of the nuclear project within the White House by instructing his staff to rework a memo written by a former business associate into policy for Mr Trump to sign.

Two US officials familiar with the issue said the policy document Flynn prepared for Mr Trump's approval proposed working with Russia on a nuclear reactor project but did not specifically mention ACU. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they did not know if Mr Trump had read the memo or acted upon it.

This was a big win

On November 18, 2016, 10 days after Mr Trump won the presidential election, ACU's Copson received an email from nuclear non-proliferation expert Reuben Sorensen saying that he had updated Flynn on the nuclear project's status. Sorensen's role in the project was not clear from the emails.

"Flynn is getting closer to (being named) National Security Advisor. Expect an announcement soon. This is a big win for the ACU project," Sorensen wrote.

"Spoke with him via backchannels earlier this week. He has always believed in the vision of the ACU effort ... We need to let him get settled into the new position, but update him shortly thereafter," Sorensen added.

The email can be seen here.

Reuters could not independently confirm a briefing took place. Sorensen did not reply to an email seeking comment.

On November 30, 2016, Copson briefed US Representative Ed Royce, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on the nuclear project, an email shows.

Copson was joined by Jim Hamel, a senior official from Curtiss-Wright Corp., which has a nuclear division based in Royce's California district and was eager for a role in the multi-billion dollar project.

In a follow-up email on December 5 to a Royce aide, Mr Hamel wrote, "We hope that the Chairman will follow-up on Alex's suggestion to reach out to General Flynn" to discuss the project.

Royce's spokesman, Cory Fritz, confirmed the briefing to Reuters. "No action was ever taken by the chairman or the committee," he said in an email.

Mr Hamel and Curtiss-Wright declined to comment.

Mr Flynn was an adviser to ACU from April 2015 to June 2016, according to amended financial disclosure forms he filed in August 2017 to the Office of Government Ethics.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee say that when Mr Flynn applied last year to renew his government security clearance, he failed to disclose a June 2015 trip he made to Egypt and Israel to promote the reactor project. Mr Flynn has not commented on the trips.
Mohammad Suleiman was born with Down Syndrome and he has intellectual difficulties, according to his father. (Photo: AFP/Representational)

Houston: A six-year-old Muslim boy with Down syndrome was feared as a terrorist by his teacher in a school in the United States after he kept repeating "Allah" and "boom" in his classroom, a media report said on Sunday.

Mohammad Suleiman was born with Down Syndrome and he has intellectual difficulties, according to his father.

He said his son's regular teacher in an elementary school had left and a substitute teacher called police in Pearland, around 20 miles south of Houston, in Texas, about his son.

The teacher also said the school told the officer that Mohammad could talk.

Disgusted by the allegations, Mohammad's father said his son did not speak at all and had the mental capacity of a one-year-old, The Independent reported.

"They claim that he's a terrorist. This is so stupid, this is discrimination actually. It's not implied discrimination, its a hundred per cent discrimination," the father said.

The Pearland Police Department said it has concluded its investigation and found no further action was needed.

However, the region's Child Protective Services department said its investigation was ongoing.
Mattis is the first top US official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the new South Asia Strategy that was announced by President Donald Trump on August 21. (Photo: PTI/ File)

Washington: US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has said that he intends to work hard to find common ground with Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, which is necessary to restore the level of stability in South Asia to allow economic development.

Ahead of his visit to Islamabad, Mattis said he wants to work with Pakistan, listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective, and to address the problems.

Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Pakistan, since taking over the charge of the Pentagon. Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest the 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

Saeed is still roaming free, despite vigourous warning from the Trump Administration. "The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," Mattis told reporters travelling with him on his way to Pakistan from Egypt.

Mattis is the first top US official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the new South Asia Strategy that was announced by President Donald Trump on August 21.

"We know we have some common ground. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their innocent people and troops murdered and wounded by terrorists, so we know that there is a common ground," said Mattis.

Similarly, he said, there is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth in order to live in one and attack in the other.

"Now it is about how much more common grounds can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another and listening to others perspective," Mattis added.

"But at the same time, as the (Pakistan Army Chief) General (Qamar Javed Bajwa) has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and we'll find that common ground, if we have the will to, he said.

"And then we'll work on how we address the problems where we can work together," the Defense Secretary said. Responding to a question, he said he would not characterize everything, over the past 16 years, as failures.

"There is clearly an abundance of areas where we have to double down, and I am optimistic at this point that because of what our adversaries, our mutual enemies are doing, that we can find ways to work together," he said.

Mattis said both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military, the NATO-led militaries of 39 nations have all been in fights in Washington.

"We've got to find a way to work together". He said there is "always an urgency to something" when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken.

"These are 39 of the most economically powerful, generally speaking, most long-term democratic institutions in the world. These are powerful nations morally, economically and diplomatically, and certainly militarily," he added.

Mattis said that it was essential in South Asia that all work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economy to build.

"I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We cannot only imagine it; it's a reality right now," Mattis said.

So, the US Defence Secretary said that we have got to work together on this, and there's a sense of urgency about that.

"There are people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries. So as you look at this problem, if you'll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things," he said. Mattis is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and General Bajwa.

"General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting that's characterized the area," he said.
Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest the 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding. (Photo: AP)

Washington: US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said he intends to work hard to find common ground with Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, which is necessary to restore the level of stability in South Asia to allow economic development.

Ahead of his visit to Islamabad, Mattis said he wants to work with Pakistan, listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective, to address the problems.

Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait and Pakistan, since taking over the charge of the Pentagon.

Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest the 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

Saeed is still roaming free, despite tough warning from the Trump Administration.

"The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," Mattis told reporters travelling with him on his way to Pakistan from Egypt.

Mattis is the first top US official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the new South Asia Strategy that was announced by President Donald Trump on August 21.

"We know we have some common ground. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their troops killed and wounded by terrorists. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their innocent people murdered and wounded by terrorists, so we know that there is common ground".

Similarly, he said, there is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth, that do move back and forth in order to live in one and attack in the other, that sort of thing.

"So we know there's common ground; it's how much more common ground can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective," Mattis said.

"But at the same time, as the (Pakistan Army Chief) General (Qamar Javed Bajwa) has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and we'll find that common ground, if we have the will to.

Read: Act against terrorist safe havens or we will: CIA warns Pak

"And then we'll work on how we address the problems where we can work together," the Defense Secretary said.

Responding to a question, he said he would not characterise everything over the past 16 years as failures.

"There is clearly an abundance of areas where we have to double down, and I am optimistic at this point that because of what our adversaries, our mutual enemies are doing, that we can find ways to work together," he said.

Mattis said both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military, the NATO-led militaries of 39 nations have all been in fights here. "We've got to find a way to work together".

He said there is "always an urgency to something" when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken.

"These are 39 of the most economically powerful, generally speaking, most long-term democratic institutions in the world. These are powerful nations morally, economically and diplomatically, and certainly militarily," he said.

Mattis said that it was essential in South Asia that all work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economy to build.

"I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We can not only imagine it; it's a reality right now," Mattis said.

So, the US Defence Secretary said that we have got to work together on this, and there's a sense of urgency about that.

"There's people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries. So as you look at this problem, if you'll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things," he said.

Mattis is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and General Bajwa.

"General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting that's characterised the area," he said.
Tourists gather to watch Mount Agung at Amed beach in Karangasem on Indonesias resort island of Bali last week. (Photo: AFP/ File)

Bali: Gushing ash from Balis Mount Agung volcano has dissipated into a wispy plume of steam, and Australian airlines that cancelled some flights to the Indonesian resort island on the weekend have returned to near-normal schedules.

Indonesias disaster mitigation agency said on Monday, the volcano remains at its highest alert level but most of Bali is safe for tourists.

The exclusion zone around the volcano still extends 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the crater in some directions. More than 55,000 people are living in shelters.

Read: Bali airport re-opens as volcanic ash shifts direction

Airlines Jetstar and Virgin Australia, which cancelled flights over the weekend even as the ash cloud shrank dramatically, said they were resuming services from Monday.

The regions volcanic ash monitoring centre in Darwin, Australia, has stopped issuing advisories for Agung, reflecting that its currently posing no threat to aircraft. It would resume advisories if theres another eruption.

Tens of thousands of tourists were stranded when ash closed Balis international airport for nearly three days last week.

Indonesian government volcanologists say Agungs crater is about one-third filled by lava and there is still a high risk of more eruptions.

The volcanos last major eruptions in 1963 killed more than 1,100 people and it was active for more than a year.

David Boutelier, a geologist at the University of Newcastle in Australia, said the chance of a violent explosion is still very high but possibly not as high as several weeks ago because pressure is being released.
Islamabad: Jamaatud Dawa chief Hafiz Mohammed Saeed has said that he will contest the general elections 2018.

Speaking to reporters in Lahore, Saeed said he would contest on the National Assembly seat from the platform of the Milli Muslim League (MML).

Earlier in August this year, the JuD had launched the launched the MML. Religious scholar and longtime office bearer of the group Saifullah Khalid is the president of MML. The party had claimed to work to make Pakistan a real Islamic and welfare state.

Saeed, the alleged mastermind of 2008 Mumbai attacks, said that the decision to field his party  though placed on an anti-terror watch list in February  in the political arena was aimed at helping to highlight the Kashmir cause internationally.

I strongly believe that after winning elections, the MML will be able to work decisively for the Kashmir cause  this is why I support it, said Saeed.

Blaming the government for adopting a soft stance over the issue, he said Pakistans incumbent government had bowed down to appease New Delhi.

However, he said that he would underscore the struggle of Kashmiris by holding conferences, seminars and public meetings. No matter what, we will not abandon the Kashmir cause. The government has failed to achieve any breakthrough or help the Kashmiris through its back channel diplomacy, the JuD chief.

Saeed termed it a good sign that Pakistans flags were being hoisted in various parts of India, and Indian Muslims distributed sweets after his release.
Beijing: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau began a visit to China focused on trade Monday with a stop at social media giant Sina, where he talked up the advantages of travel to his homeland.

Accompanied by four Cabinet ministers, Trudeau is due to hold talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang later on Tuesday before meeting President Xi Jinping the following day.

At Sina, owner of the phenomenally popular Twitter-like Weibo microblogging service, Trudeau took part in a panel discussion that touched on Canadian tourism draws, as well as the nation's beer and wine, according to Chinese and Canadian reports.

2018 marks the China-Canada year of tourism and Canada is hoping to double the number of Chinese tourist arrivals. China and Canada are also in exploratory talks on a framework for a trade agreement, although reports say Ottawa has been pushing for provisions on the environment, governance, labour and gender issues.

Beijing generally seeks to avoid references that might highlight the one-party authoritarian state's human rights record. China has positioned itself as a leading advocate of free trade, particularly since President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Yet foreign businesses complain often that China closes many key areas to foreign investment, while Xi is known to favour a centralized economic model with special support for state-owned industries.

Canada has remained part of a pan-Pacific trade deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even after President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the agreement.

During recent talks in Danang, Vietnam, Trudeau lobbied for strong provisions for environmental protection, labour rights, and gender issues and the name of the initiative was altered to be the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

China largely imports wood and agricultural products, ore, fuels and seafood from Canada, while Canada imports machinery, furniture and sporting goods and textiles from

China. The trade imbalance has narrowed, but China still ran a surplus of about USD 17 billion with Canada during the first half of this year, according to the Canadian government.
The annual exercise comes five days after the nuclear- armed North test-fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the United States within range. (Photo: File/ Representational)

Seoul: The US and South Korea Monday kicked off their largest ever joint air exercise, an operation North Korea has labelled an "all-out provocation", days after Pyongyang fired its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile.

The five-day Vigilant Ace drill - involving 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troops - began Monday morning, Seoul's air force said.

Pyongyang over the weekend blasted the drill, accusing US President Donald's Trump's administration of "begging for nuclear war".

The annual exercise comes five days after the nuclear- armed North test-fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the United States within range.

As tensions surged, US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican and foreign policy hawk, warned that the US was moving closer to "preemptive war" with the North.

Read: Preemptive war with North Korea more likely, warns US lawmaker

"If there's an underground nuclear test (by the North), then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States," Graham told the CBS show "Face the Nation".

The isolated and impoverished North has staged six increasingly powerful atomic tests since 2006 - most recently in September.

"The preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures. Every missile test, every underground test of a nuclear weapon, means the marriage is more likely," he said.

Graham's remarks echoed those of Trump's National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who told a security forum on Saturday that the potential for war with the North "is increasing every day."

The North has boasted that the Hwasong 15 ICBM tested on Wednesday is capable of delivering a "super-large" nuclear warhead anywhere in the US mainland.

Analysts agree that the latest test showed a big improvement in potential range, but say it was likely achieved using a dummy warhead that would have been quite light.

They say a missile carrying a much heavier nuclear warhead would struggle to travel as far.

They are also sceptical that Pyongyang has mastered the sophisticated technology required to protect such a warhead from the extreme temperatures and stresses encountered as the missile hurtles back to Earth.

The North's widely-condemned nuclear and missile programmes have made significant progress under leader Kim Jong-Un, who has overseen four nuclear tests and dozens of missile launches since taking power in 2011.

The months-long nuclear standoff between Kim and Trump - as well as their trading of personal insults - has fuelled concerns of another conflict, more than six decades after 1950-53 Korean War that left much of the peninsula in ruins.

But even some Trump advisers say US military options are limited when Pyongyang could launch an artillery barrage on the South Korean capital Seoul - only around 50 kilometres from the heavily-fortified border and home to 10 million people.
The girl was in the McDonalds outlet on Seven Sisters road in Holloway when a guard asked her to take off the hijab if she wanted to queue up for ordering food, The Independent reported. (Photo: Representational Image)

A 19-year-old Muslim student with hijab was stopped from placing an order in a McDonalds restaurant in north London, according to a media report.The girl was in the McDonalds outlet on Seven Sisters road in Holloway when a guard asked her to take off the hijab if she wanted to queue up for ordering food, The Independent reported. Its just a matter of taking it (hijab) off, the guard told the girl. She responded: Its not just a matter of taking it off. I wear this for religious reasons and Im not ashamed of it, and I will stand in line and I will get the food I want, because this isnt okay.

Another customer intervened to defend the girl, a British Muslim of Middle Eastern descent, but was told by the guard, Its none of your business.The restaurant later issued an apology and said it has suspended the security guard involved in the incident. In a statement, McDonalds said it has no policy which restricts or prevents anyone wearing a hijab, or any other religious attire, from entering our restaurants.
The Bible will be on show with the St Cuthbert Gospel, the earliest intact European book, which was also made at Wearmouth-Jarrow and was acquired by the British Library in 2012.

The worlds oldest complete Latin Bible in existence is set to return to the UK after over 1,300 years for display in an exhibition by the British Library next year.The one-foot thick Codex Amiatinus, one of the three great single-volume Bibles which was made at the monastery at Wearmouth-Jarrow, is returning to England for the first time in 1,300 years, after it was taken to Italy as a gift for the Pope in 716, the British Library said.

It is now held in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence which is generously loaning the manuscript next year, the library said in a blog post on November 30. The Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition will be open at the British Library from October 19, 2018 to February 19, 2019. The Bible will be on show with the St Cuthbert Gospel, the earliest intact European book, which was also made at Wearmouth-Jarrow and was acquired by the British Library in 2012.

The two books are very different: while the St Cuthbert Gospel, which contains only the Gospel of John, can be held in one hand, the spine of Codex Amiatinus, containing the whole Bible, is nearly a foot thick. These two books will be exhibited alongside the Lindisfarne Gospels, one of Britains greatest artistic treasures, and other illuminated manuscripts of international significance made in the late 7th and 8th centuries, it said. Ranging from the 5th to the 11th Centuries, the exhibition will explore this long, dynamic period when the English language was used and written down for the first time and a kingdom of England was first created. The library said a key theme in the exhibition will be the development of the English language and the emergence of English literature.
Pope Francis has said he wept hearing the plight first-hand of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, adding that this meeting was a condition set for his trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh. The Rohingya meet was a highly symbolic gesture of solidarity with the Muslim minority fleeing violence in Myanmar, and the Pontiff said on his plane flying back to Rome that the refugees wept as well. I knew that I was going to meet the Rohingyas but I did not know where and how; for me it was one of the conditions of the trip, the Vicar of Christ said.
The first phase of the Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman coast was inaugurated Sunday by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. (Photo: AFP)

Beijing: China Monday hoped that the launch of the strategic Chabahar port in Iran which enables India to directly trade with Afghanistan besides rivalling Pakistan's Gwadar port is conducive to regional peace and stability.

The first phase of the Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman coast was inaugurated Sunday by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, opening a new strategic route connecting Iran, India and Afghanistan while bypassing Pakistan, and reflecting growing convergence of interests among the three countries.

Read: China invites more countries to take part in CPEC projects

The port in Iran's Sistan-Balochistan province on the energy-rich nation's southern coast is easily accessible from India's western coast and is increasingly seen as a counter to Pakistan's Gwadar port, which is being developed with Chinese investment and is located around 80 kms from Chabahar.

Asked how China views the launch of the project, considering that China is investing heavily in Gwadar as part of the USD 50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang declined to comment on it directly.

"As for the (Chabahar) port, I want to give you a principled answer. We welcome the development of friendly relations between the regional countries and conduct mutually beneficial cooperation," he said.

"We hope the relevant cooperation can be conducive to maintaining regional peace and promoting regional stability and prosperity," he said.

The Chabahar port is being considered a gateway to golden opportunities for trade by India, Iran and Afghanistan with central Asian countries besides ramping up trade among the three countries in the wake of Pakistan denying transit access to New Delhi.
She said the period of Ansari's detention before conviction may be counted as sentence served, that he may he be released on humanitarian grounds, and that he may be allowed to talk to his family on the phone. (Photo: File/ Representational)

Lahore: The mother of an Indian engineer, who was sentenced after he sneaked into Pakistan from Afghanistan to meet a girl he had befriended on the internet, has appealed to President Mamnoon Hussain to remit the remaining period of her son's prison term.

In a letter to Hussain, the mother of Hamid Ansari said: "Mohtaram Sadar - your government has shown clemency to foreign nationals who have committed far graver offences than Hamid Ansari.

"The country's credit for listening to humanitarian calls will go up and the chances of relief for Pakistani citizens in Indian prisons might improve if you could remit the remaining period of Hamids prison term."

She said the period of Ansari's detention (three years) before conviction may be counted as sentence served, that he may he be released on humanitarian grounds, and that he may be allowed to talk to his family on the phone.

The Indian national was tried in a military court and was awarded three years' vigorous imprisonment that started from December 15, 2015 and will end on December 14 2018.

Ansari, a Mumbai resident, suffered injuries after he was attacked by inmates in the Peshawar Central prison in 2016.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Ansari, an assistant professor at an Indian management institute, became friendly with a girl belonging to Kohat (in Kyber Pakhtaunkhawa province of Pakistan) through Facebook.

"When she feared the denial of her rights, he decided to come to her rescue. He could not get a Pakistan visa but was able to fly to Afghanistan and enter Pakistan, though without valid papers. He was arrested from a hotel in Kohat on November 14, 2012.

"Thus, for five years he has been in the custody of the Pakistani authorities. Charged with espionage and not with illegal entry into Pakistan, he was sentenced to three years imprisonment by a military court," says known rights activist I A Rehman.

"There is no doubt that Hamid Ansari committed an offence but his motives, love or a desire to help a woman in distress, are strong mitigating circumstances. He has already suffered enough for his naivete," he said and demanded his immediate release.

On the other hand, a Pakistani woman journalist who was allegedly kidnapped while pursuing the case of Ansari two years ago, has gone missing again two months after her return.

Read: Pak journalist abducted for helping Indian national returns after 2 yrs

President of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances Justice (retd.) Javed Iqbal had said Shahzadi had been recovered from an area on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Thursday night.

"Non-state actors and anti-state agencies had abducted her and she has been recovered from their custody," Iqbal said.

Rehman said Shahzadi has gone missing again. "Missing of Shahzadi two months after her return from two-year captivity is alarming."

He says Shahzadi, a young and poor journalist without any clout, had dreams of helping her fellow human beings.

"When she learnt that an Indian named Hamid Ansari was in trouble for trying to help a Pakistani girl, she thought this was a case that could help her establish herself as a bold human rights defender and a skilful journalist.

"She persuaded Ansaris mother to grant her authority/permission to pursue the matter before the Peshawar High Court. She also met the Indian high commissioner at a public meeting, probably to seek his help in the case," he said.

The 26-year-old local reporter of Daily Nai Khaber and Metro News TV channel had gone missing on August 19, 2015, when some unknown men allegedly kidnapped her while she was en route to her office in an auto-rickshaw from her home in a populated locality of Lahore.

On her return in this October she was not allowed to speak to anyone. Later, her family reported she has gone missing again.
The three references against the Sharif family are related to the Al-Azizia Company and Hill Metal Establishment, Flagship Investment Ltd and the Avenfield properties. (Photo: File)

Islamabad: Pakistan's accountability court adjourned till afternoon the hearing on three corruption references against ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after his lawyer informed that the high court was to give its verdict on a plea of clubbing of graft cases Monday.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had in September registered cases against Sharif, his family in the Islamabad Accountability Court, following a Supreme Court verdict.

Sharif, along with his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar, appeared before the accountability court here Monday, amid tight security.

His lawyer Khawaja Harris requested Judge Mohammad Bashir to suspend proceedings and wait for the Islamabad High Court's (IHC) decision on a petition by Sharif to club his three graft cases into one, as all were related to his alleged making of assets beyond the known sources of means.

The IHC had completed the hearing and reserved its judgement on November 23. Sunday, the court announced that it will give its verdict around midday Monday.

The accountability court after hearing the argument from the NAB prosecutor postponed hearing till 1 pm (local time) and allowed Sharif to go home but ordered him to remain present when the hearing begins again.

The court had on November 8 rejected a plea by Sharif to club his cases following which he challenged the decision in the Islamabad High Court.

The three references against the Sharif family are related to the Al-Azizia Company and Hill Metal Establishment, Flagship Investment Ltd and the Avenfield (London) properties.

Sharif and his sons, Hassan and Hussain, have been named in all three NAB references, while Maryam and her husband Safdar named only in the Avenfield reference.

Maryam on November 23 requested exemption from personal appearance between December 5, 2017 and January 5, 2018, while Sharif sought exemption between December 5 and 12.

The court is expected to give its decision on the two pleas Monday.

November, Sharif was indicted in all three cases while his daughter Maryam and her husband Muhammad Safdar, co-accused with Sharif in only one case, were also indicted along with Sharif.

Sharif's sons Hassan and Hussian have failed to appear in the court despite repeated summons, which prompted it to separate their case.

Ahead of the verdict, hundreds of security personnel have been deployed around the court premises to deal with any situation.

The cases are based on July 28 verdict by the Supreme Court which disqualified Sharif and ordered to launch three corruption cases against him and his family, and one case against finance minister Ishaq Dar.
Saeed, who continues to be an influential person in Pakistan's certain religious groups despite being an internationally designated terrorist, announced on Saturday that he would contest the general election in 2018. (Photos: AP)

Islamabad: Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, who earlier came in support of the terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), has now said that he would welcome an alliance with global terrorist and 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed for the general election in 2018.

Responding to a question about having an alliance with JuD chief Saeed, Musharraf in an interview to Pakistan based Aaj News channel said, "so far, there has be no talks with them but if they want to be part of the alliance, I would welcome them,"

The former military ruler had in November announced the formation of a grand political alliance after a consultative meeting between representatives of around two dozen political parties, including the Sunni Tehreek, Majlis-i-Wahdatul Muslimeen, Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and Mr Musharraf's own All Pakistan Muslim League (APML).

However, several parties dissociated themselves from Musharraf's Awami Ittehad alliance after he announced the formation of a "grand alliance" of 23 parties.

According to media reports, two major partners of the alliance - the Pakistan Awami Tehrik and the Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen - denied being part of the coalition headed by Musharraf.

Saeed, who continues to be an influential person in Pakistan's certain religious groups despite being an internationally designated terrorist, announced on Saturday that he would contest the general election in 2018.

The announcement comes days after the Lahore High Court ordered his release from the house arrest.

However, the JuD chief did not disclose anything about the constituency he would like to contest from.

Though, the JuD formed Milli Muslim League (MML) in August when Saeed was detained in Lahore, the party yet to be recognised by the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Saeed is a wanted terrorist by India and the United States for his alleged role in masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives.

He even carries a bounty of 10 million USD (approx. Rs 66 crore) on his head for his role in the attack.

Musharraf had recently called himself as the "biggest supporter" of the LeT and its founder Hafiz Saeed.

Speaking on Pakistan's ARY News, Musharraf said, "I am the biggest supporter of the LeT and I know they like me and the JuD also likes me."

The former president added that he was always in favour of terrorist action in Kashmir, and the LeT and the JuD were the biggest forces to take on the Indian Army in the state.
He was a member of the Rohingya student union in college, taught at a public high school and even won a parliamentary seat in Myanmar's thwarted elections in 1990. But according to the government of Myanmar, Kyaw Min's fellow Rohingya do not exist.



A long-persecuted Muslim minority concentrated in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine, the Rohingya have been deemed dangerous interlopers from neighbouring Bangladesh. Today, they are mostly stateless, their very identity denied by the Buddhist-majority Myanmar state.

"There is no such thing as Rohingya," said Kyaw San Hla, an officer in Rakhine's state security ministry. "It is fake news." Such denials bewilder Kyaw Min. He has lived in Myanmar all of his 72 years, and the history of the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group in Myanmar stretches back for generations before.

Now, human rights watchdogs warn that much of the evidence of the Rohingya's history in Myanmar is in danger of being eradicated by a military campaign the United States has declared to be ethnic cleansing.

Since late August, more than 6,20,000 Rohingya Muslims, about two-thirds of the population that lived in Myanmar in 2016, have fled to Bangladesh, driven out by the military's systematic campaign of massacre, rape and arson in Rakhine.

In a report released in October, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Myanmar's security forces had worked to "effectively erase all signs of memorable landmarks in the geography of the Rohingya landscape and memory in such a way that a return to their lands would yield nothing but a desolate and unrecognisable terrain."

"The Rohingya are finished in our country," said Kyaw Min, who lives in Yangon, the commercial capital of Myanmar. "Soon we will all be dead or gone."

The UN report also said the crackdown in Rakhine had "targeted teachers, the cultural and religious leadership, and other people of influence in the Rohingya community in an effort to diminish Rohingya history, culture and knowledge."

"We are people with our own history and traditions," said Kyaw Hla Aung, a Rohingya lawyer and former political prisoner, whose father served as a court clerk in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine. "How can they pretend we are nothing?" he asked.

Speaking over the phone, Kyaw Hla Aung, who has been jailed repeatedly for his activism and is now interned in a Sittwe camp, said his family did not have enough food because officials have prevented full distribution of international aid.

Myanmar's sudden amnesia about the Rohingya is as bold as it is systematic. Five years ago, Sittwe, nestled in an estuary in the Bay of Bengal, was a mixed city, divided between an ethnic Rakhine Buddhist majority and the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Walking Sittwe's crowded bazaar in 2009, I saw Rohingya fishermen selling seafood to Rakhine women. Rohingya professionals practiced law and medicine. The main street in town was dominated by the Jama mosque, an Arabesque confection built in the mid-19th century. The imam spoke proudly of Sittwe's multicultural heritage.

But since sectarian riots in 2012, which resulted in a disproportionate number of Rohingya casualties, the city has been mostly cleared of Muslims.

Across central Rakhine, about 1,20,000 Rohingya, even those who had citizenship, have been interned in camps, stripped of their livelihoods and prevented from accessing proper schools or health care.

They cannot leave the ghettos without official authorisation. In July, a Rohingya man who was allowed out for a court appearance in Sittwe was lynched by an ethnic Rakhine mob.

The Jama mosque now stands disused and moldering, behind barbed wire. Its 89-year-old imam is interned. "We have no rights as human beings," he said, asking not to use his name because of safety concerns. "This is state-run ethnic cleansing and nothing else."

Sittwe's psyche has adapted to the new circumstances. In the bazaar recently, every Rakhine resident I talked to claimed, falsely, that no Muslims had ever owned shops there.

Sittwe University, which used to enroll hundreds of Muslim students, now teaches only around 30 Rohingya, all of whom are in a distance-learning programme. "We don't have restrictions on any religion," said Shwe Khaing Kyaw, the university's registrar, "but they just don't come."

Rohingya Muslims have lived in Rakhine for generations, their Bengali dialect and South Asian features often distinguishing them from Rakhine Buddhists. During the colonial era, the British encouraged South Asian rice farmers, merchants and civil servants to migrate to what was then known as Burma.

Some of these new arrivals mixed with the Rohingya, then known more commonly as Arakanese Indians or Arakanese Muslims. Others spread out across Burma. By the 1930s, South Asians, both Muslim and Hindu, comprised the largest population in Yangon.

Fleeing xenophobia

The demographic shift left some Buddhists feeling besieged. During the xenophobic leadership of General Ne Win, who ushered in nearly half a century of military rule, hundreds of thousands of South Asians fled Burma for India.

Today, far more Rohingya live outside of Myanmar - mostly in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia - than remain in what they consider their homeland.

Yet in the early decades of Burma's independence, a Rohingya elite thrived. Rangoon University, the country's top institution, had enough Rohingya students to form their own union. One of the Cabinets of Nu, the country's first post-independence leader, included a health minister who identified himself as Arakanese Muslim.

Even under Ne Win, the general, Burmese national radio aired broadcasts in the Rohingya language. Rohingya, women among them, were represented in parliament.

Shwe Maung, a Rohingya from Buthidaung Township in northern Rakhine, served in parliament between 2011 and 2015, as a member of the military's proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party. In the 2015 elections, however, he was barred from running.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were disenfranchised in those polls. Shwe Maung's electoral district, which had been 90% Rohingya, is now represented by a Rakhine Buddhist.

In September, a local police officer filed a counterterrorism suit accusing Shwe Maung of instigating violence through Facebook posts that called for an end to the security offensive in Rakhine. (The military operation began after Rohingya militants besieged government security posts in late August.)

Shwe Maung, the son of a police officer himself, is in exile in the United States and denies the charges. "They want every Rohingya to be considered a terrorist or an illegal immigrant," he said. "We are much more than that."
Gavin Aung Than is not your struggling cartoonist, beckoning your generosity for a quick roadside caricature. Well, not exactly. But this Melbourne-based ex-graphic designer would have ended up that way if that creative spark hadn't hit him, turning him into a global star with 'Zen Pencils' online.



The power of his cartoons based on inspirational quotes from Gandhi to Kalam, Einstein to Van Gogh, was in full flow at the Bengaluru Comic-Con.

On Sunday, as his avid fans queued up for his autographed books, Gavin reminisced about those dull, boring days as a corporate designer, a day job that had his creativity chained. He had dared to quit that job, sell his house and dive deep into online comics. In quick time, he produced 300 comics. But success eluded him. It was then this thought struck him: Why not turn inspirational quotes from historical figures to tell compelling stories through cartoons.

In one of those cartoon strips, he had an overweight man decide to take control of his life and start running. Gavin's lines did the trick. "People loved such life-changing ideas illustrated through cartoons. They would connect with me through social media, even urge me to illustrate quotes of their choice," he told DH.

As Gavin's works grabbed global attention featuring in The Washington Post, Slate and more, an American publisher offered to publish the cartoons in three books. He put out those inspirational works on mugs, T-shirts and posters. Gavin was now getting known to fan clubs across the world.

So, how does his creative process unfold? "I start with rough pencil sketches before inking. They are then scanned, coloured and processed with Photoshop or other software. Once the work is uploaded onto my site, I take the social media route to promote them. I prefer the e-commerce route to sell my merchandise," Gavin explains.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday quoted senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar to compare democracy within the party to the Mughal rule, especially on the issue of transfer of power.

Speaking at a rally at Dharampur in south Gujarat, Modi said: "A senior Congress leader, Mani Shankar Aiyar, who had a lot of things to say to me in the past said, 'Were elections held when Shahjahan replaced Jehangir or Aurangzeb replaced Shahjahan? It is understood that the son will take over the reins.' Now even the Congress leaders accept that the Congress is a family and not a party. Let them have this kind of Aurangzeb rule."

"One who is facing corruption charges and is out on bail is being propped up as president of the party. This is the kind of culture they have. It shows that the Congress is doomed," Modi said.

Speaking on Rahul's temple-hopping spree, Modi said that there was a time when people competed to prove their "secular" credentials but not anymore.

"Over the years they alleged that the BJP was anti-Muslim. This time, not once have they said anything like that. It shows that even the Congress has accepted that they used to propagate such information to polarise minority votes. Even Muslims have seen through their true nature," he added.

The prime minister, who is on the final day of his two-day visit to Gujarat, will address four rallies, at Jamnagar, Junagadh, Bhavnagar and Dharampur.

Polling will be held in the first phase on December 9 in these places.

Modi will again visit the state for three days on December 6, 8 and 9, covering south and central Gujarat, as well as Saurashtra.

Rahul will be in the state on December 5 and 6.
The Kalaburagi police have arrested nine hardcore criminals, including two associates of the dreaded killer of Bheema basin Chandappa Harijan, and have recovered 20 country-made pistols and 54 bullets from them.



Inspector General of Police (North-East Range) Alok Kumar briefing reporters here on Monday, said, "Two of the arrested - Mallikarjun and Arjun - were associates of Chandappa Harijan. The arrested were involved in criminal activities in Afzalpur."

"The illegal country-made firearms from Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are being smuggled into the district. Huge cache of illegal firearms are being smuggled into the region from Madhya Pradesh, in particular, where illegal firearm industry thrives. A team led by Kalaburagi SP N Shashikumar will be sent to Madhya Pradesh to probe into the nexus of firearm dealers and the local criminals and take measures to prevent the smuggling," Alok Kumar said.

IGP (North-East Range) felicitated the police team with cash reward of Rs 1 lakh for arresting the dreaded criminals.

Alok Kumar said that he would recommend Additional SP Lokesh's name for Chief Minister's Medal.
Hundreds of farmers took to the streets against the construction of illegal shops in K R Market by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Monday.



About 500 farmers gathered near K R Market and marched till the BBMP head office.

Chairman of Karnataka State Farmer's Association and Hasiru Sene, Kodihalli Chandrashekar, said, "The farmers wake up in the middle of the night and get flowers to sell here until 8 am. But four shops have come up in this place overnight. This has been done though BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad had issued a notice to remove illegal encroachments."

He also said that there are goons who extort money from vendors every day.

Prasad said that the BBMP had issued notices to remove the shops.

"It is illegal to construct shops in open spaces. We will ask the K R Market police to remove the shops," said Prasad.
Union Minister of State for Skill Development Anantkumar Hegde, on Sunday said, the Union government is keen to establish Indian Institute of Skills (IIS) in the state.



Addressing reporters in a press conference, here, the minister said, "The Union government is ready to establish IIS in the state if the state government provides the land required for the same. The government has already established a IISaat Kanpuraand planning to establish in other states too," he informed.

Hegde said, "International Skill Centers have been set up at various parts of the country to impart skills among the youths. The government planned to open such centers at all the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies across the country. Already a total of 285 are functioning. All the centers will start activities by the end of 2018," he said.

Hegde said, the Ministry has urged the state governments to conduct a survey to analyse skill gap. According to the minister, the employment sector will witness drastic change in next two decade. "As per the survey, about 67% of employment sector will undergo change in next 20 years and thus we need to identify the changes, which may take place, to impart training to the youth accordingly," he said.

The Union government has launched 'Skill Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood Promotion' (SANKALP). Under the scheme, ITIaand Polytechnic courses will be upgraded, he informed.

Hegde said the Ministry has been concentrating more on ITatraining in Karnataka as there is good opportunity in the sector. Short-term courses have been introduced in Karnataka too, he added.

Earlier in the day, the minister interacted with the youths, ideapreneurs and budding entrepreneurs about the skill development and the various schemes launched by the Ministry.

Skill on Wheels

Aaprogramme 'Skill on Wheels', to create awareness about the skill development, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, various schemes, will begin in Mysuru from Monday.

The teams will approach the students and new entrepreneurs to provide them information about the skill development.

The programme has been planned to create awareness about skill development among the people.

Hegde said, the programme will be conduced in 100 different places in the state. The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, which came into existence in 2014, has trained 1.5 crore youths, he informed.
Union Minister Anantkumar Hegde, on Sunday, took a dig at the state government terming it as 'Hitler government'.



Speaking to media persons on the sidelines of an interactive session, here, the minister alleged, the arrest of BJPaleaders and workers, including MPaPratap Simha, at Hunsur during a procession organised as part of Hanuma jayanti was a murder of democracy by the state government.

The government has been playing the people's sentiments, he said.

On Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's statement that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is afraid of his political strength and defeat, Hegde said, "Let Siddaramaiah win in his own constituency, first."

Hegde said that BJPawill record comprehensive victory in Gujarat elections. Like Uttar Pradesh, BJPawave will continue in Karnataka and Gujarat too, he added.

When asked about All India Congress Committee (AICC) vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who is likely to file nomination for AICCapresident post, the minister said, "Iadon't want to speak about 'Pappus'.

Speaking about BJP's Parivarthana Yatra in the state, Hegde said, the yatra has been receiving overwhelming response across the state. BJP will form government in Karnataka and state unit president BaSaYeddyurappa will be the next chief minister, he said.

Who is secularist?

Anantkumar Hegde said that secularist is a person who does not have any identity.

Speaking on the sidelines of a religious function here, Hegde said, "Iarespect those who identify themselves as a Muslim, Christian or a Hindu. But, who are these secularists. What does secularist mean?" he asked.

Hegde said, "We should not allow to build a mosque at the place where a temple should be constructed."

He called Hindus of all castes to stay united to protect the country.
Industrialist Vijay Mallya arrived at the Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday for the opening day of his extradition trial.



The 61-year-old tycoon looked relaxed as he was greeted by a swarm of cameras and reporters when he entered the court to stand trial on charges of fraud and money laundering related to his erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines owing several Indian banks around Rs 9,000 crore.



"Please hear the proceedings," Mallya told reporters outside the courtroom.



However, the trial opening was delayed as the courtroom had to be evacuated due to a fire alarm going off.



Mallya, who has been out on bail since Scotland Yard executed an extradition warrant in April, will be in the dock for the duration of the trial scheduled to end on December 14.



A judgement in the case, being presided over by Judge Emma Louise Arbuthnot, is unlikely until early next year.



Mallya's defence team is led by barrister Clare Montgomery, known as an expert in criminal and fraud law with the UK's Matrix Chambers.



The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will be arguing on behalf of the Indian government, led by barrister Mark Summers.



The CPS will need to demonstrate a prima facie case by producing evidence to show that the criminal charges against Mallya are justified and that he should be extradited to face the Indian courts.



Prison conditions in India are expected to be at the forefront during the hearing, with the Indian government providing assurances of protection of Mallya's human rights.



The tycoon has been on a self-imposed exile in the UK since he left India on March 2, 2016.



While on strict bail conditions, which include providing a bail bond worth 6,50,000 pounds, surrender of his passport and a ban on possessing any travel documents, the former Rajya Sabha member has been based at his Hertfordshire estate Ladywalk in the village of Tewin, around 30 miles from London.


Veteran journalist A Surya Prakash today took charge as the chairman of the Prasar Bharati board for a second consecutive term.



On December 1, Prakash was appointed the chief of the public broadcasting board for a second term till February 8, 2020, when he would turn 70, according to an order issued by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

"Prasar Bharati welcomes Dr A Surya Prakash @mediasurya as he takes charge as the chairman," Prasar Bharati said in a tweet.

Speaking to PTI after his appointment, Prakash had said that his core preoccupation would remain professionalising Prasar Bharati, creating content in sync with the New India vision, and digitisation which would be the key driver for a new age public broadcaster.

The effort would be to make Prasar Bharati the most favoured destination for all kinds of content made available in all possible formats for varying consumption classes, he had said.

Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer Shashi S Vempati also welcomed Prakash as he took the charge today.

"Welcome back @mediasurya @prasarbharati," Vempati tweeted.

The senior journalist was appointed as the chairman after his name was approved by a three-member committee headed by Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu.

Prakash's earlier three-year term as the chairman had ended in October this year.

According to the Prasar Bharati Act, the chairman holds the office for a term of three years or until the person attains the age of 70 years, whichever is earlier.

Prasar Bharati oversees the functioning of Doordarshan and All India Radio (AIR).
Exactly a year after chief minister J Jayalalithaa's demise, the fragile situation in the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu still persists with the K Palaniswami government having a wafer-thin margin in the Assembly.



During the year, the state saw two chief ministers and a deputy chief minister.

In addition, there was also confusion in the government as there was a faction fight in the ruling party.

The first and the most important event to note after the death of Jayalalithaa was cyclone Vardah that devastated the Chennai.

Tamil Nadu also witnessed many protests, including the pro-Jallikattu stir by youths.

Another major development was witnessed when O Panneerselvam turned rebel, Palaniswami took over as chief minister with the support of Jayalalithaa's close aide V K Sasikala, who later went to jail.

Prior to the change, MLAs supporting Palaniswami were forced to stay in a resort in Koovathur.

The Palaniswami-led government was subjected to a floor test in the Assembly, which it won convincingly with 122 votes. The Panneerselvam faction had only 11 supporters.

After the Supreme Court upheld the trial court order against Sasikala and others in the disproportionate assets case, her nephew T T V Dhinakaran was given the plum post of AIADMK deputy general secretary.

However, Dhinakaran did not last long as he was expelled by a united AIADMK led by Palaniswami and Panneerselvam.

A few legislators supporting Dhinakaran submitted separate letters to the governor withdrawing their support to the chief minister.

These legislators were first kept at a resort in Puducherry and from there to Kodagu. These legislators were disqualified by Speaker P Dhanapal under the anti-defection law.

In terms of the relationship between the Centre and the state, there has been a lot of difference when compared to Jayalalithaa's rule.

The present government supported and implemented few of the policies, including Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (Uday), Goods and Services Tax (GST), Food Safety Modernisation Act and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).

On the other hand, the 'Amma' branded government schemes gradually started fading. The government found it tough to meet the expenses of Amma Unavagam (canteen).

Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao, who was given additional charge of the state, was relieved of his duties after Banwarilal Purohit was appointed.

Jayalalithaa passed away on December 5, 2016, after 75 days of hospitalisation.
The Karnataka Power Corporation (KPC) is planning to undertake a 2,000-MW Rs 5,000-crore underground hydroelectricity project near the Sharavathi wildlife sanctuary in the taluk.



But environmentalists have strongly opposed the plan, saying it is coming up in an ecologically sensitive region. They have planned to move the court against the project.

The plan involves supplying water from the Gerusoppa reservoir in Uttara Kannada district by means of pipelines through underground tunnels to Talakalele reservoir, which is at a height of 480 metres. The water will be made to flow down in the reverse direction to generate electricity.

The union ministry of forests and environment gave its approval for pre-project works on August 9, much to the chagrin of the environmentalists.

Two tunnels, 3.8-km-long, will be dug at a depth of 312 metres. A 52-metre-tall, 22-metre-wide and 300-metre-long power station will also be constructed underground.

Greens have expressed concern that that 371 acres of protected forest in the Jog, Linganamakki and Aghanashini limits of the Western Ghats will be under threat.

Also, the project area is just 3.5 km away from the Sharavathi wildlife sanctuary and is an environmentally sensitive area. No new project can be taken up in such areas as per the recommendations of the Kasturirangan report.

The project site is part of evergreen forests, rich in biodiversity and home to priceless medicinal plants, besides animals like tiger, deer, leopard, bison and king cobra. The forest is also home to the lion-tailed macaque.

Environmentalists point out that explosives will have to be used for the tunnel work. This may kill many creatures in the forests, they say. The greens feel that the KPC should have consulted local residents and organisations before going ahead with the project.

They say a lot of electricity has to be spent for pumping water from Gerusoppa reservoir to Talakalele reservoir. They question whether the same is worth it and wonder whether the target power production can be achieved.

They say much harm has already been caused due to existing hydel projects in the Sharavathi command area and people there reel under the effects of ecological imbalance. Environmentalists say all pros and cons should be looked into before going ahead with the new project in the Western Ghats. They want the project proponents to reconsider it.
Taking a jibe at Rahul Gandhi hours after he filed his nomination papers for the Congress president's post, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today said the party had become a "burden" which would disappear on its own after the elevation.



The chief minister also said the move in the Congress would have no impact on Assembly elections in Gujarat.

"Hamey lagta hai ki Congress party ek bojh ban chuki hai. Rahul Gandhi ke (adhyaksh) banney se yeh bojh apney aap samapt ho jayega ... (I feel the Congress party has become a burden. After Rahul Gandhi's elevation, this burden will end on its own)," Adityanath told reporters here.

The elevation would not affect the BJP in the ongoing Gujarat polls, he stressed.

"It will have no impact on the BJP's poll prospects in Gujarat, where there is no doubt about our victory," he said.

Gandhi, accompanied by a host of senior party leaders, including former prime minister Manmohan Singh, filed his papers for the party president's post earlier today.

The 47-year-old Gandhi scion is likely to emerge as the lone candidate in the fray, clearing the decks for his elevation and succeeding his mother, who held the post for 19 successive years.

"Rahulji has been the darling of the Congress...," Manmohan Singh told reporters at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters in New Delhi.

The last date for withdrawal of candidature is December 11. Polling, if needed, will be held on December 16. PTI ABN SMI BDS
Irked by his wife questioning him over buying a costly mobile phone, a farmer killed her at their house on the city's outskirts, police said. Balamurugan (38), a habitual drinker, had bought the Rs 9,000 phone and showed it to his wife Muthulakshmi at their house in Kinathukadavu late last night, they added.



When she questioned why he had bought such a costly phone as they were facing financial problems, Balamurugan in a fit of rage hit her on the head with a pickaxe, killing her on the spot, police said. The farmer was arrested after police rushed to the spot on receiving information about the incident.
Amid protests in coastal hamlets against Kerala authorities' reported failure in warning fishermen ahead of the cyclonic storm Ockhi, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman sought calm and made an assurance that rescue operations would continue till all the untraced fishermen were brought back.



Nirmala visited Vizhinjam and Poonthura on Monday and told the fisher-folk and their families that it was not a time for protests.

Fishermen protested at Poonthura where Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran and Fisheries Minister J Mercykutty Amma accompanied Nirmala on her visit to the affected areas.

Speaking in Tamil, she said alerts regarding the deep depression and the cyclone were sounded with the best available weather-warning systems.

"This is a time to learn new lessons. Let's not argue and play the blame game at this time of distress," she said.

The minister said the scale of the ongoing rescue operation was bigger than what was launched after the Tsunami.

"I assure you that the search and rescue operations won't stop till the last untraced fisherman is brought back," she said.

Later, she met Chief Minister Vijayan and senior government officials.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's late Sunday visit to the coastal village of Vizhinjam was also marked by angry protests.



CM not spared

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's late Sunday visit to the coastal village of Vizhinjam was also marked by angry protests.

In five days since the cyclonic storm formed off the Kerala coast, 25 deaths have been reported.

85 fishermen who left the shores before the cyclone are still untraced.

The Kerala State Disaster Management Authority is in the line of fire following reports that it acted late on alerts from central agencies on possibilities of the deep depression turning into a cyclone.

The state government is facing criticism over a reported lack of coordination in the search and rescue operations.

The CPM-led government has maintained that the cyclone alert was received only on November 30 and all contingency measures were initiated.

The 22nd edition of the International Film Festival of Kerala will open here on Friday without the inaugural ceremony and cultural programmes, in view of the disaster.
Google's India-born CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday made a strong case for the search giant's return to China, saying it is already helping Chinese companies gain global access.



Google was shut down in China in 2010, following a showdown with the government over censor policies. Since then, Google, Gmail, Youtube and its other products are banned in the world's second largest economy.

"A lot of work Google does is to help Chinese companies", the 45-year-old Google CEO, who has a BTech degree from IIT Kharagpur, said at a state-run global internet conference at the Chinese city of Wuzhen.

The conference was also addressed by Apple CEO Tim Cook and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"Many small and medium-sized businesses in China take advantage of Google to get their products to many other countries outside of China," Pichai told the meeting, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

After the ban, Google subsequently shifted its operations to Hong Kong.

In its absence, Chinese firms like Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com emerged most powerful players in China and abroad.

Google and its products can be accessed in China through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) over which, Beijing has stepped up a crackdown in recent times.

Apple this year agreed to the Chinese government's requests to remove dozens of VPN app services that allow Chinese users to access blocked websites from its local App Store.

Pichai's attendance at the state sponsored internet meeting came after China recently lifted the ban on Google translation services.

Besides Google, a number of global social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter remain banned in China over fears that their presence would open-up to millions of China's social media users marginalising the official media.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Monday filed his nomination for the post of party president in the presence of leaders spanning generations and amid mounting criticism by the BJP over dynastic politics.



As was expected, Rahul's was the only application received for the post of the Congress president that was supported by incumbent Sonia Gandhi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, members of the Working Committee, chief ministers, state unit presidents who filed 89 sets of nomination papers.

The 47-year-old Rahul is expected to be declared elected as president on Monday next to succeed his mother Sonia, who holds the record for the longest tenure of 19 years in the 132 year-old history of the Congress.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Motilal Vora, Mohsina Kidwai and Shivraj Patil to young turks such as Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Sushmita Dev, Gaurav Gogoi, Suraj Hegde were present at the AICC headquarters that wore a festive look.

"We have received 89 sets of nomination papers from senior Congress leaders, state units of the party," Mullapally Ramachandran, Chairman of the Central Election Authority told a press conference here.

He said the CEA will scrutinise the nomination forms publish the names of the eligible candidates on Tuesday.

A formal announcement of Rahul's election is expected on Monday next on the last date of withdrawal of nomination papers.

"It is a great day. Rahul has been the darling of Congress and this is yet another step in his devotion to the Congress party and country," Manmohan Singh, said, when asked about Rahul Gandhi's takeover.

Rahul stayed away from media persons and spent the day meeting Congress leaders who had come from across the country.

Rahul began his day with a visit to Raj Ghat to offer tributes to Mahatma Gandhi. He later visited former president Pranab Mukherjee and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to seek their blessings before filing the nominations.

Mukherjee applied the traditional red 'tilak' on Rahul's forehead and wished him good luck for the future.
Madhya Pradesh may soon become the first state in the country where raping a girl aged 12 years or less could invite death penalty, with the state Assembly on Monday passing a bill to this effect.



The landmark legislation, passed unanimously by the House, also provides for tougher punishment for stalking a woman and some other offences against them.

The Penal Law (Madhya Pradesh Amendment) Bill-2017, introduced by Minister for Law and Legislative Affairs Rampal Singh, was passed after a debate during which some Congress members voiced apprehension over tougher sentence for stalking, insisting cases may be registered against innocent people to settle personal scores.

The bill introduced a section--376 (A) (A)--to the Indian Penal Code (IPC) under which a person convicted of raping a girl aged 12 years or below may be awarded death penalty, life imprisonment or a minimum imprisonment of 14 years with a fine.

Similarly, section 376 (D) (A) was introduced for gang-rape with girls up to 12 years of age. The convict under this section may be awarded capital punishment, life imprisonment or a minimum of 20 years in jail, besides a fine.

Under both the sections, the convict awarded life sentence will have to remain in jail till death.

The bill also amended the IPC section 493 (A) (cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage), under which a person could be jailed up to three years for establishing sexual relations with a woman on the pretext of marrying her.

The legislation provides for a minimum imprisonment of 3 years that may be extended up to 7 years for people caught stalking a woman or a girl for a second time and convicted for committing the offence. The amendment to section (354 D) relating to stalking says those convicted will also have to pay a minimum fine of Rs 1 lakh. The first time offender will face jail term up to 3 years in addition to fine.

Similarly, the second time offender in cases under section 354 (B) (assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to disrobe) of the IPC would face a minimum punishment of 7 years in jail which may extend up to 10 years, besides a minimum fine of Rs 1 lakh.

For the first time offender, the punishment is between 3 and 7 years of imprisonment in addition to fine.

Except for the first time offence under section 354(D), all offences would be cognisable and non-bailable.

During the debate, some Congress MLAs, including Ramnivas Rawat and Govind Singh, voiced apprehension about possible misuse of some of the provisions. They said some women may file a stalking case to settle a personal score.

They said the perpetrators may kill the victim after raping her in an attempt to destroy evidence out of fear of severe punishment.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan assured the members that the government would take appropriate measures if these provisions were misused.

Chouhan said smartphones and Internet are spreading vulgarity among children.

The chief minister said girls are vulnerable to sexual assault from people known to them, with acquaintances and family members being involved in 98 per cent of the rape cases.

The bill was later passed unanimously.

It will now be sent to the President for his assent before it become a law.

"It was a historic day for Madhya Pradesh as the state Assembly, as per the wish of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, passed a bill making a provision to award capital punishment to those indulging in such crimes (raping girls aged 12 or below)," Singh said.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday rejected Pradesh Congress Committee president G Parameshwara's suggestion for adopting the one-family-one-ticket norm to check the clamour among family members of party leaders to get picked for the coming Assembly elections.



Siddaramaiah said it was "impractical" to enforce or implement such a norm for selecting candidates.

"The suggestion may look good. But it is impractical and not possible to implement in political parties. We have already given tickets to two members of the same family in the last Assembly elections. If the one-family-one-ticket rule is applied, can we deny tickets to sitting MLAs?" Siddaramaiah wondered.

"We have the case of senior leader Mallikarjun Kharge whose son is an MLA and a minister," he told reporters here.

Mallikarjun Kharge is an MP from Gulbarga Lok Sabha constituency and his son Priyank Kharge is an MLA from Chittapur and also a state minister.

Similarly, Housing Minister M Krishnappa is an MLA from Vijayanagar while his son Priya Krishna too is a legislator from Govindarajnagar. "Is it possible to apply the one-family-one-ticket rule to them?" the chief minister asked.

Siddaramaiah said primacy should be given to the "winnability factor" in deciding the candidates as there could be a tough challenge for the ruling party in the polls.

"Winnability of candidates is our top criteria and nothing else," the chief minister said when asked about the norms for selecting candidates.

"Let Parameshwara place his suggestion before the party high command. They will take a final call on this issue," the chief minister said. "Before giving tickets," he insisted, "we will take views from the party workers and local leaders."

The chief minister, who is keen to field his doctor son Yathindra from Varuna constituency, said he would shift from Varuna (of which he is a sitting member) to Chamundeshwari seat in the coming polls.

Earlier, the chief minister said his son has expressed his willingness to contest from Varuna and has hit the ground already in the run-up to the polls.

The chief minister's statement expressing his disagreement with the state unit president comes when the party is preparing to announce the first list of candidates in a month or so.

Parameshwara had stated that the state unit would suggest to the party top brass to follow the one-family-one-ticket norm to prevent any powerful political family from "cornering" tickets. His suggestion was essentially seen a move to block the ticket to the chief minister's son.

However, this is not the first time the chief minister has openly differed with the PCC president who once served as the home minister in his Cabinet.

Earlier when Siddaramaiah favoured senior Lingayat leader S R Patil as the PCC chief, Parameshawara found suppport from other senior leaders in prevailing upon the party high command to retain him as the state unit chief for a second consecutive term.

Siddaramaiah said he has started touring the state to launch development projects covering 100 Assembly segments in one month. The PCC chief will also tour the state and hold meetings with party workers in another 100 Assembly constituencies in one month.

From March first week, the chief minister, party president and other leaders will hold joint rallies across the state, he said.
Governor Vajubhai R Vala has shot off a stinker to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah complaining about a Cabinet minister for publicly criticising the Raj Bhavan, it is learnt.

Apparently, this is the third time Vala has complained against the minister. However, the Governor has not named the minister in his letter.

"A minister in your Cabinet is publicly chiding the Raj Bhavan. Either you tell him to stop, or I will do so in my own way," the Governor is learnt to have stated in the letter, according to sources.

It is said that Vala was referring to Higher Education Minister Basavaraj Rayareddi, who has publicly lamented the delay in the appointment of vice-chancellors to Bangalore and Mysore universities. As Governor, Vala is also the chancellor of universities who appoints vice-chancellors.
MP Pratap Simha, took to social media to express his displeasure over the Mysuru district police and district administration, after his release from the police custody.



The MP, who was released on Sunday late night, has tweeted that the district administration and the police had ensured smooth celebration of Tipu Jayanti and Eid Milad procession at the same place. "But we can't take out Hanuma Jayanti procession."

The MP also tweeted that "Dear @SPmysuru you are NOT able to arrest the murders of Periyapatna Ravi since 13 months. But successfully scuttling Hanuma Jayanti procession from last 2 years at the behest of state govt! Ask your predecessor, SP Abhinav Khare, how he facilitated Hanuma Jayanti till 2015?!"
The Centre has deployed ten ships each of the Navy and the Coast Guard, besides six aircraft and as many helicopters for rescue operations off the coasts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which were battered by severe cyclonic storm "Ockhi."



A total of 243 fishermen in Tamil Nadu, 250 in Kerala and 1,047 people in Lakshadweep have been rescued so far. Relief material is also being provided to inmates in relief camps set up by the government agencies. Around 100 are still missing.

The National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC), chaired by Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha, reviewed the situation.

NCMC took note of another depression forming in the South East Bay of Bengal adjoining South Andaman sea and reviewed the state of preparedness by Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Advisories issued

"Necessary advisories have been issued to fishermen and others. The Chief Secretaries of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Andaman & Nicobar Islands have taken necessary steps to deal with any eventualities occurring in their respective States," an official statement said.



The Cabinet Secretary held a video conference with the Chief Secretaries and the senior officers of the affected States and UTs.

The very severe cyclonic storm "Ockhi" over east central Arabian Sea moved further northwards with a speed of 13 kmph early Monday. It was likely to move North-North Eastward and weaken gradually.

It will then cross coasts of south Gujarat and adjoining North Maharashtra near Surat as a deep depression by midnight of December 5, the statement said.

It also took stock of the state of preparedness in Maharashtra and Gujarat which are likely to be impacted by "Ockhi."

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman visited Kerala, which bore the brunt of the cyclone over the week-end and assured Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of all help. The rescue operations, she said, will continue till every missing fishermen has been brought back safely.



The fishermen's demand for including some of their men in the rescue team had been accepted and already 11 of them have joined the Navy boats and helicopters engaged in the operations, Sitharaman said.
Eight juvenile delinquents escaped from the state-run home for boys in Madiwala, South Bengaluru, on Sunday. One of them returned along with his parents hours later.



The boys, aged between 16 and 18, cut the iron grille and broke a windowpane in a toilet next to their classroom to sneak out between 2.45 pm and 3 pm, a staff member told DH. The boys were part of a group that was watching television in the classroom, the staffer said. After lunch, the boys are supposed to attend a class on non-formal education.

Five of the runaway boys had committed crimes registered at HSR Layout, Tilak Nagar and RT Nagar police stations while three were from Hebbagodi and Thirumalashettyhalli police stations. Four of them already had a criminal record when they were brought to the remand home, the staffer added.

"We have informed the police stations concerned as well as the boys' parents so that they can keep tabs on them," Vasanthi, the superintendent of the observation home, told this newspaper.

Just two weeks ago, six boys had escaped from the remand home but five of them returned later. The boys had cut a roof grille that led to an open area. They did that from a room near the kitchen, according to the staffer.

Vasanthi said it was difficult for the short-staffed remand home to keep watch on 40-50 boys. The boys keep roaming the large campus of the observation home, she added.
For the third time in a week, police shot at a history-sheeter who was fleeing after robbing a man in North Bengaluru in the early hours of Monday. He was injured in the leg.



Ashwath (22) waylaid one Anniyappa at Mariyappa Palya in Rajagopala Nagar, stealing his scooter, mobile phone and a300 in cash. Anniyappa complained to the jurisdictional RMC Yard police. The cops set up bandobast in the area.

Around 2.30 am, a police team spotted Ashwath on ESI Hospital Main Road. When Akash, a constable, tried to catch him, Ashwath purportedly attacked him with a lethal weapon. Mohammad Mukarram, the police inspector, intervened and shot Ashwath in the leg.

The suspect was later admitted to Victoria Hospital while Akash is being treated at KC General Hospital.

"Ashwath didn't surrender despite a warning by the inspector and attacked the constable. The inspector was forced to shoot him in the leg," said Chethan Singh Rathor, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North).

Ashwath is accused of four robberies or thefts and was released on bail just a month ago.
A 64-year-old woman immolated her mentally retarded daughter before setting herself afire on Magadi Road, West Bengaluru, police said.



Rangamma poured kerosene on her daughter, Thimmamma (34), and set her afire around 10.30 am on Sunday. Moments later, she immolated herself in the same manner. Neighbours rushed to the house hearing the women's screams and took them to Victoria Hospital. Both of them had, however, 90% burns and died on Sunday night.

Rangamma's husband Huchaiah had died earlier. She was living in a house belonging to her brother, Rangaswamy, and worked hard to take care of her daughter. Fearing that no one would take care of her daughter after her death, Rangamma decided to take the extreme step, police said.
Credit: FBI(ONSLOW COUNTY, N.C.) -- Earl Kimrey, the man charged with withholding information from North Carolina investigators who were searching for 3-year-old Mariah Woods, appeared before a North Carolina judge on Monday. Mariah was found dead over the weekend in a creek after an extensive search that included FBI officials.



Kimrey, the 32-year-old live-in boyfriend of Mariah's mother, Kristy Woods, answered all of the judge's questions and was held in the Onslow County Detention Center on $1 million bail. His next court appearance is Dec. 18.



He was arrested two days after Kristy Woods made an emotional plea for the safe return of her missing daughter.



"Please, bring her back ... she's my baby, she's my everything," she said in a press conference. "[I] just to be able to touch her and hold her and not let her go again. I'd give anything."



Kimrey is accused of "removing Mariah Woods' body from the scene of her death" and withholding information on Mariah's death, law enforcement said.



The prosecutor has charged him with concealing of death, obstruction of justice, second-degree burglary, felon larceny and possession of stolen property.



ABC News attempts to reach Kimreys attorney were unsuccessful.



Mariah was reported missing on Nov. 27, authorities said.



Officials said a dive team member found the little girl's body around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday in waters in a remote part of Pender County.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
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North Korea said on Sunday that the joint military drill by the US and South Korea that started today could trigger a nuclear war. In comment's that appeared in state-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, North Korea's foreign ministry said the five-day military drill was "all out provocation against" the country, and it may lead to nuclear war "at any moment". It accused the Donald Trump administration of "begging for nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula". Pyongyang will ''seriously consider'' countermeasures against the drill, and the US and South Korea will ''pay dearly for their provocations,'' the Korean Central News Agency said on Sunday before the start of the exercises. The drill took off today just days after North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that landed in the Sea of Japan in the middle of night. North Korea's missile tests are an "imminent threat" to Japan, the Japanese parliament declared today, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said talking to the reclusive state was meaningless. The upper house unanimously adopted a resolution protesting against the North's firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile that dropped into the sea inside Japan's exclusive economic zone. Hundreds of aircraft including two dozen stealth jets began training today as the United States and South Korea launched their biggest-ever combined air force exercise. The five-day drill, which is called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies wartime capabilities, South Korea's defence ministry said. The US Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets that include six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets for the annual training exercise in the Korean Peninsula, which this year is bigger than ever. About 12,000 US military personnel are participating. Some local media reported that B-1B bombers will also join aerial drills. Tensions are at a particularly dangerous point as North Korea edges toward its goal of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, and President Donald Trump uses aggressive rhetoric toward the North, threatening, for instance, ''fire and fury'' toward the country. While many South Koreans typically ignore North Korea's rhetoric, some senior American officials have expressed worry following the ICBM test, North Korea's third. On Sunday, Lindsey Graham, a US senator from the state of South Carolina, said he believes that it's time for US military families in South Korea to leave the country because conflict with North Korea is getting close. The US government has not announced a formal decision to evacuate US citizens from South Korea, and there were no such signs in the diplomatic community in Seoul. In addition to American diplomats and other embassy workers, about 28,500 US troops operate in South Korea, and many come to their posts with their families, who often live on huge, well-guarded military bases. Also on Sunday, the White House national security adviser said that Trump will take care of North Korean threats by ''doing more ourselves.'' ''The priorities that the president has given us are to move as quickly as we can to resolve this crisis with North Korea,'' General H R McMaster told Fox News in an interview. ''If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it, because he has said he's not going to allow this murderous rogue regime to threaten the United States.''








Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday inaugurated the first phase of the Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, opening a new strategic route connecting Iran, India and Afghanistan bypassing Pakistan.

The port in the Sistan-Balochistan province on Iran's southern coast, is easily accessible from India's western coast and is located around 80 km from Pakistan's Gwadar port, which is being developed with Chinese investment.

India's minister of state for shipping Pon Radhakrishnan represented India at the inauguration ceremony of Phase 1 of the Shahid Beheshti Port at Chabahar, which was also attended by ambassadors and senior officials of the region.

At an India-Iran-Afghanistan ministerial-level trilateral meeting held on the sidelines of the inaugural function on Sunday the three countries resolved to work towards integrated development of connectivity infrastructure, including ports, road and rail networks to open up greater opportunities for regional market access and integration of their economies.

India has contracted to equip and operate two berths in Chabahar Port Phase-I with capital investment of $85.21 million and annual revenue expenditure of $22.95 million on a 10-year lease.

The port will give Iran the closest link to the Indian Ocean and more than triple the country's shipping capacity and pose a challenge to Pakistan's Gwadar Port, which is some 80 km away.

The $340-million project was constructed by Khatam al-Anbia, a company affiliated to the Revolutionary Guard and the largest contractor of government construction projects.

It brings the capacity of the port to 8.5 million tonnes of cargo annually, from the previous 2.5 million tonnes.

The port facilities now include five new piers, two of them allowing docking of container vessels with up to 100,000 tonnes captaincy.

Rouhani, in his inauguration speech and said the port will bring ''more engagement and unity'' among regional countries. ''We should go after positive competition,'' he said. ''We welcome other ports in the region, we welcome Gwadar's development.''

Iranian state TV said the inauguration was attended by dignitaries from India, Qatar, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries.

For India, which has committed $500 million for the development of the Chabahar port along with associated roads and rail lines, the investment is important since the port will open a trade route for land-locked Central Asian countries bypassing Pakistan.

Last month India shipped the first consignment of a planned 1300,000 tonne wheat supply to Afghanistan through the Chabahar port.

Chabahar also has an international airport and Iran's Navy and Air Force have bases in the city, adding to the port's value.
At this busy seasonal time, An Garda Siochana wishes to advise of the continuing existence of Invoice Redirect Fraud and urges businesses to remind employees to treat any request to change supplier bank account details with extreme caution. Losses amounting to over 700,000 have been reported to Gardai in the last month.



Invoice Redirect Fraud is a crime targeting businesses working with suppliers and businesses that regularly perform online financial transactions.

In the last month alone there have been numerous attempts in relation to this type of fraud in excess of 1.3 million with actual losses amounting to over 700,000. An Garda Siochana works very closely with the Financial Institution in this regard who have intercepted many transactions of this nature however it can be difficult to recover funds once they have left the jurisdiction so prompt reporting is critical.

In crimes of this nature, criminals send emails to businesses purporting to be one of their legitimate suppliers. These emails contain an instruction to change the bank account details that the business has for a legitimate supplier, to bank account details that ultimately benefit the criminals. These requests can also come by way of letter or phone call so caution should attach to any request of this nature.

The criminal intention is that when the legitimate supplier next sends an invoice to the company seeking payment for services rendered or goods supplied, the victim business acts on the new banking instructions and sends the payment to the criminals bank account where the funds are quickly transferred or withdrawn. In many instances the business does not know it is a victim of this crime until sometime later when the legitimate supplier sends a reminder invoice for payment.

Robust policies

Businesses must ensure that they have robust policies and procedures in place to deal with requests of this nature including escalating the decision making function to supervisory positions and making direct contact with a trusted known person in the suppliers organisation. In this context it is imperative that a suitable known contact person is identified before a business relationship commences with the supplier.

If a business relationship has already commenced and no such checks are in place and a request of this nature is received; independent contact should be made with the supplier to verify the contents of the email. Under no circumstances should contact details contained in the email or attachments be relied upon to verify the request whether these consist of a physical address, an email address or a phone number. In that context, all existing business relationships should be reviewed without delay and defensive policies and procedures put in place.

It is important to note that victims of Invoice Redirect Fraud range from very small businesses to large corporations and the consequences of falling for a scam of this nature can be catastrophic and can result in the closure of businesses and redundancies so all employees should receive training in relation to avoiding this type of scam.
Ibec, the group that represents Irish business, has welcomed the announcement that work is to begin on the first phase of the A5 upgrade, from Newbuildings to Strabane.

Ibec North West Regional Director Terry MacNamara stated: The advancement of the A5 is of great strategic importance to the North West. Infrastructure is the backbone of everyday life, underpinning all economic activity. The upgrade of the A5 will be a vital boost to the North West's economy and a crucial step forward in connecting the North West to Dublin. Ibec has actively lobbied for ambitious proposals to upgrade the all-island transport network. The A5 is a crucial artery of this network and is currently unfit for purpose.

Land purchases are also set to begin in early 2018 for the new Lifford to Letterkenny N14 road. The road will connect to the new A5. This is a welcome development as improved cross border connectivity will support economic growth, help create jobs and promote investment in the North West. It is vital for the continued economic recovery of the region.

Funding

It is essential that funding is now agreed for the remaining two phases of the A5 upgrade as well as the upgrade of the A6. Enhanced connectivity is particularly important given current uncertainties and challenges created by Brexit.

Ibec North West has raised serious concerns for the future growth of the region and calls on Government to address the long-standing issue of lack of prioritisation of the region in the soon to be finalised National Planning Framework (NPF) and National Investment Plan (NIP). Investment in the N4 Sligo-Dublin and the Atlantic corridor routes are vital in countering the challenges of peripherality and perceived remoteness of the North West.

The NPF must prioritise the two regional urban centres of Sligo and Letterkenny-Derry. Channelling growth to these two important urban centres would support targeted population growth and help achieve wider regional and national planning objectives.

The task now is to ensure the North West region is not deprived but instead is given an opportunity to capitalise on the many advantages it has to offer as a place to live, do business, create jobs and invest. The NPF and the NIP will both be central to this.
A Donegal woman who scooped prizes to the value of 27,000 on the National Lottery Winning Streak gameshow on RTE ONE last Saturday said her appearance on the programme was down to her late husband, Seamus.

Emily Lynch, from Lifford, revealed that her house was full of relatives and close friends who had attended her late husbands anniversary Mass when her name was pulled out of the drum to appear on the show.

Emily said her good luck was sent as a gift from Seamus, who passed away two years ago, and came at the end of what has been a tough couple of years.

She said the whole house went bananas and there was uproar when her name was called out and there was a great night of celebrations.

Emily had no shortage of support on the show on Saturday as she has nine siblings  five brothers and five sisters - who all travelled to RTE. Also accompanying her were her children Michael, Seamus and Lisa and grandchildren Daisy, Travis, Millie, Cara and Junior. Her mother, Frances who is 87 years old, was delighted to be in the audience for the show after being a fan of the show for many years.

Emily scooped a holiday to Venice, Italy worth 3,000 and bagged herself a tidy 24,000 - plenty of spending money for her travels. With her winnings, Emily wants to do some home improvements and said some will go towards helping out her son Seamus, who will marry his partner Sheena next April.

The winning ticket was bought from Statoil, Letterkenny Road, Lifford.
Letterkenny University Hospital had the fifth highest number of patients on trolleys for the month of November. INMO trolley/ward figures for November show that there were 502 patients on trolleys in Letterkenny.

The hospitals with the highest number of patients on trolleys, in November were:

University Hospital Limerick: 878

University Hospital Cork: 651

University Hospital Waterford: 624

University Hospital Galway: 539

Nationally the latest Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) Trolley/Ward Watch figures confirm the number of admitted patients (91,147), on trolleys or overcrowded wards, continues at record levels in the first eleven months of this year (tables attached). This is a 6% increase, on the first eleven month of 2016, and a 95% increase on the first eleven months of 2007.

However the latest figures, for the month of November, confirm a 7% reduction when compared to November 2016. This is broken down as follows:

6,212 admitted patients, on trolleys, in Emergency Departments and 2,476 admitted patients, on trolleys/extra beds on inpatient wards.

This gives a total of 8,688 admitted patients, without a proper inpatient bed, in November 2017.

The ED Taskforce meets this Thursday, 7th of December at which the INMO will again be seeking confirmation that all hospitals are allowed/resourced to do the following:

Open all available beds;

Introduce incentivised recruitment/retention packages to ensure additional nursing staff are employed to deal with this continuing demand;

Ensure senior clinical decision makers are available, between 8am and 10pm, over the seven day cycle; and

Ensure all available resources are provided for community beds/home care packages and community nursing requirements leading to no waiting lists for same.



Speaking this morning, INMO General Secretary, Liam Doran said: The latest November figures confirm a welcome 7% reduction in the number of admitted patients, without a bed, in November, compared to November 2016. The reduction, in the numbers on trolleys in Emergency Departments, is particularly welcome. However, the very significant increase in additional patients on inpatient wards, on trolleys or additional beds is most disturbing and suggests hospital management are increasingly repeating the mistakes of the past. Overcrowding wards has never solved the problem, of hospital overcrowding, and this will only be done through additional acute beds.

Mr. Doran concluded: The INMO will be raising these latest figures, at the ED Taskforce meeting on Thursday. We will be seeking clarity on what further measures are planned, in addition to the four demands outlined above, to address the continuing overcrowding crisis.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the appeal of a local man convicted of killing another man in 1992 in what became known locally as the Waller Store murder.

Christopher Floyd, convicted in 2005 of the 1992 murder of Waylon Crawford, argued that prosecutors struck blacks from serving on the jury solely because of race. Floyds appeals were eventually denied at the state level and attorneys appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to consider the case Monday.

Although both defendant and victim are white, a recent Supreme Court ruling concluded minorities cant be excluded from a jury on race alone, regardless of the races involved in the case.

Floyd claimed on appeal that the prosecution used more than half of its peremptory strikes to exclude 10 of the 11 remaining African-Americans from the jury pool during jury selection. Local prosecutors claimed legitimate reasons for striking the jurors, ranging from prior criminal convictions to personal opposition to the death penalty to simply being non-responsive during screening questions from the prosecutors.

On an earlier appeal to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, the court sent the case back to Houston County, ordering the local court to hold a hearing in which prosecutors were required to give a non-racial reason for striking each of the black jurors.

According to reports, Floyd killed Crawford during a robbery at the convenience store where Crawford worked. The case had grown cold until new information allowed authorities to make an arrest in 2005. Floyd was sentenced to death.
Local restaurant China Town, Main Street, Castlebellingham has been served with a closure order for breaches of food safety legislation during the last month, according to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI).

The order was served on December 1st.

Under the FSAI Act, 1998, a Closure Order is served where it is deemed that there is or there is likely to be a grave and immediate danger to public health at or in the premises; or where an Improvement Order is not complied with.

Closure Orders can refer to the immediate closure of all or part of the food premises, or all or some of its activities.

Under the EC (Official Control of Foodstuffs) Regulations, 2010, Closure Orders and Prohibition Orders are served where there is a non-compliance with food legislation

Closure and Improvement Orders will remain in the reports for a period of three months from the date the order was lifted. Prohibition Orders will remain in the reports for a period of one month from the date the order was lifted.
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Pupils from St Francis National School, Blackrock, took part in the Team Hope Christmas shoebox appeal and made up over 200 shoeboxes filled with gifts for vulnerable children in countries throughout the world, through the Team Hope partnership network.

The shoeboxes were recently collected from the school by the area coordinator, but not before a group photograph was taken.

"Since the school was established ten years ago, pupils have taken part in the shoebox appeal", said school principal, Oreena Lawless.

"It's therefore a cause that our pupils and their families are familiar with and the support and generosity of parents is simply overwhelming. The shoebox appeal is a fun and easy way to get the message to pupils that Christmas is about giving.

Team Hope collects shoe boxes which have been filled with gifts, and send them all over the world, giving to children who normally receive nothing for Christmas. This small and generous gesture means so much to the children who receive theses boxes.

You can find out more about Team Hope by visiting http://www.teamhope.ie
A 21-year-old student from Dundalk has been announced as a runner-up in the A&L Goodbody Bold Ideas Student Innovation Award.

Dylan Markey, a Law & Business degree student at Maynooth University, was commended for his proposal to establish a crowdsourcing business called ' Soncom '. The overall winner was Conor Leavy from DCU.



The local student's idea aims to help Irish businesses ahead of the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) next year.



Soncom is billed as an intermediary for businesses in the IT and legal sectors whose primary purpose would be to provide services for companies that allow them to comply with new GDPR protection legislation.



The A&L Goodbody has held the Bold Ideas competition saw over 1,200 members of the public cast their vote on Facebook for their favourite submissions. The winner and runners-up were selected by a panel of three expert judges, in what marked the sixth year of the competition.



John Whelan, Partner and Head of A&L Goodbody's Commercial and Technology Group said: "Bold Ideas inspires creativity and bold thinking among students and this year it gave students the opportunity to showcase great ideas to enhance Ireland as a global centre for data when the EU GDPR is introduced next year. Dylan's idea impressed the judges as an innovative and unique way to encourage businesses to establish here."



Dylan and fellow runner-up Aine McCarthy from Trinity College Dublin both received iPad minis for their innovative ideas. As a first prize winner, Conor Leavy received 4,000 in cash and an internship in A&L Goodbodys Head Office in Dublin.The firm will also make a donation to a charity of his/her choice.
A plan for the future of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument includes the National Park Services preference for building a new 10,600-square-foot visitor center on the footprint of the current center and bringing back some if not all of the tens of thousands of battlefield artifacts now being stored for safekeeping in Tucson, Arizona.

Park officials are accepting comments on the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument General Management Plan Amendment and Environmental Assessment through Jan. 4, 2018. The only scheduled meeting on the EA will be held via a conference call from 2 p.m. through 4 p.m. Dec. 14. Phone 866-714-0783 and use participant code 4244998#.

Right now we are in the information-gathering stage. We want to hear anything we may or may not be aware of, said Wayne Challoner, superintendent at the Little Bighorn Battlefield monument for the past month. We are trying to see if we can go in and rebuild in the same footprint with a new and better-designed facility. Getting those artifacts back has always been the goal.

Theres no construction timetable in the plan, and theres no guarantee that funding will be available.

"We want to make sure the public buys in on what we are trying to do," Challoner said.

According to the plan, the decision to move artifacts to the park services Western Archaeological and Conservation Center in Tucson was strongly opposed by tribal members who felt the move would disconnect their attachment to items of cultural importance associated with the battlefield site.  Restoring the trust relationship is essential to future park management and cooperation and consultation with the tribes and other stakeholders.

The NPS says its committed to returning the collections to the monument and providing secure on-site curatorial storage.

The preferred alternative would bring an end to the current summertime practice of up to 200 visitors at a time squeezing together to hear a ranger deliver a talk beneath a partial overhang outside the visitor center.

Rebuilding in the footprint of the existing visitor center would give visitors an entry experience, which includes seeing key elements of the battlefield from the visitor centers windows and patios and creating a place-based context for their visit," the plan states.

Before the visitor center is demolished and rebuilt, an interim remodel of the current visitor center would provide for updated interim exhibits, including the removal and relocation of existing objects and new exhibit construction and installation.

The plan states its possible that a 7,000-square-foot collections facility will be built near the existing administration building.

Five alternatives were considered and then dismissed:

Leasing a new visitor center and museum storage facility in the Garryowen area. The plan calls this alternative unreasonably expensive.

Leasing facilities in the Reno Creek Road area. These modifications would present the history of the battle chronologically but would be costly, the plan states.

Building facilities on Custer Battlefield Preservation Committee land. The 11 percent grades on the site far exceed the normal construction threshold of 5 percent.

Locating administrative offices outside the park. Plan writers eliminated this alternative because of technical and economic infeasibility.

Leasing facilities as part of the proposed Montana Department of Transportation Battlefield Rest Area. The rest area is conceptual until MDT and the Crow Tribe sign a lease agreement. The park has a compelling need to move forward to address its issues, and this alternative may or may not proceed in the near future, the document states.

Visitation at Little Bighorn has been up in recent years  from about 278,000 in 2013 to more than 332,000 in 2016, an increase of almost 20 percent.
A man has pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide after striking and killing a motorcyclist last year while having nearly four times the legal amount of THC in his blood.

Kent Roderick Jensen, 21, made the change of plea Monday before Judge Gregory Todd in Yellowstone County District Court.

The state will recommend a sentence of 20 years in prison, according to a plea agreement. The maximum penalty for the charge is 30 years in prison.

On March 7, 2016, Jensen, 21, struck and killed Jashua James Fry, 31, of Billings. Fry was riding a Kawasaki motorcycle eastbound on South Frontage Road when he was hit by a car that had turned west off Wise Lane, according to the Montana Highway Patrol.

The crash was reported at about 6:40 p.m., and Fry was declared dead at the scene.

Jensen stayed at the scene until law enforcement arrived and consented to a blood draw. The draw showed he had 19 nanograms per milliliter of THC in his system. Under Montana law, 5 ng/mL of THC constitutes a DUI.

According to charging documents, Jensen told deputies he was driving to a Subway restaurant from a friends house when the crash occurred. The friend told deputies he and Jensen had smoked marijuana for most of the day.

Jensen will remain out on release before sentencing. A sentencing date has not yet been set.

Jensen retains the right to appeal the judges ruling on his constitutional challenge. In July, Todd denied Jensens request to challenge the THC threshold laid out in Montanas DUI law, arguing it is not scientifically based.

In his arguments, public defender Gregory Paskell cited a 2016 report from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety that cast doubt on a specific level of THC impairment, because tolerance varies considerably between people. He called on a chemist from a Colorado pharmaceutical testing lab, who testified that he agreed with those claims.

Todd said that while the science may not be precise on impairment, the goal of the law was to reduce impaired driving.

"Currently there may be no method for precisely measuring the distracting effects of THC on a person," Todd wrote in his order. "But it is scientifically proven that THC had major psychoactive effects on people, and driving while under its effects poses a major risk to the driver and the public."
A man whose headless body was found in a transient camp in mid-November told casino staff as he left one night that if anything happened to him, Donald Cherry and Jeffrey Haverty would be responsible.

The information was included in charging documents filed against Cherry, 31, and Haverty, 33, on Monday.

Both men face a charge of deliberate homicide, which is punishable by life imprisonment, or by 10 to 100 years in prison, plus a consecutive two to 10 years for use of a dangerous weapon. The men made their initial appearances in Yellowstone County Justice Court on Monday.

Justice of the Peace David Carter set bond for both men at $500,000 and required GPS monitoring should either be released. Cherry and Haverty will appear next in front of Judge Mary Jane Knisely on Dec. 21.

The body of Myron Wesley Knight, 41, of Billings, was found in a transient camp near 32nd Street West and Gabel Road on Nov. 15. Two people walking on a dirt trail near the canal west of Billings Collision Repair discovered the body, according to the Billings Police Department.

But he likely was killed weeks earlier, according to charges.

Haverty, Cherry and Knight had been together at Montana Lils Casino, 2850 King Ave. W., on the night of Oct. 26. Knight asked a casino employee to hold his $120 in winnings for the night in case Haverty and Cherry wanted to rob him, the employee told police.

Knight also told the employee that if he did not come back, that Haverty and Cherry would be responsible. He was going to check out Havertys tent that was set up nearby, he said.

All three were regular customers at the casino and known to staff.

The three left the casino together at 10 p.m. Knight had wanted to see the campsite, Haverty later told investigators. Haverty and Cherry had been camping in a wooded area near 32nd Street West and Gabel Road.

Cherrys girlfriend, identified in the charges only as Z.W., told police she had stayed at the transient camp with Haverty and Cherry, and was there on the night of Knights death.

On the night of Oct. 26, the three men arrived at the campsite, Z.W. left to go to a gas station nearby and returned 15 to 20 minutes later. At that time, Knights body was lying on the ground and there was blood on his neck, she told police. She said it looked like he wasnt breathing, she said.

Z.W. watched Haverty begin cutting Knights head off, she said. He stopped when it became difficult, and Cherry took over. Knights head was found about 30 feet away from the body, wrapped in a towel and covered with leaves.

The decapitation, she told police, was part of the men's plan to dispose of the body. But they never burned Knight's remains in a fire pit as they planned, she said.

Knight had just $6 on him when he was killed, Z.W. said, and Haverty was angry because he expected him to have much more.

Z.W. said she went gambling at the Magic Diamond Casino, 3150 King Ave. W., with Haverty and Cherry after they killed Knight.

In separate statements to police, Haverty and Cherry said they didnt know how Knight died and were not involved.

Knight likely was still alive when his killers began cutting off his head, said Dr. Robert Kurtzman, state medical examiner, who assessed bruising around the neck wounds.

The autopsy also showed multiple blunt force traumas, indicating Knight had been beaten.

Haverty had lost his job, been kicked out of his apartment in late August, and had had his truck stolen, he said in statements to casino staff and to police. Cherry, his friend, had told him about the campsite near 32nd Street West and Gabel Road.

On Halloween, a man entered Montana Lils Casino with a bleeding head wound, asking to use the phone. He did not say what happened to him, but a couple of days later Haverty was at the casino and told staff he had hit the man with his hatchet while they were smoking.

Casino staff also told police about a separate incident in which Haverty came into the casino and was flailing his hatchet around, saying a man outside had tried to shoot him. The last time the casino staff reported seeing Haverty was on Nov. 3, when he said he planned to move to Arizona.

U.S. Marshals Service deputies with the Montana Violent Offender Task Force found and arrested Haverty at a friends house on the West End on Nov. 18. The friend later told police Haverty had asked her how to wash blood out of clothing, charges state.

Haverty has a criminal history.

He had been serving probation on a suspended sentence for criminal endangerment out of Wheatland County from April.

Charging documents state that in July 2016, Haverty rubbed his own feces in his partners face and assaulted her and their 1-year-old child.

Haverty was also convicted of partner or family member assault in Harlowton in 2014.

He also faces a felony drug possession charge from the Nov. 18 arrest because he was found with meth residue on a pipe in his pocket, charges state.
Recently we flew to Bohol on-board an AirAsia flight and in there two World Vision celebrity ambassador spoke in-flight to tell passengers about how flying with AirAsia help World Vision kids #SeetheWorld.

See the World is a fund raising initiative that aims to raise one million pesos (Php1M) to provide sponsorship program for many children as direct recipients across the country. The initiatibe sets that for everh AirAsia seats booked or sold in the Philippines from December 1 to 31 2017 , five pesos (Php5) will be automatically donated tl World Vision Child Sponsorship program.

Tippy Dos Santos and Gretchen Ho were the celebrity ambassadors on our flight who told passengers about this info. They also were on that flight to Bohol to see some of the beneficiary children of World Vision program.

I was with them when they met some kids in Barangay Oy, Loboc, Bohol to give inspiration to the kids to oursue their education and secure a better future.

It was such a heartwarming trip as kids were very enthusiastic and thankful for the gift of education World Vision has provided them. They promised to be good in school so as the sponsorship will not be put to waste.

AirAsia Regional Chief Operating Officer Pete ChReonwongski said the collaboration between AirAsia and World Vision is part of their Christmas program which also represents another step forward in the companys commitment to the philosophy that no corporation can live apart from the community it serves.

World Vision Philippines National Director Rommel Fuerte was very grateful of the initiative as this can ensure that every peso that will be donated to World Vision will help a lot of underprivileged Filipino children strain their dreams of a better life.

Aside from. The fund raising efforts #SeetheWorld will feature inspiring stories of children from impoverished communities around the country whose lives have changed and caused other children and community aspire for better living conditions.

AirAsia will run a web series online available in AirAsiaPhilippines facebook.

Keep updated with the initiative by searching for the #SeetheWorld hastag and #AirAsiaWorldVision.
Electoral choices are increasingly made without due regard for the consequences.

Some of our friends tell us that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. This is not really correct. Only bits and pieces of the world are being carried to hell or some place near it, with each in a handbasket of its own. Other bits and pieces duly replace what is carried away. We can observe three particular handbaskets on their way to some place that is not hell, but near enough in their discomfort. One is Catalonian secession, another is Brexit, and the third is America First. These are noted in increasing order of importance.

Independence for Catalonia is perhaps best understood by thinking of a teacher in a Catalonian village who is a poet writing verse in Catalan in his spare time. He thinks his poetry is very good but not appreciated. He is dreaming of the post of cultural attache in London or Rome once Catalan gets an independent diplomatic service. There may be many hundreds of Catalonian teacher-poets who hope to become diplomats in a fashionable capital, but the low probabilities of prestigious appointments for a new Catalan embassy will not deter him from becoming a fighter for Catalonia independence. The fight will have an outcome that Catalans and Spaniards will both regard as a regrettable modus vivendi, one in which the European Union is further weakened. Both the Catalans and the remainder of Spain will be a little weaker and poorer than if the independence movement had not taken place at all, and where our teacher poet does not become a cultural attache. The rule of one man, one vote will in any case have done its work.

An ever closer union could be a one-line explanation for why the British people in 2016 decided by referendum to leave the European Union. And now Frances ambitious young president, Emmanuel Macron, is doing what he believes to be the natural role of France, that is to lead the union towards an ever closer union; and there is some temptation by Poland and Hungary to escape the ever closer union by referendums of their own, should the union get ever closer. There might be many more opportunities for one man, one vote in the foreseeable future.

It is easy to see why universal suffrage and one man, one vote are particularly vulnerable to fact twisting and downright lies.

A referendum attempts to decide a single question. The question can either be to decide what a majority wants as a matter of taste or as a matter of interest. Like a person who prefers blue to green, his decision for one over the other is nothing one can meaningfully argue about. The British public has apparently decided that certain decisions of national significance should be decided in Westminster rather than Brussels or Luxembourg, and in doing so, they reverted to the ancient tradition by which Britons want to govern themselves. The referendum at the same time chose certain other alternatives, mainly of an economic nature, which were not matters of taste, preference, or tradition, but calculations about greater or lesser prosperity. This type of question, unlike the question of liking blue over green is a legitimate question for fact-finding and argument. Unfortunately, there can also be matters of twisted facts or lies. It is easy to see why universal suffrage and one man, one vote are particularly vulnerable to fact twisting and downright lies. Their vulnerability must be weighed against the possible merits that democracy might also have.

Perhaps because it was a decision that brought out many passions, the British referendum of 2016 has proved very vulnerable to fact twisting and lies. An exquisite lie about Brexit was that it would make the National Health Service rich. The British government was paying 350 million per week to Brussels. The British electorate was asked by the partisans of Brexit whether they would like to continue paying this sum to Brussels or to the services of the NHS. It was a matter of a primitive psychological trick to name the sum in terms of weeks and millions rather than years and billions, a much vaster sum, which the average voter could barely envisage. The UK Statistics Authority has explained that in terms of a rebate granted by the Brussels authority, the sum that Britain owed was only 276 million, of which 161 million was spent in Britain itself, with the remainder being spent on EU-wide community services like research, in which the United Kingdom was one of the beneficiaries. With all the adjustments duly made, the residual that might be devoted to the NHS is only pocket money.

Overall, the 350 million to be found is perhaps the simplest instance where the people who have the votes have been misled into using them. There are still other cases where the referendum has led to future outcomes that entail use risks. British foreign trade, for example, would have to compensate for the part lost from Brexit with gains from outside the European Union. They may not succeed fully or indeed at all. For the compensation, or the part (lost) in future trade will depend largely on how the people are using their votes. This is a risk that the exercise of one man, one vote ought not to be entrusted with.

It is strange but true that China is now a champion of an open world economy and the United States a defender of closed fences. Since starting another five year term at the head of the Chinese state apparatus, Mr. Xi Jinping has made a very clear and solemn declaration in favour of globalisation and free trade, being the leader of the only communist party in history which is both capitalist in its economic policy and apparently successful in suppressing any opposition. Donald Trump, at about the same time and indeed at all times when he is commenting his own greatness, will only accept globalisation and free trade when they are subordinate to America First.

Being the President of a country in which the Congress has the last word about taxes and expenditures, Donald Trump has only limited power over the economy of what is still the most important capitalist country of the world. Much of his discretionary power is over relations with other countries, where he can menace the post-World War II western civilisation, both in terms of military security (he does not want to tolerate the free-riding of his allies on US armed forces) as well as in international trade, where he thinks that existing arrangements are not good enough for America.

A trade agreement can be conceived as both a trade creation and a trade replacement. In the North American Free Trade Agreement inherited from the Obama administration, America and Mexico jointly created additional flows of automobiles, with some of the manufacturing of automobile part relocated to Mexico. The two partners have benefited from more automobiles, and Mexico has additionally benefited from more automobile parts. Of the two partners, Mexico may have benefited more, although both partners became better off. In what looks like the spirit of America First, this agreement is now to be renegotiated. In the background of this renegotiation, America wants the trade balance between the two partners, at present favourable to Mexico, to be redressed in favour of America. The dream of nine feet of concrete wall on the Mexican border paid for by Mexico, promised in Trumps election campaign, has apparently been forgotten.

Another trade agreement, which was stillborn because President Trump and his advisers judged it not favourable enough, was the Trans Pacific Partnership. It included twelve countries in Southeast Asia and South America. The United States was merely one out of twelve partners, which was judged unacceptable by the White House. President Trump dislikes multi-lateral agreements where the United States is only one out of many, and must bargain as only one out of many. The remaining eleven members of the agreement are now trying to revive it; if they succeed, the eleven-member agreement would bring important developments in trade and regulation, and will no doubt be something that China will influence instead of the United States, as was originally intended. However, it will not be the first and only failure of American diplomacy and American goodwill that the Trump administration will have suffered.

Donald Trump can be proud of a highly successful career in financing building and letting high-rise buildings. Industry circles and a mainly hostile press reproach him for his methods, which have been controversial. The first year of his presidency has not been heroic because none of his major promises have been completed or are even likely to be realised. His most friendly critics think that he is just not presidential, while his harshest critics call him simply grotesque.

It may be that Donald Trump, a property speculator all his life, does not really deserve the criticism that he receives as President. The really blameworthy criticism should go to one half of the American men and women who have used their precious vote for electing the President of the most powerful nation (at least for the time being the most powerful) of which they have the great good fortune to be citizens.
(Photo: Wikipedia)Jim Wallis at the World Economic Forum

Two evangelical Christian leaders, Jim Wallis and Hershael York, have told National Public Radio that there is a crisis of spirituality in the current political climate of the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump.

NPR host Michael Martin noted in the interview he surmised from Wallis's writing that he believes that Christians' support for Donald Trump is something of an ethical challenge for Christians.

Political activist and writer Rev. Wallis replied, "I think these issues are much deeper than politics. Many of us feel politically homeless these days, But the racial divide is of deep concern to me.

"So, when white evangelicals say to black evangelicals, I didn't vote for Donald Trump because of his racial bigotry but because of other issues like the ones you mentioned, the response often back from black evangelicals is, so his racial bigotry wasn't a deal breaker for you, I guess? And we're really having to repair that divide."

Martin asked York, if he agreed there is a crisis among American Christians, and he believes that plays some role in that?

"Yes. I think we are in danger of, as evangelicals, losing influence for the gospel's sake really for a generation because of this uneasy alliance," he replied.

York, a professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and senior pastor at Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Kentucky said there are two different narratives from the Bible,

"And we want to be faithful even though we're serving someone who is not in agreement with us. But the other narrative we can put on it are the Pharisees conniving with Pontius Pilate.

"The question is, is it collusion, complicity, connivance, or is it capitalization on a unique moment in history to shape the future through judicial appointments? It's a really difficult moment for evangelicals."

EVANGELICAL SUPPORT FOR TRUMP AND MOORE

York was asked why he thinks that so many white Christian evangelicals supported Donald Trump and Roy Moore who is standing as a Republic Party candidate in a Senate election contest in Alabama.

This is despite calls from his GOP (Grand Old Party) office bearers for accused child molester Moore to stand down and his refusal to so while he is now getting full backing from accused molester of women, Trump.

"Well, I think that in their minds, they've made a - basically a prioritization of issues. And for a lot of evangelicals, the abortion issue is the number-one issue.

"And so, they are willing to make peace with any flawed politician who will fight abortion and stand for other things.

"I think the rapid change on the gay-marriage issue and a lot of evangelicals felt like there was really an undue pressure to go beyond simply understanding that this is now in society to having to accommodate it and - against one's own personal convictions."

When Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine, was asked why he thinks so many evangelicals, particularly white evangelicals, are supporting Donald Trump.

He replied that the polling he had seen shows something different," that most white evangelicals are supporting Donald Trump because of immigration.

"They're angry toward immigrants or guns or, as evangelical pastors often tell me, I've got them for three hours - two hours a week and Fox News has them every day. It's that agenda. It's a political agenda."

Wallis added, however that Pastor York is right, that they care about things like abortion and marriage and family, "but even there, to have Donald Trump as a champion for those things is rather incredible.

"This man as a defender of marriage is quite ridiculous. And, in fact, this president-supported-and-Republican-passed tax bill just now will hurt poor families, taking away food and education and health care. And the abortion rates will go up. I believe in a consistent ethic of life."


By LA Times , Dec 01 , 2017





For decades, millions of Mexicans crossed into the U.S. in one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. But stricter immigration enforcement and new opportunities in Mexico have reversed the trend. Now, many are returning to towns like Malinalco, a rural community southwest of Mexico City. But coming home, it turns out, can be complicated.



As the cell door slammed behind him at an immigrant detention center in Detroit, Jose Roberto Tetatzin knew his life as an American was about to come to an abrupt end.



He thought about all the things he had acquired over 10 years of hard work in Michigan: the apartment full of furniture, the cool clothes, the cars.




In the next week or so, Washington regulators will rule on a major utility rate case affecting 1.6 million customers in their state and coal-fired plants in Colstrip.

Colstrip supplies 20 percent of the power distributed by Puget Sound Energy, which owns 50 percent of Colstrip Units 1 and 2 and about 25 percent of Units 3 and 4. Together, the four units and the coal mine that fuels them provide most of the jobs and nearly 80 percent of the tax base for the town of 2,300 Montanans.

Two points in this case before the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission directly affect Colstrip. A settlement agreement signed in September by PSE, Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, the Sierra Club, National Resource Defense Council, Northwest Energy Coalition, Renewable Northwest and Natural Resources Defense Council proposes that:

PSE will pay $10 million to help the community of Colstrip transition with the closure of Units 1 and 2 by the middle of 2022. Details of how that money will be paid have not been set, but PSE has said it should include worker retraining.

PSE will accelerate payoff of its share of debt on Units 3 and 4, so it is completely paid off in 2027. This would require an increase in PSE customers rates. Units 3 and 4 wouldnt necessarily close in 2027.

The WUTC is deciding whether to accept the proposed settlement. All parties signed it, except for the Washington state consumer advocate.

Talen, the company that owns the other 50 percent of Units 1 and 2, isnt a regulated utility; it markets power to utilities and other customers. Talen hasnt agreed to payments to assist the Colstrip community, but it will be legally responsible for a share of the cleanup costs that are still being calculated by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

As a net energy exporter, Montana is largely at the mercy of distant markets and forces beyond our control. Montana law and leaders must hold energy producers accountable for the impacts they incur in our state.

Colstrip 1 and 2 will require decades of cleanup with costs running over $100 million, according to Steve Secrist, PSE senior vice president and general counsel. Secrist, who helped negotiate the proposed rate case settlement, said the cleanup will create nearly 100 jobs, approximately as many as would be lost at the plants with the closure.

The need for people to help with remediation is such that no people will be out of work with the step down from 1 and 2, Secrist said on a recent visit to Montana.

State Sen. Duane Ankney, R-Colstrip, is skeptical. There will be loss of jobs, he told The Gazette, noting that coal miners will no longer be mining to supply the two closed units.

Secrist said remediation will create family wage jobs. We want to get solutions, retrain employees, certify them to give certainty to families that they will have work for the next 20 years, Secrist said.

If they assimilate the plant workers, what about the miners? Colstrip Mayor John Williams asked when The Gazette called for his opinion on the proposed $10 million transition fund. I dont know how the $10 million will come, if and when that occurs.

We suggest that PSE representatives meet with the Colstrip city council to discuss the impending shutdown and how that $10 million fund should work.

Regardless of the WUTC decision, Units 1 and 2 are scheduled to close by July 2022, under a court-ordered clean air settlement. Out-of-state customers for the plants power are demanding cleaner energy sources, which also are less expensive.

Change is coming to Colstrip. Coal-fired plants will still produce power for years to come, perhaps many years. The community deserves help in developing new industries.

Last spring, Ankney sponsored Senate Bill 338 that would have held PSE and Talen responsible for transition costs such as loss of local residential and commercial real estate value, outstanding government bond debt that was issued with the expectation of repayment with plant tax revenues and money for transitioning and retraining workers. The Gazette editorialized in support of SB338, which sailed through the Senate, but was killed in House energy committee where lobbyist argued the bill was bad for business. In March, a Gazette opinion said that legislation would be an important start on helping Colstrip.

Now the PSE rate case settlement is an important step in keeping a community that has always depended on coal viable in a changing energy market.
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Each time I come to the defense of public lands, I feel an attack on our state by people that are tasked with doing what constituents explain time and time again that they want: public lands access and respect for the last vestiges of wild places that are the very essence of our state.

We do not want legislation that releases 500,000 acres of Montana's Wilderness Study Areas as a ransom for protecting the Paradise Valley and Yellowstone from people that want to extract wealth, lock the public out and make our state a private playground for the wealthy. Wilderness Study Areas should be resolved through collaborative processes and not this top-down approach to managing our public lands.

Outdoor recreation generates $7.1 billion in consumer spending and supports 71,000 direct jobs in our state. It is essential to Montanas economy, and essential to our way of life.

Why does Sen. Steve Daines want to undermine years of locally driven, collaborative efforts? Montanans are working together to resolve their differences and chart a path forward. Collaboratives are the best way to resolve the status of WSAs.

More than anyone, Daines should understand how much these places mean to Montanans. He must get mountains of correspondence telling you how much public lands mean to people, and how they want this legacy passed to their children. Take the time to read the passion of your constituents. Learn what the collaboratives are doing. Learn the facts about WSAs, and what experts have to say.

I myself cherish these places because they are my peace and comfort, my history and my granddaughters' future.

Frances Galvin

Anaconda
YPG is grateful to US and Russia for the support

The YPG militia said that it had fully captured Deir al-Zors eastern countryside from Islamic State with the help of both the US-led coalition and Russia.

YPG and its allies had been shot by the missiles thrown by Russian warships and submarines. They now control around a quarter of Syria, the largest part outside government control, after seizing vast land from Islamic State.

YPG WAS PLACED INTO THE ZONE

YPG had been girded by the Iran-Russia forces on both sides because of the danger of the oil pool could have been seized by YPG. But today, signs argue against it.

YPG militias said that that it had fully captured Deir al-Zors eastern countryside from DEAS with the help of both the US-led coalition and Russia.

YPG THANKED TO US

It was announced that the area was purified from the DEAS by the help of US military forces.. Spokesman for the YPG, praised US and Russian air and logistical support as well as ground operations coordination. He said his forces are ready to form joint operation rooms with the different partners to complete the fight against DEAS.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said this week that as the battle against Islamic State entered its final stages, he expected the focus to move towards holding territory instead of arming Syrian Kurdish fighters. Mattis said "The YPG is armed and as the coalition stops operations, then obviously you don't need that, you need security forces, you need police forces. That's local forces, that's people who make certain that DAES doesn't come back."

Turkey, which considers YPG in the force an extension of its own insurgent group, has protested Washingtons reliance on the YPG, as well as the provision of heavy weaponry to its fighters, in the fight against DEAS.
Disney has decided to remove Olaf's Frozen Adventure from Coco. The 22-minute Frozen short has been playing before Coco screenings since the latter premiered last month.

Starting Dec. 8, Olaf's Frozen Adventure will no longer air alongside Coco, and the freed up time will be used to provide more screenings of the animated film in various theaters.

It is not new for Pixar to unveil a completely unrelated short film alongside their main animated projects, but the shorts are called as such for a reason. Normally, the special films would only last for 10 minutes.

Disney Removes 'Olaf's Frozen Adventure' From Theaters

The special story, which centered on Olaf, lasted for a good 21 minutes, and fans were reportedly not happy to stay inside the movie house for a much longer period of time.

As of late, Disney has not released an official statement regarding the removal of Olaf's Frozen Adventure. However, someone who claimed to work for a movie theater released a note that allegedly came from Disney.

"Please note that the run of Olaf's Frozen Adventure playing before Coco will end after 12/7. Starting on Friday 12/8 no more Olaf shorts should be up on screen. With the extra 22 minutes of running time back, we would appreciate if you could get in an extra show if possible," read the note.

However, it is unclear whether or Olaf's Frozen Adventure will also be removed from the theaters outside of the United States.

Meanwhile, Coco has become a massive hit among both kids and adults. The animation earned $69 million last weekend alone and has already grossed $280 million.

These figures are expected to improve in the coming days because Coco has not yet been released in Australia, Japan, Italy, Korea, Brazil, and the United Kingdom.

'Coco' Synopsis

Coco centered on a young boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez), who had a passion for music. However, his parents didn't want him to pursue the craft because of the bad memories they had of his great grandfather, Hector (Gael Garcia Bernal).

After borrowing Ernesto de la Cruz's (Benjamin Bratt), Miguel became transported into the Land of the Dead. While there, he went in search for his grandfather who he initially thought was Ernesto. Later on, Miguel found out that his real grandfather was Hector.

After exposing Ernesto's bad deeds, Miguel returned home. He made his grandmother, Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguia), remember her dad, Hector, so that he could cross over the bridge.

Coco remembered Hector at the last minute, which made it possible for him to be reunited with all of his deceased family members in the alternate world.
On December 2nd, news broke that Golden Krust CEO, Lowell Hawthorne committed suicide at his companys factory in the Bronx. Hawthorne, a Jamaican immigrant founded the restaurant franchise in 1989 alongside his wife and siblings. By 2017, the company grew to have 120 locations in nine states.

What Employees Said About Hawthorne

Employees of Hawthorne, 57, paid their respects by visiting the location where he killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot. They said the news of their boss' sudden death was shocking because they never saw him angry. We saw him every day. He talks to everyone. He was always in a good mood, Hanaku Oxori, who has been working at the factory for 17 years expressed to the New York Post. Many employees of the brand, like Oxori, revealed they remained employed at the company for nearly 20 years because Hawthorne was a great boss to work for. Fans of the Golden Krust business grew to love Hawthorne, especially when he appeared on the hit reality show Undercover Boss. On social media, they conveyed that they didnt believe the news of his death and suspected foul play.

The Surprising Tax Debt

However, a family member of Hawthorne told detectives that the mogul had mounting tax debt. The same relative also disclosed to law enforcement that Hawthorne was acting funny and talking to himself in the hours leading up to his death. Police say surveillance tapes show Hawthorne shooting himself inside his office thats located in the Bronx factory. Four days before ending his life, Hawthorne wrote on Facebook about the struggles he faced as a Caribbean immigrant and how he hoped his story inspires others to go after their dreams.

Hawthorne's Legacy

I was always in search of the next honest means to make a dollar. Like many transplanted Caribbean nationals, I struggled to work and raise a family. I can only thank God for everything I have achieved. If my story here can inspire others to rise up and give it a go, I would have accomplished something meaningful, he wrote on the social media platform. Aside from the 120 store locations, Golden Krust sold its popular pastry to 20,000 supermarkets, the United States military, correctional and city educational systems. According to its official website, it was the first Caribbean-owned business to be given a franchise license in the United States and will eventually launch locations in Canada.

Steven Clarke, Hawthorne's nephew and franchise's spokesman said at a news conference the family is arranging Hawthorne's funeral but is unsure if it will be open to the public. He revealed the family is still processing "this tragic loss."
PAPER Magazine has given fans another reason to fall in love with DJ Khaleds son, Asahd. The celebrity baby, who has made countless appearances on social media since he was born, has snagged the cover of the popular magazine.

Asahd Khaled Shows Off His Modeling Skills

Baby Asahd broke the internet in a different type of way when he appeared on the cover of the Winter 2017 issue as the fresh prince of hip-hop. He posed with a luxury car just right for his size. In another photo, he rocked a pair of Air Jordans with a silver tracksuit. His look was made complete with a silver chain. He was all-smiles in a more casual snapshot as he wore a blue dotted outfit as he sat on a silky blue fabric in front of a matching backdrop. He got dressed up and snazzy as he stuck with the blew in an adorable tuxedo. He got behind the wheel of the luxury car in another photo.

Asahd Khaled's Biggest Moments

Asahd has certainly been making his rounds as his level of fame seems to heighten with every Instagram post. He has more than 1.7 million followers on the social media site. The tot could be the youngest to ever grace the red carpet at the Grammy Awards as he accompanied his mega-producer father to the even earlier this year. DJ Khaled amped up Asahds appearance status and brought him on stage with him as DJ Khaled brought his only child on stage with him to present an award this past March.

Asahd has also been spotted at the 2017 Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards in March and VH1s Dear Mama event special in May.

DJ Khaled is without a question setting up his son for success as Asahd was listed as the Executive Producer of DJ Khaleds tenth studio album, Grateful, that was released this summer. The single Im The One debuted at the number 1 spot on Billboards coveted Hot 100 list when Asahd was only six months.

And of course, we couldnt forget about his jungle-themed first birthday party in October. Celebrities such as P. Diddy and Fat Joe made appearances at the Liv nightclub turned childs playground in Miami. Kids enjoyed fun-sized versions of luxury cars and tiger cubs at the special event that was fit for a king. Baby Asahd was seen sitting on his mini golden throne.

Be sure to keep up with Enstarz for the latest in celebrity news!
This is in response to Phoebe Tollefsons Oct. 15 article All or nothing mental health care is filling the Montana state hospital, critics say. The problem is that Warm Springs is not treating patients to their full ability and releases many of them after only a short stay, even though the involuntary commitment order is typically for up to 90 days.

In addition, the facilitators have, in the court order, the permission to force patients to take the medication to help them, but that doesn't always happen either. (Many mentally ill patients don't understand that the medication will help their brain illness, hence the court gets involved). Often the medications prescribed to help patients achieve "recovery" take weeks to actually take effect in the body; therefore, a longer stay is necessary to monitor them and to keep the patient on the medication.

Yes, my family has direct experience of this. Earlier this year, a loved one was released after only two weeks of the 90-days and this person was not impelled to take the prescribed medication. And so, we have to start over to help a loved one get treatment ... again. And we'll try as many times as it takes for Warm Springs to follow the court order. But the system shouldnt have to be this way.

Patricia Madsen

Billings
Archenemies of liberty  Soros, Steyer, Bezos and Bloomberg

By Mark Alexander



Last Monday, one of our political editors, Thomas Gallatin, wrote about a legal restraining order filed on behalf of a Barack Obama deep-state leftover. Richard Cordray, former director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, attempted to name his deputy, Leandra English, as his successor  clearly an end-run around the executive branch.

What's the CFPB, you ask? It's a behemoth unconstitutional regulatory bureaucracy created by the ill-conceived Dodd-Frank legislation. As Gallatin noted, it's "a rogue agency answerable to almost no one and Corday's selection of English was a deliberate attempt to keep it that way."

Donald Trump ignored Cordray and English and tapped his current Office of Management and Budget director, Mick Mulvaney, a CFPB critic, to serve as interim director. Mulvaney arrived at CFPB Monday (with donuts!) and advised all employees to "disregard any instructions you receive from Ms. English in her presumed capacity as acting director."

The Trump administration received a temporary reprieve Tuesday when U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly dismissed the restraining order, noting, "Denying the president's authority to appoint Mr. Mulvaney raises significant constitutional questions." But it won't end there...

While this high-profile legal dispute for control of their out-of-control statist bureaucracy is a high priority for Democrats, as spun by their MSM propaganda machine, there is something revealing about this case that they don't want you to know.

The attorney leading the suit, Deepak Gupta, was asked during an interview who is funding his lawsuit. "Well, uh, it's, it's not, um, Miss, um English, um, ah."

Pressed for an answer, Gupta was asked if his firm was providing its service pro bono. He replied, "No. We're not." He did say that the dismissal of his suit was not "the final stop for this case."

So, who is funding this suit and many others to stop the Trump administration from reversing Obama's statist polices?

Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova warns that reliance on "anonymous donors" for such a lawsuit exposes "the dangers of not having full accountability for the expenditure of funds for this type of litigation." He added, "The usual suspects like [Tom] Steyer and [George] Soros could well be funding this. From a government accountability point, this is 'Bad Government 101.'"



George Soros

And that brings me to Soros, Steyer and their fellow billionaire socialists, Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos.

While "billionaire socialists" seems oxymoronic, it's not. The fact is, politically and financially, Soros, Steyer, Bezos and Bloomberg  the big four archenemies of Liberty  share an insatiable narcissistic quest for power, including centralized government power.

Notably, Steyer, whose super PAC donated $100 million to Democrats in 2016, has now committed $20 million for a national "Impeach Trump" ad campaign.

Let me be clear: The CFPB lawsuit is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg created by this billionaire club of socialists in their quest to sink Rule of Law and replace it with the rule of statist bureaucrats.

If this warning seems too strident, consider that a week ago, a gaggle of these rich socialists gathered for a three-day secret confab, the Democracy Alliance, at the posh La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, California.

The gathering of tyrannical wannabes, "Beyond #Resistance: Reclaiming our Progressive Future," featured presentations by Soros and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and had an admission price of at least $200,000, though the big four are devoting billions toward their quest for statist power. Recall that just last month Soros transferred $18 billion  "the bulk of his wealth"  into his so-called Open Society Foundation. He may get a tax deduction for the transfer, but there's nothing charitable about his abject assault on Liberty.

The gathering described itself as a "safe place" for donors and activists, which means it was a dangerous place for the future of Liberty.

One of the key organizing groups at the La Costa confab was the grotesquely misnamed "Patriotic Millionaires," which claims membership of more than 200 uber-wealthy leftists, distributed literature to attendees indicating the desire to "fundamentally reset" our nation's political, economic and cultural course.

The group's Dear Leader, Morris Pearl, former manager of one of the planet's largest investment firms, says, "We hope to facilitate a wholesale rejection of modern conservatism, exposing the dogma of 'free enterprise, limited government, and traditional family values' for what it truly is: a thin veil concealing rapacious capitalism, social Darwinism, and a profound misunderstanding of  and disinterest in  the human condition."

Is that strident enough for you?

It's no small irony that Soros's socialist soiree comes during the centennial celebration of communism's worldwide reign of tyranny and terror. And like previous generations of socialists such as Stalin, Hitler and Mao, the current generation is completely indifferent to the masses for whom they, ostensibly, advocate. Indeed, why else would they seek to renew the failed Democrat policies of the past?

In any case, they're in a very good position to do so...

Fortunately, Donald Trump has largely revoked the regulatory overreach of his socialist predecessor, Barack Obama, advanced outstanding nominees, and historic tax reforms now have momentum.

Unfortunately, the greatest obstacle to his conservative policies are sometimes "establishment Republicans" in the House and Senate. Even though the ranks of genuine conservatives have grown in recent election cycles, the Republican Party is still plagued by a relatively small group of "centrists," who aren't quite sure with which political party they should caucus.

Case in point would be the current tax reform measure. There are some Republicans who want to hold it hostage to tax increase triggers to contain the deficit. How about spending decrease triggers!

The American people gave Republicans control of the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014 and the presidency in 2016, but a small group of congressional RINOs have blocked efforts to turn that mandate into action  and unless things change dramatically in the coming months, Democrats, with the help of Soros, Steyer, Bezos, Bloomberg, et al., are prepared to obliterate that mandate in the 2018 midterm elections.

Let's be clear: The above-named billionaire socialists pose a far greater threat to the next election than Russian or Chinese hackers.

That notwithstanding, in the words of Founder Joseph Warren, "Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of." We never lose sight of what is "True, Noble and Just."

Mark Alexander is the executive editor of the Patriot Post
Examining the historical defence of Christendom as the conceptual template for the defence of Westernesse in J.R.R. Tolkiens The Hobbit/The Lord of the Rings (Part One) By Mark Wegierski

This essay is based on a presentation co-authored with Wojciech Szymanski, M.A., which was read at the Fantastic Literature Conference 2016 (Religious Topics in Fantastic Literature) at the University of Lodz (Lodz, Poland), September 19-20, 2016. J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) is widely reputed to be the archetypal author of fantasy in the modern period, or what has come to be termed high fantasy. Some have said that Tolkien both inaugurated and closed out the high fantasy subgenre, since anything that follows him is bound inevitably to appear derivative. Over the years, there has been a wide-ranging debate on whether Tolkiens The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, are more pagan or Christian in spirit. In this presentation, we will be looking mainly at J. R. R. Tolkiens The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (originally published in three volumes in 1954-55). The presence of the Elves and other fantastically imagined races, as well as the veneration of nature, are said to make these works more pagan  rather than rooted in Christian monotheism. Indeed, the works seem to uphold a pluralism of different free races  as opposed to a clearly univocal monotheism. The works seem to cherish the pluralism of difference  in contrapuntal contrast to the stark theme of One Ring to rule them all  and in the darkness bind them. In real life, Tolkien was a devout Catholic. There have been a number of works tracing Tolkiens Catholic inspiration for the so-called Middle Earth legendarium, or the Arda mythos (as it is sometimes called). Notable among these works is Craig Bernthals Tolkiens Sacramental Vision: Discerning the Holy in Middle Earth (Second Spring Books, 2014). Given the psychological matrix of devout Catholicism from which Tolkiens works sprang, it would hardly be surprising if his creative endeavours did not carry at least a tinge of Christian underpinnings. To quote Craig Bernthal: One of Tolkiens great appeals to readers is that he offers a world replete with meaning at every level. To read and reread Tolkien is to share his sense of wonder and holiness, to be invited into the presence of a beauty beyond the circles of the world. It is to fall in love with a universe that has a beginning and an end, where good and bad are not subjective choices, but objective realities; a created order full of grace, though damaged by sin, in which friendship is the seedbed of virtues, and where the greatest warriors finally become the greatest healers. The vision enunciated by Tolkien could be termed as pre-modern. It hearkens back to the idealized Middle Ages of Christendom, to a world  as Tolkien put it -- of less noise and more green. Obviously, Tolkiens works did not arise ex nihilo. There was a societal and cultural context out of which his works sprang, these being roughly-speaking Britain/England. Tolkien was deeply shaped by pre-World War One Britain, a society where propriety and decorum and so-called civilized values were not yet out of fashion. That society was to be sorely tested by the Great War, in which Tolkien fought heroically. The original inspiration of the hobbits was said to be the ordinary British Tommies who were living in the trenches (holes in the ground) of the Great War -- and rose to great levels of heroism, despite their preference for the simple comforts of home. This elevation of hobbits representing so-called ordinary people rising to extraordinary heights of courage is one of the main themes of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. At the same time, Tolkien had a profound appreciation for the element of hereditary monarchy and aristocracy in human existence, which he saw as being increasingly under attack in Britain. The Elves were clearly natural aristocrats. Also, part of the vision of Tolkien as a Catholic living in the British Isles was a sense of tragedy. For centuries since the time of Henry VIII, Roman Catholics had faced varying degrees of persecution in the British Isles, especially so under Oliver Cromwell. The fact that the Elves are increasingly harried and diminished throughout the unfolding of the Middle-Earth legendarium may be a reflection of this sense that Roman Catholicism was increasingly attenuated in the British Isles. As well, Oliver Cromwell could be seen as a possible inspiration for the figure of Sauron. Indeed, as Lord Protector, he has been considered a precursor to twentieth century dictators. Also, part of the Roman Catholic experience in the British Isles was identified with a yearning for the restoration of the Stuart dynasty, epitomized by the Jacobite Rising of 1745, led by Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles Edward Stuart). For these Roman Catholics, the British Isles were seen as being under the occupation of a hostile, usurping dynasty (the Hanoverians). The romantic resonance behind the historical desire for a Stuart restoration may play a part in an over-arching theme of kingship in The Lord of the Rings (the third volume being significantly titled, The Return of the King). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was very possible for a tension of sentiment and feeling to exist between the person who wanted to be a good Englishman -- and the person who wanted be a good Roman Catholic on the other. It could be argued that the dynamic arising from an attempt to effect a resolution of this tension was one of the origins of the Arda mythos. Tolkiens works did not arise without some precursors. Tolkien, for example, had read George Macdonalds and William Morriss fantasy works. Britain was also the locus for the Arthurian legends and their literary renderings. Tolkien also had high respect for Beowulf, the great Old Anglo-Saxon poem. Another influence was the epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse (1911) by G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) portraying an idealized King Alfred. Much of Tolkiens creativity was shaped by his interactions with the Inklings group, especially C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), whose own childrens fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia appeared in seven volumes between 1950-1956  beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. To be continued. Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher. Home
Oh, give me a home where the good groceries roam By Michael R. Shannon

One doesnt have to be perpetually disgruntled to work in the Opposition Media, but it certainly helps. Not every Democrat operative disguised as a newsman can be assigned to the White House, but that doesnt mean those unfortunates who arent cant contribute to increasing the national vague sense of outrage. The Washington Post is filled with stories designed to do just that. Recently the Metro section introduced readers to yet another artifact of our corrupt national system: D.C.s grocery gap reflects citys income divide. Now dont make the mistake I did and assume this is another hunger story. Hunger has been vanquished more thoroughly than Al Gore! The War on Hunger is the only successful social program in the history of Democrat handouts. I defy you to visit a school, mall, theatre, bus station, airport or stadium and find undernourished people. Winning the War on Hunger was not a painless victory. There was collateral damage just like we see in kinetic conflicts. In Afghanistan collateral damage is typically confined to wedding parties, which limits the exposure of the general population. Collateral damage from the War on Hunger hit most of our population. Everything from weddings to wakes was affected. Many victims are still burrowing their way out of the adipose rubble, which tends to concentrate on the waist and behind. America is now the land of the overnourished. Even the kids were told are one English muffin from disaster and must therefore eat free breakfast and lunches in government schools are fat. Gyms do a booming business because America is fat. Try this experiment and see if you dont agree: The next time you go to a mall count the number of people you see who arent chewing. Government bureaucrats and nonprofit compassioneers have noticed this worrisome trend. The government compassion gravy train doesnt attract the type of employee who will march in a Victory over Hunger parade through the streets of New York and then go get a real job. They prefer to redefine the mission and keep the tax dollars flowing. Thats why instead of stories about hunger, we read about food anxiety. Thats a term that covers everything from genuine deprivation to worrying about a gas station burrito. The War on Food Anxiety is so nebulous its participants never have to worry about victory being defined. Traveling alongside food anxiety in the mission creep cavalcade is the concept of the food desert. This doesnt refer to a genuine desert like the Mohave where there is no food. Food deserts are a snobs wasteland, like my old home in Odessa, TX, where there are no upscale groceries and people cant pronounce quinoa. The WaPost story was something of a hybrid. The Post sniffs, In 2016, nearly 70 percent  or 34  of the citys 49 supermarkets were in four wards that are predominantly white and have the Districts highest household incomes, according to the review by D.C. Hunger Solutions, a nonprofit advocacy group. This combines Bernie Bro suspicion of capitalist motives with segregated geography paranoia. In this instance call it whitebread privilege. As Beverley Wheeler, director of DC Hunger Solutions, warns, Grocery-store access is a racial equity issue that must be dealt with, and its a health issue. We can no longer pretend we dont see what we see. So what is it they are seeing? Duck hunters are notorious for going where the ducks are. Retail merchants, which includes grocers, are equally notorious for building where the money is. Its not a black thing, its a green thing. For the same reason one doesnt find many HarrisTeeters in Appalachia. And what good would it do residents of Wards 7 and 8 in DC to have a grocery store where they couldnt afford to shop? At one time I defined wealth as being able to shop at Sutton Place Gourmet without worrying about the final tab. But I didnt torture myself by walking up and down the aisles admiring groceries I couldnt afford to buy. Are there benefits to envy of which Im unaware? Companies look for average income, crime rates, transportation access and available real estate. This makes choosing the site of a grocery store is about as impersonal as statistics can make it. The decision is not based on a whim like choosing the headquarters for the corporation. Those usually land within a short drive or helicopter jaunt from the Chairmans favorite home. Frankly I dont see how convincing the people she purports to help that their grocery stores are secondclass is going to improve morale in those wards. Wheeler is quick with complaints and the Post is eager to amplify, but frankly this strikes me as a problem that wont find a solution. Michael R. Shannon is a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe. He is a dynamic and entertaining keynote speaker. He can be reached at mandate.mmpr (at) gmail.com. He is also the author of Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!). Home
UN agency to Congress: Drop dead By Paul Driessen

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in France has received over $48 million from Americas National Institutes of Health (NIH), to determine whether various chemicals cause cancer in humans. Of more than 900 chemicals it has reviewed, only one was ever found non-carcinogenic. The latest substance to face IARC scrutiny is glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide RoundUp. Not surprisingly, the agency branded glyphosate carcinogenic. But this time evidence is surfacing of collusion with anti-chemical activist groups and class action lawyers, serious conflicts of interest involving a key IARC glyphosate reviewer, and IARC manipulation of scientific reports along with deliberate withholding of studies that concluded the chemical is safe, so that the agency could get a guilty verdict. Despite this disturbing evidence, and demonstrable proof of the chemicals safety, the European Union barely extended its authorization for glyphosate use, and then by just five years, instead of the usual 15. The House of Representatives Science Committee is deeply concerned about this corruption of science, its potential impacts on US regulatory decisions, and the use of IARC rulings by predatory lawyers who are suing glyphosate manufacturers. It sent letters to Health and Human Services Secretary Eric Hargan (who oversees the NIH and its agencies) and IARC director Chris Wild. The letters request all relevant documents and the names of IARC-affiliated people who could testify at Committee oversight hearings. Dr. Wilds artful and legalistic response emphasized scientific consensus among all review panel members; said deliberative documents would not be made available; claimed there were no conflicts of interest among any IARC reviewers; said he and his staff would not be pressured by vested interests, the media or Congress; and said congressmen can come to France if they want answers to their questions. In other words: Drop dead. Members of Congress who authorize taxpayer funding for IARC have no right to scrutinize its deliberations and decisions, to ensure sound science, transparency and accountability. Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world. It is vital to modern agriculture  and one of the most extensively tested chemicals in history: some 3,300 studies over four decades attest to its safety. Indeed, virtually every reputable regulatory agency and scientific body in the world has determined that it does not cause cancer  including the European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, German Institute for Risk Assessment and US Environmental Protection Agency. Only IARC says glyphosate causes cancer. To help it reach that conclusion, the agency employed the services of Italys Ramazzini Institute, which also concocted studies claiming cell phones and artificial sweeteners cause cancer. It relies on Ramazzini even though regulatory bodies in Europe, the United States and New Zealand have investigated and criticized Ramazzinis sloppy, suspect pseudo-science. Dr. Wilds agency has also worked closely with Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the $690-million-a-year National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences or NIEHS (an NIH agency in the HHS). Birnbaum is also a member of the Collegium Ramazzini and has directed over $90 million of US taxpayer funds to her Ramazzini colleagues, many of whom serve on numerous IARC expert panels. Evidence is accumulating that Brinbaum has worked closely with anti-chemical pressure groups and even trial lawyers, thereby undermining the US regulatory and chemical review process and perhaps ultimately forcing glyphosate off the market. She has helped to coordinate and direct these activities, and has turned the United States into IARCs biggest donor, earmarking $4.2 million to support IARCs current effort to list more agricultural and industrial chemicals as carcinogens  including artificial sweeteners. Even GMO foods are on the agencys hit list. The well-funded, carefully coordinated effort to eradicate weed-eradicating glyphosate has also involved a number of devious, secretive, deceptive actions. The 2014 advisory group that decided IARC would review glyphosate was led by activist statistician Dr. Christopher Portier, who worked for years for NIEHS and Birnbaum. In fact, investigative journalists David Zaruk (Risk-Monger) and Kate Kelland (Reuters) discovered, Portier drove the glyphosate review, while also working for the anti-pesticide Environmental Defense Fund and serving as the only invited specialist on the working group that labeled glyphosate carcinogenic. At the same time, Portier was also advising trial lawyers suing over other chemicals that IARC had found carcinogenic  and shortly after serving on the advisory group signed with the same lawyers to work on their glyphsate suits, a gig for which he has so far been paid $160,000. No conflicts of interest? Even more outrageous, as Ms. Kelland explained in another article, IARC repeatedly ignored or altered studies that exonerated glyphosate. One report clearly said the researchers unanimously agreed that glyphosate had not caused abnormal growths in mice they had studied. IARC deleted the sentence. In other cases IARC panelists inserted new statistical analyses that reversed a studys original finding; quietly changed critical language exonerating the chemical; and claimed they were not able to evaluate a study because it included insufficient experimental data, while excluding another study because the amount of data in the tables was overwhelming. These machinations helped to ensure a consensus. Equally questionable, NIH Cancer Research Institute scientist Aaron Blair conducted a years-long study that also found glyphosate was not carcinogenic. But he held off on publishing his results, and did not divulge his findings, knowing IARC would leave unpublished work out of its analysis. This is not science. It is manipulation and deception  supported by our tax dollars, and used to drive safe, widely used chemicals off the market. Other activists repeatedly claim endocrine disrupting chemicals which dont cause cancer or other harm in high doses somehow do so at barely detectable levels. Another clever ploy claims no actual exposure is needed; kids get cancer because their parents or grandparents were exposed to something, perhaps years ago. Its ridiculous. But convincing a jury theres no cause-effect relationship is a Sisyphean task. The end result, if not the goal, is to undermine public confidence in science-based risk assessments, lend credibility to agitator claims that countless chemicals contaminate our foods and imperil our health, endlessly frighten consumers, and set the stage for billion-dollar lawsuits to enrich class-action lawyers and organic food interests. More than 1,000 US lawsuits already claim glyphosate causes cancer, and law firms are running ads saying anyone who has cancer and was ever exposed to glyphosate in any form or amount may be entitled to millions in compensation. Other lawyers are playing the same games with manmade climate change. Ending legal predation will require major state and federal reforms. However, the American people elected this President and Congress to bring transparency and accountability back to Washington and international regulatory agencies. They need to use their oversight and funding powers to do so. Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith told me he is reviewing Mr. Wilds response. Given the serious nature of our concerns related to IARCs expenditures of taxpayer dollars, IARC should exercise due diligence and provide a complete response to my November 1 letter. The Science Committee will use all tools at our disposal to ensure the stewards of our taxpayers dollars are held accountable, Smith said. That is good news. Too many regulators and scientific panels have the attitude, We are accountable only to ourselves. We will not have any member of Congress or the Trump Administration presume to tell us how to run our business, do science or be transparent. That arrogance is intolerable. Even if Dr. Wild is beyond the reach of US law, Drs. Birnbaum, Portier, Blair, et al. are not. They should be compelled to testify under oath, and funding for their agencies and work should be made contingent on their cooperation in rooting out the apparent secrecy, corruption, conflicts of interest and junk science. Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy and environmental policy. Home
My Pilgrimage, Chapter Thirty-Eight: The English-Speaking Peoples Unashamed Father Figures Part Two By Michael Moriarty

The Crown is, to put it most simply and, yes, boldly, A Sacred Television Series. For me, a lapsed Catholic, attending it, watching it, hearing it is more like experiencing a TRUE Mass than anything I lived through in HIGH Mass offered by my Jesuit high school instructors. Could I borrow the Crown? offers Queen Elizabeth to one of her advisers, For a couple of days? He replies, Yes but from whom? If the Crown is not yours? Whose is it?!

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown And shes not a King! She cant possibly be a father-figure of any kind. Shes the Mother of the Commonwealth! And what used to be called The British Empire!! Meanwhile?! The infamous Edward, the Duke of Windsor? Played with the most impressively shameless style and divinely subtle panache by Alex Jennings. His equally infamous mistress/wife?!

The Bonnie and Clyde of Windsor Wallis Simpson, played by Lia Williams with a frighteningly profound lack of concern for the health of the Commonwealth. Both giving lust an almost inalterably bad name. Edward, with a most un-amorously smug smile, Shall we f**ck? Vengeance boiling within every syllable and in every narcissistic ounce of flesh within his lips. Just another of the great actors in the cast of this television triumph. Another of his perfect line-readings: This is COOKIES work! Cookie is the Queen Mother. Edwards own mother. She wants neither her American daughter-in-law, now the Duchess of Windsor, nor her son, the Duke of Windsor, to attend the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She has sent, of all people, the Archbishop of Canterbury and his Parliamentary thugs, to deliver the profoundly unforgiving and, yes, blatantly un-Christian message. This is where Bonnie and Clyde Windsor, to my mind, become Romeo and Juliet! And Shakespeare, the Romantic Historian, begins to enter the drama. At this point, I am now on the side of the Windsors. And on the side of Edwards eloquence. To the Archbishop, Edward unloads this brief quote from his brother, the former King: My Lord Archbishop,

What a scold you are,

And when your man is down,

how very bold you are!

Of Christian charity,

How very scant you are!

You old, lame swine!

How full of cant you are! Apparently, George VI, had written that about the present Archbishops predecessor. WOW! No wonder the Archbishop storms out of the room!! Hypocrisy at its most undeniable! Not just royal hypocrisy but Holier-Than-Thou Sacred Hypocrisy. Subsequently we hear Edward narrating, referring to Queen Elizabeth as Shirley Temple. Nothing and no-one, in my experience with the England of a Monarchy, now a Matriarchy under Queen Elizabeth, has embodied so complete a picture of British Aristocracy as Alex Jennings Duke of Windsor! Neither extreme of blistering intelligence and eloquence nor cruelly narcissistic self-adulation are left out of this Duke of Windsors arsenal. The best and worst of British Aristocracy: Edward, the Duke of Windsor. Captured in the exquisitely eloquent letters he had written to his one, true and apparently ONLY love, Wallis Simpson, his companion and Duchess of Windsor. Offered up by Alex Jennings with what should have been recognized as award-winning perfection. Oh, well to quote someone or other, Life can be a bitch! Elizabeth II wants her husband Phillip to supervise her Coronation. Will he?! Or will the Queen submit to those who, as they themselves declare, know better?! NO! Phillip is now, before my eyes, supervising the entire Coronation of his wife, the Queen. However, the Establishment is upset. Winston Churchill is sent to deliver yet another negative message to the Queen. Subsequently, the Coronation happens! Not entirely as Phillip would want it to but yes according to the Queens wishes!! The cynical and bitter commentary by Edward, Duke of Windsor?! His contempt for the Magic?! One cannot resist wanting to know how such suicidal magic can persist without the entire Fall of the House of Windsor. Tune in! You wont regret it. Michael Moriarty is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning actor who starred in the landmark television series Law and Order from 1990 to 1994. His recent film and TV credits include The Yellow Wallpaper, 12 Hours to Live, Santa Baby and Deadly Skies. Contact Michael at rainbowfamily2008@yahoo.com. He can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/@MGMoriarty. Home
Random thoughts two By Dr. Robert Owens

The Democrats havent been this angry since the Republicans ended slavery. If Islam is so wonderful why do Muslims seek refuge in Christian countries? The NRA is the only organization in America that is consistently blamed for actions its members dont commit. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, from the 1950s through July 10th of 2016, 98.4 percent of mass shootings have occurred on gun-free zones, with just 1.6 percent occurring where citizens are allowed to have firearms with them. Why doesnt Eminem write protest songs about all the Democrat politicians who bankrupt and ruined his hometown of Detroit? Admitting that both parties routinely ignore the Constitution, reject the rule of law, and erode liberty is the first step to recovery. From the You Cant Make This Stuff Up Department: Hillary, I give 10% of my income to charity every year and Weinsteins donations will be part of that A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man which he proposes to pay off with your money. Dont worry if people dont like you. Most people struggle to like themselves. If you eat today thank a farmer. If you eat in peace thank a veteran. Five things liberals never seem to understand: Free does not actually mean free. You are not entitled to someone elses hard earned moneyever. You cannot tax a nation into prosperity. The rich are not responsible for your financial situationyou are. Socialism leads to communism  always. Fifty-nine are dead in the worst mass shooting in American History. In Chicago they call that August. At Planned Parenthood they call that Tuesday. In America today every citizen is forced to buy health insurance yet everyone is not forced to prove they are a citizen. Many of those who refuse or cannot prove they are citizens receive free health insurance paid for by those forced to buy insurance because they are citizens. In America today the federal government can listen to and record everything you say without a warrant and the person who tells us about it is a traitor. Does anyone see a problem with a system that taxes you if you work and pays you if you dont? Trump says we are a nation of believers and that together we are strengthened and sustained by the power of prayer. Democrats want prayer out of the public sphere. Trump called the Las Vegas shooting a horrific mass murder and an act of pure evil. Democrats blame the guns and want to take yours away. Trump honored the heroes of Las Vegas, including the police officers and other first responders. Democrats elevate thugs and view our protectors in blue with disdain. Trump quotes scripture. Democrats ridicule those who do. Trump stresses unity. Democrats divide American society into victims and oppressors. Trump says, We love our country. Obama went on an international apology tour. Trump says, We cherish the sacred dignity of every human life. Democrats murder babies. Trump says, We believe in strong families. Democratic policies pull them apart. Trump says, We are proud of our history. Democrats tear down monuments. Trump says, We respect our great American flag. Democrats take a knee. In a DUI we blame the driver. In a bombing we blame the bomber. In a mass shooting we blame the gun. Does anyone remember that after Pearl Harbor we declared war on Japan? We didnt declare war on sneak attacks. Yet after 9-11 when fifteen of the 19 terrorists who flew planes into our buildings were citizens of Saudi Arabia associated with al-Qaeda (the others were from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Lebanon) we declared war on Terrorism. We knew the war was over when the delegates of Japan signed an unconditional surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo bay. How will we know when a war on terror is over? Stand up for whats right. Or youll fall for whats wrong. Ive been trying to figure out a way to get the gators in the swamp to at least read the Constitution and I think I have a fool-proof plan. I put the entire constitution into the body of an email. That way at least the NSA read it. Now lets hope they pass it along. Dr. Robert Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com  2017 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens Home
Letters must be less than 250 words. Include the author's name, address and daytime phone number (only the name and city will be printed). Space isn't available to thank supporters by name. Instead, consider thanking all donors, sponsors and volunteers, and briefly remind readers of the work that your organization does for its community. Letters may include contact information for readers to learn more about the organization.
Ireland will have the final say on the future of the Irish-North Irish border following the Brexit. The EU said that it would be up to the Irish government to approve whether the UKs proposals regarding the border and custom checks on the island are acceptable. Irish leaders are worried that the British divorce from the EU, slated for March 2019, will hamper Irish trade and business links and social ties that have deepened since the end of the Northern Irish conflict two decades ago.

When the UK leaves the EU in 2019, it is going to take Northern Ireland with it, which is a problem because Northern Ireland shares a border with the Republic of Ireland. I will consult the Taoiseach if the UK offer is sufficient for the Irish government, European Council President Donald Tusk said after meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin. Let me say very clearly, if the UK offer is unacceptable for Ireland, it will also be unacceptable for the EU.

Mr. Varadkar said he was hopeful of securing a firm commitment from London that its divorce from the EU would not lead to the creation of a hard border. Im also prepared to stand firm if the UK offer falls short, he warned. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said that the UK needed to avoid regulatory divergence between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. If there is, then it is very hard to avoid a checking system, he said.

Mr. Coveney in November proposed the British government to give Northern Ireland special status based on how China dealt with Hong Kong upon its return from Britain in 1997. However, that option has been dismissed by Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party, which does not want the province to have closer relations with Ireland and the EU than with the UK.
There are many security divides between the European Union and the United States under Donald Trump but nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of Iran. Given the harsh stance of the new US administration towards Tehran and its hostility towards the nuclear deal, this new dynamics will inevitably lead to a transatlantic clash on the issue. Brussels should get ready now to mitigate the negative consequences and preserve both EUs and US strategic interests on non-proliferation.

Donald Trump is seeking to shift US policy on Iran away from diplomacy towards containment. The nuclear deal  the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the JCPOA)  is going to be the primary target. The US President has called Iran a fanatical regime and rouge nation and placed extensive restrictions on Iranian nationals. His administration has also unambiguously teamed up with Irans archrival, Saudi Arabia, in addressing the many conflicts across the Middle East.

The White Houses new strategy on Iran released in October put an emphasis on neutralizing Irans destabilizing aggression in the region. President Trump also decided to decertify the JCPOA, meaning that he will not attest to Congress that Iran is abiding by its terms. In response, the leading EU economies released a joint statement expressing their concern at President Trumps policy while the overall situation around the nuclear deal has already strained transatlantic relations. As Ms. Mogherini put it: Trumps policy has reduced the credibility of the United States as the EUs future partner on Iran policy.

The current developments not only endanger European non-proliferation goals but they also heighten the risk of a nuclear arms race including a possible military escalation in Europes vicinity. Any direct or indirect confrontation of American and Iranian-backed forces would have a profound impact across the Middle East. While Brussels and Washington share many common concerns regarding Tehran, their approaches are strikingly different.

The EU consistently supports the JCPOA, warning that ditching the deal would make it much more difficult to resolve any disagreements with Iran. Moreover, there are valid fears that isolating the country further would only trigger hardline elements on the Iranian political scene and thus further fuel regional instability. As Ms. Mogherini has said, Europe feels an interest and a responsibility to engage with Iran, and an increasing number of European governments is convinced that it is a diplomatic dialogue with Iran that will ultimately reduce the violence and instability in the Middle East.

Therefore, the European governments and the EU need to safeguard the nuclear deal and plan for any contingency in their relationship with the United States. Europe should also further pursue the diplomatic route and engage in tough diplomacy with Iran on non-nuclear issues such as the freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf, reducing the violence in the conflicts currently underway in Yemen and Syria and lowering tensions in Iraqi Kurdistan. Moreover, the EU should also create a platform for regional dialogue and further nurture the channels they have developed with the Iranian leadership to help mitigate the negative effects of Donald Trumps new Iran policy.

The Coming Clash: Why Iran Will Divide Europe from the United States  Policy Brief by Ellie Geranmayeh  European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

(The Policy Brief can be downloaded here)
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Hi,

My husband is applying for his FLR(M) any day now but we have been waiting for a letter from his HR department re: confirming his employment etc.



He has a copy of the letter which was emailed to him, on headed paper from the national company he works for, with the information and the name and title of the person who has completed the document (Immigration & Conpliance Specialist for Recruitment Supoort Services). However, it isnt signed and this person is now on leave for two weeks.

Will this be okay or does it absolutely have to be signed??
I am a Thai National filling in the FLR(M) form (with my husbands help!). Should I sign the form with the English signature I use for my bank cards, driving licence etc. or the Thai signature used on my passport?

This must be a common issue for Asians - any advice would be welcome.

Many thanks,



Sukanda
Hi there, I sat for my exam in June and got top scores and exactly what I was aiming for except a -0.5 for the writing module. I was sure that my writing was higher than the band their ranked me and I know that my writing skill is stronger than my other skills. I read online, and heard from friends, that it's better to re-sit the exam but I didn't agree with them. So I did an EOR and two months later, my new grade was ranked higher by 0.5 exactly what I wanted. For me, it was worth the shot.

Good luck! Let us know how you get on.
After reviewing information on Express Entry, my education level should qualify as long as I find an employer who will give me an offer (I have a Bachelor of Science and Masters of Science in Animal Science from U.S. universities). I also have 5 years of experience as an agricultural extension agent at a prominent U.S. university. With my work experience, I could obtain Certified Crop Adviser certification fairly easily.



My question is whether or not there is a need for my skill set in Canada, and how likely it would be to find a Canadian employer who could demonstrate the need to hire me.
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University of Texas-Austin astronomers will be among the first in the world to use NASAs brand-new $8.8 billion telescope after it launches in 2019  a piece of technology one says will revolutionize all areas of astronomy.

The James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, has been under development for decades.

And with less than two years until its expected launch date, the Space Telescope Science Institute (the science operations center for the Hubble and Webb telescopes) in Baltimore has released the list of the first 13 projects that will test the telescope in space. UT-Austins Steve Finkelstein found himself, and his Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, on that list.

This will be the first time anyone has had access to this brand-new telescope that is in some ways 100 times better than Hubble, said Finkelstein, an associate astronomy professor at the university. This telescope will reveal enormous truths the moment we turn it on.

The CEERS will build upon Finkelsteins previous work with the Hubble telescope of examining the oldest galaxies in the universe as a way to understand how quickly stars formed into the galaxies and how they evolve over time. More than 100 astronomers from 10 countries are involved in the project, including astronomers at Texas A&M.

Finkelstein said Webb will allow astronomers to see galaxies as they existed 13.4 billion years ago. His project will take place in the telescopes first five months of science operations, likely to begin in late fall, early winter 2019.

To be among the first to use it is incredible, he said, adding that his research will take 62 hours to complete.

Other projects chosen include an examination of Jupiter and its moons and weighing supermassive black holes, according to NASA. UT-Austin researchers are involved to some degree in five of the 13 projects.

We were impressed by the high quality of the proposals received, Ken Sembach, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, said in a recent NASA web update. These observing programs not only will generate great science, but also will be a unique resource for demonstrating the investigative capabilities of this extraordinary observatory to the worldwide scientific community.

Projects will receive funding, but Finkelstein said they have not yet been told how much. Up to $5 million has been allotted for all 13 projects, he added.

Webb is projected to launch in spring 2019 from Kourou, French Guiana, and is expected to carry out its mission for five to 10 years. The telescope is named after James E. Webb, NASAs second administrator who lead the Apollo space missions that landed the first humans on the moon.

Unlike Hubble, which launched 27 years ago and orbits the earth, Webb will orbit the sun 1 million miles away from earth. Hubble mainly observes visible light, while Webb will operate in the infrared, enabling it to study some of the faintest, youngest galaxies.

Using Webb, we will discover the most distant galaxies ever seen  galaxies that were literally invisible to Hubble, Finkelstein said.

Last month, about 100 days of cryogenic testing  to ensure the telescope functions as intended in an extreme cold and airless environment  was completed at Johnson Space Center.

But the telescope still must undergo more testing before it can be launched into space. It now will be transported to Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California, where it will be integrated with the spacecraft element, according to a Nov. 20 NASA web update.

It will then undergo even more testing, the last exposure to a simulated launch environment before flight and deployment testing on the whole observatory, the update states.

The Webb telescope is an international project lead by NASA in partnership with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
The school board that oversees North Dakota's largest school district is planning an overhaul of the rules it uses to govern.

The Bismarck School Board next year will adopt a new governing model dubbed "coherent governance" by the Colorado-based consultant group Aspen Group International LLC.

The new model differentiates between school board policies from administrative policies and gives more discretion to the superintendent. Next year, school board members will undergo a $50,000 training program in coherent governance.

The school board decided earlier this month to hire Aspen Group International LLC in a 4-1 vote. Board member Heide Delorme, the lone dissenting vote, expressed concerns due to the district's budget constraints.

"(Funding is) kind of unknown right now," Delorme said last week, referring to the state Legislature freezing K-12 funding for the next two years. "I kind of felt like it was a tight year, (and) that I didn't want to commit to those funds."

The coherent governance model divides the school board's work into four areas that include student educational outcomes and monitoring superintendent performance. School board members in favor of the new model said it will bring clarity to their job duties and the role of the superintendent.

"It clearly defines what the board's purpose is," said Karl Lembke, school board president.

The board heard about coherent governance at a National School Board Association Conference this spring, according to Lembke.

Board members said the governing change is not in response to the school board's past performance.

"I don't think we have performed poorly or negatively," said board nember Matt Sagsveen, who was first elected in 2010. "My reading of the governance model (is) it will help facilitate our ability to do a better job as board members and to better serve our community."

Delorme, who is in her sixth year on the board, said she is not against coherent governance, and said it would be good to define the superintendent's responsibilities and set clear-cut goals for the district.

The school board will undergo multiple policy training sessions next year, and then adopt the model sometime late next year, according to Lembke. Even with the school board election next year, in which three seats are up for election, Lembke said the new model will be helpful in educating incoming school board members about their duties.

"We're not just doing this for our board ... This is something for a future board," said Lembke, whose term expires next year. Lembke said he hasn't decided whether he will run for re-election.

Sagsveen, whose term also is up next year, said he plans to run again. Sagsveen agreed that coherent governance will be helpful for new school board members.

"I think if you get three new board members, they're going to have the same learning curve in our current system as they would in a new governance plan," he said.

Bismarck Public Schools Superintendent Tamara Uselman said she is in support of the coherent governance model, particularly because it discerns school board work and administrative work.

"I think its exactly what the title describes, creating a governance model thats coherent to everybody," she said. "When you think about when people run for the board, they run for any number of reasons, including the desire for public service. But that doesn't mean you automatically understand the board's role from the administrative role."

Uselman said the school board has "done its work well, historically," in the seven years she's been superintendent in Bismarck.

West Fargo School Board

The West Fargo School Board also switched to the coherent governance model in 2013.

Patti Stedman, a member of the West Fargo School board, who has been a board member for nine years, said the biggest change she's observed is in allowing the superintendent to make decisions about subjects outside the school board's expertise.

"It was a culture change, but a really good change," Stedman said. "It probably holds superintendents more accountable than they're used to."

In turn, Stedman said school board members are able to focus on student academic achievement.

There are still some challenges in adopting the new model, according to Kara Gravley-Stack, West Fargo School Board president, who was elected in 2014. Occasionally board members have to remind themselves what work is board work and what should be handled by the administration.
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AUSTIN  For the first time, collectors of the official Texas Capitol ornaments this year can buy a 14-karat gold replica of the storied statehouse, from the dome to the chiseled granite facade.

An exact knockoff, right down to the large Texas flag hanging at the south entrance.

Price: $125.

Weve never offered a complete 3-D of the Capitol in an ornament, and we expect this limited edition to sell out quickly, said Erin Christensen, director of retail sales for the State Preservation Board that manages and maintains the 1888 landmark.

I think they will go fast. Its a limited-edition ornament. We only have 500 of them.

She said initial sales of the ornament, a first-ever initiative, have been brisk.

In another first for the holiday season, the regular Capitol ornament has a transportation theme: A replica of the white carriage thats delivered the official state Christmas trees to the statehouse, led by a white horse.

The Capitol got its first holiday tree in 1917, a 25-foot locally grown cedar that was placed in the Senate Chamber and decorated in Christmas Eve.

Such a wonderful Christmas tree as this glorious cedar did make! declared the Austin American, reporting that the tree was given in honor of Texas soldiers who were fighting abroad in World War I.

After the tree was decorated, visitors sang carols and donated gifts and then moved to the House Chamber for a holiday dance that, according to the article, made complete the evenings pleasure.

In the decades since, holiday trees have been displayed in the Rotunda, Governors Reception Room and both legislative chambers, as well as various spots on the lawn.

In recent years, the Capitols holiday trees  now pines, delivered to the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker  have been delivered in a white carriage in the week after Thanksgiving  a tradition memorialized in the 2017 ornament. It sells online and at the Capitol gift shops for $20 each.

This is the second year that weve highlighted traditions at the Capitol as part of the ornament series, Christensen said. Last year, the ornament was a decorated Capitol tree, featuring ornaments from the past 20 years. This year, were honoring the tradition of the delivery of the Capitol trees.

The official Capitol ornaments have been issued since 1996, launched by Nelda Laney, wife of then-Speaker Pete Laney, D-Hale Center, as a way to raise money for maintenance of the historic landmark and fund educational programs on site for schools.

In the first two decades, ornaments mostly featured architectural features of the storied center of state government, including the Capitols distinctive dome, its chiseled entryway, ornate doors and signature brass hinges, the Lone Star designs on its ceilings and fences, and the Goddess statue at the top of the dome.

More than $18 million in ornaments have been sold since the program started, said Chris Currens, a spokesman for the State Preservation Board.

Proceeds from the ornament program have gone to pay for painting the dome, new carpet in the legislative chambers that replicates the early-day floor coverings and restoration of historic paintings in the statehouse, officials aid.

From the time the first Capitol ornament was sold 21 years ago, just as a top-to-bottom restoration and expansion of the Capitol was completed, the tree-hangers have become collectors items.

Three years ago, the 1 millionth Capitol ornament sold on eBay for $5,176 to a collector.

We have every one of them on our tree at home, part of our family tradition, said Rae Giovanni, a Dallas resident and native Houstonian who was standing in line on a recent afternoon to buy the 2017 edition  as well as a limited-edition ornament.

Theyre gorgeous and they say Real Texas. What more could a Texan want at Christmas?
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Beneath the Northwest Sides tangled interchange of Interstate 10 and Loop 410, surrounded by more than a dozen frontage roads, ramps and flyovers, is an obscure patch of state land housing the regional traffic control center, TransGuide.

Inside that smart highway project of the San Antonio district of the Texas Department of Transportation, analysts sit in a high-ceilinged control center full of giant, quad-view TV screens, monitoring some 190 roadside cameras, creating electronic displays that alert motorists to construction delays and missing kids, and generating the traffic data used by TV and radio shows.

But they also do a job for which TxDOT has won national awards and become something of a model for other states. They hunt, electronically, for wrong-way drivers.

By most accounts theyve had an effect.

Since 2011, wrong-way driving has caused 27 deaths and 25 serious injuries in Bexar County, but overall reported incidents have declined, from 269 reports in 2012 to 162 for 2016, according to San Antonio Police Department and Bexar County Sheriffs Office statistics.

On San Antonios worst stretch of road for such incidents, U.S. 281 from Interstate 35 to Stone Oak, a TransGuide pilot program between July 2012 and March 2016 reduced them by some 35 percent. TxDOT largely does that with technology and vigilant operators, not a police force or drunken-driving checkpoints. Yet, two new arrests have occurred since Thanksgiving.

On Thanksgiving morning at 4:50 a.m., a TxDOT operator saw a wrong-way driver on his screen traveling east in the westbound main lanes of U.S. 90 at Military Drive. He immediately notified SAPDs DWI dispatcher  who sits just a few feet away at the control center  and tracked the driver with a camera posted at Leon Creek, and then one on Callaghan Road, where the driver was caught and booked on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

Another incident happened at 2:42 a.m. Thursday when a wrong-way driver went west in the eastbound main lanes of Loop 410 at Babcock Road. TxDOT operator Ben Lopez tracked the driver on five highway cameras, while an SAPD dispatcher alerted police to each high-speed turn. Police eventually arrested the driver at Loop 410 and Texas 151.

Thursdays was the 11th save of the year for the TxDOT operators and the 66th since 2011.

Always dangerous yet hardly a well-publicized enforcement priority for most police departments, wrong-way driving was forced onto San Antonios attention in March 2011, when SAPD Officer Stephanie Brown, 27, a single mother, was hit head-on in her vehicle by a drunken driver, Christopher Baldaramos, on the downtown stretch of Interstate 35.

Both Brown and Baldaramos, whose blood alcohol content was three times the legal limit, died of their injuries. The tragedy spurred some soul-searching on the part of SAPD, which joined TxDOT, the citys public works department and the Sheriffs Office to form a task force.

Stephanies death was a huge thing, said John Gianotti, a TxDOT transportation engineer and senior member of the task force. We had all heard of officers getting hit by the side of the road, but not this. By the next month, April, we were up and running.

Wrong-way driving had been a persistent but little-known problem in Bexar County, which up to that time had more crashes on major highways than almost every other densely populated county in Texas during the previous five years. In that period, Bexar County had recorded at least 136 wrong-way accidents that injured 138 people and killed nearly 30, according to an analysis of state crash data by the San Antonio Express-News in 2012.

Not surprisingly, police blamed Bexar Countys historic problem with drunken driving as the principal cause of wrong-way driving. (In 2015, Mens Health, using statistics on DWI arrests and liver disease, among others, ranked San Antonio the nations seventh-most drunken city.) A 2012 study by the National Transportation Safety Board showed numerous states reporting that roughly 60 to 72 percent of wrong-way collisions and citations involved drivers who had been drinking or were legally impaired.

The task force sought a variety of grants to fund its work and began identifying consistent San Antonio trouble spots  usually exit ramps near businesses on freeway frontage roads, especially bars, whose inebriated customers could make a wrong turn at the end of the night. San Antonio has more than 400 highway exit ramps on about 130 miles of freeways.

One of the first steps was to get SAPD to include wrong-way driving in the group of serious crimes (shootings, child abductions, officer in trouble, etc.) that merit dispatchers alerting officers with a blaring emergency tone on their radios.

Thats usually how the response now starts. A person sees a wrong-way driver and calls 911 with a location and description of the vehicle. Operators at their terminals at TransGuide look for the vehicle on their screens while simultaneously typing out a freeway warning sign: Wrong Way Driver Reported  Use Extreme Caution.

Their cameras can do full 360-degree turns vertically and horizontally, but theyre only on interstates and state-maintained highways, not most downtown or residential streets.

The issue of Big Brother surveillance occasionally comes up, Gianotti said. But as many alleged drunk drivers and their attorneys will tell you, we do not store photos from these cameras and cannot make them available. An operator did, however, demonstrate to a reporter that the cameras can focus so tightly on people that they can easily provide the police a full description of them, if needed.

Sometimes the TxDOT operators find the wrong-way driver first, and sometimes the police are already in pursuit. Gianotti and TransGuide operations manager Matt Sneed agreed that under the best circumstances, it could take three to four minutes before a police vehicle is in pursuit of a driver.

At 40 mph, that could be nearly 3 miles of drunken driving against oncoming traffic. Often its longer.

Bless those officers who wait for the wrong-way drivers to come at them, Gianotti said. Theyre putting their lives on the line.

TxDOT spokesman Josh Donat said the public sometimes asks why authorities dont just install remote-activated spikes on every ramp.

Sounds good, but its a horrible idea, he said. Those are designed to work at about 5 mph, not 40. That would destroy your vehicle.

Some of the stats compiled by TxDOTs wrong-way driving program bolster the obvious link to drunken drivers. Some do not. Five years of TransGuide stats ending in 2016 show a spike in incidents at 2 a.m.  bar closing times.

In 2016, the timing of 162 wrong-way driving reports to TxDOT  those are SAPD citations involving injury and noninjury incidents  suggests that the safest hours for avoiding wrong-way drivers would be from 8 a.m. until noon.

The most dangerous days would be Saturday and Sunday  but Thursday, too. The worst months? Strangely, March led the pack in 2016, with 22 reports, while January (with its New Years revelers), May, August and September tied with 15.

bselcraig@express-news.net
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A Wimberley development firm wants to build a 12-story upscale apartment tower near Hemisfair, in another sign that demand for expensive luxury apartments downtown is strong.

Influenced by the success of the Cellars complex at the Pearl, Laney Development expects to start construction in May on the tower, named Durango Residences, at the northwest corner of Presa Street and Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard, manager Tim Proctor said. It will include 70 apartments as well as two townhomes, three live-work spaces and retail on its ground floor, he said.

The citys Historic and Design Review Commission will consider the project at its Wednesday meeting.

The downtown area needs more residential. I think the effective way to do it is great density, Proctor said.

With an average rent of slightly less than $3 a square foot, the complex would be one of the priciest in San Antonio. The cheapest unit would rent for about $1,400 a month while the penthouse would go for $5,000, Proctor said.

At one time, rents of $2 a square foot were rare in San Antonio, but developers have lately shown more comfort with charging higher rents. In May, Pearl developer Silver Ventures opened the Cellars complex with an average rent of $3.07 per square foot, and it was already 76 percent occupied by the third quarter of this year, according to analystics firm Austin Investor Interests. Local developer Keller Henderson has said he plans to charge $4 per square foot at a complex he wants to build on the River Walk downtown.

An $83 million, 21-story apartment tower planned across the street from City Hall is expected to offer an average rent of $2.75 a square foot.

Cellars has proven out the San Antonio market and served as an influence for Durango Residences, Proctor said.

Laney Development is under contract to buy the 0.48-acre site of the proposed complex, which is currently used as a parking lot, Proctor said. He declined to say what the purchase price would be. The property has been owned since 2010 by local company Fredericksburg Suites Inc., and it was assessed at $1.3 million this year by the Bexar Appraisal District, according to the districts records.

Laney is in talks with three local banks to get financing for the project, Proctor said.

He cited the propertys proximity to the San Antonio River and the King William neighborhood and its restaurant scene as reasons for building the tower there. It is in a walkable neighborhood, but Cesar E. Chavez offers easy access for vehicles, he said.

The property is also a few blocks from Hemisfair and H-E-Bs South Flores Market, and is across the street from the upscale Agave Apartments complex.

I think its a very stimulating area and a very walkable area, Proctor said. We also think that area of town is growing and will continue to grow in the near future.

A few other luxury apartment complexes are being built near the border of King William and Southtown, including a 338-unit complex by Dallas developer Encore Multi-Family and another by local development group Landbridge Partners.

Laney Development is getting a $100,000 grant from the San Antonio River Authority for including environmentally-friendly features in the building, such as greenery on the walls above its entrance, Proctor said. The company also expects to get incentives from the county and the citys Center City Housing Incentive Policy, he said.

The tower will mark the first time Laney Development has built in San Antonio, but the company plans to move its operations to the Alamo City, Proctor said. It has built multifamily, industrial, mixed-use and small office projects in the northeast U.S., he said.

rwebner@express-news.net | Twitter: @RWebner
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to fully enforce a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries.

This is not a final ruling on the travel ban: Challenges to the policy are winding through the federal courts, and the justices themselves ultimately are expected to rule on its legality.

But the action indicates that the high court might eventually approve the latest version of the ban, announced by President Donald Trump in September. Lower courts have continued to find problems with the policy.

Opponents of this and previous versions of the ban say they show a bias against Muslims. They say that was reinforced most recently by Trump's retweets of anti-Muslim videos.

"President Trump's anti-Muslim prejudice is no secret. He has repeatedly confirmed it, including just last week on Twitter. It's unfortunate that the full ban can move forward for now, but this order does not address the merits of our claims," said Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project. The ACLU is representing some opponents of the ban.

Just two justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, noted their disagreement with court orders allowing the latest policy to take full effect.

The new policy is not expected to cause the chaos that ensued at airports when Trump rolled out his first ban without warning in January.

The ban applies to travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Lower courts had said people from those nations with a claim of a "bona fide" relationship with someone in the United States could not be kept out of the country. Grandparents, cousins and other relatives were among those courts said could not be excluded.

The courts were borrowing language the Supreme Court itself came up with last summer to allow partial enforcement of an earlier version of the ban.

Now, those relationships will no longer provide a blanket exemption from the ban, although visa officials can make exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

The justices offered no explanation for their order, but the administration had said that blocking the full ban was causing "irreparable harm" because the policy is based on legitimate national security and foreign policy concerns.

In lawsuits filed in Hawaii and Maryland, federal courts said the updated travel ban violated federal immigration law. The travel policy also applies to travelers from North Korea and to some Venezuelan government officials and their families, but the lawsuits did not challenge those restrictions. Also unaffected are refugees. A temporary ban on refugees expired in October.

All the rulings so far have been on a preliminary basis. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, will be holding arguments on the legality of the ban this week.

Both courts are dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expects those courts to reach decisions "with appropriate dispatch."

Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.
Fleischmeister Horst Schurger, who has a Masters Degree in Butchering and Smallgoods from the Master College in Monchengladbach, Germany, joined chefs, Paul McDonald and Simon Bestley, on the judging panel and described the ham as perfectly smoky and sweet, with a brilliant initial taste, true to style and with even colouring.
In what will be a major shot in the arm for the government and could restore some confidence after a grim few weeks, Mr Joyce appears to have lifted his primary vote by at least 10 points, meaning after the distribution of preferences he will have as many as seven in 10 votes in the NSW seat.
The suspension is good and itll get plenty of work around here and will probably knock out 800 hours in a year, mainly spreading lime and urea, apart from the chase work.
Primaries of WA wool technician Graeme Luff said the prices Mr Thomas received last Thursday for his prem wool from a second shearing this year, were less than 30 cents a kilogram clean below what he might have expected for full wools.
GRAND FORKS  In June, more than 4,700 Grand Forks residents filtered through the Alerus Center -- and only the Alerus Center -- to vote on the future of a downtowns Arbor Park. It was another sign of the polling consolidation popping up across the state, as voting locations continue a yearslong drop.

The move was a first for the city, which had never before held its own single-site election. But in the aftermath of the vote, the debate over the park seemed settled, and Grand Forks leaders were glad to skirt the costs and logistical headache they say can come with polling sites all around town.

Then came the lawsuit.

A group of about two dozen voters sought to have the election voided, their case stated, in part because using a single-site system was an overreach of city authority. That claim was the result of months of concerns that the new system and its lower number of voting locations would reduce turnout and potentially change the elections results.

Henry Howe, the voters lawyer, later said in court that the city tried to stack the deck. The suit is pending on appeal to the North Dakota Supreme Court, and the citys legal team has denied wrongdoing.

But state voting data show precincts have been falling for decades, with 1,235 precincts in the 1980 presidential election and just 432 in 2016 -- an indication that polling sites have followed suit. Those numbers are consistent with staffing, budgetary and logistical concerns expressed by election officials around North Dakota, raising questions of how the state and its voters adapt.

The trend holds up around the country. Dana Harsell, an associate professor of political science and public administration at UND, said the 2008 presidential election had 132,237 voting locations. In 2016, just 116,990.

Part of the pressure, voting experts say, has come from the Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in 2002, which added to elections cost and logistical burdens -- like technological requirements for voting machines.

Harsell added that ages of election workers are increasingly skewing older, too, which can make it harder to staff big elections every two to four years. Theres also evidence, he said, that increasing pay for election workers has made polling sites increasingly expensive in sparsely populated rural areas, forcing consolidation.

We certainly know it is a trend, and you could say its been a trend since the 1950s, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Silrum said. Because weve steadily dwindled down over the years.

Voting in Grand Forks

The same trends are affecting voting in Grand Forks. City leaders approved a seven-location plan for the 2018 elections last week in a 5-2 committee vote expected to be confirmed by the full Council Monday, Dec. 4. A separate plan for just one site has also drawn support, and City Council President Dana Sande has argued that such a plan helps voters remember where to go vote.

City Clerk Sherie Lundmark said that would be the latest in a reduction from 26 polling sites in 2004. She said much of that can be attributed to schools no longer wanting to take security risks with visitors, but she said voters sometimes express discomfort entering an unfamiliar house of worship, too. And its far easier for technicians to service machines at one site than bounce from one precinct to the next on Election Day.

Officials around the state say the same. In Minot, the 2018 primary and general elections are expected to be held at just one citywide location, and special elections have long been held in just one spot. In Fargo, polling sites have dwindled in the last decade from 39 to 16 in the most recent presidential contest. North Dakotas local officials offer a range of reasons for scaling back polling sites, but most often say its because of logistical issues.

Debra Smestad, Ward County auditor and treasurer, said schools are increasingly wary of the security risks that accompany the visiting public. Consolidation in MInot also saves the headache of finding election workers.

I can make phone calls for eight, nine weeks in advance trying to fill my precincts, and then trying to make sure I have substitutes, she said. Its a full-time job for a while, working evenings just trying to find people.

A double-edged sword

But that hasnt calmed concerns that shrinking polling sites are bad for voter access. Former City Council member and state representative Eliot Glassheim spoke before city leaders last week as they weighed their plans for 2018 elections, urging them to keep as many polling sites as possible. He predicted as many as 400 votes lost -- to car trouble, cross-town travel and the like -- if all voting was held at the Alerus Center.

"It seems to me the council's job is to make it as easy as possible for people to vote, he said. I can't prove you're going to lose 400 votes. You can't prove you're not going to lose 400 votes. But just as an older politician, that seems about right to me."

But many North Dakota officials say they arent so sure. Its easier to know where to go when there are fewer sites, Smestad said. Eschewing schools also means voters avoid an early-morning crush of student drop-offs, Silrum added.

Harsell said its true that fewer polling sites could mean curtailed voter access. But he said that, along with diminishing physical Election Day voting sites have come other methods of enfranchisement, like early voting, vote-by-mail and increased absentee ballot use.

According to state data, Harsell said, nearly 40 percent of North Dakotas votes in the 2016 presidential election were cast before Election Day -- so Its not clear if the net result has been harmful or beneficial.

The more we open up alternative methods to voting outside of the traditional polling place on Election Day, the more were going to see fewer physical locations to vote, he said. Its a double-edged sword.
Matt Smith admires Prince Philip for doing "what he wants".

Matt Smith

The 35-year-old actor plays the 96-year-old royal in Netflix series 'The Crown' - which stars Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth - and he thinks the Duke of Edinburgh is "too cool for school" after learning so much about his life.

Speaking on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!', he said: "I'd really like to meet Prince Philip. He's an enigma. He's too cool, he's too cool for school.

"I've not been asked to meet him. That's what I love about him - he's done what he wants, when he wants, how he wants, with whom he wants. He hasn't asked permission and his wife's the queen."

The second series of the popular drama will air from Friday (08.12.17), and Philip is set to be portrayed as an adulterer in the new episodes.

The show's creator Peter Morgan said: "What I have to do is write a story about people at the centre of British life who are human beings.

"If you're hoping that tries to pick holes in the royal marriage, I wouldn't dream of it. Their marriage is a triumph by any standards."

What's more, 'The Crown' - which will also star Matthew Goode as Lord Snowdon, and Dexter's Michael C. Hall as John F. Kennedy - is said to be poised to dedicate a future episode to Edward VIII and his dealings with the ruling power in Germany at the start of World War Two.

In particular, the episode will focus on his relationship with the Nazis after he abdicated the throne.
Ferne McCann didn't think she'd be able to bond with her baby.

Ferne McCann

The former 'The Only Way is Essex' star was left devastated when her now-ex-boyfriend Arthur Collins was arrested for throwing acid on revellers inside a nightclub in London just hours after she found out she was pregnant with his child earlier this year.

And considering the stress she went through while she was carrying her now-one-month-old daughter Sunday, she was concerned she wouldn't have a connection with her but she was blown away by the love she had for the tot when she finally met her.

Speaking on 'This Morning' on Monday (04.12.17), she said: "I felt like, imagine if my baby arrives and I don't feel that connection, because everyone speaks about this unconditional gush of love. Imagine if I didn't have that. I think it's like a natural concern, I don't know, maybe it's just me. But as soon as she arrived, and every minute that I spend with her, the love just grows so much. And I think for me, this year it wasn't part of the plan to have a baby, but you can't plan life. It just happened. I wasn't the most maternal person, but now I feel so maternal. And I'm just so in love with her."

And, although the pregnancy was full of ups and downs, the 27-year-old beauty's little one is actually a really "calm baby" and, that in turn, has made her chill out a bit more.

She explained: "She's really calm and she makes me really calm. She's made me so serene. Who would have thought it?"

Ferne has since moved back in with her mother so that she can help with the baby as Arthur - who she began dating at the beginning of the year - has been found guilty of the acid attack and has been told by the judge that he will spend a long time behind bars.
Rak-Su have five songs in the top 10 of the iTunes chart.

Rak-Su

After winning 'The X Factor' less than 24 hours ago, the four piece - made up of childhood friends Mustafa Rahimtulla, Ashley Fongho, Jamaal Shurland and Myles Stephenson - shot straight to number one with their original winners' charity single 'Dimelo', which features Wyclef Jean and Naughty Boy.

As of writing, the original version of the track - without the rapper and producer featured on it - is at number three below Ed Sheeran and Beyonce's 'Perfect', while their song I'm 'Feeling You' is number four, fifth is 'Mona Lisa' and 'Mamacita' made it to number six.

The boys beat off competition from Grace Davies to be crowned winner of the talent contest, however, the 20-year-old beauty's song 'Too Young' has just made it into the top 10, sat in eighth place.

It comes after the group revealed they have a catalogue of songs they've written and are ready to release.

Fans won't have to wait too long to hear some new music from them as they've revealed they've already got loads of tracks they penned before and during the competition that are ready to drop.

Speaking on 'Lorraine' on Monday (04.12.17), Ashley said: "We have a got a backlog [of songs] but we always want to better ourselves so we write every single day ...

"That's the good thing about 'X Factor' - we have to write songs every week and you write four or five and only one will get used so we've got other stuff we can go back to."

The band's mentor Simon Cowell is convinced they will become as big as One Direction - who finished third in the 2010 series of the show, and have gone on to sell more than 70 million records - and, although they were the early favourites, they never expected to win the show and were just using the competition for "exposure."

Ashley explained: "I think for us, we knew who we wanted to be and we knew who we wanted to be going onto the show and obviously we saw it as a good opportunity to get some exposure for ourselves, we didn't know it was going to go this far. I think we were just fortunate in that when we said we wanted to do our own songs, the staff were kind of like: 'OK, if it's really what you want to do, it's a risk but fine.'"
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated the first phase of the Chabahar port, called the Shahid Beheshti port, in the Sistan-Balochistan province on December 3, paving the way for a new strategic transit route between India, Iran and Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan. Indias minister of state for shipping Pon Radhakrishnan was present at the event.Easily accessible from Indias western coast, the port is expected to accelerate trade between India, Afghanistan and Iran as Pakistan does not allow transit access to New Delhi for trade with the other two countries.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated the first phase of the Chabahar port, called the Shahid Beheshti port, in the Sistan-Balochistan province on December 3, paving the way for a new strategic transit route between India, Iran and Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan. India's minister of state for shipping Pon Radhakrishnan was present at the event.#

India will equip and operate two berths in the phase-I of the Chabahar Port with a capital investment of $85.21 million and annual revenue expenditure of $22.95 million on a 10-year lease, according to Indian media reports.Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj met her Iranian counterpart Javed Zarif in Tehran a day before the inauguration and discussed the implementation of the Chabahar port project along with other issues. Swaraj stopped at Tehran while returning from Sochi in Russia after attending the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.India sent its first consignment of wheat to Afghanistan by sea through the Chabahar port over a month ago, marking opening of the new route. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The avalanche of sexual harassment claims, with new ones pouring forth daily, leads me to the wisdom of George Washington's observation in his farewell address in 1796:

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. ... And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be managed without religion."

You may say, "There you go again, Star. Waving your Bible."

But is there a better answer for dealing with this problem?

Society, all human life, is guided by rules. The only question before us is: What are the rules that we choose to live by?

Washington's point is crucial. In a free society, one in which we want to minimize government and political control, we must maximize self-governance. Religion, and the morality that emerges from it, provides the rules by which free men and women govern their own behavior.

I will say further that the rules that we learn from scripture provide the framework for a society based on love, respect and creativity, as opposed to power and control.

Sexuality, outside the framework of mutual love, commitment and respect between husband and wife, is transformed from a physical expression of intimacy and beauty to the gross and crass behavior of brutes.

That this appears to be so widespread in our society should trouble us all.

So what do we do?

I am a Christian, but I do not believe that our government was designed to mend men's souls. It was designed to allow citizens to live free.

We cannot force citizens to do what Washington advises -- learn and be guided by scripture.

What's the alternative?

One is to forget it and let people do what they want. Let women fend for themselves when beastly predators with money and power threaten them.

Alternatively, we can have politicians design our rules. But can this work? Without guidelines of scripture, how do we discern right and wrong, acceptable and forbidden?

This is the trend that has been going on for years. The less we self-govern through eternal Biblical truths, learned at home and at school, the more we grow government to control our lives.

In response to sexual harassment violations perpetrated by some members of congress, Rep. Barbara Comstock has introduced a congressional resolution requiring "all House Members, Officers, employees, including interns, detailees, and fellows, of the House of Representatives shall complete an anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training program during each session of Congress."

Surely, similar programs will be popping up across industry. So instead of our workforce developing new and better products, more of their time will be spent sitting in anti-harassment training sessions, learning rules designed by bureaucrats.

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University published a report last year on the costs to our economy of the vast growth in the regulatory state from 1977 to 2012. The study concludes that accumulated regulatory growth reduced the size of the American economy in 2012 by 25 percent -- $4 trillion of what it might have been.

Aside from economic costs, what are the human costs of our lives increasingly being controlled by bureaucrats?

According to research from Stanford University, 10 percent of married couples meet at work. So much for this, as men will fear giving a woman a second glance at work, let alone saying or doing anything that might hint he's attracted to her.

I see only one viable path to a healthy, free nation. Choose to heed the wisdom of our first president.
Members of the Cotton Association of India (CAI) will go on a one-day token protest on December 15 against the reverse charge mechanism (RCM) under the goods and services tax (GST) and on an indefinite strike in their respective states by closing shutters from December 22 if the RCM issue is not resolved in the next meeting of the GST Council on December 21.Under reverse charge mechanism, the recipient of the goods or services is liable to pay GST instead of the supplier.

Members of the Cotton Association of India (CAI) will go on a one-day token protest on December 15 against the reverse charge mechanism (RCM) under the goods and services tax (GST) and on an indefinite strike in their respective states by closing shutters from December 22 if the RCM issue is not resolved in the next meeting of the GST Council on December 21.#

The decision was arrived at in a recent meeting in Mumbai of CAI members from all cotton growing states, according to a press release from the association. CAI also has about 70 ginners as members.The plight of the entire cotton sector across the country and the issue of pending refunds to exporters since July 2017 when GST was rolled out were discussed at the meeting. Telangana Cotton Millers & Traders Welfare Association president Ravinder Reddy highlighted the heavy losses suffered by the farmers in his state due to the damage caused by pink bollworm and uncertain rains.Because of RCM on cotton, the relationship between spinners and ginners has soured, Manjeet Singh Chawla, president of Madhyanchal Cotton Ginners & Traders Association, said.BS Rajpal, president of Maharashtra Cotton Ginners Association said that RCM has been unjustly imposed only on cotton and not on other agricultural commodities.CAI director Manish Daga, said every day about 2,700 farmers were shifting from cotton to other competing crops. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- (Marketwired) -- 12/03/17 -- Taste Ireland, Australia's largest distributor of Irish and UK foods, will raise the freshness and availability of Ireland's iconic food brands in Australia with a new end-to-end freight solution from DHL.

The solution will see DHL Global Forwarding, the leading international provider of air, sea and road freight services, ship Taste Ireland's products -- including much-loved Irish labels like Tayto crisps and Barry's Tea -- on direct sailings to Australia, selected to minimize transit times and the risks of in-transit food expiry. To ensure freshness of the food items, DHL will utilize its reefers -- refrigerated containers -- to ship temperature-sensitive products.

Prior to shipping, DHL will consolidate and pack Taste Ireland's high volumes of orders -- from customers including major supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths as well as most Irish pubs in Australia -- to reduce container numbers and subsequently optimize transport costs and times for the distributor.

We chose to work with DHL because of their exemplary track record in handling time-sensitive food shipments with strict compliance, accuracy, and efficiency," said Eamon Eastwood, CEO, Taste Ireland. "As our business continues to grow at breakneck speed, we needed a forwarder who could not only simplify and speed up our shipping process across numerous line items, but give us full visibility of and confidence in our shipments' freshness when they arrive at each customer's door."

To further expedite the delivery process, DHL will also pre-clear Taste Ireland's shipments with Australian customs prior to their arrival, as well as offering door-to-door airfreight for more urgent shipments. Doing so ensures DHL can swiftly deliver shipments across the final mile to Taste of Ireland's warehouses for unpacking and retail distribution, supported by regular reports and status updates through all stages of each shipment's journey.

Tony Boll, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding South Pacific, said, "We're excited to be helping Taste Ireland as it makes the leap from SME to global supplier of repute, by giving them total visibility and compliance across every facet of the logistics process as well as the support of our world-class customs clearance processes."

"Outsourcing the entire supply chain to a single trusted logistics provider gives importers like Taste Ireland huge freedom to extend their horizons," said Tony Boll, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding South Pacific. "The time previously spent on in-house logistics management can now go into how Taste Ireland markets and sells Ireland's favorite foods to meet untapped and increasingly hungry demand throughout Australia and the South Pacific."

DHL - The logistics company for the world

DHL is the leading global brand in the logistics industry. Our DHL family of divisions offer an unrivalled portfolio of logistics services ranging from national and international parcel delivery, e-commerce shipping and fulfillment solutions, international express, road, air and ocean transport to industrial supply chain management. With about 350,000 employees in more than 220 countries and territories worldwide, DHL connects people and businesses securely and reliably, enabling global trade flows. With specialized solutions for growth markets and industries including technology, life sciences and healthcare, energy, automotive and retail, a proven commitment to corporate responsibility and an unrivalled presence in developing markets, DHL is decisively positioned as "The logistics company for the world."

DHL is part of Deutsche Post DHL Group. The Group generated revenues of more than 57 billion euros in 2016.

Media Contact:

DHL Asia Pacific & EEMEA

Corporate Communications and Responsibility

Belinda Tan

Tel: +65 6771 3332

Fax: +65 6771 3322

Email: Email Contact






LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Rio Tinto Plc. (RTPPF.PK, RIO.L, RIO, RTNTF.PK) said that it has appointed Simon Thompson as chairman. Thompson, who joined the Rio Tinto board as a non-executive director in 2014, will become chairman on 5 March 2018. He succeeds Jan du Plessis who will step down as chairman and from the Rio Tinto board on the same date after serving almost nine years as chairman.



Separately, Rio Tinto said it expects capital expenditure of less than $4.5 billion in 2017 down from prior outlook of $5 billion. It is targeting $5 billion in additional free cash flow from its five-year productivity programme from 2017-2021.



Thompson has over 20 years' experience working across five continents in the mining and metals industry. From 1995 to 2007, he worked for the Anglo American group, holding a number of senior positions, including executive director of Anglo American plc, chief executive of the Base Metals Division, chairman of the Exploration Division, and chairman of Tarmac. His experience as a non-executive director includes serving on the boards of AngloGold Ashanti, Rusal and Newmont Mining Corporation.



Mr Thompson has been chairman of 3i Group plc since 2015 and was chairman of Tullow Oil plc from 2012 to 2017. Earlier in his career, he held investment banking positions at S.G. Warburg and N M Rothschild.



Upon assuming the role of chairman, Mr Thompson will step down as chairman of the Rio Tinto remuneration committee and will also cease to be a member of the audit committee. Sam Laidlaw, who previously chaired the remuneration committee at HSBC Holdings plc, will succeed Mr Thompson as chair of the Rio Tinto remuneration committee with effect from 5 March 2018.



In a presentation to investors at a seminar in Sydney, Rio Tinto demonstrated how it leads the sector in delivering cash returns to shareholders, returning 40 per cent of cash generated to shareholders in the first half of 2017.



Rio Tinto said it reinforced its focus on delivering superior cash returns for shareholders over the short, medium and long term as it unveiled key features of its drive to generate $5 billion of additional free cash flow over the next five years.



Rio Tinto chief executive J-S Jacques said, 'Our Group target of $1.5 billion of annual additional free cash flow from 2021 will ensure we can continue to lead the pack in delivering superior cash returns to our shareholders.'



Rio Tinto is targeting $5 billion in additional free cash flow from its five-year productivity programme from 2017-2021. As part of the $5 billion target, the productivity programme will deliver additional free cash flow of ~$1.5 billion a year from 2021.



The company said it is on track to deliver additional free cash flow of $300 million from productivity improvements in 2017 (year one of the five-year programme), and a cumulative $900 million by the end of 2018.



Rio Tinto said it expects capital expenditure of less than $4.5 billion in 2017 down from prior outlook of $5 billion.



Rio maintained its capital spending forecast for 2018 at about $5.5 billion.



The company expects capital expenditure of $6 billion in both 2019 and 2020. Previously, the company expected capital expenditure of about $5.5 billion for 2019.



The company expects to ship 330 million to 340 million tonnes of iron ore from its Pilbara operations in 2018.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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RA'ANANA, Israel and TOKYO, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Inuitive Ltd. (Inuitive) and SoftBank Corp. (SoftBank), a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. (TOKYO: 9984), today announced that they have agreed to collaborate through the development of artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning (DL) and advanced 3D sensing with computer vision capabilities for future IoT. This collaboration will draw from the expertise of both companies in AI by leveraging Inuitive's existing and future vision processors and its AI framework with SoftBank's IoT platforms, which offer advanced heterogeneous processing capabilities for embedded products. The companies expect the collaboration to drive the popularity and development of smart IoT devices and systems.

Devices such as IoT are becoming more intelligent with the proliferation of AI. Implementing AI on the device provides a number of advantages over current market implementations, enabling edge devices to provide human-like interaction while keeping consumer market price tag. Additional benefits of on-chip AI include real-time performance, privacy protection and longer operation time.

"To develop an AI framework, it takes efforts from players in multiple domains," said Mr. Shlomo Gadot, founder and chief executive officer, Inuitive. "The strategic collaboration between Inuitive and SoftBank will advance on-device intelligence by leveraging Inuitive's advanced technologies and SoftBank market proven technologies. Together we'll push the performance envelope and extend AI to places that are currently beyond reach. Our strategic collaboration will become a turning point for the whole on-chip AI industry".

"SoftBank has been conducting research in AI over a decade," said Hironobu Tamba, Vice President, Head of Smart IoT Division, SoftBank. "We look forward to the results of our collaboration with Inuitive to further accelerate new and exciting capabilities of on-chip AI for millions of devices".

Currently, SoftBank is focused on optimizing the high-end platforms to accelerate AI products use cases in the areas of computer vision and neural networks and is researching broader executions in the areas of Objects recognition, Scene reconstruction, SLAM and power management. Inuitive is a leading company in vision processing and its applications. It plays an important role in deep learning algorithm innovation. The company's leading technology in deep learning makes it possible to innovate and develop a variety of algorithms with low cost and fast response time. Inuitive has also made breakthroughs in sensing technologies. Its strategic collaboration with SoftBank is expected to drastically improve the speed and efficiency of combining system with chipset, making Inuitive's AI technology more pervasive.

About Inuitive

INUITIVE (http://www.inuitive-tech.com) Inuitive is the leading fabless semiconductor company in the area of 3D imaging. With the NU4000, a superior multi-core vision processor that supports 3D Imaging, it optimizes consumer experiences and enhances competitive advantages in the areas of Robots, Drones, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality to name just a few. INUITIVEintelligentofferingcombines algorithms, ASIC and System solution to realize the AI practice, enabling devices to acquire more human capabilities.With AI at its core,The INUITIVE platform also includes a3D Depth Sensing Computer Vision processor and powerful deep learning capabilities to enable smart devices to become even smarter.

About SoftBank

SoftBank Corp., a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. (TOKYO: 9984), provides mobile communication, fixed-line communication and Internet connection services to customers in Japan. Leveraging synergies with other companies in the SoftBank Group, SoftBank Corp. aims to transform lifestyles through ICT and expand into other business areas including IoT, robotics and energy. To learn more, please visit http://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/group/sbm/

Contact:

Oriane Morley

Inuitive

+972-54-261-4671

oriane@innovationhall.org.il


LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC (ERM.L), a business information and events group, announced Monday that it has acquired Seven Site Media Limited, trading as TowerXchange. The company did not reveal the financial terms of the deal. TowerXchange is a fast-growing information and events business. It is a major source of information on the tower market, the infrastructure supporting the growth of the mobile telecoms market. According to Euromoney, the acquisition of TowerXchange is part of its telecoms strategy to facilitate industry collaboration and trading in areas ranging from pricing to standards across the telecoms ecosystem. Rosalind Irving, Euromoney Divisional Director responsible for its telecoms businesses, said, 'TowerXchange is an excellent business which serves an increasingly important part of telecoms infrastructure. It is strategic for Euromoney because it is highly complementary to the markets served by TelCap, BroadGroup (in which we invested in March) and Layer123 (acquired in April).' Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Fujitsu Limited Public and Investor Relations Tel: +81-3-6252-2176 URL: www.fujitsu.com/global/news/contacts/

TOKYO, Dec 4, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu today announced that Japan's Ministry of the Environment has honored the company's multi-node Fujitsu Server PRIMERGY CX600 M1 with the Environment Minister's Award for Global Warming Prevention Activity in the Technological Development and Commercialization category. This award is in recognition of the fact that the "hot water cooling" technology available on the PRIMERGY CX600 M1 reduces TCO(1) and power consumption throughout the system, contributing to a reduction in CO2 emissions.Fujitsu will continue to develop highly energy-efficient products, contributing its efforts to alleviate climate change through its business activities.About the Environment Minister's Award for Global Warming Prevention ActivityThe Environment Minister's Award for Global Warming Prevention Activity has been bestowed by the Ministry of the Environment since 1998, as part of its efforts to promote global warming countermeasures, recognizing organizations and individuals which have made a notable contribution to the prevention of global warming.About PRIMERGY CX600 M1The PRIMERGY CX600 M1 water-cooled model employs a "hot water cooling" technology that relies on external air to lower the temperature of the coolant water circulated within the server. This model cools CPUs by using a water cooling pump inside the server, which can cut the number of fan rotations needed for cooling, reducing server power consumption. In addition, the heat removed from the server along with the coolant water is exchanged in a cooling distribution unit (CDU)(2) connected to the rack holding the servers, and cooling towers installed outside the facility enable cooling with less air conditioning equipment. This reduces TCO and power consumption by the system as a whole, contributing to lower CO2 emissions.Installation Diagramhttp://www.acnnewswire.com/topimg/Low_FujitsuPRIMERGYCX600M1.jpg(1) TCOTotal cost of ownership. Includes not just the cost to install the system, but also the cost to operate and maintain it.(2) CDUCooling distribution unit. This unit circulates the coolant water from the water cooling pumps within the servers to the cooling towers, while also conducting heat exchange within the CDU itself.About Fujitsu LtdFujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 155,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.5 trillion yen (US$40 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. For more information, please see http://www.fujitsu.com.* Please see this press release, with images, at:http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/Source: Fujitsu LtdContact:Copyright 2017 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
WAYNE, New Jersey, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Toys"R"Us, Inc. (the "Company") today announced that, as part of the Company's ongoing financial restructuring efforts, the Company's UK operation ("Toys"R"Us UK") has initiated a process by which it is seeking creditor approval to reposition its real estate portfolio for future growth and profitability.

The UK Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) process will not impact any Toys"R"Us entities or stakeholders outside the UK, including employees, vendors and customers. The Company's approximately 1,600 Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us stores around the world, including all stores in the UK, are currently open for business and continuing to operate as usual. Customers can also continue to shop for the toy and baby products they are looking for onlineat the Company's www.toysrus.com and www.babiesrus.com web stores.

Dave Brandon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "As we continued to work through the financial restructuring process, we made the decision to take action to put our UK operation on stronger financial footing. Through the CVA process, we hope to receive authorization to restructure our UK lease obligations so that we will be better able to invest in our UK business and further improve the customer experience. Importantly, our stores and operations in our other global markets will not be impacted by this process."

Mr. Brandon continued, "We are confident that we are taking the right steps to ensure that the iconic Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us brands live on for many generations in the UK and around the world. We remain committed to championing play for kids and serving as a trusted resource and friend for parents around the world. Today's proactive measure better positions us to achieve these goals and ensures customers can continue to shop us with confidence over the Holiday season and beyond."

Under the UK's CVA process, Toys"R"Us UK has submitted a restructuring plan to its creditors and will solicit their approval of this plan over the next 14 days. If approved by 75 percent of the creditors and then declared effective, the CVA plan would allow the UK entity to move forward with a more cost efficient store base and footprint better suited to meet the needs of today's consumer.

Additional information can be found by visiting the Company's restructuring website atwww.toysrusinc.com/cvaprocess or calling the Company's Information Hotline, toll-free, at the following numbers internationally:

US and Canada : 844-794-3476

: 844-794-3476 UK Toll Free: 800: 0-800-014-8914

Germany : 0800-182-9016

: 0800-182-9016 Spain Mobile Enabled: 900-984918

Portugal Mobile Enabled: 800-180-778

France : 805: 0805-080337

: 805: 0805-080337 Poland : 0-0-800-141-0322

: 0-0-800-141-0322 Australia 1300: 1-300-009-390

1300: 1-300-009-390 Austria Mobile Enabled: 0800-802290

Switzerland Mobile Enabled: 0800-562-556

China : 400-120-4011

About Toys"R"Us, Inc.

Toys"R"Us, Inc. is the world's leading dedicated toy and baby products retailer, offering a differentiated shopping experience through its family of brands. Merchandise is sold in 885 Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us stores in the United States, Puerto Rico and Guam, and in more than 810 international stores and over 255 licensed stores in 38 countries and jurisdictions. With its strong portfolio of e-commerce sites including Toysrus.com and Babiesrus.com, the company provides shoppers with a broad online selection of distinctive toy and baby products. Toys"R"Us, Inc. is headquartered in Wayne, NJ, and has nearly 65,000 employees worldwide. The company is committed to serving its communities as a caring and reputable neighbor through programs dedicated to keeping kids safe and helping them in times of need. Over the past three decades, the Company has given more than $100 million in product donations to children's charities. Since 1992, the Toys"R"Us Children's Fund, a public charity affiliated with Toys"R"Us, Inc., has also donated more than $130 million in grants. For more information, visit Toysrusinc.com or follow @ToysRUsNews on Twitter.

For more information please contact:

Lenders and Note Investors:

Matthew Finigan, Vice President, Treasurer at 973-617-5808 or Matthew.Finigan@toysrus.com

Media:

Amy von Walter, Executive Vice President, Global Communications & Customer Care at 201-815-9512 or Amy.vonWalter@toysrus.com

press@toysrus.com

973-617-5900

Michael Freitag / Meaghan Repko

Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher

Tel: (212) 355-4449
SAN FRANCISCO, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The globalsmart manufacturing marketsize is estimated to reach USD 395.2 billion by 2025, according to a new study by Grand View Research, Inc. The growing emphasis on increasing production efficiency and gaining visibility across the entire value chain are the two major factors driving market growth. In addition, the availability of advanced technologies such as 3D printing, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and plant asset management solutions to small and medium enterprises is further accelerating the industry growth.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160524/371361LOGO )

The positive impact of government initiatives and investments to promote smart manufacturing adoption has been one of the most influential factors driving market growth. The fact that both industrialized countries and developing economies are aggressively pursuing this avenue is expected to further drive growth. For example, China is reportedly investing over USD 3 billion for advanced manufacturing under the Made in China 2025 program.

Automotive and aerospace & defense industries are the leading growth avenues for smart manufacturing solution providers with industries such as oil and gas and industrial equipment manufacturing rapidly scaling their digitalization efforts. With the proliferation of 3D printing, simulation, and modeling in manufacturing and design, these industries are expected to continue to maintain a significant growth rate over the forecast period. Though numerous solutions are available in the market, digital twin and real-time analytics are anticipated to spearhead the penetration of digitalization in these industries.

Browse full research report with TOC on "Smart Manufacturing Market Analysis By Component, By Technology, By End-use (Automotive, Aerospace, Chemicals, Healthcare, Electronics, Agriculture, Oil & Gas), By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2014 - 2025"at: http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/smart-manufacturing-market

Further key findings from the report suggest:

Enterprise control, asset performance management, and augmentation are expected to lead the smart manufacturing solutions landscapes with many instances of these technologies overlapping with each other.

Collaborative robots and additive manufacturing are also playing a pivotal role in the industry's growth. However, some manufacturing sectors are still looking for efficient ways to capitalize on them.

While Industrial Internet of Things and control systems have been highly touted for their benefits, cybersecurity and security standards are expected to gain renewed interest in the industry.

Major companies such as John Deere, Harley Davidson , and General Motors have successfully implemented smart manufacturing in a bid to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness Smart manufacturing is supported by various organizations and consortiums including Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC), Industrie 4.0, and MESA International, among others.

Browse related reports by Grand View Research:

Smartphone Applications Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/smartphone-applications-market

Rolling Stock Market- http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/rolling-stock-market

Microdisplays Market- http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/microdisplays-market

Hyperscale Data Center Market- http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/hyperscale-data-center-market

Grand View Research has segmented the global smart manufacturing market based on components, technologies, end uses, and regions.

Smart Manufacturing Component Scope (Revenue, USD Billion;2014 - 2025) Hardware Software Services

Smart Manufacturing Technology Scope (Revenue, USD Billion;2014 - 2025) Machine Execution Systems Programmable Logic Controller Enterprise Resource Planning SCADA Discrete Control Systems Human Machine Interface Machine Vision 3D Printing Product Lifecycle Management Plant Asset Management

Smart Manufacturing End-use Scope (Revenue, USD Billion;2014 - 2025) Automotive Aerospace & Defense Chemicals & Materials Healthcare Industrial Equipment Electronics Food & Agriculture Oil & Gas Others

Smart Manufacturing Regional Scope (Revenue, USD Billion;2014 - 2025) North America U.S. Canada Europe UK Germany Asia Pacific China India Japan Latin America Brazil Mexico MEA



Read Our Blog By Grand View Research: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/blogs/technology

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. Thecompany provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.

Contact:

Sherry James

Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc

Phone: +1-415-349-0058

Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519



Email: sales@grandviewresearch.com

Web: www.grandviewresearch.com
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to host live, 24-hour broadcast on climate change; Intelsat provides global contribution and distribution services

Intelsat S.A. (NYSE: I), operator of the world's first Globalized Network and leader in integrated satellite communications is providing global communications services for The Climate Reality Project's "24 Hours of Reality: Be the Voice of Reality" live broadcast. Intelsat's contribution services will be used to uplink video featuring performances and leaders from around the world. Intelsat's distribution services will be used to reach millions of people globally via the Intelsat 19, Intelsat 20, Intelsat 34, Intelsat 905 and Galaxy 17 satellites.

The live event, hosted by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, will begin today, Dec. 4 at 6 p.m. EST. During each hour of the program, regional climate experts will highlight stories of climate activism in six regions, including North America, Oceania, the Middle East and Africa, Europe, and Central and South America. The event will also feature conversations with political leaders, thought leaders, climate scientists and cultural icons, as well as musical performances and short films.

In its seventh year of supporting The Climate Reality Project, Intelsat will use its Globalized Network, which includes its satellite network and IntelsatOne terrestrial services. Intelsat will contribute video from multiple locations worldwide, and support the broadcast of the event to more than 100 countries via traditional platforms such as Telemundo, France 24, SKY, PhoenixTV, and iHeartRadio.

"Climate Reality is grateful for Intelsat's support for this year's 24 Hours of Reality broadcast," said Stacie Paxton Cobos, Climate Reality's Senior Vice President of Communications and Marketing. "24 Hours of Reality: Be the Voice of Reality will showcase activism around the globe with the goal of inspiring millions to take action to solve the climate crisis. We are thrilled to partner with Intelsat once again to reach a truly global audience, and mobilize citizens around the world to stand up for the health of our planet."

"A global organization like The Climate Reality Project requires a globalized network to ensure its message reaches people all around the world," said Kurt Riegelman, Intelsat's Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing. "Intelsat's expansive network and video neighborhoods are proven platforms for reaching the largest international audiences and are ideal for collecting video from multiple locations. We have supported The Climate Reality Project and the work of Vice President Al Gore on climate change since the groundbreaking Live Earth broadcast in 2007. Our long history working together is a testament to the breadth of Intelsat's globalized network and the strength and reliability of our satellite-based contribution and distribution services."

Supporting Resources:

Intelsat Media Services: http://www.intelsat.com/solutions/media

About Intelsat

Intelsat S.A. (NYSE: I) operates the world's first Globalized Network, delivering high-quality, cost-effective video and broadband services anywhere in the world. Intelsat's Globalized Network combines the world's largest satellite backbone with terrestrial infrastructure, managed services and an open, interoperable architecture to enable customers to drive revenue and reach through a new generation of network services. Thousands of organizations serving billions of people worldwide rely on Intelsat to provide ubiquitous broadband connectivity, multi-format video broadcasting, secure satellite communications and seamless mobility services. The end result is an entirely new world, one that allows us to envision the impossible, connect without boundaries and transform the ways in which we live. For more information, visit www.intelsat.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171204005541/en/

Contacts:

Intelsat

Shannon Booker, +1 703-559-7536

Corporate Communications Manager

shannon.booker@intelsat.com


Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 4, 2017) - Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. (CSE: LDS) (OTCQB: LDSYF) (FSE: LD6) (WKN: A14XHT) ("LDS" or the "Company") announces that the City of Adelanto confirmed the issuance to CSPA Group, Inc. of a Volatile Extraction Permit and Business License along with a Certificate of Occupancy signed by the San Bernardino County Fire Department, and that all are in good standing for the manufacturing facility. The Mayor of Adelanto Richard Kerr said, "The CSPA Group's Volatile Extraction Permit, Conditional Use Permit (CUP), Business License, and Certificate of Occupancy (COO) are all in good standing." The Mayor continued stating, "CSPA Group, Inc. was operating within the approved parameters of the City's Volatile Extraction Ordinance." The State of California began accepting applications for State Manufacturing Licenses on December 1, 2017, and the attorneys for the CSPA Group, Inc. submitted the California State application for a state manufacturing license on December 1, 2017.

Brad Eckenweiler, CEO of LDS, stated, "There is a significant amount of misinformation being disseminated on the internet and even with some news agencies. It would be impossible to address all of the negative hypothetical speculation. I would like to thank the overwhelming support from the Cannabis Industry, the City of Adelanto and Mayor Kerr. Simply put, we believe that CSPA Group, Inc. acted within the parameters of its permits and licenses. It's our hope that all parties concerned will continue to work together to a mutually satisfactory conclusion." Until further regulatory clarity can be determined regarding manufacturing, CSPA Group, Inc. will continue its operations with CO2 extracted material.

About Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc.

The Company's technology produces infused strips (similar to breath strips) that are not only a safer, healthier option to smoking, but also a new way to accurately meter the dosage and assure the purity of the product. In addition, with the entering into its management services agreements with NHMC, Inc. and CSPA Group, Inc., the Company has begun its direct involvement in the growing of medicinal ingredients for, and the manufacturing of, its products. From seed to sale, the Company's products and ingredients will be tested for quality and composition throughout the formulation and production processes, resulting in a delivery system that is safe, consistent and effective.

On behalf of the board of directors of Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc.

Brad Eckenweiler, CEO & Director

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

investor.relations@lifestyledeliverysystems.com

1-866-347-5058

Cautionary Disclaimer Statement:

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release.

Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's limited operating history and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. In particular, there is significant regulatory uncertainty with respect to the production and sale of medicinal and recreational marijuana in the United States of America. In particular, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug under the United States Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Although Congress has prohibited the US Justice Department from spending federal funds to interfere with the implementation of state medical marijuana laws, this prohibition must be renewed each year to remain in effect and is subject to change at any time. In addition, although the State of California has adopted laws permitting the commercial cultivation, extraction and manufacturing of medicinal marijuana, final regulations with respect to the implementation of these laws have yet to be adopted. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.
GENEVA, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Exceptional Employee Offerings Acknowledged for the fourth consecutive year

JTI (Japan Tobacco International) has once again been recognized with the prestigious Top Employer certification in the Asia Pacific region for the fourth consecutive year. Along with the regional award, nine JTI offices and factories in eight countries - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore and Thailand - also received the national Top Employer certification.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130528/617491 )



"Our continued success as a Top Employer in the region is a recognition of the high standards we set ourselves," says Mike Griffiths, JTI's Human Resources Vice President for Asia Pacific. "Investing in our people is the cornerstone of our HR strategy in order to enable our employees to develop a fulfilling career within JTI, and to grow into future leaders. A good example is our recent pan-regional Asia Pacific Management Trainee Programme 'Explore' that builds functional expertise and a broad business perspective with multicultural awareness, through rotational assignments across the region."

David Plink, CEO at the Top Employers Institute, confirms: "Our extensive research concluded that JTI forms part of a select group of employers that advance employee conditions worldwide. Their people are well taken care of. Having reconfirmed their outstanding HR practices again this year in the Asia-Pacific region, they can truly consider themselves at the top of an exclusive group of the world's best employers."

The annual international research undertaken by the Top Employers Institute recognises leading employers around the world: those that provide excellent employee conditions, nurture and develop talent throughout all levels of the organization, and which strive to continuously optimize employment practices. JTI's employee offerings were assessed on the following criteria: Talent Strategy, Workforce Planning, On-boarding, Learning & Development, Performance Management, Leadership Development, Career & Succession Management, Compensation & Benefits, and Culture.

For JTI, the renewed regional Top Employer 2018 certification in Asia Pacific is the latest addition to a list of awards recognizing its HR excellence across the globe: JTI is currently Number One Global Top Employer and holds regional Top Employer certifications in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

About JTI

JTI is a leading international tobacco company with operations in more than 120 countries. It is the global owner of both Winston, the number two cigarette brand in the world, and Camel outside the USA and has the largest share in sales for both brands. Other global brands include Mevius, LD and Natural American Spirit. With its internationally recognised brand Logic, JTI is also a major player in the e-cigarette market and has, since 2011, been present in the heated tobacco category with Ploom. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, JTI employs around 27,000 people and was awarded Global Top Employer for three consecutive years. JTI is a member of the Japan Tobacco Group of Companies. For more information, visit http://www.jti.com.

About the Top Employers Institute

The Top Employers Institute is the global Human Capital Management research and Certification company, identifying and celebrating excellence in HR practices and employee conditions in companies around the world. Organisations which also achieve its International Standard in HR best-practice receive the coveted, and well-deserved, Top Employer Brand Certification: a globally recognised validation of their commitment to HR excellence and advancing employee conditions, and powerful differentiator for business performance.Certified Top Employers are the world's premium employers. To learn more about the Top Employers Institute and the Top Employers certification visit:http://www.top-employers.com.
ALBANY, New York, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

As competition soars, companies such as Smith & Nephew plc, Zimmer Biomet, Lohmann & Rauscher International DeRoyal Industries, Inc., BSN Medical, Misonix, Soring GmbH, Arobella Medical, LLC, and Derma Sciences Inc., among others are toying with various idea to buoy growth. Strategic collaborations for instance have proven a popular tactic among companies to gain competitive edge. With mergers and acquisitions, the market players can expect foraying in unexplored regions, in turn expanding their footprint as well as product portfolio. Some of the leading companies are also investing in research and development for robust product launches. Such strategies adopted by the market players are likely to influence the global wound debridement market significantly, finds Transparency Market Research (TMR) in a new study.

According to TMR, the global wound debridement market was valued at US$1,750 mn in 2016. Exhibiting a CAGR of 6.4% between 2017 and 2025, the market is expected to reach US$3,044.8 mn by the end of 2025. Based on type of wound, the chronic wounds segment exhibited high demand in the global market in 2025. By the end of 2017, the market is likely to witness North America emerge dominant. However, during the course of the forecast period, Asia Pacific is expected to showcase strong growth.

View Report at https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/wound-debridement-market.html

Despite Several Positive Impacts Stringent Approval Norms May Threaten Market

The global wound debridement market is expected to grow at a steady pace on account of the increasing prevalence of infectious diseases. Besides this, growing investment by the prominent market players and improving healthcare infrastructure worldwide, especially in developed nations will pave the way for the market's steady growth in the coming years. This holds true in case of growth scenario offered by nations across the Middle East and Africa and Latin America. Conversely, stringent norms of approval implemented by Ministry of Public Health, besides numerous registration regulations to get commercialization objectives a nod are key challenges witnessed by the market at present.

Request to View Sample Copy of Report - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=35036

In response to the rising geriatric population and the increasing incidence of chronic ailments, which may affect skin integrity leading to peripheral vascular diseases, the demand for preventive therapeutics is sure to rise. In addition, the rising incidence of diabetes is also factored in by experts analyzing the market's future. As skin breakdown is a frequent consequence of these diseases leading to chronic wound or formation of ulcers, the usability of wound debridement is expected to rise even further in the coming years. "Against this backdrop, experts foresee a considerable rise in the demand for wound debridement," said a lead TMR analyst.

Request Wound Debridement Market Report Brochure @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=35036

Rising Demand from Emerging Nations to Aid Growth

The expanding demographics and developing economies of India and China and several other emerging nations have created an environment conducive to the market's growth. In addition, the surging demand for apt wound bed preparation, advancements in debridement products, rising awareness, and the increasing popularity of wound care at home have enabled growth in the global wound debridement market. Also the increasing demand for preventing long stays at hospitals will have a positive influence in the overall wound debridement market.

Global Wound Debridement Market Report is available @ US$ 5795

About TMR

Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The company's exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.

Contact

Transparency Market Research

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90 State Street,

Suite 700,

Albany NY - 12207

United States

Tel: +1-518-618-1030

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Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com



Website:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

TMR Blog: http://www.theglobalhealthnews.com/
NANAIMO, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 12/04/17 -- ATLAS ENGINEERED PRODUCTS LTD. (the "Company" or "Atlas") (TSX VENTURE: AEP), a leading supplier of trusses and engineered wood products, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a letter of intent with Clinton Roof Truss Ltd. ("Clinton") whereby the Company has agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Clinton (the "Transaction").

Guy Champagne, President of Atlas, commented, "The acquisition of Clinton represents a major milestone of our acquisition program to significantly broaden our geographic reach. We are extremely pleased to be acquiring Clinton as it is highly accretive and provides us with a strategic base from which to expand in Ontario."

The purchase includes 31,000 square feet of plant, warehouse and office space on a 5-acre site strategically located to provide access to the growing Ontario communities west of Mississauga. Clinton is growing and has over $3 million in annual sales, strong profitability, and very capable operational leadership.

Terms of Transaction with Clinton

Under the binding letter of intent, the Company and Clinton have agreed to negotiate a definitive agreement (the "Definitive Agreement") whereby the Company will acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Clinton for $2,100,000 cash and issue $140,000 in common shares of the Company on closing of the Transaction. The shares will be issued on the closing price immediately preceding the date of this news release. As additional consideration, the shareholders of Clinton will receive an additional $360,000, which will be paid $10,000 per month for the 36 months following closing of the Transaction. A significant portion of the cash required to complete the transaction will be provided by mortgage financing and a term loan.

The current owners of Clinton will be pursuing retirement while remaining available to the Company and the general manager of Clinton will enter into a three-year management contract. All agreements will include non-solicitation and non-competition clauses.

The Company will be entitled to carry out due diligence until January 6, 2018. Upon completion of due diligence, the parties will enter into the Definitive Agreement setting forth the terms and conditions of the Transaction by January 15, 2018. Completion of any transaction with Clinton is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to, completion of due diligence, negotiation of definitive agreements in respect of such a transaction and receipt of any required regulatory approvals. A transaction cannot be completed until these conditions are satisfied, and there can be no assurance that a transaction will be completed at all.

About Atlas Engineered Products Ltd.

Atlas Engineered Products is one of British Columbia's leading suppliers of trusses and engineered wood products. The company was formed over 18 years ago and operates manufacturing and distribution facilities in Nanaimo to meet the needs of residential and commercial builders. Atlas has expert design and engineering teams, a multiple-shift state-of-the-art truss manufacturing operation, and large inventories of engineered beam and flooring components. Atlas aims to grow its base of business across Canada by pursuing an aggressive acquisition and consolidation strategy, and will continue to bring its construction industry partners unparalleled excellence in service, product, and support.

Forward Looking Information

Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations; they are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the Company including those to be described in the Filing Statement filed by the Company on www.sedar.com. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

Contacts:

Atlas Engineered Products Ltd.

1-250-754-1400

2005 Boxwood Rd.

Nanaimo, BC V9S 5X9

www.atlasengineeredproducts.com



Rob Gamley

1-604-689-7422

rob@contactfinancial.com

Contact Financial Corp.

810 - 609 Granville St.

Vancouver, BC V7Y 1G5




Baker Hughes, a GE company (NYSE:BHGE) ("BHGE"), announced today the commencement of tender offers by its subsidiary, Baker Hughes, a GE company, LLC ("BHGE LLC"), for debt securities of BHGE LLC or its subsidiaries. The tender offers consist of offers to purchase for cash:

1) any and all (the "Any and All Tender Offers") of the outstanding (i) 7.500% Senior Notes due 2018 (the "7.500% 2018 Notes") and (ii) 6.000% Senior Notes due 2018 (the "6.000% 2018 Notes" and, together with the 7.50% 2018 Notes, the "Any and All Notes"); and

2) up to $175 million (the "Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price") in aggregate purchase price (the "Maximum Tender Offers" and, together with the Any and All Tender Offers, the "Tender Offers") of the outstanding (i) 8.550% Debentures due 2024 (the "2024 Notes") and (ii) 6.875% Notes due 2029 (the "2029 Notes" and, together with the 2024 Notes, the "Maximum Tender Offer Notes," and, together with the Any and All Notes, the "Securities").

The Tender Offers are summarized in the tables below and are being made pursuant to an Offer to Purchase, dated December 4, 2017 (the "Offer to Purchase"), which sets forth a more detailed description of the Tender Offers. Copies of the Offer to Purchase and the form of notice of guaranteed delivery with respect to the Any and All Notes are available at www.dfking.com/bhge.

Any and All of the Principal Amount Outstanding of the Securities Listed Below:

Reference U.S. Bloomberg Principal Amount Treasury Reference Title of Security CUSIP Number Outstanding Security Page Fixed Spread 6.000% Senior 055482 AJ2 $196,873,000 0.875% UST due FIT3 40 bps Notes 05/31/2018 due 2018(1) 7.500% Senior 057224 AY3 $525,378,000 1.250% UST due FIT4* 50 bps Notes 11/15/2018 due 2018(2)

(1) The 6.000% 2018 Notes were issued by BJ Services Company and subsequently assumed by its successor Western Atlas Inc., a subsidiary of BHGE LLC. On July 3, 2017, BHGE LLC, Baker Hughes Co-Obligor, Inc. (the "Co-Obligor"), Baker Hughes Oilfield Operations, LLC and Baker Hughes International Branches, LLC became co-obligors of the 6.000% 2018 Notes. (2) The 7.500% 2018 Notes were issued by Baker Hughes Incorporated ("BHI"). On July 3, 2017, BHGE LLC, as successor to BHI, and the Co-Obligor became co-obligors of the 7.500% 2018 Notes. * The Bloomberg Reference Page may change to FIT3 prior to the Any and All Price Determination Date (as defined below).

The Any and All Tender Offers will expire at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on December 8, 2017, unless extended or earlier terminated by BHGE LLC (the "Any and All Tender Expiration Date"). Holders of the Any and All Notes must validly tender and not validly withdraw their Any and All Notes prior to or at the Any and All Tender Expiration Date to be eligible to receive the Total Consideration for such Any and All Notes.

Up to $175,000,000 in Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price(1) of the Outstanding Securities Listed Below:

Early Tender Payment (per Fixed Principal Acceptance Reference Bloomberg $1,000 Spread CUSIP Amount Priority U.S. Treasury Reference principal (basis Title of Security Number Outstanding Level Security Page amount)(4) points) 8.550% 957674 2.250% UST Debentures AD6 $112,944,000 1 due FIT1 $50.00 40 bps due 2024(2) 11/15/2027 6.875% Notes due 057224 2.250% UST 2029(3) AK3 $305,788,000 2 due FIT1 $50.00 80 bps 11/15/2027

(1) The Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price for the Maximum Tender Offer Notes includes the Total Consideration (as defined below) and excludes Accrued Interest (as defined below) and fees and expenses related to the Tender Offers. (2) The 2024 Notes were issued by Western Atlas Inc. On July 3, 2017, BHGE LLC, the Co-Obligor, Baker Hughes Oilfield Operations, LLC and Baker Hughes International Branches, LLC became co-obligors of the 2024 Notes. The interest payment payable on December 15, 2017 with respect to the 2024 Notes will be paid to record holders of the 2024 Notes as of December 1, 2017 and will thus not be included in the calculation of Accrued Interest payable on the 2024 Notes purchased in the Maximum Tender Offers. (3) The 2029 Notes were issued by BHI. On July 3, 2017, BHGE LLC, as successor to BHI, and the Co-Obligor became co-obligors of the 2029 Notes. The interest payment payable on January 15, 2018 with respect to the 2029 Notes will be paid to record holders of the 2029 Notes as of January 1, 2018 and will thus not be included in the calculation of Accrued Interest payable on the 2029 Notes purchased in the Maximum Tender Offers at the Maximum Tender Final Settlement Date (as defined below), if any. (4) The Total Consideration for Maximum Tender Offer Notes validly tendered prior to or at the Early Tender Date (as defined below) and accepted for purchase is calculated using the applicable Fixed Spread (as defined below) and is inclusive of the Early Tender Payment (as defined below). The Total Consideration is subject to the Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price and proration in accordance with the Acceptance Priority Levels, as more fully set forth in the Offer to Purchase.

The Maximum Tender Offers will expire at 12:00 midnight, New York City time, on January 2, 2018 (one minute after 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on January 2, 2018), unless extended or earlier terminated by BHGE LLC (the "Maximum Tender Expiration Date"). Holders of the Maximum Tender Offer Notes must validly tender and not validly withdraw their Maximum Tender Offer Notes prior to or at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on December 15, 2017, unless extended (the "Early Tender Date"), to be eligible to receive the Total Consideration for such Maximum Tender Offer Notes, which is inclusive of an amount in cash equal to the applicable amount set forth in the table above under the heading Early Tender Payment (the "Early Tender Payment"). Holders of the Maximum Tender Offer Notes who validly tender their Maximum Tender Offer Notes after the Early Tender Date but prior to the Maximum Tender Expiration Date will be eligible to receive the Total Consideration for such Maximum Tender Offer Notes less the amount of the Early Tender Payment. The amount of each of the Maximum Tender Offer Notes that are purchased will be determined in accordance with the acceptance priority levels noted in the table above (the "Acceptance Priority Level"), with 1 being the highest Acceptance Priority Level.

The applicable consideration (the "Total Consideration") payable for each $1,000 principal amount of Securities of each series validly tendered and accepted for payment pursuant to the applicable Tender Offer will be determined in the manner described in the Offer to Purchase by reference to the applicable fixed spread for such Security (the "Fixed Spread") specified in the tables above plus the applicable yield to maturity based on the bid-side price of the applicable U.S. Treasury Security specified in the applicable table above. The Total Consideration will be calculated as of 11:00 a.m., New York City time, on December 8, 2017, in the case of the Any and All Tender Offers (the "Any and All Price Determination Date"), and at 11:00 a.m., New York City time, on December 18, 2017, in the case of the Maximum Tender Offers, in each case unless extended by BHGE LLC. In addition to the Total Consideration, payment for the Securities purchased will include accrued and unpaid interest from and including the last interest payment date applicable to the relevant series of Securities up to, but not including, the applicable settlement date for such Securities accepted for purchase ("Accrued Interest").

The settlement date for the Any and All Tender Offers is expected to be promptly after the expiration of the Any and All Tender Offers, which is expected to be December 11, 2017, the first business day after the Any and All Tender Expiration Date. The settlement date for the Maximum Tender Offer Notes validly tendered and accepted for payment on the Early Tender Date is expected to be promptly after the Early Tender Date, which is expected to be December 19, 2017, the second business day after the Early Tender Date (the "Maximum Tender Early Settlement Date"). The settlement date for the Maximum Tender Offer Notes validly tendered and accepted for payment after the Early Tender Date but on or prior to the Maximum Tender Expiration Date is expected to be January 4, 2018, the second business day after the Maximum Tender Expiration Date (the "Maximum Tender Final Settlement Date"), assuming the Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price is not purchased on the Maximum Tender Early Settlement Date.

The Any and All Notes may be validly withdrawn at any time prior to or at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on December 8, 2017, unless such date and time is extended by BHGE LLC, but not thereafter. The Maximum Tender Offer Notes may be validly withdrawn at any time prior to or at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on December 15, 2017, unless such date and time is extended by BHGE LLC, but not thereafter.

The obligation of BHGE LLC to accept for purchase and to pay the Total Consideration and the Accrued Interest on Securities purchased pursuant to the Tender Offers is not subject to any minimum tender condition, but is subject to satisfaction or waiver of certain other conditions described in the Offer to Purchase. These conditions include BHGE LLC having closed, on terms and conditions satisfactory to BHGE LLC, one or more offerings of senior notes resulting in net proceeds to BHGE LLC in an amount not less than the amount required, upon the terms and subject to the conditions of the applicable Tender Offer, to purchase all the Securities validly tendered and accepted for purchase in the Tender Offers and to pay Accrued Interest thereon and fees and expenses associated therewith. BHGE LLC is commencing such an offering concurrently with the Tender Offers. BHGE LLC also reserves the right, subject to applicable law, to: (i) waive any and all conditions to the Tender Offers; (ii) extend or terminate any of the Tender Offers; (iii) increase or decrease the Aggregate Maximum Purchase Price; or (iv) otherwise amend any of the Tender Offers in any respect.

BHGE LLC has retained Morgan Stanley Co. LLC and Barclay Capital Inc. to serve as dealer managers for the Tender Offers. D.F. King Co., Inc. has been retained to serve as the tender and information agent for the Tender Offers.

Holders of the Securities are urged to carefully read the Offer to Purchase before making any decision with respect to the Tender Offers.

Questions regarding the Tender Offers may be directed to: Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC at (800) 624-1808 (toll free) or (212) 761-1057 or Barclays Capital Inc. at (800) 438-3242 (toll free) or (212) 528-7581. The Offer to Purchase and, in connection with the Any and All Notes, the notice of guaranteed delivery may be accessed at the following link: http://www.dfking.com/bhge or obtained from D.F. King Co., Inc., free of charge, by calling toll-free at (866) 796-7179 (bankers and brokers can call collect at 212-269-5550) or by e-mail at bhge@dfking.com.

This news release shall not be construed as an offer to purchase or sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase or sell any of the Securities or any other securities. BHGE LLC, subject to applicable law, may amend, extend or terminate the Tender Offers and may postpone the acceptance for purchase of, and payment for, the Securities so tendered. The Tender Offers are not being made in any jurisdiction in which the making or acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities, blue sky or other laws of such jurisdiction. None of BHGE, BHGE LLC, the dealer managers, the information agent or the depositary makes any recommendations as to whether holders of the Securities should tender their Securities pursuant to the Tender Offers.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking statements (each a "forward-looking statement"). The words "anticipate," "believe," "ensure," "expect," "if," "intend," "estimate," "project," "foresee," "forecasts," "predict," "outlook," "aim," "will," "could," "should," "potential," "would," "may," "probable," "likely," and similar expressions, and the negative thereof, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. There are many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are also affected by the risk factors described in BHGE's Registration Statement on Form S-4 (File No. 333-216991), filed by BHGE with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") and declared effective on May 30, 2017; BHGE's subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q for the quarterly periods ended June 30, 2017 and September 30, 2017; BHGE LLC's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended September 30, 2017; and those set forth from time to time in other filings with the SEC by BHGE and BHGE LLC. The documents are available through BHGE's website or through the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering and Analysis Retrieval ("EDGAR") system at: www.sec.gov. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement.

About Baker Hughes, a GE company

Baker Hughes, a GE company (NYSE: BHGE) is a fullstream provider of integrated oilfield products, services and digital solutions. We deploy minds and machines to enhance customer productivity, safety and environmental stewardship, while minimizing costs and risks at every step of the energy value chain. With operations in over 120 countries, we infuse over a century of experience with the spirit of a startup inventing smarter ways to bring energy to the world.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171204005552/en/

Contacts:

Baker Hughes, a GE company

Investor Relations:

Philipp Mueller, +1 281-809-9088

investor.relations@bhge.com

Media Relations:

Stephanie Cathcart, +1 202-549-6462

stephanie.cathcart@bhge.com

or

Melanie Kania, +1 713-439-8303

melanie.kania@bhge.com
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Elsevier, the information analytics business specializing in science and health, and its imprint Cell Press, home of the flagship journals Cell, Chem, and Joule, today announced a new addition for basic and applied research across life, physical, and earth science. iScience(@iScience_CP), an interdisciplinary, open-access, peer-reviewed journal, will publish on a continuous basis starting early 2018. The journal promises fast and fair decisions and will promote rigorous research that advances a field and reporting with transparent methods, replication studies, and negative results. Articles can now be submitted at www.cell.com/iscience/. Sign up for alerts at info.cell.com/iscience-registration .

"My main hope for iScience is that it will coalesce around a community of like-minded scientists who deeply value research that builds bridges and stimulates interdisciplinary thinking," says Lead Editor Stefano Tonzani, who holds a PhD in physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder and has helped launch several open-access titles. "What the scientific world needs isn't for scientists to dig deeper in their burrows, but to go out and cross-pollinate ideas. Our grand societal challenges can be solved only if chemists are collaborating with economists, biologists are speaking to nanofabrication engineers, and so on."

With more than 40 years of experience publishing high-quality, high-impact journals, Cell Press's launch of iScience marks the brand's ongoing expansion into disciplines beyond the life sciences that began with Chem in 2016, followed by the energy journal Joule earlier this year. As with any other respected and recognized Cell Press publication, iScience will have a team of in-house professional editors giving each paper their personal attention and platforms that get articles to relevant audiences.

"This is an exciting new chapter for Cell Press," says CEO Emilie Marcus. "As science itself evolves, so too does the need for new ways to communicate it. With iScience, we can cater to more researchers in more disciplines and work with them to get the experience of Cell Press, which prides itself on author hospitality, large readerships, ethics, and research integrity."

iScience's editorial board harnesses experts across many different fields, a majority of whom are dynamic, early-career researchers. Current members include:

Emanuele Biondi , CNRS-Marseille, cell biology and bacteriology

, CNRS-Marseille, cell biology and bacteriology Pedro Camargo , University of Sao Paulo , materials science

, University of , materials science Stuart Casson , University of Sheffield , plant biology

, University of , plant biology Wenlong Cheng , Monash University, chemical engineering

, Monash University, chemical engineering Heather Christofk , University of California, Los Angeles , metabolism

, , metabolism Elisabetta Collini , University of Padova, chemistry

, University of Padova, chemistry Corinna Dawid , TU Munich, plant and fungal metabolism

, TU Munich, plant and fungal metabolism Suzanne Devkota , University of California, Los Angeles , gastroenterology and immunobiology

, , gastroenterology and immunobiology Paula Diaconescu , University of California, Los Angeles , chemistry

, , chemistry Kathryn Ferguson , Yale University , biophysics and structural biology

, , biophysics and structural biology Luisa Figueiredo , IMM, parasitology

, IMM, parasitology Lorenzo Galluzzi , Cornell University , cell biology

, , cell biology Bonnie Hurwitz , University of Arizona , biosystems engineering

, , biosystems engineering Dooseok Jeong , KIST, materials science

, KIST, materials science Hawoong Jeong, KAIST , statistical physics

, statistical physics Ahmad Khalil , Boston University , synthetic biology

, , synthetic biology Hyun Wook Lee, UNIST, energy storage and electron microscopy

Chaoyang Lu , University of Science and Technology of China , quantum physics

, University of Science and Technology of , quantum physics Emma Lundberg , KTH Stockholm, bioimaging and proteomics

, KTH Stockholm, bioimaging and proteomics Arianna Maffei , Stony Brook University, neurobiology and behavior

, Stony Brook University, neurobiology and behavior Bettina Malnic , University of Sao Paulo , biochemistry

, University of , biochemistry Qixi Mi, Shanghai Tech, materials science and renewable energy

Tudor Moldoveanu, St. Jude's Hospital, structural biology

Ki- Tae Nam , Seoul National University , materials science and engineering

, Seoul , materials science and engineering James Olzmann , University of California, Berkeley , nutritional sciences and toxicology

, , nutritional sciences and toxicology Satish Patil , Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore , organic electronics

, Indian Institute of Science, , organic electronics Sai Reddy, ETH Zurich, biomolecular engineering

Paola Scaffidi , The Francis Crick Institute, cancer epigenetics

, The Francis Crick Institute, cancer epigenetics Jaswinder Sethi , University of Southampton, immunometabolism

, University of Southampton, immunometabolism Savas Tasoglu, University of Connecticut , materials science

, materials science Hiroki Ueda , Riken, synthetic biology

, Riken, synthetic biology Miriam Unterlass, University of Vienna , polymer science

, polymer science Ophelia Venturelli , University of Wisconsin , biochemistry

, , biochemistry Zuankai Wang, City University of Hong Kong , biomedical engineering

, biomedical engineering Xi Wang , Beijing Jiaotong University, materials science

, Beijing Jiaotong University, materials science Wilson Wong , Boston University , biomedical engineering

, , biomedical engineering Fei Xu , ShanghaiTech University, developmental biology

, ShanghaiTech University, developmental biology Kwang Wei (Joel) Yang , Singapore University of Technology & Design, optics, photonics, and electrical engineering

, of Technology & Design, optics, photonics, and electrical engineering Li Yang , Chinese Academy of Sciences, computational biology

, Chinese Academy of Sciences, computational biology Hyun Youk , Delft University of Technology, physics of cellular systems

, Delft University of Technology, physics of cellular systems Hani Zaher, Washington University St. Louis, molecular cell biology

St. Louis, molecular cell biology Jinxing Zhang , Beijing Normal University, condensed matter physics

, Beijing Normal University, condensed matter physics Wenjun Zhang , University of California Berkeley , chemical and biomolecular engineering

About Cell Press

Cell Press (@CellPressNews), an imprint of Elsevier, is a leading publisher of scientific research and reviews. We drive science forward and promote cross-pollination of ideas with our passion for excellence and commitment to innovation. Our aim is to engage the scientific community by communicating important, exciting discoveries made today that will impact the future of research. www.cell.com

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a global information analytics business that helps institutions and professionals progress science, advance healthcare and improve performance for the benefit of humanity. Elsevier provides digital solutions and tools in the areas of strategic research management, R&D performance, clinical decision support, and professional education; including ScienceDirect, Scopus, Scival, ClinicalKey and Sherpath. Elsevier publishes over 2,500 digitized journals, including The Lancet and Cell, more than 35,000 e-book titles and many iconic reference works, including Gray's Anatomy. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a global provider of information and analytics for professionals and business customers across industries.www.elsevier.com

Media contact

Joseph Caputo

Cell Press

+1-617-397-2802

jcaputo@cell.com | press@cell.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President Donald Trump has fully endorsed the Republican candidate for Alabama Senate Seat Roy Moore, who is accused of preying on teenagers. Trump threw his support behind the controversial GOP nominee in a detailed Twitter post Monday morning. 'Democrats' refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet.' He termed Moore's rival candidate, the Democratic nominee Doug Jones, a 'Liberal Puppet' of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and senior Senator Chuck Schumer. Electing him would 'hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders...& so much more,' according to Trump. 'Look at your 401-k's since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back.' he tweeted. Five women have accused Moore of making romantic or sexual advances on them when they were teenagers, in the 1970s. He, however, denied the allegations. Last month, the president had said he doubted the stories presented by Moore's accusers and questioned why things said to have happened 40 years ago were emerging now, just weeks before the election. The president breaks with other Republican leaders, who said the 70-year-old former state Supreme Court chief justice should be expelled from the Senate if he wins the election, which is scheduled for December 12. Opinion polls show Moore was trailing the Democrat candidate in the run up to the Special election. 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.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Winklevos Twins, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, have become the first investors to become billionaires from investing in Bitocoin, after the cryptocurrency hit a new high of $11,826.76 a coin on Sunday. Winklevoss twins, known for suing Mark Zuckerberg, had revealed in 2013 that they owned $11 million worth of bitcoin. Since then the digital currency has gained over 1,000%. The brothers made the investment on Bitcoins using the $65 million settlement won in a lawsuit against Facebook in 2011. The brothers had alleged that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had stolen their idea for a social network while all three were undergraduate students at Harvard. Earlier this year, Winklevos brothers had tried to create an ETF for Bitcoin, however, their plan did not materialize after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rejected the application, due to potential of being fraud. 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.
Regulatory News:

SoLocal Group (Paris:LOCAL), leader in local online communication, announces the finalization of the sale of its online real estate classifieds business, avendrealouer.fr, to leboncoin Group, in accordance with the announcement made on 27 October 2017. This transaction has been made on the basis of a sale price of 19.8 million as of 30 November 2017, this amount being subject to evolution post-transfer, on the basis of adjustment criteria agreed between the parties.

Acquired in 2011 from PriceMinister, A Vendre A Louer benefited from the support of SoLocal Group, which allowed it to become a reference in its sector by strengthening its assets with 6 million visits month and a turnover of 10 million in 2016, thanks to recognized expertise and talents in the field of marketing in the online real estate classifieds market. A Vendre A Louer joins leboncoin Group today, with all its employees.

This sale operation, which reflects positively this value creation generated by SoLocal Group and comes at a favourable moment of main market players consolidation, confirms the continuation of non-strategic activities divestment for SoLocal in favor of priority and structuring investments on high-potential markets, around the Local Search (e.g. referencing on the Group's media such as pagesjaunes.fr and mappy.com and those of partners with Bing, Google, Apple, etc.) and Digital Marketing (e.g.: content creation including 4 million reviews on professionals, transactional services with ClicRDV online appointments, design management of websites for professionals, data-programmatic, etc.), in order to find some leeway to invest and innovate.

"We are proud to have supported the development of A Vendre A Louer for the past six years. The strength of SoLocal 's salesforce spread throughout France, closer to real estate agencies, and the complementarity of our digital expertise have been outstanding assets to enhance the attractiveness of A Vendre A Louer. We wish the teams all the best for the future. This disposal allows to create value for our shareholders and no longer to focuse on the classifieds market but on local digital communication advice for real estate professionals (website creation, SEO offers, etc.). The challenge is to refocus priorities on our high-growth strategic digital activities: Local Search and Digital Marketing. Indeed, our ambition is to make SoLocal a recognized digital leader in France to provide growth to small and medium businesses and network companies. We already have outstanding assets: we are working to make them more effective and to complete them, and we are therefore confident in our ability to succeed ! says Pascal Garcia, Secretary General and Strategy Director of SoLocal Group.

Key dates and figures on A Vendre A Louer Company founded in 1986

65 employees

employees 1.6 million unique visitors in May 2017, growing at +23% versus May 2016 (source: Mediametrie) Key dates and figures on SoLocal(source: SoLocal, 2016) 812 million revenues of which 80% is digital

500,000 clients, SMEs and network groups

SMEs and network groups Powerful parterships with Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo!

with Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo! 2.4 billion visits/year on Group's websites

Morgan Lewis Bockius and Clairfield International acted as advisors in this sale operation.

About SoLocal Group

SoLocal Group, European leader in local online communication, reveals local know-how, and boosts local revenues of businesses. The Internet activities of the Group are structured around two business lines: Local Search and Marketing Digital. With Local Search, the Group offers Internet services and solutions to clients which enable them to enhance their visibility and develop their local contacts. Thanks to its expertise, SoLocal Group earned the trust of some 490,000 clients of those services and over 2.4 billions of visits via its 4 flagship brands (PagesJaunes, Mappy, Ooreka and A Vendre A Louer) but also through its partnerships. With Marketing Digital, SoLocal Group creates and provides the best local and customised content about professionals. With over 4,400 employees, including a new orders force of 1,900 local communication advisors specialised in five verticals (Home, Services, Retail, Health Public, BtoB) and Internationally (France, Spain, Austria, United Kingdom), the Group generated in 2016 revenues of 812 millions euros, of which 80% on Internet and ranks amongst the first European players in terms of Internet advertising revenues. SoLocal Group is listed on Euronext Paris (LOCAL). More information may be obtained at www.solocalgroup.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171204005836/en/

Contacts:

SoLocal Group

Press

Delphine Penalva, +33 (0)1 46 23 35 31

dpenalva@solocal.com

or

Edwige Druon, +33 (0)1 46 23 37 56

edruon@solocal.com

or

Alexandra Kunysz, +33 (0)1 46 23 47 45

akunysz@solocal.com

or

Investors

Emmanuelle Vinel, +33 (0)1 46 99 41 80

evinel@solocal.com

or

Sebastien Nony, +33 (0) 1 46 23 49 03

snony@solocal.com
MONTREAL, QUEBEC and TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 12/04/17 -- The Cogeco Program Development Fund (CPDF), the Independent Production Fund (IPF) and Cogeco Communications Inc. ("Cogeco") announced today that they have concluded an agreement with a view to ensuring the sustainability of the CPDF's Canadian television production funding activities. This new agreement will become effective on January 1, 2018.

The CPDF and the IPF had been cooperating with each other since 1992 by sharing resources for the processing of funding applications and the administration of the CPDF's program funding activities, which are supported financially by the annual contributions of Cogeco's regulated broadcasting distribution undertakings to independent production funds and the returns from an initial capital endowment of Cogeco following the creation of the CPDF.

The annual contributions from Cogeco have been under pressure lately as a result of lower revenues from traditional broadcasting distribution activities. Given this trend, the directors of the CPDF concluded earlier this year that a new arrangement and a restructuring of the CPDF were necessary.

The new agreement between the CPDF, the IPF and Cogeco provides for the transfer of all the existing program funding activities and commitments of the CPDF to the IPF and the redirection of the totality of the annual contribution of Cogeco for independent production funds to the IPF, effective on January 1, 2018. This transfer will ensure that Canadian television program producers will still be able to apply for dramatic television series program funding in 2018 and thereafter from the proceeds of Cogeco Communications' annual financial contribution directly through the IPF offices in Toronto and Montreal and under the sole responsibility and guidance of the IPF, its staff and its Board of Directors.

The CPDF has invested in total $55M in Canada's program industry for the production and development of nearly 1000 television productions and feature films since 1992, as well as sponsoring key industry events over the years. Projects funded were in English and in French and represented productions from across Canada.

Effective January 1, 2018, the CPDF will be streamlined and known simply as the Cogeco Fund, with a more narrow mandate to support Canadian television industry events through sponsorships or grants from the proceeds of its remaining capital endowment and will continue to be a not-for-profit Canadian corporation.

Also effective January 1, 2018, the IPF will operate two distinct program streams: the Web Series Program with funding for the production of scripted digital-first web series, and the Cogeco Television Production Program for the funding of the production of television series and mini-series. This streamlining of decision-making and funding processes will rely on the expertise of the IPF Board of Directors and reduce administrative overhead expenses.

The IPF remains a Certified Independent Production Fund (CIPF) under the regulations and policies established by the CRTC, and it will receive BDU contributions annually from Cogeco for the television funding program to be known as the Cogeco TV Production Program. In addition, the IPF will continue to use the annual interest from its $36M endowment for its Web Series Program. Recoupment from investments in each Program will be allocated for reinvestment in projects to be funded by the respective Programs of the IPF.

There will be annual deadlines for applications to each of these programs in 2018 - March 1 for the Web Series Program and April 2 for the Cogeco TV Production Program.

The Independent Production Fund has invested $13M in the production of 114 web drama series in the past 7 years, as well as $47M in 251 television drama productions from 1991-2010. It is incorporated as a charitable foundation with an endowment valued at $36M. Its Board of Directors makes all final funding decisions.

ABOUT COGECO INC.

Cogeco Inc. is a diversified holding corporation which operates in the communications and media sectors. Through its Cogeco Communications Inc. subsidiary, Cogeco provides its residential and business customers with Internet, video and telephony services through its two-way broadband fibre networks. Cogeco Communications Inc. operates in Canada under the Cogeco Connexion name in Quebec and Ontario, and in the United States under the Atlantic Broadband name in western Pennsylvania, south Florida, Maryland/Delaware, South Carolina and eastern Connecticut. Through Cogeco Peer 1, Cogeco Communications Inc. provides its business customers with a suite of information technology services (colocation, network connectivity, hosting, cloud and managed services), through its 16 data centres, extensive FastFiber Network and more than 50 points of presence in North America and Europe. Through its subsidiary Cogeco Media, Cogeco owns and operates 13 radio stations across most of Quebec with complementary radio formats serving a wide range of audiences as well as Cogeco News, its news agency. Cogeco's subordinate voting shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CGO). The subordinate voting shares of Cogeco Communications Inc. are also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CCA).

Contacts:

Cogeco Inc.

Nancy Bouffard

Director, Corporate Communications

(514) 764-4613

nancy.bouffard@cogeco.com



Independent Production Fund

Montreal: fipinfo@ipf.ca

Toronto: info@ipf.ca




Healthcare facilities the world over face a daily challenge to prevent the spread of infections and, with increasing concern about antibiotic resistance, South African healthcare group Netcare is teaming up with Germ-Zapping Robots that seek and destroy viruses and bacteria within minutes.

"Our new 'allies' in infection prevention and control have shown such impressive results internationally and during pilot trials at two of our hospitals, that Netcare recently ordered a second consignment of these highly advanced robots, manufactured by Xenex, to further bolster our comprehensive existing disinfection measures," says Jacques du Plessis, managing director of Netcare's hospital division.

Senior clinical advisor at Netcare, Dr. Caroline Maslo, explains that the Xenex LightStrike pulsed xenon ultraviolet (UV) disinfection robots were recently made available in Africa for the first time, but are becoming an established line of defence against bacteria, viruses and fungi in healthcare facilities across Europe and the United States.

"We initially tested the LightStrike pulsed xenon UV disinfection robots at Netcare Blaauwberg Hospital and Netcare Pretoria East Hospital, where we found that they quickly and efficiently disinfected the areas where they were deployed. Having tested the robots in different settings in the two facilities in separate provinces, we found that the results lived up to the independent international studies endorsing this method of disinfection," Dr. Maslo observes.

"What we found particularly impressive is the fact that the high-intensity pulsed xenon UV light used by the robots is not only highly effective in destroying viruses, bacteria and fungal spores, but is also able to achieve thorough disinfection far more quickly than the other traditional methods, which we continued to use alongside the robots. In addition, the robots can be used 24 hours a day. This means that we are able to continually move the robots around within our facilities to apply this rigorous disinfection within minutes, with minimal disruption to busy hospital areas. We have also enlisted the robots for disinfecting Netcare 911 ambulances to excellent effect," continued Dr. Maslo.

The LightStrike robots emit blasts of UV-C Full Spectrum light, which destroys the DNA of bacteria, viruses and fungi to neutralise them and prevent them from replicating. The portable disinfection robots are effective against the most common as well as the most dangerous pathogens, including Clostridium difficile (C.diff), norovirus, influenza, Ebola, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, better known as MRSA. The technology is non-toxic, although the area must be vacated during the robot's disinfection cycle, as human eyes are sensitive to the UV light.

"This form of disinfection is particularly useful against antibiotic resistant bacteria, commonly referred to as 'superbugs,' and has the added benefit that it is non-toxic. It is environmentally friendly in that it requires no water during operation, thus rendering it optimally water-wise when compared with other forms of intensive disinfection. It furthermore uses minimal electricity," Dr. Maslo says.

Another important benefit is that the robots' UV light does not result in any residue or potentially harmful by-products, which means it is totally safe for use in even the most sensitive environments, such as neonatal intensive care units where premature and other compromised babies are cared for.

"The robots are proving effective and efficient, while being tough on germs yet gentle on the environment. This new technology does not replace the infection risk management protocols and procedures we already have in place, but are certainly complementing them as an additional weapon in our arsenal against potentially harmful germs," Dr. Maslo says.

"Another benefit brought about by the arrival of the robots is that the cleaning staff responsible for operating this technology are acquiring new sets of skills. This is not a case of robots replacing human labour, but rather of robots empowering their human operators," Dr. Maslo says.

Du Plessis concludes, "Introducing this new disinfection technology in Netcare hospitals is a significant step forward and is keeping our facilities abreast of the latest advances in the global fight against microbe resistance in healthcare facilities. We are very encouraged to see the results the robots have shown in Netcare hospitals."

The Xenex pulsed xenon UV disinfection system has been credited by numerous healthcare facilities for helping them reduce their infection rates significantly. Several U.S. hospitals have published their C.diff, MRSA and Surgical Site infection rate reduction studies in peer-reviewed journals. More than 400 hospitals, Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense facilities in the U.S., Canada, Africa, UK, Japan and Europe are using LightStrike robots, which are also in use in skilled nursing facilities, ambulatory surgery centers and long term acute care facilities.

Kiara Health is the Authorised Reseller of Xenex LightStrike Germ-Zapping Robots in Africa.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171204005970/en/

Contacts:

Martina Nicholson Associates (MNA) on behalf of Netcare Hospital Division

Martina Nicholson, (011) 469 3016

martina@mnapr.co.za

or

Xenex Disinfection Services

Melinda Hart, 210-240-4669

melinda.hart@xenex.com
DUBLIN, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Global Packaging Market 2017-2021" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

The global packaging market to grow at a CAGR of 5.76% during the period 2017-2021.

Global Packaging 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. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of packaging.

The latest trend gaining momentum in the market is Focus on sustainable packaging solutions. Consumer product manufacturers prefer various types of eco-friendly packaging designs and materials for supporting sustainable business operations. For instance, paper can be recycled up to seven times, thereby giving corrugated packaging vendors an advantage over other types of packaging product vendors. Thus, packaging vendors are focusing on the production of the packaging solutions, such as corrugated boxes, which are 100% recyclable.

According to the report, one of the major drivers for this market is Growth of the global e-commerce market. The global e-commerce market, which includes online retail shopping, has witnessed a substantial growth during the period 2014-2017, and it is further expected to witness a high growth rate during the forecast period. The growth in the online retail sales has boosted the demand for packaging products for the safe shipment of products. The ease of online shopping due to the increase in penetration of the Internet in the emerging countries, such as India, China, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa, has encouraged many customers to switch from the traditional shopping method to online shopping.

Further, the report states that one of the major factors hindering the growth of this market is Volatility in raw material prices. Various types of raw materials used in the packaging industry are plastic, wood, glass, and corrugated paper. The cost of the raw material is one of the vital factors in determining the end-products cost. Thus, the fluctuation in raw material prices is a major challenge faced by vendors operating in the global packaging market. The widening of the gap in the demand-supply in the last few years has led to a considerable increase in the price of raw materials.

Market Trends

Focus on sustainable packaging solutions

Growing popularity of lightweight packaging

Growing market consolidation in the packaging market

Increased focus on smart packaging solutions

Key vendors

Amcor

Ball

Bemis Company

Berry Global

DS Smith

International Paper

Mondi

Owens- Illinois

Sealed Air

Smurfit Kappa

Sonoco

Other prominent vendors

Allied Glass

AptarGroup

Ardagh Group

Can Pack Group

CCL

CKS Packaging

DuPont

Evergreen Packaging

Excel Packaging

Genpak

Gerresheimer

Stora Enso

Westkey Graphics

Key Topics Covered:



Part 01: Executive Summary



Part 02: Scope Of The Report



Part 03: Research Methodology



Part 04: Introduction



Part 05: Market Landscape



Part 06: Market Sizing



Part 07: Five Forces Analysis



Part 08: Market Segmentation By Packaging Type



Part 09: Customer Landscape



Part 10: Market Segmentation By End-User



Part 11: Regional Landscape



Part 12: Decision Framework



Part 13: Drivers And Challenges



Part 14: Market Trends



Part 15: Vendor Landscape



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/vv9ss4/global_packaging





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
Chelmsford, Massachusetts--(Newsfile Corp. - December 4, 2017) - The highest priority for Hawkins Point is to help businesses ensure their success through the best talent, technology, and processes. For this reason, Hawkins Point proudly welcomed Joe Robichaud last month as their new Vice President of Business Development. They are extremely excited about his contribution to the company and its solutions.



Joe Robichaud and the executives of Hawkins Point view his new role as two-pronged. With a passion for building relationships, Joe's first priority will be to build and manage relationships with businesses that partner with Hawkins Point. He aims to anticipate the needs of each one, prioritizing their goals as his own. The second prong of this role will be to guide the leadership and delivery teams, studying industry and market trends, to define the best strategies Hawkins Point will bring to the Greater Boston market.



Hawkins Point believes Joe Robichaud is the perfect fit for this role. He has over 20 years of experience in business consulting, and 11 years of experience in business development. He not only possesses an innate sales ability -which he prefers to view as relationship-building- but has in-depth experience in the delivery-side of business consulting through his previous roles as a business analyst and project manager.



So, he has a unique advantage of understanding the services and solutions he will promote. This gives him an authoritative voice to speak about the talent and approach that Hawkins Point dictates in areas such as project management, process reengineering, and software implementations. He can bridge the gap between sales and delivery. "People don't want to just be sold to. They want to trust that their consultant understands them and can fully recommend the best solution." Joe shared.



He has a like-mindedness with the leaders of the company. And he's appreciated their receptivity to his style. "I feel I will be a great fit with a company that already has a sterling reputation." Joe carries the same strong work ethic and business integrity he's witnessed in the Hawkins Point culture. He's been known to say that a person should live like their actions will be printed on the front page of the Boston Globe.



Joe believes in Hawkins Point's mature, battle-tested consultative approach, too. He is most excited to support the company to position it even more as a thought leader and one of the top trusted solution providers in the area. "Coming to Hawkins Point has unleashed a level of creativity I didn't know existed in myself. They've given me the license to think creatively and act creatively and do it in a way that's strategic," Joe said.



Joe Robichaud and Hawkins Point believe that the current market craves thought leadership and trusted partnerships. They're also seeing that businesses they hope to reach, such as companies in the BioTech industry, are looking for a local firm that is relationship-driven and able to bring top talent to help solve their business problems. Hawkins Point believes they've put the right people in place to be the high-value consulting partner these companies desire.



For Hawkins Point, their clients are top of mind with every decision. That's why they are excited to share their news of their new executive. They believe their clients and peers will greatly benefit from a relationship with Joe Robichaud.



About Hawkins Point

Hawkins Point Partners is a technology consulting organization that offers delivery management, process engineering, and security services. They have become a trusted partner for companies of all sizes seeking to maximize the return on their technology investment, fueling 3-year revenue growth of 1,112%.



Contact:

Steve Mersky

Hawkins Point Partners

978-455-4110

smersky@hawkinspointpartners.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"):

Trading Venue: London Stock Exchange Date of purchase: 4 December 2017 Number of Shares purchased: 11,856 Shares Highest price paid per Share: 1,033 pence 13.92 USD Lowest price paid per Share: 1,022 pence 13.77 USD Average price paid per Share: 1,027.67 pence 13.85 USD

Trading Venue: Euronext Amsterdam Date of purchase: 4 December 2017 Number of Shares purchased: 34,569 Shares Highest price paid per Share: 13.94 USD Lowest price paid per Share: 13.77 USD Average price paid per Share: 13.85 USD

PSH intends to cancel these Shares. The net asset value per Share related to this Share buyback is USD 17.66 GBP 13.06 which was calculated as of 30 November 2017. After giving effect to the above Share buyback, PSH has outstanding 235,958,028 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/20171204006053/en/

Contacts:

Media Contact:

Maitland

James Devas, +44 20 7379 5151

Media-pershingsquareholdings1@maitland.co.uk
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA and WATERLOO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 12/04/17 -- BlackBerry Limited (NYSE: BB)(TSX: BB) today announced that QIC has deployed BlackBerry Workspaces, a secure collaboration solution that enables companies and their clients to safely share, protect and track sensitive information within mobile and cloud environments.

With billions of dollars under management, QIC ensures that it operates in a strictly secure and confidential environment. As QIC expanded internationally, the company adopted a cloud-first digital strategy to enable its staff, clients and partners around the world to exchange information and documents safely from any location.

Grant Slender, Information Technology, Security and Risk Leader at QIC, said, "Trust is a top priority in investment management and for QIC. We take all necessary steps to prevent even the slightest security breach to protect our clients and our firm. A key component of that effort is our adoption of BlackBerry Workspaces, which allows our employees to share, edit and control sensitive files securely and seamlessly, both inside and outside QIC, in a mobile and cloud-based environment including Microsoft 365, OneDrive and SharePoint."

Alex Manea, Chief Security Officer, BlackBerry, explained, "In today's digital and mobile age, companies in any industry need to enable staff, clients and suppliers to be productive and collaborative. The challenge lies in adopting flexible next-generation technologies such as cloud, without hindering data security. At BlackBerry, we are helping governments and private companies to navigate these security challenges, as well as manage very complex regulatory requirements."

BlackBerry Workspaces' file sync and sharing functionalities are fully integrated into the new Microsoft Office 365 framework, enabling QIC to maintain the highest level of security required to safeguard client information. BlackBerry Workspaces is also used to power advanced collaboration, such as digital "'deal rooms"' for investment negotiations. Using these secure and confidential 'deal rooms' is transforming how QIC does business with its clients and partners, making it easier and more secure than ever before to discuss and make strategic investment decisions.

BlackBerry Workspaces gives QIC an independent and auditable way to manage the collaboration of documents and information with third parties, as the IT department has complete control over all files, and total visibility into how, where and when those files are accessed or modified. Additional tools also enable staff and IT to easily trace and protect attachments in outgoing emails, and transfer data while maintaining security and control.

Alex Manea added, "With European GDPR and Australian Data Breach Notification laws going live in early 2018, many Australian organizations must comply with these strict security and confidentiality requirements, or face serious consequences. The time is now for forward-thinking companies like QIC to take action to address cloud security and compliance challenges and become BlackBerry Secure."

Grant Slender concluded, "In our business, it is vital that we minimize migration risks, which is challenging as many next-generation business collaboration apps are still interdependent with legacy systems. BlackBerry Workspaces and Microsoft 365 integrate smoothly, and the transition has been seamless. Our clients and partners can draw confidence from the fact that we have clear, demonstrable file security in place, which is essential to maintaining trusted relationships."

BlackBerry recently announced that the company received the highest score in two use cases in Gartner's Critical Capabilities for Content Collaboration Platforms report(1). BlackBerry received the highest scores in Workforce Productivity and Centralized Content Protection for its BlackBerry Workspaces solution.

To learn more about how QIC used BlackBerry Workspaces, click here. To download a complimentary copy of the Gartner 2017 Critical Capabilities for Content Collaboration Platforms Report, click here. To find information about BlackBerry Workspaces, click here.

1 Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Content Collaboration Platforms, by Karen A. Hobert, Monica Basso, Michael Woodbridge, September 12, 2017

Gartner Disclaimer

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About QIC:

QIC is a global diversified alternative investment firm offering infrastructure, real estate, private equity, liquid strategies and multi-asset investments. It is one of the largest institutional investment managers in Australia, with A$82.9 billion (US$65.0/GBP 46.6 billion)(1) in funds under management, offering infrastructure, real estate, private capital, liquid strategies and multi-asset investment services. QIC has over 800 employees and serves more than 110 clients including governments, pension plans, sovereign wealth funds and insurers, spanning Australia, Europe, Asia, Middle East and the US. Headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, QIC also has offices in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, London, Sydney, and Melbourne. For more information about QIC, our approach, clients and regulatory framework, please refer to our website www.qic.com or contact us directly.

About BlackBerry

BlackBerry is a cybersecurity software and services company dedicated to securing the Enterprise of Things. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company was founded in 1984 and operates in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Middle East, Latin America and Africa. The Company trades under the ticker symbol "BB" on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. For more information, visit www.BlackBerry.com.

Contacts:

For QIC media queries, please contact:

USA:

Caroline Gentile

CNG Consulting LLC

+1 917 692 5730

caroline.gentile@comcast.net



Australia:

Samantha Pankovas

BlueChip Communication

+61 9018 8602 / +61 424 790 205

samantha@bluechipcommunication.com.au



BlackBerry Media Contact

N2N for BlackBerry

blackberry@n2n.com.au

Patrice Calopedos

+61 (0) 0404 950 634



BlackBerry Media Relations

(519) 597-7273

mediarelations@BlackBerry.com




SUDBURY, ON / ACCESSWIRE / December 4, 2017 / Frontier Lithium Inc. (TSX-V: FL) (OTC PINK: HLKMF) (FRA: HL2) (the "Company") announces the closing of a non-brokered private placement offering for a total of 2,267,950 units ("Units") of the Company priced at $0.40 per Unit, for total gross proceeds of $907,180.00. The private placement was oversubscribed from the initial offering of up to 1,250,000 common shares of the Company.

The Common Shares to be issued under a unit offering of 2,267,950 units ("Units") at a subscription price of $0.40 per Unit. Each Unit shall consist of one (1) Common Share of the Company and one (1) share purchase warrant (the "Warrant"). Each full Warrant shall entitle the holder thereof to purchase one additional common share of Frontier Lithium at an exercise price of $0.64 for an 18 month period from the closing (the "Offering").

In connection with the CDN $907,180.00 Offering, the Company issued finder's fees of CDN $10,669.98 (2% of the gross proceeds of the Offering) and 24,441 finder warrants (1% of the total number of Units sold under the Offering). Each finder option will be exercisable at a price of $0.64 into one common share for a period of eighteen (18) months from the date of issuance.

All of the Shares and Warrants issued pursuant to the private placement are subject to a minimum 4-month hold period. Proceeds from the financing will be used to advance exploration of Frontier's 100% owned and optioned PAK Lithium Project located in northwestern Ontario.

About Frontier Lithium Inc.

Frontier's goal is to become a low-cost, fully integrated lithium and tantalum producer through development of the PAK lithium deposit in Ontario, Canada. Frontier maintains a tight share structure with management ownership exceeding 30% of the Company. CAD $7 million of exploration work has been conducted from 2013 to 2017 on the deposit which boasts its lithium in a rare, high-purity, low-iron spodumene. The initial target market is the glass-ceramic industry which consumes roughly one-third of global lithium supply and is currently faced with monopolistic conditions, coupled with major lithium producers increasingly directing output toward supporting battery manufacture.

Ceramic/glass customers prefer to source technical-grade (low-iron) spodumene concentrate in excess of 7% lithium oxide (Li2O), if available, to avoid lower grade petalite concentrates, or paying much higher prices for battery grade lithium compounds. The Company's October 2017 Metallurgical Study returned favourable results by producing lithium concentrate with a grade of 7.13% lithium oxide (Li2O) with a corresponding Li2O recovery of 79.4% which satisfies the preference from technical-grade consumers.

The PAK lithium deposit remains open in all directions and Company Management is working towards developing a viable operation. The Company is currently conducting a pre-feasibility study to assess the economic viability and technical feasibility of producing lithium concentrates. Frontier's goal is to first establish a viable technical grade spodumene concentrate operation. A possible second stage of investment and longer term prospect is to further process some of PAK's output to produce the higher purity lithium compounds required for lithium battery technologies used in the electrification of transportation and electric grid storage applications.

About the PAK Lithium Project

The PAK Lithium Project lies close to the boundary between two geological sub-provinces of the western Superior geologic province in northwestern Ontario and hosts a rare metals pegmatite deposit. The deposit is an LCT (lithium- cesium- tantalum) type pegmatite. These types of pegmatites have been the principal source of hard rock lithium, tantalum, rubidium and cesium ores mined in the world but there are comparatively few commercially-viable deposits.

Frontier is actively exploring its 100% owned project which contains the Pakeagama Lake pegmatite. The PAK deposit has a current Measured and Indicated Resource of 7.89 million tonnes of 1.73% Li2O equivalent (eq.) or 1.58% Li20 and 104 ppm Ta2O5 and an Inferred Resource of 295,600 tonnes of 1.35% Li2O eq. or 1.20% Li2O and 103 ppm Ta2O5 which has a technical/ceramic grade spodumene with low inherent iron (below 0.1% Fe2O3). The deposit has adjacent zones that are enriched in tantalum and rubidium.

The deposit now has a known 500m strike length with an estimated true width varying from 10m to 125m with a sub-vertical orientation. The resource remains open to depth and along strike to the northwest and southeast.

Company Contact Information

Trevor R. Walker

President & CEO

2736 Belisle Drive Val Caron, ON. P3N 1B3 CANADA

T. +001 705.897.7622

F. +001 705.897.7618

Media Requests

Joseph Mansourian

Manager, Investor Relations

2736 Belisle Drive Val Caron, ON. P3N 1B3 CANADA

T. +001 705.618.0070

F. +001 705.897.7618

Additional information regarding Frontier Lithium is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com under the Company's profile and on its website at www.frontierlithium.com, including various pictures of ongoing work at the project.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Frontier Lithium Inc.
LONS-LE-SAUNIER, FRANCE / ACCESSWIRE / December 4, 2017 / ARK Ecosystem is now incorporated in France as a cooperative society (SCIC), registered under n 833 439 300, with a structure matching our open source blockchain organization. It is the first of its kind in the crypto world, and one of the first blockchain projects to incorporate in the European Union.

SCIC is the French acronym for 'General Interest Co-operatives.' It is a new private, common interest co-operative which allows anyone - employees, users, volunteers, public bodies, companies, associations - to act together in a legal framework to govern an entity.

All SCIC members are shareholders and will belong to one of the statutory categories: Founders, Advisers, or Employees.

The vote principle is 1 shareholder = 1 vote.

The ARK crew, being initial shareholders, will choose the executive board of the legal entity, which permits ARK to continue the current board structure.

A Long Process

ARK decided on the SCIC after working with their legal team and evaluating different options for creating a legal entity. After deciding that incorporating through the Swiss Foundation - a popular option for blockchain projects - was not the best choice for ARK, the team turned to France.

There, they found the SCIC incorporation process. According to the team, that option had almost everything they had been looking for in terms of incorporation.

As an SCIC, ARK will be able to structure corporate governance based on a board of directors and input from the ARK community. Additionally, SCIC incorporation allows ARK to establish a well-defined structure without legal ambiguities related to capital gains and taxation.

Through its SCIC status, the ARK board of directors - except for founders and employees - can name additional shareholders. These new shareholders can also be appointed to the supervisory board, as provided for in the charter. The charter may be amended as often as necessary.

In French Law, the SCIC format also allows public institutions to become shareholders if seen fit by the board.

As a common interest benefit company, an SCIC must keep at least 52.5 percent of the company's profits as legal reserves. In the case of Ark, there is no plan to do any distribution of profits to shareholders. Therefore, it will hold 100 percent of any profits for use in development, marketing, and operations.

An Exciting Road Ahead

This establishment of ARK's SCIC in France is not only the first of its kind, but it will also bolster the credibility of cryptocurrency in France, the European Union, and the rest of the world.

The prospect of ARK and its SCIC formation has attracted the interest and enthusiasm of some regulatory institutions. During this process, ARK was invited by the Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) - the French regulatory body for financial markets - and the Banque de France (National Bank of France) to present the ARK Project and explain the conditions of the ARK TEC. The discussion was in-depth and encouraging. Conversing with the AMF on how to best comply with French laws resulted in a positive two-way conversation with the French government.

The team at ARK is proud to play a part in France becoming a crypto-friendly environment and proud to be the leaders in this huge step forward in cryptocurrency adoption. And now that the SCIC is finalized, the team will be able to expand and advance the ARK blockchain technology, which will provide more opportunities for all.

Website: http://ark.io

Blog: https://blog.ark.io

Team: https://ark.io/team

Media Contact

Contact Name: Travis Walker

Email: pr@ark.io

ARK Ecosystem is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

Additional Links

ARK Ecosystem

Bitcoin PR Buzz

SOURCE: ARK Ecosystem
HOUSTON, TEXAS -- (Marketwired) -- 12/04/17 -- Greenfields Petroleum Corporation ("Greenfields" or the "Company"; TSX VENTURE:GNF) is pleased to announce that on November 27, 2017 Bahar Energy Operating Company Limited ("BEOC"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Greenfields, executed an exclusive memorandum of understanding (the "MOU") with SOCAR Complex Drilling Works Trust ("SDT"), a subsidiary of the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), to formalize a partnership for the drilling of deep gas wells in the Bahar gas field offshore Azerbaijan.

BEOC has identified locations to potentially reestablish gas production from the deep NKP reservoir of the Bahar gas field. Prior to 1988, twelve wells were drilled to the NKP reservoir of the Bahar gas field and produced a total of 113 Bcf of natural gas and average aggregate production of 12 MMcf/d before being abandoned to uphole zones. None of these wells are available today to reestablish production and therefore BEOC is developing a partnership with SDT to drill new wells. BEOC estimates the NKP reservoir contains over 200 Bcf of remaining gas.

SDT has been very successful in drilling deep gas wells in the Bulla Deniz offshore gas field in Azerbaijan, most recently with Well No. 78, which was drilled and completed in 2017 producing at initial rates of approximately 17 MMcf/d of gas and almost 1,000 bbl/d of condensate.

Pursuant to the MOU, BEOC and SDT will be jointly inspecting the refurbished offshore BH 196 platform to ensure that safe drilling operations can be carried out to international standards. SDT will prepare the design and drilling plan for the deep wells and the parties will select drilling locations for deep wells of up to 18,000 feet of true vertical depth. Production facilities and flowlines are already in place to handle the additional gas production and BEOC has procured some of the drilling tangibles for the initial wells, including casing, tubing and wellheads. The parties expect to propose final plans early in 2018 to support the development drilling in Bahar later in the year.

John W. Harkins, CEO of Greenfields, stated: "This is an excellent opportunity for cooperation with SDT to drill new gas wells from the deeper reservoirs in the Bahar gas field and re-establish significant gas production for Azerbaijan."

About Greenfields Petroleum Corporation

Greenfields is a junior oil and natural gas corporation focused on the development and production of proven oil and gas reserves principally in the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Company plans to expand its oil and gas assets through further farm-ins and acquisitions of Production Sharing Agreements from foreign governments containing previously discovered but under-developed international oil and gas fields, also known as "greenfields". More information about the Company may be obtained on the Greenfields website at www.greenfields-petroleum.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. More particularly and without limitation, this press release includes statements concerning: the MOU; a future partnership between BOEC and SDT and expectations in relation thereto; and drilling plans in the NKP reservoir including the timing thereof. In addition, the use of the words "propose", "will", "plan", "expect", "estimate", and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained herein are based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by the Company, including, but not limited to, expectations and assumptions concerning the success of optimization and efficiency improvement projects, the availability of capital, current legislation, receipt of required regulatory approval, the success of future drilling and development activities, the performance of existing wells, the performance of new wells, general economic conditions, availability of required equipment and services, weather conditions and prevailing commodity prices. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct.

Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties most of which are beyond the control of Greenfields. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information prove incorrect, actual results, performance or achievements could vary materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. These risks include, but are not limited to, risks associated with the oil and gas industry in general (e.g., operational risks in development, exploration and production; delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration or development projects or capital expenditures; the uncertainty of reserve estimates; the uncertainty of estimates and projections relating to production, costs and expenses, and health, safety, political and environmental risks), commodity price and exchange rate fluctuations, changes in legislation affecting the oil and gas industry and uncertainties resulting from potential delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration or development projects or capital expenditures. Additional risk factors can be found under the heading "Risk Factors" in Greenfields' Annual Information Form and similar headings in Greenfields' Management's Discussion & Analysis which may be viewed on www.sedar.com.

The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof and Greenfields undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. The Company's forward-looking information is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement.

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.

Abbreviations

bbl/d barrels per day MMcf/d million cubic feet per day Bcf billion cubic feet

Contacts:

Greenfields Petroleum Corporation

info@greenfieldspetroleum.com

John W Harkins, Chief Executive Officer

(832) 234-0836

Jose Perez-Bello, Chief Financial Officer

(832) 234-0831



Yellow Jersey (Media Relations)

greenfields@yellowjerseypr.com

Charles Goodwin, +44 7747 788 221

Harriet Jackson, +44 7544 275 882

Sophia Macleod, +44 7966 935 994




Simplus, a Salt Lake City, UT-based Salesforce partner and Quote-to-Cash implementation solutions provider, closed $17.8m funding.

The funding includes a Series B round of $9.3m and an additional $8.5m in debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank. The equity round was led by Epic Ventures with participation from existing investor Salesforce Ventures, newcomer Cross Creek Advisors, and others.

The company also acquired consulting firm CRM Manager, which follows the purchase of BaldPeak, Basati and EDL Consulting, earlier this year.

Founded in 2005, CRM Manager is a Salesforce implementation, integration, and consulting partner with offices in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York City. CRM Manager became a Salesforce Ventures Portfolio Company in 2010. The Salesforce-certified consulting team focuses on delivering Salesforce, Insidesales.com and AppExchange solutions.

Led by Ryan Westwood, CEO, Simplus is a Platinum Salesforce Partner and the industry leader in Quote-to-Cash implementations. The company provides enterprise-wide digital transformation across the entire Salesforce ecosystem through advisory, implementation, change management, custom configuration and managed services. It has more than 1000 clients.

Simplus recently created 100 new jobs in the U.S. and overseas to address its growth and, in the past few months, recruited new Managing Director Suman Konidana and new V.P. of Western Sales Pete Shelton.

FinSMEs

04/12/2017
United Ventures, a Milan, Italy-based venture capital firm, has launched its second fund, holding the first closing at 75m.

UV2, which aims to raise up to 120m during 2018, UV2 has Fondo Italiano dInvestimento, the European Investment Fund, Banca Mediolanum, Banca Sella Holding and Fondazione di Sardegna among its its anchor investors.

The fund will continue to make early stage and Series A round investments in innovative companies in the business and consumer software and digital technologies sectors.

In particular, UV2 will focus on enabling technologies that will speed up the innovation of sectors that are not yet digitized, thus increasing their productivity.

Founded in 2013 by Massimiliano Magrini and Paolo Gesess, United Ventures invested over 50m through its first fund, UV1, over 5 years. The firms portfolio includes 13 early stage tech companies, including Moneyfarm, Cloud4WI, Musixmatch, Faceit, Loop AI and Mainstreaming.

FinSMEs

04/12/2017
As supporters of economic freedom, we frequently find ourselves in vigorous defense of personal choice, whether in business, trade, consumer goods, education, or otherwise.

But while the elevation of economic choice is based on plenty of principle, not to mention historical and empirical analysis, we ought to be careful that our views about freedom arent confused or conflated in the process. Given our cultural appetite for turning choice into an idol above all else, its a risk wed do well to confront and diffuse.

Readers of this blog will no doubt be reminded of Lord Actons popular refrain: Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought. Or the variation from Pope John Paul II: Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

This basic contrast  between what we might call Christian freedom and secular or modern notions of the same  is crucial for navigating these debates, with an embrace of the former stretching well before and beyond whatever advocacy we ought to indulge as it relates to individual choice.

Over at First Things, Dan Hitchens offered some insights along these same lines:

The Christian idea [of freedom] is a broader one. For Christians, freedom consists not in how many choices you have but in whether you can choose the right thing, the good thing. If Fred is keeping his options open about whether to join the Ku Klux Klan, and Ben has decided he will never do so, Fred is not freer; quite the opposite. When Einstein discovered special relativity, he did not become less free because he was now unable to believe a dozen alternative theories. When Mozart decided how the Jupiter Symphony had to end, he did not lose freedom merely because of all the other possibilities he was compelled to give up. The model of a free human being, then, is not the person who has so much money, time, and imagination that he can do whatever comes into his head, but someone who will choose the good: who knows just how to make a friend happy, or who, offered the chance to become wealthy through committing fraud, can turn it down without a second thought. As the Catechism says, The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes.

Hitchens is responding to some specific squabbles over a particular social issue, an area of tension which often determines the dividing line between conservative and libertarian. But regardless of where we fall on all that, we ought not ignore that such a distinction bears similar weight when it comes to economics, regardless of the effect (or lack of effect) on the specifics of public policy.

Again, the policy merits of promoting economic choice have plenty of sound backing. Indeed, choosing the good does, of course, require the ability or capacity or freedom to choose the good. But we neednt take for granted that the moral fabric necessary for all this actually exists between the individual and the State.

True freedom isnt a given or guarantee, no matter how much economic choice our government grants us.

The question, then, for the Christian supporter of economic freedom, is whether were also willing to uphold virtue, constraint, and spiritual obedience as key ingredients to that bigger picture, stewarding our choice with wisdom and grace. This may not lead to significant changes in policy, but it will surely lead to a new vocabulary and a renewed focus on the power of spiritual and moral transformation at the other levels and layers of culture.

In a society with economic freedom, we have so much more than terrific consumer choices, wild paths to entrepreneurship, and an abundance of time and treasure. We also have tremendous capacity to choose the good  to align our lives and actions to Gods call over our lives, thus aligning our hands and hearts to the needs of others. But if we forget that basic purpose, we risk a failure to connect the dots, confusing a policy that maximizes choice with a life (and society) of true freedom lived in Christ.

Photo: Lyza, The New Fred Meyer on Interstate on Lombard (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The Centre on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that it was willing to extend till 31 March next year the deadline fixed for mandatory linking of Aadhaar for availing of various services and welfare schemes.

The Supreme Court will be setting up a five-judge Constitution Bench next week to hear several pleas seeking an interim stay on the Centres decision of mandatory linking of Aadhaar.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra was informed by Attorney General K K Venugopal that the Centre was willing to extend the deadline of 31 December to 31 March next year for linking of Aadhaar with various services and schemes.

The Attorney General, however, made it clear that February 6 next year would remain the deadline for linking Aadhaar for availing of uninterrupted mobile services as it had been mandated by the apex court.

Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for those who are opposed to the Aadhaar scheme told the bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, that the Centre should give an undertaking that no coercive steps would be taken against those who fail to link their Aadhaar with various services.

Plea against Aadhaar linking

Last month, the government had told the court, which is hearing petitions against making Aadhaar linking to bank accounts, mobile phone numbers and others mandatory, that it is willing to extend the deadline to 31 March, 2018.

This year, the government made the quoting of Aadhaar mandatory for filing income tax returns (ITRs) as well as obtaining a new PAN.

The duplicate PAN cards are the ones which are creating a major danger to the economy. They are the ones who are using this duplicate PAN for opening bank accounts and then they are transacting and they are not filing returns. So we need to worry about them, the official said.

Section 139 AA (2) of the Income Tax Act says that every person having PAN as on July 1, 2017 and eligible to obtain Aadhaar, must intimate his Aadhaar number to the tax authorities. The government had in August extended by four months the deadline for linking PAN with Aadhaar till 31 December, pending the Supreme Court verdict.

As the case is pending in the Supreme Court, the government is not enforcing the provision, the official said.

There will be a time when, once Supreme Court clears it, we would like to give a date by which all have to link with Aadhaar and remaining will be cancelled.

We will give a 3-6 month window... But after that the PAN, if it is not linked, will be cancelled. Our purpose is, all duplicate PANs should be eliminated which are not linked to Aadhaar card. So, all the Benami transactions will go, the official said.

The Supreme Court is hearing petitions challenging the governments decision on Aadhaar and has said it may consider setting up a constitution bench to hear pleas challenging the Centres move to make Aadhaar card mandatory for availing various services and benefits of welfare schemes.

However, if you have already got your Aadhaar card and are planning to link them here are five simple steps to do it:

Step 1: Keep your Aadhaar and PAN numbers handy.

Step 2: Register on the Income tax e-Filing portal if you already havent yet. If you are already registered at the income tax departments e-Filing portal, log in using your ID, password and date of birth.

Step 3: A pop up window will appear, prompting you to link your PAN card with Aadhaar card. If you have a pop up blocker active, you will have to go on the Profile Setting on the dashboards menu bar to click on Link Aadhar option.

Step 4: You will have to add the necessary details like name your Date of Birth as per the PAN details as well as your gender. If you data is different that whats mentioned on your PAN, the Aadhaar will not be linked to your PAN. Next thing to do is, to enter your 12 digit Aadhaar card number, then verify captcha and then click on Link Aadhaar button. Once your validation is successful, your Aadhaar will be successfully linked to your PAN.

Step 5: The last step is when a popup message is displayed stating that your Aadhaar card has been successfully linked to your PAN card.

Keep in mind, that once the Aadhaar-PAN linking is done, you can e-Verify your IT returns using Aadhaar if your mobile is registered with Aadhaar. By linking the two cards you will no longer have to submit your Income Tax acknowledgement to the IT department.

(With inputs from PTI)
Salil S Parekh, the former executive of Capgemini who will take over as the new chief executive officer at Infosys, has an unenviable task at hand. From addressing the stake holder concerns to managing investor expectations to taking the company through a big transformation, Parekh has a work which is truly herculian. Above all, his relationship with both the founders and the board will be closely watched.

Parekh, 53, will take charge from 2 January 2018, Infosys said in a press release over the weekend. He reportedly beat a number of internal candidates and former executives to get the top job at Infosys, the second largest software exporter in India. He comes after the exit of Vishal Sikka, who had an acrimonious war of words with the company's co-founder NR Narayana Murthy.

Analysts and sector experts say Parekh's first task will be to boost the sentiment of all the stakeholders  the board, employees and the market. That will be the defining role of his job and that should be his focus, suggests Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst, founder and CEO of Greyhound Research. That is the first of the 'mool' mantras that Parekh will have to chant.

He says that unless Parekh gets this one right, the others like ensuring market performance by aiming for growth or building future leadership to ensure stability won't fall in place. The crux for Parekh is to manage stakeholders sentiment and that has to be done overnight, says Gogia.

Concurring with his view, Manoj Kumar, visiting fellow at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), says that Parekhs challenge will be to put a transparent structure in place and also have set a norm to avoid a repeat of the past discords. One of the ways to do that would be to have a strong rung of leadership in the firm, he feels.

Advantage, Parekh

The mails in the public space, the war of words between Murthy and Sikka and a few members of the board have all led to an erosion of the image of Infosys. Parekh now has the tall order of building on what Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder who was brought back as non-executive chairman to set the house in order, has done so far since Sikka quit. However, he has to be careful to not change the status quo too much.

Sikka, a Punjabi, was perceived as aggressive, while Parekh is not viewed as aggressive. He should be able to carry on the board and stakeholders, besides employees with him, said an analyst, requesting anonymity, hastening to add that the changes Sikka proposed were good. The analyst, however, feels it was a case of too-much-too-soon for the tradition-bound company which is loathe to make quick reflexes.

Another advantage seen for Parekh is that he wont be operating from the US like Sikka, another grouse against the latter's style of functioning. Unlike Sikka, Parekh has a pulse on the Indian IT services context. He is definitely a kingmaker, for sure. He was pivotal in making Capgemini what it is today, said Gogia

Transformation challenge

The IT industry is undergoing a technological transformation locally and globally. Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, robotics and automation are taking the sector by storm. The change is impacting the Indian IT sector. Unlike its earlier strength in the 1990s in outsourcing, Infosys and its peers now have to look at other facets to build their portfolio.

When you look at new IT firms, they do multiple things together to make money. There are technologies that they focus on like cloud, or lead on Big Data, and voice-assisted services like Googles Siri or Amazons Alexa and none of them are offering platforms but they are all making money, said Arvind Singhal, chairman and managing director of Technopak Advisors.

Transitions can cost a lot, which the tradition-bound Infosys may be loathe to take. Singhal suggests that since Infosys is rich in market cap and has had good results, it can now look at acquisitions. He reasons that it has to realise that though it cannot develop everything in-house, it needs to have a really strong presence in the Silicon Valley not in terms of customer services but new age technology beyond being just a software tech firm.

Parekh will have to morph Infosys culture gradually. The new CEO will have to gradually take the company away from traditional services and make it more professional, says Gogia. Many sector specialists say that itself is going to be a major hurdle for Parekh.

Sikka had come with ideas which were considered drastic by many, said an analyst. Unless the company comes out with new ideas which are drastic, it cannot go to the next level. However, the system could not accept Sikkas ideas as it was not only different but was also risky. Doing anything different comes with risk, be it financial or failure, says Singhal.

Sikka's Vision 2020 envisaged a $20-billion revenue target by 2020. It will now be Parekh's turn to figure out how to shape that vision and grow, says Harish HV, partner, India Leadership Team, Grant Thornton India LLP. Nandan Nilekani has done his review and Parekh will have to leverage on what he has done, he said. If Infosys has to grow, and grow rapidly, Parekh will have to get the confidence of senior management and the top team, besides the co-founders who will be watching every move of his. He will also have to ensure that there is no major exit after he takes over, said Harish.

The expectations from shareholders will be very high in view of the loss of market cap following the events leading to exit of Sikka, said Kumar of ORF.

The Murthy factor

The big question for many is what will Murthy do now? Many have blamed Murthy's outbursts on Infosys functioning for Sikka's exit. They even feel Murthy was unnecessarily meddling in the company though he is not an office-bearer now. Gogia says that Parekh has come on board with Nandan as its non-executive chief. Parekh will have Nandan to take care of that, says Gogia. Another industry expert said that till date he has been unable to understand what was Murthys problem with Sikka. "What was the issue?" he asks. However, many feel the biggest burden for Parekh will be this legacy of the company.
New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is likely to present Indias first post- goods and services tax (GST) and the current governments last full Budget on 1 February next year. The Budget session of Parliament may begin on 30 January with President Ram Nath Kovind addressing the Joint Session of both the Houses of Parliament, a senior government official said.

The Economic Survey, detailing the state of the economy, is likely to be tabled on 31 January and the Union Budget may be presented the following day, he said. Scrapping the colonial-era tradition of presenting the Budget at the end of February, Jaitley had for the first time presented the annual accounts on 1 February this year.

The Budget presentation was advanced by a month to ensure that proposals take effect from 1 April, the beginning of the new financial year. Also, the nearly century old tradition of having a separate budget for the railways was scrapped and merged with the general budget. The tentative schedule being drawn up for the Budget Session means that there would be less than a months gap between two sessions of Parliament.

The Winter Session, which begins on 15 December, will end on 5 January. The official said that at least on one occasion in the pastin 1976, when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister, had the winter session spilled into January. But in those days, the Budget was presented on the last day of February and so there was one-month gap between the two sessions.

The Union Budget 2018-19 would be the last full Budget of the BJP-led NDA government before the 2019 general elections. As per the practice, a vote-on-account or approval for essential government spending for a limited period is taken in the election year and a full-fledged budget presented by the new government.

While P Chidambaram had presented the previous UPA governments vote-on-account in February 2014, Jaitley had presented a full budget in July that year. The official said this will be the first budget post implementation of the GST regime. Even though independent Indias biggest tax reform of GST was implemented from 1 July, the Budget for 2017-18 (April- March), had followed the practice of tax revenue projections under the heads of customs duty, central excise and service tax alongside direct tax numbers.

With excise duty and service tax being subsumed in the GST, the classifications in the forthcoming budget may undergo change, he said. While a new classification for revenues to be accrued from GST will be included in the Budget for next fiscal, for the current year two sets of accounting may be presented  one for actual accruals during April-June for excise, customs and service tax, and the other for July-March period for GST and customs duty.

The official said that since the GST rates are decided by a GST Council, headed by finance minister and comprising of representatives of all states, the Budget for 2018-19 may not have any tax proposals concerning excise and service tax levies. Only proposals for changes in direct taxes, both personal income tax and corporate tax, besides customs duty, are likely to be presented in the Budget along with new schemes and programmes of the government.

This will be Jaitleys fifth Budget in a row. With the preponement of Budget, ministries are now allocated their budgeted funds from the start of the financial year beginning April. This gives government departments more leeway to spend as well as allow companies time to adapt to business and taxation plans.

Previously, when the Budget was presented at the end of February, the three-stage Parliament approval process used to get completed some time in mid-May, weeks ahead of onset of monsoon rains. This meant government departments would start spending on projects only from August-end or September, after the monsoon season ended. Besides advancing the presentation date, the Budget scrapped the Plan and non-Plan distinction as well.

For full coverage of Union Budget 2018, click here.
You could consider it a lucky moment for Nandan Nilekani, executive chairman of Infosys in his second coming at the company. In Salil Satish Parekh's being bypassed for the CEO's post at global technology consulting giant Capgemini, the co-founder of the Bangalore-based IT services leader has found a near-perfect match for its own CEO slot, given its predicament following the uneasy resignation of former SAP whizkid Vishal Sikka last August.

From all indications, Nilekani may want to keep his intent of stabilising the leadership and moving out as soon as possible -- and 53-year-old Parekh seems just the man for that. With his roots at IIT Mumbai (Nilekani's alma mater as well), his long years at consulting firm Ernst & Young and later as an outsourcing expert with a strong India as well as global footprint at Capgemini, Parekh is very much the suitable boy for the top spot at Infosys. His strong track record in services is a substantial asset for Infosys.

But deep questions remain on both his future and that of Infosys, especially on the long-term strategy going forward. The biggest of them all: Does Infosys need a thorough makeover to face a new age in technology, or is a calibrated mix of continuity and change enough?

For close observers, there are lingering questions on why Sikka was made to leave under pressure from co-founders led by N R Narayana Murthy. After much noise and innuendos about corporate governance lapses in severance pay for former chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal, there seems to have been some kind of an honourable silence in favour of Sikka -- as if to suggest that what the co-founders wanted was his resignation, and not much else.

Murthy has not been effusive in his early welcome for Parekh. His terse 'best wishes' welcome suggests he may be once bitten, twice shy. For Parekh, this might contain a watch-your-step message. Murthy may be a minority shareholder, but is an activist board member who commands respect from tens of thousands of Infosys employees and the general public. His vigilant eyes are certain to follow the new CEO who has to try and avoid a Sikka moment.

As for Sikka, in hindsight, his sin seems to have been a bit of extravagance or generosity that did not sit easy with Murthy's austere, penny-wise style. Parekh has been credited with swinging in acquisitions to help Capgemini, and he would have to watch his shopping bills, given the great amount of reluctance displayed by Infosys during the Murthy-Nilekani years in going for buyouts.

The looming question is: Will Sikka's technological vision be integrated into a new-look Infosys or given a slow burial? This is an important question as the information technology industry worldwide goes through upheavals caused by software automation, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. These three things have made it difficult for the old formula pursued by Infosys -- of blending cost-effective software programming with some consulting to serve large clients and get steady streams of high-margin revenues.

Sikka had taken a sharp turn towards product innovation at Infosys, given his own experience as a high-end product/platform architect at SAP. He tried to blend in services within and around that. Now, his handpicked executives have left Infosys, but the product vision and some of the innovations he introduced are still around, best exemplified by the artificial intelligence platform, Nia. As of last month, Infosys was sticking to Nia and eyeing big-ticket partnerships in data analytics and business intelligence.

Given cloud-era platforms such as IBM's supercomputer Watson and SAP's HANA, Infosys can simply adjust itself around these cutting-edge behemoths much the way it adjusted to SAP's old enterprise software in the early days of network computers. However, that does not seem easy. These new platforms are positioned for easier direct use by business clients. Picture them like do-it-yourself kits.

This is somewhat akin to what Sweden's IKEA did to furniture. Why do you need to hire a carpenter at home when you can assemble the furniture yourself? And why would a Fortune 500 client need a major deal with a large IT service company like Infosys if smaller partners working with in-house teams can leverage large cloud platforms?

The situation may be more complex than that, but it is pretty certain that a new IT ecosystem is emerging that calls for large-scale reinvention at Infosys for it to be able to grow on a scale similar to what it has done in the past.

To craft a new, viable strategy, Parekh needs to bring in his global experience, look at the co-founders and their austere values and then eye a disrupted technological environment that involves the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and software automation. Given that he has been given a five-year contract, one would hope he would get sufficient elbow room and encouragement if he is to walk a tightrope between old-fashioned continuity and phenomenal change.

(The author is a senior journalist. He tweets as @madversity)
New Delhi: State Bank of India will "redesign" its envelopes used to dispatch tax refund cheques of customers to cover their PAN and contact numbers, after an activist raised that the crucial personal information was visible to anyone which may result in misuse, the bank said.

The move comes nearly 16 months after activist Commodore (retd) Lokesh Batra raised the issue that the window envelopes used by SBI make it easy for someone to glance through permanent account number (PAN) and contact number of the tax payee and misuse it.

Batra wrote to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Urjit Patel, alleging that SBI was violating its directions on 'protection of customer's information' by sending crucial information about customers in "unsecured envelopes".

"...this systemic failures by banks must be breaching the personal information of very large numbers of People. I had reported this matter at the highest level in SBI..., but as of now no one has even blinked...and breaching of people's personal information is continuing," he wrote to the RBI Governor on November 28.

He said he had been "pleading" with SBI at the highest level for the past 16 months to ensure compliance with RBI directions, but nothing has changed.

After the RBI referred the matter to SBI, the bank responded by saying that "the envelops (window envelops) in which income tax refund orders are being dispatched to various assesses will be redesigned, so that the PAN number is not visible to anyone".
A meeting of the National Capital Regional Planning Board (NCRPB) is scheduled today in which the Haryana government will again try and scuttle the exception clauses to allow construction licenses in Natural Conservation Zone (NCZ) earmarked Aravallis.

The National Green Tribunal recently has directed the Haryana government to submit revenue records of the land in Faridabad where it has sanctioned felling of trees for construction of a real estate project by Bharti Land Limited in the eco-sensitive Aravalli hills, PTI reported.

Let us look at some of the issues:

What are Aravallis?

Can you believe in June 2016 at the the NCRPB Meet, the government of Haryana said it did not know the meaning of the term Aravalli. A series of meetings followed between the Ministry of Urban Development, Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MOEFCC) and the government of Haryana, to narrow down and identify a definition of the Aravallis. It was agreed that revenue land categories (primarily gair mumkin pahar) identified as Aravallis in a Ministry of Environment & Forest (MOEF) notification dating back to 1992 which was applicable to Gurgaon district of Haryana, would be applicable across the National Capital Region. A special meeting of the board on 20 December, 2016, recorded that the issue of definition of Aravallis was now resolved.

The Regional Plan 2021 for the Delhi NCR region had already zoned all Aravalli areas (forests, waterbodies, rivers, groundwater recharge areas) as Natural Conservation Zone or NCZ.

The importance of the Natural Conservation Zone (NCZ) is that it is earmarked for conservation, rather than real estate. Accordingly, construction is allowed only for 0.5 percent ( or 1/200), and that too for regional recreational activities like regional parks and sanctuaries. This strictly precludes construction for commercial, residential, tourism, and other real estate purposes.

But the issue is far from resolved. Haryana has been constantly trying to remove the cap on construction of 0.5 percent. In January 2017, Manohar Lal Khattar, the Chief Minister of Haryana himself wrote to Venkaiah Naidu, the then Minister of Urban Development saying that Aravallis could not be put in NCZ across the state. This was followed by a 15 June, 2017 letter which implied that there were no Aravallis in Haryana except in Gurgaon district, and even there, the 0.5 percent cap should not be operative.

The state of Haryana today has less than 3.7 percent forest cover, mostly in the hilly Aravallis (and Shivaliks). The Aravallis are the main wildlife habitat in a rapidly urbanizing area and play an important role in groundwater recharge, moderating desertification and air pollution. In short, they are a key element of the ecological infrastructure that underpins our cities and villages of the NCR. Delhi and Rajasthan had put the majority of their Aravalli hills in official notified forests, as well as sanctuaries. Currently Haryana has no sanctuary in the Aravallis, and hardly any reserved and protected forests. It is time Haryana protected the Aravallis, and rolled back the privatization and licencing of real estate across the Aravalli hills in Gurgaon and Faridabad areas.

A CSE or Centre of Science & Environment report has raised worrying red flags on Gurgaons depleting and near extinction groundwater and unbreathable air.

Where are the battle lines drawn?

On 15 June 2017, Haryana wrote to the NCR Planning Board in effect saying that there are no Aravalli hills in Haryana outside Gurgaon district, for the purposes of inclusion in Natural Conservation Zones. Suddenly, over 17,000 acres of Aravallis in Faridabad seemed to have evaporated from Haryana's maps and records. As also in other districts of Rewari, Mahindergarh, etc. This incredible claim communicated by the Director of Town and Country Planning TL Satyaprakash has been preceded by a history of delay in operationalising the NCZ by successive state governments.

Not just that, in 2013, the government of Haryana proposed that the 0.5 percent cap on construction be removed which was was accepted by the NCRPB without demur. It took huge media outpour for the cap of 0.5 percent to be restored, but again there was an exception clause slipped in allowing construction for tourism. The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) had to intervene for the exception clause and tourism as a purpose, to be junked.

But the fight is far from over. The government of Haryana is constantly raising new and novel arguments on What is Aravalli and What is forest to gut the NCZ category in Haryana.

Today the NCR Planning Board Meet will see another round of similar attempts. It is for citizens and civil society to raise their collective voices to ensure the remaining lungs of the State of Haryana are not sacrificed at the altar of mindless construction.
The audio launch of Sivakarthikeyan's Velaikkaran directed by Mohan Raja was held on 3 December at Chennai's hotel ITC Grand Chola in a grand manner. Although the entire supporting cast and crew were in full attendance, Nayanthara and Fahadh Faasil, who play significant roles in the film, were conspicuous by their absence. Composer Anirudh Ravichander performed two hit songs from the album  Karuthavanlaam Galeejaam and Iraivaa.

In a befitting gesture, the makers honoured some hardly-known, under-appreciated workers from various walks of life such as Traffic Police Kumar, Auto Annadurai, Moar Thaatha, Sundari Akka, Birdman Joseph Sekar for their relentless dedication and hard work. Another highlight of the event was the screening of the making video of a sprawling, realistic slum set constructed by art director Muthuraj for the film.

I promise not to endorse any brands in my career henceforth, says Sivakarthikeyan

In a breaking statement, Sivakarthikeyan, the fast-rising star in Tamil cinema, took an oath to say no to advertisements in his career. I know Ive done a commercial before. But now, I have decided that I wont endorse any brands and act in advertisements henceforth in my career. The reason behind my decision is a crucial scene in the film, which I cant reveal it now. A real-life doctor has also performed in the sequence, which left the entire team in tears. I dont want to convey a wrong message to anyone. I would like to be a responsible person and dont want people to be misguided through my ads, said Sivakarthikeyan.

Velaikkaran has given me great hope and changed me a lot as a person. Im sure the impact of the film will continue to change me personally. Ive come out of my comfort zone for the first time. Going forward, if I do nine movies to entertain audiences, I will do at least one film like Velaikkaran to educate viewers and connect with them emotionally, he said.

No one could have done justice to 'Arivu' character except Sivakarthikeyan, says director Mohan Raja

Director Mohan Raja said the lead character Arivu played by Sivakarthikeyan would be one of the memorable roles in the history of Tamil cinema.

Ordinary people who have no financial background rely only on their hard work. What happens when their hard work too fails them? Velaikkaran will be the answer to that question. I was aware of the hard work the film will need. When my sister and her family watched the film, they were all praise for Sivakarthikeyan. They were pretty sure that he is going to make me win again. No one could have done justice to Arivu as Siva did. And it will be a memorable role. I will definitely do another film with him soon because I have never felt so comfortable with an actor before. Of course, it's a different level of comfort while working with my brother (Jayam Ravi).

I realised the strength of our youngsters and their social responsibility during Chennai floods and the Jallikattu protest. That's what I have portrayed in this film - the spirit of the public, Raja added.

I felt like a better human being after listening to Velaikkaran script, says Anirudh Ravichander

Composer Anirudh Ravichander said he has associated with Sivakarthikeyan for one-third of his career. After Mohan Raja sir narrated the script, I told him that I feel like a better human being. That was a special day. Given the areas he has touched and the content dealt with the story, Velaikkaran will be a hard-hitting film. It will be a proud project for producer RD Raja, who has an uncanny knack for delivering quality cinema to the audience.

Talking about his relationship with Sivakarthikeyan, Anirudh said, I first met him at an event that happened in Coimbatore. It's been quite a journey from that day to what we are now. Everyone tells me that I give my best for Sivakarthikeyan's film. It's not exactly like that. When his face flashes as I sit to compose, some great music happens. After Velaikkaran, he can take up any role and cakewalk it. What matters the most is that Ive earned a good person like him in my life.

Produced by RD Raja under the banner 24AM Studios, Velaikkaran features an extensive support cast including Sneha, Prakash Raj, RJ Balaji, Robo Shankar, Sathish, Vijay Vasanth, Thambi Ramaiah, Rohini, and Charlie. The film is slated to hit screens on December 22nd for the Christmas weekend. The trailer for the movie will be released in the upcoming days.
Almost everyone from the film industry has put forth their opinions on the Padmavati row, and the latest member to join the lot is none other than veteran actor Manoj Kumar. In a recent media interaction Manoj highlighted on how the Padmavati controversy could be nipped in the bud, and why he thinks the whole chapter is unnecessary, terming it 'washing dirty linen in public'.

The actor called the drama over the content of the film, 'nonsense' and also claimed that both the protestors and the filmmaker is at fault here.

With chief ministers of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Gujarat calling for a ban on the film, the political-religious fringes have been vying an all India ban on the film.

During the interaction, Kumar told PTI I will blame both the sides. This is nonsense. If the Rajputs feel something is wrong, they should have written to the makers. The producers should have written to them after their objection, to come and see the film and finish the matter in one hour. This is [like] washing dirty linen in public. To some extent, even the media is to be blamed.

The major allegation against Bhansali and team remained that they have distorted history by showing a romantic angle between Rani Padmavati and Alauddin Khilji. Though the makers have sternly maintained that there's no distortion of history in the movie, the protests seem to get more intense with every passing day.

"When I started to make films, I started writing about Bhagat Singh in my earlier days. There were some incidents which I had to conceive within the framework. Every film made later on Bhagat Singh featured the scenes which I had conceived. You have to imagine some linking sequences within the framework," he said.

Several years back, similar to Padmavati, Manoj Kumar's Kalyug Aur Ramayan also faced displeasure from the censor board.

"There was a song in the film Kalyug Ki Sita Milne Judge Ko Chali/Sau Chuhe Khake Billi Haj Ko Chali... I was not talking about Ram-Sita here. It was a novel subject to me but there was a huge uproar by some groups back then and they created ruckus at the censor board," he said recalling the incident.

Padmavati which was slated to release on December 1, has now been deferred indefinitely by the makers of the film.
 Israeli Peace Offers Go Missing in Politico | Main | Palestinian Textbooks Are Significantly More Radical Than Before 

December 04, 2017

Fatah Official: Iran is Hindering Palestinian Reconciliation



The man tasked with leading efforts to reconcile Fatah and Hamas has accused the Islamic Republic of Iran of working to prevent reconciliation between the two Palestinian groups, which rule the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Gaza Strip, respectively.

Fatah and Hamas are rivals for power. They engaged in a brief and bloody civil war in the summer of 2007, after Fatah lost elections in 2006. That conflict ended with Hamas seizing control of the Gaza Strip, which had previously been run by Fatah, the movement that dominates both the U.S.-supported Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

As CAMERA has noted, Hamas and Fatah have been in reconciliation talks for nearly four months ("The Washington Post Belatedly Covers Hamas-Fatah Talks," Oct. 6, 2017).

On Nov. 27, 2017, a senior Fatah official named Azzam al-Ahmad told al-Arabiya, a Saudi Arabian outlet, that, Iran is the number one sponsor of the divisionthe number one financier.? The Times of Israels Dov Lieber noted the significance of al-Ahamds comments, calling them rare? and full-throated (Senior Fatah Official: Iran the key source of Palestinian division,? November 28).?

Tehran is a chief supporter of Hamas and other groups that rival Fatah, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Both Hamas and PIJ challenged Fatahs support for diplomatic engagement with Israel during the 1990s Oslo process that created the PA. Both groups, as well as Fatah elements like Tanzimwhich was supported by then-Fatah and PLO-head Yasser Arafatperpetrated terrorist attacks against Israelis.

Irans support for Hamas dried up as a result of a disagreement over Tehrans involvement in the Syrian civil war. However, Iran recently renewed its support of the U.S.-designated terrorist group and, in a widely underreported move, senior Hamas operative Saleh al-Arouri visited Iran in late October 2017 (Wheres the Coverage? Hamas Visits Iran,? CAMERA, Oct. 27, 2017).

Indeed, in an August 2017 interview, Hamas Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, admitted that Iran is now the largest backer financially and militarily? of the terror group.

In his interview with al-Arabiya, Al-Ahmad stated, It seems that one of the conditions for the return of Iranian support [to Hamas] is the continuation of the division.? As part of the ongoing talks, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has insisted that the authority be in sole control of all weapons and security in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has refused to give up its arsenal.

Azzam al-Ahmads remarks were widely ignored by major U.S. news outlets, including The Washington Post, USA Today, The Washington Times, and others. By contrast, The Times of Israel provided a detailed report, complete with essential background and context.

A Palestinian official highlighted Irans efforts to thwart a unity deal? between two rival and warring factions and many in the media were nowhere to be found.

Posted by SD at December 4, 2017 11:02 AM

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As the future of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati remains uncertain, the latest actor to have spoken about the controversy is Shahid Kapoor. Kapoor, who plays the role of Raja Rawal Ratan Singh in the film, tells Deccan Chronicle, "No one wants to make a film to hurt sentiments because its for as many people as possible to see."

Padmavati has come under fire from several Hindu groups who allege the film distorts history and shows the Rajput community in a poor light. However, Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh and now Kapoor, have shown faith in their director and have said that they believe in the film. Kapoor also says that it is unfortunate that someone of such fine repute is being subject to unwarranted criticism.

The film has so far been banned in three states  Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat. Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani said the film was banned in his state due to the way it represents women. The political leader also said that"such issues spoil the environment" and could wreak havoc during elections, if not handled properly, as reported by Business Standard.

Several petitions seeking a ban on the film have been filed and duly rejected in the court. The film was originally supposed to release on 1 December but stands deferred.
Veteran actor-producer Shashi Kapoor passed away on 4 December in Kokilaben Hospital in Mumbai at the age of 79. The romantic screen icon of the 70s and early 80s  Shashi was hospitalised and breathed his last at 5:20 pm today, after having battled a prolonged illness.

Shashi Kapoor was a member of the famous Kapoor clan of Bollywood. Born in Kolkata, Shashi was the third and the youngest son of late Prithviraj Kapoor and brother of late Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor. Shashi, his father and his brothers were all equally celebrated in the world of Hindi cinema.

Shashi began his acting career in the 1940s where he first appeared on screen as a child artiste. Some of his most famous roles were the 1975 and 1982 movies Deewar and Namak Halal respectively. Shashi was a major contributor to Hindi cinema, much like his father and brothers. He was also touted as one of the first actors to venture into foreign films, with films like The Householder and Shakespeare Wallah under his belt.

His death has left the entire Hindi film industry shaken and in mourning. Several prominent personalities took to Twitter to express their grief and condolences for the Kapoor family.

Here are a few of the heartfelt messages:

Shashi Kapoor's versatility could be seen in his movies as well as in theatre, which he promoted with great passion. His brilliant acting will be remembered for generations to come. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 4, 2017

Sorry to hear of the demise of Shashi Kapoor, well-known actor, with a repertoire of Indian and international films. His support for meaningful cinema as a producer and pivotal role in the theatre movement in India too are cherished. Condolences to his family #PresidentKovind  President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) December 4, 2017

A legend has passed away. Shashi Kapoor will remain in our hearts forever. My condolences to his loved ones and all his fans. pic.twitter.com/OmLvtvYZtb  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) December 4, 2017

Innumerable Bollywood dreams came to life watching your iconic dialogue, "Mere paas maa hai." Your tremendous contribution to cinema will always be remembered. RIP #ShashiKapoor ji  Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) December 4, 2017

You won't be forgotten. Rest in peace #ShashiKapoor ji.  Ajay Devgn (@ajaydevgn) December 4, 2017

His contribution to this industry will be remembered. May his soul rest in peace. Shashi Kapoor ji you will be missed always.   Sanjay Dutt (@duttsanjay) December 4, 2017

One of my favourites passed away today. A handsome charming gentleman who entertained us for 40+ years. His endearing smile will be embedded in my memories. RIP #ShashiKapoor pic.twitter.com/wXM0YSoQ45  Jaaved Jaaferi (@jaavedjaaferi) December 4, 2017

RIP Sir. You will be deeply missed by all #ShashiKapoor pic.twitter.com/Bkr48vvtKp  Bipasha Basu (@bipsluvurself) December 4, 2017

I feel a part of me is gone. A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome & w/a name that was often confused w/mine. (My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health!) I will miss #ShashiKapoor. Condolences2his family&all his fans pic.twitter.com/fSz3jafPZJ  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017

One of the most iconic dialogues ever, #ShashiKapoor . You will continue to inspire future generation of actors. Condolences to family and friends. pic.twitter.com/QBoLf7IlPb  Virender Sehwag (@virendersehwag) December 4, 2017

Saddened by the demise of legendary actor Shashi Kapoor ji. His contribution to Indian Cinema is monumental. Shashi jis passing away marks the end of an era. My deepest condolences to his loved ones, colleagues and fans. May his soul rest in peace. Om Shanti!  Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) December 4, 2017

Saddened at his passing away. Shashi Kapoor a legend and actor will be remembered for generations for his great work in cinema  Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) December 4, 2017

#ShashiKapoor had so much grace, vision & beauty. I will never forget the humanity he brought to Vijay Khanna in Kabhi Kabhie and the intensity of Javed Khan in Junoon. RIP  Anupama Chopra (@anupamachopra) December 4, 2017
TV actress Aashka Goradia, of Kkusum fame, got hitched to her longtime boyfriend Brent Goble in Ahmedabad on Sunday. The couple first tied the knot as per Christian rituals on Friday and then followed the traditional Indian marriage rituals on Sunday in presence of family and friends, reported Hindustan times.

A report by Indian Express also claimed that the families of the couple arranged a mehendi and sangeet ceremony for the duo, which took place in Ahmedabad itself, being Aashka's hometown. The couple's first public appearance was in the celebrity dance reality show Nach Baliye where they received much support from their fans.

The actress remained quite active on her social media accounts, posting photos from all the events. She also wrote a thank you post on Instagram, which read, Love is not something you do! Love is the way you are, Love is the way I am: Sadhguru. And today our love has led to this beautiful union as we are now officially husband and wife! Thank you @knottingbells for the lovely picture and @mapxencarsofficial for helping me with this gown, which belongs to my mother in law! @orrajewellery this special day and this bridal look would have been incomplete without your beautiful jewelery #MrAndMrs #breshka #breshweds #brentauraashukishaadi #IndiaMeetsAmerica

On choosing Ahmedabad as her wedding destination, Aashka had earlier elaborated in an India.com report, saying, Brent wanted a wedding replete with all the rituals, which seemed possible only in my hometown. Another reason is that I have so many memories associated with the city. I have spent 16 years of my life in Ahmedabad and Gujarat is extremely rich, culturally. I am sure my in-laws will enjoy the traditional garba, Gujarati delicacies and the hospitality in my hometown.

Aashka's friends from the industry, Karanvir Bohra with wife Teejay Sidhu and daughters Vienna and Bella, Mouni Roy, Sana Khan and Adaa Khan were spotted at the wedding as well.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday admitted for hearing an appeal by Jammu and Kashmir government against a high court order for payment of compensation to the victims of 1991 Kunan Poshpora mass rape incident allegedly by army personnel.

The top court directed expeditious hearing of the appeals filed by the state government against various orders of the high court.

A bench of Justice J Chelameswar and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul granted leave on the appeal of state government and said all the interim orders will continue.

In 2013, a writ petition was filed in Jammu and Kashmir high court alleging that army personnel belonging to the Rajputana Rifles and 68 Mountain Brigade had raided the remote villages of Kunan and Poshpora in Kupwara district and had committed mass-scale rapes and torture of villagers.

The charges have not been proved so far as there has been no progress in trial.

It was alleged that on the intervening night of 23 and 24 February, 1991, separate teams of armymen had entered several houses in the villages, removed men of all ages into makeshift interrogation centres and tortured them. The plea alleged that over 30 women of the villages were raped by these personnel.

An SIT probe was sought in the plea for carrying out comprehensive investigation, besides seeking compensation and relief for the victims.

Standing counsel Shoeb Alam, appearing for the state government, said the compensation cannot be given as directed by the high court under provisions of Section 545(a) of the CrPC, which was introduced on 24 April, 2012 and notified on 23 April, 2013.

He said such a direction to pay compensation under a provision which did not exist at the time of the incident was contrary to law.

The state government also claimed that since the allegation was against army personnel, a direction to the state government for payment of compensation to the victims was without any legal backing.
Navy Day is observed annually on 4 December to celebrate the Indian Navy's achievements and commemorate the sacrifices made by its personnel. But the specificity of the date holds an underlying story of the force's valour, that brought victory for India in the 1971 war against Pakistan.

The date commemorates the launch of Operation Trident, a devastating attack on the Pakistan Naval Headquarters of Karachi during the 1971 war. During the attack, three Vidyut-class missile boats, two anti-submarine vehicles and a tanker of the Indian Navy successfully sank the enemy's minesweeper, a destroyer and an ammunition supply ship.

The attack was carried out at night as intelligence confirmed that Pakistan did not have aircrafts that could carry out bombings at night. The operation was deemed a big success as zero casualties were incurred on the Indian side while five Pakistani sailors and over 700 men were injured in the attack.

But the Indian Navy's military contributions go beyond its significant role in the 1971 war and the liberation of Bangladesh, there are several interesting aspects to the navy's campaign.

Versatile capabilities

Not only did it fight on two fronts but almost the entire gamut of naval operations came to play in the 1971 war. This included aircraft carrier operations in support of the land offensive, anti-submarine operations that led to neutralising of the Pakistan submarine Ghazi, offensive attack by missile boats and blockade of then East Pakistan coast.

More recently, during the Kargil conflict in 1999 and later during Operation Parakram, the Indian Navy by its offensive posturing bottled the Pakistani ships inside their harbours and effectively kept the war localised and the situation on an even keel. Similarly, Indian Navy's role in Operation Pawan, India's prolonged engagement in Sri Lanka, has not got the attention it, arguably, deserved.

Spread over three years, the navy was involved in support of the army, transportation of troops and material, amphibious operations, seaward cordon militaire, shore bombardment, special operations and airborne surveillance.

Most remarkably, several smaller ships based in Visakhapatnam and Chennai excelled at giving a good account of themselves in hostile conditions.

Today, it operates in all three dimensions: On, above and below water; most of its ships are indigenously built and it is among the few navies to build and operate an array of platforms from aircraft carriers to nuclear submarines.

But numbers alone do not tell the whole story. Of particular significance is the fact that the navy has built excellent capacities  both human and material  in several disciplines such as hydrography, special operations, integration engineering, doctrine writing, underwater medicine and disaster relief, to name a few.

These capacities have been particularly useful when the Indian Navy's achievements in different domains are analysed. If one were to evaluate in terms of roles that navies classically play  military, constabulary (policing), diplomatic and benign (including humanitarian assistance)  the Indian Navy can be said to have ticked all boxes with high scores.

A self-reliant force

Navy Day is a good occasion to reflect on its journey and evaluate its progress over the last 70 years. The Indian Navy was an exceedingly small force at the dawn of Independence and, while being a product of both its British inheritance and the maritime DNA of our forebears, is largely a post-independence construct.

Despite the many problems that besieged the newly independent country  and by extension, its navy  such as low industrial base, problems on our land borders made it imperative to focus on the army and the air force. But the navy was not short on vision.

As early as 1948, it drew up ambitious plans for a balanced navy that would consist of light aircraft carriers, submarines, destroyers, cruisers, auxiliaries and associated training and maintenance infrastructure.

Seen against this backdrop, the Indian Navy has grown quietly but steadily. From a force of less than half a dozen sloops to one that has 135 ships and 235 aircraft, most state-of-the-art, is indeed an impressive story.

The notable point is that it's a self-reliant force. The Indian Navy was a pioneer of 'Make in India' which was an article of faith for it. Compared to the army and the air force, the navy is way ahead in the indigenous content of its combat units.

Though it has a long way to go, every ship that gets constructed has more indigenous content than its predecessor and is an improvement over the previous one.

Award-winning innovations

On Monday, award-winning innovations by the force will be on display at the 'Innovation Pavilion' put up at the Navy House in New Delhi, PTI reported.

These include the innovations by Indian Naval Ships 'Kuthar' and 'Vikramaditya', which have been selected as the winner and runner-up respectively in the 'Operational Units' category.

The innovations by the Weapons Electronic Systems Engineering Establishment (WESEE) and Naval Aircraft Yard, Kochi were selected as the winner and runner-up respectively in the 'Shore Establishments' category.

As a run-up to the Navy Day, 20 innovations were shortlisted from those submitted by units and establishments across the navy for central evaluation, a defence ministry statement said.

They range from innovative repairs to complex system modules to development of new techniques that would save money, time and manpower, it added.

A boost to foreign policy

The increased mettle and muscle of our navy provides much more traction to our foreign policy initiatives, be it in enhancing cooperation with big powers or in providing a palpable physical dimension to the Act East Policy. Further, the Indian Navy's own international initiatives are wide and encompass several arenas.

They include multilateral forums such as Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) and the MILAN meetings, joint exercises with several nations, assistance in capacity building to nations in the Indian Ocean neighbourhood, hydrographic surveys, providing training to many foreign navy personnel and hosting events like the International Fleet Review in February 2016 or more recently the Goa Maritime Conclave last month.

The disaster situations could be natural, such as the Tsunami of 2004 or cyclonic storms that recur with great regularity in the Bay of Bengal, or they could be caused by human intervention such as what occurred in Lebanon in 2006, Libya in 2011 or Yemen in 2015. The latter cases are often messy and often also involve evacuation of non-combatants and deployment in conflict zones.

There will indeed be some areas that provide scope for improvement. Further indigenisation of weapons, ordnance and systems and gaps in inventory are issues that are attracting the attention of decision makers. There is also need for the development of expertise, among its personnel, in a range of subjects such as foreign languages, international law, energy security, area studies and economics.

But, overall, it would be fair to say that the 'Silent Service' of the Indian Navy at 70 is a success story.

With inputs from IANS
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court said the issue of marital rape, an act in which a spouse indulges in sexual intercourse without the other's consent, was of huge ramifications and tremendous importance.

The high court fixed 2 January next year to continue hearing arguments in the matter in which some NGOs, espousing the cause of women, have raised the issue of sexual violence in marriage in India.

The matter was listed before a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar which during the brief hearing noted the concern raised by the NGOs, RIT Foundation and the All India Democratic Women's Association.

The court asked senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, who is assisting it as an amicus curiae, to freely express his views on the issue in which the Centre has maintained that marital rape cannot be made a criminal offence as it could become a phenomenon which may destabilise the institution of marriage and become an easy tool to harass the husbands.

Ramachandran told the bench that he will come up with his views after hearing the submissions of the Centre and the NGOs.

Advocate Karuna Nandy, appearing for the two NGOs, tried to impress the bench by citing few studies and research to press for the prayer to declare forcible sexual intercourse between married couple as an offence.

She elaborated by referring to the 2005 data of National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) about the gravity of the situation. However, without going any further, the bench deferred the hearing with the observation that "the issue has huge ramifications. It is of tremendous importance."

In a related development, the Supreme Court in its historic verdict in October this year, has held that sexual intercourse with a girl below 18 years of age, even by the husband, would amount to rape. It has criminalised sex with a wife who is not a major.

The apex court read down a provision in the Indian Penal Code of 1860 exempting males from being tried for rape if the wives were between the age of 15 and 18 years. The top court's verdict will have ramification in the petition pending before the high court.

In the original petition before the high court, the petitioners had highlighted that the provision under the IPC did not consider non-consensual sexual intercourse with a wife, above 15 years of age, as rape.

The petitioners submitted that there was a need to strike down the exception clause under Section 375 of IPC that says that sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape.

The court is also hearing two intervention applications, one in support of pleas to make marital rape an offence and the other opposing it. The Centre had advocated retaining the exception clause in Section 375 saying child marriages were taking place in India and the decision to retain a girl's minimum age as 15 years to marry was taken under the amended rape law to protect a couple against criminalisation of their sexual activity.

The NGOs' counsel had said that they have challenged the constitutionality of section 375 (rape) of the IPC on the ground that it discriminated against married women being sexually assaulted by their husbands.
Ranchi: A school principal has been arrested on the charge of raping a six-year-old girl student in Jharkhand's Koderma district, police said on Friday.

According to police, S Xavier, principal of Tilaiya Public School, was arrested after the girl's father filed a complaint against him at the Tilaiya police station. The principal allegedly raped the girl in the school's washroom on 29 November 29. When she cried out for help, he offered her a chocolate.

The girl informed her mother after reaching home.

Xavier, a resident of Kolkata, has been charged under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. The principal told reporters that he had not committed "any big crime". He said he did it out of tension, and termed the act as "accidental".

"I was not sleeping for the last few days ... but I was not involved in any intercourse," said the principal defending himself before the media. He, however, admitted to undressing the girl.

Xavier was produced in court and sent to judicial custody. The medical test of the girl will be done on Saturday.
New Delhi: A preliminary study has found that the water of the Siang river, which originates in southern Tibet and becomes the Brahmaputra upon entering Assam through Arunachal Pradesh, is turning black due to a recent earthquake in the region, Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal has said.

"We have been getting reports of pollution in the river and its water turning black. The Central Water Commission (CWC) has started looking into the matter recently and people have been sent to the internal areas," the Union minister of state for water resources said in New Delhi on Sunday.

He added that according to the preliminary findings, the path of the river was temporarily obstructed after an earthquake in Tibet on 17 November.

"There is a strong possibility that the colour (of the river's water) has changed due to natural reasons," the minister said.

Congress MP Ninong Ering, representing the Arunachal East constituency in Parliament, had recently written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this regard, noting that the water of the river changing its colour was an unusual phenomenon in the winter months.

In his letter, Ering had also pointed out that there were reports of China constructing a 600-km tunnel in its Yunnan province to divert the Siang water to the Taklamakan desert through the Xinjiang province, even though the neighbouriong country had denied any such development.

He had mentioned in the letter that the reports of the Tsangpo (Siang or Brahmaputra) being diverted had appeared a few months back.

Although China had denied it, the matter remained an area of concern for India, the Congress MP had mentioned in his letter to the prime minister.

"After these reports appeared, the water of the river Siang has turned muddy and slushy. It has been two months since the Siang turned black and contaminated. It is an unusual phenomenon.

"The reason for the river getting dirty is unknown. I have already put up questions for discussions in Parliament under rule 377. But since the House is not in session, I am requesting you to use your good office to seek the reason for the river turning muddy in this season, when the water is usually crystal clear," Ering had written in his letter to Modi.

He had also pointed out that there could be no reason for the river getting contaminated in the month of November other than a possible heavy land excavation on the Chinese side, adding that it had to be verified by an international team.

Certain reports claim that the water of the river have become unusable and that a number of fish had died in the river in the recent past.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday directed the special investigation team (SIT), constituted by it to probe allegations against former CBI Director Ranjit Sinha in coal scam cases, to submit a status report before it.

A three-judge bench headed by Justice MB Lokur asked the SIT to file before it in a sealed cover within four weeks the status report with regard to the investigation conducted by it in the matter.

The bench, also comprising Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice AK Sikri, directed this after advocate Prashant Bhushan said that several months have gone by since the SIT was formed and it should be asked to submit a report of its investigation.

The Supreme Court had on 23 January constituted the SIT headed by the CBI director to look into the prima facie allegations against the former CBI chief of trying to influence the probe in coal scam cases.

During the hearing, senior advocate RS Cheema, who has been appointed as the special public prosecutor in coal scam cases by the apex court, told the bench that eight CBI cases related to the scam were pending consideration before the highest authority of the agency.

The top court directed the CBI director to finalise the eight pending cases on or before 15 January, 2018.

The apex court was earlier told that a panel headed by former CBI special director ML Sharma held that Sinha's alleged meetings with some high-profile accused in the coal scam, prima facie indicated that there was an attempt to influence the investigation. The apex court-appointed panel was probing the alleged scuttling of probe into coal block allocation scam cases by Sinha, whose meetings with the accused persons were held as "completely inappropriate".

On 7 December, 2015, the court had ordered handing over the original visitors' diary of the official residence of the former CBI director to the Sharma-led panel.
Kochi: The Indian Navy on Sunday said 10 of its ships and eight aircraft were involved in the continuing search and rescue operations in the southeast Arabian Sea and Lakshadweep and Minicoy islands following Cyclone Ockhi.

The vessels included capital ships such as Chennai and Kolkata which were carrying relief materials, a defence ministry statement said late on Sunday.

In addition, eight aircraft, including long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft P8I, were deployed throughout the day.

"A total of 55 people were rescued on Sunday taking the total to 145. The weather conditions are still adverse at the L&M Islands," the release read.

Naval ships Chennai, Trikand and Kolkata were stationed around the Lakshadweep islands with relief materials.

The ships were equipped with desalination plants and will be able to provide the islands fresh water as and when required.

The total relief material carried would sustain approximately 5,000 people for over seven days.

Additionally, all naval units in the vicinity of the Lakshadweep and Minicoy islands had been directed to provide fresh water in consultation with the local administration. Additional units will also be deployed to augment water supply, the release said.

The other ships were continuing the search and rescue operations along the Kerala coast and around the L&M Islands in a systematic and planned manner to provide immediate aid to any person, vessel/boat in distress.

"The Indian Navy is relentless in shouldering the responsibility of providing relief from this natural disaster impacting the southeast Arabian Sea and adjoining Lakshadweep islands," it said.
Coimbatore: Tamil Nadu chief minister K Palaniswamy on Sunday assured that all fishermen stranded at sea following Cyclone Ochki would be rescued and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised necessary help from the Centre in this regard.

Five aircraft, four helicopters and 15 Coast Guard ships were trying to locate and rescue the missing fishermen, he told a public meeting in Coimbatore.

Palaniswamy said he had spoken to the prime minister and Home Minister Rajnath Singh and they promised all help to rescue the fishermen.

"All steps are being taken expeditiously and the Amma's (Jayalalithaa's) government will rescue all the (stranded) fishermen safely," he said adding that there was no need for any apprehension and the government was a friend of the fishermen.

He was addressing the the centenary celebrations of late AIADMK founder and chief minister MG Ramachandran in Coimbatore on Sunday evening.

Hitting out at DMK working chief MK Stalin for "deliberately spreading lies" on the rescue operations, he alleged the main opposition party was falsely claiming that "fishermen are not rescued...it is a false information."

Deputy Chief Minister O Paneerselvam was leading a team of ministers to take stock of the damage caused by the cyclone and also monitor rescue operations, he said.

On getting the 'two leaves' symbol, he said "If we stand united as a party, then not just the RK Nagar bypoll, but we can win all elections in Tamil Nadu."

"Amma's soul has already punished TTV Dhinakaran (also spelled as Dinakaran) by the EC verdict and the people of RK Nagar will also punish him in the bypoll," he claimed, referring to the sidelined party leader.

He reiterated that the recent death of software engineer Raghupathy in Coimbatore was not caused by an arch put up for Sunday's function but claimed it was due to a lorry.

Raghupathy had died on 25 November after falling off his bike after allegedly hitting a wooden structure erected for the MGR centenary and run over by a heavy vehicle.

Criticising erection of arches and banners for the MGR centenary, Stalin had said the state government should take responsibility for the accident.

Seeking to turn the tables on Stalin, Palanisamy referred to the decorations made for Tamil 'Semmozhi' conference held in Coimbatore during the DMK regime in 2010.

A few photographs of the arches and cutouts allegedly put up then were shown on a digital screen on the stage.

"When we put up banners they cannot digest, but we have to tolerate, if they do it," he claimed.
Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan was in the state capital when family members of fishermen hit by Cyclone Ockhi spent day and night in the battered coast just 10-15 kilometres away, waiting and praying for the return of their kith and kin.

But he stepped out of his air-conditioned office only on the fourth day, that too after the Bharatiya Janata Party played their cards deftly and brought defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister of State for Tourism Alphons Kannanthanam to the state to take stock of the situation.

The fisherfolk, who were waiting for him for three days to know the steps taken by the state government to save their kith and kin, battling high waves in the sea, gave vent to their anger and anguish at him when he finally visited Vizhinjam, one of the worst-hit areas, on Sunday.

Pinarayi beat a hasty retreat when the agitated residents mobbed his car and blocked him from moving ahead for nearly five minutes. He abandoned his official car and further visits to the other areas and left the place in the car of one of his ministerial colleagues.

State tourism and cooperation minister Kadakampally Surendran, who is in-charge of the capital district, and fisheries minister Mercykutty Amma were the only two ministers to visit the affected areas till then. Both of them also faced the fury of the fisherfolk.

While the tourism minister faced flak for his aerial surveillance of the havoc from a helicopter and then posting a selfie on his Facebook page, the fisheries minister invited the wrath of the fisherfolk for undermining their protests.

Revenue minister and state disaster management authority (SDMA) vice-chairman E Chandrashekharan, who is supposed to coordinate the rescue and relief efforts, was seen nowhere in the picture even when the storm battered the coast and displaced hundreds of fishing families and destroyed their houses.

Though he accompanied the chief minister on Sunday, the district collector and the members of the SDMA, who come under him, have remained elusive.

The chief minister and his colleagues have been claiming that the government was doing everything possible to save the fishermen stranded in the sea. But the hapless fisherfolk did not believe them. They have enough reasons not to trust the state government, which let down the fishermen by not acting on the weather alerts that they received from the meteorological department and other agencies.

"We are ready to forgive the government authorities for their initial lapse. But we cannot let them off the hook for their failure to make effective use of the official machinery in rescuing the fishermen who ventured into the sea without knowing what awaited them," said Poonthura St Thomas Church vicar Fr Justin Judin, who is coordinating the local relief efforts.

He told Firstpost that lives of many who perished in the sea could have been saved if the navy, air force and the coast guard were pressed into action immediately after the state government realised that the storm that lashed the coasts was, in fact, a cyclone. Though the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) had issued three alerts from 29 November, the government took cognisance of only the third alert at 12 noon on 30 November.

Even after the confirmation, the authorities wasted considerable time in putting their acts together. While the state government was caught in a blame game with the IMD over the delay in cyclone warning, the central agencies groped in the dark in the absence of proper directions. The coast guard, a multi-mission organisation tasked with round-the-year real-life operations at sea, remained frightened by the turbulent sea.

They launched the rescue operation the next day when Ockhi started moving towards Lakshadweep islands. But precious time was lost by then. The fishermen who had gone to sea prior to the storm on 29 November and before that had exhausted fuel, food and water. Many of them could not be located by the time the ships and aircraft were deployed.

"The fishermen who returned from the sea knew the location and they came forward to help the agencies, the government refused to involve them in the operation. A decision to take the fishermen along with the government search teams was finally taken only in the afternoon on 3 December," said Fr Justin.

But before that, fishermen themselves ventured into the sea in search of their colleagues. Fifty-five boats equipped with fuel, food, GPS, life jackets and other gadgets have left the coast at Vizhinjam and Poonthura. The priest said that the government had not given any assistance to the fishermen, who dared to confront the turbulent sea.

"According to our information, 96 fishermen are still trapped at sea. We are not sure whether our search team will be able to bring them alive. It will be a big consolation even if they bring the dead bodies of the fishermen," he added.

Thrissur district Congress committee chief TN Prathapan, who was one of the first to visit the affected areas, said that he had informed the government about the gravity of the situation and pleaded before them to act immediately. However, the government woke up to the situation only the next day. He told Firstpost that even the response was half-hearted.

"When a tsunami hit Kerala in 2006, the then chief minister Oommen Chandy and many of his cabinet colleagues rushed to the affected areas and camped there till relief operations were completed. The cabinet had also held a special meeting there and took on-the-spot decisions to provide relief to the victims. In the present case, not even a minister was deployed to coordinate the search and rescue operations," he said.

"The government could at least post a senior officer for the coordination. Only two sub-collectors and a tehsildar were posted to deal with the situation. Many of the decisions they took in consultation with the local residents could not be implemented," Prathapan added.

He said there was absolutely no system to inform the families of the fishermen about the search and rescue operations. A control room was set up at Thiruvananthapuram only on the fourth day. But it had no reliable data about the missing fishermen and those who were rescued.

Though many fishermen from the state had landed in Maharashtra, Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep, none of them have been identified so far, let alone making arrangements for bringing them back to the state. A team to be sent to Maharashtra was constituted only on Sunday.

BJP Thiruvananthapuram district president advocate S Suresh said that the government had also failed in providing adequate food to hundreds of people shifted to relief camps. Though the SDMA is flush with funds, the government could provide only bread and plantain fruit to the people in the relief camp.

The government, which is pressing the Centre to declare Cyclone Ockhi as a national disaster, should first declare the SDMA as a disaster and disband it, the BJP leader said.
Washington: Amid a rush of weekend tweets taking aim at targets old and new, President Donald Trump criticised the FBI and raised questions about the special prosecutor's investigation into Russian election meddling and possible ties to his campaign.

The Twitter storm  more than a dozen tweets through Saturday and Sunday  came after his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

In one message, Trump denied that he directed FBI director James Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

Trump questioned the direction of the federal law enforcement agency and wrote that after Comey, who Trump fired in May, the FBI's reputation is "in tatters  worst in history". He vowed to "bring it back to greatness". The president also retweeted a post saying new FBI director Chris Wray "needs to clean house".

After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Former attorney general Eric Holder tweeted in response, "Nope. Not letting this go. The FBI's reputation is not in 'tatters'. It's composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. You'll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now."

Trump seized on reports that a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was removed from special prosecutor Robert Mueller's team last summer after the discovery of an exchange of text messages that were viewed as potentially anti-Trump.

The agent, Peter Strzok, had also worked on the investigation of Democrat Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, said Strzok was removed from the team "immediately upon learning of the allegations".

He would not elaborate on the nature of the accusations. The person who discussed the matter with The Associated Press was not authorised to speak about it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump tweeted on Sunday, "Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI 'agent's role in Clinton probe under review.' Led Clinton Email probe."

Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI agents role in Clinton probe under review. Led Clinton Email probe. @foxandfriends Clinton money going to wife of another FBI agent in charge.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

In a separate tweet, he wrote:

Report: ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE Now it all starts to make sense!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Strzok's removal almost certainly reflected a desire to insulate the investigators from any claims of political bias or favoritism. Trump and many of his supporters have at times sought to discredit the integrity of the investigation, in part by claiming a close relationship between Mueller and Comey and by pointing to political contributions to Democrats made by some lawyers on the team.

Following the tweets, Senator Lindsey Graham warned the president to tread cautiously. "You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril. I'd be careful if I were you, Mr President. I'd watch this," Graham said.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the vice-president and the FBI". He has pleaded guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

The tweet suggested that Trump was aware when the White House dismissed Flynn on 13 February that he had lied to the FBI, which had interviewed him weeks earlier. Comey has said Trump the following day brought up the Flynn investigation in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could "let this go".

With questions raised by the tweet, Trump associates tried to put distance on Saturday evening between the president himself and the tweet. Trump's personal lawyer John Dowd told ABC News that he drafted the tweet and gave it to the president's social media director Dan Scavino.

Dowd had declined to comment when reached by the AP on Saturday night.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel is beginning to see "the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice" against Trump.

"I think we see this in indictments... and some of the comments that are being made. I see this in the hyperfrenetic attitude of the White House, the comments every day, the continual tweets," Feinstein said. "And I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey, and it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. That's obstruction of justice."

Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said given that Mueller could have charged Flynn with more crimes but instead limited it to just one offence. "Bob Mueller must have concluded that he was getting a lot of value in terms of Gen. Flynn's cooperation," he said.

"I do believe he will incriminate others in the administration. Otherwise, there was no reason for Bob Mueller to give Mike Flynn this kind of deal," Schiff said, adding, "Whether that will ultimately lead to the president, I simply don't know."

Feinstein spoke on NBC's Meet the Press, Graham spoke on CBS Face the Nation, and Schiff spoke on ABC's This Week.
Lawngtlai: In a contradiction of its own policy, the Indian government has allowed over 1,300 tribal Buddhist refugees from Myanmar's Rakhine region to enter Mizoram. The refugees left their homeland because of the ongoing war between the Myanmarese Army and the Arakan Army, made up of Buddhist insurgents.

This comes nearly a month after the Union Home Ministry had directed the northeastern states to take strict measures to prevent Rohingyas  who are Muslims  from entering Indian territory despite persecution by the Myanmar regime.

The new group of refugees, belonging to the Chin and few other communities of Myanmar, have come to four villages in Lawngtlai district.

According to sources in the Mizoram government, the administration is struggling hard to bring down the rising tensions among the refugees and the residents of Laitlang, Dumzautlang, Hmawngbuchhuah and Zochachhuah villages.

According to the state administration, the refugees are being taken care of on humanitarian grounds as all of them came to escape clashes back home.

"It's been some six days since these refugees have arrived on Mizoram territory. They currently are in four villages of the Lawngtlai district and are put up at shelter homes, Buddhist homes, temples and many other places," T Arun, Deputy Commissioner of Lawngtlai, told IANS over the phone.

He emphasised that the security threat in such a situation cannot be denied.

"We basically have two rules  one relating to national security and other related to humanitarian assistance. Under the humanitarian rules we are providing food as we do not want any starvation deaths. We also have to guard against the outbreak of diseases," said Arun.

Additional police, health workers and doctors have also been deployed not just to keep a vigil on the new arrivals but also to keep a check on their health condition.

"The problem is that the population of each of the villages is just 200-400. The arrival of such a large number of people is a matter of serious concern," said Arun.

Mizoram's police chief emphasised that though they won't immediately term the arrival of the refugees a security threat, they are waiting for the situation in Myanmar to normalise so that they could be sent back.

"We won't call it a security threat at this juncture. They were alllowed into Indian territory due to the ongoing fighting in Myanmar. We are taking care of it and police forces are there. However, we are making sure there won't be any problem for the villagers due to the refugees. They have been confined to the four villages," Director General of Police Thianghlima Pachuau told IANS over the phone.

The current crisis in Myanmar comes nearly two months after the Myanmar Army had launched operations against the Rohingyas in Rakhine province. While the conflict led to more than 6,00,000 Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh, the United Nations Human Rights Commission called the strike by the Myanmar Army "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

The Indian government has taken measures, including asking the states in the region to seal their borders with Mayanmar, to prevent Rohingya refugees from entering the country.

Myanmar, the only Southeast Asian country which shares a 1,600-mile-long border with India, serves as its gateway to the other member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Four northeastern states  Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Manipur (398 km), Nagaland (215 km) and Mizoram (510 km)  have an unfenced border with Myanmar.

Experts on Indo-Myanmar relations see the current influx as a temporary matter that is different from the Rohingyas issue.

"This is an issue that has emerged in the last few months. The arrival of Buddhist refugees is certainly a matter of concern as it affects people on the Indian side as well. However, this is different from Rohingyas," Khriezo Yhome, senior Research fellow at Observer Research Foundation and an expert on Indo-Myanmar affairs, told IANS.

According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees there are around 21,500 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers in India. The central government, though, has sent a clear message that it would not be willing to accept them "because of security concerns".

The Supreme Court on 13 October asked the Centre to strike a balance between national security, economic interests and humanitarian considerations with regard to Rohingya women, children, old, sick and infirm
Srinagar: Militants attacked an army convoy in Qazigund area of Anantnag district in Jammu and Kashmir, leaving one soldier injured, ANI reported.

#Visuals from #JammuAndKashmir: One Army Jawan injured as encounter continues between terrorists and Army in Qazigund (visuals deferred by unspecified time) pic.twitter.com/7C4mFtKW0N  ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017

However, The Hindu reported that two soldiers were injured in the attack.

A police official said security forces have cordoned off the area and launched a hunt for the militants.

Further details are awaited.

The incident comes a month after a similar attack was carried out in south Kashmir's Pulwama district, when one policeman was killed after militants attacked a patrol party.

The deceased was among two personnel who sustained injuries during the attack.

The injured constables  Abdul Salam and Munir Ahmad  were rushed to a hospital for treatment and their condition was stated to be stable.

However, one of them died later.

With inputs from PTI
Jammu/New Delhi: On 10 September, as the police lined up 10 Muslim Rohingya refugees in a police station on the outskirts of Jammu and lashed them with a stick and a belt, they had only one question: "Who killed the cow?" multiple refugees, including a minor boy who was detained, told IANS.

"We were crying and told the police that we did not do it, but they kept beating us for about 15 minutes," Hamid Hussain, 29, recalled about his second day in police detention.

Twelve Rohingya refugees -- including two women with breastfeeding infants - were detained in Channi Himmat Police Station in south Jammu, for durations ranging from four to 11 days, and the men were allegedly beaten up by police.

A cow's carcass had been found in an empty parcel of land near the Rohingya refugees settlement in Channi Rama in south Jammu. BJP members protested against the killing of the cow.

The detention and brutality that followed were confirmed to IANS by three persons detained by the police, community leaders, neighbours, and family members of two out of three refugees currently in jail for allegedly killing the cow.

"On the second day, police made us sit on the floor and stretch our legs. Then they hit us on our legs, back and hands with a stick and a belt," a scraggy-bearded Hussain said. "They tortured us a lot."

The refugees, who were let off by the police after periods ranging allegedly from "96 to 264 hours", said that they were "never produced in a court". A person cannot be detained for more than 24 hours and must be produced before a magistrate, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure.

"The infants were crying a lot in the police station," said 16-year-old Sayed Noor, who claimed to have been detained for eight days. "One was only four days old."

Vimla, 35, a Hindu woman, who stays in the same plot from where the Rohingya refugees were arrested, said the police asked her to come to the police station. "But we said that we are Hindu, how can we come? The police then told us to go back to sleep and left," Vimla said outside her shack. "I never went to the police station."

Rohingya refugees, termed as one of the "world's most persecuted minorities", have been facing military brutality in Myanmar, with the UN urging the government to end the "cruel military operation".

More than 8,00,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar in the last five years as a result of violence, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and there are around 21,500 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers in India.

Jammu, with a large refugee population, has been witnessing protests by the BJP and the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) to "identify and deport Rohingya refugees".

Noor Hussain is one of the boys who, with others, was taken into custody by policemen as they stepped outside their mosque -- without any explanation. "Before I reached the jeep, an officer slapped me on the cheek," Noor said, adding "he appeared drunk."

The 16-year-old said that at night "they put us in the lock-up and bolted it from outside".

Stuck on the white wall of Channi Himmat Police Station is a list of rules. One of them reads: "Do not take a child/juvenile into police custody or keep them in police station at night."

Hamida Begum, 30, said she and another woman were detained for four days. "I had my seven-month-old son and the other woman had her new born baby girl with her," she said.

Kushnama, 20, wife of Noorullah, 22, one of the three Rohingya refugees currently in jail, said: "I do not have money to get him out (on bail) or to even visit him in the jail."

Mustaq Ahmad, 51, a Muslim from the Gujjar community, whose cow was found dead on September 9, said that within hours, a crowd, including hundreds of members of the "Shiva Sena and BJP", blocked the nearby highway blaming Rohingya refugees for "killing the cow".

When asked whether he saw any refugee killing his cow, Ahmed said "No", adding: "Who else would do it? It happened right next to where they live."

BJP's Jammu legal cell member, Hunar Gupta, also confirmed to IANS that "local BJP leaders had blocked the highway" in protest. In February, Gupta had filed a PIL for deportation of Rohingya refugees from Jammu.

The SHO of the Channi Himmat Police Station, Sajjad Mir, confirmed that many people were called in for questioning, but claimed that "they were sent back and not detained".

"If I get a chance, I want to ask the police: Why did you take him?" Kushnama said in her weak voice from under her burqa. "Every day I think he will come back today."
Thiruvananthpuram: Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday faced a protest from a group of fishermen when he visited nearby Vizhinjam to express solidarity with the community affected by Cyclone Ockhi.

As Vijayan came out of a local church to board his car, a group of men tried to block his way.

Some of them raised slogans protesting alleged government apathy toward their ordeals in the wake of the cyclone, which has claimed 19 lives in rain-related incidents in the state and left several fishermen stranded at sea.

Several of the missing fishermen hailed from Vizhinjam.

Police had a tough time removing the protesters. Vijayan later left the place along with Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran.

Earlier, while interacting with fishermen at another place in Vizhinjam, the chief minister said the government shared the concern of the fishing community.

"We can expect good tidings. Our effort is to locate the remaining missing fishermen," he said.

Protests were witnessed elsewhere in some coastal areas including Alappuzha and Chellanam in Ernakulam district over the alleged delay in rescuing the fishermen.

Some of the protesters squatted on rail tracks and were removed by police.
Srinagar: Relatives of Kashmiri prisoners who were allegedly beaten up in New Delhi's Tihar Jail protested on Sunday, seeking Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti's intervention to immediately shift those inmates to the prisons in the state.

The protest was held at the press enclave in Srinagar. Family members of the Tihar inmates, who hail from the Valley, claimed they were assaulted by personnel of the Tamil Nadu special force on 21 November in the prison.

The protesters said their jailed kin should have access to the rights detailed in the jail manuals till they are shifted to the state. They appealed to the chief minister to visit the jail and ensure the safety and welfare of their kin.

JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik, who joined the protesters, appealed to international human rights bodies to intervene.

The union home ministry has sought a report from the director general of the Tihar jail in the wake of reports that a scuffle involving Kashmiri prisoners took place in the prison, leading to injuries.

Mufti had on 28 November spoken to union home secretary Rajiv Gauba and asked him to intervene in the matter. The Union home secretary had assured the chief minister of a thorough probe into the incident and punishing the culprits for having violated the jail manual
Kolkata: Three days after a minor girl was allegedly sexually abused inside a south Kolkata school by two physical training (PT) teachers, parents and guardians of students on Sunday held a sit-in protest demanding their children's security and arrest of the school's principal.

The agitating parents first blocked the road near the school premises in south Kolkata's Ranikuthi and then marched to Tollygunj where they held the sit in. The protesters were joined by several parents of students from other prominent schools in the city.

The four-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted by two PT teachers inside a washroom in in the high-profile GD Birla Centre For Education on Thursday. Both the accused have already been arrested under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and sent to two days of police custody till Monday.

On Sunday afternoon, the father of the victim lodged a police complaint against the school's principal, claiming that she tried to cover up the issue and indirectly supported the crime.

"We have lodged a police complaint against the principal. This is not the first time that such an incident has taken place in her school, it has happened before as well. In spite of knowing the incident, the principal initially did not take any steps against the criminals," said the lawyer appointed by the victim's family.

"The principal should be arrested because she supported the crime instead of reporting it to police. She tried to cover up the issue. So she has a part in the crime," she added.

Amid demands from the guardians to remove all the male teachers and teaching staff from school, education minister Partha Chatterjee said it is better not to have male teachers in girls' schools.

"Be it any school, I feel it is better not to have male teachers in girl's school. There are many school buses for girls which do not have any female attendants. This should not happen," he said.

The agitating parents carried banners and placards condemning the assault on the minor girl. They created a massive road graffiti of a child student asking for her security, as a symbolic protest to the incident of sexual assault.

"The schools would have to ensure their children's security and make sure no such untoward incident takes place in the future," one of the parents demanded.

They also warned that the school would not be allowed to operate till the principal resigned, taking responsibility for the incident.

Police appealed to the agitators to remove the blockade and suggested they hold a meeting with the school's management committee to resolve the disputes.

"We have proposed to the guardians and the representatives of the students' forum to sit in a meeting with the management and other stakeholders and place their demands there. That would help resolve the disputes," said Rupesh Kumar, deputy commissioner of Kolkata police's south suburban division.

Meanwhile the school issued a notice saying the junior as well as the senior sections will remain closed from Monday. The notice also said the school has removed the two arrested physical training teachers from duty.
Guwahati: Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday said the media was supposed to avoid sensationalism, report news without colouring with views and appealed them to create awareness about the challenges confronting the nation.

The media must always be free, fair and objective to champion the cause of the underdogs, he said while addressing the gathering after giving away Pratidin Achievers Awards 2017 in Guwahati.

"Unfortunately, there is an increasing tendency in the newsrooms of the print and electronic media to sensationalise isolated incidents while relegating real hard news to the background. In the long run, this will not only cause damage to the credibility of media but will harm democracy itself as media will not be able to perform its role of an independent watchdog," he said, according to an official statement.

While appreciating Pratidin Group for recognising excellence in different fields, he made an appeal that "such media houses to conduct campaigns and competitions on issues such as Swachh Bharat to promote awareness on cleanliness and sanitation".

"Maybe, its TV channel must encourage the cleanest mohalla or locality by giving wide coverage. Such promotional coverage will not only help in creating awareness but also inspire others to follow suit," he said.

The vice president also said that awareness should also be created on fighting various challenges confronting the nation such as growing atrocities on women, dangers of drug and alcohol addiction, casteism, religious fundamentalism, corruption, illiteracy and terrorism.

"Increasing depiction of violence, vulgarity and obscenity in cinema is another area of concern which needs to be highlighted by the media," he said.
Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh Assembly unanimously passed a bill awarding death to those found guilty of raping girls aged 12 and below.

With the passage of the bill, Madhya Pradesh becomes the first state in the country where those convicted of such rapes will face the gallows.

Introduced in the House by Law and Legislative Affairs Minister Rampal Singh, the bill was discussed in detail and then passed by all parties, including the ruling BJP and Opposition Congress.

The bill will now be sent to the president for his assent after which it will become a law, state Home Minister Bhupendra Singh told reporters outside the Assembly.

"It was a historic day for Madhya Pradesh as the state Assembly, as per the wish of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, passed a bill making a provision to award capital punishment to those indulging in such crimes (raping girls aged 12 or younger)," Singh said.

Capital punishment will be awarded to convicts under section 376 (A), which is related to rape, and section 376 (D, A), pertaining to gang rape.

Welcoming the bill, Chouhan said, "There are people in society who can be set right only by severe punishments. It (the legislation) will deal with them. We will also raise awareness in society against such crimes."
Aizawl: The administration of southern Mizoram's Lawngtlai district has started the process to register the over 1,600 Myanmarese nationals who had taken refuge in four remote villages in the district, an official said on Monday.

After the refugees are registered with the district administration, they would be given temporary ration cards for food distribution among them, the official said.

More than 300 quintals of rice had already arrived in the four villages, situated along the Mizoram-Myanmar border to be distributed among the refugees, he said.

Makeshift relief camps in the villages were being constructed for the refugees.

The official said that the refugees who took shelter in the four villages  Hmawngbuchhuah, Zochachhuah, Laitlang and Dumzautlang  belonged to Khumi and Rakhine province of Myanmar, known to the local populace inside Mizoram as 'Zakhai', tribes.

Central committee of the Young Lai Association (YLA), the apex body of the Lai tribe in Lawngtlai district had distributed blankets and garments to the displaced people on Friday.

Mizoram Thalai Kristian Pawl (MTKP) the youth wing of the Baptist Church of Mizoram also handed over Rs 50,000 to the central committee of the YLA for the purchase of relief items.

The exodus of civilians from Myanmar to Lawngtlai district began on 25 November last after armed clashes between the Myanmar Army and the Arakan militants.
Mumbai: The Mumbai police has decided to set up a dedicated cyber cell at each of its police stations to curb rising technology-related cases in the city, a senior police official said on Monday.

Akbar Pathan, deputy commissioner of police, cyber crime cell, said that the cells will be fully functional at all police stations from 9 December.

All the cyber related cases, except the complicated ones which need technical expertise, will be dealt by the police station cells, Pathan said. The cell will comprise a police inspector, two sub-inspectors and two to three constables, he added.

The victim can lodge his or her case at the cyber cell of the police station concerned instead of approaching the cyber police station at Bandra, the official said.

Police said that a five day-long training programme commenced today to make the personnel who will be part of the dictated cell adept in dealing with such crimes. "Besides theoretical knowledge, the training will emphasise on providing practical knowledge. From making post-investigation seizures to which sections of the IT Act to be applied, they will be imparted training on a wide range of aspects," Pathan said.

Cyber Cell expert, Vijay Mukhi, termed the move as a positive one and said that it will help in dealing with basic crimes related to information technology.

The recently-released National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report titled "Crime in India 2016" had put Mumbai first among 19 big cities nationwide in the number of cyber crime case registered. Mumbai saw 4,172 cases reported for the year 2016 followed by Bengaluru with 762 cases and Jaipur with 532 cases.
The National Crime Records Bureau's (NCRB) recently-released 'Crime in India' report for 2016 has been followed by a flurry of news articles shedding light on various dimensions of it. Several of the news reports have given places monikers such as 'rape capital,' 'crime capital' (Delhi) and 'hotbed of criminals' (Kerala) based on registration of crimes. But although such phrases can make for eye-catching headlines, they tend to mislead more than inform.

Of course, there is no doubt that data on registration of crimes serves an important purpose  to get a sense of the extent of criminal activity (or allegations of criminal activity) in a particular jurisdiction. But data is prone to varying interpretations, and statements based on data often ignore how the numbers are arrived at.

For instance, if we go by registration of crimes by law enforcement authorities, Sweden recorded as many as thirty times the number of offences as India, as pointed out by this BBC report. Further, Sweden and New Zealand have among the highest rates of rape cases in the world, as per an analysis by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). While Sweden recorded 40.6 incidents of rape per 1,00,000 population, India reported 1.7 incidents per 1,00,000 population. Can this data be cited to claim that India is less prone to crime and safer for women than Sweden? That would be quite a stretch.

The above argument was an extreme one meant to highlight the broader point. But there are similar, less dramatic examples closer home. For instance, in 2007, actor Amitabh Bachchan had been the subject of much criticism after he appeared in an advertisement for the Uttar Pradesh government proclaiming 'UP mein hai dum, kyunki jurm yahan hai kam.' That advertisement was based on data by the NCRB. Again, Uttar Pradesh is not exactly known for being an exemplar of law and order, but statistics may not necessarily reflect this.

At an international level, these statistics can be further complicated because legal positions on what constitutes a crime differ widely between countries. For instance, cow slaughter is legal in many countries in the world, but is illegal in most of India. On the other hand, marital rape is a crime in many countries, but is not defined as such in India. But even within the country, different legal positions can affect statistics. For example, Maharashtra invokes the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against sand miners, while Tamil Nadu files cases under the Mines and Minerals Act for the same act.

However, the problem is not just one involving statistics and questionable advertisements. Depending on how the figures are interpreted, the police can be motivated to either register or not register criminal cases when victims approach them with a complaint. As it is, the police force in India is severely understaffed. India's ratio of police personnel to public is a mere 138 per one lakh population, the fifth lowest among 71 countries surveyed by the UNODC, as reported by the Economic Times. This acts as a huge motivator for the police to register fewer cases, in order to keep its own workload relatively manageable. Over and above that, if cities or states are labelled as 'crime capital' or 'unsafe' based on the number of FIRs, then it only has the effect of accentuating the pressure on the law enforcement agencies.

A major success of the civil society agitation after the Delhi gangrape of 16 December, 2012 was the emphasis laid on the police registering cases and not turning away victims who come to them with a complaint. From 2011 to 2012, there was a 3 percent increase in reported cases of rape in India, as per an analysis by Factly. However, from 2012 to 2013, the corresponding figure was 35 percent. It would be difficult not to attribute this increase at least partly to increased public awareness and increased alacrity on the part of the police towards responding to sexual crimes.

So, while we go about mining data for trends on crime in the country, we would do ourselves and law enforcement agencies a favour if we steer clear of misleading labels for cities and states.
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Saturday defended his strategy of avoiding the term Rohingya in Myanmar, saying he believed he got his message across to both the civilian and military leadership without shutting down dialogue. Speaking to reporters aboard the plane returning to Rome from Bangladesh, the pontiff also indicated that he had been firm with Myanmars military leaders in private meetings about the need for them to respect the rights of Rohingya refugees. He also disclosed that he cried when he met a group of Rohingya refugees on Friday in Bangladesh, where he defended their rights by name in an emotional meeting. For me, the most important thing is that message gets through, to try to say things one step at a time and listen to the responses, he said. I knew that if in the official speeches I would have used that word, they would have closed the door in our faces. But (in public) I described situations, rights, said that no one should be excluded, (the right to) citizenship, in order to allow myself to go further in the private meetings, he said. Francis did not use the word Rohingya in public while on the first leg of the trip in Myanmar. Predominantly Buddhist Myanmar does not recognise the mostly Muslim Rohingya as an ethnic group with its own identity but as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Local Roman Catholic Church authorities had advised him not to say it because it could spark a backlash against Christians and other minority groups. The pope met Myanmars military leaders privately on Monday, shortly after his arrival in the nations biggest city, Yangon. The meeting had been scheduled for Thursday morning but the military pointedly asked at the last minute that it be pushed forward. The result was they saw the pope before the civilian leaders instead of the other way around, as had been planned. NON-NEGOTIABLE TRUTHS It was a good conversation and the truth was non-negotiable, he said of his meeting with the military leaders. Pope Francis waves from his vehicle as he travels to the airport in Yangon, Myanmar November 30, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge SilvaThe latest exodus from Myanmar to Bangladesh of about 625,000 people followed a Myanmar military crackdown in response to Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts on Aug. 25. Refugees have said scores of Rohingya villages were burnt to the ground, people were killed and women were raped. The military have denied accusations of ethnic cleansing by the United States and United Nations. Asked if he used the word Rohingya during the private meeting with the military chiefs, the pope said: I used words in order to arrive at the message and when I saw that the message had arrived, I dared to say everything that I wanted say. Slideshow (2 Images)He then gave a reporter a mischievous grin and ended his answer with the Latin phrase Intelligenti Pauca, which means Few words are enough for those who understand, strongly hinting that he had used the word the military detests while in their presence. Human rights groups have criticised the countrys de facto civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was under house arrest for a total of 15 years before the 2015 elections, for not taking a stand against the generals. But Francis, who met with her privately on Tuesday, appeared to give her the benefit of the doubt because of her delicate relationship with the generals who were once her jailers. Myanmar is a nation that is growing politically, in transition, Francis said in response to a question about Suu Kyi and budding democracy in Myanmar. So things have to be viewed through this lens. Myanmar has to be able to look forward to the building of the country. On Friday in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, Francis held an emotional encounter with Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and then used the word Rohingya for the first time on the trip, although he had defended them by name twice from the Vatican earlier this year. He told the crowd where the Rohingya were that Gods presence was within them and they should be respected. I was crying and tried to hide it, Francis said on the plane, recounting how moved he felt when the refugees recounted their ordeals to him.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
The father of the Ryan International School student who was murdered in his school on 8 September, has moved the Supreme Court seeking measures to improve the safety of school students in the country, news reports said.

Barun Chandra Thakur, the father of the schoolboy, has filed a petition in the apex court asking it to direct authorities to frame guidelines to ensure the safety of school students, DNA reported. Along with Thakur, lawyer Abha Singh and other lawyers have also filed petitions in the Supreme Court, according to Dainik Jagran.

Meanwhile, Supreme Court judge Justice AM Khanwilkar has recused himself from hearing the matter of framing the guidelines, ANI reported. Earlier, Justice UU Lalit had recused himself from hearing an appeal filed by Varun Thakur seeking cancellation of anticipatory bail granted to three trustees of the Ryan International group.

The murder of the seven-year-old in Gurugram had caused nationwide outrage and brought the spotlight on the safety of school students in the country.

After the murder, school bus conductor Ashok Kumar was initially arrested by the Haryana Police in connection with the crime. However, subsequent investigations revealed the possible involvement of a juvenile in the murder. After the juvenile  a ClassXI was apprehended on 8 November, he reportedly admitted to his involvement in the crime. However, only days later, he retracted his confession. saying that he was beaten him and forced him to confess. He also claimed that investigators recorded the confession in their own words.

On 1 December, the father of the juvenile had filed plea in court against the three-day custody of his son given to the Central Bureau of Investigation by the Juvenile Justice Board. The father had contended that the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 states that a minor cannot be put in jail under any circumstances. However, the child's father said he will challenge the petition in court.

The murder has also led to a political war of words in Haryana. Praduyman's father had alleged Haryana minister Rao Narbir Singh asked him not to insist on a CBI probe in the case. The minister, however, dismissed the claim as "baseless".

Later, former Haryana chief minister and Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda said the state government should have handed over the probe to the CBI immediately. Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala also hit out at the Haryana government, saying its role in the case stood "exposed".

With inputs from PTI
A 20-year-old student of Hyderabad's Osmania University allegedly committed suicide on Saturday by hanging himself, triggering protests on campus.

E Murali, a first-year student of MSc Physics at the university, was found hanging in the washroom of one of the hostels on the campus on Saturday evening, a senior police official said.

A suicide note was found from the scene, purportedly written by Murali, stating that he did not want to fail in his exams, police said.

"I am unable to continue my studies. The exams are around the corner and I am scared that I will fail. I never wanted to fail in exams. Therefore, I have decided to end my life," Murali wrote in his suicide note, according to The Times of India report.

Police added that the student appeared to be depressed over the matter, and said further investigations were on.

After learning about Murali's death, a large number of students gathered near the hostel. The Times of India report added that unemployement was cited as a reason for the suicide by the student leaders.

The university students, according to Hindustan Times, suspected that the suicide note was fake, since the handwriting in the note did not match with Murali's.

"He was depressed as there was unusual delay in the issuance of job notifications by the Telangana government. The K Chandrasekhara Rao government should be held responsible for his death," K Manavatha Rai, president of the Unemployed Youth Association, was quoted as saying by Hindustan Times.

Rai told ANI that the state government was responsible for Murali's suicide. He said the government should give Rs 50 lakh as compensation to Murali's family or else the student organisation would not allow the police to shift his body from the hostel.

On Sunday, when university vice-chancellor S Ramchandram arrived outside Murali's hostel room, students started demanding justice for the 20-year-old boy, and chanted slogans like "KCR, down down", said Deccan Chronicle report.

Students also reportedly alleged that the state government hadn't heeded their repeated pleas to provide employment.

With inputs from PTI
New Delhi: The influx of Rohingya and Bangladeshis and cross-border smuggling of fake currencies and drugs would top the agenda at a meeting of chief ministers of eastern states called by home minister Rajnath Singh on 7 December in Kolkata.

The chief ministers and home ministers of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram will huddle for the day-long meeting where the influx of Rohingya and Bangladeshi immigrants and how to check it would be discussed threadbare, a home ministry official said.

These states share their borders with Bangladesh. This would be the fourth meeting of the chief ministers of states, which share international borders, called by the home minister. Three separate meetings of chief ministers of states, sharing borders with Pakistan, China and Myanmar, was held earlier.

The meeting in Kolkata on 7 December is expected to chalk out plans on how to check the cross-border smuggling of fake Indian currency notes, narcotics and other illegal activities, the official said.

India shares a 4,096 kilometre long border with Bangladesh of which 2,217 kilometre falls in West Bengal, 262 kilometre in Assam, 443 kilometre in Meghalaya, 856 kilometre in Tripura and 180 kilometre in Mizoram.

As per the official estimate, around 36,000 Rohingyas are currently living in various parts of India.

Director General of BSF KK Sharma had last week said his troops apprehended 87 Rohingya Muslims along the Indo-Bangla border from the beginning of this year till 31 October, and 76 were sent back to Bangladesh.

As per latest estimates, 9-10 lakh Rohingya Muslims have migrated to Bangladesh from Myanmar and the possibility of a spillover to India cannot be ruled out, he had said.

Illegal immigration from Bangladesh has also been a big concern for the north-eastern states and West Bengal for many years now, another home ministry official said.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the execution of death sentence of 1993 Mumbai bomb blast convict Taher Mohammed Merchant who was found guilty on different counts including hatching conspiracy and waging war against the nation.

Merchant, along with Feroze Abdul Rashid Khan, was given the death sentence after being convicted along with underworld don Abu Salem. However, the latter escaped the capital punishment because of conditions surrounding his extradition from Portugal.

"There shall be stay of the execution of death sentence," said a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Mohan M Shantanagoudar, directing the supply of the order's copy to the Central Bureau of Investigation and listing the matter for hearing on 14 March next year.

The court also directed its registry to call for the lower court records and ordered Maharashtra to "compile the evidence in entirety and file the compilation in convenient volumes" and also serve a copy thereof to Merchant's counsel.

On 7 September this year, a special Terrorist and Disruptive Activity (TADA) court had sentenced Merchant and Feroze Abdul Rashid Khan to death.

Besides Abu Salem, the TADA court had sent Karimullah Khan to jail for life and Riyaz Siddiqui to 10 years rigorous imprisonment.

The court had found them guilty on various counts including murder, hatching a criminal conspiracy to carry out the blasts, waging a war against the nation, supplying arms and ammunition, and other serious offences.

The capital punishments were given in the second part of the Mumbai blasts trial. The earlier part of the trial, completed in 2007, saw 100 people being convicted which included Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt and prime accused Tiger Memon.

Dutt, who was convicted for illegal possession of arms but acquitted of the other serious charges, has since completed his six-year sentence while Memon is absconding.
As news of actor Shashi Kapoor's death was shared by several on micro-blogging site Twitter, news channel Times Now became the butt of all jokes when they tweeted out this:

"Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar remembering Shashi Tharoor on his sad demise said he is one producer who got parallel cinema on the front."

The goof didn't go unnoticed as soon the channel was trolled for mistakenly saying 'Tharoor' instead of Kapoor.

ANI journalist Nishant Singh noticed this error and promptly tweeted a screenshot to the Congress leader. To make matters worse for Times Now, Tharoor tweeted at Singh and assured the denizens of Twitter that he was still alive. "We're getting condolence calls in the office! Reports of my demise are, if not exaggerated, at least premature," he quipped.

We're getting condolence calls in the office! Reports of my demise are, if not exaggerated, at least premature. @TimesNow #ShashiKapoor https://t.co/nbtZGcdQTa  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017

The erroneous tweet in question was meant to report the demise of veteran actor Shashi Kapoor. The actor breathed his last in Mumbai after battling a prolonged illness.

In fact, Tharoor had tweeted his condolences minutes before the erroneous Times Now tweet. In that tweet as well, he joked that his office got two calls from journalists about his reportedly serious ill-health.

I feel a part of me is gone. A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome & w/a name that was often confused w/mine. (My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health!) I will miss #ShashiKapoor. Condolences2his family&all his fans pic.twitter.com/fSz3jafPZJ  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017

Times Now apologised for the error, wishing good health to Shashi Tharoor.
Ghazipur : Police have arrested three people in connection with the killing of RSS worker and journalist Rajesh Mishra in Brahmanpura village in Ghazipur, a senior police official said on Monday.

However, gang leader Raju Yadav is still absconding and will be arrested soon, Superintendent of Police Somen Verma said.

"A number of police teams were involved to search the killers. Acting on a tip-off, six miscreants were travelling in two motorcycles on Sunday, police intensified checking," the SP said.

"When the police signalled the bikers to stop, they turned away their motorcycle and started firing. However, one motorcycle lost its balance and the bikers fell and were arrested," he said.

They have been identified as Ajit Yadav and Jhanku Yadav (both residents of Bhabhua district in Bihar) and Sunil Yadav of Chandauli, the SP said. Those who managed to escape are Raju Yadav, Govardhan Yadav and Pawan Yadav, he said.

"Rajesh Mishra used to publish news against Raju Yadav and his gang members, who were involved in illegal mining. On 21 October, Mishra was shot dead by three motorcycle-borne assailants, who also wounded his brother," Verma said.

The assailants, who came brandishing firearms, shot at Mishra, 40, when he and his brother Amitesh were at their shop in Brahmanpura Chatti area in Ghazipur where they sold building material.

Mishra, who was shot in the head, was declared brought dead at the Ghazipur district hospital.

His brother, who was shot in the abdomen, has been referred to a Varanasi hospital for further treatment.
Agartala/New Delhi: A nine-member delegation of Tripura journalists met Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Jitendra Singh on Monday to demand a CBI probe into the murder of two journalists from the state.

The team also plans to hold a demonstration in Delhi on Tuesday in front of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) office, Forum for Protection of Journalists (FFPJ) Convener Pranab Sarkar told IANS over phone from Delhi.

The FFPJ delegation  led by veteran editor Subal Kumar Dey  would also try to meet President Ram Nath Kovind, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Press Council of India Chairman Justice Chandramauli Kumar Prasad to press for their demand.

"After a series of agitations in Tripura we came to the national capital to press for our demand to protect the media persons in Tripura," Sarkar added.

A local newspaper journalist Sudip Dutta Bhowmik, 50, was shot dead inside the Tripura State Rifles (TSR) 2nd battalion headquarters at Ramchandra Nagar in West Tripura district on 21 November.

Young television journalist Santanu Bhowmik, 28, was hacked to death while he was covering protests of a tribal based political party at Mandai, 25 km from Agartala, on 20 September.

PCI chairman, who is likely to visit the state to study both the incidents, took suo-moto cognizance of the journalists murder cases.

To probe the sensational killings, the state government had earlier constituted two separate Special Investigation Teams (SIT) headed by Deputy Inspector General of Police Arindam Nath and Inspector General of Police (IGP) GS Rao.

The SIT, led by Nath, has so far arrested four TSR personnel, including TSR second battalion Commandant Tapan Debbarma, who is a senior Tripura Police Service (TPS) officer (1998 batch) and waiting for IPS nomination.

In the Bhowmik murder case too, the SIT led by IGP Rao also arrested four youths.

The Congress has demanded a high-level inquiry into the murder. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded a CBI probe and resignation of Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, who also holds the Home portfolio.

Both parties observed a state-wide shutdown on 23 November to protest the killings.

The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) has criticised the BJP for politicising the journalist's killing.

"State government is on the right track in probing the unfortunate killings," CPM central committee member Gautam Das told the media.
Ayodhya: A Ram temple in Ayodhya will fulfil the dreams of "temple warriors" who had devoted their life to the cause, says a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader ahead of the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

The VHP, which is celebrating the demolition anniversary on 6 December as 'Shaurya Diwas', has several special events lined up in Ayodhya and the Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow.

As the group prepares for the day, Ambuj Ojha, co-media in-charge of VHP's Awadh region, said the group's chief Ashok Singhal, Mahant Awaidhyanath, the former chief priest of Gorakhnath Temple in Gorakhpur, Mahant Sri Ramchandra Das Paramhans, former head of the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas in Ayodhya, and kar sevaks had sacrificed their lives for the cause.

"A Ram temple in Ayodhya will undoubtedly fulfil their dreams," Ojha told PTI.

On December 6, 1992, a large number of 'kar sevaks'  religious volunteers  had gathered in the temple town and demolished the 16th-century Babri Masjid, triggering widespread violence in the state and the country.

Though the VHP has been celebrating Shaurya Diwas on 6 December since 1992 every year, Ojha said the commitment to a temple -- on what they believe to be the birthplace of Ram -- would be strengthened this coming year.

"In Lucknow, a Shaurya Sankalp Sabha will be held at Madhav Sabhagar of Saraswati Shishu Mandi Nirala Nagar.

"A large number of seers are likely to reach Karsewakpuram and hold a meeting there from 1.00 pm to 4.00 pm," he said.

Preparations are on in full swing at the VHP office here.

There's 20-year-old Rohit Pandey, who is busy narrating the history of Ayodhya and the demolition to curious visitors. And also Hanuman Yadav, who is in his 50s, discussing the various books, pamphlets and posters related to Ayodhya and Ram temple movement with visitors.

"Four other guides and I brief visitors coming here to know the history of Ayodhya and that of Ram temple movement," said Pandey, who was not born when the demolition took place.

On 28 November, Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya told PTI in an interview that it was the wish of every Ram devotee to see their god in "thaat" (grandeur) rather in a 'thaat' (tent house accommodation).

"...Lord Ram is still in the same shape, as he was before the dispute structure fell...Everyday he is worshipped as per the tradition and rituals. But he is being worshipped under a 'thaat'... he should live in thaat, and a grand Ram temple must be built," he said.
New Delhi: Former finance minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram on Monday slammed the BJP for terming PAAS leader Hardik Patel, OBC leader Alpesh Thakore and SC/ST leader Jignesh Mevani as 'HAJ', and accused the saffron party of playing the "communal card" and "divisive politics".

"Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mevani are sons of the soil in Gujarat. To call them 'HAJ' is playing the communal card and divisive politics," Chidambaram said.

"Patel, Thakore and Mevani are articulating the demands of Gujarati youth for jobs and development. Their campaign should not be trivialised," he said.

Chidambaram's remarks came after a poster was released on the social media showing upcoming Gujarat elections as a face-off between 'HAJ' and 'RAM', which stands for (Gujarat chief minister Vijay) Rupani, BJP chief Amit (Shah) and (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi.

Both terms are acronyms coined by the political parties.

Patel, Thakore and Mevani have joined hands with the Congress to uproot the Bharatiya Janata Party from the state, which has been in power for 22 years.

Two-phase Assembly elections for the 182-seat Gujarat Assembly are due on 9 December and 14 December. The counting of votes will take place on 18 December.
New Delhi/Ahmedabad: Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on Monday stoked a controversy when he invoked the rulers of the Mughal dynasty in the election of Rahul Gandhi as party president, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi latched on to quickly to call it "Aurangzeb Raj".

"When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any election happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go to the heir," Aiyar said, retorting to the "dynasty" jibes of the BJP on Rahul Gandhi's election.

"But in a democracy elections are held. I openly invite Poonawala to file the nomination and contest," Aiyar said, adding has anyone heard of Shehzad Poonawala.

He was replying to a question about BJP's criticism following Maharashtra Congress leader Poonawala calling Rahul Gandhi's election as party chief rigged.

Modi was quick to pounce on Aiyar's remarks. Addressing a public meeting in Dharampur constituency in Gujarat, Modi said: "Mani Shankar Aiyar, who never shies away from showing loyalty to one family, proudly said - When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any elections happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the the throne of the king will automatically go the son," Modi said.

"I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the wellbeing of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," he said.

He also said that the Congress leaders admit that it is not a party but a kunba (family).

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New Delhi: Congress leaders, both young and old, were jubilant on Monday after Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination papers for the party president's post and said his ascent to the top will help it regain the lost glory after a string of electoral reverses.



The leaders also returned the BJP's "mockery of democratic traditions and farcical election process" barb, asking the ruling party at the Centre not to preach lessons as they cited the grand old party's "long-proven democratic" track-record.

"Rahul ji has been the darling of the Congress...," former prime minister Manmohan Singh told reporters at the Congress headquarters here after Gandhi filed his nomination.

"Congress president Sonia Gandhi has served the Congress party and, through the Congress party, the country for the last 19 years... Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party," Singh added.

Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, hit out at the BJP for questioning Congress' organisational election process. He said it was the saffron party, which does not follow democracy within its fold.

"...those who have trust in machines to win votes, are preaching us on democracy," Azad said, reiterating his party's "EVM tampering" charge against the BJP.

Terming Gandhi as a "capable" leader, Azad exuded confidence the former will turn out to be a "very successful" leader. "And under his leadership, the Congress will regain power," Azad added.

Former Union minister and party leader P Chidambaram took to Twitter to wish Gandhi "very best" as the latter threw his hat in the ring for the top job in the party.

As Mr Rahul Gandhi files his nomination, I wish him the very best as Congress President. #IndiaWithRahulGandhi  P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) December 4, 2017

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma stressed that all leaders and workers were in unison when they backed Gandhi. He said it was a "conscious and considered" decision of the party delegates to nominate Gandhi for president's post.

Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, who joined the Congress ahead of the state elections in Punjab earlier this year, hailed Gandhi as a "special leader with character" who, he added, has come to the forefront during hours of crisis.

"He has become matured, showed his character. The general is standing at the forefront alone and on the other hand there is this entire government. This is the sign of a leader," Sidhu told reporters here.

Party MP from Guna, Jyotiraditya Scindia, dubbed Gandhi's imminent elevation to the top post as a "new wave of hope".

Another party leader, Kapil Sibal, congratulated Gandhi on Twitter as he filed the nomination with "full support" from the party and called it a "historic moment".

Yet another historic moment as Rahul Gandhi files his nomination to guide the party with our full support. Congratulations.  Kapil Sibal (@KapilSibal) December 4, 2017

All India Mahila Congress president Sushmita Dev dubbed Gandhi a "symbol of strength, compassion and integrity" and said it was an honour to be led by him.

According to Congress' central election authority chairman Mullappally Ramachandran, Gandhi is the sole leader in the fray for the party president's post, paving way for the latter's elevation.

Gandhi has been Congress' vice-president since January 2013.

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The Congress vice president is likely to reach the party headquarters around 10.30 am to file his nomination. He will sign sets of nomination papers to be filed before the Returning Officer.

A host of party heavyweights will be present when Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi files his nomination for the party chief's post at its headquarters in New Delhi on Monday, with over 90 sets of nomination papers likely to be filed to support his candidature.

Speaking to ANI, Congress leader Dr. Karan Singh said, "Soniaji took Congress to new heights. We won many elections under her leadership and now it is time for Rahul Gandhi to take the party forward."

Speaking to ANI, Congress leader Dr. Karan Singh said, "Soniaji took Congress to new heights. We won many elections under her leadership and now it is time for Rahul Gandhi to take the party forward."

Speaking to ANI, Congress leader Kamal Nath said, "Do BJP presidents get elected? Did Nitin Gadkari get elected through a ballot process? Let them answer that first."

Rahul Gandhi, accompanied by Ahmed Patel and Jithin Das, arrives at the Congress headquarters to file his nomination papers.

"Sonia Gandhi has been party president for 19 years. This (Rahul Gandhi's nomination) is yet another step in that direction. Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party," said the former prime minister Manmohan Singh.

Manmohan Singh says Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of Congress

When he made his electoral debut in 2004 Lok Sabha election, the family's traditional constituency Amethi  which had been represented by Sanjay, Rajiv, and Sonia Gandhi in the past  embraced him warmly. Within the party, his entry in politics was hailed as "Congress' Obama moment", NDTV reported at the time.

Rahul, unlike many other grassroots leaders who later shot to fame, never had to fight for recognition. He was representing the fourth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and was perhaps destined to enter politics, the moment his mother accepted the role of Congress president, reluctantly in 1998.

Just like Rajiv, Rahul's complete disregard for his security, as he mingled with cheering crowds, or when he rode pillion on a motorbike to reach agitating farmers in Bhatta Parsaul, were a reminder of his father's ways of politics.

Rahul's personal charisma, and ability to strike a chord with the people, urged many to compare him to his father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

"Mere sources mujhe bata rahe hain ki darbariyon mein baat chal rahi hai ki ek dummy candidate utara jaye taake ye election lage, lekin ab logon ki aankhon mein dhool nahi jhonk sakte (My sources have told me that the discussion among the "courtiers" is that they will appoint a dummy candidate so that this sham looks like an election. But they can't fool people for too long.)"

Shehzad Poonawalla says Congress appointing dummy candidate so that this sham looks like an election

"If anyone wants to participate in elections he or she is free to do so,its going on in democratic manner. Prime Minister has no business to comment on Congress's internal matter," Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said on Rahul Gandhi filing nomination for party president.

Take a look at all past Congress presidents since the party's inception

"Congress party leaders themselves agree that it isn't a party, rather a clan. Congress can't either tolerate or accept leaders from Gujarat. They have always defamed Gujarat. They put (former Prime Minister) Morarji Desai in jail."

"I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj'. For us, the well-being of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command."

Prime Minister Modi is addressing a rally in Gujarat's Dharampur where he has raked up Mani Shankar Aiyar's reported statement on Rahul Gandhi's elevation. "Mani Shankar Aiyar says its like Aurangzeb taking over from Shah Jahan," says Modi.

"Mani Shankar Aiyar said that 'did elections happen during Mughal rule? After Jehangir, Shahjahan came, was any election held? After Shahjahan it was understood Aurangzeb will be the leader'. So Congress accepts its a family party? We don't want this Aurangzeb rule," says Narendra Modi in Gujarat's Dharmapur.

"Earlier, Congress would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing in this election, where they are going. Unfortunately for them, Muslims know their real nature," says Narendra Modi.

'Earlier, Congress would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing'

"On 9 December, you have to decide the destiny of Gujarat.. The vote is against those who hate Guajrati people, Gujarat state, its name itself. 9 December is the date when you can teach a lesson these people who are defaming Gujarat."

The Congress leader's quote has already been picked up by Narendra Modi who is addressing several rallies in poll-bound Gujarat today.

BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya on Monday tweeted out Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar's quotes to a TV channel where the party veteran compared the Congress to Mughal era. "Was their an election process to chose Shah Jahan after Jehangir? Or was their a poll to elect Aurangzeb after Shah Jahan?"

"Don't compare both, during Mughal rule it was understood that after Jehangir, Shahjahan will be the leader but here anyone is free to contest against Rahul Gandhi, its a totally democratic process," says Mani Shankar Aiyar.

"Congress has become a burden on this nation, now would be good if after Rahul ji's elevation once and for all this burden is removed," says Chief Minister Adityanath.

Meanwhile, Jammu and Kashmir National Conference leader Omar Abdullah wished Rahul Gandhi and tweeted, "As Rahul Gandhi files his nomination to take over the Grand Old Party of India (Congress) I wish him all the very best going ahead. Expectations are high, challenges are numerous & I pray for his success."

Wish Rahul all the very best going ahead: Omar Abdullah

"But in a democracy elections are held. I openly invite Poonawala to file the nomination and contest," Aiyar said, adding has anyone heard of Shehzad Poonawala.

Replying to a question about BJP's criticism following Maharashtra Congress leader Shehzad Poonawalla calling Rahul Gandhi's election as party chief rigged, Mani Shankar Aiyar said, "When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any election happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go to the heir." Aiyar's comments came as a retort to the "dynasty" jibes of the BJP on Rahul Gandhi's election.

In no organisation is a member promoted for repeatedly failing to perform, he said after the Gandhi scion filed his nomination papers to succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi as Congress president. "Pidhikaran of the Congress is now complete. Neither the old generation (PEEDI), nor the new generation matters. Only Pidhi matters," Rao said.

The BJP on Monday played on the words "Pidi" and "peedi" while dismissing the process for generational change in the Congress leadership as "Pidhikaran", a reference to Rahul Gandhi's dog . Neither the old "peedi" nor the new "peedi" matter in the opposition party, BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao said, using the Hindi word for generation to take a swipe at the process to elevate Rahul Gandhi from vice president to president of the Congress.

According to party sources, there were apprehensions among the party leaders earlier over the incumbent president being among the proposers to Rahul Gandhi's candidature.

Accompanied by her mother Sonia Gandhi, Singh and other senior Congress leaders, Rahul Gandhi will file his nomination papers for the election to the top Congress post tomorrow(Monday), the last date for filing of nominations.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh will be among proposers for the candidature of Rahul Gandhi for the party chief's post.

Over 90 sets of nominations are expected to be filed supporting Gandhi whose election is a mere formality now, as there is no other candidate for the party's top post.

"So it will be yet another chapter for the party and Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of taking the party forward," Singh added .

"It's a great day. Rahul has been the darling of the Congress men and Congress women and this is yet another step in his devotion to the Congress party and country," Manmohan Singh, said, when asked about Rahul Gandhi's takeover.

Manmohan Singh heaps praise on Rahul on coronation day, says Gandhi scion is a darling of Congress

"This is a good sign that the young brigade is stepping forward. I hope he takes India to great heights where everyone lives with harmony. The post of PM lies in distant future, for now he must work hard to unite India and bring everyone together," Farooq Abdullah said on Rahul Gandhi filing his nominations for election of Congress President.

"But will Modiji tell when he will answer the questions of his own senior party leaders like Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha?" he asked.

He also said that Modi's "love for Shehzad (Poonawalla), Shahzada (BJP chief Amit Shah's son Jai Shah) and Shourya (National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's son)" is well known to the world.

"Why is the Prime Minister suffering from Rahul Gandhi phobia? Why is he so much stressed?" Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala told reporters here ahead of party vice president Rahul Gandhi's filing of nomination for its presidential post.

However, whatever he did on his international vacation, it has certainly paid off for Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party. He has returned energised; his speeches today have the spark, while he's already becoming a darling of the social media. His elevation to Congress party president, which would have polarised opinions until last year, are even being seen in a positive light today.

In June, to mark his 47th birthday, the Congress scion had gone for an international vacation. At the time, following a series of electoral debacles, and key events like the GST roll-out and the presidential elections coming up shortly, the Congress vice-president's travel was criticised roundly.

If one must pin-point the exact time when Rahul Gandhi's transformation began  from a bumbling, confused, novice politician who was still learning the ropes and finding himself the butt of all jokes from seasoned Opposition leaders to a witty politician capable of giving it back as good as it came  it must be following his international trip in the summer this year.

Its a transfer of responsibilities and challenges, and Rahul will succeed in it: Sharad Yadav

So, at one level we have Ashok Gehlot chaperoning him on the campaign trail with a smile permanently pasted on his face. Then there is the trusted Estate Manager, or the 10 Janpath equivalent of the Lord Chamberlain as it were, Ahmed Patel, who has been entrusted by the Queen Mother to install the crown Prince on the throne. Operating from the wings is the benign and brainy uncle, Sam Pitroda, who has taken it upon himself to ensure the succession of his departed friends lineage.

Gujarat Assembly elections will be the first formal litmus test for Rahul Gandhi, within days of him taking over as Congress President. It is interesting to observe and analyse the ecosystem that is working to make Rahul tick. It is as if the constituents around Rahul have realised that their own survival depends on his success.

Lutyens' ecosystem around Rahul Gandhi is working overtime to help him succeed in Gujarat

"Its a black day as a person who lacks merit and has been a perpetual underperformer has been promoted for every failure of his at the behest of a dynastic system led by his mother," Shehzad Poonawalla told News18.

Gandhi's biggest success  and we are not talking about electoral gains, they are still in the realm of future  has been his ability to 'humanise' himself. Slowly and steadily, he has given us a glimpse of Gandhi as a person, a walking, breathing entity, instead of the abstract concept he once was.

His one-liners are finding traction. Images of his extra-curricular activities are going viral. His election rallies are drawing crowds and applause. And young girls are clicking selfies with him. As the inimitable Richie Benaud would have said, it is all happening here, in our lifetimes.

After several years, brand Rahul Gandhi is in demand again. Every morning these days, we wake up to find Gandhi either trending on Twitter or dominating headlines on Google, both considered indicators of popular interest.

As many as 89 sets of nominations have been filed today for the Congress president elections today.

According to The Indian Express , Congress election authority chairman Mullappally Ramachandran said that it will scrutinise the nomination papers and publish the list of candidates tomorrow.

Congress election authority to scrutinise the nomination papers and publish the list of candidates tomorrow

As the country is divided over the way the Congress president election process is being held, News 18 looked at possible Congressmen who could be inducted into his close circle.

The second challenge would be overhauling the party cadre through internal restructuring. Third, Rahul's equations with the old guard of the Congress and how efficiently he deals with them will be watched closely. Fourth, regaining the trust of party workers across the country will be crucial.

When he takes over, dealing with alliances will be a major challenge. Especially given the fact that the NCP just snapped ties with the Congress in Gujarat. A rift has also emerged between the Patidars and Congress.

On the other hand, he has failed during the Assembly elections, be it allying with the Left in West Bengal or in Uttar Pradesh. Many times, Rahul has been accused of being an absentee politician.

Once Rahul takes over as Congress chief, hes expected to face a tough challenge from Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, who are known for their connection to the grass roots and drawing up electoral strategies with surgical precision.

Industrialist and Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law, Robert Vadra took to Facebook to congratulate Rahul as he is set to take over the party's reins.

Its a transfer of responsibilities and challenges, and Rahul will succeed in it: Sharad Yadav

So, at one level we have Ashok Gehlot chaperoning him on the campaign trail with a smile permanently pasted on his face. Then there is the trusted Estate Manager, or the 10 Janpath equivalent of the Lord Chamberlain as it were, Ahmed Patel, who has been entrusted by the Queen Mother to install the crown Prince on the throne. Operating from the wings is the benign and brainy uncle, Sam Pitroda, who has taken it upon himself to ensure the succession of his departed friends lineage.

Gujarat Assembly elections will be the first formal litmus test for Rahul Gandhi, within days of him taking over as Congress President. It is interesting to observe and analyse the ecosystem that is working to make Rahul tick. It is as if the constituents around Rahul have realised that their own survival depends on his success.

Lutyens' ecosystem around Rahul Gandhi is working overtime to help him succeed in Gujarat

Rahul Gandhi is not president of Congress but has been anointed like a Mughal king in line of dynastic hereditary succession: Shehzad Poonawalla pic.twitter.com/3IxaiA1pC5

"Its a black day as a person who lacks merit and has been a perpetual underperformer has been promoted for every failure of his at the behest of a dynastic system led by his mother," Shehzad Poonawalla told News18.

Gandhi's biggest success  and we are not talking about electoral gains, they are still in the realm of future  has been his ability to 'humanise' himself. Slowly and steadily, he has given us a glimpse of Gandhi as a person, a walking, breathing entity, instead of the abstract concept he once was.

His one-liners are finding traction. Images of his extra-curricular activities are going viral. His election rallies are drawing crowds and applause. And young girls are clicking selfies with him. As the inimitable Richie Benaud would have said, it is all happening here, in our lifetimes.

After several years, brand Rahul Gandhi is in demand again. Every morning these days, we wake up to find Gandhi either trending on Twitter or dominating headlines on Google, both considered indicators of popular interest.

As many as 89 sets of nominations have been filed today for the Congress president elections today.

According to The Indian Express , Congress election authority chairman Mullappally Ramachandran said that it will scrutinise the nomination papers and publish the list of candidates tomorrow.

Congress election authority to scrutinise the nomination papers and publish the list of candidates tomorrow

As the country is divided over the way the Congress president election process is being held, News 18 looked at possible Congressmen who could be inducted into his close circle.

The second challenge would be overhauling the party cadre through internal restructuring. Third, Rahul's equations with the old guard of the Congress and how efficiently he deals with them will be watched closely. Fourth, regaining the trust of party workers across the country will be crucial.

When he takes over, dealing with alliances will be a major challenge. Especially given the fact that the NCP just snapped ties with the Congress in Gujarat. A rift has also emerged between the Patidars and Congress.

On the other hand, he has failed during the Assembly elections, be it allying with the Left in West Bengal or in Uttar Pradesh. Many times, Rahul has been accused of being an absentee politician.

Once Rahul takes over as Congress chief, hes expected to face a tough challenge from Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, who are known for their connection to the grass roots and drawing up electoral strategies with surgical precision.

Industrialist and Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law, Robert Vadra took to Facebook to congratulate Rahul as he is set to take over the party's reins.

A host of party heavyweights will be present when Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi files his nomination for the party chief's post at its headquarters in New Delhi on Monday, with over 90 sets of nomination papers likely to be filed to support his candidature.

Six chief ministers  Punjab's Amarinder Singh, Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Himachal Pradesh's Virbhadra Singh, Puducherry's V Narayanasamy, Meghalaya's Mukul Sangma and Mizoram's Lal Thanhawla  are expected to be present when over 90 sets of nomination papers are likely to be filed by various leaders to extend support to Rahul Gandhi's candidature.

Congress state unit chiefs, senior leaders and Pradesh Congress Committee delegates will be present at the party's central office to express support to Rahul Gandhi ahead of his much-awaited elevation.

The Congress vice president is likely to reach the party headquarters around 10.30 am to file his nomination. He will sign sets of nomination papers to be filed before the Returning Officer.

Mullappally Ramachandran, the Returning Officer for the organisational election, told IANS that 90 nomination forms were taken by different states though not one has been submitted so far.

The process of nominations started on Friday. The last date for filing nominations is 4 December.

Reacting to criticism over the election process, Congress spokesperson Sushmita Dev told the media: "All I want to say is that it is happening under Election Commission supervision. When we talk about electoral democracy, I wish to say, we conduct (internal) elections while adhering to Election Commission rules. It is being done with full transparency. We have not violated any rules."

She said if someone was raising questions, what was the basis on which they were doing so. "I won't be able to comment about it. Only those who have raised the issue can explain."

On Sunday, many senior Congress leaders, its members of Parliament and PCC chiefs arrived at the party headquarters to sign the papers, including Sachin Pilot, Kapil Sibal, Rajeev Shukla, PC Chacko, Shobha Oza, Hamdulla Sayeed and others.

Apart from states and union territories, senior leaders on the Congress Working Committee (CWC), including former prime minister Manmohan Singh, AK Antony, Ahmed Patel and Ghulam Nabi Azad are likely to submit different sets of nomination papers.

The elevation of Rahul Gandhi, who is presently spearheading the Congress campaign ahead of the 9 and 14 December Gujarat Assembly polls, has been much talked about in party circles for around two years.

With Rahul Gandhi in all likelihood to be the only candidate in the fray, he could be declared the next Congress chief on 5 December after scrutiny of nominations.

He will succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998.

Rahul Gandhi became the Congress vice president in January 2013.

With inputs from IANS
New Delhi: The Congress wondered why Prime Minister Narendra Modi was "suffering from Rahul Gandhi-phobia" and reminded him that he was still to answer questions raised by senior leaders of his own party.

"Why is the prime minister suffering from Rahul Gandhi phobia? Why is he so much stressed?" Congress communications incharge Randeep Surjewala said before Gandhi filed his nomination papers for the party's presidential post. "Why is the prime minister getting so anxious and tense about the election of Rahul Gandhi? This day marks the amalgamation of old and new aspirations and Rahul Gandhi who has the backing of all Indians," Surjewala said.

"Will Modi ji tell when he will answer the questions of his own senior party leaders like Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha," he said. The Congress leader said his party will never "fall to the level" that the prime minister was indulging in attacking Gandhi.

Slamming Modi, he sought to ask him about the "conspiracies being played against LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Keshubhai Patel, Kashiram Rana, Hiren Pandya, and Sanjay Joshi, who have since been made a part of the party's "history".
Kochi: BJP in Kerala on Sunday accused the CPM-led LDF government of failure to protect the lives of people from cyclone Ockhi which battered the southern coastal areas of the state despite timely alert.

"There was a criminal negligence on the part of the state government in dealing with the crisis," party state president Kummanam Rajasekheran told reporters in Kochi.

He alleged that the state government failed to act promptly even after getting a cyclone alert from the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services on 28 November.

"The state government did not take it seriously. This gross negligence from the Kerala government authorities paved way for one of the biggest tragedies in the state," Rajendran alleged.

He said cases should be registered against those responsible for the negligence.

Nine persons died in rain-related incidents in the state due to the impact of Ochki, which brought heavy rains accompanied by strong wind besides leaving hundreds of fishermen stranded in sea.
New Delhi: The Election Commission on Monday issued directions that no newspaper advertisement be published on 8 and 9 December in poll-bound Gujarat without its prior clearance, a policy the poll panel adopted after controversial ads were issued by the BJP during the 2015 Bihar elections.

The first phase of Gujarat election would be held on 9 December for 89 assembly seats.

In a direction to the chief electoral officer of Gujarat, the commission said that instances of "advertisements of offending and misleading nature" were brought to its notice in the past.

"Such advertisements in the last stage of election vitiate the election. The affected candidates and parties will not have any opportunity of providing clarification or rebuttal in such cases," the poll watchdog said.

It said to ensure that no such instance is repeated and no untoward incident takes place because of any "inflammatory, misleading or hate advertisements", no political party, candidate, organisation or person will bring out ads in the print media on December 8 and 9 unless the contents are pre-certified by Media Certification and Monitoring Committee at the district or state level.

The newspapers, the commission said, should also be informed against bringing out advertisements which were not cleared by the committee.

During Bihar polls, the commission had clamped a ban on publication of two controversial advertisements printed by the BJP in the state.

One of the advertisements alleged that RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar were "snatching the plate of Dalits" by planning to transfer the quota meant for Dalits and EBCs to minorities.

Another advertisement dealt with "vote ki kheti" or vote-bank politics. It claimed that the RJD, the JDU and the Congress leaders were "giving sanctuary" to terrorists to appease a particular community for votes.
Lucknow: The BJP is all set to encash its Uttar Pradesh civic poll performance in Gujarat by utilising newly elected mayors for campaigning in the poll-bound state.

The BJP has won 14 out of 16 mayoral seats in civic polls in Uttar Pradesh and all the newly elected leaders will be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to seek his blessings.

Thereafter, they will proceed to Gujarat for campaigning for the Assembly elections there on 9 and 14 December.

"The newly elected mayors will meet the prime minister over tea tomorrow in Delhi. They are all devoted party workers and will be used where ever the party needs them," BJP state general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak told PTI.

Amethi Nagar Panchyat Chairperson Chandrama Devi and Jais Nagar Palika Parishad Mahesh Pratap will be among those who will be meeting Modi.

Though Congress did not field any candidate in Amethi, the victory of a BJP candidate there is still considered a major blow to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as it is his parliamentary constituency and considered a Congress bastion.

The Congress lost in Jais and Gauriganj where Nagar Palika polls were held. In Amethi and Musafirkhana, where Nagar Panchayat polls were held, the party had not fielded anyone.

With the BJP's extensive campaign in the local polls in Uttar Pradesh paying off, the sweeping win is considered as a boost to the saffron party in the midst of the high-decibel campaign for the Gujarat elections.

Counting of votes in Gujarat will be taken up on 18 December.

The Uttar Pradesh civic elections were touted as the first litmus test of Yogi Adityanath after the BJP stormed to power in March.

The saffron surge routed the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, both of which drew a blank in mayoral polls.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who has been drafted as the key campaigner in Gujarat and went on a nearly 90-day whirlwind tour of the state, described it as a "historic win".

He attributed the victory to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision and BJP chief Amit Shah's able guidance and added that the BJP will now look forward to achieving the goal of one hundred per cent success in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

"The victory of party has sent positive message among the people who are already admirers of Narendra Modiji. There is a significant population of people from east Uttar Pradesh in Gujarat," said BJP leader and state spokesman Shalabh Mani Tripathi, who is campaigning in Gujarat for the past one month.

"Yogiji is already a star campaigner and our newly elected mayors with their success stories will add to our ongoing campaigning here," Tripathi said.
Can you find liquor in Gujarat?

Everyone in the state will answer this question in the affirmative. However, they will be reluctant to tell you where exactly it can be found in the state. They will try and gauge your personality first. Once they think you can be trusted, they will gradually start talking.

Some locals agreed to talk about the liquor situation on the condition that their names are not revealed. Shyam Rajput (name changed) from Ahmedabad said, "Liquor is banned in Gujarat for the sake of saying. But, you can find it everywhere provided you know a way of buying it."

He also said that the figures of alcohol sale in the state are not official. "If they are made official, Gujarat will be counted among the states with maximum consumption of liquor."

Liquor business runs discreetly

The liquor industry in Gujarat is working discreetly. It works in a way similar to actor Anil Kapoor in the famous bollywood movie 'Mr India'. The liquor industry is running in the state but is not visible on ground.

Shyam even offered to direct me to a place where liquor is available abundantly. He also said that regular customers can even get alcohol delivered to their homes. He directed me to Chharanagar, which is one of the most notorious streets of Gujarat.

As soon as you enter Chharanagar, you will feel a part of the movie 'Raees'. There are houses on either side of the narrow street. The space is so narrow that only a two-wheeler can pass through.

I met Shyam's friend Bhawari Desai, who agreed to accompany me. However, she said that it was important to show that we are tourists and just want to party.

We met a woman and told her that we need some alcohol for a party. She demanded Rs 400 for one bottle of beer. While she claimed to get it from a nearby house, it was very clear to us that she had brought the bottle from her house only.

Desai said that the people here have become a little more cautious because of the election season. On regular days, people in Chharanagar can be seen sitting outside sipping alcohol, she added. We saw another man who was carrying a blue bottle in a plastic bag. It seemed like oil at first glance. However, Desai said that he was carrying country liquor.

Every sort of alcohol is available in this area. In Chharanagar, more women than men are involved in the liquor business. About 100 metres from Chharanagar is the Naroda Patiya police station but they never dare come here. Desai said, "the police sometimes comes here but they are beaten and sent away." The police, when contacted, refused to comment and only said that that is not the situation.

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
Amreli: The Patidar-dominated Amreli is gearing up for a fight between two strong Patel candidates in the Assembly segment, where farm issues are dominating the campaign discourse.

Sitting Congress MLA Paresh Dhanani is pitted against BJP heavyweight Bavkubhai Undhad, the legislator from the nearby Lathi seat who has been fielded from Amreli this time.

There is a talk in political circles that Dhanani could emerge as a strong contender for the chief minister's post if he retains his seat and the Congress dislodges the BJP from power in Gandhinagar.

Dhanani (41) is considered close to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and had accompanied the latter during his campaign tours.

In the 2012 Assembly elections, Dhanani had registered a resounding victory - he won by a margin of more than 18 percent votes over his nearest rival Dilip Sanghavi, a senior BJP leader and prominent cooperative leader.

The most important issue in this agriculture-dominated constituency, known for cotton cultivation, is farm distress, and the Congress seems to be cashing in on this.

The Patidars form 60 percent of the population in the Amreli assembly segment followed by Kolis at 15 percent.

Besides farm matters, issues like the impact of the Centre's demonetisation move and effects of GST on the diamond polishing industry are being raised aggressively by the candidates.

A section of farmers believes that the promises made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding minimum support price (MSP) for farm produce and tackling issues related to agriculture have not been fulfilled.

"Modiji had promised us (MSP of) Rs 2,000 per 20 kg on cotton against Rs 1,500 given by the UPA government. But we are getting Rs 800-900, which is causing us a huge loss. Many of us have not got crop insurance money," said a cotton farmer, Pankaj Chavda.

Chavda added that the prime minister's pre-Lok Sabha election promise of giving farmers a support price that is 50 percent more than production cost of a crop, too, remains a pipe dream.

In Amreli, where farmers mainly grow cotton, the crop has seen a sharp decline in prices this year, fuelling anger against the state government.

Amreli district Congress president Pankaj Kanabar said Chief Minister Vijay Rupani recently announced his government would purchase cotton at Rs 100 per 20 kg over and above the MSP. However, Kanabar alleged only the farmers who were close to the BJP were getting this benefit. "It is a scam in which BJP's commission agents have made a lot of money while genuine farmers have been left out," he said.

The BJP candidate Undhad is trying to douse the anger of the Patidars against the ruling party by listing the efforts made by the Rupani government to address the grievances of the community.

Patidar quota stir spearhead Hardik Patel is expected to address an election rally in Amreli on 6 December.

Undhad is battling the image of a politician who has switched sides. He started out as a BJP leader and later joined the Congress and became its MLA from Lathi in 2012.

He came back to the BJP fold in 2014 and was made a minister.

The BJP said it is on a strong wicket in Amreli as its candidate has developed strong links with the constituency, while the sitting MLA is hardly seen.

"The BJP is strong because Bavkubhai lives here most of the time, while Congress candidate Paresh Dhanani mostly remains outside the constituency and is rarely seen here," said district BJP president Hiren Hilpara.

"As far as farmer issues are concerned, we are making sure all farmers get higher rate than MSP for their produce. The government is making purchases of groundnut and cotton which will continue till March next year," he said.

Voting in Amreli will take place on 9 December. There are a total of nine candidates in the fray, including four independents, but the fight is likely to be between Dhanani and Undhad. The NCP and the BSP have also fielded their nominees.

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
Sticks and stones may break my bones

But harsh words will never harm me.

Come 9 December, Gujarat will show the rest of the country if the slanging match between the Congress wearing the colours of Rahul Gandhi and the BJP in the right corner wearing the colours of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has had any effect on the voters.

With the media sitting in the front row and fanning the flames, we have been witness to several weeks of verbal battering ensuring that more than any major issues, personal insult and insinuation have been the tactics adopted by both combatants. These actions are more in keeping with the conduct of wrestlers in the WWE rather than an honourable battle.

Rahul perhaps started it all when he used the Berkeley campus to attack Modi by painting India as a nation where violence, anger and the politics of polarisation have raised their ugly head". He later followed that up with a harsh indictment on social media:

"Expensive gas, expensive ration, stop making hollow speeches! Control prices, give jobs else quit the throne," he tweeted. When brother-in-law Robert Vadra was accused of links with an arms dealer, the Congress hit back at Modi, demanding to know who paid for over 100 trips he made by chartered planes across India and abroad during his tenure as Gujarat chief minister. Even the Rafale jet deal was not spared and suspicion was whipped up over whether Modi upped the payment for 36 initial deliveries to please a specific industrialist. The most tragic part is that not a shred of evidence is needed to utter these slurs against character. In recent days, the level of discourse has deteriorated even further. Rahul hit out with schoolboy angst over the release of Hafiz Saeed, tweeting:

Narendrabhai,   . Terror mastermind is free. President Trump just delinked Pak military funding from LeT. Hugplomacy fail. More hugs urgently needed.https://t.co/U8Bg2vlZqw  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 25, 2017



Not to be outdone, the BJP struck back in an equal measure with the accusation that Rahul was a Saeed sympathiser. Modi also slammed Rahul with a clever one-liner that may have been a catch-line if it wasnt part of this tacky package. He said: "I sold tea not the nation."

Congress leaders then joined the fray and pointed a flinty finger at Modi saying he was conducting a campaign to vilify Sonia Gandhi, her son and the larger family.

Modi recently upped the ante by placing on record his disdain: "Congress has no reason to escape now They don't understand what to do now. In Uttar Pradesh, where they used to win every time. It is a state which is the karmabhoomi of Nehru-Gandhi family. What happened in results?" Modi said while referring to the civic poll debacle. He added, "They know to change their colours. They divide brothers, divide communities."

He then went for another sledgehammer: "Congress is unhappy about demonetisation. They keep attacking me but I want to tell themI have grown up in the same land as Sardar Patel. I will ensure that the poor get their due. We will not allow this nation to be looted."

No subject has been left out of the abuse fest: Demonetisation, Goods and Services Tax (GST), terrorism, military hardware shopping, surgical strikes, Modis hugs, Rahuls religion, even poor little rich Ivanka Trump.

And while the nation watches this daily name-calling with curiosity and dismay, seeing there is one unanswered question: Where is the voter in all this? Whats in it for the voter?

Read complete coverage of Gujarat Elections 2017 here

Read complete coverage of our Congress president election here
Editor's note: The following is the first part of a series relating to reservations across the country ahead of the crucial Gujarat Assembly election.

Here is a fictional example of Lallu and Mohan, which the Mandal Commission, in the report it submitted in 1980, reeled off to say why Other Backward Classes (OBCs) must have reservations:

Lallu is a poor village boy who comes from an illiterate family belonging to a backward class. He studies at the village school where standards are pathetic. On the other hand, Mohan belongs to an educated, well-off family. Studying at a city public school, Mohan gets help at home and can use television, radio and the magazines to acquire knowledge. Although both boys possess the same level of intelligence, Lallu can never compete with Mohan in any open competition because of the environmental disadvantages he suffers. So boys like Lallu must have reservations.

Mandal was neither the first nor the last to bandy about examples like these to argue in favour of reservations and debunk those who say merit should be the sole criterion in jobs and academic admissions.

And Gujarats quota warrior Hardik Patel would like us to believe that his land-owning Patidar community is packed with helpless boys like Lallus and that reservations must protect them against usurpers like Mohans. It is hardly of any concern to Hardik that extending reservations to Patidars means crossing the 50 percent ceiling recommended by Supreme Court for caste quotas (total for Scheduled Castes/Tribes and OBCs).

And its also hardly of any bother to the Congress that has promised reservations for Hardiks caste in return for backing from his Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (Paas) in this months Assembly election in Gujarat. Desperate to defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modis BJP in his home state, Congress has apparently told Patel that, if it won Gujarat, it would ensure reservations for Patidars in a way it wouldnt fall afoul of Supreme Court.

Past verdicts of the Supreme Court as well as various high courts, however, make it evident that the Congress is fooling Hardik. Or possibly, Hardik, too naive to understand the legal hassles of raising reservation levels, is fooling himself. Or he is fooling his community.

Even as Congress leaders and Hardik live in a fools paradise, beating tambourines and singing paeans to each other, their so-called deal is getting the adrenaline of backward class reservations going in other states.

The latest state to join the mad race for placating OBCs is Andhra Pradesh, where Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday extended five percent reservations to the Kapu community, taking the total of caste quotas in his state to 55 per cent, which is above the SC ceiling.

In recent weeks, reservation fever gripped the Karnataka and Telangana chief ministers as well. And the Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Haryana too have reasons to watch keenly whats going on between the Congress and Hardik. In all these states, the governments want to expand reservations beyond the SCs top limit and get away with it. They think that if Gujarat can swing it somehow, they can too.

The farcical nature of the Gujarat deal is not stopping other chief ministers from dreaming their own pipe dreams.

Gamble by Naidu, KCR and Siddaramaiah

In Andhra Pradesh, where elections to the Assembly are slated for 2019, Naidus Telugu Desam government will send the new bill to extend reservations for Kapus to the state governor who, in turn, will send it to the Centre. Then you could depend on Naidu  an ally of the BJP  to begin putting pressure on the Centre to place the new law in the Constitutions Ninth Schedule to save it from the wrath, if any, of the Supreme Court.

Laws in the Ninth Schedule are supposedly beyond judicial review.

And with elections to the Karnataka Assembly only five months away, Siddaramaiah says he too will raise the total reservations to 70 percent so that more sub-castes of SCs, STs and OBCs could benefit. Having first spoken about it last year, he now repeats it with new vigour.

And in Telangana, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao wants to hike reservations from 50 percent to 60 percent to help SCs, STs and backward Muslims. Siddaramaiah and Rao too can do with the legal immunity that they believe the Ninth Schedule immunity will offer to their respective moves.

Mahrashtras move to give 16 percent reservation for Marathas in 2014 and Haryanas law to give Jats (and five other castes) a 10-percent quota in 2016 were stayed by their high courts and the issue in both states is before their respective backward classes commissions. Attempts by Rajasthan to extend reservations to Gujjars failed thrice  the latest being only last month when the Supreme Court ruled that total reservations must not cross 50 per cent.

If these three states have their own way, the reservations will have gone up to 73 percent in Maharashtra (along with five percent for some Muslim sub-castes) 67 percent in Haryana and 54 percent in Rajasthan.

Why the Gujarat deal is a chimera

While legal luminary and Congress leader Kapil Sibal, who brokered the deal with Hardik, did not disclose its details, the 24-year-old Patidar leader claimed that it would be carried out under Articles 31B and 46 of the Constitution.

Taking recourse to Article 31B means passing a law to raise reservation level to include Patidars and then parking that legislation in the Constitutions Ninth Schedule where it is presumed to be safe from judicial hurdles. In theory this can happen, but there are three big Ifs:

It can only happen

1) if the Congress wins Gujarat elections to pass a bill that will bless Patidars with reservations;

2) if the Modi government then agrees to keep that law in the Ninth Schedule and

3) if the Supreme Court agrees that such a law in Ninth Schedule is really beyond a judicial review.

A tall order indeed.

And using Article 46, which is part of the directive principles of the Constitution, is no less risky legally. Court verdicts in the past frowned on the misuse of this article to extend reservations (more on this in the second part of the series).

Whichever constitutional provision is used, the total percentage of reservation is bound to cross the SCs upper limit. Thats because states are bent upon expanding the quota levels instead of letting new communities share the existing concessions and ruffle those already enjoying the benefits. At least two verdicts of the SC in the past said the 50 percent ceiling could be breached in extraordinary circumstances to extend reservations to a communities that are abysmally backward. But beginning with Gujarats Patidars, most of the castes that the states want to placate fail to qualify for the SCs exceptional circumstances.

So its just not enough to say that a caste is packed with Mandals Lallus to milk the reservation cow. Congress knows. Hardik pretends he doesnt.

Read Part II of the series here: States challenging SC's 50% reservation ceiling will turn the Ninth Schedule into a 'constitutional dustbin'

The author tweets @sprasadindia

Follow all the latest updates ahead of the Gujarat polls here
Rajkot: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday mocked Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi over the allegation that he gave an "enormous piece" of land to an industrialist.

Modi also said 125 crore people of this country were his "God" and he was their priest.

"The Congress is being rejected from every corner of the country. They need to introspect," Modi said at a rally in Rajkot.

Making a veiled reference to Gandhi, he said, "One leader during his speech said Modi gave 48,000 crore acres of land to an industrialist. The area he is talking about is three times the size of land available on the earth. I don't know what to do... to laugh or cry."

The prime minister said, "What can you expect from the Congress, when the person expected to lead the party cannot understand such basic things," said Modi.

Gandhi had during one of his rallies in Gujarat alleged that Modi had given a vast tract of land to an industrialist in Mundra of Kutch district.

The video of his speech had gone viral on social media.

Referring to the meme tweeted by the Youth Congress, Modi said the Congress was using abusive language against him.

"It is their 'sanskar' (values). I have not studied in an English medium school but in a government school where they taught me how to lead life," Modi said in Surendranagar.

"From those lessons, I have learnt that 125 crore people of the country are my God and I am their priest. I will continue to work for 'sabka sath, sabka vikas'," the prime minister said.

He also accused the Congress of spreading poison of casteism to win elections in the state.

"They know that they have no chance, so they are spreading the poison of casteism to win in the state. They have done it earlier. Now they are doing it again," Modi said.

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
Over a month ago, close to 150 women did a rasta roko, merely 30 kilometers from Rajkot, the capital of Gujarat's Saurashtra region. The Punit Nagar area in the town of Gondal, where the agitation had transpired, had not received water for about 20 days, including over the festive Diwali period.

"We eventually lost patience," Kanchan Ramani, a participant, said. "We needed to clean up the house during Diwali, prepare delicacies, and have our traditional early morning bath. How are we supposed to do that? A pipeline was damaged during road construction, but how long can one tolerate?"

After the agitation, water supply was restored. That is once every four days for half an hour. "In summers, it's once every eight days," said Hansa Vora, another participant at the agitation. "This in a year when the monsoon was satisfactory and the dams are full. When the rain gods desert Saurashtra, as they often do, the situation is unimaginable."

In rural Gondal, farmers shared a similar story regarding irrigation water. Shambhu Lonagariya and his wife Jaya in PatKhilori village say their dependence on rainwater has resulted in an unpredictable cotton produce on their 20-acre farm. "Cotton is an eight-month crop. It requires water consistently. My entire crop died in 2016 because of the drought. The uncertainty of something you cannot control is stressful," Shambhu said.

There are a few small dams around Gondal, providing drinking water to the town. But most of them are decades old, built for the population of the time. When the dams dry up in summers, the Narmada pipeline is channelled. Gondal does not benefit from the Bhadar dam nearby, because that's linked to provide water to Rajkot city, where the then chief minister Narendra Modi had launched a grand scheme in 2012 to permanently end Saurashtra's dire water deficit.

Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation (SAUNI) Yojana aims to fill 115 dams in Saurashtra through a network of pipelines that would channelise floodwater from the Sardar Sarovar Dam. The project is a work in progress and the deadline is reportedly end of 2019. The network of pipelines includes four links, one of which originates from Dholi Dhaja Dam in Surendranagar and ends at Venu I dam in Upleta taluka of Rajkot district, pumping water in 28 dams along its length of 245 kilometres.

While the benefits of SAUNI have reached Rajkot city, where the water has been pumped into Aji dam, it would take a year or two for the pipeline to reach Gondal. Residents said that the water from Bhadar dam should now be diverted to Gondal, with Aji dam fulfilling the needs of Rajkot city, which now gets water 20 minutes every day. Until three or four years ago, it was three times a week, for 20 minutes each.

The Congress party has been cashing in on this. In one of the chowks, BJP installed a poster with Modi on it, saying Narmada water has been brought to Aji dam. Congress installed a poster right alongside it, pointing out that the state has had three chief ministers in 22 years, but Rajkot still doesn't get water for over 20 minutes a day.

Senior journalist Sunil Joshi said people in well-off areas buy tankers when their handpumps dry out. "The poor areas are the worst sufferers," he says.

In Raiya Dhar area of Rajkot, residents have to wait for a water tanker to arrive from the corporation. "I have been living here for the past 21 years. The corporation tankers started 10 years ago. Before that, we would go on our bicycles to fetch water," said daily-wage labourer Ajit Mokashi.

In Raiya Dhar, a tanker brings water twice a week, which is hardly enough, forcing the residents to spend from their own pocket on water tankers. When tankers arrive, fights often break out between women who queue up to fill water. "I get Rs 300 a day. Even if I work 20-25 days a month, my monthly earning fluctuates between Rs 6,000 to Rs 7,500. On water alone, I spend Rs 1,200, double of that in summers. How do I educate my kids?" Mokashi asked.

All these different constituencies, unable to solve their water woes in 22 years, are expressing their anger against the ruling BJP, and most are expected to take it to the voting booth.

A lot is at stake here. There are thousands of traders, and a substantial Patidar population in Rajkot. It's Chief Minister Vijay Rupani's constituency and he is skating on thin ice. He did a lukewarm roadshow on 2 December, which did not seem like the one by a sitting chief minister. An auto driver said Rupani is highly unimpressive. "Anandiben was better," he said. "Rupani does not inspire us to vote for him. He is Amit Shah's puppet."

A few days ago, Hardik Patel's huge rally in Rajkot sent a message, especially since Rupani's Patidar meet a day before did not attract more than a thousand people.

The BJP responded with a resounding Modi rally on 3 December, but it's betraying its nervousness as well. Rupani's opponent Indranil Rajguru's brother got into a scuffle with BJP cadres, after which Indranil, along with the party cadres, protested at the chief minister's residence where the Gujarat Police detained him. When Maharashtra MP and AICC secretary Rajeev Satav went to meet him on the night of 2 December, the police did not let him in. Satav refused to go without meeting his candidate. At which point, the police took Satav and his colleagues in, beat them up, before releasing them at 5 am. Satav said this goes against the policy of free and fair elections.

Nonetheless, the biggest thing that stands as Congress' impediment is the Gujarati asmita. Considering the provincial pride, a sizable chunk could fall for the emotional card in spite of the disquiet against the establishment. Rahul Gandhi and Congress are still seen as outsiders, while Modi is the son of the soil.

Chirag Parmar, 30, said he does not like most of the BJP leaders, but would not want to see Modi being humiliated on his home turf. "Kaam toh Modiji theek thaak kiye hai," he said. "Lekin woh humare hai. Vote toh BJP ko denge."

Read complete coverage of Gujarat Elections 2017 here
Sanand: Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday said that the BJP formed government at the Centre because of the Gujarat model of development and that the people of the country had already answered the questions of Rahul Gandhi by giving it a mandate in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Hitting out at Gandhi over his "a question a day" social media campaign, Singh said he should first tell why India remained poor despite the Congress ruling it for 50-55 years.

At a public rally in Sanand, Singh said, "The Congress leader (Rahul) asks what did the BJP government do in 22 years of its rule? What the BJP government has done in 22 years has been answered by the people of India during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections."

"If development has gone mad here, then why the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation appreciated the Gujarat government in 2012. It was the Gujarat model because of which the BJP formed government at the Centre.

"A single party ruled for 50-55 years... what is the reason India is still counted among poor countries in the world?" Rajnath asked.

The home minister also suggested the three young leaders in the state who have supported the Congress  Alpesh Thakor, Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mevani  to stay away from Gandhi.

"I would like to send a message to them that Rahul Gandhi will take them along when he sinks," he said, citing the example of Uttar Pradesh where the Samajawadi Party, which stitched a pre-poll alliance with the Congress, was defeated.

Singh praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that because of him India had found a place of respect in the world community and that his government was committed to making it the most powerful country in the world.

He said his government was committed to increasing farmers' income by 2022 and that the concerns of peasants in Sanand will be resolved as soon as the BJP returns to power in Gujarat.

He also suggested the opposition to restrain itself while speaking about the prime minister.
New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday alleged that BJP was indulging in violence against its candidates in Gujarat and urged the Election Commission to initiate an action against Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani.

"Our leaders Indranil Rajyaguru, Mitul Donga and MP Rajeev Satav, who are fighting the 'Shah-kaal' of fear and corruption in Gujarat, were attacked by the Gujarat Police yesterday," said Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Twitter.

"Violence is a result of fear. Rupani ji fears losing the election and he is taking support of lathis. But Gujarat is not frightened," he added.

Congress said that its candidate Indranil Rajyaguru, who is contesting Rupani from Rajkot West, its Rajkot East nominee Mitul Donga and MP Rajeet Satav have been arrested by the Rajkot Police.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said: "People of Gujarat and Rajkot will teach a befitting lesson for such brutalities through the 'power of ballot'."

Another Congress spokesperson Sushmita Dev said Rupani was "puzzled" as he was "losing" and was thus resorting to violence against Congress leaders.

"I have heard the chief minister's audio in which he said that the BJP was in a bad shape'," Dev told reporters.

"When Rajyaguru, who is also an MLA, was campaigning last night (Saturday), he was attacked by some BJP goons. Instead of arresting them, police arrested our candidate," she added.

She further alleged, "The police also arrested Rajeev Satav, who had gone there to enquire about the Congress candidate."

Dev asked the Election Commission to take action against Rupani, and police officials concerned.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday will hold four rallies in Gujarat's Dharampur, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar, where polling is scheduled in the first phase on 9 December.

"Will continue the campaign across Gujarat. Looking forward to addressing rallies in Dharampur, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar," Modi said in a tweet.

Will continue the campaign across Gujarat. Looking forward to addressing rallies in Dharampur, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 4, 2017

The second-phase of polling for the 182-seats-Gujarat assembly will be on 14 December. The counting of votes will take place on 18 December.

Negative politics of the Congress isn't cutting ice with the people of Gujarat. People are fully aware of the divisive tactics of Congress and have terrible memories of Congress rule, which was characterised by misgovernance and lawlessness.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 3, 2017

On Sunday, Modi was in Bharuch where he addressed a rally and took a jibe at the Congress for opposing the bullet train project.

Continuing his two-day visit to the state, on Monday, he will visit Dharmapur in Valsad district and then he will be in Saurashtra's Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar.

Gujarat has been under the Bharatiya Janata Party-rule for the last 22 years.

Click here for LIVE coverage of Modi's campaign on Monday

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
I read a column by Steve Banker, a fine analyst and advisor in the Supply Chain, What Was Hot in Supply Chain Technology In 2017.

Steve listed 3D Printing of Spare Parts, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Supply Chain Applications, Autonomous Mobile Robots for the Warehouse, Autonomous Trucks, SNEW data  social media, news, event, and weather data  and the Uberization of Freight.

Its a good list.

What I find interesting is what happens when you overlay that list against the Federal Government. There are few touch points.

The military is taking autonomous trucks and robots seriously, as well as 3D printing of spare parts, for obvious reasons. I sure hope some of the folks in the Three Letter Agencies (CIA, NSA, etc.) are doing something with Artificial Intelligence. I keep hoping that NASA will do something spectacular like they did in the sixties, but they remain starved for funds.

This is not a long list. Where are the other overlaps between innovation and the Federal Government? It shouldnt be a hard question.

During World War II, a phrase entered common usage. Seventy-five years ago, "good enough for Government work" meant it could meet the most rigorous of standards. Thats not what people mean when they use that phrase today, and that should make all of us sad.

Once upon a time the Federal Government was known for innovation, including achievements in the supply chain. These are the people who gave us the Post Office, the most formidable last mile delivery capability on the planet. The Feds figured out how to mobilize the supply chain to win World War II on the other side of the Atlantic, and even more impressively on the other side of the Pacific. They conceived of and created the interstate highway system; where would we be today without that coast-to-coast network? ARPA, now DARPA, played a pivotal role in the creation of the internet.

The list could go on, but I dont really see much that is meaningful and recent. Why cant federal government agencies keep pace with the private sector anymore? I once had a boss who liked to ask, What have you done for me lately? As a Taxpayer and a Supply Chain Professional, I find myself wanting to ask that same question of the Federal Government.

Can anybody tell me who I should call?
New Delhi: Hitting out at his detractors within the AAP, its founder-member Kumar Vishwas on Sunday said the party needed an anti-virus system to get rid of "viruses that have been destroying it".

"Anti-virus system will be set up in the party and that will include party workers," Vishwas told the media in New Delhi.

He also talked of bringing into the party fold those who had left the AAP, which is in power in Delhi.

Asked about which virus he was referring to, he only said that Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP), support had gone down from five lakh persons who Assembly at Ramlila Maidan at one point of time to 5,000 at present and it was only due to the viruses.

He expressed displeasure over the AAP's functioning and said the party needs to go back to the basics.

Vishwas reiterated that the AAP had deviated from the path from where it started five years ago.

He said party workers were in talks with many of their colleagues who had since left the AAP, including Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, and apologised for any wrongs done by the party.

In the AAP's National Council meeting in November, Vishwas' name was not included in the list of speakers.

In October, the AAP had revoked the suspension of AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan, who had accused Vishwas of being a traitor. Khan was suspended in May, days after he made the remark.
New Delhi: Former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said that Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is the "darling" of the party and will carry forward the "great traditions" of the Congress.

"Rahul Gandhi is a darling of the Congress and he will carry forward the great traditions of the party," the former prime minister said after Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination papers for the party's top post.

He also said that Congress president Sonia Gandhi has served the party for over 19 years.

"So it will be yet another chapter for the party and Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of taking the party forward," Singh added.

Over 90 sets of nominations are expected to be filed supporting Gandhi whose election is a mere formality now, as there is no other candidate for the party's top post.

Gandhi will succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998.

Rahul Gandhi became the Congress vice president in January 2013.

Click here for LIVE updates.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his election rally in Valsad's Dharampur, slammed the Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's expected elevation as party chief, terming the party's election process as 'Aurangzeb Raj', according to media reports.

"Mani Shankar Aiyar said, 'did elections happen during Mughal rule? After Jehangir, Shahjahan came, was any election held? After Shahjahan it was understood Aurangzeb will be the leader'. So Congress accepts it is a family party? We don't want this Aurangzeb rule," the prime minister said, according to ANI.

I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the well being of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command: PM Modi pic.twitter.com/GSobcJT20X  ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017

The prime minister also attacked the Congress by saying the party cannot tolerate or accept leaders from Gujarat. He went on to question Rahul Gandhi's several visits to temples in the Congress campaigns.

Earlier, Congress would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing in this election, where they are going. Unfortunately for them, Muslims know their real nature: PM Modi #GujaratElection2017 pic.twitter.com/vredOl0z6a  ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017

On Monday, Modi is scheduled to hold four rallies in Gujarat's Dharampur, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar, where polling is scheduled in the first phase on 9 December.

The second-phase of polling for the 182-seats-Gujarat assembly will be on 14 December. The counting of votes will take place on 18 December.

Click here for LIVE coverage of Modi's campaign on Monday

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
The inevitable has finally happened in the Congress party. Rahul Gandhi is going to be the sixth member of the Nehru-Gandhi family  from the fifth generation  to be Congress president.

This kind of ascendency to power and privilege in a leading national party is perhaps unparalleled in the world, in the countries which practice democracy. While taking the all-important step of filing the nomination papers for the Congress presidents post, the mother and son have scripted a fresh chapter in Congresss history, even by their own dynastic family standards. This means a smooth formal transfer of power from Sonia Gandhi, who has been holding the top post for the last 19 years, to Rahul Gandhi, who currently holds charge as the vice-president of the party.

Neither the Congress nor Rahul had any qualms of about the First Family's virtually divine right to rule the party. In fact, during Rahul's recent tour to America, he had countered the failed dynast charge against him by arguing that that (dynasty) is how India runs.

Meanwhile, senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar stepped into a controversy after a comment made by him was picked up by the BJP. Aiyar speaking to a TV channel, said, "When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any election happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go to the heir." The comment was quickly picked up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was campaigning in Gujarat.

Less than 45-minutes after Mani Shankar Aiyar made the comparison, Modi, who was addressing a public rally at Dharampur in Gujarat, mocked Aiyar and the Congress. He said, "Mani Shankar Aiyar proudly asked whether an election took place when Shahjahan succeeded Jehangir as emperor. When Aurangzeb succeeded Shahjahan, did an election take place? It was known to one and all that the emperors throne would go to his son.

Mani Shankar Aiyar, who never shies away from showing loyalty to one family, proudly said-      ,    election  ?      ,   election  ?           ,      : PM  narendramodi_in (@narendramodi_in) December 4, 2017

This means that senior leaders in the Congress believe that the Congress is not a party but a kunba (family holding) and the son of the emperor would acquire the throne. I congratulate Congress on Aurangzeb Raj," Modi added.

The usage of the term 'Aurangzeb raj' for the Congress has loaded connotations at a time when campaigning for the Gujarat election is at its peak and Rahul is going to various Hindu temples. For many in India, Aurangzeb remains a hated Mughal emperor. The Modi governments position, without saying so in as many words, is the same. It recently changed the name of a road named after Aurangzeb in Lutyen's Delhi to APJ Abdul Kalam Road.

This new-found tag (Aurangzeb) by Modi to describe dynastic rule in the Congress would come in handy for several BJP leaders and workers to unleash a fresh bout of attacks on the Congress.

Note Modis other charge against the Congress

Why has the Congress stopped saying BJP is anti-Muslim? Earlier, they would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing in this election, where they are going. Unfortunately for them, Muslims know their real nature: PM  narendramodi_in (@narendramodi_in) December 4, 2017

While the merits of Modis Aurangzeb raj barb against Rahul and the Congress will be debated for long, the fact remains that in less than an hour or 45 minutes, Modi turned the news headlines as he had so wished. It became the biggest talking point of the day, although from the Congress' perspective, the media should have been discussing Sonia Gandhis 19 years of stewardship and the challenges that Rahul will have to brave in the days and months to come.

The other connotation of the 'Aurangzeb raj barb could be the contention that after Rahul's reign, the Congress will completely disintegrate. Though Aurangzeb ruled India for close to 50 years in the seventeenth century, by the time he left the throne, the Mughal empire had begun disintegrating.

Congress spokesperson Rajiv Tyagi had recently said that Rahul is not becoming the president for a term but for the next 50 years. Unfortunately for Rahul, at the time when he is officially taking over the reign of the Congress party, its disintegration is already at an advanced stage. It has 44 seats in the Lok Sabha and is losing one state after another. It has only one big state, Karnatakawhich is going to the polls in the next six monthsin its kitty. Senior leaders from across the country are quitting the party. The party recently won in Punjab, but the credit for that went to local strongman Captain Amarinder Singh, not to Rahul.

What made Modis charge stick on the Congress is the fact that despite warnings of an existential crisis by leaders like Jairam Ramesh, the party went into denial mode over Rahuls failures. In an interview to PTI, Jairam Ramesh, former union minister and one-time close confidante of Rahul had said The sultanate has gone, but we behave as if we are sultans still. We have to completely redo the way of thinking, the way of acting, the way of projecting, the way of communicating. I think there is a lot of goodwill for the Congress, a lot of support for the Congress but the people want to see a new Congress. They don't want to see old mantras and old slogans. We must recognise this is a big challenge."

Rahul's elevation as the Congress chief gave the BJP enough ammo to attack the party on its "dynastic" ways of functioning. If things continue in the same manner, Rahul might become BJP's biggest asset ahead of the Gujarat Assembly election. The state goes to polls on 9 and 14 December. The BJP seems to be enjoying Rahuls elevation, after all.

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
Vadodara: Senior NCP leader Praful Patel on Monday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the comments he had made on the forthcoming election of the Congress president while addressing a poll rally in Gujarat on Sunday.

"Narendra Modi commented on infighting in the Congress, which was unwarranted. He had termed the election (of Congress president) as a tussle between 'shezad' and 'Shahzada'," Patel told reporters.

Addressing a rally, Modi had said that if one doesn't have democracy in his home (party), how can the person practice it in the country.

Modi also said that the outcome of the election to the top post in the Congress is a foregone conclusion.

"A youth called Shezad (Poonawala), who is a (Congress) party worker has raised questions over the process of the election and alleged that it is being rigged," the prime minister had said.

Patel said the Sharad Pawar-led party is contesting 58 out of the total 182 seats in Gujarat elections, to be held in two phases on 9 and 14 December.

The senior leader said had the Congress sealed a pre-poll alliance with the NCP in Gujarat, the chances of the BJP's victory would have become remote.

The NCP and the Congress had fought state assembly polls in an alliance in 2002 and 2007.

The tie-up couldn't materialise this time as the Congress was livid with the NCP over its two MLAs in Gujarat purportedly voting for a BJP candidate against Ahmed Patel in Rajya Sabha election this year.

Patel said the BJP was losing the ground in Gujarat since the emergence of Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mevani, who represent Patidars, OBCs and Dalits, respectively.

"After Modi's ascension to Delhi in 2014, the BJP failed to retain power in most of district and tehsil panchayats that went to polls, which reflected resentment against the saffron party," Patel said.

Attacking the prime minister, Patel said Modi was "maintaining silence" on the matters concerning the common people while raking up the "son-of-the-soil" issue in Gujarat.

Patel was referring to Modi's emotional appeals to the people of the state during canvassing.

"Modi should have talked about issues like farmer distress, atrocities on Dalits, discrimination against minorities, plight of small and medium scale industries, adverse impact of GST and demonetisation etc," the NCP leader said.

Taking a jibe at the BJP for drafting in senior Union ministers for the poll campaign, Patel said this reflects "nervousness" in the saffron party and that the "parivartan" (transformation) is imminent in Gujarat.
Patna: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar came out in support of the demand for a constitutional amendment that could pave way for introducing reservations in job promotions.

"We have always been for reservations in promotions. We had introduced this provision for the SCs and STs in Bihar. Our decision was challenged and struck down by the high court. The matter is now pending before the Supreme Court," he told reporters on the sidelines of his weekly Lok-Samvad programme.

The chief minister was responding to a query on a statement by Union minister and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan that his party was planning to write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for bringing in a constitutional amendment which could facilitate reservations in promotions, while taking into account the conditions laid down by the Supreme Court in this regard.

"If Paswan wants to take an initiative in this direction, we welcome it. The issue of reservation in promotions is a long-standing one and it needs to be debated in Parliament," Kumar said.

Rubbishing the speculation that such a move could lead to a compromise as far as merit was concerned, the chief minister said there was nothing wrong in supporting a community which was grossly under-represented in a certain service at a certain rank.

The JD(U) chief also reiterated that he was in favour of reservations in the private sector, "which is providing more jobs nowadays than the public sector", and that "the basis for introducing quotas cannot be economic backwardness, but social and educational backwardness, as has been elucidated in the Constitution".

About the poor among the upper castes, the chief minister said, "They can be supported through measures like scholarships. We are doing that in Bihar. But it must be understood that reservation is meant for the limited, though important, purpose of enabling the deprived sections of the society to avail of equal opportunities. The sole objective of the quota system is to create a condition, wherein every segment of the society will become a part of the social mainstream."
Jammu: Opposition National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah on Sunday said "politics of hate" is the biggest threat to the unity of the nation, and asked its propagators to stay away from Jammu and Kashmir.

He also cautioned people against "communal polarisation" ahead of panchayat elections in the state.

"There is no threat to any religion. If there is a danger at all, it is 'politics of hate', which has been serving as a shield to communal elements," Abdullah said at a meeting of senior party leaders at NC headquarters in Jammu.

He asked the believers of hate politics to keep off from Jammu and Kashmir, a state he said was a "shining example of amity and communal harmony".

Seeking mass participation in the upcoming panchayat elections, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir cautioned against "machinations of divisive forces which may try to vitiate the atmosphere by engineering communal divide".

Terming the panchayat polls as crucial for strengthening democracy at grass-root level in the state, Abdullah exhorted the party cadre to gear up for the "big challenge".

"Notwithstanding the spirit of Panchayati Raj system having been trampled by the PDP-BJP dispensation by amending the Panchayat Raj Act, 1989, the National Conference believes panchayats as engines of political empowerment of people," he said.

He referred to the amendment in the Panchayati Raj Act, 1989, with regard to indirect election of sarpanch, claiming that it would weaken the system and give rise to manipulations.
It was a formality that the Congress rank and file were waiting for quite some time. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Monday filed his nomination for election to the post of the party president. According to sources, since Rahul is the only one filing his nomination, his election is a foregone conclusion. The formal announcement, however, is likely to be done later.

And so, finally, the next generation of the Gandhi family is set to helm an organisation which began as a party of the common, educated Indians in 1885 but has undergone several transformations since then to reach its present avatar of a family party. It's a party which has been famously headed by members of his family and Rahul takes over from his mother, Sonia Gandhi, the incumbent party president.

The atmosphere outside the 24 Akbar Road, the Congress headquarters in New Delhi, was euphoric when Rahul arrived to file his nomination on Monday. Party workers were rejoicing over the impending election of their 'president-in-waiting,' almost in a scene that could be straight out of a fairy tale: Subjects rejoicing for their crown prince, hoping he will resuscitate a party that badly needs an injection after the rout it suffered in the 2014 general elections and in subsequent state Assembly elections.

From morning, hundreds of Congress workers from across the country gathered outside AICC headquarters. The moment the Congress vice-president filed his nomination, there was an outpouring of emotion and celebrations. Slogans, fireworks, beating of drums and distribution of sweets marked the day.

Its almost after three years that Congress headquarters saw the presence of veteran Congress leaders who used to be a part of former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhis core teams: Motilal Vohra, Ahmed Patel, Ambika Soni, Kamal Nath, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Manmohan Singh, Ashok Gehlot, Sheila Dikshit, to name a few.

Its a historical day; a day of celebration and utsav for Congress workers. A new chapter is being added to history with Rahul as president. Thousands and thousands of Congress workers have been waiting for this day as he will lead the party with a new energy, said Randeep Singh Surjewala, in-charge, Communication, AICC, immediately after the nomination was filed.

Rahul has had a tough life as a Gandhi scion. After all, he belongs to one of the world's most powerful political families. With Jawahar Lal Nehru for a grandfather, Indira for a grandmother and Rajiv for a father, Rahul has been carrying a heavy burden of expectations on his shoulder. The nation has not been very kind in assessing him vis-a-vis his predecessors.

While Nehru led the party in the first years after Independence with almost unanimous support of the majority of the masses, Indira had a turbulent relationship with the people. Yet, she steered the party into becoming the family-centric, omnipotent political entity that it became, investing the family with unprecedented powers. Rahul's father, Rajiv, an accidental prime minister, continues to hold the record of leading his party to a sweeping majority that will be hard for anybody to replicate. In the 1984 Lok Sabha election, held after Indira's assassination, Rajiv led his party to 404 out of 533 seats.

As if coming into this legacy is not enough, Rahul has the serious challenge of rebuilding a party that has, in the past few years, reached its nadir. His task is compounded by the fact that the field is not easy. He faces the biggest political juggernaut of our time: Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Anything thats stagnant cant progress. The Congress is over 100 years old. Rahul, as the new leader, will bring a new blood and vigour into the organisation. Leadership is all about how one takes people forward, how one leads the team. And, he will prove it, said senior Congress leader Ambika Soni.

Immediate challenges

The immediate challenge before Rahul is to continue leading the Congress from front in the Gujarat Assembly elections. When he eventually takes over as Congress president, alliances will be a major challenge. Overhauling the party cadre through internal restructuring, strengthening and restructuring the Congress units at the state level and how efficiently he deals with the old guard of the party are some immediate and long-term challenges.

The immediate challenge or task before Rahul ji is Gujarat election, where hes leading from front. Instead of making personal attacks like Modi, hes taking up issues," Sharmistha Mukherjee, Delhi Congress spokesperson and daughter of Pranab Mukherjee told Firstpost. "For example, he questioned why Gujarat ranks so low in Human Development Index. Unlike the BJP, where veterans are pushed into Margdarshak Mandal, senior leaders in Congress are actively involved in policy making. Today, before filing nomination, Rahul ji met former president Pranab Mukherjee and former prime minister Manmohan Singh to seek their blessings. This is good sanskar."

Prior to visiting AICC headquarters, Rahul met Mukherjee, who blessed him with flowers and put a tilak on his forehead.

Sharmistha added, Congress is a party with continuity, change and evolution. Were rooted in our traditions and no drastic change will occur. Rahul ji may make his team, but seniors will play an important role. It will be a good team of young leaders and a combination of young blood and experiences of old generation.

Enthusiasm among youth

It wasnt just the senior leaders and Congress workers who gathered at the headquarters to celebrate Rahuls nomination: There were also members from Sewa Dal, Youth Congress (YC) and students wing National Students Union of India (NSUI).

Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh aptly described Rahuls elevation as euphoric and said, Its a dawn of young India. Hell make a good prime minister.

The younger generation in Congress party as well as in its affiliated bodies feels that barring Rahul, no other leader at present has a pan-India appeal. Referring to Rahuls tenure as Congress general secretary, the national media in-charge of NSUI, Neeraj Mishra said, First thing he did after becoming the general secretary was democratise NSUI and YC. His vision helped identify leadership in NSUI. Earlier, office bearers were appointed directly. This system gave opportunity to many of us whore not from any political background, but proved ourselves by working in our respective areas, to be a part of Congress and work further. Rahul jis vision and leadership will further strengthen the party. He told us last month that whether one holds a post or not, should strive to carry forward India's constitutional values.

Political analyst Neerja Chowdhury summed it up: Much will depend on how Rahul brings generational change at all levels; how he projects young leaders in the party as faces during the forthcoming elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh in 2018. Working in tandem with fresh young faces and the experiences of old guard will be a challenge.

Read complete coverage of Gujarat Elections 2017 here
It was instructive to watch Rahul Gandhi file his nomination papers at the party headquarters on Monday with a large tilak on his forehead and the frame of Mahatma Gandhi hanging from a wall behind him.

Delhi: Rahul Gandhi at AICC HQ,files nomination for Congress President pic.twitter.com/QUHFFtHNXb  ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017

The Gandhi dynast, who could take over as Congress president the by the end of day if no one else steps up to challenge his nomination, recently responded to controversy around his religion by declaring: "Our faith is our personal matter. We are not required to show a certificate to anybody in this regard. We do not want to trade on this issue. 'Hum is cheez ki dalali nahi karna chahte' (we are not brokers of religion). We do not want to use it politically."

So Rahul tells voters that he is disinterested in doing "dalali" over religion. Rahul takes the moral high ground in claiming that he doesn't want to make a public spectacle of his faith or indulge in politics over it. And then Rahul steps into the AICC headquarters at 24 Akbar Road sporting a huge tilak on his forehead, knowing well that the cameras would be panned on him as Gujarat election dates draw near.

Also, let us not forget that Rahul's solemn declarations on keeping politics and religion "separate" emerged after he embarked on an extended temple run, visiting well over 20 shrines as part of his poll campaign. This dichotomy isn't just opportunism ahead of an Assembly election. These mixed messages reflect a cognitive dissonance that defines the very nature of Rahul's Congress. They speak of an ideological and structural failure that the grand old party has steadfastly refused to address.

Let us first take a look at Congress's ideological confusion. The Congress accuses the BJP of indulging in strident 'Hindutva' politics. It doesn't matter whether the charge carries any truth, or not. The point is that critics and political rivals identify BJP with a certain kind of ideology. The BJP, for better or for worse, has consciously occupied an ideological space. BJP leaders, workers, supporters, the larger electorate, media, critics and political rivals are aware of that positioning, and accordingly modify their behaviour.



As Rahul takes the reins, is he clear about the direction in which he wants to steer the party? What does the Congress stand for? Do the Congress cadres have a clear idea about the party ideology? Can its leaders deliver a consistent, coherent message? Do the voters have a clear understanding of Congress' political positioning? There are no clear answers to each of these questions.

As a fourth-generation dynast, Rahul has had some unparalleled advantages. He grew up in a family that defined the nation's power structure for the better part of India's journey post-Independence. He was assured of party presidentship virtually at birth, and has had the space and time (perhaps too much time) to get groomed for the role. One would imagine that by now he has a very clear idea about the role that is demanded of him.

If he does, the dynast has been very careful not to let it show. Given his family lineage, the Gandhi scion had a marvelous chance to position himself as the face of a syncretic India but he incredibly stumbled on a sacred thread to expose himself as a casteist and Brahmin supremacist, all the while trying to stitch up a rainbow coalition in Gujarat with leaders of a Dalit movement and upper-caste agitators.

This ideological confusion within Congress ranks rises ultimately from a paucity of leadership and bankruptcy of ideas. Directionless Rahul doesn't know whether he should align with the subaltern movement, back a constitutionally untenable upper-caste quota demand, canvass for minority votes or visit temples to show that he is a greater Hindu than Narendra Modi. In his dearth of ideas, the Congress boss has decided to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.

He is a Dalit leader one day, Patidar leader the next; critic of BJP's 'Hindutva' politics one day, ardent temple visitor the next. It is evident that Rahul lacks the spunk, skill and vision to lead India's oldest political party in the world's largest democracy but he must manfully accept the job because he was to the manor born, and Congress won't allow a more meritorious leader to replace a Gandhi at the helm. It wasn't by accident that Mahatma Gandhi was adorning the wall behind the dynasts' back when he was filing his papers. It was specifically designed to portray Rahul as a torchbearer of the Mahatma legacy, not as a fourth-generation dynast. The placement of the picture was an admission that the party remains deeply troubled by charges that Congress has been reduced to a family vessel: An issue that Shezad Poonawalla, the high-profile rebel, has been quite vocal about of late.

Party insider tells me dynasty advisors are considering fielding a "Dummy Candidate" against Shehzada !! Really, why this farce?? The well wisher also adds "Shehzad dont become a second Safdar Hashmi by reaching INC office today!" What a Black Day in the history of my party! pic.twitter.com/t1Sk59x6tg  Shehzad Jai Hind (@Shehzad_Ind) December 4, 2017

#RaGaSelected a fact accepted by no less than Anand Sharma...everything was fixed 4 years ago I told u many sympathised with me but forced to be with the King  Wait for more.. some going to ECI & some to court I am told https://t.co/EDESwAk6lM  Shehzad Jai Hind (@Shehzad_Ind) December 4, 2017

It was also instructive to witness senior Congress leaders, one after the other, swear by Rahul and insist that winning elections isnt the true measure of leadership. The Congress might dress up its compulsion as a choice, but it would do well to remember that voters are under no such obligation.

Read complete coverage of Gujarat Elections 2017 here

Read complete coverage of our Congress president election here
The much talked about change of guard in India's oldest political party is now happening. As Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination for the post of party president on Monday, heralding a generational shift in the leadership of party, the day also marked the beginning of the end of Congress' longest-serving high command's tenure, which has steered the party for 19 years, including the 10 when it led the UPA government. The official handover, however, is yet to occur.

The election process

According to the election process laid out in the party's constitution, the Congress' Central Working Committee (CWC) meets and decides to elect its chief. Once the notification is published, interested candidates are then required to file their nominations before the party's Central Election Committee within a given deadline, which ended on Monday at 3 pm. Party units and members of the CWC then file nominations, espousing the candidate of their choice. The committee then scrutinises the nominations, this time on 5 December.

The same day, a list of valid nominations will be published. The election process also has a window for withdrawal of candidature until 11 December. Later that day, the final list of candidates contesting the election will be published, and if necessary, the casting of votes will be held on 16 December. The votes will be counted and result will be declared on 19 December

Sources say Rahul only candidate in fray

The grand old party seeking a revival in its electoral fortunes is all set to elect Rahul to take over the party's reins from his mother Sonia Gandhi, as he remains the sole candidate in the fray. The election for choosing a new Congress president saw 89 sets of nominations being filed on Monday: All likely in support of Rahul as the new party chief.

Talking to the media after the process for filing nominations ended, Mullappally Ramachandran, returning officer for the election, said "89 nominations had been filed on Monday, the last day." He did not give further details and said these will be given after the scrutiny of nominations is done on Tuesday.

However, sources said all the nominations were for "one candidate", IANS reported.

The office for conducting the party's presidential election had distributed a total of 90 nominations. Sources said that one form was not filed apparently because it did not have signatures of the stipulated 10 delegates.

Ramachandran said the nomination forms had been signed by 890 delegates. The 47-year-old, who will be the sixth Nehru-Gandhi scion to helm the party, filed papers at the Congress headquarters amid cheers and celebrations by party leaders and workers. His mother and incumbent party president Sonia signed the first nomination paper for Rahul's election. The maximum number of nominations were from Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populous state.

Rahulwho was appointed Congress vice-president in January 2013was accompanied by a host of senior party leaders, including former prime minister Manmohan Singh, who called Rahul the "darling" of the party. Party leaders exuded confidence that he will carry forward the party's traditions and lead it to victory in the next general elections in 2019.

"Rahul ji has been the darling of the Congress...Rahul will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party," the normally taciturn Singh told reporters at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters after Rahul filed his papers.

While there were several nomination forms filed on behalf of Rahul, the Congress vice-president personally filed two sets. The first nomination form was filed by him and proposed by Sonia, Motilal Vora, Ahmed Patel, Mohsina Kidwai, Kamal Nath, Sheila Dikshit, Ashok Gehlot, Mukul Wasnik, Tarun Gogoi and V Narayanasamy. All leaders except Sonia were present.

The second nomination form was proposed by Manmohan, Siddaramaiah, Oscar Fernandes, P Chidambaram, Sushilkumar Shinde, Jyotiraditya Scindia, T Subbarami Reddy, Jaipal Reddy, Mukul Sangma and Anand Sharma.

Three more forms were filed on behalf of Rahul by other senior leaders. These included Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ambika Soni, Amarinder Singh, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, CP Joshi, Selja, KC Venugopal and Salman Khurshid, besides Janardan Dwivedi, Shivraj Patil, Meira Kumar, Harish Rawat, Avinash Pande and BK Hariprasad.

Rahul arrived at the Congress headquarters around 10.30 am and filed his papers around 11 am. "We are very happy that Rahul ji has filed his nomination... I am confident that Rahul will turn out a very successful leader. And under his leadership, the Congress will regain power," Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said.

Before filing his nomination, Rahul sought the blessings of former president Pranab Mukherjee, Manmohan Singh and his mother.

Controversy over Mani Shankar Aiyar's remark

The filing of nomination was not without controversy. Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar invoked the Mughal dynasty in the Congress presidential election and Prime Minister Narendra Modi latched on, calling it "Aurangzeb Raj".

"When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any election happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go to the heir," Aiyar said, retorting to the 'dynasty' jibes of the BJP on Rahul's election.

"But in a democracy elections are held. I openly invite (Shehzad) Poonawalla to file the nomination and contest," Aiyar said, adding that nobody would have heard of Poonawalla earlier.

Aiyar was replying to a question about BJP's criticism following Maharashtra Congress leader Poonawalla alleging that election for Congress president was a sham and Rahul Gandhi's elevation was rigged.

Modi was quick to pounce on Aiyar's remarks. Addressing an election rally in Gujarat, Modi said: "Aiyar, who never shies away from showing loyalty to one family, proudly said: When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any elections happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go the son. I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the well-being of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," he said.

The prime minister also said that the Congress leaders admit that it is not a party but a "kunba" (family).

Congress' defence on BJP's 'dynastic politics' barb

Congress leaders hailed the day as "historic", while the BJP took jibes on the 'farcical election procedure' noting that there were no other claimants to the post to challenge Rahul.

The Congress, however, defended itself against the BJP's attacks.

Taking a swipe at the BJP, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said several parties, including the ruling party which has no history of uniting the country, had issues with the nomination.

"There cannot be a bigger joke than the current ruling party talking about democracy. Those who dont believe in democracy, in people, those who have to trust in machines to win votes are preaching to us on democracy," he said.

Anand Sharma described it as a "historic moment" and said there are challenges before the country as the government had failed to deliver. "Rahul will accept the responsibility in continuity with the established traditions of the Congress. We want to make this absolutely clear that it is a conscious and considered decision of the Congress party," he said.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said Modi was "suffering from Rahul Gandhi phobia".

Surjewala also said that Modi's "love for Shehzad, Shahzada (BJP chief Amit Shah's son Jai Shah) and Shourya (National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's son)" is well known to the world.

"But will Modi ji tell when he will answer the questions of his own senior party leaders like Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha?" he asked.

Rahul's much awaited appointment also comes just ahead of the elections in Gujarat, which goes to the polls on 9 and 14 December. According to this Firstpost article, the Assembly elections, will be seen as a tough testing ground for Rahul, who has suffered blame for previous electoral routes.

In 2014, the Congress was reduced to its lowest-ever tally of 44 seats in the Lok Sabha and has since suffered a series of electoral defeats at the state level.

With inputs from agencies
School choice got a boost when the Senate passed its tax reform bill early on Saturday morning. But what else went down thats connected to K-12?

Weve already gone over the key features of the tax legislation when it comes to education. Among other things, the Senate wants to double to $500 the deduction teachers can take for money they pay out of their own pockets for classroom supplies. And the deductions taxpayers can take for state income taxes would go away, a potential game-changer for education funding because it could put pressure on states to reduce their tax burden, and therefore the amount of money they can use to fund schools.

Lawmakers still need to go to conference to hash out the differences between the House and Senate tax bills before voting on that final versions on their respective chambers. We identified some key differences between the two bills last week, although overall the number of key differences between the two bills on K-12 has shrunk as the process has moved ahead. The GOP is hoping to have a tax bill signed by President Donald Trump by the end of the year.

There were a few interesting moments from that very long overnight debate you may have missed. Lets review them.

The Ephemeral Amendment Favoring Religious Instruction

On Friday, an amendment from Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, was attached to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This amendment would have allowed those paying tuition at qualified organizations providing religious instruction to treat 25 percent of that cost as a charitable donation, and therefore a deduction on their taxes.

By Saturday morning when the bill passed 51-49, however, that amendment was excluded from the bill. In fact, it was literally crossed out by lawmakers as they feverishly worked to finish the legislation:

At least 30 percent of the instructional time at those organizations would have had to have been devoted to religious teaching in order for parents paying the tuition to claim the benefit. In essence, it would have treated tuition payments to such organization as a tax-advantaged cost for some families, at least partially.

Hatch had offered an similar amendment earlier in the Senates consideration of the bill, but it took several days for that amendment to be included (and then taken out of) the tax bill. Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Tim Scott, R-S.C., also proposed amendments to boost school choice in some form. Both of them were unsuccessful.

529 Plan Change

Late Friday night, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, proposed a successful amendment to the tax bill that would change 529 college savings plans. Cruzs amendment would allow up to $10,000 annually in 529 plans to be used for K-12 expenses, including for private school tuition.

Today the Senate voted to adopt my amendment which will expand the popular 529 college savings plans so that parents can save for K-12 elementary and secondary school tuition, including educational expenses for homeschool students. -> https://t.co/piKvARkAGz pic.twitter.com/oSSeqhpoeM  Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) December 2, 2017

The House had already approved the same provision in its tax bill. So as GOP lawmakers in the two chambers get together and hash out a final bill, it looks all but certain that this change will be included in any tax bill lawmakers send to President Donald Trump.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and other school choice supporters have applauded the move by creating a new form of tax-advantaged money parents can spend at the schools of their choice. But some are critical that using 529 plans to boost K-12 choice wont do much to help low-income families.

The Link to DeVos

Speaking of DeVos, she didnt have a vote on the GOP tax plan. But she came up during the final debate because of a private college in Michigan.

Hillsdale is a prominent institution of higher education among political conservatives , and has been for some time. DeVos brother, Erik Prince, attended Hillsdale, and the DeVos family foundation has provided financial support for Hillsdale.

A proposed amendment from Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., would have exempted Hillsdale College from the bills tax on college and university endowments. Toomey argued on the Senate floor that because Hillsdale does not accept federally backed student financial aid, it should be rewarded by not getting taxed.

However, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, successfully proposed an amendment to strip out the tax break for Hillsdale. Merkeley used the DeVos familys financial support for the school as a way to attack Toomeys proposal.

The Senate just passed my amendment keeping Devos-funded Hillsdale College from getting a special break in the #TaxScamBill . The only bright spot in an otherwise infuriating night.  Jeff Merkley (@JeffMerkley) December 2, 2017

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
Rahul Gandhi is being repackaged. This should happen soon, if reports are to be believed.

Like any smart company that is passionate about its pet, but so-far-failed, product by giving it a new appeal, the Congress is also making a last-ditch effort to salvage the Gandhi brand that has held the party together since its infancy. But make no mistake, there may be very few who expect a miracle for the Congress with Rahul's elevation. Congress' allies and party sympathisers are on wait-and-watch mode before expressing confidence (or discarding) the Gandhi factor.

"In his recent campaign in Gujarat, he showed tenacity  contacting people at the grassroots, but his commitment will only be demonstrated when he is in a position of responsibility," said CPM leader Sitaram Yechury last month.

Even all those years in his capacity as Congress vice-president and while working under mother Sonia Gandhi, who has been Congress president, Rahul had all the powers he needed to govern the party's affairs, whether questioning senior leaders or even the Prime Minister's Office.

Rahul took charge of the party's poll campaigns way back in 2012. But his progress card shows that he hasn't won any elections for the party, nor has he made a mark among his political allies. He was born with the guaranteed position of a future Congress chief and prime ministerial candidate, as was given to the family's three previous generations before him. That is what has taken him so far in the power corridors of his party.

Rahul's key errors in judgement

In Gujarat, where Assembly elections are imminent, Rahul made the tactical mistake of affiliating himself to what many call a "soft Hinduvta" stand  visiting temples. It contradicted starkly with his party's secular image. Rahul walked right into the trap set by his political opponents and proclaimed himself as a sacred thread-wearing Hindu and a Shiva follower, at a time when BJP cornered him using a goof-up at Somnath Temple questioning his religious identity.

He should not have taken the bait, and should have discarded the question as a politically motivated gimmick. He said exactly what his opponents wanted.

Rahul's second mistake was that he is yet to break free from the image that has imprisoned the party for long  the image of a corruption-prone, policy-paralysed and family-centered party that has nothing new to offer to the country. He hasn't yet learned from the reasons behind the party's past defeats and hasn't managed to offer a convincing alternative.

Beyond his new-found popularity on social media, with his wit and unrelenting focus on the man he's pitted against, Narendra Modi, there is no clear strategy that Gandhi can boast of to counter the government's economic or political policies. This is critical when he faces the informed voter who may have lost faith in personality politics.

Gandhi's strategies are more or less the same as what the Congress party has preached for decades. He still talks of loan waivers and freebies, and portrays corporations as enemies of the poor without understanding that unless big industries come up, there isn't much the poor can hope for in an agriculture-dominated Indian economy. The Congress' populist card worked in the past, but won't work in the changed socio-political circumstances.

In the 2014 Union elections and thereafter, the Congress failed to win the people's mandate on account of its past image. Under Rahul's active leadership in polls since 2012, he hasn't shown either the political courage to admit his party's wrongdoings or promise a change.

He has fought tooth and nail against Modi's controversial economic policies such as demonetisation and a flawed roll-out of Goods and Services Tax (GST). But beyond criticising the actions, Gandhi hasn't yet offered credible alternatives to where the Modi-government may have gone wrong on fighting black money or how to implement a better GST structure. Even Congress party intellectuals would not disagree that these are key issues, but a solution is missing.

Similarly, as pointed out in an earlier article, one of the charges Rahul raised against the Modi government was its failure to generate enough jobs, which again is a serious issue. Job creation has been at its lowest in the three-and-a-half years of Modi's rule. Rahul is right in pointing out the problem. But what would Rahul Gandhi, as prime minister, do to generate enough jobs? Is there a well thought out, credible alternative plan to accommodate the millions of workers entering the job market every month?

Rahul also lacks the aggression, the fighter instinct, to take on a powerful orator and master tactician that Modi embodies. His friendly and approachable appeal would make him the darling of social media but will hardly win him votes.

Nevertheless, being the topmost leader of the only national political party that has the potential to at least challenge the BJP and the indomitable Modi-factor in 2019, or at least create a unified Opposition voice, the repackaged version of Gandhi offers some promise in the democracy.
New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's long-delayed elevation as party chief is eventually taking place at a time when Congress faces an "existential crisis", as a party leader put it, and has huge electoral challenges in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Rahul, 47, will be the sixth member of Nehru-Gandhi family to take the top position of the 132-year old party.

The change at the top is coming on the eve of assembly polls in Gujarat and the outcome there would be interpreted in terms of Rahul's ability as a campaigner and vote getter.

But the next round of assembly polls in 2018  first in Karnataka and later in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh  will be absolutely crucial for Rahul Rahul for building the momentum to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha polls. The state elections, with Bharatiya Janata Party as the key rival, will also be first major polls directly under Rahul Gandhi's charge as party chief. Assembly polls will also be held early next year in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.

The challenges for Rahul include fostering a new energy and enthusiasm in the Congress and evolving a new strategy to galvanise the party after a string of electoral losses since the 2014 Lok Sabha debacle. The Congress has to work hard at the grassroots to take on the relentless election machine of BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party chief Amit Shah.

Rahul has to take a call on forging a larger opposition alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls under a "collective leadership" or projecting himself as the alternative against Modi with support of different parties. He was the face of Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Rahul has been perceived as a reluctant politician due to some of his longish trips abroad, the delay in stepping up to the role of party chief, his not taking up a ministerial responsibility in two UPA governments and not properly following through some of the issues he raised.

Of late, he has been able to counter the perception with his sharp and aggressive attacks on Modi and the BJP. A trip to the United States where he had had interactions with think tanks appeared to have done a sea change to the image about him.

In Gujarat, where success will be a big morale-booster for the Congress, Rahul has sought to create a broad social coalition and has forced Modi to react.

Congress' only major success since its debacle in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls has been Punjab while the BJP, in comparison, has tremendously expanded its footprint by winning states it had never done in the past. The BJP is making efforts to expand its base in states it has been weak including West Bengal, Kerala, Odisha and Tamil Nadu.

Another major challenge for Rahul is to revive Congress in Uttar Pradesh, the state that sends the largest contingent of 80 MPs to parliament. Rahul has twice led the party's campaign in the assembly polls but had come a cropper.

The results of the recent local body polls in Amethi and Rae Bareli, the Lok Sabha constituencies of Rahul and his mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, have not been flattering for his image.

Congress has shrunk electorally, being now the fourth player in states such as Bihar, third in states such as West Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu as also Delhi. In the polls held to various assemblies since 2014, it has largely finished third or fourth. Sections, which were strongly with the party including Dalits, have drifted away.

Rahul had been projected as a young leader who understands the language and idiom of the youth but Modi has been more successful in weaning away the section that has large electoral presence. The Congress also has to devise ways to woo the large middle class.

Rahul, who is stepping into shoes of his mother Sonia who helmed Congress for 19 years including 10 as the chief of the party heading the ruling coalition at the Centre, will need to be dexterous in his dealings with allies as also other opposition parties such as the CPI-M.

The crumbling of the ruling alliance in Bihar has been a setback for the party.

Senior leaders like Mamata Banerjee and Lalu Prasad have a comfort level with Sonia and it remains to be seen how Rahul fits into the role.

Within the party, Rahul has to take several decisions including whether to project chief ministerial candidates in Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan and who they will be.

Bringing about unity in faction-ridden state units and making the balance between the "old guard" and the younger aspirants will be other challenges.

Congress had to project nonagenarian Virbhadra Singh as chief ministerial candidate in Himachal Pradesh in the absence of a younger acceptable option.

Congress is now ruling only five states and a union territory and if it loses Gujarat and Karanataka next year, its chances of staging a comeback in 2019 will be further squeezed.

Though Rahul's experiments to democratise the party's youth organisations have not entirely succeeded, he has had some political successes, including forcing the Modi government to go back on its proposed changes in the land acquisition Act.

The concerted opposition attack on the "flawed" implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) as also perception of unease among traders in poll-bound Gujarat has apparently forced the government to extend several concessions.

But the Congress or other opposition parties could not reap political dividends on demonetisation though it caused a lot inconvenience to people.

Though Rahul had promised to "involve people in ways you cannot even imagine now" after the party lost in Delhi in 2013 assembly polls, the party fared far worse in the next polls.

Rahul, who is into his third term as Lok Sabha MP, was made party vice-president in 2013 as a stepping stone to his eventual elevation.
Jaipur: The much-hyped and controversial Criminal Law (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance 2017  which promulgated to protect public servants against probe into on-duty actions and "gagged" the media, triggering national uproar  met a silent death on Monday.

Senior Cabinet Minister Gulab Chand Kataria confirmed that legally, the ordinance has lapsed. Now its fate will be decided on 27 December when a committee meets to discuss it.

Drafted by the state government on 6 September, the ordinance was introduced in the Rajasthan assembly on 23 October.

As per the rule book, an ordinance is valid for 42 days after it gets tabled in the assembly, after which it lapses automatically. Going by this, the gag ordinance lapsed on 4 December.

"Now, the ball is in the select committee's court. If the committee stops it, it will be dropped, and if the committee considers it to be ok, it will be reintroduced," said Kataria, who heads the select committee.

This committee is expected to submit its report in the first week of the next assembly session.

The announcement for the select committee was made on 27 November and its next meeting is scheduled for 27 December.

The ordinance was meant to protect public servants from prosecution for on-duty actions.

The Rajasthan government, via this ordinance, made it a must for judicial magistrates to seek government approval before taking cognizance against former and sitting judges and public servants on complaints filed under CrPC Section 156(3).

Even media was not spared under this ordinance and there were provisions of jail term of up to two years for journalists publishing or broadcasting such complaints which have not been approved by the government.

However, the government, in its defence, said that the gag ordinance aimed at curbing the misuse of CrPC Section 156(3).

As it was protested against from all corners of the country, the state government had to refer it to the select committee, thereby leading to the silent gagging of the "gag bill".
Delivering scathing attacks against Congress and soon-to-be party chief Rahul Gandhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is in Gujarat to campaign for the upcoming election, said that the grand old party always had an animosity for Gujarat and that Gujaratis must decide the destiny of the state by voting on 9 December.

Modi calls Rahul Gandhi's elevation as party president 'Aurangzebi raj'

On the second-day of his two-day visit to poll-bound state, Modi addressed a rally at Malanpada in Dharampur, a Congress bastion. Addressing the gathering, Modi slammed Rahul Gandhi's expected elevation as Congress president, dubbing it as "Aurangzebi raj".

Modi's Aurangzeb jibe came after BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya tweeted out senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar's quote to a TV channel.

Mani Shankar Aiyar does it, again! Compares Congress rule with Mughal Raj! pic.twitter.com/irijmGjWbY  Amit Malviya (@malviyamit) December 4, 2017

The party veteran compared the Congress to Mughal era and about Rahul's elevation said, "Was their an election process to chose Shah Jahan after Jehangir? Or was their a poll to elect Aurangzeb after Shah Jahan?" Within 42 minutes of airing these quotes, Modi and the BJP caught on to the faux pas and attacked the Congress election process as a sham. At his rally, the prime minister also attacked the Congress for its dynastic politics.

Modi said, "Mani Shanker Aiyar, who was a minister in the Congress government said 'did elections happen during Mughal rule? After Jahangir, Shahjahan came, was any election held? After Shahjahan it was understood that Aurangzeb would be the leader'. Does the Congress accept that it is a one family party? We don't want this Aurangzebi Raaj (Aurangzeb's rule)....For us, country comes first, 125 crore people of this country are our high-command."

Rahul Gandhi is all set to take over as the Congress president next week and he has filed his nomination papers on Monday for the post amid opposition jibes over dynasty politics, in a contest with no one else in the fray.

At a campaign in Valsad, without directly referring to the National Herald case, in which Rahul Gandhi got bail, Modi said, "Congress has gone bankrupt, as it is going to make a person who is out on bail in corruption case its president."

"You (the UPA government) could not even handle Kashmir. But Sardar did yeomen service by unifying all rajas in India. Morarji fought for Prime Ministership. But he was jailed and thrown out like dirt," Modi said while slamming dynasty politics in Congress.

Modi reminds Congress of Uttar civic polls defeat

Attacking Congress over the poll rout that the party faced in recently-concluded Uttar Pradesh civic election, Modi said that the Congress has been wiped out in the state. "The people of Uttar Pradesh have now recognised the Congress and have wiped out them out, who ruled the state through five dynasties. Now, the Congress has accepted that they cannot harm Modi in 2019 and now they don't have anywhere to go," the prime minister said in Dharampur.

"So, their target is to malign Gujarat. The Congress has always made people fight against people, tribal against tribal, educated against uneducated, communities and so on. But the people of Gujarat have rejected such a disruptive party," Modi said at the rally.

'Congress against the people of Gujarat'

Raking up corruption in the Congres, Modi asked the crowd whether they were angry because of demonetisation. The crowd shouted 'no'.

"It is only Congress which is angry due to the note ban as they have lost their opportunity to loot the poor in India. They cry because I have acted against them. I am here for the poor. Every money in India is for the poor, adivasis, Dalits, farmers and workers."

Referring to the temple visits of the Gandhi scion in Gujarat, Modi said, "Look at the strength of the land of Sardar and Mahatma Gandhi, that after 70 years they have started visiting places like Somnath mandir. But people won't be fooled by that. There is a conspiracy to insult Gujarat and Gujarat won't tolerate."

"The Congress dynasty which has reigned in Uttar Pradesh for the past five decades, but have we ever maligned them, insulted them? Insulted other states? But not a single day passes when every Congress leader curses Gujarat. What is our fault? They cursed Sardar Patel. What was his fault? That he worked for the good of the country?"

"Do these people defame Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and West Benagl? But Congress used to defame and insult Gujarat. Every Congress leader usued to at least insult Gujarat once a day," Modi said in the Dharmapur rally.

Continuing in the same vein, Modi said, "Indira Gandhi had our Morarji Desai jailed for months. Why such animosity for Gujarat? Gujarat should teach them a lesson that they stop insulting Gujarat. Gujarat has never been on anybody's mercy."

Congress is anti-OBC: Modi

Alleging the Congress of not doing anything for the Other Backward Castes (OBC), the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), Modi said, "All the previous governments did not do anything for these communities. As soon as our government was formed, we granted constitutional status to the OBC commission. Congress had halted that bill in the Rajya Sabha. I don't have to go and learn what backward living is."

"These people talk a lot of OBCs.. but I want to tell the OBCs of south Gujarat that Congress is lying and renegading on promises. Our MP met Manmohan Singh on giving constitutional status to OBC commission but nothing came out of it," Modi said in Dharmapur. The prime minister further added, "Why did the Congress not give Constitutional Status to the OBC Commission? We got a bill but when we did so, they stalled it in the Rajya Sabha. This anti-OBC Congress should be severely punished by the people."

"Not only did the Congress ignore the healthcare infrastructure in tribal areas, there was no arrangements for ambulances. We changed both these things- today there are better healthcare services and the 108 ambulance service is active," said the prime minister.

"Why has the Congress stopped saying BJP is anti-Muslim? Earlier, they would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing in this election, where they are going. Unfortunately for them, Muslims know their real nature," Modi said in Dharampur.

You decide Gujarat's destiny on 9 December: Modi

"On 9 December, you have to decide the destiny of Gujarat. The vote is against those who hate Gujarati people, Gujarat state, its name itself. 9 December is the date when you can teach a lesson to these people who are defaming Gujarat," Modi added, referring to the first phase of voting for the Gujarat Assembly elections.

Attacking the party over several corruption cases, Modi said, "Have you ever read in newspapers that Modi took away so much money for himself? For his brother, for his relatives? Whereas what was on the other side  scams of loot in coal deal, helicopter deal, why? Since Modi is in Delhi, he has stopped all such loot. Instead, now people ask what did Modi bring in," Modi asserted.

He also slammed the Congress for opposing demonetisation, "It has been 12 months since note ban, why are Congress party's tears not drying?" he asked at a rally in Bhavnagar. "Congress is angry with me for demonetisation. Tell me are you angry with me for demonetisation?" Without waiting for the crowd's response, Modi went to say, "The Congressmen are worried that their scam money, corrupt money has gone. They are angry that Modi looted us. But remember all the looters of the country, Modi will extract every penny out from you and use it for the common man of the country. The money belongs to the country."

Modi also added the Congress learnt disruptive politics from the British colonials. "Congress is trying to create fights between brothers, between cities and villages, between religions and castes, whatever chasms that they could create, Congress party has learned this sin from the British Raj rather well."

The prime minister said even the Congress has accepted that the BJP is not an anti-Muslim party, as unlike in the past elections, it is not branding BJP leaders communal this time.

"If you remember 2002, 2007, 2012 (polls), all Congress leaders would brand us as communal and anti-Muslim. But before the 2017 polls, no leader is saying that BJP is communal. This means the Congress has also accepted that the abuse they were hurling against the BJP was false and was meant for vote bank politics," he said.

Urging the gathered crowd to vote for BJP, Modi said, "I can see the target of achieving 150 seats for the BJP being fulfilled right in front of my eyes. You will be deciding the fate of Gujarat on the 9th and you will have to punish the people who have disliked Gujarat."

Polling for the two-phase elections in the state, which has a total of 182 seats, will take place on 9 and 14 December. The votes for Gujarat Assembly elections will be counted on 18 December. Eighty-nine seats of Saurashtra and south Gujarat region are going to polls in the first phase, while the remaining 93 seats in the central and northern region would vote in the second phase.

With inputs from agencies

Click here for detailed coverage of Gujarat Assembly Election 2017
Vadodara: Rajya Sabha MP Sharad Yadav said on Monday that leaders of the opposition parties would be meeting in the next two days to discuss a strategy to prevent the tampering of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in the forthcoming Gujarat elections.

Talking to the newsmen in Vadodara late Monday evening, Yadav said that it follows the outcome of civic polls held in Uttar Pradesh where the ruling BJP bagged 14 of the 16 mayoral seats as well as a sizeable chunk of the Nagar Palika and Panchayat posts.

To support his claim, Yadav circulated a statement giving details of the BJP's performance in the 16 municipal corporations where EVMs were used and the Nagar Parishad and Panchayat seats where ballot papers were used.

"There has been huge noise around the wave of Modi and Yogi being the cause of the BJP's victory in Uttar Pradesh civic polls. Fact is that wherever voting was done through EVMs, BJP has won and wherever ballot papers were used, the BJP has lost," said Yadav.

He criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for comparing the elevation of Rahul Gandhi as Congress president to the rule of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb.

Yadav said that Gandhi did not run after power. "He could have become PM in 2004 and 2009 if he wanted to. I was witness to it," Yadav said.

He slammed the prime minister for not being able to provide jobs to seven crore youths as he had promised.

"Three and a half years have passed and only seven lakh jobs have been created. The PM has not provided 150 percent more than the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) to farmers nor has he provided a home to a single tribal in the tribal-dominated areas of Gujarat," said Yadav.

He also alleged that tribals were being subjected to police atrocities and cases being registered against them on the eve of the assembly polls.

Meanwhile, Congress leaders from Gujarat met Chief Election Commissiner (CEC) AK Joti in Ahmedabad two days ago and urged him to deploy adequate security personnel in the sensitive constituencies in the state.

The Congress has also demanded that jammers should be installed at strong-rooms where EVMs will be stored after the polling.
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday hit back at the BJP for its dynasty taunt at Rahul Gandhi, saying they should "first look at their own internal party democracy".

"BJP should first look at their own internal party democracy...It is a classic case of people living in glass houses (throwing stones at others)," he said.

The Lok Sabha member said this in response to questions from the media on the allegation levelled by the BJP on the imminent elevation of Rahul Gandhi to the Congress president post, on a day when he filed his nomination for it.

"Democracy doesn't mean that there necessarily has to be more than one candidate. It means the process should be followed, and at present, it seems there is no opposition to his (Rahul Gandhi's) nomination. And, if there is an opposition, there will be a vote," Tharoor told reporters on the sidelines of an event.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday likened the imminent elevation of Rahul Gandhi to dynastic succession of Mughal rulers, while BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao said "Pidhikaran of the Congress is now complete. Neither the old generation, nor the new generation matters." He termed the entire election process a "mockery of democratic traditions".

Without naming anyone, Tharoor, also obliquely referred to the detractors within the BJP, to make his point.

At the beginning of the press conference, the Lok Sabha member said it was an important day for the Congress, and "it is a beginning of handing over of the torch to a new generation of leadership" in the party.

Earlier in a video message posted on his Twitter handle, he said, "It is in Rahulji, we have exactly the kind of young, dynamic visionary, leader that the nation as a whole needs."

The Congress vice president filed his nomination for the post of party president, heralding a generational shift in the leadership of the grand old party seeking a revival in its electoral fortunes.

The 47-year-old Gandhi scion is set take over the party's reins from Sonia Gandhi, who has steered the party for 19 years, including the 10, when it led the UPA government. Accompanied by a host of senior party leaders, including former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi filed his papers before the party's Central Election Committee.
New Delhi: Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said his government will not allow communal violence in the state even if the BJP tried hard for the same ahead of the assembly polls.

His comments come in the wake of the arrest of BJP MP Pratap Simha near Mysuru, ahead of a Hamnuman Jayanti procession on Sunday. Simha is out on station bail.

"We will not allow any communal violence in our state, however much the BJP tries, ahead of the (assembly) polls. We will deal it with iron hands," Siddaramaiah told reporters here.

The senior Congress leader condemned the behaviour of Simha for allegedly taking the driver's seat and knocking down barricades, causing injury to some police personnel.

Simha and others were taken into preventive custody and later arrested after he along with the organisers allegedly insisted on making changes in the specified route for the Hanuman Jayanti procession, ignoring the advice of the administration.

On being stopped by the police for his preventive arrest yesterday, Simha allegedly took the driver's seat of the vehicle he was travelling in and tried to drive off by knocking down barricades in the area.

Karnataka BJP chief BS Yeddyurappa, however, accused the chief minister of indulging in vendetta politics.

Siddaramaiah said ensuring law and order was the responsibility of the government.

"Therefore, two different routes were chalked out for smooth conduct of Eid Milad and Hanuma Jayanti processions," he said.

The Karnataka chief minister was in the national capital for showing his solidarity with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, who filed his nomination for the party president's post.

Siddaramaiah later made a courtesy visit to Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu and Union commerce minister Suresh Prabhu.

Exhuding confidence of winning the forthcoming 2018 assembly polls, the Congress leader said the party tickets would be given to those with a high potential to win.

"We will discuss with party workers and decide about ticket distribution. The candidates with winning prospects will be given the priority," he said.

Asked if the BJP's massive victory in Uttar Pradesh civic polls would have an impact on Karnataka, Siddaramaiah said, "The election of local bodies is different from assembly polls. There will not be any impact. We are confident of winning with majority seats".

Siddaramaiah also made it clear that he will contest from the Chamundeshwari Assembly constituency next year.
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has asked BJP's newly elected mayors of the

different municipal corporations of the state to work with full commitment to fulfil promises made to the people.

BJP had earlier swept the mayoral polls winning 14 of the 16 seats on offer.

The newly elected mayors met Adityanath and state BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey at the party office on Sunday in Lucknow.

Speaking on the occasion Adityanath expressed satisfaction over the results and said, "It is indeed a moment of happiness for all of us that the party emerged victorious in the four newly-created municipal corporations."

He told the newly-elected mayors to implement the promises made in the Sankalp Patra (manifesto) "with full commitment", the statement issued by the UP BJP.
Lucknow: The 14 newly elected mayors of Uttar Pradesh's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will call on Prime Mminister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Tuesday, said a party leader.

According to state leaders, BJP's state Organisation Secretary Sunil Bansal would be part of the delegation.

While the meeting is being termed a courtesy call, the prime minister is expected to share with the new mayors, his vision of development of cities.

A source told IANS that Modi will also seek and exchange ideas on how to improve the lot of the cities, improve garbage disposal system, and create more awareness about cleanliness.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and state BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey had met these newly elected mayors in Lucknow on Sunday.

Out of the 16 municipal corporations in Uttar Pradesh that went to polls late in November, the BJP candidates won the mayoral seats in 14, including in Lucknow, Agra, Varanasi, Moradabad, Kanpur and Allahabad.
Lucknow: The state election commission in Uttar Pradesh on Monday strongly refuted an independent candidate's accusations about rigged EVMs used in the just concluded civic body polls.

Independent candidate from Saharanpur, Shabana, who triggered a storm by claiming that she got zero vote despite casting a vote for herself, has been slammed by the poll panel for alleging that the electronic voting machines (EVMs) were "manipulated".

An official of the poll panel on Monday said that the charge was "not only baseless but also mischievous as records show clearly that Shabana polled 87 votes".

Claims by Shabana had gone viral on the social media and were tweeted by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) as proof to back their claims that EVMs had been "tampered with" to help the ruling BJP in the civic polls.

Shabana's husband, Ikram, had initially claimed that there were 11 booths and that the family had voted in booth 388. But the family alleged that there were no votes for her when votes were counted.

Shabana contested from ward no 54 and told the media that EVM tampering had been proved by the fact that she herself did not get her own vote.

In the polls where the Bharatiya Janata Party captured power in 14 of the 16 municipal corporations, the opposition parties have been alleging that the official machinery was misused and the EVMs tampered with to favour the ruling party.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and social activist Prashant Bhushan had cited the case of Shabana in their tweets questioning the electoral process in the urban body polls.
UPDATED The national high school graduation rate has risen to a new all-time high: 84 percent, the fifth straight year of increases, according to data published by the federal government today.

The graduation rate for the high school class of 2015-16 is nearly a whole point higher than the one for the previous years class, which was 83.2 percent , according to the new data from the National Center for Education Statistics . The rate measures the proportion of each freshman class that earns a diploma four years later.

All groups of students showed improvements, a notable feat. The graduation rates for black students and for students who are learning English each rose 1.8 percentage points in one year. The rates for low-income students and Hispanic students each rose 1.5 points since the previous year. Students with disabilities saw a gain of nearly a full percentage point.

This shows we are still heading in the right direction, said Phillip Lovell, the vice president for policy and advocacy at the Alliance for Excellent Education, which works on high school policy issues. You can argue that the pace of improvement is slower than wed like it to be, but there are more graduates this year than last. Thats a good thing.

The fact that all subgroups of students showed gains is super important, Lovell said. We dont want to increase the national grad rate and leave behind kids who are struggling to be served.

Despite the gains, however, there is still cause for concern. Some groups of students are still graduating at far better rates than their peers; there is a gap of more than 14 percentage points between Asian and African-American students, for instance. Low-income students lag behind their overall class by more than six points.

High school students show that they have a long way to go to be ready to succeed in college, too. Every year, large proportions of students fall below the college-readiness benchmark scores on the SAT and ACT. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, known as the nations report card, has shown little progress for high school students .

Just because students are graduating from high school doesnt mean theyre ready for college, Lovell said. So our celebration must be muted. We are clearly doing something right when it comes to getting kids across the line, but were not quite there when it comes to ensuring students are ready for the next step.

What Does a Diploma Mean?

Robert Balfanz, a Johns Hopkins University researcher who has focused on high school graduation and early signs of dropout risk, said that the new rates show real progress for the groups that need progress the most"low-income and minority students, students with disabilities and those learning English. He called the graduation-rate improvements evidence that people are taking this issue seriously, learning what works, and trying to do a good work.

But he said its important that educators and policymakers keep their eye on a key issue: the rigor of the work students are asked to do for their diplomas.

We can devalue anything if we give it away, Balfanz said. We need to be sure these kids are earning honest diplomas.

John Bridgeland, the chief executive officer at Civic Enterprises, which works with several other groups to monitor and report on the high school graduation rate in its annual Building a Grad Nation report, said the new high point is a result of a sustained and aggressive focus on the issue in the last decade. Federal requirements that schools report graduation rates by student subgroup helped shine a spotlight on work that needed to be done, and lead schools to set goals for improvement, he said.

But good national or state graduation rates can also camouflage wide variations among schools. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, a school is considered a low graduation rate school if it fails to graduate two-thirds of its students within four years. The distribution of those schools varies widely from state to state. In 2015, 12 percent of all U.S. high schools were low-graduation rate schools, according to GradNation.

How Real Are the Gains?

Skeptics have raised questions about the national graduation rate, wondering whether a variety of short cuts by high schools might artificially inflate it. One practice some have criticized is credit-recoveryself-paced, often computer-based programs that let lagging students catch up quickly.

News media investigations have found that some schools improve their graduation numbers by not counting some low-performing students in their graduating classes. Others try to get rid of students who are at risk of dropping out by encouraging them to transfer to alternative schools or to be home-schooled. One recent investigation found that a school in Washington D.C. graduated half of its students last year even though they had missed three months of school , too much to have earned diplomas.

The most recent Building a Grad Nation report took on the question of rate inflation, and concluded that its unlikely that the national graduation rate is inflated . But it did find evidence that shortcuts could have pushed the numbers up in six unnamed states.

UPDATED Michael J. Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which studies academic standards and accountability, said that the improvements in student achievement that began to emerge a dozen years ago, with the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, appear to be affecting graduation rates now.

There is a plausible case to be made that the education system is doing a better job for more of these kids, especially for disadvantaged subgroups, he said.

But there is reason to be nervous about the rapid progress in the graduation rate, since requirements for diplomas can be squishy and some high schools decide to make themselves look good by lowering standards, Petrilli said.

At a time when districts and schools are held accountable for raising graduation rates, they have a strong motive to make those standards lower, he said.

Lovell, of the Alliance for Excellent Education, disagreed that accountability is responsible for schools fudging their results.

We should always keep our eye on unintended consequences, he said, but blaming accountability is like blaming the speed limit for a traffic ticket. The purpose of accountability is to identify where we need to be making improvements. Schools shouldnt be taking shortcuts.

The Education Week Research Center contributed to this report.
AP

A former National Security Agency employee pleaded guilty Friday to keeping top-secret US defence material at his home  the latest in a series of breaches involving workers at the nation's largest spy shop.

Nghia Hoang Pho, 67, of Ellicott City, Md., pleaded guilty to willful retention of national defence information, according to federal law enforcement officials.

The guilty plea said that between 2010 and March 2015, Pho removed and retained at his home paper and digital copies of US government documents and writings containing national defence information.

Starting in April 2006, he worked as a developer in the National Security Agency's Tailored Access Operations unit, which is involved in cyber operations.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, but prosecutors are recommending he serve eight years, according to his attorney, Robert Bonsib.

Pho, who was born in Vietnam and is a naturalised US citizen, is free pending his sentencing, which is set for 6 April, Bonsib said. He declined to give further details about the case.

The New York Times quoted unnamed government officials as saying Pho took the classified material home to assist him in reworking his resume. The officials told the newspaper that Pho's home computer was using antivirus software made by Kaspersky Lab, a top Russian software company and that Russian hackers are thought to have exploited the software to steal the documents.

Bonsib declined to answer questions about Kaspersky.

The guilty plea was announced by Stephen Schenning, acting US attorney for the District of Maryland; Dana Boente, acting assistant attorney general for national security; and Gordon Johnson, special agent in charge of the FBI's Baltimore Field Office.

NSA has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years. Most notably, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed a cache of classified material in 2013 exposing US government surveillance programs.

In August 2016, Harold Thomas Martin III, 51, of Glen Burnie, Md., was arrested by the FBI after federal prosecutors said the former NSA contractor illegally removed highly classified information and stored the material in his home and car.

Reality Winner, 25, a former Air Force linguist who worked as an NSA contractor at a facility in Augusta, Ga., was charged in June with copying a classified US report and mailing it to a news organisation.
IANS

Hinting at a possible resumption of a harmonious relationship with China, Google's India-born Chief Executive Sundar Pichai on Sunday said that a lot of the tech giant's work actually helps Chinese companies.

Attending the fourth edition of the Chinese state-run "World Internet Conference" in Wuzhen, near Shanghai, Pichai said that many small and medium-sized businesses in China take advantage of Google to get their products to many other countries outside of China, the South China Morning Post reported.

The Google website and most of the company's products  including YouTube  are banned in mainland China.

Google shut down its Chinese search engine seven years ago after a direct confrontation over Beijing's censorship policies.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and Cisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins also attended the event.

The previous three conferences in 2014, 2015 and 2016 were not attended by such heavyweight US tech executives as Cook or Pichai.

Cook told the event that "the theme of this conference - developing a digital economy for openness and shared benefits - is a vision we at Apple share".

He said that Apple "is proud to have worked alongside" many of its partners in China to help build a community that will join a common future in cyberspace.

Apple this year agreed to Chinese government requests to remove dozens of virtual private network (VPN) apps - services that allow Chinese users to access blocked websites - from its local App Store.

Skype, the calling app, was removed from its mainland App Store this autumn.
PTI

A research by IIT Kharagpur faculty in collaboration with the University of Rochester and ICTS, Bengaluru have paved way for futuristic technology development.

Calling it a path-breaking research, an IIT Kharagpur statement had said that it has opened up possibilities for the development of quantum devices.

Prof Sajal Dhara who joined the Department of Physics at IITKGP in 2016, has discovered along with his collaborators negative mass particles of polaritons which are composed of half-light and half-matter.

Mass of such polaritons thus created is lighter than the mass of an electron by a factor of 0.00001, the statement said.

Prof Dhara and his collaborators at University of Rochester and ICTS (International Centre for Theoretical Sciences) have discovered new insights on the mass of such particles which will lead to a giant leap towards futuristic technology development, the statement said.

The research has been featured in the esteemed Nature Physics journal in their October 2017 issue.

The collaborators involved in this work are Dr. C Chakraborty, Dr. K M Goodfellow, Dr. L Qiu, Dr. T A O Loughlin, Prof G W Wicks, Prof A N Vamivakas, all from University of Rochester and Prof Subhro Bhattacharjee from ICTS which is a centre of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).

Elaborating on the research, the statement said, scientists can artificially create a combined particle state that is made of half-light and half-matter, known as polaritons.

Light is an electromagnetic wave but it also shows particle properties with zero mass. On the other hand, matters are made of atoms with a certain mass, the statement said.

"The area of research is itself a promising field for the development of a future generation of technologies at room temperature," he said.

The aim is to look for a particle other than an electron to build advanced devices. This will witness a giant leap from smart electronic to smart polaritonic devices promising to increase manifold the speed and storage capacity at which tomorrows devices like laptops and smartphones work.

Polaritonics is an intermediate regime between photonics and sub-microwave electronics.

Dhara has received substantial funding from MHRD, ISIRD (International Society of Invertebrate Reproduction and Development) and the SERB (Science & Engineering Research Board) Ramanujan Fellowship research grant for developing his lab facilities at IIT Kharagpur.

One of the long-term goals of his Nanoscale Optoelectronics lab (set up for understanding the optical, electronic, and quantum properties of novel solid-state nano-structures by nanoscale device design) would be to investigate the light-matter interaction for the development of futuristic technologies and basic science.
PTI

Domestic handset maker Micromax said it expects to clock sales of 6 million units for its Bharat range of affordable smartphones by March next year. The series, which was launched in May this year, comprises six devices. The company has unveiled its latest Bharat 5 and will add one more device in the next few days.

We launched our Bharat range in May and we have sold 3 million handsets under the series. With todays launch and one more device coming in the next few days, we aim to sell 6 million Bharat phones by March 2018, Micromax chief marketing and chief commercial officer Shubhodip Pal told reporters.

The Bharat 5, which was unveiled on 1 December, features 5.2 inch-HD display, 1 GB RAM, 16 GB internal memory (expandable up to 64 GB), 5 MP front and rear cameras, and 5,000 mAh battery. Priced at Rs 5,555, the handset will be available at retail stores from next week.

Data affordability, connectivity and ease of using technology are the three barriers for the users to get a connected experience. We want to connect more Indians to the internet and Bharat series addresses all these three issues at an affordable price, Pal said.
tech2 News Staff

Barely two weeks after the launch of company's flagship, the OnePlus 5T, the Chinese smartphone brand is set to launch the Star Wars Limited Edition variant of the phone in India. The new variant which was announced on Saturday at Comic-Con Bangalore finally has a sale date.

Similar to the launch of the OnePlus 5T, the company has arranged for a screening of the launch event set for 7 pm on 14 December at IMAX Wadala, Mumbai. The Star Wars Limited Edition variant has been arranged courtesy of the brand's association with the franchise's awaited 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' movie. OnePlus in a statement said that fans may begin buying tickets for the launch event exclusively on Paytm beginning 7 December for Rs 999.

As per the OnePlus statement, sales for the OnePlus 5T Star Wars Limited Edition will begin on 15 December across all of OnePlus' channels which include Amazon India website and well the company's e-commerce website oneplusstore.in. The company will also allow sales at the company's experience zones in Noida and Bangalore.

Going by the teasers of the new variant, the Star Wars Limited Edition of the phone features a white back with the Star Wars text graphic placed towards the bottom. The lock button wears a red finish which contrasts against the white back. The volume keys also have a black paint finish which makes the variant look distinct from the base variant of the OnePlus 5T.

In terms of specifications, the OnePlus 5T features a 6.0-inch FHD+ Optic AMOLED display panel with 18:9 aspect ratio and 1,080 x 2,160 resolution updating the screen to match the near bezel-less design that has gripped the smartphone industry in 2017. The display will be protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass 5. Similar to the OnePlus 5, the company has packed a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset with an octa-core processor clocked at up to 2.45 GHz along with Adreno 540 GPU to handle graphics-intensive tasks. OnePlus 5T will come in two variants, the first one with 6 GB RAM and 64 GB storage while the second variant will come with 8 GB RAM and 128 GB internal storage.

The OnePlus 5T retails at Rs 32,999 for the 6 GB RAM and 64 GB storage variant and at Rs 38,999 for the 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage variant. There are no indications about the pricing of the Star Wars Limited Edition phones though. We will find out soon.
IANS

Samsung has refuted reports that a "Microsoft Edition" of its flagship devices Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+ exists somewhere on this planet.

"Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, and Galaxy Note 8 are available in the Microsoft online and retail stores with a unique Microsoft experience which ensures their customers a best-in-class productivity experience. There is not a 'Microsoft Edition' brand of any Samsung Galaxy products," Windows Central reported, quoting a Samsung representative.

It has now turned out that the reports were part of a promotional campaign to get people to visit Microsoft stores.

The reports of the launch of a special "Microsoft Edition" Galaxy S8 surfaced for several days following their commercial debut.

In November, Microsoft started selling Samsung Galaxy Note 8 from its online store that comes packed with pre-installed apps like virtual assistant Cortana, Word, Excel, OneNote and Outlook.

Notably, Galaxy S8 and S8+ have been immensely successful in rebuilding Samsung's image as a smartphone manufacturer after the Note 7 debacle.

Driven by Galaxy S8 and S8+ sales, Samsung pipped Apple to grab the top spot in the global smartphone sales to end users (by vendor) in the third quarter of 2017, market research firm Gartner said last week.
tech2 News Staff

For those of us who were born in the 1980s, Computer Science as a subject may have sounded exciting when we were first introduced to the machines. But that excitement somehow drowned out because even in the early 90s computer monitors at least here in India were still monochrome, expensive and added little value to our daily lives, not enough for us to even call them practical in any way imagined.

But as with everything else and the dawn of the internet, things have changed quite a bit. Computers have now become smaller and personal and are even palm-sized in the form of smartphones with their own operating systems. So where do we go from here?

Well, todays Google Doodle is a good reminder of how the past is not exactly the past and how we need to change the way we learn to prepare for the future. Code is all around us and its high time we started educating kids about the same.

With that todays Google Doodle is all about helping kids learn to code, by breaking it down in the simplest way possible, using carrots and a furry (not to mention) hungry little rabbit.

Googles first coding doodle ever, is fairly simple for an adult to understand, but also makes sense to kids to help them build the foundations of what they will learn in the near future.

Everyone knows that rabbits love carrots. So it easy to guess that your objective is to create an action using a code, one that can be easily completed by filling in the missing blocks to complete the action.

The doodle is a part of Computer Science Education Week where three teams have come together to create a Doodle thats not only fun but helps kids learn to code as well.

Googles Doodle team tied up with Google Blocky team and even some researchers from MIT Scratch to come up with this fun doodle.

Champika Fernando one of the MIT projects collaborators explains why they did it:

My first experience with coding was in a free after-school program back in the eighties when I was nine years old. We programmed a little green turtle to move around and draw lines on a black screen."

That programming language was called Logo.

In the 1960s, long before personal computers, Seymour Papert and researchers at MIT developed Logo  the first coding language designed for kids. With Logo, children could program the movements of a turtle, giving them the opportunity to explore ideas in math and science. Papert and his colleagues envisioned that computers could eventually be used by all children as a powerful tool for learning. They saw coding as a way for kids to develop confidence and fluency with a piece of powerful, modern, and one-day ubiquitous technology.

With todays Doodle  the first coding Doodle ever  we celebrate fifty years of coding languages for kids by Coding for Carrots. In the interactive Doodle, you program and help a furry friend across 6 levels in a quest to gather its favourite food by snapping together coding blocks based on the Scratch programming language for kids.

As Fernando explains, Scratch (the programming language) too was developed at MIT and comes from Seymour Paperts ideas about kids and computers. It certainly does not appear as boring (it may have been exciting for those born in the 80's but not today) as Logo (which was perceived about 50 years ago) so it will be better at teaching kids how to code.

The director of communications at Scratch Team also said that computers are used in every aspect of our lives, This week, millions of people around the world can and will have their first experience with coding. It makes me happy to think of all of the nine-year-olds who will get their first coding experience playing with todays Doodle. My hope is that people will find this first experience appealing and engaging, and theyll be encouraged to go further. In some ways, its very different from my first coding experience many years ago, but I hope it will be just as inspiring and influential for them.

For kids today, the new Google Doodle and Scratch sure seems like a win-win.
Asheeta Regidi

This article is Part 4 of a multi-part series explaining the recently issued white paper on data protection in India. The responses to the white paper will help in the formulation of Indias future data protection laws. You can read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Any right, even a fundamental right, is subject to restrictions. These are set out to balance two competing needs  the rights of the individuals and the rights and interests of others, such as that of the state. Even the right to privacy is, without doubt, subject to reasonable restrictions. While the Puttaswamy judgment outlined some of these, the data protection law which will embody the main restrictions. These will result in the exemption of certain activities from the ambit of the new law.

Common exemptions

Exemptions from a data protection law will not imply a complete exemption from the protection it offers. Instead, it normally involves a partial waiver of the obligations, with the extent of the waiver to be determined on a case by case basis. The most common exemptions are for data that is already in the public domain, anonymous data and data on deceased persons. Another common exemption is to data with small businesses.

In the internet and technology age, even these traditional notions have to be challenged, in view of the increasing uses and disclosure of data. Apart from these, the White Paper discusses the following specific types of exemptions.

Personal or household purpose

The first exemption often found in various jurisdictions is the processing for personal or household purposes. This may be an individuals personal diary or blog post, which lists information on his friends or relatives. It may be an individuals address book. It may also include data collected through the installation of CCTV cameras in private residences.

An important point raised by the White Paper is the change in obligations involved even with such uses, in view of the tremendous publishing power in the hands of people these days. Consider contact lists on your cell phone, data which is collected by several apps. An app like TrueCaller uses these contact lists to prepare global phone directories, and you have your and your friends data on this public space for anyone to access.

Similarly, consider private collections of data, such as matrimonial lists, which are prepared for circulation among private members, say of a particular society. Such lists could involve details of names, parents names, date of birth, contact details and other details specific to a matrimonial list. So long as the circulation of such lists is limited to the private members, it may fall under this exemption. But if the society decides to publish this data online, say through a blog post, then it is putting highly sensitive data out in the public domain, for anyone to access. This would be a privacy violation.

Journalistic / Artistic / Literary purpose

This exemption is crucial to maintaining a balance between the right to privacy and right to freedom of speech. Journalists often turn to methods which may be legal or covert to obtain data, and this is often justified in the name of protecting the public interest. Journalists gain access to, retain and have the power to disclose huge amounts of data in this process.

Such activities, even covert investigations, are often protected under this head, even in foreign data protection laws. The important aspect is to ensure that the public interest in the issue is justified, and the degree of intrusion is necessary. Consider newspapers which routinely acquire and publish personal data on public figures. Journalists are thus required to be fair and cautious of the information that they actually put out in the public domain through the media, in order to stay within the law.

A new issue in this field is the number of non-media journalists and even citizen journalists, who are officially not the press. Even such activities may be protected under this head if the public interest in the matter is established.

Similar exemptions also apply in the name of art and literature.

Research / Historical / Statistical purpose

The right to privacy should not be such that it impedes innovation and research. Thus, activities like academic research, collecting and recording data are exempted from certain obligations.

An example of this is the census. Under the law, people are obligated to hand over their data to officials collecting, recording and analysing this data. However, the same issue with the publishing power available to people today applies to this exemption as well. Publication of census data is fine, so long as it only involves anonymous, aggregated data, or the results of the analysis of this data. For example, it is fine to know that there are so many males, females and children living in a particular area.

However, a publication of the personal data collected on these people, revealing their names and addresses and other details, becomes a problem. Such census databases have been found online in the past, much like the Aadhaar databases disclosed by government websites. Care thus needs to be taken to ensure that the data in the possession of such authorities is adequately protected.

Investigation and detection of crime

Several laws in India such as the CrPC and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act give the State the power to conduct search and seizure operations for the purpose of investigations. This includes the authority to demand the production of a document by the individual.

Under a data protection law, any collection, use or sharing of data will require the consent of the individual in order to be legitimate. On the face of it, fulfilling obligations like acquiring the consent of an individual before conducting an investigation against him seems to defeat the very purpose of the investigation. Even acts like the right to information (RTI) contain exceptions for providing information which can hamper an ongoing investigation. However, when considering the details of conducting an investigation, this is less obvious.

Consider a police request for CCTV footage from a residence to investigate a crime. Next, consider requests from a tax official to an employer to disclose an employees details for investigating a suspected tax evasion. The general view in other jurisdictions is that the first example is valid under data protection laws, but the second may not. It will be valid only if a sufficient link can be established between the data sought, the investigation required, and the authority of the person seeking the data.

Another consideration to be had is with the databases created to aid such investigations. For example, consider the DNA databank proposed to be created in India, which is to store data from a crime scene, suspects or undertrials, offenders, missing persons and unknown deceased persons. While the DNA bill itself does contain some provisions to ensure privacy, the creation of such databases and safeguarding the data in them is an issue that should be addressed in a data protection law.

National security or security of the state

Exemption of activities by the state includes reasons like national security, security of the state, upholding the sovereignty, maintaining public order, etc. The White Paper does not specifically discuss the SCs clause of preventing dissipation of social welfare benefits, a new clause added to the typical list of state-related exemptions listed above, purportedly introduced to protect state activities like the use of Aadhaar.

Consider the large-scale surveillance being conducted by state agencies like the NSA. Though this activity is in the name of prevention of terrorist activities and crime detection, it is a major invasion of privacy.

Another issue that arises in this respect is with border searches and the data collected at that point. Increasingly invasive border searches are seeing seizure of phones and other devices, copying of all data on them, demanding and storing social media and other passwords, all under the pretext of permitting entry into the nation. When the device of a NASA scientist or a journalist is seized, it brings the amount of sensitive data at risk at such points into focus.

Previously, the exercise of such powers required following a number of legally determined procedures and safeguards. Examples of these are the Supreme Court rules in the telephone tapping case and the rules for interception and monitoring under Section 69 of the IT Act, 2000. Such safeguards are essential to prevent privacy violations such as conducting large-scale surveillance on people and the warrantless seizure of devices at the borders.

Key questions raised in the White Paper

Such new uses of and risks with data need to be taken into consideration while determining the contours of these exemptions.

In view of these issues, the White Paper has sought comments on the following key questions w.r.t exemptions:

What exemptions must be included in the new law? What are the basic safeguards which should apply to these?

What are your views on the specific exemptions discussed here and what should their scope be?

How should terms like journalist, art and literature be defined?

How much protection should be offered to non-media persons?

Is prior judicial approval required before exercising investigative powers? Should there be a subsequent review of such acts?

What are the obligations on law enforcement agencies to protect personal data in their possession? How can it be ensured that such data is only used for bona fide purposes?

Should there be a separate exemption for the assessment and collection of tax?

Any other views?

Part I of the series explores the definitions of personal data and sensitive personal data, Part II of the series examines the jurisdiction and territorial scope of data protection laws and Part III of the series explores cross-border data flows and data localisation.

The author is a lawyer and author specialising in technology laws. She is also a certified information privacy professional.
Reuters

Volkswagen AG executive Oliver Schmidt, who is due to be sentenced this week in connection with the carmakers emissions scandal, has written to the judge to say he feels misused by the German company.

Schmidt pleaded guilty in August in the US District Court in Detroit to wrongdoing connected to a massive diesel emissions scandal that has cost Volkswagen as much as $30 billion. He is due to be sentenced on Dec. 6.

I must say that I feel misused by my own company in the diesel scandal or Dieselgate, Schmidt wrote to US judge Sean Cox, according to a letter filed in federal court.

The letter was originally published by Germanys Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

A Volkswagen spokesman declined to comment, citing the ongoing proceedings.

Under a plea agreement, Schmidt faces up to seven years in prison and a fine of between $40,000 and $400,000 after admitting to conspiring to mislead US regulators and violating clean air laws.

In March, Volkswagen pleaded guilty to three felony counts under a plea agreement to resolve US charges it installed secret software in vehicles to evade emissions tests.

US prosecutors have charged eight current and former Volkswagen executives.

Schmidt was in charge of the companys environmental and engineering office in Auburn Hills, Michigan, until February 2015, where he oversaw emissions issues.

In the letter to the judge, he said he had agreed to follow a script, or talking points, agreed by Volkswagen management and a high-ranking lawyer, at a meeting with Alberto Ayala, a California Air Resources Board executive.

In hindsight, I should never have agreed to meet with Dr Ayala on that day, he wrote.

Or better yet, I should have gone to that meeting and ignored the instructions given to me and told Dr Ayala that there is a defeat device in the VW diesel engine vehicles and that VW had been cheating for almost a decade. I did not do that and that is why I find myself here today.

After being informed of the existence of the emissions software in the summer of 2015, according to his guilty plea, Schmidt conspired with other executives to avoid disclosing intentional cheating by the automaker in a bid to seek regulatory approval for its model 2016 VW 2 liter diesels.
Hammuriyeh: A wave of Syrian air strikes today killed at least 25 civilians and wounded dozens across the besieged rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, a monitor said.

The deadliest raids hit the town of Hammuriyeh, killing 17 civilians including six children, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Other air strikes on the towns of Arbeen, Beit Sawa, Harasta and Misraba killed eight civilians.

The Observatory said at least 75 people were wounded and the death toll was likely to rise given the critical wounds suffered by dozens of people.

In Hammuriyeh, an AFP photographer saw men carrying the body of a victim wrapped in a blue blanket across a rubble-littered street, a shoeless foot sticking out.

The strikes appeared to hit a modest residential neighbourhood, smashing a small convenience store and caking a vegetable stand in a layer of dust.

Victims were taken to a nearby clinic where doctors could be seen treating a man wincing from a gash above his knee.

In another room, the lifeless soot-covered body of a boy lay in a pool of blood.

Eastern Ghouta, one of the last remaining rebel strongholds in Syria, has been under a heavy government siege since 2013 that has caused drastic food and medical shortages.

An estimated 4,00,000 people still live in the enclave, and the United Nations has warned that hundreds are at risk of death if they are not evacuated for urgent medical treatment.

The area is one of four "de-escalation zones" agreed earlier this year by regime allies Russia and Iran and rebel backer Turkey aimed at curbing violence across war-ravaged Syria.

Syria's government agreed last week to a ceasefire in the region to coincide with the resumption of UN-led peace talks in Geneva.

But heavy bombardment of the opposition enclave near the capital has resumed, with another 11 civilians killed on Sunday.

The Observatory said today's deaths took the number of civilians killed in regime bombardment of Eastern Ghouta to at least 191, including 43 children, in nearly three weeks.

More than 3,40,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.
A growing number of charter school teachers have begun to start seeing unionizing as an option , as weve written.

Among the most recent charters to organize is Chavez Prep Middle School in Washington, part of the Cesar Chavez Public Charter School network. Teachers there voted in June to form a collective-bargaining unit affiliated with the 1.6-million-member American Federation of Teachers.

And now those teachers are saying the charter schools administration isnt negotiating with them as is legally required.

By law after our vote, any changes to our working conditions have to be negotiated with us, said Christian Herr, a science teacher who headed the organizing effort. Our board continues to make significant changesadding job duties without additional compensation, things like thatwithout bargaining with us.

About 25 teachersnearly the whole teaching staffwalked down the street with protest signs during their lunch break on Friday. The union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board over the summer, but claims the employer continues to make employment decisions without collectively bargaining.

The schools principal, Kourtney Miller disputes all of these charges. These are entirely their accusations, they havent been validated by the NLRB, and we disagree with their complaints, she wrote in an email.

The administrators and union have been meeting regularly, both sides say. But the union claims the decisions were made outside those discussions.

All were asking for is that they talk to us, said Herr. We believe it makes the school better when teachers have a voice in the building.

Charter schools often pride themselves on having close-knit communities, and the dispute illustrates how complicated the relationships can become when single schools organize. After picketing, staff members headed back inside for a chili cookoff and staff meeting, Miller said.
Karangasem: Gushing ash from Bali's Mount Agung volcano has dissipated into a wispy plume of steam, and Australian airlines that canceled some flights to the Indonesian resort island on the weekend have returned to near-normal schedules.

Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency said Monday the volcano remains at its highest alert level but most of Bali is safe for tourists.

The exclusion zone around the volcano still extends 10 kilometers from the crater in some directions. More than 55,000 people are living in shelters.

Airlines Jetstar and Virgin Australia, which canceled flights over the weekend even as the ash cloud shrank dramatically, said they were resuming services on Monday.

The region's volcanic ash monitoring center in Darwin, Australia, has stopped issuing advisories for Agung, reflecting that it's currently posing no threat to aircraft. It would resume advisories if there's another eruption.

Tens of thousands of tourists were stranded when ash closed Bali's international airport for nearly three days last week.

Indonesian government volcanologists say Agung's crater is about one-third filled by lava and there is still a high risk of more eruptions.

The volcano's last major eruptions in 1963 killed more than 1,100 people and it was active for more than a year.

David Boutelier, a geologist at the University of Newcastle in Australia, said the chance of a violent explosion is still "very high" but possibly not as high as several weeks ago because pressure is being released.
Sydney: A lawmaker from Australia's conservative ruling party proposed to his gay partner in parliament on Monday just moments after a bill paving the way for same-sex marriage was introduced.

Tim Wilson, who has reportedly been engaged to Ryan Bolger for nine years, fought back tears as he thanked his fiance for enduring a marriage debate that "has been the soundtrack to our relationship".

"In my first speech I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands  that they are the answer to the questions we cannot ask," said the 37-year-old.

"So there is only one thing left to do: Ryan Patrick Bolger will you marry me?"

Bolger, who was sitting in the public gallery, quickly responded "yes" as the floor erupted in applause.

"That was a 'yes', a resounding 'yes'," house speaker Rob Mitchell noted for the record. "Congratulations."

The same-sex marriage bill being debated is expected to comfortably pass through the House of Representatives before Christmas after the upper house Senate last week overwhelmingly voted in its favour.

After more than a decade of debate, Australians emphatically endorsed gay marriage in a recent nationwide postal vote, with some 62 percent of the 12.7 million who took part voting "yes" in November.

"This is a historic moment of inclusion, of recognition, of respect," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said shortly after the bill was introduced for debate in the lower house on Monday.

"This is a day to be especially proud that all of our friends, our colleagues, our neighbours, our brothers, our sisters, can marry the people they love."

Former conservative prime minister Tony Abbott, a leading voice in the 'no' campaign, said he would now back the bill.

"I certainly don't pretend to be an overnight convert to support same-sex marriage but I am pledged to respect and to facilitate the verdict of the Australian people," he said.

"Same-sex marriage should now be recognised. It will now be recognised."

Abbott moved an amendment he said protected discrimination against anyone over their "conscientious view about the nature of marriage", before saying he planned to attend his gay sister's wedding in 2018.

"I am looking forward to attending the marriage of my sister, Christine, to her partner Virginia some time early in the new year."
Phnom Penh: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday called for Cambodia's support in developing a sustainable solution to the Rohingya crisis and the minority's persecution in Myanmar's Rakhine state.

Hasina made the remarks during a discussion with her Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen in Phnom Penh on Monday, bdnews24.com reported.

"We have discussed some of the emerging security challenges facing our region and expressed our common resolve to fight terrorism and extremism," Hasina said during a joint statement.

"We have also discussed the Rohingya crisis that threatens the peace and stability of our region. Bangladesh continues to shelter more than 1 million Rohingyas, among them around 6,30,000 who fled atrocities in Myanmar and took shelter in Bangladesh recently."

Hasina asked for Hun Sen's support for a durable solution as Bangladesh continued bilateral talks to return Rohingyas safely to their homeland.

"We highly appreciate Bangladesh (for giving shelter to the Rohingya refugees)... even though it has a population of over 160 million, it took the issues of refugees on its shoulder," said the Cambodian leader.

Bangladesh let in a wave of Rohingya refugees since late August, when the Myanmar military launched a crackdown in Rakhine state over insurgent attacks.

The refugees in Cox's Bazar said the military and locals shot and killed people indiscriminately, raped women, looted and set fire to Rohingya homes.

Bangladesh and Myanmar signed an agreement on 23 Novemberon the repatriation of recent refugees to their homeland. The agreement specified the formation of a joint working group to begin the repatriation process within two months.

The Bangladesh government also attempted to enlist international support for the Rohingya crisis. The UN, EU, US, UK and other parties expressed their appreciation for Bangladesh's efforts on the Rohingya crisis.
Washington: President Donald Trump endorsed embattled Republican Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race on Monday, looking past sexual misconduct allegations against the GOP candidate to argue that his vote is needed in Congress.

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017

It was Trump's strongest show of support for Moore since allegations surfaced that the candidate had sexually assaulted teenage girls decades ago, including one who said he molested her when she was 14 and he was in his 30s. Many national Republicans have called on Moore to step aside in the wake of multiple sexual assault and harassment allegations.

Trump also assailed Moore's Democratic rival Doug Jones, tweeting that "Putting a Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders...& so much more."

Trump for weeks was silent after the allegations against Moore surfaced, and the White House has said he had no plans to make campaign appearances before the 12 December election. But Trump in recent days has raised doubts about the allegations against Moore, and he has agreed to headline a campaign-style rally in Pensacola, Florida  less than 20 miles from the Alabama border  just four days before the Alabama election.

And Trump tweeted of Moore on Monday: "We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!"

White House legislative director Marc Short told CNN that Trump was "making the case to the people of Alabama that it's a factor to consider that not one Democrat has been able to find time to say they support" the GOP tax plan.

Short said Trump's point is that "when allegations arise 38 years later, when Roy Moore has been a very public figure for those 38 years, he's run multiple times statewide in Alabama, the people in Alabama have an opportunity to choose and make some decisions about Roy Moore's character. Putting all that together, he's encouraging the people of Alabama to make the right decision."
Cairo: Five terrorists were killed in exchange of fire with security forces in Sharqeya governorate, security sources said.

They said that terrorists clashed with security forces during a raid on Belbeis-10th of Ramadan road in Sharqeya.

The raid came over a week after a terrorist attack on a mosque in North Sinai in which more than 300 people were killed.

Terrorist attacks, targeting police and military personnel, have increased following the ouster of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by the military, following massive protests against his rule.

Hundreds of police and army personnel have been killed since then.

The military has launched security campaigns in Egypt's restive North Sinai province, arrested suspects and demolished houses that belong to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has certified that the Honduran government has been fighting corruption and supporting human rights, clearing the way for Honduras to receive millions of dollars in U.S. aid, a document seen by Reuters showed. A woman and a man walk past a giant Honduran flag in Tegucigalpa September 28, 2012. REUTERS/Jorge Cabrera The document, dated Nov. 28, which was seen by Reuters on Monday, showed that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson certified Honduras for the assistance, two days after a controversial presidential election that has been claimed by an ally of Washington. Honduras has faced violent protests over the disputed results of the election, which has still not produced a clear winner over a week after the vote ended. The decision to issue the certification prompted concern from some congressional Democrats that Republican President Donald Trumps administration could be seen to be taking sides. What kind of message does that send? one congressional aide asked. State Department officials did not have an immediate response when questioned about the timing of the certification. Honduras is required to fulfil about a dozen requirements in order to receive its share of $644 million appropriated by the U.S. Congress under a programme to assist Central American governments. Among those requirements are combating corruption - including investigating and prosecuting current and former government officials alleged to be corrupt - and protecting the rights of political opposition parties. Honduras struggles with violent drug gangs, one of the worlds highest murder rates and endemic poverty. In recent years, many Hondurans - including children - have attempted to migrate to the United States. In hopes of stemming this migration, former President Barack Obamas administration in 2015 came up with a plan that included sending hundreds of millions of dollars in additional aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Congress agreed to provide the money, if the governments were found to be taking steps to fight crime and corruption. A preliminary ballot count in Honduras on Monday pointed to a narrow victory for President Juan Orlando Hernandez over opposition challenger Salvador Nasralla, although the electoral tribunal has not declared a winner. Early last week, Nasralla, a former sportscaster and game show host, appeared set for an upset victory over Hernandez. The counting process suddenly halted for more than a day and began leaning in favour of Hernandez after resuming. Opposition leaders said they wanted a recount and have accused the government of stealing the election. Hernandez, 49, implemented a military-led crackdown on gang violence after taking office in 2014. He has been supported by Trumps chief of staff, John Kelly. Nasralla, 64, is one of Honduras best-known faces and is backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist ousted in a coup in 2009.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Dozens of relatives of the 44 crew members of an Argentine submarine that went missing on November 15 marched from a naval base on Sunday, demanding to know what happened and criticizing the governments response to the tragedy. Relatives and friends of Alejandro Damian Tagliapietra, one of the 44 crew members of the missing at sea ARA San Juan submarine, react outside an Argentine naval base in Mar del Plata, Argentina November 24, 2017. The banner reads "Camarades, be strong". REUTERS/Marcos BrindicciHolding posters with photos of the crew and chanting Search and Rescue! the family members walked away from a naval base in Mar del Plata, following a press conference during which the navy said the submarine had still not been located. The disaster has spurred soul searching over the state of the military in Argentina, which now has one of Latin Americas smallest defense budgets in relation to economic size after a series of financial crises. Our disagreement is with the government, not with the navy, said Marcela Moyano, wife of crew member Hernan Rodriguez, during the protest. Whoever is responsible needs to be held responsible. Spokesman Enrique Balbi said on Thursday the navy had abandoned hope of rescuing the crew alive, noting the ARA San Juan had air supplies for a week while 15 days had passed since it last reported its position. The Argentine military submarine ARA San Juan and crew are seen as they leave the port of Buenos Aires, Argentina June 2, 2014. Picture taken on June 2, 2014. Argentine Navy/Handout via REUTERSSome family members complained they were not advised before the general public of the end of the rescue mission and have also demanded more contact with President Mauricio Macri in Mar del Plata, where the San Juan was scheduled to end its journey. While local media have speculated Macri will soon declare a period of national mourning for the submarine crew, he has been silent in recent days. He (Macri) needs to be here because this is the priority, there are 44 families behind this situation and someone has to be in charge, said Marcela Fernandez, wife of Alberto Sanchez. Macris defense minister met with families in Mar del Plata on Friday. Balbi said on Saturday an object that was being reviewed by a Russian unmanned remotely operated vehicle in the South Atlantic had turned out not to be the submarine. The government has pledged to continue the search with foreign assistance. The navy said on Nov. 27 that water that entered the submarines snorkel caused its battery to short-circuit before it went missing. The navy had previously said international organizations detected a noise that could have been the submarines implosion the same day contact was lost.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Beirut: France should know that Irans missile programme is not an issue that can be negotiated, Irans foreign ministry spokesman, Bahram Qassemi, said in an interview with state media on Monday.

"French official, other officials, who want to speak about Irans affairs need to pay attention to the deep developments that have come to pass in the region in past decades and the big changes between the current situation and the past," Qassemi said on Monday, according to state media.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely not negotiate on defence and missile issues."

Tension between Iran and France increased last month when French president Emmanuel Macron said that Iran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify its ballistic missile programme.

His foreign minister also denounced, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Irans "hegemonic temptations".

France could play a productive role in West Asia by taking a "realistic and impartial approach", Iranian president Hassan Rouhani told Macron in a telephone call two weeks ago, according to Iranian state media.

Iranian state media said Rouhani told Macron that the Islamic Republic was ready to develop its relations with France on all bilateral, regional and international issues based on mutual respect and shared goals.
Washington: As the US Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments Tuesday in the highly anticipated "gay wedding cake" case, all eyes are once again on Justice Anthony Kennedy, the fulcrum upon which the bench has turned for a decade.

The case, which pits Christian conservatives against progressives and the LGBT community, concerns a Colorado baker who, due to his religious beliefs, refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

The court will have to decide between three constitutional rights  sexual equality, freedom of religion and freedom of expression. The stakes are high, and could open the door for conservative businesses to spurn gay couples.

Eighty-one-year-old Kennedy, who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1987 and is the court's longest serving judge, is widely expected to provide the decisive vote.

Kennedy is to the Supreme Court what swing states are to elections. Conservative on firearms and election financing, he can be more progressive on issues such as abortion and affirmative action. On a bench comprising four progressive and four conservative judges, his view often tips the balance.

An example of this came in 2015, when, thanks to him, same-sex marriage was legalised across the United States. The judge, of Irish origin, then drafted the landmark ruling  just as he drafted the decision in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, which declared a state law forbidding sodomy illegal.

'A clash of interests'

But will the elderly judge, a practising Catholic, vote in favour of the LGBT community in this latest case? It's a question currently frustrating experts.

The Trump administration, around twenty American states, dozens of members of Congress and countless Christian and conservative pressure groups have backed Jack Phillips, the baker. These supporters have sent the Supreme Court many arguments, which seem to directly address Kennedy.

Steven Schwinn, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, told AFP he believes the judge will "struggle" with the decision. "I think he'll see this case as a clash of interests: the dignity and equality interest of the same-sex couple, on the one hand, and the religious freedom and free-speech interests of the cake-baker, on the other," he said. "I imagine that he'll probably struggle with how to balance these."

"I think he's going to be torn," was the view of Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "He's distracted by the deep faith of Jack Phillips. Jack Phillips is a person of faith and runs his bakery consistent with his faith, he has a small family business. We know that Justice Kennedy will care about that, there is no question," she said.

"On the other hand, Justice Kennedy cares deeply about the LGBT community," Melling added.

Moral rigor

Another question is how Kennedy can vote in Phillips' favour, without opening "the floodgates for discrimination against gays and lesbians in marriage services and beyond," says Schwinn.

"I do not think he wants to open that door," Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of Berkeley Law and constitutional law expert, told AFP.

During the hearing on Tuesday, every word uttered by Anthony Kennedy will be under scrutiny  with supporters from both sides searching for signs of his position.

Reassuring Christian conservatives will be the Harvard Law School graduate's days as a choir boy in California  not to mention his marriage of over half a century to the same woman, with whom he has three children.

Indeed, Kennedy has a reputation for moral rigour sometimes regarded as prudishness. While he was a university student, he travelled Europe in a red Volkswagen. His father offered him a bottle of whiskey for the trip  but he did not drink it, instead using it only to gargle when he had a sore throat.
BERLIN/MUNICH (Reuters) - The leader of Germanys Social Democrats (SPD) said on Monday he would launch talks with Chancellor Angela Merkels conservatives on forming a government next week if members of his centre-left party gave him the green light at a congress this weekend. Chancellor Angela Merkel leaves after a joint meeting with Horst Seehofer, the head of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and the leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) Martin Schulz, hosted by the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in Schloss Bellevue in Berlin, Germany, November 30, 2017. REUTERS/Axel SchmidtThe remarks by Martin Schulz raised hopes that the two parties that suffered losses to the far right in an election in September could renew an alliance that has ruled Germany since 2013 and end the political deadlock in Europes largest economy. Merkel turned to the SPD after failing to form a three-way alliance with the left-leaning Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, plunging Germany into a political impasse and raising doubt about her future after 12 years in power. Well explore whether and how the formation of a government is possible in Germany, Schulz told journalists. The SPD party board leadership had earlier set down its key demands for coalition talks with the conservatives. On the divisive issue of immigration, one of the main reasons for the collapse of Merkels first effort, the SPD said it opposed a conservative plan to extend a ban on the right to family reunions for some asylum seekers. Family reunions and family cohabitation lead to good integration, the SPD document said. Thats why we are against extending the suspension of family reunions. CONSERVATIVE TROUBLES Merkel could also face complications from her own camp. Her arch-conservative CSU allies in Bavaria on Monday named right-winger Markus Soeder to be their candidate for the state premiership in a regional election next autumn, potentially weakening her hand as she negotiates with the SPD. Merkels Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) bled support to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Septembers federal election because of anger at the chancellors decision in 2015 to open Germanys door to more than a million asylum seekers. The CSU now fears losing more votes at regional level. The future of current Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer had been in question since the election. After the losses, Merkel reluctantly accepted a CSU demand to put a limit on the number of asylum seekers Germany will accept each year. Asked why he was clearing the stage for Soeder to lead the CSU in next years vote in Bavaria, Seehofer said: The past doesnt win you any elections. Soeder, who has accused Merkel of pulling the conservatives to the left and took a hard line on Greece during the euro zone crisis, is likely to be a bigger thorn in Merkels side than Seehofer, who is expected to remain party leader. SPD RELUCTANCE For its part, the SPD, which has governed in coalition under Merkel since 2013, suffered its worst election result in postwar history in September, and had been reluctant to join another grand coalition. It dropped its pledge to go into opposition only after Merkel failed to form a government, bowing to pressure from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to ease the deadlock. The SPD will hold a party congress in Berlin this weekend, where it is expected to debate its position on coalition talks. Kevin Kuehnert, the head of the SPDs youth wing - which opposes another grand coalition - told Die Welt newspaper that the outgoing CDU-CSU-SPD government had been characterised by cheap and often quite bad compromises, such as on urgently needed investment in education and infrastructure. The SPD did not stake out a position on the conservatives upper limit on refugees in its policy document. But it did say Germany should work with French President Emmanuel Macron on strengthening the European project through policies geared to fight high youth unemployment. It did not mention key proposals by Macron that the euro zone should have its own budget and finance minister, but it did refer to his plan for closer defence cooperation. On the economy, the SPDs proposals for more rights for workers and employee-friendly regulation of the large temporary work sector could draw fire from the CSU. The long political impasse is starting to worry investors. An investor sentiment survey tracking Germany fell in December. The research group Sentix said investors wanted to know how expensive a tie-up with the SPD would be.

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TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - A preliminary ballot count in Honduras disputed presidential race pointed on Monday to a second term for incumbent Juan Orlando Hernandez, while his opponent accused the government of stealing the election and called for protests. Supporters of Salvador Nasralla, presidential candidate for the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, sing the national anthem during a curfew while the country is still mired in chaos over a contested presidential election in Tegucigalpa, Honduras December 3, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard GarridoU.S.-backed Hernandez had 42.98 percent of the vote, compared with opposition challenger Salvador Nasrallas 41.39 percent, based on 99.96 percent of ballots tallied after a partial recount of more than 1,000 polling stations. David Matamoros, who heads the electoral tribunal and is a member of Hernandezs party, refused to declare a winner. Parties can still file legal challenges, and a wider recount is possible, he told reporters, adding that there would be further announcements on Monday. Early last week, Nasralla, a former sportscaster and game show host, appeared set for an upset victory over Hernandez, gaining a five-point lead with more than half of the ballots tallied. The counting process suddenly halted for more than a day and began leaning in favor of Hernandez after resuming. Opposition leaders said on Sunday they wanted a recount of all the polling stations that were entered into the system after the delay. Protesters flooded streets across the country on Sunday to decry what they called a dictatorship. As night fell, the sounds of plastic horns, honking cars, fireworks and beaten saucepans echoed over the Tegucigalpa capital, challenging a military curfew imposed to clamp down on protests that have spread since last week. Nasralla, addressing a giant rally in the capital earlier in the day, told the armed forces not to enforce the curfew and encouraged supporters to walk out on a national strike starting on Monday. I call on all members of the armed forces to rebel against your bosses, Nasralla told a cheering throng of supporters who booed nearby troops. You all over there, you shouldnt be there; you should be part of the people. People are seen next to barricades along a street at a protest during curfew while the country is still mired in chaos over a contested presidential election in Tegucigalpa, Honduras December 3, 2017. REUTERS/Henry RomeroTV images showed similar protests in other major cities. While there were no reports of violence on Sunday, hundreds have been arrested and at least three people were killed in recent days. The government imposed a military-enforced curfew on Friday that expanded powers for the army and police to detain people and break up blockades of roads, bridges and public buildings. The tribunal began the partial recount on Sunday. Supporters of Salvador Nasralla, presidential candidate for the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, hold a flag in front of a barricade during a curfew while the country is still mired in chaos over a contested presidential election in Tegucigalpa, Honduras December 3, 2017. REUTERS/Edgard GarridoThe Organization of American States said on Sunday that Nasrallas demands to recount more than 5,000 polling stations were doable, and it urged the tribunal to make further checks. Also on Sunday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused the United States of backing vote fraud in Honduras, while the top official at the U.S. embassy praised the peaceful protests and the orderly final count then under way. Honduras struggles with violent drug gangs, one of worlds highest murder rates and endemic poverty, driving a tide of its people to migrate to the United States. Hernandez, 49, implemented a military-led crackdown on gang violence after taking office in 2014. He has been supported by U.S. President Donald Trumps chief of staff, John Kelly. Nasralla, 64, is one of Honduras best-known faces and is backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist ousted in a coup in 2009. Since late last week, three people have been killed as soldiers broke up protesters blockades of rubble and burning tires. There were also reports that four or five more had been shot dead in the north of the country on Friday.

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New Delhi: Russia is and will remain India's key foreign policy priority, and the challenge before the two countries would be to nurture and foster the close ties amid fast unfolding global changes, a senior diplomat in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Monday.

Vijay Gokhale, Secretary (Economic Relations) in the MEA, said past relationship between the two countries should not transmute into a "passive" present partnership, insisting there was no room for complacency in India-Russia ties.

He was speaking at the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), a leading think-tank.

Observing that the past few years have witnessed unprecedented changes in the world, Gokhale said Indo-Russia ties cannot remain isolated from global changes.

"Therefore, the challenge before all of us, whether in the government or outside, would be how to nurture and foster our 'Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership' amidst these fast unfolding global changes," he said.

The MEA official's comments came amid apparent unease in Moscow over India's growing ties with the United States.

Gokhale said there was a need to expand bilateral engagement between the two countries beyond the traditional fields of energy and defence.

Talking about connectivity projects, he said India supports such regional and international initiatives, but at the same time asserted that due sensitivity in respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity of states was essential, in an apparent reference to China's Belt and Road initiative (BRI).

India has expressed strong reservations over BRI as the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). CPEC is part of the BRI.

Referring to the Chabahar port project, Gokhale said it was the first step to build a sea-land link with Central Asia and Russia, that is both secure and sustainable.

"We appreciate the encouragement given by Russia to the Chabahar project," he said, a day after the first phase of the Chabahar port was inaugurated.

On regional issues, Gokhale said India and Russia have shared interest in peace, security and prosperity in Indo-Pacific, Eurasia and the world at large.

"Whenever we have divergences, these should be bridged in an appropriate way through discussion and better understanding," he noted.

On defence cooperation, Gokhale said India believes it was the opportune time to move from a buyer-seller format to joint production and investments, in order to bring a new dynamism to military co-operation.

"We invite the Russian defence industry to look at our new policies in this regard and to partner us, as India begins its journey to become a defence manufacturer," he said.

On economic cooperation, the MEA (Economic Relations) secretary said the current trade figures do not reflect the real potential.

"Russia could look at new opportunities to invest in India, for instance in infrastructure and logistics sectors. All our economic indicators suggest that ours is a market with long-term potential and stability," he added.
There is no mistaking the fact that with the inauguration of work on the first phase of Chabahar port in Iran on Sunday, India has sought to neutralise some of the strategic advantages that China had gained in the tug of war with New Delhi for control of the sea lanes. The Gwadar port in Pakistan, which is barely 80 kilometres from Chabahar, was designed to give Beijing and Islamabad that strategic edge after India's access to Gwadar was denied by design.

If the Chinese in collusion with Pakistan thought that they could choke a vital Indian access to the sea, thereby jeopardising Indian trade especially with Central Asia, the opening of a new strategic transit route to Iran and Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan, would be an effective counter to it.

However, while Iran's interests have been well catered to by India's finance for the Chabahar project and the setting up of ancillary industries in and around it, the China-Pakistan link would predictably leave no stone unturned to woo as well as browbeat the Iranians to re-think about the India connection as they have been doing.

Indeed, the Narendra Modi government has committed $500 million to the Chabahar port along with associated roads and rail lines that will crack open a trade and transport route to landlocked Afghanistan, as well as the resource-rich countries of central Asia.

While Chabahar is expected to be fully operational by the end of next year, in what can be compared to a full dress rehearsal, India plans to send seven shipments of wheat to Afghanistan through Chabahar by the end of January. The wheat will be trucked from Chabahar to western Afghanistan. The shipments will put to test the route's viability and the plan is to broaden the cargo flow before the port is fully operational.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani said at Sunday's inauguration that Iran also plans to link the port to the country's railroad network to facilitate the transit of goods to neighbouring landlocked Central Asian countries, as well as open a route to eastern and northern Europe through Russia. That would suit India well. Significantly, he downplayed the rivalry with Pakistan in his inauguration speech and said the port will bring "more engagement and unity" among regional countries. That is a facade that has to be maintained.

"We should go after a positive competition," he said. "We welcome other ports in the region, we welcome Gwadar's development."

That the opening of the first phase of Chabahar represents a personal triumph for Modi was clear from his visit to Iran in May 2016, to give a fillip to the project after it was steeped in uncertainty following Chinese moves to scuttle it.

To leave nothing to chance, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj made an unscheduled stopover in Tehran recently on the eve of the port inauguration at which she broke bread with her Iranian counterpart Dr Javad Zarif.

India's state-run railway body IRCON International will set up a railway line at Chabahar to move goods right up to Afghanistan. The 500-kilometre rail link between Chabahar and Zahedan will link India to the rest of Iran's railway network.

To make it adequately attractive for the Iranians, part of the agreement is a free trade zone where a total investment of Rs one lakh crore is envisaged. Indian companies would set up a range of industries from aluminium smelter to urea plants in the region. State-owned NALCO will set up an aluminium smelter while private and co-operative fertiliser firms are keen to build urea plants.

India will also supply $400 million of steel rails to Tehran. There are plans of a fertiliser plant through a joint venture with the Iran government. Securing hydrocarbon sources is a priority for India as New Delhi and Tehran would look to expand the basket in the coming years.

This will also give momentum to the International North-South Transport Corridor of which both India and Iran are initial signatories along with Russia. Iran is the key gateway in this project. It entails the ship, rail, and road routes for moving freight between India, Russia, Iran, Europe and Central Asia. The route primarily involves moving freight from India, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia. The objective of the corridor is to increase trade connectivity between major cities such as Mumbai, Moscow, Tehran, Baku and Astrakhan.

All in all, with Chinese hegemony getting a big boost as a result of the upcoming China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the Chinese assiduously wooing greater trade link-ups with countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, Chabahar offers India a silver lining.

But if those dead set against Chinese control of sea lanes  principally India, Japan, the US and Australia  are to effectively counter the Chinese thrust, it is vital that the US plays a more pro-active role. India will indeed be called upon to play a key role to get the US on board.
Islamabad: US Defence Secretary James Mattis will arrive in Pakistan on Monday to hold talks with the civilian and military leadership on bilateral and regional issues, officials in Islamabad said.

Mattis, ahead of his first visit to Pakistan as US defence secretary, said on Saturday that the US wants Pakistan to act in "its best interest" and take action against terror safe havens.

Relations between the US and Pakistan plummeted after President Donald Trump announced his new south Asia policy in August and directly blamed Islamabad for supporting the Taliban in war-torn Afghanistan.

Officials in Islamabad said on Sunday that Mattis is visiting Pakistan in a bid to rebuild the frayed ties and seek cooperation against the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

Signs of recovery have been witnessed in US-Pakistan ties after the successful raid by Pakistani security forces to release a kidnapped Canadian man and his American wife.

Trump and top US officials praised the effort and hoped for more cooperation.

Mattis will meet the civilian and military leaders and discuss various bilateral and regional issues, said diplomatic sources privy to the developments.

According to sources, "All issues of bilateral and regional interests would be discussed in the meetings".

Local media reports, however, suggest that Mattis faces a difficult task as Pakistan is not happy over the repeated US allegations about safe havens for the Taliban.

The Express Tribune reported that the civilian-military leadership will adopt a "clear cut decisive" stance during the visit of Mattis that "only cooperation will get cooperation".

Quoting sources, it reported that if the US adopts parity, Pakistan will also cooperate in a balanced way, but if it continues its policy of demanding to "do-more", then Islamabad will reply "no-do-more and no cooperation".

The report further said that no pressure and demand to do more without any proof or information will be accepted.

Pakistan will clarify that there are no militant safe havens or terrorist network on its soil as security institutions have purged the land of terrorists, it said.

Pakistan will not conduct any joint operation with any other country on its soil but will take action against militants including the Haqqanis on the basis of intelligence-based information, it said.

Pakistan will also respond positively to any US requests for cooperation to establish peace in Afghanistan but would stress for reconciliation in the trouble-torn country, the report said.

It would also demand that the US and Afghan governments expedite actions against terror groups that are hatching conspiracies using Afghan soil to destabilise Pakistan, it said.

Authorities will inform Mattis about its reservations over the pro-India policy of the Trump administration and any demand in support of India will be rejected, the report added.

Mattis embarked on a four-nation tour on Friday which will take him to Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Kuwait.

During the tour, he will re-affirm the US' enduring commitment to partnerships in the Middle East, West Africa and South Asia.
Washington: US defense secretary Jim Mattis has said he intends to work hard to find common ground with Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, which is necessary to restore the level of stability in South Asia to allow economic development.

Ahead of his visit to Islamabad, Mattis said he wants to work with Pakistan, listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective, to address the problems.

Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait and Pakistan, since taking over the charge of the Pentagon.

Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest the 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

Saeed is still roaming free, despite tough warning from the Trump Administration.

"The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," Mattis told reporters travelling with him on his way to Pakistan from Egypt.

Mattis is the first top US official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the new South Asia Strategy that was announced by President Donald Trump on 21 August.

"We know we have some common ground. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their troops killed and wounded by terrorists. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their innocent people murdered and wounded by terrorists, so we know that there is common ground".

Similarly, he said, there is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth, that do move back and forth in order to live in one and attack in the other, that sort of thing.

"So we know there's common ground; it's how much more common ground can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective," Mattis said.

"But at the same time, as the (Pakistan Army Chief) General (Qamar Javed Bajwa) has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and we'll find that common ground, if we have the will to.

"And then we'll work on how we address the problems where we can work together," the Defense Secretary said.

Responding to a question, he said he would not characterise everything over the past 16 years as failures.

"There is clearly an abundance of areas where we have to double down, and I am optimistic at this point that because of what our adversaries, our mutual enemies are doing, that we can find ways to work together," he said.

Mattis said both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military, the NATO-led militaries of 39 nations have all been in fights here. "We've got to find a way to work together".

He said there is "always an urgency to something" when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken.

"These are 39 of the most economically powerful, generally speaking, most long-term democratic institutions in the world. These are powerful nations morally, economically and diplomatically, and certainly militarily," he said.

Mattis said that it was essential in South Asia that all work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economy to build.

"I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We can not only imagine it; it's a reality right now," Mattis said.

So, the US Defence Secretary said that we have got to work together on this, and there's a sense of urgency about that.

"There's people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries. So as you look at this problem, if you'll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things," he said.

Mattis is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and General Bajwa.

"General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting that's characterised the area," he said.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Yemens steely former president of 33 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, made his last political gamble and lost on Monday, meeting his death at the hands of the Houthi movement, his erstwhile allies in the countrys multi-sided civil war. FILE PHOTO: Yemen's then President Ali Abdullah Saleh gestures during a gathering of supporters in Sanaa February 20, 2011. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah/File PhotoOfficials in his General Peoples Congress party (GPC) confirmed to Reuters that the 75-year-old Saleh had been killed outside the capital Sanaa in what Houthi sources said was an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) and gun attack. A master of weaving alliances and advancing his personal and family interests in Yemens heavily armed and deeply fractious tribal society, Saleh unified his country by force, but he also helped guide it toward collapse in its latest war. The Middle Easts arch-survivor once compared running Yemen to dancing on the heads of snakes, ruling with expertly balanced doses of largesse and force. He outlived other Arab leaders who were left dead or deposed by uprisings and civil wars since 2011. Cornered by pro-democracy Arab Spring protests, Saleh wore a cryptic smile when signing his resignation in a televised ceremony in 2012. Saleh waged six wars against the Houthis from 2002 to 2009 before he made an impromptu alliance with the group that seized the capital Sanaa in 2014 and eventually turned on him. The two sides feuded for years for supremacy over territory they ran together. The Houthis probably never forgave his forces for killing their founder and father of the current leader. Fearing the Houthis are a proxy for their arch-foe Iran, the mostly Gulf Arab alliance sought to help the internationally recognised Yemeni government win the conflict. Salehs army loyalists and Houthi fighters together weathered thousands of air strikes by a Saudi-led military coalition in almost three years of war. As the conflict wrought a humanitarian crisis, mutual sniping about responsibility for economic woes in northern Yemeni lands that they together rule peaked on Wednesday when the capital erupted in gunbattles between their partisans. ARCH-SURVIVOR Saleh had seemed unshakeable in one of the worlds poorest and unstable countries. He managed to play his enemies off against each other as tribal warfare, separatist movements and Islamist militants destabilised Yemen. He survived a bomb attack in his palace mosque in 2011 which killed senior aides and disfigured him. As other leaders were toppled by the Arab Spring uprisings, he found a way to retire peacefully to his villa in the capital and plot a comeback. Despite being forced to step down in 2012 under a Gulf-brokered transition plan following protests against his rule, Saleh won immunity in the deal and remained a powerful political player. The ever-nimble Saleh was a pivotal figure in the war, which has killed at least 10,000 people, displaced 2 million from their homes, led to widespread hunger and a cholera epidemic. Saleh became the ruler of North Yemen in 1978 at a time when the south was a separate, communist state, and led the unified country after the two states merged in 1990. Opponents often complained that Yemen under Saleh failed to meet the basic needs of the countrys people, where two of every three live on less than $2 per day. Saleh managed to keep Western and Arab powers on his side, styling himself as a key ally of the United States in its war on terrorism. He received tens of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid for units commanded by his relatives. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks against U.S. cities, Yemen came onto Washingtons radar as a source of foot soldiers for Osama bin Ladens al Qaeda network. Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia though his family came from Yemens Hadramaut region. Saleh cooperated with U.S. authorities as the CIA stepped up a campaign of drone strikes against key al Qaeda figures, which also led to scores of civilian deaths. Born in 1942 near Sanaa, he received only limited education before joining the military as a non-commissioned officer. His first break came when President Ahmed al-Ghashmi, who came from the same Hashed tribe as Saleh, appointed him military governor of Taiz, North Yemens second city. When Ghashmi was killed by a bomb in 1978, Saleh replaced him. In 1990, the collapse of the Soviet Union helped propel North Yemen under Saleh and the socialist South Yemen state into a unification. Saleh angered Gulf Arab allies by staying close to Saddam Hussein during the 1990-91 Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, leading to the expulsion of up to 1 million Yemenis from Saudi Arabia. But he then won plaudits from Western powers for carrying out economic reforms drawn up by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and made efforts to attract foreign investors. He swept to victory when southerners tried to secede from united Yemen in 1994 and drew closer to Saudi Arabia, which he allowed to spread its radical Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam. Salehs son, Ahmed Ali, lives under house arrest in the United Arab Emirates, where he once served as ambassador before it joined ally Saudi Arabia to make war on the Houthi-Saleh alliance. Ahmed Ali, a powerful former military commander whom his father appeared to be grooming to succeed him, may the familys last chance to win back influence.

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Brussels: Axed Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont arrived on Monday for an extradition hearing in Belgium as Spain seeks to have him sent back to face sedition charges over his region's independence drive.

A judge sitting behind closed doors in Brussels will hear from lawyers for Puigdemont and four of his former ministers, who all fled to Belgium in October despite a summons to appear in court in Spain, claiming they would not get a fair trial.

Prosecutors last month asked the judge to approve the European arrest warrant issued by Madrid for the five in the opening round of what could become a protracted courtroom battle.

A police source said Puigdemont and the others had arrived for the hearing, which comes on the eve of the official start of campaigning for 21 December elections in Catalonia.

Madrid wants the polls to "restore normality" to the wealthy northeastern region, which declared independence unilaterally following a hotly disputed 1 October referendum.

Puigdemont's lawyer said at the weekend he will remain in Belgium until after the elections.

"No matter what, they will be (in Brussels) till at least 21 December and according to my calculations this could go on till mid-January," lawyer Jaume Alonso Cuevillas told Catalan radio Rac1, referring to Puigdemont and the four former ministers.

"I am convinced that no matter what happens they will have recourse to an appeal," the lawyer said.

Legal tangle?

Spanish prosecutors want to prosecute Puigdemont and his former ministers for rebellion  which carries a maximum 30-year jail sentence  and sedition for their role in the independence drive, as well as for misusing public funds.

Meanwhile a Spanish Supreme Court judge is set to decide whether or not to free 10 other separatist leaders who were jailed pending a probe into their role in the Catalan independence drive.

Any release on bail would mark a turn in the election campaign, particularly for separatist parties who have repeatedly accused Madrid of taking "political prisoners" and "repression" after their attempt to declare unilateral independence fell flat.

Puigdemont and his cadres say the charges against them are politically motivated and as both sides are likely to appeal if the judge rules against them in the extradition hearing, the case could drag on for months, according to the Belgian justice minister.

Christophe Marchand, lawyer for two of Puigdemont's ex-ministers, told AFP that "the facts as written in the arrest warrant are not punishable under Belgian law", saying the case was an attempt to punish a "political process that passed off peacefully".

After Monday's hearing the court is expected to make its ruling in eight to 10 days, according to the Brussels prosecutor's office.

A spokesman for Puigdemont said Friday he would "respect the schedule" of the Belgian legal process.
Islamabad: The Islamabad High Court on Monday dismissed ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's plea to club three corruption cases against him.

A two-member bench issued a short order turning down his appeal and said that a detailed judgment would be issued later.

The cases were registered by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on 8 September against Sharif, his family in the Accountability Court, Islamabad, following a verdict by Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case. The accountability court in Islamabad had on 8 November rejected a plea by 67-year-old Sharif to club his cases, which he challenged in the Islamabad High Court.

The high court had completed the hearing and reserved the judgment on 23 November, which it announced on Monday.

The three cases against the Sharif family are related to the Al-Azizia Company and Hill Metal Establishment, Flagship Investment Ltd and the Avenfield (London) properties.

Earlier, the accountability court postponed hearing of graft cases against Sharif until Monday afternoon due to the expected verdict of the high court. Sharif along with his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar appeared in the court.

His lawyer Khawaja Harris requested Judge Mohammad Bashir to suspend proceedings and wait for the Islamabad High Court's decision on a petition by Sharif to club his three graft cases into one, as all were related to his alleged amassing of assets beyond the known sources of income.

The court after hearing the argument from the NAB prosecutor postponed hearing till 1 pm and allowed Sharif to go home but ordered him to be present when the hearing would restart. Sharif and his sons, Hassan and Hussain, have been named in all the three NAB cases, while Maryam and her husband Safdar have been named only in the Avenfield case. Maryam on 23 November had requested exemption from personal appearance from 5 December, 2017 to 5 January, 2018, while Sharif sought exemption from 5-12 December.

In November, Sharif was indicted in all three cases while his daughter Maryam and her husband Safdar, co-accused with Sharif in only one case, were also indicted along with Sharif. Sharif's sons Hassan and Hussain have failed to appear in the court despite repeated summons which prompted the court to separate their cases.

Heavy security arrangements were made and hundreds of security personnel deployed around the court premises.

The cases are based on 28 July verdict by the Supreme Court which disqualified Sharif and ordered to launch three corruption cases against him and his family, and one case against finance minister Ishaq Dar in the Panama Papers case.

Dar had been relieved of his duties after the ailing politician, who was declared a proclaimed absconder by a court in the case, requested leave for three months.
Pope Francis on Saturday defended his strategy of avoiding the term Rohingya in Myanmar, saying he believed he got his message across to both the civilian and military leaderships without shutting down dialogue.

Speaking to reporters aboard the plane returning to Rome from Bangladesh, the pontiff also indicated that he had been firm with Myanmar's military leaders in private meetings about the need for them to respect the rights of Rohingya refugees.

He also disclosed that he cried when he met a group of Rohingya refugees on Friday in Bangladesh, where he defended their rights by name in an emotional meeting.

"For me, the most important thing is that message gets through, to try to say things one step at a time and listen to the responses," he said. "I knew that if in the official speeches I would have used that word, they would have closed the door in our faces. But (in public) I described situations, rights, said that no one should be excluded, (the right to) citizenship, in order to allow myself to go further in the private meetings," he said.

Francis did not use the word 'Rohingya' in public while on the first leg of the trip in Myanmar. Predominantly Buddhist Myanmar does not recognise the mostly Muslim Rohingya as an ethnic group with its own identity but as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Local Roman Catholic Church authorities had advised him not to say it because it could spark a backlash against Christians and other minority groups.

The Pope met Myanmar's military leaders privately on Monday, shortly after his arrival in the nation's biggest city, Yangon.

The meeting had been scheduled for Thursday morning but the military pointedly asked at the last minute that it be pushed forward. The result was they saw the Pope before the civilian leaders instead of the other way around, as had been planned. "It was a good conversation and the truth was non-negotiable," he said of his meeting with the military leaders.

The latest exodus from Myanmar to Bangladesh of about 6,25,000 people followed a Myanmar military crackdown in response to Rohingya militant attacks on an army base and police posts on 25 August.

Refugees have said scores of Rohingya villages were burnt to the ground, people were killed and women were raped. The military has denied accusations of ethnic cleansing.

Asked if he used the word Rohingya during the private meeting with the military chiefs, the Pope said, "I used words in order to arrive at the message and when I saw that the message had arrived, I dared to say everything that I wanted say."

He then gave a reporter a mischievous grin and ended his answer with the Latin phrase 'Intelligenti Pauca', which means "Few words are enough for those who understand," strongly hinting that he had used the word the military detests while in their presence.

Human rights groups have criticised the country's de facto civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was under house arrest for a total of 15 years before the 2015 elections, for not taking a stand against the generals.

But Francis, who met with her privately on Tuesday, appeared to give her the benefit of the doubt because of her delicate relationship with the generals who were once her jailers.

"Myanmar is a nation that is growing politically, in transition," Francis said in response to a question about Suu Kyi and the budding democracy in Myanmar.
Tokyo: North Korea's missile tests are an "imminent threat" to Japan, the Japanese parliament declared on Monday, as prime minister Shinzo Abe said talking to the reclusive state was meaningless.

The upper house unanimously adopted a resolution protesting against the North's firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile that dropped into the sea inside Japan's exclusive economic zone last week.

The launch showed Pyongyang was determined to continue its nuclear and missile programmes and constituted "an unprecedented, significant and imminent threat against the safety of the region, including Japan."

"This is a frontal challenge against the international community that must not be tolerated," added the resolution.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula are high after last Wednesday's missile launch. On Monday the US and South Korea began their largest-ever joint air exercise, described by Pyongyang as an "all-out provocation".

Abe vowed to put pressure on North Korea until it changes its ways and gives up its missile and nuclear technology in a "verifiable" and "irreversible" fashion.

"In order to press North Korea into changing its policies, we shall take a resolute attitude in our diplomacy," he told the upper house. "Dialogue for the sake of dialogue is meaningless," Abe said.
Doha: Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani will attend a crucial summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council this coming week, Doha's foreign minister said on Sunday.

Speaking at a forum, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said Qatar's leader had accepted the invitation to attend, amid the region's worst political crisis in years.

"I will attend the ministerial council tomorrow (Monday) and the emir will attend the summit," said the minister.

He added that Qatar had not yet seen the summit agenda, but the current crisis would be discussed at the meeting.

"It is important that the GCC system remains alive," said the minister.

The emir received an invitation from Kuwait at the end of last month to attend the GCC summit.

It was the first such invitation during the ongoing and increasingly bitter Saudi-led diplomatic boycott of Doha.

The summit will start on 5 December, the six-month anniversary of the start of the crisis.

It was unclear who would represent the other members of the GCC at the gathering.

On 5 June, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt abruptly cut all ties with Qatar over accusations Doha supported extremism and was close to Shiite Iran. Qatar denies the allegations.

Since the beginning of the crisis, all diplomatic communication between Qatar and the boycotting countries has been stopped.

Founded in 1981, the GCC is a political and economic union that includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as Oman and Kuwait.

Kuwait and Oman have not taken part in the boycott of the tiny gas-rich emirate, and Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah has acted as a mediator in the crisis.
Buenos Aires: The search for the ARA San Juan, the Argentine navy submarine that disappeared 18 days ago, was now focusing on an area where the ocean floor is 950 metres deep, as complaints by the family members of the vessel's 44 crew-members mount.

At his Sunday press briefing, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said that Russia's remote-controlled submersible Pantera Plus will try to descend to the ocean bottom at a spot where a "contact" that is, a possible metallic object has been detected, reports Efe news.

The Russian undersea vehicle, which is being transported on board the Argentine vessel Islas Malvinas, on Saturday had descended to 477 and 700 meters at two other locations, but neither target proved to be the missing sub.

The ARA San Juan was sailing northwards some 432 kilometres off Argentina's Atlantic coast when it went missing on 15 November after reporting a battery short-circuit caused by water entering the vessel via the snorkel.

Some three hours after the last communication, a sound consistent with an explosion was detected 27 kilometres from the submarine's reported position, and the huge international search has focused in that region, with six vessels still at sea continuing with that effort.

At Balbi's daily update, the father of one of the missing sailors claimed that the navy had not provided him with any information about his son.

"You said that (the navy) informed the relatives but (I've received) nothing. I haven't received a single call," said Luis Antonio Niz, the father of one of the sub's officers, Luis Alberto Niz.

Balbi offered an immediate apology for the apparent oversight and took Niz's contact information, saying that the navy is not "infallible" and can make "mistakes".

On Sunday, most of the crewmembers' relatives left the Mar del Plata base en masse carrying Argentine flags and photos of their missing loved ones, stopping to speak with reporters and announcing that they were marching to the city's central square to call upon Argentine President Mauricio Macri to order a resumption of the "rescue" phase of the operation.

The rescue operations were discontinued on 30 November since calculations are that, even if the crew members were alive in a sunken vessel, they would have exhausted their available oxygen by then.
On Sunday, London mayor Sadiq Khan arrived in Mumbai, to hold a series of meetings with business leaders and politicians.

As part of his maiden official trip to India, Khan will also visit Amritsar and New Delhi apart from Mumbai. He will then fly out to Pakistan, where he will visit three more cities  Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi  before wrapping up his six-day South Asia visit.

As part of the Indian leg of the trade mission aimed at promoting new business links between India and London, the London mayor has a series of meetings planned with senior politicians, business leaders, regional leaders as well as Bollywood personalities.

His central message in these meetings will be that the British capital remains open to Indians post-Brexit. "Following last year's EU referendum, it is far more important to get the message of 'London is open' out far and wide and I will be taking that message to India and Pakistan," he had said on the eve of his departure.

British prime minister Theresa May is meeting the top brass of the European Union on Monday, dubbed the "absolute deadline day" for progress on the Brexit separation issues. Khan's visit to the subcontinent acquires significance with Britain appearing keen on pushing Brexit to the wire. The scheduled date for Britain's separation from the EU is March 2019.

According to a report on The Times of India, he began his trip by saying it was a "mistake" to tighten visa regulations, which had made it tougher for Indian students to visit the British capital. "London is the student capital of the world and students are a big asset. It was a big mistake to withdraw post-study work visa and to treat students as immigrants, which has benefitted Canada and Australia. It's in London's interest to change visa rules," he said.

It's not only Indian students that they want, but also the film industry, Khan said. "London is open. This is not just a phrase, but a frame of mind. We want Bollywood to not only shoot films in London, as they have done in the past, but also take up post-production work here. Even Hollywood is coming to Bollywood because of its brilliant post-production work," he said.

The 'London is Open' slogan has long been Khan's pet project, and the mayor is keen on capitalising on this further. As per a report on LBC, Britain was the second largest destination for Indian investment, and 44 percent of the fastest growing Indian companies now have a base in London.

Contrary to popular opinion, he said, Brexit will actually make visa norms easier. A report on The Hindu quoted Khan as saying on Sunday: "One of the justifications that some ministers in the government give to leave the EU is to have better trade relations with many countries like India. One of the best ways to encourage trade with India is to invite talent to London and UK."

Now that he is here, however, it's not all business on his mind. Maybe he will do a spot of acting as well, the report added. "Maybe I can act as well," Khan, whose parents were born in India, quipped. "I believe culture is the glue that binds the two cities together."
New Delhi: Notwithstanding its apology, the Supreme Court on Monday criticised the CBI for the manner in which it "treated" a sitting Orissa High Court judge during its attempted raid at his residence in connection with a case of alleged bribery in the name of judges.

The apex court made strong observations after the CBI said the agency has apologised to the Chief Justice of the high court as well as the concerned judge for the "mistake" and both have accepted the apology tendered by the agency. "The only problem is the way the sitting judge was treated," a bench comprising Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said, adding "such mistakes are not expected from an agency like the CBI".

At the outset, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Tushar Mehta, representing the CBI, said the agency had sought appointment from the chief justice and the concerned judge of the Orissa High Court and tendered apology for the incident.

"It was a mistake," Mehta said and added that the apology was accepted by both the judges. He said this matter should be rested in a dignified manner as senior officials of CBI had explained to the Chief Justice the circumstances under which the incident took place.

The issue had arisen after a CBI team had allegedly attempted to raid the official residence of the sitting judge in Cuttack on 19-20 September night in 2017. A team of CBI officials had come looking for the house of a former judge of the high court. The sitting judge of the Orissa High Court had shifted at the former judge's residence. Mehta, however, maintained that the probe team had not entered the house of the judge and CBI's superintendent of police had also met the concerned judge and expressed regrets for the inconvenience caused to him.

The bench sought to know from the ASG how the chief justice and the concerned judge had accepted CBI's apology. "You have explained your position, that is one thing. Whether they have accepted it or not?," the bench asked, adding, "where is the acceptance of apology?"

Mehta told the bench that this could be verified and said he would file an affidavit giving all the details. The bench also observed that the CBI officials, who had gone to conduct the raid, should have seen the name-plate of judge at his residence before going ahead with the raid. When one of the counsel appearing for the respondents said that the apex court has to protect the institution, the bench observed, "we are concerned with the entire judiciary".

Mehta also told the bench that an FIR against the CBI officers, lodged on a complaint by a security guard posted at the judge's residence, should be quashed. The top court said it would consider this aspect later and asked the agency to file its affidavit. It posted the matter for hearing on 5 January.

The CBI has approached the apex court seeking transfer of the matter pending before the Orissa high court.

The High Court had issued notices to the CBI and the state police on a plea seeking a judicial probe into the incident. The high court had sought responses on the plea filed by the bar association.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May failed to strike a Brexit divorce deal with EU negotiators in Brussels on Monday despite earlier reports of a breakthrough agreement that would have kept British-ruled Northern Ireland aligned with EU regulations. Both sides said they should unlock talks on future trade relations in the coming days. We will reconvene before the end of the week and I am also confident that we will conclude this positively, May said after a lunch with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who also voiced confidence in overcoming outstanding obstacles. He insisted the meeting, after days of intensive talks behind the scenes, was not a failure and, well aware the EU does not want to humiliate May as she accepts many of its terms for withdrawal, credited the prime minister with hanging tough. They spoke after government sources in Dublin said London had agreed to keep Northern Ireland aligned to EU regulations to avoid a hard border with the Irish Republic. Word of that sent the pound higher on hopes of rapid trade talks but also provoked an angry response from Mays allies in Northern Ireland, demanding equal treatment with the rest of the United Kingdom. Underlining the conundrums of Brexit, the idea of Northern Ireland remaining closely linked to the EU single market prompted speculation that, to avoid new barriers between Belfast and London, the British mainland would have to follow suit. The leaders of Scotland and London, which voted against Brexit, demanded they be allowed the same EU relationship as Northern Ireland. Yet May has ruled out such differentiated treatment or staying in a customs union or the single market. She is a tough negotiator, and not an easy one, Juncker said in remarks reflecting concern in Brussels that concessions by May could fuel a disruptive push in London to unseat her. She is defending the point of view of Britain with all the energy we know she has, the EU chief executive told reporters. Despite our best efforts and the significant progress we and our teams have made over the past days on the remaining issues, it was not possible to reach a complete agreement. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May is welcomed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the EC headquarters in Brussels, Belgium December 4, 2017. REUTERS/Yves HermanREGULATORY ALIGNMENT The sudden announcement that no deal had been reached swiftly squelched optimism that had spread earlier on Monday. Irish government sources had said agreement had been reached on an overall deal for the Irish issues. Slideshow (5 Images)The key phrase is a clear commitment to maintaining regulatory alignment in relation to the rules of the customs union and internal market which are required to support the Good Friday Agreement, the all-island economy and the border, one of the Irish government sources said. The Irish border, which is now completely unguarded and barely even marked, would not change its physical appearance after Britain leaves the EU, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said. Fears that a hard border could disrupt the peace deal in the north had driven both sides to find solutions. Juncker spoke to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar by phone. EU lawmaker Philippe Lamberts, who met Juncker, said the draft text on Ireland committed Britain to full alignment on rules. Donald Tusk, the EU summit chair, tweeted ebulliently after speaking to Varadkar that there was good progress on the Irish issue to unblock UK-EU trade talks: Tell me why I like Mondays! the former Polish premier wrote. Getting closer to sufficient progress at December (EU summit). This is code for Britain complying with a set of conditions the EU wants met on divorce terms before leaders will agree to launch talks on a future trade deal at a summit next week. Tusk, who had cancelled a trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah because of apparent progress on Brexit, met May after her talks with Juncker. Officials had earlier said he was preparing to call round EU leaders to get agreement on trade negotiations. National envoys handling Brexit were also summoned urgently to a meeting in Brussels later on Monday. London has broadly agreed to many of the EUs divorce terms, including paying out something like 50 billion euros. But the issues of the rights of expatriate citizens and the UK-EU border on the island of Ireland have defied a deal. Elmar Brok, another member of the European Parliament who met Juncker and his Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, before they met May, said just a few words separated the sides.

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DUBLIN/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain agreed on Monday to keep Northern Ireland in regulatory alignment with the European Union after Brexit, Irish government sources said, raising hopes Prime Minister Theresa May can strike a deal in Brussels to start free trade talks. After intensive negotiations in recent days, Britain made what the Irish sources called a clear commitment to keep economic rules on both sides of the new UK-EU land border across the island of Ireland similar enough to allow no frontier -- and so ease fears of stirring up conflict again in Northern Ireland. News of a deal, by raising the prospect of starting trade negotiations in the coming weeks, lifted sterling. It triggered speculation that it could result in the whole of the United Kingdom effectively remaining in a customs union, or even the EU single market, despite Mays insistence that it would not do so. The pro-British Northern Irish party on which May relies for support in parliament immediately insisted rules on the British mainland must not deviate from those in Northern Ireland, a position May herself supports. As a result, it is hard to see that Britain could itself stray far from EU regulations. That idea was immediately embraced by the leaders of London and Scotland, two major British regions where voters strongly opposed Brexit in last years referendum. Scotlands first minister and the mayor of London both repeated their wish to stay in a customs union or, better, the EU single market. That is a position Mays hardline pro-Brexit supporters would not countenance, underlining the conundrums that the Irish border and other complex issues have raised over Britains ability to make a clean break after 44 years of EU membership. REGULATORY ALIGNMENT Agreement has been reached on an overall deal for the Irish issues, one of the Irish government sources said. The key phrase is a clear commitment to maintaining regulatory alignment in relation to the rules of the customs union and internal market which are required to support the Good Friday Agreement, the all-island economy and the border. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said he hoped to make a positive statement shortly, adding that British-EU negotiations on post-Brexit trade would start. The Irish border, which is now completely unguarded and barely even marked, would not change its physical appearance after Britain leaves the EU, he said. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May is welcomed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at the EC headquarters in Brussels, Belgium December 4, 2017. REUTERS/Yves HermanEuropean Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar by phone. EU lawmaker Philippe Lamberts, who met Juncker earlier on Monday, said the draft text on Ireland would commit Britain to full alignment on rules. Donald Tusk, the EU summit chair, tweeted ebulliently after speaking to Varadkar that there was good progress on the Irish issue to unblock UK-EU trade talks: Tell me why I like Mondays! the former Polish premier wrote. Getting closer to sufficient progress at December (EU summit). This is code for Britain complying with a set of conditions the EU wants met on divorce terms before leaders will agree to launch talks on a future trade deal at a summit next week. Slideshow (5 Images)May and Juncker made no comment to reporters when they met at the EU executives Berlaymont headquarters for a lunch that diplomats and officials hope can seal a breakthrough that would open the way to negotiations on future trade relations. Tusk cancelled a trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah and hastily scheduled his own meeting with May for after lunch. Officials said he was preparing to call round EU leaders to get agreement on trade negotiations. National envoys handling Brexit were also summoned urgently to a meeting in Brussels later on Monday. London has broadly agreed to many of the EUs divorce terms, including paying out something like 50 billion euros. But the issues of the rights of expatriate citizens and the UK-EU border on the island of Ireland defied a deal until the last minute. Elmar Brok, another member of the European Parliament who met Juncker and his Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, before they met May, said just a few words separated the sides. In London, Mays spokesman said: Progress is being made. Theres more still to agree upon. Dublin, backed by the rest of the EU, wants strong assurances that London will commit to keeping business regulations in Northern Ireland the same as in the EU. Britain is seeking to keep its options open, having rejected a commitment to leave Northern Ireland in a full customs union with the EU or to keep the whole United Kingdom in one. Juncker and Barnier met the European Parliaments Brexit team to brief them on progress. The legislature, which must approve any withdrawal treaty if a disruptive Brexit is to be avoided in March 2019, has demanded that EU courts have the final say in guaranteeing rights for 3 million EU citizens in Britain. Britain insists that it will no longer accept the supervision of the European Court of Justice.

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ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis on Monday met Pakistans civilian and military leaders and urged them redouble their efforts to rein in militants accused of using the country as a base to carry out attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan. U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis arrives in Islamabad, Pakistan December 4, 2017. U.S. Embassy/Handout via REUTERS Mattis, on a one-day visit to Pakistan, said the South Asian nation had made progress in the fight against militancy inside its borders but needed to make more. More than 100 days since President Donald Trump announced a South Asia strategy that calls for a firmer line towards Islamabad, U.S. officials and analysts say there has been only limited success and it is not clear how progress will be made. U.S. officials have long been frustrated by what they see as Pakistans reluctance to act against groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network that they believe exploit safe haven on Pakistani soil to launch attacks in Afghanistan. The Secretary reiterated that Pakistan must redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country, the Pentagon said in a statement. Mattis, who visited Pakistan for the first time as defence secretary, said before the trip that the goal for his meetings with Pakistani officials would be to find common ground. In his discussion with Mattis, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the two allies shared objectives. Were committed (to) the war against terror, he said. Nobody wants peace in Afghanistan more than Pakistan. Mattis also met with high-ranking officials from Pakistans powerful military, including army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Lieutenant-General Naveed Mukhtar, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency that U.S. officials say has links with Haqqani and Taliban militants. In August, Trump outlined a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, chastising Pakistan over its alleged support for Afghan militants. But beyond that, the Trump administration has done little to articulate its strategy, experts say. U.S. officials say they have not seen a change in Pakistans support for militants, despite visits by senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis arrives in Islamabad, Pakistan December 4, 2017. U.S. Embassy Handout via Reuters We have been very direct and very clear with the Pakistanis ... we have not seen those changes implemented yet, General John Nicholson, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, said this week. Pakistani officials have pushed back on the U.S. accusations and say they have done a great deal to help the United States in tracking down militants. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis addresses a news conference during a NATO defence ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, February 16, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/Files LIMITED LEVERAGE U.S. official expressed hope relations could improve after a U.S.-Canadian couple kidnapped in Afghanistan were freed in Pakistan in October with their three children. However, while the Trump administration has used tougher words with Pakistan, it is has yet to change Islamabads calculus. Some experts say the United States loses clout in Pakistan when it is seen as bullying. While Mattis travelled to the region earlier this year, he did not stop in Pakistan, but visited its arch rival, India, a relationship that has grown under the Trump administration. There is not an effective stick anymore because Pakistan doesnt really care about U.S aid, it has been dwindling anyway and it is getting the money it needs elsewhere ... treat it with respect and actually reward it when it does do something good, said Madiha Afzal, with the Brookings Institution. Mattiss brief visit to Islamabad comes a week after a hardline Pakistani Islamist group called off nationwide protests after the government met its demand that a minister accused of blasphemy resign. Separately, a Pakistani Islamist accused of masterminding a bloody 2008 assault in the Indian city of Mumbai was freed from house arrest. The White House said the release could have repercussions for U.S.-Pakistan relations. I think for Pakistan, the timing is very bad. There is talk about progress being made against extremists and here you have a situation where religious hardliners have basically been handed everything they wanted on a silver platter, said Michael Kugelman, with the Woodrow Wilson think-tank in Washington.

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Ramallah: The Palestinian president has warned that American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital would jeopardize the White House's nascent West Asia peace efforts.

President Mahmoud Abbas' comments came amid a diplomatic push by the Palestinian leader to rally international support against the possible American move later this week.

"Any American step related to the recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, or moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, represents a threat to the future of the peace process and is unacceptable for the Palestinians, Arabs and internationally," Abbas told a group of visiting Arab lawmakers from Israel, according to the official Wafa news agency.

American officials have said President Donald Trump may recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital this week as a way to offset his likely decision to delay his campaign promise of moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

Israel regards Jerusalem as its capital, with most government functions, including the prime minister's office, Supreme Court and parliament, located in the holy city.

But the international community says the city's status should be determined through peace talks. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as their capital.

Abbas' spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeneh, said late Saturday that the president has been in touch with Arab and world leaders to rally opposition against any American move on Jerusalem.

He said Abbas had been in contact with leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and France. "We believe that such an American step, if it takes place, will enter the region in a new course, and a dangerous phase whose results cannot be controlled," he said.

The White House, led by Trump's adviser and son in law, Jared Kushner, has held months of meetings with leaders across the region ahead of an expected peace initiative.

While the proposal is expected to be regional in scope, little is known about the details, including whether Trump will continue the policies of recent predecessors in supporting the notion of an independent Palestinian State.

Kushner said on Sunday that Trump has not yet decided whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital or whether to proceed immediately in moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. "He is still looking at a lot of different facts," Kushner said at the Saban Forum, an annual Mideast policy conference in Washington.

Ahead of Kushner's comments, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, urged the US not to move forward with any change on Jerusalem's status.

Doing so, he said, "is not only going to promote international anarchy and disrespect for global institutions and law, but it will also be disqualifying itself to play any role in any initiative toward achieving a just and lasting peace."
Seoul: The US and South Korea on Monday kicked off their largest ever joint air exercise, an operation North Korea has labelled an "all-out provocation", days after Pyongyang fired its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile.

The five-day Vigilant Ace drill  involving 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troops  began Monday morning, Seoul's air force said.

Pyongyang over the weekend blasted the drill, accusing US president Donald Trump's administration of "begging for nuclear war".

The annual exercise comes five days after the nuclear-armed North test-fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the United States within range.

As tensions surged, US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican and foreign policy hawk, warned that the US was moving closer to "preemptive war" with the North.

"If there's an underground nuclear test (by the North), then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States," Graham told the CBS show Face the Nation.

The isolated and impoverished North has staged six increasingly powerful atomic tests since 2006 - most recently in September.

"The preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures. Every missile test, every underground test of a nuclear weapon, means the marriage is more likely," he said.

Graham's remarks echoed those of Trump's National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who told a security forum on Saturday that the potential for war with the North "is increasing every day."

The North has boasted that the Hwasong 15 ICBM tested on Wednesday is capable of delivering a "super-large" nuclear warhead anywhere in the US mainland.

Analysts agree that the latest test showed a big improvement in potential range, but say it was likely achieved using a dummy warhead that would have been quite light.

They say a missile carrying a much heavier nuclear warhead would struggle to travel as far.

They are also sceptical that Pyongyang has mastered the sophisticated technology required to protect such a warhead from the extreme temperatures and stresses encountered as the missile hurtles back to Earth.

The North's widely-condemned nuclear and missile programmes have made significant progress under leader Kim Jong-Un, who has overseen four nuclear tests and dozens of missile launches since taking power in 2011.

The months-long nuclear standoff between Kim and Trump  as well as their trading of personal insults  has fuelled concerns of another conflict, more than six decades after 1950-53 Korean War that left much of the peninsula in ruins.

But even some Trump advisers say US military options are limited when Pyongyang could launch an artillery barrage on the South Korean capital Seoul - only around 50 kilometres from the heavily-fortified border and home to 10 million people.
PARIS/ALGIERS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron is likely to use a visit to Algeria on Wednesday to look to the future and turn the page on the colonial past, but stop short of apologising for his countrys actions as some demand. French President Emmanuel Macron attends a press conference at the Elysee Palace following a meeting in Paris, France, December 2017. REUTERS/Etienne Laurent/PoolThe trauma of the 1954-1962 independence war, in which hundreds of thousands of Algerians were killed and tortured was used on both sides, has left deep scars. Former French leader Francois Hollande sought a more conciliatory tone describing his countrys colonization of Algeria as brutal and unfair and Macron is unlikely to go further. With President Abdelaziz Bouteflika rarely seen in public since a 2013 stroke, Macron will focus on the generational shift and importance of enhanced economic and security within that context. On a visit to Algeria in February as a candidate, Macron, 39, already shocked many at home when he said Frances 132-year colonial rule was a crime against humanity. The president had strong words. It was appreciated by Algerians, but today the idea is to turn the page and build a new relationship with Algeria, a French presidential source said, adding that youth was his key message. During a three-day tour in Africa last week Macron again addressed the colonial past. While recognising the crimes of the European colonisers, he also pointed to the positives of the era and made clear that his generation should not be blamed. Facing high unemployment, low oil prices, austerity and political uncertainty, Algerias youth is likely to warm to Macrons call to look to the future more than the war veterans. Its very difficult to have a relationship between one partner (Macron) that is young, vibrant and wants renewal and the other partner (Bouteflika) who represents such a severe contrast, said Pierre Vermeren, a North Africa specialist at the Paris Sorbonne university. Economic ties between the two countries have marginally progressed since 2012 and France is now behind China as the main partner. Annual trade stands at about 8 billion euros compared with 6.36 billion five years ago. More than 400,000 Algerians are given visas for France annually, almost twice as many as in 2012. If Macron makes it easier to get a visa, that will be great for me. As for the history stuff I really dont care, said Slimane Khalifa, 25 who is an engineer at a state firm. POST-BOUTEFLIKA TEST Political jostling around Bouteflika has intensified as his health has waned, fuelling questions about the transition if he steps down before his term ends in 2019. With more than 4 million people of Algerian origin in France, all with ties to the North African state, any upheaval across the Mediterranean would have a serious impact on Paris. Macrons biggest foreign policy test could be Algeria because the state of Bouteflikas health is a worry and potentially what happens after could have huge ramifications on us, said a French diplomat. Macrons friendship visit, downgraded from an official visit, is also an opportunity to appease some anger in Algiers after he travelled first to arch-rival Morocco earlier this year, a taboo for previous French leaders. Many hope Macron will go one step further when it comes to the past. France should not only apologise, but also pay for its crimes during occupation, Lakhdar Brahimi, retired diplomat and close friend of the 80-year-old Bouteflika said last week. Brahimi, like Bouteflika, belongs to the war veterans who fought against French occupation and among that generation Macron is seen as his last chance for history to remember Bouteflika as the man who obtained an official apology. However, it remains a sensitive issue across France and Macrons comments in February led to a drop in poll ratings and uproar across various strands of society forcing him to clarify his stance. With the generational change yet to take place, Macron for now needs Algeria to help resolve the crisis in neighbouring Libya and to prevent Islamist militants from stoking problems in the Sahel region, where some 4,000 French troops, roam close to the Algerian border. All the Algerians want is for France and the Barkhane force to get out of Mali and away from its border, said a senior French diplomat.

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United Nations: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for a ceasefire in Yemen in light of an ongoing humanitarian crisis, his spokesman said.

Guterres "calls on all parties to the conflict to cease all air and ground assaults" and is "deeply concerned about the sharp escalation of armed clashes" over the past several days, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

"Ambulances and medical teams cannot access the injured and people cannot go outside to buy food and other necessities. Aid workers are unable to travel and implement critical life-saving programmes at a time when millions of Yemenis rely on assistance to survive," he continued, reiterating calls for the Saudi-led alliance to end their blockade of the country.

Three years after Huthi rebels captured the Yemeni capital Sanaa with the help of forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh their alliance appears to be collapsing.

The two sides have fought deadly street battles this past week in Sanaa, in clashes the security sources say killed around 60 people.

The war in Yemen has claimed more than 8,750 lives since an intervention by Riyadh and its allies in March 2015 in support of a rebel government in the south of the country.
SANAA/DUBAI (Reuters) - Veteran former president Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed in a shooting on Monday after switching sides in Yemens civil war, abandoning his Iran-aligned Houthi allies in favour of a Saudi-led coalition, foes and supporters said. Yemen's former President Ali Abdullah Saleh (in red neck tie) is surrounded by guards as he attends a rally held to mark the 35th anniversary of the establishment of his General People's Congress party in Sanaa, Yemen August 24, 2017. Picture taken August 24, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled AbdullahSources in the Houthi militia said its fighters stopped Salehs armoured vehicle with an RPG rocket outside the embattled capital Sanaa and then shot him dead. Sources in Salehs party confirmed he died in an attack on his convoy. Unverified footage of his bloodied body lolling in a blanket circulated just days after he tore up his alliance with the Houthis following nearly three years in which they had jointly battled the Saudi-led coalition that intervened to try to reinstate Yemens internationally recognised government. In a televised speech on Monday, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi congratulated the Yemeni people for what he described as a victory against a conspiracy of treason engineered by the groups Gulf Arab enemies. He did not mention Salehs death. Saleh, 75, had said in a speech on Saturday that he was ready for a new page in ties with the coalition and called the Houthis a coup militia, leading them to accuse him of betrayal. Warfare between the former allies has torn densely populated Sanaa for days as Houthi fighters seized control of much of the capital and on Monday blew up Salehs house while coalition jets bombed their own positions. The end of their alliance had seemed poised to transform the fortunes of war after two years of attrition along mostly static front lines, which gave the Saudi-led coalition a new advantage over the Houthis. Stalemate in Yemen has contributed to a human catastrophe as a Saudi-led blockade and internal fighting has thrust millions to the brink of famine and accelerated the spread of deadly epidemics. Eyes will now turn to Salehs political allies and military commanders, whom analysts credited with aiding the Houthi march southwards in 2014 to dominate swathes of western Yemen. What happens now and whether his family and political allies fight on is not yet clear, said Adam Baron, a Yemen expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. His people will be angry, and many will certainly be out for blood, but there are many in the middle especially among the tribes who will fall with whoever appears stronger, he said. The (Saudi-led) coalition may have put a lot of their eggs in Salehs basket only for it to fall over now. They appeared to strongly support his attempt to confront the Houthis and now that bid may have failed. HEADS OF SNAKES Saleh once compared his 33-year rule over Yemen to dancing on the heads of snakes, a period that included unification of conservative north and Marxist south Yemen, civil war, uprisings, Islamist militant campaigns and tribal feuds. But he was forced from power in 2012 following an Arab Spring uprising that left him wounded by an attempted assassination, leading to a Saudi-brokered political transition. He fled to his one-time ally Saudi Arabia for treatment of his injuries and the princes in Riyadh allowed him to return to Yemen months later - something they came to bitterly regret as he undermined the transition plan and later joined the Houthis. That set the stage for his final role - that of ally to the Houthi movement which he had previously fought six times during his own presidency, and to Iran, the Houthis political backer. But they vied for supremacy over the territory they ran together, including Sanaa, which the Houthis seized in September 2014, and their feud burst into open combat on Nov. 29. The manoeuvring ended on Monday, as footage circulating on social media appeared to show his corpse, a deep wound in the side of its head, wrapped in a red blanket and being loaded onto a pick-up truck as tribal fighters waved their weapons. Praise God! and Hey Ali Affash! (another name for Saleh) they were shouting. Officials in his own General Peoples Congress party said Saleh was killed outside Sanaa in an RPG and gun attack on his convoy along with the GPCs assistant secretary general, Yasser al-Awadi. His death was confirmed by Salehs nephew and former chief of Yemens security forces, Yahya Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, who hailed him as a martyr on his official Facebook page. STREET BATTLES EASE IN SANAA Residents reported that the situation in Sanaa had calmed. Most people were indoors, and streets were deserted amid a state of fear as the Houthis asserted full control. Saudi-led aircraft continued to fly overhead. Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam claimed significant gains in the battle for Sanaa on Monday. With the aid and approval of God, the security forces backed up by wide popular support were able last night to cleanse the areas in which the militias of treason and betrayal were deployed, he said in a statement. The Houthi movements TV channel al-Masirah and witnesses said Houthi fighters had seized the downtown home of Salehs nephew Tareq, an army general. Residents said the warring sides traded heavy automatic and artillery fire as the Houthis advanced in the central Political District, which is a redoubt of Saleh and his family. We lived through days of terror. Houthi tanks have been firing and the shells were falling on our neighbourhood, said Mohammed al-Madhaji, who lives in the frontline district. The fighting has been so violent we feel we could die at any moment. We cant get out of our homes. Houthi media and political sources also reported that the Houthis also advanced toward Salehs birthplace in a village outside Sanaa where he maintained a fortified palace.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Harare: Zimbabwe's new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, called for public unity to revive the country's sickly economy as his new cabinet took office on Monday.

"I have sworn in a new cabinet just to finish the term of the former president, which is a period of six to seven months," Mnangagwa said after the new ministers took the oath of office at state house.

"I believe with my team we will stand up to the challenge."

"I want them (Zimbabweans) to be united, we must grow our economy," he added.

Mnangagwa was seen as favourite to succeed long-time ruler Robert Mugabe but then fell out with his boss.

Mugabe dismissed him after the then first lady, Grace Mugabe, accused him of plotting to topple her husband.

He briefly went into exile, returning after the army stepped in and the ruling party expelled Mugabe and a coterie of allies. The veteran ruler resigned on 21 November after 37 years in power.

Mnangagwa, chosen by the ruling party to replace Mugabe, appointed a new cabinet on Thursday.

He drew criticism for retaining the majority of ministers who served under 93-year-old Mugabe and appointing officers from the military which played a key role in the events leading to his ascent to power.

The 22-member cabinet includes Air Marshal Perrance Shiri, who was appointed agriculture and lands minister, and Major General Sibusiso Moyo, who is now in charge of foreign affairs.

Both officials had to relinquish their army positions, as they are not permitted to hold two posts.

"When I was in the military I was under (the) ministry of defence, which is part of government and who says military should never be politicians," Shiri told reporters after he was sworn-in.

"I am Zimbabwean, I have got every right to participate in the country's politics," he said.

The new president also reinstated prosecutor general, Ray Goba, who was named under Mugabe in September but whose appointment was rescinded the following month.

Mnangagwa has issued a three-month ultimatum for the return of funds siphoned out of the country by individuals and corporates.
IFF aims to take ground meat burgers to the next level with its latest ingredient, a plant-based protein based on soy called SUPRO TEX, which is poised to accelerate... Read More
Billionaire Bill Gates reads about 50 books each year, which he says has been critical to his success, his reign as the worlds richest man, and his overall wellbeing.

Over the last several years, it has become a tradition for the Microsoft co-founder (NASDAQ:MSFT) to release his top five books of the year on his blog, GateNotes.

Although Im lucky that I get to meet with a lot of interesting people and visit fascinating places through my work, I still think books are the best way to explore new topics that interest you, Gates wrote Monday.

Here are Bill Gates favorite books this year and why.

1) The Best We Could Do, by Thi Bui. Gates Review: This gorgeous graphic novel is a deeply personal memoir that explores what it means to be a parent and a refugee. The authors family fled Vietnam in 1978. After giving birth to her own child, she decides to learn more about her parents experiences growing up in a country torn apart by foreign occupiers.

2) Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond. Gates Review: If you want a good understanding of how the issues that cause poverty are intertwined, you should read this book about the eviction crisis in Milwaukee. Desmond has written a brilliant portrait of Americans living in poverty. He gave me a better sense of what it is like to be poor in this country than anything else I have read.

3) Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens, by Eddie Izzard.

Gates Review: Izzards personal story is fascinating: he survived a difficult childhood and worked relentlessly to overcome his lack of natural talent and become an international star. If youre a huge fan of him like I am, youll love this book. His written voice is very similar to his stage voice, and I found myself laughing out loud several times while reading it.

4) The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Gates Review: Most of the books Ive read and movies Ive seen about the Vietnam War focused on the American perspective. Nguyens award-winning novel offers much-needed insight into what it was like to be Vietnamese and caught between both sides. Despite how dark it is, The Sympathizer is a gripping story about a double agent and the trouble he gets himself into.

5) Energy and Civilization: A History, by Vaclav Smil. Gates Review: Smil is one of my favorite authors, and this is his masterpiece. He lays out how our need for energy has shaped human historyfrom the era of donkey-powered mills to todays quest for renewable energy. Its not the easiest book to read, but at the end youll feel smarter and better informed about how energy innovation alters the course of civilizations.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Donald Trump by allowing his latest travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries to go into full effect even as legal challenges continue in lower courts.

The court, with two of the nine justices dissenting, granted his administration's request to lift two injunctions imposed by lower courts that had partially blocked the ban, which is the third version of a contentious policy that Trump first sought to implement a week after taking office in January.

The high court's action means that the ban will now go fully into effect for people seeking to enter the United States from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad. Lower courts had previously limited the scope of the ban to people without certain family or other connections to the United States.

Trump's ban also covers people from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, but lower courts had already allowed those provisions to go into effect.

The nine-member high court said in two similar one-page orders on Monday that lower court rulings that partly blocked the latest ban should be put on hold while appeals courts in San Francisco and Richmond, Virginia weigh the cases. Both courts are due to hear arguments in those cases this week.

Two of court's liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, said they would have denied the administration's request.

The ban was challenged in separate lawsuits by the state of Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both sets of challengers said the latest ban, like the earlier ones, discriminates against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution and is not permissible under immigration laws.

Trump issued his first travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries in January, then issued a revised one in March after the first was blocked by federal courts. The second one expired in September after a long court fight and was replaced with the present version.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Oil fell on Monday after U.S. shale drillers added more rigs last week, though prices remained in sight of their recent two-year highs thanks to last week's decision by OPEC and other producers to extend output cuts.

Drillers in the United States added two oil rigs in the week to Dec. 1, bringing the total count to 749, the highest since September, energy services company Baker Hughes said in its closely followed report late on Friday.

February Brent crude futures fell 75 cents on the day to $62.98 a barrel by 1423 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were down 67 cents at $57.69.

The Brent price hit a two-year high of $64.65 a month ago and has since attracted record investment by fund managers.

The U.S. rig count, an early indicator of future output, has risen sharply from 477 active rigs a year ago after energy companies boosted spending plans for 2017.

U.S. producers were encouraged during 2017 to increase activity as crude prices started recovering from a multi-year price slump after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and some non-OPEC producers, including Russia, agreed to production cuts a year ago.

"So long as speculative financial investors do not lose heart, oil prices are likely to maintain their high level," said Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch.

"Even higher prices are likely to be precluded by news from the U.S., where drilling activity is being stepped up."

Last week the producers agreed to extend those cuts of 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) until the end of next year.

"Market reaction has been positive so far. There are only two worrying aspects ... One is that Iraqs indiscipline has not been discussed, at least not publicly," PVM Oil Associates strategist Tamas Varga said, referring to Baghdad's compliance with output cuts.

"The second is OPECs own forecast for next year. They are by far the most bullish on 2018, with the annual call on their oil at 33.42 million bpd," he said.

The forecast is much higher than those of the U.S. government at 32.70 million bpd and the International Energy Agency's prediction of 32.38 million bpd.

The latest agreement allows for producers to exit the deal early if the market overheats. Russian officials had expressed concern that extending the cuts might encourage U.S. shale oilcompanies, which have been a thorn in OPEC's side, to pump more crude.

U.S. output rose in September to 9.5 million bpd, the highest monthly output since 9.6 million bpd in April 2015, government data shows. On an annual basis, U.S. output peaked at 9.6 million bpd in 1970.

(Additional reporting by Aaron Sheldrick in TOKYO and Emily Chow in KUALA LUMPUR; Editing by David Goodman)
In this segment from the Rule Breaker Investing podcast, David Gardner dips into the mailbag and finds a question he doesn't feel he has a good answer for: Beginning investor Dylan recently took a sum of money he'd had in savings bonds and put it into four Stock Advisor recommendations, and wants to start bolstering his portfolio with more stocks over time. The question: What strategies should a young professional -- drawing a young professional's salary -- use to expand his holdings?

A full transcript follows the video.

10 stocks we like better than Wal-MartWhen 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, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*

David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Wal-Mart 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 November 6, 2017The author(s) may have a position in any stocks mentioned.

This video was recorded on Aug. 30, 2017.

David Gardner: This comes from another Minnesotan. In fact, [Dylan Dimkey], you come from beautiful, as you write, Brainerd, Minnesota. You're 25 years old. You're going to ask a question that I'm not going to have a good answer to, but I am going to say something toward it. So here's what you wrote.

"I'm very new to stocks and investing. I've just found it to be absolutely fascinating. I joined Stock Advisor about a month ago. I've been catching up on your Rule Breakers podcasts as well as a few others that The Fool offers. I want to say thank you for all you do for young investors like me. You and your team at Fool HQ do a wonderful job." I'm not going to read all this, but thank you very much.

You go on to say, "I recently cashed out all of my EE savings bonds that had been given to me each birthday" -- I'm sure others of us have had this experience as kids -- "since I was born", [Dylan] writes. He says that's not a huge sum of cash, but it is substantial at this point in his life at the age of 25.

And he used the money to purchase, you said, "three of my favorite stocks off the Starter Stocks list of Stock Advisor," and you go ahead and say that they're Apple, Nike, and PayPal. You now are a part owner of those companies. Congratulations, Dylan! As well as another Stock Advisor stock. That would be Activision Blizzard to begin, you say, building your investing foundation.

You go on, "I buy in completely with the strategy of purchasing great companies for the long haul, so I'm doing my best not to pay attention to the daily fluctuations in their stock price. I'd also like to take your advice and purchase 15 different companies as soon as possible.

"However, I don't have a lot of expendable cash at the moment to continue investing. I do dedicate 5% of my salary matched 40% by my employer to a Roth 401(k) or maybe IRA, but I feel like I'm missing out on a golden opportunity to get into some more great companies at an early age and allowing the wonder of time to work its magic. Do you have any strategies for a young investor to continue adding to his portfolio while bringing in a young professional's salary? An anxious Fool, [Dylan Dimkey]."

Well Dylan, first of all, good on you, because it is outstanding to hear from a 25-year-old who's already putting away 5% of his salary. Yes, we'd love to see that at 10% if you can squeeze it, so that's my first bit of advice. Squeeze that belt. Can you do 6%? Can you do 7.5%? 10% is really where we'd love it if each of us could get there, and in the end, it's just about controlling your own spending or being utterly disciplined or more cognizant of what you're doing, and that's the best, first answer I have for you.

You're getting an employer match. Excellent. Anybody who's getting an employer match from any employer should max out that match because, as the old saw goes, it is truly free money. You're being given free money to add to your investment nest egg. So good on yah, again.

Really what I want to say, here, is that I'm not a specialist at budgeting or helping people think about how to save more money. We have a lot of resources here at The Motley Fool. When I think about a Motley Fool podcast, like Motley Fool Answers, it sometimes answers personal financial questions about how to save better. How to save smarter.

We also have a discussion board on our free side at Fool.com called Living below Your Means. It is one of our longest running, most prolifically posted to discussion board in Fool history. There are a lot of people helping each other figure out how to live below our means.

You know, I did tweet out just on my own, here, in the last week or two [that] a lot of people talk about the sustainability of our environment or our world, today, and I think that those are great things. I'm glad there's more conversation about that than ever before.

I also want anybody who cares about sustainability to think about personal sustainability, specifically your own financial sustainability. You want the best for your environment. I do, too. I want the best for you, and the best way to be financially sustainable is to live below your means. To have capital that you then go on to invest.

So, [Dylan], what I'm here to say is I'm not great at this. There are a lot of online sites you can probably google. Sites like Mint with a lot of people who do budgeting and share ideas with each other. But really what I want to point out is the beauty of the cycle that you've set up, because not only have you gotten started investing early at a young age, but it has whetted your appetite to have more to invest, and that's one of the most positive dynamics that I see in the financial world today.

When people truly take control of their own destiny via their own finances and they start to save, and then they invest and, yup, the stock market, as it turns out, more often than not goes up; they watch their money do that work for them without them doing any work. You buy those shares of Apple or Netflix. Sometimes you have some tough years, but they go up over time and you know what it makes you want to do? It makes you want to save more.

It makes you realize the beauty of it, and that's what I want for every young person in this world, especially, is to recognize the ownership culture and the beauty of owning companies and letting them grow in value. You benefit from that, and that is maybe the best way to inspire people to save that I know of, and the people who have started it, like you [Dylan], start to ask that positive question, "How do I save even more?" I wish you the best.

David Gardner owns shares of Activision Blizzard, Apple, and Netflix. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Activision Blizzard, Apple, Netflix, Nike, and PayPal Holdings. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on Apple and short January 2020 $155 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Bitcoin dipped back under $11,000 on Monday, coming off a record high just shy of $11,800 it hit on Sunday after a surge from less than $1,000 at the start of the year.

The cryptocurrency, which trades 24 hours a day and seven days a week, climbed as high as $11,799.99 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange at around 2100 GMT on Sunday.

It was not clear what caused the move higher over the weekend other than new investors joining the upstart market, with so-called wallet-providers reporting record numbers of sign-ups over the past week.

Analysts said Friday's announcement by the main U.S. derivatives regulator that it would allow CME Group Inc and CBOE Global Markets to list bitcoin futures contracts had turned sentiment positive after a choppy week.

"The price rises are triggered by continued media interest driven by the expectation of futures trading on CME," Charles Hayter, founder of data analysis website Cryptocompare, said.

By 1310 GMT on Monday, bitcoin had slipped back to around $10,919, down 2 percent on the day but still up more than 100 percent over the past three weeks. Sunday's high marked a 1,121 percent increase since the start of the year.

Think Markets analyst Naeem Aslam said reports Britain wants to increase regulation of bitcoin and other digital currencies by expanding the reach of European Union anti-money-laundering rules that force traders to disclose their identities and report suspicious activity, had knocked bitcoin off its highs.

But others said greater regulatory scrutiny would help.

"If anything, regulation will only increase bitcoin's rate of growth as regulation lends credibility and engenders trust," Nicholas Gregory, CEO of London-based cryptocurrency firm CommerceBlock, said.

Sunday's record high for bitcoin came as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the launch of the "petro," which he said would be a cryptocurrency backed by oil reserves, to shore up a collapsed economy.

Opposition leaders said the digital currency would need congressional approval and some cast doubt on whether it would ever see the light of day in the midst of turmoil.

(Reporting by Jemima Kelly; editing by Alexander Smith)
HELSINKI/TORONTO (Reuters) - An arbitration court ordered smartphone pioneer BlackBerry Ltd to pay $137 million to Nokia to settle a payment dispute and the Canadian company said it would pursue a separate patent infringement case against the Finnish firm.

The International Court of Arbitration ruled earlier this week that BlackBerry had failed to make certain payments to Nokia under a patent licence contract, BlackBerry said on Friday.

The ruling, in a previously undisclosed disagreement over a smartphone technology licensing deal signed in 2012, highlights the financial risks technology companies face from disputes over intellectual property, which are sometimes resolved through confidential arbitration processes unknown to investors.

BlackBerry won a $940 million payout from chipmaker Qualcomm Inc earlier this year in a similar case of disputed payments.

BlackBerry has previously said it is looking to generate more revenue from its portfolio of some 40,000 patents by licensing them to other technology companies, and in November said that U.S.-based Marconi Group would help it license out a broad range of its patents.

It is often difficult for investors to value a company's patent portfolio given the opaque nature of licensing deals and disputes.

"Patent issues are going to come up from time to time and as one-offs," said Todd Coupland, an analyst at CIBC World Markets. "Getting in front of them, unless there is some detail, is going to be tough."

BlackBerry shares were down 1.9 percent in midday Toronto trading, Nokia closed 2 percent lower in Helsinki.

BlackBerry disclosed in February that it had filed separate patent infringement complaints against Nokia, alleging that several of the Finnish network equipment maker's base stations and related software infringed on 11 of its patents.

Nokia, which sells these products to telecom operators, said in a statement on Friday that it believes those infringement claims "are without merit."

BlackBerry said it would take a GAAP charge on its results, but did not say when the ruling would hit its financials.

Nokia said a significant portion of the amount awarded had already been recognised in its financials.

Nokia sold its once-dominant phone business in 2014, sticking to its network equipment business and broad patent portfolio. It has licensed technology to smartphone makers Samsung Electronics, Apple, Xiaomi Technology and LG Electronics.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto and Jussi Rosendahl in Helsinki; Additional reporting by Ahmed Farhatha in Bengaluru; Editing by Jim Finkle and Grant McCool)
Eurozone finance ministers on Monday backed a plan for Greece to secure upcoming bailout loans, with the end of the country's massive rescue program now just eight months away.

Bailout negotiators reached the provisional agreement in Athens on Saturday, and officials in Brussels said finance ministers from countries using the euro planned to finalize the deal in late January.

"This is very good news. It's been hard work and it shows a commitment from all sides," said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the outgoing head of the eurozone finance meetings.

He said there was no discussion Monday on the size and payout schedule of the next disbursements.

Greece has relied on bailout loans since 2010 and is set to exit its latest rescue program in August.

Under the agreement reached Saturday, the government committed to expand the privatization of a state power company and help speed up efforts to clear a huge backlog of banks' soured loans  measures that are both politically unpopular.

Athens has already agreed to continue austerity measures for at least another two years, hoping that public hardship will be eased by a return to growth.

The country's economy grew by an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the previous quarter, an independent national statistics agency reported Monday, short of the ambitious expectations of the government and European Union.

Without a revision, the July-September preliminary growth figure suggests that Greece could miss its target of annual growth of 1.6 percent.

The end of bailout programs means Greece will need to return to regular market financing next year. In preparation, Greece launched a bond exchange with private holders last month. Ratings agency Fitch described the process "as another step toward the resumption of regular bond issuance."

On Monday, the government defended its growth target, arguing that all major sectors of the economy were now improving.

"The goal of 1.6 percent is attainable," Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, a minister of economy and development, told a business conference in Athens.

"The Greek economy is back on a path of recovery, powered by fiscal adjustment, reforms agreed with our partners, and the gradual but substantive return of trust of our creditors, the markets, and investors."

___

Gatopoulos reported from Athens, Greece.

___

Follow Gatopoulos at http://www.twitter.com/dgatopoulos and Casert at http://www.twitter.com/rcasert
The Latest on the election of the next president of the eurogroup (all times local):

5:05 p.m.

Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno has been elected the new head of the so-called eurogroup, the body made up of the single currency bloc's finance ministers.

In a tweet following the election, the European Union said he had been elected as the eurogroup's new president and that he will take up his post on Jan. 13.

Centeno had been overwhelming favorite to win the race to succeed Dutchman Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who has been at the helm for nearly five crisis-ridden years. He defeated Luxembourg's Pierre Gramegna, Slovakia's Peter Kazimir and Latvia's Dana Reizniece-Ozola.

Centeno will take the helm at a time when the eurozone is in far better shape than the one that existed during Dijsselbloem's tenure.

The economy is growing strongly, while worries over Greece's future in the bloc have subsided and the country is poised to exit its bailout era next summer.

___

12:45 p.m.

The finance ministers from the 19 countries that use the euro are deciding who should lead their regular meetings, with Portugal's Mario Centeno widely tipped to take the helm of a group that has been at the forefront of the single currency bloc's crisis-fighting efforts.

The decision of who will succeed Dutchman Jeroen Dijsselbloem as president of the so-called eurogroup is expected later Monday. Dijsselbloem, who has held the post for nearly five years, has been one of the most high-profile European politicians during a period that saw a number of countries, notably Greece, teeter on the edge of bankruptcy and the euro currency itself come under threat.

Three other candidates are in the frame, too: Luxembourg's Pierre Gramegna, Slovakia's Peter Kazimir and Latvia's Dana Reizniece-Ozola.

Whoever gets the presidency will inherit a eurozone in far better shape than the one that existed during Dijsselbloem's tenure. The economy is growing strongly, while worries over Greece's future in the bloc have subsided and the country is poised to exit its bailout era next summer.
News / Local

by Stephen Jakes

An MDC-T Councillor for ward 10 Mpopoma, Charles Moyo has revealed that assaulted by Zanu PF youths who were extorting money from vendors in the city forcing them to attend a party meeting last week.Moyo said he was assaulted while doing his work by the young guy Magura Charumbira and police did not act which he described as sad news indeed."Zimbabwe is a peaceful country and there is no room for fake War Lords . Allocating vending bays to people is Council s roll through its workers. The council must act very swiftly to avoid this embarrassing unfortunate situation going out of hand," said former depute Mayor Alderman Amen Mpofu who said Moyo told him of the assault."This is our City. We don't have another one, hence our plea for order and total peace .Youth must not allow themselves to be misled .their future is more important and must not appreciate a person holding ice block because in the end he will realise that he was holding nothing and will be to late."
What happened

Shares of General Cable Corporation (NYSE: BGC) jumped as much as 35.2% in trading on Monday after the company accepted a $3 billion buyout offer from Prysmian Group. Shares traded in a tight range during the day, and at 1:30 p.m. EST shares were up 35.1%.

So what

Prysmian agreed to pay $30 per share in cash, an 81% premium to July 14, 2017 when the company announced it was undertaking a strategic review. The deal has already been approved by both companies' boards of directors, and Italian company Prysmian has proposed financing some of the transaction through an equity offering.

The acquisition isn't expected to close until the third quarter of 2018, but shares are already trading near the offer price, so the market thinks it's highly likely to close.

Now what

Given the massive premium being paid, I think it's probably wise to take some gains off the table. There's still a possibility that the acquisition won't close -- and if that happens, shares could give back today's gains.

What we do know is that General Cable's strategic review led to a big buyout offer, which drove shares higher today.

10 stocks we like better than General CableWhen 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 General Cable 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 December 4, 2017

Travis Hoium has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
In December 2014, I detailed why the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (NYSEMKT: EWJ), a proxy for participating in Japanese equities, was a timely purchase for investors. In the roughly three years since, although the stock endured a volatile period between mid-2015 and mid-2016, the fund's shares have posted a cumulative total return of roughly 33%. Twenty-three of those percentage points were notched year to date, a period in which the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX (Tokyo Stock Price index) averages have been among the best-performing major stock indices worldwide.

Let's review a few performance factors fueling the rise of Japanese stocks, and examine why their streak may continue for a few years yet.

A governmental jump start

In my initial overview of the Japanese market, I discussed three potential impacts from Abenomics, the broad set of measures instituted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government to pull the world's third-largest economy out of its low-growth, deflationary conditions:

A then-new mandate compelled Japan's "Government Pension Investment Fund," or GPIF, to allocate half of its holdings in equities, split equally between the Japanese equity market and foreign stock markets; this buying program from the world's largest pension fund would provide support to domestic equity prices.

A weak Japanese yen, supported by Abe's government's policy, would favor export-heavy ETFs like the iShares MSCI Japan fund.

A sharper focus by Japanese companies on corporate governance and investor-friendly metrics like return on equity (ROE) would increase corporate profits.

In the intervening years, Abe's government has pumped money into the economy, and the consistent stimulus has kept the yen relatively weak, boosting the fortunes of large capitalization exporters like Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM), which not only influence the iShares MSCI Japan ETF, but also set the direction for the Japanese market in general.

The GPIF has indeed reallocated its holdings, and steady buying of Japanese equities has pushed domestic stocks to 24.4% of the total GPIF portfolio, essentially achieving the target goal of 25%. The GPIF's total value as of its last reporting period is 156.8 trillion yen, or a mammoth $1.4 trillion at current exchange rates.

If anything, government participation in Japan's stock market is rising. The Bank of Japan, which has separately purchased Japan-centric ETFs since 2010, almost doubled its yearly purchase amount last July, from 3.3 trillion yen to 6 trillion yen (nearly $54 billion).

By the way, so much central bank and public pension money flowing into public markets throws into relief the still relatively meager participation by retail investors, who own less than 20% of outstanding common Japanese shares. Japanese investors, especially those who witnessed the collapse of the asset bubble in the early 1990s, have been frequent sellers into periodic rallies like the current market climb.

Finally, it also appears that zeroing in on corporate behavior has benefited stock valuations. The Japanese government introduced a corporate governance code in 2015, and it hasn't been subtle in pressuring corporations to avoid stockpiling cash (an ingrained habit of Japanese management teams), to increase economic and shareholder returns, and to become more transparent in reporting. In its buying program, GPIF openly favors corporations which put cash to constructive use, and which demonstrate rising annual ROE.

Of course, many other important factors I didn't grasp or foresee also influenced the markets. For one, the rise of Asia-Pacific economies has expanded export opportunities for goods and services by "Japan, Inc.," which had historically leaned on Europe and the U.S. for growth abroad.

While the United States is still Japan's biggest export market, at 22% of total exports, the next 40% of Japan's annual exports are consumed by Asian economies: China at 19%, followed by South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Singapore (here's a nicely illustrative heat map). The cachet of the "Made in Japan" label, especially among Chinese consumers, is providing new growth opportunities for non-industrial manufacturers of a wide range of goods, from packaged foods to cosmetics.

Why Japanese equities will continue to run

While Japan's GDP (gross domestic product) growth is still quite modest, the country has recorded seven straight quarters of expansion as of the government's most recent report. In real, as opposed to nominal, terms, Japan's last five years have seen 1.2% annualized improvement in GDP:

National GDP is shaking out of its lethargy as long-held specializations of the Japanese economy find new demand in global trade. Robotics companies and components suppliers are prospering as the developed world increasingly turns to automation to reduce labor costs. Companies like Yaskawa Electric Corp. and Denso Corp. -- large-capitalization automation leaders on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, but hardly household names in the U.S. -- are poised to benefit greatly from current trends. According to the International Federation of Robotics, Japan dominates robot manufacturing, delivering 52% of the global supply of industrial robots.

Tightening labor conditions also support rising GDP. Japanese employment recently dropped to its lowest level in 22 years, in part due to rising labor-force participation among women and the elderly. Much has been made of Japan's demographic time bomb, which will have to be addressed with a more relaxed immigration policy and incentives for both highly skilled and low-skilled foreign workers to enter Japan's notoriously hermetic workforce and society.

Yet Abe's efforts to catalyze lagging female participation are already paying off, especially in the youngest cohort of workers. In the chart below, which tracks labor participation of girls and women between the ages of 15 and 24, note the slight but important trend reversal after 2012:

Despite gains, the Japanese market isn't overvalued

The Nikkei 225, the most broadly cited measure of Japanese stocks, has gained more than 140% over the last five years, and currently trades around 22,700. But as the index has bounced between 10,000 and 20,000 for most of this century, the latest upswing, though stronger than previous surges, doesn't indicate an overly expensive market.

Recently, German equity analysis firm StarCapital Research ranked Japan the 24th most attractive market out of 40 major global markets, based on an assortment of commonly used equity-valuation metrics. Incidentally, in 38th place, the U.S. won distinction as one of the least attractive markets at present.

Like the U.S., Japan has one of the highest cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratios (CAPE ratios) in the world. According to StarCapital, Japan's CAPE as of Sept. 30 stood at 27, versus the U.S. market's reading of 29. But Japanese companies traditionally have been extremely stingy dividend payers, and low aggregate payout ratios are often correlated with a higher CAPE result; a paper accompanying StarCapital's report makes this point, although not specifically in regard to the Japanese market.

For a more balanced view, it's important to note that Japanese firms trade on average at a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 16.4, versus the average U.S. P/E of 22.4. And Japanese equities look much cheaper on a book-value basis, carrying an aggregate price-to-book ratio of 1.4, less than half the current U.S. price-to-book ratio of 3.1. Moreover, U.S. stocks have coasted to all-time highs since the Great Recession in an enduring bull market. In contrast, Japanese shares, slower to catch fire, still have room to play catch-up.

Below, a final chart to ponder, of the historical movement of the Nikkei 225 index:

I'm not sure how relevant the Nikkei's all-time high is today. The surge in the late 1980s was, after all, driven by one of the greatest asset bubbles of the 20th century. Yet, contextually, investors can glean from the above chart that a march toward at least the 30,000 level isn't out of the question.

The path to that next milestone won't necessarily be smooth, as risk factors remain. The low participation rate of Japanese retail investors remains worrisome. And the fact that the Japanese government is such a forceful driver of the stock market, as well as an increasingly significant equity owner, invites potential volatility once GPIF and the Bank of Japan begin to curtail their purchasing.

Yet I believe that enough true economic value is being created by Japanese corporations to offset effects of future diminishment in government buying programs. Given a closer corporate focus on shareholder returns, and the global demand for the outputs of Japan's advanced, high-tech economy, Japanese markets should provide domestic retail investors and foreign buyers alike with ample rewards for their patient capital.

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Asit Sharma has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Sen. David Perdue on Sunday praised the Senate tax bill, and said the recently-passed legislation could be just more than a week away from moving to the Oval Office.

This is going to be so stimulative for our economy. Our workers are going to become competitive again  Capital formation is going to come out of the woodwork to support this economy  We could have this on the presidents desk within 10 days, Perdue, R-Ga., told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures.

The Senate passed the sweeping tax reform legislation in a 51-49 voteSen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., being the only Republican to vote noin the early morning hours on Saturday. Since lawmakers in the House voted last month to approve their own version of a tax plan, both chambers of Congress will next have a conference committee meet to iron out any differences between the bills.

I dont anticipate many changes, Perdue said. We moved in the SALT areathe state and local tax we gave relief to some of the high-cost states. But also, I believe that we have taken out a lot of the differences. So I think this is going to move very quickly.

Perdue said the Senates plan will benefit more than just corporations68% of tax cuts in the bill going toward individual Americans. A family of four a couple with two childrenmaking a median income of $73,000 would see a 60% tax cut, while a single-mom making $41,000 will receive a 75% tax cut, according to Perdue.

The issue of state and local tax (SALT) deductions for high-tax states such as New York, New Jersey and California has become somewhat of a focal point for some legislators. While the original Senate bill called for a full repeal of SALT, the legislation that passed Saturday mimicked the Houses plankeeping a deduction for property taxes up to $10,000. However, the senator believes most Americans are tired of subsidizing the nations high-tax states.

Why should a couple with two children making an income exactly the same for the same couple with the same [number of] kids in Californiawhy should the couple in Iowa pay more federal income tax? he asked.

The Senates bill also preserves the alternative minimum tax (AMT), which some say would benefit wealthy Americans, though the Georgia Republican disagrees.

We put this back in there primarily to pay for an enrichment of cuts on the individual side  So when you look at the math, there is absolutely no support that this is just for the rich, Perdue said.
ABC News reporter Brian Ross was suspended for a serious error.

Ross initially reported that President Donald Trump asked former national security advisor Michael Flynn to contact Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign, but later clarified the comment reporting the Trump-Flynn interaction took place after the election. In a tweet Sunday, Trump suggested investors should consider suing ABC over the markets drop Friday after the report.

Counselor to President Trump, Kellyanne Conway, weighed in on the report, telling the FOX Business Networks Stuart Varney, Well if Brian Ross worked for me, and I was a private employer for many years, it would not be four weeks unpaid suspension for a guy making seven figures to lie on the air, it would be complete termination.

Conway says the incident highlights the mainstream medias eagerness to jump on negative stories about the president.

The other thing is it really shows, it brings into sharp relief the presumptive negativity and the hunger to get rid of this president and talk about Russia collusion, Russia, Russia, Russia for this entire calendar year by the entire mainstream media, nonstop, Stuart.

People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused - many millions of dollars!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

According to Conway, those in the media only trust one another now.

The media just trusts the media now. They dont independently source things, they see a tweet, they hear a report and, if its negative about the president, they go right for it, they like it, they retweet it, they resay it.
Chelsea Handlers Netflix series is going out with a bang as the comedian-turned-activist took some brutal shots at White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders over the weekend.

On Fridays episode, Handler conducted an interview in which she interrupted her guest to slam Sanders, calling her a "harlot," trollop and wh---."

That Harlot that theyre dressing up and trolloping out every day? she asked when Sanders name came up. I mean, one day she has no makeup on at all, the next she has six foot long eyelashes, shes got cleavage and summer wh--- lipstick all over her face. Can you believe what they turned her into? A proper trollop.

While Handler is known for her off-color political humor, many fans were quick to jump on her recent characterization of Sanders as being both too harsh and anti-feminist.

Showing your true colors of lifting up women, one user wrote. Huckabee-Sanders is more of a lady than you can ever fathom being.

The user then posted an old quote from Handler about how women should respect women with open arms.

Another user noted that Handler practices many of the beauty tactics that shes chastising Sanders for saying, before you call Sarah Huckabee Sanders a wh--- maybe you should check some of the stuff you have posted on instagram.

Another mocked the double standard that Handler appears to enjoy on social media saying, Just an FYI to everyone APPARENTLY Chelsea Handler can call Sarah Huckabee Sanders a W--- and keep tweeting, but if you return the favor to her, you are suspended.

As previously reported, it was recently announced that Netflix would end its run of Chelsea after the completion of Season 2. The star claimed in a statement that the decision to end the show was her own so that she could focus on political activism in the future. Handler has made a name for herself as a prominent critic of the Trump administration. Her comments against Sanders are just the latest in a long line of jabs at the White House.

Chelseas comments against Sanders come about 28 minutes into the latest episode of Chelsea, titled Dinner Party: Scandalous.
The View host Joy Behar had to eat some crow on Monday after celebrating a story on air that turned out to be inaccurate.

On Fridays broadcast, the longtime host, 75, was handed a card with breaking news. She read from ABC News' exclusive report from Brian Ross that stated: Michael Flynn promised full cooperation to the Mueller team and is prepared to testify that, as a candidate, Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians.

Hours later, ABC News was forced to correct that report from Ross, noting that the alleged directive came after Donald Trump had already been elected president, not when he was a candidate. Because of the error, ABC News suspended Ross for four weeks without pay.

Behar read the false report on air, prompting her audience to break into uproarious applause, which co-host Meghan McCain compared to Oprahs now famous car giveaway. On Monday, Behar tried to make light of the error.

On Fridays show, apparently I was guilty of premature evaluation. I hear they have a pill for that, she said.

In a statement read on The View Monday, ABC News said the report had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process.

It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience, the statement continued. These are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday.

People are slamming this as fake news, I think its a mistake, Behar said, throwing the topic to the panel.

I will say that fake news and what we did on Friday, thats what I was being accused of being a part of. I dont want to sit on a show where I feel like were giving fake news or acting irresponsibly, McCain said.

However, the panel, which included Behar, McCain, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro and Sunny Hostin, seemed to unanimously agree that Ross suspension was warranted, but called it an error instead of deliberate, misleading fake news.

He clearly made a mistake, hes paying the consequences for that mistake, and I think its a good standard, Navarro said. Now, its the same standard Id like to hold the president of the United States to.
The sensual coming-of-age tale "Call Me By Your Name" was voted the best film of the year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

The critics announced their awards Sunday on Twitter.

Luca Guadagnino's film about a 17-year-old's first love in northern Italy also scored breakout star Timothee Chalamet best actor. Guadagnino shared the award for best director with Guillermo del Toro for "The Shape of Water." Del Toro's Cold War-era fairytale also came away with three awards, including best actress for Sally Hawkins.

The wins further solidified "Call Me By Your Name" as an Oscar favorite. The Sony Pictures Classics release, which last week set the year's box-office record for best screen-average in its limited-release debut, also won best feature at last week's Gotham Awards. Chalamet, though just 21, has won three awards just in the past week, besting veteran names like Gary Oldman ("Darkest Hour") and Tom Hanks ("The Post").

While some critics are continuing to praise the film, others feel the depiction of a sexual relationship between an underage teenager and an adult is sending the wrong message.

Writer Chad Felix Greene said the film sends a "cultural message to teenagers to seek out adult partners and romanticize relationships they are not yet able to manage."

The film first came under scrunity when actor James Woods tweeted about it in September.

"As they quietly chip away the last barriers of decency. #NAMBLA," Woods tweeted.

The film's star Hammer tweeted back, "Didn't you date a 19 year old when you were 60.......?"

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Former Today show co-host Meredith Vieira joked about the time she went into Matt Lauers office and found a huge bag of sex toys in a resurfaced video from 2016  and now a therapist is claiming she was the one who gave him the goods.

Dr. Laura Berman, who was a regular guest on the Today show, told Inside Edition Friday she reportedly gave the fallen TV journalist sex toys to help him spice up his troubled 19-year marriage with his wife, former model Annette Roque.

She claimed the 59-year-old sought advice when cameras werent rolling.

We were in the makeup room and he sort of asked the makeup artist to leave, said Dr. Berman. He asked me about sexual aids and devices. He confided in me about some of the struggles he was having in his married relationship.

Dr. Berman insisted Lauer didnt want to be outed buying sex toys in a store. The therapist also added she is able to speak about Lauer because he is not a patient of hers.

I brought him a shopping bag filled with toys from my line that were designed for couples, spicing things up, she claimed.

According to Dr. Bermans site, shes a sex and relationship educator and therapist who has helped countless couples build stronger relationships, improve their sex lives, and achieve a heightened level of intimacy through her TV and radio shows, books, columns and website, along with her private practice based in Chicago.

She has also written several books on sexual health and pleasure.

In May 2016, Lauer appeared on The Meredith Vieira Show with his then-co-host Savannah Guthrie, and Vieira recalled the time she went snooping in his office and discovered the bag of sex toys.

You had a huge bag of sex toys, yes you did, in your closet, Matt, Vieira told her studio audience.

Lauer then attempted to explain the explicit toys.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute, he responded. We had a guest on the show who was a sex therapist. I think you (Vieira) did the segment, actually.

Vieira, looking confused, said she did not do the segment.

Lauer continued that the sex therapist gave each of us a shopping bag of stuff.

Vieira replied she did not receive anything.

A flustered Lauer then said he did not know what to do with the sex toys and left them in his closet.

Lauer was fired last week after he was found to have carried on inappropriate sexual behavior with a female colleague. A shocking report in Variety detailed multiple claims of crude behavior by the morning show star.

Among the allegations: that Lauer once gave a colleague a sex toy with an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her; that he exposed himself to another female co-worker; that he would question female producers about their sex lives; and that he would talk about which co-hosts he would like to sleep with.

Variety also reported Lauer had a secret button under his desk that allowed him to lock his office door remotely, affording him privacy for his sexual conquests.

The New York Times later reported that Lauer allegedly summoned a married co-worker to his office for sex in 2001 and had sex intensely with her over the back of his chair until she fainted and had to be taken to a nurse.

Roque has since reportedly left their New York home and jetted off to her native country the Netherlands to escape public scrutiny after the bombshell accounts.

Lauer and Roques marriage has been reportedly rocky since 2006. Roque filed for divorce in 2006 but did not follow through, People reported. He allegedly offered his estranged wife $5 million to stay in the marriage. However, the celebrity magazine added it was no secret that Lauer regularly cheated on his wife.

Dr. Berman was shocked by the allegations.

Im sort of crestfallen if any of those toys were used to harass any colleagues or any women, she said.
NBC News two top executives are resisting calls for an outside investigation into who knew about  and didnt report -- sexual misconduct by Matt Lauer, opting instead for an internal review that would likely spare the bosses from meaningful scrutiny.

Andy Lack and Noah Oppenheim, who have deep ties to Lauer from their many years at NBC, have insisted they had no idea the disgraced Today co-host was behaving inappropriately. This has raised eyebrows within NBC, and numerous media outlets have reported that everybody knew about Lauers proclivities.

A team of the most experienced NBCUniversal Legal and Human Resources leaders have begun a thorough and timely review of what happened, Lack told NBC employees on Friday in an e-mail that was obtained by Variety.

That won't cut it, according to attorney Gloria Allred.

NBC should hire an outside law firm to investigate what knowledge the network had, or should have had, about Matt Lauers alleged sexual harassment of female employees at NBC," Allred told Fox News. "An outside law firm hired to do an independent investigation is more likely than HR to be impartial and not subject to internal pressures and potential conflicts of interest."

The New York Post reported that on Friday, Oppenheim told staff from NBCs prestigious Nightly News program, I can tell you, on a personal level, that if there is anyone who works here, who still works here, who knew about this and didnt report it, this is going to be dealt with in the most severe way possible. And that is why we are conducting this review."

Lack had announced on Friday that NBC will investigate internally, with Legal and Human Resources leaders leading the charge. He labeled it a timely review of what happened, but experts dont think NBC Universal employees should be responsible for the inquiry.

Boston University professor and corporate ethics guru Susan Samuelson co-authored Business Law and the Legal Environment, which details how people should behave when faced with an ethical dilemma. The book explains that we cannot be objective about ourselves, a rule Samuelson said applies directly to the situation surrounding NBCs decision to use internal employees to investigate.

No matter how hard they try, people cant be objective about the organization they work for, Samuelson told Fox News. Thats why people get outside investigators.

Samuelson said that research has shown that using internal Human Resources will be a huge trap for NBC because that practice prevents people from doing the right thing.

HR is first place people go, but clearly that process didnt work at NBC, she said. You might argue that the step has failed. The second step would be to go outside, which theyre not doing.

NBC staff are expressing great skepticism at Lacks and Oppenheims review.

The most charitable way you can look at the situation is that Andy encouraged an environment where Matt got everything he wanted, said one NBC insider. Matt was king.

Other NBC staff confirmed that under Lack, who is described as a largely disengaged manager, Lauer held absolute sway at NBC. And Oppenheim repeatedly told colleagues he had no say over talent issues, according to multiple NBC insiders.

Oppenheim has also told colleagues in recent months he is bored in his job and thinking about returning to the west coast, where hes worked as a screenwriter of films such as Allegiant and Maze Runner.

Lack and Oppenheim have both declined repeated requests for comment.

Northwestern University Professor of Communication Studies Irving Rein is considered an expert in crisis management. He told Fox News that NBC should absolutely use an independent investigator if it wants to maintain credibility as a legitimate news organization -- because a third party wouldn't be beholden to Lack and Oppenheim.

Their history of looking into this matter was really ambiguous, ambivalent and confusing, Rein said. Given the ambiguity and the issues, I dont think they really have much of a choice. If they try to do it internally, theyve already demonstrated that they dont have the ability to do so.

Lack and Oppenheim have faced two serious scandals in the last year which could both be linked to Lauer. The network has yet to give a clear explanation of why it sat on the explosive Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump making lewd comments about women, which was leaked to the Washington Post in October, 2016, just weeks before the presidential election. And NBC has also not been transparent about why it spiked Ronan Farrows bombshell expose on Harvey Weinstein. Farrow published his finding in The New Yorker, helping to spark a national debate on the treatment of women in the workplace.

In recent days, observers have asked if NBCs reticence to expose other big stars bad behavior was linked to a glass houses problem.

Its curious why NBC has now botched the handling of three separate stories that all involve some sort of sexual harassment angle, said University of North Carolina journalism professor and media ethics expert Lois Boynton, adding that there is a concern about a conflict of interest since the two execs are friends with Lauer.

Typically, scandals of the magnitude NBC is facing lead to an independent investigation that answers to the corporate level of the parent company. This weekend, New Yorks prestigious Metropolitan Opera announced that it would launch an investigation with an outside law firm into allegations against star conductor James Levine, who was recently accused of sexual misconduct.

Similarly, banking giant Wells Fargo recently used an independent investigator and an outside law firm to look into its scandalized sales practices.

During Rathergate in 2004, CBS hired former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh to investigate. And back in 1998, CNN launched an independent investigation led by legendary media attorney Floyd Abrams when the network botched a report on the Vietnam War's Operation Tailwind. Abrams decline comment when asked if NBC should take a similar approach because of personal interests with the company.

21st Century Fox hired an outside law firm in 2016 to investigate allegations of sexual harassment within Fox News. The investigators reported up to 21st Century Fox, which is Fox News parent company.

Walter Scott, clinical professor of strategy at Northwesterns Kellogg School of Management, told Fox News that having NBC News staffers do the investigation is a major issue because they have a vested interest in the results.

There is a problem in terms of having HR do the investigation. The reputation of the company is very essential, Scott said before adding that NBCs parent company, Comcast, should want to stay on top of what is happening.

Lack and Oppenheim have already come under fire for the way they handled the situation, initially claiming there was only one complaint about Lauer in 20 years before backtracking and clarifying that only current management was in the dark. Even the second statement has raised eyebrows and the Variety reporters who broke the Lauer bombshell, Elizabeth Wagmeister and Ramin Setoodeh, have questioned the claim that current NBC staffers were unaware of Lauers misconduct.

University of Maryland broadcast journalism professor Mark Feldstein, who has worked at NBC, CNN and ABC, is working on a book exploring various media scandals and journalistic malpractice. Hes spent months studying a how news organizations have handled misconduct over the past generation.

It varies widely. Some appoint outside independent blue-ribbon commissions to investigate and issue a public report, others investigate internally with or without a public report and some clam up entirely, Feldstein told Fox News.

A big reason Lack and Oppenheim have come under particular scrutiny is the executives close ties to Lauer. Lack is widely known to be personal friends with Lauer. According to Vanity Fair, the two men have vacationed together. It was Lack who promoted Lauer to Today co-host in 1994 and the two men remained close friends when Lack left NBC for several years. Oppenheim has spent most of his career at NBC, including a multi-year tour of duty as a senior producer on Today when he worked closely with Lauer. Prior to his promotion to NBC News president, he was the executive overseeing Today.

The New York Post reported late Friday that NBC News insiders say they believe NBC News boss Lack is trying to blame his second in command Oppenheim, along with previous execs at the news network. Its like theyre turning on each other, when it was Matt who destroyed a lot of people.

NBC News and Comcast did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Ruby Rose fired back at reports addressing her seemingly frail appearance at the Pitch Perfect 3 premiere in Australia last week.

The Australian actress/model also took to social media Monday to address her adult acne, claiming she broke out because of hotel pillow cases and frequent phone interviews with reporters to promote the film.

This acne belongs to me, not them, and you are welcome to it, the 31-year-old wrote. I never thought Id see the day Id leave my beautiful country balling my eyes outwhen I was so excited to come home. I mean it sucksfor me, I dont see how its bothering so many others? but Im a human. It happens..one side of my face is clear and the other is a mess.

FOR MORE PHOTOS OF RUBY ROSE, VISIT HOLLYWOODLIFE.COM

The Orange is The New Black star then discussed how several tabloids have focused on her photos from the premiere. According to Rose, Britains Daily Mail, in particular, highlighted her thin arms and the visible outline of her spine, hinting she may be suffering from an eating disorder.

This is always my back..I have a tilted posterior (its why I have abs but no butt) and spinal curvature from a bad car accident, wrote Rose.

Its very important to know what an eating is, to know how to speak about it properly when you have such a platform such as a national newspaper, she added. From the bottom of my heart I am sorry if those stories triggered anything in anyone. This is the problem with believing tabloids or any news without research.

In the past, Rose has credited being a vegetarian for helping her maintain a healthy lifestyle.
News / National

by Staff reporter

A VISUALLY impaired prosecutor who was denied full access to the courts since 2006 because of his condition has been finally granted permission to prosecute after the Prosecutor-General Advocate Ray Goba granted him his long-denied rights.Mr Mehluli Ndlovu joined the Public Service Commission 11 years ago but was confined to set down offices as his superiors said he would not be able "to see" the credibility of witnesses.He received a letter from the Prosecutor General's last week granting him permission to prosecute as provided by the Constitution of Zimbabwe.Mr Ndlovu's lawyer Mr Costar Dube of Mcijo Dube and Partners confirmed that his client got the letter. "I Advocate Ray Goba, the Prosecutor-General of Zimbabwe, do hereby nominate and appoint Mehluli Ndlovu to appear before the Magistrates' Court and Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, for me, and in my name, to prosecute all cases as shall be therein pending," reads the letter."I find that the applicant is unnecessarily being discriminated and thereby order that the Attorney General, Public Service Commission and the Director of Public Prosecutors through any of its subordinates and functionaries officials desist from subjecting Mr Ndlovu to any restrictions in the performance of his duties. They should but render him with all necessary support and assistance to fully and effectively perform his duties without any differentiation with his other colleagues in prosecution." Mr Ndlovu's plight started in 2006 when he left private practice to join the then Public Service Commission as a prosecutor at Bulawayo Magistrates Court housed at Tredgold Building when Mr Johannes Tomana was still the Attorney-General.Until now, he was not allowed to present cases in court with authorities arguing his assistant is not a civil servant and has not taken an oath to keep State secrets. For the past 11 years, Mr Ndlovu has been confined to the set down offices where he received new cases and decides whether there is enough evidence to prosecute.Frustrated by his former boss, Mr Tomana, Mr Ndlovu approached the Labour Court seeking an order to be allowed to prosecute in court.Labour Court President Justice Mercy Moya-Matshanga ruled in his favour and ordered Mr Tomana to allow him to prosecute, but the court order was violated.
When Kensington Palace announced Meghan Markle was engaged to Prince Harry, many wondered if the American actress will eventually follow in his mothers philanthropic footsteps.

The late Princess Diana, crowned as the peoples princess, dedicated much of her life to helping those in need, raising awareness on the AIDS crisis, leprosy, the danger of land mines and feeding the hungry. She died in 1997 at age 36 after a car crash in Paris.

As Markle prepares for her May 2018 wedding, a rep for Prince Harry told Fox News the star has experience being an activist and will take on new causes after she marries the royal.

Ms. Markle has previously served as an Ambassador for World Vision Canada and UN Women  roles that have introduced her to a number of grassroots projects around the world, wrote the rep. She is incredibly grateful for the experiences she has had with both organizations, but has told them she will have to end her Ambassador roles as she embarks on the next stage in her life.

"She is focusing on traveling around the UK in the months ahead and will join The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry as a Patron of The Royal Foundation after the wedding.

Markle, who is best recognized by fans as Rachel Zane from USA Networks Suits, was passionate about her charity work long before she met her prince.

The 36-year-old served an ambassador for World Vision in February 2016, and she traveled to Rwanda to see how a local school was impacted by having access to clean water thanks to a pipe built by the global relief charity within the community.

Meghan is a true humanitarian, wrote Lara Dewar, chief marketing and developing officer, to Fox News. Were deeply grateful for her contribution as a global ambassador for World Vision over the past two years and for helping to raise awareness for the worlds most vulnerable children."

During her visit, Markle taught students to paint, and she helped drill a borehole to provide fresh water.

"I personally witnessed Meghans passion to improve the lives of children and, know her heart to advocate for the rights of girls  to her and amplify their important voices," Dewar said. "She will undoubtedly bring vast energy to her charity work as a member of the Royal Family. We cant wait to see what the future holds for her and Prince Harry  a couple who clearly have a heart for social justice.

Africa also has a special place in Prince Harrys heart. BBC.com reported the 33-year-old helped create Sentebale in 2006, an organization that aims to work with young people affected by HIV/AIDS. It was set up in honor of Princess Diana. Since then, Prince Harry has made numerous trips to check on the charitys work, as well as arrange fundraising events to support it.

Markle has a similar passion for raising awareness.

We are grateful to Meghan, who has been a World Vision ambassador for the past two years and has helped us support the worlds most vulnerable children," a rep for World Vision International wrote to Fox News. "Her humanitarian work has taken her to Rwanda and India where she has inspired and transformed the lives of many children. We wish the couple every happiness together.

The Royal Foundation, which is recognized as the main vehicle for Prince Harrys philanthropic work, as well as Prince William and his wife, Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, focuses on cyber bullying, mental health, preventing youth violence and providing education in Uganda, just to name a few.

Its unknown which cause Markle will take on as a royal  but she could soon return to Africa to continue helping those in need there.

I have this love of Africa that will never disappear, Prince Harry told ITV in 2016 about his work with Sentebale. And I hope it carries on with my children as well.
MSNBC declined to comment on Monday regarding whether embattled host Joy Reid will be disciplined for her homophobic remarks and anti-gay jokes that were unearthed over the weekend.

Reid wrote a dozen blog posts from 2007-2009 containing remarks that are highly offensive to the LGBTQ community. MSNBC prides itself on being progressive, and Reids decade-old comments directly contradict the networks typical direction.

The old blog posts  unearthed by a Twitter user and reported by Mediaite  targeted former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who Reid mocked as Miss Charlie, for being gay and closeted, even though there was never any proof that he was. The posts fanned rumors of Crists sexual orientation and his political opponents tried to tar him with the gossip during his governorship  when he was a Republican.

Rachel Maddow, MSNBCs most-watched host and cash cow, is openly gay. Reid apologized once her homophobic past was exposed and Crist  who is now a Democrat  took to Twitter to accept her apology. However, MSNBC presumably is considering some sort of discipline for Reid, or else the networks spokesperson would have likely shot down questions about punishment for the homophobic slurs.

Conservative blogger Wayne Dupree, who was named to the 2017 Newsmaxs 50 Most Influential African-American Republicans, doesnt think anything will happen to Reid despite the nasty rhetoric.

When we look at this from a common sense perspective, we will see that nothing will probably happen to Reid because she is completely insulated from any repercussions that would be called for in todays politically sensitive climate, he wrote. Why do I say this: shes a liberal, black woman, and those two cards will save her from just about anything  but we will always know.

Mediaite reported it was able to retrieve the posts from Reids blog, which no longer exists, through an online archiving service.

Miss Charlie, Miss Charlie, Stop pretending, brother, Reid wrote in a 2007 post, according to the media outlet. Its okay that you dont go for the ladies.

In another, the AM Joy host wrote, Now that hes married to a girl, Charlie Crist is being sought out for all KINDS of good stuff [The GOP] are wooing Miss Charlie to run.

In a Dec. 12, 2008, post, Reid belittled Crist as dreading physical relations with his wife on their honeymoon.

I can just see poor Charlie on the honeymoon, ogling the male waiters and thinking to himself, god, do I actually have to see her naked? she wrote.

The same blog post included a joke about Crist having sex with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Mediaite reported. Get your mind out of the gutter, she joked.

Reid commented in the blog that Crist got married to a woman in the first place to help him become McCains 2008 running mate. Mediaite counted 17 times Reid derisively referred to Crist as Miss Charlie, and the subject led her to opine on why gay men stay in the closet.

When a gay politician gets married, it usually indicates that he is highly ambitious, and desires to put himself in a position to move up the power ladder, she wrote.

She further mocked Crist with tags gay politicians and not gay politicians.

Reid said her blog posts were written at the time when Crist was a conservative Republican. Back in 2012, Crist joined the Democratic Party and endorsed Barack Obama for re-election.
Hundreds of thousands of children in the Philippines have been given a dengue vaccine which may worsen the outbreak, officials warned, as they halted the program late last week.

The vaccine, Dengvaxia, has been administered to more than 730,000 public school children aged 9 and older in three endemic regions of the Philippines.

France-based manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur said that an analysis of the drug based on six years of clinal data showed that in the longer term, more cases of severe dengue could occur in those who have been vaccinated with the drug among people who have not previously been infected with dengue.

Sanofi said it would ask health officials to update information provided to physicians and patients.

WHY MOSQUITOES ARE CONSIDERED A WORLDWIDE THREAT

Dengue, according to the World Health Organization, is a mosquito-borne pandemic-prone viral disease which causes severe flu-like symptoms. In severe cases, dengue can cause breathing problems, hemorrhaging and organ failure.

About half the world's population is at risk of dengue and, according to WHO, about 96 million people are sickened by the viral infection every year.

The Philippines Department of Health launched the $69.5 million public dengue immunization drive last year  the worlds first such program.

Sanofi had previously referred to the drug as critical in the fight against dengue, Sky News reported.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said further information would be released on Dec. 12 or 13 by the WHO advisory body, Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization.

US-MADE DENGUE VACCINE 100 PERCENT EFFECTIVE IN SMALL STUDY

The secretary said there havent been any reports of severe dengue infection among those vaccinated, and he noted that the government would profile all those who received the vaccination and heighten its surveillance mechanisms. That would include mandatory reporting of all hospitalized vaccine recipients, regardless of symptoms, and five years of post-vaccination surveillance.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A police officer is being called a guardian angel after responding to reports of a robbery ended up with him agreeing to adopt a homeless pregnant womans baby.

Albuquerque police officer Ryan Holets was investigating a convenience store robbery when he walked behind the building and found a woman getting ready to inject heroin.

Holets turned on his bodycam and confronted the 35-year-old Crystal Champ and her companion before realizing the woman was pregnant.

Youre going to kill your baby, Holets is heard on the bodycam chastising Champ, who revealed she was seven or eight months pregnant.

Holets, who appears to be writing a citation for the couple in the beginning of the video, begins talking to Champ about her situation.

Its not every day I see a sight like that, Holets said in an interview with CNN. It just made me really sad.

OFFICER TAKES CHILD TO MCDONALD'S AFTER NOT BEING PICKED UP FROM SCHOOL ON BIRTHDAY

It was in that life-changing moment that Holets decided to intervene.

"I just felt God telling me, 'Tell her that you will do it because you can, Holets said to CNN.

That it was the father of four telling Champ he would like to adopt her baby.

Champ, who lives in a tent among the brush beside a highway in New Mexico, has battled addition to heroin and crystal meth for most of her life.

I know how bad my situation is, she told CNN. I know what a horrible person I am.

Champ had also desperately wanted someone to adopt her baby, Holets said and he wanted to be the one.

I got so tired of seeing so many situations that I want to help, but cant. But in that moment I realized I had a chance to help, Holets continued.

After the conversation with Champ, Holets got in his squad car and drove immediately to his wife  with whom he had not yet discussed the magnanimous decision he made.

The police officer went right up to his wife and told her the whole story.

He already knew my heart on the issue, and he knew that I would be totally onboard with it, Holets wife, Rebecca, told CNN.

The couple had discussed adopting before, Yahoo reports, but wanted to wait until their youngest, who is 10 months old, was a little older.

The couple had no time to spare, though. Three weeks later, Champ gave birth to a baby girl, Hope. However, because of Champs drug use, Hope was born addicted to opioids, called neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). The syndrome can cause a lot of problems for growing infants like increased irritability, autonomic overreactivity and gastrointestinal tract dysfunction, as well as developmental disorders later in life.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a child with NAS is born every 25 minutes in the U.S.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

The Holetses have said when the time is right, they will tell Hope about the circumstances of her adoption, Yahoo reported.

I just want her to be safe and secure and be in a family and be loved and have a chance, Champ said.

After giving birth, with the Holetses at the hospital, she gave the couple Hope and said goodbye. She turns to me and says, Take care of her for me. And I said, I will take good care of her, and you take good care of yourself. It was super emotional, said Rebecca.

I am so thankful and blessed and humbled that we are allowed to be Hope in our family, Holets said.
A pair of childhood friends are on their way toward completing a bucket list full of good deeds as one of them faces a devastating cancer prognosis. Chris Betancourt, 20, was given about one year to live after the leukemia he faced as a child returned in September.

Betancourts best friend, Dillon Hill, was there for him the first time he was diagnosed with chronic mylogenous leukemia, and the pair bonded over their love of video games. Tragedy struck for them a second time when Betancourts sister, who Hill was dating, committed suicide while they were in high school.

In support of his friends recent diagnosis, Hill is planning to postpone his studies at UC Davis for the upcoming semester while helping Betancourt complete his 79-item list.

MOM OF 2 DIES DAY AFTER FLU DIAGNOSIS

Over Thanksgiving break, the duo got started on the list near their hometown in Sacramento, California, and managed to tick off two tasks by ordering 100 items from a fast-food place and delivering it to the homeless. Video of their good deed went viral.

I didnt think wed get any news coverage, anything of the sortmaybe a few people on YouTube might be like, Alright, good job guys, Betancourt told ABC 10. But to see other people, like, get it on it, was nice.

3-D PRINTED MASK HELPS PUP HEAL FROM BITE WOUNDS

Other items on the list include meeting celebrities, falling in love, seeing Yosemite, road tripping and helping to demolish a house. Theyre hoping to raise enough funds to embark on their road trip that would help tick off several items along the way.

Currently, Bentancourts best hope for treatment is a bone marrow transplant that will require three months of hospital stays, but must be from a donor of Puerto Rican decent. The pair are keeping supporters updated on their list and Bentancourts health through the MyBestFriendsList.com website, as well as several social media channels.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, thy leaves are so unchanging. Or so the lyrics of the popular Christmas carol go. But Christmas trees around the world are no longer traditional evergreen firs. Instead, theyve taken on unique and diverse forms, with variation in color, size and shape.

Some arent even trees at all.

The Christmas tradition of decorating a tree is believed to have its roots in pagan and Christian winter celebrations, where fir tree branches were used to decorate homes to remind people of spring, or as a symbol of everlasting life.

While there were a number of forms of early Christmas trees, the first recorded appearance of a Christmas tree in a town square is said to date back to 15th or 16th century Latvia. Townsfolk are said to have danced around the trees before setting them on fire.

SINGLE DAUGHTERS HILARIOUS CHRISTMAS CARD GOES VIRAL

Now, Christmas trees are commonplace in town centers, with cities around the world keen to put on a show with their impressive trees  and this year is no exception. From Moscow to Madrid to Melbourne, here are some of the worlds most spectacular Christmas trees.

The tree in Puerta del Sol in the Spanish capital of Madrid stands brightly, the blue and green neon lights illuminating the city plaza. Meanwhile, a tree in Moscow can be seen reflected in a nearby stainless steel sculpture by artist Gregory Orekhov.

Dortmund, in Germany, claims to have the worlds largest Christmas tree. The 147-foot-tall tree is covered in some 48,000 lights.

MASSACHUSETTS POLICE STOP CAR WITH MASSIVE CHRISTMAS TREE ON TOP

The tree in Strasbourg is a feature of the citys Christmas market, which is said to be one of the largest and one of the oldest Christmas markets in France.

Christmas comes to Washington D.C., with snow-dusted trees inside the White House, and a massive tree erected outside the Capitol building.

Everyone from royalty to celebrities seem to get in on the act. The Queen of England has a lavishly decorated 20-foot tree put up in Windsor Castle, while queen of pop Gwen Stefani was caught striking a pose in front of the Empire State Buildings annual tree.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Paris went with a statement all-white tree this year at the Place de la Concorde. The City of Lights lived up to its name with this illuminated tree, as well as many other decorative Christmas lights throughout the city.

A 118-foot Giant Redwood tree stands over Wakehurst Place in Haywards Heath, England. The tree was decorated with 1800 low-energy lamps, so its no surprise the tree can be seen by pilots as they fly overhead towards Gatwick Airport.

A more abstract form of Christmas tree is that which appears in front of the V & A Museum in London. Composed of a cloud of floating words," the tree forms part a month-long festive music-themed program at the museum.

This article originally appeared on News.com.au
This friendship between a young local rapper and an elderly Florida woman is melting hearts all over the country.

On Friday, the 22-year-old Spencer Sleyon  who, according to XXL, raps under the name Half Empty  flew 1,000 miles to West Palm Beach to meet 81-year-old Rosalind Roz Guttman. The two had been playing the online game Words with Friends together for over a year.

We played [300-plus] games together, and [Roz] actually ended up becoming a good friend of mine, Tweeted Sleyon. The tweet, along with the photos of the two hugging each other, has been liked one million times.

The trip was arranged by Amy Butler, a pastor at Manhattans Riverside Church, who flew to Florida with the rapper.

Sleyon told The Root that Roz was his best friend.

Sometimes wed speak about personal things, but nothing extra personal, he said. Politics, the election, hurricanes.

Added the rapper: Whatever people want to take from this story and however it makes them feel, Im just glad and Rosalind and I can bring that to people.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post
For those Americans who care about the future of elephants on the African continent, the decision to allow the importation of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is the right one. Although the controversy surrounding this decision has clouded the truth and it may seem counterintuitive to some, allowing these imports is the very best thing we can do to save elephants.

Africa is an amazing place, and all those who visit the continent come away truly inspired by its endless beauty, its diverse people, and the remarkable wildlife that inhabit the landscape. For more than a century, Americans have traveled on safari to witness Africas wonders, including the apex of African wildlife, the elephant.

In some areas of the continent, however, the African elephant is in trouble. Driven largely by Chinas illicit ivory trade, illegal poaching has decimated the population in some countries, especially those where well-regulated hunting has not been embraced. In other countries, where hunting has provided the incentive for protecting the herd, the population is healthy.

In Zimbabwe and Zambia, for example, government wildlife biologists have determined that hunting is a necessary component of their overall management plan, and have successfully implemented such programs to maintain a healthy population.

In the years preceding the ban on trophy imports into the U.S., the Dande Anti Poaching Unit succeeded in reducing elephant poaching by 90 percent. Following the ban, poaching increased five-fold.

Weve seen such successes here in the United States, where the Theodore Roosevelt model of wildlife conservation has been in place for almost a century. Hunters have always been part of this equation  including President Roosevelt himself  and provide the finances through excise taxes and license fees by which all wildlife and their habitats thrive. Since the late 1930s, hunters have provided over $7 billion from excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment alone. This investment has resulted in the return of healthy and abundant wildlife populations all across the country.

The difference in Africa is that elephants do not exist in the same highly structured and regulated system continent-wide. In addition to illegal poaching, elephants are seen by many residents as a nuisance to crops and livestock, a source of sustenance when other sources of food are not available, and in some cases, a dangerous threat to individuals and their families. These are the challenges elephants face every day.

These challenges dont disappear when the FWS bans trophy imports into the U.S. Illegal poaching continues and the data from Zimbabwe are clear on this point. In the years preceding the ban on trophy imports into the U.S., the Dande Anti Poaching Unit, covering an area of approximately 500,000 acres, succeeded in reducing elephant poaching by 90 percent. Following the ban, poaching increased five-fold.

In fact, when one understands how hunting contributes to conservation, just the reverse is true: Allowing trophy imports actually protects elephants.

Hunting provides the financial resources that allow game managers in Africa to implement anti-poaching programs, including the hiring of game wardens and rangers to protect elephant herds. Hunting dollars also provide a clear incentive for local residents to embrace elephant conservation, instead of viewing them as direct competitors or a nuisance. Having local residents on board is critical to elephant protection, and it is only with local help that poaching rings can be uncovered and destroyed. In short, when hunting is embraced, the full protection of elephants is possible.

Our wildlife successes here in America provide an example to the entire world on how best to manage wildlife and their habitats. White-tail deer, Canada geese, and wild turkeys were once largely gone from the landscape here in America, but through regulated hunting and habitat programs paid for by hunter dollars, these species are now thriving.

We can do our part to ensure the same wildlife successes in Africa, including for the elephant. But to do so, we have to drop our preconceived notions and embrace a counterintuitive truth that well-regulated hunting provides the best avenue to the overall health and abundance of this majestic species and its future. All of us who care about elephants should applaud the FWS and its decision to embrace elephant protection in Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Not many years ago, an ad for a newspaper warned that, If you miss a day, you miss a lot.

Now you dont need a day to miss a lot. Mere seconds of inattention can get you behind the curve. What, you didnt hear about the latest predator to fall on his sword?

The gusher of startling events puts us neck deep in the curse of interesting times. We are in the midst of cultural reckoning over sex, could be on the brink of nuclear war with North Korea and may experience an economic boom as Congress moves closer to historic tax reform.

Then theres the White House, where the dynamics of upheaval are entering a crucial phase. Although many deplorables believe they finally have a government looking out for them, much of Washington and the American left are preparing to dance on the grave of Donald Trumps presidency.

Their celebration got an early start Friday with the guilty plea of Gen. Michael Flynn and his pledge to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller. The news persuaded James Comey, the insufferably self-righteous former FBI boss, and the Democratic media that the clock is ticking on Trumps time in the Oval Office.

That is one way to look at Flynn  if you assume he has beans to spill. He was close to Trump but its worth noting that Flynn pled guilty to a single count of lying to the FBI, including about a phone conversation he had with a Russian official last Dec. 29  seven weeks after the election.

Thats the same call that got Flynn fired after less than a month as Trumps national security adviser because he lied to the vice president about whether the conversation covered sanctions.

So its clear that Flynn is a serial liar, but decidedly unclear whether he knows anything that would put Trump in jeopardy. Its important that the content of his conversations with Russians are not the basis of his admitted crime and do not appear to be illegal.

No collusion, Trump said Saturday. There was absolutely no collusion. So we are very happy.

Happy seems a stretch, but it is a fact that the probe into whether Trumps campaign worked with Russia to alter the election has found zero evidence so far. Four Trump associates have been charged, but no count relates directly to the probes original purpose.

Keep reading Michael Goodwin's colulmn in the New York Post
President Trumps decision to reduce the size of the Bears Ears and Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah, announced Monday on his visit to the state, is a good one and an example of his policies that will benefit every American who enjoys national parks and monuments.

We should all thank the president for his administrations efforts to look at the facts, listen to the people, and act to roll back restrictive and unnecessary national monument designations that provide few advantages to the American people.

While such designations may sound good on the surface, in reality they have strained land management budgets and limited public access to beautiful places.

The Trump administration has been on the ground listening to those who bear the burden of these decisions  unlike the Clinton and Obama administrations, which showed little interest in talking to local people before locking up millions of acres of land around them.

The Trump administration has seen firsthand what I saw when I represented some of these areas in Congress  that the consequences of locking down the West have been severe.

Overly expansive monument designations  like the two multimillion-acre monuments in Utah  could have been spent on existing park treasures.

I applaud the president for having the courtesy to do what his predecessors never did  visiting Utah personally to deliver the news that will positively impact those who love and care for these lands. His attention is a far cry from President Clinton making his Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument announcement from another state and President Obama issuing a press release with the wrong photo of Bears Ears.

The notion that our only option for managing public land is a restrictive monument designation is false. In truth, we can build bathrooms and fire pits, and accommodate hunting, fishing, grazing, and permit accessibility without destroying the land. In places where restrictive conservation rules are less justified, we can even authorize responsible resource extraction.

Each time the federal government levies new land designations, that new designation and management plan competes with existing parks and monuments for funding.

The National Park Service suffers from a $12 billion maintenance backlog  meaning crumbling buildings, roads, and bridges cannot be repaired or replaced. Overly expansive monument designations  like the two multimillion-acre monuments in Utah  could have been spent on existing park treasures.

In the case of Bears Ears National Monument, all of that land was already federal land mostly managed for conservation use. With President Obamas monument designation, the maintenance fell to the already-strapped National Park Service. Many of these lands were once managed successfully by other agencies  like the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service  and can be again.

But freeing up more money for national parks isnt the only advantage of Mondays decision. Access to these places will be expanded, not restricted, as required in large-scale national monuments.

By lifting restrictions on motorized access, President Trump makes these lands available to more than just the able-bodied. With expanded access, the elderly, disabled and even wounded veterans can utilize bikes or off-highway vehicles to access spectacular places.

Furthermore, those who wish to use the land for other purposes  such as hunting, fishing, camping, and outdoor recreation  will now also have access.

For Utah Native Americans, this improved access is important. For centuries, they have used the land around the Bears Ears National Monument to hunt, gather, and worship. Many would come on foot while others would utilize off-highway vehicles to collect firewood, gather medicinal herbs or meet in specific locations for religious ceremonies.

The federal government could preclude these uses under a restrictive monument designation  as it has in Arizonas Canyon de Chelly, Wupatki and even Utah's Natural Bridges.

Monument designations  particularly the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument  have been routinely abused in an effort to lock down resource-rich areas that do not meet objective criteria for preservation.

By unlocking these otherwise unremarkable areas, President Trump enables high-paying resource extraction jobs to return to rural communities  a process that not only helps local economic development, but reduces U.S. dependence on foreign imports.

Protecting our most beautiful places is important. But we dont have to lock people out to do it. We dont have to put further strain on federal land management budgets. We certainly dont need to decimate rural economies. President Trump has done the right thing. All of us will be the beneficiaries of this decision.
News / National

by Staff reporter

A MAN from Inyathi who fatally stabbed his 17 year-old neighbour for spurning his love proposal on Christmas Day has been sentenced to an effective 40 years in jail.Structor Khumalo (25) of Lupote village was convicted of murder with actual intent by Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Maxwell Takuva in connection with the death of Ms Sicelo Moyo last year.In passing the sentence, Justice Takuva said Khumalo committed a heinous crime by viciously murdering a young and defenceless girl."However, what is aggravatory is that the accused person brutally murdered a young and defenceless girl who had not wronged him in any way except that she exercised her freedom to choose who to love and who not to love," he said.Justice Takuva said the courts have a duty to protect the sanctity of human life through passing deterrent sentences."The accused's brutal conduct led to the needless loss of a precious life. It is the duty of this court to uphold the sanctity of life. It is clear from the provisions of the law that life imprisonment is a competent sentence in casu. However, having balanced the mitigating features against aggravating circumstances, we are of the view that 40 years imprisonment is the most appropriate sentence," ruled the judge.Prosecuting, Ms Namatai Ngwasha said on December 25 last year, Khumalo met Sicelo at Masuku Store in Inyathi Business Centre and she was in the company of her two cousins, Mercy Madedele and Progress Madedele. The three cousins were having drinks.The court heard that Khumalo who was carrying an axe proposed love to the deceased and one of her cousins and they did not respond."Accused proposed love to the deceased and Mercy and they did not answer him. He again proposed love to the two girls and they told him not to come close to them as he was holding an axe," said Ms Ngwasha.The court heard that as the three girls left the business centre, Khumalo grabbed an umbrella from Mercy and tore it into pieces using a sharp object.The three cousins took to their heels but Khumalo managed to catch up with Sicelo.When Mercy and Progress later realised that Sicelo was missing they became suspicious and asked two local men to accompany them back to the shops to look for their cousin."On arrival at the shops they found Sicelo lying dead on the ground in a pool of blood and she had a stab wound on her left breast," said Ms Ngwasha.A report was made to the police leading to the arrest of Khumalo the following day.In his defence through lawyer, Mr Njabulo Ndlovu of Ndove, Museta and Partners, Khumalo said he was wrongfully identified as the accused person on the basis that he had behaved violently on the day in question.According to the postmortem results the cause of Sicelo's death was due to cardiac block, cardiac damage and stabbing injury.
Tax reform should reward individual risk-taking and initiative. The investor who puts the fruits of her labor on the line should not be straitjacketed by accounting rules that are better suited for measuring the value of corporate inventory, or sticking a price tag on a pile of widgets. Yet, this is exactly where one provision of the Senate version of tax reform is headed.

In the course of giving many taxpaying Americans a rate cut in one hand, the Senate proposes to punish them with the other. As things stand now, the Senates version of tax reform would impose rigid accounting standards on the sales of securities by individuals, which rules would effectively deprive small investors and American workers of their well-deserved profits. Specifically, under the Senate bill, individual stock sellers would be forced to use what accountants call the first-in-first-out or FIFO method of pricing stock when calculating what they owe to Uncle Sam.

Obviously, when an investor holds a single position in a stock that is not a problem. But when investors sell off securities in which they hold more than one position in the same investment, the FIFO rule is more than just a headache. Rather, it is unfair and unreasonable.

Unfair and unreasonable? Yes, on both counts.

The Senates bill would dictate how individual investors are required to account their stock sales, but would grant professional fund managers broad latitude in electing the accounting method of their choice. Right off the bat, this would skew the playing field. Individual investors would be left to absorb an even greater degree of risk, all for the sake of $2.4 billion in added tax revenue over a decade. In the world of federal budgets, thats chump change.

Unlike sophisticated investors with their battery of tax lawyers and experts, Middle America lacks the time and wherewithal to continuously structure their investments with an unblinking eye focused on the tax code.

But beyond favoring professional managers over individual investors, this ill-conceived legislation would actually amount to a tax hike. Let me explain.

Right now, the Tax Code grants individual investors the right to choose how they wish to account for their disposition of their securities. But if the Senate provision becomes law, individual investors would be compelled to sell off the first-purchased block of stocks regardless of costs and economic realities.

And the reality is this -- over the past eight years, since the stock market hit its Great Recession lows in 2009, stock prices have more than quadrupled. Significantly, this growth in stock price has real tax consequences under the proposed law.

For example, an American worker who invested in his employer through automatic payroll deductions would likely face a heftier tax bite if he were compelled to first pay taxes on stock gains arising from his 2009 stock purchases than if he were permitted to attribute his gains to securities purchased at a later date. Against this backdrop, the Senate bills FIFO methodology can only be viewed seen as a disguised tax.

Indeed, the contemplated FIFO rule would unduly impact middle-income Americans and recent retirees. Unlike sophisticated investors with their battery of tax lawyers and experts, Middle America lacks the time and wherewithal to continuously structure their investments with an unblinking eye focused on the tax code. For them, investment is less about profiting from slight upticks in the market, and more about a commitment to a disciplined and reasoned reward. A nondiscretionary FIFO regime for individual investors would jeopardize those hard-earned expectations.

To drive the point home, gains from real estate, private equity investments and art are not slated to be subject to this proposed change in the law. In plain English that translates into one rule for the rich, and another for the working stiff. Economically, that route is unjustifiable; politically it borders on the senseless if not the suicidal. Individual investors should not be driven away from the market for the sake of plugging a budgetary rounding error. Equity demands fairness.

At a time when economic growth is experienced unevenly, the tax laws should be a vehicle for rewarding risk, as opposed to punishing thrift and savings. If America is to robustly compete, we need tax laws that encourage savings. Right now, China is out-saving us by more than five-to-one, with a savings rate of nearly 30 percent. Its time for America to get smart and say no to mandating FIFO.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder and ex-FBI Director James Comey fired back Sunday at President Trump, who claimed the FBIs reputation is in tatters after its handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Nope. Not letting this go. The FBIs reputation is not in 'tatters,' Holder, who served as attorney general under President Obama, tweeted. Its composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job.

Holder added, Youll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now, referring to the White House.

Trump earlier Sunday said that after years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters  worst in history! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.

The presidents tweet followed news that FBI agent Peter Strzok was removed from special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia because of anti-Trump text messages he may have sent.

Meanwhile, Comey tweeted what seemed to be a response of his own, quoting a statement he gave to the Senate Intelligence Committee last June: I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.

The FBI Agents Association also chimed in. FBIAA President Thomas OConnor said: Every day, FBI Special Agents put their lives on the line to protect the American public from national security and criminal threats. Agents perform these duties with unwavering integrity and professionalism and a focus on complying with the law and the Constitution.

OConnor continued, This is why the FBI continues to be the premier law enforcement agency in the world. FBI Agents are dedicated to their mission; suggesting otherwise is simply false.

Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired by Trump after she sent a memo instructing Justice Department attorneys not to defend the administration's refugee ban, tweeted Sunday night: "The FBI is in 'tatters?' No. The only thing in tatters is the Presidents respect for the rule of law. The dedicated men and women of the FBI deserve better."

TRUMP RELOADS ON FBI'S CLINTON EMAIL PROBE, AFTER REPORTS OF 'TAINTED' ANTI-TRUMP AGENT

Trump frequently has asked why the FBI and the Justice Department havent filed criminal charges against Clinton.

Later Sunday, he tweeted, Now it all starts to make sense! in response to word that the Justice Departments Office of the Inspector General is reviewing the role Strzok played in the Clinton email investigation.
A Republican congressman plans to introduce a bill Monday that would threaten huge fines and prison time for elected officials accused of sheltering illegal immigrant criminals from deportation, in the wake of the not-guilty verdict in the Kate Steinle murder trial.

Indiana Rep. Todd Rokitas bill is one of the most aggressive pieces of legislation to date aimed at sanctuary city policies, going beyond the Justice Departments threat to cut off grants to those jurisdictions.

Politicians dont get to pick and choose what laws to comply with, Rokita told Fox News. Americans are dying because politicians sworn to uphold the law refuse to do so.

His Stopping Lawless Actions of Politicians (SLAP) Act would hold state and local lawmakers criminally responsible for refusing to comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts. The Republicans bill would subject violators to a $1 million fine and up to five years in prison if they are convicted.

Its time the federal government gets serious about enforcing immigration laws and holding politicians accountable who conspire to break them, said Rokita.

Rokita also supported Kates Law  legislation that would boost penalties for illegal immigrants who were previously deported and that was named after Steinle.

On Thursday, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an illegal immigrant who already had been deported back to Mexico five times, was acquitted in the 2015 murder of Steinle on a San Francisco pier.

Zarates attorneys argued Zarate had found a gun that accidentally discharged, and the bullet ricocheted off the ground before hitting Steinle. Prosecutors argued Zarate intentionally shot 32-year-old Steinle.

The killing revived a national debate over sanctuary city policies, as some lawmakers as well as Steinles family faulted San Francisco for releasing the suspect from a local jail without notifying federal immigration officials.

President Trump, who frequently cited Steinles case on the campaign trail, called the not-guilty verdict disgraceful and a complete travesty of justice.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions took direct aim at the city, saying San Franciscos decision to protect criminal aliens led to the preventable and heartbreaking death of Kate Steinle.

In an interview prior to Thursdays verdict, Steinles family said they wanted the case out of the national spotlight. We just want to get this over with and move on with our lives, and think about Kate on our terms, Jim Steinle, Kates father, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Following the verdict, he said his family was shocked Zarate was convicted only of firearm possession.

On Friday, the DOJ released an amended arrest warrant for Zarate for a supervised release violation.

Rokitas bill follows a similar attempt in Texas to punish local officials who ignore federal requests to hold and then potentially turn over suspects for possible deportation. That law is the subject of a federal court challenge.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle on Sunday warned President Trump to use caution before tweeting about the ongoing investigation into contacts between his campaign and Russia.

Sen. Lindsey Graham told CBS Face the Nation that the president could be wading into peril by tweeting on the Russia probe.

I would just say this with the president: Theres an ongoing criminal investigation. You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril, he said.

Trump has long maintained that his use of social media gives him the opportunity to bypass the media and speak directly to the country. He credits Twitter for -- at least in part -- helping him defeat Hillary Clinton.

Trump is focusing renewed attacks on the FBI, and on the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, two days after his former national security adviser Michael Flynn agreed to cooperate with the probe as part of a plea agreement.

But recent posts have raised eyebrows, namely the tweet that claimed that he never asked then-FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Flynn. A position that Reuters pointed out is at odds with Comeys account.

Trump tweeted Saturday that he fired Flynn because he lied to the Vice President (Mike Pence) and the FBI.

The timing of when Trump learned of Flynn lying to the FBI is important in the investigation. Legal experts told Reuters that if Trump called off Comeys investigation after learning about Flynn's action, it could support an obstruction of justice charge for Trump.

John Dowd, Trumps attorney, told Reuters that the first time Trump learned that Flynn lied to the FBI was when Flynn was charged.

Dowd said he crafted wording in the tweet and it was botched. Dowd said it was the first and last time he would craft a tweet for Trump and said sorry for misleading people.

The mistake was I should have put the lying to the FBI in a separate line referencing his plea, he told Reuters. Instead, I put it together and it made all you guys go crazy. A tweet is shorthand.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told NBCs Meet the Press that evidence is coming partly from "the continual tweets" from the White House.

Feinstein said she believes Trump's firing of Comey came "directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation." She said, "That's obstruction of justice."
Gun-rights supporters are eyeing a big win this week as a bill that would make concealed-carry permits valid across state lines heads to the House floor -- though it faces long odds in the Senate amid deep-pocketed opposition from gun-control advocates.

This is just simple, common-sense legislation that says if youre a law-abiding citizen  were not going to turn you into a criminal just for crossing an invisible state line, bill sponsor Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., told Fox News @ Night.

Hudson says the bill simply attempts to clarify the patchwork of state laws that confuse citizens who can unwittingly get arrested when traveling from state to state.

All Im saying is, when I cross the state line, I dont want to automatically become a criminal, he said.

The three-term congressman also is quick to point out the measure does not attempt to usurp state and local authority with federal law, nor does it ease background checks on gun purchases.

The bill has 213 cosponsors, including three Democrats, and backing from 24 state attorneys general.

Hudson has tried for several years to get his Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act passed and scored a victory several days ago when it got through the House Judiciary Committee.

The full House is set to vote on Wednesday.

The bill also has support from Second Amendment advocacy groups like the powerful National Rifle Association.

However, Hudson acknowledges the bill has an uphill challenge in the Senate, considering opposition from Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Michael Bloomberg, the wealthy ex-New York mayor who purportedly is giving $25 million to the fight.

Schumer, in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre in October, slammed such reciprocity legislation and the NRAs support.

Under this law, if Wyoming or Alabama said any person could carry a concealed gun, they could come to Times Square, Penn Station carrying that gun -- concealed, he said. The chaos that would result would be utterly amazing.

Hudson argues his bill says law-abiding citizens with concealed-carry permits must follow that law of the state they are in.

When I go to New York, I have to follow New Yorks laws, he said.

Bloomberg founded and bankrolls the Everytown for Gun Safety group, which advocates for gun control and efforts to stop gun violence.

The group did not respond to a request Monday to confirm that Bloomberg had indeed put $25 million into the reciprocity fight, which has become a top priority for the nonprofit.

The American people are sick of the liberal elites in New York and San Francisco trying to tell us  that we dont have the right to defend ourselves, Hudson also said.

In one such reciprocity case, a Philadelphia mother faced gun charges in New Jersey after being caught during a traffic stop with a firearm she carries legally in her home state. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie later pardoned her.

The Senate companion bill to Hudson's measure is sponsored by Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn and is now in the chambers Judiciary Committee.

In 2013, Cornyn got support for his bill from 13 Democrats, including seven who are still in the Senate. He would need their support and more to pass the measure with a 60-vote majority, considering Republicans have 52 senators in the chamber.

I think the votes are there, Hudson said. Well see.
A federal judge ruled Thursday that Michael Slager, the former South Carolina police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man, committed second-degree murder.

He was sentenced to 20 years in jail without a fine. Slager will also receive mental health counseling until he is released from prison.

The ruling comes after Slager, 36, pleaded guilty in May to violating Walter Scotts civil rights. He had said he shot Scott multiple times in self-defense, alleging Scott had attempted to grab his Taser. Cell phone video captured at the scene, however, showed Slager shooting Scott in the back as Scott tried to run away.

Federal officials recommended 10 to 13 years in prison, but Slager's attorneys argued he should face far less time.

Slager first began his sentencing hearing Monday. In light of the ruling, here's what you need to know about Slager's case.

What did Michael Slager do?

Slager, a white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., encountered Scott on April 4, 2015, after he stopped him for a non-functioning taillight.

The altercation between Slager and Scott has been heavily debated and scrutinized, according to the Charleston Post and Courier. Prosecutors alleged that during a struggle between the two men on the ground, Slager remained in control of his Taser. They said he threw the device to the ground at one point in order to grab his firearm.

Cell phone video taken by a bystander showed Scott attempting to run away after the stop. Slager then fired his gun eight times at the fleeing man, hitting him five times.

After he shot Scott, Slager dropped the Taser near Scott's unmoving body, according to the Post and Courier. Later, as seen in the video, Slager picked up the Taser and returned it to his belt, the newspaper reported.

Slager argued that he fired his weapon as self-defense, even as Scott ran away. His attorneys had also argued that the use of force was  rooted in Scotts misconduct, according to the Post and Courier.

The Scott family previously reached a $6.5 million settlement with the city of North Charleston.

What already happened in court?

A grand jury indicted Slager in 2015, but a judge ultimately declared a mistrial in December 2016 after a jury remained deadlocked. The panel was made up of 11 white jurors and one black juror.

While that case was ongoing, federal authorities pursued a parallel investigation against Slager on civil rights charges. Solicitor Scarlett Wilson had planned to bring a second case against Slager later this year, but those charges were dropped as part of his federal plea deal.

Slager pleaded guilty in May to violating Scotts civil rights.

A probation officer recommended a prison term between 10 and nearly 13 years, the Post and Courier reported.

He was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison with no fine.

Fox News' Kaitlyn Schallhorn, Madeline Farber and Terace Garnier contributed to this report. The Associated Press also contributed to this report.
Although specifics werent provided, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un joined his counterpart to the south in promising to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons.

The vow to create a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula through complete denuclearization came during the Koreas historic summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in late April, and just before a much-anticipated meeting between Kim and U.S. President Trump.

I feel like Im firing a flare at the starting line in the moment of (the two Koreas) writing a new history in North-South relations, peace and prosperity, Kim told Moon.

Kim is the first known member of his familys dynasty to set foot on South Korean soil since 1953. There, at least in front of cameras, his rhetoric drastically changed since he engaged in a war of words with Trump throughout the first year of the U.S. presidents time in the White House. (Kim called Trump a dotard; Trump called the North Korean leader short and fat.)

Since Kim took over North Korea in 2011, the regime rapidly expanded and tested its missile arsenal with weapons capable of striking the U.S. mainland. His end goal, he once said, was to "establish the equilibrium of real force with the U.S. and make the U.S. rulers dare not talk about military options for the North.

Read on for a brief look at how North Koreas nuclear weapons program has grown throughout the regimes in the past century.

Kim Il Sung, leader from 1948-1994

Kim Il Sung can be credited with founding North Korea and propelling the nations nuclear program forward  but he did not live to see his country conduct its first nuclear test.

It was under the first Kim that North Korea began to build up its nuclear reactors. And it was under his leadership that the nation began the Korean War  surely a catalyst that led the leader to believe his nation needed nuclear weapons, Dr. Sung-Yoon Lee, the Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, told Fox News in an interview.

TRUMPS COMMENTS ON NORTH KOREA, FROM FIRE AND FURY TO BLAMING CHINA

The seeds of nuclear aspirations were sown in the Korean War, Lee said.

The Korean War pitted North Korea and its ally China  two nations that did not have nuclear capabilities at the time  against a nuclear-armed U.S., making it clear to the first Kim that nuclear weapons are very powerful, a powerful deterrent, Lee said.

Kim Jong Il, leader from 1994-2011

When the second leader of the Kim dynasty died in 2011, Kim Jong Il was remembered as the dictator who turned North Korea into a nuclear state, in his New York Times obituary.

And its Kim Jong Il that really gets the credit of taking the country down the nuclear path," Lee said.

In the beginning of his reign  he was North Koreas supreme leader from 1994 to 2011  North Korea denied that it had a nuclear weapons program.

TIMELINE OF NORTH KOREAN MISSILE LAUNCHES IN 2017

However, in 2003, Pyongyang announced that North Korea was withdrawing from the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which barred the nation from making nuclear weapons.

By 2005, North Korea confirmed that it had its own nuclear weapons. It tested its first nuclear device in 2006.

Kim Jong Un, leader from 2011-present

Kim Jong Un is credited with accelerating North Koreas push for nuclear weapons, and under the Obama administration, many of the worlds attitudes toward the East Asian nations nuclear capabilities became less blase than in the past, Lee said.

Kim Jong Un also crossed a major threshold for his country in the summer of 2017  the ability to credibly threaten the U.S. with an intercontinental ballistic missile.

In 2017, North Korea successfully tested its longest-ever flight of a ballistic missile. The intermediate-range weapon traveled 3,700 miles and passed over Japan before it landed in the Pacific. The country also tested its most powerful nuclear test to date this year.

After the missile test, Kim Jong Un said North Korea is nearing equilibrium with the U.S. in terms of its military force.

The increasingly frequent and aggressive tests added to outside fears that North Korea is closer than ever to building a military arsenal that could viably target the mainland of the U.S. or its allies in Asia.

Calling Kim Jong Un Rocket Man, Trump said in 2017 the dictator is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.

The United States has great strength and patience, Trump said. But if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.

But 2018 brought a dramatic turn of events after he declared in a stark New Years address that a nuclear launch button is always on my table. Kim Jong Un offered to meet with Trump and became the first known member of his familys dynasty to set foot in South Korea since 1953. At the historic summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, both leaders pushed for peace and would work toward a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

However, neither leader provided any specific measures or seemed to forge a potential breakthrough on the issue that has captivated and terrified many, especially since last year.

Before Trump canceled a much-anticipated meeting with Kim Jong Un, North Korea said it demolished what it claimed to be its nuclear test site, setting off several explosions over the course of a few hours in the presence of foreign journalists.

The planned closing of the Punggye-ri site was previously announced, but it's unclear if another facility could be used to continue the country's nuclear weapons program. Yongbyon nuclear complex, located about 64 miles north of Pyongyang, has a new reactor that could produce weapons-grade plutonium. Pyongyang insists is being used to produce electricity for its citizens.

Trump ultimately rejected Kim Jong Un's invitation to a June meeting in Singapore, citing North Korea's "open hostility."

Fox News Edmund DeMarche, Ryan Gaydos and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is out as the nation's top diplomat.

President Trump announced the news in a tweet on the morning of March 13. Mike Pompeo, the current director of the CIA, will take Tillerson's place as secretary of state, he said. Gina Haspel, the current CIA deputy director, will then take over Pompeo's role at the intelligence agency.

"Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!" Trump tweeted.

The news broke amid Tillersons contentious relationship with President Trump. In October 2017, NBC News reported that Tillerson allegedly called Trump a "moron," and considered resigning from his position during the summer amid disputes with the White House. And sources told Fox News late last year that Tillerson planned to step down from his position in January 2018, though he did not.

Heres what you need to know about Tillerson's career as secretary of state.

March 22, 2018 -- In a farewell speech to State Department employees, Tillerson highlighted values such as integrity, honesty, respect and accountability. Tillerson, who did not mention President Trump in his speech, also said that Washington, D.C. can be a very mean spirited town.

But you don't have to choose to participate in that, he added. Each of us get to choose the person we want to be, and the way we want to be treated, and the way we will treat others.

March 15, 2018 -- Fox News learned that Tillersons plan, as of now, is to stay at the department until March 22 and then return to Texas. He officially remains secretary of state through the 31st.

March 13, 2018 -- In a tweet, Trump announced that Tillerson was out as secretary of state. He will be replaced by Pompeo, the current director of the CIA, Trump said.

Dec. 4 - Dec. 8, 2017 -- Tillerson embarked on a trip to Europe, which included a number of activities, among them the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial Council in Vienna and meeting "senior French leaders" in Paris, the State Department said.

Dec. 3, 2017 -- In an interview broadcast on "Fox News Sunday," national security adviser H.R. McMaster said he's "not aware of any plan at all" to replace Tillerson.

"What I'm aware of is that the secretary of state is traveling today to advance and protect our interests, as is our secretary of defense," McMaster said.

Dec. 1, 2017 -- Tillerson attended two meetings at the White House with Trump  one with Libya's visiting prime minister and then a lunch with the president and Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Before those meetings, Tillerson told reporters at the State Department that speculation he was on his way out was "laughable."

"The media has been speculating that I fired Rex Tillerson or that he would be leaving soon - FAKE NEWS!" Trump tweeted that day. "Hes not leaving and while we disagree on certain subjects, (I call the final shots) we work well together and America is highly respected again!"

Nov. 30, 2017 -- Reports said that Tillerson was expected to step down in January.

While meeting with the Crown Prince of Bahrain in the Oval Office Thursday, Trump was asked if he wants Tillerson "on the job."

"He's here," Trump told reporters. "Rex is here."

Nov. 4 - Nov. 16, 2017 -- Tillerson joined the president during his five-nation tour of Asia that included stops in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, the State Department said. Tillerson later visited Burma during his travels.

Oct. 20 - 26, 2017 -- Tillerson took part in the first Coordination Council meeting with the Saudi and Iraqi governments in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the State Department said. His trip also included stops in Qatar, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, India and Switzerland.

Oct. 4, 2017 -- It's reported that Tillerson allegedly called Trump a moron after a meeting with cabinet officials on July 20. The comments came after President Trump gave a controversial speech to the Boy Scouts of America in July. Tillerson, who served as the president of the organization from 2010-2012, was reportedly upset over the content of the speech and allegedly threatened to quit.

Trump later labeled the report fake news.

Later that day, Tillerson called a press conference to address the reports, but sidestepped questions about his moron comment.

"I'm not gonna deal with petty stuff like that," Tillerson said at the time. "The places I come from, we don't deal with that kind of petty nonsense. It is intended to do nothing but divide people and I'm not gonna be part of this effort to divide this administration."

He did reaffirm that he was not planning to resign, however.

TILLERSON BLASTS REPORT OF RIFT WITH TRUMP

Oct. 2, 2017 -- Trump appeared to publicly chide Tillerson on his handling of North Korea. At the time, the president said Tillerson was wasting his time trying to negotiate with the rogue country over its missile and nuclear programs.

Sep. 28 - Oct. 1, 2017 -- Tillerson visited China and spoke about topics like trade and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, according to the State Department.

Sep. 19 - 22, 2017 -- Tillerson had meetings and events in New York.

On the margins of the UN General Assembly, Secretary Tillerson met with a number of his counterparts to discuss a range of bilateral and global issues, the State Department said.

Sep. 13 - 14, 2017 -- Tillerson went to London for meetings on North Korea and Libya that were hosted by the United Kingdom, the State Department said.

Aug. 5 - 9, 2017 -- Tillerson went to several events including the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit Ministerial, in Manila, the State Department said. Tillerson later visited Thailand and Kuala Lumpur.

July 5 - 13, 2017 - Tillerson accompanied Trump to Hamburg, Germany, before going to Ukraine and meeting President Petro Porosheno, the State Department said. Tillerson later made stops in Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, meeting officials in those countries.

While in Germany, Tillerson was at Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G-20.

The President opened the meeting with President Putin by raising the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election, Tillerson later told reporters.

They had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject. The President pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement. President Putin denied such involvement, as I think he has in the past.

Tillerson said that Trump and Putin agreed, though, that this is a substantial hindrance in the ability of us to move the Russian-U.S. relationship forward.

June 5 - 6, 2017 -- Tillerson visited Sydney, Australia and Wellington, New Zealand.

May 19 - 25, 2017 -- Tillerson accompanied Trump on his trip to Riyadh, Jerusalem, Rome and Brussels.

May 10 - 11, 2017 -- Tillerson traveled to Fairbanks, Alaska where he attended the 10th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting, an intergovernmental forum designed to address issues related to the Arctic region. Tillerson attended along with representatives from the eight Arctic States.

April 28, 2017 -- Tillerson visited New York City to chair a special ministerial meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

April 9 - 12, 2017 -- Tillerson traveled to Italy and Russia. In Lucca, Italy, he attended the G-7 Foreign Ministers Meeting. Later in Moscow, Tillerson met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other Russian officials to discuss Ukraine, counterterrorism efforts and bilateral relations, among other things.

WHO IS REX TILLERSON?

March 30 - 31, 2017 -- Tillerson traveled to Belgium and Turkey. He visited NATO in Brussels after meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other officials about how to defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

March 15 - 19, 2017 -- The secretary of state traveled to Japan, China and the Republic of Korea. In each country, he met with senior officials to discuss the nuclear and missile threat from North Korea.

He also reaffirmed the United States commitment to further broaden and enhance U.S. economic and security interests in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the State Department.

Feb. 22 - 23, 2017 -- Tillerson traveled to Mexico City to talk border security, law enforcement cooperation and trade with the President of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto and other Mexican officials, according to the State Department. He was joined by John Kelly, who was then the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security.

Feb. 15 - 17, 2017 -- Tillerson traveled to Bonn, Germany to attend the G-20 Foreign Ministers Meeting, marking his first trip as secretary of state.

Feb. 1, 2017 -- The Senate confirmed Tillersons role in a 56-43 vote. A swearing-in ceremony was held in the Oval Office.

This is where you were meant to be, right here, today, at this crossroads in history, Trump told Tillerson.

Jan. 11, 2017 -- During a Senate confirmation hearing, the former Exxon Mobil CEO was grilled mainly by Democrats on everything from climate change, to his business interests, to his stance on Russia and China.

Dec. 13, 2016 -- Trump said he planned to nominate Tillerson for secretary of state, calling him one of the truly great business leaders of the world.

Dec. 6, 2016 -- Tillerson met the president-elect, before meeting him again Dec. 10, the Washington Post reported.

Fox News' Brooke Singman, Rich Edson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
One of the women who accused U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of having a relationship with her when she was 17 revealed what she called new evidence of her connection to the embattled Republican, according to a report Monday.

Debbie Wesson Gibson, who claimed she had a relationship with Moore when he was 34 years old, told The Washington Post she discovered a card in her attic that Moore gave her for her high school graduation.

Happy graduation Debbie, the card read. I wanted to give you this card myself. I know that youll be a success in anything you do. Roy.

The cards handwriting looked similar to the writing found in the yearbook of another Moore accuser, Beverly Young Nelson.

Nelson claimed in a news conference last month that Moore groped her and tried to push her head toward his crotch when she was 16. The yearbook signature, which she claimed Moore wrote, said: To a sweeter more beautiful girl I could not say 'Merry Christmas' Christmas 1977 Love, Roy Moore D.A.

Gibson was one of the first accusers to speak out when she talked to The Washington Post in November.

Gibson said that in 1981, Moore, then an assistant district attorney, had spoken to her high school civics class and asked her out on the first of several dates that did not progress beyond kissing.

The woman reportedly said she and Moore dated for two to three months. She added in The Posts latest report that she campaigned for Moore when he was running for circuit court judge in 1982 and exchanged Christmas cards with him over the years.

Moore has repeatedly denied allegations that he initiated sexual contact with teenage women decades ago.

When asked on Fox News host Sean Hannitys radio show for more details on the allegations from Gibson, Moore said: I know her but I dont remember going out on dates. I knew her as a friend.

Alabamas special election to fill the Senate seat of Attorney General Jeff Sessions is on Dec. 12. President Trump on Monday endorsed Moore for the position.

When previously asked about his stance on Moore following the allegations against him, Trump said: Roy Moore says he didnt do it.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Former Finance minister, Ignatius Chombo, wished President Mnangagwa well in his new roles and responsibilities.Chombo wrote to President Emmerson Mnangagwa two days after he had been sworn into office offering to work for him in any capacity.In a passionate congratulatory message to Mnangagwa, Chombo wrote from his hospital bed pledging he would be unwaveringly loyal to Mnangagwa in the same way he was to former president, Robert Mugabe, who was deposed last month."I saw your inauguration as the second executive President of the Republic of Zimbabwe with pride and contentment, especially after the goings on in the party and government during the last six weeks. I wish I could attend but I couldn't because I am in hospital for some health problems that doctors are attending to. I missed all recently held meetings because I was away, learning some hard lessons," Chombo wrote."I wish to heartily congratulate you for your elevation to the position of president of the Republic of Zimbabwe as well as first secretary of our beloved party Zanu-PF. May God give you strength and guidance as you lead us into the future."You have all my full support and loyalty in equal measure as I served the formerPresident R.G. Mugabe during his tenure in office."I am available to serve in any capacity that you deem fit. Once again, I wish you all the greatest good and may God bless you ever more," he wrote.
Many national Republican leaders pulled their support for Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate, in the wake of allegations claiming he had inappropriate sexual contact with teenage girls.

The Washington Post reported that four women accused Moore of initiating sexual contact with them in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when he was an assistant district attorney in his early 30s. One of the women, Leigh Corfman, told the newspaper that Moore had sexual contact with her when she was 14. The age of consent in Alabama is 16.

Several additional women have since come forward to accuse Moore of sexually inappropriate behavior.

Moore denied the allegations, saying in a statement obtained by Fox News that the allegations are "based on a lie supported by innuendo."

"It seems that in the political arena, to say that something is not true is simply not good enough. So let me be clear. I have never provided alcohol to minors, and I have never engaged in sexual misconduct," he said.

Multiple Republican lawmakers called on Moore to step aside from the Dec. 12 special election. However, President Trump offered his endorsement for the embattled politician, and the Republican National Committee began supporting Moore after having previously cut its fundraising ties to him.

The White House

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president had no plans for an in-person appearance on Moore's behalf.

In addition, the president previously signed off on a decision by the Republican National Committee to cut off support for Moore's campaign.

But publicly, Trump unleashed his criticism on Democratic candidate Doug Jones instead of Moore.

The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is weak on crime, weak on the border, bad for our military and our great vets, bad for our 2nd Amendment, and wants to [raise] taxes to the sky. Jones would be a disaster, Trump tweeted on Nov. 26.

And just over one week before the election, Trump said he needed Moores vote in the Senate when it comes to certain issues, such as immigration, gun rights and judicial appointments.

Trump also encouraged his Twitter followers to vote for Moore on the morning of the election as he contended that Moore "will always vote with us."

Vice President Mike Pence found the allegations in the story disturbing and believes, if true, this would disqualify anyone from serving in office, his press secretary, Alyssa Farah, has told reporters.

Sen. Mitch McConnell

While speaking to reporters, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he believes the women quoted in the Washington Post story. He urged Moore to step aside in light of the allegations.

Previously, McConnell said Moore should step aside if "these allegations are true."

Sen. Cory Gardner

Cory Gardner, the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, said he believes the women who have alleged Moore's misconduct. In a statement, he encouraged the Senate to "vote to expel" Moore should he win the election next month.

"He does not meet the ethical and moral requirements of the United States Senate," Gardner, R-Colo., said.

Sen. Mike Lee

A former backer of Moore, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, pulled his endorsement from Moore after the allegations came to light.

"Having read the detailed description of the incidents, as well as the response from Judge Moore and his campaign, I can no longer endorse his candidacy for the US Senate," Lee said in a tweet.

He had also requested that Moore's campaign no longer use his image.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski

Im horrified and if its true, he should step down immediately, Murkowski told reporters.

She reportedly also urged Sen. Luther Strange, who was appointed to fill Jeff Sessions seat when he was tapped to become attorney general, to launch a write-in campaign. The deadline to take Moore off the ballot has passed.

Sen. Mike Rounds

If they are true, then he should seriously think about stepping aside," Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said.

Sen. John Cornyn

I find it deeply distrusting and troubling. Its up to the governor and the folks of Alabama to make that decision as far as what the next steps are," Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. He later withdrew his endorsement of Moore.

Sen. Tim Scott

If theyre accurate, he absolutely should [step aside]," Tim Scott, of South Carolina, said.

Sen. Susan Collins

In a tweet, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called for Moore to "withdraw from the Senate race in Alabama."

Collins wrote that she listened to Moore deny the allegations in a recent radio interview, but "did not find his denials to be convincing."

Collins' most recent statement comes after she previously tweeted: "If there is any truth at all to these horrific allegations, Roy Moore should immediately step aside as Senate candidate."



Sen. Steve Daines

"I am pulling my endorsement and support for Roy Moore for U.S. Senate," said Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.

Sen. John McCain

"The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying. He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of," Arizona Sen. John McCain said.

Sen. Richard Shelby

Its a devastating nasty story, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby told reporters. If its true, I dont believe thered be a place for him in the U.S. Senate.

He said that he did not vote for Moore when he sent in his absentee ballot but voted instead for a "distinguished Republican write-in."

Sen. Jeff Flake

Like other Republicans, Flake called on Moore to step aside from the election.

"Just to be clear. If the choice is between Roy Moore and a Democrat, I would run to the polling place to vote for the Democrat," Flake tweeted.

Hes said that Republicans to support Roy Moore over Doug Jones is political tribalism at its worst.

Flake also tweeted a photo of a check made out to Jones for $100 with "Country over Party" written in the memo line.

Sen. Luther Strange

Alabama Sen. Luther Strange, who lost the special election primary to Roy Moore, called the allegations disturbing.

It is too late to take Moore off the ballot, but Strange has been encouraged to launch a write-in campaign.

Sen. Rob Portman

I think if what we read is true, and people are on the record so I assume it is, then he should step aside, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman said.

Sen. Ben Sasse

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., called the Washington Posts story "heartbreaking."

Sasse also slammed the Republican National Committee for providing funds to Moores race.

This is a bad decision and very sad day. I believe the women  and the RNC previously did too. Whats changed? Or is the party just indifferent? Sasse said on Twitter. This sends a terrible message to victims its not that the party wont believe you if you come forward. It might. But just doesnt care.

The senator than warned that if the National Republican Senatorial Committee decided to contribute to Moore, he would no longer be a donor to or fund-raiser for it.

Sen. Ted Cruz

"These are serious and troubling allegations," Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who previously endorsed Moore, said in a statement. "If they are true, Judge Moore should immediately withdraw. However, we need to know the truth, and Judge Moore has the right to respond to these accusations."

Sen. Bill Cassidy

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., officially withdrew his support from the candidate.

"Based on the allegations against Roy Moore, his response and what is known, I withdraw support," he said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch

"I stand with the Majority Leader on this. These are serious and disturbing accusations, and while the decision is now in the hands of the people of Alabama, I believe Luther Strange is an excellent alternative," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, tweeted.

But a week before the election, Hatch said Trump didnt have another choice but to endorse Moore, Bloomberg reported. He also said that many of the things he allegedly did are decades ago. So its hard to  thats a decision that has to be made by the people in that state.

If they make that decision, who are we to question them? Hatch said.

Sen. Pat Toomey

We'll probably never know for sure exactly what happened," Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"But  I think the accusations have more credibility than the denial. I think it would be best if Roy would just step aside.

Sen. Lindsey Graham

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham took to Twitter to say Moore should step aside in the Alabama Senate race.

"In light of the most recent allegations and the cumulative effect of others, I believe [Moore] would be doing himself, the state, the GOP, and the country a service by stepping aside," Graham said. "If he continues this will not end well for Mr. Moore."

He has also bemoaned Trumps attempt to throw a lifeline to Moore.

Rep. Paul Ryan

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said if the allegations are true, they would disqualify Moore from the special election.

These allegations are disqualifying if true. Anyone who would do this to a child has no place in public office, let alone the United States Senate, Ryan said in a statement.

Rep. Peter King

"I would say unless he can prove his innocence, the burden is now on him within the next day or so, I believe he has to step down. He owes it to himself, he owes it to the state and and he owes it to the U.S. Senate," New York Rep. Peter King said after the allegations came out.

Rep. Lee Zeldin

In a tweet, Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., called for that "creepy Roy Moore dude" to step aside from the campaign.

"It's about that time for that creepy Roy Moore dude to exit stage left. He should step aside & let someone take his spot on the ballot who doesn't prey upon young teenage girls as a grown man," he said.

Gov. John Kasich

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said on Twitter that hes long opposed Moore and called on him to step aside from the race as well.

Ive long opposed Roy Moore [and] his divisive viewpoints. The actions described make him unfit for office. The GOP must not support him. He should step aside, Kasich said.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, slammed Moore on Twitter.

Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman, the former governor said. Her account is too serous to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside.

"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," Romney said in another tweet on Dec. 4.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush

Former Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Moore should step down in light of the allegations.

"This is not a question of innocence or guilt like in a criminal proceeding; this is a question of whats right and whats wrong. Acknowledging that youre dating teenagers when youre 32 years old as assistant state attorney is wrong. Its just plain wrong," he told CNBC, adding that he agreed with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said earlier Monday that Moore should "step aside."

"We need to stand for basic principles, and decency has to be one of those," Bush added. "In the really poisonous political environment we have right now, one of the rules I think has to apply is that when you attack somebody on the other party, and the other team for doing something wrong, when it happens on your team, you have an obligation I think to speak out as well."

Ivanka Trump

The president's daughter had some harsh words for Moore.



"There's a special place in hell for people who prey on children. I've yet to see a valid explanation, and I have no reason to doubt the victims' accounts," Ivanka Trump told the Associated Press.

Condoleezza Rice

While she didnt name Moore, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice  who is from Alabama  encouraged voters to take a stand for our core principles and for what is right.

These critical times require us to come together to reject bigotry, sexism and intolerance, Rice said in a statement to AL.com.

"It is imperative for Americans to remain focused on our priorities and not give way to side shows and antics. I know that Alabamans need an independent voice in Washington. But we must also insist that our representatives are dignified, decent, and respectful of the values we hold dear, she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Arizona residents may want to put their costumes away until Halloween.

A new bill, recently introduced by state GOP Rep. Jay Lawrence, would make it a felony offense to wear a disguise, whether partial or complete to evade or escape discovery, recognition or identification during protests and other public events.

Offenders could face up to a year in prison, while anyone caught wearing a mask when committing property destruction could face up to five years.

It's just the latest state-based effort to crack down on wearing masks in certain circumstances. Lawrence first announced his plans to introduce the bill back in August, citing concerns about mask-wearing rioters.

While the right to anonymity is sometimes desirable in healthy political discourse (think of letters to the editor, etc), too many who wish to act violently hide behind hoods or masks in an effort to intimidate or conceal their identity from law enforcement, Lawrence said in a Facebook post at the time.

The bill does make exemptions for disguises worn for business-related purpose or for places where a mask is generally viewed as part of acceptable attire, but critics say that is too vague and could lead to the arrests of people wearing costumes for more innocent purposes.

Lawrence says the bill is not intended to target those types of costumes, but is meant for people who are intentionally trying to evade recognition.

That type of disguise would not be the same as Antifa and others who wear masks and hoods to hide their identity, Lawrence told Capitol Media Services in Arizona.

The proposal will likely be considered during Arizonas next legislative session which begins in January.

Arizona is the latest in a string of states to push for anti-mask legislation, coming after a wave of violence and property destruction at protests across the country carried out by hooded or masked demonstrators.

5 ASSAULTED AT BERKELEY PROTESTS AS BLACK-CLAD ANARCHISTS STORM RIGHTWING RALLY

Earlier this year, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum signed a bill into law which makes it illegal to wear masks or other face coverings when committing a criminal offense, in response to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in the state.

Washington state Sen. Jim Honeyford introduced a bill in May that would make it illegal to wear a mask on public property, with exceptions made for religious dress and other factors. The bill was aimed at a small but dangerous group of individuals who conceal their identities while committing illegal acts under the guise of political protest.

Opponents of anti-mask legislation say it violates protesters First Amendment rights.

The First Amendment actually protects peoples right to wear a mask in public, Elisabeth Smith of the ACLU Washington told the Seattle Times. Its clear that the impetus is to criminalize protest behavior.

Several states already have anti-disguise laws in the books, many of which date back to the early 20th century and came as a response to the hooded members of Klu Klux Klan.

Alabamas law outlaws disguises with exceptions for events like Mardi Gras and Halloween. In Ohio, it is illegal for two or more people to wear a disguise while committing a misdemeanor.
Handing the White House a huge judicial victory, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of President Trumps travel ban affecting residents of six majority-Muslim countries.

The justices said the policy can take full effect despite multiple legal challenges against it that havent yet made their way through the legal system.

The ban applies to people from Syria, Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Lower courts had said people from those countries with a "bona fide" relationship with someone in the United States could not be prevented from entry.

Grandparents and cousins were among the relatives courts said could not be excluded.

The nine-member high court said in two one-page orders late Monday afternoon that lower court rulings that partly blocked the ban should be put on hold while appeals courts in Richmond, Va., and San Francisco take up the case.

Liberal-leaning Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place.

The justices offered no explanation for their order, but the administration had said that blocking the full ban was causing "irreparable harm" because the policy is based on legitimate national security and foreign policy concerns.

Both courts are scheduled to hear arguments in those cases this week.

Both courts are also dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expects those courts to reach decisions "with appropriate dispatch."

Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley called the ban lawful and essential to protecting our homeland.

Gidley added in a written statement, We look forward to presenting a fuller defense of the proclamation as the pending cases work their way through the courts.

We are pleased that the Supreme Court has agreed to allow us to fulfill this most vital mission performed by any sovereign nation. DHS will continue to fully implement the Presidents robust and Constitutional counterterrorism agenda in accordance with the law, the Department of Homeland Security's acting press secretary, Tyler Q. Houlton, said.

Trumps travel ban has been challenged in separate lawsuits by Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both have argued the ban discriminates against Muslims and should not go into effect under immigration laws.

"President Trumps anti-Muslim prejudice is no secret  he has repeatedly confirmed it, including just last week on Twitter," Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement. "It's unfortunate that the full ban can move forward for now, but this order does not address the merits of our claims. We continue to stand for freedom, equality, and for those who are unfairly being separated from their loved ones. We will be arguing Friday in the Fourth Circuit that the ban should ultimately be struck down."

Trump issued his first travel ban within days of being sworn in as president. That version tightened the countrys refugee and visa policies and suspended almost all refugee admissions for four months.

Trump issued a revised version in March after the first was blocked by federal courts. The second one expired in September after a lengthy court fight and was replaced with the current version.

Fox News' Jake Gibson, Bill Mears and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Trump on Monday endorsed Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore, telling voters "we need" him to tackle illegal immigration, tax reform and more -- after weeks of holding back his full support for the embattled candidate.

The White House made it official in a statement confirming Trump personally backed Moore during a phone call.

"The President had a positive call with Judge Roy Moore during which they discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and the President endorsed Judge Moore's campaign," Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said.

Moments earlier, Moore tweeted that Trump had given his support and told him: "Go get 'em, Roy!"

His wife Kayla Moore also revealed the phone call on Facebook.

With just one week left before voters head to the polls next Tuesday, the president made clear early Monday morning he was throwing his weight behind the Republican nominee, while slamming Democratic rival Doug Jones as a puppet for congressional Democratic leaders.

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama, Trump tweeted. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges, 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/ Schumer Puppet!

Until now, Trump has kept a certain distance from Moore while making clear he opposes Jones -- and refraining from condemning Moore in the same way some Senate Republicans have. Those GOP lawmakers have sought to ostracize Moore over explosive allegations he initiated sexual contact with teenage women decades ago, when he was an assistant district attorney in his early 30s. One of the women, Leigh Corfman, alleged Moore had sexual contact with her when she was just 14. The age of consent in Alabama is 16.

Moore has repeatedly denied the allegations.

Trump has been relatively mum on the allegations facing Moore, with White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders saying it's a decision for Alabama voters.

Trump, though, ramped up his defense of Moore during a session with reporters last month.

Roy Moore says he didnt do it, Trump said on his way to Marine One.

Trumps endorsement of Moore on Monday seems to be driven by legislative items and his desire to keep the majority in the Senate.

Minutes after his tweet supporting Moore, Trump elaborated on the threat Jones would pose to the GOP agenda.

Putting Pelosi/ Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders& so much more, Trump tweeted. Look at your 401-ks since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!

The Senate passed the Republican tax plan late Friday night, with a 51-vote majority. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., was the lone Republican to vote against the bill, joining the 48 Senate Democrats who voted nay.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been tough on Moore, saying last month he's "not fit" to be in the Senate and claiming party leaders were looking at ways to "prevent that from happening."

But McConnell has seemingly softened his tone.

Im going to let the people of Alabama make the call, McConnell, R-Ky., said Sunday on ABCs This Week, in an apparent shift from his earlier comments.

Moore, on the other hand, continues to bash McConnell and the Republican establishment.

The special election to fill the Senate seat of Trumps Attorney General Jeff Sessions is Dec. 12.

Moore thanked Trump for his support.

"Thankful for President Trump's support. The America First agenda will #MAGA. Can't wait to help him #DrainTheSwamp," Moore tweeted Monday morning.
President Trump on Monday called the criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn very unfair, claiming he and Hillary Clinton both lied to the FBI but only Flynn faced consequences.

The presidents comments, made to reporters as he left Washington for a policy announcement in Utah, saw Trump wading deeper into the Flynn investigation even after a weekend tweet landed the White House in hot water.

On Monday, Trump said he feels badly for Flynn, who pleaded guilty on Friday to giving false statements to the FBI about his Russia contacts.

Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI, nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and they destroyed his life, Trump said. The president, without offering specifics, said his 2016 Democratic rival lied many times during her FBI interview in early July.

Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and its like they ruined his life. Very unfair, Trump said, echoing a weekend tweet in which he asked whether a double standard was at play.

MUELLER'S RUSSIA PROBE: WHAT TO KNOW

Clinton was interviewed by FBI agents as part of the investigation into her exclusive use of a private email system while secretary of state. After that interview, then-FBI Director James Comey called her actions extremely careless without recommending criminal charges.

Trump also noted over the weekend that Clinton was not recorded or under oath during that interview.

On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., suggested Trump might want to think twice before tweeting and commenting on the Russia case. You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril, he said on CBS Face the Nation.

This was after Trumps account tweeted Saturday: I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

That tweet immediately caused problems for the White House, as some legal experts said it potentially exposed the president to obstruction of justice allegations  since, according to the tweet, he would have known Flynn lied to agents when he allegedly asked Comey to lay off the Flynn investigation and later fired Comey. Trump said earlier this year that he fired Flynn only for lying to Vice President Pence about the issue.

Trumps personal lawyer John Dowd later said he was the one who wrote that tweet, saying he did not mean to break news.

Dowd attempted to explain Sunday that the tweet was referring to then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates telling White House Counsel Don McGahn in January that Flynn had given the agents the same story he gave the vice president.

He also said the agents seemed to think Flynn was confused. All the president knew was that the department was not accusing him of lying, Dowd said.

Trump over the weekend denied that he asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday that the panel has begun to see "the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice" against Trump.

Flynn is now cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigators in the Russia meddling case, though its unclear what exactly he might reveal about Trump and his associates.

Fox News' Joseph Weber and Jennifer Bowman contributed to this report.
Capping months of speculation, President Trump on Monday signed a pair of executive orders to significantly shrink two of Utahs national monuments  Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante  that were created by his Democratic predecessors.

The controversial move was pitched by Trump as a win for states' rights and follows an April review conducted by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on the boundaries of large national monuments. The review initially looked at more than two dozen sites designated by presidential decree since the 1990s.

I know you love this land the best and you know how to protect it and you know how to conserve this land for many, many generations to come, Trump told a group of people at Utahs Capitol in Salt Lake City. They dont know your land. They dont care for your land like you do.

Trumps presidential proclamations cut Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante in half. The action is also likely to trigger a legal battle that could alter the governments approach to conservation.

Utahs congressional and state leaders lobbied the president to reduce the size of the monuments so the state would have more control on what can be done on the land.

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah praised the announcement and said Trump was giving the people of Utah a voice in the process.

Zinke maintained Monday that the move should be seen as correcting an overreach by the federal government.

Were not taking one square inch of federal land and transferring it or selling it. It is still federal land, with all the protections of federal land, Zinke said, adding that the biggest change is that the government is allowing greater use on the areas that were previously in the monument.

Opponents, however, see it as the latest example of the government breaking promises to Native American tribes and eroding protections for public land.

In 2016, former President Barack Obama proclaimed Bears Ears a national monument dedicated to Native American culture.

Former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who was instrumental in designating Bears Ears monument, tweeted Trumps actions will make him the most anti-conservation president in our history. He will be challenged by tribes and thoughtful citizens that recognize that some places are too special to develop.

Former President Bill Clinton designated the Grand Staircase-Escalante monument.

About 2,000 people lined up near Utahs capitol on Monday, holding signs like Keep your tiny hands off our public lands and chanting lock him up! at Trump.

There were also protests held over the weekend at Utahs snowy capital.

I think its important to have natural places that are untouched and not modified, demonstrator Valerie Huitzul told Fox News.

Huitzul was among the 5,000 protesters who showed up over the weekend.

The decision to shrink the states sprawling wilderness shrines has prompted fierce backlash by environmental groups as well.

Ahead of Mondays visit, 146 scientists, researchers and academic organizations from 19 states sent a letter to the Trump administration calling the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument an important living laboratory to scientific research.

The Center for Western Priorities described Mondays event as the largest rollback of protections for lands and wildlife in U.S. history.

Arnold Miller, president of the Paleontological Society and Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Geology at the University of Cincinnati, said the Grand Staircase-Escalante contains a trove of scientifically-valuable fossils and strata from boundary to boundary, and the excising of portions of this national monument for mining or other commercial activities will tragically compromise its integrity.

Trump said Monday while leaving the White House that the monument announcement is "something that the state of Utah and others have wanted to be done for many, many years." He said it is "so important for states' rights and so important for the people of Utah."

In December, shortly before leaving office, Obama irritated Utah Republicans by creating the Bears Ears National Monument on land sacred to Native Americans.

Trump signed an executive order in April directing Zinke to review the protections. Trump is able to upend the protections under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives the president broad authority to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use.

Trump said at the time that he had spoken to state and local leaders "who are gravely concerned about this massive federal land grab. And it's gotten worse and worse and worse, and now we're going to free it up, which is what should have happened in the first place. This should never have happened."

The move marks the first time in a half century that a president has undone these types of land protections. And it could be the first of many changes to come.

Zinke has also recommended that Nevada's Gold Butte and Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou monuments be reduced in size, though details remain unclear. The former Montana congressman's plan would allow logging at a newly designated monument in Maine and more grazing, hunting and fishing at two sites in New Mexico.

Fox News' Dan Springer and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the latest version of President Trump's controversial travel ban that affects residents of some majority-Muslim countries.

The ban applies to people from Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. It also placed limits on people from North Korea and Venezuela.

Since the president signed an executive order in January 2017 establishing a ban on travel of people from Muslim-majority nations, it has been a point of contention and challenged in court. Heres a look at the bans journey through the legal system.

June 26  Supreme Court upholds ban

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court issued its first substantive ruling on a Trump administration policy on June 26, upholding the travel ban. The court said the president has substantial power to regulate immigration.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by his four conservative colleagues.

The sole prerequisite set forth in [federal law] is that the President find that the entry of the covered aliens would be detrimental to the interests of the United States. The President has undoubtedly fulfilled that requirement here, Roberts wrote.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who dissented, said "a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus."

April 25  Supreme Court hears oral arguments

In the last case the justices will hear until October, oral arguments on the travel ban will be delivered before the Supreme Court on April 25. This is the first time the justices are considering whether it violates immigration law or the Constitution.

People waited for a seat inside the courtroom for days ahead of the hearing.

A decision is expected by June.

April 10  Chad removed from travel ban

The Trump administration removed Chad from the travel ban because the African country had improved its identity-management and information sharing practices enough, press secretary Sarah Sanders said.

It had been included on the list because of an office supply glitch that prevented it from supplying homeland security officials with recent samples of its passports. It was also unable to adequately share public safety and terror-related information with U.S. officials who screen foreigners seeking to enter the country, officials said.

March 30  More than a dozen states back lawsuit against ban

Washington, D.C. and 16 states backed Hawaiis lawsuit against the travel ban with an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court.

President Trumps discriminatory ban both hurts the families caught up in the chaos of his draconian policies, and undermines our states residents, institutions, businesses and economies, New York Attorney Gen. Eric Schneiderman said in a statement.

Jan. 19  Supreme Court announces it will rule on the travel ban

The Supreme Court announced on Jan. 19 that it will rule on Trump's controversial travel ban. The justices plan to hear arguments in April and issue a final ruling by late June.

Dec. 4  Supreme Court OKs full enforcement of Trump travel ban

Handing the White House a huge judicial victory, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trumps travel ban affecting residents of six majority-Muslim countries.

Lower courts had said people from those countries with a "bona fide" relationship with someone in the United States could not be prevented from entry.

Grandparents and cousins were among the relatives courts said could not be excluded.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place.

Oct. 17  Federal judge temporarily blocks travel ban

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson granted a request from Hawaii to temporarily block a version of Trump's travel ban, which was supposed to take effect at midnight ET on Oct. 18.

Hawaii argued that the revised ban  which included citizens from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, and some Venezuelan government officials and their families  was a continuation of Trump's "promise to exclude Muslims from the United States."

"Todays dangerously flawed district court order undercuts the Presidents efforts to keep the American people safe and enforce minimum security standards for entry into the United States," the White House said in a statement. "The Department of Justice will vigorously defend the Presidents lawful action."

Oct. 10  Supreme Court dismisses one case

The Supreme Court didnt take action on a case that originated in Hawaii pertaining to Trumps travel ban and a ban on refugees.

However, it did dismiss another case that originated in Maryland. That case involved a ban that has since expired and been replaced with a new one by the administration.

Oct. 5  Justice Department asks Supreme Court to drop travel ban case

The Department of Justice asked the nations highest court to dismiss the case challenging the administrations travel ban. The administration argued the case should be dismissed because it was regarding a previous travel ban that is now moot.

Sept. 24  Trump signs new travel ban

As Trumps original ban was set to expire, the president unveiled new restrictions on travel to the U.S. from certain countries citizens.

The revised ban included citizens from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. It also included some government officials from Venezuela.

Sept. 12  Supreme Court lifts restrictions

The Supreme Court blocked a lower courts decision that would have allowed refugees to enter the country under certain conditions, blocking a ruling that said a resettlement agency counts as a bona fide relationship.

Sept. 7  Appeals court limits travel ban

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that would allow for more refugees to enter the country despite the ban. The federal court ruled that refugees working with a resettlement agency would be considered to have established an approved bona fide relationship with a contact in the U.S.

WHO DOES TRUMPS TRAVEL BAN BLOCK FROM ENTERING THE US?

It also expanded the scope of a bona fide relationship to include other family members, such as grandparents and other relatives.

July 19  Supreme Court allows for strict enforcement of refugee ban

The Supreme Court, temporarily, allowed for the administrations travel ban to keep a strict enforcement on its ban of refugees. It did, however, leave in place the court order that made it easier for travelers from the six Muslim-majority countries to enter the U.S. and allowed a previous expansion of bona fide relationships to stay.

July 13  Federal judge expands scope of travel ban

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson, in Hawaii, ruled that a bona fide relationship certain travelers need before entering the U.S. could be expanded to include grandparents and other relatives.

The Justice Department filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court for clarification.

June 29  Travel ban goes into effect

After the Supreme Courts ruling, the Trump administration issued guidance on who would be allowed into the country and who would be barred.

June 26  Supreme Court allows for travel ban to continue

The Supreme Court announced it would allow Trump to forge ahead with a limited version of his travel ban. Trump hailed the decision as a victory for national security.

HAWAII GETS CHANCE TO MAKE CASE FOR FIGHTING 3RD TRAVEL BAN

The court said it would hear arguments in October, but until then, the ban on travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen could be enforced if the visitors lacked a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.

May 25  Travel ban blocked by federal court

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia blocked the travel ban from being implemented. It had begun to hear the case earlier in May.

We remain unconvinced [the ban] has more to do with national security than it does with effectuating the Presidents promised Muslim ban," the court said at the time.

March 30  Trump administration appeals ruling

The Department of Justice filed an appeal with the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to challenge the ruling against the travel ban.

March 29  Federal judge continues to block travel ban

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson granted a request to continue to halt the travel ban.

March 16  Another federal judge temporarily blocks the order

Sitting in Maryland, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang temporarily halted the executive order. The injunction was not as comprehensive as the one issued earlier in Hawaii, but it did contend that the ban was discriminatory toward Muslims.

The order did not change the previous injunction in Hawaii, but rather just reinforced it.

March 15  Federal judge blocks travel ban

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson prevented the travel ban from being implemented just before it was set to take effect. Watson granted the state of Hawaiis request for a temporary restraining order.

Trump called the decision an unprecedented judicial overreach.

March 8  Hawaii sues to block the travel ban

The state of Hawaii sued in an attempt to halt the Trump administrations travel ban from going into effect. Lawyers said the new executive order is resulting in the establishment of religion in the State of Hawaii contrary to its state Constitution.

Lawyers also argued that the ban would damage Hawaiis economy, educational institutions and tourism industry; and it is subjecting a portion of the states citizens to second-class treatment and discrimination, while denying all Hawaii residents the benefits of an inclusive and pluralistic society.

March 6  Trump unveils new travel ban

Trump signed a new executive order which barred travel from six predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days  removing Iraq from the new ban.

The new order also exempted permanent residents and current visa holders from the travel ban. Syrian refugees were still included in the new order but only for 120 instead of indefinitely.

Feb. 15  Trumps travel ban gets a defender

Texas Attorney Ken Paxton split with other states and defended the travel ban as he filed documents with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit asking to reconsider a decision blocking the ban.

Paxton argued that the order is a legal exercise of presidential authority.

Feb. 13  Federal judge grants injunction against ban

A federal judge in Virginia granted an injunction to prevent the administration from implementing the ban.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said the ban was unconstitutional as it had a religious bias.

Feb. 9  Travel ban is again blocked

The travel bans suspension was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a unanimous decision.

MUSLIM ADVOCATES, LEGAL ORG FILES SUITS OVER TRAVEL BAN

Those judges were Michelle Friedland, appointed by former President Barack Obama; Richard Clifton, appointed by former President George W. Bush; and William Canby, appointed by former President Jimmy Carter.

The court began to hear arguments from the Justice Department and lawyers from the states of Washington and Maryland  in opposition to the ban  on Feb. 7.

Feb. 6  Justice Department asks federal court to intervene

The Justice Department filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit asking it to intervene and reverse a previous judges decision to halt the travel ban.

Sixteen attorneys general filed an amicus brief in support of the lawsuit against the travel ban. Those included: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Feb. 3  Judge declines to extend injunction against travel ban

U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton did not extend a temporary injunction against the administrations travel ban.

But U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle did issue a temporary block of the ban on the same day.

The state has met its burden in demonstrating immediate and irreparable injury, Robart said as he ruled in favor of lawyers from the states of Washington and Minnesota.

Feb. 1  Administration tweaks travel ban

The Trump administration tweaked its travel ban to exempt legal permanent residents of the U.S.

AFGHAN GIRLS ROBOTICS TEAM ARRIVES IN US JUST IN TIME

They no longer need a waiver because if they are a legal permanent resident, they wont need it anymore, then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer said of green card holders.

Jan. 30  Senate Republicans save travel ban from Democrats

Senate Republicans squashed an effort by Democrats to overturn the executive order. When Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. sought a vote on legislation to reverse the ban, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., objected.

Trump also fired acting Attorney Gen. Sally Yates on this day when she refused to defend the travel ban.

Jan. 29  Temporary stay issued on travel ban

A Boston federal court temporarily put Trumps travel ban on hold for one week.

The ruling stipulated that previously approved refugees, valid visa holders and lawful permanent residents or travelers from the seven countries included in Trumps order could not be detained or removed from the U.S. because of the executive order.

Jan. 28  Federal judge issues emergency injunction against ban

A federal judge in New York issued an emergency order blocking, in part, the executive order. U.S. District Judge Ann Donnellys ruling temporarily barred the U.S. from deporting people who arrived with a valid visa or who had already completed a refugee application.

As dozens of people were detained after their planes landed in the U.S., massive protests erupted at airports nationwide.

Jan. 27  Trump signs executive order barring travel from seven Muslim-majority nations

Trump signed an executive order which immediately barred entry into the U.S. for the citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The order, dubbed Protection the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, also halted the U.S. refugee program for 120 days, but indefinitely barred all Syrian refugees from entering the country.

Fox News' Barnini Chakraborty, Bill Mears and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
From his handling of a probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to his investigation into Russian meddling in the election, former FBI Director James Comey has long been a punching bag for President Trump.

After Comey left the FBI, Trump accused him of leaving the agency in "tatters." And as Comey released his explosive tell-all book, Trump called for the former FBI boss to be "prosecuted" for allegedly leaking information and lying under oath to Congress.

"He is a weak and untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI," Trump said in April. "It was my great honor to fire James Comey!"

But while Trump has publicly hit the nations former chief investigator hard, his public opinion throughout his presidency and campaign hasn't been all bad.

Criticism

On Comey's Capitol Hill testimony

On Dec. 7, Comey testified behind closed doors, despite previously seeking an open hearing. He was expected to answer a variety of questions  from his decision not to recommend any criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her private server scandal in 2016 to the FBI's investigation into potential Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Comey tweeted days before his testimony that it was "hard to protect [his] rights without being in contempt," so he agreed to "sit in the dark." House Republicans apparently weren't satisfied at the conclusion of Comey's questioning and indicated they may want to bring Comey back, according to reports.

Trump, too, was clearly frustrated.

"It is being reported that Leakin' James Comey was told by Department of Justice attorneys not to answer the most important questions," Trump tweeted afterward. "Total bias and corruption at the highest levels of previous Administration. Force him to answer the questions under oath!"

On Clintons emails

Trump has often tweeted about Comeys involvement in the FBIs investigation into Clintons use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state, saying his handling of the probe has left the FBI in tatters.

Hillary and the Dems loved and praised FBI Director Comey just a few days ago. Original evidence was overwhelming, should not have delayed! Trump tweeted in October 2016.

Before Comey was officially sacked, Trump said Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Clinton because he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds.

After the FBI confirmed Comey had drafted a statement about Clinton before the investigation was completed, Trump took to Twitter to lambast the former FBI chief even more.

Wow, FBI confirms report that James Comey drafted letter exonerating Crooked Hillary Clinton long before investigation was complete. Many people not interviewed, including Clinton herself, Trump tweeted. Comey stated under oath that he didnt do this  obviously a fix? Where is Justice Dept? Trump tweeted.

As it turned out, James Comey lied and leaked and totally protected Hillary Clinton. He was the best thing that ever happened to her! he said.

He's also said Comey, along with others, have "committed many crimes."

On Comeys firing

Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017 and sent his FBI chief a short, impersonal letter to make him aware of his termination.

Trump predictably took to Twitter to defend the firing.

James Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI," Trump said the morning after the firing.

Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike. When things calm down, they will be thanking me! Trump added.

On the Russia investigation

Comey told Trump that he was not under investigation by the FBI, Trump said in a May 2017 interview with NBC News.

I said, if its possible would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, You are not under investigation, Trump said.

When asked if he was angry with Comey over his investigation into Russias meddling in the presidential election, Trump just said he want[s] somebody thats competent to lead the FBI. He added that he is a big fan of the FBI.

Trump reportedly called Comey crazy and a nut job during a conversation with Russian officials in the Oval Office the day after Comeys firing, according to The New York Times.

I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job, Trump said according to a document of the meeting obtained by the Times. I faced great pressure because of Russia. Thats taken off.

And when it comes to his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump has denied asking Comey to stop his investigation into potential wrongdoing.

I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie! Trump tweeted on Dec. 3.

On Comey's memo

As Comey has promoted his new memoir, titled "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership," Trump called the former FBI head a "slimeball" and dubbed him "Slippery James Comey."

"Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!" Trump said on social media.

He also criticized the book for not answering certain questions, such as: "how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give [Clinton's email server] to the FBI (why didn't they TAKE it), why the phony memos," among other things.

Trump has also denied asking Comey for his loyalty, something Comey detailed in his memoir.

On stopping government leaks

Trump has several times expressed his disappointment with Comey and the FBI not being able to stop national security leakers  and even accused the former FBI boss of leaking as well.

The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security leakers that have permeated our government for a long time. They can't even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S. Trump tweeted in February 2017.

Trump also threatened Comey against leaking, himself, information to the media.

James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press, Trump tweeted.

His tweet came after The New York Times reported Trump asked for Comeys loyalty during a private dinner, which Comey declined to give. The New York Times cited sources who said they knew about the details of the dinner through Comey.

Later, after Comey told Fox News the memos he shared with his legal team did not constitute a leak of classified information, Trump took to social media to call him "either very sick or very dumb."

Is everybody believing what is going on. James Comey cant define what a leak is. He illegally leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION but doesnt understand what he did or how serious it is. He lied all over the place to cover it up. Hes either very sick or very dumb, he wrote.

Praise

On Clintons emails

While the president eventually castigated Comeys handling of the probe into Clintons private email server, Trump initially praised him for investigating Clinton at all.

It took a lot of guts, Trump said in October 2017 of Comeys decision to reopen the Clinton investigation.

I have to give the FBI credit. That was so bad what happened originally, Trump said after the FBI did not recommend charges be brought against Clinton by the Justice Department.

It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where theyre trying to protect her from criminal prosecution, Trump said.

I was not his fan, but Ill tell you what  what he did, he brought back his reputation, Trump continued.

He also encouraged Comey then to hang tough.

On the Russia investigation

In prepared remarks released ahead of Comeys testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017, Comey confirmed reports that Trump asked the FBI to lay off his former national security adviser as the department investigated Russias influence on the 2016 presidential election. But Comey also confirmed that he did reassure the president that Trump was not under investigation.

Trump was pleased by Comeys admission.

The president is pleased that Mr. Comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the President was not under investigation in any Russian probe, Trumps lawyer said in a statement. The President feels completely and totally vindicated. He is eager to continue to move forward with his agenda.
Rex Tillerson is out as secretary of state, the White House announced on March 13 as he came back to the U.S. from a trip to Africa.

Tillerson will be replaced as the nations top diplomat by CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Rumors that Tillerson would be out as secretary of state have been circling for quite some time, and he was expected to step down from the position in January.

Tillerson told reporters that his last day will be March 31. Until then, he will delegate all of his responsibilities to the deputy secretary of state.

In leaving, Tillerson lamented that Washington, D.C., can be a "very mean-spirited town." He told the State Department employees that "personal integrity" is the "most valuable asset you posses."

Heres a look at who Tillerson is and what he did before joining the ever-evolving Trump administration.

Who is Rex Tillerson?

Tillerson, 65, grew up in Texas and Oklahoma. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering.

Tillerson is also known for his involvement with the Boy Scouts of America. He served as the organization's national president from 2010 to 2012.

Following the oft-criticized speech Trump gave to the Boy Scouts in 2017, Tillerson reportedly threatened to resign from the State Department.

What about his resume?

Prior to becoming secretary of state, Tillerson did not have any experience in the public sector.

Tillerson was the chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil until 2016. He served in that role starting in 2006, but he actually joined the company in 1975 as a production engineer, according to an archived version of his Exxon biography.

What has he done as secretary of state?

Tillersons tenure as secretary of state was fairly contentious with Trump. He reportedly called Trump a moron in front of other Cabinet officials in July 2017. Following reports of the remark, Tillerson gave an unusual personal address and reassured people he was not quitting.

As secretary of state, Tillerson traveled extensively  visiting Australia, Europe, Mexico and Africa, among other places. He assumed the position of secretary of state on Feb. 1.

Tillersons ties to Russia have also been scrutinized  a criticism that has plagued many Trump administration officials as investigators continue to look into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Tillerson was named vice president of Exxon Ventures (CIS) Inc., and president of Exxon Neftegas Limited in 1998. In those roles, Tillerson was tasked with overseeing Exxons holdings in Russia and the Caspian Sea, his Exxon biography stated. He met with Russian President Vladimir Putin multiple times before becoming secretary of state.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Newly appointed Cabinet ministers will take their oath of office before President Emmerson Mnangagwa at State House in Harare today.President Mnangagwa last week announced a 22-member Cabinet to run Government business until harmonised elections next year.In a statement on Saturday, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Misheck Sibanda said the swearing-in ceremony starts at 9AM."Cabinet ministers are invited to State House for the swearing-in ceremony scheduled for 0900hrs, 4th December, 2017," reads the statement.The invitation was also extended to Ministers of State for Provincial Affairs and Deputy Ministers.However, there have been adjustments to the original list of Cabinet ministers that was announced on Thursday last week in order "to ensure compliance with the Constitution and considerations of gender, demography and special needs".Lazarus Dokora, who was appointed Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, was dropped and replaced by his former deputy, Professor Paul Mavima.Goromonzi West legislator Mrs Petronella Kagonye becomes the new Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, taking over from Professor Clever Nyathi, who becomes Special Advisor on National Peace and Reconciliation.Mrs Kagonye was formerly the Deputy Minister of Transport and Infrastructural Development before she was fired in December 2014.President Mnangagwa also brought in two other special advisors to the President  Christopher Mutsvangwa and Joshua Teke Malinga (Disability Issues).Victor Matemadanda, who was initially designated as Deputy Minister for Defence, Security and War Veterans, has been reassigned to lead the Zanu-PF commissariat.He replaces the sacked Mr Saviour Kasukuwere.Similarly, Pupurai Togarepi will no longer be taking up the post of Deputy Minister for Women and Youth Affairs but will concentrate on his role as Zanu-PF Secretary for Youth Affairs, a position that was previously held by the embattled Kudzanayi Chipanga.Some of the ministers-designate did not represent parliamentary constituencies as required under Section 104(3) of the Constitution.These are Air Marshal Perrance Shiri, July Moyo, Major-General Sibusiso Moyo, Ambassador Mutsvangwa, Prof Amon Murwira, Mr Winston Chitando, Matemadanda, Professor Clever Nyathi and Pupurai Togarepi.Presidential spokesperson Mr George Charamba highlighted last week that President Mnangagwa was alive to the constitutional requirement for him to appoint only up to five Cabinet ministers from outside Parliament.The new team will have its work cut out as it needs to deal with the current economic challenges.The 2018 National Budget, which is expected to be presented by Finance and Economic Planning Minister Mr Patrick Chinamasa, is tentatively scheduled for Thursday.In his inauguration speech on November 24, President Mnangagwa said the country's economic recovery would be predicated on agricultural performance."Our economic policy will be predicated on agriculture, which is the mainstay, and on creating conditions for an investment-led economic recovery that puts a premium on job creation."Key choices will have to be made to attract foreign direct investment to tackle high levels of unemployment while transforming our economy towards the tertiary," he said.Already, Government has given an ultimatum to individuals and corporates who externalised money and other assets to bring them back.The amnesty will run until February 28.
A supermoon was visible across much of the planet on Sunday evening for the one and only time in 2017.

The supermoon, given its name by Astrologer Richard Nolle, is a new or full moon that appears bigger to the human eye because its the closest distance it could get to Earth during a given orbit.

The supermoons are a great opportunity for people to start looking at the moon, not just that once but every chance they have! said Dr. Noah Petro, a research scientist from NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center.

Supermoons typically appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than the average moon seen in the sky each night, Petro told Fox News.

SLIDESHOW: PHOTOS OF THE SUPERMOON FROM AROUND THE WORLD

While it may seem bigger, its simply close to the horizon, according to Space.com. The effect is called a moon illusion, which scientists believe may be the human brain comparing the moon to other objects nearby.

Or it could be that the human brain is just wired to process things on the horizon as bigger than things in the sky.

This particular moon, according to NASA, has been given the Indian names of Frost Moon or the Moon Before Yule, because its the last full moon of the fall season.

The moon, which also has been dubbed a full cold moon, is one part of what NASA is calling a super moon trilogy.

The next supermoon will be on Jan. 1, 2018, with the third taking place on Jan. 31  which NASA says will be extra special, considering it will feature a total lunar eclipse.

Fox News' Zoe Szathmary contributed to this report.
Biblical scholars have discovered the first-known original Greek copy of an ancient forbidden Christian text that purportedly describes Jesus secret teachings to his brother James, an early leader of the Church.

Geoffrey Smith and Brent Landau, religious studies scholars at The University of Texas at Austin, located the rare text in Oxford University archives earlier this year. The experts found several fifth- or sixth-century A.D. Greek fragments of the First Apocalypse of James, one of the books from an ancient collection known as the Nag Hammadi library. Previously, the text was thought to be preserved only via translations in the Egyptian Coptic language.

Only a small number of texts from the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of 13 Coptic Gnostic books discovered in Egypt in 1945, have been found in Greek, their original language of composition. Also known as the Gnostic Gospels, the books are seen as key documents for understanding Gnosticism, an ancient belief system.

NEW EVIDENCE DATES CHRISTS TOMB TO ROMAN ERA, MATCHING HISTORICAL RECORDS

The First Apocalypse of James, like the other books in the Nag Hammadi library, was deemed heretical or forbidden by the church because it fell outside of the fourth-century religious boundaries that defined the 27-book New Testament.

Experts were thrilled by the discovery of the ancient fragments, which are owned by the Egypt Exploration Society.

To say that we were excited once we realized what wed found is an understatement, said Smith, an assistant professor of religious studies, in a statement. We never suspected that Greek fragments of the First Apocalypse of James survived from antiquity. But there they were, right in front of us.

INCREDIBLE 1,500-YEAR-OLD CHRISTIAN MOSAIC UNCOVERED IN ISRAEL

The document is said to describe Jesus secret teachings to his brother James. Details of the heavenly realm and future events, such as James inevitable death, are revealed, according to The University of Texas at Austin.

The text supplements the biblical account of Jesus life and ministry, Smith added.

There are a number of interpretations of references to Jesus' siblings in biblical texts. The Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark, for example, refer to Jesus' brothers, including James.

ANCIENT ROMAN SHIPWRECKS, STUNNING ARTIFACTS, DISCOVERED NEAR EGYPTIAN PORT

James, also known as "James the Just" was a leader of the early church - one interpretation of brother may thus be a close spiritual relationship as opposed to a fraternal biological link. The First Apocalypse of James describes James as not Jesus brother materially.

Other interpretations describe James as Jesus' step-brother or cousin.

The manuscript, which uses neat, uniform handwriting and words separated into syllables, was probably a teachers model used to help students read and write, according to the experts. The scribe has divided most of the text into syllables by using mid-dots. Such divisions are very uncommon in ancient manuscripts, but they do show up frequently in manuscripts that were used in educational contexts, said Landau, a lecturer in the UT Austin Department of Religious Studies, in the statement.

Landau notes that the teacher who produced the manuscript likely had a particular affinity for the text. The document, he explains, appears to be a complete copy of the forbidden ancient text.

This story has been updated with information from the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
NASA's far-flung Voyager 1 spacecraft has taken its backup thrusters out of mothballs.

Voyager 1 hadn't used its four "trajectory correction maneuver" (TCM) thrusters since November 1980, during the spacecraft's last planetary flyby  an epic encounter with Saturn. But mission team members fired them up again Tuesday (Nov. 28), to see whether the TCM thrusters were still ready for primetime.

The little engines passed the test with flying colors, NASA officials said. [Voyager 1's Road to Interstellar Space: A Photo Timeline]

"The Voyager team got more excited each time with each milestone in the thruster test," Todd Barber, a propulsion engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "The mood was one of relief, joy and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all."

As Barber's words suggest, the mission team didnt do this out of idle curiosity. Voyager 1  which in August 2012 became the first human-made object ever to enter interstellar space  has long been using its standard attitude-control thrusters to orient itself into the proper position to communicate with Earth. But the performance of these thrusters has been flagging for at least three years, so mission team members wanted to find an alternative option.

A successful test was far from guaranteed. Not only was the long layoff a potential issue, but the TCM thrusters were designed to burn continuously for relatively long stretches; they had never been fired in the very short bursts employed for attitude control, NASA officials said.

"The Voyager flight team dug up decades-old data and examined the software that was coded in an outdated assembler language, to make sure we could safely test the thrusters," Chris Jones, chief engineer at JPL, said in the same statement.

The plan is now to press the TCM engines into service in the attitude-control role, beginning in January. This should make a big difference for the mission, team members said.

"With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years," Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd, also of JPL, said in the same statement.

But the four TCM thrusters will likely be retired again at some point in the future. Each one requires a heater to operate, which in turn uses power. When Voyager 1's power supply gets too low, the probe's handlers will switch back to the attitude-control thrusters, NASA officials said. (Voyager 1 is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG. RTGs convert to electricity the heat generated by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238.)

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, launched a few weeks apart in 1977 to conduct an unprecedented "grand tour" of the solar system's giant planets  Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The spacecraft accomplished this goal, and then kept on flying. Voyager 2 is expected to join its sibling in interstellar space in the next few years, NASA officials said.

The mission team will probably do a similar TCM test on Voyager 2 at some point, but that spacecraft's attitude-control thrusters are in better shape than those of Voyager 1, NASA officials said.

Originally published on Space.com.
Facebook is using artificial intelligence to help with a number of different issues, the latest being spotting posts of people who may be suicidal in an effort to prevent them from harming themselves.

The company is also using machine learning and other automated techniques to help spot and delete terrorist-related content from ISIS and Al Qaeda, with the company claiming 99 percent of content it removes is detected before it is spotted by users.

"We do this primarily through the use of automated systems like photo and video matching and text-based machine learning," wrote Monika Bickert, Facebook's Head of Global Policy Management, and Brian Fishman, head of counterterrorism policy, in a post.

FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE, TWITTER AND MICROSOFT JOIN UP TO BATTLE TERRORIST CONTENT

Al Qaeda and ISIS have been a priority for the social networking giant because of the way it is focusing its techniques.

"A system designed to find content from one terrorist group may not work for another because of language and stylistic differences in their propaganda," Bickert and Fishman wrote. "Because of these limitations, we focus our most innovative techniques on the terrorist groups that pose the biggest threat globally, in the real-world and online. ISIS and Al Qaeda meet this definition most directly, so we prioritize our tools to counter these organizations and their affiliates."

As soon as content is flagged for potentially being terror-related, Facebook said 83 percent of that content is ultimately removed and any copies of that content are removed within an hour of the time they are posted.

Facebook also noted that there have been instances where the content was removed "before it goes live on the site," thanks to systems like photo and video matching and text-based machine learning.

Not working alone

Facebook has acknowledged that it cannot combat terrorist content by itself and has teamed up with experts from around the globe.

Over the summer, Facebook partnered with Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube to form the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) in an effort to battle terrorist content on their respective platforms.

The company also said it has expanded its partnerships with several anti-terrorism and cyber intelligence organizations around the world, including Flashpoint, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the SITE Intelligence Group and the University of Alabama at Birminghams Computer Forensics Research Lab in an effort to "flag Pages, profiles and groups on Facebook potentially associated with terrorist groups for us to review."

SOCIAL MEDIA FUELED THE RISE OF 'FAKE NEWS'

More work to be done

Still, the company has more work to do and noted that deploying artificial intelligence in this matter is "not as simple as flipping a switch." Bickert and Fishman wrote that, depending upon the technique used, databases have to be carefully curated or humans have to code the data in order to train the machine.

Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center (GIPEC), a software company that monitors illegal activity and terror-related social media accounts, found at least one pro-ISIS Facebook account that has not been removed, providing screenshots of the account to Fox News.

For its part, Facebook has acknowledged that it can and will do more. "As we deepen our commitment to combating terrorism by using AI, leveraging human expertise and strengthening collaboration, we recognize that we can always do more, Bickert and Fishman added.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also talked about Facebook's strategy for using AI, saying in February it would take "many years" for the system to be fully developed.

Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia
The crew of a Cathay Pacific flight over Japan saw a North Korean ballistic missile test last week, the airline said.

The airline told the BBC that the crew flying from San Francisco to Hong Kong saw what is suspected to be the re-entry" of a North Korean nuclear missile during a test.

Last week, the North Korean regime tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)  the first such test in over two months  that could potentially reach any city within the U.S. The regime praised the missiles as its most powerful.

The details of the test remain unclear, with a U.S. official saying the missile did not manage to make a re-entry into the earth atmosphere  the key problem of the rogue communist countrys nuclear program.

Without perfecting the re-entry technology, such missiles pose little danger as they fall apart before re-entering the Earth.

The continued nuclear weapon tests and hostile rhetoric have increased tensions in the region, with key U.S. allies preparing for the possibility of all-out war.

The U.S. and South Korea began Monday a massive combined air force exercise in the wake of the threats from the North. A five-day drill  called Vigilant Ace involves hundreds of aircraft and two dozen stealth jets.

South Koreas defense ministry said the practice is aimed to improve the allies wartime capabilities and preparedness.

North Korean state media condemned the exercise, saying the U.S. was begging for nuclear war and will push the region to the brink of nuclear war, the BBC reported. It also said it will seriously consider a counter-response to the military drill.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
If you like vacationing near the ocean, but would rather stay by the pool, Los Cabos is your place.

Located on the southern tip of Mexicos Baja California peninsula, this beautiful land full of contrast  from desert to ocean and breathtaking mountains  offers enough attractions to keep even the most demanding travelers busy.

Los Cabos is usually thought of as one destination, but it is actually two  and both are very different from one another.

TOKYO OFFERS TRAVELERS A FASCINATING, UNEXPECTED EXPERIENCE

Just 20 miles from the Cabo San Lucas that gained celebrity status for its gorgeous topography is the quieter San Jose del Cabo, a quaint little village where the downtown streets are filled by local artisans selling their pottery, paintings, textiles and all kind of handicraft alongside a great variety of food.

San Jose is the ideal destination for travelers who want a quiet vacation away from the noisy nights of Cabo San Lucas.

The town offers a wide variety of accommodations, from motels to all-inclusive hotels located right on the beach. Barcelo Gran Faro, for example, is a great option, with up to 85 percent of its rooms boasting an ocean view. It also has a wide selection of food, great service, and the drinks are just wonderful.

The temperature of the ocean is generally warm and its color a deep blue that hypnotizes you  but thats about all you'll get to know about it: Dont even think of going for a swim. Most beaches are black-flagged due to the strong currents created where the Pacific Ocean meets the Sea of Cortes.

Cabo San Lucas, on the other hand, is more of a party town, like Cancun or Puerto Vallarta, and mostly packed with tourists. It offers more places and things to do than San Jose del Cabo, from restaurants, tours, luxurious malls, tons of pharmacies and, yes, a wild nightlife.

Cabo San Lucas also has better beaches. With a little more color to them and the water is clearer. Both are because the currents are much less severe in Cabo San Lucas, which is a big plus for some travelers. After all, swimmable beaches make a big difference for those who don't want to be stuck by the pool.

THE ENTIRE COUNTRY OF NEW ZEALAND IS PLANNING A HOLIDAY GIFT EXCHANGE

The Cabos area is also unique when it comes the culinary options, since its cuisine doesnt provide a wide array of dishes.

In the mid-18th century, the arrival of Jesuits added more flavors to the basically bland variety of foods cooked and served in Cabos. They brought ingredients that considerably expanded the locals' menu, although their presence did not last. The Jesuits were expelled, and with them some of their gastronomic contributions.

Some of the dishes that survived include Almejas Chocolatas Tatemadas, or grilled clams cooked on beach stones; Machaca de Pescado, a stingray dish seasoned with chili and native spices), Tamales Fajados, which are steam-cooked corn-based doughs filled with chicken; and the so-called ''Comida de Pobres'' (food of the poor), which is a seafood soup with rice, vegetables and beans.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Either San Jose del Cabo or Cabo San Lucas are great destinations with good weather all year round, save for a few showers and a bit of serious heat in the months of July and August. Youll enjoy good food, incredible scenery and the always-welcoming charm of the Mexican people  and depending on where you hit the beach, a nice swim in the ocean.
A 28-year-old teacher has been arrested after she allegedly had sex with a 16-year-old student in a park this past spring, police in Solebury Township, Pa., said.

Former Pennington School teacher Alyssia Marie Reddy was arrested on Friday, authorities say. The school is located in Pennington, New Jersey.

Solebury Township police said that last month they got a report of an alleged spring 2017 sexual assault, which took place in a park. The investigation determined that Reddy allegedly had sexual intercourse with the student.

COURT THROWS OUT LAWSUIT OVER TEACHER MOM, 38, JAILED FOR UP TO 30 YEARS FOR SEX AFFAIRS WITH THREE TEEN BOYS

Reddy is living in the Baltimore area.

She was arrested Friday for institutional sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, criminal use of a communication facility and corruption of a minor, the Solebury Township police department release said.

Shes being held in Baltimore City, while waiting to be extradited to Pennsylvania, police say.

The Pennington School said in a letter to parents that it had been recently made aware of an alleged inappropriate relationship involving a former Upper School teacher of The Pennington School in the 2016-17 school year, the Trentonian reported.

FEMALE TEACHERS CHARGED OR CONVICTED OF HAVING SEX WITH STUDENTS

The school said that the matter was promptly reported to the Mercer County Prosecutors office.

Reddy also has been fired from her job at St. Pauls School for Girls in Maryland, Fox 43 reports.

We have just learned that one of our Upper School teachers, Alyssia Reddy, who joined our faculty this year, has been charged with a felony involving sexual assault of a minor, head of school Penny B. Evans said in a letter obtained by the station. The alleged events took place in Pennsylvania this past school year with a male high school student before she came to St. Pauls School for Girls.

She said that Reddy has been fired from the school and banned from the campus.

Before today, we had no information suggesting any prior improper conduct by Mrs. Reddy, she said.
A Texas woman was arrested after she claimed her boyfriend was threatening her life on social media  but was actually writing those threatening posts herself, according to police.

Lisa Garcia, 22, was arrested Thursday after cops said she falsely accused her boyfriend, Brandon Berrott, 23, of threatening her, leading police to toss him in jail multiple times, KTRK reported.

Garcia claimed her boyfriend threatened her life on social media and through text messages, the Baytown Police Department told Fox News.

POLICE: TEEN ADMITS TO MOLESTING 50 CHILDREN IN CALIFORNIA

Garcia allegedly set up accounts on Instagram pretending to be Berrott, according to the Houston Chronicle. Garcia also sent threatening messages to herself and Berrotts other girlfriend and reported them to the police department and the Harris County Sheriffs Office, investigators said.

Berrott reportedly has children with Garcia and the other woman.

Berrott was charged with eight different crimes, according to Fox 26. The charges were filed within 10 days in October, and he was jailed at least three times for Garcias threats, the Chronicle reported. It also cost him his job, prosecutors said.

As Berrott was cooperating with police, Garcia was making threats to herself under his name, according to KTRK. Investigators reportedly found that it wasnt possible for Berrott to have sent one of the threats because he was in custody at the time.

He didnt do any of this. He was charged with eight criminal cases and is innocent of all of them, prosecutor Britni Cooper told the Chronicle. Im horrified, actually, and cant imagine what this guy went through. Its a nightmare.

COURT THROWS OUT LAWSUIT OVER TEACHER MOM, 38, JAILED FOR UP TO 30 YEARS FOR SEX AFFAIRS WITH 3 TEEN BOYS

Berrotts defense attorney, Carl Moore, said he has never felt so confident that my client was innocent, and believes Garcia did this because of a custody battle between the two regarding their child.

She wanted him to revoke his parental rights, and he said, No, I want to be in my childs life, Moore said. When you read the messages, I believe you could tell that they were written by a female that was scorned.

He told KHOU that he blames the police department as much as anyone for continuing to accept these charges without doing the proper investigation.

During the course of the investigation, Garcia claimed Berrotts mother, an employee of Harris County, bribed a state district judge to allow her son to make bail.

Garcia was taken into custody Thursday on charges of retaliation and online impersonation. Bond was set at $10,000.
Three teenage boys were charged as adults Monday after they allegedly beat a homeless man in Philadelphia, robbed him and left him for dead, police said.

Brandon Conrad, 14, and Malik Page, 16, were charged with murder, criminal conspiracy, robbery and other related offenses, FOX29 Philadelphia reported. Emmanual Harris, 17, was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, robbery and other offenses.

Kevin Cullen was in the Philadelphias Holmesburg neighborhood on Nov. 26 when the teenage boys allegedly beat and robbed him, Philly.com reported. Police found Cullen unconscious with his pockets emptied out. He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead the next day.

Cullens family thanked nearby residents in the neighborhood for attempting to help the 57-year-old man after the beating. Tom Cullen, his brother, specifically thanked a woman named Donna who sat with Kevin Cullen, according to FOX29.

"Especially, the woman, Donna, who sat with him when he was dying. Glad somebody was there to show him compassion when he was dying, Tom said.
News / National

by Staff reporter

A Gwanda man (29) has been arrested for allegedly fatally assaulting his 17-year-old younger sister's 30-year-old boyfriend with an iron bar after he found him in the middle of the night fondling the juvenile at their home.David Mukondole of C4 Blanket Mine rushed to his young sister's bedroom when the teenager screamed after her boyfriend Knowledge Moyo of D22 Blanket Mine budged into her room unannounced.Matabeleland South provincial police spokesperson Inspector Philani Ndebele confirmed the incident.He said Moyo died on Wednesday while admitted at the United Bulawayo Hospitals after he was attacked on Monday at around 12 midnight. "I can confirm that we arrested a man who allegedly beat up the now deceased with an iron bar after he invaded their homestead in the middle of the night. Knowledge Moyo sustained injuries as a result of the attack and was referred to the United Bulawayo Hospitals. He died after he had been admitted for two days," he said.Insp Ndebele expressed concern on the increase in cases of murder and assault in the province. He said people must desist from taking matters into their own hands."We continue to urge people to desist from resorting to violence in order to solve issues. We also urge people to stop taking the law into their own hands. When a suspect has been apprehended by community members they should hand him or her over to the police as taking matters into their own hands will only lead them to jail," he said."In this case this man realised that there was an intruder in their house. Instead of attacking him he should have apprehended him and taken him to the police. People should allow justice to take its course."A source who preferred anonymity said the juvenile screamed for help after her boyfriend gained entry into their house and proceeded to her bedroom and started fondling her in the middle of the night. He said Mukondole retrieved an iron bar and proceeded to the juvenile's bedroom but Moyo fled upon seeing him."Mukondole pursued Moyo and caught up with him a few metres from the house. He struck him on the head with an iron bar and Moyo fell down.Mukondole left Moyo who was bleeding profusely lying on the ground."After some time Mukondele's wife urged him to check on Moyo. Mukondole found Moyo lying on the same spot and he alerted the mine security officer. Moyo was ferried to Gwanda Provincial Hospital where he was later transferred to UBH and later died," said the source.
Welcome to Fox News First. Not signed up yet? Click here.

Developing now, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017:

President Trump in war of words over the FBI and its handling of the Clinton email probe

New questions about possible Trump obstruction in Russia investigation after questionable tweet

Fox News Exclusive: In wake of the Kate Steinle verdict, GOP lawmaker to introduce bill that would threaten prison time for elected officials accused of sheltering illegal immigrant criminals

CVS Health to acquire AETNA for $69 billion in year's largest acquisition

"Supermoon" dazzles stargazers across the world in its only appearance this year

THE LEAD STORY: President Trump is in a war of words with James Comey and Eric Holder over the FBI and its integrity after new details suggested the handling and closure of the Clinton email probe without criminal charges was reportedly driven by partisan politics ... Trump suggested Sunday that news reports about an anti-Trump FBI agent on the agencys Hillary Clinton email investigation explains why the Clinton case was closed without criminal charges. Report: ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE Now it all starts to make sense! Trump said in one tweet. The office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller confirmed with Fox News exclusively that agent Peter Strzok had been removed from Muellers investigation into Russia collusion after the Justice Departments inspector general started examining Strzok's electronic messages with a colleague, which reportedly included ones that were anti-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton. Strzok had worked on the Clinton email probe last year.

Former Attorney General Holder and former FBI Director Comey both responded to Trump, who had added the FBI's reputation was in "tatters" because of its handling of the Clinton email investigation. Nope. Not letting this go. The FBIs reputation is not in 'tatters,' tweeted Holder, who served as attorney general under President Obama. "It's composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. Comey tweeted what seemed to be a response of his own, quoting a statement he gave to the Senate Intelligence Committee last June: I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton: New documents reveal FBI's Clinton cover-up

DEMS EYE POSSIBLE TRUMP OBSTRUCTION AFTER TWEET MISFIRE: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel has started to see "the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice" against President Trump ... Feinstein told NBCs Meet the Press that her analysis is based on Special Counsel Robert Muellers Russia collusion probe that has recently resulted in indictments against former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates and guilty pleas by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. She also pointed to "the continual tweets" from the White House on the matter. Among those tweets was controversial message from Trump's official Twitter account on Saturday that said, "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies."

The tweet Saturday suggested to some observers that Trump had obstructed justice because he would have known Flynn lied to federal agents when he purportedly asked then-FBI Director James Comey in February to ease up on investigating Flynn. John Dowd, President Trumps personal attorney, has taken responsibility this Trump tweet on Flynn, saying that he had sloppily drafted the passage and given it to White House Social Media Director Dan Scavino.

FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: In wake of the not guilty verdict in the Kate Steinle murder trial, a Republican congressman plans to introduce a bill today that would threaten huge fines and prison time for elected officials accused of sheltering illegal immigrant criminals from deportation ... Indiana Rep. Todd Rokita's bill is one of the most aggressive pieces of legislation to date aimed at sanctuary city policies, going beyond the Justice Departments threat to cut off grants to those jurisdictions. His "Stopping Lawless Actions of Politicians (SLAP) Act" would hold state and local lawmakers criminally responsible for refusing to comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts. The Republicans bill would subject violators to a $1 million fine and up to five years in prison if convicted.

HEALTH INDUSTRY SHAKE-UP: Drugstore chain operator CVS Health Corp. has agreed to acquire health insurer Aetna Inc. for $69 billion, seeking to tackle soaring health care spending through lower-cost medical services in pharmacies ... This year's largest corporate acquisition will combine one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefits managers and pharmacy operators with one of its oldest health insurers, whose national business ranges from employer healthcare to government plans.

LOOK, UP IN THE SKY ... IT'S THE "SUPERMOON": A "supermoon" was visible across much of the planet on Sunday evening for the one and only time in 2017, wowing observers ... The supermoon, given its name by Astrologer Richard Nolle, is a new or full moon that appears bigger to the human eye because its the closest distance it could get to Earth during a given orbit. Supermoons typically appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than the average moon seen in the sky each night. CLICK HERE to look at a Fox News Digital slideshow of the supermoon from around the world

AS SEEN ON FOX NEWS WEEKEND

A CALL FOR AN 'INVESTIGATION OF THE INVESTIGATION': "This whole investigation stinks worse than cabbage cooking in a small, unventilated kitchen - with sardines on the side."  Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, on "Fox & Friends Weekend," sounding off on the removal of FBI counterintelligence division agent Peter Strzok from Robert Mueller's special investigation into President Trump and possible Russian collusion because of anti-Trump texts. WATCH

TRUMP AND THE LOOMING DANGER FROM NORTH KOREA: "There's a real grave danger to China, to Russia, to all nations, by -- you know, from a North Korea that's armed with nuclear weapons. And of course, you have that direct threat, but you also have the threat of -- the potential of Japan, South Korea, others, arming themselves, possibly even with nuclear weapons. That is not in China's interest; it's not in Russia's interest. And so, what the president's saying is, we all need to take care of it. If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it, because he has said he's not going to allow this murderous, rogue regime to threaten the United States with the most destructive weapons on the planet."  National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, in an exclusive interview on "Fox News Sunday," on how President Trump will handle the increasing nuclear threat from North Korea. WATCH

ACROSS THE NATION

McConnell eases stance on Moore, says voters should 'make the call.'

After victorious Senate vote, GOP leaders confident about tax reform, avoiding shutdown.

Grassley criticized for comments on taxpayers who waste money on 'booze,' 'women.'

MINDING YOUR BUSINESS

"Sunday Morning Futures" interview - Senate tax bill could reach Trump's desk in 10 days: Sen. Perdue.

U.S. equity index futures open higher after Senate passes tax bill.

Average U.S. gas price drops 7 cents to $2.54 for regular.

NEW IN FOX NEWS OPINION

Why Masterpiece Cakeshop case could bring a major Supreme Court ruling on free expression.

Michael Goodwin: The left (and much of Washington) are preparing to dance on the grave of Trump's presidency.

Todd Starnes: Pro-life teenager punched outside Planned Parenthood clinic.

HOLLYWOOD SQUARED

Billy Bush slams Trump for questioning authenticity of Access Hollywood tape.

MSNBC host Joy Reid targets Crist with anti-gay comments in old blog posts.

James Levine suspended by Met Opera after sexual abuse accusations.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?

Coco screenings remove aggravating Frozen short from the film.

This Star Wars coat costs $1,300.

Sphinx from set of 1923 film The Ten Commandments unearthed in California.

STAY TUNED

On Fox News:

Fox & Friends, 6 a.m. ET: We'll look at how the tax reform bill could impact the health care system; House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy weighs in on the GOP chances of passing tax reform by Christmas; legal scholar Alan Dershowitz on whether President Trump could face obstruction charges in the Russia investigation; Counselor to President Trump Kellyanne Conway takes on the latest developments in the Russian collusion and Clinton email scandals; and we celebrate veteran-owned businesses, starting with Bottle Breacher.

The Story with Martha MacCallum, 7 p.m. ET: The six officers acquitted in the Freddie Gray case are back at work. The father of one of the officers speaks exclusively to Martha.

Hannity, 9 p.m. ET: Newt Gingrich sounds off on an apparently pro-Hillary FBI investigator's role in the Clinton email investigation and dismissal from the Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia collusion probe.

On Fox Business:

Mornings with Maria, 6 a.m. ET: Kiron Skinner, Fox News foreign policy analyst, on the next step for the Trump administration in handling North Korea; Rep. Peter King, Congressman on the impact of the tax reform bill; and former Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray on what Michael Flynn's plea deal means for the Trump administration and the Russian collusion case.

Varney & Co., 9 a.m. ET: Rep. Steve King on the future of "Kate's Law" following the not guilty verdict in the Kate Steinle murder trial.

After the Bell, 4 p.m. ET: Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform president, on what lawmakers need to do to pass the landmark legislation.

On Fox News Radio:

The Fox News Rundown podcast: Fox News Radio has launched the Fox News Rundown! This long-form podcast features insights from top newsmakers, along with reporters and contributors from across all Fox News Channel platforms. All episodes of this podcast can be found at: www.foxnewsrundown.com. Want it sent straight to your mobile device? Subscribe through Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher.

The Brian Kilmeade Show, 9 am to Noon ET: Columnist Andrew McCarthy on Michael Flynn's plea deal; Rep. Rod Blum talks tax reform; Amb. John Bolton on what's next in handling North Korea.

#OnThisDay

1991: Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson, the longest held of the Western hostages in Lebanon, is released after nearly seven years in captivity.

1956: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins gather for the first and only time for a jam session at Sun Records in Memphis.

1945: The Senate approves U.S. participation in the United Nations by a vote of 65-7.

Thank you for joining us on Fox News First! Enjoy your day and we'll see you in your inbox first thing Tuesday morning.
Oregon cops are hunting for a female inmate who fled from her work crew in a brazen escape early Monday, officials said.

Lorrie Marie Hocker, 42, was riding with other minimum-custody inmates to a job in Salem from the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility when she opened a door and fled, the Oregon Department of Corrections said in a news release.

Hocker was admitted to the facility on Sept. 12 on counts of coercion and felony assault, the agency said.

Hocker, who has blue eyes and brown hair, was last seen wearing blue jeans with the word "inmate" stenciled on the knee in orange, a blue T-shirt, sweatshirt and a coat similarly stenciled with "inmate." She is is 5-foot-3 and weighs 145 pounds, according to officials.

She also has several tattoos on her wrist and chest.

Oregon DOC spokeswoman Betty Bernt told the Oregonian guards did not attempt to stop Hocker.

"If there are other inmates in the vehicle they wouldn't pursue that individual automatically," Bernt told the newspaper.

Hocker has a prior criminal record, serving 48 months in prison in Montana for exploitation of an older person, according to prison records.
U.S. immigration authorities detained last week an illegal Mexican immigrant after he was featured in newspapers following his girlfriends immigration arrest in June.

Baltazar "Rosas" Aburto Gutierrez, who has lived in the country for 18 years, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last Monday after he talked about his girlfriends arrest with the local Chinook Observer and The Seattle Times.

The girlfriend, who is also his childrens mother, was detained when she took their children to meet someone interested in the ad about a homemade pinata she was selling. The meeting turned out to be a sting by immigration authorities and she was arrested.

Guttierez said the authorities walked her home so she can drop off the kids with him before taking her away. He claims to have told the ICE agents Why you don't take us all?" as he was illegally in the U.S. as well. The woman has since been deported and lives in Mexico with their children.

Their story was featured prominently in multiple newspapers, portraying the increased deportation efforts under the Trump administration and a crackdown on illegal immigrants who have not committed other crimes.

Speaking from the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Gutierrez told the Times that he was arrested last week in Ocean Shores, where he lives and works as clamdigger. My supervisor asked me to come find you because of what appeared in the newspaper, he said an ICE agent told him.

ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley said the agency does not retaliate, but declined to comment on Gutierrez's case.

"ICE conducts targeted immigration enforcement in compliance with federal law and agency policy, and at times, exercises prosecutorial discretion when the circumstances of a particular case have extenuating factors like the care of minor children or an alien's medical condition," the statement read, adding that "This does not mean an alien is exempt from future immigration enforcement.

Legal advisors for immigrants said Gutierrez could potentially argue that ICE violated his free speech rights because he was arrested after speaking out. "It certainly is troubling," Northwest Immigrant Rights Project legal director Matt Adams told the Times.

Gutierrez said he cannot afford the $25,000 bond and has not yet been given a court date. His girlfriend, speaking from Mexico, said the arrest is putting the family in jeopardy as he was sending his earnings to them.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The family of Kate Steinle reportedly asked San Francisco to remove a small memorial that was set up Friday at Pier 14 in memory of their daughter after its ties to a self-proclaimed alt-right group were discovered.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the makeshift memorialwhich was located where Steinle was shot-- consisted of about 50 candles and flowers. The family had expressed concerns that her death was being politicized, The San Francisco Examiner reported.

The Steinle family placed a request with the Mayors Office for the bench to remain as it was intended  a simple memorial in recognition of Kate and her spirit, Deirdre Hussey, a mayoral spokeswoman, said in a statement to The Examiner. However, we do have a city policy in place in regards to active memorials that Public Works enforced.

The memorial started to grow after a San Francisco jury acquitted Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, who has been deported five times and was wanted for a sixth deportation when Steinle was shot.

Before the shooting, he had finished a federal prison sentence for illegal re-entry to the United States and had been transferred to San Francisco's jail in March 2015 to face a 20-year-old charge for selling marijuana.

The sheriff's department released him a few days after prosecutors dropped the marijuana charge, despite a request from federal officials to detain him for deportation.

The story dominated conservative talk radio, but also had Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, saying San Francisco was wrong to let Garcia Zarate go free.

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly referenced the Steinle shooting and vowed to crack down on sanctuary cities. His administration has moved to restrict funding from such cities, but judges have blocked those attempts.

Supporters of sanctuary policies say they improve public safety by allowing immigrants to cooperate with police without fear. They also say detaining people without a warrant just so immigration officials can pick them up is unconstitutional.

Whoever put that up didnt influence what we did, we just followed our procedure, Rachel Gordon, a Department of Public Works spokeswoman, told The Examiner.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
The Latest on President Donald Trump's plan to scale back national monuments (all times local):

5:55 p.m.

Environmental groups are suing to block President Donald Trump's decision to scale back a national monument in Utah just hours after the decision was announced.

The lawsuit filed Monday by Earthjustice on behalf of several groups challenges the reduction of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which has been a source of Republican frustration since it was created by Bill Clinton in 1996.

The monument near the Arizona border contains a rich cache of dinosaur fossils and vast coal reserves.

Trump said in Salt Lake City that Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will be reduced by half, from nearly 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) to 1,569 square miles (4,064 square kilometers).

He also reduced Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. A coalition of American Indian tribes plans to sue over that decision.

___

4:20 p.m.

Native American leaders say President Donald Trump's move to shrink Utah's Bears Ears National Monument is another insult, one they're vowing to fight in court.

Navajo Nation Vice President Jonathan Nez noted Monday that Trump's move comes a week after he referred to a Democratic senator he doesn't like as "Pocahontas." He says the administration doesn't respect indigenous people.

Trump said in a speech Monday that many native people support the move. Nez called that event "a circus."

Representatives from the five tribes who advocated for creation of the monument said Trump decided to reduce it without meeting with them, despite multiple requests.

Zuni councilman Carleton Bowekaty called the move an illegal and shameful attack on tribes.

Shaun Chapoose with the Ute Tribe says Trump's decision benefits "a few powerful Utah politicians."

___

3:30 p.m.

The Republican chairman of House Natural Resources Committee is applauding President Donald Trump for reversing what he called "abuses" of the Antiquities Act by former Democratic presidents.

Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah says proclamations that Trump signed Monday shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments "are a first step toward protecting identified antiquities without disenfranchising the local people who work and manage these areas.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats says Trump is undermining "the preservation of some of this country's most important national monuments" by removing protections for more than 2 million acres (3,125 square miles) of public lands.

The lawmakers say the lands "will now be put at risk of desecration and looting."

___

3:25 p.m.

Demonstrators are blocking traffic on a major Salt Lake City street during a visit by President Donald Trump as they protest reductions to two national monuments in Utah.

The largely peaceful crowd that lined up near the state Capitol for hours in the snow Monday morning started marching downtown as Trump finished announcing the cuts to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.

The crowd of about 3,000 protesters carried signs saying "Protect Utah's Wild Lands" and chanting "Lock him up." They took to the streets after some took a knee, thumped their chests in unison and turned their backs.

Riot police earlier cleared protesters from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Welfare Square.

Meanwhile, Mayor Jackie Biskupski tweeted a list of things Trump should target instead, including carbon emissions.

___

2:45 p.m.

President Donald Trump has signed proclamations to formally scale back two sprawling national monuments in Utah: Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase Escalante.

Trump traveled to Salt Lake City to make the announcement and sign the declarations. The move is supported by Utah's top Republican officials but opposed by tribes and environmental groups.

Trump said in a speech Monday at the Utah State Capitol that past presidential administrations had "severely abused" the purpose and spirt of a federal law that allows them to protect public lands by turning them into national monuments.

Trump says his action means that "public lands will once again be for public use."

__

2:30 p.m.

Roughly 2,000 demonstrators are lined up near the Utah State Capitol protesting President Donald Trump's announcement reducing two national monuments in Utah.

The vocal group gathered in wintry weather Monday morning held signs like "Keep your tiny hands off our public lands" and chanted "Lock him up."

Navajo protester and University of Utah student Shaniah Chee says wood-gathering in the area is essential to her tribe's traditions. She calls the reduction a major loss.

A handful of counter-protesters also gathered to support Trump and the decision to scale back the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalate national monuments. Jason Lutu of Lehi works in construction and says he's in favor of potential drilling or mining that could create jobs.

__

2:15 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he's encouraging 83-year-old Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah to run for re-election.

Hatch joined Trump on a visit Monday to Salt Lake City. When Trump was asked if he wants Hatch to run for an eighth term in 2018, he replied, "Yes."

Trump made the comments while touring a food distribution center run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Hatch has not publicly declared his plans.

___

1:55 p.m.

President Donald Trump is meeting with Mormon leaders during a trip to Utah to announce he's scaling back two sprawling national monuments.

Trump on Monday visited Welfare Square, a complex in Salt Lake City run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that provides aid to the poor.

Trump spoke briefly and publicly praised the church for the way it takes care of people.

The Republican president traveled west to announce his intention to shrink the Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments spanning millions of acres in Utah. He has condemned the act of creating the Utah monuments as a "massive federal land grab."

The move is welcomed by the state's top Republicans but opposed by Native American tribes and environmental groups.

___

1:05 p.m.

President Donald Trump has arrived in Utah to announce that he is scaling back two sprawling national monuments in a move welcomed by the state's top Republicans but opposed by Native American tribes and environmental groups.

Trump landed in Salt Lake City late Monday morning. He was accompanied on Air Force One by Utah Republican senators Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

The president traveled west to announce his intention to shrink the Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments spanning millions of acres in Utah. The two monuments were among 27 that Trump ordered Zinke to review earlier this year.

Trump will also meet with leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints while he is in Utah.

___

9:45 a.m.

President Donald Trump says his plan to scale back two national monuments in Utah is an important move for "state's rights" as well as for the people of Utah.

Trump commented Monday as he left the White House for a trip to Salt Lake City, where he was outlining his intention to shrink the Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. Both monuments span millions of acres in Utah and are among 27 national monuments that Trump ordered his Interior Secretary to review earlier this year.

Trump previously had condemned the act of creating the Utah monuments as a "massive federal land grab."

Utah Republican leaders had complained that the monuments locked up too much federal land.

Both monuments were created by Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

___

1:20 a.m.

President Donald Trump is outlining his plans to scale back two sprawling national monuments in Utah, responding to what he has condemned as a "massive federal land grab" by the government.

Trump is traveling to Salt Lake City on Monday to announce his intention to shrink the Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments spanning millions of acres in Utah. The two national monuments are among 27 that Trump ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review earlier this year.

Utah's Republican leaders pressed Trump to launch the review, saying the monuments declared by Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton locked up too much federal land.

The planned changes have angered tribes and environmentalist groups who have vowed to sue to preserve the monuments.
A married high school teacher in Maine pleaded not guilty Monday to sex charges after she was accused of sleeping with a 17-year-old student.

Jill Lamontagne, 29, of Kennebunk, pleaded not guilty to 14 charges, including six counts of gross sexual assault, two counts of unlawful sexual contact and six counts of sexual abuse of a minor, according to The Portland Press Herald.

Lamontagne was indicted in October and turned herself into authorities. The teacher allegedly had a relationship with a male student who was in her health class at Kennebunk High School at the time of their sexual contact.

MARRIED MAINE TEACHER INDICTED FOR MULTIPLE SEX ROMPS WITH STUDENT WHO TRIED TO COMMIT SUICIDE

Mrs. Lamontagne categorically denies the charges, Lamontagnes lawyer, Scott Gardner, said following the indictment, Seacoast Online reported. These allegations arise from a high school rumor which consisted of the fantasies of an emotionally troubled senior at Kennebunk High School. None of this is true.

The alleged relationship between Lamontagne and the student was revealed when the student was hospitalized following a suspected suicide attempt.

The student reportedly ingested a concoction of ibuprofen, Tylenol, cold medicine and blood thinner Warfarin.

The boy confessed to the relationship to his aunt a day after his hospitalization. The student and his teacher had sexual contact numerous times, in the classroom, at her house, in her car, the students mother wrote. The student said Lamontagne performed oral sex on him, adding that other stuff happened.

The student reportedly told his mother and a nurse at the hospital that he loved Lamontagne and took the mixture of medicines to attempt suicide.

The teacher was placed on administrative leave in June and later resigned in September.

PREP SCHOOL TEACHER, 28, HAD 'SEX IN THE PARK' WITH 16-YEAR-OLD BOY STUDENT, POLICE SAY

According to the Press Herald, its a class-C felony under state law for teachers or adults to have sexual contact with someone they have supervisory authority over.

Class-C crimes reportedly carry a maximum prison sentence of five years and/or a $5,000 fine.

Lamontagne is scheduled to appear in court on March 8 for a dispositional conference.
A New York man was arrested Saturday after he allegedly bit the eye out of his family's Shih Tzu, officials announced Monday.

The Nassau County SPCA said in a news release 20-year-old Aaron Kluger of Port Washington, on Long Island, was arrested after an investigation by detectives.

Officials said the incident happened on Nov. 6, when the 3-year-old dog named Chloe was taken to an animal hospital with a "serious eye injury."

After Chloe was examined by a veterinarian, it was determined the dog's right eye was bitten out and the SPCA was notified.

The dog later received surgery to reattach her right eye.

"At this time, with proper care and treatment, the veterinarian is hopeful her eye will be saved," the SPCA said.

An SPCA spokesperson told Newsday the 20-year-old was arrested based on information given to the animal hospital by a family member who brought the dog in.

Kluger is due in court again on Dec. 27 to appear on a misdemeanor charge, according to the SPCA.
As authorities in Tampa announced the arrest of a suspected serial killer last week, hearing-impaired people tuning into the news conference got quite a different message from an American Sign Language interpreter.

Instead of getting a rundown from Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan on the timeline of the four shootings and what led up to the arrest of 24-year-old Howell Emanuel Donaldson III, interpreter Derlyn Roberts made signs that were gibberish, according to those who watched in confusion.

"She sat up there and waved her arms like she was singing Jingle Bells," Rachell Settambrino, who is deaf and teaches American Sign Language at the University of South Florida, told the Tampa Bay Times through an interpreter.

Among the things Roberts signed, according to Settambrino, were the following: "Fifty-one hours ago, zero 12 22 (indecipherable) murder three minutes in 14 weeks ago in old (indecipherable) murder four five 55,000 plea 10 arrest murder bush (indecipherable) three age 24."

But Dugan was instead describing how his agency received around 5,000 tips before the 24-year-old's arrest.

"I was disappointed, confused, upset and really want to know why the city of Tampas chief of police who is responsible for my safety and the safety of the entire community did not check her out," Settambrino told the newspaper.

City officials were just as puzzled by the interpreter.

TAMPA SERIAL KILLER SUSPECT USED SAME GUN IN 4 KILLINGS, POLICE SAY

Tampa Police Department spokeswoman Janelle McGregor told FOX13 Tampa in a statement officials are conducting an internal review because they didn't request an interpreter for the Nov. 28 news conference, and are trying to figure out "if someone requested that she attend or exactly who sent her to provide services."

Settambrino said Florida, unlike some other states, does not require ASL interpreters to be certified through the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, a national nonprofit that "seeks to uphold standards, ethics, and professionalism" for the field, according to its website.

Florida law says only that ASL interpreters have to be "qualified,"

The incident is the latest example of an apparently unqualified signer appearing at news conferences. In September, as Hurricane Irma approached Florida and officials announced a mandatory evacuation, an interpreter in nearby Manatee County began signing words like "pizza," ''monster" and "bear," along with other gibberish.

Manatee County officials later said they were in a pinch and called on a county employee who had an understanding of sign language because he communicates with his deaf brother. However, it quickly became apparent he was in over his head. The deaf community demanded an apology and the video of the news conference went viral.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who declined to make a wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony.

The case  Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission  asked the high court to balance the religious rights of the baker against the couples right to equal treatment under the law. Similar disputes have popped up across the U.S.

The decision to take on the case reflected renewed energy among the court's conservative justices, whose ranks have recently been bolstered by the addition of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the high court.

Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., declined to make a cake for the wedding celebration of two gay men in 2012. Phillips told the couple that he would make a birthday cake but could not make a cake that would promote same-sex marriage due to his religious beliefs.

July 2012

Shopping for a cake for their upcoming wedding and celebration, couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig stopped into Masterpiece Cakeshop.

Jack Phillips, the bakerys owner, informed the couple that he did not provide cakes for same-sex weddings and celebrations due to his religious beliefs.

What should have been a joyous occasion had turned into a humiliating occasion, Deborah Munn, the mother of Craig, wrote in a blog post for the American Civil Liberties Union about the experience.

The ACLU of Colorado represented the same-sex couple in their complaint against Phillips.

December 2013

Judge Robert Spencer of the Colorado Office of Administrative Courts decided  in line with the Colorado Civil Rights Division (CCRD)  that the bakeshop had violated a Colorado law which prohibits businesses from refusing service due to a persons sexual orientation.

Masterpiece Cakeshop appealed the decision.

May 2014

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission decided at a public hearing that Masterpiece had violated Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA.

COLORADO BAKER RECEIVES DEATH THREATS AND HATE FOR REFUSING TO MAKE GAY WEDDING CAKE

Phillips was ordered to change its company policies as well as offer comprehensive staff training to employees. The cake shop was also required to provide quarterly reports about how it handled prospective customers.

August 2015

The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that Phillips cannot cite his religious beliefs in his refusal to provide a service to same-sex couples.

With the ruling, Phillips could face a penalty if he continues to deny wedding cakes to same-sex couples.

April 2016

The Colorado Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal from Phillips.

July 2016

On behalf of Phillips, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal nonprofit, petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case.

SUPREME COURT IS IN SESSION WITH GORSUCH ON BOARD, GAY WEDDING CAKE CASE ON DECK

We are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure that government understands that its duty is to protect the peoples freedom to follow their beliefs personally and professionally, not force them to violate those beliefs as the price of earning a living, ADF senior counsel Jeremy Tedesco said in a statement at the time.

June 2017

The Supreme Court agreed to consider the case during its next term, which began in the fall.

June 2018

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop.

"The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression," the Court said in its decision. "While it is unexceptional that Colorado law can protect gay persons in acquiring products and services on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other members of the public, the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion."

Justice Anthony Kennedy said when the Colorado Civil Rights Commission made its decision "it did not do so with the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires." The opinion says the Commission "violated the Free Exercise Clause, and its order must be set aside."

In its decision, the Supreme Court did not decide whether a business has the right to refuse to serve gay and lesbian people outright.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, two of the Court's more liberal justices, dissented.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
In a year when even the pews of a church proved to be no sanctuary from a killer's aim, an Indiana congregation is planning a special training session Monday that organizers hope will protect people across the region in the event of another mass shooting.

The First Bible Apostolic Church in Indianapolis will host be hosting pastors from around the state, as well as from Ohio, with the goal of learning what to do if an active shooter decides to target their places of worship.

Weve got to be prepared for every situation, Ben Smith, an assistant pastor at the church and the events organizer, told FOX59. We dont know whats going to happen.

The session comes a month after 26 people were shot and killed in Texas when a gunman opened fire inside the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs.

TEXAS MASSACRE: CAN CHURCHES BE PROTECTED FROM MASS SHOOTERS?

Smith said as recently as five years ago, no one would have ever thought of having a seminar like this for a church.

Im looking to get out of it something that we havent thought of before, he said. some type of training that maybe they can give.

Officers from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department will conduct the training, which Smith hopes will include guidance on everything from securing doors to carrying firearms.

I want our folks and folks who come to visit here to feel safe, to know theres something in place and you can come here and worship and you can also be safe while youre here, he told FOX59.
News / National

by Staff reporter

African Union Ambassador to the United States, Dr. Arikana Chihombori Quao, says there was no coup in Zimbabwe as the military used a provision of the nation's constitution to avert a political crisis.Dr. Chihombori Quao, who made these remarks at a townhall meeting titled 'Zimbabwe: The Way Forward' convened by VOA Studio 7 in Washington DC last Thursday, said the Zimbabwe Defence Forces did not violate the constitution when they forced the removal of former President Robert Mugabe."They acted within the constitution to do that. So, there was no coup but there was a provision within the constitution for the army to do that because of the conditions on the ground at that time and they moved in swiftly according to the constitution and address the issue," she said.Dr. Chihombori Quao stressed that the Africa Union is proud of Zimbabweans, who ensured that there was peace while power was being transferred from Mugabe to current president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who fled to South Africa after he was sacked by the then president for alleged disloyalty."We are so glad that Zimbabwe has set an example for Africa how we don't kill each other. There was no looting, there was no killing. It was a peaceful transition and it's a good day, it's a new day in Zimbabwe  From the African Union side we are very proud and pleased that Africa in general and Zimbabwe is leading the way  that we have matured as communities from a political point of view. So, yes Zimbabwe is a success story and I reiterate there was no coup."Her views were echoed by Zanu PF activist, Dr. Frenk Guni, who said his party is pleased that President Mnangagwa is the new leader of the party following serious internal divisions pitting the so-called Generation 40, which wanted former First Lady Grace Mugabe to succeed her husband and another one said to be led by the current president.Dr. Guni, who was a panelist together with Dr. Chihombori Quao, Den Moyo of the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai and Rutendo Mudzamiri of Women to Watch Network, said the military acted diligently in averting a national crisis."There were some people who were supporting Grace Mugabe and when we realized that the people in the G40 led by Dr. Grace Mugabe were diverting from the fundamental principles of our party we took corrective measures and that has been addressed. It's going to be a thing of the past. We are democratizing our party (and) even people who were in the G40 they are being welcomed back into the party provided they are willing to tow the party line."Some G40 members, including former Finance Minister Ignatius Chombo, Zanu PF Youth League secretary Kudzanyi Chipanga and several others are appearing in court facing various charges ranging from corruption to undermining the authority of General Constantino Chiwenga, who masterminded the military intervention.Others like former Higher Education Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo and former Local Government Minister Saviour Kasukuwere, who are said to be architects of the G40 succession plan, are in exile.The Zimbabwe Defence Force cited Section 211 of the country's constitution for interfering in the political processes of the ruling Zanu PF party, which it claimed were likely to spark public discontent.Section 211 stipulates that "the function of the Defence Forces is to protect Zimbabwe, its people, its national security and interests and its territorial integrity and to uphold this Constitution.""You can see the change as it happening right now. The way forward for Zimbabwe from a Zanu PF perspective is number one economic recovery, addressing our economic fundamentals to ensure that we put in place sound economic policies that attract investment and ensuring that things like property rights are protected and investors are welcome in Zimbabwe to do business  Improve the issue of doing business with Zimbabwe."The second thing that the new government and the new Zanu PF is going to do is to ensure that there is affordable access to health care for all Zimbabweans. We are no longer going to see a situation where Zimbabweans have to go to board planes and cross borders to look for health care."But Moyo immediately shot back saying Zanu PF is always fond of making such statements, which were not beneficial to Zimbabweans."We have held these conferences over and over for a very long time and every time the Zanu PF people come here and say 'we will do this, we will do that' and then drink tea and walk away and nothing happens, it's always been the same. When are we going as Zimbabwean as a people going to accept that this is not working. We cannot continue doing the same thing all the time over and over and expect a different result. Einstein called that insanity."Mudzamiri chided both MDC-T and Zanu PF for not fully engaging youth in Zimbabwe saying young people want to participate in political processes without coercion."We need to know the power of our voice and we need to be willing not to be all talk but to be open to what MDC has to offer, to what Zanu PF has to offer and take everything with a pinch of salt  At least take everything with an open mind so that we are not just going to say 'yes' to everything because we have seen and attended Africa Union meetings, we have seen what SADC (Southern African Development Community) can do, we have seen what the United Nations can do but as young people are we willing to be that change that we want to see and not take everything at face value because it's not going to be enough for us to take what unfortunately I see as a sided view where African Union is concerned. It's true that there have more factual things Arikana is saying but it's also not true to push propaganda because for so many years that what we have received as young people."She said young people should be respected if Zimbabwe, other nations and the African Union have to work hand in hand with them."I am saying we are tired, we are frustrated, we are angry and we don't want to be taking that (propaganda)  All talk no action, everything good on paper  As young people we just need a progressive administration whether it's Grace Mugabe, President Mnangagwa, whether it's Zanu PF, whether it's MDC or anybody. We just need progressive administrations. Why do I say so? We need respect where rule of law is concerned, we need respect where human rights are concerned, we need free and fair elections, we need to make sure there is freedom of the press. Our platform as young people is social media. Are we having that freedom?"Several people took turns at the townhall meeting to question the panel with some expressing reservations over the current government led by Mnangagwa, saying it looks like an appendage of the Mugabe regime, which has been blamed for ruining a once vibrant economy.Mugabe always blamed the West for the southern nation's economic downturn claiming that sanctions imposed on him and his inner circle were to blame for the serious social, economic and political problems in Zimbabwe.
The United States and South Korea have started their biggest-ever joint air force exercise with hundreds of aircrafts including two dozen stealth jets.

South Korea's defense ministry said Monday the five-day drill called Vigilant Ace will improve their capabilities in wartime.

The U.S. 7th Air Force deployed major strategic military assets including six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets for the regular exercise in the Korean Peninsula. About 12,000 U.S. military personnel are participating.

It takes places a week after North Korea test-launched its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile that puts most of the U.S. within range.

On Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham said it is time for U.S. military families in South Korea to leave the country because the conflict with North Korea is getting close.
France's first baby panda has a name at last, bestowed by Chinese dignitaries and French first lady Brigitte Macron.

The 4-month-old male cub is called Yuan Meng, which means "the realization of a wish" or "accomplishment of a dream."

Monday's naming ceremony at the Beauval Zoo south of Paris was an important diplomatic moment, involving Chinese officials who flew in from Beijing for the event. The cub's parents are on loan to Beauval from China, and the cub will be sent to a Chinese panda reserve when it is weaned.

Tradition holds that panda cubs born in captivity are named by China. Brigitte Macron  considered the panda's "godmother"  officially announced the name.

There are only about 1,800 pandas in the wild in China and about 400 in captivity worldwide.
U.S. opposition to an independence referendum by Iraqi Kurds will not break a long-standing alliance between the stateless community and the United States, the Kurdish prime minister says.

While Washington opposed the September 2017 referendum for independence, Kurdish Prime Minister Nechiravan Barzani insisted that the people of Kurdistan still see America as their No. 1 partner and have hope the U.S. will come to endorse their ongoing dream of independence.

There was disappointment among the Kurdish people; the people of Kurdistan have had high expectations from the United States and they believe that the values the U.S. cherishes, we also cherish, Barzani told Fox News in an exclusive interview last week in his office.

But the people of Kurdistan, they still love the United States, he said. Kurds consider themselves a friend and partner to the United States. We want this to continue long term.

The U.S., joined by most of the international community, backed the Baghdad Central Government in opposing the referendum over fears the push toward independence would have potentially catastrophic consequences on the fight against ISIS and on the region as a whole, given that neighbors Iran and Turkey worry that their own significant Kurdish populations would attempt to carve out land for themselves.

Barzani noted that his peoples disappointment stemmed not only from the U.S. policy to oppose their freedom quest, but what happened next.

After the Kurds refused Baghdads insistence that the vote be canceled as unconstitutional and an antagonizing act aimed at weakening the Iraqi government, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the army to retake disputed territories -- which the Kurdish Peshmerga had been guarding since the ISIS invasion. Iran-backed fighters known as the Popular Mobilization Units assisted the effort.

Most notably, violent tensions arose around the strategic oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Several casualties were reported on both the Peshmerga and Iraqi sides as a result of the Oct. 16 clashes, which ended when the Peshmerga withdrew.

Over 1,846 Peshmerga soldiers have sacrificed their lives and more than 10,000 were wounded fighting ISIS, Barzani said. ISIS was a threat not only to Kurdistan, but to Europe, the U.S., to humanity. Therefore, the Kurdish people were expecting that when a threat comes in, the U.S. would stand by them. They were not expecting that American tanks given to the Iraq government would be used against them by the Popular Mobilization Units.

Iraqi officials have denied that the Iranian-backed forces have possession over any U.S.-issued tanks or weaponry or that they were used against the Kurds.

Barzani also contended that it was never his governments intention to control or grab Kirkuk or the disputed territories from the Iraqi government. He said the Peshmerga forces went there in 2014 as the ISIS threat loomed at the behest of Abadis predecessor, Nouri al-Malaki.

The fact is neither Baghdad nor Erbil had full control over these areas, Barzani said, stressing that the issues should have been addressed in accordance with the constitution and not by military pressure.

ISIS CURSED, MOCKED IN MOSUL, WHERE OLD CITY REMAINS A HAUNTED WASTELAND

ISIS SEXUAL VIOLENCE VICTIMS: MINORITIES TARGETED MORE THAN DOCUMENTED, FACE HONOR KILLINGS IF RETURNED

LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE: IRAQ'S KURDS FANS OF ALL THINGS US, BUSH

The prime minister said Iraqs military action in response to the referendum, which included shutting down the regions two international airports, was never anticipated.

What we saw was a very peaceful experience of people to express their right to self-determination by putting their finger in the ink and voting, while the reaction from Baghdad was to use force, Barzani said. We have made it clear we want to address all these issues through dialogue with Baghdad, but they have not yet shown their readiness for this.

Barzani  who is currently at the helm of the autonomous region after his uncle Masoud Barzani stepped down as president in the weeks after the referendum  welcomed a deeper involvement by the U.S. to resolve the issue, but maintained that they have no regrets about holding the referendum.

I dont believe anyone here, any political party, thinks they made a mistake or they did something wrong. What we have seen was a democratic process, he said. It was an expression of will, not less, not more.

The long-awaited Sept. 25 vote  of which more than 92 percent of some 8 million Iraqi Kurds voted yes to part ways with the Baghdad government  was non-binding in that unilateral succession would not immediately take place. Iraqi Kurds hoped it would prompt negotiations for eventual separation.

While it remains to be seen when and how Kurdish aspirations for an independent state will now move forward  some analysts suggest it is in tatters and U.S. officials have doubled down on the long-held policy to support a federal, prosperous, unified and democratic Iraq  Barzani said they remain committed to the process and are still hopeful for American backing.

We have to look at Iraq very realistically, he said. For those who talk about a strong, centralized Iraq we have seen that doesnt work. The most important point for Iraq and what the international community wants to see in Iraq is stability, which means we should find a model that all communities in Iraq can agree upon and can be sustained.

He added, Our position after the referendum is to address our problems with Baghdad on the basis of the constitution. But our right to self-determination will remain as it is. This is a new era and we hope the American people will come to support our cause.
Kosovo's government has decided to reopen a parliamentary debate on a border demarcation deal with Montenegro.

A government statement issued on Monday said the Cabinet decided to seek ratification of the border deal in Parliament, where it lacked sufficient support for approval earlier this year and led to a no-confidence vote for the coalition leading the country at the time.

The opposition, of which Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj's party was a member, claimed the deal signed in 2015 would cost Kosovo territory. The previous Cabinet, international experts and Western backers of the agreement disputed the claim.

The European Union insists Kosovo must approve the border demarcation deal before its citizens enjoy visa-free travel within the Schengen zone.

Montenegro recognizes Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia, which Serbia vehemently opposes.
The Latest on tensions over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs (all times local):

9 p.m.

NATO's chief is warning that war on the Korean Peninsula would be catastrophic and says the military alliance has the means to respond to missile and nuclear strikes if they are launched.

North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile last week that some observers say would be able to strike the United States.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that "war in that region would be catastrophic and it would have global consequences."

He said the 29-country alliance "is strong, and united, and NATO is able to respond to any attack, including ballistic and nuclear attacks."

Stoltenberg added that NATO "will continue to put maximum pressure on North Korea. We will continue to deliver credible deterrence and ... work with our partners in the region."

___

11 a.m.

Hundreds of aircraft including two dozen stealth jets began training Monday as the United States and South Korea launched a massive combined air force exercise. The war games come a week after North Korea test-fired its most powerful missile ever, an ICBM that may be able to target the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The five-day drill, which is called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies' wartime capabilities and preparedness, South Korea's defense ministry said.

The U.S. Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets, including an unusually large number of the latest generations of stealth fighter jets, for the annual training in the Korean Peninsula. In total, 230 aircraft will be flying at eight U.S. and South Korean military installations in the South.
Ten people were arrested in connection with the car bombing of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Malta's prime minister announced Monday.

Joseph Muscat said eight Maltese citizens were arrested on Monday morning, given a "reasonable suspicion" of their involvement in Caruana Galizia's Oct. 16 slaying. Later, he tweeted two others had been arrested, but didn't cite their nationality.

Police sources said the other two are also Maltese.

Overall, Muscat gave almost no details, citing concerns any information could compromise prospects to prosecute the case.

The investigation appeared to be continuing, as police had cordoned off an area in Marsa, a small town close to Valletta, the capital.

The arrests, made in an operation coordinated among the Police Corps, the Armed Forces of Malta and the Security Services, were the first known break in the investigation of the murder that's drawn widespread outrage and condemnation.

FOREIGN EXPERTS TO HELP MALTA PROBE CAR BOMBING OF REPORTER

Investigators have 48 hours to question the suspects to decide whether to seek charges, in accordance with Maltese law.

Galizia, whose reporting focused heavily on corruption on the EU island nation, was killed when a bomb destroyed her car as she was driving near her home.

Just before her death, Galizia, 53, had posted on her closely followed blog, Running Commentary, there were "crooks everywhere" in Malta.

In addition, the Guardian reported Galizias family had taken legal action against the Maltese police force and asked for the chief police investigator in the case, Silvio Valletta, to be removed from the investigation because he is married to a top government minister. Both were subjects of Caruana Galizias critical reporting. The police have not responded to the legal claim.

The journalist focused her reporting for years on investigating political corruption and scandals, and reported on Maltese mobsters and drug trafficking. She also wrote about Maltese links to the so-called Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Pakistan Monday to meet with top leaders and seek common ground on the counterterrorism fight, amid Trump administration calls for Islamabad to more aggressively go after the insurgents moving back and forth across the border with Afghanistan.

Mattis said he wants to work with Pakistan to address the problems, adding that the U.S. is committed to a pragmatic relationship that expands cooperation while also "reinforcing President Trump's call for action against terrorist safe havens."

"We have heard from Pakistan leaders that they do not support terrorism. So I expect to see that sort of action reflected in their policies," Mattis told reporters traveling with him in the Middle East before his trip to Islamabad.

Mattis is expected to meet with Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, as well as the U.S. embassy team. He was greeted at the airport by U.S. Ambassador David Hale and senior Pakistani military leaders.

Asked if he was going to press the Pakistani leaders to take more action against the insurgents, Mattis said: "That's not the way I deal with issues. I believe that we work hard on finding the common ground and then we work together."

Mattis' optimism, however, comes despite persistent U.S. assertions that Islamabad is still not doing enough to battle the Taliban and allied Haqqani network insurgents within its borders.

Since the start of the war in Afghanistan, militants in Pakistan have crossed the mountainous and ill-defined border to wage attacks against U.S., Afghan and allied forces. They then would return to their safe havens in Pakistan, where they have had a long-standing relationship with the ISI, Islamabad's intelligence agency.

In a blunt assessment early last week, Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said there have been no changes in Pakistan's support for militant networks.

He said Pakistani leaders went to Kabul and met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

"They identified certain steps that they were going to take. We've not yet seen those steps play out," Nicholson told reporters in a recent briefing.

The U.S., he said, has been very direct about what it expects Pakistan to do in the fight against the Taliban.

"We're hoping to see those changes," he said. "We're hoping to work together with the Pakistanis going forward to eliminate terrorists who are crossing" between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The White House, meanwhile, condemned Pakistan's release late last month of a U.S.-wanted militant as a "step in the wrong direction" and warned that it could harm Islamabad's relations with the U.S. and its reputation around the world.

In August, the United States said it would hold up $255 million in military assistance for Pakistan until it cracks down on extremists threatening Afghanistan.

President Donald Trump's tough words about Pakistan as he unveiled the updated U.S. strategy for the war in Afghanistan, infuriated Islamabad and triggered anti-U.S. protests there that Pakistani police had to use tear gas to disperse

Pakistani Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif said during a visit to Washington in October that Pakistan was willing to cooperate fully with the Trump administration. He said Pakistan had wiped out militant hideouts with little help from the U.S.

Mattis' trip to Pakistan comes at the end of a short trip to the region, including stops in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait.
Argentina's navy says that U.S and Russian ships carrying remotely operated vehicles capable of deep seafloor searches are joining other vessels hunting for an Argentine submarine that went missing in the South Atlantic 19 days ago.

Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said Monday that Russia's Yantar oceanographic research ship will arrive to the search area Tuesday. The U.S. Atlantis research vessel is expected to arrive Saturday.

They will join five vessels from Argentina and a Chilean ship combing the area of some 1,500 square miles (4,000 square kilometers).

An explosion occurred near the time and place where the ARA San Juan sub went missing with 44 crew members on Nov. 15. The navy says it is no longer looking for survivors although a multinational operation continues to search for the vessel.
The advanced intercontinental ballistic missile unveiled by North Korea last week is capable of reaching any major U.S. city -- and may be able to disguise itself en route to its final destination.

The Hwasong-15 rocket could be equipped to carry decoys in a bid to evade U.S. missile interceptors such as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, Michael Elleman, the senior fellow for missile defense at International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Fox News.

One of the unfortunate implication of the recent test, because it is so much larger in size, it also has the capacity to carry decoys that would further confuse our missile defense. It increases the probability that it could evade THAAD, Elleman said. Whether if North Korea has tested decoys or countermeasures [is unclear]  but it has throw-weight to carry simple decoys."

The decoys could be as simple as Mylar balloons that could trick the systems radars as the ICBM flies straight toward the U.S., Kingston Reif, from the Arms Control Association, told NPR.

The Hermit Kingdom released photos of the Hwasong-15, which it dubbed the greatest ICBM, a day after Wednesdays stunning middle-of-the-night launch. Photos revealed the rocket was a significant improvement from its predecessor, the Hwasong-14, launched in July.

The photographs from North Korea tells a number of things. First and foremost, it informs us that this wasnt a modified version of the Hwasong-14. It's a completely new missile, Elleman said.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF NORTH KOREA FIRES A MISSILE AT THE US

He added the photos revealed a new mechanism for steering the missile's first stage, which could be a significant innovation.

In short, it eliminates the amount of things that could go wrong, Elleman said. It assures greater reliability.

Meanwhile, the missiles size gives it twice the thrust capability and allows it to carry a payload  a warhead or any system strapped on a missile  weighing at least 2,204 pounds, according to Elleman.

North Korea can certainly make a warhead small enough to fall [between 1,543 pounds and 2,204 pounds], he said. This missile has the capability to hit anywhere in the U.S. in principle.

FLIGHT CREW WITNESSED NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR MISSILE TEST, AIRLINE SAYS

North Koreas claim it now has the capability of placing a super-large nuclear warhead on an ICBM thats capable of reaching American soil has reportedly prompted the U.S. to deploy THAAD anti-ballistic missile systems along the West Coast, Reuters reported Saturday, citing congressmen Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Adam Smith, D-Wash.

The Pentagon told Fox News in a Monday statement: We have no additional information to provide.

Though it appears Kims rocket scientists have made huge strides in the regimes missile program, there are still likely more tests coming in the near future. Wednesdays launch did not survive re-entry into the Earths atmosphere  a feat North Korea is working to perfect, a U.S. official told Fox News.

As for when the next missile launch will take place, it could be weeks or months, Elleman said, depending on if Kim wants to instigate the U.S. or collect data.

The fact that this was successful means that they can do a test on a normal trajectory sooner. They can do it in a matter of weeks or they can wait a certain amount of timebased on how much data they need, Elleman said.

Fox News Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report.
Its being called a five-day show of power.

The U.S. on Monday kicked off one of the largest live fire military drills ever held in South Korea, called Vigilant Ace. It was highlighted by more than 230 aircraft  including an unusually large number of the latest-generation stealth fighters, six F-22s and 18 F-35s.

In Washington D.C., the Trump administration warned the U.S. would go against North Korea alone  if other nations don't step up.

"If necessary, the president and the U.S. will have to take care of it, because he has said he's not going to allow this murderous rogue regime to threaten the U.S., National Security Advisor HR McMaster told Fox News Sunday.

NATO: NORTH KOREA WAR WOULD BE CATASTROPHIC

But the Hermit Kingdom continues to deliver threats. On Sunday, North Korea called President Trump insane, adding that the latest military drills show the U.S. was begging for nuclear war.

Ceaseless large-scale war games [by the US and South Korea], North Korea state media said,  [is] creating a situation that a nuclear war may break out any moment."

China is also calling on the U.S. to stop the drills, saying they won't bring North Korea back to the bargaining table.

The U.S. says these military drills, which involve a staggering 12,000 U.S. Service members, were planned in advance  but the timing is certainly appropriate.

FLIGHT CREW WITNESSED NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR MISSILE TEST, AIRLINE SAYS

This past weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said it is time for U.S. military families in South Korea to leave because, in his words, conflict with North Korea could be imminent.

"We're getting close to a military conflict because North Korea's marching toward marrying up the technology of an ICBM with a nuclear weapon on top that cannot only get to America but deliver the weapon, Graham told CBS News. We're running out of time."
News / National

by Staff reporter

The quote below from @Welshman_Ncube in the @thestandardzim yesterday speaks for itself. The Coup D'etat wasn't an overnight 15 Nov affair triggered by former First Lady or propelled by the 18 Nov demos. No. It was a long planned & very sinister ZDF power grab waiting to happen! pic.twitter.com/59Y9IVQJv0  Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) December 4, 2017



Former Higher and Tertiary Education minister Jonathan Moyo says the Zimbabwe coup d'etat was not an overnight 15 Nov affair triggered by former First Lady, Grace Mugabe, or propelled by the 18 November demonstration.Moyo wrote, "The quote below from @Welshman_Ncube in the @thestandardzim yesterday speaks for itself. The Coup D'etat wasn't an overnight 15 Nov affair triggered by former First Lady or propelled by the 18 Nov demos. No. It was a long planned & very sinister ZDF power grab waiting to happen!"Former Industry minister Welshman Ncube said Mugabe and Grace were so naive to the extent that they failed to read the signs that the security forces were being pushed to the edge."The G40 cabal saw the coup coming including Grace, the military themselves always warned, you recall General Chiwenga actually at one point, three or so months ago claimed that the gun always leads politics and Mugabe replied that politics has always led the gun in Zanu PF," the MDC leader said."You will also recall Jonathan Moyo's presentation to the politburo about state capture, that all state institutions and most state institutions, including the military had been captured to overthrow Mugabe."We just didn't believe it, but, clearly given the manner in which the coup was executed there can be no doubt that it was planned a long time ago."If you go back and read Moyo's presentation and you read President's Emerson Mnangagwa's rebuttal, you will see that everything Moyo said was correct and if you today read what President Mnangagwa said in rebuttal [it has] turned out to be false."So it's not just that Grace said it, the whole of G40 saw it, not actually did they see it, but the army itself didn't hide its determination to intervene in this thing. So it was always out there."Ncube said Mugabe may have failed to forestall the coup because he strongly believed that the military would never turn against him."Personally, I think 37 years in power and being a strong man and your word being literally the word, you tend not to believe anyone would dare," he added."I think that it was his undoing. he just thought they wouldn't dare and after the coup, he still didn't think that they would disobey him when he said, 'fine, let's go to the Zanu PF congress and do this', up to the very last minute he still thought that he had authority."University of Zimbabwe (UZ) political science lecturer Eldred Masunungure said although Mugabe was a shrewd politician, he did not foresee a military takeover."I have always referred to him as a Machiavellian political operator, who understands the logic of power and I think power tends to intoxicate its holder," he said.
A 13-year-old Texas girl who went missing late last week and was believed to have been lured from her home by an online predator was found in Mexico on Sunday, police said.

Ashlee Hattermann, of Katy, was discovered in Mexico City with help from authorities in Mexico and the FBI, the Harris County Sheriffs Office tweeted Monday.

Hattermann was reported missing on Friday after her parents found out she only attended one class at school that day, the Houston Chronicle reported.

"The last thing we heard is that she crossed the border into Mexico," Tiffany Hattermann, Ashlees mother, told the Chronicle. "We got a tip from somebody in Laredo."

Hattermann was last seen on surveillance footage with a woman at a Greyhound bus station, KHOU reported. Hattermans parents said they believed their daughter was planning to meet an older man with whom she spoke online.

The other woman Hattermann was spotted with told KHOU she was duped into purchasing a bus ticket for Hattermann, who told her she was 18 years old and visiting her boyfriend in town, and was trying to get home to her family.

We found a note in her room, Hattermans father told KHOU of the man she was suspected of meeting. She calls the guy daddy and herself baby girl. [The note read] Daddy owns my body and my soul,' over and over and over again down this sheet of paper.

The teens parents said Hattermann admitted to talking to a 29-year-old man living in Mexico. The parents said they discovered their daughter had exchanged graphic sexual images and messages through her phone by using the covert messaging apps, according to KHOU.

The Sheriffs Office, along with FBI Agents in San Antonio and Laredo, were investigating the girls disappearance during the weekend  which they were treating as a runaway situation, Sheriffs Office spokesman Thomas Gilliland told the Houston Chronicle.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with Homeland Security, also joined in the search for Hattermann.

The Sheriffs Office tweeted just before 11:30 p.m. on Sunday night that Hattermann had been located in Mexico.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday said a preemptive war with North Korea is becoming more likely as the rogue country continues to develop its missile technology while increasing the threat for the West.

Graham warned that North Korea is getting closer to striking the U.S.

Were running out of time, he said.

Graham, who appeared on CBS News Face the Nation, said the Trump administrations policy on North Korea is not simply to contain the situation but rather to deny the North the capability to strike the U.S. Graham, meanwhile said the Pentagon should pull the families of American military personnel from South Korea.

"It's crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea, given the provocation of North Korea, he said. South Korea should be an unaccompanied tour. So, I want them to stop sending dependents, and I think it's now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea."

There are roughly 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea.

Grahams comments come just as North Korea successfully launched a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile last week, which they say has the ability to strike the whole mainland of the U.S. The jump in missile capability was backed up by outside governments and analysts.

Graham commended the Trump administration in its readiness to handle the situation should it escalate any further.

"He's got the best national security team of anybody I have seen since I have been in Washington," he said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and South Korean militaries have also begun their largest joint air force exercise on Monday. According to South Koreas defense ministry, the drill called the Vigilant Ace will improve the two countries capabilities in wartime.

The exercise is set to last five days and will include about 12,000 U.S. military personal.

The Associate Press contributed to this report.
The German government is welcoming a Turkish decision to end the solitary confinement of a German newspaper correspondent detained for months and accused of espionage. But it's underlining its demand that he and others, held on what Berlin considers political grounds, be released.

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Monday the improvement in Deniz Yucel's detention conditions is "a small step." But he added: "it doesn't change the German government's demand that German citizens jailed on incomprehensible grounds in Turkey be released."

Yucel, a German-Turkish journalist for the daily Die Welt, was arrested Feb. 14. Turkish authorities accuse him of disseminating terrorist propaganda and inciting hatred, as well as espionage. Yucel denies the allegations.

He's one of nine Germans the Foreign Ministry says are being held in Turkey over "political accusations."
The United States and South Korea kicked off a massive military drill Monday with hundreds of aircraft -- including two dozen stealth fighter jets -- despite North Koreas claim the exercise brings the Korean Peninsula to the brink of nuclear war.

The drills also come less than a week after Kim Jong Un ordered North Korean officials to fire the rogue regime's most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile yet, and boasted how the rocket could carry a super-large heavy nuclear warhead that could strike the entire U.S. mainland.

The five-day U.S.-South Korea drill, called Vigilant Ace, will include the latest generations of six F-22 Raptors and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets, the first time such a large number will partake the regular joint exercise between the two allies, Yonhap News Agency reported. In total, 230 aircraft will be flying at eight U.S. and South Korean military installations in the South  with six EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets and dozens of F-15C and F-16 fighter jets also participating.

Some Marine F-35Bs, stationed in Japan, are also expected join the training, according to Yonhap.

About 12,000 U.S. military personnel are participating. The drills will also include simulating precision strikes that target mock nuclear weapons and missiles fired by North Korea.

The training is held each year in the late fall and was planned before Wednesdays North Korean missile test, the U.S. Seventh Air Force said in a statement. South Koreas defense ministry said the drills are meant to improve their wartime capabilities and preparedness.

The exercise was earlier reported to be the biggest ever conducted, but a South Korean Defense Ministry official has corrected his earlier statement.

Despite launching its greatest ICBM, called the Hwasong-15, last week, the Hermit Kingdom blasted the U.S. and South Korea on Sunday and claimed the joint exercise was pushing the Korean Peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war, according to a statement released by its state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun.

It is an open, all-out provocation against the DPRK, which may lead to a nuclear war any moment, the statement said.

North Korea took particular notice of the large number of stealth fighters, saying: The U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces are so foolish as to run amok with such stealth fighters.

It added: The stealth fighters, which the enemies boast so much of, will not escape the fate of a tiger moth.

In a separate Korean News Agency statement, North Korea threatened to seriously consider the taking of a highest-level hard-line countermeasures in history to cope with the U.S. and its vassal forces reckless moves against the regime.

Though many South Koreans usually take North Koreas bombastic rhetoric with a grain of salt, some senior American officials, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., believe U.S. military families should return to America amid the growing crisis.

Were running out of time, Graham said.

He added: "It's crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea, given the provocation of North Korea. South Korea should be an unaccompanied tour. So, I want them to stop sending dependents, and I think it's now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Sunday his country would create a cryptocurrency called the petro as it faces a financial blockade in the midst of crippling U.S. sanctions.

Maduro announced in a televised address the currency will be backed by oil, gas and diamond reserves, declaring to cheers the 21st century has arrived! in the struggling socialist state, Reuters reported.

Without offering specifics as to how or when the currency would launch, Maduro added it would help Venezuela advance in issues of monetary sovereignty, to make financial transactions and overcome the financial blockade.

Opposition leaders blasted the announcement, saying it needed congressional approval, while others doubted it will ever see the light of day in an economy with a dim outlook on its horizon, Reuters reported.

The Trump administration has levied sanctions against Venezuelan government officials, state oil executives and its debt issuance, hurting Venezuelas ability to move money around as it faces a heavy debt burden, according to the news agency.

Everyday Venezuelans have to face long lines at cash machines to withdraw the countrys currency, the bolivar, which is in short supply, the New York Times reported. It also said a survey conducted by a group of national universities found around 80 percent of Venezuelans were living in poverty in 2016.

Excessive money printing and state currency controls have contributed to a 57 percent depreciation of the bolivar against the American dollar in the last month in black markets, according to Reuters.

In August, the bolivar was worth even less than fictional gold in the popular World of Warcraft computer game.
Iran-allied Houthi forces claimed to have killed Yemen's powerful ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh on Monday, while Saudi-led fighter jets pounded areas of the country's capital in the intensifying and bloody battle for control of the city.

The Houthi-run Masirah TV announced the death of the "leader of the traitors," referring to Saleh, who ruled the country for more than three decades, and up until last week was in a fragile alliance with the rebels.

A senior official with Yemen's internationally-recognized government confirmed to The Associated Press that Saleh had been killed, sending video purportedly showing Saleh's body being carried away by a group of armed men chanting, "Allahu akbar."

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the press. It was not immediately possible to confirm the authenticity of the video, which was circulating widely on social media.

Residents in Sanaa told Reuters that Houthi fighters blew up Salehs house in the center of the city.

Iran's FARS News Agency reported Saleh was killed while trying to escape from Sanaa on an armed vehicle, which was hit and destroyed, though that could not be immediately confirmed.

Saleh's reported killing comes as a climax to the fighting erupted between the Iranian-allied Shiite rebels and forces loyal to Saleh last week. The breakdown of the fragile alliance has caused the Saudi-led coalition to step up its bombing of Houthi positions, in support of Saleh's forces, leaving the rebels increasingly isolated after three years of war.

The fighting in the capital of Sanaa caused residents to cower in their homes as explosions rocked the city overnight. Residents and medics told Reuters at least 125 were killed in the fighting on Monday, according to Reuters.

Suze van Meegen, Sanaa-based protection and advocacy adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told the AP the violence left aid workers trapped inside their homes and was "completely paralyzing humanitarian operations."

"No one is safe in Sana'a at the moment. I can hear heavy shelling outside now and know it is too imprecise and too pervasive to guarantee that any of us are safe," she said.

The Houthis and forces allied to Saleh swept into the capital, Sanaa, in 2014. The Houthis dominate the northern part of the city, while Saleh's forces hold the southern part, with much of the current fighting concentrated around the Political District, home to ministries and foreign embassies. The Houthis appeared to be targeting the homes of Saleh's family, political allies and commanders in this most recent round of fighting.

The Saudi-led coalition launched an air campaign against the rebels in March 2015 and later expanded into ground operations. Saudi Arabia views the Houthis as an Iranian proxy on its doorstep, and the rivalry between the two regional powers has amplified the conflict. Iran supports the Houthis but denies arming them.

The stalemated war has killed more than 10,000 civilians and displaced 3 million.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
News / National

by Staff reporter

University of Zimbabwe (UZ) political science lecturer Eldred Masunungure said although former President Robert Mugabe was a shrewd politician, he did not foresee a military takeover."I have always referred to him as a Machiavellian political operator, who understands the logic of power and I think power tends to intoxicate its holder," he said."I think he had become so arrogant that he did not appreciate that the pillar of the military also has its sensitivity and interests that were being harmed by the manner in which it was being ridiculed in public by the former first lady."Masunungure said Grace pushed the generals to the edge with her abrasive approach to politics and her unbridled ambition.The former typist enjoyed the backing of a Zanu-PF faction known as G40 and towards her last days the group was pushing for the annihilation of the Lacoste faction linked to Mnangagwa."I think the former first lady was not very diplomatic in the manner in which she articulated her interests and ambitions," Masunungure added."It is her intemperate language and gestures of not being sensitive to the nature of the security forces and their interests, and that the military, is particularly a sensitive institution."It is a pillar of support anywhere else but here it was particularly in respect of the Mugabe regime and what she was doing was to erode the confidence of the military and within it, the army."Mugabe had always relied on the military for political survival, but the arrival of his 52-year-old wife on the political scene in 2014 changed the dynamics.Grace appeared to be determined to succeed her husband but the push was bound to rub Mugabe's backers in the military the wrong way.Masunungure said it was possible that the generals reached out to Mugabe to rein in his wife, but the veteran ruler could not do anything because of his advanced age."As I understand it, the security forces did express their anxiety about the manner in which the former first lady was addressing the military and the security chiefs, particularly those in the army and within it, General Constantino Chiwenga," the academic said."She could have expressed her concerns, if she had any, to her husband who was the president but she managed to alienate a critical cog of the Mugabe regime and when you do that the wheels tend to come off as they did in mid-November this year."Mugabe could have also seen that a coup was imminent but was still not able to tame his wife, Masunungure said."You should also appreciate and acknowledge that the former president is of an advanced age and advanced fragility health-wise so his mental and physical stamina are increasingly diminished and as a result he may not have had enough control as he previously had even within his own household, including controlling his wife," he said."He failed to rein in his wife to ensure that she did not act beyond the constitutional and legal confines of her role."She did not have any constitutionally defined roles except that on the title first lady' and beyond that, she had no official government or constitutional role to play in the governmental affairs of this country."Masunungure said Grace had also alienated influential people in Zanu-PF, creating a fertile ground for a popular uprising against the world's then oldest leader."She alienated many, not just in the military but in the party. The manner in which she ridiculed, humiliated and embarrassed many of the seniors in the party, including some old enough to be her father or grandfather.""I think she did things in the wrong way. She was not as political as she ought to be."
Getting let go from the courier business hed been running for a childhood friend left Jayson Silvera in a fog. Hed been earning a six-figure salary and was raising a family in Stafford County.

Overnight, all of that [income] went away, said Silvera, who lost his house and car during the six months he was unemployed. I wasnt really sure how to pick myself back up.

Silvera, 45, considered going back to school, but realized that what he knew best was the courier business. Hed started out as a driver, and noticed many were poorly trained. As hed worked his way up to office manager, hed figured out which systems and processes worked well and which did not. He decided to go into business for himself using the best practices hed learned, and opened DDR courier service in the Four Mile Fork area. DDR stands for Deliveries Done Right.

That was nearly two years ago.

Silveras company now handles deliveries in the Fredericksburg, Richmond and metro Washington areas, and just expanded into the Tidewater area. It specializes in same-day delivery of anything from a single envelope to shipments that fill one of DDRs 26-foot box trucks.

Im pretty proud of what Ive done, he said.

That success hasnt come easily. It was four or five months before DDR started getting calls for its services, which include scheduled and routed deliveries and delivery of medical materials by HIPAA-trained couriers.

There were a few times when I wanted to give up, said Silvera. It took a lot of resolve to keep going.

He credits contacts made through the Fredericksburg Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Stafford Regional Black Chamber of Commerce with helping him get his business up and running. An introduction to Howard Owen, owner of Stafford Printing, at a chamber function, lead to DDR being hired to deliver that companys time-critical orders to customers.

Hes done a wonderful job for us, Owen said. Its like having a logistics person off site. Its like hes an employee of Stafford Printing.

Other chamber contacts led to DDR being hired to provide courier services for such local businesses as Virginia Partners Bank.

Its a big relief to know that other folks are marketing for you because of the relationships you form in the community, Silvera said. Im doing the same. Im looking for different office space in Fredericksburg, so Im calling Realtors Ive met through the chamber.

He hasnt relied on local contacts alone. He drove to LabCorps office in Richmond to explain his companys services, for instance, and offered to shadow their route drivers for free. The idea was to learn the health care diagnostic companys policies and procedures so DDR couriers could fill in if LabCorp drivers called in sick or were on vacation.

Who passes up something for free? Silvera said. They wound up needing us.

DDRs medical couriers are trained to know at what temperature to keep a specimen as well as how to use a spill kit to clean themselves and their vehicle so germs dont spread. One of their more unique duties is to transport organs such as hearts and livers to patients awaiting transplants.

Somebody is looking for that. Somebody is being given a chance at life, Silvera said. Thats a tremendous responsibility.

He said his goal is to become a national courier company, and surpass the company he used to work for. He said his old boss, whom he declined to name, has asked him to come back to work for him at a higher salary.

That former boss, he said, had been paranoid that Silvera would leave to start his own courier company.

His fear has come back to bite him, Silvera said. I had to start my own company because this is all I knew.
Rebecca Church was pregnant with her son, Benjamin, when she and her husband were trying to decide which franchise they wanted to own and operate.

Her father, franchise expert Ben Litalien, had given them a list with thousands of possibilities, but didnt single out any one in particular.

We wanted something that would be meaningful and something that my husband Patrick could be passionate about as he would be the sole provider for the family as far as being at the business every day, Rebecca Church said.

The Churches, who live in Spotsylvania County, were impressed by Malawis PizzaPizza with a Purpose, the Utah-based fast-casual pizza chain established in 2010. For every meal purchased at one of its restaurants, it donates a meal to a child in Malawi, an impoverished country in southeastern Africa.

They decided to look into Malawi further, and then fate intervened. Rebecca Church went into labor five weeks early while her parents were in Utah where Malawi has its flagship location.

My mom flew home, and when she walked into labor and delivery room she said, I hope my grandson is worth it because I did not get my berries and cream [dessert pizza] at Malawi, she said. So at that point my husband Patrick and I said, OK, We gotta check this place out.

Two weeks later Patrick Church flew to Malawis headquarters in Utah where he got to taste various menu items and learn about the concept. When he came home, he told his wife that they were going to become Malawi franchisees.

The couple held the grand opening of their first Malawis PizzaPizza with a Purpose, on June 23 in The Village at Towne Centre in Spotsylvania. The restaurant served 1,000 meals that day, and averages selling 20,000 a month.

Recently, the small chainit has only three restaurants so farmet its goal of delivering 1 million meals to children in Malawi in partnership with Feed the Children, and plans to expand nationally in order to deliver a million more meals, according to a news release.

Any menu item, unless its one of the restaurants signature zebra bread sticks, counts as a meal in the Meal-for-Meal Exchange Program, Rebecca Church said. The companys foundation then buys maize in Malawi that is then blended with vitamins and nutrients and delivered to schools and villages throughout the country.

Utah businessman Blake Roney came up with the concept after he returned from a humanitarian trip to Malawi, where some 6.5 million people grapple with hunger. He realized that they needed food on a regular, sustained basis, and teamed up with Kent Andersen, a French-trained chef, to found Malawis Pizza. Besides the location in Spotsylvania, there is now one in Texas and another is slated to open in the Lone Star state soon. The Churches franchise deal calls for them to open five locations in 10 years, and they plan to open the next one in Stafford County.

Rebecca Church said that she and her husband have watched a company video that included a letter from a 6-year-old in Malawi whod received meals through the companys program. He said that he wouldnt have made his sixth birthday without them.

The couple said they havent visited the poverty-stricken country yet, but plan to when once Benjamin, now 2, is older.

Rebecca Church said that she and her husband credit their fathers with helping them get started as franchise owners. Her father helped Malawis founders fine-tune their franchise program, and owns a local carpet-cleaning franchise called Zerorez in addition to teaching at Georgetown University. Patrick Church, whose background is working in restaurants, took Litaliens class to learn more about franchises. His father, Robert Church, owned Advanced Pneumatics.

Malawis specializes in made-to-order gourmet, thin-crust pizzas baked in a brick oven, as well as a variety of pastas, salads and dessert pizzas. Customers pay at the counter and help themselves to drinks, but meals are served on china plates and the napkins are linen. Wine, craft beer and hard cider are available.

The restaurants diverse menu and fast-casual concept appeals mainly to families, large groups and University of Mary Washington students, Patrick Church said. Its philanthropic mission is also a draw, but he and his wife dont stop there. They also give back to the local community in a number of ways, including accepting non-perishable food items for the Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank before Thanksgiving.

Wed like to sponsor a team in the CANstruction event at the mall next year, Rebecca Church said.
When robbing a bank, one's choice of stationery for the demand note is of utmost importance. Does it convey a tone of seriousness? Will it retain fingerprints or other latent evidence? The prudent bank robber sometimes retrieves his note after passing it, in the interests of discretion and eluding prosecution.

Rashad Harris did, in fact, retrieve two of his demand notes during a series of holdups in the Hampton Roads area of southeast Virginia earlier this year. And he often requested no exploding dye packs be placed with his cash, the sign of an experienced stick-up man. But in his holdup of a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Chesapeake, Virginia, he wrote his demand note on a blank starter check actually issued by Wells Fargo, court records show. A bank employee ran the account number through the Wells Fargo database, found the customer's name, and then looked him up on Facebook. There was Rashad Harris, the man with the gun, the note and $2,701 of Wells Fargo's money.

Harris, 26, was arrested. He admitted committing five robberies and one aborted robbery, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced last week in federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, to 15 years in prison. The case was first reported by the Virginian-Pilot.

And while using a blank starter check as a holdup note may be comical, federal prosecutors would remind us that having a gun pointed at you during a robbery is not.

The branch manager of the Wells Fargo bank was eight months pregnant when Harris walked in that day last January, which not only ruined the baby shower planned for later that day, but caused her such anxiety that she took off the last three weeks of work prior to giving birth, prosecutors wrote in a court brief. "The stress of coming to work," the woman told prosecutors, "and being afraid to stand in my lobby or with my tellers without having a panic attack became unbearable."

Harris could not be reached for comment. His lawyer, assistant federal public defender Rodolfo Cejas II, did not return a message seeking comment. But in a memorandum to the court, Cejas said Harris was "very sorry" for his criminal conduct and was "eager to prove to the Court, and to himself, that he can turn his life around."

Prosecutors noted that Harris had a lengthy criminal history beginning at age 16 with a robbery, followed in adulthood by grand larceny, burglary, and attempted carjacking. This perhaps contributed to U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson's decision not to reduce Harris's potential sentence, but to impose eight years for conspiracy and robbery, and seven years for using a gun in said crimes.

Harris's robbery rampage lasted less than two weeks. On Jan. 2, court records show, he and a friend entered a Title Max store in Portsmouth, Virginia, where both brandished guns and escaped with $7,200. Two days later, they entered another Title Max in Portsmouth, handed over an unspecified demand note, and escaped with $2,200. And two days after that, a woman walked into a third Title Max in Portsmouth, pretended to be interested in obtaining a title loan, then handed a title to an employee which had a note taped to it reading, "Don't push the panic button and don't call the police." Harris admitted to being the getaway driver, and that robbery netted only $100.

One week later, on Jan. 13, Harris walked into a cash advance store in Portsmouth and handed over a note which stated, "Stay calm don't hit the panic button and give me the $$." The employee handed over money to Harris but said she needed to keep his paperwork. Harris pulled out a gun and "demanded his paperwork back," the court records state. His note was returned to him and Harris fled with $240.

The next day, Harris moved up from title companies to banks. At 10:40 a.m., he went into a BB&T Bank branch in Chesapeake, Va., and passed a note on a blank check which read, "Stay calm do not hit any alarms gimme all the $$ no one gets hurt and everyone goes home and no dye packs." But before Harris could get the money, he spotted a police car outside so he scooped up his demand note and walked out without any cash, an FBI affidavit stated.

But less than two hours later, Harris entered the Wells Fargo branch on Portsmouth Boulevard in Chesapeake and handed the teller his ill-fated note on the starter check:

"Stay calm don't hit no alarm gimme the $$ no dye packs no one gets hurt everybody goes home."

Demanding yet reassuring, slightly amended from the note earlier in the morning. Or, more likely, the exact same note Harris had passed and withdrawn from the earlier robbery, with the earlier teller's memory of the wording just slightly off. The Wells Fargo teller complied, and Harris escaped with the aforementioned $2,701, and no messy dye pack.

However, this time he left the note behind. A sharp-eyed employee recognized the starter check from their bank, and the dominoes soon fell.

Harris was arrested in Portsmouth three days later, with a .40-caliber pistol in his car. He confessed to the robberies, and told police that the gun was the one he'd used in the crimes.
Willis Leslie Broadus passed away on November 28, 2017 at Culpeper Health & Rehabilitation Center. Les was born October 1, 1923, and he is survived by his wife Gladys; two daughters: Anise Broadus and Alfreda Edmonds. Funeral services will be held on Saturday, December 9, 2017 at 2 p.m. at Found and Sons Funeral Chapel, 850 Sperryville Pike, Culpeper, VA. Viewing will be one hour before the service. Interment will follow on Monday, December 11, 2017 at 10 a.m. at Culpeper National Cemetery with military honors provided by Culpeper VFW Post 2524. Found and Sons Funeral Chapel of Culpeper is serving the family.
How cancer cells find direction

Intrigued by the direct interactions between the two cell types, the researchers then adapted a method previously used to study how tumor cells interact with each other to ask whether macrophages and tumor cells were sharing their cellular contents during their close encounters.

The technique engineers each cell type to produce one new gene: The macrophages produce a trigger protein, and the tumor cells are engineered to make a red fluorescent protein that changes to green only if the trigger protein is transferred from the macrophage to the cancer cell. Applying this technique in the zebrafish, Roh-Johnson and her colleagues found thats indeed what happens  the trigger protein passed from macrophages to tumor cells, and their color switched from red to green.

In a separate experiment, they showed that direct contact between the two cell types is needed for that cellular transfer, because when the two cell types are put together in a petri dish but separated by a tiny screen so they cant touch, the color switch doesnt happen as frequently.

In videos made by their collaborator and co-author Dr. Melissa Wong, a stem cell biologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, the researchers watched cells in petri dishes to see how the melanoma cells behavior changed after being contacted by macrophages and gaining some of their contents.

When you track the tumor cell location over time, if you were to look at it before transfer, you would see it sort of meandering along, Roh-Johnson said, tracing small circles in front of her to indicate a directionless tumor cell.

After the transfer, she said, the cells become what cell biologists term directionally persistent, which means that once it went along a path, it just kept going. The speed of migration didnt actually change, but the way it migrates changed.

In the context of a tumor, cancer cells may be spurred by these contacts to migrate more effectively, Moens said, which would increase the likelihood of eventually hitting a blood vessel and getting into circulation. And those cells may be the ones that seed new tumors.

Transferred molecules remain mysterious

While the researchers dont know if these same events take place in people with cancer, they did repeat some of their experiments in a mouse model of melanoma and saw that mouse macrophages also transfer some of their contents to cancer cells and that the transfer hastens metastasis. And they dont yet know if this type of exchange happens in other cancer types besides melanoma, although there have been previous studies showing that macrophages are important for metastasis in a number of different types of solid tumors.

Roh-Johnsons next goal  once she establishes the laboratory team she will lead at the University of Utah early next year  is to uncover the identity of the molecules being passed from immune cell to tumor. Because macrophages are so good at migrating, their innards are likely full of motility-promoting factors, she said.

If researchers can understand what those factors are and why they promote metastasis, there could be downstream possibilities to use those molecules as markers of macrophages-gone-bad, or even as targets for new therapies to stem some of cancers dangerous spread.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Fred Hutch Cooperative Center for Excellence in Hematology, the American Heart Association, the Fondation ARC pour la Recherche sur le Cancer, the European Commission, an OHSU Center for Womens Health Circle of Giving Grant, the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America and the Prospect Creek Foundation.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

A political analysts Doctor Philip Zamchiya has written a letter to Defence Forces Commador Constantino Chiwenga reminding him that he previously declared that he will never meet with the MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai.Chiwenga as quoted by Zamchiya said "I and fellow ZDF generals are not missionaries and will never meet with Tsvangirai.""On a Sunday like this let me remind you that in May 2013, the Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, General Constantine Chiwenga, expressed his disposition towards the opposition and Zimbabwe's most popular politician Morgan Tsvangirai in the most horrifying and uncivil terms. In response to news that he had met Tsvangirai and his team, the General said," wrote Zamchiya.He wrote that Chiwenga said "We have no time to meet sell-outs,mapuruvheyaclearly Tsvangirai is a psychiatric patient who needs a competent psychiatrist. There is nothing like that, we never met Tsvangirai, Giles Mutsekwa or anyone from the MDC-T. Why would we do that? We have no time for sell-outs. It's a figment of his imagination that he met us. I think he was dreaming and that dream should remain a dream and never be reality because we have better things to do than to meet with sell-outs. It's just not possible for me to entertain the MDC-T leader, we are different.""Just like oil and water, we cannot mix. As the defence forces we will not respect or entertain people who do not value the ideals of the liberation struggle. Meeting such people will be a mockery to the thousands of people who sacrificed their lives fighting for the country's independence. Who the hell does Tsvangirai think he is? No one can make us turn our back on the ideals of the liberation struggle. Thousands of people died for this country and you cannot change that nor wish it away. This country was liberated courtesy of a protracted struggle, some of us we carry severe scars from that struggle and its unimaginable of us to spit on that struggle through meeting sell outs. Its either you say yes or no, I do not have time to talk to Tsvangirai who seems to be suffering from hallucinations. I and fellow ZDF generals are not missionaries and will never meet with Tsvangirai," Chiwenga added.Zamchiya said this shows that the military elites especially of ZANLA and partly ZIPRA origin have been ideologically drilled to believe the opposition is an extension of the neo-colonial and neo-imperial agenda of the British and Americans."The General's evident ideology of exclusive nationalism creates outsiders and insiders yet we are all citizens. The outsiders' are denigrated as sell-outs, traitors and stooges of western imperialism and neo-colonialism and therefore any forceful or illegal action against them is justified. In military language a sell-out deserves death. The ideology is also used to justify the exclusion of opposition supporters and leaders in gaining access to state power," said Zamchiya."It seeks to legitimise the entitlement mentality that Zimbabwe belongs to the ZANLA/ZIPRA command element for the period that they are alive! The institutional legacy of military involvement in politics from the days of the liberation struggle does not augur well for electoral democracy in Zimbabwe. Such history predisposes the military elite to intervene politically in ways that undermine democracy."He said even beyond the ideological and historical inclination, the army, especially the ZANLA element, is likely to cling to Emmerson Mnangagwa, to swim or sink with him in the 2018 general elections."Hence the military is likely to step in during the electoral cycle. Interventions will be at voter registration, actual electoral campaigns in the villages, management of election results and in the event of Mnangagwa losing the first round of elections. In case of the later they will execute another coup d'etat, where they will clandestinely urge Mnangagwa to hold onto state power to maintain a civilian leader as they did. Examples include Algeria, where the army stopped a second round of national elections after an electoral victory by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in December 1991. We have learnt that the military elite can act independently of civilian control but never actually seizing state power yet determining the course of political events," said Zamchiya."I therefore insist that the military elite are likely to support Mnangagwa to tenaciously cling on to power in the event of an electoral defeat. Why? Zimbabwe's military elite fear prosecution having amassed businesses and prebends through state patronage since 1980. Second, some of the military elites face serious allegations of human rights abuses and mass murders of civilians. Third, stultified by decades of obeisance to the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF), in Zimbabwe's neo-patrimonial context, they can hardly imagine a change of context. Fourth, they believe their prebends are best defended by Mnangagwa and prospects of upward accumulation are also served best by the incumbent. Some rightly argue that the army is not a homogeneous unit but the top brass is united by fear of collective punishment, shared memory, business interests and other factors I mentioned above."He said what about the enthusiastic junior army officers they saw on the streets during the execution of the ruthless coup?"Yes they are disgruntled and not recipients of the largesse and some think corruption by the senior officials is worsening their livelihoods but they have little room to manoeuvre between now and 2018. First, the military has a hierarchical command structure. Second, the military intelligence has an effective surveillance system. Third, dissent can be punished by death even of loved ones. Fourth, SADC and international community is not paying much attention to victims of the current coup," he said."The non-partisan conduct of the military is an important ingredient for electoral democracy. The military is the ultimate support of Mnangagwa's governmentif they withdraw their support, if they carry out a coup against his government, or if they refuse to use manipulation and force against those who threaten to democratically change the government, ED falls. There is need for an urgent triple alliance of opposition, civil society and citizens to ensure the military becomes non-partisan ahead of the 2018 general elections. One key demand across is for all the military generals involved in the coup to be negotiated out of their positions before the general election. There is need for a regional and or international partner to demilitarise the space and the mind for 2018 general elections to advance democracy."He said a sustainable strategy to apply diplomatic pressure on the military elite is a must because Zimbabwe on its own faces a herculean task."It is unfortunate the general elections are going ahead next year. Otherwise Zimbabwe could have pondered more and refined Dr Ibbo Mandaza propositions of a transitional authority. A survey of political action across Africa indicates that in fragile transitions, interventions of the military (covert or overt) should be expected to play a major role in enabling or blocking electoral democracy. They constitute a wild card and Zimbabwe is no longer an exception," he said.
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News / National

by Staff reporter

Why has noone attempted to test allegations from @ProfJNMoyo's blue ocean strategy presentation against the events of the the last couple of weeks? Seems he was right all along? Might we not get more from it in terms of where we are headed then?  Munya Mugadza (@munyamugadza) December 4, 2017

The Blue Ocean document has been a source of much contention in Zanu-PF and is said to have been authored by members of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association who had selected Emmerson Mnangagwa to succeed Robert Mugabe as the leader of Zanu-PF. The war vets came out to air their demand to the public telling President Robert Mugabe to step down.Chairman Christopher Mutsvangwa, secretary general Victor Matemedanda and spokesperson Douglas Mahiya were allegedly in support of having Mnangagwa succeed Mugabe and are believed to be fighting against G40.Why has no one attempted to test allegations from @ProfJNMoyo's blue ocean strategy presentation against the events of the last couple of weeks? Seems he was right all along? Might we not get more from it in terms of where we are headed then?This presentation below was made by Professor Jonathan Moyo recently at a cabinet meeting chaired by President Mugabe, as he sought to counter Mnangagwa's threats against himself and Savior Kasukuwere to oust them from Zanu-PF. The document by Mnangagwa allies alleges that Moyo and his Local Government counterpart Kasukuwere who are being identified as G40 kingpins are using the First Lady Grace Mugabe to achieve their ambitions of ruling Zimbabwe.
A farmer from Cornwall came to the rescue of a motorist who got stuck on a popular beach in Newquay at the weekend, giving yet another reason to thank a farmer.

The elderly driver managed to beach his white Seat Ibiza car in the sand as he attempted to turn around and a local farmer was called on to pull the car from the rapidly advancing tide with a New Holland tractor.

A Newquay Coastguard spokesperson said: The team was paged at 2.22pm on Saturday, 2 December, to a report of a vehicle stuck in the sand at Great Western Beach in Newquay.

See also: 6 alternative bedding options to straw compared

On arrival the team made sure everyone was safe and conveyed the drivers elderly passengers, who were cold and had medical conditions, to a local hotel where they were safe and warm.

The driver was put in touch with a local farmer and arrangements were made to tow his car out. The farmer arrived in the nick of time.

The coastguard spokesperson added that people should not drive on to beaches unless they are in a suitable vehicle and know it is safe to do so.

Watch the video below of the rescue taking place.
The UKs departure from the European Union will have a lasting impact on farm profitability in Northern Ireland and Ireland, a senior Brussels adviser has warned.

Whatever the eventual agreement on the Irish border, Brexit has major implications for the substantial trade in agricultural products between Ireland and the UK, said Tom Tynan.

See also: No winners from Brexit, warns EU farm commissioner

Mr Tynan is an Irish national who worked in the agri-food industry for nearly 20 years before being appointed a key adviser to EU farm commissioner Phil Hogan in 2014.

We should never forget how things were in Northern Ireland and acknowledge the role that an invisible customs-free land border has had in the development of businesses on both sides of the border, he said.

With 800m litres of milk crossing the Irish border annually, agriculture was arguably more inter-woven between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic than between any other EU countries.

Mr Tynan was speaking at a debate organised by the British Guild of Agricultural Journalists, supported by Massey Ferguson, at Harper Adams University, Shropshire, on Friday (1 December).

Customs declarations

Even an agreement that involved no physical border would still probably result in the need for customs declarations, he told Farmers Weekly.

That would add enormous complexity and costs to businesses that would impact on farming profitability, said Mr Tynan.

Take a Northern Ireland meat company that sends six loads across the border a day, six days a week. At the moment they have to declare 486 loads in one go at the end of the quarter.

Even under a duty-free customs agreement they would have to declare each load  which would be 1,872 declarations a year.

If you estimate that each declaration costs 70, then that would add 130,000 to the cost of doing business every year.

Young farmers

Also speaking at the debate was Alan Jagoe  a dairy and beef farmer from County Cork and past president of CEJA, the European council of young farmers.

Brexit dominates everything at the moment  40% of all we produce goes across the border into the UK, said Mr Jagoe.

While British farmers have benefitted from the 25% weakening of the pound against the euro over the past two years, it has hit Irish farmers hard.

Individual farmers felt they could do little about Brexit, said Mr Jagoe.

But by investing in education, exploring innovation and focusing on efficiency, they would be in a better position to manage any risks and opportunities that would arise.
News / National

by Staff reporter

The Commander Zimbabwe National Army Lieutenant General Phillip Valerio Sibanda has called on the national army to be disciplined and to desist from harassing citizens.Lieutenant General Sibanda was addressing a pass out parade of 590 recruits at Battlefields in Mhondoro Ngezi.Discipline and patriotism are very essential in the military because of the extreme duties that the armed forces carry out.Lieutenant General Sibanda implored army graduands to be disciplined and to desist from harassing fellow citizens.He said soldiers are important members of society who should instead strive to work towards the betterment and well-being of communities they operate in.He expressed gratitude to traditional leaders who graced the occasion and to the Kwekwe business community and individuals who provided resources and facilities during the training programme.The General Duty Soldiers Course Number 33b 2017 covered subjects such as foot and arms drill, map reading and navigation, civic military education and weapon training, among other subjects.
A Pinch of Salt: The election is over, I think, so what now?
The Corvallis Public Schools Foundation is seeking the oldest living Corvallis School District support staff member to honor at a foundation event in February.

The search follows an effort to find the oldest living Corvallis teacher in the 2016-17 school year and an effort to find the oldest living graduate the year before that.

To be eligible, candidates must reside locally and have worked for the Corvallis School District for a decade or more. Candidates for the oldest support staff honor are asked to send letters to the foundation at 1555 SW 35th St., Corvallis, OR 97333. Alternatively, they can email Liv Gifford, the foundations director, at liv.gifford@corvallis.k12.or.us.

The person selected for the honor will be invited to the foundations Hands Across Corvallis breakfast February 2.

The foundation funds district programs that support students in poverty and enhance school enrichment activities. In the fall of this year alone it has provided $72,000 to the district for college readiness programs and science, technology, engineering, art, and math programs.

For more information about the foundation, visit cpsfoundation.org.
One of the most gratifying aspects of the effort underway at Oregon State University to reassess the names of some campus buildings has been the spotlight it's cast on how professional historians approach their work.

Regardless of what you think about the OSU effort, which hit a milestone last week when President Ed Ray announced his decision to rename Benton Hall, Benton Annex and Avery Lodge but to retain the names of Arnold Dining Hall and Gill Coliseum, the historical reports that were researched and written on each building provided not just illumination into the past but a vivid example of how historians approach their work.

Just as intriguing, the rigorously researched and well-written reports also show the limits of what historians can know for sure.

It's a message that Stacey Smith, the associate professor of history at OSU who led the effort to compile the reports, frequently tells her students: "Ninety-eight percent of the past is irretrievable," she said. "We can't recover it. We're left just trying to put together these tiny fragments to put together a portrait of these people."

And that's work, Smith told me in an interview last week, that seeks to "complicate and contextualize" the lives led by the namesakes of the buildings under review. People don't lead lives that are black or white; we all live, to some extent, in shades of gray. And we are, of course, shaped by the times in which we live. The trick in delving into these lives is to research primary sources, gauge the reliability of those sources (everybody has an ax to grind, and those axes must be taken into account) and to offer fair interpretation of what those sources, limited as they may be, can tell us. "History is intrinsically an interpretative discipline," she said.

At OSU, the process of identifying campus buildings named after people who might have held racist beliefs had been percolating for the last couple of years and predated this year's campus protests. But Smith said the effort had reached the point where there was "so much information and misinformation circulating" that it became apparent that it was necessary to bring in professionals to sort through the history. "They needed well-trained professional historians to give a neutral and nuanced" accounting of the lives under review, she said.

At that point, OSU administrators climbed to the roof of the Kerr Administration Building and fired up the spotlight to summon the History Squad.

Alas, no: As rewarding as I find that image, it did not happen that way. But it did make sense to reach out to Smith, considering her expertise in the history of the North American West and her research into race relations, labor and politics during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.

Smith, who declined an honorarium for the work, assembled the team that prepared the reports into the buildings. And she spent a month researching and writing the report on Joseph Avery and the naming of Avery Lodge, a potentially controversial case in that Avery also is a founder of Corvallis. Her overall conclusion: Although there's evidence that Avery did not personally hold proslavery views, it's likely that he condoned those views in the pages of the newspaper he controlled. In Smith's words, "he was willing to disseminate proslavery arguments for his political or economic gain." (Copies of the Avery report and the other three reports are attached to the online version of this column.)

Smith and her team knew that their work had the potential to stir up controversy. But, she said, "we made the concerted decision not to take a position in any of the debates," she said. "We tried to call it like we saw it."

And the assembled historians understood the opportunity that the renaming spotlight afforded: "All of us understood this to be a very important teachable moment," she said. "And an important moment for the community."

As debates over these issues get heated, she said, they tend to paint their subjects as either "good people or bad people," Smith noted. But people don't fit neatly into one of those buckets. History offers a richer, fuller portrait of those subjects and their times. And not just that: Smith and her team have shown again how history, properly done, also casts light onto the times in which we live. (mm)

Holiday music

I'm still seeking nominations for the Think Too Much Holiday Music Hall of Fame. Many excellent nominations already have come in, but if you have a particular performance of a holiday tune you think is definitive, let me know about it. Send your nominations to mike.mcinally@lee.net. I'll announce this year's inductees in the Dec. 24 column. (mm)
News / National

by Staff reporter

If there was someone queer enough to apply to Guinness Book of World Records to have the title "shortest lived government ministers" added to their database, the category will certainly not be short of takers.Among the frontrunners would be South Africa's former Finance minister Des van Rooyen who was reshuffled after three days by President Jacob Zuma following widespread criticism of his appointment.That race would also include Messaoud Benagoun who was Algeria's Tourism minister for three days and Trinidad and Tobago's Public Utilities minister Marlene McDonald who was fired after two days on the job.Somewhere down the pecking order will be three faces that momentarily made it into President Emmerson Mnangagwa's Cabinet last week only for their excitement to be quashed while they were in the midst of popping champagne bottles.Clever Nyati, Lazarus Dokora and Christopher Mutsvangwa had made it into Cabinet on Thursday evening only for the appointments to be rescinded two days later.A day before they could be sworn in, Mnangagwa quickly moved to drop them from his Cabinet upon realising that he had overlooked the number of non-constituency legislators he could appoint to be ministers.Before the news could reach him, Mutsvangwa, who had been made Information, Media and Broadcasting Services minister, had already "hit the ground running".He gave an interview to VOA, assuring Zimbabwean journalists that he will be bringing a new approach to their work, including revising controversial laws such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Public Order and Security Act, which have stifled the country's media environment."I will look at the Constitution, pick out some parts and throw them out of the window," Mutsvangwa was quoted saying, as he castigated former Information minister Jonathan Moyo, who crafted the laws."The madness of Jonathan (Moyo) to think that he can think for the whole country of 14-million, I don't like that."Mnangagwa's revocation of the three appointments came as another crop of ex-ministers are still trying to come to terms with their short-lived tenure in former president Robert Mugabe's last Cabinet.In October, Mugabe had made significant changes to his Cabinet by introducing new faces as he sought to do away with the Team Lacoste cabal that had been campaigning for Mnangagwa to succeed him.The life of that Cabinet was cut short by the unexpected resignation of Mugabe, a man many had gambled would die in office.For decades Happyton Bonyongwe was the head of Mugabe's secret service and he was subsequently appointed to Mugabe's Cabinet on October 9 as the head of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, replacing Mnangagwa who had been performing the dual roles of vice president and Justice minister since December 2015.During his swearing-in ceremony, Bonyongwe said he was relishing the opportunity of serving in his new post."It is my hope that I will be able to make some positive contributions to my country. That is something that has always motivated me. I view it as a deployment by my leadership and therefore, I look at it from that context and I will go there and do my best," he said then.Well, as for doing his best, that chance never came during a stint that did not last long.His fate was intertwined with former minister of State for Masvingo Province Paul Chimedza, Tourism and Hospitality Industry minister Edgar Mbwembwe, Foreign Affairs minister Walter Mzembi and Finance minister Ignatius Chombo.Before they had moved into their offices, their portfolios were disbanded by a military intervention that led to the resignation of Mugabe on November 21.The over a month long stay in Cabinet may well be the record for the shortest ministerial appointment ever held in Zimbabwe.That script rang true for the Zanu PF central committee where one Johnson Madhuku's venture as a Zanu PF central committee member only lasted for a week.Madhuku is famed for turning around the fortunes of Reformed Church-run Pamushana High School where he is headmaster, to a school that has become a sporting powerhouse and talent conveyer belt of repute.But his ascend to that position through loyalty to former First Lady Grace Mugabe counted for nothing as he was among those purged by the military recently.Madhuku along with Jeffreys Murire, Veronica Dzika and Watson Maguraumwe faced the chop. They had been elected into the Zanu PF central committee for Bikita before the elections were annulled as a faction rallying behind Mnangagwa went on a purge of members aligned to G40.Ironically, their election had come after the purging of Zanu PF members aligned to Mnangagwa who was at that time fighting for his political life after he was fired by then president Mugabe.The cleansing of G40 loyalists in Zanu PF central committee structures also saw the axe fall on Chimedza and former provincial Governor Willard Chiwewe whose election to the Zanu PF central committee, a week earlier, was nullified by the Zanu PF Masvingo provincial executive.The supposedly sham elections also saw Gutu West legislator Tongai Muzenda, Retired Colonel Mutero Masanganise and Patricia Gama being chopped, after a week on the job.It will definitely be a hard record to break for a somewhat reformed Zanu PF which is trying to pick up the pieces after the dismissal of Mugabe.
Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
A new home for the visionary : Bonns August Macke House re-opens

Bonn The extension to the August Macke museum in Bonns Nordstadt has officially opened. On the one hand, the artists house is a biography of Mackes life and works and on the other a location for temporary exhibitions and events.

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Outside, driving snow and grey skies. Inside, melancholy folk songs by Brahms with the devastating message: The sun no longer shines. And all this to honour a painter who bathed the world in fantastic colours and about whom, after he tragically fell at the age of 27 in the first weeks of World War I, his friend Franz Marc wrote in his obituary: Of all of us, he gave colour the brightest and clearest tone, as clear and bright as his whole being.

August Macke, to whom these lines refer, loved Brahms. And so it was almost obligatory that the celebration for the opening of the new August Macke Museum started with emotional Brahms songs. And so colour was brought to this miserable Sunday in December. According to Gunter Winands, head of the Federal Office for Culture and Media, this followed a certain meteorological logic: both the first ground-breaking ceremony in June 2015, as well as the topping out ceremony for the Macke extension project a year later, took place in bad weather.

Winands referred to the strong support by the Federal Government for Bonn  with around 3.5 million Euros, it financed around half of the building of the extension and artists house. Bonn now has a unique feature with three authentic artists houses for Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and the Visionary Macke. The art centre in Bonns Nordstadt is complete, he said.

The director of the museum, Klara Drenker-Nagels, looked back but then also talked about the concept of the new museum, which provides a biography of Mackes life and work in the artists house on one side as well as a spacious ensemble for the other museum areas: space for temporary exhibitions, offices, storage, museum education, gastronomy and events. In a short preview of the programme, she also announced that the museum wanted to increasingly be a bridge to contemporary art.

Lord Mayor, Ashok Sridharan, celebrated: At least, August Macke has the representation in Bonn that he has long deserved.

The museum is open to the public from 5 December.
Parcel bomb in Potsdam : Deutsche Post warns customers to beware of unfamiliar packages

Potsdam The Potsdam bomb alert was a blackmail attempt against DHL. The police are advising people to exercise caution and not to open suspicious packages.

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Following the discovery of a parcel bomb in Potsdam, police are advising caution when accepting packages from unknown senders in the lead up to Christmas. If something seems strange to people, the police should definitely be called, a police spokesman told the German Press Agency (DPA) on Sunday night. This is the case, for example, when the sender cannot be clearly identified or is missing completely. Investigators believe the dangerous package sent on Friday to a pharmacy at the Potsdam Christmas Market was intended to blackmail the DHL parcel service.

There were no further clues as to the perpetrator or perpetrators during the night. However, the spokesman said they were investigating round the clock. According to interior minister Karl-Heinz Schroter (SPD), investigators in Brandenburg have been in the closest contact with DHL since the blackmail was first uncovered. In the next hours and days they will work very closely together, explained Schroter in the news programme RBB-Aktuell on Sunday evening. DHL will also conduct internal investigations. The company itself did not want to comment on Sunday.

Brandenburg authorities are working on the basis of a perpetrator or perpetrator group from the region. However, Schroter said this had not been proven one hundred per cent. However, queries to all state criminal investigation offices in Germany had shown that no other state was affected. The packages had also been sent in Brandenburg and delivered to addresses in Brandenburg.

On Friday, a suspect package was delivered to a pharmacy, whose premises are directly on the Potsdam Christmas Market. There were hundreds of nails and a type of firework that is illegal in Germany because of safety deficiencies. Police said a similar packet was sent to an online retailer in Frankfurt (Oder) at the start of November. This caught fire when it was opened.

Security authorities think further shipments are possible or even likely. Police president Hans-Jurgen Morke said on Sunday that the Potsdam shipment contained a message. This was encrypted in a so-called QR-Code on the internet.

So far, small businesses have been affected. However, shipments to private persons could not be ruled out. If you receive a suspect package, do not open it, as this could trigger it, warned interior minster Schroter. Clues are, for example, spelling mistakes or wires sticking out of the package, explained police, who have also set up a telephone hotline.

Police have set up an investigation group called Luise, after the pharmacy where the package was sent, to carry out the search. Around 25 criminal police are working in the group. The public prosecutors office said they were investigating attempts to bring about an explosion and attempted serious extortion.
Fire in apartment building : Fire brigade rescues 18 residents

Limperich 18 residents were trapped by thick smoke after a fire broke out in their apartment building in the early hours of Saturday.

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There were dramatic scenes early on Saturday morning during a fire at an apartment building in Limperich. As the fire started in the cellar of the four storey building and thick smoke filled the entire stairwell within a short time, residents were trapped and had to be rescued using ladders on the outside of the building.

The fire at the apartment building on Konigswinterer Strae was reported to the control centre of the fire brigade in Bonn at 3.47am. When a large team of firemen arrived at the scene of the fire, thick, dark smoke was already coming out of the cellar windows and the entrance door. The residents were standing at the windows on the street front and at other windows at the rear of the four storey building, in which they were trapped. Dangerous smoke was blocking their escape.

As the cellar doors were not closed, the dense smoke could spread through the stairwell and also entered some of the apartments on the various floors. Only two people were able to escape in time through the door. For the firemen, rescuing people was the highest priority. According to the fire brigade, the 18 residents who were still in the building were first taken from the four storey building by rescue services using turntable ladders or portable ladders. They were looked after by rescue services. Two residents were slightly injured and taken to hospital for examination.
News / National

by Staff reporter

On January 17, 2014, a bizarre story was reported by Zimbabweans news websites.The story read: a Bindura businesswoman is reported to have died on Tuesday night moments after an alleged sexual encounter with a top High Court judge.Although the independent Daily News newspaper who broke the story withheld the name of the judge, Nehanda Radio understands its Justice Charles Hungwe.According to the paper, Gladys Farai Mangwiro (55) had been having an affair with Justice Hungwe for "quite a span" and the judge was at the woman's home when she died.Police sources in Bindura told the paper that the woman became unresponsive after the two engaged in a sex-act. The judge then rushed to make a police report.This version of events has been corroborated by members of the family and also employees of Mayfair Lodge which is owned by the late businesswoman.The businesswoman was later pronounced dead at a Bindura hospital.According to Mangwiro's first born daughter, Cheryl-Jane Kujenga, her mother had been in the company of a "male friend" moments before she met her death."She developed sudden respiratory complications on Tuesday the 14th just before midnight. Attempts to resuscitate her were fruitless. She had been in the company of a male friend who had visited but it is not necessary to reveal the name," she said.Justice Hungwe spent the greater part of last year being victimized by the Mugabe after he ordered the release of human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa and granted a search warrant to the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission to search the offices of three Zanu PF cabinet ministers.
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.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Former liberation war fighters have a well-calculated strategy to set up First Lady Grace Mugabe and her backers for failure as they push for Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa to take over from her husband President Robert Mugabe, an alleged secret document that has revived factionalism in Zanu PF claims.A fortnight ago Mugabe reacted angrily to the details in a document titled, Blue Ocean -Taking Back Zanu PF, labelling the former fighters coalescing behind Mnangagwa dissidents.The 92-year-old leader threatened to deal with the former fighters the same way he crushed bandits in the early 80s in a campaign that left over 20 000 civilians dead in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.Crestfallen leaders of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) have disassociated themselves from the document that has been leaked to The Standard, but War Veterans minister Tshinga Dube said State security agents were investigating the matter.According to the document, there is increasing discontent in Zanu PF over Mugabe's reluctance to put Mnangagwa on a pedestal to succeed him and Grace's manoeuvres to seize control of the fractured ruling party.The document alleges Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo and his Local Government counterpart Saviour Kasukuwere were using Grace to achieve their ambitions of ruling Zimbabwe.Moyo and Kasukuwere are identified as the G40 kingpins. Zanu PF is on the verge of an internal war that could dwarf the 2014 infighting that culminated in the ouster of then vice-president Joice Mujuru, the document says.The document says Zanu PF had three options with Mnangagwa representing path 1 (where the party and government must go), Mugabe (path 2 - where the president wants the party to go) and Grace (path 3 - the path to self-destruction)."While 2014 represented a considerable Rubicon in its own right, it is not watershed as the times that are upon," the document reads."It is the outcome of this phase of political gamesmanship that will shape the future of Zanu PF and determine whether or not it will continue to dominate the political landscape of Zimbabwe."It adds: "Current machinations by G40 are aimed at converging path 2 and 3 through the manipulation of the First Lady."The means to an end being their capacity to leverage on her influence on the president."The G40 cabal has coerced the First Lady into a spirited campaign against VP Mnangagwa and the real Zanu PF cadres who have a clear understanding of path 1."This has resulted in several high profile casualties in all organs of the party."Currently, the First Lady has been around the country on nationwide rallies that are eerily similar to those that culminated in the demise of the Mujuru cabal."Moyo is accused of holding a grudge against Mnangagwa for the failed Tsholotsho Declaration in 2004.The document says the Zanu PF strategist was not happy that Mnangagwa did not protect his backers after the plot was exposed, hence his alleged crusade to force the party's old guard out of politics."The thrust is to promote their ambition whilst forcing out the old guard through political euthanasia [committing suicide to ease pain]," the authors of the document say."That is the basis of G40's current war. Cde Kasukuwere and Cde Patrick Zhuwao are tail hangers to Mnangagwa's grand strategies and their only relevance is on providing resources so they won't be able to handle."The document goes on to lay out several strategies to contain Grace and G40 while keeping Mnangagwa in the race.Some of the plans include the creation of "dummy corporates" and non-governmental organisations as well as identifying people who will work to expand the VP's network.The media would be used to manage the Zanu PF Midlands godfather's image.A deliberate effort would also be made to plant Mnangagwa's sympathisers in institutions such as the ZNLWVA, Judicial Services Commission and Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission.Dossiers against known members of the G40 faction would also be compiled with a view to use them on the eve of the 2018 elections, the authors say."Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission must accumulate dossiers on Dr (Ignatius Chombo), Prof Moyo and Cde Kasukuwere), The dossiers must be leaked strategically in 2017 while the cantankerous Cde [Patrick] Zhuwao will have to be kept busy with the Telecel scandals and his glaring incompetence as a government minister must be exaggerated," added the report.The document also alleged there was a dossier incriminating Grace in a scandal involving $2 million, which was referred to as the Zinaragate."The aim is to make it toxic for anyone to be associated with the G40 group," the authors say.Other strategies include subjecting G40 leaders to brutal character assassination, infiltrating and fomenting fights and chaos amongst the faction's kingpins."Seeds of distrust must be sown in that alliance with the First Lady with immediate effect," the document reads."A potent way is to attack the glue that binds them, play on the First Lady's interests and begin a spirited campaign for the removal of sanctions and foreign restrictions on Zimbabwe's president and First Lady."A Godsend is setting China or Russia to make noise over this through Brics [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa]."High level Chinese or Russian 'business people' or envoys will then approach the First Lady and offer her a new value proposition that not only protects her interests but goes on to guarantee her influential government position."She must be given strong impression that to 'their countries' this carries more plausibility if she partners with VP Mnangagwa than the G40 mavericks," reads the report.Minutes of recent war veterans meetings, which have also been disowned by the ZNLWVA leadership, showed that the former fighters believe Mnangagwa is favoured by China and Russia to take over from Mugabe.The Blue Ocean strategy also alleged that Mugabe was the real force behind G40, adding that there was bad blood between the veteran ruler and Mnangagwa.The authors alleged Mugabe felt "threatened by VP Mnangagwa and the prospect of his presidency being outshined by that of his protege.""The feigned love for VP Mnangagwa has at times come out of the mask in certain statements and manoeuvres and the unflinching composure by VP Mnangagwa has not made matters easier."President Mugabe keeps bringing in upstarts e.g Joice Mujuru and now the G40 cabal in a bid to derail Mnangagwa," read the report.The report queries why Mugabe has not endorsed his deputy for the presidency if he did not have anything against him. "Why Mugabe has let children mess up with impunity among others," it said.The report also alleged that G40 was planning to make Mnangagwa a lame duck and erode his support base.A strategy is then laid out on how Grace would be misled to believe that she has the VP's backing only to be disappointed when it matters the most.To achieve that, a recording of youth league members discussing how Mnangagwa believes in the First Lady and secretly attacking Mutsvangwa and Oppah Muchinguri would be leaked to media outlets."In it, it must be alleged that Cde Chris Mutsvangwa and Cde Oppah Muchinguri were failing to read the new brand of politics being pedalled by the First Lady with reference being the fight for the Zapu ticket while also throwing Cde Kasukuwere into a dogfight with Dr Chombo, Cde (Innocent) Tizora (Principal in the Office of the President and Cabinet)and possibly Cde (Sidney) Sekeremayi for the Zanu PF ticket," the document added."Preconditions for this to happen include little or no open resistance from VP Mnangagwa to all the G40 shenanigans being fronted by the First Lady."All sympathisers will have to be ordered to stand down and not interfere. The fighting must continue unabated.The nine-page document's conclusion says "While this is work in progress, it provides a baseline from where to work from."However, it is imperative that action be taken now to prevent any further damage to the presidential ambitions of VP Mnangagwa."A meeting of minds must meet to interrogate this stratagem at soonest possible convenience."The document claims Chombo and Tizora were Mugabe's preferred candidates for the vice-presidency ahead of Mnangagwa when the Justice minister was elevated in 2014.It says this shows Mnangagwa could also be sidelined in the race to succeed Mugabe.
Photo Of Nigerian Man Brutally Stabbed To Death Over House Rent Argument In South Africa

kacylee at 4-12-2017 08:56 AM (4 years ago) (f)

A 26-year-old Nigerian, Chidiebere Nwaojiekwu, from Unubi, Anambra state, was on the 1st of December, 2017, stabbed to death at Galeshewe, Kimberly town in Northern Cape, according to journalist Peter Agba Kalu .

A 26-year-old Nigerian, Chidiebere Nwaojiekwu, from Unubi, Anambra state, was on the 1st of December, 2017, stabbed to death at Galeshewe, Kimberly town in Northern Cape, according to journalist Peter Agba Kalu .

The murder was reportedly committed by his landlord, after an argument about rent degenerated into a fight. The landlord was said to have called his boys and they started stabbing the deceased. .



It was gathered that Chidiebere ran out of the house and they chased after him and kept stabbing him till he slumped and died. Nigerians in the neighborhood were informed and the cops came to secure the area and start investigation. .



The deceased body has been taken to the mortuary and a case has been opened with a case number GALESHEWE CASE : 05/12/2017 Murder. Three of the suspects have already been arrested. Chidiebere was single and was a businessman selling earpiece and accessories.



The murder was reportedly committed by his landlord, after an argument about rent degenerated into a fight. The landlord was said to have called his boys and they started stabbing the deceased. .It was gathered that Chidiebere ran out of the house and they chased after him and kept stabbing him till he slumped and died. Nigerians in the neighborhood were informed and the cops came to secure the area and start investigation. .The deceased body has been taken to the mortuary and a case has been opened with a case number GALESHEWE CASE : 05/12/2017 Murder. Three of the suspects have already been arrested. Chidiebere was single and was a businessman selling earpiece and accessories.

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 4-12-2017 08:56 AM (4 years ago) | Addicted Hero

ruthie at 4-12-2017 09:08 AM (4 years ago)

(f) JUST TOO BAD Posted: at 4-12-2017 09:08 AM (4 years ago) | Hero JUST TOO BAD Reply

victorstic1 at 4-12-2017 09:16 AM (4 years ago)

(m) OMG WHAT A WASTE RIP Posted: at 4-12-2017 09:16 AM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac OMG WHAT A WASTE RIP Reply

Haso112 at 4-12-2017 09:33 AM (4 years ago)

(m) Quote from: ruthie on 4-12-2017 09:08 AM JUST TOO BAD



MADAM... I DON DEY OBSERVE YOU... WHERE YOU DEY ALWAYS GO FOR WEEKENDS? OYA START CONFESSING BEFORE I SEND SARS MAKE DEM HELP ME FIND YOU GET THE INFO...

Posted: at 4-12-2017 09:33 AM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac MADAM... I DON DEY OBSERVE YOU... WHERE YOU DEY ALWAYS GO FOR WEEKENDS? OYA START CONFESSING BEFORE I SEND SARS MAKE DEM HELP ME FIND YOU GET THE INFO... Reply

fineboy77 at 4-12-2017 09:34 AM (4 years ago)

(m) If our people can just leave south Africa,just if. What is the color beneath your skin? Posted: at 4-12-2017 09:34 AM (4 years ago) | Hero If our people can just leave south Africa,just if. Reply

fineboy77 at 4-12-2017 09:36 AM (4 years ago)

(m) Quote from: Haso112 on 4-12-2017 09:33 AM



MADAM... I DON DEY OBSERVE YOU... WHERE YOU DEY ALWAYS GO FOR WEEKENDS? OYA START CONFESSING BEFORE I SEND SARS MAKE DEM HELP ME FIND YOU GET THE INFO... What is the color beneath your skin? Posted: at 4-12-2017 09:36 AM (4 years ago) | Hero whats ur own sef?,u wan use style get my address abi? Reply

Haso112 at 4-12-2017 09:37 AM (4 years ago)

(m) NA WA OOO... ON TOP HOW MUCH BE THE RENT SEF... WE NIGERIANS TOO, MOST OF US DON'T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THINGS DIPLOMATICALLY, WE'LL JUST START MAKING NOISE AND GETTING HYPER AT ANY LITTLE THING, SOMETHING THAT COULD BE RESOLVED PEACEFULLY & THE MATTER COOLS & LIFE GOES ON... TOO BAD, REST IN PEACE BROTHER... Posted: at 4-12-2017 09:37 AM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac NA WA OOO... ON TOP HOW MUCH BE THE RENT SEF... WE NIGERIANS TOO, MOST OF US DON'T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THINGS DIPLOMATICALLY, WE'LL JUST START MAKING NOISE AND GETTING HYPER AT ANY LITTLE THING, SOMETHING THAT COULD BE RESOLVED PEACEFULLY & THE MATTER COOLS & LIFE GOES ON... TOO BAD, REST IN PEACE BROTHER... Reply

Haso112 at 4-12-2017 09:38 AM (4 years ago)

(m) Quote from: fineboy77 on 4-12-2017 09:36 AM whats ur own sef?,u wan use style get my address abi?



AH...! BROS, WETIN CONCERN ICE WATER SELLER WITH BOTTLE? NA WA FOR U OOO, SO U DEY TRY TELL SAY..... HMMMM, MAKE I NEVER TALK AM, I WAIT FOR RUTHIE TO ANSWER ME FIRST.... RUTHIE, IS IT WHAT I'M THINKING? HMMMMM Posted: at 4-12-2017 09:38 AM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac AH...! BROS, WETIN CONCERN ICE WATER SELLER WITH BOTTLE? NA WA FOR U OOO, SO U DEY TRY TELL SAY..... HMMMM, MAKE I NEVER TALK AM, I WAIT FOR RUTHIE TO ANSWER ME FIRST.... RUTHIE, IS IT WHAT I'M THINKING? HMMMMM Reply

ruthie at 4-12-2017 10:34 AM (4 years ago)

(f) Quote from: Haso112 on 4-12-2017 09:33 AM



MADAM... I DON DEY OBSERVE YOU... WHERE YOU DEY ALWAYS GO FOR WEEKENDS? OYA START CONFESSING BEFORE I SEND SARS MAKE DEM HELP ME FIND YOU GET THE INFO... Posted: at 4-12-2017 10:34 AM (4 years ago) | Hero This is a very good observation.....you r right! weekends are for rest.....i start the usual on monday! Reply

Haso112 at 4-12-2017 10:43 AM (4 years ago)

(m) Quote from: ruthie on 4-12-2017 10:34 AM This is a very good observation.....you r right! weekends are for rest.....i start the usual on monday!



OKAY OOO... BUT @FINEBOY77 DEY TRY TELL ME SAY NA HIM END U DEY HIBERNATE FOR WEEKEND..... CHALE, U BERRA DEBUNK D STORY OO, B4 WE START WW3 FOR HIA... Posted: at 4-12-2017 10:43 AM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac OKAY OOO... BUT @FINEBOY77 DEY TRY TELL ME SAY NA HIM END U DEY HIBERNATE FOR WEEKEND..... CHALE, U BERRA DEBUNK D STORY OO, B4 WE START WW3 FOR HIA... Reply
Libya Slave Trade: Charlyboy Group Storms Foreign Affairs In Chains & Handcuffs

clarajancita at 4-12-2017 02:50 PM (4 years ago) (f)

There was mild drama as the group of good governance protesters led by veteran musician, Charles Oputa, also known as Charly Boy, stormed the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Abuja to demand proactive and reactive steps from the federal government over the plight of Nigerians sold as slaves in Libya.

There was mild drama as the group of good governance protesters led by veteran musician, Charles Oputa, also known as Charly Boy, stormed the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Abuja to demand proactive and reactive steps from the federal government over the plight of Nigerians sold as slaves in Libya.

The group carried out the protest strapped in chains, handcuffs and sealed mouth to drive home their points.



This comes as the Nigerian Charge DAffaire to Libya, Ambassador Iliya Danladi Fachano, addressed the media on reports of auctioning of Nigerian migrants and kidnapping for ransom in the country.



Details later.

The group carried out the protest strapped in chains, handcuffs and sealed mouth to drive home their points.This comes as the Nigerian Charge DAffaire to Libya, Ambassador Iliya Danladi Fachano, addressed the media on reports of auctioning of Nigerian migrants and kidnapping for ransom in the country.Details later.

Post Reply I am a metro reporter on Gistmania, I have been publishing news materials for over 5 years Posted: at 4-12-2017 02:50 PM (4 years ago) | Hero

euwilliams at 4-12-2017 03:11 PM (4 years ago)

(f) Leg chained too Posted: at 4-12-2017 03:11 PM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac Leg chained too Reply

euwilliams at 4-12-2017 03:12 PM (4 years ago)

(f) Leg chained too Posted: at 4-12-2017 03:12 PM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac Leg chained too Reply

ruthie at 4-12-2017 03:58 PM (4 years ago)

(f) THIS GRANDPA DON COME AGAIN O! Posted: at 4-12-2017 03:58 PM (4 years ago) | Hero THIS GRANDPA DON COME AGAIN O! Reply

gogoman at 4-12-2017 05:59 PM (4 years ago)

(m) SO MAKE BUHARI COME SEND JET GO LIBYA ABI GO BOMB DEM Posted: at 4-12-2017 05:59 PM (4 years ago) | Grande Master SO MAKE BUHARI COME SEND JET GO LIBYA ABI GO BOMB DEM Reply

kacylee at 4-12-2017 06:07 PM (4 years ago)

(f) this people concept dey baffle me ooo, why the chain nah 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 4-12-2017 06:07 PM (4 years ago) | Addicted Hero this people concept dey baffle me ooo, why the chain nah Reply

crocatum at 4-12-2017 06:33 PM (4 years ago)

(m) Slave trade cannot be stopped, due to the economic situation, and this can be a strong psychological weapon, if we move past the concept of acquiring wealth to show off to acquiring wealth to change our world, if we focus on changing our world rather than showing off, everyone would gain and the unborn. Posted: at 4-12-2017 06:33 PM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac Slave trade cannot be stopped, due to the economic situation, and this can be a strong psychological weapon, if we move past the concept of acquiring wealth to show off to acquiring wealth to change our world, if we focus on changing our world rather than showing off, everyone would gain and the unborn. Reply

REALTRUTH at 4-12-2017 09:50 PM (4 years ago)

(m) THIS IS A VERY GOOD MESSAGE TO THE LIBYA GOVERNMENT Posted: at 4-12-2017 09:50 PM (4 years ago) | Newbie THIS IS A VERY GOOD MESSAGE TO THE LIBYA GOVERNMENT Reply

ficull at 5-12-2017 12:26 AM (4 years ago)

(m) What is our government doing for this matter sef Posted: at 5-12-2017 12:26 AM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac What is our government doing for this matter sef Reply

Upbendel at 5-12-2017 01:51 AM (4 years ago)

(m) Quote from: kacylee on 4-12-2017 06:07 PM this people concept dey baffle me ooo, why the chain nah

Read your primary six history text book about slavery!!! Posted: at 5-12-2017 01:51 AM (4 years ago) | Upcoming Read your primary six history text book about slavery!!! Reply

WhaleDog at 5-12-2017 01:56 AM (4 years ago)

(m) Quote from: REALTRUTH on 4-12-2017 09:50 PM THIS IS A VERY GOOD MESSAGE TO THE LIBYA GOVERNMENT

Well ! Thats is if theres a government in charge of the nation affairs ,but in the case of Libya ,theres no functioning central government.The country is divided under different sectional group leadership .In some quarters you have the millitant totally in control of resources control and daily affairs of state matters ,and while in Tripoli u have a kitchen cabinet paying millitant a chunky bulky amount for security .So,in contrast theres simply no functioning government in place in Libya as at now to follow up our complaint,or to take a swift action to stem this atrocious crime.Libya as at now can be regarded as banana fall on me or free for all Spare me Posted: at 5-12-2017 01:56 AM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac Well ! Thats is if theres a government in charge of the nation affairs ,but in the case of Libya ,theres no functioning central government.The country is divided under different sectional group leadership .In some quarters you have the millitant totally in control of resources control and daily affairs of state matters ,and while in Tripoli u have a kitchen cabinet paying millitant a chunky bulky amount for security .So,in contrast theres simply no functioning government in place in Libya as at now to follow up our complaint,or to take a swift action to stem this atrocious crime.Libya as at now can be regarded as banana fall on me or free for all Reply

Haso112 at 5-12-2017 07:19 AM (4 years ago)

(m) ABEG OOO, JUST AN OBSERVATION NI OOO, MAKE NOBODY TAKE AM P OOO.... I JUST WAN ASK, OGA CHARLEY NA PROTESTING BE HIM NEW CAREER? Posted: at 5-12-2017 07:19 AM (4 years ago) | Gistmaniac ABEG OOO, JUST AN OBSERVATION NI OOO, MAKE NOBODY TAKE AM P OOO.... I JUST WAN ASK, OGA CHARLEY NA PROTESTING BE HIM NEW CAREER? Reply
Almere, The Netherlands

December 04, 2017

ASM International N.V. (Euronext Amsterdam: ASM) reports the following transactions, conducted under ASMI's current share buyback program.

Date Repurchased shares Average price Repurchased value November 27, 2017 34,388  60.60  2,083,916 November 28, 2017 34,132  60.60  2,068,256 November 29, 2017 41,132  59.43  2,444,586 November 30, 2017 38,340  57.92  2,220,561 December 1, 2017 38,349  57.28  2,196,673 Total 186,341  59.11  11,013,992

These repurchases were made as part of the 250 million share buyback program announced on September 22, 2017. Of the total program, 41.4% has been repurchased. For further details including individual transaction information please visit:

www.asm.com/investors/share-information/share-buyback.

About ASM International

ASM International NV, headquartered in Almere, the Netherlands, its subsidiaries and participations design and manufacture equipment and materials used to produce semiconductor devices. ASM International, its subsidiaries and participations provide production solutions for wafer processing (Front-end segment) as well as for assembly & packaging and surface mount technology (Back-end segment) through facilities in the United States, Europe, Japan and Asia. ASM International's common stock trades on the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange (symbol ASM). For more information, visit ASMI's website at www.asm.com .

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: All matters discussed in this press release, except for any historical data, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These include, but are not limited to, economic conditions and trends in the semiconductor industry generally and the timing of the industry cycles specifically, currency fluctuations, corporate transactions, financing and liquidity matters, the success of restructurings, the timing of significant orders, market acceptance of new products, competitive factors, litigation involving intellectual property, shareholders or other issues, commercial and economic disruption due to natural disasters, terrorist activity, armed conflict or political instability, epidemics and other risks indicated in the Company's reports and financial statements. The Company assumes no obligation nor intends to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future developments or circumstances.

CONTACT

Investor contact:

Victor Bareno

T: +31 88 100 8500

E: victor.bareno@asm.com

Media contact:

Ian Bickerton

T: +31 625 018 512
CALGARY, Alberta, Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canacol Energy Ltd. ("Canacol" or the "Corporation") (TSX:CNE) (OTCQX:CNNEF) (BVC:CNEC) is pleased to announce that the Canadonga-1 exploration well has encountered 32 feet true vertical depth (ft tvd) of net gas pay within the Cienaga de Oro (CDO) primary reservoir target on its 100% working interest Esperanza block. Canadonga-1 is the Corporations tenth consecutive natural gas exploration discovery on its 1.1 million net acre exploration position located in the Lower Magdalena Basin of Colombia. The Corporation is also pleased to announce that the Pandereta-1 discovery well tested 29 million standard cubic feet per day (MMscfpd) of gas from the CDO sandstone reservoir. The gas bearing fractured basement encountered within the Pandereta-1 well tested very small amounts of gas. The Corporation has also spud the Pandereta-2 well and expects flow testing resulting in approximately five weeks.



Canadonga-1 Gas Discovery

Esperanza Exploration and Exploitation Contract

CNE Oil and Gas S.A.S, 100% Operated Working Interest

The Canandonga-1 exploration well is located 6 kilometers (kms) northeast of the Nelson gas field on the Esperanza contract. Using the Tuscany 109 drilling rig, Canandonga-1 was spud on November 4, 2017, and reached a total depth of 9,300 feet measured depth (ft md) within the primary CDO sandstone reservoir on November 15, 2017. Due to drilling related problems the Canadonga-1 well penetrated only the upper 713 feet of the CDO sandstone reservoir section before drilling operations were suspended, having penetrated approximately 1/3 of the anticipated section of CDO sandstone reservoir. The well encountered 32 ft tvd of gas pay with an average porosity of 18 %. The Corporation is currently mobilizing the drilling rig to the Gaitero-1 exploration well location located on its 100% working interest VIM 5 block. The Corporation plans to mobilize a workover rig to complete and test the Canadonga-1 discovery well in early 2018.

Pandereta-1 Gas Discovery

VIM 5 Exploration and Exploitation (E&E) Contract

CNE Oil and Gas S.A.S, 100% Operated Working Interest

The Pandereta-1 exploration well is located approximately 10 kms to the northeast of the Clarinete and Oboe gas fields on the VIM 5 contract. Using the Pioneer 302 drilling rig, Pandereta-1 was spud on October 25, 2017 and reached a total depth of 9,347 ft md in 15 days. The well encountered 64 ft tvd of net gas pay with average porosity of 20.5% within the primary CDO sandstone reservoir target. In the secondary and shallower Lower Tubara reservoir target, 34 ft tvd of net gas pay with average porosity of 15% was encountered in the well.

The CDO sandstone reservoir was perforated between 7,7427,778 and 7,8107,830 ft md within the CDO reservoir and flowed at a final stable rate of 29 MMscfpd and no water with a 44/64 inch choke and a flowing tubing head pressure of 2,136 pounds per square inch over a test period of 32.5 hours. The fractured basement was perforated over a small interval and flowed very low volumes of gas. The subsurface technical team is analyzing these latter results to determine the viability of this new fractured basement gas play.

The Corporation spud the Pandereta-2 well on December 2, 2017. This well is targeting gas bearing reservoirs of the CDO sandstone approximately 1 km to the west of the Pandereta-1 bottom hole location. The well is anticipated to take 5 weeks to drill and flow test.

The Corporation shall provide results concerning the above mentioned wells as they become available.

Canacol is an exploration and production company with operations focused in Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico. The Corporation's common stock trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the OTCQX in the United States of America, and the Colombia Stock Exchange under ticker symbol CNE, CNNEF, and CNE.C, respectively.

This press release contains certain forwardlooking statements within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forwardlooking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur, including without limitation statements relating to estimated production rates from the Corporation's properties and intended work programs and associated timelines. Forwardlooking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forwardlooking statements. The Corporation cannot assure that actual results will be consistent with these forward looking statements. They are made as of the date hereof and are subject to change and the Corporation assumes no obligation to revise or update them to reflect new circumstances, except as required by law. Prospective investors should not place undue reliance on forward looking statements. These factors include the inherent risks involved in the exploration for and development of crude oil and natural gas properties, the uncertainties involved in interpreting drilling results and other geological and geophysical data, fluctuating energy prices, the possibility of cost overruns or unanticipated costs or delays and other uncertainties associated with the oil and gas industry. Other risk factors could include risks associated with negotiating with foreign governments as well as country risk associated with conducting international activities, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Corporation.
Kim Hassmer doesnt know what she and her family would have done without FAMIS.

When the Sandston family lost their employer-based coverage for four months earlier this year, she and her husband, David, fell back on Family Access to Medical Insurance Security, a Virginia Medicaid program that acts as a safety net for families who lose coverage, or low-income families who cannot afford insurance.

Though the Hassmers children were only enrolled in the program from March to June, coverage couldnt have come a moment too soon. Just after he was enrolled, their oldest son, 7-year-old Wesley, fell off a fence and severely broke two bones in his arm. Six hours in the emergency room at VCU Medical Center, medication, countless doctors visits and weekly X-rays followed.

If we did not have FAMIS for him, we would still be paying thousands and thousands worth of medical bills, Kim Hassmer said. And I can tell you, were doing OK, but Christmas is going to be tight. We are still paying off student loans, we have a mortgage to pay, and food for three children is not cheap.

By Hassmers estimates, the family could be paying up to $20,000 in medical bills had it not been for the program.

That would have been difficult for our family, she said.

If their gap in coverage and Wesleys broken arm had come a year later, the family might have been out of luck, and thousands of dollars in debt.

Because Congress has yet to re-fund the Childrens Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which funds FAMIS, the future of the program is uncertain. If federal lawmakers fail to act soon, Virginias program will end and 68,000 children and more than 1,000 pregnant women will lose coverage.

That number has increased since initial reports on CHIP funding as more children have been enrolled in Virginias program.

Without CHIP funding, Virginia will run out of funds for its program by the end of January.

That reality is so unbelievable to officials with the Department of Medical Assistance Services, though, that theyre grasping at hope and are avoiding sending families letters warning them about the end of their childrens coverage, which were initially supposed to be sent out Friday in order to give them 60 days notice.

The new hope is that Congress will fund CHIP by Friday, the deadline to pass a continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown. That may be a vehicle by which Congress could slip CHIP funding through.

If Congress fails to meet even that deadline, though, letters will almost certainly be sent out Friday, or shortly thereafter.

We dont want to send a letter Dec. 1 and then Congress act by Dec. 8, said Linda Nablo, deputy director of DMAS, which runs Medicaid in Virginia. At this point, its going to be a week-by-week, day-by-day judgment call, still knowing we need to give families a lot of notice because we are still saying we cant cover any services after Jan. 31.

But Nablo also wants to avoid unnecessarily scaring or confusing families. If a letter goes out too late, it could arrive around the holidays and be lost or ignored. If it goes out too soon and Congress does act within the next few weeks, families may get the first letter saying the program is ending, but not the second saying it is continuing.

And what does that do in terms of shaking their confidence in this program and government in general? Nablo said. Its an ugly scenario. Its an unnecessarily complicated, depressing scenario for families and quite honestly for state workers as well.

So now the state is balancing trying to avoid those scenarios, while also keeping in mind that families need enough time to act.

Margaret Nimmo Holland, executive director of the advocacy group Voices for Virginias Children, said confusion will almost certainly abound if the state has to send out multiple letters to families.

If they got the first letter but not the second letter, it could lead them to not seek out needed health care for their kids, she said.

CHIP has existed for 20 years and historically enjoyed bipartisan support. Each state uses its CHIP funding differently. Virginia uses some for FAMIS, and some for children covered through Medicaid, but the state will have to continue paying for the latter group regardless of whether or not it gets CHIP funding.

Unfortunately, I think this is an indication of where things are in this country, that were so polarized that we could let something like childrens health insurance get held up, something that both sides of the aisle agree on, Nimmo Holland said. One thing that it tells us is that you cant take anything for granted.

The best possible scenario, Nablo said, is for Congress to just re-fund CHIP so her department can avoid sending letters at all.

Federal lawmakers first deadline to re-authorize funds for the program was Sept. 30. Then the rumor was that Congress would do something in October, then after Thanksgiving.

Despite all those missed deadlines, though, the state and advocates still hope, perhaps with increasing desperation, that Congress will do something  if only because the alternative is too distressing.

This shouldnt be happening, Nablo said. Every single senator Ive met, and every single representative in Congress will tell you they support CHIP. Theyll even quote the numbers of how many kids in their states are covered. And here we sit, almost 60 days past the deadline.

There are days when my concern and worry turn into anger.

If Congress fails yet again, thousands of Virginia families will receive letters just before the holidays telling them that the new year will bring with it an end to their childrens health insurance coverage and a beginning to a slew of worries  worries the Hassmer family narrowly avoided earlier this year.

The Hassmers are a pretty typical American family. They rely solely on David Hassmers income because their 5-year-old son, Blake, was born with so many medical complications that Kim Hassmer stays home with him.

During their gap in coverage, they needed insurance for just Wesley and their 1-year-old daughter, Molly. Blake already had a Medicaid waiver, so they didnt have to worry about him going without coverage.

Its a huge deal to say, FAMIS is going away, Kim Hassmer said. Its another thing to say, this is my son, Wesley, he has a broken arm and if you take FAMIS away, his arm is going to be crooked.

Its just very sad, she continued. I wish it was easier. I wish it was easier for families to get the care they need.
News / National

by Staff reporter

A FORMER congregant with the Johanne Masowe weChishanu Nyenyedzi Nomwe has been reported to police after allegedly pointing a gun at the sect members at a shrine in Budiriro 4.Innocent Muguvhe and Owen Nhedziwe lodged a complaint with the police against Clifford Chimusoro, Muchineripi Utete and Taurai Munyika at Budiriro police station under RRB3393/179.Muguvhe and Nhedziwe told police that Chimusoro is the one who pointed the gun at them while the other two accomplices were threatening to beat them if they did not comply with their orders.Chimusoro is believed to have approached the duo ordering them to vacate the land they are using for prayer citing that the land is meant for residential stands."I told Chimusoro to approach Harare City Council because we got that land as land for the church and not for residential stands. I do not know what got into his mind because he has been our member for a long time."He tried to kidnap us because he was forcefully ordering us to get in the car but we refused," said Nhedziwe.The church leader, Hebert Senda, known as Madzibaba Enock condemned what he termed "an act of terror on holy ground"."This is an act of terror on holy ground. We go to church to pray and not to point guns at congregants because it is not a war zone."It will not bear fruit for people to employ such tactics when there are people seeking the face of the Lord at the shrine. There should be other alternatives people should use when they have grievances not to employ terror," said Madzibaba Enock.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 4, 2017) - Bayhorse Silver Inc. (TSXV: BHS) ("Bayhorse" or the "Company") is pleased to report that on November 30, 2017, Steinert US commissioning personnel handed over the KSS100 X-Ray Transmissive "Ore-Sorter" to Bayhorse CEO, Graeme O'Neill, in a fully operational state at the Bayhorse Silver Mine, Oregon, USA.

Before handing over the Ore-Sorter to Bayhorse, Steinert US personnel conducted their standard "on-site" comprehensive pre-commissioning tests. The final step was installing the three ore-sorting algorithms that were developed from Bayhorse mineralized material shipped to the Steinert US test facility at Walton, Kentucky, USA in May of this year. (See NR BHS2017-14)









Figure 1: Bayhorse Ore-Sorter and Steinert US technical commissioning personnel with Bayhorse CEO Graeme O'Neill and Mine operating personnel.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5015/30969_a1512361746245_74.jpg

Bayhorse CEO Graeme O'Neill comments "Commissioning the KSS 100 Ore-Sorter, with state- of- the -art sensing and sorting technology, concludes a major milestone by installing cutting-edge technology to separate mineralized from non-mineralized material at the Bayhorse Silver Mine." "The Ore-Sorter is completely automatic, with sorting operations and performance monitored remotely by both Steinert and the Company. Steinert can change the operational characteristics and sorting algorithms of the Ore-Sorter at their US operations center, without ever needing to do a site visit."

Levi Duncan, Bayhorse Operations Manager, along with his two highly experienced mining teams from Idaho's Silver Valley, led by Bayhorse Mine Supervisors, Josh Haynes and Jon Farrell, played a significant role in achieving this momentous occasion.

Upgrading the 1,300 tonnes of stockpiled silver mineralized oxide and sulphide material, from underground development conducted concurrent with the Ore-Sorter installation, will continue through to January, 2018. The Bayhorse Silver Mine operates on a 7 day and week schedule.

The first mineralized material to be processed through the Ore-Sorter is from the Sunshine Zone in the upper level, where grab samples from blasted mined rounds assayed as shown in the following table: (previously disclosed in the Company's news release BHS2017-17).

Sample Type

Au Oz/t

Ag Oz/t

Ag g/t Grab, blasted round <.001 0.80 24.88 Grab blasted round 0.001 2.70 83.98 Grab blasted round 0.005 62.50 1,943.96 Grab blasted round <.001 0.50 15.55 Grab blasted round 0.006 69.60 2,164.80 Grab blasted round 0.001 14.75 458.78 Grab blasted round 0.001 17.90 556.75 Grab blasted round 0.004 52.78 1,641.64 Select blasted rock 0.003 68.76 2,138.67 Select blasted rock <.001 4.33 134.68 Grab, 46' into drift 0.001 23.55 732.49 Grab, 52' into drift 0.002 61.12 1,901.04 Grab, 61' into drift 0.002 35.56 1,106.04 Grab 68' into drift <.001 5.72 177.91 Chip 76'- 18" across vein 0.003 49.58 1,542.11 Chip 80' - 18" across vein 0.001 2.70 83.98 Chip 85' - 24" across vein 0.004 83.50 2,597.13 Select - Big Dog Zone 0.005 111.85 3,478.92

Grab/select samples are selected samples and are not representative of the mineralization hosted on the property.

Dr. Bill Willoughby, the Company's mining engineer, supervised the underground development, including 530 feet of new workings into unexplored areas of the Mine, that intersected new mineralized zones. A stockpile of 1,300 tonnes of mineralized oxide and sulphide development material, both of which the Ore-Sorter readily sorts, was derived from both the upper level workings and the two new mineralized zones in the intermediate level.

The Company advises it is not basing any decision to produce on a feasibility study of mineral reserves demonstrating economic and technical viability and also advises there is increased uncertainty and specific economic and technical risks of failure associated with any production decision.

This News Release has been prepared on behalf of the Bayhorse Silver Inc. Board of Directors, which accepts full responsibility for its contents. Dr. Clay Conway, P.Geol., a Qualified Person and Director of Bayhorse has prepared, supervised the preparation of, or approved the technical content of this press release.

On Behalf of the Board.

Graeme O'Neill, CEO

604-684-3394

Bayhorse Silver Inc. has earned an 80% interest in the historic Bayhorse Silver Mine, Oregon, USA, through current underground development , and construction of concentrating facilities.

Bayhorse is also earning a 75% interest in the Bridging the Gap Project, consisting of past producing historic Crown Point, Silver King, Ranger, Wyoming, Curlew, and Blackhawk silver/lead/zinc mines of ASARCO in Idaho's Silver Valley.

The Company has an experienced management and technical team with extensive exploration and mining expertise.

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.
Prior to last months elections, no polling had been done on Maines first-of-its-kind ballot initiative to expand Medicaid. Considering how controversial the health-care debate in Congress has been all year and the fact that the state elected a Republican governor, health policy experts were expecting a nailbiter.But to their pleasant surprise, the vote was quickly called in their favor. Sixty percent of Maine voters chose to expand Medicaid, which is one of the key provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare. That means more low-income people in Maine should soon be eligible for Medicaid, the government-run health insurance program. (The governor, however, has vowed to implement it only under certain conditions.)The victory in Maine has re-energized Obamacare advocates hoping to replicate that success in other states.A 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling made Medicaid expansion optional for states. Since then, 33 have expanded. The holdout states are largely run by Republicans. In many cases, GOP governors support Medicaid expansion but can't convince their GOP legislatures to approve it.In Maine's case, though, it was just the opposite: Gov. Paul LePage vetoed five expansion bills passed by the legislature over the course of five years.In Nebraska, state Sen. Adam Morfeld, a Democrat, said he plans on pushing a Medicaid expansion bill that didnt get a vote this year again in 2018."[Maine's vote] reshapes the debate. My district is one of the top five in the state where people fall in that coverage gap, so Im constantly hearing about the need for more affordable health care, says Morfeld.Morfeld said he's noticed his Republican colleagues warming to the idea, but even if the legislature were to pass something, the challenge would be getting GOP Gov. Pete Ricketts to sign off on it. Ricketts is opposed to Medicaid expansion , calling it a risky proposition for taxpayers ... because we cannot trust the federal governments long-term financial commitment to state programs.Under the ACA, the federal government pays 100 percent of the costs of expanding Medicaid and then gradually drops its contribution to 90 percent over the course of several years. The state then picks up the rest of the tab. In several of the bills introduced in Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare this year, though, that funding provision was removed or drastically reduced.Regardless, if Ricketts vetoes a Medicaid expansion bill, Morfeld says he will follow in Maine's steps and take the issue to the ballot box.At least three other states have ongoing attempts to place Medicaid expansion on the ballot.In Idaho, advocates filed paperwork in October to let voters weigh in on Medicaid expansion in November 2018. Idaho Attorney General Scott Keim says he has concerns about the language of the measure, primarily around costs to the state if the federal government stops paying for the program. If the AG allows the proposal to proceed, they'll need 48,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot.Advocates in Utah are also waiting on a decision from their state about whether they can start collecting signatures for a Medicaid expansion initiative. The federal government approved a waiver in November for Utah to expand Medicaid to 6,000 people who are either chronically homeless, in the criminal justice system or in need of substance abuse treatment. But state Sen. Brian Shiozawa, a Republican sponsoring the initiative, says it's time for the state to fully embrace Medicaid expansion."The ACA is the law of the land, whether we like it or not. If our tax dollars are going to D.C. anyway, let's get some of it back to help out the taxpayers," Shiozawa says. "I'm an emergency room doctor, so I know we have very real need."In Missouri, the fight to expand Medicaid is largely up to one man, and it's an uphill battle. Gary Peterson, a 76-year-old former truck driver, has to collect 100,000 signatures for his initiative to make the ballot. But even the state's Democratic Party hasn't taken a position on Peterson's efforts.Another state has a shot of expanding Medicaid soon -- but not through the popular vote.In Virginia, outgoing Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe tried to expand Medicaid for most of his four-year term. Standing in his way was the GOP-led legislature. But in the elections last month, Democrats gained more seats in the state House than they have in any single cycle since the 19th century. Depending on the final election results ( which have yet to be certified ), Democrats may flip control of the chamber over to them. Either way, Democrat Ralph Northam was elected governor and is committed to pushing Medicaid expansion.Back in Maine, the matter is being complicated by Gov. LePage, who has a history of not enacting voters' ballot decisions on issues ranging from marijuana to the minimum wage The ballot initiative was given a cut-and-dry timeline: The approved measure becomes law 45 days after the legislature reconvenes on Jan. 3. After that, the state Department of Health then has to file a plan with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services within 90 days and officially expand services in 180 days.But within days of the vote, LePage said he wouldn't implement Medicaid expansion unless the state legislature maps out how it will fund it. The state's Department of Health and Human Services estimates that expansion would cost the state $63 million for fiscal year 2019. To put that into perspective, total government spending in Maine totaled $8 billion in 2016.Medicaid expansion will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to give free health care to working-age, able-bodied adults, most of whom do not have dependents," says LePage Though LePage will likely try to stop or at least slow expansion, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle don't think he has the authority to do so."The results of [the] election are clear. It is now the job of the legislature to once again find a path forward," Maine Senate President Michael Thibodeau, a Republican who is also running for governor, told It remains to be seen if the legislature will follow LePage's request to show how they'll fund it when they reconvene for regular session in January.LePage is also in his final year in office, limiting the amount of time he has to win a legal fight. Still, advocates of Medicaid expansion are prepared for one. David Farmer, spokesperson for Mainers for Health Care, which supported the ballot measure, says his organization will take LePage to court if he halts the implementation process."What the governor says he will do and what he can actually do are two different things," he says.
Nevada will receive $5.7 million in unspent funds for federal health care for low-income children, but the states entire congressional delegation urged House and Senate leaders Friday to quickly reauthorize the program that expired two months ago.The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services notified the state that it would receive the redistribution of unspent funds, which should allow Nevada to provide Childrens Health Insurance Program services through January.Nevada was expected to run out of CHIP funds around Dec. 15, prompting Gov. Brian Sandoval and the states bipartisan congressional delegation to urge quick action to reauthorize the program.In a joint letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Nevadas U.S. Sens. Dean Heller, a Republican, and Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, urged quick renewal of CHIP to provide children and families in Nevada the certainty they deserve.
All Kinds

Research Needed

CARRBORO, N.C.  On a sunny November afternoon in this quiet college community, a steady stream of customers walks through the doors of a local cafe called Oasis for a cup of an increasingly popular herbal beverage. The menu offers coffee, black tea, beer, wine and pastries, but nearly everyone opts for a $5 mug of kratom (pronounced KRAY-dum).A powder ground from the leaves of an indigenous Southeast Asian tree related to the coffee plant, kratom (Mitragyna speciosa) offers pain relief and mood enhancement, similar to prescription painkillers.Advocates say the substance, which does not depress the respiratory system and therefore presents little to no overdose risk, could help reduce the nations reliance on highly addictive and often deadly prescription painkillers. Some addiction experts also argue the plant could be used as an alternative to methadone, buprenorphine and Vivitrol in medication-assisted therapy for opioid addiction.Used for centuries to fight fatigue, pain and anxiety in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea and Thailand, kratom was rarely taken in the United States until recently.Now, with growing concerns about the dangers of prescription painkillers, an estimated 3 million to 5 million people are using kratom and reporting positive results, based on information from retailers. But worries that the unregulated plant product could be abused for its mild euphoric qualities and users could become addicted are spurring federal officials to issue public health warnings  and a handful of states and cities to impose bans.Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Tennessee, Vermont, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia have banned kratom, along with at least three cities  Denver, San Diego and Sarasota, Florida. Legislation was considered last year in at least six other states  Florida, Kentucky, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina.Animal studies have shown that kratom use may lead to addiction. But user surveys indicate that although the herb can be habit-forming, withdrawal symptoms are no worse than those encountered when quitting coffee, sugar or certain herbal supplements. Withdrawal symptoms, which typically last three to four days, include muscle aches, cravings, a runny nose, restlessness and mood swings.The Drug Enforcement Administration last year said it intended to classify the herbal supplement as an illegal Schedule 1 drug, along with heroin, LSD and marijuana. But after public demonstrations, letters from Congress and a petition with more than 142,000 signatures, the agency put the proposal on hold.Last month, Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottlieb issued a public health warning, citing 36 deaths in which kratom was present, but not necessarily the cause. About 50,000 Americans die of drug overdoses each year. In addition, the FDA, which has been seizing imports of kratom at U.S. ports since 2013, stepped up import enforcement.The agency also cited a 10-fold increase in kratom-related calls to poison centers between 2010 and 2015  from 26 calls to 263, out of roughly 2.2 million calls a year. And Gottlieb warned about the unknown risks of using kratom to treat opioid addiction, saying he fears some kratom may have been laced with opioids, and that the FDA needs to conduct more study on the plants potential benefits.In response, the American Kratom Association, a Colorado-based advocacy and lobbying organization, issued its own analysis of FDA data on adverse drug events, calling the kratom numbers incredibly insignificant in the broader context of drug-related deaths and adverse reactions.At Oasis, no one seems concerned about the hubbub in Washington. Owner Robert Roskind says the controversy has only improved business by focusing attention on what he says is still a little-known plant with huge benefits and few drawbacks. Except for the rare upset stomach or lightheadedness, it has helped nearly everyone, he said. And its cheap. I have about 300 customers and most come here several times a week. Some buy take-home packages.With subdued lighting, soft music and mystical artwork, Oasis has a peaceful vibe. Customers are happy to talk about their reasons for taking kratom, and they vary widely.A group of University of North Carolina students from nearby Chapel Hill sit on floor pillows in a corner, reading and working on laptops. Kratom sharpens their focus when they need to study for an exam, one student said. Its like coffee without the jitters.A 27-year-old tattooed chef from Brooklyn said he started drinking kratom to relieve withdrawal symptoms after he decided to quit heroin on his own three months ago. A conservatively dressed 22-year-old fraternity brother said kratom has helped him stop binge drinking.A woman in her 40s, recovering from brain cancer therapy, says it relieves her anxiety and improves her sense of well-being. Two women who work with preschoolers say it lowers their stress level. And a 29-year-old construction worker says it keeps his fibromyalgia symptoms, including pain and fatigue, at bay so he can get up and work every day.Even among the diverse crowd here at Oasis, Bob Whyte, a well-dressed 80-year-old businessman from Chapel Hill stands out. A self-described straight-laced boy scout, he said hes been drinking kratom three times a day to relieve severe back pain from failed surgery.Id been taking tramadol and hydrocodone consistently for two years when I found out about kratom, he said. Whyte said his doctors didnt want him to keep taking the highly addictive prescription painkillers, and they had no objections when he told them he was switching to kratom.At first, Whyte said he was a little fearful about trying the plant-based medicine. Roskind gave him a kratom brownie and suggested he eat half of it at home.I picked a day when I wouldnt be driving and sat on the front porch and had half a brownie. I waited a half-hour and felt fine, so I had the other half. Thats when I had a little happy moment there on the porch, he said sheepishly.Since that July morning, Whyte said hes figured out what dose is best for him  enough to bring his pain down to a tolerable level without feeling drowsy. Now he says hes telling everyone he knows about kratom.Despite rave reviews from kratom users, most physicians and researchers argue that research using human clinical trials is needed to accurately determine the leaf powders potential harms and benefits. They also insist that oversight of commercial sales of the plant is needed to ensure consumers are getting high-quality, uncontaminated products.But scientists and other stakeholders differ about whether sales of the plant should be curtailed in the meantime.The American Society of Addiction Medicine argued in comments to the DEA last year that the whole botanical product, like the powder sold at Oasis, should be made illegal to prevent people with addictions from trying to use it to recover. Since three FDA-approved medications exist that have proven safe and effective, using kratom to treat opioid addiction presents an unnecessary risk for people with addictions, the group said.At the same time, they recommended that what appears to be the plants primary active ingredients, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, should remain legal so they can be researched for their pain relief and addiction treatment potential.Oliver Grundmann, an associate professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, has surveyed kratom users and found that very few report becoming addicted and most use it to treat chronic pain, mental health conditions and drug addiction.Im questioning whether we are doing any good by banning kratom, Grundmann said. If states and the federal government make kratom illegal, he said, it would not only slow the progress of research, but it would also leave many kratom users no choice but to switch back to painkillers or heroin.
News / National

by Staff reporter

PROPHETIC Healing and Deliverance ministries founder, Dr Prophet Walter Magaya was offered pieces of land to construct churches by the Angolan army general.Angola National Army Zi-Grante general Armando Jose received Prophet Magaya upon his arrival at Aeroporto Internacional 4 De Fevereiro Partidas and took him to a hotel where he thanked the man of cloth for changing lives of Angolan people fellowshipping with him.There was a stampede at the airport as people wrestled with Angolan police and army officers to touch Prophet Magaya's feet as a sign of receiving his blessing."We say Bem Vindo' Prophet Magaya for stepping your feet here in Angola may the showers of blessings be upon our people," said General Jose.The army general assigned Brigadier Jorge Mayer Faria to fly Prophet Magaya and his team to Huambo province in a military jet where he was shown 7000 hectares to construct church and 50 000 hectares for an agro-city where he can build a hospital, school and farm.Dr Prophet Magaya and his team experienced military touch reception with army officials that they jetted to the capital Kuito of Bie province.Prophet Magaya thanked Angola National Army for the reception they gave him and pronounced a blessing to PHD members urging them to be careful with people abusing social media to settle their personal vendetta.(image) "I thank Angola National Army for according me military status, we experienced the life of soldiers of Christ and police motorcade took us to the capital Luanda streets until we return," said Dr Prophet Magaya."Thank you Angola PHD members who attend our conferences and seminars in Harare, your welcome was great and I feel comforted."Remain blessed and focused and do be careful with those people who are after settling their personal vendetta by abusing social media."To our prayer partners, Yadah Connect and PHD members out there continue preaching peace and receive your healing," said Prophet Magaya.Among his missionary team who witnessed how Angolan army respected Prophet Magaya were his legal advisor Everson Chatambudza, local PHD coordinators and Yadah Connect team.Prophet Magaya recently received an honorary doctorate degree in entrepreneurship from a South Africa University, Unisa, and back home he was voted the most influential person Under 40.
Notices will be sent out later this month to the parents of 17,000 Connecticut children and teens covered by the federal Children's Health Insurance Program, warning them their coverage could end early next year if Congress doesn't act soon."Given the uncertainty of congressional action to extend the program, it is incumbent upon the state to warn those who could be potentially affected before they lose coverage," Gov. Dannel P. Malloy wrote in a letter to legislative leaders Friday.The program covers children from low- and moderate-income families who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid. A family of four in Connecticut can earn up to $79,458 and qualify for a version of CHIP with maximum monthly premiums of $50. Funding for CHIP expired on Sept. 30.Malloy said the Department of Social Services will send notices by mid-December warning parents that their HUSKY B coverage, as CHIP is referred to in Connecticut, may end on Jan. 31 if Congress does not vote to reauthorize funding.A second notice will be sent in late December or early January to let parents know if their children may qualify for Medicaid or a plan purchased through Access Health CT, the state's health insurance exchange."This will undoubtedly be disruptive and alarming to those receiving notices -- and then possibly losing coverage -- and we should all be prepared for the fallout," Malloy wrote.The state stands to lose $37 million in annual CHIP funding and an additional $40 million in extra federal funding for certain children covered under Medicaid if the program is not reauthorized.Other states have already notified parents that their coverage may be terminated and some states have had to request additional federal funding to keep their CHIP programs going.Republicans and Democrats in Congress both say they want to extend funding for CHIP, but the issue has gotten pushed aside by debates over health care and tax reform. A funding bill passed the House but was not taken up by the Senate.It's possible CHIP reauthorization could be included in an appropriations bill that Congress must pass soon to fund the government into 2018.
Governors

Statewide Elected Officials

State Legislators

Mayors and County Officials

When a Republican and Democrat from Washington state recently announced a new group called Washington Independents, they did something that in today's aggressively partisan age is positively radical: They seized the political center.The new group, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Brian Baird said, is "looking for candidates who will listen, have the courage and integrity to solve the tough issues, and who will put principle over party or special interests and people over partisanship."Baird and Chris Vance, a former head of the state's Republican Party, are far from alone.According to dozens of political observers across the country, there are a handful of moderates at all levels of government who aren't just quietly pursing moderate policies but who actually wear the title proudly.Before we meet these moderates, it's important to note that we're only including politicians holding or seeking office and who are rising stars rather than long-entrenched incumbents. That's because it's too easy to eschew partisanship when you're not facing an imminent party primary, and for this discussion to be valid, it's important to demonstrate that their brand of politics has a future.Being a governor offers a better opportunity for pursuing a centrist approach than most elected positions. After all, governors have to run statewide and a hardline partisan approach often won't win over enough urban, suburban or rural voters.Governors also have to work with the opposite party in the state legislature to pass laws and in cities and counties on economic development. In many cases, this fosters moderate policies.Unsurprisingly, today's moderate governors can be found in states that generally lean toward the opposite party of their executive leader. In the blue states of Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont, voters have, respectively, elected RepublicansandCharlie Baker, for example, signed bills in November that require insurers to offer free birth control and ban bump stocks , which increase weapons' rate of fire. Hogan, meanwhile, signed a fracking ban and has pursued sick-leave legislation, though he vetoed a Democratic version he considered too far-reaching.Red states, meanwhile, have elected several Democratic governors, includingin Montana,in North Carolina andin Louisiana. Cooper's highest-profile accomplishment -- overturning the H.B. 2 "bathroom bill" -- ended up irritating both the left and the right."I happen to believe that Democrats in a large part of the country, but particularly across the South, would do much better if we fielded more candidates who were pro-Second Amendment and pro-life such as myself," Edwards told in September. "I happen to believe we have a superior message in many regards that will resonate with people across this region, but they won't hear it if you don't check a couple of boxes first. They won't hear the rest of your message."And almost by definition, the nation's sole independent governor, Alaska's, qualifies as a centrist.It's worth noting, however, that none of these politicians are necessarily a good fit for the term rising star. Few elected positions rank higher than governor, and the ones that do are difficult for moderates to attain.Winning a U.S. Senate election as a member of the state's minority party is a much heavier lift than winning the governorship. And running as a moderate in a party's primary for president? Fuhgeddaboutit.If governorships are the ideal place for moderates, then it should come as no surprise that several are running for the office.Take Kansas. Following a divisive two terms under Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, moderates in the state are flexing their muscles. The widespread unpopularity of Brownback's budget-busting tax cuts has shifted the power in the Republican Party ever so slightly back toward the center, as Democrats and moderate Republicans have sought with some success to stymie Brownback's initiatives.The GOP has three relatively moderate candidates in their large field for 2018: former legislatorsand, and state Rep.. If any of them manages to survive the primary, says Burdett Loomis, a University of Kansas political scientist, they would likely fare well in the general election.Democrats, for their part, have always had to be more moderate to win in the state. If a conservative wins the GOP primary, the Democrats should be able to make the race competitive with one of their candidates -- House Minority Leader, former Wichita Mayor, and former legislator and agriculture secretaryAnother state where moderates may be ascendant in 2018 is Colorado. There, independent voters will have their first chance ever to vote in partisan primaries, potentially pushing both parties toward the center.Floyd Ciruli, a Denver-based pollster, pointed to several moderate politicians running for governor next year who could benefit, including Democratic Lt. Gov.and Republican Attorney GeneralLynne, who has served as president of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Colorado, called herself the most "pragmatic" candidate in the race, "with more experience than any other candidate in managing millions of dollars of budgets, large organizations,"Coffman has a moderate record on social issues and has attended an LGBTQ pride event.Other candidates with moderate profiles who are expected to run for governor next year include Afghanistan War veteran and Democratic state Rep.in South Carolina, former Democratic U.S. Rep.in Florida, Republican surgeonin Oregon and former Tennessee economic development chiefIf a couple of these moderate gubernatorial candidates begin to gain traction during the 2018 election cycle, it may be a sign that centrism is demonstrating a surge in popular appeal.It's increasingly rare for members of one party to win statewide office in states dominated by the opposite party. Nevertheless, there's Mississippi Attorney GeneralThe Democrat withstood a tough Republican challenge in 2015 and may run for governor in 2019. If he does so, he would be the only Democrat with a prayer of winning.In Missouri -- a state that has turned heavily Republican in a relatively short period of time -- Democratwas appointed to the position of state auditor and plans to run for the office on her own in 2018. Despite Missouri's political drift, observers say she's taken a relatively nonpartisan approach and has a good shot at winning next year.The position is a bit of a launching pad: Three recent U.S. senators from Missouri previously held the state auditorship -- Claire McCaskill, John Ashcroft and Christopher Bond.On the Republican side, Utah Lt. Gov.has made headlines for criticizing President Trump, reaching out to gays and leading a bipartisan effort to address Utah's homelessness and opioid challenges. He is expected to run for governor in 2020.Given the hyperpartisan nature of state legislatures these days, it's tough to be a moderate. Still, there are a few in the most unlikely of places.In Texas, Republican state Rep.is "the most visible and vocal unabashed Republican moderate," says Rice University political scientist Mark P. Jones. She's the only abortion rights Republican in the Texas Legislature, and she's been endorsed by the state's leading LGBTQ advocacy group, Equality Texas."Unlike some of her moderate colleagues who are moderates in Austin but present themselves as hard-line conservatives back in their district, Davis both walks the moderate walk in Austin and talks the moderate talk when back home in Houston," Jones says.In California, Assemblymanis a leader among moderate, pro-business Democrats in the legislature. Previously, Daly served as mayor of Anaheim."To be effective at any level of government, you have to be able to work with people who are not going to agree with you on every issue," Daly told thein 2013.And in New Mexico, Democrat, a state representative, is one of a handful of moderates who are gaining influence in the legislature. A Democrat from the conservative eastern portion of New Mexico, Dodge served in the Navy and has been a teacher, principal and business owner. He has risen quickly in the chamber to become vice chairman of the influential House Appropriations Committee.Since cities and suburban counties have become increasingly Democratic, mayoral offices and county executive positions offer Republicans some of the best opportunities for pursuing centrist political careers. In other words, they can offer agendas that are pro-business but socially moderate.In deep red Oklahoma, Oklahoma City Mayoris considered relatively moderate."By Oklahoma standards, his views on issues like LGBTQ rights [have become] more progressive during his years as mayor," wrote Arnold Hamilton, editor of theCornett is widely considered a strong general election candidate as he runs for governor in 2018, but Hamilton noted that the last Oklahoma City mayor to run statewide didn't survive the 2004 GOP primary.In New York's Dutchess County, which narrowly supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016, voters have elected Republican, a former village mayor and former Assemblyman, as their county executive.Molinaro is "very steeped in how government works and is committed to good government while pursuing fiscally conservative and socially moderate policies," says Gerald Benjamin, a political scientist at SUNY-New Paltz.In staunchly Republican Utah, Salt Lake County Mayor, a Democrat, has branded himself as a moderate -- a necessity as he seeks to oust Republican U.S. Rep. Mia Love.While McAdams had backed a broad expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, he told that he collaborated with Republican state House Speaker Greg Hughes on a more politically manageable approach.Meanwhile, in Alabama,has been elected mayor of Tuscaloosa four times as a Democrat, focusing on economic development and the city's recovery from tornado devastation. He's running for governor in 2018.One of the surprise hotbeds of moderate Republican and Democratic mayors is Indiana. The highest-profile example is South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg , who ran unsuccessfully to lead the Democratic National Committee, billing himself as a fresh, midwestern voice. He's gay and a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan.The bench of moderate Indiana mayors is even deeper on the GOP side.is the mayor of Carmel, an Indianapolis suburb with a population of 86,000. He's pushed for green and pedestrian-oriented development. Another Republican mayor isof the neighboring and similarly sized suburb of Fishers; he's considered a pragmatic Republican. Elsewhere in the state, Republicanserves as mayor of Evansville and has taken a moderate approach.
Asked what advice he would give to Jeff Colyer when he takes over as governor of Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback answered with one word:"Pray."After a lengthy pause, he elaborated."The motto of the country is 'in God we trust,' right?" Brownback said. "Do we believe it, or not? I think leaders need to be people who pray and really do seek wisdom from above. And I just think that's a very important thing, to seek that and have the humility to do that."Brownback is awaiting Senate confirmation for his new role in government as the nation's international ambassador for religious freedom, a post he helped create as a U.S. senator and to which he's been nominated by President Trump.In a farewell address to Republican supporters at the Wichita Pachyderm Club, laced together with frequent religious references, Brownback announced that one of his last acts before he leaves office as governor will be to declare a statewide day of prayer and fasting for Kansas."You look at our great leaders of our nation, George Washington, Lincoln, my goodness, these guys were on their knees all the time," he said. And he hailed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, "a man of the cloth," for the religious underpinnings of the nation's civil rights movement."They started these rallies from the church," he said. "They were singing hymns before they'd go out and face the police and the dogs. Where does your strength come from? It comes from God."Brownback also praised Republicans in general and the Pachyderms in particular for making Kansas "the leading pro-life state" in the country.He likened the movement that began at the Summer of Mercy protests in Wichita to the anti-slavery activism in Kansas that was a key factor in launching the Civil War.He said the nation basically tolerated slavery until "people came out here and said 'I am not willing to tolerate it.'"Brownback said he has signed 19 bills restricting abortion and the movement has spread from Kansas across the country."We are a pro-life state and we are not going back," Brownback said. "You changed the nation by changing thoughts in people."Brownback declined to give specifics about what he plans to do as an ambassador, but did say he thinks the position will be "one of the most important portfolios around" because of the intersection between religious extremism and international terrorism and security."This issue hasn't been trending the right way" in the past 20 years, he said. "It's been trending the wrong way."Brownback said the message he hopes to convey to other countries is "If you want your country to grow and prosper, you need to protect your religious minorities."In terms of state politics, Brownback said he thinks Colyer, the lieutenant governor, will do "an outstanding job" when he takes over. But he also praised the numerous other candidates who will run against Colyer next year and gave a quick shout-out to candidate Wink Hartman, a Wichita businessman who was in the audience."I'll be really disappointed if you don't elect a pro-life governor," Brownback said.Although Brownback won't be in Kansas to see it through, he urged Wichitans to keep pushing for his proposal to start an independent private-sector medical school to train doctors of osteopathic medicine.Brownback said it's important not just to Wichita, but to the rural parts of the state. In contrast with the medical doctors trained at the University of Kansas, osteopathic physicians are more likely to go into general practice and become family physicians serving small towns."We've been chronically short of medical people practicing in rural areas since I've been in public life," Brownback said.While other Kansas communities are also competing to be the site for the osteopathic medical school, "I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be here," Brownback said.
The Texas House Administration Committee unanimously approved an updated sexual harassment policy Friday that gives examples of such harassment, offers guidance for internal and external complaint processes and lays out counseling information.The policy also requires sexual harassment training for all House members, employees and interns, though it's not enforceable for legislators.The move comes following media reports of sexual misconduct at the Capitol.The old policy stated that victims or witnesses could confront the offender and ask the person to stop. The new policy says that that isn't required, but it could stop future offensive behavior."If you do not want to confront the offender directly, or if you have talked with the offender and the behavior has not stopped, or if you believe your complaint has resulted in retaliation, you may pursue a sexual harassment complaint as described below," the policy states.The new policy offers multiple ways to report a complaint, including to the manager of the House Payroll/Personnel Department, the Civil Rights Division of the Texas Workforce Commission or the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.The updated policy also states that confidentiality will be upheld for victims and that witnesses and others working on the House side who learn of a victim's identity are expected to maintain that confidentiality. The policy also offers information on how to get counseling and explicitly prohibits retaliation for reporting someone accused of harassment. Acts of retaliation could be a violation of state or federal law, the policy states.The Daily Beast and The Texas Tribune last month detailed claims of sexual harassment and assault by male lawmakers and others at the Capitol. The reports mostly relied on anonymous sources.At the beginning of the panel's meeting Friday, House Administration Committee Chairman Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, called the updated policy "a major improvement."Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, said she hopes the updated policy makes it easier for victims to report their attackers. Howard said she has found that, as with sexual assaults on college campuses, "a lot of people do not report these incidents ... because they do not have confidence in the system."Geren said he will ask House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, to appoint a working group that would offer additional recommendations to further improve the guidelines before the 2019 legislative session.Straus thanked the committee and other House members who offered input on the policy change."This new policy provides a much clearer statement that sexual harassment will not be tolerated in the Texas House," he said in a statement to the American-Statesman. "It provides more specific guidance and protection for victims, it requires training of all members and employees, and it makes clear that any report of sexual harassment will be taken seriously. There is more work to do, and we will do it, but this is an important step."Employees can be fired for their offenses, and lawmakers could face sanctions by the full House, including expulsion, he said. Geren said he "absolutely" would not have a problem pursuing a fellow lawmaker accused of wrongdoing."None of us are above the law on this and shouldn't be," Geren said.Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, has asked that chamber's Administration Committee Chairwoman Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, to review sexual harassment policies.
Some see a renewed relationship between the states and the federal government. Some see Cabinet members who are engaged and willing to work with the states.Others aren't nearly as optimistic. And don't get them started on those tweets.With President Donald Trump now 11 months in office, we asked some Western governors to assess how he's doing so far _ the good and not-so-good.The 10 governors had come to Phoenix for a two-day meeting of the Western Governors Association. Dealing with wildfires and other disasters was a major focus, and the governors and their representatives shared ideas on how to prevent and combat wildfires. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, said of wildfires: "This is an ongoing tragedy that affects us all. ... It shows no partisan slant."As for Trump, the reviews, as expected, were mixed.We talked to seven of the 10 Western governors and asked them to share their biggest concern about the president, as well as what makes them optimistic. (California Gov. Jerry Brown did not attend the conference , but he's fiercely criticized Trump on health care, immigration and climate change, among other issues.)Here's what the governors had to say. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity:The use of social media by the administration and the difficulty that presents in knowing whether that is an indicator of policy positions or simply an indicator of an attitude at a given moment in time.The seemingly pretty wide-spread attitude among the Cabinet that they welcome and initiate communication on policy matters that affect us in the states.That is a hard question because you're asking me to prioritize a list. ... My biggest, probably largest concern, is the tweets, and you know the amount of energy and distraction that comes out of those tweets. I think it could dilute the authority of the office.I don't agree with all of his appointments, but he has hired a lot of talented people and I think our job as governors is to work with the Cabinet assembled and try and move this country forward. ... Almost all of the Cabinet he has picked are constructive.I think a kind of an isolationist beginning. Like, the whole "let's not do international trade and stay home." I think we actually need to increase international trade. It's a global economy, and we need to be interfacing with other countries around the world. It brings friendlier relationships and leads to peace.The fact there seems to be accessibility from the states and the roles that states play as equal partners with the federal government. ... I very much appreciate the fact that this administration seems to recognize and wants to hear from the states on whatever the issue might be. They say, "Let's see what the states have to say," before making a decision. I'm very encouraged about that. Part of that is because we have a vice president who is a former governor.Not much is getting done. There are a lot of pressing issues and not much is getting done. I'm not sure the dialogue we always hear is that helpful, either.That part is still to be written. We have not seen a lot coming out of Washington that's positive.Not knowing what kind of access we will have to his administration. That was a big question.I've been pleased with access we've had so far to the Cabinet. They've reached out to us and we've been very pleased with that.I would say the sustainability of momentum _ we get little spurts of momentum. We got taxes done. There's these fits and starts and stops with things. The administration needs to keep getting momentum.We at the state-level depend a lot on the stability of the stock market, the growth in the stock market ... we've seen that. I'm optimistic and pleased about that. I think there's also been a renewed Federalism. We're getting answers back out of Washington, D.C. ... we're not in suspense. We're hearing from them.We continue to look at the partnership between federal government and states and you know there are a lot of co-dependences for very important programs. ... So we look forward to working with the administration so we can serve the public.I think that we see movement in working together. For us, in Hawaii, the biggest public works project in the state is our public transit system and so certainly we look forward to working with the administration to complete that project.
Description

GIS - 04 December, 2017: Government is striving for an equitable society that promotes the inclusion of people with disabilities in society; gender equality and the rights of elders and the development of children. Our citizens must fight against indifference and discrimination so as to foster a culture of unity, fraternity and harmony that will in turn contribute to the stability and progress of the country. We must ensure that people with disabilities should always be given due attention and respect so that they fully participate in the society.

This statement was made yesterday by the Prime Minister, Minister of Home Affairs, External Communications and National Development Unit, and Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr. Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Moka.

He was speaking on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, commemorated on 01 December, in the presence of the Minister of Social Security, National Solidarity, and Environment and Sustainable Development, Mr Etienne Sinatambou and several Ministers as well as other eminent personalities.

The Prime Minister reiterated that Government is committed to provide adequate measures and facilities to enhance the quality of life of people with disabilities. He spoke of the Building Control (Accessibility and Gender Compliance in Buildings) Regulations. The proposal of the Disability Bill, aiming to protect the rights of persons with disabilities as well as eliminating discrimination against them is yet another measure that Government is working upon, added the Prime Minister.

As regards the promotion of equity in the education system, the Prime Minister highlighted the various scholarships that are being provided to encourage learners with disabilities to achieve higher education aspirations. He underscored that the increase in the grant-in-aid to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) running Special Education Needs schools and the coming up of a Special Education Needs Authority are also measures put in place to that effect.

Prime Minister Jugnauth lauded the talents and perseverance of persons with disabilities as well as the key role of NGOs in providing the necessary support to them. The achievements of Mauritians with disabilities, he underlined, have been remarkable in various fields even at international level. The Prime Minister referred to the examples of Jane Constance and Yaseen Edoo who have made Mauritius proud at national and international level. Mr Reynolds Permal is yet another source of inspiration for all people with disabilities to strive for excellence, he added.

For his part, the Minister of Social Security, National Solidarity, and Environment and Sustainable Development, Mr Etienne Sinatambou, called upon a change in attitudes and mentality vis a vis people with disabilities so that they are valorised and their status is recognised and acknowledged in the society.

On this occasion, a National Disability Skills Award Ceremony, rewarding the best employees with disability and the best recruiting employers was also held.

International Day of Disabled Persons

The International Day of Disabled Persons was proclaimed in 1992, by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 47/3 . It aims to promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development, and to increase awareness of the situation of persons with disabilities in every aspect of political, social, economic and cultural life.

The theme for this year is Transformation towards sustainable and resilient society for all.
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GIS  01 December, 2017: The Public Service Excellence Award (PSEA) 2016 has exceptionally two grand winners, namely: Sir Leckraz Teelock State Secondary School and La Tour Koenig Police station. Both institutions received a cash prize of Rs100 000 and a souvenir trophy at an award ceremony held yesterday at the Intercontinental Mauritius Resort in Balaclava.

In his speech, the Minister of Civil Service and Administrative Reforms, Mr Eddy Boissezon, pointed out that the PSEA is an important platform to steer the Civil service as a dynamic, customer-centric and performing institutions to reach excellence and new heights. It helps to instill a culture of excellence and innovation among Civil servants in the discharge of their duties by promoting a performance-based, responsive, customer-focused and accountable public service, he said.

He underscored the importance of uplifting the quality of public service in addition to developing a modern and sustainable Civil service, which according to him will act as an enabler and facilitator to spearhead the countrys development, in line with Government Vision 2030.

The Minister recalled that countries like Singapore have achieved new heights of success by attaining excellence in the public service and hence, the need for excellence should dictate all endeavours of public officers. He congratulated the participants for their laudable attempt to rise to the challenge, and termed them as figures of motivation and inspiration to other Civil servants.

For his part the Secretary for Public Service, Mr S.Kandasamy Pather, stated that the PSEA constitutes a platform where public bodies can rethink the way they engage in service-delivery by being more responsive to their customers, make optimum use of resources and come up with novel approaches.

He said that Civil servants should work with a robust sense of urgency and purpose and work to the expectations of the public.

The Public Service Excellence Award

The Public Service Excellence Award aims at recognising organisational excellence and reward Ministries/Departments or Divisions/Units that have adopted innovative and environmentally-friendly means to deal with daily challenges. The theme for this tenth edition was Excellence-Doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Fifty-eight entries across various departments and ministries were recorded for the year 2016.

Participants were evaluated by a panel of jury on the basis of five criteria, namely: strategic planning and objectives; customer centred delivery; leadership and team spirit; efficiency and effectiveness, and innovation and improvement.

PSEA Sub-Category Award

Runner-ups of the following sub-categories were each awarded a cash prize of Rs 50 000 and a trophy:

Customer-Centred Delivery Award - Civil Status Division

Leadership and Team Spirit Award- Flacq Haemodialysis Unit

Efficiency and Effectiveness Award- Main Control Room, Mauritius Fire and Rescue Service

Innovation and Improvement Award- Gastroenterology Department, SSRN Hospital
Uber has a documented habit of surveilling people it deems to be a potential threat, including employees, competitors, and its opponents in court. Sullivan was the one to order underlings to dig up dirt on the conservationist Stephen Meyer, who sued Uber for price fixing.

Sullivan operated autonomously and secretly. Sources also told Bloomberg that Sullivan had made himself more nimble by becoming Ubers deputy general counsel, which let him assert attorney-client privilege on his communications with colleagues and make his e-mails more difficult for a prosecutor to subpoena. Bloomberg wrote in October that Sullivans work is largely a mystery to the companys board.

Sullivan was in charge of a team formerly known as Competitive Intelligence or COIN, according to Bloomberg, which oversaw projects like Hell, which spied on Lyft drivers. Sullivan shut down Hell but kept other programs like it, and COIN was renamed to Marketplace Analytics and then again to Marketplace Integrity. The 57 million-person hack came to light because Ubers board hired a law firm to investigate Sullivans teams, including COIN.

On Tuesday, a former Uber employee alleged that Sullivan encouraged his teams to use ephemeral messaging apps in order to make sure we didnt create a paper trail that would come back to haunt the company in any potential criminal or civil litigation.

The first lesson is that the cover-up is always worse than the crime.

The second lesson is that data breaches are no longer a matter of if, but when.

The third lesson is that an independent perspective is essential.

A 'simple' hack strikes again

Uber failed its 'social responsibility'  "Organisations like Uber have a social responsibility not only to do their best to protect the data they control, but to be transparent with their users about the risks to their identity," says Jeremiah Grossman, chief of security strategy at SentinelOne. "How an organisation responds to a breach is what really separates the good from the bad."

Review the security of your cloud deployments.

Regarding disclosure: Honesty and forthrightness are key.

Your security and your brand are inextricably linked.

Customer Perception Will Impact Your Business.

Security Awareness Is Everyones Job.

Prompt Detection and Response Are Critical

Know applicable data breach notification laws in your jurisdiction. Have a plan in place to respond and recover from cyberincidents that ensures compliance with the law.

Dont Cover Up Data Breaches. The ramifications of a cover-up can be worse than the actual breach. This may seem like an obvious lesson, but the Uber case is full of twists and turns that should serve as warning signs to public- and private-sector executives. There is no doubt that using the word incident makes sense at first, and there are many incidents that are not breaches.

Ensure the appropriate ethical rules and guidelines are well-understood and communicated to all employees, including actions taken surrounding incidents  including senior management. Make sure all necessary employees are engaged in ongoing cybertraining. Also ensure that table-top exercise based are planned regularly, based upon on these policies and procedures.

What could be worse than a major data breach involving millions of records that occurs at a well-known global company affecting millions of personal records?Answer: a cover-up of the entire incident. Add in a payment to hackers to try to have the stolen data deleted, and call those payments a bug bounty . Add in delays in reporting the data breach to the appropriate authorities, and the scope of Ubers troubles becomes scary.On Nov. 29, Uber disclosed that 2.7 million people in the UK were affected by the security breach. The Guardian (UK) reported TheOutline.com reported more details of what was going on behind the scenes at Uber with their company leadership.The list of public- and private-sector organizations that are suing Uber is growing by the day. Dark Reading reported The Seattle Times reported that:While these investigations and lawsuits will likely take years to resolve, security industry experts have been quick to offer lessons learned from this situation. Here are a few of the more notable articles that I have seen on this Uber data breach topicwith the details available at the linked articles:Another good set of points comes from the Financial Times"But this latest scandal is not just bad for Uber. By handing those in favour of stricter privacy regulation a new stick with which to beat the tech companies, Ubers behaviour will have a negative impact on all digital service providers. Rightly so, some will argue. The distinction between the Silicon Valley tech companies and traditional industries has become increasingly blurred. ..."However, this article from law.com suggests that data breach cover-ups may be more common than many people think. Although there are data breach notification laws on the books in 48 U.S. states requiring companies to inform consumers about potential exposures of their personal information, companies dont exactly have great incentives to disclose a potential data breach. Disclosing data breaches tends to invite scrutiny from investors, open the door to litigation, and may not play well for a companys reputation.No company or government is exempt from the ramification of poor ethical behavior. The Uber name and brand reputation are suffering more because of the actions taken after the breach. Well-prepared companies and governments can avoid this extra brand damage.There is little doubt that this Uber data breach is one of the top cybersecurity stories in 2017. No, it doesnt rise to the level of the Equifax data breach, nor does it have nearly the same level of impacts to the global financial system or customers.Nevertheless, the Uber brand name has already been badly tarnished, and the long-term viability of the company is even being questioned by some. At a minimum, the fallout of this Uber data breach will be felt for years. These developments at such an innovative company are amazing, given that "ubering" has becoming a verb (like googling), which includes dramatically changing a business process using data and digital transformation Meanwhile, for the rest of us who are watching events unfold, a key question is whether Uber riders and drivers will lose trust in the company. Other lawsuits were revealed in the past week which allege that Uber used covert tactics to steal rival secrets No doubt, Uber should (and will) get a chance to tell their side to these stories in court, but customer trust is the ultimate key. As Uber plans to build out its "new transportation world" with a future that includes autonomous cars that can pick up and drop off our children virtually anywhere, will we trust them with our data?That is the (multi) billion-dollar question. And everyone is watching and taking detailed notes.
News / National

by Staff reporter

MYSTERY surrounds the circumstances leading to the fatal accident that claimed the life of prominent Harare lawyer, Edmore Jori in the early hours of Saturday.The accident is understood to have taken place near the Women's University in Mt Pleasant as he drove towards Greencroft.It is not clear whether Jori lost control of his ML and hit another car, crashed against a pole or he fell asleep under the influence of alcohol and lost control of the vehicle as the police report on the accident was not immediately available.All things being equal, Jori will be laid to rest in his rural home of Buhera today.He is survived by his wife and three children.At the time of his death, Jori was with Wintertons Legal Practitioners in the capital having joined them in 2002. He had been a partner since 2005 and headed law firm's Energy, Infrastructure and Natural Resources Department.Profiling Jori, Wintertons said he had:"developed a niche market, having handled numerous Power Generation, Transmission and related transactions in this increasingly competitive sector since the Government adopted the deliberate policy of opening up space for private players."His areas of specialisation included transactions relating to Mining, Infrastructure Development, Public-Private Sector Partnerships, Information, Communication and Technology, Corporate Mergers & Acquisitions, Banking, Bilateral and Syndicated Finance, together with Property transactions and complex commercial litigation.But while the legal fraternity, family and friends were plunged into mourning, the intrusive social media was awash with theories on what might have led to the fatal accident.All the theories featured Jori's lover and trendy Harare businesswoman, Michelle Kawome.H-Metro could not get hold of Michelle to give her side of her story as her phone was under the care of a close friend, Chipo.People who knew Jori as Michelle's lover were visiting her home to convey their condolence messages and offer moral support while the bulk of mourners were at his Greystone Park home from where his body left for Buhera.Understandably, Chipo said Michelle was not in a good place to do an interview as she was still grieving."I am sorry Michelle cannot talk to you about that issue. She is still grieving, Eddie is not even buried yet and makutoda kunyora nezvazvo."I know you are doing a job but don't you have heart to do a story whilst she is still grieving?"You can write whatever you want from social media, I don't think she will be able to talk to you," said Chipo.It also emerged that Michelle had been forced to deactivate her Facebook account on Saturday as people started posting messages incriminating her.THE THEORIES***What is agreed is that the two were at Pariah State before moving to Pabloz where award-winning South African house wheel-spinner, DJ Shimza was performing.***What is also agreed is that Michelle and Jori were using different cars.***What is also agreed is that as they left Pabloz, Michelle drove in front.THE POPULAR THEORYThis unconfirmed theory is popular on social media where everyone claims to have inside information even when overseas.It is said they had a misunderstanding in the nightclub and Michelle stormed out of the bar while Eddie followed her and this developed into a car chase leading to the fatal crash. Under this theory, Michelle was to blame for the tragic accident.SECOND THEORYJori and Michelle's relationship had become solid and he was providing funding for her clothing business and this enabled her to travel to places like China for stock. Jori took Michelle from dealer, Roland Muchegwa, who is popularly known in social circles as Uncle Roland. Michelle and Uncle Roland have two children together.This resulted in numerous clashes between Uncle Roland and Jori. At one stage, Jori was attacked with an empty beer bottle at a nightspot while the other clash ended up at Rotten Row courts. In between the clashes between the men, Uncle Roland would brutally attack Michelle over her move. Even at the time of Jori's death, Uncle Roland was still bitter, FOUR years after Michelle left him.It is understood that Uncle Roland's desire to ruin Michelle's love life actually solidified her affair with Jori who then did all he could to ensure that she was comfortable. The theory even claims that Jori's wife had accepted Michelle's presence in their life and as such, their man would even spend nights at Michelle's home.Consistent with this theory, it is claimed that Michelle and Jori were in good books as they left Borrowdale and had agreed to use their separate cars to her home. Michelle would use the rear-view mirror to see if Jori was following. She however, lost him near the Women University and made a U-turn only to be met by the tragic crash. Michelle was among the first people at the scene of the accident. This theory clears Michelle of causing the accident.THIRD THEORYWith Uncle Roland having been in Harare last week, there were those that wanted to implicate him in the accident suggesting that he had followed Jori. However, H-Metro can confirm that Uncle Roland is in South Africa where he went last week on Wednesday. He is now based there although he comes to Harare often.
It is not yet clear if Alfa Romeo's legendary 'four leaf clover' will be on the Sauber livery in 2018.

The Swiss team's sponsorship by the Italian luxury car brand was launched at the weekend, at an event attended by Chase Carey and Jean Todt.

Team owner Pascal Picci said fans can expect Sauber to do better next year.

"Definitely. Now we have everything together to be successful again."

However, when speaking with the Swiss newspaper Blick, he denied that the Alfa Romeo deal is similar to Sauber's former alliance with BMW.

"It's something entirely different," Picci insisted.

"At that time, BMW had the whole team. While Alfa is our title sponsor, the team remains independent."

He said Sauber was never offered for sale to Ferrari.

"Absolutely. We did not take over the team to get rid of it immediately," said Picci.

"After putting Sauber on a solid footing, the second step follows. We were looking for a partner interested in a long-term solution and an exciting history.

"Now we want to prove to the world that Sauber is back."

He said the deal was prompted by Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne.

"It is no secret that Mr Marchionne had this idea, and we really clicked after the first meeting."

But as the 2018 Sauber may not be a genuine Alfa Romeo, it is not decided if the car will feature the legendary four leaf clover logo.

"What you see on the car was in the hands of our new title sponsor," Picci said at the launch event.

"Mr Marchionne says that he is still undecided if it will be on the Sauber."

(GMM)
Sebastian Vettel has admitted he is not sure what to think about Robert Kubica's F1 comeback.

It is believed the Pole is now on the cusp of securing his return to the sport with Williams, seven years after almost severing his arm in a rallying crash.

"I think it's very tragic what happened back then," German Vettel told Sonntagsblick newspaper.

"He was regarded as a future champion. But I do not understand why he is pushing for a comeback now," he added.

"Why did he not do this before?" the Ferrari driver added.

"For him it would be a nice story, but on the other hand it would be unfortunate for younger drivers who would also like that cockpit," Vettel said.

Nico Hulkenberg agrees that Kubica's return would be a "huge story" for F1.

"In testing you can see that the pace is there," he told Sport1.

"But you cannot simulate the racing action of the first lap in Monaco or Singapore," Hulkenberg said.

"I hope he is able to race at the highest level, but we will only see that when he's in the car next year. I estimate the chances of his comeback at 50-50," the Renault driver added.

(GMM)
News / Press Release

by PDP

The decision by the current administration to deploy soldiers on vendors and commuters is a bad development which must not only be condemned but must stop forthwith.The past few weeks have been peaceful with no cat and mouse games being played in town owing to the suspension of high police presence.The people of Zimbabwe who marched on the 18th of November 2017, wished to have the absence of a police state as a permanent feature of our society, this is what opening a new chapter entails.In his speech at the Gathering of the Daily Maverick in South Africa delivered on the 23rd of November 2017, President Biti said "I hope ZANUPF does not misinterpret what happened on the historic march."In less than a fortnight the new administration has misinterpreted the dislike of a police state for a desire for a military state.They have misinterpreted the dislike for police brutality as a desire for military brutality.We stated then as we do now that after the resignation of Mugabe those who took over had two choices.The first choice is to maintain the status quo with those coming in just doing so for the purposes of filling the big shoes that have been left by President Mugabe.The deployment of soldiers on the vendors coupled with the appointment of questionable characters back in cabinet is a sign of the new administration's choice.The choice to maintain coercion, corruption and capture.That the status quo must continue with the same livers of power that have dominated our society for the past 37 years.The second option is to use the opportunity of the coup to lay a foundation of an irrevocable path to sustainability, of a stable, just, inclusive and democratic Zimbabwe in which all are free to pursue happiness. For the majority of Zimbabweans including vendors who marched against President Mugabe, this is the option they marched for.Zimbabweans who flanked the soldiers and their tanks during the march were expressing their search for a new contract with those in power and with power itself.Sadly the deployment of soldiers against the vendors today is a betrayal of that narrative.Power in democratic societies is based on persuasion as an instrument to rally the citizen behind you.The past 37 years have been dominated by tear gas, guns and baton sticks as instruments of persuasion. Sadly those who took over from President Mugabe today displayed that they are unwilling to change.Reality is that they even want to make it even scarier replacing crowd management responsibility from the police to the soldiers.It is a reproduction of the old order with different names, characters and form. The new administration has thrown away a window of opportunity too early into their tenure.They have thrown away a window of opportunity to restart, rethink and reconfigure, they have betrayed the goodwill expressed by Zimbabweans who felt that they deserve a chance.When the vendors marched against Mugabe they were giving an opportunity to whoever would succeed him the opportunity to create jobs and create a better working environment for small businesses to operate.It is a fundamental issue, vendors are not in the streets by choice anyone who has the people at heart must address the foundation not the symptoms.Everyone is agreed to the idea that the current vending arrangement is an eyesore but there are ways to reorganise.The government is full of people who are on foreign trips lessons could be learnt from other places as well.By the way President Mnangagwa there is a little town called Rosaria in Argentina with ten times the number of vendors than those in Harare you can send one of yours to get lessons from there, the PDP did so in March of 2017.The individual we sent is available to advise the government on how to organise vending in town, he will do this for free.If you do not change from the use of force, Zimbabweans will have no choice but to regroup, pick up the pieces and continue with the fight.Together Another Zimbabwe is PossiblePDP Communications
Tri Delta Transit in California has switched its entire fleet of transit buses from operating on petroleum diesel to using only Neste MY Renewable Diesel. Neste MY Renewable Diesel is a low-carbon fuel, produced from 100% renewable and sustainable raw materials. This drop-in fuel cuts greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80% and significantly reduces tailpipe emissions, all while enhancing fleet performance.

The company reports that complaints about engine smoke have been eliminated even from the older vehicles in the fleet.

Since changing fuels, we have received zero complaints from drivers regarding vehicle power and reliability, and there has been no change to routine maintenance. Kevin Moody, maintenance director at Tri Delta Transit

Moody added that none of the drivers were told of the switch to renewable diesel and none of them noticed any difference at all.

Tri Delta Transit provides more than 3,000,000 trips each year to a population of more than 250,000 residents in the 225 square miles of Eastern Contra Costa County, California. Tri Delta operates 14 local bus routes Monday  Friday, four local bus routes on weekends, door-to-door bus service for senior citizens and people with disabilities, and shuttle services to community events.
The WVU-led team will combine the capabilities of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and prior work with the University of Pittsburghs catalysis expertise and Shells industrial experience and success to advance the technology resulting in an integrated pilot test. Shell is providing a $1-million match for the scale-up activity.

Researchers at West Virginia University will lead a team that will investigate ways to convert stranded gas resources into value-added liquid products that could reduce the United States demand for crude oil by up to 20%.

The technologies developed in this project will utilize shale gas as feedstock to produce aromatics, C 2 -C 4 olefins and hydrogen, which are key chemical intermediates for polymers and specialty chemicals. The technologies for shale gas conversion are more cost effective and environmentally benign than those used in commercial processes based on petroleum or other conventional gas-to-liquid technologies.

The University of Pittsburgh will develop catalytic materials that will be integrated into the microwave reactor that is being designed and built by WVU and NETL. Shell will bring process and reactor modeling capability, engineering scale-up and commercial demonstration expertise to the project. John Hu, Statler Chair in Engineering for Natural Gas Utilization at WVU

Through the use of microwave plasma catalysis, which enables long-term energy storage and long-distance renewable energy delivery from remote, isolated and stranded locations, initial projections by Hu and his team shows that the potential impact of the technology could improve energy efficiency by about 63%, reduce capital expenditures by 51 percent and increase energy productivity.

Current indirect natural gas conversion to chemicals approaches using traditional product refining is capital intensive and less energy efficient compared the potential use of microwave catalysis that can increase product yields.

NETLs Dushyant Shekhawat, who helped develop the microwave approach, said that researchers are optimistic that in addition to on-site conversion, the process could also be applied to traditional large-scale natural gas conversion plants and eliminate some unit operations currently required to accomplish the same results. He noted that microwave upgrading of fossil fuels has been an active research area at NETL.

Shekhawat, along with NETL colleague, Dave Berry, will be responsible for process and microwave reactor scale-up. Joining Hu as co-principal investigators on the project are Debangsu Bhattacharyya and Hanjing Tian with the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering.

WVU has had a long and successful working relationship with the National Energy Technology Laboratory. With a four-year award from the Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment Manufacturing Institute (RAPID), that relationship will continue.

Late last year, WVU became a partner in RAPID, which focuses on using advanced manufacturing to develop breakthrough technologies to boost the productivity and efficiency of some of industrial processes by 20% in the next five years. The effort is overseen by the US Department of Energy in conjunction with the American Institute for Chemical Engineering.

A few weeks later, WVU was awarded a $1.25-million grant from the DOEs Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy to develop technologies for converting electrical energy from renewable resources into energy-dense carbon-neutral liquid fuelsthat is, fuels that do not increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. NETL is a partner on that award as well.
Opinion / Columnist

In his classical tale Animal Farm, George Orwell has the witty and sharp shooter, the pig Squealer, telling the other animals black is white today and the exact opposite tomorrow and the latter believe him. Orwell had modelled his book on real life under a totalitarian dictatorship. Zimbabwe is a totalitarian dictatorship, two weeks ago one dictator was forced to resign and a new one was sworn in a week later. President Mnangagwa has his own witty sharp-shooter in the name of Christopher Mutsvangwa, he has certain hit the ground running."We cannot have a country of people without any purpose because the economy is not providing them with opportunities which they want. The focus of the President, immediately, is how to revive this economy. That is where his attention is focused on," he told a Zanu PF Mashonaland West provincial coordinating committee meeting, according to State media.No doubt the State Media now have several teams follow Mutsvangwa everywhere he goes and give everything he says or does prime-time coverage. (I have send a copy of this article to both the Herald and Chronicle, knowing fully well the email will be deleted on receipt and trash emptied. The place is crawling with CIOs masquerading as journalists and they all live in constant fear of their colleagues telling the powers-that-be that they were working for regime change  a crime worse than high treason.)"The route which we have taken is the route of wealth, the route of money, prosperity and building a model African country, which no other African has ever done. The route of having an economy that grows at a rate of 10, 15, 20 per cent per annum for the next 10 to 20 years," said Mutsvangwa.This is just a repeat of what the deposed President Robert Mugabe and the rest of the Zanu PF leadership including Mutsvangwa and Mnangagwa had said soon after independence. "Gutsa ruzhinji!" (Mass prosperity!) the nation was told then. Today Zimbabwe is the poorest nation on earth with unemployment soaring to the nauseating height of 90%. 72.3% of our people are living on US$ 1.00 or less a day.So, instead of mass prosperity the nation got mass poverty.It is not that the people of Zimbabwe did not know the root cause of the country's economic decline, we did. It was the gross mismanagement and the rampant corruption brought about by the Zanu PF political patronage system spawned by Mugabe and the Zanu PF dictatorship. The political patronage system's primary task was to help Mugabe establish and retain the de facto one-party dictatorship at all cost. The economic decline was one of the costs but well worth the price, as far as Mugabe and his cronies were concerned.Zimbabwe's economic decline was caused by the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption in the first instance but these have been allowed to grow and spread to the life-threatening cancerous tumours they are total because for 37 years the nation could not do anything to end the mismanagement and corruption. Zanu PF rigged elections to stay in power and as long as the party remained in office the regime stop the dismantling of the patronage system that helped it to remain in power.For the last 20 years, the nation has turned its attention from dealing with the economic problems to address the political problem of the dictatorship itself. Until we found ways to stop Zanu PF rigging elections, there was no hope of the regime dismantling the system it has created to keep it in power. Implementing democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections has become the clarion call."Leave our President alone. Give him a chance. He means well for Zimbabwe and the people of Zimbabwe are solidly behind him. Please do not try him before he has even started. Don't condemn him before he has even started," pleaded the passionate Mutsvangwa."I am saying this because all the papers have started attacking the new President. He is being judged in 37 hours more than someone who has been in power for 37 years."If the truth be told Special Advisor Mutsvangwa, President Mnangagwa and 99.99% of his administration have been in the Zanu PF government and/or dictatorship for donkey years. Mnangagwa himself has been Mugabe's right hand man and chief enforcer for 37 years and it is therefore a nonsense this Mnangagwa administration to pretend it had nothing to do with the disastrous failures of the last 37 years. Worse still, this administration cannot disown the Zanu PF dictatorship but only as a cover for doing nothing to dismantle it.As Mutsvangwa himself readily admitted President Mnangagwa is focusing all his time and energy on the economy and has never ever said anything about implementing the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections. Just supposing Mnangagwa fails to deliver on his promise of "a model African country" just as Mugabe before him failed to deliver "gutsa ruzhinji"; with no guaranteed free, fair and credible elections; we will be stuck with him until another putsch force him at gun point to resign.President Mnangagwa can continue in his efforts to revive the economy, we all welcome that. But there is no excuse why he cannot implement the democratic reforms necessary for free and fair elections. We insist on that!Indeed, the economic measure to end mismanagement and corruption are best done by a regime with popular electoral mandate of the people and not by a regime whose political base is totally dependent on the men and women behind the mismanagement and corruption."Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else shall be added unto you," said Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first post independence president.What Nkrumah meant was simple and clear enough; only when the people have a meaningful political say can they force those in power to share out the economic wealth fairly. Before independence Mugabe and his cronies sort to wrestle political power from the white. But as soon as they were in power they have systematically usurped the ordinary people's political power to hold the regime to account.Zimbabweans are poor and back to where we started before independence fighting for a meaningful say in the governance of the country as the first step to securing our other political freedoms human and economic rights.Comrade Mutsvangwa, Mnangagwa and the rest in the Zanu PF dictatorship are doing their best to trick us into believing we do not need free and fair elections and that they have our best economic interests at heart. We should just accept their word for it and not demand to have a meaningful political say. After 37 years of ruinous misrule, we would be very foolish to fall for that nonsense ever again.We must seek political reforms, free and fair elections and the economic prosperity will follow.We demand the implementation of all the democratic reforms to ensure next year's elections are free and fair; this is not negotiable!
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley perfectly summed up Republican sentiment about giving big tax breaks to the wealthy in an interview with the Des Moines Register last week.

The paper reported:

"Grassley was adamant about the need for change, even if farmers and small business owners represent a tiny minority of estate tax payers. The reason, he said, is as much philosophical as practical.

"An estate tax effectively and unfairly taxes a persons earnings twice, he argued: first when they earn it and again when they die. And, he added, it penalizes savers without touching spenders.

'I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,' Grassley said, 'as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether its on booze or women or movies.'

I'll admit it. He's got me pegged.

I've been known to spend money at the ABC store, although not my last dollar. Sometimes, but not often enough, I buy my wife a gift. And I've gone to the movies, if not this year than probably last year. That's not cheap anymore, especially since North Carolina Republican put a tax on it to make up for giving breaks to corporations and the wealthy.

So, yes, I spend just about all my income and should not be rewarded with a tax cut.

The favors Grassley prefers should by all rights go to people like ... Grassley.

The Register story continued:

"The seven-term senator runs an operation in Butler County with his son and grandson and frequently describes himself as a farmer. When asked if his own family farm would be subject to the estate tax, Grassley initially said it would not.

"Then, after mulling it over a moment, he backtracked, noting that if he and his wife died on the same day the estate would be subject to the $5.5 million exemption rather than the $11 million exemption and likely would have to file an estate tax return."

Of course the tax bill is structured to give the greatest benefits to people exactly like those who wrote and voted for it: President Trump, millionaires and billionaires, big corporations and the special-interest groups whose lobbyists apparently were in on the drafting process and whose campaign donations help elect the compliant lawmakers.

It's only fair, because those who ought to get a tax cut are those who know how to spend and invest their money wisely  not on booze, women or movies like the rest of us.
The proposed grad student tax in the House version of the new tax bill has garnered a lot of headlines and for good reason: If a tax on grad student tuition waivers becomes law, a lot of people could wind up paying tax on what amounts to phantom income. And if grad students can't afford to attend college, universities say that will have devastating effects on their graduate programs.

Tuition waivers aren't currently taxed, and wouldn't be under the Senate version of the bill. Tuition waivers also aren't income like a paycheck. Instead, its an expense that a student doesnt have to pay. A Ph.D. student from Illinois likened it to "taxing a coupon."

Here are some other things to consider about this plan:

 A tuition waiver tax would hit grad students at expensive private universities harder than it will at state universities. Thats because private universities like Duke and Wake Forest charge higher tuition, which means the waivers are bigger  $40,000 or more in some cases.

 Best I can tell, the UNC schools typically (but not always) use tuition waivers to cover the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition. At UNCG, that spread is close to $14,000 per year; at UNC-Chapel Hill, it's a little over $17,000. The schools encourage grad students to qualify for N.C. residency so they don't need that waiver. If in-state tuition is waived as well, that's another $4,000 and $10,000 a year, depending on the school.

 In the UNC system, a tax on grad student tuition waivers would have a much bigger impact on the larger institutions. UNC-Chapel Hill (11,000) and N.C. State (9,000) have graduate student populations that are as large as some UNC schools. UNCG (3,500) and N.C. A&T (1,500) have smaller, but still significant, numbers of grad students.

 Grad students already are taxed on the below-cost-of-living stipends (usually in the $20,000 neighborhood) they get for teaching and doing research. (As one Ph.D. candidate noted in this Washington Post piece, universities use tuition waivers to blur the line between student and employee, an issue at the heart of the battle over unionizing grad students.) Most grad schools prohibit their students from holding a second job.

 A waiver tax wouldnt affect most grad students. According to the Council of Graduate Students, about a fourth of U.S. doctoral students and about 6 percent of masters students get tuition waivers.

 One part of the tuition waiver equation that doesn't get much attention is this one: Universities often let employees take classes for free, and some offer tuition breaks for employees' children. Under the House version of the tax bill, this perk would be taxable, too.

Have something to say about something you just read? Email me at john.newsom@greensboro.com.
Opinion / Columnist

Tinashe Eric Muzamhindo writes in his personal capacity as the Head of Southern Institute of Policy Analysis and Research  SIPAR TRUST, which is responsible for policy Analysis and Research. He is also an academic and researcher. He holds a BA, M.A from Solusi University, and he also holds a Masters of Development Studies from University of Lusaka, Zambia. He is currently enrolled at University of Kwazulu Natal University in South Africa (PHD in Development Studies). He can be contacted at southerninstitutepar@gmail.com

One thing I like about the new President is that he listened to the public outcry so people like us will continue providing checks and balance to the current affairs of this country.It is important for the civic society to play such a critical role on matters of arise. I think it is not good to criticize the President left, right and center we also need to look into things why he has done so.Let's give him 100 days in office then we can begin to talk. It's ideal for him to reshuffle his advisory council, if he wants to last with the POVO mentality I for see him having head on with people.My suggestion is let us give him time to work and we see progress as time goes on. We need to consider that he has not been a President before and I think he has simply started the journey to State House, so we expect maturity. I'm happy that on Saturday morning the President made some adjustments prior to his appointments.If you look at Youth ministry I think HE also should look into that, there is a serious outcry because Sithembiso Nyoni is over 70 years and what can she really address on our current generation? Even the women part, ED was supposed to have appointed someone who is more relevant to women and young people.If you check my previous articles you would find that the President is currently addressing some of the things I raised earlier on.What people want Mr President is a person who accommodates other people's views and be able to have a considerable plan, and give room for criticism. I think there are critical areas that need to be addressed urgently.We have to look into the youth ministry I would suggest that it is never late to give it to WadyaJena or Temba Mliswa both are members of the august house they can help on that one. I see Mayor Wadyajena to be a more relevant guy who can bring input to the new ministry which has been merged with women affairs.Sithembiso is old and she has some challenges and why would the President consider such a person on that big portfolio? Remember youths and women play a critical role in economic development.I guess the information ministry needs a more diplomatic person and a person who can be easily approached so that we can have sufficient relations with the international community.Our relations with the outside world during Mugabe's era of politics was hostile so it is high time the President should consider someone who can be more diplomatic, who understand the nature of our politics and be able to give good advice to the President.I don't think Mutsvangwa should get this one, this post can be given to George Charamba or Supa Mandiwanzira who did some bit of Journalism or even Mzembi with his experience in the tourism sector, and he can do better.We need people who can deliver, and who can market our country.I suggest Mzembi can go to information then Mutsvangwa can be moved to foreign Affairs or WAR Vets because there it is ideal for him.I think the President should also re-look into his advisory team we can also recommend who can come on board if he is comfortable; we also need young people who can play significant role in national building.There is too much old age in that cabinet.I think it was a positive move to make the cabinet more sound and leaner but I suggest HE can also trim the cabinet to 15 people to cut expenditure which is burdening the fiscus.We have external debts that need to be worked on, we have internal projects that have been stopped due to lack of funding, we have civil servants who are expecting bonuses by mid-December, and we also have new ministers who are expecting perks such as 3 vehicles, allowances, houses and VIP security facilities.My question is where we can get the money to fund such things when we have critical areas such as tourism, mining, agriculture and infrastructure development.We have the Harare- Chirundu road which was estimated at 1.2 billion and I think HE can review that project I don't think it is worthy that amount.We have Mupfumira who has just been appointed as the Minister of Tourism, my question is this is the same woman who was moved from different ministries because of under-performance, and do you expect her to do a better job? I suggest that the President should introduce the quarter system appraisal reporting for ministers, and all those ministers who fail to meet the requirements should be send packing.We need performance based ministers who should work on targets and whop can deliver best results.In the previous arrangement ministers used to sleep in parliament, and they used to withdraw excessive allowances and they used to get a lot of perks when majority are languishing in poverty.Unverified reports say that HE ED has reduced perks from 3 vehicles to 2 vehicles, whether this is true or not we applaud such a move to cut expenditure and promote re-direction of expenditure.
Dec. 4, 2016

Edgar Maddison Welch, 28, of Salisbury, N.C., fired several shots from a rifle inside Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C., pizzeria, as he attempted to investigate an online conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats were harboring child sex slaves at the restaurant. No one was hurt, and Welch surrendered to police. He later was sentenced to four years in prison. In what became known as Pizzagate, Welch said he was trying to self-investigate a conspiracy in a fake-news story that Hillary Clintons presidential campaign operated a sex ring out of the sites basement. He walked into the front door and pointed an assault rifle in the direction of a restaurant employee. The employee escaped, but Welch fired the rifle. He was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.
GREENSBORO  A Chapel Hill man has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for defrauding the UNC Newman Center Catholic Student Parish.

Brian Lee Cansler, 27, was ordered in late November by U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Eagles to pay more than $171,000 in restitution, according to a news release from Acting U.S. Attorney Sandra J. Hairston, Middle District of North Carolina.

Cansler worked in various roles at the parish before becoming financial director there from September 2014 until his termination, according to the release. The parish ministers to both the student body and the town's community.

Hairston said Cansler used his position to defraud the parish. On two instances, he forged the signature of the serving pastor on checks made out to Cansler from the parish, according to the release. In addition, he fraudulently misused credit cards issued to the parish for official use. Cansler was authorized to use the cards for parish expenses, such as liturgical and office supplies.

From October 2014 to July 2016, Cansler made more than $146,000 in unauthorized purchases,the release said. These purchases included fine dining, clothing, computer products and travel.

Cansler also used the parish's credit cards for trips to London, Brussels, Disney World, and to Las Vegas for a Celine Dion concert.

In addition to the 57-month prison term and restitution, Cansler was sentenced to five years of supervised release.
As Republicans continue to sell the details of their tax bill, some are reaching for more colorful language to liven up complex policies that tend to put the average voter to sleep.

Case in point: over the weekend Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, hashed over the plan with his home state's Des Moines Register. Turning to the party's idea to do away with the estate tax, Grassley framed the current law as a hindrance to responsible saving.

"I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing," Grassley told the Register. "As opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze or women or movies."

The estate tax, often described by Republicans as the "death tax," is levied only on the very rich, individuals who pass on assets of more than $5.5 million, $11 million for married couples.

Grassley, a member of Senate Finance Committee responsible for writing the tax proposal, immediately was hit with criticism online over the comments.

The suggestion - that anyone not socking away their savings in the bank or investments must be profligately throwing their money away - played directly into the critique that Republicans are disconnected from the majority of working Americans.

"Darn straight, Sen. Grassley," former Hillary Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson wrote on Twitter. "[I]f we gave that money in middle class tax cuts, they'd just waste it on hookers and blow. right?"

The current tax on estates is 40 percent on an individual's wealth when they die, applying to assets valued above $5.5 million for an individual, $11 million for a couple. Republicans have long criticized the provision, referring to it as a "death tax."

Under the Senate tax planned passed early Saturday morning along partisan lines, the exemptions are both raised to $11 million per individual and $22 million per couple. The House version of the bill does the same but also axes the tax completely in 2024.

In Grassley's home state of Iowa, the estate tax has been particularly fraught with controversy. Republicans have often argued the 40 percent government tax creates a cost prohibitive situation for farmers hoping to pass their farms on to heirs.

"Death should not be a taxable event and families should not have to fear the Internal Revenue Service and more taxes making it more difficult and costly to pass on the farm or family business to the next generation," Rep. David Young, a Des Moines-area congressman, wrote on Friday in a newsletter to constituents.

But, according to the Des Moines Register, the actual numbers do not support that narrative. Citing 2016 data from the Internal Revenue Service, the paper determined 5,219 tax returns were impacted by the current estate tax. Only 682, or 13 percent, of the tax filers owned farm assets.

The paper also referenced a 2015 report from the Congressional Research Service noting only 65 farm estates in the U.S. annually are touched by the estate tax.

Grassley and other congressional Republicans have long maintained that even if farmers are not impacted by the tax directly, the planning involved is an additional strain.

"[M]any are forced into spending large sums of their hard-earned dollars on lawyers and accountants to avoid its impact instead of reinvesting in their business," he told the Register. "This means that while many don't end up paying the tax, it still has a negative effect on the economy."

Washington Post News Service (DC)
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Opinion / Columnist

As confirmed by the International Association of Genocide scholars, the 5th Brigade of the Zimbabwean National Army murdered some 20 000 Ndebele speaking people in Matabeleland and Midlands between 1983 and 1984 . Many innocent women and children , noncombatants and old people who had nothing to do with political views or may have been critics of ZANU PF were incinerated .Those massacres cast long shadows over our contemporary politics and will undoubtedly continue to unless and until something is done by a transformational administration managed by and through a combination of Political, Civil and Church Organizations.ZANU PF has never fully accepted responsibility for the unspeakable atrocities that they perpetrated against helpless innocent civilians. At their best, they could only call it " Moments of madness" . Whether it is the Former President R.G Mugabe, the present President E.D Mnangagwa, the late Cde E. Nkala or and any of their allies , too many to mention, the one thing that sticks out like a swollen thumb is that the last man standing should apologize to the affected region(s) . As if not enough, the new regime has granted the architect or the would have been orchestrator immunity from prosecution undoubtedly as a fig leaf . Apparently ,no one can stonewall that, It is a threadbare.That rapid depopulation of a sovereign state can not be looked at over a shoulder given its extreme degree. Indeed, moral and ethical considerations should always be taken into account. There are other factors that may make the cost of the apology prohibitive, for instance, compensation policies ,commemoration policies, and the generality of the official historical narrative of the country. However, the sitting President should still apologize for the psyche of the country going-forward. There is seemingly no better time for President Mnangagwa to polish his shoes off the historical tragedy . Procrastination and sheer hard -headedness will lead Zimbabwe nowhere .The cost of ignoring the damages will continue to sky-rocket. From a physiological perspective , people become persuaded by what they hear. Costs and benefits can not only be measured in Zimbabwean bond dollars , they can moreover be measured in moral and emotional terms . If the Government fully comprehends the depths of depravity to which some of the families gave into during the time then apologizing would be as easy as cutting butter with a hot knife.Until ZANU PF or its government , categorically and collectively takes responsibility for its abominable acts in 1983/84 and apologize as a Party or on behalf of , for their misdeeds ,the people of Matabeleland and Midlands will never forgive ZANU PF leadership for the past or let alone trust them in the future. Without a clear and unequivocal apology, there will be no forgiveness and trust . The President thus should humble himself and kneel down before the victims' families and apologize , unless if he thinks they never committed a humanity crime, then in that case he surely has the memory span of a fly . It's about time that ZANU PF admitted on a government and national level the terrible torture and abuse meted out to Matabeleland / Midlands .In my opinion, the longer they take to apologize will be a great exhibition of that they are not sorry . How can victims forgive if the perpetrators have shown no true remorse . Until the President finds it in himself to apologize, the whole regime change frenzy is a stillbirth . The ball is on the state house side of the court . His Excellency has the "carte blanche " .There is a saying that goes, " The Sins of the father, Son must pay" . I strongly believe Mnangagwa is no exception in as far as his involvement in the Gukurahundi is concerned . As a Zimbabwean, I feel the excruciating pain of Mothers, Sisters , Uncles ,Fathers and Grandparents that were routinely targeted during the Gukurahundi era. The majority of younger Zimbabweans further afield do not even know what atrocities were committed against fellow Zimbabweans as the history books are doctored to show a different story. The younger generation must be shown what their elders have gone through before forgiving can start.Nevertheless, until President Mnangagwa issues a formal apology and formally educates the Citizens in Matabeleland and Midlands on his role in the atrocities and not merely meaningless diplomatic words of sympathy and regret, the wounds can not begin to heal . Until then the people of Matabeleland / Midlands will continue to turn their backs on him .Matthew Dube ( Zimbabwean Citizen )
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It was a footnote likely soon forgotten in the storied lore of the YMCA, after a pair of men were caught in early November trespassing in the former Norwalk YMCA building downtown  as they told it to police, pursuing a hobby photographing abandoned buildings.

If the picture has been slow to develop on the West Avenue buildings second life, it may come into better focus in short order as business booms in South Norwalk and downtown.

Five years ago last week, the Norwalk YMCA shut its doors at 370 West Ave., with revenue from some 3,000 members unable to support the cost of running the 58,000-square-foot edifice that this year marked 90 years since the laying of its cornerstone. The Norwalk YMCA organization now shares a main facility with the Wilton YMCA on Danbury Road in Wilton, while continuing to offer some programs in Norwalk including in a leased gymnastics space on Main Avenue.

If not abandoning its mission, the Norwalk YMCA left behind its historic, four-story West Avenue home which remains empty to this day, on a plot totaling less than 2 acres. After Norwalk Hospital spent $4.6 million in March 2013 to acquire the main YMCA building along with smaller outbuildings, the hospital has yet to put the property to use.

The Norwalk YMCA building has idled even as West Avenue has blossomed with the construction of Belpointe Capitals Waypointe development, which to date has comprised four mammoth residential buildings with site preparation under way for a fifth dubbed The Pinnacle.

And going vertical just a few blocks south is the SoNo Collection mall, which when opening in the fall of 2019 is expected to serve as a magnet for shoppers from throughout the region, with many local establishments expected to benefit from the influx of visitors.

Focal point

Is there any better-situated piece of unused commercial real estate in Norwalk today than the Norwalk YMCA building? Located just off the South Norwalk exit of Interstate 95 southbound, the building is across the street from the Stepping Stones Museum for Children and Lockwood Mathews Mansion Museum.

If the block has refreshed appeal entering 2018 given all the nearby activity, its locale has value as well for Norwalk Hospitals central mission of providing patient care, with its main campus just opposite the elevated Route 7 connector. The past few years under its Danbury-based parent Western Connecticut Health Network, Norwalk Hospital has been working to expand the services of its physician affiliates to other commercial office properties in Norwalk and surrounding towns.

WCHN did not provide an immediate update on whether it plans to push ahead with a conversion of the Norwalk YMCA property for medical use, and whether it has contemplated cashing out of the property in favor of continuing to use other nearby commercial space for its needs.

The city of Norwalk lists any replacement cost of the building at $6 million, with the land holding additional intrinsic value. On the LoopNet commercial real estate website, only one other property is listed for sale with value as a development parcel in an automotive center adjacent to Waypointe.

I am aware that the hospital has undertaken some preliminary planning work regarding the reuse of the former YMCA site, but no development plans have been formally filed with (the city of Norwalk) for approval, said Tim Sheehan, executive director of the Norwalk Redevelopment Authority, in an email response to a Hearst Connecticut Media query. There remains significant private development interest in that property and others in close proximity to either the Waypointe (project) or the SoNo Collection.

Precedent

Commercial developers in southwestern Connecticut have a history of snapping up YMCA facilities that have outlived the economic circumstances under which they were built. In Stamford, RMS Construction transformed a former YMCA into Hotel Zero Degrees, later expanding the concept to Norwalk and Danbury.

And in Westport, where the towns former downtown YMCA held a comparatively dominant real estate parcel, principals with David Adam Realty and Charter Realty & Development did not hesitate to acquire the hybrid structure, creating Bedford Square with Anthropologie & Co. occupying a Tudor-design historic building shell. Williams-Sonoma and other retailers were quick to to snap up available space in new storefronts.

Now the biggest retail development of them all is under way in South Norwalk, with Sheehan expecting all property owners to benefit. The question is how many will capitalize on any escalating values for their land.

The SoNo Collection as a fully built, sizable, high-end retail development should positively impact the surrounding property valuations, beyond the vacant raw land that the project is now being built on, Sheehan said.

Robert Koch contributed to this report. Includes prior reporting by Leslie Lake.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
CVS Health wants to do much more than fill your prescription or jab your arm with an annual flu shot.

The drugstore chain is buying Hartford-based Aetna, the nations third-largest health insurer in order to push much deeper into customer care. The evolution wont happen overnight, but in time, shoppers may find more clinics in CVS stores and more health care they can receive through the network of nearly 10,000 locations the company has built.

The $69 billion deal was announced Sunday evening.

Aetna has between 5,500 and 6,000 employees in Connecticut, almost all connected with the head office in Hartford, though many of those people work from home. The total number has drifted down from about 7,000 in 2010, even as Aetnas national employment has gone up because of acquisitions.

CVS, with more than 10,000 pharmacy locations in the United States, has more than 50 pharmacies in southwestern Connecticut. A merger might be unlikely to affect those numbers since Aetna does not have retail locations and a main goal of the merger would be to connect health coverage to the public where the public shops.

It remains unclear how and whether Aetnas local employment will change if the merger happens as the companies propose. The announcement Sunday night did not give details or even substantial hints at that question and an Aetna spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment about it.

The administration will continue to monitor this merger as it develops and as details emerge to ensure that the best interests of consumers and Connecticut are protected, Kelly Donnelly, a spokeswoman for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, said in a written statement.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said he believes the merger gives Hartford a chance to participate rather than see a shrunken Aetna presence  and he said hes had some encouragement along those lines from the company.

I congratulate both Aetna and CVS Health, and look forward to working with the leadership of both companies as this merger moves forward, Bronin said in a written release. I think this deal could present an important opportunity for Hartford and for Connecticut to build a partnership with what would be the nations leading healthcare company, rooted right here in New England.

Bronin said he has been in touch with Aetna and has reached out to CVS in Rhode Island. We need to seize that opportunity, and that means working with tremendous urgency to offer a fiscally-stable, business friendly environment with strong, vibrant cities and high quality of life in all of our communities.

The mayor added Aetna executives  whom he declined to name  have assured me that the companys commitment to being part of a comprehensive, sustainable solution to Hartfords longstanding fiscal challenges remains in place.

Thats a reference to the capital citys brush with bankruptcy, which appears to have been averted at least for the time being through a state package that would include refinancing of the citys debt and additional state aid. As a taxpayer, Aetna could see relief through any form of municipal reorganization, in or out of bankruptcy.

Aetna joined with The Hartford and Travelers in pledging a $50 million fund over five years to help stabilize Hartford  but only as part of a comprehensive plan. The city is expected to draw on that as the state aid and refinancing unfold.

Connecticut, along with Wall Street, will closely watch statements by the companies Monday and beyond when they roll out details on possible savings. And Connecticut will pay close attention to the comments by Aetna CEO Mark T. Bertolini  who is known to not favor the companys home state.

In the July, 2015 Aetna-Humana deal, Bertolini pointedly assured Louisville, in person, that city, the home of Humana, would keep its local workforce of 12,000 intact. Bertolini made no such assurances in Connecticut, and hinted at possible workforce declines in the event of that merger  which was shot down by a federal judge who agreed with the U.S. Department of Justice in an antitrust case.

Two big differences this time around: First, the companies will plead with regulators that they have relatively little overlap, which could mean less savings wrung out of Aetnas Hartford base. And second, Bertolini is less in charge, as chief of the acquired company.

The corporate headquarters can be expected to see declines, but Aetna planned to move its headquarters to New York before the CVS deal happened. Regardless, the global headquarters functions in Hartford amount to a small number of people, as Aetna has top corporate executives around the nation.

Its unclear how much Aetna pays in state corporate earnings and computer services taxes  an issue the company raised with ire in June, 2015, along with General Electric, after the General Assembly raised business taxes. In increase in the state computing tax, Aetnas main objection, ended up not happening in part because of the companys lobbying.

But whatever Aetna pays directly in taxes, by the larger effect of a merger could be on the economy of metro Hartford overall, and on tax collections through personal taxes the Aetna employees pay.

The deal will push the drugstore chain more forcefully in a direction it has been heading for years, according to analysts on Wall Street. It already has about 1,100 clinics in its store network, and it has methodically expanded what they do. The clinics started off as a place to treat basic health care needs like sinus infections or strep throat.

Gradually, the company has added services like blood draws or monitoring of chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Expect that trend to continue, as the drugstore switches more from selling products in its stores to services that cant be bought online, where retailers face formidable competition from the likes of Amazon.

I think over time youre going to see less of that front-store retail and more health care services in their stores, said Jeff Jonas, a portfolio manager for Gabelli Funds who follows drugstores.

The mammoth acquisition pairs a company that runs more than 9,700 drugstores and 1,100 walk-in clinics with an insurer covering around 22 million people. CVS Health Corp. is also one of the nations biggest pharmacy benefit managers, processing more than a billion prescriptions a year for insurance companies, including Aetna.

Analysts say the combined company could add more clinics and expand in-store services to include eye care or maybe centers for hearing aids. That could gradually turn CVS Health a one-stop-shop for health care, a place where patients can get a hearing aid checked, then see a nurse practitioner and pick up prescriptions.

If you think about it, we actually dont have anything like that, Jefferies analyst Brian Tanquilut said recently.

Analysts say clinics arent especially profitable, but they are important because they draw people into the stores and help build deeper customer relationships. Thats crucial because drugstores are learning customers have less loyalty to them than was previously thought, Tanquilut said. He noted customers will fill their prescriptions wherever their coverage tells them to visit.

Im not going to leave my job just because they took CVS out of my network, he said.

The clinics have become an attractive option for customers in need of basic health care because they are usually open longer than the family physician, and a clinic visit can be $30 cheaper or more for someone who doesnt have insurance. But they have drawbacks. Family doctors say they know their patients better and can check on a patients broader health when she comes in for a visit, rather than dealing with just the one thing that brought that person in.

CVS isnt the only health care giant delving into clinical care. The deal will help it compete with others like UnitedHealth Group Inc. The nations largest health insurer also runs clinics and doctors offices. Like CVS, it also has one of the nations largest pharmacy benefit management businesses. PBMs manage prescription drug plans for insurers like Aetna and also large employers, among other clients.

CVS also is on the defensive with this deal. Locking up Aetna helps secure a large client that can send millions of customers to its stores. It also keeps Aetna from turning to Amazon, if the retail giant decides to expand into prescription drugs.

Investors have been worried about that prospect since reports about the possibility first appeared earlier this year. Amazon has not commented on the possibility.

Amazon is already hurting drugstores in some markets with a same-day delivery service that competes with the products stores like CVS sell in the front part of their stores, outside their pharmacies. CVS actually is starting its own same-day delivery service this month in New York.

CVS Health Corp. will pay about $207 in cash and stock for each share of Aetna Inc., a person with knowledge of the matter said Sunday. That represents a 29 percent premium to the price of Aetna shares on Oct. 25, the day before The Wall Street Journal first reported about the possibility of a deal.

The source said the boards of both companies have approved the deal.

But antitrust regulators still need to approve the deal, and that is not guaranteed.

The Justice Department said last month it is suing AT&T to stop its $85 billion purchase of Time Warner. Regulators also sued to stop the Aetnas approximately $34 billion purchase of rival Humana Inc.  a deal that fell apart earlier this year.

Aetna and Woonsocket, R.I.-based CVS both manage Medicare prescription drug coverage. Some of that business may have to be sold to address antitrust concerns. But otherwise, Leerink analyst David Larsen thinks a CVS-Aetna combination has decent odds of getting past regulators, in part because the businesses have little overlap.

We also believe that the Trump administration is more business-friendly, and regulators may view a CVS/(Aetna) combination as a way to continue to put pressure on manufacturers and drug prices, he said in a recent research note.

Associate Editor Dan Haar and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
The pizza may be gone, but the emphasis on Italian food and wine remains. Photo: Melissa Hom

Restaurateur-sommelier Joe Campanale and chef Erin Shambura, both late of LArtusi, had been searching earlier this year for the perfect Brooklyn location to open their own place. Then came the call from Francine Stephens, with the shocker that she and her husband, Andrew Feinberg, would be closing local landmark Frannys, and did they want the space?

Being longtime Frannys regulars and fans, they did, to put it mildly. And after hiring HOME Studios to redesign the premises with Venetian-plastered walls, a travertine-and-marble bar, and terrazzo-inlaid tables, they have transformed it into Fausto, a restaurant that celebrates (mostly) Italian wine and regional Italian food made with local, seasonal ingredients.

If that sounds familiar, bear in mind theres no pizza; instead, Shambura has put the wood-burning ovens to use for entrees like black sea bass with tomato-braised Tuscan kale. Pastas are housemade, seafood is East Coast and wild, and a new standing bar accommodates drinkers snacking on the kind of cicchetti Shambura savored in the bacari of the Veneto.

On the wine side, Campanale favors the organic, biodynamic, and light-to-medium-bodied, and has borrowed smart ideas from lists he admires: Most bottles are available by the half, too (extraction by Coravin helps with preservation), and markups on Champagnes and other big-ticket bottles will be modest enough to encourage regular consumption.

Heres a look at a few of Shamburas dishes and the refurbished space, which is slated to open this weekend.

Little Gem salad with Marcona almonds and sheeps-milk feta. Photo: Melissa Hom

Red-snapper ceviche with winter citrus and fennel. Photo: Melissa Hom

Arancini with quadrello di bufala, a water-buffalo cheese from Lombardy. Photo: Melissa Hom

Whole-wheat bigoli with duck ragu. Photo: Melissa Hom

Tortelloni with sweet potato and parsnip. Photo: Melissa Hom

Braised pork shank with white beans and gremolata. Photo: Melissa Hom

Black sea bass with tomato-braised Tuscan kale. Photo: Melissa Hom

Lemon ricotta cake. Photo: Melissa Hom

Postwar Italy was an inspiration for the swanky design. Photo: Melissa Hom

348 Flatbush Ave., nr. Eighth Ave., Park Slope; 917-909-1427

*A version of this article appears in the December 11, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.
The Aviarys Bloody Mary. Photo: Miachel Breton

Dont worry, most people abandon it halfway through, the impeccably mannered waitperson said with a practiced little bow. My guests and I were peering at Grant Achatzs towering Giant Crispy Pork Skin, a creation that, like the Redwoods or the Taj Mahal, still manages to look impressive in real life, no matter how many times youve scrolled absently past it on your Instagram feed. The great pork flap is pulled and twisted into giant rippling shapes during the deep-frying process at Achatzs new bar-restaurant the Aviary and then propped, like a great decorative palm frond, in a square glass vase. Its served with a cool, creamy mix of corn pudding spiced with chile oil and coriander, and although it tastes good, the real fun, aside from mindlessly filling your own Instagram feed, and the snapping, tree-bark sound the pork makes when you break it off, is the spectacle of the thing.

Achatz has long been famous for dreaming up these kinds of edible (and drinkable) conjuring tricks, of course, at his Chicago flagship, Alinea, and its sister operations Next, the Aviary, and the Office. But like a traveling carnival, or a slow-moving Old Masters art show, the new Aviary production, which opened not long ago in the skyscraper lobby of the Mandarin Oriental hotel above Columbus Circle, represents the first time jaded New Yorkers get to experience his particular vision for themselves. Like the original Aviary, this one is billed as a bar, although there are plenty of snacks to graze on besides Goliath-size pork rinds, and the only bar in sight is the one at the back of the room where troupes of mixologists, herbalogists, and ice aficionados concoct antically named libations (Wake and Bake, Heart of Stone), many of which are served bubbling in strange, medicinal glassware, billowing clouds of frozen liquid smoke.

The Aviary NYC. Photo: Jemma Hinkly/New York Magazine

New Yorkers pride themselves on being immune to this kind of trickery, of course, and the dreaded term molecular gastronomy has been out of fashion in this expedient, meat-and-potatoes town for years, if it was ever fashionable at all. So it pains me a little to admit that, after what remained of our mega-chicharron was whisked away, I enjoyed sipping the strange, mango-colored margarita creation paired with it, which featured two rust-colored ice cubes that released the essence of blood orange and poblano peppers into the drink as they melted. Another grizzled boozer at the table ordered the house version of that Mexican libation the michelada, which was touched, weirdly but not unpleasantly, with coriander, a smoky Japanese whiskey, and hints of soy. Whos pouring this kind of thing down at your local bar? he asked as he took one happy sip, then another. The answer is nobody.

Certainly nobody around town serves treacle-sweet rye-coffee-and-orange-vermouth concoctions hoisted to the table in an inflated plastic pillow filled with a smoky, everything-bagel perfume. Nobody serves gin-and-tonics reimagined to look like the contents of a gently defrosting green lava lamp (I have dim memories of enjoying mine), or deconstructed $38 Bloody Marys, the contents of which are laid out on a round glass tray (the highlight being a curled tapioca crisp flavored with Worcestershire). I like the novelty of this, but my critical faculties are now somewhat impaired, declared one of my addled guests, as our little magic show concluded with an homage to New Years in New York, called In the Rocks, which involved a tot of Champagne, followed by the breaking of a booze-filled ball of ice (containing a Scotch-and-green-Sichuan-pepper-spiked Old Fashioned) into the bottom of a frosty glass.

Chip and dip: This morsel of pig skin is no reflection of the actual serving size. Photo: Miachel Breton

These entertaining creations tend to be uniformly sweet, and they have a way of blending into each other, especially if you click one of the more pricey ticket options (eight courses for $215 being the priciest) on the online ticket site Tock. The bar-snack options follow an equally haphazard progression, although there were many things Id be happy to order again, including a kind of supercharged (and also weirdly sweet) version of the Japanese octopus street snack takoyaki and a single shrimp, seized in a delicately crunchy tempura batter, which we dipped into an aioli whipped with spicy togarashi powder. The lustrous, flower-decked pork-belly curry is a good match for the many fruity drinks on the list, and if you want a taste of what the shouting has been about at Alinea all these years, call for the famous soup-dumpling-style Black Truffle Explosion, which packs a layered, umami punch far beyond its delicate tablespoon size.

Black Truffle Explosion: umami by the spoonful. Photo: Miachel Breton

Not that this is the same thing as drinking (and dining) back in Achatzs Chicago headquarters, of course. The view from the top of the Mandarin has its pleasures, but the limitations in lighting, noise, and traffic flow make it feel a lot like youre experiencing these elaborate culinary tricks in, well, a hotel lobby. Regular guests of the hotel may also end up wishing that in terms of space and everyday access, the New York branch of Achatzs speakeasy bar the Office, which opened months ago in a much smaller, darkened space next door, was flipped with this endlessly running performance, especially if theyre looking for a place to relax over a beer, say, and a helping of Buffalo wings. For New Yorkers, however, its worth getting a ticket, even if the prices are a little extreme, and, like most magic shows, the tricks work best if you see them just once.

Rating: 2 stars

The Aviary NYC

80 Columbus Cr., at 60th St.; theaviarynyc.tocktix.com

Open: Lunch, dinner, and drinks daily.

Prices: Drinks, $12 to $38; small plates, $11 to $29.

Ideal Meal: Giant Crispy Pork Skin, tempura Hawaiian shrimp and/or pork-belly curry, Black Truffle Explosion. Instead of dessert, save your calories (and cash) for drinks like the Bloody Mary, Margarita-ish, and Heart of Stone.

Note: As always at the Mandarin, tables by the window are best. The Aviary will soon be open for breakfast.

Scratchpad: One star each for the best of the inventive food and drink and another for the Office next door. Minus a star for the prices and the space.

*This article appears in the December 11, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.
Opinion / Columnist

Clive Chiridza is a motivational speaker and social commentator who writes here in his personal capacity. He can be reached on chiridzac@gmail.com

Dear young women and men of Zimbabwe, I feel the urgency to communicate to you on this day, and through this letter on three things; the state of our country, the prospects for the future, and what each one of us must do today to better our destiny.Firstly, I commend all of you for the zeal you show each day for a better country. Every day, wherever I go, whenever I read your social media engagements, whenever I tune into the radio and TV- I see a generation which is passionate about their country! I also see young men and women who are tired and fed up of a country which does not work for them and a system which is disconnected from their daily realties.The statistics are clear and are on our side! The median age of Zimbabwe is 20. More than 60% of the people are below 30 years of age, and over 65% below 35 years of age. The average age of our newly appointed cabinet ministers is about 65 and the young people continue to be side-lined.Out of the many intelligent, young Zimbabweans with great potential, it is just one or two if any, who get appointed to become ministers- to represent this generation. Rather than demand for and take our place in shaping our country, the majority of us continue to beg for hand-outs from the minority- turning ourselves into subjects of patronage.This is a serious cause of concern but surprisingly many young people continue to live in some bit of comfort which has made them complacent. Some are luckier than the majority in this country as there are employed and often feel comfortable just because they can afford some basics of life, and have totally become depoliticized. The temporary comfort has blinded them to the bigger picture and to the problems of our country.In 1980 the colonialists handed over this country to our grandparents. As we are told, a working country was handed over to us. Newspapers of the time paint a picture of some kind of tropical paradise, of course with the nickname Bread basket of Africa'. One could travel from Harare Street to Fourth Street in a few minutes straight without meeting a pothole, and all traffic lights in cities were functional.Therefore, when our forefathers agitated for independence before and in 1980, their problem was not poor service delivery or a failed system. They were simply agitating for self-governance. They wanted to free themselves and their children from the indignity of being ruled over by the white man.'They understood that having good infrastructure, excellent service delivery and a functioning healthcare without political freedom and direct participation meant nothing. To them, it was important to have both economic development while at the same time exercising their God-given right to self-determination! They wanted a black man or woman on the steering wheel of the country because they thought our own shall not betray us, our own shall not enslave us and our own shall be accountable to us, therefore Independence Day was celebrated with pomp and flair.Youths! Our silence in the face of injustice is loud, our inaction is costly and many of us do not even vote! By so doing we do not only betray our generation and country, but the effects of a badly run country will soon catch up with us.We are that generation, the grandchildren of the independence generation and the grandparents of the future generations, we must within ourselves find solutions, since our leaders don't seem to care for the next generation but instead care for the next general-election. We are the country, we are the future, we are the change we badly need, we are the youngest population in the world, we stand a chance, we are the leaders of the future and the future is today and if we only come together we can change our destiny.Young people ended apartheid, young people marched against slavery, and yes, young people fought for Africa's independence. Therefore the struggle for a better country must involve all of us- men and women, young and old, from rural and urban areas, educated and not educated, all of us.We must build a country which works for everyone where all young persons are proud to be called Zimbabweans and are not politically marginalized in their own land. We should always remember that there are some generations in this country which have been bypassed- which have not put any meaningfull contribution to the development of this country.




Haiti - France : 2nd Edition of the Assises of the Franco-Haitian Municipal Cooperation





Organized by the National Federation of Mayors of Haiti (FENAMH) and Cites Unies France, the Federation of French territorial authorities engaged in decentralized cooperation, with the support of the Ministry of the Interior and Territorial Communities (MICT), the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) and the French Embassy in Haiti, the 2nd Edition of the Assises of Decentralized Franco-Haitian Cooperation will be held on 5 and 6 December 2017 in Port-au-Prince.



These Assises will bring together the mayors of Haiti, representatives of the Government and its main national and international partners and over a hundred members of the French communities of Metropolitan France and the Americas.



Space for dialogue and exchange on the main themes of cooperation between Haitian and French communities, these Assises will offer conferences, round tables and workshops on key topics of territorial development such as: education, regional planning, the environment and rural development, water and waste management, intercommunality, local taxation, participatory democracy, tourism and heritage, and cooperation and regional integration.



These Assises will also give rise to several field visits by the delegations of French communities to the territories of the Haitian communes with which they cooperate.



Download the Assizes Program : https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/programme_detaille.pdf



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Education : Towards a solution to the crisis at EFACAP of Petit-Goave ?





Friday, concerned about the resumption of classes at the School of Basic Education and Pedagogical Support Center (EFACAP) of Petit-Goave paralyzed for 3 months by the teachers' strike, a delegation of the Ministry of Education led by Pierrin Cherlvil, Deputy Director of the Department of the West, spoke for several hours with the teachers and members of the EFACAP Directorate.



During the meeting, many parents angry and hostile to some executives of the Direction were massed on the yard of the establishment by launching insults.



Concerned about the resumption of the courses, the Director Pierrin solicited from the teachers present, a truce until the Ministry of National Education, already touched by their file, brings a definitive solution to the problem of the arrears of salary and the regularization of the situation of some teachers. In addition, he wished that the courses are resumed from Monday, December 4.



The teachers intend to present themselves in the classrooms, however they pose certain conditions related to their demands... A break which could be of short duration...



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22429-haiti-petit-goave-deprived-of-class-students-demonstrate.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22840-haiti-petit-goave-act-of-vandalism-at-efacap.html



HL/ HaitiLibre / Guyto Mathieu (Correspondant Petit-Goave)






















Haiti - Economy : Comparison of Price at the pump Haiti versus DR





The Ministry of Economy and Finance informs that for the period from 18 to 24 November 2017 the Fuel Prices are always cheaper in Haiti than in the neighboring Republic, if the price difference between the two countries is reduced for the gasoline and kerosene, rising respectively from 71.83 gourdes and 31.78 gourdes (period from 11 to 17 November 2017) to 67.12 gourdes and 31.23 gourdes (period from 17 to 24 November 2017). On the other hand, the difference increased slightly for diesel because of the increase of the price of this product on the Dominican market; from 37.83 gourdes to 38.86 gourdes.



It should be noted the appreciation of the gourde in relation to the Dominican peso: 1.3006 gourdes for 1 pesos (period from 18 to 24 November) against 1.3102 gourdes for 1 pesos (period from 11 to 17 November).



Haiti - Dominican Republic (DR) Fuel Price Difference, period from 18 to 24 Nov 2017 :



Gazoline: 224.00 (HT) versus 291.12 in DR, 67.12 Gdes cheaper in Haiti

Diesel: 179.00 (HT) versus 218.86 in DR, 38.86 Gdes cheaper in Haiti

Kerosene: 173.00 (HT) versus 204.23 in DR, 31.23 Gdes cheaper in Haiti



https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/comparaison-produits-petroliers-18-24-novembre-2017.pdf



Obviously this kind of information that aims to demonstrate, that despite increases in fuel prices in Haiti, they remain lower than our neighbors, remains convincing. Indeed, the ministry forgets to specify that the increases in fuel prices in Haiti weigh much more heavily on the budget of Haitian citizens whose average income "per capita" is 5 times lower than that of the Dominicans...



HL/ TB/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Justice : The mayors of the Nippes engage in the fight against corruption





The ULCC determined to move forward in the fight against corruption and in its fight for the moralization of life and public action realized in the city of Miragoane the third exit of the training seminar and information executed for the benefit of mayors of the department of Nippes, around the theme "Towards the involvement of local elected representatives in the fight against corruption".



During these two days of symposium, various topics were discussed. The first day focused on the declaration of assets, prescribed legal which is, according to the remarks of Major David Basile, Director General of the Unit against the Corruption (ULCC), the first act of transparency of an elected. This intervention was followed by a workshop around the asset declaration form itself, including how to fill it out. He recalled that the ULCC had already organized a training for the benefit of two executives of the National Federation of Mayors of Haiti (FENAMH) to support mayors who wish it. The second day tackled the issues related to the legal and regulatory framework of local authorities as well as the local budget implementation modalities. The two speakers of the second day reviewed the law of 12 March 2014 in its preventive and repressive aspects.



Speaking at the closing ceremony on behalf of the Director General of the ULCC, his chief of staff, Major Francois-Marie Sandry Charles-Pierre, emphasized on the moral fundamentals that should guide mayors in the exercise of their responsibilities "You are the ones who, in your areas of expertise, are in a position to change things or make them change, in the right way, for trust, respect, esteem, prestige, honor. We are all people of honor. Be models of virtue in your respective communities, and say well, that all that you will do well in your communes, will be for the benefit of the realization of the general interest."



The President of AmaNippes, Mr. Wilnor Pierre, Mayor of Petit-Trou de Nippes, who spoke on behalf of his colleagues, invited them to work toward a common goal : the eradication of corruption in the communes. At the end of this seminar, the mayors of the Nippes, like their peers in the West and Artibonite, signed an ethical act against corruption. This document, conceived by the ULCC, is a personal commitment to the fight against corruption and a bias towards the moralization of life and public action. Through this act, drafted in 11 resolutions, the mayors of the Nippes made various resolutions consisting, among other things, of preventing and repressing corruption in their local administrations, rationalizing the management of local public resources and restoring the confidence of their communities in their respective administrations.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Opinion / Columnist

Most people have left their motherland with the hope of staying only for six months and then go back home. Those who travelled first never told other's the truth. They make every one believe that staying abroad is a bed of rose petals. at least if they say bed of roses you cannot blame them because roses prick, but the petals are soft. it is only when you arrive in the foreign land that you will realise that Home is best. A number of people have stayed on because they are ashamed to come back home without anything. The need to prove a point makes one stay longer but at a high price. A few days ago, ten years have passed since I started living in London, says Zebron Phiri a Zimbabwean migrant in the UK. The first time, a couple of years ago, I was here for a few hours as a tourist. The second time I came I was so sure I will never last six months, guess what I am here. I do not regret the move but the first years were tough and I lived like a slave a willing slave.Even before my Bachelors graduation in Zimbabwe I was searching for institutions in London in which I could do my masters and empower myself. I was not poor and was not an economic refugee. I came to better myself and enhance my capacity to compete in the global village. In general that was however more or less an excuse in order to be able to leave Zimbabwe maybe permanently. Zimbabwe was still good but the signs of economic meltdown were showing. Knowing that something out there was waiting for me, having found an institution for my internship, I couldn't just cancel everything. Apart from that, having committed to something like this can be very helpful in terms of one's mental state of mind if you are coming to a foreign country planning to go back home later.. If from the moment of your arrival you know that in a few days you will have to go to work, you have a mental safety net in comparison to just packing your things and leaving and then being in state of insecurity, where you have to fill your days and hours with time consuming and compulsory procedures and necessities such as like the search for an apartment, the registration at the local authorities, the job applications and so on.it turned out to be different but I thank God I have achieved a lot. In this country UK the sky is the limit. I have known many who have been in the UK for the past twenty years and they have achieved NVQ 1 which is equivalent to first aid course. this is mainly because some are myopic and only want to eat now no worries about tomorrow. The challenge comes when your child asks you dad what do you do.?At the same time my escape abroad was a result of my wish for postgraduate studies outside of the Zimbabwean frames or reference. From the beginning of my studies I was convinced that my Masters programme should be abroad. Being a student and afterwards a graduate I always regarded the experience that one can get living abroad as of great importance, even if the final destination is Zimbabwe.. The number of things that you can learn from a year's stay abroad amount to more than ten years in any country you've been born in. And all these things follow you afterwards in your life and they change you for the better as a person. Having lived abroad you experience, see, hear, and get to know things that are not part of your country's reality: how the country, the cities, and the public transport are structured, how people interact with one another, what kind of habits they have, how they entertain themselves, how they think and other innumerable small information and details, which whether you want it or not force you in comparing them with what you've taken for granted so far. This is by no means a bad comparison, as it makes you reflect and think outside of what you've learnt your whole life.Saviour Shava said," I graduated with an engineering degree from Zimbabwe did further studies in Engineering in the UK but the situation taught me to be humble, I now drive a lorry with all my degrees. if only our friends in Zimbabwe are to know that education is not only the key but it is indeed a humbling process our country will be miles away from what it is.For me, my immigration abroad was always a matter of belonging. In Zimbabwe since I was young, even more after I started studying, I had a constant feeling of intolerance and 'must' surround me. I grew up calling our neighbours names, we had five Mozambicans working in our fields and two maids from Malawi. A foreigner had a name. Education was a class above classes; UK was a sobering situation said Gilbert Dumbura now working as a nurse. You must act like a man, because this is what you are, you must not cry, you must love your country man even though you don't share a word with them, you have to be social, you must be human, you must, must, must. And if you don't fit into the box they moulded for you and you can't adjust to it, then there is no room for existence in the UK. You will die of stress and surely you will be stressed if you think high of yourself.I remember my friend a medical doctor arrived from Zimbabwe full of pride in two weeks he was sorting letters at a local post office being supervised by his former maid who arrived in the UK early, what a humiliating but humbling situation. UK teaches you to love and be a better Christian.John Dziva said that he was shocked with the selfishness he found back home in Zimbabwe when he went for holiday. Despite the fact that he was buying food fuelling cars giving people pocket money he was accosted for five dollars he asked from his brother who he gave six hundred dollars just for his own use. "I was depressed and deeply drained when I realised that people at home are more like animals than family,""With the love we fly around people in Diaspora amount of money we send home even to cousins, I was shocked when I went to burry my mother when I was given a bill of the money used to feed the mourners in my absence." mourned Rufaro a nurse in the UK. Despite the fact that Zimbabwe is home our brothers no longer look after each other."Later as the crisis intensified and became more visible and was felt more than ever, diaspora took on a more financial aspect. "As a graduate even if I had a Master's and a PhD degree I knew that in .Zimbabwe the chances of finding work in the field I am interested in are minimal, In UK I can have my own room and at the same time the state can on the one hand partially support me during my studies financially, and for that I decided to stay permanently. After all those I left home never care about me, if I go home sick they will throw me under a bus" Nigel Matura said.Obviously immigrating is not something easy and in no case is it a treachery or a convenience against those who stayed (since we left for a richer country) as some believe and report in the public sphere. To leave the place where you were born and grew up in for something unknown and uncertain isn't that simple and for sure it needs much more strength and decisiveness than staying in your country, even if this country is crisis-stricken. You might not be able to find a job, you might hardly make ends meet or you might not be able to do otherwise but to stay with your parents, but you are never ever a stranger. The language that you speak is your language, you own and possess it and it expresses you. You can explain everything and saying do you know what I mean?' is to be heard only sometimes, when you really lack the words for that. . Do you know what I mean?' is not your daily life however, as when you are struggling with a language that is not yours, a language that is not a second nature. A language that in order for you to comprehend you have to constantly be alert and in order for you to learn it, you've spent money and time, since you didn't learn it like your mother tongue, as a child, naturally and self-evidently.Diaspora at the very end is not just a matter of money It much more means education, awakening, reflecting, self-improvement, love. Because all these that you will experience abroad, you haven't experienced in your whole life. In no other way do your horizons expand, as with leaving your country.Living abroad is not a shame, nor an act of treachery or a convenience. Nor is it full of misery or is it a compromise contributing to another (preferably western) country's wealth. Living abroad means becoming a better, open-minded person. At the bottom line, living abroad means to blossom and indeed live for others, for you children and for your family. living abroad must not turn you into money machine where any broke uncle rings you for money and never for your health. Most of them never say thank you after they have received the money you send, the next call is to ask for more.VAZET2000@YAHOO.CO.UK
Published on 2017/12/03 | Source

Lotte Group on Thursday donated W1 billion to the Community Chest of Korea to help victims of the recent earthquake in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province (US$1=W1,089).

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"We hope our donation will help speed up recovery efforts after the disaster", a Lotte spokesman said.

Lotte's subsidiaries were already engaged in various relief efforts in the southern city.

Lotte Confectionery sent snacks worth W80 million, while Lotte Mart provided food and W30 million. Convenience store franchise 7-Eleven also donated about 10,000 daily necessities including bottled water, toilet paper, and toothpastes to emergency shelters there.
Published on 2017/12/03 | Source

The Education Ministry wants to reduce the university entrance quota by 20,000 by 2021, it said Thursday.

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After being evaluated based on various factors, universities will be divided by region and classified into three tiers. The top 60 percent will not have to reduce their freshmen intake, but lower-ranking universities will have to reflect the dwindling number of school-leavers.

"We will minimize government intervention and reflect market logic", the ministry said.

The remaining 40 percent will go through another assessment process and will be advised to reduce their budgets or risk losing state support for student loans and national scholarships.

The ministry hopes that this will bring down freshmen numbers by 20,000 students from 2019 to 2021.

"The number of students applying for college admissions in 2021 is already expected to decline by 34,000 compared to 2018", said Lee Hae-sook at the ministry. "But only 20,000 of them will be reduced through government inspections and the rest left to schools so that non-competitive ones are weeded out by market forces".

The law prevents the government from closing down universities simply because they underperform. Instead, the ministry selects the worst-performing universities with irregularities in management and unstable financial situations. They will be given an opportunity to clean up their act or face closure.

Successive governments have tried to deal with the problem of private "Mickey Mouse" universities that suck up public subsidies but exist purely for profit or the greater glory of their proprietors, but with little success so far.
Opinion / Columnist

"The Commander Zimbabwe National Army Lieutenant General Phillip Valerio Sibanda has called on the national army to be disciplined and to desist from harassing citizens," reported Bulawayo24. "Lieutenant General Sibanda was addressing a pass out parade of 590 recruits at Battlefields in Mhondoro Ngezi. "Discipline and patriotism are very essential in the military because of the extreme duties that the armed forces carry out, he told the recruits."The sheer hypocrisy of it all is astonishing! So, the General was aware that the Army has been harassing citizens. Of course, he was aware of the harassment and worse; after all he played his part in devious plans and in their ruthless execution!General Valerio Sibanda is a senior member of the Joint Operation Command (JOC), the shadowy Junta cum Mafia cum Freemason that has ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist all these last 37 years. He knows the small details of the 2008 Operation "Mavhotera papi" (Whom did you vote for), for example, in which the Army played a pivotal role in not just the harassment of civilians but in the beating, raping and murder of innocent people to force them to vote for Mugabe in the presidential run-off.The now deposed Robert Mugabe publicly acknowledge and thank the war veterans and the security services top brass for the role they all played in restoring him back into State House when he had in fact lost the popular vote.The full details of what role the top brass in the Army, Police, CIO and other organs of State are still to be properly investigated and documented but there can be no doubt that General Sibanda play a role. It is rich therefore for him to now be talking of discipline and patriotism when the red alert of the military coup he was involved is still bright red!There is talk that General Sibanda will be appointed one of the two VPs, his reward for carrying out his fair share of the Junta's mindless barbarism, debauchery and betrayal of the people and the ZDF uniform. Even if he does not get the VP post he is certainly one of the Zanu PF ruling elite, by virtue of his position in the Junta, who have profited from the wholesale looting by the Zanu PF dictatorship.The Zanu PF dictatorship was thrilled and relieved to see the hundreds of thousands of ordinary civilians come out in the street in support of the military coup. The Mnangagwa faction's worst fear was that the people should see the coup was just an internal matter in Zanu PF that does not resolve their real demand for meaningful democratic reforms to end the dictatorship itself.Indeed, most people are only now coming round to realising that supporting the coup was but a foolish thing to do because President Mnangagwa and his gang have taken the support to mean the people are happy with the removal of Mugabe and that is all they have ever wanted.General Sibanda's hand of friendship to the citizens of Zimbabwe is just part of the charm-offensive by this Mnangagwa administration to get the people to forget that the cabal now in government is the same dictatorship, except for the removal of Mugabe to replace him with Mnangagwa, that has looted, rigged elections and ruthlessly oppressed them.The country's political temperature is already hotting up and as the people's good will after the coup is freckle, it is starts to wear-off already. Zanu PF's prospect of winning next year's election may be looking good now, hence the regime's charm offensive, but in three or four months' times things will be very different. Will General Sibanda still be calling for the Army not to harass the citizens and allow the country to finally have its first free, fair and credible elections? Knowing fully well that should Zanu PF be booted out of office, he too will lose his share of the loot from Marange and, worse, have his dark past uncovered for all to see!The Zanu PF dictatorship is the same corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and ruthlessly oppressive juggernaut the people of Zimbabwe have known these last 37 years. The change of from one dictator, Mugabe, for another, Mnangagwa, has not change the dictatorship itself. The removal of Mugabe has, at best, allowed key players in the Zanu PF dictatorship to mount a charm-offensive to fool the naive and gullible into believing the ruthless Zanu PF dictatorship of Mugabe days died with the demise of the old tyrant.The Zanu PF charm-offensive has successfully dressed the Zanu PF iron fist in a velvet glove. With not even one democratic reform in place, the iron fist is still there, as those foolish enough to expect next year's election will be free, fair and credible, will soon learn. When Zanu PF's hold on power is under serious threat General Sibanda may still continue to publicly call for the Army not to harass civilians but in private order the soldiers to show no mercy to all those threatening regime change. An iron fist in a velvet glove is just as deadly as a bare-knuckle iron fist; the glove is a disguise and not a cushion the blow!
SONNING Common Parish Council is gearing up for a legal battle with a developer.

Gallagher Estates has appealed after its plans for 95 homes off Kennylands Road were refused planning permission by South Oxfordshire District Council.

The company wants to develop 6.15 hectares of land which has been earmarked for 26 homes in the villages neighbourhood plan.

The parish council argues that the plans go against its neighbourhood plan and the development would have a negative impact on the countryside and surrounding area and would increased traffic and cause disturbance to residents. It has budgeted more than 10,000 to employ Emily Temple, a planning consultant, to prepare its case and a barrister to represent it at a planning appeal hearing next spring.

Councillor Tom Fort, who is managing the appeal for the council, said: Emily Temple has extensive experience and I am in contact with her about the way ahead.

As we are a main party we get more than 10 minutes to make our case. Unfortunately, to put our case successfully we require a barrister.

Emily has made contact with the district council appeals officers and says they will be able to work together. We come at it from different angles.

Deputy parish clerk Ros Varnes said: The district council has to stick to defending its decision based on the grounds for refusal. The parish council can be much more broad on the reasons for refusing the application. The neighbourhood plan is an extremely good starting point.

Cllr Fort said he felt that money spent on the appeal was worth it, adding: If we lose this, everything we put into our neighbourhood plan will be lost and it will not be an effective plan anymore.

The council has emailed and sent flyers to residents encouraging them to contact the Planning Inspectorate expressing concerns about the proposed development.

It also plans to launch a crowdfunding appeal in the New Year led by David Winchester, of Kennylands Road.

Councillor Leigh Rawlins said the significance of the case for neighbourhood planning could bring it to national attention.

He said: By making it a test case you may get more people to contribute a fiver. The small amounts can be quite significant collectively.

The appeal hearing has been scheduled for April 10 and is expected to take four days. It will probably be held at Henley town hall.
PARENTS say they are happy to pay towards basics at their childrens schools.

The governors of Robert Piggott junior and infant schools have asked parents for a donation of 1 a day towards stationery and books, the equivalent of 190 per child over the school year.

They blame changes to schools funding and say the extra money will allow them to maintain small classes and provide the best quality teaching.

Lucinda Bryers, chairwoman of the schools parents association, said: The association and the school share the view that we should attempt to maintain the current standard of schooling in what are increasingly difficult financial times in the education sector.

This is not the first school nationally or in the local area to reach the same conclusion.

The voluntary donations only help the school to meet current expenditure levels.

The association continues to run a calendar of fund-raising and community events.

Over the course of the year the money raised from these is used to enhance the education of the children, such as with the iPads funded last year. Education of the children, both in the curriculum and as individuals, continues to be the focus of the school.

It is hoped that until the national funding position improves this focus can be achieved to the same high standard through the support of the parents and wider community.

In a statement, the schools governing body said: Like many schools, we are experiencing rising costs in the face of reduced funding.

We have had to make tough choices over the last few years to ensure we continue to provide the same high-quality education for our children and still balance our budgets.

Following consultation, some parents requested guidance on making voluntary contributions.

While committed to the principle of state-funded education, we have now reached the stage where, like many other schools in the country, we need to ask parents and the community to consider making voluntary donations to help meet the predicted shortfall in funding.

This decision has not been taken lightly and our financial situation will continue to be carefully monitored by the governing body.

The request for money was made in a letter to parents by Caroline Meader, who chairs the governing body.

She wrote: We have been working with parent volunteers, governors and the teaching staff to develop a funding strategy and implementation plan.

One of the elements of this plan was to ask parents and the community to consider making donations to help meet the predicted shortfall in funding.

She said the voluntary contributions would go towards:

 Consumables such as glue, pens, pencils, exercise books, paper, tape and paint.

 Curriculum resources, such as maths text books, reading books, tools, software, science equipment and musical instruments.

 Maintaining current levels of support staff, for example, teaching assistants.

Parents can make their donation as a one-off payment of 190, three payments of 64 for each term or a monthly payment of 16 by direct debit.

Mrs Meader said: We would like to suggest that parents donate 1 per school day for each child to help the schools through this funding crisis.

All donations, however large or small, will be gratefully received and will help us to continue to maintain the current provision and excellent standard of education for every child.

The schools say they have suffered a decrease in government funding over recent years at the same time as the cost of staff has risen.

They have already cut back on expenditure by renegotiating contracts with service providers and reducing staff training and outlay on supplies as well as sharing staff.

The schools have also attempted to bring in more money by renting out areas of the schools for external events.

The school is in the Maidenhead constituency of Prime Minster Theresa May, who pledged during the election campaign last year that all children would have the support they need.

Minister for school standards Nick Gibb has said that the new national schools funding formula will end disparities.

But shadow education minister Angela Rayner said: While I welcome any money going into schools, it doesnt even paper over the cracks.
CHANCELLOR Philip Hammonds decision to abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers up to a value of 300,000 has this week been welcomed by mortgage lenders the Halifax.

The stamp duty cut in last weeks autumn budget also applies to the first 300,000 of homes worth half a million in order to get more people on the first rung of the housing ladder.

Mr Hammond said: With effect from today for all first-time buyer purchases up to 300,000, I am abolishing stamp duty altogether.

Jasjyot Singh, mortgages director at the Halifax, said The changes to stamp duty are a real boost for those hoping to take their first step on the property ladder.

Todays first-time buyers need to find an average deposit of 32,899  if they do manage to purchase their first home, they are on average 651 a year better off owning versus renting.

The number of first-time buyers getting on the housing ladder has now exceeded 150,000 for the third time in four years  a level of momentum not seen since before the financial crisis.

We will be lending over 10 billion in 2017 to help people own their first home.

Mr Singhs comments were echoed by Ollie Purdue, the 24-year-old CEO and founder of Loot, a digital current account specifically aimed at millennials.

He said: Todays budget outlined by the chancellor was particularly welcome news for younger generations  specifically for those with a dream of one day owning their own house.

Shockingly, home ownership for those aged between 25 and 34 years old stands at just 39 per cent, and real solutions that young people actually felt the impact of are long overdue.

The biggest financial worry for those under 35 is affordable housing  in particular raising a sizeable enough deposit to get on the housing ladder. The abolition of stamp duty for first time buyers purchasing a property of up to 300,000, or the first 300,000 of properties up to 500,000, is welcome news for all those dreaming of owning their own home one day.

Its particularly positive for those in London, where the average stamp duty for a first-time buyer sits at over 10,000. This change will save 80 per cent of first-time buyers from having to pay any stamp duty at all.

Itll take a significant number of other changes to really turn around the housing market for young buyers, but this is certainly a step in the right direction and will allow people to get on the housing ladder quicker.

In a further boost for younger homebuyers, this week has seen claims that first-time buyer developments could spring up around the country if a new scheme to relax planning laws goes ahead.

This would see councils having to offer homes for sale or rent in first-time buyer led developments.

Homes for younger buyers could be built in hubs designated by councils for affordable first-time properties. However, land in the green belt would not be included in the scheme.
Opinion / Columnist

At this time last month, under the Dictatorship of former President Mugabe and his Crooked Finance Minister Chombo, at least I could sit on my computer and transfer my hard-earned cash to a needy relative in Zimbabwe from my Bank. Today, I am proudly boasting with a new President assumedly one who has the people at heart. Yesterday I got a call from a close relative in Chiredzi whose four-year-old son has been diagnosed with Non Hodgkin's Lympoma. This is a type of a cancer and the little boy has a badly swollen neck needing urgent attention at Parerenyatwa.As my new President still can't believe how lucky he is, he is being introduced to all the free services he is entitled to, I am sure his poisoning bill has been paid by the State in South Africa. All his money problems of last month are over. And yet we, the recipients of a new Service from a new President, are getting new challenges instead of envisaged solutions.This morning, I immediately jumped on my computer to transfer money from my Zimbabwean Bank Account trying to help a relative at this urgent hour of need. I was shocked to find out that, for the first time, I couldn't make that transfer. The Bank says I must not EXCEED my DAILY LIMIT of ZERO dollars. It clearly shows how much money there is, but I am NOT allowed to transfer my own money to pay for an urgent cancer treatment at Parerenyatwa.This is the time that President CoupSolution is edging people to bring back externalised money into the Banks. That money will suddenly turn into Zero Daily Limit of Transfer. In the first place, what made people externalise their money is because NO ONE TRUSTS MONETORY SYSTEMS UNDER A ZANU GOVERNMENT. The Finance Ministry would have worked better under Biti. Investors would trust Biti better than people with a written philosophy that the Zanu Government CAN seize your property. They can turn your life servings into a clean ZERO as they did in 2008. Not even the Government themselves trust custodianship of funds under themselves. Chinamasa's own left hand does not trust the conspiratous dealings of his right hand. Not only is Chinamasa, Chombo still wants to come and fetch more cheap waters. Gono wouldn't hesitate either. One common thing about them is that they are Zanu. They have no conventional monitory ethics. Many Zanu Ministers Bank in Zuma's South African Banks where a Black Government operates better than a Zimbabwean Black Zanu Government.Anyone who says we must be patient and wait for this slow and old President to start acting, is himself slow and old and is being paid new wages by the new but old and slow President.In the case of a cancer emergency, should I wait for the President to take time to fix my money problem which was not a problem just last month under thieving Chombo? Did it really show any proactivity and innovation, on the part of the Government, by putting Chinamasa as Finance Minister. Is it not a known gerontological fact that old people are slow in doing things? How can Chinamasa beat gerontological erosion? How can he make Zimbabwe move fast when he cant even breathe fast himself? When is slowness going to end? Slow bank queues, slow problem detection, slow solutions, slow thinking, slow to understand problems, slow to communicate, slow to ask, slow to plot solutions while the rest of the World is moving fast.Is it not a fact that Mnangagwa himself is too old to learn new ways of doing modern business? Is Mnangagwa not as slow as the Mugabe of 1997? Was it not in 1997 when Mugabe's brain begun to die and he begun to print money for War Vets? Can we trust that Mnangagwa will do better at 75 years of age while Mugabe begun to fail at 75?Those who have not experienced the pinch yet, I say to you wait a few days. Not weeks, It's only days away. Anyone complaining about money is a barking inconvenience who is not patriotic enough to celebrate the "new agile" President. "Vanongo Vukura vachivukura , VaPresident vachingotonga"The little boy is a desperate this evening at Parerenyatwa, testing the smooth flowing of the New Era. But, unfortunately, his much needed money is sanctioned by the Cool-Coup Regime. Across the road from his hospital bed, President Mnangagwa is still learning how to prepare his body for an hourly state-paid body massaging.
BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Director of Emergency Management for Sullivan County Jim Bean said at 9 p.m. that his team is opening up Interstate 81 North.

The Emergency Management Team has been on the scene of wreck that slowed traffic on the interstate since 10:40 this morning.

A truck carrying over 9,000 gallons of propane rolled down a hill after blowing a tire on I-81 near mile marker 74, close to The Pinnacle retail development.

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- A truck carrying over 9,000 gallons of propane rolled down a hill after blowing a tire on I-81 this morning. The accident took place around 10:40 a.m., near mile marker 74, close to The Pinnacle retail development.

The driver, who had just began a trip from Greeneville to Marion, Va., was shielded under a white sheet as Sullivan County firefighters worked to remove him from the overturned vehicle. After cutting away the roof and using a pulley to move the steering wheel, the driver was pulled out on a stretcher and transported to a nearby hospital. His identity has not yet been released.

A Sullivan County firefighter and Tennessee State Trooper Ryan Curd confirmed he is not in critical condition. He was alert the whole time, Curd said.

Danny Roberts, a truck driver who was behind the accident, was one of the first people to the scene. He said the driver began talking as soon as he arrived and was coherent.

Once the truck went over the edge of the pavement it was just a slow-motion roll to the right, he said. It looked like he did a couple of rolls down to the bottom.

Curd believes the truck rolled completely once. But tire marks nearby indicate it rolled again before tipping back to the position pictured.

Jim Bean, Director of Emergency Management for Sullivan County, said there is no danger from the propane tank and that removal of the vehicle should not take long. Were very confident that its a real sturdy tank, he said

The Tennessee Highway Patrol is investigating the incident, according to Bean.

Traffic was backed up at least five miles from the accident. Initially, the roadway was completed shut off. A slowly moving lane then opened. Around 1 p.m., Curd said he expected that flow of traffic to continue for two or three more hours.

First responders were relieved the driver was okay, especially after a crash on I-81 northbound earlier this week left one man dead and another with severe head trauma.

It could have been a lot worse, Curd said.

He was pinned in pretty good, Roberts added. It made my Christmas to hear his voice.

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- A crash involving a propane truck is slowing down traffic along Interstate 81 in Sullivan County, according to the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

One northbound lane is currently closed near mile marker 73, which is not far from The Pinnacle retail development and Bristol Regional Medical Center.

It's not clear how long the road will remain closed or if anyone has been hurt.

The Bristol Herald Courier has a crew on scene and will bring you the latest details as they become available
will end at John A. Patten Recreation Center followed by an open house at the recreation center.

line up is at 10:30 a.m. a

Thiswill take place fromalong Browns Ferry Road and Cummings Highway. The

parade, now in its 27th year,

:

St. Elmo Ave. will be closed from Tennessee Avenue to W. 38th St. In addition, runners will be in the road on St. Elmo Ave. from W. 38th Street to Middle Street. Closures will be from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m.

The annual event is A Christmas themed 5K and 1 mile Mutt Strut benefiting the Humane Educational Society. Visit

www.heschatt.org

for more information.
The third annual Holiday Market in Miller Plaza hosted by River City Company will be Wednesday, Dec. 13, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in Miller Plaza at 850 Market St. This shopping event will feature a variety of local retailers and perks, officials said.

Vendors include Good Fortune Soap & Spa, Tangerinas, Locals Only Gifts, elea blake Cosmetic Studio, Lost Art Design, alkohaulers, Nooga Paws, Best Sesh Board Company and Center MedSpa.

Musical performances will begin with the Center for Creative Arts Jazz Ensemble from 5:30-6 p.m. and will wrap up with the Chattanooga School for the Arts & Sciences middle school choirs from 6:10-7 p.m. These performers will be accompanied by a piano thanks to Summitt Pianos.



The Daily Ration will also be on hand to serve wine and beer along with Peets Coffee and Tea serving up hot beverages like coffee and cocoa.

Amy Donahue, director of marketing and communication for River City Company, said, Whether youre buying a spa gift card for your mom, a Chattanooga themed gift box for a friend far away, need to snag some wrapping paper or buy a treat for your favorite four-legged family member, the Holiday Market in Miller Plaza has it all in one spot and from local vendors.

"If youre too busy this holiday season to go from store to store to shop but still want to support local small businesses, this is your perfect opportunity to do so all in one place. Plus, theres wine, cocoa and live music to make your shopping experience a little more enjoyable.

The Holiday Market in Miller Plaza is free and open to the public. There are no more vendor spaces available for this retail event.
11/16/2022

Vince Butler of the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center spoke at a recent Friends of Hixson Coffee Meeting. The Friends of Hixsons Community Coffee Meetings are on the third Wednesday ... more
On September 27, 1989, Buta Singh, at the time Union home minister, landed in Lucknow on a secret mission.

He drove straight to the chief ministers residence to meet a high-profile delegation of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) headed by the late Ashok Singhal.

The closed-door meeting concluded with the Congress government in Uttar Pradesh and the VHP signing an agreement that gave a fillip to the temple movement, which culminated in the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992.

The VHP leaders beamed as the state government granted permission for shilanyas (foundation-laying ceremony) of the proposed Ram temple at the undisputed site, close to the disputed structure. In return, the VHP agreed to abide by the directives of the Allahabad high court.

It was election time. Communal passions ran high as the VHP moved truckloads of sanctified shilas(stones) to Ayodhya for the temples foundation on November 9, 1989. Shila pujan, aimed at mobilising public support, ended with the foundation laid about 200 feet from the disputed complex.

As the Sangh Parivar stepped up its temple campaign, the Congress realised its blunder, but it was too late. It lost power in Indias most populous state and has never won it back since. The Janata Dal formed governments in Delhi under VP Singh and, in UP, under Mulayam Singh Yadav.

In 1990, BJP leader LK Advani embarked on his Somnath-to-Ayodhya rath yatra. He was arrested in Samastipur on the orders of the then Bihar CM Lalu Prasad in October. Emphasising the security of the disputed structure, Mulayam said, Parinda bhi par nahi maar sakega (not a soul will be able to reach there), which incensed the kar sewaks. On October 30, sewaks hoisted the saffron flag atop the heavily barricaded disputed structure. More than two dozen people were killed in police firing and Mulayam was derided as maulana(Islamic cleric) by some.

The Janata Dal governments fell, first at the Centre, and then in the state. The BJP won UP in 1991 polls and the Congress returned to power at the Centre under PV Narasimha Rao. The government of Kalyan Singh, UPs first BJP chief minister, moved in tandem with the VHP, to clear the hurdles for the Ram temple.

Young and old thronged Ayodhya as the undisputed land, acquired adjacent to the disputed complex by the Congress government, was leased to the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas. Several temples were demolished to level the ground for kar sewa in the garb of promoting tourism.

Opposition leaders made a beeline for Ayodhya but were stopped midway. The late PM VP Singh staged a dharna in the middle of the national highway.

The biggest congregation was planned for December 6, 1992. All entries to the temple town were sealed, but temple enthusiasts reached days before for symbolic kar sewa. Kalyan Singh submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court that Babri Masjid will be protected. He also said his government will not fire at kar sewaks.

On December 6, a huge and restless mob started assembling around the disputed structure. Senior VHP-BJP leaders addressed the kar sewaks from a makeshift dais. The CRPF waited in Faizabad, 10km away, even as the SC-appointed observer sent his reports to the court.

Soon, the mob went berserk and the first dome collapsed. Some pulled down the iron barricade and used sticks, along with axes and shovels, to demolish the other two. The VHP-BJP leaders embraced each other as slogans like  Ek dhakka aur do (Give it another shove) rent the air.

A makeshift temple was raised on the debris of the disputed structure. The idols were reinstalled. The incident triggered rioting and arson that left 2,000 dead across the country. Rao dismissed the Kalyan Singh government, promised reconstruction of the mosque and slapped cases against senior BJP-VHP leaders.

Despite the VHPs sporadic campaigns, the issue lost mass appeal soon. The BJP was defeated in subsequent elections and has ruled the state only twice since  first as part of a coalition, and again from March 2017 onwards with a majority.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a strong votary of the Ram temple, appears to have quietly stepped into Kalyans shoes, reiterating his commitment to Ram Rajya (Rams empire). In over eight months, he visited Ayodhya five times.

The BJPs former district president Dr Banke Bihari Tripathi recalls, Kalyan Singh had released funds for civic infrastructure, research centre and beautification of Saryu ghat. However, he could not deliver as his government was dismissed in 18 months. CM Yogi has taken up the development of Ayodhya on the same lines. His ascent has raised hopes of temple construction.

There is expectation in the air that he will complete the task by removing the last hurdle.

In 1986, when the gates of the disputed structure were thrown open, I, too, was oblivious of the history that was in the making. As it turned out, I was witness to the creation of history.
The resignation of Pakistans law minister was the final act in the three-week long drama of a determined and religiously charged agitation in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The demand of the protesters was that the law minister resign for an act that had eroded the truth of the finality of the Prophet. The government, embattled and weakened since Nawaz Sharifs removal, repeatedly apologised for what it said was a clerical error. Prodded by the Supreme Court, an attempt was made to clear the demonstration that had paralysed the capital. The attempt failed and the protest showed signs of spreading to other parts of Pakistan. Instructions to the army that it step in to aid the civilian authority to restore order was responded to by a demurral from the chief of army staff that efforts be made to resolve the situation peacefully. The resignation of the law minister was the final act of capitulation by the government.

Multiple readings of this narrative are possible. The most benign is of a government and military paralysed by images of almost exactly a decade ago; when the Army stormed the Lal Masjid in Islamabad and the blow back that unleashed the furies of hell on Pakistan. Yet there are other readings. The government did not act and let the protest build up because it was unwilling to risk alienating its popular base on the right wing that is made up of religious groups involved in the protest or similar to them. The military, on the other hand, chose not to act in what it saw was a cat and mouse game orchestrated by the former prime minister and designed to earn it public ignominy which clearing the protest would have led to. Other theories will emerge in due course.

All these explanations have some substance to them; and the civil military equation corrodes all aspects of public life in Pakistan today. The protests in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, however, also have a broader context symptomatic of a deeper churning in Pakistan. From the 1980s Islamic radicalism and mobilisation has been the hall mark of the Wahabis, Deobandis and the Jamaat- i-Islami. Each of these developed strong links with the military and Pakistans political class; and many had their own favourite extremist militant outfit loosely attached.

The groups that led the recent protests and whose followers demonstrated considerable staying power come from a different persuasion  the Barelvis; so named because the movement originated in Bareilly in the mid 19th century. Their hall mark is popular sufism, a cult of shrines and a deep veneration of the Prophet. They are therefore in contrast to the austere and literalist Wahabis. The Barelvis are generally regarded as pluralistic and adherents of a softer, more moderate approach; although this image is gradually changing much like everything else in Pakistan. For the past decade or so there have been many signs of ferment among them. The Canadian Pakistani preacher Tahir ul Qadri is of this persuasion and in 2014, mobilised a large number of his followers to join Imran Khans agitation. He thus demonstrated a street power in Lahore and Islamabad which rivals that of the Jammat-i-Islami. The assassination of the Punjab Governor Salman Taseer in 2011 saw a cult following developing around his killer Mumtaz Qadri whose grave now is a Barelvi shrine in its own right. Two other related sets of activities  often very violent  exemplify this activism amongst many Barelvis: A zeal to act against real or imagined blasphemy and a fresh intensity to older prejudices against Ahmadis for disputing the finality of the Prophet.

What explains the larger churning among the Barelvis? Since the 1980s they have felt excluded and disempowered, despite being numerically preponderant, from the attention and funds the Deobandis and Wahabis have received and as the militant and terrorist groups associated acquired a swagger under the benign care of their handlers in the Pakistani intelligence agencies. Barelvi shrines were often the target also of these militants and perhaps this too contributes to the need to forge a broader and more powerful grouping. Many also point to the role of the Pakistan military establishment in explaining this Barelvi resurgence. As it battled the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and sectarian outfits, there was a need to create new countervailing forces and the hitherto ignored Barelvis seemed the best bet. In any event something new has stirred in Pakistan and this humiliation of the government and the standing aside of the army is an event of some importance in marking the movement of the Barelvis out of the shadows and acquiring political muscle of some magnitude.

TCA Raghavan is a former high commissioner to Pakistan

The views expressed are personal
The Congress promised a stipend to jobless young people, reservation in jobs and education to Patidars, and to reduce petrol and diesel prices in its Gujarat assembly elections manifesto, which was released on Monday.

The party, if voted to power, pledged an unemployment allowance of up to Rs 4,000 a month for each jobless youth in the state. The Congress has been highlighting what it alleged rising unemployment and shrinking job opportunities in BJP-ruled Gujarat and the country in general.

The manifesto, made public by state Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki, makes another concession as it promises reservation in jobs and education to Patidars under a special category.

We will consult all stakeholders on reservation to Patidars and a commission will be constituted for this purpose, Solanki said. Thereafter, a bill will be introduced in the state assembly, he added.

The Congress has been trying to woo the Patidars, who have been traditional BJP supporters, but many of them are loggerheads with Gujarats ruling party over its demand for reservation.

The Patidar vote could become a deciding factor this election. The BJP is unsure about the unflinching support of Patidars that can influence results in more than 60 of 182 assembly constituencies.

Gujarat was on the edge in August 2015 as Patidars, led by a young and fiery Hardik Patel, held a huge rally in Ahmedabad demanding reservation. The event triggered widespread violence in which 10 people were killed and public property worth crores of rupees was damaged across the state.

Gujarat, where the Congress is out of power for 22 years, goes to the polls on December 9 and 14. Results will be declared on December 18.

The party pledges social sector benefits for other backward classes (OBCs) and weaker sections of society. The Congress is trying win over the OBCs, who comprise 146 castes and make up around 40% of the states about 60-million people. Alpesh Thakore, a Dalit leader, joined the party in the run-up to the elections.

Another promise, apparently directed towards traders, transporters and the middle class, the Congress said it would reduce the price of petrol and diesel by up to Rs 10 in the state if it gains power. Besides, the party vows to regulate cooking gas prices to make the commodity affordable.

The manifesto promises a Sardar Patel Universal Health Card to provide subsidised healthcare, minimum support price for the states main crops, cotton and groundnut, assured electricity for 16 hours a day and up to 200 units of power for Rs 2 a unit.

The party also vowed fast-track courts to deal with crime against women, an electorate that no party can afford to ignore.

The percentage of woman voters is increasing every election. More than 20 million women are likely to vote this assembly election in Gujarat, compared to 1.8 million in 2012.
Actor Rishi Kapoor, who was shooting for Rajma Chawal in the national capital, has rushed back to Mumbai to be with his family after the demise of veteran actor-producer and his uncle Shashi Kapoor.

Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of the 1970s and early 1980s, died on Monday at a hospital in Mumbai. He was 79.

We are the airport looking at the flight schedule, and want to reach Mumbai at the earliest. We might go tonight or tomorrow morning, Shanti Malik, who works closely with the Kapoor family, told IANS on Monday evening.

Malik also said that he doesnt know the cause of Shashi Kapoors death, and would be in position to give out details on Tuesday morning.

The younger brother of late Raj and Shammi Kapoor, who were both actors par excellence, Shashi Kapoor started his tryst with acting at the age of four, with plays directed and produced by his father Prithviraj Kapoor.

He started acting in films as a child in the late 1940s. His best known performances as child artist were in Aag (1948) and Awaara (1951), where he played the younger version of the character played by his elder brother Raj.

When he grew up, he made his debut as a leading man in the 1961 film Dharmputra, and went on to appear in more than 150 Hindi films.

Shashi Kapoor, whose nuanced acts in memorable films like Deewar, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Trishul and Kabhi Kabhie captivated Hindi film buffs, was married to English theatre actor Jennifer Kendal.

He had three children -- Kunal, Karan and Sanjana Kapoor.

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In Jennifer Kendal Kapoors life, the domestic, at least for a while, superseded all else. Even as Shashi got increasingly busy with his career as an actorproducer, Jennifer abandoned her vocation as an actress to keep home and raise her three children.

Perhaps, abandoned is a poor choice of word, since, in an interview, Jennifer says that there was never a point when she wasnt committed to the life of a theatre actor:

I never quit theatre as such. Had I known then that I was going to be away from the stage for so long, I wouldve reacted very badly. I wouldve been very disturbed. Ive still got my hand towel, in which we used to have liquid paraffin to wipe off our make-up. Its still in my make-up case. Its just as I left it after the last show I did. Ive always had this superstition: I felt that if I washed it, I would never act again.

It was Jennifers love for theatre that propelled her to start Prithvi and look into its day-to-day management and functioning. And it was her love for acting that drew her back to cinema after a long break with 36 Chowringhee Lane. Following the critical acclaim the film received, Jennifer was suddenly in the limelight, her career as an actress resurrected. Offers began pouring in, and soon, she found herself playing Mrs Saundersthat cheerless woman in perpetual fear of being molested by an Indian servant  in Heat and Dust. But now, when she had the time to act, her health refused to support her.

It was 1983. Cannes. Jenniferwho, until then, was thought to be suffering from amoebic dysenterywas diagnosed with cancer. Geoffrey Kendal writes in his autobiography that when he learnt of his daughters malady, he could not utter the word cancer for the longest time; he called it the illness or this thing.

In the meantime, Jennifer, in her own way, slowly came to terms with the diagnosis, and began informing those close to her, including friends like Anil Dharker. She started telling me about how they had tried to brighten up a room with wallpaper at the Tata Memorial Hospital in Bombay, Anil says. And I asked, well, why did you go there? And she replied, Anil, dont you see? Ive got the Big C. That was it. That was how I came to know.

Cover of the book Shashi Kapoor: The Household, the Star.

After her diagnosis, Jennifer had surgery in India and seemed to be recovering. But later, during a trip to London and after more check-ups, it appeared that the cancer had spread. Jennifer spent her last months in the British capital in the hospital and at her parents home.

Geoffrey was devastated when she died. Jennifer was his firstborn, his favourite, his almost-all. A grieving Geoffrey mentions: The appalling loss is something I cannot talk or write about. It seemed as if the whole Land of Promise had frozen.

Along with him, his wife, Laura Liddell Kendal, suffered. Felicity Kendal says, My mother was never quite the same afterwards. She was very religious before, but lost her faith. The light went out a bit. The family, as a whole, found itself teetering, without a mainstay. My parents used to spend half the year in India with my sister, Felicity states, but when she died, they felt going back was too painful, so they lost their home as well as Jennifer.

Felicity, in the meanwhilewho says, towards the end, Jennifers only concern was for her childrenrecalls being overwhelmed with grief; in a newspaper interview, she says of her sister: Our closeness came because we were nomads growing up, so didnt really have local friends. When [Jennifer] died, it wasnt just the tragedy of her death, it was also that selfish thing of, Who am I going to say this to? I couldnt make any decisions.

And then, there was Shashi. After Jennifers demise, Dev Benegal says that he met Kunal Kapoor at a memorial at Prithvi Theatre: The family had just come back from Goa and Kunal said to me, Dad took this boat out in the middle of the sea. When he got there, that was the first time he cried. Really, he wept. Like Dev, Im stunned by the rawness of that momentof Shashi, alone in the vast open seas, sorrowing. He was really shaken by her death.

Condolences poured in and there were press reports about Jennifer, the fine actress and grand woman. But few had seen what we had seen or had our memories, Geoffrey writes. Peoples memories are over such a short period, and no one seems to imagine that anything really happens before their own time.

Shashi Kapoor continued to work after Jennifer Kendal Kapoors passing, and some of his best work emerged during a time of loss. But something inside him did break. I think the death of Jennifer was a big blow to him, Hanif Kureishi says, who worked with Shashi on Sammy and Rosie Get Laid two years after his wifes demise. It really destroyed him.

Jennifer had been the love of Shashis life, his true anchor. With her death, he became rudderless. Simi Garewal tells me, Jennifer occupiedor Shashi surrendered to hera large part of his personality. And they merged. With Jennifer gone, Shashi struggled, but couldnt find himself. That vast area of his personality that was Jennifernow it lay empty. A void. I met him in London over dinner with Ismail Merchant and could see that he was floundering. He was differentnot himself.

Anil Dharker, always a friend, bore witness to Shashis emotional collapse. Sometimes, the actor would depend on himthe way he must have, once, on Jenniferto help him muddle through awkward social situationssuch as, when the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting would request him to invite a foreign dignitary to dinner. And then he would ring me up, Anil says, and implore: Look, I have this very boring dinner guest, do you mind keeping me company? And I would do that. But when the dignitary would leave, Shashi would actually push me out.

Then, Anil, and those close to Shashi, bore witness to the actors physical breakdown. Without the strict discipline Jennifer imposed on his existence, the star began indulging in his two chief weaknessesfood and drink. Anil remembers dropping by for lunch on occasion, and asking for a glass of beer, only to learn that Shashi had been drinking vodka since the morning. His domestic staff would bring refills as soon as his glass emptied out, Anil says. He wouldnt even have to ask. They knew exactly how long it took him to finish his drink and they would be ready with the next. By the end of lunch, he would be quite sozzled.

I tried, quite often, to talk him out of it, Anil continues. In fact, Sanjna and Kunal would say, Come on, do something, he listens to you! And I would respond, This is one area where he doesnt listen to me at all. Then, they would say, Visit more often because when you are here, at least he walks around. Otherwise, he just sits. So I did.

As Shashi found himself caught in a loop of grief and consumption, he fell victim to that infamous Kapoor syndrome of putting on too much weight, too soon. His health rapidly deteriorated. He was forced to leave Atlas Apartments and moved to Juhu, where he could be looked after by his son, Kunal. With that, his whole life changed, Madhu Jain tells me. He was a South Bombay person, and the move, she claims, added to the stars loneliness, his growing depression. I went to Juhu a few times, Anil adds, but really, he stopped saying very much. Simi, with characteristic insight, tells me, Its as though Shashi had given up the inner struggle. He almost became a recluse.

Then came the year 2005. Ismail Merchant was dead; he was only sixty-eight. Ismail was just one of those characters who was supposed to live forever, Sanjna says of the man who had become part of her family. He was not meant to die. It was just wrong. I am glad that I was physically with my dad when he heard the news.

Shashi, when he found out about his beloved producers demise, was shaken; his grief became even more profound, loss piling on loss. When James Ivory came to India a year later, paid his respects at Ismails grave, and then visited Shashithe first leading man of the MerchantIvory bannerhe saw he was no longer the star he had known, but a ghost of a former self, emotionally withdrawn. I cant tell if it was a form of ongoing grieving about Jennifer, James says. But Shashis youth had dimmed, he was beginning to be an old man. We just didnt connect.

Later, Simi saw Shashi at an award function at the Yash Raj Films Studios  the star, wheelchair-bound, his daughter by his side. As Simi approached her one-time co-star, Sanjna Kapoor cautioned her. She said to me, Hes had a stroke, so one side is paralyzed. He has also had a heart attack and lots of other problems. He doesnt remember people. So dont be upset. Im just warning you. Simi recalls.

Then she adds, To me, it didnt matter if Shashi remembered me, or if he didnt. I still had to go to him. I bent low, looked into his tired face. His eyes lifted slowly and focussed on me. He said, Hello, Simi! I felt like laughingand crying. Then, I just wanted to hug him.

As Simi speaks, its as though I can hear echoes from Shashis penultimate film,the poetry of Hafeez Jalandhari:

Tarab-fizaa, alam-rubaa, asar sadaa-e-saaz kaa, Jigar mein aag de lagaa. Har ik lab pe ho sadaa, na haath rok saaqiyaa; Pilaaye jaa, pilaaye jaa, pilaaye jaa Abhi to main jawaan hoon. (Maker of song, sing through the night, Kindle that fire in my life. Maker of wine, ah, dont take flight; Pour on, pour on, pour on For Im still young tonight.

Excerpted with permission from Rupa Publications India.

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Indias anti-trust regulator has fined Monsanto Co 15 million rupees ($233,000) for being too slow in replying to questions in a competition probe into the U.S. seeds company.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) last year ordered an investigation into whether Monsanto had abused its dominant position as a supplier of genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds.

The CCI, which is yet to complete its investigation, fined Monsanto for delays in filing replies, according to official documents reviewed by Reuters.

Monsanto responded to CCIs queries in August, but only after eight reminders issued between April 2016 and May this year, the watchdogs November order showed.

The commission hopes and trusts that full cooperation shall now be provided, the CCI said in its order dated Nov. 14.

A Monsanto India spokesman said: Monsanto continues to extensively cooperate with the CCI in the investigation and has been providing information in response to requests received.

This order is related to a procedural matter and is subject to further orders from the Delhi High Court, he added.

Challenging the role of CCI and the nature of its probe, Monsanto has filed two separate cases with the Delhi High Court.

Monsanto is locked in a battle with Indian seed maker, Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd, one of the complainants at the CCI.

That battle sparked a series of government moves that prompted the worlds biggest seed company to withdraw from some businesses in India, one of the worlds most important seed markets, Reuters reported earlier this year. (
In April this year at Infosys Ltds Palo Alto office, when Vishal Sikka was starting to get disillusioned about his future at Infosys, another top executive stationed on the other side of the globeroughly 8,400 miles awayat a rival, global information technology (IT) services firm was starting to feel equally uneasy about his own future at his company.

This executive, who had long harboured ambitions of landing the role of global chief executive at his firm, had just learnt that his company was planning to pick two other executives for the role of joint chief operating officers later during the yeara development that would deal a severe blow to his own ambitions.

Fortuitously for that executive, while one door of opportunity had shut firmly in his face, another door opened a few months later.

On Saturday, that executive, Salil Satish Parekh, 53, was named CEO of Infosysa development made all the more gratifying owing to the fact that he had lost out on that job to Sikka in 2014.

For Parekh, this weekends appointment also marked the culmination of eight months of constant back-and-forth with multiple companies, including Infosys and International Business Machines (IBM), among othersa process that proved to be frustrating at times for him, with plenty of hand-wringing, before he finally landed his latest gig at Infosys.

These accounts of the past eight months have been obtained after Mint spoke to at least half a dozen executives and other people directly familiar with Infosyss CEO search process. All these executives requested anonymity in order to speak more freely about the search process.

Sikka & Parekh: a tale of two CEOs

Back in April, the seeds of Parekhs eventual coronation at Infosys were sown when Sikka was growing increasingly frustrated with what he viewed as the efforts of the Infosys board to rein him in and oversee his performance, amid a bitter, public fight with founder NR Narayana Murthy, who was repeatedly questioning decisions made by the Infosys board.

On 15 April, Infosys named Ravi Venkatesan as co-chairman and then appointed a three-member panel to support and advise Sikka in executing strategy.

As Mint reported on 21 August, Sikka was deeply unhappy with Venkatesans appointment, even telling some executives close to him that he wanted to leave, given that he and Venkatesan had a tough working relationship on the board.

Around the same time, Mumbai-based Parekh learned Capgemini was planning to elevate two other executives to roles of joint chief operating officers later during the yeara development that effectively snuffed out his chances of being elevated to the role of global CEO of the Paris-based IT giant.

Over the next few weeks, Parekh privately made up his mind to move on from Capgemini and seek opportunities elsewhere.

Calls, emails and texts to Parekh over the weekend went unanswered.

One door of opportunity would open up at IBM in June, when CEO Ginni Rometty was looking to hire a top executive to lead the companys multi-billion dollar IT infrastructure business. While accepting the role would mean a step-up for Parekh, it did not quite fit the stature of his own ambitions. Parekh would eventually pass on the job and IBM would pick former Wipro joint-CEO Suresh Vaswani for that role.

Next, around September, came an offer from US-based DXC Technology, which was formed earlier this year after the merger of Computer Sciences Corp. and Hewlett-Packards (HP) enterprise services business.

A spokesperson for DXC Technology said the company had no comment to offer while an email sent to IBM seeking comment went unanswered.

According to two of the people mentioned above, Mike Lawrie, CEO of DXC, made an offer to Parekh to take over the $7-billion Americas business of the company. The offer was generous. If Parekh had taken up the role, he would stand to make at least $5 million in annual compensation, which is a significant jump from the estimated two-and-a-half million he made at Capgemini.

Parekh, however, had his sights on Infosys at the time, with the CEO position lying vacant at the company after Sikkas acrimonious ouster.

According to two other executives directly familiar with his thinking, Parekh asked for an introduction to the board of Infosys less than a week after Sikka stepped down in a huff on 18 August.

However, it was a while before the Infosys board itself reached out to Parekh.

A shortlist of CEOs

On 25 August, Infosys named co-founder Nandan Nilekani as chairman. Nilekani would soon depart for the US for a long-planned trip. Infosys director and head of the boards nominations committee Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, who also made a trip to the US around the same time, and Nilekani stayed in constant touch during that time and coordinated with each other on the search.

Over the next few weeks, the board started creating a firm list of potential candidates, with the help of search firm Egon Zehnder. That list contained 10 names, including that of Parekh, according to a fifth and sixth executive directly familiar with the search process that was being firmly spearheaded by Mazumdar-Shaw.

The board of Infosys had three clear mandates this time, unlike back in 2014. Firstly, they wanted a leader who was a reputed sales guy with a strong grounding in the IT outsourcing industrytraits that Sikka did not possess.

Secondly, the new CEO had to be based out of Bengaluru. No two ways about it.

The overseas experiment (with Sikka) proved to be a disaster for Infosys. The new CEO could not be based anywhere outside Bangalore. Period, said the fifth person.

And, finally, Infosys wanted to play it safe and opted to take a conventional and conservative route, said this person.

When Sikka came into Infosys in 2014, he had the reputation of being a maverick change agent. That didnt work out so well, and Infosys learnt its lessons. They chose stability this time around, he said.

Parekh and Infosys: a marriage of convenience

Mazumdar-Shaw and Nilekani further whittled down that list of names over the next few weeks. Parekh was on the final shortlist that the board began to consider seriously in early October.

The pool of IT services executives with global experience has shrunk and become smaller and smaller over the years. You just dont have any global leaders based out of India anymoreSalil was probably the only exception. And it has become impossible for companies like Infosys to get global leaders to relocate to Indiaa case in point being Abid (Ali Neemuchwala) at Wipro and Sikka at Infosys, said the sixth person.

With Parekh, all three criteria were met. Parekh, a Gujarati from Mumbai, possesses three decades of global experience in the world of IT services, having sat across the table with CEOs of Fortune 500 firms and having negotiated complex multi-year, multi-million dollar outsourcing deals over the years.

And more importantly for Infosys, Parekh, a father of three young boys, was more than happy to relocate to Bengaluru from Mumbai.

After the initial set of conversations, Nilekani, Mazumdar-Shaw and the board of Infosys decided to meet Parekh. In October-November, Parekh would travel to Bengaluru a number of times and meet the board at plush, five-star hotels in the city.

By the second week of November, the board made up its mindas had Parekh.

However, so closely guarded was the search that many were still unsure as to who Infosys would finally zero in on.

One such person was Ray Wang of Constellation Research, who has worked with Parekh both at Ernst and Young (now EY) and Capgemini, and who had met Parekh in November. When Mint asked Wang on 29 November if hell be surprised if Parekh will get the job, Wang laughed it off, saying he had heard the rumours in the past, too.

Just two days earlier (on 27 November), this paper had reached out to Parekh, asking if he indeed had accepted Infosyss offer. Mints query went unanswered and by the time Mint could independently confirm the development, Infosyss board had met on Saturday afternoon, fulfilling Parekhs ambition of becoming the boss of the high-profile IT firm.
How would you react if told that more arms were seized in the largely peaceful Uttarakhand than in the strife torn Jammu & Kashmir? In fact, more than three times the number of deadly weapons that the police found on criminals or seized in different operations in the Valley?

Sounds ironic, but it is true.

Uttarakhand witnessed a sharp jump of around 96% in the number of arms seized in the state last year compared to the 2015, as per the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2016 report.

The hill state -- which reported total 621 arms seizure in 2016, up from the 2015s figure of 317 -- also recorded the highest number of arms seizures among the Himalayan states.

Jammu & Kashmir (185) reported the second highest number of arms seizures among the mountain states, while Sikkim, with just a single seizure, was at the last spot. Uttarakhands neighbour Himachal Pradesh reported only 20 such cases last year.

Incidentally, the state had also recorded the highest number of crimes against children and cases of economic offences among the Himalayan states last year.

When it comes to confiscation of arms, Uttarakhand was way ahead of even bigger states such as Gujarat (502), Tamil Nadu (252), Kerala (196), Odisha (413) Karnataka (22) and Andhra Pradesh (36). Nationally, Uttar Pradesh reported the highest number of arm seizures (27,189), raising concerns about the growing activities of interstate gangs and criminals here.

Ashok Kumar, additional director general of police (law and order), however, said that the rise in arms seizure in Uttarakhand indicated how the police was working actively to crack down upon anti-social elements in the state.

We are continuously working to strengthen our intelligence network and based on specific inputs from them, conduct seizure of illegal arms from time to time, Kumar told HT.

It may be recalled that the number of seizures under the Arms Act had witnessed a decline in the state in 2015, as compared to 636 arms seized in Uttarakhand in 2014.

HT had recently highlighted how crime graph in the mountain state, especially in Haridwar district, known for its pilgrimage importance, has shot up mostly because of criminals and gangs from Western Uttar Pradesh making a base here.

Haridwar is close to west UPs crime-sensitive districts of Muzaffarnagar, Bijnore and Saharanpur.

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The rise in smuggling of contrabands from Nepal has become a headache for Indian security agencies along the India-Nepal border in Uttarakhand, officials said.

Earlier this week, the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB)--that mans the India-Nepal border--seized smuggled jackets from Nepal worth 8 lakh at Tanakpur in Champawat district along the international border.

Prior to this, the SSB seized smuggled cosmetics worth 1 crore from the same border.

Smuggling is rampant cross the India-Nepal border as smugglers rake in huge profits by evading customs duty and other taxes. Four months back, a central GST team arrested a man and a woman in Haldwani for smuggling 12 kg of gold across the international border.

Ram Chandra Rajguru, Champawat superintendent of police said they were coordinating with the SSB at Banbasa and Khatima border posts to curb smuggling.

There is multi-level checking at Tanakpur and Banbasa border check-posts in the district where the first checking is carried out by the customs and then by the police, he said.

Intensive patrolling was being undertaken at the places that had no check posts.

There could be points of entry that are unguarded as there are instances of goods being smuggled into India from Nepal by using the river route, the SP said.

The Sadra River demarcates the international border along the Champawat district.

Our focus is to catch these people at the points further away from the international border where they come with their goods to board buses or pass through the authorized check-posts.

Udham Singh Nagar senior superintendent of police Sadanand Date said there were indications that Rudrapur was emerging as a transit point for goods smuggled from Nepal, but police have stepped up vigil.

We are constantly monitoring hotels, bus stations and modes of transport that are taken by the smugglers to reach here from the border and the results have been encouraging as we have been able to crack down on cases of human trafficking too, he said.
The North Delhi Municipal Corporation is all set to present its annual budget on Tuesday, with a number of project announcements made in the last few years likely to be repeated. The financial budget for different projects of the civic agency will be tabled by the north corporations commissioner.

HT takes a look at some of the projects forgotten and delayed over the years.

Sanitation and landfill at Bhalsawa

In last years budget, improving sanitation conditions and management of Bhalswa landfill were among the prominent projects. In the budget, North Corporation had proposed to place 10,000 litter bins in their areas but they have managed to place less than 5,000. The agency had also proposed to buy eight mechanical sweepers, but till now only 4 mechanical sweepers .

By this month we are going to purchase four more mechanical sweepers, said an official.

In last years budget, Rs 5 crore was allocated for management and beautification of Bhalswa landfill. Officials said that Rs 1 crore was spent on hiring a consultant to chart out the road map for its beautification but the consultant left within a few months. We have now invited global tenders, an official said.

Rani Jhansi flyover

In 2008, the then MCD budget had a proposal to construct the 1.6km flyover, which would ease traffic in central Delhi. It was to be completed in 18 months. In the last 9 years, while the flyover awaits completion, it finds a mention in every budget. MCD officials said at least 82% of the work is complete and they expect to complete the project by March 2018.

Preety Agarwal, mayor of north corporation said that acquiring land and court cases had delayed the project. In case of Rani Jhasi Flyover, after fighting a lot of court cases and acquiring land, work moved at a fast pace. The lackadaisical attitude of the municipal corporations administrative wing can also be held responsible behind the delay, Agarwal said.

In September, after Delhi L-G Anil Baijal visited the construction site, the corporation had announced a deadline to complete the project in November. A north corporation official said that the project is delayed because some shopkeepers on the stretch ,where the flyover is to be built, have managed to get a a stay order against demolition orders from the Supreme Court.

Redevelopment of municipal properties

In 2014, the then budget included the construction of a multi-level parking in at least three places. It was to be completed within 2 years. The construction has not even begun.

Five-time Congress councillor Mukesh Goel, who was also a leader of Opposition, told HT that projects take a back seat because development is sidelined in the quest to make money. In my 21 years of career as councillor I have not seen the situation this bad, said Goel.

What to expect

Facing severe financial crisis, instead of new projects the agency will focus on projects that generate revenue to improve its financial health. The agency is at present running under the deficit of Rs 3,000 crore and has not been able to implement any new project this year. Among the revenue generating projects is construction of parking projects, auctioning of 22 shops at Asaf Ali Parking and other 24 properties in its jurisdiction.

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The Tri-Octaves held a two-day fundraising concert for the Bethlehem Center on Friday and Saturday.

The Christmas concert featured classic Christmas songs mixed with rhythms from well known love songs including the Supremes Stop in the Name of Love, Stevie Wonders I Just Called to Say I Love You, and Mark Ronsons Uptown Funk featuring Bruno Mars.

This Christmas concert is one of a kind, said Gloria Dubose, projects and marketing manager for the Bethlehem Center. I have never heard anyone put together two contrasting sounds in a way that makes everyone young and old feel nostalgic and get up to dance.

The Bethlehem Center thank the Tri-Octaves, Christ United Methodist Church, attendees, local media, and everyone who made the Tri-Octave Christmas concert possible. Proceeds will benefit the Bethlehem Centers Read to Lead Academy.
The concentration of poisonous gases such as nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide rose up to seven times their safe limit in November, when Delhi was covered by a choking haze for several days.

Since pollution control agencies were busy with the exceptionally high levels of particulate matter  PM2.5 and PM10, the most dominant pollutants in Delhis air, these gases escaped scrutiny.

The Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority considers the part matter levels to enforce the Graded Response Action Plan, which was for the first time this year. The EPCA is planning to take into account other pollutants from next year.

Read: Delhi air pollution interrupts play in India vs Sri Lanka Test, visitors wear masks on field

Levels of ozone and ammonia also fluctuated drastically.

While SO2 and carbon monoxide can linger in the air from 10 days to a month, prolonged exposure to high levels of these gases could trigger a range of respiratory and cardiac diseases.

SO2, NO2 and volatile organic carbon can also trigger the formation of secondary pollutants such PM2.5  ultra fine particles that can go deep inside the lungs.

Nitrogen Dioxide

High level of NO2 in the air has become a concern for experts and scientists. Data from air monitoring stations show that NO2 levels shot up by more than seven times above the safe standards in areas such as Punjabi Bagh over the last four November days. It had shot up to 588ug/m3 on November 28.

NO2 is primarily the result of burning diesel. It cant be said for certain why it increased to such levels in Punjabi Bagh without a detailed analysis, but it could be because of the high density of vehicular population, said Anumita Roychowdhury executive director at Centre for Science and Environment.

Sulphur Dioxide

The gas, one of the key elements of smog, has dropped well below the safe standards in Delhi primarily because of use of cleaner fuels. Though it did not breach the safe standards for a single day, in NCR cities such as Ghaziabad and Bhiwadi, it increased beyond the safe standard.

Monitoring SO2 is important because it triggers the formation of secondary pollutants. SO2 often condense and convert into other pollutants, reflecting a reduction in its own level, said SN Tripthi head of the Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur.

Ozone

Ozone is a threat to asthma patients and can cause premature death, if it is high even for a short duration during the day. It forms primarily when nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), react in the atmosphere in the presence of sunlight.

The level of O3 shot up above the safe standards on some days at places such as Anand Vihar, Delhi University North campus and Lodhi Road. The maximum level was recorded at DU where it had shot up to 143 above the permissible limit of 100.

Carbon Monoxide

On Lodhi Road, it had shot up at least three times above the safe standards on certain days. Once in the air, this gas can linger for more than a month and its presence affects concentrations of other greenhouse gases, including methane, ozone and carbon dioxide.

Carbon monoxide is usually emitted during burning of garbage or incomplete combustion, said Dilip Ganguly assistant professor at Centre for Atmospheric Sciences at IIT Delhi.

Other gases: Other pollutants such as Benzene and Ammonia have also spiked sometimes in Delhis air in certain places. But on most of the days they found to be under safe limits.

Benzene, which is usually found in emissions, also escapes into the atmosphere when petroleum products are transported or handled. A fuel station (petrol pump) in the vicinity of an air monitoring station could push up levels of this gas. Its level often shot up in places such as Shadipur, Punjabi Bagh and Anand Vihar.

Levels of Ammonia also shot up in Delhi on some days but have never crossed the safe standards.

Some pollutants may spike momentarily at some stations for various reasons but their overall levels are under control. This time, we experienced a far better November as far as pollution levels are concerned. Efforts like GRAP has started to show its effects and despite unfavourable weather conditions, pollution is still in very poor category, said D Saha, head of the air quality laboratory at CPCB.

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Estranged AAP leaders, Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, on Monday dismissed the possibility of returning to the party saying it has betrayed all ideals of the anti-corruption movement.

AAP leader Kumar Vishwas had on Sunday called for working towards a version 2 of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) by facilitating return of ousted leaders, including Yadav and Bhushan.

No formal or informal conversation of any such a move has happened. And I dont see that happening. We (Swaraj India) are on to a different path. AAP is pursuing standard politics of any other party  like Lalu Prasad runs in Bihar and we have chosen a difficult path of alternative politics by raising farmers issues, Yogendra Yadav told Hindustan Times.

Yadav and Bhushan, founder members of AAP, were sacked in April 2015 for their alleged anti-party activities after they questioned party chief Arvind Kejriwals style of functioning. The two founded Swaraj India, a political outfit, soon after.

They would claim it (AAP) is a shade better than others, but I am not into disputing or giving into those claims, Yadav said.

Poet-politician Vishwas, who has been at loggerheads with the partys top leadership, said on Sunday that he would travel across the country to revamp the party that should be based on the core principles set five years ago.

Bhushan termed the announcement absurd.

There are no talks or possibility of our return to AAP which has betrayed all the ideals of the anti-corruption movement, he tweeted on Monday.

An absurd report. There are no talks or possibility of our returning to AAP which has betrayed all the ideals of the Anti Corruption movement https://t.co/dFWxdAYU7v  Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) December 4, 2017

Yadav, now president of Swaraj India, said the liberating idea of the movement had been let down ever since it transformed into a political party five years ago.

I really do not know where this is coming from. The moment anyone in AAP remembers morality, they remember Prashant and me. There must be a serious deficit, he said.

Vishwas, AAPs Rajasthan in-charge, has been at odds with the top leadership after suspended MLA Amanatullah Khan was reinstated in the party in October this year. Okhla MLA Khan was suspended over his tirade against Vishwas in May this year.

Speaking at the partys fifth anniversary on November 26, Vishwas said that AAP has drifted away from its core principles. He had called Sunday meeting with volunteers at the partys Delhi office. No other senior leader attended the event, even as there was no rebuttal from the party.

Its good for the party to have a meeting with volunteers, said AAP spokesperson, Saurabh Bharadwaj.

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A sub-committee set up by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) has pitched for aligning school calendar and timings to the climatic and cultural requirements of the children.

CABE is the governments highest advisory body for policymaking in the field of education.

The sub-committee was formed to find ways to re-engage children who have dropped out of schools. Officials said the scope also involved looking at improving the quality of education so that kids do not drop out.

School calendar and timings should be aligned to the climatic and cultural requirements of the children. To accommodate their diverse needs, it is important to have flexibility in school calendar and school timings. Delegate the necessary powers, the subcommittee headed by minister of state for human resource development Upendra Kushwaha has recommended .

According to the officials, this recommendation was approved at a recent meeting that was chaired by Khushwaha and attended by education ministers of Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Tripura besides other nominated members of CABE. Sources said the recommendation would now be sent to CABE and education ministers across the country will deliberate on it at the next CABE meeting.

The committee learnt from the states that in hilly areas, reaching schools very early (in the morning) is a difficult task. Similarly, many areas remain under snow and this should be taken into account. Even in urban areas we see students out of their homes as early as 6am. Many are not able to concentrate in the classes. It would be better if schools timings can be pushed ahead a little bit, said a source.

While private ones are more flexible, government-run schools like Kendriya Vidyalayas, with over 11 lakh students, are not so. Our schools generally start around 7.30am. But we allow schools the flexibility of starting it 30 minutes earlier or later. Until 2000, our schools followed the 9am to 3pm timing. But as several of them run in two shifts, we had to push it earlier, said a senior KV official.

The sub-committee has also suggested that schools should have vocational education in their curriculum, and has recommended pre-primary education at all government-run schools to prepare the children for further education.

The CABE meetings in the past have undertaken several important issues related to school education. For instance, it is at one of these meetings that the HRD ministry had asked all the states to decide on the contentious no-detention policy.

Earlier, the Central Board of Secondary Education had suggested advancing the board exams from 2018 but several schools, especially in hill states, opposed it, citing climate woes.

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New Delhi

The Jawaharlal Nehru University may soon start offering courses in engineering and management with its academic council (AC) giving approval to setting up a school of engineering. The council also approved upgrading the special centre for Sanskrit studies into a school.

The vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar had said earlier this year, in an interview with HT, that the university was planning to start these two courses.

We will start a school of management and entrepreneurship to focus on informal innovation. We will also start an engineering school which will offer integrated five-year degree, he had said.

The council members confirmed that a proposal to set up a school of engineering was approved on Friday along with the change of the special centre for Sanskrit studies into a School for Sanskrit and Indic Studies. The changes now need to be approved by the executive council before implementation.

JNU teachers association (JNUTA) said their demands on a discussion on how the school of engineering programmes would be different from Indian Institute of Technology(IIT) were not answered.

It also alleged that no actual proposal was circulated on the issue of upgrading the Sanskrit studies centre.

The chair announced that he has been promised Rs 180 crore by the UGC for this (Engineering) School and full support in terms of faculty positions. A decision to run the entrance exam, rather than through the IIT-JEE system was also announced. Along with engineering, the programme in management was also deemed to be passed, even though not one comment regarding this was placed as part of the agenda for discussion, a statement from JNUTA said.

If approved, the university will take students for these subjects for 2019 -2020 academic session. The vice-chancellor, registrar, and rector-I did not respond to calls and text messages seeking their comments on the issue.

JNU, established in 1969, is known for its arts and humanities subjects. JNU officials had submitted a proposal and made a presentation to the university regulator University Grants Commission.
A 21-year-old youth has been arrested in Murshidabad district of West Bengal on charges of raping a four-year-old girl after luring her with chocolates.

Murshed Sheikh, the accused, lived close to the victims house in Malipara village and used to frequently visit them, and so, the child did not hesitate to go with him on Saturday evening.

When she returned home, she complained of severe lower abdominal pain. When we asked her, she narrated the brutal torture on her, said the victims father, a carpenter.

The girl had suffered severe injuries to her private parts and was taken to a local hospital, but as her condition deteriorated, she was referred to Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital (MMCH), where she is currently undergoing treatment.

Police said Sheikh had confessed to the crime. He has been charged with rape under section 376 (rape) of IPC and sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).

During primary interrogation, Sheikh confessed. We have got him in our custody for three days, said a senior officer at Raninagar police station.

The childs father also said that some locals had offered money to suppress the matter, but we have lodged a complaint against Sheikh.
More than two months after an unprecedented students protest against sexual violence shook the century-old Banaras Hindu University (BHU), a security overdrive meant to ensure the safety of female students is instead making them feel claustrophobic.

Founded in 1916, BHU was considered to be one of the safest campuses for girls. That seems to be history now.

Old-timers say harassment of girls on campus was unheard of.

BHU was completely safe for girls till 2000. Even after that, incidents of boys passing comments at girls occurred once or twice in a year, said Sudama Tiwari, a former BHU student and a poet who has been watching BHU closely since the early 1960s.

Tiwari, who is in his late 70s, couldnt recall any incident of sexual harassment or violence before 2000.

The situation has recently gone from bad to worse. I think the cultural transformation has led to these unsavoury incidents, he said.

Prof Chandrakala Tripathi, who studied at BHU in the early 1970s and joined the Hindi department as a professor in 1978, said she never felt unsafe during her student days.

I was a student in the 70s and joined BHU as a faculty in 1978. As a student, I often used to go to the library. I never felt the lack of security and safety on campus, she said. The incidents that have occurred in the recent past were beyond imagination in those days. Whatever happened in the recent past was a result of a clash of ideologies.

But she insists the university is still a safe place for women. So far as girls security is concerned, BHU is a safe place. The picture is not as bleak as painted by a section of media, she said.

Sukhdev Prasad Mishra, a violinist who studied at BHU till 2004, said even before 2000, there were sufficient numbers of girls at the university but they never had security concerns.

Deterioration started in 2000 and the situation completely changed after 2005. Incidents of clashes between student groups were reported on the campus, Mishra said.

The September Assault

The assault in September by two motorcycle-borne on a girl returning to her hostel sparked off a protest demanding action against the accused.

The protesters, mostly girls, were caned by male police personnel on September 23, which sparked nationwide outrage and put the spotlight on the lack of security for women at BHU.

The two men are yet to be arrested.

Investigation is on and we are trying to identify the accused. They will be arrested soon, said station officer, Lanka, Sanjiv Mishra.

The slow pace of the investigation has earned the police the girls derision. The accused should have been behind bars by now. It has been two months and they have not been identified yet. This exposes the sluggish pace of investigation, Shivani Chaubey, a student, said.

Two incidents of sexual harassment and an assault on a girl by a male student have taken place in the span of a year. While the accused in the assault case were arrested, the perpetrators of sexual harassment are still at large.

On October 5, a student of public administration, Sheetala Sharan Gond, allegedly dragged a woman student by her hair, slapped her and smashed her mobile phone after she refused to talk to him. He was arrested within a few hours of the incident and was suspended by university authorities.

On October 25, a girl alleged that a third-year student of Bachelor in Ayurvedic Medicines and Surgery (BAMS), Kali Charan, indulged in obscene discussions and activities with her when she went to the outdoor patient unit of the Ayurveda department at Sir Sundar Lal Hospital, BHU.

She lodged a complaint with chief proctor, Professor Royna Singh, who immediately referred the matter to police who arrested the accused.

Enhanced security or stifling rules?

Following the condemnation of the police crackdown on protesters, the BHU administration decided to bolster campus security.

The administration installed 70 surveillance cameras, halogen lamps at 15 locations on roads leading to the girls hostels, and constituted an all-woman security squad.

In a first, the university also appointed Prof Royana Singh as the first woman chief proctor of BHU.

But the girls are not impressed. They claim the university is imposing stifling rules and restrictions on them in the name of security.

What is being portrayed outside and what is actually done are two different things. The desired relaxation in curfew timings (the duration when girls are not allowed to venture out of hostels) is yet to be enforced. We demanded relaxation till 10pm but the university administration extended it till 9pm. The deadline is 10pm only for the inmates of Triveni Hostel, a student said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Girls have been pitching for the constitution of a gender sensitisation committee against sexual harassment (GS-CASH). A group of girls, led by student Mineshi Mishra, recently submitted a memorandum signed by 400 students to the chief proctor to press for the constitution of GS-CASH.

After the September 23 incident, the university authorities have become very strict with girls. They are imposing new restrictions on us in the name of security, Mishra said.

They dont allow relatives, male students and acquaintances to sit even for a while in the visiting area of hostels. Will the university administration decide whom should we meet? she asked.

No curfew

Prof Singh rubbished the girls allegations of curfew as baseless and insisted that the universitys gates were closed at 10pm for security reasons and to keep external elements away from the campus during the night.

There is no curfew but all girls are supposed to return to their hostels by 8pm. In case any girl wants to go out after 8pm, she needs to seek permission from the hostel warden and give a reason. Permission is immediately granted if the reason is genuine, Prof Singh said, adding that the timings had been relaxed by an hour to 9pm.

The university has found some support on security steps from a former employee.

This is a matter of great concern. These external elements should be dealt with sternly, said Vishwanath Pandey, former public relations officer of BHU. Prof Singh added she would speak to BHU registrar Neeraj Tripathi (who holds the additional charge of vice-chancellor) to ensure formation of university-level GS-CASH.

Campus secure, says BHU

The chief proctor says the security has been tightened to ensure the girls safety.

Three quick response teams (QRTs) have been formed and patrolling has been intensified, which is monitored round-the-clock through a central monitoring system, she said.

QRTs promptly respond to the incident and reach the spot within five minutes. Surprise checking is carried out during the night and strict action is taken if any outsider is caught on the campus.

In the last year, the womens grievance cell (WGC), BHU, received about 26 complaints related to lewd remarks, taunting, humiliating comments and intentional targeting between November 2016 and November 2017, a well-placed source told HT.

As soon as a complaint is lodged, we ensure the probe is completed within four days. The complainant and the accused are summoned and the matter is heard. Appropriate action is taken after the probe, said Prof Singh, who also heads the WGC.

We do not hesitate in referring a matter to police if the situation warrants. Action was taken on all 26 complaints, she said.

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Senior Congress leaders on Monday hailed Rahul Gandhi, saying the partys future will be bright under his stewardship as party chief and attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP for ridiculing the Congresss presidential election. (Live updates)

Rahul Gandhi is a darling of the Congress and he will carry forward the great traditions of the party, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said after Rahul filed his nomination papers for the partys top post.

Over 90 sets of nominations are expected to be filed supporting Gandhi whose election is a mere formality now, as there is no other candidate for the partys top post.

Another senior Congress leader Dr. Karan Singh said time has come for vice-president Rahul Gandhi to take over the commands of the party from his mother, Sonia Gandhi.

Sonia ji took Congress to new heights. She brought the party to Centre twice, we won many elections under her leadership and now it is time for Rahul Gandhi to take the party forward, Singh told reporters outside the AICC headquarters.

A young generation is taking over, the future of Congress is bright, he said.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he is suffering from a Rahul Gandhi-phobia and asked why he was silent on questions being raised by his own senior party leaders.

Why is the Prime Minister suffering from Rahul Gandhi phobia? Why is he so much stressed? Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala told reporters here ahead of party Vice President Rahul Gandhis filing of nomination for its presidential post.

He also said that Modis love for Shehzad (Poonawalla), Shahzada (BJP chief Amit Shahs son Jai Shah) and Shourya (National Security Advisor Ajit Dovals son) is well known to the world.

But will Modiji tell when he will answer the questions of his own senior party leaders like Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha? he asked.

Slamming the Prime Minister and BJP president Amit Shah, Surjewala said: Modiji should also tell about his and Amit Shahs conspiracies against L.K. Advani, Keshubhai Patel, Kashiram Rana, Hiren Pandya, Murali Manohar Joshi and Sanjay Joshi, those who have been made a part of the partys history.

Former Union minister Kamal Nath also attacked the BJP for not having democracy in the party.

Do BJP Presidents get elected? Did Nitin Gadkari get elected through a ballot process? Let them answer that first, Kamal Nath told reporters.

Incumbent BJP chief Amit Shah was elected unopposed for a second term on January 24, 2016.
Kashmiri and Rohingyas Muslims found a prominent mention in a new audio file released by the media wing of the Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), an Islamist militant organisation, asking south Asias Muslim community to help the oppressed.

In the audio released last week, AQIS lauds the efforts of Bangladesh in supporting Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar and praised the Kashmiri community for raising their voice despite being in suffering themselves.

The Islamist outfit reiterated the call for Jihad against India and other nations including US, Russia and Israel, saying that these countries were in alliance when it came to fight Islam and were happy till the time Islam is in mosques. The moment Islam pours out into society and the legal system, they do not tolerate that, he added.

The voice in the 12-minute audio address was identified as that of AQIS spokesperson Ustadh Usama Mahmood.

He said there were two categories of help by which subcontinents Muslims could assist the oppressed one of which was by providing financial and other assistance to Rohingyas. The second way, said Mahmood, was to stop the hand of the cruel.

Intelligence agency officials told HT, The said audio has come to our notice. Investigative agencies are ascertaining whether the audio poses a concrete threat . Till now we have no reason to believe that it does.

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Shortly after Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination for the Congress president post on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi compared the opposition leaders expected elevation to the Aurangzeb Raj. (Live Updates)

Amid criticism of the election process that has even drawn flak from a Maharashtra Congress leader, Mani Shankar Aiyar rushed to the 47-year-old Gandhi scions defence even as the BJP targeted the opposition party over dynasty politics.

When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any election happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go to the heir.

The Congress veteran was replying to a question about the BJPs criticism following Maharashtra leader Shehzad Poonawallas charge that the process of electing the partys president was rigged.

Poonawalla alleged that partys spokesperson Manish Tewari had told him during a conversation that the Congress was a proprietorship like every other political party in India. He also said he had information that the delegates, who were going to vote for the election, were fixed.

But in a democracy elections are held. I openly invite Poonawalla to file the nomination and contest, Aiyar said and asked if anyone has heard of Poonawala.

The Congress presidents post is currently held by Rahuls mother Sonia Gandhi, who has been at the helm of the party since 1998.

Modi was quick to respond to the remarks made by Aiyar, who he said never shies away from showing loyalty to one family. He also said that the Congress leaders admit that it is not a party but a kunba or a clan.

I congratulate the Congress on their Aurangzeb Raj. For us, the wellbeing of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command, Modi said while addressing a public meeting in Dharampur constituency in Gujarat.

Congress has gone bankrupt as it is going to make a person who is out on bail in corruption case its president, Modi, said without referring to the National Herald case, in which Rahul has got a bail.

Does the Congress accept that it is a family party? We dont want this Aurangzeb rule, Modi said.

The ruling BJP has, time and again, attacked the Congress party, accusing it of following dynastic politics and feudalism.

The Prime Minister also accused the Congress party of defaming the BJP by propagating it is against Muslims.

Disinformation like BJP does this and that against Muslims has been spread. This family party made it their main agenda to spread disinformation about the BJP. But Gujarat people are not so naive, they have now become sensitive and aware to disinformation, he said.

He alleged that the Congress party has been indulging in divisive politics in a bid to win the upcoming Gujarat assembly elections.

Earlier, Congress would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing in this election, where they are going. Unfortunately for them, Muslims know their real nature, Modi said, adding that Congress has always defamed Gujarat and that it can neither tolerate nor accept leaders from the state.

The two-phase Gujarat polls will be held on December 9 and 14.
Just a day ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya on December 1992, the Supreme Court of India is set to begin final hearing in the politically controversial Babri Masjid-Ram temple dispute case.

A special bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice S Abdul Nazeer will assemble at 2pm on December 5, Tuesday, to begin hearing a total of 13 appeals filed against the 2010 judgement of the Allahabad high court in four civil suits.

The high court had then ruled a three-way division of the disputed 2.77 acre area at Ayodhya among the parties  the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and the deity Ram Lalla (Ram as an infant).

Contesting parties, including the Uttar Pradesh government, are likely to make their opening statements on Tuesday.

A sect of Muslims, under the banner of Shia Central Waqf Board of Uttar Pradesh, had earlier approached the court offering a solution that a mosque could be built in a Muslim- dominated area at a reasonable distance from the disputed site in Ayodhya. The Shia board was not a party in the case originally.

However, its intervention was opposed by the Sunni board which had claimed that judicial adjudication between the two sects had already been done in 1946 by declaring the mosque, which was demolished on December 6, 1992, as one which belongs to the Sunnis.

The Sunni board also challenged the judgment, saying the verdict was based on faith rather than documentary evidence.

It also said the verdict violates Articles 25-26 of the Constitution, which grants equal rights to all faith. The appeal has the endorsement of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, one of the original litigants.

Tuesdays hearing comes in the backdrop of a failed suggestion by the SC in March this year, when it had suggested an out-of-court settlement. None of the parties were keen on it.

Recently a group of civil rights activists also moved the apex court seeking intervention in the Ayodhya dispute and urged it to consider the issue saying it is not just a dispute over property but has several aspects that would have far-reaching effects on the secular fabric of the country.

Since September 2010, over 20 appeals and cross-appeals have been filed in the SC without making any significant headway.

In pursuance to the SCs earlier direction, the Yogi Adityanath government has submitted English translation of exhibits and documents likely to be relied upon, as these were in eight different languages.

The SC on August 11 asked the UP government to complete within 10 weeks the translation of the evidence recorded for adjudication of the title dispute in the HC. It had said it would not allow the matter to take any shape other than the civil appeals and would adopt the same procedure as was done by the high court.

(With PTI inputs)
Buzzing like a mammoth insect, the four-prop drone lifts off the ground, rising straight up. Once it reaches about four feet, it hovers for a bit, then slowly settles back to the ground.

It doesnt seem like much of a flight until you understand how it happened.

No handheld controls, no tether, no nothing.

Just brain waves.

Tony Ferguson sits about 12 feet away at a laptop. As he works in what has been dubbed the Unmanned Systems Lab, on top of his head is a lattice of white plastic dotted with blue electrodes about the size of a thumb. The electrodes, which register brainwave activity, can be tightened to firmly hold the entire device in place.

Unfortunately, at the skull-touching end, the electrodes have a circle of tiny pointslittle needles, basicallyand they tend to dig into the flesh. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to make anyone wearing the headgear want to take it off as quickly as possible.

These things are pretty uncomfortable; they stick and they arent fun. About an hour is all I can take, Mr. Ferguson says, several small, reddish circles indented in the skin of his forehead just short of the hairline.

But the pain is worth it, he says, because his goal is to develop technology that will allow control all aspects of the drone simply through thought. Want it to move right? Think about it. Want it to take a photo with its camera? Imagine it.

Visualization in the brain would control the drone, says Mr. Ferguson, an electrical engineering major.

Future uses

Dr. Zach Ruble, a researcher in the Departments of Engineering and Electrical Engineering and director of the drone project, pictures a future in which one person can control multiple drones by thought. A separate research project that uses infrared light to control a swarm of dronesled by electrical engineering student Artem Malashiyis taking place alongside the project on brain-wave control.

Ultimately, we want to detect patterns in the brainwaves such that we can give abstract commands to multiple drones, Dr. Ruble says. So instead of giving a basic command such as take off or land, we can send out an abstract command such as search and rescue.

After receiving the command, the swarm of drones will determine what needs to be done in order to carry out that command and execute the mission autonomously.

A smaller, more comfortable headset should be possible as the technology develops, Mr. Ferguson says.

It could have military applications, search-and-rescue applications, etc. Obviously, prosthetics has a huge, huge application here, says Mr. Ferguson, a former Marine who served spent time under fire in Iraqs war-torn Fallujah.

In the current setup, his brainwaves are fed into his laptop, which sends a Wi-Fi signal to a second computer that, in turn, sends a wireless signal to the drone. The second computer, manned by Ed Steele, a graduate student in electrical engineering, contains the software that actually controls the drone. Mr. Steele developed the software and, without his work, the project would not be possible, Mr. Ferguson says.

He did all the groundwork, all the legwork, to fly the drone, he says.

Both spent several months just getting the drone to move up and down, and both say the work took longer than they wanted, but now they want more. Much more.

Following footsteps

Using brainwaves to control robotics limbs is nothing new, but those rely on implants in the brain that fire nerves and send electric impulses to microprocessors in the limbs. What Mr. Ferguson and other members of the project team have plans that are difficult to create but will ultimately make things easier.

Im following in the footsteps of stuff thats gone before, but the thought avenue is what Im focusing on, to be able to control things just by thinking, says Mr. Ferguson, who adds that, until he joined the drone project in January, had no idea that this type of technology was even available much less usable.

Hes in the process of creating a wide vocabulary for drone control and says he hopes to have that done by the end of December. Creating a wider command list is another step to increase the drones capabilities, Dr. Ruble says.

For example, if we can detect a pattern in the EEG signals that differentiates a person moving his left arm versus moving his right arm, we can generate two different commands based off which arm the person is moving.

Mr. Ferguson says hes trying to get gesture control, the brainwave response for this he moves his right arm up and downto fly the drone left or right, I will move on to purely thought, he explains.

Ive done it a little bit; its kind of hard to do.
Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav has accused the BJP of spreading lies, saying while the party was patting its back for doing well in Uttar Pradeshs mayoral elections, it was silent about its defeat in the nagar palika and nagar panchayat polls.

The BJP is a jhoot parosne wali party (a party which indulges in serving lies). It won 14 out of the 16 mayoral seats in Uttar Pradesh due to the electronic voting machines (EVMs). But it is not discussing its defeats in the nagar palika and nagar parishad polls, he said Sunday.

Akhilesh, who was in Etah to attend a wedding, said, If countries more developed than India can use ballot papers in elections, what is the problem here? The Election Commission must clarify on how could it repair a faulty EVM. When a faulty EVM can be repaired, a properly functioning EVM can also be tampered with.

Opposition parties, including the SP, Congress, AAP, have repeatedly accused the BJP of tampering with the EVMs and rooted for an alternative way of casting votes.
Cyclone Ockhi, which left behind a trail of destruction in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Lakshadweep, is expected to make landfall in Gujarat on Tuesday night which may cause heavy rains in the state and adjoining Maharashtra.

An India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast said, The severe cyclonic storm Ockhi is now laid centred about 850 km south-southwest of Surat and is likely to cross south Gujarat and adjoining North Maharashtra coasts near Surat as a deep depression by mid-night of December 5.

We have issued heavy rainfall warnings for Gujarat, while light to moderate rain is expected in isolated areas in north Konkan, including Mumbai, on Tuesday, IMDs director general KJ Ramesh said.

Schools and colleges in Mumbai and adjoining districts have been asked to remain closed on Tuesday due to serious weather predictions, Maharashtras school education minister Vinod Tawde said

The impact of the cyclone will be seen in Palghar, Thane, Raigarh, and Greater Mumbai districts of Maharashtra and Valsad, Surat, Navsari, Bharuch, Dang, Tapi, Amreli, Gir- Somnath and Bhavnagar districts of Gujarat.

Union Territories Daman, Diu and Dadra, Nagar Haveli will also be affected.

The scale of the cyclone was reduced from very severe on Sunday to severe, the weather department said.

It has warned fisherman along the Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka coastline not to venture into the sea from Monday to Wednesday.

The high winds and persistent rains hit the southern districts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu last week and caused loss to life and property.

The death toll climbed to 28 in Kerala after a rescue team recovered two more bodies on Monday and officials said at least 90 people were still missing in the state.

The Tamil Nadu government on Monday said a total of 2,604 fishermen out of the 2,864 caught in the cyclone Ockhi have been rescued and search for the remaining 260 is on.

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday that representatives of fishermen will also be included in the ongoing search operation to rescue the missing in Kerala.

The joint operation of the Indian Navy, Indian Air Force and Coast Guard will continue till the last man is saved from the sea, the minister said after visiting the two worst-hit fishing hamlets of Vizhinjam and Poonthura in Thiruvananthapuram district.

People of the coast are in deep distress. The government will do everything to alleviate their suffering. I will inform the Prime Minister and home minister what I have seen, she said in Poonthura.

We have even deployed warships. The rescue operation this time is more intense than the one during the tsunami in 2004. We are committed to saving the last man marooned in the sea, she said.

Sitharaman later chaired a meeting with Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and reviewed the situation.

Tempers ran high on the coast when Sitharaman arrived and the angry relatives of the missing fishermen took exception to the presence of two state ministers in the team. Sitharaman had a tough time pacifying them.

On Sunday, chief minister Vijayan was heckled by an angry crowd and he had to leave without his official car. The crowd shouted at him, accusing him of not visiting them immediately after the tragedy.

The affected people have said the government did not give them the warning about the cyclone on time and that its response to the situation was delayed. They also blocked roads at several places.

On Sunday, the families of the missing fishermen defied the warning of the met office and government and ventured into to look for them.

A naval ship on Monday located a fishing boat with nine crew members, reportedly missing from Kochi since the last 15 days, off Lakshadweep, a defence spokesperson said.

All of them are safe. They are coming on their own their boat to Kochi, he said.

The boat, Island Queen, was located by INS Kolkata 132 nautical miles north of Kavaratti in Lakshadweep, he said. The local administration had requested the navy to search for it, he added.

The spokesperson added that the naval ship continued with them for some time before going for another rescue operation.

Sitharaman, who was in Kanyakumari on Sunday to take stock of the situation in the wake of the cyclonic storm, said 357 fishermen, including 71 from Tamil Nadu, have been rescued so far.

(With agency inputs)
National Conference president Farooq Abdullah on Monday met governor N N Vohra and batted strongly for holding clean panchayat elections, which were long overdue, an official spokesperson said.

Abdullah met the governor at the Raj Bhavan here and informed him that his party was looking forward to the panchayat polls, a Raj Bhavan spokesperson said.

The dates for the panchayat elections have not been announced.

The former chief minister complained that the indirect elections of the sarpanch shall vitiate the essence of the Panchayati Raj institutional framework.

He also demanded that full details of the delimitation of the panchayats recently done by the state government should be placed in the public domain.

Abdullah stressed the need for all the candidates being provided effective security and the sanctity of gram sabhas being strictly maintained till the elections were concluded.

He expressed serious concern and warned about the lack of required action to prevent the rapid pace at which drug smuggling and trafficking were spreading in the state.

Abdullah also complained about the virtual stoppage of registration of residents under the Aadhaar card scheme and complained that those who are without such identity cards are facing serious problems in carrying out their day to day work.
At around 4 pm on 30 November, at Vizhinjam Coast Guard base in Kerala, orders went out to all routine patrol boats of the Indian Coast Guard to return to shore, as a storm was coming. The Coast Guard wanted to protect its men and machinery.

Then, an SOS arrived from the district administration of Thiruvananthapuram  many fishermen were stuck at sea and unable to return due to strong winds raging at over 130 kilometres an hour and a rough sea. The Coast Guard sent out two interceptor boats, two offshore vessels and a Dornier aircraft to rescue the stranded fishermen.

A capsized boat with people in mid sea. (Handout by Defence ministry)

But what began with the Coast Guard turned into a rescue operation of massive scale also involving the Indian Coast Guard and Navy.

They realised that the storm was too powerful for these few ships and one aircraft to handle, said a senior Coast Guard officer at the Vizhinjam base on condition of anonymity. The Coast Guard is generally the first responder in case of any crises at sea, for search and rescue operations. But we realised very quickly that we were not equipped to handle this by ourselves. So, we sent out a call to the Coast Guard Headquarters in Kochi and also informed the Indian Navy, asking for help. We informed the state government too who, in turn, approached the Navy and Air Force for help, he said.

A Coast Guard ship towing a fishing boat to shore. (Handout by Defence ministry)

Once we got the call from the state government, we activated all our ships in the Western Command and pressed them into search and rescue operations, said Commander Sreedhar E Warrier of the Indian Navy who is in the Kochi Naval Base. On the first day, 6 ships, 2 aircraft and 2 choppers of the Navy headed out. Apart from these, 9 ships, 2 Dornier aircraft and 1 helicopter belonging to the Coast Guard were also deployed. One more ship went towards the Lakshadweep Islands.

By the end of the same day, the Indian Air Force had jumped in as well with one aircraft and two choppers. The nodal point of contact for all of these agencies was the Kochi Naval Base.

As Twilight Fell

Cyclone Ockhi picked up in fury and an unknown number of fishermen who were closer to shore were quickly picked up and rescued by all three agencies. But night began to fall and finding survivors became tougher.

The Dorniers flying range is very less and it has no special features for night searches, so we pressed the Boeing P8i aircraft of the Navy into action, said Warrier.

This craft is Indias latest pride. Manufactured by American firm Boeing, the first P8i  Poseidon 8 India  arrived at the INS Rajali Naval Base in Arakkonam, Tamil Nadu in 2013. Following flight trials, in 2015, then Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar dedicated these aircraft to the nation.

The P8i has state of the art sensors and radar that can detect very small objects in the sea as well as submarines over a wide area of the sea. Infrared cameras, magnetic anomaly detection and other surveillance cameras ensure that even at night, Navy officers have eyes.

The first P8i took off from INS Rajali on the night of 30 November. With this, 250 nautical miles off the Kerala coast was scanned and stranded boats and fishermen were identified. GPS co-ordinates of these were sent to ships out on sea.

Image from P8i of capsized boats (Handout by Defence ministry)

We formed a joint action team of the Navy, Coast Guard and the Air Force and started rescue operations in full swing, Rear Admiral Alok Bhatnagar, Flag Officer of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Naval Area told HT. Though it was difficult at night to conduct rescues, our Advanced Lightweight Helicopters (ALH) were deployed to winch up those fishermen who had fallen into the sea and needed immediate rescue. These were fishermen who were hanging on to capsized boats. There were our first targets for rescue, he said. It was easier said than done. The strong winds made it almost impossible for the aircraft to get close to where the fishermen were floating.

Coast Guard ships are the ones which are designed for search and rescue, more than the Navy. So, we made use of our aircraft more to gather details and location of the stranded fishermen and passed it on to the Coast Guard ships, he added.

For search and rescue operations, ships and aircraft are given specific co-ordinates  in squares  for operations.

Search and rescue by Indian forces done in squares. (Handout by Defence ministry)

Smaller aircraft such as the Dornier and ALH are generally given smaller squares for their ops. The P8i is usually deployed over the high seas to sweep 250 nautical miles in its search. Once the P8i finds survivors, information and GPS co-ordinates are passed on to the nearest ship, which then sends its onboard helicopter for rescue. Offshore Dorniers also provide information to these ships for rescue operations. These are smaller aircraft which cannot access the high seas and scan the waters closer to land.

INS Jamuna, INS Sagardhwani and INS Nireekshak were some of the Navy-owned ships sent to conduct rescues along the Kerala coast. INS Shardul and INS Sharda headed to Lakshadweep. Even destroyers  vessels meant for attack  like the INS Kolkata, INS Chennai and INS Trikand were deployed for search and rescue operations!

Search and rescue by Indian forces done in squares. (Handout by Defence ministry)

Coast Guard ships are designed to be able to get close enough to stranded fishing boats to throw a line and tow them back to shore. But larger ships, like the ones in the Navy, cannot get close to small fishing boats as they would end up damaging the boats. For larger ships to conduct rescues, the Navy had to shoot a rope into the boat and drag it in its wake at a distance.

A Coast Guard ship towing a fishing boat. (Handout by Defence ministry)

In fact, the INS Shardul and Sharda are such ships ill equipped for search and rescue operations. A boat from Tuticorin district in Tamil Nadu, with 9 fishermen on board was rescued in such a fashion by INS Sharda about 50 nautical miles off Kavaratti island in the Lakshadweep Islands. Here is the video of that rescue recorded via infrared camera of a P8i aircraft.

Local fishermen in Kerala attempted to brave the fury of the storm on their own but found that they could not even enter the sea in their little boats.

The Coast Guards Ops

On the night of 1 December, the Sea King helicopter of the Indian Coast Guard switched on its lights and flew over the rough seas in high winds to search for survivors in its last flight of the night. It was about to turn back, when a small green object was sighted in the sea, 30 nautical miles from the Trivandrum coast. It was a lone survivor, hanging on for life to his boat. It was a truly satisfying experience to have picked up this fisherman, said the pilot of the Sea King when he came back to Vizhinjam base. The fisherman, who was from Kerala, was very weak and in bad condition when he came in, said the senior Coast Guard officer at Vizhinjam.

Air force personnel bring in survivors for treatment. (Handout by Defence ministry)

That same night, an ALH diver VK Verma, who jumped into the seas to rescue fishermen to safety, injured his hand on the winch wire. However, he heroically continued to assist the fishermen to be rescued before himself being winched up. He was thereafter admitted to a Thiruvanthapuram hospital, said the senior official of the Coast Guard.

As survivors began streaming in, many were in shock and in poor health. We provided first aid in the Naval clinic at the Trivandrum Naval Base to the survivors and also conducted medical examinations. Those who were very weak were sent to the Trivandrum Medical College and Hospital, said Commander Sreedhar Warrier of the Indian Navy in Kochi.

Survivors being treated at Trivandrum Medical College and Hospital. (Handout by Defence ministry)

Fishermen in Tamil Nadu and Kerala had begun protests, stating that many more were missing. Data from the P8i too showed that rescue ops were far from over. By 2 December, deployment of ships and aircraft was further increased. 20 ships from the Coast Guard and the Indian Navy, 6 aircraft belonging to the Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force as well as 7 helicopters intensified search operations.

By the end of 2 December, the Coast Guard alone had rescued 87 survivors belonging to Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The Indian Navy picked up 65 more and 9 others were rescued by the Air Force. Merchant vessels, belonging to private companies too chipped in, picking up any survivors they spotted  they managed to save 28.

We found that 172 fishermen had safely reached the shores of Lakshadweep. We arranged for shelter and food for them there itself. Once the weather cleared, we brought them back, said Commander Warrier of the Navy. Another 1000 fishermen were sent to Goa, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala and given shelter there.

By 3 December, the storm had moved on towards the Gujarat coast. As of this morning, a total of 89 boats comprising 1,154 fishermen from several states mainly from Kerala and Tamil Nadu have taken shelter in various ports of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa & Lakshadweep, tweeted the Defence Ministry.

As search and rescue enters the final stage, survivors are fewer. As on 10 am on 3 December, 357 survivors have been rescued from sea. But there is no estimate yet as to how many fishermen have died in the fury of Cyclone Ockhi.

(In arrangement with GRIST MEDIA)
With heavy rainfall warning issued by India Meteorological Department (IMD) in many parts of Odisha, the state government asked farmers on Monday to shift their harvested paddy from the fields to safe places to avoid loss or damage.

Rain is likely to lash Odisha for at least three days from December 7 due to a well marked low pressure that lies over southeast Bay of Bengal and adjoining south Andaman Sea Monday, the Meteorological Centre here said.

It is very likely to become a depression over southeast Bay of Bengal during next 24 hours and further intensify into a deep depression during subsequent 48 hours. It is likely to move west-northwestwards towards north Tamil Nadu  south Andhra Pradesh coasts next three days, it said.

While weather is expected to remain dry over Odisha during next 72 hours, rainfall is likely to occur in several parts of the state by December 7 under its impact, said director of the local Met Centre, Sarat Chandra Sahu.

Low intensity rainfall is likely to occur in districts like Koraput, Malkangiri, Gajapati and Ganjam on December 7, while rainfall of higher intensity is expected to pound coastal and adjoining districts on December 8 and 9, he said.

Preliminary reports indicate that around 18 districts of the state are likely to face heavy rainfall due to the system, the MeT office said.

In view of the emerging weather conditions, the Revenue and Disaster Management department has advised the farmers of the districts likely to be affected to shift their harvested paddy to safe places and keep it properly stacked under suitable cover so as to avoid any loss or damage.

Where paddy crops are ready for harvest, the farmers should take steps to harvest the same and store safely to avoid damage due to rains, a senior official said adding necessary measures should also be taken to protect the paddy in mandies, if any, from rain.

Farmers in most parts of the state have already suffered a lot due to crop loss caused by unseasonal rains last month.
In a contradiction of its own policy, the Indian government has allowed over 1,300 tribal Buddhist refugees from Myanmars Rakhine region to enter Mizoram. The refugees left their homeland because of the ongoing war between the Myanmarese Army and the Arakan Army, made up of Buddhist insurgents.

This comes nearly a month after the Union Home Ministry had directed the northeastern states to take strict measures to prevent Rohingyas -- who are Muslims -- from entering Indian territory despite persecution by the Myanmar regime.

The new group of refugees, belonging to the Chin and few other communities of Myanmar, have come to four villages in Lawngtlai district.

According to sources in the Mizoram government, the administration is struggling hard to bring down the rising tensions among the refugees and the residents of Laitlang, Dumzautlang, Hmawngbuchhuah and Zochachhuah villages.

According to the state administration, the refugees are being taken care of on humanitarian grounds as all of them came to escape clashes back home.

Its been some six days since these refugees have arrived on Mizoram territory. They currently are in four villages of the Lawngtlai district and are put up at shelter homes, Buddhist homes, temples and many other places, T. Arun, Deputy Commissioner of Lawngtlai, told IANS over the phone.

He emphasised that the security threat in such a situation cannot be denied.

We basically have two rules -- one relating to national security and other related to humanitarian assistance. Under the humanitarian rules we are providing food as we do not want any starvation deaths. We also have to guard against the outbreak of diseases, said Arun.

Additional police, health workers and doctors have also been deployed not just to keep a vigil on the new arrivals but also to keep a check on their health condition.

The problem is that the population of each of the villages is just 200-400. The arrival of such a large number of people is a matter of serious concern, said Arun.

Mizorams police chief emphasised that though they wont immediately term the arrival of the refugees a security threat, they are waiting for the situation in Myanmar to normalise so that they could be sent back.

We wont call it a security threat at this juncture. They were alllowed into Indian territory due to the ongoing fighting in Myanmar. We are taking care of it and police forces are there. However, we are making sure there wont be any problem for the villagers due to the refugees. They have been confined to the four villages, Director General of Police Thianghlima Pachuau told IANS over the phone.

The current crisis in Myanmar comes nearly two months after the Myanmar Army had launched operations against the Rohingyas in Rakhine province. While the conflict led to more than 600,000 Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh, the United Nations Human Rights Commission called the strike by the Myanmar Army a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

The Indian government has taken measures, including asking the states in the region to seal their borders with Mayanmar, to prevent Rohingya refugees from entering the country.

Myanmar, the only Southeast Asian country which shares a 1,600-mile-long border with India, serves as its gateway to the other member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Four northeastern states -- Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Manipur (398 km), Nagaland (215 km) and Mizoram (510 km) -- have an unfenced border with Myanmar.

Experts on Indo-Myanmar relations see the current influx as a temporary matter that is different from the Rohingyas issue.

This is an issue that has emerged in the last few months. The arrival of Buddhist refugees is certainly a matter of concern as it affects people on the Indian side as well. However, this is different from Rohingyas, Khriezo Yhome, senior Research fellow at Observer Research Foundation and an expert on Indo-Myanmar affairs, told IANS.

According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees there are around 21,500 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers in India. The central government, though, has sent a clear message that it would not be willing to accept them because of security concerns.

The Supreme Court on October 13 asked the Centre to strike a balance between national security, economic interests and humanitarian considerations with regard to Rohingya women, children, old, sick and infirm
A suspected Islamic State terrorist lodged in a Kolkata jail on Sunday tried to slit the throat of the warder after hitting him with a brick, grievously injuring 45-year-old Gobinda Chandra Dey, police said.

Mohammad Masiruddin alias Musa shouted Hail Islamic State as he attacked Dey, a jail official said on Monday of the assault that raises questions over jail security. The 27-year-old Musa is among the most guarded prisoners in the state.

Musa first hit Dey with a brick on his head. Then he suddenly brought out a sharp steel weapon and tried to slit his throat, the official said. A prisoner, Mohammad Sohail alias Pintu, managed to overpower Musa and save Deys life, the official said.

The 45-year-old warder was rushed to the state-run SSKM Hospital but was shifted to a private hospital as his injuries were serious.

Musa first hit Dey with a brick on his head. Then he suddenly brought out a sharp steel weapon and tried to slit his throat -- A jail official

A resident of Birbhum in West Bengal, Musa was in December last questioned by a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) team a few months after he was arrested for his alleged links to Islamic State and trying to radicalise young men.

It appeared that Musa, brought to the Alipore jail on October 31, 2016, laid his hands on a piece of metal and had sharpened it over a long time, another jail official said.

An FIR had been registered against Musa and a probe was underway, Bengal correctional services minister Ujjwal Biswas said, adding security was being beefed up in prisons across the state.

Usually, such prisoners are kept in cells where it is easier to keep a close watch on them, a correctional department official said, admitting to lapses in the monitoring process that allowed Musa to hide the metal strip.

A team of government railway police arrested Musa from the Burdwan train station in July 2016 after being tipped off by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

The FBI team questioned him over his alleged links to an Islamic State leader based in Syria, sources said.

Musa planned attacks against the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata and foreign tourists, the NIA had told media after his questioning.
Begging in public places is an eyesore that is difficult to eradicate and the authorities in Telangana are realising it the hard way. Weeks after they rounded up and removed hundreds of beggars from the streets in the run up to Ivanka Trumps visit to the state capital, people seeking alms are back in business.

Police in Hyderabad had last month proclaimed begging as an offence and banned people from seeking alms ahead of the November 28-29 visit to the city by the daughter of the US president Donald Trump. But after a month, the government-run shelters where the beggars were lodged on being removed from the streets are mostly empty with the inmates going back to where they came from.

Now, only 10 female beggars are left with us in the Cherlapalli shelter. In the Chanchalguda shelter, only 30 beggars are left. All the remaining left the within no time, K Arjun Rao, superintendent of the Cherlapalli open air jail and in-charge of the Anand Ashram shelters that housed the beggars within the Cherlapalli and Chanchalguda jail premises ahead of Trumps visit, said.

The police order banning begging in public places was to be in force until January 7.

Most of the beggars left with their relatives after giving an undertaking that they would not beg again.

Rao said if the same beggars were caught again in the act, they would be handed over to the police and prosecuted.

Beggars at a temporary rehabilitation centre, where they were shifted after the Hyderabad police issued an order banning begging. (AFP File)

Meanwhile, Hyderabad police are planning to launch a fresh drive against begging from December 25. A jail official said the director general of police (prisons) VK Singh has ordered that anyone who helped in identifying beggars would get a cash award of Rs 500 per culprit caught. In fact, rehabilitation of beggars in special beggar homes is a continuous process and is part of initiatives taken up by the prisons department, the official added.

Rao said the beggars rounded up would be provided with counselling during their stay in the shelters and advised not to take up begging again. If necessary, we would also offer employment opportunities to eligible persons among them in petrol bunks and other stores run by the department, he said.

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The Madhya Pradesh state assembly on Monday unanimously passed a bill aimed at amending the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to impose the death penalty on those found guilty of raping girls aged 12 and below.

The bill, tabled by the state government in accordance with announcements made by chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, recommends life term as the minimum punishment for people convicted of raping girls in this age group.

Under life imprisonment, the convict is expected to spend his entire life in jail.

The legislation also prescribes severe punishment for other sexual offences, including stalking and molestation. According to the bill, a person found guilty of stalking a girl (irrespective of her age) is to be punished with imprisonment of up to three years and a fine. A subsequent crime of this nature will entail imprisonment of anywhere from three to seven years and a fine of Rs 1 lakh. Those found guilty of having sexual intercourse with a woman under fraudulent promises of marriage will face imprisonment of up to three years.

Madhya Pradesh has created history by becoming the first state to take such a step. It will trigger a debate on womens safety across the country, the chief minister said.

The bill will be sent to the state governor, who will then forward it to the President for his assent.

Chouhan claimed that rapists were worse than animals, and can only be termed as Narpishach (demons from hell). The Internet is being misused to dish out vulgarity to children. (Drug and alcohol) Addiction is another major factor that contributes to this problem. We have to check this simultaneously, he said, adding that relatives and acquaintances are responsible for as much as 98% of all rapes.

Protecting our sisters is our duty. We can further explore ways to amend the IPC, so as to award severe punishment to those guilty of raping girls over 12 years of age, Chouhan said.

Though Opposition MLAs  including Govind Singh, Ramnivas Rawat and Sunderlal Tiwari  also gave their nod to the bill, they said steps should be taken to ensure that the provision of harsher punishment was not misused to target innocent people.

Singh said that fear of the death penalty could also spur rapists to kill their victims in an attempt to destroy evidence. Rawat, for his part, demanded stringent measures to check the illegal sale of alcohol in villages.

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Dillon Martin was in New York, meeting and greeting big-time movers and shakers in the world of finance. There were people from Barclays, from the New York Stock Exchange, from TD Ameritrade.

It was somewhat daunting to talk shop with titans of the financial industry, he admits, but he also came away with something valuable:

I knew that there wasnt magic to it.

We know the same things they know, says Mr. Martin 16, who now works full-time at Merrill Lynch in Chattanooga. We can understand it just as well as anybody else. It instilled a whole lot of confidence and it took away a whole lot of anxiety. Once you take away that worry, it levels out the playing field.

While classroom lessons are essential, he says, much of his ability to navigate the nerve-wracking world of investments without going gray can be traced to a program he was involved in while a finance student at UTC: the SMILE Fund.

Created in 2015 with a $250,000 endowment from the UC Foundation, the fundSMILE stands for Student Managed Investment Learning Experienceallows students to invest in the stock market. Real money. Real wins and losses. Real world. No Monopoly money here.

Essentially, they are financial advisors with the UC Foundation as their client. They must research various stocks, make the carefully-considered but ultimately gut-level judgments on which ones to buy and which to sell, when to buy and when to sell.

We have a saying, Its better to be wrong for the right reasons than to be right for the wrong reasons, says Dr. Hunter Holzhauer, UC Foundation assistant professor of finance and faculty advisor to SMILE.

Although final decisions are OKd by higher-ups, students whove been part of SMILE say its a rare moment when theyre overruled.

You gain experience that you just cant get in a classroom at all, says Hunter Carroll, current president of the fund. You hear it in class and you know that its important, but it gives you the experience to see what youre learning in class applies to the real world.

In conversation, SMILE students use terms like financial modeling, quantitative and qualitative research, derivatives, equities, algorithms and commoditiesand actually know what they mean. They come off so knowledgeable and self-assured, youre tempted to reach into your pocket, pull out whatever money you have there and give it to them, saying Invest this for me.

I dont want this to sound braggy, Mr. Carroll says, but I think that being in the SMILE Fund, especially if you take it seriously  I think you really do leave college with the mindset of a late 20-year-old in the investment world.

Instantly Employed

For many SMILE students, jobs are waiting for them before they even graduate. Mr. Martins job as a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch was waiting for him; Isabella Loza-Ortiz 16 had her name on an investment analyst position at Unum before she picked up her diploma. Carroll, who graduates in May, doesnt have a fulltime job yet, but hes hardly worried.

I have countless business cards in my apartment from people Ive met through the SMILE Fund. One of my drawers at home is dedicated to throwing business cards in, he says.

At this point, the fund has about $285,000, according to Dr. Holzhauer. While the fund has had its dips, it has spent almost all of its two years on the positive side of the ledger, he says. SMILE uses the S&P 500 as its benchmark, trying to maintain its growthor lossesat the same level as the index and overall its growth rate has been better.

At eight months into this year, were about 1.5 percent above the S&P, he says. If youre beating your benchmark by 1 or 2 percent every year, you cant ask for more than that.

Over the summer, two high school students called Dr. Holzhauer, asking specifically about the SMILE Fund and whether freshmen can be part of it. Yes, they can, Dr. Holzhauer told them.

The University of Tennessee was also on their radar, he says, but they wanted to come to UTC and getting in the SMILE Fund was a high priority.

If they decide to come to UTC, however, they must realize that theres no slacking in the fund. Dont do the job? Youll be fired, just like you would in real life.

I hire and I fire and I fire a lot, Dr. Holzhauer says. Its usually pretty shocking to the students, but its good. I think it sends a message: This is real.

Exciting

Ashley Nichols 07, an investment officer at Unum, has been part of the funds professional advisory board since Day One. And yes, she sees the financial professionalism exhibited by SMILE students, but another talent stands out even more.

To me, its aboutNo. 1learning to communicate ideas verbally, to get up in a room full of peers and professionals who give you feedback.

Giving presentations in a boardroom-like setting is a frequent task when youre dealing with financial and investment issues, she says, and its a unique situation for SMILE students to do the same thing. In those situations, they must learn how to be confident and knowledgeableand non-sweatingwhen theyre peppered with questions and have others pick apart their thinking.

Theyve been up there and they can take it, she says.

Ms. Loza-Ortiz joined the SMILE Fund in January 2015, six months before the endowmenti.e., the cashwas officially handed over. Students and faculty used the time to iron out some of the kinks in their systems, making sure everyone knew their jobs and how to do them.

The idea that they were handling $250,000 wasnt so scary as much as exciting, says Ms. Loza-Ortiz, who graduated with a degree in finance. It meant you cared about it a little bit more; you were more interested in the whole process, more accountable.

She has no hesitation about SMILEs influence in her life.

I would say that it changed my career.

Special abilities

Paul Payne, senior financial advisor at Merrill Lynch, hired Dillon Martin to be on his four-person team in part because of what the student had learned while working at the SMILE Fund. Mr. Martin was blessed with a magnetic personality that draws people to him and convinces them to trust his abilities, Mr. Payne says, but the lessons he learned at the SMILE Fund raised him to a higher level.

Mr. Payne points to a statement from the book Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to Gods Work: We are most fulfilled when our passion and competency intersect at our highest point.

What I saw in Dillon was he was someone who had passion about what he did and yet exuded a great sense of competency, he says.

Mr. Martin is not hesitant to credit SMILE with the certainty he has in his abilities. Such confidence may not be something that other finance undergraduates feel when they leave school, he believes.

The SMILE Fund allows us operate from a position of strength when we come out of undergrad. Most students, when they come out of undergrad, I dont think are in that position of strength. Theyre coming out in a position of kind of begging, Please give me this job as opposed to Why I think I fit here.

I think SMILE Fund students go into interviewsif theyve done it the right wayand know that there are very few candidates better than them.
Two militants and a soldier were killed in a gunfight that raged in south Kashmir on Monday afternoon after militants attacked an army convoy on national highway in Qazigund.

Two dead bodies of terrorists recovered. Search still on, director general of police (DGP), Shesh Paul Vaid tweeted.

(An) army convoy on its way to Srinagar fired at by terrorists near Qazigund area at 1240 hrs. One soldier on Road Opening Party (ROP) duty injured, an army spokesperson said.

Local reports said the security forces blasted the house in which the militants were hiding.

The encounter which continued till late in the evening also disrupted traffic on the highway.

The place lies right on the highway so we had to divert the traffic, said deputy inspector general of police, South Kashmir, SP Pani.

Director general of Jammu and Kashmir police SP Vaid told HT that the fire had come from a house near Qazigund and the area has been cordoned off. An exchange of fire is on.

According to sources, army convoys are easy targets for militants.

In June last year, eight CRPF personnel were killed and 20 injured in an ambush on a convoy in Pampore on the outskirts of Srinagar. In December, three soldiers were killed when motorcycle-borne militants fired on an army bus in south Kashmir.
The mother of an Indian engineer, who was sentenced after he sneaked into Pakistan from Afghanistan to meet a girl he had befriended on the internet, has appealed to President Mamnoon Hussain to remit the remaining period of her sons prison term.

In a letter to Hussain, the mother of Hamid Ansari said: Mohtaram Sadar - your government has shown clemency to foreign nationals who have committed far graver offences than Hamid Ansari.

The countrys credit for listening to humanitarian calls will go up and the chances of relief for Pakistani citizens in Indian prisons might improve if you could remit the remaining period of Hamids prison term.

She said the period of Ansaris detention (three years) before conviction may be counted as sentence served, that he may he be released on humanitarian grounds, and that he and that he may be allowed to talk to his family on the phone.

The Indian national was tried in a military court and was awarded three years vigorous imprisonment that started from December 15, 2015 and will end on December 14 next year.

Ansari, a Mumbai resident, suffered injuries after he was attacked by inmates in the Peshawar Central prison last year.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Ansari, an assistant professor at an Indian management institute, became friendly with a girl belonging to Kohat (in Kyber Pakhtaunkhawa province of Pakistan) through Facebook.

When she feared the denial of her rights, he decided to come to her rescue. He could not get a Pakistan visa but was able to fly to Afghanistan and enter Pakistan, though without valid papers. He was arrested from a hotel in Kohat on November 14, 2012.

Thus, for five years he has been in the custody of the Pakistani authorities. Charged with espionage and not with illegal entry into Pakistan, he was sentenced to three years imprisonment by a military court, says known rights activist I A Rehman.

There is no doubt that Hamid Ansari committed an offence but his motives, love or a desire to help a woman in distress, are strong mitigating circumstances. He has already suffered enough for his naivete, he said and demanded his immediate release.

On the other hand, a Pakistani woman journalist who was allegedly kidnapped while pursuing the case of Ansari two years ago, has gone missing again two months after her return.

President of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances Justice (retd.) Javed Iqbal had said Shahzadi had been recovered from an area on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Thursday night.

Non-state actors and anti-state agencies had abducted her and she has been recovered from their custody, Iqbal said.

Rehman said Shahzadi has gone missing again. Missing of Shahzadi two months after her return from two-year captivity is alarming.

He says Shahzadi, a young and poor journalist without any clout, had dreams of helping her fellow human beings.

When she learnt that an Indian named Hamid Ansari was in trouble for trying to help a Pakistani girl, she thought this was a case that could help her establish herself as a bold human rights defender and a skilful journalist.

She persuaded Ansaris mother to grant her authority/ permission to pursue the matter before the Peshawar High Court. She also met the Indian high commissioner at a public meeting, probably to seek his help in the case, he said.

The 26-year-old local reporter of Daily Nai Khaber and Metro News TV channel had gone missing on August 19, 2015, when some unknown men allegedly kidnapped her while she was en route to her office in an auto-rickshaw from her home in a populated locality of Lahore.

On her return in this October she was not allowed to speak to anyone. Later, her family reported she has gone missing again.
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)leader Praful Patel questioned the Narendra Modi government on Monday as to why the Vadodara airport was not being named after Vadodaras erstwhile ruler late Sayajirao Gaekwad.

Patel said the erstwhile ruler had established the world famous Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and the Bank of Baroda in 1908.

He added that the ruler had also given an educational scholarship to Dalit icon BR Ambedkar.

The NCP leader said as civil aviation minister in the previous UPA government, he had introduced a bill to rename the airport after Sayajirao Gaekwad.

He claimed that the demand was close to the heart of the people of Vadodara.

Patel added that NCP chief Sharad Pawar would visit Gujarat on December 6 to campaign for party candidates.
A 35-year-old pregnant woman died after she jumped off a moving van to escape molestation by the driver and cleaner of the vehicle in Telanganas Medak district, police said on Monday.

The incident happened on the Hyderabad-Nagpur National Highway 44 at Ravelli village of Toopran block late on Saturday night and the womans relatives lodged a complaint with the police on Sunday afternoon.

Police said Ude Kalavathi, a seven-month pregnant woman who sold old clothes, was returning to her village from Kompalli on the outskirts of Hyderabad along with her seven-year-old daughter Sirisha on Saturday night in a van after she missed the state-run RTC bus.

The driver asked Kalavathi to pay the toll fee at the Toopran toll plaza. The driver and cleaner attempted to rape her after travelling for a kilometre and she jumped off the moving van. The driver and the cleaner immediately forced her daughter to get down and fled the spot.

Local villagers reached the spot and realised that Kalavathi was dead. They immediately alerted the police, who informed her husband Regonda and other relatives at Potharajpalli village nearby.

The daughter was not in a position to tell exactly what had happened inside the vehicle. Going by the closed circuit footage images, she first threw her bag of clothes out before jumping from the vehicle. The driver appeared to have applied the break and then moved again, Toopran circle inspector Lingeshwar Rao told the Hindustan Times.

Unless we apprehend the driver and the cleaner, we cannot tell what had happened in the vehicle, he added.

Sirisha reportedly told her father that she had seen Kalavathi fighting with the driver and cleaner in the vehicle before jumping off.

Based on the complaint by her relatives, we booked a case of suspicious death. If it is proved that she was molested during the investigation, we will add other sections of the IPC (Indian Penal Code) as well, the inspector said.

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A suspect who allegedly supplied arms for the killing of an RSS leader in Punjab managed to flee from a Ghaziabad village after locals fired upon a raiding team of National Investigation agency (NIA) and Uttar Pradesh police early on Sunday.

The joint team was following a lead in connection with the killing of religious leaders in Punjab over the last years.

During the raid, a large crowd of men and women tried to obstruct the local police and the NIA team. Some people in the mob started firing at the (police and NIA) parties. The firing was followed by stone pelting, the NIA said in a statement.

The mob also blocked roads at many locations. The UP Police and NIA personnel fired in the air in self defence.

A UP police constable Tahjib Khan suffered injury in his leg whereas an official vehicle was damaged in the incident.

The NIA has been entrusted with probe into the killing of RSS leader Ravinder Gosain in Punjabs Ludhiana in October.

Punjab police had arrested two accused Ramandeep Singh of Ludhiana and Hardeep Singh of Italy (his parents live in Amloh of Fatehgarh Sahib) for their involvement in the killing.

NIA, which took over the case and their custody later, had earlier said that the two were allegedly involved in eight previous incidents of murder or attempted murder in Punjab since January 2016, targets of which were religious leaders, primarily of the RSS or Hindu organisations.

The NIA had claimed that the murders were a larger conspiracy to destabilise Punjab and it was hatched by Sikh extremist elements based in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.

During interrogation of the Punjab-based accused, names of some suspects from western Uttar Pradesh emerged for allegedly supplying arms.

The agency has been raiding various places in neighbouring Meerut district since Saturday night.

On getting more leads, a raid was conducted at the residence of suspect Malook (resident of Nahali village in Ghaziabad) on Sunday morning, when the locals fired upon them and pelted stones, NIA spokesman said.

He added that efforts were on to trace Malook, and two suspects are being questioned in this regard.
Rahul Gandhi is set to become the president of the Indian National Congress , taking over the mantle from his mother Sonia.

Gandhi , who was Congress vice president for the past five years, filed his nomination papers at the partys 24 Akbar Road headquarters in New Delhi on Monday. The Congress selects its president through an election, but it is not expected that anyone will challenge Gandhis nomination or file papers.

As Rahul comes of age in Indian politics, heres a look at his political journey so far:

Rahul was born in 1970, the first child of Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia and the grandson of Indira Gandhi. He and sister Priyanka have lived their entire lives under the spotlight. Rahul Gandhi was just shy of his 21st birthday when his father Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu in 1991.

Rahul attended The Doon School in Dehradun, Uttarakhand from 1981 and then joined St Stephens College in Delhi, before moving to the United States and then the United Kingdom for further education.

Politics wasnt Rahuls first calling. After he finished his M.Phil from Cambridge Universitys Trinity College in 1995, he worked at a management consulting firm in London for three years. When he returned to India, he started running his own strategy consultancy in Mumbai.

Indira Gandhi, with grandchildren Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi, paying homage to Jawaharlal Nehru at Shantivan on 27 May, 1981. (Virendra Prabhakar/HT archives)

Rahuls first foray into active politics was in 2004, when he contested the Lok Sabha elections from his fathers former constituency Amethi. He won his first election by over one lakh votes. Ever since his entry into politics, Rahul has had to contend with labels such as prince and political rivals have focussed on his dynasty to attack him.

In 2007, he was appointed the Congress general secretary. He also took charge of Indian Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India.

In this May 21, 2011 file photo, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi talks to son Rahul Gandhi during a memorial ceremony for husband Rajiv Gandhi on the former prime minister's 20th death anniversary in New Delhi. (HT Archives)

The first test of Rahuls political mettle came in 2009, when he campaigned for the Congress during Uttar Pradesh elections. The Congress, which had been struggling in the state, won 22 out of 80 seats, its best show in years.

But this victory was short-lived. Rahuls extensive tour of Bihar could not land Congress a victory in the state in the 2010 state elections, and the party managed a measly 4 out of 243 assembly seats.

In 2011, Rahul made national headlines when he took on the Mayawati government during the anti-land acquisition protests by farmers in Bhatta Parsaul. Gandhi dodged the police to enter the village, riding pillion on a farmers motorbike, and was arrested by the administration.

While Rahul wasnt officially helming the party, it was his strategies that the Congress followed in the 2012 Uttar Pradesh elections. But Gandhis high-profile campaign and tours of the state resulted in naught. The Congress suffered a crushing defeat.

A 2011 photo of Rahul Gandhi meeting with villagers in Chill village, Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh. (HT Archives)

Gandhi studiously refused any cabinet position under both the terms of the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government. In 2013, Gandhi was appointed as the Congress Vice-President at a party conclave in Jaipur.

The 2014 general elections were Gandhis litmus test, but the incumbent Congress government faced a humiliating defeat as the BJP-led NDA claimed a landslide victory, winning 336 seats. The BJP won 282 seats by itself, the first time that a non-Congress party won a simple majority on its own.

The run-up to the elections were marked by a fierce contest. The BJPs party machinery painted Rahul as the shehzada, who was out of touch with reality, while Gandhi was bested by Narendra Modi when it came to communication skills. The Congress hesitation in making Rahul Gandhi the sole face of its campaign was seen as the partys reluctance to lay the blame of defeat squarely on his shoulders.

On February 23, 2015, the Gandhi scion took an impromptu 56-day break from politics, prompting missing posters with his face and name in Amethi. It also prompted a slew of political commentaries that saw Gandhi as a reluctant politician.

In April 2015, Rahul Gandhi addressed the Parliament on the issue of farmer crisis,calling the NDA a suit-boot ki sarkaar. In May the same year, Gandhis office opened a Twitter account, which now has a following of 4.68 million.

Rahul Gandhi delivered a speech at the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley, California. (PTI)

The Congress vice-president has become more active of late. His speech at University of California, Berkeley, earlier this year garnered praise for Gandhis frankness in answering questions on dynasty and the BJPs economic policies. Gandhis astute use of his Twitter account , laced with humour and sarcasm,challenged Modi governments policies such as demonetisation and GST and increased the Gandhi scions social media following.

Rahuls elevation to the post of Congress president will mark his coming into his own. It seems that he is ready to emerge out of his mothers shadow, an allegation levelled at him by political opponents.
Rahul Gandhi, who is set to take over as the Congress president, faces the challenge of reviving and rebuilding the party ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

To execute his long-term plan, the 47-year-old Rahuls first task will be a revamp of the party. Congress leaders suggest he would go for an overhaul, completing a generational shift in the 131-year-old party brought about by his elevation.

His mother, Sonia Gandhi, who took over the reins of the party in March 1998, has served as the Congress chief for record 19 years.

He will have to ensure that the transition is smooth by striking a right balance between young leaders and the old guard, which in the past had some reservations about his style of functioning.

In his nearly five years as the Congress vice-president, Rahul had tried to open the party to end the heirloom politics but didnt make much headway.

As party chief, the Amethi MP would have the authority to bring about the changes. His training in Aikido  Gandhi has a black belt in the Japanese martial art that lays emphasis on harmony  will come in handy.

He also has to lead from the front to galvanise an otherwise demoralised Congress cadre struggling to recover after a series of electoral setbacks.

Though the change of guard is happening after two decades, Rahul is confronted with a situation almost similar to what his mother had faced when she took over in 1998.

Apart from internal dissensions, the party then was ruling just four states of Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Mizoram and Nagaland.

But in six years, Sonia brought the Congress back to the centre-stage of countrys polity and was instrumental in the partys victories in 2004 and 2009. At one point of time in her career, the Congress was in power in 15 states.

Nearly two decades later as the 70-year-old Sonia hands over the baton to Rahul, the Congress is again going through difficult times. Not only does it have the lowest ever representation in the Lok Sabha, the party is also ruling just six states  Karnataka, Punjab, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh and Puducherry.

Rahul has long had the reputation of a reluctant leader, though some analysts say he has displayed greater political acumen since the 2014 election defeat.

A good show in Gujarat, where he is leading an aggressive campaign and has attempted a broad coalition of disparate caste groups, will not only give him a good start but also silence his detractors within the party.

Prime Minister Narendra Modis home state votes on December 9 and 14.

Next year, too, will test him. Retaining Karnataka and dethroning the BJP in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan will be a daunting task for him and the party before the big one  the 2019 general elections.

The Congress national fortunes hinge on its revival in states but intense infighting coupled with indecisiveness to address the leadership issues is coming in the way of the revival push.

The party desperately needs to get its house in order in key states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and West Bengal, where it has ceded political space to rivals.

Reconnecting with the middle class, youth and common people who over the years have grown distant from the Congress has been on Gandhis agenda for a long time.

He has less than two years to make the Congress fighting fit to corner the BJP-led NDA government on critical issues and present it as in effective alternative.

With around 16 months left for the next Lok Sabha election, he will have to decide on alliances partners to prevent a division of the opposition vote that could help the BJP.

Stitching up alliances perhaps is his second biggest challenge after reviving the party.

Sonia, who turns 71 on December 9, enjoys a good rapport with other opposition parties. Crediting her with bringing together the United Progressive Alliance, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury described Sonia as the glue that bound the Congress as well as secular allies.

Rahul will have to be the Congress president, the glue and more.

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A PIL highlighting the violation of fundamental rights of leprosy-affected persons due to existence of archaic central and state laws prompted the Supreme Court to ask the Centre on Monday whether such provisions need to continue in statute books.

Filed by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy (VCLP), the petition listed 119 laws that discriminate against leprosy patients and stigmatise them.

Such outdated provisions deny them access to public services, impose disqualifications on them under personal laws and prohibited them from occupying or standing for public posts or office, the plea said.

The seminal issue highlighted in the petition is in the third decade of 21st century. There is no justification to treat a person suffering from leprosy as a man to be kept away from the mainstream and suffer from ignominy that the disease is infectious or something to do with genetics.

With the discovery of modern medicine, the disease is curable, a bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said, giving eight weeks notice to the Centre for placing its response.

VCLP supported its case by citing several provisions from various laws. One such is Section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 that allows dissolution of marriage if one of the partners has been suffering from a virulent and incurable form of leprosy.

Similarly, Section 2 of the Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act 1939 and Section 27 of the Special Marriage Act 1954, Section 18 of the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act 1956; Section 18 of the Jammu And Kashmir Hindu Adoptions And Maintenance Act 1960; Section 13 of the Jammu And Kashmir Hindu Marriage Act 1980 and Section 2 of the Jammu And Kashmir Dissolution Of Muslim Marriages Act 1999 perpetuate the stigmatization of those affected by leprosy.

The Orissa Municipal Corporation Act, 2003 disqualifies a leprosy patient from contesting the civil polls. Even the Rajasthan Panchayati Raj Act, 1994, has a provision that bars someone infected with the disease from fighting the elections for the post of a panch or any other member of the institution.

Section 35(2) of the Karnataka Rajya Dr. Gangubai Hangal Sangeetha Mattu Pradarshaka Kalegala Vishwavidyalaya Act, 2009, empowers the Syndicate of the University to remove those persons from membership of any authority of the University who suffers from leprosy. One of the objects of this law it to prevent transmission of the disease.

Some of the impugned provisions VCLP has quoted violate the right to move freely throughout the territory of India and the right to practise any profession.

Such restrictions, VCLP contended, are not reasonable restrictions in the interests of the general public, in the light of medical advancements in the treatment of leprosy that render the disease non-infectious.

Senior advocate Raju Ramchandran cited the Law Commissions 256th report that recommended the elimination of discrimination against persons affected by leprosy.

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A joint team of the CBI and ED was in London for the extradition hearing on Monday in a London court of beleaguered liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya, who is wanted in India over non-payment of bank loans and a case of fraud and money laundering.

Here are highlights:

5.25pm: Prosecution lawyer Mark Summers presents details of bank loans sought by Vijay Mallya from SBI, IDBI totalling Rs 2,000 crore. Internal appraisal notes of banks quoted.

4.55pm: Mark Summers, the lawyer for Crown Prosecution Service, begins to outline case against Vijay Mallya, alleges he misled banks in India.

4.40pm: Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot enters court, Mark Summers, lawyer for Crown Prosecution Service (for India), informs her of details about papers containing index and responses to witness statements.

4.25pm: Vijay Mallya enters court and sits in the dock. His legal team brings boxes of papers. Trial yet to begin; Mallyas bail ends today; magistrate Emma Arbuthnot expected to extend it.

4pm: Fire drill at Westminster magistrates court ends. Court to assemble soon.

3.40pm: Fire drill delays start of trial. Westminster magistrates court evacuated. Mallya, others wait outside.

3.23pm: Please listen to the proceedings before the court. I have nothing more to say, Mallya tells TV channels before the hearing

3.20pm: I have said repeatedly that these (allegations of fraud) are false, fabricated and baseless charges and that is my stand: Mallya

3.15pm: When asked why he went to the UK and did not stand trial in India, Mallya tells television channels outside the court: I have been living in England since 1992.

3pm: Vijay Mallya arrives in court.

2.50pm: According to a CBI official, the agency has submitted a 2,000-page dossier on Mallya, detailing how he cheated Indian public sector banks and diverted the loans taken for Kingfisher Airlines over the years.

2.24pm: Mallyas lawyer Clare Montgomery arrives at the court with documents. The trial will begin soon.

Vijay Mallyas lawyer waits outside the Westminster Magistrates Court on Monday. (Prasun Sonwalkar/HT Photo)

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Nearly a month after farmers in Jaipurs Ninder village buried themselves neck-deep in pits to protest acquisition of land for a housing project, farmers in Jhunjhunus Derwala village, have followed suit.

The district administration, however, has termed the protest as misplaced and politically motivated.

Fifty-one people from Derwala village, about 170km from the state capital, sat in 2ft deep pits for three hours on Sunday as a token protest against the municipal councils plan of setting up a biomedical and solid waste treatment plant in the village.

Its a religious spot. We have temples of Gogamedi and Balaji. Every year a religious fair is also organised here. Now waste from three districtsJhunjhunu, Sikar and Churuwill come here. Is it fair? asks Dinesh Sunda, president of Derwala Pahadi Sangharsh Samiti (DPSS), adding that there was a 200-year-old pond right next to the proposed site for the plant.

The three-hour protest was a saanketik Samadhi (token burial) and villagers, threatened bury themselves permanently if the government does not withdraw its orders.

Well go to any extent to oppose the orders, said Mahesh Kumar, a member of DPSS.

Well die but wont let the plant be set up here. People of thirty nearby villages are with us in the protest, he said.

More than 12 hectare of land was allocated by the district administration to the municipal council in April this year and the village panchayat objected, Kumar said.

The protesting farmers also carried out a mock death procession of the municipal council last week and are observing a 12-day shok sabha (mourning).

On December 8, the day on which the ruling BJP won the elections in the state four years back, villagers will carry out a narayan bali of the civic body and observe black day, Sunda said.

Municipal council chairperson Sudhesh Ahlawat, however, said the land belonged to the government and was not even acquired from the farmers.

Some people are stoking the protest for political reasons, he said.

The plant is situated 2 km from the village and will be a fully covered one, built with the latest technology at a cost of 20 crore, Ahlawat said, adding that villagers will get manure and electricity from the plant.

District collector Dinesh Kumar Yadav said the Supreme Court has issued directions for constructing waste treatment plants.

Where will the waste then go? Its in the greater interest (of villagers) but they are adamant, he said.

We are also willing to take them to a similar plant and dispel their apprehensions that it produces any kind of stench.
Tim Hinck will perform an Intimate Concert on the Solstice on Thursday, Dec. 21, at 7:30 p.m.

"The Winter Solstice is always an important time for me to refocus and recalibrate my mind and spirit," said Mr. Hinck. "It also seems that there is special power in the music of J.S. Bach for such a focused meditation."

There will also be white tea provided to enhance this meditation.

The concert will be at St. Peter's Episcopal Church, 848 Ashland Terr. Tickets are $5-$15 and available here.
A woman dentist in Rajasthans Kota called off her wedding after the man, also a doctor, who she was to marry demanded a dowry of  1 crore hours before the marriage was to be solemnized.

The father of the woman, Dr. Anil Saxena, a senior faculty member at the Kota Government Medical College and Hospital, said family members decided to call off the wedding late on Sunday.

Since guests, who were to attend the wedding ceremony, had arrived, the wedding feast was served. Once the guests finished dinner, we told them about the cancellation of the wedding, Saxena said.

The bridegroom and his family members from Uttar Pradeshs Moradabad, however, did not attend the wedding feast as they were earlier intimated of the wedding being called off, he said.

During the tilak or engagement ceremony on December 1, the girls family members had given jewellery worth  34 lakh and  21 lakh in cash to the bridegrooms family, which they refused to give back, sources in the womans family, said.

Saxena, family members said, requested the bridegrooms family members to return the jewellery and cash given during the tilak ceremony in a dignified manner but mans family members allegedly misbehaved and left the wedding venue in a huff.

Asked about calling off the wedding, Saxena said: The bridegrooms family members demanded for a huge dowry hours before the wedding on Sunday after which his daughter refused marry the man and the family members decided to call off wedding.

It is good that the wedding was not solemnized, he said.

God saved us as if the wedding would have been solemnized then the things could have been worse.

Saxena, however, rubbished offering cash worth  21 lakh during the engagement ceremony to the bridegrooms family members besides confirming the exact figure of the dowry demand made by the bridegrooms family members, saying it was huge dowry demand.

The brides father, late on Monday, lodged a police complaint against bridegrooms family members at Kotas Nayapura police station of Kota.

Confirming the lodging of the complaint, circle inspector of Nayapura police station Harish Bharti said police are probing into the complaint.

Doctors of Kota and other guests, who attended the wedding feast, appreciated the decision of the bride and her family members.

Former superintendent of government-run Kotas Maharao Bhim Singh Hospital Dr Vijay Sardana, a guest at the ceremony, said, It was a very bold move for any woman to take and which will certainly inspire society against dowry.
A recent report of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) puts Rajasthan at number two position in the wildlife crimes, raising concern of the wildlife experts.

Of the 852 cases registered in the country under the Wildlife Protection Act in 2016, 190 cases were registered in Rajasthan alone. Uttar Pradesh (UP) topped the list with 302 cases. At least 1,722 people involved in the wildlife crimes were arrested last year in Rajasthan. While 214 of them were convicted, 110 acquitted. Others were let off after being fined.

The worrying factor, the wildlife experts said, was that several hunting cases go unreported. Though, they added that awareness about Scheduled Wildlife Species has increased in recent years, leading to higher registration of wildlife crimes in the state.

People have certainly become aware about wildlife protection and rise in registration of these (wildlife crime) cases has been noted in recent years, but several cases go unreported, said NS Rathore, former joint director of the Desert Regional Centre in Jodhpur, which works under the Zoological Survey of India.

Lalit Bora, the then forest officer who lodged the first information report (FIR) against actor Salman Khan in the blackbuck and chinkara hunting case, said that people have become more aware about the Wildlife Protection Act after cases were lodged against celebrities, which has led to the rise in registration of hunting cases.

The first message conveyed to the public after the registration of case against celebrities was that a stern punishment can be delivered under the Wildlife Protection Act, he said.

He said western Rajasthan, where majority of chinkara hunting cases take place, leads in registration of the wildlife crimes. People of the Vishnoi community, known for wildlife protection, lodge most of the cases.

Rathore, however, said that most of the hunting cases registered in western Rajasthan involve the hunting of chinkara, but there are some other wild species that are disappearing constantly.

There has been a considerable drop in population of species such as desert fox and desert monitor lizard, he said, adding that, Earlier these species were easily visible in the desert.

He said the registration of hunting cases in south-eastern part of Rajasthan is very low despite the fact that some particular communities in the area tend to hunt wildlife of scheduled species.
The West Bengal government has made insurance cover mandatory for all fair price shops in the public distribution system (PDS), popularly known as ration shops.

On November 21, the principal secretary of the state food & supplies department and the state food commissioner, Manoj Kumar Agarwal issued the order.

Read: Rajasthan govt partners with Future Group to manage PDS shops

West Bengal government is the first state government in India to make insurance coverage mandatory for all the fair price shops affiliated to it, state food & supplies minister, Jyotipriyo Mullick claimed.

There are 20,268 fair price shops throughout the state.

This year several dealers faced loss of stocks because of the floods. Mandatory insurance coverage will relieve the financial burden of the state government that is faced with the demands of compensating the dealers, said Mullick. However, he could not say the quantum of compensation that the government has to pay.

The rule will be applicable for both existing dealers as well as for future applicants for ration card license. For new applicants the clause for mandatory insurance coverage will be included in the application form. For existing dealers, the government will either cancel, or not renew, the license if they do not get insurance coverage policies within a specific period of time, Mullick said.

Read: Get Darjeeling tea, edibles from Jharkhand PDS stores soon

In the present system, the government has to compensate the dealers for the loss. Once the insurance coverage is obtained, the dealers can seek compensation directly from the service provider, the minister said.

Food department officials told HT that the dealers will have the liberty of choosing the insurance service provider. The premium has to be paid by the dealer, Mullick added.

Officials said the premium will be based on the estimated food items that the ration dealers will stock in a year.

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Two buffaloes belonging to former union minister of state for home affairs, Ram Lal Rahi and father of sitting BJP MLA, Suresh Rahi, were stolen from his farmhouse in Sitapur district, nearly 80 km from Lucknow on Friday-Saturday intervening night.

FIR LODGED Ram Lal Rahi is associated with the BJP and his son is MLA from the same party from Hargaon constituency. He was a minister during the Narasimha Rao government and remained MP from Mishrikh Lok Sabha constituency of Sitapur four times in the past. The veteran leader lodged an FIR of theft under IPC Section 379 with Sitapur city kotwali on Saturday and asked the police to find the stolen buffaloes.

Ram Lal Rahi is associated with the BJP and his son is MLA from the same party from Hargaon constituency. He was a minister during the Narasimha Rao government and remained MP from Mishrikh Lok Sabha constituency of Sitapur four times in the past.

The veteran leader lodged an FIR of theft under IPC Section 379 with Sitapur city kotwali on Saturday and asked the police to find the stolen buffaloes.

Inspector of Sitapur city kotwali, Dharmendra Singh Raghuvanshi said the complainant mentioned in the complaint that the two buffaloes worth Rs 1 lakh were stolen from his farmhouse in Hajipur locality behind Sitapur district jail. He said the complainant alleged that unidentified thieves stole the buffaloes after trespassing the farmhouse around 12 am on Friday-Saturday night.

Singh said initial investigation hinted at the involvement of someone familiar in the theft. He said the farmhouse workers were being questioned and efforts were on to crack the case.

In a similar incident on January 31, 2014, seven buffaloes belonging to the then minister of Samajwadi Party government, Azam Khan were stolen from his farmhouse in Rampur district. After the theft, three police personnel were suspended for dereliction in duty and the entire police force of Rampur was deployed for the recovery of buffaloes. The police had recovered the buffaloes within 36 hours while three persons involved in the crime were arrested after 18 months.

However, Ram Lal Rahi got annoyed when some news channel compared the two buffalo theft incidents. He even issued a press communique, raising objection over the comparison. He said the name of his MLA son was unnecessarily being dragged into controversy when he had lodged FIR in the matter.
A Samajwadi Party leader from Rasheed Nagar in Meerut was allegedly poisoned on Saturday night, when he went to meet voters after his wifes victory in the recent civic body polls.

Superintendent of police (city) Maan Singh Chauhan said Haji Shahid Abbasi was admitted to a nearby hospital in a critical condition. After his wifes electoral victory, Abbasi and his supporters visited the area to thank voters. That was when somebody offered him sweets laced with poison. He was admitted to the hospital, where he began vomiting blood, Abbasis brother Abid stated in his complaint filed at the Lisari Gate police station.

Abbasi was elected as the corporator of Rasheed Nagar on three previous occasions. The Samajwadi Party fielded his wife, Nazreen, after the seat was reserved for women candidates this time round.

The political leader had earlier created a controversy by protesting against the recital of Vande Mataram at nagar nigam house meetings. He was even accused of slapping a BJP corporator in the midst of a heated discussion, causing a commotion.
Lucknow: To give rural children a basic exposure to agriculture education, scientists of the Central Institute for Subtropical Horticulture (CISH) and several progressive farmers and teachers organised a sensitisation programme at the Golden Jubilee School in Lucknow on Sunday. Students of Nabi Panah village of Malihabad benefited through the initiative.

A team of scientists from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research-CISH and the locals attended the programme, which was organised to celebrate the Agricultural Education Day. The day is observed in the memory of Dr Rajendra Prasad who was the countrys first agriculture minister as well as the first president of independent India.

The students were informed about the various opportunities they could utilise by getting some fundamental level knowledge of the Indian agricultural system. They were also told about the different agricultural fields and organic farming methods.

Shailendra Rajan, director CISH, stressed on the importance of agriculture education in improving the health and the wealth of the nation.

Linking rural colleges with agriculture education is important for improving the influx of rural youths in agriculture colleges and universities. The field is gradually becoming attractive because of increasing job avenues, said a scientist.

Speakers also lauded the scheme Student READY (Rural Entrepreneurship Awareness Development Yojana) for providing undergraduate students practical experience in rural agriculture and knowledge about farming and allied sciences. Initiative like this help build the confidence and skills of students. They also help pass-outs become ready for self-employment. Besides, they give them opportunities to acquire hands-on experience and entrepreneurial skills, said a scientist.

The scientists said that armed with agricultural education and technical know-how, rural students could set up their own ventures in villages, which could be commercialised.

Opportunities for girl students were also discussed, as in many of agriculture universities, girls outnumber boys.

The participants were told that knowledge of farming could help them prepare for careers not only in agriculture departments, state agriculture universities, ICAR, but also in banks and various private companies.

The speakers also said that rural youths had an edge over their urban counterparts when it came to agriculture studies, as they were already familiar with the socio-economic conditions of farmers and their problems.

NGOs Awadh Aam Utpadak Bagwani Samiti and the Society for Conservation of Mango Diversity also participated in the event.

ICAR considers exposure to rural environment an important component of its bachelor programme, and rural agricultural work experience (RAWE) is a compulsory part of the course.
All the newly elected mayors of Bharatiya Janata Party will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Tuesday. This year, the party has won 14 out of 16 mayoral seats in Uttar Pradesh, while two have gone to the Bahujan Samaj Party.

The Prime Ministers meeting with the newly elected mayors is scheduled at 10.30 am. According to sources in the Bharatiya Janata Party, this meeting is significant because the Prime Minister wants to establish direct communication with the public representatives.

Mayor of Lucknow Sanyukta Bhatia has already met home minister Rajnath Singh, chief minister Yogi Adityanath, deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma and deputy chief minister Keshav Maurya in the past two days.

Bhatia said she was excited at the prospect of meeting the Prime Minister and seeking his guidance to work for the development of the city.  Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been an inspiration for everyone who wants to work for the downtrodden. One can learn so much from his working style.He always keeps on working for the masses. All the mayors of the BJP will seek his blessings before assuming office, Bhatia said .

She said during her meeting with the home minister and chief minister, she had been assured about implementation of the 74th amendment to increase the powers of mayors .

Its a new responsibility for me but I can assure one thing: my doors are open for anyone who is facing any civic problem and I will respect every public representative who has been elected by the people, cutting across party lines, she said.
At a time when both rural and urban consumers are feeling the pinch of power tariff hike, the decision of Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited to give subsidy on 30,000 units to new upcoming airports in the state has come under fire from Uttar Pradesh Rajya Vidyut Upbhokta Parishad.

Chairman of the Parishad Avadhesh Kumar Varma said,  The government has brought down subsidised power for rural areas from 150 units to just 100 units and reduced the subsidy from Rs 4 to Rs 3 per unit. But for new upcoming airports built for rich people, the government has decided to give subsidy of Rs 4 per unit on 30,000 units of power. This cannot be tolerated.

He said, Either the chief minister was not taken into confidence before taking this anti -farmer decision or he has been misguided on the issue of power tariff.

Varma said at a time when UP Power Corporation was recommending lesser use of geysers, heaters, coolers and air conditioners and was reducing limit of subsidy to just 100 unit for the poor, it was ready to give 30,00 units of subsidised power to the rich.

He said the Rajya Upbhokta Paarishad would not sit silent over the issue. It would take up the matter with appropriate authorities and meet the chief minister too.

However, a higher official of the UPPCL said, It is a policy decision to promote domestic connectivity in the country and for promotion of air traffic between smaller cities.
A priest at a prominent temple in Uttar Pradeshs Mirzapur district approached the state finance minister Rajesh Agarwal a few months ago with an unusual problem.

His bank was refusing to accept the coins, which the temple received as offerings from the devotees, without citing any plausible reason.

The minister directed the officer concerned to look into the issue and the problem was solved to the priests satisfaction.

But not everyone is as lucky as the priest.

Small traders, retailers and vendors throughout Uttar Pradesh are helplessly watching their stock of coins swelling as banks  both public and private  are turning them away.

Banks have imposed an undeclared ban on deposit of coins which has left small businessmen in a fix.

Traders are making representations and holding protests in various parts of the state while in some districts it has become a law and order issue.

Many vendors and auto-drivers are not accepting coins as they consider it illegal tenders.

We are facing problems as banks are not accepting coins. Our money has been blocked which is affecting trade, said president of UP Adarsh Udyog Vyapar Mandal Sanjaya Gupta.

He has earlier staged a demonstration at the Lucknow Collectorate and has also threatened to lay siege to the regional branch of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) if banks did not deposit coins of retailers.

Who will clear the air?

As confusion over the fate of coins continues, neither the Reserve Bank of India nor the government is doing anything to allay the concerns of traders.

Officials at RBIs regional branch in Kanpur refuse to speak anything on the record.

Do you know how many have lost their jobs for speaking to the media? RBIs Kanpur office is doing its bit. We have sternly asked the banks to accept coins. It they are not accepting coins, how can we force them? said an official on condition of anonymity.

He said only the main office in Mumbai was authorised to speak to the media.

When the HT mailed queries to the RBIs Mumbai office, the banks spokesperson Ajit Prasad sent a one-line reply saying Rs 10 coins were legal tenders across the country.

He did not reply to the query regarding the status of coins of other denominations and also why banks are not accepting Rs 10 and other coins if they are legal tenders.

Prasad also remained silent on the question if the RBI had issued any advisory to banks in this regard or proposed to take action against errant banks.

It is interesting to note that during demonetisation, the same banks had been forcing customers to take bags of coins when they went to exchange their old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes.

State general secretary of Laghu Udyog Bharti Ravindra Singh said he met RBI officials a number of times but they pleaded helplessness saying the central bank was a mere facilitator to the government of India that issued the coins.

Small businesses go for a toss

A number of products like toffees, match box, pencil, eraser and balloon cost less than Rs 5. Producers and traders who deal in such items receive a lot of coins every day.

More than 150 bread manufacturing units in Uttar Pradesh have big collection of coins because of which their working capital remains blocked.

Members of the UP Bread Manufacturers Association (UPBMA) recently came up with a list of more than 50 specific complaints with the name of firms that went to deposit coins and the branches of banks that did not entertain them.

However, no action was taken on any complaint.

In a desperate attempt to get their voices heard, a few traders triggered a controversy that grabbed media attention. (HT Photo)

Most of the banks are accepting coins worth Rs 1,000 only in a week, that too in current accounts. This has become a major problem for traders, said president of Akhil Bharatiya Udyog Vyapar Mandal Sandeep Bansal.

The market is flooded with coins. Where should we deposit coins? asked Suresh Chablani of Lucknow Udyog Vyapar Mandal.

Why were the coins issued in such a huge quantity if banks couldnt take it back? People think we are harassing them but think of the agony of traders. We cannot refuse coins from customers and banks are not accepting it, he said.

In Allahabad too, traders have accumulated several lakhs of rupees in coins and are finding it hard to deposit in banks or store it safely.

I have coins worth over Rs 1 lakh. I tried to deposit it in my bank account but the employees refused to accept it. Customers take some coins as change but other traders do not take it in bulk, said Sachin Jaiswal, a spice trader in Allahabads Mutthiganj area.

Matter of facts Kanpur being an industrial centre is the worst hit by the coin crisis in UP. Coins worth Rs 200 crore were pumped in by the RBI in Kanpur after demonetisation. Coins worth Rs 100 crore poured in through business from other states. On an average, every trader has coins worth Rs 6 lakh. Even beggars are requesting for currency notes as shopkeepers are not accepting coins from them. Currency notes of Rs 50 and Rs 200 denomination not in circulation as yet.

I get coins from customers but distributors and dealers want payments in currency notes of Rs 100 or above. Many people are also refusing to accept Rs 10 coins which do not have a Rupee symbol on it. There is a rumour that such coins are fake, said Ashish Gupta, who owns a paan kiosk in Civil Lines area.

A traders leader in Kanpur Gyanesh Mishra said: This currency is dumped with the people. I know many people who have coins worth Rs 10 lakh. No one knows what to do with it.

The RBI has issued instructions to banks to accept Rs 1,000 in coins every day against one current account. However, banks have created their own rules.

In Kanpur, when traders try to deposit coins, they are asked to go back and get them weighed as counting of coins is a tedious job.

The amount of Rs 1,000 in Rs 10 coins weighs 770 grams and traders have to give an undertaking that they would be responsible if the coins weigh less.

No bank has weighing machines. We get the coins weighed and then put a slip and give an undertaking, said Parikshit Mehrotra, a businessman on Mall Road.

Do we mint coins? Banks have thousands of reasons not to accept coins, said Yogesh Gupta, who runs a confectionary business.

In Kanpur, the RBI circulated coins worth Rs 200 crore post-demonetisation.

Law and order issue

The crisis has also led to a law and order problem.

Last week, two men were brought to Kanpurs Barra police station who threw blows at each other even as the policemen held them by their collars to control them.

One of them was left with a broken nose while the other had bruises all over his neck.

At the heart of their battle was a coin of Rs 10.

Krishna Kumar Singh, an employee with a private firm, bought paan masala from a betel shop owner Lalmani Nanku and gave him Rs 10 coin but he refused to take it and demanded a banknote instead.

After two hours, they had a patch-up and returned home. This was the third such incident in a week where people fought over refusal to accept coins, said station officer, Barra, Bhaskar Mishra.

The Kanpur police have attended to 25 cases of fight over coins.

As coins make regular transactions difficult, traders are holding protests on a regular basis. They have organised more than 40 demonstrations and have met all the authorities with no success.

In a desperate attempt to get their voices heard, a few traders triggered a controversy that grabbed media attention.

The wholesale traders of small items put up hoardings and posters likening Prime Minister Narendra Modi with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un to highlight the deluge of coins affecting their businesses.

The posters came up on October 12, the day when chief minister Yogi Adityanath was in Kanpur to attend the state executive meeting of the BJP.

We wanted to draw the attention of the CM and others to our problems. We needed help, said Raju Khanna, the trader who put up the posters.

Khanna, along with 21 others, is underground as the police have suo motu registered a case against them.

A police sub-inspector Rajesh Awasthi lodged the FIR under sections 505 (conducing public mischief with statements), 153 (provocating with intent to cause riot) and 32 (3) of the UP Special Powers Act.

Superintendent of police, South, Ashok Verma said investigations were on in the case.

We have been agitating for eight months. It is hurting us badly now. If no solution is found out, we will stage a sit-in on the RBIs premises, said secretary Kirana Vyapar Mandal, Gopal Sardana.

Authorities take note, finally

The state government and legislators have finally taken note of the problem.

We have taken up the issue with the State-level Bankers Committee (SLBC) asking them to take action against the banks if there are specific complaints that they are not accepting coins, director, institutional finance, Shiv Singh Yadav said.

RBI guidelines clearly instruct banks to take coins from customers. (HT Photo)

He said coins were the currency of the government of India and nobody could refuse it.

Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Chayal constituency in Kaushambi district Sanjay Gupta has also come forward to help traders in depositing coins in banks.

He announced a reward of Rs 5,000 to a person who shoots the video of bank employees refusing to accept coins as deposits. He has also promised strict action would be ensured against such employees.

Gupta himself visited several branches of various banks in his constituency and got the coins deposited in his presence.

RBI guidelines clearly instruct banks to take coins from customers. I have announced a cash reward if somebody shoots the video of bank officials refusing to accept coins. I will write to the RBI against such employees and lodge FIRs against them, he said.

--Inputs from Kenneth John, Brajendra K Parashar and Anupam Srivastava
Worli to Versova in 12 minutes? It may be possible soon.

The Maharashtra government on Monday gave the final nod to the proposed Versova-Bandra sea link (VBSL) project.

The final nod comes after the cabinet sub-committee on infrastructure, headed by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, gave its go-ahead to the project in June.

The sea link is a crucial component of the coastal road project, which envisages connecting south Mumbai and the western suburbs by a series of reclaimed roads, tunnels and a sea links.

The proposed sea link will continue north-wards, from the Bandra-end of the 5.6-km Bandra-Worli sea link (BWSL).

The VBSL will also have a 30-m long cable-stayed section, similar to the BWSL. The sea link will have three connectors-- one at Otters Club, Bandra; second at Juhu Koliwada and the third at Nana Nani Park at Versova.

With this go ahead, the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC)-- the nodal agency for the project -- will commence the process to invite bids (request for proposal) for the construction of the sea link that is estimated to cost Rs7,502 crore.

The state-run MSRDC has already selected five qualified bidders -- Reliance-CGCD JV, Hyundai-ITD Cementation JV, CHEC-Soma JV, HCC-SKEC JV and L&T-Daewoo JV. We have shortlisted five consortia for the construction of VBSL. These processes were going on simultaneously while we were awaiting a go-ahead from the state government. The construction is expected to start by March 2018 and we expect it to be complete by 2020-end, said a senior MSRDC official.

Meanwhile, the state government also extended the concession period of the two sea links till 2052, which means motorists will now have to pay the toll on sea links till March 31, 2052. The MSRDC had sought to extend the toll collection period on BWSL, which was earlier till 2039, to raise funds for other projects including the VBSL. The MSRDC is going to raise funds for the sea link through domestic market. We have roped in SBI Caps to raise funds for the project. We had started the process much in advance so when the nod from the government comes, we are ready with our plan. The response from lenders is good, as we have a great track record, a senior official added requesting anonymity.

The MSRDC, however, is yet to get clearance from the forest department for the mangroves that need to be removed at the sites, where the three connectors are proposed. We are in advanced stages of discussion with the forest department. We will secure a clearance in a month, the MSRDC official said.

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The Chattanooga Department of Transportation (CDOT) is studying the possibility of converting downtown one-way streets back to two-way streets, and invites the public to a kickoff meeting on Thursday to learn more about the two-way conversion study, what streets are being studied, and how to be involved.

The meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m.

CDOT is exploring this possibility in response to citizen recommendations from downtown planning sessions including the Chattanooga Forward Downtown Task Force and the City Center Plan.
How does one convert conventional power utilities to digital ones? How does one improve the sanitation system? How can one create a sustainable agriculture model? These are some of the problems that students participating in Ideate, a competition that is part of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombays (IIT-B) annual technological extravaganza TechFest, are tasked with solving.

Ideate seeks to address some of the pertinent issues in society from a technological point of view. Students are required to come up with innovative and implementable solutions to these problems. The competition places students in real-life situations, said Anirudh Poddar, media manager, TechFest.

In keeping with the theme, the competition has been divided in three parts: digitalisation, biotechnology and sustainability. These are important sectors that are all facing very real problems in India, Poddar said.

In the first part, students are tasked with solving pressing problems in the health care, education, agriculture, and energy sectors through computerisation. This requires them to create prototypes of their idea. In the second part, participants have to harness biotechnology to achieve goals such as environmental conservation and sanitation.

In the final part, they find ways to lower costs and increase productivity in rural trades, including agriculture, using renewable energy sources.

Festival organisers said most of the problem statements presented to students are open-ended, allowing students to identify the problems themselves, and then seek solutions.

Participants can seek advice and guidance from lecturers at IIT-B as well as other colleges, and are also allowed to use the institutes laboratories to develop their prototypes. The mentors will check the abstracts submitted by students and guide them, Poddar said.

This year, the TechFest will be held from December 29 to 31. Students have already sent in their entries. After declaration of finalists, participants will get a chance to improve upon the prototype of their project by December 15. The teams will have to bring their prototypes to be judged and showcased at the event from December 29 and 31. Three participants from each of the three themes will be declared winners, who will be awarded prizes worth Rs3.2 lakh. IIT-B has received 284 entries this year, including participants from Iran and Bangladesh.

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The city recorded its highest 24-hour December rain in a decade after unseasonal showers lashed Mumbai on Monday, as a result of Cyclone Ockhi in the Arabian Sea.

The city recorded rainfall in December for the first time since 2014.

Between 5.30pm and 8.30pm, the Santacruz weather station, representative of Mumbai as a whole and suburbs, recorded 7mm rain, while Colaba, representative of south Mumbai, recorded 11.4mm.

While 1.5mm rain was recorded on December 13, 2014, traces of rain were recorded on December 20, 2009 and December 21, 2008. The all-time high rainfall for December was recorded on December 12, 1967 was 31.4mm.

The weather bureau has for Tuesday issued a heavy rainfall warning for Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts in north Konkan, Nandurbar, Dhule, Nasik and Jalgaon districts in north Madhya Maharashtra.

Mumbai witnessed a cloudy sky from Monday afternoon onwards. Light drizzles were reported in different parts of the city in the evening.

Under the weather departments classification, 15.6mm to 64.4mm of rain is considered moderate, 64.5mm to 115.5mm is heavy, 115.6mm to 204.4mm is very heavy and more than 204.5mm is extreme.

The cyclone is expected to weaken into a deep depression over south Gujarat and north Maharashtra coast, read a special weather forecast bulletin issued by the Mumbai weather department on Monday.

Cyclone Ockhi, which left behind a trail of destruction in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Lakshadweep Islands, is currently located over east central Arabian Sea, around 540km southwest of Mumbai and 720km south-southwest of Surat, Gujarat, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Monday.

The intensity of the cyclone is expected reduce from severe to deep depression to a depression as it moves northeastwards from its original location (at the same latitude of Goa over the Arabian Sea). Our prediction models indicate this depression or low pressure will bring heavy rain over the north Konkan coast and rain with higher intensity over the Gujarat region, said KS Hosalikar, deputy director general, western region, IMD. Rumours of a cyclone hitting Mumbai are absolutely incorrect and such false messages will only increase panic.

He added that the Mumbai coastline can expect high speed winds from Monday night onwards to Wednesday morning with speeds reaching 50-60 kmph gusting to 70 kmph. Strong surface winds reaching 25-35 kmph gusting to 45 kmph are likely over inland areas of north Konkan and north Madhya Maharashtra, said Hosalikar.

Meanwhile, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) issued a separate warning for the city from Monday to Thursday (December 4-7) wherein an alert was raised for people living close to the sea, specifically Shivaji Park, Dadar areas and Cadell Road, Mahim. Owing to the warnings related to cyclone Ockhi, there will be increased wave action in these regions and water might come onto the promenade areas and onto the road. On December 6, Ambedkar Jayanti, a huge crowd is expected at Shivaji Park, Dadar. They will need to take precautions and avoid going close to the sea, read the BMC warning issued on Monday.

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The Shiv Sena released its election manifesto for the Gujarat Assembly polls on Sunday evening in Ahmedabad, highlighting its agenda, Hindutva is nationalism and criticising the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat.

The Sena projected itself as an alternative to the BJP, with whom it shares power in Maharashtra and at the Centre.

Promising 24x7 electricity and water supply in each district, as well as better roads and employment, the Sena manifesto attacked the Gujarat government saying that it has done nothing for the poor as it has been busy helping select rich people. The current government had promised to fulfil peoples basic needs, but their priorities have changed. It has abandoned the poor and is busy giving to a few rich ones, the manifesto, which is printed in Gujarati, read.

The Sena is contesting 65 seats in the two-phase polls, scheduled for December 9 and December 14. With ties between the saffron parties having soured in the past few years, the Senas decision to contest these polls is being looked upon as a strategy to hurt the BJPs chances. Having ruled the state for 22 years, the BJP is already dealing with anti-incumbency.

On Sunday, the Sena also attacked the BJP over the Centres Swachh Bharat programme. The BJP has made Swachh Bharat Abhiyan its priority and has spent huge sums for its advertisements. However, the ground reality is different. Look at the state of the villages in the state. Instead, the government has levied cess for the cleanliness programme. The Shiv Sena is the only alternative to change this situation, the party declared in its manifesto.

Apart from the Hindutva agenda, the Sena focused on rural Gujarat, alleging that the state government has failed to make villages self-sufficient, or provide proper amenities. The condition of hospitals in Gujarat is poor and they lack adequate staff, including doctors, the manifesto claimed. Shiv Sena will change the face of rural Gujarat. It has always fulfilled its promise, and has always stood by the people, it said.

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The state government has tied up with the United Nations (UN) to launch the Human Development Mission (HDM) in 25 tehsils in 12 districts with the lowest human development index.

Besides expertise in agribusiness, data analysis, value chain and marketing, the UN is also expected to fund the poverty alleviation programme in these tehsils.

The planning department of the state government will launch the HDM in Armori, Dharni, Patur, Nagbhid, Tusmar and other tehsils of backward districts including Chandrapur, Amravati, Akola, Gadchiroli, Jalna, Nandurbar, in the upcoming weeks.

The monthly per capita expenditure of the households in these tehsils ranges between Rs1,121 and Rs2,307. The programme will be spread across 125 tehsils next year and will cover all 358 tehsils in three years.

In addition to the budgetary allocation of Rs75 crore made for the HDM in July this year, the state government approached the UN for its assistance in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). After sharing data on poverty, agriculture and monitoring through its dash board, the UN recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the government.

From improving medical facilities and ensuring quality of education to doubling farmers income by 2020, the government has identified the areas to tap under SDGs. We expect 22 UN organisations to help us with their expertise in upgradation of the primary health centres, Industrial Training Institutes and establishing marketing linkage. The UN experts will be camped in the war room set up in the new administrative building, said an official from the planning department.

The planning department has roped in four UN experts to work with three interns from the chief ministers office with expertise in marketing, market analytics and IT.

According to officials, besides Maharashtra, the UN is also expected to include Manipur and Rajasthan in its funding for the livelihood programme next year.

The state government has also tied up with the Mysore-based Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) for sharing 400 technologies in food processing, agricultural produce packaging. After studying the cropping pattern and horticulture data, the CFTRI has assured it will set up 75 common facility centres in the 25 tehsils.

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The Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) will soon arrive at your doorstep to know your commute patterns as it aims to improve the transport system.

To update its comprehensive transportation study (CTS), the MMRDA has appointed consultants LEA Associates South Asia Pvt Ltd and Krish Enterprises to interview 5,000 families living in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).

People will be asked about their socio-economic condition, commute patterns, household size, location of work or study and daily trips.

A senior official from MMRDA said, The success of the study depends on the qualitative of the data. Therefore, we appeal to citizens to co-operate with the survey.

The CTS was last undertaken between 2005 and 2008. The MMRDA needs to update the study every 10 years to initiate infrastructure projects as per the growing needs of the MMR. Satellite cities such as Navi Mumbai, Thane, Virar, Vasai and Bhiwandi are likely to be the focus of the study this time with a growing population migrating there.

The 2005-2008 CTS had suggested major projects such as the passenger water transport system, the Mumbai Trans Harbour link (MTHL) from Sewri to Nhava-Sheva, southward connectivity up to Colaba using Bandra-Worli Sea link, the eastern freeway, improvement to Thane-Ghodbunder Road, and capacity addition to Metro, suburban railways system and highways in a phase-wise manner.

It had proposed to build 435 km of Metro network, 1,740 km of highway network and 248 km of the suburban railway by 2031 in a planned and phased manner.

However, various agencies are lagging behind in implementing these suggestions.

The water transport system, MTHL and extension of the sea link are yet to take off.

The current CTS will also focus on short, medium and long-term goals.

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In an attempt to prevent floating trash from Mumbais polluted rivers from entering the sea, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is planning to install river debris booms in four rivers in the city. Officials said it would be a pilot programme to determine the effectiveness of the booms.

Built for use in both moving and still waters, floating booms help contain floating materials that have to be cleared during river clean-up jobs. These booms are typically placed above the river and go one metre under the sea.

These booms will prevent materials such as bottles and plastic bags from entering the sea. Workers will be deployed where the booms are placed to clear the floating debris that the booms collect , a senior civic official, who did not wish to be named, told HT.

These booms will be placed at the very polluted Oshiwara, Mithi, Dahisar and Poisar rivers. The placement of the booms will depend on the exact location where the river debris tends to accumulate, the official said. The floating barriers may include different components to suit the requirements of still and moving water.

Speaking to HT, Vijay Singhal, additional municipal commissioner, said: This is in the planning stage, and once we prepare a concrete plan, it will likely be executed.

Another official said the BMC will also deploy a machine that will remove pollutants from the river directly, and will be used at places where the rivers meet the sea.
Noise levels during this years Mahim Fair (Mahim Dargah Urus) on Sunday were as loud as a thunderclap at 122.5 decibels (dB), making it the loudest festival this year and the loudest Mahim Fair in five years, said anti-noise activists.

Police said they booked a group of Dharavi residents as they were violating noise norms.

On receiving complaints, we filed an FIR against the group that had come from Dharavi, issued them a notice, and confiscated their instruments. We will now submit these details in court, said Milind Idekar, senior police inspector, Mahim police station.

The 10-day annual festivals inaugural procession begins at Mahim police station, with officers carrying an offering of sandalwood paste, perfume, flowers, silver utensils and a silk chaddar honouring Sufi saint Makhdoom Ali Mahimi at his dargah.

NGO Awaaz Foundation filed complaints at the Mahim police station after members of a procession staged around 4.15pm at Cadell Road used loudspeakers and drums. While decibel levels were high, the noise was stopped within 10 minutes of my complaint. It was unclear whose procession it was, said Sumaira Abdulali, convener, Awaaz Foundation. I recorded noise levels at the same road around 7pm and there were no loudspeakers or drums audible, she added.

Mahim residents said a police procession kept making loud noise till 9pm on Sunday. After Abdulalis complaint, the noise stopped between 6am and 7am. From 7am onwards, the police, and a few others staging a procession, used loudspeakers, drums, and banjos for a long time, said Zafar Khan, Mahim resident.

The police, however, said they did not use loudspeakers or any musical instruments and were only singing.We warned two other processions, which stopped playing music immediately, said Idekar.

A week before the fair, we told police to take precautionary measures to ensure noise levels were not breached. However, noise levels were still above 120dB, said Farooque Dhala, a resident.

Last year, the Mahim Fair registered 117.3 dB from a police procession close to the police station. On May 24, ruling that no breach of noise pollution norms in the city will be tolerated, no matter what the occasion, the Bombay high court issued show-cause notices of contempt against the senior inspector of the Mahim police station, and assistant commissioner of police (ACP) Mahim division, for using loudspeakers inside the police station compound during the fair.

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When Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) security officer Akshay Gaikar, 24, told Sahar police he had found a threatening letter from ISIS in a toilet at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport last week, they swung into action immediately. On Sunday, they found that it was Gaikar himself who had planted the note and arrested him.

Sahar police said Gaikar is a resident of Bhandup (East). He was hired through a private security agency. He got the idea for his plan after he saw a video of someone pulling the same stunt.

An airport official, who did not wish to be identified, told HT that Gaikar had issues with his seniors.

He wanted to ensure an increased police presence at the airport and so planted the note, the official added.

On Wednesday evening, he used gum to stick the threatening note on the toilet seat. The note, written in marker, said ISIS would attack the airport anytime on January 26, 2018.

After leaving the note, Gaikar alerted officials and so was thus made the complainant in the polices case.

A short while later, security forces visited the spot. The cargo was cleared and a Bomb Detection & Disposal Squad searched the airport, but did not find anything suspicious.

Police examined CCTV camera footage and saw Gaikar leaving the security control room with a marker and a piece of paper. He was produced before a magistrate court on Sunday and remanded in judicial custody. His bail application will be heard on Monday. He will spend the night in Arthur road jail, said officials.

Police registered a case against him under section 506 (2) for criminal intimidation and 505 (b) (statements conducing to public mischief with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, fear or alarm to the public, or to any section of the public whereby any person may be induced to commit an offence against the state or against the public tranquillity) of the Indian Penal Code.
Shiv Sena leader and minister of state for dairy development Arjun Khotkar will not be eligible to vote in the state council by-election, to be held on Thursday.

Election officials said he would not be able to vote as 10 days ago, the Bombay high court ruled that Khotkars election as a member of legislative assembly (MLA) from Jalna was null and void.

Khotkars election was annulled by the Aurangabad bench of the high court for having filed his nomination after the deadline was over for the 2014 elections, after Congress candidate Kailash Gorantyal challenged his election.

Khotkar has already moved Supreme Court in appeal, but he has not yet got a stay on the order.

As there is no order by the apex court, we will abide by the high court order that says that Khotkar is no longer an MLA. He, therefore, will not be allowed to cast his vote on Thursday, said an official from state legislature, who did not wish to be named.

Anant Kalse, principal secretary, state legislature, said the case has been referred to the Election Commission of India for more clarity.

Khotkar said he is aware that he cannot vote in the council by-election. The petition filed in the SC is up for hearing on December 8, a day after the election. As the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena candidate Prasad Lad is in a strong position, I have not insisted on getting permission to vote, he told HT.

Two NCP leaders unlikely to vote

Meanwhile, two Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLAs, Chhagan Bhujbal and Ramesh Kadam, who are in prison on charges of corruption, are also unlikely to cast their votes.

Bhujbals bail plea will be up for hearing on Tuesday, and if approved, he is likely to be free to vote. Kadam has not sought permission from court, said an NCP leader, requesting anonymity.

Both Bhujbal and Kadam had voted in the presidential election held five months ago, with permission from court.
The Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway industrial development authorities have assured the three-member ministerial committee delivery of 32,525 flats to homebuyers by end of this month.

On Monday, top officials from the authorities apprised the three-member ministerial committee, looking into homebuyers issues, on Monday at a meeting held to review the progress on delivery of flats in stuck housing projects. The two-hour meeting was held at the India International Center in New Delhi.

The December-end deadline was set by Uttar Pradesh chief minister after he constituted the ministerial panel to look into homebuyers issues and revive stuck housing projects after homebuyers had complained of non-delivery of flats despite several years of delay.

The committee, which comprises of state industries minister Satish Mahana, urban housing minister Suresh Khanna and minister of state for industry and sugar mills Suresh Rana, had earlier warned builders that they will either deliver flats by December-end or go to jail.

Atal Kumar Rai, additional CEO of the Noida authority, said, Officials from the three authorities explained to the committee how flats will be delivered to homebuyers. The three authorities gave a detailed report about the status of flats and their delivery to the committee.

The Noida authority assured the committee that different builders are scheduled to deliver 11,000 flats; the Greater Noida authority promised to deliver 14,000 flats in various housing projects under its jurisdiction; the Yamuna Expressway industrial development authority told the committee that it will deliver 7525 flats by December end.

Arun Vir Singh, chief executive officer of the YEIDA, said, We are set to deliver 2,827 flats in different schemes launched by the authority in 2012. Some 4,698 flats will be delivered by builders who have projects along the Yamuna Expressway in urban areas developed by us.

However, Mondays update not only left the ministers miffed, but also angered citizens, who complained that these flats are not even in the critically stuck housing projects that were supposed to be revived.

Homebuyers said that these figures are of those builders whose projects were nearing completion.

The committee and officials talk of flat delivery in housing projects that were not stuck. The ministers committee has failed to revive projects that have remained in the deep for years and because of which thousands of homebuyers have been losing sleep, a homebuyer, Rajiv Singh, said.

Builders claim they have failed to complete some projects because of financial crisis, accentuated by the dip in realty sector. Homebuyers, however, allege that the fund shortage was created because builders diverted funds collected from them against flats.

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British climber James Pearson has made the first ascent of the "bold and difficult" Power Ranger at Sunset Rock, planetmountain.com reported.

Mr. Pearson has been traveling around the world for over a decade tacking the most difficult climbs.

The quest has led "initially from his home in the gritstone outcrops in the Peak District to the rest of the British Isles, then to France, Italy and as far as Chad, Japan and South Africa," the article says.

The 32-year-old has just returned from what he described as the "quite simply awesome" Power Ranger ascent.

The article says, "The route owes its uniques to its physical and psychological difficulties - run-out 5.14 R / 8c trad routes are still extremely rare - but also to the innate beauty of the actual climbing.

A bold but relatively easy lower wall leads to a good rest, before launching into the headwall with its intense and unforgiving moves. Long powerful reaches lead into an intricate and delicate crux, and then past a run-out power endurance sequence to the top."

It says Mr. Pearson "first tried the line last February and immediately became obsessed with this 'beautiful flowing sequence' " so he returned this fall with his wife Caroline Ciavaldini for the free ascent.

He commented, This route is beautiful - a single line of holds up an otherwise blank wall. No way around, no way to cheat, you get only what nature has given. The moves are powerful, yet delicate, with an obvious crux but also the chance to fall on any move. The gear is good, the run-out quite big, and provided you fall in a controlled way you should be ok, yet the climbing is awkward, the rope runs behind your legs, and falling off the upper moves would send you exactly in the direction you dont want to be! I never fell off the last few moves so I cant say for sure. Perhaps it is safe, perhaps not only time will tell.
A 53-year-old businessman was killed and his friend and business aide was critically injured when armed assailants shot at the duo in Sector 71 on Saturday night. The two were attacked when they resisted the assailants attempt to rob them.

The deceased was identified as Shri Niwas and his friend was identified as Vicky Gupta, both residents of Sadarpur Village in Sector 45.

The duo would supply polythene carry bags to vendors in the market and collect money in the evening.

On Saturday, Niwas and Gupta were on their way home after collecting cash for the days supply when they were attacked. They were on a motorcycle, with Gupta riding the bike and Shri Niwas on pillions seat, police said, adding that they were carrying the cash in a bag.

Soon, four men started following them on two motorbikes. They intercepted the duo in a service lane behind Metro apartments in Sector 71, police said.

The assailants told Gupta and Niwas to hand the bag over, but the duo refused and confronted the men. Soon, a heated argument ensued and the assailants shot at Gupta, who suffered a bullet injury on his right arm and fell off the bike. Shri Niwas jumped off the bike and ran with the bag of cash, police said.

Niwas was chased by the unidentified assailants for around 300 metres when they opened fire at him. He was shot in back and died on the spot, police said, adding that the assailants fled with the bag of cash.

The incident came to light when Gupta managed to call his family members, who then called the police.

A police team rushed to the spot and took Gupta to Om Hospital in Sector 66.

Following the incident, family members, relatives and villagers of Gupta and Niwas staged protested outside the mortuary in Sector 94. They raised slogans against the police, protesting the alleged delay in response time. The protest continued for half an hour; the group said they would take to the streets if the case is not promptly solved.

A case of murder and robbery was registered at Phase-3 police station against unknown men.

Refuting allegations of late response, Akhilesh Pradhan, SHO, Phase-3, said, We immediately rushed the duo to hospital after receiving information. It was important for us.

Pradhan said, The injured man could not tell us about the direction in which the criminals fled or how much money they had kept in the bag. We recovered 70,000 from the deceased and 10,000 from the injured. The matter is being investigated. As of now, there is no clue about the suspects.

Robbery turns to murder:

Sept 30:A 22-year-old man was shot at after he resisted robbery by two armed men in Sarfabad village of Noida.

Sept 16: A businessman was shot dead in broad daylight by two persons on a bike on Taksal Road in Noidas Sector 78. The duo attempted to snatch the mans bag and opened fire when he resisted.

Sept 6: A 45-year-old security guard was shot dead when he tried to stop armed robbers from entering a bungalow in Sector 44.

Aug 13: A 22-year-old civil services aspirant died after he was shot at by motorcycle-borne assailants in Greater Noida. The assailants were trying to steal his car.

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This Christmas Eve, it will be known as to who succeeds J Jayalalithaa as member of the Tamil Nadu Assembly from the Dr Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency. But the void her death, on December 5, 2016, has created in the states political arena will persist and the future of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the party she spearheaded for close to three decades and led it to victory in four assembly elections, continues to hang in balance.

Although Jayalalithaa left the AIADMK not just as the ruling party in the state but as the third-biggest party in Lok Sabha with 37 members and the fourth in Rajya Sabha with 13 members, its inheritors have been caught floundering in asserting the states rights and standing up to the Centre  a trait of Jayalalithaa that had endeared her to the masses.

So when the state government meekly gave up on the fight against NEET (National Eligibility Entrance Test) for medical college admission, ignoring popular sentiment, and when it led to the suicide of medical aspirant Anita, the people missed Jayalalithaa, recalling how she had opposed the Centres bid to impose its modes of admission in the state. Of course, her loss was felt much earlier. First when the Marina was under siege over Jallikattu and then when the protest was brought to a cruel closure. The popular perception was that Jayalalithaa would not have allowed an uprising like that to fester and prolong for such a long time and then she would definitely not have let loose the police on young people so brutally.

Even when the Centre brought in the Goods and Services Tax (GST), amidst the widespread resentment, there was a reminder of Jayalalithaas opposition to it. In fact, social activists, who probably were not on the same page as her when she ruled the state, lament the passing of a plethora of central legislation that Jayalalithaa had opposed with the AIADMK giving its nod after her hospitalisation in September 2016. They squarely blame it on the inefficacy of the team that has inherited Jayalalithaas mantle.

The present leadership of the party, after the farcical display of unity by the Edapadi Palaniswami faction and the O Panneerselvam faction, and the subsequent dismissal of the Sasikala-Dinakaran group, inspires little confidence. The absence of Jayalalithaa is constantly evident in the clueless statements by the ministers, and in dim-witted ideas like covering a reservoir with thermocol to prevent water from evaporating. Instances of the governor meddling with administrative matters with impunity led to speculation of the Centres role in state matters. All these were reminders of Jayalalithaas absence.

Perhaps her loss would have been compensated if her political bete noire, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagams M Karunanidhi, had been active, at least if his wit and sarcasm was sharp. His absence due to illness accentuated the sense of emptinessa void which suddenly caught the attention of many, especially the stars from filmdom. Of course the stars, mainly Rajnikanth and Kamal Haasan, linger around with hope and expectation, though the popular perception is that they are mere pretenders to the throne. Also, none of these stars appear interested in cultivating a political base from the grassroots; they aim for the throne at Fort St George.

The most recent from Kollywood to move in this direction is actor Vishal, the president of the general secretary of the actors federation and president of Tamil Film Producers Council. His foray into the RK Nagar electoral arena is a response to a perceived popular disillusionment over the lack of a powerful icon helming the states politics. It is a different matter that Vishal, or for the matter his seniors Rajnikant and Haasan, will not be able to fill the political vacuum caused by Jayalalithaas demise.

The BJP, too, is not a worthy contender at the moment. Apart from its local leaders regularly failing to gauge public sentiments, it is difficult for them to overcome the wave of antipathy in the state that has not collectively come out of the Dravidian ideological grip completely. The AIADMK, by letting itself to be seen as a stooge of the BJP, has shot itself in the foot, giving the DMK a leg up.

So really, all eyes are on the developments that will unfold later this month.

G Babu Jayakumar is a Chennai-based senior journalist

The views expressed are personal
Police in Bhabua town in southwest Bihar are on high alert after an objectionable WhatsApp message sparked communal tension on the eve of Babri Masjid demolition anniversary.

Prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), that bans assembly of more than four people, has been imposed in the town till further orders by the Kaimur district administration as a precautionary measure.

The trouble started when a group of people, hurt by the WhatsApp message, blocked the main road at Ekta Chowk and attacked a house at Purana Chowk in the town on Monday.

The mob forcibly entered the house of Shambhu Halwai, allegedly assaulted men and women, damaged utensils, furniture and belongings and looted valuables. Family members said a boy of the family was married on the Sunday night and the newlywed bride had just arrived at the house with gifts and valuables when the attackers ransacked the house.

READ| Internet services suspended after tension grips Bihars Nawada

A police team, led by superintendent of police (SP) Harpreet Kaur, rushed to the locality and dispersed the mob after using mild force. Kaur later visited Halwais attacked house, met the family and assured them security and action against attackers.

Five alleged attackers had been arrested and the minor boy, who allegedly posted the objectionable matter, detained for interrogation, Kaur said, adding that the arrested men were being sent to jail.

Police had been deployed at all sensitive places and the situation was under control, Kaur said.

READ| Tension in Madhubani village over Shivling dispute, 1 killed

The police were examining the video footage to identify the other attackers, the SP said. Those found guilty of creating trouble would not be spared, she added.

Bhabua, the headquarters of Kaimur district, 197 km southwest of state capital Patna, has no history of any major communal strife in the past.
Over a month after Punjab government withdrew the essentiality certificate from the Chintpurni Medical College, Pathankot, owned by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Swaran Salaria, on November 3, students are yet to be shifted to other government medical colleges as promised.

To take up the issue, over 90 students and their parents protested outside the headquarters of the Medical Council of India (MCI) in New Delhi on Monday, demanding early shifting of students to other colleges.

Members of their delegation also met officials of the health ministry, the MC and the oversight committee that the Supreme Court has formed in the case. The Punjab government says it has sent a proposal for approval to the MCI to shift all 249 students that took admission over various years. Sources said the Punjab government had also sent a reminder to the MCI.

What is the issue?

The college started admissions in 2011, in spite of the fact that the medical education regulator, the Medical Council of India (MCI), did not grant it the mandatory approvals. The 2011 batch of 150 students had earlier moved the Punjab and Haryana high court and have since been shifted to other colleges, students of 2014 and 2016 batches face a bleak future. On April 26, 2016, these students moved the high court seeking to shift to other colleges in the state claiming that their institute is short of infrastructure

On September 8 this year, the Punjab and Haryana high court had directed the state government to shift all students of 2014 batch of Chintpurni Medical College to other medical colleges across the state within two months.

File is now with the oversight committee

Even as state government sources had claimed, in the first week of November, that the process of shifting of students would be completed within a fortnight, nothing has moved since. After the essentiality certificate of the college was withdrawn, students have been sitting at home since November 1. Their pre-final exams are pending, said Dr Sushil Garg, member of Parents Welfare Association of the college, formed to take up the students cause.

He added, We want that the oversight committee must consider our case on priority and give its approval order to the state government and the MCI for early shifting of students.

MCI secretary Dr Reena Nayyar said, We considered the proposal of the Punjab government in our executive committee and sent it to the oversight committee. As soon as we receive comments from the oversight committee, the matter will be communicated to the health ministry. Dr Sanjay Srivastav, secretary, oversight committee, said, We have received the reports on Friday and will consider it in the coming days.
It is an irony that creations of a man as self-effacing as Pierre Jeanneret are now being appropriated by celebrities who love the limelight. From the pages of Vogue to the houses of French designers and Hollywood stars, the name Pierre Jeanneret is associated with furniture as classy as it is functional.

The V-legged chairs, ubiquitous in government offices of Chandigarh, now find a pride of place in the dining room of reality star Kourtney Kardashian. The celebrated French architect, Joseph Dirand, a favourite with fashion houses, goes into raptures as he describes the chair, Its so simple, so minimal, so strong. Put one in a room, and it becomes a sculpture.

Fifty years after his death, Jeanneret, the first chief architect of Chandigarh, is finally coming out of the shadows of his cousin Le Corbusier, and getting the tributes he deserved even then, way back in the 1950s, when he so painstakingly built Chandigarh.

OBSCURITY TO FAME

His journey from obscurity to fame began with some French art collectors, who descended on the city in the 1990s and found his chairs heaped in junkyards across Panjab University and the Secretariat. Later, the scrap they acquired for a song, was auctioned for crores across Europe.

Earlier this year, a set of six armchairs designed for Tagore Theatre fetched Rs 41.83 lakh at an auction in London, while an office teak table meant for the Secretariat went for Rs 24.97 lakh.

In 2013, Amie Siegel, a film director, made a film, Provenance, describing the journey of Jeannerets furniture from its rejection in the city of its birth  the film shows heaps of chairs lying discarded  to its resurgence in Europe.

Jasbir Singh, an engineer and interior designer, says Swedish giant Ikea was among the first to take inspiration from Jeanneret. His furniture was ahead of its time. He followed the principles of ergonomics when few had heard of them. His furniture is simple yet stylish and comfortable. See how easy the chairs are on your back, says Singh.

Jeanneret worked on the principle that furniture lives with us and grows old with us. He realised that a wrong piece of furniture could give you a wrong posture. Thats why his V-legged office chair has an upright back unlike the lounge chair shaped like a kangaroo, which allows you to relax while supporting your spine.

MASTER IMPROVISER

Sangeeta Bagga, principal of Chandigarh College of Architecture, says with an eye on government servants with transferable jobs, Jeanneret made furniture that could easily be dismantled. He was also a master at improvising with local material. He made a table of bricks with a wooden slab on top. He would invert a tasla (a labourers wok) and use it as a table lamp, she says.

The foot architect of Chandigarh also kept the local weather in mind. While Indians were happy to embrace the stuffy, upholstered sofas that the British brought with them from their cold climes, Jeanneret introduced them to airy furniture made of humidity and bug-resistant teak with cane weave.

Its a testimony to the great artist that while fashions come and go, his furniture has not only endured but has also become more stylish with time.
Sivakarthikeyans speech at the audio launch of Velaikkaran, directed by Mohan Raja, was one of the major highlights of the event, which was organized on a lavish scale in Chennai on Sunday evening. Speaking on the occasion, Siva recalled how the project materialized in the first place. Ive never approached any director for an opportunity. For the first time in my career, I went to a director (Mohan Raja) and expressed my interest to collaborate because of the impact Thani Oruvan had on me. People see Mohan sir as someone most suitable for doing remakes, but not many know the challenges associated with a remake. I might have turned ten remake offers because I knew I cant do justice to the original.

The film, gearing up for release later this month, is produced by RD Raja of 24 AM Studios. Heaping praise on his producer, Sivakarthikeyan said: Velaikkaran is the brainchild of Raja sir and the entire team worked having placed full faith in him and the content. Raja sir deserves all the appreciation I get for my performance and character. Velaikkaran marks the Tamil debut of Malayalam actor Fahadh Faasil. Talking about the association of working with Fahadh, a proud Siva said: Hes an international actor and I can openly admit this anywhere. To share screen space alongside him helped me perform even more effectively. Weve become good friends and I continue to learn from him. Itll be a special role and special film for him.

On pairing up with Nayanthara for the first time, Siva said that he met her for the first time on the sets of Ajiths Aegan. Arunraja and I were supposed to play small roles in Aegan, and its on the sets of this film we saw Nayanthara. She then made a brief appearance in a song in my film Ethir Neechal. The next time I saw her was only on the sets of Velaikkaran. One thing that hasnt changed about her in all these years is her punctuality. This is precisely why she has established a market for herself, he added.

The film has music by Anirudh Ravichander and it marks his fifth collaboration with Sivakarthikeyan. Without mincing words, Sivakarthikeyan said: When I read memes that theres no Sivakarthikeyan without Anirudh I cant be happier. He has supported me so much through his music and has played a pivotal role in my growth.

At the event, Siva caught the audience off guard when he made a breaking statement. He said he wont endorse any brand or be part of any advertisement in the future. Velaikkaran has changed me a lot as a person. So much so that, I have decided to not have any brand association or be part of any advertisement. Its not that Im against them but its just that I dont want to send out wrong message people. The experience of working in Velaikkaran has been an eye-opener, and it has made me realize that Im responsible for my actions. I have done one advertisement in the past and thatll be the first and the last.

Talking on the occasion, director Mohan Raja said the film will be a tribute to the working class. Velaikkaran is about the workers around us. Audiences wont hate this film. Thats where I believe Ive already won in this process, he said, adding that only Sivakarthikeyan could do justice to the character he essays in the film. His character will be remembered for a long time, he added.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

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A gay Australian lawmaker popped the question in parliament on Monday, proposing to his partner moments after a bill paving the way for same-sex marriage was introduced.

Tim Wilson, who has reportedly been engaged to Ryan Bolger for nine years, fought back tears as he thanked his fiance for enduring a marriage debate that has been the soundtrack to our relationship.

In my first speech I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands--that they are the answer to the questions we cannot ask, the 37-year-old lawmaker from the ruling conservative party said.

So there is only one thing left to do: Ryan Patrick Bolger will you marry me?

Bolger, who was sitting in the public gallery, quickly responded yes as the floor erupted in applause.

That was a yes, a resounding yes, house speaker Rob Mitchell noted for the record. Congratulations, well done mate.

Wilson earlier emotionally recalled the uneasiness he experienced with some friends when he and Bolger were first engaged.

Australian lawmaker Tim Wilson, right, proposes to his gay partner Ryan Patrick Bolger, who was sitting in the public gallery, at Parliament in Canberra. (AP)

Many simply didnt know how to react. Many SMS went unresponded. In conversations some people politely changed the topic, or fell silent entirely, he said.

His partner had pushed him to have an engagement party.

On informing one person of our news, they responded: Why bother?

At the time I fell silent and I have never had an answer to that question. But the Australian people have now answered that for me.

The same-sex marriage bill being debated is expected to comfortably pass through the House of Representatives before Christmas after the upper house Senate last week overwhelmingly voted in its favour.

After more than a decade of debate, Australians emphatically endorsed gay marriage in a recent nationwide postal vote, with some 62 percent of the 12.7 million who took part voting yes last month.

This is a historic moment of inclusion, of recognition, of respect, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said shortly after the bill was introduced for debate in the lower house Monday.

This is a day to be especially proud that all of our friends, our colleagues, our neighbours, our brothers, our sisters, can marry the people they love.

Former conservative prime minister Tony Abbott, a leading voice in the no campaign, said he would now back the bill.

I certainly dont pretend to be an overnight convert to support same-sex marriage but I am pledged to respect and to facilitate the verdict of the Australian people, he said.

Same-sex marriage should now be recognised. It will now be recognised.

Abbott moved an amendment he said protected discrimination against anyone over their conscientious view about the nature of marriage, before saying he planned to attend his gay sisters wedding next year.

I am looking forward to attending the marriage of my sister, Christine, to her partner Virginia some time early in the new year.
The apparent haste with which the Maldives vetted its free trade agreement (FTA) with China last week could have come as a surprise to India, but the agreement between the two countries is part of Beijings steady efforts to strengthen economic ties with South Asian nations, including via proposed trade agreements.

For China, it is the second FTA with a South Asian country after Pakistan.

Beijings recent efforts to sign FTAs with several countries is now part of its broad plans to enter trade agreements with countries along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the multi-billion dollar connectivity project which plans to link China with the rest of Asia, Africa and Europe. China has FTAs or is in talks to sign FTAs with as many as 25 countries and regions along the BRI, state media has reported.

At present, Beijing is at discussion stage to sign an FTA with Sri Lanka, with six rounds of talks already held. It also plans to upgrade the one with Pakistan. Feasibility studies for FTA have also been initiated with Nepal, Bangladesh and Mauritius.

The ministry of commerce had made progress in eight FTA talks, as well as launched feasibility studies and negotiations with another eight countries and regions in 2016, Zhang Shaogang, director-general of the department of international trade and economic affairs at the ministry told the state-controlled China Daily newspaper.

Even if China does strengthen its economic ties with South Asian countries via FTAs, the arrangements are not targeted against India, state media reported on Monday.

It needs to be noted that economic cooperation between China and the Maldives does not target any third party, India included. The expeditious signing of the trade pact only signifies that the two countries urgently hope to tap the potential for cooperation due to their economic complementarity, the nationalistic tabloid Global Times said in a comment piece.

But expect economic ties between China and South Asian countries to become stronger, the article said.

To take the example of Sri Lanka, it is because of finance and industrial complementation that the two countries have increased cooperation in infrastructure construction and the pursuit of free trade. Political relationships are sometimes a barometer of economic ties.

It wont be easy for India to maintain its political influence in South Asia if its own economic presence is weakening. If India thinks its position is threatened, it should consider how it can give more benefits to its neighbours through win-win economic cooperation, the article said.
Its time to submit a National Cornbread Cook-off recipe. Lodge Cast Iron and Martha White are searching the nation for the best original main dish cornbread recipes in the 22nd Annual Lodge National Cornbread Cook-Off.

Now through Jan. 15, 2018, Cook-Off applicants can submit an original main dish/entree recipe prepared with at least one package of Martha White Cornbread Mix and prepared in Lodge Cast Iron cookware. Ten finalists will be selected to compete during the National Cornbread Festival on April 28, 2018, in South Pittsburg.

Cooks across the country continue to impress me with their creative twists on classic recipes and trendy dishes reinvented with cornbread, said Martha White baking expert, Linda Carman. Past cook-off contestants have stretched beyond Southern cuisine, preparing Caribbean, Tex-Mex and Mediterranean-style recipes.

Main Dish recipes are entree, or main course, recipes. Cook-Off competitive ranges are provided by FiveStar Professional Cooking Equipment.

Recipes must be a finalists original creation, may not have won previous awards, may not have been published previously, and must not infringe on upon any other persons rights.

Cook-Off competitors cannot be graduates of a culinary institute or be paid as an executive chef. Bloggers are encouraged to submit their recipes.

Along with the coveted cast iron skillet crown, the Cook-Off champion will receive $5,000 and a 30-inch stainless steel gas range (a $3,250 value) from FiveStar Professional Cooking Equipment, a division of Brown Stove Works, Inc.

The second prize winner will receive $1,500, and the third prize winner will receive $1,000. The remaining seven finalists will walk away with $150, and all finalists will receive a $500 travel reimbursement and a gift basket courtesy of Lodge and Martha White.

South Pittsburg hosts the National Cornbread Festival the last full weekend of April. The 2018 event is set for April 28-29








CIA director Mike Pompeo has issued a stern warning to Pakistan that if it did not act against the alleged terrorist safe havens inside the country then the United States would be forced to destroy them on its own.

The warning comes as Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is scheduled to arrive in Islamabad on Monday and hold talks with Pakistan to seek their support to the new US strategy for Afghanistan.

The CIA director gave this warning at the Reagan National Defence Forum in California on Saturday, when he was asked about what Trump administration was doing to make Pakistan participate in its new Afghan strategy.

(Secretary Mattis) will make clear the presidents intent. (He) will deliver the message that we would love you to do that. And that the safe haven inside of Pakistan has worked to the detriment of our capacity to do what we needed to do in Afghanistan, the Dawn quoted Pompeo as saying.

And in case things go south, he added, In the absence of the Pakistanis achieving that, we are going to do everything we can to make sure that safe haven no longer exists.
Iran-allied Houthi forces blew up the house of ex-Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa on Monday as fighting between the erstwhile allies intensified in the capital with at least 125 killed, residents and medics said.

Saudi-led coalition warplanes bombed Houthi positions in for a second day in support of Saleh, a former Houthi ally who has now renounced his alliance with the heavily armed militia in the multi-sided war shattering the Arabian Peninsula country.

The Saudi-led air campaign, backed by U.S. and other Western arms and intelligence, has killed hundreds of civilians but has failed to secure the coalition any major gains in the nearly three-year-old campaign to restore Yemens internationally recognised president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power.

Sanaa residents said Houthi fighters blew up Salehs house in the centre of the city. His whereabouts remain unknown.

Salehs loyalists have lost ground on the sixth day of heavy urban combat with the Houthis, with three hospitals reporting a toll of at least 125 killed and 238 wounded over six days, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

We are supporting the main hospitals in Sanaa who urgently need war-wounded kits, ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said in Geneva. We are also looking at donating dead body bags to hospitals which are actually asking for them and hope to donate fuel to the main hospitals because they depend on generators.

The ICRC have relocated 13 international staff to Djibouti from Sanaa on Monday, she said.

Sanaa residents reported intense fighting overnight and into the morning with families cowering in their homes as explosions rocked the city. Coalition air strikes hammered Houthi positions in an apparent bid to shore up Salehs forces, witnesses said.

PROXY CONFLICT BETWEEN IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA

The re-alignment of Salehs forces with the Saudis would mark a significant turn in a war that is part of a wider struggle between regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The bloodshed has compounded the woes of one of the Arab worlds poorest countries and left at least 10,000 dead as hunger and disease have spread.

At the United Nations, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the warring parties to stop all ground and air assaults. He also called for the resumption of all commercial imports into Yemen, saying millions of children, women and men were at risk of mass hunger, disease and death.

However, in a speech late on Sunday, Saleh formally annulled his alliance with the Houthis and pledged to step up his fight.

Saleh, who dominated Yemens heavily armed tribal society for 33 years before quitting in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, and the Shiite Muslim Houthis had made common cause against Hadi loyalists.

But they vied for supremacy over the territory they ran together, including Sanaa, which the Houthis seized in September 2014, and their feud burst into open combat on Wednesday.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam claimed significant gains in the battle for Sanaa on Monday.

With the aid and approval of God, the security forces backed up by wide popular support were able last night to cleanse the areas in which the militias of treason and betrayal were deployed, he said in a statement.

The Houthi movements TV channel al-Masirah and witnesses said Houthir fighters had seized the downtown home of Salehs nephew Tareq, an army general.

Residents said the warring sides traded heavy automatic and artillery fire as the Houthis advanced in the central Political District, which is a redoubt of Saleh and his family.

We lived through days of terror. Houthi tanks have been firing and the shells were falling on our neighbourhood, said Mohammed al-Madhaji, who lives in the frontline district.

The fighting has been so violent we feel we could die at any moment. We cant get out of our homes.

Houthi media and political sources also reported that the Houthis also advanced toward Salehs birthplace in a village outside Sanaa where he maintains a fortified palace.
Gushing ash from Balis Mount Agung volcano has dissipated into a wispy plume of steam, and Australian airlines that cancelled some flights to the Indonesian resort island on the weekend have returned to near-normal schedules.

Indonesias disaster mitigation agency said Monday the volcano remains at its highest alert level but most of Bali is safe for tourists.

The exclusion zone around the volcano still extends 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the crater in some directions. More than 55,000 people are living in shelters.

Airlines Jetstar and Virgin Australia, which cancelled flights over the weekend even as the ash cloud shrank dramatically, said they were resuming services Monday.

The full-moon is seen along with Mount Agung volcano in Bali on Monday. (Reuters Photo)

The regions volcanic ash monitoring center in Darwin, Australia, has stopped issuing advisories for Agung, reflecting that its currently posing no threat to aircraft. It would resume advisories if theres another eruption.

Tens of thousands of tourists were stranded when ash closed Balis international airport for nearly three days last week.

Indonesian government volcanologists say Agungs crater is about one-third filled by lava and there is still a high risk of more eruptions.

The volcanos last major eruptions in 1963 killed more than 1,100 people and it was active for more than a year.

David Boutelier, a geologist at the University of Newcastle in Australia, said the chance of a violent explosion is still very high but possibly not as high as several weeks ago because pressure is being released.
Indo-Canadian comic Russell Peters is among the worlds most popular stand-up acts but now, as he makes his debut as the lead in a scripted television series, he appears to have made the transition to the small screen as smoothly as that between the setup and punchline of one of his gags.

The show actually has India as the backdrop, as it is mostly set in Mumbai and is about a Toronto police constable who is suspended for messing up a case and finds himself doing some sleuthing while visiting his father in India.

Called simply The Indian Detective, the four-part series has already premiered in Canada, where it attracted 1.6 million viewers for the first episode, making it the biggest bow for a Canadian show in the country in two years. On December 19, it will be available to a larger audience, including viewers in India, when it is released globally by Netflix.

In an interview with Hindustan Times, Peters expressed satisfaction with the reception so far: Im very happy with the show, and the people that tuned in to watch it seem to be very happy with it as well.

Peters plays Constable Doug DMello, who finds himself elevated to the status of detective by his father, Stanley (Anupam Kher), while he is in India and gets involved with the investigation of the murder of a swami.

His character is one that takes the thriller genre and puts the sitcom sensibility into it, as Peters said, I think they based it around me being a wisecracking guy from Toronto, which kind of made sense. It was a much easier thing for me to do.

While he has often appeared on TV, on comedy specials and as the host for major awards ceremonies, now he gets to head a cast. This is the first time Ive played the actual lead and buoyed down the entire show based on my name, he said.

The shows writer, The X-Files veteran Frank Spotnitz, at first asked Peters whether he should write the jokes for the detectives dialogue.

I said, Dont write jokes, Frank, thats not what your forte is. Your forte is storytelling and writing dramatic sequences, so you focus on the stories and all the intricacies of that and Ill read your script in my voice and add funny where I feel necessary, Peters said.

The cast is boosted by the presence of Canadian actor William Shatner (Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek), as billionaire property developer David Marlowe. Peters, like many others, was a fan of Shatner while growing up.

Russell Peters as the cop Doug DMello with William Shatner, who plays a billionaire property developer, in the new serial The Indian Detective.

The guys such a legend that the first day we were shooting together, I was watching him as opposed to acting with him. I would be staring at him like a fan. Then he stops his lines and looks at me and Im like, Oh my God, whatre you looking at? and I realise I had lines Id forgotten to say because I was just staring at him all the time, he recalled.

While Mumbai is the setting, much of the show was filmed in South Africa, with desi-origin actors from that country playing Mumbaikars.

The director (Sandy Johnson) is Scottish so he didnt know whether they were sounding proper or not. So, I would have to pull him aside and say, Hey, that doesnt sound Indian at all. He said, Ah, nobody is going to notice. I said, Yes! A billion people will actually notice.

While Peters now divides his time between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the shows success does not mean he will shift showbiz priorities, as he said: Stand-up is what I make my living at and stand-ups what Ive been doing for the past 28 years. And thats what puts me in this position.

Peters was listed among Forbes top 10 grossing US comics last year and was featured among Rolling Stones 50 Best Comics of All Time.

So, as The Indian Detective streams on to devices worldwide, Peters will start his next stand-up world tour in early 2018, which is also likely to include an India stop in the fall. That is called the Deported world tour.

The names very appropriate especially given the times weve living in, Peters said.

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A 49-year-old Indian-origin woman equity manager based in New York was killed last week by a tiger shark while scuba diving on a remote Costa Rican island, according to media reports..

Rohina Bhandari, 49, a Wall Street private equity manager from New York City, suffered fatal bites to both her legs during the shark attack last Thursday while she was diving with a group near Cocos Island, a national park about 300 miles off the Costa Rican mainland, New York Post reported on Sunday.

Bhandari, a Wall Street private equity manager, was hauled out of the water after sustaining severe bites to her legs, Costa Ricas environment ministry said.

Authorities said two park rangers and several doctors who were part of the diving tourism group of 18 people on the island trip organised by the Undersea Hunter Group, offered first aid in a desperate bid to save her.

But Bhandari, a senior director at WL Ross & Co. LL, a firm founded by commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, could not be saved, the reports said.

Her 26-year-old diving instructor was also badly injured. The male instructor, who was conscious and in relatively stable condition, told officials that the shark attacked when his group was surfacing at the tail end of the dive in the waters.

According to the Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion, the guide noticed the shark approaching his group underwater and tried to scare it away. But as they surfaced, the shark went for Bhandari, tearing at her legs. The guide, too, suffered leg injuries.

Friends paid tribute to the Manhattan resident on Facebook. Unbelievably sad and heartbreaking news that Rohina has died, wrote Julie Walker. She was such a wonderful person who loved life. I will always remember her kindness, friendship and our adventures together.

Another friend wrote: Your kindness and genuine warmth to those of us lucky enough to call you friend was a blessing to behold.

Tiger sharks are predators often found around Pacific islands.

One of the largest sharks in the world, Tiger sharks are known for their powerful jaws and voracious appetites
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Monday called for a summit of Muslim nations if the United States takes the controversial decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital.

President Donald Trump faces a key decision this week over Jerusalems status, potentially reversing years of US policy and prompting a furious response from the Palestinians and the Arab world.

The 57-member OIC sought to amplify concern over the possible move in an emergency meeting on Monday in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah.

If the United States takes the step of recognising Jerusalem as the so-called capital of Israel, we unanimously recommend holding a meeting at the level of council of foreign ministers followed by an Islamic summit as soon as possible, the pan-Islamic body said in a statement.

The OIC also warned that recognising Jerusalem or establishing any diplomatic mission in the disputed city would be seen as a blatant attack on the Arab and Islamic nations.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Most of the international community, including the United States, does not formally recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved through final-status negotiations.

Central to the issue of recognition is the question of whether Trump decides to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

All foreign embassies are located in Tel Aviv with consular representation in Jerusalem.

Israelis and Palestinians are eagerly watching to see whether he again renews a waiver delaying the move, as his predecessors have done.

There are suggestions that Trump will sign the waiver and decline to move the embassy for now, but later this week declare Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Israel, which seized the largely Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, claims both halves of the city as its eternal and undivided capital.

But the Palestinians want the eastern sector as capital of their promised state and fiercely oppose any Israeli attempt to extend sovereignty there.

Several peace plans have come unstuck over debates on whether, and how, to divide sovereignty or oversee the citys sites holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims.
Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has come under racist attacks for his plan to roll-back Obama-era regulation of Internet called net neutrality, and a lot of it from fellow Indian-Americans who have unleashed a string of barbs tied to his Indian origins.

Ajit Pai is the type of Indian guy who eats dosa with a fork, wrote Hari Kondabolu, an Indian-American comedian, on Twitter just days after Pai announced his plan.

Similar tweets by others called Pai the type of Indian who calls chai  chai tea, who thinks Lassi is a dog (from Lassie the female star dog of a novel and a TV series), who says Naan bread, and whose favorite Amitabh Bachchan movie is the Great Gatsby (in which the Bollywood superstar had a short role).

On Sunday, after Indiaspora, an organisation of Indian Americans condemned the slight campaign led by an Indian American comedian, Kondabolu retaliated with another tweet. Dear @AjayPaiFCC , I apologize for my tweets questioning your Brown-ness. You are not a disappointment to Indian Americans...but to all Americans. You can eat a pakora while destroying #NetNeutrality. You can wear a kurta while catering to corporate interests, #AjitPaiSucks

Dear @AjitPaiFCC, I apologize for my tweets questioning your "Brown-ness." You are not a disappointment to Indian Americans...but to all Americans. You can eat a pakora while destroying #NetNeutrality. You can wear a kurta while catering to corporate interests. #AjitPaiSucks  Hari Kondabolu (@harikondabolu) December 3, 2017

Net neutrality, as enforced by an introductory law passed in 2015 by the Federal Communications Commission under the Obama administration, prevents internet service providers (ISPs) from slowing down, blocking or speeding up net connection; every website enjoys equal access and speed. Undoing it, critics argue, will allow ISPs to regulate net access, speed things up for those who pay and slow down those who dont.

Pai has argued that is an irrational fear, which will be taken care of by free trade regulators who monitor market competition and will be monitoring ISPs, to catch those manipulating net access. And that freeing bandwidth from the control of bureaucrats would encourage private investments. His plan comes up for a vote at the commission on December 14, and is likely to go through given the 3-2 Republican majority there.

Pais hasnt spoken about the attack from his community, but he did address those that came from net neutrality activists who showed up outside his home in Virginia state. They left behind signs naming his children and, one that said, They (the children) will come to know the truth. Dad murdered democracy in cold blood.

Read more: Net Neutrality: US FCC head Ajit Pai slams Hollywood, tech companies

It was a little nerve-racking, especially for my wife, Pai said on Fox News, and added in a statement later, Internet regulation activists have crossed the line by threatening and harassing my family. They should leave my family out of this and focus on debating the merits of the issue.

But the attacks from the Indian community were troubling enough for some, such as Indiaspora, which said in a statement it was saddened by the personal and baseless attacks on Chairman Pai in which his Indian heritage is questioned. And they reached out to other members and leaders of the community.

Shekar Narasimhan, a top Democratic strategist, weighed in as well in Pais defence.

Irrespective of your political leanings, behavior and threats against individuals for their actions are unacceptable. We should have zero tolerance for hate and xenophobia whether its directed from the left or right, Narasimhan said in a statement.
Expressing love for the word Hindustan, a Pakistani youth was arrested by police in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Seeing Hindustan Zindabad written on the wall of a house in the Nara Amazai area of Haripur infuriated the local community, the daily Express news reported on Monday.

According to police, Sajid Shah had been booked for treason under section 505 of the Pakistani Penal Code. A police officer said that Shah had written Hindustan Zindabad on the outer wall of his home in Nara Amazi.

People told him to remove the slogan as it hurt their national pride, the SHO said. Some people took pictures of the wall and emailed them to senior police officials.

We have booked the young man on orders from the high-ups, he said, refusing to comment further.

Hindustan -- the Persian name for South Asia -- now commonly being referred as India after partition in 1947.
The Palestinian president has warned that American recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital would jeopardize the White Houses nascent Mideast peace efforts.

President Mahmoud Abbas comments came amid a diplomatic push by the Palestinian leader to rally international support against the possible American move later this week.

Any American step related to the recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, or moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, represents a threat to the future of the peace process and is unacceptable for the Palestinians, Arabs and internationally, Abbas told a group of visiting Arab lawmakers from Israel, according to the official Wafa news agency.

American officials have said President Donald Trump may recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital this week as a way to offset his likely decision to delay his campaign promise of moving the US Embassy there.

Israel regards Jerusalem as its capital, with most government functions, including the prime ministers office, Supreme Court and parliament, located in the holy city.

But the international community says the citys status should be determined through peace talks. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as their capital.

Abbas spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeneh, said late Saturday that the president has been in touch with Arab and world leaders to rally opposition against any American move on Jerusalem.

He said Abbas had been in contact with leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and France. We believe that such an American step, if it takes place, will enter the region in a new course, and a dangerous phase whose results cannot be controlled, he said.

The White House, led by Trumps adviser and son in law, Jared Kushner, has held months of meetings with leaders across the region ahead of an expected peace initiative.

While the proposal is expected to be regional in scope, little is known about the details, including whether Trump will continue the policies of recent predecessors in supporting the notion of an independent Palestinian state.

Kushner said on Sunday that Trump has not yet decided whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital or whether to proceed immediately in moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. He is still looking at a lot of different facts, Kushner said at the Saban Forum, an annual Mideast policy conference in Washington.

Ahead of Kushners comments, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, urged the US not to move forward with any change on Jerusalems status.

Doing so, he said, Is not only going to promote international anarchy and disrespect for global institutions and law, but it will also be disqualifying itself to play any role in any initiative toward achieving a just and lasting peace.

Arab League chief warns Trump

The Arab League chief has said a decision by US President Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital would boost fanaticism and violence, and not serve the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

It is unfortunate that some are insisting on carrying out this step without any regard to the dangers it carries to the stability of the Middle East and the whole world, Ahmed Abul Gheit, head of the Arab League, told reporters in Cairo.
US President Donald Trump is closely monitoring the progress in his new South Asia Strategy, which gives a major role to India, and is very much engaged in its implementation, a senior administration official has said.

Trump had sought a major role for India in bringing peace in Afghanistan and ruled out a hasty withdrawal of troops from the war-torn nation while announcing his new Afghanistan and South Asia policy in August.

The president has been very closely monitoring the progress of the South Asia strategy. Hes very interested in any progress that has been made, a senior administration official told PTI.

Trump had a meeting with his Defense Secretary Jim Mattis before he left on his visit to Pakistan. The defense Secretary is again likely to brief the president on his return.

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly Session in New York in September, Trump met the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

That was a good opportunity to hear from President Ghani on how the strategy was being received in Afghanistan, the official said.

Observing that Trump has been getting updates from his national security team on whats happening in Afghanistan, the official said the president is very much engaged and interested in how this strategy is progressing.

Asserting that the things are signs of encouragement in the implementation of the South Asia strategy, the official said it is moving in the right direction.

We need to give more time for the strategy to take root, the official said.

Its a multifaceted strategy. Were using all the tools that the US has its disposal  military, economic, diplomatic. All these parts of the strategy are important. They all need to work in tandem together. The president is very interested in keeping track of how the strategy is going. And he is receiving regular updates, the senior administration official said.

In his August 21 speech, Trump had said that terrorists who slaughter innocent people will find no glory in this life or the next.

They are nothing but thugs, and criminals, and predators, and -- thats right -- losers. Working alongside our allies, we will break their will, dry up their recruitment, keep them from crossing our borders, and yes, we will defeat them, and we will defeat them handily, he had said.

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, Americas interests are clear: We must stop the resurgence of safe havens that enable terrorists to threaten America, and we must prevent nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the hands of terrorists and being used against us, or anywhere in the world for that matter, Trump said.

Announcing his strategy, Trump said a core pillar of his new strategy is a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions.

Another fundamental pillar of our new strategy is the integration of all instruments of American power -- diplomatic, economic, and military -- toward a successful outcome, he said.

Describing Pakistan as an important part of his strategy, Trump had said the US can no longer be silent about Pakistans safe havens for terrorist organisations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.

Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan. It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists, he had said.
Forty-three students from Tyner Academy and Central High School participate in a facility tour at Roadtec Tim Lewis explains the manufacturing process for an asphalt paving machine Students enjoy the animated welding simulation experience during their recent facility tour of Roadtec Seventeen junior and high school students from Brainerd High School tour EPB Brainerd High School students speak with EPB employees to gain insight on potential career opportunities and training within the company Previous Next

A new program launched this year by the Education and Workforce Development division of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce seeks to highlight industry opportunities to local high school juniors and seniors by providing facility tours of companies and organizations in Hamilton County. Students were able to tour and speak with employees at two local companies: Roadtec and EPB.

Area employers look at these tours as an opportunity to impact students and their future career paths in a meaningful way, while educating the students of work that can be done right in their backyards.

One of the most important decisions we make at Roadtec is hiring," said Tim Lewis, director of operations for Roadtec. "It can be challenging to find the right candidate with the right qualifications for the job. Opening up our plant to these students begins to address our future workforce needs by giving them insight into what we are looking for in our facility. Our hope is that a few of these students might be led to a career path here at Roadtec.

Mr. Lewis guided the students through the offices and plant at Roadtecs Chattanooga plant. The students received first-hand information on the work being done, the careers available at the facility, and the credentials and/or certifications needed to obtain those positions.

Ken Jones, manager of Fiber Designs at EPB, notes the impact of these tours not just for the students but for businesses, as well.

These type of activities allow companies to meet and work with some of the brightest and most intelligent young talent within our community," said Mr. Jones. "We have to find creative ways to inspire entrepreneurial thinking, promote the quality of our companies, and recruit and retain our communitys top talent to build a better Chattanooga.

I view this as more of a job shadowing opportunity. We arent showing off the buildings, we are providing kids with an opportunity to see people in their everyday work life.

The Chattanooga 2.0 movement, which has been making waves in education reform in Hamilton County, released a report last fall focusing on strategies to support a cradle to career pipeline in our community. The report highlighted the benefits of creating seamless pathways between high school and postsecondary that support students learning earlier about career opportunities in the community and the credentialing path to a job in their desired field.

We are focused on supporting quality education to all students in Hamilton County and providing each student a pipeline to college and career," said Jared Bigham, executive director of Chattanooga 2.0. "The Chambers new facility tour program is another step forward in creating these pathways, ensuring that students have the vision, support, and resources to pursue degrees and certifications, which can connect them with good jobs and a meaningful career. For our community, this is a great tool for industry recruitment and economic development. By preparing our students, we support our local industry with the highest caliber workforce to help build the smartest community in the South.

The Chamber hopes to expand this program into other industries and facilities and continue to provide more students the opportunity to match with potential career paths in the community.




Britain agreed on Monday to keep Northern Ireland in regulatory alignment with the European Union after Brexit, Irish government sources said, raising hopes Prime Minister Theresa May can strike a deal in Brussels to start free trade talks.

After intensive negotiations in recent days, Britain made what the Irish sources called a clear commitment to keep economic rules on both sides of the new UK-EU land border across the island of Ireland similar enough to allow no frontier -- and so ease fears of stirring up conflict again in Northern Ireland.

News of a deal, by raising the prospect of starting trade negotiations in the coming weeks, triggered speculation that it could result in the whole of the United Kingdom effectively remaining in a customs union, or even the EU single market, despite Mays insistence that it would not do so.

The pro-British Northern Irish party on which May relies for support in parliament immediately insisted rules on the British mainland must not deviate from those in Northern Ireland, a position May herself supports. As a result, it is hard to see that Britain could itself stray far from EU regulations.

That idea was immediately embraced by the leaders of London and Scotland, two major British regions where voters strongly opposed Brexit in last years referendum. Scotlands first minister and the mayor of London both repeated their wish to stay in a customs union or, better, the EU single market.

That is a position Mays hardline pro-Brexit supporters would not countenance, underlining the conundrums that the Irish border and other complex issues have raised over Britains ability to make a clean break after 44 years of EU membership.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar by phone. EU lawmaker Philippe Lamberts, who met Juncker earlier on Monday, said the draft text on Ireland would commit Britain to full alignment on rules.

Donald Tusk, the EU summit chair, tweeted ebulliently after speaking to Varadkar that there was good progress on the Irish issue to unblock UK-EU trade talks: Tell me why I like Mondays! the former Polish premier wrote. Getting closer to sufficient progress at December (EU summit).

This is code for Britain complying with a set of conditions the EU wants met on divorce terms before leaders will agree to launch talks on a future trade deal at a summit next week.

May and Juncker made no comment to reporters when they met at the EU executives Berlaymont headquarters for a lunch that diplomats and officials hope can seal a breakthrough that would open the way to negotiations on future trade relations.

Tusk cancelled a trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah and hastily scheduled his own meeting with May for after lunch. Officials said he was preparing to call round EU leaders to get agreement on trade negotiations. National envoys handling Brexit were also summoned urgently to a meeting in Brussels later on Monday.

London has broadly agreed to many of the EUs divorce terms, including paying out something like 50 billion. But the issues of the rights of expatriate citizens and the UK-EU border on the island of Ireland defied a deal until the last minute.

Elmar Brok, another member of the European Parliament who met Juncker and his Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, before they met May, said just a few words separated the sides.

In London, Mays spokesman said: Progress is being made. Theres more still to agree upon.
US defence secretary James Mattis on Monday urged Pakistans civilian and military leaders to redouble their efforts to rein in militants accused of using the country as a base to carry out attacks in Afghanistan.

Mattis, on a one-day visit to Pakistan, said the country had made progress in the fight against militancy inside its borders but needed to do more. His trip comes two weeks after a Pakistani court released Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed from house arrest, prompting a furious response from the White House.

The secretary reiterated that Pakistan must redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country, the Pentagon said in a statement.

In his discussion with Mattis, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the two nations shared objectives.Were committed (to) the war against terror, he said. Nobody wants peace in Afghanistan more than Pakistan.

Mattis also met top military officials, including army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI chief Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar the spy agency that US officials say has links with Haqqani network and Taliban militants.

Mattis earlier told reporters he wants to work with Pakistan to address the problems, adding the US is committed to a pragmatic relationship that expands cooperation while also reinforcing President Trumps call for action against terrorist safe havens.

We have heard from Pakistan leaders that they do not support terrorism. So I expect to see that sort of action reflected in their policies, Mattis said.

Asked if he was going to press the Pakistani leaders to take more action against the insurgents, Mattis said: I believe that we work hard on finding the common ground and then we work together.

US officials have long been frustrated by what they see as Pakistans reluctance to act against groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network that they believe exploit safe havens on Pakistani soil to launch attacks in Afghanistan.

Gen John Nicholson, the top US general in Afghanistan, said last week: We have been very direct and very clear with the Pakistanis...we have not seen those changes implemented yet.
The winners of the annual Poetry Aloud competition, which is organised by the National Library of Ireland (NLI) and Poetry Ireland, have just been announced.

Poetry Aloud is an annual poetry speaking competition for post-primary school students across the island of Ireland. It has grown from just a few hundred entries since its launch in 2007 to 1,700 entries in 2017, with 143 schools nationwide participating.

The competition has three categories: junior, intermediate and senior. The prescribed poems for this year were Little Skellig by Moya Cannon (junior); Lullaby by Francis Ledwidge (intermediate) and State Funeral by Thomas McCarthy (senior).

Speaking at the final, Brid OSullivan of the NLIs Learning and Outreach Department said: Encouraging young people to engage with poetry, and nurturing the art of poetry speaking have been long term commitments of the National Library of Ireland. Were proud to host Poetry Aloud in partnership with Poetry Ireland, and it is heartening to see it continue to grow on year.

The competition presents a wonderful opportunity to welcome students from across the country through our doors, and we hope it is the start of a long-lasting relationship with the Library and with poetry speaking. Congratulations to all involved.

National Winners of 2017 Poetry Aloud

The Poetry Aloud competition comprises three stages: the regionals; the semi-finals; and the final. A national winner is chosen from each category by a panel of esteemed judges and receives a prize of 300. The 2017 judging panel comprised of actor and overall winner of Poetry Aloud 2008, Sam McGovern; Librarian at University College Cork, John FitzGerald and Director of Poetry Ireland, Maureen Kennelly.

The 2017 Poetry Aloud national winners are:

Junior category: Brendan Mac Domhnaill, Colaiste Oiriall, Co. Monaghan.

Intermediate category: Holly Micklem, Wesley College, Ballinteer, Dublin.

Senior category: Liam Rush, St.Kevins CC, Dunlavin, Co.Wicklow.

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From the three national category winners, Brendan Mac Domhnaill was chosen as overall winner and awarded the Seamus Heaney Poetry Aloud Award. The perpetual trophy is designed by Meath-based sculptor Fiona Smith-Darragh. The overall winner receives an additional 200.

The late Seamus Heaney was a significant supporter of Poetry Aloud. In 2009, he was presented by the British Library with the David Cohen Prize for Literature. In addition to the main award, the winner each year nominates the recipient of a subsidiary prize. In nominating Poetry Aloud for the award, Seamus Heaney cited the extraordinary way in which the competition seeks to celebrate the joy of speaking and listening to poetry as well as the fact that there is a strong North-South dimension to the competition.
After two sold out gigs there last year, it was announced today that Picture This will return to play two more Cork dates on June 19 & 20.

Just before their RDS gig this June , the band will play Live at the Marquee Cork.

After the success of their debut album, Picture This have released Picture This  Deluxe Edition which includes two brand new tracks and the festive favourite This Christmas.

Released at the end of August, the self-titled debut from the Athy natives, stormed into the charts at #1 with the highest charting entry for a debut artist this year.

The band have just come off the back of a sold out UK and Ireland tour, including two dates at the 3Arena.

The band's successes began back in 2015 when Take My Hand went international with over 4 million cumulative plays.

After recording their debut at the world-renowned Blackbird Studios in Nashville, the Kildare natives went on to release hit singles Never Change, Addicted To You, 95 and Saviour,

Tickets go on sale this Saturday 9th December at 9am from Ticketmaster.
Bradley Countys annual Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day will take place Thursday, the 76th anniversary of the attack in Hawaii that led to the U.S. entry into World War II.

The ceremony will take place at the Elks Lodge downtown at 235 Second Street N.E. at 10 a.m. The program, organized by the Colonel Benjamin Cleveland Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution, will last about one hour.

State Rep. Kevin Brooks, who represents the 24th District in the Tennessee House Of Representatives, will be the guest speaker.

George Allen, a Pearl Harbor survivor, will light a memorial candle to honor the victims of the attack and fellow American veterans who took part in the war.

SAR members will present a memorial wreath to honor those who fought in the war.

Bradley Central High Schools JROTC will post the national colors to begin the ceremony.

Cleveland Mayor Tom Rowland will lead the invocation and benediction prayers.

The Bradley County Veterans Funeral Honor Guard will fire the traditional 21 gun salute on the lawn at the Elks Lodge.

Buglers from the Cleveland High School Band will close the program with taps.

Bradley County Mayor D. Gary Davis and other city and county officials will be attending the ceremony. Area veterans groups and the public are invited to attend the program that has become a Cleveland December tradition.

The citys Pearl Harbor Remembrance Ceremony was first organized over a dozen years ago by Bill Norwood, a Korean War POW, and other veterans. Mr. Norwood asked the SAR to adopt the program last year.






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As Hurricane Harvey moved inland, rising floodwaters chased KHOU reporter Brandi Smith and photographer Mario Sandoval from one location to another. They ended up reporting live from the Beltway 8 overpass near the Imperial exit Aug. 27, two days after they left the station to provide on-the-scene coverage.

They had just switched from the west to the east side of the overpass when Sandoval spotted a semi paralyzed on the feeder road. Its engine compartment was submerged.

The truck's lights and windshield wipers were on, and movement could be seen inside the cabin, where driver Robert Roberson was trapped.

Their response to this unfolding drama would become one of the most notable acts of heroism during Hurricane Harvey - earning widespread media attention and even an invitation to "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

Smith and Sandoval did not have the equipment necessary to perform a rescue on their own, but they knew inaction was not an option.

In what Smith describes as a perfect moment, a Harris County Sheriff's Office truck drove by with an airboat and two deputies inside. She flagged them down, and the deputies were able to extract Roberson, saving his life.

To Smith, the situation felt surreal - serendipitous.

She began her journalism career at KPIC, a local news station in Roseburg, Ore., when she was 19.

Sixteen years later, she found herself reporting on an unprecedented flood, as the KHOU station itself was taking on water, and helping to save a man's life.

"I would love to say there was a lot of thought process put into it, but there wasn't.  I was just being human, I guess - still trying to hold onto the reporter part of it - but holding onto the two while everything seemed to be falling apart," Smith said.

Smith and Sandoval weren't aware of KHOU's evacuation until after they interviewed Roberson post-rescue. They had been knocked off the air after Smith flagged down the deputies but before they reached Roberson.

In the next 10 minutes, Smith was barraged by people asking the same question: "Is the driver OK?" So, they dumped the raw footage onto Facebook.

Shortly thereafter, articles about the rescue started popping up online. Smith's social media followers surged by about 10,000, she said.

While Smith and Sandoval were stranded overnight on the overpass, an email from "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" popped into Smith's inbox.

"It was just such a contrast," Smith said. "I associate Ellen with happy, bubbly, light, uplifting - and we were in the most miserable of circumstances."

Smith appeared as a guest on show, which aired Sept. 27. Roberson and his wife, Virginia, surprised Smith when they, too, appeared on the show for a heartfelt reunion.

"Then she gave them $10,000, which will have a huge, huge impact," Smith said. "Robert has to have surgery on his back. He'll be out of work for a bit. So, that will help offset that, and they also want to take a vacation."

Despite the attention Smith and Sandoval received for their roles in Roberson's rescue, Smith insisted the Harris County deputies deserve the credit.

She also admires Roberson's graciousness throughout the experience. The two have kept in frequent contact - a trend Roberson intends to continue for years to come.

"No doubt about that - can't lose contact," Roberson said. "That's something special coming to your life. That's something very special."
Courtesy EMI Films

John Cleese is close to wrapping up his current "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" Tour. Here are dates: If you're in Salt Lake City, you're in luck. If you're in Ft. Lauderdale, you are not. The comedian will continue the tour next year, and among the dates is an April 5 stop at the Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land.

The format for the show is pretty simple. "Holy Grail" will screen in all its armor-clad, bloodthirsty rabbit glory. Then Cleese ambles out for a Q&A session with the gathered devoted.
It was a whirlwind weekend for President Donald Trump's legal team, from Michael Flynn's guilty plea to Trump's problematic tweet to new reports that fill out the picture of a broadening Russia investigation. And it concluded Monday morning with Trump's personal lawyer making a bold claim: Regardless of all of it, John Dowd says, a president can't even technically obstruct justice.

Here's the money quote Dowd gave to Axios: The "president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case."

To be clear, this is a Trump lawyer effectively trying to knock down one of two major pillars of the Russia investigation - to exempt his client completely from being held liable for his actions in (roughly) half the investigation. That investigation began by looking at possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and, thanks to Trump's own actions, has also come to key on Trump's possible obstruction of justice. Dowd argues the latter is a mythical crime even if it is proven that Trump intervened in the investigation to save himself or others.

This theory is clearly a hugely convenient one for the White House; that much is clear. But does it actually hold water, legally speaking?

Experts are dubious, but they are dubious to varying degrees. Constitutional experts Jonathan Turley of George Washington University and Daniel P. Franklin of Georgia State University both said Dowd's argument isn't completely without merit.

"The president's lawyer is overstating his case, but he has a point," Franklin said. "The words of a president, not expressed under oath and not in the service of obstruction (for example, ordering subordinates to commit obstruction), are just words and not actions and, therefore, are not a crime."

Franklin said he believes the argument that Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey is "thin" and said he doesn't believe Trump can obstruct justice when he is acting within his authority as chief executive. But, he said, the president can obstruct justice when not acting in that capacity.

"To the point that the president can't engage in obstruction because he is the chief executive," Franklin said of Dowd's argument, "that is engaging in sophistry."

Turley said he disagrees with Dowd but that it is a "perfectly reasonable argument." He agrees that it's more difficult to prove obstruction when a president is acting as chief executive, but unlike Franklin, he said even those actions could theoretically be criminal.

"[Trump] has the power to fire an attorney general, but he can commit a crime if he does so to block an investigation into alleged crimes," Turley said.

Meena Bose, an expert on executive authority for Hostra University, noted that the ultimate arbiter would be Congress, which has the power to impeach and convict. And she noted that previous presidents who faced impeachment were confronted with obstruction charges - both explicit and implicit.

"The articles of impeachment against Nixon mention obstruction of justice. The articles against Clinton, who was impeached, did so as well," Bose said. "The articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson, who also was impeached, discussed alleged high crimes and misdemeanors that today might be construed as obstruction of justice."

Others were blunter, arguing that Dowd's case is bogus and entirely self-serving. Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina called it "absurd."

"The president is obliged to faithfully execute the law, and that includes in circumstances where he or his friends are involved," Gerhardt said. "He must also comply like every citizen is obliged to follow the laws in everything else he does - ranging from filing his taxes properly to driving to avoiding sexual harassment in the workplace."

Of course, no president has actually been removed from office via impeachment, so this is still a legal question that is unresolved. That means whatever the answer, Trump could be the one to answer it thanks to his own missteps.

"For years, professors have engaged in a type of professorial parlor game of unanswered questions ranging from the definition of 'emoluments' to prosecuting a president in office to charging a president with obstruction," Turley said.

He added: "To its great peril, the Trump administration seems intent on answering each of these questions."
In a democracy, we get the leaders we deserve, right?

That's what I remind myself as I watch the dismantling of this country's institutions, civility and integrity and when I see our president offending our friends and courting our enemies,when I see the indictments and last week's guilty plea by a former national security adviser for lying to the FBI about Russia, and when I see a tax proposal that favors the rich and is predicted to drive up the deficit by $1 trillion over a decade.

These consequences were earned. They weren't imposed on us by some foreign power or some military dictator installed by a coup. We, the people - the American electorate as represented by the Electoral College - we did this.

And sometimes, in my radical moments, I think maybe we needed this as some kind of reset, or reality check, some kind of proof that being informed and involved matter, and that using votes as bumper stickers - to cleverly flip off the status quo - has consequences.

But even if we, the American people, deserve this, the same cannot be said for American kids.

They didn't have a vote. They didn't have a say. And now, through no fault of their own, 9 million of them across the nation stand to lose their health insurance because of Congress' failure to fund the Children's Health Insurance Program, a federal-state program known as CHIP.

Here in Texas, if a last-minute plea by Gov. Greg Abbott's administration to the federal government for $90 million in stop-gap funding falls through, then money will run out at the end of January, and the program will shut down, The Dallas Morning News first reported. By law, parents would need to be notified in advance.

Imagine: Days before Christmas, the parents of 400,000 young Texans enrolled in CHIP could get letters telling them their son or daughter won't have coverage to see a doctor or a dentist starting in February.

In addition to kids, about 36,000 women getting prenatal and postpartum care through the program could lose it, even more concerning when you consider Texas' high rate of maternal deaths.

Not so confident

Cancellation letters have already begun in other states set to run out of CHIP funding sooner.

Texas officials who administer CHIP seem to have confidence that the $90 million will come in time to keep the program going, but even so, it's temporary. Some congressional leaders have expressed confidence that funding can be restored in December as part of a larger spending package.

But given the worth of words in Washington today, we shouldn't hold our breath.

"It's hard to feel confident that Congress will meet any deadlines these days," said Anne Dunkelberg, a health policy expert and associate director at the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin.

She and other health advocates have expressed shock and concern that Congress has let the limbo go on for so long.

So what's the problem here? What led Congress to allow CHIP funding to expire in September and fail to renew it ever since? Is it an actual substantial disagreement over some wasteful welfare program that only a liberal could love?

No.

Bipartisan program

CHIP has enjoyed bipartisan support since its inception 20 years ago. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has portrayed it as a model for other programs because of the flexibility allowed to states administering it.

The federal-state program was created for children in low-income families whose parents can't afford private health insurance but make just enough not to qualify for Medicaid.

Liberals like CHIP because it provides families with health care designed for kids, without giant deductibles or out-of-pocket costs, and because it's simple to apply and renew coverage. Conservatives like the fact that it requires families to share in costs, which they say increases accountability among consumers.

In truth, there's no good reason why the program hasn't been funded. Initially, there was a disagreement about whether the renewed funding should be tethered to cuts, including some in Medicare.

Tax breaks before kids

But lately, the problem seems to be one of priorities, despite pleas from a list of groups representing children, doctors, hospitals and others.

The Senate has been laser-focused on President Donald Trump's top goal. Hint: It ain't the kids.

It's a tax overhaul, House and Senate versions of which are expected to provide only modest tax cuts for middle-income families and huge windfalls for wealthy Americans, including the president himself.

The message is unmistakable: In America today, unnecessary benefits to the rich come before, quite literally, the vital health benefits of 9 million children.

Maybe the American people deserve these leaders, but our kids don't.

If you still prioritize the health and well-being of America's children - America's future - let your representatives in Congress know. Tell them to get their priorities straight and fund CHIP now.
A college student from Spring pleaded guilty on Monday to plotting to join ISIS in Syria, a joint plan that resulted in the death of a Klein Oak high school classmate he helped recruit to the jihadist insurgency.

U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes questioned Asher Abid Khan, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Houston, about whether he knew he was supporting a terrorist organization that produced and posted violent videos of executions. Khan, who was accompanied in court by his parents, admitted he knew what ISIS was doing and "stupidly bought into their propaganda."

Khan, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, ditched his plan in Turkey as he was on his way to joining jihadist forces, but he continued to talk of becoming a martyr after he returned home. A co-defendant Khan knew from high school and their mosque is believed to have died fighting in Syria, a fact federal prosecutors said was critical to his culpability.

"Khan provided ISIS a battlefield soldier to further the terrorist organization's violent agenda," Acting U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez said in a statement. The plea, Martinez said, demonstrated the Justice Department's commitment to pursuing justice for "those who would give aid and comfort to terrorists operating in the United States and abroad."

A third defendant, accused of facilitating the trips to join ISIS, is still at large and thought to be living in Turkey or Syria.

In exchange for Khan's plea, prosecutors agreed to withdraw additional charges. He faces up to 15 years in prison and a maximum of life on supervised release at his sentencing on March 5. He remains free on bond.

Khan is the sixth person in Texas to plead guilty to attempting to provide support for ISIS, according to the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. A seventh man is awaiting trial in Dallas.

In an unrelated local case before the same federal judge, Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, 25, is due for sentencing in Dec. 18 after pleading guilty to an ISIS bomb plot in the Houston area.

In all, 147 people have been charged in the U.S. with involvement in ISIS and 89 have pleaded guilty or been convicted, the GWU researchers found. The vast majority are U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the GWU program and an expert on homegrown terrorism, said Khan is relatively typical of the people who have tried to join ISIS.

"He's a bit aimless but he's looking for some sort of meaning," director Hughes said. He said Khan was likely motivated to join by news coverage of barrel bombs and other atrocities perpetrated by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He had a circle of friends who were encouraging him, telling him this was a good idea and feeding off each other, he said.

Now Playing: Michelle Bandur reports. Video: KETV

Khan stood at a podium in a suit and tie Monday afternoon, his hands interlaced, answering the judge's broad ranging questions about the history of Islamic state, his news consumption and what prompted him to join ISIS.

"You knew what ISIS was doing? What were they doing?" Judge Hughes asked.

"They were trying to take over or dismantle the regime in Syria and at same time they had ambition to restart a caliphate," Khan replied.

The judge then asked Khan about the last time there was a caliphate. About 100 years ago, during the Ottoman Empire, Khan said.

It was earlier, the judge rebutted.

"You wanted to re-establish the Ottoman Empire?" the judge asked.

"No, sir," Khan said.

"The Ottoman Empire had it's faults, but it was tolerant," the judge added.

Hughes asked Khan how this informal group was trying to re-establish the caliphate.

"I thought they were trying to win over people's hearts and now I realize it was completely false propaganda," Khan said.

What about the 2014 videos on YouTube where they were shooting people on the spot? the judge wondered.

"I was very close minded then," Khan said, adding he only believed the explanations of ISIS sympathizers of what took place in the gruesome videos of slayings.

"I knew what they were doing and at the time I stupidly bought into the propaganda," Khan said. He said he now completely disagrees with all they stand for and hope to achieve.

Facebook plot

Khan was living in Australia and Sixto Ramiro Garcia, his Klein Oak High School friend, was in South Texas when the two began hatching a plan via Facebook to travel to Turkey and then slip into Syria to fight for ISIS. They chatted online about their shared faith in the Islamic caliphate and their desire to dedicate their lives to something bigger than themselves.

According to court documents Khan reached out to Mohamed Zuhbi, a facilitator in Turkey for foreigners who wanted to fight for ISIS.

On Feb. 24, 2014, Khan traveled to Istanbul with plans to continue on to Syria and enlist with ISIS. According to court documents, Khan traveled to Turkey, but he changed his mind after a call home in which relatives lied and said his mother was ill and was in the intensive care unit.

Khan also offered his friend Garcia money and helped getting connected with ISIS, according to court documents. By August 2014, Garcia made it to ISIS boot camp in Syria. On Dec. 25, 2014, Garcia's mother a notice on Facebook that her son had died fighting for the cause.

FBI agents learned of Khan's involvement from these Facebook messages.

Gabrielle Banks covers federal court for the Houston Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter and send news tips at gabrielle.banks@chron.com.
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First-time expectant mother Lauren Lococo came to Memorial Hermann's hospital in The Woodlands open to any procedure that would ensure a healthy baby and pleasant birthing experience but hoping she wouldn't need an epidural.

She was already in labor when nurses suggested an alternative for her pain management: laughing gas.

The idea wasn't new to Lococo, who'd read about the practice in Europe during her pregnancy and childbirth research. She jumped at the idea.

"It turned out to be the perfect option," said Lococo, 26, a Spring proprietor of an online health and fitness business. "I felt like I was rocking on a hammock on a sunny day  relaxed, aware of my surroundings, not loopy or out of it."

Lococo, who delivered a healthy 7-pound boy that June day, became Memorial Herman's first patient to get the gas as part of a pilot program now being offered at The Woodlands hospital. The program, thought to be the first in Texas, is one of many increasingly being offered in hospitals and birthing centers around the nation.

Memorial Hermann expects to extend the program throughout the system in mid-2018, officials said.

More Information The lowdown on laughing gas As a pain management tool for women in labor, the Memorial Hermann Health System has begun offering laughing gas at its hospital in The Woodlands and expects to extend it to all its hospitals in mid-2018. The first such availability in Texas, it's part of a national trend. - Despite the nickname, inhaling nitrous oxide doesn't make women in labor laugh. Rather, it decreases anxiety and puts the patient at ease. - Laughing gas used in labor is a 50/50 mix of nitrous oxide and oxygen; the concentration used in dentist offices is typically 70/30. - The patient isn't able to raise the mask to her face once she's had sufficient nitrous oxide, a safety feature. No one is allow to hold the mask for her. Source: Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses See More Collapse

It's all about giving women in labor another option, say program leaders at Memorial Hermann and other hospitals.

The gas, known as nitrous oxide, is the same that's used in dental offices but of a milder concentration. The woman in labor herself administers it through a mask.

It can be used during labor, delivery and even immediate postpartum procedures and is safe for the mother and baby, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. That's because the gas is dissipated through the lungs within a breath or two of the mask being removed. It doesn't reach the placenta.

"This won't replace existing methods of pain relief, but it's good to be able to offer another choice," said Dr. Gregory Eads, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Memorial Hermann The Woodlands. "For patients who want to be in control and make their own decisions, nitrous oxide has its advantages."

In style, out of style

Nitrous oxide was first used for pain relief in childbirth in 1881 and became more common in the 1930s and 1940s, though it never really caught on in the United States. It has been widely used for decades in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, but any use in the U.S. was supplanted by the arrival of powerful anesthetics such as the epidural, an injection near the spinal cord that blocks feeling below the waist. By the 1980s, nitrous oxide for childbirth had completely disappeared from American hospitals.

Today's growing popularity is being driven by midwives, who stress a natural, unmedicated approach to labor. In a 2010 statement, the American College of Nurse-Midwives called nitrous oxide an inexpensive, simple, reasonably safe and effective analgesic and urged it be offered to more mothers.

In the years since, laughing gas has gone from being offered in a handful of maternity wards to more than 400 hospitals and 100 birthing centers, according to Michelle Collins, a Vanderbilt professor of nursing and expert on the subject. The movement, started at Vanderbilt and the University of California San Francisco, spread gradually around the country.

Still, Eads notes that Memorial Hermann is having to educate patients that nitrous oxide is an option for childbirth.

"The reality is that unless Hollywood stars promote a new medical procedure on Facebook, most people aren't aware of it," Eads said. "It's not easy getting the word out."

A lack of demand was one reason cited by Texas Children's Hospital and The Woman's Hospital of Texas for why they don't offer the option. The other primary reason: questions about its effectiveness as a pain management tool.

"The reason there was an evolution away from nitrous oxide is because epidurals are superior for pain relief," said Dr. Wycke Baker, chief of anesthesiology at Texas Children's. "Even in places that have rolled nitrous oxide out as option, the epidural is still the gold standard."

But epidurals aren't without downsides. Lococo said she wasn't crazy about the immobility they cause and wanted the freedom to move around in her room. She also feared one would prolong the pushing stage of labor, long thought to be a side effect, now a matter of debate among researchers.

Epidurals do require an IV, frequent blood pressure monitoring and continuous fetal monitoring.

A calming effect

Dr. McCallum Hoyt, chair of the American Society of Anesthesiologists's Committee on Obstetric Anesthesia, said that early research confirms Baker's contention, that the rate of epidural use appears unchanged even at hospitals that offer laughing gas. She said so far laughing gas tends to be used most as a precursor to an epidural, early in labor; and by women already committed to not having an epidural.

Hoyt, an anesthesiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, said the consensus among patients there who use nitrous oxide is that it doesn't provide great pain relief but helps tremendously with anxiety, that it exerts a great calming effect.

That likely explains its popularity in other countries, Hoyt said. It is used by 60 percent of women in the United Kingdom and 50 percent in both Canada and Australia, she said.

So far, about 50 Memorial Hermann The Woodlands patients have used the nitrous oxide during labor, none with any regrets, said program leaders. The vast majority switched to an epidural at some point during the procedure.

Lococo was among such patients, mostly because of first-time labor fears that the pain would escalate during the pushing stage. She used the nitrous oxide for the first hour of labor, putting the mask on as each contraction came and taking it off as each contraction weakened.

"I wasn't pain free, but the pain wasn't the first thing on my mind," said Lococo. "I felt instant relaxation and loved being in control. Next time around I'll expect I'll just use the nitrous oxide."
The Chamber Choir and Vocal Rhapsody Ensemble of Cleveland State Community College will present a concert celebrating the holiday season on Friday at 7 p.m. in the George R. Johnson Cultural Heritage Center.

The celebration will include many different styles and types of music from classic choral arrangements such as Still, Still, March of the Kings and Angels We Have Heard on High to playful novelty songs like Text Me Merry Christmas and The 12 Days AFTER Christmas and several non-seasonal selections both the Chamber Choir and Vocal Rhapsody has studied over the course of the semester including He Never Failed Me Yet, Lean on Me, The Boy from New York City and many more. There will also be a set of music dedicated to veterans which will include a Patriotic Medley and The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy.

Both choirs are under the direction of Karen Dale, associate professor of music. According to Ms. Dale, The students are excited about sharing their music with family, friends and the community. The concert is free, and we hope that everyone will come and help us celebrate the conclusion of a successful semester of study.






WASHINGTON  Texas U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, who used $84,000 in taxpayer dollars to settle with a former aide who sued him for sexual harassment in 2014, says he's going to pay back the money.

Farenthold told a Corpus Christi television station Monday that he plans to take out a personal loan to repay the government, a move that would be unprecedented under the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act that governs workplace disputes against lawmakers and their staffs.

The four-term Congressmen, who has long denied any wrongdoing, said he will offer a check to House Speaker Paul Ryan or other congressional leaders this week.

Farenthold also got an endorsement Monday from a past spokeswoman, Elizabeth Peace, who told the Chronicle that while Farenthold was always respectful, the atmosphere for women in much of the rest of Congress can be "toxic," requiring mandatory sexual harassment training.

READ ALSO: Congressman, hit with 'sexting' revelation, bows out of 2018 race

Now Playing: FOX 26 News reporter Natasha Geigel and The News Edge anchor Kaitlin Monte Video: Fox 26 Houston

Farenthold, for his part, told KRISTV, that the losers in his case, which was eventually settled out of court, were the taxpayers who are required by law to underwrite settlements and awards against members of Congress.

"I want to be clear that I didn't do anything wrong," he said, "but I also don't want the taxpayers to be on the hook for this."

In an interview witth "6 Investigates" in Corpus Christi, Farenthold said he was not given a choice about using his own money in the 2015 confidential settlement with his former spokeswoman, Lauren Greene.

Under the 1995 law, awards and settlements are paid from an account of the U.S. Treasury.

The scion of a wealthy and politically-connected family, Farenthold's net worth was estimated in 2015 at more than $5.7 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which ranked him the 72nd wealthiest lawmaker in the House.

Farenthold, 55, is the first member of Congress now known to have benefited from a little-known Treasury Department fund created to cover workplace settlements involving lawmakers.

READ ALSO: Congressman Al Green addresses past 'romantic encounter'

The congressional Office of Compliance (OOC) disclosed Friday that the fund paid for only one sexual harassment settlement involving a House lawmaker's office in the past five years, but did not name Farenthold.

In a statement Friday, Farenthold declined to confirm or deny that the claim had involved him. But he confirmed the payment in his interview Monday.

"I wish I could have said something Friday," he told the television station. "I went to the House lawyer and said, 'What can I say?, and they said 'Nothing ... Here's the statement that you can make.'"

Farenthold's account, however, differs from documents provided by the Office of Compliance, which state that the terms of settlement agreements, including any provisions governing disclosure, "are solely determined by the parties and their representatives."

Greene, then 27, alleged in a 2014 federal lawsuit that Farenthold made sexually suggestive remarks and, along with top staff members, created a hostile work environment. She also alleged that he retaliated against her when she complained. She did not allege any inappropriate sexual contact.

In his response to Greene's complaint, Farenthold alleged that she was fired for "poor performance."

The out-of-court settlement came after the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent watchdog agency, cleared Farenthold, concluding that there was no "substantial reason" to believe the allegations against the Corpus Christi Republican.

Greene did not return several calls in the last week requesting comment. Her Washington attorney, Leslie Alderman, also did not return calls Monday.

Until now the details of the settlement, including the $84,000 payout, remained under wraps, apparently by agreement of the parties. At the time, Farenthold was represented by lawyers for the House Employment Counsel.

Though Farenthold was cleared in 2015, the House Ethics Committee indicated Friday that it will review all formal claims of sexual harassment and other misconduct involving members and employees of the House.

He said he hired his own attorney at personal expense over the weekend to review the 2015 settlement, and was advised that he can talk about the "process."

Peace, who served as the congressman's spokeswoman for two years after Greene left, said that while Farenthold always treated her with respect, the same is not true elsewhere in Congress, which she called a "toxic environment."

"My two years with Congressman Farenthold were incredibly valuable," Peace said in an email. "I had an extensive and great career prior to working for the House but I learned so much during my time there. Congressman Farenthold was always very respectful to me and very considerate of my family - as in flexible with my schedule when necessary for the needs of my children as my husband was deployed overseas for the majority of the time I worked there.

"Sadly," she added, "I'm not surprised by the news coming out lately about sexual harassment in Congress as a whole because of other things I witnessed and things that occurred during my time there. It can be a very toxic work environment as a whole but once the Congressman became aware of those issues, he immediately took action on behalf of his staff and did his best to always do the right thing.

"While I don't want to discuss the particulars of that, I am very empathetic to the stories of other women coming forward in recent weeks. I would urge Congress to immediately pass mandatory sexual harassment training for all staffers as I believe it's greatly needed.

The Congressional Accountability Act was created in 1995 to give Congressional employees a way to pursue harassment claims and secure awards for settlements. In all, it has paid out more than $17 million over the past two decades for 264 settlement cases, including sexual harassment cases.

Farenthold criticized the agency for silencing accusers and lawmakers while forcing taxpayers to pay the costs.

"The process is broken," he said, on tape to KRISTV.com.

He said he will now push for more transparency.

A spokeswoman for Ryan did not respond to a request for comment on Farenthold's offer to repay the government.

Farenthold's is by no means the only office to have used public funds to pay for a harassment claim. Detroit Michigan John Conyers Jr. has faced multiple allegations of harassment in recent weeks, and in at least one case is reported to have used his office budgets to settle a complaint in an apparent effort to hide it from public view.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a Texas Supreme Court ruling allowing a challenge by conservatives to Houstons extension of employment benefits to the legal spouses of gay city employees to proceed.

The state courts June decision in Pidgeon v. Parker said same-sex couples are not necessarily entitled to government employment benefits, though the ruling does not prevent the city of Houston from continuing to offer such benefits to employees' same-sex spouses.

The city will continue to do so, Mayor Sylvester Turners office has said, while the case returns to trial court for a ruling on the merits. The mayor is on a trade mission to China, but his office reiterated that point in a statement Monday.

"The United States Supreme Court's decision means that further proceedings will likely be required. In the meantime, the City of Houston's policy to provide benefits remains in effect," Turner spokeswoman Tanya Makany-Rivera said.

The state courts June ruling asserted that the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2015 decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized marriage rights among gay couples, did not determine whether same-sex couples have spousal benefits.

The city in September asked the high court to review that decision, arguing that the Obergefell decision found that benefits that a state attaches to marriage must be provided equally to all married couples, including those of the same sex.

Jonathan Saenz, president of the conservative nonprofit Texas Values and an attorney for the two plaintiffs in the case, called the U.S. Supreme Courts decision not to review the state courts decision a major victory for Texas Values and Houston taxpayers.

This is an incredible early Christmas present from the U. S. Supreme Court for taxpayers, Saenz said. Were grateful that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed our lawsuit to go forward.

Houston began providing benefits in 2013, after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Plaintiffs Jack Pidgeon and Larry Hicks quickly sued, alleging the payments were an illegal use of taxpayer money.

A year later, a trial court temporarily blocked the city from providing same-sex benefits, a ruling that held until July 2015, after the Obergefell ruling.

The state Supreme Court's June ruling essentially wipes that slate clean and instructs the trial court to reconsider the case.
Just when you think our do next-to-nothing Congress has set a new low bar for inaction, along comes a failure that's putting the health of about 400,000 Texas children at risk.

Alas, Congress has dropped the ball on funding the Children's Health Insurance Program, better known as CHIP. This routine legislation, which generally enjoys bipartisan support, provides health insurance for about nine million American children.

At least, that's what it's supposed to do. But Congress missed a Sept. 30 funding deadline, and Texas is one of at least five states in which millions of families have faced the prospect of losing childrens' health insurance right before Christmas. With so much at stake for Texans, our state's congressional delegation needs to do whatever it takes to get CHIP reauthorized. Now.

CHIP covers uninsured children whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to pay for private insurance. When Hurricane Harvey hit in August, data from the Center for Public Policy indicated more than 77,000 children depended upon CHIP in Harris County alone. That's in addition to roughly 10,000 pregnant women who counted on this coverage for everything from prenatal to postpartum care.

Underwriting children's health insurance doesn't just save kids' lives, it also makes hard economic sense. CHIP pays for childrens' check-ups and preventive care, which is way cheaper than ultimately treating illnesses that could have been avoided.

After Congress let CHIP funding lapse, state governments have kept their kids insured by draining down dwindling dollars left over from the last year. For Texas, that money runs out at the end of January. State law requires cancellation notices sent out 30 days before coverage ends, so the state's Health and Human Services Division reluctantly drew up plans to drop those notices like lumps of coal into parents' mailboxes during Christmas week.

Gov. Greg Abbott's administration knows this would be a disaster for Texas families, so it has asked the feds for $90 million to temporarily keep CHIP in business. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reportedly signaled this week that it will give Texas enough money to fund CHIP at least through February, so it appears the crisis has been pushed back for another month. But this stop gap measure is nowhere near enough. Keeping millions of families in limbo about their health insurance during the holiday season is needlessly cruel. Congress needs to reauthorize CHIP and prove it can still perform the basic task of taking care of America's children.
On Thursday morning, The New York Times revealed that Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, has been lying for months about Republican tax plans. Mnuchin has repeatedly claimed the existence of a Treasury report that - unlike every independent, nonpartisan assessment - found that these plans would pay for themselves, increasing growth and hence revenues so much that the deficit wouldn't rise. But there is no such report, and never has been; Treasury staffers weren't even asked to study the issue.

Also on Thursday, John McCain - who has delivered sanctimonious lectures on the importance of "regular order" in the Senate - declared his support for the GOP tax bill. Remember, Senate leaders rushed this bill to the floor without holding any hearings or soliciting expert testimony (and tax policy is an area where you really, really need to hear from experts, lawyers and accountants even more than economists). In fact, at the time McCain declared his support, some key provisions were still secret, so they could be presented for a vote with no time for debate.

McCain declared that he had made his decision after "careful consideration." Careful consideration of what? He didn't even wait for an analysis of the bill's economic impact by the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress' own scorekeeper - the only official assessment, since the Trump administration was, as I said, lying when it claimed to have its own analysis.

Later that day the joint committee delivered its predictable verdict: Like all other reasonable studies, its review found that the Senate bill would do little for U.S. economic growth, while directly hurting tens of millions of middle-class Americans, blowing up the deficit, lavishing benefits on the wealthy and opening up new frontiers for tax avoidance. But thanks to the moral collapse of McCain and other supposedly principled Republicans, at the time this column was filed the bill nonetheless seemed on track to clear the Senate.

But aren't politicians always cynical? Not to this degree.

For one thing, there's no precedent for this frantic rush to pass major legislation before anyone can figure out what's in it or what it does. By way of comparison, the Affordable Care Act went through months of hearings before it was brought to the Senate floor; the full Senate then debated the bill for 25 straight days.

And there's a world of difference between normal political spin - yes, all politicians try to emphasize the good aspects of their policies - and the outright lies that have marked every aspect of the selling of this thing.

Mnuchin said his department had a study showing great effects on growth; that was a lie. Donald Trump says the bill is "not good for me"; that's a lie. Sen. John Cornyn said, "This is not a bill that is designed primarily to benefit the wealthy and the large businesses"; that was a lie. Sen. Bob Corker said he wouldn't support a plan "adding one penny to the deficit"; that was a lie.

In other words, this whole process involves a level of bad faith we haven't seen in U.S. politics since the days when defenders of slavery physically assaulted their political foes on the Senate floor.

There are two further things worth pointing out about this moral rot.

First, it is not, at a fundamental level, a story about Donald Trump, bad as he is: The rot pervades the whole Republican Party. Some details of the legislation do look custom-designed to benefit the Trump family, but both the broad outlines and the fraudulence of the sales effort would have been pretty much the same under any Republican president.

Second, the rot is wide as well as deep.

I'm not just talking about Republican politicians, although the tax debate should dispel any remaining illusions about their motives: Just about every GOP member of Congress, including the sainted John McCain, is willing to put partisan loyalty above principle, voting for what they have to know is terrible and irresponsible legislation. The point, however, is that the epidemic of bad faith extends well beyond elected or appointed officials.

It was remarkable, for example, to see a group of Republican-leaning economists with serious professional credentials put out an open letter clearly intended to lend aid and comfort to Mnuchinesque promises of miraculous growth. True, they didn't explicitly claim that tax cuts would pay for themselves. But they didn't clearly state that they wouldn't, either, leaving Mnuchin free to claim - as they have to have known he would - that the letter vindicated his position.

And weasel-wording aside, it turns out that the letter misrepresented the research on which it was supposedly based. In other words, the rot of bad faith that has spread through the GOP has also infected many intellectuals affiliated with the party. Not all: Some anti-Trump conservatives have stood by their principles. But so far they have had little influence.

So what will it take to clean out the rot? The answer, basically, is overwhelming electoral defeat. Until or unless that happens, there's no telling how low the GOP will sink.

Krugman is a New York Times columnist.
The following are excerpts from reports generated by the Texas County Sheriffs Department:

At about 5 p.m. Dec. 3, a deputy initiated a traffic stop on U.S. 63 near Cabool of a vehicle traveling well below the speed limit that had a temporary license that was difficult to read.

The officer made contact with a man and woman in the vehicle and the man, 74, turned out to be listed as a missing person in Christian County. The woman stated the man had a medical issue and was taken to a hospital for several days. She said she was unable to contact him during that time and had reported him as missing, and had then forgotten to advise Christian County when he was located.

A Summersville man called Nov. 24 to report a big rig trailer had been swiped from his King Drive residence. When an investigating officer arrived, the man stated another driver from his company had taken it.

A deputy was dispatched at about 9:40 a.m. Nov. 25 regarding a report of a suspicious vehicle at a Mount Zion Road residence at Cabool.

A 50-year-old man who lives there showed the officer a gray Chevrolet pickup that had run through a fence into a wooded area. The officer determined the truck was reported stolen from Mountain View.

It was towed, and the man who owned it was advised of its location.

A deputy spoke with a Lebanon Police Department officer on Nov. 29 in reference to a stolen black 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix.

The Lebanon officer said a 31-year-old man took it for a test drive and failed to return it. The officer said the suspect was a sex offender who had previously registered at a Lone Pine Road residence at Mountain Grove.

The deputy went to residence, but didnt see the car and was unable to make contact with the suspect. Investigation continues.

A deputy on Nov. 29 investigated a report of a suspicious vehicle at Jacks Fork Bridge on Highway 137.

Upon arrival, the officer observed a silver Ford car that was registered to an El Dorado Springs man. There were no wants or warrants associated with it.

Texas County 911 called Nov. 30 to report a hang-up call from a Grandview Road residence at Houston.

An investigating officer made contact with a 35-year-old man there who said a 36-year-old woman had been kicked by a donkey and had been taken by her mother to see a doctor.

An anonymous person reported on Nov. 30 that there were a bunch of dead cows at a Decker Road property at Licking. An investigating officer didnt observe any.

A deputy responded Nov. 30 to a request to assist an ambulance crew at a Highway AW residence at Plato where a 63-year-old man had fallen off a piece of farm machinery and been hurt. An ambulance took the man to the hospital at Fort Leonard Wood.

A deputy was dispatched at about 10:30 p.m. regarding a report of a vehicle theft at the Crow Creek Bar and Grill on Highway CC north of Licking.

The officer made contact with a 45-year-old Licking man there who said his 1999 Jeep Wrangler valued at $20,000 had been swiped, along with a Glock pistol valued at $500 that was inside. The man said he had gone inside the bar at about 9:20 p.m. and when he came out the Jeep was gone.

The officer reviewed surveillance video and observed a white Chevrolet pickup drive through the parking lot, and a man in a brown coat and blue jeans walking around about 10 minutes later. The officer saw the man walk toward the Jeep, look inside on the passengers side, and then walk to the other side, climb in and drive away.

The Jeep reportedly went east on Highway CC, in the same direction as the white truck. There are no suspects and investigation continues.

A deputy was dispatched Nov. 6 to Summersville High School regarding a report of a student making threats against the school.

The officer made contact with the school principal, who showed the officer a threatening picture posted by the student  a 15-year-old boy  on Snapchat. The deputy spoke with the boy and his mother, and the boy said he wasnt threatening the school, but rather another boy who had been bullying him.

The principal stated the school would be handling the issue.

A 57-year-old Licking woman reported on Nov. 6 that the garage at her Highway AT residence had been broken into and several items with a total value of $475 had been stolen out of her car that was parked inside. The officer reported that he believed a local man was a suspect.

A 30-year-old Cabool man reported on Nov. 24 that his silver Dodge Ram pickup (of unreported year and value) had been stolen from his Highway AV residence. Investigation continues.

Pulaski County 911 called Nov. 24 to report that a woman had called and stated that a 50-year-old man had shot his 28-year-old son at their Evening Shade Road residence at Plato. Several deputies responded to the location and determined the shooting had not actually taken place.

They attempted to make contact with the son with regard to a report of a domestic disturbance, but without success.

A deputy on Nov. 25 investigated a report of gunshots and a loud vehicle in the area of Douglas Road and Lundy Road at Houston. The officer and multiple Missouri State Highway Patrol troopers searched the area and didnt find the loud vehicle.

A deputy was dispatched at about 12:15 a.m. Nov. 27 regarding a request to assist an ambulance crew at a Highway P residence at Licking.

The officer made contact with a 58-year-old woman there who stated there was a stranger in her bed and wolves were all over her apartment and attacking her and chewing on her foot. She said she had locked herself in the bathroom, but one of the wolves had gotten in and attacked here there.

When the ambulance crew arrived, the woman refused medical attention.

Texas County Jail admissions

Nov. 27

Michael P. Deardorf  West Plains PD hold

Gaige C. Watts  tampering with motor vehicle, resisting arrest

Nov. 28

Cody Westmoreland  writ

Cody J. Stafford  writ

Nov. 29

Amanda M. Layton  writ

Randall C. Redding  writ

Nov. 30

Joshua W. Steffens  non-support

Jamie A. Cooper  possession of controlled substance

Elizabeth A. Knopfel  stealing

Brett E. Hall  probation violation

Dustin W. Hewett  Phelps County hold

Ivan A. Gale  parole warrant

Sherri L. Long-Bucchi  transport to MDOC

Dec. 1

Roy Kramer  possession of controlled substance

Joshua D. Eisenhauer  48-hour commitment

Jamie A. Bolden  warrant

Chance A. Hebblethwaite  DWI, driving while revoked, possession of marijuana

Dec. 2

Elizabeth A. Knopfel  Rolla PD hold

Chance I. Gale  48-hour commitment

Macie O. Hayes-Mitchell  driving while revoked, stealing

Dec. 3

Alexander B. Hall  parole violation

Megan L. Neal  Houston PD warrant
Reducing medication errors has been a top priority over the past month at Texas County Memorial Hospital, board members heard at last weeks monthly meeting.

Wes Murray, TCMH chief executive officer, detailed efforts by hospital staff to make improvements to the medical reconciliation process for patients seeking treatment at TCMH.

A significant portion of our patient demographic uses multiple medications, Murray said.

Murray described patients showing up at the emergency department with bags of medications or medication lists that were incomplete or wrong. The patients may or may not take the medications they have in their possession, and the patients may not take those medications correctly.

Hospital visits are compounded by medication history that is contained in a patients electronic medical record. The electronic record may also be out of date.

Medication reconciliation has always been a cumbersome process, and electronic medical records hasnt made the process easier, Murray said.

The TCMH medical staff expressed concern about medication errors due to the electronic charting. Doretta Todd-Willis, TCMH chief nursing officer, put together a team of nurse managers, physicians and information technology staff to address and correct issues.

Todd-Willis said changes have already been made in the way staff process medication brought in by patients. Old medication lists are deleted from the patients electronic record and new medication lists are started with each patient hospital visit.

The patient, physician, pharmacy and sometimes the nursing home or family caregivers have to be active participants in the process, Todd-Willis said.

Dr. Jonathan Beers, TCMH chief of staff, said many times a primary care provider may not know about medications prescribed by a specialist to a patient.

Patient use of multiple pharmacies can also make it difficult for the patient and the patients healthcare providers to keep track of medications.

Many times a patient doesnt even know why they are on certain medications, Todd-Willis said.

Beers said large hospitals have staff tasked entirely with medication reconciliation for hospital patients. At TCMH, those providing the patient care are responsible for the medication reconciliation efforts.

There are countless ways that medication errors can occur, and we are focusing on this issue so that nothing serious occurs, Murray said.

This is an ongoing process that will continually need to be looked at and worked on, Beers said.

FUNDS OWED BY THE STATE

TCMH has requested help from the Missouri Hospital Association (MHA) to collect $1.2 million from the state of Missouri. The funds are owed to the hospital following Medicaid cost settlements completed for fiscal years 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Historically, the state has paid the funds when we request them after the cost settlements are complete, said Linda Pamperien, TCMH chief financial officer.

According Pamperien, the funds that would typically be paid by the state have been frozen by the governors office.

The funds being held are for services provided by TCMH to Missouri Medicaid patients. The funds are not dispersed by the state until final cost reports are completed for each fiscal year.

We arent the only hospital waiting to be paid, Pamperien said.

There is no timeline for when the funds might be paid. MHA is working on behalf of multiple Missouri hospitals to get the funds owed to them.

TCMH is also collecting information regarding medical reimbursement denials for patients with Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance.

Anthem has been denying claims for services provided in the emergency room as non-emergent, Murray said. This puts the burden on TCMH to collect payment from the individuals rather than their insurance company.

Murray provided two examples of Anthem insurance refusing to cover emergency room service for insured patients: one was hit by a car and one had a stroke. Murray said both would be considered emergency healthcare needs.

These are not examples from our hospital, but they could have easily happened to insured patients in Texas County, too, Murray said.

Murray said MHA is seeking information from member hospitals and from patients insured by Anthem that have received denials of coverage for emergency room services.

QUALITY REPORT

Turpin, TCMH quality management director, reported TCMH met all five first year milestones set by the Hospital Improvement and Innovation Network (HIIN), a two-year program sponsored by Centers for Medicare Services (CMS).

We saw either an improvement or no decline in the areas we were measuring monthly, Turpin said.

The overall goals of the project are a reduction in all causes of patient harm and a reduction in readmission of hospital inpatients less than 30 days since the first admission. Other key areas of the program include antibiotic stewardship, hospital acquired infections, workplace violence, physician leadership, patient engagement and healthcare disparities.

TCMH is one of more than 100 hospitals in the state participating in the program. The MHA collects and compiles data from TCMH and other hospitals in the state. The state data is then collected and compiled into national data by the American Hospital Association Health Research and Educational Trust. The program is planned to last two years with the possibility of a third year.

Participating in this program is helping us prepare for new CMS guidelines that we will have to follow, Turpin said.

SURGERY WING

An $89,000 Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) grant request for a new generator to power the surgery department under construction at TCMH has gone to the second round of consideration. Board members unanimously passed a resolution to agree to cover $23,000 of the new generator cost if FEMA approves the request.

Funding for the grant will not be known until next summer.

Construction on the new department, slated for completion in 2018, is located between the Jayson Gentry Community Safe Room and the east wing of the hospital, will have two operating rooms, an endoscopy suite and seven private pre-surgical and post-surgical rooms for patients. The area is 6,091 square feet in size.

FINANCIAL REPORT

Pamperien said inpatient revenues were below budgeted expectations, but outpatient revenues exceeded budgeted expectations for the month. Expenses were also down for October. TCMH finished the month with a positive bottom line of $103,247 and a negative year-to-date balance of $581,880.

Present at the meeting were: Murray; Beers; Todd-Willis; Pamperien; Turpin; Joleen Senter Durham, director of public relations; John Hammons, TCMH legal counsel; Texas County Commissioner John Casey and County Clerk Laura Crowley; and board members Dr. Jim Perry, OD, Omanez Fockler, Janet Wiseman and Jay Loveland. TCMH board member Mark Hampton was absent.

The county officials met with the board to discuss outstanding medical costs related to inmate care at the Texas County Jail.

Due to the Christmas holiday, the next meeting of the TCMH board of trustees is Dec. 19.
Houston police were called early Saturday to a fight on a business parking lot.

Chance H. Hunter, 18, of 402 Forrest Drive in Houston, was issued citations for minor in possession of alcohol by consumption and peace disturbance by fighting after an incident at Caseys General Store on U.S. 63 just after midnight Dec. 2.

An officer was dispatched to the store regarding a fight in progress. Upon arrival, the officer observed Hunter and another male facing one another in a fighting stance in the parking lot and separated them. After investigation and speaking to an employee who witnessed the fight, Hunter was cited for fighting. While the officer was speaking to Hunter inside the patrol car, the officer smelled a strong odor of alcohol and Hunter admitted to drinking several beers earlier that night.
A senior Houthi official confirmed to Xinhua on Monday that former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, his nephew, relatives and the general secretary of Saleh's party were killed.

Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh speaks during a ceremony to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Popular Conference Party, in Sanaa, Yemen. [File Photo: AP]

"Saleh and his party's Assistant General Secretary Yasser al-Awadhi were killed on Monday morning while they were trying to escape through Khawlan district on the southeastern outskirts of Sanaa on their way to escape to Saudi-backed government-controlled Marib province, " the official confirmed to Xinhua.

"Saleh's nephew Tarek was killed also early Monday morning in his home in Haddah quarter in the capital Sanaa," the official said.

"Saleh's party's General Secretary Arif al-Zuka was also killed in Sanaa," the official added.

The security situation and clashes in the capital Sanaa and surrounding provinces have eased.

Meanwhile, Saudi-led coalition warplanes were still hovering over the capital.
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employee who borrowed money from his boss and failed to return it has been awarded more than $10,000 after the Employment Relations Authority said the misstep did not warrant dismissal.Finance and insurance broker David Boone was at the Hawkes Bay races with colleagues from Car Finance 2U when he realised he was $35 short of making a bet.Boone asked company director Matthew Hodges to loan him the money and Hodges agreed on the condition the money was paid back as soon as possible.The issue was raised during a taxi trip back to their hotel that evening, then two days later when both were back at the companys offices.Two days after that, Hodges requested the money once again, this time in front of other staff. On this occasion, Boone asked to talk to Hodges but the director shouted for him to go and get the money immediately.Boone claims he went to get the money from an ATM but felt unwell and under pressure so decided to work from home. Hodges then called Boone and requested he return to work  Boone said he would if the pair could have a civilised conversation.Later that day, Boone  who was in New Zealand on a work visa and was in the process of obtaining residency  received a text message informing him of his dismissal.Boone soon filed a claim with the ERA which was heard by authority member Nicola Craig.In her determination, Craig noted that Finance 2U did not follow correct procedure when dismissing Boone  something the companys directors also acknowledged.She suggested that, instead of an immediate dismissal, the company could have started a disciplinary process for non-payment of the loan.Ultimately, Craig ordered Finance 2U to pay Boone three months pay with a 30 per cent reduction, noting that that Boones behaviour did contribute to his dismissal.She also ordered the firm to pay $7,000 for humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to feelings, as well as $1,983 reimbursement of immigration expenses and $881 in expenses.
It failed to investigate the allegation of poor work performance;

It failed to give Stojanovich a reasonable chance to respond to the allegation; and

It failed to consider any explanation that Stojanovich provided.

hristchurch funeral parlour has been ordered to pay $21,000 to a former employee after the Employment Relations Authority ruled the woman had been unjustifiably dismissed.Angela Stojanovich, of Poppy Funerals, was fired by company shareholder and director Jasmin Teague in February of this year.According to the recent ERA decision, Teague dismissed Stojanovich after making "some vague references to [her] being better suited to a larger funeral business where she may be able to learn embalming."There was also said to be a misunderstanding between Stojanovich and Teague's mother, who was also working at Poppy Funerals at the time.Stojanovich's advocate submitted that any dismissal could not have been justified as she signed her employment agreement after she had commenced work, meaning the 90-day trial period was not valid.The ERA agreed and said the company had not followed a fair process because:The ERA awarded Stojanovich $15,000 compensation for hurt, humiliation and loss of dignity, $2,076 in wages she would have otherwise earned, and $727 in lost wages.The agency also ordered to the funeral parlour to pay Stojanovich $3,500 as contribution to her costs and $72 for the filing fee on her claim.Stojanovich said that she became angry and upset and felt betrayed as a result of her dismissal. She also said she was stressed for several weeks; she became tearful, emotional and depressed.The ERA acknowledged this: I accept that Ms Stojanovich was only employed for a short period of time and was able to find new employment relatively quickly but the evidence of the impact on her was clear, credible and compelling," the decision read.
When Is The Best Time To Release An Album In 2018?

As with every other aspect of marketing yourself in the music industry, when you choose to release your music can make all the difference. In this article we break down the best months in which to drop your new record as well as those months which will ensure a flop.

_______________________

Guest post by Janelle Rogers of Symphonic Blog

Over the past few years, Ive put together a month-by-month guide with the best time to release your album. Its patently simple: which months would maximize your release and which would destroy it?

This year, Im taking it a up a notch and giving you additional ideas of how you can maximize your release in a specific month or how to schedule based on your albums specific subject matter or genre. There is one rule that stays the same: start planning your album release and reach out to media three months in advance. You should also release your album on Friday, which is the official release day of the week that was set by the industry in 2015.

As for when to release based on competition, I saw two major shifts in 2017. Typically, I avoid March because of SXSW and October because of CMJ. This past year, I saw little impact with SXSW in regards to securing press coverage for our clients. October, which is usually a looming black hole, turned into our best month for coverage. In fact, it was coming in so fast and so abundantly that we were struggling to keep up with it (a very good problem to have).

Like last year, Im beginning the calendar with March to maximize your lead time for an effective album release. If you want to know what Id suggest for January and February of 2018,you can review my forecast from 2017.

March

As mentioned above, in years past, I recommended avoiding releasing an album in March simply because SXSW takes over the minds and hearts of media. We didnt see that this year. Although we still recommend avoiding releasing an album during the conference (March 9-16), the rest of month shouldnt matter as much. Just make sure youre getting started on your promotion well before the end of 2017.

How to maximize your album release

SXSW is still a major music industry event, so a great way to maximize the release is to actually be in Austin during the festival . Look at former showcases and party lists to see if there are any that could be a good fit for your band. Reach out to the people in charge! If you secure a showcase, make sure you promote it while youre promoting your album release. If youre not able to make headway on live performances, still try to make it down there to network. Contact bands or industry people you respect, and find out how you can support their efforts at the conference.

Spring is in the air, and people are ready to shake out the frigid winter blues. Media knows this, which is why this is the time they put together playlists that are spring friendly . If you have songs that create a spring feel or have a spring like title, this could be a great time to release them.

Spring break! Whats spring break without a great spring break playlist? If you have a song that fits the party theme, now may be time to let it out.

April

Typically, my advice is to wait until the middle of the month to release an album because of SXSW. In 2018, Im declaring April wide open.

How to maximize your album release

The dreaded April 15 tax deadline looms in the US. Do you have songs about money, taxes, or tunes that could just help relieve the stress of filing to Uncle Sam?

Continue the spring theme if you have any songs that are a fit.

May

This is a great month to release albums. Its your last chance to release your album before the summer festival season hits.

How to maximize your album release:

Mothers Day presents a time to give that great, big ode to mom. Do you have an album or song that honors your mom (and all the other amazing moms out there)? Make this known, and also look outside traditional music sources when pitching press. Pitch the mom blogs and magazines so they can see just how much theyre appreciated!

June

Music-festival season is here, so unless you plan to work the festival circuit or you have great seasonal tie-ins, I recommend waiting to release your album until the fall.

How to maximize your album release

Indie pop bands unite! This season is made for you with all those upbeat summer songs that make us dream of lazy days at the beach. If you have a summer anthem, this is the time to release it.

Journalists spend a great deal of time trying to keep their head above water during festival season. If music festivals are a cornerstone of your band and also your greatest asset, this is absolutely the best time to release your album.

We honored mom, now its time to honor dad on Fathers Day . Have a song or album about your dad or fathers in general? Nows a great time to release it.

If you have songs that have a coming of age theme or could fit the graduation theme, this could be a great opportunity to release them.

July

Just like June, the same rules apply for festival season.

How to maximize your album release:

In the US, theres the Fourth of July . I dont expect the civil discourse were seeing in America to dissipate, so if you have something political to say on your album, this is the time to say it.

Summer songs are still a major factor.

August

The festival season is starting to wind down toward the end of the month. The standard rules apply for August that applied for the rest of the summer.

How to maximize your album release

Media is trying to soak in the last sun of summer, so you have another chance for coverage if your songs are summer friendly .

If you have any songs that could be great for back to school or have a coming-of-age theme for those entering college, this month would be a good time for them.

September

Alas, festival season is over, and the opportunities are starting to open up with media. This is a great time to release an album if youre an emerging artist.

How to maximize your album release

If youre waiting until September to release a song or album with a back-to-school theme, its best to do it at the beginning of the month .

Were hitting that cozy, crisp time of year where we long for songs of comfort. If youre an Americana or folk type of band, this could be the right time for you to release your album.

October

In 2017, this was our best month for press coverage, so we highly recommend an October release.

How to maximize your album release

Like September, this is a good time to release music with a fall theme.

If you have songs that fit a haunting, spooky, or straight-up Halloween theme, now is the time to release them. Some of the outlets who are focused on pop-culture themes could be particularly interested.

November

As I write this section, its now only the tail end of October, so theres a bit of guess work on what will happen next year. Mid-term elections could be a major focus considering the political climate. Its also safe to assume that best-of-year lists will stay play a major factor.

How to maximize your album release

As we transition into winter, songs about comfort, coziness and the first signs of winter could be of significance.

If youre writing songs with an air of civic mindedness or political themes, use them this month as your rallying call.

December

We expect best of lists will still be on the radar. It can sometimes be a great time to release an album, however, because theres little competition in the indie world. If you decide to release in December, do it with caution, and also do it before December 15 when media starts to shut down for the end of the year holidays.

How to maximize your album release

Do you have songs that connect with the winter season? Give them a push.

If you have any holiday-related songs, this is a great way to grab attention, even while outlets are starting to shut down. Keep in mind that not everyone loves a good holiday song, so make sure you do your due diligence in finding the ones that do.

January

Mid-to-late January can be a good time to release an album since the competition for new releases isnt there yet. We wouldnt recommend releasing it any sooner than that, because, for the most part, media is still getting back in the swing of things after the holiday season and needs time to catch up.

How to maximize your album release

Keep those winter songs coming.

If you have songs with a positive twist, this could be a great time for a release. Think about the people who want to start off the year with a fresh start. How can you appeal to them?

Songs that contribute to a great exercise playlist are always in vogue, but those January resolutions help take it to the next level.

February

February is also a great time to release an album due to relatively light competition from outside forces.

How to maximize your album release

Love and anti-love songs could get an extra push this month because of Valentines Day. If your album is rich in relationship content, look at this month as your guide.

Folk Alliance occurs in mid-February. If youre a folk band playing the festival, definitely look at releasing an album around this time. Many of the same rules apply as I mentioned with SXSW. If you have an opportunity to be there and network, do it.

Workout songs are still in play this month.

As you can see, there are a lot of angles you can use to maximize your album release and schedule it for the best chance for success. The tips mentioned above are some of the more obvious in our forte of indie rock and folk. If you have songs or an album based on certain themes, a quick Google search can help you discover additional ideas to enhance your release.

\\ Via Sonic Bids //

Janelle Rogers began her 20-year music industry career working for SXSW Music and Media Conference. She then went on to work for BMG Distribution for 10 years in the alternative music department where she championed bands like Kings of Leon, Ray LaMontagne, The Strokes, Belle & Sebastian, and The White Stripes. In 2002 she launched Green Light Go Music PR as a haven of honesty, integrity, and passion for underrepresented artists and labels. She has since been named Mentor of the Year by the University of Michigan, Dearborn, appeared as a panelist at NXNE, and been an official SXSW mentor.

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Why Mexico City Us A Top Market For Many Musicians

While places like Los Angeles, New York, or London are likely to jump out as 'music cities', one which doesn't always leap to mind is Mexico City. While off the radar, however, Mexico's capital is becoming the number one market for a number of high profile artists, particularly where streaming is concerned.

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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

Whenever we think of the top music market for an artist, the major city centers of New York, Los Angeles or London immediately come to mind. One thats been off the radar but is coming fast is Mexico City, and its already the #1 market for a diverse number of artists like Diplo, Adele, Dua Lipa, Radiohead, Shania Twain, Harry Styles and Metallica, at least as far as Spotify is concerned as outlined in this Billboard post.

In fact, Spotify has 64% of Mexicos streaming market, which dwarfs Google Play (12%), Apple Music (8%) and Tidal (2%), according to 2016 data from the Competitive Intelligence Unit. One of the reasons why Spotify dominates comes thanks to its cell phone bundle deals with Virgin Mobile and Movistar, which is happening in other huge markets like China and India as well.

While this might be a surprise to many, the reason behind Mexico Citys rise is due to the fact that its metro area population now stands at more than 21 million, which is far more than any other North American market.

Another reason is the cost of a Spotify paid subscription, which now costs 99 pesos (or around $5.23USD). Thanks to the low cost, its virtually eliminated physical piracy, which ran rampant in the country prior to streaming. A typical pirated CD goes for around 250 pesos ($13.20USD) on the street. Whats more, Mexico has now become Spotifys 3rd highest volume for streams, just after the U.S. and the U.K., meaning that its users there do actually take full advantage of the service.

While physical piracy is becoming less of a factor, Mexico City does seem to be center for purchased fake Likes and streams. Electronic artists like Avicii, Skrillex, David Guetta and Steve Aoki have been accused of purchasing Facebook Likes in the past, since it became obvious when so many originated from that city. That said, Facebook has made a concerted effort to crack down on these accounts.

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Bob Dylan was right.

The times do change.

Its hard to think of a more hidebound institution than the British monarchy  horses, carriages, tall guys in great big furry hats. Royalty seemed as changeless as the queens hairstyle until it was announced that the House of Windsor will be importing its next princess from the erstwhile colonies.

Thus far the Brits appear to find this a jolly good idea and already have started turning out tea towels tatted up with images of Meghan Markle and her young prince  a fellow only five dead relatives away from becoming Henry IX.

It has to have his great-grand uncle Ed spinning in his grave  and his grand aunt Meg making a few rotations of her own.

So heres the 30-second history lesson. Uncle Ed is more formally known as Edward VIII, King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and Emperor of India, Jan. 20, 1936, until his abdication less than 11 months later  signing off to his subjects with a farewell message: I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.

That woman was Wallis Simpson, an American, barred by the Church of England from marriage to the king because she was divorced.

Aunt Margaret  Queen Elizabeths sister  found herself in much the same situation, only it was a divorced man to whom she was forbidden to pledge her troth.

Meghan will also be leaving an ex behind when she settles in with Prince Harry, but with the blessing of Old Queen Bess  and the Archbishop of Canterbury to boot.

Oh, and Megs mom is black  you have to wonder how that would have sat with all those Brits who set out to the colonies bound to take up the white mans burden, as their poet laureate so delicately put it.

Yeah, the times do change.

Especially when it comes to men and women.

And what goes on between us.

A divorced woman is longer a threat to the British throne, but an offended woman has become threat to a Senate seat.

Theres some symbolism lurking somewhere in the fact that Hugh Hefner was barely cold in his grave when Harvey Weinsteins reputation was popped like an infected pimple, and what goes on between guys and gals will likely never be the same again.

Over the past couple of months theres been an avalanche of accusations sweeping all sorts of dirty old  and not so old  men into sudden, unanticipated retirement as titillating, tawdry tales took over the headlines and what we used to call frat boy behavior suddenly took on a more felonious cast.

The times change  sometimes overnight.

But the past doesnt change. What was was. What happened happened.

In 1936, an American divorcee nearly toppled the British throne. Eighty-one years later, another promises to infuse new life into that aging institution.

On a trip to Australia, Edward described a group of aborigines as the most revolting form of living creatures Ive ever seen! One must wonder what he would think of Meghans family background.

Times change  attitudes with them.

What was accepted, isnt. What was ordinary, isnt.

A nation of ex-smokers will attest to that.

So will the Queen of England.

And Al Franken.
Clarksburg eighth-graders are using art and poetry in their Holocaust studies presentations. PreviousNext

Clarksburg Elementary Holocaust Exhibit Runs Wednesday



Inge Auerbacher, seen here in 2013, is returning to Clarksburg School on Wednesday to talk about her experience in the Holocaust.

CLARKSBURG, Mass.  Clarksburg School eighth-graders will host the school's 14th annual Holocaust Exhibit with Terezin survivor Inge Auerbacher on Wednesday night.

English teacher and exhibit organizer Michael Little said this year's exhibit will be different and instead of exploring the Holocaust purely academically, students will create a "poetic puzzle" based on Auerbacher's book "I Am A Star" and the book "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" which is a collection of poetry and art from children that were in Terezin.

"Invention can be a little scarce sometimes especially with such a complex subject, but we find a way to do it every year and we have done it we have to reinvent," Little said. "We are making boards that are radically different in their approach this year."

Little said Auerbacher spoke at the school some five years ago, so past students have already created the standard academic exhibit boards. This year, students will use the knowledge they have gained from various trips to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and juxtapose the academic boards with new boards displaying poetry and art.

"So we thought let's use the stuff we learned at Mass MoCA. The idea of abstraction an metaphor and lest see what we can come up with," Little said. "We wanted to do something abstract that would really jar the audience."

The boards use poetry from "I Never Saw Another Butterfly," quotes from "I Am a Star," and pictures to tell Auerbacher's story.

Each board is artfully adorned with artwork reflective of the often-dark subjects of the poetry that include charcoal smudges and handprints, drawn barbed wire and treated paper made to look aged.

"Nothing is pretty on these boards and we want to express those inner fears. We want it to hit people," Little said. "We matched quotes with the poetry and it allowed us to tell a story in a completely different way. A subconscious way."

Little said although the boards are often grim, the way the poetry and art are laid out conveys hope.

"The poems are matched up in certain ways and they are matched up in a way that will balance the darkness of the board," he said. "Even in the midst of all of the darkness people find hope."

Little noted that this year's exhibit comes earlier than it typically does because Auerbacher could only attend a fall presentation. Normally the class holds its presentations with a speaker near the end of the course in the spring.

"If I didn't book her, I probably would not be able to get a survivor and this group would be left out," he said. "I did not have the confidence that I could find another survivor that could make the journey here."

Little said every year it becomes harder to find survivors. Most survivors now were children during World War II; those that are left are elderly, and some are unable to travel great distances. Auerbacher, for example, was 7 when she entered Terezin, a concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic, 75 years ago.

Little urged people to attend the exhibit, that will be held Dec. 6 at 6 p.m. at the school, because the day will come when there will be no more survivors.

"I think we are coming to the end of when you can't have a living survivor and I am grateful for all of these years because having a living survivor in the classroom is a gift and a blessing," Little said. "But for sure there is a near future where there won't be survivors ... down the road, the program will have to exist in another way."

Little said Rabbi Robert Sternberg will speak at 6:15 and Auerbacher will speak at 7:15.

"Inge will deliver a message and she wants people to understand that we need to reach out to each other and we need to understand each other and have compassion," Little said. "We need to learn to accept each other and I am hoping that the kids learn that in the context of the world we can do good for each other. We can work out our differences instead of destroying the world."

Little said the event would not be possible without the help and donations from Robert and Elaine Baum, McLain Electric, Midtown Tax and Bookkeeping Company, Christo's Famous Pizza and Wise Guy Snacks.
Pittsfield Police Department Implements 'Park and Walk' Initiative

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  It's been a month since on-duty Pittsfield police officers have incorporated a change in their daily routine: for 15 minutes each shift, officers leave their vehicles and walk a selected portion of their beat.

Known as the "park and walk" initiative, officers on the day, evening, and midnight shifts are all expected to attempt one 15-minute walk, said Police Chief Michael Wynn. As of Nov. 26, officers registered a total of 293 park and walk details throughout the city.

"The officers can call in anywhere in their sector. If they're off sector, they can stop anywhere downtown," he said. "The expectation is that it should be done once per shift."

Mayor Linda Tyer said the exercise serves to enhance the relationships that officers have with community members.

"Pittsfield has officers who are committed and dedicated to their profession. We have seen in their interactions ranging with that of our youth to senior citizens that they truly care about the community they serve. I know that this will be one more opportunity to demonstrate that same care and concern."

The concept isn't a new one for Pittsfield. In the 1990s, officers regularly engaged in foot patrol, said Wynn. However, the total elimination of funding for community policing in 2007 put a halt to this kind of patrol.

In recent years, there have been continuous conversations on community policing in Pittsfield and requests for officers to be assigned to walk patrol  a move that Wynn notes requires added manpower due to the necessary replacement to fulfill the loss of a vehicle patrol.

However, the 15-minute park and walk is feasible for a department which at 87 officers is still understaffed and the plan doesn't require additional funding.

"Because we're not taking that resource from the entire shift, everybody can participate to the best of their ability. If they need to revert to their cruiser to address a situation, they can," Wynn said. "Also, the nice part is we are able to operationalize this exercise with zero impact on the budget."

Wynn says the initiative has been welcomed by officers. "The reception has been positive," he said.

Lt. Matthew Kirchner agrees.

"I like interacting with the public, from business owners to pedestrians. We get to talk to people and listen to their concerns," he said. "I think it's proven to be valuable, given the personnel constraints that we have. We're doing a work-around to make it work for the community."

For now, Wynn said the park and walk initiative will continue to be a part of the department's engagement strategy and will be continuously monitored.
Recipients of the Scholarship must agree to take a full course load (12 or more credits), including the college's BUS-139 Personal Finance course, a course that is supported by Guardian Life Insurance Company of America and is free to students.

Biz Briefs: BCC Offers Micro-Grants to Help Students Get Out of Debt

Helping hand

Berkshire Community College, with sponsorship from Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, is offering select students micro-grants to help them pay their past-due debts and stay on track to graduate. The program is called the "Guardian Value Scholarship," which identifies students who are in good academic standing but unable to re-enroll due to college debt.



The scholarship can help reduce or remove a student's debt to the college which in turn allows them to register for upcoming spring 2018 classes at BCC. The maximum value of the scholarship is $1,500. If a student owes more than $1,500, they are expected to pay down the remaining balance of their debt before they can register.



Recipients of the Scholarship must agree to take a full course load (12 or more credits), including the college's BUS-139 Personal Finance course, a course that is supported by Guardian Life Insurance Company of America and is free to students. In the fall 2017 semester, 39 students took the free personal finance course, which aims to help them learn to be more financially savvy. For more information about Guardian Value Scholarships, contact Anne Moore in the Financial Aid office at 413-236-1641.

Doing Rite

The Price Rite Marketplace store in Pittsfield has joined other locations in its annual Check-Out Hunger fundraising campaign, which raises funds to benefit local food banks in communities served by Price Rite stores. Through December 30, 64 Price Rite stores throughout Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia will raise funds by collecting donations of $1, $3 or $5 from shoppers at checkout.



In support of the fight against hunger, 100 percent of the funds raised will be donated to local hunger-fighting charities and organizations. The supermarket chain contributes approximately $500,000 annually to local food banks and food pantries to benefit local families in need within the communities it serves. In Pittsfield, the money will be given to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

Know your rights

Kimball Farms Life Care in Lenox will host a drop-in clinic with attorney Kate Alexander from the Berkshire Consumer Services Office on Friday, Dec. 8, at 2 p.m. Attorney Alexander can discuss such issues as filing a credit freeze, consumer fraud, scams and other consumer information. Visitors are invited to drop by and ask questions beginning at 2 p.m.

Get moving

Jacob's Pillow has been awarded $300,000 from the Ford Foundation as a strand of Challenging Inequality through Creativity and Free Expression to support the recently imagined Pittsfield Moves! program. Pittsfield Moves! was conceived by Jacob's Pillow in collaboration with lead partner The Berkshire Bridges  Working Cities Pittsfield Initiative to help local stakeholders within educational, social, and economic justice organizations develop a practice of storytelling and relationship building through movement. The Ford Foundation is one the world's largest philanthropic foundations focused on global social change.



After key Community Conversations held in Pittsfield, choreographer Paloma McGregor, director of Angelas Pulse, has been selected as lead artist for this year-long project. This selection process was implemented in a way that enabled community members to have direct agency in the project from its conception.



Pittsfield Moves! will work to create community performance through multi-tiered partnerships over the course of the year. The project will present its first iteration at Jacob's Pillow as part of the Inside/Out Performance Series during Festival 2018 and will culminate in a performance in Pittsfield in the Fall of 2018. In the Spring of 2019, the Pillow will host a major international summit on dance and social change where Pittsfield Moves! will be presented as a case study alongside other projects from across the country and the world.




iciHaiti - Economy : Haiti eligible for concessional loans from the World Bank





An information session on the operating procedures of the World Bank was held last week for managers, technicians and heads of autonomous agencies under the Ministry of Economy and Finance.



Anabela Abreu, the representative of the World Bank in Haiti took the opportunity to confirm that Haiti in regard of the criteria of the WB for the 82 member countries of the consortium, is eligible for concessional loans (loan at low rates see 0% interest with often the beginning of deferred repayment).



IH/ iciHaiti


















Imperial Valley News Center

Canadian Hacker Who Conspired With And Aided Russian FSB Officers Pleads Guilty

San Francisco, California - Karim Baratov, a/k/a Kay, a/k/a/Karim Taloverov, a/k/a Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov, pled guilty Tuesday to charges returned by a grand jury in the Northern District of California in February 2017. The guilty plea was announced by U.S. Attorney Brian J. Stretch; Acting Assistant Attorney General Dana J. Boente of the U.S. Justice Departments National Security Division; Executive Assistant Director Paul Abbate of the Federal Bureau of Investigations Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch; and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge John F. Bennett.

Baratov, 22, a Canadian national and resident, and three other defendants, including two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Russias domestic law enforcement and intelligence service, were charged with computer hacking and other criminal offenses in connection with a conspiracy to access Yahoos network and the contents of webmail accounts that began in January 2014. Baratovs co-defendants, all of whom remain at large in Russia, all are Russian nationals and residents: Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev, 33; Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin, 43; and Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, a/k/a Magg, 29.

According to his plea agreement, Baratovs role in the charged conspiracy was to hack webmail accounts of individuals of interest to the FSB and send those accounts passwords to Dokuchaev for money. As alleged in the indictment, Dokuchaev, Sushchin, and Belan compromised Yahoos network and gained the ability to access Yahoo accounts. When they desired access to individual webmail accounts at a number of other internet service providers, such as Google and Yandex (based in Russia), Dokuchaev tasked Baratov to compromise such accounts.

The illegal hacking of private communications is a global problem that transcends political boundaries. Cybercrime is not only a grave threat to personal privacy and security, but causes great financial harm to individuals who are hacked and costs the world economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year. These threats are even more insidious when cyber criminals such as Baratov are employed by foreign government agencies acting outside the rule of law, said U.S. Attorney Stretch. With the assistance of our law enforcement partners in Canada, we were able to track down and apprehend a prolific criminal hacker who had sold his services to Russian government agents. This prosecution again illustrates that we will identify and pursue charges against hackers who compromise our countrys computer infrastructure.

Where a foreign law enforcement or intelligence agency recruits, tasks, or protects criminals targeting the United States and its companies or citizens, instead of taking steps to disrupt them and hold them accountable, the United States will leverage all of its available tools to expose that agencys conduct and arrest those responsible, said Acting Assistant Attorney General Boente. Todays plea exemplifies the Departments commitment to pursuing, arresting, and bringing to justice even those hackers who work for a foreign law enforcement or intelligence organization. We wish to thank the Canadian authorities for their skillful assistance in the investigation and arrest of Baratov and to acknowledge the contributions of the other nations and law enforcement services that provided invaluable assistance.

This case is a prime example of the hybrid cyber threat were facing, in which nation states work with criminal hackers to carry out malicious activities, said Executive Assistant Director Paul Abbate of the FBIs Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch. Todays guilty plea illustrates how the FBI continues to work relentlessly with our private sector, law enforcement, and international partners to identify and hold accountable those who conduct cyber attacks against our nation, no matter who theyre working with or where they attempt to hide.

Today's guilty plea is a testament to the FBI's tireless commitment to tracking down cyber-criminals who think they can anonymously attack our country's cyber infrastructure, said FBI Special Agent In Charge Bennett. The FBI is determined to find, unmask, and identify criminals who steal the information of our citizens. With the help of our law enforcement partners around the world, we were able to expose this type of criminal behavior and bring them to justice.

As part of his plea agreement, Baratov not only admitted to agreeing and attempting to hack at least 80 webmail accounts on behalf of one of his FSB co-conspirators, but also to hacking more than 11,000 webmail accounts in total from in or around 2010 until his March 2017 arrest by Canadian authorities. Baratov advertised his services through a network of primarily Russian-language hacker-for-hire web pages hosted on servers around the world. He admitted that he generally spearphished his victims, sending them emails from accounts he established to appear to belong to the webmail provider at which the victims account was hosted (such as Google or Yandex). Baratovs spearphishing emails tricked victims into (i) visiting web pages he constructed to appear legitimate, as though they belonged to the victims webmail providers, and (ii) entering their account credentials into those web pages. Once Baratov collected the victims account credentials, he sent his customers screen shots of the victims account contents to prove that he had obtained access and, upon receipt of payment, provided his customers the victims log-in credentials.

Baratov pleaded guilty to Count One and Counts Forty through Forty-Seven of the Indictment. Count One charged Baratov, Dokuchaev, Sushchin, and Belan with conspiring to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by stealing information from protected computers in violation of 18 U.S.C.  1030(a)(2) and causing damage to protected computers in violation of 18 U.S.C.  1030(a)(5)(A). Counts Forty through Forty-Seven charged Baratov and Dokuchaev with aggravated identity theft in violation of 18 U.S.C.  1028A. As part of the plea agreement, in addition to any prison sentence, Baratov agreed to pay restitution to his victims, and to pay a fine up to $2,250,000 (at $250,000 per count) with any assets he has remaining after satisfying a restitution award.

Baratov waived extradition from Canada and is being detained in California without bail.

Baratovs sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 20, 2018, at 3:00 p.m., before the Honorable Vincent Chhabria, U.S. District Court Judge, in San Francisco. The maximum statutory penalty for each count in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030(b) is 10 years and a fine of $250,000, plus restitution, if appropriate. The maximum statutory penalty for each count in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1028A is two years (mandatory consecutive) and a fine of $250,000, plus restitution, if appropriate. However, any sentence, including restitution and fine, if any, will be imposed by the court only after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C.  3553.

The FBIs San Francisco Field Office led the investigation that resulted in the charges announced today. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of California and the U.S. Department of Justice National Security Divisions Counterintelligence and Export Control Section with support of the Justice Departments Office of International Affairs.
Former Employees of Southern California Ambulance Company and Dialysis Center Plead Guilty to Medicare Fraud

Los Angeles, California - A former employee of a Southern California ambulance company and a former employee of a Los Angeles dialysis treatment center both pleaded guilty Tuesday to fraud charges for their roles in a fraud scheme that resulted in more than $6.6 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare. Three other individuals charged in the case previously pleaded guilty.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Blanco of the Justice Departments Criminal Division, Acting U.S. Attorney Sandra R. Brown of the Central District of California, Special Agent in Charge Christian J. Schrank of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector Generals (HHS-OIG) Los Angeles Region and Acting Assistant Director in Charge Danny Kennedy of the FBIs Los Angeles Division made the announcement.

Aharon Aron Krkasharyan, 53, of Los Angeles, California, pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Maria Espinoza, 47, also of Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks for health care referrals. U.S. District Judge George H. Wu of the Central District of California accepted the guilty pleas. Krkasharyan is scheduled to be sentenced on March 29, 2018, and Espinoza is scheduled to be sentenced on April 2, 2018.

Krkasharyan was employed as the Quality Improvement Coordinator for Mauran Ambulance Inc., an ambulance transportation company operating in the greater Los Angeles area that provided non-emergency services to Medicare beneficiaries, many of whom were dialysis patients. According to admissions made in connection with his plea, between June 2011 and April 2012, Krkasharyan conspired with other Mauran employees to submit claims to Medicare for ambulance transportation services for individuals who did not need such services. Krkasharyan also admitted that he and his co-conspirators instructed Mauran emergency medical technicians to conceal the patients true medical conditions by altering paperwork and creating fraudulent reasons to justify the ambulance services.

Espinoza was an administrative assistant at DaVita Doctors Dialysis of East Los Angeles. As part of her guilty plea, Espinoza admitted that she conspired with an employee of Mauran to receive cash kickbacks in return for referrals of dialysis patients to Mauran for whom Mauran submitted claims to Medicare for non-emergency ambulance transportation services.

Earlier this month, Toros Onik Yeranosian, 55, the former owner of Mauran, and Oxana Loutseiko 57, the former general manager of Mauran, each pleaded guilty before Judge Wu to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud for their roles in the fraud scheme. The former Dispatch Supervisor at Mauran, Christian Hernandez, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud in December 2015.

In connection with his guilty plea, Yeranosian admitted that during the course of the conspiracy, Mauran submitted to Medicare at least $6.6 million in false and fraudulent claims for medically unnecessary transportation services, of which Medicare paid at least $3.1 million. As part of their plea agreements, all five defendants agreed to pay restitution to Medicare.

The case was investigated by the FBI and HHS-OIG, and was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the Criminal Divisions Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California. Trial Attorneys Alexis D. Gregorian and Jeremy R. Sanders of the Fraud Section are prosecuting the case.

The Fraud Section leads the Medicare Fraud Strike Force. Since its inception in March 2007, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, now operating in nine cities across the country, has charged nearly 3,500 defendants who have collectively billed the Medicare program for more than $12.5 billion. In addition, the HHS Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with HHS-OIG, are taking steps to increase accountability and decrease the presence of fraudulent providers.
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The subject of the upcoming film All the Money in the World might just be as controversial as the production itself.

It originally starred Kevin Spacey; however, the Hollywood actor was recently cut from the project after allegations against him emerged surrounding sexual assault.

Christopher Plummer steps in to replace Spacey in the lead role of J.Paul Getty, the American billionaire who famously refused to pay $17m (12.5m) for the release of his kidnapped teenage grandson.

Recommended Kevin Spacey replaced in the All the Money in the World spot

The movie tells the true story of how Gettys resistance to pay his grandsons abductors a dime led him to overdosing on drugs at the age of 25.

It was in 1973 that the then 16-year-old John Paul Getty was kidnapped in Rome.

Knowing all about his familys wealthy legacy  which had its roots in the oil industry  his kidnappers demanded $17m from J. Paul Getty, who was the wealthiest man in the world at the time.

Known to his contemporaries as Old John, Getty had five wives during his lifetime in addition to a string of mistresses whom he spoke to via a personal payphone which was installed at his 75-acre Surrey estate.

Getty did not meet his kidnapped grandson, who was known to friends and family as Paul, until he was 11-years-old and when they met again four years later when he was 15-years-old, Getty was reportedly unimpressed by his bohemian lifestyle.

At the time of the abduction Paul had been living in Rome where he had worked as painter.

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Aware of his family legacy, his identity was well known by the local media and he was subsequently scrutinised by them and dubbed the Golden Hippie.

Paul was purchasing a comic book at a newsstand when he was abducted by three men who knocked him out by hitting him with a gun.

The men drove him to a cave in the southern part of the country and tied him up while they probed the Getty family for the hefty ransom.

Initially, they suspected it was a hoax that Paul had contrived in order to ascertain more money from his family.

At the time, Old John told the media that he didnt believe in paying kidnappers.

I have 14 other grandchildren and if I pay one penny now, then Ill have 14 kidnapped grandchildren, he said.

After three months of silence from the Gettys, the kidnappers took action by cutting off the wealthy teenagers right ear with a razor and sending it in a bag to a newspaper in Rome.

After close inspection, Pauls mother, Gail, recognised that this was her sons ear from his freckles and began trying to raise funds to pay the ransom money that Old John had refused to pay.

The family were ultimately able to negotiate the ransom down to $2.2m (1.6m) and Paul was released five months after hed been taken.

Nine years later, an overdose on methadone and valium left Paul quadriplegic and he died in 2011 at the age of 54.

Today, Forbes estimates that the Getty family  who remain prominent figures in the US and the UK  boast a net worth of $5.4bn.
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Veteran Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor has died aged 79.

Star of huge hits like Deewar, In Custody, and Junoon, the actor was a member of the Kapoor dynasty, which has been a dominating force in the Hindi film industry for decades. The youngest son of Prithviraj, a pioneer in film and theatre, both he and his brothers Raj and Shammi Kapoor became renowned as actors.

Shashi Kapoor made a name for himself both on stage and on film, starting his career as a child and eventually starring in more than 150 films; he won several national film awards and was awarded the Padma Bhushan civilian honour by the Indian government in 2011.

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He also appeared in several English-language films, including several Merchant Ivory productions, such as The Householder, Shakespeare Wallah, Bombay Talkie, and Heat and Dust.

Kapoor passed away in hospital after prolonged illness. His nephew, actor Randhir Kapoor, told news agency PTI that Kapoor had been suffering from kidney problems and had been undergoing dialysis. "Yes, he has passed away. He had kidney problems since several years. He was on dialysis for several years," Randhir said.

The actor was married to actress Jennifer Kendal, who died in 1984, and is survived by his sons Karan and Kunal, alongside daughter Sanjana.

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Apple boss Tim Cook has spoken out about the importance of children learning to code.

The CEO has frequently said that teaching children to program computers is one of the most important skills they can have. That same mission has been taken up by Apple, which encourages kids to take part in sessions in schools and at its own stores.

Now Mr Cook has repeated his support for the "Hour Of Code" programme, which aims to teach every child at least some basic programming tools.

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

To make clear that support, the Apple boss has headed to China and sat in on a session at a school for the deaf there, in which students learnt some programming skills.

"Coding is the language of the future, giving people of all ages and backgrounds the chance to create something new," Mr Cook wrote on Twitter. "Thanks to Shanghai No. 4 School for the Deaf for letting me join your #HourOfCode session!"

Companies across the tech industry have given their support to such schemes. Google, for instance, is currently running its first ever programming Doodle  which allows children to play through a game and learn basic coding as they go.

Apple has a similar piece of software, called Swift Playgrounds. That also encourages children to learn how to code by guiding a character through a maze, using the logical and practical skills required to become good at programming.
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The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S9 will be available in four colour schemes, according to a new leak.

The handset, which is expected to launch early next year, will reportedly come in black, blue, gold and purple colour options.

It would be a slight change in direction from the S8, which you can buy in black, grey, blue and silver.

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

Samsung recently unveiled a burgundy version of the S8 too, but that doesnt appear to be on the cards for the S9, reports SamMobile.

Several recent leaks suggest the S9 will look very similar to its predecessor, which is still one of the most attractive on the market.

However, the introduction of attractive new colours could still tempt consumers into upgrading.

A Samsung Galaxy S9 case render based on reports (BGR)

Reports claim the S9 could be unveiled as early as January, but not at a full-blown launch event.

That is said to be taking place around a month later, possibly at the Mobile World Congress technology conference in Barcelona.

If the phone does make a public appearance before then, it will likely be brief.

The rumoured 5.8-inch S9 looks set to launch alongside a larger, 6.2-inch S9+. Both phones are expected to have 64GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot and a headphone jack.

Though theyre expected to look very similar to their predecessors, Samsung is reportedly making at least one major design change.

Instead of lying right next to the camera sensor, as it does on the S8 and S8+, the fingerprint sensor on the S9 and S9+ will instead sit beneath it, which should make it much easier to feel out with your finger.
Jayson Smith has been involved in many pivotal moments in Chippewa Falls history, but perhaps one of his longest projects is the park crowning the citys downtown.

Theyre buttoning things up for this construction year, Smith said, gesturing in the direction of Riverfront Park. Currently, the project is in Phase II of its development, with footpaths twining through a large, grassy area and lights lining a stroll down to the riverbank, but more work is still to come.

Smith, Chippewa Falls city planner and transit manager, has been with the city since 1981, a total of 36 years.

Though not a native of Wisconsin, he has a background in the Chippewa Valley. He graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelors degree in urban planning, and in 1981, started working at the West Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission in Eau Claire  the very commission that will be taking over the citys transit program next year.

They had a contract with the city to provide a half-time planner for (Chippewa Falls), Smith said. The job went full-time in 1988. ... I started out pretty green right out of college, and as always, you get mentored and learn as you go.

36 years later, Smith is wrapping up loose ends: updating his job description as the city searches for a new planner. The job has really ... morphed into a significant amount of economic development, Smith said. Im pretty sure theres going to be some local folks interested in the job, but my primary recommendation ... is to hire a person with a planning background.

Finding a candidate who has experience with TIF districts  tax increment financing districts  is also essential, Smith said. He calls the districts the most powerful economic development tools in the municipalities of Wisconsin, and Chippewa Falls has nine such districts active.

Smith has worked with the citys TIFs throughout his tenure, and has had a fingerprint on many of their benefits: a new Leinie Lodge, the current Chamber of Commerce and SEH buildings on Bridge Street and the reinvigorated strip mall on the citys south side  one that now houses a movie theater and several restaurants  have all benefited from TIF financing.

Those projects were administered through his office in City Hall, and future projects will do the same, Smith said.

The city has accepted a proposal from the West Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission to administer the citys transit program, but Smith says that may be temporary, until a new planner settles into the position.

The (Planning Commission) will have a little bit of a learning curve ... but theyve done it before, he said.

Looking back on his career, Smith emphasizes the importance of transparency: Solid plans that are done openly and supported by the public will help the citys governing body make the right calls, he said.

Hell spend time with family members, but still live in Chippewa Falls after retiring from his desk on the first floor of City Hall: Im not going anywhere. ... I told them, anytime they have a question, Im more than happy to answer the phone. He taps his head. Theres a lot of history here.

Smiths last day with the city will be Jan. 8.
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A woman who has struggled to come to terms with her alopecia since she was a teenager is now working as a model.

Therese Hansson, 26, from Malmo, Sweden, first started losing her hair when she was just 14-years-old but unaware of the symptoms of alopecia, she was mostly concerned about having cancer, the Daily Mail reports.

I first noticed it when I was standing in the mirror trying to put up my hair in a ponytail and saw a small patch with no hair close to my forehead, she said.

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I was young at the time so I was mostly worried that it was cancer since that's normally the first thing you think of when you see hair loss, but little did I know that this hair loss only happens after chemotherapy.

After her diagnosis, only Hanssons closest friends and family knew about her condition as she tried to keep it a secret and admits thats she became good at hiding it.

However, as she got older Hansson learned to embrace her aesthetic and says that she is now confident going out in public without wearing a wig.

So much so in fact, that she has even pursued a career in modelling and, since being signed by agency GC Management, now works for brands like lingerie specialist Curvy Kate.

Now I feel like I can be myself and that I don't need to hide it anymore, she explains.

While Hansson admits that she regrets not embracing her alopecia sooner she says that she is now happy doing what she loves and urges other sufferers to do the same.

Don't hide, she said.

It will only make you feel worse. A big stone of relief will leave your body if you can just be yourself.

Anyone that won't accept it is not someone you need in your life anyway.
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

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Theresa Mays week ended with the mass walk out of her social mobility commission, and started with the official wine supplier to No 10 warning that her country faces starvation if the door is closed to foreign fruit pickers after Brexit. Its a tough job being PM.

Does Chapel Down Winery, the Kent producer of sprightly Sauvignon Blanc-style Bacchus and fizz that has gone toe to toe with Champagne in blind tastings, have a point?

The biggest potential impact of Brexit is on agricultural labour, CEO Frazer Thompson opined. Kent has had eastern Europeans picking fruit in recent years, but well all starve if the labour issue is not sorted after Brexit.

It isnt hard to predict the response of the Brexit crew to this. Hyperbole, is what theyll say. Well get it sorted! All it needs is for Brexiteer ministers to follow the path mapped out by their colleague Andrea Leadsom a few months ago by telling entitled millennials to get off their backsides and into the fields.

If a few newspaper columnists will kindly join in by lecturing them on how lazy they are, theyll rush out in patriotic fervour to do their bit so we can toast each other with a spot of that fizz at the next Downing Street reception.

No we arent living in a Philip K Dick novel (although sometimes I wonder); this has genuinely been put forward by some as the answer to the problem Mr Thompson raises, as if berating people and calling them idle and entitled is just the ticket for producing a turnaround in their thinking.

Unlike most of the people doing that shouting, Ive actually engaged in agricultural labour  albeit many years ago and at a time when I was able-bodied. It was hard, painful and sometimes dangerous work. One of the fingers Im typing this with has a discoloured spot at the tip as a result of my cutting a chunk of it off with a pair of secateurs while pruning fruit trees in the autumn.

I also, at various points in time, pushed supermarket trolleys, hauled stock around in a warehouse, and delivered newspapers. All of those jobs were preferable to picking fruit on a seasonal basis.

Why make that point? Simple. The Brits, whom Ms Leadsom and friends fondly imagine will pick up the slack when Mr Thompsons eastern Europeans are gone, cant be forced to do so. With the Labour market currently experiencing shortages in a number of sectors, there are plenty of alternatives available to them.

They might not be well paid. They might not be a lot of fun. But they still might be seen as preferable to the fields.

In stark contrast to the nativist propaganda currently doing the rounds, the eastern Europeans who have been coming here arent stealing anyones jobs. They are doing work that others dont want to do.

The answer to the problem Mr Thompson raises is actually fairly simple: regardless of how the Brexit process proceeds, we need put out the welcome mat. Want to come here to work at Chapel Down, or at places like it? Have at it. Well buy you a drink in the pub afterwards too. Well tell all those who would moan about it to belt up, and well put the really nasty racists in jail.

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.

Whats that? You want to use the NHS if you cut the top of your finger off because youll be paying taxes and such? No trouble. Well let you do that too. Its only right.

Unfortunately, for Mr Thompson in particular, while we might not starve, we probably will have to endure a period of ugly economic disruption, and very much more expensive fresh food, before the sense in taking that stance filters through to the brains of some of our more lumpen-headed politicians.

Id advise stocking up on a few cases of Chapel Down in the meantime. Itll be a lot easier to see out the disruption half-cut.
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Australias competition regulator said on Monday it would investigate whether US online giants Facebook and Alphabets Google has disrupted the news media market to the detriment of publishers and consumers.

Like their rivals globally, Australias traditional media companies have been squeezed by online rivals, as advertising dollars have followed eyeballs to digital distributors such as Google, Facebook and Netflix.

The government ordered the probe as part of wider media reforms, amid growing concern for the future of journalism and the quality of news following years of declining profits and newsroom job cuts and the rise of fake news.

Recommended Facebook opens London office creating 800 new jobs

We will examine whether platforms are exercising market power in commercial dealings to the detriment of consumers, media content creators and advertisers, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.

The inquiry also would study how Facebook and Google operated to fully understand their influence in Australia, he added.

A Google spokesman said, We look forward to engaging with this process as relevant.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The idea for an ACCC investigation was hatched during media reform negotiations in parliament earlier this year, which resulted in a relaxation of ownership laws to allow the countrys big players to boost their market share to better compete against online disruptors.

Independent media analyst Peter Cox told Reuters it was unclear what measures the competition regulator could recommend to the government even if it found the countrys media sector was increasingly anti-competitive.

You could see this as a stepping stone towards another type of reform, such as tax, said Mr Cox.

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.

Jurisdictions around the world, including the European Union, are grappling with how to tax technology giants with global operations.

Currently corporate taxes are paid where firms have a physical presence, which allows digital multinationals to book most of their profits where they have set up headquarters as opposed to where they make their money.

The Australian probe will have power to demand information from businesses and hold hearings. It is due to make its final report in 18 months.
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MPs are calling on the competition watchdog to launch an investigation into a proposed merger of the UK retail operations of energy companies SSE and Npower, warning a deal could reduce competition and be a bad deal for consumers.

SSE and rival Npower, which is owned by Germanys Innogy, announced that they intend to merge their British retail energy businesses last month, reducing the Big Six down to five.

MP Rachel Reeves, who chairs the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee, wrote in a letter to the Competition and Markets Authority that the deal was concerning for the competitiveness of the energy market.

The energy market isnt working for consumers, she said.

The proposed merger between SSE and Npower risks damaging the development of a more competitive energy market, reducing consumer choice, and threatening to be a bad deal for energy consumers, she added.

The CMA needs to look at the potential impacts of this merger and launch a full investigation if there is any risk to competition within the energy market.

The deal would give the combined new company a customer base of around 11.5 million, making it the countrys second largest energy provider after Centricas British Gas.

The select committee said the move would result in almost half of the domestic energy share being held by British Gas and the new business.

A spokesperson for SSE defended the deal, saying: The merger will improve competition by offering customers a completely new model combining the resources of established players with the agility and innovation of an independent supplier  turning 60 competitors into 59, not five, and ultimately offering better value for customers.

This is, naturally, subject to the appropriate regulatory approvals and we will engage openly with the CMA, the BEIS Select Committee and any other interested parties as the process goes on, the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Innogy said: The transaction will create a new, strong and independent British retail energy supplier, which will provide a better deal for consumers and help deliver the Governments plans for more competition in the market.
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The UK Government is looking to step up regulation of bitcoin amid concerns criminals are using cryptocurrencies to launder money and avoid taxes.

The Treasury wants to regulate bitcoin under European Union anti-money laundering rules, forcing traders in the cryptocurrency to disclose their identities and any suspicious activity.

It expects changes to new EU-wide rules to come into effect by the end of December or early next year.

Bitcoin currently works by anonymous trading, which has fuelled fears that it could be an attractive way of funding illegal activity.

A rise of 1,000 per cent in value this year has worried MPs and banks alike.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Treasury Select Committee member John Mann said he expects the Government to carry out an inquiry over regulating digital currencies.

These new forms of exchange are expanding rapidly and weve got to make sure we dont get left behind  thats particularly important in terms of money-laundering, terrorism or pure theft, he said.

"It would be timely to have a proper look at what this means. It may be that we want to speed up our use of these kinds of thing in this country, but that makes it all the more important that we don't have a regulatory lag."

A Treasury spokesperson said: "We are working to address concerns about the use of cryptocurrencies, by negotiating to bring virtual currency exchange platforms and some wallet providers within Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing regulation".

Bitcoin hit record highs of $11,879 (8,842) on Sunday night, before dropping to $11,253 on Morning morning, according to online cryptocurrency trading platform Coin Exchange.
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Massive tax cuts for working families across America, was how Donald Trump described the tax bill, which passed the Senate on Saturday, in the first legislative success of his Presidency.

Trump also approvingly re-tweeted a group of economists at the weekend who claimed that: The enactment of a comprehensive overhaul - complete with a lower corporate tax rate - will ignite our economy with levels of growth not seen in generations.

But are these claims true? Will this tax package really benefit ordinary working American families?

And will it boost US growth?
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From Launch Complex 17 here at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, many of Nasas robotic planetary missions blasted off. Soon, the two massive towers that once cradled Delta 2 rockets will be torn down. A new tenant  Moon Express, a tiny company with far-out ambitions  is moving in.

Next year, the company, with just 30 employees, aims to be the first private entity to put a small robotic lander on the moon and perhaps win $20m (14.8m) in the Google Lunar X Prize competition. It is investing at least $1.85m to renovate decades-old buildings here. The company is transforming a parking lot into a miniature moonscape, and will also set up an engineering laboratory, a mission operations room and a test stand for spacecraft engine firings.

Moon Express would not need all of these facilities if its only goal were to win the Lunar X Prize. Its second spacecraft aims to land in 2019 near the moons south pole. A third, larger spacecraft in 2020 is to gather samples and then bring them back to Earth, the first haul of moon rocks since a Soviet robotic probes return in 1976.

But these plans almost came to a halt a couple of years ago  not because of technological challenges or financial shortfalls, but because of an international agreement known as the Outer Space Treaty, which is marking its 50th anniversary this year.

The treaty spells out what countries are and are not allowed to do in space. Its crowning achievement was stopping the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union from expanding into space. But the agreement may now be getting in the way of entrepreneurs with plans to push farther and faster into space than national agencies like Nasa.

Before it was something really, really hypothetical, said Fabio Tronchetti, a law professor at Harbin Institute of Technology in China. But now there are groups that are really serious. It changes everything.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded after launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida (Reuters)

Robert D Richards, Moon Expresss chief executive  whose business plan is to expand Earths economic sphere to the moon and beyond  is far from the only entrepreneur looking for business opportunities beyond our planet.

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, boldly proclaims that his company will begin sending colonists to Mars in a decade. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is using part of his fortune to finance his rocket company Blue Origin, and predicts millions of people will be living and working in space.

As these companies go where no businesses have gone before, they raise questions only fuzzily addressed by the Outer Space Treaty: what are private companies allowed to do in space? Can a company mine the moon or an asteroid and then sell what it has pulled out? How are countries to regulate these businesses?

Recommended Planets and moons are now part of Google Maps

Internationally, countries have been discussing how to answer these questions. In the United States, Congress has begun tackling regulatory issues. Some warn that if the United States does not set up business-friendly policies, then the startups could move elsewhere  including such seemingly unlikely places as Luxembourg.

A quick fix before launch

The Outer Space Treaty  officially it is the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space  declares that the moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all states parties to the treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The treaty also prohibited nations from making any claim of sovereignty over any part of the rest of the solar system.

Moon Express ran into a bureaucratic wall because the treaty declares that activities of nongovernmental entities  a classification that includes commercial companies  require authorisation and continuing supervision of the government. (The United States had insisted on the clause, rejecting the Soviet view that space exploration should be limited to governments.)

We had a mission planned, we had investors invested, but didnt have a way forward at the end of 2015, Richards testified during a Senate committee hearing in May. There wasnt anybody that didnt want to say yes. There was just no mechanism to do so.

The Federal Aviation Administration licenses rocket launches and re-entry of commercial spacecraft from orbit in order to ensure the safety of people on the ground. The Federal Communications Commission regulates communications satellites, and the Department of Commerce regulates commercial remote sensing satellites. But the US does not as yet have a process for authorising or supervising novel endeavours such as a private company landing on the moon.

Moon Express spent about a year working with the FAA, the State Department and other agencies to jury-rig what Richards called a temporary patch, using the FAAs existing authority to review rocket payloads in order to gain the approval Moon Express was seeking. In announcing the decision, however, the FAA said the approval applied only to this one Moon Express launch, and that not even Moon Express could count on a favourable outcome in the future.

Moon Express has begun discussions with the FAA for the second trip to the lunar south pole, and Richards is confident that the company could successfully pull off its first three flights via the current regulatory patchwork. But if Congress and the President do not come up with a better solution, Moon Express, SpaceX, Blue Origin and the rest of the emerging industry could run into more bureaucratic walls, and companies might start looking for other places to set up shop.

Richards remains optimistic. Each company is moving forward with some assumption of risk but a presumption of the US government coming through with frameworks that allow that to happen, he said in October during a visit at his companys Florida headquarters.

Smoothing a path to space rocks

Another space upstart is Planetary Resources, a small company located in an unremarkable office park outside Seattle. Its early investors included Larry Page, co-founder of Google, and Charles Simonyi, a former chief software architect at Microsoft. The company is also taking advantage of an investment from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Planetary Resourcess goal is to mine the solar systems asteroids. Luxembourg, a tiny nation with a long history in mining, has bet 200m (176m) on this industry that does not exist. That includes 23m invested in Planetary Resources. In return, Luxembourg owns a 10 per cent share of the company, said Etienne Schneider, the countrys deputy prime minister.

In April, Luxembourgs crown prince, his wife and government officials paid a visit to Planetary Resources, putting on white gowns, gloves, wispy caps and baby blue bootees  a distinctly unroyal outfit sometimes called a bunny suit  to take a close look at where the company is assembling small satellites.

Robert D Richards, chief executive of Moon Express, whose business plan is to expand Earths economic sphere to the moon and beyond

In June, Schneider returned to the United States to host a symposium with a roomful of bankers and venture capitalists, a vivid demonstration that private space investment has reached a tipping point of credibility.

A Goldman Sachs report about innovative space businesses that came out in the spring seemed to agree. Space mining could be more realistic than perceived, the report said. While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the actual financial and technological barriers are far lower.

At the Manhattan presentation, Schneider acknowledged that the notion of asteroid mining sounds like science fiction and that he often gets quizzical questions about why Luxembourg is spending money chasing this.

Schneider recalled that during a visit to Silicon Valley in 2012, he met S Pete Worden, then the director of the Nasa Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California, who suggested that Luxembourg look into asteroid mining. At the time, I listened to him and wondered what this guy might have smoked, Schneider said. But more discussions and research convinced Schneider this was a promising possibility.

For Planetary Resources, the first wave of development is to culminate in a doughnut-shape spacecraft heading on a prospecting mission to a near-Earth asteroid in 2020.

Sometime after that, the company hopes to mine in earnest  for seemingly mundane water ice. But water, in addition to potentially providing something to drink for astronauts, can be split into hydrogen and oxygen. Both can be used as rocket propellent; the oxygen, of course, also can provide air to breathe.

As a business, Planetary Resources is betting that by the time it extracts water from an asteroid there will be a customer such as Nasa interested in buying water, hydrogen and oxygen.

Eventually, the company aims to extract platinum, currently worth more than $900 an ounce, and other precious metals.

To make these pursuits easier, Luxembourg passed a space law that took effect this summer. Planetary Resources has set up its European office there. Moves like this one are in part motivating policymakers in the US to devote more attention to domestic laws that govern commercial space activities.

Revising space law

Ambiguities in the Outer Space Treaty currently create uncertainty over whether anyone can profit from such business ventures. Article 2 in particular states: Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

If the United States is prohibited from appropriating a celestial body, is a private company allowed to appropriate a mineral mined out of a celestial body? The Moon Treaty, finalised in 1979, declared that any resources from space should be shared among all nations, but most countries, including the United States, never signed or ratified it.

Two years ago, Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed a law that said private companies can own and sell what they extract, although, abiding by the language of the Outer Space Treaty, the companies cannot claim ownership of the celestial body itself.

This year, Congress is revisiting the Outer Space Treaty again, hoping to boost nascent space companies looking to push outward into the solar system.

The Outer Space Treaty declares that the moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all states parties to the treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes (Reuters)

Republicans in Congress have said they want the new space ventures to thrive in permissionless innovation, similar to the ethos that nourished new enterprises on the internet. This spring, the House science committee packed those ideas into a bill that has been sent to the full House.

It would put the regulatory power in an Office of Space Commerce, which would have 60 days to decide whether to approve or deny a companys application. The full House has not yet taken up the bill, and the Senate is still working on its version.

Officials at Moon Express and Planetary Resources say they do not want unfettered freedom in space, nor do they seek withdrawal from the Outer Space Treaty. Our goal is to have a space environment that is populated by people acting responsibly, says Peter Marquez, vice president for global engagement at Planetary Resources. If there arent any adults in the room, it concerns me. If it turns into the wild, wild West of just do whatever you want, then that kind of runs against concepts and precepts of Outer Space Treaty.

These companies do want the regulations to be light-touch and hope that the default inclination of the US government will be to say yes.

Once the price of transportation comes down, more business opportunities will open up, Richards says.

The moon, peppered with the impacts of asteroids over the aeons, should also possess dollops of platinum and other precious metals. Helium-3, embedded in the lunar crust by the solar wind, could be fuel for future fusion power plants.

Moon Expresss family of spacecraft could be a boon to scientists, sending low-cost probes not just to the moon but to other planets.

Its second spacecraft is to carry a shoebox-size experimental telescope for the International Lunar Observatory Association. Some locations near the lunar south pole, offering a continuous view of the universe, could be ideal for an astronomical observatory.

Patches of eternal sunshine on the moon could be limited, valuable resources that nations and companies will someday squabble over.

Richards compares this moment he sees coming to the 19th century California Gold Rush, when gold diggers jousted over the most lucrative places to sift ore. But he is confident that the new competitors would reach compromises.

I dont think theres going to be bad players per se, but there could be arguments over areas of operation overlap, he says. But those are problems for the future, and thatll be a great problem to have.

 New York Times
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A teenager was placed in a headlock and forced to apologise for being gay during a homophobic attack on a London Underground train, police have said.

British Transport Police are appealing for information about the two men who allegedly attacked a 19-year-old who was travelling on a westbound Jubilee line train between West Ham and North Greenwich.

The teenager and his friends were wearing fancy dress for an event they were going to during the attack at around 11:10pm on 21 October.

The police said the two men boarded the train at West Ham and began verbally abusing the victim and his friend, using homophobic language.

When they were challenged, the BTP said they became more aggressive and one of the men pulled the victim into a headlock, throttled him.

The second man then allegedly took the the victims phone and threatened to stab him.

The pair allegedly demanded the victim apologise for being gay which he was forced to do as he was struggling to breathe in the headlock.

When they let him go and handed back his phone a fight ensued between the victims friends and the two men.

One of the victims friends, a 25-year-old woman, was punched and pushed to the ground. She was bruised but the original victim did not sustain any injuries.

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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 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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. 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The alleged abusers left the train at North Greenwich.

A spokesman for the BTP said: Officers would like to speak to the people shown in the images as they may have information which could help the investigation.

Hate crime will not be tolerated by British Transport Police. We believe that everyone has the right to travel safety.

We wont tolerate behaviour where someone is targeted because they are perceived to be different, or made to feel uncomfortable on their journey.

Anyone with information has been asked to contact the BTP on 0800 40 50 40 or text 61016, quoting reference number 273 of 1/12.
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Organisers of an anti-Donald Trump protest group are hoping to gather a million people to demonstrate against the president after details of his working visit to the UK were reported.

More than 3,800 people have committed to a planned protest against the president on Facebook, with another 10,000 marked as interested in the event, just hours since it was set up. Organised by journalist Owen Jones and the Stop Trump protest group, the protest is planned for 26 and 27 February at the US Embassy and 10 Downing Street.

The event follows reports that the president could visit the UK early next year as part of a working visit to attend the opening of the new US Embassy in London. The Sunday Times reported that a date has been pencilled in for February, despite Theresa Mays condemnation of the presidents decision to share a series of Islamophobic posts by far-right group Britain First on Twitter.

 Stand Up To Racism protests against Donald Trump's Britain First retweets

The Protest Trumps visit event on Facebook states: Put the date in your diaries. If Donald Trump attempts to sneak into the UK to open the US Embassy on 26/27 February 2018 and also pop in to see Theresa May at Downing Street  he will be met by a million of us attempting a citizens arrest of him for incitement of racial hatred.

Mr Jones tweeted about the event on Sunday with the message: Stop what youre doing: Donald Trump is set to come to Britain on *26/27 February*. Lets make this the biggest demonstration in British history, sharing a link to the protest.

The Stop Trump campaigns organisers said last week they believed more than a million people would take to the streets in demonstration against the president if his trip went ahead.

Weve had a huge response to our campaign over the past 24 hours, particularly on social media, a spokesperson told the Evening Standard.

The British government know that the protests against a Trump visit could be the biggest weve ever seen in the country. Upwards of a million people could take to the streets, the spokesperson said, adding: We could mobilise hundreds of thousands at a days notice.

An estimated 30,000 people marched on Downing Street earlier this year in protest against Mr Trumps proposed travel ban against seven majority-Muslim countries.

The 2003 Stop the War protest against Britain's involvement in Iraq remains probably the largest protest in UK history, with police estimating 750,000 attended. Organisers said at the time that there were 2 million marchers, although that was based on an extrapolation from an ICM poll of those who said they attended.
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An award-winning resort has been left deeply offended after unwittingly hiring out a meeting room to far-right group Britain First.

The Wyboston Lakes resort in Bedfordshire said the controversial organisation booked the 2,250 room under a different name for its conference.

Pictures posted online by the fringe political group's leader Paul Golding appeared to show dozens of people sitting in a small room decked with banners declaring Taking Our Country Back!

The resort faced criticism online when news of the conference, the location of which had not been made public by the group, became clear.

The meeting was booked at short notice under the name Patriot Merchandise, a resort spokesman said, and did not appear to have any obvious connections to Britain First.

Patriot Merchandise is listed at Companies House as a private limited company based in Belfast.

No staff entered the meeting room during the event and the banners were erected only in the closed off conference room, the spokesman said.

The hire cost of the five-hour event on Saturday will now be donated to an as-yet undecided charity.

In a statement released on Sunday evening the resort spokesman said: For the sake of clarity, had we known the nature of the event being held by Britain First, we would not have taken the booking, as the values of our organisation conflicts with theirs in totality.

Wyboston Lakes, which was ranked at 28 in this year's Sunday Times best 100 companies to work for list, said it embraces diversity.

The spokesman added: We can fully understand the concerns expressed, but we can only refer to our company values and principles, our standing as an award-winning employer and assure everyone that we are deeply offended by their presence on our property.

Britain First's conference came days after Donald Trump retweeted three anti-Muslim videos posted by the group's deputy leader Jayda Fransen.

Two featured violent scenes, including someone being pushed off a roof and another person being assaulted.

The group has since boasted they received hundreds of new membership applications and said its Facebook posts were reaching hundreds of thousands more users.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 16 November 2022 Emma Woolf, great niece of British author Virginia Woolf, and her son Ludovic sit next to a new bronze statue of Woolf, unveiled in Richmond, London Reuters 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

Fransen, 31, from Penge, south east London, is on bail facing trial over four charges of causing religiously aggravated harassment as part of a Kent Police investigation into the distribution of leaflets and the posting of online videos during a trial held at Canterbury Crown Court in May.

She will go on trial at Folkestone Magistrates' Court on 29 January alongside Golding who faces three similar charges.

Fransen will also appear in court in Northern Ireland in December charged with using threatening and abusive language in connection with a speech she made at an anti-terrorism demonstration in Belfast on 6 August.

PA
Gov. Scott Walkers administration has finalized a rule that would require able-bodied adult recipients of food stamps to be screened and possibly tested for drugs.

The move is the latest step in the ongoing battle over whether such testing is legal under federal law.

Walker has framed the issue as addressing the states worker shortage and as a continuation of the states landmark welfare reform efforts begun in the 1990s under Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson.

Employers have jobs available, but they need skilled workers who can pass a drug test, Walker said in a statement. This rule change means people battling substance use disorders will be able to get the help they need to get healthy, and get back into the workforce.

Walker and the Legislature included the requirement in the 2015-17 budget and the state preemptively sued the federal government in 2015 for the right to implement the new program.

A federal judge tossed out that lawsuit last fall because the state hadnt implemented the plan yet, so it wasnt ready to be litigated. The state argued President Barack Obamas administration had advised that federal law doesnt allow food stamp recipients to be drug-tested, but that another section of federal law allows such testing.

President Donald Trumps administration has indicated, throughout the administration, interest in working with states to provide flexibility, Wisconsin Department of Health Services spokeswoman Julie Lund said. But there hasnt been a direct communication from the Trump administration green-lighting the program.

The rule requires able-bodied adults receiving food stamps to fill out a questionnaire and, based on the answers, requires a drug test. Those who test positive for drugs must undergo treatment.

Under the plan, childless FoodShare participants who fail a drug test would be eligible for state-funded rehabilitation treatment if they dont have any other way to pay for it.

The state estimates out of 66,200 individuals who would fill out the questionnaire, 2,000 would be required to take a drug test. Of that amount, 220 are expected to test positive for drugs and require treatment.

Lund said the questionnaire will be similar to a 10-question Drug Abuse Screening Test used by treatment clinics that asks about illegal drug-related behavior over the past 12 months.

The Legislature has up to 120 days to review the administrative rule, after which it will be published and take effect sometime next spring.

Walker has already implemented worker training requirements for FoodShare program participants. Since April 2015, able-bodied adults ages 18-49 have been required to participate in a worker training program or work at least 80 hours per month to maintain eligibility for Foodshare. Some 20,000 participants have gone through the program, Walkers office said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Women in prison in England and Wales are often victims of much more serious offences than the ones they have been convicted of, a charity has warned.

A report published today shows 57 per cent of female inmates have been victims of domestic violence, while 53 per cent have experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child.

The figures do not tell the whole story, according to by Prison Reform Trust.

Both figures, taken from Ministry of Justice data, are likely to be an underestimate because many women fear disclosing abuse

Previous research by charity Women in Prison shows 79 per cent of the women who use their services have experienced domestic violence or sexual abuse.

After conducting focus groups with women about their experience of committing offences in response to coercive and controlling behaviour from a partner, researchers identified strong links between womens experience of domestic and sexual abuse and coercive relationships and their offending.

They warned that this can trap women in a vicious cycle of victimisation and criminal activity, often exacerbated by poverty, substance dependency or poor mental health, and having a severely detrimental impact on any dependent children.

Several women said that they had committed offences on many occasions and over prolonged periods of time in order to support a partners drug use  including by shoplifting, by selling drugs and by committing other undisclosed offences saying they felt trapped in these unhealthy relationships.

The female inmates told researchers they felt the police were rarely sympathetic or helpful to them as victims of domestic abuse, and said they did not have confidence in the police to identify the primary aggressor and provide protection. A number reported having been repeatedly arrested by the police in incidents of domestic violence where they had not been the primary aggressor.

Previous research shows womens offending is more likely than mens to be prompted by their relationships or by financial concerns. Nearly half of women prisoners (48 per cent) questioned for the Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction (SPCR) longitudinal survey reported having committed offences to support someone elses drug use, compared with 22 per cent of male prisoners.

Jenny Earle, director of the Prison Reform Trusts programme to reduce womens imprisonment, urged that it was time for concerted action to help break the cycle of victimisation and offending.

Our recommendations have been developed in consultation with women who have been personally driven to commit crimes by violent partners, and the services that support them, she said.

If implemented we would see both a reduction in the incidence of domestic abuse and fewer women unnecessarily imprisoned.

The Prison Reform Trust insists specific guidance is required in order to ensure that criminal justice agencies, as well as police officers, respond appropriately to women offenders who are themselves victims or survivors of domestic abuse.

The charity adds that there is a lack of explicit guidance within the legal system on the appropriate response to women suspected of committing a range of offences who are victims themselves.

While new legislation recognises coercion as a mitigating factor for some offences, the charity says that the sentencing process needs to be better informed about domestic and sexual abuse as significant drivers to womens offending.

It emerged last month that the law against coercive and controlling behaviour has led to no more than 20 charges by half of Englands police forces in the two years since it was enacted.

The report concludes: The Home Office and Ministry of Justice should work closely together, and in consultation with the Welsh government, to ensure that the forthcoming women offenders strategy addresses the extent to which domestic and sexual violence and abuse underpin the life experience of many women offenders, and include clear expectations on criminal justice agencies to improve their responses to women.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA

Police, prosecuting authorities, probation services and the courts should adopt the practice of appropriate, routine inquiry into womens histories of domestic and sexual violence at each stage of the criminal justice process to ensure informed decision-making and proportionate responses.

Dawn Butler MP, Labours Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, responded to the report saying: As a magistrate I saw first-hand just how brave women had to be to engage in the criminal justice system. I was frustrated at the lack of support we could offer and as the probation service was stripped back that support became almost non-existent for female focused services. To break the cycle of abuse and offending takes emotional intelligence and a commitment from the Government.

A Government spokesperson said: We are committed to doing all we can to address issues around female offending so we can deliver more effective rehabilitation and better respond to the complex needs of offenders who have been victims of domestic abuse.

We will shortly be setting out our strategy for female offenders, to improve outcomes for women in the community and custody. Amongst other things, this important piece of work will look at how we can improve the services that are available in the community so we can cut crime.

Tackling domestic abuse is key priority for this Government and we will also be publishing a landmark draft Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill to protect and support victims, recognise the life-long impact these crimes have on children, and ensure agencies respond effectively.
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An Indian business tycoon due to face extradition proceedings has insisted fraud allegations against him are unfounded - after an evacuation of the court building brought him face to face with journalists.

Entrepreneur Vijay Mallya, chairman of the UB Group and co-owner of Silverstone-based Sahara Force India F1 team, is wanted in his home country and was due before Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday.

But a fire alarm forced him instead to walk into the glare of the media spotlight outside the central London building.

Reporters from across the globe had gathered to see the drinks and aviation magnate arrive and quickly seized the opportunity to question him.

TV crews from India pursued Mr Mallya haphazardly around the pavement as he tried to avoid being cornered.

He told reporters the accusations against him were unfounded, while angrily telling one broadcaster he would not stand for trial by media.

Mr Mallya was arrested in April by the Metropolitan Police's extradition unit on behalf of authorities in India, where he is wanted in connection with money laundering and high value bank demands.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 16 November 2022 Emma Woolf, great niece of British author Virginia Woolf, and her son Ludovic sit next to a new bronze statue of Woolf, unveiled in Richmond, London Reuters 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

India's Enforcement Directorate has been gathering evidence as part of its investigation into the tycoon's debts, totalling 977 million, linked to Mr Mallya's now-defunct airline Kingfisher.

PA
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Theresa May has a 50-50 chance of coming home from Brussels with a deal on sufficient progress today, the European Parliament's chief negotiator has said.

The Prime Minister is in the EU capital to break a deadlock in Article 50 talks over the Northern Ireland border, divorce bill, and citizens' rights  which she needs to secure with the EU before trade talks can begin.

Guy Verhofstadt, the EP's Brexit lead, met with EU president Jean-Claude Juncker and chief negotiator Michel Barnier this morning  ahead of their Mr Juncker's with Ms May later in the day.

He made the comments speaking to reporters outside the meeting.

He added: "During my meeting with Juncker EU, I reiterated that EU citizens in the UK should not have to go through an unclear, costly and burdensome procedure.

"Their rights must be guaranteed. They came to the UK in good faith and must be treated with the respect they deserve."
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Ireland is surprised and disappointed that the UK was unable to agree a Brexit deal, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has said, after an acceptable outcome for the text was agreed earlier with the EU.

His comments came shortly after Theresa May and the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told a press conference in Brussels that while progress had been made, they had failed to reach an overall agreement.

But Mr Varadkar said in Dublin that the Irish Government received confirmation earlier on Monday from both Downing Street and EU officials that a text on the contentious issue of the Irish border had been agreed, and met the concerns of the Irish Republic.

The text, the Irish PM hoped, would have formed part of the broader UK-EU agreement on phase one of the negotiations and would allow us all to move onto phase two.

He continued: I am surprised and disappointed that the British Government now appears not to be in a position that was agreed earlier today.

I accept that the Prime Minister has asked for more time and I know that she faces many challenges and I acknowledge that she is negotiating in good faith. But my position and that of the Irish Government is unequivocal.

Recommended No Brexit deal in Brussels after May and Juncker meet

Ireland wants to proceed to phase two  its very much in our interests to do so. However, we cannot agree to do this unless we have firm guarantees there will not be any hard border in Ireland.

I have spoken to President Juncker again in the last hour and he has confirmed to me that our position remains Europes position and I still hope this matter can be concluded in the coming days as was agreed.

Leo Varadkar arrives at Government Buildings in Dublin to attend an emergency cabinet meeting on Brexit (PA)

A breakthrough on the issue appeared on the cards on Monday but hopes were dashed by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who Ms May currently relies on to prop up her fragile Government in Westminster.

After reports emerged that the UK Government was considering a deal on the border that would have effectively provided Northern Ireland with a special status over the rest of the UK, the DUP reacted furiously. They said the party would stop any efforts which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Speaking at a brief press conference in the European Commission building after a three-hour working lunch with the PM, Mr Juncker said: Despite our best efforts and the significant progress we and our teams have made over the past days on these main withdrawal issues it was not possibly to reach a complete agreement today.

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

Despite the setback Mr Juncker said he was still confident of reaching sufficient progress before next week and said the UK and EU would meet again for more discussions before the European Council summit on 14 and 15 December. He said Ms May was a tough negotiator and not an easy one and was defending the point of view of Britain with all the energy we know she has.

The Prime Minister echoed his sentiments. We have had a constructive meeting today, both sides have been working hard in good faith, weve been negotiating hard and a lot of progress has been made. But one a lot of the issues there is a common understanding and its clear, crucially, that we want to move forward together, she said.

On a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation and those will continue.
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British and Irish officials have tentatively agreed to keep Northern Irelands regulations in line with those of the EU after Brexit, a leaked draft agreement on the issue of the Irish border suggests.

The draft deal text, obtained by Irish public broadcaster RTE, would effectively keep Northern Ireland in the single market and customs union after Brexit by keeping EU regulations in place, unlike the rest of the UK.

Sources in Brussels however told The Independent that though officials on both sides were in broad agreement over the solution to the problem, Downing Street has so far felt unable to sign off on it.

Recommended Theresa May meets EU presidents in Brussels to break Brexit deadlock

One difficulty for Theresa May is that the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)  who she relies on for a majority in the House of Commons, has said that it would veto any bid to move Northern Ireland closer to the Republic  potentially explaining Downing Streets reticence to sign off the leaked draft agreement.

RTE says the draft deal said: In the absence of agreed solutions the UK will ensure that there continues to be no divergence from those rules of the internal market and the customs union which, now or in the future, support North South cooperation and the protection of the Good Friday Agreement.

It adds that this paragraph was later amended to say there would be continued regulatory alignment on the island of Ireland.

Speaking to a briefing of journalists in Westminster, Downing Street rubbished the draft leak.

"The PM has been clear that the UK is leaving the European Union as a whole and the territorial and economic integrity of the United Kingdom will be protected," the Prime Minister's spokesperson said.

 EU will refuse UK's Brexit demands if Ireland is not happy with plans

Rubbishing the Irish public broadcaster, he added: "RTE also reported this morning we were holding a Cabinet meeting and I missed that if it occurred."

Despite Downing Street's public dismissal of the plan, Sky News reports that the UK Government is "confident" it can get the DUP to agree to a deal by the end of today.

Theresa May has travelled to Brussels on Monday morning to meet EU presidents Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk for face-to-face talks in the hope of breaking the deadlock.

Whether the results of the meetings will be made public today is currently uncertain, with the EU's college of commissioners set to meet on Wednesday to formally discuss progress.
 Close Theresa May arrives at the European Commission for talks on Ireland border and trade negotiations

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Theresa May has failed to strike a deal with Brussels that would allow Britain to unlock Brexit trade talks with the EU.

The Prime Minister had hoped to convince European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker that enough progress had been made to move on from the first phase of talks, which hinged on progress on issues including citizens rights, the so-called divorce bill and the Irish border

In a joint press conference after their lunch meeting, Mr Juncker said it was "not possible to reach a complete agreement today" but acknowledged that "significant progress" had been made.

Both leaders declared they were "confident" that a solution could be found in time for a crunch European Council summit on December 14.

But Ms May faces trouble ahead, as a leaked document outlining plans to keep Northern Ireland in the customs union to prevent a hard border prompted outrage among her allies in the Democratic Unionist Party.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called for Scotland to have remain in the single market, if Northern Ireland was permitted to do so, while Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones and London mayor Sadiq Khan also piled in to demand bespoke deals.

Also today, Brexit Secretary David Davis leads a committee stage debate on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill  which would transfer EU law onto British statute books.

Please allow a moment for the live blog to load.
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What caused todays Brexit crisis?

The Democratic Unionist Party said it will not accept a deal on the Irish border question brokered by Theresa May which treats Northern Ireland differently to the rest of the UK, throwing the already difficult talks into chaos.

The DUP is effectively propping up Ms Mays minority Government, giving the group of just 10 Irish MPs a significant influence on UK politics.

DUP leader Arlene Foster said: We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom, she said, speaking at Stormont.

What was supposed to happen?

Theresa May met Jean Claude Junker, the President of the European Commission, in Brussels for the latest round of Brexit negotiations.

A deal on the Irish border question has to be reached as a matter of urgency, as when the UK leaves the EU in March 2019, the Republic of Ireland will remain a member while Northern Ireland, as part of the UK, will be outside of it  an unprecedented situation because the Irish Republic and the UK joined the union at the same time in 1973.

The hope was that a draft proposal would have been agreed allowing Northern Ireland to maintain regulatory alignment with the EU, preventing a hard border with the Irish Republic.

What was the sticking point?

Ms Foster gave a fiery press conference, declaring any such deal had not been approved by her party  regarded as hardline unionists.

She said: The Republic of Ireland government is trying to unilaterally change the Belfast agreement without our impact and without our consent.

Of course we will not stand for that.

Within 20 minutes of this conference, Ms May is understood to have halted the talks to make an emergency call to Ms Foster.

After a three and a half hour working lunch, the Prime Minister and Mr Juncker emerged to admit in a slightly awkward press conference they had reached a stalemate in the talks.

What does regulatory alignment actually mean?

Regulatory alignment could mean both Ireland and Northern Ireland following the same rules governing trade, to ensure that goods can continue to move freely across a soft border with no customs checks.

But critics say this would effectively move the customs border between the UK and the Republic into the Irish Sea. This alarms the Unionists as they say it would mean Northern Ireland being treated as though it is part of a united Ireland instead as part of the UK.

The border between the North and the Republic of Ireland has never been a hard one, but the proposal to keep things as they are in terms of free movement of both goods and people would create a backdoor between the EU and the UK  for immigrants as well as goods.

What other implications would regulatory alignment have for a post-Brexit UK?

Leaders of the devolved governments in Scotland and Wales as well as London Mayor Sadiq Khan seized upon the possibility of separate trading arrangements for different areas of the UK.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, a strident Brexit opponent, said: If one part of the UK can retain regulatory alignment with the EU and effectively stay in the single market  which is the right solution for Northern Ireland  there is surely no good practical reason why others cant.

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

And Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones said: We cannot allow different parts of the UK to be more favourably treated than others.

"If one part of the UK is granted continued participation in the single market and customs union, then we fully expect to be made the same offer."

Mr Khan said the deal being discussed in Brussels would have "huge ramifications for London", which voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU.

"If Theresa May has conceded that it's possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market and customs union after Brexit  and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs."

What will happen next?

Pro-remain MPs, who now favour a soft Brexit, have seized on the sticking point over the Irish border question to say the simplest solution would be for the UK to remain in the single market and customs union  which would entail paying into the EU budget and accepting continued freedom of movement  an absolute red line for most Brexit supporters.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has said he is prepared to give Ms May more time to reach an agreement.

Speaking in Dublin, he said the British and Irish governments had agreed the draft wording of a deal on the Irish border on Monday morning, and that he was "surprised and disappointed" it had been pulled from the table at the eleventh hour.

Ms May said the UK and the EU would "reconvene before the end of the week".

Is the peace process under threat?

While there is no immediate threat of a return to the troubles, the political situation in Northern Ireland remains delicate. Leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg accused Dublin of promoting the creation of a united Ireland by trying to force Britains hand on the border issue.

Mr Juncker insisted there was a common understanding on most relative issues, while Ms May said the meeting had been constructive.

Mr Varadkar said that while it is important to listen to the views of the DUP, it is also crucial to bear in mind the position of the other northern Irish parties.

Irish nationalist parties, including the SDLP, favour the whole of the UK remaining in the customs union and the single market.

Mr Varadkar insisted there is no hidden agenda, and said the soft border solution complies fully with the terms of the Good Friday agreement, which sealed the peace process in 1998.

Could this mean the beginning of the end of Theresa Mays premiership?

Pundits have been predicting Ms May will not last the course of the Brexit negotiations ever since she lost her majority at the June general election, having to rely on a 1bn agreement with the DUP to cling onto power.

This tenuous confidence and supply arrangement means the unionist party votes with the Government on all crucial matters of budget and finance, allowing the Prime Minister a slim working majority to get bills passed through the House of Commons.

The deal brokered between the Conservatives and the DUP was much criticised by opposition parties at the time, with pundits predicting there would be trouble ahead.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said after the breakdown: The real reason for todays failure is the grubby deal the Government did with the DUP after the election."

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: The DUP must not be allowed to dictate the UKs Brexit negotiations. This again shows the Conservatives are in office but not in power.

Should the DUP decide to break the agreement and turn its back on the Conservatives, Ms May would be left in an all but impossible position, unable to get any legislation through, undone by the coming together of the separate historical controversies of the Irish question and Europe,  and with another general election on the cards.
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The Democratic Unionist Party has said it will not accept a deal on the Irish border being brokered by Theresa May, threatening her with a fresh crisis.

Staging an emergency press conference in Belfast, Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, ruled out accepting any move which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

The warning comes as a deal appeared close in Brussels under which the UK would allow Northern Ireland to maintain regulatory alignment with the EU.

Ms Foster did not directly repeat the DUPs threat last week to pull the plug on the deal that props up the Prime Minister in No 10.

Instead, she described the Irish Governments suggestions that the UK was poised to bow to its concerns over the post-Brexit border speculation.

But she added: We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom.

We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

The economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom will not be compromised in any way.

Ms Foster said No 10 should be in no doubt about its stance, adding: Her Majestys Government understands the DUP position.

Ms May did not comment on the reports as she arrived for a key working lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker, which will be followed by talks with European Council president Donald Tusk.

Preventing the return of a hard land border in Ireland has emerged as the key hurdle to getting agreement from the EU to move the Brexit negotiations on to future trade.

Regulatory alignment could see both Ireland and Northern Ireland following the same rules governing trade, to ensure that goods can continue to move freely across a soft border with no checks.

But a deal could put the Prime Ministers domestic position in peril, because she depends on the votes of the 10 DUP MPs in order to pass a Budget and Brexit legislation.

Earlier, Ms May's official spokesman insisted any agreement on the Irish border would protect the "territorial and economic integrity" of the UK.

Ahead of the meetings in Brussels, he told a regular Westminster briefing: "The PM has been clear that the UK is leaving the European Union as a whole and the territorial and economic integrity of the United Kingdom will be protected."

Responding directly to questions about the report of agreement on regulatory alignment by Irish broadcaster RTE, he said: "RTE also reported this morning we were holding a Cabinet meeting and I missed that if it occurred."
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Britain has agreed a deal with the EU on the issue of the Northern Ireland border that would effectively keep the province in the single market and customs union, EU chiefs have told members of the European Parliament.

The Independent understands that a joint text on Northern Ireland drawn up by UK and EU officials was read out at a meeting between the Parliaments Brexit taskforce with Michel Barnier and Jean-Claude Juncker today.

MEPs were told that Theresa May, who is visiting Brussels later today to have meetings with Mr Juncker and Donald Tusk, the European Council president, was onboard with the agreement.

Recommended Theresa May meets EU presidents in Brussels to break Brexit deadlock

Following the meeting, Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts, a member of the Brexit taskforce who was in the room, also told Sky News that the UK Government had agreed to a special situation for Northern Ireland.

I think the discussions that weve seen in the last few months have allowed the British government to realise the implications of the Good Friday agreement, he said.

Basically, the British government would commit to maintain the full alignment of single market and customs union legislation that might potentially create a border.

 Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts: 'The British government would commit to maintain the full alignment of single market and customs union legislation'

Asked whether there would be a wider deal on sufficient progress today, Mr Lamberts said: I would put my money on it. Pending the goodwill of the Prime Ministers of Ireland and the United Kingdom we can get a deal today.

A leak of a draft text obtained by Irish public broadcaster RTE pledged to ensure there would be continued regulatory alignment on the island of Ireland.

In the absence of agreed solutions the UK will ensure that there continues to be no divergence from those rules of the internal market and the customs union which, now or in the future, support North South cooperation and the protection of the Good Friday Agreement, the original draft said.

One difficulty for Theresa May is that the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)  who she relies on for a majority in the House of Commons, has said that it would veto any bid to move Northern Ireland closer to the Republic.

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

There are also outstanding issues on the issue of citizens rights, such as the cost and complexity of the application process for EU citizens wanting to stay in the UK to gain settled status.

The UK is understood to be proposing the creation of an ombudsman to oversee the implementation of the withdrawal agreement with regards to citizens' rights. This body could then refer cases to UK courts, with judges then being able to voluntarily refer cases on in turn to the European Court of Justice.
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Theresa Mays Brexit strategy is in disarray after the Irish Prime Minister dramatically accused her of reneging on an agreement that would have ended the deadlock in the talks.

On a day of drama, the Prime Minister pulled the plug on a deal on the Irish border after it was rejected by the Democratic Unionist Party which props her up in power  triggering claims she is being held to ransom.

The embarrassment left Ms May scrambling to arrange crisis talks with the DUP before she heads back to Brussels later this week, with the clock ticking on the negotiations.

EU leaders have demanded she guarantee there will no hard land border in Ireland before a summit next week, if the talks are to move on to discussing future trade and a transitional deal.

The unravelling of the deal also left many Conservatives questioning Ms Mays handling of the talks, amid disbelief that the DUP had not been squared off in advance.

The talks broke down after Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, ruled out any move which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom, she said, speaking at Stormont.

The party  despite being the Tories partner in government  appeared to be blindsided by the UKs apparent concession of regulatory alignment on both sides of the border, to avoid checks.

Within 20 minutes, Ms May interrupted her talks with Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU Commission President, to telephone Ms Foster. When she went back to the lunch, the deal was off.

Later, Leo Varadkar, the Irish Prime Minister, went on the attack, accusing Ms May of reneging on a firm agreement to solve the border controversy and kick-start the talks.

The responsibility of any prime minister is to ensure that they can follow through on agreements that they make and we are surprised and disappointed that they havent been able to, he told a Dublin press conference.

The UK government and EU leaders had agreed a text earlier in the day that gave us the assurance we needed  only for Ms May to ask for more time, he said.

At Westminster, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats seized on the role of the DUP. Jeremy Corbyn said: The real reason for todays failure is the grubby deal the Government did with the DUP after the election.

Theresa May relies on Arlene Fosters DUP for her commons majority after losing it at the general election she called (PA Wire/PA Images) (PA)

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: The DUP must not be allowed to dictate the UKs Brexit negotiations. This again shows the Conservatives are in office but not in power.

And Ben Bradshaw, the former Labour minister, tweeted: Britain is being held to ransom by a party thats propping up the Tory Government and represents minority opinion in Northern Ireland.

In Brussels, Ms May put a brave face on the disappointment, saying the two sides would reconvene before the end of the week for further negotiations.

On many of the issues there is a common understanding. And it is clear, crucially, that we want to move forward together, she said

The Irish PM said the UK and Ireland had reached an agreement (BBC)

But on a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation and those will continue.

Later, Donald Tusk made clear how close the EU believed it had been to a deal, tweeting: I was ready to present draft EU27 guidelines tomorrow for #Brexit talks on transition and future.

The European Council President argued an agreement at next weeks EU summit was still possible, but warned: It is now getting very tight.

In Dublin, Mr Varadkar said he was happy to give Ms May more time, saying: I do trust her and I believe she is negotiating in good faith.

But he rejected claims that regulatory alignment for Northern Ireland was a weakening of Dublins earlier demand for no regulatory divergence, insisting they meant the same thing.

If so, that adds weight to the argument that such a deal would see Northern Ireland effectively remain inside both the EU single market and customs union.

A draft of the agreement, obtained by the Irish public broadcaster RTE, read: In the absence of agreed solutions the UK will ensure that there continues to be no divergence from those rules of the internal market and the customs union which, now or in the future, support North South cooperation and the protection of the Good Friday Agreement.

Nicola Sturgeon was fast out of the blocks, insisting that  if Northern Ireland was to be allowed to effectively stay in the single market  then so should Scotland.

The First Ministers call was quickly echoed by Carwyn Jones, her counterpart in Wales, and London mayor Sadiq Khan, who both demanded bespoke Brexit deals.

Intensive talks will now take place between the Government and the DUP over the next few days and the Cabinet is expected to discuss the continued deadlock on Tuesday.

Boris Johnson and Michael Gove may seek answers on suggestions that the Prime Minister is willing to accept regulatory alignment for the whole of the UK, if necessary.

Pursuing that course would almost certainly trigger resignations by Brexiteers, who are determined that Britain has complete freedom to pursue trade deals with different regulations.

The Prime Ministers spokesman refused to discuss that claim, saying: This is an ongoing negotiation. Im not going to comment on that.

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

Anti-Brexit campaigners also hit out at the DUPs role in the affair.

It seems clear that Arlene Foster and the DUP are calling the shots and now are running the Government. Labour and Conservative remain minded MPs outnumber this sad little rump by more than ten to one. It is time for these people to stand up and make themselves heard, said Eloise Todd, chief executive of Best For Britain.

While DUP MPs might have cost Theresa May more than Pogba, it is the British public who are paying the price for their intransigence.

What galls me most is hearing the DUP saying that they want the same rules as the rest of the UK  if they believed, that they would have acted on same sex marriage and abortion but yet, they wont. Maybe more public cash will now be sent across the Irish Sea to keep the DUP happy.
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Conservative MP Nadine Dorries has been forced to defend her approach to cyber-security after she revealed she routinely shares her login passwords with all her staff, including interns.

The backbencher took to Twitter to defend her colleague Damien Green, who has been accused of having pornography on his Commons computer.

She said a retired police officers claim that Mr Green must have been responsible for material found on his machine, was utterly preposterous.

My staff log onto my computer on my desk with my login everyday. Including interns on exchange programmes, she said.

She faced a backlash from Twitter users, with users accusing her of being cavalier or careless, and one asking: Does anyone know whos supposed to be in charge of data security for the UK Parliament? Because they have some explaining to do.

Data protection officer Carl Gottlieb told Sky News: Sharing access to confidential systems should always be minimised, especially in Government where security and audit trails are paramount. MPs and the civil service have a track record of lax practices around sharing passwords and this needs to change.

MPs, like many senior managers, have team around them that act as a bubble of trust. Interns are trusted to handle their email and social media accounts on a daily basis.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 16 November 2022 Emma Woolf, great niece of British author Virginia Woolf, and her son Ludovic sit next to a new bronze statue of Woolf, unveiled in Richmond, London Reuters 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. 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The Mid Bedfordshire MP hit back, saying that she does not have access to sensitive government documents because she is not a minister.

She said: Im a backbench MP with four staff working on two computers. I dont get top secret emails from government.

A Cabinet Office Inquiry is examining the claims from two retired detectives that a vast quantity of extreme pornography was found on Mr Greens parliamentary computer in 2008.

Mr Green, who as first secretary of state is effectively Theresa Mays deputy, has also been accused of behaving inappropriately towards a young Conservative activist, Kate Maltby, which he denies.
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Support for the Conservatives among ethnic minority voters is at its lowest level for sixteen years, with the partys stance on immigration to blame, according to internal party memos.

New 10 Downing Street Chief of Staff Gavin Barwell has been giving presentations to MPs over the past two weeks, detailing its standing with BME communities.

One MP told The Times the presentations had been really gloomy.

Recommended Theresa May meets EU presidents in Brussels to break Brexit deadlock

Another said: We made big strides under Cameron. For reasons of image, not policy, it seems to have gone backwards.

One party figure said: Weve been told that BME support is down to 2001 levels, when Iain Duncan Smith was leader. Its that bad

The private polling showed that BME voters identified with Conservative values such as freedom and choice and caring for future generations, but would not vote Tory.

BME voters are much more likely to vote for Labour, with data from the 2017 election showing that the Conservatives only achieved 17 per cent of the ethnic minority vote, which is down from 21 per cent in 2015.

In her speech on becoming Prime Minister, Theresa May vowed to tackle "burning injustices" such as racial inequality. Standing outside 10 Downing Street she said: "If youre black, youre treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if youre white," and promised to take action.

But, in her conference speech several months later she memorably said: "If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don't understand what citizenship means. These appeared to be specifically aimed at tax avoiding billionaires but have still since come to haunt her.

The Prime Minister also remains dogged by controversial decisions during her six year spell at the Home Office. The department paid for billboard vans encouraging illegal immigrants to go home to be driven around ethnically sensitive areas. She also pledged to cut immigration to the tens of thousands, and has refused to remove students from the overall immigration figures.


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The Government has suspended a foreign aid scheme after an investigation claimed that taxpayers' money was being used by extremists in Syria.

Officers from the Free Syrian Police (FSP), the civilian police force backed by Britain, have also been working with courts accused of torture and summary executions, BBC One's Panorama alleged.

According to documents seen by the programme, police officers in Aleppo province were forced to hand over funds to the extremist group in control of the area, Nour al-Din al-Zinki.

Evidence also showed that the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, had handpicked police officers for two stations in Idlib province, it said.

Britain is one of six countries funding the FSP, which was set up after the Syrian uprising.

Adam Smith International (ASI), the British company that runs the project, said it had managed taxpayers' money effectively to confront terrorism.

The programme 'Jihadis You Pay For', which will air on Monday evening, claims the documents also showed that dead and fictitious people were on the FSP's payroll.

When the company visited one police station, supposedly the base for 57 police officers, they could not find a single officer, the investigation found.

ASI said it accounted for the officers on subsequent visits and that it had found very few instances of dead officers remaining on the salary list in Syria.

It said it used cash because there was no practical alternative and that officers imposed by Jabhat al-Nusra were detected within two months.

Payments to the stations funding the extremist group Nour al-Din al-Zinki were stopped in August 2016, it added.

ASI said: ASI has managed the project successfully alongside our partner in an extremely challenging, high-risk environment under the close supervision of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and five other governments.

Kate Osamor, Labour's shadow secretary of state for international development, said that if the allegations were true, British taxpayers would be rightly outraged.

She said: We need to understand how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office allowed this to happen, and why their mechanisms for properly managing aid projects failed.

The opaque Conflict, Stability and Security Fund that financed this project also operates in 70 other countries - many with questionable human rights records.

This investigation is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg: the Government must now open up its books so the public can understand the true extent of the problem.

Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa atop of military vehicles REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces march past destroyed buildings as they celebrate victory REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces gesture the "V" sign in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces evacuate a civilian from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A civilian prays after she was rescued by fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters ride atop of military vehicles as they celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A fighter of Syrian Democratic Forces celebrates in Raqqa Reuters

An FCO spokesman said: We take any allegations of co-operation with terrorist groups and of human rights abuses extremely seriously and the Foreign Office has suspended this programme while we investigate these allegations.

We believe that such work in Syria is important to protect our national security interest but of course we reach this judgement carefully given that in such a challenging environment no activity is without risk. That is why all our programmes are designed carefully and subject to robust monitoring.

PA
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The Labour Party will seek to force the Government to publish its own reports into the rollout of its Universal Credit, in a move that could embarrass the Government further over its flagship benefits scheme.

In a debate in the House of Commons, in which the Conservatives are expected to abstain, the party will use the same arcane parliamentary procedure as it used several weeks ago to compel the Government to publish its Brexit impact assessments.

The reports, known as Project Assessment Reviews, are detailed assessments of the implementation of Universal Credit, which has come under criticism for driving debt, arrears and even evictions.

The independent Information Commissioner, has determined that five of the reports, drafted between 2012  2015, are in the public interest and called on the Government to release them. So far it has not done so.

Debbie Abrahams MP, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said: These reports could further expose the implementation flaws, design failures and the impacts of major cuts to Universal Credit, which is pushing people into poverty, debt and arrears. Labour has long called for a pause and fix of this programme, but the Chancellor failed to act in the Budget, meaning thousands of families will face a miserable Christmas.

The Government should have abided by the Information Commissioner and released five of these reports into the public domain. Having already ignored Parliaments unanimous approval of Labours motion to pause Universal Credit, the Government is now once again riding roughshod over the democratic process.

Labour is calling for the release of this catalogue of failures on Universal Credit, to ensure that the lessons are learned from this Governments mismanagement.

Labour is committed to transforming Universal Credit, so that it meets its original ambitions of simplifying social security, reducing child poverty and making work pay.
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A well-known campaigner against vaginal mesh procedures has died from sepsis, it has been reported.

Christina Brajcic, 42, of Ontario, Canada, is believed to be the first woman to die in what has become known as the vaginal mesh scandal, which Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke called the new thalidomide.

Her death comes just a week after the UK-based National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommended banning vaginal mesh as a routine treatment for prolapse.

Professor Carl Heneghan, an expert in medical device regulation, says this essentially amounts to a backdoor-ban  but that it had come too late to help the thousands of women whose lives have been irreparably damaged.

The insertion of a plastic mesh device to treat hernia, prolapse and incontinence  in particular, the transvaginal mesh procedure, used on around 10,000 UK women a year  has come under increasing public scrutiny as reports have emerged of high rates of complication and inadequate medical trialling.

Women have been left unable to work, walk or even sit down after complications, including chronic pain, organ erosion and perforations, nerve damage and loss of sexual function. Some have reported feeling suicidal  all as a result of a treatment often performed for minor incontinence.

Recommended Government refuses to ban vaginal mesh despite calls for suspension

After her second son was born four years ago, interior designer Ms Brajcic was implanted with a polypropylene mesh TVT (tension-free vaginal tape), the most commonly prescribed in the UK, to treat mild incontinence: a gold standard, minimally invasive procedure.

But just a few hours after her surgery, she explained to CTV W5, The pain got worse, and worse, and worse, and finally it was like my insides were ripping out.

The surgery left her bedridden, suffering nerve damage and constant pain. A year later, she received a five-hour operation to remove the mesh device  which, as they are designed to be permanent, had to be extracted piece by piece. Afterwards, she was treated in hospital at least once a month for related urinary tract infections, and eventually became resistant to the antibiotics she was receiving.

By the end of October, Ms Brajcic was readmitted to hospital suffering from sepsis, a life-threatening bodily response to infection that can end in organ failure.

On 15 November, she posted on Facebook: Funny how after going septic and almost dying now Im getting respect and being treated well by doctors. All it took was dying to get better care and better pain management. I will take it...its better then fighting for my care.

On Wednesday, according to her husband Tony, her heart stopped. The family await the results from a toxicology exam, but believe that her death can be linked directly related to her mesh.

Ms Brajcic had already launched a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson, the company that made her device, joining thousands of Canadian and American women and 800 in the UK who are already involved in litigation against various mesh providers.

She also campaigned relentlessly against mesh procedures, selling T-shirts and ribbons to raise awareness and funds for sufferers.

In October, Labour MP Emma Hardy brought the issue to Parliament, with a cross-party group demanding a suspension pending full investigation into the scandal. However, minister for care and mental health, Jackie Doyle-Price, ruled out a public inquiry or a suspension.

Recommended Why men should be worried about the vaginal mesh NHS scandal

The week Ms Brajcic died, Australias medical regulatory body, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), banned mesh as a treatment for POP (pelvic organ prolapse), saying in a statement that the benefits of using transvaginal mesh products do not outweigh the risks to the patient.

Former Scottish health secretary Alex Neil recently described the issue as a global catastrophe and is calling for an international summit. Back in 2014, officials in Scotland called for all mesh devices to be banned, including those used to treat hernias.

Kath Sansom, founder of Sling the Mesh, a prominent campaign group fighting the treatment in the UK, told The Independent: Chrissy must not die in vain. Her death has shocked and upset women around the world. She only had a mild stress incontinence problem from childbirth and physio probably could have fixed it. Now she has lost her life. This is wrong in every way. This is shocking.

Sansom, who has launched a Just Giving page to raise money for Ms Brajcics children, added: Many women in groups globally are close to being antibiotic-resistant  and then what? Benefits do not outweigh the risks of this operation. Its time to say enough is enough.
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A Brazilian mayor who governed her town via WhatsApp has been jailed for at least 14 years for embezzling millions from its education budget.

Lidiane Leite went on the run in August 2015 when she was accused of taking the money form the town of Bom Jardim in Brazils north-west.

The 27-year-old directed local officials using WhatsApp while she lived a life of luxury in Sao Luiz, the state capital of Maranhao, around 180 miles away.

She eventually gave herself up after 39 days on the run.

Following a two-and-a-half year legal battle, Leite was sentenced to 14 years and one month in prison followed by six years of house arrest after she was found guilty of taking R$20m (4.5m) from an education fund.

She is still able to appeal the decision, the TNH1 news channel reported.

The saga began in 2012 after her former boyfriend, Humberto Dantas dos Santos, who was also known as Beto Rocha, was banned from serving as mayor of the town in 2012 due to corruption allegations.

Shortly afterwards, Leite ran in his place and appointed the 44-year-old as her chief advisor. He was responsible for most of the towns day-to-day management.

Meanwhile Leite lived a lifestyle full of expensive champagne and fast cars in Sao Luiz as she communicated with her deputies via a special Task Force WhatsApp group.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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Dos Santos is still on the run but was also sentenced to 17 years and nine months in prison followed by seven years and four months of house arrest in absentia.

At the start of 2015 the couple broke up and Dos Santos resigned. This is when the corruption scheme started to unravel

Bom Jardim is a poor town of around 40,000 people in one of the countrys poorest states.

Many families rely on the local school to give their children at least one decent meal a day. Locals told the BBC that during Leites tenure they never had food at the school which first prompted the investigation into the mayor and her associates.

The authorities began to look at Leites social media feeds where she repeatedly bragged about her glamorous life of luxury.

One post on Instagram wrote: Before I became mayor, I was poor. I had a Land Rover, now I drive a [Toyota] SW4. Maybe I should buy a more luxurious car, because  thank you God  I have enough money to do it.

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I can buy whatever I want. Im going to spend money on what I want and I dont care what people say about me.

Once Brazilian authorities announced her arrest she went on the run  all the while sending WhatsApp messages to her deputies insisting she was still the mayor and forbidding them from talking to prosecutors.

Fabio Santos de Oliveira said she and around 10 others had pilfered millions from the state coffers  especially the health and education budgets.

He said: In one case, she contracted fake companies to rebuild three schools in Bom Jardim, that way she could steal money from the budget.
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A former Stanford University swimmer who was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman outside a campus fraternity party, is to appeal his conviction.

Brock Turner's case made headlines around the world, when the former Olympic hopeful was sentenced to just six months in prison despite a powerful written statement delivered by his victim in which which she outlined the impact the attack had on her.

Judge Aaron Persky said a longer sentence would have a damaging effect on his life, even though he was found guilty of three separate counts of sexual assault for the 2015 attack. He served just three months after being released early for good behaviour.

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Lawyers for Turner, now 22, filed an appeal for the Ohio native, arguing his trial in March 2016 heard a detailed and lengthy set of lies. They hope to overturn the requirement for Turner to be on the register of sex offenders for life.

The details of the case sparked outrage after two Stanford graduate students testified they had spotted Turner thrusting himself into his unconscious victim. Both he and the woman had drunk heavily at a student party at the elite institution.

Turner maintained the woman was not unconscious but the victim said she had woken up hours after the attack with blood on her hands and no memory of meeting Turner or being taken to hospital.

His legal adviser John Tompkins said what happened was not a crime and the facts do not reflect the verdict.

Is Helen Mirren right about date rape? Show all 2 1 /2 Is Helen Mirren right about date rape? Is Helen Mirren right about date rape? 50182.bin AP Is Helen Mirren right about date rape? 50149.bin alamy

After the first case, Turner's victim waived her right to anonymity in the US and allowed her victims impact statement going viral after the conclusion of the case.

Writing for Glamour magazine after the case, the young woman who chose to be identified by the name Emily Doe said that after the sentnence she "felt embarrassed for trying, for being led to believe I had any influence."

She added: "The violation of my body and my being added up to a few months out of his summer. I began to panic; I thought, this cant be the best case scenario. If this case was meant to set the bar, the bar had been set on the floor.

Turner served his sentence at the Santa Clara County jail and is currently on probation.

He dropped out of university after his arrest. His father then caused further outrage when he said his son had paid a steep price for 20 minutes of action.
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President Donald Trump's push for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians stems from a belief that his broader goals of stopping Iranian aggression and Islamic extremism will not be possible without it, presidential adviser Jared Kushner said in a rare public appearance on Sunday.

If we're going to try to create more stability in the region as a whole, you have to solve this issue, Kushner told Middle East experts gathered at the Brookings Institution's Saban Forum. Trump, he said, sees this as something that has to be solved.

But nearly a year after Trump named Kushner, his son-in-law and senior White House aide, as point person for what he called the ultimate deal, there has been no public indication of where the initiative is heading.

Presumed participants in the plan - described by officials as a comprehensive package including Israel, the Palestinians, Arab governments and international backers - have been kept similarly in the dark, leading to widespread speculation and anxiety.

If two states are in there, a major part of the [Israeli] coalition will object, a senior Israeli official said last week. Any attempt to establish a Palestinian state in any form, the official said, could bring down the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There are just rumours, but we hear there are moves to bring the Arabs on board and provide Israel with rewards and give the Palestinians pressure and threats and extortion, said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Reports that Trump plans this week to declare US recognition of Jerusalem as the undisputed capital of Israel have elevated anxiety to panic in some quarters.

This move will promote international anarchy and disrespect for global institutions and law, PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat said in a statement on Sunday. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as their capital. By taking sides on an issue long considered part of final status negotiations, he said, the United States will also be disqualifying itself to play any role in an initiative towards achieving a just and lasting peace.

Jordan's King Abdullah II, whom Kushner's team considers a key regional partner, warned last week that a US decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv must come within a comprehensive solution that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side with Israel.

Any move at this point, said Abdullah, who was in Washington to consult with Congress, could be potentially exploited by terrorists to stoke anger, frustration and desperation in order to spread their ideologies.

Monday is a deadline for Trump to either announce the embassy move - as required by 1995 legislation - or issue the same six-month waiver that he signed last summer, as has every president before him over the past two decades. Administration officials have indicated that Trump will again sign the waiver, but he will make a midweek speech recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

Kushner declined to comment on the embassy issue, saying that Trump was still looking at a lot of different facts.

The president is going to make his decision... He'll be one who will want to tell you, not me, he said. Haim Saban, the Israeli American media billionaire who heads the forum, an annual dialogue between US and Israeli leaders, said he would call Kushner for the answer on Thursday - the day after Trump is expected to speak on the issue. Perfect, Kushner replied.

Kushner has stayed away from public view in recent months, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller has investigated ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. The format of Kushner's Sunday appearance was an on-stage interview with Saban, a major donor to the Democratic Party, who said the two had established a relationship in discussions about the Middle East. But Saban made little headway in excavating details of the peace plan.

After Kushner explained that Iran, with their nuclear ambitions and their expansive regional mischief, along with the threat from the Isis and extremist ideology could best be addressed after the distraction of the Israeli-Palestinian issue was resolved, Saban responded with the question many experts on the region have posed.

I understand that. But to achieve that, Saban said, the team has in it an entrepreneurial real estate lawyer, a bankruptcy lawyer - I don't know how you've lasted eight months in this lineup... It's impressive that it's still going. There's not a Mideast 'macher' in this group. Macher is a Yiddish word for a mover and shaker.

How do you operate with, with all due respect, a bunch of Orthodox Jews who have no idea about anything? he asked. What are you guys doing? Seriously, I don't understand this.

Amid audience laughter, Kushner responded: I'll definitely say its not a conventional team... It's a perfectly qualified team. How is that?

Three members of Kushner's team, including him, are Orthodox Jews. Jason Greenblatt, the White House special representative for international negotiations, came to the administration after serving as executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organisation. David Friedman, Trump's bankruptcy lawyer and, like Kushner, a financial contributor to the Israeli settlement movement in the past, now is the administration's ambassador to Israel.

The fourth team member is Dina Powell, deputy national security adviser and an Egyptian American who is a Coptic Christian. The State Department, which led decades of failed Middle East peace efforts under previous administrations, has been kept largely out of the Trump initiative.

According to administration officials willing to discuss the process but not the contents of the peace package, the plan is to release a comprehensive, final document covering all aspects of a deal. Rather than previous attempts to move from one issue to another in search of compromises between Israel and the Palestinians, the hope is that each party will find enough it likes in the overall document that it will be more amenable to those aspects it might previously have rejected.

One administration analogy for both the process and its final presentation is to a dinner party in which the host, rather than asking guests what each would like to eat when they sit down at the table, has already prepared a several course, take-it-or-leave-it meal.

In order to reach a bottom line, Kushner and his team have met repeatedly with leaders and negotiators in countries throughout the region. We've tried very hard to do a lot of listening, he said, to learn what their red lines are... to find areas of mutual agreement, to find reasons to do things rather than not do things.

He brushed off publicly expressed Israeli and Palestinian concerns, and insistence that there is no wiggle room on what he acknowledged were the elephants among the issues that have dogged previous efforts, including establishment of a Palestinian state and its borders, Israeli settlements, and Jerusalem.

We've solicited a lot of ideas from a lot of places, Kushner said. There is obviously a lot of speculation... 'There is a plan, what is it? Are these four points in or out?'

We all kind of laugh and say, OK, we're just not going to play the guessing game... We know what's in the plan. The Palestinians know what discussions we've had with them, the Israelis know.

None of the parties has been told what the others have discussed, according to administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity about the undertaking that, as Kushner noted, has had no leaks.

Underlying all of Kushner's calculations are what he called the regional dynamics, which the administration believes have brought the Saudis and other countries influential with the Palestinians to find common cause with Israel - and the administration - against Iran and extremism. The region, he said, is unifying against Iran's aggression.

Officials insisted that while Arab partners - including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates - have a role to play, the main focus of the plan is on Israel and the Palestinians.

But Kushner sidestepped questions about the administration's especially close ties with Saudi Arabia, and his own tight relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely known as MBS.

Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Show all 22 1 /22 Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Donald Trump's international Presidential trips French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump talk as they leave the Army Museum at Les Invalides in Paris AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Donald Trump arrive for the group photo at the G7 Taormina summit on the island of Sicily in May 2017 Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Mr Trump was pressed on the subject at the G7 summit in Italy Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump gives a speeech at the Warsaw Uprising Monument on Krasinski Square Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May during a ceremony at the NATO headquarters before the start of a summit in Brussels, Belgium Reuters Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Montenegro's Prime Minister Dusko Markovic is seen to the right of Donald Trump at a Nato summit in Brussels REUTERS Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Pope Francis meeting with US President Donald J. Trump EPA Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Pope Francis poses with US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump arrives at Palazzo del Quirinale ahead of the meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella Ufficio Stampa Presidenza della via Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump is seen during a joint press conference with the Palestinian leader at the presidential palace in the West Bank city of Bethlehem AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas meets US President Donald Trump PPO via Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with US President Donald Trump prior to the President's departure GPO via Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands after delivering a speech at the Israel Museum AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump lay a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance as White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump watch on during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem accompanied by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu GPO via Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump takes his seat before his speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia Reuters Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, US President Donald Trump and US First Lady Melania Trump look at a display of Saudi modern art at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud take part in a signing ceremony at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips King Salman presents Donald Trump with The Collar of Abdulaziz al-Saud Medal at the Royal Court Palace on 20 May AP Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump is welcomed by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud upon arrival at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk on the South Lawn prior to their first foreign trip Getty Images

Some experts attribute what appears to be a delay in release of the administration's plan, initially believed set for the end of this year, to overreaching by MBS, who in recent weeks has arrested more than 200 members of the Saudi royal family and leading business persons, stepped into domestic politics in Lebanon and has been held responsible internationally for a humanitarian disaster in Yemen.

Kushner insisted that there was no delay, because there had never been a deadline.

We're businesspeople, we're not politicians, he said. We've been very deliberate about not setting time frames. We're not trying to do this the way it's been done before.

The Washington Post
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Antifa outnumbered white supremacists during a protest in front of the White House which saw the two rival groups hurl slogans at each other before being escorted away by the police.

Neo-Nazis and members of the far right gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue carrying American flags and chanting build the wall to show their opposition to the verdict in the Kate Steinle trial.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, was found not guilty of murder last week in the killing of a woman on a San Francisco pier that sparked a national immigration debate two years ago. The jury found him guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Around 25 white nationalists, including far right poster boy Richard Spencer, were confronted by approximately 50 Antifa protesters yelling Nazi scum off our streets! and clutching placards with slogans such as Stop Racial Scapegoating.

Antifa, shorthand for anti-fascist protesters, refers to a loose decentralised coalition of groups who oppose fascism via popular grassroots action rather than relying on the police or the state.

(AFP/Getty Images (AFP/Getty Images)

The white nationalists rally, which called for more stringent laws on immigration, lasted 20 minutes before police on bikes and horseback succeeded in separating the opposing groups before clashes broke out. Police managed to escort far right demonstrators away from the scene.

Spencer, who is credited with coining the term alt-right, urged people to join him for the protest on Twitter, saying: Join me on Sunday at 2pm in Lafayette Square to demand Trump build #KatesWall.

Spencer helped organise the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville which saw neo-Nazis, KKK members and alt-right supporters descend on the ordinarily quiet university town. Tensions between fascists and counter protestors turned deadly after a 20-year-old man, who officials say had Nazi sympathies, deliberately ploughed his car into the crowd of peaceful anti-fascist demonstrators and killed a female civil rights activist.

Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Show all 9 1 /9 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Protesters clash and several are injured White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A state of emergency is declared, August 12 2017 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Trump supporters at the protest A white nationalist demonstrator walks into Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday after violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville State police stand ready in riot gear Virginia State Police cordon off an area around the site where a car ran into a group of protesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Militia armed with assault rifles White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' with body armor and combat weapons evacuate comrades who were pepper sprayed after the 'Unite the Right' rally was declared a unlawful gathering by Virginia State Police. Militia members marched through the city earlier in the day, armed with assault rifles. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' during the 'Unite the Right' rally 12 August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. They are protesting the removal of the statue from Emancipation Park in the city. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Racial tensions sparked the violence White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' exchange insults with counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Lee Park during the 'Unite the Right' rally Getty Violence on the streets of Charlottesville A car plows through protesters A vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The incident resulted in multiple injuries, some life-threatening, and one death. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Rescue personnel help injured people after a car ran into a large group of protesters after an white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville President Donald Trump speaks about the ongoing situation in Charlottesville, Virginia from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He spoke about "loyalty" and "healing wounds" left by decades of racism.

Spencer addressed US President Donald Trump directly through his microphone at the recent White House demonstration, saying: Kate could have been your daughter too.

He shouted: Kate Steinles death has touched everyone thats here. She represented everything that is white and wonderful about this country.

President Trump has condemned the acquittal of Mr Zarate and used the case to launch an attack on illegal immigration.

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A disgraceful verdict in the Kate Steinle case! No wonder the people of our Country are so angry with Illegal Immigration, he tweeted last week before claiming it was a total miscarriage of Justice on Sunday.

Mr Zarate, who had been deported five times and served time in federal prison for illegally re-entering the US, was found not guilty of first or second-degree murder or assault with a firearm.

Mr Zarates lawyer for the case released a statement last week urging President Trump to reflect on his own presumption of innocence beyond a reasonable doubt in special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation before deciding to comment on the Steinle case.

The Steinle case became a flashpoint over debates on immigration policy and Mr Trump regularly used the case to call for stricter immigration policies during the 2016 presidential election.

Immigration officials said they will try to deport Mr Zarate again following his acquittal on the murder charges.
In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
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The CEO of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill who was hailed as the archetypal American success story has killed himself in his Bronx factory.

Lowell Hawthorn, who created a Caribbean empire which popularised the beef patty across the US, fatally shot himself on Saturday, according to the police.

The police said the 57-year-old was found dead just after 10pm on Saturday in his office at the company factory in the Claremont neighbourhood.

While preliminary indications suggest Mr Hawthorne took his own life police are continuing to look into the circumstances leading up to his death.

Capitalising on recipes from his native Jamaica, he opened the first Golden Krust store in the Bronx back in 1989 when he was just 21. He went on to carve out a fast food empire and expanded to more than 120 franchises in nine states.

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The magnates death shocked New Yorks Caribbean community because Mr Hawthorn, who was president and chief executive of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill for almost three decades, was routinely lauded as an immigrant success story.

The Bronx-based company where he worked with his wife and four children thanked his supporters and said arrangements for his funeral would be announced at a later date.

Our hearts are broken, and we are struggling to process our grief over this tremendous loss, the Golden Krust company said in a statement on Sunday. Lowell was a visionary, entrepreneur, community champion, and above all a committed father, family man, friend and man of faith.

Ruben Diaz Jr, the Bronx borough president, expressed his sadness at the news on Twitter. Lowell Hawthorne was a good friend, and was always ready to help my office whenever we needed him, he said.

He will be sorely missed. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and employees during this difficult time.

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Andrew Holness, the prime minister of Jamaica, said: My condolences to the friends, family and employees of Jamaica-born Lowell Hawthorne, CEO of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill. He headed the largest Caribbean franchise chain in the US, with more than 120 stores.

Mr Hawthorne wrote a memoir titled The Bakers Son back in 2013 in which he cast his mind back to his childhood in Jamaica, where he was raising rabbits, chicken and guinea pigs at the age of just 10.

He started the wildly successful Caribbean fast food chain in 1989 by selling selling beef patties and jerk chicken under the maxim We take the taste of the Caribbean to the world.

The majority of the restaurants, which serve up mildly spicy and hot Jamaican patties, jerk chicken, jerk fish, dumplings, steamed yams, callaloo, ackee, and curried meat dishes, are situated in New York.

Barbadian pop superstar Rihanna visits the Caribbean fast food spot whose shops are adorned with cheerfully bright yellow and orange tiles.

For confidential support on mental health call the Samaritans on 116 123, email jo@samaritans.org or attend a local Samaritans branch.
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When you ask Marie Newman why she is running for office against another Democrat, she responds simply: Im not.

The former marketing consultant and anti-bullying expert is mounting a primary challenge to Illinois third district Representative Dan Lipinski  a seven-term Democrat who has voted against abortion access, spoken out against LGBT rights, and refused to back Barack Obama for president.

Ms Newman is part of a growing group of progressives who want to take on Republicans  and Donald Trump  by challenging their fellow Democrats to be better.

Being progressive is about moving forward, Ms Newman told The Independent. I think that there are some folks in the Democratic party for whom maybe thats uncomfortable. Dan Lipinski is one of them.

Mr Lipinski is not an easy first target for a revolution. The 51-year-old sits comfortably in his decidedly blue district, which elected Democrats to Congress in 24 of the last 25 elections. Since he took office in 2004, Mr Lipinski has faced few competitive primary opponents. In 2016, he faced no challengers in the primary or the general races.

Dan Lipinski is the incumbent Representative for the third district (Facebook/Congressman Dan Lipinski)

From this place of relative security, Mr Lipinski has become one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. He is an abortion rights foe who has voted several time to defund Planned Parenthood. He is one of only three Democrats still in the House to vote against Obamacare in 2010. He voted to impose mandatory minimum sentences on immigrants who enter the country illegally. The Human Rights Campaign gives him the lowest ranking for LGBT support of any Democrat in Congress.

Ms Newman, meanwhile, is a decidedly Bernie Sanders-styled progressive. If elected to Congress, she says she would be a worker bee for Medicare for All  a Sanders-backed proposal for universal healthcare coverage. She would also advocate for a higher minimum wage  $15 per hour, at least  and affordable childcare. She would lobby for holistic jobs bills, including things like paid benefits for workers.

While these values put Ms Newman to the left of much of her party, she maintains that her opponent is the truly radical one.

He is a radically conservative extremist who is not representing the district correctly, she said. Ive observed that for many 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

Mr Lipinski would contest this, of course. He declined multiple interview requests from The Independent, but told The Hill that his voting record is very much in line with his district.

You can never please everybody, he said. ...I think that the support Ive received throughout my career in the Democratic primary shows that Im really in line with a large portion of my district.

But Ms Newman isnt convinced. She believes the district was galvanised by the election of Mr Trump and by Republicans attempts to roll back Obamacare. She plans to ride that wave of political mobilisation all the way to the ballot box.

The district has finally uncovered how radical [Mr Lipinski] is, and how inappropriate he is for the district, she said. I mean, the phrase Got woke is the epitome of what happened in my district.

Ms Newman celebrates on the campaign trail (Courtesy Marie Newman) (Courtsey Marie Newman)

Ms Newman is not the only one hoping to capitalise on this historic moment. Across the country, young progressives are springing up to push their Democratic peers to the left.

In Florida, Air Force veteran Chardo Richardson is challenging fellow Democrat Stephanie Murphy, a US Representative, hoping to outflank her from the left. In Rhode Island, the Democratic lieutenant governor is facing a primary challenge from Democrat Aaron Regunberg  a state representative who volunteered for the Sanders campaign and promises to ensure "the 1 per cent pays their fair share. Even the Governor of New York, Democrat Andrew Cuomo, may be facing a progressive challenger in state Senator Terry Gipson.

For many Democrats, the thought of pitting progressives against more moderate incumbents conjures up nightmarish visions of 2016. The bitter presidential primary between the progressive Mr Sanders and the moderate Hillary Clinton left a bad taste in the mouth of many Democrats, who would rather join ranks to defeat Mr Trump than criticise one of their own.

But Ms Newman says fears of the Sanders-Clinton divide fracturing the party are overblown. In fact, she thinks these divisions are necessary to bring in fresh ideas and perspectives.

I think there are far more divisions than the Bernie wing and the non-Bernie wing, she said. There are probably ten different flavours out here, and that will always be the case. And I will always be excited that thats the case, because then we keep bringing new ideas all the time.

She added: Im probably a wing. Im probably a new wing. That crazy lady from the southwest suburbs that has the audacity to think she can actually represent her district in a proper way.

Ms Newman previously worked as an anti-bullying expert (Courtesy Marie Newman) (Courtsey Marie Newman)

But challenging Mr Lipinski will not be easy. The Representative has served his district for more than a decade, with little conflict. He beat his last primary challenger  Farah Baqai, in 2012  by more than 85 per cent of the vote.

Thats likely because Mr Lipinski is popular with the trade unions and the more socially conservative voters in the area. While the district is decidedly Democratic, it leans more conservative than many around it. In 1980, for example, the district was one of only two in Chicago to go for Ronald Reagan. In 2004, George W Bush scored 41 per cent of the districts vote  almost double what he received in the other four southside districts.

Mr Lipinski is also well-connected. In fact, he essentially inherited his seat from his father, Bill Lipinski, who represented the district for more than 10 years before him. The elder Mr Lipinski announced his retirement in 2004, shortly after winning the Democratic primary. The move allowed the younger Mr Lipinski to take his place in the general election, bypassing the primaries entirely and sailing to victory over his Republican opponent.

Ms Newman says she works on the campaign 19 hours a day (Courtesy Marie Newman) (Courtsey Marie Newman)

The Lipinski family is also close to Mike Madigan, the speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. In 2011, at the same time another Democrat was preparing a primary challenge to Mr Lipinski, Democratic map-makers were redrawing several districts in Illinois. By many accounts, Mr Madigan had a strong hand in designing the maps  and a conversation with Mr Lipinski about how they should look. In the end, Mr Lipinskis challenger was drawn out of his district.

Ms Newman, meanwhile, has never held a political office. She has worked at various advertising agencies, and started her own consulting firm in 2005. She became interested in anti-bullying campaigns after her daughter, who is transgender, started being picked on at school. She eventually founded her own anti-bullying non-profit, and signed on to lead a coalition of 70 anti-bullying groups working nationwide. Her aspirations have taken her into business, advocacy, and non-profits  but never into office.

There is also the issue of funding. As a matter of policy, the Democratic party will not fund primary challengers when there is a Democratic incumbent. Ms Newman shut down her business and quit her job to campaign full-time, but fundraising is still a struggle. Her campaign ended the third quarter with $98,000 on hand; Mr Lipinksi had $1.5m.

Ms Newman attends a Pride parade (Courtesy Marie Newman) (Courtsey Marie Newman)

Still, there are signs that this crazy lady from the southwest suburbs could actually pull it off. She has raked in a striking number of endorsements in recent weeks, including from Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. She has also been endorsed by five major progressive organisations, including LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign and pro-choice organisation NARAL.

In a statement announcing their endorsement, the liberal group MoveOn.org pushed Democrats to seek more candidates like Ms Newman  candidates who act like Democrats, not Donald Trump Republicans.

The progressive news site Daily Kos also endorsed Ms Newman, again emphasising her differences with Mr Trump. According to Carolyn Fiddler, the sites political editor, this contrast could be what propels the candidate to victory.

If theres one thing voters have made clear in 2017s elections, its that they want their representatives to stand up to Donald Trump  something Lipinski has refused to do, Ms Fiddler told The Independent. Trump is our nations bully-in-chief while Newman is a dedicated advocate against bullying, making her the perfect counter to Lipinski and his Trump-enabling ways.

Talking with Ms Newman, its clear that shes excited by the rising tide of progressivism, and the national backlash against Mr Trump. For the time being, however, she is focused on just one man: Mr Lipinski.

There is a movement that is occurring, and its not just a womens movement  its the movement to protect and advance rights on every corner, she said. So if I can help support that movement, I am thrilled.

But, she added, My priority is to get this guy out of office.
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Donald Trump has given his explicit backing for Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race  because he says he needs Moores vote.

Mr Trump called the Senate candidate, with the White House saying that the two discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and that the president "endorsed Judge Moore's campaign".

That call followed a morning tweet by the president that Mr Trump tweeted: Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!

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Mr Trump reinforced that attack on the Democrat candidate Doug Jones in a subsequent tweet: Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders...& so much more. Look at your 401-ks since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back! The tweets refer to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the Democrat leaders in the House and the Senate respectively.

A White House official told Associated Press last week that Mr Trump would not campaign for Mr Moore in person.

Mr Moore has been accused by multiple women of pursuing them when they were teenagers and he was in his thirties. One woman said she was only 14 years old when he initiated sexual contact with her. He has denied the accusations and blamed them on socialists and LGBT people.

At a campaign rally at Magnolia Springs Baptist Church in Alabama last week, Mr Moore boasted he was still leading in the race, despite the fact that they had pulled out all the stops to thwart him.

When I say they, who are they? he asked the congregation. Theyre liberals. They dont hold conservative values. They are the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender who want to change our culture. They are socialists who want to change our way of life and put man above God, and the government is our God.

Shortly after Mr Trump's tweet on Monday morning, Mr Moore responded with his own tweet: Thankful for President Trump's support. The America First agenda will #MAGA. Can't wait to help him #DrainTheSwamp.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Mr Trump had previously addressed the accusations against Mr Moore saying, He totally denies it, he said then, telling reporters: You have to listen to him, also.

The President is due to hold a campaign-style rally in Pensacola, Florida, four days before the vote which takes place on 12 December. Pensacola is less than 20 miles over the border from Alabama.
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Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general, has fired back at Donald Trump for his tweets about the FBI.

The US President began lashing out at his critics days after his former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

He attacked the FBI and its former director, James Comey, saying in a tweet: "After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness."

He also retweeted a post saying new the FBI Director, Chris Wray, "needs to clean house."

Ms Yates, who was sacked by Mr Trump, tweeted: "The FBI is in 'tatters'? No. The only thing in tatters is the Presidents respect for the rule of law. The dedicated men and women of the FBI deserve better."

Eric Holder, the former Attorney General, also tweeted in response: "Nope. Not letting this go. The FBI's reputation is not in 'tatters'.

"It's composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. You'll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now."

 Donald Trump insists 'no collusion' after Michael Flynn admits lying to FBI

Mr Trump seized on reports a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was removed from special prosecutor Robert Mueller's team last summer after the discovery of an exchange of text messages which were viewed as potentially anti-Trump.

The agent, Peter Strzok, had also worked on the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mr Mueller, said he removed Mr Strzok from the team "immediately upon learning of the allegations."

The removal almost certainly reflected a desire to insulate the investigators from any claims of political bias or favouritism.

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... 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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... 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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... 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On Saturday, Mr Trump tweeted to say he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

The tweet suggested the President was aware Mr Flynn had lied to the FBI when the White House dismissed him on 13 February

Mr Comey has said the following day, Mr Trump brought up the investigation into Mr Flynn in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could "let this go."

With questions raised by the tweet, associates of Mr Trump tried to put distance between the President himself and the tweet.

Mr Trump's personal lawyer, John Dowd, told ABC News he drafted the tweet and gave it to the President's social media director, Dan Scavino.
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As President Donald Trump edges toward the controversial decision of recognising Jerusalem as Israels capital, unease is growing in the region over a move that will likely spark waves of protests  with Turkey the latest nation to suggest the change would bring catastrophe.

As has become usual for his administration, Mr Trump has so far refused to give a definitive answer about what he will do. As well as the decision over the capital, a decision about whether to sign a six-month waiver for moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has been delayed - despite a deadline for doing so having passed. An announcement on the decision would be made "in coming days," the White House said.

Mr Trump is expected to announce that Jerusalem is the Israeli capital during a speech this week, as well as eventually sign the waiver pushing back a decision on moving the embassy. But White House adviser Jared Kushner and National Security Adviser HR McMaster have both made it clear in recent days that that they are unsure about what Mr Trump will do.

That lack of firm direction has stoked tensions in the region. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said that Jerusalems status has been enshrined in a number of international declarations.

The status of Jerusalem and Temple Mount have been determined by international agreements. It is important to preserve Jerusalems status for the sake of protecting peace in the region, Mr Bozdag told reporters.

If another step is taken and this step is lifted, this will be a major catastrophe, he added.

The diplomatic status of Jerusalem is one of the worlds thorniest issues, and any change could have vast repercussions across the Middle East. The citys holy sites are sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, with both Israel and the Palestinians claiming it as their capital. The Palestinians want a number of areas of the city as part of any future state.

Israel occupied the area in the 1967 Middle East war and regards the entire city as its indivisible capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem. According to the 1993 Israel-Palestinian peace accord, the citys final status is meant to be discussed in later peace talks.

Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem has never been recognised internationally. But this is expected to change this week with Mr Trumps announcement.

France President Emmanuel Macron expressed "concern" over the potential move to recognise Jerusalem on a call with Mr Trump on Monday,

Meanwhile Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the US, Prince Khalid bin Salman, said: Any US announcement on the status of Jerusalem prior to a final settlement would have a detrimental impact on the peace process and would heighten tensions in the region.

In a phone call over the weekend, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are said to have discussed the status of Jerusalem.

According to reports, Mr Erdogan told Mr Abbas that preserving the status of Jerusalem was important for all Muslim countries, adding that international laws and United Nations decisions should be followed on the issue.

Over the weekend, Mr Abbas warned that American recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital would jeopardize the White Houses Middle East peace efforts.

Any American step related to the recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, or moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, represents a threat to the future of the peace process and is unacceptable for the Palestinians, Arabs and internationally, Mr Abbas told a group of Arab legislators from Israel, according to the official Wafa news agency.

Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Show all 22 1 /22 Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Donald Trump's international Presidential trips French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips French President Emmanuel Macron and US President Donald Trump talk as they leave the Army Museum at Les Invalides in Paris AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Donald Trump arrive for the group photo at the G7 Taormina summit on the island of Sicily in May 2017 Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Mr Trump was pressed on the subject at the G7 summit in Italy Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump gives a speeech at the Warsaw Uprising Monument on Krasinski Square Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May during a ceremony at the NATO headquarters before the start of a summit in Brussels, Belgium Reuters Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Montenegro's Prime Minister Dusko Markovic is seen to the right of Donald Trump at a Nato summit in Brussels REUTERS Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Pope Francis meeting with US President Donald J. Trump EPA Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Pope Francis poses with US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump arrives at Palazzo del Quirinale ahead of the meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella Ufficio Stampa Presidenza della via Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump is seen during a joint press conference with the Palestinian leader at the presidential palace in the West Bank city of Bethlehem AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas meets US President Donald Trump PPO via Getty Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with US President Donald Trump prior to the President's departure GPO via Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands after delivering a speech at the Israel Museum AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump lay a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance as White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump watch on during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem accompanied by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu GPO via Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump takes his seat before his speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia Reuters Donald Trump's international Presidential trips Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, US President Donald Trump and US First Lady Melania Trump look at a display of Saudi modern art at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud take part in a signing ceremony at the Saudi Royal Court in Riyadh AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips King Salman presents Donald Trump with The Collar of Abdulaziz al-Saud Medal at the Royal Court Palace on 20 May AP Donald Trump's international Presidential trips US President Donald Trump is welcomed by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud upon arrival at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump's international Presidential trips U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk on the South Lawn prior to their first foreign trip Getty Images

Any move by the US to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital would lead to violence, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said.

We say very clearly that taking such action is not justified ... It will not serve peace or stability, but will fuel extremism and result to violence, Mr Gheit said in a statement.

Jordans Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, said he had raised the matter with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Such a decision would trigger anger across Arab Muslim worlds... and jeopardise peace efforts, he wrote on Twitter.

Jordan has begun consultations on convening an emergency meeting of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation ahead of the move by Mr Trump

Jordan, the current president of the Arab summit, would invite members of the two bodies to convene if the recognition is extended, to discuss ways of dealing with the consequences of such a decision that raised alarm and concern, one diplomatic source told Reuters.

But while Mr Trump is anticipated to make the move anyway, he will likely hold back on announcing his plans on another controversial issue  his campaign promise to transfer the US embassy to Jerusalem.

He is not expected to relocate the US embassy just yet  a deferment that has been viewed as an attempt by his administration to avoid completely derailing the Presidents peace initiative in the region.

All countries currently maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv, Israels commercial capital. And each American president since 1995 has signed a national security waiver every six months to keep the US embassy in Tel Aviv.

Mr Trump  under pressure from Arab leaders  also deferred a decision to move it to Jerusalem, even though he said during the campaign that it would be one of his first acts as president.

That action came as leaders warned that the change would spark protests, and advisers  including his son-in-law Jared Kushner  were reported to be concerned that it could complicate the administrations efforts to foster peace talks.

Mr Kushner is now said to be counting on his relationship with Saudi Arabias Crown Prince, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to be the key to brokering a Middle East peace agreement. Mr Trumps son-in-law also hopes this connection could mitigate any Arab uprising that could result from the Presidents upcoming announcements.

Mr Tillerson  who would normally be the official figuring out the USs Middle East strategy  reportedly disagrees with Mr Kushners approach. Mr Tillerson is said to be worried that Prince Mohammed is attempting to use Saudi Arabias cooperation and economic support for the peace process as a way to receive funding from the White House to confront Iran, according to US media reports.

The president is going to make his decision, Mr Kushner said of the Israel decision, in a rare public appearance at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank on Sunday. He is still looking at a lot of different facts.

Im not sure what decision hell make. Weve given him options, Mr McMaster told Fox News. He added that the Presidents advisers have discussed a number of options, and that each of these options will allow the United States to take action concerning Jerusalem in a manner that would gain momentum toward a peace agreement and solution that works both for Israelis and for Palestinians.
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Crew members aboard a passenger jet have claimed they saw a North Korean ballistic missile re-entering Earths atmosphere during the repressive states latest test firing.

Staff on a Cathay Pacific flight said they observed what is suspected to be the re-entry of the projectile over Japan last Wednesday.

The Hong Kong carrier said the flight was far from the event location, however, and it was not planning to change its routes.

Recommended US seeking new missile defence sites as North Korea nuclear fears grow

In a statement to The Independent, it added: We have been in contact with relevant authorities and industry bodies as well as with other carriers.

At the moment, no one is changing any routes or operating parameters.

We remain alert and review the situation as it evolves.

Pyongyang was believed to have tested a new, more advanced intercontinental ballistic missile in last weeks launch, the Hwasong-15.

 North Korea announces test of new long-range missile

Its lofted trajectory took it up to 2,800 miles into space, 10 times further from Earth than the International Space Station.

Following the launch, South Korea and the United States launched large-scale joint aerial drills on Monday.

The annual Vigilant Ace exercise will run all week and will include F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters.

It has been condemned as provocative by the North, which views such drills as practice for war.

North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Show all 13 1 /13 North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Pyongyang residents react after the news of the successful launch of the new intercontinental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Images North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un signing an order to test-fire the newly developed inter-continental ballistic missile KRT via AP Video North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch A news broadcast displays Kim Jong Un's signed document AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch People cheer as they watch the news broadcast announcing Kim Jong Un's order to test-fire the new inter-continental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Images North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Residents react after the document signing AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Pyongyang residents celebrate Kim Jong Un's announcement AFP/Getty North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Cheering Pyongyang residents react AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch To counter North Korea's missile test, South Korea fired missiles into the East Sea The Defence Ministry/Yonhap via REUTERS North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch The Hyunmu-2 missiles firing during the drill South Korean Defense Ministry vi North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch The exercise was carried out in an attempt to counter Kim Jong Un's order South Korea Defense Ministry via AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch The South Korean army continue to carry out military exercises AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Where K-9 self-propelled howitzers were taking part in a drill Rex Features North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch US soldiers are also present in the border city of Paju AFP/Getty Images

The reported sighting of the Hwasong re-entry vehicle by staff on board flight CX893 from San Francisco to Hong Kong would not be the first observation of a space launch from a commercial airliner.

Last year Ryan Kennedy tweeted an image of a rocket launch while flying over Florida, and in 2011 Stefanie Gordon captured the Space Shuttle Endeavour streaking above the clouds on its way to orbit.
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Two doctors have been fired and a police investigation launched after a baby who was declared dead at a New Delhi hospital woke up on the way to his own funeral.

The baby boy and his twin sister were born prematurely at just 22 weeks, according to local media and NDTV, with the girl stillborn and the boy in critical condition.

Doctors at Max hospital declared the boy dead soon after and he was returned to the family wrapped like a courier package from the back door, according to NDTV.

Some six hours later and on the way to perform funeral rites, however, the parents reportedly noticed movement inside the polythene bag and discovered he was breathing.

When we opened the bag, we found the boy breathing. I was shocked. I couldnt believe my eyes, the babys grandfather, Praveen Malik, told CNN.

The family then rushed the baby to another hospital where, according to Indian TV, they were told it would cost 100,000 rupees (1,150) for three days treatment in an intensive care unit.

He is on life support, the boys uncle Deepak told The Hindu. The doctors at the [new hospital] told us that the boy has several infections because he was exposed to the environment and had been wrapped in plastic. They havent told us whether hell survive.

The incident at one of the capitals most upmarket hospitals has provoked a national debate about the state of Indian private healthcare, which can be prohibitively expensive.

Following the news of the incident, state health minister Satyendar Jain said on Twitter he had ordered an inquiry, and Indias federal health minister JP Nadda called it heartbreaking.

The two doctors who were fired may also be subject to police charges. Their dismissal was strict action... taken on the basis of our initial discussions with experts, a statement from Max hospital read.

While the inquiry by the expert group which includes external experts from Indian Medical Association (IMA) is still in process, we have decided to terminate the services of the two treating doctors.

The hospital said the IMA investigation was expected to be concluded on Tuesday. If the states own probe finds the hospital guilty of medical negligence, it could have its licence revoked.

There have been a number of reports in recent months of alleged negligence in Indian hospitals. According to the BBC, last month a girl died of dengue fever at another private hospital, with the parents alleging that they were overcharged for her treatment.

And in August, more than 60 children died at a hospital in Gorakhpur after the facilitys oxygen supply ran out amid a financial dispute with suppliers.
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A motorcyclist had a miraculous recovery after he fell off his bike and was impaled on a metal rod - through his neck and mouth.

The rider, named only as Suresh, 35, was trying to avoid a head on collision with an oncoming three-wheeler, when he lost control of his bike and veered off the road.

He rammed his bike into a pile of construction materials and got impaled by the rod which pierced through the back of his neck - and emerged through his mouth.

Unsurprisingly he immediately passed out - but thankfully he was discovered by passing motorists who took him to hospital.

Miraculously surgeons removed the rod - and Suresh, who works as a farmer, is now recovering at home in Andhra Pradesh's East Godavari district in India.

He said: "After the accident, I fell unconscious and had no idea how I landed in the hospital.

Suresh was found by passers-by on the roadside SWNS (SWNS)

"My relatives told me that some good samaritans brought me to the hospital. I want to thank them for saving my life.

"Doctors told me that I was brought in within the golden hour and that's why they could save my life."

Surgeons were able to remove the rod from his neck and mouth (SWNS)

The accident took place on 18 November on National Highway 216 and passers-by rushed him to the state-run Kakinada Hospital, 20 miles away.

The materials which he fell on were made to expand roads (SWNS)

A police spokesperson said: "Suresh was trying to avoid hitting an auto-rickshaw. He fell on a pile of iron rods lying by the National Highway 216.

"The construction materials were meant to be used to widen roads.

South West News Service
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North Korean defectors have claimed they are suffering from the effects of exposure to radiation during time spent living near the countrys nuclear test sites.

Lee Jeong-hwa said she had tried to flee North Korea for seven years until finally succeeding in 2010.

During those years Kim Jong-il detonated two nuclear devices at the Punggye-ri test site, which sits within Ms Lees home county of Kilju.

So many people died we began calling it ghost disease', she told NBC News. We thought we were dying because we were poor and we ate badly. Now we know it was the radiation.

However, speaking in South Korea, Ms Lee told the broadcaster she had undergone radiation tests that had come back negative.

And Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, a scientist at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies in California, told NBC that radiation leaks would have been detected by sensors in the region.

The claims of defectors are notoriously difficult to verify due to the repressive nature of the North Korean regime  and the potential propaganda value of their life stories.

Earlier this month, defectors from Kilju made similar claims in interviews with South Korean media.
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US Senator Lindsey Graham has said that he believes it's time to start moving the families of American military personnel out of South Korea as North Korea pushes the US closer to a military conflict.

Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he will also urge the Pentagon not to send any more dependents to South Korea.

It's crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea, given the provocation of North Korea. South Korea should be an unaccompanied tour, the South Carolina Republican said on CBS's Face the Nation. ''So, I want them to stop sending dependents, and I think it's now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea.

Recommended US and South Korea embark on massive aerial drills over peninsula

About 28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea to deter potential aggression from the North.

Last week, North Korea shattered two months of relative quiet by firing off an intercontinental ballistic missile that some observers say showed the reclusive country's ability to strike the US East Coast. It was North Korea's most powerful weapons test yet.

The launch was a message of defiance to President Donald Trump's administration, which a week earlier had restored North Korea to a US list of terror sponsors. It also hurt nascent diplomatic efforts and raised fears of a pre-emptive U.S. strike. Threats traded by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have further stoked fears of war.

Graham expressed confidence in the Trump administration's ability to manage the growing conflict with North Korea.

He's got the best national security team of anybody I have seen since I have been in Washington, said Graham, who has served in Congress since 1995.

The Trump administration has vowed to deny North Korea the capability of striking the US homeland with a nuclear-tipped missile.

Denial means pre-emptive war as a last resort. The pre-emption is becoming more likely as their technology matures, Graham told CBS. I think we're really running out of time. The Chinese are trying, but ineffectively. If there's an underground nuclear test, then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States.

North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Show all 13 1 /13 North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Pyongyang residents react after the news of the successful launch of the new intercontinental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Images North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un signing an order to test-fire the newly developed inter-continental ballistic missile KRT via AP Video North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch A news broadcast displays Kim Jong Un's signed document AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch People cheer as they watch the news broadcast announcing Kim Jong Un's order to test-fire the new inter-continental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Images North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Residents react after the document signing AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Pyongyang residents celebrate Kim Jong Un's announcement AFP/Getty North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Cheering Pyongyang residents react AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch To counter North Korea's missile test, South Korea fired missiles into the East Sea The Defence Ministry/Yonhap via REUTERS North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch The Hyunmu-2 missiles firing during the drill South Korean Defense Ministry vi North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch The exercise was carried out in an attempt to counter Kim Jong Un's order South Korea Defense Ministry via AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch The South Korean army continue to carry out military exercises AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Where K-9 self-propelled howitzers were taking part in a drill Rex Features North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch US soldiers are also present in the border city of Paju AFP/Getty Images

Trump has said he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping about Pyongyang's provocative actions, and he vowed that additional major sanctions will be imposed on North Korea. China is North Korea's only significant ally, but it has grown increasingly frustrated over the North's nuclear and missile tests that have brought a threat of war and chaos to China's northeastern border.

AP
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North Korea's latest intercontinental ballistic missile, which it said could reach the "whole mainland" of the United States, broke up as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, a US official has said.

South Korea's military believes the Hwasong-15 missile, which flew 950km (600 miles) before splashing down in waters near Japan, is potentially capable of striking targets as far as 13,000km (8,100 miles), which would put Washington within reach.

But a US official told CNN "the North Koreans had problems with re-entry."

While North Korea's latest missile test puts Washington within range, Pyongyang still needs to prove it has mastered critical missile technology, such as re-entry, terminal stage guidance and warhead activation, South Korea said last week.

After North Korea released video footage and photographs of Hwasong-15, US based experts said it appeared North Korea was indeed capable of delivering a nuclear weapon anywhere in the US and could only be two or three tests away from being combat ready.

Yeo Suk-joo, South Korea's deputy minister of defence policy, told the South Korean parliament North Korea still needed to prove some technologies, like re-entry, terminal stage guidance and warhead activation.

 North Korea announces test of new long-range missile

Mr Yeo said the first stage engine of the missile featured a clustering of two engines from a smaller Hwasong-14 ICBM test-launched in July.

North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Show all 13 1 /13 North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Pyongyang residents react after the news of the successful launch of the new intercontinental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Images North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un signing an order to test-fire the newly developed inter-continental ballistic missile KRT via AP Video North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch A news broadcast displays Kim Jong Un's signed document AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch People cheer as they watch the news broadcast announcing Kim Jong Un's order to test-fire the new inter-continental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Images North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Residents react after the document signing AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Pyongyang residents celebrate Kim Jong Un's announcement AFP/Getty North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Cheering Pyongyang residents react AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch To counter North Korea's missile test, South Korea fired missiles into the East Sea The Defence Ministry/Yonhap via REUTERS North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch The Hyunmu-2 missiles firing during the drill South Korean Defense Ministry vi North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch The exercise was carried out in an attempt to counter Kim Jong Un's order South Korea Defense Ministry via AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch The South Korean army continue to carry out military exercises AP North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch Where K-9 self-propelled howitzers were taking part in a drill Rex Features North Korea announces intercontinental missile launch US soldiers are also present in the border city of Paju AFP/Getty Images

South Korea's Defence Minister, Song Young-moo, told parliament he expected North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to use his New Year's Address to declare North Korea had completed its weapons programme.

The dictator visited a factory which built the tires for a huge vehicle used to transport the new intercontinental ballistic missile to thank its workers.

At the factory, Kim complimented workers for manufacturing the large-size tires for the 9-axle missile truck without relying on imported equipment and called for efforts to raise production to "satisfy the daily-increasing needs in developing the country's economy and beefing up national defence capabilities," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday.

In September Kim tasked the Amnokgang Tire Factory to make the tires for the "great event in November," the agency reported.

Additional reporting by agencies
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He was a member of the Rohingya student union in college, taught at a public high school and even won a parliamentary seat in Burma's thwarted elections in 1990.

But according to the government of Burma, Kyaw Mins fellow Rohingya do not exist.

A long-persecuted Muslim minority concentrated in Burma's Rakhine state, the Rohingya have been deemed dangerous interlopers from neighbouring Bangladesh. Today, they are mostly stateless, their very identity denied by Buddhist-majority Burma.

There is no such thing as Rohingya, said Kyaw San Hla, an officer in Rakhines state security ministry. It is fake news.

Such denials bewilder Kyaw Min. He has lived in Burma all of his 72 years, and the history of the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group in Burma stretches back for generations before.

Now, human rights watchdogs warn that much of the evidence of the Rohingyas history in Burma is in danger of being eradicated by a military campaign the United States has called ethnic cleansing.

Since late August, more than 620,000 Rohingya Muslims, about two-thirds of the population that lived in Burma in 2016, have fled to Bangladesh, driven out by the militarys campaign of massacre, rape and arson in Rakhine.

In a report released in October, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Burma's security forces had worked to effectively erase all signs of memorable landmarks in the geography of the Rohingya landscape and memory in such a way that a return to their lands would yield nothing but a desolate and unrecognisable terrain.

The UN report also said the crackdown in Rakhine had targeted teachers, the cultural and religious leadership, and other people of influence in the Rohingya community in an effort to diminish Rohingya history, culture and knowledge.

We are people with our own history and traditions, said Kyaw Hla Aung, a Rohingya lawyer and former political prisoner.

How can they pretend we are nothing? he asked.

Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Show all 10 1 /10 Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Rohingya refugee Mohamed Jabair, 21, reveals the burns on his bod, which he said he sustained when his house was set on fire in Myanmar REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Refugee Momtaz Begum, 30, at Balukhali refugee camp. Begum told how soldiers came to her village demanding valuables.After beating her, they locked her inside her house and set the roof on fire. She escaped to find her three sons dead and her daughter beaten and bleeding REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Imam Hossain, 42, sleeps at Kutupalang refugee camp, near Cox's Bazar. Hossain said he was returning home after teaching at a madrassa in his village when three men attacked him with knives REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Rohingya refugee Setara Begum, 12, at Nayapara refugee camp. The home of Begum and her siblings was hit by a rocket. The young girl received no treatment for the severe burns to her feet. Her feet healed but she has no toes. Her mother said: 'She has been mute from that day, and doesn't speak to anyone. She only cries silently' REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Mohamed Heron, 6, and his brother Mohamed Akter, 4, show the burns on their bodies at Kutupalong refugee camp. The boys' uncle said the burns resulted from Myanmar's armed forces firing rockets at their village Reuters Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Kalabarow, 50, at Leda refugee camp, in Bangladesh. Kalabarow said her husband, daughter and son were killed when soldiers fired on her village in Maungdaw. She was hit and lay on the floor pretending to be dead for several hours before a grandson found her. During their journey to Bangladesh, a village doctor amputated her REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Ansar Allah, 11, at Leda refugee camp in Bangladesh. Allah showed a large scar  the result of a gunshot wound. His mother Samara said: 'They sprayed us with bullets, as our house was burning' REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Anwara Begum, 36, at Kutupalang refugee camp, near Cox's Bazar. Begum said she woke to find her home in Maungdaw township in flames REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Abdu Rahaman, 73, at Leda refugee camp in Bangladesh. Rahaman, a merchant from Maungdaw, was ambushed while walking on a mountain path with other refugees. A machete thrown at his feet severed three toes REUTERS/Jorge Silva Bullets and burns: injured Rohingya refugees Nur Kamal, 17, described how soldiers assaulted him after they found him hiding in his home in Maungdaw. His uncle found him unconscious in a pool of blood. It took them two weeks to get to Bangladesh. Kamal said: 'We want the international community to help us obtain justice' REUTERS

Five years ago, Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, was a mixed city, divided between an ethnic Rakhine Buddhist majority and the Rohingya Muslim minority.

But since sectarian riots in 2012, the city has been mostly cleared of Muslims. Across central Rakhine, about 120,000 Rohingya, even those who had citizenship, have been interned in camps, stripped of their livelihoods and prevented from accessing proper schools or health care.

The New York Times
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Catalonia's removed Vice President has been refused bail following a hearing by a Spanish judge.

Oriol Junqueras was ordered to be kept in jail following charges of sedition, but six other former Catalan ministers were freed on bail by the court.

Along with Mr Junqueras, deposed Catalan interior minister Joaquim Forn and the leads of two civic groups ANC and Omnium Cultural, were also kept in prison.

Spanish authorities levels charges of rebellion, sedition, and the misuse of public funds against ministers of the Catalan government after they called an independence referendum on 1 October.

The referendum was declared illegal by Spain's constitutional court in Madrid and national police used force to try and stop it, including the confiscation of ballot boxes and documented physical attacks on people going to vote and protesting. The Madrid central government then removed Catalonia's regional autonomy, imposed direct rule, and called new elections.

Mr Junqueras will now have to campaign ahead of those elections, called for 21 December, from a jail near Madrid.

The judge set 100,000 bail for the six other Catalan politicians who had been jailed in early November, and ordered their passports to be confiscated.

The six were expected to leave jails near Madrid later in the day.

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

Meanwhile, Catalan ex-president Carles Puigdemont and four of his separatist allies heard that they will be judged on whether they can be extradited from Belgium to Spain on 14 December, exactly one week before the election.

The group is refusing to return to Spain to face rebellion, sedition and embezzlement charges that can be punished with decades in prison under the country's criminal laws.

Mr Puigdemont's defence lawyer, Paul Bekaert, insisted that the Spanish charges were not punishable in Belgium and thus there were no grounds for extradition.

"We also highlighted the danger for the impediment of their human rights in Spain," he said.

Whatever decision is made on 14 December, two appeals will be possible and a final ruling will likely come after the election called by Spain's central authorities, in which Mr Puigdemont is leading his pro-independence party's campaign.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Maltese police have arrested 10 suspects in the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has announced, almost two months after her car was blown up in an apparently targeted assassination.

All of those arrested are Maltese nationals and most have a criminal record, the Prime Minister said at a press conference on Monday morning. The police have 48 hours to question the suspects, arraign them or release them.

Eight of the arrests arrests were initially announced by the Prime Minister at the press conference, with a further two coming shortly afterwards.

As I stated as soon as I learnt about this barbaric act, we will leave no stone unturned to get this case solved. I am committed to doing so more than ever, the Prime Minister said.

Home minister Michael Farrugia confirmed the nationalities of the latter two arrests but said he would not go into any more detail because, he said, I have been already threatened by legal action by the Caruana Galizia family.

53-year-old Caruana Galizia was murdered on 16 October. Her popular blog had relentlessly highlighted cases of alleged high-level corruption targeting politicians from across party lines, including around the Panama Papers tax scandal.

Her killing has sparked protests on the island, with thousands marching against what some called the Mafia state.

The sons of murdered journalist carry their mothers coffin out of the church in Mosta (Getty)

Her family made it known that they did not want the countrys Prime Minister or President  targets of her journalism  to attend her funeral.

And they alleged that the minister, Mr Farrugia, had divulged confidential information that could hamper the investigation into her death. The minister has dismissed the allegation.

The spate of arrests comes just days after a European Parliament delegation from Brussels visited the island EU member state and warned that rule of law was failing there, with authorities showing a high degree of unwillingness to investigate.

They are the first known breakthrough in a Maltese police operation coordinated between the Police Corps, the Armed Forces of Malta and the Security Services. Europol, the EUs police agency, has also sent a team of organised crime experts to help Maltese police investigate the assassination, joining the FBI and Dutch forensic experts.

A court hearing was set for Tuesday, at which point police can officially file charges and the suspects asked for a plea.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Last week, a cross-party delegation of MEPs travelled to Malta to assess whether the countrys law enforcement system had been compromised. The European Parliament had previously backed a motion expressing concern about the countrys legal and justice system.

Green MEP Sven Giegold said the group had came away from the meetings even more concerned over the rule of law now than before the visit, and we must follow up on what we found.

But the delegation was criticised by the Maltese Prime Minister, who said it chose to meet with a disproportionate number of government critics and that its conclusions were misguided.
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The German government is considering legal changes that would oblige operators of car and house alarm systems to help police and security services in their efforts to spy on potential terrorists or criminals, a spokesman for the interior ministry said.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a conservative, plans to discuss the issue with officials in a bid to remove what he sees as hurdles to better surveillance, the spokesman said.

But those plans have already sparked criticism from the Social Democrats (SPD), who are partners in the current German caretaker government and are under pressure to renew the grand coalition that has ruled Germany for the past four years.

Surveillance is a sensitive issue in Germany given its legacy of spying by East Germanys Stasi secret police and the Nazi era Gestapo.

Boris Pistorius, an SPD member and interior minister of the state of Lower Saxony, said Mr de Maizieres plans were premature and panicked, and called for a more measured approach.

2017 is not Orwells 1984, he told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung in an interview. We need sound judgment and not exaggeration.

In the past, security officials have run into difficulty installing secret listening devices in cars and apartments because individuals were tipped off by security systems in electronic gadgets connected to the internet, or received text messages when their cars were opened.

Officials were now exploring legal changes that would require alarm system operators to provide law enforcement with specific tools that would enable them to secretly open and circumvent alarm systems in cases involving suspected terrorist activity or organised crime, the spokesman said.

He said authorities were not seeking access to suspects computers, smart phones or other electronic devices.

Reuters
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Anu Partanen left her home country of Finland seven years ago, and she'd like to set one thing straight.

Contrary to the popular belief that Nordic countries make the list of happiest countries year after year because they are unified utopias where everyone looks out for each other, the truth is that northern Europeans are just as selfish as Americans.

In fact, maybe even more so.

Partanen recently explained this misconception in a piece for The Atlantic entitled What Americans Don't Get About Nordic Countries.

The central argument is this: All the socialized programs that make Nordic countries different from the US - centralised health care, free higher education, mandatory paid parental leave - are done to help people individually, not collectively, as many Americans assume.

Nordic nations offer their citizens - all of their citizens, but especially the middle class - high-quality services that save people a lot of money, time, and trouble, Partanen writes. This is what Americans fail to understand: My taxes in Finland were used to pay for top-notch services for me.

Partanen goes on to say that this view isn't a niche opinion; it's the prevailing mindset. Nordic citizens may pay higher tax rates so there's a larger pot of money to give out to everyone, but that doesn't mean people necessarily care that others are getting off easier.

For Partanen, the important thing is that she benefits from the system.

Nordics are not only just as selfish as everyone else on this earth but they can - and do - dislike many of their fellow citizens just as much as people with different political views dislike each other in other countries, she writes.

The happy byproduct of this, which Partanen doesn't address in her piece, is that Nordic citizens feel more secure, which means there is less crime. That breeds more trust between ordinary people and between those people and their government, which helps legitimize the system.

Not so in the US.

Gummi Oddsson, an Icelandic sociologist from Michigan State University, says that a lack of trust is ultimately what produces the kind of gun violence epidemic that's taking place in the US, but has failed to reach northern Europe. Instead, people in Nordic countries have their basic needs met, which means they aren't forced to resort to illegal strategies, like theft and drug-dealing, to get by.

And that's important, because even if Americans understand that social welfare programs work without them having to give up being selfish, the reality is still bleak. Massive change still needs to come from the top to convince people the government won't mismanage the extra money it'll take in taxes.

But Partanen's argument is a good start for changing American opinions of the Nordic model.

It's a lot easier to consider a new way of living if you don't have to give up caring about your own needs.

 Elon Musk doesn't have a desk at the office and has slept on the floor

 19 highly successful people who changed careers after age 30

 26 European cities where you can live on less than 600 a month

Read the original article on Business Insider UK.  2016. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter.
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An Egyptian lawyer has been sentenced to three years in prison for declaring women who wear ripped jeans should be raped as a national duty.

Nabih al-Wahsh, a prominent conservative who has previously stoked controversy, was also fined 20,000 Egyptian pounds (839).

The lawyer sparked outrage for making the controversial comments during a TV panel show discussion in October debating a draft law on prostitution.

"Are you happy when you see a girl walking down the street with half of her behind showing?" he said on Al-Assema.

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.

Mr al-Wahsh said women who wore revealing clothing were "inviting men to harass them" and said "protecting morals is more important than protecting borders".

The lawyers remarks sparked fury across the country and Egypts National Council for Women announced it would be filing a complaint against the TV channel. It issued a plea for media outlets to refrain from providing a platform for individuals who make incendiary comments that incite violence against women.

The National Council said the remarks were a "flagrant call" for rape and in violation of "everything in the Egyptian constitution". Maya Morsi, head of the council, argued his remarks constituted an actual violation of the Egyptian constitution that makes explicit efforts to safeguard womens rights.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The prosecutor brought charges against Mr al-Wahsh in the wake of the public uproar.

The council has now filed a complaint about the statement to the Supreme Council for Media Regulation about the broadcast which was shown on 19 October.

In October, the Egyptian capital of Cairo was branded the most dangerous megacity for women in the first international poll which looked at how women fare in cities with over ten million people. Women's rights campaigners in the city say this is the result of deeply entrenched centuries-old traditions of discrimination there and women having limited access to good healthcare, education, and finance.

A 2008 study found that 83 per cent of Egyptian women said they had been sexually harassed and 53 per cent of men blamed women for bringing it on themselves.

Mr al-Wahsh has previously prompted controversy for branding the Holocaust "imaginary" and labelling himself a proud anti-Semite.

Recommended Egypt launches largest LGBT crackdown in more than a decade

"If I see any Israeli, I will kill him," he said during a separate TV panel show.

Mr al-Wahsh made headlines in October last year after his debate with a liberal cleric descended into chaos and chairs and shoes flew around the TV studio.

The fiercely heated discussion spiralled out of control after Sheikh Rashad, who is famed for his permissive interpretation of Islam, argued women should not necessarily be required to cover their hair with a headscarf.

Mr al-Wahsh has previously stated his opposition to women serving as judges. He argued if women become judges they could also become muftis, a Muslim legal expert who has the power to give rulings on religious issues, and would issue fatwas - a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognised authority - while they are on their periods.

He said: If we let a woman become a judge, why shouldn't she become Sheik of Al-Azhar? Why shouldn't she become the Mufti? Why don't we all just go to Hell?! Will she issue me a fatwa while she is menstruating?!
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Israel is about to commit a war crime and leave 50 Palestinian children homeless in freezing winter conditions by demolishing a large chunk of their West Bank village, it has been claimed.

The Village Council of Susiya in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has now written an open letter pleading for the international community to exert pressure to stop the demolition, which is now thought to be just days away.

The villagers say the demolition of 20 buildings, one fifth of the village, will violate the fundamental human rights of 100 people, half of them children, and leave them exposed to freezing rain and harsh winds.

Claiming the plan to demolish Susiya is part of a wider extensive campaign of [Israeli] demolitions in the West Bank, the villagers letter concludes: The Israeli government has repeatedly violated its obligations to us as protected persons living under occupation.

It will be a war crime if the Israeli government forcefully displaces our village.

The Israeli authorities have long viewed Susiya as an illegal encampment but the demolition order, announced by the Israeli State Attorneys Office on 22 November, has also been condemned by a group of US Senators including Bernie Sanders, and by EU diplomats.

On 24 November the EU Representative and the EU Heads of Mission in Jerusalem and Ramallah issued a joint statement citing Israels humanitarian legal obligations as an occupying power and demanding the demolition be halted.

Declaring themselves deeply concerned about the Susiya demolition plan, the diplomats said: The EU calls upon the Israeli authorities to halt demolitions of Palestinian houses and property, in accordance with its obligations as an occupying power under international humanitarian law, and to cease the policy of settlement construction and expansion, of designating land for exclusive Israeli use and of denying Palestinian development.

Susiya is located in the South Hebron Hills within Area C of the West Bank, where all civil and security affairs are run by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) through its Civil Administration, as set out in the 1993 Oslo peace accords.

It has been a source of growing tension since 1986 when the site of the original village was declared a national park because of its archaeological heritage, which included an ancient synagogue that was later converted into a mosque.

Supporters of the villagers say at that point they were expelled from their original homes and took to living on their adjacent agricultural lands.

Throughout the Nineties, the IDF carried out small-scale demolitions of homes at the new site of Susiya, claiming they had been built illegally.

In July 2001, according to The Times of Israel, the entire village was destroyed a day after the murder of Yair Har Sinai, a shepherd from the nearby Jewish settlement, which is also called Susiya.

The Palestinians later rebuilt. The villagers submitted a development plan for Susiya in 2012, but in October 2013 this was rejected by the Civil Administrations Subcommittee for Planning and Licensing.

The committee was said to have ruled that the rural residences built by the Palestinians did not provide them with proper chances for social advancement, job opportunities or educational empowerment. The committee also argued that the Palestinian Authority and the nearby town of Yatta were unable to provide proper educational, welfare and health services to Susiya.

It allegedly claimed the plan submitted by the villagers would keep Susiyas 350-strong population in poverty and ignorance, and suggested that they integrate into the urban fabric of Yatta instead.

Susiya residents claim they have been left no choice but to remain on our land living in tents, under very difficult conditions, forbidden from building or repairing anything (Dina Rickman) (Dina Durnan)

The ruling was condemned by the organisation Rabbis for Human Rights as especially cynical considering the regime authorities placed obstacles in the way of building a school [and] left it for decades without infrastructure for electricity, water, sewage, and roads.

In their letter, the villagers say the 2013 rejection of their plan left them no choice but to remain on our land living in tents, under very difficult conditions, forbidden from building or repairing anything, in order to protect our land from the threat of annexation by the surrounding [Jewish] settlements.

Then in 2014 Regavim, which calls itself a legal advocacy NGO but is characterised by opponents as a right-wing pro-Jewish settler group, began lobbying the Israeli High Court to demolish Susiya.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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Regavim argued that Susiya was an illegal Palestinian outpost and referred to its residents as squatters with an agenda intended to obliterate the fact that an ancient Jewish community, including a magnificent ancient synagogue, thrived in this area before Islam even existed.

The group argued that the idea of an ancient Arab village called Susiya was an invention, citing Israels High Court rulings that found such assertions were demonstrably false, based on comprehensive objective historical and geographical accounts.

Regavim director Ari Briggs asserted that in the past the area occupied by the squatters had just been temporary grazing land used by Arab shepherds for between two weeks and a month every year.

As Regavim appeared to have won a decision in favour of demolition in 2015, it was backed by Israels deputy defence minister Eli Ben Dahan, of the pro-settlement Jewish Home party.

He told the Knesset: There has never been an Arab village called Susiya, adding that claims of its historical existence were a ploy by leftist organisations to take over Area C [of the West Bank].

Four days later, the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the villagers had in their possession an authentic land-ownership document dating back to 1881.

The demolition plans were condemned by the US State Department of President Barack Obama, and by EU diplomats including Alistair McPhail, Britains consul general in Jerusalem.

The situation appeared to have become so sensitive that the demolition was repeatedly postponed.

Now, however, the demolition of Susiya appears imminent, at a time when many commentators think the Israeli government has been emboldened by a Trump administration seeming far more reluctant than Obamas to criticise Israel.

The villagers letter states On 22 November 2017 the Israeli State Attorneys Office announced that within 15 days they plan to demolish 20 buildings, [that] are our homes and also provide shelter for our animals.

The timing of the demolition  in the middle of winter  could not be more devastating. It will leave us vulnerable and exposed to freezing rain and harsh winds.

Our health clinic which provides health services for around 500 people from our own and surrounding communities, is among the buildings they plan to demolish. The Israeli authorities also want to demolish our village council which provides services for 350 local residents.

So far 30 British politicians including MPs and members of the Scottish Parliament have signalled their support for the villagers, along with dozens of academics and activists.

In the November 29 letter initiated by US Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein and Bernie Sanders, a total of 10 US senators, four of them Jewish, told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: We urge your government not to demolish the Palestinian village of Susiya and the Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar.

The displacement of entire communities would be an irreversible step away from a two-state solution, and we urge your government to abandon its efforts to destroy these villages.

Instead of forcibly evicting these communities, we encourage your government to fairly re-evaluate Susiyas professionally developed master plan.

Your governments threats to demolish these communities are particularly distressing in light of the Israeli Civil Administrations efforts to dramatically expand settlements throughout the West Bank.

Israeli Embassy spokespeople were not immediately available for comment.

Israel has always stressed its claim to be the only democracy in the Middle East and fiercely denied claims that it has ever been guilty of war crimes.

A spokesman for Mr Netanyahu has previously stated Israel is a country with a fiercely independent judiciary  Everything done by the military in Israel is open to judicial review by the independent judiciary.
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Antonio Guterres, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General has called for an immediate ceasefire in Yemen and the resumption of all commercial imports to combat the growing humanitarian crisis in the country.

The warring parties to stop all ground and air assaults because millions of children, women and men risk mass hunger, disease and death, he said.

It comes after five days of street fighting in the capital Sanaa between the forces of Yemen's former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the Iran-backed Shia rebels known as Houthis.

The two sides originally joined together three years ago and swept across Sanaa, forcing the country's internationally recognised president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, to flee the country and seek military intervention led by Saudi Arabia.

The oil rich Middle Eastern kingdom and a coalition of other powers then began a brutal aerial bombing campaign which the UN estimates to have killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than three million.

The number of people killed in a cholera outbreak alone reached over 2,000 in September, according to Oxfam.

After months of political and military stalemate, the street battles have marked a turning point in the conflict.

The situation in Yemen Show all 14 1 /14 The situation in Yemen The situation in Yemen Houthi supporters trample on a US flag during a gathering mobilizing more fighters into several Yemeni battlefronts, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen People carry the coffins of men, who were killed in the recent Saudi-led airstrikes during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen AP The situation in Yemen Pro-government fighters give food to Yemeni children on the road leading to the southwestern port city of Mokha. Yemeni rebels are putting up fierce resistance in a key Red Sea port city where they are encircled by pro-government force Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni stands in front of a graffiti protesting US military operations in war-affected Yemen, in Sana'a, Yemen. According to reports, US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen A Yemeni female fighter supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, takes part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen Yemeni female fighters supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, take part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A boy shouts slogans next to pro-Houthi fighters, who have been injured during recent fighting, during a rally held to honour those injured or maimed while fighting in Houthi ranks in Sanaa, Yemen Reuters The situation in Yemen Balls of fire and smoke rise from a Houthi-held military camp following alleged Saudi-led airstrikes, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy looks on as Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy sits amidst the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa AFP/Getty The situation in Yemen Marine One with US President Donald Trump flies with a decoy and support helicopters to Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, for the dignified transfer of Navy Seal Chief Petty Officer William 'Ryan' Owens who was killed in Yemen Getty Images The situation in Yemen US President Donald Trump aboard the Marine One to greet the remains of a US military commando killed during a raid on the al Qaeda militant group in southern Yemen on Sunday, at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, US Reuters

Clashes between fighters loyal to Mr Saleh and the Houthis first erupted last week when he accused the rebels of storming his giant mosque in Sanaa and attacking his nephew, the powerful commander of the special forces, Tarek Saleh.

Both sides have set up checkpoints, placed snipers on rooftops and sealed off entrances to the city. Bombings and sporadic gunfire rocked the southern part of Sanaa over the weekend, when Houthi militants stormed Mr Saleh's Yemen Today TV network, beat up its director, and held over 40 journalists and crew members inside the building, Yemen's Press Syndicate said.

Many state institutions  including the airport, state TV headquarters and the official news agency  remained under the control of the Houthis, despite earlier reports that Mr Saleh's forces had taken them over.

In Mehwat, a province in northern Yemen, sporadic fighting also broke out between Mr Saleh's supporters and the Houthis, while heavy fighting rocked the western district of Gidr in Sanaa province, where tribesmen took over military camps briefly before surrendering them to the Houthis.

Medical officials in Sanaa said nearly 75 people from both sides were killed and wounded in clashes there. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief media, did not provide a breakdown of the casualties.

Meanwhile, Mr Hadi, who is in Saudi Arabia in self-imposed exile, appeared to extend an offer of reconciliation to Mr Saleh.

In a statement from the country's capital Riyadh, Mr Hadi said his side would support "any party confronting Houthi terrorist gangs."

Additional reporting by agencies
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The radio station of Yemen's Houthi-run interior ministry said on Monday the militia's former war ally turned adversary, ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, had been killed as fighting racked the capital Sanaa though there was no independent confirmation.

Unverified footage circulated by Yemeni social media users appeared to a show corpse resembling Saleh. Armed militiamen unfurled a blanket containing the corpse and shouted, "praised God!" and "hey Ali Affash!", another last name for Saleh.

The radio station said the official Houthi TV station would soon broadcast footage of Saleh's dead body.

Saleh's party denied to Reuters that their leader had been killed and said he was still leading forces in heavy fighting in Sanaa that has killed at least 125 people and wounded 238 in six days, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Houthi fighters ride a vehicle amid clashes between the Houthis and forces loyal to Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, in Sanaa (EPA)

His whereabouts were unknown and he has made no public appearances since the reports of his death surfaced.

Earlier on Monday, Houthi forces blew up Saleh's house in Sanaa and came under aerial attack by Saudi-led coalition warplanes for a second day, residents said.

The Saudi-led air campaign, backed by U.S. and other Western arms and intelligence, has killed hundreds of civilians but has failed to secure the coalition any major gains in the nearly three-year-old campaign to restore Yemen's internationally recognised president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power.

 Houthi-controlled TV station reports former Yemen president has been killed

Saleh's loyalists have lost ground on the sixth day of heavy urban warfare with the Iran-allied Houthi militia during which the casualty toll has rapidly mounted in Sanaa.

Recommended Red Cross forced to buy own fuel in Yemen because of Saudi blockade

"We are supporting the main hospitals in Sanaa who urgently need war-wounded kits," ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said in Geneva. "We are also looking at donating dead body bags to hospitals which are actually asking for them and hope to donate fuel to the main hospitals because they depend on generators."

The ICRC have "relocated" 13 international staff to Djibouti from Sanaa on Monday, she said.

Sanaa residents reported intense fighting overnight and into the morning with families cowering in their homes as explosions rocked the city. Coalition air strikes hammered Houthi positions in an apparent bid to shore up Saleh's forces, witnesses said.

The re-alignment of Saleh's forces with the Saudis would mark a significant turn in a war that is part of a wider struggle between regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The bloodshed has compounded the woes of one of the Arab world's poorest countries and left at least 10,000 dead as hunger and disease have spread.

At the United Nations, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the warring parties to stop all ground and air assaults. He also called for the resumption of all commercial imports into Yemen, saying millions of children, women and men were at risk of mass hunger, disease and death.

However, in a speech late on Sunday, Saleh formally annulled his alliance with the Houthis and pledged to step up his fight.

Saleh, who dominated Yemen's heavily armed tribal society for 33 years before quitting in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, and the Shi'ite Muslim Houthis had made common cause against Hadi loyalists.

But they vied for supremacy over the territory they ran together, including Sanaa, which the Houthis seized in September 2014, and their feud burst into open combat on Wednesday.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam claimed significant gains in the battle for Sanaa on Monday.

"With the aid and approval of God, the security forces backed up by wide popular support were able last night to cleanse the areas in which the militias of treason and betrayal were deployed," he said in a statement.

The Houthi movement's TV channel al-Masirah and witnesses said Houthir fighters had seized the downtown home of Saleh's nephew Tareq, an army general.

Residents said the warring sides traded heavy automatic and artillery fire as the Houthis advanced in the central Political District, which is a redoubt of Saleh and his family.

"We lived through days of terror. Houthi tanks have been firing and the shells were falling on our neighbourhood," said Mohammed al-Madhaji, who lives in the frontline district.

"The fighting has been so violent we feel we could die at any moment. We can't get out of our homes."

Houthi media and political sources also reported that the Houthis also advanced toward Saleh's birthplace in a village outside Sanaa where he maintains a fortified palace.

Reuters
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The Made in Taiwan moniker hardly does Taiwan any favours as it belies the islands hot-spring bubbling mountains, scrumptious street food, and a sassy capital. But last weeks launch of China Airliness first direct flight from the UK (from Gatwick to Taipei) will make it easier for travellers to discover the real Taiwan. Here are 10 things to do in Taipei City.

See Chinese treasures

Chinese politician Chiang Kai-sheks nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 under Maos Communist onslaught, bringing with them one of the greatest collections of Chinese art purloined from the Forbidden Palace in Beijing. These imperial treasures of calligraphy, bronzes, and jades are on display at the National Palace Museum.

Avoid crowded weekends to be able to absorb the harmonious pricelessness of objects like the 11th-century Mao Gong Ding cauldron inscribed with 500 Chinese characters. Entry 6.50.

Follow the locals to eat street food at Taipeis markets (Mark Stratton)

Eat stinky tofu

Could you eat something reeking of unwashed feet? Stinky tofu is just one exotic aroma from night markets offering some of Asias best street food. Avoid the touristy Shilin night market for a far more authentic experience at a local favourite like Ningxia, and graze as you walk. Cheap eats include squid soup, sticky rice in bamboo, and that stinky tofu  which tastes better than you could have imagined when its fried and served with a healthy dollop of chilli. With dishes from 1-6, its easy to see why the Taiwanese dine out most evenings.

Sleep in a palace

Neo-Brutalist latitude gets an imperial palace makeover at the extraordinary Grand Hotel. Even if you dont stay at this 14-floor colossus, pay it a visit to gawp at the lacquered pillars propping up a golden double-eave roof, as red-uniformed bellhops skate around polished marble floors. For an option closer to the shopping and nightlife of Xinyi district, Home Hotel is a more 21st-century offering hosting a grainy whisky and jazz bar.

Dont just eat dumplings  learn to make them (Mark Stratton)

Cook potsticker dumplings

Salivating over Taipeis foodie onslaught may kindle a desire for a cooking class. Trade secrets, such as how to crisp up potsticker dumplings and how white pepper, not chilli, puts the bite into hot-and-sour soup, can be unlocked during a three-hour class with private chef, Wayne Lin. Book it through My Taiwan Tour - it costs from 75 per person, depending on group size.

Learn to brew oolong

Understand your oolongs and the art of brewing them at Ten Shangs Tea Company near Xingtian Temple MRT. Amid fragrant sacks of tea leaves, Mr and Mrs Chang treat visitors to tastings from their own plantations and explain the variations of high mountain green oolongs and black lowland teas. For the connoisseur, a fine 150g packet of mountain Li Shan oolong costs 42.

The Taipei 101 tower was the tallest building in the world until 2010 (Wikimedia Commons)

Head into the clouds

Given Taiwans vulnerability to earthquakes and typhoons, it took some bravery to construct the 509m-high Taipei 101, the worlds tallest building between 2004-2010. Swaggering over Xinyi in the design of a bamboo stem, the engineering is impressive as ear-popping elevators rise 89 floors in 36 seconds. The 360-degree views of the city ensure this is 15 well spent.

Eat Taipeis best xiaolongbao

Wrapped in silky casings, xiaolongbao soup dumplings contain a gelatinised broth that liquefies upon steaming. Theyre best eaten off a spoon to avoid jets of the soupy interior squirting out if you puncture them with chopsticks. The spiritual home of xiaolongbao is Din Tai Fung, where queues routinely stretch for 90 minutes. Five crab roe and pork xiaolongbao cost 3.75.

Soak up the onsen culture at Beitou (Lim Ashley)

Soak in sulphur

Japans ruthless colonisation of Taiwan between 1895-1945 isnt fondly recalled but they did bequeath an onsen culture. Head to the suburbs of Beitou to find accessible outdoors public hot-spring baths, but dont forget your swimwear  naked onsen etiquette does not apply as the pools are mixed gender. It costs 1 to soak for two hours in a tiered cascade of acidic mineral pools bubbling away at 45C.

Longshan Temple is a must-see in Taipei (Wikimedia Commons)

Pray for favours

Taiwans cocktail of Buddhist and Tao spirituality has more than an essence of expediency as worshippers pray for good health and fortune at intoxicatingly ornate temples. Enjoy the carnival-like spectacle at Longshan Temple, where devotees of this 18th-century temple light incense sticks and cast wooden jiaobei diving stones.

Venture beyond the city

Taipei is the gateway to explore an island of great natural beauty. From Tamsui MRT Station the superb Golden Riverside Path cycleway makes a flat 10-mile loop via mangroves and the 17th-century Spanish-built Fort San Domingo. Cycle hire costs 4.50 for four hours from the station. Hikers meanwhile will love the well marked mountainous trails of Yangmingshan National Park just outside Taipei City.
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New Zealand, famous for its jaw droppingly lovely landscapes, has been likened to a beautiful person with cancer by British environmentalist Sir Tim Smit.

The co-founder of the Eden Project said that NZ has many environmental problems, largely caused by the dairy industry, when giving the keynote speech at CLAs Rural Business Conference in London on 28 November.

The original Eden Project is in Cornwall, but there is also a similar project being run out of Avonside in Christchurch on the east coast of New Zealands South Island, entitled Eden NZ: Mountains to the Sea.

"We are working in the red zone, in Christchurch," said Sir Tim, reports the NZ Herald.

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"You know, what is the brand New Zealand guys? You know, it's the oldest advertising thing for a place in the whole of the world  Pure New Zealand.

"It's so pure that the people of Christchurch won't even swim in the River Avon."

Sir Tim said many of the lakes and rivers there are blighted by algae, which he attributed to a dairy industry that is out of control.

"It is like a beautiful person with cancer," he said. "The only strategy was to satisfy consumers in China with a dairy product, which is ironic for a lactose-intolerant people.

"So, with global warming, more rain, but focused in a short period of time, loads of nitrates to make the grass grow faster, because cattle need it faster than sheep, and all of the nitrates go in the river."

The dairy industry hit back, with DairyNZ strategy leader Bruce Thorrold saying the industry group was "extremely disappointed" at the comments.

He said New Zealand was "still very much a beautiful person and proud of it."

"We acknowledge that not all of our waterways are pristine but compared to the rest of the world, New Zealand's waterways are in good condition, and our farmers and communities are working hard to be even better," said Thorold.

"And dairy is just one sector that has had an important role to play. The Avon River, which Sir Tim references, is the river that flows through Christchurch City and isn't anywhere near dairy farms."

He extended an invitation for Sir Tim to return to New Zealand for a swim. "We invite Tim to revisit our beautiful country, and his facts, so he can see first-hand the state of our rivers and lakes, and perhaps even take a dip."

However, other experts have backed up Sir Tims assertions. NZ Environment Minister David Parker told the NZ Herald: "We agree New Zealand's got a real issue with water quality  we campaigned on it, and we are going to do something about it."

A recent Government report found that nitrogen levels were rising at 55 per cent of monitored river sites, while decreasing at 28 per cent of sites. Phosphorus levels were decreasing at 42 per cent of sites while rising at 25 per cent of sites.

Too much nitrogen and phosphorus in the water causes algae to grow faster than ecosystems can handle. Significant increases in algae harm water quality, food resources and habitats, and decrease the oxygen that fish and other aquatic life need to survive.
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Residents of a Swiss village voted to offer a settlement grant to people willing to move there.

The vote on 30 November was passed by 71 votes in favour to 29 against, reports ATS.

Its a clear result and Im very happy about it, said mayor Beat Jost.

It means that, for those who are eligible, moving to the village of Albinen in the Valais region will mean a payout of CHF25,000 (15,000) per adult and CHF10,000 (7,500) per child.

The village currently has 240 inhabitants; the new scheme was proposed in response to a group of young residents request that something be done to bolster Albinens decreasing population.

A dedicated fund of CHF100,000 (75,000) per year will be allotted to the project.

But getting the settlement grant isnt as straightforward as packing your bags and showing up in Switzerland. To be eligible, new residents must be under 45 years old, sign up to live in Albinen for a minimum of 10 years, buy or build a property there with a minimum value of CHF200,000 (150,000), and be a Swiss citizen or have a valid Swiss C permit. Their house there must be a primary residence, rather than a second home.

The local newsletter called the move an investment in the villages future.

However, Albinen authorities are keen to stress that the scheme is not aimed at everyone after some media coverage suggested that anyone would be eligible, reports the Local.

A statement released by authorities said that the news caused a worldwide sensation and was responsible for misleading thousands.

Of the many expressions of interest Albinen has received since the story initially broke, one in a hundred could realistically be considered due to the strict stipulations, the statement said.

Authorities say they expect that at most five to 10 young families will end up taking part in the scheme.

It's not the first place to entice new residents with a cash bonus. In October The Independent reported that an Italian town was offering to pay people up to 2,000 (1,800) to move there.

Nicola Gatta, mayor of Candela, a small town in Puglia, made the offer in the hope of reversing the towns declining population.

Gatta said he wants to bring numbers back up to the 8,000 of the 1990s, when the town was known as Little Naples. Today, there are just 2,700 residents.
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Theresa May has spent the last year or so learning how to put a brave face on the most calamitous events in recent British political history  some her fault, some not.

Today, in the convivial company of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the brave face was on display once again, the Prime Minster sounding as upbeat as she could be about the failure  there is no other word for it  of the latest round of talks. In this she was abetted by the silken rhetoric of Mr Juncker, something of a charmer over the lunch table by all accounts, but, if anything, Mr Juncker only made matters worse when he let slip that there were two or three issues still open for further negotiation and consultation  which is one or two more than might have been assumed. In other words the latest iteration of the historic Irish question is not the only sticking point, as appeared from some of the more positive mood music emanating from Brussels and London in recent days.

Some of this, in fairness, is not Ms Mays fault, and not simply because she was once, in a lost world far away, a Remainer, albeit a highly reluctant one during the EU referendum. It is simply that, after around 18 months of wrangling, the finest diplomatic, political and economic minds in Europe have not been able to solve the insoluble  how Northern Ireland can be outside the EUs single market and customs union, but have no economic border with the Republic of Ireland.

In a thoughtful and creative position paper in the summer the British Government attempted to solve the problem by suggesting that new technologies could be used to remove most of the difficulties. Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern suggested a blind eye could be turned to small-scale movements of goods and people strictly outside of the letter of Brexit. The Irish government suggested, successively, an economic border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and thus the EU). A new wheeze, of regulatory convergence between Ireland and the EU on the one side, and Northern Ireland on the other, was swiftly agreed by the British Government, and just as rapidly spat out by Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionists.

So this failure to settle the economic status of Northern Ireland by giving it special treatment suggests that the problem is so intractable as to represent a significant obstacle to Brexit in its own right  along with still unresolved issues about the rights of EU citizens in the UK and the divorce bill. To put it colloquially, the British people may soon wonder whether the as yet undefined and uncertain benefits of Brexit  many of which have evaporated on the journey from the side of the Brexit bus to reality  are worth all of the hassle. At the very least they would be forgiven for asking for another referendum vote on how things seem to be shaping up for a deal.

Theresa May cannot be blamed for failing to make two plus two make five, and neither can anybody else. There is genuine goodwill about the problem, and about the determination to keep the UK-Ireland common travel area that has lasted since partition in 1922 (and of course for centuries before), and avoid hard borders. If goodwill and a sense of partnership was sufficient to solve the Irish border question it would have been sorted long ago. That it has not is extremely ominous, ether for peace in the province or for the prospects for a meaningful Brexit.

Where Ms May plainly didnt do her homework was in squaring the political party she relies on for her survival at Westminster  the Democratic Unionists. It seems as though Ms May might have been under the misconception that the Unionists could be bounced into going along with special status for Northern Ireland. The Prime Minister, in a very tight corner and desperate to move to the next stage of trade talks, might have risked the support of the DUP to seal this first phase of the Brexit deal. The cynical calculation usually is that the DUP would be unwilling to overthrow Ms May if it meant the arrival of the IRA-sympathising (in their view) Jeremy Corbyn into No 10.

If so she made a fundamental mistake. First, Ms May has underestimated the confidence and belligerence of the DUP, whose constituency could never accept different economic arrangements in Ulster to those in the rest of the UK, for political and for financial reasons. Moreover, there principle is that Northern Ireland leaves the EU on the same terms as the rest of the UK  and terms themselves appear secondary. Thus, if Jeremy Corbyn wants a soft Brexit where the whole of the UK stays in the single market and some version of the custom union, then that would be a more unionist policy than that of Ms May, who is proposing to erect a border between Northern Ireland and the UK, with customs checks on the ferries and at the airports.

This is not what Ms Foster and her friends came into politics to deliver. In their 2017 election manifesto the DUP stated they wished to see a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement with the European Union; ease of trade with the Irish Republic and throughout the European Union; particular circumstances of Northern Ireland with a land border with the EU fully reflected; and frictionless border with the Irish Republic assisting those working or travelling in the other jurisdiction. Mr Corbyns policies are presently closer to those commitments than are Ms Mays  which might mean Northern Irish citizens having to present a passport to enter the rest of their own country.

Brexit, then, is throwing up some strange and unexpected contortions in the British body politic. At the moment, those contortions make the medium-term survival of the Prime Minister even less likely than a few weeks ago.
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Anything Tony Blair cant do, Jared Kushner probably cant do better. Then again, when it comes to solving the Palestinian-Israeli conundrum, a 36-year-old real estate investor possibly has as good a shot as anyone else.

Back in January, Kushner was appointed Senior Advisor to his father-in-law, the President of the USA, Donald Trump  a reward for his loyal support and guidance during the presidential campaign. To almost universal surprise he was immediately charged with brokering peace in the Middle East in what seemed like a super-charged task from The Apprentice.

Nearly a year on and we have finally had a sighter of Kushners progress, which seems slight to say the least. At a closely-observed talk at the Saban Forum in Washington on Sunday, there was little detail as to how Kushner and his President actually plan to close what would surely be the deal of the century. Instead, a confident demeanour allied itself to platitudes about how solving the long standing Palestinian-Israeli puzzle was necessary to create more stability in the region. Bravo indeed!

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As to why Trump and Kushner might be able to succeed where Blair (in his Middle East envoy role) and myriad others have failed, the young man insisted that the Presidents track record was sufficient to offer grounds for optimism. In essence, if Trump can pull off a successful run for the White House, he and his team can achieve anything. It was the kind of thing that would come from the Donald himself  plenty of belief and bluster but little real information.

Ironically, Kushners first public speech on the issue came at the beginning of a week in which his wifes dad has to decide whether to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem  or whether to postpone the switch once again, as he and his successors have been doing every six months for over two decades.

Despite being approved by Congress in 1995, US presidents have perennially declined to initiate the transfer from Tel Aviv for the fairly obvious reason that formally to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital may not go down well with the Palestinians. Until a peace deal is struck, any move has the potential to inflame tensions, rather than temper them.

Trump, however, may have come up with a cunning plan, if press briefings emanating from advisors are to be believed. It is suggested that he will shortly sign another postponement but then later in the week give a speech in which he will offer some sort of Presidential endorsement of Israels claim to Jerusalem as its capital city. Indeed, this plan is so crafty in its having and eating of cake, it might have been developed by Boris Johnson.

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... 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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... 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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

Longstanding Middle-East watchers are unconvinced by this masterstroke of diplomacy, however, and it is certainly hard to see how such a manoeuvre is likely to aid Kushners endeavours.

But then, such is the revolving nature of the staff door at the White House, that one wonders whether there should be any reason to think Kushner will be any better at hanging around than others. Indeed, rumours have swirled on and off for months that a distance has opened up between the President and his son-in-law. The suggestion that Michael Flynn might implicate Kushner in his evidence to the Mueller inquiry (by fingering him as the man who allegedly told Flynn to contact the Russians last December) has only served to fuel talk of a possible breach.

Kushner, it must be said, denies any collusion with Russia. Yet if Trump wanted a convenient way to put talk of a renewed Middle East peace process on the back-burner and thus have an excuse to ditch Kushner, wouldn't a rumpus over Jerusalems capital status be handy?

In the end, much may depend on the degree to which Trump decides that blood is thicker than water, and his view on which camp Kushner falls into. He is, after all not a Trump himself.

Still, he gained the Presidents ear by marrying into the dynasty and has effectively been given a job on the basis of nepotism, not of experience or qualifications. His rise is emblematic of the way Trump works on the combined basis of instinct and ego: he may have a gut feeling that Kushner could succeed in bringing peace to the Middle East, but if he does the glory will reflect not only on the Presidency but also on the wider dynastic ambition which Trump seems to hold dear. The problem for Kushner, is that any failing must not be allowed to drag the Trump name through the mud.

In the end, whether Kushner achieves the unexpected or whether he does not, he must know it will be the patriarch of the family who either takes the credit or deflects the blame. Parents eh?
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These days, uprisings should be studied with a cold eye and theres a fine little exhibition on in Paris about the 1917 Russian revolution which casts a dark reflection on the Arab awakening weve all been observing in the Middle East. Its an extraordinary display from the revolution which changed the world, including posters, photographs and  amazingly  some documents which show just how much the Mencheviks (and the Russian Provisional Government) and then the Bolsheviks tried to enlist the Muslim world  and the Armenians  in their destruction of the Romanov dynasty.

I suppose the overthrow of Mubarak (the Tsar) and then the brief 11-month tenure of Mohamed Morsi (representing the temporary Mensheviks comes to mind; but Field Marshal-President al-Sissi of Egypt hardly counts as a Lenin (or a Stalin) and the war which the Egyptian government is now fighting in Sinai bears no relation to the Whites versus the Reds  yet. On balance, the end of King Farouq of Egypt, the temporary leadership of General Neguib (the Mensheviks) and then the takeover by Nasser would be much closer to the mark.

But Syria is a worrying parallel since it demonstrates just how easily revolution can turn into civil war. The casualty figures dont come anywhere close to the millions of Russians who were killed in the conflict after 1917, but there are some disturbing features which both conflicts share. The Syrians could scarcely have known how swiftly their war would come upon them. Nor did the Russians in 1917. And the interference of foreign nations  Russia on the side of the Syrian government, America and Britain on the side of the rebels (the Whites, until they turned out to be Muslim Greens), inserting their troops into Syria with minimum losses since they would let others do the dying  is a painful reminder of what happens when overseas powers decide that they will decide who wins the war.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The British landed at Murmansk to support the White Russians, and its intriguing to see how the Whites set up their own mini-capitals wherever they went  just as Isis set up its capitals in Raqqa  and in Mosul in Iraq. The parallels are not exact, of course, but the Bolshevik demonisation of the White Russians in the ferocious anti-religious, anti-capitalist posters on display in Paris at the Musee de lArmee (the exhibition is called Et 1917 devient Revolution) are not dissimilar to the war against terror which Bashar al-Assad and the Russians (and the Hezbollah, and the Iranians) think they are fighting in Syria today. There are terrifying cartoons of mass killings, naked men beaten with whips and women led away for rape. Pretty much standard Isis fare.

There are, too, ten-ruble banknotes from the short-lived commisariat of Transcaucasia, printed in Russian on one side and in the Armenian, Georgian, and Azeri languages on the reverse. Azeri was in those days written in Arabic script and so it appears on the note. More interesting is a large poster in the Tartar language (printed in 1919 in both Arabic script and in Cyrillic) depicting a horsemen leading a band of warriors and holding a red flag bearing a half moon and a star. To Muslim comrades, it announces, the enemies of the working people are crushing your freedom and you alone can defend your lands, only Soviet power will give you your mountains Join the Muslim cavalry regimentsAll under the red star.

Im not sure what the Tartar Muslims thought of their half-moon under the Red Star of Bolshevism but there are photographs of soldiers in a Muslim village in eastern Anatolia paying homage to the earlier 1905 Russian revolution and a bright snapshot of Red Cross nurse Nino Djordjadze mounted on a camel. Her name is Georgian but she was born in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) in Georgia.

For the Muslim republics of the future Soviet Union  and for the short-lived Armenian republic  there would, of course, be no freedom and Soviet power brought them the same purges and executions as the rest of the USSR which inherited the Russian empire. The Communists tended to feel more at home with the Christian than the Muslim religion, because  so an ex-Soviet citizen told me  Jesus was the son of a working class carpenter while the Prophet Mohamed was a bourgeois businessman. Nowadays, Russia has been busy killing Muslim fighters (terrorists) in Syria, some of them descendants, no doubt, of the Tartar horseman supposedly carrying that red flag 98 years ago.
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Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp, but what he never told anyone is he planned on replacing it with a cesspool. This morning, the President of the United States officially endorsed accused child molester Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama. Meanwhile, European allies are saying Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cant be taken seriously due to the rumours hes about to be sacked  leaked from Trumps own White House. And last Friday, under the cloak of darkness and with handwritten notes senators didnt even have time to read, the GOP-controlled Senate passed a tax bill which will redistribute wealth to the one percent whilst hurting the very people who put Trump in office and adding trillions to the deficit.

Im old enough to remember when Republicans touted themselves as the grownups in the room on family values, foreign policy, and the economy. No more. Donald Trumps Republican Party has shown it has no principles, no morality, and no shame. As the events of the past 72 hours show, they are rewriting the rules of American democracy and diplomacy  and we are all suffering as a result.

To begin with, Roy Moore, I cant believe I have to say you shouldnt support accused child molesters, but here I am, having to say that you shouldnt support accused child molesters. All I know is I never want to hear a Republican talk about how LGBT people are a threat to children ever again. There are no words to describe how disgusting it is that anyone would support this man, let alone the President. Trump is so infantile (perhaps not the best choice of word given these circumstances, but honestly) that hed rather win than stand against an accused child molester. Yet here we are. Never take another lecture from family values from a Republican. Not when the Republican President supports an accused child molester for the US senate.

 Trump praises 'tremendous reform' after tax bill passes giving cuts to America's richest

Meanwhile someone Trump isnt supporting is Rex Tillerson. The Secretary of State has embarked on a long-anticipated trip to Europe, but our allies are balking at the idea that his words hold any gravity. He has no mandate, one EU official told Reuters. Its easy to see why, considering the lukewarm support he clearly has from President Trump and the persistent rumours hes on his way out of Soggy Bottom.

That our allies feel his visit is basically a waste of time should startle every American. The Secretary of State is responsible for American foreign policy, yet Trump and the Republicans who continue to enable him have basically undermined any credibility Tillerson may have. Im the only one that matters, Trump said of the State Department last month. But thats never been how American foreign policy works. The president cant be everywhere and do everything, so he delegates. Thats even more important considering how volatile and inexperienced the current President is.

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

Rex Tillerson was an unconventional pick for Secretary of State (he had zero foreign policy experience), but hes proven to be one of the few level heads and reasonable voices to emerge from this administration. That Trump has ruined his credibility on the international stage is deeply concerning. Besides that, if the world doesnt think the Secretary of State speaks for America, who does?

Back on home turf, Republicans have resorted to taxation without representation. Thats all you can call it when senators are on national television complaining that they dont even know whats in the bill theyre voting on and asking their Twitter followers if they can read the scribbled notes in the margins.

In the course of 72 hours, the Republican Party was able to shake the foundations of American democracy and completely ruin its brand. The Republican Party can no longer claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility, strong foreign policy, or family values. Going into 2018 and the midterm elections, every American should remember this weekend  the weekend the Republican Party and Donald Trump finally replaced the swamp with a sewer.
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Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh once said that governing Yemen was like dancing on the heads of snakes.

But the image of his country as a vipers nest was always self-serving and self-fulfilling: through three decades of divide and rule, deceit and violence, Saleh played on every cynical short-term interest  from those of presidents in Washington to jihadis in hillside caves  to shore up his power.

By Monday, the old master had run out of tricks; captured and killed by militants of the rebel movement known as the Houthis, with whom he built an alliance of convenience between 2014 and last week, when he finally turned on them too.

Saleh, who became president in 1978, was overthrown in 2011 after troops loyal to him fired on protests against his rule. The administration which followed rapidly lost legitimacy, and by 2014 Saleh saw an opening. He formed an alliance with the Houthis, and instructed troops still loyal to abandon their positions and allow the Houthis to take the capital and, later, much of the rest of the country.

But the Houthis would not let Saleh rule. And so, reputedly, he was plotting to reach a deal with Saudi Arabia and its allies to oust the Houthis and make a separate peace. The tensions that plotting provoked erupted into last weeks fighting.

As he lay dead in the back of a pickup truck, wrapped in a blanket, the state which he had built lay in ruins, the country which he had united in 1990 was once again divided, and his final play, to secure the future influence of his family in Yemeni politics, appeared to have failed.

The situation in Yemen Show all 14 1 /14 The situation in Yemen The situation in Yemen Houthi supporters trample on a US flag during a gathering mobilizing more fighters into several Yemeni battlefronts, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen People carry the coffins of men, who were killed in the recent Saudi-led airstrikes during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen AP The situation in Yemen Pro-government fighters give food to Yemeni children on the road leading to the southwestern port city of Mokha. Yemeni rebels are putting up fierce resistance in a key Red Sea port city where they are encircled by pro-government force Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni stands in front of a graffiti protesting US military operations in war-affected Yemen, in Sana'a, Yemen. According to reports, US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen A Yemeni female fighter supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, takes part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen Yemeni female fighters supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, take part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A boy shouts slogans next to pro-Houthi fighters, who have been injured during recent fighting, during a rally held to honour those injured or maimed while fighting in Houthi ranks in Sanaa, Yemen Reuters The situation in Yemen Balls of fire and smoke rise from a Houthi-held military camp following alleged Saudi-led airstrikes, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy looks on as Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy sits amidst the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa AFP/Getty The situation in Yemen Marine One with US President Donald Trump flies with a decoy and support helicopters to Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, for the dignified transfer of Navy Seal Chief Petty Officer William 'Ryan' Owens who was killed in Yemen Getty Images The situation in Yemen US President Donald Trump aboard the Marine One to greet the remains of a US military commando killed during a raid on the al Qaeda militant group in southern Yemen on Sunday, at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, US Reuters

Yet his death leaves a chasm in the midst of power in his country. As news of his death filtered out, the guns that rattled the air of the capital, Sanaa for days, fell quiet.

Every Yemeni, from those emerging from basements and backrooms to count the dead, to the Saudi-backed government in exile in Riyadh, to disenfranchised Southerners and feuding militants of every side, were forced to reckon with the casting aside of old hopes and certainties.

The Houthi movement, a minority religious order which before 2014 had no national political profile, will now discover if it has the political and military wherewithal to hold together the patchwork alliance which has held off several regional powers and their Yemeni allies for more than two and a half years with little loss of territory.

 Yemen's ousted president 'killed by rival rebel group', video suggests

Saleh was sometimes said to have brought to the alliance not so much military strength  the Houthis often complained that he held his troops back from the front lines  than a deep network of tribal relationships, crucial to the informal power base of the country, and the ability to project a more inclusive image than the Houthis of Yemeni identity. His followers brought a measure of bureaucratic sophistication to a hardscrabble militant movement.

The resilience of that movement will now be tested against the vigour of their enemies. Forces loyal to the Riyadh-based government are reported to be preparing for a push toward the capital through the mountains to its east in an attempt to take advantage of the confusion and division which the rebellion has caused.

At the nearest point, the anti-Houthi fighters are perhaps 30 miles away, but they have hardly advanced in the past year. It is unknown how much their prospects have changed  particularly since the Houthis seem largely to have quelled the rebellion behind their lines.

If the Houthi alliance survives, and if the expected offensive fails, the Saudi-led coalition  and the impetuous prince at its head, Mohammed bin Salman  will be compelled to starkly confront their options. If they cannot defeat the Houthis through subversion, nor through pitched battle, nor through the humanitarian crisis which their blockade on the north has caused, what options remain?

Their alliance, too, is fraying: there were two gun battles in Aden this week between parties to the coalition, and several anonymous shootings. Little in the coalitions recent behaviour gives hope that they would choose compromise rather than a further, damaging escalation on one front or another, of what is already the worlds gravest humanitarian crisis.

And that is why even millions of Yemenis who hated Saleh will not rejoice at his passing. Throughout his political life, he made himself the lynchpin of alliances. Even in death, he was seeking to position himself as the only available interlocutor in the north for the Saudi coalition, and thus the necessary gatekeeper for an end to the war in which everyone could save a little face.

In truth, the truculence of the Houthis and the insistence of Saudi Arabia on the utter humiliation of its enemies, would always have called into question his ability to affect that deal. But nonetheless, that is what many seem to have hoped: that perhaps Salehs last manipulation might have inadvertently saved Yemen at the same time as himself.

But it was not to be.

Now, no one really knows what will happen next. Saleh built a state upon fear and a society upon uncertainty. That his death has caused, itself, so much worry and so much confusion is perhaps his fitting epitaph.

Saleh wasnt the dancer. He was the viper and all Yemen danced to his tune. That era is over.
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Nine Turkish nationals, all ethnic Kurds, arrested last week in raids on three central Athens apartments, and charged with various terrorism-related offenses, were ordered held on remand after their statements on Monday to an investigating magistrate.
Nollywood actor Michael Okon has been accused of stealing from a sugar mummy in America  According to social media user and blogger, Stella Dimokokorkus the actor made away with her friends credit card and money  Michael was reportedly in America for a movie premier but allegedly eloped with a sugar mummy and stole from her Theres trouble in paradise for Nollywood actor, Michael Okon who is reportedly currently in America hiding from his sugar mummy who he stole from. Social media user and blogger, Stella Dimokokorkus exposed the actor on her social media page accusing him of theft and being unprofessional.

In a recent post shared on Instagram, Stella mentioned the actor and narrated details of his actions against his sugar mummy who happens to be the bloggers friend. According to Dimokokorkus, Okon was taken to America for a movie premier but eloped with an older lover instead. As the two had a nice time together, Michael reportedly stole her money and credit card and is hiding somewhere in America.

In an attempt to expose and threaten him, Stella wrote: @mikijay_okon Michael Okon alleged Nollywood actor you took my friends credit cards and stole her money after everything she did for you? You were taken to America for a movie premiere but eloped with a sugar mummy instead. You are a shameless piece of sh*t and Karma has your number. May your dead career never resurrect and May that your colorless preek that you use to deceive your victims put you in hot soup. Fraudster. Watch out for karma as you decide to stay on in America with the money you stole. You will be served Cold!!! Bloody crazy thief.

source: Naij.com
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakars final return to the PDP has raised concerns among Nigerians with Aisha Yusufu reacting on social media.

Aisha Yesufu, the convener of Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) campaign, has lashed out at former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, over his presidential ambitions.

Atiku on Sunday confirmed that he was returning to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), after he resigned from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Aisha, writing on her Twitter page, questioned the former vice-presidents integrity and character and claimed he was going back to his vomit.

She tweeted: Haba @atiku is it by force? Dont integrity and character mean anything to you?

How can you vomit and and go back to lick it?

Is it by force to serve Nigerians?

Anyway its your right to do what you want to and our right to do what we want to.

Time for a Macron in Nigeria.

Source  Tori
The former vice-president said the APC-led administration of President Buhari had disappointed Nigerians, particularly youths of the country.

He added, Creating jobs is something I know about as I have created over 50,000 direct jobs and 250,000 indirect jobs in my home state of Adamawa and I also know how the government can create opportunities for jobs.

In the last two years, almost three million Nigerians have lost their jobs and today we have a record 25 per cent of people within the age of 18 and 25 years unemployed. I can see how difficult it is for people to get jobs.

The key to creating jobs is a strong economy and that is what we lack presently. Today, I want to let you know that I am returning home to the PDP as the issues that made me leave it have been resolved and it is clear that the APC has let the people, especially youths, down.

But rather than giving a long political speech on this matter, I thought it would be more helpful to invite you to ask me questions and share with you my answers.
Chude Jideonwo and Adebola Williams, StateCraft Inc. co-founders and authors of the new book How to Win Elections in Africa: Parallels with Donald Trump, continued their tour around the United States of America with stops at the Harvard University, University of Massachusetts, Boston, and in Atlanta, Georgia on the 25, 28, and 29 November respectively.

With the book already becoming a resource material on issues connected with democracy, elections and campaigns globally, the authors shared their thoughts about the parallels between America, American events and the rest of the world, especially in the context of development.

Speaking in Boston, Chude described it as essentially about all the things that make elections happen globally and the order in which they matter or otherwise in sub-Saharan African contexts, as seen through our experience in four national elections in three countries.

Joining the hosts of the AfroBuzz podcast, Bebe, Nunoo and James, Remi Makanjuola, and Toks Ogun for a chat, Chude also shared the unique experiences of StateCraft Inc. and its work on elections in Africa, the business of nation-building, and the urgency for a newer generation of Africans who are directly involved in the politics of the continent in their respective countries.

To determine the future of this wonderful continent, it is important to get involved. This is not just about Africans living in Africa. There are strong voices and minds in diaspora driving change for Africa, so the battle does not only exist in Africa, he said.

The interview preceded two further discussions, with the first at the University of Massachusetts Center for Peace, Democracy and Development at the UMass Boston Campus Center in Boston and another at the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession where Jideonwo was interviewed by Kenneth Ononeze Okwor for the Harvard African Policy Journal.

How to Win Elections in Africa: Parallels with Donald Trump United States of America book tour will continue in the coming days with book discussions in Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. on Monday, 4 and Tuesday, 5 December, 2017.

The discussion in Pennsylvania will be about governance and politics in the context of building businesses and creating value in and for Africa at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania while the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies will host the discussion in Washington D.C.
Following kidnap complaint made by one Ibrahim Nasir about his 18-year-old wife, Mrs. Fatima Muhammed, operatives of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Nasarawa State Command stormed the alleged kidnappers den to rescue the lady alongside 15-year-old Hafsat Adamu.

According to the state commandant of NSCDC, Mr. Mamud Gidado-Fari, the victims who have been locked up for over a week by the yet to be identified suspect, were rescued last Friday at Line Supper Cinema in the Lafia LGA of the state.

We forced our way into the room and found the woman alongside a 15-year-old girl, Hasat Adamu, he said. The motive of the abductor had yet to be determined. . The nature of the case is what we are trying to investigate because as it is, we dont know whether the motive of the abductor was ransom or for ritual.

Punch reports that the rescued housewife who spoke to newsmen, however claimed that she was at her lovers place when some NSCDC operatives broke into the room and whisked her away.
Vice president of Catalonia, Oriol Junqueras and three other separatist leaders will remain in prison pending a probe over their role in the regions independence drive, a judge decided Monday, just as Catalan elections approach.

Six other former ministers who were also remanded in custody last month will be released on bail of 100,000 euros ($120,000) each as an investigation into charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds continues, the Madrid court said in a statement.

The decision comes as axed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont faces an extradition hearing in Belgium, where he escaped to after his regions parliament declared independence on October 27, claiming he would not get a fair trial back home.

Spain is seeking to have Puigdemont and four of his former ministers who also fled with him sent back to face charges over their role in the independence drive.

News that Junqueras, Joaquim Forn, who used to be in charge of interior matters in Catalonia, and the leaders of two pro-independence associations will stay in prison comes as the official campaign for Catalan elections on December 21 kicks off at midnight.

Madrid called the polls after the independence declaration, sacked Catalonias government and suspended the regions autonomy.

Supreme Court Judge Pablo Llarena decided there was a risk that Junqueras and the three others would repeat their alleged offences if he released them.

Source: ( AFP )
The Federal High Court in Lagos on Monday issue a bench warrant against a former governor of Enugu State, Chimaroke Nnamani, who was charged with an alleged fraud of N5.3bn.

Justice Chuka Obiozor issued bench warrant against the ex-governor for failing to appear in court on Monday for his scheduled re-arraignment.

The judge held that Nnamanis counsel failed to give a tenable reason why his client was absent from court.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
The comedian on his IG page, penned down an open letter to former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who yesterday returned to PDP as he plans to contest for presidency in 2019. Atiku in a live video on Facebook, berated the APC for ignoring the youths of Nigeria. Read what I Go Dye wrote below

Dont use sentimental empathy on the youths to express your political ambitions.

Sir, you are one of those that have immensely benefited from Nigeria since your birth in 1946.

Having worked for 20years with the Nigeria Customs where you retired at the age of 43 in 1989 as Deputy Director, your bucket list sure looks good because you were obviously employed at youth 23.

In 1999 you became governor of Adamawa and ultimately the Vice President, all of these you achieved at 53. What did you do during your time in that exalted position? When will the youths like in your time get a chance? am motivated to speak, based on your statement : A party that does not take the youths into account is a dying party.The future belong to young.Please which of the future?

Remarkably, between 1999 and 2007 that you were the Vice president of Nigeria, it is recorded that tertiary institutions witnessed several strikes that wasted seventeen months ,three weeks and three days.Within this period, what did you do?

If social support were given to youths then,their children will be between 18 and 20years during the 2019 elections,obviously they would have willingly voted for you or anyone that you endorse in 2019.This is the essence of making sacrifices for the future generation.

You cannot be credited to have been a philanthropic to the youths.

The recent revocation of the NPA contract with Intel,your company,is the major issue.

As a company either, the people in the region you operated cannot accredit Intel to have provided credible support for the youths or built skills acquisition centers to curb unproductivity as part of its cooperate social responsibility , which has resulted to many youths embarking on the sub- sahara deserts route treking to Europe,which has claimed many lives.

Your excellency,sir Atiku Abubakar, please dont use sentimental empathy on the youths to express your political ambitions,because by 2019 the youths are preparing to substantiate the real economical,political and progressive change.

I kindly recommend that you should advocate for process that will afford us

the opportunity of a youthful leadership in the 2019 election.Thanks Amb Francis
Prominent politician in Kaduna, Alhaji Yaro Makama Rigachikun has revealed that he made a grave mistake taking membership with the APC in 2015.

Former Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kaduna State, Alhaji Yaro Makama Rigachikun, who decamped to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015, has dumped the party. Rigachikun returned to the PDP, along with his followers at the weekend in Kaduna.

He was received back to the party at a ceremony attended by top leaders of the PDP, including the interim National Chairman of the party, Senator Ahmed Makarfi and the Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT), Senator Walid Jibrin, among several others.

Speaking during the occasion, Rigachikun said he made a grave mistake by joining the APC in 2015. Speaking in Hausa language, he said the APC has failed Nigerians, declaring that the time had come to change the change.

He said he joined the party, thinking it would address the numerous problems confronting Nigerians, regretting that over two years since its assumption of power, Nigerians were plunged into untold hardship. He condemned the sacking of teachers and local government workers in Kaduna State, alleging that Governor Nasir el-Rufai was implementing anti-people programmes.

He said the governor should start packing his belongings from the Government House, as the people will not vote him again in 2019. The APC has brought much suffering to Nigerians, in Kaduna State, the teachers are crying, local government workers are suffering and traditional institutions are ridiculed.

The school feeding program is in comatose, in fact, nothing is working in the state, so we must change the change he said. Hundreds of the defecting members burnt their brooms, the APC symbol.

Rigachikun, who is said to be a closed political ally of Makarfi, was the chairman of PDP in Kaduna State for eight years when Makarfi was governor.
The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB , Nnamdi Kanu, claims that he is been owed $800m by the Federal Government for his alleged unlawful arrest and detention in 2015.

Nnamdi was granted bail by the Federal High Court in Abuja where he is being prosecuted alongside others on charges of treasonable felony.

This is contained in his response to the motion filed by the Federal Government asking the Community Court of the Economic Community of West African States sitting in Abuja to dismiss a fundamental human rights enforcement suit filed by the IPOB leader.

Kanu had filed the suit on March 3, 2016 demanding $800m as compensation from the Federal Government for his alleged unlawful arrest in 2015 and detention.

But the Federal Government, through its lawyer, Mrs. Maimuna Shiru, filed its motion on November 13, stating that Kanu having been granted bail by the Federal High Court in Abuja on April 25, 2017, and allegedly jumped bail, the judgment of the ECOWAS Court on the suit would serve no purpose.

But Kanu, through his lawyer, Mr. Ifeanyi Ejiofor, objected to the Federal Governments motion contending that granting bail to the IPOB leader was just a partial satisfaction of prayers sought in the suit.

He maintained that the ECOWAS Court had the power to grant his client the $800m compensation sought since the IPOB leaders rights had been violated.

Ejiofor stated in his written address, We submit therefore that the court has powers to order for payment of compensatory damages when found that the plaintiffs right has been violated.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Former Yemeni President, Ali Abdullah Saleh has been killed amid fighting between his supporters and their former allies, the Houthi rebel movement.

Yemens ex-president, Ali Abdullah Saleh has been killed by Houthi rebels near the capital, Sanaa, a development expected to have major implications for the war in the Arab worlds poorest country.

The death was first announced on Monday by the Sanaa-based interior ministry, controlled by Salehs allies-turned-foes, the Houthi rebel movement.

His killing was later confirmed to Al Jazeera by Salehs political party, the General Peoples Congress (GPC).

Footage circulating on social media appeared to display a body resembling Saleh, with one video showing how armed militiamen used a blanket to move the corpse into the back of a pick-up truck.

There were earlier reports that the Houthis blew up one of Salehs houses, after storming the property. Houthi sources said Saleh was killed by the rebels in a rocket-propelled grenade and shooting attack on his car at a checkpoint outside Sanaa.

Yasser al-Awadi, the GPCs assistant secretary-general, was also killed.

In a statement read out on a Houthi television network, the interior ministry announced the killing of Saleh and his supporters.

This is after he and his men blockaded the roads and killed civilians in a clear collaboration with the enemy countries of the coalition, the statement said.

The ministry also said its forces had taken over all the positions and strongholds of the treacherous militia in the capital, Sanna, and the surrounding areas, as well as other provinces in order to impose security.

Sources close to Saleh told Al Jazeera that the head of the former presidents security detail, Hussein al-Hamidi, was also killed, but did not provide further details.
An Australian lawmaker popped the question to his gay partner in parliament on Monday, with the first ever proposal in the chamber coming shortly after a bill paving the way for same-sex marriage was introduced.

Tim Wilson, who has reportedly been engaged to Ryan Bolger for nine years, fought back tears as he thanked his fiance for enduring a marriage debate that has been the soundtrack to our relationship.

In my first speech, I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands  that they are the answer to the questions we cannot ask, the 37-year-old lawmaker from the ruling conservative party said.

So, there is only one thing left to do: Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me?

Bolger, who was sitting in the public gallery, quickly responded yes as the floor erupted in applause.

That was a yes, a resounding yes, House Speaker Rob Mitchell noted for the record. Congratulations, well done mate.

The Australian House of Representatives official twitter account confirmed later that after reviewing past records, Wilsons proposal was likely the first ever in that chamber of Parliament.

Update: Weve dug through Hansard and @timwilsoncomau appears to be the first ever Member to propose on the floor of the House, it tweeted.

Wilson earlier emotionally recalled the uneasiness he experienced with some friends when he and Bolger were first engaged.

Many simply didnt know how to react. Many SMS went unresponded. In conversations, some people politely changed the topic, or fell silent entirely, he said.

His partner had pushed him to have an engagement party.

On informing one person of our news, they responded: Why bother?

At the time, I fell silent and I have never had an answer to that question. But the Australian people have now answered that for me.

The same-sex marriage bill being debated is expected to comfortably pass through the House of Representatives before Christmas after the upper house Senate last week overwhelmingly voted in its favour.

After more than a decade of debate, Australians emphatically endorsed gay marriage in a recent nationwide postal vote, with some 62 percent of the 12.7 million who took part voting yes last month.

This is a historic moment of inclusion, of recognition, of respect, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said shortly after the bill was introduced for debate in the lower house Monday.

This is a day to be especially proud that all of our friends, our colleagues, our neighbours, our brothers, our sisters, can marry the people they love.

Former conservative prime minister Tony Abbott, a leading voice in the no campaign, said he would now back the bill.

I certainly dont pretend to be an overnight convert to support same-sex marriage but I am pledged to respect and to facilitate the verdict of the Australian people, he said.

Same-sex marriage should now be recognised. It will now be recognised.

Abbott moved an amendment he said protected discrimination against anyone over their conscientious view about the nature of marriage, before saying he planned to attend his gay sisters wedding next year.

I am looking forward to attending the marriage of my sister, Christine, to her partner Virginia some time early in the new year.

Source: (AFP)
Following viral social media rape posts against Francis Nwaze, Technical Assistant to Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State on New Media, he has reportedly been arrested.

It was gathered that the rape victim, Esther Odinakachi, an undergraduate student of Ebonyi State University led men of the Special Anti Robbery Squad from the Ebonyi police command who arrested Nwaze and remanded him in police custody for interrogation.

Punch reports that Odinakachi said;

He lied to you that he didnt touch me. If he never touched me, how did I know his house? Even though the incident happened late in the night and I was helpless because of the reckless way he drove, I was able to identify the location. But I dont know the address. He was arrested around 10pm. When he was arrested, he started making calls to the state governor to intimidate me. He thought he could take advantage of me because I am a student. His family members have been begging me, but I have refused to back down. I have a lot of evidence against him.

It was also gathered that medical test conducted on her showed there was forceful penetration, even though the governors aide denied the allegation saying he had nothing to do with Odinakachi.

Reacting to the allegation, the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor Umahi, Emmanuel Uzor said:

There was no report of such an incident to the government or the security agencies. We read about it on Facebook and then The PUNCH. It was your paper that informed us. I am not aware that he was arrested by the police. I spoke with him yesterday (Saturday). This is a government that believes in human rights. If this (rape) truly happened, she should have explored the option of the office of Her Excellency, the wife of the state governor, to tell her story. The wife of the governor has been an advocate of such cases, whether sexual or otherwise. We also have the Ministry of Women Affairs and Youth Development. Personally, I believe if such a thing happened, the victim should have come to the government to let us know about it. As it stands now, I dont have any case of rape. Whatever is happening in that case is shrouded in mystery. There is no proper channel to link the government with what is happening. When I first read it on Facebook, I called Nwaze to know what really happened. From what he said, it is a case of blackmail because of the way it is being celebrated. It is being celebrated by the opposition. So, I see it as one of the efforts to silence a voice that has been terrorising them. If he was arrested, I am not aware. If he raped anybody, I am not aware. And that is the position of the governor.

However as at 8:55pm on Saturday, December 2, 2017, Nwaze was still functioning in his capacity as the governors media aide as he posted some of the governors activities on his Facebook page.
A married woman has cried out bitterly, telling of how her own husband left her alone after only one month into their marriage.

Halima Salihu, an Abuja-based businesswoman, has approached a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) sitting at Maitama, Abuja, seeking the dissolution of her marriage to her husband, John Nouhayin, on the grounds of desertion.

According to Nigerian Tribune, the petitioner informed the court, presided over by Justice Peter Affen, that she got married to the respondent on June 16, 2014 at the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) marriage registry and were issued with a marriage certificate.

According to her, her husband left their Kubwa, Abuja residence on July 27, 2014 without telling her anything, only for her to later discover that some of his belongings were no longer in the house.

My Lord, we got married on the 16th of June, 2014 at AMAC marriage registry. We were given a marriage certificate that day. We moved in together as husband and wife after the marriage.

On the 27th of July, 2014, he left the house at Kubwa without saying anything to me. I waited throughout that day. His line (telephone) was not going through.

I later found out that some of his belongings were no longer in the house, the petitioner told the court.

She informed that she contacted her husbands family to tell them the issue on ground but the response they gave was unsatisfactory.

The petitioner added that it was then she contacted her uncle and told him what was happening.

My uncle met with his family who told him that he had travelled out of the country and that he was no longer interested in the marriage. I still waited hoping that he would change his mind and come back.

But up till now, he has not come back. That is why I brought the matter before my Lord, the petitioner told the court.

She, therefore, pleaded with the court to dissolve the marriage.

Counsel for the husband, Abubakar Muhammed, told the court that he did not want to cross-examine the plaintiff.

He stated that based on the instruction of his client, all the wife said in her petition before the court was true.

According to the counsel, based on the instruction of my client, the respondent confirmed that all she claimed in her petition is true and he has no objection to the petition.

Muhammed then urged the court to grant the relief sought by the petitioner.

Meanwhile, Justice Affen has directed parties in the matter to file their written addresses within seven days from Wednesday, November 29.

He, therefore, adjourned the case till December 5 for adoption of final addresses.
The Peoples Democratic Party, Lagos State, has endorsed Chief Olabode George as their preferred candidate for the National Chairmanship position during the forthcoming December 9 National Convention of the party.

The State Chairman of PDP, Dr Moshood Salvador, gave the certification at a feedback meeting between George and members of the party, held at the partys secretariat in GRA, Ikeja.

George had been on a campaign in the Southern states of the country to seek support for votes ahead of the National Convention.

There are about eight aspirants jostling for the National chairmanship seat of the party from the south.

They include the former Governor of Ogun State, Chief Gbenga Daniel; former Minister of Education, Prof. Tunde Adeniran; former Minister of Youth Development, Prof. Taoheed Adedoja; and former Lagos State PDP governorship candidate, Mr Jimi Agbaje.

Others are Prince Uche Secondus, a former acting National Chairman of PDP, and Chief Raymond Dokpesi.

Salvador said, On behalf of Lagos PDP, we must vote for Chief Bode George come Dec. 9; the Southwest is the rightful region to have the chairman of our great party.

In the last dispensation, Ekiti produced the Vice- Chairman while Osun and Oyo states took the highest office. It is only Lagos that is left and what we want is the chairman.

The South-east and the South-south have produced a chairman before that is why it is our turn to have the chairman of PDP.

Earlier, George assured members that if given the opportunity to serve, he would re-establish the culture and tradition put in place by the founding fathers of the PDP.

If I am given the opportunity, I will not be new to the management of this party because the partys constitution is not going to be new to me; I know its provisions as I know the back of my hand.

We grew up with the party and the founding fathers handed over the culture of the party to us and that is what we would re-establish.

Just check out, from the end of our convention to the national election is a very short time, it is not a time where you can do experimentation, it is not a time you can bring a greenhorn to be the chairman of the party.

If you are desirous that you want to win that election, on that day before you cast your votes search your consciences and think very carefully.

Secondly, it is not a matter of life and death, if I dont believe that I have anything to offer, I will not be here.

I will not compromise on things that are not right and are not in the constitution.

I will do things the way they should be done and everybody will be happy. That was how our founding fathers were moving the party forward, George said.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper)
Legendary Indian actor and veteran Bollywood star, Shiashi Kapoor, passed away Monday, at the age of 79, family members said.

The actor was admitted to the Kokilaben hospital in Mumbai.

He was administered several rounds of dialysis at the hospital and today evening he breathed his last, a family member told media.

Born on March 18, 1938 in Kolkata city in Indias eastern state of West Bengal, Kapoor made his debut in 1961, as the lead actor, in the Hindi film Dharamputra.

Prior to it, he began his acting career as a child artiste in the 1940s.

Reports said he acted in more than 175 films mainly in mainstream Bollywood and art films. Kapoor has worked in English films too.

The actors performance has been widely acknowledged and has been felicitated with several awards.

Kapoors death has been widely condoled in India.

A number of people took to social networking websites to express condolences and recalled their association with the deceased.

Kapoor earned acclaim for his performance in notable Hindi films which include Deewaar, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Junoon, Shaan, Namak Halaal and others.

He had been suffering from ailments for the past few years.

Local media reports said Kapoor will be cremated on Tuesday.

Source: (dpa/NAN)
#OurMumuDonDo activists led by Charly Boy held a dramatic protest at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today, asking the Nigerian government to stop the slavery in Libya.

They used masking tapes to cover their mouths and iron chains to cuff themselves as they protested. More photos below
The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, ( NSCDC) Nasarawa State Chapter , rescued a housewife,identified as Mrs. Fatima Muhammed, 18, and Hafsat Adamu, 15, who were allegedly abducted by a yet-to-be-identified criminal.

The state commandant of the NSCDC, Mr. Mamud Gidado-Fari, who disclosed this in an interview with Northern City News on Sunday, said the victims were rescued last Friday at Line Supper Cinema in the Lafia Local Government Area of the state.

According to him, one Ibrahim Nasir reported to the command that his wife had been kidnapped by certain unknown person.

Gidado-Fari said security operatives swung into action, rescued the housewife and handed her over to her husband.

Gidado-Fari explained that the housewife was found at the kidnappers hideout, where she had been locked up for a week by the suspect.

We forced our way into the room and found the woman alongside a 15-year-old girl, Hasat Adamu, he said.

He said the teenager had also been handed over to her parents, noting that the motive of the abductor had yet to be determined.

The commandant said, The nature of the case is what we are trying to investigate because as it is, we dont know whether the motive of the abductor was ransom or for ritual. The suspect is at large, but by the time we get him, we shall investigate his motive.

But Fatima said she was not abducted, saying she was at her lovers place when some NSCDC operatives broke into the room and whisked her away.

She said, I was with my sick mother from morning till evening and when it was time for me to go home I decided to see my old boyfriend at the Tudun kwari area of Lafia Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, because I didnt have money for transport.

I had to stay till the following day because it was late and before I knew what was happening, I saw NSCDC (operatives) breaking into my boyfriends room and that was how I was arrested.

She stated that she left her matrimonial home because she had been having issues with her husband since they got married.

I am a married woman, but I left my matrimonial home because I have been having quarrels with my husband ever since we got married. My husband had told me not to go anywhere there is crisis and there was never a day I disobeyed him, Fatima stated.

Meanwhile, Gidado-Fari told Nothern City News that the Nasarawa NSCDC command had arrested over 15 suspected criminals within two weeks, noting that they were apprehended for various offences bordering on theft, kidnapping, rape and armed robbery.

Gidado-Fari explained that seven of the suspects had been charged to court while the remaining suspects would be arraigned this week.

Source: ( Northern City News )
The head office of Saclux Nigeria Limited, the manufacturer of Saclux Paint, was on Sunday gutted by fire in Umuahia, Abia State.

Southern City News learnt that the inferno, which started at about 1.30pm, consumed properties worth millions of naira.

Although the cause of the fire could not be immediately ascertained, men of the Abia State Fire Service were seen battling to contain the fire when our correspondent visited the scene.

An eyewitness, who identified herself only as Ada, said the residents living around the industry got to know of the inferno when they sighted thick smoke emanating from the industry.

She said they had to join hands with some workers in the company to stop the fire from spreading to nearby buildings before the men of the fire service arrived.

Nobody knew what caused the fire incident. We only got to know that the company premises was on fire when we saw the thick black smoke from one of the buildings. We joined hands with others to ensure that the fire did not spread beyond the company premises before the fire fighters came, she said.

One of the firemen, who craved anonymity, said the fire service hurried to scene immediately it received a distress call from a worker in the company.

He urged Abia residents to be careful about the way they handle inflammable materials, adding that they should always contact the fire service on time in the event of any fire outbreak.

Source: ( Southern City News )
The Adamawa Command of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, has confirmed the arrest of five suspects who allegedly specialise in luring and raping teenagers in Mubi town of Adamawa.

The Commands Public Relations Officer, Suleiman Baba, confirmed the arrest of the suspects to the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, on Monday in Yola.

Mr. Baba said that the suspects were apprehended following a tip-off that led to the arrest of one of them whose confession and that of their four victims ranging between the ages of 12 and 10 were used to fish out the rest.

Mr. Baba said medical reports confirmed that the minors had been violated.

We are taking the suspects to court and they will be charged with rape, criminal force and assault on minors, Baba said.

While nothing that the victims were girl hawkers, Mr. Baba cautioned parents on sending their little children to hawk instead of school.

Parents need to be vigilant on the movement of their wards if we must tackle this problem, Mr. Baba said.

He gave the names of the suspects as: Abdullahi Ibrahim (32), Musa Mohammed (31), Bakura Mohammed (39), Joseph John (29), and Mohammed Musa (42).

Also speaking, a resident of Mubi town, Danladi Chamber, who lauded the development said residents would be mobilised to support NSCDC to expose more suspects.

We are working on a theory that those rapists of minors are syndicate; we need to work and expose those dangerous people, Mr. Chamber said.

Source: (NAN)
The Caretaker Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) , Senator Ahmed Makarfi, has said he could still contest the partys presidential ticket despite Atikus defection.

Makarfi stated this in an interview published in the current edition of The Interview magazine, noting that Atiku had earlier left the PDP and had come back.

When asked about his interest to run , Makarfi said, By the time I leave as a caretaker committee chairman on December 9 or 10, there will still be 10 months to the party primaries. By any law or the partys guidelines, Im not excluded.

Makarfi also said in the interview that Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayoses declaration of interest in the partys presidential ticket, is uncalled for and unhealthy.

We are expecting a harvest of defections from the APC. Wait a bit and you will see the influx of people into the PDP, he added.
The HIV and AIDS Specialist, UNICEF, Kaduna, Dr Idris Baba, has raised alarm over the increasing number of people who do not know their HIV status.

The United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday that less than 10 per cent of young people in Kaduna State knew their HIV status.

The HIV and AIDS Specialist, UNICEF, Kaduna, Dr Idris Baba, made this known in Kaduna at the 2017 World AIDS Day, organised by the Kaduna State Agency for the Control of AIDS (KADSACA).

The activity began with a rally from the Ministry of Health to KADSACA office along Katuru Road, Malali.

Baba said the figure, based on the 2017 data of the United Nations Programm on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), also showed that about 160,000 people died as a result of AIDS-related illness in Nigeria in 2016.

He further said that 15 per cent of Nigerian youths of less than 15 years engaged in sexual debut, adding that the development had increased HIV vulnerability among young people.

Baba SAID there was also very low HIV testing rates with only 17 per cent of young people knowing their HIV status in the country, adding that of the figure, less than 10 per cent was recorded in Kaduna State as at 2016.

The specialist also said for various reasons, ranging from gender, biological to socio-economy; young women had a higher HIV prevalence and were infected earlier in life than men of the same age group.

He said that UNICEF had committed significant resources in supporting Adolescent and Young Persons (AYPs) HIV interventions in the state.

The intervention is ongoing in Igabi, Birnin Gwari, Lere, kagarko, Chikun, Jaba and Jemaa Local Government Areas of the state.

This is part of our goals of ensuring that 90 per cent HIV positive AYPs know their status, 90 per cent HIV positive placed on treatment.

According to him, UNICEF will also ensure that 90 per cent of those on treatment achieve viral suppression by 2020.

UNICEF has also committed to supporting Kaduna State achieve elimination of Mother-to-Child-Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV by saturating the identified 14 high burden LGAs with PMTCT services.

The LGAs include: Chikun, Igabi, Jaba, Jemaa, Kachia, Kaduna North, Kagarko, Kauru, Lere, Sanga, Soba, Zangon Kataf, Sabon Gari, and Kaduna South.

Baba commended the state government for the successes so far recorded in HIV response in the state, stressing that the state recorded HIV 5.6 per cent prevalence in the state 2001 while the figure increased to 7 per cent in 2007.

He, however, said that following sustained coordinated prevention, the prevalence had consistently declined to 2.2 per in 2014.

Also speaking, the Commissioner for Health and Human Services, Dr Paul Dogo, said that the states HIV/AIDS response would remain strong and resilient.

Dogo also said the state could do better by further reducing the burden of HIV, especially among the AYPs population in the state.

Dr Mark Anthony, the Executive Secretary, KADSACA, thanked UNICEF, UNFPA, Society for Family Health, and other development partners for supporting the states HIV response in no small measure.

On his part, the Coordinator of People Living with HIV/AIDS in the state, Bala Sumaila, urged the state government and other stakeholders to carry members of the organisation along in HIV and AIDS response to ensure success.
The officials of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Nasarawa State Command, says it has rescued a housewife who was abducted, while she insists she wasnt kidnapped.

An 18-year-old housewife, Mrs. Fatima Muhammed, and 15-year-old Hafsat Adamu, who were allegedly abducted by a yet-to-be-identified criminal, have been rescued by operatives of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Nasarawa State Command.

While speaking in an interview with Northern City News on Sunday, the state commandant of the NSCDC, Mamud Gidado-Fari, disclosed that the victims were rescued last Friday at Line Supper Cinema in the Lafia Local Government Area of the state.

According to him, one Ibrahim Nasir reported to the command that his wife had been kidnapped by certain unknown person.

Gidado-Fari said security operatives swung into action, rescued the housewife and handed her over to her husband, adding that the housewife was found at the kidnappers hideout, where she had been locked up for a week by the suspect.

We forced our way into the room and found the woman alongside a 15-year-old girl, Hasat Adamu, he said, adding that the teenager had also been handed over to her parents, noting that the motive of the abductor had yet to be determined.

The commandant said, The nature of the case is what we are trying to investigate because as it is, we dont know whether the motive of the abductor was ransom or for ritual. The suspect is at large, but by the time we get him, we shall investigate his motive.

But Fatima said she was not abducted, saying she was at her lovers place when some NSCDC operatives broke into the room and whisked her away.

She said, I was with my sick mother from morning till evening and when it was time for me to go home I decided to see my old boyfriend at the Tudun kwari area of Lafia Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, because I didnt have money for transport.

I had to stay till the following day because it was late and before I knew what was happening, I saw NSCDC (operatives) breaking into my boyfriends room and that was how I was arrested.

She stated that she left her matrimonial home because she had been having issues with her husband since they got married.

I am a married woman, but I left my matrimonial home because I have been having quarrels with my husband ever since we got married. My husband had told me not to go anywhere there is crisis and there was never a day I disobeyed him, Fatima stated.
A Honda Civic and a white Nissan Cabstar were both involved in an accident at Olorunsogo village along the Abeokuta-Sagamu Expressway, leaving three persons dead.

The Public Relations Officer, Traffic Compliance and Enforcement Corps (TRACE), Mr. Babatunde Akinbiyi, who confirmed the incident to the News Agency of Nigeria on Sunday, said the accident happened on Saturday.

Akinbiyi said the driver of the Nissan Cabstar, with number plate, KSF 906 XR, was speeding when he lost control.

He said the car left its lane for another lane, which led to a head-on collision with the Honda with number plate, GBE 495 AA.

The driver of the Nissan Cabstar was on top speed when he lost control and crossed to the opposite lane. He then hit the oncoming vehicle.

The accident involved eight people: six males and two females. Three males died in the accident, while two people sustained various degrees of injury, Akinbiyi said.

The TRACE spokesman said the corpses of the victims were taken to the Federal Medical Centre mortuary in Abeokuta, and the injured persons were admitted to the same hospital.

The Sector Commander, Federal Road Safety Corps, Ogun State, Mr Clement Oladele, also confirmed the incident.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Some village heads have reportedly been brutally killed in some communities in Plateau State after Fulani herdsmen attacked the place.

According to a report by Daily Sun, unconfirmed sources, on Monday, revealed that the village heads of Dong and Lawaru, Dabang Kayako and Ferdinand Boro, respectively have both been killed in the herdsmen militia attacks that occurred in the communities early in the day.

Locals said a military aircraft is currently hovering over the area apparently to nip the crisis in the bud.
Some members of staff of the University of Lagos, Akoka have staged a protest in the school to drive home their demands.

Non-academic staff at the University of Lagos on Monday protest what they termed the Federal Governments unequal distribution of allowance.

The protesters shut the institutions gate.

When a Punch correspondent got to the scene of the protest at 11.48am, there was heavy traffic along major roads leading to the university gate as a result of the protest.

The workers, who held leaves, were also chanting anti-oppression songs.

They accused the Federal Government of downgrading their importance in the nations education system.
A cancer centre championed by the former Nigerian First Lady, Turai YarAdua, has been revealed to currently lie abandoned.

The many residents of the city o Abuja have called for a revamp of the cancer centre project that was championed by former President Umaru YarAduas wife Turai for health delivery to the vulnerable in the country, The Nation reports.

On July 18, 2009, she assembled the Nigerian rich and government contractors to a fundraising in Abuja, which was also attended by her usually taciturn husband, who was battling some complicated diseases at the time.

Financial pledges made by the galaxy of guests to actualise her dream amounted to N6.8 billion.

The International Cancer Centre, (ICC) Abuja was born.

But since then, apart from the imposing structure on the Umaru YarAdua Express Road, the project is now virtually abandoned, according to a report by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

One of the security guards at the ICC, who simply identified himself as Garba confirmed the abandonment.

He said there had been no activities to actualise the centre, as envisioned by Turai YarAdua.

According to him, Turai came two times in 2016 to the site. She had not been seen around the area since then.

We have not seen her this year, but some people often come around to see the progress of the place, he said.

Garba said some bandits invaded the ICC last year to disposess them of their valuables, adding that few items belonging to the centre were also stolen..

He added that some policemen from the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) had since been deployed to secure the ICC against further attacks.

Six of us were employed to secure this place and we do alternate, but because the bandits were fully armed, they overpowered us and beat the security guards.

The desolate centre was more palpable at a park for scores of tricycles meant to be conveying patients. Weeds have swamped the tricycles.

Worried by the delay in completing the ICC, one the residents of Abuja, Mr. Gabriel Oluwabunmi, berated those responsible for the abandoned project, adding that such noble idea that could bring relief to the masses, should have been completed without the usual hiccup.

He called on the authorities to ensure that the project was resuscitated, adding that such cancer centre would help bring succour to those ravaged by the disease and especially those who could not afford to be flown abroad.

Miss Ngozi Chukwuma, whose relative is suffering from the cancer, called on the Federal Government to ensure the completion of the centre to enable Nigerians who could not afford overseas treatment to patronise it.

She said such project would go a long way in assuaging the feeling of Nigerians who could not afford the treatment as a result of heavy monetary demand.

Mrs. Yaradua had in her speech during the launch of the centre said the whole idea of establishing the cancer centre was conceived out of her desire to contribute her quota to achieving standard healthcare delivery for the vulnerable.

According to her, the centre would specifically render services to women and children, especially the rural and urban poor.

When NAN visited the National Hospital Abuja, which is offering an alternative treatment to cancer patients, the staff appeared so overwhelmed with the huge number of cancer patients.

A cancer patient who craved anonymity called on the Federal Government to assist in revamping the centre, adding that this would go a long way in decongesting the national hospital from cancer patients with special attention.

Mr. Mohammed Lawal, an Abuja based businessman, called on the government not to abandon the centre, adding that though it was a private initiative; the government could also intervene to revamp it.

The ICC, according to its promoter, was meant to focus on four types of cancer that account for most deaths in Nigeria: cervical cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer and throat cancer.
 Crawford & Company (Canada) Inc. today announced that is honoured to have won the Insurance Business Canada, Outstanding Claims Service Award. This award recognizes organizations that have a proven track record for providing best-in-class claims management service. Crawford is grateful for the ongoing support and recognition of our clients and the marketplace.As an organization, fostering a positive corporate culture that supports the growth and development of our people and focuses on enhancing the overall claims experience through exceptional service, is central to what we are all about, said Pat Van Bakel, president and chief executive officer, Crawford & Company (Canada) Inc. Everyone at Crawford has worked so hard over the last year to offer customized service solutions to our clients while delivering superior service. I am proud of our achievement and grateful to our clients for their continued support.Crawfords commitment to enhancing the claims experience through digital innovation, new product development and enhanced service offering is reflected in many of the initiatives that have been launched throughout 2017. From Crawford 360 to Crawford Compliance and WeGoLook , Crawford has grown and evolved as an organization.Our commitment to enhancing the claims experience to address the evolving needs of our clients has never been stronger, and we look forward to sharing new products and solutions with our customers in the New Year, states Pat Van Bakel.
Arthur J. Gallagher has announced the acquisition of Illinois-based Weiss Insurance Agencies. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.



Weiss Insurance Agencies was founded in 1905. The company provides a full range of employee benefits, property-casualty, financial and retirement products, as well as human-resources consulting services. John Weiss, James Parilli Jr. and Arthur Pizzello will continue to operate the company from its current locations in Wayne, Ill., and Carmel, Ind. They will report to John Neumaier, head of Gallaghers Great Lakes employee-benefits consulting and brokerage operations, and Patrick M. Gallagher, who heads the companys Midwest retail property-casualty brokerage operations.



Weiss Insurance Agencies offers deep client expertise, an entrepreneurial spirit and a responsive, client-focused culture that complements our own, said J. Patrick Gallagher Jr., president, chairman and CEO of Gallagher.

I am delighted to welcome John, James, Arthur and their associates to our growing Gallagher family of professionals.






It was less than a week ago that we revealed Wells Fargos plans to exit the insurance business following allegations of a sales scandal  and today we can announce that a deal has been done for the firms insurance arm.USI Insurance Services has closed its acquisition of Wells Fargo Insurance Services USA, formerly part of the Wells Fargo Company in a deal that encompasses the insurance brokerage, consulting, employee benefits and property and casualty national practices. It also takes into account its safehold special risk, student insurance, individual health and private risk management insurance lines and small business insurance.With the combined strength of our two market leading companies, USI is one of the largest and strongest insurance brokerage and consulting firms in the world, said Michael J. Sicard, chairman and CEO, USI Insurance Services. We serve large risk management clients, middle market companies, smaller firms, and individuals with a full range of property & casualty, employee benefits, personal risk, program and retirement solutions. We are thrilled to join together with the tremendous professionals of Wells Fargo Insurance Services.USI is one of the largest insurance brokerage and consulting firms in the world, offering property and casualty, employee benefits, personal risk, program and retirement solutions to large risk management clients, middle market companies, smaller firms and individuals. Its headquarters are in New York and it has over 150 offices with 6,000 industry professionals on board making it the right fit according to Perry Pelos, head of Wells Fargo Wholesale Banking.This strategic transaction is the result of hard work from the outstanding teams of both companies, he said. I also want to recognize the extremely talented team of professionals who are leaving Wells Fargo to join USI. Im confident they will continue to be successful as they serve clients insurance needs as part of this strong industry leader.Terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Banks across America have moved forward with an initiative meant to help shield financial companies from industry-crippling cyberattacks.Dubbed Sheltered Harbor, the project involves the participation of various banks and credit unions that have about 400 million accounts in the US. Members of the Sheltered Harbor project are required to individually back up data so that it can be used by other member firms to serve customers in the event of a debilitating data breach.Banks can pay fees between $250 and $25,000 a year to participate in the national data backup initiative, depending on their size. Members must also follow guidelines on formatting their backup data, creating the backup vault, and submitting to audits. The data submitted must be able to cover an affected banks customers within 48 hours of a data breach.The concept for Sheltered Harbor was conceived last year by the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center and its trade group members.Sheltered Harbors 34-member board is composed of representatives from all walks of the financial sector  including executives from big banks, financial groups, trade associations, clearinghouses, and broker-dealers.The projects development comes after credit bureau Equifax had revealed in September that its data had been breached, exposing the personal information of as many as 145.5 million consumers.Similar cyberattacks could be staged on banking companies, crippling their ability to operate. Experts project that when data breaches disable banks and prevent customers from accessing their accounts, it could cause a disastrous domino effect  panicking customers with unaffected banks to withdraw their funds en-masse, potentially sparking a run on the wider banking system.So far, most people think about cyber in terms of having a credit card stolen, MIT Sloan School of Management information technologies professor Stuart Madnick explained to Wall Street Journal. What youre talking about now is a nuclear attack: If you cant get to the ATM and get it to work.Although the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) have measures in place to help the financial industry recover in the event of emergencies  such as the Reserves discount window that allows banks to borrow and the FDICs deposit insurance guarantees  such measures were designed to counter bank failures related to a firms solvency or liquidity.
On October 3, 2017, two major Left political parties, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified, Marxist and Leninist (CPN-UML), and the Nepal Communist Party-Maoist (CPN-M), along with a new fraction of the Maoists, the Naya Shakti Party, formed an alliance for the upcoming election for seven provincial legislatures and the federal parliament to be held on November 26 and December 7. However, the Naya Shakti party, days after the alliance formation, exited from it as the party was sidelined in choice-based seat sharing, and aligned instead with the Nepali Congress party.





At the national level, this announcement surprised political observers since the Maoists remain in the government in coalition with the Nepali Congress. This is not the first time that the Maoists and the UML have come together. Prior to the present Nepali Congress-led government, the UML had formed the government with the support of the Maoists under the leadership of KP Oli in 2015. The Maoists had blamed Oli for not respecting the terms of the power-sharing agreement and in May 2016, Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda withdrew support from the coalition and formed the government with the support of the Nepali Congress party. The Maoists also continued their alliance with the Nepali Congress in the recently-concluded local body elections where they came in third with the Nepali Congress securing second place.





Similarly, the news injected a wave of mixed opinions in the international fora, especially in India and China. The alliance defied the calculations of the South Block in New Delhi. New Delhi had lately been lobbying with the top brass of the Nepali Congress in anticipation that the Maoists would realign with the former for the upcoming elections, assuring a reachable political space in Nepal, but the long-secret talks between the UML and Maoists have foiled these hopes. Notably, Nepals transition from a feudal monarchy to constitutional democracy in last decade has tested Indias Nepal policy, precisely in terms of approach and functionalities. Critics argue that Indias party-centric approach, rather than maintaining a reliable and balanced relationship with Nepal, has failed to provide the desired results to India.





On the other hand, China has called this a fruitful development towards a stable Nepal. For a long time, China has maintained a policy of not commenting on the internal developments of Nepal on public platforms. However, China remains one of the influential actors in the Nepalese polity. Professor Dai Yonghong of the China Center for South Asia Studies at Sichuan University sees the Left Alliance as a great opportunity for the long-awaited political stability in Nepal. He also commented that China looks forward to friendly and peaceful cooperation with Nepal, and that by joining the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in May 2017, the government of Nepal, irrespective of the leadership, has affirmed its commitment for the sustainable development of Nepal.





Following the constitutional promulgation on September 20, 2015, an earthquake-stricken Nepal suffered a four-month-long blockade at a major trade route at the India-Nepal border, allegedly imposed by India. As a result, Nepal utilized the opportunity to reach out to China for the supply of necessary utility items. Also, just two days before the inaugural BRI Forum in China, Nepal signed to become part of the ambitious project. It was one of the major departures of Nepal from its reliance on India towards balanced cooperation with China. As the BRI took a leap forward with its clear future course in Chinese President Xi Jinpings three-and-a-half hour speech at the nineteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017, it was apparent from Xis speech that the global outreach of China will be conducted under the BRI umbrella, and the record seven-times mention of the BRI in his speech makes a strong case in this regard. This provides reassurance of the commitment of China to Nepal of its continued cooperation in the several sectors of development.





In contrast, Indias outreach in the region has fallen prey to a long-standing bilateral issue with neighbouring countries  India-Pakistan tensions. As a result, platforms like the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) are deficient in acceptable and visionary regional leadership. The alternative arrangement deployed by India to save the regional bargain runs on a snail shell syndrome. In this situation, Nepals rising trade deficit with India, changing public perceptions after the blockade, and deadlocks on several development projects to be developed by India, show the dire need for confidence-building measures.





The vague ideological foundations of UML and the Maoists offer the least of socialism, and a future authoritarian government cannot be overruled.



This will be the third time that Nepalese will participate in parliamentary elections, the first being in 2008 and the second in 2012. This is timely for Nepal as the new constitution promulgated in 2015 provides a clear face for its legislative, executive and judicial branches. This comes following the delay caused by the political impasse over the constitutional promulgation, which will become a reality after the elections.





Observers in India see the ongoing developments in Nepal as a forward-looking solution to the prolonged political instability in Nepal. The upcoming elections will be held as per the provision in the new constitution, and this will further strengthen the constitution. Nonetheless, the constitutional amendments concerning the rights of the people belonging to Terai (southern part of Nepal) remain unresolved to date. It will be interesting to see the crucial role of the two major Terai-based regional parties, the Rashtriya Janata Party-Nepal (RJP-N) and the Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum-Nepal.





Further, Nepals leadership crisis has intensified in the last six years. By resigning from the post of the Prime Minister nine months after he assumed power in May 2017, Prachanda paved the way for the present Prime Minister Deuba to lead the coalition government until the new Parliament becomes functional. Although this had provided hopes for long-lasting political stability, the Left Alliance faces tangible challenges.





First, UML, being the largest party in the alliance, and its satisfactory performance in the recently-concluded local body elections, challenges the ideality and existence of the Maoist party even as they align with them. Second, the impending issues of constitutional amendments, the peace process, and the slow pace of relief works following the 2015 earthquake, will create a further political vacuum. Third, an ideological unity and merger of UML and the Maoists in the post-election phase seem utopian precisely because of the existing rift within the UML leadership. It was clearly seen during the seat allotment process for the upcoming elections and indicates a more uncertain political agenda of the two parties. Notably, the Nepali communist movement has witnessed a series of splits and disintegrations since its inception some 68 years ago. Even though by aligning with his staunch longtime critic, KP Oli, Prachanda has secured his political relevance, the vote share will still be crucial in deciding the future course of the Left Alliance.





Fourth, on the foreign policy front, the patriotic UML remains China-friendly whereas the Maoists will have a puzzling time balancing their equation with India. The recent cancellation of the Budhi Gandaki project, a 1200-MW hydropower project that had been awarded to the Chinese firm Gejuwa, on transparency grounds by the Nepali Congress party-led government, is seen as part of a political vendetta. Oli has left no stone unturned in raising this issue at several election rallies and his promise to overturn the governments decision in case the Left Alliance forms the next government will have serious implications for Nepals relationship with India. A Left Alliance victory in the forthcoming provincial and federal elections will push India to rethink its policy grounds to move from the established structure of a unilateral party/individual to a more multilateral shareholder based interaction with Nepal.





To conclude, as UML chairman KP Oli calls for establishing a communist form of governance after the elections, an intense debate on its nature has begun to surface. The vague ideological foundations of UML and the Maoists offer the least of socialism, and a future authoritarian government cannot be overruled. Yet, the elections will provide a clear map to a new order of relationship between the provinces and the federation, helping the country achieve a new transparency in its development.
A West Cork firm making perfumes with only organic materials is thinking global, writes Trish Dromey

Following in the footsteps of Irish producers who have blazed a trail with organic foodstuffs internationally, West Cork company Waters + Wild is now working on making a name for organic Irish perfume.

Director Joan Woods believes that as the only Irish perfume company with organic certification, and one of only a small number in the world, Waters + Wild is well placed to sell to countries such as Germany, the US, and Japan, where there is a growing demand for organic, chemical-free perfume.

Although its a small, one person operation with part-time staff, Waters + Wild has already developed sales to high end retailers around Ireland and is selling to an online retailer in France and an organic shop in Austria.

In recent months, the company also signed an agreement with a distributor supplying high-end organic perfume stores and pharmacies in Germany.

With some assistance from the Local Enterprise Office in West Cork, Ms Woods has now opened an organic shop in Glandore and is aiming to increase perfume production, rebrand, and develop exports in 2018. Her new year plans include taking on a full-time employee.

A commerce graduate, Ms Woods worked for Vichy Ireland in the 1990s and set up two fashion stores in Dublin before settling in West Cork to raise a family, in 2004.

Looking for business ideas she hit on perfume and decided that scenic West Cork was perfect for this type of venture. Although she went to France to learn perfumery at Grasse, she decided that conventional methods werent for her.

They told me it would be impossible to make perfume without chemicals, but I decided to prove them wrong, said Ms Woods.

Working from a stone barn near Union Hall, she and her business partner, who has since left the company, experimented with various ingredients, importing a variety of them from around the world and researching combinations.

Ms Woods says that the decision to go organic was important: There are quite a number of natural products on the market now but an organic certification says more; it says no chemicals.

Applying to the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association the company secured the certification in 2015.

In early 2016, Waters + Wild had three perfumes which sell for 120 for 50ml and 45 per 10ml.

The ingredients for organic perfumes are difficult to find and very expensive  they include oils and roses from France and Madagascar as well as herbs and seaweed from West Cork, she says.

Ms Woods designed the logo and the packaging herself and has been doing all the blending, bottling, packaging, and selling.

I started out by travelling around Ireland with the perfume taking it to high-end retailers, she says, adding that customers include the Kilkenny Shop and Shannon Duty Free.

Recognising that opportunities to sell high-end organic perfume in the Irish market were limited, the company immediately began looking at export prospects and secured help in identifying them from both the Local Enterprise Office in West Cork and Enterprise Ireland.

In 2016, the company participated in Going for Growth, a programme for women entrepreneurs, and attended a French trade fair in 2016 where it launched Waters + Wilds fourth fragrance.

This year we were the only certified organic perfume company at Pitti Fragranze, a niche perfume trade show in Italy, says Ms Woods.

Opening an organic shop in Glandore in time for Christmas, Ms Woods says shes had a high level of interest from distributors in Germany, Japan, and the UK.

At her new shop in Glandore, she says she will have space to expand production to develop exports in 2018.

Assistance from the Local Enterprise office will allow her to take on a staff member to help with the workload and also provide her with the services of marketing graduate.

Options currently under consideration include attending a trade show in the US where she sees good potential for sales.

Shes also thinking about looking for investment to grow the business.
GSK in Dungarvan produces more than six billion tablets for the global market every year. Country manager of GSK Consumer Healthcare Ireland, Dave Barrett tells Padraig Hoare why its Irish plants are key

In an era where big pharma is viewed with as much scepticism in the media as the political establishment or the banking sector, GSK Consumer Healthcare Ireland believes boosting its 1,800 staff in Dungarvan, Sligo, Cork and Dublin is a way to heighten public trust.

More than six billion Panadol tablets are made in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, annually, exporting to 70 countries around the world, emphasising the town as the global home of the over-the-counter painkiller is a worthwhile campaign, said GSK Consumer Healthcare Ireland country manager Dave Barrett.

Mr Barrett said its recent PR campaign to focus on those employees was a way for the public - and by extension, its consumers  to identify with them.

The Cork site produces active ingredients for a range of medicines for diseases such as childhood cancer, depression, diabetes, HIV, Parkinsons disease and arthritis.

Sligo produces around 30m skin medicines and products every year, including Oilatum and Physiogel, exporting to over 65 countries.

The Dublin offices are home to its pharmaceuticals and consumer healthcare businesses.

Some 10% of the population is employed directly in Dungarvan. If you live in Dungarvan, you will be related to or know somebody who works on the site. That is powerful. The work ethic of the people on the site led us to think that we had a story to tell. When you consider Dungarvan is down the road and all the statistics of what is produced, then you have our campaign, he said.

Mr Barrett said GSK wanted Panadol and its other products to become as synonymous with Ireland as Tayto or other easily recognisable brands.

The Irishness part is important. When you think of traditional Irish brands like Tayto or Kerrygold, the Irishness is very important to consumers when they are making that choice on the shelf. Sligo is the home of our skincare  there are 30m skincare products made in Sligo. Thats something we should be very proud of and we should be telling consumers that.

Like other pharmaceutical giants, the UK-headquartered GSK has had its controversies worldwide.

A $3bn (2.5bn) fine by US authorities in 2012 for promoting Paxil with false claims was among the most high profile. Mr Barrett insisted GSK Consumer Healthcare in Ireland was above reproach.

Its important we deliver our business in absolutely the right way. I have never come across a situation personally where I have ever been challenged around values.

At the heart of our business, all decisions taken are with the best interests of the patient in mind. Yes, the shareholders are there to be satisfied but decisions are made on what is right for the consumer and the patient.

Im proud we are a transparent organisation. Things like transparency are important  so patients and consumers know what we are doing. There is this legacy of big bad pharma but there is a lot of good stuff also. Weve got to work hard to amplify some of the good stuff we are doing, he said.

The emphasis on its employees and how Irish operations were performing in the regional economy are key to enhancing the public image of GSK, he said.

When you look at the sites in Ireland, to say they are jewels in the crown of manufacturing community would probably be a fair comment. The investment has been there. Dungarvan and Sligo really are that good. GSKs commitment to Ireland is steadfast and rock solid.

The importance of employees is paramount. Are we listening to what teams are telling us? That goes across all the sites and the commercial businesses. The engagement for me means they are clear on what their role is, how it adds value to the strategy of the business. They leave the days job feeling they have contributed and they have had a chance to have their voice heard. Im not concerned that we are not hearing our employees.

said Mr Barrett.

With the threat of Brexit looming, firms big and small have got to prepare accordingly.

That means planning for something that may never happen but such an approach is prudent, said Mr Barrett.

There is uncertainty there but I am reasonably sure that the uncertainty will be less and less as we go on. That will take time. Were trying to be really proactive at the moment in trying to understand where the pressure points are, where the risk could be  scenario planning. Some of it may never happen but Id rather be prepared and on the front foot.

The most important thing around Brexit is that we ensure customer and consumers are not affected at the end of this, and that we have a product on the shelf with full availability as we have now.

There is a lot to play out but we are getting great support to scenario plan and mitigate risk, but we are trying to plan for something that may never happen.

he said.
By Ann O'Loughlin

A building company has sued for more than 2m damages over allegedly defective insulation boards which, it claims, caused floors in houses built by it to sink.

Tallaght-based Kelland Homes says extensive remedial works were required to about 58 houses at a development at Elder Heath, Kiltipper, Tallaght, because the insulation boards shrank, causing floors in the houses to sink.

It says it has suffered a loss of some 2m as a result of the remedial works and having to pay compensation to, and provide alternative accommodation for, affected homeowners.

It claims the boards were used in construction of houses at Elder Heath in 2015 and 2016 and were used under ground floor slabs.

It claims a component supplied by a Dutch company, which included the chemical PIR 3009, was used in the manufacture of the boards and that component contributed to the failure of the product.

It claims it became aware about September 2016 of settlement/sinking of ground floor slabs in houses at Elder Heath.

The floors had sunk "significantly" below the height of the skirting boards and its investigations established the sinking was a result of the insulation boards shrinking, causing voids to form beneath the floor slabs, the firm claims. The boards at issue were installed in 58 hours at Elder Heath, it claims.

It has sued Ballytherm Ltd, with registered offices at Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, as manufacturer and supplier of the boards; Clondalkin Builders Providers Ltd, Clondalkin, Dublin, and James McMahon (Dublin) Ltd, with registered offices at Dock Road, Limerick, who sold the insulation boards to Kelland; and a Dutch company, Covestro B.V, whose allegedly defective product was used in the manufacture of the boards.

Kelland claims Ballytherm initially agreed last March to fund remedial works and had made a part payment of some 150,000 under that agreement, but in August 2017 purported to resile from that agreement. Ballytherm had identified the alleged defect in the insulation product as having been caused by a wrong on the part of the Dutch company and Ballytherm has taken proceedings in that regard against four entities, Kelland claims.

When the proceedings came before Mr Justice Brian McGovern at the Commercial Court today he agreed to fast-track them.

The judge was told the first three defendants were consenting to the case being fast-tracked, but Covestro may raise a jurisdictional issue. He adjourned the matter for two weeks to allow Covestro consider whether to bring an application contesting jursdiction.
A report into a fatal plane crash in Co Waterford in March of this year has found that the probable cause was a collision with a tree during an attempted forced landing following an engine stoppage in flight.

The 84-year-old pilot was killed in the crash.

On March 27, a pilot in a 10-year-old amateur-built Rutan Long-EZ plane was on a short local flight, intending to return to Waterford Airport for circuit work.

But about 18 minutes after take-off, at an altitude of 2,000 ft, the 84-year-old declared an emergency and told Waterford Air Traffic Control that his engine had stopped.

He gave his approximate position as near Dungarvan and said he had selected a field for landing.

However, the aircraft struck trees as it attempted to land.

Scene of light aircraft crash outside of Dungarvan pic.twitter.com/PbF0PvlETT  Damien Tiernan (@damienwlr) March 27, 2017

The Irish Coast Guard helicopter was on the scene within minutes but the pilot had sustained fatal injuries.

The report found no evidence that the pilot suffered incapacitation or impairment during the forced landing.

It concluded, however, that the safety harness did not continue to restrain the Pilot following impact.

It identified the probable cause as the collision with a tree during an attempted forced landing following an engine stoppage in flight.

It also stated that the high probability of serious induction icing at any engine power setting was a contributory factor.
By Louise Roseingrave

The coroner at the inquest into the death of six year old Tristan Neiland has returned a narrative verdict.

The child from Cabinteely, Dublin 18, had a number of health issues and was in weekend respite care when he was found unresponsive by staff.

Speaking after the inquest, Tristans mother Angela Neiland welcomed the verdict.

We note that Tristanss death and the circumstances surrounding it has resulted in changes being made in the Carmona Respite Services. In that context Tristans death has not been in vain, she said.

I miss him. Every single day, Mrs Neiland said.

Tristan, who suffered from epilepsy, asthma and global development delay was attending Carmona Special National School in Dun Laoghaire, which is a day school for pupils with special needs and funded by the Department of Education & Skills.

On the night he passed away Tristan was staying at the St. John of God Carmona Respite Service, a separate service to the school.

His mother told Dublin Coroners Court that her son suffered from seizures, mostly at night and in the early morning. Mrs Neiland said her son could not breathe during a seizure and needed oxygen at the onset, she said.

Mrs Neiland said she understood her son would be constantly monitored using a sats monitor, which measures oxygen saturation levels. She brought the sats monitor to the Carmona centre and left clear instructions for its use. Mrs Neiland told staff the sats monitor should only be attached once her son was deeply asleep as it could otherwise disturb him.

My understanding was he would be constantly monitored. His seizures generally last from three to five minutes. If any longer than seven minutes it becomes a medical emergency and an ambulance must be called, Mrs Neiland said.

Angela and Andrew Neiland at the Coroners court inquest into the death of tristan Neiland at Store Street, Dublin. Picture: Gareth Chaney Collins

Staff at the facility put Tristan to bed at 8.30pm on January 5th 2013. He was due to be checked every 15 minutes. Tristan was checked approximately five times between 9pm and approximately 11pm. There was a baby monitor in his room and the door was left slightly open. There was no sats monitor attached to him because staff were of the opinion Tristan was not deeply asleep, the inquest heard.

When a staff member checked on Tristan shortly before 11pm he was found unresponsive.

A nurse immediately began cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and an ambulance was called.

Tristan was rushed Our Ladys Childrens Hospital in Crumlin where he was pronounced dead the following day, January 6 2013.

Pathologist Dr Maureen OSullivan gave the cause of death as sudden, unexplained death in epilepsy.

St John of God community services apologised to the Neiland family for the shortcomings in Tristans care and outlined a number of changes made at the facility since the childs death.

Following a full systems review, the centre no longer accepts children with high medical needs and individual care plans with risk assessments for each child are now conducted, along with more stringent staff training.

Returning a narrative verdict, Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane endorsed the changes that have been implemented at the Carmona centre since Tristans death.

* This story was subject to a clarification highlighting the fact that while Tristan attended Carmona Special National School in Dun Laoghaire, which is a day school for pupils with special needs and funded by the Department of Education & Skills he had been attending the St. John of God Carmona Respite Service, a separate service to the school, for overnight stays and it was while Tristan was in respite on the night of 5th January 2013 that he unfortunately passed away.
Three recent medical inquiries involving obstetricians have highlighted variations in the quality of Irelands maternity services, particularly in areas outside Dublin, writes Liz Farsaci.

OVER the past year, three medical inquiries involving obstetricians have highlighted the variations in quality in the States maternity services, particularly in areas outside of Dublin.

This inequality can be seen in the lack of routine scans for fatal foetal abnormalities, and for families whose babies are born with life-threatening conditions.

Tipperary mother Laura Esmonde told a Medical Council inquiry late last year of the eerie moment she realised a consultant may have wrongly diagnosed an ectopic pregnancy, having advised medication that would terminate the pregnancy.

A few months later, an obstetric registrar came under review for the care she provided to six mothers in Sligo. After performing a Caesarean section on one of these mothers, the doctor left the lower half of the mothers uterus in the breeze after suturing the top half to her abdominal wall.

Then, in June, the longest-running Medical Council inquiry, which investigated the care provided to three Cavan mothers during the births of their children, concluded. One of these babies died two days after his birth, one was stillborn, and one born in very poor condition.

In September 2016, Laura Esmonde, 39, of Tipperary, told a Medical Council fitness to practice inquiry that she attended the A&E at South Tipperary General Hospital on January 6, 2013, with a swollen leg.

A routine urine test revealed she was pregnant, which she had not known.

I was shocked  it was a lot to take in, but I was happy to be pregnant, said Ms Esmonde during her evidence on September 12, 2016.

On January 7, 2013, an ultrasound of her leg showed she had a clot. Ms Esmonde also asked for an ultrasound of her pelvis, because she wanted to see the baby. Her husband was due into the hospital shortly and she wanted to tell him the good news in person.

The stenographer said she couldnt see anything, and called in a consultant radiologist. He also performed a scan, and Ms Esmonde said he told her there was a possibility that she had an ectopic pregnancy.

On January 8, the consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist under review  referred to as Dr A throughout the inquiry  performed a transvaginal scan. According to Ms Esmonde, he told her she had an ectopic pregnancy of unknown location.

He told me my uterus was empty, she added.

Dr A advised that she take methotrexate, a medication that stops cells from growing and can be used to terminate ectopic pregnancies. On the evening of January 8, 2013, Ms Esmonde took her first dose, and her second on January 18.

On January 26, Ms Esmond was transferred to Cork University Hospital for treatment of the clot in her leg, but a scan that day indicated her pregnancy was not ectopic.

A further scan showed an intrauterine gestational sac, but the pregnancy was no longer viable. The possibility of doing a D&C procedure later in the week to remove products from the uterus was discussed.

After that conversation with doctors, Ms Esmonde then returned to the ward.

I was very upset. It was the eeriest of things. It was very distressing, she said.

On January 29, a consultant came in to discuss the possibility of holding off on the D&C, and perhaps putting her on folic acid.

For one split second, I thought maybe everything was going to be okay but immediately, I thought about the two doses of methotrexate and the damage that had been done to the baby, said Ms Esmonde. I was very upset. I was hobbling around the place, distressed.

I was so angry. I said I can cope with things that happen to me but if anyone has hurt my baby, I was going to kill him.

Ms Esmonde was successfully treated for the clot in her leg, and discharged from CUH on January 31. She then returned on February 2, suffering from abdominal cramping and bleeding.

A nurse did a scan and then an internal exam, and the pregnancy came out in the nurses hand so I saw the sac in her hand, said Ms Esmonde.

Dr Keelin ODonoghue of Cork University Maternity Hospital told the inquiry that she found evidence of an intrauterine gestational sac when she performed a scan on Ms Esmonde on January 27, 2013. Dr ODonoghue, the lead clinician for obstetric ultrasound and foetal medicine at CUMH, said she saw no mass signifying an ectopic pregnancy.

She did not see anything clearly within the sac, such as an embryo but, for me, it looked like an intrauterine pregnancy, said Dr ODonoghue.

She added that three of her colleagues also saw evidence of an intrauterine gestational sac.

At the conclusion of the inquiry on December 12, 2016, Dr A was exonerated, and found not guilty of poor professional performance on seven counts.

I cut in the wrong place

In December 2016, an obstetrician who made a number of clinical errors while treating six mothers was found guilty of poor professional performance on 17 counts.

Dr Andrea Hermann: Told a patient I cut you in the wrong place. Picture: Courts/Collins

Dr Andrea Hermann, who worked as an obstetrics and gynaecology registrar at Sligo General Hospital in 2013 and 2014, was also found guilty of professional misconduct on three counts.

In relation to one mother, referred to as Patient A, the inquiry found Dr Hermann failed to perform an elective Caesarean section with due skill, making an abnormal wound incision on the mother.

During her evidence, Patient A said Dr Hermann told her she cut her in the wrong place during an elective Caesarean section on December 4, 2013.

The mother-of-two told the inquiry that she suspected something was not right when she was still in hospital four days after giving birth, with a scar down the side of her abdomen, instead of across it.

She said that just as she was leaving the hospital, Dr Hermann brought her into a room and said: I cut you in the wrong place.

Patient A said Dr Hermann said by way of explanation that they were using new drapes  a large piece of fabric placed over the patient with a slit for the incision  during the surgery.

At this point I didnt know what to think, Patient A told the inquiry. I was very shocked. I was quite upset leaving the hospital.

I was devastated, she continued. I couldnt get my head around how she had made a mistake doing a planned section. Its been very hard over the past three years, she added.

Dr Hermann failed to obtain informed consent from Patient B prior to carrying out a membrane sweep during an antenatal visit on August 15, 2013.

Patient B, a mother-of-three from Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, said she was shocked after Dr Hermann performed the membrane sweep  an intervention used to induce labour  on her without her knowledge or consent.

Dr Hermann failed to establish whether Patient C still had a Mirena coil in place during a follow-up appointment. This patient later conceived and miscarried, the inquiry heard, although Patient C chose to give her evidence in private.

Dr Hermann also gave a blood-thinning drug, Innohep to a mother  referred to as Patient D  who was already at risk of heavy bleeding, as Patient D laboured with her sixth child on August 12, 2013.

Fortunately, the mother later gave birth without any complications.

On February 19, 2014, Dr Hermann performed a speculum examination on a pregnant Patient E, without first establishing the absence of placenta praevia.

Uterus in the breeze

Dr Hermann also failed to display adequate surgical skill in respect of the closure of a uterotomy on January 22, 2014, while performing a Caesarean section on Patient F. During her evidence, Dr Hermanns former supervisor said Dr Hermann made an astonishing mistake while performing the section on Patient F.

Dr Hermann left the lower half of a mothers uterus in the breeze after failing to suture the section properly, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Heather Langan, from Sligo General Hospital, said.

Dr Langan spoke of the chaotic scene in the operating theatre on January 22, 2014, while Dr Hermann was performing an elective Caesarean section on Patient F. Dr Langan, who was in the theatre observing Dr Hermann, said the baby was delivered swiftly.

But Dr Langan then saw that the baby had a serious laceration on her head so she ran next door to get the general surgeon, in case they needed help with suturing the babys cut.

Upon her return, she found Patient Fs husband collapsed on the floor, having fainted, and staff were attending to him.

Dr Langan then turned her attention to the mother, and she remembered that Dr Hermann told her that she couldnt see the ovaries.

Dr Langan became concerned when she looked at the mother, as she couldnt see the bladder, and asked Dr Hermann to stop.

What I found was that she had managed to suture the abdominal wall to the uterus, and had left the lower part of the uterus in the breeze, effectively, said Dr Langan. My concern was that what she had done in surgical terms made absolutely no sense. To miss the entire lower part of the uterus and not suture it  Id never seen anyone do that. Its an astonishing mistake.

Dr Langan, who completed the surgery, said she was concerned the mother would bleed heavily if she had not intervened.

Dr Hermann was also the subject of a previous inquiry at the Medical Council, in 2009 and 2010. Before this, she worked in The Galway Clinic. She was suspended from June 2010 to June 2011.

On the first day of the inquiry, Dr Hermanns solicitor, Gerard ODonnell, of ODonnell Waters solicitors in Galway, read out a statement on her behalf, before going off record.

Mr ODonnell  who previously represented Savita Halappanavars husband, Praveen  said Dr Hermann admitted to the clinical allegations against her.Addressing the Medical Council in her statement, she said: It feels to me you are disappointed that Im still alive.

Longest-running inquiry

Dr Salah Aziz Ahmed: Inquiry relating to three births at Cavan General Hospital. Picture: Collins

November 2016 saw the start of the longest-running Medical Council inquiry to date  the case of consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Salah Aziz Ahmed, of Cavan General Hospital.

The inquiry investigated the care Dr Aziz provided to three mothers at Cavan General Hospital between 2012 and 2014.

Evidence  at times heart-breaking, at times tediously technical  was given by two of the three patients, a number of Cavan staff members, several expert witnesses and Dr Aziz himself. The inquiry heard details of Patient A, now 38, whose baby boy passed away 32 hours after he was born.

The baby was born by emergency Caesarean section on November 22, 2012, in very poor condition. He died on November 24, and a coroners court later found the cause of death to be extensive meconium aspiration as a result of hypoxic brain injury.

Eileen Barrington, BL, legal counsel for Dr Aziz, pointed out during the first day of the inquiry that it was not claimed that any of Dr Azizs actions caused the death of Patient As baby.

Patient A chose not to give evidence, and did not attend the hearing.

The inquiry, held in the unusual venue of Finnstown Castle Hotel in Lucan, Co Dublin, heard evidence from the second mother, Deirdre Clarke, who waived her right to anonymity.

Ms Clarke, 38, who was admitted to Cavan for an induction on June 5, 2013, was hoping to achieve a vaginal birth after a previous Caesarean section (VBAC).

She was given Syntocinon, a drug used to progress labour, but one that can lead to hyper-stimulation of the uterus and very strong contractions, which can distress the baby and increase the risk of uterine rupture.

That night, Ms Clarke required an emergency Caesarean section, after her uterus ruptured. She suffered a post-partum haemorrhage and her baby boy, Roland, was born in a very poor condition, requiring resuscitation.

After the surgery, Ms Clarke was transferred to a recovery room. I didnt know what way the baby was, whether it was a boy or a girl, she said.

At some point, I heard it was a boy, and that he had gone to the SCBU, the special care baby unit. Roland was then transferred to the Rotunda, where they were very concerned about him, and they didnt know what the outcome would be, said Ms Clarke.

Initial tests on Roland proved positive and he is now aged four and a perfect little boy, said Ms Clarke.

By the time Dr Aziz gave evidence in relation to Ms Clarke, the inquiry had moved to the normal venue of the Medical Council headquarters in Dublin City.

Dr Aziz defended his antenatal care of Ms Clarke, but began his evidence with an apology to her.

I want to acknowledge the suffering and trauma Mrs Clarke went through, Dr Aziz said. I appreciate shes been through a lot. I hope this process will bring closure to her.

I didnt expect him to die

The inquiry sat in January, and then in March, when the mother referred to as Patient C  whose baby died inside her  gave her powerful and heart-breaking evidence.

Patient Cs baby boy was delivered stillborn after an emergency Caesarean section on April 26, 2014.

Baby C was his mothers seventh pregnancy, as she had suffered three previous miscarriages in 2007, given birth to a stillborn baby girl in 2009, and then given birth to two live baby girls in 2010 and 2011.

In 2009, Patient C was diagnosed with a genetic blood-clotting disorder, and suffered two placental abruptions, or separation of the placenta from the uterus, prior to her pregnancy with Baby C.

Patient C told the inquiry that on the evening of April 25, 2014, when she was 32 weeks pregnant, she began to feel very unwell. The following morning she went to hospital, arriving at 12.40.

At 4.45pm, Patient C met with Dr Aziz, the consultant on call that day. She told him about her poor obstetric history, and he examined her. He said he would return at 7pm to perform a Caesarean section.

But shortly after 6pm all hell broke loose, said Patient C, after a midwife could not find the babys heartbeat. Patient C was rushed to theatre and given a general anaesthetic. When I woke up, I knew something terrible had happened because [the nurse] was crying, she said.

After initially meeting my son, I was taken to the recovery room. I met my husband. We didnt know what to say to each other.

I didnt expect him to die.  All that I wanted that day, to come out of that, is my little man to be delivered.

During his evidence on March 28, Dr Aziz said he should have performed the section at 4.45pm, when he first met with Patient C.

In hindsight, I regret not doing the section at that time, Dr Aziz said. Doing the section could have given the baby some chance of survival. On May 18 this year, the inquiry committee which rules on the case found seven of the 14 allegations against Dr Aziz to be proven as to fact. On June 6, Dr Aziz was found not guilty of poor professional performance on six out of the seven counts. He was found guilty of poor professional performance on just one count, which related to the fact that he failed to decide that immediate delivery of Patient Cs baby by emergency section was required.

Dr Aziz was also cleared of professional misconduct on two counts.

More patient awareness

Brigid Doherty, CEO of national advocacy group Patient Focus, said patients are becoming more aware of their right to complain, due to recent investigations and inquiries highlighted in the media, and the increased visibility of Patient Focus and other advocacy and support groups.

But patients should receive explanations about their care long before any verdict in a Medical Council inquiry, Ms Doherty argued.

Patients expect that if there is poor performance on the part of a doctor, it would be examined by the hospital and a decision made whether the practitioner is reported to the regulatory body.

But we would hope that any unexpected outcomes or deficits in care would be acknowledged, and explanations given in a timely manner. Parents should not be forced to make complaints to get answers due to lack of local information, she said.
It is unlikely the volatile US president would limit his power to press a nuclear button, so cabinet members should be authorised to oversee first-strike orders, says John Mecklin

From the beginnings of the 2016 US general election campaign, through the presidential debates and on to Donald Trumps fire and fury comments on North Korea this summer, the prospect of a president as impulsive as him in command of nuclear weapons has raised global worries.

North Koreas test last week of a missile that might be able to reach the US mainland with a nuclear warhead  and Trumps initial response that we will take care of it  wont diminish the anxiety.

The simmering concern was already a medium boil last week, when the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony on the presidents authority to order a nuclear attack.

The Senate hearing was at the behest of committee chairman, Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, who, since announcing he would not run for re-election next year, has publicly fretted that Trumps intemperate tweets, and other public pronouncements, risk putting the United States on the path to World War III.

A Democratic member of the committee, Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, echoed those concerns during the hearing, saying the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with US national security interests.

But as the Senate hearing and subsequent commentary made clear, concern about Trumps authority to launch an unwarranted first-strike nuclear attack is one thing; circumscribing that authority is quite another.

The president holds the constitutional position of commander-in-chief and is obligated to protect the United States from foreign threats. The US Constitution does grant to Congress the power to declare war, but it is unclear whether a law that significantly constrained the presidents nuclear command authority  particularly when the United States, or its allies are under attack or in imminent danger of attack  would be constitutional.

Also, as former National Security Council staffer and Duke political science professor, Peter Feaver, noted in his Senate testimony, legislation that attempts to alter the nuclear chain of command could have unintended and dangerous consequences, perhaps leading adversaries and allies to question the United States ability to respond quickly during a crisis.

There are ways out of this constitutional and legislative dilemma, at least as regards a first nuclear strike by US forces. The difficulty is that they require the participation of Trump.

In recent months, a bill proposed by Senator Ed Markey, of Massachusetts, and Representative Ted Lieu, of California  the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017  has gained support from experts and activists concerned by Trumps control of US nuclear-weapon use.

The bill would prohibit the president from conducting a first-use nuclear strike, unless such strike is conducted pursuant to a congressional declaration of war expressly authorising such strike.

But the Lieu-Markey bill  in my opinion an admirable effort to create a check against wanton nuclear war-making  is sponsored by two liberal Democrats and has zero chance of passing the current, Republican-controlled Congress. If effective congressional action is unlikely in the short-term, what might reassure government officials of both parties and the citizens they represent? The president could circumscribe his own authority to launch a nuclear first strike.

There is nothing to stop US presidents from reining in their own nuclear command authority. When the US is not under (or at imminent threat of) nuclear attack, the nuclear command-and-control system already contains some restraints on presidential authority, including military commanders trained to make sure that a nuclear launch order is legal. As Feaver told me after his Senate testimony, the president could order additional controls on nuclear decision-making.

I dont think that you could impose, over a determinately hostile executive branch, a legislative fix that actually would work, he said.

But [Congress] could cooperate with the executive branch on legislative fixes, and, better yet, it could, through oversight and review, make recommendations that the executive branch would adopt on its own, recognising that theyre worth doing.

Just as the Barack Obama administration laid out strict guidelines for authorising drone attacks on terrorist targets, Feaver said, the Trump administration could adopt a policy that, for example, required certain cabinet members to determine whether a presidents first-strike nuclear order is legal, and complies with US treaty obligations, before it can be acted on.

An executive order formally requiring that , for example, the secretaries of defence and state sign off on any presidential order of a first nuclear strike, before it is sent to military commanders, would go a great way toward assuaging concerns about presidential impulsiveness  particularly at a time when the North Korea confrontation looms large. Such a three-key reform could be of enormous political benefit to Trump, reassuring both domestic audiences and allied countries that he will not explode early some morning and, after an angry tweet or two, order up an attack on Pyongyang that triggers doomsday.

To have credibility, any such reforms would need to be vetted by congressional and military experts. They would have to ensure that while the presidential power to initiate first-strike attacks could be curbed, presidents could still respond immediately when the US is under attack, or when an attack is impending. In matters pertaining to the continued existence of humanity, details matter.

Because they would be enacted by executive order, the reforms would not necessarily outlive the Trump administration; a future president could undo them by fiat. But if they were wisely crafted, procedural safeguards against a presidents unilateral misuse of his authority to order a first nuclear strike would likely be welcomed by people in America and around the world, and those safeguards might serve as a powerful precedent.

Beyond the political benefits these reforms would provide Trump today, they could serve as a long-term legacy for a president who has struggled to get major legislation passed.

Its highly unlikely that Trump would agree to limit his own powers, but its time to start thinking about how to persuade his successor to think differently about control of the nuclear button.

John Mecklin is the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. @meckdevil
Eight suspects have been arrested over the October 16 murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Maltas prime minister has said.

Joseph Muscat said in a statement that the suspects, all Maltese citizens, were arrested on Monday morning in an operation coordinated among the Police Corps, the Armed Forces of Malta and the Security Services.

He said the arrests resulted from the inquiry over recent weeks and that investigators have 48 hours to question the suspects to decide whether to seek charges.

He provided no other concrete information about the arrests or suspects, citing concerns that anything he says could derail any prosecution.

Ms Caruana Galizia, whose reporting focused heavily on corruption on the EU island nation, was killed when a bomb destroyed her car as she was driving near her home.

Europol, the European Unions police agency, sent a team of organised crime experts to help Maltese police investigate the assassination, joining the FBI and Dutch forensic experts.

Just before her death, Ms Caruana Galizia, 53, had posted on her closely followed blog, Running Commentary, that there were "crooks everywhere" in Malta.

The island nation has a reputation as a tax haven in the European Union and has attracted companies and money from outside Europe.

The journalist focused her reporting for years on investigating political corruption and scandals, and reported on Maltese mobsters and drug trafficking.

She also wrote about Maltese links to the so-called Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.

AP
A Spanish judge has ordered the release of six Catalan politicians but upheld the jailing of two separatist activists and two other prominent members of the regional government ousted more than a month ago amid an unprecedented independence bid.

Magistrate Pablo Llarena, at the Supreme Court in Madrid, ordered ousted Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras, former regional interior minister Joaquim Forn and the leaders of two Catalan grassroots separatist groups to remain in jail without bail.

The judge considers that it remains to be seen if their pledges to abide by Spanish law and renounce unilateral independence for Catalonia is "truthful and real", according to a statement by the court.

Judge Llarena set bail at 100,000 for the six other Catalan politicians who were jailed in November on preliminary charges of rebellion and other offences.

Meanwhile, ousted Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four close separatist allies are to appear in court in Belgium for extradition hearings and a possible decision whether they will have to be sent back to Spain.

Mondays court hearing in Brussels for the five Catalans is the latest step in their flight from Spain and their refusal to return to face rebellion and sedition charges.

Mr Puigdemont plans to lead his partys campaign for the December 21 regional election called by Spains government in an attempt to find a democratic solution to the nations worst institutional crisis in nearly four decades.

Whatever decision is made on Monday, two appeals will be possible and a final ruling could well only come only after the vote.

AP
A pedestrian has died after being struck by a marked police car that was responding to an emergency call, the Metropolitan Police said.

The incident happened at around 6.45pm on December 3 on Seven Sisters Road close to the junction with Elizabeth Road in Haringey, north London, the force said.

A spokesman for the Met said: "Officers immediately provided first aid. The London Ambulance Service and Londons Air Ambulance attended.

"The pedestrian, a man believed to be aged in his 40s, was pronounced dead at the scene at 7.20pm."

The Mets Directorate of Professional Standards and the Independent Police Complaints Commision (IPCC) have been informed, the spokesman added.

The IPCC confirmed independent investigators have been deployed to the scene to gather evidence, and that an inquiry into the incident is now under way.

One of the most high-profile victims of a collision involving the police was broadcaster Sheena McDonald, who was suffered massive head injuries when she was knocked down by a police van in Islington, north London, in 1999.

She was in a coma for 72 hours after the accident, spent two months in hospital and suffered post-traumatic amnesia. Ms McDonald had to rebuild her life and was able to return to work less than a year after the accident.

The officer driving the vehicle, which was on the wrong side of the road, was responding to a 999 call and was later acquitted of driving without due care and attention.
Bonus points may be introduced at Leaving Certificate for foreign languages, if the students apply for higher education courses in language-related areas.

Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education 2017  2026, which will be formally launched by Education Minister Richard Bruton later today, contains many of the measures flagged by him in the spring.

The strategy aims for, amongst other things:

A 25% increase in the number of post-primary schools offering two or more foreign languages;

A 20% increase in the number of students in higher education studying a foreign language as part of their course;

A 50% increase in the number of participants in Erasmus.

Mandarin Chinese will be introduced as a Leaving Certificate subject, as will curricular specifications for heritage speakers for Polish, Lithuanian and Portuguese; and a range of short courses in languages will be developed for the Junior Cycle.

The minister has also asked that a number of other options be considered to incentivise students to undertake the two-year postgraduate course in education. These incentives will include financial supports.

The strategy follows a lengthy consultation. This showed a lack of awareness of the opportunities that foreign languages offer in careers; the perceived difficulty of learning languages; and a limited choice of foreign languages available in schools.

There were also concerns about a shortage of qualified teachers of foreign languages and the traditional dominance of French in the system.

The lack of adequate support for immigrant languages was also raised.

To address the shortage of teachers, the strategy aims to double the number of them participating in teacher-mobility programmes and to double the number of foreign-language assistants in schools.

English may be a global lingua franca, but, in the world of international business, knowledge of English is increasingly taken for granted, according to the strategy. It is companies with additional language capabilities and an understanding of local cultures that will enjoy competitive advantage in new, but also in existing, markets.

It also says new Irish learners will be encouraged to enhance their proficiency in their own languages, as well as their proficiency in Irish and English.

The availability of this extended range of foreign languages provides Ireland with a very valuable resource, the strategy said.

Richard Bruton said the country needs to change its mindset around language-learning.

There is a significant opportunity for Ireland to excel on the global stage, he said. Our education providers and employers must work together to increase awareness of the importance of gaining proficiency in foreign languages. Parents must act as advocates and motivate their children to learn foreign languages.
One in two, or 70,500 of those workers in temporary employment last year, said they were in the roles because they could not find permanent work  a 179% increase on 2008.

The ICTU report, to be published later today, also shows a 34% rise in the category of part-time, self-employed without employees, since 2008, a rise which, it says, is indicative of significant growth in bogus or false self-employment.
Ava, who is from Aghabullogue, Co Cork, travelled to Holland last summer with her family to receive medicinal cannabis for a catastrophic form of epilepsy called Dravets Syndrome.

After two years of campaigning, her parents Vera and Paul this week received the news of the granting of the medicinal cannabis licence for Ava.

Paul Barry said it was great to be finally home.

We are delighted. We are going to have a normal boring Christmas. We are going to bring the kids to Santa, eat plenty of turkey and fall asleep in front of the TV. Twas a long road to get to here but it is worth it. But you have to ask where the compassion was?

Supporters, friends, and family turned out at Cork Airport to greet Ava as she was reunited with her brothers and sisters Sophia, Michael, and Elvera Mae.

Vera Twomey says that she is relieved that the familys nightmare is finally over.

We have had no ordinary life whatsoever. As for Christmas we will just have a few people around. But its going to be great to be home for it. I cant believe it has finally happened.

Ava is all smiles with her parents after meeting Santa Claus in the VIP lounge at Cork Airport.

Vera says that Ava has her freedom back now that she has a prescription for medicinal cannabis.

It is freedom for us. We have a medicine that works. We can speak openly and honestly about Ava having the THC form of cannabis. We dont have to hide in the shadows.

We know that CBD oil and THC work. Ava has got better and better every day. She is seizure free. THC has saved Avas life and changed her life and is the most humane form of medication. Now she is just dealing with ordinary childhood illnesses like bugs rather than multiple seizures a night.

Ms Twomey has branded the delay in obtaining a licence a disgrace.

The professionals in Ireland are looking at their professional equivalents in Holland and they want the training. It is a disgrace.

The consultants here are trained [on medicinal cannabis] and the education is provided by the equivalent of their department of health.

We felt such helplessness and powerlessness in Ireland. We landed on our feet here. The paediatric neurologists are extraordinary.

The mother-of-four said she feels a personal responsibility to help other people in similar situations.

It doesnt matter if you are the first, second or 23rd person to get medicinal cannabis. It is your duty to share some of your success and how it is achieved. I feel so sorry for people dealing with things like Lyme disease.

Ms Twomey thanked her supporters for their fundraising which enabled the family to move to Holland to obtain legal medicinal cannabis for Ava. She also paid tribute to friends, relatives and the wider community for contacting TDs and councillors urging them to fight for the family.

It has been going on for so long and I really appreciate what people have done for us. People have been amazing.

Over the course of her long campaign, Vera walked from Cork to Dublin in order to highlight the plight of her daughter. She incurred a knee injury on the trek to Dublin and was pushed in a wheelchair for the last few miles of her journey. She also travelled to Spain to get a prescription for medicinal cannabis only to have the drug confiscated at Dublin Airport.

Prior to using medicinal cannabis, Ava suffered up to 23 seizures a day. Her parents feared that she would lose her life during the course of her seizures and were living through a total nightmare.
Leo Varadkar called the cabinet meeting for 9am today after officials from both governments were locked in negotiations late last night.

The Irish Examiner understands that despite days of talks between Irish officials and their British counterparts, Mr Varadkar was not in a position to hold direct phone call talks with British prime minister Theresa May to sign off on the deal by 10pm last night.

And while a deal was expected by this morning, the last-minute negotiations are likely to lead to fresh Brexit talks concerns with a key Brussels deadline looming this afternoon.

It is understood the late night talks centred around Irish questions over whether the UK can satisfy all four of the areas needed to allow wider EU-UK Brexit negotiations to move onto the next phase of negotiations focussed on trade deals.

These are a Brexit transition period, the continuation of the common travel area between both nations, the protection of the Good Friday Agreement, and crucially a credible way to avoid a hard Irish border if Britain leaves the customs union.

European Council president Donald Tusk last Friday said Ireland will effectively decide on behalf of the EU if sufficient progress has been reached.

A Government spokesperson said last night talks may well continue to late in the night and there has been no resolution yet .

The senior Government spokesperson said there must be clarity on the need to avoid regulatory divergence [caused by Britain leaving the customs union] which would risk the re-emergence of the border.

The l talks came just hours before Ms May is due to travel to Brussels to hold talks on the deal with European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker, EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and Mr Tusk after holding her own emergency cabinet meeting.

Provided Ireland has signed off on the border deal, these Brussels discussions will form the basis of whether the British plan on how to address the Irish border issue can be discussed by EU member states and the EU college of commissioners tomorrow.

Under the negotiations framework, agreement must be reached on the divorce deal between Britain and the EU, citizens rights and the border before talks can enter their second stage on trade.

However, if the plans on how to address the border are not deemed acceptable this week, they are unlikely to be passed by European heads of state at a meeting on December 14-15, potentially derailing the Brexit process.

Speaking on BBC1 yesterday, Tanaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said Ireland doe not want to be vetoing anything and that a border plan setting out parameters and a framework may be acceptable rather than exact details at this stage.

However, he later told RTE Ireland cannot be jumping into the dark here hoping we land in the right place and that a credible plan is needed.

The situation has been complicated by the fact DUP leader Arlene Foster, whose party provides crucial support to Ms Mays Conservatives government, has warned it may pull down the coalition if a deal treats Northern Ireland differently to the rest of Britain.

Separately, hard-line Brexiteers yesterday warned Ms May in an open letter not to back down on key issues to help cut a border deal.
Dublin City Councils monthly meeting faces two decisions, because the leader of Myanmar has refused to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in the west of the country.

Rock star and human rights campaigner, Bob Geldof, last month publicly handed back his own freedom-of-the-city scroll and asked that his name be taken off the register of recipients, in protest at Ms Suu Kyis continued inclusion.

No precedent for such a request exists and councillors will tonight debate how to handle it. But they will also discuss the wider issue of Ms Suu Kyis status as freeman and whether it should be rescinded.

While a number of councillors have called for her removal from the register of freemen, the majority have been quiet on the subject and some are understood to feel unfairly forced into action by Mr Geldolfs self-acknowledged publicity stunt.

The small Rohingya community in Ireland, who came here as refugees in 2009, wrote a lengthy plea to the city council ahead of tonights debate, asking them to take back the freedom award, saying it was at odds with Irelands and Dublins reputation as a refuge for the persecuted.

Ms Suu Kyi was awarded the freedom of Dublin in her absence in 2000, while she was the international face of the Burmese freedom and democracy movement and was one of the worlds best-known political prisoners.

She was already a Nobel peace prize winner at that time, and has gathered countless other awards from international bodies and institutions, including Irish universities. She picked up her freedom award in person in Dublin in 2012, when she was feted by stars, including Bono and Geldof.

Since being released, she has failed to exert control over the Myanmar military, which has been responsible for decades of atrocities against the Rohingya people, but she has come under increasing criticism for refusing even to acknowledge any wrongdoing against them.
After years of controversy over the issue  which included a split statutory report which was ultimately shelved, a government- ordered review and threats of legal action  it is understood that a compromise boundary extension has now been agreed.

Details of the new boundary line, which will result in the citys population increasing by almost 100,000 to about 220,000, and which will shape development of the city for the next half century, is set to be unveiled to both city and county councillors today.

A source described today as a make it or break it point in the long boundary extension process.

It is understood the compromise extension proposes that Ballincollig, Blarney, Glanmire and Cork Airport become part of the city, as proposed by the Mackinnon review group.

However, the commercial rates-rich area of Little Island and Carrigtwohill, east of Dunkettle, which were part of the Mackinnon report, are expected to remain part of the county under the compromise deal.

It follows weeks of intense negotiation between senior city and county council officials, overseen by an implementation oversight group which was set up to implement the boundary extension as recommended by the Mackinnon review group.

Mackinnon was set up to review the shelved 2015 Smiddy report which recommended the effective merger of the city and county councils and the creation of a super-council.

However, Mackinnon recommended the retention of the two local authorities and a significant city boundary extension.

The chiefs executive of both city and county councils will be briefed on the proposed boundary during what could be the final meeting of the Mackinnon implementation oversight group this morning.

Both chiefs executive will then update their councillors on the outcome of the oversight group process at special local authority meetings which have been called for this afternoon.

Councillors will be asked to endorse the proposed boundary extension which the oversight group proposes to submit to the Local Government Minister Eoghan Murphy.

Last week, Tanaiste Simon Coveney had warned both local authorities to agree an extension or face the prospect of government imposing an extension.

The citys boundary was last extended in 1965.

Cork City Council has been arguing for an extension for the last 20-years to give it enough land and population to grow, and act as a development counterweight to Dublin.

Cork County Council has argued that a significant boundary extension will result in a significant loss of its rates income and affect its ability to deliver services.

Details of a compensation package which will see the city paying the county for any loss in rates income arising from an extension are also expected to be part of the extension proposal.
Operation Hurdle, which is now in its sixth year, will see an increased garda presence between now and Christmas in Co Wicklow, which has the highest concentration of Christmas tree farms in the country.

Regular air patrols in the run-up to Christmas will also enable gardai to keep an eye on any suspicious activity around the more remote plantations across the county.

Supt Paul Hogan, who set up the initiative back in 2012 after a delegation of concerned farmers approached him following a spate of thefts, said the threat growers used to face from criminal gangs has since reduced dramatically.

Weve only just officially launched this years Operation Hurdle, but weve been running it for the past few weeks.

Our focus is primarily on prevention, because the criminals and gangs out there know were keeping a very close eye on things. The Christmas tree farms are our main focus since we set it up at the instigation of the growers, but were also looking out for poachers and that kind of activity, which tends to increase towards Christmas.

We also have the help of the air corps unit, which can cover large tracts of land and quickly spot anything suspicious.

Padraig Sugrue harvesting a tree on his Christmas tree farm at Drumavalla, Tralee, Co Kerry. Picture: Dan Linehan

Supt Hogan, whos based at Wicklow town garda station, set up Operation Hurdle following an incident in 2011 when a grower in Roundwood was tied up and robbed.

Up to then criminal gangs had successfully plundered many farms, stealing over 2,000 festive firs a year and costing growers as much as 100,000.

But an increased garda presence, plus investment from the growers themselves in security measures  such as employing security guards and setting up CCTV cameras and motion detectors around their plantations  has helped them win the war on Christmas tree crime.

Grower Christy Kavanagh, who expects to supply around 10,000 trees in total from his isolated farm in Newtownmountkennedy, Co Wicklow, to both the Irish and export market this year, described Operation Hurdle as a wonderful success.

There has hardly been any theft at all since it was set up and it has a ripple effect across the communities around here, because levels of poaching are kept right down and older people and those who live on their own feel a lot safer at night, because theres a bigger garda presence around.

Christy, whos a multi-award winning grower and vice-president of the Irish Christmas Trees Growers Association, also said many Irish farmers can look forward to a bumper harvest following a very good growing season.

The total value of the Christmas tree market to the Irish economy is estimated to be about 21m.

The Nordmann Fir accounts for 75% of trees grown in this country, with another 15% made up by the Noble Fir and the remaining 10% by several other varieties.

Denmark is the largest producer of Christmas trees in Europe, but the high-quality crop produced in this country has made Ireland the biggest exporter of festive trees, first to the UK, with strong demand also from France, Germany, Belgium and Holland.
An Bord Pleanala had said they would announce on December 5 their ruling on a proposal by Indaver Ireland Ltd to to build a 160m, 240,000-tonnes-per-annum waste-to-energy facility at Ringaskiddy, in Co Cork.

However, that date has now been pushed out to December 19, a year-and-a-half after the original deadline.

The planning authoritys own guidelines state there is a duty on the board to make its decision as expeditiously as is consistent with proper planning and sustainable development, and to avoid delays.

There is also a statutory objective to make decisions within 18 weeks, beginning on the last day for making submissions or observations by the public, following the applicants newspaper notice of intention to apply for permission. This means a decision in relation to the Indaver case should have been reached mid-July, 2016.

An Bord Pleanala has previously told the Irish Examiner that the Indaver case is unusual in its sheer super-complexity, as well as in the number of new issues raised since an oral hearing took place in April/May of 2016.

CHASE, the environmental lobby group opposed to the incinerator, said a number of significant changes had taken place in relation to the proposed incinerator site, between the time of the statutory, mid-July 2016 deadline, up to the present day.

Spokesperson Linda Fitzpatrick said the site had been rezoned for education purposes by Cork County Councillors in the Local Area Plan (July, 2017).

Moreover, there were strong commitments by Europe to circular economies and renewable energy, while strict limitations on energy produced from unsorted waste place incineration firmly towards the bottom of the waste management hierarchy.

She said there had also been an increase in extreme weather events, which was causing visible and ongoing erosion of the site and that the tourism value of the area around the site has been affirmed, with Spike Island named Europes leading tourism attraction in September, 2017.

Ms Fitzpatrick also questioned the fairness of potentially deciding on such a big project just days before Christmas. If the decision was in favour of incineration, CHASE members would have to spend the holiday period gearing up for a legal challenge.

She said she couldnt understand why the planning authority posted decision-due dates on its website which it repeatedly failed to meet.

Are they pulling dates out of a hat? she asked.

A decision from the planning board, in relation to the 180m, M28 motorway, linking Cork city to Ringaskiddy, is also due Christmas week. The project would mean an upgrade of the existing primary route, the N28, along which Indaver trucks would travel to reach the incinerator.

Its the third time since 2001 that Indaver has applied to build an incinerator in Ringaskiddy.
Security expert Dr Tom Clonan said every other country in Europe has beefed up its special forces to react to terrorist attacks and its absolutely essential that the same is done with the Army Ranger Wing (ARW).

In August 2015, then minister for defence, Simon Coveney, announced that the Government would double the size of the elite force.

He said bolstering it was a key plank in the States counter-terrorism measures and this policy was enshrined in a White Paper on defence.

However, the Irish Examiner can reveal there has been little or no expansion in the specialist unit since Mr Coveney made the promise.

In fact, the ARW is far smaller than it was during the height of the Troubles.

Dr Clonan said that international terrorists are constantly looking for weakness and that is why every other country in Europe is beefing up its counter-terrorism forces.

He said he was very disappointed to learn that no progress had been made.

Its an absolute must have. Its absolutely essential in the evolving picture of terrorism. To be operationally ready on a 24/7 basis they need increased numbers, he said.

Dr Clonan said the Department of Justice has increased Garda armed units and identified the threat.

But its quite different from the Garda response units can do compared to the ARW. Theyre an iron fist in a velvet glove, he said.

Dr Clonan said that ARW could be tasked to deal with hijackings on aircraft or ferries.

Thats the kind of intervention the gardai cant do, he said.

In May last year, the Defence Forces released a video of the ARW carrying out an exercise in the Irish Sea where they simulated a response to a terrorist takeover of a passenger ferry.

The ARW assaulted the ship both from the air and sea.

The elite unit has also carried out similar anti-terrorist exercises on gas rigs and other important installations.

The ARW is mainly based in The Curragh and has its own purpose built tactical training facilities, including shooting ranges and various urban and rural settings where soldiers can act out different operational scenarios.

The Department of Defence admitted that it was the intention of the 2015 White Paper on Defence to ensure measures were taken to further enhance the capabilities of the ARW, with the aim of increasing its strength considerably.

In a statement is said work to identify a range of options is ongoing with a military/civilian team currently actively working on the project.

It added that Minister with responsibility for Defence, Paul Kehoe, was committed to ensuring this happens, but was unable to provide a timeframe.
Business group, Retail Ireland, predicts that spending will grow to 4.5bn  an average of 2,654 per household and a 2.6% increase on the same period last year.

The positive forecast is based on stronger spending this year, higher employment, competitive prices, and growing consumer confidence. It is also backed by successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, for which some retailers reported record sales.

Retail Ireland director, Thomas Burke, said: Retailers are approaching Christmas, 2017 with an air of confidence not seen in many years.

However, the surge will not necessarily translate into a Christmas bonus for all, as consumers are increasingly buying online, from overseas retailers. Almost 75% of the goods bought online now come from overseas stores.

Mr Burke said online sales were likely to top 16bn in 2017, an increase of 50% in just two years. This is one of the greatest challenges facing the trade, this Christmas season, as, unfortunately, Irish retailers have thus far been unable to stem the flow of online consumer spending currently leaving these shores.

Given that growth in the e-commerce world is running at six times that of traditional bricks-and-mortar outlets, the opportunity for sales uplift is clear. Those who can crack the online world stand to benefit greatly.

Traditional main street retailers are holding their own, however, and 90% of all sales still take place across the counter.

Mr Burke urged retailers to make the most of the Irish shoppers loyalty and give them the best in-store experience possible.

The value of retail sales, to October this year, was 3.7% up on the same period last year, while the volume of sales was up 6.8%, indicating lower prices. It is the highest year-on-year boost in sale values since 2007.

But another challenge facing retailers is cross-border shopping. Sales slowed in recent months and, according to Retail Ireland: It is likely that cross-border trade in cars and other goods, accompanied by strong growth in cross-border online shopping, has driven this phenomenon.

Different sectors in the retail industry are gearing up for the last three weeks of Christmas shopping in different ways. Supermarkets expect their surge in shoppers in the week beginning December 18 and Retail Ireland says while there is great value for shoppers, competitive discounting will put pressure on the stores.

Department stores are expecting a nail-biter, banking on last-minute shopping to boost their tills. Computer and electronics stores are anticipating continued strong demand for TVs, tablets, and gaming systems, despite prices returning to normal after Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The Leave Means Leave campaign made the claim, despite health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, insisting that removing Ms May from office could stop Brexit from happening at all, as it could lead to an election that Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, would win.

In an open letter to Ms May, on Sunday, the Leave Means Leave campaign  which includes Conservatives MP, Jacob Reec-Mogg, and former cabinet members, John Redwood, Owen Patterson and David Jones  said the prime minister must not back down on key issues at todays Brexit talks.

Leave Means Leave  which is also backed by a number of business groups, and has the informal support of former Conservatives leader, Michael Howard  said no deal should be agreed with the EU until there is:

a reciprocal free trade deal without tariffs

the end of the European Court of Justices jurisdiction over Britain

the end of free movement of citizens by March 30, 2019

and that there will simply be a good faith agreement to continue working on resolving the Irish border stand-off

The letter  which came as DUP leader, Arlene Foster, separately warned, last night, against moving the border to the Irish sea, and as both former British court of appeal judge, Sir Richard Aitkens, and former Conservative cabinet member, Iain Duncan Smith, warned against allowing the European Court of Justice to continue its role post-Brexit  has complicated Ms Mays negotiating position even further. This is because her strained government is dependent on support from both the DUP and hard-line Brexiteers, meaning the prime minister  who campaigned during last years referendum for a Remain vote  has been forced to take a tough stance in office.

However, in a bid to calm the situation last night, Hunt warned hard-line Brexiteers that any move to remove Ms May for compromising could derail Brexit itself.

He said this is because Corbyn could win an election in such a situation, stressing: If we dont back Theresa May, we will have no Brexit. The British Labour party said it has not made a decision on whether there should be a second Brexit referendum.

The partys international trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, said it was not Labour policy to have a second vote, but did not rule out the possibility.

He stressed that stating support for another referendum would encourage the EU to give Britain the worst possible deal. Lets be absolutely upfront about this: the idea that you would have a second referendum would encourage the EU to give you the worst possible deal that there was, he said.
Further west, Dingle, which is within the boundaries of the west Kerry Gaeltacht, has already been selected as a Gaeltacht service town. That has to be seen as a tacit admission that there isnt as much Irish in use in Dingle as might be expected. In fact, Dingle is classed as category C for Irish language use.

The strongest class, category A, is now confined to the westernmost sea coast stretch around Dun Chaoin, Baile nan Gall, and Baile an Fheirtearaigh.

Even Ventry, and places closer to Dingle town, have declined to a category B.

The Gaeltacht Act promotes the use of Irish in towns that are outside the Gaeltacht, but which are used by Irish speakers.

A lead organisation/committee will be selected in each service town to put together a language plan. Funding of 20,000 is available to draw up a plan over two years.

Roibeard O hEartain, Irish officer with Kerry County Council, said: People dont look for services in Irish, because they know they are not available.

It is one thing to train people to speak Irish, but they must be given an opportunity to speak it, he added.

Udaras na Gaeltactha member and West Kerry councillor, Seamus Cosai Fitzgerald, said this is a bottom-up approach to the language by Udaras, which is implementing the programme: It will, it is hoped, deepen the use of Irish in Dingle town, as well as in areas close to Dingle.

There is extreme concern that even in west Kerry Irish is not as prevalent as it was two decades ago.

West Kerry Irish speakers have noted that they need to be assured that if they attend hospitals in Tralee, or have dealings with the gardai, or call into Bus Eireann, they will not be embarrassed to speak in Irish. And it is hoped that even festivals like the Rose of Tralee will have an Irish language element.
PIONEERING ceramic artist David Seeger is celebrating his 80th birthday with an exhibition at Uilinn: West Cork Arts Centre.

The Yorkshire-born artist, who moved to the Baltimore area in West Cork in 1990, says he influenced by everything he sees.

There are colours that come into my work that just happen to fit the landscape around me. Its coincidental with the kind of glazes I use and the preferences that I have. It wasnt anything intentional. I would say the influences are subliminal rather than anything conscious.

The constantly curious and evolving Seeger, who went to school in Bradford with the renowned British artist, David Hockney, has been making mostly one-off ceramic pieces for over 50 years.

Interested in philosophy, quantum physics and Jungian psychology, Seegers pieces often carry some thought or intention of what, for example, a pot actually is.

His Black Hole series play with the fact that pots have a hole. His Twirling the Edge pieces explore the ambiguity of where and what the line may be between the inside and the outside of an object. And his Touching the Void series discovers how the hole may be seen as a black three dimensional form (for example, a cube). The only way to tell whether its real or an illusion is to touch it, which the artist encourages.

Visual art, says Seeger, is all about showing without words. In my case, the answer to the question, How do you make an inside-out teapot? is to make one. There is one in the show. There are many ideas like that in the show that answer simple ordinary kinds of questions.

Seeger says his work is a kind of performance. He gives an example of a piece of sculpture that has two faces. When you walk around it, the whole thing changes. Its like watching a video. It changes shape as you look at it. There is no medium other than video that can get anywhere near that experience. Everything in my show is of that order. Ive used mirrors at the back of quite a lot of the exhibition of pottery so that you can see both sides, the back and the front, from one view point.

Seeger says he was privileged to be one of the early guinea pigs of a revolutionary teacher, Harry Thubron, at Leeds College of Art.

Thubron revolted against the old-fashioned early Impressionist and English tradition of composition with figures. In some ways, he was misunderstood. But he was credited with what he called the Basic Course. That was a set of exercises we did in the first term using geometry and shapes, fairly simple abstract design.

But essentially, Thubron was more of a spontaneous kind of Zen artist with subliminal influences. He was interested in getting drawings from a moving model, maybe like Marcel Duchamps painting, A Nude Descending a Staircase. Theres a kind of time lapse there. We did a lot of that kind of work. Thubron put a lot of emphasis on drawing and life drawing.

Seeger taught art for many years, including at Leeds College of Art which later became part of Leeds Polytechnic. At the moment, he and some of his contemporaries from art college are putting things on the record. My show and the book I published to go with it, are very much of that order. The bedrock of it all is the ethic we set out with, given to us by Harry Thubron.

He based his work on the work of Sir Herbert Read, author of The Meaning of Art. Read avowed that art is as essential to a healthy person as food is.

Its an idea Seeger has been lived by ever since he first encountered it.
Behind the scenes in Santas Workshop, there are a lot more power tools than you might expect. At the studios of Dowtcha Puppets, the street theatre company behind this years Glow Christmas experience in Bishop Lucey Park in Cork city, its all go.

About 230m of painted fencing, six life-size elf puppets, Santas sleigh, and a specially constructed postbox for children to post their letters to the man in red are amongst the props getting the finishing touches in preparation for transport to the park, where the work of assembling the magic of Christmas is about to get under way.

Some of the people working on the props and painting are also amongst the 10 performers, clowns and puppeteers that will bring the Glow experience to life, and are busily working away as real-life elves, but Dowtcha director Cliff Dolliver is a little too busy to be amused by this example of life imitating art.

The theme for this years Cork Christmas Celebration is Santas Cork Workshop: a walk-through experience in the park that captures the magical tingle of anticipation that children feel in the lead-up to the big day.

Families who take a walk in the park will be treated to the sight of behind-the-scenes preparations at Santas Cork HQ: elves packing presents and performing quality control on toys, reindeer being taken through some final training, and of course Santa himself.

With the count-down on to Fridays grand opening, Cliff is working hard, but the end goal is always in sight. At this stage, Im really looking forward to getting the public into it, he says.

Because I know theyre going to love it. People will walk away with life-long memories, and pictures of their kids with silly reindeer and Giant Santa. This year is going to be very special.

Cassandra Davis and one of Dowtchas elf puppets at Glow. Pictures: Larry Cummins

He points out a scale model of the park, describing the various surprises in store for visitors.

The aesthetic is what Im calling Cork and Western: its a kind of cartoony, classic Hanna Barbera look, he says. The first thing families will see when they come in is the sleigh being loaded up, and the bags of toys all have the names of areas of Cork painted on them, so parents can point out a bag for their area to children. I think thatll be really exciting for younger kids.

The last time Dowtcha won the commission to present Cork City Councils Christmas park walk-through was in 2014. Cliff worked on a Celtic-themed Christmas called Tir na Nollaig, with specially commissioned traditional music, lush costumes and 17 live actors.

A Tasmanian who has developed an abiding love for Irish culture in his two decades in Ireland, he was keen to inject a little more cultural relevance into his production than the bland, commercial, TV-inspired fare often on offer at such events.

But despite an attendance of over 80,000 visitors to Tir na Nollaig, some punters did say that the experience wasnt Christmassy enough: where was Santa, where were the reindeer?

This year, Cliff feels hes met a happy medium, a production that can deliver all of the visual palette expected at Christmas, but blended with touches that instil pride in a uniquely Irish, and Corkonian, heritage.

Were picking up from where we left off the last time in 2014 because we did really like that presentation, but were making it more Christmassy and traditional, he says. Its also a longer and more interesting route this year.

Dowtchas 10 live performers are a very talented bunch, including Italian clown Elisa Gallo Rosso, Cork stage actress Rosie ORegan and Belgian puppeteer and performer Serge Vandenberg, who also frequently works behind the scenes with Dowtcha, constructing their set pieces.

For an acting CV you have to start somewhere, Serge jokes, as he paints a set of weighing scales for the elves present-packing station, which will be just one of the areas where families can observe and interact with the performers.

Cliff is full of praise for the talents of the cast. I really think thats something that makes a huge difference in what a child will experience, so were incredibly lucky to have this bunch on board.

Its been really easy to bring this together, because theyre a competent, dedicated, talented team. And its the effort of the team that will really bring the spirit of Christmas to this, at the end of the day.

In another room in Dowtcha HQ, hilarious reindeer puppets are in the final stages of completion; in a reindeer paddock at the end of the park, children will be able to watch Rudolphs brethren undergoing special training for their Christmas delivery run.

A unique sensory addition to Santas Cork Workshop is a Bell Tree: a huge construction bedecked with 1,500 bells, to add a magical jingle to the atmosphere in the park, which will also be heightened by Cork City Councils lighting scheme and the musical arrangement by sound designer Cormac OConnor.

This year, queuing on the winding route inside the park will be kept to a minimum by ensuring that photo-opportunities are accessible from many different angles at once, although due to the perennial popularity of the free city centre amusement, there will still need to be a queuing system in place outside for access to the park.

Then therell be elf stations for wrapping, sorting and quality control, Cliff says, And of course, right at the end, Santa Claus himself, who is a really beautiful giant puppet.

As a puppetry company, its a natural addition for Dowtcha to mix puppets in with the live performance at Santas Cork Workshop and to give puppeteers the chance to show off their skills, but its a physically demanding job for performers.

There are lots of little challenges to figure out, he says.

The big puppets are quite heavy, and difficult to operate for four hours at a stretch. But were busy devising a clever, theatrical way to work in a shift change so puppeteers can swap roles while staying in character.

There was one other major nail-biting factor for the Dowtcha team as the opening night approached: facing into 12 nights of an outdoor show in December, the weather is one of the only factors that leaves the production completely in the hands of fate.

Does it make Cliff nervous? He shudders for effect, but laughs: I think at this stage Cork City Council think were jinxed with the weather, because theres always something. All I know so far is that I think theres a cold snap forecast? That wouldnt be so bad. The elves can have gloves.

All practicalities aside, its still an exciting job, Cliff says.

It can be quite humdrum when youre putting props together and worrying about ordering enough paint, but the reward is that first time you see a really small child walk in and look around and grab their parents hand tighter: you can see their imagination light up and start working in front of you.

No matter what Christmas means to you, thats a gift.
Crocheting was just a hobby for Ann Cooke until she went out shopping one day and bumped in to her former SNA workmate, Linda Burgess, who told her that she had had a bilateral mastectomy.

Linda mentioned how uncomfortable her prostheses were and an idea was sparked in Anns head. She had come across knitted knockers online and knew that it was possible to make handmade breast prostheses.

Ann, who is based in Dublin, made up a pair of the knockers for Linda and they were both surprised at the result. They are about one sixth the weight of a regular prosthesis. Regular prostheses are very heavy and hot and uncomfortable and people say they are dying to take them out when they get home. But they feel when they are out that they are taking away their femininity. So they end up leaving them in.

Ann says people who wear prostheses often dont want to even open the door to guests without them. However, they can feel heavy and wearers often say they feel weighed down by them both literally and emotionally.

What people say when they have the knitted knockers is that you dont have the physical weight beating down. And that weight is a constant reminder of what has happened.

After successfully knitting the knockers for Linda the pair decided to set an Irish branch of the American organisation Knitted Knockers. The knockers are a soft, lightweight alternative to the standard gel filled prosthesis and can fit into an ordinary bra where they take on the shape of a real breast. Volunteers knit or crochet them and they are free to breast cancer patients.

Knitted Knockers Ireland was set up in 2015 when Ann contacted the American branch of the organisation and was told that there was no Irish chapter in place.

For the first six months I was doing all the craft work myself and then in January 2016 I put out a call for volunteers. We meet once a month in Donaghmede library. Sometimes we meet every two weeks depending on demand. There has been a huge response from volunteers. Sometimes we have to ask people to stop knitting so we can catch up with the process of sending them out.

Ann has been hugely heartened by the donations she has received which have covered materials and postage.

The mail bags we send them out in are donated. There is a company called Royal Upholstery, a family run business in Kilbarrack, and they donate the polyfibre. I thought it would be a once off but when they heard what it was for they decided to do it all the time. A woman held a raffle to pay for the stamps forpostage. I am always happy to get donations of stamps.

Ann sends out the pair of prostheses complete with a personal note, ribbons and two crochet hearts to symbolise from one woman to another. She says women are often very moved that a stranger has come to their assistance in this way.

A lot of elderly ladies arent entitled to free prostheses and they are delighted to get the knitted knockers. People are thrilled that someone they didnt know went to the trouble of making the prostheses for them. People phone us all the time to say thanks, particularly old people. I had one woman in her 90s who rang to say she was delighted that they were so comfortable. If I get a call about a woman in her nineties she goes to the top of the list. And there are women in that age group.

Ms Cooke says she was looking to do voluntary work and that the Knitted Knockers has opened up a whole new world to her, enriching her life in numerous ways.

We get cards from people and we put them on Facebook. It is lovely for people to see the cards and to see the level of appreciation. Everybody knows somebody with cancer. And we all feel that there is not a lot you can do for someone in the midst of it. But this is something you do. I never realised I would have so many bags of prostheses in my house but I love it! My children are all grown up and I really enjoy this.

Knitted Knockers Ireland provides hundreds of free knockers every month to women across the country. They also provide swimming knockers which are filled with the mesh from a net shower puff, because it keeps its shape without absorbing the water.

More information on Knitted Knockers (Irish branch) is available at facebook.com/KnittedKnockersIreland. Email knittedknockersireland@gmail.com or call Ann and Linda on 087 1673220.

Knitted Knockers patterns at knittedknockersireland.wordpress.com
Politicians who favoured an easy approach to one-off houses are now confronted by people in the same rural communities who strongly object to plans for windfarms near their homes. The proliferation of one-off houses is also coming in the way of much-needed road projects and tourism developments like greenways being built through the countryside.

The EPA has confirmed greenhouse gas emissions have gone up here by more than 7% in two years. The Government has given a commitment internationally to reduce emissions by 20% by 2020, but there isnt a hope of reaching that target, as were clearly going in the opposite direction.

Government policy encourages renewable energy. However, policy is playing against a metaphorical gale in many areas, including counties Cork and Waterford and, especially, Kerry where there are claims the county already has more than its fair share of turbines.

There are calls from some councillors  often the same politicians who lobbied in favour of one-off rural houses  for a lengthy setback of wind turbines from peoples homes. They seek a distance of 1,000m, or more, but, in reality, such would rule out many windfarms because houses are everywhere.

The draft National Planning Framework (NPF) aims to identify the best way to accommodate 1m more people in Ireland by 2040, as well as catering for the existing ageing population in a world facing increased climate change impact and nature loss.

A key message from the framework is that choices have to be made about where people live. Were told it is most efficient to service compact settlements of more than 10,000 inhabitants, with a focus on developing towns and villages. Planning authorities have been thinking that way for some time and are now far more reluctant to allow one-off houses.

An Taisce says scattering people across the country causes many problems, such as social isolation, difficulty in finding sites for renewable energy projects, and the loss of an opportunity to develop strong villages and towns.

We only need to see many small towns failing and main streets half closed to recognise that they lack the population within easy reach that they need to survive. Rather than being a crazy attack on rural Ireland, as portrayed in the local press, this is rural Irelands only hope for survival, it states.

The decline that has occurred in many towns has been caused in part by the building of one-off houses in the open countryside.
IF you happen to be one of the benighted few who has yet to encounter Jack Reacher, you should know that hes six-and-a-half feet tall at least and has hands the size of hams, which is why us fans refused to go to the movie where Tiny Tom (Cruise) played him.

Once you get to know Reacher, you know nobody other than a young Liam Neeson could play him.

The two downsides to Reacher which you also need to know before you identify with him are, first of all, that he has damn all sense of humour.

He has been known to crack a smile, but thats about the height of it. The second downside is that Reacher doesnt stay. Anywhere. Its not that hes a freeborn man of the travelling people.

Its just that when he left the US military, wherein he was a military policeman who attained the rank of major, he decided he was never going to settle.

He has no home. He has no property. Well, OK, unlike most of his compatriots, he has a passport, but youd expect that of a man whose mother was French and who travelled the world as an army brat.

He has a passport and a capacity to magic money out of an account somewhere. Other than those two items, zilch.

He travels by Greyhound bus, washes himself a lot but tosses his cheapo clothes into a bin after a couple of days, having picked up more from a Goodwill store. He does not have a phone. Imagine.

What he does have, in every book, is a willing woman  all of them intelligent, brave, beautiful and reasonably happy to bonk and then let him fly free, untrammeled by fidelity. Oh, and a cause. Reacher always has a cause.

An adventitious righter of wrongs, he arrives in a town and straightaway a cause presents itself to him, requiring his always principled and inevitably violent response.

His latest outing, entitled The Midnight Line, is set nowhere in particular in Wyoming, a state which, lets face it, is big enough to contain a whole load of nowhere in particular.

The novel ticks all of the boxes that have made this big bad multiple killer beloved of peaceable little old lady readers and others. But this time, it does more. It gives a painful insight into Americas opiate epidemic.

Millions of Americans are now hooked on drugs they or somebody close to them had prescribed for pain.

Top of the list, one called Oxycontin. The medication was developed to help patients cope with major post-operative and other pain, and the hope, when they first came out, was that they were non-addictive.

Indeed, they were marketed as precisely that. They were so incredibly effective that a new breed of clinic began popping up all over the US: the Chronic Pain clinic, which offered physio, meditation, living in the moment, and, if all of these failed, Oxy.

Everybody was happy. Good folk who had suffered genuine pain for years now had something that would kill off the misery and raise them to a new plane of light, happiness and peace.

When it was suggested that patients on time-release Oxy seemed to get pretty desperate for the next dose two hours before it was due, the makers, Purdue, came up with a rationale that talked of pseudo-dependency.

Of course the patients suffering this new syndrome were not addicts. They simply needed their next fix. Oops, sorry, we meant their next dose.

It was a whole new kind of addict: Hard-working, respectable, decent folk, some of them veterans grievously injured in the course of their duty and whose consequent pain was beautifully managed by Oxy. Wars are the best stimulant for the addiction business.

They deliver pain-wracked men and women with money and a long life ahead of them, that life bearable only through the use of laudanum (that would be after Americas Civil War) or morphine (the first and second world wars).

But the great thing, let us remind ourselves, the great thing about Oxy was that, unlike heroin and alcohol, which constituted the main ingredients in laudanum, or morphine, it was not addictive, the claim went, if used properly.

So while Oxy, used properly, was managing pain for hundreds of thousands of patients, Oxy, used improperly, was changing Appalachian life for the worst.

Given the level of backwoods deprivation that characterises that area of the US, its difficult to imagine any factor making life there much worse, but you have to hand it to Oxy, it managed it.

Young relatives of older patients discovered that a tablet crushed and snorted delivered the most fantastic high, which in time  and it didnt take much time  turned Oxy into an equal generational addiction.

Grandpa took it, Mom took it and young Wilbur took it, albeit in different forms. Since they had only one prescription serving the three of them, they had to engage in a new sport that took over the Appalachians  doctor shopping.

It would take a while and a lot of petrol, but eventually, a determined enough Oxy addict would get enough prescriptions to keep them going and allow a few business deals on the side.

Eventually, the family firm that makes the drug came under pressure because of the deaths their medication was causing. Hundreds of thousands, some authorities suggest. Hundreds of thousands of OD deaths. So the family firm that makes the drug took action.

They reformulated the pills in a way that made them impossible to crush and snort. You can tell this family, the Sacklers, are good at heart, even if you didnt know about their philanthropic donations to museums like the Louvre.

The only problem was that the consumers who had, over time, become addicted to snorted Oxy and who discovered the new version wouldnt play for them quickly became so desperate that they abandoned the pharmacy where theyd purchased Oxy and went out on the street to buy anything that would deliver the same hit.

They found it. Good old reliable heroin would do it. Right there and then. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Thats why authorities find it difficult to nail down precisely how many deaths can be laid at the door of Oxycontin: because many of those who have died since it was reformulated actually died of heroin, for which Oxy was the gateway drug.

WHAT Lee Childs new novel does is change many popular notions of drug addiction. The product is not processed in dubious jungle laboratories owned by killer cartels, but in government inspected pharmaceutical plants.

The peddlers are not scabby locals, but white-coated doctors. The people behind the whole operation are not Netflix villains, but a family of generous philanthropists.

Donald Trump says hes going to tackle the opiate epidemic. He could do with a non-fiction Jack Reacher to help him. Because a legally prescribed drug has destroyed a region and more than one generation of Americans.

The Midnight Line by Lee Child is published by Bantam Press
COLUMBUS  Columbus Police arrested a male juvenile for an armed robbery just before 6 a.m. Sunday at Casey's General Store at the corner of 33rd Avenue and 27th Street.

According to police, the suspect was taken into custody after officers executed a search warrant and most of the stolen items were recovered.

Police said the suspect, who was armed with a knife, is not being named because of his age.
Hillary Clintons favorite Central American was back in the news this week, as Honduras painstakingly counted ballots in front of international observers and tried to discern, with utmost transparency, the winner of the Nov. 26 presidential election.

Amid the tension, left-wing candidate Salvador Nasralla cried fraud and called for an uprising. Soon, like a bad centavo , pro-Chavez Honduran former President Manuel Zelaya turned up in the midst of one angry mob.

Recall that in 2009 Mr. Zelaya was kicked out of the country, with the support of his own party, for violating the constitution. Mrs. Clinton, who was then secretary of state, tried and failed to force Honduras to take Mr. Zelaya back. Last week he was seen again, wearing his signature cowboy hat and leading a bunch of hooligans trying to break into the warehouse where the electoral authorities had stored ballots and tally sheets from around the country for counting. The raid did not succeed, but the incident captured the spirit of Zelaya-Nasralla politics.

Mr. Nasralla, a former game-show host, ran against incumbent center-right President Juan Orlando Hernandez. By Friday it looked like Mr. Hernandez had narrowly won. Mr. Nasralla seemed sure of it too. Thats when he announced that his supporters would stay in the streets for years in protest unless he was declared the winner. With no concession, the uncertainty dragged on.

Mr. Nasralla insists he was robbed. Never mind that this election had greater scrutiny by international observers than any contest in the region in recent memory. Or that Mr. Nasrallas Alliance of Opposition had equal access to the tallying process. The Zelaya-Nasralla movement is using its phony cheating claim to justify a torrent of violence.

Welcome to Central America, where even after Venezuela has succumbed to famine, the left remains committed to the tactics that brought the country to misery. The process is simple: win one election, then consolidate power and never leave. The strategy has been successful in Nicaragua, where Sandinista Daniel Ortega has been in power since 2007. He is as corrupt as any caudillo and has handily put an end to political pluralism, competitive elections, transparency and institutional independence.

El Salvador may soon suffer the same fate. Former leftist guerrillas of the FMLN party, who are also allies of Venezuela, have governed since 2009. The party moderated its image to get to power, but last week the party secretary announced that its goal is to end capitalismincluding the right of private property.

In Guatemala a United Nations prosecutor, who is in the country ostensibly to root out corruption, has teamed up with the local leftists to try to unseat a center-right president. The prosecutor has so far been unsuccessful, but he has generated dangerous instability. In Honduras, socialist hopes were on Mr. Nasralla, which is why his followers are taking his loss so badly.

Polls had widely anticipated that Mr. Hernandez would win re-election, as the Economist wrote on Nov. 25. Yet the earliest returns, released on Nov. 27, showed Mr. Nasralla in the lead. Officials cautioned that with less than 60% of the vote counted it was too soon to declare a winner.

When the electoral tribunal did not give the victory to Mr. Nasralla immediately, he called for rebellion. His supporters have blocked highways with burning piles of debris, destroyed cars, trashed storefronts, set highway tollbooths ablaze, and rampaged through the residential neighborhoods where electoral authorities live. On Friday a nighttime curfew was imposed for 10 days. Mr. Nasrallas supporters flouted it.

The violence is well-organized, raising suspicions of outside help. Exiled Venezuelan political science professor Jose Vicente Carrasquero warned in a video of Venezuelan elements seeking to undermine the integrity of Honduran institutions.

That Mr. Hernandez was behind in the early count was surprising but explainable. In the capital there were reports that thugs instructed neighbors not to vote. Most of his backing came from outside the big cities. Both sides had agreed before the election that the physical tally sheets had to be reviewed in Tegucigalpa. It took longer to get them from rural areas.

Another charge is that Mr. Hernandez is an ally of the U.S. and has been allowed to steal the election. But that doesnt add up either.

Observer teams from the Organization of American States and the European Union played a key oversight role. On Tuesday the European mission criticized the tribunals failure to communicate at regular intervals with the public. Yet it also noted that all parties had representatives on hand to monitor the process.

Midweek, the two candidates came together to sign a document pledging that they would each respect the final outcome. Within hours Mr. Nasralla backtracked, alleging that he had been tricked. Hondurans speculated that the reversal came about because Mr. Zelaya did not approve. In other words, Hillarys old friend is the one calling the shots.
AN estimated 63,000 people on the Isle of Wight are suffering due to changes in benefits and allowances, according to a charity.

Ray Harrington-Vail, from Island-based charity The Footprint Trust, is backing National Energy Action's (NEA) Warm Home Campaign.

New research by NEA revealed over one million fuel-poor families in England - over 169, 237 in the South East alone - will not have the cash to meet basic living expenses as winter begins to bite.

Families in fuel poverty are facing an income shortfall of up to 9,331 per year (778 per month) to cover basic essentials, including energy, the charity said.

Peter Smith, director of policy and research, said: "Our new report highlights the scale of the impossible choices that over 169, 237 families in the South East, 63,595 households on the Isle of Wight, will be making this winter.

"The report illustrates the catastrophic impact Universal Credit could have on these families who have no savings to insulate them from falling into debt, going hungry and not heating their homes over the current six-week waiting period.

"We aren't talking about needing to cut down on a few luxuries; we're seeing people switch off the heating for the whole winter and kids only eating one meal a day. We know others are adopting unsafe behaviours in an attempt to keep warm, withdrawing entirely from society or building up bigger and bigger debt problems.''
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Lombardy reflects on Europe

European Union after Brexit and the implications on Lombard territory and citizens

Strengthening the voice of Lombardy in Europe

An open debate will take place in Milan on 15 December 2017, a "Reflecting on Europe debate" jointly supported by the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the Regional Council of Lombardy in the context of the CoR campaign "Reflecting on Europe".

The event takes the cue from a policy paper commissioned by the Regional Council of Lombardy to its own research institute Eupolis Lombardia, about post Brexit effects on EU members and in particular on the Lombardy region. During the meeting there will be an open dialogue between students and companies, representing Lombardy, starting from the topic of the policy paper. Finally several representatives of regional, national and international institutions will give their contribute to the debate. The aim of the event is giving an opportunity to students and companies to show their hopes and concerns about the future of Europe to the institutions, in order to reduce the distance between institutions and citizens as much as possible.

The event is made in cooperation with the Representation of the European Commission and the office of the European Parliament in Italy- offices in Milan and the Europe Direct information centre.

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"Reflecting on Europe" is an initiative launched by the European Committee of the Regions to offer a space for citizens to present their ideas, thoughts and opinions on what the European Union should be. In this context, regional and local authorities are asked to engage in a dialogue with their citizens and to collect feedback on the future of the EU.

To this end, all the participants are invited to take part in the online survey "Have your say on Europe". The CoR is committed to take into account the results of the survey in view of the approval of its opinion on the Future of Europe in October 2018. 11.000 replies in 20 European countries have been already collected.

Join the debate!

The survey is available online and as "Have your say on Europe" mobile app for :

Apple iOS / Google Android

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Contact: Regional Council of Lombardy

E-mail: uffrel.istituzionali@consiglio.regione.lombardia.it












Charlottesville authorities failed to protect public safety and free speech during the August white supremacist rally that turned deadly, according to an independent report [text, PDF] by US Attorney Timothy Heaphy [profile] found that , citing breakdowns in planning and coordination.

Heaphy revealed that Virginia state police and police chief Al Thomas refused to make commanders available for interviews following the rally, made officers wary of retaliation for speaking with investigators, and that Thomas deleted text messages relevant to the investigation. Murphy disclosed that Thomas stated when the violence first broke out, Let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly. Thomass lawyer denied texts were deleted and that he made those remarks. Heaphy concluded that:

the City of Charlottesville protected neither free expression nor public safety on August 12. The City was unable to protect the right of free expression and facilitate the permit holders offensive speech. This represents a failure of one of the governments core functionsthe protection of fundamental rights. Law enforcement also failed to maintain order and protect citizens from harm, injury, and death. Charlottesville preserved neither of those principles on August 12, which has led to deep distrust of government within this community.

Heaphy interviewed 150 people and he said that no police officer with whom he spoke felt good about what happened on August 12.

The violence in Charlottesville occurred on August 12 when a Unite the Right rally took place to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from the recently renamed Emancipation Park. The rally drew members of white nationalist groups who marched through the streets of Charlottesville the night before carrying torches and chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans. Counter-protesters clashed with these groups during the protest, and 34 were injured. In addition, two state troopers were killed on the same day when the helicopter they were using to monitor the protests crashed. The week after the rally, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a federal civil rights investigation [JURIST report] into the violence.
Judge Pablo Llarena of the Supreme Court of Spain [official website, in Spanish] on Monday ordered the continued detention [press release, in Spanish] of four members of the Catalan National Assembly [official website, in Spanish] while allowing six other members freed on bail.

The four men held in detention are former vice-president of Catalonia Oriol Junqueras, former interior contractor Joaquim Forn, and leaders of Catalan National Assembly and Omnium Cultural, Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart. The judge had considered that there was no risk of escape for these men, instead choosing to keep them confined over a risk of criminal reiteration.

Llarena had stated their contributions are directly linked to a violent explosion that, to reiterate, leaves no room for correction or satisfaction to those who see yourself reached by it. The judge would only be willing to allow the four men to be set free requires to verify that the possibility of new attacks has effectively disappeared.

All of these arrests occurred after members of the Catalan National Assembly announced the regions Independence from Spain. However in November Spains Constitutional Court declared [JURIST report] the Catalan independence declaration to be unconstitutional.
Bosnian police on Monday arrested 13 Muslim citizens suspected of war crimes against ethnic Serbs in the south of the Balkan country during the 1992-1995 civil war, authorities said.

"These are former officials of the Bosnian army, territorial defence (forces) and the interior ministry, suspected of war crimes committed against several dozen Serbs" in the Konjic region, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

The 13 are suspected of "murders, torture, rapes, persecutions and expulsions" of civilians, the statement said.

Police said they had arrested the suspects in Konjic and the capital Sarajevo.

Last month Edhem Zilic, a former member of Bosnian Muslim forces who served as an official at a detention camp for Serbs in Konjic during the war, was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Sarajevo court.

Bosnia's inter-ethnic war claimed 100,000 lives, while 2.2 million people were displaced.




Hanoi is Vietnams capital city, located in northern Vietnam. Hanoi is frenetic and has a reputation for its crazy traffic, mostly made up of motorbikes. Its also known for its French architecture and mouthwatering variety of Vietnamese street food. On our Magnificent Mekong tour with Viking R iver Cruises, we had 48 hours in Vietnam. Even with that short amount of time, we were able to fit in a lot of the best things to do in Hanoi, including viewing Ho Chi Minh, visiting Hoa Lo Prison and a few temples, and eating a lot of delicious food, all while successfully dodging motorbikes, or riding on the back of one.





Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum





We could have visited Ho Chi Minhs palace area and mausoleum with the Viking River Cruises included tour. However, they were visiting in the afternoon, after the mausoleum closes. While that does mean it was far less crowded when our fellow passengers visited, I really wanted to go inside Ho Chi Minhs mausoleum, so we had to visit on our own.





The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum reminded me a lot of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Beijing, China . Ho Chi Minh actually asked to be cremated, but this much-revered leader of communist Vietnam was embalmed and put on display in a colossal marble mausoleum.





There is a huge line, but it goes pretty fast. In fact, we visited the mausoleum and the rest of the presidential palace area in two hours and 45 minutes. When in line, be sure to hold on to your place; pushy tourists will try to cut in front of you if youre not paying attention. No cameras or large bags are allowed in the mausoleum, so we had to leave ours at the stand on one side, and they were available at the other side when we emerged.





Inside the mausoleum, four guards stand in a sunken well around Ho Chi Minh, who lays frail, pale, and waxy.









Since we were leaving Hanoi with our Viking River Cruises tour at noon, we had to make sure we made the most of our time. We took a taxi from the hotel, which was a good call because the taxi took us directly to where we needed to get in line, and told us exactly where to go. The complex is huge and, looking at the map, where he took us was nowhere near where I thought we would need to go.





Ho Chi Minhs Vestige in the Presidential Palace Area









Located in the same complex that holds the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is Ho Chi Minhs Vestige in the Presidential Palace Area. The most imposing structure in this area is the large yellow Presidential Palace, which is not open to the public.









Other places of interest in the presidential palace area include the flower trellis where Ho Chi Minh received guests, the meeting room where Ho Chi Minh chaired meetings and received guests, a garage of cars used to serve Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minhs humble stilt house in which he lived occasionally from 1958 to 1969, the one pillar pagoda built by Emperor Ly Thai Tong in the 2nd century, and Ho Chi Minh Museum which showcases his life with photos and official documents.





Hoa Lo Prison









The Hoa Lo Prison Historical Relic is what remains of the Hoa Lo Prison, built by the French Colonialists in 1896 to imprison Vietnamese revolutionary fighters. Most of the exhibits of the prison are dedicated to this time in history, showing the inhumane conditions in which prisoners were held, shackled to cement floors, beaten, and tortured.









However, most travelers know the Hoa Lo Prison by a different name, the Hanoi Hilton. This name comes from the time the prison was used to hold American pilots who had been shot down during a bombing raid of North Vietnam. Perhaps the most well-known of these prisoners of war is Senator John McCain.









The name Hanoi Hilton came about because it was said the prisoners of war were treated as if they were staying in a resort. While we know that isnt quite true, it is an idea that still seems to be sold to visitors.





Street Market Near the Temple of Literature









While we were walking from our hotel to the Temple of Literature, we stumbled upon an outdoor market. The benefits of walking through the market were twofold as we were able to avoid some of the crazy Hanoi traffic by walking through this mostly pedestrian section and also because we got to look at some of the local fruits, vegetables, and flowers.





Temple of Literature









The Temple of Literature is over 1,000 years old and is dedicated to Confucian scholars and sages and was used as a university. In addition to temples, there are statues of turtles with tablets standing on their backs listing names of doctors. There are statues of birds on turtle backs and Buddha figures. Exhibits portray the history of Confucian education in Vietnam. It is a place of peace and quiet in the middle of bustling city.





Bach Ma Temple









Bach Ma Temple is a small temple in the heart of the Old Quarter and is said to be the oldest temple in Hanoi. Its small size means it is crammed with statues, ornamentation, flowers, offerings of fruit and beer, and, when we were there, a white cat.





Traditional House at 87 Ma May









Another interesting site in Hanois Old Quarter is the Traditional House (also called Memorial House and Ancient House), which is a traditional merchants house built at the end of the 19th century. The house is filled with traditional furniture and has rooms situated around two inner courtyards.









The type of architecture is sometimes referred to as a tube-house because of its narrow facade and succession of courtyards and buildings. The courtyards allow for good ventilation and natural light. The house was the first to be so well restored in the Old Quarter and was recognized as a Vietnamese National Heritage in 2004.





Food Tours









One of our favorite things to do when we travel is experience as much local food as possible. We worried we might not have many chances to do so while traveling with Viking River Cruises (though we ended up having more chances than we imagined) so we booked not just one, but two food tours with Hanoi Street Food Tours . Through these two tours, we not only had some of the best Vietnamese food of all our time in Vietnam, we also received quite an education in traditional Vietnamese foods and got a little sightseeing in as well.









The first food tour we took was the Seafood Tour by Night. I didnt realize before we started researching food tours that seafood is such a big deal in Vietnam. On this tour we stopped at one place for a non-seafood appetizer then went to a seafood restaurant where we sat on short stools at tables on the sidewalk and had our fill of crabs, shrimp, clams, and cockles. We topped off the evening with a sweet treat, egg coffee.









The second food tour with Duc Ivan of Hanoi Street Food Tours was the Hanoi Street Food Tour, which combined stops at multiple hole-in-the-wall restaurants around the Old Quarter, each specializing in one regional dish, with visits to a handful of historical sites and a walking tour of the Old Quarter.





Hoan Kiem Lake at Night









There are a few bodies of water in Hanoi. One of those, Hoan Kiem Lake (Ho Hoan Kiem), separates the French Quarter from the Old Quarter. The English meaning of the lakes name is Lake of the Restored Sword. The legend is that the blade of a sword was fished out of water and made its way to Emperor Le Loi. Le Loi found the sword hilt separately. With the two combined, he was victorious in many battles. Later on, after the Chinese accepted Vietnam as independent, Le Loi was approached by a great turtle while boating on the lake in Hanoi. The turtle asked him to return the sword to the Dragon King. Le Loi immediately dropped the sword into the water and the turtle descended into the deep with the sword in his mouth.





In the lake is an island with a temple, the Temple of Jade Mountain, which is connected to the shore by a red bridge, Huc Bridge. Also in the middle of the lake is Turtle Tower. At night, all of these structures are lit and the lake is surrounded by the lights of Hanoi.





Temple of Jade Mountain









During the day you can cross the Huc Bridge onto Hoan Kiem Lakes island and visit the Temple of Jade Mountain.





St. Josephs Cathedral









St. Josephs Cathedral is the oldest Roman Catholic Church in Hanoi. The church is located in Hanois Old Quarter and was built in 1886 in a style to resemble Notre Dame in Paris. At night the area in front of the church is a gathering place for young people. The church is also a favorite spot for wedding photos for couples of all faiths. The cathedral is especially pretty during the Christmas season when it is decorated to the hilt.





Ride on the Back of a Motorbike







Riding on the back of a motorbike was not an adventure we had planned. In fact, I purposefully avoided planning such a thing. However, when Duc Ivan, our food tour guide, asked on our second tour with him if we would like to ride on the back of his motorbike and get a real taste of Hanoi life, we couldnt pass up the opportunity. So off we went, three adults on one motorbike, no helmets, weaving our way through Hanois crazy traffic. It was thrilling and one of my favorite memories.





Another way to have the motorbike experience is to use the Uber of Vietnam, Grab . With the assistance of an app, the company provides GrabTaxi, GrabCar, GrabBike, and GrabExpress. We saw the green-jacketed GrabBike guys all over Hanoi waiting to give someone a lift on the back of their motorbike.





ong Xuan Market









If you love shopping, a trip to ong Xuan Market is an absolute must. This market was originally built by the French in 1889, but was renovated in the 1990s after a fire almost destroyed the market.









Inside the market is multiple floors of wholesale goods for sale. You can pretty much by anything at ong Xuan Market including clothing, purses, dishes, luggage, shoes, dried goods, seafood and anything else your heart might desire.





History Tour at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi





Every day at 5:00 p.m., the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi provides a Path of History tour of the old wing of the hotel. The highlight of the tour is the hotels bunker/bomb shelter. But there is more to the tour than that.









Life magazine with a photo on the cover that was the first photo to come out of north Vietnam by a foreign journalist. The photo shows the small bomb shelters that lined the sidewalk outside of the hotel. While the hotel has a bunker many feet below the grounds surface where VIPs would be sheltered, the hotel staff and the common people did not have that luxury. Along the sidewalk were little more than manholes just deep enough for a person to crouch inside and block the top with a cover. It didnt seem possible that these close to the surface, tiny, cramped spaces would provide any real protection. They still exist, but now there are trees planted in them. The tour starts with a little history of the century-old hotel and a look at some of the old china and silverware used. There is also an old issue ofmagazine with a photo on the cover that was the first photo to come out of north Vietnam by a foreign journalist. The photo shows the small bomb shelters that lined the sidewalk outside of the hotel. While the hotel has a bunker many feet below the grounds surface where VIPs would be sheltered, the hotel staff and the common people did not have that luxury. Along the sidewalk were little more than manholes just deep enough for a person to crouch inside and block the top with a cover. It didnt seem possible that these close to the surface, tiny, cramped spaces would provide any real protection. They still exist, but now there are trees planted in them.









Where is My Son, highlighting the pain and sorrow the citizens of Hanoi experienced during the war. Jane Fonda, also known as Hanoi Jane, was in the hotels bomb shelter during a raid and spoke out against the war. We didnt hear any animosity towards Americans for their involvement in the war. Rather, we heard how people who fought in the war, like John McCain, have come back to Hanoi recently to visit and express their goodwill. When we later visited the south of Vietnam, we also felt no animosity, but there it seemed more like the people were grateful America had joined them in the war, but perhaps a little wistful for what might have been if America had not withdrawn so early, as some believe the south would have won if America had stayed in the war a little longer. The tour then continues down the hallway where there are a number of photographs of important and famous people that have stayed at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi. While hearing the stories of the various VIP guests, it was interesting to get a glimpse into how the people of Vietnam view Americas involvement in the war. In Hanoi, which was part of North Vietnam fighting for communism, against South Vietnam with whom America fought to achieve democracy, celebrities like Joan Baez and Jane Fonda are thought of well. Joan Baez stayed at the hotel and wrote a song while there,, highlighting the pain and sorrow the citizens of Hanoi experienced during the war. Jane Fonda, also known as Hanoi Jane, was in the hotels bomb shelter during a raid and spoke out against the war. We didnt hear any animosity towards Americans for their involvement in the war. Rather, we heard how people who fought in the war, like John McCain, have come back to Hanoi recently to visit and express their goodwill. When we later visited the south of Vietnam, we also felt no animosity, but there it seemed more like the people were grateful America had joined them in the war, but perhaps a little wistful for what might have been if America had not withdrawn so early, as some believe the south would have won if America had stayed in the war a little longer.









Where is My Son. We ascended the stairs and were provided with a warm, spiced hibiscus beverage at the conclusion of the tour. Our final stop on the tour was the bunker, where we descended the steep staircase and donned hard hats to protect us from the low cement ceilings. Rather than being one big room, the bunker is divided into many small, narrow rooms. This provided extra stability and support, as well as the hope that if one room failed, the others might still stand. In the final room we visited in the bunker, we listened to Joan Baez sing. We ascended the stairs and were provided with a warm, spiced hibiscus beverage at the conclusion of the tour.





This tour is exclusively for guests. If you cant join the tour, you can still walk around the lobby and ground floor hallway of the original wing to view the old photos and other items on display. Then head outside to the front left corner of the outdoor Bamboo Bar where you will see a stairway leading below ground. If the gate is unlocked, you may be able to go downstairs and view the bunker on your own.





Other Points of Interest













Information for Viking River Cruises Guests









While in Hanoi, we explored the city on our own. While Viking puts together phenomenal tours that hit most of the points of interests that travelers will want to see, plus provides historical information that you may not learn otherwise, when we are in a big city, we prefer to see it on our own. Also, we were most interested in starting our time in Vietnam with an education on traditional Vietnamese food, which conflicted with the Viking tour schedule, and we preferred to see Hanoi by walking and the occasional taxi and motorbike ride, rather than getting from place to place by tour bus.









However, if you are traveling with Viking and want to join the tours, they see many of the places we describe above with a couple exceptions and a couple extras. The Viking tours of Hanoi include the Museum of Ethnology, Temple of Literature, Ho Chi Minh Palace Complex, Hoa Lo Prison, and an electric car tour of the Old Quarter. All of these tours are guided, meaning you will get more information about each site than if you visit on your own. Also, if joining the tour, all entrance fees are covered, while if you visit sites on your own, you will have to pay your own entrance. Entrance fees are usually only a dollar or two. As mentioned above, the Viking tour does miss entering the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum as their visit to the Ho Chi Minh complex is in the afternoon, after the mausoleum has closed, when it is far less crowded.





Where to Stay in Hanoi









One of the best hotels in Hanoi is the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi , a 5-star hotel with a long history. We were traveling with Viking River Cruises and this was the hotel we all stayed in. Since we did the Ha Long Bay extension, we stayed at the Sofitel Legend Metropole for a total of three nights, one night before heading to Ha Long Bay and two nights afterward, when we explored Hanoi.









The Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi is located in Hanois French Quarter close to the Opera House. Its architecture is distinctly French Colonial and the hotel has been around for over 100 years, having been built in 1901. It has always been THE place to stay in Hanoi, having had countless dignitaries and celebrities as guests like Joan Baez, Jane Fonda, and Bill Clinton, just to name a few. It is one of the top three hotels in Southeast Asia.









There are two parts to the hotel, the original hotel and the newer opera wing, which is where we slept. The two wings surround a courtyard which holds the pool and the outdoor Bamboo Bar.









While all of the hotels in which we stayed during our Viking Mekong trip were excellent, this was probably my favorite one of the bunch. Perhaps it was because the big spacious room with its comfy bed and its spectacular view of the courtyard, decorated with a huge Christmas tree made entirely of non la (the traditional Vietnamese conical hat), all of which greeted us at 2:00 in the morning after two flights had been delayed, one of which we caught only because of a Christmas miracle, negating what had seemed to be the inevitable overnight in the Seoul airport. Or maybe it was the amazing breakfast buffet which allowed us to start our trip immediately with Vietnamese food, a breakfast of pho, banh cuon, and tropical fruit (Western options were also available).





Hanoi Tip  How to Cross the Street









The most valuable lesson one must learn if exploring Hanoi by foot is how to cross the street. Because practically everyone drives a motorbike and hardly anyone drives a car, there are myriads of motorbikes everywhere.









Not only are the streets filled with motorbikes, the sidewalks are filled with them. Sidewalks are first and foremost for parking motorbikes. Sidewalks are also for driving motorbikes more frequently than youd imagine. Sidewalks are also for serving food and selling goods. Sidewalks are even for playing badminton. Sidewalks are also for walking, but thats more of an afterthought. So, when youre walking on the sidewalk, always be on the lookout for a motorbike coming from in front of you, from behind you, from an alley, or even from a doorway.









Getting back to crossing the street, the street is a sea of motorbikes. Traffic lights are a mere suggestion, as are traffic directions. Therefore, even if you are crossing a street at an intersection with a green light, that is no guarantee there will not be a hundred motorbikes coming at you. They will still be turning right without stopping. They will be turning left without stopping. They may be coming straight through their red light without stopping.









The key to crossing the street in Hanoi without getting maimed or killed is to commit, go slow, and go at one speed without stopping. Actions that will get you hit are running and stopping. Motorbike drivers see you crossing the street. They are actually very skilled in watching everything going on around them as they are also contending with motorbikes driving in front of them, behind them, and around them. When they see you walking, they gage your speed and calculate whether to drive in front of or behind you. Therefore, if they calculate that they can drive behind you and you stop, you will get hit. If they calculate that they can drive in front of you and you speed up or start running, you will get hit. Crossing the street in Hanoi is quite an art and very interesting to watch.




Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images(DETROIT) -- A group of Michigan lawmakers and activists will hold a rally in support of Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, on Monday as the veteran congressman faces multiple sexual harassment allegations.



The coalition will consist of dozens of city leaders, ministers and activists -- most based in Conyers 13th District -- who said they plan to stand with Conyers amid growing calls on Capitol Hill for him to resign.



Michigan Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo, one of the events organizers, defended Conyers in a Facebook post Sunday. She argued that he should be given "due process" before choosing to resign.



"We know the balance of the work and contributions that Rep John Conyers has made. He's certainly someone who has championed civil rights and he deserves due process," Gay-Dagnogo wrote. We always see a difference when the leader is a person of color. There's a rush to judgment."



"It tells us that African Americans are disposable and that's why people are not engaged in the political process. We're just used to help carry the vote and we're not going to accept that anymore," she added.



At least 12 House Democrats have called on Conyers to step down as Congress investigates sexual misconduct claims against him. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, has said he should resign, calling the allegations against him "serious, disappointing, and very credible."



Conyers was the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee before stepping aside last week.



Several members of the Congressional Black Caucus have reportedly encouraged him to resign as well, sources told ABC News.



Rep. Cedric Richmond, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, called the allegations against 88-year-old Conyers serious" and "disturbing" if true. Conyers, first elected to the House in 1964, is a founding member of the CBC.



The House Ethics Committee announced this month that it was looking into claims of sexual harassment and age discrimination involving Conyers' staff. Conyers, who has denied those allegations, said he will fully cooperate with the investigation.



His decision came after BuzzFeed News reported last month that Conyers office paid a female aide over $27,000 to quietly settle a wrongful dismissal complaint.



Last week, Deanna Maher, who served as Conyers deputy chief of staff from 1997 to 2005, accused him of making unwanted sexual advances toward her in the 1990s.



Maher, 77, said he touched her inappropriately on at least three occasions, including once in 1999 when he allegedly placed his hands underneath her dress.



Separately, Melanie Sloan, a lawyer who worked with Conyers on the Judiciary Committee, accused him of being increasingly abusive to her, behavior she said wasnt sexual harassment but sexual discrimination.



Another accuser, Marion Brown, alleged that Conyers propositioned her for sex multiple times over more than a decade, according to The Associated Press. Brown settled a complaint in 2015 with Conyers over the allegations, according to her attorney, the AP reported.



Conyers has acknowledged that his office settled a harassment complaint involving a former staffer but denies the allegations against him.



His attorney, Arnold Reed, called Mahers allegations uncorroborated and said his client denies any wrongdoing. Conyers is still in the hospital recuperating from a stress-related illness and is expected to decide his next steps in coming days, his lawyer said.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The Kimball County Sheriff's Department has released details about the arrest of a man wanted out of Laramie County, Wyoming, on murder charges.

In a press release, the sheriff's department confirmed the arrest of Armando Ramirez-Serna, of Cheyenne. Ramirez-Serna is wanted on warrant on charges of first-degree murder out of Laramie County.

Ramirez-Serna is sought in the shooting death of another man, Justin Robinson, 19, in November. His body was located at a Cheyenne reservoir on Nov. 26. A burned out vehicle was also located.

Kimball County Sheriff Harry Gillway told the Star-Herald that Laramie County Sherriff's investigators contacted his department Saturday, saying they had received a report that the Ramirez-Serna may be in Kimball. Gillway said authorities attempted to locate the man at a Kimball residence, but he was not located. Authorities developed information that he was at another location, the First Interstate Inn, a hotel near Interstate 80. They were able to obtain a room number and did surveillance until additional agencies were able to respond and assist.

At about 5 p.m., Gillway said, a call was placed to Ramirez-Serna to call him out of the hotel room, where the man, who had been reported by authorities to be armed and dangerous, was arrested without incident. The Nebraska State Patrol and its SWAT unit, the Kimball Police Department and Laramie County Sheriff's Office assisted in the arrest.

During a search of the room, Gillway said, authorities located quantities of marijuana. Ramirez-Serna has also been charged with other drug charges. He also reported additional evidence in the homicide case was also located.

Ramirez-Serna's girlfriend, Rachel Rodriquez, was also arrested on drug charges, Gillway said.

Gillway praised the work of one of his deputies, Inv. Anthony Osborn, in the arrest. "He worked very hard on this and was instrumental in getting (Ramirez-Serna) arrested without incident."
I arrived to Lincoln in the summer of 2012. I had lived in Madrid for two years, and I decided to start a Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln after knowing that I had been accepted.

The economic crisis was at its peak in Spain, and even though I didnt know anybody in Nebraska, I decided to move here. The university had made an offer I couldnt refuse: I would have a tuition waiver, and I would get a monthly stipend for teaching two classes during the duration of my Ph.D. That kind of agreement between a university and a student doesnt exist in my home country, Colombia, or in Spain.

I graduated with a Ph.D. in Spanish literature in May 2016. My salary, $1,200 a month, was just enough for me to pay for a small apartment, buy groceries and save $900 for fees I had to pay at UNL every semester. I paid taxes from day one, and I didnt work anywhere else since my student visa only allowed me to work as a teaching assistant at the university where I was studying. I was in charge of at least 15 Spanish classes during those four years. I was not assisting a teacher, I was the teacher, and that helped me develop my teaching skills and address a group of students in a bilingual setting. If I had received $200 less, I would have probably dropped out of the program, since banks dont authorize loans to international students.

I write in first person to give a closer look to what the proposed graduate student tuition waiver tax would do to doctoral students. I saw how much my taxes would have increased if that law had passed when I was a student.

An online tool allowed me to see that, in my case, my taxes would have gone from $135 to $2,256 a year. I would have had a salary of around $9,800 a year. As an international student with a visa, I wasnt authorized to look for a second job to make ends meet, so I would have probably quit my doctoral studies and flown back to Bogota, wondering where did America, that land of opportunities, go.

In a country where public education is already too expensive to many potential students  local and international  hurting the tuition waiver agreement would be devastating for scientific, artistic and technological development. Doctoral students would go away or they would just give up and rejoin the workforce, and only the wealthy ones would remain.

My husband, who was raised in the United States, is finishing his Ph.D., and he refuses to calculate how much more he would pay in taxes if the graduate student tuition waiver tax was approved. It would be devastating.

We cant forget that America is great not because of its wealth, but because of its leaders in every area of knowledge at a doctoral level and for its unbeatable universities.

When other countries look at the United States, they dont see the owner of Ford or Budweiser, they see Dr. Isaac Asimov, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Paul Krugman and Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

Making education a privilege again is a terrible mistake that slowly separates this country from the progressive ones and drags it closer to unequal nations  such as my own  where education is not a right but a privilege. Is that really what we want?
Since 1790 the federal government has conducted the census every 10 years. Originally established as a mere head count of residents of each of the states for the purpose of apportioning members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the census has grown into a comprehensive effort that collects data on a number of characteristics of Americans. That information influences distribution of federal funds based on population as well as serves as the major federal data set for policy analysis during the next 10 years.

In the year following each census, states use the population information to evaluate the population residing in different electoral districts to determine if they contain relatively equal numbers. These include Nebraskas three members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and more significantly, legislative districts for representation in state government, along with University of Nebraska Board of Regents, Public Service Commission, and State Board of Education. As shifts in population occur, apportioning equal numbers of voters into each district may require redrawing district boundaries. This process is known as redistricting.

Residents of District 38 are familiar with the consequences of redistricting. In 2011, LB703 created new boundaries for the district following the 2010 census. Kearney County was moved into the district and Harlan County was moved into District 44. Clay County has also moved among different legislative districts through different iterations of legislative redistricting.

With the shift in population to Douglas, Sarpy, and Lancaster counties, the redistricting process will continue to have significant implications for representation of rural Nebraska. In 2011, the movement of District 49 from western Nebraska to Gretna created an important change in the Legislature. Of the 49 seats, 25 are now held by representatives of the Omaha and Lincoln urban areas. Current population projections would indicate two additional seats will be shifted away from rural Nebraska to the Omaha/Lincoln area. That magnifies the urban dominance from a simple majority to a 27-22 split.

While most rural states also face this population shift, the impact on the representation of rural areas in state government is not as extreme. In a two-house state legislature, the population shifts impact rural representation in the state House of Representatives, while geographic representation remains in the Senate. As the only unicameral in the nation, the loss of legislative seats in the single legislative chamber means a direct loss of representation in state government.

The consequences of this political shift can be enormous for rural Nebraskans. There is no better example than the dysfunctional school funding system that has left rural districts paying for public education almost exclusively with local property taxes, while urban districts consume almost $1 billion of state equalization aid. Appeals to fairness by rural senators and rural citizen groups have fallen on deaf ears of urban senators, whose support is required to restore equity to the system. The problem has been recognized for almost a decade, with little action to resolve it.

Rural Nebraskans should carefully watch and evaluate the redistricting process that will be taking shape in the coming years. To date the focus has been on concerns of political parties, not on the impact of the accelerating shift of representation to urban areas. Voters of District 38 should get engaged. The very nature of your representation in state government rests with the outcome.

Sen. John Kuehn of Heartwell represents District 38 in the Nebraska Legislature. The district encompasses southwest Buffalo County and all of Clay, Franklin, Kearney, Nuckolls, Phelps and Webster counties.
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The tugboat Nathan E. Stewart is seen in the waters of the Seaforth Channel near Bella Bella, B.C., in an October 23, 2016, handout photo. The National Transportation Safety Board says the second mate of a tugboat fell asleep before it ran aground off the coast of British Columbia last year and spilled thousands of litres of fuel.THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Heiltsuk First Nation, April Bencze, *MANDATORY CREDIT*
Liberal MP Sherry Romanado leaves a committee meeting, in Ottawa on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. Romanado rose earlier in the House of Commons and claimed that Conservative MP James Bezan had made comments towards her that were "humiliating" and "sexual in nature." THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
FILE - This Oct. 16, 2017 file photo shows the wreckage of the car of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia after a car bomb which killed her, next to a road in the town of Mosta, Malta. On Monday, Dec. 4, 2017 Malta's prime minister Joseph Muscat announced the arrest of eight suspects, all Maltese citizens, in the murder of the journalist. (AP Photo/Rene Rossignaud, file)
Editors note: Each Monday, the Kenosha News takes a look at the life of a Kenosha County resident who recently died. We share with you, through the memories of family and friends, a life remembered.

If youre a fan of UW-Parksides foreign films, then Don Kummings is one of the people to thank.

Thirty-five years ago, he, along with Norm Cloutier, rolled out the first season of hand-picked foreign films, which became an immediate hit with the community.

Others are grateful to Kummings for his influence on their academic growth at Parkside. He taught for more than 43 years, 36 of those in the English department at Parkside.

He was known for being a kind and patient professor, for giving students detailed feedback and challenging them to be better writers.

His love of English was infectious, wrote former student Benjy Bar-Lev.

It was because of Don Kummings that I became an English major, said another former student, Michael Rohl.

I respected him immensely, said Mary Lenard, a former colleague. He was one of the English departments strongest scholars, but he also had a passionate commitment to undergraduate education.

Donald D. Kummings, 77, died at home on Nov. 10. He is survived by his wife, Pat; his brother, John; his son, Jeremy and daughter-in-law, Jill (Murray); three grandsons; his stepchildren, Laura (Keith) Stummer, Wanda (Todd) Stingley, Eric Larson and Diana (Saunders) Kohn; and six stepgrandchildren.

He was born July 28, 1940, to Herman and Estelle Kummings in Lafayette, Ind. He earned his bachelors and masters degrees from Purdue University in Lafayette and a doctorate in English and American studies from Indiana University.

In 1963, he married Gayle Savage. They had two children, Kevin Scott and Jeremy William. The couple divorced in 1980.

He taught at Purdue, Adrian College in Michigan and Indiana University at Bloomington before coming to Parkside in 1970, when the university was just 2 years old.

Committed to Parkside

Although he didnt anticipate staying at Parkside, he did so until his retirement.

He taught American literature and American poetry, freshman writing, literary analysis and creative writing.

Over the course of his Parkside career, Kummings earned the universitys Triple Crown of faculty awards: for teaching, service and research/creative activity.

In 1997, he was named Wisconsin Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

His forte was Walt Whitman. He wrote three books on the poet and often gave readings and lectures of Whitmans works.

In 1990, Kummings published an anthology of his own, The Open Road Trip: Poems.

Uber editor

When it came to grading papers and offering his opinions, Kummings was an uber editor, recalled Lenard and Cloutier.

At first, I wasnt sure if I should interpret these bold (editorial) red comments as anger, but it quickly became apparent that these were simply physical manifestations of Dons full commitment to his craft  thoughtful, thorough and deliberate, Cloutier said.

Foreign films

A great fan of foreign films, Kummings teamed up with Cloutier in 1982 to create Parksides Foreign Film Series.

When I proposed the idea for the Foreign Film Series, Don was one of the few (faculty members) to offer kind encouragement and volunteered to help organize the series, Cloutier wrote.

Kummings did much of the research for each seasons list, Cloutier said.

I think its fair to say that over the years Dons selections tended to be more serious films; he did not look favorably on fluffy, feel-good filmmaking.

As a filmgoer, Don had a reviewers eye, his wife said. He was very aware of lighting, plot and characters.

Though he retired in 2006, Kummings stayed on the Foreign Film Series committee.

A new partner

In the late 1980s, Don met Patricia Finnelly Larson, then an English teacher at Central High School.

Our paths crossed a few times, then after two dates, we decided, Thats it and got married, she said. They married on March 20, 1987.

The next 30 years were filled with plays, operas and world travel. Pat said Don enjoyed planning every detail of their trips to the Middle East, Japan and Africa.

They also shared lively conversation on subjects ranging from English literature to films, Pat said.

Unless we were doing schoolwork, it never happened that we didnt talk. We had a tremendous amount of fun, she said.

I will miss his counsel, his friendship, hearing about his recent international travel exploits with Pat, and Ill miss those heavy-handed, bold red, editorial comments, Cloutier said.
Itll look like a giant pinto bean when its done.

But in theory, this transportation pod being developed by a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison students, some of them from Kenosha, will be able to reach speeds of up to 350 mph through a three-quarter-mile vacuum chamber Hyperloop test track in Hawthorne, Calif., where billionaire inventor Elon Musks SpaceX company is headquartered.

The students are members of Badgerloop, a 60-member team, many of whom have been competing in Musks Hyperloop Pod Competition since its inception in 2015.

Musks Hyperloop envisions a fifth mode of major transportation  the other four being planes, trains, automobiles and boats  that delivers passengers to their destinations while riding in pressurized pods inside a vacuum tube.

When successfully applied, the technology could make for a 45-minute one-way trip from Chicago to Minneapolis, for instance.

Musk, the inventor of the Tesla car, launched the Hyperloop competition to encourage student innovation with the hope of accelerating the development of a pod protoype.

The team from Madison is on its third prototype. Members hope to submit their plans by the end of the month and possibly advance to the building stage next summer.

Badgerloop won innovation awards at the first two pod competitions at Space X headquarters, according to Ryan Castle, a Bradford High School graduate who is electrical director for the team.

Castle said he and the team are excited to be a part of a new technology and frontier for transportation.

Theres definitely debate over whether Hyperloop is the way to go, but were happy to have the opportunity to provide input and to say, Heres what weve come up with to shape that conversation, he said.

First pod

Badgerloops first pod encountered technical difficulties and didnt make it to the tube track.

However, its use of Halbach wheels, which were designed to levitate the pod while inside the Hyperloop tube, made an impression on the SpaceX engineers.

The Halbach wheel was developed at UW-Madison in late 2000 and was originally intended for propulsion, Castle said.

We basically took that design and innovated it for use on a vehicle, he said.

The pod was the first that could comfortably house a person  with Musk testing it. According to the competition requirements, pods must be at least 5 feet long, but no more than 24 feet in length and are limited to 3,300 pounds.

The first pod could fit a full sized, six-foot person, which happened to be the height of Elon Musk, Castle said. So he ended up taking a seat.

Second chance

For its second pod, the team employed cold gas thrusters, or jet propulsion technology, to propel the pod.

Clayton Fellman, 22, of Kenosha, another Bradford graduate studying mechanical engineering at UW-Madison, was in charge of the second pods propulsion team.

A cold gas thruster is the most simple form of jet propulsion, he said.

Badgerloops second pod qualified for the full vacuum tube demonstration. The team was unable to demonstrate the pods capabilities, however, because it ran out of time.

Third try

Fellman said the team is ready for its third go-round.

Castle and Fellman said the third pod will use a different source to propel it: electricity.

Were using an electric motor and drive wheel on a non-levitating pod, Castle said.

While SpaceX judges lauded the teams use of jet propulsion, the team chose electricity due to safety and efficiency.

We have a completely re-designed pod, and I have a lot of faith this time well do well, Castle said. A lot of the success I envision is not the engineering expertise  we all know what are the important parameters we need to work out  but that we really know what the problems are and what we need to address.
For many students, pursuing their passions can mean opening them up to new opportunities.

For Hayden Qualls, a senior at Harrisburg Academy, pursuing his passion for the environment has given him the opportunity to travel to new lands.

In July, Qualls traveled to Peru on scholarship to, among other things, help build greenhouses for the local community.

(Im probably most proud of) the service part of my Peru trip, he said. I know it had such an impact on those peoples lives. Theyll be able to use those greenhouses, theyll be able to earn money ... through their crop growths, and theyll just be able to better their lives so much. Its just something that I feel has had the biggest impact [on] people.

Despite his love of nature, Qualls said he is not sure he would define himself as an environmentalist.

Im not sure how I would define myself, he said. Id just say Im someone whos interested in the environment and protecting it. I dont know what that would fall under.

Qualls said hes grown up around nature and has always been an outdoorsy person, even from a young age.

Ive always just really liked being outside, and Ive gone hiking with my dad when I was little, he said. I guess at camp just spending time with friends outside, its always just been a big part of my life. I want to keep it healthy so other people can continue to enjoy it.

He said his trip to Peru, which included hiking through the Andes Mountains, has helped instill in him his desire to study environmental engineering in college and pursue a career in the field.

Qualls carries a 4.01 GPA while taking advanced-level and college preparatory classes.

He is the son of Karl Qualls, a history professor at Dickinson College, and Gretchen Qualls, a teacher at Harrisburg Academy.

The fact that both of his parents work in education has instilled in Qualls a desire to push himself academically and has given him an appreciation for learning, he said.

They are not demanding, but they have high expectations, Qualls said of his parents. It keeps me on track to maintain and meet those expectations.

Beyond school work, Qualls is a youth swim instructor at HACC, a member of the National Honor Society and is a member of the Harrisburg Academy swim, Brain Busters and Quiz Bowl teams.

Outside of the environment, Qualls said participating in Brain Busters and Quiz Bowl, where he is the schools co-captain, are his greatest passions.
Everyone (except some Alabama Republicans) seem to believe sexual contact between a man in his 30s and a 14-year-old is illegal and reprehensible.

Most everyone believes the women who say Republican Senate Candidate Roy Moore hit on them while they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, including the woman who says he did so when she was 14, younger than the age of consent, even in Alabama.

Most everyone.

John Skipper, a former chairman of the Mobile County Republican Party, calls the accusations, Total contrived media garbage.

Alabamas state auditor, Jim Ziegler, told The Washington Examiner, that the womens claims were much ado about nothing and said that Mr. Moore had done nothing immoral or illegal.

Note: Alabama law states in no uncertain terms that someone 19 or older having sexual contact with someone between the ages of 12 and 16 is guilty of second-degree sex abuse.

It was Mr. Ziegler who made the unholy comparison to Joseph, Mary and Jesus, saying its okay because the Virgin Mother was a teenager when Joseph married her.

Alabama Marion County GOP chair David Hall defied logic and disgraces his party saying, It was 40 years ago. I really dont see the relevance of it. He was 32. She was supposedly 14. Shes not saying that anything happened other than they kissed.

I wonder how that argument would go over with an angry Republican Alabama father of such a 14-year-old wielding a shotgun at Halls door.

Ed Henry, a state representative, told The Cullman Times that the women who came forward should be subject to legal action.

If they believe this man is predatory, they are guilty of allowing him to exist for 40 years, he said. I think someone should prosecute and go after them. You cant be a victim 40 years later, in my opinion.

Henry knows nothing of sexual abuse survivors.

Meanwhile, National Republicans say Moore is unfit to be a candidate, or he should step aside if the accusations are true.

Only President Trump has said that people should also listen to the accused, Roy Moore, who has a right to a defense.

This brings us directly to Nancy Pelosi.

When well-pressed by Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, Pelosi called Moore a child molester while crying for Democrats John Conyers and Al Franken to be given due process for their charges of sexual abuse.

Pelosi desperately tried to pin all of the sexual abuse cases on Trump: ...the election of President Trump evoked what happened to Harvey (Weinstein). And now everybody is served notice.

Neither Todd nor anyone else of sound mind believes Trumps election gave women strength in numbers to go public with sexual abuse by Hollywood mogul and Hillary Clinton supporter Harvey Weinstein.

Thats a deplorable Pelosi spin.

But then Pelosi goes all Alabama Republican, stuttering, we must move forward and there must be due process and Al Frankens sexual abuse of women cant be compared to Roy Moore, the child molester.

First of all, as credible as Moores accusers are, Pelosi does not have the authority to adjudicate the case, which she tries in the media.

Second, why is the Democratic Party Leader so insistent that Democratic Senator Al Franken forcefully pushing his tongue into the mouth of at least one unwilling victim, being photographed fondling the breasts of a sleeping female employee and being accused of groping even more women, has to be compared to anyone else?

Pelosi might as well have said, Well, Al Franken isnt as bad as Charles Manson.

Does she need some metric for condemnation of Democrat perverts that exceeds photos and Democratic Rep. John Conyers $27,000 paper trail?

He did step down as chair of the Judiciary Committee, which was especially ironic.

Conyers denies everything and Franken-the-creep says hes sorry and now must get back to work.

Pelosi is circling her wagons around Democrats like Alabama Republicans around Roy Moore.

Which brings to mind the message for Pelosis voters:

Democrats Conyers and Franken are still in power and pose serious threats to female aides, employees and interns.

This is on you.
Construction of a new source for renewable energy is underway in one Parkland community.

The groundbreaking for the solar farm on property in the southern part of Farmington was held in October. Since that time, crews working for MC Power are busy installing around 9,000 panels on the 15 to 20 acres located off Korber Road.

The farm will generate about 3 megawatts against a peak load of about 50 megawatts for the city and will be 100 percent solar during a solar generating period  meaning when skies are not cloudy or at night.

Ewell Lawson, vice president of government affairs, communications and member relations for MPUA, explained the role of MPUA at the ground breaking.

(MPUA) is an umbrella name for an organization that represents a number of entities and alliance of entities relating to municipal utilities, he said. One part of that leg of that stool isMJMEUC  the Missouri Joint Municipal Electrical Utility Commission.

Within MJMEUC are three power pools  with Farmington belonging to the oldest pool of the three.

The city of Farmington purchases energy through the MoPEP Energy Pool, which is a group of municipal electric utilities purchasing power collectively through their participation in the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission (MJMEUC), a non-profit commission established in 1979.

There are 35 member cities in the MoPEP energy pool  which began operations in 2000  and includes the following communities: Albany, Ava, Bethany, Butler, Carrollton, Chillicothe, El Dorado Springs, Farmington, Fayette, Fredericktown, Gallatin, Harrisonville, Hermann, Higginsville, Jackson, La Plata, Lamar, Lebanon, Macon, Marshall, Memphis, Monroe City, Odessa, Palmyra, Rock Port, Rolla, St. James, Salisbury, Shelbina, Stanberry, Thayer, Trenton, Unionville, Vandalia, and Waynesville.

During the groundbreaking, Lawson said solar farms bring a diversive portfolio to the table - providing strength to the pool, stability to their rates and bolstering long-term price stability.

And, having a diversified portfolio with predictable costs and production protection for decades in the future is good for Farmington and every other city in the power pool, Lawson said in October.

MoPEP agreed to purchase 16 megawatts of electricity from MC Power Company. And, the only way to get that power is to put these systems in communities that are MoPEP communities, Farmington City Administrator Greg Beavers explained earlier this week during a tour of the solar farm.

Farmington is the last of six solar farms in Missouri being completed, he said. As a part of the pool, the city has already paid for the solar power from the other solar farms.

Beavers gave an analogy of how the pool works.

What happens isall the energy bought by MoPEP energy pool is  I use the term, socialized  all that cost is socialized, he said. We pay MoPEP energy pool for our prorated share of the energy we use.

So, while we say the energy were reserving on the market by paying for it at the wholesale level  and putting it on the grid is our energywe dont know where its coming from.

Beavers further explained the process by giving the example of a farmer harvesting corn and a grain elevator to show the energy is distributed through the pool.

When the farmer gets ready to sell the corn, its not necessarily his corn he takes out of the elevator and sellshe put corn in, he said. The electric market is the same way. You put (electric energy) on the supply system.

The solar farm is a little different, in that even though the cost of the electricity is billed to Missouri Public Energy Pool and then, in turned, billed to all the member cities, the city will actually be taking the energy off of the farm here in Farmington.

To a lot of people (the solar farm) communicates or demonstrates a commitment to renewable energy (and) shows that were trying to be out front, he said.

A new development by Engler Park will be the first stop for energy generated from the solar farm due to the location near the connect line  therefore, noting 100 percent of that energy for the development is from a renewable source.

The current plan is to commission the facility on, or about, Dec. 20 for testing.

The system will not be fully commercial until we have installed the system protections required by AmerenUE to ensure that energy from the solar system does not feed back onto the AUE transmission system, Beavers said. The system analysis was completed by AUE and submitted to the City last week, which provided us with the requirements for the interconnect protection. We have forwarded that report to our engineering consultant to finalize the interconnect design, which will be sent back to AUE for review.

Upon completion of their review, and availability of the required equipment, we will complete the interconnect and the solar system will be in full commercial operation. The best schedule anticipated for completion of those tasks is mid- to late-February 2018.
By Sumeet Gaikwad

Dec 4 (Reuters) - Australian shares were steady on Monday, as gains in materials stocks on strong commodity prices were offset by declines in the financial sector.

The S&P/ASX 200 index rose 0.01 percent or 0.344 points to 5990.1 by 0104 GMT. The benchmark fell 0.3 percent on Friday.

Materials stocks led the gains on the benchmark with the mining index gaining more than 1 percent when Shanghai steel futures traded near their strongest level since mid-September, along with lead and zinc touching multi-week highs amid supply concerns. Mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto climbed 1.7 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively.

Rio Tinto, after months of speculation, appointed Simon Thompson as its next chairman to succeed Jan Du Plessis.

Thompson, who is currently chairman of Rio's remuneration committe, take over the chairmanship on March 5 next year. The financial index was down 0.6 percent with the 'Big Four' banks sliding between 0.5 percent and 1.1 percent.

"The banks are still reacting to the news from last week. So they are likely to underperform. And I would say given the uncertainty, the banking enquiry is going to yield," said Ben Le Brun, an analyst at Charles Schwab Australia.

The Australian government last week said it will hold a wide-ranging inquiry into a scandal-hit finance sector, arguing one was needed to restore public confidence as it reversed its long-held opposition amid mounting political pressure. Deutche Bank in a research note said they expect the Royal Commission to be disruptive for the banks, and a distraction for management. The financial services company also said the inquiry could impose new constraints on the banks' operations.

In other sectors,the energy index gained 0.7 percent as Brent crude rose as high as $64.32 a barrel, a day after OPEC and other crude producers agreed to extend output cuts until the end of 2018 to tighten global supplies and support prices Oil and gas company Woodside Petroleum gained 0.5 percent while Origin Energy climbed 0.7 percent.

Meanwhile, child care centre operator G8 Education was the biggest loser on the benchmark, falling more than 20 percent, after the company reduced its profit forecast from the previous quarter stating it expects market conditions to remain challenging for the next 6-9 months. In New Zealand, the benchmark S&P/NZX 50 index fell 0.1 percent or 7.4 points to 8181.43, after gaining for three consecutive sessions.

The consumer sector was the biggest drag on the index with milk companies a2 Milk falling 2 percent and Synlait Milk shedding 2.2 percent.

Healthcare and real estate stocks also weighed on the index with Ryman Healthcare and Kiwi Property Group falling 2 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively.

Utilities sector helped recoup losses on the benchmark with electricity supplier Contact Energy climbing 0.6 percent.

(Reporting by Sumeet Gaikwad in Bengaluru; Editing by Eric Meijer)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Sunday that he is optimistic the Senate and House of Representatives will reach a conference agreement on tax legislation that can be signed into law by President Donald Trump. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) walks to the Senate floor as debate wraps up over the Republican tax reform plan in Washington, U.S., December 1, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan

Well be able to get to an agreement in the conference. Im very optimistic about it, the Kentucky Republican told ABCs This Week program. Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Lisa Shumaker

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.
(Reuters) - Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto Ltd (RIO.AX) said on Monday it now expects capital expenditure of less than $4.5 billion in 2017 down from an earlier forecast of $5 billion.

The company also said that it will deliver additional free cash flow of $1.5 billion a year from 2021, following on from its drive to boost free cash flow by $5 billion over 2017 to 2021.

Our Group target of $1.5 billion of annual additional free cash flow from 2021 will ensure we can continue to lead the pack in delivering superior cash returns to our shareholders, Chief Executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques told an investment seminar.

Reporting By Shashwat Pradhan in Bengaluru; editing by Richard Pullin
Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A series of tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump about the investigation into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia prompted concerns on Sunday among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham saying Trump could be wading into peril by commenting on the probe.

I would just say this with the president: Theres an ongoing criminal investigation, Graham said on the CBS program Face the Nation.

You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril, he added.

On Sunday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that he never asked former FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, the presidents former national security adviser - a statement at odds with an account Comey himself has given.

That tweet followed one on Saturday in which Trump said he had fired Flynn because the former national security adviser had lied to the FBI.

Trumps attorney, John Dowd, said in an interview with Reuters that he had drafted the tweet and said putting it together had been a mistake.

Ill take responsibility, Dowd said.

The series of tweets came after a dramatic turn of events on Friday in which Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into contacts between Trumps inner circle and Russia before he took office.

Legal experts and some Democratic lawmakers said if Trump knew Flynn lied to the FBI and then pressured Comey not to investigate him, that could bolster a charge of obstruction of justice.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she believed the indictments in the investigation so far and Trumps continual tweets point toward an obstruction of justice case.

I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey. And it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. Thats obstruction of justice, Feinstein said on NBCs Meet the Press.

The president knew he (Flynn) had lied to the FBI, which means that when he talked to the FBI director and asked him effectively drop this case, he knew that Flynn had committed a federal crime, Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told the ABC program This Week.

The Russia matter has dogged Trumps first year in office, and this weekend overshadowed his first big legislative win when the Senate approved a tax cuts bill.

Flynn was the first member of Trumps administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by special counsel Robert Muellers wide-ranging investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and potential collusion by Trump aides.

Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion.

Comey, who had been investigating the Russia allegations, was fired by Trump in May. He told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in June he believed his dismissal was related to the Russia probe, and said Trump asked him to end the investigation of Flynn.

I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie! Trump said on Twitter on Sunday.

On CBS, Graham criticized Comey, saying he believes the former FBI director made some very, very wrong decisions during his tenure as FBI director. But Graham also said Trump should be careful about his tweets.

Id be careful if I were you, Mr. President. Id watch this, Graham said.

Reporting by David Morgan, Susan Cornwell in Washington and Karen Freifeld in New York; Writing by Roberta Rampton and Caren Bohan; Editing by Mary Milliken
SINGAPORE, Dec 4 (IFR) - Asian credit was generally tighter on low volumes after the US Senate approved a draft tax bill, bringing corporate tax reforms a step closer.

That news over the weekend was not the driving force in the Asian trading session on Monday, though.

"The main factor today is the Indonesia new issue," said a credit trader. "Everyone is trying to figure out where it is going to price."

As Indonesia came out with a primary offering of 5s, 10s and 30s, its 3.85% 2027 bonds widened 2bp to Treasuries plus 117bp, and its 4.75% 2047s widened 3bp to Treasuries plus 164bp.

The Asia ex-Japan iTraxx investment grade CDS index tightened 1.6bp to 72.125bp/72.875bp.

Alibaba's bonds have outperformed since pricing last week, with 10bp tightening in the 5.5-year, 30-year and 40-year tranches since then, and 4bp tightening in the 10-year.

The 5.5-year notes were bid at Treasuries plus 63bp, the 10-year at 104bp, the 30-year at 128bp, and the 40-year notes at 147bp.

China high-yield property bonds were little changed, with trading activity finally slowing down, said another trader.

Many analysts viewed Adani Abbot Point Terminal's 2022 bonds as generously priced, given the low Triple B rating, but the bonds have actually widened to Treasuries plus 249bp, according to Tradeweb, since pricing at 245bp over on Thursday.

(Reporting by Daniel Stanton; Editing by Vincent Baby)

Keywords: MARKETS ASIA DEBT/
Dec 4 (Reuters) - Vietnamese shares reached decade-highs and topped Asia-Pacific with the highest price gains in November, bolstered by rising foreign interest during the month.

Foreigners were net buyers of about $500 million of shares in the country's stock market in November, the highest monthly purchases in at least seven years.

Singapore-listed Jardine Cycle & Carriage Ltd's purchases of about $900 million in Vinamilk's shares was seen as a positive for Vietnamese markets, with government aiming to trim its stakes in more state-owned firms.

Vietnam will also kick off the sale of a majority stake in Sabeco , the country's biggest brewer, in December.

The Vietnam index rose more than 13 percent in November.

Hong Kong and Japanese shares rose more than 3 percent each in November.

Sri Lankan stocks led the losers with a fall of 3.11 percent, followed by China and Taiwan shares with declines of more than 2 percent.

South Korean, Malaysian, Thai, Philippine and Indian equities fell between 1 to 2 percent.

Asia-Pacific markets performance Nov 2017: Asia-Pacific markets performance 2017: Asia-Pacific equities valuations: Asia-Pacific equities analyst revisions score: <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Asia-Pacific markets performance Nov 2017 Asia-Pacific markets performance 2017 Asia-Pacific equities valuations Asia-Pacific equities analyst revisions score ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Reporting by Gaurav Dogra and Patturaja Murugaboopathy; Editing by Richard Borsuk)
BEIJING, Dec 4 (Reuters) - China will encourage private funds to invest in defence firms to promote reform in the industry, China's cabinet said on Monday. China will encourage defence firms to list on the stock market or invest in listed companies, the State Council said in guidelines issued to further open up the military industry.

(Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

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.
(Corrects time of trade resumption in last paragraph)

By Nichola Saminather

TORONTO, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Canadian marijuana producer Aphria Inc. said on Monday it had entered into an agreement to sell medical cannabis to Loblaw Companies' pharmacy chain Shoppers Drug Mart.

Aphria will supply Shoppers with medical cannabis products to be sold online, the company said in a statement. The agreement is subject to government approval of Shoppers' application to be a licensed producer, Aphria said.

Aphria inc shares were halted from trading ahead of the announcement and will resume trading at 4:30 p.m. EST in Toronto (2130 GMT).

(Reporting By Nichola Saminather; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
DEAR HARRIETTE: My husband's ankles swell sometimes -- really, kind of a lot. Whenever I bring this up to him, he shrugs it off.

My husband is big on health food and vitamins that he reads about on the internet, but he is horrible about going to the doctor. I think it has been five years since he had a physical.

I am so worried. My brother-in-law died of colon cancer. His father died of a heart attack. I'm not trying to wish anything bad on him, but I do think there is value in getting an annual checkup. How can I get him to go? -- Against the Doctor, Seattle

DEAR AGAINST THE DOCTOR: Start by doing some research. There are many reasons why a person's feet and ankles swell, and most of them are signs of poor health. Among the causes are congestive heart failure, kidney disease, cirrhosis of the liver, hypertensive heart disease and more. In other words, there are serious health concerns that could be the reason why his ankles swell. For more details, go to: healthline.com/symptom/swollen-ankle.

Point out to your husband that it is worth it to find out if he has a serious ailment that needs treatment, or if it is a less serious situation like a fracture. Remind your husband of how much you love him and want him to be healthy. Tell him you are scheduling a doctor's appointment for him, and urge him to go.

DEAR HARRIETTE: My kids spent the weekend with good friends from school while my husband and I took a much-needed mini-vacation. When we picked them up, all they could talk about was how much fun they had playing with their friends' dog. They have talked nonstop about wanting to have their own dog, which is not in the cards for us. For one, I am allergic, but even if we got a hypoallergenic dog, I don't have the time or the inclination to walk or tend to a dog, and I know my children ultimately won't do it. My husband won't either.

How can I break it to my kids that I'm really not going to give in to their endless begging for a dog? -- No Furry Friends, Boston

DEAR NO FURRY FRIENDS: Stay firm in your convictions. You have to be clear about what you can manage for your family. You can also get creative about how your children can experience more doggy time in their lives. Perhaps they can visit friends who have dogs with more regularity. You can also check in with the local ASPCA to see if your children can volunteer there to help support their work on rescuing and re-homing animals. Your need to not have a dog at home does not mean that your children cannot get to know dogs.

I am similar to you; what I did was talk to a local pet grooming shop to see if my daughter could volunteer there. They happily agreed, and she goes in from time to time to learn about how these people groom dogs. Occasionally she gets to play with the dogs, too.

DEAR HARRIETTE: The girl I've been calling my best friend for years has just done the worst possible thing. She made up a story about me that was horrible and then told it to everybody in our grade. We are in middle school. I am so upset.

My mother told me to get over it, but how do I do that? I have to go to school with all these kids who now think I am a terrible person. I tried to talk to my friend about it, but now all of a sudden she doesn't want to talk to me. I can't imagine what I did to make her act like this. I know my mom reads your column, so I was wondering what you think I should do? -- Mean Girl Drama, Cleveland

DEAR MEAN GIRL DRAMA: When your friends choose to hurt you, it can be devastating. To lie about you with the intention of turning people against you is cruel. You should go to your teacher and principal to report what you believe your friend did. Be as precise as possible and bring any backup information that can prove what you are suggesting she did. If you have emails or social media postings that point to the story, bring those. If other students have told you that your friend shared the lie with them, give their names to the teacher and principal. As scary as it may seem to report this behavior, it is important. People should not get away with slandering someone's name. This is a form of bullying. By standing up for yourself, you create space for support.

You also should open your eyes to other students. It is time to make new friends. I know that isn't easy to do, especially when you are feeling sad and hurt, but this girl is no friend of yours if she is intentionally trying to hurt you.

DEAR HARRIETTE: I have been on a weight-loss plan for a few months now. What is working for me is eating cottage cheese and fruit in the morning. I sometimes bring it with me to work and eat it at my desk. The people sitting nearby often eat bagels or muffins, and it has been fine.

All of a sudden one woman who sits near me has started to talk about my food. She calls my cottage cheese "grandma food" and finds ways to poke fun at me whenever I am eating. She even went so far as to say she thinks it's a waste of time to eat such nasty food only to lose a couple of pounds. I was furious. I'm doing my thing, minding my business. How can I get her to back off? -- Healthy Living, Miami

DEAR HEALTHY LIVING: Congratulations on your weight-loss program. It's not easy to stick to a consistent path of wellness. It takes time to develop discipline. Good for you that you are doing it.

You have a couple of options with this woman. You can ignore her. Eventually she will stop if you don't react. Or you can offer to share some of Grandma's food with her! Don't let her see she is upsetting you. That will only exacerbate the situation.

Harriette Cole is a lifestylist and founder of DREAMLEAPERS, an initiative to help people access and activate their dreams. You can send questions to askharriette@harriettecole.com or c/o Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106
(Corrects $100 million to $100 billion in paragraph 4 of Sunday's story)

RIYADH, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Top Hong Kong officials met Saudi Arabian King Salman in Riyadh on Sunday, Saudi state news agency reported, as the world's leading stock exchanges compete to list oil giant Saudi Aramco .

Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam and financial secretary James Lau were joined by the chairman and the chief executive of HongKong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx), CK Chow and Charles Li.

The officials discussed "areas of cooperation and means of developing them in various fields" along with Saudi ministers of energy, finance and interior, the news agency said.

Li told Reuters last week a Hong Kong listing would help secure huge Chinese demand for Aramco's partial share sale, which Riyadh hopes will raise some $100 billion. Saudi Aramco said in October that exchanges such as New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong have all been looked at for the Aramco float.

(Reporting By Stephen Kalin; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
* Biogas could provide 30 pct of French consumption by 2030

* Engie has 70 biogas projects in France and abroad

* Hydrogen could decarbonise heat, cooling, transport

* Solar plants could produce renewable hydrogen

By Geert De Clercq

PARIS, Dec 4 (Reuters) - French utility Engie plans to switch all of its gas operations to biogas and renewable hydrogen by 2050, making it 100 percent green, its chief executive said on Monday.

The power and gas group has some 70 biogas projects worldwide, including 40 in France, and says that if all its projects get approval its annual investment in biogas could soar tenfold to hundreds of millions of euros per year.

Engie, which has sold its fossil gas activities as part of a broader restructuring, is also looking to invest in industrial-scale hydrogen production by electrolysing water in places where solar energy is cheap.

"We will progressively make our gas greener so that by 2050 it can be 100 percent green," Chief Executive Isabelle Kocher told reporters on Monday.

In May, Engie agreed to sell its oil and gas exploration business for $3.9 billion and last month sold its gas liquefaction, shipping and trading business to Total for $1.5 billion. The sale included a deal to make Engie Total's preferred supplier of biogas and renewable hydrogen.

Kocher said the world was focused on decarbonising electricity via renewable energy, but that electricity only accounts for a minor part of total energy demand.

"Most of the energy consumed is for heating, cooling and transport," she said. "By massively deploying green gas we could decarbonise all that."

Engie estimates that biogas from agricultural and other waste - but not using food crops - has the potential to grow from about one percent of gas consumption in France to 10 percent by 2025, 30 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050.

France has around 400 biogas projects, but it takes too long to get them approved, usually up to two years, compared to six months in neighbouring countries, according to Engie's head of grids, Didier Holleaux.

Engie wants to produce hydrogen gas with solar energy by electrolysing water at a price that would make it more competitive with steam reforming of hydrocarbons, which accounts for 95 percent of hydrogen produced today and costs about 2 euros per kilo, compared to 6 euros/kilo for electrolysis.

The company is looking abroad for gigawatts of solar capacity to produce hydrogen, investments that would likely require billions of euros, Holleaux said.

"In places like Chile's Atacama desert we could produce hydrogen on industrial scale and hopefully ship it abroad at a competitive price, transport included," said Kocher. She also said the company was looking to acquire start-ups in hydrogen technology, especially electrolysis.

Engie already has a significant presence in Chile, where it operates power grids, LNG facilities and renewable energy assets.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq. Editing by Jane Merriman)
DUBAI, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Hope for a resolution to Qatar's diplomatic dispute with four other Arab countries may buoy Gulf stock markets on Monday, while Saudi Arabia may also stay firm because of its technical breakout on Sunday.

Qatar's foreign minister said late on Sunday that Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani was expected to attend the annual summit of Gulf Arab heads of state in Kuwait on Dec. 5 and 6. There was no immediate comment from other Gulf nations on the Qatari announcement, and events at the summit are difficult to predict. Nevertheless, some investors hope Sheikh Tamim's attendance could be a step towards renewed dialogue with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt.

On Saturday, former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh signalled he was abandoning his support of the Iran-aligned Houthis - a shift that could pave the way to end three years of war in Yemen. So the Gulf may have a chance of easing two geopolitical crises that have weighed on markets in recent months. The Saudi stock index rose for an eighth straight day on Sunday, gaining 1.2 percent to 7,089 points and climbing above technical resistance around 7,000 points, which has capped the market since mid-October and roughly coincides with the 200-day average at 7,014 points.

A clean break of the resistance - two straight daily closes - would point up to around 7,250 points, according to the height of the former downtrend channel dating back to mid-October.

In the United Arab Emirates, where markets reopen on Monday after a long weekend, Dubai Investments announced it had raised its foreign ownership limit to 49 percent from 35 percent. But since the current actual ownership of all foreign investors is under 17 percent, there is no reason to expect any immediate impact on the stock.

The global market environment is mixed, with MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan up 0.4 percent and Brent oil slipping 35 U.S. cents to $63.38 a barrel, drifting away from a near 2-1/2 year peak of $64.65 touched last month.

(Reporting by Andrew Torchia)
DUBAI, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Qatar's stock market rose sharply in early trade on Monday because of hopes that Doha can resolve its diplomatic dispute with four other Arab countries, while the rest of the region was mixed.

Qatar's foreign minister said late on Sunday that Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani was expected to attend the annual summit of Gulf Arab heads of state in Kuwait on Tuesday and Wednesday. There was no immediate comment from other Gulf nations on the Qatari announcement, and events at the summit are difficult to predict. Nevertheless, some investors hope Sheikh Tamim's attendance could be a step towards renewed dialogue with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt.

Qatar's stock index was up 1.3 percent after two hours of trade, although trading volume was moderate. Drilling rig provider Gulf International Services jumped 9.1 percent.

Real estate firm Ezdan Holding , which has been hit hard by a downturn in the Qatari property market that was worsened by the diplomatic crisis, soared its 10 percent daily limit.

Qatar Insurance , which has operations in the UAE, surged 5.2 percent. Banks, which have suffered from outflows of Gulf deposits due to the crisis, were also strong with Qatar International Islamic Bank up 4.0 percent.

United Arab Emirates markets, reopening after a long weekend, also climbed. Dubai added 0.5 percent as blue chip Emaar Properties DU>, which has been pulled down in recent months by the slump in Dubai's real estate market, rebounded 3.1 percent and was the biggest gainer.

Saudi Arabia , which had risen for eight straight days and broke above its 200-day average on Sunday, edged down 0.1 percent as some short-term investors took profits.

But cement stocks were strong for a second straight day, partly because of hopes for an end to the conflict in Yemen, where former president Ali Abdullah Saleh signalled on Saturday that he was abandoning his support of the Iran-aligned Houthis - a shift that could pave the way to end three years of war. Reconstruction in Yemen could fuel regional demand for cement. Najran Cement climbed 8.0 percent in its heaviest trade since February, while Southern Province Cement added 4.4 percent.

(Reporting by Andrew Torchia; Editing by Alison Williams)
COLOMBO, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Sri Lankan shares fell slightly on Monday, hovering near a more than two-month closing low hit early last week, with telecom stocks leading the decline.

The Colombo Stock Index ended down 0.09 percent at 6,405.91, hovering near its lowest close since Sept. 15 hit on Tuesday. It fell 0.03 percent last week, recording its fourth straight weekly drop, but has gained about 3 percent so far this year.

Worries over a delay in local council polls and a lack of clarity over the budget and two other key policy measures weighed on sentiment, said analysts.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission said on Monday that the council polls would be held before Feb. 17.

Investors are concerned about political stability as coalition partners in President Maithripala Sirisena government had decided to contest separately in the council polls.

Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera imposed new taxes on motor vehicles, telecoms, banks and liquor in the 2018 budget presented last month, with a final budget vote scheduled for Dec. 9. Analysts said market participants were seeking more clarity on those taxes and that there could be some amendments before the final vote.

The government also released gazette notifications on the Inland Revenue Act and the Exchange Control Act, with investors waiting for clarification on the new legislation.

Shares in Hatton National Bank Plc fell 1 percent, Sri Lanka Telecom Plc dropped 2.4 percent and Overseas Realty Plc ended 3.4 percent weaker.

"We saw some foreign interest coming in to the market when the market is at very low levels," said Dimantha Mathew, head of research at First Capital Holdings.

"Local interest was not there but suddenly we saw some foreign interest coming into the market. Foreign investors are collecting at cheaper rates."

Turnover was 716.1 million rupees ($4.67 million) on Monday, less than this year's daily average of 943.3 million rupees.

Foreign investors were net buyers of equities worth 455.1 million rupees, extending the year-to-date net foreign inflow so far this year to 18.7 billion rupees worth of shares. ($1 = 153.5000 Sri Lankan rupees)

(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal and Shihar Aneez; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Britain wants to increase regulation of Bitcoin and other digital currencies by expanding the reach of European Union anti-money-laundering rules that force traders to disclose their identities and report suspicious activity.

With demand for Bitcoin surging, fuelling a 1,000 percent rally in its value so far this year, the British finance ministry said it expected negotiations over changes to the EU rules would conclude later this year or in early 2018.

Stephen Barclay, economic secretary to Britain's Treasury, told parliament in a notice dated Nov. 3 - but only reported by media on Monday - that the amendments "bring virtual currency exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers into Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing regulation."

That would mean those companies would be overseen by national competent authorities, the statement said.

The main U.S. derivatives regulator said on Friday it would allow CME Group Inc and CBOE Global Markets Inc to list Bitcoin futures contracts, opening the door to added regulation .

Australia has also said it would strengthen its money- laundering laws by bringing Bitcoin providers under the government's financial intelligence unit .

(Writing by William Schomberg)
(Adds details, context)

ALMATY, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Kazakh upstream company KazMunaigas Exploration Production (KMG EP) plans to launch a tender offer to repurchase all of its outstanding global depositary receipts (GDRs) at $14.00 per GDR, it said on Monday.

If the offer succeeds, KMG EP plans to buy out other outstanding common shares and delist from the London Stock Exchange as well as the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange, it said in a statement.

The move could pave way for the listing of the company's biggest shareholder, state-owned National Company KazMunayGaz (NC KMG).

Kazakhstan plans to privatise NC KMG within the next few years, but it cannot be listed on a major stock exchange alongside its main upstream subsidiary. Previous attempts to restore full control over KMG EP have failed.

Minority shareholders of KMG EP last year rejected NC KMG's proposal to give the parent company more control over its subsidiary and the option to sell their shares to NC KMG.

NC KMG has a 58 percent stake in KMG EP, which currently sits on a $4 billion cash pile. Minority shareholders include Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation, and funds overseen by Western managers such as BlackRock.

The price of the offer represents a premium of 23.7 percent to the 30-day volume-weighted average GDR price of $11.32 at Dec. 1, KMG EP said. The GDR last closed at $11.80.

(Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Stephen Coates and Gopakumar Warrier)
Britain and the European Union failed to reach a highly anticipated Brexit deal on Monday despite "significant progress" on key outstanding issues, both sides announced in Brussels.

Negotiators had earlier appeared close to reaching an agreement on the Irish border, the complex and historically sensitive issue that had emerged as a final stumbling block.

But after details of a draft deal leaked, the Democratic Unionist Party, a small but hardline grouping from Northern Ireland that props up the minority government of British Prime Minister Theresa May, said they would not support it.

After talks over lunch, May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker acknowledged that some issues remained unresolved. Both said they were confident of a deal soon that would allow talks to progress to a future trading relationship.

Juncker said that it was not possible to reach deal on Monday despite "significant progress" made in recent days. "This is not a failure, this is the start of the very last round. I am very confident that we will reach agreement in the course of this week," he said.

May said meetings had been "constructive" but differences remained on a "couple of issues." May said she remained confident an agreement could be reached in the coming days.

'Critical moment' in talks

Britain has been desperate to secure an agreement from the EU that it would move on to discussions about trade.

But the EU has insisted that "sufficient progress" must first be made on three issues: that Britain pay a substantial "divorce bill," that rights of European citizens in the UK are guaranteed and that there is no reinstatement of a border infrastructure between Northern Ireland, which will leave the EU with the rest of Britain in March 2019, and the Republic of Ireland.

The dismantling of a so-called "hard border" was a key plank of the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland after years of sectarian conflict. The Irish government was determined to secure a cast-iron guarantee from the UK that there would be no return to border controls after Brexit.

Substantial progress on the divorce bill and on EU citizens was made last week but wrangling on the Irish border continued through Sunday night and into Monday.

It appeared on Monday morning that a deal on the Irish border was close.

Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, scrapped a scheduled trip to Israel, citing a "critical moment" in the negotiations. An EU official said the trip was abandoned so that Tusk could be available for "consultations on draft guidelines" for potential trade discussions.

Philippe Lamberts, leader of the Greens in the European Parliament, told CNN that the British government had made a key concession: Northern Ireland would continue to be aligned with EU laws and regulations that, if they diverged, would require checks at the border. The concession was first reported by the Irish public broadcaster, RTE.

After details of the draft deal leaked, DUP leader Arlene Foster gave a TV statement in which she said that her party "will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom."

Leo Varadkar, the Irish Prime Minister, said he was "suprised and disappointed" that an agreement was not concluded. He said that the British and Irish governments had agreed the draft wording of a deal on the Irish border on Monday morning. "That's the agreement we had, I believe it stands," Varadkar said at a news conference in Dublin, adding that he was prepared to give May more time. "I trust her," he said.

Repercussions in UK

Even if the DUP came on board with an eventual deal, there could be other consequences for May. The suggestion that Northern Ireland would enjoy a special status withing the UK has infuriated leading figures in areas of the UK that voted to remain in the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, wrote on Twitter: "If one part of the UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can't."

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said there were "huge ramifications" for the city if news of the deal turned out to be accurate.

He said on Twitter: "Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs."

The UK still hopes that the EU will deem sufficient progress to have been made in order to give the go-ahead for negotiations to move on to a second phase of negotiations at a summit next week. This phase would focus on a future trade relationship between the UK and EU and transitional arrangements.

CNN's Hilary McGann, Bianca Nobilo, Carol Jordan and Matt Wells contributed to this report from London.
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By Park Jae-hyuk



Koreans appear to have fewer negative feelings about enterprises than they did last year, a recent Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industry's (KCCI) survey showed Monday.



According to the survey, the corporate favorite index (CFI) was 55.8 points this year, up from 47.6 points a year earlier. If the index surpasses 50 points, it means the number with good feelings regarding companies is larger than the number of those who have bad feelings about them.



In particular, conglomerates enjoyed the steep growth in their CFI. The index made a turnaround to 52.2 points this year from 33.0 points last year.



Small- and medium-sized enterprises earned 59.4 points this year, similar to the 59.7 points they received last year.



"The largest-ever exports and the expected increase in the rate of economic growth seems to have raised the index, amid the lingering uncertainty caused by trade conflicts with large countries and a worsening youth unemployment rate," Prof. Cho Seong-hoon at Yonsei University said. He has also served as an adviser to the KCCI.



While companies got 62.8 points in their economic achievement, they marked relatively low scores in their social contributions and compliance with the law and ethical standards at 46.5 points and 44.4 points, respectively.



The result means Koreans have yet to be satisfied with the conglomerates' corporate social responsibility activities and their efforts to obey the law and to practice ethical management.



In addition, 36 percent of 1,000 respondents feel Korean businesspeople lack entrepreneurship, while 26.2 percent were positive about the entrepreneurship of Korean businesspeople. 37.8 percent said they are neither good nor bad.



Among the respondents, 38.5 percent feel the government should strengthen the social safety net to encourage entrepreneurs, while 29 percent want an atmosphere of inspiring challenges. Others want to see deregulation and better education.


By Yoon Ja-young



Over 1 percent of the land on Jeju Island belongs to foreigners, with Chinese people owning nearly half of it. Experts say that the government should attract foreign investment that seeks mutual growth with the local community while deterring real estate speculation by foreigners.



According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, foreigners owned 234 square kilometers of land as of the first half of this year, or 0.2 percent of available land in all of Korea. Foreigners here refer not only to individuals but also corporations and joint ventures set up by Koreans and foreigners.



Foreigners' ownership of land has been increasing steeply during the past few years, rising 6 percent in 2014 and 9.5 percent in 2015. Its growth slowed last year and this with a 2.3 percent and 0.3 percent increase, respectively.



Foreigners own the biggest portion of land in South Jeolla Province, with 37.86 square kilometers, followed by Gyeonggi Province at 37.59 square kilometers, and North Gyeongsang Province at 34.97 square kilometers.



The hottest region for foreigners, however, is Jeju Island, the most popular tourist destination which was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.



Foreigners hold 21.14 square kilometers of land on the volcanic island, up 5.7 percent from last year. Currently, 1.08 percent of Jeju land belongs to foreigners. It is especially popular among Chinese, who own 44.4 percent of land under foreign ownership.



Among land owned by foreigners, 61.9 percent is forest or farmland, followed by land for factories at 27 percent and land for leisure activities at 5.2 percent. Over half of the foreigners who own a plot in Korea are Koreans with foreign citizenship, while joint ventures set up by Koreans and foreigners make up 32.3 percent. Foreign corporations have 8.3 percent of land under foreign ownership, while individuals own 5.6 percent.



Half of the foreigners who own land in Korea are from the U.S, followed by those from Europe at 9.1 percent.



There has been an increase in Chinese people purchasing land in Korea though their ratio is still not very high at 7.3 percent. The land owned by Chinese increased by 37.9 percent in 2013. It marked double-digit growth until last year, slowing to 6.5 percent this year.



While Korea does not restrict foreigners' purchase of land, some show concern that a considerable number of the investments seems to be for speculative purposes.



According to the Korea Appraisal Board, foreigners' purchase of land notably increased in PyeongChang, Gangwon Province, where the 2018 Winter Olympics is to be held. Among the foreigners who bought land there, 76.1 percent were Chinese. They mostly bought land near PyeongChang Interchange which is expected to benefit from development projects - 92.9 percent of the Chinese who bought land in Gangwon Province don't reside there.



"While foreigners are acquiring and using Korea's real estate in diverse forms, there is concern over the outflow of national wealth," Rep. Jeon Hyun-heui of the governing Democratic Party of Korea said at a recent parliamentary hearing.



She said the government should attract foreign capital that aims at mutual growth with the local community.
Government sets up task force to regulate cryptocurrency



By Nam Hyun-woo



The Moon Jae-in administration established a task force Monday to discuss ways of regulating Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency trading, which has been causing controversies across the country.



The Ministry of Justice, which hosted the first meeting of the task force, said that the government is "aware of the seriousness of virtual currency-related problems and will collaborate to deal with the issues."



Thus far, investments in cryptocurrencies have created a craze here as its prices have shot up. But worries have surfaced that this is creating a bubble that will burst soon and cause great damages to investors.



The country's daily virtual currency trading volume averages 2 trillion won, which is the third largest in the world. On Monday, Bitcoin was nearing $12,000 in value. The leading digital currency has gained more than 60 percent over the past month alone, an annualized return of about 720 percent. Other cryptocurrencies are also on the upswing.



However, the area has not been properly regulated.



It remains to be seen how the government will regulate virtual money exchanges. But the country's financial regulator hinted at introducing a "positive system" -- exchanges are basically illegal but some will be allowed if they meet certain criteria.



"Korea plans to regard virtual currency trading as a fund-raising business without permission," Financial Services Commission (FSC) Vice Chairman Kim Yong-beom said during a recent meeting with his counterparts from Japan and China in Incheon.



Kim means that the financial regulators classify virtual currency trading as an illegal practice, which is subject to up to a five-year prison term.



In detail, the FSC plans to check which exchanges do not meet its criteria. Criteria will include prevention of money laundering, separate management of clients' money and proper explanations of the risks. This means that some exchanges which fully meet those criteria can continue their businesses. Otherwise, they will be forced to shut down.



The FSC plans to table a bill containing this measure to the National Assembly early next year.



The envisioned regulation is similar to that of Japan. The Japanese government in April allowed exchanges' trading only when their identity verification process is appropriate; they prevent money laundering; and they manage clients' money separately.



Another option that Korea could adopt is a license system -- which allows only those with a government license to start a virtual money business.



In July, Rep. Park Yong-jin of the Democratic Party of Korea proposed a bill recognizing digital tokens as financial assets. The bill includes details on requiring virtual currency issuers, brokers and exchanges to get approval from the FSC and have more than 500 million won ($459,000) in capital.



However, FSC Chairman Choi Jong-ku said Monday that the authority is not thinking of a license system.


Trauma surgeon Lee Cook-jong shows images of parasitic worms found in a wounded North Korean soldier at Ajou University Hospital in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, Nov. 15. The soldier was shot several times during his escape to the South Korean side of the Joint Security Area before undergoing emergency surgery at the hospital. / Yonhap



By Yi Whan-woo



The defection of a North Korean soldier at the Joint Security Area (JSA) in November is raising awareness of health conditions inside the impoverished regime after parasitic worms and a chronic liver infection were found in the solider.



The finding came unexpectedly after the soldier, Oh Chung-sung, 25, was shot by his comrades during his escape to the Southern side of the JSA , was brought to safety by South Korean and U.S. soldiers and underwent emergency surgery.



Doctors found and removed several types of intestinal parasitic worms, some up to 27 centimeters long, according to Lee Cook-jong, the trauma surgeon who operated on Oh at Ajou University Hospital.



Lee said that in 20 years as a surgeon he had never seen such a case except in a medical textbook.



Lee said the soldier hepatitis B as well, which was a serious risk factor for liver cancer.



Oh' s stomach also contained raw corn kernels, which came as a surprise because North Korea was believed to assign soldiers with elite backgrounds to the JSA and treat them well.



Oh's father is reportedly a high-ranking officer in the military police, according to intelligence sources.



Since the soldier's health problems were revealed, calls have been growing in Seoul to bolster medical support for Pyongyang to help improve health conditions in the rogue state.



Experts claim that such efforts will be critical in "narrowing the gap" between the two Koreas on sanitation and other public health issues and prevent diseases spreading if the Korean Peninsula is united.



During a CNN interview, Seoul National University College of Medicine professor Choi Min-ho said poor sanitary conditions and use of human waste as fertilizer on crops were responsible for parasitic cysts in North Korea.



"It is a vicious cycle that is hard to stop in North Korea," he said. "They are so desperate to make ends meet that they cannot take proper preventive measures."



A defector-turned-journalist voiced a similar view, pointing out that she and her fellow residents in a rural village in North Korea pumped up underground water and drank it, even though it was believed to be polluted by feces from public toilets.



"There was no sewage facility and the feces from the toilets went directly underground, meaning the water is getting mixed with those feces," she said.



She said the village chief had said not to worry about pollution because the water was 15 meters below the ground and therefore "self-purified."



She said a friend in the village told her recently in a secret phone call that the villagers were "still drinking that water."





The North Korean soldier who defected on Nov. 13 at the JSA waits for emergency surgery at Ajou University Hospital in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. / Yonhap
A top Republican lawmaker warned Sunday that the United States moves closer to preemptive war with North Korea every time Pyongyang carries out a missile or nuclear test.



North Korea's test launch this week of an intercontinental ballistic missile has sent tensions soaring once again on the Korean peninsula, after a two month lull.



"If there's an underground nuclear test, then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States," Senator Lindsey Graham said on CBS' "Face the Nation."



His remarks echoed those of National Security Advisor HR McMaster, who told a security forum in Washington on Saturday that the potential for war with North Korea "is increasing every day."



The United States has demanded tougher international sanctions, including cuts in oil shipments to the isolated state, but both McMaster and Graham suggested that the risk of war is growing despite the diplomatic efforts.



"We are in a race to be able to solve this problem," said McMaster. "This would be the most destabilizing development I think in the post World War II period. It's something that places us at direct risk but places the world at risk."



Graham, a foreign policy hawk, said he has had extensive discussions with the Trump administration about the situation.



The administration's policy, he said, is "to deny North Korea the capability to hit America with a nuclear-tipped missile. Not to contain it."



"Denial means preemptive war as a last resort. That preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures. Every missile test, every underground test of a nuclear weapon, means the marriage is more likely.



"I think we're really running out of time. The Chinese are trying, but ineffectively," he said.



Beijing has backed a slew of sanctions that include bans on imports of North Korean coal, iron ore and seafood.



The UN also barred the hiring of North Korean guest workers and capped exports of refined petroleum products.



But China has refused to turn off its pipeline shipping crude to North Korea.



North Korea has boasted -- and western experts agree -- that the missile tested on Wednesday is capable of reaching the United States.



In September, it conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test. It is unclear whether it has succeeded in making nuclear warheads small enough to be put atop a missile. (AFP)




By Yi Whan-woo



Japan plans to set up an information center in Tokyo by 2019 to address history of 23 Meiji Industrial Revolution sites granted UNESCO world heritage status, according to diplomatic sources, Monday.



The measure to set up the center 1,000 kilometers from the sites, however, is virtually seen as noncompliance with UNESCO's recommendation in 2015 when the 23 sites won world heritage status despite Korea's opposition.



It is also an apparent attempt to cover up the forced labor of hundreds of thousands of Koreans at seven of the 23 sites, including Hashima Island off the coast of Nagasaki, during Japan's 1910-45 occupation of the Korean Peninsula.



In 2015, UNESCO granted world heritage status to all 23 sites under the condition Japan correctly addressed the slave labor issue of the Koreans at the seven, by measures including opening an information center. But it did not state where such an information center should be set up.



An estimated 57,000 Koreans were forcibly taken to Japan and toiled under extreme conditions at the sites to produce coal and steel and also to manufacture ships as well as other equipment for the Japanese military.



If the information center is installed in Tokyo, visitors to the seven sites will hardly learn about the conscripted labor of Koreans. The sites are located across eight prefectures but none are in Tokyo: For instance, Hashima Island is approximately 1,000 kilometers from the Japanese capital.



"It's anybody's guess whether visitors to the UNESCO heritage sites will learn about the dark history related to the Meiji Industrial Revolution, unless they spend extra time and money to come to Tokyo to only visit the information center," a Japan expert at the Sejong Institute said on condition of anonymity.



Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, which handles the information center, initially considered Kyushu Island as a candidate site for the center, according to sources.



The sources claimed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's office then insisted on opening it in Tokyo.



What information the center will provide is likely to be controversial as well, because Abe's Cabinet is focusing on promoting the 23 sites as evidence illustrating Japan's rapid industrialization -- as the first non-Western nation to do so -- rather than highlighting the conscripted workers.



The Asahi Shimbun reported last week the information center will address various historical facts, such as Korean workers on Hashima Island, but did not mention whether the information will state that they were coerced into labor.



During World War II, Korean workers at Hashima Island were isolated from the outside world and suffered frequent tunnel collapses, gas explosions, falling rocks and other harsh work conditions.



Koreans were also forced to build military supplies such as warships and torpedoes at the Nagasaki shipyard.


By Ko Dong-hwan





POSTECH President Kim Doh-yeon / Korea Times file
Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Kim Sang-kon speaks during a press briefing on a five-year plan to strengthen special needs education, at the Sejong Government Complex, Monday. Yonhap



By Kim Bo-eun



The government will set up at least 22 more special needs schools by 2022 to provide students with fair access to education, the country's top education policymaker said Monday.



The five-year plan will also add 1,250 more special needs classes at regular schools, hiring a total of 1,173 additional teachers,.



"We must ensure that students with special needs be provided their right to education, not as a benefit but as a right," Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Kim Sang-kon said in a briefing at the Sejong Government Complex.



Currently 89,353 students are receiving special needs education, which is a 25 percent increase from 2008.



However, there has been a dire lack of specialized schools, forcing many students with disabilities to commute long distances or resort to receiving education at regular schools. Data shows 71 percent of disabled students are in regular schools _ either in special needs or regular classes.



The lack of special needs schools has been attributed to local residents shunning the openings.



Last September, parents of disabled students knelt and pleaded in front of residents in Gangseo-gu, western Seoul, who opposed the opening of a special needs school in the area. This case brought to light the plight of these parents and their children, prompting action by the local and central government.



As a means to ensure these students are provided needs-based education from early childhood, the education ministry pledged to set up integrated kindergartens which run the same number of classes for regular and special needs students. At least one such kindergarten will be set up in 17 cities and provinces nationwide.



The government will also set up special needs schools affiliated with universities and hospitals.



In addition, the government will increase the number of regional support centers for specific types of disabilities from the current 42 to 50.



Moreover, the government will boost career guidance and life-long education for these students who face difficulty gaining employment.



A system which allows students to explore various career paths as part of the school curriculum will be implemented at 139 special needs schools by 2022.



Teachers providing career counseling and employment assistance will be placed at all special needs schools.



The government will have related ministries set up a system so students are able access an integrated package of education, welfare and employment.



At the same time, as a means to eliminate prejudice or prevent its rise against disabled students, the government will have students at kindergartens, elementary, middle and high schools take mandatory education sessions.



An estimated 1.67 trillion won will be needed to implement the plan. The government said it would secure the funds by working together with ministries, local governments and regional education offices.


A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter takes off from a South Korean Air Force base in Gwangju, Monday, during the allies' combined exercise, dubbed Vigilant ACE (Air Component Exercise). The five-day annual drills are taking place amid tension here following North Korea's launch of what it claimed was a new, more powerful intercontinental ballistic missile last week. / Courtesy of Republic of Korea Air Force



By Jun Ji-hye



The South Korean and U.S. Air Forces began large-scale combined exercises, Monday, mobilizing some 230 aircraft including six F-22 Raptor fighters from the U.S.



The five-day Vigilant ACE (Air Component Exercise) held over South Korean airspace comes just days after North Korea launched what it claimed was a new, more powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of carrying a super-large heavy warhead and striking anywhere on the U.S. mainland.



The Republic of Korea (ROK) Air Force said the allies' drills, in which 12,000 personnel from the two air forces are participating, will demonstrate their combined air power against the Kim Jong-un regime.



"Vigilant ACE is the allies' annual combined exercise designed to enhance their readiness posture and capability of carrying out missions in the event of war," the Air Force said in a press release. "The drills highlight the longstanding military partnership and enduring friendship between the two nations."



For the drills, the U.S. Air Force Raptor fighters arrived at an air base in Gwangju, Saturday.






Coast guards at a wharf near the Incheon Coast Guard Headquarters examine a fishing boat, Monday, that capsized off the coast of Incheon the day before. / Yonhap



President Moon Jae-in says gov't should take responsibility



By Jung Min-ho



The Coast Guard is investigating the cause of the boat crash that killed at least 13 people off the west coast of Incheon Sunday.



The Incheon Coast Guard said Monday it has secured surveillance cameras and GPS equipment of a 336-ton tanker, which crashed into a 9.77-ton fishing boat in West Sea waters near Yeongheung Island at around 6:09 a.m.



The smaller boat had 22 people on board. The accident has left 13 of them dead and two missing; the rest have been rescued.



"We will analyze the GPS and cameras first to find out what happened," Hwang Joon-hyun, a senior Coast Guard official, told reporters. "We will also investigate whether sailors on the tanker breached their duty of care."



Two people from the tanker  a 37-year-old captain and a 46-year-old deckhand  have been detained over the accident. The prosecution is soon expected to request arrest warrants for them.



The captain, surnamed Jeon, told the Coast Guard he saw the fishing boat before the crash but did not change the tanker's direction thinking the boat would shift its course.



According to the Coast Guard, the deckhand, surnamed Kim, was supposed to be on duty to navigate the ship but he was not in the wheelhouse at the time of the accident.



The Coast Guard suspects the tanker crashed into the fishing boat from behind. Coast Guard investigators have searched the tanker and questioned its 27-man crew.



"We do not make any assumptions here," Hwang said. "We will look into every possibility to get to the truth."



Meanwhile, rescue workers have been trying to find the two missing people. Following the accident, the government mobilized 30 Coast Guard boats, seven Navy vessels, one local government vessel, two Coast Guard planes and one Air Force plane for search operations. More ships and planes are expected to join.



President Moon Jae-in said the government is responsible for finding the missing people.



"Check if there are any problems in our safety system. The government should be held accountable for protecting its citizens no matter what," Moon said during a Cheong Wa Dae meeting with his secretaries.



"My heart goes out to the victims and their families. I hope the missing two will come home safely."



Maritime accidents have grown as the number of people chartering private fishing boats continues to increase.



According to data from Rep. Park Wan-joo of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, 3.4 million people used services offered by private fishing boats so far this year, a 15.9 percent increase from 2016.



The number of accidents stood at 206 in 2015 and 208 in 2016. This year, there have been 160 accidents as of August. The largest number of accidents occurred because of collisions.






Chairman of the minor opposition People's Party Ahn Cheol-soo speaks during a press conference at the National Assembly, Monday, the 100th day of his inauguration as party head. / Yonhap



By Kim Hyo-jin



People's Party Chairman Ahn Cheol-soo vowed to strengthen the party's centrist presence, Monday, reiterating his vision for a multi-party system in Korean politics that used to be dominated by ruling and main opposition parties.



Ahn underlined the need to create a political force that embraces both liberals and conservatives, renewing his determination to seek an alliance or integration with the minor conservative Bareun Party.



"Breaking down the political landscape led by the two big parties is directly related to the question of whether the People's Party can survive or not," Ahn said in a press conference that marks the 100th day of his inauguration as party head.



"By building a stable third political force, I will lay the ground for a he multi-party system."



Ahn has actively sought to join hands with reform-minded conservatives _ meaning Bareun Party members _ to strengthen the party's presence, particularly ahead of local elections slated for June next year.



The move has made little progress amid a backlash by senior members of the People's Party who follow the legacy of liberal former President Kim Dae-jung.



Ahn alluded that he will keep pushing for a merger with the Bareun Party although it will take time. He dismissed speculation that he may give up the plan due to the ongoing internal conflict.



"We are now cross-checking how similar the two parties' visions and thoughts are," he said. "Now we are at a stage of figuring out the differences between the parties and collecting the opinions of their respective members."



He laid out a reform agenda in politics, saying the existing parties should overcome regionalism and open themselves to new outside figures.



"The People's Party will create an atmosphere where new figures can easily enter politics. We will work on expanding our presence so we become a party competent enough to lead an administration," he said.



Touching upon a campaign strategy for the upcoming local elections, Ahn claimed that it should be a "three-party competition," hinting that he can join hands with other minor parties to present joint candidates to compete with rivals from the ruling Democratic Party of Korea and the main opposition Liberty Korea Party.



Ahn expressed hopes for a rebound of the party's low popularity, saying, "The support rate does not change due to a single event. It can happen at a certain time after a long-time accumulation of public trust. It's what we have witnessed over the past five years."



He criticized the Moon Jae-in government for its North Korea policy. "Moon needs to make a genuine explanation to the public on what is the actual security status or how high the chances are of military conflict with the North," he said. "He should contemplate on why people ridicule the government, saying its one and only strength is causing confusion."



When asked about whether he will run for the Seoul mayoral post in the local elections, he said he was open to all possibilities. "I will do whatever the party decides," he said.




By Choi Ha-young



More than six out of 10 Koreans are in favor of having the anti-graft law, the so-called Kim Young-ran Act, revised to ease price caps for gifts, according to an opinion survey, Monday.



The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) is scheduled to review the revision of the law on Dec. 11  whether to raise the price cap of gifts which public servants, journalists, private school teachers and their spouses can accept from the current 50,000 won ($46) to 100,000 won if the gifts are agricultural and marine products  a measure to help the agricultural and fisheries industries which have seen large decreases in sales.



The envisioned revision also plans to reduce the amount for congratulatory and condolence money from 100,000 won to 50,000 won.



The poll conducted by Realmeter showed that 63.3 percent of the respondents support the change. Only 27.5 percent of them oppose it. The support rate was particularly high among those in the agriculture and fisheries industries, standing at 80.9 percent.



According to separate research conducted by the Korea Rural Economic Institute, the sales of agricultural produce gift sets decreased by 25.8 percent for Seollal in 2017, or the Lunar New Year holiday, compared to the 2016 holiday.



Earlier on Nov. 27, the ACRC's decision-making body rejected the revision with a slim margin. The outcome drew enormous flak from farmers and fishermen, who want changes and sales hikes for the next Seollal, which will fall in February next year.



After the decision, Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon said the government will again try to revise the law this year. "It is pointless to revise it after next year's Seollal, since many farmers and fishermen are looking forward to the change," Lee said in a debate last week.



And the ACRC will review it again Dec. 11. Even though the ACRC endorses the revision, the price cap for gifts other than agriculture, livestock and fisheries products would remain at 50,000 won.



Unlike the move by the Prime Minister, some civic groups claim to uphold the act to eradicate corruption in society. Former ACRC head Kim Young-ran, who initiated the act, spoke against the envisioned change.



"I feel for the industries suffering because of the act, but society should not revoke the original purpose of the act," he said in a radio interview Monday. "It's improper to claim, though, that easing the rule would be effective in helping the agriculture and fisheries industries."


Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon, right, and floor leaders of the ruling and opposition parties hold hands after announcing their agreement on the government's budget bill for next year at the National Assembly, Monday. From left are main opposition Liberty Korea Party floor leader Chung Woo-taik, ruling Democratic Party of Korea floor leader Woo Won-shik, opposition People's Party floor leader Kim Dong-cheol and Kim. / Yonhap



By Kim Hyo-jin



The rival political parties reached a tentative agreement over a budget bill for next year Monday, with some sticking points including the size of job creation in the public sector due to reservations from the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP).



The revised budget bill will be put to a vote during a plenary session, Tuesday.



Floor leaders of the ruling and opposition parties announced their agreement on the 429 trillion won ($395 billion) budget for next year. This comes two days after they missed the Dec. 2 legal deadline for the government budget.



Amid growing concern about potential harm to the government's fiscal momentum, the party leaders met halfway on the budget.



But the LKP still expressed reservations on two provisions _ the increase in the number of public employees by 9,475 through 2018 alone, and the increase of the corporate tax rate to 25 percent for businesses earning over 300 billion won annually.



"We clearly stated our reservations on the two points in the agreement," LKP floor leader Chung Woo-taik told reporters.



With the deal, the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) agreed to reduce the government's original plan of creating 12,221 new positions to get an agreement with the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) and the minor opposition People's Party.



They claimed employment in the civil servant sector should not be increased by more than 7,000 to 9,000 jobs, expressing concerns about the fiscal burden of such jobs.



Under the tentative agreement, 2.97 trillion won ($2.75 billion) will be set aside for small businesses to cushion their labor costs increase from the latest minimum wage hike.



And the size of this fund will not be allowed to exceed amount in the 2018 budget plan from the year 2019, the floor leaders said.



The government and the ruling party originally sought to increase the corporate tax rate for businesses with taxable income of 200 billion won ($183.8 million) or more a year to 25 percent from the current 22 percent.



In a compromise the parties agreed to increase the tax rate only to businesses earning over 300 billion won annually.



They also saw eye-to-eye on extra childcare allowances, an increase in the state pension for senior citizens, and the expansion of health insurance coverage and inter-Korean cooperation funds.



Two-member families with a child up to five years old who are in the lowest 10 percent of income level will receive 100,000 won monthly beginning September next year.



The state pension for senior citizens will be increase to 250,000 won from September 2018, adding follow-up measures to counter elderly poverty will be devised.



However, the government's original scheme of allocating 120 billion won under the name of the inter-Korean cooperation fund was reduced to 40 billion won.


By Bahk Eun-ji



More than 40 percent of people with part-time jobs have been sexually harassed at work, a survey released on Monday shows.



Job search portal Alba.co.kr surveyed 2,100 part timers nationwide, with 41.8 percent of respondents saying they had been sexually harassed at work.



Of the victims, 87.1 percent were female and 12.9 percent male.



By age, 72.4 percent were in their 20s, 15.3 percent were teenagers and 9.7 percent were in their 30s.



A total of 30.8 percent said they heard comments about their appearance, 28.6 percent heard unpleasant sexual remarks, 26.7 percent experienced physical contact and 6 percent said they were forced to serve drinks.



Female part-timers said they were harassed by male employers (38.7 percent) and customers (37.4 percent), 13.3 percent by male co-workers and 6 percent by female employers.



Male part-timers said 23.3 percent of female customers placed them in an uncomfortable sexual situation, 20.2 percent of female employers did the same as did 18.4 percent of male employers and 14.1 percent of male customers.



More than 65 percent of those questioned said they just "cope with" the situation while only 1.4 percent said they filed complaints with relevant government departments.
By Heather Barr





Abortion is illegal in South Korea. But women are demanding change. More than 235,000 people signed a petition, posted on September 30 on the presidential office website, that calls for the government to legalize abortion. And that should include access to mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug available in many countries around the world.

The government allows members of the public to post a petition on its website for 30 days. In August, the new government of president Moon Jae-In pledged to formally respond within 30 days to any petition that gathers more than 200,000 signatures.

On November 26, the government responded by buying time.

In a 10-minute video, Cho Kuk , the senior presidential secretary of civil affairs, discussed the current restrictions on abortion and mentioned future legal reforms, referring to a constitutional challenge to the country's abortion laws by a doctor accused of performing illegal abortion. The case is expected to be heard in 2018.

Cho pledged that the government would develop a better sexual education program for teenagers, and provide more support for single mothers and adoptive families. But on abortion he said the government needs updated data to decide how to proceed, such as the number of abortions taking place and women's reasons for seeking abortion, he promised the government will collect new data in 2018.

He described the issue as "sensitive" saying government will use the term "interruption of pregnancy" rather than "abortion."

If euphemisms are helpful, so be it. But the call for more data smacks of delaying tactics. Some things are already perfectly clear.

Today in South Korea, women may only legally obtain an abortion in highly restricted circumstances. An abortion is possible in cases of rape or incest, if the parents cannot marry legally, if continuation of the pregnancy is likely to jeopardize the pregnant woman's health, or when the pregnant woman or her spouse has one of a limited number of designated hereditary disorders or communicable diseases.

Married women need their spouse's permission for an abortion, and any abortion, regardless of motivation or context, is prohibited after 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Current South Korean law punishes a woman who has an illegal abortion with up to one year in prison or fines up to 2 million won ($1,820). Healthcare workers who provide abortions face up to two years in prison.

Despite these restrictions, abortion is widely available in South Korea, and prosecutions for abortion are rare. But in recent years there has been growing tension over the issue, and abortion foes have pushed for tougher enforcement.

Abortion is still a sensitive issue in South Korea, which struggles with the consequences of a falling birthrate and rapidly aging population. But it is also clear that when governments restrict abortion, women still have abortions  they just have more dangerous ones.

According to the U.N., in 2011 the average unsafe abortion rate was more than four times greater in countries with restrictive abortion policies than in countries with liberal abortion policies.

Measures such as enhanced access to prenatal and obstetric care, generous parental leave for both women and men, equality and lack of stigma for single and unmarried parents and their children, free or subsidized child care, and improved access to high quality free education for children could both help promote gender equality and make it easier for South Koreans to choose to become parents.

President Moon has taken several important steps to improve women's rights. He made a campaign promise to have a Cabinet that is at least 30 percent women  and kept that promise.

In another positive step, the government recently pledged to strengthen its law on workplace sexual harassment. So he is off to a good start, and he should now lead a comprehensive effort to reform laws and policies to increase gender equality. There is a lot to fix.

South Korea still has serious problems with discrimination, harassment and violence against women. It was recently ranked an abysmal 116 out of 144 countries when it came to gender equality. Footage recently emerged of nurses at a hospital allegedly forced to dance in skimpy outfits for visiting officials. In a recent survey, 80 percent of South Korean men said they had physically or psychologically abused a girlfriend.

The country also has the unhappy distinction of having the third-highest proportion, at 52.5 percent, of female murder victims in the world  a fact attributed to murder of women by intimate partners and the government's failures to effectively enforce laws against domestic violence.

A 2015 survey by the government found that more than 78 percent of sexual harassment victims in the workplace did not seek recourse but rather "put up with it." Many women said they did not believe they would get help if they complained.

The government's sex education guidelines have also been criticized; an indication of just how inappropriate the guidelines are is their suggestion, intended for high-school teachers, that women may risk rape if they go on dates with men who pay for an expensive meal and who may expect sex in return.

With its 235,000 signatures, the petition to legalize abortion is a key test of the depth of President Moon's commitment to women's rights. The petition places the issue squarely in his lap. Some might argue the government's willingness to discuss the issue and the pledge for future steps are positive signs.

But every day of delay is another day in which South Korean women are forced to risk their health to make reproductive choices that should be their right. Presidential secretary Cho and his government have already heard from hundreds of thousands of South Koreans who think that's the sensitive issue.

President Moon and his government should act now to introduce and pass legislation to fully decriminalize abortion. South Korea should remove all penalties for women who seek abortion, and for medical providers of abortions, and abolish the requirement that wives obtain their husband's consent before they can access abortion.

There is a long road ahead if South Korea is to treat women equally.



Heather Barr is a senior researcher in the Women's Rights division of Human Rights Watch
By Doug Bandow





On his recent trip to Asia President Donald Trump asked his South Korean hosts an impolitic question: "Do you have to reunify?" They said yes, but the right answer is no.



The head of the ruling Democratic Party observed that "people who come to South Korea almost never ask it. The fact that he posed this question, frankly speaking, gave us the opportunity to explain the need for reunification."



But there is no need. In fact, reunification is unlikely, absent a catastrophic collapse of North Korea. And no one should wish for that, given the possibility of civil war, factional conflict, loose nuclear weapons, and mass refugee flows.



After Japan's surrender in World War II the U.S. and Soviet Union divided the peninsula into two occupation zones. Korea's division was cemented after the Korean War. That left a common desire for reunification.



But the older generation is dying off. Younger South Koreans have no connection with the North. For them the appeal of reunification is purely abstract.



Moreover, German reunification caused even many fans of a united peninsula to hesitate. Germany's process cost as much as 2.5 trillion Euros, or $3 trillion. The latter is about twice the ROK's annual GDP.



Reunification was a significant burden for West Germany, which was wealthier than South Korea. And East Germany was richer than North Korea. (The per capita income ratios were 3-1 for West/East Germany, and 20 or more to 1 for the South/North Korea.)



South Koreans hoped the subsequent "Sunshine Policy," which channeled money and aid to Pyongyang, would promote more rapid economic development, encouraging economic convergence between the two Koreas before reunification.



The likely political consequences of reunification also raised concerns. Some conservative South Koreans worry about adding millions of voters raised as socialists. The latter might reject communism, but still vote left.



Moreover, it is hard to imagine how reunification could occur voluntarily. In 1972 the two Koreas agreed to principles for reunification, but, as expected, nothing came of it. Although Koreans North and South share a common heritage, their cultures, economies, and political systems differ dramatically.



Most important is the question of power. When I first visited the North 25 years ago, North Korean officials told me that they did not want to be "swallowed." They understood that in any genuine reunification the DPRK would simply disappear. And with it their privileged positions.



Indeed, most would have no useful role in a new united Korea. South Koreans would flood in with money as newly empowered North Koreans defenestrated their former overlords. The latter have no incentive to consent to their demise.



An equally important, though usually ignored, factor is China. The common assumption is that Korean reunification is inevitable. But Beijing does not want the Koreas to reunite.



The result would be a larger, stronger, more populous competitor, one offering a powerful draw to the ethnic Koreans who populate China's border provinces. A reunited Korea allied with America hosting U.S. bases and forces would be an even more undesirable development.



While Beijing would hesitate to block a voluntary reunion, that, as noted earlier, seems extremely unlikely. In contrast, if the Kim regime lost control, or if the North Korean state suffered a serious loss of authority, China might find an opportunity to intervene, perhaps on behalf of internal forces friendly to the PRC. Beijing might create an independent but more pliant neighbor, one willing to conform to China's foreign policy objectives in return for security guarantees.



This result might disappoint some South Koreans, but others might be relieved to avoid the manifold uncertainties, difficulties, and costs of reunification. Moreover, a willingness to accept Chinese intervention could be used as a bargaining chip to encourage Beijing to toughen its stance toward Pyongyang.



While the desire for Korean reunification looks Quixotic, the objective of denuclearization deserves priority. Ending or at least limiting the security crisis in Northeast Asia would open possibilities for peaceful transformation of the Korean peninsula.



President Trump asked an important question: is reunification necessary? It is not, even from South Korea's perspective.



It isn't even obviously desirable, at least absent an unlikely transformation of the North. The ROK has come far; it does not want to sacrifice its success in a vain attempt to incorporate the North.



Maybe everything will work out. But maybe not. And the allies should be prepared. They have no higher duty than maintaining the peace. Reunification would be too dearly bought if it followed another Korean War.





Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.


By Kenneth Rogoff





CAMBRIDGE  As U.S. President Donald Trump's administration throws sharp elbows in trade negotiations and systematically rescinds regulations introduced by President Barack Obama, one casualty is likely to be efforts to fight the global obesity epidemic.

Left unchecked, rapidly rising obesity rates could slow or even reverse the dramatic gains in health and life expectancy that much of the world has enjoyed over the past few decades.

And by forcing its food culture on countries like Mexico and Canada, the United States is making the problem worse. One of the paradoxes of modern global capitalism is that whereas more than 800 million people in the world do not have enough to eat, an estimated 700 million people (including 100 million children) are obese.

Of course, the two are not necessarily directly related. A considerable proportion of world hunger occurs in countries suffering from domestic strife or severe government dysfunction. The obesity epidemic, however, has a much broader footprint, affecting advanced economies and most emerging markets.

Although there is some connection between obesity and poverty within countries, it is notable that obesity rates in rich countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada are among the world's highest. Recently, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimated that a stunning 40 percent of all Americans are obese (defined as having a body mass index of 30 or higher), a figure that includes 20.6 percent of adolescents (12-19 years old).

According to the CDC, the average weight of an American woman today is greater than the average weight of an American man in 1960 (166 pounds, or 75 kilos). Back in 1960, the average weight of an American woman was 140 pounds, while the average weight of an American man today is 195 pounds. (Over the same period, the average height of Americans increased by only one inch, or 2.5 centimeters.) This same dynamic is playing out worldwide, with obesity rates soaring in Europe, Latin America, and even in China.

Although it is difficult to gauge the long-run health consequences, there is abundant evidence that obesity contributes significantly to higher rates of type II diabetes, heart attacks, and certain types of cancer. The health costs are staggering, estimated to be close to $200 billion per year in the U.S. alone. And with rising childhood obesity rates worldwide portending significantly greater health problems in the future adult population, the costs are likely to rise considerably.

The causes of obesity are manifold and complex. Nevertheless, a growing body of evidence suggests that a culture emphasizing processed food and a generally sedentary lifestyle lies at the center of the problem. In emerging markets, rapid urbanization is another important factor as well as a desire to emulate Western lifestyles.

Many governments have launched initiatives to improve nutrition education. Unfortunately, industry advertising typically dwarfs these efforts, as do U.S. trade lobbyists' own efforts to push processed and fast food on the rest of the world. It is hard to ignore the fact that Mexico's adult obesity rate has soared since the adoption in 1993 of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

While there are many causes, post-NAFTA direct foreign investment in the processed food industry and a surge in advertising are important contributors. Mexican consumption of sugary beverages nearly tripled between 1993 and 2014, and a new tax on sugary drinks has muted demand only slightly since then. The other NAFTA partner, Canada, has similarly experienced a rise in obesity, partly because U.S. imports have led to a sharp decline in the price of fructose.

It is unfortunate that government regulators have been so slow to try to reverse these trends by, for example, helping to educate the public on the science of nutrition. And, for too long, most government anti-obesity education has focused on mechanically regulating calorie intake, without taking into account that different foods have dramatically different effects on appetite (as David Ludwig, a professor at Harvard Medical School, emphasizes in his excellent new book "Always Hungry").

Skeptics may point out that nutrition guidelines always seem to be morphing, with last year's sin food becoming this year's superfood, and vice versa. Though there is some truth to this, the fact is that nutrition research has made significant progress in recent decades.

The government has other tools at its disposal, besides education, for affecting people's eating habits. They can and should place greater restrictions on advertising to children, as the U.K., France, and several other countries have done; obesity in early years can lead to lifelong problems. Beyond that, Ludwig, Tufts University's Dariush Mozaffarian, and I have proposed instituting a tax on processed food, much the same way that tobacco is taxed. Proceeds from the tax could be used to subsidize healthier alternatives. It is perhaps fantasy to expect the current U.S. administration to consider any kind of antiobesity strategy while it is still busy dismantling Obama-era policies.

But that is all the more reason why countries entering new trade agreements with the U.S. (for example, the post-Brexit UK, or post-NAFTA Canada) must be wary of any provisions that tie their hands in the war against obesity.
What the National Assembly has been doing of late makes many people question whether the nation needs this kind of parliament that reminds them of such negative terms as corruption, partisan strife, absurd remarks by its members, selfish political interest and too many privileges, instead of legislation and serving as a check and balance to the administration.



The National Assembly Steering Committee once again angered the public by deciding early last month to raise lawmakers' monthly pay by 2.6 percent from 137,960.000 won (about $127,000) to 140,000,000 won ($134,321). The parliamentary action was belatedly made public last week.



A week ago, the Assembly also passed a bill to give each lawmaker one more assistant, up from the present seven, meaning an additional annual cost of 6.7 billion won ($6.164 million) for the employment of a secretary for each of the 300 lawmakers.



In comparison with gross domestic product (GDP) per capita among OECD member countries, the monthly pay of a South Korean lawmaker ranks third-highest after Japan and Italy. As for the "effectiveness of the parliament," South Korea is placed 26th among 27 countries surveyed, while Sweden employing one secretary per two lawmakers is ranked second.



It is still vivid in the people's memory that both the ruling and opposition parties competitively "promised" to cut lawmakers' monthly salary as respective election pledges last year. A candidate from the then-opposition party proposed a 30 percent reduction, while the People's Party promised a 25 percent cut. In particular, the then-ruling Saenuri Party, now the opposition Liberty Korea Party, pledged to return the annual pay of all its members if their election pledges were not kept. But after the election, nothing happened. Nobody kept their promises.



Electing the lawmakers last year, most of the voters had expected, half in doubt though, that the new four-year-term parliament would be different. Yet, "their excellencies" have already forgotten what they pledged to do to win votes. Without contradicting the people's deep-rooted negative notions, the lawmakers, irrespective of political affiliation, have once again demonstrated their trademark lust for personal and partisan political gain at the cost of the people's money. They are the very deep-rooted evils of the past President Moon Jae-in has been campaigning to annihilate in the name of national reform.














Michael Nyman created an original score for the 66-minute movie about a wash cycle. / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics



By Chyung Eun-ju



Samsung's 66-minute movie, "Washing Machine  The Movie," will be released on Tuesday in Leicester Square, London starring Samsung's washing machine, QuickDrive with music by one of Britain's most celebrated composers.



The "slow movie" will show a full wash cycle in one continuous shot to emphasize QuickDrive's efficiency  cutting the wash time in half "without compromising the cleaning performance."



The soundtrack was composed by Michael Nyman, who also wrote the soundtrack for the Oscar-winning movie "The Piano."





Trailer:





"In an audacious move, the poetic monotony of the spinning drum and sloshing water are the sole focus of 'Washing Machine' the movie," Samsung said in an online statement.



"The film chronicles the full cycle, moment by moment, of Samsung's QuickDrive washing machine, in this big screen addition to the canon of slow cinema treats. The production team captured the action with a single long shot trained on the machine to bring the full glory of the wash, rinse and spin to the screen."





The film will be released in Leicester Square, London on Tuesday. / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics
/ Korea Times



By Park Si-soo



There is no doubt that English is "the world language" with nearly 360 million people speaking it as their first language and many more as a second language.



French President Emmanuel Macron recently vowed to make French the most spoken language in the world.



French would "be the first langue of Africa" and "perhaps of the world," Macron told students in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou last week.

"The radiance, the attractiveness of French does not belong just to France," he said.



French is reportedly the fifth most-spoken language, with 274 million speakers worldwide.



The French leader did not elaborate on how his mother tongue would challenge English's long-established hegemony.



British newspaper The Independent said Macron's bold pledge was based on projections of rapid growth in the population of Africa, where French is commonly spoken due to French colonialism in the 19th century.



The French investment bank Natixis forecast a few years ago that the number of people speaking French could overtake English, Mandarin, and Spanish and become the most-spoken language by 2050.



Brexit is seen as another "golden" opportunity. The newspaper said Britain's departure from the European Union (EU) would give French a chance to be designated as the bloc's benchmark legal language, something France tried to do a decade ago but failed.



Internally, France is trying to make its territory more French-friendly. The French government periodically updates a blacklist of distasteful "Anglo-Saxonisms" such as "le weekend."



The law has even been deployed to defend French. In 2006 a French subsidiary of General Electric was fined 500,000 euros for publishing a software manual in English.




I have an associate who lost his job because of thc and was under prescription.



Sooooo many people are introduced to opiates via DR. Then cut off to end up on dope.



I was just talking to a friend of mine and we both agreed that if the dope market was as tainted as it is today one or both of us would most likely be dead from fentinal poisoning.



It is the most ridiculous, government created problem.



But lets make an issue over plants.



People are stupid.
PRESS RELEASE

China and Russia Reassert Strategic Ties at Shanghai Cooperation Organizatoin Meeting

Dec. 3, 2017 (EIRNS)Xinhua reports that Chinese Premier Li Keqing held a bilateral meeting on Dec. 1 on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, noting that Li told Medvedev that

"China and Russia should continue to promote cooperation in major strategic projects, further expand cooperation in science, technology and innovation, and tap cooperation potential between the two countries small and medium-sized enterprises and at local areas."

Xinhua further reports that Li also had bilaterals on the sidelines of the SCO meeting with the Kazakh, Pakistani and Belarusian Prime Ministers, who were also among the participants.

The SCO final communique addressed the international financial situation, Xinhua reports:

"Facing the unstable financial and raw materials markets, fluctuating foreign exchange rates and rising protectionism, the SCO members need to take coordinated actions and improve international monetary and financial system, according to the communique."

It also called for jointly fighting against "three evil forces"terrorism, extremism and separatismand to "augment cooperation in drug control and fighting cross-border crimes." It also called for members to "actively tap new potentials from the accession of India and Pakistan into the organization."
PRESS RELEASE

National Security Advisor McMaster Says War Threat from North Korea Is Increasing

Dec. 3, 2017 (EIRNS)U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said yesterday that the threat of war from North Korea is "increasing every day." He was responding to a question at the annual Reagan Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, about the threat "emerging" from the North Korean government.

Referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, McMaster said:

"Every time he conducts a missile launch and nuclear test, he gets better. And whether its a success or a failure isnt as important as understanding that over the years hes been learning from failures, improving and thereby increasing his threat to all of us."

McMaster stated that there are still ways to address the problem short of war, but "hes getting closer and closer and theres not much time left." Though the South Korean Defense Ministry and experts consulted by the news media concluded that the missile that North Korea tested on Nov. 28 could have a range of 8,000 miles, long enough to reach any point in the United States, an unnamed U.S. official told CNN yesterday that technical assessments of the launch are still ongoing. But, he said, "the North Koreans had problems with re-entry," implying that the dummy warhead broke up during the atmospheric re-entry phase of the flight.

Meanwhile, U.S.-South Korean military exercises are going ahead, full bore. The Korea Herald reported yesterday that six U.S. F-22 stealth fighters had arrived in South Korea for next weeks giant air exercise, which will also involve U.S. F-35s, F-16Cs, B-1B bombers and other aircraft, and F-15K, KF-16 and F-5 fighter jets from the South Korean side. The exercise will involve some 230 aircraft flying from eight airbases. A North Korea Foreign Ministry spokesman stated in response, according to Xinhua, that "The Trump team is begging for a nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean Peninsula."
Sabcat said: Who says the leftists wont use lists against the people????





Naw...its all.for your protection.





Gotta round up all of those violent, dirty potheads.



Ya know, that stuff makes the dark skinned rape white women too... Click to expand...

"We need grown-ups in charge in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought not to be minimized, that it's in fact a very real danger."



"I think one of [Obama's] great failures, it's obvious to me, is his lax treatment in comments on marijuana... It reverses 20 years almost of hostility to drugs that began really when Nancy Reagan started 'Just Say No.'"



"You can't have the President of the United States of America talking about marijuana like it is no different than taking a drink It is different It is already causing a disturbance in the states that have made it legal."



"Good people don't smoke marijuana." --- Jeff Sessions

It's ridiculous. The federal government has no constitutional right to criminalize drugs, including alcohol. The 18th Amendment proved that.But, AG Sessions must be giddy.Makes me want a shot of tequila. Alcohol, the good ol' boys drug........ B)
House of Cards will resume production in 2018 without Kevin Spacey, according to Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer of Netflix.

The sixth and final season of the popular series will feature a lead role for Robin Wright, who plays the wife of Spaceys character.

Production on the sixth season of House of Cards came to a halt Oct. 31 following bombshell sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey, who starred in the series for five seasons as politician Frank Underwood and also served as an executive producer. Spacey was officially suspended from the show early last month.

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The allegations include an accusation from actor Anthony Rapp, who claimed that Spacey made an unwanted sexual advance decades ago when Rapp was still a minor. Spacey has also been accused by eight current and former House of Cards employees of creating a toxic work environment with his behavior. The allegations include one former production assistant who said Spacey sexually assaulted him during one of the shows early seasons.

Sarandos said Monday at the UBS 45th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference that the final season of House of Cards will consist of eight episodes. Previous seasons consisted of 13 episodes each.

It remains unclear how Spaceys character will be written out of the show, which films in Maryland. Sarandos said that he was glad that Netflix was able to reach a deal for the 2,000 people in Baltimore who work on the series.

Media Rights Capital produces House of Cards and licenses the show to Netflix. The 200-member crew of the hit drama has been on a paid hiatus since early November as Netflix and Media Rights Capital tried to sort out the future of the show without its star.

House of Cards was Netflixs first hit series when it debuted in 2013. But the show is now regarded as past its prime. Creator and showrunner Beau Willimon left the series last year after four seasons.

Netflix had also worked with Spacey on a movie in which the actor stars as the late writer Gore Vidal. But the streaming service said last month after Spaceys sex scandal broke that it will no longer release the feature.

david.ng@latimes.com

Twitter: @DavidNgLAT
Former Fox News producer Rachel Witlieb Bernstein is suing Bill OReilly and Fox News for defamation and breach of contract, alleging they violated a settlement she reached with the fired cable anchor.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Bernstein said OReilly and Fox News broke their nondisclosure agreement in remarks to the New York Times. The April 1 story recounted how the anchor and network had paid $13 million in settlements over the years to her and other women who had complained that OReilly had abused or sexually harassed them during their employment.

Bernstein complained in 2002 that she was mistreated by OReilly when she worked for the network, and ultimately reached a settlement agreement with the network. Her story was among those included in the New York Times report, although her suit said she was not the source of the information.

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Her financial settlement with Fox News required both sides not to disparage the other and only say the matter had been resolved. Unlike the other settlements made by OReilly and Fox News, Bernsteins complaint did not involve sexual harassment.

Bernstein alleges that OReilly had defended the payouts in the New York Times and other publications by portraying her as a liar and politically motivated extortionist.

In the New York Times story, OReilly said he paid Bernstein and other women who complained because hes vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative publicity. In another widely published statement he said, the worst part of my job is being a target for those who would harm me and my employer, the Fox News Channel.

OReilly was fired on April 19 from Fox News after a 20-year run at the cable network. He was the networks top rated personality for most of that time.

The suit also said that Fox News parent company 21st Century Fox falsely said in the story that there had never been any harassment complaints made against OReilly on a company hot line.

Bernstein said there was no hot line in existence at the time of her employment.

Bernstein alleges in her suit that she complained repeatedly about OReillys mistreatment of her to the companys human resources department and top Fox News executives, but nothing was done. OReilly screamed at Bernstein in front of other employees, according to the New York Times.

This cynical falsehood about a non-existent hot line was made to bolster OReillys claim that the women who received settlements must have fabricated their claims or they would have complained, said Bernsteins attorney Nancy Erika Smith, whose Montclair, N.J., law firm Smith Mullin represented Gretchen Carlson in her suit against former Fox chief executive Roger Ailes.

Fox News did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

stephen.battaglio@latimes.com

Twitter: @SteveBattaglio
Mick Mulvaney is moving quickly to put his stamp on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency he has strongly criticized, even as he continues to spar with the deputy director over who is its lawful acting chief.

Mulvaney, the White House budget director whom President Trump appointed to the post Nov. 24, said he had already started installing some of his aides into bureau positions and was reviewing ongoing legal actions against financial firms. He also expressed support for House legislation introduced last week to repeal the bureaus recent regulations cracking down on payday and other short-term loans.

The moves come despite an expectation that Deputy Director Leandra English will continue her legal battle and file for a temporary injunction that would seek to oust Mulvaney from his office and reinstate her as acting chief.

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Aside from her presence here, which is a little strange, I wont lie to you, I think things are going extraordinarily smoothly and extraordinarily well, Mulvaney said Monday of English, who he said continues to report for work.

Mulvaney, who as budget director has held regular news briefings, told reporters that he expected to be in the job for five to seven months because a permanent director still must be nominated and then confirmed by the Senate.

Among his priorities in that time, he said, was acting on an inspector generals report this year that raised concerns about the bureaus data security efforts that scares me to death.

He said he was halting the collection of all data containing personally identifiable information about consumers as part of the bureaus oversight of banks and other firms until the security issue is buttoned down.

Were not going to start collecting data under my watch until we are absolutely confident that stuff isnt going to get hacked, Mulvaney said, adding that he believed that the bureaus previous leadership team had been taking the problem seriously.

It was a rare positive comment directed toward Richard Cordray, an appointee of President Obama who was the bureaus first director and clashed often with Mulvaney and other Republicans.

The disputes continued after Cordray stepped down Nov. 24. He promoted English, his chief of staff, to deputy director and said she would serve as acting director under a provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that created the bureau.

Trump then appointed Mulvaney under a different law, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998. English sued, saying she was lawfully entitled to the position. A federal judge ruled in Mulvaneys favor last week.

Englishs attorney indicated she would seek a preliminary injunction. The injunction request had not been filed as of Monday afternoon, but a conference is scheduled Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for Englishs attorney, Deepak Gupta, and Justice Department lawyers to work out a schedule for legal arguments.

English has been at the bureaus headquarters from time to time and also has been working from another bureau office a few blocks away, Mulvaney said. He has not met with her yet and doesnt expect to do so.

Its always a challenge when youre in a workplace with somebody who is suing  to sort of chat around the water cooler, so I have attempted to correspond with her via email, which I believe to be the appropriate manner, Mulvaney said.

He said hes sent English about half a dozen emails on two topics but has not received any replies.

One topic involved asking her to please cease holding yourself out as acting director, Mulvaney said. As recently as Thursday, English was sending emails through the bureau saying she was acting director and actually giving people instructions which were occasionally counter to mine, he said.

Those emails were confusing to employees and put them in a difficult situation, Mulvaney said. He also said he emailed her asking her to perform some deputy director duties.

Mulvaney said he was absolutely not considering firing English.

We need everybody doing their jobs, he said.

Gupta did not respond Monday to an email request for comment.

Mulvaney, who continues to serve as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said he was at the bureau all day Saturday even though his office was extremely hot. The thermostat only for that office was locked at 80 degrees and could not be changed without a security code that nobody had.

Mulvaney said it occurred to him that might have been a prank tied to his controversial appointment.

If it was, I appreciate that kind of deviousness, he said.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

Twitter: @JimPuzzanghera
Will the Los Angeles Philharmonic be Jonathon Heywards good luck charm?

Heyward, a 25-year-old American who is part of the L.A. Phils prestigious Dudamel Fellowship Program for conductors, could follow the likes of Lionel Bringuier and Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, who earned major orchestra appointments after stints with the ensemble.



For the record: An earlier version of this article implied that Jonathon Heyward was part of the L.A. Phils Dudamel Fellowship Program in years past. He is a fellow for 2017-18.

When illness forced Miguel Harth-Bedoya to withdraw this weekend from the L.A. Phils Bernstein 100" anniversary concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Heyward stepped in. This season as part of the Toyota Symphonies for Youth series, he led the orchestra in Glinkas Ruslan and Ludmila Overture and Stravinskys Firebird Suite, and both of those works substituted for Rachmaninoffs Symphony No. 3, originally on Harth-Bedoyas program.

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Jonathon Heyward conducts the L.A. Phil through Glinkas Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture at the Sunday afternoon performance at Disney Hall. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times )

More important, on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, Heyward conducted the premiere of an L.A. Phil commission, Tania Leons intimate Ser (Being), as well as Leonard Bernsteins tricky 1954 Serenade, a five-movement violin concerto inspired by Platos Symposium, featuring soloist Hilary Hahn.

With reportedly only two days to prepare for his subscription concert debut weekend, Heyward nevertheless strode to the podium with confidence, launching into Glinkas warhorse with whirlwind vitality and an exuberant boyish charm that was positively Bernsteinian. He then settled down for the Serenade, allowing Hahn, who performed the piece from memory, to conjure some of her warmest, most autumnal and, when appropriate, spikiest playing.

Throughout, Heyward and the L.A. Phil made the most of Bernsteins changing meters and jagged rhythms, capturing the bristling energy of the jazzy finale. The conductors rhythmic command provided enough contrast to keep Bernsteins intensely lyrical meditation on love from cloying. He knew when to lead and when to follow, effortlessly balancing his roles as a natural showman and sensitive collaborator in service to the music.

Hahns encore was a delightful account of the gigue from Bachs Partita No. 3.

Conductor Jonathon Heyward and violin soloist Hilary Hahn perform Serenade by composer Leonard Bernstein, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Sunday at Disney Hall. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times )

After intermission came Ser. Leons finely crafted and bird-sound-haunted piece engaged the coloristic resources of the L.A. Phil to lovely effect. Especially memorable were the chirping clarinet and fluttering flute figures, set off by zesty writing for the brasses. Heyward led the orchestra with delicacy and mature skill, lending Leons ethereal 10-minute piece a shapely character.

Leon, 74, came to New York in 1967 as a pianist from Cuba. She studied with Bernstein at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestras summer home, subsequently adding the jobs of composer and conductor to her resume. She became a founding member of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and its first music director. Though based in New York, she is no stranger to California: She conducted the premiere of her instrumental ensemble piece Palante at the 2016 Ojai Music Festival.

At a charming pre-concert talk, Leon spoke of musics power to cultivate empathy by creating a direct line to universally shared emotions  another Bernstein connection. A composer is like a shoemaker, she said, demystifying the aloof artist and suggesting the composers primary role as a craftsperson who engages others.

The concert concluded with an electrifying account of The Firebird, in its 1919 orchestration. Here, Heyward forged a seamless connection among the music, the orchestra and the audience. There were no gimmicks. Heyward used the score, conducting without a baton. Flexible phrasing allowed breathing room for the Dance of the Firebird and dreamy Berceuse, and the Infernal Dance was suitably primal, sometimes brutal, in its earthiness.

Bernstein was 25 in 1943 when he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic, substituting for an ailing Bruno Walter. Although its too early to tell where Heywards career might go  hes currently assistant conductor of the Halle Orchestra in Manchester, England  his L.A. Phil concert augurs great things to come.

For now, hes conducting another performance of The Firebird, this time set to dance and directed and choreographed by Kitty McNamee, on Dec. 9 at Disney Hall.

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The Sundance Film Festival will add a new section, dubbed indie episodic, to the upcoming 2018 edition. The festival has also announced its short-film program and several titles in the special events section.

Other festivals, such as the Toronto International Film Festival and the South by Southwest Film Festival, already have sections dedicated to episodic content. Sundance has previously explored screening episodic content, including Jane Campions miniseries Top of the Lake in 2013 and Ezra Edelmans multi-part documentary OJ: Made In America in 2016, both in their entirety. The Sundance Institute has also been running a program for episodic projects among their talent labs for the last few years.

I think weve always prided ourselves on embracing what change is happening in these different mediums for storytellers to work in, Trevor Groth, the festivals director of programming, said in a recent interview of the festivals embrace of episodic work. We felt that a lot of the storytellers who were working in that form were Sundance artists. And so we started showing more and more.

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Among the selections for the inaugural Indie Episodic section are America to Me, directed by Steve James; Cherries, directed by Diaz Jacobs; Franchesca, executive produced by Franchesca Ramsey and directed by Kaitlin Fontana; Halfway There, directed by Rick Rosenthal; High & Mighty, directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada; Im Poppy, directed by Titanic Sinclair; Leimert Park, directed by Mel Jones; Mr. Inbetween, directed by Nash Edgerton; The Passage, directed by Kitao Sakuri; The Show About the Show (Season 2), directed by Caveh Zahedi; This Close, directed by Andrew Ahn, and Tropical Cop Tales, directed by Jim Hosking.

Thats what I love about this episodic work too, its allowing [for] all of these different voices, said Groth.

Groth said the ultimate goal of the section was trying to create a bit of a market around this work like we did for film back in the late 80s, early 90s and you saw this whole industry grow up around it. I think the same thing will happen with the episodic work. Whether its connected to the film space or becomes its own industry, we dont know, but we want to help stimulate it as much as we can.

The festival has previously screened episodic work in the special events section, where this year Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman will world premiere The Trade, a docu-series exploring the opioid epidemic on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border.

Also screening as a special event will be The King, an ambitious look at American cultural, political and economic power via a 1963 Rolls-Royce once owned by Elvis Presley, directed by Eugene Jarecki and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh.

Pass Over, an adaptation of the play by Antoinette Nwandu directed by Spike Lee, will have its world premiere. As will Wild Wild Country, an examination of a utopian community in rural Oregon, directed by Chapman Way and Maclain Way.

Sundance also released the lineup of 62 short films that will play at this years festival.

Among the selection are Home Shopper, directed by Dev Patel; Maude, directed by Anna Margaret Hollyman; Painting With Joan, directed by Jack Henry Robbins; LaZercism, directed by Shaka King; War Paint, directed by Katrelle N. Kindred; Careful How You Go, directed by Emerald Fennell (and starring Fleabag lead Phoebe Waller-Bridge), and Cheer Up Baby, directed by Adinah Dancyger.

Among the animated shorts are A Brief Spark Bookended By Darkness, directed by Brent Green, The Burden, directed by Niki Lindroth von Bahr, and World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other Peoples Thoughts, directed by Don Hertzfeldt.

Mike Plante, senior programmer for the festival, said in a statement, We are always thrilled to discover new voices in filmmaking through the short-film program: they take risks in story and style you might not expect.

SIGN UP for the free Indie Focus movies newsletter 

Mark.Olsen@latimes.com

Follow on Twitter: @IndieFocus

ALSO

Sundance announces 2018 program as festival sits at cultural crossroads

L.A. Film Festival moves to crowded fall festival season for 2018
The page hadnt yet turned on December when Barneys New York rang in its holiday campaign in Beverly Hills on Thursday evening.

The event, at its flagship on Wilshire Boulevard, celebrated its collaboration with Simon and Nikolai Haas and the campaign Haas for the Holidays. It also marked Barneys first holiday launch event on the West Coast.

The soiree brought out a good chunk of industry movers and shakers, including Devendra Banhart, Tallulah Willis, Greg Chait, Justin Kern, Juan Carlos Obando and Sophia Amoruso to help Barneys creative director Matthew Mazzucca and the Haas brothers celebrate the holiday windows and broader campaign.

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The message is that life comes in waves, obviously, and not to fight them. Its setting a positive view and thats in line with everything else, Simon Haas said of the windows as he pointed to sayings leading up the staircase within the store, such as Love Heels All Wounds and Sun body Loves You.

The idea for the holidays, Simon continued about the work he and his brother did for the Barneys windows, was instead of being a snowy, Christmas theme is being what holidays are, which is about positivity and giving and sharing.

Haas Brothers, the Los Angeles art and design company the two started, is working on Design Miami, followed by a show at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami next year.

Barneys decked out the Beverly Hills out with different elements of the Haas Brothers campaign, from a photo booth area to an on-site screen-printing station for guests to create their own T-shirts.

So why the push now for the holidays on the West Coast?

Mazzuccas new role as creative director  the windows were his first as Barneys creative director, although not his first for the retailer  is a part of that answer. With Mazzucca in his new position, the goal is about making each store unique to the locale its in and, given the Haas brothers hail from L.A., doing something locally made sense, he added.

One thing that we always talked about is that theres not a really strong window culture [in Los Angeles] like there is in New York. There is a culture of windows, but you dont have pedestrian traffic like you do in New York so I looked at this as a great opportunity. Niki and Simon being from Los Angeles it makes a statement here and gives the store its own identity.

Additionally, with Barneys being a global business, doing more outside of New York makes sense, Mazzucca added.

I am adamant about doing this more. Its an international company so I really feel its superimportant to be that and not just focus on one thing, he said. So thats the plan. Its the first time Im in this leadership role to make that decision and now to be able to do that, Im really trying to push that.

Mazzucca is also thinking more about the Barneys digital component and how that can be strengthened, which he said will come through a combination of pieces including aesthetics on the site, functionality and content to give the web its own identity.

For me, I really want to focus on how do we take our digital channel and make it feel like a store. I feel like e-commerce can either be really simplified and become really very e-commerce driven or become super experiential. I think we do an excellent job, but if you could take all this energy, Mazzucca said, motioning to the festivities within the store, and put it into what the web site experience is, thats my next goal. And then also, instead of doing these one-off moments, how do we keep momentum throughout the year in different cities and really connect all the dots?
For more than a year, Uber Technologies Inc. concealed a massive hack that exposed the personal data of millions of drivers and riders, violating a California law that requires companies to promptly report such breaches, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer.

In October 2016, hackers stole the names, cellphone numbers and email addresses of more than 57 million riders across the world, as well as drivers license numbers for 600,000 Uber drivers in the United States. Uber disclosed the hack last month.

Feuer filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of California residents. The case will focus on Ubers failure to disclose the data breach to Ubers California drivers, he said.

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California law requires companies to report hacks in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay when some forms of personal data, including drivers license numbers, are compromised. The law is designed to help consumers fight identity theft.

Instead, Uber paid the hackers $100,000 to destroy the data, pressured them to sign nondisclosure agreements, and portrayed the ransom as a payment to test the vulnerabilities of the companys data security systems, according to the lawsuit.

Were taking action because we believe very strongly in the importance of protecting consumers, Feuer said Monday at a news conference at Los Angeles City Hall.

The consumer protection law is commonly invoked in the lawsuits that follow data breaches. In September, San Franciscos city attorney cited the law in a suit filed against Equifax, alleging the company failed to promptly disclose a hack that affected more than 15 million California residents.

Feuer said he doesnt yet know how many drivers in California were affected in Ubers lawsuit.

The lawsuit seeks $2,500 for each violation of the law. Any payments would be shared between the city and the county of Los Angeles, and would be spent on consumer protection efforts, Feuer said.

In a statement, an Uber spokesperson said the company is happy to address regulators questions, and is committed to changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make, and working hard to regain the trust of consumers.

Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi, who was hired in August to replace controversial founder Travis Kalanick, said in a blog post last month that he learned of the hack months after it occurred.

Ubers chief of security and another employee were fired for not revealing the hack, and the company has provided free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to affected drivers, Khosrowshahi said.

None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it, Khosrowshahi said. While I cant erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes.

The hack did not expose Uber riders trip histories, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, Social Security numbers or dates of birth, he said.

In January 2016, Uber paid a $20,000 fine to the New York attorney general for failing to promptly report a separate data breach in 2014. That previous disclosure, Mondays lawsuit said, makes the companys gross conduct ... even more alarming.

laura.nelson@latimes.com

Twitter: @laura_nelson
Hospital offers

nitrous oxide

during labor

Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis recently introduced a new pain management option for women in labor.

Women who deliver at the hospital have the option of using inhaled nitrous oxide during labor to help manage their pain. This option can be used instead of other pain management offered at Good Samaritan, such as intravenous pain medication or an epidural.

Nitrous oxide increases the release of hormones in the mothers brain, temporarily relieving pain. It leaves the body within a breath or two, so the gas does not accumulate in the mother or babys bodies.

There are no known effects on the baby and the most common side effects are nausea after prolonged use and unsteadiness. Anti-nausea medication is available if needed, and women using nitrous oxide are able to get out of bed with assistance five minutes after inhaling the gas.

Doctor joins

Corvallis Clinic

Marina Arbuck recently joined The Corvallis Clinics Internal Medicine Department in the Asbury Building, 3680 NW Samaritan Drive, Corvallis.

Arbuck comes to Corvallis from Advanced Family Medicine in Redmond, Washington, where she was a staff physician. She also was a staff physician at Multicare Health System in Auburn, Washington, from 2011 to 2015, and Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington, from 2008 to 2011. She was an infectious diseases consultant at Northwest Medical Specialties in Tacoma from 2004 to 2008 and at South Sound Inpatient Physicians, Auburn, from 2003 to 2004.

After leaving her native Russia with her 7-year-old son in 1995 and before passing medical boards to get into a U.S. residency program, Arbuck was a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital. She then did a year-long psychiatric residency.

Arbuck earned a medical degree from Yaroslavl Medical Academy, in Yaroslavl, Russia, in 1982. She completed an internal medicine residency at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis in 1999, and an infectious disease fellowship at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis in 2001.

Deputy takes

basic training

Deputy Sheriff Ethan Garrison of the Benton County Sheriffs Office graduated from the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Trainings basic training class last June 16 at the Oregon Public Safety Academy in Salem.

The DPSST provides training to more than 25,000 students each year throughout Oregon, and at the academy in Salem certifies qualified officers at various levels from basic through executive; certifies qualified instructors; and reviews and accredits training programs throughout the state based on standards established by the board.

Dermatologist

moves practice

Board-certified dermatologist and Mohs surgeon Todd L. Knapp recently moved his practice from Eugene to Albany and Corvallis.

Knapp has joined Silver Falls Dermatology and now will see patients only at Silver Falls Albany and Corvallis offices.

Knapp graduated from Brigham Young University, then attended medical school at the University of Utah. Knapp completed his dermatology residency at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Knapp was accepted to a cutaneous oncology and reconstructive surgery fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his training in Mohs micrographic, dermatologic and laser surgery. He is board certified in dermatology and a member of the American College of Mohs Micrographic Surgery and Cutaneous Oncology.

Silver Falls Dermatology is at 2358 NW Kings Blvd., Suite 100, in Corvallis; and 1390 Waverly Drive SE in Albany. Knapps schedule is open for skin cancer appointments at both locations. Appointments can be made at 541-967-8385.

Law firm wins

leader award

The Reynolds Law Firm in Corvallis has received the 2017 Oregon Women Lawyers Workplace Leader Award.

The firm won the award due to leaderships commitment to supporting projects and policies that employees say brings them personal fulfillment. The Honorable Darleen Ortega of the Oregon Court of Appeals presented the award to the firm at a reception on Oct. 27 in Portland.

The OWLS Workplace Leader Award recognizes an Oregon legal employer making innovative and effective efforts to promote one or more of the following values: a healthy balance between work and life; acquiring and maintaining a diverse workforce with diverse leadership; and maximizing opportunities for women and minorities to succeed in the workplace and advance to positions of influence and leadership. The award is not given every year.

Under the Reynolds Law Firms Paid Pro Bono requirement, work done pro bono by attorneys counts toward billable hour requirements. That means attorneys can do meaningful work in the community without having to personally absorb the financial cost of doing so. Ten percent of their work is done pro bono.
Shashi Kapoor, a leading Bollywood actor and producer from the 1970s and 80s who went on to appear in American and British films, has died after a long illness. He was 79.

Kapoor died Monday at a Mumbai hospital, where he was being treated for a kidney ailment, said Randhir Kapoor, a family member.

Kapoor acted in more than 100 Hindi films and was also a key theater personality. He appeared as well in British and American movies produced by Merchant Ivory productions, run by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory.

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His English-language movies included The Householder in 1963, Shakespeare Wallah in 1965, Bombay Talkie in 1970 and Heat and Dust, in which he co-starred with his wife, British actress Jennifer Kendal, in 1982.

Some of his popular Bollywood films were Deewar (Wall), Kabhi Kabhie (Sometimes), 'Namak Hala (Loyal Servant) and Kaala Pathar (Black Rock). He co-starred with Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan in each.

Very sad to hear the news that iconic Bollywood actor and producer Shashi Kapoor has died. His contribution to the Hindi film industry will forever be remembered across the world. pic.twitter.com/Uv22UqiP0s  Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) December 4, 2017

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Kapoors versatility could be seen in his movies as well as in the theater, which he promoted with great passion. His brilliant acting will be remembered for generations to come, he said.

Kapoor was a member of a family dynasty in the Bollywood film industry. He was the youngest son of Prithviraj Kapoor, a veteran of Bollywood and the theater.

Shashi Kapoor began acting at age 4 in plays produced and directed by his father. He started in films as a child actor in the late 1940s. He made his debut as a leading actor in movies in 1961.

He is survived by two sons and a daughter. His wife Kendal died in 1984.
President Trumps removal of federal protections from huge portions of two national monuments in southern Utah on Monday threatens to undercut the wilderness-conservation legacies of his Democratic predecessors Presidents Obama and Clinton.

Whether Trump has the legal authority to withdraw 1.1 million acres of land from Bears Ears National Monument and 800,000 acres from nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante will soon be tested in court.

Supporters of the monuments, which cover vast stretches of Utahs scenic red-rock country, are preparing lawsuits to block Trump from shrinking them.

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But Trumps drive to open wilderness to oil, gas, coal and mineral extraction, among other things, is already one of his most significant environmental legacies, along with his wholesale scrapping of Obama policies to address climate change.

How can a president unilaterally shrink a national monument?

The 1906 Antiquities Act empowers the president to establish national monuments by proclamation to protect landmarks and objects of historic or scientific interest. (Creation of a national park requires congressional approval.)

The naming of national monuments has become one of the most visible ways for presidents to establish a permanent legacy. Obama created Bears Ears in December 2016, a few weeks before the end of his presidency. Clinton named Grand Staircase-Escalante as a national monument in September 1996, seven weeks before his reelection.

The Antiquities Act says nothing about whether presidents have the power to revoke national monument designations of their predecessors.

Previous presidents have reduced the size of national monuments, but never on the scale that Trump did in Utah, and courts have never ruled on the legality of those cuts.

How much land did Trump withdraw from national monuments in Utah?

Bears Ears was 1.35 million acres. Trump sliced it into two national monuments totaling just under 229,000 acres.

Grand Staircase-Escalante was 1.9 million acres. Trump split it into three national monuments totaling just over 1 million acres.

Is it just scenic lands that could now be developed?

No. Much of the mesas, canyons and mountains of Bears Ears is sacred to Native American tribes, including the Navajo, Zuni, Ute Mountain and Hopi. Its archaeological treasures include rock art, ancient cliff dwellings and ceremonial sites.

Grand Staircase-Escalante is one of the worlds premier sites for paleontological discoveries. More than two dozen new species of dinosaurs have been discovered there in the 21 years since Clinton preserved it as a national monument.

Fossils preserved from the Late Cretaceous period, from 100 million to 66 million years ago, have given scientists an unparalleled view of life on Earth in an era when the climate was hotter, the air contained a lot more carbon dioxide and the sea level was extremely high.

Do the boundary changes jeopardize any of the research?

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, a nonpartisan group of scientists, says the removal of national monument protections is a serious setback.

Trumps claim that the new boundaries protect the resources named in the original proclamations is simply untrue, said P. David Polly, an Indiana University professor who serves as the groups president.

Almost all of the Triassic period, the time when dinosaurs originated, has been purged from Grand Staircase-Escalante, as have the unique Cretaceous mammals and the amazing marine reptiles from the Tropic Shale that justified founding the monument in 1996.

The shrinking of Bears Ears will cause similar damage to paleontology, he said.

Is Trump correct that citizens of Utah opposed the national monuments?

While many residents of Utah have long opposed federal control of public lands, opinion on the national monuments is split. Both monuments are major tourist attractions, stimulating the economy of towns nearby.

But political leaders in Utah have been nearly unanimous in opposing the national monuments, and they agree with Trump that some of his predecessors have abused their powers under the Antiquities Act.

Thank you for standing with the people of Utah, Republican Sen. Mike Lee told Trump at the presidents announcement ceremony Monday in Salt Lake City.

A coal mine was going to open in Grand Staircase-Escalante when Clintons designation of the national monument put a stop to the project.

Rob Bishop, a Republican congressman from Utah, has proposed sharply curtailing the power of presidents to establish national monuments.



michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Twitter: @finneganLAT

ALSO:

Trump taking unprecedented action to revoke national monument designations in West

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Trumps environmental rollbacks hit California hard, despite Sacramentos resistance
If youre a normal person who pays attention to politics, youd be forgiven for thinking that Washington cant decide whether deficits are bad or not. Well, I have one easy trick that will help you make sense of it all.

In Washington, when you hear people complain that this or that piece of legislation will explode the deficit, what they are really telling you is that they dont like the legislation.

Its really that simple. Good legislation, like good food, movies, novels and pretty much everything else except for dogs (theyre all good) is in the eye of the beholder. A politician or partisan who thinks a proposal is worth doing will think its worth doing even if it increases the deficit. If he thinks a proposal is bad, he might argue that its bad on the merits. But you can be sure that if it also increases the deficit, he will cite this fact as a major reason why it is bad.

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That is the role deficits  and the national debt  play in our politics. Anti-debt talk serves as dye-marker for some more fundamental objection.

The ultimate problem is that everyone says they care about the deficit, but few people care about it enough.

Almost everyone thinks deficits are bad in the abstract, but that their badness should only be a problem for the other side. In 2008, for example, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama said that the $5 trillion in debt rung up under George W. Bush was unpatriotic. But his actual complaint wasnt about the debt but what that money was spent on  the Iraq war and tax cuts.

Under Obama, the national debt soared from $11 trillion to just under $20 trillion, but that deficit spending was justifiable, according to Democrats, because it went to combating the financial crisis and paying for various other domestic programs.

The source of the apparent inconsistency isnt simply partisan hypocrisy (though thats a factor as well), but a good-faith ideological disagreement.

As a matter of economic policy, conservatives believe that the people themselves are better at spending their money than the government. Cutting taxes and regulations drives economic growth. Liberals, meanwhile, believe that the government is the prime, or at least an indispensable, driver of economic growth.

This is why liberals tend to talk about spending on everything from infrastructure to education as an investment. The Obama stimulus was sold as an investment that would pay huge dividends, thanks in part to Keynesian multipliers  the idea that every dollar of government spending results in more than a dollar in economic growth. Obamacare, we were told, would reduce the deficit by cutting healthcare spending and improving economic growth.

Conservatives make similar arguments about tax cuts. Over the weekend, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News that the tax cuts would yield more than enough economic growth to make up for the deficit the bill creates on paper.

On the philosophical side, theres an even starker conflict of visions. Liberals tend to start from the assumption that the government is entitled to as much revenue as it needs, and so tax cuts amount to giving people money.

Earlier this year, Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed a budget that would add at least $21 trillion to the debt over a decade. But when the Senate passed the GOP tax bill, he tweeted, Historians will look back on Dec. 1, 2017 and conclude this was one of the great robberies in US history because Republicans are looting the Treasury. For Sanders, letting people keep more of their own money is theft  because its really the governments money.

Conservatives start from the assumption, on the other hand, that money belongs to the people and businesses who earn it. Letting people and businesses keep more of their money isnt a handout or giveaway, never mind a robbery: Its fairness.

The ultimate problem is that everyone says they care about the deficit, but few people care about it enough. Democrats think spending is more important than the deficit and Republicans think cutting taxes is more important. And thats why the national debt is more than $20 trillion, and growing.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of David Mullins and Charlie Craig, a couple turned away by Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., when they tried to buy a wedding cake.

The two werent turned away because they couldnt afford the cake. They werent turned away because they were rude. They were turned away because they are gay.

The Colorado courts and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission found that the bakerys actions violated the states law barring discrimination. In the high court, the bakery argues that the lower courts findings violate its rights to both religious freedom and free speech.

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Ive watched this argument tangle a lot of good people in knots. But it shouldnt.

Discrimination by a business should not be protected simply because the refusal is of a service that involves speech or expression.

The bakerys argument is among the most radical to come before the Supreme Court in recent years. When you scratch below the surface, the case poses the following question: Is there a constitutional right to discriminate?

The bakery argues that there is, and that the Constitution should exempt it from state laws requiring that businesses not discriminate when serving their customers. In an Orwellian twist, the Department of Justice  the very body charged with enforcing the countrys anti-discrimination laws  agreed with the bakery in a friend-of-the-court brief.

Specifically, the bakery argues that it should be allowed to refuse service to people if doing so runs contrary to the religious beliefs of its owners. That should give us pause.

In the 1960s, Piggie Park, a small chain of barbecue restaurants in South Carolina, said that its owners freedom of religion would be violated if it were held responsible for disregarding the Civil Rights Act when it refused to serve black patrons.

In 1983, Goldsboro Christian Schools of Goldsboro, N.C., argued it had a religious right to refuse black students. In the same case, Bob Jones University of Greenville, S.C., argued it had a right to deny admission to students who engaged in, or advocated for, interracial dating.

As recently as 1990, Roanoke Valley Christian Schools in Virginia argued that it had a right to pay women less because their faith taught that men should be heads of households.

The courts rejected all of those arguments. They understood that religious liberty does not translate into a right to discriminate. If the Supreme Court now accepts the cake shops religion argument, the decision would have far-reaching consequences. Religious liberty could become a way out of anti-discrimination law.

The bakery is also arguing that freedom of speech protects its refusal to serve Mullins and Craig. According to its argument, the 1st Amendment protects its discriminatory conduct because the product it sells is artistic and expressive. Any business engaged in artistic expression can refuse service, they say, not just those motivated by religious beliefs.

But Colorados anti-discrimination law pertains to the refusal of service, not the artistry of cakes. It does not tell the bakery how to design its baked goods. It does not compel the bakery or any other business that opens its doors to the public to make a particular product at all. It simply requires that, once a business open to the public chooses to offer a product or service, it cannot refuse to sell that product or service to a customer based on identity.

Consider the question from a different angle. What if, instead of turning the couple away, the bakery posted a sign that said, Wedding cakes for heterosexuals only? Those are words, as were whites only and men only need apply. Though the Constitution protects speech, it does not protect this speech, because it communicates and contains an act of discrimination.

In the bakerys argument, the cake is the expression, and the Constitution protects its refusal of service because the cake is expressive. Should that act of discrimination be protected simply because the refused service was artistic and expressive? By this logic, the Constitution could protect the right of a hairdresser who refuses to cut the hair of Muslims or a hotel that wont host an interfaith wedding.

Just as speech by a business open to the public is not protected when it communicates discrimination  we dont service your kind here  discrimination by a business should not be protected simply because the refusal is of a service that involves speech or expression.

If the Constitution exempts the bakery from the laws bar on discrimination  either because the discrimination is motivated by religion or because it is attached to an expressive service  it would mean that the Constitution protects discrimination. Period.

Today, there is no constitutional right to discriminate. Lets hope the Supreme Court keeps it that way.

Melling is a deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
To the editor: John Dowd, President Trumps lawyer, is taking responsibility for sending a tweet that said Trump fired his former national security advisor Michael Flynn because he lied to the FBI. (Trump says there was no collusion with Russia  and cites a new reason for why he fired Flynn, Dec. 2)

If Trump wrote that tweet, it would show that he knew in February that Flynn had committed a felony and that he did nothing about it.

Ordinarily, the attorney-client privilege would protect inquiries into communications between a client (Trump) and his lawyer (Dowd). But now Dowd says he sent the tweet on his own, without communicating with Trump.

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That constitutes a waiver of the attorney-client privilege under settled law. It would allow special counsel Robert Mueller to question both Dowd and Trump on their communications about the tweet.

David M. Dorsen, Washington

The writer was the assistant chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee.

..

To the editor: What will it take for Congress to come to the conclusion that Trump is a crook? He now includes Flynns lying to the FBI as a reason he fired him, yet he fired James Comey when the then-FBI director refused the presidents alleged request to [leave] Flynn [alone].

Can any right-thinking American deny that this is an attempt to obstruct justice? And can anyone believe Trump when he says it is a shame that Flynn lied because he had nothing to hide?

As a retired 36-year criminal defense attorney, I can say with confidence that nobody lies unless he has something to hide. Some very bad people throughout history have amassed power by convincing people that their illegal acts are legal and their detractors are liars.

Alan Abajian, Alta Loma

..

To the editor: Reading your reports about the content of Flynns conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, I cant help but think this looks like much ado about nothing.

Yes, lying to FBI agents about whether the conversation took place was wrong. But what was wrong about the subject of the conversations? I dont see any harm to our country in Flynn having had discussions with the Russian ambassador.

The dislike of the present administration should not interfere with a fair investigation.

Vladimir Bogorad, Chatsworth

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook.
The Supreme Court gave President Trump a significant victory Monday, ruling he may put his full travel ban into effect while legal appeals are being weighed in lower courts.

The decision, with only two dissents, strongly suggests the justices believe the current version of Trumps broad travel ban does not exceed his powers under the immigration laws and does not reflect unconstitutional religious discrimination against Muslims.

The justices issued an unsigned order Monday granting the administrations request for a stay that would block lower-court decisions that prevented full enforcement of the ban. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would deny the request but did not spell out their reasons.

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The court did not issue an opinion with the order, but usually the justices do not intervene in pending cases unless they believe the lower courts have gone wrong.

The decision vindicates a rather bold procedural move by the Justice Department and Trumps solicitor general, Noel Francisco.

In a statement, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions called the courts decision a substantial victory for the safety and security of the American people.

The Constitution gives the president the responsibility and power to protect this country from all threats foreign and domestic, and this order remains vital to accomplishing those goals, he said.

Two weeks ago, the solicitor general filed an emergency plea with the high court urging the justices to bypass two lower courts that were weighing legal challenges to the third version of Trumps travel order, which was issued on Sept. 24.

The third version of the travel ban blocks visitors and immigrants from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and North Korea. The addition of North Korea is mostly symbolic, since the government did not expect to see visitors arriving from that country. It also limits travel for some officials from Venezuela.

Administration officials described the Sept. 24 order as measured and reasonable. No existing visas will be revoked, and people currently allowed to travel to the U.S. for other reasons will not affected, they said. The court was advised the countries were put on the watch list only after the administration concluded they lacked the identity management systems that would permit U.S. officials to spot would-be travelers who presented a heightened risk.

By contrast, civil libertarians and immigrants rights advocates portrayed the third travel order as more of the same: an unwarranted ban that targeted Muslims. They said U.S. officials had ample authority to deny entry to foreigners who posed a security risk. They also pointed out the administration has had nearly a year to improve and tighten its vetting procedures.

In recent weeks, the third order had gone into partial effect based on a middle-course position the Supreme Court set out in late June. Then, ruling on an earlier version of the travel order, the justices said the administration could refuse entry for visitors and immigrants from several Muslim nations, but not to families, travelers and others who had a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with person or entity in the United States.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in California, and a federal judge in Maryland adopted that standard and applied it to Trumps latest order. They agreed the ban could go into effect in part, but not against those who had close personal or professional ties to a person or an entity in the United States. The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Va., and the 9th Circuit are scheduled to hear arguments this week on whether Trumps latest order discriminated based on nationality in violation of a 1965 law. The appeals courts are also considering claims that the ban reflected unconstitutional bias against Muslims.

Trumps lawyers were not satisfied with that partial win in the appeals courts. They filed an emergency appeal on Nov. 20 contending that allowing the ban to go into only partial effect will cause ongoing irreparable harm to the government and the public. They predicted the court would eventually uphold the order so the justices should permit the order to go into full effect without further delay.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the state of Hawaii filed lengthy responses urging the court to maintain the status quo while the legal claims are heard and decided.

Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLUs Immigrants Rights Project, said its unfortunate that the full ban can move forward now, but this order does not address the merits of our claims. We will be arguing Friday in the 4th Circuit that the ban should ultimately be struck down.

david.savage@latimes.com

Twitter: DavidGSavage

UPDATES:

3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction from Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and others and to add additional background.

The article was first published at 1:40 p.m.
At a crucial juncture in special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs wide-ranging Russia investigation, President Trump embarked on a risky gambit on Sunday, going on record to directly dispute his former FBI chiefs sworn contention that the president had sought to derail an investigation into fired national security advisor Michael Flynn.

The imbroglio  set off, not surprisingly, by a presidential tweet  comes on the heels of Flynns guilty plea to charges of having lied to the FBI in connection with conversations with Russias then-ambassador to Washington during the presidential transition.

Fridays dramatic development was met with initial silence from Trump, then with a deluge of weekend tweets in which he muddied the waters over his reasons for firing Flynn, excoriated the Justice Department and the FBI, renewed his attacks on rival Hillary Clinton and seemingly questioned the impartiality of Muellers probe. He also explicitly contested statements by James B. Comey, who was fired seven months ago, regarding events before his dismissal.

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Shortly after 6 a.m. EST Sunday, the president tweeted, I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn, adding: Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!

Sundays statement by Trump on Twitter was largely in line with his previous disparagement of Comey, whose truthfulness and even mental stability have been questioned by the president in the past.

Last month, the president told reporters traveling with him in Asia that Comey was a liar and a leaker. In May, the day after firing the FBI director  an action that set in motion Muellers appointment as special counsel  the president told senior Russian officials in an Oval Office meeting that Comey was a crazy  a real nut job, according to news reports based on transcripts of the encounter.

But the specificity and timing of the presidents public denial of Comeys contention that Trump asked him to back off on investigating Flynn took on added significance with news that the former national security advisor is now cooperating with Muellers investigation.

Within hours of Trumps tweet, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, flatly declared: I believe FBI Director Comey.

Speaking on CNNs State of the Union, Warner said the fired FBI chief was very credible in his testimony when Comey went before the committee in June. The ex-FBI director has said he kept contemporaneous notes of an encounter in which Trump asked if he could ease off Flynn, characterizing the fired national security advisor as a good guy.

Warner said he expected that Flynn being charged with only a single count of lying suggested that the former advisor had many more stories  to tell about the Trump campaign and transition.

The response to major developments in the Mueller investigation has often diverged along partisan lines. But Flynns guilty plea, which for the first time takes the inquiry inside the White House, drew cautionary language from some GOP lawmakers.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), also interviewed on CNN, said he agreed with those who said Trump should not pardon Flynn.

We have to have a way to restore confidence of the American people in their elected officials and the leaders of this country, he told journalist Jake Tapper. One way you do that is by holding those folks who are  lying to the FBI, you hold those folks accountable.

Against what would otherwise have been the triumphal backdrop of Trumps first major legislative victory, Senate approval of a major GOP tax overhaul plan, the current national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, was asked whether interactions with key allies were being colored by uncertainty over the fate of Trumps presidency due to the Mueller investigation.

I dont think our allies need any reassurance, McMaster said on Fox News Sunday, adding: What were doing is continuing to work with them on all the key challenges we face today, including North Korea and the fight against Islamic State.

McMaster declined to characterize any personal feelings over his predecessor, a military man like himself, having admitted to lying to the FBI.

My thoughts are on what we have to do for the country, he said. I dont really have a lot of spare time to think about other topics, other than our greatest national security challenges.

Trumps senior aides have acknowledged their inability to rein him in on Twitter, but the presidents penchant for off-the-cuff observations could have serious implications for his own legal standing in the Mueller investigation.

On Saturday night, Trump tweeted that he had been forced to fire Flynn because the former Army lieutenant general had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, then-Russias envoy to the U.S. But Trump also blamed the firing on Flynn having lied to the FBI, which the White House had not previously acknowledged knowing at that time. One of Trumps frequent critics, former Office of Government Ethics head Walter Shaub, seized on Trumps tweet, asking in his own tweet, Are you ADMITTING you knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when you asked Comey to back off Flynn?

A number of legal experts said such an admission by Trump could expose him to accusations of obstructing justice.

Seeking to defuse the controversy, the presidents personal lawyer, John Dowd, told ABC News that he drafted the tweet on Flynns dismissal, characterizing it as sloppy.

The apparent walking back of Trumps statement did not satisfy some Democrats. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., interviewed Sunday on NBCs Meet the Press, said what were beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice in connection with the firing of Comey and other actions.

In a series of tweets Sunday, Trump also sought to cast doubt on the impartiality of Muellers investigation, citing reports that FBI agent Peter Strzok had been removed from the special counsels team after an internal investigation of text messages he reportedly wrote that were interpreted as being critical of Trump. Muellers office confirmed that he had been reassigned in late July.

Trump declared that the FBIs reputation was in Tatters, worst in History! in the wake of Comeys tenure. Fear not, he wrote. We will bring it back to greatness.

In response Sunday, Comey, who in recent days has been tweeting famous quotations about truth and justice, offered a quote from his own Senate testimony earlier this year. I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.

The presidents tweets also included voicing approval for a decision by ABC News to suspend journalist Brian Ross for erroneously reporting that Trump directed contacts with the Russians as a candidate, not as president-elect.

Times staff writer Brian Bennett in Washington contributed to this report.

laura.king@latimes.com

Twitter: @laurakingLAT

ALSO

In series of tweets, Trump targets FBI and the agent reassigned from role in Mueller probe

Trump says there was no collusion with Russia  and cites a new reason for why he fired Flynn

Flynn guilty plea brings Mueller investigation directly into the White House

As he investigates Trumps aides, Robert Muellers record shows surprising flaws

UPDATES:

3:05 p.m.: This article was updated with Comeys tweet.

This article was originally published at 12:10 p.m.
President Trump on Monday fully endorsed Roy Moore, acting to back the Alabama Senate candidate after conversations with his former strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who has advocated Moores candidacy.

Trumps early morning tweets marked his first all-out endorsement of Moore, who has been accused of making unwanted sexual advances on teenage girls. They came after Republican leaders began to back away in recent days from previous threats to expel Moore if he were to win the Dec. 12 election.

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017

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Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders...& so much more. Look at your 401-ks since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017

Trump called Moore on Monday morning.

Go get em, Roy! Trump told Moore, according to a description of the phone call that Moore posted on Twitter.

Just got off the phone with President Trump who offered his full support and said he needs a fighter to help him in the US Senate, Moore wrote.

Trumps strong support came after a couple of polls showed Moore starting to reestablish a lead over Democrat Doug Jones, providing an argument to Moores backers that Trumps support could make the difference in the race.

A Washington Post poll released Saturday, however, showed the race near a dead heat.

Overall, polling by several organizations has shown the race close despite Alabamas heavy Republican tilt. In addition to the usual margin of error in polls, the outcome is even harder to predict because of the difficulty in knowing who will turn out to vote in a special election held a couple of weeks before Christmas that has been roiled by the accusations against Moore.

Some advisors to the president were concerned that if Trump didnt come out more forcefully in favor of Moore, the former Alabama state judge could lose, according to people familiar with the conversations who spoke anonymously to comment on the internal discussions.

The question of whether to back Moore continues to split Republicans. A few hours after Trumps tweets, Mitt Romney, the Republicans 2012 presidential candidate, repeated his opposition to the Alabamian.

Moores election would be a stain on the GOP and the nation, he wrote on Twitter. No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity.

Romney has been pondering a possible Senate race in Utah if the states senior senator, Orrin Hatch, retires. Trump, visiting Utah on Monday, publicly asked Hatch not to retire.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) have previously called on Moore to step aside, saying they believe the allegations. Some Republican senators said last month that if Moore were to win the election, they would move to expel him.

But in a sign that the GOP is warming to the candidate, the Republican National Committee revealed Monday night that it would resume financial support of Moore.

McConnell said Sunday on ABC News that the decision, at least for now, should be left to Alabama voters. Also, in an interview on CBS, McConnell would not commit to supporting an ethics investigation into the allegations should Moore win.

We will swear in whoever is elected and see where we are at that particular point, he said.

Bannon, by contrast, has supported Moore consistently and has argued the candidate is popular with Trumps most ardent supporters. He recently talked with Trump about putting the presidents full weight behind Moore, according to a person close to the White House who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

In November, Trump pointed to Moores denials of the allegations from several decades ago and spoke against voting for Jones, but did not explicitly endorse Moore.

Trump is not campaigning for Moore directly, but is scheduled to hold a rally on Friday in the Florida Panhandle, which shares a media market with Mobile, Ala. The special election is to fill the seat of Jeff Sessions, who is now U.S. attorney general.

Moore has denied the allegations and recently denied knowing any of the women who had described Moores actions to reporters. One woman who told the Washington Post that she dated Moore when she was 17 showed the Post a handwritten note Moore had given to her at the time that she recently found in a scrapbook, according to an article published Monday.

Some Republican strategists fear that if Moore is elected, GOP candidates across the country will be saddled with his reputation. Indeed, Democrats in Pennsylvania are already bringing up Moores name in an effort to fend off a push by Republican Rep. Lou Barletta to defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.

The people of Pennsylvania deserve to know if Congressman Barletta believes Moores accusers and if he wants to serve in the Senate alongside a man accused of child molestation, Pennsylvania Democratic Party spokesman Max Steele said in a statement. Silence is not an option.

On the ground in Alabama, where voters rarely see Democratic challengers pull close to Republicans, Moore called the atmosphere intense, writing in a fundraising appeal to supporters that left-wing foot soldiers  aka community organizers  are descending on Alabama to volunteer for Doug Jones and create chaos and trouble on the ground at my events.

Jones campaign claims to have launched the most robust get-out-the-vote program Alabama has seen in a generation with volunteers knocking on more than 100,000 doors and making some 800,000 phone calls in the last month and a half.

Trump was late to come to Moores side. During the Republican primary, the president supported Luther Strange, a former Alabama state attorney general and an early supporter of Trumps candidacy for president. Strange was also a favorite of McConnells.

But Trumps support for Big Luther, as the president called him, put him at odds with Bannon, who began actively campaigning for Moore after leaving the White House in August. Bannon, who has returned to running the conservative website Breitbart News, was drawn to Moores unapologetic conservative stances and willingness to buck the GOP establishment.

Moore defeated Strange in the primary in September, despite Trumps appearances at Stranges side, showing there was a limit to Trumps ability to influence the votes of even his most ardent supporters.

brian.bennett@latimes.com

noah.bierman@latimes.com

ALSO:

Russia investigation sheds new light on Jared Kushners involvement with Moscow

Supreme Court may be about to legalize sports betting in states that want it

California assemblyman accused of forcing lobbyist into bathroom and masturbating

UPDATES:

3:35 p.m.: This article was updated with a comment from Mitt Romney and additional details.

This article was originally published at 10:35 a.m.
Dr. Mike Huntington will speak in support of Ballot Measure 101 at the monthly general meeting of the Linn County Democrats on Thursday, Dec. 7, in the Albany Public Library Meeting Room, 2450 14th Ave. S.E.

The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. A social time with light refreshments begins at 6.

Huntington is a graduate of Oregon State University and the University of Oregon Medical School, now Oregon Health Sciences University. He was an Army flight surgeon in Vietnam in 1969.

He was a radiation oncologist for 35 years, and was medical director of the Radiation Oncology Department at Samaritan Regional Cancer Center in Corvallis from 1984-2006.

Since his retirement in 2006, he has joined with physicians and other activists in Corvallis and Oregon to engage colleagues and the public in discussions about the need for healthcare reform.

For more information, contact Linn County Democrats Co-chair Graham Kislingbury, 541-974-2075.
Residents of Echo Park, Silver Lake, Chinatown, Lincoln Heights and City Terrace will have a new Assemblymember after Tuesdays special election: Wendy Carrillo or Luis Lopez.

The two Democrats emerged from 13 candidates who sought to replace Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez in the October special election. Carrillo claimed 22.16% of the vote, and Lopez came in with 18.59% in an low-turnout affair in which just 10% of the roughly 223,000 registered voters cast ballots.

Tuesdays decision will close out the chain of special elections that was triggered when U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer announced her retirement from politics more than two years ago.

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Last fall, Kamala Harris won Boxers seat in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles Rep. Xavier Becerra was appointed fill out Harris term as state attorney general. Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez in turn won the special election for Becerras seat in Congress. Theyre all Democrats.

Carrillo and Lopez are now in the final stages of getting out the vote in Assembly District 51, hoping to boost what is expected to be another election with meager voter turnout.

Wendy Carrillo waves a flag at a 2013 May Day march in downtown Los Angeles. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times )

Since the special election, Carrillos campaign has gathered a string of new endorsements and benefited from over $500,000 in outside spending from independent expenditure committees largely funded by labor unions. She also has gotten support to the tune of $38,000 from a committee funded by charter school proponents.

Carrillo, a former local radio host and communications manager for a Service Employees International Union affiliate, also is now armed with endorsements from the state Democratic Party, Emilys List, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the Democratic Legislative Womens Caucus. Gomez endorsed Carrillo when she took the top spot in the special election.

Carrillo has been in campaign mode for about a year: She was one of a dozen women who ran to succeed Becerra but finished in fifth place. The two districts overlap.

Carrillo is counting on her personal history  she was brought to the U.S. from El Salvador when she was a child, became a citizen in her early 20s then went on to graduate from Cal State L.A. and earn a masters degree at USC  to resonate in the heavily Latino district.

In-the-moment updates on this race and California politics 

I think my story speaks to the story of this district, she said in an interview. It is a time in which women and immigrants and the undocumented community are being attacked on a federal level. It is a perfect opportunity for this district to be a voice of progress.

Lopez, the director of government affairs for City of Hope Medical Center who has a masters degree in public policy from Harvard, is stressing his resume working in government and in neighborhood groups around the district.

He is a board member at Planned Parenthood  which has endorsed his candidacy  and previously served as president of the East Los Angeles Area Planning Commission. He also co-founded the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council.

L.A. City Councilman Mitch OFarrell and former Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg have endorsed Lopez, along with the Sierra Club, the California Legislative Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus and various local Democratic clubs.

I have served meaningfully in my district, he said in an interview. My opponent has not.

Lopez previously ran for this Assembly seat in 2012 but lost to Gomez by about 19 percentage points. The dynamics of the two races have been somewhat similar: Gomez ran with the support of the Democratic party and labor unions.

Lopez and Carrillo are not worlds apart on most issues: Both say they want to protect Planned Parenthood, work toward providing universal healthcare and protect undocumented Angelenos.

One rift appeared late in the campaign: Members of the Los Angeles Tenants Union are putting pressure on the two candidates to sign a pledge to repeal a pair of laws that impact housing. They oppose the Ellis Act and the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

Under the Ellis Act, landlords can eject tenants from rent-controlled apartments if they are tearing down a building or if they intend to take the housing off the rental market. The Costa-Hawkins Act bars rent caps on single-family homes and apartments built after 1995.

Carrillo told The Times she favors repealing the laws but said she had not signed the pledge because she had not seen it. Lopez said he would not legislate by signing petitions and wanted to work with stakeholders and other lawmakers before making a decision.

Over the weekend, Lopez won a late endorsement from United Teachers Los Angeles, the union that represents teachers, counselors and nurses in L.A. Unified.

In a low-turnout election between two Democrats, the largest factor can be which candidate has the official blessing of the state party.

It is one of the pieces of information that actually affects voter decisions, said Darry Sragow, a veteran campaign consultant who helped Democrats regain control of the state Assembly in 1996.

javier.panzar@latimes.com

Twitter: jpanzar

ALSO:

Rep. Jimmy Gomez endorses Wendy Carrillo as his successor in Assembly

Wendy Carrillo and Luis Lopez appear to advance in Assembly special election in Los Angeles

This is what the first month of Congress was like for Rep. Jimmy Gomez

Coverage of California politics
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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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
Question: I am returning from Mexico through Tijuana by car, and there is a choice of signed lanes, including Publico General and Ready Lanes. We have passports with us, but which lane is for us?

John Loggins

Rancho Palos Verdes

Answer: Loggins emailed his question to me as he was stuck in the traffic at the border.

For him, the answer is Publico General.

If Loggins had a U.S. passport card, not the traditional passport book or one of several other acceptable documents, the Ready Lane, which offers the promise of shorter waits, would be the answer.

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But lets back up for a minute to see how we got to this point.

What is the Ready Lane?

Returning from Mexico by car has never been a cakewalk in terms of traffic, especially on weekends or holidays.

Enter Ready Lane, which U.S. Customs and Border Protection said began as a pilot project a little more than eight years ago. The goal: Speed up the process for people who have specific kinds of Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, -enabled documents.

What documents are those?

Besides the aforementioned passport card, those documents include the new permanent resident green card; the new border crossing card; an enhanced drivers license, which California does not issue but Washington and several other Canada-proximate states do; and a Trusted Traveler card.

One such Trusted Traveler card is SENTRI, or Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection. The SENTRI lane can be used by people who often go back and forth across the border and have SENTRI documentation.

The Trusted Traveler card you are more likely to have is a Global Entry card. Thats the program that allows you to speed through customs upon return to the U.S. by air and also gives you TSA PreCheck, which includes expedited lanes for airport security. It costs $100 for five years and may be the best time- and money-saving bargain around.

Why wont a passport book work at the U.S. border?

The book and the card use different RFID technologies, the State Department said. The book is designed for borders all over the world, or, as the State Department calls it, to be globally interoperable.

The card, State said, was designed for limited use for compliance with the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, or WHTI.

What is the WHTI and why should I care?

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative was part of the post-9/11 effort to make borders more secure.

The first wave went into effect in 2007 and mostly dealt with air travel; Part 2 went into effect in 2009 and meant that those traveling by car needed a WHTI-complaint travel document such as a valid passport, U.S. passport card and more, Customs said in its FAQ.

And, it added, Verbal claims of citizenship and identify alone are no longer sufficient to establish identify and citizenship for entry into the United States.

And why should you care about the WHTI? Because, in some cases, you need documentation you didnt need to carry before 9/11 (as in a passport or other doc to cross from Mexico into the U.S.).

And you should care because you have choices about what that documentation should be depending on how you plan to use it.

If my passport doesnt get me into the fast lanes, should I have a passport and something else?

Maybe. If youre driving back and forth across the border, consider getting a second form of compliant ID. If not, your passport is sufficient, if slower.

Do the lanes really save time?

Customs says they are about 16% faster than the general public lanes. (Thats nationwide, not just at Tijuana.)

Statistics cited by the San Diego Union-Tribune explain the clog: San Diego-Tijuana is the busiest land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere, with approximately 120,000 passenger vehicles, 63,000 pedestrians and 6,000 trucks crossing back and forth every single day.

The May opinion piece went on to say that traffic congestion and delays cost the San Diego County and Baja California economies billions of dollars, and it called for smart (or smarter) border enforcement.

Maybe I should let my passport lapse?

I wouldnt. Having a card that gets you across the border faster is nice, but its a little bit like the secondary insurance a credit card affords on a rental car: Secondary insurance cant do everything the passport book (like your auto insurance policy) can do.

One last note: If youre going to renew your passport, do so before January.

Check your passport to see whether its close to expiring, then plan accordingly. There was such a rush for passports in the months after WHTI that passport adjudication centers could not keep up.

As passports obtained during those tumultuous times near their expiration, there could be another big push for renewal.

December is one of the better months to renew  maybe not from a financial standpoint but from a time standpoint. Applications drop; speed increases.

Its a good gift to give yourself.

Have a travel dilemma or question? Write to travel@latimes.com. We regret we cannot answer every inquiry.

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel
As U.S. warplanes flew above a cluster of villages where Islamic State militants were holed up in eastern Afghanistan, 11 people piled into a truck and drove off along an empty dirt track to escape what they feared was imminent bombing.

They did not get far.

An explosion blasted the white Suzuki truck off the road, opening a large crater in the earth and flipping the vehicle on its side in a ditch. A teenage girl survived. The 10 dead included three children, one an infant in his mothers arms.

The lone survivor of the Aug. 10 blast in Nangarhar province, and Afghan officials who visited the site, said the truck was hit by an American airstrike shortly before 5 p.m. Relatives expressed horror that U.S. ground forces and surveillance aircraft could have mistaken the passengers, who included women and children riding in the open truck bed  in daylight with no buildings or other vehicles around  for Islamic State fighters.

How could they not see there were women and children in the truck? said Zafar Khan, 23, who lost six family members, including his mother and three siblings, in the blast.

A photo of the Aug. 10 blast site provided by a victims family, who visited the area. (Handout)

In a statement after the incident, the U.S. military acknowledged carrying out a strike but said it killed militants who were observed loading weapons into a vehicle and there was zero chance of civilian casualties.

Pockets of Nangarhar remain inaccessible to outsiders because of fighting, making it impossible to independently determine the cause of the fatal explosion. What is not in question is that in the 17th year of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, American airstrikes are escalating again, along with civilian casualties.

Operating under looser restrictions on air power that commanders hope will break a stalemate in the war, U.S. fighter planes this year dropped 3,554 explosives in Afghanistan through Oct. 31, the most since 2012.

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 Weapons released, January-October 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan Data: abcdefg hijkl mnop qrstu vwxyz 1234 56789 @latimesgraphics Source: U.S. Air Forces Central Command

American officials say the firepower has curtailed the growth of Islamic States South Asia affiliate  known as ISIS-Khorasan, which they believe numbers about 900 fighters, most of them in Nangarhar  and enabled struggling government forces to regain ground against Taliban insurgents in other provinces, such as Helmand, where a Marine-led task force has helped coordinate a months-long offensive.

But innocent Afghans are asking: At what cost?

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan documented 205 civilian deaths and 261 injuries from airstrikes in the first nine months this year, a 52% increase in casualties compared with the same period in 2016. Although both U.S. and Afghan forces conduct aerial attacks, preliminary data indicate that American strikes have been more lethal for civilians.

In the first six months of 2017, the U.N. said, 54 civilians died in international air operations, compared with 29 in Afghan strikes. Twelve additional deaths could not be attributed to either force, the U.N. found.

In the case of the blast in Nangarhar province in August, U.S. officials have continued to assert that the American airstrike that day struck only militants. But they have since offered an alternative explanation for the civilian deaths. Responding to questions from The Times, coalition officials said that a passenger vehicle  presumably the Suzuki truck  hit a roadside bomb planted by Islamic State militants slightly more than a mile from where the airstrike killed the militants. It was the roadside bomb that resulted in multiple enemy-caused civilian casualties, said Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, a spokesman for coalition forces in Kabul.

Afghans vigorously dispute that account. The district police chief, Hamidullah Sadaqat, said there was only one deadly explosion in the area that afternoon. Rozina, the 17-year-old survivor, said her memory was clear.

The plane dropped the bomb on us, said Rozina, who, like many Afghans, has only one name.

How could they not see there were women and children in the truck?  Zafar Khan, who lost six family members in the Aug. 10 bombing

Zafar Khan fled Loi Papin to a rented house on the outskirts of Jalalabad. Everyone was trying to get away, Khan said. We had recently sold our sheep and half the land. It was too dangerous to be in the village. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

The bombing occurred in Haska Mina district, about three hours by road south of the provincial capital, Jalalabad. The victims were residents of Loi Papin, a village near the front line between government-controlled territory and the Islamic State-held village of Gorgoray.

Many left Loi Papin more than two years ago after militants arrived claiming allegiance to Islamic State. The extremists tortured locals and barked orders from mosque loudspeakers, demanding that families surrender adult sons to their ranks.

Khan, a slender laborer with close-set eyes, fled to a rented house on the outskirts of Jalalabad. Other family members made brief trips to Loi Papin to tend to their farm and flock of sheep, he said.

On the afternoon of Aug. 10, Khans mother, Malaika, left the village with three of her 10 children  12-year-old Bahadur Shah, 8-year-old Anisa and 1-year-old Mohammad  in the Suzuki truck, driven by his cousin. His uncle was on board as well as five others, including Rozina, her father and brother, who were returning to a house they had rented in the district center, still under government control.

Everyone was trying to get away, Khan said. We had recently sold our sheep and half the land. It was too dangerous to be in the village. No one wants to be anywhere close to Daesh  a colloquial term for Islamic State.

Rozina said everyone in the truck was afraid of the Americans.

Because we knew they were in the area, she said, we expected that they would bombard by the next day.

As they drove off, she recalled seeing two planes in the sky. Then the blast struck, knocking her unconscious for several minutes. When she awoke, she found that seven people were dead, including her father and brother.

Malaika and two of her children were badly wounded and yelling for help, Rozina said. But American troops in the area  probably U.S. special operations forces conducting joint operations with Afghan commandos against Islamic State  did not allow anyone to come to their aid for hours, she said.

They died because there was no one to help them, Rozina said. They were stuck and screaming.

From left, Lal Mohammad, 17, Roqia Khan, 10, Basina Khan, 9, Nasir Mohammad, 13, and Rishma Khan, 8, lost their father in the August bombing. U.S. officials say the deadly blast was caused by a roadside bomb, not an airstrike. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Khan and several others set off from Jalalabad after the bombing, reaching Haska Mina in the middle of the night. They found the crumpled truck overturned in a field. Rozina was lying at a womans house with severe injuries to her face, hands and legs. Villagers had carted the bodies away in wheelbarrows and brought them to a nearby mosque.

I found a piece of a leg and a thumb next to the truck, said Mohammad Agha, 42, whose cousin, a peanut farmer also named Khan, was among the dead.

Sadaqat, the district police chief, took Agha and other family members to a former Afghan Border Police base being used by U.S. special operations troops. Speaking through an Afghan interpreter, the Americans gave the relatives until noon to bury the bodies. They worked quickly, Agha said; Islamic custom requires bodies to be interred within 24 hours, wrapped in simple shrouds.

We didnt have enough fabric to cover them all properly, he said. We had to use shawls.

An Islamic State broadcast shows Mohammad Agha, second from left, conducting a burial for the victims. (Khurasan Media)

When they were done, Agha and others went to inform the Americans, who dismissed the possibility that a U.S. plane had launched the strike.

They said maybe it was a mortar fired by Daesh, but a mortar wouldnt have created a 10-foot crater, Agha said. The Americans asked us: Which countrys plane did this? It seemed like they werent taking us seriously so we left.

When there were 100,000 American troops in the country, then-President Hamid Karzai frequently accused them of excessive force and wielded reports of dead innocents as a cudgel against the United States. Karzais bombast had an effect: Far fewer civilians died in airstrikes in 2012 and 2013, according to U.N. reports, when the U.S. averaged hundreds of airstrikes a month.

Experts said North Atlantic Treaty Organization coalition commanders took serious measures to reduce the risk of harm to civilians. They met regularly with the U.N. and nongovernmental agencies and dedicated a team of officers to investigate complaints.

As the foreign troop presence shrank and NATO shifted its focus to training Afghan forces, coalition officials released less information about operations. They also face less resistance from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, a stronger proponent of U.S. military action.

The U.S. military is becoming less transparent, and its a pity because they had worked really hard  and succeeded  in reducing civilian casualties, said Kate Clark, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a Kabul-based research organization.

Dusk falls along the Kabul-Jalalabad highway in Afghanistan. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

The use of air power has surged since mid-2016, when the Obama administration approved new rules of engagement that allowed U.S. warplanes to open fire in support of Afghan operations, not just to defend coalition forces. It is expected to rise further after the Trump administration sent nearly 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan  bringing the total U.S. presence to 15,000  and grants more latitude to military commanders.

U.S. planes carried out 1,570 strikes from August through October, the most in a three-month period since 2012, according to U.S. Air Force statistics.

In October, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis testified to Congress that Trump had authorized him to eliminate the requirement that U.S. forces could fire only when in proximity to hostile fighters.

In other words, wherever we find the enemy, we can put the pressure from the air support on them, Mattis said. But he added that U.S. forces would still do everything humanly possible to prevent the death or injury of innocent people.

Military officers say every report of civilian casualties is investigated. U.S. forces attempt to interview residents and local officials and use all forensic actions available, based on the security threat, said Gresback, the military spokesman.

But just as in Iraq and Syria, where the U.S.-led coalition is accused of significantly undercounting the civilian toll of its air war against Islamic State, Afghan victims believe the U.S. military isnt being thorough or transparent enough.

Mohammad Agha, left, lost his cousin, who was among the 10 people killed in the August bombing that victims families said was a U.S. airstrike. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Rozina and relatives of other victims in Loi Papin said American officials have not contacted them. And the U.S. has often pushed back strongly against accusations that its operations are taking a greater toll on innocents.

In early November, after reports that an airstrike killed 14 civilians in the northern province of Kunduz, American officials said they found no evidence to support the claims. That prompted a rare direct challenge from the United Nations, which said in a series of tweets that interviews with multiple survivors, medics, elders & others give strong reason to believe civilians [were] among [the] victims.

U.S. forces have also suggested that Afghans in Nangarhar are lying about civilian deaths. The militarys initial statement on the Aug. 10 blast called it the second false claim of civilian casualties in the same district within the last three weeks  after an incident in which Haska Mina residents told Afghan media that a U.S. strike killed mourners attending a funeral service.

Although public outrage over civilian casualties has softened, Clark said they continue to serve as a propaganda tool for extremists.

The basic parameters of the war havent changed: If youre killing civilians, its going to be problematic, Clark said. The bullish U.S. approach, taking the gloves off, thats all very well, but if there are more dead civilians youre not going to be better off politically or militarily.

Ghanis government has not drawn attention to the strike in Nangarhar, but officials visited from Kabul and gave families condolence payments of more than $1,000 each.

The money wont replace the loss of family breadwinners, or cover the mounting medical bills for Rozina. She now lives with four family members at an uncles house and walks with crutches while she awaits additional operations to her feet.

Khan said he has little sympathy for Islamic State but cannot support the way the U.S. is prosecuting the war.

The Americans say they are here to kill terrorists, but if they cant carry out a proper operation, it is better that they leave us alone, he said. At least we would not see our families destroyed.

Special correspondents Sultan Faizy and Mohammad Anwar Danishyar contributed to this report.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Follow @SBengali on Twitter for more news from South Asia

ALSO

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The Irish border question took center stage in Britains negotiations to leave the European Union on Monday, causing a major setback for Prime Minister Theresa May, who had hoped to conclude an initial agreement but instead was forced to acknowledge talks had faltered.

Eighteen months after the country voted to leave the EU  a referendum result now colloquially referred to as Brexit  both May and her European counterparts had initially appeared upbeat about the prospect of concluding the first round of talks as they arrived in Brussels.

But after a day of talks in Brussels, she stood on a podium beside European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and declared that attempts at an agreement had failed, for now.

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On a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation, she acknowledged, trying to downplay the intense politicking that had unfolded throughout the day.

At stake were three key issues: How much Britain should pay the EU to sever ties, a so-called divorce bill; the status of EU citizens living in Europe as well as British citizens living in the EU; and what the border will look like between Northern Ireland, which must leave the EU along with the rest of the United Kingdom, and mainland Ireland, which is part of the European Union.

This final issue proved to be the trickiest on Monday.

Reports suggest that May and Juncker were willing to accept a deal that would in essence have seen Northern Ireland remain within the EUs single market and customs union, even though the rest of the United Kingdom is likely to lose such privileges.

Such a deal would prevent a hard border from reemerging between the two parts of Ireland and ensure that smooth trade relations could be maintained.

But statements from the Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, the group that Mays government now depends on to maintain a majority in Parliament, were quick to thwart that.

We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the U.K., DUP leader Arlene Foster said in a news conference Monday afternoon.

The Republic of Ireland for their part claim to be guarantors of the Belfast Agreement, but they are clearly seeking to unilaterally change that Belfast Agreement without our input or consent, and of course we will not stand for that.

The Belfast, or Good Friday, Agreement is the deal that finally brought peace to Northern Ireland after 30 years of sectarian conflict.

A short while later, May reportedly broke off her talks with Juncker to speak by phone with Foster, and later returned to the room to say the deal was off.

Even as the DUP threw a wrench into the talks, the governments in Scotland and Wales, as well as London Mayor Sadiq Khan, were also quick to state that if Northern Ireland got preferential treatment, they expected a similar deal.

Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that its possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market & customs union after Brexit, Khan wrote on Twitter. Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said he was surprised and disappointed by the days developments, which came after weeks of negotiations between the British government and the EU.

Varadkar said his government is seeking at all costs to prevent a hard border with Northern Ireland, which some analysts fear could reignite the sectarian tensions that engulfed the region for so many decades.

But the difficulties in cutting a deal on this issue are a sign of the scale of the quagmire Brexit is proving to be for May, who came to power after the referendum in which 48% of Britons voted to remain part of the EU while 52% voted to leave. Her predecessor David Cameron resigned as prime minister after staking his political career on backing the remain side, and May promised to unite the deeply divided country.

But in some ways those divisions have only intensified.

The markets responded Monday with the pound falling as soon as it became clear no deal was being reached.

Speaking alongside May at the afternoons news conference, Juncker struck a conciliatory tone and even praised Mays skills as a negotiator.

He said there had been significant progress, and a deal on the first round of negotiations was getting closer, a crucial milestone as it will enable Britain to move on to talking about trade.

This is not a failure, this is the start of the very last round, he said. Im very confident we will reach an agreement in the course of this week.

Instead of leaving Brussels with a deal under her belt on Monday, May is now expected to have to return later this week to try to seal it.

It is hoped that this will pave the way for a summit with the remaining 27 EU countries on Dec. 14, where it is hoped they will be able to give the go-ahead for future talks.

Boyle is a special correspondent.

UPDATES:

2:15 p.m.: This story was updated throughout with staff reporting.

This story was originally published at 10:40 a.m.
Nearly 200 motorcyclists gathered in the Walmart parking lot on Sunday morning, but despite the black leather and burly beards, the riders were far from menacing. After all, holiday music was playing in the background and Santa Claus was sitting in a sidecar.

We get a bad rap sometimes as troublemakers, but thats far from what weve been, at least the associations that Ive been involved with, said Larry Johnson of Albany.

Johnsons pickup was filled to the top of the canopy with hundreds of toys for the annual Rollin for the Kids Albany Toy Run. The motorcycle and classic car parade ended at the Albany Eagles Aerie, where about 150 children were each able to pick out two gifts and a stuffed animal and visit with Jolly Old Saint Nicholas.

Hallie Van Deusen, 12, and her sister Jamie Van Deusen, 10, helped load items into the back of Johnsons rig.

Theres a lot this year. Way more than I expected. We can barely shove any more in, said Hallie, a Memorial Middle School student. The sisters volunteer every year with the event, which their grandfather David Guerin helps organize.

I think its nice that kids, their families cant afford presents, they get presents so they can enjoy Christmas, said Hallie, who wants to ride an Indian motorbike when she grows up.

Here come some more toys. Get ready, toy crew, Johnson exclaimed, as riders delivered baby dolls and toy cars recently purchased from Walmart. Each motorcyclist brought at least one or two toys for the charity event.

At the Eagles Aerie, the children and their family members also were able to get a free lunch.

After the meal, Deziray Marcotte, 8, selected a toy bow and arrow and a robot cat, as well as a stuffed animal. It makes me happy, the Sunrise Elementary School third-grader said, when asked about the toy run.

This means a lot, said her mother, Cary Marcotte of Albany. We had $700 stolen from us yesterday that was our Christmas money.

Jacob Whidden of Lebanon, a member of the Christian Motorcyclists Association, said that the toy run was a great excuse to get out. I get to go for a ride, buy something that makes someone elses face smile, he said.

And motorcyclists often attend multiple toy runs during the holiday season. Lebanon has a toy run this coming weekend, Whidden added.

About 15 classic cars also showed up for the Rollin for the Kids Albany Toy Run, and owners brought hundreds of toys, as well, said Kathleen Crump-Breshears, who coordinates the event.

The Cutting Room, which Guerin owns, Above & Beyond, Pride Printing and the Christian Motorcyclists Association were sponsors for the event. Walmart pitched in by donating candy canes and other snacks for kids goodie bags handed out at the Eagles Aerie.

I love to see children happy at Christmastime. Its all about the kids and helping people, Crump-Breshears said.

And the stereotype about motorcyclists? I dont think motorcycle people are rough and tough at all. They love to give, Crump-Breshears added.
Ali Abdullah Saleh, the deposed strongman who led Yemen for more than three decades and colluded with Iran-aligned rebels to topple his successor, was killed Monday as fighting raged between his followers and their former allies, according to officials on both sides.

Salehs death removes one of the most enduring and cunning political figures in Yemen, injecting new uncertainty into a devastating civil war just days after he turned against the rebels, known as Houthis, and made overtures to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition that sided with the countrys internationally recognized government.

Even after he was swept from office five years ago in an Arab Spring uprising, Saleh remained a force in Yemen, retaining the loyalty of the Republican Guard and other elements of the security forces.

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The Houthis announced Salehs death after reports of an explosion at his familys compound, but there were conflicting accounts about the circumstances. Houthi officials said their forces ambushed Salehs convoy as he tried to flee the capital, Sana, but members of his political party, the General Peoples Congress, said a sniper shot him.

Grisly video circulating on social media purported to show gunmen loading Salehs body, wrapped in a floral blanket, onto the back of a pickup truck and shouting, God is great!

Saleh appeared to have sustained a wound to the head, and his shirt was stained with blood. The authenticity of the short clip could not be independently verified.

The Houthis leader, Abdel-Malek Houthi, hailed Salehs death as the fall of the conspiracy of cunning and betrayal, saying Saudi Arabia and its allies were dealt a resounding, historic defeat.

In a televised address from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Yemens exiled president, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, sought to rally Salehs forces, saying his government would support any uprising in Sana.

Houthi fighters guard a street leading to the residence of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in Sana, Yemen, on Dec. 4, 2017. (Hani Mohammed / Associated Press )

Saleh, who once compared leading Yemen to dancing on the heads of snakes, was regarded as a supreme tactician, making and breaking alliances with ruthless skill to ensure his political survival.

As president, he was an important ally to the United States in the fight against Al Qaedas affiliate in Yemen and clashed repeatedly with the Houthis. But after he was toppled, he struck a deal with the rebels.

Rogue elements of the military still loyal to Saleh provided critical support to the Houthis when they charged out of their northern strongholds and took over the capital in 2014.

The Houthis sudden advance alarmed Saudi Arabia, which views the rebels as proxies of its archrival, Iran. With backing from the United States, it formed a military alliance with the United Arab Emirates and other Persian Gulf nations to restore Hadi to power.

When clashes erupted in the capital last week between the Houthis and Salehs forces, many here assumed the coalition had a hand in the unraveling of the rebel alliance.

In a televised address Saturday, Saleh blamed the Houthis for a crippling blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia and its allies and said he was ready for talks with the coalition.

The coalition welcomed his appeal to open a new page, raising hopes among some diplomats and analysts that it might be possible to break the deadlock that has stymied efforts to negotiate a political solution to a multi-sided war that has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced over 3 million and pushed the Arab worlds poorest nation to the brink of famine.

With Salehs death, peace in Yemen appears even further out of reach.

The road map for peace is now obsolete, said Adam Baron, a Yemen analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Its clear there will be more conflict  and greater suffering for Yemenis is much more likely.

As coalition warplanes streaked over Sana late Monday, residents braced for what many feared would be a push by the coalition into the capital.

Now we dont know what will happen, said Mona Saleh (a common last name here), a 30-year-old schoolteacher who recalled a time when the former president brought a measure of stability to Yemen after previous civil wars. We have been hearing airstrikes all day, and citizens were already suffering  no salaries, not enough food, and prices have increased in an unprecedented way.

The only choices left, she added, were to die by airstrikes, armed clashes or starve.

At least 125 people have been killed and more than 230 injured since the infighting began in the capital Wednesday, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Some of the fiercest clashes have occurred in the area where the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations have their compounds, impeding the delivery of desperately needed relief.

You can hear the gunshots, [rocket-propelled grenade] firing and the tanks meters away as we spend most of our day taking shelter in the basement, Johan Mooij, CARE Internationals director in Yemen, said in a statement issued with four other agencies.

Ambulances have been unable to reach the injured, and residents have been unable to buy food and other supplies, according to aid workers.

But as street fighting appeared to subside in the hours after Salehs death was announced, some saw an opportunity for countries with influence over parties to the conflict to press for a cease-fire and a return to the negotiating table.

I think the important thing now is to test the proposition  that reconfiguring the players creates the possibility of finding a resolution to the conflict, said Jon Alterman, who heads the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

In his final days, Saleh appeared to offer a possible way out of the catastrophic conflict he helped foment.

The challenge now, Alterman said, is who can play that role?

ALSO

A Saudi prince is shaking up the Middle East  and may be pushing it toward war

Who are Sufi Muslims and why are they the target of Muslim extremists?

Gaming is flourishing in the Arab world  and governments are taking notice

Special correspondent Ahmed reported from Sana and Times staff writer Zavis from Beirut. Special correspondents Nabih Bulos in Beirut and Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran contributed to this report.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Twitter: @alexzavis

UPDATES:

6:55 p.m.: This article has been updated with details about the fighting in Sana, comment from a resident and aid workers and additional background.

12:40 p.m.: This article has been updated with reaction from the Houthi leader, analysis and additional background.

8:25 a.m.: This article has been updated throughout with staff reporting and additional background.

This article was originally posted at 6 a.m.
The first 500 arrived at sunrise. They trooped past the handful of homes on their left, up the dusty hill at the end of the street and through the single row of sparse trees to the vacant lot, plastic tarps folded under their arms and wooden posts in hand.

While some quickly mounted makeshift shacks in the calf-high grass, marking where they hoped their permanent homes would someday be built, others went in search of more families to join them  more families desperate for affordable housing.

They werent hard to find. Just two months after the Homeless Workers Movement occupied the abandoned land in Sao Bernardo do Campo, an industrial town just outside the mega-city of Sao Paulo, the number of families staking a claim to a piece of it skyrocketed to 8,300.

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The group brings together urban workers struggling to find affordable housing, and the encampment was originally meant as a temporary protest.

But the startling speed with which it grew  and the sense of permanence its already attained  has turned it into a national symbol of the stark inequalities dividing the well-off from the poor in Brazil. Looming over the camp are rows of tall, handsome apartment buildings.

Since September, the encampment has morphed into its own self-contained city, with mandatory registration and town hall meetings. Its narrow walkways are teeming with improvised homes built just inches from one another, organized into 19 blocks, each with its own communal bathroom and kitchen. Residents show no signs of leaving.

Maria de Almeida Vieira runs the kitchen in G19, the last block to be built, the closest to the encampments entrance. It should have followed the order of the other 18 groups  odd numbers on the left, even numbers on the right  but the People Without Fear Occupation ran out of space and had to make do with the small piece of land still available next to G1.

Three young men sit on white plastic lawn chairs and benches made of leftover two-by-fours while on a break from repairing shelters blown over in a recent thunderstorm and delivering 20-liter water jugs to other kitchens. Its almost noon, and the shade under the overhanging tarp gives a sliver of relief from the biting sun.

Vieira calls to them from behind an open plywood door, authorized personnel only painted on it in white.

Are you boys hungry? Lunch is ready!

They all get up and stand at the wooden counter as Vieira comes through the door with three plastic plates in hand, each loaded with rice, beans, chicken and salad. Residents of the encampment contribute food when they can, but most meals come from donations from unions and other workers groups.

Thank you, Ms. Maria, says Cleiton Alves, kissing the top of her head.

Vieira leans on the counter as she watches Alves and the others eat. They laugh and tell one another stories about jobs they had before they were laid off, before they found shelter here.

I have five kids and 12 grandkids of my own, but now I have all of you too, she says, a broad smile on her face. And I love you all.

Maria de Almeida Vieira, 63, waits to serve lunch to her neighbors outside the G19 kitchen at the occupation in Sao Bernardo do Campo. (Jill Langlois / For The Times )

On the other end of the lot, G17s kitchen is quiet as Selma Pinto Alves finishes lunch. She should be at work now, but she lost her job as a factory production assistant a week earlier.

Pedro, finish your rice and beans before you go play, she says to the 6-year-old boy sitting next to her. His mom is working and his dad is trying to get some rest before his night shift, so Pinto Alves is watching Pedro until she has to pick up her 4-year-old daughter, Eloa, from day care.

Pedro scrapes his plate clean and sits on the ground with his yellow dump truck, running it over the rough surface where grass grew before the shacks were built here.

Living here is fun, he says, scooping dirt up with his hands and letting it sift through his fingers into the back of the truck. But I really want to go to Disney World. It has so many rides, and you get to meet Mickey Mouse.

Pinto Alves and the two men working in the kitchen look at one another and chuckle softly.

I remember having that dream, one of them says. But I realized a long time ago that I was never going to get there.

Across the encampment in G4, Renata Swiecik pours water into a margarine container for her puppy, Jade. Her nephew, Carlos Henrique, 13, whom she has raised since he was a baby, calls to her daughters, Gabryela, 8, and Beatryz, 6, a few shacks away.

Were going to G17, Beatryz says, referring to the block where Pedro lives. They have a hose there now to play in the water. But a swimming pool would be better.

Swiecik smiles and nods slowly, agreeing with her youngest.

Go ahead and play then, she says. But stay in G17. Dont wander off.

The kids stay with her mom during the week to be closer to school, but its a holiday, so tonight theyll sleep in the bunk beds Swiecik built. Their shack is just big enough to squeeze in another bed and love seat. Childrens books, stuffed animals and toy cars sit in a corner, and their clothes hang from the beams holding up their roof.

Swiecik watches as the girls disappear around a corner. Shes lucky to have a place here. The encampment is already at capacity, and theres a waiting list 2,000 families long.

Langlois is a special correspondent.
WASHINGTON  I bumped into Bret Baier, the Fox News host, at a Washington cocktail party Wednesday night where it seemed everybody was chatting about the latest White House insanity: President Trump joking about "Pocahontas" to Native Americans, reviving the Obama "birther" allegation, suggesting the "Access Hollywood" video was fake, retweeting anti-Muslim videos made by British white supremacists.

Most assumed Trump was just being crazy, but Baier had a theory: Whenever Trump escalates such antics, he is agitated about news that is about to break. Maybe, Baier speculated, Trump knew something about the Russia probe that we didn't yet know.

Now we do. On Friday morning came former national security adviser Michael Flynn's guilty plea, the most ominous development for Trump yet in the Russia probe. Court documents show that Flynn is cooperating with special prosecutor Robert Mueller and that Flynn's Russian contacts were made under direction from higher-ups  and there weren't too many higher than Flynn on the campaign other than Trump himself. The notion that Flynn has the goods on Trump would explain why Trump was reluctant to fire him, tried to get the FBI to stop probing Flynn  and seemed unglued this week as the news of Flynn's cooperation was about to become public.

Though predictions are perilous in the age of Trump, this really could be the beginning of the end of the national horror his tenure has been. If Baier is correct  as I believe he is  that Trump gets ever more outrageous when he feels cornered, then this means the nation is entering a perilous new period. We can expect Trump to get ever more dangerous and desperate in his distractions as he hears Mueller's footsteps. Trump's erraticism is damaging in its own right, to alliances and civility, but the greatest danger is that while we chase Trump's distractions, we lose sight of real calamity.

This week was a good example. Trump raised the level of crazy. We in the media took the bait. And you, dear reader, encouraged us.

I asked my digital colleagues at The Washington Post for the top 25 pieces that appeared online in the Post this week before the Flynn news broke. Along with news stories about current intrigue  the Matt Lauer firing, James O'Keefe's failed sting operation against the Post, Prince Harry's engagement  the top items were dominated by Trump insanity: his Muslim-video retweets, his insult of the British prime minister, his attacks on CNN, his war on the "war on Christmas," the insults he traded with Democrats, his "unhinged" behavior and his veering past "guardrails" of what's acceptable.

But in the top 25 were only two about the monstrous tax bill as it made its way through the Senate this week. There were only two about North Korea testing a missile that could strike anywhere in America. There was only one about Trump's takeover of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And there wasn't a single story about the sprawling Russia scandal.

In other words: We are all being played for suckers as we get exercised over Trump's diversions.

It's possible that Trump does crazy things simply because he's crazy. But the outbursts serve a real purpose. They provide cover. While the nation gapes at Trump implying Joe Scarborough's involvement in the death of a congressional aide, the administration and its allies achieve all kinds of abominations.

If this tax bill were to see more sunlight, it would never become law. It adds $1 trillion in debt, ultimately increases taxes on those making less than $75,000 a year, gives most of the breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent, is forecast to add negligible economic growth and would force massive cuts to Medicare and Obamacare. But while Trump distracted the nation, GOP leaders strong-armed holdouts all week.

Likewise, the Post published several largely unnoticed pieces this week about the failure to renew the Children's Health Insurance Program, which expired on Sept. 30. States have begun to notify beneficiaries (9 million children) that they may be cut off.

I tried to ignore the Trump shenanigans this week, instead writing about the drug-industry executive Trump tapped to oversee drug pricing and about the administration lawyer who orchestrated Trump's takeover of the CFPB after serving as lawyer for a payday lender cited by the CFPB for abuses. But such pieces generate only a fraction of the "clicks" of pieces I and others write about Trump's pyrotechnics.

Those pyrotechnics are going to increase now that Mueller has turned Flynn. Trump's distractions will be impossible to ignore. But we  lawmakers, the media and the public  need to keep our focus on the real damage Trump is doing.
Daniel Clary, the 22-year-old man charged in the Nov. 7 shooting of a Pennsylvania State Police corporal along Route 33 in Plainfield Township, has been moved to Lehigh County Jail.

Clary was initially housed in Northampton County Prison after he was released from Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township.

But because a "close family member" works at the prison, it's the "normal process" to move the prisoner, Corrections Director Dan Keen said.

Keen didn't identify the family member.

Clary is charged with attempted homicide and various related offenses in the shooting of Cpl. Seth Kelly. Clary is being held in lieu of $1 million bail.

Kelly was released in recent days from St. Luke's University Hospital in Fountain Hill where he was treated for gunshots wounds to neck/shoulder and leg. Trooper Ryan Sieple was also injured in the altercation that began with a traffic stop.

Clary was treated for various injuries, including a head wound, before being turned over less than a week later to the Easton prison.

He is awaiting trial on the charges.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A Bethlehem man who went in the woods to hunt deer was taken to the hospital after a bullet from another hunter in the field struck an object, ricocheted off it and hit the man in the face, state police said.

Pennsylvania State Police in Fogelsville identified the injured hunter as 30-year-old David Gable.

An investigating trooper said Gable was in a legal wooded area for hunting in Upper Milford Township at about 4:30 p.m. Saturday when the incident occurred. Gable was hunting in a tree stand alone, but there were two other hunters in the field, the trooper said.

One of the other hunters spotted a deer and opened fire, missing the deer with the bullet possibly ricocheting off a rock, police said. Gable was hit in the side of the face and taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Salisbury Township for treatment.

Police said Gable was fortunate with injuries non-life threatening. A preliminary investigation showed the incident was accidental and police do not expect any wrongdoing, the trooper said.

No charges have been filed in the incident.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission also responded to the scene to investigate. Pennsylvania State Police in Fogelsville also continue to investigate.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A man reported early Monday morning that he was carjacked, according to the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.

The incident happened off bridge commission property but the man at 4:15 a.m. walked up to the office on the Phillipsburg side of the toll bridge and told the officer in charge, spokesman Joe Donnelly said.

Phillipsburg police were dispatched and picked up the victim, Donnelly said.

It was unclear if the man was hurt.

Town police didn't return several phone calls seeking more information.

Dispatches said the man reported he was carjacked at Main and Broad streets, his knife was taken and the carjackers threatened to blow his brains out.

The man was driving a Hyundai Sonata with a Pennsylvania tag, dispatches said.

It's unclear if the car was found or if anyone was taken into custody.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The boss of the State agency which brings vital overseas investment and jobs to Laois will have a lot of explaining to do when he comes to Laois in early 2017, according to Brian Stanley TD.

The IDA boss Martin Shanahan is coming to Portlaoise in January with the most senior staff in Enterprise Ireland. The Laois Sinn Fein TD said Laois is practically ignored by Mr Shanahan and his team.

"The abysmal record of the IDA in Laois has been well documented and this shows no signs of improving. Figures released this week show that the IDA paid almost 93 million in grant aid last year to support employment from foreign direct investment enterprise.

"However, Laois fared very poorly and was practically ignored with a tiny grant of just 5,000, the lowest amount of all counties which received grant aid in 2016," he said.

CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE

Dep Stanley said Laois has a rapidly growing youth population with 24.6% under the age of 14, the highest in the state. He said the county also had the fastest population growth in the country of 26.3% between 2006 and 2016 yet the participation rate for school leavers in Laois for access to 3rd level was 41% in 2014, again the lowest in the country.

LAOIS BABY BOOM
A combined group of Laois housing estates have been crowned All Ireland housing estates winners at a gala awards ceremony.

Kiln Lane Residents Association, made up of residents from Kiln Lane, Clonbarrow and An Garain estates in Mountrath, are this week celebrating their amazing win, at the IPB Pride of Place awards last Saturday night in Mount Errigal Letterkenny.

The award recognises the extraordinary community spirit and level of activity on Kiln Lane, dating back to the 1980s, currently led by committee chairperson Margaret Moore.

Along with the hard work of local volunteers grasscutting and planting, they have organised very successful estate events, including a 1916 commemorative event and family fun days, all extremely well supported locally.

Educational efforts for young and old can be seen in their horticultural projects, poly tunnel and other programmes. Their community building houses a mother and toddler group and provides a space for activities including arts and crafts and Glee club. They opened their playground and games area in 2009. Housing up to three generations in some cases, this estate displays great respect for family legacy and commitment to ensuring the estates pride, illustrated by a number of local awards.

The Judges' citation read as follows:

"On entering this winning complex, the judges were immensely impressed with the wonderful colour in the floral displays and flowerbeds, the neat and tidy grassed areas, open spaces and the absence of litter. The residents group caters for the needs of all age groups from toddlers to the elderly. It is gratifying to notice that the elderly are actively involved in all activities. The community building in the complex hosts a wide range of activities for children and young people and generally acts as a hub for all the activities in the estates. The residents association works closely with the Council and the estate is a great credit to the residents. Without doubt this winning entry is a very attractive and rewarding place to live."

Cllr James Kelly from Mountrath was at the launch, and is thrilled for his community's win.

"Kiln Lane Residence Association had a very pro active committee ably led be Margaret Moore with tremendous co operation and funding by the great staff in Laois County Council which has led to the Estate been crowned all Ireland champions 2017. This was a great night for all the voluntary work of communities all over the island of Ireland.

"The competition is based on communities demonstrating directly to the judges their pride in their place by oral presentation,exhibitions of community activities and culture and a tour of the area highlighting the aspects of which they are particularly proud. It is also important that the community demonstrates real partnership with their local council and shows that all sectors of the community are included," Cllr Kelly said.

It was the first time in several years that Laois County Council entered communities in the 32 county competition. Rathdowney Errill community also entered the competition this year.

Mountrath has received an incredible Christmas gift from the Brigidine nuns

Runners Up: Brawny Housing Estate, Athlone, Co. Westmeath and St. Patricks Villas, Castleconnell, Co. Limerick

Life of Laois toddler saved yet again last weekend by Portlaoise hospital staff

Below at the awards: Patrick Guidera, Tom Dowling Chairman Pride of Place, Noel Wrest, Stephen Moore. Front Nicola OConnor, Statia Guidera, Margaret Moore, Anne Marie Maher Laois County Council and Cllr James Kelly.
The HSE has issued no statement on the protest by thousands of patients against the proposal to downgrade of Portlaoise hospital but has issued a press release highlighting an 'excellence' award nomination for a Tullamore hospital pilot project.

The says the Trauma Assessment Clinic at Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore (MRHT) has been recognised for its excellence and innovation as part of the Health Service Excellence Awards.

Over 300 projects from all around the country entered the 2017 Health Service Excellence Awards and 11 of those projects got through to the final shortlist after a rigorous selection process. The annual awards are open to all staff working in the publicly funded health system.

Commenting on the awards, Tony OBrien, Director General of the HSE said: The Health Service Excellence Awards are designed to identify and recognise the real value we place on excellence and innovation across all of our health service.

The HSE says the Trauma Assessment Clinic has introduced a 'new care pathway' for patients to improve care in the fastest time in the most appropriate setting.

So far, the HSE says that 'pilot project' has seen a total of 1,668 patients. Of these, 30% are discharged at the initial stage, 40% are referred on to an appropriate clinic or a follow up trauma clinic, and 30% are referred onto physiotherapy services.

It says this means that 60% of patients do not need to attend the fracture clinic and can be discharged at a much earlier stage. The HSE says this has led to a big improvement from how patients were previously treated, with 100% of patients attending hospital clinics.

Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and lead of the initiative, Dr Eoin Sheehan said staff are are delighted to be shortlisted for this award and very proud that our work will be recognised and shared as best practice across the health service.

"This process works. It reduces the amount of time a patient attends a clinic, freeing up valuable clinical time for patients with more serious injuries and making more time for the elective schedules.

"Patients with fractures who present at Tullamore Hospitals Emergency Department are initially assessed; those with the simplest injuries are provided with information on their treatment and sent home, with medical follow-up guaranteed within 24 hours," he said.

The Trauma Assessment Clinic is a new care pathway for patients at MRHT aimed at improving the patients experience of care, by ensuring they are treated in the fastest time in the most appropriate setting. I would like to acknowledge the support we have received from hospital management, the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group, and the National Clinical Programme for Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery. The opportunities are endless with this model of clinical care and its simple format is easily transferable to another speciality or hospital site."

Commenting on the Trauma Assessment Clinics shortlisting for the national award, Orlagh Claffey, General Manager of MRHT said this is a great result for the team.

"We have a dedicated team of expert clinical staff who have worked hard to get this project off the ground. The results speak for themselves," she said.

While no patient survey is quoted, the manger said the project has "dramatically improved the patient experiencesomething we at Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore are always working to do".

The Trauma Assessment Clinic is run by Consultant Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgeons at MRHT with the service using a team approach which includes a consultant, a junior doctor, a clinical nurse specialist and a physiotherapist to review each patients case.

The Trauma Assessment Clinic will be represented at the Health Service Excellence Awards ceremony in Farmleigh in Dublins Phoenix Park on December 14 where the Overall Winner will be announced, along with the Popular Choice Award, the Best Team Project Award winners.

Staff across the health services also have an opportunity to vote for the Trauma Assessment Clinic in the popular choice category by clicking here. Voting closes on December 8.
The Presidents wife, Sabina Higgins was in Newbridge last weekend to support Kildares HOPE(D) December mental health awareness campaign for December.

The charity was delighted to have Mrs Higgins and RTEs Brenda Donohue on board.

The Kilkenny Shop at the Whitewater Shopping Centre in Newbridge selected local charity HOPE(D) as there preferred charity for the month of December.

Mrs Higgins arrived at 11am last Saturday to the front entrance of Whitewater to applause by members of the public, who gathered to witness her arrival.

SEE ALSO: PHOTO GALLERY: Hundreds turn out for Hope(D) Vigil March in Newbridge

Jim Brady, Chairperson of HOPE(D) and Laura Raleigh from Kilkenny Shop, greeted Mrs Higgins and escorted her into the Kilkenny Shop to meet the committee and staff of Kilkenny Group.

Mrs Higgins was delighted to be associated with this awareness campaign on Mental Health and she encouraged people to talk out and seek help if they think they need support from organisations such as HOPE(D), said Jim.

In the afternoon, Brenda Donohue of RTE arrived to support the cause and was met by well wishers young and old.

Brenda was well aware that the stresses of modern life come to bear on us all and in particular during December. Any one of us can face the challenges of life, but it is the support aid that we reach out for in crisis that will help us work through to recovery. HOPE(D) provide discreet professional Counselling with our fully qualified Therapists in our warm, welcoming surroundings, he added.

The charity recently moved to a larger premises on 2 Henry Street, Newbridge, which has allowed it to expand the range of services offered which include eight qualified counsellors and three holistic therapists; confidentiality, respect and empathy; four counselling rooms (one with wheelchair access); support group room; and holistic therapy room.
Sometimes, it just seems as if Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson can't help himself: Richardson, the only Republican elected to statewide office in two decades, is determined to keep voters apprised of everything he's up to, and so a steady stream of news releases and newsletters flows from his office. There's nothing wrong with that: Every elected officeholder does the same.

But it seems to us that Richardson would have been better off holding his tongue in a newsletter he issued last week in the wake of a scathing audit of the Oregon Health Authority.

Richardson oversees these state audits, and he often issues press releases about their findings. Previous secretaries of state have done the same.

The overall findings of the audit into the Health Authority couldn't have been much of a surprise for anyone who's been following the troubled agency: The audit concluded that the Health Authority misspent millions of dollars by providing Medicaid benefits to people who were ineligible. The audit also noted that the agency's previous top officials had hampered attempts by auditors to access information. (The Health Authority now is under the leadership of a new director, Patrick Allen, and Richardson has been generous in his praise of Allen.)

So far, so good. But then Richardson pushed it too far: In his official newsletter, he summarized the results of the audit and then added a reference to the January election in which Oregon voters will decide whether to approve Measure 101, a pair of health care taxes.

Here's what Richardson wrote in the newsletter:

"In closing, todays OHA (Oregon Health Authority) Audit Report provides the best information the audit team could obtain from OHAs previous uncooperative leadership and administration. The amount of wasteful and incompetent spending at OHA has been staggering and has gone on for at least the past four years. Soon Oregon voters will be considering whether or not to approve tax increases intended to provide additional funding to the OHA. With such abysmal examples of OHA misfeasance and obfuscation, OHA faces tough questions about its credibility and its ability to appropriately spend the money it is provided."

A couple of notes are worth making here: First, of course, Richardson has a legitimate point. And that's certain to be a focal point of the campaign against the health care taxes.

But here's the second note: In including that reference to the January election, Richardson opened himself to charges of improper electioneering.

State law does allow elected officials to engage in political advocacy while on the job. But a state election law manual (produced  you guessed it  by the secretary of state's office) says that such political advocacy "may not be published" in a newsletter produced or distributed by public employees. The law also blocks elected officials from using public resources to promote or oppose candidates or ballot measures.

Richardson's newsletter prompted an official complaint from Jeanne Atkins, head of the state Democratic Party and the previous secretary of state. Since these complaints are investigated by election officials in (you guessed it) the secretary of state's office, Atkins asked that state Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum take the lead in this case. Richardson agreed to that request.

Richardson also called the complaint "meritless." Now, there's no doubt that the complaint is politically motivated, but it's going to be hard to make the case that the language in the newsletter isn't meant to persuade voters to oppose the health care taxes. And it's worth noting that a variety of mid-valley public officials have been nailed for electioneering violations based on much more neutral language than Richardson used.

The secretary of state can drag this fight out, but it's a losing battle. He should apologize and pay whatever fine is assessed. And he should remember this: Sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut. (mm)
THEY SAY bad things come in threes but for the Childrens Grief Centre it has been all good news recently.

Earlier this month, the project set up by Sr Helen Culhane, Croom, was short-listed in the Community Impact Awards. Last week, they were announced as one of ten national recipients of 25,000 in the Animate Fund. It is to develop community projects promoting good health, wellbeing and inclusion.

And on December 9, Owen Gilhooly, tenor and director of the Mid-West Vocal Academy and Music School in Lisnagry, is hosting a fundraising Christmas concert in St Marys Cathedral at 8pm.

Sr Helen says every cent will go towards helping the children in their care.

Located in Westbourne, Ashbourne Avenue, SCR, the Childrens Grief Centre is a free and voluntary organisation that supports children between the ages of four and 18 where parents have separated, divorced or where there has been a bereavement. Since 2009, it has provided a space and place for children to explore their experiences of loss associated with bereavement and parental separation.

The centre was in the midst of a funding crisis at the beginning of 2017. They had 120 young persons on their waiting list and the wait to be seen was eight to nine months. Thanks to a 20,000 donation from the JP McManus Benevolent Fund the waiting list has been halved and the wait is three months now.

With the 25,000 from the Animate Fund and 30,000 from Olive Foley, from the sales of a commemorative match day programme following the death of her late and great husband Anthony Foley, Sr Helen and her team can continue their life changing good work.
A LIMERICK man disqualified from driving for failing to give a blood or urine sample to gardai, told a garda to call for backup after he surrendered his two hands during an arrest, the District Court heard.

Michael ONeill, aged 30, of Ballyvouden, Kilteely, was charged with obstruction and failing to provide a specimen, following an arrest in Garryowen on August 13, 2016.

Giving evidence last Thursday, Garda Niall Deegan, of Henry Street, said that he observed the accused driving outbound on Mulgrave Street at 3.20pm, as he was driving inbound. He the turned the patrol car around to check his documents.

As he made the turn, Mr ONeill took off at speed and turned left into Garryowen, he said.

He later observed the vehicle at Fairview Crescent and signalled the driver to stop. After he asked to see the drivers documents, he could get a smell of intoxicant from inside the vehicle.

Gda Deegan told the court that, after the accused stepped out of the vehicle, he was told You and me have a history and he started getting aggressive. After he asked him to relax and calm down, Gda Deegan was told that the only reason why I was stopping him was to make him miss his childs christening. He formed the opinion that he was under the influence of an intoxicant and that he was incapable of controlling a mechanically-propelled vehicle, he said.

When Gda Deegan attempted to handcuff ONeill, he pushed me back raising his elbow and was told: You broke my shoulder six years ago. Its not going to happen this time, buddy.

He accused ONeill of vigorously resisting arrest and he cautioned him that he was going to pepper-spray him.

At this stage, he started to make threats, saying: I will break your jaw. He called for back-up and later pepper-sprayed the accused as he was in fear for my personal safety.

When he was brought to Henry Street, the court heard, he was asked three times to give either a blood or urine sample, to which he replied You choose. He later said: I am not giving you anything.

Solicitor John Herbert argued that it was an extraordinary situation to do a u-turn on a busy street to check his documents, and that he had 30 days to do so.

He put it to Gda Deegan you do have a history with him and that he stopped his client before. He argued his client put his two hands out and said: Not behind my back because that is how you dislocated my shoulder.

He was extremely nervous and he feared for himself. Mr Herbert asked Mr ONeill what went through his head when he saw the garda make the u-turn. He said: I have to get away from him. Asked why, he replied: Why would I stop to get another broken arm? Why is it that whenever he stops me, he is on his own?

Mr ONeill denied consuming an intoxicant.

He told the court that he had asked Gda Deegan to call for back-up, and said: I am not getting into no car with you anywhere. Inspector Helen Costelloe said to Mr ONeill said that he was obliged to stop the car. He replied: I know I am obliged to stop, but am I obliged to be harassed and assaulted?

You were not assaulted; you were arrested, she said. She told the accused that the choice was yours when he was asked to provide a specimen.

Mr Herbert argued that the arrest was was not legal or lawful and that there was no basis for what Gda Deegan was doing that day. Insp Costelloe said that he was carrying out his duty. Judge Marian OLeary imposed a four-year disqualification and a 500 fine.
THE father of a Limerick teenager who was murdered near his home a decade ago is offering a reward for any information which results in a prosecution.

Alan Hannan opened a bank account in recent days after he was approached by a member of public who offered him some money following an appeal to mark the tenth anniversary of Jeffrey Hannans killing.

The father-of-two, who was aged 19, died from severe injuries after he was struck a number of times during a row with a group of young men at OMalley Park, Southill during the early hours of November 22, 2007.

While more than 20 people have been arrested and questioned by gardai about the murder, nobody has ever been charged in connection with the killing.

I want to get the message out there that there is a reward going for any information about Jeffreys murder, said Alan Hannan, who has consistently maintained his belief that there are people who have information about his sons killing who have not come forward.

In the wake of last months appeal for information a man, who wishes to remain anonymous, contacted Jeffrey and gave him a sum of money.

He just approached me and he gave me the money and anybody else who wants to make a donation can do so by making contact or by lodging money directly into the account, Alan Hannan told the Limerick Leader. Money talks up there (Southill) and hopefully it will have an effect and somebody will come forward, he added.

While not commenting officially, its understood gardai are supportive of the concept of a reward being offered.

The account in which the reward money has been lodged is located at AIB, O;Connell Street. The IBAN is 63551408847101 while the BIC is AIBJIE2D.
DISCOUNT Retailer Dealz is facing the prospect of a criminal conviction over its failure to remove large posters from the windows of its city centre store.

Limerick City and County County Council has initiated legal proceedings alleging the company failed to comply with an Enforcement Notice.

Planning Inspector Pat Campbell told Limerick District Court the prosecution against Dealz Retailing Ireland Ltd, under the provisions of the Planning and Development Act, relates to a prominent building at the junction of Bedford Row and Henry Street.

He said he inspected the store in May 2016 and that a warning letter was sent to the company in July 2016.

Judge Marian OLeary was told after an Enforcement Notice, requiring the company to remove the signage, was served on the company on October 14, 2016, an application for retention (of the signage) was lodged.

Solicitor Will Leahy, representing the local authority, said this application was subsequently refused and that an appeal to An Bord Pleanala was refused in July 2017.

In its decision, the board stated the scale, design and quantum on the building frontage would be excessive in terms of visual clutter and that retention of the signage would seriously injure the visual amenities of the area.

Mr Leahy told the court the unauthorised signage, which remains in place, is in breach of regulations which state posters should not be more than a quarter of the window size.

Having considered the matter, Judge OLeary said she was satisfied the council had proven its case.

However, noting the defendant company was not represented in court, she adjourned the matter to January indicating she will record a formal conviction once all of the proofs are in order.

If convicted, a 500 fine will apply for each day the Order is not complied with.
A WORKER at an internet cafe tried to fight off two armed robbers with an umbrella, a Limerick court has heard.

One of the culprits  James Connors, aged 24, of Lord Edward Street  has pleaded guilty to a charge of robbery relating to an incident at Station Internet Cafe, Davis Street on February 20, last.

Limerick Circuit Court was told Mr Connors and another man entered the premises at around 7.25pm and that one of them threatened a worker while the second went behind the counter and took cash from the register.

A struggle then ensued during which the employee produced an umbrella and confronted the culprits who escaped with around 1,200 in cash.

While gardai located the culprits nearby a short time later, the money was not recovered and compensation has not been paid.

Brian McInerney BL, representing Mr Connors, said his client cooperated with gardai and made comprehensive admissions regarding his role in the offence following his arrest.

He commented that CCTV from the internet cafe was of outstanding quality and showed the utter incompetence of this client.

He said Mr Connors was not compos mentis on the night as he was heavily intoxicated when he entered the premises.

Short of going in with a sandwich board and a flashing neon sight, he couldnt have advertised his intentions any better, he said adding that his client is lucky there is no offence in law of incompetence.

Garda Eoghan McDonagh agreed with the barrister that while in the premises the second culprit, who has not been prosecuted, appears, according to the CCTV footage, to be intent on escalating the incident while Mr Connors can be seen trying to calm him down.

Judge Tom ODonnell adjourned sentencing to early in the new year.
OVERCROWDING at University Hospital Limerick is again the worst in the country, according to new monthly figures released this week.

Statistics published by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation show that there were 878 patients being treated on emergency department trolleys and on extra trolleys or beds in the wards at UHL in November.

Though the overcrowding rate was lower than September levels  902 patients  it is significantly higher than the October figures, when there were 712 patients on trolleys.

There were 227 more patients being treated on trolleys at UHL than at Cork University Hospital, the INMO figures also reveal.

And so far this year, there have been 8,116 patients being treated on trolleys at the hospital in Dooradoyle.

Condemning the findings in the monthly report, Sinn Fein Deputy Maurice Quinlivan said that he fears that the action needed to tackle the problem will only happen after a tragedy occurs due to the overcrowding levels and, by the stage, it will be too late.

The Limerick City TD tweeted: In July, Health Minister Simon Harris expressed his anger when he contacted UHL  we need more than anger from the Minister we need intervention.

7% reduction nationally but 11% Increase in @ULHospitals in Limerick.

In July, Health Minister Simon Harris expressed his anger when he contacted UHL - we need more than anger from the Minister we need intervention. https://t.co/jg2AqJIoyS  Maurice Quinlivan TD (@QuinlivanTD) December 4, 2017

In a statement, Deputy Quinlivan said that he was constantly raising the issues facing University Hospital Limerick in the Dail, but this government is not listening.

The huge numbers on hospital trolleys is becoming a monthly occurrence, and Minister Harris needs to take radical action, focusing on four main areas; recruitment and retention of staff, reopening closed beds, adequate step down facilities, and proper primary and community care.

Nationally, there was a 7% decrease in trolley numbers, which was welcomed by INMO general secretary, Liam Doran.

However, the very significant increase in additional patients on inpatient wards, on trolleys or additional beds is most disturbing and suggests hospital management are increasingly repeating the mistakes of the past.

"Overcrowding wards has never solved the problem, of hospital overcrowding, and this will only be done through additional acute beds, he stated.
THE Minister in charge of the delivery of flood defences to Limericks riverside communities has pledged these will be fast-tracked through the planning process.

Independent Alliance TD Kevin 'Boxer' Moran was in the city on Friday at the invite of Senator Kieran ODonnell, where he met people in Annacotty, Castleconnell, Corbally and the docklands area.

He also took a tour of the St Marys Park area, which was hit with devastating flooding in early 2014.

He reaffirmed the governments commitment to delivering 55m for flood defences, and said a Cfram report outlining what needs doing will be made available by the end of the month.

We have identified a number of schemes in and around the Limerick area, and particularly where we are in the Kings Island.. Government is fully committed to delivering this for the people of Limerick. They have listened to a great amount of talk for the last number of years. But we have 440m for five major schemes around the country, and Limerick is one of them, Mr Moran said.

The minister said as a way of getting the flood defence projects through planning quickly, some could be designated as strategic infrastructural development, which would mean they bypass local planning offices. And he pledged that even if the government were to fall, the funding is safe.
AFTER almost three months of intensive preparations, and with a cast of over 100, it is nearly show time for Limericks Castletroy College to tread the boards in the annual musical.

The impressive production, All Shook Up, is a comedy musical based on the songs of Elvis Presley.

Leah ODonnell, who is in transition year, plays the role of Natalie. Her sidekick Chad, played by sixth year student Cian Cahill is new to the stage but looking forward to performing with the rest of his classmates.

The show promises to be a smash hit spectacle with the teenagers ready and waiting to showcase their theatrical talents under the direction of teachers Anita Cunneen and Catherine Clohessy, alongside artistic director Jessica Bray and choreographer Pamela McGlynn.

Principal, Padraig Flanagan said that the show is the culmination of months of hard work done by so many in the school community. He thanked all involved, particularly the sponsors for their generous donations which has made the production possible.

Castletroy Colleges performance is being presented in association with Odeon Cinemas, Castletroy.

It all takes place in the Lime Tree Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday, December 5 and 6 at 8pm. Tickets available from www.limetreetheatre.ie.

Depending on availability, tickets may also be purchased on the door and range from 11-16.
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Extremely high tides expected through Tuesday prompted weather forecasters Sunday to issue a flood warning for coastal regions of the Bay Area.

The dramatic tidal fluctuations known as king tides  caused by the full moon being in close proximity to the Earth  were expected to surge as high as 7 feet, said Steve Anderson, a National Weather Service meteorologist. Tides will reach their height in the mid- to late-morning hours of Monday and Tuesday, forecasters said.

Officials recommended caution in low-lying parking lots, coastal trails, underpasses and roadways. The Point Reyes National Seashore, southern Monterey Bay and Big Sur coast were among those expected to be inundated with high tides.

And the water might splash up onto the Embarcadero, Anderson said. Just be aware.

The warning remains in effect until Tuesday at 3 p.m.

Marina Psaros, co-founder of King Tides Project, a group that tries to raise awareness of the effects of climate change, said there wont be as much roadway flooding as on days when king tides coincide with storms.

We have this kind of nuisance flooding, or sunny-day flooding, and youll see a little bit of water on the Embarcadero, for example, at the highest point of the high tide, and all of our marshes will be flooded, and the water will look like its about to spill on Highway 37, she said. We usually dont get a bunch of wet infrastructure on sunny days  its really when theres a storm that you see the flooding at the parking lots, and you see water up over the roads.

King tides are a natural phenomenon, nothing to be worried about, Psaros said. Its a really good opportunity to think about how our city and our region will be impacted by sea level rise.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Dianne de Guzman contributed to this story.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
The driver of a rented box truck who crashed into a Bay Bridge tollbooth, killing the attendant, remained in the hospital Sunday in serious condition, authorities said.

Daniel Berk, 32, of Foster City was being treated at Highland Hospital in Oakland after ramming into a tollbooth on the north side of the plaza at 5:11 a.m. on Saturday and wasnt expected to be released for about a week, said Officer Matthew Hamer, a CHP spokesman.

A passenger in the truck, who was ejected as the vehicle split apart, and the occupants of five other cars that were hit have all been released from the hospital, Hamer added.

Berk, who is facing charges of driving under the influence and vehicular manslaughter, suffered major injuries, Hamer said.

A relative of Berks, who identified herself as his sister on Facebook, said he was in surgery shortly after the crash. His family members declined to comment.

Si Si Han, a 46-year-old Caltrans employee, was killed in the collision. She worked as a toll collector for nearly a decade, said agency spokesman Bob Haus.

Han is survived by her husband, Ryan Saw, and 10-year-old daughter, Ashly.

Gov. Jerry Brown released a statement that he and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, are deeply saddened to learn of the loss of Caltrans toll collector Si Si Han, who died (Saturday) while serving the traveling public. On behalf of all Californians, we extend our condolences to her family, co-workers and friends.

According to LinkedIn, Berk works as a stage engineer. On Facebook, he lists himself as a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 16 in San Francisco.

A co-worker, Kenny McCain, said Berk worked in the close-knit production industry in the Bay Area. McCain heard from mutual friends that Berk had been driving between gigs at the time of the crash.

Ive never seen him drink, so that was a little strange to me, McCain said. I thought he mustve fallen asleep at the wheel. The whole thing was a shock to me.

The truck was filled with lighting and sound equipment at the time of the collision, said CHP Officer Vu Williams.

Berk was a former student at the College of San Mateo, said Richard Rojo, a college spokesman.

He took classes over the course of several years and stopped in spring 2015, Rojo added.

Berk did not earn a degree from the college.

The truck had been rented from Monarch Truck Center in San Jose, said Steve Russler, an employee with the company.

Four tollbooths and lanes 13 through 16 remained closed, posing a potential slowdown for morning commuters on Monday, Haus said.

Hans booth, from Lane 14, is completely wiped out and has to be completely rebuilt, Haus said.

There is no estimated time for reopening the lanes that lead up to the booths.

With four booths out of commission ... its going to have an adverse effect on traffic, Haus said.

No additional information on the crash, including the speed that Berk was driving and what substance he was suspected of using, was released Sunday.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
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A Sacramento lobbyist broke her silence Monday, filing a formal complaint with the Assembly that names the lawmaker she said cornered her in a bathroom last year and masturbated in front of her.

Pamela Lopez accused Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, D-Encino (Los Angeles County), of pushing his way into a bathroom with her last year and trying to get her to touch his exposed genitals. Dababneh quickly denied the allegations, claiming they are false.

Lopez initially declined to name the lawmaker when she first spoke to the news media about the alleged incident in October, saying she didnt want the attention to be on one bad actor and that she feared her lobbying firm would lose business.

But on Monday, at a news conference with her lawyer, she said she decided to name the assemblyman  and file a formal complaint against him  after assurances from leaders in the Assembly that her allegations will be taken seriously and that she wont be retaliated against.

There is strength in numbers, and I want women to know that you can lawyer up and there are good people who will represent you and protect you, Lopez said. Im putting this in the hands of the Legislature. Matt Dababneh has abused his power.

Assemblyman Ken Cooley, D-Rancho Cordova (Sacramento County), head of the Rules Committee, which oversees human resources for the Assembly, said an outside investigator will be hired for the case and suggested Lopez file a police report because the allegation is criminal in nature.

Jean Hyams, Lopezs lawyer, said her client had not decided whether to file a complaint with police.

Dababneh issued a statement denying the allegations: I affirmatively deny that this event ever happened  at any time. I am saddened by this lobbyists effort to create this falsehood and make these inflammatory statements, apparently for her own self-promotion and without regard to the reputation of others. I look forward to clearing my name.

His lawyer, Patricia Glaser, had sent Lopez a cease and desist letter on Friday, threatening legal action if she named him.

Along with Lopez, a second woman, Jessica Yas Barker, spoke at the news conference, saying she was subjected to sexual harassment by Dababneh when he was a congressional staffer for Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks (Los Angeles County). Barker said Dababneh would routinely make inappropriate sexual comments and brag about sexual encounters with other women. She also said he would comment on her appearance, refer to her as Ellen  a reference to comedian Ellen Degeneres  and tell her she dressed like a lesbian.

Barker said she has already experienced retaliation from those who knew she was coming forward with allegations against Dababneh.

There have been some really nasty things put out about me that are not true, Barker said.

A third woman who was not at the news conference and who spoke to The Chronicle on condition that her name not be published said she left her job as a legislative staffer for Dababneh because the assemblyman would routinely make detailed sexual comments about other women that made her uncomfortable.

He was creepy, the woman said. Thats why I quit. I was taken aback by his behavior.

Jonathan Bash, a past president of the Bruin Democrats at UCLA from 2011 to 2012, wrote on Twitter and in a follow-up email to The Chronicle that it was common practice in the college Democratic club to warn women not to intern in Dababnehs office or go to events with him. The Bruin Democrats current president, NJ Omorogieva, declined to comment.

Debabneh is a UCLA graduate.

The allegations against Dababneh come after hundreds of women signed an open letter Oct. 17 calling for an end to pervasive sexual harassment and sexual misconduct in the state Capitol.

The Legislative Womens Caucus said in a statement Monday that an independent and thorough investigation is needed where the findings are made public.

If the investigation finds that these allegations are likely true, there must be swift and transparent consequences for this type of behavior, said caucus chair Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County) and vice chair state Sen. Connie M. Leyva, D-Chino (San Bernardino County), in a statement.

Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, D-San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles County), resigned from his seat amid several allegations of sexual misconduct. State Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia (Los Angeles County), was stripped of his chairmanship until an investigation into sexual misconduct is completed.

Previously, after Lopez spoke about the incident without naming the lawmaker, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County) called the allegation horrifying and noted that it is also a crime. Rendon said at the time that if the lawmaker turns out to be an assemblyman, we will contract with an outside firm so there can be an independent investigation.

If he is found to have committed this assault or any similar harassment, I will ask for his immediate resignation and move for his expulsion if he refuses to resign, Rendon said.

Rendons office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Lopez said the incident happened on Jan. 16, 2016, in Las Vegas at a party for a mutual friend who was getting married.

She said she did not have more than a brief conversation with Dababneh before he pushed his way into a bathroom with her.

She said Dababneh kept telling her to touch his genitals. She said she refused, instead pressing herself against the furthest wall in the bathroom.

Lopez said she initially indicated the incident happened in Sacramento, explaining that she worried that naming the Las Vegas location and time frame would have made it clear who the person was when she did not plan to name him.

How the Assembly responds to Ms. Lopezs report is a test of whether it is a body governed by law, or one that considers itself above the law, said Hyams.

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez
Multiple Molotov cocktails were hurled into a store in San Franciscos Tenderloin neighborhood over the weekend, and police suspect two men who had argued earlier with a worker at the business, officials said Monday.

An employee of the store on the 300 Block of Ellis Street was working behind the counter when he got into a squabble with two men about 12:30 a.m. on Saturday. About ten minutes later, two men threw Molotov cocktails into the store, starting a fire, police said.
Local developer Steve Yndo isnt known for big, splashy projects like the new Frost Tower downtown.

But his developments over the last 20 years filling vacant properties in Southtown and near the Pearl with high-end lofts and townhomes have done as much to rehab downtown San Antonio as any other major developer.

Yndo and his partners have built seven loft and townhome projects around downtown. He developed his first one in 1999, when such projects were unheard-of in San Antonio, converting an old factory into the King William Lofts. Hes now working on building another 14 townhomes in King William and 27 on former industrial properties across the river from the Pearl.

For Yndo, working around downtown was a no-brainer. Hes had an affinity for urban areas since he was a kid growing up on the suburban North Side, he said.

More Information Quick facts about Steve Yndo What's your morning routine: I'm typically up at 6:00, 6:15. Hopefully I work out. If not, I'm checking emails and kind of getting things ready. I'm probably one of the few people who still reads the newspaper - hard copy, paper copy. Where do you and your family live in San Antonio: We are on East Guenther (in the King William District), so right across the river from Blue Star. I have been in King William since '83. ... I've been here the whole time with the exception of maybe about 10 years up in the Alamo Heights, Columbus Park area for school districts. I still think it's the best neighborhood in town. People are very nice, but you can be as social as you want to be or as much of a hermit as you want to be, and nobody will give you any grief. What was the last movie you saw: "Thor," believe it or not. It was actually pretty good. Typically, we're at the (Santikos) Bijou watching more of an indie film or international, but those have been slim pickings lately. What are your hobbies outside of work: My wife and I are very involved in the arts. We live down here in King William. So, if we wanted to we'd have something to do just about every night - art openings, some kind of art event. A lot of our friends are artists, so we're typically going out to support somebody. See More Collapse

Even when I was a kid, I always had the sense that things were depressing out in the suburbs, he said. There's a certain emptiness when you're a kid where it's just quiet, nothing going on, nothing on the streets.

Yndo wanted to join the military after graduating from Texas A&M in 1985. But a reduction in the armed forces at the time, and his diagnosis with low-frequency hearing loss, forced him to change his plans, he said.

An internship introduced him to real estate, and he started his career brokering office and industrial properties. He became a developer in the late 90s with the King William Lofts project. Along with the townhomes, Yndo operates three real estate firms: King William Realty, Yndo Urban and Yndo Commercial Real Estate.

The Express-News sat down with Yndo at the Cedar Street Townhomes project hes building in King William. Turn to Mondays Business section or click here to read an edited transcript of the interview.

rwebner@express-news.net | Twitter: @RWebner
ELKO  The lack of sufficient broadband internet service in the Elko area has attracted the attention of the state, and stakeholders will meet next week to begin identifying potential solutions.

Representatives from the Governors Office of Science, Innovation and Technology are scheduled to attend the Broadband Action Committee Meeting in Elko Dec. 6-7 to visit with leaders of Elko Countys key industry sectors. Jojo Myers Campos, the state broadband development manager, is bringing a four-member team to gather input with the ultimate goal of ushering in better broadband to Elko County.

The state office  whose mission is to coordinate the planning, mapping, and procurement of broadband to ensure connectivity across Nevada for schools, libraries, hospitals, clinics and communities meets national standards  aims to take a whole-community approach to getting better broadband service to Elko County. The office has begun a similar process to improve broadband in White Pine County.

These rural areas need the same opportunities  that some of our larger urban areas have, Myers Campos said. Better broadband means greater opportunities for Nevada. When you leverage todays internet, we have greater opportunities to connect to education [and] to healthcare such as telemedicine and telepharmacy. We have better opportunity to foster economic development, and when a community can foster economic development, they then can access new markets and even create more jobs.

The need The purpose of the meeting is to identify solutions to better broadband and work toward improvements, explained Elko City Councilman Reece Keener, who volunteered to spearhead the effort to rally representatives for the meeting after subpar internet speeds and interruptions affected his two businesses.

Our communitys internet/broadband service is at best sorely insufficient, and has a lot of room for improvement, Keener wrote in an email inviting key residents. Broadband service is no longer considered a luxury, but rather a necessity for users at all levels: schools, government, businesses and residences. Poor internet service compromises safety, hampers commerce and puts our community at a competitive disadvantage.

Spring Creek residents also have protested poor internet and phone service, and those grievances have elevated to the Attorney Generals Bureau of Consumer Protection, which received about 40 complaints by Nov. 1 regarding Frontier Communications. The BCP solicited formal feedback after a Sept. 20 general consumer session in Spring Creek that was attended by representatives from the BCP and the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada, according to Elko Daily Free Press archives.

Also this year, the Spring Creek Association board authorized SCA staff to pursue action to obtain a short-term solution with Frontier, which could include adjusting service charges or installing infrastructure, wrote SCA President Jessie Bahr in an email.

The method

The meeting will be divided into sessions that focus on broadband as it relates to Spring Creek, public safety, healthcare, business and government/education/economic development. Each group will be made up of about 15 invited individuals who represent those sectors. A few seats are still available, and Elko County or Spring Creek stakeholders can request to be part of a session by emailing Keener at reece@elkonv.com.

I want to make sure that we keep that linear focus, Myers Campos said, explaining that the meeting is by invitation only and excludes providers at this point. My whole goal is to create a strong enough foundation with these meetings that we create a next step to move forward.

Keener reminded participants that the sessions are focused on solutions, to discuss the current situation, potential solutions and providers, potential upgrades and new technology.

We really want to focus on solutions, he said. We have defined the challenges.

The future

Deploying high-quality communitywide broadband across Elko County will be a monumental task, explained Myers Campos. The effort will likely take more than one provider and will take time to implement.

It takes more work in our rural areas because we dont have the infrastructure, she said. Anything broadband is not done overnight  but it will be done.
The Big Book of the Continental Op

By Dashiell Hammett. Edited by Richard Layman & Julie M. Rivett

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. 733 pp. Paperback, $25

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Have I got a treat for those who prefer to celebrate their holidays in hard-boiled, rather than Hallmark, style. It's a heavyweight of a collection called "The Big Book of The Continental Op" that gathers together the 28 short stories, two novels and one unfinished tale starring Dashiell Hammett's first series detective, known only as "The Continental Op."

For those readers who haven't yet run into him, the Op is middle-aged, overweight and nameless. His moniker derives from his job: He's an "operative" or detective, who works for the Continental Detective Agency. He's easy to underestimate, but that would be a mistake. In the Op, Hammett revolutionized the traditional figure of the detective, strong-arming him out of his Sherlockian smoking jacket and into an American-made trench coat, shoving him out of his armchair and down those dark alleys where the most realistic crimes are waiting to be solved. Hammett paid tribute to his first great literary creation by referring to him as "a little man going forward day after day through mud and blood and death and deceit."

Hammett wrote The Continental Op stories in the earliest years of his career, and to read them in sequence is to witness how Hammett slowly transformed the formulaic "gals, guts, and guns" action tales, the staple of pulp magazines like the Black Mask, into the stuff of literature. Even the early Op stories here give readers the chance to walk around the mythic San Francisco that Hammett created - a place of fog and furnished apartments, sinister Nob Hill mansions and Chinatown gambling dens.

This collection is edited by the distinguished Hammett scholar Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett, who is Hammett's granddaughter. In a couple of short-but-substantive opening essays, Layman sketches out the sources of the Continental Op stories in Hammett's own five-year career working for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. That career was interrupted by his Army service in World War I, where he contracted tuberculosis. In 1922, Hammett (by then on disability and a married father of a young daughter) took a course at the Munson School for Private Secretaries, with a "newspaper writing objective." Layman suggests that journalistic training came in handy when Hammett began submitting stories to the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1923.

Those early stories were published under the editorial reign of George W. Sutton, a busy guy who wrote about cars and boats on the side. There's little to suggest that either Sutton or Hammett realized that the popular Op stories were also remaking the detective fiction form. The first Op story, "Arson Plus," is dated Oct. 1, 1923, and Hammett wrote it under the pseudonym, Peter Collinson, theater slang for "a phantom person." The plots of "Arson Plus" and the other Sutton-era stories are simple and their pilferings from the more genteel British mystery tradition evident. For example, in "Slippery Fingers," the Op is hired to solve the murder by penknife of a tycoon whose body is found in that mustiest of locales: the library. Hammett's rougher Pinkerton experience, however, comes through in passages like this one, from "Crooked Souls," in which the Op, who's shadowing a suspect, describes a nifty bit of multitasking: "A touring-car, large, black, powerfully engined, and with lowered curtains, came from the rear. ... Possibly a scout! I scrawled its license number down on my pad without taking my hand out of my overcoat pocket."

Also present in even the earliest Op stories are the working-class resentments and nativist politics that, like it or not, would become essential elements of the hard-boiled formula. The Op is always cleaning up messes made by the wealthy; when an heiress apparently falls afoul of kidnappers in "Crooked Souls," Hammett stokes up 1920s nativist fears by having the Op discover a ransom note threatening to sell the girl to "a Chinaman who will buy her."

When Phillip C. Cody became the editor of Black Mask in 1924, Hammett's simple tales more than doubled in length, and became more complex and nastier. The Op doesn't even carry a gun in his early outings, but, as Layman says, "Hammett's first story for Cody features six murders, three of which are committed with cause by the Op."

For those who want to delve even deeper into the pulp appearances of the Continental Op, this collection also includes the Black Mask serialized versions of "Red Harvest" (originally entitled "Poisonville") and "The Dain Curse," Hammett's creakiest novel, which he later dismissed as "a silly story." As Layman demonstrates, the language of both novels were substantially changed when they were published in book form by Knopf.

There's one striking word, however, that remains unchanged in the opening paragraph of both versions of "Red Harvest." It's a word that also appears frequently throughout the Continental Op stories: meaningless. A bit of humorous wordplay is "meaningless" in the opening of "Poisonville"; a servant's face is "meaningless" (7) in "Arson Plus"; a smile is "meaningless" in "Dead Yellow Women" and on and on, into Hammett's masterpiece, "The Maltese Falcon," where the entire quest for the falcon itself is meaningless. "Meaningless" is a word that packs an existential wallop for Hammett and his fellow modernist writers. As this magnificent collection attests, the world that the Continental Op investigates may be "meaningless," but that nameless "little man's" work - and Hammett's achievement - remain momentous.

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Corrigan, who teaches literature at Georgetown University, is the book critic for the NPR program, "Fresh Air."
Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital

By Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove

North Carolina. 609 pp. $39.95

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When census experts reported in 2011 that African-Americans had lost their numerical majority in the District, commentators generally treated the event as a kind of setback for a city that prides itself as a center of black politics and culture. The response was understandable, but people needn't have worried. Washington's status as a capital of black America has never depended on having an African-American majority. Blacks have been a minority for most of the city's existence, since they labored as slaves on the tobacco plantations that dotted the land ceded by Maryland and Virginia to create the new nation's capital. Nonetheless, the District's African-Americans have consistently been leaders in the nation's unfinished efforts to tear down racial barriers to political, economic and social equality.

Before the Civil War, Washington was the only Southern city with an active abolitionist movement. In the years following the war, Howard University and other intellectual centers offered unmatched educational opportunities. The city was half a decade ahead of the rest of the South in ending legally enforced segregation. While cities such as New Orleans had a black aristocracy, Washington's African-American community boasted both an elite and a middle class, the latter supported by jobs in the federal bureaucracy.

This distinguished legacy is an integral part of "Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital," an ambitious, comprehensive chronicle of the civic experience of blacks, whites and other races over more than two centuries in Washington. The authors are Chris Myers Asch, editor of Washington History and a history teacher at Colby College, and George Derek Musgrove, a history professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. (Full disclosure: The reviewer has occasionally used Musgrove as a source.) Their work succeeds in being both scholarly and accessible to the general reader. It mixes academic analysis with lively examples of individuals who battled discrimination. They include Ann Williams, a slave whose leap from a third-story window to avoid being sold South in 1815 aroused outrage in the North, and Charles Hamilton Houston, a graduate of what is now Dunbar High School, whose work as a NAACP lawyer in the 1930s and 1940s earned him the sobriquet "the man who killed Jim Crow."

Sadly, the uplifting stories of campaigns for progress are often outweighed by wince-provoking reminders of the extent and severity of racism and discrimination. The book provides abundant evidence of its thesis that race - more than class, politics or other factors - has "proven to be the most significant explanation for social, economic and political divisions in the city."

Why did Alexandria, originally part of the District, reunite with Virginia in 1846? Because slave owners resented the accelerating, biracial agitation in the city for abolition. Why did city residents of all races lose the right to vote in local elections in the 1870s? Partly because whites preferred that nobody vote rather than that blacks - male ones, that is - exercise the suffrage they won briefly in Reconstruction.

The list goes on. In 1878, a Washington Post editorial said that the city's economy would be better off with "an immediate exodus of 15,000 or 20,000 of her negro population." As recently as the late 1940s, the Washington Real Estate Board's code of ethics stated, "No property in a white section should ever be sold, rented, advertised, or offered to colored people."

It is also sobering to learn that many of the social and economic troubles besetting the city today also afflicted it in earlier eras - an ominous sign that such problems may continue to defy solution. Shortages of affordable housing pop up repeatedly as the city's No. 1 challenge. For decades, working-class blacks lived in alley communities that "became a notorious feature of Washington's urban landscape," the authors write. The city experienced repeated waves of what we would call gentrification - and accompanying displacement - that transformed Georgetown in the 1920s, and Foggy Bottom and Capitol Hill (for the first time) in the 1950s and 1960s. A journalist who investigated D.C. schools in 1954 reached a conclusion that would apply today: People were working hard to make integration succeed, but city leaders needed to improve housing, urban development and the economy if the District hoped to avoid becoming a place "where only the very poor and the very rich continue to live in the heart of the city."

Blacks aren't the only group to have fought prejudice. The city's history includes battles for fair treatment for low-income whites - especially what was once a sizable Irish American community - as well as for Latinos and Asian Americans. But the book's main focus remains on the dynamics between whites and blacks, and on differences between elites and the lower classes within the African-American community.

The book offers a smorgasbord of historical tidbits. Segregation rules were uneven after World War I, when blacks could shop at Garfinckel's and other downtown department stores but could not try on the clothes. The civil rights movement in the 1950s got an unexpected lift by reviving enforcement of the "forgotten laws" - anti-discrimination statutes passed during Reconstruction that were ignored for decades but never actually repealed. In the destructive 1968 riots, Giant grocery stores fared better than Safeway because the latter company had a worse reputation for treating blacks.

The book feels authoritative, but one omission was surprising. It mentions only in passing the approval of the 23rd Amendment, which empowered District residents to vote in presidential elections. By contrast, the discussion of one of the city's most controversial figures - four-time mayor Marion Barry - is thorough and evenhanded. On the plus side, he and other black activists who entered District government in the late 1970s made it more representative of the city's diverse population. They redistributed wealth through public jobs and city contracts. But some of his aides and friends padded their wallets, public services deteriorated, and the city teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. The authors conclude that "the man whom many District residents entrusted with their hopes ultimately let them down."

"Chocolate City" aims to be constructive rather than despairing. It says its story is "not of blame and resignation, but of action and resilience." The book seems likely to become an important reference for the city's history. At nearly 500 pages of text, it is not a quick read. But it is a well-paced narrative portraying both how the capital city exemplified the nation's racial sins and how citizens of good conscience worked to erase them.
A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

By James Reston Jr.

Arcade. 304 pp. $24.99

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Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial has been so successful that one almost forgets the ugly storms of racism and misogyny with which opponents of the design fought the young architect more than 35 years ago. The contest over the memorial, which ultimately triumphed with the public, has become a convenient metaphor for healing whenever Vietnam is discussed. And Lin's success has reinforced a popular but shopworn narrative about the lonely artist with a vision fighting and prevailing over philistinism. But it's also a trope, a reflexive rhetorical off-ramp whenever the conversation about Vietnam, and the still-treacherous cultural fault lines exposed by our wars in Southeast Asia, becomes too uncomfortable. At the end of Ken Burns' Vietnam War television documentary, the director made the obligatory reference to Lin's masterpiece. Of course he did. The memorial is now connected to the war rather like "bless you" is connected to sneezing.

James Reston Jr.'s "A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial" recounts the bitter debate over Lin's design and the contest between Lin and Frederick Hart, who was commissioned to make the memorial more appealing to traditionalists with the addition of a bronze statue known as "Three Soldiers." Lin's 1981 plan for a reticent form, in which the names of the fallen were inscribed on reflective stone panels set into a V-shaped wall, was misunderstood and mischaracterized by some veterans who felt their sacrifice should be honored with a more conventional memorial. Opportunistic political figures exploited the veterans' grievance, vilified Lin in vile, racist terms, and called for scrapping her design, which had won first place in an open, anonymous and professionally administered public contest. In the end, supporters of Hart and traditionalism prevailed over good taste, and Hart's statue has permanently disfigured the memorial since it was installed in 1984.

This transpired during the early years of the Reagan administration, which was morning in America for demagogues such as Interior Secretary James Watt (who resigned after referring to the members of a departmental panel as "a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple"). Watt threw himself into the middle of the controversy, backing what would have been a ridiculous "compromise": Lin's memorial walls would frame Hart's statue, with a giant flagpole on the ground above the apex. In the end, a better but still bad solution was found. Hart, who had placed third in the initial competition, got his chance to muck up Lin's design, but the statue was placed on the periphery of the memorial, as if his three realistically rendered soldiers were encountering Lin's "rift in the earth" like an enemy squadron emerging from the forest.

Reston retells the story dramatically, dredging up material that many of the players in this drama might wish to remain forgotten. Lin's design emerged from classwork at Yale, and an early iteration included a series of large stone slabs, toppled over on one another like a line of dominoes terminating at the intersection of the two walls. Classroom critique led to the elimination of that rather clumsy element, which was, perhaps, a metaphor for the war and the "domino theory" that compelled U.S. engagement and escalation. But the professor who led Lin's class "would resent her ingratitude for all he and his class had done for her." During the contentious political process of getting the memorial approved, Lin emerges as admirably tough but sometimes her own worst enemy.

But Lin was young and new to the ways of Washington. Her sins were minor compared with the machinations and ugliness of Hart. A fast-rising artist who had been commissioned at a young age to design the tympanum over the central doors of the National Cathedral, Hart was working in a long, historical tradition of realistic representation. At a time when most of the rest of the art world considered that kind of work retardataire, Hart had built a solid reputation, good connections and formidable champions, and he was a favorite of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund founder, Jan Scruggs, even before the decision to hold an open contest was made. Hart may well have felt cheated when he lost to Lin, and he certainly conducted himself like a sore loser.

"Lin's memorial is intentionally not meaningful," he said, calling it "elitist." That word in aesthetic debates is simply mudslinging. But Hart was slinging with gusto. "People say you can bring what you want to Lin's memorial. But I call that brown bag aesthetics. I mean you better bring something because there ain't nothing being served."

His allies were even more despicable. Tom Carhart, a lawyer, veteran and author, said the memorial should bear the inscription "designed by a gook." Ross Perot, who had contributed generously to the funding of the memorial, called her an "egg roll." The novelist Mark Helprin, in a letter to Hart, called Lin "that little fluffball" and said that Hart's statue had "pulled her chestnuts out of the fire and gave meaning to her otherwise cynical gravestone." The National Review deemed Lin's work "Orwellian glop."

Lin was forced to compromise, and the memorial has been weaker ever since, and will be further weakened if plans to build a superfluous high-tech visitor's center nearby proceed. Reston has no comment on that, which is unfortunate, given how destructive the new building will be to the Mall and the memorial. Still, much of Lin's vision was finally realized, a small miracle given the forces arrayed against it. When it opened, no senior member of the Reagan administration attended. When Hart's statue was installed a few years later, the president himself came and addressed the crowd. Lin received $20,000 for winning the competition; Hart demanded $330,000 for his statue.

Reston's own view of all this isn't entirely clear. He is evenhanded in laying out the history of the debate, but he also positions himself as an outsider to what he deems an insider's art discourse. He opens one chapter with what seems a snide slap at professional design review, including the respected and venerable Fine Arts Commission: "The art world was not about to lie down and accept a political invasion into its sacrosanct dominion. What did politicians and veterans know about high art anyway?" About the placement of the memorial, always a contentious decision, he writes: "The guardians of Washington's public spaces were stingy in ceding ground in central Washington." Indeed, they are. The creation of open space on the Mall, essential to the symbolism of modern Washington, cost too much pain and expense to clutter it up anytime someone proposes a new monument or memorial.

The book concludes with an extended "Author's Reflection" in which Reston tells the gripping and tragic story of a friend's death in Vietnam. The emotional power of this pendant chapter gives the book a strange hybrid character, as if it were two books in one. But it also serves as an elliptical take on the ugliness of the memorial debate. Reston concludes with a conversation he had with a prominent Vietnamese professor and former government official. The author asks why the Vietnamese today don't resent the Americans more, because they fought only to get the Americans out. "Our patriotism is like a lump of charcoal," he writes, paraphrasing his interlocutor: "If you light it, it burns very hot. ... But when it is over, it is over, and we focus on peace and development and rebuilding."

Not the Americans. We keep fighting, including bitter wars over aesthetics that are, in the end, merely proxies for the same old thing: Do white men run the world and write its history? Or can a rift in the earth open up new possibilities?
The Tunnel at the End of the Light: Essays on Movies and Politics

By Jim Shepard

Tin House. 272 pp. Paperback, $15.95

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Pay close attention to the subtitle of Jim Shepard's smart, stimulating new book, "The Tunnel at the End of the Light: Essays on Movies and Politics." In these 10 pieces, first published a decade ago in the Believer magazine, you won't find reflections on what we ordinarily think of as political movies - "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," say, or "Primary Colors." Rather, Shepard discusses films such as "Badlands," "GoodFellas" and "Lawrence of Arabia," in which few if any politicians are portrayed, but which highlight certain character traits that shape our politics. Above all, he focuses on "the power and resilience of the lies we tell ourselves as a collective."

Take, for example, "Badlands" (1973), the first feature directed by Terrence Malick, in which Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek play young killers. Based on the 1958 rampage of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend, the movie is narrated by Spacek's character, Holly, who has a knack for detaching herself from the mayhem. For example, while the camera shows her companion, Kit (Sheen), brutalizing a cow, Holly savors a compliment he paid her: "He'd never met a 15-year-old girl who behaved more like a grown-up and wasn't all giggly." Kit is even more sunnily superficial, a perverse throwback to that standard Western-movie hero, "the affable man with the gun." "Think about our conception of ourselves in terms of our foreign policy," Shepard goes on. "We may screw up, we may blunder about, but we always mean well. Any harm done to others is either unforeseen or couldn't have been avoided. Our hearts are in the right place, even if we act as though they aren't."

In an essay on Italian American mob movies, Shepard prefers Martin Scorsese's "GoodFellas" to Francis Ford Coppola's vaunted "The Godfather" and "The Godfather II." Shepard finds fault with the "rosy glow [cast] backward" by the Godfather films, which evoke a kind of Thugs' Golden Age when a code of honor centered on family loyalty. In "GoodFellas," the only value is power. "If you got out of line, you got whacked," one character observes. "But sometimes, even if people didn't get out of line, they got whacked." This shrugging off of arbitrary brutality strikes Shepard as truer to the way gangsters actually behave, and he draws analogies with the politics of the day, especially the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. After citing excuses for it made by Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, Shepard singles out the revealing explanation given by an official at the American Enterprise Institute: "Every ten years or so the United States needs to pick up some crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."

Shepard, a novelist and short-story writer who teaches creative writing and film at Williams College, keeps up his attacks on the Bush administration in a piece contrasting David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" with Werner Herzog's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God." T.E. Lawrence's unlikely career puts Shepard in mind of guess-who. "For Lawrence, as for George W. Bush," Shepard writes, "his lack of aptitude for nearly everything seemed to be part of what convinced him of his greatness: he clearly wasn't made for ordinary tasks. So perhaps he was made for (BEGIN ITAL)extraordinary(END ITAL) tasks."

By now, it probably goes without saying that if you are a conservative, this book is probably not for you. But even for unregenerate lefties, the last and longest piece in the book may come as a welcome change of pace. Paying scant attention to politics, Shepard analyzes "The Vanishing," a Dutch thriller from 1988.

"The Vanishing" gets its title from the disappearance of a young woman who is driving through France with her boyfriend. They stop at a gas station. She goes to the bathroom, he stays with the car, she never comes back. The boyfriend, Rex, is so distraught that he plasters the region with missing-person signs and keeps searching for her year after year. We soon learn part of what happened: She was abducted. The rest of the story is left for Rex - now our eyes and ears - to unearth.

Shepard emphasizes the aspect of the film that makes it more than just exciting: the profoundly creepy relationship that develops between Rex and the kidnapper. This is a fine essay about a haunting masterpiece, but I think Shepard missed a trick. The director, George Sluizer, remade "The Vanishing" a decade later in English, starring Jeff Bridges. "About that second version," Shepard writes, "the less said the better." But "The Vanishing II" (if you will) exemplifies just about everything that's wrong with the stock Hollywood approach to moviemaking - a topic Shepard might have done well to address.

As our new president continues to make fresh breakthroughs in reckless buffoonery, it can be tempting to cast "a rosy glow backward" on Bush and his policies. In this astringent and witty collection, Shepard argues convincingly that to do so would be a travesty.

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Drabelle, a former contributing editor of The Washington Post Book World, writes frequently on movies.
His Other Life: Searching for My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams

By Melanie McCabe

New Orleans. 252 pp. $19.95 paperback

---

I was only 16 years old when my father died. Shortly after the funeral, I sat with my mother and peppered her with questions about this man who had been taken away from me too soon. I knew him only as Daddy, in that limited way a child knows a parent, and I longed to create a fuller picture of who he had been before I was born.

That day my mother revealed to me a secret that my father had wanted to keep hidden from my sister and me: He had been married before my mother, for 12 years. This fact was both astonishing and tantalizing. I badgered Mom for every tidbit she might share. She let the story slip out in pieces. Something had gone wrong in my dad's first marriage. The woman had died in 1951 in some mysterious way, in the company of another man. Her name had been Hazel Kramer before she became Hazel McCabe. Mom added, seemingly as an afterthought, "I know that she used to be Tennessee Williams' girlfriend."

I was thrilled at this revelation. Two years later, when Williams' "Memoirs" came out, I raced to get a copy, fascinated to find my father mentioned as the man who had stolen Hazel away, breaking young Tom Williams' heart. My dad had been a wonderful and devoted father, but the picture of him as "the other man," capable of stealing another fellow's girl, was not the image I held. The story turned him into someone far more intriguing than I had ever thought he was. I savored this tangential brush with fame, and years later, as a high school teacher, I enjoyed introducing my students to "A Streetcar Named Desire" and milking my juicy backstory for all it was worth.

For a long time, I knew nothing beyond this. Then, in 2013, a friend asked if I knew that in one of Williams' late plays, there was a character named Terrence McCabe - my father's name. Excited, I obtained a copy of "The Red Devil Battery Sign" to learn that the character McCabe is something of a villain. He becomes romantically involved with the beloved daughter of the main character, King Del Rey - a relationship that King disparages when he learns of it. King feels betrayed by his daughter and by this relationship that developed without his knowledge. The parallels between what the character McCabe does and what Williams must have perceived that my father had done by marrying Hazel were striking. Was this what had motivated Williams to name this character after Dad? Had he held onto bitter feelings about my father all those many years?

My friend's casual question launched an investigation into the past that took on for me the power of a mythic quest. Understanding what had happened between Dad, Hazel and Tom became an obsession as I researched each night into the wee hours, long past a sensible bedtime. I didn't know when I began that I would end up writing a book, "His Other Life: Searching for My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams." I only knew that at that moment in my life, during a rocky period following a broken marriage and during the terminal illness of my sister, the past and its secrets felt like safer territory to explore than the current terrain.

I delved into Ancestry.com, starting more than 40 family trees, trying to track down living children and grandchildren of long-dead people who had played a part in the story. I sought and obtained Hazel's will, which revealed additional mysteries. For one, who was this man - Russell Henderson Burke - to whom she had left a small fortune in money and jewelry? Was he her lover? Had he played a part in the breakup of Dad and Hazel's marriage? I traveled to Chicago to access two court cases Hazel had brought in a challenge to her grandmother's will. I unearthed a lengthy State Department file about her tragic death in Mexico City. Hazel died from a lethal mixture of Seconal and alcohol, but there is some dispute about whether it was an accident, suicide or even murder. The man who was with her at the time of her death was questioned by the police and ultimately released. Mexican newspaper accounts I found at the Library of Congress insinuated that the man knew more about the death than he was saying.

I combed through various Williams archives, sought out alumni offices for old records and made an exhaustive study of my father's writings. My father was an economist, but from the time I was a little girl, I remember falling asleep to the nightly clatter of his Royal typewriter as he wrote short stories, plays and two full-length books. I have wondered how much of my dad's writing pursuits were motivated by his envy of Williams' success. Sadly for Dad, his work never found publishers, though I have kept all of it that I could find. In my Google searches, I turned up a play Dad wrote that was maintained by the New York Public Library. Paying for a copy of it turned out to be a very lucky move, as the play is a barely fictionalized account of his last year with Hazel before they separated.

Scholars who have delved deeply into Williams' background seem to believe that Hazel disappeared from his life once she married my father. But this turns out to be untrue. Dad and Hazel continued to associate with Williams whenever they visited St. Louis, between 1935 and 1940, the period right before his major success with "The Glass Menagerie." Once they even gave him a ride to Illinois and spent an evening together before parting ways. In an album that belonged to Hazel, I discovered a photograph of young Tom, probably taken on that evening.

I learned that Hazel had sought Tom's help in the late 1940s when she challenged her grandmother's estate and that they met up in New York. Williams later expressed guilt that he had not provided Hazel the help she needed, as he was then involved with his longtime lover, Frank Merlo, and busy with his career. The memory of Hazel would haunt Williams for years, and, according to Lyle Leverich, in his well-respected biography of Williams called "Tom," Williams confided to his mother that the beautiful redhead had been the greatest love of his life. Characters modeled after her appeared in numerous plays and short stories, including "Battle of Angels," "Orpheus Descending," "Spring Storm," "The Accent of a Coming Foot" and "The Field of Blue Children." I even found an original typescript of one of Williams' last plays, "Something Cloudy, Something Clear," in which Hazel, appearing as herself, discusses her marriage to my father. In a conversation with the Tom character, (later renamed August in the published version of the play), Hazel reminds Tom that she once told him she had been happy with my father for only a short time. Seeing this, I was glad my father had never read this play, published as it was some 10 years after his death.

What I learned about Williams is significant, but what I discovered about Hazel and my father has had a more profound impact on me. I encountered the woman I originally pegged as a heartbreaker and came to empathize with her over the troubles of her short, tragic life. Of even greater weight is that this journey brought my father back to me - not just the Daddy I had revered and lost, but the man, with all his flaws, whom I never had a chance to know.

---

McCabe is the author of "His Other Life: Searching for My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams." She is an English teacher at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Va.
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Official sources were mum last week about a Capital One commercial filming in San Antonio but social media seemed to provide one of the answers they wouldn't: whether the stars of previous ads like Charles Barkley, Samuel L. Jackson and Spike Lee would be in town.

Downtown San Antonio became a hot spot for celebrity sightings over the weekend, with fans spotting all three.

The San Antonio Film Commission confirmed Capital One was filming in town last week, though a specific location was not disclosed and the financial corporation declined to comment.

RELATED: Capital One filming commercial in San Antonio

No one has confirmed that the stars were in town for the filming but Jackson himself provided more insight into what's going on. On Dec. 2, the actor posted a photo of The Pearl with a full moon looming over it.

Now Playing: Watch a clip from Entertainment Weekly Cast Reunions: Do the Right Thing! Video: Entertainment Weekly

He included the hashtags "#capitalone," #3amigos" and "#roadtofinalfour" in his caption.

The three celebrities have starred in Capital One commercials in the past. The NCAA 2018 Final Four, sponsored by Capital One  presumably what Jackson was referring to in his caption  will begin in March.

Regardless of why the stars where in town, fans were surprised to catch them at spots around The Pearl and eating beside them at popular restaurants like Osteria Il Sogno. They were quick to share their grazes with greatness on social media.

Check out their time in the Alamo City in the gallery above.

Madalyn Mendoza is a digital reporter for MySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| mmendoza@mysa.com | Twitter: @MaddySkye
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Moxie is defined as a "force of character, determination, or nerve."

Moxie's Grill & Bar, the new restaurant that opened last week across from the Galleria, hopes to be a culinary force that strikes a chord with Houston diners.

A popular Canadian chain opened its second U.S. location (the first was in Dallas only months ago) at 5000 Westheimer in an airy two-level space that was once home to Canyon Cafe that shuttered last year.

READ ALSO: Grand opening of Canadian bar in Houston turns into hot party

While poutine, a national dish of Canada, is among the appetizers, Moxie's isn't a restaurant offering Canadian fare. "We're really a melting pot of cultures in one menu," said Brandon Thordarson, the brand's executive chef.

Now Playing: Chronicle critic Alison Cook compiles the best dining the city has to offer. Video: Houston Chronicle

For Houstonians the Moxie's menu will ring familiar with global flavors invested in dishes such as tuna poke, Korean fried cauliflower, tempura shrimp cones, spicy tuna roll, chipotle mango chicken on quinoa, red Thai curry bowl with jasmine rice, beef vindaloo with curry-buttered naan, and chicken and rigatoni tossed in a mushroom and madeira cream sauce.

There are dishes created specifically for the Houston market including guacamole and chips, blackened mahi mahi with chorizo and corn hash, a fried crispy chicken sandwich, and steak frites with chimichurri. The house prime rib also was upgraded to USDA Prime cut, a nod to Houston's discerning beef palate.

The Moxie's menu is rounded out with a selection of salads, steaks, burgers, and sandwiches.

The beverage program also has a stronger nod to Houston tastebuds as well as local ingredients, said Kim Spence, sommelier and national beverage director. The list of five signature margaritas includes Straight Outta Cozumel (made with Don Julio blanco tequila, Texas orange juice, fresh basil, pineapple simple syrup, and fresh lime juice) as well as a tableside jalapeno margarita made with Olmeca Altos Plata tequila, Texas orange juice, simple syrup, and fresh lime juice. The cocktails list also includes an avocado gimlet (rosemary- and olive-infused gin, avocado, apple-flavored liqueur, simple syrup, and fresh lime juice), a grapefruit mojito, and the Signature Caesar, billed as "Canada's best-selling cocktail," made with Tito's and clamato juice and garnished with a house-made pickled vegetables skewer.

Locally, the restaurant's managment will include Drew Smith as executive chef and Allan Hannay as general manager.

Hannay described Moxie's as a "premium casual restaurant that puts the fun back in the premium sector of dining." Part of that fun, he said, is a lively atmosphere with a DJ on the lower level and serving food at later hours from most Galleria restaurants (Sunday through Wednesday the restaurant, including the kitchen, is open until midnight; Thursday through Saturday until 2 a.m.).

Physically, the restaurant is imposing  at 11,000 square feet it can accommodate up to 430 guests including patio seating. The two-level configuration includes a downstairs bar with seating and the main second-level space with a generous bar, open kitchen, main dining room, and a curved wrap-around patio.

Moxie's Grill & Bar, 5000 Westheimer, 346-571-6164; us.moxies.com
WASHINGTON  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will not issue final regulations for financial responsibility requirements for certain hardrock mining facilities, the agency announced Dec. 1.

After careful analysis of public comments, the statutory authority, and the record for this rulemaking, EPA is confident that modern industry practices, along with existing state and federal requirements address risks from operating hardrock mining facilities, said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Additional financial assurance requirements are unnecessary and would impose an undue burden on this important sector of the American economy and rural America, where most of these mining jobs are based.

EPA published proposed regulations under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund) on Jan. 11, and the public comment period closed on July 11.

EPA has decided not to issue final regulations because the risks associated with these facilities operations are addressed by existing federal and state programs and industry practices. EPA was under a court-ordered deadline to take final action on this rulemaking by Dec. 1. The decision not to issue final rules under CERCLA section 108(b) will be published in the Federal Register.

The success of Nevadas robust mine bonding program protects public safety and our environment and ensures our critical mining industry can operate with certainty, said Gov. Brian Sandoval in a statement. I applaud the EPA for their thoughtful approach and thorough review of the proposed rule, for seeking comments from a diverse set of stakeholders and ultimately, for making the right decision. Todays action by the Administrator recognizes the reality that the states have been capably regulating mine bonding without interference from Washington and should be allowed to continue to do so.

EPA has analyzed the need for financial responsibility requirements under CERCLA section 108(b) based on the degree and duration of risk associated with the production, transportation, treatment, storage and disposal of hazardous substances from current hardrock mining operations, as well the risk of taxpayer funded cleanups at facilities operating under modern management practices and modern environmental regulations. That risk is identified by examining: the management of hazardous substances at such facilities; federal and state regulatory controls on that management and federal and state financial responsibility requirements; and, the payment experience of the fund in responding to releases.

EPA concluded the degree and duration of risk associated with the modern production, transportation, treatment, storage or disposal of hazardous substances by the hardrock mining industry does not present a level of risk of taxpayer-funded response actions that warrant imposition of financial responsibility requirements under CERCLA for this sector. This determination reflects EPAs interpretation of the statute, EPAs evaluation of the record for the proposed rule, and the approximately 11,000 public comments received by EPA on this rulemaking.

The American Exploration & Mining Association is pleased that EPA, under Administrator Pruitt, undertook a legitimate, science and fact based analysis. EPA has finally recognized that the robust financial assurance system in place works. said Laura Skaer, AEMA executive director. No mine approved by the Bureau of Land Management or the United States Forest Service since 1990 has been placed on the Superfund list. This undeniable fact, along with robust financial assurance requirements, stringent regulatory requirements and the industrys commitment to the highest environmental standards is what made todays decision the right one.

State mining and environmental regulators, as well as other federal agencies and the regulated community and financial sectors, commented that the proposed requirements would potentially interfere with state and local mining regulations, were unnecessary, and would be difficult to implement. This decision does not in any way affect EPAs authority to take appropriate response actions under CERCLA.

The National Mining Association also welcomed the decision, saying that the proposed final rules stemmed from environmental group litigation seeking to use CERCLA to impose additional, crippling financial and regulatory burdens on the mining industry.

When litigation is used as a tool to attempt to force the government into unnecessary action against an industry, the result is bad policy, said Hal Quinn, NMA president and CEO. Todays action shows that reason can prevail. Modern, advanced mining practices  coupled with existing state and federal environmental and financial assurance requirements  comprehensively cover the same risks contemplated under the CERCLA program.

Great Basin Resource Watch, a nonprofit regional environmental justice organization, was one of the plaintiffs in the years-old litigation via Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm. GBRW Executive Director John Hadder said that the group hasnt yet discussed officially what will happen next but that the fight isnt over.

I guess the bottom line is that well be back in court, he said. We feel that it is needed, and well probably be back in court.

Nevada Mining Association President Dana Bennett said she appreciated the EPA not tampering with Nevadas already successful bonding program.

"If enacted, the proposed rule would have created an unnecessary and duplicative federal program in Nevada, which would have discouraged domestic mineral production, limited future mining investments, and devastated rural Nevada economies," she said in a statement. "The Silver State has long protected its public lands, in partnership with federal land management agencies, through continuous oversight of mining operations and vigorous enforcement of state and federal environmental laws. In addition, mining companies are required to bond for the reclamation and remediation of mining sites, and Nevada regulators currently hold nearly$3 billion in financial assurance bonds. The proposed CERCLA rule would have more than doubled the bonding costs for mines without adding any extra benefit to Nevadas environment."

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., also remarked on the decision.

The Environmental Protection Agencys decision today is a win for Nevadas mining industry, which helps employ nearly 25,000 workers in our state alone, he said. The CERCLA rule would have discouraged investment, development, and job creation in the very communities that rely on this industry.

This story has been updated to include a statement from the Nevada Mining Association.
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A 13-year-old East Texas girl who ran away last week was found safe in Mexico late Sunday, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

Mexican authorities and the FBI pitched in to track down Ashlee Hattermann during the two-day hunt that led officials to Laredo and eventually to Mexico City.

The teen disappeared Friday morning after her mother dropped her off at Thornton Middle School. A few of the girl's friends saw her that day, but at some point she walked off campus and went to a church, where she persuaded a good Samaritan to buy her a bus ticket.

"She convinced a woman she was trying to get back to Laredo to get to her family," said Harris County Sheriff's Office spokesman Thomas Gilliland.

The teen hopped on a Greyhound headed south to Laredo on Friday afternoon.

READ MORE: City of Laredo employee accused of using work vehicle for personal gain

The next morning, the good Samaritan saw Facebook posts about the missing girl and came to police after realizing she'd been duped.

Authorities tracked down security footage from the Katy bus station showing the girl getting ready to board a bus headed south. Initially, authorities tracked her to Laredo but couldn't confirm she'd crossed the border until mid-day Sunday.

"We are working with Mexican authorities in an effort to locate her in Mexico, but we are also seeking any information anyone in the United States may have which may help us find her," FBI spokeswoman Michelle Lee said in an email.

Although Ashlee left school early in the day, the Hattermanns didn't find out their daughter was missing till late Friday afternoon, when the school called to say she'd only attended one class that day.

"The last thing we heard is that she crossed the border into Mexico," her mother, Tiffany Hattermann said Sunday morning. "We got a tip from somebody in Laredo."

Ashlee's parents feared she was headed south to find a man she met on the internet.

"There's been an ongoing case since May of last school year when she was talking online with a sexual predator," Hattermann said. "It was investigated by the Harris County Sheriff's Office and unfortunately they never followed up with it."

Gilliland disputed that.

"It has been investigated," he said. "It wasn't just put on a shelf."

RELATED: Laredo PD looking for man seen driving stolen F-150

After finding out about the messages last spring, Ashlee's parents took away her phone and internet access. But now they think she may have managed to stay in contact with the man using a secret second phone.

The worried Katy couple had no indication there was anything amiss in recent weeks, though.

"There was nothing wrong when I dropped her off at school," her mother said. "The only thing that threw me off was she told me she loved me when she got out of the car."

Ashlee is described as 5-foot-7 and 110 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. She may be wearing glasses. There was no Amber Alert issued, but activation requires indication of an abduction, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

"I know they're saying he's a human trafficker but we don't have anything saying that yet," Gilliland said. "Right now, we're still treating this as a runaway."

ICE and the Department of Homeland Security pitched in as officials plastered the girl's image across the internet and saturated media near the border.

Finally, around 11 p.m., authorities in Mexico spotted the teen and alerted the sheriff's office before picking her up to meet her father, who was already in Mexico City.
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Dr. Corinne Stern spoke to Commissioners Court on Monday not in her capacity as Webb County medical examiner, but as a resident of Los Botines.

For months she and many of her neighbors have been terrorized by a pack of dogs that have killed and injured a number of their livestock. Stern showed commissioners photos of several of the goats she had raised, dead, covered in blood, with bones protruding and limbs missing due to attacks from these dogs.

"My goats are vaccinated, they are de-wormed, I have a fly control program. My animals are fully vetted and very well cared for. But I still could not protect them from this," Stern said.

On Nov. 11, Stern lost six goats, three of which were pregnant, she said. Twenty-one others have been injured, and the death toll could rise.

Stern said she raises cabritos and show goats for 4H. One of the goats that was killed was a family pet, raised on a bottle.

READ MORE: City of Laredo employee accused of using work vehicle for personal gain

Brothers Mario and Jose Aguero raise livestock in Los Botines as well. They told commissioners that the dog problem has been going on for at least six months, and it's escalating on a daily basis. They asked for animal control presence in the area.

Several chapters in the Texas Health and Safety Code stipulate that this problem is the sheriff's responsibility, Stern said.

Sheriff Martin Cuellar said Stern expects his department to perform miracles. In order to fully administer animal control, the Sheriff's Office would need funding for cages, equipment and a place to take these dogs, he said.

"The only time that we take a dog in to the pound is if he bites a human. That's the way it is. That's the only time that we do that," Cuellar said.

For the last seven years, since the county terminated their contract with the city's Animal Care Services, Commissioners Court has dropped the ball, Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina said, and to point a finger at the sheriff is unfair.

RELATED: Laredo PD looking for man seen driving stolen F-150

Rhonda Tiffin, the county's planning director, said she believes there's been a misunderstanding in the Sheriff's Office. If an animal bites a human or another animal, the sheriff has a responsibility under the county's rabies prevention order to respond, she said.

"And that includes confiscating the animal, euthanizing it, and sending it off for specimen. So that does include other animals," Tiffin said. "... And we certainly should start doing that right away."

Also, landowners may not be aware that they have a legal right to protect their animals, which means anyone who witnesses an animal attacking livestock or fowl can shoot it without any responsibility, Tiffin said.

"And they don't even need to have a hunting license. They even put that in the statute," she said.

Tijerina said the the county needs to enter into talks with either the city or Laredo Animal Protective Society to re-establish animal control in these rural areas of the county. Commissioners Court could not take any action on this issue at Monday's meeting.

Julia Wallace may be reached at 956-728-2543 or jwallace@lmtonline.com
A Mexican national has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for his role in importing methamphetamine into the United States, Acting U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez announced Monday.

Omar Martinez-Cervantes, 34, arrived at the Lincoln-Juarez Bridge Port of Entry in Laredo on Oct. 8, driving a Chevrolet Cruze. At that time, he claimed to be driving to Houston to visit his family.
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Indivisible Houston along with Texas Organizing Project, Tax March Houston, Pantsuit Republic and Houston Handmaids, rallied outside Ted Cruz's office on Monday, Nov. 27, as part of a National Day of Action protesting the recent Senate tax bill.

Republicans revealed the $1.5 trillion plan early November, which some groups say will produce a significant tax cut for corporations.

Daniel Cohen, president of Indivisible Houston, said the organization and other supporters against the tax bill have been fighting for months.

"Once it looked certain that the House would pass the Tax Scam, there needed to be a concentrated effort to voice our opposition," Cohen said.

Cohen used the term "Tax Scam" to describe the bill that plays favor to business by providing the significant tax cut, which he added that the plan burdens students, teachers, homeowners and workers of all wages with a tax increase that are to come.

"This is a reverse Robin Hood that will steal from the poor and give to the rick," Cohen said.

He added that the organization believes this tax bill would build a bankroll for donors on the backs of poor kids and seniors.

The Senate bill would lower the current 35 percent tax rate for business down to 20 percent.

However, the "Tax Cut and Jobs Act" serves more than just a tax bill, it would also provide changes to health care and make changes to taxes at the state and local level.

Cohen said Cruz's staff allowed four of protesters to go into his office and discuss their concerns compared to John Cornyn's office, which he said allowed everyone who was out protesting the ability to sit and air their grievances.

"It's pretty ridiculous that the senator refuses to talk to us," Cohen said. "He even manipulated the facts to claim he has had town halls this year when he absolutely has not."

Organizing and consistently being present are what Cohen said hopes their effort can "kill this terrible tax plan and start over."

Cohen believes that economic growth and tax relief should be provided to the working class and middle class and not the top tenth of the top one percent of billionaires, millionaires and mega corporations.

"This plan gets rid of the mortgage deduction, the medical expense deduction, student loan interest deductions, teacher materials deductions and makes grad research stipends taxable," Cohen said.

Cohen highlighted many of the administration's policies and legislation produced since President Trump assumed his seat, but he calls this tax bill the worst that could come out of the administration.

"This White House has put forth some horrible policies, including the Muslim Ban and the attack on healthcare," Cohen said. "We're looking at a direct attack on working families, particularly seniors and kids."

President Trump ran on many platforms, one of which was promising major tax cuts, which Cohen said is what we are seeing and with this specific push to present before Christmas is what he called, "a big fat giftwrapped giveaway to corporations."

Cohen said Indivisible knows that the real impact will show come next November with constituents angry and plenty of grassroots activists putting in more work than usual, proves that many people want change.
WASHINGTON - New toll lanes kicked off Monday morning along a 10-mile stretch of a key commuting route in suburban Washington. At first blush, the rates seemed rather high at times.

The estimated toll on Interstate 66 for one-way travel from the Beltway in northern Virginia to Washington before 8 a.m. was $28.50. About 8:40 a.m., the toll was $34.50.

The rates are variable depending on traffic conditions. Officials with Virginia's Department of Transportation said the $34.50 rate was the "peak of the peak rate."

"It is a dynamic toll," said Jenny McCord, a spokeswoman for VDOT. "It will vary and fluctuate based on the demand." Other times, she noted, the toll was in the low $20s. The toll changes every six minutes.

The new toll lanes run, which Rosslyn, Virginia, to Interstate 495, are meant to help alleviate traffic along one of the most congested roadways in the region. Solo drivers can use the new high occupancy toll lanes during rush hours as long as they're willing to pay the toll.

There is no cap on the toll pricing. The price changes as congestion rises and decrease as congestion is less. The hours of the toll lanes are from 5:30 to 9:30 a.m. eastbound and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. westbound, Monday through Friday. The lanes are free to all drivers during off-peak hours and weekends.

Transportation leaders have said they expect the new tolls to encourage carpooling and to push more people to use mass transit. When tolling was talked about in 2015 and models on traffic and pricing were done, transportation officials had said that, on average, the price would average about $9 for the 10 variations of trips drivers could take on the highway.

Part of the reason toll prices can spike at any given time, Virginia officials said, is that the system bases rates on the volume and speed it is trying to maintain. On Monday, VDOT said the average speed was 57 mph, compared to 37 mph at roughly the same time a year ago.

McCord said transportation planners felt that the new toll had done its job - to help provide a more reliable trip. But at a cost.

On social media, drivr aged.

"Staff said in the hearings about I-66 toll lanes that the highest tools would be $9 from Vienna to DC? I paid $22 today. My neighbor paid $24. This is literally highway robbery," one driver noted on Twitter.

Offered another: "I-66? More like I-$66."
BEIJING - Reading headlines from the World Internet Conference in China, the casual reader might have come away a little confused. China was opening its doors to the global internet, some media outlets optimistically declared, while others said Beijing was defending its system of censorship and state control.

And perhaps most confusing of all, Apple's CEO Tim Cook stood up and celebrated China's vision of an open internet.

Say what?

China has more than 730 million internet users, boast the largest e-commerce market in the world, and consumers who enthusiastically embrace mobile digital technology. But it censors many foreign news websites and keeps most Western social media companies out.

The World Internet Conference held in the eastern Chinese city of Wuzhen is meant to promote China's vision of "cyber-sovereignty' - the idea that governments all over the world should have the right to control what appears on the internet in their countries.

In practice, in China, that amounts to the largest system of censorship and digital surveillance in the world, where criticism of the Communist Party is sharply curtailed and can even land you in jail.

But that wasn't mentioned when Cook delivered a keynote speech on the opening day of the gathering Sunday.

"The theme of this conference - developing a digital economy for openness and shared benefits - is a vision we at Apple share," Cook said, in widely reported remarks. "We are proud to have worked alongside many of our partners in China to help build a community that will join a common future in cyberspace."

Chinese media welcomed Cook's endorsement, with the nationalist Global Times declaring in a headline that "Consensus grows at internet conference."

Alongside Cook in endorsing China's digital vision were officials from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Serbia, it noted.

Free speech and human rights advocates were less impressed.

"Cook's appearance lends credibility to a state that aggressively censors the internet, throws people in jail for being critical about social ills, and is building artificial intelligence systems that monitors everyone and targets dissent," Maya Wang at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong wrote in an email.

"The version of cyberspace the Chinese government is building is a decidedly dystopian one, and I don't think anyone would want to share in this 'common future.' Apple should have spoken out against it, not endorsed it."

And it wasn't just Cook who some critics accused of indulging in a little double-speak.

China's President Xi Jinping opened the conference written remarks that led to a flurry of arguably misleading headlines.

"The development of China's cyberspace is entering a fast lane," he said, in remarks read out by an official. "China's doors will only become more and more open."

Yet the audience was soon reminded that nothing that could possibly threaten the Communist Party would be allowed through those supposedly open doors.

China has tightened censorship and controls of cyberspace under Xi, with a new cybersecurity law requiring foreign firms to store data locally and submit to domestic surveillance.

Wang Huning, who serves as a member of the Communist Party's elite standing committee and is Xi's top ideologue, defended China's system and even suggested that more controls could be in the offing.

"China stands ready to develop new rules and systems of internet governance to serve all parties and counteract current imbalances," he said to the conference, according to Reuters.

But it was Cook's words that prompted the strongest reaction, coming after Apple has also come under fire for its actions in China.

In a written response to questions from Senators Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, last month, Apple said that it had removed 674 VPN apps from its app store in China this year - tools that allow users to circumvent censorship by routing traffic abroad - to comply with local laws. Skype was also removed from Apple's China store, the New York Times reported.

In August, Cook said Apple hadn't wanted to remove the apps, but had to follow local laws wherever it does business.

"We strongly believe that participating in markets and bringing benefits to consumers is in the best interests of folks there and in other countries as well," Cook said. "We believe in engaging in governments even when we disagree."

But Greatfire.org, a group that combats Chinese censorship, argued Apple's decision to agree to censorship put pressure on other companies to follow suit, and could even mean that Chinese citizens could ultimately be subjected to Chinese censorship when they travel abroad.

"It is undeniable that Tim Cook and Xi Jinping have a shared vision of the internet. Xi wants to be able to control all information and silence those who may threaten his leadership. Cook helps him with vast, unaccountable, implementation of censorship across Apple products," it wrote to The Washington Post.

Critics saw simple business calculations in Cook's appearance in Wuzhen.

"Cook Kisses the Ring,' Bloomberg columnist Tim Culpan wrote, arguing that Cook was "desperate to hold onto any remaining scraps of the China market" in the face of stiff competition from local rivals.

The head honchos of China's main digital and internet companies, Huawei, Baidu and Tencent, "ought to have been grinning like Cheshire cats," Culpan added, since censorship has kept foreign companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter out of China and served as a "handy little tool of trade protectionism."

Nor did it matter if Cook's tongue was in his cheek, for his presence at the conference, along with Google's Sundar Pichai and CISCO Systems' Chuck Robbins, not only gave legitimacy to the authorities but also sent a signal to domestic Chinese rivals that their turf is safe, Culpan wrote.

Rights group Freedom House last month branded China the worst abuser of internet freedom among 65 countries surveyed, followed by Syria and Ethiopia.

But in Wuzhen, that report was not about to be discussed.

Instead, a top state-backed Chinese think-tank declared that the host nation ranked fifth among 38 nations globally in standards of cyber governance, as it called for a 'democratic' internet governance system to eradicate inequalities that it said had marginalized developing nations.

"We should promote the establishment of a multinational, democratic and transparent global internet governance system," the Chinese Academy of Cyberspace Studies said in a report, according to Reuters.
London and Brussels failed to clinch a long-sought breakthrough on Brexit after a series of dramatic twists that saw a tentative deal derailed by the delicate question of the Irish border.

"It was not possible to reach a complete agreement today," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters as glum negotiators looked on. Talks will resume this week and he's confident there will be a agreement that paves the way for trade talks to begin.

May traveled to Brussels on Monday to meet Juncker for what was meant to be a key lunch to hash out the details and tie loose ends. She interrupted the lunch to speak to the leader of the Northern Irish party that props up her government -- and which opposes the EU's plan for the island after Brexit.

Shortly after that phone call, May and Juncker came out to declare no deal and left without taking questions. The pound fell. Going into the meeting, British officials had been downplaying the chances of a breakthrough and pushed back against the EU's line that Monday was a deadline.

This was not how the script was meant to play out -- with a joint declaration of success expected and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar poised to make a statement at 2:30 p.m. Earlier in the day -- as May was on her way to the lunch -- chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier told a group of European lawmakers that a breakthrough was imminent.

They then told the world -- yet U.K. officials continued to call for caution.

To get to this turning point had required many concessions from May, whose own political fortunes changed from nine months ago -- when she triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that set the clock on Britain's exit in March 2019. An ill-advised election in June saw May lose her majority and need to form an alliance with a Northern Irish party to stay in power.

As varying reports leaked out about the terms of the agreement on the controversial matter of the Irish border, the Democratic Unionist Party that props her up in parliament made some robust comments about its Brexit red lines. In May's current circumstances, they carry a lot weight.

The thought that an exception could be made for Northern Ireland also opened another can of worms. Scotland and London piped up to say that if Northern Ireland could stay in the single market then they why not them.

As the lunch dragged on, Ireland's Varadkar postponed facing the press as he awaited word from Brussels. A lectern had already been set up for a statement that never came.

Both sides were conciliatory when they spoke to reporters. They said discussions would continue and Juncker -- normally a U.K. critic -- even paid May a compliment. She's a "tough negotiator."

Even with this setback, the hope is still for a mid-December summit of EU leaders to conclude that Britain has achieved "sufficient progress" in this first phase of talks so that trade negotiations can start and the transition arrangement that business wants can be put in place. It's 17 months since the referendum and Britain leaves the bloc in 15 months, with or without a deal.

The Irish border was always going to be an intractable challenge that would require political will on all sides. The invisible border now is only possible because both Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland are members of the EU's single market and customs union. When the U.K. leaves the EU, Northern Ireland goes with it.

Another possible sticking block was the role of the European Court of Justice. The ECJ has totemic importance for the Brexit backers in May's Conservative Party, who see it as a symbol of lost sovereignty.

On the EU side, it's a possible deal-breaker as the veto-wielding European Parliament has made clear the court must have a role in protecting the rights of EU citizens living in the U.K. after Brexit. Neither side will be drawn into the specifics of why a deal fell through.

"We've been negotiating hard and a lot of progress has been made and on many of the issues there is a common understanding. On a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation," May said.

---

Bloomberg's Dara Doyle contributed.
In recent weeks, Congress has grilled Twitter, Facebook and Google about their role in allowing foreign interests to place ads and articles intended to divide the electorate and spread false information during the 2016 election.

Now a number of people in and out of government are calling for federal regulation of social media.

Lay down some rules, the thinking goes, and we would be able to prevent the infestation of bots and fake news from our news feeds and ads. Democracy would be saved  or, at least, foreign interference in our elections kept in check.

However, as someone who has studied and taught the First Amendment for decades, I would argue that if such regulations were enacted, the main victims would be not the purveyors of fake news, but our freedom of expression. In my view, the result would do far more damage to our democracy than any foreign misinformation campaign ever could.

Free speech being attacked from all sides

The First Amendment is under a lot of duress.

Arguably, its been that way since the Supreme Courts clear and present danger decision in 1919, which spelled out when limits on free speech could be lawful. It not only held that the government had an obligation to stop someone from falsely shouting fire in a theater, but also opened the gates to all manner of government violations of the First Amendment injunction that Congress shall make no law  abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

These range from the FCCs Fairness Doctrine, which was upheld by the Supreme Court, that required broadcasters to present controversial issues in a balanced way (in the FCCs view), to the FCCs warning to radio broadcasters in 1971 not to play songs that glorified drug use, which actually had the effect of limiting the airplay of songs that critiqued drug culture.

Indeed, with the exception of Supreme Court decisions in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971 and the Communications Decency Act in 1997, the American government has systematically increased its control of media.

The situation has gotten much worse over the past year. President Trump has tweeted about withholding the licenses of NBC affiliates and lashed out at other media not to his liking.

Although Trumps bluster about limiting and punishing media may be easy enough to deride, the fact that he is in the White House  and has the ability to appoint FCC commissioners  means his threats must be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, a theory of philosopher Karl Popper  the paradox of tolerance  is being widely cited as a justification for outlawing hate speech, notwithstanding the First Amendment. From his 1945 book The Open Society and its Enemies, it says that tolerance defeats itself when it permits intolerant speech.

I studied Popper extensively while researching my first book, an anthology of essays about Poppers work. There are many aspects of Poppers philosophy to admire, but I dont believe the paradox of tolerance is among them.

To ban hate speech could turn our tolerant, democratic society into precisely the kind of state that hate speech is calling for: It could open up an opportunity for all sorts of speech to be dubbed hate speech.

A slippery slope

When regulating fake news on social media sites, theres the danger of the same sort of phenomenon taking place. And its exactly why the well-meaning hue-and-cry that the government needs to intervene and forbid social media sites from disseminating fake news or allowing accounts that are actually bots is so dangerous.

Fake news is nothing new. Centuries ago, anti-Semitic publications spread rumors that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood on holidays.

Over the past two years, social media have increased the amplitude and reach of fake news. But theres also been the ascension of a political figure  Trump  who has turned the tables by labeling any unwelcome news as fake.

The latter should be more than enough reason to reject calls for government censorship of fake news. After all, whos to say a government that determines whats fake wont simply follow Trumps lead, and suppress critical and truthful content under the guise that its fake?

Instead, social media networks could develop and implement algorithms for identifying and removing fake news by marshaling the same engines that spread fake news in the first place. These algorithms would not be administered by the government; rather, Facebook and other social media would be responsible.

Twitter has already made considerable progress flagging and removing accounts that spread Islamic State propaganda. Theres no reason to think that the same process cant be applied to Russian bots seeking to inflame political discord and therein damage Americas political system.

Such self-regulation is in the best interest of these media companies. It would increase the confidence of their users in what they encounter online. It would also have the added benefit of keeping government regulators at bay.

In the end, the ultimate antidote to fake news and bots is the rationality of the human mind.

As John Milton famously urged in his Areopagitica, if you let truth and falsity fight it out in the marketplace of ideas, human rationality will most likely choose the truth. Regulating what can enter that marketplace could impair or destroy this process, by inadvertently keeping truth from public awareness.

Rational thinkings ability to identify fake news is more than a Miltonian ideal: Its been demonstrated in a carefully conducted 2015 experiment. When given a small financial incentive, the subjects were able to identify fake news as fake, even if the fake news supported the political views of the subjects.

Indeed, rationality is deeply implicit in democracy itself. You cant have the latter without the former.

The key in combating fake news and kindred attacks on our body politic is to give our rationality maximum access to all information, including the truth. And in my view, this means resisting any attempts by government to limit the information that reaches us.
BRUSSELS - British and European Union leaders said they were nearing a divorce deal even as divisions within fractious Britain kept them just short of a final bargain in negotiations Monday.

The elements of the deal - which would be the most significant step in Britain's exit from the European Union since it officially filed papers in March - appeared to signal an acknowledgment by British negotiators that they have scant leverage in the negotiation. On issues ranging from what Britain will pay before exiting to a special status for Northern Ireland, British leaders were being pushed toward Europe's demands after long vowing otherwise.

A bargain would pave the way for London to start negotiating its future trade relationship with the remaining 27 EU nations. But the emerging terms of the agreement raised questions about how British Prime Minister Theresa May would convince her own divided public about the best way forward. On Monday, she was forced to leave a day of Brussels meetings with no deal in hand following sharp objections from political forces back home. She promised consultations in London.

The defeat was a reminder that the British prime minister is not just negotiating the exit with the Europeans but within her own party, with hard and soft Brexiteering Tories, and with Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and the London mayor.

The Brexit bill of up to $65 billion will anger pro-Brexit leaders who want Britain to crash out of the bloc without paying a cent, for example. A floated pledge that Northern Ireland would be kept in regulatory "alignment" with the EU to avoid rekindling sectarian violence there raised immediate questions from pro-EU Scottish and London leaders who asked why they could not have similar deals for themselves.

"We were narrowing our positions to a huge extent today thanks to the British prime minister," said European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in brief remarks following the inconclusive lunchtime bargaining session. "This is not a failure, this is the start of the very last round. I'm very confident that we will reach an agreement in the course of this week."

May also tried to put a good face on the talks, which she had to interrupt for phone calls with furious political factions in London.

"Both sides have been working hard in good faith," May said. "I am also confident that we will conclude this positively."

If Britain is to move on to negotiating its future trade deal with Europe before the end of the year, the divorce bill needs to be approved by the 27 remaining EU leaders at a summit in Brussels that begins Dec. 14.

But that first depends on May being able to sell it at home. Following an electoral wipeout in June, she leads a minority government that depends on the support of a tiny but influential Northern Ireland party that on Monday appeared to veto any possibility of a special status for Northern Ireland. Irish leaders want to avoid imposing a hard border to preserve the Good Friday Agreement that quelled decades of violence.

May's partner there, Arlene Foster, the head of the Democratic Unionist Party, offered a blunt warning: "We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom. We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom."

Still, if May gives ground, that opens the door to other regions of Britain wanting the same deal.

"If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can't," wrote Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Twitter. London and Welsh leaders asked the same question.

At the center of the negotiations to this point has been the Brexit "divorce bill," settling the tab of what Britain owes the EU before talks can begin on future trade agreements.

Europe has insisted that the U.K. honor its financial commitments for budgets and spending going forward even after it leaves the union in March 2019. As a member of the European Union, Britain made commitments both toward short-term expenses and for long-term items such as the pensions of EU bureaucrats or building projects that are funded over many years.

Europe has insisted that Britain cannot just walk away. Juncker compared it to ordering a round of drinks and then walking out of the bar.

Independent analysts have estimated that the Brexit divorce bill falls somewhere between $30 billion and $80 billion, depending on how generously one assesses the obligations.

May and her government have been loathe to name a figure, both because they are still in negotiations and because whatever the price, it won't be popular at home.

Many Brexit supporters have insisted London shouldn't pay a penny, calling the demands a form of Euro-extortion. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said this summer that Brussels can "go whistle" if it expected to see large sums of money.

But the reality is that if Britain wants a deal on trade, EU leaders say, it has to settle its affairs first.

European and British negotiators have also squabbled about the rights of the roughly 3 million EU citizens living in Britain. EU leaders want guarantees that citizens who moved to Britain will have the same rights as before the breakup - and they want the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to have the final word to make sure Britain keeps that pledge.

The court's oversight would be a bitter pill for British anti-EU campaigners who long chafed under its jurisdiction and said it was a loss of sovereignty to hand over decisions to judges in another country.

The last of the three main issues is the question of what to do about the border between the Irish Republic in the south, an independent nation that will remain in the European Union, and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom that will exit the European bloc along with England, Scotland and Wales.

After the Good Friday Agreements in 1998 brought a semblance of peace between unionists and republicans, the badlands between the two entities - once a perilous place of gunrunning and violence between Irish Republican Army cells and British soldiers - calmed down.

Today, the border between north and south is wide open. More than 180 formal roads cross the border - many more if you count farmers' lanes and foot trails.

Irish leaders in Dublin said they did not want to derail Brexit - but they have been insistent that the border remain relatively open and soft.

On Monday, that push appeared to break down the negotiations. Both sides said they hoped to conclude by the end of the week.

- - -

Booth reported from London.
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As Republicans continue to sell the details of their tax bill, some are reaching for more colorful language to liven up complex policies that tend to put the average voter to sleep.

Case in point: over the weekend Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, hashed over the plan with his home state's Des Moines Register. Turning to the party's idea to do away with the estate tax, Grassley framed the current law as a hindrance to responsible saving.

"I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing," Grassley told the Register. "As opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze or women or movies."

The estate tax, often described by Republicans as the "death tax," is levied only on the very rich, individuals who pass on assets of more than $5.5 million, $11 million for married couples.

Grassley, a member of Senate Finance Committee responsible for writing the tax proposal, immediately was hit with criticism online over the comments.

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The suggestion - that anyone not socking away their savings in the bank or investments must be profligately throwing their money away - played directly into the critique that Republicans are disconnected from the majority of working Americans.

"Darn straight, Sen. Grassley," former Hillary Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson wrote on Twitter. "[I]f we gave that money in middle class tax cuts, they'd just waste it on hookers and blow. right?"

The current tax on estates is 40 percent on an individual's wealth when they die, applying to assets valued above $5.5 million for an individual, $11 million for a couple. Republicans have long criticized the provision, referring to it as a "death tax."

Under the Senate tax planned passed early Saturday morning along partisan lines, the exemptions are both raised to $11 million per individual and $22 million per couple. The House version of the bill does the same but also axes the tax completely in 2024.

In Grassley's home state of Iowa, the estate tax has been particularly fraught with controversy. Republicans have often argued the 40 percent government tax creates a cost prohibitive situation for farmers hoping to pass their farms on to heirs.

"Death should not be a taxable event and families should not have to fear the Internal Revenue Service and more taxes making it more difficult and costly to pass on the farm or family business to the next generation," Rep. David Young, a Des Moines-area congressman, wrote on Friday in a newsletter to constituents.

But, according to the Des Moines Register, the actual numbers do not support that narrative. Citing 2016 data from the Internal Revenue Service, the paper determined 5,219 tax returns were impacted by the current estate tax. Only 682, or 13 percent, of the tax filers owned farm assets.

The paper also referenced a 2015 report from the Congressional Research Service noting only 65 farm estates in the U.S. annually are touched by the estate tax.

Grassley and other congressional Republicans have long maintained that even if farmers are not impacted by the tax directly, the planning involved is an additional strain.

"[M]any are forced into spending large sums of their hard-earned dollars on lawyers and accountants to avoid its impact instead of reinvesting in their business," he told the Register. "This means that while many don't end up paying the tax, it still has a negative effect on the economy."
The Pentagon is preparing to spend millions of dollars to fix up a Cold War-era air base in Iceland as Washington rushes to keep an eye on a new generation of stealthy Russian submarines slipping into the North Atlantic.

Tucked away in the 2018 defense budget sitting on President Donald Trump's desk is a provision for $14.4 million to refurbish hangars at Naval Air Station Keflavik to accommodate more U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, a key surveillance asset for locating and tracking submarines, a defense official confirms.

The move comes as new Russian nuclear and conventional submarines have been making more frequent trips through the area known as the "GIUK gap" - an acronym for Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom - the route for the Russian Northern Fleet to enter the Atlantic Ocean.

The United States and Iceland have agreed to increase rotations of the American surveillance planes to Iceland next year, Pentagon spokesman Johnny Michael confirmed to Foreign Policy.

Inside the alliance, there is concern over NATO's ability to locate and track the new Russian submarines as they move silently into the open ocean. NATO officials have admitted that the past two decades of anti-piracy operations near Africa and support for ground operations in the Middle East have distracted from the anti-submarine mission which was at the core of the Cold War mission in the Atlantic.

After allowing its naval forces to fall into disrepair in the 1990s, Russian President Vladimir Putin set out on a major military overhaul in the 2000s, clawing back capability by designing and building new diesel- and nuclear-powered boats, making them quieter, more lethal, and longer-legged than their Soviet predecessors.

Russia's undersea fleet "is in the best state it has been in since the fall of the Soviet Union," said Michael Kofman, a Russian military expert at the Center for Naval Analyses. "A lot of effort has been spent on drilling, training, and readiness."

The Russian submarine force of about 50 hulls is a fraction of the 400 the Soviet Union floated during the Cold War, but they boast vastly improved technical capabilities that put them on par with their American rivals, experts said. "This time they're going for quality rather than quantity," added Magnus Nordenman of the Atlantic Council.

In an unclassified assessment of Russian military strength issued earlier this year, the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that Moscow's new nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines are "capable of delivering nuclear warheads from thousands of kilometers away. This strategic capability puts the Russian Navy in the top tier of foreign navies."

The pride of the Russian fleet is the nuclear-powered Yasen-class guided missile submarine, which can carry 32 Kalibr cruise missiles. While the missile's range isn't known for sure, Russian subs have fired the Kalibr into Syria from about 700 miles away. Moscow has two Yasen-class subs operational, and plans to build an additional eight in coming years.

In late November the British first sea lord, Adm. Sir Philip Jones, said that the naval superiority Western navies have enjoyed in recent decades is disappearing and resurgent powers like Russia are testing the Royal Navy in home waters.

"It's now clear that the peaks of Russian submarine activity that we've seen in the North Atlantic in recent years are the new norm," he said.

France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Turkey signed a letter of intent this summer to start development of new submarine-detecting aircraft. More airborne assets are needed because the number of sub-hunting ships that can patrol the waters on the North Atlantic, Baltic, and Mediterranean is far reduced since the Cold War.

Navies generally use frigates to conduct anti-submarine warfare - known as ASW operations - and the number of frigates in use by NATO allies has fallen to about 50, down from the 100 or so in the early 1990s.

Partly to fill that gap, the U.S. Navy is working to rush a new class of 20 frigates into service beginning in 2020. Last month, the service issued a notice to the defense industry to come up with a multi-mission frigate design that could be built within the next two years capable of conducting air defense and anti-submarine operations.

Russia has traditionally been constrained in its access to the open ocean, and the loss of the Baltic states and Poland, and of Black Sea ports in Romania and Bulgaria, mean modern Russia has a harder time getting out to sea than the Soviet Union did.

In the event of conflict with the West, Moscow's Baltic and Black Sea fleets would likely be bottled up by NATO, "so that leaves the Northern Fleet as their power-projection fleet - it's how they get out into the Atlantic," the Atlantic Council's Nordenman said.

While the Northern Fleet has primarily been designed to hold NATO at a distance from Russia, or exact a cost for any push by NATO forces, the increasing ability of its stealthy submarines to slip past American surveillance and pop up off the U.S. Eastern seaboard unannounced is a major concern for policymakers. "The U.S. Navy needs to have a clear answer as to how they're going to track these submarines," said Kofman.

"Iceland is key," Nordenman added. During the Second World War, U.S. anti-submarine forces in Iceland helped hunt down German U-boat wolf packs that had enjoyed a safe haven in the middle of the ocean, a role the island seems set to reprise. "It's the unsinkable aircraft carrier in the middle of the Atlantic that you can fly from," Nordenman said.
Over the past few weeks, former FBI director James Comey's Twitter feed has been filled with inspirational quotations, Bible verses and nature photographs - many of them timed around remarks made by the president who fired him.

On Nov. 11, he quoted a sermon from the late English Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon about the difference between a truth and a lie, hours after President Donald Trump called Comey a proven "liar" and "leaker." Then on Nov. 25, about a half-hour after Trump attacked CNN International, Comey tweeted a quote from Thomas Jefferson: "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

Described as a subtle Trump troll, most of Comey's tweets have quoted historical leaders and thinkers. But on Sunday, Comey took a different approach: quoting himself.

The move came after Trump launched into a tweetstorm early Sunday morning, slamming the FBI, calling it "Tainted (no, very dishonest?)" and saying "its reputation is in Tatters."

Hours later, Comey quoted his own words from his June 8 testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent," Comey tweeted, along with a collage of photographs of various FBI teams.

The president began his commentary on Saturday, a day after dismissed national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with a Russian official. Trump drew controversy with his tweet saying part of the rationale for firing Flynn was that he had lied to the FBI. The Post reported Saturday that Trump attorney John Dowd had drafted the president's tweet, according to two people familiar with the message. Dowd confirmed that Sunday.

Trump also latched onto news that Peter Strzok - the former top FBI official assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election - was taken off that job this summer after his bosses discovered that he and another member of Mueller's team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging Trump and supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton.

And early Sunday, Trump reiterated his denial that he asked Comey, then-FBI Director, to halt an investigation into Flynn.

"Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI 'agent's role in Clinton probe under review.' Led Clinton Email probe. @foxandfriends Clinton money going to wife of another FBI agent in charge," Trump wrote on Twitter. He added: "After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History!" Trump tweeted. "But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness."

Former attorney general Eric Holder, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, and others jumped to the FBI's defense as well.

"The FBI is in 'tatters'? No. The only thing in tatters is the President's respect for the rule of law," said Yates, who has been a frequent recent critic of Trump on Twitter. "The dedicated men and women of the FBI deserve better."

Trump fired Yates in January for refusing to defend his ban on travel from six majority-Muslim countries. In May, Yates testified that she expected White House officials to "take action'' on her January warning that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn could be blackmailed by Russia.

Holder, who served as attorney general under the Obama administration, also fired back at Trump, saying, "You'll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now."

The president of FBI Agents Association, an advocacy group that claims more than 14,000 active and former FBI Special Agents as members, released a statement on Twitter Sunday evening.

"Every day, FBI Special Agents put their lives on the line to protect the American public from national security and criminal threats," the group's president, Thomas O'Connor, wrote in the statement. "Agents perform these duties with unwavering integrity and professionalism and a focus on complying with the law and the Constitution."

"This is why the FBI continues to be the premier law enforcement agency in the world," the statement continued. "FBI Agents are dedicated to their mission; suggesting otherwise is simply false."
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Defense attorneys who won acquittal for a homeless undocumented immigrant on murder, manslaughter and assault charges in the shooting of Kate Steinle on a San Francisco Bay pier will seek to have the sole conviction in the case dismissed as well, they said Monday.

A jury last week found Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 45, guilty of a lesser count of being a felon in possession of a gun in connection with Steinles death on Pier 14 in July 2015, after the defense argued at trial that the shooting was an accident that happened after the defendant found a stolen gun wrapped in a T-shirt or cloth under a bench.

Now the defense says the conviction is inconsistent with the jurys larger acquittal. If the panel believed Steinle may have been killed by an accidental discharge, lawyers assert, Garcia Zarate should not be held responsible for possessing the weapon  even though he threw it in the bay as Steinle lay dying.

Matt Gonzalez of the San Francisco Public Defenders Office, the lead attorney in the case, said he will appeal the charge at some point after Garcia Zarates Dec. 14 sentencing in Superior Court. Gonzalez said his appeal will contend jurors should have been told that momentary possession of a gun is not necessarily a crime.

If you possess it just to dispose of it or abandon it, it wouldnt be a crime, he said.

San Francisco prosecutors, who declined to comment, argued at trial that Garcia Zarate fired toward Steinle intentionally, offering evidence that the pistol that killed the 32-year-old woman would discharge only with a firm pull of the trigger. The bullet bounced off the piers concrete ground before striking Steinle in the back and piercing her heart.

The defense said the gun went off in Garcia Zarates hands almost immediately after he found it, and that he flung it in the water because he was scared.

During deliberations, Gonzalez said, jurors asked Judge Samuel Feng about brief possession of the gun.

We suspect the conviction on the gun charge is based on (Garcia Zarates actions) after the gun went off and he realized it was a gun and dumped it, said Tamara Aparton, a spokeswoman for the Public Defenders Office. If its based on that, the jury did not get proper instruction on momentary possession.

Jurors did not explain their verdict publicly after handing it down, and in general they cannot be asked to explain deliberations to settle conflicts during appeals.

If an appeals court agrees with the defense argument and overturns the conviction, Garcia Zarate could be retried for that charge alone.

Showing an error was made during jury instructions isnt necessarily enough to get a new trial. On appeal, the defense additionally has to show that the error affected the outcome, said Andrea Roth, an assistant professor of the UC Berkeley School of Law and a former appellate attorney for the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C.

You have to show the error mattered  that it wasnt harmless, she said.

In previous cases on appeal, Roth said, shes argued an error wasnt harmless by pointing to inconsistency in verdicts and suggesting the jury may have compromised  violating their instructions.

Its unclear how the dispute could affect the fate of Garcia Zarate, who remains in San Francisco jail. He faces up to three years in state prison on the gun-possession charge, but he has likely already satisfied that term since his arrest shortly after the shooting. Federal authorities on Friday unsealed a warrant for his arrest, and they plan to deport him for a sixth time.

Garcia Zarate has pending federal charges of violating the terms of his 2015 release from prison, where he had served 46 months for felony re-entry to the United States after deportation. He will be turned over to the U.S. Marshals Service when he is eligible for release in the Pier 14 case, Sheriffs Department officials said.

The .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol that Garcia Zarate allegedly possessed had been stolen four days earlier from a U.S. Bureau of Land Management rangers car after he drove into the city and parked along the Embarcadero. No one has been arrested in the burglary.

Garcia Zarates acquittal on the most serious charges shocked many observers and was called disgraceful and a complete travesty of justice by President Trump.

Before the shooting, Garcia Zarate had been on track for deportation, but his course changed when he was transferred from federal custody to San Francisco County Jail in March 2015 on an old warrant alleging he fled marijuana charges in 1995.

When city prosecutors discharged the case, the Sheriffs Department released Garcia Zarate despite a federal request to hold him for deportation. Then-Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi cited the citys sanctuary policies, which limit local cooperation with immigration enforcement and seek to encourage undocumented people to feel comfortable having a relationship with city agencies.

Evan Sernoffsky and Bob Egelko are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com, begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky, @Egelko
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, on his first visit to Pakistan in that role, called on its top military and civilian officials Monday to "redouble" efforts to prevent Islamist militants from using the country as a refuge and a launchpad for attacks on Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But Mattis seemed to tone down the sharp language he has used in congressional hearings and other settings to accuse Pakistan of harboring Afghan Taliban fighters. Instead, he adopted a milder, more diplomatic approach aimed at finding "common ground."

Statements from the Pakistani prime minister's office and the Pentagon late Monday, after Mattis had left the country, described his interactions with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the defense minister, and military and intelligence chiefs in positive, bland terms.

The U.S. Embassy said he praised Pakistan's "sacrifices in the war against terrorism" while insisting that it "must redouble its efforts to confront" militants within its borders.

Abbasi was even more upbeat, saying in a statement that both countries share a commitment to the war against terrorism and asserting that there are "no safe havens" for militants in Pakistan. He emphasized Mattis's comments about continuing the long-term relationship between the former Cold War allies and "deepening cooperation" for the common goal of "eliminating terrorism from the region."

There was no public mention from either side of the repeated threats by President Donald Trump and other top U.S. officials that Washington will take strong action against Pakistan if it fails to stop sheltering militants. The punitive measures could include significant cuts in military and economic aid, retracting Pakistan's status as a "major non-NATO ally," and declaring it a state sponsor of terrorism.

Pakistani army officials said they told Mattis that "Pakistan has done much more than its due share despite capacity constraints." They said Mattis told them that his aim was "not to make demands." In a statement, the officials said the U.S. defense chief expressed concern that "a few elements" use Pakistani territory to promote terrorism in Afghanistan, and they said they are "prepared to look into the possibility" that such "miscreants" may be taking cover in Afghan refugee communities.

But other U.S. officials have continued to assert that Pakistan has not taken sufficient action, despite repeated meetings with U.S. military officials and a visit from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in late October.

"We have been very direct and very clear with the Pakistanis. . . . We have not seen those changes implemented yet," Gen. John Nicholson Jr., the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said at a news conference in Kabul last week. But he, too, said the United States is "hoping to work together with the Pakistanis" to eliminate cross-border terrorism and did not mention any sanctions.

In Washington on Saturday, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the United States will do "everything we can to ensure that safe havens no longer exist" if Pakistan does not do so. One of the measures would be an expansion of U.S. drone strikes deeper into Pakistan's heartland. Such a move would alarm the populace and provoke the government, which has quietly cooperated with U.S. drone strikes in tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.

Afghan officials have repeatedly accused Pakistan of allowing the Taliban and other militant groups, especially the Haqqani network, to take shelter and launch attacks from sanctuaries on its side of the border. They also accuse Pakistan's military and its intelligence services of orchestrating attacks in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan. Pakistan has always denied the accusations.

Despite the cordiality of the Monday meetings, the previous threats from the Trump administration were very much on the minds of Pakistani officials and analysts in the capital as Mattis arrived at midday for a brief stop before flying to Kuwait. The U.S. demands that Pakistan "do more" have angered many Pakistanis, who insist that Washington should put pressure on Afghanistan to stop sheltering militants on its side of the border.

Some commentators suggested that an enormous bomb dropped in August by U.S. warplanes just over the border in eastern Afghanistan, which had no apparent immediate purpose and fell on a deserted former militant hideout in the mountains, was actually intended as a warning to Pakistan.

Syed Talat Hussain, a longtime Pakistani media analyst, wrote Monday that the Trump administration has decided to "bring Islamabad to its knees" and is only "going through the motions of engagement" with polite visits like those by Tillerson and Mattis, who will be followed shortly by Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Public "niceties and contrived bonhomie," Hussain added, are just for show.
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DELRAY BEACH, Fla. - Debbie Wesson Gibson was in her attic hauling out boxes of Christmas decorations last week when she noticed a storage bin she said she had forgotten about. Inside was a scrapbook from her senior year of high school, and taped to a page titled "Those Who Inspire" was a graduation card.

"Happy graduation Debbie," it read in slanted cursive handwriting. "I wanted to give you this card myself. I know that you'll be a success in anything you do. Roy."

The inscription, Gibson said, was written by Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican nominee for U.S. Senate who in recent days has repeatedly denied the accounts of five women who told The Washington Post that he pursued them when they were teenagers and he was an assistant district attorney in his 30s. Since those allegations were published last month, four more women have come forward to allege that Moore made unwanted sexual advances. The accounts in The Post included those of Leigh Corfman, who said she was 14 when Moore touched her sexually, and Gibson, who said that she publicly dated Moore when she was 17 and he was 34, a relationship she said she "wore like a badge of honor" until she began reevaluating it in light of the accounts of other women, and now, Moore's own denials.

Shortly after the allegations first surfaced, Moore said in a radio interview with Sean Hannity that he did not know Corfman, but that he remembered Gibson as well as Gloria Thacker Deason, who had told The Post that she dated Moore when she was 18. He called each one "a good girl," and said that he did not remember dating them.

But at two campaign events in recent days, Moore has backtracked.

At a Nov. 27 campaign event in the north Alabama town of Henagar, Moore said, "The allegations are completely false. They are malicious. Specifically, I do not know any of these women."

At a Nov. 29 rally at a church in the south Alabama town of Theodore, Moore said, "Let me state once again: I do not know any of these women, did not date any of these women and have not engaged in any sexual misconduct with anyone."

Gibson said that after finding the scrapbook, she was not sure whether to make it public given the threats she received after publication of the original story. Then she heard what Moore said last week, she said, and contacted The Post.

"He called me a liar," said Gibson, who says she not only openly dated Moore when she was 17 but later joined him in passing out fliers during his campaign for circuit court judge in 1982 and exchanged Christmas cards with him over the years. "Roy Moore made an egregious mistake to attack that one thing - my integrity."

The Moore campaign did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this story.

Two of the other women named in The Post article have also pushed back in recent days against Moore.

In an open letter to Moore published on the Alabama news site Al.com after Moore's Nov. 27 speech, Corfman wrote that "I am done being silent."

"You sent out your spokesman to call me a liar. Day after day. Finally, last night, you did the dirty work yourself . . ." she wrote. "What you did to me when I was 14-years old should be revolting to every person of good morals. But now you are attacking my honesty and integrity. Where does your immorality end?"

In a statement to The Post after Moore's Nov. 29 speech, Paula Cobia, a lawyer for Deason, recounted Deason's vivid memories of dating Moore, from specific restaurants she says they frequented, to the velvet-collared dress Deason says she wore when she says Moore took her to a social function at a Ramada Inn. Cobia said,

"No matter what lies Roy Moore may choose to tell now," Cobia said, "the truth was the first thing out of his mouth when it came to remembering Gloria."

Gibson, 54, now lives in Delray Beach, Florida, is a registered Republican, and is the founder of a company that provides sign language interpretation. Though she said the bulk of her work is in educational, medical and legal settings, her clients have included Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and Republicans such as the mayor of Miami. She said that despite requests from dozens of media outlets, she had "very carefully said absolutely nothing" after her account was first published in The Post due to a barrage of threatening hate mail she received, prompting her to notify her local police department. She and the other women have been accused by Moore's surrogates of lying, or being paid to spread false stories, or being part of a larger political conspiracy to defeat Moore.

Then she found the scrapbook and the graduation card with the slanted, cursive handwriting, which she said immediately reminded her of another woman, Beverly Young Nelson, who had come forward after the Post story was published. In an emotional news conference with the attorney Gloria Allred, Nelson accused Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was 16, and produced what she said was her high school yearbook with an inscription to her from Moore.

"I just couldn't imagine him doing something like that," Gibson said. "And then when I saw the interview from Beverly, and I saw his handwriting in her yearbook, my heart just sank. And when I saw what I knew to be Roy Moore's handwriting, I just began to sob openly."

Mark Songer, a former FBI forensic examiner now with the firm Robson Forensic, examined an image of the graduation card at The Post's request and said that it "appears to be naturally prepared." Songer also compared an image of the yearbook inscription to the image of the graduation card and said that "the style of writing, as well as certain letter features, appear to be similar." He stressed the need for a full and comprehensive handwriting examination to arrive at a final conclusion.

Gibson said she remembers Moore handing the card to her at the Etowah High School graduation ceremony in Attalla, Alabama, where Gibson grew up about 10 miles from Moore's home. She remembers reading the inscription and writing below it: "Roy Moore inspires me because he is such a successful man himself. Also, he is about the only person I know of who seriously believes in me. I appreciate that. He's got to be one of the nicest people I know."

As she flipped through the scrapbook last week, Gibson said, she realized it contained other indications of her relationship with Moore, which she says began in March 1981, after he came to speak to her high school civics class.

On a page titled "commencement," under "My own guests," she had written "Roy S. Moore," just above "mom" and "dad."

On a page titled "remembrances," she had listed her graduation gifts line by line, including "$10, card" from "Roy S. Moore," and a check mark indicating she had sent a thank-you card.

On a page titled "the best times," she had written: "Wednesday night, 3-4-81. Roy S. Moore and I went out for the first time. We went out to eat at Catfish Cabin in Albertville. I had a great time." She had underlined "great" twice.

The scrapbook also contained a photo of Gibson as a high school senior, and when she saw it, she said, she thought to herself, "That's the age I was when I dated Roy Moore, because my braces were off."

As Gibson previously told The Post, she said that she and Moore dated for a couple of months. She said he kissed her by the swimming pool concession stand at a local country club, that he played his guitar and read his own poetry to her, and that things ended when she went off to college in another part of Alabama, though they still kept in touch.

She said she helped Moore when he was campaigning for circuit court judge in 1982, and remembers tucking fliers under windshield wipers at the Kmart parking lot.

She said that when she became engaged, Moore insisted on meeting her fiance to make sure he was "good enough for me." She said when Moore was first appointed as a circuit court judge in 1992, she sent him a gavel engraved with his name and a congratulatory note, and that her family and his exchanged Christmas cards some years.

She said that she held Moore "in high esteem," despite political differences with him, until she began hearing stories from other women who alleged that Moore pursued them as teenagers. She said that at first she did not want to believe the women.

"It takes what I thought was a very lovely part of my past, and it colors it, and it changes it irrevocably," she said. "It changes it permanently."

What made her decision to share the documents easier, she said, was watching and re-watching a video she has on her cellphone of Moore speaking last week and deciding that supporting the women who have come forward was more important than staying silent.

"At 34 minutes and 56 seconds into the video, he says, unequivocally, I did not know any of them," Gibson said. "In that moment, it changed my perspective. I knew he was a liar."

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Video: Debbie Wesson Gibson, who says she dated Roy Moore in 1981, recently found a high school graduation card she says he gave her at the time and inscribed to her. When another woman who accused Moore of sexual assault showed an inscription she said that Moore had written to her, Gibson said she recognized Moore's handwriting. Moore, who is running for the U.S. Senate, said in a campaign appearance last week, "I do not know any of these women, did not date any of these women and have not engaged in any sexual misconduct with anyone."(Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)

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Tigran Yeghoyan: Currently, they sell the local meat mixed with the imported hybrid meat

Farmers are in chaotic condition. Tigran Yeghoyan, Director of "Gerastgh" farming economy, reported on this. He said that the Government, in the person of the Ministry of Agriculture and Nature Protection, was engaged in criminal activity against the village and villagers. The Yeghegis River, a part of which was engaged in farm activity, has drowned because of the 19 HPPs built on it, and the 20th HPP has recently been discovered. The Ministry of Agriculture denies the existence of so many hydropower plants, accepting the fact that there are only seven. Another issue is the Amulsar mine, from which the cyanide leaks through the snow and mixes with water resources. During today's press conference, the farmer referred to the Rural Advisory Centers (RACs) and announced that the program had "spent 500 million". The farmer said that it did not justify itself; in the field of bee-keeping it was unacceptable to feed bees with sugar, disinfection with chemicals, and so on. Tigran Yeghoyan noted that the price of meat in the market was conditioned by exporting local meat to the Iranian market. "They exported our local meat to the Iranian market and raised the price of meat. Currently, they sell the local meat mixed with the imported hybrid meat. We have studied beef and lamb meat, so, we know it for sure. I can say nothing about pork." To the question of A1+ on whether the export of local products and the import of ecologically not clean products had a special purpose, the speaker replied: "In my opinion, it is the dictation of external forces. They are credit programs that were brought to Armenia and spent, and today they leave all the debt to our generations." By the way, from the Georgian region of Marneul, where the majority of the population consists of Azerbaijani, good opportunities to engage in farming activities were offered, but on the condition to present Armenian goats to the world as a Caucasian. The offer was rejected.
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City workers have finally finished a "deep cleansing" of a homeless encampment in Midtown, an area the Houston Health Department had declared a public health nuisance for the second time in October.

What could have been a one-day project stretched into a 15-day battle of wills between the city, which was required to finish cleaning, and a lone holdout who wouldn't move his belongings.

While the city's anti-encampment ordinance remains tied up in court, just about everything at the sprawling tent city remains in limbo.

"Nothing's really changed," said Sgt. Steve Wick, who leads the Houston Police Department's homeless outreach team. "Everybody's waiting to see how the lawsuit comes out, and what happens."

The city passed an anti-encampment ordinance in May designed to prevent camps like the one beneath the Interstate 69 bridge in Midtown, but the ACLU of Texas quickly filed an emergency motion to stop it. In August, U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt issued a temporary restraining order to block the city from enforcing the ordinance.

Now both sides are on hold, waiting on a ruling about whether that injunction will remain permanent.

A string of shootings, stabbings and other violence have turned the camp into a trouble spot in the past few months. A homeless man was shot to death in an adjacent parking lot last month.

"We're restricted right now because there's a TRO in place against the encampment ordinance," Wick said - and as long as it's in place, "police don't have the tools" to deal with the camps properly.

Meanwhile, the repeated abatement of the Midtown camp illustrates the cyclic nature of the city's stopgap solutions.

The health department first declared the camp a public health nuisance in August, and city workers cleaned it up. The trash piles and waste piles had returned by mid-October, leading the health department to require another abatement.

That cleanup started Nov. 15, when a team of city workers arrived at dawn to power-wash the area and remove piles of trash and human waste.

Most camp residents agreed to temporarily move their 100-odd tents to make way for the cleanup, but one man  Trampus Edwards, 50  refused to move his property, which includes a treadmill, a rug, an office chair, a grill, a putting green and two dogs.

Just before Thanksgiving, the city filed a motion that pointed to the camp's lone holdout as the reason the health department couldn't declare the camp fully abated. But police couldn't force Edwards to move because of the restraining order.

Edwards, who held out for two weeks, has now voluntarily complied with demands, police say, and the camp has been abated completely. But that doesn't solve the neighborhood's problems.

Meanwhile, the space under the bridge has started filling with trash and excrement all over again.

Shere Dore, an advocate for the homeless who drops by the Midtown camp a few times a week, was a primary witness in the ACLU's lawsuit against the city. She says the city's hands aren't tied at all.

The restraining order on the ordinance, she said, merely dictates whether people can sleep in tents. It doesn't keep the city from dealing with crime or trash.

"A homeless person committing a crime, you've got to deal with it," she said. "Any criminal element, anybody who commits real crimes in the area, I have no problem with the cops coming in."

Until there's a ruling, Wick said, "it's going to be more of the same" in the city's homeless camps, including the one in Midtown.

"We've had a couple of murders down there, shootings, stabbings," he said. "It's not a good environment, and it's not going to get better until the issues are taken care of."
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Convicted child killer Genene Jones, a former nurse sent to prison in 1984 for killing a toddler, was moved to San Antonio on Monday to face more charges that she caused the deaths of five children in the 1980s.

Jones was a nurse at hospitals in San Antonio and Kerrville in the 1980s. Dubbed the Angel of Death, she was convicted of murder in 1984 and sentenced to 99 years in prison in the death of 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan, who died in 1982 from a fatal overdose of muscle relaxers at the hand of Jones.

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, who was 4 weeks old. He survived.

Her sentences are being served at the same time at the Texas Department of Criminal Justices Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville.

She has been indicted on five more murder charges, which came this year because Jones is set to be released in March 2018 under a law designed to prevent prison crowding.

In May, Bexar County District Attorney Nicholas Nico LaHood announced a Bexar County grand jury returned a murder indictment against Jones in the death of 11-month-old Joshua Sawyer on Dec. 12, 1981.

In June, the grand jury returned three more murder indictments against Jones in the deaths of Richard Ricky Nelson, 8 months, who died July 3, 1981; Patrick Zavala, 4 months, who died Jan. 17, 1982; and Rosemary Vega, 2-years-old, who died Sept. 16, 1981.

And in October, the grand jury indicted Jones in the death of 3-month-old Paul Villarreal. She is alleged to have injected him with the drug Heparin on Sept. 24, 1981.

In each case, the grand jury set Jones bail at $1 million, according to court records.

Jones is in the Bexar County jail, awaiting a trial setting in the 399th state District Court, presided by Judge Frank Castro.

LaHood said Monday evening that Jones would remain in Bexar County until there is an adjudication on each of the five cases.

Now its going to be up to the court to give us a scheduling order, he said. It will take a little bit of time. She will be here until the cases are resolved.

Her attorney, Cornelius Cox, did not return a call seeking comment Monday.

Staff Writer Kelsey Bradshaw contributed to this report. ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
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EDINBURG  John Feit allegedly confided that he had gotten away with murder, Dale Tacheny said Monday while on the stand in Feits murder trial.

Feit showed little remorse, Tacheny testified Monday, yet the troubled priest confessed in 1963 that he was still haunted by the sound of Irene Garzas heels, a former beauty queen he is accused of killing in 1960. Tacheny was serving as a Trappist monk at Assumption Abbey, a monastery in Ava, Missouri, when Feit was sent there.

He put the young lady in a bathtub, the 88-year-old Tacheny testified. As he was leaving, the young lady said I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe. Then he left.

Feit attacked Garza in the church rectory, fondled her, then stored her in the basement while he went next door to Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen to offer the sacrament of confession, Tacheny said.

Feit took a break to transport Garza to the pastoral house, a hotel in San Juan where he stayed, leaving her in a bathtub before returning to the church to again offer confession. When he returned the next day, Garza was dead, Feit allegedly confessed to Tacheny.

I asked him, Do you feel bad about any of these things, do you feel remorse, do you feel guilt? Tacheny said. He said No, I get anxious when I hear  heels on a hard concrete, hard floor, Tacheny testified, rapping his knuckles on the witness stand for emphasis.

Tacheny said it wasnt his place in 1963 to take Feits admission to authorities. Instead, the monastery attempted to modify Feits behavior by having him imagine walking into a church, walking up to a women and not attacking her.

Feit was a 27-year-old priest April 16, 1960, preparing to offer confession, when the 25-year-old Garza knocked on the door, he told investigators.

I had never made the acquaintance of this person before, Feit told investigators at the time, and to the best of my knowledge, Id never seen her before.

Several days after Garzas body was found, Feit gave investigators a meandering alibi. On the night Garza disappeared, she had asked to make a confession in the rectory at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Feit told investigators in 1960.

Feit, now 85, gave investigators conflicting versions of what transpired.

In that original statement to authorities, Feit said that he did not take her confession, and that another priest had been present in the rectory when Garza arrived. But on June 14, 1960, the young priest contradicted his earlier statement, saying he was alone and that he had indeed taken her confession.

It makes his first statement an obvious lie, McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez testified. I believe it was deceitful.

The last Feit saw of Garza she was standing on the sidewalk in front of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen, he told investigators. Her body was found in an irrigation canal five days later. She had been beaten, raped while unconscious and then asphyxiated.

Rodriguez read Feits 1960 statements while on the stand Monday in Feits trial. He first became involved with the murder investigation in 2001 when McAllen police revisited the cold case.

Back in 1960, Feit was living at the pastoral house in nearby San Juan, filling in at area parishes where he was needed.

On the night of April 16, 1960, and into the following day of Easter Sunday, Feit told investigators that he made six trips between the McAllen church and the pastoral house.

He explained that he scraped his hand while climbing to the second-story balcony of the pastoral house. Jose Garcia, 87, a classmate of Feits at Pan American College in Edinburg, testified last week that he noticed what appeared to be scratch marks on the priests hands.

Garza had been Miss All South Texas Sweetheart in 1958 and a former prom and homecoming queen at what then was Pan American College.

Contrary to Feits statement to investigators, Ana Marie Hollingsworth, 83, a friend of Garzas, testified Friday that Feit had pulled Garza out of a confessional booth at least once before to hear her confession face-to-face in the rectory, a practice that was highly unusual at the time.

Hollingsworth said her friend was disturbed by Feits behavior.

In the weeks leading up to Garzas murder Feit had threatened several women, including an attack on America Guerra at a church in Edinburg. Feit pleaded no contest to assaulting Guerra and was fined $500.

Cleotilde Tilly Sanchez, 80, a cook who worked at the rectory, testified last week that after the attack on Guerra, Feit called her at the rectory to say, Tilly, youre next, honey.

After Tacheny worked with Feit, the monastery sent Feit to Chicago and St. Louis to find out if his behavior had indeed changed.

It wasnt until years later when another priest asked Tacheny to write a book that he revisited that episode of his life and decided to contact San Antonio police where detective George Saidler took the call.

Tacheny didnt know the name of Feits alleged victim, or where the murder had taken place, only that Feit had been trained as an oblate in San Antonio. He had also given Saidler 1963 as the date for the murder.

Saidler couldnt find any unsolved murders from San Antonio, but a chance encounter with a Texas Ranger led him to the Garza cold case. In 2002, Texas Rangers, with testimony from two former priests, including Tacheny, who told investigators that Feit had confessed to the killing, reopened the case.

Feits attorney O. Rene Flores pressed Rodriguez to provide evidence of a crime scene linking his client to the murder.

You dont have any physical evidence or anything that was collected from the rectory that affirmatively links John Feit to the disappearance of Irene Garza, Flores asked.

No sir, Rodriguez said.

You dont have any evidence affirmatively linking John Feit to the disappearance of Irene Garza from what was known as the pastoral house, Flores asked.

Thats correct, Rodriguez said.

However, Rodriguez suggested that church officials had gotten rid of items belonging to Garza found in the rectory.

On the first day of trial, Darrell Davis, a TV reporter in 1960, testified Thursday that the Hidalgo County district attorney, now deceased, told him off the record that the plea in the Guerra case was part of a deal struck with the Catholic Church.

Feit would plead no contest in the Guerra case and be sent to the Trappist monastery, and the DA would stop the investigation into Feit in the Garza case.

The states prosecutor, Michael Garza questioned why Tacheny finally approached San Antonio police after keeping quiet for decades.

Tacheny paused before answering, She had parents, he said, tearing up.
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It's been a busy year at the San Antonio Zoo.

Dozens of newborns were welcomed in 2017, said Jennifer Pue, the zoo's marketing manager.

"We have had quite a bit of births at the zoo," she said.

RELATED: Video: San Antonio's young hippo takes first dip into zoo exhibit life with a splash and a smile

Here's a list of the animals born this year:

32 Texas horned lizards

56 American flamingos

2 Guam rails

2 hooded cranes

3 palm cockatoos

11 golden-crested mynahs

1 giant anteater

1 tamandua

Although he was not born at the San Antonio Zoo, a baby hippo was also delivered to the Alamo City this year. The unnamed hippo joined its grandmother Uma in September.

Click through the slideshow to see photos of animals born this year.

Kelsey Bradshaw is a digital reporter for mySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| kbradshaw@express-news.net | Twitter: @kbrad5
Two unrelated road rage incidents that occurred over the weekend have left one woman dead and several others injured, including a teenage suspect who was shot by a Bexar County sheriffs deputy whom he allegedly tried to run over.

The first incident occurred at 11:30 p.m. Saturday on the North Side at U.S. Highway 281 North and Stadium Drive.

According to a San Antonio police report, a black sedan was chasing a blue sedan on the highway. The blue sedan lost control and struck a black truck from behind, slowing down in the process.

Thats when the black sedan pulled up from behind and an unidentified individual shot at the two people in the blue sedan multiple times, hitting the 20-year-old male driver in the shoulder and the female passenger in the head.

The male driver of the blue sedan drove into the center lane and the black sedan fled the scene.

The female and themale driver were transported to University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The Bexar County Medical Examiner indentified the woman late Sunday as Ditraniq Hawkins, 21.

The male driver was treated for non-life threatening injuries.

In the second incident, which occurred at 5:39 a.m. Sunday, a BCSO deputy was flagged down by a motorist who had been involved in a road rage incident with a person in a black Dodge Charger near Loop 1604 and Marbach Road.

According to BCSO Sheriff Javier Salazar, the deputy searched for the vehicle and was able to locate it and a male driver and female passenger, both 17 years old, at a nearby dead-end. As the deputy exited his patrol car, the suspect turned his vehicle in the direction of the deputy and began to drive toward him at a high rate of speed. The suspect then allegedly struck the vehicle and the deputy.

The officer deployed his taser toward the suspect, but Salazar said it was ineffective. The deputy then fired his weapon, striking the teenager.

The suspect then fled the location, but the deputy, who had minor injuries, was unable to pursue him because his patrol car was immobilized.

According to a media release, a second patrol unit was able to locate the suspect on the access road of U.S. Highway 90 and Kriewald Road.

Salazar said at some point during this pursuit, the suspect struck another motorist head-on. The 39-year-old female driver suffered minor injuries.

The suspects car was still running, and he continued fleeing until the second deputys vehicle and the suspects vehicle collided, immobilizing both.

The suspect was transported to the hospital from the scene in critical condition with several gunshot wounds. The female passenger was transported with minor injuries.

If the suspect survives, he is facing serious felony charges, Salazar said.

We dont know if it will be handled as an attempted capital murder or aggravated assault on a public servant, Salazar said.

At this point, our homicide deputies are handling the incident, Salazar said. Internal Affairs is on scene making sure that we are handling this incident from all angles.

As of late Sunday, no one has been arrested in either incident.

nbautista@express-news.net | @aluna@express-news.net
AUSTIN -- Jeffrey Payne, a Dallas businessman, signed up Monday as a Democrat running in crowded primary field for the chance to challenge Republican incumbent Gov. Greg AbbottAbbott in a year.

Payne is the first of an expected two gay Democrats who are expected to be candidates in the primary. The second, Dallas Sheriff Lupe Valdez, has been examining a likely run but has not yet filed.

Signing paperwork and presenting a $3,500 check, Payne became the sixth Democrat to file for the state's top office. In addition to Payne, the list currently includes Houston electronics businessman Joe Mumbach, Dallas financial analyst Adrian Ocegueda, former Balch Springs Mayor Cedric Davis Sr., retired San Antonio school teacher Grady Yarbrough and San Antonio businessman Tom Wakley.

Two more, Houston entrepreneur Andrew White and Valdez, are expected to declare their candidacy before the filing period ends in a week, on Dec. 11.

"I have had great response to my campaign and, after touring the state for the past several months, I think we can win -- even though it's going to be uphill," Payne said at the Texas Democratic Party headquarters, where he filed his candidacy papers. "People want a politician who listens to them."

Payne said he thinks he will have to raise $8 million to win the March primary. He had earlier pledged to put up to $2.5 million of his own money into his campaign, but said Monday that he hasn't had to tap his accounts yet.

He also said that if Valdez runs, the campaign will mark a milestone by having two gay candidates running for governor. "That says something about where Texas is now," he said.

The openly gay Payne, a political newcomer who owns five businesses including The Dallas Eagle, a popular leather bar, has acknowledged that he knows that challenging a popular and well-funded incumbent Republican in a solidly GOP state will be a tough campaign.

A native of Maine who grew up in Louisiana, Payne has said he thinks that having a background in business will help him win. In addition to the bar, his businesses include a court reporting firm, a retail clothing outlet, a property management company and a land-holding company.

Payne relocated to Dallas from Louisiana in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.
Serzh Sargsyan inspects military exercises in Artsakh held within the framework of cooperation

On December 2, the second day of Serzh Sargsyans working visit to the Republic of Artsakh, within the framework of the ongoing cooperation between the armed forces of the two Armenian republics, Serzh Sargsyan and AR President Bako Sahakyan joined the RA and AR Defense Ministers and high-ranking army officials to inspect the military exercises conducted by the Defense Armys unified command in the southeastern section of the Republic of Artsakh. Mr. Sargsyan encouraged the most prominent servicemen with various incentives. On the same day, Serzh Sargsyan attended the commissioning of a multi-apartment residential building for servicemen, as well as the openings of a newly built canteen and barracks at one of the military units. Serzh Sargsyan handed awards and incentives to the best officers, contract and conscript soldiers for dedicated and excellent service. Strong defense calls for effort, due diligence and hard work, which can ultimately lead to high professionalism. Modern armed forces imply not only state-of-the-art armament, but also the ability to apply it at the right moment and to its full capacity. I am grateful to you for todays drills which testified to your high efficiency. Believe me, this is your response to all those who want to take away our homeland, who are trying to put on show their might and get something out of us. Peoples can protect their homeland if your type is dominant in them. We are in a position to defend our borders, and we will defend our homeland. I would like to thank your parents, your teachers, all those who have contributed to your upbringing, Serzh Sargsyan said, wishing the servicemen a dignified stance and successful service.
This is the 40th anniversary of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, which starts today at the Convention Center. As the 2017 symposium begins, we reflect on this important meetings value to patients and families everywhere.

When the symposium began in 1978, women with breast cancer faced a far bleaker outlook than today. Radical mastectomies were still routinely done, and little was known about genetic profiling of tumors. Each years symposium has provided state-of-the-art information on breast cancer research, and this years symposium will be no different.

Co-directors for 2017 are Dr. Virginia Kaklamani of the UT Health San Antonio Cancer Center, Dr. C. Kent Osborne of Baylor College of Medicine and Dr. Carlos Arteaga of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is one of the largest breast cancer meetings in the world, with approximately half of attendees coming from more than 90 countries outside the U.S. More than 7,000 oncologists, cancer researchers and patient advocates attend annually. The first symposium, in contrast, attracted 141 physicians and surgeons from five states.

The meeting has a $19 million economic impact on San Antonio.

San Antonio was an appropriate place to launch the worlds foremost breast cancer symposium, since the city from the 1970s onward was a cradle of the highest-quality research in the field.

Dr. William L. McGuire, pioneering breast cancer researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and Dr. Charles Coltman, medical director of San Antonios Cancer Therapy & Research Center, or CTRC, planned the first symposium. Osborne, a breast cancer researcher now at Baylor College of Medicine, was instrumental in the events growth during his years with the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio and onward.

In 2005, Baylor College of Medicine became a joint sponsor with the CTRC. In 2007, it was announced that the American Association for Cancer Research, or AACR, would join the collaboration on the annual symposium.

Today the CTRC is part of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and is called the UT Health San Antonio Cancer Center. It is a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center.

Exciting times are on the horizon as the UT Health San Antonio Cancer Center is developing an affiliation with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

This will expand cancer services to the regions patients and ensure families will not be forced to go elsewhere for cancer care. Patients do better when treated near their homes.

Current investigators stand on the shoulders of the symposiums founders. We are grateful that the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium exists, because in convening the fields greatest minds, the treatments, equipment and techniques available to a medical practitioner steadily increases. Mothers, grandmothers, wives and aunts can spend more time loving their families, the way it should be.

Dr. Virginia Kaklamani is director of the breast cancer program at the UT Health San Antonio Cancer Center. Dr. Ruben Mesa is director of the UT Health San Antonio Cancer Center.
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Culture / Art Republik

Dec 04, 2017 | By Art Republik

The Parkview Museum Singapore, a private museum established by the Parkview Group, was part of a long-term endeavour by its executive chairman, the late George Wong, to share his art collection with the world. A sprawling 1,500 square metres and an impressive six metres in height, the museum has hosted three shows since its launch in March this year, including its latest exhibition, The Artists Voice.

The son of property tycoon and group founder Hwang Chou-Shiuan, Wong had inherited not just his fathers business, but also his love for art. Continuing the familys legacy of combining art with business  a vision demonstrated by Hwang in his real estate model  Wong established art spaces in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei, and also founded Parkview Arts Action, an arts organisation that aims to raise awareness of critical environmental issues and inspire change.

In addition to that, works from Wongs extensive art collection hang on the walls of his hotels and shopping malls, reflecting his strong belief in art as something to be shared. ART REPUBLIK had the privilege of speaking with the personable man in October. The only thing I cant share is my wife, quipped Wong. With art, you cant just keep it to yourself, or store it in a warehouse. I want everybody to have part of my collection. To that end, Parkview Museum Singapore, which hosts exhibitions with a focus on contemporary art, is open to the public free of charge.

The museums focus on contemporary art is not incidental. Wong expressed a special appreciation for the genre, and regularly interacted with and championed contemporary artists. In contemporary art, when an artist paints something, there is a language in it. Each painting has a story to tell, explained Wong. Its fascinating. Traditional art can be very beautiful, but they often hold no language of their own. Theyre just pretty.

Wongs deep belief in the language of contemporary art is demonstrated in the museums latest exhibition, The Artists Voice, which spotlights the role of the artist in a modern-day society faced with crisis, disillusionment and instability. Highlighting themes relevant to the contemporary such as existentialism, ethics and anthropology, the exhibition visualises these realities through various mediums in contemporary art.

In the same vein, the museums first exhibition, Of Sharks and Humanity, keeping in line with the goals of Parkview Arts Action, addressed issues of the contemporary while tackling the widely controversial topic of shark finning as well as the impact of human activities on the ocean. Its an interesting topic because we humans kill and eat all kinds of things, such as chickens, pigs, and cows, said Wong. But in the case of sharks, its harming the ecosystem, and us in turn. Its a topic that people need to be made aware of, and art can do that.

Wong also emphasised his belief in the relationship between art and architecture, a vision grounded in the groups foundation in real estate. I think art should be part of the landscape, part of livable space, said Wong. When we build something, were building something for the people who live and work there. It cant just be a concrete frame with a few windows and an elevator. He explained that even in his properties, he would change the artworks on display every now and then so that every piece gets its time in the limelight.

A serial collector, Wongs thirst for collecting art manifested as a love that bordered on obsession. Recounting two instances in which he sold works from his collection, Wong expressed clear regret. I ended up buying one of them back, he recalled. Every time I sell something, I regret it. So I decided that I wouldnt sell my artworks anymore. In addition to collecting art, the late billionaire also collected a multitude of other items, such as wine, watches, cigars and whiskey.

Wong revealed during the interview that there were multiple developments in progress, including a museum within a hotel in Taipei, with original art in each room, and also projects in Huizhou, Guangdong and Shanghai. Im a simple person, said Wong. I enjoy my life and I enjoy my work. I build things and if it doesnt work, I take it apart. Its a constant work in progress. Wongs legacy will live on in through his projects and his unwavering determination to share the best of art with the public.

Here are some highlights from The Artists Voice exhibition, which will be on view at The Parkview Museum Singapore  from 18 November 2017 till 18 March 2018:

More information at parkviewmuseum.com.

This article was written by Nadya Wang and Ilyda Chua for Art Republik.
Ucoms mobile customers will benefit from the best internet roaming rate of 8 AMD/MB when travelling to Georgia, Egypt or the UAE

Ameriabank Launches Google Pay and Google Wallet Support for Card Users in Armenia

Karen Vardanyan donated 112 million drams for the medical equipment for National Center for Infectious Diseases.

UCOM HAS INTRODUCED FUTURE NETWORK WI-FI 6E ROUTERS

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Statement by the Spokesperson on the conflict resolution and reconciliation efforts

Foreign Minister of Armenia to participate in the Fifth Paris Peace Forum

Armenia: EU and Armenia Hold annual Dialogue on Human Rights

Todays Shushi, Occupied and Cleared of Armenians, is a Real Example of Turkish-Azerbaijani Policy of Ethnic Cleansing of Artsakh

Ookla, the the global leader in internet testing and analysis has awarded Ucom

Sweden will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union

Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector

STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH

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Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

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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
Military exercises in Artsakh (video)

The four-day military exercises of the Armenian and Artsakh aggregate troops were held in the southeastern part of Artsakh. The main task was to prepare and conduct an attacking operation. "The military doctrine of the armed forces is defensive, but it includes defensive, offensive and counterattack operations, as one cannot defeat the adversary with only defensive protection. Those who will try to break the borders of either the Republic of Artsakh or of the Republic of Armenia, this group is intended for them in order to attack and destroy the adversary," said Movses Hakobyan, Head of General Staff of the Republic of Armenia. These troops were formed just four months ago. The exercise was not planned. It aimed at checking whether the re-formed military units were capable of fighting, or not. "We need a well-trained individual soldier, but our ultimate goal is to have a harmonious subdivision, as no one can win separately," said Movses Hakobyan. Both the ground and air weapons were used in the exercises with a few hundred units of equipment. Thousands of soldiers from different subdivisions participated in the same tasks. According to the Commander of the Unified Forces, such a large-scale military exercise, co-operating with each other, took place for the first time. "Military art is always to be improved, military exercises should not be based on the previous war or clashes. As the army is a developing organism, it develops at all stages, and during maneuvers and daily routines," said Tigran Parvanyan, head of the united military unit. A few days ago, separate armies of Azerbaijan, including Nakhijevan, held a large-scale military exercise. The exercises were conducted under the slogan "Passing the adversary's attack and shooting back." "i should say that it is good that they conduct military exercises. When they have an army, they should exercise it. It is very important our adversary to be strong so that we win a strong adversary, and not a weak one. That is their business," said Movses hakobyan. During the conventional war, the work of media representatives was also been reorganized. "The four-day war in April showed that we, the mass media, had our gaps. It is also important that journalists also have combat readiness. Soldiers safety is the most important thing. No matter how much the media tries to cover the news first, the most important thing for me is the soldier's safety," Knar Manukyan, journalist of Zhokhovurd newspaper told A1+.
MassLive is one step closer to finding the best batch of freshly baked cookies in Massachusetts.

The initial Best Of Mass Cookies round saw nearly 40 nominations from bakeries in Springfield to New Bedford and places in between.

Now it is time to vote your favorite into the contest's Top 10.

In the poll below, you will find all of the bakeries nominated for Best Of Mass Cookies. Voting is restricted to one ballot for up to 10 bakeries, once every 24 hours per IP address. The poll will remain open until Monday, Dec. 11 at midnight.

Once the poll closes, the five most popular Western Massachusetts bakeries and the five most popular Eastern Massachusetts bakeries will make it into the Top 10.

In this month's Best Of Mass, the western half of the state is defined as towns and cities west of Worcester, while the eastern half of the state includes Worcester and towns and cities east of.

After the Top 10 is announced, our judges will visit and rank the Top 10 contenders and crown one as the best cookie bakery in Massachusetts.

Cast your votes in the poll below. Problem loading the poll? Vote directly here.
Shooting on an abbreviated final season of "House of Cards' resumes next month without its disgraced star, Kevin Spacey.

The sixth and final season of the Netflix series will consist of eight episodes, five fewer than previous years, according to Variety.

The new episodes will focus on Robin Wright's character, Claire Underwood, and Spacey will not be involved, as Netflix announced last month.

"We were really excited we could get to an agreement" to provide "closure of the show for fans," said Netfliix's Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, speaking Monday at UBS's Global Media and Communications Conference in New York.

Sarandos said he was gratified to have reached the deal for the team of 370 people who directly work on the show, as well as the 2,000 people in Baltimore, who have jobs working on the shoot in that city.

Spacey faces dozens of allegations of sexual assault or misconduct with investigations underway in London and Nantucket.
Forty years ago, this week, the FBI opened its John F. Kennedy files to the public for the first time. Those who were able to obtain "electronic-coded" passes were able to enter the FBI reading room to view some of the 40,001 pages released on a first-come basis. This batch was released due to a Freedom of Information lawsuit. The FBI insisted that the released documents would show no light on the 1963 assassination.

Ten years earlier, the first African-American U.S. astronaut was killed in a plane crash. Air Force Maj. Robert Lawrence, Jr., 31, was killed when his F104 crashed during a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He had been selected as a "astronaut designee" in June and was to participate in a manned orbiting laboratory program known as MOL. He was the sixth astronaut to die in 1967, and the fifth to die in a plane crash that year.

From the December 9, 1967 edition of The Springfield Union

These are some of the headlines you'll see from Page 1 of The Republican and its predecessors over the past fifty years for the week of December 3 - December 9. Each week I'll put together a slideshow of Page 1 images from selected years over the course of that week. We're starting with a look back at one, five, thirty, forty and fifty years ago, with Page 1s from each day of the week for those years.

The slideshow for December 3 - December 9 is embedded at the top of this article.

We'll also find some humor printed out on page one over the years. In 1967 'Dennis The Menace' could be found on the bottom of page one six days a week.

From the December 4, 1967 edition of The Springfield Union

Other newspaper comics from the archive can be found in the Featured Collection photo galleries on MassLive.

Also back from 1967, Springfield resident SSGT. Frank Morey, Jr., was killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. Morey was a 1953 graduate of Technical High School and joined the Marines in 1954. At the time of his death, he was an aerial gunner in a helicopter near Quang Nam Province in Vietnam.

From the December 7, 1967 edition of The Springfield Union

And a year ago, officials at Hampshire College in Amherst decided to fly the American flag at the college once again. The flag had been taken down November 18th so the college could have a discussion on what the flag meant to the college community. After a series of protests by outside groups, and attacks towards students on social media, Hampshire President Jonathan Lash decided to return the flag to the campus.

As you'll find with looking through the slideshow, that while many stories come and go, many of the issues and topics that affected lives in the past, continue to have an impact on our lives today.

Copies of these and other stories can be found in the online archives. The Historic Archive includes stories from 1824 to 1989, and the Newsbank Archive covers 1988 through the present day.
An investigation is underway days after sexual abuse allegations were reported against famed Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine, who worked for seven years with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Levine, 74, stepped down as music director at the Met Opera in New York in April 2016. He led the BSO from 2004 until 2011, though he has had a working relationship with the orchestra for decades since he guest-conducted in 1972.

The Met Opera suspended any relationship with Levine on Sunday after a police report and multiple accounts, reported in the New York Post and New York Times, accuse Levine of sexual misconduct with teenagers. At least three of the accusers say they were underage when Levine made contact with them sexually.

In a statement, the BSO said there were no reports of Levine committing inappropriate behavior during his tenure in Boston.

"The BSO finds this information deeply disturbing and awaits the findings of further investigations on the matter."

The orchestra said it "adhered to a due diligence process" when hiring Levine as music director in 2004, citing a personal and professional review of his candidacy at the time.

The Met Opera used similar language, saying their organization is "deeply disturbed by the news articles" that were published.

We are deeply disturbed by the news articles that are being published online today about James Levine. We are working on an investigation w outside resources to determine whether charges of sexual misconduct in the 1980s are true, so that we can take appropriate action.  Metropolitan Opera (@MetOpera) December 3, 2017

The flood of media, including the Post's article on a 2016 police report filed by one of Levine's accusers, has prompted the Met Opera to launch its own investigation "with outside resources." The Opera admits it knew of the police report since it was filed last year, but that they had not been updated by police.

Reports indicate rumors about Levine's "private life" have circulated for years, but the music leader has always denied any negative story as "a fabrication."
SPRINGFIELD -- The Springfield St. Patrick's Parade Committee revealed its 2018 Springfield parade marshal and award winners at a Sunday morning announcement party at the John Boyle O'Reilly Club.

The marshal for this year's parade is Nancy Lefebvre, a Chicopee resident who grew up in the Hungry Hill section of Springfield, where she attended Our Lady of Hope Church and graduated from Ursuline Academy.

The marshal -- a community member who's contributed greatly to the Irish community of Springfield -- will lead the Springfield contingent in the 2018 Holyoke St. Patrick's Parade on Sunday, March 18.

Lefebvre, a longtime member of the John Boyle O'Reilly Club and the Catholic Woman's Club of Springfield, has belonged to the Springfield St. Patrick's Parade Committee for over 25 years, serving as committee chairperson for six years. During her tenure, she started the very successful spaghetti supper fundraiser that's held every September.

The Springfield St. Patrick's Parade Committee also announced the following award winners:

The 2018 John & Agnes Burke Award went to Caroline Kelly, a Dublin native who moved to Springfield as a teenager. This award is presented in memory of John and Agnes Burke for outstanding service to the Irish community of the City of Springfield.

After losing family members to cancer, Kelly took action by forming a relay team of family and friends to participate in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. The team blossomed into a fundraising powerhouse under the leadership of Kelly, who joined the society's board and went on to become event chairperson for the Greater Springfield Relay.

In addition to her work for ACS, Kelly is the mother of three and an event coordinator for the Thomas J. O'Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center in Springfield.

The 2018 Paul G. Caron Award was given to Matt Keating, who was born and raised in Hungry Hill. The annual award is presented in memory of the founder of the Springfield Colleen Contest to a past or present parade committee member who has made an outstanding contribution to the committee.

Keating is a longtime member of the John Boyle O'Reilly Club, where he serves as manager and helps plan club events. He works very closely with the Springfield Parade Committee, scheduling their events at the club and making sure the banquet hall is arranged just right and the bartenders are ready to serve.

The 2018 Mary B. Troy Appreciation Award was granted to Rick Quackenbush and the Lower Pioneer Valley Career & Technical Center. The award is presented in memory of Mary Brigid Troy to a person or business that has given outstanding service to the committee.

Quackenbush, a facilities management teacher at Lower Pioneer Valley, is a former member of the Springfield St. Patrick's Parade Committee. For six years, he and the Lower Pioneer Valley staff and student body facilitated the building of the committee's award-winning floats. Pitching in were students from the auto shop, horticultural and graphics design classes.

Sunday's event at the Boyle was attended by the family of Tommy Sullivan, the Springfield Marine gunnery sergeant who was killed in a domestic terrorist attack in July 2015. The Sullivans joined Eric Devine, president of the Boyle, and about two dozen others for coffee, pastries and news about this year's parade honorees.

The nonprofit Sringfield St. Patrick's Parade Committee is dedicated to promoting and celebrating Irish heritage in the Greater Springfield area. The organization was founded in 1962 by a small group of Irishmen who wanted to honor Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, while also improving, developing and fostering the capabilities of people of Irish descent to help promote Irish heritage in the City of Springfield, culturally and socially, to the best of their ability.

The committee is responsible for selecting the Springfield Colleen and Court members who will represent the City of Springfield in the parade. Additionally, the Parade Committee awards annual scholarships in honor of Mossie and Kathleen Murphy. Learn more at www.springfieldstpatricksparade.org/
AMHERST -- Amherst will elect two new school committee members in the spring as two incumbents say they do not plan to seek re-election.

Nomination papers are now available for the March 27 annual town election.

Neither Vira Douangmany Cage nor Phoebe Hazzard will seek a second three-year term.

Cage said she wanted a break from campaigning. In 2016 she ran for the state representative seat vacated by Ellen Story, a seat won by Solomon Goldstein-Rose in a six-way race.

Hazzard in an email wrote that it was not "a commitment I can make for another three years."

"It's a substantial amount of time that I feel like I just can't accommodate as I work on the next steps in my life professionally, along with the many evening events and meetings, which become a lot for the family to absorb," she said.

She said she appreciates "the service of so many volunteers in our community that make up our town government. It's very important work that relies on the efforts of those willing to share their time and energy."

For Select Board, just one seat is up for election, that held by Douglas Slaughter. He has already taken out papers and is collecting signatures.

"It has been an honor and privilege to serve Amherst as a member of the Select Board over the last three years and I look forward to the opportunity to continue to serve the community," he wrote in an email. He has served one term.

Nomination papers for those seeking townwide office must be signed by at least 50 registered voters but just one signature is needed for Town Meeting member. Papers must be filed by Feb. 6.

Voters will also decide whether to adopt a change in the town's charter replacing the five-member Select Board and 240-member Town Meeting with a 13-member Town Council. The town manager's position would remain.
SPRINGFIELD -- A large monitor comes to life in a Hampden Superior Court courtroom and a defendant looks out from the screen.

The judge asks the defendant if he can hear everything. Once that is confirmed, the defendant -- from a room at the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow -- listens while his lawyer argues for reduced bail.

The defendant, in this instance Javier Flores, is the only participant not in the Springfield courtroom. The judge, prosecutor, defense lawyer and probation officer are in the courtroom as usual.

The defendant sees the courtroom on his monitor in a room at the jail set aside for the video conferencing.

The video system is now being used in Hampden Superior Court for some bail reviews. Lawyers may still choose to have their clients brought to court, as has been the traditional procedure.

Regional Administrative Judge David Ricciardone, who has been presiding in the Hampden Superior Court courtroom where scheduling is done, is one proponent of the system. Some other judges won't use it.

Hampden Superior Court Clerk Laura Gentile promised during her election campaign in 2012 to get the video system into the courtrooms.

"First and foremost, it's a safety issue," Gentile said in a recent interview. "Our lockup is woefully inadequate, in my opinion. It gets overcrowded."

The daily docket is extensive and there is a shortage of court officers, she said.

"The fewer people we can bring in, the less risk," Gentile said.

The system also saves taxpayers money because fewer people are transported from the jail to court and back, she said.

Gentile said most defendants prefer not being brought into court for bail hearings. "They don't like coming into court and sitting in a lockup all day long," she said.

Lawyers Joseph Franco and Daniel D. Kelly both said the clients they have asked would rather stay at the jail than travel to court.

When defendants are brought to court for a bail review, all their possessions are packed up and sent with them in case they are able to post bail, Gentile said.

But defendants who opt not to come to court must wait until their families can travel to the jail to post bail. If a condition of release is GPS monitoring, the defendant must be brought to the courthouse anyway so the Probation Department can install the tracking device. Those are drawbacks of the video system, some lawyers said.

Gentile said some defendants prefer to come to court because they like the support of seeing their families.

"I know some of the defense attorneys don't like it," Gentile said. "They like to be able to be here with their clients. ... Anything new is met with some backlash until we become comfortable with it."

The Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center in Chicopee houses women from all over the state. It has been using video conferencing to connect inmates with various courts since 2014.

Gentile hopes at some point the video conferencing program in Hampshire Superior Court will be expanded to include arraignments in addition to bail reviews.

Flores, the defendant who attended his bail hearing by video recently, had been held on $20,000 bail on charges related to a serious shooting incident. He has a trial date of Jan. 9.

Judge Michael K. Callan reduced Flores' bail to $10,000, the amount requested by defense lawyer Arthur J. O'Donald III. Assistant District Attorney Karen J. Bell argued against a reduction in bail, saying the victim in the shooting "quite frankly came close to dying."

O'Donald does not like bail reviews by video conference. "I think it's important for my clients to be next to me in the courtroom," he said. Bail reviews, like arraignments, are important processes and should be done in person, he said.

Family members of Flores were present in court but were only able to see him on the screen.

"Javy couldn't be here," said the defendant's mother, Victoria Moson-Flores. "He couldn't speak with his own lawyer. He can't see who's there to support him."
WESTFIELD - An unattended candle was the reported cause of a basement fire that displaced a family from a Dickinson Place home Sunday afternoon.

Police Lt. Jay Pitoniak told Western Mass News the blaze at 34 Dickinson Place was reported shortly before 2 p.m.

No injuries were reported. The Western Massachusetts Chapter of the American Red Cross is aiding those displaced.
The government also says the SCS will "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step."

Chinas government will implement a nationwide ranking system of its population by 2020. If this idea of a personal rating seems a little familiar perhaps you have seen the dystopic Netflix series, Black Mirror.

It works by giving each citizen a score based on their daily interactions and financial decisions, the score can be affected by debt, spending habits and even social interactions. Obviously, to get this kind of score that will be somewhat compared to a persons trustworthiness, there will need to be a huge amount of individual monitoring and data collection. The SCS is expected to be rolled out in 2020, but there will be a large scale trial period from now until then so the system can be at optimal functionality when it goes live on its 1.3 billion citizens.

https://interestingengineering.com/china-is-set-to-implement-a-system-of-ranking-its-citizens?_source=newsletter&_campaign=ylzXq3NnpLa22&_uid=nXe0N3Xbxr&_h=64cc3b5d9718727b8670189a16e07bec629326aa&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=mailing&utm_campaign=Newsletter-04-12-2017
A technology company based in a nondescript building west of Missoula has found itself on the forefront of a green energy future, manufacturing a line of "Power Perfect" products suited for both home and industrial settings.

Satic Technology http://saticusa.com/ , founded by BD Erickson, has also pledged an American-made approach to its product line, opting for wire harnesses made at S&K Technologies http://www.sktcorp.com/ in Ronan and junction boxes molded by Diversified Plastics http://www.diversifiedplastics.net/ in Missoula.

"Were engineers and American manufacturers of go-green energy products," Erickson said. "A lot of guys talk about American manufacturing, creating jobs, building something that serves the greater good or that can truly reduce the impact on the planet. We generally feel we deliver on that."

BY MARTIN KIDSTON
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'Reading' the starved body in relation to cultural prescriptions of femininity

The dynamics of 'healthy' eating/living and fitness cultures' aimed at women

Su Holmes, Ms Sarah Drake, Miss Kelsey Odgers and Dr Jonathan Wilson. 'Feminist approaches to anorexia: a qualitative study of a treatment group'. Eating Disorders (2017).

Dr Holmes said that although there is now extensive evidence on how EDs are bound up with cultural ideas surrounding gender, the contemporary focus on evidence-based treatment, and particularly the rise of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), has all but forced these issues off the agenda."If cultural elements are addressed, it is through a limited focus on 'body image' work, which often invokes the significance of the media in perpetuating unattainable images of the body".The paper said more culturally-focused perspectives on eating problems have argued that 'disordered eating may not necessarily be motivated by the drive for pursuit of thinness or any "distortion" of body image, but rather by wider experiences' of gender expectations and pressures.'Dr Holmes' previous research with people who had received treatment for an ED showed that even when a patient specifically asks to talk about questions of gender, their request may be ignored - either because such issues are seen as a low priority, or because health professionals have little training in this sphere.Dr Holmes and Ms Sarah Drake, an occupational therapist and lecturer in the School of Health and Social Care at UEA, devised and ran a new treatment intervention at an inpatient clinic that specialises in the treatment of EDs.The group, which was run over 10 weeks at Newmarket House clinic Norwich, was called 'Cultural Approaches to Eating Disorders', and included all the patients who were resident in the clinic at the time. These were all female, with a diagnosis of anorexia, and their ages ranged from 19-51.Each week, the programme examined what role culture might play in EDs, including:Media, such as television adverts, Disney films, press articles, image bank photography to social media, was used to stimulate debate about the particular issue being explored. But the media were not consistently positioned as the 'cause' of anorexia, as so often happens in suggestions of how society influences eating problems.The study found thatOne patient said that suggesting seeing "a skinny model in a magazine" influenced the development of EDs "completely trivialises" the many reasons people develop body- and eating distress.Looking at the wider contexts that shape ideas about gender in society - such as beliefs about 'appetite' - was seen as helpful by the participants. This focus took in food advertising aimed at women as well as wider ideas about 'appetite', such as the ways in which girls and women are still expected to exercise more restraint in sexual appetite than boys and men - and are sex- or slut-shamed if they don't.Participants in the group said they found it useful to situate their problem within society, thus moving away from the more individualized focus of medical perspectives that may encourage self-blame - but it also raised questions about recovery.One patient said: "But then, as the groups went on it's like OK, maybe this society's norms are quite disordered. But then it's like ... if society's norms are disordered ... then ... I don't know, how am I meant to change kind of things?"Dr Holmes said: "The medical framework may offer the patient a greater sense of personal agency when it comes to feelings of control in recovery. Given that anorexia in particular is seen to be tightly intertwined with issues of control, this is clearly worth some thought."The research shows, however, that there is room for more work and exploration in this area, and the group is now being re-run with the hope of adapting it for other services in the region.Dr Holmes said: "It is important to stress that the study does not work on the assumption that issues concerning gender identity are only relevant to the experience and treatment of eating disorders in girls and women. The focus on how eating- and body distress may be used to negotiate dominant ideas about gender and sexuality is similarly applicable to male patients, as well as gender minorities, even whilst the cultural constructions at stake may be different."Indeed, she said, given that recent research indicates how transgender individuals may be particularly at risk from developing eating problems, this arguably adds credence to the idea that EDs may be bound up with the pressures and difficulties posed by dominant gender norms.Dr Holmes said: "The bottom line is that, although eating disorders are now widely recognised as being shaped by biological, psychological and social factors, the social aspect of the equation is poorly served."Source: Medindia
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nikos Kotzias, will be in Brussels on 5 and 6 December to attend the Meeting of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs.



During the first day, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs will discuss issues concerning NATO-EU relations and global security challenges. This will be preceded by a working luncheon with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. At the working dinner, discussion will centre on Russia and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.



Finally, on Wednesday, 6 December, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs will focus on NATO-Georgia relations, the combating of terrorism and the Alliances open door policy.




JOURNALIST: Does President Erdogans upcoming visit to Athens  the first by a Turkish head of state since 1952  mean there are hopes for substantial progress in Greek-Turkish relations?



N. KOTZIAS: A visit, however important it might be, doesnt automatically resolve all problems. But it can contribute to the enhancement of a positive outlook in the relations between our countries. I often wonder at those who confuse analysis with foreign policy. Analysis, even if it draws the most negative conclusions, is carried out to point up the difficulties, and not to make one abandon a proactive foreign policy. It is one thing to delude yourself about the difficulties in a relationship, and another to give up on pursuing the positive development of a relationship. And we want to work in this latter direction. Finally, foreign policy has to look soberly and precisely at the intentions and pursuits of each of our interlocutors. It has to rationally analyse these intentions and understand them in depth in order to influence them as far as possible.



JOURNALIST: After the long meeting you had in Crete with your Albanian counterpart, are you optimistic about a package solution to the pending bilateral issues.



N. KOTZIAS: Through the shared history of our two peoples, multiple interdependencies, lines of conflict and possibilities for friendship have been shaped. We need to resolve the problems of the past, work for the best possible present, and ensure a positive agenda for cooperation in the future. Regarding the problems and potential for joint actions, the Albanian side is more interested in some, and the Greek side is more interested in others. Dealing with all of these in tandem is what we call, in negotiation theory, a package solution, because such a solution takes into account any asymmetry of interest in various topics in the negotiations. I believe we are on the right path for reaching an agreement that is positive for both sides.



JOURNALIST: The opposition asked you to describe your negotiations with Mr. Bushati before they began. Can you comment on that?



N. KOTZIAS: I find it silly, to say the least, that certain members of the opposition want us to tell them  publicly, no less  what positions and proposals we are going to submit in the negotiations, the tactics we are going to employ, before a negotiation even begins. They did the same thing in our negotiations with fYROM and on the Cyprus issue. Perhaps they don't have experience of real negotiations, and thats why they ask us to reveal our negotiating strategy to third parties in advance.



JOURNALIST: Are there indications of a change in the Rama governments stance towards Athens.



N. KOTZIAS: I see that it has been understood that the countrys European course is more important than certain other issues. I also read his most recent statements, in which he talks about the development of a strategic relationship between Greece and Albania. These are positive developments. They contribute to the development of mutual trust. But, allow me to note that the opposition took an item of fake news that was based on a speech Mr. Rama made a year and a half ago  in other words, a speech he made under different circumstances. They then presented it as having been made recently, taking aim at Albania and myself for holding negotiations. These are foolish tactics and are in no way helpful. Unless some people want our foreign policy to be idle and the problems to drag on forever. Personally, I refuse to exercise foreign policy with my attention on party-politics.



JOURNALIST: Is there momentum for resolving the pending fYROM name issue?



N. KOTZIAS: I think all of our interlocutors understand that all sides have to accept an honest compromise. That is, to operate based on consensus and on principled compromises. This also goes for those Europeans who, in the past, misled the leadership of our friendly country into believing that accession to the EU and other organizations can be achieved without compromises. In the case of fYROM, our neighbours believed that they could join institutions without reaching an agreement with us  which is impossible  while some people in Greece mistakenly believed that inertia is a foreign policy tool. It turned out that, during our inertia, other powers gained excellent access to our northern neighbours.



JOURNALIST: Is the new government in Skopje in a position to handle the reactions from extreme nationalist groups?



N. KOTZIAS: The next six months will show whether my friends in Skopje will put their hands on their hearts and decide to compromise. An honest compromise, not a rotten one. They can do it. They only need to believe in it and be supported by their friends. I also think the confidence-building measures have contributed to this end.



JOURNALIST: What is the overall assessment, so far, of the impact of the two trilateral regional cooperation schemes (Greece-Cyprus-Israel and Greece-Cyprus-Egypt) on the stability of the Eastern Mediterranean?



N. KOTZIAS: In the nearly three years I have been minister, we have developed and created a number of international institutions: Six trilateral and three quadrilateral cooperation schemes, one eight-sided and one seven-sided platforms, two international organizations and one global organization. Fourteen in all! Many countries have asked to participate in these initiatives, and a number of countries have asked to collaborate with us on creating new ones. Of all these initiatives, the ones that have gained the most depth are the trilateral configurations Greece and Cyprus have formed with Egypt and Israel. These are multi-level cooperation schemes. We are trying to do the same thing with our cooperation schemes in the Balkans, with Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. Greeces standing has risen. These cooperation schemes have contributed to regional stability and security. As you know, within the framework of the Rhodes Conference we are preparing to create a new security and stability structure in the Eastern Mediterranean, with the participation of eight European states, twelve Arab states and two international Arab organizations.



JOURNALIST: Beyond the interest of the U.S., has the EU taken a positive view? Finally, are these two cooperation triangles compatible with open channels of communication with Moscow and Tehran?



N. KOTZIAS: The non regional players needed time to see the importance of all these initiatives we have taken. I think they understand them now, and I think the two countries you mentioned do as well. Let me also note that Iran is a very active member of the successful initiative we launched with China, at my suggestion, for forming the Ancient Civilizations Forum  ancient civilizations that have influence and a presence in the contemporary world. We had a summit meeting in Athens, in April 2017. We met recently in New York, and we will meet in the spring of 2018, in Bolivia.



JOURNALIST: Does Greece support the European perspectives of Turkey and the Western Balkans?



N. KOTZIAS: If anyone has gains to make from these states accession to the EU  from their democratization and Europeanization  it is Greece. But for this to happen, these countries will have to satisfy the terms and conditions that have been set. Conditions that are of direct interest to Greece and in many cases are based on proposals we ourselves made.



JOURNALIST: In the midst of its own crisis, is the EU currently willing and able to support the full accession of new countries?



N. KOTZIAS: It is, but this will has to become more substantial, more democratic and with a more socially just vision. Europe has to deepen its integration processes. It has to take a resolute decision that all of the states, old and new, large and small, will be equal, and that the citizens of all these states, their societies and the social groups with the most problems today, will be the heart of a democratic, just, socially sensitive EU. So the EU has the capability, but the path to utilising these capabilities is long, difficult and full of social struggles.



JOURNALIST: The memorandum ends in mid-2018. What will the end of the programme mean for Greeces foreign policy?



N. KOTZIAS: Throughout this time, we have exercised a multidimensional proactive foreign policy. We contributed to upgrading the country, to strengthening its sovereignty and independence. By introducing the geopolitical element into the debate on the crisis, we made our countrys role easier to see, and we made it easier to find the path out of the crisis. Our countrys role, duties and capabilities on the international stage have been augmented. Globalization has also increased our duties. I hope that, now that we are emerging from the crisis, we will be able to hire personnel  it has been 15 years since we last hired personnel of some categories and enhance our international presence through better finances.



JOURNALIST: It is often said that foreign policy is, by definition, a field of consensus. Nevertheless, since the beginning of your tenure as Minister of Foreign Affairs, you have been targeted by the opposition.



N. KOTZIAS: The opposition doesnt have its own foreign policy strategy. Part of the opposition actually supports the current foreign policy. Another part simply goes along with. But there are also some within the opposition that had grown accustomed to the policy of bowing down, of inertia and submissiveness. These people take issue with our every initiative. They are the voices of a new isolationism that fears any discussion with third countries and is suspicious of any negotiations. Finally, there is a category that has understood that leftist patriotic foreign policy enjoys the broad acceptance of all the genuine democratic patriotic forces, including within New Democracy itself. They are trying to confront this through insults, false accusations and personal attacks on me.
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MIDDLETOWN  Each area high school that participated in a recent workshop at Middlesex Community College took home an accessory-equipped 360 camera for students which will allow them prepare a virtual reality video on their own.

More than 70 high school seniors visited the college to engage in a five-hour workshop, 360-Degree Learning: VR Video, Nov. 17. Students traveled from Nathan Hale-Ray (East Haddam), Portland, Valley Regional (Deep River), Vinal Tech (Middletown) and Westbrook high schools, according to a press release.

MxCC faculty and partners from CTGS Productions of Thomaston led three sessions at the Center for New Media classrooms. They included shooting video with 360-degree camera, video editing in Adobe Premiere Pro software, and a high-end VR experience, the release continued. Students interacted with the cameras, computers, software and VR equipment provided by MxCC during each session.

After the early morning welcome session, students divided into three groups and rotated between each 50-minute breakout session.

They will bring back their creations to the MxCC arts and media festival in May.

Its so interesting to see new technology like this. Its like youre in another world, Emily Miner, a senior from Deep River considering attending Middlesex next year, said in a prepared statement. I especially enjoyed learning about the 360 video camera, since I plan to study cinematography in college.

In the 360 camera session, Craig Ziogas, producer and partner at CTGS, introduced the Ricoh Theta, a camera that shoots everything in 360 degrees. The camera easily fits in the palm of the hand or on a tripod, according to the college. Users press a button and the device records in three dimensions as well as audio.

Smaller groups of students dispersed around campus to experiment shooting with the camera and tripod for 20 minutes before returning to the classroom. The Ricoh Theta connects to a computer and the students downloaded their video files into the Ricoh Theta software, the release continued. By dragging the files into the app on the desktop, the software converts the video segments and stitches them together.

Participants also learned how to edit video using the Adobe Premiere Pro software in a step-by-step session presented by Tim Coakley, also a partner at CTGS. Using video samples provided on Macintosh desktops, they shortened segments of a VR tour of a town in Connecticut, a popular way to use virtual reality online, according to the release.

Psychotherapists also use virtual reality to treat veterans with PTSD. By simulating and controlling elements in the patients past experience, they can relive these situations and draw back from them, Coakley said in a prepared statement. It can also be a way to overcome your fears, such as being in an airplane.

Organizations such as the Smithsonian, The New York Times, CNN, Huffington Post, etc., have embraced 360 journalism, and VR is very useful in the travel industry.

Middlesex digital media professors Rick Eriksen and John Shafer explained the video assignment to the attendees before bringing them into the Center for New Media broadcast studio for the experience. Each student took turns wearing the HTC Vive headset or the Oculus Rift VR headset to view the VR world up close.

Nicole Esposito, who teaches a traditional video production course at Westbrook High School, brought 12 students to the Middlesex program. We have high-definition cameras at our school, but this is my first time experiencing 360 video equipment, she said in the release.

Hosted by Middlesex Community College, this workshop was funded by the Perkins Postsecondary Enhancement Grant.
Middletown police reported the following arrests:

POSSESSION: Debra McCain, 48, of Goodwin Street, Indian Orchard, Massachusetts, was arrested Nov. 30 and issued a misdemeanor summons for possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. She is accused of having a glass pipe and 0.3 grams of crack cocaine in her possession. She was released on a promise to appear Dec. 5 in court.

FAILURE: Wayne Francis, 57, was arrested Nov. 29 on a warrant and charged with two counts of providing a false address with the Connecticut State Police Sex Offender Registry. He was held in lieu of $50,000 bail and issued a court date for the following day.

ASSAULT: Charles Stack, 26, of College Street, was arrested Nov. 29 on an active warrant and charged with breach of peace and assault on a police officer. He was held in lieu of $25,000 bail and issued a court date for the following day.

ASSAULT: Samuel Saez, 46, of Burgundy Hill Lane, was arrested Nov. 30 on outstanding warrant and charged with four counts of assault, three counts of reckless endangerment, two counts of threatening, strangulation and risk of injury to a minor. He was held in lieu of $5,000 bail and issued a court date for the following day.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: Patrick Reynolds, 47, of Plaza Drive, was arrested Nov. 30 on an active warrant and charged with operating an unregistered motor vehicle, operating with a suspended license, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and criminal mischief. He was held in lieu of $2500 bail and issued a court date for the following day.

POSSESSION: Willie Young, 57, of Westfield Street, was arrested Nov. 30 and charged with possession of narcotics and possession of drug paraphernalia. He is accused of having a crack pipe and 1.27 grams of crack cocaine in her possession. He was released on $1,500 bail and issued a court date of Dec. 15.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: Walter Tixi-Vazquez, 27, of Rose Circle, was arrested Dec. 3 and charged with criminal mischief and breach of peace. He was issued a court date for the following date.

FAILURE: James Salters Jr., 38, of John Street, Willimantic, was arrested Dec. 1 on an active warrant and charged with failure to appear. He was held in lieu of $25,000 bail and issued a court date for Dec. 4.

ASSAULT: Estrella Gonzalez, 29, of High Street, was arrested Dec. 1 and issued a misdemeanor summons for third-degree assault and disorderly conduct. She is accused of grabbing a man she knew by his neck and scratching him. She was released on a promise to appear Dec. 4 in court.

ASSAULT: Justin Ryals, 32, of Spring Street, was arrested Dec. 1 on an active warrant and charged with first-degree assault, violation of a protective order, risk of injury to a minor, breach of peace, home invasion and violation of probation. He was held in lieu on $150,000 bail and issued a court date for Dec. 4.

POSSESSION: Thomas Freeman Sr., 52, of Silver Street, and Stanley Scherp, 53, of High Street, were both arrested Nov. 24 and issued a misdemeanor summons for possession of narcotics. Police pulled over the vehicle and reportedly found eight wax paper folds containing heroin inside the car. Both men denied the heroin was theirs, but since it was in the reachable area of both, it was deemed in the constructive possession of Freeman and Scherp. Both were issued a court date of Dec. 8.

THREATENING: Steven Grzybowski, 51, of Union Street, was arrested Dec. 1 and charged with criminal attempt to assault a police officer, criminal attempt for first-degree assault, three counts of threatening and disorderly conducting for reportedly threatening to hurt three people and trying to assault a police officer with a hatchet. He was held in lieu of $500,000 bail and issued a court date of Dec. 4.

POSSESSION: Walter Dismuke, 31, of Rowe Avenue, Hartford, was arrested Nov. 25 and charged with possession of marijuana, possession with intent to sell, threatening and breach of peace. He is accused of threatening to a shoot a man and grabbing the man by the back of his neck. After being detained, officers reportedly found 14 wrapped baggies with marijuana in his possession, leading police to believe Dismuke was allegedly planning to sell them. He was held in lieu of $25,000 bail and issued a court date of Nov. 27.

POSSESSION: Neil Singhal, 37, of Keighley Pond Road, East Haddam, was arrested Dec. 1 and charged with possession of narcotics, possession of drug paraphernalia, interfering with an officer, operating with a suspended license and failure to display a license plate. He was held in lieu of $25,000 bail and issued a court date of the same day.
For women with uterine factor infertility who want to be mothers, the calculus has always been heartbreakingly simple: No uterus means no pregnancy.

The equation changed drastically in 2014, when Swedish doctors delivered a healthy 3.9-pound baby that was the result of a successful uterus transplant.

Now, doctors at Baylor University say a woman born without a uterus has delivered a baby after a successful transplant, the first time the surgery has worked outside of the Swedish hospital that pioneered the procedure.

The success marked another step forward for transplant surgery aimed at improving a person's life, not just saving it. Doctors have performed penis transplants for wounded troops, given a young boy two new hands and given a new nose, lips, palate, eyelids and jaw to a woman who was gruesomely disfigured after she was shot in the face.

The fact that the uterus transplant success in Sweden can be replicated is a promising sign for thousands of women who have been unable to conceive. And doctors at Baylor have sought to expand the limits of the procedure, using donated uteri that didn't come from family members and, in some cases, organs that came from cadavers.

"To make the field grow and expand and have the procedure come out to more women, it has to be reproduced," said Liza Johannesson, a uterus transplant surgeon who left the Swedish team to join Baylor's group, told the New York Times. "It was a very exciting birth. I've seen so many births and delivered so many babies, but this was a very special one."

Baylor's clinical trial was designed to include 10 women. Eight, including the new mother, have received the transplants so far. One recipient is pregnant, and two are trying to conceive. Four others had transplants that failed, and the organs had to be surgically removed.

The surgeries differ from other transplants in one major way: They're not intended to be permanent. Instead, they give a woman enough time to conceive a child. In vitro fertilized eggs are transferred to the woman's womb, and after the baby is born, the uterus is removed via surgery.

That means the patient doesn't have to spend a lifetime taking powerful drugs that suppress her immune system, which would put her at risk for dangerous long-term complications.

The university hasn't released the names of the mother or the baby, saying they chose to remain anonymous.

But according to Tech Times, the donor uterus came from Taylor Siler, a Dallas nurse who has two children. She said she wanted to offer another woman a chance to give birth.

While this most recent birth is a step forward, uterine transplantation surgery is still in its very early days, and doctors conceded that there had been setbacks, particularly with the earliest volunteers.

In February 2016, Lindsey McFarland became the first woman to receive a uterus transplant in America. The organ came from a dead donor and was implanted during a nine-hour surgery.

Her story gave a sense of just how tenuous the nascent surgery is. She had to have her transplanted uterus removed after coming down with a yeast infection.

According to Newsweek, most of the women in Baylor's trial had Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, which makes pregnancy and giving birth impossible.

And for most of their lives many had been told that they wouldn't be able to have children.

"We do transplants all day long," Giuliano Tesla, who heads the uterus transplant clinical trial at Baylor University Medical Center, told Time magazine. "This is not the same thing. I totally underestimated what this type of transplant does for these women. What I've learned emotionally, I do not have the words to describe."
The Metropolitan Opera in New York announced Sunday that it was suspending its relationship with James Levine, its music director emeritus and a monumental figure in the world of classical music, because of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.

The New York Times reported Sunday that three more men said they had been sexually abused by Levine in a time period that encompassed the 1960s through the 1980s. "While we await the results of the investigation, based on these new news reports, the Met has made the decision to act now," Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, said in a statement.

The decision to suspend followed an announcement Saturday that the Met would start an investigation into allegations, which came in the wake of an article detailing sexual abuse allegations made by a man, now 48, to the police department in Lake Forest, Illinois - allegations that the Met had known about for at least a year.

"This first came to the Met's attention when the Illinois police investigation was opened in October, 2016," Gelb said in a statement. "At the time, Mr. Levine said that the charges were completely false, and we relied upon the further investigation of the police."

Gelb could not be reached for comment on why the Met deemed the charges worthy of investigation at this time, but not a year ago.

Levine, 74, was the music director of the Metropolitan Opera for 40 years before stepping down in 2016. He is also the former music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic and the Ravinia Festival, which is held near Chicago and is billed as the oldest outdoor music festival in the country. Levine was a Kennedy Center Honors recipient in 2003.

Levine is a beloved figure in the industry but has faced rumors of these sorts in the past - so much so that he addressed them in a 1987 interview. "I don't have the faintest idea where those rumors came from or what purpose they served," Levine told the New York Times' John Rockwell.

The alleged victim in the Illinois investigation, whose name has been withheld because The Washington Post does not identify alleged victims of sexual abuse, has approached reporters from multiple publications over the years and, more recently, posted publicly on Facebook. But the New York Post was the first to report his allegations, followed shortly by the New York Times and other publications over the weekend.

In his account to the Lake Forest Police Department, the accuser made explicit charges against Levine. The abuse, he told police, began in 1985, when he was 16. Levine, he said, used to arrange to meet him for dinner, but would instead take him to his hotel room near Ravinia, where Levine was music director from 1973 to 1993. There, according to the accuser, Levine would ask him to remove his clothes, fondle his penis and masturbate in front of him.

The man told police that this behavior continued for years. Levine, he said, also gave him financial gifts amounting to about $50,000.

The encounters left him confused and unhappy, he said, and almost drove him to suicide.

Levine has suffered from ill health for years. He was diagnosed as having Parkinson's disease in 2006, but that was publicly revealed only a decade later. Today, he is largely in a wheelchair, but he has stepped up his activity at the Met in his current role of music director emeritus, after a period of not conducting very often. The New York Post story was published shortly after he finished conducting the last of four performances of Verdi's "Requiem."

Levine's management did not respond to requests for comment.
An art performance at the event (Source: cinet.gov.vn)

The event drew the participation of five universities and academies, including the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, University of Communications and Transport, Hanoi Law University, Foreign Trade University and Hanoi University of Culture.

It was an opportunity to help Laos students meet and exchange with Vietnamese students, and help each other in studying and daily life.

Art performances by both Vietnamese and Lao students showed warm melodies and lively images about traditional culture of the two countries.

It was also a chance to popularize specific Lao cultural characteristic to Vietnamese students, promoting the solidarity and special friendship between Vietnam and Laos./.
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday granted President Donald Trump's request to fully enforce his revised order banning travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries while legal challenges to it proceed in lower courts.

It was a victory for the White House, which has seen the courts trim back various iterations of the travel ban, and it bodes well for the administration if the Supreme Court is called upon to finally decide the merits of the president's actions.

Two lower courts had imposed restrictions on Trump's new order, exempting travelers from the six countries who had "bona fide" connections with relatives - such as grandparents, aunts or uncles - or institutions in the United States. Those exemptions to the president's order, issued in the fall, were along the lines of those imposed by the Supreme Court last summer on a previous version of the travel ban.

But in an unsigned opinion Monday that did not disclose the court's reasoning, the justices lifted the injunctions, which had been issued by federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor noted that they would not have lifted the restrictions. The new ban also bars travelers from North Korea and Venezuela, but they were not affected by the injunctions.

The justices said they expected the federal judges reviewing challenges to the order - based on what challengers say are Trump's animus toward Muslims and lack of authority under immigration laws - to handle the cases with "appropriate dispatch."

The court's move is "a substantial victory for the safety and security of the American people," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a written statement. "We are pleased to have defended this order and heartened that a clear majority Supreme Court has allowed the President's lawful proclamation protecting our country's national security to go into full effect. The Constitution gives the President the responsibility and power to protect this country from all threats foreign and domestic, and this order remains vital to accomplishing those goals."

The justices acted just after the American Civil Liberties Union, which is leading one of the lawsuits, sent a letter to the court Monday morning pointing out that Trump last week tweeted links to anti-Muslim videos.

Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, reacted to the court's order with disappointment.

"President Trump's anti-Muslim prejudice is no secret - he has repeatedly confirmed it, including just last week on Twitter," Jadwat said. "It's unfortunate that the full ban can move forward for now, but this order does not address the merits of our claims. We continue to stand for freedom, equality, and for those who are unfairly being separated from their loved ones."

The latest iteration of the travel ban, the third Trump has issued, bars various people from eight countries: Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela. Six of the countries have Muslim-majority populations.

But federal judges in Maryland and Hawaii blocked its implementation for "foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States." They said such people include grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the United States.

The language was drawn from a Supreme Court decision in June that exempted such foreign nationals from Trump's second version of the executive order, which expired this fall.

The orders from the two district judges will be reviewed this week. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is set to consider the Hawaii case Wednesday, and the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond will consider the Maryland judge's decision Friday.

Lawyers for Hawaii had told the Supreme Court that there was no reason to back away from the "equitable determination, dutifully adhered to by the court below," that it had already made. If anything, Hawaii's lawyers said, the government's case deserves even greater scrutiny than before, as compared with the earlier temporary travel bans.

The president now "has imposed an indefinite one, deepening and prolonging the harms a stay would inflict," said the brief submitted on Hawaii's behalf by Washington lawyer Neal K. Katyal.

But Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco, representing the Trump administration, argued that there was no reason for the injunctions.

The new executive order, he wrote, followed a "comprehensive, worldwide review of the information shared by foreign governments that is used to screen aliens seeking entry to the United States. Based on that review, the Proclamation adopts tailored entry restrictions to address extensive findings that a handful of particular foreign governments have deficient information-sharing and identity-management practices, or other risk factors."

The cases are Trump v. Hawaii and Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project.
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
Conex Banninger celebrates 25 years working in Poland

Conex Banninger, leading global manufacturer and supplier of fittings, valves and accessories, is celebrating 25 years of production excellence in Poland.

Today, a world class manufacturing site and a distribution centre near the city of Poznan supports a total of around 550 jobs, fulfilling its potential as a base for thriving sales in markets across Europe and around the globe. It was spotting that opportunity for growth, firstly in Poland then internationally, that persuaded parent IBP Group to invest in what was a small factory and warehouse in Ovodrzytka in the west of the country, in 1992.

Richard Darwin, group commercial director at IBP Group, said: We were fortunate in identifying the opportunity for growth through establishing production in Poland and this has proven to be a winner, many times over. The commitment, innovation and expertise provided by all those involved has built great success for Conex Banninger over the past 25 years, and made a major contribution to the rich heritage of the IBP Group.

For more information on this story, click here: December 2017, 122

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As already informed, the Thirty Third Annual General Meeting of the Company is scheduled to be held on Thursday, December 28, 2017, 2.30 p.m at Grand Ball Room, Taj Krishna, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad.A copy of the Notice of the Annual General Meeting is enclosed herewith in accordance with Regulation 30(12).Source : BSE

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Australia's competition regulator said on Monday it would investigate whether U.S. online giants Facebook and Alphabet Inc's Google has disrupted the news media market to the detriment of publishers and consumers.

Like their rivals globally, Australia's traditional media companies have been squeezed by online rivals, as advertising dollars have followed eyeballs to digital distributors such as Google, Facebook and Netflix Inc.

The government ordered the probe as part of wider media reforms, amid growing concern for the future of journalism and the quality of news following years of declining profits and newsroom job cuts and the rise of fake news.

"We will examine whether platforms are exercising market power in commercial dealings to the detriment of consumers, media content creators and advertisers," Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.

The inquiry also would study how Facebook and Google operated to "fully understand their influence in Australia", he added.

A Google spokesman said, "We look forward to engaging with this process as relevant."

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The idea for an ACCC investigation was hatched during media reform negotiations in parliament earlier this year, which resulted in a relaxation of ownership laws to allow the country's big players to boost their market share to better compete against online disruptors.

Independent media analyst Peter Cox told Reuters it was unclear what measures the competition regulator could recommend to the government even if it found the country's media sector was increasingly anti-competitive.

"You could see this as a stepping stone towards another type of reform, such as tax," said Cox.

Jurisdictions around the world, including the European Union, are grappling with how to tax technology giants with global operations.

Currently corporate taxes are paid where firms have a physical presence, which allows digital multinationals to book most of their profits where they have set up headquarters as opposed to where they make their money.

The Australian probe will have power to demand information from businesses and hold hearings. It is due to make its final report in 18 months.
Rajnath Singh

Home Minister Rajnath Singh today said the BJP formed government at the Centre because of the Gujarat model of development and that the people of the country had already answered the questions of Rahul Gandhi by giving it a mandate in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Hitting out at Gandhi over his "a question a day" social media campaign, Singh said he should first tell why India remained poor despite the Congress ruling it for 50-55 years.

At a public rally here, Singh said, "The Congress leader (Rahul) asks what did the BJP government do in 22 years of its rule? What the BJP government has done in 22 years has been answered by the people of India during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections."

"If development has gone mad here, then why the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation appreciated the Gujarat government in 2012. It was the Gujarat model because of which the BJP formed government at the Centre.

"A single party ruled for 50-55 years... what is the reason India is still counted among poor countries in the world?" Rajnath asked.

The home minister also suggested the three young leaders in the state who have supported the Congress -- Alpesh Thakor, Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mevani -- to stay away from Gandhi.

"I would like to send a message to them that Rahul Gandhi will take them along when he sinks," he said, citing the example of Uttar Pradesh where the Samajawadi Party, which stitched a pre-poll alliance with the Congress, was defeated.

Singh praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that because of him India had found a place of respect in the world community and that his government was committed to making it the most powerful country in the world.

He said his government was committed to increasing farmers' income by 2022 and that the concerns of peasants in Sanand will be resolved as soon as the BJP returns to power in Gujarat.

He also suggested the opposition to restrain itself while speaking about the prime minister.
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Infosys employees have not quite made up their minds about their new chief executive, on the first working day after Salil Parekh replaced Vishal Sikka.

This happened over the weekend and weve been trying to find out more about Salil, but he seems to be a very private person, said an employee who works at the Infosys Pune campus and did not wish to be named.

While Parekh is a well-known name in the industry, famous for his sharp focus and eye for the future, he is certainly low-key compared to his predecessor Sikka.

We were hearing of Ashok (Vemuri) and BG (Srinivasan) being in the fray for the top job for a long time, but this came as a surprise, said another employee based in Chandigarh, who did not wish to be named. He (Parekh) is very low profile, this person added.

Parekh was named the second non co-founder CEO of Infosys on December 2.

In August, Sikka stepped down following a very public battle with co-founder NR Narayana Murthy over issues of corporate governance and Sikkas lavish lifestyle.

The board blamed co-founder NR Narayana Murthy for Sikkas resignation, was supposed to find a replacement by March 31, 2018, under co-founder Nandan Nilekani as non-executive chairman of the Board.

What happened with Sikka has dented confidence among the workforce about another non co-founder CEO.

It doesnt seem like there are too many people who can step into the shoes of the Infosys CEO, said another employee based in Bengaluru. What happened with Vishal was unfortunate; now lets see how Salil works out. We do miss having Vishal around, she added.

In the time since his appointment was announced, much has been written about the Parekh experience in leading Capgeminis key businesses and also the crucial role he played in the acquisitions of his previous company Ernst & Young and the takeover of iGate by Capgemini in 2015.

"He seems to have a good track record. Let's hope he lasts longer than Vishal," added the Pune employee quoted above.

Many parallels have also been drawn between Parekh and Sikka, with analysts hoping that Parekhs decision to be based out of Bengaluru and the Boards mentorship will be a key differentiator in the new CEOs favour.
A customer walks outside an HDFC Bank branch in Mumbai July 17, 2013. India's HDFC Bank Ltd posted on Wednesday a 30 percent rise in first-quarter net profits, in line with expectations, boosted by higher fee income and credit growth. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui (INDIA - Tags: BUSINESS) - RTX11P4B

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HDFC Bank, one of most valued banks globally and the cleanest among Indian banks when it comes to non-performing assets (NPAs), has seen an unhappy secret, according to a report by Bloomberg.

While most banks are battling a high amount of bad loans from largely around 4-5 percent to as high as 25 percent, HDFC Bank, countrys second largest private lender, has maintained the gross NPA ratio at 1.26 percent of its total loan book size.

The Aditya Puri-led bank also has a price-to-book value ratio at 5.2 percent, the value it gives to its investors in the stock market.

However, despite being largely insulated from the most notorious financially-troubled infrastructure, steel, power companies and road & construction sectors, HDFC Bank was hit by the NPA "divergence" storm last month after Reserve Bank of India, in its annual risk based supervision, asked the bank to classify one account as an NPA.

RBI took this move after a reported divergence in its classification of NPAs and its provisions in comparison to the banks classification as on March 31.

The Bloomberg quoted a report by independent analyst Hemindra Hazari, who said in the his analysis, It is now clear that the unnamed and disputed corporate non-performing asset (NPA) in HDFC Bank Limited [2QFY2018 results was Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL)]A letter from the bank to JSPL makes clear, however, that the account was irregular and overdue but probably within the 90-day grace period as on end September 2017. What is even more curious is that JSPL, which was having difficulty servicing its bank debt, is now borrowing high-cost funds from a non-bank finance company (NBFC) to settle its overdue with banks."

HDFC Bank did not respond, at the time of publishing this article, to queries sent by Moneycontrol seeking clarification on the exposure to JSPL.

Jindal Steel had net debt of Rs 44,000 (USD 6.8 billion) at the end of September 2017.

According to Bloomberg, HDFC Bank should acknowledge the "divergence" between its self-reported and RBI-assessed NPAs. But doing so would also mean admitting that those soured loans, net of provisions, were 95 percent more than disclosed in the full-year accounts.

Such a divergence in asset classification of NPA accounts emerged in two other banks - Axis Bank at Rs 5,633 crore and Yes Bank at Rs 6,355 crore.

Also Read: NPA divergences point to a need for bank auditors to have a dialogue with RBI

So far, HDFC Bank has not disclosed the quantum of the exposure but stated that it has made a provision of Rs 700 crore, adequate as per the RBIs norms for NPAs.

Without mentioning the word divergence, a day after it announced the second quarter results, HDFC Bank in a statement said, With specific reference to the part pertaining to the project loan account which underwent flexible structuring as approved by the Joint Lenders Forum and for which the Bank had made contingent provisions. The Bank has received communication from the regulator advising it to classify the said account as a non-performing asset. The same has been duly complied with.

The Bloomberg report said, If the corporate account exposure exceeds Rs 8.84 billion or Rs 884 crore (i.e. 15 percent of the banks announced FY17 gross NPAs), the bank will be in the embarrassing position of having to disclose the divergence in the RBI format. Such a divergence was not expected from Indias largest bank by market capitalization, a bank that trades at 5.2x price to book value.

The Bloomberg report also acknowledges if questions would be raised about the RBI. The RBI can't arbitrarily force some lenders to appear less than truthful, while sparing others the humiliation of a mea culpa.

Earlier, speaking to Moneycontrol, former RBI deputy governor SS Mundra has said, Sometimes, it is quite possible that NPAs may be recognised in one bank and not in another. At times, when the RBI is inspecting, the availability of information is slightly better than the bank auditors and also the timeline is better.

So, there are also interpretational issues. However, this should account for a limited difference. There may be genuine reasons that some parties (banks or auditors) may not be clear. Now that two cycles are over, the bank Board, auditors must pick these up and engage into discussions with the management and RBI. I would prefer more engagement than judge that as a misconduct on the part of auditors, he added.

With the stakes this high, the RBI needs to crack the whip of asset classification with a steady hand -- one that treats creditors fairly and borrowers correctly. Meanwhile, HDFC Bank must present a more accurate picture of its soured loans. After all, bad things can happen even to great banks, the report added.
In a response to the ban notification issued by Indian intelligence agencies last week, China-based content sharing platform SHAREit on Monday said that the company adhered to high security standards and respected the privacy of its users.

"At SHAREit we strictly adhere to high security standards and respect our users privacy. SHAREit is a user friendly content sharing platform and not a malicious or a spyware application as alleged in the reports," the company said in a statement.

"We do not compromise on users security and their privacy is of utmost importance to us. We have a huge user base in India and we are committed to providing better products and service to our users with continuous technological developments," it added.

Last week, intelligence agencies listed more than 40 applications that could allegedly aid a cyber attack against the nation as they store sensitive data of people. The agencies have already issued an advisory warning to the army and paramilitary posted on border against their usage.

The company said it is investigating the advisory and is open to interacting with the government.

"We have taken this issue seriously and are investigating the advisory. We are also happy to interact with government and media representatives to give more clarity," it said.

The list has apps for both Android and iOS platforms. Besides SHAREit, the list also has names such as Truecaller, news app UC News and WeChat.
A Chennai-bound Air India flight from Dubai was diverted to the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport here today as a passenger took ill.

The male passenger (name not revealed by the airline) complained of chest pain, following which the pilot decided to divert the Airbus A321 aircraft to Mumbai, an Air India spokesperson said.

Air India flight AI 906, carrying 164 passengers, had departed from the Dubai International Airport at 1128 hours yesterday night.

On landing, the passenger was deplaned for medical examination, the AI spokesperson said, adding the flight with remaining passengers left for Chennai at 0455 hours this morning.

Doctors from Mumbai International Airport Limited conducted medical tests and declared the passenger fit for travelling. He will be flying to Chennai on another Air India flight, the official added.
Liquor baron Vijay Mallya, out on a 650,000-pound bail bond following his arrest by Scotland Yard over fraud and money laundering charges earlier this year, will return to Westminster Magistrates' Court in London on Monday as his extradition trial begins.

India's case to bring back the 61-year old businessman will be represented through the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of the British government.

PTI quoted CBI sources as saying that a team led by Special Director Rakesh Asthana left for London on Sunday and would remain present during the trial.

Mallya, who had shifted to the UK in March 2016, is wanted in India on charges relating to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines defaulting on loans from various Indian banks amounting to Rs 9,000 crore.

The former Rajya Sabha member had told PTI during his numerous court appearances in London over the last few months that he had "done nothing wrong" and described the allegations against him as "fabricated".
Parsvnath Developers posted a rather weak set of Q2 numbers. In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Pradeep Jain, Chairman of the company discussed the Q2 performance and gave his outlook for the future.

We own commercial properties that have a size of 1.38 million square feet, said Jain.

He further said that the company will become debt free in the next two-three years.

We will monetise few assets and will use the proceeds to pare debt, he added.

Talking about projects, he said we will deliver all our projects in the next 18-24 months.
13 years after becoming a member of parliament, Rahul Gandhi is all set to take over as the President of the Congress party. He will now lead the 132-year old party as it faces a crisis to stay relevant. Is he the right man to steer the ship? And is brand Rahul Gandhi relevant today? In fact, what does Rahul Gandhi stand for? Those are the questions CNBC-TV18s Shereen Bhan is asking the eminent panelists.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Salman Soz, Spokesperson Congress, Santosh Desai, Columnist, Media Critic and Author of Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India, Aarthi Ramachandran, Assistant Editor, The Good State as well as the Author of 'Decoding Rahul Gandhi and AK Bhattacharya, Editorial Director, Business Standard shared their views and outlook on the same.
On Sunday, the first phase of the Chabahar port was officially inaugurated by Hassan Rouhani, the President of Iran. The strategically located port not only opens a new trade route to central Asia but also is of utmost strategic importance to India which has invested heavily in it.

From the days of Shah

Located in Irans Sistan and Baluchistan province on the Gulf of Oman region, Chabahar is the only oceanic port of the country. Consisting of two separate ports named Shahid Kalantari and Shahid Beheshti, it was in the days of the last Shah of Iran that a proposal to develop the port was first floated. The early steps in this direction were only taken in 1983 when the country started to shift its trade to the port in the wake of the war with Iraq.

Indias interest in the port dates back to 1990 when as per an IDSA report it partially built the port in order to access Afghanistan and Central Asia by bypassing Pakistan. However, the real push towards developing the port began after India signed a deal with Iran in 2016 to develop the port and region along with the trilateral transit and transport agreement that also includes Afghanistan.

How is it important for India?

Indias quest to find a direct route to Afghanistan and beyond by bypassing Pakistan seems to be answered with the identification of Chabahar as its strategic gateway. While India made a deal worth over Rs 50,000 crore last year to develop Chabahar special economic zone, it had already taken several other measures to increase cooperation with Afghanistan and Iran.

The country has already completed the Zaranj-Delaram road in Afghanistan that will enable Afghanistan to access the sea ports in Iran and end its dependence on Pakistan for sea access. India is also planning to build rail links across the region that will not only connect the port with India promoted Hajigak iron and steel mining project in central Afghanistan, but also serve as a link to the port with central Asia, Russia and Europe.

Above all this, around Rs 600 crore has been invested by India to refurbish one of the berths at Shahid Beheshti port and to reconstruct a 600-meter long container handling facility.

The strategic impact

With large investments it is obvious that India gives the port utmost priority. There are several factors behind this.

First of all, the new port will allow India to counter the blockade created by Pakistan. For years all Indian attempts to forge direct access to Afghanistan and beyond has been met with Pakistan's challenge. The new port and its related connections will bring an end to this problem.

Secondly, with Indias ever increasing demand for natural gas and crude oil, the port could be a door for the country to import both resources from Iran and Central Asia.

Thirdly, with China growing its tentacles throughout the region, particularly Pakistan, the new port could well aid India in countering the Chinese threat especially to nullify the impact of Gwadar port that it is building just across the border in Pakistan.

Fourthly, the port could pave the way in improving Indias soft power across the globe. Along with the plans to link the port with Afghanistan and central Asia, there are also plans to link it with Russia and Europe through 7,200-km-long multi-modal North-South Transport Corridor. And with India steadily improving ties with East Asian countries, this may end up becoming a new international trade route that will counter the China-led Belt and Road initiative.
Prakash Gaba of prakashgaba.com told CNBC-TV18, "Tata Coffee has been in a buy mode since the level of Rs 94, and it is still into a buy mode. However, after seeing such an up move, possibly we could see some sideways move and maybe Rs 160 or Rs 155 is possible. It is a beautiful stock to hold."

"I do not remember last time when any one of us saw rally of 30-50 percent on either Punjab National Bank (PNB) or a State Bank of India (SBI) or maybe Bank of India , or likewise even Canara Bank . SBI would be the best suitable stock in the universe," he said.
mployees walk along a corridor in the Infosys campus in Bangalore (Image: Reuters)

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Shares of Infosys rose as much as 2.9 percent in morning trade on Monday after the Board appointed Salil Parekh as its new Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director (CEO & MD) of the company effective January 2, 2018, over the weekend.

The stock, which has given a flat return in the calendar year 2017, could well scale Rs 1,100 levels in the next 12 months, experts suggest. Most analysts remain fairly optimistic about the appointment of Parekh, who is no stranger to the IT industry. The appointment of the new CEO at Infosys will remove the uncertainty and put the stock back on investors radar.

The former Capgemini executive was in the race for the top job at Infosys last time as well, when the Indian IT major decided in favour of Vishal Sikka.

The appointment of Salil Parekh as MD and CEO of Infosys is a promising choice. Salil brings tenured experience with the added advantage of working in a global firm, CLSA said in a note. This is perhaps the best of three outcomes for Infosys, said the note.

Parekh had been with Capgemini India for over a decade & a half, starting with EY in 1992 and was part of the consulting business that was acquired by Capgemini in 2000.

"The appointment of Salil Parekh comes in reasonable time after Nilekanis swift appointment to the Board. This allows Infosys to expedite away from inward focus and start to chase growth in business sooner than later," Motilal Oswal said in a report.

The domestic brokerage firm maintains a buy rating on Infosys with a target price of Rs 1,100 which translates into an upside of about 15 percent from current levels. The domestic brokerage firm is of the view that gradual recovery to normalcy will provide a further case for rerating.

Earlier in October, Infosys September performance and FY18 guidance had quelled fears of the impact on business post the leadership exit, and we note that ex-RBS, the midpoint of current guidance is close to industry.

The company has not been underperforming its peers on the front of revenue growth and profitability, but its valuation to peers remained discounted amid the ongoing search for a new leader and concerns around governance, said a report.

With the appointment of CEO, the uncertainty is over. Majority of IT shares had performed recently but Infosys was lagging behind, but now with the clarity on leadership, the stock should perform well, Jimeet Modi, Founder & CEO, Samco Securities told Moneycontrol.

P/E for IT industry is trading at 20-times trailing earnings while Infosys is trading at 15x, a deep discount, which now will get narrowed down. The appointment is positive for the stock both for the short and long-term, he said.

At 09:46 hrs, Infosys was quoting at Rs 978.70, up Rs 20.20, or 2.11 percent, on the BSE. It touched an intraday high of Rs 986.25 and an intraday low of Rs 969.65.
3:30 pm Market Check: Equity benchmarks closed flat after rangebound trade as investors await RBI policy and mid-term review of foreign trade policy.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 36.78 points at 32,869.72 and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 6 points to 10,127.80.

About 1,545 shares declined against 1,178 advancing shares on the BSE.

3:10 pm Buzzing: Mirc Electronics share price fell more than 5 percent intraday after the issue of Rs 144 crore worth of shares to non-promoters, at lower than current market price.

The maker of Onida brand of consumer durable products informed exchanges that the board has approved issue of 1.92 crore equity shares and 1.92 crore warrants convertible into equity shares, on preferential basis at Rs 37.53 per share to non-promoters to augment its long term working capital and corporate requirements.

"This would result in infusion of Rs 144.12 crore worth of equity in to the company," the company said.

Every warrant is entitled to receive 1 equity share at the time of conversion within a period of 18 months from the date of issue of warrants.

2:58 pm Oil Output Cut: OPEC is expected to stick to its current policy of output cuts in the second half of 2018, but oil producers have plenty of supply with which to respond to any sudden disruptions, Saudi Arabian energy minister Khalid al-Falih told reporters.

He was speaking after meeting with US Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who said OPEC would make its own decisions and that he was comfortable the United States could work within those parameters.

2:40 pm Management Interview: Setco Automotive is in focus after posting a good set of Q2 numbers.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Udit Sheth, Joint MD of Setco said the company is looking at Rs 1,000 crore revenue target over next three years.

He further said that the company expects 17 percent margins by next year.

Setco has done well post disruptions like note ban and changes in emission norms, he said.

2:25 pm FTP Review: Key policymakers led by Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu will unveil the mid-term review of the foreign trade policy tomorrow, which is likely to address exporters' concerns to arrest the declining trend of shipments.

The mid-review of the much-awaited policy will be released at an event graced by Prabhu, along with top officials including the Directorate General of Foreign Trade Atul Chaturvedi, Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia and Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia.

Exporters have been voicing concerns about challenges on account of implementation of GST, even suggesting that they be kept out of the ambit of the new indirect tax regime and the drawback refund be expedited as it was blocking their working capital.

The mid-term review was earlier supposed to be released before July 1, in line with the introduction of GST. However, it was put off as the government wanted to factor in the feedback from exporters based on their experience with GST.

2:15 pm Gold Update: Gold prices tumbled by Rs 300 to Rs 30,200 per 10 grams at the bullion market today, taking cues from a weak trend overseas and slack demand from local jewellers.

Silver also fell by Rs 150 to Rs 39,000 per kg on reduced offtake by industrial units and coin makers.

Traders said that besides a weak trend in the overseas market as strength in dollar reduced appeal for the precious metal as a safe-haven, fall in demand from local jewellers and retailers at domestic spot market, weighed on the gold prices.

Globally, gold fell by 0.46 per cent to USD 1,273.70 an ounce and silver by 0.40 per cent to USD 16.36 an ounce in Singapore.

2:03 pm Market Update: Benchmark indices came off day's high in afternoon, with the Sensex rising 27.02 points to 32,859.96 and the Nifty trading 7.10 points higher at 10,128.90.

The market breadth was negative as about 1,455 shares declined against 1,075 advancing shares on the BSE.

Here are the top headlines at 2 pm from Moneycontrol News' Anchal Pathak

1:50 pm Stake Buy: Telecom major Bharti Airtel today said it has acquired a "strategic" stake in Juggernaut Books, a digital platform for amateur riters.

The investment is in line with its endeavour to build an open content ecosystem and bring world-class digital content to its customers, the company said in a statement.

Juggernaut Books allows people to discover and read high quality, affordable books and to submit amateur writing, it said.

"The investment from Airtel will enable Juggernaut to ramp up content acquisition, digital marketing and prepare for a subscription offering launch in the next few months," the statement said.

1:45 pm Europe opens: European markets were higher on Monday morning, as investors digested news that the U.S. Senate narrowly passed a major tax bill over the weekend.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 opened up 0.65 percent shortly after the opening bell, with all sectors and major bourses in positive territory.

1:21 pm IT notices: The Income Tax (I-T) department has served notices to more than 50 persons whose names were in the list of people having Swiss accounts with HSBC Geneva.

The people have been communicated their hearing dates, The Economic Times reports. The department would then be able to initiate prosecution once appeal of the people are dismissed in the initial stage of appeal.

The tax department is keen to start the process before the year-end.

While the Supreme Court had said the beneficiaries are not liable to pay tax if they haven't received any amount from the trust, an appellate tribunal last month ruled in tax department's favour.

1:10 pm Europe to open higher: European markets are expected to start off the first trading day of the week sharply higher, as investors digest news that the U.S. Senate narrowly passed a major tax bill over the weekend.

On the bourses front, the U.K.'s FTSE 100 is expected to open 59 points higher at 7,359, while the German DAX is set to skyrocket at the market open, up 176 points at 13,037 and the French CAC up 57 points at 5,372, according to IG.

12:52 pm China Growth: China's economic growth target for 2018 will reflect new changes in the economy as the government put more emphasis on higher quality development, the State Council Information Office said today.

The government will set its key targets for 2018 "after earnestly studying new performance, new situations and new problems", the office, the government's public relations arm, said in a statement in response to Reuters' requests for comment on a source-based story.

"China's economic and social development still faces many contradictions and challenges that need to be seriously resolved and dealt with," it said.

Policy sources have told Reuters that China's leaders are likely to maintain this year's growth target of "around 6.5 percent" in 2018, even as they ratchet up efforts to control systemic risks from a rapid build-up of debt in the world's second-largest economy.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and some economists have suggested that Beijing do away with growth targets to reduce the country's long reliance on debt-fuelled stimulus and encourage more productive investment.

12:37 pm Market Outlook: Ratnesh Kumar, MD & CEO, BOBCAPS does not see a big correction.

There is an element of topping out seen. Valuations are on the higher side and the numbers are not coming through in terms of earnings, he told CNBC-TV18, adding, with the year end approaching, last two-three weeks of December could see slowdown in foreign flows due to holiday season. So, there could be stagnation, but not a deep correction.

Speaking on the impact of major events, Kumar said the Street is expecting the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to hold rates in the upcoming policy meet. Meanwhile, for Gujarat elections, the market is looking at incumbents retaining the mandate. Any disappointment there could impact the market, he told the channel.

12:27 pm Market Check: Equity benchmarks continued to trade higher in afternoon, aided by Infosys (up 3.6 percent), HDFC (1.24 percent), Tata Motors (2 percent) and L&T (0.9 percent). However, Reliance Industries and select private banks capped gains.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 104.93 points at 32,937.87 and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 30.40 points to 10,152.20.

TATA Projects in a joint venture with Daewoo E&C of

South Korea has announced that they have secured an USD 850 million contract (Rs. 5,612 crore) to design and build a part of India's longest sea-bridge - Mumbai Trans Harbour Link.

While the TATA JV emerged as the lowest bidder for both the Sea Packages 1 & 2, it was awarded only one of the packages (package 2) as provided in the tender conditions. The package awarded to Daewoo - TATA Projects JV involves construction of a 7.8 km long bridge section across the Mumbai Bay including Shivaji Nagar Interchange at Navi Mumbai at contract value of Rs 5,612 crore, which is a complex stretch.

12:05 pm IDFC India Strategy: Research house IDFC Securities expects Nifty earnings to register 15.1 percent CAGR over FY16-19 and set FY19 Nifty EPS target at Rs 579, implying 20.9 percent YoY growth.

Recent quarterly earnings (July-September) were stable to better-than-expected, which supported the market and gave investors a confidence to stay positive on India growth.

After earnings season, experts also lifted their earnings estimates and believe that there could be strong earnings revival from second half of FY18.

The Nifty50 rallied nearly 24 percent year-to-date, driven majorly by liquidity on hopes of earnings growth and Modi government reforms.

IDFC feels the asset-heavy and export oriented industries are expected do well as global economy is recovering. Consumption sector will find growth impetus from retail credit, it said.

Here are the top headlines at 12 pm from Moneycontrol News' Anchal Pathak

11:48 am Buzzing: Shares of Wipro declined 3.2 percent as National Grid US filed lawsuit against company in the US court.

The suit filed by National Grid against the company in the US court for the Eastern District of New York seeking damage amounting to USD 140 million plus additional cost related to the project.

National Grid has been a valued customer of Wipro in the US and UK for several years.

The company strongly believes that the allegations misstate facts and the claims are baseless. The company will vigorously contest the allegations in court.

The lawsuit is related to an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation project, which began in 2009, and was undertaken by National Grid US.

11:40 am Crude Oil Update: Crude oil futures eased by Rs 26 to Rs 3,736 per barrel today as speculators reduced their positions amid a weakening trend overseas.

Profit-booking at existing levels too weighed on crude prices, analysts said.

At the Multi Commodity Exchange, crude oil for delivery in December was trading lower by Rs 26, or 0.69 percent, to Rs 3,736 per barrel in 1,902 lots.

The oil for delivery in far-month January 2018 also fell by Rs 25, or 0.66 percent, to Rs 3,749 per barrel in 43 lots.

The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude lost 0.3 percent at USD 58.15 a barrel, while Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 0.4 percent to USD 63.51 a barrel at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

11:20 am Buzzing: Tata Motors share price rallied 3 percent intraday following strong commercial vehicle sales data reported by the company in November

"The commercial and passenger vehicles sales performance in domestic market in November 2017 was at 52,464 units, a growth of 58 percent, over last year due to growing demand across segments, introduction of new products and strong customer initiatives," the company said in its filing.

Commercial vehicle sales increased 71.9 percent year-on-year to 35,307 units in month gone by.

"The commercial sector has bounced back strongly after the initial disruption in the market, surrounding demonetization and the BS4 transition that largely affected the transport industry last year," the company said.

Tata Motors said passenger vehicle sales growth of 35 percent at 17,157 units was driven by strong growth momentum of new generation Tata cars.

11:06 am Market Check: Equity benchmarks gained strength again, backed by Infosys that extended rally to nearly 4 percent after appointment of Salil S Parekh as MD & CEO of the company.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 112.18 points at 32,945.12 and the 50-share NSE Nifty gained 30.70 points at 10,152.50.

About 1,223 shares advanced against 1,077 declining shares on the BSE.

10:57 am Sales Data: Steel Strips Wheels achieved total wheel rim sales of 12.92 lakh against 11.99 lakh in November 2017, representing a growth of 8 percent YoY.

The volumes of truck segment helped post highest healthy revenue growth for the company.

In terms of value, the company has achieved gross turnover of Rs 172.75 crore in November 2017 against 128.62 crore in November 2016, there by recording a growth of 34 percent and achieved net turnover of Rs 138.85 crore in November 2017 against Rs 115.25 crore in November 2016, recording a growth of 20 percent.

"The record turnover is driven by record growth in truck segment and we expect this trend to continue going ahead," Steel Strips Wheels said.

10:40 am Joint Venture: Fiem Industries informed exchanges that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese firms Aisan Industry and Toyota Tsusho Corporation for establishing a joint venture company in India.

The joint venture company will manufacture fuel pump module and IC connector assembly for two-wheelers and three-wheelers.

Fuel pump module will become mandatory for two-wheelers and three-wheelers w.e.f. April, 2020 under Bharat Stage VI (BS VI) regime.

This is an advanced Emission Control System Product, which will have huge market in India under BS VI norms, Fiem Industries.

10:20 am Order Win: Shares of Transformers and Rectifiers India gained 5 percent in morning as it has received order worth Rs 127 crore.

"..... has been awarded order for 15 number of transformer amounting to Rs 127 crore from Power Grid Corporation of India."

The said order fall under the normal course of business. The company neither has any interest in the entity that awarded the order nor fall within related party transactions.

With this order, the company's order book as on stands around Rs 937 crore.

The company continuously thrives to deliver quality products and services, and over a period of time has become a leading manufacturer of transformers in the country.

10:12 am EIR from USFDA: Shares of Dr Reddy's Laboratories was up more than 2 percent intraday as it has received EIR for its Miyapur facility.

The company has received establishment inspection report (EIR) for Miyapur facility, Hyderabad, Telangana.

The audit of the said facility has been completed by USFDA in September with zero observations.

10:01 am Rupee Trade: The rupee was trading down by 3 paise at 64.49 against the US currency in early trade today at the interbank foreign exchange as the dollar strengthened in global markets after progress on the US tax-cut proposal.

Dealers also attributed the rupee's fall to increased demand for the US currency from importers but a higher opening in the domestic equity market capped the losses to some extent.

The rupee opened lower by 7 paise at 64.53 against last close of 64.46 on higher demand for the dollar. Later the rupee reverses its losses to touch a high of 64.45 in early trade.

On Thursday, the rupee had lost 15 paise to close at 64.46 a dollar on growing concerns with regard to fiscal deficit and possible extension of crude oil production curb by OPEC. Forex and money markets were closed on Friday on account of Id-E-Milad.

Here are the top headlines at 10 am from Moneycontrol News' Anchal Pathak

9:53 am Buzzing: Shares of JSW Energy rose 2.2 percent in morning as it has secured (power purchase agreements) PPAs aggregating to 208 MW.

This PPA consists 176MW PPA with Haryana Power Purchase Centre to be supplied from the Karcham Wangtoo Hydro Electric Project of Himachal Baspa Power Company, a 100 percent subsidiary of the company.

And 32MW under group captive scheme to be supplied from the Ratnagiri plant of the company.

With this, the long term PPA proportion of the company on a consolidated basis has increased from 64.6 percent at end of Q2FY18 to 69.3 percent currently.

9:43 am Adani Enterprises under pressure: Chinas two biggest banks said they do not plan to finance a controversial Australian coal mine, in the latest blow to Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises long delayed project.

The stock fell more than 4 percent after this news, but immediately recovered to trade 0.4 percent lower.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China Construction Bank said in separate statements they were not working on the project, after media recently reported that Chinese banks may get involved.

Adani is seeking 2 billion Australian dollar (USD 1.5 billion) in financing by March 2018 for the 4 billion Australian dollar first stage of its proposed Carmichael coal mine in the state of Queensland, a project that has been shrunk from a 16.5 billion Australian dollar plan to make it more viable.

Adani declined to comment on its financing plans on Monday or the statements from the Chinese banks.

9:31 am Market Check: Equity benchmarks wiped out opening gains to trade flat as gains led by Infosys, Tata Motors, HDFC and Axis Bank were offset by Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank and ITC.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was down 5.47 points at 32,827.47 and the 50-share NSE Nifty fell 15.30 points to 10,106.50.

9:25 am Buzzing: Share price of Alphageo advanced more than 4 percent in the early trade on receiving award of contract from ONGC.

The company has received a notification of award of contract from ONGC, WOB, Vadodara, Gujarat for acquisition of 3D seismic data in Mehsana carpet area of Cambay basin, India for an estimated contract value of Rs 154.77 crore.

A meeting of the board of directors of the company is scheduled to be held on December 4, 2017, to consider and approve the unaudited financial results of the company for the quarter and six months ended September 30, 2017.

9:20 am Infosys in focus: Infosys' board of directors has appointed Salil S Parekh as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director (CEO & MD) of the company effective January 2, 2018.

The appointment ends a nearly four-month long search for the top job at Indias second largest IT services firm.

Parekh joins Infosys from Capgemini where he was a member of the Group Executive Board.

He has Master of Engineering degrees in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

UB Pravin Rao will step down as the interim CEO and Managing Director effective January 2, 2018 and will continue as Chief Operating Officer and a whole-time Director of the Company.

9:15 am Market Check: Equity benchmarks started off the week on a positive note, backed by Infosys that gained 2.5 percent after the appointment of new CEO and MD.

The 30-share BSE Sensex rose 89.51 points to 32,922.45 and the 50-share NSE Nifty gained 23.60 points at 10,145.40. About 980 shares advanced against 291 declining shares on the BSE.

Infosys, Indiabulls Housing, Tata Motors, Dr Reddy's Labs, SBI, Aurobindo Pharma and ICICI Bank were early gainers while Tech Mahindra, Sun Pharma and Hero MotoCorp were early losers.

Biocon surged 10 percent as the US FDA approved Mylan and Biocon's Ogivri, the first biosimilar for Trastuzumab, for the Treatment of HER2-Positive breast and gastric cancers.

Syngene International, MT Educare, Zee Learn, Videocon Industries and Ashok Leyland gained up to 8 percent.
What we saw on Friday was breakdown on charts  Nifty slipped below crucial support level. It moved below its 50-DEMA and if the index stays below this level, chances are that index could retest 10,000 levels soon.

SGX points towards a mild negative start but weak closing on Wall Street could weigh on D-Street on Monday.

Whipsawed by Washington, Wall Street ended modestly lower. Wall Street fell on Friday, whipsawed by developments with a probe into Russia's alleged involvement in the US election as well as with progress on a tax bill in Congress.

Stocks recouped the bulk of their initial losses after US Senate Republicans said they had enough support to pass a sweeping tax overhaul.

The index started the December expiry on a weak note and without meaningful rollover. It looks like investors turned slightly cautious ahead before the closing of the year.

Investors turned cautious ahead of major events in the month ahead - RBI policy, FOMC meet and Gujarat Assembly Elections.

For more, watch the Markets@Moneycontrol show. Money control Editor Santosh Nair talks to Anchal Pathak on the markets trends to watch out for today.
North Korea appears ready to accelerate submarine weapons tests, adding to nuclear threat, reports CNBC. Meanwhile, South Korea, US kick off largest air exercise amid North Korean warnings, reports Reuters

8. Zee Learn may pick up 42.78% in MT Educare for Rs 140cr, reports The Economic Times

21:48 That's all for today, readers. Thanks for staying on with our coverage of the day's action. Your enthusiasm encourages us to better our coverage every day. Do come back tomorrow for more news, views and insights.

21:47 CIS: SEBI gives 2 more months to Anmol India to repay investors

Cracking the whip on illegal investment schemes in the guise of plant cultivation and animal rearing, SEBI on Monday directed Anmol India Agro-Herbal Farming & Dairies Care Company and its directors to repay money to investors within a maximum two months.

The company was found to be running collective investment schemes (CIS) without obtaining registration from the regulator. It was inviting investments from the general public through its development and maintenance/rearing of the farms/animals/plants scheme.

21:45 India fines Monsanto for delay in answering anti-trust questions

Indias anti-trust regulator has fined Monsanto Co 15 million rupees (USD 233,000) for being too slow in replying to questions in a competition probe into the US seeds company.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) last year ordered an investigation into whether Monsanto had abused its dominant position as a supplier of genetically modified (GM) cotton seeds.

21:39 Trade setup for Tuesday: Top 10 things you should know before Opening Bell

The Nifty, which started with a mild gap on the upside, failed to keep the momentum going and closed slightly above its previous close, making a bearish candle on an intraday basis on the daily candlestick charts.

The closing price was significantly lower than the opening price which made a small upper shadow, a large body, and a significantly large lower shadow.

21:29 Trade union sets deadline in talks over ThyssenKrupp-Tata venture

IG Metall has given ThyssenKrupp until December 22 to agree to job, plant and investment guarantees for a chance of winning the powerful German trade union's backing of the planned European steel merger with Tata Steel.

"We are putting an end to this process of playing for time. We will negotiate until December 22 and that will be the end , " labour representative Detlef Wetzel, who is also deputy supervisory board chairman of ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe, told Reuters on Monday.

21:26 Air quality worsens, pollution 'severe' in many parts of Delhi

Air quality in Delhi worsened on Monday and inched closer to the 'severe' category with a sharp rise in the level of particulates through the day, according to official data.

The spurt in pollutants was caused by a combination of meteorological factors including a drop in temperature, wind speed and mixing height, a layer where air and particulates float, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) said. On Sunday, Sri Lankan cricketers took to the field here wearing anti-pollution masks.

21:20 TRAI moots cap on pre-launch subscriber numbers, test period

Telecom regulator TRAI on Monday recommended rules of network testing before an operator commercially launches mobile services, proposing clear limits on a number of trial subscribers to be onboard and a 90-day period for the test phase.

The issue of dos and don'ts for network testing had stirred up a storm in the industry after Reliance Jio amassed over 1.5 million users even before the commercial launch of its services in early September last year.

Disclosure: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd

21:00 Siemens, Brazilian prosecutors eyeing 1 billion real settlement: Report

German industrial group Siemens is negotiating a settlement worth more than 1 billion reais (USD 307 million) with Brazilian state prosecutors over civil cases relating to irregularities in metro tenders, according to a Monday newspaper report.

The Estado de S. Paulo reported that lawyers for Siemens and Sao Paulo state prosecutors met last week to discuss the deal, which it said is on the cusp of being sealed and would require the company to admit to illicit acts. The paper cited unnamed sources within the state prosecutors office.

20:49 Half of Britons support a second vote on Brexit, poll finds

Half of Britons support a second vote on whether to leave the European Union and a majority think the government may be paying too much money to the EU to open the way to trade talks, according to a new opinion poll.

The poll, published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, found 50 percent of people supported another vote on the final terms of Britain's exit deal, 34 percent rejected another referendum and 16 percent said they did not know.

20:37 Yemen's Saleh killed in RPG, gun attack on his car, Houthis say; party confirms death

Officials in Ali Abdullah Saleh's General People's Congress party (GPC) confirmed to Reuters that the former Yemeni president and party leader has been killed outside Sanaa, in what sources in the Houthi group said was an RPG and gun attack.

The GPC officials said Saleh was killed south of the capital Sanaa along with the assistant secretary-general of the GPC, Yasser al-Awadi.

20:34 Congress burden will end once Rahul Gandhi heads party: UP CM Yogi Adityanath

Taking a jibe at Rahul Gandhi hours after he filed his nomination papers for the Congress presidents post, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday said the party had become a burden which would disappear on its own after the elevation.

The chief minister also said the move in the Congress would have no impact on Assembly elections in Gujarat.

20:30 Indian public relations firm files insolvency plea against Reliance Communications

Fortuna Public Relations Pvt Ltd has filed an insolvency petition against phone carrier Reliance Communications Ltd over a claim for unpaid dues of 4.4 million rupees (USD 68,000), a lawyer representing the public relations firm said on Monday.

Separately, Fortuna has filed another insolvency petition against Reliance Webstore Ltd, a unit of the phone carrier, over unpaid dues of about 4.1 million rupees, said Darshan Mehta, a partner at Mumbai law firm Dhruve Liladhar & Co, which is representing Fortuna in the two cases.

20:22 India, Germany seal various loan agreements

India and Germany on Monday signed several agreements, including a 200 million euro funding pact for climate-friendly urban mobility project.

The 'Government to Government Umbrella Agreement' concerning financial cooperation in 2016 (II) under the Indo- German Development Cooperation was formalised here.

20:19 Hines to invest USD 23 million in Tata Housings project in Mumbai

Global real estate firm Hines will invest USD 23 million (about Rs 150 crore) in Tata Housings residential project at Thane in Mumbai as part of a strategy to expand presence in the Indian property market.

US-based Hines has developed two commercial projects  One Horizon Center and Skyview Corporate Park  at Gurgaon in India. It has invested in an upcoming residential project in Gurgaon with Conscient Group.

20:16 Cement demand to witness modest growth in FY18: ICRA

Domestic cement demand is expected to register a modest growth of one percent in 2017-18 fiscal driven by pick-up in affordable and rural housing and road and irrigation projects, rating agency ICRA said on Monday.

As per the agency, the cement offtake has continued to remain weak in April-September and also in October due to factors such as weak real estate activity, sand shortage and GST implementation issues.

20:11 Vijay Mallya's extradition trial begins in UK court

The extradition trial of Vijay Mallya wanted in India on charges of Rs 9,000 crores fraud and money laundering, today began at a UK court here, with the embattled liquor baron rejecting the charges as "false, fabricated and baseless".

The trial, however, was briefly halted as the courtroom had to be evacuated due to a fire alarm. Mallya and others waited outside the Westminster magistrates court during the fire drill.

20:06 Cyclone Ockhi: Coast Guard rescues 183 fishermen

The Coast Guard has rescued 183 fishermen stranded in choppy waters off the coasts of Kerala and Lakshadweep due to Cyclone Ockhi, a top official said here on Monday.

Till yesterday, 164 fishermen were rescued. Today, 19 more were rescued, Inspector General K R Nautiyal, Commander, Coast Guard Region (West) told reporters.

20:03 Kremlin says Vladimir Putin not influenced by ex-Trump official Michael Flynn

The Kremlin said on Monday Russian President Vladimir Putin had taken a decision to hold off responding to the new US sanctions last year independently and had not been influenced by the former US national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into the actions of President Donald Trumps inner circle before he took office.

19:56 Bitcoin dips below $11,000 after setting another record high

Bitcoin dipped back under USD 11,000 on Monday, coming off a record high just shy of USD 11,800 it hit on Sunday after a surge from less than USD 1,000 at the start of the year.

The cryptocurrency, which trades 24 hours a day and seven days a week, climbed as high as USD 11,799.99 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange at around 2100 GMT on Sunday.

19:51 EC says no newspaper ads in Gujarat on December 8, 9 without clearance

The Election Commission on Monday issued directions that no newspaper advertisement be published on December 8 and 9 in poll-bound Gujarat without its prior clearance, a policy the poll panel adopted after controversial ads were issued by the BJP during the 2015 Bihar elections.

The first phase of Gujarat election would be held on December 9 for 89 assembly seats.

19:44 1993 Mumbai blasts: Supreme Court stays execution of death row convict

The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the execution of death row convict, Tahir Merchant, in the sensational 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.

The top court sought a response from the CBI in six weeks and called for the case records from the special TADA court in Mumbai, which had awarded death sentence to Merchant, Firoz Abdul Rashid Khan and life imprisonment to gangster Abu Salem.

19:39 Rupee cheers GDP, PMI data; up 9 paise to 64.37

The rupee on Monday rebounded by 9 paise to end at 64.37 against the US dollar in a highly volatile trade on fresh selling of the greenback and also emboldened by encouraging Q2 GDP numbers and monthly manufacturing data.

Overall sentiment got a boost after the government's official data showed that the country's economy expanded by 6.3 percent in the July-September quarter, reversing the five-quarter downtrend.

19: 35 Precautionary holiday declared on 5/12/17 for schools and colleges in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Sindhudurga, Thane, Raigad and Palghar Districts for the safety of the students due to the serious weather predictions on Cyclone Ockhi, tweets Vinod Tawde, Minister of State.

19:31 Fitch Ratings cuts India FY18 growth forecast

Rating agency Fitch Ratings has cut its growth forecast for India for the current fiscal year from 6.9 percent to 6.7 percent, citing slower-than-expected growth in the countrys economy.

Although Indias GDP grew at 6.3 percent in the September quarter, up from 5.7 percent earlier, Fitch said the growth was lower than expected. The rating agency also cut its growth forecast for FY19 to 7.3 percent from 7.4 percent earlier.

19:27 "Shashi Kapoor's versatility could be seen in his movies as well as in theatre, which he promoted with great passion. His brilliant acting will be remembered for generations to come. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers," tweets Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

19:25 Banks assure UIDAI of meeting enrolment centre target by December

Banks have assured the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that they will be able to open, by December-end, Aadhaar enrolment and update centres in the stipulated 10 percent of the branches.

The deadline for reaching the 10 percent target was October 31. But only a fraction of the bank branches - a little over 2,600 on an 'active' basis out of stipulated 15,000 branches that are required to do so - have been armed with Aadhaar enrolment and updating facility, so far.

Saleh

The radio station of Yemen's Houthi-run interior ministry said on Monday the militia's former war ally turned adversary, ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, had been killed as fighting racked the capital Sanaa though there was no independent confirmation.

Unverified footage circulated by Yemeni social media users appeared to a show corpse resembling Saleh. Armed militiamen unfurled a blanket containing the corpse and shouted, "praised God!" and "hey Ali Affash!", another last name for Saleh.

The Delhi High Court today reserved its verdict on low cost carrier IndiGo's plea against the decision of Delhi airport operator DIAL to partially shift its operations along with that of two other airlines, SpiceJet and GoAir, from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2.

"Judgement reserved," Justice A K Chawla said after hearing arguments on behalf of IndiGo, the Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) and the Centre.

18:38 Rajnath

CMs

The influx of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis and cross-border smuggling of fake currencies and drugs would top the agenda at a meeting of chief ministers of eastern states called by Home Minister Rajnath Singh on December 7 in Kolkata.

The chief ministers and home ministers of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram will huddle for the day-long meeting where the influx of Rohingya and Bangladeshi immigrants and how to check it would be discussed threadbare, a Home Ministry official said.

Lakshadweep

The Central government has assured all help to cyclone battered Lakshadweep, where there was no loss of lives, but extensive property damage in some islands, a top administration official said today.

In a Facebook post, Lakshadweep Administrator Farooq Khan said "with the grace of God", there had been no loss of human life, but property damage in some islands was very high.

Congress leaders, both young and old, were jubilant today after Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination papers for the party president's post and said his ascent to the top will help it regain the lost glory after a string of electoral reverses.

The leaders also returned the BJP's "mockery of democratic traditions and farcical election process" barb, asking the ruling party at the Centre not to preach lessons as they cited the grand old party's "long-proven democratic" track-record.

Shashi

Kapoor

Veteran Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor has passed away, according to a report by India Today. Kapoor was 79 and was unwell for quite some time.

The government will set up a panel of experts for consultation on matters pertaining to the implementation of drug price control order, including technicalities involved in pricing and new launches.

The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) said the "multi-disciplinary committee of experts" will have member secretary of National Pharmaceutical Pricing authority (NPPA) as its convener.

The Madhya Pradesh Assembly today unanimously passed a bill awarding death to those found guilty of raping girls aged 12 and below.

With the passage of the bill, Madhya Pradesh becomes the first state in the country where those convicted of such rapes will face the gallows.

The Kolkata airport is all set to start using clean and green energy for its day to day operations, as its ground mounted grid connected solar plant is ready for commissioning.

The 15 MW plant, capacity wise the largest one among all the AAI airports across the country, is slated to be inaugurated by Union Minister for Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju tomorrow.

17:32 Coalscam

Ranjit

Sinha's

The special investigation team (SIT), set up to probe the allegations of abuse of authority prima facie committed by former CBI Director Ranjit Sinha to scuttle the coal scam probe, was today directed by the Supreme Court to submit a status report before it.

The apex court asked the SIT to furnish the status report in a sealed cover within four weeks with regard to the probe conducted in the matter.

Modi

Rahul's

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today likened the imminent elevation of Rahul Gandhi to dynastic succession of Mughal rulers, and castigated the Congress for abandoning "public modesty" by deciding to make a person, who is out on bail in a graft case, its president.

The prime minister also targeted the Congress over corruption during its rule, and spoke about the clean governance under him in Gujarat and at the Centre.

Leading bourse National Stock Exchange (NSE) may have to file fresh draft papers with markets regulator Sebi to float an initial public offering after getting clarity on the co-location matter.

However, the current preliminary IPO papers, which were filed with Sebi in December last year, will remain open, the exchange said.

A day after Sri Lankan cricketers took to the field here wearing anti-pollution masks, Delhi's air turned fouler today with a sharp rise in the level of particulates since morning.

The concentration of the most dominant pollutants, PM2.5 and PM10, reached levels as high as 276 and 455 micrograms per cubic metre by 3 pm, according to the Central Control Room for Air Quality Management of the CPCB.

Prabhu

Prabhu

Representatives from Swedish furniture major IKEA today met Commerce & Industry Minister Sureshhere, as the company looks to ramp up its

presence in India.

However, IKEA has not sought any relaxation in local sourcing norms from the Union Government, and is confident that by 2022, 30 per cent of the products it sells in India will be sourced locally.

Salil

Parekh

Infosys

Analysts today welcomed the appointment of Salil Parekh as the managing director and chief executive at country's second largest software exporter Infosys, which has been struggling with leadership issues.

They said Parekh, who joins from French outsourcing major Capgemini, has a challenging job ahead but his association with technology companies with a strong perception on the emerging area of digital technologies is a positive.

Girls and women are more vulnerable to their own relatives and acquaintances than unknown persons on the issue of sex-related crimes, data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) "Crime in India 2016" report has indicated.

Highlighting rape figures, the report has stated that "in 2016, the accused of rapes in 94.6 cases are none other than the victim's relatives including brother, father, grand-father, sons or acquaintances."

The mother of an Indian engineer, who was sentenced after he sneaked into Pakistan from Afghanistan to meet a girl he had befriended on the internet, has appealed to President Mamnoon Hussain to remit the remaining period of her son's prison term.

In a letter to Hussain, the mother of Hamid Ansari said: "Mohtaram Sadar - your government has shown clemency to foreign nationals who have committed far graver offences than Hamid Ansari.

NGT

BCCI

The National Green Tribunal on Monday slammed the Delhi government for not filing a comprehensive action plan on ways to deal with severe air pollution and came down heavily on authorities for holding the India-Sri Lanka Test match despite bad air quality, reports CNN-News18. A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar took exception over the failure of the AAP government to file the report despite its specific order.

During the hearing, the Delhi government said it needed more time to file the action plan as the chief secretary and environment secretary have been recently changed. The tribunal, however, directed the government to file the report within the next 48 hours.

"Where is your action plan? Why have you not submitted it? What can we do if you keep on changing everybody? It's not our problem if people don't want to stick to you. You keep on doing meetings but tell us a single action or step you have taken in the last four days to combat air pollution," the bench said.

The green panel was also irked by authorities for conducting the third Test between Sri Lanka and India which was disrupted on Sunday due to the choking smog.

15:55 As the Vijay Mallya extradition trial was about to begin, a fire alarm went off and the whole premises is being evacuated now, reports The Hindu.

15:46 In the Jaypee Infratech case, the Supreme Court has allowed Jaypee Associates (JAL) to deposit money for the home buyers in a fixed deposit. Home buyers had wanted the money deposited by JAL to be put in a fixed deposit.

15:40 Ahead of appearing before London's Westminster Court, liquor baron Vijay Mallya told ANI, I have said repeatedly that the charges are false, fabricated and baseless. I have nothing to say, submissions in court will be self-evident.

Maha

The Bombay High Court suggested the Union government to not insist on installation of speed governors in black and yellow taxis and app-based car service providers if speed governors are not available with manufacturers, reports PTI. "The state government (Maharashtra) has also said that manufacturers do not have speed governors. Then it is better that the union government relaxes the rule for some time. You (government) can make something compulsory only when it is available," a division bench of Justices SM Kemkar and GS Kulkarni said.

Electronics major Samsung said it has forayed into the air purifier segment to expand its portfolio of consumer electronics, reports PTI. The company launched two premium air purifiers and said its product provides purification through advanced PM 2.5 filters. With this launch, Samsung has forayed into a new category and expanded the portfolio in the consumer electronics segment, it said. The products are priced at Rs 15,490 and Rs 41,990, respectively.

15:30 The Madhya Pradesh assembly has unanimously approves a bill awarding 'hanged till death' sentence for convicts of rape and gang-rape cases involving girls below 12 years of age, reports ANI. Repeated stalking will now be a non-bailable offence and offenders will be punished, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said in the state assembly.

Sadiq

Continuing his criticism of the UK government's strict visa norms, visiting London Mayor Sadiq Khan said they are preparing a proposal for revising policies like "for post-study work visas", reports PTI. "We are putting together a proposal to the government, to revise the policies like for post-study work visas," Khan said.

Reiterating his criticism of the stringent visa norms, Khan said he was "lobbying" with the British government to revise the visa policy to help attract more trade and investment to the UK capital. Terming the visa policy of Theresa May government as a "huge mistake", Khan said, "On the one hand the British government is asking Indian businesses to trade there and on the other hand they have made it more tough with strict visa norms".

Two of Indias state-owned oil refiners have issued tenders seeking to charter tankers for at least five years while giving preference to Indian companies, tender documents reviewed by Reuters showed, which would boost domestic shipping firms battered by slumping tanker rates. Indias Ministry of Shipping asked the refiners to issue long-term crude import tenders on a pilot basis and include a right of first refusal for Indian shipping lines, a source said.

The shift to the five-year contracts would give millions of dollars in tanker contracts to the Indian carriers, the source said. This would help companies like Shipping Corp of India (SCI), Mercator, Great Eastern Shipping Co and Essar Shipping. The global tanker industry is grappling with an oversupply of ships that has depressed rates, with the benchmark West Asia to Japan route for Very Large Crude Carriers dropping 43% since the start of the year.

As millennials step into their quarter life phase, the almost-forgotten Short Message Service or SMS will turn 25. The first ever SMS was sent on December 2, 1992 by engineer Neil Papworth. The first SMS was a warm and crisp Merry Christmas sent by Papworth to the then Vodafone director Richard Javis. Text messages changed the way people communicated before its inception, through pager and voice calls.

14:33 Sources have told CNBC-TV18 that Nestle India will appeal against the Shahjahanpur Additional District Magistrate Court order over the next 24-48 hours. Nestle India told the channel that its lawyers have received the order and are reviewing it.

14:25 A major accident was averted near Masjid Bunder railway station after a motorman stopped the train on sighting three rods on the track, reports ANI. DRM Central Railway has declared reward for the motorman.

14:22 Salil

Parekh

Infosys

After well over a decade with Capgemini, Salil Parekh is returning home to head unsettled Indian software services firm Infosys, where he will seek to replicate his success in notching up record growth at the divisions he ran, reports Reuters. Alongside, Parekh has to help the bellwether of Indias $154 billion software services sector recover from a nasty public spat between its board and founders that led to the dramatic exit of the previous CEO, Vishal Sikka, in August.

Parekh joins Bengaluru-based Infosys in January from Paris-headquartered Capgemini, where he headed their core application services business in key markets like North America and the United Kingdom, and their cloud services and cloud infrastructure businesses. He also managed Sogeti - a unit of Capgemini focused on digital transformation. As the CEO, Parekh will have to achieve growth while being careful not to antagonise Infosys founders, who own about 12% of the company, but command an outsized say in its direction.

In Parekh, Indias No 2 IT firm gets an executive with vast experience in some of its biggest Western markets and one who has led high-margin businesses like cloud services, where it is keen to accelerate growth. His Capgemini colleagues say Parekh pushes people to work hard, believes in sharing information and cutting across hierarchy to deliver on projects.

Japanese consumer confidence improved in November to its highest level in four years, lifted by surging stock prices and a robust job market, the Cabinet Office said on Monday. The sentiment index for general households, which includes views on incomes and jobs, rose 0.4 point from the previous month to 44.9, up for a third straight month and marking the highest since September 2013, reports Reuters. The survey adds to upbeat signals surrounding consumer sentiment - service-sector business confidence reached a 3-1/2-year high last month.

14:15 Airtel

Telecom major Bharti Airtel has acquired a strategic stake in Juggernaut Books, a digital platform for amateur writers, reports PTI. The investment is in line with its endeavour to build an open content ecosystem and bring world-class digital content to its customers, the company said in a statement. Juggernaut Books allows people to discover and read high quality, affordable books and to submit amateur writing, it said.

"The investment from Airtel will enable Juggernaut to ramp up content acquisition, digital marketing and prepare for a subscription offering launch in the next few months," the statement said. Airtel did not disclose the investment details.

The political message of Union Budget 2018-19 is expected to be consolidating the gains from the big-ticket changes of the past three years rather than introducing radical departures, reports The Business Standard. This is the conclusion of top officials as the Finance Ministry wraps itself up in the veil of secrecy two months before the Budget is read in Parliament by the finance minister.

However, the one area in which some changes could be possible is direct tax rates for the corporate sector. In 2015-16, the ministry had clipped the headline rate of the corporation tax to 25% for new units in the manufacturing sector. Jaitley promised that the new manufacturing companies that did not avail of any exemption would be charged only 25% and included the MSMEs in the 25% club in 2017-18. The ministry is exploring ways to add more categories here, short of a blanket move to migrate all units to the lower rate.

Also a proposal the Finance Ministry has acknowledged it is working on is offering larger tax sops to pensioners, a politically rising power group. In a letter addressed to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, the Minister of State for Finance, Shiv Pratap Shukla, has said the ministry has received representations to raise the income tax exemption limit for pensioners with an annual income of Rs 5 lakh. The proposal would be examined during the exercise for the ensuing Union Budget, 2018, his reply notes.

12:47 AYUSH

26m

Prabhu

The AYUSH industry is expected to grow in double-digits and provide direct employment to 1 million people and indirect jobs to 25 million persons by 2020, Union minister Suresh Prabhu said. The government is eyeing a three-fold increase in the AYUSH sector by 2022, reports PTI. AYUSH stands for traditional systems of medicine and healthcare such as Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy.

After a lull of two years, the tax office is in a rush to move against many named in the list of secret Swiss accounts with HSBC Geneva. In the past fortnight more than 50 persons have been served notices, informing them about the date of hearing of their cases. The move, sources told The Economic Times, would pave the way for the Income-Tax (I-T) Department to initiate prosecution proceedings once the appeals of these alleged accountholders and beneficiaries are dismissed at the first stage of appeal.

12:33 Biocon

USFDA

biosimilar

Shares of Biocon surged as much as 14% in morning trade after the biotechnology major said it has received regulatory approval to market a biosimilar of cancer drug Herceptin in the United States, reports PTI. The US health regulator has approved Mylan NV's biosimilar Ogivri, co-developed with Biocon, for the treatment of certain breast and stomach cancers, a company statement said.

Following the announcement, shares of the company opened on a bullish note and surged 14.2% to touch an early high of Rs 510 on the BSE. Similar movement was seen on the NSE as well, where the stock opened at Rs 491.95, then gathered further momentum and touched an early high of Rs 509, registering a jump of 13.8% over its previous closing price.

Mylan and Biocon's biosimilar for Herceptin is also under review by regulatory authorities in Australia, Canada, Europe and several additional markets, the statement said. It is already approved in 19 countries around the world, including India, thus providing increased access to this more affordable biologic for cancer patients, it added.

12:15 The Bombay High Court has quashed the Rs 5 fare hike proposal by Mumbai metro fare fixation committee, reports ANI.

Chandimal

Former Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews and his successor Dinesh Chandimal dug deep in a burgeoning 117-run stand to help the tourists to 192 for three at lunch on day three of the third and final test against India on Monday. Beginning the day 405 runs behind Indias first innings total of 536 for seven declared, the onus was on the right-handers to spearhead Sri Lankas battle for survival at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium.

The duo overcame occasional discomforts to deny India in the morning session with Mathews, who scored the last of his seven test centuries in 2015, on 90 not out, which included 11 boundaries and two sixes. Chandimal was on 52, the duo having displayed the kind of application that has been largely lacking among the tourists who trail 1-0 after succumbing to their worst defeat in the second test in Nagpur.

After the second day was blighted by complaints of air pollution by the visitors, they resumed on a slightly hazy morning on 131 for three and found themselves at the receiving end of Mohammad Shamis fiery four-over spell during which the Indian paceman did everything right except take a wicket. Chandimal took a single off Ravichandran Ashwin to bring up Sri Lankas first 100-plus partnership in the series, while his seventh boundary brought up his third successive fifty but Sri Lanka, still 344 behind, will need the duo to continue the rebuilding job after the break.

11:55 Shares of 63 Moons are presently locked at 5% lower circuit after the Bombay High Court upheld a previous order on its merger with NSEL. The court upheld the order by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA). The ministry had passed an order in February 2016 to merge National Spot Exchange with its parent firm. The merges intention was to recover dues of NSEL scam from 63 Moons, reports CNBC-TV18.

Teleservices

000cr

Tata Teleservices is looking to offset telecom infrastructure commitments by offering its 26% stake in a local joint venture to controlling shareholder American Tower Corp (ATC) for discontinuing rentals, sources told The Economic Times. This follows the Tata Groups exit from mobile services. The value of the stake is pegged at Rs 5,000 crore while the penalty for early termination may be as much as Rs 7,000 crore.

Its unclear if Tata will offer additional cash payouts to bridge the deficit, sources said.

TTSL has told ATC it will discontinue around 30,000 tower tenancies with ATC India and its unit Viom Networks. The 25,000 tenancies on the Viom network are locked in for six years, while 5,000 on the ATC India network are for three years, sources added.

YoY

Steel Strips Wheels share price rallied over 3% on Monday as its November sales turnover increased 34% YoY. The company said it achieved total wheel rim sales of 12.92 lakh as against 11.99 lakh in November 2017, representing a growth of 8% YoY. Its truck segment was the key highlight, with highest ever revenue growth.

In terms of value, the company achieved gross turnover of Rs 172.75 crore in November 2017 as against Rs 128.62 crore in the same period last year, thereby recording a growth of 34%. It achieved a net turnover of Rs 138.85 crore in November versus Rs 115.25 crore YoY, a growth of 20%.

11:10 Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi has filed his nomination papers for the post of party president at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters.

The Rajasthan government looks to provide air connectivity to all districts either through its inter-state air services or the central scheme Udan, a senior official told PTI. While the Centre is pushing ahead with the ambitious regional air connectivity scheme UDAN, the Rajasthan government's intra-state air services initiative has been operational for little over a year.

Besides, the state government has plans to start 'Palace on Wings' services to connect heritage properties, forts and palaces by air, according to Captain Keshri Singh, Director of Civil Aviation Rajasthan. The government has plans to "connect all districts with air services either by intra-state or UDAN or regular flight operations," he said.

Udan or Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik scheme seeks to connect unserved and under-served airports in different parts of the country. There are 18 state-owned airfields in Rajasthan besides AAI airports, defence airfields and private airstrips.

Adani's

Chinas two biggest banks said they do not plan to finance a controversial Australian coal mine, in the latest blow to Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises long delayed project, reports Reuters. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China Construction Bank said in separate statements they were not working on the project, after media recently reported that Chinese banks may get involved.

Adani is seeking A$2 billion ($1.5 billion) in financing by March 2018 for the A$4 billion first stage of its proposed Carmichael coal mine in the state of Queensland, a project that has been shrunk from a A$16.5 billion plan to make it more viable. Adani declined to comment on its financing plans on Monday or the statements from the Chinese banks.

Australian and overseas banks have balked at granting loans for the project, which environmentalists oppose due to climate change and the potential for damage to the Great Barrier Reef.

Educare

140cr

Subhash Chandra-controlled Zee Learn is in talks with MT Educare, a Mumbai-based company that runs the popular Mahesh Tutorials coaching classes, to buy a controlling stake in the company, in a growing sign that a wave of fresh capital is triggering larger consolidation in the educational services space, reports The Economic Times.

Zee initially plans to buy the entire promoter block of 42.78% and will make an open offer for another 20% stake, sources said. Institutions and public shareholders own the remaining 57.22%. MT Educare, which went public in 2012, is a leading education services company that prepares students for competitive examinations. At current valuations, Zee will have to pay Rs 140 crore for a controlling stake in the company.

Brexit

Half of Britons support a second vote on whether to leave the European Union and a majority think the government may be paying too much money to the EU to open the way to trade talks, according to a new opinion poll. The poll, published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, found 50% of people supported another vote on the final terms of Britains exit deal, 34% rejected another referendum and 16% said they did not know. The newspaper said it was the first major opinion poll since last weeks media reports that Britain is preparing to pay about EUR50 billion ($59 billion) to help to move on to talks on a future trade pact with the EU.

Mike Smithson, an election analyst who runs the www.politicalbetting.com website and a former Liberal Democrat politician, said on Twitter it was the first time any pollster has recorded backing for a second Brexit referendum. Since the referendum in 2016, high profile opponents of Britains exit - from French President Emmanuel Macron, to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and billionaire investor George Soros - have suggested Britain could change its mind and avoid what they say will be disastrous for the British economy.

The National Investigation Agency in its probe of the Kerala Love Jihad case has successfully cracked a new development which reveals that Akhila Asokan alias Hadiyas husband was in link with two charge-sheeted accused of the terror group Islamic State (IS) in the Omar-al-Hindi case before marrying Hadiya, reports NewsX. The probe revealed that Hadiyas husband Shafin Jahan shared his presence with the two IS terrorists in two groups on Facebook and an instant messaging platform which also comprised of activists from Popular Front of India (PFI)s political wing SDPI.

IPOs

1bn

Private equity (PE) funds sold shares worth $1.17 billion in 2017 as their portfolio companies went public, data from Venture Intelligence shows. The figure is almost 25% higher than the $935 million they sold through initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2016, reports Mint. In 2015, PEs sold stocks worth just $287 million in IPOs.

Several PE investors such as Warburg Pincus, ChrysCapital, Kedaara Capital and others reaped successful exits or part-exits through IPOs of firms such as Au Small Finance Bank and Eris Lifesciences, thanks to the buoyant market. The share sale of AU Small Finance Bank saw PE investors sell shares worth almost $247 million, while those of Eris Lifesciences and Indian Energy Exchange saw PE investors selling shares worth $209 million and $102 million, respectively.

The Indian IPO market has seen a record year, with companies raising Rs 65,923 crore till November, as compared to a total IPO fund raising of Rs 26,493 crore in 2016. (Picture courtesy: Mint)

08:26 Indian Railways claim conspiracy to derail trains averted, reports CNN-News18. Fastening clips found missing from rail tracks in Lucknow during a routine check. UP ATS to probe into possible terror angle, FIR registered against unidentified persons, it tweeted.

There are signs that North Korea's submarine missile program is expanding as it prepares its second test, adding to the risk that the nuclear-armed country could one day threaten the US or its Asian allies with yet another powerful weapon in its arsenal, reports CNBC.

Experts suggest North Korea having fully submersible submarines firing a nuclear ballistic missile pose a dangerous scenario because they could offer the hermit regime a better chance of survival and might be harder to detect. It comes on the heels of North Korea last Tuesday launching a new Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, a road-mobile weapon the state-owned KCNA media claimed could carry a "super-large heavy warhead, which is capable of striking the whole mainland of the US."

The North Koreans appear to be getting more aggressive on submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) development and now have several shipyards active in the offshore-weapons program. The North is not believed to have the capability today to launch multiple ballistic missiles from a submarine. However, experts say the totalitarian state is working at a feverish pace and could have this submersible as early as next year.

"If North Korea can deploy not only developmentally a submarine-launched ballistic missile that is effective and deploy it on ballistic missile submarines, it certainly complicates defence against missile attacks," defence analyst Joseph S Bermudez Jr, co-founder and CEO of Colorado-based imagery analysis firm KPA Associates.

In a 38 North blog post on Friday, he revealed that "commercial satellite imagery from November 11, 16 and 24 show that North Korea's second submersible ballistic missile test stand barge  a platform that allows for underwater missile launches outside of submarines  located at the Nampo Navy Shipyard is being prepared to enter service."

38 North, a project of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said the "second missile test stand barge [is] almost operational." Bermudez wrote, "Once in service, this barge will help facilitate a broader SLBM testing regime and potentially establish a SLBM capability within the West Sea fleet [of North Korea's navy]."

Bermudez, a 38 North contractor, explained that the test stand barge and platform are used to simulate the weapons that would be inside the submarine because it's considered too dangerous and costly to do such early testing inside a real submarine. He also said that the North Koreans know the US military is watching its SLBM and submarine development so they have been doing things to mitigate the satellite surveillance capabilities, including resorting to concealment in some cases.

Max Healthcare has decided to terminate the services of two doctors allegedly involved in the case of a premature baby being wrongly declared dead, hospital authorities told PTI. The decision was taken on Sunday night after a meeting of the Max Healthcare authorities in connection with the incident.

"While the inquiry by the expert group which includes external experts from the IMA is still in process, we have decided to terminate the services of two treating doctors, doctors AP Mehta and Vishal Gupta in the case relating to the twin extreme pre-term babies," Max Healthcare said in a statement.

The case pertains to the birth of twins (boy and girl) on November 30. Both the babies were allegedly declared dead by the Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh. However, the family later found the boy was alive.

Brexit

Theresa May hopes to break the Brexit talks deadlock on Monday with a new offer on divorce settlements at a crunch meeting with EU officials, as some of her party members urge her to walk away unless there is progress, reports Reuters. EU officials and diplomats say they are increasingly optimistic a deal can be struck on Monday, while cautioning that things could still go wrong. Over lunch with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Union Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, the British prime minister will try to persuade them to start discussions on a new trade pact and a two-year transitional deal.

The European Union has given May until Monday to put forward a more comprehensive offer on the remaining separation issues before officials recommend moving onto discussing trade and future ties. They want a pledge that Britain will pay what it owes the bloc when leaving, protect the rights of EU citizens living in Britain and ensure there is no hard border between the north and south of Ireland.

South Korea and the United States launched their largest-ever joint aerial drills on Monday, officials said, a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced missile as part of a weapons program that has raised global tensions, reports Reuters. The annual US-South Korean drill, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday, with six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part. The exercises have been condemned as a provocation by the isolated North.

F-35 fighters will also join the drill, which will also include the largest number of 5th generation fighters to take part, according to a South Korea-based US Air Force spokesman. Around 12,000 US service members, including from the Marines and Navy, will join South Korean troops. Aircraft taking part will be flown from eight US and South Korean military installations. South Korean media reports said B-1B Lancer bombers could join the exercise this week. The US Air Force spokesman could not confirm the reports.

Venezuela is creating a digital currency to combat a financial blockade by the United States, President Nicolas Maduro has announced, reports AFP. It will be called the Petro and be backed up by Venezuela's reserves of oil and gas and its gold and diamond holdings, the president said in his weekly television program.

"This is going to allow us to move toward new forms of international financing for the country's economic and social development," the president said on Sunday. The news comes as Venezuela faces acute financing problems after creditors and ratings agencies declared the government and the state run oil firm PDVSA to be in partial default for missing interest and principle payments on bonds.

Maduro blames those problems on sanctions imposed by the United States in August, barring American citizens and companies from buying any new Venezuelan government or PDVSA bonds. Venezuela is mired in a deep economic crisis triggered mainly by a fall in crude oil prices and a drop in oil production. Petroleum is its main source of hard currency.

Mallya

Embattled liquor baron Vijay Mallya, out on a GBP650,000 bail bond following his arrest by Scotland Yard over fraud and money laundering charges earlier this year, will return to Westminster Magistrates' Court in London today as his extradition trial begins, reports PTI. The 61-year-old businessman, who has been in self-imposed exile in the UK since March 2016 when he left India, is wanted in India on charges relating to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines defaulting on loans from various Indian banks amounting to Rs 9,000 crore.

Diversified conglomerate ITC expects chocolate category to contribute 10% to its food division revenue in next five years, a top company official told PTI. The company had entered into chocolate category with brand Fabelle in May last year. "In five years, we should see a 10% share of the total food business from chocolates," ITC Foods Divisional Chief Executive Hemant Malik said.

"We will phase ourselves. There is no point in launching too many products. We will be looking at various spaces and be a full portfolio player (in chocolate category)...Overall market share in five years, we should have 15-20%," Malik said. The company manufactures chocolates from its Bengaluru facility at present and it has added another factory at Haridwar.

cos

804cr

The combined market valuation of nine of the top 10 most valued Indian companies diminished by Rs 81,804.34 crore last week, with Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL) taking the biggest hit.

Barring Maruti Suzuki India, rest of the nine companies including, State Bank of India (SBI), Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HDFC suffered losses in their market capitalisation (m-cap) for the week ended Friday.

Among the top 10 firms, RIL was the worst hit as its m-cap slumped by Rs 25,110.60 crore to Rs 5,76,213.96 crore. The valuation of SBI plunged by Rs 17,005.15 crore to Rs 2,69,794.84 crore; Infosys (Rs 11,818.04 crore to Rs 2,20,166.80 crore); TCS (Rs 11,141.16 crore to Rs 5,03,562.92 crore) and HDFC (Rs 8,127.28 crore to Rs 2,64,934.96 crore).

The m-cap of ITC declined by Rs 6,084.85 crore to Rs 3,11,164.96 crore and that of Hindustan Unilever (HUL) plummeted by Rs 3,106.03 crore to Rs 2,71,068.47 crore. HDFC Bank lost Rs 1,555.84 crore to Rs 4,77,135.50 crore and ONGC Rs 1,475.82 crore to Rs 2,30,677.40 crore.

On the other hand, the only gainer in the top 10 list, Maruti Suzuki India, added Rs 3,620.43 crore to its valuation to reach Rs 2,60,016.92 crore.

In the ranking of top-10 firms, RIL stood at the numero uno spot followed by TCS, HDFC Bank, ITC, HUL, SBI, HDFC, Maruti Suzuki India, ONGC and Infosys.

Over the last week, the Sensex plunged 846.30 points, or 2.51%, while the Nifty declined 267.90 points, or 2.57%.

The government has asked Coal India to focus on production enhancement, saying it cannot let the "profitability tumble" as the recent wage hike will have an estimated impact of nearly Rs 6,000 crore annually. "They (Coal India) have to increase their production and productivity. That goes without saying. When they came to meet me after they signed this (wage pact) both the employee leaders and management were sitting. I told them that you have to do that," Coal Secretary Susheel Kumar said.

Coal India (CIL) had in October signed a wage agreement with workers' unions proposing 20% hike in salaries for a period of five years, which will have an estimated impact of Rs 5,667 crore per year to the world's largest coal miner. "Because if there is an Rs 5,000-Rs 6,000 crore of outgo that has to be generated. We cannot let the stock prices tumble. We cannot let the profitability tumble. So, they (CIL) have to work for productivity and production enhancement," Kumar said.

The public sector firm had signed the agreement at 20% hike in salaries against workers' demand for a 50% raise. In FY18, CIL has been pegged production target at 600MT with an annualised growth of about 8.3% over the last year. In FY19, the envisaged coal production projection is 773.70MT with a growth of about 28.95%. The miner is eyeing an output of one billion tonne by FY20.

07:10 FPI

728cr

Foreign investors pumped in over Rs 19,700 crore into the country's stock markets in November, the highest in eight months, mainly due to government's plan to recapitalise state-run banks and surge in India's ranking in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business. In addition, such investors put in Rs 530 crore in the debt markets during the period under review.

According to depositories data, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) invested a net amount of Rs 19,728 crore in equities last month. This is the highest net investment by FPIs since March, when they had poured in Rs 30,906 crore in the equity market.

It has been a tremendous journey for the Indian equity markets in 2017. After taking a break from buying into Indian equities in August and September, FPIs bought equities in abundance in November. Overall, FPIs have invested Rs 53,800 crore in equities so far in 2017 and another Rs 1.46 lakh crore in debt markets.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is likely to present India's first post-GST and the current government's last full Budget on February 1 next year, reports PTI. The Budget session of Parliament may begin on January 30 with President Ram Nath Kovind addressing the Joint Session of both the Houses of Parliament, a senior government official said. This will be Jaitleys 5th Budget in a row.

The Economic Survey, detailing the state of the economy, is likely to be tabled on January 31 and the Union Budget may be presented the following day, he said. With excise duty and service tax being subsumed in GST, the classifications in the forthcoming budget may undergo change, he stated.

While a new classification for revenues to be accrued from GST will be included in the Budget for next fiscal, for the current year two sets of accounting may be presented  one for actual accruals during April-June for excise, customs and service tax, and the other for July-March period for GST and customs duty.

programmes

The official said that since the GST rates are decided by a GST Council, headed by Union Finance Minister and comprising of representatives of all states, the Budget for 2018-19 may not have any tax proposals concerning excise and service tax levies. Only proposals for changes in direct taxes, both personal income tax and corporate tax, besides customs duty, are likely to be presented in the Budget along with new schemes andof the government.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, CEO and founder of Paytm, has announced that he will not take two months salary.

Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma on Saturday posted on Twitter a screengrab of the donation he made to the Armed Forces Flag Day Fund and it clearly did not go down well with the Twitter fraternity.



Just sent 501 to Armed Forces Flag Day Fund. # @DefenceMinIndia pic.twitter.com/B5KD7wcdb9

 Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) December 1, 2017

Vijay Shekhar posted on Twitter: Just sent Rs 501 to Armed Forces Flag Day Fund, and tagged the Defence Minister.

People on Twitter were quick to point out the publicity stunt and chided Sharma for contributing such a meagre amount despite being the owner of a multi-billion dollar company.



Nice way of publicity. If u had donated a huge sum, u wudnt have been talk of the town. Donation shudnt be publicized on twitter.  Dibya R Nath (@dibyarnath) December 2, 2017





Millions earned due to demon , bought Golf links land -90crores and donation 500 that too being used for paytm marketing indirectly. sir you are an inspiration !!

 Ankit Jain (@jainankit83) December 1, 2017



Thank You! Your generous contribution would be sufficient to provide entire armed forces with a retirement fund.

They can stop collecting now. December 2, 2017





  .....          ?

 Goldemort  (@CholericCleric) December 2, 2017



You are a true baniya. Salute!!!  Satish Bhatnagar (@satish7b) December 3, 2017





Wow what a huge amount!

 Ajay Pratap (@AjayPra2763175k) December 3, 2017



This is somewhere an insult to the defence forces sir. You are owner of PayTM and 501 amount is just an Insult. Please put this tweet down. This will backfire sir.  Gaurav Pandey (@PandeyTweets) December 2, 2017





What a cheap publicity stunt. These days common rural citizens give this much money for Saraswati Pooja. Our tycoons are so miser. CSR must have a burden for you. Didn't expect this from you!

 Mayank Shandilya (@ShandiMayank) December 2, 2017

However, the defence minister thanked Sharma for his contribution.
The amicus curiae of the Jaypee insolvency case, Pawan Shri Aggarwal, informed the Supreme Court on Monday that the website was ready and that buyers could register their claims from today.

Aggarwal was directed by the apex court last month to update the portal where homebuyers who have booked apartments in various Jaypee projects in Noida could register their claims.

Homebuyers can register their claims on the website from tomorrow  whether they want the unit or a refund. They will also have to upload their details, allotment letter, photograph and an affidavit stating what they want, says Pawan Shri Aggarwal.

Homebuyers are required to file an affidavit stating that they are the owners of the said flat and get the document attested.

The Jaypee matter was listed for Monday. The bench heard the matter for five minutes.

The Supreme Court registry on Monday also wanted, that the amount of Rs 275 crore deposited by the troubled Jaypee Associates last month, be transferred from the general account of the Supreme Court to a fixed deposit so that it could earn interest. The request was accepted.

At the November 22 hearing, the Supreme Court had allowed the parent company of Jaypee Infratech Ltd to deposit Rs 275 crore and another Rs 275 crore by December 31. This is against the earlier order asking the promoters to deposit Rs 2,000 crore by November 13 which the promoters were unable to meet even though four deadlines had expired.

While the Supreme Courts order to deposit Rs 2,000 crore stands, the court allowed the developer to deposit the amount in instalments but did not specify a timeline for the remaining Rs 1,450 crore to be deposited by the promoter.

The bench comprised of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud.

The next date of hearing - has been listed for January 10, 2018, the order said.

On September 11 this year, Supreme Court directed Jaypee Associates, the parent firm of its real estate firm Jaypee Infratech, to deposit Rs 2,000 crore by October 27. The apex court also asked the NCLT-appointed interim resolution professional (IRP) to take over the management of Jaypee Infratech and submit a plan to protect the interests of homebuyers and creditors within 45 days.

Also, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) appointed resolution professional (IRP) Anuj Jain received 21 bids from investors last week who were willing to pump in at least Rs 2,000 crore to complete the projects floated by Jaypee Infratech that involves nearly 32,000 apartments, plots and villas.

The new entrants post the ordinance promulgated last week that bars promoters of companies that have been non-performing assets (NPAs) for over a year from submitting their bids for the resolution process include high profile companies such as Adani Group, Hindujas and Sajjan Jindals JSW Group.

Among the parties that had expressed interest earlier included Vedanta Group, Essel Highways, IDFC, Lodha Group, Puravankara, SARE Homes, L&T Infra, Cube Highways from Singapore, Kotak Infra, SARE Group, Deutsche Bank, Asset Reconstruction Company (India) Limited, Suraksha Realty, Tata Realty, National Infrastructure Investment Fund (NIIF) and JSW among others.
Auto players witnessed a huge spike in their sales volume for the month of November, partly due to the lower base of the previous year when demonetization hit them.

However, we believe that market will continue to support the emerging trends: strong growth in commercial vehicles (CV) on the back of good monsoon, improved rural sentiments and increased production of BS-IV compliant vehicles; signs of revival in three-wheeler sales following governments decision to end permit raj and pick-up in exports on the back of improving global climate.

We believe that most of the regulatory headwinds are waning and the situation is coming back to normalcy. A near normal monsoon, rural demand and governments capex push are the tailwinds to watch out for.

The commercial sector has bounced back strongly after the initial disruption in the market, surrounding demonetization and the BS-IV transition that largely affected the transport industry last year.

Tata Motors registered a significant growth on the back of the success of Tata Motors innovative SCR technology, which has been well accepted by customers. Increased demand for the new tonnage vehicles, infrastructure development led by government funding and a keen focus on customer requirements have helped in reviving the M&HCV performance for the company.

M&M posted a healthy growth (on a low base) thanks to good monsoon, and rural penetration of the company. The management expects the growth momentum to continue on the back of some recent refresh launches as well as better performance of its product portfolio.

Eicher Volvo also witnessed a significant growth of 54.1 percent (YoY) in the month.

Ashok Leyland also posted a healthy growth of 51 percent (YoY) on the back of the low base, good monsoon, improved rural sentiments.

The leader, Maruti, continued to top the chart in PV (passenger vehicles) segment with 15 percent growth, mainly driven by 34 percent growth in UV (utility vehicles).

For Tata Motors, the car segment witnessed a decline of 4.5 percent (YoY) whereas its UV segment witnessed a whopping 366 percent (YoY) on the back of strong growth momentum of new generation Tata cars.

Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) posted a growth of 21.5 percent (YoY) in PV.In two-wheeler space, Eicher continued its dream run and witnessed strong sales of bikes below 350cc with a growth of 25.6 percent (YoY) whereas bikes above 350cc segment witnessed a decline of 11.7 percent (YoY) as has been the case for long barring last month.

TVS posted a strong growth in 2W segment primarily because of 37.3 percent growth in bikes. Bajajs domestic business was also flat in terms of 2W (two-wheeler) volume.

Hero, a formidable player in 100/110cc bikes, posted a significant growth of 26.1 percent in the month, primarily because of the lower base of last year.

The overall three-wheeler market is showing significant improvement as is evident from the sales number for the November month. This is primarily due to the end of Raj Permit in Maharashtra and new 10,000 permits in Delhi. Bajaj Auto, the leader in the space, could capture the growth coming in this segment and posted a very strong 156.7 percent (YoY) growth in the domestic 3W segment.

TVS also posted a strong growth of 46.9 percent (YoY) in 3W volumes whereas Atul Auto continued to face challenges and witnessed a flat growth of 3 percent (YoY) in 3W volumes.

M&M posted a significant growth of 31.8 percent (YoY) on the back of healthy monsoon, higher Kharif production and improved MSPs.

Escorts disappointed in tractor sales which grew at 5.3 percent.

Auto companies had been struggling in the export markets for long. However, going by the monthly numbers, there appears to be signs of normalcy. TVS and Bajaj yet again witnessed a strong growth in their exports. Eicher witnessed a significant growth of 59.9 percent. Escorts also continues to gain momentum in the exports market.

Bajaj Autos performance was on the back of stabilizing currency and retail sector in Nigeria. The management also mentioned that the geographies like Philippines, Latin America, Egypt, East Africa, and Nepal have stabilized.

However, Tata Motors and M&M continue to face pressure on foreign roads.

Follow @agrawant

For more research articles, visit our Moneycontrol Research Page
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Share price of Alphageo advanced more than 4 percent in the early trade on Monday on receiving award of contract from ONGC.

The company has received a notification of award of contract from ONGC, WOB, Vadodara, Gujarat for acquisition of 3D seismic data in Mehsana carpet area of Cambay basin, India for an estimated contract value of Rs 154.77 crore.

A meeting of the board of directors of the company is scheduled to be held on December 4, 2017, to consider and approve the unaudited financial results of the company for the quarter and six months ended September 30, 2017.

At 09:16 hrs Alphageo (India) was quoting at Rs 985, up Rs 29.80, or 3.12 percent on the BSE.

The share gaiend 28 percent in the last one month.

Posted by Rakesh Patil
Mitessh Thakkar of mitesshthakkar.com told CNBC-TV18, "In line with the belief that we might possibly head higher for the next couple of days before eventually we start correcting again, I have two buys and one sell. The buys are on CESC which is close to support area. So, buy with a stop loss at Rs 972 and look for a Rs 1,010 kind of a target."

"The other buy is on NMDC which is clearly showing a good price and volume action. So, buy with a stop loss below Rs 130.50 and look for Rs 141 kind of a target."

"A sell on HPCL. It is a conditional sell. Let the price break below levels of Rs 405 and sell with a stop loss at Rs 414, and look for a target of Rs 385."

"Yes Bank is very close to important support zones of Rs 285 to about Rs 300. So if somebody has bought with an investment perspective, my sense is that just stay invested. I dont expect Rs 280-285 to be broken. You still have about 4-5 percent kind of a downside."

"However, barring that, I think the stock is at important support zones. So I think it will eventually bounce back and head towards targets of Rs 350-360 again. So in that sense, take a six months call, hold on, you might even want to add more, closer to about Rs 285 zones if you get it, and keep a stop loss below Rs 270."

"Graphite India has had a very good rally and I think now it is possibly sideways for the last three weeks. They are still doing a range of about Rs 540-542 on the downside to roughly about Rs 630-640 on the upside. I think that range might play out for some time."

"If it is a short term view, the idea should be to buy towards the lower end of the range. So, Rs 550-555 should be your buying area, Rs 540 should be your stop loss, and on the upside, Rs 630-640 should be your profit booking target," he added.
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DLFs shares gained nearly 3 percent intraday on Monday as investors cheered the real estate majors fundraising plans.

The companys Board approved issue of debentures and warrants to promoters in lieu of Rs 11,250 crore equity infusion into the company, as part of its objective to reduce net debt significantly.

The board also gave its nod to selling shares through public issue or private placement to institutional investors.

The company is estimated to raise more than Rs 3,500 crore through this process.

In late August, the promoters had sold the entire 40 percent stake in rental arm DLF Cyber City Developers Ltd (DCCDL) for Rs 11,900 crore and proposed to invest proceeds into DLF.

This deal included sale of 33.34 per cent stake in DCCDL to Singapores sovereign wealth fund GIC for Rs 8,900 crore and buyback of remaining shares worth Rs 3,000 crore by DCCDL.

The Board also approved the offer and issue up to 17.30 crore equity shares to eligible investors, in one or more tranches, in India or overseas, by way of public issue or a private placement or a qualified institutional placement.

It approved increase of authorised share capital of the company from Rs 500 crore to Rs 1,000 crore.

The board also approved the appointment of Ashok Kumar Tyagi and Devinder Singh as Whole-Time Directors (WTDs) of the company for a period of five years with effect from December 1, 2017.

Broking firm Edelweiss has maintained its buy call on the stock with an increased target price of Rs 273 from Rs 185, implying an upside of 47 percent.

The brokerage house highlighted that the balance sheet recovery could provide a significant operational flexibility. It also expects a gradual uptick in the operations in coming quarters. Among other positives for the stock are steady rental portfolio, balance sheet improvement and benefits from consolidation, among others.

At 11:27 hrs DLF was quoting at Rs 228.45, up Rs 2.05, or 0.91 percent, on the BSE. It touched an intraday high of Rs 232.70 and an intraday low of Rs 224.00.
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Shares of Fiem Industries added 6.2 percent intraday Monday on signing MoU with Japanese firms Aisan Industry and Toyota Tsusho Corporation.

"..... has signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese firms Aisan Industry and Toyota Tsusho Corporation for establishing a joint venture company in India," company said in release.

"The joint venture company will manufacture fuel pump module and IC connector assembly for two-wheelers and three-wheelers," it added.

Fuel pump module will become mandatory for two-wheelers and three-wheelers w.e.f. April, 2020 under Bharat Stage VI (BS VI) regime.

This is an advanced Emission Control System Product, which will have huge market in India under BS VI norms, said Fiem Industries.

A meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on December 04 to consider and approve the standalone un-audited financial results of the company for the quarter ended September 30, 2017.

At 10:56 hrs FIEM Industries was quoting at Rs 935.30, up Rs 41.50, or 4.64 percent on the BSE.

Posted by Rakesh Patil
The Philippines ordered an investigation on Monday into the immunisation of more than 730,000 children with a vaccine for dengue that has been suspended following an announcement by French drug company Sanofi that it could worsen the disease in some cases.

The World Health Organization said it hoped to conduct a full review by year-end of data on the vaccine, commercially known as Dengvaxia. In the meantime, the WHO recommended that it only be used in people who had a prior infection with dengue.

The government of Brazil, where dengue is a significant health challenge, confirmed it already had recommended restricted use of the vaccine but had not suspended it entirely.

Amid mounting public concern, Sanofi explained its "new findings" at a news conference in Manila but did not say why action was not taken after a WHO report in mid-2016 that identified the risk it was now flagging.

A non-governmental organisation (NGO) said it had received information that three children who were vaccinated with Dengvaxia in the Philippines had died and a senator said he was aware of two cases.

However, Department of Health Undersecretary Gerardo Bayugo told Reuters the three referred to by the NGO died due to causes not related to the vaccine and Sanofi said no deaths had been reported as a result of the programme.

"As far as we know, as far as we are made aware, there are no reported deaths that are related to dengue vaccination," said Ruby Dizon, medical director at Sanofi Pasteur Philippines.

Last week, the Philippines Department of Health halted the use of Dengvaxia after Sanofi said it must be strictly limited due to evidence it can worsen the disease in people not previously exposed to the infection.

In a statement, Sanofi said the long-term safety evaluation of the vaccines showed significantly fewer hospitalisations due to dengue in vaccinated people over 9 years old compared with those who had not been vaccinated.

Nearly 734,000 children aged 9 and over in the Philippines have received one dose of the vaccine as part of a programme that cost 3.5 billion pesos ($69.54 million).

The Department of Justice on Monday ordered the National Bureau of Investigation to look into "the alleged danger to public health ... and if evidence so warrants, to file appropriate charges thereon."

There was no indication that Philippines health officials knew of any risks when they administered the vaccination.

However, the WHO said in a July 2016 research paper that "vaccination may be ineffective or may theoretically even increase the future risk of hospitalised or severe dengue illness in those who are seronegative at the time of first vaccination regardless of age."

Singapore's Health Sciences Authority said last week that it flagged risks when Dengvaxia was approved there in October 2016, and was working with Sanofi to strengthen risk warnings on the drug's packaging.

According to Sanofi in Manila, 19 licences were granted for Dengvaxia, and it was launched in 11 countries, two of which a the Philippines and Brazil a had public vaccination programmes.

Brazil's healthcare regulator Anvisa said in a statement that it now recommends that people who have never been infected with dengue not take the vaccine, which was approved for use in Brazil at the end of 2015.

It was not known whether many people have taken the vaccine, if it was part of any government immunization program or if any illnesses or deaths linked to the drug have been reported to the government.

Anvisa did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the Health Ministry.

A spokesman for Sanofi in Paris was not immediately available for comment. "A SHAMELESS SCAM" A spokesman for Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said on Sunday the government would hold to account those responsible for the programme.

Former Health Secretary Janette Garin, who implemented the programme under the administration of then-President Benigno Aquino, said she welcomed the investigation.

"In the event that there will be authorities who will point culpability to me, I am ready to face the consequences," she told ANC TV. "We implemented it in accordance with WHO guidance and recommendations."

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said there had been no reported case of severe dengue infection since the vaccine was administered and urged the public "not to spread information that may cause undue alarm."

Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, an NGO, said it was checking a report that three children on the northern island of Luzon had died since being vaccinated in April 2016 but the Department of Health said the deaths were not due to Dengvaxia.

"When we evaluated the clinical records, it was not related to the dengue vaccination," Bayugo said.

A prominent senator, Richard Gordon, told Reuters he was aware of two deaths - but gave no details - and said approval and procurement for the programme was done with "undue haste."

Dengue is a mosquito-borne tropical disease. Although it is not as serious as malaria, it is spreading rapidly in many parts of the world, killing about 20,000 people a year and infecting hundreds of millions.

While Sanofi's Dengvaxia is the first-ever approved vaccine for dengue, scientists already recognised it was not perfect and did not protect equally against the four different types of the virus in clinical tests.

A new analysis from six years of clinical data showed Dengvaxia vaccine provides persistent protective benefit against dengue fever in those who had prior infection.

But for those not previously infected by the virus, more cases of severe disease could occur in the long term following vaccination, Sanofi said.
Chinese media has refuted the countrys role in polluting River Siang in Arunachal Pradesh. The report stated that the country will not pollute its own river as it considered the frontier state an integral part of its 'South Tibet' territory.

The report in Global Times, the Chinese state mouthpiece, claimed that Arunachal Pradesh is a part of Chinas southern Tibet region, and as a country, China is determined to preserve its environment. "South Tibet is the territory of China, which has the duty to preserve local environment," a researcher was quoted saying in the Global Times report.

Also Read: Concerns raised about Chinese intentions after a river in Arunachal Pradesh turns black

The issue came to light after news emerged that the Siang river, known as Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet had turned black. Officials had hinted that this may be due to some construction activity being carried out in Tibet by China. The development had raised concerns across the country as Siang, which is a main constituent of Brahmaputra had earlier been in news for alleged Chinese plans to divert its water to the arid Xinjiang region.

However, the Chinese media has openly refuted the allegation. Alleging that India is trying to incite anti-China sentiments, the report claimed that India has made a mountain out of a molehill.

It also criticised India for thwarting what it claimed as Chinese attempts to improve bilateral relationships."China has overcome all sorts of difficulties to seek India's cooperation in areas such as the hydrological flood reporting of trans-border rivers," a foreign ministry spokesperson was quoted saying in the report.

The rise of slag in the river has raised concerns that China may use its strategic position in Tibet to control river flows into India as a mode to exert pressure. Earlier Chinese reluctance to transfer hydrological data about floods, citing reconstruction work being conducted on its hydrological stations had led to severe damages in India.
The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the execution of death row convict, Tahir Merchant, in the sensational 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.

The top court sought a response from the CBI in six weeks and called for the case records from the special TADA court in Mumbai, which had awarded death sentence to Merchant, Firoz Abdul Rashid Khan and life imprisonment to gangster Abu Salem.

Merchant was convicted among others in the second stage of the trial in the case as he was absconding.

As many as 257 people were killed and 718 suffered grievous injuries, with some of them suffering disabilities, were killed in the serial blasts at 12 places in Mumbai on March 12, 1993.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices Ashok Bhushan and M M Shantanagoudar issued a notice to the CBI and directed the registry to call for the lower court's records.

"The State of Maharashtra is directed to compile the evidence in entirety and file the compilation in convenient volumes and also serve a copy thereof to the counsel for the appellant (Merchant)," it said.

While staying the execution of the death sentence awarded to Merchant, the bench listed the matter for further hearing on March 14 next year.

Merchant had challenged the September 7 order of the special TADA court which had held that he was amongst the main conspirators.

"The evidence proves the anguish, agitation and frustration expressed by Tahir due to the situation prevailing in Bombay during the period of riots in January 1993," it had noted.

He worked with (absconding conspirator) Tiger Memon and had participated in several conspiracy meetings in Dubai. Tahir made travel arrangements, financed the stay and travel of several co-accused and facilitated their training in Pakistan, the court had noted.

"The role of Tahir in the conspiracy is prominent. He is one of the initiators of the conspiracy," the court had said in its ruling on June 16.

On Tahir's role, the court had observed that he was absconding and, by remaining in Dubai, he has deprived the investigating agency of necessary assistance to investigate the case.

Salem had escaped the noose and was handed down life imprisonment due to a provision in the Extradition Act.

Besides Salem, the court had sentenced Karimullah Khan to life imprisonment, while awarding 10 years in jail to the fifth convict, Riyaz Siddiqui.

The court had referred to the worldwide scenario and the menace of terrorism and said it was pertinent that a case relating to terrorism cannot be treated at par with other offences.

It had also imposed a fine on the five accused totalling Rs 27.09 lakh. Firoz Khan was fined Rs 4.75 lakh, Karimullah Khan Rs 8.88 lakh, Tahir Merchant Rs 4.85 lakh, Abu Salem Rs 8.51 lakh and Riyaz Siddiqui Rs 10,000.

The court had in June convicted six persons, including the prime accused Mustafa Dossa and Salem, 24 years after the blasts had left 257 people dead. It, however, let off accused Abdul Quayyum for want of evidence.

Salem, a notorious gangster considered close to fugitive mob boss Dawood Ibrahim, escaped death sentence as the Extradition Act bars India from seeking capital punishment for an accused extradited from a country where the practice is not in force.

Before Salem's extradition in 2004 following his arrest in 2002 in Portugal, India had assured Lisbon that he would not be awarded capital punishment if convicted.

All the seven accused faced multiple charges including criminal conspiracy, waging war against the government and murder.

The trial court, in its June 16 ruling convicting the six accused, had held that the prosecution had proved that Salem was one of the key conspirators and had delivered three AK-56 rifles and ammunition and hand grenades to actor Sanjay Dutt, who was convicted under the Arms Act in the earlier phase of the trial.

Salem, who was close to Dawood Ibrahim's brother Anees Ibrahim and Dossa, took upon of himself to bring a part of arms and ammunition from Dighi to Mumbai, the court had said.

The trial of Abu Salem, Mustafa Dossa, Karimullah Khan, Firoz Abdul Rashid Khan, Riyaz Siddiqui, Tahir Merchant and Abdul Quayyum was separated from the main case as they were arrested after the first set of trial had already started.

Dossa had died of cardiac arrest at J J Hospital in Mumbai, shortly after being convicted.
18:25 EC writes to Chief Electoral Officer of Gujarat that no political party, organisation or candidate shall publish any advertisement in print media on 8th & 9th December, unless it has obtained pre-certification from Media Certification and Management Committee, reports ANI.

18:07 NCP criticises PM Narendra Modi over his comments on Congress president election

Senior NCP leader Praful Patel on Monday attacked Prime Minister

Addressing a rally, Modi had said that if one doesn't have democracy in his home (party), how can the person practice it in the country. PM Modi also said that the outcome of the election to the top post in the Congress is a foregone conclusion.

Narendra Modi for the comments he had made on the forthcoming election of the Congress president while addressing a poll rally in Gujarat yesterday."Narendra Modi commented on infighting in the Congress, which was unwarranted. He had termed the election (of Congress president) as a tussle between 'Shezad' and 'Shahzada'," Patel told reporters.

17:45 Former J&K CM Omar Abdullah wishes 'very best' to Rahul Gandhi

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Monday wished success to Rahul Gandhi as he prepares to take over the reins of the Congress party.

"As @OfficeOfRG files his nomination to take over the Grand Old Party of India, I wish him all the very best going ahead. Expectations are high, challenges are numerous & I pray for his success," Omar tweeted.

17:30 "For Congress, 'work' was giving a hand pump. They never envisioned something like a SAUNI (Saurashtra Narmada Avataran Irrigation) Yojana", Prime Minister Narendra Modi said while addressing a public meeting in Junagadh, tweets BJPLive.

17:15 Congress party releases its election manifesto ahead of Gujarat elections in Ahmedabad, reports ANI.

16:30 The Congress party is expected to release its election manifesto shortly.

16:15 The prime minister is scheduled to hold public meetings in Junagadh and Jamnagar this evening. BJP President Amit Shah is also slated to Maroli and Gandevi, Navsari.

15:47 PM Narendra Modi terms Rahul Gandhi's elevation as 'Aurangzebi raj'

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today slammed Rahul Gandhi's expected elevation as Congress President, dubbing it as "Aurangzebi raj".

Without referring to the National Herald case, in which Rahul Gandhi had got bail, Modi, addressing a campaign rally in Valsad district of Gujarat, said, "Congress has gone bankrupt, as it is going to make a person who is out on bail in corruption case its president."

Read the full story here.

15:33 The prime minister has ended his rally in Bhavnagar.

15:20 The prime minister said in Bhavnagar, "I am seeing videos of Congress supporters saying, vote for Congress on 9th and 14th and then we will do 'Dadagiri' for 5 years. This is not the Gujarat that the people desire."

15:16 "I appeal to the Congress to stick to the truth. The people of Gujarat do not like poll time lollipops and false promises of the Congress," the prime minister said.

15:06 People of UP rejected Congress repeatedly: PM Modi

Talking about the recent civic polls in Uttar Pradesh, PM Modi said, "The people of UP know the Congress and their leadership well and see how they have rejected Congress repeatedly."

14:59 Prime minister Modi has attacked Congress for 'divide and rule' politics

Speaking at the public meeting in Bhavnagar, PM Modi said, "I fail to understand why is the Congress once again doing what it always did in the past - divide people, be it on caste lines, communal lines, between villages and cities. Congress has learnt 'divide and rule' from our colonial rulers rather well."

14:56



PM @narendramodi is addressing a rally in Bhavnagar. Watch live at https://t.co/mjKkF2PNsz Listen him LIVE by dialing 02245014501. #ModiWaveInGujarat pic.twitter.com/2ACNToR1Uu  BJP (@BJP4India) December 4, 2017



14:42 The prime minister has begun his address at the Bhavnagar rally.

14:30 Prime Minister Modi has arrived for the rally in Bhavnagar.

14:21 Next stop: Bhavnagar, a place where BJP has always done well

The prime minister's next rally will be held in Bhavnagar in the Saurashtra region.

For the assembly, Bhavnagar has two constituencies - Bhavnagar Purva and Bhavnagar Paschim. Since 1991, BJP has generally done well in both assembly seats and in the Bhavnagar Lok Sabha constituency.

         ,           ,                 ,        pic.twitter.com/9RE883VjxH Hardik Patel (@HardikPatel_) December 3, 2017

13:45 Police deployment for Gujarat polls

As many as 600 companies of central paramilitary forces will be deployed for the 2017 assembly polls in Gujarat. BSF Gujarat Frontier has also set up an election cell for coordination with state police, according to The Times of India.

13:33 Rahul Gandhi has filed his nomination papers to contest in the Congress presidential election. Senior leaders of the party are now reacting. Follow the LIVE updates here.

13:17 Prime Minister attacks Congress for 'ignoring healthcare' in tribal areas

"Not only did the Congress ignore the healthcare infrastructure in tribal areas, there was no arrangements for ambulances. We changed both these things- today there are better healthcare services and the '108 ambulance service' is active," he said during his public address in Dharampur.

13:07 The prime minister has ended his day's first rally in Dharmapur.

13:07 PM Modi congratulates Congress for 'Aurangzeb Raj'

"Mani Shankar Aiyar said that 'did elections happen during Mughal rule? After Jehangir, Shahjahan came, was any election held? After Shahjahan it was understood Aurangzeb will be the leader'. So Congress accepts it's a family party? We don't want this Aurangzeb rule," the prime minister said.

"I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the well being of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," he added.

13:00 PM Modi questions Congress for not giving OBC Commission Constitutional Status

Prime Minister Modi questioned Congress at a rally in Dharampur for not giving OBC Commission Constitutional Status. He said, "Why did the Congress not give Constitutional Status to the OBC Commission? We got a bill but when we did so, they stalled it in the Rajya Sabha. This anti-OBC Congress should be severely punished by the people."

12:53 Warning the Opposition for 'looted the poor' the prime minister has said, "I am not scared of you, will return everything that belongs to the poor".

12:46 PM Modi has said, "Why has the Congress stopped saying BJP is anti-Muslim? Earlier, they would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing in this election, where they are going. Unfortunately for them, Muslims know their real nature."

"Disinformation like BJP does this and that against Muslims has been spread. This family party made it their main agenda to spread disinformation about BJP. But Gujarat people are not so naive, they have now become sensitive and aware to disinformation," he added.

12:35 Speaking at a rally in Dharampur, the prime minister said, "I have spent many years of my life in Gujarat's tribal stretch, worked among tribal communities.

"Congress can't either tolerate or accept leaders from Gujarat. They have always defamed Gujarat," he added.

12:31



I condemn the attack on the Dinyanil Rajyaguru brother of Indranil Rajyaguru, @INCGujarat Candidate against CM Rupani. Fearing defeat of CM Police has also arrested Indranil Rajyaguru & @SATAVRAJEEV late night, without giving any reason.      Bharat Solanki (@BharatSolankee) December 3, 2017



12:24 Prime Minsiter Modi is now addressing a public meeting at Dharampur.

12:16 Away from the campaign, Rahul Gandhi files nomination papers for Congress top job

Meanwhile, away from the poll campaign in Gujarat, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi has filed his nomination papers for the party's top job.

The 47-year-old Gandhi scion is likely to emerge as the lone candidate in the fray and decks have been cleared for his election as the Congress president, succeeding his mother Sonia Gandhi, who has held the post for 19 years in a row now.

Read the full report here.

12:00 The prime minister will first address a public meeting at Dharampur, Valsad district in southern Gujarat.

11:43

11:16 PM Modi mocks Rahul over charge of giving land to industrialist

PM Narendra Modi on Sunday, mocked Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi over the allegation that he gave an "enormous piece" of land to an industrialist.

Modi also said 125 crore people of this country were his "God" and he was their priest.

"The Congress is being rejected from every corner of the country. They need to introspect," Modi said at a rally here.

Read the dull story here.

11:01 Meanwhile, BJP President Amit Shah will also be holding rallies in Vapi, Surat, Maroli Jalalpur, Navsari and Gandevi.

22   #__ - 6 :    

   

  

      7    18000         5500  10000 ? pic.twitter.com/KngeBgLlVp  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) December 4, 2017

10:17 Will ensure fair, transparent polls in Gujarat: Election Commission

The Election Commission (EC) today said it has directed the election machinery in Gujarat to ensure effective monitoring and comprehensive planning for "free, fair and transparent" polls in the state.

The EC reviewed poll preparations in Gujarat over the last two days.

Chief Election Commissioner AK Joti told reporters that the state election machinery had been directed to ensure effective monitoring, vigilance and planning to address concerns of political parties and instill confidence in the electorate.

Read the full story here.

09:55



Will continue the campaign across Gujarat. Looking forward to addressing rallies in Dharampur, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 4, 2017

09:43 Prime Minister will hold four public meetings in Gujarat today. His meetings will be held at Dharampur, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar.

On Sunday, the prime minister and Bharatiya Janata Party's 'start campaigner' held rallies in Bharuch, Surendranagar and Rajkot.
405200 03: Muslim children watch as communal violence erupts May 10, 2002 in the streets of Ahmedabad, India. A wave of revenge killings and clashes erupted in late February after a Muslim mob torched a train carrying Hindu devotees, killing 59 people. Officials put the death toll since the train attack at 890, but human rights groups and opposition parties say more than 2,000 people have been killed. (Photo by Ami Vitale/Getty Images)

The Madhya Pradesh Assembly on Monday unanimously passed a bill awarding death to those found guilty of raping girls aged 12 and below.

With the passage of the bill, Madhya Pradesh becomes the first state in the country where those convicted of such rapes will face the gallows.

Introduced in the House by Law and Legislative Affairs Minister Rampal Singh, the bill was discussed in detail and then passed by all parties, including the ruling BJP and opposition Congress.

The bill will now be sent to the President for his assent after which it will become a law, state Home Minister Bhupendra Singh told reporters outside the Assembly.

"It was a historic day for Madhya Pradesh as the state Assembly, as per the wish of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, passed a bill making a provision to award capital punishment to those indulging in such crimes (raping girls aged 12 or younger)," Singh said.

Capital punishment will be awarded to convicts under section 376 (A), which is related to rape, and section 376 (D, A), pertaining to gang rape.

Welcoming the bill, Chief Minister Chouhan said, "There are people in society who can be set right only by severe punishments. It (the legislation) will deal with them. We will also raise awareness in society against such crimes."
Answer: Vijay Mallya

Moneycontol News

The Westminster Magistrates Court in London will start the final hearing of Indias extradition request for Vijay Mallya against charges of fraud and money laundering filed by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate.

The infamous business tycoon, who was out on bail till today, will meet his fate after this final round of hearing that can extend till December 14.

The judgement would decide if he can be legally forced back to India to face trial for defaulting on loans to the tune of a whopping Rs 9,000-crore taken from multiple banks. The absconding Mallya had not consented to extradition when he was asked about the same earlier in a court.

Here are seven key things that has happened in the high-profile case of Vijay Mallya:

1. Indias Ministry of External Affairs submitted an extradition request in February for Mallya whose Kingfisher Airlines owes over Rs 9,000 crore to a consortium of 17 banks in India. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) also filed charge sheet against Mallya under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and requested for his extradition. The London court will hear their joint plea on extradition of Mallya.

2. The ED case alleges that Kingfisher Airlines diverted to shell companies abroad Rs 417-crore loan, which was meant for the airline, and was taken from IDBI Bank. The ED alleged that Mallya had laundered a total of Rs 1,300 crore through 13 shell companies.

3. The 61-year-old tycoon had fled to England in March last year to evade trial, following which India canceled his passport and started the extradition process. He was then arrested in London in April this year on an extradition warrant but he got a conditional bail in just a few hours by paying a bond of 650,000 pounds.

4. Mallya has repeatedly denied all the allegations against him. He has also said the allegations of money laundering against him were false and he has evidence to back up his claim.

5. During one of the hearings of Mallyas case, the London court had raised concerns regarding alleged human rights violation in Indian prisons. The Indian government followed up with an assurance that the tycoon will not face any threat to his life in case he is extradited and lodged in Arthur Road jail of Mumbai. The government submitted details of the prison conditions to the court, as per a report in the Hindustan Times.

6. The India High Commission had stated that the evidences presented against Mallya in the UK court makes a strong case against the liquor baron. India has submitted a number of evidences to the court to prove Mallyas loan default and that it was intentional. But UK puts India in category two countries regarding extradition, making the process more difficult and lengthy compared to the one availed by European countries and other first-world nations.

7. The 25-year old extradition treaty between India and UK has not yielded a good result wherein only one among several extradition requests made by India has been approved. It would be a rare achievement if the court rules in Indias favour and sends the tycoon back home. In that case, UK home secretary Amber Rudd would order Mallya's extradition within two months of the ruling, unless multiple court appeals hinder and prolong the process.

With inputs from PTI.
Vivek Wadhwa

Imagine a world in which rich and poor alike have unlimited food, live in excellent health, and can zip through the streets of Delhi, Bangalore, or Mumbai in minutes in driverless cars  and enjoy affordable clean energy, education, and comfortable housing.

This seems like a dream, doesnt it? It isnt. It is a future that can be created within two decades. Technology advances are literally making science fiction a reality.

Take the smartphones that even rickshawallahs can now afford. These are powered by computers many times more powerful than the Cray Supercomputers that could not be imported to India (because of an arms embargo imposed on India in the late 1980s; and this was a dual use technology). The accelerometers and gyroscopes in these are more precise than those that Americas nuclear missiles once contained. The photographs that NASAs rover Curiosity (launched in 2011) is sending from Mars are taken with a 2 MP camera  something even the poor would scoff at now.

That is how rapidly technology is advancing. Computers are doubling in their capabilities every year on a trajectory known as Moores Law. And everything they touch is advancing on the same exponential curve, including sensors, artificial intelligence, robotics, genomics, and energy technologies.

India has long been held back by the cost of energy and the reliance on high-polluting fossil fuels. But the price of solar power generation has been falling by 10 to 20 percent a year for the past 40 years, and with every 20 percent reduction, total installed capacity has doubled. In 1980, solar-generated electricity in the US cost USD 1.50 per watt. In May, a solar power auction at Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan yielded a bid of Rs 2.44 per unit for a 500-megawatt installation, a greater than 99 percent reduction in cost. The trend is accelerating; by 2030, energy will be as inexpensive as cellphone minutes are now  and available to all.

With inexpensive energy, the problem of water shortages and waterborne viruses can be solved because boiling all of the water needed will be economical  and India is surrounded by oceans.

Along with advances in LED lighting, which are already as economical as tungsten-based lightbulbs, and breakthroughs in optimising light frequencies for growing plants, the falling price of energy makes vertical farming economical. Using sensors and artificial intelligence software to monitor crop growth in glass-enclosed buildings, India can grow all the organic food it needs.

And then there is health care. World wide, more than four billion people lack access to quality diagnostics, so ailments that could be cured if diagnosed lead instead to suffering and death. But with the declining cost of micro-electromechanical- and nanofluidic-based sensors, a new generation of inexpensive medical devices are possible.

Forus Health, for example, has developed a portable eye-screening device, called 3nethra, that can detect eye pathologies such as cataract, diabetic retinopathy, and cornea-related problems. Health Cubed has built an inexpensive medical-grade device that provides 32 measures and tests, including blood pressure, blood sugar, blood haemoglobin, and urine protein and is able to diagnose diseases such as HIV AIDS, syphilis, dengue, and malaria. MapMyGenome analyses genome data to provide insights into the genetic bases of various aspects of individuals health, including traits, lifestyle, drug responses, and inherited conditions. These are all Indian startups that will soon help people all over the world.

With 3D printing, within 15 years, we will be able to digitally manufacture household goods and clothing and even buildings and electronics goods. The 3D printers of today are still slow and clumsy and do little more than produce device prototypes and toys. But exponentially advancing technologies move slowly before they do amazing things.

It will also become economical to synthetically produce meat. What if you were offered cooked protein which had the appearance, texture, and taste of beef or pork but was designed on a computer and produced in a 3D printerand no animals were even touched. Would you eat it? That is a question you may have to answer in 2027.

In education, it is already possible to watch educational videos on the same smartphones that one is gawking at Sunny Leone on. With AI-based learning apps and virtual reality headsets, which will also become affordable within five years, Indias entire education system could be transformed.Imagine learning Sanskrit by conversing with the inhabitants of ancient India, or learning mathematics by building pyramids in ancient Egypt in virtual reality. This will be possible.

It is not going to be smooth sailing to this amazing future, though. Every technology creates new risks, disrupts industries, and destroys old-line jobs. Technologies can be used for good and for evil. The challenge for India will be to ensure that the benefits of technology are shared equally, that the rewards of each technology outweigh the risks, and that there is greater freedom and autonomy for the people. If this is done right, it could open up the era of knowledge and enlightenment that we have dreamed of.
business Keep close eye on US mkt; 10,100 not good support for Nifty, sell on rallies: Pros Mitessh Thakkar of mistesshthakkar.com said selling on rally would help and momentum would come in once we break below 10,100, then we could see severe declines.
Experts suggest North Korea having fully submersible submarines firing a nuclear ballistic missile pose a dangerous scenario because they could offer the hermit regime a better chance of survival and might be harder to detect.

There are signs that North Korea's submarine missile program is expanding as it prepares its second test, adding to the risk that the nuclear-armed country could one day threaten the U.S. or its Asian allies with yet another powerful weapon in its arsenal.

Experts suggest North Korea having fully submersible submarines firing a nuclear ballistic missile pose a dangerous scenario because they could offer the hermit regime a better chance of survival and might be harder to detect.

It comes on the heels of North Korea on Tuesday launching a new Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, a road-mobile weapon the state-owned KCNA media claimed could carry a "super-large heavy warhead, which is capable of striking the whole mainland of the U.S."

The North Koreans appear to be getting more aggressive on submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) development and now have several shipyards active in the offshore-weapons program. The North is not believed to have the capability today to launch multiple ballistic missiles from a submarine. However, experts say the totalitarian state is working at a feverish pace and could have this submersible as early as next year.

"If North Korea can deploy not only developmentally a submarine-launched ballistic missile that is effective and deploy it on ballistic missile submarines, it certainly complicates defense against missile attacks," defense analyst Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., co-founder and CEO of Colorado-based imagery analysis firm KPA Associates LLC, told CNBC in an interview Friday.

In a 38 North blog post Friday, he revealed that "commercial satellite imagery from Nov. 11, 16 and 24 show that North Korea's second submersible ballistic missile test stand barge  a platform that allows for underwater missile launches outside of submarines  located at the Nampo Navy Shipyard is being prepared to enter service."

38 North, a project of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said the "second missile test stand barge

Bermudez, a 38 North contractor, explained that the test stand barge and platform are used to simulate the weapons that would be inside the submarine because it's considered too dangerous and costly to do such early testing inside a real submarine. He also said that the North Koreans know the U.S. military is watching its SLBM and submarine development so they have been doing things to mitigate the satellite surveillance capabilities, including resorting to concealment in some cases.

Still, Bermudez called the Nampo shipyard activities on the regime's west coast "a strong indicator that Pyongyang is advancing" in its SLBM program. And he said the North Koreans will need a series of tests from the submersible barge before deploying ballistic missiles on submarines.

Last year, North Korea conducted a test of its SLBM technology near its port city of Sinpo and reportedly flew one missile at least 500 kilometers (or about 300 miles), according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. Sinpo, located on the country's northeast coast, also is where the North reportedly has renovated large buildings that might be involved in the construction of a new SLBM-capable submarine.

The Sinpo-class experimental submarine that the North Koreans have today is believed to be up to about 2,000 tons and have a nautical range of about 2,800 kilometers (about 1,500 miles). Yet it features just a single launch tube and Bermudez said "no one considers that an operational capability."

According to Bermudez, Pyongyang is apparently building a submarine that will feature multiple tubes for ballistic missiles and greater capability at sea. He estimated the new submarine "could be launched any time next year and going forward."

To be clear, though, he said just because the submarine may launch doesn't necessarily mean it's fully operational. The expert explained how it typically takes a year or two after the submarine is launched that it "truly becomes operational" because it will go through a range of sea trials and necessary crew training.

Even so, having the submarine-launched ballistic missiles with nuclear capability is potentially a nightmare scenario for South Korea and Japan. That's because the submarines could potentially avoid detection by some of the most advanced defense systems.

For example, missiles fired by North Korean submarines off the east coast of Japan could potentially dodge detection from Japan's Patriot anti-missile system by launching from behind radar. At present, the detection is focused on missiles coming from land-based missiles in North Korea.

Similarly, the current THAAD anti-missile system deployed by the U.S. in South Korea is focused on identifying missile threats from the North. As a result, a submarine missile from the North Korean navy could be launched behind radar and perhaps evade existing defense systems.

"Up to now we've only had to worry about them coming from north to south or from west to east in the case of Japan and the United States," said Bermudez. "If they deploy a ballistic missile submarine with operational missiles, it can come from almost any direction around the peninsula."

Experts say U.S. bases in the Western Pacific, including Guam, also are potentially at risk if North Korea deploys submarines with SLBM weapons. At this point, though, it's not believed that the North Korean submarines have a range to reach the United States mainland.

That said, if the North's submarines could reach closer to the U.S. West Coast they would not need an intercontinental ballistic missile to threaten major American cities, says Loren Thompson, a defense industry consultant and chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based public-policy think tank.

"The biggest problem the U.S. faces in dealing with a North Korean nuclear launch is that you can't stop it if you don't know where it's coming from," Thompson said. "That is why the North Koreans are building mobile missile launchers on land and why they're trying to develop the ability to launch from under the seas."

At the end of the day, Thompson said what the North Koreans want is something the United States has in its nuclear arsenal  "a survivable retaliatory capability. If it's at sea, they might be very well obtain it."

But he said technological hurdles in developing a submarine with multiple ballistic missiles is rather challenging. That may be one reason North Korean hackers last year reportedly stole blueprints from Daewoo Shipbuilding, a large South Korean maker of submarines.

"You can't just launch the missile," Thompson said. "The exhaust will destroy the submarine. You have to push it into the air with gas, like compressed oxygen, and then ignite it once it's in the air. That is just more more complicated than launching from a land base."

North Korea's largest submarines at present include the so-called Romeo-class submersibles that are based on an old design from the Soviet Union. The 1,800-ton vessels are considered relatively easy to detect using anti-submarine warfare technology available to the U.S. and its Asian allies.

In fact, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been featured in state-run media taking tours and riding on board the green-painted Romeo-class submarines operated by the North's navy. Some estimates are the North has around 20 of the Romeo-class submarines.

The North Koreans also are known to have some 50 smaller submarines that are harder to detect and can sink ships with torpedoes. One of those submarines was believed to be responsible for sinking the South Korean Cheonan navy ship in 2010, resulting in the deaths of 46 sailors.
Men sit under a banner carrying a portrait of chief of India's Congress party Sonia Gandhi outside the Congress office in New Delhi May 16, 2014. Counting of votes began on Friday after India's mammoth election, which could usher in the most profound economic change in a generation if opposition leader Narendra Modi wins a clear mandate for his agenda to revive growth and create jobs. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi (INDIA - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS) - RTR3PEHK

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday filed his nomination for the post of the Congress President.

Experts suggest the 47-year-old leader of the party could win the election unopposed. That would become clear only on Tuesday, when the Central Election Committee (CEC) scrutinises the nomination paper.

If no other candidate files nomination, Gandhi could be declared the winner unopposed on December 11.

If he faces competition, the election will be held on December 16. The votes will be counted and the result will be declared on December 19.

The 131-year old political party has its own constitution which has laid down elaborate procedure to elect its President. Here's how the 'Grand Old Party' of India, elects its highest leader:

Top leaders of the party are members of a top executive body called the Congress Working Committee (CWC).

Following a meeting of the CWC, the party's election committee sets an election schedule.

All members of the Pradesh Congress Committees are delegates to the party according to Article XII of the party's constitution.

It takes ten delegates of the party to jointly propose any other delegate's name for the post of the party President. The term of the Congress president is five years.

As delegates from across the country can nominate a fellow delegate, about 50-55 sets of nomination papers are expected to be filed on his behalf, media reports suggest.

After declaration of the election procedure, delegates can file their nominations according to the specified date. The nominations are then scrutinised and a final list of candidates is published.

After which, candidates are given a seven-day window to withdraw their nomination if they wish to do so.

Winning unopposed

In a situation where only one candidate is contesting the election, he or she is declared the winner.

The president officially takes charge starting from the All India Congress Committee (AICC) plenary session. Till the plenary session, the winner is called as the 'President-elect'.

Contest

In a situation where there are multiple candidates, the winner has to secure more than 50 percent of the total votes from AICC delegates.

Party rules state that, if in case, no candidate is able to secure more than 50 percent votes as the first preference, the second preferences would be counted.

If the election process is disrupted due to any unforeseen circumstance, the CWC has the power to appoint a provisional President till the time, the process is completed.
On November 29, 2017, North Korea, following orders from its Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, tested its most powerful missile yet, the Hwasong-15, which has all of mainland US, India and global cities like Paris, London, Dubai, Barcelona, Sydney and Tokyo within its reach.

With this, Kim Jong-un has underlined his nuclear credentials, pitting him against other nuclear powers like the US, UK, Russia and France. Nuclear deterrence is under debate once again, and if history is anything to go by, Kim Jong-un will never give up his nuclear toys.

Apart from compromising his countrys defence, giving up the nukes wont serve Kims self-interest either. Two instances from recent history illustrate the perils of cooperating with the wider world: The fall of dictators Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein - who ruled for more than two decades  was declared nuke-free by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as early as 1994. A US-led Iraq invasion followed in 2003, after allegations that Saddam had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction  an unverified claim. He was hanged to death in 2006 - 12 years after IAEA declared Iraq nuke free.

Libya ruler Muammar Gaddafi agreed to eliminate the countrys nuclear weapons programme in 2003. British and American experts, along with the IAEA, dismantled the programme in 2004. During the Arab Spring in 2011, rebels rose against Gaddafi. To control the unrest, NATO sent war planes to bomb government positions. A group of rebels captured Gaddafi and killed him the same year  eight years after he voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons.

India and Pakistan are clear examples of nuclear deterrence in practice. Israel, for instance, follows the policy of nuclear ambiguity where it is believed that it possesses nuclear weapons but it hasnt officially admitted to having them. In either case, the motto is to avoid war/destruction and ensure safety through a threat. Kim Jong-un is doing the same. There could be other reasons why he wont give up the nukes but as a declared nuclear state, North Korea is perhaps more insulated from attack; more to the point, Kim himself certainly is. (Source: Why Kim Won't Give Up His Nukes)

N Korea missiles
British Prime Minister Theresa May failed to strike a Brexit divorce deal with EU negotiators in Brussels on Monday despite earlier reports of a breakthrough agreement that would have kept British-ruled Northern Ireland aligned with EU regulations.

Both sides said they should unlock talks on future trade relations in the coming days.

We will reconvene before the end of the week and I am also confident that we will conclude this positively, May said after a lunch with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who also voiced confidence in overcoming outstanding obstacles.

He insisted the meeting, after days of intensive talks behind the scenes, was not a failure and, well aware the EU does not want to humiliate May as she accepts many of its terms for withdrawal, credited the prime minister with hanging tough.

They spoke after government sources in Dublin said London had agreed to keep Northern Ireland aligned to EU regulations to avoid a hard border with the Irish Republic.

Word of that sent the pound higher on hopes of rapid trade talks but also provoked an angry response from Mays allies in Northern Ireland, demanding equal treatment with the rest of the United Kingdom.

Underlining the conundrums of Brexit, the idea of Northern Ireland remaining closely linked to the EU single market prompted speculation that, to avoid new barriers between Belfast and London, the British mainland would have to follow suit.

The leaders of Scotland and London, which voted against Brexit, demanded they be allowed the same EU relationship as Northern Ireland. Yet May has ruled out such differentiated treatment or staying in a customs union or the single market.

She is a tough negotiator, and not an easy one, Juncker said in remarks reflecting concern in Brussels that concessions by May could fuel a disruptive push in London to unseat her.

She is defending the point of view of Britain with all the energy we know she has, the EU chief executive told reporters.

Despite our best efforts and the significant progress we and our teams have made over the past days on the remaining issues, it was not possible to reach a complete agreement.

The sudden announcement that no deal had been reached swiftly squelched optimism that had spread earlier on Monday.

Irish government sources had said agreement had been reached on an overall deal for the Irish issues.

The key phrase is a clear commitment to maintaining regulatory alignment in relation to the rules of the customs union and internal market which are required to support the Good Friday Agreement, the all-island economy and the border, one of the Irish government sources said.

The Irish border, which is now completely unguarded and barely even marked, would not change its physical appearance after Britain leaves the EU, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said. Fears that a hard border could disrupt the peace deal in the north had driven both sides to find solutions.

Juncker spoke to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar by phone. EU lawmaker Philippe Lamberts, who met Juncker, said the draft text on Ireland committed Britain to full alignment on rules.

Donald Tusk, the EU summit chair, tweeted ebulliently after speaking to Varadkar that there was good progress on the Irish issue to unblock UK-EU trade talks: Tell me why I like Mondays! the former Polish premier wrote. Getting closer to sufficient progress at December (EU summit).
Education

Montgomery County Community College will present the spring installment of the interview/talk show program Issues and Insights April 20 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Science Center room 214, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The programs will be simulcast to the Colleges West Campus in South Hall room 216, 101 College Drive, Pottstown. Dr. Kolsky will offer a humorous presentation, Carrots, Sticks and Politics: A State of the Nation and the World Message. In this speech, he will provide his interpretation of domestic and international politics and then welcome questions from the audience for discussion. Issues and Insights, is free and open to the public. For information, contact Dr. Thomas Kolsky, professor of political science, at 215-641-6380 or tkolsky@mc3.edu.

Montgomery County Community Colleges STEM Scholars Program will host a STEM Jam! open house April 25 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Advanced Technology Center at the Colleges Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The drop-in event is designed for students interested in learning more about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Activities will include STEM program information and career advising, STEM speakers throughout the day from industry and academia, micro-helicopter and robotics competitive obstacle courses and demonstrations and static models of STEM student and faculty work. For more information about STEM Jam! or STEM programs at MCCC, contact William Brownlowe at wbrownlowe@mc3.edu or 215-641-6644, or Robin Zuhlke at 215-619-7440 or rzuhlke@mc3.edu.

Temple Ambler, located at 580 Meetinghouse Road, presents the following events:

International Club Global Bazaar April 15 from 5 to 8 p.m. The Ambler Campus International Club invites all students, faculty, staff and the community to celebrate a multitude of diverse cultures, which will be showcased at the organizations Global Bazaar. This family friendly event will highlight cultural traditions and celebrations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South American, North America and Africa through music, entertainment, food and informative displays developed and presented by students at the Ambler Campus. Young visitors will be provided with passports, which they may get stamped at each country they visit. Prizes will be awarded to world travelers who talk to cultural representatives, answer questions about the countries theyve visited and take part in fun-filled activities designed to help them learn about the rich diversity of cultures found throughout the world. Refreshments will be served. The event is free. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail tuc36466@temple.edu.

EarthFest 2011 April 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. More than 75 exhibitors, including the Philadelphia Zoo, The Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Elmwood Park Zoo and the Insectarium, will take part in EarthFest 2011. School students of all ages are invited to attend and develop displays of their own. EarthFest partner the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society also offers its Kids Grow Expo, featuring the Junior Flower Show, as part of the event. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail duffyj@temple.edu.

Annual Spring Plant Sale May 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The plant sale  an Ambler Campus tradition dating back to the early 1900s  will feature woody plants and perennials in portable sizes, hardy trees, shrubs, and vines, native plants that are attractive to wildlife, herbs, and hanging baskets. There will also be numerous special plants for sale to highlight Amblers special anniversary year. Garden books and garden tools will also be available for sale. Students, staff, and volunteers from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture and the Ambler Arboretum Advisory Committee will be available to answer questions. All proceeds from the Spring Plant Sale will support the Ambler Arboretum Fund and the Pi Alpha Xi National Honor Society. Information: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

June Homecoming/Louise Bush-Brown Garden Dedication June 5 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. (June Homecoming), Bright Hall Lounge; 2 p.m. (Garden Dedication), Ambler Campus Formal Perennial Gardens. Tickets  June Homecoming: Participant  $18 per person; Sustainer  $25 per person; Benefactor  $40 per person. The 2011 June Homecoming, sponsored by the School of Environmental Design Alumni Association, will include the Alumni Association annual meeting and luncheon. June Homecoming will be followed by the formal dedication of Temple University Amblers Formal Perennial Gardens as the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Gardens. During this 100th anniversary of the campus, Temple University Ambler and the Ambler Arboretum of the Temple University is honoring Louise Bush-Browns many contributions to the history of the campus by formally dedicating the gardens in her honor. During the program, campus Executive William Parshall will welcome guests, Ambler Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey will speak about the Bush-Browns and the history of the garden, and an official ribbon cutting will be held for the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Garden. Following the ribbon cutting, guests are invited to take a tour of the gardens, which will wend their way to the Campus Greenhouse for the School of Environmental Designs annual Plant Auction. Information (Garden Dedication): 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Information (June Homecoming): 215-482-0722. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

Northview Garden Tour and Fundraiser for the Ambler Arboretum June 12 from noon to 5 p.m. Call for reservations. Tickets: $15 per person or $20 at the door. In addition to the gardens of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey has a garden oasis all her own right in Ambler  Northview. Visitors will have the opportunity to take self-guided tours throughout the many gardens, where garden experts will be available to answer questions about the various designs. The Ambler Keystone Chapter of the Womans National Farm and Garden Association will also provide tea and refreshments. All proceeds from the tours will support the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University. Information or to register: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

The Senior Adult Activities Center of Montgomery County, 536 George Street, Norristown, will hold the following events:

SAAC Adult Day Care, an alternative to Nursing Home Care is available  for information call 610-275-1960

Volunteers are needed for Meals on Wheels Program (call the number above)

SAACs Fifth Avenue Boutique opens Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Exercise with Theresa will be held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1 p.m.

Dance class is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Tai Chi is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Yoga is held every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m.

Line Dancing is held every Thursday at 10:30 a.m.

Dancing with Joan is held every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.

Sculpture Class is held Wednesdays from 2 to 3:30 p.m.

Why Should I Learn Spanish? will be held Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m.

Generations On-Line computer classes for seniors will be held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.  4 p.m.  computers are available during those hours.

Health Living will be held every Tuesday at 1 p.m.

Boomer U will hold the following events. Boomer U is located at 45 Forest Avenue, Ambler. Registration & payment is required for all events: 215-619-8863.

Pilates Class is held Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:30 a.m. First class is free; please bring a mat. For information call 610-291-5376.

Blue Bell School of Dance, 921 Penllyn Blue Bell Pike, Blue Bell, hosts Argentine Tango Classes and a Milonga dance party every Friday evening. Lessons start at 8:30 p.m. followed by dancing at 9:30 p.m. Andrew Conway, master Argentine Tango dancer, instructor and performer and his partner Linda Chase will instruct. All levels welcome and no partner is needed. Refreshments will be served. Fee is $12 per person and includes lesson and dancing. Information: 215-634-1101 or www.amoretango.com.

The Montgomery Hospital Medical Center will offer the following classes:

Childbirth Education Class- all parents are invited to participate, including those who are delivering at

other hospitals. For more information on maternity services or classes, call 610-270-2020.

CPR and First Aid Courses are offered for beginners to experiences health care providers. Call 610-270-2313.

The Ambler SAAC (Senior Adult Activities Center), located at 45 Forest Ave in Ambler will hold the following events:

Tai Chi every Monday and Thursday at 11 a.m.

Yoga is every Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Friday at 10:30 a.m.

Strength and balance training every Wednesday at 10 a.m.

Armchair Aerobics is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Gourmet Weight Wise every Thursday at 12:30.

Fitness Center and Pool Room open daily 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

The Diabetes Education Center will offer day and evening classes each month. Health insurance pays for diabetes education classes. Preregistration is required. Call 610-270-2301.

For Kids & Families

The Ambler Kiwanis Club will host its annual Easter Egg Hunt April 26 at 10 a.m. in Ambler Borough Park, located just off of the intersection of Hendricks Street and Valley Brook Road. Members of the Wissahickon Key Club will assist Kiwanians in hiding thousands of wrapped chocolate eggs in a designated area of the park. Also hidden will be plastic colored eggs, which are redeemed for prizes. Elementary school children are separated by age.

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation will hold its 21st annual Storybook Egg-Stravaganza April 15 fom 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Upper Dublin Township Building. Toddlers and preschoolers love this annual event where photo opportunities with favorite friends abound! Treasures are collected from UDP&Rs assortment of lifesize cutouts of favorite cartoon characters from Disney, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon and other well-known animation. Children can have their picture taken with Bugsy OHare; bring your own camera. And dont forget a basket for goodies! $7 for UD residents; $12 for non-residents. Pre-register at 215-643-1600 ext. 3443.

Splash Week is a free week-long program that teaches children and families basic swimming skills and water safety practices. All YMCA branches will host multiple classes each day from April 11 to 15. For more information, contact the Ambler Area YMCA at 215-628-9950.

Healthy Kids Day is April 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The day is filled with fun, engaging and artistic activities that cultivate healthy living as part of the YMCAs larger efforts to help more kids and families become physically active. All activities are free and open to the community. For more information, contact the Ambler YMCA at 215-628-9950. No reservation is required.

The Ambler Area YMCA has added several new programs for area youngsters. Classes are held late afternoons or evenings on various weekdays. For more information, visit philaymca.org or call 215-628-9950.

Basic Beading: Ages: 10+. Wednesdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. This class will teach you the fundamentals of wiring and stringing along with how color can be used to create unique and vibrant beadwork design. You will create various jewelry including earrings, bracelets, charm pendants and much more! Supplies will be provided. Bringing your own jewelry pliers or tools would be a plus.

Messin with the Masters: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. Learn about some of the worlds greatest artists. You will be inspired to create your own Starry Night with oil pastels and tempera paints, a tissue paper painted Monet garden, a Picasso head using scraps of paper, a Georgia OKeeffe clay flower bowl and a Rousseau jungle collage.

Super Scientist: Ages: 5-7. Mondays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Well be concocting chemistry experiments such as making slime, mixing potions and having fun with magnet magic. Your budding little scientist will enhance his/her creative thinking and motor skills and to top it off will learn that science can be serious fun.

Wacky Junk Art: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 6 to 6:45 p.m. Why throw it away! Instead join us to make household junk into aliens from outer space, wacky specs, crazy hats, body masks or a recycled train.

Globe Trotters: Ages: 4-6. Tuesdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Youre never too young to start thinking globally. Each week, we explore a new country through crafts, games, music, stories and even some taste-testing. A perfect introduction to our great big world!

Crazy about Crafts: Ages: 5-7, Thursdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Let your childs creative juices flow with our fun arts and crafts projects each week. Fine motor skills and creative thinking skills will be enhanced with this crafty class.

Come out and join the Ambler Area YMCAs Teen and Junior Leaders Club. Participants are given the freedom to plan community service projects year round and truly make a difference in the lives of people in need. Those in Teen and Junior Leaders also attend leadership retreats all along the East Coast three times a year and meet other leaders who are doing the same great work in their respective areas. Dont miss out on this inspiring opportunity. Teen Leaders, ages 13-17, meet every Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Junior Leaders, ages 10-12, will begin in the spring and will meet every Monday. For more information, contact Mike Miles, Teen Director, 215- 628-9950 x 1540 or mmiles@philaymca.org.

Did you know that the new Ambler Area YMCA holds childrens birthday parties at its site for members and non members as well. The Ambler Y does all the work from start to finish and birthday parties include a personalized cake, ice cream, beverage and paper products. Parties are held on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and include two party hosts to lead activities, set-up, clean-up and assist with serving. You can have a Splash Party for children ages six to 12 in the new zero depth entry pool with water slide and spray fountains. Up to 25 children have exclusive use of the pool area with 30 minutes in the party room. Sports Parties are offered for kids ages four to 12 with age appropriate activities and games, and sports such as floor hockey, soccer, basketball or dodge ball. Children ages three to five years of age will enjoy parties in the Family Active Center with use of the Moon Bounce and organized activities, such as parachute play and songs. For information, 215-628-9950 ext. 1583.

Community Events at the Ambler Y:

-YAchievers YMCA Achievers is a developmentally based, extracurricular, educational and team mentoring program designed to help students in grades five through 12 prepare for fulfilled livelihoods in college and beyond. Participation is free and all students in this program receive a free YMCA membership. Registration for the 2009 program begins now. You do not need to be a YMCA member to utilize these special services. Call 215-628-9950 to register.

Greater Norristown Art Leagues Childrens Weeklong Summer Art Camps will be held at 800 West Germantown Pike in East Norriton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the summer. The cost per session is $125 per student for ages 6 and up. Jo Ann Cooksey Bono teaches an introduction to basic drawing skills and techniques from 10 a.m. until the lunch break each day. In the afternoon sessions, Mary Vogel Lozinak involves the students in hands on projects such as collage, papermaking, T-shirt printing, 3D design and sculpy clay. Fridays Graduation Day includes an art show, awards ceremony and reception for parents, siblings, grandparents and friends. All supplies are included. Students provide their own lunch. A refrigerator is available and the building is air-conditioned. This is the 15th year to run this successful program. Both instructors are professional artists with State Police and Child Abuse Clearances. To register, call Jo Ann at 610-279-1008, or register on-line at www.gnal.org.

Health

Dresher Physical Therapy is hosting an interactive seminar discussing its Golf Assessment Progam April 30 from 10 a.m. to noon at Dresher Physical Therapy, 1075 Virginia Drive, Suite 200, Fort Washington. Physical therapist Chris Miller, certified through the Titleist Performance Institute, will discuss why your body may be the most important piece of golf equipment you invest in and how this can drastically improve your game. $10 in advance; $15 at the door. Call 215-619-4545 to reserve your spot.

The Chestnut Hill Center for Enrichment, Center on the Hill and Chestnut Hill Hospital will host a Senior Health and Resource Fair April 14 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, 8855 Germantown Ave. The event is free. For more information, call 215-248-0180 or e-mail chseniors@cavtel.net.

The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is hosting Help Yourself to Health, a new six-week workshop for older adults with ongoing health conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, heart disease and others. The free workshop will take place at the Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center, 45 Forest Ave. on six Thursdays, May 12 through June 16 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Although there is no charge to participate, registration is required. To register, call 215-619-8863.

The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is sponsoring an eight-week program called A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns About Falls. Presented by the Montgomery County Health Department, this workshop will be held on Tuesdays, May 3 to June 21 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ambler Center, 45 Forest Ave. If you pre-register by April 27, the fee is only $5! Registration at the first class is $10. (Checks should be payable to SAAC and will benefit our Meals on Wheels program that serves homebound seniors.) A workbook will be provided and refreshments will be served. Call 215-619-8863 to register or for more information.

Fort Washington Wellness Center classes are ongoing. There are several offered during lunch or right after work, for your convenience: Boot Camp from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday; Zumba is MWF from 11 a.m. to noon and Friday at 4 p.m.; there are 25 cycling classes; Ashtanga and Vinyasana Yoga and Pilates; and a group Womens Strength Training class M-F from 10 to 11 a.m. Questions, call Cathy DeMarco at 215-641-1245.

Following the success of other local area programs, Impact Sports and Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation are delighted to team up again to offer a spring program for the 2011 season! Upper Dublin area children ages 3-5 years old can attend a Sports Program featuring their favorite sports games; soccer, rugby, hockey, track and field, basketball, and more. The program will start on April 27 and run through June 1. Cost for the program is $85 for the six weeks. The classes will be running 12- 1 p.m.; 1- 2 p.m.; 2- 3 p.m. For more info or to register, call Upper Dublin Township on 215 643 1600 or visit their website a http://www.upperdublin.net.

Spring Aquatic Programs  UDHS Pool:

-Summer is just around the corner  Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool can help get you into shape! Programs begin in March; preregistration is required.

 Shallow Water Aerobics  Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 8-8:45 p.m., $40R/$50NR.

 Adult Swim Instructions  Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 7-8 p.m., $50R/$60NR

-Open Rec Swims are fun for the whole family! Come out on Fridays from 7-9 p.m. or Saturdays from 1-4 p.m. and enjoy use of the pool and diving area. Fridays are offered through June 17; Saturdays are offered March 12-May 21.

-Join a growing group of adult lap swimmers and water walkers. Lanes are set aside evenings and weekends for use; lanes are shared. Monday  Thursday from 7:30-9:30 p.m.; Fridays from 7-9 p.m. and Saturdays (March 12-May 21) from 1-4 p.m.

-Private Swimming & Diving Lessons for ages 3-adult are offered at the UDHS Pool through a partnership with the Upper Dublin Aquatic Club (UDAC). Visit the UDAC website for more information, www.udac.us, and click the link to UDHS Private Lessons.

-Looking for local programs for US Masters Swimming (adults) or Water Polo (all ages)? UDAC and UDSD are working together to develop programs that will be offered at the UDHS Pool. Add your name to Interest Lists by emailing slohoefer@upperdublin.net. emails will be sent about clinics and program start dates.

Questions about Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool, group use of the pool or pool rental? Contact Susan Lohoefer, Facility & Community Affairs Manager at slohoefer@upperdublin.net or call 215-643-8800 x8994.

SilverSneakers Fitness Program. The Healthyways SilverSneakers Fitness Program is a result-oriented program that enables older adults to take charge of their health. The program is an innovative blend of physical activity, healthy lifestyle and socially oriented programing. Members of the program are eligible for a free YMCA membership, with use of the pool and exercise equipment, along with customized classes designed for older adults who want to improve their strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. If you are a subscriber to Independence Blue Cross (Personal Choice 65 PPO) or Keystone 65 HMO, Bravo Health, or Health Options Programs (HOP), call the Ambler Area YMCA, 215-628-9950 or Hatboro Area YMCA, 215-674-4545. You can also visit www.silversneakers.com.

Zumba Fitness offers Zumba dance/fitness classes at Academy of Dance and Music/BBAD Studio located at 1524 DeKalb Pike in Blue Bell (behind Sherwin Williams). Classes are offered three times a week: Tuesdays at 6 p.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 8 a.m. For a free trial pass for your first class, email us at info@danceandmusic.biz or call 610-277-2557. For more info, visit our site at www.academyofdanceandmusic.org.

Chestnut Hill Health Systems presents the following Health Education Programs:

FITNESS CLASSES

Golden Yoga: A Breathing, Stretching and Relaxation Class. Fridays, 2:30-3:30 p.m. Lea Auditorium, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. Registration for four classes at a time required. Golden Yoga is Classical Yoga, adapted by the SKY Foundation, to accommodate those who have difficulty getting up and down from the floor. The program includes postures, breathing, relaxation and meditation techniques, all performed while sitting in a chair and standing. Registration required. Call 215-247-3029. Cost: $20 for 4 classes per month.

Tai Chi: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8:30  9:30 a.m. Springfield Residence, 8601 Stenton Ave. Classes, for the novice or beginner/intermediate student, are designed to improve balance, power, posture, coordination, flexibility and mental focus. Slow, gentle movements are modified to most everyones abilities. For more information or to sign up for a free introductory class, call 215-882-2804. Cost: $8 per class/paid monthly.

SUPPORT GROUPS

Weight Loss Surgery Support Group: Fourth Wednesday of the month, 7-8 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. Join us for a monthly get-together where well share information for those interested in weight loss surgery, learn from guest speakers discussing current news on issues including lifestyle modification, nutrition and exercise and provide ongoing support for those who have completed surgery. Registration required. Call 215-753-2000.

Breast Cancer Networking Group: Fourth Tuesday of the month 5:30  7 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. A free, confidential support group for women living with a diagnosis of breast cancer designed to provide a forum for sharing information, feelings and concerns associated with breast cancer. Facilitated by Tish Wakefield, LCSW, Oncology Social Worker. Registration required. To register or for more information, call 215-248-8047.

New Moms Support Groups Tuesdays 10:30 a.m.  12 p.m.; contact Jeanine ORourke, MSW or 2:30  4 p.m.; contact Susan Schack, Ph.D Volunteer Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. The Center for Postpartum Depression at Chestnut Hill Hospital is pleased to offer two new support groups to support new moms. Both groups will be run by experienced mental health professionals who really get it when it comes to new motherhood and juggling relationships, extended family, work/family balance and self-care. If you are experiencing new mom challenges that often heighten anxiety and involve hormonally driven depression, join us for an informative and supportive forum to connect with other moms. Infants are welcome. $30 per session (flexible based on need). Registration is required. Call Dr. Schack, 646-265-2484, or Ms. ORourke, 215-206-2931.

Man to Man Prostate Cancer Support Group Third Thursday of the month 8-9 a.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. A networking group for men diagnosed with prostate cancer designed to provide education, support and encouragement. Spouses and partners welcome. Harry M. Baer, MD, Chief, Urology Division, will host Ask the Doctor. Registration required. Call 215-248-8325.

Contact the Senior Center by phone 215-248-0180 or email (chseniors@cavtel.net) with your questions about these programs or any of our on-going activities and classes.

Holy Redeemer HomeCare and Hospice seeks compassionate and emotionally mature volunteers to provide support to local hospice patients and their families in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. Volunteers may also assist with pet therapy and administrative work within the hospice department and are requested to have daytime availability. Hospice patient care volunteers visit with patients in their homes or nursing facilities once a week for two to three hours. They provide emotional support and companionship to patients and family members, assist with errands or provide respite for caregivers. Bereavement volunteers support the families of hospice patients following the loss of a loved one, while administrative volunteers assist with typing, mailings and/or filing. Hospice care workers provide a great service to families and loved ones of hospice patients. Many volunteers also report a great deal of personal satisfaction as a result of their services. Patient care and bereavement volunteers complete an application and attend an 18-hour volunteer training program that covers the medical, psychological and spiritual aspects of hospice volunteering. Day and evening training programs are offered. To sign up for volunteer opportunities in Pennsylvania, contact Holy Redeemer Volunteer Coordinator Jean Francis at 215-698-3737 or email jfrancis@holyredeemer.com.

Librarytalk

Upper Dublin Public Library, 805 Loch Alsh Avenue, Ft. Washington, 215-628-8744

www.upperdublinlibrary.org

APRIL CHILDRENS PROGRAMS:

Storytimes: Please register in the library.

o Wee Ones: 0 to 23 months Thursdays and Fridays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m.

o Tiny Tots: age 2. Wednesdays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. and Fridays 11 to 11:20 a.m.

o Jr. Book Lovers: ages 3 to 6. Tuesdays 10:30 to 11 a.m.

o Bedtime Storytimes: 7 to 7:30 p.m. April 20 and 27. Wear your jammies, bring your teddy & hear Miss Barbara read bedtime stories! For ages 3 to 6.

APRIL TEEN PROGRAMS:

North Hills Library Teens April 28 from 4 to 6 p.m. Movie Matinee

APRIL UDPL ADULT PROGRAMS:

NEW! ESL Conversation Group. Tuesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. Interested in practicing your English in a safe and caring environment? Come to our conversation group and improve your skills! Please register with Kay Klocko at 215-628-8744 or kklocko@mclinc.org.

One-on-One Computer Mentoring. Get personalized assistance from experienced computer volunteers! Sign-up for a one-hour session. Limit one session per month. Please register  contact info above.

Book Groups Please register with Kay Klocko 215-628-8744.

o Daytimers: April 21 at 1:30 p.m. Tired of book groups where you all read the same book? Read any fiction or non-fiction book on this months theme: Explorers. Please register.

Meetings:

Annual Meeting of the Friends of UDPL: April 14 at 1 p.m.

Board of Directors: April 20 at 7 p.m.

Blue Bell Library www.wvpl.org Upcoming Events: The Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 650 Skippack Pike (Route 73) in Blue Bell, is diagonally across from the Blue Bell Inn. Call 215-643-1320 or visit their website at www.wvpl.org.

For children and teens at Blue Bell:

* Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian.

* Mondays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages.

* Fridays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Family Movies, new releases, second Saturdays of the month at 1:30 p.m.

* May 14  Despicable Me

* June 11  Alpha and Omega

* Special Events

* April  watch for date of spring/Easter events

* April 14 at 4:30 p.m.  Junior Lego Club for children ages 3 through 5. Parents and caregivers need to stay with children.

* April 14 at 7 p.m.  Jeopardy for ages 11 to 18. Test your book and library knowledge for prizes. Sign up to be a contestant. No sign up to be in the audience. Snacks provided.

* April 16 at 1 p.m.  Adult Mystery Book Group discussing The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King.

* April 16 at 1:30 p.m.  Childrens event for One Book, Every Young Child celebration. Story and craft for book Whose Shoes?

* April 19 at 7 p.m. and April 26 at 1:30 p.m.- Adult book group discusses The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Group led by Adam Button.

* April 30 through May 3  Friends book sale with about 10,000 items for sale for children, teens and adults.

* May  sign up for Science in the Summer

* June  sign up for Enrichment Programs for Elementary-Age children

* June  sign up for Summer Reading, all ages

For adults at Blue Bell:

* Daytime Book Discussion Group  fourth Tuesday, Jan  April at 1:30 p.m.

* April 26  The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

* Night-time Book Discussion Group  third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m.

o April 19  The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

* Art Series with Dr. Sheldon Weintraub, docent at The Barnes and speaker at local colleges

o April 27 at 2 p.m. The Art of Looking at Art-Is She Nude or Is She Naked?

*Mystery Book Discussion Group, third Saturday of the month at 1 p.m.; new mystery theme each month; www.wvpl.org/programs

* Yoga on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop-in class.

* Tai Chi on Mondays at 3 p.m. with Dr. Kurt Findeisen. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop in class.

* Philadelphia Museum of Art presents class on their Marc Chagall exhibit, April 13 at 2 p.m.

* Giant Book Sale, April 29  May 3

o Starts with almost 10,000 items for children and adults!

o Held during library hours.

o Preview for members of the Friends of the Library, April 28 at 7 p.m.

o Join the Friends and attend the preview sale. Modest fee to join.

* Blooms at Blue Bell Gardening Series

o May 11 at 1 p.m.  Summer Bulbs by PA Horticultural Society

* Knitting group Mondays and Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Work on your project or observe and learn. The groups continue year-round in the community room.

* Socrates Cafe discussion group every Monday at 7 p.m. You pick the topic to discuss each week. No sign-up, nothing to read.

* Bridge every Friday at 12:30 p.m. New players welcome.

* Mah Jong every Wednesday at 1 p.m. New players welcome.

*Chess every Wednesday at 7p.m. for adults and teens 14 and older.

* Movie Matinee showing recent releases every Thursday at 2 p.m. April 14: Maos Last Dancer; April 21: Welcome to the Rileys; April 28: Conviction; May 5: Inception; May 12: Inside Job; May 19 The Kings Speech; May 26 The Fighter; June 2 Rabbit Hole; June 9 Black Swan; June 16 127 Hours

* Ongoing like-new, year-round book sale for adults & children during library hours

* Library opening at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday!

Ambler Library, a branch of the Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 209 Race St., 215-646-1072. www.wvpl.org. All the following events occur at the Ambler Library.

* Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian.

* Tuesdays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages.

* For adults:

* Beading Group meets the first and third Monday of every month at 1 p.m. Work on your own projects or come to watch and learn.

* Free Family History Lookup with Connie Briggs. Email Connie for an appointment at the Ambler Library. conniebriggs@comcast.net

* Special Events:

* April 14 at 1:30 p.m.  Book Group discusses Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian.

* April 19 at 7 p.m.  Travel to Paris with world traveler Harry Balin. Tea and scones at 6:30 p.m.

* April 21 at 7 p.m.  Art with Sara for children in fourth through seventh grades.

*May 2 at 6:30 p.m.  Discuss the movie Lone Star with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time.

*May 10  Robert Capucci discusses Art into Fashion. Tea and scones served at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m.

*May 12 at 1:30p.m.  Book Group discusses The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.

*May 17  Tour the gardens of Devon and Southwest England with Lois McMullen. Tea and Scones at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m.

*June 13 at 6:30 p.m.  Discuss the movie Blade Runner with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time.

Meetings and Lectures

The Unisys Blue Bell Retiree Group will meet in the Church on the Mall in the Plymouth Meeting Mall April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Kathy Sacket Young, director/trainer with the North Penn YMCA, will speak on Keeping Fit in Retirement. For more information, contact Membership Committee Chairperson Jerry Feldscher at 610-275-3538 or President Al Rollin at 215-368-4833.

The next FWBA meeting will be April 28 at the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Networking begins at 11:30 a.m.; meeting from noon to 1 p.m. Leon Singletary, Principal, First Contact HR and FWBA Executive Board, will present: Social Media: How to Use It To Get More Business. Lunch is provided courtesy of the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Members are welcome to bring a guest. An RSVP is requested by return email or 215-628-0313.

Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern PA is hosting a information sessions over the next few weeks on how to become a Big Brother. The information sessions will take place: April 16 at noon, April 19 at 8 a.m. and April 28 at 6 p.m. All sessions will be held at the groups Norristown Office,t 530 DeKalb St., Norristown. For more information, call 610-277-2200.

The North Penn Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) normally meets on the third Tuesday of each month from now until May. Meetings are held at the William Penn Inn on Route 202 and Sumneytown Pike, Upper Gwynedd, PA. Social hour starts at 5:30 p.m., dinner is served at 6:30 p.m., and the technical program begins at 7 p.m. Cost with reservation is $28 for members. Members without reservations and guests pay $30. Students with reservations pay $15. Reservations may be made by noon on the Monday preceding the meeting by phoning 215-371-1854 or emailing the reservation to northpennima@yahoo.com northpennima@yahoo.com. Information about the North Penn Chapter is available at http://northpenn.imanet.org/.

LeTip, a professional organization of men and women who are dedicated to the highest standards of competence and service meets every Tuesday at Cedar Brook Country Club, 180 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell at 7 a.m. -meeting officially starts at 7:16 a.m. and ends at 8:31 a.m. Our purpose is the exchange of business tips, leads, and referrals. Each business category is represented by one member and conflicts of interest are disallowed. Guests are welcome to visit any of our breakfast meetings.

Every third Thursday of month, Sunrise Assisted Living of Blue Bell (795 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422, 215-619-2777) serves as a satellite site to 148th Legislative district PA congressman Mike Gerber from 10 a.m. to noon. Stop by for help needed with things such as disability placards and license plates, vehicle registration, utilities issues, birth/death certificates,property tax/rent rebates, etc. Notary services arranged by appointment.

The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce is an action-oriented organization dedicated to promoting its members and the economic health of eastern Montgomery county. The Chamber is committed to serving as a catalyst by uniting business, community agencies, government and education to make our county a great place to live and work. For information, call 215-887-5122 or visit www.emccc.org.

Do you have a fear of public speaking? Blue Bell Toastmasters Club can help. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m., on the second and fourth Tuesday at the Marriott Courtyard, located on Route 202, directly across from the Montgomeryville Mall. Learn how to improve communication and leadership skills in a friendly and supportive environment. Guests are welcome. Admission fee: $5. For more info, visit www.bbtoast.org.

The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will hold the following meetings (for reservations to any of the following, email info@PennSuburban.org)

-Breakfast News Network, 7:30-8:45 a.m. at Normandy Farm Hotel (1401 Morris Road, Blue Bell, PA 19422) $15 members, includes full buffet breakfast. Join us for a networking program at Normandy Farm Hotel every Thursday morning for breakfast, business news, informative speakers, and plenty of networking. The cost includes a full breakfast buffet. Copies of the business cards will be made available to those who would like them.

The BNI, Fort Washington Chapter meets every Monday at The Hilton Garden Inn, 520 Pennsylvania Ave., Fort Washington for a networking meeting. Meetings are from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Visitors are welcome. The only cost to attend is the cost of your meal. For information or a reservation to attend, please call Luanne Cram at 215-947-7784, or visit our Internet site at: http://www.BNIDVR.Com and click on the menu item Find a Chapter.

For the past seven years, people have enjoyed participating in WVWAs Adopt-a-Tree program. Individuals can support the Association in its reforestation efforts by purchasing native trees to be planted. Supporters can plant their adopted tree or have WVWA volunteers will plant it. Trees cost $30 each. If you would like to volunteer or purchase a tree(s), please contact: Bob Adams at Bob@wvwa.org or call: 215-646-8866 for more information. Check www.WVWA.org for directions and maps.

Sustainable Upper Dublin, http://sustainableupperdublin.org, meets the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m., at the Upper Dublin Township Building, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington, PA 19034. Please send any questions to suec@sustainableupperdublin.org or call 610-996-6316. To learn more about Sustainable Upper Dublin, view or join the discussion at http://googlegroups.com/group/sustainableupperdublin.

Special Events

The Mattie N. Dixon Community Cupboard will hold its first nutrition class April 19 at 10 a.m. at the Community Cupboard, 150 N. Main St., Ambler. Lynne Sinclair, a nutritionist from Abington Memorial Hospital specializing in diabetic nutrition, will conduct the class. Topics will include healthy eating, beneficial foods, recipes, making meals with every day foods, and how to use unfamiliar produce. A healthy snack will be provided.The class is is open to all residents in Montgomery County.

The Historical Society of Fort Washington presents The History of Conshohocken April 19 at 8 p.m. at the Clifton House, 473 Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington. Jack Coll will present an illustrated program on the history of the Borough of Conshohocken. Coll is a longtime resident of Conshohocken and a member of the Conshohocken Historical Society. He is co-author with his son, Brian, of the Arcadia Then and Now Series book Conshohocken. He has also done books Conshohocken and West Conshohocken Sports and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Italian Feast. He has taken many photos for the Conshohocken Record and the Norristown Times Herald. This program is free. Refreshments will be served. For additional information, call 215-646-6065.

Taste of the White House Soiree featuring former White House Chef Walter Scheib will take place April 29 at 6 p.m. at Manufacturers Golf & Country Club in Fort Washington to celebrate HealthLinks 10th anniversary and honor its founders, the Eugene Jackson Family. The evening will heat up with a Chef Meet & Greet, followed by a specially selected presidential menu. Gala tickets are $150 per person. Proceeds benefit HealthLink, a free clinic providing compassionate, quality medical and dental care to uninsured, working adults in Bucks and Montgomery counties who fall in between the health care cracks. Go to http://tasteofthewhitehouse.charityhappenings.org to make reservations online or lend support through sponsorship. For event information, call 267-699-0124 or email jmarushak@healthlinkmedical.org.

The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association will hold an open house at the Evans-Mumbower Mill April 17 from 1 to 4 p.m. The Mill is at the corner of Swedesford and Township Line Roads in Upper Gwynedd. The open house is free but donations are welcome. For more information, call 215-646-8866 o email info@wvwa.org.

The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce will host Breakfast With Your County Commissioners and State Representatives April 21 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Fort Washington, 432 W. Pennasylvania Ave. Commissioners: James R. Matthews (Chairman), Joseph M. Hoeffel (Vice Chair), State Representatives: Todd Stephens (District 151) and Josh Shapiro (District 153). Register onlineat www.emccc.org. $10 for EMCCC member; $20 for non-members.

Upper Dublins Districtwide Allied Art Show will be held April 27 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. in the Upper Dublin High School Athletic Complex.

The Rev. Alfred Muli, chaplain at Fort Washington Estates, will be the featured speaker at the Kiwanis sponsored breakfast observing the National Day of Prayer May 5 at 7 a.m. at the William Penn Inn. The breakfast is open to the public ($15). Reservations can be made by calling 215-646-4356 or by emailing georgesaurman@Juno.com.

The Upper Dublin Shade Tree Commission invites people to participate in its spring bare root planting events, sponsored in part by Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Friends of Robbins Park. On April 9, zix trees will be planted at the Evelyn B. Wright Park & Community Pool, 401 Logan Ave., North Hills, at 9 a.m., followed by the planting of 10 trees at Sheeleigh Park, Loch Alsh Avenue and Douglas Street, Ambler, at 10:15 a.m. On April 29, students from Upper Dublin High School will join the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to plant 16 trees in Robbins Park, Butler Pike and Meetinghouse Road, Ambler, to help launch the societys Million Trees campaign. This event will occur in conjunction with Temple Amblers EarthFest. Experienced tree-tenders are sought to assist the students. For more information,contact Ron Ayres at 215-653-0421 or 215-483-4348.

The Friends of the Wissahickon and the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association are teaming up once again to clean the Wissahickon Creek from top to bottom April 30 from 9 a.m. to noon. This spring marks the 41st anniversary of Wissahickon Valley Watershed Associations annual Creek Clean Up, and the second year that FOW has teamed up with WVWA. Volunteers of all ages will clean the creek, the surrounding trails and the many tributaries of the Wissahickon Creek. Armed with bags, volunteers will be assigned to sections of the creek. Following the clean up, all volunteers are invited to WVWAs Talkin Trash picnic in Fort Washington State Park, with food provided by Whole Foods Market of North Wales. The pavilion is located on Mill Road in Flourtown. To help out in Montgomery County, all volunteers must be pre-assigned a section of the Wissahickon Creek to clean. Please contact Bob Adams, WVWA director of stewardship, at 215-646-8866 ext. 14 or bob@wvwa.org. To work with the Friends of the Wissahickon in Philadelphia, meet at the pavilion along Forbidden Drive, a short distance south of the intersection of Forbidden Drive and Northwestern Avenue. Limited parking is available along Northwestern Avenue and other nearby streets. Volunteers are encouraged to bike or carpool to the event. To participate, register at www.fow.org. Contact Kevin Groves with questions at 215-247-0417 ext. 105 or groves@fow.org.

Montgomery County Community Colleges International Club invites the community to the second annual International Festival April 20 from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The rain date is April 26. The International Club will transform the outside quad area into multicultural celebration with various performances by dancers, singers and musicians. Artists will share their artwork at various display tables. Activities include games, raffles, Easter egg decorating and henna tattoos. Students will have samples of international cuisine at tables representing different countries and will serve food from various local ethnic restaurants. Throughout the evening, volunteers will accept donations and will raffle gift baskets and prizes to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. Donations of food, international clothes and prizes are needed. Volunteers, including artists and performers, are welcome. For more information or to sponsor an activity, contact Gillian Nel, International Club president, at gnel9277@students.mc3.edu or 267-974-0163.

The Arts and Humanities Division at Montgomery County Community College is partnering with the Philadelphia Writers Conference to host Memoirs Matter: How Life Stories (Including Yours) Can Transform Your Relationship to Literature April 23 from 1 to 3 p.m. in Advanced Technology Center room 101, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The event is free and open to the public. In the first part of this two-hour seminar, professor and author Robert Waxler will explain how writing his two memoirs affected his life as well as his relationship to literature. In the second part, blogger and workshop leader Jerry Waxler will present a sequence of steps to help writers find their own story. For information, contact Dana Resente at dresente@mc3.edu.

The Maple Glen Garden Club will hold its fourth annual Plant Sale on May 7 from 8 to 11 a.m. Perennials, shrubs, vegetables and native plants grown by the club members will be sold. The club uses the plant sale proceeds to fund community projects, a college scholarship and community plantings. The sale will be held in the 500 block of Coach Road, Horsham, as part of a neighborhood garage sale. Plants will be sold at bargain prices. For more information, email MapleGlenGardenClub@gmail.com.

The Relay for Life Craft Show is looking for local crafters to participate in show, which will be May 21 from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Wissahickon High School track, 521 Houston Road, Ambler. There is a $10 entry fee, and 20 percent of sales are donated to the American Cancer Society. Participants will receive a 6-foot table under a tent. For information, contact Joanne at joannescoles@comcast.net or Mindy at mcamsilver@comcast.net.

Spring House Estates is hosting its annual book fair on April 18 from 4 to 7 p.m. and April 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Included will be hardback and paperback used books. Spring House Estates is located at 728 Norristown Road, Lower Gwynedd.

The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will present the Penn Suburban/Hatfield Joint Business Card Exchange April 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Univest Bank Lansdale Area Financial Service Center, 120 Forty Foot Road, Hatfield. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. Join Univest National Bank and Trust Co. for a spring-inspired Business Card Exchange at its newest office in the Hatfield Pointe Shopping Center. Come out and meet members of Univests executive management team while enjoying fine food and beverages.

13th Annual Community Reading Day Kick-off Breakfast Get Together April 26 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the North Wales Area Library, 233 Swartley St., North Wales. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. For more information, contact the chamber office at 215-362-9200 or info@pennsuburban.org. Join presenting sponsor Verizon, chamber staff and fellow members for the Community Reading Day volunteer get together. The Community Reading Day program allows volunteers to read a designated book to second-grade students throughout 38 area public and private schools and present the book as a gift to each class. Even if you are not a volunteer, you are cordially invited to stop by to network, enjoy coffee and pastries.

Ambler Mennonite Church is hosting a Spring Craft Show and Flea Market May 21 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rain date will be May 28. The community is invited to shop the great craft booths, find some gifts and deals, as well as enjoy home baked goods and tasty lunch specials. Childrens activities are planned. All vendors are encouraged to contact the church at 215-643-4876 or AmblerMennonite@verizon.net. Advertising, signage, customer parking and a shuttle to auxiliary parking at nearby lots for vendors will be provided. 10 foot by 10 foot spaces can be rented for $5 each and tables for an additional $5 each. All proceeds from space and table rentals go toward school kits for children around the world. The church is located at the corner of East Mt. Pleasant Avenue and North Spring Garden Street, Ambler.

The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association presents The Life & Times of Aquatic Insects in the Wissahickon Creek April 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. Join WVWA for a hands-on program. RSVP required: www.wvwa.org or 215-646-8866. WVWA member fee: $5 per person / $15 per family. Non-WVWA member fee: $10 per person / $20 per family.

The photography exhibition Natures Palette by photo-artist Judy Miller will run March 18 to May 19 at the Art in the Storefront gallery, 41 E. Butler Pike, Ambler.

JPRN  Networking For People in Transition & People Who Can Help Them  Unemployment remains high. JPRN, the Jarrettown Professional Relationship Network can help. Are you trying to network your way to a new job? Do you have expertise or contacts that can help people in transition? Is your company or organization looking for people in the area? This is a free outreach program to support those seeking work, involve people with contacts and networking know how, and involve local companies. Meetings held monthly at Jarrettown United Methodist Church, Limekiln Pike.

Pennsylvanias Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) grant program is now open for the 2010-11 heating season. Grants are based on income, family size, type of heating fuel and region. Additional information, such as specific income limits, and applications for LIHEAP grants are available online via the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Access to Social Services (COMPASS) website at www.compass.state.pa.us. Applications are available at most public officals district offices, county assistance offices, local utility companies and community service agencies, such as Area Agencies on Aging or community action agencies.

Begin your holiday shopping at Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation! Entertainment books for 2011, Philadelphia North, are now on sale at $30 each. Regal/United Artists movie tickets are on sale for just $7.50 each, and tickets to the Adventure Aquarium, Baltimore Aquarium, and the Philadelphia Zoo are also available. Discounted ski vouchers to area mountains will be arriving in December; call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

RSVP of Montgomery County and the Wissahickon Valley Public Library have partnered again to offer the public their popular free mock interview sessions. The mock interviews are conducted by RSVP volunteers who are retired professionals, some of whom were in hiring positions themselves. Packets of information which include a sample employment application and interviewing tips with mock interview questions are available at the library to pick up prior to a scheduled mock interview or will be sent via email once the interview is scheduled. To schedule your interview, please contact Janis Glusman at RSVP 610-834-1040, ext. 16. The library is also offering a free resume review service. Bring in your current resume and the professional reference staff will assist you with hints and tips on capturing your work history accurately.

Registration for Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation summer playgrounds, Camp B.I.G. and Small Folks, X-Zone, and sports camps has began. Register online at www.upperdublin.net/store, or at the UDP&R office, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington. Call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information.

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Danielles Espresso Cafe presents Mornings at Mondaug Bark Park April 16 and May 21 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Meet fellow dog lovers. These events include complimentary coffee, treats for people and pups and raffles/giveaways.

Upper Dublins Annual Spring Flea Market will be held June 4 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Reserve a table, or come and shop. Tables are $15 for UD residents, $20 for non-residents. This successful event occurs rain or shine. Refreshments available. Call 215-643-1600 ext. 3443 to register for a table.

Regal movie tickets available for purchase at Upper Dublin Township Parks & Recreation. Reduced rate: $7.50 per ticket. Some restrictions apply. Call 215-643-1600 x3443.

Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation movie tickets $7.50 Regal Cinemas, United Artist & Edwards Cinemas on sale throughout the year Monday  Friday from 9 a.m.  4 p.m.

Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation Camp Sign-ups for Stony Creek Day Camp  Stony Creek Tracers and Park n Tots. Register on-line at www.whitpaintownship.org OrCome to Township Building with check or Visa MasterCard Monday  Friday from 9 a.m.  4 p.m. For additional information call 610.277-2400 ext. 374

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation offers exciting new programs for the fall:

-Returning favorites include UK Elite Petite Soccer, Tiny Dancers, Kiddie Tennis, Fun-nastics, Messy Playtime, Little Chefs, and more. Babysitters Training will be offered in November and December. Continuing Adult Fitness Classes include Cardio Circuit, Core & More, Yoga, Boxing, and Adult G.Y.M. For more information call 215-643-1600 x3443. Register for programs online at www.upperdublin.net/store.

Music and Theater

The community is invited to a Cantors Concert April 16 at 8 p.m. Congregation Beth Or, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen. Listen and hum-along to the Yiddish, pop tunes and classical music performed by Congregation Beth Ors own Cantor David Green and his special guest, Cantor Irvin Bell, from Temple Beth Israel in Deerfield Beach, Fla. The cantors will be accompanied by Mark Sobol and his Klezmer musicians. Tickets are $18 in advance and $25 at the door. RSVP with payment to Barb Murtha, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen, PA 19002, or call 215-646-5806 ext. 220.

Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse will host the Jameson Sisters May 14. Doors open at 7:30 pm, performance at 8:00 pm. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse is located at the corner of Rte. 202 & Sumneytown Pike, Gwynedd. $5 suggested donation. Light refreshment available at a modest cost. For further information, call 215-393-9576 or visit gwyneddmeeting.org/coffeehouse.html.

Celebrate patriotism through song with Gwynedd-Mercy Colleges choir, the Voices of Gwynedd, as it presents Hear America Singing April 15 at 8 p.m. The choir will perform song selections from all over the country, including Georgia on My Mind, New York State of Mind, and a medley including Philadelphia Freedom and Allentown. The performance will end with When the Saints Go Marching In to acknowledge the choirs upcoming tour in New Orleans. Hear America Singing will take place in the Julia Ball Auditorium, located in St. Bernard Hall. Parking is available in lots A, C and D. Admission is free.

The Choristers will present Anton Dvoraks Stabat Mater April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler. The choir will be accompanied by a 41-piece orchestra. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for senior citizens, $10 for students and children are free. Tickets will be sold in advance or at the door. For more information, call 215-542-7871 or visit TheChoristers.org

Religious News

The Staircase Gallery at Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington will feature the work of Emily Ennuat-Lustine. The artist will be showing paintings and graphics inspired by her own personal spiritual journey and quest for meaning. Some of the works to be shown have been inspired by Biblical Psalms and writings. Her work has been shown at Abington Art Center, Cheltenham Arts Center and Old City Gallery of Jewish Art among others. The exhibition is open Friday evenings starting Feb. 18 after Shabbat services. Gallery hours are: Mondays through Thursdays 10-4:30, Fridays 10-3 and following Shabbat Services and Sundays 10-1. The synagogue is located at 190 Camp Hill Road in Fort Washington. For additional information contact the synagogue office at 215-283-0276.

Reunions

St. Matthews High School Conshohocken Class of 1961 is looking for classmates. For details, contact Greg Marincola at 215-646-2239, 215-740-1296 or gregcola@comcast.net.

Olney High School Class of 1971 is Lloking for classmates for a 40th reunion Oct. 28. For details, contact Judy at ohsclassof71@yahoo.com or 215-870-7572.

Abington High School Class of 1961 is seeking classmates for a 50-year reunion to be held Oct. 14-15, 2011.Visit the website, www.abington61.com, for details or call 215-947-1779.

Overbrook High School class of January 1956 is having a 55 year reunion on May 22, 2011 at the Bala Golf Club in Philadelphia. For information please contact overbrookreunion56@comcast.net

Germantown High School Class Of January 1961 is looking for classmates for 50th year reunion to take place in May of 2011. Please contact: 215-362-9148, 856-577-0659 or samdelcomo@comcast.net

The June 1961 class of Germantown High School is holding their 50th reunion on May 15, which will be a brunch. For further details please contact Linda Dorfman Alten at lindaalten@yahoo.com or call 215-441-8411.

Support

New Life Presbyterian Church in Dresher, will host GriefShare, a special seminar and support group which will run on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m., from March 7 through June 6. At each meeting there will be a DVD about the grief process, discussion and reference to a grief workbook. Preregistration is required to secure a place in the group and to purchase a GriefShare notebook (for a one-time fee of $15). The notebook goes along with the 13-week schedule covering such topics as: living with grief, the effects of grief, and stuck in grief. For more information or to register, call: Sandy Elder at 215-884-5149.

PUPS (People Understanding Parkinsons) A self-help group for those adjusting to a new diagnosis or dealing with the early stages of Parkinsons Disease. Meets fourth Tuesday of the month from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at Abington Health Center, Schilling Campus, Willowood Building, 2510 Maryland Road, Suite 251, Willow Grove. For more information or to RSVP, contact Lorna at 215-542-2931.

The North Penn Visiting Nurse Associations Meals on Wheels program is looking for volunteers to pack or deliver meals to the elderly and infirmed. Meals are packed and delivered mornings, Monday through Friday. You can volunteer for as many days per week or month as you would like. Packaging meals requires approximately 2-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves making sandwiches, packaging food into individual serving containers and packing coolers with the meals. Delivering meals requires approximately 1-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves loading coolers into your car and delivering a route of approximately 10 to 15 stops. The Meals on Wheels program is also in need of emergency, winter-weather volunteers to pack and deliver meals in bad weather. North Penn VNA is located at 51 Medical Campus Drive in Lansdale and delivers meals in the Lansdale, North Wales and Blue Bell areas. For more information or to volunteer, please call Bridget, North Penn VNA Meals on Wheels coordinator at 215-855-8296.

Elkins Park Area CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) meets the first Tuesday of every month, 7- 8:30 p.m., at Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital in Elkins Park. For information on CHADD or ADHD, please see our website www.chadd.net/249 or call Claire Noyes at: 215-779-6656.

Center for Loss and Bereavement, 3847 Skippack Pike, Skippack (610-222-4110) www.bereavementcenter.org Offers professional counseling for individuals, couples, children and families dealing with issues of loss and bereavement. Six-week adult support groups: Newly forming young adult grief support group  every other Wednesday, 7  8:15 p.m. (free of charge); Monthly loss of child support  second Mondays, 7-8:15 p.m.; Six-week young loss of spouse/partner  Thursdays, 10-11:15 a.m.; Other groups scheduled as interest is shown for suicide loss support, adult loss of parent, motherless daughters, adult loss of sibling, coping with chronic illness and disability and mens loss of spouse. Nellos Corner Family Bereavement program offers peer grief support groups for ages 4 through teen and their caregivers  Every other Tuesday or Wednesday (free of charge) Local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children also meets at the Center. Registration required. Call for further information.

CHADD is a national organization for children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, providing education, advocacy and support for individuals and their families with AD/HD. Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital, 60 Township Line Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027, will host children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder on the First Tuesday of each month 7  8:30 p.m. Free, no childcare provided.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphias Kehillah of Old York Road is sponsoring a free Caregiver Support Group for individuals who care for an elderly person with cognitive and/or physical impairments. The group meets at SarahCare Adult Day Care Center, 101 Washington Lane, Suite G-6, Jenkintown, Pa., on the first Wednesday of each month. Patty Rich,
December 04, 2017

Yemen Without Saleh

Updated below

The former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been killed today. He was 75 years old but still very active in Yemeni politics. Video of his dead body being thrown onto the back of a pickup is making the rounds. One hears Houthi slogans shouted in the background. The pictures show a gun wound on the chest and at the side of the head. The face is easily recognizable. There are also pictures of his ID card.

Though several media report his death there is no confirmation yet from his GPC party or his family.

Over the last few days Houthi media had announced several times that Saleh had been killed. This morning Saleh's house was blown up. This time the Houthi news proved right. The circumstances of Saleh's death are not yet known, but it was said that he was fleeing Sanaa when fate caught up with him.

As we wrote in our recap on Saturday, Saleh had suddenly made peace with the Saudis and asked his followers to take up arms against his former allies. For more than two years he had allied with the Houthi against the U.S. and UK supported Saudi invasion and proxy forces. On Friday, after several days of local clashes with the Houthi, he had called for his followers to throw the Houthi out of the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

For a day his fighters, led by some 1,000 soldiers of Saleh's personal guards, were successful and the Houthi were kicked out of many of their positions. But they were not defeated. They called up more of their troops and on Sunday regained the lost ground and buildings. They occupied Saleh's media. His TV station started to transmit his enemies chants. Over the last night and throughout today they defeated Saleh's troops.

It is yet a mystery why not more of Saleh's supporters came to his help. Sanaa is his home turf and whenever he had called for demonstrations in the city, hundreds of thousands attended. For much of his 34 years of rule as president and even after his forced resignation Saleh could call on the seven "collar tribes" who's territory surround the capital. This time they did not come to his aid. Saleh also continued to command significant parts of the former Yemeni army. These currently hold positions far outside of Sanaa against Saudi proxy forces who try to conquer the mountainous territory of northwest Yemen. One wonders why he had not called them back in time.

It may be that his unexpected turn-on-a-dime towards a new alliance with the eternal enemies of Yemen, the Saudis, has alienated his followers.

The Saleh family and clan is quite big and resourceful. Many of his relatives have held high military positions in the Yemeni army and keep enough money to pay for their troops loyalty. Some nephew of his may take up his banner. It is unsure though if such a replacement could gain the following of the former army units Ali Abdullah could call on.

The Saudis had recently bet on Saleh to end the stalemate in their war on Yemen. Had he won out, it could have meant a pause in the war and probably its end. With the Houthi now having the upper hand in Sanaa, the war, the permanent Saudi bombing and the blockade of Yemen are likely to continue. The Houthi will continue to attack within Saudi Arabia and the fight against the Saudi proxy forces on the ground will go on.

It will need another breakthrough event for the war to stop.

Update:

In previous pieces on Yemen MoA had quoted Haykal Bafana and Iona Craig. Both live in Yemen. Here are their first thoughts on Ali Abdullah Saleh's death:

@BaFana3 - 6:49 AM - 4 Dec 2017 I cannot describe the deep grief I feel. Ali Abdullah Saleh was the greatest leader #Yemen ever had. He never surrendered: He died a martyr in his homeland Yemen, as a Yemeni fighting for Yemen's cause. I salute Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, both in life and in death.

@ionacraig - 6:13 AM - 4 Dec 2017 I was 1st foreign journalist to interview Saleh after he stepped down. He said his memoirs wouldn't be published until after his death as they contained secrets about many people. I responded "So a lot of people should be afraid the day that you die?" He laughed & said "InshAllah"

Followers of Saleh and his family will now consider revenge against the Houthi for Saleh's death as their highest priority:

@SaadAbedine - 2:21 PM - 4 Dec 2017 Unconfirmed reports that Ahmed, #Salehs eldest son & former commander of #Yemens Republican Guard, will be addressing the nation tonight at 9 PM local & that he was released from his house arrest in #UAE, en route to Marib to lead the fight & seek revenge from #Houthi rebels

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SUPREME COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF BURKE COUNTY

A county cannot be held responsible for pigeon droppings on its courthouse walkway in case someone slips and falls as a result of stepping on it. And neither can the pigeons, apparently.

The NC Supreme Court last week upheld a decision by Superior Court Judge Hugh B. Campbell of Charlotte that a plaintiff could not collect damages under such circumstances in Mrs. Vassie Dallas Cooks' case against Burke County. Mrs. Cook fell in front of the Burke County Courthouse in June 1965 during a rainstorm, ensuing a $50,000 lawsuit.

WMNC WILL AFFILIATE WITH NBC

Morganton Radio station WMNC will be affiliated with the National Broadcasting Co., effective Jan. 1, Nathan J. Cooper, owner and manager of the station, announced today.

NBC, the oldest radio network, has the largest staff of any of the networks with over 800 people working in the news field.

Morganton has grown into a vast metropolian area that it merits the fine news-broadcasting such as will be heard on NBC network radio beginning Jan. 1.

The newscasts over WMNC will feature such well-known newscasters as Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Frank McGee, Arlene Frances, Barbara Walters and Bill Cullen.

PURCHASING AGENT ADDED AT BROUGHTON

James W. Haigler, general foreman at Southern Devices for the past four years, was named to a new position at Broughton Hospital. Monday he began working there as purchasing agent.

Clifton K. Avery,. business manager, announced the appointment as meeting the need for someone to coordinate purchasing hospital supplies. This is at least a partial result of the hospitals new cost accounting system.

TWO GREAT LAKES EMPLOYEES GET MEDALS FOR SAVING LIFE

Last Sept. 18, the quick thinking and quick actions of two workers - Robert E. Gonzalez and Tony M. Sisk - saved the life of a fellow employee.

Last night at the Elks Lodge, Great Lakes honored the two for their heroic action at a dinner while the recipient of their bravery, T.W. Jarrett, sat by and smiled in appreciation.

Gonzalez, 34, and Sisk, 24, were presented Liberty Mutual Insurance Companies Life Savers Awards and copies of a telegram from Joseph G. Solari, president of Great Lakes Carbon.

Only 325 men and women throughout the United States have received the Liberty Mutuals Life Savings Award since it was initiated in 1922.

MAN FACING FOUR MOTHS IN JAIL

Unless some of Ralph Lentzs relatives bail him out, then the 64- year-old transient sign painter will spend another four months in Burke County Jail.

Lentz was sentenced to four months during Burke County Superior Court Thursday for non-felonious breaking and entering of the Patrick H. Majors residence on West Union Street Aug 26. The sentence will be suspended if he can pay a $100 fine and the costs of court.

Lentz told Judge Sam J. Ervin III that he had raised eight children, three of whom had finished college, and had been divorced for 18 years. He was on his way to Oteen VA Hospital when it started raining and he needed a dry place to stay, he said.

IN THE SERVICE OF THE USA

In VietNam, Marvin A. Stamey Jr., 18, of Glen Alpine has arrived in VietNam, where he is serving with the third Marine Division. The son of Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Alfred Stamey Sr., he had a 20-day leave here before leaving on Nov 9. He would appreciate letters from Burke County folk.

AMONG US MORGANTONIANS; J. GORDON QUEEN, (circa 1963, 55 years ago.)

We were sitting at our desks watching men and huge machines pull down the huge oak trees on the site of the new recreation center. We hated to see them go, but they were in the way of the new building. The larger tree nearer Collett Street than the rest will probably be left, and we hope so. Anyway, progress is progress and trees, old homes and the like must make way.

The front of the Whitley Pharmacy really looks good after getting a coat of paint, brick and all. We just love face-lifting.

The new Giles Motors used car lot near Hunting creek sure is full of electric lights. We were glad to see the big clock at the First National Bank back in order, everybody missed the timepiece.

This article is sponsored by the History Museum of Burke County, where the archives of The News Herald are stored. Jimmy Rhyne is the researcher of the archives.
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The information contained within is for educational and informational purposes ONLY. It is not intended nor should it be considered an invitation or inducement to buy or sell a security or securities noted within nor should it be viewed as a communication intended to persuade or incite you to buy or sell security or securities noted within. Any commentary provided is the opinion of the author and should not be considered a personalised recommendation. The information contained within should not be a person's sole basis for making an investment decision. Please contact your financial professional before making an investment decision.
American Financial Resources may not be as large a lender as industry giants like Quicken Loans  but AFRs technology stacks up to its largest competitor. The company is an industry leader in tech solutions  without forgetting that the mortgage industry is ultimately a people business. MPA recently chatted with Bill Packer, AFRs chief information officer, about the importance of technology  and how it should work for brokers and borrowers.We were talking to one of our brokers one day, and he said, Weve got this Alexa device in our office that we use for streaming music. It would be nice if it could do other things. And we thought, Well, we can get it to do other things.In my view, its inevitable that were going to move from hands on keyboard to speaking to intelligent devices. Clearly, Amazon, with its Alexa, is the leader there, with more than 10 million devices sold. So about three months ago, we released an Alexa integration, where the broker, if theyre signed up with us, can ask Alexa, Hey, Alexa, tell me about my pipeline, or, Hey, Alexa, which files are coming due?  It was about three months worth of concentrated development. Weve got a pretty good staff here, and they were really focused on it.Were not getting a lot of use yet  but Im not afraid of that. Thats where the space is now. (But) were really just at the beginning stages. What were trying to demonstrate at AFR is that were looking a year or two down the road. We want to have the capabilities so that when the broker community is ready for it, we dont have to scramble to create it  we already have it. And for the early adopters, each release just gets better and better.If youre a broker whos looking at the renovation business or the one-time close business, weve been in those spaces for 20 years, and our one-time close and renovation portal is fully digital. I think those are particular spaces in which, for most brokers, theyre going to do those transactions infrequently. So for the broker to have the ability to go online, input their information, and then get a nice document that explains to your borrower what a one-time close is, thats a great thing to have. Or if your borrower is in the midst of the renovation and they call you, you just have to log in and you have the information right there.It gives brokers the tools to be a lot more knowledgeable that they would otherwise  because this way youre on the phone with the borrower and youve got all the information right there. Thats the piece of the digitization of our industry that makes sense to me. Some of the other things people talk about  Im not sure they do much for the borrower and the broker.If youre a broker whos currently evaluating your technology needs, were more than happy to extend our technology to you, and through a licensing agreement, allow you to access this technology. It really allows smaller brokers to have a big technology presence without having to have a big technology staff. The way we structure the contract is that we only charge the broker for loans that close.The AFR brand promise is really the best technology in the business, and I would stack that up against any of our bigger brethren. Our brand promise is also that we still have a family touch. You want to interact with a company with real hearts and minds behind it, that loves the mortgage business.I would turn it around and say that the technology should embrace them. We have customers who, on some transactions, are going to be a broker to us. On some transactions theyre going to be a correspondent lender. It gets very complex.  So we try to lead you through very simple questions. We try to make it so the technology embraces you. You dont have to get through some big training class. You just go question by question, screen by screen, and you can originate the mortgage. Some of our new brokers call up and say, I think I did it right, but it seemed too easy. Well, thats the way software should be in the 21st century. The software should evolve for how the brokers need it in their business.
Despite a recent major setback in court, Democrats are not backing down against the Trump administrations move to install Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).The fight boils down to a succession dispute. Before stepping down, former CFPB head Richard Cordray appointed Leandra English as deputy director to ensure a smooth transition. The Trump administration disagreed with the move and instead appointed Mick Mulvaney as acting CFPB director.English asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order against the administrations move, but a judge recently sided with the Trump and upheld Mulvaneys appointment.This is just the beginning of what will likely be a long legal battle. While the temporary restraining order has been denied, the merits of the case have yet to be decided, said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.Waters and 25 other current and former members of Congress have filed an amicus brief with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that English should serve as acting director until a director is confirmed by the Senate.The Dodd-Frank statute is clear that the deputy director of the Consumer Bureau shall serve as acting director in the absence or unavailability of the director. Leandra English, the Consumer Bureaus deputy director, is the lawful acting director, and she should be allowed to serve in that capacity until a director is confirmed by the Senate, Waters said.Mulvaney has been a harsh critic of the CFPB. Waters described him as an unacceptable candidate, as he was also the original cosponsor of a bill to completely eliminate the bureau.
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As a mother of two, Allison Garrett felt called to bring another child into her home through adoption. She was surprised to discover her husband, Kevin, had the same desire.

We were rocking along and just assumed that was our family and everything was complete, Allison said. I felt God was talking to me and telling me that its not done yet, and adoption was just on my mind.

Last month, the Garretts welcomed a third child, Dylan, into their family. The couple adopted the 20-month-old girl after forming a connection with her from the start.

Once we saw her, it didnt matter if she had health defects, mental defects, Kevin said. It didnt matter at that point. [We] fell in love with her the minute that we saw her.

The Garretts, who live in the Greenwood area, met Dylan when she was about 3 months old. She was born addicted to drugs and had been staying at Midland Memorial Hospital during withdrawal.

Patricia Acosta, foster care supervisor at Buckner Children and Family Services, was the Garretts caseworker for a period of time. She said they often asked questions of medical personnel to find out details about the babys health.

At the hospital, they were just ready to help Dylan in any way that they could, Acosta said. They were rearranging schedules, trying to work out what to do with their other kids so they could spend time at the hospital.

After bringing Dylan home, the Garretts were attentive to needs that stemmed from the girl having spent her first few months in the hospital. They noticed developmental delays and behavioral effects from staying in the clinical environment.

Acosta said the Garretts have devoted time and effort to help Dylan progress. She guided the family through a process that culminated at a National Adoption Month celebration event in November.

I was there from when we went to the hospital until now when shes adopted, Acosta said. She officially became a Garrett, and they made what was in their hearts official.

Buckner this year has helped to facilitate 25 adoptions and license 17 new homes. Acosta said families are increasingly becoming aware of the need for foster care in this area.

About 44 percent of children in foster care in Midland County were placed outside Region 9  which includes Midland and nearby counties  according to Texas Department of Family and Protective Services statistics from October.

Kevin and Allison initially thought about adoption. But they decided to become certified foster parents in hopes of taking in long-term placements.

Throughout the process, the Garretts kept in mind the well-being of their other children, Beau, 7, and Tenley, 5. They said their older the kids have become more thoughtful and express concern for those who are mistreated.

Theyve lived a very loved, spoiled, protected life, so I think it did just open them up, Allison said. You want to keep their innocence, but at the same time they need to be aware outside of their little world that theres a whole other world.

The foster care and adoption process also made an impact on the parents. Kevin said he learned about the demand for services locally.

There are lots of kids out there that need help, more than I ever would have thought around this part, he said. Its a sad situation how bad some of these kids get treated.

He and his wife hope people who have misgivings about foster care and adoption will start the process. Allison wants Midlanders to know there are tools for families who choose to provide foster care.

Buckner held our hand and walked us through, she said. The support system has been amazing, not even just at Buckner but other foster families in this area  its a really close-knit group.
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A former state legislator tapped by Florida Gov. Rick Scott to help oversee the state's powerful utility industry abruptly resigned from his post Monday after being accused of sexual misconduct by a Republican state senator.

Ritch Workman resigned from Public Service Commission

Accused of inappropriately touching state senator

Was supposed to start working in January

Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto said in a statement that Ritch Workman had touched her inappropriately and made "vulgar" comments to her at a charity event in 2016.

"Workman approached me from behind, pushed his body up against me and made vulgar and inappropriate gestures," said the Fort Myers Republican. "I immediately asked him to stop. He continued to make vulgar and inappropriate comments and gestures until other attendees intervened. I found his conduct to be abhorrent."

Scott had appointed Workman, a Republican from Melbourne, to a $131,000 a year job on the Public Service Commission. He was scheduled to start work in January.

Workman's position was subject to Senate confirmation. Senate President Joe Negron said as a result of the allegations against Workman that he would not be confirmed. Workman called the governor's office and resigned within minutes of Benacquisto releasing her statement.

"The governor has consistently said that any misconduct cannot be tolerated," said Lauren Schenone, a spokeswoman for Scott. "He supports his decision to resign."

Workman did not immediately respond to a call to his cellphone seeking comment.

Benacquisto, who holds a top position in the state Senate and is ally of Negron, had a private meeting with Scott and his chief of staff back in early November. Scott's office refused to comment on what was discussed during the meeting, including whether or not the senator talked about Workman.

Scott picked Workman from a list of nominees given to him by a nominating panel controlled by the state Legislature. Workman, who unsuccessfully ran for the state Senate in 2016, had been working for Keiser University since 2013. He gained a bit of attention in 2015 when it was discovered that he was working as a driver for the ride-sharing service Uber while still a legislator.

John Tupps, a spokesman for Scott, said the governor relied on the nominating council to look at qualifications and the backgrounds of candidates.

"Our office relies on this committee to provide names of qualified applicants which have been vetted and thoroughly reviewed by the nominating commission," said Tupps. "This vetting process includes a background screening conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement."

Workman previous served in the Florida House of Representatives, representing southern Brevard County, from 2008 to 2016.

Workman's abrupt resignation comes as the state Capitol has been thrown into turmoil due to allegations of sexual misconduct.

GOP Sen. Jack Latvala has been accused by six women of groping or making demeaning comments about their bodies. The Florida Senate is investigating Latvala. Latvala has denied the allegations, but last week one of his anonymous accusers went public. Rachel Perrin Rogers is a top aide to Senate Majority Leader Wilton Simpson and her husband is a prominent GOP consultant.

Simpson put out a statement on Monday that said his aide is "trusted and valued member of my team for more than five years."

Gov. Scott has called Latvala "a distraction" and has said that he should resign if the allegations against him are true.
SOUTHINGTON  Two people were injured in a three-car crash on West Street Monday afternoon.

The crash occurred about 3:45 p.m. and at least one serious injury was initially reported. Fire officials said one person was taken to Hartford Hospital and one person was taken to MidState Medical Center.

West Street was closed between West Queen Street and the Bristol town line while emergency crews were on scene. The road was reopened about 4:45 p.m.

bwright@record-journal.com

203-317-2316

Twitter: @baileyfaywright
Chris Mattei, one of several Democrats considering a run for governor, announced Monday that he is changing course and running for attorney general.

Mattei, a former federal prosecutor, made his announcement one week after Attorney General George Jepsen, also a Democrat, announced that he will not seek re-election next year.

"I spent the better part of the last decade serving the people of Connecticut as an assistant United States attorney, Mattei said in an email announcing his decision. It was my responsibility to stand up for what was right and what the law required, without fear or favor  regardless of how wealthy, powerful or influential someone might be.

Mattei also said that he feels he could be of best use to the people of Connecticut as its attorney general, especial after the election of President Donald Trump. Mattei said Trumps election in November 2016 means the nation face(s) a new challenge.

Mattei was head of the Financial Fraud and Public Corruption Unit for the U.S. Attorney's Connecticut office. In that role, he oversaw the prosecution of John G. Rowland that resulted in the former governor returning to federal prison.

The announcement brought praise from several Democrats, including municipal officials, union representatives, and undocumented immigrants.

We need people like Chris Mattei to stand with us  and with everyone who is vulnerable, who is voiceless, who is at risk of being left out and left behind. For everyone who worries that the actions of the Trump Administration will undercut the values we were raised with in Connecticut, Jonathan Gonzalez-Cruz, a DACA recipient, said in Matteis press release.

Matteis candidacy drew a quick response from the Republican Attorneys General Assocation, does not need an activist attorney general. They also referenced a report from the Connecticut Post that cited campaign filings showing Mattei paid for an aides speeding ticket with campaign funds.

Its time for a fresh start in Connecticut, the RAGA said in a statement. Job creators will drive Connecticuts economic recovery, not repeating the failed policies of the past. The next attorney general can be a part of the solution, by creating a climate of regulatory certainty."

Matteis announcement makes him the second Democrat to express interest in the Jepsens seat since he declared he will not run next year. State Rep. William Tong, D-Stamford, and co-chair of the legislatures Judiciary Committee, announced last week that he has formed an exploratory committee.

On the Republican side, John Shaban, a former state representative from Redding, has declared his intention to enter the race.

msavino@record-journal.com

203-317-2266

Twitter: @reporter_savino
OPEC and its allies outside the group will maintain their cuts in oil output until global production meets demand, Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners agreed last week to extend the cuts until the end of 2018, a strategy that has boosted prices to near the highest level in more than two years. Now the focus is shifting to how production will ramp up when the agreement expires.

"We will not let go of our current approach until we reach a balanced market," Al-Falih said Monday at a news conference in Riyadh after meeting with U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry. "There will be plenty of supply to respond to any need."

Global inventories have fallen since the production curbs took effect in January. By keeping 1.8 million barrels a day of cuts in place for an additional nine months, the oil producers aim to reduce stockpiles to their five-year average without overheating the market and eliciting a new surge in supply of shale oil. Benchmark Brent crude traded 0.8 percent lower at $63.22 a barrel at 11:30 a.m. in London.

Inventory Surplus

"The outlook for when we will hit the balanced market will be clearer in June, and we will start thinking of what we will do in 2019," he said. "The intent is not overnight to open the taps and flood the market."

There is still about 150 million barrels of "inventory overhang" that has to be drained, and this number probably won't change much over the next four months due to "seasonal stock build" and increased output from U.S. shale deposits, Al-Falih said.

U.S. drillers added two oil rigs to reach 749 in the week ended Dec. 1, the highest level since late September, according to Baker Hughes.

"The world needs shale oil to play a role," Al-Falih said, as shale is needed "to meet some of the demand."
The money-losing Schlitterbahn water park and resort on North Padre Island could be auctioned off at a foreclosure sale in February if a deal for the property is not reached before then, under an agreement announced Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Antonio.

About 270 acres surrounding the park and hotel, however, are slated to be sold at Tuesdays foreclosure auction in Nueces County.
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HARTFORD  A three-year study to determine where birds live and dont live, as well as their favorite habitats, will soon be the focus of the those interested in birds in Connecticut.

Its called The Atlas Project, the new assessment of feathered animals will be the work of the University of Connecticut and the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. An army of volunteer birdwatchers will be conscripted to help with the effort. The project was announced by the Connecticut Audubon Society, which made it the focus of its 2017 State of the Birds annual report.

The last bird atlas dates to 1994, and CAS officials are calling this latest effort the biggest and most important bird research project ever in Connecticut. It was the subject of 12th annual CAS State of the Birds report, which was released last week in Hartford.

The new atlas will help us make better conservation decisions and justifications for protection of key parcels, said Patrick Comins, Connecticut Audubons executive director.

This year we included only one major recommendation in the report: If Connecticut's birds are important to you, learn as much as you can about the project and then volunteer to participate, said Milan Bull, Connecticut Audubons senior director of science and conservation. The last atlas was dated 1994 but it used data from 1986, so were in desperate need of a new atlas  the data that were working with is 30 years old.

Bull said that a lot has happened to birds in the state since the mid-1980s.

Back then, for example, ravens only had a couple of breeding populations in the Northwest Corner, but now theyre widespread across the state, he said. But by the same token, your shrub-scrub birds are in the decline, and because of climate change, new species are moving in and others are moving out.

CAS said the Atlas Project will cost about $700,000 to complete, although because of grants and volunteer time, its really a $2.5 million study, Bull said. The cost will be shared by DEEP, UConn, CAS and others.

This is the most important conservation bird research project that the state has ever undertaken, Bull said. Not only will it tell where the breeding birds are, but also the migratory and wintering numbers and species as well. And it will give us the places that are most important to conservation.

About 600 volunteers will be involved in the effort. Training lessons are being scheduled for those interested in helping.

The first of these sessions is scheduled for Dec. 12 at 6:30 p.m., at the Great Hollow Nature Preserve & Ecological Research Center in New Fairfield, and Jan. 8, at 7 p.m., at Connecticut Audubons Center in Pomfret. Additional sessions are being arranged.

The State of the Birds 2017 report urges Connecticuts birders and conservationists to volunteer and support the project. Large landowners, including land preservation organizations, can participate by allowing volunteers onto their land to conduct fieldwork, CAS said.

This atlas is something Ive been talking about for more than a decade, and most of all Im looking forward to contributing to the results, said Comins. The new atlas will help us make better conservation decisions and justifications for protection of key parcels. We hope the atlas will become a basic decision-making tool for municipal planners, state regulators, conservationists, and others.

Comins said hes had to guess as to which species of conservation concern might benefit from a particular project to conserve land.

The atlas will take it to the next level, he said. When this project is done, we will finally know exactly which places are most important to which species and be able to make much better conservation decisions.

Editors note: The Connecticut Audubon Society (Connecticut Audubon) and the Connecticut Chapter of the National Audubon Society (known as Audubon Connecticut) are separate, unaffiliated organizations.

jburgeson@ctpost.com
Authorities say the death of an 11-year-old Dayton girl appears to be medically-related, according to a statement from Liberty County Sheriff's Capt. Ken DeFoor.

On Friday, Dec. 1, Abigail Garcia, a sixth-grade student at Woodrow Wilson Junior High, reportedly called her mother to ask that she pick her up at the bus stop on CR 678 as she was feeling ill, DeFoor said.
A substitute teacher working at CJ Harris Elementary School in Pearland allegedly called police to report a six-year-old Muslim child with Down's syndrome was a possible terrorist.

According to a report by by Fox 26 Houston, the teacher claimed to police that she heard the child say "Allah" and "boom" several times in class.

The child's father, Maher Suleiman, told the TV station that his child "doesn't speak at all," making the teacher's claims impossible.

Suleiman said Monday that because there is an ongoing investigation, he and his family were unable to make comments regarding the case at this time.

Google Earth

Social activist Quanell X said that when the family reached out to him for help, he was initially skeptical.

"When the father first reached out to me, I really didn't think the story was completely true," he said. "I thought maybe because he was an immigrant, his English was not great, maybe he was a little confused about what was happening. But as my office began to work on it, we found his story to be true. How can you go after a six-year-old child and call him a terrorist?"

Quanell X said the case became further complicated when he met the child.

"This substitute teacher alleges that this six-year-old child was saying terroristic things," he said. "I've met this child. He cannot speak. He is severely, severely special needs. He has the mental capacity of a one-year-old. I couldn't believe (the substitute teacher's) story had gone to this degree  it's extreme. To me, this is a case of some of the worst religious bigotry I have ever seen, and it's specifically targeting a Muslim family."

X said that he has been helping the family during ensuing investigations from the police and Child Protective Services.

"To give the police credit, when I spoke to the assistant police chief in Pearland, the man was honest, respectful and believed this was extreme, but they had to follow protocol," X said. "I was just surprised that CPS was involved. What are they investigating? Neglect? Abuse? I didn't realize Child Protective Services had a division that was trained to spot out Islamic terrorism."

Tiffani Butler, media specialist for Child Protective Services confirmed that the case is currently under investigation by their office.

"The only reason we would be involved is because it's something that happened at school," Butler said.

The incident comes just months following a tumultuous city council election, where Position 7 Councilman Woody Owens was sharply criticized for sharing what many considered anti-Muslim messages on his personal Facebook page prior to his campaign against Dalia Kasseb, a 30-year-old pharmacist and the first Muslim candidate to run for office in the City of Pearland.

X said he hopes the Pearland community will reach out and support the Suleiman family. "Pearland needs to come together and say, 'Wait a minute. We aren't ok with this.'"
JERUSALEM - Arab nations and Palestinian officials have warned of dire consequences if the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital, including potential unrest and an end to the peace process, amid last-minute lobbying to prevent President Donald Trump from making the move.

In a late-night call Sunday, Jordan's foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that such a decision could "trigger anger across the Arab and Muslim world, fuel tension and jeopardize peace efforts," according to Jordan's state news agency.

Egypt's foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, also discussed with Tillerson the "possible negative impacts" on peace, according to a ministry spokesman. He asked that Tillerson avoid taking decisions that could "stir tensions in the region."

Turkey said a change in policy would be a "major catastrophe." Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki, meanwhile, called for an emergency meeting of the 22 members of the Arab League, which is expected to take place Tuesday.

For more than two decades, successive U.S. presidents have signed a waiver every six months that allows them to delay a move of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on national security grounds. During his campaign, Trump vowed to relocate the U.S. Embassy but reluctantly signed the waiver six months ago as his administration attempts to broker a peace process.

The White House was expected to let Monday's deadline for the next signing pass unmentioned, a signal that a shift is likely to be in the works. Trump is likely to outline a new policy on Jerusalem and the embassy in a speech Wednesday, an administration official said.

Israel claims Jerusalem in its entirety as its eternal and undivided capital, but Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Despite the critical statements by Jordan and Egypt, Palestinians may find it hard to coordinate genuinely robust opposition at a time when Arab states increasingly see their security interests aligned with Israel's against their shared enemy, Iran.

In the Knesset on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed an "unprecedented" shift in the Arab states' attitude to Israel.

The regional power broker, Saudi Arabia, has yet to publicly condemn possible U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and White House adviser Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, reportedly held late-night discussions on Middle East strategy in October.

"I don't see how this advances our interests," said Aaron Miller, an analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and former Middle East negotiator under both Democrat and Republican administrations. "Whether this is going to be the end of the world is another matter. The Saudis have been quiet on this."

Kushner said Sunday that Trump is "close" to making a decision on Jerusalem but is "still looking at a lot of facts." Israel captured the eastern part of the city from Jordan in 1967 in the Six-Day War, later annexing it in a move considered illegal by the United Nations.

Palestinian officials have warned that recognition of the city as Israel's capital will end U.S.-brokered peace efforts, which they have already complained appear biased toward Israel. Calling it Israel's "undivided" capital would mark an even more dramatic step, effectively recognizing Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last month expressed surprise after the United States threatened to shutter the Palestine Liberation Organization's Washington office unless the Palestinians engaged in meaningful peace talks.

Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital "is offensive and contrary to the role of the U.S. administration as a mediator and sponsor of the peace process," the Palestinian deputy premier, Ziad Abu Amr, told the U.S. consul general for Jerusalem, Donald Blome, in a meeting in Ramallah on Monday, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. It "closes every door to the continuation of a serious peace process, and pushes the entire region into more tension and instability."

"The status of Jerusalem and Temple Mount have been determined by international agreements," Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said after a cabinet meeting on Monday, according to Reuters. "It is important to preserve Jerusalem's status for the sake of protecting peace in the region."

Eran Lerman, vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, said threats of violence amounted to a "toy gun."

"These are attempts to manipulate the American administration," he said on a conference call organized by the Israel Project, a pro-Israel media advocacy organization. "They are actually counterproductive. I don't think this administration responds very well to crude threats."

The State Department has warned embassies of potential unrest and anti-American protests this week related to an announcement, according to U.S. officials.

---

The Washington Post's Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report.
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Bill O'Reilly is being sued by a former Fox News producer who claims he violated a settlement agreement in a harassment case by disparaging her in the media as a liar and extortionist.

Rachel Witlieb Bernstein's attorneys filed a lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against O'Reilly and his former employer, Fox News, for breach of contract and defamation.

Her attorneys said in the lawsuit that O'Reilly and the network violated non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses in their 2002 settlement agreement with Bernstein, which stated that if asked about the case, they "may say only 'The matter has been resolved (or settled)', without elaboration."

"But he's gone far beyond that and painted our client in a terrible light," one of her attorneys, Neil Mullin, told The Washington Post.

O'Reilly has publicly denied harassment accusations, calling himself a "target" and saying the claims against him were "politically and financially motivated."

The lawsuit states that O'Reilly's remarks portrayed Bernstein in a "false light" and "disparaged her character, in fact calling her a liar and an extortionist."

"In fact, Mr. O'Reilly is the liar," the complaint stated. "He mistreated Ms. Bernstein. She was forced out of her job at Fox News and paid a settlement because of his mistreatment.

"She did go to HR and other company executives to complain about him several times. Fox News took no action to protect plaintiff from O'Reilly. There were many witnesses to her mistreatment. She was not politically or financially motivated to raise the claims of abuse."

Mullin said O'Reilly's comments not only violated their 2002 settlement agreement but also illustrate a broader issue, in which powerful men who are exposed as harassers attempt to discredit their victims.

"The reason women don't come out is because there's a pattern of these men lashing out," Mullin said.

Mullin said O'Reilly and Fox News have made "false and disparaging claims" against women who had to sign nondisclosure agreements, adding that the women should be released from those agreements.

"It is cowardly to publicly attack these women knowing they have been subjected to contractual provisions requiring absolute silence," he said.

O'Reilly's attorney, Fredric Newman, said in a statement that "Bill O'Reilly has never mentioned the plaintiff's name publicly in any context."

Newman added that Bernstein's lawsuit had no merit and said that O'Reilly would "respond aggressively in court."

Fox News could not immediately be reached for comment.

Allegations against O'Reilly came to light in April when the New York Times reported that the cable star and Fox News paid out millions of dollars to five women to settle harassment claims.

As the newspaper reported at the time:

"Fox News has been aware of complaints about inappropriate behavior by Mr. O'Reilly since at least 2002, when Mr. O'Reilly stormed into the newsroom and screamed at a young producer, according to current and former employees, some of whom witnessed the incident.

"Shortly thereafter, the woman, Rachel Witlieb Bernstein, left the network with a payout and bound by a confidentiality agreement, people familiar with the deal said. The exact amount she was paid is not known, but it was far less than the other settlements. The case did not involve sexual harassment."

Bernstein's attorneys said in a statement that she "was not the source for this revelation."

The Times added:

"In a statement, Mr. O'Reilly suggested that his prominence made him a target.

" 'Just like other prominent and controversial people," the statement read, "I'm vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative publicity. In my more than 20 years at Fox News Channel, no one has ever filed a complaint about me with the Human Resources Department, even on the anonymous hotline.'

" 'But most importantly, I'm a father who cares deeply for my children and who would do anything to avoid hurting them in any way. And so I have put to rest any controversies to spare my children.'

" 'The worst part of my job is being a target for those who would harm me and my employer, the Fox News Channel. Those of us in the arena are constantly at risk, as are our families and children. My primary efforts will continue to be to put forth an honest TV program and to protect those close to me.' "

In interviews and statements following the story, O'Reilly further denied the allegations.

In September, he appeared on the "Today" show, saying that in 42 years in the business, "not one time, did I have any interaction with HR, any complaints filed against me."

"In totality, this was a hit job, a political and financial hit job," O'Reilly said.

In the new lawsuit, Bernstein's attorneys said: "This defamatory and disparaging statement is false. Ms. Bernstein settled her claims and left Fox News because of severe mistreatment and by Mr. O'Reilly, as he knows."

The lawsuit says Bernstein has suffered loss of income, emotional distress and illness.

The filing comes amid mounting harassment and sexual misconduct claims against celebrities, politicians and other public figures. Following an uproar over harassment claims against O'Reilly, Fox News severed its relationship with him in April, just months after the media company became embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal involving its founder, Roger Ailes.
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The remnants of a small shrine initially erected by a self-proclaimed alt-right group and dedicated to Kate Steinle remained on a wooden bench Monday at the foot of Pier 14, just days after the Steinle family asked San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee to have anything connecting her death to politics to be removed.

The alt-right group claimed in a Facebook post that it set up the memorial shortly after a San Francisco jury acquitted a 45-year-old homeless and undocumented immigrant on murder and manslaughter charges stemming from the killing of Steinle.

The 32-year-old San Francisco resident was walking with her father on Pier 14 on July 1, 2015 when a bullet fired from a stolen gun by Jose Ines Garcia Zarate ricocheted off the concrete ground, and hit her. Steinle died after collapsing in her fathers arms.

While the San Francisco Superior Court jury acquitted Garcia Zarrate on Thursday of murder and manslaughter charges, the panel found him guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

The memorial set up in the wake of the verdict was initially adorned with photos of Steinle captioned She had dreams too, fifty candles, and handwritten notes that read, Build the wall, echoing President Trumps call for a wall on the border with Mexico.

But just three days later, the notes, candles and flags were gone. All that was left behind were three photos of Steinle, dozens of glow sticks tied with black ribbons to the bench and two withering bouquets of flowers.

A family representative placed a request with the mayor for the bench to remain as a simple memorial in recognition of Kate and her spirit, according to a spokeswoman from the Mayors office.

The city Department of Public Works removed any symbols and notes that politicized Steinles death.

Since the verdict, plans for a vigil and justice for Kate Steinle demonstrations have been organized throughout the country, including San Francisco, Portland and Utah in the coming weeks.

Jake Hanft, 28, of San Francisco, who was walking by the memorial Monday morning said he was disappointed by the reaction of people on both sides of the political aisle following the verdict.

Im a liberal guy and Im still disappointed by the verdict, but I dont think that should be cause for widespread protests, Hanft said. I think its insensitive to the family. Im not sure if thats what they wouldve wanted.

In an exclusive interview with The Chronicle, Steinles father, Jim, said he and his family just want to get this over and moved on with our lives, and think about Kate on our terms.

Nothings been on our terms. Its been on everyone elses terms, Jim Steinle said. We never had a second of anger  not a moment.

In reaction to the verdict, he said, Justice was rendered, but it was not served.

Gisa Bok, 39, of St. Petersburg, Fla., was taking a stroll on the Embarcadero Monday morning before her flight back home when she stumbled upon the memorial.

Shes beautiful, her partner muttered softly, as the two gazed at the photos of Steinle.

Bok had read about the case in newspaper reports.

I think its very hurtful for the family, Bok said of the memorial. Its very disrespectful for the family especially if they have been asking for it to be taken down.

Steinles death set off a national debate over immigration and was used throughout President Trumps campaign for the White House as a call for a wall. Garcia Zarate is a homeless and undocumented Mexican immigrant who had been deported from the United States five times and was awaiting a sixth deportation.

Shortly after the verdict, Trump tweeted that the verdict was disgraceful and a complete travesty of justice.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
SALT LAKE CITY - President Donald Trump on Monday drastically scaled back two national monuments established in Utah by his Democratic predecessors, the largest reduction of public lands protection in U.S. history.

Trump's move to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by more than 1.1 million acres and more than 800,000 acres, respectively, immediately sparked an outpouring of praise from conservative lawmakers as well as activists' protests outside the White House and in Utah. The changes plunge the Trump administration into uncharted legal territory, as no president has sought to modify monuments established under the 1906 Antiquities Act in more than half a century.

His decision removes about 85 percent of the designation of Bears Ears and nearly 46 percent of that for Grand Staircase-Escalante, land that potentially could now be leased for energy exploration or opened for specific activities such as motorized vehicle use.

Trump told a rally in Salt Lake City that he came to "reverse federal overreach" and took dramatic action "because some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what? They're wrong."

"They don't know your land, and truly, they don't care for your land like you do," he said. "But from now on, that won't matter."

The two proclamations are the first in a series of major changes Trump intends to make to numerous monuments, which range from a forested patch of the Pacific Northwest to a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean off New England.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who has reviewed more than two dozen sites established by Democratic and Republican presidents under an executive order Trump signed in April, said he would release his report on the study Tuesday. Zinke has recommended downsizing Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou and Nevada's Gold Butte national monuments and shifting the way several others are managed, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post. If these revisions are successfully sustained in court, they would redefine the extent to which future presidents could dictate that public lands remain untouched.

Conservatives have long sought to curb a president's unilateral power to safeguard federal lands and waters under the law, a practice that both Democrats and Republicans have pursued since it was enacted under Theodore Roosevelt. The issue has been a particular flash point in the West, where some residents feel the federal government already imposes too many restrictions on development, and others, including tribal officials, feel greater protections of ancient sites are needed.

Even before Trump made the announcement as part of a day trip to the state, National Cattlemen's Beef Association President Craig Uden was hailing the resized designations. While grazing has continued on both monuments, as well as on others, Uden said ranchers could not have greater input into how they are managed.

"We are grateful that today's action will allow ranchers to resume their role as responsible stewards of the land and drivers of rural economies," he said.

Republicans at the president's rally applauded him and his deputies for heeding their concerns. "President Trump listened to us," Utah House Speaker Gregory Hughes (R) said. "We are not a flyover state."

Gov. Gary R. Herbert (R) characterized the action as "an opportunity to push a reset button on these areas" and derided as myth "this idea that somehow there will be some wholesale development" on lands removed from the designation. "There is a lot of scaremongering" about future oil derricks and natural gas wells, he said, but "the only thing that smacks of energy is the uranium" that will now become available near Bears Ears and coal near Grand Staircase-Escalante.

A series of protests that opponents began over the weekend, attracting thousands, continued Monday at the Utah Capitol. About 300 demonstrators gathered before Trump arrived and, against the backdrop of the dome and snowy grounds, chanted "Lock him up!"

Conservation advocates and tribal representatives have for months been preparing legal briefs that aim to block the monument changes in federal court.

After Trump signed the two proclamations, the Ute Indian Tribe, Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Pueblo of Zuni announced they would file suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to challenge the action on Bears Ears. A coalition of eight environmental groups, represented by Earthjustice, sued late in the day over Grand Staircase-Escalante.

"We're going to fight this," Jonathan Nez, Navajo Nation vice president, told reporters Monday.

Douglas Wheeler, a partner at the firm Hogan Lovells who represents the Conservation Lands Foundation, Utah Dine Bikeyah and other groups, said the "watershed" moment on the issue came with the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act. "Congress made very clear, as a matter of law, that they intend to delegate only that which has been expressly delegated in terms of management of federal lands," he said - which would mean a president can establish a monument under the Antiquities Act but not "rescind or substantially reduce" a site.

Yet Todd Gaziano, executive director of the Pacific Legal Foundation, argues that Trump can act unilaterally: "There are many hard or uncertain questions in the law, but this is not one of them," Gaziano said in a statement.

Despite this legal uncertainty, Trump and his deputies have worked to address the concerns raised by Utah politicians such as Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R) and executives in the mining, ranching and oil and gas industries.

Zinke held public events at multiple locations, but the review decision-making process was largely contained to a handful of top staffers at Interior and the White House. Zinke's aides have had only minimal consultations with Bureau of Land Management field office staff members in Utah, according to individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

While both Utah monuments have drawn criticism, they have simultaneously boosted local tourism. Grand Staircase-Escalante also has spurred significant scientific discoveries.

Grand Staircase's Kaiparowits Plateau ranks as one of the most important examples of the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs roamed the area, according to David Polly, president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Nearly half of the plateau falls outside the new boundaries, Polly noted in an interview - including nearly all of the Tropic Shale, a roughly 94 million-year-old swath of rock that the new proclamation identifies as a protected object.

Bears Ears, by contrast, is best known for tens of thousands of relatively intact archaeological sites and petroglyphs within its boundaries. Some date from the ancestral Pueblo era, and many tribal members continue to visit the area regularly to conduct rituals as well as to gather herbs and firewood.

A senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the push to change the monument designations was driven by Hatch; Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee; and Zinke.

Hatch has raised the issue of the two Utah sites repeatedly with both the president and his eldest son, not just during the 2016 campaign but also during his visit to the Oval Office on Trump's fifth day in office.

Trump "really likes" Hatch, the White House official said, because he supports his agenda, defends him on TV, praises his children and has a sense of humor. He appreciates his work on the Senate's tax overhaul bill, the aide added, and is hoping the 83-year-old incumbent will run for re-election next year rather than provide an opening for Trump political rival Mitt Romney.

The president, who updated Hatch personally on the process, brought him along on Monday's trip on Air Force One and agreed to meet with leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City at Hatch's request.

Both Trump and Zinke implied Monday that monument designations had impeded public access. "Our public land is for the public to use, not special interests," Zinke said.

But Amy Roberts, executive director of the Outdoor Industry Association, said in an interview that the notion "is flat-out wrong" and that business has thrived in the 20 years since Grand Staircase-Escalante was designated a monument.

"Unfortunately, there's a risk now that those people's livelihoods are going to be threatened as people hear the monument's cut in half and wonder whether it's worth visiting," she said.

San Juan County Commission Chairman Bruce Adams, who opposed the Bears Ears designation, said last week that he hoped the tourism boost his county had experienced in the past year would continue."Whoever's in charge of managing the monument will come up with some places for people to visit, and visit respectfully."

According to two senior administration officials, the question of how to treat existing monuments has not received significant attention in the White House, which has been focused on taxes. White House official Ty Cobb, who served as the president's attorney and once served as chairman of the Grand Canyon Trust, has opposed the reductions.
The property was off an isolated road running through north Florida swampland, hidden behind thick walls of trees dripping with moss.

The House of Prayer for All People opened in 1983 in Micanopy, a town just south of Gainesville. For nearly 10 years, children arrived at the religious boarding school and into the care of "Mother Anna" - Anna Elizabeth Young. There, according to Alachua County authorities, they were tortured and abused in a religious cult atmosphere that included exorcism and chemical baths.

Decades later, police are only now beginning to understand what may have happened at the site.

"Witnesses came forward from the House of Prayer alleging brutality and even some children being murdered," Art Forgey, a spokesman with the Alachua County Sheriff's Office told ABC 20 last week. "It's not just one isolated incident of beatings. There were numerous children that were beaten, locked in solitary confinement, food-withheld."

Late last week, Young, 75, was arrested for the premeditated first-degree murder of a child, law enforcement announced in a news release. The Gainesville Sun reported the charges stem from the death of Emon Harper in the late 1980s. Authorities say the boy was either two or three at the time of his death, but few other details have been released.

Young has not filed a plea. No lawyer for her has been identified so far.

Officials have said they believe Young - who is referred to as a "former cult leader" in a law enforcement news release - may have been involved in more crimes at the isolated Florida compound.

"We think there are many, many more. We can document other states and other missing children that we believe are tied into this," Forgey told the Sun. "They ran a religious institution - exorcising demons and other things like that. We have documentation involving her clear back the '60s. We did extensive forensic examination on the property this summer. We are still analyzing the evidence that we gathered."

The Sun reported Young and her husband, Jonah Young, had an "outreach ministry run from their home" in Micanopy along with other members of the family. It is unclear how children were placed in the Young's care. Jonah Young was crushed to death when his car slipped off a jack in 1988.

In 1992, Anna Young was charged in Alachua County with felony child abuse. According to a news release from authorities, the charges stemmed from when Young allegedly bathed a 12-year-old girl with chemicals in a steel tub, leaving her with severe burns. Young fled the state. She was located eight years later living in an attic in a relative's house in Illinois. Court records indicated that she pleaded no contest and was sentenced to six months in prison 2001.

In the last year, children who stayed with Young at the House of Prayer, now in their 40s and 50s, have approached authorities with stories of torture, punishment, caging, and starvation. Those allegations led to the charges in the Harper death.

"It's going to be a really complex case and there is a lot of sensitivity with the victims, who are all adults now," Darry Lloyd, the spokesman for the Florida Eighth Circuit State Attorney, told the Sun. "Their recall is very good because they've been through it."

Young, who now lives in Cobb County, Georgia, was arrested last week and is currently in custody. Her extradition to Florida is pending.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg that we know of," Alachua County Sheriff's Office's Forgey told ABC 20.
A man was found dead Sunday morning along the North Freeway service road, but it's not immediately clear who he was or how he died.

The man was found unresponsive behind a gas station at 5716 North Interstate 45 around 7:10 a.m.
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS  Frank Pomeroy pauses outside his daughters room, unable to enter. He knows whats inside: Annabelles bed, her One Direction poster and various items in shades of purple  her favorite color.

But Pomeroy and his wife, Sherri, cant look in her room yet. It reminds them too much of the girl they lost.

It seemed like it was just yesterday I had dropped her off at school. It seemed like I had just told her, Ill see you Monday, the First Baptist Church pastor says, his eyes watering behind his glasses.

Pomeroy wasnt at the church here the morning of Nov. 5 when a gunman walked in and opened fire with a military-style rifle.

Devin Patrick Kelley killed 14-year-old Annabelle and 25 others, including an unborn child, before he was shot and then killed himself during a car chase. Twenty people in the packed sanctuary were wounded. Kelleys motive remains unclear, though he had a history of violence.

Four weeks after the church massacre, time stretches and snaps for people in this town of 600 south of San Antonio, shifting from fast to slow to fast again. One moment, its as if their loved ones were just there with them. The next, theres a gaping hole, a monumental loss.

The days run together. Its like being on an island where you lose track of days, Pomeroy said Thursday at his church office.

It was the first night the church reopened its community meal and Bible study session, which was held every Thursday until the massacre.

Faith in God permeates life in Sutherland Springs, a belief that has helped families cope with the tragedy as they envision their loved ones in a better place. And they cope by staying busy, visiting the wounded still recovering at the hospital and staying close to relatives to soothe the pain.

Yet the wounds still are fresh, and the nightmarish visions unescapable.

In a nearby store last week, Jennifer Holcombe stopped in her tracks and stared at a pair of pink rubber boots. She almost can see her dead infant daughter Noah Grace standing in them. Its too much.

Farida Brown wakes up shivering every night. A survivor who was shot four times, she sees the blood, hears the cries. Its as if shes right back there, at the First Baptist Church on Nov. 5. She relives it all again and again.

I cant get it out of my head. Its like it just happened, said Brown, 73.

The trauma from that day rippled throughout the community and far beyond  the world watched in horror as news stories unfolded of congregants hiding under their pews in terror, of mothers and grandmothers dying to protect their little ones, of children being shot to death for crying out.

I wish I  no. I dont, said Pomeroy, stopping himself short. He took a deep breath. He started over. Sometimes I wish I could understand what was inside his head, so I couldve stopped him. But theres nothing to understand. You have to be insane to understand insanity.

The community has hopes of finding a new normal, but for now, theres too much to do.

The Pomeroys, who have six other children, are constantly taking calls, organizing the vast amount of donations and making rounds visiting victims families. Theyre also conducting the day-to-day work that comes with running a church  preparing sermons, connecting their congregants to resources and just keeping the place clean.

If you dont water your plants, theyre going to die, so we dont have much of a choice, Sherri Pomeroy said. Youve got to keep on going, even when you dont feel like it.

Frank Pomeroy was in Oklahoma on Nov. 5 and drove seven hours to get back home when he heard about the shooting. Sherri Pomeroy was in Florida.

A Texas State University alum with a degree in biological anthropology, and a minor in medieval and renaissance studies, Frank Pomeroy is an avid motorcyclist. He said his days now are like using a hula-hoop with a thorn: youre going and going and then  a piercing pain.

Some days are better than others, Pomeroy said. Our lives are changed forever.

He also has been disturbed by the number of conspiracy theorists that have come to Sutherland Springs or attacked his family and other congregants on social media  saying the shooting was a hoax, a scam, or that he must work for the CIA.

Its demoralizing to have so many of these conspiracy people calling victims and trying to say that theyre lying, that theyre stealing peoples money. That hurts, he said.

Some residents are remodeling their homes to accommodate family members who were injured in the massacre. Julie and Kip Workman are installing a ramp for their son Kris, who likely is permanently paralyzed from the bullets. Some of those who were killed left house projects half-finished, tasks now taken up by relatives.

Youre doing any little thing you can get done to feel accomplished, said Jennifer Holcombe, whose husband, Marc Danny Holcombe, also was killed. Were taking it one minute at a time.

Safe in heaven

The prayer request sheet that passed around during Thursdays Bible study listed 22 names, all of them people who were at the church that Sunday and survived.

Faith in God helps them make sense of the tragedy.

There was a point when I said, Lord, why them? said Frank Pomeroy. But those 26, I dont have to worry about them. I know where they are. Theyre safe.

Finding meaning in the tragedy is an integral part of healing, trauma experts say. Thelma Duffey, co-director of UTSAs Academy for Crisis and Trauma Counseling, said the goal is for residents to integrate the loss and trauma into their lives  so its a part of their life story, but it doesnt define it.

Meaning is how you live with it. How you make sense of it in a way that you can live with, said Duffey, whos helping lead a team that will provide counseling services in Sutherland Springs under a $150,000 grant from the Whataburger chain.

When Jennifer Holcombe emerged from the church Nov. 5, having inexplicably survived the seven-minute massacre, she told her family she knew her husband and daughter no longer were in the church.

I told them I know where Danny and Noah are, and Ill see them again. And thats how Ill get through this, she said.

The promise of heaven also is what Sherri Pomeroy holds onto.

I dont know how people without faith do it. Because if you dont have something to hope for, whats the reason to live? she said. If I didnt have a hope that Annabelle was in heaven and that I will see her one day, why would I want to continue living?

Joe Holcombe, 86, who lost nine members of his family spanning three generations, said he cant find anything bad in what happened because the way he sees it, his family is in a better place and hell get to see them someday.

Some people might not understand that response, but these folks are very, very devout, said Holcombes lawyer, Rob Ammons, who filed a civil claim against the Air Force last week that blames military officials for failing to alert the FBI about Kelleys criminal history  an error that allowed Kelley to buy firearms from licensed dealers.

With every ounce of Joe Holcombes being, he believes that all of these folks that passed are in a far better place, Ammons said. When he says its all good, you have to look at it through that lens for it to make sense.

Jimmy Stevens lost his sister, Peggy Warden, in the shooting. But now he said he has something to look forward to.

Some day well all join her. They always say there are no tears in heaven, but I think on that day there will be some happy tears.

Slowly moving on

When the Pomeroys opened up the free community meal again Thursday, Frank said he doubted how many would show up. All of the parishioners who were killed would regularly attend the meal. The others who came now were wounded or had lost those family members. Would the hall be empty?

But Brown showed up with bandages still wrapped around her legs from the four bullets. Workman attended despite having a child in the hospital. Holcombe, the only one left in her immediate family, came too. And so did other family and friends. It was almost a full house.

There are some things that are going to be very hard to accept  but we can adjust. And create life even when people find it difficult to see it as a possibility, Duffey said.

The Sutherland Springs residents ate hot dogs and Frito pie in that hall, and laughed about any old thing  like the size of mosquitoes in Alabama or the funny way they met.

A lot of people dont understand how we can go on and be laughing and get along with life  but you have to have those moments. You cant heal if you dont, Holcombe said as she gazed around at the grinning faces.

In a storage room nearby are hundreds of letters, gifts, artwork big and small, sent from across the world expressing condolences and sympathies.

Its so encouraging to see that people care, from all over the world, said Marina Pomeroy, Annabelles 19-year-old sister. I think thats whats kept me and my parents going  the outpouring of love.

The sanctuary remains a memorial, painted white with chairs and roses marking the people who were killed. Frank Pomeroy said a new temporary building that potentially could seat 200 people is being shipped and is expected to arrive Monday. The decision to either preserve or demolish the church has not yet been made, he said.

The Sutherland Springs Historical Museum had also gathered board members Thursday night to discuss the upcoming annual banquet. Also on their minds was how to represent this shooting in the towns history.

We realize this is now part of Sutherland Springs history, but we dont want it to be the predominant event, said Tambria Read, the museum chairwoman. This does not define us. Probably what defines is that we are resilient  over the centuries of flooding, episodes of fire, etc. We are resilient and we come together.

Read said they plan to set up a monitor that will show videos and play oral histories of community members. Theyll have a binder with a collection of news articles on the shooting, and pamphlets from the victims funerals, she said.

Holcombe said shes still searching, trying to discover a new purpose. She wants to find a way to help others.

Hug your friends and family, cherish every moment you have with them, she said. If you want to help, find someone in your community that needs help. Do something for them. There are others that need help right now, too, and there will be others like us.

When Frank Pomeroy walks by Annabelles room, hes overcome with the enormity of his loss. Sometimes, for a second, he questions why she had to be killed. But then he knows.

I went by her room and I had a moment, you know, where I thought, What did she do wrong? But my wife is right  she wouldnt have been able to handle it, having so much of her family gone. She couldnt do it.

Staff Writer John Tedesco contributed to this report.

sfosterfrau@express-news.net
Alex Luna /San Antonio Express-News

An argument between in-laws turned violent Sunday evening after a family member drew a gun in the South Side, San Antonio police said.

SAPD Sergeant Gary Mucho said police were called to a home in the 7000 Block of Hallie Ridge for a reported shooting.
Officers are trying to determine what happened after they responded to a report of a shooting in a Northwest Side home but found no victim, police said.

San Antonio Police Department Officer Carlos Ortiz said a man called police around 3 p.m. and told them someone was shot in the 1500 block of Santa Monica.
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A San Marcos police officer was fatally shot Monday afternoon while attempting to arrest a man on a warrant.

San Marcos Police Chief Chase Stapp said at a news conference that officer Kenneth Copeland, 58, was fatally shot when he and a small contingent of officers were ambushed at 2:23 p.m. in the El Camino Real subdivision.

"Ken's a hero ... today was his day off," Stapp said before pausing. "He worked just about every day off to provide for his kids because he knows that we're short-handed and that we need help."

RELATED: Man killed at East Side landfill in 'unfortunate' accident

Stapp said Copeland is the first San Marcos police officer to be killed in the line of duty.

During the news conference, Stapp provided details of the fatal shooting.

"Shortly after their arrival, it appears this individual began firing at the officers much like in an ambush-type situation," he said. The officers were there to arrest the man on charges related to a violent crime, he added.

Copeland, who was wearing ballistic armor, was struck several times, police said. Officers pulled him out of the area, Stapp said.

One officer rushed him to the Central Texas Medical Center in a police car. He was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m., Stapp said.

Other officers at the scene surrounded the home in hopes of talking the man out of the house. The Hays County-San Marcos joint SWAT and crisis negotiation teams responded to the scene.

"He did later come out and surrender to officers and has been taken into custody," Stapp said, adding that the man was shot during the incident.

RELATED: Woman killed in possible road rage incident on Hwy. 281 identified

Investigators did not know Monday evening if the man shot himself or was shot by an officer at the scene.

The man has been taken to an area hospital where he is being guarded until he is medically stable enough to be taken into custody, Stapp said.

Stapp did not identify the shooter nor offer further details on the warrant being served because the man had not yet been brought before a judge. Copeland, a 19-year-veteran of the force, leaves behind a wife, Shiela, and four children: Nile, Noah, James and Jonah.

Were not accustomed to this, with the exception of helping other agencies in the nearby area deal with this when it happens to them, Stapp said.

San Marcos Mayor John Thomaides called for the citys support as they mourn the loss of a member of our family.

RELATED: Suspect in Thanksgiving killing of young girl released then arrested again

No city is prepared for this, Thomaides said. We are all mourning together, and we will continue to mourn even as we all get back to the business of serving our citizens.

San Marcos City Manager Bert Lumbreras described seeing officers reacting to Copelands death.

I can tell you I saw a lot of crying; I saw peoples hearts ripped out, Lumbreras said.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement: Today we grieve for the family of the fallen San Marcos police officer, and we vow swift justice for the killer. The men and women in law enforcement put their lives on the line every day to protect and to serve our communities, and we will never forget their sacrifices.

Cecilia and I extend our heartfelt condolences to the officers family and to the entire San Marcos Police Department.

This will mark the 14th officer shot in the line of duty this year in Texas, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks law enforcement deaths.

Officers around our state courageously serve and deserve our utmost honor and respect, especially during this time, Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. Please join Angela and me as we pray for the officers family, the people of San Marcos, and for our law enforcement officers around the state.

Kelsey Bradshaw is a digital reporter for mySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| kbradshaw@express-news.net | Twitter: @kbrad5
HONG KONG - The United States and South Korea began large-scale combined air force drills Monday, with plans to carry out simulated strikes on North Korean nuclear and missile testing sites, South Korean military officials said.

Some 230 aircraft will take part in the drills, which will include some of the Pentagon's most powerful warplanes, such as stealth F-35 Lightning II fighters and B1-B Lancer bombers.

They come just a week after North Korea tested a missile that analysts said had the capability of reaching much of the continental United States.

The drills were part of an annual exercise that had been planned before North Korea conducted the missile test, officials said.

The exercise is "aimed at enhancing the all-weather, day and night combined air power operation capabilities of South Korea and the U.S.," South Korea's defense ministry said.

Such drills have drawn vigorous criticism from North Korea, whose state news media said Sunday that the latest exercises were pushing the Korean Peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war." It warned that Pyongyang would "seriously consider" countermeasures against the drill and that the United States and South Korea would "pay dearly for their provocations," the North's Korean Central News Agency said.

Underscoring the tensions, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina urged the Pentagon on Sunday to move dependents of U.S. service members out of South Korea because of the threat of conflict. More than 28,000 U.S. troops are stationed there, many living with their families.

"It's crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea, given the provocation of North Korea," Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CBS's "Face the Nation."

The military exercises that began Monday involve 12,000 personnel and also include six F-22 Raptors, representing the largest deployment of the stealth fighters to South Korea, officials said.

The drills will be conducted under wartime scenarios that include attacks on mock North Korean nuclear and missile targets, South Korea's military said.
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WASHINGTON  Texas U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, who used $84,000 in taxpayer dollars to settle with a former aide who sued him for sexual harassment in 2014, says he's going to pay back the money.

Farenthold told a Corpus Christi television station Monday that he plans to take out a personal loan to repay the government, a move that would be unprecedented under the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act that governs workplace disputes against lawmakers and their staffs.

The four-term Congressmen, who has long denied any wrongdoing, said he will offer a check to House Speaker Paul Ryan or other congressional leaders this week.

Farenthold also got an endorsement Monday from a past spokeswoman, Elizabeth Peace, who told the Chronicle that while Farenthold was always respectful, the atmosphere for women in much of the rest of Congress can be "toxic," requiring mandatory sexual harassment training.

READ ALSO: Congressman, hit with 'sexting' revelation, bows out of 2018 race

Now Playing: FOX 26 News reporter Natasha Geigel and The News Edge anchor Kaitlin Monte Video: Fox 26 Houston

Farenthold, for his part, told KRISTV, that the losers in his case, which was eventually settled out of court, were the taxpayers who are required by law to underwrite settlements and awards against members of Congress.

"I want to be clear that I didn't do anything wrong," he said, "but I also don't want the taxpayers to be on the hook for this."

In an interview witth "6 Investigates" in Corpus Christi, Farenthold said he was not given a choice about using his own money in the 2015 confidential settlement with his former spokeswoman, Lauren Greene.

Under the 1995 law, awards and settlements are paid from an account of the U.S. Treasury.

The scion of a wealthy and politically-connected family, Farenthold's net worth was estimated in 2015 at more than $5.7 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which ranked him the 72nd wealthiest lawmaker in the House.

Farenthold, 55, is the first member of Congress now known to have benefited from a little-known Treasury Department fund created to cover workplace settlements involving lawmakers.

READ ALSO: Congressman Al Green addresses past 'romantic encounter'

The congressional Office of Compliance (OOC) disclosed Friday that the fund paid for only one sexual harassment settlement involving a House lawmaker's office in the past five years, but did not name Farenthold.

In a statement Friday, Farenthold declined to confirm or deny that the claim had involved him. But he confirmed the payment in his interview Monday.

"I wish I could have said something Friday," he told the television station. "I went to the House lawyer and said, 'What can I say?, and they said 'Nothing ... Here's the statement that you can make.'"

Farenthold's account, however, differs from documents provided by the Office of Compliance, which state that the terms of settlement agreements, including any provisions governing disclosure, "are solely determined by the parties and their representatives."

Greene, then 27, alleged in a 2014 federal lawsuit that Farenthold made sexually suggestive remarks and, along with top staff members, created a hostile work environment. She also alleged that he retaliated against her when she complained. She did not allege any inappropriate sexual contact.

In his response to Greene's complaint, Farenthold alleged that she was fired for "poor performance."

The out-of-court settlement came after the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent watchdog agency, cleared Farenthold, concluding that there was no "substantial reason" to believe the allegations against the Corpus Christi Republican.

Greene did not return several calls in the last week requesting comment. Her Washington attorney, Leslie Alderman, also did not return calls Monday.

Until now the details of the settlement, including the $84,000 payout, remained under wraps, apparently by agreement of the parties. At the time, Farenthold was represented by lawyers for the House Employment Counsel.

Though Farenthold was cleared in 2015, the House Ethics Committee indicated Friday that it will review all formal claims of sexual harassment and other misconduct involving members and employees of the House.

He said he hired his own attorney at personal expense over the weekend to review the 2015 settlement, and was advised that he can talk about the "process."

Peace, who served as the congressman's spokeswoman for two years after Greene left, said that while Farenthold always treated her with respect, the same is not true elsewhere in Congress, which she called a "toxic environment."

"My two years with Congressman Farenthold were incredibly valuable," Peace said in an email. "I had an extensive and great career prior to working for the House but I learned so much during my time there. Congressman Farenthold was always very respectful to me and very considerate of my family - as in flexible with my schedule when necessary for the needs of my children as my husband was deployed overseas for the majority of the time I worked there.

"Sadly," she added, "I'm not surprised by the news coming out lately about sexual harassment in Congress as a whole because of other things I witnessed and things that occurred during my time there. It can be a very toxic work environment as a whole but once the Congressman became aware of those issues, he immediately took action on behalf of his staff and did his best to always do the right thing.

"While I don't want to discuss the particulars of that, I am very empathetic to the stories of other women coming forward in recent weeks. I would urge Congress to immediately pass mandatory sexual harassment training for all staffers as I believe it's greatly needed.

The Congressional Accountability Act was created in 1995 to give Congressional employees a way to pursue harassment claims and secure awards for settlements. In all, it has paid out more than $17 million over the past two decades for 264 settlement cases, including sexual harassment cases.

Farenthold criticized the agency for silencing accusers and lawmakers while forcing taxpayers to pay the costs.

"The process is broken," he said, on tape to KRISTV.com.

He said he will now push for more transparency.

A spokeswoman for Ryan did not respond to a request for comment on Farenthold's offer to repay the government.

Farenthold's is by no means the only office to have used public funds to pay for a harassment claim. Detroit Michigan John Conyers Jr. has faced multiple allegations of harassment in recent weeks, and in at least one case is reported to have used his office budgets to settle a complaint in an apparent effort to hide it from public view.
How long are we going to pretend that President Trump is fully rational? How long are we going to ignore the signs that he is dangerously out of control?

Trumps supporters comfort themselves with the idea that hes being crazy like a fox  that all the outrageous lies, abrupt reversals, bizarre pronouncements and vicious personal attacks are calculated to achieve some rational goal. Hes just playing to his base, perhaps, or distracting everyone from unpopular legislation cutting taxes for the rich, or trying to deceive other world leaders into thinking he might be unhinged and therefore should be accommodated.

His approval rating plummeted after the inauguration and has been stuck at 40 percent or below since June, according to Gallup. He has managed to alienate our closest allies  even drawing a rare rebuke recently from British Prime Minister Theresa May  and created a vacuum in world leadership that China is happily beginning to fill.

But Trump stays his wild and erratic course, as if he simply cannot help himself.

The most alarming development is the revelation that Trump continues to entertain paranoid conspiracy theories of the kind usually found beneath tinfoil hats. According to both the Washington Post and the New York Times, Trump still clings to the ridiculous birther theories about where former President Barack Obama was born. The papers also reported that Trump has privately claimed the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which he bragged about harassing and assaulting women, was somehow forged or doctored.

You will recall that Obamas birth in Hawaii has been definitively proved; and also that Trump acknowledged the Access Hollywood tape when it surfaced last year and gave a televised address apologizing for it.

It would be one thing if Trump were broadcasting this nonsense for a reason. Id feel better even if he had a nefarious reason  to appeal to racists who cannot accept the legitimacy of the first black president, say, or to encourage his base to doubt everything they see and hear in the media and instead to trust only him. But Trump has raised these off-the-wall subjects in private conversations with aides, associates and a sitting U.S. senator  settings in which the president is likely to say what he truly believes.

It is one thing to create a fantasyland for political ends  appealing to some voting groups prejudices or giving supporters a reason to excuse bad behavior. It is another thing altogether, however, for Trump to fall into his own rabbit hole and actually believe what he once knew to be untrue.

For decades, when he was a publicity-seeking developer and social-climbing Manhattan playboy, Trumps method was to fabricate his own reality; he even called gossip columnists and pretended to be a publicist named John Miller or John Barron in order to sing his own praises. But he employed this shtick with a wink and a smile, knowing it was all a game. Increasingly he sounds and acts as if he thinks his make-believe is real.

One of the things that first drew attention to Trump as a presidential candidate was his public speaking style  free-association, basically, with no discernible filter between brain and lip. Follow one of his speeches and you can track how his mind works.

On Nov. 27, at a White House ceremony honoring Navajo code talkers, he bizarrely slipped in his Pocahontas slur against Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who wasnt there and had nothing to do with the event.

On Wednesday, at a Missouri rally touting the tax bill, he came to a line about how it would add rocket fuel to the economy, paused a second, and then reprised his Rocket Man insult of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, whom Trump went on to call a sick puppy.

Maybe Trump is rattled by the Great Reckoning on sexual harassment and assault. Maybe he is worried about the steamrolling Robert Mueller investigation. Or maybe his mental state is just deteriorating.

Whatever the problem is, its serious  and its getting worse.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com
At some point, whether the presidents more head-scratching actions are a matter of instability or calculation is of little importance. There should be no hesitation in calling out divisiveness, bigotry and hate no matter the roots of those behaviors.

And each of those descriptors fit a number of particular presidential acts, public and private, lately.

When is it appropriate to call a colleague who claims Native American ancestry Pocahontas? At an event to honor Native American war heroes?

When it is appropriate to retweet inflammatory videos from a disreputable, fascist, anti-Muslim source  their veracity unverified  that purport to show Muslims assaulting people and desecrating a statue of the Virgin Mary?

After you admitted to and apologized for the misbehavior contained within, when is it appropriate to question whether a video in which youve boasted of the ability to grab female genitalia is authentic?

After you previously conceded  after strident assertions to the contrary  that the nations first black president was indeed U.S. born, when is it appropriate, even in private, to reprise the accusations he wasnt?

The answer in each case is never. President Donald Trump is at the center of all of those actions, and it isnt even a complete list.

Trump being Trump? Or Trump being crazy as a fox to distract from a tax bill that will be disastrous for Americans, from a guilty plea from his former national security adviser, from the most recent missile launch by North Korea, from  take your pick of looming crises?

Pocohantas is what Trump snidely called Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts during a ceremony to honor Navajo code talkers who thwarted Japanese attempts to understand U.S. transmissions during World War II  a ceremony unfolding before a portrait of Indian killer Andrew Jackson, who signed the bill that prompted the infamous Trail of Tears.

The inflammatory videos came from the Twitter account of Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of the far-right Britain First party.

And now, behind closed doors, Trump is reportedly questioning the authenticity of the Access Hollywood tape and is again questioning the validity of the birth certificate from Hawaii for President Barack Obama.

Shall Americans give the president a pass? In San Antonio, a majority-minority city with a tradition of racial and ethnic harmony, we know the answer. Americans should not become inured to this behavior, lest it become the new normal.

At some point, abiding bigoted behavior can be little different from outright bigotry.
Serving the needy

Re: Mission goes on; Humanitarians followers keep up her work with homeless downtown, front page, Nov. 20:

Thanks for giving front page status to the story of Dorcas Rogers and her mission to serve the homeless at the Church of Hope. She and her volunteers serve the homeless with respect and compassion as they minister to the citys most vulnerable. This ministry takes place not within a fancy megachurch or the carefully landscaped grounds of a suburban neighborhood, but under a downtown bridge!

A major part of being a Christian is meeting people where they live and serving them as they are, not as we wish they would be. Ms. Rogers is a shining example of this, and I pray that her work will continue to be blessed.

Donna Fisher

Keep the vibrancy

Re: Alamo in peril, but Bush plan would save it, Yvette Reyna, Other Views, Nov. 20:

Ms. Reyna gives a nice history of Jose Losoya, but unbelievably fails to mention the Cenotaph and gushes over the talented Bush team that gave us the glass wall.

Alamo Street could be closed and a museum could be built without moving the Cenotaph. The little park behind the Alamo also could be opened without moving it. Any necessary repairs, if any, are better done where it stands.

The only reason moving the Cenotaph is even being considered is one or two powerful people must have got their feelings hurt 30 years ago when they tried to move it and were rejected by the City Council of that era. To them it is like Moby Dick, the great white whale, something that must be destroyed at all costs.

The people have spoken. They dont want a wall built around the Alamo because it would transform the vibrant urban space of today into the sterile, wasteland that existed in 1836.

Our new mayor would do well to listen to the people who elected him. His wealthy new friends may have the big bucks, but they still only have one vote.

Bill Sandidge

Protect our kids

As a registered nurse, every day I saw the devastating impact of tobacco on the health of my patients and those who loved them. Because of this, I know we must do everything in our power to protect our youth and prevent them from starting down a path of deadly addiction that will follow them throughout their lives. If we do not, nearly half a million kids in Texas will ultimately die prematurely from smoking.

Studies show 95 percent of adult smokers began smoking before they turned 21. If we can prevent young people from smoking, we drastically increase the odds that they will never start. By raising the tobacco sales age to 21, we are taking a stand for our youth against tobacco companies that spend $1 million a day marketing their products to kids.

I hope San Antonio will join the list of 215 cities that made the health of their children a priority by raising the tobacco sales age to 21.

Suzanne Lozano, R.N.

Soul mates?

Our president has announced that we Americans must drain the swamp in Washington. We citizens of Texas know that if your intent is to drain the swamp, you cannot continue to add slime. Roy Moore of Alabama is exactly that kind of slime.

Mr. President, you have just proven that he must be your kind of people, huh?

Rick Reyes, Boerne

Threats abound

We definitely need more guns, a pistol in every pocket. Ordinary rifles and shotguns are fine for blasting bunnies and bringing down deer, but we need lots of assault rifles to protect ourselves from all those foreigners who keep sneaking into our country, stealing our jobs and driving us out. Also, we need to protect ourselves against gangs of liberals who will be coming around to confiscate our weapons and burn our Bibles.

Besides that, how are we going to hold off Barack Obama when he invades Texas with that secret army hes been building and inflicts us with the horrors of universal health care and environmental protection?

Also, I hear theres a rainbow battalion planning to take over the Alamo, paint it pink, and convert it to a gay wedding chapel.

How can we hold them off without high-capacity, rapid firing weapons?

Steven Botts

Inaction on guns

Re: What if Sutherland Springs hero didnt have a gun? Rich Lowry, Opinion, Nov. 12:

A better question would be, what if the killer (and many other killers) had no access to an assault weapon? Many of these people would not have died. No citizen should be able to obtain an assault weapon. Our Second Amendment does not guarantee us assault weapons. We should still have weapons to protect our homes, but not this kind.

We need an assault weapon ban ASAP and better background check capabilities. The illegitimate president, Donald Trump, and his cronies in the Republican Party Congress (for the most part) refuse to pass any any kind of gun control because they are controlled by the NRA.

Enough is enough; these weapons are not toys to use for practice or games. They only destroy lives. The NRA, Trump and the Republican Congress have blood on their hands every time a mass murder occurs.

As a nation, we all should have the guts to stand up to these people and do something, because as long as money is flowing into the coffers of the legislators, they will do nothing.

Edward Sosa
THE National Economic Consultative Forum (NECF) has congratulated President Emmerson Mnangagwa following his inauguration as Zimbabwes Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF).

President Mnangagwa becomes the countrys second Executive President since independence in 1980 after taking over from President Mugabe, who resigned after being in charge for 37 years.

In their congratulatory message, NECF co-chairpersons Dr Misheck Sibanda, who is also the Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, and Dr Robbie Mupawose said they were proud to have President Mnangagwa as their patron.

We write to congratulate you, Your Excellency, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, on your inauguration as the second Executive President of the Republic of Zimbabwe.

As NECF, we take pride in your visionary and inspirational leadership that you have exuded during the many high level NECF events that were privileged to host you as our guest of honour.

NECF events that quickly come to mind are the annual Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF)  NECF Business Conference, the Zimbabwe Agricultural Society (ZAS) -NECF Agribusiness Conference and the National Economic Symposium during which the annual Zimbabwe National Competitiveness Report is launched.

It is with great honour and pleasure that the NECF welcomes you as our patron and we stand ready to continue providing a platform for smart partnership dialogue amongst Government, business, labour, academia and civil society in building the economy, read their letter.

NECF said it was happy with President Mnangagwas inauguration speech.

Your inauguration speech remains a great inspiration and beacon to the NECF family and the nation at large.

Separately, former Minister of Finance and Economic Development Dr Ignatius Chombo also sent his congratulatory message to President Mnangagwa.

I saw your inauguration as the second Executive President of the Republic of Zimbabwe with pride and contentment, especially after the goings on in both the party and Government during the last six weeks.

I wish I could attend but I couldnt because I am in hospital for some health problems that doctors are attending to. I missed all recently held meetings because I was away, learning some few hard lessons.

I wish to heartily congratulate you for your elevation to the position of President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, as well as the First Secretary of our beloved revolutionary party Zanu-PF, he said.

Dr Chombo wished President Mnangagwa well in his new roles and responsibilities.

May God give you strength and guidance as you lead us into the future. You have my full support and loyalty in equal measure as I served the former President R.G. Mugabe during his tenure in office.

I am available to serve you in any capacity as you deem fit. Once again, I wish you all the greatest good and may God bless you ever more, he said.

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Econet Wireless founder and Executive Chairman, Dr Strive Masiyiwa is reportedly the next in line for the most powerful position in Zimbabwean politics.

A source close to the internationally recognised Businessman and Philanthropist who is a humble, God-fearing billionaire alleges that Masiyiwa has received this call numerous times from God though he has kept quiet about this calling. Its reported that a number of Men of God have given him this message from God and he himself confirmed hearing this from God.

Strive has been fighting the call from God silently but I think just like the Biblical Jonah, the issue is now getting to him, said the mole who is very close to Dr Masiyiwa.

Over the past 2 years, several prophets and Men of God and even fortune tellers have predicted that Zimbabwes 2018 Presidential elections winner will neither be a Zanu PF nor an MDC principal, but an individual who is currently based in diaspora.

In July last year, United Family International Church (Ufic) leader, Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa, pulled a shocker by wading into the then raging Zanu PF succession storm, declaring that the 2018 elections would be won by a Zimbabwean presently based in the Diaspora. Makandiwa told his congregants that he was seeing a person coming from outside, who was running towards the people of Zimbabwe.

This person is running in the opposite direction to people, who are running towards him, I see a spider and this spider is following this person, who is the chosen one to lead the people, he said.

To prove that the person Prophet Makandiwa was referring to, wasnt a member of neither Zanu PF or MDC, the former AFM preacher said if that person were to join a reputable opposition when he returns to Zimbabwe, he would certainly win 2018 elections. Most people believed the prophecy was talking about Strive Masiyiwa, who also owns Kwese TV, Steward Bank and was once an MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirais personal advisor up to quite recently.

In May this year, revered Prophet, Madzibaba Wimbo, apparently completely ruled out any of the Zanu PF leaders from leading the country after next years elections. The mysterious Madzibaba Wimbo is the same prophet who reportedly accurately predicted in 1957 that Mugabe whose second name is Gabriel would rule Zimbabwe in the post independence era for over 20 years.

In May this year, the elderly man of God, who is turning 95 in three weeks time on the Christmas day, apparently prophesied earlier this year that a new leader would emerge in Zimbabwe after next years eagerly-anticipated national elections.

He has made another prophesy that a new leader will emerge next year, but did not give names. However, he said the new leader is not among the current favourites who are engaged in Zanu PFs succession battles, but is an outsider, one of the sources at the secretive church said.

The Daily News, reported that a close mole within Madzibaba Wimbos church said the man of God had prophesied that the the winner of the next elections will have a foreign name. Interestingly, the Daily News published the article on 24 July last year, and in the article, the revered prophet is said to have accurately predicted that the military would intervene in Zimbabwean politics.

The prophet said the person who will next lead Zimbabwe will have a foreign name and that there will be great suffering in the country for some months. He also predicted that the army will intervene in politics, the first source claimed.

Dr Strive Masiyiwa added sparked speculation when he ended his Facebook post on 22 December last year with the following statement: Meanwhile, Ive delayed my special announcement until January. This one will blow you away Dont try and speculate on what it might be; youll just end up feeding the fake news hucksters. Just wait for it, and be prepared.

Although early this year, three months later, Masiyiwa was quick to point out that he was not interested in politics, not in the past, not now, and not in the future, however, those close to him have already highlighted that he has been trying to ignore Gods calling which has been delivered to him by nearly countless prophets and pastors, and that he has already played various political roles which have benefited millions of Zimbabweans even to this day.

According to Wikileaks, an international whistle blower that exposes governments top secrets, the Econet founder was the one who floated the idea of a Government of National Unity. According to the leaks, Strive Masiyiwa briefed Pretoria PolCounselor and Harare PolEcon chief on August 7, 2007, on ZANU-PF-MDC negotiations.

Below is an except of the summary of the cable:

The WikiLeaks documents revile that Masiyiwa is quietly floating an idea to shift executive power from President Mugabe to a technocratic Prime Minister. To get Mugabe to accept the deal, Mugabe would remain President until 2010 with some power over the security apparatus, but the Prime Minister would run the economy and get the country back on its feet. All parties would work together to draft a new constitution.

Masiyiwa was open to ideas on who best to sell the plan, but suggested new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, working through an envoy like former Malaysian PM Mahathir, as possible mediators. We cannot comment on the merits of the plan, but find it encouraging that senior Zimbabwean exile businessmen are discussing solutions to their countrys political and economic crisis. Embassy Harare notes that the concept is increasingly in circulation in Harare and may not require outside intervention.

According to the draft by Masiyiwa, Mugabe gets the extension of his presidential term to 2010, but would share power with a technocratic Prime Minister during the 2007-10 period. The PM would have to be acceptable to 85 percent of the parliament, thus requiring opposition MDC support, and could only be removed by an 85 percent vote in parliament.  Source: My Zimbabwe News

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Coalition of Democrats (CODE) president, Elton Mangoma believes the newly appointed President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa will continue on his predecessor Robert Mugabes dismal economic and political trajectory as the two are cut from the same cloth.

Mangoma was commenting on Mnangagwas cabinet appointment which he said was identical with Mugabes culture of rewarding his backers and disregarding the constitution by appointing the military into cabinet.

The cabinet shows a true ZANU PF mentality of not caring, he has not listened to what people have said and certainly they have not listened to what people are saying.

Their attitude and mind-set is the same as the former president (Mugabe) and president Mnangagwa must have learnt very well from president Mugabe in that you just do what will keep power there is nothing about servant leadership, said Mangoma.

Mangoma said that Mnangagwas decision to appoint Military personnel into cabinet was worrying considering that none of them were being addressed as former military members.

CODE would like to see a professional army that will not meddle in the political spheres of the country.

It could now be a showcase that our military is running affairs of the country, he added.

Mangoma said that the fact that Mnangagwa chose to retain Patrick Chinamasa who he described as the architect of Zimbabwes current financial turmoil and Obert Mpofu who he described as one of the most corrupt public officers in Zimbabwe shows that he (Mnangagwa) is a proper disciple of Mugabeism who has no idea what the Zimbabwean economy needs.

This is in response to the extremely disappointing cabinet line-up president Mnangagwa announced in the night. He is even scared to do it in the light of day.

A good number of these ministers are dead wood they will not deliver anything, they have not delivered anything and will not show any spark, said Mangoma.

President Mnangagwa last week named a 22 member cabinet which included Major General Sibusiso Moyo as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Air Marshall Perrence Shiri as Agriculture Minister.

Before Mnangagwas cabinet announcement, speculation was rife that he was going to include opposition members into a transitional arrangement, however the new Presidents key ally, Christopher Mutsvangwa who had been appointed Information minister appeared in a local publication saying MDC-T leader, Morgan Tsvangirai had put forward demands which could not be met by Mnangagwa.

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Walter Mzembi was the last Foreign Affairs minister to serve under former president Robert Mugabe.

Although his tenure was brief, for it was during his stint that the Mugabes regime fell, it was an event-packed period that has not been recorded.

Daily News News Editor Gift Phiri had an opportunity to hear these events from the horses mouth. Below are excerpts of the interview:

Q: Where were you when the military tanks rolled into Harare? What was your reaction?

A: Before I respond to your questions, let me hasten to say the first casualty of conflict is truth. I am hoping this interview can lay to rest the many falsehoods and fake news that have been generated and disseminated around my name and whereabouts in the most recent past, amounting to hate speech! Thank you for the opportunity to set the record straight. Now back to your first question, we were of course in bed at that wee hour but had been kept wide awake by anxiety over the statement by the military and its implications and also queries from the region on what was going on, remember on the night in question

I had missed a flight to South Africa, where I had been granted an appointment with the South African Foreign Affairs minister in Pretoria in the morning of the 15th and later a meeting with President (Jacob) Zuma at 6pm in Cape Town as part of my regional diplomatic tour but also as the ex-presidents special envoy.

I had just completed a similar assignment in Zambia the previous day, where I had met both the Foreign Affairs minister and President Lungu. So my colleagues in the region were equally anxious. As to our reaction as a family, we stayed on, and only moved into a hotel around 6am, as we were now responding to various messages on the insecurity of Cabinet ministers getting to us from various sources.

Q: Some people suggest you took sanctuary in the Cuban Embassy. Is this correct?

A: We never were visited by the military contrary to falsehoods peddled by social media, and some of my colleagues in government who have been authoritatively peddling lies about my whereabouts and supposed fugitive status. I never left Zimbabwe nor sought sanctuary anywhere including the Cuban Embassy as asserted by some. My immigration and passport records can confirm this, including checking with the said embassies that are clearly irritated by these falsehoods. Its just malice!

Q: So where did you go?

A: I went to a hotel, and after two days was back at my residence.

Q: Why do you think you were expelled from Zanu PF?

A: Retaliatory action from my colleagues. Remember we were clearly split into two factions. The one with the upper hand expels the other! Those expelling others had been expelled the previous week or so, some childish game of sorts hence the intervention by the military who are stockholders of this party.

Q: In hindsight do you think you did the right thing ?

A: None of us is more righteous than the other, I hope one day there can be an honest stocktaking of actions, and a genuine attempt to heal the party. We have no other home outside Zanu PF, so expelling individuals is not the solution for a mature party such as Zanu PF. You sit down in the true spirit of Operation Restore Legacy , and examine the conflict points including generational and ideological misunderstandings and mend the fences, not just physically but mentally.

Q: What do you make of the process used to oust the president?

A: It was unfortunate, what started as a struggle within a struggle of a liberation movement was hijacked by civil society and others and we were unable on our own to sort things out without inviting other interests. Now they talk of going for the kill, and here they refer to Zanu PF, we have to pause and sort things on our own going forward, and clearly an eye for an eye left the world blind. This is my cautionary statement to the party.

Q: Do you believe the ex-president was ousted through a coup? Some are calling it a democratic military coup, which seems like an oxymoron.

A: He denied it himself that it was a coup and instructed me in the diplomatic solution I was championing to communicate that to Sadc. Our courts also adjudged that it wasnt a coup. So it wasnt a coup but a military arbitration in a party in which the military are stockholders. Dont look for it anywhere, nor try it elsewhere, you will not find a precedent. It was made in Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans.

Q: You were suspected of being a member of the so-called G40. Is it a correct assertion?

A: No I wasnt a member of G40 as you know it or as its characterised now. I spent my last two years detached from local politics until after the UNWTO General Assembly in Chengndu, China this last September. So my drama in local politics is two months old, with the results you know now.

Q: Do you buy the argument that the ex-first lady had usurped the authority of the ex-president and there were plans afoot to impose a dynasty?

A: That can only be answered by the former president himself.

Q: Have you spoken to the ex-president or former first lady after November the 21st?

A: Yes

Q: Your expulsion also deprived you of a Cabinet post. You have since been replaced by your predecessor who has become your successor. Your comment?

A: No deployment is permanent. The president must be allowed space to choose his own Foreign minister, its his prerogative! And we serve at his pleasure. Its a very sensitive portfolio, requiring absolute trust, and when you are in there you are the last in terms of loyalty to ship out hence my hanging on until D Day. I am sure even the new president respects and admires my loyalty, he needs a lot more principled people around him, thats my prayer.

Q: Would you accept a Cabinet post in President Mnangagwas administration?

A: Am I ready to work and contribute in any capacity including as a private citizen? So the answer is yes, that notwithstanding Zimbabwe needs all hands on the deck private and public and it should not just be about Cabinet posts, there are people who have been contributing to the well being of Zimbabwe beyond measure as Private Citizens, in business, academia, religion etc. There is life beyond these deployments, so I will lend my absolute support regardless of nomination for Cabinet and in whatever role.

Q: You have interacted in Cabinet with the new President, what type of man is he?

A: Pragmatic, shrewd and maybe reserved bordering on aloofness, but he certainly has bottled up ideas and refreshing thoughts that are only coming out now, which is natural for an astute politician who was reserving his best for future use and avoiding policy clashes!

Q: Do you think he will revive this shrinking economy?

A: He will lead the revival of the economy only to the extent that we all support him. He has said all the right things so far and is on track. He is carrying the cross as our leader but he needs all of us to achieve his vision and mission for a prosperous Zimbabwe.

Q: Zanu PF has recalled five MPs. Are you confident of retaining your seat?

A: I am ready to surrender my seat if it unites the party more going forward provided its done procedurally. An election is in the horizon and I am not sure what is served by taking away my seat from the electors in Masvingo South Constituency purely out of a decision of a central committee that may be completely disconnected to grassroots feelings on the same. They just sit here in Harare and decide for the people without consulting them.

Q: You went to the National Assembly on Wednesday, and reports suggest you shook hands with the new First Lady. Why did you do that?

A: She is the first lady of Zimbabwe and the shadow of the president inside the House of Assembly. Secondly, circumstances had not permitted me to pay my respects and courtesies nor attend the inauguration ceremony, so it was the cultural and normal thing to do. I am still on standby to extend my congratulations to the president himself too.

Q: Are you pursuing a future in politics?

A: President Mnangagwa was an avid supporter of my UNWTO Campaign, politics cannot only be constituency representative and/ or Executive deployment, both of which I am reconsidering going forward. I am yet to meet my constituency to sound them out on this, but if its not Zanu PF representation as predicated by my expulsion from the party, its time for a sabbatical. I will lend my support to any Zanu PF cadre nominated by the Party and I hope they can support me in my private life trajectory as well.

Q: There were claims by some war veterans that during the talks between H.E and the generals you acted as the ex-presidents special envoy ostensibly to mobilise regional support for him to dig in. What happened?

A: No, quite to the contrary the traditional itinerary of a new Foreign minister kicks off with regional courtesy calls, starting with Sadc and its dean who happens to be minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane of South Africa, then it follows the hierarchy of the Sadc Troika which was very relevant at the time, Angola as chair, Zambia, vice chair and Tanzania. The special envoy status is a coveted one, because it allows the visiting minister to engage the host president and share his foreign policy thrust at the highest level in addition to any message one may be delivering at the time from the Head of State.

Its time for a political sabbatical, says Mzembi. So you are not privy to the contents of the special message but should be ready to appraise the host president of issues that may be prompted by him during interaction. So my diplomatic tour was overtaken by events and ostensibly even the special messages because I never embarked on the rest of the tour after Zambia.

Q: You visited Zambia during that interregnum, what was the purpose of your visit?

A: Same objectives as alluded to already, but I came back from Zambia on the evening of the 13th of November, and the mix up of my whereabouts kicked off from there, notwithstanding the fact that I attended the Cabinet session of November 14. Even the reassurance message given to President Lungu that all was well was also overtaken by events thereafter.

There was a very naughty string of fake news that sought to bring the integrity of our meeting and President Lungus position on Zimbabwe into disrepute. I am glad he shamed the purveyors of these falsehoods by bringing a high powered delegation of three presidents to the inauguration, two of them past Presidents. It was the highest expression of endorsement of President Mnangagwa seen in Zambia as their son too because of shared family links dating back to the liberation struggle. As vice president, he was recently the guest of honour to the class of 1975 law school celebrations , which he was part of at UNZA.

Q: President Lungu later despatched ex-president Kaunda to Harare to lean on the old man. Were you involved in that shuttle diplomacy?

A: We were pleasantly interrupted from a lengthy conversation with former president Mugabe when President Kaunda telephoned announcing his arrival , and he just exclaimed Oh KK , and indicated he would call me back. Of course, I was constantly in touch with both the Foreign Affairs minister and President Lungu. It was their own decision. On my earlier visit I had sought to see ex-president Kaunda which I have done before regardless of deployment, because he is my mentor having been partly educated in Zambia myself too. In 2015, he was the Guest of Honour at my firstborn son Kombas wedding in Lusaka.

Q: To what extent where you involved in the talks?

A: I was in the loop on the Sadc diplomatic solution, and the point person with regards to communication with ex-president Mugabe and the region, and would consult him frequently on direction and vice versa. This in hindsight seemed disconnected to the local mediation effort. The diplomatic solution to be communicated by presidents Zuma and Lourenco of Angola was to deliver the same outcome as the people have now in President Mnangagwa except that it was a sequential one, starting with our Congress endorsing him for presidency of the party in December, and reappointment to vice president in government and then president Mugabe hand holding him to elections in 2018.

It was a solution in the interest of healing relations between the two of them and inside the party which has been raven by expulsions and counter expulsions. The mediators are presiding over sister liberation movements and had no interest in an implosion of Zanu PF, contrary to the indifference which was coming from civil society and other political parties who were assisting the demise of our party in the name of the Mugabe must go mantra . .There is contagion effect on the Region if one of liberation parties is under siege.

Q: When did you sign off as Foreign minister. There are claims you stood with Mugabe, to the end until he capitulated, why and how?

A: Given the diplomatic networking role not known to many, I am sure you appreciate the need for my professional conduct at the time, and why it was necessary to abstain from processes that were taking place in the party and in Parliament, they would have clearly conflicted my role in this whole saga. I chose to stand on principle and the rest is history. All this coordination and mediation work with Sadc happened from my home office, not the Cuban Embassy or any other country as shared at press conferences by comrades who were trying to cash in on my whereabouts and perceived demise for their own sinister interests.

I played my anticipated diplomatic role diligently to the end and I do not feel it was an exercise in circumventing a peoples will at all. I go honourably with my head high after 10 years of illustrious service and dedication to my country, and president and I have no regrets in being the last man standing. I was observing my oath of loyalty consistent with the seniority of the office I was holding.

Q: Your final word?

A: Hail the new President, His Excellency Cde ED Mnangagwa! It is time to move on for everyone, time for healing, for forgiveness, time to love, to smile, to laugh , time to live. As in 1980, lets turn our swords into ploughshares. Let bygones be bygones!

Breaking News via Email
NEW YORK  In Mexico, Bloomberg reports that the key to online shopping is offline payments, which is why the e-commerce giant allows people to pay for goods ordered on its website at convenience stores.

In a nation where just about everyone prefers to pay cash, Amazon.com Inc. and Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB are pushing a hybrid payment system to encourage more shoppers to go online. Amazon is letting people pay for goods ordered on its website at the corner convenience store, while Wal-Marts local unit and retail giant Grupo Elektra SAB have set up kiosks at megastores that work much the same way. Even MercadoLibre Inc., Latin Americas biggest online marketplace, has gotten in on the trend, writes Bloomberg.

The news source adds that shift stems from a population thats slow to set up a bank account, along with less than half of the adults in Mexico having a credit card. China and India have faced similar challenges and allow delivery people to accept cash payments; however, thats not an option in Mexico because of sky-high rates of assault and robberies.

Bloomberg says that retail in Mexico is a $168 billion business, but the e-commerce market was valued at just $17.6 billion in 2016, and more than half of those online purchases were made by consumers paying by cash in person. To tap into Mexicos consumer market, Amazon launched its Amazon Cash program in November, an online-offline hybrid marketplace that allows customers to deposit money in an account with the online retailer at more than 6,000 convenience stores and pharmacies throughout Mexico, and use the credit to make online purchases, notes the news source.

Theres not a single important retailer in Mexico thats not investing heavily in e-commerce, Eric Perez-Grovas, president of the Mexico online sales association, AMVO, told Bloomberg. Companies that have been in Mexico forever have brand recognition and their physical stores allow customers to go in, make payments and collect packages.

The competitive landscape for Mexico's e-commerce has intensified a great deal, Philip Behn, senior vice president of e-commerce at Walmex, told Bloomberg. Walmex, the local unit of Walmart, has about 2,000 kiosks throughout its stores that allow for online payments and serve as a training point for older or non-tech-savvy shoppers. Likewise, Elektra has about 250 kiosks in its stores. Its a process of evangelizing, Juan Carlos Garcia, Elektras director of e-commerce, told the news source. Many customers have never shopped online.

OXXO is on the forefront of the trend to bring online payments into its convenience stores throughout Mexico, working with MercadoLibre and Elektra to accept payments at its nearly 15,000 locations. Last year, OXXO stores accounted for 35% of such transactions in Mexico.

And although people may be slow to switch from unbanked to banked in Mexico, they are embracing technology. Bloomberg writes that in 2016 almost two-thirds of the population had access to Internet, and 91% had smartphones.

Retailers are constantly looking for ways to make their payments more flexible, Euromonitor International said in a report, adding that online payment kiosks represent a good strategy in terms of helping consumers feel more confident when buying products online.
Find the newest releases to watch from National Geographic on Disney+, including acclaimed documentary series and films Fire of Love, The Rescue, Limitless with Chris Hemsworth and We Feed People.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), the National Commission for Securities and the Stock Market and the National Commission for Financial Service Markets Regulation have said that it is impossible to declare cryptocurrencies monetary units, currency and a payment unit of another country, currency valuable, e-money, securities or quasi-money within the current Ukrainian legislation.

"We, financial regulators of Ukraine, continue working on the legal status of cryptocurrencies and legal regulation of transactions with them, taking into account the position of regulators of other countries and recent trends in development of these technologies," Deputy NBU Governor Oleh Churiy said, presenting the statement of the financial regulators in Kyiv last week.

He spoke against attempts to hastily regulate the status of cryptocurrencies in the Ukrainian legislation.

"We believe that amending the Ukrainian legislation should not be in hurry, as today there is no unified position towards cryptocurrencies in the world," Churiy said.

He said that different regulators interpret cryptocurrencies in an absolutely different ways: sometime it is considered as a payment unit, sometimes  an intangible asset and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) considers it decentralized virtual currency.

"The approach to legislative regulation should be careful and grounded. It is linked to protection of rights of investors into these cryptocurrencies," he said, finding it difficult to disclose concrete terms.

He said that this regulation should not hinder the use and development of modern IT technologies in the financial sector and entail outflow of specialists and capitals or the transfer of businesses outside Ukraine.

The financial regulators again warned of a large number of risks in operations with cryptocurrencies.

Head of the National Commission for Securities and the Stock Market Tymur Khromaev said that the commission is ready to take over the responsibility for setting the status of some investment assets, in particular those similar to crowdfunding ICO. However, amendments to the legislation about the regulator should be made.

He also said that the registration of bitcoin futures by the commission under an initiative of a stock exchange should not be considered the recognition of bitcoin, as this is a cash settlement stock index contract.

As for taxation of transactions with cryptocurrencies, Churiy said that representatives of the Finance Ministry and the State Fiscal Service have their members of the working group.
A mother and father in Colorado say their 10-year-old daughter committed suicide over video of a fight with an alleged bully. Ashawnty Davis, was only in fifth grade.

She was a happy girl until everything changed at the end of October when she was involved in a fight after school, her parents told KDVR.

They say it was her first fight and it was recorded by another student and posted on an app called Musical.ly.

The video shows Ashawnty and another student fighting, while other kids watched. Ashawnty's mother, Latoshia Harris, says her daughter had been confronting the girl who had been bullying her.

"I saw my daughter was scared," she said.

The video is difficult to watch. But Ashawnty's parents are sharing it to help other parents.

"She was devastated when she found out that it had made it to Musical.ly," said her father, Anthony Davis.

"My daughter came home two weeks later and hanged herself in the closet," said Harris.

She was on life support for two weeks after passing away Wednesday.

Her parents say she was the victim of "bullycide." The term is used when someone takes his or her own life because of bullying.

"We have to stop it, and we have to stop it within our kids," said Davis.

"I want other parents to know it's happening," Harris said. "That was my baby, and I love my baby, and I just want mothers to listen."

The school district issued the following statement regarding the incident:
PrivatBank has filed a claim to the police in Dnipropetrovsk region demanding to open a criminal case against facts of filing claims seeking to collect a debt under credit agreements of the bank by unidentified persons established by the bank, PrivatBank has said in a press release.

"The security service of PrivatBank reported that on November 23 during the monitoring of the Judiciary of Ukraine website the fact of filing three claims seeking to collect a debt under credit agreements to the business court of Dnipropetrovsk region on behalf of PrivatBank was revealed. The claims were filed by unidentified persons, without notifying the bank and without the required permits and powers," the bank said.

According to the report, the claims were filed allegedly on behalf of PrivatBank and allegedly signed by an employee of the financial institution. Similar cases regarding the fabrication of claims to business courts on behalf of the bank were recorded in other cities of Ukraine.
By Online Desk

CHENNAI: Actor Vishal after filing his nomination for contesting in the RK Nagar bypoll said that delay in civic polls, bad state of hospitals, schools were some of the reasons that led him to take a sudden political plunge.

The actor earlier paid respects to late AIADMK Supremo J Jayalalithaa, at her memorial before filing his nomination at the RK Nagar election office on Monday. He also paid respects to former Tamil Nadu chief ministers CN Annadurai, K Kamaraj and MG Ramachandran (MGR).

READ HERE | Vishal enters RK Nagar bypoll race, rushes in where Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan wait to tread

According to a press release from his team, Vishal first visited the Ramapuram house of AIADMK's late founder, M G Ramachandran before heading to the Amma Memorial at the Marina Beach.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has welcomed Vishal's entry into politics. The AAP convenor has tweeted that Vishal's entry will inspire many youngsters and has said that they should meet up during the actor's next Delhi visit.

Vishal, the general secretary of the Nadigar Sangam, who Saturday announced his decision to contest the RK Nagar bypoll as an independent candidate, is yet to reveal the reason behind his surprise entry into politics.

He, however, has promised to break the silence after filing his nomination at the election office.

Independent candidates cause ruckus inside #RKNagar election office for being made to wait to file nomination. Say @VffVishal should also wait in line. But will he? @NewIndianXpress #RKNagar #bypoll pic.twitter.com/qwwmt442Rn  Samuel Merigala (@themerigala) December 4, 2017

He is scheduled to launch a mobile app V Shall to interact with the people. The actor will explain the reason for his decision on Monday. He has taken this decision on his own without anyones pressure, sources close to Vishal told Express.

. @VishalKOfficial seeks blessings of #Kamarajar giving respect with garland before filing nomination for #RKnagarByElection. All looking positive for #Vishal with the blessings of God, Parents, Blessed Souls and people with good vibes. pic.twitter.com/oq6kiauJ3N  Johnson PRO (@johnsoncinepro) December 4, 2017

Vishal was elected as the General Secretary of the Nadigar Sangam in October 2015 and is also the president of the Tamil Film Producers' council.

Other major regional parties have already announced their candidates for the RK Nagar bypoll. AIADMK has fielded E Madhusudhanan, while Marudhu Ganesh will be contesting for DMK.

Actor Vishal paying his respects at Amma Samadhi on Monday morning. (Express Photo | Sunish Surendran)

Meanwhile, sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakar has also filed his nomination for the bypoll.

Karu Nagarajan has been announced as BJP's candidate, while late former CM Jayalalithaas niece Deepa Jayakumar is also set to contest.

Polling is scheduled to take place on December 21 and the results will be announced on December 24.

Following late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaas death in December 2016, the RK Nagar bypolls were originally slated for April this year, but was later cancelled after allegations of voter bribery.

RK Nagar has significant numbers of people of the Nadar community, fishermen and Christians, as also a sizeable population of Telugu-speaking people. Already, the ruling AIADMK has fielded veteran politician E Madhusudhanan in this constituency. There is a likelihood that Vishal may split the votes of Madhusudhanan, who also hails from the Telugu-speaking Naidu community.

(With inputs from Express News Service and T Muruganandham)

CHENNAI: Actor Vishal after filing his nomination for contesting in the RK Nagar bypoll said that delay in civic polls, bad state of hospitals, schools were some of the reasons that led him to take a sudden political plunge. The actor earlier paid respects to late AIADMK Supremo J Jayalalithaa, at her memorial before filing his nomination at the RK Nagar election office on Monday. He also paid respects to former Tamil Nadu chief ministers CN Annadurai, K Kamaraj and MG Ramachandran (MGR). READ HERE | Vishal enters RK Nagar bypoll race, rushes in where Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan wait to tread According to a press release from his team, Vishal first visited the Ramapuram house of AIADMK's late founder, M G Ramachandran before heading to the Amma Memorial at the Marina Beach. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has welcomed Vishal's entry into politics. The AAP convenor has tweeted that Vishal's entry will inspire many youngsters and has said that they should meet up during the actor's next Delhi visit. Vishal, the general secretary of the Nadigar Sangam, who Saturday announced his decision to contest the RK Nagar bypoll as an independent candidate, is yet to reveal the reason behind his surprise entry into politics. He, however, has promised to break the silence after filing his nomination at the election office. Independent candidates cause ruckus inside #RKNagar election office for being made to wait to file nomination. Say @VffVishal should also wait in line. But will he? @NewIndianXpress #RKNagar #bypoll pic.twitter.com/qwwmt442Rn  Samuel Merigala (@themerigala) December 4, 2017 He is scheduled to launch a mobile app V Shall to interact with the people. The actor will explain the reason for his decision on Monday. He has taken this decision on his own without anyones pressure, sources close to Vishal told Express. . @VishalKOfficial seeks blessings of #Kamarajar giving respect with garland before filing nomination for #RKnagarByElection. All looking positive for #Vishal with the blessings of God, Parents, Blessed Souls and people with good vibes. pic.twitter.com/oq6kiauJ3N  Johnson PRO (@johnsoncinepro) December 4, 2017 Vishal was elected as the General Secretary of the Nadigar Sangam in October 2015 and is also the president of the Tamil Film Producers' council. Other major regional parties have already announced their candidates for the RK Nagar bypoll. AIADMK has fielded E Madhusudhanan, while Marudhu Ganesh will be contesting for DMK. Actor Vishal paying his respects at Amma Samadhi on Monday morning. (Express Photo | Sunish Surendran) Meanwhile, sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakar has also filed his nomination for the bypoll. Karu Nagarajan has been announced as BJP's candidate, while late former CM Jayalalithaas niece Deepa Jayakumar is also set to contest. Polling is scheduled to take place on December 21 and the results will be announced on December 24. Following late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaas death in December 2016, the RK Nagar bypolls were originally slated for April this year, but was later cancelled after allegations of voter bribery. RK Nagar has significant numbers of people of the Nadar community, fishermen and Christians, as also a sizeable population of Telugu-speaking people. Already, the ruling AIADMK has fielded veteran politician E Madhusudhanan in this constituency. There is a likelihood that Vishal may split the votes of Madhusudhanan, who also hails from the Telugu-speaking Naidu community. (With inputs from Express News Service and T Muruganandham)
By IANS

NEW DELHI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Veteran actor-filmmaker Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of the 70s and early 80s, died on Monday at a hospital in Mumbai. But Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said he was getting condolence calls.

'"We're getting condolence calls in the office. Reports of my demise are, if not exaggerated, at least premature. #ShashiKapoor," Tharoor tweeted on Monday.

The mistake happened after a news channel's Twitter handle wrote Shashi Tharoor instead of Shashi Kapoor, who was 79.

But the politician has "no problem" as "mistakes happen. Glad to be able to crack a smile at a tragic moment".

Tharoor even paid tribute to the youngest son of late Prithviraj Kapoor and brother of late Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor.

We're getting condolence calls in the office! Reports of my demise are, if not exaggerated, at least premature. @TimesNow #ShashiKapoor https://t.co/nbtZGcdQTa  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017

"I feel a part of me is gone. A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome and w/a name that was often confused w/mine. (My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health!) I will miss Shashi Kapoor. Condolences to his family and all his fans," he tweeted.

I feel a part of me is gone. A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome & w/a name that was often confused w/mine. (My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health!) I will miss #ShashiKapoor. Condolences2his family&all his fans pic.twitter.com/fSz3jafPZJ  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017

In Thiruvananthapuram, a close aide of Tharoor told IANS that the MP's office in Delhi has, since Monday evening, hadbeen getting a flurry of telephone calls from several people, including journalists, with all in a hushed voice asking about Tharoor.

The aide said initially all of them were indeed perplexed on how come a common cold and cough that Tharoor had since arriving in Nerw Delhi on Sunday night could lead to so many calls.

"Later, we understood when it surfaced there was a goof up committed by a TV channel who got it wrong after Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor passed away," said the aide.

Thanks. No problem. Mistakes happen. Glad to be able to crack a smile at a tragic moment. https://t.co/3VxIpZ5yED  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017

Tharoor, who was in Kerala apital and was moving around for a few days after Cyclone Ockhi hit the district's coastal villages, had caught a bad cold and cough.

NEW DELHI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Veteran actor-filmmaker Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of the 70s and early 80s, died on Monday at a hospital in Mumbai. But Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said he was getting condolence calls. '"We're getting condolence calls in the office. Reports of my demise are, if not exaggerated, at least premature. #ShashiKapoor," Tharoor tweeted on Monday. The mistake happened after a news channel's Twitter handle wrote Shashi Tharoor instead of Shashi Kapoor, who was 79. But the politician has "no problem" as "mistakes happen. Glad to be able to crack a smile at a tragic moment". Tharoor even paid tribute to the youngest son of late Prithviraj Kapoor and brother of late Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor. We're getting condolence calls in the office! Reports of my demise are, if not exaggerated, at least premature. @TimesNow #ShashiKapoor https://t.co/nbtZGcdQTa  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017 "I feel a part of me is gone. A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome and w/a name that was often confused w/mine. (My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health!) I will miss Shashi Kapoor. Condolences to his family and all his fans," he tweeted. I feel a part of me is gone. A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome & w/a name that was often confused w/mine. (My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health!) I will miss #ShashiKapoor. Condolences2his family&all his fans pic.twitter.com/fSz3jafPZJ  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017 In Thiruvananthapuram, a close aide of Tharoor told IANS that the MP's office in Delhi has, since Monday evening, hadbeen getting a flurry of telephone calls from several people, including journalists, with all in a hushed voice asking about Tharoor. The aide said initially all of them were indeed perplexed on how come a common cold and cough that Tharoor had since arriving in Nerw Delhi on Sunday night could lead to so many calls. "Later, we understood when it surfaced there was a goof up committed by a TV channel who got it wrong after Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor passed away," said the aide. Thanks. No problem. Mistakes happen. Glad to be able to crack a smile at a tragic moment. https://t.co/3VxIpZ5yED  Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017 Tharoor, who was in Kerala apital and was moving around for a few days after Cyclone Ockhi hit the district's coastal villages, had caught a bad cold and cough.
By Online Desk

Congress President-elect Rahul Gandhi today visited some places hit by the Cyclone Ochki in southern Kerala that has claimed 63 lives in the state, most of them fishermen, and pitched for a better warning system to prevent recurrence of such tragedies.

Thousands of fishermen and their families in Kerala and Tamil Nadu are continuously holding mass protests, demanding for search operations to continue and for relief to be provided faster.

Search and rescue operations to trace the fishermen missing in the aftermath of cyclone Ockhi continued for the 12th day today. As many as 433 fishermen from Tamil Nadu and 186 from Kerala are yet to be traced.

The cyclone, earlier this week, had finally dissipated over the Arabian Sea, sparing Gujarat from destruction.

ALSO READ | No tsunami says IMD as false WhatsApp alerts create panic

Here are all the latest updates:

The Union Home Ministry is constituting an inter ministerial central committee for the spot assessment of damage and admissibility of claims of the states hit by Cyclone Ockhi.

House-to-house verification process is going on and a final figure of the missing fishermen would be known once the process was over, say officials. [READ FULL REPORT]

"The farmers have a ministry that looks after their interests and I think it is time that we create a ministry for the fishermen to look after their interests and make sure they are protected," said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi after visiting fishermen families in affected areas in Kerala. [READ FULL REPORT]

TN government hikes compensation for non-fisherman families from Rs 4 lakhs to Rs 10 lakhs. ( READ )

The death toll in the Ockhi cyclone that hit the Kerala coast mounted to 65 with more bodies being recovered.

DMK petitions TN governor Banwarilal Purohit to expedite rescue work post-Ockhi.

Efforts are on to identify the recovered bodies through DNA test.

In a bid to set up a mechanism to ensure the safety of fishermen, Kerala CM Vijayan said a system was being planned in association with the Indian Space Research Organisation.

Kerala State control room officials said three bodies were found off the coast of Kozhikode and three from Kochi. [READ FULL REPORT]

The financial assistance of Rs 20 lakh for families of Kerala fishermen killed in the cyclone would be given in one go. An amount of Rs five lakh would be given to those who are seriously injured and are not able to go to work in future as an "alternative livelihood" initiative.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday said the Centre has agreed to continue search operations for the missing fishermen in Cyclone Ockhi that hit the state's coast on November 29 and 30.

The death toll due to Ockhi cyclone, which hit the Kerala coast, rose to 52 on Tuesday as more bodies were recovered and the search for the missing fishermen in the high seas continued.

The Tamil Nadu CM Palaniswami on Tuesday announced Rs 20 lakh compensation for the kin of fishermen who died in the cyclone that devastated the coastal areas of the state recently.

Pope Francis has enquired about the hardships and sufferings caused to Kerala's fishermen community in the Ockhi cyclone that ravaged the coastal belt on November 30.

The Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday announced 'livelihood assistance' ranging from Rs 48,500 to Rs 63,500 per hectare for horticulture farmers of cyclone Ockhi-battered Kanyakumari district.

Kerala fishermen protestors took to the street by waving black flags and photos of the dead and missing fishermen walked about two km from Palayam to Raj Bhavan raising slogans, bringing the traffic to a standstill on the busy stretch.

The death toll in the Ockhi cyclone in Kerala rose to 40 on Monday with the recovery of two more bodies even as the search operations to trace the missing fishermen entered the 10th day.

Search and rescue operations to trace the fishermen missing in the aftermath of Ockhi cyclone continued for 10th day today even as 67 persons caught in the storm, returned to Kochi coast.

The Goa government would provide compensation to shacks having legal validity, for the damages suffered during the Cyclone Ockhi last week. [FULL REPORT]

The Indian naval ships engaged in search and rescue mission in the aftermath of Cyclone Ockhi today continued their operations in the high seas, searching area till the Maldives. No stranded boats , fishermen or floating bodies have been found in the sea by the naval search team during the last 72 hours, the official said.

Kerala Governor P Sathasivam will contribute a month's salary to the special fund being raised for the victims of cyclone Ockhi.

The Kerala government has asked the Indian Armed Forces and the Coast Guard to continue search operations for fishermen missing in high seas post-Cyclone Ockhi for 10 more days.

#HADR #CycloneOckhi #OpSahayam #SAR Based on reports by IN Boeing P8 i aircraft, INS Kalpeni was sent to Off Sesostris Bank/Bassas de Pedro (a traditional fishing area off Lakshadweep island).About 17 boats with 180 plus fishermen have been located.@DefenceMinIndia @nsitharaman  SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) December 8, 2017

Fishing vessel as seen from the aircraft. This video captures the essence of what Navy Boeing P-8i is doing - systematic search of every inch of possible/ probable area & providing hope to the stranded till they are rescued by our ships @nsitharaman pic.twitter.com/1sY0VXul42  SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) December 6, 2017

People receive essential commodities at a relief camp following cyclone Ockhi in the Kanyakumari district on Saturday. (PTI)

Given orders to Maharashtra Maritime Board and Collector, Sindhudurg Dist. to make all arrangements for the stranded fishermen. Local authorities are already with them and taking care of all arrangements, tweets Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis.

In all 68 fishing boats have reached, out of which 66 are from Kerala and 2 from Tamil Nadu with total 952 fisherman on board.

All are safe.

Maharashtra will completely look after everyone till weather permits them to go back. @nsitharaman @BJP4Keralam

 Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) December 2, 2017

A fresh spell of heavy rain is in store in some areas of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry with a low pressure area forming over south Andaman sea, which is "very likely" to become a depression over Bay of Bengal . It is very likely to become a depression over southeast Bay of Bengal and neighbourhood during the next 36 hours. It is also very likely to intensify further and move towards north Tamil Nadu south Andhra Pradesh coasts during the next 3-4 days. (IMD)

Though many fishermen from Kerala were brought ashore safely and admitted to hospitals, many are yet to recover from the shock of wrestling the lashing waves and seeing death face-to-face. Stephan, a fisherman hailing from nearby Poonthura, said: "It was the first time we were experiencing such huge waves and a rough sea. Luckily, the rescue boat came back and saved us." Most of the rescued fishermen had bruises all over their bodies and were seen shivering and begging for hot water and food when brought ashore. (PTI)

Stranded fisherman being brought to Kerala coast by Indain Navy personnel in Kochi on Saturday. (PTI)

Tamil Nadu CM K Palaniswami today requested the Centre to deploy the Indian Navy and Coast Guard for the search and rescue of fishermen who have not returned so far, and that helicopters of Coast Guard and Navy should be deployed for this purpose. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh assured the AIADMK leader that the Centre would provide the assistance required to rescue the fishermen. (PTI)

Several roads that connect Kanyakumari with many interior parts have got cut or were fully damaged due to heavy rainfall following the impact of cyclone Ockhi in the district on Saturday. (PTI)

A Coast Guard advisory here said the status of weather and sea conditions should be checked on television, radio, newspapers and smartphone applications before venturing out into the sea. The merchant ships should also be alert and avoid the path of Cyclone Ockhi, it said. Fishing boats should remain in groups and during distress all the crew should remain together, it said.

DMK working president M K Stalin urged Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in his letter to direct the Coast Guard to search and rescue "thousands of fishermen fighting for their lives in the mid sea, so as to prevent further loss of lives due to the Ockhi cyclone".

Steps have been taken to prevent any possible outbreak of epidemic in rain-hit areas of

Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu Health minister C Vijayabhaskar said today.

A relief worker places sand bags on the banks of a beach in Kochi in wake of cyclone Ockhi on Saturday. (PTI)

Leader of the opposition in the Kerala Assembly Ramesh Chennithala today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare cyclone Ockhi as a national disaster. He also urged the Kerala government to increase the financial aid for the injured at least up to Rs 50,000 from the present Rs 15,000. Lack of coordination had affected the government's relief and rescue operations, launched post Ockhi, he alleged. (PTI)

The Southern Railway announced partial and full cancellation of some trains in the Kaniyakumari-Nagercoil section. One train service was also rescheduled. (PTI

Meanwhile, relatives of missing fishermen from Kaniyakumari staged a road blockade demanding the fishermen be rescued at the earliest. Scores of women also staged protest at Chinnathurai in that district.

There has been a huge demand for generator sets following the devastation caused by cyclone Ockhi in the Kanyakumari region on Saturday. (PTI)

In Kanyakumari, power supply had been restored even as efforts are on to resume power supply in neighbouring areas like Nagercoil and Kuzhithurai. Officials expressed confidence that the power supply would be restored in the entire district by tomorrow.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami announced Rs 25 crore for expediting relief and restoration work in the district . ( PTI)

261 persons rescued by @IndiaCoastGuard @adgpi and @IAF_MCC in #CycloneOckhi @NewIndianXpress pic.twitter.com/ywhzBQLJnP

 Kiran_TNIE (@tniekiran1) December 2, 2017

The Coast Guard informed in a press release that on November 30, the Coast Guard District Headquarters in Kerala was informed that around 70-80 fishermen were stranded at sea due to the storm. The Coast Guard immediately sailed as many as nine ships towards Search and Rescue (SAR) efforts. Further, ships based at New Mangalore were also sailed towards Kerala coast to undertake the rescue of stranded fishermen. As the cyclone intensified, coordinated search by Coast Guard ships and aircraft continued in extremely rough weather with wind speed gusting up to 150 kmph. Ships at Mumbai and Goa were also placed on maximum alert to augment efforts as required, the press release read. (PTI)

As per the last report, a total of 79 stranded fishermen have been saved by the Coast Guard in coordination with other agencies. Also, the fisheries department has intimated that about 25 boats with 250 personnel are still in distress at sea.

A man watches a road that has been cut off due to floods following the heavy rainfall caused by the cyclone Ockhi which left heavy damage in the Kanyakumari district on Saturday. (PTI)

138 fishermen have been rescued from the Lakshadweep islands. (PTI)

So far 393 people from Kerala have been rescued, Kerala CM Vijayan said, as the state government announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the family of those who died in the storm, in addition to the financial assistance of Rs four lakh being given by the fisheries department.Of the rescued, 132 fishermen were from the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, 66 from Kozhikode, 55 from Kollam, 40 from Thrissur, and 100 from Kanyakumari. (PTI)

In Lakshadweep, 31 relief camps have been opened in the10 inhabited islands. So far, 1,047 people have been evacuated to the relief camps, official sources said. No casualties have been reported, with the worst-affected islands being Minicoy and Kalpeni. Seven people have lost their lives in Kerala in rain-related incidents over the past two days, official sources said. (PTI)

Cyclone Ockhi has so far claimed 13 lives in Sri Lanka . Power supply, essential services and air traffic was disrupted in the stormy weather that left several buildings damaged and trees uprooted in its wake. READ FULL REPORT HERE

#CycloneOckhi update @IndiaCoastGuard ship rescued 15 fishermen at sea off Vizhinjam/Quilon (Kerala) Coast and heading towards shore for safe disembarkation of fisher-folks @DefenceMinIndia @SpokespersonMoD pic.twitter.com/39gJrfI20Z

 Indian Coast Guard (@IndiaCoastGuard) December 2, 2017

Authorities including the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Coast Guard and Navy have rescued about 223 fishermen and evacuated thousands of people from cyclone hit areas, officials said, as they continued their operations on Saturday.

While INS Nireekshak, INS Jamuna and INS Sagardhwani are continuing search and rescue operations in their designated areas along the coast off Vizhinjam in Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam, two ships INS Shardul and INS Sharda are heading towards Lakshadweep, a defence spokesman said. (PTI) The naval ships, which left from the Southern Naval Command here yesterday, are likely to reach Lakshadweep this evening.

The Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Lanba briefed me on the on-going rescue operations #CycloneOchki . More fishermen rescued this morning. Rescue work to continue.Some rescued fishermen waiting in Lakshadweep Isle to get back. Details @indiannavy @DefenceMinIndia @IndiaCoastGuard

 Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) December 2, 2017

The Kerala state government has announced a compensation of Rs. 10 lakh to the families of the deceased.

#Kerala Locals have blocked National Highway for last five hours in Trivandrum's Thumba, demand better relief measures & rescue of 6 fishermen missing from the area #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/rcTY0gyDty

 ANI (@ANI) December 2, 2017

Six boats and 73 fishermen that went missing in the sea have been brought back, the Fisheries Minister of Tamil Nadu, D Jayakumar, informed on Saturday. (ANI)

Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan slammed rumour mongers on Saturday after it came to light that Friday's reports of a Japanese merchant ship rescuing 60 Kerala fishermen caught in the deep seas, was "fake". It was Thiruvananthapuram district Collector S.Vasuki who told the media, on Friday evening, that she wished to thank the Japanese government as one of their ships had rescued 60 fishermen and said they would arrive at the Vizhinjam coast. (IANS.) [READ FULL REPORT]

Locals in Thiruvananthapuram's Poonthura came out in protest alleging rescue operations have been inadequate. (ANI)

According to Thiruvananthapuram district Collector S Vasuki, 102 fishermen from the city who had gone into the sea have not been able to contact their relatives. [READ FULL REPORT HERE]

Kerala: Locals evacuated to rehabilitation centre in Kochi's Chellanam. #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/iAwj7Q7g94

Several houses suffered damage, trees got uprooted and communication lines were disrupted as rains accompanied by strong winds lashed the Lakshadweep Islands under the influence of Cyclone Ockhi. [ READ FULL REPORT]

INS Nireekshak rescued two fishermen off Alappuzha coast. INS Sagardhwani fished out one cadaver, 30 km off Thiruvananthapuram coast. The ship had earlier found another cadaver. (PTI)

PM Modi dialled Tamil Nadu CM K Palaniswami and enquired about the damage caused by the cyclone, which also battered parts of Kerala. [READ FULL REPORT HERE]

The Tamil Nadu government has said it will soon seek central funds for the damage caused by Cyclone Ockhi in the southern parts of the state, with Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli districts being the worst hit.

As many as 218 fishermen from various parts of southern Kerala who were missing at sea since Thursday have been rescued and brought back so far, even as Cyclone Ockhi continued its menacing north-westward path along the Arabian Sea. [READ REPORT HERE]

A rescued fisherman rushed to the ambulance from the technical area of the Thiruvananthpuram airport on Friday afternoon. Express Photo | Kaviyoor Santhosh

According to a CWC advisory, the west-flowing rivers in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Idukki, Kottayam, Alappuzha and Ernakulam in Kerala are likely to rise over the next 24 hours and then, slowly fall as the rains reduced.

Three deaths were reported in Kerala and one in the worst-hit Kannyakumari district in Tamil Nadu, taking the toll to 12, reports UNI.

A report from Lakshadweep said a red alert had been sounded as high waves posed a major threat to most of the islands in the region. (UNI)

WATCH: Navy rescue fishermen off Thiruvananthapuram coast

About 150 fishermen, who put out to sea from various southern districts, were rescued, Thiruvananthapuram District Commissioner K Vasuki said, adding that efforts were on to bring the rest of the stranded fishermen to the shore. The rescued fishermen included those who were saved by a Japanese cargo vessel. Kerala: Rescued fishermen brought to Trivandrim Air Force Station, later admitted to hospital for treatment #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/lB10HNPqsE  ANI (@ANI) December 1, 2017

Heavy to extremely heavy rains are likely over Lakshadweep Islands, while light to moderate rains with a few heavy spells are expected over Kerala and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, according to Skymetweather's latest weather update.

Two fishing boats Arokia Mary and Hermen Mary from Kanyakumari reported missing due #CycloneOckhi since 30 Nov 2017 with 08 crew each rescued by Coast Guard Ship C-427 off Vizhinjam #Kerala pic.twitter.com/nyLuxkoonk

 ANI (@ANI) December 1, 2017

Search and rescue effort progressing off Vizhinjam where approximately 40 people were stranded at sea. Indian Navy ships Sharda and Shardul sailed out to augment search effort, in final stages of embarking humanitarian assistance and disaster relief items for assistance at Lakshadweep and Minicoy Islands , reports ANI.

130 families from Chellanam, 17 families from Kumbalangi and 18 families from Edavanakad rehabilitated from the coastal areas, reports ANI. [Read Report]

Cyclone Ockhi is moving to the Arabian Sea. Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan says steps are initiated to rescue fishermen stranded in the rough sea, reports PTI.

#WATCH: High tides seen at Lakshadweep coast #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/sxUBC4geku

 ANI (@ANI) December 1, 2017

24 people stranded at sea sighted by IN assets. Efforts underway to rescue all 24:-

07 picked up by MV ENERGY ORPHEUS,04 being rescued by INS JAMUNA ,03 rescued by trawler in area,02 rescued by ALH (progressing further rescue of 06 more),02 under Rescue by MV KUN LUN SHAN

 SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) December 1, 2017

READ FULL STORY: Navy, Coast Guard save 39 Kerala fishermen

ALSO READ | Cyclone Ockhi tales

#Kerala: Relatives of missing fishermen mourn in Thiruvananthapuram, say they received no warnings of #CycloneOckhi from the government pic.twitter.com/gewQlJZvPI

 ANI (@ANI) December 1, 2017

- One person was killed when a tree fell on his autorickshaw at Kulathupuzha in Kollam

- A couple at Kattakkada in Thiruvananthapuram was electrocuted when power cables fell over them

- Trees and hoardings collapsed in the strong wind, which also blew away thatched roofs and roofing sheets of houses

- The State Disaster Management Authority has issued alert to Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Idukki and Kottayam districts

Satellite image of Cyclone Ockhi across South India. (Image Courtesy: skymetweather.com)

Southern Naval Command deployed 3 ships & 2 aircraft following request by District Collector, Trivandrum for assistance in search of 6 fishing boats with fisherman & 1 Marine Engineering vessel missing near Vizhinjam, due to cyclonic storm developed in Indian Ocean off Kerala. pic.twitter.com/2fShFmu1NS

 ANI (@ANI) November 30, 2017

 SkymetWeather (@SkymetWeather) November 30, 2017

With a speed of 38 kmph at 8:30 Thursday morning, the cyclone lay centred about 340 km west-northwest of Galle in Sri Lanka, 60 Km south of Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu and 120 km southwest of Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala and 480 km eastsoutheast of Minicoy in Lakshadweep. It has moved west-northwestwards towards Lakshadweep Islands in the southeast Arabian Sea. Lakshadweep is an archipelago of 12 atolls, three reefs and five submerged banks lying 200 to 400 km to the West of the South-West coast (Kerala) of India.

Cyclone Ockhi is approaching the Lakshadweep archipelago, a top official at the Ministry of Earth Sciences said in Delhi today. Madhavan Rajeevan, secretary in the ministry, said the archipelago in the southern part of the Arabian Sea will start experiencing heavy rainfall and strong winds from tomorrow. "It will hit the islands on December 2," Rajeevan said. (PTI)

Earlier today, the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC) had put out an alert saying that the system could intensify further to become a severe cyclonic storm. It further said the storm could re-curve towards the Mumbai-Gujarat region on the West Coast, after being influenced by an incoming western disturbance from the opposite direction.

Heavy rainfall and storms in Tamil Nadu in the first week of November this year killed at least 12 people and thousands took shelter in relief camps, triggering fears of the 2015 floods repeat. It had killed more than 400 people, displaced lakhs and damaged property worth thousands of crores.

What is a tropical depression The India Meteorological Department (IMD) classifies the low pressure systems in the Bay of Bengal and in the Arabian Sea into seven categories. Low pressure areas with maximum sustained surface wind speeds between 31 and 61 kmph are called tropical depressions. Once the winds around the low pressure area reach at least 62 kmph, it is called a tropical cyclone and is assigned a name. The current system is intensifying rapidly. As per the IMD wind warning, squally winds would reach 45-55 kmph gusting to 65 kmph along and off south Tamil Nadu during the next 48 hours. Another depression kicking-in The trough of low pressure over the Malay Peninsula and neighbourhood is persisting and is likely to develop into a low-pressure area over Malay Peninsula and adjoining south Andaman Sea during the next 24 hours. This system is likely to trigger a wet spell for the north coastal districts of Tamil Nadu, including Chennai, around December 4. (With inputs from Express News Service and agencies)

Congress President-elect Rahul Gandhi today visited some places hit by the Cyclone Ochki in southern Kerala that has claimed 63 lives in the state, most of them fishermen, and pitched for a better warning system to prevent recurrence of such tragedies. Thousands of fishermen and their families in Kerala and Tamil Nadu are continuously holding mass protests, demanding for search operations to continue and for relief to be provided faster. Search and rescue operations to trace the fishermen missing in the aftermath of cyclone Ockhi continued for the 12th day today. As many as 433 fishermen from Tamil Nadu and 186 from Kerala are yet to be traced. The cyclone, earlier this week, had finally dissipated over the Arabian Sea, sparing Gujarat from destruction. ALSO READ | No tsunami says IMD as false WhatsApp alerts create panic Here are all the latest updates: The Union Home Ministry is constituting an inter ministerial central committee for the spot assessment of damage and admissibility of claims of the states hit by Cyclone Ockhi. Today's #OpSahayam #CycloneOckhi Deployment of IN & ICG assets for #SAR of missing fishermen off Kerala & Tamil Nadu coast. @CMOKerala @CMOTamilNadu @OfficeOfOPS @ShashiTharoor @PonnaarrBJP @pibchennai @PIB_India @PIBTvpm @BJP4TamilNadu @BJP4Keralam pic.twitter.com/oTeP5QI2XP  Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) December 14, 2017 House-to-house verification process is going on and a final figure of the missing fishermen would be known once the process was over, say officials. [READ FULL REPORT] "The farmers have a ministry that looks after their interests and I think it is time that we create a ministry for the fishermen to look after their interests and make sure they are protected," said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi after visiting fishermen families in affected areas in Kerala. [READ FULL REPORT] TN government hikes compensation for non-fisherman families from Rs 4 lakhs to Rs 10 lakhs. (READ) The death toll in the Ockhi cyclone that hit the Kerala coast mounted to 65 with more bodies being recovered. DMK petitions TN governor Banwarilal Purohit to expedite rescue work post-Ockhi. Efforts are on to identify the recovered bodies through DNA test. In a bid to set up a mechanism to ensure the safety of fishermen, Kerala CM Vijayan said a system was being planned in association with the Indian Space Research Organisation. Kerala State control room officials said three bodies were found off the coast of Kozhikode and three from Kochi. [READ FULL REPORT] The financial assistance of Rs 20 lakh for families of Kerala fishermen killed in the cyclone would be given in one go. An amount of Rs five lakh would be given to those who are seriously injured and are not able to go to work in future as an "alternative livelihood" initiative. Today's deployment on #SAR #CycloneOckhi .@CMOTamilNadu @CMOKerala @OfficeOfOPS @PonnaarrBJP @ShashiTharoor @PIB_India @pibchennai @PIBTvpm @BJP4Keralam @BJP4TamilNadu pic.twitter.com/LQedhf51eA  Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) December 13, 2017 Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday said the Centre has agreed to continue search operations for the missing fishermen in Cyclone Ockhi that hit the state's coast on November 29 and 30. The death toll due to Ockhi cyclone, which hit the Kerala coast, rose to 52 on Tuesday as more bodies were recovered and the search for the missing fishermen in the high seas continued. The Tamil Nadu CM Palaniswami on Tuesday announced Rs 20 lakh compensation for the kin of fishermen who died in the cyclone that devastated the coastal areas of the state recently. Pope Francis has enquired about the hardships and sufferings caused to Kerala's fishermen community in the Ockhi cyclone that ravaged the coastal belt on November 30. The Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday announced 'livelihood assistance' ranging from Rs 48,500 to Rs 63,500 per hectare for horticulture farmers of cyclone Ockhi-battered Kanyakumari district. Kerala fishermen protestors took to the street by waving black flags and photos of the dead and missing fishermen walked about two km from Palayam to Raj Bhavan raising slogans, bringing the traffic to a standstill on the busy stretch. The death toll in the Ockhi cyclone in Kerala rose to 40 on Monday with the recovery of two more bodies even as the search operations to trace the missing fishermen entered the 10th day. Search and rescue operations to trace the fishermen missing in the aftermath of Ockhi cyclone continued for 10th day today even as 67 persons caught in the storm, returned to Kochi coast. The Goa government would provide compensation to shacks having legal validity, for the damages suffered during the Cyclone Ockhi last week. [FULL REPORT] The Indian naval ships engaged in search and rescue mission in the aftermath of Cyclone Ockhi today continued their operations in the high seas, searching area till the Maldives. No stranded boats, fishermen or floating bodies have been found in the sea by the naval search team during the last 72 hours, the official said. Kerala Governor P Sathasivam will contribute a month's salary to the special fund being raised for the victims of cyclone Ockhi. The Kerala government has asked the Indian Armed Forces and the Coast Guard to continue search operations for fishermen missing in high seas post-Cyclone Ockhi for 10 more days. #HADR #CycloneOckhi #OpSahayam #SAR Based on reports by IN Boeing P8 i aircraft, INS Kalpeni was sent to Off Sesostris Bank/Bassas de Pedro (a traditional fishing area off Lakshadweep island).About 17 boats with 180 plus fishermen have been located.@DefenceMinIndia @nsitharaman  SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) December 8, 2017 A decision in this regard was taken at an all-party meeting in Kerala on Friday to discuss the steps taken by the state for rescue of fishermen stranded at sea and situation in the aftermath of the cyclone that hit the coast on November 29 and 30. READ | Cyclone Ockhi: 200 people from Kerala's fisher community to be recruited to coastal police Sixty-six boats from this district were yet to be traced, while 713 fishermen were still to be rescued, in the aftermath of cyclone Ockhi, a top district official said. Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan on Friday said all steps were being taken to trace and rescue missing fishermen in the aftermath of cyclone Ockhi. A "false image" is being created against the central and state governments though they were taking up rescue, relief and rehabilitation works, Radhakrishnan told reporters in Kanyakumari. READ FULL STORY HERE | Tension at Adimalathura as Finance Minister meets protesting fishermen Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Thursday announced a solatium of Rs 10 lakh to the kin of fishermen who died in Cyclone Ockhi. Palaniswami also announced setting up of a high-level committee to go into the matter of missing fishermen and submit a report. He also announced Rs five lakh solatium to those fishermen who were affected by the cyclone and unable to pursue their profession. ALSO READ | Fishermen meet CM Edappadi K Palaniswami, seek intensive search operations The Tamil Nadu government said on Thursday (08-12-2017) that nearly 2,000 fishermen who had ventured into deep sea before Cyclone Ockhi crossed the coast of Kanyakumari were rescued and safely accommodated in coastal districts of various states. Principal Secretary (Information Technology) T K Ramachandran said that 1,969 fishermen on 284 boats ventured into the sea just a day before Cyclone Ockhi crossed the coast last week. READ | After Cyclone Ockhi, now its a sea of protest for 2000 fishermen families in Nagercoil Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit today assured the families of missing fishermen in the district that steps would be taken to trace all those missing after cyclone 'Ockhi' hit the state coast. Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan said prime minister Narendra Modi had called the Tamil Nadu chief minister and enquired about the situation, but did not call the Kerala CM. Three bodies were recovered today off the Kerala coast, taking the death toll due to Cyclone Ockhi to 36, even as defence sources said search and rescue operations will be extended to International waters around Maldives. Family members of 19 fishermen from Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu, reported missing in the aftermath of cyclone Ockhi, today met Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and sought help to trace them. "It was an unprecedented calamity, which claimed several lives and caused a widespread damage to properties. The Centre should declare Cyclone Ockhi a national disaster and announce a special package for the rehabilitation of the victims," Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said. Tamil Nadu government today said a total of 4,501 houses in cyclone Ockhi-hit Kanyakumari have suffered partial and full damage and relief to the tune of Rs 41 lakh has been provided in this regard so far. [READ REPORT] Nuns take out a candlelight procession for the victims of Cyclone Ockhi at the National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Ransom at Vallarpadam in Kochi on Wednesday night. (Albin Mathew | EPS) The Kerala state cabinet on Wednesday cleared a comprehensive rehabilitation package for the victims of Cyclone Ockhi, which includes Rs 20 lakh compensation for the kin of the deceased fishermen and Rs 5 lakh each for fishermen who were grievously injured. [READ FULL REPORT] Boeing P8i of Indian Navy detected a fishing vessel near Kavaratti, close to Mangalore, yesterday evening. While INS Chennai has diverted for rescue, search areas are being expanded due to drift and currents in the area, said Navy spokesperson. Fishing vessel as seen from the aircraft. This video captures the essence of what Navy Boeing P-8i is doing - systematic search of every inch of possible/ probable area & providing hope to the stranded till they are rescued by our ships @nsitharaman pic.twitter.com/1sY0VXul42  SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) December 6, 2017 The government on Tuesday issued an advisory in view of Cyclone 'Ockhi', warning of a "rapid" rise in the water level of rivers in parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat. Union Health Minister J P Nadda today spoke to health ministers of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, assuring them of all help from the Centre for dealing with the possible damage caused by Cyclone Ockhi. A Coast Guard ship today located 15 boats off Lakshadweep and provided assistance to 184 fishermen on board, as part of its Cyclone Ockhi relief operations. Local fishermen will join Naval teams with INS Kabra, presently involved in search and rescue operations off Kollam port and their inputs will be taken to carry out the mission. The Madras High Court today directed the Tamil Nadu government to provide adequate basic amenities to those affected by cyclone Ockhi in Kanyakumari district. The Union Home Ministry on Tuesday said that Cyclone Ockhi was not expected to have high impact in Gujarat which is geared for the worst situation. As many as 39 people have perished and 167 fishermen were still missing after cyclone Ockhi hit Tamil Nadu and Kerala coasts while 809 others were swept away to Maharashtra, the Union Home Ministry said today. Narendra Modi today said he is constantly monitoring the situation in various states arising out of cyclone Ockhi battering parts of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep islands and now heading towards Gujarat. [READ FULL ARTICLE HERE] Light rains were expected at one or two places in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry over the next two days. Rahul Gandhi's rallies in Gujarat's Morbi, Dhrangadhra and Surendranagar cancelled due to bad weather, reports ANI. The Kerala government today said intensified search and rescue operations are on to trace the 92 fishermen missing in high seas after Cyclone Ockhi hit the state's coast on November 29. The National Disaster Management Authority today asked fishermen in both eastern and western coasts not to venture out in the sea for the next three days as heavy rainfall is expected in many areas due to Cyclone Ockhi. The North Goa district has done a preliminary assessment of the damage caused due to Cyclone Ockhi in the coastal state. Cyclone Ockhi today moved closer to the southern coast near Surat in Gujarat and is expected to make a landfall in the state around midnight, said officials. PM Modi and Amit Shah have directed party workers to stop campaigning and instead help people in coastal regions of Gujarat move to safer places. Amit Shahs cancelled rallies were to be held in Rajula, Mahua and Shihor. (TV reports) It's likely to rain today, there will be strong winds. People have been advised not to go out at night. Those living in kachha houses will be given shelter. NDRF is on alert. Municipality & local bodies are working on their level.: Mahendra Patel, Surat DM #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/lUuIpOiauW  ANI (@ANI) December 5, 2017 Kerala fishermen demand stringent action against erring disaster management officers. [READ FULL STORY HERE] UP CM Yogi Adityanath hands over a cheque worth Rs. 5 Cr to PM Modi from CM Distress Relief Fund towards PM's National Relief Fund, for the cyclone affected people in Lakshadweep and other States #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/vPxxQaE43A  ANI (@ANI) December 5, 2017 The recent cyclone has brought to the fore the lack of proper mechanism to urgently communicate with fishermen at sea about an impending natural disaster. The situation is set to change once a mechanism to improve the communication with fishermen at sea is put in place by the state government in association with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS). [Kerala government to better offshore communication of fishermen | READ HERE] Rs 600 per hour to use a motor generator to fill water tank? Impossible, you might think. But the power-less Nagercoil is seeing this and more, as desperate residents look at help from all quarters to bring life back to normal. They shell out the extra charges to get drinking water and to charge their already-dead mobile phone batteries. [READ FULL ARTICLE HERE] With #CycloneOckhi expected to make a landfall in Gujarat, I appeal to @BJP4Gujarat Karyakartas to focus on helping people across the state. Our Karyakartas should devote themselves to providing all possible assistance and stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow citizens.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 5, 2017 In Mumbai, the Western Railways has deployed extra personnel for crowd management in case of any emergency due to the cyclone. [FULL REPORT] According to the IMD, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani held an urgent meeting with senior officials to take stock of the preparedness in the state ahead of the expected landfall of the cyclone today. THE STORM OCKHI OVER ARABIAN SEA MOVED FURTHER NNE WARDS & IS NOW 480 KM SSW OF SURAT LIKELY TO CONTINUE TO MOVE NNE WARDS, WEAKEN GRADUALLY & CROSS S GUJ & N MAHA AS A DEEP DEPRESSION BY TONIGHT. HEAVY RAINS AND STRONG WINDS ALREADY STARTED. BE CAREFUL & TAKE PRECAUTIONS. pic.twitter.com/M5YymjDD7W  Dr. Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) December 5, 2017 Some parts of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway experienced a hailstorm early today, police said. The traffic on Eastern and Western Express Highways in Mumbai has slowed down. There are traffic curbs in some places in view of the rush of followers of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar on his death anniversary tomorrow. Five days after #CycloneOchki made landfall @IndiaCoastGuard continues to be at sea off #TamilNadu #Kerala & #Lakshadweep Island for Search & Rescue . Coast Guard Ship rescued 19 fishermen on board 02 stranded vessels 96 Nautical Miles off Bitra (L&M ) Islands @DefenceMinIndia pic.twitter.com/PKFBHiUkjh  Indian Coast Guard (@IndiaCoastGuard) December 5, 2017 All exams for Mumbai University taking place as scheduled, announced the administration. (TV reports) Mumbai police have been putting up barricades near Dadar chowpatty and Juhu chowpatty to stop people from going near the beaches, say TV reports. Cyclone Ockhi is expected to make landfall in Mumbai and coastal Gujarat on Tuesday midnight with squally winds, which may cause heavy rains in several parts of the state during the next two days. The Maharashtra government has declared a holiday for schools and colleges in Mumbai and adjoining districts. An official at the Mumbai office of India Meteorological Department said on account of the cyclone, the megapolis has started receiving rainfall due to spread of clouds. The Tamil Nadu government on Monday said a total of 2,604 fishermen out of the 2,864 caught in the cyclone Ockhi have been rescued. Women with all hopes of the return of their dear ones at the St Mary'schurch at Vizhinjam (EPS | Kaviyoor Santhosh) Several dozen shacks have reportedly been affected by Sunday night's swelling of waters along the coastline. The Central government has assured all help to cyclone-battered Lakshadweep, where there was no loss of lives, but extensive property damage in some islands: Lakshadweep Administrator Farooq Khan. Shibi, whose husband went missing Cyclone Ockhi, in all tears inside the St Mary's church at Vizhinjam. ( EPS | Kaviyoor Santhosh) The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) on Monday rescued another 19 fishermen from the Arabian Sea, top officials said. Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today donated Rs two crore from the CM's relief fund to the PMNRF to provide relief to the victims of Cyclone Ockhi. A well-marked low pressure area over southeast Bay of Bengal is likely to become a depression and move towards Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh by December 6, the Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) said today. The National Crisis Management Committee, headed by Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha, has reviewed rescue and relief operations being carried out in high seas and coastal areas hit by cyclone Ockhi. Women members of the fisher folk community on Monday held a protest in Kanyakumari district demanding that authorities intensify rescue operations to trace fishermen caught in the deep sea in the wake of Cyclone Ockhi. Hundreds of women held protest on the roads in Neerodi village demanding the authorities trace their loved ones who are still missing. [READ FULL STORY] In a thatched house on Poonthura beach in Kerala, 21-year-old Bobby, his 42-year-old mother Jacintha and his 17-year-old sister Nimmy are hopeless about the future. Their sole breadwinner Christy, 51, a fisherman, died in the Ockhi cyclone in high seas when he ventured out into the sea last Wednesday. [READ THE FULL STORY HERE] Four days after Ockhi hit Chellanam in Kerala, Annamma Pouly, 67, is yet to recover from the troubles she went through to shift her 74-year-old immobile husband from their house as sea water gushed in during the middle of the night. [READ HER ACCOUNT HERE] Cyclone Ockhi and the frantic scramble for organising rescue efforts down south have yet again underscored the need for permanently stationing Naval and Coast Guard ships in Thiruvananthapuram. [READ FULL REPORT HERE] Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Monday sent two crore rupees from the Chief Minister Fund to the Prime Minister Fund for the relief of victims. (ANI) Union Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met with the families of fishermen affected by the cyclone at Vizhinam in Thiruvananthapuram. She pointed out that the boats that had gone out well before the cyclone warning was issued had been found 15 days after their departure with the fishermen alive. ''If boats which went 15 days ago can come back with fishermen alive, we will make every attempt to get everybody back,'' she said. (Express News Service) [READ FULL REPORT HERE] Previously, Cyclone Ockhi had moved north-northwestwards during the past six hours and lay centered over southeast and east-central Arabian Sea , about 390 km west-northwest of Amini Divi island of Lakshadweep. Lakshadweep islands, which was hit by Cyclone Ochki, has suffered a loss of over Rs 500 crore, Lakshadweep MP Mohammad Faizal said today. Nirmala Sitharaman taking stock of Cyclone Ochki affected Kanyakumari and interacting with the locals. Very severe Cyclone Ockhi to recurve towards Gujarat, weaken gradually: Skymet Weather Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said 28 more boats, carrying 321 fishermen, which were caught in rough seas due to Cyclone Ockhi, have safely reached Maharashtra's Ratnagiri coast today. [READ FULL REPORT] A total of 357 fishermen, including 71 from Tamil Nadu, stranded in sea due to Cyclone Ockhi , were rescued this morning, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said today. What looked like an aftermath of cyclone Ockhi, three houses were damaged while the compound wall of a private resort collapsed as surging waves lashed the coast of Ullal in Dakshina Kannada in the last two days. According to official sources, damage to the property by huge waves has occurred in most of the coastal areas. KJ Alphons on Sunday also said that Cyclone Ockhi will not be termed a national disaster. [READ HERE] Even as the blame game over the lack of warning before cyclone Ockhi continues, Union Minister of State for Tourism and IT Alphons Kannanthanam said that the state had not received any warning until November 30. However, he later clarified that a warning had been issued on November 28 and 29 about a deep depression in the sea. [READ FULL REPORT HERE] Four men  three from Thiruvananthapuram and one from Tamil Nadu  were rescued by the IAF and admitted to the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital. They were identified as Zacharias (55), Seva Kurishu (35), and Kristudas (48) of Adimalathura, Thiruvananthapuram; and Anthony Adima (30) of Kollencode, Tamil Nadu. Another fisherman was brought dead to the hospital. A Coastguard vessel carrying 19 rescued fishermen was expected to arrive in Kochi. Moderate rain is expected at a few places in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry during the next 24 hours, according to IMD. [READ FULL REPORT] Indian Coast Guard ship Sarthi rescued a fisherman in rough seas during Cyclone Ockhi off Kerala coast. [WATCH VIDEO] Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will visit Thiruvananthapuram and Kanyakumari today. She will arrive at the technical area of the IAF at Shangumugham by 3 pm and leave for Kanyakumari. Fishermen community in Thiruvananthapuram have decided to launch their own rescue operations on Sunday as 55 boats ventured into the sea to search for the missing fishermen. (IANS) TN SDMA has also warned that strong winds from North-easterly direction with speeds reaching 40-55 Kmph is likely along and off Tamil Nadu and Puducherry coast. The Tamil Nadu State Disaster Management Authority (TN SDMA) has issued a 24-hour warning to fishermen not to go for fishing to the Arabian sea. 68 fishing boats, out of which 66 are from Kerala and two from Tamil Nadu, have reached Maharashtra's Sindhudurg coast with total 952 fishermen on board. All are safe: Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis. (READ FULL REPORT HERE) Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has decided to ask the Centre to declare the Ockhi cyclone as a national calamity. (ANI) Claims of thousand fishermen stranded are false. Correct figures- 97 are yet to be rescued, 71 from Tamil Nadu have been rescued till now. The Coast Guard is at it, with all its strength to rescue the rest. Hoping for good news soon: Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. (ANI) People receive essential commodities at a relief camp following cyclone Ockhi in the Kanyakumari district on Saturday. (PTI) Given orders to Maharashtra Maritime Board and Collector, Sindhudurg Dist. to make all arrangements for the stranded fishermen. Local authorities are already with them and taking care of all arrangements, tweets Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis. In all 68 fishing boats have reached, out of which 66 are from Kerala and 2 from Tamil Nadu with total 952 fisherman on board. All are safe. Maharashtra will completely look after everyone till weather permits them to go back. @nsitharaman @BJP4Keralam  Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) December 2, 2017 A fresh spell of heavy rain is in store in some areas of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry with a low pressure area forming over south Andaman sea, which is "very likely" to become a depression over Bay of Bengal. It is very likely to become a depression over southeast Bay of Bengal and neighbourhood during the next 36 hours. It is also very likely to intensify further and move towards north Tamil Nadu south Andhra Pradesh coasts during the next 3-4 days. (IMD) Though many fishermen from Kerala were brought ashore safely and admitted to hospitals, many are yet to recover from the shock of wrestling the lashing waves and seeing death face-to-face. Stephan, a fisherman hailing from nearby Poonthura, said: "It was the first time we were experiencing such huge waves and a rough sea. Luckily, the rescue boat came back and saved us." Most of the rescued fishermen had bruises all over their bodies and were seen shivering and begging for hot water and food when brought ashore. (PTI) Stranded fisherman being brought to Kerala coast by Indain Navy personnel in Kochi on Saturday. (PTI) Tamil Nadu CM K Palaniswami today requested the Centre to deploy the Indian Navy and Coast Guard for the search and rescue of fishermen who have not returned so far, and that helicopters of Coast Guard and Navy should be deployed for this purpose. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh assured the AIADMK leader that the Centre would provide the assistance required to rescue the fishermen. (PTI) Several roads that connect Kanyakumari with many interior parts have got cut or were fully damaged due to heavy rainfall following the impact of cyclone Ockhi in the district on Saturday. (PTI) A Coast Guard advisory here said the status of weather and sea conditions should be checked on television, radio, newspapers and smartphone applications before venturing out into the sea. The merchant ships should also be alert and avoid the path of Cyclone Ockhi, it said. Fishing boats should remain in groups and during distress all the crew should remain together, it said. DMK working president M K Stalin urged Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in his letter to direct the Coast Guard to search and rescue "thousands of fishermen fighting for their lives in the mid sea, so as to prevent further loss of lives due to the Ockhi cyclone". Steps have been taken to prevent any possible outbreak of epidemic in rain-hit areas of Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu Health minister C Vijayabhaskar said today. A relief worker places sand bags on the banks of a beach in Kochi in wake of cyclone Ockhi on Saturday. (PTI) Leader of the opposition in the Kerala Assembly Ramesh Chennithala today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare cyclone Ockhi as a national disaster. He also urged the Kerala government to increase the financial aid for the injured at least up to Rs 50,000 from the present Rs 15,000. Lack of coordination had affected the government's relief and rescue operations, launched post Ockhi, he alleged. (PTI) The Southern Railway announced partial and full cancellation of some trains in the Kaniyakumari-Nagercoil section. One train service was also rescheduled. (PTI Meanwhile, relatives of missing fishermen from Kaniyakumari staged a road blockade demanding the fishermen be rescued at the earliest. Scores of women also staged protest at Chinnathurai in that district. There has been a huge demand for generator sets following the devastation caused by cyclone Ockhi in the Kanyakumari region on Saturday. (PTI) In Kanyakumari, power supply had been restored even as efforts are on to resume power supply in neighbouring areas like Nagercoil and Kuzhithurai. Officials expressed confidence that the power supply would be restored in the entire district by tomorrow. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami announced Rs 25 crore for expediting relief and restoration work in the district. (PTI) 261 persons rescued by @IndiaCoastGuard @adgpi and @IAF_MCC in #CycloneOckhi @NewIndianXpress pic.twitter.com/ywhzBQLJnP  Kiran_TNIE (@tniekiran1) December 2, 2017 The Coast Guard informed in a press release that on November 30, the Coast Guard District Headquarters in Kerala was informed that around 70-80 fishermen were stranded at sea due to the storm. The Coast Guard immediately sailed as many as nine ships towards Search and Rescue (SAR) efforts. Further, ships based at New Mangalore were also sailed towards Kerala coast to undertake the rescue of stranded fishermen. As the cyclone intensified, coordinated search by Coast Guard ships and aircraft continued in extremely rough weather with wind speed gusting up to 150 kmph. Ships at Mumbai and Goa were also placed on maximum alert to augment efforts as required, the press release read. (PTI) As per the last report, a total of 79 stranded fishermen have been saved by the Coast Guard in coordination with other agencies. Also, the fisheries department has intimated that about 25 boats with 250 personnel are still in distress at sea. A man watches a road that has been cut off due to floods following the heavy rainfall caused by the cyclone Ockhi which left heavy damage in the Kanyakumari district on Saturday. (PTI) 138 fishermen have been rescued from the Lakshadweep islands. (PTI) So far 393 people from Kerala have been rescued, Kerala CM Vijayan said, as the state government announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the family of those who died in the storm, in addition to the financial assistance of Rs four lakh being given by the fisheries department.Of the rescued, 132 fishermen were from the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, 66 from Kozhikode, 55 from Kollam, 40 from Thrissur, and 100 from Kanyakumari. (PTI) In Lakshadweep, 31 relief camps have been opened in the10 inhabited islands. So far, 1,047 people have been evacuated to the relief camps, official sources said. No casualties have been reported, with the worst-affected islands being Minicoy and Kalpeni. Seven people have lost their lives in Kerala in rain-related incidents over the past two days, official sources said. (PTI) Cyclone Ockhi has so far claimed 13 lives in Sri Lanka. Power supply, essential services and air traffic was disrupted in the stormy weather that left several buildings damaged and trees uprooted in its wake. READ FULL REPORT HERE #CycloneOckhi update @IndiaCoastGuard ship rescued 15 fishermen at sea off Vizhinjam/Quilon (Kerala) Coast and heading towards shore for safe disembarkation of fisher-folks @DefenceMinIndia @SpokespersonMoD pic.twitter.com/39gJrfI20Z  Indian Coast Guard (@IndiaCoastGuard) December 2, 2017 Authorities including the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Coast Guard and Navy have rescued about 223 fishermen and evacuated thousands of people from cyclone hit areas, officials said, as they continued their operations on Saturday. While INS Nireekshak, INS Jamuna and INS Sagardhwani are continuing search and rescue operations in their designated areas along the coast off Vizhinjam in Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam, two ships INS Shardul and INS Sharda are heading towards Lakshadweep, a defence spokesman said. (PTI) The naval ships, which left from the Southern Naval Command here yesterday, are likely to reach Lakshadweep this evening. The Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Lanba briefed me on the on-going rescue operations #CycloneOchki . More fishermen rescued this morning. Rescue work to continue.Some rescued fishermen waiting in Lakshadweep Isle to get back. Details @indiannavy @DefenceMinIndia @IndiaCoastGuard  Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) December 2, 2017 The Kerala state government has announced a compensation of Rs. 10 lakh to the families of the deceased. #Kerala Locals have blocked National Highway for last five hours in Trivandrum's Thumba, demand better relief measures & rescue of 6 fishermen missing from the area #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/rcTY0gyDty  ANI (@ANI) December 2, 2017 Six boats and 73 fishermen that went missing in the sea have been brought back, the Fisheries Minister of Tamil Nadu, D Jayakumar, informed on Saturday. (ANI) Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan slammed rumour mongers on Saturday after it came to light that Friday's reports of a Japanese merchant ship rescuing 60 Kerala fishermen caught in the deep seas, was "fake". It was Thiruvananthapuram district Collector S.Vasuki who told the media, on Friday evening, that she wished to thank the Japanese government as one of their ships had rescued 60 fishermen and said they would arrive at the Vizhinjam coast. (IANS.) [READ FULL REPORT] Locals in Thiruvananthapuram's Poonthura came out in protest alleging rescue operations have been inadequate. (ANI) According to Thiruvananthapuram district Collector S Vasuki, 102 fishermen from the city who had gone into the sea have not been able to contact their relatives. [READ FULL REPORT HERE] Kerala: Locals evacuated to rehabilitation centre in Kochi's Chellanam. #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/iAwj7Q7g94  ANI (@ANI) December 2, 2017 Several houses suffered damage, trees got uprooted and communication lines were disrupted as rains accompanied by strong winds lashed the Lakshadweep Islands under the influence of Cyclone Ockhi. [READ FULL REPORT] INS Nireekshak rescued two fishermen off Alappuzha coast. INS Sagardhwani fished out one cadaver, 30 km off Thiruvananthapuram coast. The ship had earlier found another cadaver. (PTI) PM Modi dialled Tamil Nadu CM K Palaniswami and enquired about the damage caused by the cyclone, which also battered parts of Kerala. [READ FULL REPORT HERE] The Tamil Nadu government has said it will soon seek central funds for the damage caused by Cyclone Ockhi in the southern parts of the state, with Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli districts being the worst hit. As many as 218 fishermen from various parts of southern Kerala who were missing at sea since Thursday have been rescued and brought back so far, even as Cyclone Ockhi continued its menacing north-westward path along the Arabian Sea. [READ REPORT HERE] A rescued fisherman rushed to the ambulance from the technical area of the Thiruvananthpuram airport on Friday afternoon. Express Photo | Kaviyoor Santhosh According to a CWC advisory, the west-flowing rivers in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Idukki, Kottayam, Alappuzha and Ernakulam in Kerala are likely to rise over the next 24 hours and then, slowly fall as the rains reduced. Three deaths were reported in Kerala and one in the worst-hit Kannyakumari district in Tamil Nadu, taking the toll to 12, reports UNI. A report from Lakshadweep said a red alert had been sounded as high waves posed a major threat to most of the islands in the region. (UNI) WATCH: Navy rescue fishermen off Thiruvananthapuram coast About 150 fishermen, who put out to sea from various southern districts, were rescued, Thiruvananthapuram District Commissioner K Vasuki said, adding that efforts were on to bring the rest of the stranded fishermen to the shore. The rescued fishermen included those who were saved by a Japanese cargo vessel. Kerala: Rescued fishermen brought to Trivandrim Air Force Station, later admitted to hospital for treatment #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/lB10HNPqsE  ANI (@ANI) December 1, 2017 Heavy to extremely heavy rains are likely over Lakshadweep Islands, while light to moderate rains with a few heavy spells are expected over Kerala and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, according to Skymetweather's latest weather update. Two fishing boats Arokia Mary and Hermen Mary from Kanyakumari reported missing due #CycloneOckhi since 30 Nov 2017 with 08 crew each rescued by Coast Guard Ship C-427 off Vizhinjam #Kerala pic.twitter.com/nyLuxkoonk  ANI (@ANI) December 1, 2017 Search and rescue effort progressing off Vizhinjam where approximately 40 people were stranded at sea. Indian Navy ships Sharda and Shardul sailed out to augment search effort, in final stages of embarking humanitarian assistance and disaster relief items for assistance at Lakshadweep and Minicoy Islands , reports ANI. 130 families from Chellanam, 17 families from Kumbalangi and 18 families from Edavanakad rehabilitated from the coastal areas, reports ANI. [Read Report] Cyclone Ockhi is moving to the Arabian Sea. Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan says steps are initiated to rescue fishermen stranded in the rough sea, reports PTI. #WATCH: High tides seen at Lakshadweep coast #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/sxUBC4geku  ANI (@ANI) December 1, 2017 24 people stranded at sea sighted by IN assets. Efforts underway to rescue all 24:- 07 picked up by MV ENERGY ORPHEUS,04 being rescued by INS JAMUNA ,03 rescued by trawler in area,02 rescued by ALH (progressing further rescue of 06 more),02 under Rescue by MV KUN LUN SHAN  SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) December 1, 2017 READ FULL STORY: Navy, Coast Guard save 39 Kerala fishermen ALSO READ | Cyclone Ockhi tales #Kerala: Relatives of missing fishermen mourn in Thiruvananthapuram, say they received no warnings of #CycloneOckhi from the government pic.twitter.com/gewQlJZvPI  ANI (@ANI) December 1, 2017 - One person was killed when a tree fell on his autorickshaw at Kulathupuzha in Kollam - A couple at Kattakkada in Thiruvananthapuram was electrocuted when power cables fell over them - Trees and hoardings collapsed in the strong wind, which also blew away thatched roofs and roofing sheets of houses - The State Disaster Management Authority has issued alert to Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Idukki and Kottayam districts Satellite image of Cyclone Ockhi across South India. (Image Courtesy: skymetweather.com) Southern Naval Command deployed 3 ships & 2 aircraft following request by District Collector, Trivandrum for assistance in search of 6 fishing boats with fisherman & 1 Marine Engineering vessel missing near Vizhinjam, due to cyclonic storm developed in Indian Ocean off Kerala. pic.twitter.com/2fShFmu1NS  ANI (@ANI) November 30, 2017  SkymetWeather (@SkymetWeather) November 30, 2017 Five people dead, 22 fishermen missing, 62 houses fully damaged, 240 houses partly damaged due to heavy rains, in Kanyakumari district. 16 rehabilitation centres established by government in which 1044 people are being given shelter. (ANI) Ockhi can lead to cloudy weather coupled with light rain for some parts along Maharashtra coast and Mumbai next week, reports said. The IMD has issued warning to all ports. Skymet predicted that there will be light rains in Saurashtra and Kutch region of Gujarat as well. Thiruvananthapuram saw a respite from incessant rains Friday morning. Several trains to and from Thiruvananthapuram were either delayed, cancelled or re-scheduled, say TV reports. #WATCH: Water logging in Sthanumalayan Temple in Kanyakumari's Suchindram #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/nDSjmpfXoz  ANI (@ANI) December 1, 2017 Tamil Nadu CM K Palaniswami announces Rs 5 lakh compensation to kin of the five deceased in Kanyakumari district due to rain-related incidents. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said there were serious lapses from the side of state disaster management department. The alert from Hyderabad was not sent to the Government on time, reports ANI. [READ FULL REPORT] Indian Navys Advanced Light Helicopter has dropped a life a liferaft for 8 survivors at sea 20nm off Trivandrum and is picking up two critically injured survivors from MV Energy Orpheus. Naval Seaking helicopter being launched shortly to recover 8 survivors & additional SAR. Boeing P8I Aircraft deployed at first light from INS Rajali this morning sights 7 survivors hanging on to a capsized boat ~25 miles West of Tivandrum. A/c drops life raft in the vicinity and reported the exact position. Ships in area are being diverted to render assistance: Indian Navy Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has spoken to the DG of NDRF and reviewed the situation in areas affected by Cyclone Ockhi. NDRF teams have already been moved to the affected areas. More teams are on standby to respond to any further emergencies. The Home Affairs ministry is closely monitoring the situation, according to a the HMO, reports ANI. #Kerala: 59 people stranded due to heavy rains rescued by Navy and coastal guards in Trivandrum #CycloneOckhi pic.twitter.com/8YziNQeaeH  ANI (@ANI) December 1, 2017 A cyclone alert has been issued across the coastal regions in north Kerala as MET has predicted cyclone Ockhi will reach this part of the state also. Nearly 200 fishing boats, which left Kochi coast in the last couple of days, are yet to return. Joseph Xavier, general secretary, All Kerala Fishing Boat Operators Association, said, Usually, we used to receive advance warnings on the weather. But this time, there was no such notification." This is a matter of concern, given there were reports about the arrival of the cyclone at least two days ago, he said. Since most of the boats are co-owned by people belonging to Tamil Nadu and most of the workers are also from that state, it is also possible that the fishermen might have taken the boats to Colachel, Muttom and Thengapattanam, said Xavier. Kerala: Fishermen in Trivandrum go missing. Relatives say they received no warnings of Cyclone Ockhi from the government. [READ FULL REPORT HERE] Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan held an emergency meeting of top officials to take stock of the situation and has asked police and revenue officials to be on high alert, reports IANS. Balakrishnan Nair, scientist at INCOIS, said that the storm surge of about one metre above astronomical tides are very likely to inundate low-lying areas of Lakshadweep Islands from Thursday night and 0.5 metre surge will inundate low-lying areas of coastal districts of south Kerala (Alappuzha, Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram districts), and adjoining districts of south Tamil Nadu (Kanniyakumari, Thoothukudi and Tirunelveli districts). Four people were killed in Kerala on Thursday as heavy rains and strong winds lashed southern part of the state after cyclonic storm Ockhi hit the Kerala coast. (READ MORE) Four people died today in Kanyakumari as heavy rains and strong winds uprooted trees, snapped power lines and damaged settlements close to the sea in Kanyakumari-Nagercoil-Thoothukudi region in south Tamil Nadu. Schools in seven districts of the state including Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari and Virudhunagar were closed today. [READ MORE] Two National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams with 60 personnel have been sent to Kanyakumari. Another team of 47 will be on standby in Kochi in Kerala to help out in Lakshadweep if the need arises. [READ: TN CM Palaniswami: Taking precautionary steps for Cyclone Ockhi] Heavy rains have caused chaos and destruction in districts of Kerala since Wednesday. Thiruvananthapuram woke up this morning to a sustained heavy drizzle and heavily overcast skies, which hit rush hour traffic in the state's capital city. One death has been reported in the state so far. An autorickshaw driver on the outskirts of Kollam was killed today after a tree fell on his vehicle. [READ FULL REPORT HERE] Severe rainstorm &winds in Thiruvananthapuram. Here I'm struggling with my umbrella at Shankumukham Beach where #Padayorukkam is scheduled to conclude tomorrow w/ mass rally by Rahul Gandhi pic.twitter.com/qxXvugMqHV The Southern Naval Command is also gearing up for any Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief that may be required due to the effects of the storm in the southern part of Kerala. [READ FULL REPORT HERE] S Balachandran, Director, Regional Meteorological Centre in Chennai, said southern districts in Tamil Nadu such as Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Ramanathapuram, Sivaganga and Virudhunagar will get heavy to very heavy rainfall till December 1. Cyclone Ockhi is not expected to make a landfall in Tamil Nadu. ALSO READ | High wave warning sounded for south Tamil Nadu For north coastal Tamil Nadu, including Chennai, the skies would be generally cloudy and light to moderate spells of rain can be expected. Chennai received up to 6 cm of rain between 8:30 last night and 8:30 this morning. As far as fishermen are concerned, those in Kanyakumari, Tuticorin, Rameswaram, have been asked not to venture out into sea till December 1, Thursday as the wind speed will be 65-70 kmph, meaning the sea will be rough along and off south Tamil Nadu, south Kerala coasts and Lakshadweep Islands. #cyclonealert: Check out the progress of the #CycloneOckhi #Cyclone #Ockhi #Weather #cyclone1 #Chennai #Chennairains #Kerala #TamilNadu @tnsdma @kerala_kaumudi @archvivekh @karthickselvaa pic.twitter.com/A0RNw8wJ90 The weather office has also predicted dense fog in places in Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura. Cyclone 'Ockhi' (meaning: eye) was a name contributed by Bangladesh. With a speed of 38 kmph at 8:30 Thursday morning, the cyclone lay centred about 340 km west-northwest of Galle in Sri Lanka, 60 Km south of Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu and 120 km southwest of Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala and 480 km eastsoutheast of Minicoy in Lakshadweep. It has moved west-northwestwards towards Lakshadweep Islands in the southeast Arabian Sea. Lakshadweep is an archipelago of 12 atolls, three reefs and five submerged banks lying 200 to 400 km to the West of the South-West coast (Kerala) of India. Cyclone Ockhi is approaching the Lakshadweep archipelago, a top official at the Ministry of Earth Sciences said in Delhi today. Madhavan Rajeevan, secretary in the ministry, said the archipelago in the southern part of the Arabian Sea will start experiencing heavy rainfall and strong winds from tomorrow. "It will hit the islands on December 2," Rajeevan said. (PTI) Earlier today, the US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC) had put out an alert saying that the system could intensify further to become a severe cyclonic storm. It further said the storm could re-curve towards the Mumbai-Gujarat region on the West Coast, after being influenced by an incoming western disturbance from the opposite direction. Heavy rainfall and storms in Tamil Nadu in the first week of November this year killed at least 12 people and thousands took shelter in relief camps, triggering fears of the 2015 floods repeat. It had killed more than 400 people, displaced lakhs and damaged property worth thousands of crores. What is a tropical depression The India Meteorological Department (IMD) classifies the low pressure systems in the Bay of Bengal and in the Arabian Sea into seven categories. Low pressure areas with maximum sustained surface wind speeds between 31 and 61 kmph are called tropical depressions. Once the winds around the low pressure area reach at least 62 kmph, it is called a tropical cyclone and is assigned a name. The current system is intensifying rapidly. As per the IMD wind warning, squally winds would reach 45-55 kmph gusting to 65 kmph along and off south Tamil Nadu during the next 48 hours. Another depression kicking-in The trough of low pressure over the Malay Peninsula and neighbourhood is persisting and is likely to develop into a low-pressure area over Malay Peninsula and adjoining south Andaman Sea during the next 24 hours. This system is likely to trigger a wet spell for the north coastal districts of Tamil Nadu, including Chennai, around December 4. (With inputs from Express News Service and agencies)
Local budgets to get 5% of rent for subsoil use from 2018

Ukraine's draft state budget for 2018 envisages the preservation of the existing revenue base of local budgets, and 5% of rental payments for subsoil use will be transferred to these budgets from the beginning of next year, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.

"Starting from January 1, 2018, 5% of rental payments for subsoil use will be transferred to local budgets," he said during the second All-Ukrainian Forum of United Communities "Life-Changing Initiatives" in Kyiv on Monday.

According to Poroshenko, almost UAH 2 billion is to be spent on the formation of the infrastructure of united territorial communities next year.

"In general, state support for local government projects in 2018 will reach 18.5 billion [hryvnias]," he added.

Poroshenko also expressed hope that this week the Verkhovna Rada would adopt at second reading and as a whole the state budget for 2018.
Ukraine in January-November 2017 increased natural gas import by 39% (by 3.676 billion cubic meters) compared to the same period in 2016, to 13.095 billion cubic meters, according to data from PJSC Ukrtransgaz.

In particular, imports from Slovakia in January-November 2017 amounted to 9.239 billion cubic meters, Hungary to 2.702 billion cubic meters, and Poland to 1.154 billion cubic meters.

Imports in November 2017 amounted to 1.317 billion cubic meters of gas, which is 14.9% less than in November 2016.

At the same time, Ukraine has not been importing natural gas under the contract with PJSC Gazprom for more than two years (since November 26, 2015), purchasing resources exclusively on its western border.

As reported, Ukraine in 2016 reduced imports of natural gas by 32.7% (by 5.376 billion cubic meters) compared to 2015, to 11.078 billion cubic meters.
'The Gilded Age' hires an army of RI locals to bring show to life

Hundreds of people from greater Rhode Island help keep the set of HBO's 'The Gilded Age' running during filming.
Our County Editor

Dave Hinton is editor of The News-Gazette's Our County section and former editor of the Rantoul Press. He can be reached at dhinton@news-gazette.com.
The Ukrainian Navy has conducted joint exercises of the PASSEX-type with the U.S. Navy destroyer James Williams, the press center of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has reported.

On December 2, the Black Sea Naval Forces of Ukraine together with the destroyer of the U.S. Navy James Williams conducted a PASSEX-type training. Two Ukrainian Ka-27 helicopters were taken from the Ukrainian Navy," Navy of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in its report on Facebook on Saturday.

It is noted that the purpose of the event was to work out cooperation with the ships of partner countries in accordance with NATO standards, increase the level of compatibility and deepen cooperation.

"During the training, the helicopters of the naval aviation of the Ukrainian Navy in complicated meteorological conditions worked, in particular, elements of landing on the deck of the American ship." In addition, the training participants conducted air defense exercises in accordance with NATO standards," the press center of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said.
Omar Abdullah, former CM of Jammu & Kashmir and an avid automobile enthusiast has handed out an important road safety message, but with a twist! Setting aside the political differences, Omar Abdullah has tweeted pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is seen wearing a seatbelt on the front seat of his Range Rover SUV.

Omar Abdullah tweeted the pictures saying To those who think they are too important (or too cool) to use a seat belt in the front seat. Even the PM uses one & he doesnt do it out of fear of traffic police. Not only Omar Abdullah has given an important road safety message, he has made sure that nobody can ignore it, considering the popularity of PM Modi.

To those who think they are too important (or too cool) to use a seat belt in the front seat. Even the PM uses one & he doesnt do it out of fear of traffic police. https://t.co/BgwhVfGhSZ  Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) December 3, 2017

It may sound a bit frivolous to many, but Mr. Abdullahs tweet holds a deep message in many levels. Firstly, India is one of the most unsafe country, as far as fatal accidents are concerned. According to the Government data, 1 out of 3 people involved in a road accident in India die. A total of 4,80,652 (as per Ministry of Road, transport & Highway, 2016 data) people were involved in road accidents and out of these, 1,50,785 died.

Also, people in India wear seat-belts and helmets out of fear of police and not out of safety perception. Mr. Abdullahs tweet points out the very basic element of wearing seat-belts  its not for cops, but for your own safety. And if Indias most powerful person such as PM Modi can wear it, whats stopping the rest of the country to follow his footsteps.

Our sincere gratitude to Mr. Omar Abdullah for bringing out this evil out of the box. Also, a big thanks to PM Modi for setting the right example here.

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News18.com, one of Indias top breaking news websites, held its annual marquee offering  The Tech and Auto Awards in New Delhi amidst the presence of industry veterans. One of the most notable and competitive categories in the 2017 Tech and Auto Awards was the SUV of the Year award, won by the Jeep Compass. Apart from Jeep Compass, there were four other SUVs too, which happened to be the best SUVs to launch in 2017. Heres the list of the top 5 SUVs launched in 2017 and why were they inducted in the nominations (cars launched between 1st November 2016  31st October 2017 were considered).

Jeep Compass wins SUV of the Year 2017. (Image: News18.com)

Jeep Compass

Jeep Compass did to FCA what Duster did to Renault in India  give a second life. Fiat Chrysler owned Jeep brand was looming under deep trouble with only two expensive products in kitty  Wrangler and Grand Cherokee SUVs. But as soon as Jeep announced their 1st Made-in-India product, the market started taking the brand seriously. Jeep Compass is a compact SUV, which is a hot-selling segment in India. Moreover, priced just a little over Rs 15 lakhs, the Compass perfectly caters to the growing urban SUV consumer, making it the 1st successful product from the house of FCA in a long-long time (or since Palio, we can say!).

Volkswagen Tiguan. (Image: Cars18.in/Siddharth Safaya)

Volkswagen Tiguan

A surprise entry this year, the Volkswagen Tiguan is the companys 1st SUV in India after many years. The Tiguan was again launched with urban consumers in mind, as the SUV offers best of comfort to the occupants, along with class leading safety features and comfort features like a panoramic sunroof. Priced north of Rs 27 Lakhs, the Tiguan however, loses its ground against the Toyota Fortuner and Ford Endeavour, because for the same price, one gets proper 7 seater off-roaders. However, customers from metro cities will dig the design and comfort of the VW Tiguan.

Tata Hexa (Photo: SIddharth Safaya/News18.com)

Tata Hexa

Tata has upped its game for the last couple of years and every new product out of their stable generates a lot of interest among the buyers. Tata has adopted a strategy to cater every segment in India, under their new IMPACT design language. Tiago for compact hatchback, Tigor for compact sedan, Nexon for compact SUV and Hexa for SUV  Tata has a candidate in each segment. As for the Hexa, it promises to be a comfortable 7-seater with 4*4 capabilities, automatic gearbox and plush interiors, all starting for just Rs 12 lakhs, making it a contender for SUV of the year.

Isuzu mu-X SUV. (Image: Siddharth Safaya/News18.com)

Isuzu mu-X

Yet another surprise entry this year is the standalone 7-seater SUV from Isuzu Motors in India  the mu-X. Based on the companys 1st proper lifestyle pick-up truck in India  the D-Max V-Cross, the mu-X comes with an automatic gearbox, shift-by-fly 4*4 system and much more, at an affordable price tag of Rs 23 Lakhs. The biggest plus point of the SUV is the way it drives and handles, good enough points to include it in the top SUVs of 2017. But then, it is competing against the likes of Toyota Fortuner and Ford Endeavour.

The Toyota Fortuner. Image used for representational purpose. (Photo: Siddharth Safay/News18.com)

Toyota Fortuner

Last on our list of the immensely popular (or not so with the new model)  the Toyota Fortuner. Although some doubt the new design of the bulky SUV, which is not as intimidating as the previous gen model, which sold as hot cakes, the cabin has definitely taken a plunge into a new era. The new Toyota Fortuner is still a worthy buy for anyone looking for a big, bulky 7-seater SUV that can be taken for occasional off-roading. The good part is, Fortuner starts at only Rs 24 Lakhs for the base version, that goes all the way upwards of Rs 30 lakhs for top spec version.

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Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Monday began his three-day tour of the Republic of Korea, urging its industrialists to make the state their second home and invest big in it.

The Chief Minister held meetings with a host of Korean industrialists and told them that AP would like to make rapid strides, inspired by South Korea's success in manufacturing and technology.

Explaining what all his government had been doing to propel growth and prosperity in the sunrise state in the aftermath of bifurcation, Naidu made a strong pitch for Korean investments in different sectors like automobiles, power, textiles, food processing, electronics, etc, an official release issued here said.

"India's Look East Policy will bear fruit only from our state," Naidu told the Koreans.

He also invited them to attend the Partnership Summit to be held in Visakhapatnam in February, it added.

Showcasing Kia Motors -- which is now setting up its car manufacturing plant in Anantapuramu district of AP -- as a mascot, the Chief Minister asked the South Korean business houses to explore possibilities of investing in AP as both of them shared many similarities like population and (geographical) size, said the release.

A group of 37 South Korean industries already signed Letters of Intent to invest a sum of Rs 3,000 crore in the state, he said.

Many ancillary units of Kia Motors confirmed a total investment of Rs 4,995 crore and provision of employment to 7,171 persons, the Chief Minister added.

A Korean township would soon be developed in the state, he said.

Naidu requested Hwang Chul-joo, CEO of Jusung Engineering that has 3.5 GW of solar power plants in different states of India, to set up a research and development facility in AP.

Jusung is currently developing the next-generation OLED bulbs and also has plans to set up a further one GW of solar power generating plants in India.

The Chief Minister, who is accompanied by Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, Industries Minister N Amarnath Reddy and senior officials, visited the automobile manufacturing plant of Kia Motors.
Patriarch Filaret (Denisenko) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, said he is ready to meet with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, for negotiations, but has no intention of giving up the idea of autocephaly.

"If he [Patriarch Kirill] suggested a meeting, I would, of course, agree, but I would not give up my position, namely, autocephaly of the Ukrainian church," he said on the 1+1 TV channel on Sunday evening.

He said he has not received any offers of a meeting.

Filaret said he realized that negotiations with the administration of the Russian Orthodox Church could draw an ambiguous reaction in the Kyiv Patriarchate.

"I have warned that we should stay united regardless of the outcome of these negotiations, the decision of the Bishops' Council [of the Russian Orthodox Church], because unity is more important to us that autocephaly," Filaret said.
Kochi Metro Rail Limited thought it would be a good idea to run a contest to name its mascot elephant. But little did they anticipate that such an innocuous move would open up the Pandoras box.

As the contest deadline draws near this evening, KMRLs Facebook page has been inundated with name suggestions none so more popular than Kummanaana suggested by Wollongong-resident Lijo Verghese.

Lijo says he meant it as a joke, but the name has garnered over 35000 likes, making it a top contender for the contest.

Kummanaana bears a striking similarity to the name of BJP State President Kummanam Rajashekharan. Kummanam was the butt of nary a joke after he took an uninvited ride with the Prime Minister and Chief Minister on the Kochi metro.

That incident had added a new word to the Malayali lexicon, Kummanadi meaning to boldly go where you are unwanted. To the trolls of Kerala, who mock anything and everything under the sun, Kummanaana has been a Lijo-given boon.

Kummanaanas popularity prompted many others to come up with equally funny - or unkind, depending on your political colour - names. Another trending has been Kannanthana, a play on Union Minister Alphonse Kannathanam who is a favourite target of the Malayalam troll industry.

In a fix KMRL, which had promised to pick a name from the 3 top contenders, was forced to add a caveat  Contest entries defaming any personality or insinuating against any person is not encouraged & will not be considered for the selection.

But not to be outdone, Malayalis have been inundating its wall calling for Kummanaana to be made official. They point out Kummanam is a place in Kottayam, and there is no reason why an elephant should not be named after a place.

The KMRL contest concludes today. From the looks of it, the company is unlikely to pick Kummanaana. Names like Kesavan, Metraana, and Komel could emerge frontrunners. No matter what KMRL calls their elephant, as far as Kochiites are concerned the naming ceremony seems to be over.
New Delhi: CIA director Mike Pompeo has issued a stern warning to Pakistan, saying that if Islamabad fails to act against terror havens on its soil, the American intelligence agency will do everything it can to ensure they don't exist anymore".

In the absence of the Pakistanis achieving that, we are going to do everything we can to make sure that that safe haven no longer exists," Voice of America Radio quoted Pompeo as saying at an event in California on Saturday.

The CIA chiefs comments came days ahead of Defense Secretary Jim Mattiss visit to Pakistan where he will seek common ground on the counterterrorism fight, amid Donald Trump administration calls for Islamabad to more aggressively go after terror groups.

Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest the 26/11 Mumbai attacks mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

Saeed is still roaming free, despite tough warning from the Trump Administration.

Mattis is the first top US official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the new South Asia Strategy that was announced by President Donald Trump on August 21.

Asked if he was going to press the Pakistani leaders to take more action against terrorists, Mattis said: "That's not the way I deal with issues. I believe that we work hard on finding the common ground and then we work together."

Mattis' optimism, however, comes despite persistent US assertions that Islamabad is still not doing enough to battle the Taliban and allied Haqqani network within its borders.

Since the start of the war in Afghanistan, militants in Pakistan have crossed the mountainous and ill-defined border to wage attacks against US, Afghan and allied forces. They then would return to their safe havens in Pakistan, where they have had a long-standing relationship with the ISI, Islamabad's intelligence agency.

The White House has also condemned Pakistan's release late last month of a Hafiz Saeed, a US-wanted terrorist and 2008 Mumbai attacks plotter, as a "step in the wrong direction" and warned that it could harm Islamabad's relations with America and its reputation around the world.

In August, the US said it would hold up $255 million in military assistance for Pakistan until it cracks down on terror havens.
New Delhi: When Iranian President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated the first segment of the four-phased Chabahar Port on Sunday  India, Afghanistan and Iran materialised a 15-year-long plan. It also ended India pampering Pakistan for issuing transit licenses for venturing into the landlocked country via Pakistani soil.

The $1 billion extension of the strategic port, located in the south-eastern province of Sistan-Balochistan in Iran, aims to connect Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asian countries. It is easily accessed from India's western coast, thus bypassing Pakistan.

India can now skip its immediate neighbour in transporting goods to Afghanistan, the need for a license, no more.

For years, the Indian government has been trying to persuade Pakistan to allow it to transport goods to Afghanistan using the land route, as the latter is a landlocked country sharing borders with Pakistan. New Delhi got Afghanistan included in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in 2007 in order to ensure connectivity among all countries in South Asia but Pakistan did not budge.

In 2010, when Pakistan and Afghanistan signed a connectivity pact on transit trade, it was expected that Indian goods would be allowed to pass through Pakistan. However, the neighbours were stubborn and did not allow Afghan trucks to come up to the Indian border at Attari, Punjab, or take back Indian goods.

According to Reuters, post the inking of the Chabahar deal, Pakistan said, India is trying to use Afghanistan as a base to destabilise Pakistan and has long blocked India from conducting bilateral trade with Afghanistan using its territory as transit.

The inauguration of the port project comes almost 15 years after India and Iran first formally agreed to develop the Chabahar port in January 2003.

While India and Iran are signatories to the port development project, a second agreement on connectivity was also inked by India, Iran and Afghanistan.

The pact allows Afghanistan to use Chabahar port to ship its goods to markets like India, thereby reducing its dependence on Pakistan and its Karachi port. The port development pact and connectivity agreement were signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Tehran in May 2016.

In October, this year, India flagged off a shipment of wheat for Afghanistan through Irans Chabahar port, marking the operationalisation of the port for the trans-shipment of goods from India to the landlocked country. This also meant that Afghanistan would not need to be wholly dependent on Pakistans Karachi port for sending its goods out to global markets.

Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had also stopped by in Tehran on Friday at lunch to hold a meeting with her Iranian counterpart, Javed Zarif, to review the implementation of the Chabahar Port.
New Delhi: Despite all efforts, many fishermen are still missing. Cyclone Ockhi has already claimed 24 lives in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Rescue operations are still on with Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard's coordinated efforts in Thiruvananthapuram-Kollam coastal area, but theres no way the state governments or the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) can compensate for the loss of lives and property.

While the IMD has clearly said that they had issued the alert on 28 November, two days before the cyclone hit the coastal areas, the government of both the states are trying to evade responsibility by suggesting that the alert came too late.

Dr M Mohapatra, IMD DGM New Delhi, NWFC, told CNN-News18 that every week the Met department issues a statement on the weather. The cyclone alert was sent to the state departments two days before it hit, he said.

RB Udaykumar, Tamil Nadus revenue and disaster management minister admitted that IMD had informed them about the cyclone. We immediately informed the district collectors of Kanyakumari, Tuticorin and Nagercoil about the alert, he said. Udaykumar said that all resources were put in by the government to avoid the disaster of the natural calamity.

He said nine people died because thousands of trees were uprooted. We ensured we set up 15 relief centres at Kanyakumari where more than 1200 people from low lying areas were relocated. We reviewed the district, and the situation is under control, he said.

But the situation doesnt quite seem to be under control. Though the cyclonic storm - which has weakened - has moved away from Lakhadweep and is headed towards the coast of Maharashtra, hundreds are reported missing and 16 people have died in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Despite all efforts, 33 boats and 83 fishermen havent yet returned.

Tamil Nadu's Kanyakumari district, one of the worst affected, still remains largely powerless with more than a thousand people stranded in rescue centres.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edapadi K Palaniswami in a statement said that he has ordered the officers and the ministers to take up rescue and relief operations on a war footing.

There are several questions that arise hereWhy were the fishermen allowed to enter the sea? Why were they not told to avoid it? If the district collectors were informed in advance why had they not taken enough precautionary measures?

On Sunday, fishermen in Thirvananthapuram launched their own rescue operation with 55 boats venturing into the high seas to search for those who have not returned. They found six bodies. The angry fishermen community protested before Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan when he visited a fishing village in the state capital. They protested in Kanyakumari too alleging rescue operations have been inadequate.

Theres a tale of blame game in Kerala too. While the Kerala government insists that it received an IMD weather alert only on November 30, Union minister Alphons Kannanthanam said it was issued two days earlier. There was a warning to the fishermen not to venture into the sea. It is a question of who allowed them to go even after the warning, he said.

Meanwhile, the State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) and the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) have been sparring over lapses in issuing a warning over cyclone Ockhi.

While the IMD has confirmed that a bulletin was issued to all states on 28 November, warning of heavy rains, squally winds and high waves in south Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep, indicating a depression that could intensify. It had even advised fishermen not to venture into the sea.

Officials at SDMA claimed there was no indication in the alert that it could develop into a cyclonic storm. They said that it looked more like a regular protocol, alerting for heavy rains and high waves.

Union earth sciences minister Harsh Vardhan said that IMDs first bulletin of the cyclone warning was conveyed to all district officials in Kerala, the state disaster management authority and the chief secretary.

"In the bulletin, there was a clear message for fishermen not to venture into the sea during the next 48 hours. This bulletin was repeated every three hours including on the night of 29 November and was still continuing," Vardhan said.

While the government is trying to shift responsibility by blaming the IMD, it cannot be denied that there wasnt enough precautionary measures in place.

The state governments have reached out to the Centre, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi assuring to provide adequate help. However, the blame games have begun even as the people are struggling to cope with the trail of havoc Ochki has left behind.
New Delhi: Max Healthcare has decided to terminate the services of two doctors allegedly involved in the case of a premature baby being wrongly declared dead, hospital authorities have said.

The decision was taken on Sunday night after a meeting of the Max Healthcare authorities in connection with the incident. "While the inquiry by the expert group which includes external experts from the IMA is still in process, we have decided to terminate the services of two treating doctors, doctors AP Mehta and Vishal Gupta in the case relating to the twin extreme pre-term babies," Max Healthcare said in a statement.

"The strict action has been taken on the basis of our initial discussions with the expert group and as a reflection of our commitment to higher standards of care," it said.

The case pertains to the birth of twins (boy and girl) on November 30. Both the babies were allegedly declared dead by the Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh. However, the family later found the boy was alive.

"We wish to clarify that this action should not presuppose finding of any lapse by the expert group and should not be construed in anyway to be anything other than an expression of our continued commitment to providing quality health care," the statement read.

Earlier on Sunday, the hospital had said two experts from the Indian Medical Association (IMA) had been included in the probe team set up by the Max Healthcare authorities to investigate the case.

The Max Healthcare authorities had ordered an inquiry into the case on December 1.
Bhopal: In a landmark move, Madhya Pradesh Assembly on Monday approved an amendment introducing death sentence for those who rape girls below 12 years of age.

Following a debate, the House passed the amendment unanimously by voice vote, first by any state in India.

The Amendment Bill was introduced in the House by state Law Minister Rampal Singh proposing death sentence as maximum punishment for those who rape or gangrape girls upto 12 years of age.

"We need stringent laws to prevent heinous crimes against women and also require moral and social awareness, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said.

"The girls would be continued to be seen as burden unless their security is not ensured," he added.

To deter crimes against women, the amendment seeks to propose new sections of IPC-- 376 AA, 376 D and 493A.

Congress welcoming the move sought to ensure that these stringent laws are not misused to harass innocent men.

The bill will now be sent to the President for his assent after which it will become a law, state Home Minister Bhupendra Singh told reporters outside the Assembly.

"It was a historic day for Madhya Pradesh as the state Assembly, as per the wish of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, passed a bill making a provision to award capital punishment to those indulging in such crimes (raping girls aged 12 or younger)," Singh told PTI.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar landed in controversy on Monday when he invoked rulers of the Mughal dynasty to defend Rahul Gandhis elevation as party chief.

Rahul filed the nomination papers for party presidency on Monday and is likely to be elected unopposed, invoking dynasty jibes form the BJP. The 47-year-old Gandhi scion will succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi, who has held the post for 19 years in a row now. Monday was the last date for filing nominations.

Hitting back at BJP leaders, Aiyar said: When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any election happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go to the heir."

"But in a democracy elections are held. I openly invite Poonawalla to file the nomination and contest," Aiyar said, referring to the rebellion by Maharashtra Congress leader Shehzad Poonawalla.

Aiyar later sought to clarify, saying the comparisons should not be made. Don't compare both. During Mughal rule it was understood that after Jehangir, Shahjahan will be the leader but here anyone is free to contest against Rahul Gandhi. It's a totally democratic process.

The damage, however, was done, with PM Modi using Aiyars remarks to attack Rahul Gandhi at an election rally in Gujarat.

Addressing a public meeting in Dharampur constituency, Modi said: "Mani Shankar Aiyar, who never shies away from showing loyalty to one family, proudly said  When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any elections happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go the son," Modi said.

"I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj. For us, the well-being of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," he said.
Mumbai: Schools in Mumbai and adjoining districts will remain closed on Tuesday as a precaution after the Met department predicted heavy rain and thunderstorms from Monday night as Cyclone Ockhi heads to the countrys west coast.

According to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Ockhi was 590 km from southwest of Mumbai and 770 km from south-southwest of Surat on Monday afternoon. It is expected to make landfall in coastal Gujarat by Tuesday midnight with squally winds, which may cause heavy rains along the coastline for the next two days.

Maharashtra minister Vinod Tawde announced that schools in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Sindhudurga, Ratnagiri, Thane, Raigad and Palghar districts due to serious weather predictions.

Precautionary holiday declared for schools in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Sindhudurga, Ratnagiri, Thane, Raigad and Palghar Districts for the safety of the students due to the serious weather predictions on #CycloneOckhi #MumbaiRains Vinod Tawde (@TawdeVinod) December 4, 2017

The disaster management unit of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has issued an advisory against visiting beaches in view of the high tide alert. Along with Maharashtra, fishermen in Goa and Karnataka have also been warned against venturing out into the sea.

IMDs director general KJ Ramesh said heavy rainfall warning has been issued for Gujarat as well. Following the IMD prediction, Gujarat chief secretary J N Singh took stock of the administrative preparedness to deal with any eventuality.

Two National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams each have been deployed at Surat, Navsari, and Rajkot. The officer said the Army, Navy, and the Border Security Force (BSF) have been alerted in the view of the cyclone's landfall.

According to the IMD forecast, wind velocity would remain between 50 KMPH to 70 KMPH when the cyclone would make landfall.

The scale of the cyclone has been reduced from very severe on Sunday to severe, the weather department said. Ockhi has laid waste to large parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala last week. The death toll in the two states has risen to 25 and close to a 100 persons are still missing.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday greeted Indian naval personnel on the occassion of Navy Day.

"On Navy Day, greetings to all navy personnel and their families," Modi tweeted, attaching a video of the Indian Navy showing its prowess in the sea.

On Navy Day, greetings to all navy personnel and their families. pic.twitter.com/O36rKhnC4I Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 4, 2017

Navy Day is celebrated annually on December 4 to celebrate the Indian Navy's achievements and commemorate the sacrifices made by the personnel.

Award-winning Innovations by Indian Navy on Display in Delhi

On Navy Day on Monday, award-winning innovations by the force have been put on display at the "Innovation Pavilion" at the Navy House in New Delhi.

These include the innovations by Indian Naval Ships 'Kuthar' and 'Vikramaditya', which have been selected as the winner and runner-up respectively in the 'Operational Units' category.

On Navy Day, my good wishes to all officers and men and women of the Indian Navy. Nation is proud of your commitment in protecting our maritime frontiers, securing our trade routes, and providing assistance in times of civil emergencies #PresidentKovind President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) December 4, 2017

The innovations by the Weapons Electronic Systems Engineering Establishment (WESEE) and Naval Aircraft Yard, Kochi were selected as the winner and runner-up respectively in the 'Shore Establishments' category.

At least 20 innovations have been shortlisted from those submitted by units and establishments across the Navy for central evaluation, a Defence Ministry statement said.

They range from innovative repairs to complex system modules to development of new techniques that would save money, time and manpower, it added.

All ranks of Indian Navy & their families join me in wishing our countrymen a 'Happy Navy Day' with an assurance that the Indian Navy will always remain ready to meet all challenges and threats, and safeguard national interests in the maritime dimension- Admiral Sunil Lanba CNS pic.twitter.com/OyoApeYPVv SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) December 4, 2017

"As a mark of recognition, the shortlisted initiatives have been showcased to the invited dignitaries on the Navy Day," the statement said.

The Navy presents the 'CNS Rolling Trophy for Innovation' to selected innovations on methods adopted by units to overcome constraints and to improve efficiency at their work areas.

#NavyDay Admiral Sunil Lanba CNS , General Bipin Rawat COAS & Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa pay homage at the Amar Jawan Jyoti India Gate on the occasion of Navy Day (04 Dec) pic.twitter.com/h3siNLoS3b SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) December 4, 2017

Innovations are evolved by Navy personnel when they are on a warship in the high seas on long missions where many challenges crop up.

- With inputs from agencies
Russia's hybrid military forces have attacked Ukrainian army positions in Donbas 38 times in the past 24 hours, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as killed in action and another four as wounded in action, the press center of the Ukrainian Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) headquarters has reported.

"The Russian occupation forces more often shell the Ukrainian positions from weapons that should have been withdrawn from the contact line, including tanks," the ATO HQ said on Facebook on Monday.

In the Luhansk sector, the enemy was active near the villages of Troyitske and Luhanske after dark. Here, the militants used 120mm mortars. In addition, the invaders repeatedly fired grenade launchers and small arms to attack ATO positions near the town of Zolote, and the villages of Novo-Oleksandrivka, Zhovte and Krymske.

In Donetsk region, the epicenter of confrontation shifted from the Mariupol sector to the outskirts of the town of Avdiyivka in the Donetsk sector in the evening. Here, the invaders repeatedly opened fire from all available infantry weapons, and closer to midnight the militants had been firing from a tank's cannon for more than an hour. The enemy used 82mm mortars against the Ukrainian troops in the villages of Verkhniotoretske and Lebedynske, while the defenders of the village of Talakivka and the town of Maryinka came under fire from grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms.
Thiruvananthapuram: Union Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday sought to assure the fishermen community that rescue operations in the wake of Cyclone Ockhi would not stop till the last person is rescued.

Naval ships, helicopters, Coast Guard vessels and Air Force planes are engaged in the rescue and relief operations to track down missing Kerala fishermen.

"Search and rescue operations will continue...There will not be any dilution of operations. We want to make sure that each and every fishermen who had gone from Kerala comes back safe, she said.

According to authorities, 97 fishermen who ventured out into the sea last week are still missing. So far , 393 fishermen from Kerala have been rescued.

Fishing communities in Vizhinjam and Poonthura have been protesting alleged inaction in bringing back fishermen missing from the hamlets for five days now. The anger was palpable during Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayans visit to Vizhinjam on Sunday night. Police had to remove protesters from the CMs path.

The protesters alleged that they were not given proper warning and that the rescue operations were proceeding on slow pace. They said some fishermen from the hamlet should be taken to the seas in Navy and Coast Guard vessels since they know the waters better.

On Monday, after listening to their grievances, Nirmala Sitharaman, speaking in Tamil, assured them that rescue operations could continue.

The operations had started on November 30. Search operations are more intense that those undertaken during the 2004 tsunami. I will meet the agriculture minister with your problems. I assure you that your problems will be solved."

The fishermen complained to the Union minister that Coast Guard was not able to find the fishermen, something they were able to achieve in their small boats.

"This is not the time for blame game. Let us all try and bring our fishermen back home. That should be the focus right now. Had the Coast Guard spotted the fishermen, they would not have left them behind, Sitharaman replied.
New Delhi: A bench of Justice AK Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan issued notice to the centre on a plea to allow demonstration in Central Delhi including Jantar Mantar.

The two judge bench called for a balance between the people's right to protest and hold demonstration and also maintain law and order. It has now asked the centre to respond on how to regulate protests in Central Delhi.

This Public Interest Litigation was filed by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) to allow the protestors to protest in a peaceful manner around the Boat Club area of India Gate.

The petitioner have stated that they are aggrieved by the order banning all sort of protest at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi.

The disputed said order was passed in October, 2017 by the Principal bench of NGT. MKSS has identified 'Boat Club Area' of India Gate, as an alternative to hold peaceful protests.

Bench of Justice A. K. Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan has also asked for recommendations from Centre in regard to guidelines for regulation of 'Right to Protest and Demonstration'.

The apex court has also sought recommendations from the Traffic Advisory bodies to frame regulatory guidelines to manage smooth flow of traffic whenever a demonstration is carried on by participants in a protest.

The petitioners have also asserted that the Right to Protest, Demonstrate and have Peaceful Assembly (in a lawful manner) is a fundamental right. "Government cannot keep on imposing Sec-144 of the Cr.P.C, in an everlasting manner," reads the petition.

Earlier hearing a plea filed by residents of Jantar Mantar road, who had claimed that processions and agitations "violate their right to live in a peaceful and healthy environment, right to silence, right to sleep and right to life with dignity," an NGT bench headed by Justice R.S. Rathore had directed the respondents to remove all make-shift and temporary structures, loud speakers and public address systems from the road and to "forthwith" shift the protesters and those sitting on dharnas at the venue to Ramlila Maidan.

The NGT bench had also held that the protests were in violation of environmental laws including Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 and upheld the right of the residents of the surrounding area to live peacefully and comfortably.
It was a horrible mix-up, but trust Shashi Tharoor to see the lighter side of it. Shortly after legendary Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor died, a channel tweeted the Congress MP's name by mistake.

Soon Tharoor's office was flooded with calls and he responded on Twitter in his own inimitable way.

"We're getting condolence calls in the office! Reports of my demise are, if not exaggerated, at least premature" Tharoor tweeted. It's the author-politician's take off on the famous quote attributed to the legendary Mark Twain.

We're getting condolence calls in the office! Reports of my demise are, if not exaggerated, at least premature. @TimesNow #ShashiKapoor https://t.co/nbtZGcdQTa Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017

The journalist apologised for his mistake and wished Tharoor a healthy life. The Congress MP graciously accepted the apology and wrote, Mistakes happen. Glad to be able to crack a smile at a tragic moment.

Tharoor also tweeted out a heartfelt condolence message and said it 'feels a part of me is gone'.

A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome & w/a name that was often confused w/mine. (My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health!) I will miss #ShashiKapoor. Condolences2his family&all his fans (sic), he wrote.

I feel a part of me is gone. A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome & w/a name that was often confused w/mine. (My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health!) I will miss #ShashiKapoor. Condolences2his family&all his fans pic.twitter.com/fSz3jafPZJ Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017

The 79-year-old actor, who worked in more than 160 films, took his last breath at the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in Mumbai on Wednesday.
Seoul/ Beijing: The United States and South Korea went ahead with large-scale joint aerial drills on Monday, a move North Korea had said would push the Korean peninsula to "the brink of nuclear war", ignoring calls from Russia and China to call them off.

The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States as part of a weapons programme that it has conducted in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was "regrettable" that all parties had not "grasped the window of opportunity" presented by two months of relative calm before the North's most recent test.

China and Russia had proposed that the United States and South Korea stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programmes. Beijing formally calls the idea the dual suspension proposal.

The annual U.S.-South Korean drill, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday, with six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part.

North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country called U.S. President Donald Trump "insane" on Sunday and said the drills would "push the already acute situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war".

F-35 fighters will also join the drills, which will include the largest number of 5th generation fighters ever to have taken part, according to a South Korea-based U.S. Air Force spokesman.

Around 12,000 U.S. service members, including from the Marines and Navy, will join South Korean troops. Aircraft taking part will be flown from eight U.S. and South Korean military installations.

South Korean media reports said B-1B Lancer bombers could join the exercise this week. The U.S. Air Force spokesman could not confirm the reports.

Trump said last week that additional major sanctions would be imposed on North Korea after Pyongyang's intercontinental ballistic missile test.

Earlier last month, Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that allows the United States to impose more sanctions.

Russia has accused the United States of trying to provoke North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into "flying off the handle" over his missile programme to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country.

Speaking at a news briefing in Beijing, Wang said China consistently opposed any behaviour that elevated tensions.

"And measures that don't abide by or are outside the UN Security Council resolutions lack basis in international law and damage the rights of United Nations members," Wang said when asked about the prospect of further U.S. sanctions against North Korea.

China's Air Force said on Monday that its surveillance aircraft had in recent days conducted drills in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea to "improve combat-readiness and safeguard the country's strategic interests".

The aircraft took a flight path not previously flown to regions they had never previously operated in, and coordinated with fighter jets, alert aircraft and guided missile forces, spokesman Shen Jinke said, according to a post on the Air Force's official microblog.

The joint exercises between South Korea and United States are designed to enhance readiness and operational capability and to ensure peace and security on the Korean peninsula, the U.S. military had said before the drills began.

The North's KCNA state news agency, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, said on Saturday the Trump administration was "begging for nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula".

North Korea regularly uses its state media to threaten the United States and its allies.

North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

It has said its weapons programmes are a necessary defence against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention.
Liquor baron Vijay Mallya has returned to Westminster Magistrates Court in London and his extradition trial will begin shortly. Mallya is wanted in India on charges relating to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines defaulting on loans from various Indian banks amounting to Rs 9,000 crore.

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New Delhi: Liquor baron Vijay Mallya, out on a 650,000-pound bail bond following his arrest by Scotland Yard over fraud and money laundering charges earlier this year, will return to Westminster Magistrates' Court in London on Monday as his extradition trial begins.

India's case to bring back the 61-year old businessman will be represented through the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of the British government.

PTI quoted CBI sources as saying that a team led by Special Director Rakesh Asthana left for London on Sunday and would remain present during the trial.

Mallya, who had shifted to the UK in March 2016, is wanted in India on charges relating to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines defaulting on loans from various Indian banks amounting to Rs 9,000 crore.

The former Rajya Sabha member had told PTI during his numerous court appearances in London over the last few months that he had "done nothing wrong" and described the allegations against him as "fabricated".

The trial will be heard by Chief Magistrate Emma Louise Arbuthnot who, in a previous hearing, had highlighted prison conditions as a concern that has been "raised in extraditions to India before".

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), arguing on behalf of the Indian government, has told the court that the Indian authorities foresaw this as an issue and has been "engaged on the matter".

The extradition trial itself, to be presided over by Judge Arbuthnot, is listed for hearings until December 14, with December 6 and 8 so far marked as non-sitting days. A judgment in the case is not expected until early next year.

If the judge rules in favour of extradition at the end of the trial, UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd must order Mallya's extradition within two months. However, the case can go through a series of court appeals before the actual extradition order can be issued.

India and the UK have an Extradition Treaty dating back to 1992 but so far only one extradition has taken place from the UK to India under the arrangement. Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in connection with the post-Godhra riots of 2002, was extradited.

But, unlike Mallya, he had submitted to the extradition order without a legal challenge.

Mallya, who was based at his Hertfordshire estate called Ladywalk in the village of Tewin, around 48 km from London, had responded with a firm "no" on being formally asked in court if he consented to being extradited to India on the charges relating to his collapsed Kingfisher Airlines.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: Today is Navy Day, a day on which we celebrate the achievements and role of our Naval force. And, the biggest weapon in our naval prowess is no doubt our only aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya.

Commanding Officer of INS Vikramaditya Captain Ajay Kochhar and fighter pilot of MiG 29 Abhijit Bhute have quite a thrilling life. After all, they are the ones running the largest warship in India's fleetINS Vikramaditya. In an exclusive interview to CNN News18, the duo talk about the thrills of being on-board the 45,400-tonne warship.

INS Vikramaditya is the only aircraft carrier in service in India.(Photo: CNN News18)

This Navy day, take a glimpse at the challenges, the rigour and the responsibility of leading India's biggest diplomatic weapon. She fills the enemy's heart with fear wherever she goes.

"It is great. We go for longer bouts of practice sessions. There are extensive briefings and de-briefings," Cdr Abhijit said.

INS Vikramaditya carries a naval version of MiG-29 fighter jet. (Photo: CNN News18)

Recently, the Navy has undertaken long range deployment. This means that the warships are being sent on missions for extended periods. "This has also put increased pressure on the frontline units," Vice Admiral Girish Luthra, Flag Officer Commanding in Chief of the Western Naval Command said.
It may not feature in Morocco's official tourism brochures but cannabis attracts thousands of visitors a year to the North African country. At a hotel bar in the northern region of Ketama, German tourist Beatrix made no attempt to hide the joint she was rolling. The 57-year-old said she had fallen in love with the area for "the quality of its hashish and the friendliness of its residents".

Hassan, a 40-something sporting a conspicuous gold watch, said cannabis was "our main source of wealth". "The climate here is very special. Nothing grows here except kif," he said, using a Moroccan name for the drug. Northern Morocco is a key production center for hashish for export to Europe, but it has also seen traffic in the other direction -- an influx of European visitors heading to sample the local pleasures. While Moroccan law bans the sale and consumption of the drug, that has not stopped farmers growing vast plantations of it, providing a living for some 90,000 households, according to official figures for 2013, the most recent available.

Smoking kif is seen as part of the local culture, and is largely tolerated by the authorities. Beatrix was among the organisers of the mid-September "Bombola Ganja" festival, essentially an evening gathering of smokers at a hotel swimming pool. Cannabis leaves appeared prominently on the poster on Facebook for the event, alongside the names of trance DJs and a call for cannabis to be legalized for medicinal purposes.

Ketama hosts thousands of tourists a year, mostly from Europe but also from other parts of Morocco. "People are attracted by the mountains, the hiking, the climate," hotel director Abdelhamid said. But it has also been famed for its cannabis since the 1960s, when it became popular with hippies seeking the high life.

"Twenty years ago, the tourists were mainly young Spaniards who came to smoke," one local tour operator said. "Now, non-smokers also come for the blue of the city, highly appreciated by Chinese tourists." Famed for its narrow alleys lined with striking blue houses, the town is also the main urban center of a region famed for its cannabis production.

Small-time dealers and unlicensed guides approach tourists to offer them hashish or a tour of nearby farms to meet the "kifficulteurs" -- local cannabis producers.

Chefchaouen guesthouses offer a similar service for around $18 (15 euros), although they are careful not to mention it in their brochures. On the terrace of a strategically located cafe, dealer Mohamed approached potential buyers, showing them a large pellet of hash and offering a "field visit" to see how the cannabis is processed.

After gathering a group of tourists, he took them to a nearby village. Standing in a field, with cannabis plantations covering the hillsides as far as the eye can see, he pointed out the varieties being cultivated. "Here you have the Mexican plant, the Afghan and the beldia (Arabic for domestic)," he said. Most farmers in the area import seeds in order to ensure a bigger harvest, he said.

Women from the village watched the scene with amusement as chickens pecked around the cottage. The farmer took the bucket to his workshop and returned a few minutes later with the finished product -- a block of hashish. "Here, you smoke where you want, except in front of the police station," Mohamed said.
Los Angeles: Actress Pamela Anderson is not backing down from her controversial claims that suggested the women who accused Hollywood Producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment "knew what they were getting into".

The 50-year-old actress and model caused controversy when she appeared on "Today" and hinted at the idea that the women who have accused the disgraced producer of sexual harassment should have known what would happen if they went "into a hotel room alone".

The 'Baywatch' star has now claimed that she was not 'victim shaming' anyone, rather wants women to be aware of their surroundings.

"This is not victim shaming. (Weinstein is) a sexist pig and a bully. (But) there are a lot of self-protection courses. There is even a well-known story of suffragettes learning martial arts. Women (must be) aware of certain problems and how to spot, fight them," said Anderson to tmz.com.

Anderson further defended her comments and refused to apologise.

"It is totally hypocritical to ignore this... (I) will not get coerced into an apology," she further added.
New Delhi: Actor Rishi Kapoor, who was shooting for Rajma Chawal in the national capital, has rushed back to Mumbai to be with his family after the demise of veteran actor-producer and his uncle Shashi Kapoor.

Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of the 1970s and early 1980s, died on Monday at a hospital in Mumbai. He was 79.

"We are the airport looking at the flight schedule, and want to reach Mumbai at the earliest. We might go tonight or tomorrow morning," Shanti Malik, who works closely with the Kapoor family, told IANS on Monday evening.

Malik also said that he doesn't know the cause of Shashi Kapoor's death, and would be in position to give out details on Tuesday morning.

The younger brother of late Raj and Shammi Kapoor, who were both actors par excellence, Shashi Kapoor started his tryst with acting at the age of four, with plays directed and produced by his father Prithviraj Kapoor.

He started acting in films as a child in the late 1940s. His best known performances as child artist were in "Aag" (1948) and "Awaara" (1951), where he played the younger version of the character played by his elder brother Raj.

When he grew up, he made his debut as a leading man in the 1961 film Dharmputra, and went on to appear in more than 150 Hindi films.

Shashi Kapoor, whose nuanced acts in memorable films like Deewar, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Trishul and Kabhi Kabhie captivated Hindi film buffs, was married to English theatre actress Jennifer Kendal.

He had three children - Kunal, Karan and Sanjana Kapoor.
Former Georgian President and former Odesa regional governor, who heads the Ukrainian opposition party "Movement of New Forces," Mikheil Saakashvili, has said he does not intend to fear blackmail that he will be extradited to Georgia.

"Now [former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina] Ivanishvili and [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko agreed that a sentence on trumped-up charges will be quickly issued next week," Saakashvili told Georgia's Rustavi-2 television company on Sunday, December 3, during participation in a March for Impeachment organized by his party in Kyiv.

In his opinion, they want to blackmail him with extradition, suggesting that he go to the Netherlands or Poland instead of Georgia.

At the same time, he said that if such a question arises, he is not afraid and is ready to return to Georgia.

"Do you play these games? They will finish badly. I'll come to Georgia. I will not go to the Netherlands. I will not go to Europe as they wish. It's their joint game. I want to say that if they raise this question, if the oligarchs have agreed, if they issue a verdict in Georgia and want to blackmail me on the basis of this verdict by threatening to send me to Georgia, I said that I will come to Georgia. Let our supporters in Georgia prepare that I will come when they make this decision," Saakashvili said.

Speaking about the rally "March for Impeachment" in Kyiv, he noted that "this is only the beginning."

"Here, in Ukraine, if you let the genie out of the bottle, you cannot squeeze it back in," he said.
Mumbai: On Saturday, Salman Khan opened yet another Weekend Ka Vaar of Bigg Boss 11, however, what grabbed everyone's attention was his voice, which sounded a bit husky. He then informed viewers about his poor health.

When the superstar was spotted at the Star Screen Awards here on Sunday, he was once again asked about his health. To which, the actor said, "The environment is not suiting me these days. I am suffering from viral, which refuses to leave me because I am not getting any break. I was at a Summit recently, then I graced IFFI, and I have to host 'Bigg Boss' on the weekends. And on top of that, the 'Tiger Zinda Hai' dubbing is going on. So, I am not getting any rest."

Salman will soon be seen in Tiger Zinda Hai, which also features Katrina Kaif. The film is based on the real-life incident wherein 46 nurses were held hostage by ISIS in Iraq in 2014.

"It is not good to fight, but always good to romance," Salman said of his role in the Ali Abbas Zafar-directorial.

"It is coming out on December 22. Two songs have been released, and they are really good. Everyone has really appreciated the songs. And now on December 22, we will find out the destiny of the film," Salman added.

(With inputs from IANS)
Mumbai: Veteran Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of the 70s and early 80s who immortalised the line "Mere paas Maa hai", died on Monday after prolonged illness. He was 79.

Best known for his work in films such as Deewar, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Namak Halal, Kaala Pathar and Kabhie Kabhie, he had stayed away from the limelight in the last two decades.

He had been suffering from ailments for the past few years. He had undergone a bypass surgery and was also hospitalized for a chest infection in 2014.

He is survived by three children - Kunal, Sanjana and Karan Kapoor.

The actor-producer took his last breath at 5.20 pm at the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in Mumbai.

"Yes, he has passed away. He had a kidney problem and was on dialysis for several years," his nephew Randhir Kapoor, the son of the late Raj Kapoor, said. The funeral will be held on Tuesday morning, he said.

Kapoor hit the spotlight at the age of four, acting in plays directed and produced by his father. He started acting in films as a child artiste in the late '40s.

His best known performances as a child actor were in "Aag" (1948) and "Awaara" (1951), where he played the younger version of the character played by Raj Kapoor. He also worked as assistant director in the '50s.

He made his debut as a leading man in the 1961 film "Dharmputra" and went on to appear in more than 116 films during '70s and until the mid '80s. A three-time national award winner, he was also honoured with Padma Bhushan in 2011 and received the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke award in 2015.

President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi led in paying tributes to the popular actor.

"Sorry to hear of the demise of Shashi Kapoor, well-known actor, with a repertoire of Indian and international films. His support for meaningful cinema as a producer and pivotal role in the theatre movement in India too are cherished. Condolences to his family," said Kovind in a message on Twitter.

Prime Minister Modi said he was saddened by the news and recalled Kapoor's contribution to cinema and theatre. "Shashi Kapoor's versatility could be seen in his movies as well as in theatre, which he promoted with great passion. His brilliant acting will be remembered for generations to come. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers," Modi tweeted.

Karishma Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Rekha, Neetu Kapoor with Shashi Kapoor at the Dadasaheb Phalke Awards. (Image: Getty Images)

The Indian film industry, too, mourned the death of the actor, as friends and admirers - led by Lata Mangeshkar, Shyam Benegal and Aamir Khan - recalled his passion for cinema, while paying homage to a man known for his easy charm and good nature.

"His work has always given Indian audiences great joy. His contribution to Indian theatre was huge, Prithvi theatre is the favourite venue of both performers and audiences alike. His passing a sad day for all of us. My condolences to Sanjana, Kunal, Karan and everyone in the family. May his soul rest in peace," Aamir wrote on Twitter.

Actor Saira Banu remembered him as a "bubbly person". "He was full of fun, full of jokes and at the same time he was really a smart person," Banu, legendary actor Dilip Kumar's wife, said.

Leading Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar recalled the late actor's classic line from "Deewar" and said it inspired aspiring artistes. "Innumerable Bollywood dreams came to life watching your iconic dialogue, 'Mere paas maa hai.' Your tremendouscontribution to cinema will always be remembered," he tweeted.

Many stars, including Amitabh Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor, Kajol, Rani Mukerji, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Saif Ali Khan came to pay their last respects to Shashi Kapoor at his residence.
Actress Sunny Leone is excited about featuring in action sequences in a period war film in Telugu. The actress has been signed up for a movie to be directed by V.C. Vadivudaiyan. Ponse Stephen is producing the film. The yet untitled film will be "based on the culture of south India", read a statement.

For this project, she is all geared up to learn sword fighting, horse riding and other stunt-related arts. For this purpose, a special trainer from Andhra Pradesh will fly to Mumbai and teach Sunny all these arts. Sunny has given a call sheet of 150 days, and around 70 minutes of the movie is said to be computer generated imagery-driven. It will be released in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi.

"After this movie, I am sure my image will change completely. I have always liked doing action sequences. I was waiting for a script like this only for years. I started preparing for this movie from the minute director V.C. Vadivudayan narrated me the script. I have a special love towards south India, so I am very happy to do a straight Telugu movie. I have a lot of my fans in south India, especially Andra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala," she said.

The shoot will start from February.
Lucknow: The BJP is all set to encash its UP civic poll performance in Gujarat by utilising newly elected mayors for campaigning in the poll-bound state.

The BJP has won 14 out of 16 mayoral seats in civic polls in UP and all the newly elected leaders will be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to seek his blessings.

Thereafter, they will proceed to Gujarat for campaigning for the Assembly elections there on December 9 and 14.

"The newly elected mayors will meet the prime minister over tea tomorrow in Delhi. They are all devoted party workers and will be used where ever the party needs them," BJP state general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak told PTI.

Amethi Nagar Panchyat Chairperson Chandrama Devi and Jais Nagar Palika Parishad Mahesh Pratap will be among those who will be meeting Modi.

Though Congress did not field any candidate in Amethi, the victory of a BJP candidate there is still considered a major blow to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as it is his parliamentary constituency and considered a Congress bastion.

The Congress lost in Jais and Gauriganj where Nagar Palika polls were held. In Amethi and Musafirkhana, where Nagar Panchayat polls were held, the party had not fielded anyone.

With the BJP's extensive campaign in the local polls in UP paying off, the sweeping win is considered as a boost to the saffron party in the midst of the high-decibel campaign for the Gujarat elections.

Counting of votes in Gujarat will be taken up on December 18.

The UP civic elections were touted as the first litmus test of Yogi Adityanath after the BJP stormed to power in March.

The saffron surge routed the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, both of which drew a blank in mayoral polls.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who has been drafted as the key campaigner in Gujarat and went on a nearly 90-day whirlwind tour of the state, described it as a "historic win".

He attributed the victory to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision and BJP chief Amit Shah's able guidance and added that the BJP will now look forward to achieving the goal of one hundred percent success in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

"The victory of party has sent positive message among the people who are already admirers of Narendra Modiji. There is a significant population of people from east UP in Gujarat," said BJP leader and state spokesman Shalabh Mani Tripathi, who is campaigning in Gujarat for the past one month.

"Yogiji is already a star campaigner and our newly elected mayors with their success stories will add to our ongoing campaigning here," Tripathi said.
Rahul Gandhi has filed the nomination for the post of Congress president, paving the way for his much-awaited elevation and setting the stage for a contest against PM Narendra Modi ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Addressing a rally in Gujarat, Modi termed the elevation as Aurangzeb raj. Rahuls big moment has been shadowed by a rebellion of sorts from Maharashtra Congress leader Shehzad Poonawalla, who says the elections are rigged". Congress had no place for Shehzad, but for shehzada (prince)," he says.

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Bengaluru: Karnataka Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy on Monday accused BJP MP Pratap Simha of purposely violating the law and said that he was doing this at the behest of his party president Amit Shah.

Reddy made the comments while facing questions from reporters about why Simha, BJP MP from Mysuru, was arrested while participating in a procession in his constituency for Hanuman Jayanti.

He said that Simha, who was personally driving his car, had tried to crash through police barricades and nearly hit officials deployed for security during the procession.

Whether it is Eid procession or Hanuman Jayanti procession, the police permission is given based on a set route. But he wanted to deviate from the route-map given and dash his way through barricades. Our policemen escaped injuries narrowly. Should they then just keep quiet, without any action? They have booked cases because the law is the same for this MP, as it is for me or for the Chief Minister, Reddy said.

"They are only want to mine this for political reasons...They are all doing this at the behest of Amit Shah," he added.

He referred to a video posted by Simha a few weeks ago on social media, where Simha is heard telling the BJP Yuva Morcha cadre that he was asked by Shah during his (Shahs) last visit for review of party functioning ahead of elections, to get aggressive in all protests and demonstrations.

The video, that soon went viral on social media, has Simha saying, Shah had called a meeting of all the morchas during his Bangalore visit. He asked the Yuva Morcha how many protests have you held in the recent past. We gave him details.

After hearing us out, Shah said you are the Yuva Morcha. You must hold more fierce protests. How many of your protests have seen lathi-charging, or tear gas used? Give me those details. To this, I said, there are no such incidents, but in future, we will hold such protests in the coming days, he added.

The video put the BJP  in opposition in Karnataka  in an embarrassing position, coming as it does just days after some of their district office-bearers in Tumkur district were accused of beating up a journalist trying to question a party leaders role in illegal mining.

On Sunday, even as Simha was briefly arrested and later released for trying to break the police barricades, a similar incident was reported where BJP workers tried to create trouble at the Datta Jayanti celebrations in the communally-sensitive Bababudangiri Hills in Chikmagalur district.

Chikmagaluru MLA and BJP general secretary CT Ravi too had participated in these celebrations, where a worker tried to deface a shrine worshipped by members of another community. The incident also saw some mild lathicharge before things were brought under control.

Reddy, who said such incidents are increasing with just six months to go for elections, advised the BJP to hold workshops to teach their MPs and MLAs the law. Simha and Ananth Kumar Hegde  these are MPs. They should know the law. But they are mining these religious occasions for political purposes. They dont celebrate anything out of bhakti (devotion), but for politics, he said.

Chief Minister Siddarmaiaah too reacted on social media, taunting Simha. Taking BJP president Amit Shahs advice seriously, Mysore MP @mepratap is trying to create communal disturbance in Hunsur during Hanuman Jayanti. It is our responsibility to ensure citizens celebrate festivals peacefully. No person, including an MP, will be allowed to take law in his own hands.
Chennai: The hotly contested RK Nagar bypoll just got a celluloid twist with actor Vishal throwing his hat in the ring and how!

With the election set to be conducted on December 21, Vishal has started with the leg work by conducting review meetings with representatives of the prestigious seat that fell vacant after late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaas demise.

The actor, who wishes to be seen as a peoples politician than one with big political ambitions, said, I want to be the voice of RK Nagar. I want to be the representative of the people and Im not going to be a full time politician. I have no long-term plan. It is just a gut feeling and I want to contest the election.

Vishal said he draws inspiration from Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and late President, APJ Abdul Kalam.

He added, I look up to these two people. I havent met Arvind Kejriwal but he is a people's leader. Im not going to be a politician and will remain a commoner.

Taking note of Vishal's comments, Kejriwal tweeted his welcome to the actor's entry into politics and invited the actor to visit him.

Welcome @VishalKOfficial. Ur entry in politics will inspire many youngsters. Lets meet up when u come to Del next https://t.co/SZstIyTcRG Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 4, 2017

The actor made the surprise announcement of contesting the elections on Saturday. Besides opposition DMK, ruling AIADMK's E Madhusudhanan and the party's sidelined leader TTV Dinakaran are contesting for the prestigious seat.

Speaking to News18 exclusively, the actor said, They have not addressed issues that have being going on for many years. For instance, poor hygiene in toilets in government schools, poor treatment in government hospitals, people not getting pension, issues with the ration shops. Moreover, these problems are not just in RK Nagar, but also in other constituencies as well. We will address these issues immediately and not wait for the bypoll result.

Vishal is also likely to visit the Kamraj statue, MGRs residence and Jayalalithaa memorial, before filing the nominations.

While superstars Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth have only hinted at their political jump so far, Vishal has already decided to take that leap and is about to contest as an Independent candidate.

Vishal, for whom elections are a first, said he is overwhelmed with the support he received from the film industry after the announcement.

He said, I havent approached anyone but if they are like-minded people and they wish to support me, they are invited. Im so happy that actors Kushboo, Prakash Raj and Arya have offered their support. Wishes are pouring in. I havent heard from Kamal Sir yet, but once I file the nomination papers, Ill call him.
Bhopal: Taking potshots at the Congress' claim that party vice president Rahul Gandhi is a Janeudhari Hindu, BJP's Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy on Monday said the 47-year-old Gandhi scion was "compelled" to wear 'Janeu' (sacred thread) to perform the last rites of his father.

Swamy also termed the Congress as a "dharmashala" of one family on the day when Rahul filed his nomination for the party president's post.

"Rahul Gandhi was compelled to wear Janeu because of his father. Otherwise, he will not be able to perform last rites," Swamy said, while questioning why the Congress leader was not saying that he was a Hindu.

The senior BJP leader arrived here to attend a conference on environmental issues.

Swamy said, "When he accepts that he is a Shivabhakt, what is the problem in accepting that he is a Hindu. We will accept it. Your (Rahul) associate asked for the register meant for non-Hindus making entries and then you make claims that you are a Shivabhakt (devotee of Lord Shiva)."

The BJP leader reaffirmed that the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya would begin soon and it would be ready to receive devotees by next Diwali.

"I have seen that our pleas are stronger than the opposition. They were defeated in the Allahabad High Court. They have now filed an appeal but they did not present new facts. So, I believe that we will win the court battle," he said.

While replying to a question, Swamy claimed BJP's victory in the Gujarat Assembly elections was a foregone conclusion.

Asked about the extradition of liquor baron Vijay Mallya, Swamy said, "The government is making efforts to bring him back to India. The government will not spare anybody."

Referring about to the GST, Swamy said that after the new tax regime was implemented, the GDP has started an upward movement.

Asked if the GST would adversely affect the BJP's chances in the Gujarat polls, he said everybody was saying that demonetisation would harm the party's prospects. But, on the contrary, the BJP won 75 percent seats in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, he added.
Australia's competition regulator said on Monday it would investigate whether U.S. online giants Facebook and Alphabet Inc's Google has disrupted the news media market to the detriment of publishers and consumers. Like their rivals globally, Australia's traditional media companies have been squeezed by online rivals, as advertising dollars have followed eyeballs to digital distributors such as Google, Facebook and Netflix Inc.

The government ordered the probe as part of wider media reforms, amid growing concern for the future of journalism and the quality of news following years of declining profits and newsroom job cuts and the rise of fake news. "We will examine whether platforms are exercising market power in commercial dealings to the detriment of consumers, media content creators and advertisers," Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.

The inquiry also would study how Facebook and Google operated to "fully understand their influence in Australia", he added. A Google spokesman said, "We look forward to engaging in this process as relevant." Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The idea for an ACCC investigation was hatched during media reform negotiations in parliament earlier this year, which resulted in a relaxation of ownership laws to allow the country's big players to boost their market share to better compete against online disruptors.

Independent media analyst Peter Cox told Reuters it was unclear what measures the competition regulator could recommend to the government even if it found the country's media sector was increasingly anti-competitive. "You could see this as a stepping stone towards another type of reform, such as tax," said Cox. Jurisdictions around the world, including the European Union, are grappling with how to tax technology giants with global operations.

Currently, corporate taxes are paid where firms have a physical presence, which allows digital multinationals to book most of their profits where they have set up headquarters as opposed to where they make their money. The Australian probe will have the power to demand information from businesses and hold hearings. It is due to make its final report in 18 months.

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The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (OSCE SMM) has confirmed over 400 casualties among the civilian population in the conflict zone in Donbas since the beginning of 2017, OSCE SMM Deputy Chief Monitor Aleska Simkic has said.

Simkic said at a press conference in Kharkiv on Monday that over the current year, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission had confirmed more than 400 civilian casualties, including those dead and injured.

She noted that the failure to comply with the Minsk agreements, in particular, ceasefire violations, increased the risk of gender-based violence. In addition, the OSCE mission records numerous cases of human rights violations in the conflict zone, she said.

Undoubtedly, this situation primarily affects the civilian population and increases the risk of gender-based violence, including social and domestic violence, she said. The survivors of violence often face another tragedy - the lack of social, economic and other human rights, she said.

Simkic said that thousands of citizens (men, women and children) did not have access to electricity, gas, water, because during a protracted conflict the destruction of infrastructure erected across the contact line continues. People need to wait in lines at checkpoints for many hours, without proper shelter and without hygienic conditions, she said.

Simkic also noted that the OSCE SMM had initially called for opening more checkpoints. There are currently four of them in Donetsk region and only one pedestrian crossing in Stanytsia Luhanska in Luhansk region, she said.

According to her, in 2017, the mission recorded more appeals from women who became victims of gender violence in the conflict zone.
Remember Logo? The programming language everyone was taught to use in their computer classes back in school, today celebrates its golden jubilee and search giant Google planned to celebrate it in a unique way. Three teams including that of Google Doodle, Google Blockly and Researchers from MIT worked together to produce Mondays Google Doodle, which showcases a rabbit on a hunt for carrots in the form of a programming language for kids.

Marking the 50th anniversary of the first ever programming languages for children, the Google Doodle replicates Logo and allows kids to design codes to move the rabbit onto the blocks. Six levels of designing codes on the Google Doodle aim to provide them "the opportunity to explore ideas in math and science".

Celebrate #CSEdWeek & 50 yrs of kids coding languages by checking out our VERY FIRST coding #GoogleDoodle!  https://t.co/Kr7pjrLXOr pic.twitter.com/V0aJFBBAM2 Google Doodles (@GoogleDoodles) December 4, 2017

"Like Logo, Scratch was developed at MIT and builds on Paperts early ideas about kids and computers. Its designed to be less intimidating than typical programming languages, but just as powerful and expressive" adds Champika Fernando, Director of Communications, Scratch Team.

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After well over a decade with Capgemini, Salil Parekh is returning home to head unsettled Indian software services firm Infosys, where he will seek to replicate his success in notching up record growth at the divisions he ran. Alongside, Parekh has to help the bellwether of India's $154 billion software services sector recover from a nasty public spat between its board and founders that led to the dramatic exit of the previous CEO, Vishal Sikka, in August.

Parekh joins Bengaluru-based Infosys in January from Paris-headquartered Capgemini, where he headed their core application services business in key markets like North America and the United Kingdom, and their cloud services and cloud infrastructure businesses. He also managed Sogeti - a unit of Capgemini focused on digital transformation.

As the CEO, Parekh will have to achieve growth while being careful not to antagonize Infosys' founders, who own about 12 percent of the company but command an outsized say in its direction. His priority will be to assure clients and employees of "business continuity without rocking the boat," Harit Shah of brokerage Reliance Securities wrote in a note to clients after Infosys announced the appointment on Saturday,

The founders, led by Narayana Murthy, the doyen of India's IT services sector, engaged in a lengthy public feud with Sikka on issues ranging from flights on private jets, to over-spending on a takeover, and on the pricey rent for his U.S. office, to the largesse of payouts given to certain executives following their exits. Sikka, widely known as an innovator in the global software industry, joined Infosys from German software maker SAP in 2014. He was the first outsider to be made CEO of Infosys.

The spat culminated with the exit of both Sikka and Infosys' then chairman R. Seshasayee in August, and the return of one of its founders, Nandan Nilekani, as chairman. Nilekani, a highly regarded industry veteran, had remained silent throughout the public confrontation led by Murthy. For Parekh, the discord that led to Sikka's departure could prove to be beneficial, although he may have to work to convince Murthy.

"Sometimes coming on the back of a controversial exit is easy, because expectations would be realistic," a tech industry consultant said. Being hand-picked by Nilekani should give Parekh some cover. Two weeks ago, Murthy endorsed Nilekani, saying "absolutely, all is well," with Nilekani at the helm. In a statement on Saturday, Murthy wrote, "I am happy that Infosys has appointed Mr. Salil Parekh as the CEO. My best wishes to him."

In Parekh, India's No. 2 IT firm gets an executive with vast experience in some of its biggest Western markets and one who has led high-margin businesses like cloud services, where it is keen to accelerate growth. His Capgemini colleagues say Parekh pushes people to work hard, believes in sharing information and cutting across hierarchy to deliver on projects. "IT services is a very different business from products and someone like Sikka who came with a mindset of doing new things constantly may not have been a good idea for a firm like Infosys," a senior executive at Capgemini said, declining to be named. "Parekh, though, is a core services executive who knows how to deliver projects within tight deadlines, with the resources at hand."

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The most recent Rajasthan Digi Fest 2017, third such event by the state, was concluded in Udaipur on Monday. The 3-day long IT festival held by the state government shed light on the Rajasthan governments efforts towards digitisation and how the administration is providing a boost to the start-up culture in the state. With a string of speakers from various companies operating across the world attending the event, the Digi Fest 2017 served as a platform for learning to the aspiring youth of the nation. The event kicked off with a 24-hour long hackathon, which saw the participation of more than 1500 youngsters from across India, day 2 of the Digi Fest welcomed speakers like Greg Moran, Co-Founder and CEO - Zoomcar, Colin Tooze, Director of Public Policy  Uber Global and many more. The event was also attended by Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia who addressed the gathering and interacted with the various digital presentations at the IT festival.

The Digi Fest 2017 highlighted the state governments current e-governance practices and how the state is planning to further build upon them. Right from the nationally renowned eMitra launched in 2005, the event displayed all the prevailing e-governance practices like the Bhamashah Yojana, ePDS, Rajasthan Payment Platform, eSanchar, iFact and more. Evidently, all the e-Government portals have been designed in an integrated manner so as to combine and use all the available data for the state residents. Elaborating on the e-Mitra, the multi-modal platform aims to offer its integrated services to the citizens doorsteps through a three-way front including a dedicated web portal, mobile app and 40,000+ kiosks spread through the state. As per the government claims, the 200 plus integrated services also accommodate payment gateways of all major banks as well as mobile payment portals in addition to micro ATMs/ BCs. Recently, end-to-end application and delivery of "Digitally Signed Certificates" such as Bonafide, Caste, Income, Solvency etc. have also been made possible through the e-Mitra portal.

Other e-governance schemes practised by the Rajasthan government include Bhamashah Yojana, which is essentially a resident data hub and is mandatorily used by all the departments of the state for deciding entitlement. It provides a unique ID to each individual citizen, just like the Aadhaar, but in addition, also recognizes families wherein the lady of the house is considered as the Head of the Family. It entitles all the cash and non-cash benefits for a family through a single medium. A public grievance redressal mechanism, known as Sampark lets the citizens of Rajasthan register their grievances, even offering SMS integration, GIS linked inspection, reality check functionality for disposed cases and a process wherein the feedback is sought by the state from the complainant. An ePDS scheme provides targeted PDS benefits to the citizens through the use of PoS devices and Aadhaar linked validation and hence avoids proxy withdrawals or misuse. Some more mentionable e-governance schemes include the electronic face of the Rajasthan government - State Portal, event-based notifications to beneficiaries and officials through eSanchar and iFact, rural Wi-Fi setup scheme  Raj Wi-Fi, two-way electronic payment provision through Rajasthan Payment Platform, an online auction platform between purchasers and brokers, farmers and APMCs - RIMMS, single window access for e-commerce activities in the state - eBazaar and an end-to-end kit to help citizens become digitally sound  Digikit.

Apart from using digital services to help the citizens of the state, the Rajasthan government has also been using the digital infrastructure to help automate its own administrative operations. A unified platform for depicting the various layers and hosting GIS-based applications and collecting spatial and non-spatial attribute data for state structures  RajDharaa, e-space for safe document storage with electronic self-attestation and e-Verification  Raj eVault, electronic signature for self-attestation and e-Verification  Raj eSign, integrated automation platform - Raj Kaj, online video portal of Rajasthan government  Raj Bioscope and more such digital initiatives are currently being used in the state.

An insight into these ongoing e-governance practices reveals how digitisation can be used to enhance the reach and the actual effect of such government services. Technology, on many levels, has already enabled citizens to attain more work efficiency than what was possible earlier. With the national and state governments now moving towards the use of such digitally powered solutions to improve their administrative efficiency, it is evident on many levels that the next step of evolution for the country and its citizens as a whole would be technology driven.

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Britain's main cybersecurity agency on Friday warned British government agencies to avoid using anti-virus software from Russian companies, the latest in a series of moves targeting Moscow-based security software maker Kaspersky Lab. In a letter to departmental permanent secretaries, the director of the UK National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin, said Russian-made anti-virus software should not be used in systems containing information that would harm national security if it was accessed by the Russian government.

He said his agency is in talks with Kaspersky Lab to develop a system for reviewing its products for use in Britain. Kaspersky's anti-virus software was banned from U.S. government networks earlier this year on concerns the company has close ties to intelligence agencies in Moscow and that its software could be used to enable Russian spying.

"We are in discussions with Kaspersky Lab ... about whether we can develop a framework that we and others can independently verify, Martin said in the letter, which was publicly released. Kaspersky Lab said in a statement that it looked forward to working with the NCSC on the issue. Kaspersky has strongly denied allegations about the safety of its products or ties to the Russian government, saying it has become a scapegoat in the midst of rising tensions between Washington and Moscow.

British bank Barclays said on Saturday it had stopped offering Kaspersky anti-virus products to customers. "Even though this new guidance isnt directed at members of the public, we have taken the decision to withdraw the offer of Kaspersky software from our customer website," it said in a statement.

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Washington: US President Donald Trump on Monday issued his most explicit endorsement to date of embattled Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women including one who was 14-years-old at the time.

Trump had previously characterized the allegations, first reported by The Washington Post, as "very troubling" before changing tack and warning voters in Moore's home state of Alabama that a victory for his Democratic rival Doug Jones "would be a disaster!"

On Monday, he cited Democrats' opposition to his legislative agenda, including tax cuts, as reasons for his support.

"Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama," he tweeted.

"We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!"

"Look at your 401-k's since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!" he added, referring to an employer-sponsored retirement savings plan.

Moore, a 70-year-old Christian conservative with a history of controversy stemming from his tenure on Alabama's supreme court, had been a strong favorite to win the rightwing state's special election on December 12 before the allegations broke.

Most of the allegations about Moore relate to when he was a prosecutor in his mid-30s and sought to pursue relationships with teens, according to the reports.

One of the women, Leigh Corfman, now 53, said that when she was 14 Moore took her into his house in the woods near Gadsden, Alabama, removed her shirt and pants, and fondled her over her bra and underpants.

Moore has denied the allegations and said they are politically motivated.

The race, which is being held to replace Jeff Sessions who was named US attorney general, has national repercussions because Republicans hold only a slim 52-to-48 majority in the senate.

Allegations of sexual harassment have plagued both of America's main political parties in recent weeks.

Democrat John Conyers, a celebrated civil rights activist who is the longest-serving member of Congress, announced he was stepping down from a leadership position last month as he battles harassment claims from members of his staff.

Trump himself has been accused of misconduct by several women, ranging from groping to unwanted advances and kissing, though these did not prevent his election last year.
Islamabad: US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Islamabad on Monday to ask Pakistan's civilian and military leadership to do more to rein in militants accused of using the country as a base to carry out attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan.

More than 100 days since President Donald Trump announced his South Asia strategy, however, US officials and analysts say there has been only limited success and it is not clear how progress will be made.

US officials have long been frustrated by what they see as Pakistan's reluctance to act against groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network that they believe exploit safe haven on Pakistani soil to launch attacks in Afghanistan.

"We have heard from Pakistani leaders that they do not support terrorism ... we expect them to act in their own best interest, and in support of peace and regional stability," Mattis said told reporters travelling with him this week.

Mattis, who is visiting Pakistan for the first time as defence secretary, said the goal for his trip would be to find "common ground" and work together.

In August, Trump outlined a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, chastising Pakistan over its alleged support for Afghan militants. But beyond that, the Trump administration has done little to articulate its strategy, experts say.

Senior US officials say they have not seen a change in Pakistan's support for militants, despite visits by senior US officials, including one by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently.

"We have been very direct and very clear with the Pakistanis ... we have not seen those changes implemented yet," General John Nicholson, the top US general in Afghanistan, said this week.

Pakistan says it has done a great deal to help the United States in tracking down militants and Pakistani officials have pushed back on the US claims.

LIMITED LEVERAGE

US official expressed hope that relations between the two countries could improve after a kidnapped US-Canadian couple and their three children were freed in Pakistan in October, after the couple was abducted in Afghanistan.

However, while the Trump administration has used tougher words with Pakistan, it is has yet to change Islamabad's calculus and if the United States is seen as bullying, it is unlikely to succeed, experts say.

While Mattis travelled to the region earlier this year, he did not make a stop in Pakistan, although he did visit its arch rival, India, a relationship that has grown under the Trump administration.

"There is not an effective stick anymore because Pakistan doesn't really care about US aid, it has been dwindling anyway and it is getting the money it needs elsewhere ... treat it with respect and actually reward it when it does do something good," Madiha Afzal, with the Brookings Institution, said.

Mattis' brief visit to Islamabad comes a week after a hardline Pakistani Islamist group called off nationwide protests after the government met its demand that a minister accused of blasphemy resign.

Separately, a Pakistani Islamist accused of masterminding a bloody 2008 assault in the Indian city of Mumbai was freed from house arrest. The White House said the release could have repercussions for relations between Washington and Islamabad.

"I think for Pakistan, the timing in very bad. There is talk about progress being made against extremists and here you have a situation where religious hardliners have basically been handed everything they wanted on a silver platter," said Michael Kugelman, with the Woodrow Wilson think-tank in Washington.

Kugelman said that rather than pushing Pakistan, Mattis should explain that not dealing with militants on its border could see those same militants turning on Islamabad.
Washington: US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said he intends to work hard to find common ground with Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, which is necessary to restore the level of stability in South Asia to allow economic development.

Ahead of his visit to Islamabad, Mattis said he wants to work with Pakistan, listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective, to address the problems.

Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait and Pakistan, since taking over the charge of the Pentagon.

Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest the 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind, Hafiz Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

Saeed is still roaming free, despite tough warning from the Trump Administration.

"The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," Mattis told reporters travelling with him on his way to Pakistan from Egypt.

Mattis is the first top US official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the new South Asia Strategy that was announced by President Donald Trump on August 21.

"We know we have some common ground. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their troops killed and wounded by terrorists. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their innocent people murdered and wounded by terrorists, so we know that there is common ground".

Similarly, he said, there is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth, that do move back and forth in order to live in one and attack in the other, that sort of thing.

"So we know there's common ground; it's how much more common ground can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective," Mattis said.

"But at the same time, as the (Pakistan Army Chief) General (Qamar Javed Bajwa) has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and we'll find that common ground, if we have the will to.

"And then we'll work on how we address the problems where we can work together," the Defense Secretary said.

Responding to a question, he said he would not characterise everything over the past 16 years as failures.

"There is clearly an abundance of areas where we have to double down, and I am optimistic at this point that because of what our adversaries, our mutual enemies are doing, that we can find ways to work together," he said.

Mattis said both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military, the NATO-led militaries of 39 nations have all been in fights here. "We've got to find a way to work together".

He said there is "always an urgency to something" when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken.

"These are 39 of the most economically powerful, generally speaking, most long-term democratic institutions in the world. These are powerful nations morally, economically and diplomatically, and certainly militarily," he said.

Mattis said that it was essential in South Asia that all work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economy to build.

"I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We can not only imagine it; it's a reality right now," Mattis said.

So, the US Defence Secretary said that we have got to work together on this, and there's a sense of urgency about that.

"There's people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries. So as you look at this problem, if you'll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things," he said.

Mattis is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and General Bajwa.

"General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting that's characterised the area," he said.
Washington: President Donald Trump launched a fresh attack Sunday on the credibility of his own FBI, responding to revelations that an FBI agent was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian election meddling because of anti-Trump text messages.

Trump, two days after his former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, again denied that he directed FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

The Republican president offered a running Twitter commentary Sunday amid renewed focus on Mueller's probe and Flynn's decision to cooperate with the investigation as part of his plea agreement. Democrats said the developments suggested growing evidence of coordination between Trump's circle and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel is beginning to see "the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice" against Trump.

"I think we see this in indictments ... and some of the comments that are being made. I see this in the hyper-frenetic attitude of the White House, the comments every day, the continual tweets," Feinstein said. "And I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey, and it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. That's obstruction of justice."

Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI agents role in Clinton probe under review. Led Clinton Email probe. @foxandfriends Clinton money going to wife of another FBI agent in charge. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Report: ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE Now it all starts to make sense! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

In a series of tweets, Trump questioned the direction of the federal law enforcement agency and wrote that after Comey, whom Trump fired in May, the FBI's reputation is "in Tatters  worst in History!" He vowed to "bring it back to greatness." The president also retweeted a post saying new FBI Director Chris Wray "needs to clean house."

The president seized on reports that a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was removed from Mueller's team last summer after the discovery of an exchange of text messages that were viewed as potentially anti-Trump. The agent, Peter Strzok, had also worked on the investigation of Democrat Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, said Mueller removed Strzok from the team "immediately upon learning of the allegations." He would not elaborate on the nature of the accusations. The person who discussed the matter with The Associated Press was not authorized to speak about it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump tweeted Sunday: "Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI 'agent's role in Clinton probe under review.' Led Clinton Email probe." In a separate tweet, he wrote: "Report: 'ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE' Now it all starts to make sense!"

Strzok's removal almost certainly reflected a desire to insulate the investigators from any claims of political bias or favoritism. Trump and many of his supporters have at times sought to discredit the integrity of the investigation, in part by claiming a close relationship between Mueller and Comey and by pointing to political contributions to Democrats made by some lawyers on the team.

Following the tweets, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned the president to tread cautiously. "You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril. I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I'd watch this," Graham said.

Mueller has been investigating whether Trump campaign associates coordinated with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, and Strzok's background in counterintelligence would have been seen as particularly valuable for a secretive FBI probe examining foreign contacts.

Mueller's investigation has so far netted charges against four people, with the most recent criminal case brought Friday when Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

The tweet suggested that Trump was aware when the White House dismissed Flynn on Feb. 13 that he had lied to the FBI, which had interviewed him weeks earlier. Comey has said Trump the following day brought up the Flynn investigation in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could "let this go."

Amid questions raised by the tweet, Trump associates tried to put distance Saturday evening between the president himself and the tweet. Trump's personal lawyer John Dowd told ABC News that he drafted the tweet and gave it to the president's social media director Dan Scavino. Dowd had declined to comment when reached by the AP on Saturday night.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said given that Mueller could have charged Flynn with more crimes but instead limited it to just one offense, "Bob Mueller must have concluded that he was getting a lot of value in terms of Gen. Flynn's cooperation."

"I do believe he will incriminate others in the administration. Otherwise, there was no reason for Bob Mueller to give Mike Flynn this kind of deal," Schiff said, adding, "Whether that will ultimately lead to the president, I simply don't know."

Feinstein spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press," Graham spoke on CBS' "Face the Nation," and Schiff spoke on ABC's "This Week."
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) has summoned for questioning agents of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) Kateryna Sikorska and Serhiy Tytenkov, who are listed in criminal proceedings on provoking a bribe to an employee of the State Migration Service of Ukraine.

"NABU agents Kateryna Sikorska and Serhiy Tytenkov have been invited to the Prosecutor General's Office for interrogation. They will be asked a number of questions concerning the recent joint special operation by the PGO and the SBU, in which the abovementioned persons were involved," PGO spokesman Andriy Lysenko said on Monday.

He noted that it will be found out during the interrogation how these agents were appointed to the posts if they did not pass an open competition, which is required by the law on the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.

"There are also questions about Sikorska and Tytenkov's access to state secrets, because documents classified as secret were found with them. The legality of the use of special equipment by detectives, which is not registered in the SBU, will also be of interest to investigators," Lysenko added.
Local law enforcement recently recovered a truck two days after it was reported stolen from Evington  but a little worse for wear following a car chase.

The Campbell County Sheriffs Office reported a 2001 red Ford F-250 Super Duty had been stolen Nov. 29 from Elmwood Drive in Evington.

A little after 4 p.m. Friday, a citizen called 911 to report theyd seen the truck driven recklessly near Gladys, according to Campbell County Sheriffs Maj. L. T. Guthrie. An officer with the Brookneal Police Department spotted the truck at the Naruna Mini Mart at about 4:17 p.m., unoccupied.

The Brookneal officer tried to block the truck so it couldnt be driven off, but Guthrie said the driver was able to pull away onto U.S. 501, heading north. The officer pursued the truck as it turned onto Long Island Road and then Collins Ferry Road and was joined in pursuit by a Campbell County Sheriffs deputy.

Guthrie said officers chased the driver about two miles down Collins Ferry Road before the driver lost control, drove into a field and crashed at about 4:25 p.m. The driver then ran from the truck, leaving it heavily damaged, he said.

The Altavista Police Department, Brookneal Police Department, Virginia State Police and the Campbell County Sheriffs Office worked together to track down the driver. Guthrie said as many as 10 officers pursued the suspect that evening, aided by K-9 units and Virginia State Police helicopters.

Law enforcement took Colby Ayers, 28, whod recently been living in Rustburg, into custody at about 7:10 p.m. Friday on Marysville Road near Wards Road in Campbell County.

Guthrie said Ayers had hitched a ride from another driver and concealed himself in patches of forest before officers found him.

Ayers has been charged with grand larceny and felony eluding police. Hes being held at the Campbell County Adult Detention Center and is scheduled for a hearing in Campbell County General District Court on Jan. 9.
More than 2,500 civilians have been killed and 9,000 others injured since the beginning of the conflict in Donbas, according to a Humanitarian Response Plan 2018 for November 2017, which was published on the website humanitarianresponse.info.

"With the parties to the conflict failing to adhere to the various ceasefire agreements, more than 2,500 civilians have been killed since April 2014 and another 9,000 injured," reads the document posted on Monday.

The report notes that along the "contact line," an average of 40 armed clashes are recorded every day.

"Up to 200,0002 people living in the 5 km zone along the 'contact line' in the government controlled area regularly experience injury to or loss of loved ones or their neighbors, damage to property, and systematic barriers to accessing basic services," reads the report.

According to the report, the elderly constitute a significant proportion of the conflict-affected population in Ukraine, making up almost 30% of the 3.4 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and protection, and half the registered internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Humanitarian Response is a specialized digital service of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
NATO expects more action by Russia on Ukraine 'in the right direction'

NATO expects more action from Russia on Ukraine in the right direction, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison has said.

"In terms of Ukraine, we need to see more action by Russia in the right direction. NATO stands firm in commitment to Ukraine and to showing Russia that there will be no business as usual," the U.S. diplomat was quoted as saying by the U.S. Mission to NATO on Twitter.

The foreign ministers of the NATO member countries will meet in Brussels on December 5-6.
If there was someone queer enough to apply to Guinness Book of World Records to have the title shortest lived government ministers added to their database, the category will certainly not be short of takers.



Among the frontrunners would be South Africas former Finance minister Des van Rooyen who was reshuffled after three days by President Jacob Zuma following widespread criticism of his appointment.



That race would also include Messaoud Benagoun who was Algerias Tourism minister for three days and Trinidad and Tobagos Public Utilities minister Marlene McDonald who was

fired after two days on the job.



Somewhere down the pecking order will be three faces that momentarily made it into President Emmerson Mnangagwas Cabinet last week only for their excitement to be quashed while they were in the midst of popping champagne bottles.



Clever Nyati, Lazarus Dokora and Christopher Mutsvangwa had made it into Cabinet on Thursday evening only for the appointments to be rescinded two days later.



A day before they could be sworn in, Mnangagwa quickly moved to drop them from his Cabinet upon realising that he had overlooked the number of non-constituency legislators he could appoint to be ministers.





Before the news could reach him, Mutsvangwa, who had been made Information, Media and Broadcasting Services minister, had already hit the ground running.



He gave an interview to VOA, assuring Zimbabwean journalists that he will be bringing a new approach to their work, including revising controversial laws such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Public Order and Security Act, which have stifled the countrys media environment.



I will look at the Constitution, pick out some parts and throw them out of the window, Mutsvangwa was quoted saying, as he castigated former Information minister Jonathan Moyo, who crafted the laws.



The madness of Jonathan (Moyo) to think that he can think for the whole country of 14-million, I dont like that.



Mnangagwas revocation of the three appointments came as another crop of ex-ministers are still trying to come to terms with their short-lived tenure in former president Robert Mugabes last Cabinet.



In October, Mugabe had made significant changes to his Cabinet by introducing new faces as he sought to do away with the Team Lacoste cabal that had been campaigning for Mnangagwa to succeed him.



The life of that Cabinet was cut short by the unexpected resignation of Mugabe, a man many had gambled would die in office.



For decades Happyton Bonyongwe was the head of Mugabes secret service and he was subsequently appointed to Mugabes Cabinet on October 9 as the head of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, replacing Mnangagwa who had been performing the dual roles of vice president and Justice minister since December 2015.



During his swearing-in ceremony, Bonyongwe said he was relishing the opportunity of serving in his new post.



It is my hope that I will be able to make some positive contributions to my country. That is something that has always motivated me. I view it as a deployment by my leadership and therefore, I look at it from that context and I will go there and do my best, he said then.

Well, as for doing his best, that chance never came during a stint that did not last long.

His fate was intertwined with former minister of State for Masvingo Province Paul Chimedza, Tourism and Hospitality Industry minister Edgar Mbwembwe, Foreign Affairs minister Walter Mzembi and Finance minister Ignatius Chombo.



Before they had moved into their offices, their portfolios were disbanded by a military intervention that led to the resignation of Mugabe on November 21.

The over a month long stay in Cabinet may well be the record for the shortest ministerial appointment ever held in Zimbabwe.



That script rang true for the Zanu PF central committee where one Johnson Madhukus venture as a Zanu PF central committee member only lasted for a week.



Madhuku is famed for turning around the fortunes of Reformed Church-run Pamushana High School where he is headmaster, to a school that has become a sporting powerhouse and talent conveyer belt of repute.



But his ascend to that position through loyalty to former First Lady Grace Mugabe counted for nothing as he was among those purged by the military recently.



Madhuku along with Jeffreys Murire, Veronica Dzika and Watson Maguraumwe faced the chop. They had been elected into the Zanu PF central committee for Bikita before the elections were annulled as a faction rallying behind Mnangagwa went on a purge of members aligned to G40.



Ironically, their election had come after the purging of Zanu PF members aligned to Mnangagwa who was at that time fighting for his political life after he was fired by then president Mugabe.



The cleansing of G40 loyalists in Zanu PF central committee structures also saw the axe fall on Chimedza and former provincial Governor Willard Chiwewe whose election to the Zanu PF central committee, a week earlier, was nullified by the Zanu PF Masvingo provincial executive.



The supposedly sham elections also saw Gutu West legislator Tongai Muzenda, Retired Colonel Mutero Masanganise and Patricia Gama being chopped, after a week on the job.

It will definitely be a hard record to break for a somewhat reformed Zanu PF which is trying to pick up the pieces after the dismissal of Mugabe. Daily News
Mugabe's uncle Ben Matibiri claimed that Grace belittled everyone in the Mugabe family "as she tried to borrow powers at every opportunity". This, he said was the complete opposite of Mugabes first wife, the late Sally Hefron Mugabe, whom he described as a "great daughter" to the family.




President Mnangagwa had a brief meeting with the provincial leadership after officiating at the Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) graduation ceremony last Friday.

He urged the leadership to be exemplary and to work towards the consolidation of unity and prosperity of the nation. Let us all be united and work together for the development of our nation. Let us all be progressive Zimbabweans who aim high to achieve the best as citizens of this nation, he said.



He said peace and unity are key enablers for nation-building and economic development.

There is no need for retribution for this country is ours together. Let us shun all criminal elements which may destabilise the peace of our nation, he said.



The meeting was attended by Senate president Cde Edna Madzongwe, Minister of State for Mashonaland West Province Cde Webster Shamu, Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry Cde Prisca Mupfumira and Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Cde Ziyambi Ziyambi, among others. herald

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has urged the ZANU-PF Mashonaland West leadership to maintain peace and desist from seeking vengeance to settle old political scores.President Mnangagwa had a brief meeting with the provincial leadership after officiating at the Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) graduation ceremony last Friday.He urged the leadership to be exemplary and to work towards the consolidation of unity and prosperity of the nation. Let us all be united and work together for the development of our nation. Let us all be progressive Zimbabweans who aim high to achieve the best as citizens of this nation, he said.He said peace and unity are key enablers for nation-building and economic development.There is no need for retribution for this country is ours together. Let us shun all criminal elements which may destabilise the peace of our nation, he said.The meeting was attended by Senate president Cde Edna Madzongwe, Minister of State for Mashonaland West Province Cde Webster Shamu, Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry Cde Prisca Mupfumira and Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Cde Ziyambi Ziyambi, among others. herald




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An opossum that apparently drank bourbon after breaking into a Florida liquor store sobered up at a wildlife rescue center and was released unharmed. Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge officials say the opossum was brought in by a Fort Walton Beach, Fla., police officer on Nov. 24, the AP reports. A liquor store employee found the animal next to a broken and empty bottle of bourbon. "A worker there found the opossum up on a shelf next to a cracked-open bottle of liquor with nothing in it," says Michelle Pettis, a technician at the refuge. "She definitely wasn't fully acting normal." Pettis tells the Northwest Florida Daily News the female opossum appeared disoriented, was excessively salivating, and was pale.

The staff pumped the marsupial full of fluids and cared for her as she sobered up. "We loaded her up with fluids to help flush out any alcohol toxins," Pettis says. "She was good a couple of days later." Pettis says the opossum didn't appear to have a hangover. The store owner, Cash Moore, says he never had an opossum break in before. "She came in from the outside and was up in the rafters, and when she came through she knocked a bottle of liquor off the shelf," Moore says. "When she got down on the floor she drank the whole damn bottle." (PETA tried to stop a North Carolina town's New Year's Eve Possum Drop.)
Horrific tales are being shared by North Korean defectors who fled their homes near the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site, with stories of sickened residents and wildlife, and even a deformed baby born without genitals and murdered soon after birth. Lee Jeong Hwa, who got out in 2010 from her home in Kilju County, tells NBC News that residents started talking of a "ghost disease" after people started perishing, and they're tying it all back to the regime's nuke tests. "We thought we were dying because we were poor and we ate badly," she says. "Now we know it was the radiation." A World Health Organization fact sheet explains the havoc, based on exposure levels, that radiation can wreak on the body, causing such maladies as burns, hair loss, and skin conditions, with cancer also a possibility years after exposure.

A Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety rep tells NBC it's "assumed" that locals are being heavily exposed to radiationbut tests on Lee, one of 30 defectors being examined, have turned up no evidence of radiation contamination, and a Seoul National University professor says that even though he believes there's likely merit to the defectors' claims, scientists have a "total lack of data" to back them up. Another expert adds that "sniff" sensors in the region haven't picked up signs of radioactive matter after past testsand some residents' tales of sickened flora and fauna go back decades, long before North Korea started testing nukes in 2006. Meanwhile, Gizmodo points out a Chinese nuclear expert told the Telegraph earlier this year a radiation leak at the test site is "inevitable," even if it hasn't yet happened, and that groundwater contamination may be the biggest concern. (Read more North Korea stories.)
The next round of negotiations between Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov and U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker is unlikely to take place before the end of the year, a source familiar with the process of negotiations told Interfax.

"A meeting is unlikely to be held before the end of the year. Meetings will probably continue, as early as the next year. It is caused by continuing disagreements in views on the settlement mechanisms," the source said.

Earlier today, speaking on Kommersant-FM radio U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman said Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov and United States Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker would have a meeting next week.

This meeting will apparently be the fourth round of the negotiations, he said. Huntsman said he hoped the fourth round of the consultations would see some signs of success.

While the previous three rounds of negotiations between Volker and Surkov were not productive enough, the very fact that such consultations have taken place is inspiring, he said.

Interfax is yet to obtain official confirmation of the possibility of holding the next round of negotiations.
"Of course he said it," Billy Bush writes in a New York Times op-ed addressing reports that President Trump now claims the infamous 2005 Access Hollywood recording was fake. When Trump spoke about "grabbing women by the p---," there were "seven other guys present on the bus at the time and every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act," the former Access Hollywood and Today co-host writes. He says they laughed along, believing they were listening to "hypothetical hot air from America's highest-rated bloviator." "Surely, we thought, none of this was real. We now know better." He says he believes the accusations from around 20 women that followed the release of the tape.

Bushwho says he and many others were "acting out of self-interest" by stroking Trump's egowrites that Trump's reported claim that the voice on the tape wasn't his has "hit a raw nerve in me," so he can "only imagine how it has reopened the wounds of the women who came forward with their stories about him, and did not receive enough attention." "To these women: I will never know the fear you felt or the frustration of being summarily dismissed and called a liar, but I do know a lot about the anguish of being inexorably linked to Donald Trump," he writes. "You have my respect and admiration." Bush, who was fired by NBC after the tape surfaced last year, says he has gone through emotions including anger, anxiety, and humiliation over the last year. "But these have given way to light, both spiritual and intellectual. Its been fortifying." (Read more Billy Bush stories.)
After almost 41 years in office, Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch is the longest-serving Republican senator in US historyand President Trump apparently wants the 83-year-old Senate Finance Committee chairman to seek another term in 2018. Sources tell Politico that Trump, who will appear with Hatch at an event in Salt Lake City on Monday, is pushing for Hatch to rethink retirement plans because he doesn't want Mitt Romney to run for the seat. The sources say Trump not only wants to keep Romneya prominent "Never Trumper" before last year's electionout of the Senate, he wants to keep Hatch around because he values the loyalty the senator has shown since the early days of his campaign.

"Hatch is a known entity for Trump and has been really good for the president for the most part,"says Kirk Jowers, former chairman of Romney's political action committee. "He knows for a fact he's not going to get that with Romney. I don't know that he knows what he's going to get with Romney, but it's not going to be what he's got with Hatch." Politico's sources say Trump has tried to persuade Hatch to stay on in phone calls and White House meetings. They will travel together from Washington to Utah on Monday for Trump's first trip to the state as president, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. During the visit, Trump is expected to sign an executive order shrinking the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments, a move Hatch says he is "incredibly grateful" for. (Read more Mitt Romney stories.)
New York's Metropolitan Opera says it has suspended longtime conductor James Levine amid accusations of sexual misconduct going back almost 50 years. Levine, 74, was suspended Sunday after two more men came forward with accusations following a report that he abused a teenager in the 1980s, the New York Daily News reports. "Based on these new reports, the Met has made the decision to act now, while we await the results of the investigation," says Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager. "This is [a] tragedy for anyone whose life has been affected." The two new accusers both say Levine masturbated them in 1968, when he was 25 and they were 17-year-old music students in Michigan. The opera has hired former US Attorney Robert Cleary to investigate the accusations.

Levine, the Met's music director from 1976 to 2016, "will not be involved in any Met activities, including conducting scheduled performances at the Met this season," the Met said in a statement, per the AP. Classical-music insiders say Levine's behavior has long been an "open secret." The accusers say Levine groomed them by encouraging their musical talents. Among them is Ashok Pai, now 48, who has filed a police report in Illinois over abuse that he says began when he was 16 and continued for years. "I was vulnerable," Pai tells the New York Times. "I was under this man's sway, I saw him as a safe, protective person, he took advantage of me, he abused me, and it has really messed me up." (Read more Metropolitan Opera stories.)
Hundreds of aircraft including two dozen stealth jets began training Monday as the United States and South Korea launched their biggest-ever combined air force exercise. The war games come a week after North Korea test-fired its most powerful missile ever, an ICBM that may be able to target the eastern seaboard of the United States. The five-day drill, which is called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies' wartime capabilities, South Korea's defense ministry said. The US Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets including six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets for the annual training exercise in the Korean Peninsula, the AP reports. About 12,000 US military personnel are participating.

North Korea's state media said the drill pushes the Korean Peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war." Pyongyang will "seriously consider" countermeasures against the drill, and the US and South Korea will "pay dearly for their provocations," the Korean Central News Agency said on Sunday. Such language is typical in North Korean propaganda, but some senior American officials have expressed worry following the ICBM test, North Korea's third. On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham said he believes that it's time for US military families in South Korea to leave the country because conflict with the North is approaching. (White House national security adviser HR McMaster says the possibility of war is "increasing every day.")
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is taking flak over comments he made about why the GOP aims to scrap or least mitigate the estate tax. In speaking to the Des Moines Register, Grassley said the tax often derided by Republicans as the "death tax" is unfair because it taxes earnings twice, first when people earn the money and again when they die and try to pass it on to their heirs. Then came the more controversial part: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether its on booze or women or movies." As NPR notes, that triggered a flurry of online criticism from those who viewed Grassley's remarks as elitist. This tweet is typical of the reaction: "I'm sure those folks would love to invest, but they're a bit preoccupied just trying to make ends meet."

The Washington Post notes that it also caught the attention of former Hillary Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson, who tweeted, "[I]f we gave that money in middle class tax cuts, theyd just waste it on hookers and blow. right? But it wasn't just Democrats taking issue. At the conservative Hot Air site, Ed Morrissey says the comment "is everything right and wrong with the current Republican tax-reform effort in a nutshell." Grassley's first criticism of the "double dip" problem with the estate tax is spot-on correct, he writes. "In the very next breath, however, Grassley commits the same sin that has plagued the tax system for decades, which is Congress desire to commit social engineering through it." The House tax plan would eliminate the tax entirely in 2024, while the Senate version would double exemptions to $11 million for individuals and $22 million for couples. (Read more Ryan Grassley stories.)
North Korea's most recent missile test had some unintended witnesses: the crew of an airliner on its way from San Francisco to Hong Kong. It seems the Cathay Pacific passenger jet was over Japan on Nov. 29 when its crew saw the North Korean ballistic missile re-enter the atmosphere and crash into the Sea of Japan, reports the Guardian. "Be advised, we witnessed the DPRK missile blow up and fall apart near our current location," said the chief pilot, using the acronym for North Korea, per the South China Morning Post. The crew advised air traffic controllers in Japan, but their jet was far enough away that no course changes were necessary. It turns out that a Cathay Pacific cargo jet was even closer to the missile, though it was unclear whether that crew had seen it as well.

"Operation remained normal and was not affected," says a statement from the Hong Kong airline. "We remain alert and review the situation as it evolves." It was unclear how many passengers were aboard the plane at the time. CNN notes that many Cathay Pacific jets have cameras mounted outside that allow passengers to see the view, but the airline didn't say whether the missile had been recorded. The relative close call raises the question of whether airlines flying in the vicinity need to consider altering routes or otherwise take precautions. One Hong Kong lawmaker, a former pilot, suggests that a panel be created that would coordinate intelligence about possible North Korea tests with the aviation industry. (Read more North Korea stories.)
President Trump has given his most explicit support yet to Roy Moore since allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced against the Senate candidate in Alabama. "Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama," Trump tweeted early Monday. As Politico notes, Trump has previously weighed in on the race by criticizing Democrat Doug Jones and by taking note of Moore's denials. But Monday's tweet goes further, and the AP calls it the president's "most full-throated endorsement" of Moore yet.

"We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more," wrote Trump. "No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!" Polls remain close in the race, which will be decided on Dec. 12. The White House has previously said that Trump will not be traveling to Alabama to stump for Moore. (Read more President Trump stories.)
Ten suspects were arrested Monday in the October car bomb murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta. All 10 are believed to be Maltese citizens, but few details were released. The investigation appeared to be continuing, as police and armed forces had cordoned off an area in Marsa, a small town close to the capital Valletta, per the AP. The arrests were the first known break in a murder that has drawn widespread outrage and condemnation. Caruana Galizia, whose reporting focused heavily on corruption in the island nation, was killed when a bomb destroyed her car as she was driving near her home. Just before her death, Caruana Galizia, 53, had posted on her closely followed blog, Running Commentary, that there were "crooks everywhere" in Malta.

Malta has a reputation as a tax haven in the European Union and has attracted companies and money from outside Europe as well. Low tax rates and a popular government program that allows wealthy foreigners to buy Maltese citizenship has made the country an attractive place for investment and financial companies. Authorities, including anti-Mafia investigators in nearby Italy, worry that Malta is in the crosshairs of criminals on the lookout for money-laundering schemes. The journalist focused her reporting for years on investigating political corruption and scandals, and reported on Maltese mobsters and drug trafficking. She also wrote about Maltese links to the so-called Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.

(Read more journalists killed stories.)
The Trump attorney who says he penned the "sloppy" tweet that some say indicates a possible obstruction of justice isn't done making headlines. John Dowd spoke to Axios' Mike Allen, scoffing at criticism of the tweet regarding Mike Flynn, which suggested Trump knew the former national security adviser had lied to the FBI before Trump canned James Comey. "The tweet did not admit obstruction," Dowd says. "That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion." Plus, the Constitution has Trump's back, per Dowd. "[The] president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," he claims. Newsweek notes it's not clear which section of Article II Dowd refers to, though it speculates on one part involving the president seeking the opinion "of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices."

Allen notes that with this pronouncement, Trump's legal team is "setting the stage" to keep Trump insulated from obstruction of justice or collusion charges in the Russia probemeaning, Allen speculates, that his lawyers may be nervous charges are coming down the pike. But one of Barack Obama's former counsels notes "it is certainly possible" for Trump to have obstructed justice, and Allen points out Richard Nixon's Articles of Impeachment were jump-started with the assertion that Nixon "has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice." But whether Trump can or can't be held responsible for such a transgression may be moot, Allen adds. "The one thing everyone agrees on is that the House of Representatives, with its impeachment power, alone decides what is cause for removal from office," he writes. "For now, at least, the House is run by Republicans." (Read more President Trump stories.)
President Trump traveled to Utah on Monday and delivered news dreaded by environmentalists and Native American groups but praised by those who accuse the federal government of overreach. Trump announced he is reducing the size of two national monuments spanning millions of acres in UtahBears Ears, which was so designated by President Obama, and Grand Staircase-Escalante, designated by President Clinton. The controversial move is being immediately challenged in court by groups questioning Trump's authority to undo the moves of his predecessors, reports the New York Times. Details and developments:

The cuts: Bears Ears is shrinking by 1.1 million acres and Grand Staircase by more than 800,000 acres. That adds up to what the Washington Post calls "the largest reduction of public lands protection in US history." The move opens the lands up for energy exploration and other uses.

Now 5 monuments: Trump's move actually turns the two national monuments into five, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Bears Ears get split into two: Shah Jaa (129,980 acres) and Indian Creek (71,896 acres), down significantly from Obama's total of 1.35 million acres. Grand Staircase gets split into three: Grand Staircase (209,993 acres) Kaiparowits (551,034 acres), and Escalante Canyon (242,836 acres). That amounts to about 1 million acres, down from the original 1.9 million.

Trump's move actually turns the two national monuments into five, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Bears Ears get split into two: Shah Jaa (129,980 acres) and Indian Creek (71,896 acres), down significantly from Obama's total of 1.35 million acres. Grand Staircase gets split into three: Grand Staircase (209,993 acres) Kaiparowits (551,034 acres), and Escalante Canyon (242,836 acres). That amounts to about 1 million acres, down from the original 1.9 million. The legal fight: It hinges on what's known as the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gave Obama, Clinton, and other presidents the authority to designate protected national monuments. Whether Trump or any president has the authority to undo the protections has never been tested in court, explains the New York Times. It will be now, however, and if the challengers lose, Trump "and future presidents could drastically shrink any of the dozens of monuments created by their predecessors, opening the formerly protected terrain for all kinds of development."

It hinges on what's known as the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gave Obama, Clinton, and other presidents the authority to designate protected national monuments. Whether Trump or any president has the authority to undo the protections has never been tested in court, explains the New York Times. It will be now, however, and if the challengers lose, Trump "and future presidents could drastically shrink any of the dozens of monuments created by their predecessors, opening the formerly protected terrain for all kinds of development." Trump's rationale: "Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats, and guess what? They're wrong," Trump said in his Utah speech, per CBS News. He also used the the term "federal overreach."

"Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats, and guess what? They're wrong," Trump said in his Utah speech, per CBS News. He also used the the term "federal overreach." Protests: About 3,000 largely peaceful demonstrators blocked traffic in Salt Lake City to protest Trump's move, and the AP has details.

About 3,000 largely peaceful demonstrators blocked traffic in Salt Lake City to protest Trump's move, and the AP has details. What now: The litigation will take a while to play out, so don't expect to see drilling rigs immediately filing into the area, reports National Geographic. Still, the story notes that Bears Ears has oil and gas fields, at least on what was formerly its boundaries, and Grand Staircase has coal.

(Read more Bears Ears National Monument stories.)
Illegal armed formations violated the truce in Donbas nine times from 00:00 to 18:00 local time on Monday, December 4; in particular, residential areas in the village of Travneve in Donetsk region's Bakhmutsky district came under fire, the press center of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) Headquarters (HQ) has said.

"At night, the invaders used mortars to shell two private houses in the village of Travneve. Fortunately, the people were not hurt, but the roofs of the houses were damaged. In total, the Russian terrorist troops have already violated the ceasefire nine times since midnight," the ATO HQ wrote on Facebook on Monday.

During their attacks on the ATO forces, militants continue using the weapons that "should have been withdrawn from the contact line long ago."

In particular, they intensively used 82mm mortars, grenade launchers of various types, and infantry fighting vehicles' cannons to shell Ukrainian troops near the village of Pisky in Yasynuvata district in the Donetsk sector.

"The hottest spot in the Luhansk sector is the Svitlodarska Duha bulge. The enemy repeatedly shelled our defensive positions near the village of Luhanske, using mortars and grenade launchers. Positions near the village of Novoluhanske were attacked by an infantry fighting vehicle and a twin anti-aircraft gun mount. What is more, the enemy used grenade launchers to attack the defenders of the villages of Zhovte and Zaitseve, and large-caliber machine guns were used to fire on the defenders of the village of Troyitske," it said.

What is more, militants do not stop intensive reconnaissance along the Svitlodarska Duha, involving special operations teams "whose goal is to perform acts of provocations, subversive activity at transport infrastructure facilities, crowded places to continue accusing and discrediting the Armed Forces of Ukraine."
It's not every marriage proposal that gets recorded in an official parliamentary record, but such is the case with one in Australia. During a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives Monday in support of gay marriage, lawmaker Tim Wilson turned to his partner in the public gallery, recounts the BBC. "There's only one thing left to do," said Wilson. "Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me?"

Bolger, with a wide grin, said yes, and applause broke out in the chamber. Lawmakers are rushing to lift Australia's ban on same-sex marriage after residents overwhelmingly approved the idea in a postal ballot last month. The Senate already has voted to do so, and the House expects to do the same this month. The only question is whether amendments granting such things as religious exemptions will survive, reports the AP. (Read more proposals stories.)
Yemeni rebels killed their erstwhile ally Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country's former president and strongman, as their forces battled for control of the capital, Sanaa, officials said. The collapse of their alliance throws Yemen's nearly three-year-old civil war into unpredictable new chaos, per the AP. The war is widely seen as a proxy battle between Saudi Arabia and Iran, notes the New York Times, which says Saleh's death reduces hopes the conflict will end anytime soon. The circumstances of his death were unclear, but Houthi officials said their forces caught up with him as he tried to flee Sanaa. A video circulating online purported to show Saleh's body with a gaping head wound. It was a grisly end for a figure who was able to rule the impoverished and unstable country for more than three decades and remained a powerhouse even after he was ousted in a 2012 Arab Spring uprising.

Saleh's death was announced by the rebels, the Iran-allied Houthis, who've been fighting Saleh's forces for the past week. Two of Saleh's associates confirmed the death, and a third official from the government of Yemen's internationally recognized president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, also confirmed it. Saleh had previously allied with the Houthis, and the support of his loyalist military units was key to helping the Houthis overrun Sanaa in 2014, driving out Hadi's government. But in recent months, the alliance frayed amid Houthi suspicions that Saleh was leaning toward the Saudi-led coalition backing Hadi. A major question now will be whether Saleh's loyalistsand tribes that support himcan rally to fight the Houthis after his death.

(Read more Yemen stories.)
President Trump didn't just tweet his support of Roy Moore on Monday, he phoned the Alabama Senate candidate to endorse him. "The president had a positive call with Judge Roy Moore during which they discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and the President endorsed Judge Moore's campaign," according to a statement from deputy press chief Raj Shah, per Politico. Trump's explicit support for Moore, who has been dogged by accusations of sexual misconduct involving teen girls decades ago, comes after polls showed a tight race for a seat that would typically be an easy victory for Republicans.

The Moore campaign says Trump told Moore, "Go get 'em Roy," during the call from Air Force One, reports the Hill. In a statement, Moore said he was "honored to receive the support and endorsement" of Trump, adding that the president "knows that the future of his conservative agenda in Congress hinges on this election." As of now, Trump still isn't planning to visit Alabama on Moore's behalf before the election on Dec. 12. (Read more President Trump stories.)
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Ahmedabad:

The Congress on Monday released its election manifesto for the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections. The party has promised to waive off farmers loans and provide at least 16 hours of electricity for irrigation.

Congress has also promised to slash state taxes on petrol and diesel. To attract youths, the party has announced laptops and smartphones for students.

The state goes to polls on December 9 and December 14. The results will be declared on December 18.

Election manifesto highlights

# Crimes against women will be tried in fast-track courts.

# College students will be given laptops and smartphones.

# Rs 32,000 crore package to provide employment to 25 lakh youths.

# Rs 4,000 allowance for unemployed youths.

# No interference in reservation provided to members of SC, ST and OBC.

# Equal rights for Patidar community in education and jobs.

Also read|Rahul Gandhi: 7 Interesting facts about Congress Vice President



# Contract workers will be made permanent.

# End of contract system in government jobs.

Also read: PM Modi terms Rahul Gandhi's expected elevation in Congress as 'Aurangzebi raj'



# Petrol and diesel prices to be rolled back by Rs 10 per litre.

# At least 16 hours regular electricity of irrigation.
New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday addressed a poll rally in Dharampur's of Valsad district of Gujarat.

Here are the live updates-

# Why did the Congress not give Constitutional Status to the OBC Commission? We got a bill but when we did so, they stalled it in the Rajya Sabha. This anti-OBC Congress should be severely punished by the people: PM Modi

# Each and every person who has looted the poor, I want to tell them- I am not scared of you, will return everything that belongs to the poor: PM Modi

# Why has the Congress stopped saying BJP is anti-Muslim? Earlier, they would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing in this election, where they are going. Unfortunately for them, Muslims know their real nature: PM Modi

# Earlier, Congress would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing in this election, where they are going. Unfortunately for them, Muslims know their real nature: PM Modi

#Disinformation like BJP does this and that against Muslims has been spread. This family party made it their main agenda to spread disinformation about BJP. But Gujarat people are not so naive, they have now become sensitive and aware to disinformation: PM Modi

# Mani Shankar Aiyar said that 'did elections happen during Mughal rule? After Jehangir, Shahjahan came, was any election held? After Shahjahan it was understood Aurangzeb will be the leader'. So Congress accepts its a family party? We don't want this Aurangzeb rule: PM Modi

# I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the wellbeing of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command: PM Modi

# Congress can't either tolerate or accept leaders from Gujarat. They have always defamed Gujarat: PM Modi

He arrived in city on Sunday evening. He had addressed rallies in Bharuch, Surender Nagar and Rajkot of the state.

Mocking the Congress over the upcoming election of its president, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday alleged the party had a history of rigging organisational polls.

The outcome of the election to the top post in the Congress was a foregone conclusion, Modi had said while addressing a rally in Surendranagar district.

"If you do not have democracy in your home (party) how can you practise it in the country," Modi asked.

Modi told the crowd that had gathered for the Gujarat Assembly election rally here that an election was to be held in the Congress party for its president.

"What is the result everybody knows," he said, prompting the crowd to reply that the post would go to (Congress vice president) Rahul Gandhi.
Beijing:

China today declined to directly comment on the launch of the strategic Chabahar port in Iran but hoped that the project, which enables India to directly trade with Afghanistan besides rivalling Pakistans Gwadar port, is conducive to regional peace and stability.

The first phase of the Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman coast was inaugurated yesterday by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, opening a new strategic route connecting Iran, India and Afghanistan while bypassing Pakistan, and reflecting growing convergence of interests among the three countries.

The port in Irans Sistan-Balochistan province on the energy-rich nations southern coast is easily accessible from Indias western coast and is increasingly seen as a counter to Pakistans Gwadar port, which is being developed with Chinese investment and is located around 80 kms from Chabahar.

Asked how China views the launch of the project, considering that China is investing heavily in Gwadar as part of the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang declined to comment on it directly.

As for the (Chabahar) port, I want to give you a principled answer. We welcome the development of friendly relations between the regional countries and conduct mutually beneficial cooperation, he said.

We hope the relevant cooperation can be conducive to maintaining regional peace and promoting regional stability and prosperity, he said.

The Chabahar port is being considered a gateway to golden opportunities for trade by India, Iran and Afghanistan with central Asian countries besides ramping up trade among the three countries in the wake of Pakistan denying transit access to New Delhi.

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New Delhi:

Legendary Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of '70s and '80s breathed his last at Mumbai's Kokilaben Ambani Hospital on Monday. The 'Deewar' actor was 79.

"Yes he has passed away. He had kidney problem since several years. He was on dialysis for several years," nephew Randhir Kapoor said while interacting with PTI.

According to Randhir, the funeral will take place on Tuesday morning.

"Shashi Kapoor expired at 5:20 pm on December 4 at Kokilaben Hospital in Mumbai," PTI quoted Dr Ram Narain from Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital.

Kapoor's demise has left the Indian film industry saddened and B-town biggies like Aamir Khan, Ajay Devgn, and Akshay Kumar recalled his passion for cinema while paying homage to the legend, known for his easy charm and good nature.

Now, let's have a quick look at the childhood, acting career, personal life, and achievements of the icon.

Also Read: Legendary actor Shashi Kapoor dies at 79; here is how Twitterati reacts to legend's demise

Childhood and debut:

Born on March 18, 1938, to the illustrious and formidable theatre and film actor Prithviraj Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor hit the spotlight at the age of four, acting in plays directed and produced by his father. He started acting in films as a child artiste in the late '40s.

Kapoor made his debut as a leading man in the 1961 film 'Dharmputra' and went on to appear in more than 116 films during '70s and until the mid '80s.

Personal life:

It was 1956 when an 18-year-old Shashi Kapoor met British actress Jennifer Kendal in Calcutta. By July 1958, Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal had got married after facing initial resistance from Jennifer's family.

Shashi Kapoor suffered the biggest blow of his life after Jennifer was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer and breathed her last in the year 1984.

Career and much-loved works:

His best-known performances as a child actor were in 'Aag' (1948) and 'Awaara' (1951), where he played the younger version of the character played by elder brother Raj Kapoor. Shashi Kapoor also worked as assistant director in the '50s.

Some of his memorable films include 'Deewar', 'Kabhie Kabhie', 'Namak Halal', 'Kaala Pathar' among others.

Achievements:

He was honoured with Padma Bhushan in 2011 and received the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke award in 2015.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi :

After leaving a trail of destruction in the southern coast, Cyclone Ockhi is expected to make landfall in coastal Gujarat tomorrow midnight with squally winds, which may cause heavy rains in several parts of the state during the next two days.

An India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast said, "The severe cyclonic storm Ockhi is now laid centred about 850 km south-southwest of Surat and is likely to cross south Gujarat and adjoining North Maharashtra coasts near Surat as a deep depression by mid-night of December 5."

Following the IMD prediction, Gujarat Chief Secretary J N Singh today took stock of the administrative preparedness to deal with any eventuality.

Revenue department's Principal Secretary Pankaj Kumar told reporters in Gandhinagar that the authorities concerned in the coastal region of the state have been directed to take all precautionary measures.

Two National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams each have been deployed at Surat, Navsari, and Rajkot.

The officer said the Army, Navy, and the Border Security Force (BSF) have been alerted in the view of the cyclone's landfall.

"According to the IMD forecast, Cyclone Ockhi would enter south Gujarat tomorrow midnight. This will the impact coastal areas from Umargam (in south Gujarat) till Gir Somnath district (in Saurashtra).

"We have directed local civic officials as well as the collectors to remain prepared and take all necessary steps for the safety of the people," Kumar said.

The principal secretary said collectors of the coastal districts have been asked to ensure that fishermen do not venture into the sea as it will remain rough.

"Those fishermen who have already gone into sea should return now. Many such fishermen are already on their way to the coast," he said.

Kumar said according to the IMD forecast, wind velocity would remain between 50 KMPH to 70 KMPH when the cyclone would make landfall.

In view of the adverse weather conditions, the RoRo ferry service between Ghogha and Dahej across the Gulf of Khambhat has been suspended. The service, inaugurated recently by Prime

Minister Narendra Modi, would resume on December 6 subject if the weather conditions are suitable.

According to the IMD, Gujarat is very likely to experience a wet spell during the next four days.

Also read| Cyclone Ockhi: Navy engages helicopters to rescue 69 fishermen in Indian Ocean



"Heavy rainfall might occur in Valsad, Surat, Navsari, Bharuch, Dang, Tapi, Amreli, Gir-Sonath and Bhavnagar districts on December 5," it said.

In a port warning issued here, the MeT Centre said, "Sea condition would be rough. Fishermen (have been) advised not to venture into the sea till December 6. Hoist Distant Warning Signal Number 2 at all ports".

According to an official release, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani held an urgent meeting with senior officials to take stock of the preparedness.

During the meeting, he was apprised that as many as 50 boats from Kerala had drifted towards Gujarat's Veraval coast due to the cyclone, it said.

On the other hand, the Maharashtra government has declared a holiday for schools and colleges in Mumbai and adjoining districts tomorrow due to "serious weather predictions" in view of Cyclone Ockhi.

An official at the Mumbai office of India Meteorological Department said on account of the cyclone, the megapolis has started receiving rainfall due to spread of clouds.

The disaster management unit of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has issued an advisory against visiting beaches in view of the high tide alert issued for tonight and tomorrow morning due to the cyclone.

"Precautionary holiday declared on 5/12/17 for schools and colleges in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Sindhudurg, Thane, Raigad and Palghar Districts for the safety of the students due to the serious weather predictions on Cyclone Ockhi," state Education Minister Vinod Tawde tweeted.

Also read| Cyclone Ockhi: Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Tamil Nadu; massive destruction in Lakshadweep



According to the IMD official, a warning of heavy rainfall was issued in north Konkan and north Madhya Maharashtra.

"The centre of the cyclone is around 600 km from Mumbai but its cloud band has spread along the coastal areas. Hence, light rainfall has started in Mumbai. The intensity of rains will increase as the cyclone approaches," the official said.

He said as the cyclone approaches Maharashtra, the clouds would become denser and wind velocity would increase.

"We are expecting wind velocity of around 50-60 km per hour over the next two days," the official said, adding that in view of the cyclone, the IMD has forecast a drop in maximum temperatures by two to three degrees and a drop in minimum temperatures by about one to two degrees.

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New Delhi:

Ambassador Gil Haskel, the Head of MASHAV a Israelas Agency for International Development Cooperation a will hold an official visit to New Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai, December 4-7. His visit will be highlighted by the launch of the three-year action plan for the Indo-Israeli Agricultural Project (IIAP).



On the occasion of the visit, Ambassador of Israel in India, Daniel Carmon said, aThe IIAP is MASHAVas biggest project outside of Israel, and it holds a significant portion of our bilateral relations. The success story of our agricultural cooperation is second to none, and it is only the beginning. We hope to see the same achievements in the fields of water, innovation and academia.a



Ambassador Haskel will meet with MIDH and state government officials, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmeras Welfare and MEA. He will also inaugurate a Center of Excellence for flowers in Thally, Tamil Nadu. Ambassador Haskel will award two $10,000 grants to MASHAV Alumni to continue their projects in women empowerment and farmer empowerment in India.

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New Delhi:

Terrorists attacked at aA convoy of Indian Army in Qazigund in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir on Monday.A One security personnel has been martyred in an encounter between army and terrorists. The armed forces were successful in killing two terrorists.

According to the reports, one Army Jawan was injured heavy firing occurred between terrorists and Indian Army in Qazigund.

In a similar incident earlier on November 9, terrorists attacked a police patrolling party near district commissioners office in Jammu and Kashmiras Anantnag in which one police personnel was critically injured.

#JammuAndKashmir: Terrorists attack Army convoy in Qazigund. More details awaited a ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017

#UPDATE: One Army Jawan injured as exchange of heavy firing continues between terrorists and Army in #JammuAndKashmir's Qazigund. a ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017

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New Delhi :

Liquor baron Vijay Mallya, before his appearance at the Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday in London, said that the charges leveled against him were fabricated and baseless.

News agency ANI quoted Mallya as saying, I have said repeatedly that charges are false, fabricated and baseless. I have nothing to say, submissions in court will be sent evident.

The liquor baron denied to make any further comments and said, I am not the decision maker and would follow the proceedings.

He also told the reporters, "Please hear the proceedings."

The 61-year-old liquor tycoon is scheduled to appear before London's Westminster Court shortly. Mallya is wanted in India for defaulting on loans more than Rs 9,000 crore and alleged money laundering charges. He has been under a self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom since he left India on March 2, 2016.

Also read: Vijay Mallya hits out at Indian media over 'hate campaign' against him

Mallya is currently out on a 6,50,000-pound bail bond following his arrest by Scotland Yard over money laundering charges. Mallya is out on bail since Scotland Yard executed an extradition warrant in April this year. The extradition trial is scheduled to end on December 14.

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New Delhi:

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi filed nomination at party headquarters on Monday. He also met former President Pranab Mukherjee and former PM Dr Manmohan Singh at latter's residence. Senior Congress leaders Sushil Kumar Shinde, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Mohsina Kidwai, and Sheila Dikshit were present at the occasion.

Here are the highlights-

# If anyone wants to participate in elections he or she is free to do so, it's going on in a democratic manner. PM has no business to comment on Congress's internal matter: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah

# Rahul Gandhi is a darling of the Congress and he will carry forward the great traditions of the party: Dr.Manmohan Singh

# Former PM Dr Manmohan Singh extends his best wishes to Rahul Gandhi

# Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah meets Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi at AICC HQ

# Senior party leaders including Kamal Nath, Sheila Dikshit, Motilal Vora and Tarun Gogoi filed first set of nominations(as proposers) for Rahul Gandhi

# Jyotiraditya Scindia tweeted, "have no doubt that we will make tremendous strides under your unifying & progressive leadership @OfficeOfRG! Wish you the very best! Look forward to undertaking this journey of building an India of energy, opportunity & unity with you."

# Ahmed Patel, Narayan Sami, Ashok Gehlot and Sheila Dikshit signed as proposer

# Rahul Gandhi files nomination for Cong President at party headquarters

# Do BJP presidents get elected? Did Nitin Gadkari get elected through a ballot process? Let them answer that first: Kamal Nath

# If you ask me, I think he will make a very good Prime Minister: Capt.Amarinder Singh, Punjab CM

# Rahul Gandhi reaches former PM Dr.Manmohan Singh's residence ahead of filing nomination for Congress President



# Sonia ji took Congress to new heights, we won many elections under her leadership and now it is time for Rahul Gandhi to take the party forward: Dr. Karan Singh, Congress

Rahul was accompanied by a host of senior leaders including Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

According to Mullapally Ramachandran, the chairman of the partys Central Election Authority, Monday is the last date for filing of nominations and no one else has filed papers till Sunday.

Rahul Gandhi is likely to emerge as the lone candidate in the fray and decks have been cleared for his election as the Congress president, succeeding his mother Sonia Gandhi who has held the post for 19 years.

So far 90 nomination forms have been given out to state unit delegates. No application for the nomination has been submitted so far and tomorrow is the last date for filing nominations, he told.

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New Delhi:

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday filed his nomination papers for the party's chief post. The 47-year-old Gandhi scion is likely to emerge as the lone candidate in the fray and decks have been cleared for his election as the Congress president, succeeding his mother Sonia Gandhi, who has held the post for 19 years in a row now.

Here are some interesting facts about Congress VP Rahul Gandhi:

# He attended St. Columbas school in New Delhi and the Doon School in Dehradun. In 1989 he went to St. Stephens College, New Delhi and earned bachelors degree in History. He also earned M.Phil degree from Trinity College.

# Rahul Gandhi earned the degree in international relations and development studies at the universities of Cambridge and Rollins.

# He was only 14 years when his grandmother was killed by her own loyal security guards.

# Before his political career, Rahul Gandhi established his own firm, Backops Services Private Limited in 2004 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

# Rahul Gandhi was arrested for the first time when he was going to meet the farmers in Bhatta Parsaul village in Uttar Pradesh in May 2011.

# In 2006, Rahul had purchased two shops in Metropolitan Mall in Saket with super built-up areas of 514.44 square feet and 996.98 square feet. In his 2009 election affidavit, Rahul had declared that the combined value of these two properties stood at around Rs 1.63 crore. He sold the shops for Rs 5.28 crore sometime in 2012-13.

# According to the published reports of the Sunday Guardian, Rahul Gandhi was having an affair with the Afghan Princess. Later on, Afghan Princess got married to the Prince of Egypt in 2013.

Also Read: Rahul files nomination for Cong president's post, Manmohan Singh calls him party's darling

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KYIV. Dec 4 (Interfax-Ukraine) - The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (OSCE SMM) is ready for a dialogue, including with the new leadership of certain districts of Luhansk region - the so-called "LPR," OSCE SMM Principal Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug has said.

He said this at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Monday. When asked whether he is ready to meet with the new leadership of the "LPR," Hug said that the OSCE's SMM was always ready for dialogue and expected everyone to join this dialogue. He said that the OSCE SMM had teams in Donetsk and Luhansk and they were ready to conduct this dialogue. He added that he could also conduct this dialogue if he visits Donetsk or Luhansk this year.

Hug noted that talks were the only way to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
New Delhi :

Rahul Gandhi was today hailed as the "darling" of the Congress by former premier Manmohan Singh after he was poised to become the party president and was also described as a "capable leader" who would make a "very good" prime minister.

As Congress leaders heaped praise on the 47-year-old scion of the country's most fabled political dynasty after he filed his nomination for the post of party president, Anand Sharma and Kapil Sibal described it as a "historic moment."

"Rahul ji has been the darling of the Congress...Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party," the normally taciturn Manmohan Singh told reporters at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters here after Rahul Gandhi filed his papers.

Noting that Sonia Gandhi as Congress president has served the party and through it the country for the last 19 years, Manmohan Singh said Rahul Gandhi will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party.

Terming Rahul Gandhi as a "capable" leader, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad exuded confidence that he will turn out to be a "very successful" leader.

"And under his leadership, the Congress will regain power," Azad added.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said Rahul Gandhi would make a very good prime minister.

"If you ask me, I think he will make a very good prime minister," said Amarinder Singh. Lok Sabha polls are due in 2019.

Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu called Rahul Gandhi a "special leader with character" who, he said has come to the forefront during times of crisis.

"He has become matured, showed his character. The general is standing at the forefront alone and on the other hand there is this entire government. This is the sign of a leader," Sidhu told reporters here.

Also read: Rahul files nomination for Cong president's post, Manmohan Singh calls him party's darling

Jyotiraditya Scindia, a party MP from Madhya Pradesh, dubbed Rahul Gandhi's imminent elevation to the top post as a "new wave of hope". Rahul Gandhi has been Congress' vice president since January 2013.

Also read| Rahul Gandhi: 7 Interesting facts about Congress Vice President

All India Mahila Congress president Sushmita Dev dubbed Gandhi a "symbol of strength, compassion and integrity" and said it was an honour to be led by him.

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New Delhi:

Maharashtra Congress leader Shehzad Poonawalla on Monday said that Congress party is likely to field a dummy candidate against Rahul Gandhi in party presidentas election to showcase it as a democratic practice within party.

The party leaders cannot befool people, Poonawalla said.

While talking to media, Poonawalla said, his sources have told him that party loyalists were mulling to field a dummy candidate to give it as a shape of election.

Earlier, the Congress had downplayed the statements of Shehzad Poonawalla on organisational polls, saying it did not want to dignify his "absolutely silly comments".

"I don't think I am required to dignify such comments with a response. It actually adds weight to the maker of such absolutely silly comments," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said when asked to comment on Poonawalla's remarks.

Mere sources mujhe bata rahe hain ki darbariyon mein baat chal rahi hai ki ek dummy candidate utara jaye taake ye election lage, lekin ab logon ki aankhon mein dhool nahi jhonk sakte: #ShehzadPoonawalla on #RahulGandhi 's nomination pic.twitter.com/9wpJB1t4IN a ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017

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Canberra:

Australias Parliament on Monday started debating a bill that could soon legalise gay marriage across the country, with one lawmaker taking the opportunity to propose to his gay partner.

The House of Representatives resumed for its final two-week session of the year, which is giving priority to achieving same-sex marriage reform. The major parties want the legislation passed this week after a majority of Australians endorsed reform in a postal ballot last month.

The Senate last week approved the bill and rejected all proposed amendments that would have increased legal protections for those who would discriminate against gay couples on religious grounds.

But several lawmakers including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull intend to persist with amendments rejected by the Senate.

Turnbull, a gay marriage supporter, says he wants wedding celebrants, not just those affiliated with churches, to have the right to refuse to officiate at same-sex marriages.

If the House of Representatives supported such an amendment, then the altered bill would have to return to the Senate for ratification, delaying the reform.

Tim Wilson, a lawmaker in the conservative coalition, was among the first lawmakers to join the debate and used his speech to propose to his partner Ryan Bolger, who was watching from the public gallery.

ALSO READ: Thousands rally in support of gay marriage in Australia

In my first speech I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands, Wilson said. Theres only one thing left to do: Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me?

The 33-year-old primary school teacher responded: yes, which was recorded in the official parliamentary record.

Warren Entsch, a long-term advocate of marriage equality within the conservative government, helped draft the bill and was the first to speak for it in the House on Monday.

The bill which the Senate passed is a robust bill, a whole range of religious protections are already in place, Entsch said in introducing the bill.

We have made sure that we have removed any element of discrimination in this bill while ensuring that religious freedoms are protected.

Entsch said related amendments to bolster freedoms of speech and education rights could be debated in a separate bill next year and should not be sued to delay the reform. Australians are sick of excuses and theyre sick of delays, Entsch said.

A nonbinding postal survey found that 62 per cent of Australian respondents wanted reform. Almost 80 per cent of Australias registered voters took part in the two-month survey. Most gay marriage opponents accept that the Parliament has an overwhelming mandate to make the reform.

While marriage equality could become law this week, state marriage registries say they would not have the paperwork to proceed with weddings until January.

ALSO READ | Same-sex marriage: Taiwan becomes FIRST in Asia to allow gay marriage

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Do you have the creative chops and the craft beer know-how to name a new brew?

Plan b is teaming up with Harpoon Brewery this January to concoct an exclusive craft beer that will only be available at the burger joint's nine locations (six of which are in Connecticut). The restaurant group is asking its fans to come up with a name.
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Too much salt may be bad for you, but a pair of new spas in Fairfield County are betting that just the right amount can be beneficial to both the body and the mind.

Newtown Salt Spa, which opened in June, and The Salt Cave of Darien, which began operations in October, offer halotherapy, a form of alternative medicine that disperses highly concentrated saline aerosol in a room whose walls and floors are covered with salt.

Along with Saltana Cave in Ridgefield, which opened in 2013, the county's three salt spas reflect a nationwide trend, according to Leo Tonkin, founder of the Salt Therapy Association trade group.

Related: People seek relief from ills, stress in Himalayan salt cave in Ridgefield

"There were about a dozen in the country when I got into the business six years ago," said Tonkin, who is also founder and CEO of Salt Chamber, a supplier of dry salt therapy equipment in Boca Raton, Florida. "Now there are about 350," including standalones like the three Fairfield County operations and others operating as add-on amenities at hotel chains like the Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton and Marriott.

"There's more and more awareness of what salt therapy can do," Tonkin said. "One of the top issues that Americans, if not the world, face is having to deal with respiratory conditions, whether it's due to poor air quality, pollen or conditions like asthma and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)." Halotherapy can help relieve those conditions, he said.

Tonkin noted that the U.S. has trailed central Europe in developing saline therapy  particularly Poland, where the health resort at the Wieliczka Salt Mine opened in 1839. That still-operating facility began with salt baths and has since progressed to the sort of therapy being offered at the Fairfield County spas.

Go with the Flow Fridays! #yoga #vinyasa #saltcave #halotherapy #tgif #rejuvenate #energize #darien #ct @tommimkern A post shared by Salt Cave of Darien (@saltcaveofdarien) on Nov 9, 2017 at 1:34pm PST

Salt Cave of Darien owner Arianne O'Donnell Shuck, who also practices law in Stamford, said her trip to Wieliczka convinced her to open her own salt spa.

"My job can be pretty stressful," she said. "I also have a 10- and a 12-year-old, and my health just wasn't good." Following her Poland trip, she began booking sessions at Saltana and the Salt of the Earth Therapeutic Spa in Woodbury and combined that regimen with exercise and more healthy eating. Shuck said she lost 25 pounds over a couple of years. The entrepreneur said her mild eczema has benefited from the salt treatments.

"I decided that it wasn't just about taking care of the outside, but also about taking care of the inside," she said.

Related: A day at the spa has its benefits

Earlier this year, the Darien resident began searching for a suitable spot for her new endeavor, ultimately selecting a 950-square-foot space in the commercial complex at 555 Post Road, which also includes a Quest Diagnostics Lab, a physical therapist's office and an eye care office. The entire process took about six weeks, she said.

The cave itself occupies about 450 square feet, and is lined with blocks of Himalayan pink salt as walls and a couple of inches of salt on the ground. Clients are asked to remove their shoes before entering.

The space can accommodate up to 12 people, though Shuck said usually only a couple of clients are in the cave at a time to promote the relaxation induced by subdued lighting, gentle music, a small fountain and breathing the salt air. Anti-bacterial chairs are placed around the room and blankets are available for customers who find the 67-degree setting too cold.

The salt covering walls and floors is there mainly for aesthetic reasons. The therapeutic salt is actually delivered by a halogenerator, which grinds sodium chloride into a dry aerosol dispersed to simulate the effects of being in an actual salt cave like those found in Europe and Asia.

Come check out our new Foot Domes! They support circulation, reduce swelling, and just feel great! It is also a soothing way to warm your feet on cool days. A post shared by NewtownSaltSpa (@newtownsaltspa) on Jul 15, 2017 at 8:37am PDT

Newtown Salt Spa owner Katherine Hansen said she stumbled upon the Wieliczka facility during a trip to Poland two years ago.

"My mom and I were on a tour and were given a choice between the salt mine and Auschwitz," she said. "My mom didn't want to do Auschwitz, so we thought we'd give the salt mine a try. I felt better within 15 minutes."

A former forensic analyst with the Fayetteville, North Carolina Police Department, Hansen relocated to Newtown when her husband got a job in Ridgefield and began considering a new line of work.

"I've always been interested in trying to do my best to help people," she said, "and I thought introducing salt therapy to Newtown was a great way to do that."

Her operation at 43 S. Main St. occupies 625 square feet with a square-shaped salt room taking about 425 square feet.

"I have one client with COPD, and it helps him with his breathing," Hansen said of the halotherapy. "A couple of others have allergies and it helps with that as well."

Hansen said she's seen "hit-or-miss" results with customers seeking relief from topical skin conditions. "It's supposed to help minimize swelling in rosacea and rashes," she noted.

Sound Bath@Saltana Cave A post shared by Saltana Cave (@saltanacavee) on Oct 28, 2017 at 6:59pm PDT

The Newtown spa charges $30 for a 45-minute session, while the Darien spa charges $45 for 45 minutes and donates a portion of its proceeds to local charities. Shuck said. In Ridgefield, Saltana Cave charges $40 for a 45-minute session. Saltana's owner, Anne Pogoda, a native of Poland, was out of the country and unavailable for comment.

The health benefits claimed for halotherapy have been disputed by some medical and scientific experts.

"There is no scientific evidence that these things help people with a lung disease to breathe more easily," said Dr. Norman H. Edelman, a senior science adviser at the American Lung Association.

"This is an old idea that goes back generations to central Europe, that going to sit in an abandoned salt mine would help you breathe more easily," Edelman said.

The anecdotal evidence of health benefits cited by salt spa owners "could be a placebo effect."

"My own hypothesis," said Edelman, "is that inhaling salt deposits can help water down the mucus that sits in the lungs of many of those with respiratory problems. That makes it easier to raise the mucus and get it out, which would make you feel better. But that's only my guess."

Related: Saltana Cave  Body and mind benefits in salt 'mine'

Tonkin refuted Edelman's opinion, citing several studies that are linked to on the Salt Therapy Association website. Most were conducted in Russia, Finland, Italy and Poland, though the site also includes a positive 2007 report by a naturopath in Portland, Oregon.

All agree on the relaxation that can be had from sitting in a, cave-like space. "Almost everyone who comes here falls asleep," Hansen said. "It can sometimes take a little work to wake them up."

Edelman noted that people suffering from hypertension, kidney disease, heart failure and the like should shun salt spas, at least until consulting with their physician. For others curious about salt caves and halotherapy, "Do it in moderation," Edelman advised. "Anything in excess is a poison."

Kevin Zimmerman is a reporter for the Fairfield County Business Journal. For more of his work and that of the journal, please visit westfaironline.com.
An Austin legislators imperfect citation of a study led us to gauge whether domestic violence can reasonably be considered a predictor of mass shootings.

Answer: No.

In a Nov. 9, 2017, email blast to constituents, Democratic state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez noted that the shooter at the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, leaving 26 people dead, had been convicted years before of beating his then-wife and young stepson. According to news accounts, Devin P. Kelley subsequently served a year in a Navy brig.

Rodriguezs email blast said the Texas shootings led him to suggest steps "we can take," among them: "Strengthening existing laws and ensuring theyre implemented correctly to keep guns out of the hands of criminals." Parenthetically, Rodriguez said next that "perpetrators of domestic violence accounted for 54% of mass shootings between 2009 and 2016, according to the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety."

Domestic violence and mass shootings

Rodriguezs linkage made us wonder, in part because Everytowns research drew wide mention after the Texas shootings.

A Nov. 6, 2017, New York Times news story quoted Billy Rosen, the groups deputy legal director, saying: "We have seen over and over this pattern where in these notorious mass shootings, it is a very common thread where the person had a particular history of domestic violence. A history of this particular kind of conduct may really demonstrate that someone has dangerous propensities and should not be allowed to have guns."

Time magazine similarly quoted the groups Sarah Tofte saying: "You could think of domestic violence as a canary in the coal mine for future violence. We may not know everything we need to know about why and when it reverberates outside the home, but we know that it does, and weve seen it over and over again."

However, the relevant April 2017 report from the Everytown group doesnt offer data linking past domestic violence to the likelihood of anyone becoming a mass shooter. Rather, the report says that "in 54 percent of mass shootings, the shooters killed intimate partners or other family members."

We asked Rodriguez about this contrast. In reply, he conceded in a letter that his email blast lacked clarity.

"As I read your question," Rodriguez wrote, "I can understand how my language could inadvertently imply that 54% of mass shooters also had a history of domestic violence, as opposed to the analysis' findings that 54% of the incidents were directly related to domestic violence.

"I agree that my language was unclear," Rodriguez wrote, "as perpetrators of domestic violence could be read as shooters who had committed domestic violence in the past or, as I meant it, as shooters who perpetrated domestic violence when they shot a current or former intimate or family member. While grammatically vague, I had no intention of misrepresenting the group's findings."

The legislators claim and clarification made us wonder what data actually show about mass shooters having domestic violence backgrounds.

April 2017 report

The Everytown report says the group drew on news stories, FBI figures and police and court records (in 76 instances) to identify 156 mass shootings in the study period--including 85 (54.5 percent) in which the perpetrator "shot a current or former intimate partner or family member." Mass shootings can be defined in different ways. The Everytown group tallied shootings involving four or more victims, not counting the shooter.

In the reports appendix, which summarizes each identified shooting, we spotted 13, or 8 percent, that occurred after a domestic dispute or in which the shooter had previously been charged with or linked to domestic violence.

Around the same time, though, criminologist James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University professor, found more domestic violence links to the shootings catalogued by the group. Fox said in a USA Today commentary published after Rodriguez sent out his email blast that of Everytowns 85 listed shootings in which a person shot a family member, 41 percent were preceded by other acts of domestic violence. More broadly, Fox wrote, 25 percent of all the men listed as committing mass shootings showed "any indication of prior domestic violence."

We asked Fox to share the specifics behind his percentages. By email, he said wed need to get the spreadsheet directly from the Everytown group. Its spokeswoman, Phoebe Kilgour, had earlier emailed us a sheet lacking entries specifying prior domestic violence charges or convictions. Kilgour, asked for more detail, said the limited information was "what we're comfortable sharing at this point."

Separately, Lisa Growette Bostaph, a Boise State University criminologist, responded to our inquiry by saying that her review of Everytowns information delivered domestic-violence counts matching what Fox reported; she also provided her annotated review of what Everytown listed.

By email, Bostaph also cautioned against dwelling on whether mass shooters have documented backgrounds of domestic violence, writing:

Parsing "out whether or not a protection order was granted or a criminal charge resulted in a conviction is ignoring everything that we know about domestic violence: that victims are often manipulated and controlled by fear to rescind requests for protection and criminal charges; that victims are often silent about the domestic violence out of fear of involving others who may later be threatened or hurt; fear of angering the perpetrator and risking further violence for "bringing others into our business"; fear that the perpetrator may lose their job and the victim cannot provide for their children on their own; fear that, by leaving their abuser, they could be risking their abuser having custody or unsupervised visitation with their children who are often witnesses to the violence and/or abused themselves. This means that, if the domestic violence victim is also a victim in the mass shooting, we may never know if there was a history of domestic violence. But, does that really matter, when the end result of that relationship was the ultimate act of domestic and/or family violence?"

A mass killing compilation

Fox otherwise alerted us to an ongoing USA Today compilation of U.S. mass killings, drawing from FBI figures plus police and news reports. When we examined it in November 2017, it showed 271 mass shootings of four or more victims from 2006 through Nov. 5, 2017. We sorted those figures to find that 129 of the shootings, or 48 percent, involved family killings including 13 of 23 Texas mass shootings. The day that we looked, the latest listed Texas mass shooting involving family had occurred in Houston in April 2017; a single mother shot and killed four people including her mother and sister.

That compilation doesnt filter out shootings involving a shooter with a domestic violence history.

But Fox connected us with Emma Fridel, a Northeastern doctoral student whos conducted more detailed research rooted in USA Todays compilation. To our inquiry, Fridel summarized her findings in an email stating that from 2006 through 2016, the country experienced 205 solved mass murders exclusively involving firearms. Of those, Fridel said, she found that 41, or 20 percent, involved one or more perpetrators with a history of domestic violence. (See Fridels full analysis, published in early November 2017, here.)

Fox, summing up, said: "You could certainly say about half the cases of mass shootings are extreme incidents of domestic violence," which in itself persists as "a serious problem," Fox said. "But its not generally a precursor to mass murder," he said.

Report: Domestic disputes precipitated a fifth of mass public shootings

Separately, Time's story after the Texas shootings led us to experts including Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, who by email pointed us to a 2015 report on U.S. mass murders by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

According to the CRS report, in the 15 years from 1999 through 2013, the United States saw about 8.5 familicide mass shootings per year on average. From another vantage point, the report says, a domestic dispute of some type was allegedly a precipitating factor in roughly a fifth (21.2%) of "mass public shootings," or at least 14 of 66 such incidents. Four other mass public shooting incidents could also be characterized as familicides, the report says, in that a spouse or former intimate partner murdered four or more family members--in each case in a public space.

Times article also drew us to interview Susan B. Sorenson, who directs the Evelyn Jacobs Ortner Center on Family Violence at the University of Pennsylvania. By phone, Sorenson endorsed Everytowns statistic--that 54 percent of its catalogued mass shootings were acts of domestic violence. Sorenson also told us theres not research cementing a cause-and-effect link between someone committing domestic violence and later shooting and killing four or more people. "Thats all speculative," Sorenson said. "We just dont have that information."

From a public health perspective, Sorenson commented, the focus should be on reducing gun violence. She said there are angry men "who abuse women all over the globe. What makes us different is the guns."

Our ruling

Rodriguez wrote that according to an Everytown study, "perpetrators of domestic violence accounted for 54% of mass shootings between 2009 and 2016."

Rodriguezs statement incorrectly suggests that domestic violence was a precursor to 54 percent of mass shootings. The research he cited did not confirm as much. Rather, it says 54 percent of such shootings involved a person shooting multiple family members.

Other research suggests that about 20 percent of individuals who committed such shootings from 2006 through 2016 had a history of domestic violence.

We rate Rodriguezs claim False.

FALSE  The statement is not accurate. Click here for more on the six PolitiFact ratings and how we select facts to check.

See Figure 1 on PolitiFact.com
WUZHEN, Zhejiang, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said China hopes to encourage countries around the world to take a ride on the express train of internet and digital economic development.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remarks in a congratulatory letter to the Fourth World Internet Conference, which opened Sunday in the east China town of Wuzhen.

The conference, which runs from Sunday to Tuesday, has the theme "Developing digital economy for openness and shared benefits -- building a community of common future in cyberspace."

In his letter, Xi expressed a sincere welcome to government representatives, heads of international organizations, experts, scholars, and entrepreneurs who are attending the conference.

He expressed hopes that the delegates will draw on collective wisdom and enhance mutual understanding so as to deepen exchanges and cooperation on the internet and digital economy, and make the development of the internet better serve the well-being of all people worldwide.

Xi pointed out that the development of the internet has posed many new challenges for the sovereignty, security, and development interests of the world's countries.

"Building a community of common future in cyberspace has increasingly become the widespread common understanding of international society," he said.

Xi said China hopes to work with the international community to respect cyberspace sovereignty and carry forward the spirit of partnership to commonly advance development, safeguard security, participate in governance, and share the benefits.

"China's door to the world will never close, but will only open wider," he said.

Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and member of the CPC Central Committee Secretariat, delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony.

Wang said China is willing to conform to the historic opportunities brought by the development of the internet and use the digital economy as an important driving force to promote the openness, cooperation, exchange, and sharing in cyberspace and build a community of common future in cyberspace.

"We should promote security, construct a fine order, and build a secure, stable and prosperous cyberspace," Wang said.

He also met with guests at the conference and visited an internet expo.

Over 1,500 guests from more than 80 countries and regions, including government representatives, heads of international organizations, leading figures of internet companies, online celebrities, experts and scholars, attended the conference.
/NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES/

KELOWNA, BC, Dec. 4, 2017 /CNW/ - Cannatech is pleased to announce that it has been granted a Producer's License for medical cannabis under Health Canada's Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations (ACMPR). The license allows Cannatech to immediately begin cultivating cannabis, bringing needed supply to the current medical market and the upcoming adult-use market in Canada.

Cannatech's license encompasses the first phase of a purpose-built 85,000 sq ft facility in Kelowna, British Columbia. The state-of-the-art facility, engineered and built to meet ISO and GMP standards, is considered one of the most advanced cannabis cultivation facilities in the world. The company expects plant growth to begin in January 2018 and anticipates having product available to sell prior to July 2018.

Cannatech has recently acquired adjacent land to support both the rapid development of cultivation capacity and the construction of a stand-alone dedicated research and development facility. Situated in the heart of the Okanagan Valley, the cannabis campus will solidify Cannatech's position as a global leader in the science and commercialization of cannabis and cannabis-related goods and services.

The Producer's License and the completion of all phases of the Kelowna campus positions Cannatech as a significant supplier to the rapidly growing Canadian medical cannabis market and the upcoming adult-use market.

About Cannatech:

Cannatech is an industry-leading company focused on the natural science of cannabis. With offices in Toronto and Kelowna, Cannatech's cultivation facilities operate within GMP compliance producing the highest quality cannabis flower and associated derivatives. Cannatech is focused on research and development to advance cultivation techniques, genetics and general understanding of cannabis. For more information visit www.cannatech.ca.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation which are based on current Cannatech expectations. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. Although such statements are based on management's reasonable assumptions, Cannatech assumes no responsibility to update or revise forward looking information to reflect new events or circumstances unless required by law. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. These statements speak only as of the date of this press release. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks.

SOURCE Cannatech Plant Systems

For further information: David Towill, Director, Cannatech Plant Systems Inc., Telephone: 1-877-356-9726, Email: [email protected]
LAVAL, QC, Dec. 4, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Cara Operations Limited, owner of the Harvey's brand and chain of restaurants, which was established in Quebec in 1964 and is famous for its customized flame-grilled burgers, has appointed the St-Hubert Group to manage, market and expand the Harvey's brand throughout Quebec by supervising the opening of up to 45 new restaurants in the province including adding Harvey's to certain St-Hubert restaurants.

Drawing on St-Hubert's 66 years of expertise and in-depth knowledge of the Quebec market, a St-Hubert team will be dedicated to Harvey's and will work to grow the brand across the province. These investments will continue to evolve stand-alone Harvey's restaurants and the roll out a new type of combo restaurant accommodating both St-Hubert and Harvey's. Sharing brand space signals a new market strategy, particularly in rural areas, and will create new jobs throughout Quebec.

In these combined spaces, St-Hubert Express and Harvey's will offer their same menus and high-quality products, and the same speedy, efficient and friendly service for which they are known. Over the coming years, Harvey's will also be refurbishing and updating its existing restaurants in addition to opening new locations.

We will be keeping the unique concept of Harvey's burger bars that allows customers to customize their burgers, salads and poutines with a wide selection of fresh, local toppings. We will continue to use 100% Canadian beef and chicken, flame-grilled to perfection.

Harvey's first next-generation restaurant, sporting the chain's brand-new colours and design, celebrated its grand opening Friday, December 1st, at 1925 Boulevard St-Martin West in Laval.

"Cara Operations Limited is delighted to entrust the St-Hubert Group's team with the task of taking Harvey's to the next level in Quebec. We are excited and confident with St-Hubert's knowledge of the restaurant business and their unparalleled understanding of the Quebec market both of which will enable Harvey's to continue its growth in the province, where the chain has enjoyed a presence since 1964. We look towards the future with great optimism," says Ken Otto, President of Family Dining Restaurant.

"We are proud to see that the St-Hubert Group's know-how and expertise can drive the expansion of Harvey's restaurants across Quebec. This is an exciting challenge for us. Harvey's and the St-Hubert Group share the same approach that centres on quality and customer satisfaction. Over the coming years we will continue developing the Harvey's brand in Quebec employing the same passion, energy and enthusiasm that are characteristic of St-Hubert's rotisseries," states Pierre Rivard, President of the St-Hubert Group.

About Harvey's

Harvey's was established in Ontario in 1959 and has been present in Quebec since 1964. The Harvey's Brand currently has more than 6,000 employees and operates 46 restaurants in Quebec and 274 restaurants across Canada. Harvey's was the first restaurant to offer customers flame-grilled burgers with customized toppings using fresh ingredients. Harvey's uses high-quality ingredients produced by local farmers and suppliers, including 100% Canadian beef, chicken, potatoes and pork.

Harvey's QC

www.harveys.ca

About St-Hubert Group

The St-Hubert Group employs more than 10,000 people in its restaurant and food divisions. Established in Montreal in 1951, today St-Hubert BBQ Ltd has 121 rotisseries in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick serving more than 31 million meals a year. The St-Hubert Group also comprises a retail division which manufactures and distributes several food products under the St-Hubert brand and also under other Cara restaurant brands, including sauces, spare ribs, tourtieres and chicken pot pies. The company has a long tradition of innovation and strives continuously to satisfy its customers.

www.st-hubert.com

About Cara

Founded in 1883, Cara is Canada's oldest and largest full-service restaurant company. The Company franchises and/or operates some of the most recognized brands in the country including Swiss Chalet, Harvey's, St-Hubert, Milestones, Montana's, Kelsey's, East Side Mario's, New York Fries, Burger's Priest, Prime Pubs, Original Joe's, State & Main, Elephant & Castle, Bier Markt and Landing restaurants. As at September 24, 2017, Cara had 1,249 restaurants, 1,194 of which were located in Canada and the remaining 55 locations were located internationally. 83% of Cara's restaurants are operated by franchisees. Cara's shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CARA.TO. More information about the Company is available at www.cara.com.

SOURCE St-Hubert Group

For further information: Josee Vaillancourt, Director, Public Relations, St-Hubert Group, Tel: 450-688-4400 (ext. 2104), Cell: 514-913-3741
By ZHANG YUNBI (China Daily) 07:37, December 04, 2017

State Councilor Yang Jiechi, a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, addresses delegates to an international seminar in Beijing at its closing session on Sunday. FENG YONGBIN/CHINA DAILY

High-level meeting calls on attendees to reject isolationism, support multilateral trade system

The Belt and Road Initiative serves the interests of people of all countries and provides a platform for building a community with a shared future for mankind, political party leaders from more than 120 countries said in a joint statement issued in Beijing on Sunday.

They voiced their "earnest expectations and best wishes" for realizing the Belt and Road in the Beijing Initiative document adopted at the closing session of the Communist Party of China in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting.

In the statement, the leaders from nearly 300 political parties and organizations said forging a new form of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation is imperative to the building of the community with a shared future for mankind and a better world.

They called on countries to stay away from isolationism and exclusionism and support a multilateral trade system, and they commended the CPC's efforts and contribution in promoting the building of the community with a shared future and a better world.

Building the community and a better world requires political parties and leaders to undertake their historic duties and carry forward the spirit of hard work, State Councilor Yang Jiechi said at the closing session.

Also, the leaders should have a sense of innovation, always act with a problem-oriented approach, and create platforms for exchanges, Yang added.

In his keynote speech on Friday, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, elaborated on the CPC's idea of building the community with a shared future, and showed determination to boost world development and prosperity, Yang said.

Various attending political parties spoke highly of Xi's speech hailed the CPC's historical contribution and expect China's further navigating role, Yang added.

Pierre Ngolo, general-secretary of the Congolese Labor Party and president of the Senate of the Republic of Congo, said China fulfills its duties efficiently, promotes unity, friendship and safety among people in the world and works for enabling everyone to benefit from development.

"The Belt and Road is one of the best examples," he said, adding that the unprecedented high-level meeting, transcending the self-interests of the various political parties gathered, charts the course for the community with a shared future.

The meeting will become "a new impetus" for development in the world, he said.

Dashzeveg Amarbayasgalan, general secretary of the ruling Mongolian People's party, said the meeting has had sufficient discussions on co-building the Belt and Road.

Views have been exchanged effectively and the meeting has turned a new page for exchanges among political parties in the world, he said.

Dmitry Novikov, deputy chairman of the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Russian Federation, said the Belt and Road Initiative is promising in reinforcing economic cooperation among countries and will boost the upgrading of political and cultural cooperation among them.

China is the world's second-largest economy, it has huge potential politically and economically, and it benefits the Chinese people and facilitates efforts in building an equitable world of justice and allowing every country to have a share of development, Novikov said.

The Beijing Initiative will also introduce more possibilities to bilateral cooperation, such as those between China and Russia, he added.
The Federal Government has budgeted only N20, 226, 000 for Ogoni land clean up support in 2018 appropriation bill, while it earmarked N250 million for attendance of international bilateral/multilateral meetings.A total of N27, 369, 935, 852 is allocated to the Federal Ministry of Environment, and out of this N9, 524,482,833 is for capital projects, while debt owed contractors stood at N11.6 billion.President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2018 budget presentation said: We are working hard on the Ogoniland clean up project, and have engaged eight international and local firms proposing different technologies for the mandate.This would enable us select the best and most suitable technology for the remediation work, and have asked each firm to conduct demonstration clean up exercises in four local government areas of Ogoniland.Although, the International Oil Companies will fund the project, we have made provisions in 2018 budget for the costs of oversight and governance, to ensure effective implementation.Minister of state for Environment, Ibrahim Usmam Jibril, recently, explained that the clean up of Ogoni land is being delayed due to budget constraints and the ground work before the project would start.According to him, since the inception of the present.You cant do anything if you cannot collect the money if you dont budget for it; so you have to show your work plan which is what HYPREP has been doing, the Minister explained.The Director General of National Biosafety Management Agency, NBMA, Dr.Rufus E. Ebegba told The Guardian that they received 50 per cent of 2017 budget allocation to strengthen institutions nationwide.According to him, there are seven ongoing projects since last year and with 2018 appropriation of N689, 882,03, we hope this one would be a promising year for the agency.A break down of NBMA budget allocation, shows that procurement of genetically modified organisms, GMOs detect unit would gulf N13.5 million, while research institutes would take N19.5 million.Meanwhile, developing countries including Nigeria are to receive $540 million under the Montreal Protocol to continue their work to protect the environment and restore ozone layer to pre-industrial age level.Under the Kigali Amendment, Nigeria and others are to phase out ozone-depleting hydro chlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and to initiate enabling activities for the phase-down of climate-warming hydro fluorocarbons (HFCs).The funds will be provided by developed countries over the period 2018 to 2020 through the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol, which has disbursed over $3.7 billion since 1991 to support developing countries to phase out chemicals that destroy the ozone layer.Montreal Protocol parties made the funding commitment during the joint 11th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Vienna Convention and the 29th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol held in Montreal. There are 197 parties to the Montreal Protocol.Nigeria has been part of a global effort to protect the ozone layer, which scientists discovered about four decades ago, was being depleted by a group of man-made chemicals referred to as ODS such as Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), Halons, Carbon Tetrachloride, Methyl Chloroform and Methyl bromide.It is acknowledged that since the Montreal Protocol came into force, Nigeria, like other parties has continued to take actions in line with the provisions of the Protocol towards solving the problem of ozone layer depletion. The actions have led to reductions in the production and consumption of ODS, while the Montreal Protocol is adjudged to be the most successful Multilateral Environmental Agreement (MEA) that illustrates how countries can come together to solve a common problem.Nigeria had a baseline consumption of over 4,000 metric tons of ODS, which essentially are used in various industrial applications. These include domestic, commercial and industrial refrigeration and air conditioning, flexible and rigid insulation foam and in numerous other applications such as aerosol propellants and solvents.
Happy New Month Nigeria! Welcome to the month of June. As the world searches for a respite from all its troubles since 2020 began, one can ...
(Xinhua) 08:11, December 04, 2017

BEIJING, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) Saturday expressed strong dissatisfaction with the U.S. opposition to granting it market economy status in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative told Xinhua Friday that the United States had submitted a statement of opposition to the WTO as a third-party brief in support of the European Union (EU) in a case brought by China arguing the "surrogate country approach" should be dropped after the expiration date.

"China is strongly dissatisfied and resolutely opposes the rejection, as the U.S. government tried to mix the concepts of the surrogate country approach and market economy status to mislead the public," the MOC said in a statement.

When China joined the WTO, members use costs of production in a third country to calculate the value of products from countries on their "non-market economy" list, which includes China.

In accordance with Article 15 of the accession protocol, the surrogate country approach expires on Dec. 11, 2016.

The case has nothing to do with whether China has been granted market economy status or not as there are no standards in WTO rules for the status, the MOC said, urging all members to drop the practice.

When the approach expired last year, some member nations, including Japan and the United States, indicated they would not honor their commitments with no plans to change their trade policies. The MOC has warned that their refusal would put trade ties with China at risk.
The young barber explained that his father died when he was just 11, adding that he struggled to sponsor himself through school along with his five siblings.When I was cutting the hair of one of my customers, he advised me to go to Europe where he promised I could earn a lot of money, Mr. Imasuen recounted.I asked the man how much it would cost me. He said N350,000 but I said I only had N140,000 with me, he said. Mr. Imasuen had been determinedly saving N10,000 monthly for over one year.The man promised to help, not knowing that Mr. Imasuen was naively about to use his own hard-earned cash to sell himself into slavery.Travelling by road on a tortuous journey through Niger, the young Nigerian explained how one of the vehicles in his convoy had a terrible accident in the Sahara Desert, killing 30 people instantly.Upon arriving in Libya, the driver said he had not been paid his money and we were sold into the slave trade in Sabha. Mr. Imasuen said he and ten other Nigerians were sold and then locked up in one small room. More than 200 slaves were kept inside that inhumane cell.They started beating me to call my mother to send money. That was when my mother learned I was not in Nigeria  because I did not tell her before I left, he admitted.The ransom they demanded  N200,000  was simply too much for Mr. Imasuens poverty-stricken mother to raise.For months, I did not hear from her. They kept on beating me everyday and I fell sick. If I went to the toilet, I was shitting blood.Mr. Imasuen said he was beaten three times daily for eight gruelling months. That was his fate as a male.For the ladies sold into slavery, they would send them out to do prostitution before selling them to another person; I know of a girl there who was sold three times.According to him, most of the enslaved females fell pregnant without even knowing the father of the child.When a picture of Mr. Imasuens emaciated condition was circulated in his local community, they managed to come together to raise the money to secure his freedom in March 2017.After gaining his freedom, he attempted to travel to Tripoli, hoping to join the thousands of illegal migrants who would brave the sea to try and reach Italy by boat.I didnt even get to Tripoli before I was caught and taken to prison. I met more than 10,000 Nigerians there. We only eat once a day there  one piece of bread. I would drink salt water.While suffering the horrific prison conditions, Mr. Imasuen hatched a plan to reach the deportation camp. He slipped a note into the female section of the prison, pleading that any of the ladies who was being taken for deportation claim he was their husband.The ruse worked and Mr. Imasuen was taken to Tripolis main deportation camp  one step closer to being repatriated to Nigeria. It was there he granted an interview to CNN, he said.I decided to speak to them, hoping to get help but at the end, nothing came out of it, he bemoaned. Through the intervention of the International Organisation for Migration, IOM, Mr. Imasuen was finally deported to Nigeria  with nothing but the clothes on his back to show for his journey through hell.Upon getting to Nigeria, I decided to come to T.B. Joshua because even before I left, I heard of the help he renders to others. I need prayer.Osazee Aghimie, another deportee, equally shared his own sorrowful tale, explaining how over 100 migrants died in the boat he was in after it capsized en route to Italy. He narrowly survived only to be thrown into prison and eventually deported.T.B. Joshua, who had just returned from the Dominican Republic, gave the two men each N200,000. Mr. Imasuen could not hold back tears as he received the gift.Mr. Joshuas support to the duo is not an isolated instance. This week alone, the cleric gave over N4.4 million to Nigerians returning from Libya, and well over N100 million ($277,000) has been provided to them by The SCOAN since 2016.
Otoide (left) and Joseph (right)

Several returnees from Libya have spoken up on the terrible plight they had to endure in the north-African country where they were sold into slavery.

Over 650 Libyan deportees returned to Edo State over the past three months and the tales of their sojourn in the North African country, where they had planned to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Italy, was heart-breaking. 168 of them returned to Benin-City on Wednesday while 108 arrived Friday; they were received by officials of Edo State Task Force Against Human Trafficking. Sunday Vanguard observed that some of the women were pregnant and emaciated just like the men who said they were used as slaves. Governor Godwin Obaseki had promised to train the returnees in skills as part of the efforts to reintegrate them into the society. Most of the deportees lamented that their sponsors promised to take them to Europe only to abandon them in Libya.



One of the returnees, 27-year-old Ewere Joseph, who claimed to have been shot in his shoulder, narrated his ordeal. He said: Before I left Nigeria, I was working in a tile making company but the money was too small. One day somebody ask me if I was interested in going to Europe, the man is still here in Benin, I said yes. His name is Christopher, he said I should go and bring N500, 000. I rallied round for the money and we set out. He promised that once I got to Libya, he will arrange for me to be taken to Italy. It sounded so convincing when he said it but, when we set out for the journey, I did not know it was going to be hell. I dont need to go to hell any more, I have tasted hell already. I spent one year and six months in Libya.



Many things happened there; they killed a lot of Nigerians. Many of our women are pregnant for those they cannot identify. My friend died in prison because they always beat us. They used the butt of a gun to hit break my leg. My aim was to go to Italy.



When I got to Libya, my sponsor sold me to another Nigerian who was using me for manual labour and I had no choice. I made attempt twice to pass the sea but I ended up spending two days on top of water in the first attempt. The rescue team that came did not locate us, but God sent a fisherman to save my life.



The second attempt I made to cross the sea was when I was now arrested and sent to prison. There is one prison there that the government of Nigeria should go and free Nigerians from, we have about 10, 000 Nigerians there. The prison is called Giyuan. Eight people died in my presence in that prison. Some of the inmates had to break the prison and that was how we escaped and we were taken to deportation camp.



And when we got to the deportation camp, they started beating us; we received the same treatment like when we were in prison. They will give you bread in the morning and that is all you will eat till the next morning.



I do not regret the journey because it is part of my experience in life. But my advice to my brothers and sisters is that they should not embark on such trip. Even from Benin to Kano is very bad, from there we moved to Alghadez, Shaba to Libya. Libya is a very bad country; it is not a place to go. The first thing they did was to ask me to convert to Islam. I told them I will not, that I am a Christian. The beat me with guns and dump me in prison. I wish our government can block the road leading to Libya so that our people will not go there. I weep each time I see our girls suffering, being used as sex slaves and all sorts of abuse



How I was shot



What happened was that they brought food to us and said we should eat. I refused to eat because they gave people from other countries full bread and gave we Nigerians half bread called Oza.



About 400 Nigerians, we said we will not eat. They started shooting into the crowd and that was how I was shot. After they shot me, they started beating me, saying I was proving stubborn. One of my friends they beat up had internal bleeding and died in prison.



In the desert, seven Hilux vans left for Libya, only one person survived. You will see dead bodies like rats. One of us complained of thirst, but instead of giving him water, he was given Tramadol and he collapsed.



He was not yet dead but he was buried alive in the desert. If you refuse to proceed on the trip, they will shoot you dead. Many of our people are still there now suffering and dying. Some have gone mad due to stress of the suffering they went through. It is better you suffer in Nigeria than to die in Libya. Our government should go to Libya and return our people, they hate Nigerians a lot over there and it is sad.



Alex Otoide, another returnee, said he witnessed the sale of 20 Nigerian girls in the prison where he was kept. They (captors) sold like 20 girls in the night, Otoide said.



It was God that saved me. More than seven people died from hunger and thirst inside the prison where I was kept. The man that took me to Libya left me. I was into road construction in Lagos State but I am from Edo. I left Nigeria with N500, 000 but I spent six months in Libya jail after the man that took my money ran away. We were 55 that left for Libya, 25 died in the desert.



One of the girls, Osas Blessing, urged the state government to arrest one Charles who she described as the one deceiving people to go Libya to make money from them.



She said, I gave Charles N450, 000 but when I got to Libya he increased my fee to N600, 000. He is very wicked. He pushed many of us there. He did not care for human lives. He is a Benin man. He will say if you die you die.



He pushed us into the sea at the wrong time. I heard he just left Nigeria with new passengers for Libya and I think he must be stopped before he ruins more souls. When we were arrested, they took us to the people in charge of the UN but others were taken to prison. If you look at those that went to prison, they look like ghosts. The Libyans beat Nigerians a lot.



Henry Uwadiae also narrated: I was just passing through Libya, my destination was Europe. The Arabs came and attacked our boat as we were crossing the sea. They took us to prison since August. They maltreated us like animals.



After they kidnap you, they start torturing you till you die. They dumped us in prison and beat us every day. We ate bread once in two days. I was into business before I left Nigeria. I left Nigeria with N500, 000. I didnt get to Europe. The desert was horrible experience. Many people died in the desert but the traffickers will not tell their parents that they have died. They keep giving people false hope. The videos circulating online that Africans are sold as slaves in Libya are true. I advise our boys and girls hoping to travel to Europe through the desert that Libya is highway to hell.

- Vanguard
Captain Ibiyemi and her passengers

The picture of a female pilot plying the Abuja route has surfaced on social media with female folks celebrating her. A 25-year-old female pilot dazzled and amazed some of her passengers after a flight to Abuja earlier today.

According to a surprised Facebook user, Imade Alonge Ize-Iyamu, the young lady identified as Captain Ibiyemi flew the plane not as a co-pilot but as a full pilot as she and another passenger sought for a selfie with her (the pilot) after the flight.
CAMPAIGN for Democracy (CD), a human right group has decried the return of roadblocks in the commercial city of Onitsha, Anambra State.The group said it is particularly worried about the indiscriminate setting of road blocks in the city, saying that it was slowing down businesses in the city.The Coordinator of the group in the South East zone, Uzor A Uzor who spoke to Nigerian Tribune gave the Inspector General Police, Ibrahim Idris three days, within which to dismantle the road blocks.Uzor said the primary aim of the roadblocks was to extort from innocent road users, insisting that his group would not accept such for the traders.We want to say that after this 3-day ultimatum, we will embark on a series of protests to register our position on the matter, Uzor stated.A social critics, Prince Ezenwa noted that travelling from Onitsha to Okija, a distance not more than 20 kilometres, one could see not less than 15 checkpoints.He alleged that it might be a plan to reintroduce illegal toll collection in the south-east geopolitical zone.We intend to write to the IGP because they (Police) cause a lot of problems to road users.They are flouting the IGPs order that all road blocks be dismantled.The Gubernatorial Election, which led to the setting up of road blocks has come and gone with the state not experiencing any violent crimes to warrant these problems, Ezenwa said.The Chairman Ogirisi Igbo Foundation, Dr Linus Uche, said it was a calculated attempt to extort road users during the yuletide.
The personal assistant to the president on new media, Bashir Ahmad, has reacted to the #EndSARS campaign which has been the number one trending topic on Nigerian Twitter since Saturday, December 2.While many high profile Nigerians have either joined the campaign or commented on the matter, the Nigerian presidency has been surprisingly quiet.Ahmad, 25, described the tales of Nigerians tweeting about their experience with the Special Anti-Robbery Squad of the Nigeria Police Force as saddening.President Buhari is yet to speak on the campaign 48 hours after it is the biggest topic on Nigerian Twitter. Photo credit: Aso RockHe however said it is not within his power to do anything about the issue but promised to bring this very urgent matter to the attention of relevant authorities adding that the Buhari administration is a listening one.Some Nigerians were however not impressed with Bashirs tweet, with one particular Twitter user saying the Buhari administration take things for granted.Others however hailed Bashirs courage to speak up and expressed optimism that the presidency will address the concerns of Nigerians.Meanwhile, former vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has called for investigations into allegations of harassment leveled against the SARS unit of the Nigeria Police Force.In a statement issued in series of tweets on his verified Twitter handle on Sunday, December 3, Atiku, a former Nigeria Customs Service top chief, noted that the allegations must be taken seriously by the police and the National Assembly.While urging the two institutions to look into the allegations, he saluted Nigerian youths who have started an hashtag movement on social media to raise awareness about the allegations.
The Federal High Court in Lagos on Monday issue a bench warrant against a former governor of Enugu State, Chimaroke Nnamani, who was char...

The Federal High Court in Lagos on Monday issue a bench warrant against a former governor of Enugu State, Chimaroke Nnamani, who was charged with an alleged fraud of N5.3bn.Justice Chuka Obiozor issued bench warrant against the ex-governor for failing to appear in court on Monday for his scheduled re-arraignment.The judge held that Nnamanis counsel failed to give a tenable reason why his client was absent from court.Details later
The comedian on his IG page, penned down an open letter to former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who yesterday returned to PDP as he plans...

The comedian on his IG page, penned down an open letter to former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who yesterday returned to PDP as he plans to contest for presidency in 2019.

Atiku in a live video on Facebook, berated the APC for ignoring the youths of Nigeria. Read what I Go Dye wrote below





'Don't use sentimental empathy on the youths to express your political ambitions.

Sir, you are one of those that have immensely benefited from Nigeria since your birth in 1946.

Having worked for 20years with the Nigeria Customs where you retired at the age of 43 in 1989 as Deputy Director, your bucket list sure looks good because you were obviously employed at youth 23.





In 1999 you became governor of Adamawa and ultimately the Vice President, all of these you achieved at 53. What did you do during your time in that exalted position? When will the youths like in your time get a chance? am motivated to speak, based on your statement : A party that does not take the youths into account is a dying party.The future belong to young.Please which of the future?





Remarkably, between 1999 and 2007 that you were the Vice president of Nigeria, it is recorded that tertiary institutions witnessed several strikes that wasted seventeen months ,three weeks and three days.Within this period, what did you do?

If social support were given to youths then,their children will be between 18 and 20years during the 2019 elections,obviously they would have willingly voted for you or anyone that you endorse in 2019.This is the essence of making sacrifices for the future generation.

You cannot be credited to have been a philanthropic to the youths.





The recent revocation of the NPA contract with Intel,your company,is the major issue.

As a company either, the people in the region you operated cannot accredit Intel to have provided credible support for the youths or built skills acquisition centers to curb unproductivity as part of it's cooperate social responsibility , which has resulted to many youths embarking on the sub- sahara deserts route treking to Europe,which has claimed many lives.





Your excellency,sir Atiku Abubakar, please don't use sentimental empathy on the youths to express your political ambitions,because by 2019 the youths are preparing to substantiate the real economical,political and progressive change.





I kindly recommend that you should advocate for process that will afford us the opportunity of a youthful leadership in the 2019 election. Thanks Amb Francis'
Despite the call by the Inspector General of police, Ibrahim Idris, for an immediate reorganisation of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, ...

Can the IG of police further explain to Nigerians what re organizing really means.. Nigerians are calling on disbandment #EndSars now December 4, 2017





This same I.G. ordered the dismantling or road blocks by the Police months ago but the Police is still operating road blocks!



Don't stop this advocacy. DO NOT STOP. Don't let the press release that the I.G of Police has ordered the reorganization of SARS fool you.This same I.G. ordered the dismantling or road blocks by the Police months ago but the Police is still operating road blocks!Don't stop this advocacy. DO NOT STOP. #EndSARS December 4, 2017





And in response to the campaign, the inspector general of police said he's ordered a complete re-organisation of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad.pic.twitter.com/kWzakF0wi1 Nigerian tweeters have been using the #EndSARS hashtag demand an end to police brutality.And in response to the campaign, the inspector general of police said he's ordered a complete re-organisation of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. https://t.co/jnxa92h4bQ December 4, 2017

If we don't #EndSARS they will increase the tempo of their killings now that people are agitating to #EndSARS . Please let's all be careful. December 4, 2017

Despite the call by the Inspector General of police, Ibrahim Idris, for an immediate reorganisation of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, Nigerians insist that it should be scrapped.The Hashtag, #EndSARS gained momentum on the social media on Sunday, when Nigerians took to Twitter to protest ill-treatment, abuse and harassment by operatives of the SARS.Although, the IGP has called for the SARS to be restructured, the #EndSARS continues to trend. Nigerians still demand the scrapping of the SARS.Tweets below...
A University of Ilorin female student (name withheld), has narrated how a man she met on Instagram drugged, raped and took her unclad pi...

A University of Ilorin female student (name withheld), has narrated how a man she met on Instagram drugged, raped and took her unclad pictures in a Lagos hotel.Crying profusely while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Ilorin, the lady said she met the man through social media network (Instagram), where the relationship started.He asked for a relationship which I was reluctant to accept but I accepted.I met him for the first time in Lagos when I was on holiday. He later invited me to an hotel in Ojo area of Lagos, that was when I met him for the second time.It was when I was preparing to return to school, so he demanded s.e.x which I turned down.He promised me N15,000 and transferred it to me, we had a drink but I noticed I was dizzy.So it was when one of the hotel waiters brought a condom that I started to cause a scene before people came to my rescue.Later that day, he called and threatened to send my unclad pictures he took to my Daddy, I was surprised how he got my fathers number.It was because of the threat that I had to go to him again to have s.e.x and to ask him delete all the pictures but he again said he had video of when we were having s.e.x.I couldnt confront my parents because I was scared and told my pastor, so it was my pastor that reported the matter to the police, the Unilorin student said.She described the man as a devil who had taught her a painful lesson.Confirming the incident, Kwara police spokesman, Ajayi Okasanmi, told NAN that the suspect was arrested but escaped during interrogation.We invited the suspect to Ilorin with the help of the lady he was threatening.We arrested him and seized the phone which has the unclad pictures.So, we asked an officer to go and search where he lodged in Ilorin only for him to escape in the process and we have not seen him till date, Okasanmi explained.Okasanmi said that the suspect later went on social media claiming that he collected money from himThe Kwara Police spokesman challenged the suspect to come out and sue him if his claims were true.(NAN)
(Global Times) 08:14, December 04, 2017

Transport aircraft completes training in S.China Sea

The domestic-made medium-sized military transport aircraft Yun-9 is ready for combat mission, which will boost China's effort in safeguarding maritime rights, military experts said on Sunday after the aircraft completed exercises in the South China Sea.

The Yun-9 is now able to undertake combat missions after a fleet of the transport aircraft finished training in the South China Sea, Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) announced on Saturday on its official WeChat account.

It was the first long-range maritime exercise of the medium-sized transport aircraft, the PLAAF said.

The PLAAF didn't say on which date that the training was carried out, or the number of aircraft involved.

The Yun-9 completed its air-drop missions without assistance from ground control and the crew prepared procedures to cope with any emergency, Liu Bao, a PLA officer said, according to the PLAAF post.

"As the backbone transport aircraft of the PLA, the Yun-9's combat readiness means China has the ability to ensure military supplies reach offshore and even open seas," Wang Ya'nan, chief editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Sunday.

The Yun-9 will support China's mission to safeguard oceanic sovereignty and security, Wang said, adding maritime rights of the South China Sea always face challenges.

The aircraft, with more advanced features than its predecessor the Yun-8, should be the best-equipped transport aircraft in the PLA, said Wang. It can also be produced in greater number than the large-size transport aircraft the Yun-20, Wang explained.

The Yun-9 costs less than the larger Yun-20 transport aircraft and is more adaptable to airports, and is able to supply weapons, personnel and goods over medium-distances, another military expert told the Global Times on condition of anonymity on Sunday.

The training session demonstrated that the Yun-9 is reliable to finish its transportation missions. The Yun-9 can land on small islands if necessary, the expert said.

The Y-9 transport aircraft is manufactured by Shaanxi Aircraft Corporation, a company affiliated with Aviation Industry Corporation of China. The aircraft can carry a payload of up to 20 tons and 98 soldiers. Its flying range is up 4,200 kilometers, according to Aerospace Knowledge in October.

The transport plane flew from a military airport in Southwest China's Sichuan Province in the morning, landed on an island in the South China Sea around noon and returned the same night.

The medium-lift transport aircraft Y-9 has also undergone several other major training exercises in extreme weather, after it formally entered service with the PLA in 2016.
Governor Nyesom Wike has said he has no intention to run for Vice President in 2019, indicating that he would want to contest for a seco...

Governor Nyesom Wike has said he has no intention to run for Vice President in 2019, indicating that he would want to contest for a second term as governor of the state.The governor dropped this hint Sunday at Government House, Port Harcourt when he played host to Chief Raymond Dokpesi, a national chairmanship aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP at the partys national convention.I am a first term governor. How can I leave my state to go and vie for the post of Vice President?, he said The governor also spoke against call for micro zoning of office of the national Chairman at the convention, stressing that all the party needed now were leaders that would drive it to victory in 2019. He said he would collaborate with others for the success of the party.He said: No region has been left out. PDP is not in power. PDP is an opposition party. We are working for a chairman that will drive PDP and make PDP to win elections. The chairman is not going to share contracts to any zone for you to say a particular zone is left out.It is only when a government is formed that you talk about a zone being left out On his part, national Chairmanship Aspirant, Chief Raymond Dokpesi enjoined delegates from the state to vote for him, adding that he was in the state to appeal for the support of the governor and drum his campaigns in the state ahead of the elections.
The Lagos State Chapter of the PDP on Sunday night endorsed Chief Olabode George as their preferred candidate for the National Chairmanship position during the forthcoming December 9 National Convention of the party.The State Chairman of PDP, Dr Moshood Salvador, gave the certification at a feedback meeting between George and members of the party, held at the partys secretariat in GRA, Ikeja.George had been on a campaign in the Southern states of the country to seek support for votes ahead of the National Convention.There are about eight aspirants jostling for the National chairmanship seat of the party from the south.They include the former Governor of Ogun State, Chief Gbenga Daniel; former Minister of Education, Prof. Tunde Adeniran; former Minister of Youth Development, Prof. Taoheed Adedoja; and former Lagos State PDP governorship candidate, Mr Jimi Agbaje.Others are Prince Uche Secondus, a former acting National Chairman of PDP, and Chief Raymond Dokpesi.Salvador said, On behalf of Lagos PDP, we must vote for Chief Bode George come Dec. 9; the Southwest is the rightful region to have the chairman of our great party.In the last dispensation, Ekiti produced the Vice- Chairman while Osun and Oyo states took the highest office. It is only Lagos that is left and what we want is the chairman.The South-east and the South-south have produced a chairman before that is why it is our turn to have the chairman of PDP.Earlier, George assured members that if given the opportunity to serve, he would re-establish the culture and tradition put in place by the founding fathers of the PDP.If I am given the opportunity, I will not be new to the management of this party because the partys constitution is not going to be new to me; I know its provisions as I know the back of my hand.We grew up with the party and the founding fathers handed over the culture of the party to us and that is what we would re-establish.Just check out, from the end of our convention to the national election is a very short time, it is not a time where you can do experimentation, it is not a time you can bring a greenhorn to be the chairman of the party.If you are desirous that you want to win that election, on that day before you cast your votes search your consciences and think very carefully.Secondly, it is not a matter of life and death, if I dont believe that I have anything to offer, I will not be here.I will not compromise on things that are not right and are not in the constitution.I will do things the way they should be done and everybody will be happy. That was how our founding fathers were moving the party forward, George said.
Olisa Metuhs defense counsels, on Monday alleged threats to their lives, following a move to have former President, Goodluck Jonathan summ...

Olisa Metuhs defense counsels, on Monday alleged threats to their lives, following a move to have former President, Goodluck Jonathan summoned to testify in the ongoing trial of the ex-PDP Publicity Secretary.

Metuhs lawyer, Emeka Etiaba (SAN), informed the Abuja Federal High Court that the lead defence counsel, Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), and the former PDP spokesperson himself, have received life threatening messages.





Etiaba noted that the threat would not yield the desired result because the former President must testify in the ongoing case.





According to him, This subpoena is one that has generated quite a lot of controversy, not just to our client but to myself.





The threat goes to the life of the first defendant, myself and Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu.





This will not make us change our mind as to whether His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, will come and testify or not.




Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose has said the nations unity is not negotiable but must be backed by justice, equity and fairness to ...

Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose has said the nations unity is not negotiable but must be backed by justice, equity and fairness to every section.Fayose spoke at the weekend in Gombe, the capital, at the cultural display by different dance groups after the coronation of Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo as the Tafidan Tangale in Billiri Local Government Area of the state.The Ekiti State governor said Nigeria deserved a leadership that believes in all parts of the country and not in some sections of it.He said: As much as we believe in the unity of Nigeria, we must also continue to add justice and fairness.No section in Nigeria should feel used or oppressed by the leadership of our country. But the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable.Fayose hailed Gombe State residents for ensuring unity and displaying their rich culture.He said: Well, this is a very good culture. There could be a culture without foot drivers of such culture, no matter how rich.Dankwambo has demonstrated good leadership by promoting a rich culture, his people and celebrating them.The governor could not resist joining in the cultural dance.He urged others to emulate the rich cultural display among Gombe State residents to promote unity and progress of the country.Hailing Dankwambo, Fayose said: For him to have won an election in this part of this country in 2015 means he is an outstanding politician who should be celebrated. Im glad to be part of that celebration today.
President Muhammadu Buhari has returned to Abuja after participating in 2-day Counter-Terrorism retreat, co-hosted by Jordan and Nigeri...

President Muhammadu Buhari has returned to Abuja after participating in 2-day Counter-Terrorism retreat, co-hosted by Jordan and Nigeria.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the presidents aircraft which left the King Hussein International airport at exactly 9.38a.m local time, landed at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, at about 2.p.m.While in Aqaba, President Buhari met with King Abdullah II of Jordan where both leaders discussed bilateral issues concerning Nigeria and Jordan.President Buhari, during the meeting, stressed the need for inter-regional cooperation and information sharing towards tackling terrorism across the world.According to him, these factors are important in checkmating the threat of violent extremism to global peace and security.The president used the opportunity to thank the Jordanian King for his constant support and assistance to Nigeria especially with the recent donation of armoured vehicles and other military equipment to fight terrorism and insurgency in Nigeria.In his remarks, King Abdullah II advocated broader measures especially the use of cyber security in checking the influence of terrorists.He pledged the continued support of the Kingdom of Jordan to Nigeria in its war against violent extremism.President Buhari, who also spoke at the counter-terrorism retreat, urged leaders to speak up against the violent extremism committed by deranged people in the name of Islam.According to him, all nations, irrespective of religion should partner effectively in implementing national, regional and global action plans to counter violent extremism.Buhari reiterated the commitment of Nigeria to playing a leading role in bringing together countries of the West African sub-region in a collective security arrangement.He said that Nigeria was ready to share its experiences with a view to fashioning out comprehensive action plans in tackling the scourge of violent extremism in the region.He, therefore, called for a stronger collaboration among the member countries of the Aqaba Initiatives to check violent extremism across the world.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that President Buhari and other visiting heads of state from Ghana, Mali and Guinea Conakry were hosted to a royal dinner by King Abdullah II.
The controversy triggered by comments made by Borno State Governor, Kashmir Shettima, at a book launch in Abuja chronicling how and why former President Goodluck Jonathan lost the 2015 election, have taken a new turn with northern leaders warning the former presidents aide not to insult Shettima over his comments.It will he recalled that at the ceremony in Abuja on Thursday, Governor Shettima, who chaired the event, had chided Jonathan for blaming him over the kidnap of Chibok girls and for not doing enough to rescue the young women.Shettima also carpeted those calling for the restructuring of Nigeria, saying he did not find any merit in the advocacy.But latching on the comments, a former aide to Jonathan on Social Media, Reno Omokri, lampooned Shettima for daring to cast aspersions on Jonathan , whom he claimed did more than any other leader for Nigeria.Omorki claimed that Shettima paved the ay for the abduction of the Chibok girls and should blame himself and not Jonathan.But apparently irked by Omokris claims, Northern leaders under the aegis of Northern Emancipation Network, on Sunday rose in Defence of Shettima and warned Omokri to desist from pouring invectives on the governor.In a strongly worded mail sent to Omokri and copied to Vanguard, the President of the northern group, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, drew his attention to the fact that the north holds Shettima in very high esteem and would not allow him to get away with any abuse on their leader.The group asked Omokri to also note that Shettima had distinguished himself in governance and delivery of dividends of democracy to his people in his capacities as the governor of Borno State and as the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum.Omokri should note that the North of today does not tolerate disrespect for its leaders from any quarter, Suleiman said.We find Omokris argument as pedestrian as it is disappointing, Suleiman said, advising Omokri to always secure solid grounds on which to base his arguments lest he keeps embarrassing his paymaster in the market square.Its no longer acceptable for irresponsible commentators like Omokri to insult any northern leader and expect to go away with it. He said that northerners would only be disposed o a Nigeria in which leaders from every section re mutually respected.
US President Donald Trump denied Sunday having asked then FBI director James Comey to stop investigating ex-national security advisor...

US President Donald Trump denied Sunday having asked then FBI director James Comey to stop investigating ex-national security advisor Michael Flynn, as the Russia meddling probe darkened what would otherwise have been a victorious week for the Republican president.Trump appeared to be backtracking furiously from a tweet Saturday that deepened suspicions that he engaged in obstruction of justice  an impeachable offence  in the Russia scandal haunting his presidency.In that Twitter post, Trump said he had fired Flynn in February for lying not just to the vice president but also to Comeys FBI, which was probing Flynn over his pre-inauguration contacts with the Russian ambassador about US sanctions imposed by Barack Obama against Russia for interfering in the US election.Comey has testified under oath to lawmakers that a day after firing Flynn, Trump asked him to drop the Flynn probe.If Comey is to be believed, the Saturday tweet suggests Trump asked the FBI to lay off someone in his administration that Trump now acknowledges he knew had committed a felony  lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.But on Sunday, Trump insisted, I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!Trump fired Comey in May and has said he did so with the Russia probe in mind.Comey himself seemed to be addressing the latest developments in an Instagram message: To paraphrase the Buddha  Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun; the moon; and the truth.Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, said Sunday suspicions of obstruction of justice by Trump are growing.Schiff argued that if the evidence shows that Trump knew about and directed Flynns Russia contacts, and then asked Comey to drop the matter after his lies to the FBI came to light, Then you get the case of obstruction of justice.I think thats the significance of this context in which the president was intervening, he said on ABCs This Week.Senator Diane Feinstein told NBC: I think what we are beginning to see is a case of obstruction of justice.Clearly he is making progress, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said of special counsel Robert Muellers investigation.And in the wake of Trumps seemingly self-incriminating Twitter post on Saturday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, said he had advice for him.You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril. Id be careful if I were you, Mr. President. Id watch it, Graham told CBS.In an ominous turn for the president, Flynn on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and pledged to cooperate with Mueller.White House officials told The New York Times that in his tweet Saturday Trump was only referencing Flynns guilty plea for lying to the FBI about his conversations with then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.Trumps personal lawyer John Dowd told ABC News that he had drafted the tweet and had done so in a sloppy manner.Muellers focus goes beyond possible collusion with Russia to business dealings and whether Trump himself tried to thwart the investigation.Trump also expressed anger Sunday over word that a senior FBI counterintelligence official, Peter Strzok, was removed from the Russia investigation over the summer for sending text messages critical of Trump.Strzok had also worked on the probe into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state.*AFP
The U.S. Coast Guard rescued an ailing 92-year-old man from a charter fishing boat off the coast of Atlantic City on Sunday.

The man was experiencing possible cardiac issues aboard Fish Finder II two miles off shore around 12:22 p.m. when the Coast Guard was notified.

The rescue boat brought him ashore, where he was taken by ambulance to AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center in Atlantic City. He was in stable condition.

There were approximately 10 people aboard the boat, a Coast Guard spokesman said.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
A state assemblywoman accused of driving while intoxicated must face the charge against her, despite claims that a blood sample taken the night of a crash was drawn illegally, a judge has ruled.

Maria Rodriguez-Gregg, R-Burlington, sought to suppress results of a blood test, arguing that the sample was taken without her consent because she did not sign all the necessary forms, and also challenged whether there was probable cause for the test.

A judge, however, ruled late last week that the toxicology results are admissible in court, due to "the totality of surrounding circumstances" that indicate she did not refuse the test.

"There was no evidence that the defendant was forced or coerced to submit to the giving of the blood sample," Burlington County's Municipal Court Presiding Judge Dennis McInerney wrote in a ruling Thursday. "The record is clear that sufficient, credible evidence exists for the state to believe that the defendant drove her vehicle in Mount Laurel after consuming alcohol."

Warning: The video below contains explicit language.

Rodriguez-Gregg, 36, was rear-ended while at a Route 73 stoplight in April. When a Mount Laurel police officer arrived at the scene and spoke to the assemblywoman, he reported first smelling marijuana, and then later said there was alcohol on her breath.

A search of her vehicle did not recover any drugs or open containers of alcohol, according to a court documents. She said she had smoked cigars earlier in the evening.

In a body cam video of the arrest, Rodriguez-Gregg claimed she was being "harassed" by the police, and notes that she is a sitting assemblywoman.

"Do you really think that I'm (expletive) smoking marijuana at this time of night?" she said. "All right, I'm calling my lawyer."

The encounter continued to escalate, with Rodriguez-Gregg using expletives and arguing with police as they ask her to step out of her vehicle.

An officer asked twice if she had been drinking that evening, but Rodriguez-Gregg allegedly did not answer, and also refused to perform a field sobriety test, according to court documents. She was placed under arrest and taken to the police station.

At the station, Rodriguez-Gregg reported neck, back and chest pain, and asked to be taken to a hospital for treatment. Officers accompanied her there, and sought a blood sample to determine if she was intoxicated.

She then signed two consent forms, one from the hospital and another from the blood kit, but did not sign a required consent form from the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office and instead interupted the officer reading the form, according to court documents.

John Adams, a labor and employment attorney who is also friend of Rodriguez-Gregg's father, was present with her at the hospital. Neither he nor the assemblywoman objected to the blood test, and they did not demand the police obtain a warrant, according to court documents.

That blood test revealed "some indication of alcohol," her new attorney, Edward Kologi, previously told NJ Advance Media.

"I attribute her excited state not as the result of intoxication, but rather, the result of someone who was just in a horrible accident and is basically not getting heard when she was, in effect, the victim," he said in September.

The court, however, found her demeanor at the scene probable cause for intoxication, and maintained that she had consented to the test.

"From these facts, the Court can infer that she was aware of her right to refuse to submit to the test and request a warrant," the ruling states. "The defendant made a voluntary decision after consulting with her attorney to submit to the blood test. The fact that she interrupted the officer when he was reading the Prosecutor's Consent form and refused to sign the form does not negate her consent to submit to the test."

The assemblywoman, who was first elected in 2013 and re-elected in 2015, opted not to seek re-election this year. Her third term comes to a close next month.

No future court dates had been set for the case as of Monday afternoon.

"We're in total disagreement with the decision," Kologi said in a call Monday, noting that the ruling disregarding facts of the case and the law regarding her consent to a blood test.

He said he is in the process of reviewing the ruling with Rodriguez-Gregg and exploring their next steps in the legal proceedings.

"There was no reason why they could not have gotten a warrant," Kologi said.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Patricia Lund says she has been waiting for her money for eight years.

Eight years.

Tired of waiting, the 79-year-old woman is heading to court.

Her battle is against a Continuing Care Retirement Community, or CCRC, and it harkens back to one of the most outrageous cases to ever cross Bamboozled's desk.

Before we get into the details of Lund's case, let's start with the background.

CCRCs include independent living communities, assisted living facilities and long-term care units. These are attractive to some seniors because they wouldn't have to move if they need increased health care.

Some 10,000 New Jerseyans live in 25 CCRCs in the state, according to the Organization of Resident Associations of New Jersey (ORANJ), a group that supports CCRC residents.

Seniors who move into a CCRC typically pay a large entrance fee that can cost several hundred thousand dollars. One big selling point is that a percentage of the entrance fee will be returned to the resident if they move -- or to their estate if they die -- but not until the unit is reoccupied by a new resident.

And that's where it gets ugly.

Earlier this year, we brought you the story of Ed Nagle, a Whitehouse Station man whose mother lived in a CCRC. For five long years after his mother died, Nagle waited for the refund for his mother's unit. He said the CCRC did nothing but delay. It didn't actively try to re-sell her unit, Nagle said, and when he tried to help, he was turned away.

Nearly $250,000 was in limbo.

Ed Nagle fought to get back a refund from a CCRC for his late mother's estate.

Nagle finally accepted refund worth 63 percent of the value rather than the 90 percent promised in the contract.

Making matters worse, Nagle had previously filed his mother's estate tax return, paying more than $14,000 based on the anticipated full refund from the CCRC. But because he accepted the lower refund, his mother's estate no longer owed the taxes.

He filed for a refund.

"Surprise -- a catch-22. There is a three-year statute of limitations on refunding paid estate taxes," Nagle said at the time. "So our family got ripped by the CCRC and then ripped by the state of New Jersey."

In all, the Nagle family was out $88,481.

Nagle went on a mission, trying to pass legislation to require a time limit on CCRC refunds, calling it a "common sense cure."

He found a supporter in Sen. Christopher "Kip" Bateman (R-Somerset), who introduced a bill that would require CCRCs to give refunds within a year of vacancy.

When Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz (R-Union) heard about the bill, she introduced companion legislation in the Assembly.

Lobbyists representing the CCRCs fought against the bills.

Nagle became worried the lobbyists would win the fight, so he urged Bateman to introduce a second bill. This one would remove the statute of limitations to file an amended tax return in cases where refunds from CCRCs are delayed. The Assembly had a similar bill.

Those haven't passed yet, either.

Which brings us to a new, shameful CCRC case.

EIGHT YEARS?

Patricia Lund moved into The Fountains at Cedar Parke in Atco, Waterford Township, in March 2007.

She paid an entrance fee of $177,870, and the contract said if she moved out, she would get back 90 percent of the fee 30 days after the unit was reoccupied.

There was no time limit on giving the refund.

"The 90 percent refund was a big selling point that they repeated many times," Lund said. "I think they tried to give me a false sense of security that I would get most of my money back if I ever decided to move out."

Patricia Lund, left, plays Wii Mario Kart with her grandson Jack Lund at her son Jon's home in Cherry Hill.

After living there two years, Lund decided to move in with her son, daughter-in-law and grandson. She planned to use some of the refund money from The Fountains to convert a portion of the Cherry Hill home as private living space for her use.

Lund gave written notice to the facility that she'd be out on June 30, 2009.

"I never expected that eight years after I moved out I would still not have received my money back," Lund said.

That's right. The Fountains still has her $160,083 -- the 90 percent refund, she alleges.

In a lawsuit filed last week in Superior Court in Camden County, Lund alleges not only that the facility still has her money, but it is "utilizing apartment B-202 as a model to show to prospective new residents before steering prospective new residents to purchase other units..." the lawsuit says.

If her old place is used as a model, how is it ever going to be sold?

The suit claims violations of the Consumer Fraud Act, breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation.

Lund's attorney, Donald Browne, Jr. of Bernetich, Hatzell & Pascu in Cherry Hill, said The Fountains is not living up to its end of the bargain and it has no incentive to return Lund's money.

"This is unfair to the residents because The Fountains control the sales process," Browne said. "If The Fountains steer a new resident to a different unit, they get to continue to keep Patricia's money interest free."

We reached out to The Fountains for comment.

Murphy Vandervelde, the owner, said he couldn't comment because of the litigation.

LEGISLATIVE RELIEF?

Lund's case once again spotlights this practice, and it clearly demonstrates the need for specific consumer protections.

When we wrote about Nagle's case, we asked Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex), chair of the Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens committee, why there were delays to hear the CCRC refund bill in committee.

Vitale promised the bill would be heard.

After more delays because lobbyists for the CCRCs wanted to meet with legislators, it was finally heard on May 15. (You can listen to the hearing here.)

Nagle testified, as did industry representatives.

To date, nothing more has happened.

Bateman didn't return our requests for comment, but Nagle said Bateman's office told him last month that the estate tax legislation -- S3144 -- would probably have to be reintroduced in the next session.

Nagle continues to fight for the legislation even though it won't help his family, and he said "Bravo!" to Lund.

"Seems to me the CRCC bad faith and bad actions are quite clearly demonstrated," Nagle said of Lund's suit. "This CRCC bad action is bold and unimaginable."

Browne, Lund's attorney, said he doesn't understand how legislators wouldn't be in favor of a law that would require timely refunds.

"It continues to disgust me when I see advertising for senior communities that paint such a rosy picture, when I know that behind the scenes the industry uses lobbyists and political donations to keep the deck stacked in their favor," Browne said.

So, dear readers, that's the story. If you believe this bill is worth fighting for, contact your legislators and show your support. You can find their contact information here.

Any new legislation will be too late for Lund, but it could help thousands of seniors in the years to come.

"The Fountains have my money and have no incentive to sell my unit and pay me what I am owed," Lund said, noting she has been trying to settle this for years without involving the courts. "I feel completely ignored. I feel like they took advantage of me."

We'll keep you posted on the case.

Have you been Bamboozled? Reach Karin Price Mueller at Bamboozled@NJAdvanceMedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KPMueller. Find Bamboozled on Facebook. Mueller is also the founder of NJMoneyHelp.com.

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A 658-km high-speed railway line linking Xi'an in northwest China's Shaanxi Province with the southwestern metropolis of Chengdu will begin operation on December 6, Chinese rail authorities said Sunday.

A bullet train passes through Mianyang, Sichuan province, during a trial run on Tuesday. The Xi'an-Chengdu High-Speed Railway is expected to formally open next week. CAO NING/FOR CHINA DAILY

Boasting a designated speed of 250 kph, the railway line will cut the current travel time between the two cities by about 7 hours to just 3 hours and 27 minutes.

Nineteen trains are scheduled to run in each direction between Xi'an and Chengdu daily during the initial phase.

As the country's first high-speed railway to run through the Qinling Mountains, the route passes through the habitats of giant pandas, golden monkeys, and crested ibis.

Various measures have been taken to protect these endangered species by creating "an environmentally-friendly" line, said an official from China Railway Corporation.

The railway will also provide full 4G network coverage.

As 55 percent of the route's total length is made up of tunnels, China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom have run signal cables throughout the tunnels to ensure travelers have mobile signal and internet access.

The new line integrates China's Qingling Mountains into the rapidly developing China National "Eight Vertical and Eight Horizontal" high-speed railway network, and it is aimed at boosting regional economic development, said the official.
Robin Wright will lead the final season of "House of Cards," which will move on without Kevin Spacey, Netflix announced on Monday.

Netflix cut ties with Spacey, the South Orange native who played main character Frank Underwood in the series, on Nov. 3 after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against the actor came to light in recent weeks. Wright co-stars as Underwood's wife Claire. Since Spacey has been removed from show's cast, fans have called for the actress to front the show.

Wright, 51, will head up last season, which will include eight episodes and resume production in 2018.

"We are excited to bring closure to fans," Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "House of Cards," which debuted in 2013, was Netflix's first original, self-commissioned series. The streaming drama claimed six Emmys and 46 nominations. (Wright won the best actress Emmy.)

Spacey, 58, is accused of groping a number of men and making sexual advances on (and in one case, having a sexual relationship with) boys as young as 14. Shortly after actor Anthony Rapp alleged to BuzzFeed that Spacey had climbed on top of him in the 1980s, when he was 14 and the actor was 26, Netflix announced that the show would end after its sixth season. (In a statement, Spacey said he did not recall the incident, but apologized to Rapp, saying that if it did happen, then it would have translated to drunken behavior. He was criticized for deflecting from the accusations by coming out as gay in the same statement.)

The Hollywood Reporter says that two episodes of the sixth season had already been completed when Rapp went public with the allegations, and that the final season was originally supposed to last 13 episodes.

The report also notes that in "House of Cards," the Michael Dobbs book that inspired the series (which is, in turn, based on a British adaptation of the book, which centers on intrigue in British government), Spacey's character dies, so eliminating Underwood from the show may not prove so difficult.

Just after the show went on an indefinite hiatus, eight "House of Cards" crew members told CNN Spacey was known to grope male employees, with one production assistant saying Spacey had stuck his hand down his pants.

On Nov. 16, London's Old Vic theater, where Spacey was an artistic director for 11 years, announced that 20 people allege Kevin Spacey engaged in sexual misconduct during and before his tenure there.

Netflix has also axed plans for a Gore Vidal biopic that was supposed to star Spacey, and Ridley Scott, director of the upcoming film "All the Money in the World," quickly replaced Spacey with actor Christopher Plummer in the role of oil magnate Jean Paul Getty, reshooting all of the actor's scenes in time for the movie's Dec. 22 release. Spacey was also cut out of CBS' recent 50th anniversary special of "The Carol Burnett Show" for which he had performed a musical number with Burnett, Kristin Chenoweth and Bernadette Peters.

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
A 23-year-old man was the victim of a homicide in Vailsburg Park in Newark on Saturday evening, Essex County authorities said Sunday.

A spokesperson for the county prosecutor's office identified Richard Culver, of Newark, as the victim of a fatal shooting in the county park, which spans 30 acres in the city's West Ward near Oraton Parkway and South Orange Avenue.

No further details were immediately available about the shooting, which is under investigation by the prosecutor's office.

Thomas Moriarty may be reached at tmoriarty@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ThomasDMoriarty. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Louie, a Maltese-Shih Tzu mix, has lost one of his eyes, and suffers from tremors. Lexie, an 11-year-old Yorkshire Terrier is missing, separated from the family she lived with nearly all her life.

The dogs' owners say they are just two of the victims of Nicole DeBellis, a Fairfield pet sitter they are suing for the allegedly negligent care of their furry friends.

According to a civil suit filed in Essex County on Sept. 22, Louie's owner Gina Luongo, and Lexie's owner Rosa Cinque, of Fairfield and North Caldwell, respectively, blame DeBellis for the sad fates of their dogs.

Loungo claims she left Louie with DeBellis in December 2016 and the sitter's much larger dog attacked the small canine. As a result of the attack, Louie lost one eye, and suffered several other injuries that have left him with recurring tremors, the suit states.

In July, Cinque left Lexie with DeBellis during a weekend vacation, according to the lawsuit. The dog went missing, and has yet to be found, the suit claims. DeBellis waited to inform the family of the dog's disappearance, and did little to try to find her, the lawsuit says.

DeBellis "has proven to be, at the very least, incapable and/or severely incompetent, at caring for animals," the lawsuit says.

Lexie, an 11-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, is missing and assumed dead, a law firm representing her owner says. (Submitted photo)

The filing, which cites several other alleged instances of the mistreatment of other pets, claims negligence and breach of contract.

DeBellis did not return a phone call last week seeking comment. Her attorney has not responded to an email seeking comment.

On her CareGuide profile, DeBellis describes herself as a stay-at-home mother who grooms and boards animals in her house.

"I treat them like they are my own. They are in a family setting, and get lots of love, hugs and kisses," her profile reads.

But Darren DelSardo, the attorney representing Luongo and Cinque, said the description did not live up to the reality.

"As someone who represents herself to the public as a professional and compassionate pet sitter, Mrs. DeBellis has failed to live up to the portrayal of her talents," he said.

Though the filing does not cite a specific monetary amount, the two women are suing for damages, attorney's fees, and other relief.

"We are not looking for financial gain or remuneration because no amount of money could relieve the sadness that the loss of Lexie has brought to my son and I," Cinque said in a statement.

The two women "are really seeking acknowledgment of responsibility on the part of Mrs. DeBellis and a charitable donation to help other animals that have been neglected," the law firm said.

Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Two people were taken to a local hospital this afternoon following a two-car crash on Route 440 in Jersey City.

Traffic was snarled in both directions on the busy highway after the 1:30 p.m. crash in Route 440's northbound lanes near Suburbia Terrace, said freelance photographer Joe Shine, who was at the scene this afternoon.

Shine said a woman who was behind the wheel of a blue Chevrolet compact car told police she was traveling southbound on Route 440 when another vehicle cut her off, forcing her to veer over the highway's divider and head into oncoming northbound traffic.

Her vehicle then struck a Hyundai SUV before both vehicles came to a stop, Shine added.

The driver of the Chevrolet was able to walk into ambulance, while the man who was driving the Hyundai was taken into an ambulance on a stretcher, Shine said.

Official details on the crash were not yet available, but a spokeswoman for the Jersey City police and fire departments said the injuries are not considered life-threatening.

The two patients were taken to Jersey City Medical Center, Shine added.
JERSEY CITY -- A Jersey City police officer charged in a 100-count indictment with three fellow officers has agreed to testify for the state against his co-defendants, who are charged with offenses related to falsifying time sheets.

In court today, defense attorney Jeff Garrigan said Officer Michael Maietti has given a 151-page statement to prosecutors and is expected to testify for the state in the trial of Lt. Kelly Chesler and Police Officer Michael O'Neill and retired Capt. Joseph Ascolese.

All four officers were suspended without pay following their indictment on charges related to related to off-duty details, including conspiracy, falsifying records, official misconduct and a pattern of official misconduct.

Garrigan, who represents Chesler, held up the thick transcript of Maietti's statement at today's hearing before Hudson County Superior Court Judge Mirtha Ospina and asked for a 60-day adjournment in light of the new information.

"How am I supposed to pick a jury when my client doesn't know all the evidence against her," said Garrigan.

Garrigan called Maietti's agreement to testify "a significant event" that would require the defense to obtain additional documents referenced in his statement and to conduct additional investigation prior to trial.

Jury selection for the trial was to begin tomorrow and testimony was to begin on Jan. 2. Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Pete Stoma did not object to the request for an adjournment.

Ospina told the defense attorneys to seek permission for an adjournment from Hudson County Superior Court Acting Presiding Criminal Division Judge Paul DePascale.

In his argument for the adjournment, Garrigan said "We are going to pick a jury tomorrow and I don't even know the jury I want... Obviously, there is a lot to be done."

At today's hearing, O'Neill's lawyer argued that his client should be tried separately. He said, in part, that O'Neill's co-defendants could provide exculpatory evidence related to his client, but he could not call them to the witness stand if the three were being tried together. Ospina denied the motion.

Garrigan also said he was representing another Jersey City police officer, who is a potential witness in the case, in an unrelated matter. He said that may represent a conflict and he would need some time to assess the issue.

In the deal that led Maietti to turn state's evidence, he would be allowed to enter the pretrial trial intervention program, according to statements in court today.

PTI provides a route for first-time offenders to undergo a period of supervised release. If the defendant fulfills their obligations in the program, the charges are wiped from the their record.
Embattled Jersey City Councilman Chris Gadsden, fighting for his political life in tomorrow's runoff election in Ward B, is alleging that his opponent and her campaign team stole pieces of his campaign literature from West Side homes on Saturday.

Gadsden, who filed a complaint about the matter with police yesterday, told The Jersey Journal that after he and his team dropped off campaign fliers at homes on Ege Avenue and surrounding streets late Saturday afternoon, the fliers disappeared and were replaced with those touting his opponent, Mira Prinz-Arey.

The councilman said he confronted three workers aligned with Prinz-Arey on Saturday who were holding bags filled with Gadsden's fliers. They told him they were just "cleaning up," he said.

"What's your campaign strategy, to undo what I've done?" Gadsden said he told them. "Leave me alone, leave my stuff alone and just run Mira's campaign."

One of the men Gadsden said was holding bags of his fliers is Phil Kenny, the former Ward B councilman who resigned in 2009 when he pleaded guilty to taking bribes. A phone call seeking comment from Kenny was not returned.

Gadsden, 43, finished in second place on Election Day against two opponents, including first-place finisher Prinz-Arey, an ally of Mayor Steve Fulop. Prinz-Arey finished just 23 votes from a first-ballot victory but did not top 50 percent of the vote, so the two are facing off tomorrow. There are runoffs in Wards A, B, C and E.

Reached by text, Prinz-Arey did not deny that members of her campaign team removed Gadsden's fliers from West Side homes, as the councilman is alleging. She chalked his police report up to "election funny season."

"I think any Jersey City resident knows that unfortunately campaigns get heated in the home stretch on all sides," she said. "We have seen our opponents' volunteers take down our signs and we just deal with it and push forward."

In response, Gadsden said, "I don't have to accept that you're out here playing dirty. Just stop it."

Fulop is hoping to tighten his control of the nine-member council after the votes are all counted in tomorrow's runoffs. He and four council allies were re-elected by healthy margins on Nov. 7.

During his one year on the council, Gadsden was never a vocal Fulop critic, but two sources with knowledge of the matter say Fulop was angered when Gadsden turned down Fulop's offer to run for re-election on the mayor's ticket and ran instead with Fulop challenger Bill Matsikoudis. A request for comment from Fulop's campaign was not returned.

Gadsden also told police one of his council colleagues, Fulop ally Council President Rolando Lavarro, helped take some of his fliers and replace them with Prinz-Arey's.

Frank Gilmore, a Gadsden supporter, posted a live video on Facebook Saturday night that appears to show Gadsden speaking to one of Prinz-Arey's campaign workers and yelling at Lavarro walking down a West Side street. Facebook removed the video, telling Gilmore it does not allow "posts that bully private individuals."

Calls seeking comment from Lavarro were not returned.

A Lincoln High School vice principal, Gadsden is seeking his first full term. He joined the council last year after a special election to fill a vacancy.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- UN General Assembly President Miroslav Lajcak on Sunday expressed regret over a U.S. decision to withdraw from the global migration compact, a UN-led process toward safe, orderly and regular migration.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been informed of the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to end participation in the process that would achieve the first intergovernmentally negotiated agreement on international migration by 2018, said the U.S. mission to the United Nations in a press statement on Saturday.

Lajcak regretted the U.S. decision, saying no country can handle international migration alone.

"In the (2016) New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, all UN member states acknowledged that no one state can manage international migration on its own. Furthermore, they committed to strengthening global governance of migration. To that end, member states agreed at the highest level to launch a process leading to the adoption of a global compact in 2018," said Brenden Varma, the spokesman for Lajcak, in a statement.

"The role of the United States in this process is critical as it has historically and generously welcomed people from all across the globe and remains home to the largest number of international migrants in the world. As such, it has the experience and expertise to help ensure that this process leads to a successful outcome."

Lajcak stressed that migration is a global phenomenon that demands a global response and that multilateralism remains the best way to address global challenges, said the statement.

Despite the U.S. withdrawal, the United Nations should not miss this opportunity to improve the lives of millions of people throughout the world through global migration compact, it said.

U.S. participation in the compact process began in 2016, following the Obama administration's decision to join the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants.

"The New York Declaration contains numerous provisions that are inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies and the Trump administration's immigration principles. As a result, President Trump determined that the United States would end its participation in the compact process that aims to reach international consensus at the UN in 2018," said the press statement of the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Nikki Haley said: "Our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country. The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty."

Following the September 2016 New York Declaration, the General Assembly started to develop this global compact in April 2017. The General Assembly will hold an intergovernmental conference on international migration in 2018 with a view to adopting the global compact.
Tim Cook

Artificial intelligence (AI) will never be a threat to humanity, according to remarks by Internet titans at the 4th World Internet Conference that started on Dec. 3 in Wuzhen, Zhejiang.

The development of AI technology is another revolution in human history, said Tim Cook, CEO of technology giant Apple, adding that it will help improve peoples work, especially in education and medical services.

He believes that technologies are not developed with good or evil intentions, but it is everyones responsibility to keep them people-oriented.

Cook said he does not worry that robots will think like humans, but thinks humans will think more like robots.

Pony Ma

Pony Ma, founder of Chinese tech firm Tencent, noted that AI is being developed to serve people better.

Tencents projects this year are mostly related with AI, visual reality, and other cutting-edge technologies, Pony Ma introduced. The company has made remarkable achievements in various fields with increased investment in new technologies. It has established its first overseas AI laboratory in the US state of Seattle.

AI will embrace a broader application in medical science and transportation, and it should not be considered a threat to human beings, he added.

Lei Jun, CEO of the promising Chinese company Xiaomi, agreed with Mas point, saying that integrated development serves as an important driving force. He called AI a key technology in the development of the digital economy.

Integration itself is innovation, because the application of the Internet and the technologies in each field is a result of innovation-driven development, Lei added.

E-commerce giant Alibabas chairman Jack Ma, a four-time attendee at the conference, said the human race has only developed less than 10% of its brain capacity, and machines with a similar level of development will never be comparable with human beings.

I believe that robots will bring more dignity, value, and creativity for humans in work, he said, adding that people worked like machines in the past 30 years, and robots will be turned into human-like machines in the next three decades.

However, the ultimate goal, he said, is to make machines machine, and humans human.

He stressed that instead of worrying about robots taking human jobs, people should embrace new technologies and solve new problems. The world is entering a new era of opportunities, and the digital economy will reshape the global economy, he said.
A New Orleans woman who avoided a life sentence for killing her two children because she was found to be insane at the time of the crime moved
Former congresswoman Corrine Brown walks into Federal Court accompanied by pastor Rudolph McKissick, Sr. Brown appeared in Federal Court to be sentenced on fraud charges. (Bob Mack/The Florida Times-Union via AP)
A male was injured in a shooting in the 3800 block of Dulaney Lane in Harvey on Dec. 3, 2017.(File image)
Chris Borges, a New Orleans native, is the executive chef of Josephine Estelle at the Ace hotel.(Courtesy of Ace)
Around 1,000 government officials and senior business executives will attend the 2017 Fortune Global Forum, which will open Wednesday in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Johnson and Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky, Executive Chairman of Ford Motor Company Bill Ford, Chairman and CEO of Tencent Holdings Ma Huateng, Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma, and Lenovo Chairman Yang Yuanqing are among the participants expected to attend the forum, according to a press conference held on Sunday.

By the end of November, 388 companies have confirmed that they will attend the event. Among them, 152 are in the worlds top 500 and 72 are leading enterprises in their industry.

The number of enterprises and individuals will hit a record high, according to Cai Chaolin, executive committee director of the Guangzhou Fortune Global Forum.

Under theme of Openness and Innovation: Shaping the Global Economy, the government officials and business executives will gather to exchange views and discuss development and cooperation in the scientific innovation.

The forum will promote Chinas participation in global economic governance. Guangzhou will take its development as an instance to inject wisdom into the forum, and share its experience with attendees from across the globe.

During the forum, mayors of major cities across the globe will share governance experience and deepen interaction and cooperation with business leaders.

The Fortune Global Forum is a famous brand launched by the Fortune Magazine in 1995. It has been held 14 times to date. The Forum convenes world leaders, heads of global businesses, presidents, CEOs, and senior managers from different cities across the globe to discuss global economic issues.

The Forum is a platform that offers the clearest and most direct insights into global economy. It has been held in China for four times, witnessing the countrys latest achievements in reform and opening up and modernization.
The Upper Gulch section of the Escalante Canyons within Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument features sheer sandstone walls, broken occasionally by tributary canyons. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)
A product of the Palace Museum

Chinas Palace Museum, also called the Forbidden City, which has a history of nearly 600 years, has unexpectedly become an online celebrity on Chinese Internet thanks to its efforts in cultural products and self-promotion.

While some thought that the employees of the Forbidden City only focused on their professions and seldom cared about social responses, the fact is that they also hope to exhibit their research to the public.

According to Shan Jixiang, curator of the Palace Museum, only 30% of the total area of the Forbidden City was open to the public 5 years ago. But in the last year, that figure has expanded to 76%. Now he is planning to open 80% of the palaces grounds to visitors by 2020.

Over the last few years, the museum has established 495 signposts and 1,400 new chairs have been provided. The palace has removed 11,200 square meters of its temporary buildings and provides cold light sources in the open halls.

In addition, the Palace Museum opened an official online store on e-commerce platform Taobao, selling related products. It also started their self-promotion through new media, publishing articles to promote the culture of the museum. It unexpectedly swept the Internet by its humorous style and interesting content.

A product of the Palace Museum

The museum created over 7,000 kinds of cultural products in 2015, making a sales volume of 700 million RMB ($106 million) in the first half of the year, a figure larger than the total volume a year ago.

In 2016, it once again set a record, offering 8,700 kinds of products and achieving a sales volume of over 1 billion RMB.

At the same time, the Palace Museum has published several mobile apps, one of which saw over 200,000 downloads just two weeks after its release in 2013.

The Palace Museum has come closer to the people, sparing no efforts to promote itself among the public since 2013.

In the last month, a total of 18,529 themed calendars of the museum have been sold online. One buyer commented that buying the annual calendar has become routine for him.

Its self-promotion has achieved great results. In 2012, the museum saw 15 million visitors. Though the daily quota of visitors has been set at 80,000, the total number of tourists still keeps rising. The Palace Museum received 16 million visitors last year.

A product of the Palace Museum

In 2016, the museum reached an agreement with seven countries, including Egypt, India, Iraq, Iran, Greece, Italy, and Mexico, proposing for a harmonious relationship between humans and nature, humans and humans, as well as the inward world of the people.

However, Zhang Hongwei, director of the Palace Museum Research Institute, has suggested that the management of the museum stay calm amid the surge in popularity in a bid to maintain enough freedom for research.
Today

Overcast. High 54F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.

Tonight

Clear skies. Low 41F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.

Tomorrow

Except for a few afternoon clouds, mainly sunny. High 56F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
The recent warm weather across eastern Nebraska and southwest Iowa was to come to an abrupt end today as a strong cold front muscles into the region.

The National Weather Service office in Valley said the Council Bluffs-Omaha area, which is under a wind advisory along with most of the region until 8 oclock tonight, can expect northwest wind gusts of 45-50 mph and falling afternoon temperatures.

Get ready, said Ryan McPike, a KMTV meteorologist. Brace yourself for the big weather change.

Elsewhere, a light rain-snow mix is forecast across parts of northern Nebraska this afternoon as a winter-like weather advisory is in effect for the Dakotas. Snow accumulations of less than 1 inch in the northern Nebraska counties of Cherry, Sheridan, Boyd and Keya Paha to 3 inches in the Dakotas are likely, along with wind gusts of 55 mph.

Today in the Council Bluffs-Omaha area, forecasters said there is a slight chance of rain or drizzle this afternoon, with a high temperature around 60 this morning falling into the upper 30s by late afternoon.

Tonight, the low will drop to around 25, the weather service said, and winds could gust as high as 35-40 mph.

Tuesday and Wednesday in the metro area will remain breezy, with west-northwest winds gusting as high as 25-30 mph. The highs both days will be in the mid- to upper 30s. Overnight lows will fall to the lower to mid-20s.

Thursday and Friday will be partly sunny with highs in the lower to mid-30s and lows in the upper teens to around 20.

McPike called for a chance of flurries Wednesday and Thursday.

The weather service said the weekend in the metro area looks a little better  mostly sunny skies and highs in the upper 30s to mid-40s by Sunday.

McPike said the weather change is a big shock compared to the past couple of mild weeks.

The pattern has flip-flopped on us, he said.
Russian-appointed authorities in the occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson say power is being partially restored following what they have called a Ukrainian terrorist attack on power lines. The southern city was cut off from power and water supplies on Sunday after three power lines were damaged in the region that Moscow illegally annexed in September. Ukrainian officials have not responded to the allegations, although officials have previously claimed that Russia was deliberately turning off the power in order to force civilians to evacuate in anticipation of a Ukrainian counteroffensive to retake the city. Rolling blackouts around Ukraine continued on Monday.
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2018 will mark a double anniversary for Montblanc. The historic watch brand Minerva, founded in Villeret in 1858  now the Montblanc Villeret manufacture  which originally specialised in gold pocket watches, before moving on to professional watches and ultra-precise chronometers, is celebrating its 160th anniversary. And Montblancs Star Legacy collection has reached its 20th birthday. For the last ten years or so, Montblanc has explored and exploited Minervas heritage, in terms of movements and also watch aesthetics. The four new watches that Montblanc will unveil at SIHH 2018  two Star Legacy models and two TimeWalkers  are a continuation of that strategy.

Star Legacy

Inspired by Minerva pocket watches, and in particular a model from 1927, the new Star Legacy Automatic Chronograph and Star Legacy Nicolas Rieussec Chronograph share a polished steel case with curved sides, the onion-shaped crown so characteristic of pocket watches, and their clear and legible dials  a heritage of Minerva railway watches  accentuated by elegant black Arabic numerals. The Star Legacy Automatic is a two-pusher chronograph; its automatic MB 25.02 calibre drives not only the hour functions (with a small second at 9 oclock), but also a date, in a window between four and five oclock, two chronograph counters and the chronograph central seconds hand. The classically inspired watch has blued hands pointing to the equally classic railroad tracks around the perimeter of the dial and the chronograph registers. The watch will be priced at EUR 3,990.

Star Legacy Automatic Chronograph  Montblanc

The Star Legacy Nicolas Rieussec Chronograph is a new interpretation of the innovative Nicolas Rieussec monopusher chronograph of 2008, which itself paid tribute to a timekeeping device developed by the watchmaker Rieussec in 1821. This unusual timekeeper revisits the concept of discs that rotate beneath fixed hands for the chronograph minutes and seconds counters. The new version also features a second time zone. The main aesthetic difference from its predecessor lies in the the silvered white guilloche dial, slender Arabic numerals, off-centre time dial and domed chronograph discs. The date has moved to a new position at 6 oclock, and the day-night indicator is at 9 oclock. The blued screws of the new date aperture are echoed in the fixed pointer straddling the two rotating discs, and the hour and minute hands. The silver hand for the second time zone is hollow, as in the previous model. This timepiece is driven by the same self-winding Calibre MB R200, whose twin barrels provide a power reserve of 72 hours. Complete with column wheel, Geneva striping and gilded wheels, it comes at a price of EUR 7,450.

Star Legacy Nicolas Rieussec Chronograph  Montblanc

Timewalker

Montblancs Timewalker collection is also anchored in Minervas chronometric heritage, and embodies the spirit of motor racing. The two new 2018 models echo some of the features, and include a tachymeter function. Inside the 43-mm satin-brushed steel case of the TimeWalker Manufacture Chronograph lies the new MB 25.10 automatic chronograph movement, whose black tungsten rotor brings to mind a steering wheel. The vintage-styled panda dial is surrounded by a black ceramic bezel with engraved tachymetric scale, and the DLC crown carries the black of the dial over onto the case. The red seconds hand, terminated with a Minerva arrow, brings a dynamic touch to this sporty timepiece, whose perforated aged leather strap is a further reminder of its automotive inspiration. With a price under the psychological barrier of 5,000 euros (EUR 4,990), the TimeWalker Manufacture Chronograph is very competitive in its category.

TimeWalker Manufacture Chronograph  Montblanc

The TimeWalker Rally Timer Chronograph Limited Edition, inspired by Minervas Rally Timer from the 1960s with its vertically aligned counters, traces a strong functional line with motor sport. This monopusher chronograph can be transformed into a dashboard clock, which remains perfectly legible thanks to its 50 mm diameter and the clarity of its inverted panda dial. It works equally well as a pocket watch or table clock. The black DLC-treated titanium case can be oriented at either 0 or 180, for optimum convenience while driving. This original timepiece, in a 100-piece limited edition, enjoys the technical advantages of the manually wound MB M16.29 calibre and its 50-hour power reserve, as well as the beauty of its handcrafted decorations, including Geneva striping, circular graining, bevelling and a V-shaped chronograph bridge. It is priced at EUR 37,000.
GRIFFITH  Gracia Dudlicek, Keith and Lori Hall, Al Walus, Jason Babin and Dean Price are not teachers, but when you see them in the classroom, you'd never know.

These engineers, business leaders and parent volunteers are among the industry leaders in Northwest Indiana who are stepping into the classroom to work with students.

Retired mechanical engineer Keith Hall is a senior mentor for Indiana FIRST, a robotics competition. He has helped start, and continues to mentor, numerous robotics teams in the Region, including those at 21st Century Charter School in Gary, Griffith High School's after-school robotics club, East Chicago Central High School, Merrillville High School, Heritage Christian High School, Hobart Scout Explorer Post, School City of Hobart, Munster schools and some schools in the Gary Community School Corp.

Lori Hall is retired from the legal profession and is the volunteer Affiliate Partner for the Indiana First Technical Challenge robotics competition. Her job includes finding the venues for robotics events and obtaining insurance, signing contracts, collecting registration fees and updating the state website.

"We both do a lot of each other's jobs, but mostly I focus on the technical aspect, and she handles the organizational details of the programs," Keith Hall said of he and his wife, Lori Hall.

Both also are listed as staff and operating partners on the Indiana FIRST website. The pair said there are 74 teams at the FTC level in Indiana, along with close to 300 Lego teams.

Lori Hall said the couple get so much joy out of working with students, they treat them like grandchildren.

"I love the light-bulb moments," she said.

"It's such a wonderful process to help a child discover the answer. Sometimes they come up to me for help but I'm not really a scientific person, so I talk them through the process and they discover the answer on their own."

Dudlicek and Babin both became involved in the Griffith High School robotics club because of their children. Dudlicek is a civil engineer at Dyer Vault Co. with two sons in the robotics club. Babin is an electrical repairman at Ford Motor Co. with an eighth-grade daughter interested in robotics and engineering.

Dudlicek said her oldest son, Gabe, a senior at Griffith High School, has wanted to build robots since he began playing with Legos as a youngster. She said once he got to sixth grade, he talked her into helping out with an after-school club, and she's been involved ever since.

The robotics club, now three years old, is preparing for an upcoming FTC competition.

Robotics mentors crucial at other schools, too

The School City of Hammond has numerous robotics teams, and Team Hammond 71 is celebrating 20 years of winning. Year after year, the team has gone to competition and done well with the help of their mentors.

Sherri Silcox, the Michigan City Area Schools Safe Harbor coordinator, said Safe Harbor's Michigan City Robotics Teams have worked with numerous volunteer mentors and businesses since it began seven years ago. Safe Harbor operates the school system's after-school programs.

"I can't stress enough that their leadership is not only important, it (also) is vital to make robotics programs possible and help students succeed," she said. "When businesses connect their engineers and professionals to robotics teams it helps them as well.

"It's an excellent way for companies to grow their young workforce, recruit talented youth and train them to make choices that encourage good employees that stay local.

"Michigan City Robotics had served approximately 300 students on the teams, but outreach in what the teams have done to encourage other students to be their best ... has touched hundreds. We have had 50 or more adult mentors and volunteers since the beginning of the program."

Silcox said Al Walus, of Christopher B. Burke Engineering, helped start the team and has been a lead mentor, grant writer and strategic planning leader ever since.

Dean Price, with Haas and Associates, has been a mentor since Michigan City schools started the team, too, and he is the go-to guy for anything from event setup and outreach events to program implementation. Other mentors include Herb Higgin, retired director of Safe Harbor, and engineering teacher Ralph Gee.

"ArcelorMittal is a valuable sponsor of our team, and mentors have come from there that have helped move the team forward and been very important in assisting students during the build season," Silcox said.

At Griffith, Dudlicek said three of the Griffith High School seniors have gone on to universities around the country to major in engineering or robotics.

Griffith eighth-grader Jacoba Babin said she wants to be a structural engineer.

"I've always liked engineering and I want to help the world, especially on the West Coast making buildings earthquake-resistant," she said. "I've known I wanted to be an engineer since I was 9 and built things with Legos."

Griffith senior Daniel Welch said when he first got on the team last year, he was just learning. "I think I'm going to major in computer programming. I think it's great that we've got so many volunteers. They come in (and) help kids who might otherwise not have had a chance to do this," he said.
CROWN POINT  A 35-year-old man from Crete, Illinois, was sentenced Monday to three years in prison for shooting at his ex-girlfriend's vehicle in Highland.

John Burton III said at his sentencing hearing Monday he was sorry for his actions.

I'm very remorseful, he told Judge Salvador Vasquez. It hurts me to be in this type of predicament.

Burton pleaded guilty Nov. 7 in Lake Criminal Court to criminal recklessness, a level 3 felony, and criminal recklessness, a level 5 felony.

He admitted as part of the plea agreement he shot at his ex-girlfriend's vehicle as she fled her apartment the night of April 15 in the 2100 block of Porte De Leau Court in Highland, according to court records.

The woman was in the vehicle with her 17-year-old babysitter and a co-worker, records state. Burton allegedly chased the woman in his own vehicle before being arrested in Dyer. No one was injured in the shooting.

John Burton Jr., the defendant's father, told Vasquez his son had no criminal record, not even a speeding ticket. He said his son has always worked, and paid support for his three children.

That day  I don't know what happened, the father said.

The babysitter said in a letter to the court she wanted Burton, who has been jailed since his arrest, to remain behind bars.

Vasquez said it was pathetic what Burton did to himself, and the victims, through his reckless actions, but he believed the defendant should not be sentenced to a lengthy prison term.

He noted the defendant had no criminal record, family support and a lengthy work history before sentencing him to three years in prison on each of the two counts, to be served concurrently.
Madisyn Wimple, who turned 9 on Oct. 30, decided to collect donations for St. Jude House rather than receive birthday gifts of her own for the third year running.

Wimple has been collecting these donations in lieu of birthday gifts since her 7th birthday, on which she took donations only from her party guests. Then, when she turned 8, she expanded the project to her entire subdivision. This year, she wanted the whole community to participate, and reached out to local schools, businesses, friends and family members for support.

Wimple calls this yearly act of charity her Spread the Love Project," and wants to show others that you are never too young to impact the community and change lives for the better. I like helping people in need, she said. I like knowing that I can make a difference in someones life. Each year the project has grown larger and gained increasing support from the community, and it shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.

St. Jude House, in Crown Point, pursues a vision where all engage in healthy relationships characterized by the mutual sharing of resources and responsibility.
A Gary City Council member is among two women who will run for a 3rd District House seat of the Indiana General Assembly.

Ragen Hatcher, 39, a Gary city councilwoman and attorney, announced last week she is preparing her campaign.

Jessica Renslow, who announced a month ago, also hopes to win the legislative seat, which represents Gary, Hobart, Lake Station and New Chicago.

Hatcher issued a prepared news release: "I have actively fought for the citizens of Gary for the last ten years and look forward to serving District 3 ... with the same passion and commitment."

Hatcher has the support of state Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, who has represented the 3rd District since 1982. He announced last week he would step down to run for the Lake County Council.

"I will be supporting Ragen Hatcher because of my love and devotion to the Hatcher family, because there are only a limited number of females in the Democratic caucus and there aren't that many attorneys either," Brown said Sunday.

"I don't know how many others will run. I think Ragen will make a wonderful addition to the General Assembly."

Hatcher said, I want to thank Representative Brown for his many years of service."

Ragen Hatcher served as an at-large member of the Gary City Council from 2007 to 2011, when she ran unsuccessfully for Gary mayor. Voters returned her to the City Council in 2015.

Her father, Richard G. Hatcher, made history 50 years ago when he was elected the first black mayor of a major American city.

Renslow is involved in the Neighborhood Spotlight Program, a community development project.
LOWELL  The town will soon begin gradually filling its new, 1-million gallon water tower tank to bring it online.

But when it does, those living in the 40 homes in Heritage Falls subdivision across from the tower's Freedom Park location will notice a drop in water pressure. The Town Council plans to send letters and possibly meet with those residents.

Engineer Craig Hendrix of SEH of Indiana told the council Heritage Falls residents have "artificially pressurized" water from lift station pumps and will go from their current 55 pounds of water pressure to 35 during the filling process. He said the tower will be filled to about half, then added to weekly until filled to the top.

The town's multimillion dollar water improvement project began three years ago and is resulting in a better product and more efficient operation, Hendrix said.

"Maybe your water problem isn't going to be a water problem anymore," he said.

Councilman Will Farrellbegg, D-3rd, noted the town's deep well delivering the most water has lots of iron, sulfur and lime, but that product is expected to benefit from changes in the chemical process that resulted from a recent pilot study.

Hendrix said high velocity pumps will be installed in January, delivering water faster and energy cost savings. By spring, the water plant adjacent to the municipal wellfield should be operating much better, he said.

In other business:

The council tabled its decision on a planned array of solar panels at the wastewater treatment plant on Belshaw Road while it waits for "finding of facts" from the Lowell Police Commission.

The council is looking at ordinances regarding water meters and shutoff valves. Public Works Director Kevin Gray said difficulties to access shutoff valves are creating a dangerous situation for town crews. He said crews must sometimes go into crawl spaces at their own risk. In other cases, residents have installed sidewalks or otherwise covered access to shutoffs with concrete. A zoning amendment requiring flat work be permitted, even with no fee, would help with concrete-covered shutoffs, he said.
To share with friends and brethren The Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (the Everlasting Gospel), and to prepare a people to stand when He returns to redeem His remnant. Also, to share relevant information of current events, and to show how they relate to prophecy; By means of articles, editorials, opinions, scripture readings, and poetry.

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Endrtimes does not necessarily endorse or agree with every opinion expressed in every article/video posted on this site. The information provided here is done so for personal edification; It's up to the reader to separate truth from error, and to examine everything (like the Bereans) from a Biblical perspective. Let the Holy Scriptures be you guide! - - - FAIR USE NOTICE: These pages/videos may contain copyrighted () material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of ecological, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, economic, DEMOCRACY, scientific, MORAL, ETHICAL, and SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior general interest in receiving similar information for research and educational purposes.
PORTAGE  Two men are facing several felony charges after an alleged "one pot meth operation" was found in their car during a traffic stop.

Thomas A. Wenzel, 38, Lake Station, was charged with manufacturing methamphetamine, possession of methamphetamine, possession of two or more precursors and resisting law enforcement by vehicle while Randall J. Szostek, 34, Hobart, was charged with manufacturing methamphetamine, possession of methamphetamine, possession of two or more precursors and possession of a controlled substance with a prior conviction.

The charges came after a traffic stop Thursday afternoon.

According to a police report released Monday, a Portage police officer spotted a 1993 Oldsmobile on Willowcreek Road Thursday afternoon. The car, driven by Wenzel, made a sudden turn onto Sunrise Avenue without signaling. When the officer attempted to stop the car for the traffic violation using lights and sirens, Wenzel allegedly fled west on Sunrise Avenue and then came to a sudden stop at the end of Monnier Street near the Central Elementary School playground where children were outside playing.

Wenzel and Szostek were taken into custody and transported to Porter County Jail.

As an officer began to inventory the car, what appeared to be precursors to a meth lab were found and the Indiana State Police Methamphetamine Suppression Team was called, said police.

The ISP team recovered what appeared to be a "one pot meth operation" along with an HCL (hydrogen chloride) generator and other precursors to manufacturing methamphetamine.

Police also found several pill bottles, small plastic bags often used to package narcotics, 2-inch long straws with a white powdery residue inside, a box of fire starter sticks, an electric blender and two small propane tanks, according to the report. The substance later tested positive for methamphetamine.
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You had to think that at Thanksgiving dinner tables across Indiana and the nation, a number of women were pondering the notion of running for the General Assembly or Congress.

The reasons emanate from Alabama, Congress and the White House. The nation is in the midst of a social upheaval, or to put it in more stark and dangerous terms, a cultural revolution fueled by an array of sexual harassment allegations that began in Hollywood with Harvey Weinstein and have radiated out across newsrooms, boardrooms, Congress and even 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

In the latter stages of the 2016 presidential race, more than a dozen women accused President Donald Trump of sexual harassment or assault.

It has claimed the careers of news anchors Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, actor Kevin Spacey, comedian Louis C.K. and others. It is threatening the political careers of U.S. Sen. Al Franken and U.S. Rep. John Conyers, both Democrats. In Alabama, there is Judge Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, who has been accused of either sexual assault or harassment years ago, with at least one of them just 14 years old at the time.

The three main candidates in the Indiana Republican Senate race  U.S. Reps. Todd Rokita and Luke Messer, and former legislator Mike Braun  all have said Moore should step aside. Messer said, That would be the best thing for the state of Alabama and our country.

U.S. Sen. Todd Young also called on Moore to step aside, saying, After giving Roy Moore ample time to unequivocally deny the disturbing allegations against him, those allegations remain far more persuasive than the denials. Roy Moore should immediately drop out of the race.

Vice President Mike Pences Great America Committee PAC began making contributions to three gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidates last week, but not to Moore.

Rokita and Braun are reportedly seeking the support of Steve Bannon, of Breitbart, a former aide to Trump and a backer of Moore who is seeking his own revolution. This comes in contrast with congressional Republican leaders from Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who have said they not only want him to resign the nomination, but if he wins, wont allow him to be seated.

And Moore could win. While the Real Clear Politics polling composite has Democrat Doug Jones leading 46.8 percent to 46 percent, the latest JMC Analytics Poll had Moore up 49-44 percent.

Trump has tweeted support for Moore. Prior to Thanksgiving, Trump said, "He denies it. He says it didn't happen. And look, you have to look at him also." Hey, that strategy worked for Trump in 2016.

The media asked Trump about whether this was a pivotal moment in sexual assault on American women, with a PBS/NPR/Marist poll showing that 35 percent have been sexually harassed in the workplace. Trump responded, Women are very special. I think its a very special time, a lot of things are coming out, and I think thats good for our society. And I think its very very good for women, and Im very happy these things are coming out.

Moore campaign spokesman Dean Young said, We dont believe these women. Its just that simple. And yall can keep trotting them out if you want to.

The Republican optics against women have been breathtakingly bad this past week.

If you want to keep tabs on someone prepared to trot em out, watch Shannon Watts, formerly of Zionsville. She created the Moms Demand Action group seeking gun law reform, which has attracted a million members. Factor that in with the female march in Washington a day after Trump was inaugurated (which dwarfed his crowd in size, hands down) and you get more than a whiff of a movement assembling.

Watts has been active on Twitter, noting recently, I am thankful for badass women who refuse to go backwards."

The Washington Post notes that during the 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings in Congress that featured allegations from Anita Hill, there were only two female senators. In 1992, four were elected, along with a record 24 elected to the House.

Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist close to Mitch McConnell, explained the Moore dilemma to Axios: Either were saddled with a Democrat in a seat that ought to be Republican, or were saddled with a brand anvil thats going to drag down the president, drag down the Senate, drag down the party and plunge the Senate into immediate turmoil when he gets there.

Republican U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake said in a hot mic moment, If we become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast.

A number of Hoosier women might be asking on the campaign trail next year, Would you like some humble pie with your toast?
On Nov. 7, Hammond voters' support for the Vote Yes for Hammond Schools Referendum Initiative became a reality.

Through your efforts, the School City of Hammond moved another step forward into providing 21st century quality education for students in the Hammond public schools.

This initiative will also have a positive impact overall in the Hammond community as well. Our gratitude is extended to everyone who supported this cause.

We further acknowledge and appreciate the support of Mayor Thomas McDermott and Indiana House Rep. Linda Lawson, D-Hammond.

The goal of the referenda is intended to provide a new school facility replacing the 100-year-old Hammond High School. In addition, it will provide upgrades in all schools across the district regarding technology, safety, security and capital improvements.

Another phase to the referenda will help attract and maintain highly qualified personnel to work with our students, continue to provide transportation to general ed students and bring technologically focused programs to our schools so Hammond graduates will be considered competitive upon graduation.

All of these efforts are intended to help further support the growth and quality of life in our community.

The Hammond Board of School Trustees and the entire staff and administration of the school city are pleased and proud of the support given to us by the majority number of yes votes.

We are eagerly looking forward to taking on the challenges identified in the referendum that will move the school city and community into the 21st century.
Editor's note: This is the second of two columns on happenings in the United Arab Emirates, which is a federation comprised of seven Arab states.

In the late 1970s, when the Shah ruled Iran and before their revolution and the hard-line religious leaders took over, I worked for the American Hospital Association. Being in management, I was privy to lots of interesting information. Communications were exchanged between the Shahs people, the association and a Chicago hospital.

The Shah had some health issues, and there was only one country the international elite came to for the very best medical attention. At the time, a Chicago hospital had the leading specialist in the field pertaining to the Shahs condition.

The Shah of Iran was coming to Chicago.

This was not a unique situation. Through the years heads of state, celebrities and every foreign John Doe who could afford it came to the United States for the very best health care available. We were universally recognized as the premiere destination for diagnoses, treatment and cures.

That just might be changing.

I saw several eye-opening ads on television lately. They were promoting Dubai Health as the new go-to health care destination of the 21st century. I have to admit, before I arrogantly put on my you have got to be kiddingno one beats the U.S. in quality of care smirk, the really impressive images began to appear on the screen. They have built what looks to be an entire health care city.

Sleek, modern, architecturally stunning structures flashed on the screen as direct, seriously scripted voiceovers of a virtual tour explaining what they have to offer exuded state-of the-art health care.

They have a highly rated medical school, research facilities, an alternative medicine building and a state-of-the-art pediatrics hospital, to name only a few of Dubai Healths offerings. It is impressive.

Are we losing our cutting-edge superiority?

Also, this month in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emerites, a $600 million art center has opened in their Cultural District. It, too, is architecturally stunning. But what caught my eye is its name: Louvre Abu Dhabi. Thats right, the Louvre has entered into an agreement to provide some of the finest art in the world for the new center. Its a complex agreement for use of the name, but my guess is the Louvre is being paid very well!

And this is just a cursory look at what the oil-rich states are doing.

Our president has rightly touted the infrastructure advancements of the Emirates and other foreign nations. Roads, high speed rail, airports with Star Trek-ian designs and now advanced health care and even some of the finest art in the world.

They are catching up to us in some areas, and we are lagging behind in others.

It seems to me that we have more than Russia, China and North Korea to worry about when it comes to foreign nations impacting our country. The wealthy oil nations are no longer keeping quiet about their 21st century advancements.

We should be listening.
Who speaks for some our state and Region's largest municipalities?

An antiquated form of local government means that's not always clear.

Indiana law affords two types of municipal government  towns and cities  and we have both in Northwest Indiana.

Under Indiana law, municipalities with at least 2,000 residents can vote through a referendum to become cities.

It's time for Region towns, seven of which are within the state's 10 largest towns and 10 of which are among the largest 20, to give serious consideration to becoming cities.

City governments are led by an elected mayor  a strong central administrator who anchors day-to-day city business and economic development. Meanwhile, a city council handles the fiscal and legislative matters, such as passing new municipal laws.

Under a town government structure, it's less clear who's actually in charge. A town council of equal peers is responsible for everything.

Though councils elect a president on an annual basis, none has a strong central voice, at least by statute.

When emergencies, including natural disasters, arise a mayor has the authority to act quickly on a city's behalf to lead the response. A mayor also has a voters' mandate to create a long-term vision for a city's future.

We've seen the benefits of this in the thriving cities of Valparaiso, Crown Point and Whiting. Vibrant downtowns in Crown Point and Valpo and a booming lakeshore in Whiting are proof positive.

Griffith, a town government, also has seen some economic development successes and downtown rejuvenation in recent years. That's a tribute to the strong leadership of the town council.

But even leaders there, including Town Council President Rick Ryfa, concede the benefits of a city form of government.

Ryfa has said it may be time for his town, the ninth-most populous in the state, to explore the merits of city government.

Griffith, which has led in progressive policing strategies and many other areas, could be a leader in this regard as well.

So many others should follow. Merrilliville has the most residents of any town in Indiana, with an estimated 34,994 in 2016. Strong central leadership could create the kind of vision and accountability to make the municipality far more economically successful and vibrant.

Schererville, Munster, Highland, St. John, Dyer, Chesterton and Cedar Lake all are among the state's largest towns.

All are eligible to seek city status and should begin weighing this option.

Our state and Region continue to be surrounded by competitive opportunity.

The more our municipalities can speak with a unified voice, the more likely we'll shine bright enough to attract more residents and businesses from Illinois and elsewhere.

When great opportunities present themselves, do we want the ability to pounce, or must we discuss everything in fragmented committee? It's time to make a decision.
South Africa and Morocco will resume diplomatic ties more than a decade after Morocco withdrew its ambassador from Pretoria, South African President Jacob Zuma said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday.

Morocco recalled its ambassador from South Africa in 2004 after former South African president Thabo Mbeki recognised a breakaway region in the Western Sahara which Morocco claims as part of its territory.

"Morocco is an African nation and we need to have relations with them," Zuma told City Press in the interview. "We never had problems with them anyway; they were the first to withdraw diplomatic relations."

Zuma met Morocco's King Mohammed last week on the sidelines of an African Union-European Union summit.

"They felt that even if we differ on the Western Sahara issues, the two countries should have a relationship," Zuma said about Moroccan officials' position at the meeting.

South Africa's official government position - as re-affirmed by Zuma in one of his state of the nation addresses - is to support "self determination and decolonisation for the Western Sahara".

The decision to re-establish ties with Morocco is likely to go down badly in South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, of which Zuma is leader.

The ANC - as one of Africa's oldest liberation movements - has long backed those seeking independence in the Western Sahara and has accused Morocco of occupying the region.

A spokesman for South Africa's foreign ministry could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

Morocco has controlled most of the Western Sahara, which is rich in phosphates and has seen some initial oil exploration efforts, since 1975. A ceasefire in 1991 called for a referendum on self-determination for Western Sahara, but the vote has never taken place.

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It was an interesting question we asked ourselves in the newsroom before a reader asked it of us on Friday:

Why would the Opelika-Auburn News do a separate story about a LGBTQ group having a float in the Opelika Christmas parade?

Many readers proved our point soon enough, as digital readership of the story showed steady traffic as soon as that version of it went online. It was information readers felt they needed to read.

Even if they did or didnt want to read it.

Queer to whom?

LGBTQ is the acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer.

Queer, a term in past years that was viewed as a derogatory label until LGBT more recently reclaimed it, means differing in some odd way from what is usual or normal, according to the dictionary.

It therefore could be logical to say that LGBTQ putting a float in the Christmas parade of an extremely conservative-minded community such as Opelika was a queer move.

Not so, upon further review.

LGBTQ had to realize the ripples in the pond it would create, and it likely knew that in addition to using the move to gain further acceptance, it might gain publicity as well.

Entering a Christmas parade in Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile or any other larger city might not seem so different these days. Perhaps, maybe even in the more liberal-minded university town of Auburn it will or would have turned fewer heads.

But Opelika?

Local ministers respond

Yes, going to Opelika was a first, which caught attention, and at least one group was quick to respond.

The Lee County Ministers Alliance, representing more than 40 local Christian pastors and leaders, issued a statement last week stating it expresses sorrow in light of the LGBT participation in the Opelika Christmas parade on Saturday.

We feel that Scripture speaks strongly against the lifestyles of this group and we feel their participating in a parade that recognized the birth of our Savior is against all that He stood for.

We feel it is our moral responsibility to speak out in opposition to their participation.

That, along with the thought that families and other viewers might want to be prepared should they feel the need, moved the groups float from being a mere mention, to a short story of its own.

The Opelika Chamber of Commerce also issued a statement: The organization Pride on the Plains has a float entry in the parade. It will follow the theme we have set for all floats this year. We do not discriminate against groups or organizations participating in the parade.

Discrimination is an act of hate, and our nation has far too much of that already, in communities big and small.

Parade organizers made the right call in allowing the float, both legally speaking in that they had little desire to face a lawsuit, and morally in that Christmas is about love and inclusion, not judgment and isolation.

However, the Ministers Alliance had its right to speak, too. Christmas is one of Christianitys most important holidays and celebrations, and the Rev. Clifford Jones, as president of the alliance, made the argument that Biblical teachings promote family, in ways that stand as a contradiction to gay lifestyles.

Therefore, seeing the LGBTQ participation in a birthday celebration of Jesus seemed to some an uninvited insult.

That Christmas spirit

It is yet another of many social debates in our society today, but on one point, few disagree: Christmas is about giving, and Gods love for us as shown by His sharing the birth of His son.

Christians do not need to lose that message and the Christmas spirit to debate of any kind, nor should they ever limit someone from exposure to learning more about it.

Dont let the smaller headlines overshadow the much bigger one this holiday season.

Its a good story.

Troy Turner is editor of the Opelika-Auburn News. He can be contacted at tturner@oanow.com.
Ugandan internet users may continuously be arrested and charged of terrorism due to the absence of a law on data protection, the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) has warned.

According to the UHRC acting chairperson Meddie Mulumba, security agencies hide behind laws such as the Interception of Communications Act, Computer Misuse Act and Anti-terrorism Act to apprehend and prosecute Ugandans over what they publish over social media.

We have so many vague laws that they try to use to infringe on rights of Ugandans, for instance, how do you use the anti-pornography law to say that you will prosecute someone who has viewed on WhatsApp a message considered to be pornographic? It is like saying that in the case of a motor accident, the road is held liable, Mulumba said.

He was speaking on November 24 during the launch of a report; state of security for human rights defenders in a digital era, published by Unwanted Witness, a digital rights civil society organisation. It was based on a sample of 153 respondents many of whom journalists, human rights defenders and lawyers.

Laws are debated in anger and [intimidation from the state] that no one can oppose them like the Anti-terrorism law, because, opposing it is regarded as infringement on national security, Mulumba said.

The Anti-Terrorism Act was passed 15 years ago to among other reasons, suppress acts of terrorism and to provide for the punishment of persons who plan, instigate, support, finance or execute acts of terrorism.

THE REPORT

The report came days after directors and three editors of The Red Pepper had been arrested and kept in detention until Monday, November 27, when they were formally charged of offensive communication, publication of information prejudicial to security, libel.

Following their arrest on November 22, police detectives forced them to surrender passwords of their computers, emails and phones while in police detention.

Privacy is a qualified right whose interference must only be legitimate, necessary and proportionate, therefore the overbroad invasion of the journalists communication endangers their own privacy as well as those that they communicate with, Unwanted Witness acting chief executive officer Dorothy Mukasa said.

According to the report, government invokes the provisions of Section 19 of the Anti-Terrorism Act to intercept communications and conduct surveillance over targeted journalists and human rights defenders. This is reinforced by the Interception of Communications Act 2010 .

Now more than ever, the safety and security of the online community; particularly human rights defenders have become critical. This is because more people are embracing digital tools especially the internet to enjoy their right to freedom of expression as well as meaningfully participate in political decisions, the report stated.

This, the report further states, has threatened government that it has chosen to undertake systematic surveillance backed by repressive legislations.

Unfortunately, many online [users] including human rights defenders are not aware of the nature and extent of digital threats and online surveillance they are being subjected to, nor do they have the knowledge and skills to help them make the necessary measures to protect their data and communication from unlawful interference, the report stated.

More than half of the respondents in the study claimed to have experienced online threats and surveillance which has had an impact on their work.

The report for instance mentions a human rights activist in Mubende who besides receiving threatening messages through email and other social media platforms has been trailed up to his residence by suspected security personnel.

Among the human rights lawyers and journalists who were interviewed, 75 per cent and 59 per cent respectively reported that the surveillance had negatively impacted on their work and life as human rights defenders.

Mulumba urged civil society organisations to re-engage parliamentarians to have the laws amended and remove room for being abused by security agencies.

sadabkk@observer.ug
What was supposed to be a bit of fun turned into a crying game for Arran Maye, a 28-year-old plumber from Leicester. While vacationing with 20 friends in the Spanish city of Benidorm, the Briton invested 9 pounds ($12) in a henna tattoo that left him sporting a handlebar mustache and a chin beard. The idea was to get into the spirit of Benidorm Fiesta, a local fancy dress festival, but things went from bad to worse when Arran experienced an intense allergic reaction to the henna ink, which may leave him with permanent scars.

Adam Lewis, another member of the British partying bunch, got the same tattoos as Arran, but while his tattoos faded within a few days, Arrans were much more problematic. On top of the excruciating pain he experienced, his face ballooned and started oozing puss. It tuned out that the henna used on Arran was an illegal variety called black henna, which contains the chemical PPD. It caused a severe allergic reaction and ultimately landed him in intensive care, with one of the consequences being potentially permanent scars in the shape of a handlebar mustache and a small beard.

Photo: video screengrab

When Arran and Adam went to get the tattoos, the artist attempted to put their minds at ease by saying the paint would fade away naturally within two or three days or they could wipe it off in seconds with nail polish remover.

Stupidly we believed him. We thought it would be a good laugh for our costume that night, Arran told the Daily Mail. The problems began almost immediately, as Arran recalls.

It was fine at first but then it got tingly, the next day it was blistering and pussing and by Sunday my face was a balloon. It was like my face was trying to push out the henna. The puss was pouring out and my face was huge and it was so painful. I was in agony.

Photo: SWNS

The doctors said 100 per cent youre going to have a scar for six months. It will be exactly in the outline of a moustache. They did mention a skin graft and that it might be permanent. I was trying not to hear it to be honest.

Arran tried to solve the problem with home remedies such as toothpaste, olive oil, and salt, then tried different tablets, creams, and soaps bought from pharmacies. On the flight home, his allergy to PPD spiked, and he began having difficulties breathing. When the plane landed at Luton, friends drove him to the Leicester Royal Infirmary, where he ended up in intensive care with a breathing mask and had to be kept in hospital for two nights. Medicine helped with the swelling, but a plastic surgeon warned Arran he may carry the scars for life.



Despite all the pain and visits to the hospital, the 28-year-old plumber still has the strength to laugh at his own misfortune.

Ive manged to see the funny side of it. I mean, what choice do I have? he said. I look a right idiot though. Ive had one before years ago and it was fine but I guess that wasnt on my face.
ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Monday outlined a new preemptive legal defense in the ongoing Russia probe: The president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice in his role.



A sitting president cannot obstruct justice, Trump lawyer John Dowd told ABC News in a statement Monday, citing Article II of the U.S. Constitution.



The "president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under Art II and has every right to express his view of any case," Dowd added.



The outline was first reported by Axios this morning and later confirmed by ABC News.



This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Heavy fog brought air and road transport to a halt in several locations across Egypt on Monday morning, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported.

Borg El-Arab International Airport in Egypt's Alexandria closed its airspace due to a lack of visibility resulting from heavy fog. The airport's deputy director Khaled Abdel-Salam said that fog resulted in the delayed departure of three flights since 5 AM.

Meanwhile, Egypt's traffic authority closed several roads in Cairo and other cities due to morning fog, later opening them once the fog had lifted. During the road closures, huge traffic jams in Cairo forced people to leave their cars and walk, Al-Ahram reported.

The limited visibility led to the deaths of two people and the injury of 25 from two separate road accidents in Beheira governorate. Another person was injured in a car collision in Cairo.

The closed roads included the Mehwar and Shubra-Banha Roads in Cairo, the Cairo-Alexandria Road, as well as parts of the North Coast Road in Alexandria. However, they were all reopened within hours, once visibility had improved.

On Sunday, four people were killed and 39 others injured in a collision involving several cars on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road amid fog that started on Saturday.

Several road accidents were reported in Egypt on Saturday, including on the Autostrad in Cairo, as well as the International Coastal Highway in Kafr El-Sheikh, where 22 people were injured in a collision involving several vehicles.

Morning fog is common in Egypt during the winter months. The authorities have issued warnings of fog over the coming weeks, advising drivers to take care.

Deadly road crashes take place on a near daily basis in Egypt, which is notorious for poor road safety, badly maintained infrastructure, and loosely enforced traffic regulations.

In 2015, the country saw 25,500 road fatalities, while the total number of car accidents was 14,500, according to a study published by the official statistics body CAPMAS in August 2016.





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Japans Kobe Steel, which in October acknowledged quality control problems on products shipped to auto, aviation, railroad and nuclear power companies for at least a decade, relies on Burson-Marsteller for strategic communications counsel.

The WPP unit serves Kobe as subcontractor for its law firm, Paul Hastings LLP.

According to its contract, B-Ms purpose is to assist the attorneys regarding the various PR implications of pending and/or anticipated legal proceedings and to assist in relation to such legal proceedings at the direction of counsel.

B-M charges Hastings a guaranteed minimum retainer of $75K with that amount to be re-evaluated on Jan. 31.

Its scope of work includes message development, media relations, digital/social media management, content creation, stakeholder communications, ally mobilization, opinion research and writing/editing of materials.

Kobe Steel, in November, issued a report that concluded that it erred by elevating the pursuit of short-term profit over the maintenance of scrupulous quality standards, according to the Nov. 10 New York Times.

CEO Hiroya Kawasaki told a press conference there was a climate where employees didnt speak up, and if they did, it wouldnt have made a difference. As long as the revenue was coming in, management wasnt interested, he said.

A second report on the Kobe scandal complied by outside experts is slated for release this month.
A Netflix executive today disclosed that the House of Cards will return for a sixth and final season, brightening the holiday season for about 2,000 people who are either directly or indirectly economically tied to the program.

Following allegations of sexual abuse lodged against Kevin Spacey, who plays HoC's lead character Frank Underwood, the streaming giant suspended production of the program on Oct. 31

That suspension irritated many fans who believed the show could carry on with Robin Wright, who plays the role of Underwoods wife, Claire.

After all, Claire is as ruthless and power-hungry as Frank.

Ted Sarandos, Netflixs chief content officer, made HoCs return official today, telling the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York his company is excited to bring closure to fans.

HoC will return early next year for a shortened season of eight episodes, compared to the 13 shows of previous seasons.

The program is well positioned for a fresh beginning as season five ended with Frank Underwood resigning from the presidency and Claire moving up from VP to the villian-in-chief slot

HoC is what put Netflix on the original programming map. Its a bit ironic that Wright is wrapping up such as important program for media company.

She had battled Netflix to get the same pay as Spacey.

Wright told a 2016 Rockefeller Foundation event about her pay inequality squabble with Netflix. "I was looking at the statistics and Claire Underwood's character was more popular than [Frank's] for a period of time, according the Huffington Post of May 18, 2006, which covered Wrights session. So I capitalized on it. I was like, 'You better pay me or Im going to go public. And they did."

Claire will now be in the spotlight. Good job, Netflix. Enjoy the show, HoC fans.
Ranked the top School of Education in Canada and fourth in the world, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education has a diverse community of innovators, collaborators and leaders that have been advancing education, human development and professional practice globally for over a century.

We ignite possibilities by placing award-winning faculty, top researchers and bright, passionate students together with world-class resources, a tradition of excellence and a rich network of collaborators.
Watch Jordan Peele Respond To Some Of The Best Get Out Fan Theories From Reddit Elijah C. Watson Elijah Watson serves as Okayplayer's News & Culture Editor. When

Following the release of Jordan Peeles wildly successful directorial film debut Get Out, everyone took to the Internet to discuss a number of theories about the movie. Well, now Peele himself has chimed into the discussion, and it is just as insightful as it is hilarious.

READ: Why Get Outs Golden Globe Comedy Submission May Help It Get The Last Laugh This Awards Season

From discussing if the film is nothing but the elaborate fantasy of Rod Williams, the TSA agent who rescues Get Out protagonist Chris Washington, to if Get Out is a sequel to Being John Malkovich, Peele basically covers just about every fan theory surrounding his popular movie in this video with Vanity Fair. He also reveals a number of fun facts surrounding the film, such as dialogue changes and parts where he made a cameo (Peele actually voiced the dying deer that appears at the beginning at the movie).

Recently, it was announced that Get Out would be submitted as a comedy at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards, which incited outrage on social media. Ultimately, Peele addressed the news both through his own Twitter account and during an event he was speaking at for the film.

The problem is, its not a movie that can really be put into a genre box. Originally, I set out to make a horror movie. I ended up showing it to people and hearing, you know, it doesnt even feel like horror, Peele said. Its in this thriller world. So it was a social thrillerWhat the movie is about is not funny. Ive had many black people come up to me and say, man, this is the movie weve been talking about for a while and you did it. Thats a very powerful thing. For that to be put in a smaller box than it deserves is where the controversy comes from.
A report published on Monday by Dar Al-Ifta researchers suggests Daesh leader Abu-Bakr El-Baghdadi has been seeking to stem the flow of militants fleeing Sinai in the face of security forces strikes

Egypt's semi-official religious watchdog Dar Al-Ifta Al-Missriyyah said on Monday that the Daesh terrorist group is being defeated in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, with militants fleeing to Libya, due to the huge material and human losses sustained in battles with Egyptian security forces.

The Takfiri Fatwas and Extremist Views Observatory, a research group within Dar Al-Ifta, based its assessment on the latest messages of Daesh leader Abu-Bakr El-Baghdadi to his fighters in Libya, the watchdog said in a report on Monday.

The Observatory, which specializes in tracking militant statements on social media, said that El-Baghdadi's messages reveal the demoralization of the terror group's members after recent harsh security strikes against Daesh in Sinai.

They also indicate a wave of Daesh militants fleeing to Libya to escape the Egyptian army and police crackdown in Sinai, a phenomenon that the group's leader is attempting to halt.

"El-Baghdadi's messages revealed orders to kill Daesh members escaping from Sinai to stop this wave of fleeing," according to the Observatory.

"The messages from the Daesh leader constitute a main strategy of centralization in Egypt, while maintaining a strategic presence in the Sinai Peninsula, as well as scattering in other Egyptian governorates to evade security strikes and to maintain the flow of logistical and technical assistance in the battle against Egyptian security forces, considering Sinai as the focus point and springboard of the terror group in Egypt," the report said.

The Observatory also said El-Baghdadi's messages reveal that the group has been hit by a "fatal disaray" after recent failures in Sinai, indicating that Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, the Daesh terror offshoot in North Sinai, is deteriorating due to intense security strikes.

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PLATTSMOUTH, Neb.  A Cass County judge on Monday declined to lower the bail for a Weeping Water man charged in the apparent suicide death of his Florida girlfriend.

Matthew Stubbendieck, 41, is charged with assisted suicide in connection with the Aug. 1 death of 38-year-old Alicia Wilemon-Sullivan.

Stubbendieck, who recently moved back to Nebraska from Florida, was seeking a reduction in bail to $10,000. He would have to post 10 percent of that, or $1,000, to be released.

Cass County Attorney Nathan Cox argued against the bail reduction, noting that the amount already had been reduced from $50,000 to $20,000. Nothing has changed since that time, he said.

He did assist a person in killing themselves, Cox said. He could have called (authorities) and had her taken into custody, saving her life, but he didnt.

Defense attorney Julie Bear told Cass County District Judge Michael Smith that Stubbendiecks father is very ill. Stubbendieck would live with his parents if he were released from the Cass County Jail, she said.

The most important factor is that between the time (Stubbendieck) led authorities to the body until charges were filed, a couple of months time, there was an investigation, and he didnt go anywhere, Bear said. I think we have sufficient guarantees that we know where he is going to be.

Stubbendieck told investigators that he met Wilemon-Sullivan while living in Florida. He picked her up at Omahas Eppley Airfield on July 31 and took her to dinner with his parents and brother that evening.

The following day, Aug. 1  according to his statements in court documents  he took her to a secluded spot a mile west of Weeping Water on private property near an old quarry that locals call Lake Acapulco. Over seven hours, Stubbendieck said, Wilemon-Sullivan cut her wrists.

He said he twice tried to suffocate her to end her suffering but could not go through with it. He told authorities that she had told him that she had terminal cancer, but an autopsy revealed no tumors or masses.

Officials said Wilemon-Sullivans wounds were consistent with self-cutting, but her body was too decomposed to see what role attempted suffocation might have played.
Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer stepped to the podium Monday to greet 53 Omaha police recruits on the first day of their training.

Good morning, sir, the men and women said in unison.

I like that. Very good, Schmaderer responded.

He complimented the recruits on being selected for the class but added that the hard work is just beginning.

You have to prove it to us here. Were going to put you to the test. We have to, he said. The first test cannot be out on the street answering a radio call. It has to be here.

The two recruit classes  25 newcomers and 28 veteran officers from 17 other Nebraska agencies  will increase the sworn strength of the department to 865.

If all graduate, that is.

Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert reiterated Monday her pledge to employ 900 officers in 2019, add a fifth precinct in Elkhorn and redraw the precinct boundaries to better help the city.

You are joining a professional police department dedicated to keeping our citizens safe, she said. You have the opportunity to change lives and to save lives.

Stothert noted that homicides in the city are at a 13-year low and the number of shootings so far this year is the lowest in a decade.

The veteran recruit class is by far the largest in the departments history. The recruits have 200 years of combined policing experience. They will go through a shortened 11-week training program. The newcomers will complete the full 22-week program.

Also part of the basic class are two arson investigators from the Omaha Fire Department. They require certification but will not be sworn officers.

Many of (the veteran officers) have worked in specialized areas themselves, so coming here to the Omaha Police Department is not so much starting over for them as it is a condensed, accelerated training more focused on Omahas policy and procedures, said Lt. Catherine Milone, the academys training commander.

The two classes will be together for some training  firearms, driving and criminal law  but separate during other times, Milone said.

Schmaderer told the new recruits to take advantage of learning with the veterans, an opportunity he said he wished hed had.

This community realizes that law enforcement is a vital part of the community. Thats the beauty of Omaha, Schmaderer said. The department and the community want to be in this together, and we are. Your task is to carry on that tradition for us.
A motorist was seriously injured early Monday on Interstate 80 in eastern Council Bluffs after his car rolled.

Bluffs police said the crash occurred around 4:20 a.m. on westbound I-80.

Police said the driver of a 1998 Ford Escort lost control of the vehicle, which went off the roadway and rolled several times.

The motorist was able to crawl out of the car before officers arrived. He was taken to Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. Police said he suffered injuries that were not considered life-threatening.

Any witnesses to the crash were urged to call Bluffs police.
DES MOINES (AP)  Iowa Senate Republicans have announced a series of actions in recent weeks to respond to allegations of workplace sexual misconduct within the caucus. But questions remain, including about the details of an in-house investigation into allegations, the scope of work to be done by a former state senator and the nature of a former staffers departure.

Allegations in report

Senate Majority Leader Bill Dixs staff released a report last month summarizing an internal investigation into alleged misconduct within the caucus between the end of 2012 and mid-2017.

Dix initially declined to provide details, citing employee privacy. He reversed course amid pressure from his party for more transparency.

The investigation was launched after a lawsuit involving Kirsten Anderson, a former communications director for Senate Republicans. Anderson said she was fired in 2013, hours after reporting harassment in the office that centered on sexually charged comments.

A jury awarded Anderson $2.2 million after a trial this year. The state settled for $1.75 million.

Dix said at a Nov. 14 press conference that no new incidents of alleged misconduct were reported in the subsequent internal investigation.

But the report noted an alleged incident during the 2017 legislative session involving a senator making a sexually suggestive comment on the chamber floor.

Caleb Hunter, a spokesman for Senate Republicans, declined to comment.

Adviser's role

Senate Republicans announced Nov. 21 that Mary Kramer, a former GOP state senator with lengthy human resources experience, would voluntarily advise the caucus to improve workplace culture.

Kramers work is focused on one area of the State Capitol, but its possible it could address others. She said that although she is in the early stages of work, she intends to make recommendations before Jan. 8, the start of the next legislative session.

Former staffer

Questions remain about the exit of a former staffer for Senate Republicans who was accused during the Anderson trial of discussing sex with co-workers in an inappropriate manner.

Jim Friedrich, an analyst, resigned in September, but no additional information has been shared publicly.

The Legislature passed legislation this year requiring state agencies to release information when employees are fired, demoted or resign to avoid termination. The law doesnt apply to the Legislature, which writes its own rules.

Human resources manager

In early November, a top aide to Dix confirmed that GOP leaders in the Senate and House planned to create a human resources director position to handle complaints of harassment and other misconduct at the Legislature. Dix then said Nov. 14 that he would drop those plans because staff expressed concern about the positions accountability.

House Speaker Linda Upmeyer said on the same day that her staff still planned to hire an HR manager.

Dix reversed course again with the Nov. 21 Kramer news. A press release said his office would work with the House to hire the human resources manager. The position could become a joint employee of the House and Senate in the future.

Independent review

A week before Kramers appointment, Dix said his office would hire outside counsel or an organization to review workplace culture. Dix said it was possible the outside counsel could do an investigation similar to what was done through an internal office review, but said it would be up to the hired group.
After responding to the 2007 mass shooting at Von Maur, Omaha Police Officer Dave Staskiewicz was long haunted by that day: the faces of the victims; the vulnerability he felt as he ascended an escalator, knowing he was easy pickings for the armed gunman.

Sgt. Jeff Baker struggled, too, long harboring a sense of failure for not stopping the gunman, and anger toward him for taking his own life before officers arrived.

The officers werent prepared for their stressful experiences on Dec. 5, 2007, nor were Omaha Police Department policies regarding emotional support for officers who face trauma.

About 10 days after the mass shooting, the department held a single optional stress debriefing session for officers in a large group setting. The idea that officers would need emotional support after such an incident was still in its infancy.

It was too late, and in a group setting that was too big, Staskiewicz said.

Police officials say Omahas mass shooting, which happened 10 years ago Tuesday, ultimately served as a catalyst for overhauling programs to support officers involved in traumatic events.

Today, professional counselors and specially trained peer support officers are readily available. And depending on the seriousness of the incident, some officers are required to go through mandatory one-on-one stress debriefing sessions.

Mandatory is the key word, said Capt. Michele Bang, who helped establish the programs.

Requiring officers to attend takes away any personal stigma they might face for needing emotional help. Such reluctance to seek help is one reason law enforcement officers suffer from disproportionately high rates of depression, alcoholism, suicide, divorce and domestic problems.

We didnt share our feelings  we just didnt, Bang said. The appearance of control is important to us.

The mass shooting that claimed eight lives that day and left three other people seriously wounded before the shooter killed himself occurred at a time law enforcement agencies in Omaha and nationally were still waking up to the issue of emotional support of officers. The growing awareness was spurred in part by the large number of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan during the 2000s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological problems.

In the wake of the Von Maur department store shootings, a number of Omaha officers had difficulty dealing with the emotional fallout. They included Staskiewicz and Baker, who were among the first to enter the store.

There are two components to surviving an active-shooter event: Its surviving the gunfight, and then surviving those images and thoughts and notions you have in your head afterward, Baker said.

Today, Baker and Staskiewicz both describe how vulnerable they felt as they hunted for the gunman in a store in which shelves, racks and storerooms afforded seemingly limitless places for cover. Even as they feared for their own lives, cheery holiday music incongruously played throughout the store.

Staskiewicz recalled at one point ascending an escalator knowing that the shooter could be anywhere above, below or around him. He was completely powerless.

Baker agreed: My mortality became about as transparent as at any time Ive been in law enforcement.

The officers would later learn that the 19-year-old gunman had taken his own life before officers even arrived. But as dozens of officers searched every nook and cranny of the store and Westroads Mall, they felt that they could come face-to-face with the deadly gunman or an accomplice at any moment.

Not all the feelings officers struggled with afterward were rational.

Baker said he harbored strong feelings of guilt for not stopping the bloodshed. He knew it made no sense, because there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. He did his job to the best of his ability, based on what was known at the time. But thats not what was in his heart.

Its still hard for me to talk about it even 10 years later, Baker said.

Also in Bakers heart was much anger toward gunman Robert Hawkins  not only for what he did, but also for shooting himself before Baker could personally stop him. Baker said he spoke to many other officers who felt the same way.

I thought it was a cowardly thing to engage unarmed people and then moments before we get there push the game over button, Baker said.

Others, from officers and detectives to crime lab technicians, struggled with visions of what they saw that day. It was the bloodiest crime scene Omaha police had ever faced. Detective Derek Mois, who worked the third-floor crime scene where most of the victims fell, would later say there was so much blood, you could taste it in the air.

Staskiewicz saw nearly all the victims as he searched the third floor to make sure there were no other gunmen. He also later struggled with the fact he wasnt able to render aid to one victim who pleaded for help. Protocol called for Staskiewicz to finish searching the store to make sure it was safe for paramedics.

Staskiewicz said it helped when he later visited that victim, Fred Wilson, at the hospital. Still, Staskiewicz said he long struggled with visions from that day.

Things just werent right, he said of the weeks that followed. Trouble sleeping. Things always going through your head.

Bang said such stories were common, even for officers who did not play major roles in the incident. Police officials ultimately realized that the single group session they offered for responders was not adequate.

Over time, in part because of a 2010 change in state law and demands from the police union, the department completely overhauled its policies.

While stress debriefings previously were mandatory only after an officer killed someone in the line of duty, command staff now has the discretion to require an officer to sit down with a therapist after any traumatic situation. There are mandatory follow-up sessions at four months and one year, too.

Ive never had an officer tell me it was a complete waste of time, Bang said of the required sessions.

In addition to professional counselors who regularly work with the department, dozens of officers have been specially trained to provide emotional support for their peers. Officers are also encouraged to let their superiors know if they think a co-worker is struggling in the aftermath of a stressful event.

Bang said the new programs served the department well two years ago, after gang unit Officer Kerrie Orozco was killed in the line of duty. Two mental health professionals were on hand that night to offer assistance.

The emotional-support overhaul came too late to help officers involved in the Von Maur shootings, many of whom dealt with the emotional fallout on their own.

Staskiewicz said he never did seek any help beyond the one session offered. He attributed it to the culture within his profession.

In the law enforcement world, its hard to do that, he said. You are looked at as being weak.

But he recognized that it was a serious matter. As Staskiewicz in months after the incident traveled the country, giving presentations to other law enforcement agencies on lessons Omaha learned from the mass shooting, he would always suggest that stress debriefings be required for all officers.

Baker said he made sure to speak up in the group debriefing session he attended after the shooting. He said he thought it would make it easier for others to express their own feelings.

But he said it took another event about a year later  finding his mother dead in her home  for him to seek the help he truly needed.

Over weeks of counseling, Baker said, he was able to let go of a lot of his feelings, including his anger toward the shooter.

I wasnt getting any healthier hating Robbie Hawkins, Baker said. I hate what he did. But I no longer hate the kid.
The recent warm weather across eastern Nebraska and southwest Iowa was to come to an abrupt end today as a strong cold front muscles into the region.

The National Weather Service office in Valley said the Omaha area, which is under a wind advisory along with most of the region until 8 oclock tonight, can expect northwest wind gusts of 45-50 mph and falling afternoon temperatures.

Get ready, said Ryan McPike, a KMTV meteorologist. Brace yourself for the big weather change.

Elsewhere, a light rain-snow mix is forecast across parts of northern Nebraska this afternoon as a winter-like weather advisory is in effect for the Dakotas. Snow accumulations of less than 1 inch in the northern Nebraska counties of Cherry, Sheridan, Boyd and Keya Paha to 3 inches in the Dakotas are likely, along with wind gusts of 55 mph.

Today in the Omaha area, forecasters said there is a slight chance of rain or drizzle this afternoon, with a high temperature around 60 this morning falling into the upper 30s by late afternoon.

Tonight, the low will drop to around 25, the weather service said, and winds could gust as high as 35-40 mph.

Tuesday and Wednesday in the Omaha area will remain breezy, with west-northwest winds gusting as high as 25-30 mph. The highs both days will be in the mid- to upper 30s. Overnight lows will fall to the lower to mid-20s.

Thursday and Friday will be partly sunny with highs in the lower to mid-30s and lows in the upper teens to around 20.

McPike called for a chance of flurries Wednesday and Thursday.

The weather service said the weekend in the Omaha area looks a little better  mostly sunny skies and highs in the upper 30s to mid-40s by Sunday.

McPike said the weather change is a big shock compared to the past couple of mild weeks.

The pattern has flip-flopped on us, he said.
Egypt's interior ministry announced on Monday that the country's police forces had killed five terrorists and arrested six others during a broad and coordinated State Security operation spanning three different governorates.

According to the statement, the five terrorist deaths came as State Security forces located and raided a terrorist hideout in the desert area between 10th of Ramadan city and Belbies in Egypt's Delta governorate of Sharqiya.

As police forces approached the hideout, terrorist elements began firing at security forces, prompting a shootout that killed five terrorists who are currently being identified, the statement added.

Police forces also seized firearms, ammunition, IED's and other explosives in the hideout.

The wider operation also resulted in the arrest of six terrorist elements at hideouts in the vicinity of the Cairo and Assiut governorates, according to the statement.

These developments come as part of nationwide efforts to pursue and eradicate terrorist elements which aim to disrupt security and stability in North Sinai and other Egyptian governorates, the statement read.

Egypt has been battling Islamist militant groups, mainly concentrated in the restive northern part of Sinai, over the past years years.

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Lobbing new criticism at the special counsel's Russia investigation, President Donald Trump said Monday he feels "very badly" for former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Last week, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about reaching out to the Russians on the president's behalf.

"I think it's a shame," Trump said of Flynn's situation, adding that it's "very unfair" and that Flynn had "led a very strong life."

Trump tried to contrast Flynn's treatment with that of his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, whom he said "lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened."

"Flynn lied and they destroyed his life," Trump said.

The FBI didn't conclude that Clinton lied to agents, however. Former FBI Director James Comey testified last year that agents found Clinton to be truthful in her interview, telling a House committee, "we have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI."

Flynn is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Even as Trump sought to minimize Flynn's misdeeds, the Kremlin insisted that Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. had not influenced Russian President Vladimir Putin's response to sanctions imposed by Trump's predecessor.

Flynn was forced to resign in February following reports that the Obama administration officials had informed Trump's team that Flynn had discussed sanctions on Russia Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, a fact at odds with the public assertions of Vice President Mike Pence. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday it was "absurd" to suggest that the phone conversation could have influenced Putin's decision and added that "such requests couldn't have been passed on" to him.

Trump, who spoke to reporters Monday as he left the White House to head to Utah, unleashed a string of tweets over the weekend in which he criticized the FBI and raised questions about the federal investigation into Russian election meddling and possible ties to his campaign.

In one of his messages, Trump again denied that he directed Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

Trump questioned the direction of the federal law enforcement agency and wrote that after Comey, whom Trump fired in May, the FBI's reputation is "in Tatters worst in History!" He vowed to "bring it back to greatness." The president also retweeted a post saying new FBI Director Chris Wray "needs to clean house."

Former Attorney General Eric Holder tweeted in response: "Nope. Not letting this go. The FBI's reputation is not in "tatters". It's composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. You'll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now."

Trump seized on reports that a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was removed from special prosecutor Robert Mueller's team last summer after the discovery of an exchange of text messages that were viewed as potentially anti-Trump. The agent, Peter Strzok, had also worked on the investigation of Democrat Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, said Mueller removed Strzok from the team "immediately upon learning of the allegations." He would not elaborate on the nature of the accusations. The person who discussed the matter with The Associated Press was not authorized to speak about it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump tweeted Sunday: "Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI `agent's role in Clinton probe under review.' Led Clinton Email probe." In a separate tweet, he wrote: "Report: `ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE' Now it all starts to make sense!"

Strzok's removal almost certainly reflected a desire to insulate the investigators from any claims of political bias or favoritism. Trump and many of his supporters have at times sought to discredit the integrity of the investigation, in part by claiming a close relationship between Mueller and Comey and by pointing to political contributions to Democrats made by some lawyers on the team.

Following the tweets, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned the president to tread cautiously. "You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril. I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I'd watch this," Graham said.

Saturday, Trump tweeted that he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

The tweet suggested that Trump was aware when the White House dismissed Flynn on Feb. 13 that he had lied to the FBI, which had interviewed him weeks earlier. Comey has said Trump the following day brought up the Flynn investigation in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could "let this go."

With questions raised by the tweet, Trump associates tried to put distance Saturday evening between the president himself and the tweet. Trump's personal lawyer John Dowd told ABC News that he drafted the tweet and gave it to the president's social media director Dan Scavino. Dowd had declined to comment when reached by the AP on Saturday night.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel is beginning to see "the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice" against Trump.

Meanwhile, Trump threw his full support behind embattled Republican Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race.

Trump tweeted early Monday that Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama.

It was Trumps most full-throated endorsement of Moore, who has lost backing of many top Republicans since he was hit with allegations of sexual misconduct decades ago.

Trump has assailed Democratic candidate Doug Jones and has defended Moore against allegations of child molestation. But the White House has said he has no plans to make campaign appearances.

Trump tweeted: We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!

Copyright 2017, the Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump issued a fresh denial Sunday that he asked former FBI director James B. Comey to halt an investigation into the conduct of his dismissed national security adviser Michael Flynn.

"I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn," Trump said in a pre-dawn message on Twitter. "Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!"

The tweet was the latest in a running commentary on the case from Trump that began Saturday, a day after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with a Russian official.

In other tweets Sunday, Trump also seized on news that Peter Strzok  the former top FBI official assigned to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election  was taken off that job this summer after his bosses discovered that he and another member of Mueller's team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging Trump and supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton. Strzok was also a key player in the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server, which ended without charges against her.

"Report: 'ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE' Now it all starts to make sense!" Trump wrote, before proceeding to criticize the FBI and promise to bring it back to "greatness" under his administration.

Trump fired Flynn 25 days into this administration for misrepresenting the nature of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador, to Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials.

Comey has alleged that the day after that, Trump urged him to be lenient with Flynn, producing notes that said Trump told him, "I hope you can let this go."

Trump stoked the controversy with one of his Saturday tweets in which he said part of the rationale for firing Flynn was that he had lied to the FBI.

"I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI," Trump wrote in that tweet.

But critics pounced Saturday on Trump, arguing that if he knew at the time of his conversation with Comey that Flynn had lied to the FBI and was under investigation, it may constitute an attempt to obstruct that investigation.

"Are you ADMITTING you knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when you asked Comey to back off Flynn?" Walter Shaub, the former head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, asked in a tweet Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday, Sen. Mark R. Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Trump should have taken action against Flynn sooner if he already knew that then-national security adviser had lied to the FBI.

"Well, if he knew that then, why didn't he act on it earlier?" Warner said on CNN's "State of the Union." "It raises a whole series of additional questions."

Warner also told CNN that Flynn being charged with only one count of lying to the FBI suggests that there are "many more stories that General Flynn will have to tell about his time during the campaign and during the transition."

The Washington Post reported Saturday that Trump attorney John Dowd had drafted the president's tweet, according to two people familiar with the message. Dowd confirmed that Sunday, saying he had passed along a draft to Dan Scavino, Trump's social media director.

Two people close to the administration described the tweet simply as sloppy and unfortunate.

As Flynn pleaded guilty Friday, he made clear that he is now cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller as Mueller probes Russian meddling in last year's election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

Flynn's decision to cooperate with Mueller was widely seen as a sign of increasing legal peril for other White House aides and perhaps Trump himself, as the investigation has expanded beyond potential collusion with Russia to include obstruction of justice and financial crimes.

In an interview Sunday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said it looked to her that "what we're beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice."

Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said she saw that in the indictments of Flynn and three other Trump associates, as well as the "hyper-frenetic attitude of the White House: the comments every day, the continual tweets."

"And I see it, most importantly, in what happened with the firing of Director Comey, and it is my belief that that is directly because (Comey) did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation," Feinstein said. "That's obstruction of justice."

The president continued tweeting about Flynn late Saturday. In one message, he complained that it was unfair for Flynn's life to be "destroyed" for lying to the FBI, arguing that the agency pursued Democrat Hillary Clinton far less aggressively while investigating her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

Trump's commentary on the case began Saturday morning, as he addressed reporters before leaving the White House for a fundraising trip to New York.

He said he was not worried about what Flynn might share now that he is cooperating with prosecutors, forcefully asserting that there was "absolutely no collusion" between his campaign and Russia.

On Sunday, as he commented on news about the reassignment of Strzok, Trump also retweeted a pair of posts on the subject written by Paul Sperry, a media fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution. One suggested that the current FBI director, Christopher A. Wray, should "clean house" because of the politicization of the agency.

A little later, Trump promised a better FBI under his leadership.

"After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History!" Trump wrote. "But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness."

Trump also weighed in Sunday on a decision by ABC News to suspend investigative reporter Brian Ross for an erroneous story about Flynn, saying the network should be sued.

Ross told viewers Friday morning that Flynn was prepared to testify that Trump, as a candidate for president, told him to contact Russians.

Later in the day, Ross walked back his report, saying that the source who had provided the initial information for his story later told him that it was as president-elect, not as a candidate, that Trump asked Flynn to contact Russians.

On Saturday, ABC apologized for a "serious error."

Ross' incorrect report prompted a dramatic reaction in the financial markets.

On Sunday, Trump offered a suggestion to those who lost money: "People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused  many millions of dollars!"
An under-reported aspect of the House GOP tax plan is a new tax on some college endowments. That could mean less money for scholarships for some Nebraska college students. Nebraska House members are supporting the idea of making it more expensive for our young people to get a college education. Is that consistent with Nebraska values?
Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi discussed regional developments with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a telephone call on Monday, the Egyptian presidency announced.

According to the statement, the two leaders discussed the latest developments in Syria and Libya, as well as how to reach political solutions in each of the countries.

Presidents El-Sisi and Putin also discussed the latest developments in the Palestinian situation, regarding which the Russian leader expressed his appreciation for the Egyptian efforts to achieve Palestinian reconciliation.

The statement also noted that Putin offered his condolences to his Egyptian counterpart over the terrorist killing of hundreds of Egyptian worshipers in North Sinai's Al-Rawda mosque two weeks ago.

Putin asserted that his country, both as a government and as a people, were supporting Egypt's efforts in the war against terrorism.

The two leaders also discussed Egyptian-Russian bilateral relations concerning the military and commercial and transportation sectors, as well as the two countries' joint cooperation over building Egypt's first nuclear power plant at El-Dabaa in the Matrouh governorate.

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Hilarious. University of Nebraska-Lincoln college professors are alarmed that they are under attack by state senators who are concerned that conservative students on campus may be mistreated at UNL.

According to a 2016 Washington Times story, the ratio of liberal to conservative faculty at 40 leading universities was 12-to-1 liberal. In a 2016 Washington Post story, 60 percent of college professors identified as far-left compared to 13 percent as far-right, a nearly 5-to-1 ratio.

The fact remains that the country is generally equally divided between liberal and conservative. While liberal faculty will continue to inhabit college campuses at grossly disproportionate rates, the clutching of their pearls at allegations there may be improprieties against conservative students seems disingenuous. If theres nothing to see at UNL, then there should be no resistance to a climate assessment of conservative students and faculty to determine if they feel theyve been oppressed.
ODN 17 Nov 2022

Voters in the US react to Donald Trump's announcement that he will once again be launching a presidential..
by  Graham Pierrepoint



Another day, another twist in the tale at the White House. As revelations regarding former senior advisor Michael Flynn and his admission of guilt (regarding lying to the FBI)  reverberated over the weekend, political commentators and the press mulled over whether or not his admission would spell trouble for President Trumps team in terms of the wrapping up of the Russian collusion investigation. Its thought that Flynn could have his own story to tell if called upon  and some are wondering whether or not this may mean Trump faces some form of justice after months of scandal rarely seen in DC  for some decades, in any case.

Trump, however, may have done all the damage he needs to do all on his very own. As always, the US President took to twitter to air his own views on unfolding events  and, in his own idiosyncratic way, may have tweeted himself into a corner  or at least conviction - to paraphrase Bush counsel Richard Painter. Trump tweeted on Saturday that he had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies, the statesman continued, further advising that there was nothing to hide, and that his actions during the transition were lawful. Trumps attorney John Dowd has taken the fall for the tweet, stating that he did not mean to break news  however, legal experts seem to think enough damage could already have been done.



 Trump: 'I Feel Badly for General Flynn'

Whats at stake here is that Trump could have known that Flynn lied to the FBI  which he may have followed up with requesting former FBI chief James Comey to cease all investigations  as his tweets could be read to suggest. This, as some experts point out, could result in Trump effectively having obstructed justice within law. Dowd had reportedly drafted Trumps tweet and that the point being made was entirely correct. Whether or not others will see things this way  certainly in light of other movements being made in the Russia investigation  is another matter entirely.

 Potential Obstruction Case Develops Against Trump (Bloomberg Global Business)

Never before has Twitter taken so much of the center stage  nor has it been used to help propel so much political drama. Trumps reign as President will go down as a dramatic one  though quite where it will all end remains up for debate  as investigations into Russian collusion ahead of 2016s General Election continue.
Egypt expresses extreme concerns about the unfortunate current developments taking place in Yemen, which led to the killing of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh by Houthi rebels earlier Monday, the Egyptian foreign ministry has announced.

According to the statement, the killing of Saleh at the hands of Iranian-backed Houthi rebels would only escalate the current spilt and tensions in Yemen.

The Egyptian foreign ministry considers these developments to be a reflection of the crisis Yemen has been suffering from for years as a result of "negative foreign interference."

The ministry also renewed Egypt's position on the conflict in Yemen, calling all parties involved to be committed to a political solution in the war-torn country according to UN security council resolution 2216, as well as the 2013-14 National Dialogue Conference and the Gulf Initiative.

Egypt is currently a member of the Saudi-led military coalition against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

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by  Graham Pierrepoint



Its time to get back in the time machine and to take a closer look at some of the most important  and sometimes most fascinating  moments that have taken place across the length and breadth of human history. We take a look every week at what went down decades and centuries ago  and this week is no different. Strap in and lets go travelling!

December 4th, 1872  The Mary Celeste is Discovered

One of the most famous  and mysterious  shipwrecks of all time, the Mary Celeste was found abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean almost 150 years ago this week  a mystery that has tantalized many.

December 5th, 1933  US Prohibition Repealed

In a rare moment of constitutional amendment and re-amendment, the US found itself allowed to drink alcohol once again  ending the speakeasy era in what was only the 21st amendment made.

December 6th, 1877  The Human Voice First Recorded

The human voice has come a long way  and while we can all stream radio and music freely today, it was Thomas Edison who first recorded his own voice  ahead of all others  back in 1877, 140 years ago. He recorded his own recital of Mary Had a Little Lamb.

December 7th, 1909  The Plastics Industry Kicks Off

Its thanks to Leo Baekeland that plastic has become so popular  and perhaps so nefarious for the environment  as its on this day in 1909 that his invention, Bakelite, was first patented.

December 8th, 1966  No Chance of Space Nukes

Believe it or not, the US and the USSR signed a treaty agreeing to withholding nuclear weapons from being used in outer space on this day  consigning intergalactic war to science fiction.

December 9th, 1868  Traffic Lights Debut

A relatively new invention  if you can call 149 years new  we first started taking our streets and highways a little more safely thanks to the emergence of traffic lights outside Westminster Palace, London, in 1868  lit by gas and used to help pedestrians safely find their way around the capital.

December 10th, 1884  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Published

One of the most famous pieces of Western literature ever written, Twains most famous work (among many) found its way to Canadian and British bookshelves first; with the US receiving their copies the following February due to problems during printing.

We love travelling back in time  why not check in with us again next week for more timely traversing?
Deutsche Welle 14 Oct 2022

The two brothers entered a surprise guilty plea on the first day of their trial for the car-bomb murder of a Maltese..
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WAAY ABC Huntsville, AL 05 Oct 2019

An overwhelming amount of support for Doug Jones by black voters helped propel him to a US Senate victory.
Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi discussed bilateral relations with his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma in a telephone call on Monday, the Egyptian presidency said.

According to the statement, El-Sisi received the telephone call from Zuma during which they discussed several matters including ways to boost bilateral Egyptian-South African relations.

The two presidents also discussed the latest developments surrounding a number of African issues.

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said he appreciated his country's strong relations with South Africa.

President Zuma also expressed his appreciation for the level of coordination and consultation between the two nations on a number of regional issues.

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Yemen's Houthi group has fired a cruise missile towards a nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, the group's television service said on its website on Sunday, without providing any evidence.

"The missile force announces the launching of a winged cruise missile ... towards the al-Barakah nuclear reactor in Abu Dhabi," the website said. It gave no further details.

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The United States and South Korea went ahead with large-scale joint aerial drills on Monday, a move North Korea had said would push the Korean peninsula to "the brink of nuclear war", ignoring calls from Russia and China to call them off.

The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States as part of a weapons programme that it has conducted in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was "regrettable" that all parties had not "grasped the window of opportunity" presented by two months of relative calm before the North's most recent test.

China and Russia had proposed that the United States and South Korea stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programmes. Beijing formally calls the idea the dual suspension proposal.

The annual U.S.-South Korean drill, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday, with six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part.

North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country called U.S. President Donald Trump "insane" on Sunday and said the drills would "push the already acute situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war".

F-35 fighters will also join the drills, which will include the largest number of 5th generation fighters ever to have taken part, according to a South Korea-based U.S. Air Force spokesman.

Around 12,000 U.S. service members, including from the Marines and Navy, will join SouthKorean troops. Aircraft taking part will be flown from eight U.S. and South Korean military installations.

South Korean media reports said B-1B Lancer bombers could join the exercise this week. The U.S. Air Force spokesman could not confirm the reports.

Trump said last week that additional major sanctions would be imposed on North Korea after Pyongyang's intercontinental ballistic missile test.

Earlier last month, Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that allows the United States to impose more sanctions.

Russia has accused the United States of trying to provoke North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into "flying off the handle" over his missile programme to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country.

Speaking at a news briefing in Beijing, Wang said China consistently opposed any behaviour that elevated tensions.

"And measures that don't abide by or are outside the UN Security Council resolutions lack basis in international law and damage the rights of United Nations members," Wang said when asked about the prospect of further U.S. sanctions against North Korea.

China's Air Force said on Monday that its surveillance aircraft had in recent days conducted drills in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea to "improve combat-readiness and safeguard the country's strategic interests".

The aircraft took a flight path not previously flown to regions they had never previously operated in, and coordinated with fighter jets, alert aircraft and guided missile forces, spokesman Shen Jinke said, according to a post on the Air Force's official microblog.

The joint exercises between South Korea and United States are designed to enhance readiness and operational capability and to ensure peace and security on the Korean peninsula, the U.S. military had said before the drills began.

The North's KCNA state news agency, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, said on Saturday the Trump administration was "begging for nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula".

North Korea regularly uses its state media to threaten the United States and its allies.

North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September, in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

It has said its weapons programmes are a necessary defence against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention.

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Fighting in Yemen's capital has intensified, with the known toll from three hospitals reaching at least 125 killed and 238 wounded in the past six days, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday.

Saudi-led coalition warplanes struck at Houthi militia positions in Yemen's capital Sanaa for a second day on Monday in support of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former Houthi ally who has now renounced his alliance with the Iranian-backed group.

"We are supporting the main hospitals in Sanaa who urgently need war-wounded kits," ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said. "We are also looking at donating dead body bags to hospitals which are actually asking for them, and we hope to donate fuel to the main hospitals because they depend on generators."

The ICRC "relocated" 13 international staff to Djibouti from Sanaa on Monday, she said.

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Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi called on Yemenis on Monday to rise up against the Iran-aligned Houthis after the death of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Speaking in a speech carried live on the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television, Hadi also called for a new chapter in the fight against the Houthis, who were allied with Saleh before he turned on them and offered to back the Saudi-led coalition.

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If only the rocks could talk.

If only the sandstones could sing, imagine the stories they'd tell, of dinosaurs, mammoth hunters and the "ancient ones" known as the Anasazi.

All roamed southern Utah over the eons, long before Native Americans struggled to hold their land against Mormon settlers, modern life and now, Donald Trump.

As the President arrives in Utah Monday afternoon, this rocky corner of the Wild West is a battlefield once again, but this time the warriors will carry briefcases and lawsuits.

Trump, by signing two presidential proclamations on Monday, shrunk the size of Bears Ears National Monument by more than 80% and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by roughly 45%, fundamentally reshaping the two large national monuments.

The proclamations split the two national monuments into several smaller sections. Bears Ears will be shrunk from 1.35 million acres to 228,337 acres, according to the spokesperson for Interior, and split into two separate monument sections. Grand Staircase-Escalante, a monument designated by President Bill Clinton, will be split into three sections and shrunk from 1.9 million acres to just about 1 million acres.

Trump slammed past administrations -- namely Clinton's and President Barack Obama's -- for what he called "federal overreach." The two former Democratic president designated Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante for protection, hoping to preserve their culture, history and natural beauty.

Past administrations, Trump said, thought "the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what? They are wrong."

"The families and communities of Utah know and love this land the best and you know the best how to take care of your land," Trump said. "You know how to protect it. And you know best how to conserve this land for many, many generations to come."

Locals in the area saw the designations as nothing more than a 3-million-acre federal land grab. The drillers, miners and frackers who were shut out by Clinton's and Obama's use of the Antiquities Act would have new leases on life. Sen. Orrin Hatch and his fellow Utah Republicans would have a major victory to celebrate.

But those who believe the rocks can talk, through countless fossils, sacred ruins and desert solitude, are bracing for a fight.

"I'm going to sue him," says Yvon Chouinard, founder and CEO of outdoor gear maker Patagonia. "It seems the only thing this administration understands is lawsuits. I think it's a shame that only 4% of American lands are national parks. Costa Rica's got 10%. Chile will now have way more parks than we have. We need more, not less. This government is evil and I'm not going to sit back and let evil win."

Chouinard led the effort to move a major outdoor show from Salt Lake City to Denver in protest of Utah's land use politics and he's been a big supporter of the historic coalition of the five local tribes, which put aside ancient rivalries and lobbied for monument protection.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said he was unmoved by people like Chouinard who are threatening lawsuits.

"I don't yield to pressure, only higher principle," he said. "And I don't think public policy should be based on the threat of lawsuit ... I feel very confident."

But Chouinard's arguments carry no sway at a pro-Trump, anti-monument rally in Monticello. Here, Chouinard represents all the liberal interests from outside, conspiring to pit neighbor against neighbor. "What's his net worth? One billion dollars? Two billion?" says San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman. "You got Patagonia in here waving the flag of environmentalism while he's completely exploiting the outdoors for industrialized tourism. For a person in that position to try and lecture morality to one of the poorest counties in the entire nation is wrong."

The size of New Jersey, San Juan is the biggest and poorest county in Utah and with this moment of political victory, Lyman finds kinship with the coal miners of Appalachia.

He points out that Bears Ears is the fifth national park or monument in his county and argues that oil and gas extraction would have less impact on the landscape than the brand of adventure tourism that has transformed nearby Moab. "By designating a monument, you are using a tool that will bring hordes of people to a place that is very sensitive," he says.

But according to former county commissioner and Navajo elder Mark Maryboy, cultural sensitivity is hard to find in San Juan County. "They didn't want to work with us," he says. "In fact, one of the county commissioners told me 'You guys lost the war so you have no business talking about the land planning process.'"

With efficient strides, he drops into a canyon near the San Juan River, past one of the 100,000 sacred ruins in Bears Ears, to a wall covered in 1,200-year old rock art. The spindly renderings of man and animal are the work of an artist they've dubbed "Wolfman" for the paw print signature that accompanies the pictoglyphs. And then he points out the modern bullet holes.

To his Navajo faith, this canyon holds the spirits of his loved ones and these carvings are just as sacred as any art in the Vatican or any wall in Jerusalem, yet someone has been using it for target practice.

"The local white community members are determined to get rid of all the art rock," he says. "It stands in the way of progress for them. It stands in the way of a job. New cars. New clothes. Rolex watch."

He's heard the argument that his people need jobs and that the extraction industry could provide them while protecting the most important sites.

But, he feels, history hasn't shown that to be true.

"The experience that Native Americans see in this county is discrimination," he says. "They are the last ones to be hired for any position. Even if there's a huge mining operation opening up, they will not be hired for that position. And they will be exposed to the toxic materials that are left on the ground or in the air."

Regardless of Trump's decision and unless Utah politicians can figure out a way to take them back and sell them off, the 3 million acres around Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will remain public.

If you are an American, this is your land and these are your rocks. Pay them a visit sometime. You'll be amazed at the stories they tell.

CNN's Paul Vercammen, Rachel Clarke and Dan Merica contributed to this story.
As issues around wealth inequality, cultural disagreements, racial tensions and healthcare rage on, one cause still needs supporters - the environment. Ellie Goulding is the latest high profile celebrity to give her time to supporting environmental health and preservation, and has just been named a UN Environment Global Goodwill Ambassador, which she announced in a tweet that shows her with a pretty cute endangered giraffe named Ed.

I'm delighted to announce that I have become a UN Environment Global Goodwill Ambassador. Thank you to @unep head @eriksolheim for making it official @giraffe_manor. All witnessed by Ed the giraffe (he's pretty special. Only 800 of his species left). Feel very honoured :) pic.twitter.com/tDbuAGFmev

 Ellie Goulding (@elliegoulding) December 3, 2017

The British pop star is currently at the UN Environment headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and said in a statement that her "focus will be on amplifying the activism of young people committed to creating a bright future. I want as many people as possible to become advocates for the planet." Goulding joins Entourage actor Adrien Grenier in the UN initiative Clean Seas, which fights pollution in the ocean.

Image via YouTube


At first glance Jacob Whitesides doesn't seem to have the makings of your run-of-the-mill sex symbol and yet, that's exactly who the pop sensation has become. The freshly 20 year-old's Southern upbringing culminates in impeccable manners, he's endearingly curious and almost considerate to a fault, but there's no rebel without a cause, cigarette-smoking, see-you-in-hell-persona one might expect of someone of his popularity. This is perhaps because while, in a similar vein to Justin Bieber, or his close friend and collaborator Shawn Mendes, Jacob Whitesides has also built a career off the beating hearts of teen girls, Whitesides is almost entirely removed from his fame  particularly in country music hotspot Nashville. Instead, his almost two million-strong Instagram following might collectively faint with the knowledge The X Factor-alum can't wait to settle down, but there's no chance of that happening any time soon.

After the success of his debut 2016 album Why?, Jacob Whitesides is back with two new singles, many more tattoos and ready for his takeover. We caught up with the young star to chat high profile relationships, DMing with fans and how to survive growing up in the public eye.

I'm curious about the stigma, if any, of coming from a reality show background, is that something that still follows you or do you feel completely detached?

I feel like it doesn't, because I got no air time from that. I made it semi far, I don't remember how far, but I literally didn't get any air time from that. Thank god. Fortunately.

Because it sticks to you?

Yep. It literally does.

It's bizarre because it's like, you prove that you're this amazing live performer, win fans across the country, then suddenly it's like, "Oh but you're not really a real artist." It's strange.

Totally my ex-girlfriend (Bea Miller) was on the same season as me but she made it really far. I feel like she's kind of detached herself from it but it's always still there. You type her name in Google and it's the first thing that comes up. I'm glad I didn't get that.

"Killing Me" is such a flawless pop song  it felt like a game changer for you. How have you evolved as an artist?

I feel like everything naturally evolves from the next thing. I'm naturally growing up and experiencing new things. The first EP was the first time that I've ever written original music whatsoever. I've never really written before, maybe one or two songs, but I was always very involved in the creative process. I feel like everything's naturally evolved but not in a way that's trying too hard. Especially with the new stuff. I feel like some people turn eighteen or get in that adult range and they try so hard to detach themselves from the past stuff. I feel like everything's naturally grown. I also changed by management because with my last manager stuff I never got to get face to face with my team  they kind of just put walls up. So now it's been awesome. Now I've got it all together so that I can go and meet with labels and stuff like that without them having to tell me exactly what to sound like and what to do.

Team in what sense?

Publicists, my label, my independent publisher. I don't know it's been really nice this time. I kind of cleaned house in the last year. I kind of fired everyone because I was working with all these people that I didn't have any face to face with because of my management. I'm actually finishing up writing, recording, and stuff. I've been meeting with a ton of record labels. I've always wanted to go the major top 40 route but I didn't want to do it until I felt like I was ready. I just cleaned house completely so it's been really nice.

I feel like a lot of artists how been doing that recently. I keep hearing about people that are like, "You know what I just dropped my lawyer and everything became so much easier."

That's literally what I just did. It wasn't like, "Fuck everyone" it was like, "Hey I feel like it's time, I need to move on." It's also awesome because a lot of my new team, my attorney, my manager and a lot of people that I've been meeting with are all based out of Nashville. I've always made all of my albums in Nashville.

It's funny because you're really not country at all.

Yeah, the pop scene in Nashville is really up-in-coming but no one fully commits to making a full Nashville record. People come in all the time, I'm really good friends with Shawn Mendes, and he's coming here for three weeks to create some of his new album. I know Neil just recorded his record in Nashville. A lot of artists come but they don't commit to doing the whole thing there.

RELATED | Shawn Mendes Wants You To Know Who He Really Is

What's the attraction? Why Nashville?

Novelty...and there are just so so many talented musicians. It's the best hybrid because there's so much going on there but also it's a very chill environment. People like New York and LA, because they like the craziness. I feel like a lot of artists, especially on the indie side of things appreciate Nashville just because it's so relaxed and there's not a ton going on. It's still a happening city it's just under the radar.

I feel like prior to Taylor Swift people were saying that you come out of Nashville with pop.

One hundred percent. There's been multiple artists that have said, "You need to come work on your records in Nashville, there's a lot of unique stuff coming out of here, you should at least come and write here a little bit." All of their teams would literally say there's nothing good coming out of Nashville. Now that Nashville is starting to happen they're sending everyone there. It's amazing to see just because I've been in Nashville for a while.

Was there ever a time where you felt like you could step back from the artistry and just focus on writing?

Yeah I think so. I love that side of things and everything's been so crazy for me over the past four years. Now this is the first time in a while that I can just sit and create. We have so many songs so I'm sure that, I'm planning on signing a publishing deal next year, I'm sure that a lot of the songs that don't make the cut will find home for other artists. It's something that has always been a goal of mine. I write so freaking much that once I get in that mindset it's really nonstop for months. Every day in the week I end up with fifty songs and I only use ten of them.

Who would you love to write for?

I feel like I would appreciate collaborating more so. Being able to write with them for their project instead of pitching them songs that I already have. I kind of attach to all the songs that I write. I love the new Niall [Horan] record. I think it's really awesome.

I think he went a good way.

I think all of them have honestly. They're all very different. Zayn's definitely my favorite.

Zayn's your favorite?

Yeah. I love Zayn. I think that would be my cool collaboration just because his stuff is so interesting. He's also just a really interesting human. For someone that's so famous and has such amazing music he's so under the radar.

Is that a difficult part of the business for you? Being "on the radar"?

I think what I hate the most is just promo tour and stuff when you're just flying all the time. That shit stresses me out. There's so many times where I did a lot of the Jingle Ball stuff last year, and there are all these massive artists, and then I step in then they're like, "So what's your name?" It's so awkward. Usually when you're there they're like, "What's new or what are you working on?" That's usually the extent of the conversation, then it's just right on to the next one. You could literally hear them asking the same questions to this person and this person. Everyone's so close together. Those are my least favorite. I hate red carpet stuff. I'm also not really a stylish person either so all of these people are wearing these elaborate outfits and I have on skinny jeans and a t-shirt. I always feel so stupid. Everyone around me always dresses so nice and I'm super basic. I'm trying to step it up.

Also the fact that you just came out of a high profile relationship, there's that whole added element.

Yeah. I'm lucky I don't have a fan base that's really crazy and like, "Fuck anyone you date." I feel like I've always been so hyper involved with my fans that they have a genuine respect for me if I'm talking to someone or dating someone. We broke up the first time and her fans still supported me, my fans still supported her, it's chill. They like it, they enjoy the pictures and everything that comes along with it, but they're not crazy dramatic about it. It's been super badass only because I'm so close with so many [fans]. They can literally show up to my shows and I can recognize half of them. Mostly because I'm always online naturally.

Does that get not get tiring?

Not really. I just feel like even if I didn't have a following as an artist I'll still be that person that's always on his phone. It's a millennial thing honestly. Most of the time I'll get asked if it exhausts you but I just feel like I'd naturally be doing it anyways. The fact that I have people to talk to is sick.

Do you read everything?

For the most part yes. Honestly I read DM's, tweets, the comments. I usually do. I'm always hyper-involved.

You reply?

Yes all the time. That's kind of how it started.

It doesn't get to you at all?

Not really because people are super positive of me. I feel like the people that get the most negativity are the people who respond to it. So I've never been one to respond to it. Sometimes I will. Sometimes someone will piss me off and I'll say "Fuck you." It really drains your diehard fans to see you interacting with people who don't give a shit about you. When all of them are sitting there trying to talk to you and you're not responding. There's so many trolls on the internet that will look for vulnerable people to dive into. The people that sit there and respond the most are the people that they're going to come at the hardest because they know they're going to get a reaction and attention from it. They love it. I've just never been one to go right at it.

Sometimes I will say something like, "Hey that was fucking rude." I had to snap on a girl the other day. She tweeted at me and said, "You're not as active as you used to be." I was like, "I have a career outside of social media." I deleted it though. I'll usually snap then be like, "Shit, I shouldn't have done that and then delete it."

Can you live or are you constantly recognized?

I got recognized on the elevator on the way up just now. Some really sweet girl. She was going off at the sixth floor. She said, "I love you." She was an adult though. I forget that I'm 20 years-old now. When I see people who are my age that recognize me I feel really special but all my fans are honestly my age now. It's different.

Yeah they grew with you.

It's weird. I did that birthday show the other day. All these fans that use to come to my show with their parents are now sitting at the bar drinking liquor. It's interesting growing with them. I have such loyal fans. They stuck with me through everything. I opened up for Fifth Harmony four years ago. It was one of their first tours and their fans are very girl power, which I'm all for, but they did not like the fact that I was touring with them because I was a guy. They were coming for my neck constantly. It's crazy. For the longest time they would always harass me on social media for no reason, and then recently I got tattoos and started working out, I've grown taller and I dress better, so occasionally more and more I'd get a tweet from a Fifth Harmony account saying, "What happened to Jacob Whitesides his music is so good now. He looks good now and blah blah blah."

Was that a conscious decision, you're really embracing a new image now?

Yeah. I've always wanted to get tattoos. I kind of got into the fitness thing when I was in Europe because I was touring with this drummer that was so ripped and awesome. He taught me a bunch of things. I feel like all of this just happened very randomly but naturally. I'm just coming into my adult self in a way that's not crazy.

Listen to Jacob's new Christmas single below.

Image supplied


Exactly a week ago today, when the month of December was inaugurated with the announcement of 15 major black artists nominated for Grammy awards, I took to Google for a cursory search of "rich man" stock photos.

Unsurprisingly, 87 million results exclusively revealed images of middle-aged white men, their relationships with cash plainly visible in the garments on their backs, money bags accrued around their bodies and full champagne glasses.

But it also yielded a single portrait in color: a black man. Jay-Z stared coolly through the screen, pouring D'Usse into the mouth of one of three Grammys he won back in 2013two of which for "N*ggas in Paris," a song about black men existing at the nexus of Hollywood and the hood.

This year, leading the pack of nominees for his album 4:44an intimate confessional responding to Beyonce's Lemonade and bridging days of poverty with new moneythe hip-hop luminary was launched into the first Album of the Year category free of white men since 1999.

Cardi B enjoyed similar success. Having only debuted in November 2015, the radiant Afro-Dominican rapper was honored with two noms, both for "Bodak Yellow," the colloquial anthem of an unfuckwithable South Bronx woman of color getting her money by her own means (her net worth reportedly sits at $4 or 5 million, give or take).

Combined with Beyonce's recent dethroning of Taylor Swift as the richest woman in music, I thought of how satisfying it is to watch black artists' success affirmed by their material riches. Though granted superficially, their Grammys and money, each inevitably muddied by the fingerprints of affluent white men, feel oddly cathartic.

While I don't care much to know just how rich the super rich arethough a mental visitation to the role of creditor rather than debtor is a sweet break from realitythe triumphs of Cardi, Bey and Jay feel personal. Perhaps it's because they are pedagogically building black generational wealth that has never existed in Americathat although we're moving toward an entirely white hereditary aristocracy of fortune, they are interrupting a legacy of inequity.

I think they want that freedom for us, too. Jay-Z extends capital support to startup businesses. Yonce invests in and cultivates talent. Cardi distributes cash at the strip club.

Capitalism invites us to gauge success by measurable wealth. So if black oppression is a material struggle, perhaps black freedom responds materially, both in property and in image.

My family was never poor, but I learned the value of a dollar at a young age. I eventually assumed finance was the root of my existence in a broken nuclear family, succumbing to the mythologies that black people can't save money. So although the wealth of a child's family is the single greatest predictor of their future economic prospects, I am determined to cross the chasm between myself and my rich white counterparts.

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The average black family needs 228 years to build the wealth of a white one. But these artists are accessing that, and much more, in their lifetimes. They've seized reparations and snatched the keys to a kingdom from which they were supposed to be barred.

And they're holding their money close; on their bodies, liquidized in their hands, pressed as gold against their teeth. Black self-luxuriating is a radical and political act.

I wonder why they must be chided for practicing capitalism in its purest form, in garish spending and self-decorating, while others are envied for doing the same.

No matter, I'll continue to find solace in their material success, and every time "Bodak Yellow" comes on at the club, I'll sing it as though I wrote it myself.

Photo via Getty
A gay Australian lawmaker popped the question to his partner in parliament on Monday, with the first ever proposal in the chamber coming shortly after a bill paving the way for same-sex marriage was introduced.

Tim Wilson, who has reportedly been engaged to Ryan Bolger for nine years, fought back tears as he thanked his fiance for enduring a marriage debate that "has been the soundtrack to our relationship".

"In my first speech I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands -- that they are the answer to the questions we cannot ask," the 37-year-old lawmaker from the ruling conservative party said.

"So there is only one thing left to do: Ryan Patrick Bolger will you marry me?"

Bolger, who was sitting in the public gallery, quickly responded "yes" as the floor erupted in applause.

"That was a 'yes', a resounding 'yes'," house speaker Rob Mitchell noted for the record. "Congratulations, well done mate."

The Australian House of Representatives official twitter account confirmed later that after reviewing past records, Wilson's proposal was likely the first ever in that chamber of Parliament.

"Update: We've dug through Hansard and @timwilsoncomau appears to be the first ever Member to propose on the floor of the House," it tweeted.

Wilson earlier emotionally recalled the uneasiness he experienced with some friends when he and Bolger were first engaged.

"Many simply didn't know how to react. Many SMS went unresponded. In conversations some people politely changed the topic, or fell silent entirely," he said.

His partner had pushed him to have an engagement party.

"On informing one person of our news, they responded: Why bother?

"At the time I fell silent and I have never had an answer to that question. But the Australian people have now answered that for me."

The same-sex marriage bill being debated is expected to comfortably pass through the House of Representatives before Christmas after the upper house Senate last week overwhelmingly voted in its favour.

After more than a decade of debate, Australians emphatically endorsed gay marriage in a recent nationwide postal vote, with some 62 percent of the 12.7 million who took part voting "yes" last month.

"This is a historic moment of inclusion, of recognition, of respect," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said shortly after the bill was introduced for debate in the lower house Monday.

"This is a day to be especially proud that all of our friends, our colleagues, our neighbours, our brothers, our sisters, can marry the people they love."

Former conservative prime minister Tony Abbott, a leading voice in the 'no' campaign, said he would now back the bill.

"I certainly don't pretend to be an overnight convert to support same-sex marriage but I am pledged to respect and to facilitate the verdict of the Australian people," he said.

"Same-sex marriage should now be recognised. It will now be recognised."

Abbott moved an amendment he said protected discrimination against anyone over their "conscientious view about the nature of marriage", before saying he planned to attend his gay sister's wedding next year.

"I am looking forward to attending the marriage of my sister, Christine, to her partner Virginia some time early in the new year."

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Genesis Breyer P-Orridge doesn't want to be a guru. Any kind of hierarchy is essentially a means of exerting control over others, and stifling personal freedomthings P-Orridge categorically rejects. Despite that, however, P-Orridge, albeit inadvertently, is a radical teacher whose words can spark a bright light of understanding, and deliver incredibly impactful jolts of self-empowerment.

P-Orridge is also, of course, widely heralded as a pioneering artist: Founder of the sex-and-the-grotesque inspired performance collective COUM Transmissions in 1969; then came Throbbing Gristle, the legendary industrial music path-clearers; and later, in 1981, the genre-evading experimental outfit Psychic TV, through which emerged Thee Temple ov Psychick Youthan anti-cult fellowship of sorts, referred to as TOPY, replete with its own original sacred texts. (And of which P-Orridge is outspokenly not the leader, because there isn't one, period. A film is also in the works via indie labels Sacred Bones and Dais.)

In October, however, a medically-mandated hiatus from all appearances was announced: The 67-year-old has been performing for the last 50 years, most recently with Psychic TV, as well as lecturing at universities and LGBTQ events worldwidebut as a result of a chronic myelomonocytic leukemia diagnosis, P-Orridge would need to undergo "serious treatment" to combat the life-threatening cancer.

A Gofundme campaign has been organized by media and technology writer Douglas Rushkoff to help offset the financial burdenand physical stressthat such a diagnosis and subsequent treatment inevitably carries.

"We want Gen to be warm and fed through the winter, and focused on hopefully healing, not finances. The drugs are experimental, but promising. With continued therapy *and* low stress, Gen does not have to die from this, but could be back performing again sometime next year," Rushkoff stresses in the campaign description.

Prolific is a most appropriate descriptor of P-Orridge's consistent momentum of output; beyond Thee Psychick Bible, P-Orridge has written numerous texts, and is a visual cut-and-paste artist, as well.

Readers familiar with P-Orridge will also recall that, in the '90s, s/he (P-Orridge's preferred gender pronoun) began body modifications along with P-Orridge's late wife Lady Jaye. Together the pair endeavored to achieve a separate genderthe pandrogyne, named by Jaye and P-Orridgethat became Breyer P-Orridge, an amalgam that became a single, new individual. In 2011, Marie Losier documented the process during and in post, as Lady Jaye "dropped her body," as P-Orridge says, in 2007's The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye. Later, a journey to Ouidah, in the Republic of Benin in West Africa, where P-Orridge explores the origins of Vodoun (Voodoo) and the sacred role of twins within that particular commune, was documented in Bight of the Twin, released last year.

As P-Orridge focuses on getting better, we reflect on just a few bits of the vast wisdom s/he has amassedtimelessly illuminating reflections on art, life, gender, and more, were gifted to the public through interviews, lyrics, film, and the messages of Thee Temple of Psychick Youth.

1. On freedom and fear: "Why are they afraid of freedom? Why are they afraid of a different idea? Because they know what they've got has no strength. And that's our strength. They know that they have no strength, and they're trying to bluff everybody like playing poker, you know?"

 Interview in Tbilisi, Georgia, October 26, 2016

2. On the purpose of art: "For me, art is the ultimate questions, the ultimate thoughts, how to deprogram yourself. I believe that everyone is programmed from birth, and that that is unhealthy. And that the artist is the inheritor of a tradition of wise peopleshaman, and priests, the ritual side of the social animal, there to expiate psychic and philosophical problems. That's what art is meant to be about, is rescuing people from the fear of death and the fear of life, and that's a very thin line.

It's also a line which our society doesn't even accept is there anymore; the reinforcement of the idea of there being a status quo and socially acceptable behavior is the norm, and I believe the artist is there to destroy and cut up and reposition and collide any possibility that they see in order to try and save people from being dead while they're alive. Now that, inevitably, is going to cause conflict with authority."

 BBC interview, 1986

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN5NdqyYGFs&feature=youtu.be expand=1]

3. On information: "Information is like a bank. Some of us are rich, some of us are poor with information. All of us can be rich. Our job, your job, is to rob the bank, to kill the guard, to go out there, to destroy everybody who keeps and hides the whole information."

 "Decoder 5: Information Bank," from the album Sugarmorphoses by Genesis P-Orridge and Psychic TV, 1994

4. On language as a means of control: "We worked a lot with Burroughs, who focused my attention on language and how important it is in terms of how this planet and culture are controlled. Language is integral to the suppression of the imagination. It doesn't have to be, but that's how it was utilized by those who have privilege and power. Burroughs was fascinated with hieroglyphs because they aren't linear and there's no alphabet. Because of this, he believed they worked directly on the nervous system and could bypass imposed filters of culture. As we said before, you're programmed by people's expectations even before you come out of the womb.

For me, language is critical in the war against control. It's critical in the short circuiting of control. When Burroughs and I first met in 1971, he said, 'Genesis, your task is: how do you short circuit control?' And we thought, well that was a bit pretentious, William. But we have to confess that we've been thinking about it ever since. He programmed me with an anti-program. He put a little virus in. Short-circuiting control means you have to think, where is control, what is control, how does it operate, and what are its leverages? Language is essential within that."

 Interview with Mitch Mignano for RealitySandwich.com, 2016

5. On religion: "The only answer, if you look at every religion, and we've studied as many as we can, we've traveled the world, it all comes down to love. That's the only thing. It's so corny, but it's true."

 Interview in Tbilisi, Georgia, October 26, 2016

6. On love: "Unconditional love is really, in the end, what we discovered is what makes it worth being here."



 Interview in Berlin, September 14, 2014

7. On self-discipline: "Explore daily your deepest desires, fantasies and motives, gradually focusing on what you would like to happen in a perfect world, a perfect situation, taking away all restrictions and practical considerations, what you would really want... Once you are focused on yourself internally, thee external aspects of your life will fall into place. They have to."



 Thee Psychick Bible, published 1994, and appears on Psychic TV's "A Message from The Temple," from the album Force the Hand of Chance, 1982

8. On Lady Gaga: "Then you have Lady Gaga, which is like, 'pa pa pa paparazzi.' We've got these two parallel words, yet again the either/or. You've either got 'pa pa pa paparazzi' or a poetic writer. Of course, both have validity. The validity of 'pa pa pa paparazzi' is a very brief revelation of the mundane, dilution of meaning that's being very carefully manipulated in our culture."



 Interview with Mitch Mignano for RealitySandwich.com, 2016

Photo via Getty
Iran Opens Extension Of Key Chahbahar Port In Gulf Of Oman

12/04/17

Report by RFE/RL; photos by Akbar Tavakkoli, Islamic Republic News Agency



Iran has officially opened an extension of its southeastern port of Chabahar, which Tehran hopes will become a key transit hub for land-locked Afghanistan and Central Asia. State TV said President Hassan Rohani attended the inauguration on December 3 along with dignitaries from India, Qatar, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries.



President Rohani at the port of Chahbahar

"Through this port, goods will be delivered to neighboring countries at cheaper prices and in a shorter time," Rohani said at the ceremony.



Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi said Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman will "soon become an important commercial hub for Iran."











The extension of Chabahar port, Iran's closest sea link to the Indian Ocean, more than tripled its capacity to 8.5 million tons of cargo annually, compared with the previous 2.5 million tons.



Construction was carried out by Khatam al-Anbia, a conglomerate owned by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and a number of subcontractors, including a state-run Indian company.







Rohani Downplays Rivalry

The extension required an investment of $1 billion, including $235 million from India.



Further stages of development are due to expand the port over the next 14 years.



New Delhi has committed up to $500 million for the development of the Chabahar port along with roads and railway lines in order to get access to the Afghan and Central Asian markets while bypassing rival Pakistan.



Analysts say the Chabahar port could challenge Pakistan's Gwadar port, some 80 kilometers from Chabahar, which is being developed with Chinese investment.



However, Rohani downplayed the rivalry in his speech, saying the port would bring "more engagement and unity" among regional countries.



"We should go after positive competition," he said. "We welcome other ports in the region, we welcome Gwadar's development."







In late October, India shipped its first consignment of wheat to Afghanistan from the western Indian port of Kandla. The shipment is to be taken by trucks to Afghanistan from Chabahar.



Pakistan has banned India from transporting goods through its territory to Afghanistan.

Iran is planning to link the Chabahar port with a railway to the northeastern city of Mashhad to further facilitate trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia.



However, the project has been slow to materialise.



With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
In recognition of their contribution towards the economic development of the Ashanti region, Manhyia Palace over the weekend presented a Gold Award to Agro Ecom for their immense support to Ghanas cocoa industry.



The Administrative Manager of Agro Ecom, Seth Hammond, who received the award on behalf of the company, pledged the commitment of the company to continue with its vision of ensuring that cocoa farmers in the country get the best support they need.



Agro Ecom Ghana is part of the Ecom Group which is a Swiss-based commodity merchant and sustainable supply chain Management Company with operations in over 40 countries world-wide.



In Ghana, the company is a member of the Cocoa Buyers Association of Ghana (LICOBAG) and works with over 140,000 farmers.



It has a vision to show that through innovation and entrepreneurship, prosperity can be built.



As a leading private licensed cocoa buying company in Ghana, Agro Ecom also buys and sells other crops such as cashew and sesame. It also guides and trains farmers on how to reach sustainability and high quality, certified produce.



The company runs a large logistics business with a fleet of almost 150 modern trucks and provides input products that yield healthy crops and offers innovative micro-finance options.



This has positioned Agro Ecom at the forefront of changing the industry, driving a unique business model that safe-guards the future of cocoa and other crops in Ghana.



It has a staff capacity of 500 full time employees and individual engagement with 5,000 stakeholders and over 140,000 farmers.



Ashanti Business Excellence Awards, is organized annually under the Authority of Manhyia Palace.

Source: thepublisheronline









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The main event saw president Adama Barrow addressing citizens about the victory of December 2016 and warning that there was more work to be done to better the lives of the people.



Jammeh until 2016 had been president of the Gambia for 22 years since he took power as a 29-year-old lieutenant in a bloodless coup. He kicked out the countrys first president, Dawda Jawara.



Despite coming in as a 29-year-old he was to leave as a 51-year-old democrat who was known more for his autocratic ways and widely believed to be a person who abused rights of the media and of opponents.



Jammeh openly conceded his loss in a televised address a day after the elections (December 2, 2016). He addressed the nation and was shown congratulating Barrow in a phone call.



Things will, however, take a turn as he rejected the results a week later with the reason that the results were manipulated.



I want to make it very clear, in the same way I accept the results on the basis that the IEC is independent, I will not accept the result. I reject the results, Jammeh announced.



I hereby annul the results and we will go back to the polls, he added. He will go ahead to refuse the then ECOWAS leaders visit to Banjul. Ellen Johnson Sirleafs plane was denied landing rights.



A back and forth ensued from widespread condemnation of his move, ECOWAS sent mediation teams led by Muhammadu Buhari, some Gambians began fleeing for fear of violence.

Source: africanews









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The Minority Chief Whip in Parliament, Alhaji Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka has stated that Members of Parliament (MPs) are under severe financial pressure due to the nature of their work.



According to him, MPs, who represent the people of Ghana, are simply working to be poor.



Speaking at a parliamentary constituency forum in Bekwai over the weekend, the MP for Asawase stated that the car loan facility that is forced on MPs is burdensome and torturous.



The programme, which is an initiative of the Public Affairs Unit of Parliament, brought together people from diverse backgrounds, including chiefs, who posed questions to the MPs on some aspect of their work in parliament.



Alhaji Muntaka commented: With the pressure brought to bear on MPs to amortise the loan plus the cost incurred during party primaries, no one should tell you that were simply working poor.



No one should endure this as part of his job, and we take this problem extremely seriously because not even the aggregation of our monthly salaries in addition to the ex-gratia can offset the cost that we incur, the MP said.



He appealed to voters and constituents not to burden MPs with demand of money so as not to tempt them to be corrupt, intimating that Ghanas politics has always been rough.



The Majority Leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said MPs are not agents of development, but facilitators, who should never promise developmental projects while canvassing for the votes of the electorate.



According to him, MPs share of the Common Fund cannot construct a six-unit classroom block and roads, arguing that such funds could only purchase roofing sheets and bags of cement for the needy constituents.



You should hold the executive, including the District Assemblies, accountable. They have the money to spend on development; they have the responsibility to construct roads, classroom blocks and provide potable water for you, Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu asserted.



He educated participants on the work of legislators, and called on the electorate to elect wise and knowledgeable people to the august House.



Other speakers at the programme were the First Deputy Speaker, Joseph Osei-Owusu, who is also the MP for Bekwai, Emmanuel Gyamfi, MP for Odotobiri and Alhaji Mohammed Briamah Bawah of Ejura-Sekyedumase Constituency.

Source: Daily Guide









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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is expected to lead a high powered delegation to mourn the death of the Asantehemaa, Nana Afia Kobi Serwaa Ampem II today.



The grand two-week funeral of the late Asantehema officially started on Friday, 1st December, 2017.



Some world leaders are expected to travel to the Manhyia Palace to mourn the death of the Asantehema in the coming days.



President Akufo-Addo would storm the palace and console the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and Asantehemaa, Nana Ama Konadu II on behalf of government and people of Ghana.



Sources at the Manhyia Palace disclosed that todays ceremony would be impressive because the first gentleman of the land would join Asanteman to mourn the death of the Asantehema.



It would be recalled that President Akufo-Addo also led similar government delegation to the Manhyia Palace some few months ago during the burial of the late Asantehemaa, who died at the age of 111.



Otumfuo Fires Musketry



The rich Asante culture and traditions, which date several centuries, would be on display at the venue.



According to sources, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II would fire gunshot to show to the entire world that he and Asanteman are mourning.



The Asantehene would be dressed in Batakari Kesee, which literally means the big smock and carried in a palanquin at the Pampamso area in Adum, the city center.



From Pampaso, the Asantehene and his chiefs, elders, servants and mourners, would go through the principal streets of Kumasi.



The days activities would be climaxed with a durbar in the bush behind the Manhyia Palace where the Asantehene would fire a symbolic gunshot.



Nana Afia Kobi Serwaa Ampem II reigned for 39 years before she joined her ancestors after a short illness.



She has since been succeeded by Nana Ama Konadu II.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Two male first-year students of Kumasi Academy Senior High School (KUMACA) have died and three others are seriously ill under mysterious circumstances.



The two deceased students reportedly fell sick suddenly on separate occasions and gave up the ghost after they had been rushed to the hospital for treatment.



The shocking death of the two students is said to have ignited fear and tension in the school, which is situated in the Asokore Mampong Municipality.



It would be recalled that about five students of KUMACA also died under similar strange circumstances earlier this year.



Cassandra Twum Ampofo, the Ashanti Regional Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Ghana Education Service (GES), confirmed the recent deaths to DAILY GUIDE in a chat.



She said the temperature of one of the first-year students suddenly shot up Wednesday evening and he reported to the schools infirmary for treatment.



The students condition deteriorated and so he was rushed to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Hospital for treatment.



According to her, the condition of the student (name withheld), worsened and so he passed away at about 4am on Thursday at the hospital.



Cassandra said on that same Thursday, at about 7:30 pm, another first-year student was also rushed to the schools sickbay, having high temperature.



She said on the school nurses recommendation, he was taken to the KNUST Hospital for treatment but sadly he also passed on.



The PRO, amid sobs, narrated that another student also reported sick and he was quickly rushed to the KNUST Hospital for immediate attention.



According to Ms Twum Ampofo, that students parents advised that their child be transferred to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, where he is still on admission.



Meanwhile, unconfirmed information indicates that four students  two males and two females  are on admission at the KNUST Hospital and are responding to treatment.

Source: Daily Guide









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Celebrated Ghanaian Economist and Investment consultant, Kwame Pianim has said hes not interested in pushing frantically for or lobbying for an appointment under the Akufo-Addo administration.



A founding member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), not much has been heard from Mr Pianim who has served in several public institutions and on governing saboards, since President Akufo-Addo assumed power almost a year ago.



His last employment was with the erstwhile Kufuor administration where he served as the Chairman of the Public Utility Regulation Council (PURC), but he resigned in December 2007 as a result of differences with the government.



Some were looking forward to see Mr Pianim with his vast experience heading at least a governing board of a state institution but that has not been the case.



Speaking on Kasapa FM, Mr Pianim who though advanced in age believes he still has a lot to offer the country, however is of the view that the younger generation should rather be given opportunity to serve in public office to help build the country.



It is now time for the younger ones to be given positions to serve, they are more stronger and can execute the demanding task that comes with heading public office. Some of us are old now and will want to take the back seat and monitor proceeding and be giving advises when necessary. If our services are needed well be called upon. President Akufo Addo knows that whenever he calls upon some of us, well always answer him and give the needed assistance. Theres no point in competing for appointment with the younger ones. From where I sit, if I see something going wrong Ill prompt the President about it. If there are issues concerning the economy that I want to bring to the attention of the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, Ill do so. 



Andrew Kwame Pianim serves as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of New World Investment Limited (NWIL), a consultancy firm. Mr. Kwame Pianim is a renowned Economist and Financial Consultant with diversified work experience in the international arena and in public and private sectors of the Ghanaian Economy. Prior to the incorporation of New World Investments Limited, he was a private economic and investment consultant, specializing in packaging investments for private placement.



He served as Deputy Managing Director of Ghana Aluminum Products Limited, Tema and as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Cocoa Board from 1978 to 1979. He served as a Principal Secretary at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning from 1970 to 1972.



He served as an Economic Research Officer at the United Nations, New York from 1964 to 1970. Mr. Pianim serves as Chairman of United Bank for Africa (Ghana) Limited. He also serves on the boards of a number of Ghanaian companies, which include, Unique Insurance Company Limited, Taysec Construction Limited, amongst others. Mr. Pianim holds a B.A.(Hons ) in Economics and Political Science from the University of New Brunswick, Canada (1963) and an M.A. in Economics from Yale University, U.S.A. (1964).

Source: kasapafmonline.com









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European Council President Donald Tusk cancelled a trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories planned for this week due to a "critical moment" in Brexit negotiations, an EU official said on Monday.

Tusk, who scheduled a meeting in Brussels at short notice on Monday with British Prime Minister Theresa May, will chair an EU summit next week that London hopes will give the go-ahead to opening talks on post-Brexit trade relations.

On Wednesday, Tusk had been due to meet Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

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Minister of Information, Mustapha Hamid has said the youth in Ghana can succeed even if the devil is President of Ghana.



According to him, the youth primarily need to persevere and be determined to succeed instead of seeking greener pastures in other countries like Libya or in Europe.



He suggested that bad leadership and a corresponding poor economic condition was not a good enough reason to undertake such deadly voyage.



Mustapha Hamids comment comes on the back of the global wave over modern slavery involving black Africans in Libya.



Reports indicate that victims of the dehumanizing practice including Ghanaians, Ethiopians, Sudanese and Nigerians who left their countries to seek greener pastures in Libya, with some using that country as a route through the Mediterranean into Europe.



Some have said that the illegal immigrants cannot be blamed for the situation, rather, the leadership of the various countries for their superintending poor economic conditions.



But Mustapha Hamid who spoke at an Open Forum on migration at the University of Ghana, said, let us tell our young people, that even if the devil is president of Ghana, and they have the willpower, the determination to succeed in their country, then they will succeed.



He noted that the Ghanaian youth need to change their mindset and develop ingenious ways to succeed rather than accumulating money to travel illegally to Europe.



He said they should invest their monies into profitable ventures and ideas that will help them succeed in the country.



If you have been able to.like somebody said, mobilize $1,500 of your money, that means you are ingenious enough to succeed in this country, he said noting that the Ghanaian youth must change his perception and develop a spirit that will enable him thrive in the country even under the worse economic circumstance.



127 Ghanaian detainees in Libya return home



A total of 127 Ghanaian illegal migrants who were in detention camps in Libya returned home last Wednesday.



The Ghanaians and some other black Africans were reported to have been subjected to inhumane treatment after giving away their lifes earnings and making torturous journeys through the Sahara hoping to make it big in Europe.



Two chartered flights full of Ghanaians touched down at the Kotoka International Airport on Wednesday night.

Source: citifmonline.com









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NDC Member of Parliament for Yapei Kusawgu, John Jinapor says President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo is playing the role of a serial caller than a president in his style of communication.



Mr. Jinapor, who finds the presidents mode of communication as unfortunate, noted that he [Nana Addo] must be advised to behave like a president.



The former deputy Minister for Power in the Mahama-led government comment comes after the president responded to remarks from some National Democratic Congress MPs that his flagship free Senior High School policy will collapse in five years, saying it will be "sustained."



Former President John Mahama, whos set to run for president again, has questioned the full implementation of the program when the constitution says it should be done progressively.



In addition, some NDC communicators and MPs have predicted the collapse of the program.



However, President Akufo-Addo on Saturday said "free SHS is here to stay," adding that the NDC has a record of scrapping pro-poor policies.



I know, and I am sure I am not the only one who has heard, the people who are mounting political platforms, speaking on television and radio, and putting up posts on social media, hoping and praying for this policy to collapse, he said at the 60th Anniversary Celebrations of the Kumasi Academy, in Kumasi.



He continued, We know those who have a record for scrapping pro-poor policies  nursing and teacher trainees will bear testimony. I wish to assure them that Free SHS will be sustained, that Free SHS is here to stay. The overwhelming majority of Ghanaians support the choice that I have made in implementing Free SHS.



Speaking on Neat FMs morning show dubbed Ghana Montie, Mr. John Jinapor said The President is rushing with his policies. He should be diplomatic in his choice of words and comport himself as a president. He should talk like an elected president. He [President Nana Addo] should move away from his political campaign time and act like a president. The NDC has no intention of collapsing any policies.

Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/ Twitter: @Washman5/ Instagram: Ambrose_wash









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The General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rev Dr Kwabena Opuni- Frimpong has described the Presidents campaign to create a Ghana beyond aid as cheap populist talk.



According to him, Ghana still needs aid and that people who campaign against development aid to Ghana appear not to know what the reality looks like.



Rev Opuni-Frimpong noted that donor countries had to monitor case by case to see that the money was well spent to have their moneys worth.

He said such populist campaign undermines operations of nongovernmental organisations and other institutions that do business with the donor agencies.



Rev Dr Samuel Asenso Bediako, a former pastor of the Presbyterian Church now based in the United States, also described the Presidents campaign as premature and unnecessary looking at the countrys current economic situation.



We need more than sweet political promises, rambling narratives and confusing signals, no matter how amusing, we need real change and the nation needs a new birth.



We need political leaders who are ready to confront our challenges with practical, tough but prudent solutions, walk their talk, will always be on the side of the people who are committed, not in the cradle of those who will eventually stab the masses in the back after getting their votes.



There are many Ghanaians still jobless, the face of poverty is still on our streets, there are still no accountability for rights violators, there are still multiple standards of justice and people still cynical about our justice system because of political manipulations and our corrupt officials are called heroes by their political friends, Rev Bediako lamented.



He advised politicians in Africa to stop their cheap political rhetoric about development aid to Africa stressing that the President should focus on building on what he inherited from his predecessors and clear from his government arrogant officials.



Rev Bediako slammed politicians who fantasize that they are omnipotent appointees who think public service is a private trust fund.



These are the issues the President should concern himself with, after 10 months the demagogic promises seem to have given way to compromise, reversals and even betrayal over time.



People waited and still waiting with varying degree of disbelief and hope that poverty will wane, corruption curbed, impunity abated, economic well being assured, foreign intervention and domination stopped.



These are the issues we must dispassionately tackle not cheap populist narratives and assurances, Rev Bediako stressed.

Source: The Ghanaian Times









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Police from multiple western Pennsylvania departments arrived to find a large, inflamed crowd outside a strip club in the wee hours of this morning.

The worked-up crowd outside Club Erotica in McKees Rocks, Allegheny County, Pa., broke into two groups and then allegedly ignited into a brawl around 1:40 a.m. today, WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh reports.

At least two people injured in the strip club brawl were hospitalized this morning, the station reports. Their conditions weren't immediately known.

Witnesses told WTAE the two groups got into a fight, but it was not clear what touched off the fracas.

WTAE reported at least one person being detained by police. The person was later released.

Authorities have not said whether any arrests were made, the station added.
Seth Mull has already been accused of raping a woman in Bethlehem, Pa.

Now, the 30-year-old is being investigated as a possible a sexual predator with victims across the country, including as many as a dozen victims from the Pittsburgh area, KDKA-TV is reporting:

It is believed Mull used social media and dating apps to meet and lure women, KDKA writes. Police have received complaints from as far away as California and Hawaii - women coming forward with stories, like the ones officials believe attracted women from the Pittsburgh area as well.

Once Mull successfully attracts a woman, police say he has been involved in sexually assaulting women and holding them against their will, KDKA writes, adding:

Mull was arrested back in October after authorities say he refused to let a woman leave his hotel room in Bethlehem. Police say he kept her there for 24 hours, where he raped, strangled and burned her.

Since then, other victims have come forward with allegations of being held against their will.

Police are still trying to determine if Mull was involved in human trafficking, KDKA adds. But investigators say he appeared to use threats to keep the women from escaping.

"Once the women are in his presence, he becomes aggressive and controlling," Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli is quoted by KDKA as saying.

Authorities continue to seek additional information about Mull and are asking additional women to come forward if they were assaulted by him.

"We need to know what occurred with this individual and any other young lady out there," Bethlehem Police Chief Mark DiLuzio told KDKA.
One family's pizza night at a posh pizza shop in the Society Hill section of Philadelphia turned tragic when a 16-month-old boy fell off a second floor balcony inside the restaurant Saturday night.

As NBC-10 and CBSPhilly.com report, the child, who was not named in initial reports, plunged from the second floor balcony inside Pietro's Coal Oven Pizzeria on 121 South Street.

The boy was rushed to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia to be treated for injuries in the fall.

At last report, the boy was listed in stable condition at the hospital.

Philadelphia police responded to the incident and were investigating the child's fall.
President Donald Trump on Sunday morning lashed out at ABC News, two days after investigative reporter Brian Ross made an erroneous report involving the president.

Ross had incorrectly reported Friday that during Trump's presidential campaign, Trump had directed Michael Flynn to make contact with Russian officials before the election.

Later that night, Ross read a "clarification" on "ABC World News Tonight," saying Trump had actually asked Flynn to make contact with Russia after the election, when he was president-elect.

Flynn, who briefly served as Trump's national security adviser after the election, pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI.

ABC News apologized for the mistake Saturday and issued a full correction. The network also suspended Ross for four weeks without pay, effective immediately.

On Twitter Saturday night, Trump initially offered his "congratulations" to ABC News for "suspending Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt."

Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused - many millions of dollars!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Many Trump supporters, including the president's adult children, accused Ross of propagating "fake news" and linked his report to the Dow dropping 350 points.

On Sunday, the president took aim at the network itself, calling for those affected by the stock market tumble to "consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused."

The network had "broken" Ross' report Friday with a tweet that read: "JUST IN: @BrianRoss on @ABC News Special Report: Michael Flynn promised "full cooperation to the Mueller team" and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump "directed him to make contact with the Russians."

The tweet, which has since been deleted, included a link to a story and a photo. It was shared and liked tens of thousands of times before it was removed.

Later Friday night, ABC then issued a "clarification," in the form of a new tweet and Ross' on-air appearance on "World News Tonight" with host David Muir. The subsequent tweet, which has also since been deleted, read: "CLARIFICATION of ABC News Special Report: Flynn prepared to testify that President-elect Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians *during the transition* - initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria, confidant now says."

ABC News was widely panned, even by those in the media industry, for its bungled handling of Ross's error. Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer called the network's "clarification" a "cop out and just another reason for the decline in trust of the media."

Several lamented that ABC had given ammunition to those who have long accused the mainstream media of being "fake news."

"This is not a 'clarification,' this is a huge effing difference," BBC senior reporter Anthony Zucher said on Twitter. The clarification also "took hours to do," noted CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski.

It wasn't until late Saturday afternoon that ABC issued a full correction and characterized Ross' mistake as a "serious error."

"We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error we made yesterday. The reporting conveyed by Brian Ross during the special report had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process," ABC News said in a statement. "As a result of our continued reporting over the next several hours ultimately we determined the information was wrong and we corrected the mistake on air and online."

The statement continued: "It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience - these are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday."

Ross said he accepted the disciplinary action.

"My job is to hold people accountable and that's why I agree with being held accountable myself," he tweeted Saturday.

Ross has worked for ABC News for more than two decades, joining the network in 1994 and reporting for shows like "20/20" and "Good Morning America." According to his bio on ABC's website, Ross has won numerous journalism awards over the years, "including seven duPont-Columbia Awards, six Peabody Awards, six Polk Awards, 16 Emmys, five awards from the Overseas Press Club, and five Edward R. Murrow Awards and many more."

However, Ross has also racked up several notable corrections in his career. In 2012, following a mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, Ross incorrectly reported that the suspect was a local tea party leader with the same name as the actual shooter. He later retracted the report.

"ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted," an editor's note on the online story reads.

In its coverage of Ross' misreporting on the Colorado shooting, Politico recalled Ross had also incorrectly reported in 2006 that the FBI was investigating Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert for bribery. The Justice Department denied the story then. In 2015, Hastert was charged with breaking federal banking laws and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in a hush-money case.

In 2001, Ross also erroneously linked anthrax used in attacks in Washington and New York with Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer confirmed Sunday that, at the time, he had told ABC News not to air the incorrect story, but that Ross had done so anyway. ABC later acknowledged the mistake and retracted the reports.

(c) 2017, The Washington Post * Amy B Wang. Paul Farhi contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON -- A Senate investigation into connections between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election suggests that a potential case of obstruction of justice is developing against the president, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Sunday.

"What we're beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice," Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said about the committee's investigation.

"We see this in the indictments, the four indictments, and pleas that have just taken place, and some of the comments that are being made," said Feinstein, who is also a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I see it in the hyper-frenetic attitude of the White House: the comments every day, the continual tweets."

Feinstein, on NBC's "Meet the Press," was referring to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates, who face charges including money laundering in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation; former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos; and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Papadopoulos and Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Feinstein said the most important instance was Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, which she believes was "directly because he did not agree to 'lift the cloud' of the Russia investigation" as he said Trump requested.

"That's obstruction of justice," Feinstein said.

Feinstein said her concern about the Trump White House "rises with the day" and hit a tipping point about a month ago. "There is a kind of instability, unpredictability," she said. "It's one issue after the other."

In a statement released Friday, Feinstein called Flynn's guilty plea on Friday regarding his conversations with Russians a "stunning revelation."

"This shows a Trump associate negotiating with the Russians against U.S. policy and interests before Donald Trump took office and after it was announced that Russia had interfered in our election," Feinstein said in the statement.

Asked Sunday on NBC whether Trump is a target of the investigation, Feinstein said she assumes that "many in the White House are under investigation in this" and that she doesn't believe that Flynn "was a rogue agent."

"I think he had to have been directed," Feinstein said. "Now whether the special counsel can find that evidence or not, whether we can, I don't know yet. But I see that that's where this is going." Also on "Meet the Press," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Mueller's investigation was "making progress."

Collins, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she didn't know whether there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, "but what we do know is there were conversations during the transition period."

There's only one president during the transition period and that was Barack Obama, so those conversations "should not have been taking place, but that does not confirm collusion," Collins said.

(c) 2017, Bloomberg. Ros Krasny wrote this story.
Britain and the EU failed to strike a Brexit divorce deal after a dispute over the Irish border scuppered talks in Brussels on Monday, but both said they were confident of reaching an agreement later this week.

British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker appeared to have made a breakthrough on easing Dublin's concerns about future frontier arrangements.

Britain was prepared to keep the EU customs and single market rules for Northern Ireland in order to meet Dublin's insistence that Brexit should not bring back a "hard border" and threaten a peace process that ended decades of sectarian tensions on the island, sources said.

But any such deal was swiftly undone thanks to fierce opposition from Northern Irish unionists who prop up May's minority Conservative government, in a development that Ireland's premier called "surprising and disappointing".

The EU says Britain must make sufficient progress on key divorce issues -- Ireland, Britain's financial bill for leaving the bloc, and the rights of EU nationals in Britain -- to allow the opening of trade and transition talks at a summit on December 15.

"Despite our best efforts... it was not possible to reach a complete agreement today," Juncker said at a joint news conference with May, adding that she was a "tough negotiator."

"This is not a failure... I am very confident that we will reach an agreement in the course of this week," added the former Luxembourg premier.

May said differences remained on a "couple of issues".

"But we will reconvene before the end of the week, and I am also confident we will conclude this positively," May said.

EU President Donald Tusk -- who had earlier described Monday as the "absolute deadline" for a deal -- said that "it is now getting very tight but agreement at December (summit) is still possible."

Tusk, the former Polish premier who chairs EU summits, said he had been ready to present draft guidelines on Tuesday to start trade talks "but UK and (the) Commission asked for more time."

Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party -- which has held the balance of power in the British parliament since May's disastrous showing in elections earlier this year -- said they rejected the deal despite a desperate telephone call from the British premier.

"We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom," DUP leader Arlene Foster said in a statement.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said he felt let down, having been asked by the EU chiefs whether he accepted a deal, only to hear later it had fallen through.

"I am surprised and disappointed that the British government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today," Varadkar said at a press conference in Dublin.

"I accept that the Prime Minister (Theresa May) has asked for more time, and I know that she faces many challenges, and I acknowledge that she is negotiating in good faith," he added.

In a sign of the tensions within the United Kingdom caused by Brexit, the leaders of Scotland and Wales together with the mayor of London all called for similar deals to the one being considered for Northern Ireland.

May, Brexit minister David Davis and the prime minister's Brexit adviser Olly Robbins attended the "working lunch" with Juncker, the EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and Juncker's chief of staff Martin Selmayr.

The EU has demanded "sufficient progress" from Britain on the exit bill, citizens rights and Ireland in order to move on to talks on a post-Brexit transition period of up to two years, and on a future relationship including a trade deal.

Failure to do so this month could make the EU "rethink" whether an overall Brexit withdrawal deal is possible at all, Tusk has warned.

After months of stalemate, London and Brussels have effectively reached a deal on the divorce settlement, reported to be 45 billion to 55 billion euros ($51 to $63 billion), which was previously the most contentious issue.

A deal is also close on the rights of more than three million Europeans living in Britain, though there is still disagreement over whether they would be protected by the European Court of Justice -- a red line for Brexit supporters in Britain.

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American Airlines said it has reached an agreement with its unionized pilots on a plan to staff flights that had been unstaffed because of a computer glitch,

The computer problem discovered last week had resulted in far too many pilots approved for time off between Dec. 17 and Dec. 31. The situation had the potential to cause thousand of holiday flights to be canceled.

American Airlines and the union representing pilots announced they had an agreement, but didn't immediately reveal details.
A Harrisburg father was sentenced to 6 to 12 years in state prison Monday immediately after admitting his guilt for the starvation death of one of his 5-month-old twin daughters.

Dauphin County Judge John F. Cherry imposed that penalty after Leviticus Hardy, 35, pleaded to a third-degree murder charge, plus counts of child endangerment and aggravated assault.

Hardy's plea came 11 months after the mother of the girls, Dionne Bishop, also pleaded guilty to homicide and was sentenced to 13 to 30 years behind bars.

And like Bishop, Hardy said nothing before Cherry sent him to jail.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Sean McCormack said Hardy was responsible for the death of his daughter, Lakia, and near-death of her sister, Lamia, but not to the degree of Bishop, who was the primary caregiver.

Bishop was the primary caregiver, the prosecutor said. Hardy was having severe medical problems and was hospitalized during some of the period where the girls were endangered, McCormack said.

Still, he said Hardy could have acted to prevent tragedy, perhaps by just making a phone call to authorities.

"These children starved. One starved to death and one nearly starved to death," McCormack said. "He would have seen what was going on."

Lakia Hardy died in Harrisburg Hospital on May 8, 2015, shortly after authorities rushed to her parents' Naudain Street home for a call about a child in respiratory distress.

Investigators said an autopsy showed Lakia, who weighed just 4.8 pounds, died from complications of child malnutrition syndrome.

McCormack said the parents had not been taking Lakia to medical appointments, nor were they giving her medicine prescribed for a blood clotting condition.

Lamia survived after she was rushed to Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center for treatment.

Hardy pleaded guilty just before his case was to go to trial.
Presidents and ministers from 24 nations will gather in Sharm El-Sheikh on Thursday for a three-day conference of the COMESA free-trade area, discussing investment and development issues affecting eastern and southern Africa.

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) announced its "Africa 2017" conference on Monday, saying the event from 7 to 9 December will see 10 national leaders and 40 ministers in attendance.

The event is being organized in cooperation with Egyptian Ministry of Investment and International Cooperation, and will see the participation of 1,500 high-profile executive managers and investors from 500 different African and international companies, COMESA director Heba Salama told state-run news agency MENA.

According to Salama, the conference will include discussions on integration mechanisms between African economies, and the ways to consolidate investments between them, as well as the role of the private sector in achieving sustainable development.

The event will also promote good investment opportunities in Africa, especially in the COMESA trade area, Salama added.

Egypt is hosting the event as one of 20 COMESA member nations, with others including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Comoros, Djibouti, Libya and Sudan.

The free-trade organization aims at achieving "sustainable economic and social progress in all member states through increased co-operation and integration in all fields of development particularly in trade, customs and monetary affairs, transport, communication and information technology, industry and energy, gender, agriculture, environment and natural resources," according to the official website.

The Africa 2017 conference is intended to "bring together decision makers and businessmen from the continent, as well as international funders, providing a big opportunity for a better future for African countries," Salama said.

She stressed that there is a financial gap of $93 billion in the field of infrastructure in Africa, saying the private sector in Africa can fill the gap and help to provide services.



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The new Lamborghini 'Urus' the first Super Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) by Lamborghini, is presented at the headquarters in Sant'Agata Bolognese, near Bologna, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. Lamborghini unveiled the once-improbable Urus SUV on Monday at its headquarters in SantAoAgata, Italy, where the supercar maker owned by the Volkswagen group is expanding the factory to meet utility vehicle demand. (Giorgio Benvenuti/ANSA via AP)
Dozens gathered at the St. John's Cemetery in Halifax on Sunday to remember the children and staff at an orphanage who were killed in the Halifax Explosion. Mourners sing hymns beside an obelisk memorial to the orphans and staff of the Halifax Protestant Orphanage who were killed in the 1917 Halifax Explosion, in Halifax on Sunday, December 3, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adina Bresge
Egypt will lower tariffs next January 2018 on cars imported from EU countries, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported on Monday.

Vice-Minister of Finance for Tax Policy Amr Mounir announced that the tariffs would be lowered starting from January 2018 as part of the Egyptian-EU partnership agreement.

Mounir made the announcement while speaking at the conference of the executive committee of the World Customs Organization, which is currently being held in Luxor, marking the conference's the first time in Egypt as well the Middle East and Africa.

The Egyptian-EU partnership agreement stipulates that Egypt is to lower tariffs on cars imported from the EU by 10 percent annually. The agreement was implemented in 2010 and, according to it, the tariffs on imported European automobiles will be cancelled by 2019.

Amr Mounir added that only the Value Added Tax "VAT" and the development tariff would be kept on on cars imported from the EU and that these taxes did not increase as some claimed.

One hundred guests from 30 foreign countries are currently participating in the conference, which was inaugurated earlier Monday by Amr El-Garhy, Egypt's Minister of Finance, and Kunio Mikuriya, the secretary general of the World Customs Organization.

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Kevin Makra is pictured preparing for guests in his Toronto Airbnb rental apartment, on Saturday, December 2, 2017. Politicians in Toronto will be scrutinizing proposed rules for short-term rentals this week that could spell major changes for those who offer secondary residences for rent on platforms like Airbnb. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker address a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. British Prime Minister Theresa May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker held a power lunch on Monday, seeking a breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations ahead of a key EU summit the week after. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, before heading to Utah. Trump will be announcing plans to scale back two sprawling national monuments in Utah, responding to what he has condemned as a "massive federal land grab" by the government. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Demonstrators hold banners reading in Catalan "Freedom for the political prisoners. We are republic" gather outside the Palau Generalitat during a protest in support of the politicians imprisoned at Sant Jaume Square in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017. The latest protest by Catalan separatists came hours after a judge granted bail to six former members of Catalonia's regional Cabinet on Monday. They were released from prisons near Madrid since being jailed in early November after depositing 100,000-euro ($118,000) in bail. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Dunne, who is based in Cairo, creates documentary works on the relationship between man and nature

Medrar is hosting Irish artist Bryony Dunnes multimedia exhibition titled Amriya starting 9 December.

Dunnes research-based work explores the volatile relationship between man and nature, often with a look into historical links between Egypt and Ireland.

The display will include photography, sculpture, and an installation, bringing in footage and photos from Dublins Natural History Museum, Cairos Agricultural Museum and the Giza Zoo, among other sites.

The works are the result of her documentary projects created over the past four years between the two countries she calls home.

The exhibition is named after Amriya, the 70-year-old Bedouin woman who inspired the project when the artist met her years ago in South Sinai.

Amriya lives in her self-sustaining orchard, which, along with the surounding mountains, she calls her doctors.

The exhibition is a expanded collection of work which developed from Dunnes 2014 short film about Amriya and the environment in which she lives. Titled The Orchard Keepers, the film screened in over 20 film festivals, and won the first prize at Ethno Film in Rovinj, Croatia.

Sound Artist Asem Tag will deliver a live performance at 9pm on the opening night.

Dunne is an Irish artist based in Cairo who holds an MA from University College Dublin in Cultural Heritage Conservation. Her work merges anthropology and ecology with visual art.

Dunnes work has been exhibited at places such as the Irish Film Institute, Londons Mosaic Rooms, Goldsmiths University, Cairos Townhouse Gallery, Sharjah Art Biennial 13, Tamawuj in Istanbul, and the Athens Photography Festival in the Benaki Museum.

She is currently working on her first feature-length film, entitled Pembe (Swahili for horn), about the worlds last male northern white rhinoceros. She displayed part of this ongoing project at Townhouse Gallery in late 2016 in an exhibit titled They Usually Lie in the Grotto.

Her films have received several awards including best documentary short at the Iranian Green Film Festival and the aforementioned first-prize at Ethno Film in Croatia.



Programme:

The exhibition opens on Saturday 9 December at 7pm, and runs till 23 December.

Medrar is open daily from 3pm to 9pm, except Friday.

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

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FILE - In this Oct. 18, 2017, file photo, protesters gather at a rally in Washington. The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to fully enforce a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries. The justices say in an order on Dec. 4, that the policy can take full effect even as legal challenges against it make their way through the courts. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 19, 2014 file photo, Billy Bush arrives at the Operation Smile's 2014 Smile Gala in Beverly Hills, Calif. Bush, who was fired after an old video emerged of him engaging in offensive sex talk with then "Apprentice" host Donald Trump, said in an op-ed published in The New York Times on Sunday, Dec. 3, 2017, that it was indeed TrumpAos voice captured on a 2005 "Access Hollywood" tape. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
AP/Matt Houston Government-set prices completely removed from Mexico Thursday. Chevron, Koch and Kinder Morgan all want in on the competition.

From oil majors to trading companies to pipeline operators, U.S. companies are jumping at the chance to supply a newly free Mexico fuel market.

After years of preparation, Mexico finished liberalizing prices for gasoline and diesel across the country. Foreign companies were allowed to start moving fuels in April last year, but now consumers' costs will be more closely aligned with the ebbs and flows of the open market. As fuel specifications and prices align, U.S. companies are working to make transportation to Mexico seamless.

On the U.S. border with Mexico, trucks and trains scurry southward from Texas refineries to fuel distribution terminals south of the Rio Grande. An increasing number of foreign firms, including Koch Supply & Trading Mexico, or KMEX, plan to invest in ports terminals, fuel storage facilities and other logistics infrastructure in order to compete with state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos , the primary fuel vendor and distributor in the country. The vessel Crown II was fixed to haul Koch's second Mexican diesel import to Vopak's Veracruz terminal, the first non-Pemex terminal to import fuels, the company said.

The transparency and market-based pricing associated with the regulatory reform, which goes into effect today, is helping KMEX to execute their business development plans in the country, Eduardo Andrade, a distillates trader for Koch, said Thursday.

On Thursday, Mexico's energy regulator announced the end of government-set fuel prices in the remaining central and southern regions where price caps were still being applied.

Chevron Corp , Exxon Mobil Corp , Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc are among the international companies investing in service stations in Mexico and are now seeking to import fuel.

Chevron plans to import fuel into Mexico from California, where it has two refineries, once the infrastructure is available, Jose Parra, head of the company's Mexico fuel operations, said Thursday in Mexico City. Chevron plans to open 350 gas stations in Mexico in two to three years, while Exxon Mobil will inaugurate its first gas station in Mexico on Dec. 6, according to an emailed statement.

Kinder Morgan Inc has also added two gasoline grades on its California pipelines that meet Mexican specifications.

We made changes to our Pacific operations manual to incorporate Mexico product grades in anticipation of future demand for those services, Kinder Morgan spokeswoman Melissa Ruiz, said in an emailed response to questions.
The 14th edition of DIFF takes place between 6 and 13 December, featuring 120 movies from the Arab World and beyond

The 14th edition of the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), one of the most prestigious film events in the Arab world, is due to be held between 6 and 13 December.

The organisers are gearing up for the grand gala opening, followed by the nightly gala screenings at the Madinat Jumeirah Arena.

The festival will screen films across several venues, including Madinat Jumeirah Arena, Madinat Theatre, Souk Madinat Jumeirah and VOX Cinemas, Mall of the Emirates and The Beach, the latter location offering free-to-attend open-air cinema.

This year, the festival will present two prestigious DIFF Lifetime Achievement Awards: to British actor Sir Patrick Stewart and Indian actor Irrfan Khan.

A DIFF Honorary Award will be presented to Wahid Hamed, one of Egypts most acclaimed writers, whose contributions to Egyptian cinema and television span four decades.

The festival will showcase "over 120 exciting, original and compelling films from the Arab world and beyond, introducing audiences to fresh new talent and original and distinctive filmmaking," the festival organisers announced in a press release.

"The films, crafted in over 40 languages, will populate DIFFs Arab and Emirati competitions, and its out-of-competition segments dedicated to children, the Arab world, virtual reality and cinema from around the globe."

The even organizers highlighted the various Muhr competition sections as a means of promoting a wide range of filmmaking talent.

"DIFFs highly contested Muhr competition for feature fiction and non-fiction, and short films originating from the United Arab Emirates and the Arab world, will showcase over 60 of the latest and best films from established and promising new talent."

The Gulf Muhr Shorts section will showcase yet another angle on regional creativity through a diverse selection of creative short films, providing an opportunity for filmmakers to premiere their unique projects on the world stage.

The Muhr Emirati category celebrates rising local talent from the UAE and shares their projects with a global audience.

The Arabian Nights section will include eleven films that highlight the multifaceted nature of Arabian culture. In this section Egypt will be represented with Khaled Diab's Induced Labor and Ahmed Amer's Kiss Me Not.

Cinema Under the Stars will take place at The Beach, offering free-to-attend open-air cinema. Among the films screened will be Jennifer Peedoms epic new documentary Mountain, narrated by two-time Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe.

There will also be the world premiere of documentary A Grain of Sand from renowned British guitarist and composer Jason Carter, along with British-Tunisian filmmaker Claire Belhassines debut feature film The Man Behind the Microphone.

DIFF will also feature a Cinema for Children section, which is billed as providing "an eclectic mix of fantastical films brimming with wonder, excitement and adventure for all the family to enjoy."

The highlights of this section include the animated comedy-drama Ferdinand, directed by prestigious Brazilian director Carlos Saldanha, the Mexican animation film Ana and Bruno, and French director Nicolas Barys feature film Little Spirou.

Academy Award-winning actress Cate Blanchett joins the jury panel of the IWC Filmmakers Jury for the sixth IWC Filmmaker Award, offered by the Swiss luxury watch manufacturer IWC Schaffhausen and DIFF.

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

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In general, men are twice as likely to cheat on a spouse than women are. That frequency increases over the lifespan, peaking among the elderly. Among men 18 to 29 who have ever been married, about 1 in 10 is
At the federal courthouse in Philadelphia and in Harrisburg Monday, contentious issues between the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the union carpenters who used to work there  racketeering charges among them  will be the focus. Read more

At the Convention Center on Monday, more than 6,000 cell biologists and life scientists from the American Society for Cell Biology and the European Molecular Biology Organization will focus on connections between cell biology and neurobiology.

Nearby, at the federal courthouse, there will be another gathering  of lawyers representing the Convention Center and the union carpenters who used to be the center's main labor force. The courthouse discussion will focus on a lawsuit over whether the union engaged in racketeering after it lost work at the center in May 2014.

Meanwhile, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board hearing examiner Jack E. Marino has set Monday as the due date for briefs from the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters (formerly the Metropolitan Regional Council) on whether the Convention Center committed an unfair labor practice when it ousted the union after its leaders didn't immediately sign a new customer-service agreement.

The leaders signed a few days later, but by then the traditional work had been divided among other unions.

Protests ensued. In May 2015, the Convention Center filed a federal civil racketeering lawsuit against the union, saying the protests, particularly a mass influx of carpenters into the center during the 2015 Philadelphia Auto Show, were part of a racketeering pattern to intimidate the center and its customers.

U.S. District Judge Nitza I. Quinones Alejandro ordered the parties to appear before a magistrate Monday, hoping they can be pushed to settle. Totally routine  happens in every big case.

About this time last year, there was a tentative detente, but it failed. Now, the sides can't even agree on discovery  the judge has to intervene. (Contributing to the delay was that the original judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Luis Felipe Restrepo, was promoted to the appellate court.)

If the carpenters lose, they'll owe triple damages.

At the PLRB, paperwork deadlines have been extended since March, when Marino conducted three long days of hearings into the issue. No matter what Marino decides, and probably not before March, it likely will be appealed to the full board, with that decision appealed to Commonwealth Court.

Still not completely resolved is whether the PLRB even has jurisdiction. That particular wrinkle included an episode in which Convention Center attorneys accused Marino of being unduly influenced by politicians when he changed his mind about jurisdiction, leaving Marino to conduct a hearing to determine whether he was fit to conduct hearings in the case.

If the Convention Center loses, it could owe the carpenters three-plus years of back wages.

There's a third piece of litigation, in which the carpenters and the Convention Center's labor broker are arguing over how much should be paid into the union's pension fund as a penalty for withdrawing from it. No matter what happens in these cases, legal fees are mounting.

"The Convention Center is always interested in settling disputes, but it is important that we do so in the manner that is consistent with our duty to our customers to provide a productive place to do business," said Gregory Fox, chairman of the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority.

Fox said that business at the Convention Center has improved. "Bookings are one telltale sign of success," he said. Officials in Philadelphia's hospitality industry credit the new customer satisfaction agreement  the one the carpenters didn't sign in time, leading to their not working in the center  and new outside professional management that had experience dealing with unionized work forces in other convention centers and arenas.

Before those changes, which took place in late 2013 and 2014, customers had complained of high labor costs and hassles, and the center's management had been unable to address those concerns.

"It's very heartening to have the reverse of where we were five years ago," Fox said. "Customers are telling us what a successful show they had and how much they are looking forward to returning."

The head of the Philadelphia carpenters' union at the time, Edward J. Coryell, was ousted in February 2016 by the carpenters' top leadership in Washington, and replaced by John Ballantyne of Edison, N.J.

Ballantyne wouldn't talk about the Convention Center situation, instead sending this statement: "In response to the court order, the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters will be participating this Monday in the settlement conference. Unfortunately, we cannot discuss any aspects of the settlement conference further at this time."
Harvey C. Johnson, first president of the Black Peoples Unit Movement, speaks at a memorial service Saturday in Camden for the Rev. Sam Appel, a BPUM supporter who also led an interracial, ecumenical, city-suburban coalition in the 1960s and 70s. Read more

Samuel E. Appel's memorial service celebrated the life of a much admired, sometimes controversial clergyman  and reunited people who marched and made headlines with him in the tumultuous Camden of the 1960s and '70s.

They'd been part of a multiracial, ecumenical, urban-suburban movement that mobilized on behalf of poor and historically excluded city residents a half-century ago.

And on Saturday at Sacred Heart Church, they sang and prayed together one more time.

"I'm getting a little choked up," the Rev. Dick Whitham, 93, told me. "I didn't expect to see so many people I can't recognize anymore."

Assigned with Appel and a third Presbyterian minister, Larry Black, to do community work in Camden, Whitham was among 100 friends and family members who gathered for the memorial; between selections of glorious music, eloquent speakers paid tribute to the leader of a social justice movement with impact well beyond the city.

"No challenge was too great for Sam," said Fair Share Housing Center founder Peter O'Connor, 75, noting Appel's statewide role in urban education funding reform and particularly the development of affordable housing. Appel chaired Fair Share's board for 35 years, during which tens of thousands of affordable housing units were constructed in New Jersey.

'It's an honor to be here  [given] what he meant to me and to thousands of people, some of whom may never know what he contributed to their lives," said Jose Delgado.

Like Appel, he served on the city school board. "Sam inspired me in everything I did," Delgado said.

Appel died at 91 on Oct. 5 after a long struggle with dementia. Family members said the implacable disease never robbed him of his sense of humor and kindness of heart.

"He loved this city. He wanted good housing, good schools, and good jobs, and he ached" for them, said his daughter, Joy Appel Brown. "You know how impossible the task was. But there were a lot of 'wins' over the years."

From the altar, speakers reminisced about Appel and his black Volkswagen bug, his love of a good meal (and the occasional adult beverage), and the contagious heartiness of his laugh.

"He had a deep passion for social justice. And that passion could turn to anger in the face of the reluctance of the powerful to  change," said the Rev. John T. Ash III, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Mays Landing.

By the time Appel and his young family moved from Cherry Hill to Camden in the early '60s, the exodus of the white middle class from the city to the suburban frontier was well underway.

"We lived on Hillside Avenue, the nicest street in East Camden," Appel Brown recalled during a conversation.

"When a house was sold to a black family in 1963, nine other houses went up for sale."

As retired Rutgers-Camden history professor Howard Gillette  who called the service "a very poignant hour and a half"  wrote in Camden After the Fall, his postwar history of the city, then-Mayor Alfred Pierce and Police Chief Harold Melleby were decidedly hostile to Appel and his movement, which Pierce would later describe as Marxist-inspired.

And after a weekend retreat about non-violence led by Appel and two associates, the three were indicted on charges of conspiring to incite violence; the case was later dropped for lack of evidence.

Camden was tense, to say the least. "Black and Latino people were not allowed to participate in government fully," noted Harvey C. Johnson, 73, one of the generation of emerging African American leaders in 1960s Camden.

Now a lawyer in Cherry Hill, Johnson was the first president of the Black People's Unity Movement, which advocated in the boardroom and agitated on the street as white politicians clung to power despite the fact that people of color were fast becoming a majority of the city's population.

Appel befriended Johnson and as well as BPUM founder Charles "Poppy" Sharp, a fierce opponent of the city's urban renewal programs, whose in-your-face tactics frightened many in the white community. But Appel championed the organization and persuaded suburban whites to form a "Friends" group to support it, financially and otherwise.

"Poppy and Sam opened the doors" to greater empowerment in Camden, Johnson said.

The Friends group "was how I got to know a lot of people from the suburbs and made friends with people from the suburbs," city activist Mangaliso Davis, 70, said at a reception after the service. "Sam was a very good spirit."

Tom Knoche, 67, a longtime advocate for progressive causes, told me he got to know and respect Appel after moving to North Camden in the late 1970s.

"There wasn't the monolithic power structure in the city we have today," he said. "There was a lot of energy around a lot of issues in Camden, and Sam was right in the mix."

Some of the oratory during the service sought to credit Appel and the movement with indirectly paving the way for Camden's current mega-redevelopment boom.

But the magnificently restored sanctuary of Sacred Heart, a vibrant church that has inspired people in the city and the suburbs to work together on Camden's behalf, was a clearer testimony to the worthiness of Appel's own efforts in that regard.

"The space was never more honored  than by having this service here," said Msgr. Michael Doyle, 83, his voice reassuringly strong a year and a half after cancer surgery.

Appel and the people who worked with him "could move mountains," said Doyle, who certainly knows a thing or too about that subject.

"And they did."
Debra Casey, an assistant professor in the Fox School of Business at Temple University, believes current exposure of sexual harassment may not change male behavior but will change female behavior. Read more

In boardrooms and locker rooms, some men are asking themselves and each other: "Was I a sexual harasser? Is that me?"

Actions once seen as flirtation might today be regarded as sexual harassment  or worse.

With the promise of anonymity, I played True Confessions with 10 men I know  a cross-section of age, race, class. The majority said they had done something in the past that could land them in trouble today.

Only one, a construction worker at the time, admitted to touching women. "I did it to them, and they did it to me," the 70-year-old says without regrets. No other men admitted to touching, but most used coercion on a date, made sexual innuendos, or flirted with co-workers.

On-the-job flirting is a big no-no in the opinion of management consultant S. Chris Edmonds, author of The Culture Engine.

"Flirting and seduction have no place in a purposeful, positive, productive work culture  then or now, nor in the future," he declares.

Banning flirting in the workplace may be good in principle, but unrealistic. I know married couples who met and began dating on the job. Don't you? How is a ban going to stop that, when one person finds another attractive?

Are there workplace rules? Sure. Supervisors should not date subordinates.

Although voluntary relationships between peers is acceptable, forcing anyone to date or to provide sexual services is illegal, says Debra Casey, assistant professor of human resource management at Temple University's Fox School of Business.

Harassment is unwanted sexual attention, but it's tricky.

"When I told my secretary she looked pretty, was that harassment?" asks a retired TV executive who is 68. I think not, but compliments can crash you on the rocks today.

The 38-year-old CEO of a nonprofit charity in the suburbs, tells me he was "very forward" when he was dating, maybe bordering on aggressive. He wonders if he crossed a line.

A 77-year-old restaurateur habitually stopped women on the street, but thinks that was OK because it was always "non-threatening, almost playful," he says.

A man can't know if his attention is unwanted until he makes a move. It's OK to step to the plate, it's not OK to be a pig.

A 62-year-old attorney in Philadelphia and the suburbs says that when he asked for a date and was rejected he would ask again. Up to five times, he says. Yes, he actually has a number.

Casey says, "You can ask five times for a date without being creepy," as long as you're not following her home or texting her 40 times a day.

Half the men I spoke with said they bowed out if turned down. "Rejection was my default position," says a 39-year-old marketing strategist based in Philadelphia.

Some rules seem fuzzy, but we can agree on this: No touching, especially the way Al Franken and George H.W. Bush are said to have touched.

But "no touch" was unfair to Garrison Keillor, dismissed by Minnesota Public Radio for supposedly touching a woman's bare back as he tried to console her. That firing was "not reasonable," Casey says, based on facts we have.

The current uproar will not lead to a permanent change in male behavior, Casey believes, but it will "lead to a change in female behavior.They will come forward more." That would be a good thing.

In the meantime, for men in the dating game, Casey suggests a rule to determine if you're acting appropriately around women: Ask yourself how you'd feel if someone else acted the same way with your sister.
Bill Green was removed as SRC Chairman by Gov. Wolf. A state court has upheld that move, rebuffing Greens legal challenge. Read more

With Philadelphia's School Reform Commission on its way out the door, a state court tied up a bit of unfinished business Monday, handing Bill Green a defeat in his quest to regain chairmanship of the panel.

Green, who was named to the SRC and appointed chairman by Gov. Tom Corbett in 2014, was essentially demoted by Gov. Wolf in 2015. He was replaced by Marjorie Neff and then, when she left the panel, by Joyce Wilkerson, the current chair.

The former City Councilman said he believed Wolf's move was politically motivated: The decision came just after Green voted to approve five new charter schools, a move the governor opposed. Green said then that he had been told that the governor could not work with him as chair.

Green remains a member of the SRC, but had argued in a suit filed in Commonwealth Court that Wolf's move was illegal.

In his ruling, Judge Joseph M. Cosgrove disagreed, saying that removing Green "was well within Gov. Wolf's constitutional authority."

Green's lawyers had argued that the governor could only remove him as chair for cause. He was represented by lawyers from the Fairness Center, a nonprofit firm created to do battle with public-sector unions.

Cosgrove agreed, however, that Green had been removed without cause and that Green "has not engaged in any such malfeasance or misfeasance." Because Green remains an SRC member, he was not removed from office, despite being stripped of his chairman's gavel, the court found.

Green, in a statement, said he would not appeal the ruling, given the SRC's imminent demise.

"The SRC, while not always agreeing, has worked effectively as a team and accomplished a great deal," Green said. "It is now settled that Marge Neff and Joyce Wilkerson were and are Chair. I will continue to work with Chair Wilkerson to make sure the transition to local control is as smooth as possible."

The SRC voted last month to dissolve itself and awaits certification of the dissolution from Pennsylvania Education Secretary Pedro A. Rivera. Once Rivera signs off on the move, as is widely expected, the SRC would be on track to cease to exist June 30.

It would be replaced by a local board of education named by Mayor Kenney.
MSNBC host Joy Reid (left) apologized for old blog posts that surfaced on Twitter, while ABC News Brian Ross (right) says he agrees with being held accountable myself. Read more

Joy Reid, the host of MSNBC's AM Joy, apologized on Sunday for "insensitive, tone deaf and dumb" blog posts that contained homophobic insults and jokes targeting then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.

"At no time have I intentionally sought to demean or harm the LGBT community, which includes people whom I deeply love," Reid said in a statement released on Sunday, "My goal, in my ham-handed way, was to call out potential hypocrisy."

In the posts, which appeared on a blog associated with her now-defunct Florida radio show The Reid Report from 2007 to 2009 and recently resurfaced on Twitter, Reid repeatedly mocked Crist as a closeted gay man nicknamed "Miss Charlie" and tagged posts about him under "gay politicians." She also suggested that the Republican governor refused to come out as gay because he thought it would hurt his political career, and joked about him having sex with Sen. John McCain.

Crist, who has been married and divorced twice, has long denied claims that he is gay and called allegations that he paid two men to conceal gay affairs in 2012 "a bunch of delusional lies."

"Re-reading those old blog posts, I am disappointed in myself. I apologize to those who also are disappointed in me. Life can be humbling. It often is. But I hope that you know where my heart is, and that I will always strive to use my words for good," Reid wrote. "I know better and I will do better."

Crist, now a representative in Florida's 13th congressional district, thanked Reid for her apology.

"Long forgotten, but thank you, Joy. I appreciate you," Crist wrote.

Longtime ABC News reporter Brian Ross suspended over erroneous Trump report

Veteran ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross has been suspended for four weeks without pay after he inaccurately reported that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that then-candidate Donald Trump "directed him to make contact with the Russians."

During an appearance on World News Tonight on Friday, Ross walked back the report, noting that the directive occurred while Trump was president-elect and centered on improving relations with Russia in order to enlist its aide to fight ISIS in Syria.

"It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience  these are our core principles," ABC News said in a statement, later calling the report a "serious error" and admitting it "had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process"

The report, citing a single anonymous source, was picked up widely by media outlets and led to a fast, sharp decline in the stock market.

ABC News was also criticized for letting the report stand for a large portion of Friday before retracting it, and then initially referring to the update on World News Tonight as a "clarification" instead of a "correction."

"My job is to hold people accountable and that's why I agree with being held accountable myself," Ross wrote on Twitter.

Trump reveled in the mistake, offering his "congratulations" to ABC for swiftly suspending Ross for "his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt."

Fake News being adopted by totalitarian regimes

Trump's repeated use of the term "fake news" to undermine and delegitimize unfavorable reporting is being adopted by leaders of totalitarian regimes.

In Buddhist-majority Myanmar, the government has been accused of ethnic cleansing against a Muslim minority group known as the Rohingya. But U Kyaw San Hla, a security ministry officer in in the Myanmar state of Rakhine, echoed Trump in his denial of such allegations.

"There is no such thing as Rohingya," Hla told the New York Times. "It is fake news."

The United States has declared the military's campaign against the Rakhine to be ethnic cleansing, and free-press advocates fear Trump's harsh, anti-press rhetoric will continue to be adopted by leaders looking to obscure the truth. In Egypt, a spokesman for the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called CNN's coverage of his country "deplorable" following Trump's criticism of CNN International.

"The gravity of an American president's favorite catch phrase being used to justify ethnic cleansing will probably be lost in the noise this weekend, but it shouldn't be," journalist Sulome Anderson wrote on Twitter. "The truth has a big, red target on it now."
Ongoing efforts to conserve the dome of the Al-Imam Al-Shafie mosque in Old Cairo have uncovered sections of an intact lower wall forming part of an earlier shrine this week.

The previous shrine consisted of an open courtyard with three prayer niches attached to a domed hall. Also uncovered were decorated carved stucco features, coloured marble, stone flooring and fragments of a masonry dome.

Egypt's Minister of Antiquities Khaled el-Anany and the US Charge dAffaires in Cairo Thomas H. Goldberger, along with top officials from the Egyptian ministry, embarked on Monday on a tour to inspect the latest conservation work on the dome and the excavations of the earlier shrine.





This building pre-dates the current shrine of Al-Imam Al-Shafie, which was built by the Ayyubid Sultan Al-Kamil in the year 1211 AD and was built after Al-Imam Al-Shafie was buried there in 820 AD, Mohamed Abdel Aziz, Director-General of Historic Cairo Rehabilitation Project told Ahram Online. He added that the newly uncovered shrine is a significant addition to our understanding of the history of Islamic architecture and history in Egypt.

May Al-Ebrashi, Head of Athar Lina initiative, said that the excavations are part of a conservation project funded by the US Department of States Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation under the supervision of the Ministry of Antiquities.

The excavations fall within the work of Athar Lina, a national initiative to conserve Egypts heritage for the benefit of the community.

The project, she continued, began in March 2016 to resolve structural problems in the mosque's masonry walls and floors, as well as leaking roofs and the disintegration of decorative elements, most notably the decorated stucco exterior, carved and painted wood and coloured marble cladding.

The completed work so far has included extensive documentation, as well as physical crack repair in masonry walls, soil infill to correct subsidence (the sinking of soil under a structure), repair and insulation of wooden roofs and ceilings, repair of marble cladding, and the cleaning and restoration of decorative stucco facets.

Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Idris Al-Shafie was the founder of the Shafie madhab, one of the four major jurisprudential schools of Sunni Islam. A proponent of rational thought who is credited by some today as the originator of the scientific method, Al-Shafie dedicated his life to developing a comprehensive theory of jurisprudence that earned him the title the "Sea of Knowledge." He was also a great poet who wrote simply yet eloquently about the value of travel, learning and contemplation.

Historic sources mention that when he died, he was buried in the mausoleum of Ibn Abd al-Hakam, an Arab tribe that came to Egypt with the Islamic conquest in the 7th century AD and settled there, becoming one of its most prominent families.





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In nearly a dozen recent criminal cases, prosecutors have cited evidence that doctors supplied opiates to patients with repeated abnormal urine test results. Read more

In April 2014, state and federal drug agents raided Jeffrey Campbell's medical clinic in Jeffersonville, Ind. Police cars blocked the parking lot as bewildered patients scattered and the agents carted off boxes of records from the doctor's office.

Some of the seized records would show that Campbell endangered patients by prescribing opiates without any medical need, according to federal prosecutors. Campbell, who collected millions of dollars from Medicare for urine tests run at his office lab, also failed to act when test results revealed patients were abusing prescription and illegal drugs, according to a government medical expert's report.

Four patients died from drug-related causes under his watch, the report said. Others flunked two dozen or more urine tests, but the clinic kept prescribing them pills. One patient with a history of overdoses failed 46 urine tests and was never confronted about it. Campbell denied wrongdoing.

The nation's opioid crisis has prompted an explosion in urine testing. The scourge has driven huge profits for many pain clinics across the U.S., an ongoing Kaiser Health News investigation shows. Spending on urine screens and related genetic tests quadrupled from 2011 to 2014 to an estimated $8.5 billion a year  more than the entire budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a KHN analysis of billing data from Medicare and private insurance billing from the Mayo Clinic.

Medicare and other insurers pay for urine tests with the expectation that clinics will use the results to detect and curb dangerous abuse. But some doctors have taken no action when patients are caught misusing pharmaceuticals, or taking street drugs such as cocaine or heroin. Federal pain guidelines say doctors should discuss test results with patients and taper medication if necessary.

Medicare and private insurers acknowledge that they lack the resources to routinely verify that doctors who order a high volume of drug-related tests do so to improve patient care, not fatten the bottom line.

"This is a big issue," said Louis Saccoccio, who heads the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, a group formed by private insurers and government officials. "There are abusive practices out there."

In nearly a dozen recent criminal cases, prosecutors have cited evidence that doctors supplied opiates to patients with repeated abnormal urine test results.

One such doctor was Alabama pain specialist Shelinder Aggarwal, who billed Medicare and private insurers over $9 million for urine tests solely "because he served to profit," according to prosecutors in Alabama. He pleaded guilty to illegal prescribing and health care fraud. Earlier this year, a judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

Theodore Parran, who has served as an expert witness for the federal government, predicted more doctors could face fraud charges, or discipline by state medical licensing boards, over lab testing that appears to be profit-motivated.

"This is certainly on their radar," Parran, a professor of medical education at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, said in an interview. Ignoring repeated abnormal urine tests "is bad medicine" that "endangers the safety of the patients and the community."

The KHN investigation earlier this year found that dozens of pain doctors with their own labs took in $1 million or more in 2015 from Medicare for running urine and, in some cases, genetic drug tests. Some doctors derived at least 80 percent of their Medicare income this way.

Campbell's office was among the clinics billing Medicare the most in the country, according to KHN's data analysis of Medicare billing records.

Campbell and his staff at Physicians Primary Care PLLC billed the government agency a total of nearly $6 million for urine testing during 2014 and 2015, according to the KHN analysis.

In June, more than three years after the Indiana raid, a federal grand jury in Kentucky indicted Campbell and two associates. The charges  which were announced July 13 as part of a national health care fraud sweep  include multiple counts of illegally distributing prescription drugs and health care fraud; one fraud count accuses Campbell of ordering costly genetic tests through an outside lab that were "not medically necessary and never interpreted." All of the defendants pleaded not guilty.

Neither Campbell nor his attorney, Page Pate, would comment for this story. However, in an interview with KHN several months before his indictment, Campbell said the government's case was "without merit." He denied he ran a "pill mill" and said he relied on his "state-of-the-art" lab, which serves the Jeffersonville clinic and a branch just across the Ohio River in Louisville, to help keep patients safe.

"We do a lot of drug testing for patients and we do it appropriately," Campbell said.

Indeed, deciding how often to order these tests, and for which patients and drugs, can be a judgment call. Doctors also sometimes disagree over what action they should take against patients with "dirty" urine: Some doctors kick out drug abusers, while others argue that is unethical. Instead, doctors should counsel these patients and refer them for substance abuse treatment, they say.

Donald White, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General, said if test results are disregarded, "why is the test being ordered in the first place?"

"When abnormal urine drug test results are not acted upon by the physician who ordered the test, it raises concerns not only that the testing itself is not medically reasonable and necessary, but also that the doctor's treatment of the patient may fall below the standard of care," White said.

Prosecutors say Campbell kept them at bay for years by asserting that records seized in the raid, including computers and emails, contained privileged attorney communications. Clearing that hurdle delayed them from sending medical records to an outside expert for review, prosecutors said.

Indiana anesthesiologist Timothy King, who wrote the government medical expert's report in the Campbell case, examined 19 patient files this year for his report. He concluded that Campbell "fails to practice medicine according to generally accepted medical principles and standards of care," and "routinely" prescribed opiates "without a medical purpose."

King said Campbell gave four patients a brew of pills known as the "Holy Trinity," which King called "a street-popular combination of opiate, sedative and muscle relaxant that produces a heroin-like euphoria."

These four patients were prescribed refills despite repeated abnormal urine tests. Two failed two dozen or more urine screens, according to King's report.

All 19 patients repeatedly failed their tests, which King described as an obvious warning sign that they were ingesting prohibited drugs, or possibly peddling unused pills on the street.

"Urine drug screens are routinely inconsistent [which can indicate] medication misuse, abuse and diversion," the expert concluded.

The four people who died showed telltale signs of trouble such as admitting they had diverted some of their medicine, or had been visiting other doctors to feed pill habits according his report.

A 25-year-old woman identified only by the initials "CM" had "vague" complaints of lower-back pain and used drugs "for purposes of abuse and diversion," according to King. She died three days after the clinic issued her a prescription for painkillers methadone and hydrocodone, King wrote. "EL," who was homeless and disabled, died from a drug overdose in July 2014, also three days after her office visit, according to the report.

King also said Campbell appeared to order unnecessary tests, including X-rays, "to optimize billing."

Less than a month after prosecutors received King's report, a federal grand jury in Louisville indicted Campbell and nurse practitioners Dawn Antle and Mark Dyer.

All have pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set.

Indiana officials quickly suspended their licenses to practice.

Prosecutors also are seeking forfeiture of Campbell's Jeffersonville office building and other proceeds.

Attorneys for Antle and Dyer also had no comment. In the earlier interview with KHN, Campbell argued his practice attracts many difficult patients who have "no other option" to seek relief from pain. "Nobody else will see these people," he said.

He ordered tests for a slew of substances because none of his drug-abusing patients "ever just uses one drug. They use everything they can get their hands on."

KHN's coverage related to aging and improving care of older adults is supported in part by The John A. Hartford Foundation.
May a religious Christian baker refuse to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple? That is the issue the Supreme Court will be considering on Tuesday.

To begin with, it's important to recognize that this issue arises only when there is an applicable law that prohibits businesses from discriminating against gays or lesbians. In many parts of the country, no such law exists, so bakers are free to discriminate against gay and lesbian customers, regardless of whether they're looking for a wedding cake, a birthday cake, or a loaf of bread.

Of course, the Supreme Court held in 2015 that the Constitution requires every state to allow same-sex couples to marry. But the Constitution only restrains only government actors, not private ones. Without laws forbidding discrimination by employers, landlords, and businesses, a gay man could get married on Sunday, then be legally fired from work on Monday, booted out of his apartment on Tuesday, and denied service at a restaurant on Wednesday.

The baker in the case before the Supreme Court, Jack Phillips, lives in Colorado, which does have a state law that prohibits businesses from discriminating based on sexual orientation. After a same-sex couple complained to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that Phillips had refused their request for a wedding cake, the commission ordered Phillips to make wedding cakes either for all couples or no couples.

You might think that this case is primarily about the baker's religious liberty. After all, the First Amendment provides that government shall make no law "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion.

But in a 1990 decision by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court held that religious objectors have no constitutional right to be exempted from generally applicable laws that are not targeted at religious practice. In other words, a law forbidding the use of peyote for religious rituals would be unconstitutional. But a general law forbidding the use of peyote by everyone is constitutional, even if it prevents Native Americans from using peyote for religious purposes.

Since the Colorado nondiscrimination law applies to businesses generally and is not targeted at religiously based acts of discrimination, the Constitution does not require the government to exempt Phillips' business from the law even if it burdens his religious practice. And, unlike many states, Colorado has not enacted a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which could have exempted Phillips from a generally applicable law.

Given his weak religious liberty argument, Phillips' primary argument is instead based on freedom of speech.

But how is being forced to bake a wedding cake a free-speech issue?

It's not as far-fetched as it sounds.

Essentially, Phillips is saying that the way he decorates his cakes is expressive, particularly wedding cakes uniquely designed for each couple. Phillips contends that forcing him to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples is forcing him to celebrate these unions, a message he does not wish to convey.

First Amendment precedent arguably supports Phillips. Artwork is protected by the First Amendment. For example, the government may not suppress Diego Rivera's paintings because they portray the oppression of workers or stop the public display of Robert Mapplethorpe's homoerotic photographs. Phillips' artwork should similarly be protected, even if it's edible.

In addition, the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that forcing people to speak is just as offensive as forbidding them to speak. The First Amendment, the court has insisted, protects "both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all."

Yet, even if Phillips' argument is plausible, it should still be rejected by the Supreme Court.

While the government may not ordinarily compel people to speak, it may do so when there is a sufficiently important reason. Indeed, a federal judge only recently ordered tobacco companies to pay for advertisements that starkly describe the hazards of smoking. Surely, the companies didn't want to express this message, but the judge found that the ads were necessary to correct for decades of misleading tobacco company ads and to protect public health.

Similarly, the government has a compelling interest in prohibiting unjust discrimination by businesses, even if this means requiring businesses engaged in expressive work to provide services for same-sex couples.

Consider this argument from a broader vantage point. Should restaurants, hotels, and theaters should be able to discriminate against African American, Jews, or people of Irish, Polish, or any other descent merely because the owners say that serving these groups violates their religion? Such arguments have been tried in the past, but the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected them because of the government's compelling interest in combating discrimination.

The court should reach the same conclusion in Phillips' case. Notwithstanding his faith, it's doubtful that our society would permit him to deny service to a Catholic couple or an interracial couple, including the recently engaged Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Why should the result be any different for same-sex couples?

Who knows? Maybe if Phillips were forced to discuss the cake's design with a same-sex couple about the design of their cake, he might discover that the partners were merely two people in love.

Alan Garfield is a professor at Widener University School of Law. aegarfield@widener.edu
Temple University and the other state-related schools  Penn State and Lincoln universities and the University of Pittsburgh  will get their long-delayed state funding after Gov. Wolf signed an appropriation bill Friday. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Read more

The two Temple students who died last week each suffered fatal drug overdoses, a spokesman for the city's Health Department confirmed Monday.

Michael Paytas, 24, a fourth-year marketing major from Ridley Township, Delaware County, was found unresponsive in the university's Paley Library last Monday and was taken to Hahnemann Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

And Saturday morning, city and campus police responded to a 911 call at an off-campus apartment where they found the body of James Orlando, 20, of Reading.

The overdoses were confirmed by James Garrow, spokesman for the Health Department.

The deaths bring to five the number of student fatalities since August. The others include:
Former Fox News producer Rachel Witlieb Bernstein is suing both Bill OReilly and Fox News for statements made about a settlement regarding improper behavior by the former cable news star. Read more

Rachel Witlieb Bernstein, a former associate producer at Fox News, is suing her former employer and its former star, Bill O'Reilly, for comments they made following a blockbuster New York Times story outlining millions of dollars that were paid to silence women who accused O'Reilly of harassment.

Bernstein, who is one of six women known to have been paid a settlement regarding accusations about O'Reilly, claims in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that the former host is a "liar" for repeatedly claiming there is no truth to the allegations against him. The New York Times was first to report about the lawsuit.

"He mistreated Ms. Bernstein," the lawsuit states. "She was forced out of her job at Fox News and paid a settlement because of his mistreatment."

Frederic S. Newman, an attorney for O'Reilly, said in a statement that the lawsuit "has absolutely no merit" and that the former Fox News star "will respond aggressively in court."

Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.

At issue are public statements O'Reilly has made following his ouster at Fox News. The New York Times has reported that at least six former Fox News personalities and employees have been paid $45 million to settle claims of sexual and verbal assault. In October, the Times reported that former Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl was paid $32 million to settle sexual harassment allegations, a payment the network made before re-signing the star in January to a new four-year contract. O'Reilly was fired in April after advertisers began to boycott his popular Fox News show.

O'Reilly has insisted he did nothing wrong. He has said he only agreed to the settlements to protect his children and has painted the allegations as a false and malicious campaign to silence him.

"Just like other prominent and controversial people, I'm vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative publicity," O'Reilly said in a statement after the payouts became public.

Neil Mullin, Bernstein's lawyer, said Bernstein should have been protected from O'Reilly's public accusations by a non-disparagement clause and a confidentially clause that were part of the settlement. Because of O'Reilly's comments, Bernstein, now a supervising producer on TBS' Conan, has suffered "severe emotional distress, physical sickness, and loss of income," the lawsuit says.

"The confidentiality clause made it really clear. It said basically that if you're asked by the press about this case just simply say that the matter was settled," Mullin said. "That's simple as pie. Now you can see how far O'Reilly has strayed from that simple mandate."

He added: "The plain implication is awful, it's just awful what he's suggesting about our client and frankly about all the women in the settlements. Imagine how women feel when a man of his wealth and power is out there suggesting they're all a bunch of extortionists. They're all a bunch of liars. They're all a bunch of political hatchet women."

Bernstein's lawsuit also targets Fox News over claims the network made in an April 1 statement that said no current or former Fox News employee had used the 21st Century Fox hotline to raise a concern about O'Reilly.

The hotline didn't exist at the time Bernstein was employed by the network, according to Mullin. Bernstein, who worked there from 1996 to 2002, took her complaints to human resources, former executive Bill Shine and other top officials at the network, Mullin said.

"She complained to various people of authority and they didn't protect her. She did complain and it's a lie to say she didn't," Mullin said.

View the complete lawsuit here:
The Blackwood Falls apartments in Gloucester Township Sunday, where a man was killed and a woman and 10-year-old child were severely burned in an early morning fire. Read more

Authorities in Gloucester Township are investigating the cause of an apartment fire that killed a man early Sunday morning and severely burned a woman and a 10-year-old child.

The Gloucester Township Police Department said the woman and child were being treated for the injuries they received in the blaze at the Blackwood Falls Apartment complex in the 200 block of Washington Avenue.

Police said the victims' names were being withheld until relatives have been notified.

Police who arrived at the scene shortly after 2:54 a.m. found heavy smoke coming from the victims' apartment in Building D of the complex.

Officers and responders from the Blackwood Fire Department entered the smoke-filled apartment and carried out the two adults and the child.

The man, who was said to be in his 30s, was pronounced dead at the scene.

A woman in her 30s was taken by ambulance to Cooper University Hospital, where she was in critical condition with burns and smoke inhalation. A 10-year-old girl was flown to Saint Christopher's Hospital for Children, where she is in critical condition with burns, WPVI reported. No update on their conditions was available.

"Unfortunately there were three injuries with one confirmed fatality," Harry Earle, chief of Gloucester Township Police, told KYW.

Residents from several adjacent apartments were evacuated safely. In all, 18 people from eight apartments were temporarily displaced.

"Fortunately, [there was] not much extensive damage to other apartments," Earle said.

Firefighters from several stations responded. Earle said the fire was under control in about 30 minutes.

There were no reported injuries to any other Blackwood Falls residents or to emergency personnel.

The New Jersey Division of Fire Safety and the Gloucester Township Investigations Bureau are trying to determine the cause of the fire.

Staff writer Martha Woodall contributed to this report.
Officer Steve Dintino of East Pikeland Police (right) shows Nancy Griffith how to shoot a Glock training pistol in a shoot/dont shoot simulation during the Citizens Police Academy at Chester County Intermediate Unit in Downingtown. Read more

Police Officer Steve Dintino, 61, handed a Glock .40-caliber pistol, modified for training in a virtual simulator, to first-time shooter Nancy Griffith and told her that slow, steady pressure on the trigger was the key.

Dintino said to remember that when the virtual bad guy jumped up firing at her from a row of seats in a movie theater he was terrorizing, "Your most important shot is your first one because it might be the only one you get."

Griffith is one of nine people in the first-ever Citizens' Police Academy presented by the East Pikeland Township, West Vincent Township, and Spring City Borough police departments to help residents view police work through a cop's eyes.

Meeting from 6 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday nights through Jan. 17 at the Chester County Technical College High School Brandywine Campus in Downingtown, Citizens' Police Academy officers cover everything from use of force and SWAT tactics to vehicle stops, constitutional rights, and crime-scene investigations.

Griffith and her fellow students spent a recent "shoot/don't shoot" session firing their carbon dioxide-powered Glocks and rifles at a series of violent bad guys in scenarios projected on a wall. They had fractions of a second to decide when to use deadly force to stop shooting rampages in a theater, a church, an office, a warehouse, and a public park.

Dintino, an East Pikeland Township officer who spent the first 33 of his 37 law-enforcement years with the Tredyffrin Police Department, has the military demeanor of a career cop who commanded Southeastern Pennsylvania anti-terrorism SWAT teams in Philadelphia and its four neighboring counties.

But he also has the patience to bring inexperienced civilians into a police officer's mindset.

"How many rounds do I shoot?" Griffith asked. "Do I go boop, boop, boop, boop?" She made the sounds she's heard in movies. Dintino reminded her to focus on that first shot.

Officer Daniel Corbo, 37, from the East Pikeland Police Department, who organized the citizens academy with his police chief, Susette Wilson, reinforced Dintino's instruction.

"You're responsible for every bullet that comes out of your gun," he said. "If you miss and hit a kid, you're responsible for that."

"Do you try to shoot at the foot or the hand?" Griffith asked, before the scenario began.

"No," Dintino said, "you go for the biggest part of the body, which is the chest area. Ready?"

Griffith braced herself as the video took her down the theater's corridors amid the sounds of gunshots. When the bad guy emerged and immediately fired at her, she got off two shots, both high.

"He got me," she said dejectedly.

Dintino replayed the scene, this time accompanying Griffith in the scenario as her partner.

When the bad guy emerged, Griffith and Dintino both fired, killing him immediately. They examined where the shots had landed.

"Was that you?" Griffith asked, eyeing the fatal hits.

"Yes," Dintino said. "That's why officers help one another."

Griffith, who works in a private girls' high school office, said she signed up for the free academy because she wants to better understand the jobs of two nephews who are police officers. "One's in Lancaster County and one's in Philly," she said. "The one in Philly works in Kensington. When he told me he always patrols by himself, I said, 'You're patrolling in Kensington by yourself?' "

Her civilians' academy classmates included Jane Heemer, a registered nurse working at Kennett Square High School, who said, "As a supporter of our police I wanted to have a better understanding of what they face when they go to work to protect us, so that when I come into contact with someone who doesn't have respect for the police department, I can respond with firsthand knowledge and not mere opinion."

Corbo said that's the goal of the citizens' academy. "Me and my chief wanted to do something to put our faces out in the community that wasn't writing tickets and arresting people," he said. "There's an epidemic in the country right now of bad publicity for police officers. We're so secretive when we do investigations, which is necessary because we don't want to ruin the investigations, but people think we're being clandestine. Assumptions are made. Things are blown out of proportion. This whole course is set up so you can see through the eyes of the police officer."

Dintino said citizens experience what new police trainees feel when first faced with the violent, frightening shoot/don't shoot scenarios, which require split-second, life-or-death decisions.

"When you're involved in a shooting, things happen to you subconsciously," he told the academy students. "The pituitary gland floods your body with chemicals. You see real well, but you may lose peripheral vision. It seems like everything is in slow motion even though it's not in slow motion.

"We have two hemispheres in our brain," he said. "One side is the emotional side. The other side is the rational side. They compete. As a police officer, you want to keep that rational side of the brain firing so you can make rational decisions and think through the situation even though it's very tense."

Corbo said even a seemingly routine call can turn life-threatening quickly. "Whether you're going to answer a call about a barking dog or you're responding to shots fired, you have to be alert," he told the class. "All the time."

As a bridge of understanding between cops and the civilians they serve, citizens' police academies have sprung up in departments throughout Philadelphia's four collar counties.

At the Radnor Police Department, which will conduct its fourth citizens' police academy beginning in March for nine weeks, Deputy Superintendent Christopher Flanagan said, "The academy is important because, unfortunately, it's very easy to get a negative portrayal of police departments right now."

In Radnor, he said, "we felt we needed to get people into the police department and give them hands-on scenarios" from the simplest locked-out-of-auto call to a possible officer-involved shooting.

Flanagan said the citizens wear police-style gear while they address simulated domestic and "agitated person" emergencies "where they must use only verbal techniques to calm the person down." Citizens also drive a police vehicle and make a car stop in the dark ("the suspense takes them to another level"), and collect blood, hair, and other evidence at a simulated crime-scene investigation, then work with real detectives to solve it.

The value of the citizens' academy, Flanagan said, is that "individuals have to perform at a police officer's level. Some of the role-playing we do blows their minds. You can watch cop shows, but when you're actually doing it, it's a real eye-opener."
A timeline of the conflict in Yemen since a 2011 uprising that toppled president Ali Abdullah Saleh, until his killing on Monday by former Houthi rebel allies.

Inspired by regional uprisings in the Arab Spring, Yemenis take to the streets in early 2011 to demand the departure of Saleh, who ruled the country with an iron fist since 1978.

Under pressure from the Gulf monarchies, Saleh agrees in November 2011 to hand over power in exchange for immunity from prosecution for him and his family, after 11 months of protests and deadly clashes.

As he steps down, a presidential election is held in February 2012. Saleh's deputy and only candidate Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, seen as a man of consensus, is sworn in days later.

Efforts to draw up a new constitution for Yemen face difficulties and tensions intensify.

Rebels from Yemen's Shia Houthi minority launch an offensive in 2014 and push towards Sanaa from their northern stronghold of Saada, aiming to expand a hoped-for autonomy within a future federation.

On September 21, 2014, they storm the capital and seize the government headquarters, state radio and military sites after days of clashes. More than 270 people are killed.

The rebels, backed by Shia Iran, forge an alliance with forces loyal to Saleh, a former foe who cracked down on the Houthis while president.

By January, the rebels and their allies have also taken control of the presidential palace. Hadi flees to Yemen's second city, Aden, which he later declares as the "provisional capital".

On March 26, 2015, nine regional countries in a Saudi-led Sunni Arab coalition launch operation "Decisive Storm" with air strikes on the rebels to defend embattled Hadi and his internationally-recognised government.

They claw back some territory but also have to deal with increasing attacks by Sunni jihadists allied to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.

The UN and US organise three rounds of fruitless peace talks over 2015 and 2016. Seven truces are agreed, but all are broken.

Splits emerge in the rebel camp, with the Houthis on August 23, 2017 calling Saleh a "traitor" after he dismissed the Iran-backed group as a "militia" in a speech.

The next day, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis attend a rally marking 35 years since the founding of Saleh's General People's Congress (GPC) in a major show of support.

The tensions erupt into clashes between the allies in which a colonel loyal to Saleh and two rebels are killed. Violence erupts anew on November 29 in Sanaa, killing and wounding dozens.

On December 2, Saleh reaches out to the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis, offering to "turn the page" if it lifts a crippling blockade on the country.

The Houthis accuse him of staging a "coup against our alliance".

On Monday, President Hadi orders his forces to retake control of Sanaa.

Saleh's party says that Saleh has been killed, shot dead by Houthi fighters south of Sanaa after he fled the city for territory firmly controlled by his loyalists.

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Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf announced Monday that the state would implement stricter rules when issuing grants for special events. The change comes after reports that the 2016 DNC Host Committee used its surplus to pay $1 million in bonuses to its staff and some volunteers. Read more

In the wake of six-figure bonuses given to staffers at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Gov. Wolf announced Monday that the state Department of Community and Economic Development will implement new restrictions on grants for such events, including a ban on employee bonuses.

Any organization that receives a "special event" state grant will not be able to award bonuses and can only use the state money as a last resort to pay bills, under the new rules. Any surplus of funds must be returned to the state.

The restrictions follow revelations by the Inquirer and Daily News that the 2016 Democratic National Convention Host Committee used its surplus to pay $1 million in bonuses to its staff and some volunteers. The committee raised $86 million, of which the single biggest check came from taxpayers in the form of a $10 million DCED grant. The bonuses led to an outcry from state Republicans and Wolf  all of whom called for an investigation.

Last month, Auditor General Eugene DePasquale issued an audit chiding the state for having a "too loosely drafted" grant agreement. If the committee had not received the state grant, it would not have had a surplus with which to award bonuses, he said.

The auditor general determined that the host committee complied with the $10 million state grant agreement but asked that the state strengthen its regulations so organizations cannot spend the state money if they raise enough private money.

Depasquale also referred the case to the IRS, saying it should look at whether bonuses to Kevin Washo and Eliza Rose, who were both board members and paid staff, might have violated regulations that bar any "private shareholder or individual" of a nonprofit from benefiting from its earnings. On Monday, DePasquale said he was "encouraged" by the governor's response to his audit.

"Hopefully today's announcement paves the way for better grant contracts and oversight in all state agencies to ensure taxpayer funds are spent appropriately and that 'claw-back' procedures are included in grant agreements to ensure any leftover funds are returned to state coffers," DePasquale said in a statement.

The host committee was created to raise funds to organize the events surrounding the Democratic National Convention, which ran July 25-28 in Philadelphia. Up until the week before the convention, officials, including host committee chairman Ed Rendell, the onetime mayor and governor, were still raising money and saying they were short on their fundraising goals. It wasn't until September, when the committee filed its financial reports with the Federal Election Commission, that it reported exceeding its fund-raising goal by more than $2 million.

The committee used its surplus to pay the city more than $500,000 for municipal services incurred during the convention, make $1.2 million in grants to local nonprofits, and provide the $1 million in bonuses. The bonuses were paid in November 2016 and recorded in January in the committee's required year-end FEC financial reports.

The bonuses ranged from $500 for interns and volunteers to $310,000 for its executive director, Washo.

Rendell has consistently defended the bonuses, calling them "deferred compensation" for the time some of the staffers worked without getting paid and for receiving what he called low salaries.

Following the news of the bonuses, Wolf said he was "disappointed" in the use of the surplus and asked for the Auditor General's review. Under his order, DCED will include language in grant awards for special events prohibiting the payment of bonuses.

"Repayment of any bonus will trigger repayment of the grant," Wolf's news release said.

The new rules are effective immediately. However, special-event grants are few and far in between. DCED spokesman David Smith said that such grants are approved by the state legislature for large events such as Pope Francis' visit to Philadelphia in 2015 and national political conventions.

Under the new rules, any unspent grant money comes back to the state. If, as happened in the case of the DNC Host Committee, the state grant is spent, but privately raised money is left, the private funds must be used to reimburse the state, up to the full amount of the grant.

The state also added new requirements for competitive bidding of contracts on special-events projects that receive state money. To ensure all organizations comply with these guidelines, DCED will "enhance scrutiny" of its audits once a grant is expended by an organization, the governor's office announced.
Billy Bush, the former Access Hollywood host, has responded to recent reports that President Trump has questioned the authenticity of video in which he can be heard bragging about grabbing women by their genitalia, saying the president was "indulging in some revisionist history." Bush said that seven people, in addition to him, heard Trump.

In a commentary Sunday for the New York Times, Bush said he was disturbed by reports from the past week that Trump has told allies and at least one senator that he may not be the voice on the 2005 "Access Hollywood" tape.

"He said it," Bush wrote, referring to Trump's now infamous "grab them by the p-" remark made on an Access Hollywood bus.

"Of course he said it," Bush added. "And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America's highest-rated bloviator. Along with Donald Trump and me, there were seven other guys present on the bus at the time, and every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely we thought, none of this was real."

"We now know better," he added, referring to the women who came forward to accuse Trump of improper sexual advances.

The Washington Post first reported the leaked recording in October 2016. It captured audio of then-candidate Trump boasting to Bush about forcibly kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women as the two rode to a soap opera set to shoot a segment. Bush, who hosted "Access Hollywood" at the time, laughed and egged Trump on.

After the recording surfaced, Trump acknowledged it was him speaking and dismissed his words as "locker-room banter."

"I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize," he said.

But last week, the Times and the Post reported that Trump was raising doubt about the recording's authenticity, telling people close to him, including a Republican senator, that the tape may have been doctored or faked. He has suggested to senior advisers that the voice isn't his, or that it was edited to make him look bad, and has asked others whether they think it sounds like him, as The Post has reported.

Responding to the reports, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump "hasn't changed his position" on the recording.

Bush, who was fired from NBC's Today shortly after the tape emerged, has tried to restore his reputation in recent months by publicly atoning for his role in the scandal. He is scheduled to appear on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Monday night.

In May, the Hollywood Reporter published an extensive interview with Bush, in which he described his shame and humiliation about the recording, saying he didn't have the "strength of character" to shut Trump down. He vowed to support women in the future and lamented the fact that he had lost his job over the tape while Trump was elected president ("the irony is glaring," he said).

In his commentary Sunday, Bush said he believed some of the women who have publicly accused Trump of forcibly kissing and groping them in different encounters over the past two and a half decades, saying their accounts line up with Trump's comments on the bus. His apparent questioning of the "Access Hollywood" tape has "hit a raw nerve in me," Bush wrote.

"President Trump is currently indulging in some revisionist history," he wrote. "I can only imagine how it has reopened the wounds of the women who came forward with their stories about him, and did not receive enough attention."

Trump has denied wrongdoing, either rejecting the women's claims himself or through spokespeople. "Nobody has more respect for women than I do," he said last year after the Access Hollywood tape was released.
As of September, tax delinquents owed Philadelphia $395 million in back taxes, fees, fines and interest on 69,000 properties.

Mayor Kenney and Councilman Allan Domb have a clever plan to use tax liens to leverage $30 million or more from delinquent taxes. Simply put, they'd post the liens as collateral for bonds, hire a vendor to collect on the liens and use the money to pay off the bonds  and hopefully, come out ahead.

But Council President Darrell Clarke is saying "not so fast." He says the liens are riddled with errors that could cost vulnerable residents their homes, which is unjustifiable under any circumstances.

Domb's legislation, though, explicitly protects owner-occupants. They can enter into payment agreements with the city for as little as $25 a month, and for the most distressed, nothing a month. Further, the city would hire a vendor to examine its property data, which would help clean it up. Domb's bill also protects properties that the city may want to use for future residential and commercial development.

His sights are set on the people who choose not to pay their taxes  the suburban and out-of-state deadbeats as well as the home-grown speculators who could care less that they're dumping their share of the tax burden on the rest of us.

But Clarke isn't convinced. In fact, he has introduced a bill exempting all residential properties, which includes rentals, in his district, which covers parts of Center City through North Philadelphia as well as Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell's West Philadelphia district and Councilwoman Maria Quinnoes-Sanchez's river wards district. He recently said he wants to exclude Councilman Kenyatta Johnson's South and Southwest Philadelphia district as well.

Neither Domb nor the administration wants to throw people out of their homes. They guarantee that even after strenuous review, if a lien on an owner-occupied home winds up in the pool, it would be pulled out.

Clarke's argument to clean up the data is well taken. He should use his power as Council president to hold hearings to find out just how dirty the data are and come up with ways to clean it. If ever there was a public interest in a fact-finding process, this one literally hits home. And it should be pulled out into public view, because it's the public's money, homes and businesses. He should also appoint an oversight committee to watchdog the entire process and inform the public of all it finds.

Philadelphia has tried to leverage its red ink before. In 1997, it issued $75 million in bonds backed by so many uncollectable liens, the city wound up paying bondholders $46 million. With this plan, the Kenney administration has performed gold-medal-worthy gymnastics to avoid those pitfalls and to protect residents.

The administration, Domb, and Clarke need to pour themselves a cup of hot apple cider (spiked or not), settle into comfortable chairs and talk this through. Philadelphia has an opportunity to raise some money for the schools and ensure that more people pay their taxes. Those who actually do pay their taxes shouldn't let this opportunity get away.
For five hours on Nov. 27, residents and developers packed City Hall to debate the Mixed Income Housing Program, an affordable-housing initiative introduced last spring by Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez, Council President Darrell L. Clarke, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, and Councilman Kenyatta Johnson.

Within minutes, Councilmembers Blondell Reynolds Brown, Curtis Jones, Jr., Clarke, and Quinones Sanchez titled the story of how we got here: A Tale of Two Cities. The program, they explained, encapsulates years of feedback from local civic organizations, national policy experts, and industry professionals. But its premise is simple: Half of Philadelphians can't afford their homes; we are building for the other half.

Over the past two decades, affluent developers and residents received substantial public subsidy, including a 10-year real estate tax abatement program that diverted School District revenue to stimulate the growth of new Center City homes, such as 500 Walnut Street's $17 million penthouse. Last May, the Building Industry Association boasted that million-dollar home sales were up, up, up, by more than 3,000 percent since the tax abatement program began. Our School District has been collateral damage of this policy initiative.

During the same time period, our city lost more than 20,000 affordable homes. One of every three residents forks over more than half of each paycheck to keep a roof above his or her head. At minimum wage, Philadelphians need to log 128 hours every week to afford a two-bedroom apartment. The tale of this city: Families who can't afford an abated luxury loft are footing the bill for higher rents, mortgages, utilities, and taxes. We need to invest in these families the way we already invest in expensive new homes.

City Council will not turn a blind eye to housing segregation. We believe all Philadelphians have the right to live affordably near good jobs, good transit, and good schools. We demand urgency before Center City becomes permanently saturated with luxury homes, while concentrated poverty traps thousands more Philadelphians in low-quality housing, surrounded by struggling schools.

Our Council works tirelessly to ensure that quality of life, choice, and opportunity are not reserved only for a privileged few. A segregated, stratified Philadelphia is not the bright future our city deserves. Mixed income housing is good for us all.

Maria Quinones Sanchez (maria.q.sanchez@phila.gov, @MariaQSanchez), Blondell Reynolds Brown (@CouncilwomanBRB), and Curtis Jones Jr. (@Mr4thDistrict) are members of City Council.
"Philadelphia is not a city of palaces for the few, but a city of homes for the many  which is better."

This was the verdict of Talcott Williams, a journalist at the Chicago World's Fair, on the Philadelphia "working-man's house." Unlike other cities at the time, which pushed the poorest into squalid tenements and often-poorly equipped high-rise apartments, the vast majority of Philadelphians lived in rowhouses, with the number owning their own homes "four to six times greater than any other great city of the world." It was this exhibit that led Chicago to embark on its own version of the rowhouse in pursuit of the same goals.

Over time, the rowhouses expanded, and we added the twin to our housing stock, but the result of more homes and high ownership continued. This model of affordable comfort in housing, combined with a history of lower-than-average real estate taxes, powers Philadelphia's middle class and working poor. Yet more and more public officials and thought leaders have voiced concern that this legacy is in danger, citing rapid increases in sale prices in the neighborhoods closest to Center City as proof. In Graduate Hospital and Point Breeze, blocks where homes had once sold for $50,000 now have neighbors who may have paid more than $500,000. As Philadelphia's economy begins to grow after a long period of stagnation, more neighborhoods will begin to see demand increase for housing, especially those closest to Center City and other major amenities.

City Council's proposed solution to the affordable housing crunch  a bill calling for Inclusionary Zoning, which mandates a certain amount of affordable housing in each development  is well-intentioned, but completely misses the point. Most construction projects in Philadelphia don't have 10 or more units, and every year Council takes more land out of multifamily designations and into single-family. The bill also targets only Center City, which is a significant fraction of the city but still only one neighborhood. With rules like these, perhaps Council will meet its affordable housing goals somewhere during the lifetime of my great-grandchildren, but no sooner.

Instead, Council should focus its efforts on our existing housing stock. After all, Philadelphia is still a city of homeowners, with a 52.2 percent home ownership rate as of 2014. We can help our poorest homeowners remain in their homes by increasing the Homestead Exemption by $10,000. By decreasing the real estate liability evenly for all Philadelphia home owners, we'll have the strongest net benefit on those at the most affordable levels of Philadelphia housing.

In addition, if Philadelphia is serious about getting affordable units into Center City, it should allow for more density. When the former Please Touch Museum had a proposal that involved condos, the city allowed a few people to veto it in favor of less-dense condos. Most economists would argue that the best way to lower prices is to increase supply. Yet directly off the Parkway, the city declined an opportunity to do just that.

The city also needs to begin fulfilling its commitments to our poorest neighborhoods in terms of services. When the city decides to stop street cleaning, maintenance of neighborhood green spaces, timely repaving, leaf cleanup, and other services, it makes more of our neighborhoods look broken, desolate, and unsafe. It contributes to a climate of fear, crime, and hopelessness. No matter what part of Philadelphia you visit, there is city-owned property sitting in disrepair and blighting an entire block, city streets and sidewalks that resemble obstacle courses rather than public right-of-ways, and green spaces that look more like the Upside Down from Stranger Things than somewhere you'd want to take your child to play.

Instead of ramming through an Inclusionary Zoning bill that will do more harm than good, Council should focus on doing things it should be doing already, like maintaining our distressed neighborhoods, increasing density in Center City, and using the homestead exemption to further protect our most vulnerable homeowners. Philadelphia has a tremendous legacy of home ownership across the economic spectrum. Let's protect it the smart way.

Daniel Pearson is a lifelong Philadelphian and former data and outreach coordinator for City Commissioner Al Schmidt. tug16822@temple.edu @DanthePHLman
Cities compete for people. Philadelphia is no different. According to researchers at The Reinvestment Fund in Philadelphia, approximately 48 percent of city residents, across the country, live in "middle neighborhoods," which are described as stable, working-class communities that generally lack outside investment, especially when compared with areas such as Center City, Graduate Hospital or Northern Liberties.

Middle neighborhoods are often saddled with blight, but have extraordinary potential for growth, when given the proper tools. They typically are affordable, safe, and functional. In Philadelphia's middle neighborhoods, schools are good, but not good enough, crime is relatively low, and housing is stable, but danger of decline lingers.

Historically, as more jobs moved to the suburbs, the middle class shrunk, housing stock became older and many properties deteriorated and went vacant. Attention to the needs of our middle neighborhoods was, and is, still lacking.

Middle neighborhoods in Pennsylvania's 2nd Congressional District include parts of Mount Airy, Germantown, West Oak Lane, Roxborough, and Wynnefield. These are incredibly viable and valuable neighborhoods in our city. They provide a considerable portion of our city's property tax revenue, yet we often do not give them the credit, attention, and support they deserve.

Let's be clear, Philadelphians cannot take our city to the next level by just improving Center City and the "hot" neighborhoods surrounding Center City. We must also lift up the middle neighborhoods and those that have not fully shared in the benefits of our city's revitalization.

One example of a program that encourages private investment in middle neighborhoods is JumpStart Germantown. Jumpstart trains, mentors, networks, and lends money to local residents who want to improve their own community. By stressing scattered site rehabilitation and a healthy mix of affordable and market rate housing, Jumpstart can play a crucial role in middle neighborhood revitalization. First devised, and successfully tested, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, JumpStart helps local individuals build wealth locally, thereby keeping gentrification at bay while renovating blighted and deteriorated properties. Jumpstart may not be the only way to work toward rebuilding these neighborhoods but it is a good start.

Here's how Jumpstart Germantown works: Aspiring real estate developers enroll in a free, nine-hour training and mentoring program that connects them with more experienced real estate professionals. These sessions provide participants with a working knowledge of real estate acquisition, financing, construction, leasing, and property management. At the conclusion of the program, graduates and other real estate professionals are provided with easy to access acquisition and construction loans that can be used to start, or expand, their careers as real estate developers. The focus on recruiting mentees from traditionally underrepresented communities helps ensure that the wealth generated from Jumpstart Germantown stays local. The helpful tools that participants obtain can be useful in other fields, as well, offering the kind of invaluable workforce development often missing in urban improvement proposals. Teach a person to build, and they can organize, develop, and render unto themselves.

Philadelphia and its vibrant neighborhoods possess the infrastructure necessary to remain viable and compete in the 21st century. Investing in targeted strategies, however, such as Jumpstart, will help our middle neighborhoods improve, producing a positive impact on the quality of life of Philadelphians, and millions of Americans living in urban and suburban areas nationwide.

Our city, state, and federal government must make a concerted effort to recognize the importance and value of our middle neighborhoods; in order to ensure historic American cities such as Philadelphia remain viable and competitive in the 21st-century economy.

Congressman Dwight Evans represents the 2nd District of Pennsylvania which includes Northwest, West, North, parts of South and Center City Philadelphia, and the western suburbs of Narberth and Lower Merion Township. Ken Weinstein, President of Philly Office Retail, owner of Trolley Car Diner in Mt. Airy, Trolley Car Cafe in East Falls, and the soon to open Trolley Car Station in University City, founded Jumpstart Germantown two years ago.


Mamesiba Shiba Inu Cafe Kurashiki Okayama

You probably heard of Husky dog or Owl cafes in Japan. However, you might not hear of Shiba Inu Cafes in Japan. Shiba Inu is the smallest dog originated from Japan. So far only a few Shiba Inu cafes in Japan and one of them recently opened in Kurashiki Okayama Japan.

It is called Mamesiba cafe and it is located at Kurashiki Bikan Quarter in Okayama. Shiba inu simply means Shiba dog. Inu means dog in Japanese.







The address is at 1 Chome-1-7 Chuo, Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture 710-0046. They are pretty new so you cant find any information on them yet. They are the same operator of Kurashikin Hedgehogs Forest, Owls Forest and Bengal Cats Forest.

The entrance fee is 700 Yen per pax for 30 minutes with one drink. Even though this cafe is new but it is already packed! Most of the visitors here are still locals. If you plan to visit, please come early before the long queue.

Like any other dog cafes, you are restrained to grab or force the dogs to take picture with you. The Shiba inu are small dogs and they are cute. The dogs will come to you and if they are comfortable, they will rest in your arms and legs. If they are not, they will move around.

The area is not that big but cozy. They have chairs and tables so it is quite comfortable to be here. If not mistaken, there are six Shiba inu in this cafe.

To be honest, we enjoyed the Shiba inu cafe. It is easier for you to take picture with them. They are less active and aggressive than Husky based on our experiences.







If you are big fan of Shiba inu cafe, please head to Mamesiba Cafe at Kurashiki near the Kurashiki Bikan Quarter. Mamesiba Cafe address and GPS is below.

Okayama is 45 minutes away from Osaka (via Shinkansen) and they are popular with its white peach, castle, temples, shrines and food. Travel to Okayama and save more with 5 Day JR Kansai Wide Area Pass.

Opening Hours: 9.30 am to 5.30pm

Mamesiba Cafe Address:

1 Chome-1-7 Chuo, Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture 710-0046

Phone: 086-423-0515

GPS: 34.596707, 133.770128







Wilson Ng A Father and traveler who enjoys to eat, shop, travel and taking pictures with Samsung S22 Ultra and Sony ZV-1. Im a full time blogger, youtuber and father for two. I used to travel around 17 International trips per year but now staying at home. Remember to follow us at www.instagram.com/placesandfoods and www.youtube.com/placesandfoods. For advertisements or features, contact me at [email protected] See author's posts
Amanda Gillard Wins the 2017 WSOP Sydney Ladies Event

December 03, 2017 Kim Yuhl Contributor

The 2017 WSOP Sydney Circuit Ladies Event saw 117 female poker players invest $330 and take to the felt to fight for their share of the $35,100 prize pool.

The Star Poker Live Reporting Team was able to spot several notable local female poker players, making the quest to claim a ring a tough one. The list includes Amanda Wong, Hannah Lee, Suzy Khoueis, Mele Poulivaati, Fidan Shevket, Jen Bernard, Michelle Psarras, Ashleigh Tran, Jane Howard, Erolyn Strang and Despina Yiannikoulias.

While the field was full of talent, it was the presence of Khoueis that had everyone talking. Not only was Khoueis the reigning champion in this event, she also won the 2017 Star Poker Festival Ladies Event and the 2017 Sydney Champs event. It was not lost on the field that Khoueis had won every ladies event in the past year held in the Star Poker Room.

Unfortunately, that notoriety worked against her as Khoueis failed to make the money. It was tough going for the notables and even being the chip leader for most of the day did not guarantee a paycheck. Just ask Vuka Mani, who went from big stack to bubbling the tournament in relatively short order.

Eliminations seemed to be happening rather quickly. The field made the money after about seven hours of play and the final table came together a short time later.

The Final Table

Seat Name Chips 1 Quin Jian 89,500 2 Amanda Gillard 132,500 3 Mele Fisiihoi 56,000 4 Stephanie Lee 214,500 5 Evelyn Ruiz 199,00 6 Leanne Haas 296,000 7 Miki Wan 63,000 8 Luba Pase 13,000 9 Queenie Kim 111,000

It didnt take long for the first elimination of the final table to happen. Luba Pase who managed her short-stack through the bubble and three additional eliminations to log a final table appearance found herself behind with to Stephanie Lees . Pase failed to improve and her final table appearance came to a quick end earning her $904.

On the heels of Pases exit, there was a three-way all in. Mele Fishiihoi moved all in for her final 20,500 from early position. Evelyn Ruiz made the call and the action folded around to Miki Wan. Wan pushed her entire stack of 45,000 into the middle, and again Ruiz made the call.

Ruiz had her opponents covered, putting Fishiihois and Wans tournament lives on the line.

Wan:

Ruiz:

Fishiihoi:

The wait was over when the flop of was dealt giving Ruiz the nut flush. Having the smallest stack to begin the hand, Fishiihoi was eliminated in eighth place earning $1,134 and Wan claimed the seventh-place prize of $1,447.

It was at this time that Amanda Gillard began to make her presence known and start amassing chips and Stephanie Lee was her target. Gillard was all in with against Lees . Gillards hand held, leaving Lee with just 6,000 chips and ultimately a sixth-place finish for $1,882 a few hands later.

Gillard continued the pressure when she raised to 45,000 preflop and was called by Queenie Kim. The flop came . Gillard continued for 60,000 and Kim called. Both players checked when the fell on the turn. The river prompted a shove from Kim and a snap-call from Gillard. Kim soon saw that her was no match for the rivered straight of Gillard who held . Kim earned $2,493 for her fifth-place finish.

Ruiz was eliminated in non-traditional fashion when her stack was blinded off after she had to leave the tournament due to prior commitment. Her friend, Quin Jian claimed her final 3,000 chips and Ruiz officially became the fourth-place finisher collecting $3,366.

Jian followed her friend to the rail after moving all in for her final 207,000 with . She was looked up by Gillard who held . Gillard spiked an ace on the turn to send Jian packing with a $4,633 paycheck, setting up a heads-up contest between Gillard and Leanne Haas.

Heads up play was short and sweet, at least for Gillard. Gillard had the chip lead when all the chips went into the middle.

Hass:

Gillard:

While both players hit their queen, the board did not provide the necessary help for Hass. She was eliminated in second place earning $6,508 for her efforts.

Final Table Results

Seat Name Prize 1 Amanda Gillard $10,354 2 Leanne Haas $6,508 3 Quin Jian $4,633 4 Evelyn Ruiz $3,366 5 Queenie Kim $2,493 6 Stephanie Lee $1,882 7 Miki Wan $1,447 8 Mele Fishiihoi $1,134 9 Luba Pase $904

This is what I came here for, Gillard told the Star Poker Live Reporting team.

An hour into todays play I was down to just 2,900 chips, Gillard said. Considering the starting stack was 10,000, Gillard was adept enough to know she had an uphill battle ahead.

I just stayed focused and kept playing my game. There was a key hand with two and a half tables to go. I had pocket sixes and was all in against two other players. I held there and that gave me the chip lead.

But as we saw earlier in the tournament, being chip leader held no guarantees and she had a tough final table to navigate. Gillard kept her cool, picked her spots and stayed focus on the prize and it paid off with some shiny new jewelry and a nice paycheck.

This place is amazing, it is a great place to play poker, Gillard said. I will definitely be back here when the Star Poker Festival is on next year to represent my APL Outer West team!

There is Still Plenty of Action Down Under

The 2017 WSOP Sydney Circuit is just getting started with events scheduled daily through December 18, 2017. The full schedule can be found on the StarPoker website.
Larry Krasner, Philadelphias district attorney-elect, has drawn skepticism and even scorn from some corners of law enforcement for his promises to bring radical change to the office.

One member of his newly announced transition team is bound to add to the concern.

Michael Coard, an outspoken defense attorney, activist, and media pundit, will join at least 15 other elected officials, city power brokers, and attorneys in helping Krasner refine his goals and shape his priorities before he assumes office in January.

Coard  a vocal Krasner supporter during the campaign  has compared police departments to slave patrols and represented people accused of killing cops.

The transition team, Krasner said, was designed to include a variety of perspectives. He pointed to the inclusion of Ronald Castille  former Philadelphia district attorney and chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court  as an example of a member whose views are not in lockstep with his.

It does not include any current police, prosecutors, or public defenders  omissions Krasner told Philly.com were intended to avoid sending signals of favoritism.
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Seattle Police Chief Kathleen OToole will step down at the end of the year, Mayor Jenny Durkan announced Monday, ending months of speculation about OTooles future amid a tumultuous time in city government.

More than anything, Ive loved being a cop, OToole said during a news conference Monday morning. To me, it's not just a job, its my vocation, its my passion.

OToole will leave her post on Dec. 31, and Deputy Chief Carmen Best will serve as interim chief beginning Jan. 1, Durkan said during the news conference.

Durkan said she plans a nationwide search for a new chief, to be led by a hand-picked committee headed by four co-chairs. She called the selection of a police chief one of the most important decisions a mayor can make, the Seattle Times reports.
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After the Washington Post published a report detailing accusations of sexual assault made by multiple women against judge Roy Moore, whos currently running to be Alabamas next senator, the Republicans numbers took a hit in the polls and put Democrat Doug Jones in the lead for a few weeks. But four new polls show Moore regaining ground and give him an overall lead of 3.2 points, as calculated by RealClearPolitics.

Alabama is one of the most consistently red states in the country. It hasnt had a Democratic senator for 20 years  Howell Heflin, in office from 1979 to 1997, was the last  and the number of Democrats who currently hold statewide office is zero. And while there are more people in Alabama who believe Moores accusers than those who dont, its not by a huge margin  42% versus 38%.

An estimated 50% of Alabamians are white evangelicals, a group which mostly favors Moore. In fact, after accusations were lodged against him in early November, 37% of Alabama evangelicals said that they were even more likely to support the Republican as a response to the allegations. Another 34% said the accusations would make no difference to their voting decisions.

Like Moore, Trump is also strongly supported by white evangelicals, with 80% voting for him over Hillary Clinton. On Monday, Trump explicitly endorsed Moore on Twitter.

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama, he wrote. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!

He continued, Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders& so much more. Look at your 401-ks since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!

While the race is still a tossup, the latest polls show how imperative it is for Democrats  and anyone against putting an accused pedophile on office  in Alabama to vote for Doug Jones.
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Trumps lawyers are preemptively making the argument that the president cant obstruct justice, which means that they are laying out a legal defense in the expectation that charges are coming concerning the Russia scandal.

Axios reported:

The President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitutions Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case, Dowd claims.

..

Trumps legal team is clearly setting the stage to say the president cannot be charged with any of the core crimes discussed in the Russia probe: collusion and obstruction. Presumably, you wouldnt preemptively make these arguments unless you felt there was a chance charges are coming.

A lawyer wouldnt be offering a defense before anything has been filed unless they are trying to get out in front of charges that are coming.

The White House has gone from saying that there is nothing to the Russia scandal to claiming that the President cant be charged with a crime. Theyve gone from screaming witchhunt to arguing that even if he broke the law, Trump cant be charged.

There is no clear answer to the question of whether or not a sitting president can be charged with a crime, but if Robert Mueller finds evidence that Trump did commit a crime, Donald Trump is done as president. He may try to fight and stick around for as long as possible, but if he makes it to 2020, he wont win a second term.

If the Special Counsels report comes before the 2018 midterm, Democrats could take back all of Congress.

Either way, Trumps lawyers are signaling that they are preparing for criminal charges, which means that the Russia scandal is about to take over American politics.
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With just a little over a week to go until Alabama votes a new senator into office, President Trump officially endorsed Republican candidate Roy Moore on Monday, despite Moore being accused of sexual assault and harassment by numerous women, some who say they were underage at the time of the alleged abuse.

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama, Trump tweeted. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!

In a second tweet he added, Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders& so much more. Look at your 401-ks since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!

Moores opponent Doug Jones was recently leading in the polls, but the latest numbers put Moore back in the lead. Alabama has no Democratic legislators representing it in any statewide positions and roughly half the population consists of white Evangelicals, making it one of the reddest states in the country.

Its likely that the president was pleased with Moore regaining ground and capitalized on it by making his support explicit to his supporters.

Trump came close to fully endorsing Moore two weeks ago, telling reporters we dont need a liberal democrat in that seat and repeatedly insisting that the Republican candidate denies the accusations.

Given that Trump himself has been accused of sexual assault by more than 10 women, this outcome should be surprising to no one.
Hungary Wizz Air plans to triple fleet, headcount within 10 yrs

Hungary-based no-frills carrier Wizz Air plans to triple the size of its fleet and it also eyes to triple the number of its employees within a decade, its CEO told business daily Vilaggazdasag on Monday. Jozsef Varadi added that the goal is to carry 100 million passengers a year.

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Varadi told the paper in an interview published today that over the next nine years, Wizz Air plans to expand its fleet to 282 aircraft, triple the current size. He noted that the airline has recently signed a deal with Frances Airbus for the delivery of 146 new aircraft that will be added to the current fleet of 87.The first A320neo aircraft are expected to take off in Wizz Air colours in 2022 and the last are to be delivered in 2026. As a result of previous orders, though, the carrier will have 100 aircraft by May 2018, Varadi said.Under an agreement signed with Airbus in 2015, 110 new A321neo aircraft worth USD 12.5 billion will be arriving to Wizz Air between 2019 and 2024.

We believe that in the financial year ending next March well carry 30 million passengers, versus about 24 million in the previous year. And once we operate 300 aircraft, the number of our passengers could reach 100 million

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Hungary Wizz Air announces greatest recruitment campaign since launch 28/09/2017 12:10pm

, said Varadi.Varadi also noted that in parallel with the expansion of the fleet, Wizz Airs headcount could also triple and reach 10,000 over the next nine years. He added that 90% of the workforce are airborne staff, i.e. pilots and cabin crew.

As regards recruitment, pilots are the bottleneck since they can be considered a global resource on a European level. We can easily recruit new associates for administrative areas, and given that the airline offers competitive wages for cabin-crew members, its not a problem finding new ones, either.

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Asked about the bankruptcy of Air Berlin, Germanys second-largest airline and Europes tenth-largest in terms of passengers carried, Varadi said this process will not stop there.This is not a unique case, not by a longshot", he said, reminding that Monarch Airlines of the UK has also gone belly-up, and, I believe, we can expect additional bankruptcies".

There are a lot of irrational behaviours on the market. Some of these have political roots, as a result of which several national airlines are kept in an incubator. But there are irrational elements among private investors too, these led to the collapse of Air Berlin and Monarch Airlines.

Varadi believes these issues will be sorted out by the market, and just like in the United States - where out of dozens of airlines four major were left standing - consolidation in Europe will continue.But the end of this process is still far away."
CHICAGO  Every June, without fail, Diane Walker got a mammogram. Cancer ran in her family, she said. Even her mother had it. Determined not to be next, she went year after year. She tested negative, year after year.

But in 2003, freshly retired, Walker and her husband went on a traveling spree. Walker went to the Bahamas, Bowling Green, Ky., back to her hometown of Waycross, Ga. So caught up relishing her retirement, she said, she went everywhere, except to her doctor's office.

Walker next had a mammogram in mid-2004. Expecting her usual result, she said she was floored when she was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ  cancer in her milk ducts. She was 64.

Nearly 15 years since her diagnosis, Walker, 78, has survived cancer. It cost her a breast, but she refuses to complain, considering how often black women like herself die of breast cancer each year.

"Yeah, I lost a breast," Walker said. "But what's a breast if you're gonna live? I decided that I was gonna live."

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Diverging paths

In the early 1980s, black and white women with breast cancer in Chicago died at roughly the same rate. Thanks to improvements in detection and treatment in the 1990s, the mortality rate for white women fell sharply  but it stayed about the same for black women. Between 2005 and 2007, the death rate for black Chicago women with breast cancer was 62 percent higher on average than for white women, according to a report by the Sinai Urban Health Institute in Chicago. From 1999 to 2005 in Chicago, an average of 90 more black women died of breast cancer than white women annually, according to a local task force.

Experts attributed the troubling trend  the widest breast cancer mortality gap of any major city in the nation  to a number of causes, key among them a lack of access to quality mammography and less access to quality treatment once diagnosed.

But in the past 10 years, Chicago has narrowed the disparity gap in deaths among black and white women.

Partnerships between the city and groups like the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force, founded in 2007, were created to reduce these numbers. Chicago now leads the nation in reducing the disparity in deaths among black women, said Anne Marie Murphy, the task force's executive director  down from that high of 62 percent to 39 percent between 2011 and 2013, the most current period for which data are available.

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"When we started, Chicago had disparity in breast cancer mortality that was higher than (the national) average," said Murphy, who holds a doctorate in molecular genetics. "And though women biologically haven't changed in that nine years, the system has."

Now, Murphy said, Chicago is addressing the disparity with increased funding for quality mammograms, enhanced education and outreach programs, and other supportive services. This year, the city Department of Public Health invested $700,000 to increase breast health services for populations that have faced difficulties accessing quality care.

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Murphy's organization recently hosted its annual Beyond October event, which featured sign-ups for free mammograms, workshops, freebies and handouts from roughly 50 groups including the YWCA, Planned Parenthood and the American Cancer Society.

The event also featured massages, open enrollment help for those seeking health care and dance classes, all in support of the group's goal: Encourage healthy habits beyond October.

"Getting screened needs to be happening all year round, it can't be just an October thing," Murphy said. "Every month should be breast cancer awareness month."

'You feel very alone'

Murphy was one of a handful of speakers at the event, which included U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly of Matteson and Dr. Julie Morita, Chicago's health department commissioner. Speakers, some of them survivors, articulated their difficult experiences with the disease as black women.

"You feel very much alone," said Chris-Tia Donaldson, chief executive of the hair care company TGIN and a breast cancer survivor.

Donaldson, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was only 36 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Initially horrified that she would lose her hair just as her hair care products were making their way into major retailers, Donaldson, now 38, soon realized the loneliness she felt as a young woman with the condition was just as bad. Whereas older women may have established careers and dedicated support systems, younger women with breast cancer often have to "put all that on hold" to deal with their disease, she said.

This year, Donaldson's company coordinated a social media campaign which encouraged survivors, many of them young, to share their stories. When talking about breast cancer, such varied perspectives are important, Donaldson said, as are those of low-income women, who sometimes "have to trade-off between rent and treatment," she said.

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"A lot of people don't have paid sick days," she added.

'Trying to be strategic'

Worse still, experts said, many black women dying from breast cancer in the past lacked health insurance, which had long been a major roadblock to quality, ongoing treatment.

The Affordable Care Act reduced some barriers, but it may be harder for many uninsured Chicagoans to get covered this year, Morita said. Ninety percent of the federal budget for promoting and raising awareness for open enrollment has been cut, Morita said, and this year's health insurance sign-up deadline comes on Dec. 15, weeks ahead of prior years.

As a result, she said her department has tried to fill the void, hosting more "targeted events" to reach the communities most in need of care, like the working poor.

"We're trying to be strategic," Morita said. "We know what neighborhoods would really benefit from the marketplace." Special efforts have been made, she said, to host open enrollment programming at health centers, libraries and aldermanic offices.

Though experts say it's not immediately clear how much of an effect changes to the open enrollment period might have on the progress made against breast cancer in Chicago, there is reason to be hopeful, many agreed. Less than 10 percent of Chicago residents are uninsured  "a record low," Morita said. And as the breast cancer mortality gap shrinks in Chicago, an October American Cancer Society study shows breast cancer death rates appear to be declining nationally. From 1989 to 2015, the study's authors said, overall breast cancer death rates fell by 39 percent, something they attribute to advances in treatment and early disease detection.

Things were far different when Walker was diagnosed. She and her husband, who married in 1964, are planning a move to Las Vegas. They are lucky, she said, and always have been.

"I'm still here," she said. "Not all of us die."
New York City rolled out the red carpet for 12-year-old musician Daniel Colaner for a Carnegie Hall debut that the Akron boy will never forget.

The piano and organ prodigy and his parents, Dan and Marie, were surprised by all the media attention Daniel started to receive the day after Thanksgiving, when the Akron Beacon Journal's story about Daniel, a survivor of Stage 4 neuroblastoma who was preparing to play at Carnegie Hall Sunday, was picked up by the national press.

Daniel, who will turn 13 Dec. 4 and has been in remission for nearly 12 years, saw his story snowball by the time he got to New York Saturday. First, a News Channel 5 Cleveland camera crew came to his organ lesson at St. Sebastian Church in Akron Friday morning to do a segment.

"I was kinda like, OK, what just happened here? I was kind of confused (about) what was going on. But it was exciting, definitely," Daniel, who is home-schooled, said from home Tuesday.

Also on Friday, ABC's World News Tonight contacted dad Dan, requesting to cover his Carnegie Hall performance in New York and interview him before and after. That same afternoon, ABC's Good Morning America did a Skype interview with Daniel in his Akron living room, which ran nationally Saturday morning.

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On to NYC

All of this happened as Daniel was packing to travel and practicing to play at one of the most famous performance venues in the world. He won third place in his age division in the American Protege International Piano and Strings Competition to earn his spot in the Carnegie Hall recital Sunday.

When the Colaners arrived in New York Saturday afternoon, Daniel practiced his Chopin Fantasie-Impromptu in a rented rehearsal studio and then the family had dinner at their hotel. When the waiter saw them catching up watching Daniel on Good Morning America on their phone, he was so happy for the celebrity in his midst, he ordered the family desserts on the house.

The next morning, World News Tonight interviewed Daniel inside Weill Recital Hall before the recital, shot his performance, and interviewed the family in the lobby for their Sunday night broadcast. That story went viral on Facebook; it was viewed nearly 750,000 times.

Daniel said the media attention before his Carnegie Hall performance was both exhilarating and a little nerve-wracking. But he didn't show one trace of nerves on camera.

"He really amazed us taking it in stride," Marie said of her son, who was visiting New York for the first time.

"That was my best performance ever of that piece," Daniel reported. "I was just so focused on the music at that moment, everything else was completely out of my mind."

'Everything was amazing'

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The pre-teen prodigy reveled in his recital experience: "Everything was just amazing at Carnegie Hall. The piano was incredible. The acoustic was beautiful."

The media buzz continued. Someone on the street in front of Carnegie Hall stopped Daniel and said, "I saw you on Good Morning America!"

Sunday afternoon, Daniel got to play the magnificent organ at St. Patrick's Cathedral, which he described as a "dream come true." And things just kept getting better: Daniel Brandel, one of the cathedral's music directors, invited the Akron boy to come back and play a concert there when he's ready.

Dad Dan envisions that happening within a year, as Daniel continues to build up his concert organ repertoire with one of his teachers, David Higgs at Eastman School of Music.

The fun didn't stop there. On Monday morning, Daniel made a live appearance on Good Morning America at its Times Square Studios. The show rented him a piano to play his Chopin piece and sent a limousine to pick Daniel and his parents up.

Host George Stephanopolous interviewed Daniel and his parents live, and members of the audience asked for the boy's photo afterward.

"I don't know if I wanted to be a celebrity but it just kind of happened," Daniel said.

Now, the family is fielding calls from talk shows. But their biggest priority is to focus on their life in Akron as well as Daniel's health and continued pursuit of musical excellence.

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The Colaners, who are devout Catholics, are grateful that their story of hope and faith has resonated with readers and viewers across the country. Their son's surprisingly intense media coverage brought up many emotions related to his early fight against cancer as well as the blessing that music has been in his life.

"Every time he's able to do something, that just reminds us of how incredibly blessed we've been from the care that he got" at Akron Children's Hospital, Marie said. "The fact that he can even do what he does, in spite of everything, it's an overwhelming emotion."
High school-age kids from Christ Community Church gave up most of their Saturday to perform a one-act Christmas play at local senior living centers  and never complained.

"I like being able to come out here and share the message of Christmas with elderly people who don't have the opportunity to get out," said Asa Bratlien, of Mantorville, one of the student performers.

The play, "Come to Bethlehem and See," is a short re-telling of the Christmas story, sprinkled with traditional hymns and carols, including "O Come All Ye Faithful," "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and "Joy to the World."

For their first performance Saturday morning at The Homestead in Rochester, the kids read from a script, passing a microphone from hand to hand to make sure the two dozen seniors in the audience could hear what was being said.

"We like this, it's fun," said Greta Dokken, of Rochester, one of the seven performers. "Just the look on their faces, they seemed to be enjoying it, even when we made a mistake."

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Afterward, the kids had time to mingle with their audience before moving on to the next performance at The Brookemoor. The group also performed Saturday at Madonna Meadows and Madonna Towers.

"It's always great to have groups come in, especially when we can get young people in," said Marni Harris, life enrichment coordinator at The Homestead.

"My hope for our youth is to come out here and see that we're all community," said Becky Gerdes, a church volunteer who arranged the performances. "The goal is to make them feel comfortable enough to develop relationships (with older residents). There's so much they can learn from each other."

The students have been working on the production for about two months. They arrived at The Homestead dressed as angels and shepherds. "It's cool to go out and have a different point of view," said one of them, Sidney Williams.

"We're not in front of our peers anymore," said another, Caitlin Brunn.

That was the point of Saturday's performances, Gerdes said. "This is not a group of people they interact with on a regular basis," she said.

This was the first year for the outreach effort, she said.

"The big thing for these high school kids is giving of their time on a weekend," Gerdes said. "That's the biggest gift you can share with someone."
ALBERT LEA  Local officials recently received two studies that might shed new light on Mayo Clinic's plan to consolidate services at its Albert Lea and Austin hospitals.

Mayo representatives met with Albert Lea and Freeborn County officials Thursday to share a brief economic impact summary. Citizens and officials have been requesting such a report since Mayo announced its consolidation plans on June 12.

Mayo spokeswoman Ginger Plumbo said the three-page report, completed by TEConomy Partners in September, "provides clarity and context around our recent economic impact in Freeborn County and can serve as a baseline for future economic impact assessments." She called it "only the beginning" of ongoing discussions and dialogue.

"At Mayo Clinic, we are firmly committed to the people and economic well-being of the communities of Albert Lea and Austin as well as surrounding communities," Plumbo said in an emailed statement. "We are exceptionally proud of the health care our team provides to patients living in the surrounding area and of the positive economic impact our presence has on the region."

Mayo's report notes Mayo is the largest employer in Freeborn County, directly creating more than 1,000 jobs and indirectly creating 500 more. TEConomy Partners says Mayo Clinic Health System had an overall economic impact of more than $180 million in 2015, plus paying nearly $10 million in state and local taxes each year.

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The report  which has not yet been discussed by the city or county officials  was met by questions and criticism by local officials and members of Save Our Hospital.

Tom Jensen, Freeborn County administrator, said "the first thing" brought up in Thursday's meeting was why Mayo used financial information from 2015 to complete its economic impact study. He and Albert Lea City Manager Chad Adams met Thursday with Mayo officials and requested additional information, which he said Mayo pledged to provide.

"It's 2 years old," Jensen said. "They should have their 2016 numbers."

The study further highlights employee wages at Mayo averaged $122,500 in 2015, which is nearly three times what the average worker in Freeborn County earned at $43,500.

However, Jensen and Save Our Hospital leader Jennifer Vogt-Erickson both questioned why the study focused on the past rather than the future. Jensen questioned whether those high-paying jobs will remain after Mayo shifts most inpatient services from Albert Lea to Austin, which is what initially prompted local officials and citizens to request the economic impact study of Mayo.

While Mayo repeatedly has said it expects overall employee numbers to remain largely unchanged, Jensen expressed concern that Albert Lea will see high-paying jobs replaced by those requiring less training and expertise.

Vogt-Erickson echoed Jensen's concerns.

"This is another example of Mayo playing games with us," Vogt-Erickson said. "Mayo had promised us an economic impact study based on its planned changes."

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Adams wasn't available for comment, but the city sent out an email late Friday announcing a public forum at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Albert Lea High School auditorium. The 800-seat venue is expected to be filled to listen to officials from Quorum Health Resources LLC detail their own study on the feasibility of a full-service, acute-care hospital in Albert Lea.

The $75,000 study was jointly commissioned in October by the city, county and SOH. Some view the study as another step toward finding either a new or second health care provider.

Quorum's 60-page report was finalized Friday, but details are not expected to be made public until Tuesday's forum. Jensen and Vogt-Erickson both declined to discuss its contents.
Democrats running for the 1st Congressional District seat are divided over whether DFL Sen. Al Franken should resign amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

After a sixth woman stepped forward to accuse Franken of groping her while posing for a photo, 1st District DFL candidate Joe Sullivan issued a statement calling on the senator  and President Trump  to resign.

"Our elected officials, and those aspiring to be elected officials, should be held to a higher standard. For these reasons, I believe Al Franken should resign from the U.S. Senate and, furthermore, I believe that President Donald Trump should resign for his admitted sexual assault," Sullivan said in a statement.

Stephanie Kemplin, a 41-year-old Army veteran, said Franken touched her breast while she was posing with him for a photo in 2003 during a USO Tour in Kuwait. A spokesperson for Franken told media outlets the senator poses for pictures with tens of thousands of people and has never intentionally engaged in this kind of conduct. Franken has said he does not plan to resign and has vowed to cooperate with a Senate ethics investigation.

First District DFL candidate Rich Wright, an attorney from Rochester, called for Franken to resign following the first report of alleged sexual misconduct leveled by Leeann Tweeden. She accused Franken of forcibly kissing her during a 2006 USO Tour. A photo was also taken of a grinning Franken with his hands hovering over Tweeden's chest as she slept.

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"As an attorney, time and time again, I have represented women who have been harassed, assaulted, and stalked. There should be no protection for those who seek to use power to harm others. I call on Sen. Franken to resign, effective immediately. Sexual assault will not be tolerated," Wright said in a statement.

First District DFL candidate Dan Feehan in a Facebook post last month condemned Franken's actions and said this behavior "cannot be tolerated." During an interview, Feehan said he believes moving ahead with the Senate ethics investigation is the best course of action. This will create a process where victims can speak out and be heard.

"I'm of the belief that the ethics investigation that has been agreed to should be followed," Feehan said.

First District DFL candidate Vicki Jensen said she is glad to see Franken participating with the Senate ethics investigation. She added she is not going to call for Franken's resignation until Republicans show they are serious about confronting politicians in their party accused of sexual harassment.

"I'll be calling for Al Franken's resignation when Republicans show the same kind of outrage toward Donald Trump and Roy Moore and show some empathy for their accusers," Jensen said.

Wright hosts meetings on violence against women

Wright is hosting a three-part discussion on violence against women. The meetings will be at 7 p.m. on Dec. 14, 21 and 28 at Cafe Steam in Rochester. The first meeting will feature women who have been affected by harassment and assault talking about their experience. The second meeting will be a roundtable discussion with men to talk about steps to address the problem. The final meeting will present these action ideas to women to get their perspective.

Budget forecast

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Tuesday is a big day for the state budget. Minnesota Management and Budget will release the November budget forecast Tuesday morning. That forecast will give lawmakers their first glimpse heading into the 2018 legislative session of whether they will have surplus dollars to work with or be faced with a budget deficit. If there's extra cash, lawmakers might push for additional spending of tax cuts. A deficit would require cuts to the state's existing budget.
My father, an anti-communist, liked to tell this joke from the 1930s:

Why is Earl Browder (head of the American communist party) like the Brooklyn Bridge? Because both are suspended by a cable.

For Browder, the cable came from Moscow. It told American communists what to think and what to say.

To cite the most memorable example, one cable would tell them that Germany is an enemy. Later, another would say that Germany is an ally in the fight against American and British imperialism. But then, a third cable would instruct that Germany is the enemy and must be destroyed at all cost.

Today, Democrats are suspended by a tweet. Their media wing and their rank-and-file rely on signals from leadership about what to think and say about world affairs. (I must add that some supporters of President Trump are similarly suspended.)

Putins Russia invaded Georgia? No big deal. It was probably President Bushs fault. President Obama and Hillary Clinton want to end the mistreatment of Russia by Bush and put relations on a friendly basis through a reset (complete with button).

Mitt Romney explains why Putins Russia is the major geopolitical threat to the U.S.? He cant be right. After all, Obama has dismissed this claim with a joke and promised Russias president, off mic, to be more flexible in accommodating Putin after the election.

Putins Russia moves into the vacuum in Syria with the intention of brutally propping up the murderous Assad regime, which has crossed Obamas red line by using chemical weapons on civilians? No worries. Russia can be a force for good in Syria. After all, Obama has enlisted Putin to make sure Assad gets rid of his chemical weapons.

But: Putins Russia gets on the bad side of Hillary Clinton during the presidential election? Russia is evil. Its the main geopolitical threat to the U.S.

Claudia Rosett is as clear-eyed as anyone I know who writes about foreign policy. In addition, she used to report from Russia for the Wall Street Journal and served for a time as its Moscow bureau chief.

In an excellent interview with Ginni Thomas for the Daily Caller, Rosett explains why Russia does, indeed, pose a serious threat to the U.S. and to world order. She also reminds us of the enthusiasm and flexibility Obama displayed toward Russia until near the end of his two terms, when Russia needed to be viewed differently to serve his Partys interest.

Rosett cites Obama the hot mic promise of flexibility towards Putin; the shelving of missile defense for Europe in the name of that phony reset; the inadequate pursuit of Edward Snowden, who is still hiding in Russia; Obamas fecklessness regarding the red line that opened the door to Russias dominance in Syria; the Iran deal that advantaged Russia and its allies; and the weak response of the U.S. when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

Compared to this, says Rosett, Trumps occasional unfortunate comments about Russia and Putin pale. She is right. A few conciliatory comments cant match nearly eight years of appeasement  a policy Democrats, including those in the media, would still be defending had they not gotten the cable sent when top Democrats decided to blame Russia for Hillarys electoral woes.

Theres plenty more worth hearing in the interview with Rosett, which runs for about half an hour.


Eric Eskola and Cathy Wurzer host the weekly news review Almanac on our local PBS affiliate. This past Friday night they invited Johns and my congressman  Minnesota Second District Rep. Jason Lewis  to discuss the tax bill he had voted for. In the land of Lake Wobegon, Eric and Cathy are above average Minnesota journalists. They nevertheless carry on their discussion with Jason at a low level, I think its fair to say, based in part on Democratic talking points. Jason performs admirably with good humor. Having come out of the world of talk radio, he has excellent communication skills.

His hosts could have asked him some critical questions about the incentive effects of reforms on the individual side. Jason cites the Kennedy and Reagan cuts to individual income tax rates. Is there anything comparable in the pending bills? We can see the incentive effects on the corporate side discounted to present value in some part of the run-up of the stock market, though Cathy Wurzer is worried about what might happen when stock market values tumble. Jason points out that they tumbled momentarily thanks to ABCs Brian Ross on Friday. This point escapes her completely.

At about 5:30 the discussion turns to current sexual harassment issues. Here Eric Eskola alludes to Jasons career in radio broadcasting. Neither Eric nor Cathy takes up Minnesotas own contribution to the issues as they have manifested in Congress. Rather, they ask him about Roy Moore.

As I dream of Sabo making a house call in Minnesota, Eric and Cathy remind us of the media air that we breathe. It is suffocating.

The Dems are gunning for Jason in 2018. The Second is a suburban swing district with a slight Republican tilt. He needs all the help he can get in this cycle. His campaign site is here. You can contribute here. We wish him well in what promises to be a difficult year for Republicans.
Several Arab media sources have reported that twelve Iranian military personnel were killed in an Israeli air strike on an Iranian base in Syria Friday night. The Jerusalem Post has confirmed the strikes but apparently not the death count.

Israel fired the missiles at a base Iran has been building near the Syrian city of al-Qiswa (also spelled al-Kiswah) about 50 kilometers from the Golan Heights. Reportedly, the strike destroyed an arms depot.

The day before the strike, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned in a video clip that Israel would not tolerate an Iranian military presence in Syria. The day after the strike, his office released the clip for public consumption.

Netanyahu declared:

We will not allow a regime hell-bent on the annihilation of the Jewish state to acquire nuclear weapons. We will not allow that regime to entrench itself militarily in Syria, as it seeks to do, for the express purpose of eradicating our state.

The Jerusalem Post offers a time line of events leading to the strike.

For more than a year, there have been warnings that Iran was intent on constructing permanent bases in Syria, laying the groundwork for the era after ISIS would be defeated. On November 10 the BBC released a report that Iran was building a permanent military base in Syria. The report had three satellite images with it  from January, May and October  showing a site near El-Kiswah, south of Damascus. It was about 50 km. from Israeli forces on the Golan Heights. The changes at the site showed new buildings and the BBC ascribed the information to a western intelligence source.

Just before the release of the November 10 report, the U.S., Russia, and Jordan had agreed to a Memorandum of Principles regarding a cease-fire in southern Syria. The agreement was supposed to remove foreign fighters from the area.

From the U.S. point of view, one purpose of the agreement may well have been to reassure the Israelis that Iranian elements would not be operating in proximity to the Golan Heights. Israel had been seeking assurances that Iranian forces would be kept 60 km. from the Golan.

Two days after the November 10 report about Irans permanent military base, a State Department official indicated to Israeli media that the cease-fire memorandum would include the removal of Iranian forces from areas near the Golan. Three days later, however, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the agreement did not provide that Iranian- backed forces would be withdrawn.

On November 15, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman responded: With regards to Iran, we will simply not allow for Shiite consolidation and Iranian entrenchment in Syria, nor will we allow Syria to become a forward operating base against the State of Israel. However, Iran continued to make no secret of its intent to be a major presence in Syria, and its base testified to that intention.

Thus, Israel struck the base at the beginning of December.

The JPost asks several questions about these events. First, why did Western intelligence release pictures of the Iranian base? Second, why did Israel wait for weeks to attack it?

The answer to the second question might be that Israel wanted to give Iran time to pull its people out of the base before an attack, thus avoiding deaths that might lead to a wider confrontation. As noted, it is not entirely clear whether, or to what extent, Iran took advantage of this opportunity.
Power Line is pleased to welcome Kurt Eichenwald to its readership, though should I be worried or pleased that our most mild of provocations indicates that he keeps a cardiologist fully and anxiously employed? All it took was a nod to this overwrought tweet to provoke a tantrum:

One hardly expects an elite journalist to lose all perspective in the manner of a Hollywood star like Patton Oswalt, who offered up this:

But perhaps someone really needs to report the liberal hysteria to the Centers for Disease Control, because it seems to be spreading to otherwise sober-minded people:

Before moving on to the substance of Eichenwalds primal scream, I will heartily endorse the last part of his tweet: please, please Millennialsdo leave the country if you can! Tell you whatIll do my part. Ill offer ten one-way airfares to Venezuela for any millennials, with the proviso that they have to file the paperwork to renounce their U.S. citizenship as part of the deal. Come to think of it, if Eichenwald is right that this tax cut will destroy America, it means that Congress will have also solved the immigration problem, too, since no one will want to come here now. Strange how liberals havent noticed this dimension of the Republicans evil genius.

It is dismaying to learn that a journalist as experienced as Eichenwald has such difficulty with reading comprehension. Apparently he did not understand the last sentence of my objectionable note: Ill have more on some of the specific wonky aspects of the tax bill in a separate post. Stay tuned. . . Instead he let fly with this over on anti-social media:

Do take in the whole thing, since this is just the first of a four-part tweetstorm of handwringing about the debt and deficit. Why a journalist thinks Twitter is a suitable medium for carrying on a serious argument is beyond meI only use Twitter in a vain attempt to emulate my two heroes David Deeble and David Burgeso I am glad that Eichenwald has taken the trouble to comment and return fire in the comment thread of my previous post (just keep scrolling down).

Eichenwald is narrowly correct that my post concentrated on the political aspect of the debate over tax reform, because I think thats what drives liberals on this issue. Like most liberals, Eichenwald is notably silent on my challenge about why letting people (or corporations) keep more of their own money represents redistribution. Liberals always change the subject on this challenge, or pretend they didnt hear you, because they operate under the tacit premise that the entirety of the privately produced wealth of the nation rightly belongs to the government to distribute. No. Repeating that liberal cliche endlessly, as liberals have been doing since the Reagan years, does not make it just. Eichenwald appears conspicuously unable to defend the supposed justice of this position. (Some of my academic liberal friends will cry out Rawls!, as though that dense and unconvincing tract [A Theory of Justice] was established beyond dispute. But this is an argument for another day. Though if Eichenwald wants to throw down with Rawls, Im happy to fight it out on that line all winter.)

Instead Eichenwald bases his critique on two other arguments. The first is: But the deficit! Hes more likely right than wrong that the tax bill expands the deficit further, though only by a small amount compared with the current disastrous trajectory. It is hard to take liberal concern about the deficit seriously, since liberals only get concerned about the deficit when it involves a tax cut. Where was this concern for the deficit when Obamacare was in the works? Instead we were treated to the preposterous claims that it would lower premiums and reduce the deficit. No one over the age of six believed thisexcept liberals. So youll excuse me if Im not much impressed by this expression of Sudden Onset Liberal Deficit Anxiety.

The real source of the liberal grief is the effrontery of Republicans to stick with their position that they are no longer willing to be tax collectors for the welfare state. Liberals persist in thinking that Republicans are supposed to go on forever being the plodding Washington Generals to their Progressive Globetrotters, endlessly expanding government goodies for everyone and leaving Republicans to pay for it. They long for the days when Barry Goldwater voted against the Kennedy income tax cuts (about which liberals are always strangely mute) because of his worry about the deficit. Sorrywere wise to that game now, and wont play it any more.

His second claim is somewhat more creditable: that the supply-side logic that tax cuts will pay for itself through faster economic growth is implausible, and that it robs our policy-makers of counter-cyclical tools when the next inevitable recession occurs. The second part of this claim reflects unreconstructed Keynesianism, which Ill have to defer to another time as it would take too long to treat right now, except for one specific point. Eichenwald notes that were cutting taxes at a time of historically low unemployment. But this is only true because of the appalling low labor force participation rate. If we had a labor force participation rate close to the historic average of the last 40 years, our official unemployment rate would be a lot higher than it is today. Unutilized labor is just as much as drag on overall economic growth as is unutilized capital.

This first part of his argument is more interesting. Hes right that it is implausible to expect that 3.9 percent (or more) of economic growth for a whole decade, but what is curious to me is how liberals have simply given up on seeking faster growth at all. (Check the historical data from the World Bank here if youre curious.) The Obama administration was utterly indifferent to seeking higher economic growth. Liberal rhetoric today contrasts sharply with the liberal rhetoric of the Kennedy era, which was all about what it self-consciously called at the time growth liberalism. Today all we get from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders is demands for punitive liberalismmake the rich pay more! Redistribute! More than that, a lot of liberals today think that faster growth is no longer possible, that 2 percent growth is the new normal.

It is not necessary for economic growth to reach 4% for an entire, uninterrupted decade to vindicate this tax bill. Just a few years of higher growth will suffice to justify it. But there are other reasons to support tax reform beyond the growth argument. One of the chief concerns of liberals is stagnant wages. Theres a fair bit of serious economic research that our high corporate tax rate has been a factor in stagnant wage growth, and that lowering the tax rate will provide significant benefits to workers wages. I suspect Eichenwald disputes this argument, and probably would even if it turn out to be true, because for a liberal rising wages is only fun if the government mandates it.

Two final notes. First, for what its worth according to some of the tax cut calculators it looks like my own taxes are actually going to go up a lot under the House version, and down only slightly under the Senate version. The various tax calculators are imperfectlike accountants, every one gives me a different resultand in any case Im still likely for whatever comes out of the conference committee.

Second, as it happens, I am on record calling for higher taxes, but from everyone, not just the rich, on the theory that if everyone paid for all the government they receive, they might want less of it. Sample:

Requiring the American people to actually pay for all of the government they receive is, as Niskanen and others have convincingly argued, the most effective way to limit its growth. Right now the anti-tax bias of the Right results in shifting costs onto future generations who do not vote in todays elections, and enables liberals to defend against spending restraints very cheaply. Instead of starving the beast, conservatives should serve the check.

Turns out liberals hated my argument just as much as conservatives did (you should see the hate mail I received!), because liberals are simply obsessed with punitive taxation of the rich. I do find it curious that liberals who point to European welfare states as being superior to our supposedly parsimonious system conspicuously leave out one major element of European fiscal structure: very regressive consumption taxes (VATs and such). Why the reluctance of liberals to propose we adopt European consumption tax policy? See above: rinse and repeat as necessary.

Id have preferred a tax reform that just took on corporate taxes and left the individual side largely undisturbed. A fix of the defects of the 1986 tax reform, which socked it to and distorted the corporate tax system, was long overdue. In fact a lot of Democrats agreed with this for a long time if you listened closely. Hillary Clinton made noises about fixing our defective corporate tax system when she was still in the Senate a decade ago, and even Obama, in his more lucid moments, expressed support for changing the tax disincentives for corporations to keep so much of their capital overseas. In fact, I believe that if Hillary had won the election she would have proposed some corporate tax reform. Democrats could have dealt with Republicans on this issue if they wanted to, as they did very constructively in the 1986 tax reform, if they werent so far gone into their Resistance Uber Alles! mode toward all things Republican these days.

One last point. Eichewald writes in our comment thread (and elsewhere):

There is a reason why Forbes calls this the end of all economic sanity and the start of a decades-long economic policy disaster unlike any other that has occurred in American history.

No, Forbes most assuredly does not call the tax bill the end of all economic sanity. A single contributor to Forbes.com does. Once again Eichenwald fails at reading comprehension, as right at the byline of the author it says Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Forbes has a large and diverse stable of online contributors. And invited contributors can post without going through an editor, and in no way can be said to represent the editorial position of Forbes. How do I know that? Guess what: Im also a contributor to Forbes.com, and I suppose if I want to I can post an article today saying the tax bill will be the greatest single fiscal move since Alexander Hamilton started dancing on Broadway. Would it be right then for me or anyone else to claim that Forbes calls the tax bill the greatest thing since Hamilton was a pup? Of course not. Eichenwald has engaged in an egregious misrepresentation here. And then he probably wonders why so many people distrust or hate the media. Cheap stunts like this are exactly why he neednt be taken seriously.

Ill await his public correction or clarification about this gross misrepresentation.

P.S. Special bonus hysteria headline:
The scientific debate over Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming continues to rage. In my opinion, the realists are thrashing the hysterics, but for a more neutral view, check out this essay by Rupert Darwall, the author of The Age of Global Warming: A History (2013) and Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex (2017).

Darwalls essay is balanced and thorough. You really should read the whole thing. This is his assessment of one of the Lefts latest efforts to stoke hysteria, the West Antarctic melting due to geothermal heat. Which can hardly be caused by global warming, given the continents frosty temperatures:

The average high temperature in Antarctica in January is -18 degrees F, while the average low temperature in January is similar, at about -21 degrees F. The temperature decreases dramatically into February and then March. Februarys average high temperature is about -41 degrees F and the average low is about -45 degrees F. The average high in March is -65 degrees F and the average low is about -70 degrees F.

Darwall explains what is going on:

West Antarctica has become the poster child of the medias climate change alarmism. Late in 2016, four New York Times journalists visited the West Antarctic ice sheet, which had been singled out by Al Gore as having passed a climate change tipping point. Recent computer forecasts suggest that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high level, parts of Antarctica could break up rapidly, they wrote in a three-part story on their trip published in May. Antarcticas collapse has the potential to inundate coastal cities across the globe. Scientists, they claim, now believe that West Antarctica is a disaster waiting to happen, if human-caused global warming has not already set the calamity in motion. Its kind of a blowtorch on the underside of the ice shelf, one of the experts told them.

***

This speculation depends on greenhouse gas emissions causing the ice sheet to disintegrate. However, the human causation story is not straightforward, as the Times report quietly concedes. The warmer water under the ice shelf has not been linked to global warmingat least not directly. It had likely been there for centuries, so why had it not cooled down by now?  Despite the presence of a figurative blowtorch under the West Antarctic ice sheet, the word geothermal appears nowhere in the Times piece. The area sits atop the West Antarctic Rift System, where, according to a 2014 paper by four University of Texas geophysicists, geothermal fluxes are expected to be high, heterogeneous, possibly transient. Heat from the Earths interior, they note, is likely a significant factor in local, regional, and continental ice sheet stability. Did the Times fly four of its journalists to Antarctica to report on geothermal fluxes? The word does not appear in their three-part report. I dont think the biblical deluge is just a fairy tale, a retired glaciologist told them. In language that, if used by a non-scientist, would be disregarded as activist hyperbole, he continued: Some kind of major flood happened all over the world, and it left an indelible imprint on the collective memory of mankind.

It is entertaining to see a liberal scientist endorsing Noah and his ark. But what is happening in Antarctica is quite different:

The recent discovery of 91 volcanoes under West Antarctica was reported by the Washington Post as a human-caused climate change story. Only three quarters of the way through the story did the paper quote the remarkable third-year student at the University of Edinburgh, Max Van Wyk de Vries, who had made the discovery, saying that Antarctica as a whole had generally been doing better than most glaciers around the world. Its not melting rapidly like glaciers in the Rockies or Alps, he said.

How volcanoes in the Antarctic could possibly be linked to any human activity is hard to imagine.

There is much more at the link, and I recommend that you read it all.
TRENTON  New Jersey state senators have crafted two bills to put back in place the Obama-era campus sexual assault guidelines rescinded this fall by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

Last week, the state Senate Higher Education Committee unanimously approved two bills that target sexual assault on college campuses.

They now head to the full Senate for further consideration.

On Sept. 22, DeVos announced the U.S. Department of Education was withdrawing policy and guidance reflected in a Dear Colleague Letter, issued by the Office for Civil Rights under President Barack Obama, that she said compromised the rights of those accused of sexual harassment or violence.

The first of the bills, sponsored by state Sen. Sandra Bolden Cunningham and Senate President Steve Sweeney, requires institutions of higher education to use procedures in responding, reporting and investigation of allegations of sexual harassment that are consistent with federal guidelines issued in 2011 and 2014, instead of the newer guidelines.

This bill also requires each public and independent institution of higher education to annually report to the Secretary of Higher Education the total number of allegations of sexual assault in the institution, a summary of its efforts to respond to allegations, and any new or revised procedures in the prior year to address campus sexual as- sault.

While the federal government may want to go backwards, New Jersey will continue to go forward on these issues. New Jersey intends to be a leader in the protection of our students and will continue to strengthen the process of justice for survivors of sexual assault. These bills fulfill that goal, Sweeney said.

The second bill, sponsored by Cunningham and Sen. Tom Kean Jr., establishes a Campus Sexual Assault Commission comprised of 12 members to study and evaluate emerging issues, policies and practices concerning campus sexual assault, including at least one individual who is a campus sexual assault survivor.

This bill would codify some recommendations from the Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault created Dec. 2, 2015.
CAPE MAY  Shoppers milled around the citys Convention Hall Sunday morning searching for holiday gifts.

More than 50 vendors displayed handmade art, jewelry, woodwork and other items Saturday and Sunday during the annual Crafts at Christmas show. The event coincided with Saturdays popular West Cape May Christmas Parade and drew crowds, vendors said.

It was a far cry from the Black Friday crowds and the virtual shopping carts of Cyber Monday. However, shoppers did have the chance to browse unique local goods and snag a deal.

Ceire Parker, a silversmith for SwellColors Glass Studio, said the show was special in that it featured items that were generally made in New Jersey by people from New Jersey.

A lot of what we do is locally inspired, Parker said. We like to show local pride.

The studios display featured glass Christmas ornaments shaped to look like the state, and each contained a pinch of sand from Cape Mays beaches. The studio has locations in Surf City and Barnegat Light.

Peter Henderer also uses physical pieces of Cape May in his work. He crafts wood recycled from homes in Cape May into a variety of shapes, many of which are nautical in nature.

Henderer said he gets a lot of the wood by searching through trash and Dumpsters. Sometimes, contractors or others who know of his work give him the material.

It just comes from all over the place, said Henderer, 27, of Cape May, who participates in about 25 craft shows a year.
MAYS LANDING  Local politicians and congressional candidates will headline a rally in front of South Jersey Congressman Frank LoBiondos office Monday to protest the Republican-backed tax bill that is making its way through Congress.

The rally, hosted by the grassroots group Action Together New Jersey, will begin 11 a.m. Monday outside LoBiondos Mays Landing office and will feature Atlantic County freeholder-elect Caren Fitzpatrick and South Jersey Democratic congressional candidates Tanzie Youngblood and Sean Thom.

LoBiondo, a Republican, voted against the tax plan when it passed the House of Representatives, saying it would negatively affect residents in South Jersey.

New Jersey's recent election ranked second all-time in gubernatorial campaign spending The 2017 gubernatorial race was the second most expensive race for governor in New Jersey history.

When the House tax reform legislation was introduced, I said my support was dependent on preserving key deductions critical to taxpayers in my high-tax state of New Jersey, LoBiondo said after voting against the bill. As hard-working South Jersey residents already face excessive taxes from Trenton, I cannot support compounding the financial burden by eliminating their state and local income tax deductions, capping their property tax deductions and removing deductions for medical or education expenses. While I support reforming and simplifying the tax code, my no vote today was in the best interest of my constituents.

LoBiondo could not be reached for comment about the rally, which is part of a bigger effort around the state to protest in front of every Republican congressional office regarding the tax bill. He will be in Washington tomorrow for an unrelated voting session, according to a spokesperson.

Youngblood and Thom will face off against state Senator Jeff Van Drew in the Democratic primary for a chance to win LoBiondos seat.

LoBiondo announced last month he will not seek re-election in 2018. No Republicans have declared their candidacy yet for the open seat.

The House of Representatives and the Senate will meet in the coming weeks to try and come up with a compromise tax bill. Each chamber has already passed their own versions.

If they do, both chambers will have to vote on the compromised bill before it can be signed by President Donald Trump.
MAYS LANDING  An Atlantic County Superior Court judge has denied a motion to dismiss the weapons charges indictment against Linwood doctor James Kauffman, county Prosecutor Damon G. Tyner announced Monday.

Kauffman was indicted on four charges following his June arrest, two counts of unlawful possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon for unlawful purposes and obstruction of administration of law.

Calls to Kauffmans attorney Edwin Jacobs, of Jacobs and Barbone of Atlantic City, were not returned Monday.

According to Tyner, a motion was filed Oct. 16 by Kauffmans lawyers to dismiss the indictment. Arguments were presented Nov. 17 from both the defense and Chief Assistant Prosecutor Seth Levy.

A spokeswoman for the Prosecutors Office said Monday that a trial date on the pending charges has not been scheduled.

On June 13, the Atlantic County Prosecutors Office, along with members of the FBI and local law enforcement, executed a search warrant of Kauffmans Linwood home and Egg Harbor Township office. Kauffman displayed a 9mm handgun during the search before eventually surrendering to authorities.

Kauffman was married to veterans advocate and radio host April Kauffman when she was found slain in their home in 2012. The doctor has not been named a suspect in the case, and authorities have said the June 13 warrants were unrelated to their ongoing investigation into the homicide.

After Kauffmans arrest, Jacobs told reporters five search warrants were issued at his medical office related to a homicide and health care fraud investigation.

Kauffman remains in custody at the Atlantic County jail in Mays Landing.

Staff Writer John De-Rosier contributed to this report.
MAYS LANDING  About two dozen people rallied outside the office of U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo on Monday in protest of Republican-backed tax bills they say will raise taxes on many in New Jersey.

The rally, organized by Action Together New Jersey, was part of a statewide effort to urge Republican members of Congress to vote against the tax-reform bill.

There is no evidence to suggest that by cutting taxes on the wealthiest among us that we, the middle class, are going to be any better off, said Tanzie Youngblood, a Democratic candidate for the 2nd Congressional District seat LoBiondo will retire from in 2019. This tax bill puts us in debt, and it puts us in danger of having many social programs cut.

The local rally was headlined by speeches from Atlantic County Freeholder-elect Caren Fitzpatrick, Youngblood and fellow Democratic congressional candidate Sean Thom. The main talking point, by candidates and residents alike, was that the theory of trickle-down economics does not serve middle-class families across the country.

The House of Representatives and the Senate recently passed their own versions of tax reform that would significantly change the federal tax structure in the United States. Proponents of the legislation say it will simplify the tax code and lessen the tax burden on U.S. citizens by increasing the standard deduction and child tax credits. Proponents also say decreasing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, something that is in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, will increase competition among businesses and create jobs.

Opponents of the legislation say the reforms are gifts to the wealthiest people in the country and that vital programs such as Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid will be cut to pay for the lost revenue. They also fear education spending could be slashed to help pay for the tax cuts.

I look at the impact on education and the removal of the student loan tax credits and see that as unacceptable, said Thom, of Millville. We need to recognize where the taxation needs to start and where it needs to come from.

How your lawmakers voted this week HOUSE

With both versions of the legislation passing, the two chambers are tasked with combining their legislation to create one tax bill. If they do that, it must pass both chambers again before it can be signed by President Donald Trump. No vote has been scheduled.

House Republicans have a bigger cushion than Senate Republicans in passing a final measure or conference report.

Assuming all Democrats remain opposed to the measure, the Senate can lose just two GOP votes  with Vice President Mike Pence casting a tie-breaking vote  but the House can lose 22 votes to opposition and the bill would still pass.

Only 13 Republicans voted against the tax bill the House passed Nov. 16. Of those no votes, 12 came from members from the high-tax states of New York, New Jersey and California over concerns about the partial elimination of the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT.

LoBiondo voted against the House version of the bill, saying it would negatively affect his constituents in South Jersey.

New Jersey's recent election ranked second all-time in gubernatorial campaign spending The 2017 gubernatorial race was the second most expensive race for governor in New Jersey history.

When the House tax reform legislation was introduced, I said my support was dependent on preserving key deductions critical to taxpayers in my high-tax state of New Jersey, LoBiondo said after voting against the bill. As hard-working South Jersey residents already face excessive taxes from Trenton, I cannot support compounding the financial burden by eliminating their state and local income-tax deductions, capping their property-tax deductions and removing deductions for medical or education expenses.

GOP leaders are working on a proposal to partially restore the deduction for state and local income taxes, which is fully repealed in both chambers bills, to address the concerns of California Republicans. But the Senate would have to agree to that in conference.

Thats just one of many issues the two chambers will have to tackle. Other House priorities include eliminating expiration dates for tax cuts for individuals, fully repealing the estate tax and maintaining the corporate rate at no higher than 20 percent.

Protesters at the rally said they are not necessarily against reforming the tax code, but they are opposed to the current legislation.

This tax bill is not good for Americans, Fitzpatrick said. The one thing that sticks in my mind is that you cant get a deduction for going to college, but if you happen to buy a private jet, there is a tax deduction. Were all in luck for that one.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Juno. Nemo. Jonas.

These are names that might stick in your memory. When The Weather Channel began naming winter storms during the winter of 2012-13, senior meteorologist Bryan Norcross explained, Its simply easier to communicate about a complex storm if it has a name, which our naming program has demonstrated.

Adam Rainear, a doctoral student at the University of Connecticuts Department of Communications, wanted to find out if easier to communicate meant easier for the public to understand as well.

Winter storm naming is a controversial topic in the weather community. AccuWeather, based in State College, Pennsylvania, has publicly come out against the naming. In addition, the National Weather Service does not name winter storms.

If there were climate change, people would say, Where is your information? Prove it. So, instead of having people arguing, I wanted to use science and data to prove whether this is actually effective, Rainear often thought to himself, he said.

Sampling 407 university students as part of his Mass Communications graduate class, Rainear, Kenneth Lachlan and Carlyon Lin designed an experiment to test their theory. He designed three Tweets that looked like they came from The Weather Channel, explaining the threat for a winter storm.

One Tweet did not use a storm name, one used a name from their 2014-15 list, Zelus  which was not used that winter  and one used an Americanized name, Bill.

Then he asked the students to rate each Tweet based on three factors: source credibility, favorable reaction to the name, and severity of susceptibility (how severe they believed the storm would be).

What did the results show?

In terms of source credibility, the participants gave the Tweet with no name at all a 3 out of 5. A Tweet with Bill and Zelus scored lower, 2.83 to 2.93, respectively, but that was not found to be significant, Rainear said.

Patrick Orlando, of Linwood, echos these findings.

Whether its a winter storm bringing 10 inches of snow or Winter Storm Celeste, I am going to prepare the same way, Orlando said.

Talking about whether the type of name had an impact, Rainear said, The Americanized names did not have any difference in importance compared to the off the wall names.

However, The Weather Channel says, The storm-naming program raises awareness and reduces the risks, danger and confusion for residents in the storms paths.

A typical argument from the meteorological community against the Weather Channels naming of winter storms is that it is used as a promotional or marketing tool. It would be better if the government issued a name, similar to tropical storms and hurricanes now.

Turns out, the American Meteorological Society is doing just that. Rainear is the co-chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Naming Winter Storms, which is in charge of discussion and additional research of whether the National Weather Service should give out the names. Rainear works with meteorologists, including from The Weather Channel and the government, to find a solution.

The question going forward should be less about whether the type of name is useful to the public perception, but whether having a name it is useful at all, he said.
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Paris, Nov 30 : The UAE Embassy here has observed the country's National Day for the first time at the Louvre Museum in the presence of top officials.

The United Arab Emirates' National Day is on Saturday. The reception to mark the day was held in the museum on Wednesday and was attended by UAE Minister of State Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh, Health Minister Abdul Rahman Mohammad bin Nasser Al Owais and the country's Ambassador to France Omar Saif Ghobash.

Former French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and the Speaker of the French Constitutional Council were also present.

"We are proud to observe the 46th anniversary of the establishment of the UAE here today in a celebration that reflects the privileged bonds between the UAE and France," said Nusseibeh.

Minister Al Owais lauded the distinguished cultural relations between the two countries and highlighted the recent opening of Louvre Abu Dhabi as a major milestone in further advancing these relations to a higher level.

Around 70 UAE students are enrolled in diverse and rigorous majors in France, including medicine, law, security and political sciences.

Abdullah Musabah Al Naimi, the Chairperson of the UAE Permanent Delegate to Unesco and a number of representatives of the UAE Foreign Affairs Ministry also attended the function.
Seoul, Dec 2 : Six American F-22 Raptor stealth fighters arrived in South Korea on Saturday for a joint flying exercise - in a show of strength following North Korea's missile test earlier this week.

The fifth-generation, single-seat, twin-engine, all-weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft will take part in the 'Vigilant ace' exercise with the South Korean air force from December 4 to 8.

The US also plans to deploy F-35 and F-16 fighters and the B-1B strategic bombers.

This is the first time that the US has deployed six F-22 at one time in the Korean peninsula, which serves as another warning to Pyongyang after the latter launched a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile - its most sophisticated missile to date - on Wednesday.

This deployment, as well as the three US nuclear aircraft carriers deployed last month near the North Korean waters, falls under the agreement in October between Seoul and Washington to increase rotational deployment of strategic assets of the US in the Korean peninsula.

South Korea and the US seek to pressurize North Korea to return to the negotiating table to abandon its nuclear programme.
Mumbai, Dec 3 : "Tiger Zinda Hai" director Ali Abbas Zafar says the film's new track "Dil diyan gallan", is a love ballad shot in a way reminiscent of the way classic Yash Chopra songs.

Backed by the Yash Raj Films banner, "Tiger Zinda Hai" features Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif. For the song "Dil diyan gallan", the actors shot in Austria.

"I have always wanted to pay a tribute to the classic Yash Chopra romantic songs which I have grown up loving. And I'm thrilled that I finally got that song in 'Dil diyan gallan, an out-and-out romantic ballad on the lines of classic, beautiful love songs that the banner is remembered for by generations," Zafar said in a statement.

"The song follows the same form/signature of a classic Yash Chopra song - aesthetic, inspired by the innocence of old school romances and at the same time, focuses on mature, deeply felt love," he added,

Vishal-Shekhar have composed the Irshad Kamil-penned song, which is sung by Atif Aslam.

Vaibhavi Merchant has choreographed Salman-Katrina's romance for the song, which has a bit of waltz.

The film will release on December 22.
Jerusalem, Dec 4 : Israeli police on Sunday questioned David Bitan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's close ally and chairman of the coalition, on suspicion of bribery and money laundering.

Bitan was questioned by officers with the police's Lahav 433 unit on suspicion that he promoted interests of a senior member of a criminal organisation in return for debt relief, Xinhua news agency reported.

At the time of the alleged offences, Bitan was a politician in the municipality of Rishon LeZion, Israel's fourth-largest city to the south of Tel Aviv.

In relation to the same affair, the police also arrested 17 other senior officials with the Rishon LeZion Municipality, including the mayor.

The moves came as Bitan is pushing forward a new legislation in the parliament, known as the "recommendation bill," to end the police's rights of recommending to the General Attorney's office whether to press charges against a suspect upon concluding their investigation.

The bill also threatens to punish anyone who would leak information from the investigation with imprisonment.

The bill is widely seen in Israel as aimed at helping Netanyahu, who is a suspect in two criminal corruption investigations, as well as other senior politicians who are under corruption investigations.

On Saturday night, tens of thousands of Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv, urging the parliament to reject what they called the "corruption bill."

They also urged Netanyahu to resign amidst the corruption investigations of the Prime Minister and a growing number of his close allies.

The "recommendation bill" is scheduled to be brought up for the parliament's approval on Monday, but a lawmaker with the ruling Likud party said on Sunday the vote was postponed without a new date being set.
Cairo, Dec 4 : The Arab League (AL) warned on Sunday against the "hazardous consequences" if the US recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

"If implemented, it would mark a change in Washington's historical stance that sees the holy city as an occupied Palestinian city and an integral part of the occupied Palestinian lands," Xinhua quoted Saeed Abu-Ali, AL Assistant Secretary General for the occupied Palestinian and Arab lands, as saying.

The statement was issued after US media reported on Friday that US President Donald Trump was considering to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and might make an announcement on Wednesday.

Trump vowed during his presidential campaign to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a disputed holy city which the Palestinians want to be the capital city for their future state.

Abu-Ali said that such US recognition would give Israel the green light to continue its breaches of international resolutions and its occupation of the Palestinian lands, urging Washington to act as an 'impartial broker" of the peace process.

Over the past couple of days, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been contacting with and seeking support from Arab and Western leaders, warning about the potential destructive effects of the relocation of the US embassy.

The decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict emerged since the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the Western-backed creation of Israel in 1948.

Israel is blamed by the international community for the deadlock of the peace process since 2014 due to its settlement expansion policy, which is rejected even by the US -- its strongest ally.

The Palestinians seek to establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital in the light of the UN-proposed two-state solution based on the pre-1967 borders.
New Delhi : Title: Lies of the Land - A Brief History of Political Dishonesty; Author: Adam Macqueen; Publisher: Atlantic Books: Pages: 352; Price: Rs 599 Oxymorons, or pairs of contradictory concepts -- say, accurate estimate, virtual reality or even happily married -- were a literary device for a satirical or poignant representation of human life's paradoxes. Unfortunately, they seem to have become a regular feature of our present condition:Bbe it affordable housing, business ethics, or political honesty. And the last happens to be particularly incongruous -- and lethal.

For while most of these oxymoronic situations concern us on a personal basis, the consequences of less-than-truthful politicians, their manipulations, and their cover-ups can be much greater in scope, as this book on some celebrated cases of political dishonesty over the last six decades or so brings out.

For these leaders and their actions can -- did -- wreck lives and economies, endanger security and peace, and create a grave trust-deficit between the rulers and the ruled, which can imperil democracy.

While most of us remember the "intelligence" that led to the second Iraq War, the Brexit campaign slogans, the promise of Rs 15 lakh in every Indian's account, and so on till the phenomenon hit a entire new high with Donald Trump elected US President.

Those a little older will remember Bill Clinton's travails and those older still will recall Watergate or the Profumo-Keeler scandal. And journalist-cum-author Adam Macqueen brings out many of them here in vivid colour and context, though his focus is limited to Britain and the US.

It is not that all politicians are liars, he says, holding that old joke, "How do you know when a politician is lying? Answer: Their lips are moving" is "90 per cent nonsense wrapped around a hard kernel of truth".

While there are many politicians who live upright lives and use their power for benefit of people, Macqueen, a long-time correspondent of the fortnightly British satirical and current affairs news magazine Private Eye, holds there are many reasons why we believe otherwise and think the worst of the class.

In a sparkling and incisive introduction on the reasons for political dishonesty, he puts some blame on the "extraordinary polarisation of contemporary politics" where the "centre ground" for independent positions has been largely abandoned and a campaign of extreme vilification launched.

And then there is a great political benefit -- "as sure as night follows day, the louder you shout about your opponent's lies, the less obliged you feel to tell the truth yourself".

Macqueen, who starts with the story of how the news of Winston Churchill's first stroke was concealed -- with the connivance of leading press barons -- and governance carried out in his name, breaks his accounts into nine parts, which include those dealing with sexual peccadilloes, financial scandals, political gambles -- including Watergate -- political spin, and broken or misleading assurances.

Though in giving the background, course and consequences of these cases of dishonesty and making an incisive summation, he is also frequently wittily caustic.

Dealing with the Clinton-Lewinsky case and the titillating Starr Commission report, Macqueen concludes that sex in the Oval Office "sounds quite fun", but "compared to other activities that have been conducted there over the years, it's also pretty harmless".

Though about scandals, the book is also informative, especially on the genesis of the 1956 Suez Crisis, British politician Enoch Powell's anti-immigrant "River of Blood" speech in 1968, what the Watergate issue showed about Richard Nixon's psyche and politics -- and how it has a certain resonance with the Oval Office's present incumbent -- the West's roller-coaster relationship with Libya's Gaddafi and how Tony Blair did not actually lie about Iraq's WMDs.

Brexit, as expected, gets an entire section to itself, but it also includes how anti-EU sentiment was stoked over the years, right from the case of the banana classification rules. Trump also figures in all his unbelievable behaviour.

But it is not only a book about politicians and how they got punished for their transgressions, and about the dawning of the "post-truth" era; Macqueen also provides some tips on how people can deal with the malaise.

Now, we need a companion volume on the cases elsewhere, particularly our own country.

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
New Delhi, Dec 4 : Representatives of around 45 American companies met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at this year's Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in Hyderabad and expressed their commitment to continue investing in India, a top Indian American business leader has said.

These representatives were part of a delegation of the US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), a newly set-up non-profit organisation focused on deepening business relations between the US and India and enhancing the strategic relationship between the two countries.

"I can't talk about the specifics (of the meeting with Modi) because it was off the record. But basically the companies did meet with the Prime Minister and they showed their commitment to continued investment into India," USISPF President Mukesh Aghi told IANS in an interview.

The US looks at building its relationship with India on two broad principles. "One principle is that economic prosperity of India is good for America. And the second principle is a militarily strong India is good for regional stability," Aghi said.

If India became economically more prosperous and there was more disposable income, people would tend to buy more US goods, or send more of their kids for education to the US, he said.

"If you look at this year, the enrollment of Indian students in the US went up by 12 per cent. So we have 186,000 Indian students in the US," he stated.

"That's one. Two, if you look at companies like Amazon, look at Uber, look at WhatsApp or Google, you know they have a tremendous market share in the Indian market. Their businesses grow because consumer spending is growing in India because of economic prosperity."

On the defence side, Aghi said that if India became more prosperous, it would spend more money on defence.

"If you look at the last three years, the procurement with India has gone up to $15 billion," he said.

"We are talking Make in India also from the manufacturing perspective of defence equipment. So, I think those principles are driving this relationship."

On the current business environment in India, Aghi referred to the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings which saw India jumping from the 130th rank to 100th.

"When this government came in 2014, India's ranking was 142. And now it has come to 100. I think that is a positive sign and we will keep on urging the government to go to below 50. That should be the ambition," he stated.

About the economic reforms being undertaken by the Indian government, he said these have been certified by credit rating agency Moody's, which has upgraded India's sovereign rating to Baa2 from its lowest investment grade of Baa after 14 long years.

"What the government is doing is the right stuff -- which seems to send a strong message to investors also. Moody's ranking is a positive sign, very positive," he said.

On what were the key takeaways for USISPF from this year's GES, which was held on the theme "Women First, Priority for All", Aghi said: "I think the number one takeaway is that start-ups and entrepreneurship are important for job creation. That's what India needs".

He also stressed on the involvement and engagement of women entrepreneurs and women workers for the growth of GDP and economy.

"You know, a McKinsey report shows that by 2025, if you engage more women workers, it will have an impact of $12 trillion on the global economy," the USISPF president said.

(Aroonim Bhuyan can be contacted at aroonim.b@ians.in)
New Delhi, Dec 4 : In a generational shift at the top in the Congress, Rahul Gandhi is all set to take over as party President next week after he filed his nomination papers on Monday for the post amid opposition jibes over dynasty politics in a contest with no one else in the fray.

The 47-year-old Gandhi, who will be the sixth Nehru-Gandhi scion to helm the party, filed papers at the Congress headquarters here amid cheers and celebrations by party leaders and workers. His mother and incumbent party President Sonia Gandhi signed the first nomination paper for election of her son.

Among the proposers was former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who called Rahul Gandhi the "darling" of the party. Manmohan Singh accompanied Gandhi when he filed the nomination paper.

In all over 90 sets of nominations were said to have been filed supporting Gandhi before the deadline expired at 3 p.m. on Monday. The last date for withdrawal is December 11 when he may be declared elected since there is no contest. Scrutiny of the nomination will take place on Tuesday.

However, the filing of nomination was not without controversy stoked by remarks of senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar who invoked the Mughal dynasty in the Congress Presidential election that Prime Minister Narendra Modi latched on to quickly to call it "Aurangzeb Raj".

"When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any election happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go to the heir," Aiyar said, retorting to the "dynasty" jibes of the BJP on Rahul Gandhi's election.

"But in a democracy elections are held. I openly invite (Shehzad) Poonawala to file the nomination and contest," Aiyar said, adding has anyone heard of Poonawala earlier.

Aiyar was replying to a question about BJP's criticism following Maharashtra Congress leader Poonawala alleging that election for Congress President was a sham and Rahul Gandhi's elevation was rigged.

Modi was quick to pounce on Aiyar's remarks. Addressing an election rally in Gujarat, Modi said: "Aiyar, who never shies away from showing loyalty to one family, proudly said -- When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any elections happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen?

"It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go the son. I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the wellbeing of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," he said.

The Prime Minister also said that the Congress leaders admit that it is not a party but a "kunba" (family).

Modi at a poll rally in Gujarat on Sunday lauded Poonawala for exposing lack of internal democracy in the Congress. "Those who have no internal democracy can't work for people. I want to say to this youngster Shehzad - you have done a brave thing but this is sadly what has always happened in Congress."

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said Modi was "suffering from Rahul Gandhi phobia".

Surjewala also said that Modi's "love for Shehzad, Shahzada (BJP chief Amit Shah's son Jai Shah) and Shourya (National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's son)" is well known to the world.

"But will Modiji tell when he will answer the questions of his own senior party leaders like Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha?" he asked.

Gandhi, who became the Congress Vice President in January 2013, will succeed his mother Sonia, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998. He is the sixth in the Gandhi-Nehru family to head the party after his great great grandfather Motilal Nehru, great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi.

Hundreds of Congress workers and leaders from across the country supporters thronged the party office ahead of the filing of nominations.

A large crowd of party workers were seen requesting the guards for a chance to meet their leader as he made his much awaited move.

Earlier Gandhi called on former President Pranab Mukherjee, who applied tilak mark on his head as a way of blessing.

On his elevation, Manmohan Singh said: "Rahul Gandhi is a darling of the Congress and he will carry forward the great traditions of the party."

Noting that Sonia Gandhi served as Congress President for over 19 years, Manmohan Singh said: "It will be yet another chapter for the party."

Among those who signed the various sets of nomination papers for Gandhi were Motilal Vora, Ahmed Patel, Tarun Gogoi, V.Narayansami, Ashok Gehlot, Kamal Nath, Anand Sharma, Jaipal Reddy, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Salman Khursheed, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and Karan Singh.
Bangkok, Dec 4 : Former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has not obtained a British passport, Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai said on Monday.

His remarks came after news reports said that Yingluck had been given the passport after she had reportedly sought political asylum in Britain, reports Xinhua news agency.

Don said such possibilities were not officially reported by any authorities, Thai or British.

Thai media earlier reported that Yingluck was seeking political asylum in Britain after she unexpectedly left Thailand and secretly travelled to the United Arab Emirates in August.

Yingluck reportedly fled the country via Cambodia.

In absentia, the Supreme Court delivered a final verdict and sentenced her to a five-year jail term on duty negligence and misconduct charges pertaining to a rice subsidy programme which was implemented by her Puea Thai Party-led government and reportedly incurred an estimated 500 billion baht ($14 billion) in state losses several years ago.

Yingluck was said to have visited her brother, former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra, in Dubai where he has been in self-exile for nearly a decade.

Thaksin and Yingluck were deposed by military coups in 2006 and 2014 respectively.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday called on former President Pranab Mukherjee to seek his blessings ahead of filing nomination for the Congress presidential election.

Mukherjee blessed the Gandhi-Nehru family scion by applying 'tilak' on his forhead and embraced him.

After meeting Mukherjee at his residence here, Gandhi met former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the party headquarters here.

Gandhi signed a set of nomination papers in the presence of Singh, senior party leaders Kamal Nath, Motilal Vora, Sheila Dikshit, Ahmed Patel, and Ashok Gehlot at the All India Congress Committee office here.

He accepted greetings from party leaders and chatted with them as they came up to him to get his signatures.

Over 90 sets of nominations are expected to be filed in support of Gandhi, whose election is a mere formality now, as there is no other candidate for the party's top post.

Gandhi will succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998.

Hundreds of Congress supporters thronged the party office ahead of the filing of nominations.

A large crowd of Congress workers were seen urging security guards at the premises to let them in to meet their party leader.
Madrid, Dec 4 : A Spanish judge on Monday ruled that the former Vice President of Catalonia and three other senior Catalan pro-independence leaders will remain in jail for their part in October's independence referendum, ruled illegal by the country's top court.

Former Vice President Oriol Junqueras, former Interior Minister Joaquim Forn and the leaders of the Catalonia National Assembly (ANC) and Omnium Cultural, Jordi SA nchez and Jordi Cuixar, face charges of sedition.

The decision limits their ability to campaign in fresh regional elections which are due to be held in Catalonia on December 21, CNN reported.

Six former Cabinet members of the now disbanded Catalan Parliament were released on bail of 100,000 euros ($118,000 approximately).

Catalonia's former President Carles Puigdemont is due to appear in Brussels later in the day for an extradition hearing to send him from Belgium to Spain, where he also faces trial.
Bengaluru, Dec 4 : Global software major Infosys's philanthropic arm, Infosys Foundationon Monday announced a combined grant of Rs 15.7 crore to fund research and mentoring activities of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research's (TIFR) International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS).

As part of the agreement between the Foundation and ICTS, of the total grant, Rs 4 crore will be for the travel of 25 overseas students to India each year under the Infosys Foundation ICTS Visitor Fellowship for its programmes.

"About 20 of ICTS students will also travel abroad under the Infosys Foundation ICTS Excellence Grant," said the Foundation in a statement here.

The city-based ICTS's programmes enable physicists, astronomers, cosmologists, mathematicians, biologists, students and researchers from the world over to solve questions on nature and discover structures across sciences.

"The Centre also strives for unifying knowledge, in-house research by faculty in theoretical sciences, science outreach that harness young minds and connects students with public interested in the latest developments of scientific research," said the statement.

The grants are for students to participate in academic activities abroad and forge partnerships with educational institutions the world over, it said.

About Rs 7.5 crore of grant is for organizing lecture series by Indian and overseas experts, to exchange ideas and explore research opportunities in science and mathematics.

The lectures would be known as the Infosys ICTS Chandrasekhar Ramanujan and Turing Lecture Series, said the Foundation.

The lecture series will include Chandrasekhar lectures in physical science; Ramanujan lectures in mathematical sciences and Alan Turing lectures in computer science, engineering and biology.

Another Rs 3.35 crore grant is for about 200 students, faculty and post-doctoral students to support the 12th Kavil Asian Winter School (KAWS) on Strings, Particles and Cosmology 2018.

To be held here January 8-18, KAWS 2018 will bring together theorists from Japan,AChina and India to discuss about the latest developments in particle physics.

The grant will also be used for travel of speakers and participants from India to Strings 2018, an annual conference on string theory of particle physics, to be held at Japan's Okinawa.

About Rs 85 lakh will be for the Homi Bhabha Chair Professorship to support research and mentoring. As part of the agreement between the Infosys Foundation and TIFR, the Chair would be called the Infosys Homi Bhabha Chair Professor. The current chair holder is Professor Spenta Wadia, the founding director of ICTS.
Lawngtlai (Mizoram), Dec 4 : In a contradiction of its own policy, the Indian government has allowed over 1,300 tribal Buddhist refugees from Myanmar's Rakhine region to enter Mizoram. The refugees left their homeland because of the ongoing war between the Myanmarese Army and the Arakan Army, made up of Buddhist insurgents.

This comes nearly a month after the Union Home Ministry had directed the northeastern states to take strict measures to prevent Rohingyas -- who are Muslims -- from entering Indian territory despite persecution by the Myanmar regime.

The new group of refugees, belonging to the Chin and few other communities of Myanmar, have come to four villages in Lawngtlai district.

According to sources in the Mizoram government, the administration is struggling hard to bring down the rising tensions among the refugees and the residents of Laitlang, Dumzautlang, Hmawngbuchhuah and Zochachhuah villages.

According to the state administration, the refugees are being taken care of on humanitarian grounds as all of them came to escape clashes back home.

"It's been some six days since these refugees have arrived on Mizoram territory. They currently are in four villages of the Lawngtlai district and are put up at shelter homes, Buddhist homes, temples and many other places," T. Arun, Deputy Commissioner of Lawngtlai, told IANS over the phone.

He emphasised that the security threat in such a situation cannot be denied.

"We basically have two rules -- one relating to national security and other related to humanitarian assistance. Under the humanitarian rules we are providing food as we do not want any starvation deaths. We also have to guard against the outbreak of diseases," said Arun.

Additional police, health workers and doctors have also been deployed not just to keep a vigil on the new arrivals but also to keep a check on their health condition.

"The problem is that the population of each of the villages is just 200-400. The arrival of such a large number of people is a matter of serious concern," said Arun.

Mizoram's police chief emphasised that though they won't immediately term the arrival of the refugees a security threat, they are waiting for the situation in Myanmar to normalise so that they could be sent back.

"We won't call it a security threat at this juncture. They were alllowed into Indian territory due to the ongoing fighting in Myanmar. We are taking care of it and police forces are there. However, we are making sure there won't be any problem for the villagers due to the refugees. They have been confined to the four villages," Director General of Police Thianghlima Pachuau told IANS over the phone.

The current crisis in Myanmar comes nearly two months after the Myanmar Army had launched operations against the Rohingyas in Rakhine province. While the conflict led to more than 600,000 Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh, the United Nations Human Rights Commission called the strike by the Myanmar Army "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

The Indian government has taken measures, including asking the states in the region to seal their borders with Mayanmar, to prevent Rohingya refugees from entering the country.

Myanmar, the only Southeast Asian country which shares a 1,600-mile-long border with India, serves as its gateway to the other member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Four northeastern states -- Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Manipur (398 km), Nagaland (215 km) and Mizoram (510 km) -- have an unfenced border with Myanmar.

Experts on Indo-Myanmar relations see the current influx as a temporary matter that is different from the Rohingyas issue.

"This is an issue that has emerged in the last few months. The arrival of Buddhist refugees is certainly a matter of concern as it affects people on the Indian side as well. However, this is different from Rohingyas," Khriezo Yhome, senior Research fellow at Observer Research Foundation and an expert on Indo-Myanmar affairs, told IANS.

According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees there are around 21,500 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers in India. The central government, though, has sent a clear message that it would not be willing to accept them "because of security concerns".

The Supreme Court on October 13 asked the Centre to strike a balance between national security, economic interests and humanitarian considerations with regard to Rohingya women, children, old, sick and infirm (Rupesh Dutta can be contacted at Rupesh.d@ians.in)
Kathmandu, Dec 4 : Global warming is not only posing serious threat to glaciers, it will also result in a loss of 33 per cent of total ice volume in the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region by the end of the century, leading dire consequences for people living there.

"Climate is warming up. If it rises by 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of 21st century, we will see a loss of one-third of total ice volume in HKH region. This will be of glaciers, snow and ice," Dr Philippus Wester, scientist at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), said on Monday.

"It is one of the key findings of the Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP)," he added.

Addressing the "International Conference on Resilient Hindu Kush Himalaya: Developing Solutions towards a Sustainable Future for Asia" here, Wester said several studies have suggested that global climate warming should be kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius until the end of the century. But even this would be too hot for the HKH region, because it would mean 2.1 degrees Celsius rise in temperature there.

More than 400 experts including scientists, environmentalists and policymakers from 26 countries are taking part in the meet that began on Sunday. Over the next two days, the participants will discuss ideas for strengthening the fragile environment and solutions for mountain communities of the Hindu Kush Himalayas, which extends from Afghanistan to Myanmar.

Wester said the full report of the Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP) would be launched in mid-2018.

"HIMAP is an unique initiative, first of its kind for HKH region on the line of AMAP(Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme). It is a part of the HKH science policy dialogue to help policy makers from the region."

According to him, the report is like a mini-IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report specific to HKH region. "It is a long term integrated science policy initiative that aims to support policy change and sustainable solutions for problems in the mountains. It will make a difference as it is a landmark report."

A comprehensive assessment of the HKH region will assess the current state of knowledge of the HKH region, address critical data gaps and increase the understanding of various drivers of change and their impacts.

Based on the assessment, HIMAP will recommend a set of practically-oriented policy recommendations. The assessment process will involve a broad and diverse group of researchers, practitioners and policy makers, and culminate in a major publication with a highly-reputed international publishing house in 2017.

A. Kulkarni, scientist at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, said it was a result of global warming that in most of the HKH region, glaciers were thinning, retreating and losing mass volume.

"It is a trend that is projected to continue with possibly large changes in the timing and magnitude of glacier melt runoff."

Kulkarni, who is attending the conference as part of a team of scientists behind HIMAP said: "In future, the volume of seasonal snow is going to decrease and the peak of stream discharge will come early and many springs will become dry."

Kulkarni told IANS here that if temperature rose by 4 to 5 degrees Celsius, then 70 per cent of glaciers will be lost by the end of century.

"If glaciers retreat, new lakes will be formed and this has already happened in Sikkim in India. There will be flash floods if they burst. This is the new risk for people living in the HKH region."

Another findings of HIMAP is that persistent winter fog would lead to greater air pollution and low visibility throughout the HKH region and the Indo-Gangetic plains. Air pollution has already increased and air quality worsened.

The HKH sources 10 major river systems in Asia that provide water, ecosystem services and livelihoods to more than 210 million people. The region holds and distributes water for more than 1.3 billion people living in the downstream river basins.

Climate change and other drivers of change in the HKH have already begun to impact ecosystems and communities, increasing vulnerability and exposure to natural disasters such as floods, droughts and landslides.

The region is also home to some of the most diverse cultures, languages, religions, and traditional knowledge systems in the world. For these reasons, the HKH region is clearly a major global asset, critical to the planet as a whole.

(Imran Khan is at Kathmandu on the invitation of International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development - ICIMOD to cover the conference. He can be reached at imran.k@ians.in)
Nairobi, Dec 4 : He's young and the hope for millions of islanders across the globe for whom the nutrient-rich water technology for sustainable agriculture instead of soil that he's promoting will help improve human health and resilience to climate change in the low-lying islands.

He's 28-year-old Eritai Kateibwi, a native of low-lying nation Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean that's under threat from climate change. He is winner of a 2017 UN Environment Young Champion of the Earth for his work on a hydroponics system.

Hydroponic is a technique of growing plants without soil in water containing dissolved nutrients.

According to UN Environment, Kateibwi, one of six inaugural winners, each representing a region of the world -- Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America and West Asia.

The award gives seed funding of $15,000 and mentorship to outstanding individuals, between the ages of 18 and 30, who have big ideas to protect or restore the environment.

"The problem in my country is that people are not eating healthy food. They don't have enough land to grow their crops. Climate change has made the rains irregular. When they can't grow their own food, they rely on unhealthy processed food," Kateibwi told IANS.

He is in this Kenyan capital to receive the award on Tuesday at the UN Environment Assembly where over 2,000 heads of state, ministers, business leaders, UN officials and civil society representatives are gathered to find new ways to deal with pollution.

"I flew home and got everything what I needed. My goal is to help every family and after training them. In the next 10 years, this project will spread throughout this island," the optimistic UN young achiever said.

"For young people, I would like to say: If they have an idea just do it," he said.

Kateibwi saw problems caused in Kiribati by reliance on imported, often unhealthy, food due to the challenges of growing fresh produce.

He feels that locally grown, nutritious food through hydroponics would reduce the problems as well as provide entrepreneurial opportunities to the local communities.

"The majority of my people live in (capital) Tarawa; they come to find jobs, education and health services, but end up living close to each other," he said.

"With the rising sea level and king tides, their crops are often destroyed. The Te Maeu Project will use hydroponics to allow almost anyone to grow produce at home and sell the surplus through a cooperative," he added.

He embarked on his project when he returned home as a graduate in finance from Utah's Brigham Young University, feeling empowered by his schooling.

Kateibwi's project, which relies on Kiribati's abundant sunshine but uses only 10 per cent of the water of traditional crops, has already been used to produce lettuce, Chinese cabbage and tomatoes within 30 days.

He plans to use the seed financing from the award to build 200 units. Families will receive training and purchase these through micro-financing, the proceeds of which Kateibwi will use to build and make available more units.

The system could have wider uses for other Small Island Developing States that face similar challenges in terms of climate impact and a lack of land to grow sufficient food.

UN Environment head Erik Solheim said: "From boosting food crops in the Pacific to sustainable fashion solutions in North America, it's a delight to announce the first Young Champions of the Earth."

"The breadth of innovation and ambition shown by the inaugural winners is nothing short of exceptional and proof that we must continue to channel support to the world's younger generation for the solutions we need to secure a sustainable future," Solheim added.

The six inaugural Young Champions were selected from more than 600 applicants.

(Vishal Gulati is in Nairobi at the invitation of United Nations Environment to cover its third annual session. He can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
Mumbai, Dec 4 : As the cyclonic storm "Ockhi" averted the Maharashtra coast and Mumbai, the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) on Monday rescued another 19 fishermen from the Arabian Sea, top officials said here.

Inspector General K.R. Nautiyal, the Commander - ICG West Region, said these fisherfolk were rescued by ICGS Shoor from a remote island and Lakshadweep & Minicoy Isles, off India's southwest coast.

With this, the number of fishermen rescued reached 176 and seven stranded sailors of a vessel since the Ockhi hit on November 29-30 in south India and is now veering towards south-west Gujarat.

"The ICG has deployed 12 ships, three Dornier aircraft and two helicopters for sea-air coordinated search and rescue (SAR) assistance to the fishermen stranded at sea," Nautiyal said.

Besides, five merchant vessels are also helping out in the SAR efforts and helping rescue fishermen mostly off the Kerala coast.

The ICG stations on the west cost are offering all assistance -- from first aid and food to the rescued people, and have advised to remain inside the harbour till the stormy system subsides.

The ICG West Region is disseminating adequate precautionary advisories to the coastal states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Union Territories of Daman & Diu for the likely recurving of Ockhi and making landfall along south Gujarat coast near the Gulf of Khambat.

The oil handling agencies at Bombay High oil fields around 175 km north-west of Mumbai have also been advised to initiate cyclone contingency measures and evacuate personnel from the oil platforms well in time, Nautiyal added.

Meanwhile, more than 1,200 fishermen reached Maharashtra coast over the past weekend, landing at various points in Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri districts, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said.

While 952 fisherfolk in 68 boats reached on Saturday to Sindhudurg, another 321 came in 28 boats in Ratnagiri on Sunday.

"They are safe and being looked after with all arrangements made for them to make them feel at home," Fadnavis said in a tweet.

They include 69 boatloads from Kerala, 25 from Tamil Nadu and two from Karnataka.

Local authorities including the Maharashtra Maritime Board and the distict collectors have been entrusted the responsibility of the welfare of the fisherfolk till weather permits them to return.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : A court here on Monday rejected a bail plea of alleged hawala dealer Muhammad Aslam Wani in a money laundering case.

Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma dismissed the bail plea due to the serious allegations against the accused.

The Enforcement Directorate had opposed the plea given the gravity of offences.

Wani's counsel M.S. Khan sought bail on the ground of changed circumstances after the Supreme Court struck down a part of Section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) -- dealing with conditions for bail -- as "unconstitutional".

Public Prosecutor Navin Kumar Matta and Rajeev Awasthi said that Supreme Court verdict did not entitle everyone to bail in PMLA cases.

The ED filed a charge sheet against Wani and Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah under the PMLA in September.

Wani was arrested on August 6. He had reportedly confessed that he had passed on hawala money of Rs 2.25 crore to Shabir Shah.

Shah was arrested on July 25 on charges of money laundering in a 2005 case whenin Delhi Police Special Cell had arrested Wani.

In the 2005 case lodged by the Special Cell, the court had acquitted co-accused Wani of the charges of criminal conspiracy and other offences but convicted him under the Arms Act, his defence counsel had told the court.

The ED submitted that a conviction under the Arms Act is a trigger point to take action under the PMLA.

Both have denied the charges against them.
Beijing, Dec 4 : Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday urged countries involved in the North Korean crisis, including the US, to opt for negotiations rather than sanctions to address the issue.

Following a meeting with his Mongolian counterpart Damdin Tsogtbaatar, Wang Yi told reporters that China was opposed to actions that might aggravate tension on the Korean Peninsula, Efe news reported.

He asserted that new measures should be adopted within the framework of UN resolutions.

"Propositions and measures that are against or not included in the resolutions lack international legal support and will jeopardize the execution of UN resolutions," Wang Yi said while reiterating Beijing's opposition to Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

Meanwhile, South Korea and the US on Monday began a major joint air combat exercise, a new show of strength after the Kim Jong-un regime conducted its latest missile test on November 29.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : Actor Rishi Kapoor, who was shooting for "Rajma Chawal" in the national capital, has rushed back to Mumbai to be with his family after the demise of veteran actor-producer and his uncle Shashi Kapoor.

Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of the 1970s and early 1980s, died on Monday at a hospital in Mumbai. He was 79.

"We are the airport looking at the flight schedule, and want to reach Mumbai at the earliest. We might go tonight or tomorrow morning," Shanti Malik, who works closely with the Kapoor family, told IANS on Monday evening.

Malik also said that he doesn't know the cause of Shashi Kapoor's death, and would be in position to give out details on Tuesday morning.

The younger brother of late Raj and Shammi Kapoor, who were both actors par excellence, Shashi Kapoor started his tryst with acting at the age of four, with plays directed and produced by his father Prithviraj Kapoor.

He started acting in films as a child in the late 1940s. His best known performances as child artist were in "Aag" (1948) and "Awaara" (1951), where he played the younger version of the character played by his elder brother Raj.

When he grew up, he made his debut as a leading man in the 1961 film "Dharmputra", and went on to appear in more than 150 Hindi films.

Shashi Kapoor, whose nuanced acts in memorable films like "Deewar", "Satyam Shivam Sundaram", "Trishul" and "Kabhi Kabhie" captivated Hindi film buffs, was married to English theatre actress Jennifer Kendal.

He had three children -- Kunal, Karan and Sanjana Kapoor.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will meet the Chief Ministers of five states, situated on the India-Bangladesh border, on Thursday in Kolkata on the issues of Rohingyas and influx of Bangladeshis and illegal cross-border trade, official sources said on Monday.

He will leave Delhi on Tuesday evening and chair the meeting with the Chief Ministers and Home Ministers of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Tripura, a Home Ministry official said.

It would be the fourth in a series of meeting chaired by the Home Minister. Earlier, Rajnath Singh met with the Chief Ministers of states bordering Pakistan, China, and Myanmar.

Strategies to handle the Rohingyas and Bangladeshi refugees, apart from cross-border smuggling of fake Indian currency, narcotics, cattle and other illegal activities will be discussed.

As per Home Ministry's estimate, there are around 40,000 Rohingya in India, including 5,700 in Jammu. Only 16,000 of them are said to have registered themselves with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

As much as 2,217 km of the India-Bangladesh border is in West Bengal, 262 km in Assam, 443 km in Meghalaya, 856 km in Tripura, and 180 km in Mizoram.

The Chief Secretaries and Directors General of Police of the states concerned and senior Home Ministry officials along with those of Assam Rifles, security agencies and Border Security Force chief are likely to be present in the December 7 meeting.

Rajnath Singh will also inaugurate Thapa indoor sport complex and swimming pool at Dimapur in Nagaland on December 8 before returning to Delhi the same day.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's long-delayed elevation as party chief is eventually taking place at a time when Congress faces an "existential crisis", as a party leader put it, and has huge electoral challenges in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Gandhi, 47, will be the sixth member of Nehru-Gandhi family to take the top position of the 132-year old party.

The change at the top is coming on the eve of assembly polls in Gujarat and the outcome there would be interpreted in terms of Rahul Gandhi's ability as a campaigner and vote getter.

But the next round of assembly polls in 2018 -- first in Karnataka and later in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh -- will be absolutely crucial for Rahul Gandhi for building the momentum to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha polls. The state elections, with Bharatiya Janata Party as the key rival, will also be first major polls directly under Rahul Gandhi's charge as party chief. Assembly polls will also be held early next year in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura.

The challenges for Rahul Gandhi include fostering a new energy and enthusiasm in the Congress and evolving a new strategy to galvanise the party after a string of electoral losses since the 2014 Lok Sabha debacle. The Congress has to work hard at the grassroots to take on the relentless election machine of BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party chief Amit Shah.

Gandhi has to take a call on forging a larger opposition alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls under a "collective leadership" or projecting himself as the alternative against Modi with support of different parties. He was the face of Congress in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Gandhi has been perceived as a reluctant politician due to some of his longish trips abroad, the delay in stepping up to the role of party chief, his not taking up a ministerial responsibility in two UPA governments and not properly following through some of the issues he raised.

Of late, he has been able to counter the perception with his sharp and aggressive attacks on Modi and the BJP. A trip to the United States where he had had interactions with think tanks appeared to have done a sea change to the image about him.

In Gujarat, where success will be a big morale-booster for the Congress, Gandhi has sought to create a broad social coalition and has forced Modi to react.

Congress' only major success since its debacle in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls has been Punjab while the BJP, in comparison, has tremendously expanded its footprint by winning states it had never done in the past. The BJP is making efforts to expand its base in states it has been weak including West Bengal, Kerala, Odisha and Tamil Nadu.

Another major challenge for Rahul Gandhi is to revive Congress in Uttar Pradesh, the state that sends the largest contingent of 80 MPs to parliament. Gandhi has twice led the party's campaign in the assembly polls but had come a cropper.

The results of the recent local body polls in Amethi and Rae Bareli, the Lok Sabha constituencies of Rahul Gandhi and his mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, have not been flattering for his image.

Congress has shrunk electorally, being now the fourth player in states such as Bihar, third in states such as West Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu as also Delhi. In the polls held to various assemblies since 2014, it has largely finished third or fourth. Sections, which were strongly with the party including Dalits, have drifted away.

Rahul Gandhi had been projected as a young leader who understands the language and idiom of the youth but Modi has been more successful in weaning away the section that has large electoral presence. The Congress also has to devise ways to woo the large middle class.

Gandhi, who is stepping into shoes of his mother Sonia Gandhi who helmed Congress for 19 years including 10 as the chief of the party heading the ruling coalition at the Centre, will need to be dexterous in his dealings with allies as also other opposition parties such as the CPI-M.

The crumbling of the ruling alliance in Bihar has been a setback for the party.

Senior leaders like Mamata Banerjee and Lalu Prasad have a comfort level with Sonia Gandhi and it remains to be seen how Rahul Gandhi fits into the role.

Within the party, Gandhi has to take several decisions including whether to project chief ministerial candidates in Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan and who they will be.

Bringing about unity in faction-ridden state units and making the balance between the "old guard" and the younger aspirants will be other challenges.

Congress had to project nonagenarian Virbhadra Singh as chief ministerial candidate in Himachal Pradesh in the absence of a younger acceptable option.

Congress is now ruling only five states and a union territory and if it loses Gujarat and Karanataka next year, its chances of staging a comeback in 2019 will be further squeezed.

Though Gandhi's experiments to democratise the party's youth organisations have not entirely succeeded, he has had some political successes, including forcing the Modi government to go back on its proposed changes in the land acquisition Act.

The concerted opposition attack on the "flawed" implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) as also perception of unease among traders in poll-bound Gujarat has apparently forced the government to extend several concessions.

But the Congress or other opposition parties could not reap political dividends on demonetisation though it caused a lot inconvenience to people.

Though Gandhi had promised to "involve people in ways you cannot even imagine now" after the party lost in Delhi in 2013 assembly polls, the party fared far worse in the next polls.

Gandhi, who is into his third term as Lok Sabha MP, was made party vice-president in 2013 as a stepping stone to his eventual elevation.

Latest updates on Gandhi Jayanti 2019
Shillong, Dec 4 : Accusing Chief Minister Mukul Sangma of practising "one-upmanship", veteran Congress legislator Comingone Ymbon on Monday resigned as the Meghalaya Power Minister.

Ymbon's resignation came after two Independent legislators -- Robinus Syngkon and Rophul Marak -- withdraw support to the Congress-led Meghalaya United Alliance government last month.

Chief Minister Mukul Sangma, who was in New Delhi along with Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee President D.D. Lapang, to support the candidature of Rahul Gandhi for Congress presidentship, was back in Shillong on Monday evening to take stock of the political developments.

"I have put in my papers since I have lost confidence in the Chief Minister," Ymbon, who was inducted in the Mukul Sangma ministry on August 4, told IANS over phone.

"During my four months, as a Cabinet minister I understood his (Sangma) one-upmanship. He takes unilateral decision on programmes of the department which I was holding. What is the point of being a minister," Ymbon asked.

In fact, Ymbon's resignation is a major embarrassment for the ruling Congress party ahead of the last session of the outgoing Meghalaya Assembly, prior to the state going to polls in February next year.

The three-day session of the 9th Meghalaya Legislative Assembly will commence from December 8.

"In the days to come, I will also be resigning from the Congress party," the former minister said.

The two-time Congress legislator from Raliang Assembly constituency is expected to contest the upcoming Assembly elections on National People's Party ticket.

Four Congress legislators -- Rowell Lyngdoh, Prestone Tynsong, Sniawbhalang Dhar and Ngaitlang Dhar, besides Independent legislators Hopeful Bamon and Stephanson Mukhim are expected to contest the upcoming assembly elections on NPP ticket.
Sanaa, Dec 4 : Reports from Yemen say ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed on Monday in fighting with his former allies.

Media controlled by the rebel Houthi movement quoted officials as declaring the "end of the crisis of the treason militia and the killing of its leader".

Sources in Saleh's General People's Congress party also confirmed that he was killed during fierce clashes in the capital Sanaa with Houthi militias.

A video showed Saleh lying on blanket surrounded by Houthi militias celebrating his death. The short clip aired on a pro-Houthi television channel appears to show Saleh had sustained a head injury, potentially a gunshot wound.

Earlier in the day, militias from Yemen's armed Houthi movement blew up Saleh's house in the centre of the capital Sanaa, residents reported.

The previous night, Saleh officially announced the dissolution of his partnership with former Houthi militia allies.

"Zero hour is coming to the battlefield in Sanaa... The country had to be saved from the madness of the Houthi group," Saleh said in statements on Monday morning.

Meanwhile, International Committee of the Red Cross has said that at least 125 persons have been killed and 238 wounded in fighting in Sanaa over the last five days.
Hyderabad, Dec 4 : A rally of unemployed youth and students here on Monday demanded the Telangana government to immediately fill the vacancies even as two students ended their lives since Sunday reportedly after failing to get jobs.

Speakers at the "Koluvula Kotlaata" (Fight for jobs) rally, organised by Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC), appealed to students and unemployed youth not to resort to suicide but unite for a struggle to force the government to honour its promise.

TJAC chairman M. Kodandaram alleged that police tried to foil the meet by arresting several leaders and workers coming to Hyderabad from different parts of the state, though the court had give permission for the meet.

While one student of Osmania University hanged himself in the hostel, another unemployed youth killed himself in Nirmal district on Sunday.

E. Murali, 21, a first-year student of MSc Physics at Osmania University here ended his life in bathroom on Sunday. The incident, the first after formation of Telangana state, triggered protest by students.

According to police, a suicide note was found in the pocket of Murali in which he stated that he was taking the extreme step due to depression and the fear of failing in exams. However, student groups alleged that the letter was forged and claimed that he was depressed due to government not releasing the job notification.

Tension prevailed on the campus as students refused to hand over the body to police, demanding the government to first announces a job and Rs 50 lakh compensation for Murali's family. Police broke open the doors of a hostel room in the early hours of Monday to forcibly shift the body for autopsy and later to his native place.

However, the campus remained tense through the day as students staged protest and boycotted the classes.

When the TJAC meeting was on, report came in from Nirmal district that an unemployed youth committed suicide. B. Ramesh, who had done MSc, was reportedly depressed on not getting a job.

At the meeting, TJAC presented before people family members of four youth who committed suicide recently.

Kodandaram, who had played a key role in the movement for separate Telangana state, alleged that the government had failed to fulfill the promise to provide jobs and this had led to frustration among youth.

He demanded that the government take steps on war-footing to fill 3 lakh vacancies. He said instead of addressing the issue, ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) was branding them politically unemployed. "This is not Telangana which we had fought and the martyrs laid down their lives for," he said.

Revolutionary balladeer Gaddar urged students to come together and become a political force.

Eminent academician Chukka Ramaiah found fault with the government for creating hurdles for organizations fighting for the rights of students and unemployed.

Telugu Desam Party's state president L. Ramna called for a united struggle to pressurize the government to fulfill its promises.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday expressed condolences over death of veteran actor Shashi Kapoor. Kapoor died in a Mumbai hospital on Monday after a prolonged illness.

"Sorry to hear of the demise of Shashi Kapoor, well-known actor, with a repertoire of Indian and international films. His support for meaningful cinema as a producer and pivotal role in the theatre movement in India too are cherished. Condolences to his family," the President tweeted.

"Shashi Kapoor's versatility could be seen in his movies as well as in theatre, which he promoted with great passion. His brilliant acting will be remembered for generations to come. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers," the Prime Minister tweeted.

The third and the youngest son of late Prithviraj Kapoor and brother of late Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor, Shashi made his debut with Yash Chopra's "Dharamputra" in 1961.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : The National Students' Union of India (NSUI) on Monday demanded an independent election commission and a revision in the budget for elections in universities stating that the current limit of Rs 5,000 is "too little and impractical".

"It has been 11 years since the budget limit was set as per Lyngdoh Committee(2006). Since then, the number of students have increased and so much has changed... It is not feasible to run campaign in this amount... Moreover, there are no guidelines for social media campaign. We want the expenditure limit to be revised," the NSUI National President Fairoz Khan, said.

Khan also proposed for the establishing of an independent election commission at the national level which will work under the supervision of the Election Commission of India.

By March 2017, a convention will be held where the proposals will be made open for deliberations by other student parties, he said.

"We are planning to do a massive convention in which about 50,000 students will participate. We will invite other parties also for their say in the finalising of resolution. After that it will be presented to the members of Parliament who may propose it in the House," Khan said.

A students court, a grievance redressal cell that is "free from the intervention of the university", a National Students Rights Commission and use of ballot paper instead of Electronic Voting Machines were also among its demands.

The party also proposed online voting as an option, if not ballot paper, to "increase the voting percentage" and reduce the incidents of violence during polling.

A reduction in age for voting and contesting in polls was also proposed by the student leader, who demanded that voting age should be brought down to 16 from 18 and that for contending to be fixed at 18.
Abu Dhabi, Dec 4 : The Scottish government has appointed its first trade envoy to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and in the MENA region.

Nick Maclean will serve in the position as part of Scotland's plans to extend its worldwide business reach with the appointment of a team of trade envoys to champion international trading as well as promote and represent Scotland's export interests.

The team of overseas and Scotland-based envoys will help to identify specific business opportunities in new overseas markets where there is currently untapped potential, according to the media report on Monday.

They will also support Scottish exporting interests through trade-related visits and events.

Scottish Economy Secretary Keith Brown said: "Trade and export is vital to our economy and we have brought these experts on board to help us prepare to meet the challenges of the future."

"We already have strong partnerships throughout the world, but it is important we continue to cultivate these and have people in place who can promote Scotland to international businesses and markets."

MacLean said he was "deeply honoured to have been asked to take up the position of Scotland's Trade Envoy to the UAE."
Seoul, Dec 4 : In an apparent warning to North Korea over its latest intercontinental ballistic missile test, the US and South Korea kicked off their largest-ever Air Force exercise here on Monday involving some 230 warplanes including F-22 Raptors as well as F-35 Lightning II fighters, cloaked with the world's most advanced stealth coating.

The five-day Vigilant Air Combat Exercise (ACE) came less than a week after the North fired a new ICBM and declared the completion of its "nuclear force". It is the largest-ever combined Air Force drill between the allies, involving around six F-22 Raptors, six F-35As and 12,000 personnel.

While the North Korean military maintains capable anti-air weaponry, its radar systems would be unable to detect the F-22s and F-35s, which are cloaked with the world's most advanced stealth coating, before a strike on those defensive systems, CNN reported.

Reacting to the move, the North Korea state media said that "ceaseless large-scale war games" by Washington and Seoul are "creating a situation that a nuclear war may break out any moment".

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was "regrettable" that all parties had not "grasped the window of opportunity" presented by two months of relative calm before the North's most recent test.

It marks the first time that six Raptors have joined an exercise simultaneously in Korea. A dozen F-35Bs operated by the US Marine Corps will take part in the training.

F-35 fighters, the Pentagon's most powerful warplanes, will include the largest number of 5th generation fighters ever to have taken part, according to a South Korea-based US Air Force spokesman.

Other assets include two B-1B Lancer bombers, six EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets, and dozens of F-15C and F-16 fighter jets. The two sides plan to fly the aircraft at eight South Korean and US military installations, according to the US Seventh Air Force.

South Korea fielded F-15K, KF-16, FA-50 and F-5 fighters, as well as other planes.

The North Korean commentary published in state newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Sunday said the aerial war games showed "the enemies' moves to start a nuclear war have reached a dangerous stage".

"It is an open, all-out provocation against the DPRK, which may lead to a nuclear war any moment," it stated.

The exercises came less than a week after Pyongyang fired off an intercontinental ballistic missile it claimed can reach the "whole" mainland of the US.

In reaction, US President Donald Trump said that additional major sanctions would be imposed on North Korea. Earlier, he had also put Pyongyang back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country on Sunday called Trump "insane" and said the drills would "push the already acute situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war".

Russia had also accused the US of trying to provoke North Korean leader Kim Jong-un into "flying off the handle" over his missile programme to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country.
Islamabad, Dec 4 : US Defence Secretary James Mattis arrived in Pakistan on Monday amid Washington's concerns over "terrorist safe havens" in the country and also to shore up bilateral ties that have seen a marrked downslide in the past few months.

Mattis, on his maiden visit to Pakistan since taking charge at the Pentagon, met Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and other senior officials.

His visit comes as CIA Director Mike Pompeo has in a stern warning said if Islamabad does not eliminate terrorist "safe havens" in its territory, the US will do "everything" it can to destroy them.

Ahead of his visit, Mattis said the US would "work hard on finding common ground" and "work together" with Pakistan.

Matters of mutual interest, including the US policy in South Asia and Afghan peace efforts, were discussed during the meeting with Prime Minister Abbasi, according to Geo News.

The Defence Secretary was also briefed on efforts to secure the Pakistan-Afghan border and measures taken were also part of the briefing.

Inter-Services Intelligence Director General Lt. Gen. Naveed Mukhtar, Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Defence Minister Khurram Dastagir and National Security Adviser Lt Gen (retd) Naseer Khan Janjua were among those who attended the meeting.

Earlier, Mattis arrived at the Nur Khan Airbase where he was received by officials from the defence and foreign ministries.

Mattis's trip aims "to re-affirm the enduring US commitment to partnerships" in the region, according to a press release by the US Department of Defense.

Earlier, speaking to reporters, the American defence chief said: "We have heard from Pakistan leaders that they do not support terrorism. So I expect to see that sort of action reflected in their policies."

Asked if he was going to press the Pakistani leaders to take more action against the insurgents, Mattis stated that the country was taking action in its own best interests and "that's not the way I deal with issues".

"I believe that we work hard on finding the common ground and then we work together."

His visit comes days after a Pakistan court ordered the release from house arrest of 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed. The US had last week directed Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest Saeed and warned of repercussions if it did not comply.

Ties between Washington and Islamabad have seen a dip after President Donald Trump announced his new Afghan and South Asia policy in August.

Pakistan has also been upset at Trump's calls for increased Indian role in rebuilding of Afghanistan.

Last week the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, said Islamabad had not carried out the "clear" demands made by Washington.

The American top brass has long been frustrated by what they see is Pakistan's reluctance to act against groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, which launch attacks on neighbouring Afghanistan.

Pakistan, nevertheless, says it has done a great deal to help the US in tracking down terrorists.

Its military - in response to Trump's accusation that Islamabad was harbouring "agents of chaos" and offering safe havens to militant groups waging an insurgency against a US-backed government in Kabul - had brushed off speculation that the American head of state could signal a stronger line against Islamabad.

"Let it come," Major General Asif Ghafoor - the Pakistani military spokesman - had told reporters. "Even if it comes... Pakistan shall do whatever is best in the national interest."

Mattis began his five-day tour of the Middle East A including Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait A and Islamabad on Friday.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : India and Germany on Monday signed a series of financial agreements, including one for an 200 million euro loan for an environment-friendly urban mobility project.

The inter-governmental umbrella agreement for the various funding projects were signed here, a Finance Ministry release said.

"The Government to Government umbrella agreement was signed here today (Monday) to formalise an amount up to euro 200 million for financial cooperation in the form of loan for the project 'Climate Friendly Urban Mobility III' and 11 million euro accompanying measures in form of grant for four projects," it said.

The first part of the agreement had already been signed in May, it added.

Besides, four other agreements were signed between India's Department of Economic Affairs and German government-owned development bank KfW under the framework of Indo-German Bilateral Development Cooperation.

One loan agreement signed with KfW is for the project "Community-based sustainable Forest Management Component I Manipur" that entails a financing of Euro 15 million.

The broad objectives of the project are restoration of degraded forests in upper watersheds, reclamation of abandoned shifting cultivation areas, biodiversity conservation, water resources conservation and livelihood improvement of forest dependent rural and tribal people in the project area, the statement said.

The other loan agreements signed were for projects under the Madhya Pradesh Urban Sanitation and Environment Programme (50 million euros), the Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Development Odisha Phase II (55 million euros) and the Green Energy Corridor Intra-State Transmission System in Maharashtra (12 million euros), it added.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : Condoling the death of veteran actor-producer Shashi Kapoor, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Monday called him a "brilliant actor" and said "he has left a void difficult to fill in the world of cinema".

"A brilliant actor, he successfully contributed in paving the way for alternative pathbreaking cinema Nationally and Internationally," said Gandhi.

"He will be fondly remembered by all and has left a void difficult to fill in the world of cinema," she added.

Conveying her sympathies to his family and fans for this irreparable loss, Gandhi prayed for the departed soul.

Veteran actor-producer Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of the 70s and early 80s, died on Monday at a hospital here. He was 79.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : The Supreme Court on Monday sought a response from the Central government on a plea questioning the repeated imposing of prohibitory orders in central and New Delhi -- the heart of the national capital -- to ban protests and demonstrations.

The bench of Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan observed that it is important to frame guidelines on the right to protest, so as to ensure that the fundamental right of citizens to protest is balanced with avoiding any inconvenience that may be caused to the public.

The court also issued notice to Delhi Police.

Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) empowers an executive magistrate to prohibit an assembly of more than four people in an area.

In 2017, police has issued prohibitory orders six times - in January, March, May, July, September and the latest in October.

Moving the top court through its founder member Aruna Roy, the PIL petitioner organisation Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan (MKSS) has sought quashing of the six prohibitory orders and a declaration that imposing a blanket ban on all assemblies in central Delhi or New Delhi area is "illegal".

The petitioner has also sought laying down of the guidelines for holding public meetings, dharnas and peaceful demonstrations in various parts of the national capital.

Appearing for MKSS, counsel Prashant Bhushan described as "arbitrary" the repeated issuance of prohibitory orders by Delhi Police.

Asserting that the right to peaceful assembly is a fundamental right under the Constitution's Article 19(1) (b), he said that it was a crucial right for citizens to express their opinion in a democratic state.

He said that this right encompasses holding peaceful dharnas and demonstrations which would also be a crucial aspect of the right to freedom of speech and expression under the Article 19 (1) (a).

The MKSS also assailed the National Green Tribunal's October 5 order banning protests at Jantar Mantar on the grounds that it creates a nuisance for the residents of the area and violates environment protection statutes, saying that it was in complete violation of a citizen's fundamental right to peaceful assembly.

"Distancing a protest site from where it is most visible to the government and concerned authorities, will have the effect of diluting the impact that the protest seeks to gain," the PIL said, pointing out that Jantar Mantar has been the site for peaceful protests since 1993 and by the nature of the area, it is an easily managed and contained space.
Mumbai, Dec 4 : With cyclone 'Ockhi' expected to make a landfall in south Gujarat later on Monday or early Tuesday, Maharashtra went on a state of high alert to tackle the side-effect of the stormy weather.

Maharashtra Education Minister Vinod Tawde announced a "precautionary holiday' on Tuesday (December 5) for all schools in the coastal districts of Palghar, Thane, Mumbai, Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg, in view of the predictions for the cyclone.

After a heavily overcast day on Monday, Mumbai and surrounding districts had intermittent rainfall since dusk which continued, slowing down road traffic but the lifeline of the city, the local trains continued unhindered.

The IMD has already forecast rains with thundershowers in and around Mumbai with squalls reaching 50-60 kmph and touching 70 kmph in the coastal areas over the next two days, with minimum temperatures hovering around 23 degrees Celsis.

Danger signals LC-III have been hoisted over all ports between Goa to Dahanu (north Maharashtra), with rough to very rough conditions in the sea.

The BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation and the state Disaster Management Unit and the railways were fully geared for the cyclonic encounter expected over the next couple of days.

Western Railway PRO Ravinder Bhakar said that an emergency meeting of all departments was convened and they will remain on the water levels on the railway tracks, the Railway Protection Force and commercial staff will monitor crowd movements, especially in the areas of Palghar which have been placed on alert.

"Disaster Management Cell is in readiness for any emergencies, patrolling of the railway tracks has been intensified over various rail sections, and the RPF and commercial staff will be prepared for necessary evacuation at respective stations in case of any disaster-like situation," he said.

Technical teams will monitor railway assets and essentials like electricity supply with back-up diesel generators, signal and telecom, breakdown equipments, accident relief trains or accident relief medical vans, etc are on standby for any eventuality.

The BMC has warned people from venturing close to the coastal areas and beaches as high waves are expected in the Arabian Sea owing to the cyclone conditions.

On Tuesday, the high tide will be of 5.04 metres and on Wednesday it will be of 5.05 metres, gradually receding to 4.17 metres by Thursday, said a BMC official.

The BMC has also warned people living in some parts of south Mumbai and suburbs that the possibility of tidal waves flowing into the roads and homes cannot be ruled out and asked them to take adequate precautions.

On December 6, more than half a million followers from all over India are expected to pay homage to the late Babasaheb R. Ambedkar on his 62nd death anniversary at Shivaji Park in Dadar.

The civic officials have requested the followers to stay away from the Dadar Chowpatty beach in view of the stormy seas expected over the next few days, especially at his memorial, Chaityabhoomi which is on the seashore.

Meanwhile, all the BMC disaster units, Mumbai Police, Fire Brigade, the Indian Navy, Indian Coast Guard, Home Guards and other agencies are in full preparedness for any eventuality arising out of the cyclone Ochki as it skirts Maharashtra and is expected to make landfall near the diamond and textile city of Surat in the next few hours.

Fishermen in the seas have been advised to return immediately and others told to keep off the sea for the next two days.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the execution of death sentence of 1993 Mumbai bomb blast convict Taher Mohammed Merchant who was found guilty on different counts including hatching conspiracy and waging war against the nation.

Merchant, along with Feroze Abdul Rashid Khan, was given the death sentence after being convicted along with underworld don Abu Salem. However, the latter escaped the capital punishment because of conditions surrounding his extradition from Portugal.

"There shall be stay of the execution of death sentence," said a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Mohan M. Shantanagoudar, directing the supply of the order's copy to the Central Bureau of Investigation and listing the matter for hearing on March 14 next year.

The court also directed its registry to call for the lower court records and ordered Maharashtra to "compile the evidence in entirety and file the compilation in convenient volumes" and also serve a copy thereof to Merchant's counsel.

On September 7 this year, a special Terrorist and Disruptive Activity (TADA) court had sentenced Merchant and Feroze Abdul Rashid Khan to death.

Besides Abu Salem, the TADA court had sent Karimullah Khan to jail for life and Riyaz Siddiqui to 10 years rigorous imprisonment.

The court had found them guilty on various counts including murder, hatching a criminal conspiracy to carry out the blasts, waging a war against the nation, supplying arms and ammunition, and other serious offences.

The capital punishments were given in the second part of the Mumbai blasts trial. The earlier part of the trial, completed in 2007, saw 100 people being convicted which included Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt and prime accused Tiger Memon.

Dutt, who was convicted for illegal possession of arms but acquitted of the other serious charges, has since completed his six-year sentence while Memon is absconding.
Lucknow, Dec 4 : The 14 newly elected mayors of Uttar Pradesh's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will call on Prime Mminister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Tuesday, said a party leader.

According to state leaders, BJP's state Organisation Secretary Sunil Bansal would be part of the delegation.

While the meeting is being termed a courtesy call, the Prime Minister is expected to share with the new mayors, his vision of development of cities. A source told IANS that Modi will also seek and exchange ideas on how to improve the lot of the cities, improve garbage disposal system, and create more awareness about cleanliness.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and state BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey had met these newly elected mayors here on Sunday. Out of the 16 municipal corporations in Uttar Pradesh that went to polls late in November, the BJP candidates won the mayoral seats in 14, including in Lucknow, Agra, Varanasi, Moradabad, Kanpur and Allahabad.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : Stating that Russia will remain a key foreign policy priority for India, New Delhi on Monday called for joint defence equipment manufacturing between the two countries under the Make in India initiative.

"Russia is and will remain the key important foreign policy priority for India," Vijay Gokhale, Secretary, Economic Relations, in the Ministry of External Affairs, said while addressing the Second India-Russia Heads of Think-Tanks Forum organised by the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) here.

"It would not be out of place to state that this is a strong national consensus," he said.

Contending that the past relationship between India and Russia should not transmute into a passive present partnership, he cautioned that "there is no room for complacency in our ties" for it "cannot remain isolated from global changes or be immune from their impact".

Stating that Russia remained a major supplier of India's defence requirements, Gokhale said that New Delhi appreciated Moscow's "consistent support through the seven decades of our partnership".

"At the same time, we believe that this is the opportune time to move from a buyer-seller format to joint production and joint investments under our Prime Minister's 'Make In India' initiative, in order to bring a new dynamism to our military-technical co-operation," he said.

"We invite Russian defence industry to look at our new policies in this regard and to partner us as India begins a journey to become a defence manufacturer."

Holding cooperation in the energy sector was now embarking in new directions, Gokhale said that Indian investments in the Vankor and Taas-Yuryakh oilfields in Russia was symbolic of this and cooperation in nuclear energy is a cornerstone of the Strategic Partnership.

On the issue of regional connectivity issues, Gokhale, without naming China, said that such initiatives should take into account the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries.

"When speaking of connectivity, questions are asked whether India supports such regional and international initiatives. The answer is a categorical yes," he said.

"It is important for such initiatives to be open, inclusive, transparent and financially sustainable. It is also essential that such initiatives are taken by all states with due sensitivity in respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, so that they are net contributors to regional stability and prosperity."

India is against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a part of Beijing's One Belt One Road initiative, as it passes through Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Expressing appreciation for the encouragement given by Russia to the Chabahar port project in Iran, Gokhal said that "we can successfully build connectivity and also engage with the Eurasian Economic Union to discuss ways of concluding free trade arrangements that are balanced and mutually beneficial".

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani on Sunday inaugurated the first phase of the Chabahar port, jointly developed by India, Iran and Afghanistan, and opening a strategic transit route between India, Iran, Afghanistan and other Central Asian nations bypassing Pakistan.
New Delhi, Dec 4 : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday questioned an Odisha man over his suspected link with terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist outfit, an official said.

Akhtar Hussain Khan, 52, was questioned at the NIA headquarters here for over nine hours, an NIA official told IANS, adding his questioning would be continued for a few days.

The NIA is already scrutinizing Khan's mobile phone, his bank passbook and few documents recovered from his house and also want to know about some suspected phone calls made to him from Pakistan in last few months, the official said.

The NIA had on November 29 conducted raids at Khan's residence in Samantarapur village in Odisha's Cuttack district and subsequently issued notice to him asking to depose before its headquarters in Delhi on December 4 over his link with LeT terrorist Abdul Naeem Sheikh.

Sheikh, who was arrested on November 28 from Lucknow by the NIA and Uttar Pradesh Anti Terrorist Squad, had reportedly named Khan of having link with him during the interrogation, the official said.

Khan, who was issued notice as a witness under Section 160 of the CrPC, had earlier claimed that he was completely innocent and being harassed unnecessarily by the investigating agency.

"I am a poor man and have no links with any terror outfits. NIA officers questioned me lot of things about money transactions in my bank account and inquired about few phone numbers. I answered all their questions honestly. They found nothing, still I don't know why they are harassing me unnecessarily," Khan has said.

"I don't even have money to visit Delhi. I am innocent. I will take a loan to go to Delhi and will cooperate completely with the NIA."

He has also said that he is a "true Hindustani and have faith in the judiciary" of the country. "I am no way related to any terrorist or terror group. Truth will prevail. I often had talked to one of my former colleagues and friends, who presently resides in Lahore."

Working in a garage in Saudi Arabia for a decade before returning to his village four years ago, Khan stays with his wife and children in Samantarapur.
New Delhi,a : New Delhi,A Dec 5 (IANS) The United Arab Emirates embassy celebrated the country's 46th National Day at an event here during which Ambassador AAhmed Al Banna highlighted preparations to celebrate 2018 as the 'Year of Zayed' to honour the founding father of the UAE in the centenary year of his birth.

Indian Minister for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi was the Chief Guest, and conveyed the warm greetings of President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the UAE, a press release from the Embassy said on Monday.

Naqvi remarked that India's relations with the UAE have multiple facets spread over different fields. Banna spoke about the themes that are at the core of the country's national strategy from year to year.

Prominent figures from different walks of life, includingA members of the diplomatic corps in New Delhi, academics, members of the media, businessmen and Indian government officials attended the ceremony.

The release also said that the UAE's foreign policy witnessed dynamic and tangible activity on quite a few levels in the Gulf, in the Arab world and internationally, by way of an active and dynamic foreign policy in dealing with various global affairs. These efforts have contributed to strengthening the country's standing and strengthened ties with friendly countries in the Gulf region, in the Arab region and around the world.
Nairobi, Dec 5 : In a major global action against climate change, two UN environmental organizations on Monday signed a pact on increased cooperation and also for mobilisation of private finance and investment for climate action that is crucial for achieving the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement goals.

The pact was signed between the UN Environment and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by their heads Erik Solheim and Patricia Espinosa, respectively.

Over 2,000 heads of state, ministers, business leaders, UN officials and civil society representatives are gathered at the UN Environment Programme headquarters here till December 6 to exchange ideas to tackle the global menace of pollution and commit to action.

Environmental degradation accounts for nearly one in four of all deaths, or 12.6 million people a year, as well as other human health problems and widespread destruction of key ecosystems.

"Given the grim statistics on how we are poisoning ourselves and our planet, bold decisions from the UN Environment Assembly are critical," UN Environment head Solheim told reporters after signing the pact.

"That is as true for threats like pollution as it is for climate change and the many other environment threats we face."

Solheim also made it clear that the complex global processes linked to the environment, such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Change Agreement underscore the urgent need to take care of people and the planet.

Addressing delegates in the Nairobi plenary session of the meeting, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Espinosa said: "We did make important progress at COP23. Nations made it clear that the Paris Agreement remains the only way forward, and that fulfillment of the commitments up to 2020 will provide a solid basis for more ambition and the full operation of the Agreement."

"The upcoming year is crucial to reducing the climate threat and helping those already affected by it. The cooperation of all sectors is key, but also throughout the UN family. The Paris Agreement, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework represent our path. Climate change is connected to almost all major challenges humanity faces, making work on Sustainable Development Goal 13 vital," she added.

The new UN Environment report, titled "The Executive Director's Report: Towards a Pollution-Free Planet", which, the meeting is using as the basis for defining the problems and laying out new action areas, recommended political leadership and partnerships at all levels and action on the worst pollutants.

It also favoured lifestyle changes, low-carbon tech investments and advocacy.

The recommendations are based on analysis of pollution in all its forms, including air, land, freshwater, marine, chemical and waste pollution.

(Vishal Gulati is in Nairobi at the invitation of United Nations Environment to cover its third annual session. He can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
Ramallah, Dec 5 : A Palestinian senior official called on the US on Monday to avoid taking any move that would affect the status quo of Jerusalem.

Both moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital would be unacceptable and would entail risks, Xinhua quoted Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Abu Amr as saying during his meeting with US Consul General in Jerusalem.

The move would be "offensive and contrary to the role of the US administration as a mediator and a sponsor of the peace process," said the Palestinian official.

"It will disqualify the US from playing a role in the peace process and will close every door to a serious negotiation, as well as will push the entire region into more tension and instability," he added.

The Palestinian leadership would have to break up any previous understandings it had achieved with the US, should the US administration decided to change its stance on Jerusalem, warned Amr.

The US administration would also be held responsible for any possible consequences of its moves on Jerusalem, he said.

He further urged the US to reconsider its position and to preserve the "remaining chances" of achieving peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

US President Donald Trump was considering acknowledging Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and might announce that on Wednesday.

Trump's adviser Jared Kushner said on Sunday that the president had not yet made a decision regarding the recognition.

Trump issued an exceptional decision to maintain the US embassy in Tel Aviv last June, which is expected to expire this month, but it is not clear whether he will renew his decision or not.

Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem is considered by the Palestinians as a provocation and destruction of the peace talks.

Meanwhile, Al-Azhar, the highest Islamic learning institution for Egypt and the Sunni Muslim world dubbed on Monday that the relocation of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem a "failed step" that would cause several troubles.

Al-Azhar Undersecretary Abbas Shoman stressed during a seminar in Cairo that Jerusalem will always be an Arab and Palestinian city as the holy city constitutes an Islamic heritage and religious dimension, Egypt's official MENA news agency reported.

Late on Sunday, Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry discussed the potential negative of the move impacts with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a phone call.

Shoukry has stressed that the religious and historical status of Jerusalem requires further keenness and careful consideration in dealing with such a thorny issue concerning the national identity of the Palestinian people throughout the ages.

Cairo will remain a reliable partner that could effectively contribute to building trust and encourage Palestinian and Israeli sides to revive negotiations, with the aim of achieving a just and comprehensive peace, Shoukry said.
thebigword backs the British bid

thebigword which is a global translation and interpretation provider headquartered in Leeds is pleased to be supporting the British bid.

The British bid seeks to provide UK businesses with a platform to showcase their industry and provide opportunities for growth through overseas exports.

With offices in 9 different countries thebigword is a British success story within the localisation industry suppling translation and interpretation services to many of the worlds largest global brands. The company serves a wide range of sectors, including banking, defence, travel and leisure, manufacturing, retail and eCommerce, private healthcare as well as Government and other public sector organisations.

We are delighted that our services and technology will appear as part of The British Bid hub on The BBC.com website for the next 12 months. http://www.bbc.com/storyworks/the-british-bid/home

Founder and Chief Executive officer Larry Gould said: Britain has a proud industrial heritage and so many fantastic companies producing amazing products, so its great that the British bid is going to support British business to grow overseas.

At thebigword we know that translating and localising content can open up companies to so many new trading opportunities in all corners of the world and so we are really pleased to be taking part in this project.

Ian Hawkins at the British Bid said: "The British Bid is a global initiative designed to demonstrate the best in British business, flying the flag of British excellence. Innovation, heritage and quality are the hallmarks of British Bid participants, and these businesses are true ambassadors for the UK around the world.

"thebigword will feature as part of The British Bid that will be promoted on BBC.COM the BBCs commercial international-facing website."

thebigword is the largest interpreting services provider in Europe and is in the top 20 language companies in the world. It works with a range of major government departments, including the Ministry of Justice and the NYC Department of Education, as well as blue chip companies and brands on a global scale.

The company has 11 offices around the world, employs over 600 staff and has more than 15,000 linguists.

For more information about thebigword, visit http://www.thebigword.com/ and http://www.bbc.com/storyworks/the-british-bid/
Track5Media's Day of Giving - 2016 It's become a tradition for the company. We dress up, deliver presents, and every year we look forward to seeing the surprised looks on the children's faces.

Lancaster-based Track5Media, LLC is embracing the spirit of giving this holiday season with its annual Day of Giving. The company, which creates niche job board websites for various industries, is offering its time on Dec. 6 by sending its employees to a variety of Lancaster County nonprofits. The employees will wrap gifts ahead of time, and then they will distribute the gifts, such as small toys, to children and families in need.

Track5Medias employees will split up into groups so that they can collectively visit four separate nonprofits throughout the day. The best part  they will be dressed as Santa, Mrs. Claus, and their elves! Track5Medias Day of Giving 2017 will kick off at 11 a.m. with a visit to Community Action Partnership of Lancaster County, or CAP. From there Track5Media will stop by the Domestic Violence Shelter, operated by CAP, and then Moms House of Lancaster. The day will wrap up with a stop at Church World Services at 4:30 p.m.

Track5Media holds an annual day of giving each year as a way to use its private enterprise to make a social impact. The company continues to see steady growth, with its annual income more than doubling in the past three years. Track5Media expects that growth to continue as this year comes to an end. This year is extra special for the company. For the first time in its 10-year history, Track5Media landed at 1501 on the 2017 Inc. 5000 List of Americas Fastest-Growing Companies.

We came up with our Day of Giving a few years ago as a way to give back to our community after a successful year, said Track5Media president Oliver Feakins. Ever since then, its become a tradition for the company. We dress up, deliver presents, and every year we all look forward to seeing the surprised looks on the childrens faces.

Track5Media, LLC, is a privately-held technology company that was founded in 2007 in Lancaster, Pa. As a corporate holding company, Track5Media owns a network of industry-specific websites, from trucking to healthcare, that present unique marketing and promotional opportunities for clients. The websites include TravelNurseSource.com, AlliedTravelCareers.com, LocumJobsOnline.com, AllPhysicianJobs.com, and AllTruckJobs.com. The brands are designed to help clients find a steady stream of highly qualified referrals. With a strong concentration in healthcare recruitment advertising, Track5Media is expanding into other verticals and seeking new partnerships. From referral generation to job boards to online advertising, Track5Media websites feature outstanding resources designed to complement and enhance existing marketing initiatives for its clients across the nation. Learn more at Track5Media.com.
An Australia-based businessman and writer has published his comprehensive, solution-based analysis of Australias political, economic and social challenges that aims to engage readers in civic discourse and encourages them to look outside the box for competent, practical solutions to the nations hot-button issues.

In Placing Australians on a Fast Elevator to the Future, author Eric Gribble disputes Australias big-government regulations and puts forth relatable and easy-to-understand solutions to replace, reform or innovate upon the countrys current structure. With a heavy emphasis on the importance of embracing technology, Gribbles book advocates for the self-empowerment of citizens to combat the looming growth of Government influence.

The future is not all doom and gloom  there are alternative ways of approaching important political and social issues, and this book is my attempt to demonstrate that, Gribble said. Ultimately, it is up to us  the citizens  to better inform ourselves on pertinent matters and to be skeptical of accepting the status quo.

Through critical assessment of topics such as free speech, taxes, healthcare and climate change, Gribble prompts readers to exercise their rights, question and challenge accepted or age-old customs and educate themselves on issues that affect their fellow citizens and future generations.

Placing Australians on a Fast Elevator to the Future: Reform from the Top Down

By Eric Gribble

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0726-0 (paperback); 978-1-5043-0727-7 (electronic)

Available at the Balboa Press Online Bookstore, Barnes & Noble and Amazon

About the author

Eric Gribble previously operated a capsicum-growing business in Tasmania and has particular interest in economics, horticulture, astronomy and New Zealand and Australian politics. Gribble currently resides in Wardell, New South Wales.

###

Review Copies & Interview Requests:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

480-648-7557

dgrobmeier@lavidge.com

General Inquiries:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

480-998-2600 x 584

mdriver@lavidge.com
Investigate, investigate, investigate. It is critical that all allegations of harassment be taken seriously and investigated immediately.

Harassment and sexual harassment unfortunately is a reality of the workplace. With high-profile cases and allegations such as Matt Lauer and Harvey Weinstein coming to light recently, employers are looking for answers. They want to ensure they are offering the best working conditions for all employees, says Avitus Groups Montana-based Director of Human Resources & Risk Management Ryan Braley.

Avitus Group makes sure our members are educated on workplace policy and are able to be in compliance with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or EEOCs laws, regulation and guidance on harassment and sexual harassment. Were offering our best practices guide in an effort to help workplaces nationwide take a more proactive approach regarding sexual harassment, says Avitus Group's Colorado-based Regional Human Resources & Operations Manager Dawn Holdon.

The Avitus Group Sexual Harassment Best Practices Guide for Employers highlights 10 items critical to workplace compliance and sexual harassment policy for employers. Employers who are following best practices should be able to answer yes to each question within the guide. For example: 1. My company has a zero tolerance policy for harassment and retaliation and it enforces the policy. 2. My company provides specific sexual harassment training for management and supervisors at least every two years. My company also provides specific sexual harassment training for new managers and supervisors within 6 months of their promotion and/or hiring. 3. My company provides as many avenues as possible for reporting sexual harassment, including an anonymous harassment hotline available for all employees.

If businesses are not able to answer yes to all 10 questions within the guide, Avitus Group, as one of the largest employers in the co-employment industry nationwide, serves a resource for further information. Additionally, the guide cautions companies to make sure they are not only in compliance with federal regulation and law, but with state-specific laws.

Employers should note that certain states have more specific laws regarding sexual harassment. For example, California requires sexual harassment training for supervisors every two years for employers with over 50 employees. The training must be a minimum of two hours and must be interactive. Additionally, there needs to be a bullying component included. Effective January 1, 2018, an additional component covering harassment based upon gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation will need to be included with any mandatory sexual harassment training, says Avitus Group's California-based Director of Human Resources & Risk Management Cynthia Hancock.

Investigate, investigate, investigate, says Avitus Groups Alaska-based Human Resources Director Robert Lindstrom. It is critical that all allegations of harassment be taken seriously and investigated immediately, even if the employee who reported the allegations does not want management to do anything about it. Advise the employee that once a company learns about a harassment claim, they are required to investigate. Some of the largest lawsuits filed are due to an employers failure to properly investigate.

Assure that if there are allegations of harassment, that the employee who brought forth the allegations is not retaliated against and/or perceived to be retaliated against in any manner, says Avitus Groups New Jersey-Based Human Resources Business Partner Trudi Curcione. "This means you may have to suspend or change the alleged perpetrators schedule or move them to another department temporarily. No action should be taken against the employee who complained.

Avitus Group also advises for continued training for all level of employees throughout their career on what is and is not appropriate in the workplace. For more information, Avitus Group invites the business community to review the Sexual Harassment Best Practices Guide for Employers and reach out with any questions.

Avitus Group is a worldwide company that simplifies, strengthens and grows businesses by providing 'back office' support (payroll, accounting, taxes, recruiting, information technology, human resources and much more). When a business uses Avitus Group, all of the necessary yet burdensome functions of the business become Avitus Group's responsibility, so the business can focus on what it does best. Avitus Group serves clients nationwide through regional office locations from coast to coast. The company also serves international clients through partner locations worldwide.
Slovenia is an exceptionally open country to new investments  a number of projects are now ready for new investors

Investors exploring new markets in Central Europe in the lead-up to the UKs exit from the European Union are looking to Slovenia. The rationale was presented at a conference in London on Friday 1 December organised by the British-Slovenian Chamber of Commerce (BSCC) in cooperation with the Council of British Chamber of Commerce in Europe (COBCOE) and the Slovenian Ministry of Economic Development and Technology.

Ales Cantarutti, Slovenian State Secretary for Economic Development and Technology, explained that Slovenia is an exceptionally open country to new investments, and highlighted a number of projects that are ready for new investors. "According to recent successful FDIs in Slovenia, also GDP growth at its highest since 2008 and still growing, we believe that our country is an excellent starting point for doing business in the CEE region, especially due to its excellent geostrategic position, great infrastructure, ICT knowledge and language skills, and highly educated workforce, said Mr Cantarutti.

British Ambassador to Slovenia Sophie Honey underlined the opportunities for growing trade and investment in both directions. The UK is open for business  Im confident that UK investors will find many opportunities for doing business in Slovenia. We also want to increase Slovene investment into the UK, with many opportunities across the UK, underpinned by a great business environment, unique openness to FDI and global perspective. Our bilateral trade and investment grew by over 16% between 2014 and 2016 and I am excited by the opportunity for this to grow further in the coming years, she said.

The conference was attended by more than 100 delegates who acknowledged that Slovenia is a hidden investment gem in the middle of Europe. It is also one of the worlds safest countries with an enviable quality of life.

Barbara Uranjek, CEO of the BSCC, concluded: Many current opportunities were presented by the Slovenian Sovereign Holding and the Slovenian Bank Asset Management Company, reflecting the continuation of the Governments privatisation process and fast economic growth. Attracting British investors to Slovenia will strengthen our economic cooperation and make Slovenia even more oriented towards smart, green and hi-tech. We will organise similar investment conferences next year  not only in London, but also where we find new opportunities in this large economy  and will be part of the International Business Festival in Liverpool, as we open doors for Brits in Slovenia and vice-versa.

For more information, please contact Barbara Uranjek barbara.uranjek(at)bscc.si or Lidija Vinkovic, SPIRIT Slovenia Press Office, lidija.vinkovic(at)spiritslovenia.si
Today, Kryon Systems, the leading provider of intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions, announced the opening of a new office in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The new location, Kryon Systems third international location, is primed to be a hub for the growing demand for RPA and digital transformation services in the region. The company, which plans on opening several more regional offices as part of its expansion into the region, has appointed industry expert Darius Heisig to serve as the General Manager for Kryon Systems, EMEA region.

Before joining Kryon Systems, Mr. Heisig served as the VP of Sales for Kofax, EMEA region, where he was responsible for managing the growth of the Kofax Kapow Enterprise RPA Strategy. With over 20 years experience in sales management and business development in the European and Asian markets, Mr. Heisig and his team will prove instrumental as Kryon Systems positions itself for market leadership in the EMEA.

The EMEA region is home to a plethora of diverse companies creating new products and services in industries from finance to telecommunications, all of whom are now searching for the right tools to help them compete in an ever-competitive market, said Mr. Heisig. These companies are seeking AI-powered solutions to enable rapid growth along with consistent, high-quality performance, and with our new location, Kryon Systems uniquely intelligent RPA will be readily available for enterprises to focus on achieving their corporate vision with a regionally located partner.

Kryon Systems provides an intelligent, AI-powered RPA solution empowering enterprises with a digital workforce capable of ensuring the high-quality execution of processes across the enterprise. Kryons Intelligent RPA platform allows companies to transcend the burden of process execution, allowing the enterprise to focus resources on critical projects.

Were excited to have Darius join the team, as his years of experience in Europe and Asia are a key component in our plan to scale Kryon Systems into a market leader globally, said Harel Tayeb, CEO of Kryon Systems. At a time when all industries are undertaking digital transformation efforts to stay competitive, expanding our operations in the region is a critical part of our future, and we are excited to partner with enterprises there to help them achieve the visions they have for their businesses.

About Kryon Systems

Kryon Systems delivers innovative, intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions empowering companies to transcend the processes which consume their most valuable resource - time. While other RPA vendors provide tools that focus solely on automating repetitive process-oriented tasks, Kryon aims for a complete and lasting solution, ultimately removing these tasks entirely from the day-to-day workflow of enterprises. Using patented visual and deep learning technologies, Kryons RPA enables companies to discover the innovators and creators amongst them by reducing the noise, complexity, errors and wasted time which go hand in hand with process execution. Kryons intelligent RPA is changing the reality of todays process-focused business world by offloading the repetitive, soul-crushing processes to a digital workforce not only for the increased productivity, reduced error rates, and lower operating costs, but also so that companies can focus on what they want to be - creative, imaginative, revolutionary, and with greater revenue. Learn more about Kryon Systems and the numerous Fortune 500 organizations already benefiting from its products.
Matt DeCew The Founders vision of truly being employee focused and client service driven grabbed me from the get go.

One of the Nations leading specialty wholesale insurance brokerages, Founders Professional, is excited to announce the recent hires of Matt DeCew and Jeff Steen. DeCew and Steen will be launching the San Diego office of Founders Professional - the companys fifth location. These two new hires reinforce Founders Professionals unwavering commitment to a West Coast presence.

In these new roles, DeCew and Steen will work hand-in-hand with retail insurance agencies throughout the West in securing coverage for their clients hard-to-place professional liability and management liability insurance risks. DeCew will focus his efforts on the placement of miscellaneous professional liability risks and management liability risks across a multitude of industries, while Steen will focus his efforts on the architects and engineers marketplace  and helping retail insurance agents navigate the world of professional liability insurance in those arenas.

Im honored to be joining the Founders team. Their company vision of truly being employee focused and client service driven grabbed me from the get go. Im looking forward to helping the company grow and even more excited about helping our clients grow and achieve success, commented DeCew.

With over twelve years of wholesale brokerage experience, focusing solely on professional liability, Matt DeCew was a natural fit to join the miscellaneous professional liability team. A surfer vibe with a business mind  everybody will love working with Matt. His knowledge of and experience in the California marketplace will make him, along with Steen, an invaluable resource to Founders retail partners.

Im very excited to join the Founders Professional team as a specialist wholesale broker, building on my nearly two decades of experience servicing the insurance and risk management needs of design professionals. I was attracted to Founders due to their industry reputation and access to unique products not normally available through other wholesaler, commented Steen.

Before joining Founders Professional, Jeff Steen was an insurance broker for IOA Insurance Services where he served the insurance needs of architects and engineers throughout the Country. From 2014- 2017 Jeff served as the Treasurer for a/e ProNet, a national network of brokers who specialize in serving the insurance needs of design professionals. Additionally, Steen has earned his RPLU designation from the Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS), confirming his dedication to and expertise in the professional liability arena.

Robb Williams, President of Founders Professional, commented: We are pleased to deliver on our promise to open an office in San Diego, California. Our three recent additions in California will provide our West Coast agents a one stop source (right in their back yard) for all of their hard-to-place professional liability and management liability needs. All three have a lot of experience in their space and fit in very nicely with the growing and focused practice leader led team model, that our agents have come to count on.

Both DeCew and Steen are joining a wholesale brokerage that has quickly become one of the most effective players in the professional liability arena. With a focus exclusively on the placement of professional liability and management liability risks, and a practice leader led team model, working with Founders Professional has quickly become the go-to choice for agents across the country that focus in professional liability.

Matt DeCew can be reached directly at 714-865-3215 or via email at Matt.DeCew(at)founderspro(dot)com.

Jeff Steen can be reached directly at 619-889-0998 or via email at Jeff.Steen(at)founderspro(dot)com.

About Founders Professional

Founders Professional is a national wholesale insurance brokerage focused exclusively on the placement of management liability & professional liability insurance risks. The Founders Professional practice leaders and their respective teams have deep expertise and market access in the areas of Architects & Engineers, Law Firms, Healthcare/Life Sciences/Social Services, Management Liability, and Miscellaneous Professional Liability Insurance. Founders Professional represents a majority of the admitted and surplus lines insurance carriers that focus on professional liability insurance in the United States, additionally representing many exclusive or semi-exclusive programs.

If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Aaron Lipson at 312-219-6589 or via email at aaron.lipson(at)founderspro(dot)com.
Elle Shelley A century of product development is changing overnight with the power of the Internet and digital manufacturing coming together to usher in a new era of rapid technology advancement

After spending the year in beta, Launch Forth announced today its debut as an enterprise-level SaaS (software as a service) platform focused on helping companies accelerate their product development process by tapping into a shared community of innovators from around the globe to collaborate on ideas, solve problems and create solutions for challenges both big and small.

Among the startups first clients are General Electric Co., HP Inc. and Airbus. Launch Forth is the latest offering from LM, Inc., one of the worlds most innovative companies and pioneer in the open-innovation and advanced manufacturing space. LM, Inc. is the parent company of Local Motors, founded in 2008 and well known for its breakthrough products, including the worlds first co-created production vehicle, the Rally Fighter, the worlds first 3D-printed car, the Strati, and, most recently, a low speed, self-driving shuttle called Olli, with IBM Watson technology. Local Motors massive success revealed a need in the market, across a wide range of industries, for co-creation amongst a shared community to solve even the toughest of problems. Enter, Launch Forth.

Weve spent the last year quietly perfecting our co-creation platform while providing successful client outcomes, said Elle Shelley, executive vice president of Launch Forth. As we have refined our co-creation centric design methodology and developed best-in-class tools, we can now offer, at scale, an unprecedented level of access to the worlds largest community of solvers, makers, designers, engineers and technologists to bring breakthrough products to market quickly and cost effectively.

Since its inception, Launch Forth has tested the ability of a shared community to develop never-before-seen products and revolutionary ideas in the industrial testing, home appliance and consumer electronics industries. GE Fuse accepted the challenge and developed eight products with the community in less than a year, including an on-wing inspection device for airplane engines and a universal x-ray adaptor. Wanting to push the boundaries even further, HP Inc. and Launch Forth have partnered to co-create a city for the first million people to live on Mars. Launch Forth also worked with Airbus to develop a drone services portal.

A century of product development is changing overnight with the power of the Internet and digital manufacturing coming together to usher in a new era of rapid technology advancement in the products that run our daily lives, says LM, Inc.s Chairman and CEO John B. Rogers, Jr. Launch Forth is prepared to engage and empower companies that are ready to embrace this shift.

Launch Forth is another example of a business built to respond to the growing trend of the gig economy. Powered by a rapidly growing, open-innovation community of over 120,000 solvers, Launch Forth allows community members to participate from anywhere in the world on their own time in projects sponsored by enterprise-level clients. In these projects, the community has an opportunity to collaborate with minds from around the world, team up to work together to solve perplexing issues, compete for prizes by submitting their own ideas, models and solutions while also building their professional reputation along the way.

Share an idea, change the world thats our mantra, Shelley says of the communitys motivation to join and contribute on Launch Forth.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Launch Forth appointed Elle Shelley as the executive vice president who leads the overall vision and strategy for the company. Shelley brings more than a decade of experience to her role after founding her own marketing firm that then merged with Local Motors in late 2013. While at Local Motors, Shelley served as the chief marketing officer overseeing all marketing communications and product management as well as identifying opportunities in the marketplace to launch new products. Launch Forth recently hired 15 employees with plans to hire 10 more by the end of the year.

About Launch Forth

Launch Forth is a SaaS (software as a service) platform for product design powered by a robust community of designers, engineers and solvers. As the latest offering from LM, Inc., Launch Forth harnesses the speed and potential of crowdsourcing and co-creation to bring breakthrough products to market quickly with a shared community of innovators from around the globe who collaborate on ideas, solve problems and create solutions for challenges both large and small. This community-powered platform pairs design thinking with open innovation and accelerates the product development process for well-respected global giants like HP Inc., Local Motors, General Electric Co. and Airbus. Learn more at: http://LaunchForth.io.
REDCOM Laboratories, Inc., the leading supplier of mission critical secure communications solutions, is pleased to announce it will be at the OilComm Conference & Exposition in Houston, TX, December 6-7.

At the OilComm Conference, REDCOM will show how the companys technology can reliably interoperate with virtually any voice communications system in the world. One REDCOM system can provide secure connectivity from upstream back to corporate headquarters via a wide variety of end devices including VoIP phones, landlines, smartphones, satellite phones, and radios.

Recognizing the industrys need to reduce size, weight, and power (SWaP), REDCOM built the Server 1600, a ruggedized small form factor appliance ideal for deployments to offshore sites, oil platforms, and industrial settings. Its unique 1U, half-rack form factor allows two servers to be installed side-by-side in a standard 19 rack or transit case, enabling redundancy and High Availability in a very compact space. Server 1600 is the ideal platform for running REDCOMs Sigma Core call control software.

Sigma Core is a powerful and flexible platform that delivers a comprehensive set of UC functions, including VoIP, point-to-point video, XMPP with presence, conferencing, and unified messaging. Sigma Client is REDCOMs secure VoIP app for Windows and Android that includes integrated Push-to-Talk support, enabling the app to key any radio in the network for instantaneous communications.

Sustain mission critical communications in an IP-denied environment

At OilComm, REDCOM will also discuss CrucialConnect, the companys solution for communicating in a denied environment. CrucialConnect is a family of customizable and deployable packages designed to restore critical communications in minutes, with options for HF, VHF, LTE, and SATCOM redundancy.

Todays business leaders must understand the challenges of the cyber domain, learn how to leverage it to their advantage, and most importantly be well-versed and practiced in sustaining critical command and control functions in the cyber denied environment, said REDCOM Director of Strategy Col. Sweeney. REDCOM CrucialConnect is designed to provide businesses with unmatched security, connectivity, and interoperability in the IP environment while enabling the mechanisms to communicate securely when that environment has been rendered inoperable.

For more information on sustaining communications, please join Col. Sweeney on Wednesday, December 6 from 2:002:30 in Briarpark 1 for a presentation on Operational Continuity in a Communications Denied Environment.

About REDCOM

REDCOM specializes in the design and manufacture of advanced communications solutions with a focus on interoperability, reliability, and security. REDCOM's MIL-spec products are optimized for low size, weight, and power (SWaP), making them the ideal communications core for denied environments or deployments to rugged environments. The companys latest innovation, Sigma Core, is a software platform that delivers robust call control, media handling, and encrypted communications. REDCOMs customers include energy companies, enterprises, all branches of the military, government agencies, emergency responders, and integrators. For additional information, please visit the REDCOM website at http://www.redcom.com.
Tim Barber sweetFrog fills an important niche food demand within the military market. The brand is well recognized in many parts of the country, and we're confident that it will be well received by the military community. - Tim Barber

sweetFrog Frozen Yogurt, the nations leading frozen yogurt chain, named Americas Best Frozen Yogurt by The Daily Meal, and a Top New Franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine, is opening a new store exclusive to those living and working on Fort Belvoir in March 2018. This new location is sweetFrogs 15th location in Northern Virginia.

sweetFrogs first store to open on a military installation will be owned by Tim Barber. Barber is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He brings 11 years of military service and an additional 15 years with the Department of Defense to the company.

Barber says sweetFrog was the perfect fit for his next entrepreneurial journey because he loves the companys community first values and believes in how much the concept resonates with members of the military of all ages.

We see whats happening outside of the base regarding the popularity of frozen yogurt, says Barber. sweetFrog is the best in the industry and its name recognition is second to none. There are several sweetFrog locations in the area, so we know theyre frequented by many military people and bringing it directly to this closed population just makes sense for us.

Barber continued.

sweetFrog fills an important niche food demand within the military market. The brand is well recognized in many parts of the country, and we're confident that it will be well received by the military community. As an Air Force Veteran with over 26 years-service and as a military member and DOD civilian, my company is proud to offer a product of sweetFrog's caliber to the US Military, Retirees, and their Family members.

sweetFrogs CEO, Patrick Galleher, is excited Tim Barber is joining the sweetFrog franchise family and believes the companys frozen yogurt concept is a perfect fit for the Fort Belvoir community.

We are thrilled Tim Barber is opening our first sweetFrog location on a military installation, particularly so close to Washington, D.C., says Galleher. After working with the Air Force and Department of Defense for 26 years, Barber possesses the perfect skill set to quickly become a successful sweetFrog owner. And were thrilled to know he plans to expand and add sweetFrog stores on multiple military bases. We expect Barber to flourish as a sweetFrog owner, especially in communities defined by brave and honorable residents.

For more information about sweetFrog Premium Frozen Yogurt, please visit http://www.sweetfrog.com.

To learn more about sweetFrog Frozen Yogurt franchise opportunities, as well as acquisitions and re-brands, please visit http://sweetfrog.com/franchise.

About sweetFrog Frozen Yogurt:

sweetFrog (http://www.sweetfrog.com) is the fastest growing self-serve frozen yogurt restaurant company in the country. With a wide selection of premium frozen yogurt flavors and fresh toppings choices, sweetFrog was named Best Frozen Yogurt in the USA by The Daily Meal in 2014 and 2016. sweetFrog has over 340 locations and mobile units including retail, mobile trucks and non-traditional locations (such as sporting venues) in twenty-seven states in the U.S, Dominican Republic and Egypt. The company was founded in 2009 and is based in Richmond, Virginia. sweetFrog prides itself on providing a family-friendly environment where customers can enjoy soft-serve frozen yogurt, ice cream, gelato and sorbets with the toppings of their choice. The company was founded on Christian principles and seeks to bring happiness and a positive attitude into the lives of the communities it calls home.
We recognize we are filling a hole that has long been identified as a priority and significant neighborhood need.

In keeping with their dedication to providing world-class care to the Naperville community, Edgewood Clinical Services is pleased to announce the addition of two new psychiatrists to their team. Specializing in child, adolescent and adult psychiatry, Drs. Joe McNally and Peter Nichols will join the rapidly-growing behavioral health agency during the first two months of

2018.

The new physicians will be dividing their time between the North Naperville, South Naperville and Lisle office (scheduled to open in the near future). Dr. McNally begins his practice on January 8, with Dr. Nichols accepting patients starting February 12.

These additions to the Edgewood Clinical Services staff represent a momentous advancement in comprehensive mental health care in the Chicago suburbs, allowing access to needed psychiatric services for local families. The Drs. McNally and Nichols complement the existing community-focused, privately-owned mental health agencys current three Board Certified Psychiatrists and one psychiatric Nurse Practitioner on staff.

Their arrival is in answer to the departure of former Edgewood psychiatrist Dr. Christopher Sinnappan, who leaves Edgewood for a position in California.

After learning of Sinnappans decision to move to California, we were all committed to filling his position with a physician equally skilled to take over the care of his nearly 600 active patients, said Rebecca Gadomski, Edgewood Chief Operating Officer. Dr. Sinnappan is an incredible child and adolescent psychiatrist who has provided treatment to Naperville-area families for the last 3 and a half years. His expertise will be missed.

With the addition of Drs. McNally and Nichols, Edgewood has not only provided for Dr. Sinnappans role, but have doubled the doctor talent within the office. These gifted doctors and their Psychiatric and Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) will provide full-time psychiatric care at Edgewood, offering over 100 available clinical patient hours per week.

Theyre a very sharp, very capable psychiatric team that were lucky to have in our area,

Gadomski said.

Adam Russo, CEO of Edgewood Clinical Services, echoed Gadomskis excitement, celebrating McNallys and Nicholss arrival as a major accomplishment for Edgewood and the communities it serves. Adding these valuable clinical hours allows Edgewood to drastically increase the volume of clients served and dramatically reduce wait times, which in turn brings them closer to living out their mission to mainstream mental health and provide ease of access for services to the community.

We recognize we are filling a hole that has long been identified as a priority and significant neighborhood need, Russo said. To have doctors like this onsite on a consistent, weekly basis sets Edgewood as the Gold Standard for mental health care in the community. Theyre an excellent resource, a wealth of knowledge and incredible community contributors.

Joseph McNally, M.D., earned his Bachelor of Science in Biology at Creighton University; attended medical school at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine; completed his general psychiatry residency at the University of Michigan Hospitals in Ann Arbor; and did his fellowship at the University of Chicago Hospitals in child and adolescent psychiatry. He has spent the last 25 years building invaluable experience working in inpatient and outpatient settings as well as in Medical Administration.

Peter Nichols, M.D., earned his Bachelor of Science in Biology at the University of California-Berkeley; attended medical school at the University of Southern California; completed his child and adolescent psychiatry residency at the University of Chicago Hospitals; and did his fellowship at the University of Illinois - Chicago Hospitals. He has spent the last 15 years building invaluable experience working in inpatient and outpatient settings as well as in Medical Administration.

Edgewood Clinical Services currently has offices in Naperville and Plainfield, Illinois, with plans to open a practice in Lisle in the near future. Edgewood is a dynamic, thriving multi-disciplinary mental health agency providing the highest quality of care by creating a warm, positive and exciting work environment, while always remaining innovative and client-focused. For more information about their staff, services and areas of expertise, please visit their website at http://www.EdgewoodClinicalServices.com.
Keystone Pacific Property Management proudly announces that Jared Jones has been chosen to take on the role of Chief Financial Officer for Keystone Pacific Property Management.

Jones will be responsible for all corporate and client side accounting operations at Keystone Pacific.

"Jared brings a wealth of experience in providing operational excellence and customer service to our team members and clients," says Keystone Pacific Property Management CEO Cary Treff. "In addition, Jared has the ability to model our values of servant leadership and team member empowerment in providing proactive accounting solutions while ensuring our clients' financial assets are protected."

Jones steps into the role with over 10 years of experience as a Chief Financial Officer, most recently for a leading luxury hotel brand headquartered in Southern California. His focus has included operations, mergers and acquisitions, accounting and finance. In addition, he has significant experience working on the acquisition team and has acquired and integrated properties into a portfolio valued at $400 million.

Jones graduated from the University of San Diego with a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration. He is a Certified Public Accountant.

About Keystone Pacific Property Management, LLC

Keystone Pacific Property Management specializes in the management of common interest developments in Southern California. Currently, the firm manages over 65,000 units in master-planned, condominium, townhome, and single-family home, mixed-use and commercial common interest developments. Keystone Pacific's clients receive superior community association services and it is an Accredited Association Management Company (AAMC) in Southern California, certified through Community Associations Institute. Headquartered in Irvine, California, Keystone Pacific also maintains offices in Rancho Santa Margarita, Ontario and Temecula, California.

For more information, please contact Alex Lucht at Keystone Pacific Property Management at (949) 833 2600.
Bitnami, the leading provider of packaged server applications for any platform announced today the availability of Kubeapps, an application deployment environment that empowers users to discover, launch and manage pre-packaged Kubernetes-ready applications and developer tools from within their Kubernetes cluster.

Bitnami is the leader in application packaging and Kubernetes is the leading platform for container orchestration. We have been heavily involved in the evolution of the Kubernetes platform and contributing to its success with a focus on projects that define how applications are packaged, discovered and deployed, said Sebastien Goasguen, Sr. Director of Cloud Technologies at Bitnami While weve created and contributed to some excellent standalone tools to simplify Kubernetes for early adopters, were excited to empower the next generation of Kubernetes users with a unified experience that further simplifies the deployment of Kubernetes-ready applications. Kubeapps is that tool.

Kubeapps builds on Bitnamis work in creating and contributing to popular Kubernetes projects like Helm, Monocular and Kubeless, and leverages expertise in application packaging and containers to provide a simple, secure and comprehensive way to deploy applications for a Kubernetes environment. New users and Kubernetes experts will find value in the Kubeapps product design which provides a simple CLI for installation, a web UI for in-cluster application launch and management and a web portal for additional community contribution and social interaction including the ability to rate, review and share applications.

The Kubeapps project has three primary components:



Kubeapps CLI - a command line interface to bootstrap all the required tools onto your Kubernetes cluster

Kubeapps Application Dashboard  an in-cluster console for discovery and deployment of Helm charts and Kubeless serverless Functions

Kubeapps Hub  A community hub to discover, rate and review pre-packaged Kubernetes applications that is accessible http://hub.kubeapps.com or through the Kubeapps console in your Kubernetes cluster.

Kubeapps combines the simplicity of Bitnami click-to-deploy applications with leading Kubernetes tools to deliver an in-cluster experience with Kubernetes-ready applications that are:

Simple to Use: Pre-configured applications and development environments ready to launch in your cluster

Up-to-date: Bitnami applications are continuously updated and secure

Multi-format: Deploy Helm charts or Kubeless functions

Trusted: Over 1 million Bitnami-packaged applications are deployed every month

Kubeapps is an obvious continuation of the Bitnami mission to make awesome software available to everyone and an excellent tool to bring the click-to-deploy experience were known for to the Kubernetes world. said Daniel Lopez, co-founder and CEO of Bitnami. Repackaging many of our Kubernetes projects and contributions into a single experience is an important step for us and the community and were excited to work with users and contributors to ensure that Kubeapps is delivering the packaged application experience that they expect in their Kubernetes cluster.

See Kubeapps at Kubecon

Bitnami will be exhibiting, speaking and demonstrating Kubeapps at Kubecon in Austin, TX  Dec 6-8, 2017

Download and Try Kubeapps for Free

Kubeapps is open source and free to use. For more information and to download or contribute to Kubeapps please visit http://www.Kubeapps.com

About Bitnami

Bitnami is the leading provider of packaged applications for any platform. The Bitnami application automation platform delivers and maintains a catalog of ready-to-run server applications and development environments in partnership with the worlds leading cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and more . That same application automation platform that drives over 1.5 million deployments per month is also available to Enterprise developers looking streamline their software development processes. Based in San Francisco CA, and with offices around the world, Bitnami is proud to be a rapidly growing, self-funded company. For more information, visit https://www.bitnami.com, or follow us onTwitter (@Bitnami) and Facebook.
Members of the Santee Sioux community, in Northeast Nebraska, are working to improve health and economic outlooks. By asserting a desire to rebuild a sovereign food system, the Santee Sioux community can create a healthier community, revitalize traditional foods, create a self-sufficient food system, and develop a more resilient Nation. -Wyatt Fraas, Center for Rural Affairs

The Santee Sioux people largely lack access to healthy foods that could help them combat health challenges, according to a report recently released by the Center for Rural Affairs and the Santee Sioux community.

Digging In: Supporting a Healthy, Sustainable Food Future in Santee Sioux Nation, examines the state of the food system on the Santee Sioux Reservation in northeast Nebraska.

The report identifies strategies toward realizing a food system that meets the needs of its people and includes details on the study area; data relating to health, economics, culture and the food system; and input from community members.

The Santee Sioux community is working hard to improve health and economic outlooks, said Wyatt Fraas, Farm and Community program assistant director at the Center for Rural Affairs. By asserting a desire to rebuild a sovereign food system, they can create a healthier community, revitalize traditional foods, create a self-sufficient food system and develop a more resilient Nation.

Key findings of the report include:



In Santee, 43.4 percent of all families and 50.9 percent of all people live below the poverty line.

More than 69 percent of respondents travel on average 106 miles roundtrip to do the majority of their grocery shopping.

More than 55 percent of participants expressed a desire for greater local access to fresh produce, with 88 percent of respondents indicating better food would improve health for their families.

The community has worked with Nebraska Indian Community College (NICC) and the Center for Rural Affairs since 2011 through the Santee Community Food Project, with a goal of bringing fresh foods and healthy eating back to Santee.

For more information and to view Digging In: Supporting a Healthy, Sustainable Food Future in Santee Sioux Nation, visit: http://www.cfra.org/DiggingInSantee
Crimson Cup Coffee House Tallmadge, Ohio Were excited to bring awesome coffee to the Tallmadge community, which has been very welcoming. This is our first company-owned Crimson Cup Coffee House outside our home market in Columbus.

Columbus, Ohio coffee roaster Crimson Cup Coffee & Tea is expanding into Northeast Ohio with a new coffee house and drive thru at 116 Tallmadge Circle in Tallmadge, Ohio. To celebrate its grand opening on Wednesday, December 6, the newest Crimson Cup Coffee House will offer $1 espresso drinks all day. A ribbon cutting ceremony with Tallmadge officials is planned for 1:00 p.m.

Were excited to bring awesome coffee to the Tallmadge community, which has been very welcoming, said Founder and President Greg Ubert. This is our first company-owned Crimson Cup Coffee House outside our home market in Columbus. The roaster operates coffee houses in the Columbus suburbs of Clintonville and Upper Arlington as well as within the Greater Columbus Convention Center.

The 2,000-square-foot coffee house sits on one end of a newly built retail strip near the near the Tallmadge Town Square Historic District. More than 40,000 motorists pass through Tallmadge Circle every weekday  making this a fantastic location for a coffee house with drive thru, Ubert said. The store interior was designed by Columbus-based Kimberly Orr of Kimberly O Design, who also designed the Crimson Cup Innovation Lab and Upper Arlington coffee house.

Inside, a gas fireplace anchors a brick wall on one side of the new store, flanked by comfy leather chairs and a coffee table to encourage conversation. An Ohio logo screened onto the brick wall connects the brand to its Columbus roots and will be a staple feature of Crimson Cup Coffee Houses as the company expands. Groups of tables and chairs provide ample work and meeting space. Free Wi-Fi helps customers get down to work, while a drive-thru caters to coffee lovers on the go.

Like Crimson Cups Upper Arlington coffee house, the Tallmadge store features a brew bar with a Modbar Pour Over Module, which brings precision-temperature water and economy of motion to the counter. In addition to pour-over preparation of Craft espresso coffees, the brew bar offers a rotating menu of specialty coffee drinks. It also has a tap for dispensing Crimson Cups Nitro cold brewed coffee, a frothy, naturally sweet chilled coffee infused with nitrogen bubbles. At opening, brew bar offerings include Bourbon Barrel Maple Cortado, Maple Cinnamon Latte, Harvest Apple Tea Soda and Holiday Hopped Nitro.

In addition to brew bar offerings, the new coffee house serves a full menu of hot, iced and frozen espresso drinks  including mochas, lattes and cappuccinos  as well as iced coffee and tea, cold-brewed coffee, hot chocolate, fruit smoothies and other custom drinks. Breakfast sandwiches, heart-healthy oatmeal and award-winning local treats from Lindas Kitchen in Tallmadge round out the menu.

When fully staffed, the Tallmadge location will employ 10 to 12 baristas and cashiers under the supervision of Coffeehouse Manager Rachel Friend and Coffeehouse Assistant Manager Marissa Ratkovic.

Friend, who hails from Bath, Ohio, earned a bachelors degree from John Carroll University, where she worked with Aramark Higher Education and managed a small cafe that served Crimson Cup coffee. She joined the Crimson Cup team in June of 2016 and spent 18 months working at two coffeehouse locations in Columbus.

Ratkovic, an Akron native, graduated from Coventry High School. She also joined the Crimson Cup team in June of 2016 and spent 18 months working in Columbus.

The new store is open 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Sunday.

About Crimson Cup Coffee & Tea

Columbus, Ohio coffee roaster Crimson Cup Coffee & Tea is Roast magazines 2016 Macro Roaster of the Year. Since 1991, Crimson Cup has roasted sustainably sourced specialty and craft coffee in small batches, which it sells directly to consumers and as wholesale coffee beans. The company also teaches entrepreneurs to run successful coffee houses through its coffee franchise alternative program, which includes a coffee shop business plan. Crimson Cup coffee is available through a community of more than 350 independent coffee houses, grocers, college and universities, restaurants and food service operations across 29 states, Guam and Bangladesh, as well as the companys own Crimson Cup Coffee Houses. To learn more, visit crimsoncup.com.
When we were approached with the opportunity to be this years title sponsor, we were excited and eager to be able to further support an organization we care so much about.

The 16th annual Childrens Health Miracle Day Radiothon is less than two weeks away, and Neighborhood Credit Union is excited to announce that it is this years presenting sponsor.

As the presenting sponsor, Neighborhood CU is committing to support Childrens Health with a $50,000 contribution as well as help take donation calls. For the past five years, Neighborhood CU employees wake up early to arrive at Childrens Health hospital at 5:30 a.m. to help take calls from individuals wanting to make donations.

It seems like it would make for a long day, but employees are always excited to take part in this event every year. Over the past five years of its relationship with Childrens Health, Neighborhood Credit Union and its members have been able to contribute a total of $153,953.92.

This year Star 102.1 will be broadcasting from Childrens Medical Center Dallas all day December 8 from 6 a.m. to 7p.m. encouraging listeners to call in and make donations that will go to support programs at Childrens Health.

Neighborhood CU has also been a Child Champion sponsor for the past five years where it formed a special relationship with then six-year-old Sim Scott, a Plano brain tumor survivor. 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.

We have been privileged to be able to work alongside Childrens Health for all these years, said Chet Kimmell, president of Neighborhood Credit Union. When we were approached with the opportunity to be this years title sponsor, we were excited and eager to be able to further support an organization we care so much about.

Listeners can make donations over the phone by calling 1-800-800-7277 or online by visiting the Miracle Day website.

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 approximately 50,000 and continues to welcome new members daily. For more information, call (214) 748-9393 or visit http://www.myncu.com.
"We are blessed with our open-hearted community in Wichita, as their support is making a huge difference." Dan Soliday, CEO of Kansas Big Brothers Big Sisters

Kansas Big Brothers Big Sisters (KSBBBS) and event supporter Table Rock Infrastructure Partners announced that this falls inaugural event, Big Soiree: Culinary for a Cause Gala has raised more than $740,000. These funds will be used to support and expand KSBBBS mentor programs in Kansas, providing more one-to-one mentors for youths facing adversity.

We are blessed with our open-hearted community in Wichita, as their support is making a huge difference to supporting the recruitment of more adult mentors to match with the kids on our waiting list, said Dan Soliday, CEO of Kansas Big Brothers Big Sisters. We are grateful to everyone who donated their time, talents, money and energy to make this event the unbelievable success it turned out to be. We are exceptionally grateful to Cargill, Table Rock, the chefs, and our committee led by Steve Feilmeier, Brian Sikes and Emily Luchetti for their participation and support of this event.

Table Rock is a firm believer in matching emotion with action, both professionally and in our philanthropic efforts said Peter Luchetti, managing partner at Table Rock Infrastructure Partners. We were working in Wichita and felt a strong connection with KSBBBS as an effective, direct-impact organization with great leadership. We wanted to do something meaningful to support their efforts and are thrilled by the results of our joint event and the possibilities of what we can achieve for KSBBBS and the miraculous kids and mentors they serve.

The Parisian-themed Big Soiree, held on October 5 at the Scottish Rite Center in Wichita, featured hors doeuvres from star Wichita chefs Kevin Derks, Bobby Lane and Josh Rathbun, and an exquisite 4-course meal prepared by some of the most innovative chefs from across the country. Chefs Stephen Giunta and Pete Geoghegan Sr. of Cargill Protein Group, Chef Amy Bandewein of Centolina, Chef and author Elizabeth Faulkner, Chef Kathleen Blake of The Rusty Spoon and Chef Emily Luchetti, Chair Emeritus of the James Beard Foundation, worked in partnership with Wichitas own star chefs and, in the spirit of mentoring, the culinary students from Butler Community College.

Table Rock Infrastructure Partners is also announcing today that it has chosen Big Brothers Big Sisters as its designated corporate charity.

About Kansas Big Brothers Big Sisters

Kansas Big Brothers Big Sisters (KSBBBS) matches children facing adversity with caring, adult mentors. We believe that all children - regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or family background - can achieve success in life, especially with the guidance and support of a caring adult mentor. These one-to-one professionally-supported friendships last a minimum of one year. However, the effects of these friendships last a lifetime. For more information, visit our web site at http://www.kansasbigs.org

About Table Rock Infrastructure Partners

Table Rock Infrastructure Partners is the only equity firm in the country focused entirely on helping municipalities get critical water and wastewater infrastructure projects off the ground and moving forward. The firm structured, financed and now manages the first water and wastewater public-private partnership of its kind in the U.S. for the City of Rialto, CA, and has provided analysis on hundreds of cities around the country. Table Rocks accelerated Progressive Partnership process comparatively evaluates all options for municipal project design and delivery, and helps city leadership determine which approach produces highest value for ratepayers. For more information, visit http://tablerockpartners.com.
Consumer Attorney Sergei Lemberg By examining complaint data, we can gain important insights into the CFPB and the industries it regulates.

Against a backdrop of drama involving the Trump Administration's appointment of Mick Mulvaney as the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), consumer attorney Sergei Lemberg (http://www.lemberglaw.com) directed his staff to dive into consumer complaints filed with the agency. "The CFPB has been instrumental in empowering consumers, holding financial services companies accountable for unfair and abusive actions, and recovering billions of dollars for folks who have been ripped off," he said. "By examining complaint data, we can gain important insights into the agency and the industries it regulates."

According to Lemberg, a review of CFPB data revealed three distinct trends. "Since the CFPB's inception, the number of complaints has skyrocketed, and will likely total more than 225,000 for 2017," he said. "It is clear that consumers have come to count on the government to protect them against predatory or illegal financial practices."

The second trend revealed by the Lemberg Law analysis is the uptick in certain categories of complaints. "Complaints about credit reporting agencies and student loan servicers are on pace to double in 2017," said Lemberg. "That's not surprising, given that 44 million Americans owe more than $1.4 trillion in student loan debt."

The third trend gleaned from the Lemberg Law analysis was that, although Bank of America garnered the most consumer complaints over the arc of the CFPB's history, in recent years the number of complaints against the banking behemoth have been aligned with other large banks. In contrast, the number of complaints against the big three credit reporting agencies - Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion - has increased significantly. "This surge in complaints points to issues with credit reporting errors," said Lemberg. "Because inaccurate credit reporting negatively impacts consumers in virtually every part of their financial lives, it's important to hold credit bureaus and information furnishers accountable."

As the managing partner at Lemberg Law, Lemberg routinely represents clients in unfair debt collection and inaccurate credit reporting cases. "The CFPB data proves that there is a tremendous amount of work to be done in educating consumers about their rights," Lemberg said. "We're committed to leveling the playing field by asserting consumers' rights under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act - regardless of how the CFPB drama plays out."

For more information on CFPB data trends, visit https://www.lemberglaw.com/3-shocking-cfpb-consumer-complaint-trends/

__________

About Lemberg Law

The attorneys at Lemberg Law represent consumers in lemon law, Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and Telephone Consumer Protection Act cases, among others.

For more information, contact:

Sergei Lemberg, Esq.

Lemberg Law

http://www.LembergLaw.com
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles (Habitat LA) is pleased to announce the expansion of their service territory to encompass the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valley portions of Los Angeles County effective immediately. Recently, Habitat for Humanity International, the global organizations headquarters office based in Atlanta, awarded Habitat LA the additional service area after the previous Habitat organization in the area announced it had merged with a veteran-focused nonprofit.

We thank Habitat for Humanity International for entrusting us with this new territory and look forward to partnering with residents and leaders in this region to serve families and individuals in need of safe and affordable homes, said Erin Rank, President & CEO, Habitat LA.

Habitat for Humanity International selected Habitat LA to expand its services to the communities of San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys based on Habitat LAs strong track record of success serving the Greater Los Angeles region for the last 27 years. Having recently completed its 800th home, Habitat LA has been a leader and strong voice for affordable housing in Southern California, and has been a champion of building homes in partnership with families seeking a better life.

Habitat LA is one of the nations leading affordable housing builders and advocates, said Sue Henderson, Habitat for Humanity Internationals Vice President, US and Canada. We are excited that Habitat LA will grow its mission to San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. With this new expansion, Habitat will be able to continue partnering with families in the area to turn their dreams of owning safe, decent and affordable homes a reality.

Habitat for Humanity has served the valley communities for more than 25 years. Following the previous Habitat organizations merger, Habitat for Humanity International solicited proposals from other local Habitat organizations to continue serving low-income families in the region.

Habitat LAs expansion is effective immediately and they are now accepting applications for their Home Preservation Program, which offers home repairs to help alleviate health and safety issues for low-income homeowners. Simultaneously, they will begin looking for sites to develop new homes in the future and offering their Pathways to Homeownership program for interested residents. The organization will also be studying possible locations to expand their retail stores, called Habitat for Humanity ReStores.

To learn more about the Home Preservation Program, please visit http://www.habitatla.org/how-to-apply/home-repair-program/ or contact Jorge Leiva at (310) 323-4663 ext. 314. To partner with Habitat LA in other ways please contact us at http://www.habitatla.org or 310-323-4663.

About Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles (Habitat LA) brings people together to build homes, communities and hope. As the top nonprofit homebuilder in the greater Los Angeles area with six consecutive Charity Navigator 4-Star ratings, Habitat LA has partnered with volunteers, donors and Habitat homeowners to build, renovate and repair more than 1,300 homes locally and worldwide since 1990. The lives of thousands of individuals have been transformed as a result of having a decent and affordable place to call home. Habitat homeowners help build their own homes and pay an affordable mortgage. By supporting Habitat LA through volunteerism, donations and shopping in our ReStores, everyone can help families achieve the stability and self-reliance they need to build a better future. To learn more, visit http://www.habitatla.org.

About Habitat for Humanity International

Driven by the vision that everyone needs a decent place to live, Habitat for Humanity began in 1976 as a grassroots effort on a community farm in southern Georgia. The Christian housing organization has since grown to become a leading global nonprofit working in more than 1,300 communities throughout the U.S. and in more than 70 countries. Families and individuals in need of a hand up partner with Habitat for Humanity to build or improve a place they can call home. Habitat homeowners help build their own homes alongside volunteers and pay an affordable mortgage. Through financial support, volunteering or adding a voice to support affordable housing, everyone can help families achieve the strength, stability and self-reliance they need to build better lives for themselves. Through shelter, we empower. To learn more, visit habitat.org.

Contacts:

Angela Moore

Starfish P.R.

310-429-8868

angela(at)starfish-pr.com

Jennifer Wise

Habitat LA

424-246-3627

jwise(at)habitatla.org

Bryan Thomas

Habitat for Humanity International

404-733-3096

newsroom(at)habitat.org
Protecting patient health information has gone beyond the realm of the medical practice. Now organizations like the YMCA are offering community health programs and they need to be HIPAA compliant as well.

YMCA of the USA (Y-USA), the national resource office for 2,700 YMCAs (Ys), has selected HIPAA Secure Now! (HSN) as a preferred provider of HIPAA compliance and cyber security services to local Ys nationwide. HSN will help ensure that protected health information (PHI) for thousands of participants in the YMCAs Diabetes Prevention Program will be safeguarded at Ys offering the program to the public now and in the future.

Protecting patient health information has gone beyond the realm of the medical practice, said Art Gross, HSN President and CEO. Now organizations like the YMCA are offering community health programs that cross over to the medical services arena. They need to be HIPAA compliant and to prevent data breaches as well. We are honored that the YMCA is putting its faith in our company to meet their HIPAA compliance and cyber security needs.

The scope of services HSN will provide Ys includes:

--HIPAA compliance protocols -- conducting mandatory Security Risk Assessments (SRAs) and developing required policies and procedures.

--Cyber security assessments and training -- including technical network vulnerability assessments and continuous employee training and testing via security micro trainings, simulated phishing attacks and other tactics for preventing data breaches.

--External data breach assessments  additional training to deepen employee knowledge of thwarting cyberattacks to reduce the high risk of security scams and to prevent PHI from being accessed on the dark web.

--Employee vulnerability assessments -- to enable managers to assess whether employees present a high, medium, or low level of risk in terms of preventing cyber security breaches and to reduce those risk levels.

The need for the YMCA to adhere to HIPAA regulations became apparent when the organization developed its program for preventing diabetes, a disease that currently afflicts more than 30 million people in the U.S. As part of that program, participants with prediabetes (approximately 84 million Americans are estimated to have prediabetes) learn to alter their lifestyles by increasing physical activity, eating healthier and losing weight in order to delay or prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes.

National Institutes of Health research has shown that programs like the YMCAs Diabetes Prevention Program can reduce the number of new cases of Type 2 diabetes by 58 percent overall and by 71 percent in people over age 60. Such impressive results led to the development of the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program (MDPP) expanded model, recently finalized by CMS. MDPP has been made available through community and health care settings like the Ys, and the programs are delivered by trained community health workers and health professionals.

Since CMS has designated MDPP services as an additional preventive services under the Social Security Act, Ys will have to become Medicare suppliers to administer MDPP services and will therefore become a HIPAA Covered Entity. As an MDPP supplier, the YMCA must conform to HIPAA requirements for safeguarding protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII).

We look forward to working with Y-USA to help local Ys meet their HIPAA and cybersecurity compliance needs, Gross said.

About HIPAA Secure Now!

HIPAA Secure Now! has been helping clients comply with the HIPAA since 2009. The companys all-in-one solution provides a security risk assessment, which also satisfies Meaningful Use and MACRA requirements, as well as privacy and security policies and procedures, and training. HIPAA Secure Now! moves customers toward HIPAA compliance quickly and easily, and protects them in the event of an audit. Clients can complete the entire process in less than three hours, and regularly comment that it is painless and has made their lives easier. For more information visit http://www.HIPAASecureNow.com.

About YMCA of the USA

The Y is one of the nations leading nonprofits strengthening communities through youth development, healthy living and social responsibility. Across the U.S., 2,700 Ys engage 22 million men, women and children  regardless of age, income or background  to nurture the potential of children and teens, improve the nations health and well-being, and provide opportunities to give back and support neighbors. Anchored in more than 10,000 communities, the Y has the long-standing relationships and physical presence not just to promise, but to deliver, lasting personal and social change. For more information visit http://www.ymca.net.
The results weve seen from our partnership with Keypath are a testament to the universitys ability to work together and innovate in the face of rapid change in higher education. - Paul Jessop, Lauriers vice-president: academic

Wilfrid Laurier University is expanding its online program management partnership with Keypath Education to include new fully online postgraduate degree programs in Public Safety and Social Work. Graduate diplomas in Public Safety will also be introduced. The partnership with Keypath was first announced in June 2016 and included first-of-their-kind online policing programs.

Laurier has more than 17,000 undergraduate and over 1,000 graduate students, and is ranked sixth in Macleans comprehensive university category, and first in student satisfaction for the second year in a row.

Lauriers new fully online Master of Public Safety (MPS) degree and graduate diploma programs commence in January 2018 and are designed for those who aspire to positions of leadership in any area of public safety. The MPS is the only program aligned with the four strategic pillars of Public Safety Canada. Students who earn their Public Safety graduate diploma may continue their studies and transfer course credit into the Master of Public Safety degree.

The online Master of Social Work (MSW) program commences in 2018. The MSW is one of Lauriers signature programs, and has a longstanding reputation for specializing in critically reflexive clinical and community practice. It will be the only program in the country to offer both an advanced standing (for those with a Bachelor of Social Work) and a traditional MSW degree (for those without a BSW) in a fully online format.

As Lauriers online program management partner, Keypath is helping the university diversify its enrollment to provinces outside Ontario through online degree programs.

Our analysis showed that in the Canadian market, where fully online degrees are new, there was a significant opportunity to become a leader in that space if we were able to extend our reach across the country quickly, efficiently and professionally, said Bruce Arai, Lauriers assistant provost for strategy and dean of the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences. It became clear that we didnt have the internal capacity to do this properly, so we needed a partner to reach this goal. Through our RFP process, Keypath was well ahead of the other respondents on every measure.

Keypath provides research and strategic support, program-focused marketing, including localized B2B services, student recruitment, and student support services in the partnership. The undergraduate policing programs supported in the initial partnership have exceeded projections by more than 70 percent.

There are three things driving the partnerships success, said Keypath CEO Steve Fireng. The first is the university has a clear strategic academic plan with faculty support, in which online education plays a pivotal role. Second, Canada has high demand for online education that is underserved in comparison to the United States and the United Kingdom. Third, Laurier has been selective in the online degree programs theyve chosen to launch, giving the university the resources to invest in other programs. The strength of the undergraduate policing programs has allowed for the launch of graduate-level public safety and social work programs.

Paul Jessop, Lauriers vice-president: academic, said, The results weve seen from our partnership with Keypath are a testament to the universitys ability to work together and innovate in the face of rapid change in higher education. Online education gives adult professionals the flexibility to further their education while giving the university a foundation for enrollment growth and a more diverse population of students long into the future.

For more information about Laurier and these programs, please visit online.wlu.ca.

For more information about the Laurier-Keypath partnership and online program management services, please contact Chris Williams, director of marketing, at chris.williams(at)keypathedu(dot)com or visit keypathedu.ca.

About Wilfrid Laurier University

Wilfrid Laurier University is a leading Canadian university known for academic excellence and a culture that inspires lives of leadership and purpose. Laurier has a distinct commitment to teaching, research and scholarship, combined with a strong student focus, high levels of student satisfaction and a deep sense of community. Lauriers innovative educational model purposefully integrates the academic learning experience with an experiential learning component. The university has more than 19,000 students throughout its campuses in Waterloo and Brantford and locations in Kitchener and Toronto. The university celebrated its centennial in 2011. http://www.wlu.ca

About Keypath Education

Keypath Education is dedicated to creating global access to high-quality online education by partnering with the worlds best universities to launch and grow high-quality degree programs via its online program management (OPM) division. Through OPM partnerships, Keypath acts as an extension of the universitys team, keeping its brand and academic rigor intact while accelerating the growth and quality of the university program portfolio. Services provided include market research, capital investment, program development, marketing, student recruitment, retention and course development. The company has offices and partners in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Learn more at keypathedu.ca.
A&W celebrates the holidays with #30DaysofGiveaways Our 30 Days of Giveaways honors our loyal fans during the holiday season. Were bringing the campaign back because last year it was such a success. We have so many fun prizes lined up ...

A&W Restaurants, Inc. is getting into the holiday spirit with its 30 Days of Giveaways sweepstakes. The campaign will run through Dec. 31, 2017, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Play along by using #30DaysofGiveaways.

Fans may interact with A&W in different ways, with weekly winners chosen at random from each social media channel. Prizes include Bear Bucks gift checks, A&W branded hats, scarves and blankets, plush stuffed Rooty bears, and 2018 collectors mugs and jugs. Prizes will increase in value as the sweepstakes progresses. One grand prize will be given away at the end of December. It will include an ultimate gift basket featuring each weekly prize. A&W followers can enter by liking a post, sharing a post, leaving a comment, answering questions or tagging friends.

Our 30 Days of Giveaways honors our loyal fans during the holiday season, said Sarah Blasi, A&Ws vice president of Marketing. Were bringing the campaign back because last year it was such a success. We have so many fun prizes lined up and we are excited to help spread some much needed holiday cheer!

In addition to the sweepstakes, A&W has just launched its Inside the Mug blog that is a central hub connecting social media fans, website visitors and A&Ws Mug Club email subscribers.

A&Ws social media content is very visual, short and engaging, and we needed somewhere that allows us to tell more of our brand story, said Spencer Barrett, A&Ws community engagement analyst. Inside the Mug will feature our franchise partners and support center team, giving readers a peek behind the curtain at the people who work inside the brand every day.

Two years in the making, the blog also will include new menu announcements, social media sweepstakes and campaigns, restaurant openings, upcoming events and brand ambassador features. As part of the launch, one blog follower will win an exclusive prize package as part of the 30 Days of Giveaways sweepstakes.

In 1919, Roy Allen set up a roadside drink stand in Lodi, California, to introduce a new beverage at a parade in honor of World War I veterans. An instant success, Allen and partner Frank Wright named the beverage A&W Root Beer and started franchising roadside stands. A&W Root Beer is made fresh in the restaurants from real cane sugar, water and a proprietary blend of herbs, bark, spices, and berries that are served in a frosty mug alongside burgers, fries, hand-breaded chicken tenders and other All American Food favorites. There are nearly 1,000 locations worldwide. Connect with A&W online at https://awrestaurants.com/
HighRadius Corporation, a Fintech enterprise SaaS company headquartered in Houston, Texas, will host the final Integrated Receivables Now for 2017 in Atlanta on December 7th. Attendees will learn how to employ proven strategies and solutions to implement across receivables processes for immediate ROI.

The half-day event will begin with a lunch at 12:00 pm where attendees will meet and network with peers. Following lunch, Southwire, EBSCO and Receivable Savvy will present best practices, lessons learned and industry insights for implementing and executing a receivables optimization strategy. The presentations will conclude with a discussion from a HighRadius Solution Principal who will relay the benefits of Integrated Receivables and how machine learning and Artificial Intelligence will shape the future of accounts receivable. After the presentations, all are welcome to stay for a complimentary networking happy hour to once again mix and mingle with other industry practitioners.

Throughout the day, attendees of the complimentary event will hear how Integrated Receivables technology is transforming finance and receivables. Key insights from the event will illuminate the steps to drive improvements in operational efficiency and reduce costs to exceed KPIs across credit, accounts receivable and payments operations, including DSO reduction and cash flow improvement. Participants will also discover how peers are using HighRadius Integrated Receivables solutions to best advantage.

Ellen Farish, Senior Operations Manager  Shared Financial Services at Southwire will demonstrate how their team is automating payment processing and deduction coding work to allow resources to increase their focus on customer relationship development. Carolyn Etress, Director of Accounts Receivable at EBSCO, will explain how she and her team are re-engineering their workflows and deploying technology to easily integrate with SAP and support faster and more cost-efficient payment processing. Ernie Martin, Founder and Managing Director at Receivables Savvy, will illustrate behaviors and best-in-class preferences receivables professionals exhibit around Invoice-to-Cash practices while also describing how professionals could cultivate organizational buy-in to ensure increased cash flow and greater working capital.

For more information on the event or to register, click here.

About HighRadius Corporation

HighRadius is a Fintech enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company. The HighRadius Integrated Receivables platform optimizes cash flow through automation of receivables and payments processes across credit, collections, cash application, deductions, electronic billing and payment processing. Powered by the Rivana Artificial Intelligence Engine and Freda Virtual Assistant for Credit-to-Cash, HighRadius Integrated Receivables enables teams to leverage machine learning for accurate decision making and future outcomes. The radiusOne B2B payment network allows suppliers to digitally connect with buyers, closing the loop from supplier receivable processes to buyer payable processes. HighRadius solutions have a proven track record of optimizing cash flow, reducing days sales outstanding (DSO) and bad debt, and increasing operational efficiency so that companies may achieve strong ROI in just a few months. To learn more, please visit http://www.highradius.com.

For More Information Contact:

Kendall Bena

Marketing Coordinator

kendall.bena(at)highradius(dot)com
The partnership between Century Business Solutions and Cre8tive Technology and Design will help streamline workflow, eliminate double data entry, and simplify payments within Epicor 10. We strive to provide our customers with solutions that bring great value and help grow their business," said Aaron Continelli, President at Cre8tive Technology and Design. Partnering with Century Business Solutions offers Epicor 10 users a seamless platform to process credit cards.

Century Business Solutions is excited to announce its partnership with Cre8tive Technology and Design, a top Epicor ERP provider, to allow credit card processing directly within Epicor 10.

After evaluating several different payment options, Century Business Solutions stood out as the premier payment provider for the Epicor 10 integration. The credit card module will utilize Centurys proprietary payment gateway, EBizCharge, to provide credit card processing for thousands of merchants across the country.

This is really the coming together of two leaders in their industries, said Matt Rogers, Senior Business Relations Manager at Century Business Solutions. We chose to partner with Cre8tive because of their experience and reputation in the Epicor space and their deep knowledge of the inner workings of the Epicor software.

The Century credit card module enables merchants to process (authorize, capture, void, and credit) credit cards from directly within Epicor 10.

The powerful EBizCharge payment gateway allows merchants to lower processing fees by submitting line-item details directly to the bank. EBizCharge is fully PCI compliant and offers advanced data encryption and tokenization technology to ensure maximum transaction security within Epicor 10. EBizCharge is compatible with over 50 leading ERP and accounting systems and major online shopping carts, and provides unlimited transaction and batch history for reporting purposes.

We strive to provide our customers with solutions that bring great value and help grow their business," said Aaron Continelli, President at Cre8tive Technology and Design. Partnering with Century Business Solutions offers Epicor 10 users a seamless platform to process credit cards.

The EBizCharge payment gateway will help streamline workflows, eliminate double data entry, and make payment processing more efficient within Epicor 10. With EBizCharge, users can run custom reports, sort through transactions by category, and immediately release funds when issuing refunds.

The partnership between Century Business Solutions and Cre8tive Technology and Design will simplify credit card processing, payment acceptance, and offer our customers a cost-effective alternative.

About Century Business Solutions:

Century Business Solutions is a technology-based merchant services provider that has developed and provided payment processing technology to over 10,000 merchants in the U.S. and Canada since 2004. Named to First Datas prestigious Presidents Club, Century Business Solutions is proud to be one of the top performing and growing merchant credit card processors in the First Data network. Century develops fully integrated payment processing solutions to over 50 major ERP/CRM and accounting systems, including Microsoft Dynamics, QuickBooks, Sage, SAP Business One, and Acumatica, as well as major online shopping carts, including Magento and WooCommerce. For more information, visit https://www.centurybizsolutions.net.

About Cre8tive Technology and Design:

Cre8tive Technology and Design is a member of the Epicor Inspired Partner Network as an Epicor Platinum Partner. Cre8tive Technology and Design has earned this recognition due to their ability to effectively sell and implement Epicor ERP solutions. Cre8tive Technology and Design also helps customers customize their Epicor ERP solution to match their business model and their specific challenges. Since business needs evolve as businesses grow or change, Cre8tive Technology and Design makes sure their Epicor software solution provides both flexibility and adaptability. For more information, visit http://www.ctnd.com.
Early Childhood Development (ECD) Center in Zambia We are very grateful for this partnership and the generosity of the Episcopal Health Foundation, said Robert W. Radtke, President of Episcopal Relief & Development. Together, we have an opportunity to make an even greater impact on the lives of so many vulnerable children and their families.

Episcopal Relief & Development is pleased to announce that it has received a $200,000 grant from the Episcopal Health Foundation to support its integrated Early Childhood Development program in Zambia.

The grant aligns with the mission and commitment of both organizations to build and improve the infrastructure of communities beginning with prenatal care. It will enable Episcopal Relief & Development and a local partner, Zambia Anglican Council Outreach Programmes (ZACOP), to impact approximately 17,520 children under the age of three, many of whom are impacted by HIV/AIDS.

We are very grateful for this partnership and the generosity of the Episcopal Health Foundation, said Robert W. Radtke, President of Episcopal Relief & Development. Together, we have an opportunity to make an even greater impact on the lives of so many vulnerable children and their families.

The support from the Episcopal Health Foundation contributes to the programs expansion to all five Anglican dioceses in Zambia. The program currently works with approximately 12,720 children under the age of three along with 6,360 primary parents and caregivers in 53 communities in rural Zambia. It also enables the program to include an additional 4,800 children and 2,400 primary caregivers and parents in 20 new ECD centers. Each center serves as a hub for 240 children and 120 primary caregivers/parents.

"Episcopal Relief & Developments Early Childhood Development program has shown success in increasing primary caregivers nurturing care and in strengthening their connections to services, said Katy Butterwick, program officer at the Episcopal Health Foundation. This support of strong brain development is helping build a foundation for healthy lives."

This is Episcopal Relief & Developments second grant from the Episcopal Health Foundation (EHF). In 2016, EHF supported the organizations Integrated Child Health programs in Ghana. Based in Houston, Texas, the foundation was created in 2013 by the Episcopal Diocese of Texas with a central mission of improving the health and well-being of the 11 million people living within the diocese.

Episcopal Relief & Developments Early Childhood Development programs focus on fighting poverty, hunger and disease in children while promoting the health, development and financial well-being of families. This partnership with EHF helps fill a gap that exists in addressing the needs of young children and their parents/primary caregivers who live in communities ravaged by poverty and HIV/AIDS. The program leverages the role of faith-based leaders in working directly with community members and impacted families.

To learn more, please visit the Early Childhood Development page on Episcopal Relief & Developments website.

For over 75 years, Episcopal Relief & Development has served as a compassionate response to human suffering in the world. The agency works with more than 3 million people in nearly 40 countries worldwide to overcome poverty, hunger and disease through multi-sector programs, using the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework. An independent 501(c)(3) organization, it works closely with Anglican Communion and ecumenical partners to help communities create long-term development strategies and rebuild after disasters.
On Dec. 1 Tapestry launched a new eating disorder treatment program for adolescents that will provide residential therapy for males and females ages 10 to 17 in Fletcher, N.C.

Since opening in 2007, Tapestry has been helping to heal lives impacted by disordered eating. The expansion at the Fletcher facility will bring needed services for adolescents who require the higher-level care of a residential stay.

We have noticed a significant increase in requests for more options for adolescent care, explained Tina Nowak, Tapestry founder and executive director.

Tapestry is known for providing individualized care in a small, homelike setting, said Nowak. Our philosophy is to offer treatment in a setting that more closely resembles real life, as we believe it stacks the deck for lasting recovery. Were excited to be able to bring our treatment philosophy to this younger population for both boys and girls, said Nowak.

The new adolescent residential program complements Tapestrys existing outpatient adolescent program and residential and outpatient programs for adults, located in Fletcher and Brevard, N.C.

To celebrate the new program, Tapestry is hosting an open house for members of the community on Friday, Dec. 1 from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at 5010 Hendersonville Road in Fletcher. Guests will have the opportunity to win prizes, enjoy food and refreshments, tour the new 12-bed facility, learn more about available treatment options and meet the staff. The Henderson County Chamber of Commerce will welcome the new facility with a ribbon cutting at 2:30 p.m.

Attendees are encouraged to RSVP to bnowak(at)tapestrync(dot)com or by calling (828) 884-2475 ext. 2306.

On Dec. 1, Tapestry also unveiled a new website at tapestrync.com, featuring improved functionality, updated branding, a new logo and comprehensive program information, as well as resources for more information about eating disorders. The new branding also reflects Tapestrys incorporation into the Pyramid Healthcare, Inc. family of treatment centers. Pyramid Healthcare provides a full continuum of high-quality treatment for behavioral health disorders for adults and teens throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey and North Carolina.

For more information, please contact Jodi Grabowski, national business development liaison, at jgrabowski(at)tapestrync(dot)com or (828) 674-7315.

About Tapestry Eating Disorder Treatment Centers

Nestled in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Tapestry Eating Disorder Treatment Centers provides residential and outpatient treatment for eating disorders and co-occurring disorders in adults and adolescents. Within its small, homelike facilities, clients feel safe to confront and overcome their eating disorders. Tapestry empowers clients by teaching life skills that will continue to strengthen their recovery long after they complete treatment.
EagleView's Proprietary 3D Point Cloud Technology We understand the cost and safety risks associated with utility corridors. Combining our high-resolution imagery and accurate datasets will give vegetation managers the precision and confidence they need to succeed in their daily tasks.

Eagle View Technologies (EagleView), a leading provider of aerial imagery and data analytics, today announced that it is launching TreeRisk, an intelligent dataset and MapBook derived from EagleViews proprietary 3D Point Cloud technology. Using high-resolution imagery, TreeRisk is designed to help vegetation managers pinpoint encroachment risks on electric transmission lines and take immediate action to mitigate them.

Vegetation managers are under pressure to find complete, cost-effective ways to identify the locations of vegetation that puts their assets in danger while also keeping their crews safe. TreeRisk highlights potential threats, such as power outages due to trees either falling on or growing into power lines. Users can generate, view and share highly accurate maps while reducing time in the field, eliminating paper waste and minimizing mitigation expenses.

Unlike other applications on the market, TreeRisk uses Pictometry imagery to generate the 3D models, which are more color-rich, realistic and economical than traditional LiDAR models. This solution also comes with a companion MapBook that the vegetation crew can take into the field to easily identify encroaching areas of vegetation.

With our advanced approach to creating intelligent 3D modeling, TreeRisk is unlike any other technology seen by electric utility companies, said Rishi Daga, President of EagleView. We understand the cost and safety risks associated with utility corridors. Combining our high-resolution imagery and accurate datasets will give vegetation managers the precision and confidence they need to succeed in their daily tasks.

EagleView plans to launch TreeRisk at the CEATI Vegetation Management Conference in Orlando, Florida, from December 5-6.

For more information, please email sales@eagleview.com.

About EagleView

EagleView is the leading provider of high-resolution aerial imagery, property data analytics and structural measurements for government agencies, insurance carriers, roofing contractors and energy utilities. Using patented image capture techniques, 3D aerial measurement software and machine learning processes, EagleView helps customers answer questions related to millions of properties throughout the world. With a four-petabyte library of oblique and orthogonal Pictometry aerial imagery dating back to 2001 and the capacity to process tens of thousands of roof measurement reports per day, EagleView enables organizations to reduce field visits and adopt faster, safer and more cost-effective workflows. For more information, contact (866) 659-8439 or visit http://www.eagleview.com.
Langham Hotels & Resorts' New York City hotel is now officially known as The Langham, New York, Fifth Avenue Our hotel, with its contemporary style, Alex Katz art pieces, and an enviable location in one of the most exciting cities in the world, has always upheld the highest standards of sincere service that our guests have come to expect from any Langham hotel around the world, said Richard Bussiere, man

The end of the year always brings with it both reminisces of successes throughout the previous 12 months as well as exciting plans for the future. December 2017 promises to be no different, as The Langham, New York, Fifth Avenue  formerly known as Langham Place, New York  wraps up a successful year that brought with it the title of #1 Hotel in New York City; a brand new Presidential Suite by Roche Bobois; a new full-service spa, Chuan Body + Soul  and a new name with which to start 2018.

As part of Langham Hotels & Resorts by Hong Kong-based Langham Hospitality Group, The Langham, New York will now go by the designation with which most Langham guests are already familiar. This new christening brings closer its affiliation to the groups luxury flagship hotel and namesake in London, and the three existing hotels in the United States  The Langham, Boston; The Langham, Chicago, and The Langham Huntington, Pasadena. The two upcoming hotels in the United States will also bear The Langham name  The Langham, Wade Park, opening outside of Dallas in 2019; and The Langham, San Francisco, premiering in the trendy Soma neighborhood in 2020.

The re-naming of our award-winning hotel in New York City will strengthen the brands presence in both the United States and in cosmopolitan cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Melbourne, said Simon Manning, chief sales and marketing officer, Langham Hospitality Group. As we plan to grow from the current portfolio of 16 hotels to 30 within five years, we look forward to developing a remarkable collection of luxury properties that will add immeasurable value and special memories for our guests.

Our hotel, with its contemporary style, Alex Katz art pieces, and an enviable location in one of the most exciting cities in the world, has always upheld the highest standards of sincere service that our guests have come to expect from any Langham hotel around the world, said Richard Bussiere, managing director of The Langham, New York. I am immensely proud of all that we accomplished in 2017 and look forward to beginning the new year as The Langham.

This new identity comes on the heels of a banner year for The Langham, New York. Not only did 2017 bring the completion of a year-long renovation process, resulting in the brand new Presidential Suite by Roche Bobois on the 27th floor, and the elegantly-designed Chuan Body + Soul spa, but this was the year that the readers of Conde Nast Traveler named The Langham the #1 top hotel in New York City, as well as the #2 of The 10 Best Hotels in the U.S. and #30 out of 50 of The Best Hotels in the World.

The Langhams other U.S. properties were also recognized on the Conde Nast Traveler list in the following order: The Langham, Chicago (#2 in Chicago); The Langham, Boston (#8 in Boston) and The Langham Huntington, Pasadena (#15 in Los Angeles).

Langham Hotels & Resorts overall was given the Platinum award on Money Magazines The Best Hotels in the World list for 2017, and was voted #12 out of 15 of the Worlds Best Hotel Brands by Travel + Leisure in 2016. In 2016, the brands advertising campaign, The Art of The Say won Gold in the Advertising category at the HSMAI (Hospitality and Sales Marketing Association International) Adrian Awards; and the newly re-launched webpage for Langham Hotels & Resorts also won Gold the same year.

The Langham, New York, Fifth Avenue is centrally located at 400 Fifth Avenue, between 36th & 37th Streets. Its 234 guest rooms and suites are some of the largest in the city. The Langham boasts a residentially-inspired aesthetic, topped off by a multi-million dollar permanent art collection featuring the works of Alex Katz and two luxurious penthouses designed by French retailer Roche Bobois, who also designed the hotels brand new Presidential Suite. As of Spring 2017, The Langham features a full-service spa and fitness center, Chuan Body + Soul, offering a comprehensive menu of skincare, massage and body treatments. Ai Fiori, a Michelin-starred restaurant from Michael Whites Altamarea Group, and Bar Fiori, a destination bar and lounge, are both located on the hotels second floor. The Langham also has the capabilities to host meetings, events and social gatherings of all sizes in The Gallery at The Langham, a full floor of function space on the hotels third floor. http://www.langhamhotels.com/en/the-langham/new-york/

About Langham Hospitality Group

As the wholly-owned subsidiary of Great Eagle Holdings, Langham Hospitality Group encompasses a family of distinctive hotels under the Langham Hotels and Resorts and Cordis Hotels brands with more than 30 projects currently either confirmed or in a developed stage of negotiation from Asia, Europe and North America to the Middle East. The Group takes its name from the legendary Langham in London which was widely recognized as Europe's first Grand Hotel. For 150 years, this flagship hotel has represented sophisticated and gracious hospitality, a philosophy that reflects elegance in design, innovation in hospitality, genuine service and captivation of the senses across all properties. For more information, please access the website at http://www.langhamhospitalitygroup.com.
Ayr Skin Care Awaken Revitalizing Eye Serum Awaken Revitalizing Eye Serum has a feather light and silky smooth texture with a light fruity scent. Most individuals can hardly feel it working even though it has a kick to it.

Holiday stress can make a person's eyes look like they just went 12-rounds with "Bad Santa".

Lucky for our holiday photos, newly launched Ayr Skin Care Care (Ayr, pronounced like "Air") just introduced a powerful nontoxic and natural eye revitalizing serum to gently rescue people with sensitive skin from excessive puffiness, dark circles and fine lines around their eyes.

Ayr Skin Cares Awaken Revitalizing Eye Serum has received an overwhelming response since the family-operated company went online from their San Juan Capistrano, California headquarters over the summer.

It helps diminish the signs of aging for women and men of all skin types, said Fiona Briggs, vice-president of Ayr Skin Care Marketing and Operations. Most people notice a difference within two to three weeks of use.

"The skin around the eyes is especially vulnerable to stress largely because its significantly thinner than the skin on the rest of the body", she said.

Awaken Revitalizing Eye Serum has a feather light and silky smooth texture with a light fruity scent, Briggs said. Most individuals can hardly feel it working even though it has a kick to it.

The eye serum, like all of Ayr Skin Care's products contain no parabens and petrochemicals commonly found in many skin care lines. All Ayr Skin Care products are also gluten, soy and dairy free. Synthetic dyes and perfumes are shunned.

Instead of cheap and harsh ingredients, the Ayr Awaken Revitalizing Eye Serum is packed with marine algae rich with omega 3 fatty acids and bioactive compounds that revitalize the skin around the eyes.

A blend of cucumber, panthenol, chamomile and what Briggs calls power-packed botanical extracts cools the skin and leaves your eyes looking beautifully bright and alert.

Ayr adds probiotics, green tea, pomegranate and anti-oxidant rich caffeine to reduce the puffiness.

The serum also uses a blend of collagen-building tripeptides to reduce fine lines, and to increase elasticity as well as firmness around the eyes.

Its recommended to use the serum once a day before bed. Briggs, however, uses it in the morning and before bed each day. In a YouTube demonstration video, Briggs shows how to apply a tiny dab -- about the size of a grain or two of rice -- to the area around the eyes.

The Awaken Revitalizing Eye Serum, which comes in a half-ounce air-tight pump bottle for $108, was developed by Briggs mother and Ayr Skin Care Founder, Kirsten Thomas.

She always had very sensitive skin, Briggs said. As she hit her 40s and 50s, she wanted strong anti-aging benefits without harsh synthetic products.

The eye serum and the rest of the product line were created by Brigg's mother, Kirsten Thomas, out of necessity for her skin care. She started sharing them with friends, and the friends begged for more. This is how Ayr Skin Care was born.

Thomas wanted to honor her mothers lifetime of caring by naming the company after the seaside town where her mother was born  Ayr, Scotland. Its a beautiful resort town on the west coast of the Lowlands near Glasgow, and a ferry boat ride away from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Now the mother and daughter team are extending that caring and the vibrant brilliance of Scotland to anyone whose sensitive skin can endure no more.

Research the Ayr Skin Care Awaken Revitalizing Eye Serum by going to Ayrskincare.com.
Small in size but large in client service

On November 30th 2017, MidAtlantic Photographic LLC entered the elite status for private businesses in the Baltimore region. Every year the prestigious Baltimore Business Journal recognizes the fifty fastest growing private companies in the metro area. This years event was held at the Center Club in downtown Baltimore.

MidAtlantic Photographic, and CEO Robin Sommer not only were honored in this group, the company also placed sixth among the top ten winners. MAP enjoyed a 100% revenue increase between 2015 and 2016!

This achievement is the result of the immense time and effort by Sommer, to make MAP the top commercial photographer in the region.

MIdAtlantic Photographic is based in Bel Air Maryland, and is MBE/DBE/SBE certified by the state of Maryland.
UBCF's Disaster Relief Event UBCF's Disaster Relief event is providing Tempur-Pedic mattresses, clothing, household, baby and personal care items to breast cancer patients, survivors and their children.

The United Breast Cancer Foundation (UBCF) is hosting its first disaster relief event for breast cancer patients and survivors. The event, scheduled for December 9, 2017 in Doral, Florida, will provide assistance to women, men and children affected by breast cancer and the recent natural disasters in Florida, including Hurricane Irma.

UBCF has partnered with Good360 and Tempur-Pedic to donate high quality twin, full and queen-size Tempur-Pedic mattresses. In addition to the new mattresses, UBCF is giving away other household items, personal care products, clothing and baby items generously donated by Bed Bath & Beyond and Buy Buy Baby. Other donors include: Keurig, Nike, Burts Bees, First Aid Beauty and The Honest Company. Collectively, the value of the items UBCF will distribute is over $1.1 million.

Cancer care is expensive and a large percentage of UBCF's clients come from low-income households. Often between medical bills and every day expenses UBCFs clients struggle to afford basic household items or a new mattress. The added stress of rebuilding after a natural disaster makes these purchases even more difficult and yet much more important. All items are available to breast cancer patients, survivors and their children 18 years or younger. Patients and survivors from surrounding states are welcome to apply and travel to the event. Apply here (http://ubcf.org/disaster-relief/)

UBCF is pleased to announce that funds are available to applicants to off-set the cost of travel (gas, tolls, and vehicle rentals) to and from the event. Contact Mrs. Lauren Brohm at #877-822-4287 x708 or email LaurenB(at)ubcf(dot)org.

"We encourage all breast cancer patients and survivors  male and female - to reach out to UBCF and apply to receive a beautiful Tempur-Pedic mattress, said UBCF Executive Director, Ms. Stephanie Mastroianni. We understand that folks may not have the money to travel to our Disaster Relief event, so UBCF has made funds available to off-set the costs of this travel. Money should not get in the way of a good night's sleep.

UBCF thanks Tempur-Pedic, Good360, Bed Bath & Beyond, Buy Buy Baby, and CustomSpace warehousing. UBCF's next Tempur-Pedic mattress event is tentatively scheduled for Spring, 2018 in Melville, NY. For more information on this and future events, please contact UBCFs Director of Operations, Ms. Beth Reichart at #877-822-4287 x702 or email beth(at)ubcf(dot)org.

Background on UBCF

UBCF is committed to offering breast health and wellness services focused on cancer prevention, screening, treatment and overall wellness. UBCFs mission is to make a positive difference in the lives of those affected by breast cancer and carries it out through seven life-supporting patient and family programs available to women, men and families nation-wide. UBCF never denies services to anyone regardless of age, race, gender, ethnicity, income or medical insurance coverage. If you are in need of breast health services, please visit ubcf.org or call toll-free, 877-822-4287. Tax-deductible contributions may be made towards UBCFs programs. UBCF accepts vehicle and property donation s as well. Contributions may be mailed to UBCF, P.O. Box 2421, Huntington, NY 11743, or donate through the Combined Federal Campaign, #77934.
The Prime Number Club "We are thankful to all those who believed in us and helped fund this campaign, said Sarah Shipley, CEO of Shipley Communications LLC. "We would love to see the Prime Number Club used in schools and have big dreams that Off-Kilta Matilda will inspire kids to pursue STEM subjects," she added.

Shipley Communications LLC has announced the conclusion of Off-Kilta Matilda, a campaign to empower kids, especially girls in STEM subjects. CEO Sarah Shipley has called it a successful campaign, which is now 111% funded and has early traction as a startup.

Off-Kilta Matilda book will be out by mid-December. Meanwhile the books and other educational materials are available at http://www.offkiltamatilda.com. Pre-sales are already in full swing according to Shipley.

Off-Kilta Matilda is a product of Shipleys dream of bringing one of those stories to life that her husband had written for their new-born daughter while he was stationed in Afghanistan, more than 10 years ago. Coupled with her passion for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects, she succeeded in creating Off-Kilta Matilda.

Statistics reveal there is a gender disparity in STEM fields. Gender disparity in science and math is one of the many reasons for gender wage gap among men and women when it comes to employment. Though women constitute half of the total U.S. college-educated workforce, they make up only 29% of the science and engineering workforce, according to studies. Thus, making STEM careers more lopsided.

Economic Policy Institutes study on gender pay gap points out that college majors do have an impact on wages and economic well-being when it comes to employment. The study states that women tend to choose humanities over STEM majors. And humanities often lead to lower-salaried jobs as compared to STEM fields that have higher-salaried jobs.

We have a vision of self-confident girls, who embrace their spots, lead in STEM and study the mysteries of math and science, says Sarah Shipley of Shipley Communications LLC. We are thankful to all those who believed in us and helped fund this campaign. We would love to see the Prime Number Club used in schools, on bookshelves and have big dreams that Off-Kilta Matilda will inspire little girls and boys to become confident in STEM subjects and become future mathematicians and scientists, Shipley further adds.

This series is also a tribute to all the moms who are single handedly raising their kids while running a business. Being a mompreneur requires much more than technical skills and training. It requires what being a mom teaches women who have kids: time-management skills, multitasking, creativity, budgeting and good people management skills among numerous others.

Shipley has done it all. While her husband was away on duty, she raised their kids; juggling many tasks and work. Meanwhile, the idea for Off-Kilta Matilda was taking shape. She perfected it over the span of ten years and today her dreams have realized in the form of Off-Kilta Matilda books and educational resources.

About Shipley Communications LLC

Shipley Communications specializes in you. It's your company, your brand and your market. We understand branding, events, public relations, logo design, verbal identity, web design, fundraising and crisis communication. At Shipley Communications, we believe that good communication is simple, honest and can change the world. We build relationships with the words we write and love to do good work for good people.
Efemex Logo small businesses have a wealth of expertise, knowledge and personal touch that homeowners are looking for

Small business owners in the home maintenance sector (plumbers, electricians, etc.) usually get an influx of work followed by a period of calm. Efemex wants to help fill that period of calm, helping small business increase their sales and grow. And assisting frustrated homeowners, looking for quality professionals to help them around the house.

Efemex was created to give property owners access to small businesses service providers who otherwise would be drowned out in the noise of big commerce. Founder of Efemex, Nayef knew that small businesses could not afford large marketing campaign budgets to effectively advertise their services. He also realized that property owners werent getting the expertise, local knowledge and personal touch of local small businesses simply because they werent aware of them. He set out to create a platform that would empower homeowners and grow local small businesses.

The vision for Efemex was to provide a platform for small business owners with free tools to help them promote their company, organize their work, schedule bookings and share best practices, while simultaneously giving property owners a platform to find local home and maintenance services, get insights into better property management, and get the most value out of their assets.

Homeowners can visit https://www.efemex.com and get access to local Handymen, electricians and plumbers that are available near them. Efemex.com will provide a free estimate and homeowners can choose to proceed with a service only if they are 100% satisfied with the price provided.

Founder Nayef, created the platform out of his love for real estate and passion for entrepreneurship. He has worked in real estate for the last 11 years and has worked within the US, UK and Dubai. Nayef moved to New York City in 2016 to further evolve his real estate career and to build Efemex.

The ability to work in real estate while building something of value for people and small businesses is a dream come true, says Nayef of his start-up. Small businesses are the backbone of this country. I believe small businesses have a wealth of expertise, knowledge and personal touch that homeowners are looking for.

Efemex launched in September 2017 and has since seen an over 100% increase in users every month.

About Efemex

Efemex is a small business platform that connects property owners with quality, local home service providers. Efemex provides the tools for local home service businesses to promote and grow their business whilst giving homeowners access to the local home service providers that would otherwise be drowned out by their big commerce competitors. For more information, visit https://www.efemex.com/.
There are several tests that financial analysts use to determine solvency and adequate capitalization of a business.

Valuation is used by market participants to determine the price they are willing to pay or receive to transact a sale of a security, a business or an asset. The same techniques are used to determine the price they are willing to pay or receive to settle a claim or satisfy a liability. It should be no surprise then that when there is a dispute between two or more parties regarding value, the same valuation techniques and skills are necessary to resolve the dispute. Attorneys, accountants and business owners often rely on independent, third-party valuation experts to assist in the resolution of disputes or potential conflict situations. Some of the typical situations in which valuation experts are utilized include fair value financial reporting (GAAP accounting), bankruptcy, income tax reporting, property tax appeals, estate and gift tax planning and reporting, dissenting shareholder disputes, corporate transactions and disputes, divorce litigation, shareholder disputes or economic damages analysis as well as many other business and legal purposes. The Financial Poise webinar series VALUATION FIGHTS IN LITIGATION: BATTLE OF THE EXPERT 2017 explores all of these topics in great detail.

The third and final episode of the VALUATION FIGHTS IN LITIGATION: BATTLE OF THE EXPERT 2017 webinar series is Bankruptcy Valuation Issues: Valuation in the Context of a Fraudulent Transfer or Preference Attack, airing on December 7th at 2pm CST (Register Here), and features host Gary Frantzen of Alvarez & Marsal Valuation Services. He is joined by Anne Vanderkamp of Baker Tilly, Lisa Vandesteeg of Sugar Felsenthal Grais & Hammer, and Thad Wilson of King & Spalding, to discuss various bankruptcy valuation issues.

Bankruptcy trustees, debtors, liquidating trusts, and others often file claims against former shareholders/executives for alleged fraudulent transfers. A key issue relates to the value of the debtors assets at the time of the transfer relative to its liabilities and claims against its assets  in short, whether the debtor was solvent and/or adequately capitalized at the time of the transfer. There are several tests that financial analysts use to determine solvency and adequate capitalization of a business. This webinar describes those tests and helps attorneys understand how experts determine retrospective asset values and solvency. It will describe the methods used to determine the solvency of a business when issuing contemporaneous opinions and how they may differ when called upon to opine on the retrospective solvency of an entity that has filed for protection under the Bankruptcy Code.

The VALUATION FIGHTS IN LITIGATION: BATTLE OF THE EXPERT 2017 webinar series is sponsored by EisnerAmper. All episodes premiere live through West LegalEdCenter and then are made available on-demand.

Each episode is delivered in Plain English understandable to business owners and executives without much background in these areas. Yet, each episode is proven to be valuable to seasoned professionals. As with all Financial Poise Webinars, each episode in the series brings you into engaging, sometimes humorous, conversations designed to entertain as it teaches. And, as with all Financial Poise Webinars, each episode in the series is designed to be viewed independently of the other episodes, so that participants will enhance their knowledge of this area whether they attend one, some, or all of the episodes.

ABOUT FINANCIAL POISE:

Financial Poise (http://www.financialpoise.com) provides unbiased news, continuing education, and intelligence to private business owners, executives, investors, and their trusted advisors. For more information contact Cristina Nolan at cnolan(at)financialpoise(dot)com or 312.469.0135.

ABOUT EISNERAMPER: EisnerAmper is a leading full-service advisory and accounting firm with offices coast to coast and internationally. Visit http://www.eisneramper.com.
House Buyers of America is pleased to announce a major milestone: the purchase of its 1500th home.

CEO Nick Ron couldnt be more excited about the good news. The 1500th home we purchased is located at 10715 North Landsdale, St Glenn Dale, MD, he says. This was a rental property. The landlord was retiring and was tired of the hassle of managing a rental home. The house was sitting vacant, so he wanted to cash out his equity quickly. We made a fast offer to the seller, and he accepted. Shortly after, we went to closing. The owner didnt have to make repairs, stage the house or spruce it up  we took care of all of that for him. When sellers work with House Buyers of America, it really is that simple.

House Buyers of America pays cash for homes in As-Is condition. Thanks to the companys excellent management, access to capital and skilled trades, years in the business, and outstanding reputation from satisfied customers, House Buyers is able to provide one of the most competitive cash offers in the industry. Customers appreciate the fact that they can simply sell their home without having to go through the hassle of the traditional real estate market, or pay a Realtors commission. The cash they receive means more equity in their pocket, instead of equity going to renovations, repairs and mortgage payments while the house sits and waits for a buyer.

Our job is to deal with the hassles of renovating our houses with the latest design trends, and dealing with the sales process, Ron explains why House Buyers of America is so successful in the communities in which it operates. Our team of experts usually have 10-25 years of experience in their respective fields (construction, buying, design, sales, etc.). Most homeowners have other professions and theyre not adept at the details of managing construction, procurement, design, sales, and transaction management  but this is all we do, all day, every day. Weve helped many homeowners faced with unwanted inherited properties, job transfers, downsizing, moving to a bigger house, financial struggles, health struggles, empty nesting, and more with our straightforward cash for the As-Is home method.

Have a home for sale in Virginia, Maryland or Washington, DC? Sell the home the fast the easy way by selling to House Buyers of America. To learn more, visit housebuyersofamerica.com/about_house_buyers_of_america/ and housebuyersofamerica.com/we-buy-houses/.

About House Buyers of America

House Buyers of America is a residential real estate investment company headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia. By using House Buyers of America, home owners no longer have to pay real estate commissions, deal with real estate agents, or fix up their properties. The company offers a guaranteed, fast and hassle-free sale to people who want to sell their house for cash. House Buyers of America buys each property As Is and renovates the house if necessary, so sellers do not need to spend their time or money readying their property for sale.

Contact Details:

House Buyers of America, Inc.

14420 Albemarle Point Place, Suite 150

Chantilly, VA 20151

Phone: 1-855-659-3289

Source: House Buyers of America, Inc.
kitcheck.com Pretagged syringes are a preferred approach for many of our client pharmacies."said Kevin MacDonald, co-founder and CEO at Kit Check, "They allow the pharmacists to maximize the effectiveness of the Kit Check kit and tray automation process.

Kit Check and QuVa Pharma announced the formation of a partnership designed to streamline medication tracking for hospital pharmacies throughout the United States. Under the agreement, QuVa Pharma will embed Kit Checks Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags on their prefilled syringes. The embedded tags will work with the scanning solutions provided by Kit Check to improve medication inventory management and reduce waste by making the syringes immediately available to drop into kits.

Medicines produced by QuVa Pharma arrive ready-to-use, having been produced and fully tested in a controlled environment. The embedded RFID tags allow hospital pharmacists to add batches of medications to inventory in seconds using the Kit Check scanner. Once in inventory, the Kit Check solution permits medications to be tracked throughout the hospitalfrom pharmacy to patient -- whether they are in bags, trays or kits. Combined with their powerful machine learning platform called Bluesight, this item-level tracking enables Kit Check to provide pharmacists with actionable insights such as real-time restocking, inventory benchmarking and even manufacturer recalls, regardless of the medication management workflow in use at the hospital.

We are very excited to have a high-quality partner like QuVa Pharma on board, said Kevin MacDonald, co-founder and CEO at Kit Check. Pretagged syringes are a preferred approach for many of our client pharmacies since they allow the pharmacists to maximize the effectiveness of the Kit Check kit and tray automation process. They reduce staff handling time, reduce errors, increase patient safety and each pharmacist can work at the top of their license. Everyone wins.

As the compounding partner, QuVa Pharma is setting high standards in quality compliance, with both of their Texas facilities in excellent standing with the FDA. A third facility is already under construction to meet market demand. By investing in specialty facilities and operations, QuVa Pharma is addressing the effects of recent regulation changes on healthcare providers and establishing a goal of improving patient safety through stringent controls on production, materials and processes.

Our primary mission is to improve patient safety, said Stuart Hinchen, QuVa Pharmas co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. The outsource compounding service we provide helps to reduce the risk of inadvertent errors that may occur with bed-side preparation and frees up the pharmacist to become more of an informed advisor on patient treatment. Embedding the RFID tags in our syringes further streamlines this process and allows detailed item-level tracking, so we are thrilled to be working closely with the leading provider of this technology.

The RFID-embedded syringes are already in production and available for order. QuVa Pharma and Kit Check will be exhibiting their innovative solutions at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Midyear Clinical Meeting 2017 in Orlando Florida December 4-6. To learn more, visit Kit Check at Booth #1011 or QuVa Pharma at Booth #646.

About Kit Check

Kit Check is a leading provider of automated medication management solutions for hospital pharmacies. Our solutions blend powerful machine learning and advanced tracking technology to streamline medication inventory and auditing processes. To date our US and Canadian hospital partners have tracked over 30 million medications using our innovative products. More information about the Kit Check suite of solutions can be found at kitcheck.com.

About QuVa Pharma, Inc.

QuVa Pharma is a nationally recognized company emerging as the leading industry 503B platform and partner of choice for compliance-oriented healthcare facilities looking to ensure a quality, safe and consistent supply of medications. The Company offers a broad portfolio of products across Pain Management, Anti-infective, OR Syringes, Labor and Delivery therapeutic areas amongst others, all of which are released only once sterility and potency testing is successfully complete, and with validation supporting appropriate BUD. The company is committed to having a patient-first orientation, as well as a robust product portfolio, leading safety standards, and collaborative, partnership-oriented customer service. For more information, visit http://www.quvapharma.com.
Amica Insurance collected 20,309 canned food items during its Giving Thanks Giving Back food drive, which ran from Friday, Nov. 3, through Friday, Nov. 17, at its corporate headquarters.

Amica Insurance collected 20,309 canned food items during its Giving Thanks Giving Back food drive, which ran from Friday, Nov. 3, through Friday, Nov. 17, at its corporate headquarters. Those items were donated to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank to support families in need this holiday season.

I continue to be amazed by the generosity of our employees, said Robert A. DiMuccio, chairman, president and CEO of Amica. I sincerely thank them for their involvement and enthusiasm during this food drive, as theyre making a big difference for so many Rhode Island families.

Once again, Amica employees demonstrated their holiday spirit and support for the local community by collecting an astounding amount of food for the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, said Andrew Schiff, CEO of the Food Bank. We are truly overwhelmed by the incredible response this year and so pleased to be part of this annual tradition.

Amica kicked off the food drive in conjunction with its annual Thanksgiving card unveiling on Nov. 3. Each of the four buildings at Amicas headquarters was assigned a canned food item, and the buildings competed to see who could donate the most items over a two-week period. Building 25, which is home to Amicas corporate services and corporate information systems departments, won the competition by collecting 5,493 items.

Amica also partnered with Canstruction Rhode Island to build a piece of pumpkin pie out of approximately 2,000 of the canned food items.

About Amica Insurance

Amica Mutual Insurance Co., the nations oldest mutual insurer of automobiles, was founded in 1907. The company, based in Lincoln, Rhode Island, is a national writer of auto, home, marine and umbrella insurance. Life coverage is available through Amica Life Insurance Company, a wholly owned subsidiary. Amica employs more than 3,800 people in 44 offices across the country. For more information, visit Amica.com.

Media inquiries can be sent to MediaCenter(at)amica(dot)com.

Amica Media Center

Twitter: Amica

Facebook: Amica Mutual Insurance Co.
The organizers of International LiDAR Mapping Forum (ILMF), the worlds leading technical conference and expo covering the newest airborne, terrestrial and underwater LiDAR as well as emerging remote-sensing and data collection tools and technologies, announced the 2018 conference program. The 18th annual edition of ILMF will take place alongside the ASPRS Annual Conference February 5-7, 2018 in Denver, Colorado.

The main ILMF conference program includes these featured presentations:

UAS LiDAR:



Adam LeWinter of USACE-CRREL on Unmanned Aerial Systems for High Resolution Laser Scanning Applications

Stefan Hrabar of CSIRO on Mapping of Underground Mines with an Autonomous Drone.

Iain Woodhouse of Carbomap on Fixed-Wing UAV with LiDAR, Hyperspectral Imaging and Real-Time Processing

Dr. Julien Vallett of Helimap Systems on What you Can Expect from UAV Mapping.

Data Acquisition:

Chris Hopkinson of University of Lethbridge on Mapping of Soil Depth Following Wildfire using Multi-Spectral and Multi-Temporal LiDAR

Amar Nayegandhi of Dewberry on Multi-Sensor Topo-Bathymetric Approach to Mapping the Everglades National Park

Charles Write of NOAA on Using LiDAR, Manned Aircraft SfM, and UAS SfM for Coastal Mapping

Project Case Studies:

Martin Flood of GeoCue on Updating Legacy LiDAR Projects at USDA: Benefits, Challenges and Lessons Learned

Michael Meiser of Woolpert on the Use of LiDAR in Platinum-Group Element Mining at the Stillwater Complex, MT

Al Karlin of SWFWMD on High-Density LiDAR to Meet Southwest Florida Water Management Districts Specifications for Diverse Applications in Florida

Other topics include:

Advanced Geo-Technologies

Advanced LiDAR Topics

Bathymetric LiDAR

Coastal Mapping

Data Acquisition Approaches

Data Fusion

Geiger Mode/Single Photon

LiDAR Data Processing

LiDAR Sensor Topics

UAS LiDAR

USGS 3DEP

USGS Updates

Topo-Bathymetric LiDAR

In addition to the main program, Product Previews will provide brief updates on vendors newest products and latest advances.

>> VIEW THE FULL CONFERENCE PROGRAM HERE

More than 60 mapping experts will be speaking at ILMF 2018, including professionals from research organizations, government agencies and private enterprise, as well as leading academics.

>> VIEW THE PRESENTER LIST HERE

Exhibition

In addition to the conference content, attendees can explore the very best of LiDAR along with a growing host of new and complementary remote-sensing solutions. The exhibit floor will have more than 60 leading technology, software and service providers from around the world.

The current exhibitor list can be viewed here. For the fourth consecutive year, the exhibit floor will have a UAV/UAS pavilion to arm delegates with insight into the growing UAV/UAS market and the opportunities this presents for aerial LiDAR professionals.

For the first time, ILMF and the ASPRS Annual Conference will take place together. That means more education, networking and technology than ever before. Lisa Murray with ILMF expressed her excitement about the opportunity. The geospatial community has long been asking event partners to work together. This is a giant step toward a shared vision of bringing industry members together with government and academia for a powerful combination of education, technology innovation and commercial exchange. ILMF and ASPRS share the goal of creating more value for members, attendees and exhibitors by offering multiple learning tracks and a vibrant exhibit floor that pairs the latest technology with hands-on workshops and in-market solutions. More information about the co-location can be found here.

Registration

Early-bird registration is available now. Interested parties are encouraged to register before the early-bird deadline of December 15 to save $200. Registration is available online here.

About International LiDAR Mapping Forum (ILMF)

International LiDAR Mapping Forum (ILMF) is a technical conference & exhibition focused on airborne, terrestrial and underwater LiDAR as well as emerging remote-sensing and data collection tools and technology used for applications including Asset Management; Civil Infrastructure; Coastal Zone Mapping; Emergency Services & Disaster Response; Land and Natural Resource Management; and Urban Modeling. The 2017 edition of the annual event will be held February 13-15, 2017 at the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center. For more information, visit lidarmap.org. ILMF is part of a network of events and media for the global geospatial market organized by Diversified Communications that includes Commercial UAV Expo Americas, Commercial UAV Expo Europe, Commercial UAV News, SPAR3D Expo & Conference and SPAR3D.com.

Contact:

Lee Corkhill, Diversified Communications

lcorkhill(at)divcom(dot)com; 1-207-842-5520
The Portuguese Cork Association (APCOR) and the California-based Cork Quality Council (CQC), and its member companies  Portocork, Amorim Cork America, Scott Laboratories, M.A. Silva Corks USA, Lafitte Cork & Capsule, and Cork Supply USA  have made a combined donation of $70,000 to assist the victims of the 2017 North Bay wild fires. In addition, the CQC has pledged a donation of 200 cork oak trees to be planted in support of reforestation efforts.

For decades, California wine producers and Portuguese cork producers have worked together to provide quality wine to tables around the world, building both business relationships and a strong, supportive community says APCOR president Joao Rui Ferreira. In the aftermath of these terrible fires, we remain united to ensure the well-being of our friends in California and to help protect the future of the California wine industry.

$70,000 in aid has been donated directly to the North Bay Fire Relief Fund, established by the Redwood Credit Union Community Fund, in partnership with Redwood Credit Union, the Press Democrat, and Senator Mike McGuire.

The Napa Valley Community Foundation and the Redwood Credit Union are both providing direct aid to those in need, says Peter Weber, Executive Director of the CQC.

Along with the monetary donation, the CQC has pledged to plant 200 cork oaks in areas affected by the fires.

Cork oaks have been grown successfully in California for over a century, since we enjoy a similar climate to that of the species native Mediterranean region, says Weber. We have a shared responsibility to protect the environment, especially following these devastating wildfires. Cork oaks make extremely positive contributions to the environment.

For more information about APCOR, visit http://www.apcor.pt and http://www.100percentcork.org. You can follow APCOR on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. For more information about the CQC, visit http://www.corkqc.com. For questions about APCOR, please contact Krisna Bharvani or Josh Zoland of Colangelo & Partners.

About APCOR:

The Portuguese Cork Association (APCOR) exists to promote natural cork and its products. APCOR is the employers association of the cork sector that represents, promotes and carries out research in the Portuguese cork industry. It was created in 1956 and is based in Santa Maria de Lamas, in the council of Santa Maria da Feira, at the heart of the cork industry around 30 kilometers from Porto, Portugals second largest city. Membership of the association is open to all companies operating in the fields of production, marketing or export of cork products. The organization advocates on behalf of the Portuguese cork industry worldwide and is the driving force of an industry based on tradition, innovation and sustainability.

About the CQC:

Based in Napa, California, the Cork Quality Council (CQC) is a nonprofit organization founded to promote education and improved quality assurance procedures for the wine and cork industries. The CQC is sponsored by select wine cork supplies, and its membership includes Portocork, Amorim Cork America, Scott Laboratories, M.A. Silva Corks USA, Lafitte Cork & Capsule, and Cork Supply USA.
A better idea: The contractor found a superior waterproofing solution to the originally specified membrane; PENETRON ADMIX was used for the foundation slab, retaining walls and underground walls. Ultimately, the PENETRON team was able to save the builder time and keep to the construction schedule. Downstairs, everything is dry and solid, just as specified! Past News Releases RSS Penetron Just What The Doctor...

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Ready for the Rain: PENETRON Helps...

Set to open in December 2017, the new Petronas Lubricants Global Research Center in Santena, Italy, is built on a waterproof below-grade concrete structure that features PENETRON crystalline technology to provide integral protection from high groundwater levels.

With the completion of the new 17,000 m2 global R&D Center in Santena, Petronas Lubricants International (PLI), the global lubricants manufacturing and marketing arm of Petronas, now has a global hub linking the companys technological innovation efforts in Asia, Africa, Latin America and North America.

As with this Santena project, water table conditions at construction sites  percolating water and hydrostatic pressure  can often pose unexpected challenges for the builder already dealing with scheduling and budgetary issues. Conventional membrane solutions, a widespread technology to keep concrete structures dry, demand lengthy and complex installation procedures involving more crack inducers for waterproofing injections, with many cold joints and post injections carried out by trained specialists.

Membranes are more established and better known than crystalline waterproofing technology, explains Enricomaria Gastaldo Brac, Director of PENETRON Italy. However, when Gilardi General Contracting, the project contractor at Santena, asked PENETRON Italy to come up with a better idea for their new facility, we had the ideal solution: an integral waterproofing admixture added to the concrete with self-healing capabilities.

Technically, the main challenge for Gilardi General Contracting was to ensure that the testing areas and laboratories  with delicate equipment and fuels running under stringent test conditions at all hours of the day  remain in an absolutely stable (i.e. dry) environment. Because the local ground water level posed a potential threat to the underground concrete structures and other crucial areas, protecting them from any form of water ingress was essential.

Subsequently, PENETRON ADMIX was added to treat over 3,700 m3 (4,400 cubic yards) of concrete used for the foundation slab, retaining walls, engine-testing areas, laboratories, and underground offices. PENEBAR SW swellable waterstop was used to seal the resulting construction joints.

Ultimately, the PENETRON team was able to save the builder time and keep to the construction schedule, adds Enricomaria Gastaldo Brac. Downstairs, everything is dry and solid, just as specified!

The Petronas Lubricants Global Research Center in Santena (near Turin, Italy) is home to hundreds of scientists, researchers and product development specialists. The main focus of the Santena Center is to test and optimize the performance of fuels and lubricants for greater engine and fuel efficiency and improved sustainability. The facility boasts state-of-the art laboratories and equipment for lubricants, as well as automotive and industrial technology testing capabilities and expertise.

The PENETRON Group is a leading manufacturer of specialty construction products for concrete waterproofing, concrete repairs and floor preparation systems. The Group operates through a global network, offering support to the design and construction community through its regional offices, representatives and distribution channels.

For more information on PENETRON waterproofing solutions, please visit penetron(dot)com or Facebook(dot)com/ThePenetronGroup, email CRDept(at)penetron(dot)com, or contact the Corporate Relations Department at 631-941-9700.
"This will be one of my priorities. In five years, I want the conditions to be met to return African heritage to Africa."

Delivered at the end of his speech, this sentence resonated especially in Benin, which in July last year called for France to return treasures taken during French colonial rule from the end of the 19th century.

President Patrice Talon -- who railed against French influence in its former colony during the election campaign that brought him to power last year -- made a formal request to France's foreign ministry in September.

He said the repatriation of such treasures would allow people "to get to know better our cultural and historic assets" and also allow the tiny west African nation to develop tourism as "an important cornerstone of the Beninese economy".

France ruled the country, then called Dahomey, until 1960, when it was granted independence and changed its name to Benin. Dahomey included the kingdom of the same name that dates back to about 1600.

France's stockpiling of treasures from Dahomey happened during colonial fighting between 1892 and 1894, but it was also carried out by missionaries who "robbed communities of what they considered to be charms", said Irenee Zevounou, Benin's ambassador to UNESCO, the UN's cultural body in Paris.

Most of the artefacts have not been documented, but Zevounou said he believed 4,500 to 6,000 items are in France, including in private collections.

Many are now on display in French museums, including the Quai Branly in Paris, which exhibits indigenous art from around the world.

'Historic break'

"This is the first time a French president has tackled the issue head-on and expressed his willingness for restitution," Marie-Cecile Zinsou, creator of the Zinsou Foundation in Cotonou, wrote afterwards on her Facebook page.

"The Ouagadougou speech may mark a major turning point in future proceedings," the French-Beninese art historian said.

Others who support Benin's call for the return of its treasures -- which include royal thrones, statues and swords -- have since spoken up as well.

Louis-Georges Tin, president of a coalition of associations representing black French people known as CRAN, has urged the UN Human Rights Council to participate in negotiations between the two countries.

In an editorial, Tin described Macron's speech as a "historic break".

"Indeed, it is a question of culture, but also a question of rights," wrote Tin, who regularly presses the French government over the issue.

But the main stumbling block is legal.

France's foreign ministry has relied on "the legal principles of inalienability and imprescriptibility... of public collections" in its refusal to return the cultural assets, which are now considered French treasures.

For Yves-Bernard Debie, who specialises in art sales law, Macron's speech broke with French legal tradition established in 1566 by the "Edict of Moulins".

"Since that time, the royal domain became public property, which is inalienable and imprescriptible," he said. "It is forbidden, except under rare exceptions, for the prince, king or president of the republic, to dispose of this property".

"Heads of state change, the public domain remains".

A restitution would require a change in the law but Macron has formalised negotiations and the Beninese authorities are expected to reiterate their demand shortly.
A group of FBI agents appeared to fire back at President Donald Trump after Trump slammed the agency on Sunday and said its reputation was "in Tatters."

"Every day, FBI Special Agents put their lives on the line to protect the American public from national security and criminal threats," Thomas O'Connor, the president of the advocacy group FBI Agents Association, said in a statement Sunday evening.

"Agents perform these duties with unwavering integrity and professionalism and a focus on complying with the law and the Constitution. This is why the FBI continues to be the premier law enforcement agency in the world. FBI Agents are dedicated to their mission; suggesting otherwise is simply false."

While the statement did not mention Trump by name, it came hours after Trump called the FBI's integrity into question in a series of early-morning tweets. Much of Trump's ire was directed at James Comey, the FBI director whom Trump fired in May.

In one tweet, Trump accused Comey of lying about a conversation the two had in February concerning Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser. The president denied Comey's sworn testimony from May in which Comey said Trump had asked him to drop an inquiry into Flynn.

"I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn," Trump tweeted on Sunday. "Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!"

He later added: "After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness."

On Friday, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador and cut a cooperation deal in the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into potential collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

On Saturday, news emerged that over the summer Mueller had dismissed from the investigation a top FBI agent who possibly exhibited an anti-Trump bias in text messages sent to a colleague. The agent had previously worked on the bureau's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.

"Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI 'agent's role in Clinton probe under review,'" Trump tweeted. "Led Clinton Email probe. @foxandfriends Clinton money going to wife of another FBI agent in charge."

"Now it all starts to make sense," he later added.

Comey himself also appeared to push back on Trump's claim Sunday evening, posting to Instagram a picture of FBI agents in the field accompanied by a quote from his June 8 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee:
President Donald Trump is publicly egging on GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah to run for reelection  a move that is certain to irk 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who is widely rumored to seek a bid for Hatch's seat should the seven-term senator opt against running in 2018.

Hatch, meanwhile, has become Trump's favorite senator of late, with the president making a Monday trip to Salt Lake City at Hatch's request. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Hatch was instrumental in securing the party's victory in passing tax reform legislation through the Senate this weekend. Trump on Monday moved to reduce the size of two major national monuments in Utah, a move the 83-year-old has sought for some time.

During his visit to Utah, Trump admitted that he was encouraging Hatch to run for reelection. Asked if he was trying to send a message to Romney that he doesn't want him to make a bid for Hatch's seat, which the senator has held since 1977, Trump said Romney's "a good man. Mitt's a good man."

Then at his speech alongside Hatch and other member's of Utah's congressional delegation, Trump began his address by calling Hatch "a very special man" and "a true fighter" whom he's "gotten to know ... very well."

"You meet fighters and you meet people that you thought were fighters but they're not so good at fighting," Trump said. "He's a fighter. We hope you will continue to serve your state and your country in the Senate for a very long time to come."

Hatch has quickly become one of Trumps top Senate allies

Trump's public posturing followed a Sunday story in Politico that outlined how the president was "going all out" to persuade Hatch to seek another term in office. Hatch, who in 2012 said he would not run again, has since signaled that he is interested in doing so but has not made a final decision. As Politico's Alex Isenstadt wrote, the push to get Hatch to run again was "aimed in no small part at keeping the presidents longtime nemesis, Mitt Romney, out of the Senate."

"Romney has been preparing to run for Hatchs seat on the long-held assumption that the 83-year-old would retire," Isenstadt wrote. "Yet Hatch, the longest-serving Republican senator in history, is now refusing to rule out another campaign  a circumstance Romneys infuriated inner circle blames squarely on the president."

He added that Trump has voiced his opinion to confidants that he doesn't much like the idea of a Sen. Romney.

"Hatch is a known entity for Trump and has been really good for the president for the most part," Kirk Jowers, a friend of Romney who formerly chaired his political action committee, told Politico. "He knows for a fact he's not going to get that with Romney. I don't know that he knows what he's going to get with Romney, but it's not going to be what he's got with Hatch."

Hatch has defended Trump at times when the majority of the GOP has flocked in the opposite direction  and Trump has taken notice. Just last week, when Trump was under fire for retweeting anti-Muslim videos posted by the fringe-right group Britain First, Hatch said Trump was one of the best presidents he's served under.

"Hes not afraid to make decisions," Hatch told reporters. "Hes not afraid to take on the big mouths around here."

Trump tweeted the clip soon after.
1. Amazon is reportedly talking to generic drugmakers. The company has apparently met with Sandoz, the generic drug unit of Novartis, and Mylan.

2. Twitter said it made a mistake defending Trump's anti-Muslim retweets  but said the videos are still OK. "We mistakenly pointed to the wrong reason we didnt take action on the videos from earlier this week," CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted.

4. Reddit and its users are ratcheting up their opposition to the FCC's imminent repeal of its net neutrality rules. On Friday, Reddit users by the dozens posted pictures of members of Congress who oppose the rules.

5. Apple is reportedly looking into designing its own power management chips. It's reportedly on track to start operations as early as next year, ditching its partner Dialog Semiconductor, whose shares were down 17% after the news broke.

6. Apple's head designer Jony Ive said he hears recent MacBook criticism."Absolutely, all of your feelings and feedback around the MacBook you use, we couldn't want to listen to more," Ive said earlier this week in Washington DC. "And we hear  boy, do we hear."

7. The crypto exchange Coinbase went down on Friday as bitcoin prices neared $11,000 (8,189). It was the second time this week the site was unavailable.

8. Apple CEO Tim Cook said developers have earned $17 billion (12.6 billion) from Apple's China App Store. Cook spoke at the fourth World Internet Conference yesterday.

9. Elon Musk plans to launch his red Tesla Roadster to Mars in January 2018, SpaceX reportedly confirmed. Musk said he made up the claim, but SpaceX said it was real.
In a jointly-signed statement by the three SRC Presidents, the students explained that they have been frustrated for so long over what they described as neglect by the government.

The students demonstrated last week over the development, asking the Akufo-Addo government to fulfil a campaign promise he made to them to have their allowances restored.

According to them, they have gone through all the necessary requirements for their allowances to be paid.

The students from the three campuses of the School of Health said that even though they have submitted their E-zwich and other valid identification cards as well as their account numbers, none of them have received their allowances.

They said that they do not understand why they have been neglected by the government although trainees from the various nursing training and colleges of health have received allowances for September and October, after the announcement that the allowances have been restored.
Nabih al-Wahsh was sentenced by an Egyptian court on Saturday in absentia as he failed to show up in court after he was granted bail.

According to africanspotlight.com, the lawyer had said during a television programme that it was a national duty to rape women who wear tight and ripped jeans.

READ MORE: Undeniable reasons why defilement of youngsters cannot stop in Ghana

Lawyer Nabih al-Wahsh was charged with "publicly inciting to flout the law" and "spreading with malice reports and statements meant to perturb public order... and harm the public interest" after his comments had sparked backlash and a complaint was made to the national prosecutor.
The controversial politician was apparently unhappy about the contemporary Ghanaian womens mode of dressing and the sort of artificial things they do to their bodies, all in the name fashion.

She was very particular about wearing artificial nails and bleaching the skin to look different from their original appearance.

READ MORE:Incitement

Akua Donkor advised women to avoid altering their bodies, saying God would be excited if women appreciate what they have.

She added that In the past, other race even appreciated the hairdo of Africans. Women hair was very beautiful and appreciable. However, Madam Donkor said today, they all want to be like the Europeans. How can it be possible? She asked. She emphasised that the so-called modern fashion doesnt please God.

Akua Donkor did not mince her words when she said Most ladies of today wear fake nails as if they are tigers. Human beings have turned into tigers.
The president, during a meeting with visiting French president, Emmanuel Macron last Thursday, said: We want to build a value-added, industrialised economy with a modernised agriculture, which is neither victim nor pawn of the world economic order.

According to Akufo-Addo, this is the way to develop healthy relations between our two countries, and put Ghana at the high end of the value chain in the global marketplace, and create jobs for the teeming masses of Ghanaians, particularly the youth. Our vision is to build a free, prosperous, independent country, a Ghana Beyond Aid.

Speaking on the development on Accra-based Joy FM, the Chairman of the IEA Dr. Charles Mensa praised President Akufo-Addo for coming out boldly to speak against the old economic order of the world.

Its good that he gathered the courage to say it but what he needs to do is to dismantle the system, he said.

He added that since some of the European countries tend to use Ministers and appointees of African countries to push their agenda, the president must be able to influence the thinking of his appointees to enable them to refrain from the old way of doing business with the West.
A letter sighted by Accra-based Citi FM and signed by the CEO of the company, James Eric Antwi, stated that contracts of workers have been terminated effective November 30, 2017.

We write to serve you this days notice of termination of your employment contract effective November 30, 2017.

In accordance with the termination clause of the existing agreement between you and the company, the company is formally exercising its right to the said agreement.

The letter also asked the dismissed workers to submit all their IDs and other company assets in their possession to the administration.

It added that, On your last day of work, kindly liaise with the Human Resource and Administration Department to submit all company assets in your possession, including but not limited to ID cards, equipment, cell phones, work products (electronic and paper files) etc.

Upon receipt of these items, the payment of any outstanding amounts as stated due will be authorized.

The reason for the dismissal is not known. Industry insiders have said that it could be due to the recent incident involving one of the companys aircrafts or operational challenges facing the airline.

READ ALSO: Airline appoints Ghanaian as Chief Pilot

It is also unclear how many workers have been dismissed, however, sources say top management, flight and grounds staff have all been affected.

Starbow is one of the two domestic airline companies operating in Ghana.
A video that shows African migrants sold as slaves in Libya sparked a global outcry. It has come to light that hundreds of Africans are being auctioned in modern-day slave markets for $400 per person as Libya is the main transit hub for illegal immigrants and refugees seeking to reach Europe.

A video published by CNN shows two men stand in the dark negotiating with an auctioneer to buy migrants.

In an interview with Dr Etse Sikanku on Class 91.3 FM's World Affairs on Friday, December 1, Dr Kambudzi revealed that the AU is interested in finding out the reality on the ground in order to address concerns of the slave trade.

"Our Chairperson has taken robust measures. He has decided to deploy a delegation of the AU Commission to Libya to establish the fact and make recommendations, he said.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and other global figures have condemned the slavery describing it as gross and scandalous abuses of human rights.

Others including Member of Parliament for North Tongu and Ranking member of Parliaments Foreign Affairs committee, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has however called for a joint military intervention to free the black African slaves being held captive.

Dr Kambudzi, who was not enthused about the development blamed it partly on the overthrow and murder of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

"We allowed people outside Africa to come and destroy a country that was doing well. Libya used to pay the contributions for so many African countries to the AU. Now it can't," he stated.

Six years after the overthrow of Mr Gaddafi, Libya is still a failed state with heavy presence of militants and other violent groups perpetuating heinous crimes.
According to him, this would complement the efforts of European navy and patrol agencies.

"This regional force will be in Central Africa, Southern Africa, Western Africa, Northern Africa and Eastern Africa. This is a serious problem. The force is almost ready," he said in an interview with Dr Etse Sikanku on Class 91.3 FM's World Affairs on Friday, December 1.

His comment comes in the wake of a video that shows African migrants being sold as slaves in Libya which has sparked a global outcry. It has come to light that hundreds of Black Africans are being auctioned in modern-day slave markets for $400 per person as Libya is the main transit hub for illegal immigrants and refugees seeking to reach Europe.

The footage published by CNN shows two men stand in the dark negotiating with an auctioneer to buy migrants.

Dr Kambudzi, who was not enthused about the latest development in the Northern African country said the military force will observe and monitor the flow of human traffickers and report back on what is happening.

He said an African managed force will help the AU to get first-hand knowledge of the situation on the ground rather than depend on western sources.

"To tell you the truth, we don't know as Africa, exactly what is happening [in relation to] the situation in Libya and the Mediterranean. We don't know the exact situation. We are learning this from Western media, from global TV," he stated.
He was reacting to the ongoing slave trade in Libya where over one-hundred Ghanaian migrants have been flown back home.

The Minister said that the youth can succeed even if the devil is President of Ghana.

He argued that the Ghanaian youth must change their mindset and develop better ways to succeed instead of resolving to travel to Europe with their life-long savings.

A total of 127 Ghanaian detainees returned to Ghana on Wednesday (November 29, 2017) night following revelations of human auctioning and trade by fellow blacks in Libya.

The returnees included a woman, a physically challenged man, and 2 children.

The government paid about 400 cedis per person for their transportation back home. Chilling stories of dehumanizing treatment ranged from robbery to murder.
Sam Pynes popularity has soared with this appointment, he has fans all over the place now. As we prepare ourselves for the extraordinary National Conference later this month, I can assure you that therell be lots of meat to eat when we meet with Sam Pyne at the helm of affairs. Even when were reciting the Lords prayer we only ask God for two things, to give us our daily bread and to forgive us our trespasses. So when you have food like Sam Pyne has, then he must be okay. Its a good appointment that has been made.
Speaking at a Parliamentary Constituency Forum at Asante-Bekwai, in the Ashanti Region, the Majority Leader in Parliament Osei-Kyei Mensah-Bonsu said the level of ignorance about the core functions of parliamentarians amongst the average Ghanaian was worrying.

In most cases, Members of Parliament (MPs) have been unnecessarily misunderstood and attacked for not championing the cause of socio-economic development in their constituencies.

The august house has over the years lost some very experienced and knowledgeable personalities as their constituents agitate for their removal for not spearheading the development of their areas. This is unfortunate, he added.

He added that parliamentarians would continue to build consensus on issues that affected the interest of the people.

This is a major reason why Parliament in partnership with the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) to promote public understanding of the duties and responsibilities of parliamentarians.
In a ceremony earlier Monday, President Raul Castro, accompanied by vice president and likely successor Miguel Diaz-Canel, laid a single white rose in front of the white granite boulder of his tomb.

The ceremonies wrapped up nine days of sober commemoration of the first anniversary of Castro's death.

His death aged 90 on November 25 last year was followed by nine days of national mourning during which his ashes passed through the country as millions of Cubans lined the roads.
"We believe that if there is a problem in the region, it can be solved through dialogue," Rouhani said in a speech at the opening of a port in the southeastern city of Chabahar, broadcast by state television.

"We do not need arms nor the intervention of foreign powers. We can solve our problems ourselves through unity and dialogue."

Rouhani's comments follow an escalation in the bitter rivalry between Shiite-ruled Iran and Saudi Arabia's Sunni monarchy.

The two powers back opposing groups throughout the region -- notably in Syria and Yemen -- and Saudi leaders have lately stepped up efforts to counter Iran's growing influence, raising fears of further conflict.

But Rouhani said recent victories against the Islamic State group opened the way for the Middle East to move past its reputation for "war and conflict between Shiite and Sunni... and the presence and interventions of foreign powers".

Saudi Arabia and Iran's critics in the West have accused Tehran of seeking to dominate the region at the expense of its neighbours.
According to Zimbabwe Today, an anonymous family source said Grace Mugabe has not been happy since her 93-year-old husband resigned as President of the country.

Shes been very upset ever since Mugabe gave up to hand over power to his ousted Vice-president. She wanted a role as a First Lady, not as a woman who acts as subordinate. She is also not prepared to leave her luxurious lifestyle to live in a home of captivity. She thinks that the decor is despicable and beyond repair.

Meanwhile Judiciary spokesman, Lawrence Brown has confirmed divorce proceedings were in motion and if both parties agree, they could go their separate ways in about a month.

Grace Mugabe and Robert Mugabe have been married for 21 years. Grace was working as the secretary of then President Mugabe when they met.

After Robert Mugabes first wife died, Grace married the President and immediately became First Lady. She remained First Lady for 21 years until he husband was ousted last month.

READ ALSO: Ousted VP to be sworn in as Zimbabwe president

Sources close to the Mugabe family confirmed that Grace Mugabe has filed for divorce. She reportedly said she wants to enjoy some peaceful life after her husband was ousted.
President JuanManuel Santos said Restrepo's resignation would mean a shake-up in the government's negotiating team as both sides seek to extend the ceasefire beyond January 9.

"We are going to renew the team and continue the process, to see if we can resume the ceasefire and continue with the negotiation," Santos said.

Santos is pushing to sign a deal with the ELN to follow on from the success of a December 2016 peace deal with the South American country's other main rebel movement, the FARC.

Restrepo -- who said he is stepping down for personal reasons -- admitted his 18 months at the helm of the peace negotiations had not been easy but he believed progress has been made.

The ELN said on Twitter that it hoped the renewal of the government team would bring momentum to the peace process.

In a statement, the group said the ceasefire deal was at risk even though the parties had managed to sustain it and deliver humanitarian aid to the regions of greatest conflict.

It said the government violated the agreement when nine farmers involved in coca production were killed by security forces during a protest, and in two military attacks on ELN camps.

It also denounced what it said were attacks on imprisoned guerrillas.

The National Liberation Army, or ELN, began the historic truce with Colombia's armed forces on October 1, after half a century of fighting.

FARC and the ELN were formed in 1964 to fight for land rights and protect poor rural communities.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed in a car bomb attack on October 16, was one of the Mediterranean island's most prominent public figures thanks to a widely-read blog she used to campaign against corruption.

Her most explosive reports included allegations that members of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's inner circle benefited from kickbacks. But the 53-year-old also focused attention on alleged murky behaviour by prominent opposition and business figures.

Speaking to reporters, the prime minister said a joint team of police, military and security services made the arrests following a near seven-week investigation carried out with help from the FBI, Europol and Finnish intelligence.

It also turned an unflattering spotlight on the EU country's problems with corruption and organised crime, both seen as having flourished against the backdrop of a booming economy.

PM's biggest adversary

Muscat announced the arrest of eight of the suspects in a statement and then added in a tweet, that a further two had been detained.

The statement said the suspects had been arrested on the basis of "reasonable suspicion in connection with involvement in the murder" of Caruana Galizia.

All the suspects were Maltese nationals, it said, noting that some were "known to police".

Under Maltese law, they can be interrogated for 48 hours before a decision on whether to prosecute them has to be made.

Muscat would not divulge if the suspects included the alleged perpetrators of the assassination, or those suspected of commissioning it.

Nor would he comment on the suspected motive, saying he did not want to go into any detail for fear of prejudicing a potential trial.

The premier, who had described the slain journalist as his biggest adversary, reiterated his commitment to bringing her killers to justice.

"As I stated as soon as I learnt about this barbaric act, we will leave no stone unturned to get this case solved," he said.

"I am committed to doing so more than ever."

'One-woman Wikileaks'

Muscat's Labour Party government had offered a one million euro ($1.2 million) reward for information leading to a conviction of Caruana Galizia's killers.

Her sons had denounced the reward as a publicity stunt and called on Muscat to resign over the failings in the police and judiciary that contributed to their mother's death and his attempts to silence her through legal suits when she was still alive.

The family have repeatedly expressed concern that her death will be explained away as a criminal murder and that any connection with her revelations about the island's political elite will be swept under the carpet.

In her final post on Running Commentary, the widely-read blog she had written since 2008, Caruana Galizia voiced despair over the cronyism and sleaze she saw engulfing her island nation.

"There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate," she wrote minutes before she died in a blast so powerful her car was blown to pieces and her body was catapulted into a nearby field.

Friends subsequently revealed that she had feared she would be assassinated but had been reluctant to accept police protection that would have restricted her reporting activity.

A significant part of that had involved exposing what the massive Panama Papers data leak revealed about corruption at the highest levels of Maltese government.

Earlier this year, online news site Politico included the journalist on a list of 28 public figures "shaping, shaking and stirring Europe," describing her as "a one-woman WikiLeaks".
One hallmark of the American Dream  the single-family home  is dying as we know it.

And it's for good reason: The US needs more affordable housing.

"Around the country, many fast-growing metropolitan areas are facing a brutal shortage of affordable places to live, leading to gentrification, homelessness, even disease," Conor Dougherty writes in The New York Times.

The solution has long been to build upwards, erecting cheap condos and apartments in urban centers. But construction can no longer keep up with demand in many metros, so city planners are looking to single-family neighborhoods, valuable for their sprawl and low-density, for space to build out.

"It's an enormous problem, and it impacts the very course of America's future," Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard who studies cities, told the Times.

In California, the exemplar of the country's affordable housing crisis, Governor Jerry Brown passed more than a dozen new bills related to housing in September, many of which are aimed at speeding up new construction, especially in suburban neighborhoods.

In metros like the Bay Area and Los Angeles, single-family neighborhoods make up 90% of the housing stock, according to Issi Romem, BuildZoom's chief economist. "Single-family neighborhoods are where the opportunity is, but building there is taboo," Romem told the Times.

One way California is pushing new construction in the suburbs is by making it easier for homeowners to build an accessory dwelling unit (ADU), or "granny flat," in their backyard.

A bill passed in January 2017 put the state in charge of ADU construction and removed some of the red tape for approval imposed by individual cities. Since then, some homeowners have jumped at the chance to build an ADU on their property, to house extended family or earn additional income from renters. Others, meanwhile, have staunchly opposed the legislation, saying it would erode the character and quality of single-family neighborhoods, and accomplish nothing in the way of housing creation.

But experts, like Dana Cuff, the founding director of CityLAB and a professor of architecture and urban design and planning at UCLA, said ADUs can help create the type of "postsuburban city" America needs.

The modern household no longer comprises the breadwinning dad, the stay-at-home mom, and 2.5 kids, Cuff previously told Business Insider. Instead, college graduates are moving back in, and homeowners need cash flow from renters and space for nannies, caretakers, and aging parents.

"There's just an infinite number of ways our housing should be made more flexible for our complete lives," she said, and building additional units on single-family lots "get the ball rolling."

Cuff's research suggests that ADUs are feasible for 5% to 10% of the 500,000 single-family lots in Los Angeles, enough to make a dent in Mayor Eric Garcetti's goal for 100,000 new housing units by 2021.

But while ADUs may be a solution for boosting housing supply in the long term, it's not a quick fix, she says.
A study was conducted by TL.com to trace the source of funding of these tech-startups.

Here are some of the top venture capitalists to consider while pitching your business idea

Singularity is a private investment company led by Issam Darwish, founder and CEO of IHS Towers.

Singularity is noted to have a vision for investing in and supporting dynamic entrepreneurs in disruptive technology, media and telecommunications industries.

The firm has a major focus on early and growth stages business and provides strategic valuable network and experience to help them achieve scale.

Since a decade ago, Singularity had invested at least of $50,000 in some notable tech businesses in Africa, some of which include Asoko Insights, PayStack, mPharma, Sliide, Maliyo Games, Flutterwave and SmileID.

TLcom Capital is a venture capital company found in 1999 with investments in telecommunications, media and technology companies in Europe, Isreal and Sub-Saharan Africa.

TLcom primary is also an early and expansion stage venture capitalists with targets for mobile; digital media; internet protocol (IP) technologies and services; broadband based network architecture and service platforms; semiconductors and materials; and web based applications, services and technologies.

The total asset under management of TLcom is estimated to be more than 200 million in some African tech-startups such as Movirtu and Upstream.

DraperDarkFlow is a new early venture capital fund that invests in African entrepreneurs and business with potentials to impact the world.

Launched in Silicon Valley this year by Tim Draper and Toro Orero, DraperDarkFlow invests between $100,000 - $200,000 in startups with initial traction.

Some of the African tech-startups under the DDF portfolio are SweepSouth, Paystack, Spreebie, VugaPay, Swiftly, TuseApp, Zagace and SliideAirtime.

Spark is a Nigerian based venture capitalist with a focus on building idea to fruition and small tech businesses to big companies.

The company focuses on Nigerian based tech-startups and consider Nigeria as the main gateway to the heart of Africa.

Spark has at least $10,000 investments in some of the leading tech-startups in Nigeria, which include FlutterWave, Hotels.ng, ToLet.ng and Nanovas.

TVCLabs, a Technology Business Incubation Company based in Lagos, Nigeria. The incubation was founded by Tomi Davies and focused on early-stage tech startups.
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee, issued one of the harshest rebukes by a prominent Republican of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who is facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct with teenagers.

"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," he wrote. "No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity."

Moore fired back at Romney minutes later, suggesting that the former GOP standard-bearer is a member of the elite and should be purged from the party.

"Either @MittRomney has lost his courage or he doesnt care about truth anymore. Sad day! Americas reawakening was led by @realDonaldTrump, not you Mitt. #DefeatTheElite #DrainTheSwamp," Moore wrote.

"Innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections. I believe Leigh Corfman. Her account is too serious to ignore. Moore is unfit for office and should step aside," Romney tweeted.

Romney's statement came just hours after President Donald Trump officially endorsed Moore.

"Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama," he tweeted. "We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more."

Moore broadcasted the president's endorsement on Monday afternoon, claiming Trump gave him his "full support."

"'Go get 'em, Roy!' - President Trump," he wrote. "Just got off the phone with President Trump who offered his full support and said he needs a fighter to help him in the US Senate. I look forward to fighting alongside the President to #MAGA!"

Moore has enjoyed continued support from Steve Bannon, Trump's former top White House strategist, who is helping recruit and support far-right candidates in the 2018 midterm elections.

Other Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have appeared to reverse course over whether Moore should drop out of the Senate race. Despite calling for the GOP nominee to step aside last month, saying that he believed the women's stories, McConnell refused to say on Sunday whether Moore belonged in the Senate.
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to federal agents about his conversations in December with the former Russian ambassador  and one of President Donald Trump's first reactions was to attack the FBI as a "rigged" agency that had "ruined" Flynn's life while letting Democrat Hillary Clinton off the hook.

"So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday 'interrogation' with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times...and nothing happens to her?" Trump tweeted on Saturday night. "Rigged system, or just a double standard?"

He continued his attacks on Sunday, characterizing the bureau's investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state as "tainted" because of text messages sent last year by one of the agents in charge of that probe that appeared to show an anti-Trump skew.

The president also laid into James Comey, the former FBI director whom he blamed for leaving the bureau's reputation "in Tatters" after a "phony and dishonest Clinton investigation."

Speaking to reporters Monday morning, Trump again said that Flynn had been treated unfairly.

"I feel badly for General Flynn," Trump said. "Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI, and nothing happened to her."

He added: "She lied many times; nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and they ruined his life. It's very unfair."

Scott Olson, a recently retired FBI agent who spent 20 years at the bureau and specialized in counterintelligence, acknowledged that "Comey did more damage than he realized or intended by how he handled things last year."

But Olson said he thought Trump was "actively keeping a narrative alive to counter the news coming out of Mueller's investigation," referring to Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election and whether any of Trump's associates colluded with Moscow.

"And I think he'll continue to latch onto any and all available targets to support his counter-narrative," Olson said.

We have a couple of surprises left

Trump's suggestion that the FBI has sought to protect Clinton was undermined last November by Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who was a Trump campaign surrogate and close confidant.

A few days before the 2016 election, Giuliani indicated in an interview with Fox News that someone within or close to the FBI had leaked him information about the Clinton email investigation because they were "outraged" by the way Comey had handled it. Giuliani also suggested that he and the Trump campaign intended to weaponize that information before Election Day.

"We have a couple of surprises left," he said.

In another interview three days before Election Day, Giuliani claimed there was "a revolution going on" inside the FBI that had reached "a boiling point" over Comey's decision to close the investigation without recommending criminal charges.

The reason for the leaks to Giuliani  and to multiple media outlets in the days leading up to the election  was that "the FBI is Trumpland," one agent told The Guardian last November. Some agents, the person added, had openly discussed voting for Trump.

"The reason why they're leaking is they're pro-Trump," another unnamed agent told the publication, adding that Clinton was "the Antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel."

Olson argued that "the bureau is neither anti-Trump nor anti-Hillary."

"All political opinions are well represented in the ranks of FBI employees," he said. "And the debates over coffee and lunch are the same as anywhere else."

Asha Rangappa, an FBI counterintelligence special agent who served under President George W. Bush, largely echoed that assessment.

"There are people across the political spectrum, but by and large I'd say it is a politically conservative organization," she said.

"It's worth noting that the FBI has objectively investigated admins of both parties  Iran-Contra, Whitewater, Lewinsky, Valerie Plame leak, etc. All of the presidents in these investigations let them take their course," she added. "The last president to vilify the FBI was Nixon."

Now Mueller knows what the truth is

That Trump has defended Flynn while vilifying the FBI signals a dual purpose for his attacks, experts say: undermine the bureau, and alert Flynn that he could be rewarded with a pardon if he limits what he tells Mueller, who is also investigating whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice when he fired Comey in May.

But taking his feud with the FBI and defense of Flynn into the court of public opinion may backfire for the president. Trump's tweet on Saturday showed why  it seemed to indicate that he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when he asked Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn, raising more questions about whether Trump tried to obstruct justice.

The White House scrambled to clean up the mess Trump's tweet created, claiming hours later that Trump's lawyer John Dowd had crafted the tweet unartfully.

Legal experts were incredulous.

"Most lawyers I know are so careful about what they write that they triple-check every letter they send out," said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor. "We're supposed to believe Trump's lawyer wrote a false tweet about the Mueller investigation and sent it out through the president's account?"

A pardon, moreover, would essentially be useless at this point, said Matt Miller, a former Department of Justice spokesman  and Flynn is most likely aware of that.

"It would've worked before he started cooperating because Mueller could then compel Flynn's testimony and he could just claim not to remember anything," Miller said on Monday. "But now Mueller knows what the truth is."

The truth, court documents filed by Mueller's office on Friday say, is that Flynn had spoken to Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the US, about sanctions on Russia during the presidential transition but told federal agents that the subject never came up.
Two of President Donald Trump's former top campaign aides said in an upcoming tell-all book on the election run that the then-Republican candidate once abandoned an aide at a McDonald's because his custom burger order was taking too long.

It just so happened that the former aide Trump reportedly left behind, Sam Nunberg, was the same operative who would later claim to invent what was a viral story about Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fetching Trump's McDonald's order.

In the upcoming book "Let Trump Be Trump," which was provided to The Washington Post ahead of its release, authors and top former Trump campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie wrote that Nunberg was intentionally left behind at a McDonald's because his custom order was taking too long.

"Leave him," Trump said. "Let's go."

In June 2016, The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza wrote in a parenthetical: "One Republican told me that a friend of his on the Trump campaign used Snapchat to send him a video of Christie fetching Trump's McDonald's order."

Nunberg claimed that he invented that tale to embarrass the governor. He made the claim in a lengthy Politico story on Christie last month .

"The sad reality is that it was believable," he said, laughing.

Lizza later tweeted that Nunberg had not been his source for the anecdote, and said Nunberg's claim that he invented the story was "incorrect."

At the time, Brian Murray, a Christie spokesman, called the McDonald's anecdote a "completely invented scenario" in an email exchange with Business Insider.
The CEOs of the two most valuable technology companies spoke over the weekend at a controversial event in China.

Both Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai appeared at China's World Internet Conference, a gathering the Chinese government reportedly uses to promote its strategy of tightly controlling what's available online in the country.

Cook gave a keynote address on Sunday. "The theme of this conference  developing a digital economy for openness and shared benefits  is a vision we at Apple share," Cook said, according to Bloomberg. "We are proud to have worked alongside many of our partners in China to help build a community that will join a common future in cyberspace."

Pichai didn't give a speech, but he did appear on a panel with Xiaomi's founder, Lei Jun. "Technology is giving opportunities at a global scale, driving interconnectedness and cooperation, and I think it's a big trend and I think it's almost irreversible at this point," Pichai said.

Though the two star CEOs reportedly did not make remarks that touched directly on contentious policy issues, such as Apple's decision to pull VPN apps from its App Store under Chinese government pressure, or the fact that Google does not operate its services in mainland China, their appearance at the fourth annual conference lends legitimacy to the controversial event.

A top Communist Party official called for tight control of the internet while Cook was in the audience, according to The New York Times.

One opinion article described Cook as having attended to "kiss the ring." Apple registered $9.8 billion in sales in China for the most recent quarter that figures are available, just under 20% of Apple's overall revenue.

Questions from Congress

The sensitivity of the World Internet Conference is illustrated by a question posed to Apple and Cook by Sens. Ted Cruz and Patrick Leahy earlier this year.

The senators pointedly asked:

"Since 2014, the Chinese government has held a World Internet Conference. Charles Smith, the co-founder of the non-profit censorship monitoring website GreatFire, described foreign guests of the Conference as 'complicit actors in the Chinese censorship regime and are lending legitimacy to Lu Wei, the Cyberspace Administration of China and their heavy-handed approach to Internet governance. They are, in effect, helping to put all Chinese who stand for their constitutional right to free speech behind bars.' What role, if any, has Apple or its employees had with respect to the World Internet Conference in China? Does Apple support the conference?"

Apple's vice president for public policy, Cynthia Hogan, replied in a November 21 letter:

"Apple is not a financial sponsor of the conference. Apple has participated in the World Internet Conference in the past, and Apple employees, including our CEO, will participate in the future. We are convinced that continued engagement is the surest way to effect change. We believe in the free flow of information everywhere, and we remain committed to this ongoing effort in all countries in which we operate, across a complicated world."

Less than three weeks later, Cook would be the surprise keynote speaker at the World Internet Conference's opening ceremony.
The Bishop of Lagos West Anglican Communion announced this in a recent interview with The Nation, where he discussed the tithing issue and more ahead of the Dioceses 18th anniversary.

What the Anglican church uses tithes for

According to him, his church is different from others because of how tithes are used. Bishop Odedeji stated that the church uses tithes for the gospel, not for its priests.

In his words, The difference between our set up and other denominations is that the tithe is not for the priest. The tithe is for the church. In fact, most of our churches, the highest income they have is from the tithes. If I have to take the tithe of this cathedral, we will not be able to maintain the premises because the bulk of the money that my Cathedral collects is from tithes.

... So, it might be rocking some other denominations but not the Anglican Church or the Orthodox churches because the tithe is for God and the tithe is being used for the gospel. The tithe is being used for evangelism.

As a bishop of this Diocese, Im not entitled to the tithes of the people. I dont touch it. They dont give it to me because it is exclusively for the use of the church.

If it is a one-man church, everything comes to you; your wife is probably the treasurer. It is not like that in the Anglican Church. In the Anglican Church, three people sign a cheque. How does the money belong to the pastor? So the Anglican Church is so different. And that is why we thank God that we have been in existence for more than 150 years and we are still very solid.

Where does the church stand on tithing?

Bishop Odedeji also revealed the churchs stance on tithing. During the interview, he urged people to stop arguing because paying ones 10 percent is scriptural.

In his words, Ive listened to a lot of debates going on in the recent past and Im of the opinion that the bible is very clear And tithe is scriptural.

It is biblical and the condition is there that if you want God to rebuke devourers and we must allow food to be in the store.

My stand on tithing is that whatever is scriptural should not be open to debate. It is unfortunate.

ALSO READ: What popular pastors say about tithing and giving

Primate of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion weighs in

In November, 2017, Nicholas Okoh, the Primate of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion also shared his thoughts on the controversial tithing issue.

His grace stated that it is not by force to pay your 10% because God does not need tithe to survive. He explained that this is exactly why Christians that do not pay their tithes are not cursed.

In his words, God does not compel us to go, he only makes us willing to go.

Tithing is a very ancient tradition, Abraham paid tithe to Melchizedek and people have become transfixed to that idea till today, but in the New Testament, giving modalities have other options.

One, it says, set aside something every week which you think would be handsome for the glory of God and give that. Whether that is 10 percent or whatever percent, I dont know, but the instruction is, set aside something every week.

Then, there is the gift required to be given by all; the first concept is that your life is a living sacrifice. A sacrifice is something you offer and withdraw your hand, that means the Christian offers his life totally and the totality of his training, his money and everything he has belonged to God.

Therefore, the question of saying, God take 10 percent, I would keep 90 percent does not arise. Let me give an example: If you are a tither and you give 10 percent to the Church, and after giving this percentage, somebody is very sick, and you still have your 90 percent, will you close your eyes to the persons need?You see, that is one of the weaknesses of tithing if you follow it mechanically.
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The academic pace of the students was fraught with accreditation issues which prompted the former Minister of Education, Prof Ruqayyatu Rufa'i to recommend the dissolution of science courses in UNIABUJA.

In 2012, the Minister announced that medicine, agriculture, veterinary medicine and engineering courses in the university be suspended following panel recommendations.

This announcement led to agitations from the students asking the government to transfer them to another school.

Fortunately for the students, the panel's report was not implemented and that saved their academic pursuit from being disrupted midway. But then, the university still had to ensure the courses are accredited to authenticate the certificate of its graduates.

The University secured the accreditation and 18 out of the 30 pioneer student finally graduated in November 2017. The remaining 12 failed their final exam and would have to wait till next year for their graduation.

Ekiti State University (EKSU) is battling with the same accreditation problem as the medical students of the University's College of Medicine remain stagnant in their academic pursuit in the school.

Expressing their frustration, in October, the students flooded Twitter Nigeria with #stagnanteksumed to announce their plights and beg the government of Ekiti State to find a solution to the accreditation problem inhibiting their graduation.

The students lamented that the Ekiti State University College of Medicine has been stagnant for years saying they have spent eight years and they are still in 400 levels.

Ekiti State University started operation in 2009, the pioneer students of the College of Medicine are still in 400 Level according to the students and their course of study has still not been accredited.

When will EKSU produce medical graduates?

How many years more will it take for the university to get it College of Medicine accredited? How many more years will it take the students who have been stuck in 400 level for years to graduate?

These are the questions neither the university management nor the students can answer but UNIABUJA has set 12 years infamous standard for schools that start a program without accreditation.

Will EKSU medical students spend more than 12 years to study medicine? Only time can tell.
The Joint Action Committee, JAC comprising of Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU, Non-Academic Staff Union, NASU and National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT has directed its members in all universities across the country to resume their suspended strike.

In a letter to all branch Chairmen titled: Directives to immediately resume the suspended strike was signed by the three unions under JAC.

The union stated in the letter that the strike was necessitated because Federal Government did not clarify the criteria for the disbursement of the N23 billion it approved for the universities to settle earned allowances arrears in October.

Complaining about the sharing formula, the union said that about N15.10 billion was allocated to ASUU, while about N7.929 billion was allocated to the non-teaching staff unions comprising SSANU, NAAT and NASU.

ALSO READ: 5 courses Nigerian parents were crazy about in the 80s

The letter reads in part:

In the said letter, the Federal Government was given seven (7) days to explain the criteria for the said allocation and do the needful. The deadline has elapsed without any response from the Federal Government of Nigeria.

In view of the above, therefore, you are hereby directed to resume the suspended indefinite strike action as from 12 midnight, Sunday, December 3, 2017. During this period, the strike shall be total and comprehensive.

Further to this, all our branches are to convene a congress of Joint Action Committee by 8:00 am on Monday, December 4, 2017, to commence the strike immediately.

The three union group have however commenced their industrial action and universities across the country have been thrown into another round of crisis again.
Jason Momoa, who played Khal Drogo in the first season, recently visited the set of "Game of Thrones" in Belfast to spend time with his former showrunners and castmates.

During his stay, he learnt some spoilers which he wouldn't give away, but is very excited about.

Just knowing how amazing this season is going to be Momoa told EW.

Its going to be the greatest thing thats ever aired on TV. Its going to be unbelievable. Its going to f up a lot of people. And it was a bummer because Im a huge fan and I didnt want to know whats going on. I was like, Damn, I didnt want to know that!

Earlier, when photos of Momoa on set appeared online, there were reports that the character who passed away at the end of season one will return for the show's finale.

I just showed up to see [producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss] and I just happened to see people on set, Momoa says.

I havent been over there in a long time. You just want to see your friends and you end up make headlines going, Drogos back! and Im like, Hes dead! He cant come back, it wouldnt work.'

Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow in "Game of Thrones" knows how the series will end, and it got him teary.

Speaking on BBCs The One Show, the actor revealed that he is really emotional about the final season of the show, saying that he cried after reading the final episode.

The final season of "Game of Thrones" is still months away - 2019 is actually a very long time - but there have been interesting spoilers to keep fans going until then.

A recent photo shared by a fan reveals that contrary to what Season 7 finale might have hinted, fans haven't seen the last of Tormund GiantBane, whom we last saw on the run from the White Walkers after they destroyed the wall and invaded the North.

Ellie Kendrick, who plays Meera Reed on the show, recently confirmed that she probably wont be back in Season Eight.
Mr. Obi told newsmen at the Conference on Networking with the Giants organised by African Youths Entrepreneurs at the Oriental Hotel in Lagos, that Nigerian leaders must deploy concerted efforts in tackling the Libyan issue.

He said that such tragedy called on Nigerians to have a re-think about the trajectory the country was headed to.

If you listened to my speech, you will see a deliberate comparison of Nigeria with other countries of relative development trajectory in the eighties and how those countries have all overtaken us

What we are witnessing in Libya is part of the consequences of that failure. Such occurrences should be utilised by us to advise ourselves as a country that we must wake up and put this country on the right path to avoid implosion in the future, Obi said.

Speaking further, Obi called on those saddled with the responsibility of leadership to immediately commence real governance by doing those things that other nations did that took them out of the woods, such as savings for the future and reduction of the cost of governance.
The suspect who also goes by the name Kelvin was reportedly arrested alongside his Indian accomplice, Abbas Mustan Seer Zanjeer Barwala, who hails from Mumbai but lives in Adugodi, following a tip-off.

It was gathered that various narcotic substances were seized from the suspects in a raid in the apartment they used as their hideout.

Indian Times reports that the police received a tip-off about two people supplying narcotic substances to college students and software professionals and during the raid on the apartment, police seized 5 grams of crack Cocaine, 4.2 kg of Marijuana and 120 gram of charas.

A spokesperson for the police who confirmed the arrest of Ndubuisi, said:

Ndubisi had come to India on a student visa which had expired and he had not renewed it. In 2015, he was arrested by the Mico Layout police for selling drugs and the trial is on.
A majority of our site visitors favoured the use of canes on disobedient learners as opposed to being left alone. The responses were forwarded in the light of a tragic incident which led to the death of a female instructor, Odilinye Rita, who was assaulted by the mother of a pupil named Okafor Chinaza.

The incident which occurred on Wednesday, November 29, 2017, at the Starlight Secondary School, Ogidi, Anambra State, brought to the fore the lack of cooperation between educational institutions and parents, which has seen the latter object to the scolding of their children.

Rita was put at the receiving end of an undue violence after flogging the student who had refused to carry out an assigned task involving the cleaning of a classroom as indicated on a roster. According to Vanguard News, Chinaza was rude and unwilling to heed correction given by the deceased, a behaviour that prompted some scolding.

ALSO READ: A female teacher was beaten to death for scolding student

Her mother's reaction seemed a bright reflection of the type of training she had been exposed to - a factor that resulted in the demise of her teacher.

Dip in moral values instilled by schools

There have been an apparent reduction in the quality of morals instilled in pupils by their schools as a result of the reservation against corporal punishment which has helped put some naughty students in check in the past.

Admittedly, some teachers have taken to extreme measures while disciplining erring pupils, a factor that has discouraged the application of tough corrective measures.

The 2016 battering of a female pupil, Ogechi Anyalewechi by administrators at the Eva Adelaja Girls Junior Secondary School in Bariga, Lagos, is one in a recent list of cases that has prevented the use of force when correcting students.

Anyalewechi was 14 and had suffered the worst treatment possible for her impulsive reaction after the Head Girl of the school slapped her for being rude. The school principal as well as other senior teachers had ensured that she suffered the consequence of returning the slap which left her body in a bad shape due to an intense beating.

This act received condemnation from Princess Uzamat Akinbile-Yussuf, a Lagos State Commissioner for Youth and Social Development, who insisted that such brutality will not be condoned all in the name of discipline, The Nation News reports.

Some parents have raised fears that this position might have a detrimental effect on the upbringing of their children.

During my days (mid 60s-mid 70s), there was discipline. If you did anything wrong you were flogged. In the secondary school, especially in the boarding house, we were given corporal punishment. However, society has changed and we are looking up to America.

"In America you cannot beat children. But the maturity of children in America is different from our own children here; so if we just import those laws and behaviour, its going to spell doom for us. In America, where you dont beat children or use verbal abuse and all that, you now have gun problems.

"Students go to school with guns and they shoot their classmates, it is indiscipline. So if you refuse to flog your children, its going to spell doom for Nigeria. In my days, in the boarding house you have senior prefects, they can flog you and you have bruises and you wont even have the guts to report to the house master.

"It is discipline. If I flog my child, and he has bruises, the government will tell you it is wrong; but if we dont, it will spell doom for us," a parent, Mr. Williams Oladeji told The Nation.

Addressing the issue appears to be a very delicate one and requires long thinking and not hasty decisions. The Biblical book of Proverbs warns that sparing a child of the rod implies hatred for the individual.

Perhaps, a thorough review of the educational policies will be apt in a bid to quickly change what has benefited students who are now adults in the past. The fact is that the mindset of children born in the current era is rather unique and should call for a special approach as opposed to indulging them.
Recall that the hashtags which debuted on Twitter on Friday, December 1, 2017, arose as a result of a series of abuse and extra-judicial killing of Nigerians by operatives of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad [SARS] of the Nigerian Police Force.

Many Nigerians who have either been victims or had family members and friends who have been victims of such abuses have been calling for the scrapping of the squad or at best, revamp it but the Nigeria Police has refuted allegations that officers of SARS ever engage in torture, extortion and abuse of Nigerians.

See one instance of police brutality in this tweet video:

Speaking on the widespread hashtags that have had the support of celebrities, politicians and Nigerians from all walks of life, the Force Public Relations Officer [FPPRO], SP Jimoh Moshood, operatives of SARS are very disciplined officers and would never behave in a manner that would constitute an abuse of citizens no matter the circumstances.

In a statement published on the official website of the Police Force, Sp Moshood said:

"Anybody who wants the SARS to be scrapped may be an armed robber or has criminal tendencies. We do not take any infraction or violation of human rights of any Nigerian likely.

You know that so many police officers have been dismissed and even charged to court. So, Nigerians should not give in to insinuations from people that just come to the social media and start spreading falsehood.

Such people spreading such information may likely be armed robbers themselves. There are laid down rules for police procedures and any police officer that goes beyond the boundary to do something outrageous which is against the law is apprehended.

As we speak, SARS is doing fantastically well across the country in reducing incidents of robbery to the barest minimum. They are doing very, very well.

There has not been any specific violation of human rights against any SARS personnel. So, anybody that is spreading such a rumour is not doing the nation any good. SARS has no excesses and when there is any, we do investigate.

The call for SARS to be scrapped should be condemned by all well-meaning Nigerians. Anybody calling for their proscription is not doing the nation any good and such people should be suspected of having something to hide.

However, despite SP Moshood's explanation that SARS officers do not engage in human rights abuse of Nigerians, there have been cases where innocent people have either been killed, maimed, extorted or brutalized by operatives of the squad.

Many Nigerians have also been narrating their personal experiences in the hands of the operatives on the social media as witnessed by their tweets.
Zoonoses, on the other hand, are animal diseases that are transmissible to humans. Thus making Monkeypox a transmitted disease.

The disease which is said to be caused by monkey virus was first recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1970, during a period of an intensified effort to eliminate smallpox.

It would break out in Nigeria for the third time in September 2017, with thirty-one suspected cases reported across seven states; as it was first experienced in 1971 and 1978 respectively.

However, the outbreak of the disease which occurred in September seems to have been curtailed to some extent. New cases are not being reported like before and tension has obviously subsided.

But this doesn't go to say that the disease has been eliminated. It's a virus, and there's every possibility of another outbreak.

Be that as it may, here are some certain things we've decided to let you know about Monkeypox.

1. The symptoms of monkeypox are similar to but milder than the symptoms of smallpox in human beings.

2. Monkeypox begins with fever, headache, muscle aches, and exhaustion.

3. The main difference between symptoms of smallpox and monkeypox is that monkeypox causes lymph nodes to swell (lymphadenopathy) while smallpox does not.

4. The incubation period (time from infection to symptoms) for monkeypox is usually seven to fourteen days but can range from five to twenty-one days.

5. Patients are expected to develop a rash within one to three days (sometimes longer) after the appearance of fever; where the various stages of the rash appear, often beginning on the face and then spreading elsewhere on the body.

6. The face (in 95% of cases), and palms of the hands and soles of the feet (75%) are most affected. Evolution of the rash from maculopapules (lesions with flat bases) to vesicles (small fluid-filled blisters), pustules, followed by crusts occurs in approximately ten days.

7. Human-to-human transmission can result from close contact with infected respiratory tract secretions, skin lesions of an infected person or objects recently contaminated by patient fluids or lesion materials.

8. The disease can be transmitted from human to human through physical touch, contact with stool, and blood contact.

9. According to statistics, ten percent of those who contract Monkeypox died as a result of the disease.

10. It is believed that children are more susceptible to the infection.

11. The number of the lesions varies from a few to several thousand, affecting oral mucous membranes (in 70% of cases), genitalia (30%), and conjunctivae (eyelid) (20%), as well as the cornea (eyeball).

Medical reports have it that, lesions progress through the following stages before falling off:

Macules

Papules

Vesicles

Pustules

Scabs

12. Although there is presently no known or proven, safe treatment for the disease, vaccination against smallpox has been proven to be 85% effective in preventing monkeypox.

However, the vaccine is no longer available to the public after it was discontinued following global smallpox eradication in 1980.
The schedule of the event will include runway shows, informative seminars, exhibitions and the #LUFS after party put in place to create a networking channel between the upcoming and established fashion designers as well as fashion journalists, enthusiast, trendsetters, retailers and consumers.

ALSO READ:Mai Atafo on why he goes dramatic to close his shows

"One of the aims of the show is to show that fashion is not just a passion, but can be used as a tool to empower the youths of Africa by creating wealth & economic growth" the organizers shared about the event in an email.

"The city of Lagos (which is a cluster of design & innovation) and also the hub of the Nigerian Fashion Industry's creative process (encompasses everything from designers, textile & apparel brands,retailers, wholesales, bloggers, market research analyst,etc.) would host the show and would kick-start a new process of empowering the youths economically through fashion" the organizers revealed.

ALSO READ:5 fashion trends you could wear in 2018

The LUFS is the first platform in Africa that caters for streetwear/urban Fashion Designers.

Details:

Date: 10th of December 2017
The Commands Public Relations Officer, Mr Suleiman Baba confirmed the arrest of the suspects to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Yola.

Baba said that the suspects were apprehended following a tip-off that led to the arrest of one of them whose confession and that of their four victims ranging between the ages of 12 and 10 were used to fish out the rest.

Baba said medical reports confirmed that the minors had been violated.

We are taking the suspects to court and they will be charged with rape, criminal force and assault on minors, Baba said.

While nothing that the victims were girl hawkers, Baba cautioned parents on sending their little children to hawk instead of school.

Parents need to be vigilant on the movement of their wards if we must tackle this problem, Baba said.

ALSO READ:40 terrorists to surrender to NSCDC in Borno

Baba gave the names of the suspects as:Abdullahi Ibrahim (32), Musa Mohammed (31), Bakura Mohammed (39), Joseph John (29), and Mohammed Musa (42).

Also speaking, a resident of Mubi town, Mr Danladi Chamber who lauded the development said residents would be mobilised to support NSCDC to expose more suspects.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), recalls that the young Ali was run over by Boko Haram terrorists with motorcycle when they invaded Chibok village in 2013.

Young Ali, who sustained spinal cord injury from the attack, was flown to Dubai by an NGO, Global Initiative for Peace, Love and Care ((GIPLC) in conjunction with Telveras Group.

Alihs treatment was sponsored by Dickens Sanomi Foundation, owners of Teveras Group of companies.

On arrival at the airport, Mr Goodluck Hayi, Board Member of Dickens Sanomi Foundation, expressed happiness that Alih, who was taken away on a wheel chair in September, could now walk.

Hayi said the initial amount estimated for the surgery could not cover the cost at the end, saying it was not necessary to disclose the amount spent since it was a charity work.

He announced that Ali would be given scholarship by the Taleveras Foundation to study up till university level.

According to him, the Foundations work is hinged on the principle of love and care which it demonstrates by being its neighbours keeper as well as teaching and showing it.

Dickens Sanomi Foundation will be working with Alis family through GIPLC and will be supporting Ali post surgery life to help him settle into Abuja and grow as a child.

About three months ago, we all witnessed Ali Ahmadu being taken away on a wheel chair, today to the Glory of God we are here to receive Ali Ahmadu, walking handsomely into our arms.

What started as a painful Journey for little Ali four years ago that confined him to a wheel chair, has transformed into a journey of hope, love and care, he said.

Also speaking, Mr Nuhu Kwajafah, the Coordinator of GIPLC, said that the little boy never had access to any form of orthodox medication until he was discovered by the NGO.

Kwajafah said that Alih was at the mercy of a traditionalist and was immobile and fast deteriorating physically and mentally from that period till the first quarter of 2017, when GIPLC made contact with him.

He noted that during this period, access to education, nutrition, psychosocial tuning, water, sanitation or hygiene, was very limited, if not non-existent.

The organisation facilitated the relevant examinations and digital/lab tests for assessment and proper medical attention.

The results revealed that he couldnt access the quality care required to literally realign him toward a better quality of life, hence the decision to make prerequisite travel arrangements to travel abroad.

After duly assessing the various options open to us from all over the world, we resolved to take him to the United Arab Emirates.

Today, Ali is back to Nigeria and all his sufferings are over as he can now walk.

The spine behind has been fixed, some screws were added and after one year, it would be removed and we really thank God, the media and our partners, Dickens Sanomi Foundation, he said.

Kwajafah said that GIPLC was committed to Alis post surgery well being and had received confirmation from Dickens Sanomi Foundation to support his settling in the society.

He said that agreement had been reached to keep Ali in Abuja to give him special care as well as meeting both his medical and educational needs to guarantee him good future.

Next week is Alis birthday, but he has never celebrated his birthday because of his predicament.

He had been lying down for three years but on Dec. 10, he will be celebrating his birthday with over 2,000 orphans where he will interact with other children.
The state Commissioner of Information and Strategy, Ahmad Sajoh, who confirmed the incident, also described it as unfortunate.

Sajoh said the state government had held an emergency security meeting on the incident and had taken measures to contain the situation.

He said that military personnel and policemen had been deployed to the affected villages to contain the attackers.

I cant say the number of casualties for now as security men are still there to chase out the attackers,  Sajoh said.

The Spokesman of the Police Command in the state, SP Othman Abubakar, who also confirmed the incident, said mobile policemen, soldiers, air force and other security personnel from sister security agencies had been deployed to contain the situation.

ALSO READ: 4 policemen killed as residents flee Numan LG in Adamawa state

Abubakar also said that more highway Police Patrol teams were drafted along the YolaNumanGombe road to ensure safety of travelers along the road.
Numerous Nigerians took to social media to accuse the unit of several misconducts ranging from harassment, extortion, assault and extra-judicial killings.

In response, the IGP expressed his concern with public interest and demanded for more effective service that's in line with the nation's rule of law.

This was disclosed in a statement signed by the Police Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood, on Monday, December 4, 2017.

The statement read, "The Nigeria Police Force has observed the recent trends of event in the Social Media on the #ENDSARSNOW and the controversy being generated by the innuendos from the allegations and other misconceptions as it concerns the Operational roles and activities of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a detachment of the Nigeria Police Force.

"Undoubtedly, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) have been doing very well in fighting violent crimes such as Armed Robbery, Kidnappings and Cattle Rustling in the country in the recent time and this has resulted in drastic reduction of incidents of the mentioned violent crimes nationwide.

"However, the Inspector General of Police, IGP Ibrahim K. Idris NPM, mni concerned with public interest and the need to reposition the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) for more efficiency and effective service delivery to all Nigerians and ensure that the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) operates based on International Core Value of Policing with integrity and make sure the rule of law prevails in the operations and activities of the outfit, the IGP has directed the immediate re-organization of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) nationwide and instant investigation into all the allegations, complaints and infractions levelled against the personnel of the Special Anti Robbery Squad across the country by the IGP X-Squad of the Force."

Under the new arrangement, a Commissioner of Police is now the overall head of the Federal Anti-Robbery Squad nationwide under the Department of Operations, Force Headquarters Abuja.

The IGP also ordered for all SARS personnel nationwide to undergo a new training program to be organized in collaboration with some Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), Local and International NGOs, and other Human Rights Organizations.

The statement read, "In the new arrangement, a Commissioner of Police is now the overall head of the Federal Anti-Robbery Squad nationwide under the Department of Operations, Force Headquarters Abuja.

"The Police Zonal Commands, State Commands and Divisions will continue to operate anti-crime units/sections, crime prevention and control squads and teams imperative to prevent and detect crimes and criminalities in their Area of Responsibilities, and other crack squads necessary to sustain law and order and protection of life and properties in their Area of responsibilities (AOR).

"Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS) will now exist and operate in the State and Zonal Commands under the Commissioner of Police (F-SARS) at the Force Headquarters.

"A Federal SARS Commander of a Rank of Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) and not below Superintendent of Police (SP) will be in charge of FSARS in State and Zonal Commands across the Country.

"All Commissioners of Police have been directed by the Inspector General of Police to comply with this directive with immediate effect and warn their personnel not to pose as SARS operatives.

"The IGP X-Squad has been mandated to go round the Commands and Police Formations nationwide to ensure strict compliance and apprehend any erring police officer.

"Furthermore, a new training program to be organized by the Force in collaboration with some Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), Local and International NGOs, and other Human Rights Organizations on core Police Duties, Observant of Human Rights and Handling, Care and Custody of Suspects have been directed by the Inspector General of Police for all Federal SARS personnel nationwide with immediate effect."

ALSO READ: Nigeria has a SARS problem that needs to go away
A day later, on April 17, Maurice was among the six detainees that were killed in custody even though the officers alleged they were killed in a gun duel.

To cover up the extra-judicial killings, the officers involved sold the corpses of the victims to the Anatomy Department of UNICAL allegedly for N11,000 each.

Over the past few days, the internet has been awash with a lot of anger directed towards one of the country's most notorious law enforcement units.

You only have to be on the internet for a few minutes before you encounter the narration of one ugly encounter with SARS and then stumble upon another one that's just as ugly or worse with several stories of abuse: physical and sexual; stories of gross incompetence; and more worryingly, stories of extortion, exploitation and other criminal conducts as dastardly as casual extra-judicial killings such as the one experienced by Maurice and those other poor victims.

As Maurice's case proves, this isn't a new problem, Nigerians have just about had enough of it now and ready to take a stand against such an ugly mess.

SARS is one of the 14 units under the Nigeria Police Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department. Their operations chiefly include arresting, investigating and prosecuting suspected armed robbers, murderers, kidnappers, hired assassins and others involved in violent crimes.

While they have a clearly defined role to enforce the law, their interpretation of it has been quite problematic.

I have never had any interesting personal encounter with any SARS operative, but I clearly remember when they were first thrown on the streets of my hometown a few years ago.

They were not revered for putting cuffs on armed robbers and kidnappers, they were largely feared for their savage harassment of "indecently-dressed" ladies and suspiciously too-decently-dressed men.

They didn't operate by the law of probable cause, instead, they winged their interpretation of the law and you could find yourself in their crosshairs by something as simple as a tattoo, or 'overgrown' hair, or the possession of something as harmless as a laptop.

While that initial dread died down over the following months, they just merely evolved into more sinister tinkering of the law and assumed more roles for themselves that the law didn't think sane enough to gift them.

When the 2016 World Internal Security and Police Index (WISPI) report ranked the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) as the worst in the world, the institution told Nigerians that the report was an attempt to "cast aspersions on the achievement of the police" and should be dismissed as "complete falsehood" because it "doesnt reflect the achievements of the force".

If only.

Nigerians know there's a lot of truth to the report mostly due to what their experiences have been with officers of the law.

The Nigerian Police is not one that's accorded respect for its pristine professional conduct, and that's something that's made abundantly clear by its SARS division (and a certain Head of the Police Public Complaint Rapid Response Unit ).

Last year, Amnesty International (AI), a human rights group, described SARS as "a police unit created to protect the people (that) has instead become a danger to society, torturing its victims with complete impunity while fomenting a toxic climate of fear and corruption"

The report revealed "a pattern of ruthless human rights violations where victims are arrested and tortured until they either make a 'confession' or pay officers a bribe to be released.

"SARS officers are getting rich through their brutality. In Nigeria, it seems that torture is a lucrative business."

Of course, the report was also branded "a fantasy".

In 2015, then-Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, split SARS into two units in an effort to curb numerous human rights abuses.

He mandated that the same officers cannot make arrest and investigate the same case, thereby, isolating the operational men from human rights abuses and other allegations.

Evidence suggests this has not worked out quite well.

The unit operates with the level of impunity that has made them the judge, jury and executioner of the helpless Nigerian.

So you groom well as a young man? You must be a Yahoo Boy.

Or you dress in an "unconventional" way as a young woman? You must be a prostitute that deserves to be groped for hiding God-knows-what.

Or how can you afford a car? Or how can you afford to use an iPhone in this Buhari economy? Or how can you be walking at night if you're not a thief?

Since when has any of these become crimes?

Officers working for one of the nation's most important law enforcement units do not realise, or willfully ignore, the fact that the laws of the nation is not a subordinate to their personal thoughts and ideals.

The whole point of their existence is following the letters of the law to bring criminals to justice and protect and serve law-abiding citizens who need their presence to remain safe.

On the contrary, the average Nigerian will readily treat a SARS operative with the same amount of caution and dread that they would afford a dangerous criminal intent on causing them harm.

After all, what is the difference?

A SARS officer will target you for what you have and extort you for it, same as a criminal.

A SARS officer will threaten to take your life if you don't submit to his inappropriate demands, same as a criminal.

A SARS officer will illegally detain you and make ransom demands, same as a kidnapper.

A SARS officer will take your life if it serves his personal whims, same as a hired killer.

That's what the personal accounts of many Nigerians indicate; and too many Nigerians have raised their voices this past week for it to be a mean-spirited campaign to sully the reputation of the institution.

Make no mistake that the idea of a SARS unit is one that's very important to stemming the outbreak of heinous crimes in the country, more than we already have anyway.

However, the operational conduct of this current SARS doesn't appear to be one that has only a few bad eggs straying from the line, they seem to all operate by the same official handbook.

Law-abiding citizens of the country are done with being used as cannon fodder for the impunity of the men that should be protecting their interests, getting marched down to ATMs to pay their 'bail'.

No law-abiding citizen should fear for their lives just because they're in the vicinity of a place where "police are responding to incidents in real life."

The outrage, the outburst, the hurt that's currently boiling on the internet should not be discarded as mere "frightening dreams" that Nigerians should "pray to God not to allow it happen".

It's a daily reality for a lot of innocent Nigerians.

That 2016 AI report concluded, "Our research has exposed the callous workings of a police squad operating outside of the law and inflicting daily brutality on Nigerians who are often legally powerless to defend themselves against criminal accusations, let alone from the torture meted out by SARS."

Relevant authorities, such as the NPF hierarchy and, more importantly, lawmakers in the National Assembly, should listen to what's a loud and clear customer service complaint and respond in the most responsible way possible.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that hundreds of placard-carrying protesters from David West New Site Estate blocked their major road, preventing motorists from passing through the area.

Osuchukwu Sam-Bell, Chairman, Landlords/Residents Association, said the community had been in darkness since August due to a transformer fault.

We want our transformer repaired and restored, we need prepaid meters; EKEDC should come and install our new 500kva transformer now, he said.

Mr Zubby Anazodo, one of the affected residents, said business activities had been paralysed in the area due to the four-month outage.

Artisans are out of business, people selling frozen foods have closed their shops, it is no longer business as usual in the community again.

Our children are suffering, you see them with heat rashes and even our wives cannot preserve foods inside refrigerators any longer.

We cant sleep in our houses comfortably with the noise of generating sets and harsh weather.

It is unfortunate that we are going through this while our neighbouring communities are enjoying uninterrupted power supply, this is injustice, he said.

Arazodo appealed to EKEDC to repair the transformer and restore power supply to the community ahead of the Christmas festivities.

When contacted, EKEDC spokesman, Mr Ademola Adegoke, said the company had replaced the transformer servicing the community twice but packed up on both occasions.

This was caused by the power load in the community which far outstrip the capacity of the transformer.

The only way to save the transformer from breakdown is to rotate power supply but the community will not allow our men to do this as our men were always harassed and chased out each time they went there for load shedding, he said.

The EKDC official said that the company was finding it difficult to install the new transformer because of the huge cost involved.

We pleaded that we should be given sometime so we can include the cost of installation in our budget but the community is insisting on immediate installation of the transformer.

We even proposed to use the transformer donated to by the state government to replace the damaged one pending when we will get materials to install the damaged one.

The community yet again rejected this move and insisted that we must replace the damaged one and as well install the one donated in a fresh location, he said.
He said that the NASSCOA would be a multi-sectoral legislative platform for waging the war against HIV/AIDS in the National Assembly Community and the WTF to mobilise funds for the task.

According to him, the National Assembly shall continue to invoke its powers of appropriation under the constitution to ensure the provision of necessary resources towards the eradication of HIV.

The United Nations statistics on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and related infections is very worrisome and the vigorous global response against the disease seems to be insufficient.

Nigeria recorded the very first case of HIV just over 30 years ago, from this single case, we now have over three million people infected by the virus.

More people die of HIV infection in Nigeria than in any other country in the world, with about 180 deaths every year and we also have the largest number of newly infected children, Saraki said.

The Senate President said that Nigerians with HIV infection now live longer, can marry and have HIV free children.

He, however, said that more vigorous response was required to meet the 90-90-90 target of an AIDS free generation by 2030.

In his remarks, the Clerk to the National Assembly, Mr Mohammed Omolori, said that anti-retroviral treatment was still not available to all who need it.

Omolori said that prevention campaigns had still not been disseminated to the level needed and people living with HIV were still discriminated against.

He said that the National Assembly, being the custodian of the powers of appropriation, has great role to play in the facilitation and funding of the national response effort of the government.

The Clerk said that the NASSCOA and ETF would lead advocacy on resource mobilisation and promote partnership within and outside the National Assembly

It would provide technical leadership and advocacy for the implementation of prevention, control and impact mitigation strategies for HIV/AIDS.

It will encourage multi disciplinary collaborations and networking among stakeholders, organise training of personnel involved in the control and prevention of HIV/AIDS.

It will also facilitate the provision of care, support and treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS in the National Assembly.

According to Omolori, the WTF will address the mobilization of funds for the prevention, treatment and care for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and incidental infections.

He said that the fund would also be used to for advocacy for the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS response at all levels.

The Chief Executive Officer, Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN), Dr Patrick Dakum, called for better technical production of antiretroviral drugs, condoms and test kits in the country to help reduce their cost.

Dakum, who was represented by Dr Young Oluokun, Regional Manager, IHVN, said the Nigeria would be using up its scarce resources as long as it continued to import antiretroviral drugs.
Arise hails from Ekiti State in Nigerias South West region.

He was reportedly abducted on Sunday evening as he journeyed to Abuja from Ekiti after a slew of political meetings.

Details surrounding his kidnap are still sketchy at the time of filing this.

Pulse has sought information concerning Arises kidnap from police spokesperson Jimoh Moshood without a response.

Text messages and calls placed to Moshoods mobile have returned unanswered.

Area confusion

Premium Times reports that police commands in the four states of Edo, Ekiti, Ondo and Kogi which share a common border along the area the politician was said to have been kidnapped, are yet to account for any kidnap incident involving Mr. Arise.

Ekiti State Police Public Relations Officer, Alberto Adeyemi, told the online newspaper that he is in the worst possible position to offer answers on the kidnap of Arise because the crime didnt happen within his jurisdiction.

I cannot say. I am not allowed to comment on incidents that did not happen within my jurisdiction, Adeyemi said.

Police spokespersons of Ondo and Kogi States spoke in similar vein, according to Premium Times.

We do not have any report on the kidnapping of Senator Ayo Arise, I am not sure we have any such report, Edo State Commissioner of Police, Babatunde Kokumo, said.

Maybe it happened in Ondo or Kogi State, but there is no report of any kidnapping of the senator in Edo.

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Frank disclosed this in Abuja on Monday, December 4, 2017 while reacting to the returnof former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar to the PDP.

Frank blamed Atikus decision on "APCs lack of internal democracy, disregard for party constitution, irregular meeting, inability to conduct convention, no Board of Trustee and arrogance of party leadership."

While advising the APC, Frank noted that he might also leave the ruling party if things continue the same way.

His words: It is high time APC realize that politics is about number, every youth, man or woman is important. The kind of arrogance going on in the party led some of us out of PDP in those days but we have now realized that it is even worse in APC.

"Though its already getting late but if this impunity is not tackle between now and early next year APC may witness the mother of all defections to opposition parties.

"As for me, I'm still a member of APC because I believe I have worked hard to bring about the ruling party as a young man but if the impunity does not stop, I will be left with no option.

"Not only me but some other serving governors, members of National Assembly and other known party leaders across the country have to decide their political future elsewhere, he added.
It was also a few days after Buhari returned from a medical vacation abroad where he spent over 100 days holed up in a UK apartment.

I wanted this aide to shed more light on the thinking inside Aso Rock concerning a Buhari re-election; given that the president was widely believed to be nursing an ailment that could mean he wouldnt be able to endure the rigours of another electioneering campaign.

Hes fit as a fiddle, this aide announced unequivocally. He hasnt told us hed run, but if he decides to, no one can stop him. The president is very healthy right now and his stay in London had nothing to do with a terminal ailment. He has fully recovered", the aide announced.

Not satisfied, I threw in a follow-up question.

Does the president tell you guys hes going to run again? Does he offer any clues? Anything at all to suggest hed seek re-election? I asked.

Well, like every other politician, the president is eligible to contest again. And like I just told you, he is very fine and can endure the rigours of another electioneering campaign, this aide stated emphatically.

Clues everywhere

In the months that have followed, Buhari and his team have remained tight-lipped on the subject of his 2018/2019 political plans, but you get the feeling they are playing it safe and that the president will run again. We are only an official announcement away, it appears.

There have been clues everywhere you look as well.

When Buhari made the trip to Abidjan, Cote dIvoire last week for the 5th European Union-African Union (EU-AU) summit, he made reference to his re-election plans and told the world he turned up late for an event because he was waiting for two Governors who possess some electoral clout, to join him.

First, I want to apologise for keeping you sitting for too long, this is because I insisted on the Governors attending this meeting", Buhari said.

This is why I came along with them so that when we are going to meet you, when you are going to meet the rest of Nigerians, if you tell them that their Governors were in the company of the president, I think that will be another vote for me in the future.

Let's take that line again: Another vote for me in the future.

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The president cracks plenty of jokes and is famous for his wry sense of humour, so we could just say he was only making a light-hearted remark above; but his comment in Abidjan was the clearest hint of a re-election yet.

Powerful Governors

Did you also see how the presidency reacted hastilyto Atikus claims that Buhari wasnt able to gain entry into the US for 15 years on account of his religious disposition?

Buharis perceived reputation as a religious hardliner almost torpedoed his 2015 presidential ambition. No way are his minders going to allow that reputation gain some foothold in the minds of the voting public for the umpteenth time.

Have you heard Kaduna Governor El-Rufai openly back Buharis re-election bid? Have you heard Okorocha do the same? Most APC Governors are now firmly behind a Buhari for 2019 ticket. Its no longer a carefully guarded secret for these guys. Theyve told you its Buhari or nothing come 2019.

Atiku knows

It may also have become clear to Atiku that therell be no way hell become president on the APC platform with Buhari still looming large within the governing party.

The man had to leave.

According to Atiku; "I will definitely beat him (Buhari) this time. He has wasted a lot of his massive goodwill. A lot of people are disgruntled but they are keeping quiet and lying low. Our youths are suffering terribly. They are even now being sold into slavery.

"After Buhari won the election, he was no longer interested in the party that made him president. Every activity stopped and not even the party chairman, could take any decision.

The party became a one-man property. Everyone grumbles behind the President but they are too timid to raise a voice against the illegalities being perpetuated. I should be bold enough to know what I want, and can do so at my age. So, I decided to leave."

Here was Atiku taking on the man he considers his major opponent in 2019.

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Kalu also said that Igbos will give President Buhari 70% of the voteshe needs to win the presidential election in 2019.

According to Daily Post, the former Governor said I joined the APC to encourage president Buhari to run, again, and we are going to use his regime to correct the injustice meted to Ndigbo and also, fight for the oneness of the country.

I didnt join the APC to go and look at the rock in Abuja; I joined the APC to use it for the benefit of Igbo and Nigeria at large.

Marginalisation

Addressing the issue of marginalisation against Igbos, Kalu said that the issue started after the civil war.

He also said that the issue is not something the President can sort out in four years.
The media chief is among others seeking to become national officers of the party at the convention, where new executives would be elected.

He appealed to the governor and delegates from the state to give him their full support to enable him to emerge victorious at the national convention, scheduled to hold in Abuja.

The purpose of my visit is to intimate you, as the leader of our party in Cross River, about my aspiration to serve as the national chairman of our great party, the PDP.

I am here to seek your support and the support of members of the party in Cross River.

You need a PDP chairman that shares in your vision and is ready to give necessary support and attract the federal governments support for Cross River.

I want to be at the national PDP office, working closely with you to help actualise your vision of developing Cross River, he said.

Dokpesi, who described the 2015 general elections as a disaster for the party, said it was gladdening that Cross River remained a PDP State.

I congratulate you for this feat. It is time to look at why we fail and prepare ourselves for 2019.

 We must get our party re-engineered, rebranded, rejuvenated and reconstructed in such a manner that we can get back the presidency.

In order to achieve this, we need a chairman of the party who is courageous, visionary and has the will and capacity to win the presidential election in 2019, he said.

Responding, Ayade lauded Dokpesi for using his media platforms  the AIT and Raypower FM  to promote activities of the Cross River government.
The committee also extended the warning to other candidates looking to get the partys presidential ticket.

He said We need to make this announcement to all our party members and well wishers that the convention is going to be for delegates and we are expecting a little less than 3000 delegates. And those delegates have been properly accredited by the accreditation committee.

And for those our party members that are going to come are welcome to Abuja, but they will not be allowed to come to the eagle square and this is because we want to be sure that we are in a position to deliver a credible elective convention.

We are trying to put all these processes in place so that we dont over crowd the venue. I want to urge aspirants to the various positions to please, keep their campaigners away from the convention venue and we believe all campaigns would have stopped by Friday.

I will not expect any aspirant, especially presidential aspirants to bring their campaign posters, campaigners, men or women to the venue because it will not be allowed.

And we want to appeal to all of them campaigning to desist from doing that. For those who want to campaign for future election, possibly the presidential aspirants this convention is not the place to display campaign posters or to display their intentions.

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I believe there will be an appropriate convention for that. I want to urge them to cooperate with us as a committee.

Atiku back in PDP

On Sunday, December 3, 2017, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar announced the he has joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

In a live video broadcast on his Facebook page, Abubakar said he was again joining the People's Democratic Party (PDP) because the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) had failed to deliver on its promises since coming to power in 2015.
Heavy clashes were reported in the city between forces loyal to Saleh and the Iran-backed Shiite rebels, who together seized control of Sanaa from the internationally recognised government three years ago.

Moving to take advantage of the chaos, President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, whose government is backed by a Saudi-led military coalition, ordered his forces to advance on the capital.

The Huthi-controlled interior ministry announced Saleh's death on the rebels' Al-Masirah television station.

A statement read on the channel announced the "end of the crisis of militias", referring to Saleh's armed supporters, and "the killing of their leader and a number of his criminal supporters".

A video given to AFP by the rebels showed what appeared to be a dead Saleh with a severe head injury, his body wrapped in a floral-print blanket.

An AFP photographer who approached Saleh's home in southern Sanaa on Monday found it in the hands of the Huthis and was prevented from entering. The house appeared to have been damaged in fighting.

The alliance between Saleh, who ruled Yemen for more than three decades before resigning in 2012, unravelled over the past week, with at least 100 people reported dead in fighting, accusations of betrayal and the former leader reaching out to the Saudi-led coalition.

Heavy fighting in Sanaa

As witnesses reported continued heavy fighting on Monday, Hadi ordered his forces to launch an offensive to advance on the capital.

"The president has ordered Vice President Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who is in Marib (east of Sanaa), to activate military units and advance towards the capital," a presidency official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The government also reached out to Saleh's supporters with an offer of amnesty.

"The president will soon announce a general amnesty for all those who collaborated with the Huthis in recent months and who have retracted that allegiance," Prime Minister Ahmad Obaid bin Daghr said.

The Saleh-Huthi alliance had been fraught since its inception in 2014, when the two ended decades of enmity and joined ranks to capture Sanaa from Hadi's government.

Saudi Arabia, accusing arch-rival Iran of backing the rebels, intervened in the Yemen war on behalf of the government the following year.

The Saudi-led coalition has been hitting Sanaa with air strikes for months, and a fresh wave on Monday targeted areas near Sanaa International Airport and the interior ministry, both under Huthi control, residents and an airport source said.

The coalition on Monday warned Yemeni civilians to avoid rebel areas.

"The coalition urges civilians to evacuate areas near positions held by the Huthis," read a statement published by Saudi Arabia's state-run Al-Ekhbariya TV.

"We ask civilians to remain at least 500 metres (yards) away from Huthi military vehicles and gatherings."

Residents near the airport said multiple air raids had shaken their homes late on Sunday night and early Monday.

Fears for civilians

An airport source said rebel bases near the location appeared to have been targeted, but the airport itself had not been bombed.

Residents reported that the fighting, which erupted Wednesday, had spread outside the capital.

Tribal sources in Saleh's hometown Sanhan, south of Sanaa, on Monday reported intense overnight fighting between the Huthis and Saleh loyalists.

Witnesses said clashes had erupted around the residence of Tarek Saleh, a nephew of the former president and a leader with his forces.

Saleh on Saturday announced he was open to talks with Saudi Arabia and its allies on condition they ended their crippling blockade of Yemen's ports and airports.

That dealt a serious blow to his already fragile alliance with rebel chief Abdul Malik al-Huthi.

The Saleh-Huthi split sparked fears of a new front in the Yemen war, which has already claimed more than 8,750 lives since the Saudi-led coalition intervened.

The conflict has pushed Yemen to the brink of mass starvation and triggered what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

International aid groups warned on Monday they were losing the ability to reach civilians in Sanaa.

"Ambulances and medical teams can't access injured, people can't buy food and other supplies," UNICEF's Rajat Madhok said on Twitter.
"For the time being there has been no final decision. Damascus is still thinking about the feasibility of its participation," the government source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"As soon as a decision is reached, it will be made public through the usual diplomatic channels."

A spokesman for the opposition delegation, Yahia al-Aridi, said meanwhile that his side's chief Nasr al-Hariri would be back in Geneva on Monday evening.

The office of UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura, who is mediating the talks, made no announcements Monday on the planned return to negotiations.

De Mistura had said the negotiations would resume Tuesday.

But after meeting with de Mistura Friday, Jaafari said there were "big problems in this round of talks," pointing to a communique published by the opposition last month in Riyadh signalling it was maintaining its insistence on Assad's removal.

The opposition, united in one delegation for the first time, has defied calls to give up on its demand that Assad must step down before any peace deal can be reached.

"The language was provocative, irresponsible politically speaking," Jaafari said, warning that if the opposition delegation stuck to such language "there will be no progress."

The government delegation had initially refused to confirm that it would attend the eighth round of UN-backed talks at all, and arrived a day late.
The long-serving premier is facing two separate graft probes that have led to speculation over whether he will eventually be forced to step down.

Parliament has been examining legislation that would limit the police's ability to make recommendations to the attorney general on whether or not to charge suspects.

On his Facebook page on Sunday, Netanyahu called for changes to the proposed law to make clear that it "will not involve current investigations against me".

He said he was making the call because he did not want the law "to be used for propaganda purposes".

Netanyahu also seemed to criticise the police, saying it appeared a recommendation whether or not to charge him had been decided in advance regardless of the evidence.

The 68-year-old, who has been questioned by police six times in connection with the investigations, has maintained his innocence.

His statement came after tens of thousands took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday night to protest against alleged corruption in Netanyahu's government.

Last week, Israel's parliament approved a first reading of the bill, which would alter current practice under which at the end of an enquiry police tell the attorney general if they feel that they have enough evidence for a prosecution.

The bill would require the attorney general to ask the police for its input, but the police's opinion could not be made public.

A one-year prison term was envisioned for investigators who leak their conclusions.

Parliament was due to vote the legislation into law as early as Monday, but it is now expected to be delayed.

While calling for his cases to be excluded, Netanyahu maintained that such legislation was important to protect suspects from being smeared with premature leaks.

Police are investigating Netanyahu over suspicions he received expensive gifts from wealthy supporters as well as over allegations he sought a secret deal for favourable coverage with a newspaper publisher.

Netanyahu allies have also been questioned by police as part of a separate probe into the purchase of German submarines.

Netanyahu has not been named as a suspect in the submarine investigation.

Separately on Sunday, police questioned for several hours David Bitan, a lawmaker from Netanyahu's Likud party and the leader of the coalition in parliament.

The investigation concerns suspicions of corruption and links between members of the Rishon LeZion municipality near Tel Aviv, including Bitan, and organised crime, police sources said.

Bitan, who is very close to Netanyahu, has for weeks been among the biggest supporters of the bill on police powers, along with the bill's sponsor, David Amsalem who is also in Likud.
Tusk had been due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Tuesday night, and Palestinian Authority prime minister Rami Hamdallah in Ramallah on Wednesday, according to his official schedule published last week.

Tusk is meeting British Prime Minister Theresa May in Brussels on Monday as May tries to seal a divorce agreement that would allow Brexit negotiations to move on to the second phase, dealing with trade and transition talks.

The European Commission is set to decide whether Britain has made enough progress on Wednesday, and, if so, ambassadors from the remaining EU 27 countries will meet the same day to draw up guidelines for the next stage.

Former Polish premier Tusk then chairs an EU summit on December 15 where leaders would sign off any deal.
Palestinian leaders are lobbying desperately against such a move, fearing it could provoke such fury in the Arab world it could sink peace hopes for a generation.

But Kushner, the 36-year-old head of a small and tight-knit White House negotiating team, made a rare public appearance to put an optimistic face on his efforts.

"The president's going to make his decision," Kushner told the Saban Forum, choosing not to deny reports Trump will declare Jerusalem Israel's capital on Wednesday.

"He's still looking at a lot of different facts and when he makes his decision he'll be the one who wants to tell you. So he'll make sure he does that at the right time."

On Monday, Trump must decide whether to sign a legal waiver that would delay plans to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for another six months.

Every US president has done this since 1995, judging the time not ripe for such a move, and Trump is expected to begrudgingly do so for a second time this week.

But, according to diplomats and observers, he is also now expected to announce in a speech on Wednesday that he supports Israel's claim on Jerusalem as its capital.

New intifada?

This will likely provoke fury among Palestinians and the wider Arab world, and may hamper Kushner's long-shot effort to revamp the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Palestinians have been lobbying regional leaders to oppose the decision and the armed Islamist movement Hamas has threatened to launch a new "intifada".

But Kushner, addressing a sympathetic audience at an annual meeting of Israeli and US policy-makers hosted by businessman Haim Saban, sees grounds for optimism.

The real estate developer turned presidential adviser is working closely with Israeli officials and has developed ties with the young Saudi and Emirati monarchs.

He sees an opportunity for peace if the Sunni Arab countries of the region align themselves with Israel in opposition to the threat of Iran.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shares this hope, although he dares hope an accommodation with Arab countries could precede any Palestinian deal.

Kushner, in common with US official thinking under previous administrations, sees a Israeli-Palestinian settlement as coming before any great re-alignment.

"You've got to focus on solving the big issue," he told a friendly but frankly skeptical Saban, and an audience of dignitaries and policy experts.

"The regional dynamic plays a big role in what we think the opportunities are because ... a lot of these countries look and say they all want the same thing.

"And they look at the regional threats and I think that they see Israel, who is traditionally their foe, is a much more natural ally to them than it was 20 years ago."

"You've a lot of people who want to put this together, but you have to overcome this issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order for that to happen," he said.

'Regime will fall'

Earlier, Netanyahu also addressed the forum by video link from Israel, and also spoke of the opportunity for reconciliation in the region.

But his focus was firmly on the threat of Iran, which he again compared to Nazi Germany in its alleged determination to "murder Jews."

His address barely touched on the Palestinian issue, but did speak of regional peace, under a longer timeframe than the one Kushner has in mind.

"And that's just one reason why I'm so hopeful about the future. Today Israel is more welcomed by the nations of the world than ever before," Netanyahu said.

"When I look forward 50 and 100 years I believe Israel will be embraced openly by its Arab neighbors rather than in secret in the way it's done today."

Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was less optimistic, warning a change in the US stance on Jerusalem would spell disaster.
The probe, by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Fairfax Media, said that despite being cautioned both the Liberals and Labor continued accepting substantial sums of cash.

It said intelligence agencies had major concerns that China was interfering in Australian institutions and using the political donations system to gain access. Beijing denied the allegations as "totally groundless".

Since then concern over foreign interference has gathered momentum, heightened by ongoing revelations of Russian meddling in the American political system.

"The issue of foreign interference in our politics is an extremely serious problem," Attorney-General George Brandis told parliament on Monday.

"So I can tell the Senate that later this week, the government will introduce a milestone legislative package to reform Australia's espionage and foreign interference legislation."

He said the new laws would strengthen and modernise a range of offences "for the purposes of investigating, disrupting and prosecuting acts of espionage and covert interference in the Australian political process".

There would be a new transparency scheme, providing "visibility of the nature and extent of influence over Australia's government and political processes by foreign interests".

"It will introduce new offences targeting foreign interference and economic espionage, including offences that criminalise covert and deceptive activities that support the intelligence activities of foreign actors," he added.

Last week, a key Australian Labor MP, Sam Dastyari, was forced to resign as deputy opposition whip after reports that he told a Chinese businessman his phone was likely being tapped by intelligence agencies.
"We feel that the Honduran people deserve the results and this (count) cannot be stopped," Mataramos said.

Nasralla supporters in the capital Tegucigalpa marched near to where the count was resumed, banging on pots, blaring vuvuzelas and singing campaign songs including insults towards Hernandez.

"They are stealing our votes," Jesus Elviz, a 58-year-old accountant, told AFP, visibly angry.

Meanwhile, a group of women handed out flowers to demonstrators, and threw petals at riot and military police nearby.

On Friday, 19-year-old Kimberly Fonseca was killed by a bullet during a confrontation between protesters and the police. Her family say she was killed by police, a claim authorities are "exhaustively" investigating.

After the violent protests erupted -- with some reports of looting -- the government declared a state of emergency and imposed a 10-day curfew in an attempt to curb the unrest.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the UN Office for Human Rights in Honduras Sunday urged the authorities to act "within the framework of human rights, respecting people's lives and physical integrity."

Their joint statement also expressed concern at preliminary figures which said 11 people have died and at least 15 others have been injured during the violence.

A week after the election, Hernandez maintains an advantage with 42.92 percent of votes against Nasralla's 41.42 percent, with 94.45 percent counted, according to the TSE.
The YPG was spearheading a US-backed offensive to oust IS from territory east of the Euphrates River, which cuts diagonally across Deir Ezzor, while rival Russian-backed Syrian troops battled IS on the western bank.

It appears to the first time Syria's Kurds acknowledge receiving direct Russian support.

On Sunday, YPG officials met with a Russian military delegation in a town on the eastern bank of Deir Ezzor province, according to the Kurdish-run ANHA news agency.

"The eastern countryside of the city has been fully liberated from Islamic State... with the international coalition and Russia's support," YPG spokesman Nuri Mahmoud said in a statement.

"We thank the international coalition and the Russian forces for their air, logistical, advisory support and coordination on the ground."

Mahmoud said the YPG "hoped for an increase in support and the provision of air defence and required cover."

IS jihadists once held most of oil-rich Deir Ezzor, but now control only a tiny sliver of the province, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.

On Sunday, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said IS still held several villages in the province, on both banks of the Euphrates River.

The YPG formed the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces, an Arab-Kurdish alliance that ousted IS from swathes of northern and eastern Syria, with help from the US-led coalition.

In September, the SDF began its assault on IS positions in the eastern half of Deir Ezzor province, as Russian-backed government troops squeezed IS in the western half.

The SDF accused Moscow of striking its forces several times during the drive, which makes Sunday's announcement of Russian support all the more surprising.

Last week, the White House said it would be making "adjustments" to its military support of militia in Syria.
During the brief stopover in the capital, he is set to hold talks with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and the powerful military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Mattis's first visit to the country as defense secretary of defense comes as the US pushes its longtime ally to do more to combat insurgents who allegedly use bases in Pakistan's tribal belt to target NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Relations suffered a further blow after a Pakistani court ordered the release of firebrand cleric Hafiz Saeed in late November, prompting a furious response from the White House.

Saeed heads the UN-listed terrorist group Jamaat-ud-Dawa and has a $10 million US bounty on his head. He had been under house arrest but was released after a court in Lahore said officials had not provided any evidence of his role in the days-long assault on India's capital which killed more than 160 people.

The decision to release Saeed coincided with the beleaguered government's capitulation to Islamist protesters holding a sit-in in the Pakistani capital.

The deal, which the military helped broker, saw the federal law minister resign over blasphemy allegations.

It sent shockwaves through the country, sparking fears that the military was doing little to keep extremism in check after supporting the demands of a small group of hardliners.

President Donald Trump first signalled that the US was reassessing its fractious relations with Pakistan during a televised speech in August, launching a blistering attack on Islamabad for harbouring "agents of chaos".

The remarks triggered a series of high-level diplomatic meetings in the US and Pakistan, but Islamabad has given few signs of concessions to Washington.

Pakistan has consistently rejected claims it supports Taliban-allied forces, insisting it maintains contacts with insurgents only as a means to bring them to the table for peace talks.

Pakistan, which has long harboured fears of encirclement by arch-rival India, has also bristled at Trump's calls for an increased Indian role in rebuilding Afghanistan.

Last week the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, said Islamabad had not carried out the "clear" demands made by Washington.

"We have not seen those changes implemented yet," he told reporters.

But en route to Pakistan Mattis told reporters he would not use pressure as a tactic and insisted he would do "some listening".
"It would completely destroy the fragile peace process in the region, and lead to new conflicts, new disputes and new unrest."

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

President Donald Trump faces a key decision this week on whether to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, potentially reversing years of United States policy and drawing a furious response from the Palestinian leadership and the Arab world.

Most of the international community, including the US as well as Turkey, does not formally recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved through final status negotiations.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a champion of the Palestinian cause, often criticises Israel over its actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, despite a 2016 reconciliation deal after years of severed ties following Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound ship.

Bozdag, also government spokesman, on Monday said a US step to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital would benefit "neither Israel ... nor the region."
Anonymous leaks from the White House suggest the top diplomat could be replaced within weeks and -- even while denying this -- Trump reminded him: "I call the final shots."

Tillerson has dismissed as "laughable" reports that Trump's closest aides want him to resign, but rumors will inevitably dog him when he sits down with his European peers.

His trip is structured around ministerial conferences of the NATO allies in Brussels and the 57-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, in Vienna.

But the most closely watched encounter will be a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, on the sidelines of the OSCE talks late in the week.

At NATO, alliance partners will want to hear how America can help defend them against the newly global threat of North Korea's long-range nuclear missiles.

Tillerson gave a major speech on European policy in Washington on Tuesday to preview his agenda ahead of the trip -- and he did not mince words about Russia.

He will tell his NATO Western allies that they must stand shoulder-to-shoulder to oppose "the enemies that threaten our security and oppose our way of life," while Russia must be brought to reverse its intervention in eastern Ukraine through relentless sanctions pressure.

'Best friend'

"Any resolution to the war that does not entail a fully independent, sovereign, territorially-whole Ukraine is unacceptable," Tillerson declared.

"Our trans-Atlantic unity is meant to convey to the Russian government that we will not stand by this flagrant violation of international norms," he said.

But for this warning to be credible, Tillerson must be seen as speaking for the whole US government and the president, who has shown no enthusiasm for sanctions against Russia.

Trump -- who in 2013 suggested he become Russian leader Vladimir Putin's "best friend" -- opposed a law passed this year by Congress that could impose new sanctions from January, over Russia's Ukraine intervention and alleged interference in the US presidential election.

The White House has even attempted to play down the conclusion of US intelligence that Russia deployed hackers and propagandists to assist in Trump's election win.

But since that victory, the Trump administration's other major players -- Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis -- have taken a tougher line.

Russian-backed rebels

Relations with Russia are at a low after tit-for-tat closures of diplomatic missions, although both sides seem to want to cooperate to stabilize Syria.

Despite the enmity, progress may be made this week in agreeing terms for a United Nations mission in Ukraine.

Putin has suggested Blue Helmet troops deploy to protect the unarmed OSCE monitors struggling to oversee the shaky ceasefire between Kiev's forces and Russian-backed rebels.

Western powers would like to see the force have a broader mandate.

Germany's Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel met Tillerson in Washington on Thursday, and afterwards told reporters that they found themselves in agreement on the crisis.

"We believe that we absolutely need a robust mandate by the United Nations for a peacekeeping mission," Gabriel said, warning that tough negotiations lie ahead.

"There are -- not minor, but truly significant -- differences between Russia, the United States and us Europeans," he said.

The UN mission must have the authority to implement the truce and enforce the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the disputed and conflict-torn Donbass region, Gabriel said.

"We share this view with our American partners," the German minister added.

Despite overwhelming evidence of its involvement, Moscow continues to deny that it has played a role in the eastern Ukraine fighting.

Missile shield

On North Korea, Europe had a rude awakening on Wednesday when Kim Jong-Un's North Korean regime demonstrated that his banned missile program can, in theory, strike targets on the continent.

Any high-altitude shield to protect Europe from North Korean missiles flying over the pole could breach non-proliferation deals with Russia, promising a new diplomatic row.

Trump, meanwhile, has already made it clear that he thinks the United States already pays more than its fair share of the costs of NATO's collective defense.

Tillerson is due to arrive in Brussels late on Monday. He has talks with EU and NATO leaders on Tuesday and Wednesday before flying on to Vienna for the OSCE.
TCDD requires the first 20 trains to have 10% domestic content. The proportion of local content of the next batch of 60 trains will increase to 53% and production will transfer to Tulomsas in Eskisehir. The final 16 trains will be designed in Turkey and will have a local content of 74%.

TCDD expects considerable savings by gradually transferring production to Turkey rather than importing the entire fleet. Under the terms of the contract, Turkey will have the right to export the Turkish-designed high-speed train.

We have started the process related to our own national high-speed train, says Turkeys transport, maritime and communications minister, Mr Ahmet Arslan. We are taking steps to become fully capable of raising the domestic content of the 96 trains step-by-step.

The trains must be designed to meet the relevant European Technical Standard for Interoperability (TSI). They will have regenerative braking, an IGBT/IGCT control system, ac/ac drive, and will be equipped with ETCS levels 1 and 2.

Each train will have 470 seats, a 16-seat restaurant car and snack bar with eight seats. Space must be provided in each train for two wheelchairs.

TCDD also requires two train driving simulators, 10 table-top simulators and two trainer control stations.

Turkey is steadily expanding its existing Ankara - Polatli - Istanbul Pendik/Konya high-speed network. New lines are under construction from Ankara east to Sivas, and from Polatli to Afyonkarahisar, Usak and Izmir.

The Ankara - Sivas project is due to be completed by the end of 2018. It will reduce the rail distance between the two cities from 603km to 405km and cut the journey time from 12 hours to 2 hours.

The Polatili - Izmir line will be 508km long and will have 43 tunnels with a total length of 35km and 56 viaducts totalling 22km. During an inspection of the project on November 12 Arslan said the Polatli - Usak section will be completed by the end of 2019. A 2-hour journey time is envisaged between Ankara and Usak, with a 1h 30min journey time from there to Izmir.
The first 150 vehicles will be built at Hyundai Rotems plan in Changwon, Korea. The remaining 300 vehicles will be assembled locally by Iranian Rail Industries Development (Irico). All 450 cars will be delivered within 78 months of contract signing.

The order follows the signing of a memorandum of understanding by RAI and Hyundai Rotem in May 2016.

Hyundai Rotem was awarded a contract in 2004 to supply 150 regional DMU cars to RAI. Deliveries started in 2007 and the first 24 trains were built in Korea, while the remaining 24 were to be assembled by Irico.

However, the imposition of international sanctions on Iran in 2010 meant only 68 vehicles were delivered without payment to the Korean manufacturer. Following the lifting of sanctions in January 2016 Iran made a payment of Won 85.5bn to Hyundai-Rotem, enabling production to resume.

Trains from the latest order will be capable of 160km/h, compared with 120km/h for the 2004 order, and the new DMUs will also feature LCD passenger information screens, an area for passengers with wheelchairs, and a separate luggage compartment.
The first of 24 four-car trains being supplied by Hitachi Rail Italy to Metro-Dade County entered service on the two-line Metrorail network in Miami on November 30.

The $313.8-million order for 136 cars is being funded through the transport surtax funds from Metro-Dade Countys voter-approved Peoples Transportation Plan.

The new trains, which will replace the original fleet dating from 1984, feature:

 Automated passenger announcements;

 Digital signs displaying the name of the next station;

 Four digital information monitors in each car;

 Wi-Fi for up to 252 passengers;

 Bicycle racks;

 Closed-circuit TV, and

 LED lighting.

Half the trains needed to operate peak-hour services are expected to be in service by July 2018, with all peak services operated by the new fleet by February 2019, and the full fleet in operation by November 2019. The vehicles are being assembled at Hitachis plant in Medley, Fla.

Today is certainly a great day for Miami-Dade Countys history, said Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez. For the first time in more than 30 years of Metrorail service, we placed on the tracks our first new train.
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Alleged Russian member of Ukrainian Right Sector arrested in absentia

MOSCOW, December 4 (RAPSI)  Russian citizen Alexander Valov, who stands charged with involvement in the activities of Right Sector nationalist organization, banned in Russia, has been arrested in absentia, the Investigative Committees press office reports Monday.

Investigators claim that Valov left Russia before 2014 in order to join Right Sector in Ukraine. The man allegedly participated in the organizations mass public events, took photos and videos, and propagandized extremism online.

Currently, Valov is engaged in combat in southeast Ukraine as a mercenary of the Azov battalion, according to Russian investigators.

Right Sector is a Ukrainian association of radical nationalist organizations. In January and February 2014, its members clashed with police and seized administrative buildings in Kiev. Since April 2014, Right Sector has been involved in fighting the protest movement in eastern Ukraine.

In November 2014, Russias Supreme Court declared Right Sector an extremist group and banned its activity in Russia. The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh for alleged incitement of terrorism.

In January 2015, Right Sector was added to the Russian register of prohibited organizations.
MOSCOW, December 4 (RAPSI)  A prosecutor has asked a judge to sentence Russias economy ex-minister Alexey Ulyukayev charged with bribery to ten years in a high security penal colony, RAPSI correspondent reports from the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow on Monday.

He also requested to fine Ulyukayev 500 million rubles (nearly $8.5 million).

Ulyukayev's defense insists on his innocence.

The former minister stands charged with taking $2 million in bribes. He was arrested while receiving an alleged bribe in mid-November 2016.

According to the Investigative Committee, he threatened to create obtrusions for Rosneft with the use of his position. On November 15, 2016, Ulyukayev was put under house arrest. Later in the evening, President Vladimir Putin relieved Ulyukayev of his post because of loss of trust.

Ulyukayev pleaded not guilty and stated that he believed the case was fabricated. The defendant noted that there was a provocation, orchestrated by the Federal Security Service (FSB) and that there was no sound evidence in the case, aside from a testimony provided by CEO of the countrys largest oil corporation Rosneft Igor Sechin.

The court has seized 15 property items and over 564 million rubles ($9.5 million) belonging to Ulyukayev as part of the case.
Gogol Center theater director to stay under house arrest in embezzlement case

MOSCOW, December 4 (RAPSI, Nikolay Merkulov)  The Moscow City Court on Monday upheld a ruling to extend house arrest of the Gogol Center theater director Kirill Serebrennikov, who stands charged with large-scale embezzlement, RAPSI reported from the courtroom.

Appeals against restrictive measures of two other defendants, former head of the Seventh Studio stage company Yury Itin, and ex- general producer Alexey Malobrodsky, were also dismissed.

Serebrennikov and Itin will remain under house arrest until January 19. Malobrodsky will stay detained for the same period.

Serebrennikov was arrested in late August and then placed under house arrest. In early November, Moscows Basmanny District Court seized assets belonging to Serebrennikov including apartment, car, and money in the amount of more than 360,000 rubles ($6,000), over  60,000, and $4,000.

Investigators believe that he was an organizer of the budget money embezzlement. The defendant denied wrongdoing.

He allegedly created Seventh Studio stage company to actualize the Platforma project for promotion of art and invited Itin, Malobrodsky, and former companys chief accountant Nina Maslyayeva, among others, into organization.

Investigators believe that Itin, Malobrodsky, and Maslyayeva were falsifying data for the Platforma projects plans in 2011-2014 on request of the theater director. This data was provided to the Ministry of Culture as the rationale for financing from the state budget.

Earlier, Maslyayeva has testified against Serebrennikov. She said that Serebrennikov, Malobrodsky and Itin organized embezzlement of money allocated for a cultural event. Serebrennikov and Malobrodsky cashed the money with the assistance of Maslyayeva. The woman also said that she entered falsified data in financial reports.

Former official of Russias Culture Ministry and current director of the Russian Academic Youth Theater Sophia Apfelbaum has been also arrested and put under house arrest on embezzlement charges. According to investigators, from 2011 to 2014, Apfelbaum signed contracts on state grants in the amount of more than 214 million rubles ($3.7 million) with Serebrennikovs Seventh Studio stage company on behalf of the Russian Culture Ministry, and provided further agreement of received reporting documents, which contained overstated information on quantity and cost of the held events. Thus, she has abetted the embezzlement of about 68 million rubles ($1.2 million) by Serebrennikov and his alleged accomplices, investigators claim.

Apfelbaum admitted that she controlled the movement of cash but pleaded not guilty to embezzlement.

One more defendant, producer Yekaterina Voronova, has been arrested in absentia and put on the international wanted list.
Tax evasion charges dropped against Ulmart ex-CEO

MOSCOW, December 4 (RAPSI)  Investigators closed a tax evasion case against former CEO of Russias Internet retailer Ulmart, Sergey Fedorinov, who had fully covered loss caused to the budget, the Investigative Committees St. Petersburg directorate announced on Monday.

Fedorinov have paid out over 188.5 million rubles (about $3.2 million) including tax owing, penalties and fines, the statement reads.

According to case papers, in 2012 and in the first nine months of 2013, Fedorinov avoided paying taxes by providing tax authorities with knowingly false information on Ulmarts right to VAT offset. Investigators claimed that he had caused damage valued at more than 116 million rubles (about $2 million) to the state.

Currently, a co-owner of Ulmart, Dmitry Kostygin, is under investigation in credit fraud case. According to case papers, Kostygin acting as the Board Chairman of Ulmart provided false information on the companys financial position to Sberbank for signing a loan agreement. In April, Sberbank transferred 1 billion rubles (about $17 million at the current exchange rate) to the companys account. The accused allegedly managed the money in his discretion. The defendant pleaded not guilty, his lawyer Konstantin Dobrynin told RAPSI earlier.

Ulmart group of companies is the largest Russian private Internet holding focusing on e-commerce segment. The companys distribution network consists of over 400 sales outlets across more than 240 Russian cities and towns.
Asset managing firm files $136 million lawsuit against shareholder of Enel Russia

MOSCOW, December 4 (RAPSI)  Structures of Prosperity Capital asset managing firm have filed a lawsuit with the Sverdlovsk Regional Commercial Court seeking to recover 8 billion rubles (about $136 million) from Enel Investment Holding B.V., a shareholder of Russian energy company Enel Russia, court documents read on Monday.

Plaintiffs in the case are The Prosperity Quest Fund, Prosperity Russia Domestic Fund Limited, Prosperity Capital Management SICAV and The Russian Prosperity Fund. Five top managers of Enel Investment are also defendants in this case.

An international group of companies, Enel Group owns 54.6% of Enel Russia shares. In July 2015, it came to public attention that 5.18% of the latter companys shares were bought out by Prosperity Capital.

Earlier, the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Commercial Court has set hearing of a lawsuit filed by companies related to Prosperity Capital seeking to recover 11.4 billion rubles (about $193.5 million) from Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska for December 20.
Four persons suspected of planning attack on city administration in Russia arrested

MOSCOW, December 4 (RAPSI)  Russian investigators have arrested four persons, suspected of planning an attack on Khabarovsk citys district administration as well as of membership in an extremist organization, the press-service of the Khabarovsk Krais Investigative Committee department informs on Monday.

According to investigators, in August 2017, two residents of Khabarovsk decided to organize a nationalistic extremist group and induced two acquaintances to join them in criminal activity against people of non-slavic ethnicities.

The suspects obtained instruction manuals for production of homemade explosives, held shooting exercises and trained to throw petrol bombs. They planned to attack a street vendor and the administration for a city district in Khabarovsk, investigators said, adding that two of the arrested persons are students of a local university.

Investigators stated that the suspects wanted the populace to know who committed the crimes and manufactured a flag to mark each would-be crime scene.
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LARGE WOODED LOT IN NICE, CALIFORNIA! Would you like to own property in Lake County California? Does residential land in Nice, CA interest you? Here is your opportunity to purchase a large lot for a fraction of market value. Known as the "Bass Capital of the West." Clear Lake supports large populations of bass, crappie, bluegill, carp and catfish. Located along Klein St., the lot itself is somewhat rectangular in shape and measures approximately 11,265 square feet. Please feel free to drive out ...

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UP FOR SALE a nice solid home built in 1910 with 7 or more bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 kitchens, full basement, large deck, 2 car garage. on 1.23 acres of land located in north central Missouri. just off hwy 36 between st. Joe and Hannibal mo. about a hour and 45 min to Kansas city. the home is located in Brookfield mo. a nice quiet and safe place to raise a family or start your own bed and breakfast. the home can be used as one big home or split into a home with a apartment to rent out and live re...

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Please note that we are not affiliated with nor do we represent the resort described in this item ad.Item Description Elara: Hilton Grand Vacations ClubLas Vegas, Nevada All images in this listing are general images of the resort and do not necessarily reflect the actual resort or units. Please perform your own due diligenceOVERVIEW80 E HARMON AVE, LAS VEGAS, NV 89109The sleek, 52-story Elara resort boasts a premier Center Strip location. This spectacular property offers adjoining access to t...

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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

Former of Beverly Hills star Carlton Gebbia and her husband, David Gebbia, are getting a divorce.According to court documents, David filed for divorce after 20 years of marriage in the Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday, Us Weekly reported David cited irreconcilable differences as the cause for the split.The date of the former couple's separation is listed in the paperwork as September 16, 2017, according to Us.However, a source told the magazine in August 2016 that the pair had been broken up for a year by that point, though they still lived together at the time.Carlton, 44, and David have two daughters together -- Destiny, 15, and Mysteri, 14 -- as well as a son named Cross, 6.In his filing, David reportedly requested joint legal and physical custody of their three children.Carlton starred on Season 4 of of Beverly Hills, which aired from November 2013 to April 2014. Carlton is remembered for clashing with many of her co-stars during her brief stint on the show, including Kyle Richards Carlton and Joyce Giraud were reportedly both fired from the Bravo reality series after just one season."Decisions were made and Joyce and Carlton have been informed that they're not coming back," an insider told Us in 2014.The current cast of of Beverly Hills stars Kyle, Erika Girardi Lisa Vanderpump , Dorit Kemsley, Lisa Rinna , and newcomer Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave.alum Camille Grammer will also return to the series when it returns with its ninth season December 19 at 9PM ET/PT on Bravo. Camille has been absent from the show since Season 2.
Automobile companies are worried about challenges from electric mobility, automation and connected vehicles.

Image: Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corporation, introduces the 2018 Camry XLE during the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, US. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters

Akio Toyoda, the chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation, is a worried man.

The chief of worlds leading automobile player has raised serious concerns about survival of automobile companies in an event of newer technological challenges such as electric mobility, automation and connected vehicles.

The automotive industry has entered an era of profound transformation, the likes of which come only once every hundred years, Toyoda said.

He said there was no guarantee the auto manufacturers would continue to play leading roles in mobility over the next 100 years.

A crucial battle has begun - not one about winning or losing, but one about surviving or dying.

Toyota retailed 5.2 million vehicles during the first half of FY18 globally.

All around the world electric mobility is beginning to gain ground as an alternative to conventional fuel-run cars.

Here, the government has talked about an ambitious plan to have an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2030. Besides electric mobility, the sector is also seeing disruptions in form of connected vehicles and autonomous driving tech where carmakers have limited know-how.

Toyota Motor believes the industry has entered a phase of competition and coordination that involves entities from other industries, the firm said.

We will pursue alliances with other companies and other industries, Toyoda said.

Toyota Motor entered into a partnership with Japanese peer Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC) earlier this year to work together in areas of green vehicles, safety, information technologies and mutual supply of products and components.

SMC, the parent of Indias biggest carmaker Maruti Suzuki, said last month it would work with Toyota Motor to introduce EVs in India.

To boost business innovation among companies of the Toyota Group, Toyota Motor last week decided to change its executive line-up and revise its organisational structure from January.

Surrounded by changes of unprecedented speed and scale, Toyota Motor is aware it faces a now or never situation in which not a moment can be spared, the firm added.

R C Bhargava, chairman at Maruti Suzuki, said Toyodas statement makes perfect sense and must be taken seriously.

Businesses face challenges all the time. But when a new tech comes, these become even bigger. Nobody can guarantee success. Everybody will try; some may win and some may not, he said.

Firms are, therefore, beginning to scout for partnerships with rivals and tech firms. With partnerships, the cost of developing new tech can be spread over a larger number of vehicles.

In India, home-grown Mahindra & Mahindra and US carmaker Ford entered into a partnership to work together on mobility programmes, connected vehicle projects, electrification, product development, sourcing and marketing.

Earlier this year, Tata Motors initiated partnership talks with Volkswagen group to jointly develop vehicles.

However, both ended discussions in August after finding their partnership may not yield desired synergies.

Tata also partnered with Microsoft to work on connected vehicle technologies.
Earnings spread for foreign investors down to 10-year low of 1.1 per cent, from 2 per cent at the beginning of the year and record high of nearly 5 per cent in 2013

The mismatch between corporate earnings and stock prices has widened on Dalal Street, with the earnings yield for Indias top listed companies now down to a decadal low of 3.5 per cent.

The figure was 4.5 per cent at the start of 2007 and four per cent a year before.

The current yield is even lower than at the end of December 2007, a week before the great market fall of 2008.

This analysis is based on the latest earnings and market capitalisation of BSE 500 index companies, which account for 90 per cent of the combined market value of listed firms on the bourse.

The earnings yield declines further to 3.3 per cent if the sample is expanded to include all frequently traded companies (1,880) which have declared their results for the quarter ended September 2017.

Earnings yield is calculated by dividing the earnings per share for the most recent 12-month period by the current market price.

So, in the current scenario, an equity investor in India would earn annual yield (or income) of Rs 3,500 for Rs 1 lakh worth of investment in BSE 500 index companies - assuming these entities distribute their entire annual profit as equity dividend.

In comparison, a similar investment in a 10-year Government of India bond would now yield annual income of Rs 7,000, up from Rs 6,500 around three months earlier.

It raises a question mark over the sustainability of the current rally in equities, as a fall in earnings yield coincides with a rise in bond yield.

In the past three months, the yield on 10-year government bond is up nearly 50 basis points, while bond yields are up by five bps in the US.

Analysts expect a further rise, driven by greater borrowing by the government here and rate hike in the US.

Historically, there is a positive correlation between earnings yields and stock market movement.

The current rally on Dalal Street was preceded by a period of high earnings yield and low bond yield in early 2013.

This gave large earnings spread to stock investors over risk-free assets.

For example, the earnings yield for BSE 500 companies had risen to a high of 7.1 per cent during the June 2013 quarter, a notch below the 7.5 per cent yield on government bonds during that period.

This, in combination with low bond yields in the US, translated into a yield spread of nearly five per cent for foreign investors in early 2013, more than double the spread in the previous three years.

This created the basis for a surge in capital inflow into India and a rally on Dalal Street from September 2013.

The earnings spread for foreign investors is now down to a 10-year low of 1.1 per cent, as against two per cent at the start of 2017.

The previous low was in the second half of 2007, when spreads had fallen to 0.3 per cent at the end of the December 2007 quarter.

Analysts attribute low yields to a combination of high stock valuations and poor corporate earnings.

Optimism about the India growth story is at an all-time high among equity investors, resulting in record stock valuations. However, corporate earnings remain in the slow lane due to poor demand growth, says G Chokkalingam, founder & managing director, Equinomics Research & Advisory.

BSE 500 index companies are currently trading at 29 times their trailing 12-months' earnings, on an average, the highest in at least 11 years.

The broader market is even more expensive, at a trailing price to earnings multiple of 30.5.

BSE 500 companies' combined net profit (adjusted for exceptional gains and losses) was up eight per cent year-on-year during the 12 months ending September 2017, lagging the 25.4 per cent year-on-year growth in combined market capitalisation during the period.

Cumulatively, corporate earnings are up 10 per cent since the start of the current rally in 2013, while stock prices are up 115 per cent on average.

Analysts say the gap is unsustainable and either the earnings yield should rise or there would be market correction.

Earnings yields should rise, driven by better corporate earnings; otherwise, there is no justification for the current market capitalisation. If earnings dont increase in the next six months, it will be a problem, adds Chokkalingam.

Other experts say there could be a disruption in the market only if there is a sudden spike in bond yields.

The current rally might have been triggered by superior earnings yields and its spread over bond yields.

"But, its sustenance is largely based on liquidity, rather than incremental growth in corporate earnings.

"The current arrangement in the equity market will get disrupted only if there is a sudden spike in bond yields in the US, forcing investors to recalibrate their investment portfolio, says Dhananjay Sinha, research head, Emkay Global Financial Services.

Companies in the sample reported net profit of Rs 3.69 lakh crore during the 12 months ending September 2017, as against their current combined market capitalisation of Rs 106.6 lakh crore.

For the broader sample of 1,880 companies, net profit during the trailing four quarters was Rs 3.85 lakh crore, as against their combined market capitalisation of Rs 117.4 lakh crore currently.

Photograph: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has left no stone unturned this year after big industrialists, along with Union ministers, skipped attending the BGBS 2017.

OPe@3#2!q5After last years damp squib, the forthcoming Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS), scheduled for January next year, is poised to host top industrialists such as steel magnate LN Mittal, Reliance Industries chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani, and JSW chairman and managing director Sajjan Jindal.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has left no stone unturned this year after big industrialists, along with Union ministers, skipped attending the BGBS 2017.

Not only did she travel to Mumbai to request Ambani and Jindal to attend the event, but also went all the way to the UK to pursue Mittal and The Chatterjee Groups founder chairman, Purnendu Chatterjee, to attend the business summit as well as invest in the state.

Mittal seems impressed by Banerjees efforts. While visiting West Bengal for an event, he said: She has West Bengal in her heart and is very passionate.

Chatterjee too, after settling the shareholding issue in Haldia Petrochemicals with the government, is upbeat.

At the January 2017 BGBS, after Banerjee and her party, the Trinamool Congress, stepped up their criticism of demonetisation, Union ministers who were said to have given their consent to attend the event backed out.

With no Union ministers to present West Bengal as a favoured investment destination, top industrialists refrained from attending.

The annual event is Banerjees chance of getting back at people who critique her industrial policy.

Sanjay Budhia, managing director at the Patton Group, which has five plants in West Bengal (one more coming up), is of the view that once industrialists talk about their experience, indirectly pursuing their peers to invest, the job to attract investment is half done.

OPe@3#2!q5Her pitch for investment in the state, however, has remained consistent over the years - gateway to the north-east (India), Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar and others.

The supporting pitch is the availability of skilled personal at competitive rates.

Referring to the 34-year Left Front rule, which saw prolonged industrial disputes, Rudra Chatterjee, director at Luxmi Tea, is of the view that it takes nerves to approach top industry officials who were forced out to invest in the state again.

The 2017 BGBS saw the lowest investment proposals since the summits inception at Rs 2,35,290 crore, which is around six per cent lower than the previous years Rs 2,50,254 crore.

The biggest pie, which accounted for 11.5 per cent of the total, was worth Rs 27,200 crore, signed between Chinese company TEB Technology and Texmaco Rail & Engineering for an MRTS (Mass Rapid Transit System) project.

The Chatterjee Group, which operates the Haldia refinery and recently took over a chemicals plant from Mitsubishi Chemicals, also committed Rs 500 crore.

In the year before, the Group committed an investment of Rs 20,000 crore to set up a 15-million-tonne refinery in the state.

Amit Mitra, the states finance minister, said forward integration for the acquired Mitsubishi plant had been done.

On the other hand, industry sources said that the land allotment process for the refinery was underway.

In turn, it has stalled the proposed investment currently.

The Rs 12,000- crore Tajpur port project is stuck after the state pursued the Kolkata Port Trust as well as the Union shipping ministry to prioritise at the cost of the Sagar project.

In this case too, the Port authorities are yet to float the feasibility tender for the port.

OPe@3#2!q5Mitra also said the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group would invest Rs 10,000 crore in its maiden FMCG venture.

However, after the Group diversified into FMCG, it has been looking to set up plants in Telangana or Tamil Nadu with West Bengal also under consideration.

Nevertheless, the government, as well as industry, is optimistic about the meet.

Recently, after over nine years delay, Infosys relented on its demand for the special economic zone (SEZ) status and agreed to set up its maiden campus in the state.

Entrepreneurs say the biggest driver for industry to invest in the state is the big customer base, but cautions that unlike some states, West Bengal is not a greenfield market.

If the top guns do turn up for the summit, Banerjee will find some solace.

After all, last time, she bore the brunt of taking on the Centre.

Photograph: Jayanta Shaw\/Reuters
'Gujarat is a high turnout state and the BJP, even if it leads opinion polls, must ensure that its base comes out and votes.'

'This may not be easy because it is fighting a defensive campaign.'

'The Congress can be confident that, even though its base is smaller, their voters will turn out because they are angry,' says Aakar Patel.

What are the issues in the election campaign that is unfolding in Gujarat?

The ruling party for 22 years, the Bharatiya Janata Party, says it is about development. This is apparently a copyrighted word and development is something only the BJP can deliver, particularly under Narendra D Modi.

What the BJP does is development and what other parties do is corruption, dynasty and so on.

This formulation is childish in its simplicity, but the remarkable thing is that the BJP has been allowed to get away with it by its opponents.

Even if we assume that what the BJP wants to talk about is development, meaning discussing data and policies that push economic and social growth, the party gets distracted.

It wants to know what religion Rahul Gandhi is. The prime minister lies and says the Congress celebrated Hafiz Saeed's bail. What does that have to do with development?

Nothing, of course.

If the BJP claims to stand for development, the Congress is not clear about the issue in the election. Or at least it does not offer a single point like the BJP claims to offer development.

The Congress party's crown prince Rahul Gandhi wants to discuss corruption in the Rafale deal (for which he has got no support from the media) one day, and the next day it could be GST and demonetisation.

This lack of focus has meant that the messaging against the BJP has been scattered.

The second thing, after issues, is organisation.

Here the BJP is a formidable force. It is one of the most powerful political parties in the democratic world. It has a large grassroots presence that is managed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the world's biggest non-governmental organisation, with lakhs of members.

These are dedicated and trained individuals, and in recent years they have also been highly motivated because of Modi's charismatic leadership, whom the RSS grassroots adores.

In any tight race, and one is not sure whether Gujarat is a tight race at the moment, the BJP's organisational assets will win the day for them.

On the other side, and since this is a two-party state we can only look at the Congress, it must be accepted that this level of competence is missing.

The old Congress worker from the Seva Dal or the Youth Congress is absent. The structure has disintegrated and it is left to individual Congress candidates to provide the manpower that will do the work.

This costs money and many Congress leaders no longer invest as much money in elections because the party has been consistently losing.

Both on the side of issues and organisation, my view is that the BJP is ahead, either because of its strength or the Congress's weakness, or both.

The third thing is the campaign strategy.

The BJP has used its most powerful card, the prime minister, and has deployed him in dozens of rallies.

Readers may have observed that though for many years he would only use Hindi even in Gujarat, these days he has started speaking in Gujarati.

To me this indicates that he feels he needs to drive home the message and that may mean a closer race than the opinion polls show.

Modi is, of course, an outstanding public speaker and he is able to set the agenda in a way that Rahul Gandhi cannot.

When Modi makes a big speech, he usually frames an old issue in a new way so well that the headlines must report it.

An example: I sold tea, but did not sell the nation. Such clear, simple framing is a terrific asset to have in a leader.

On the other hand, the Congress not only cannot set the agenda, but must also keep defending itself on non-stories, such as whether Ahmed Patel was wrong to be a trustee in a hospital and whether Rahul Gandhi is Catholic.

The Congress has, however, managed to do one thing with competence: It has brought in the three large dissenting groups that had mobilised in the last few months.

The Patidars, the Dalits and the OBC Kshatriyas, led by Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mewani and Alpesh Thakor respectively.

It would not have been easy to do this, given that the three groups have contradicting demands. And it would not have been natural for these groups to align with Congress given that all three mobilisations were apolitical and spontaneous, but the Congress has managed to pull it off.

My guess is that this is the doing mainly of Ahmed Patel.

The BJP is worried by this development, and we can observe that in the many statements from its leaders, particularly the chief minister, which are aimed at breaking the alliance.

The question is: Will it be enough to defeat the BJP?

My view is that this election will be determined above all by turnout.

Gujarat is a high turnout state and the BJP, even if it leads opinion polls, must ensure that its base comes out and votes.

This may not be easy because it is fighting a defensive campaign. The Congress can be confident that, even though its base is smaller, their voters will turn out because they are angry.

In that sense the real issues in Gujarat, jobs and meaningful economic development, are against the ruling party, even if it pretends to be fighting on them.

Photograph: Kind courtesy @narendramodi/Twitter
Contemporary records speak of Chhatrapati Shivaji's resolve to liberate Hindu holy places, and the later Maratha rulers carried forward his legacy, Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) reveals in a forthcoming book.

IMAGE: Ruins of the original Kashi Viswanath temple under the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi. Photograph: Oasis.54515, kind courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Effective Mughal control over large parts of India died with Aurangzeb in 1707. In the words of Lord Macaulay, 'Soon after Aurangzeb's death every corner of his wide empire learnt to tremble at the name of the mighty Marathas!'

The Marathas held sway over large parts of Central and North India right till the Second Anglo-Maratha war of 1803.

Liberation of Hindu holy places was always a part of the Marathas' political agenda throughout this period.

The roots of this go back to the days of Shivaji the Great. In 1669, reversing the tolerant policy laid down by Emperor Akbar, Aurangzeb destroyed the Kashi Vishwanath temple in April 1669 and the temple at the birthplace of Krishna in Mathura in December of the same year.

Jijabai and Shivaji were greatly dismayed at this news.

This also led to the realisation on Shivaji's part that peace with Aurangzeb was impossible. Contemporary records speak of his resolve to liberate Hindu holy places, and the later Maratha rulers carried forward his legacy.

In an attempt to change Aurangzeb's policy and anticipating a future conflict with the Mughals, Shivaji wrote: 'Your great grandfather had been a tolerant ruler. Hindus ring a bell and the Muslims say azaan, what is the difference? Both pray to one almighty in their own way.'

In a farsighted prediction Shivaji added, 'My land is harsh and unyielding. The people born in this land, like its nature, are hardy. Your elephants and big guns cannot move freely in this area. There is very little you can gain from the poor country of mine.'

'Should you try to subjugate my people, you will meet with fierce resistance, so why venture on this foolhardy course?'

Immediately after Shivaji's death in 1680, Aurangzeb did precisely this, for which he and the Mughal empire paid the price. The rest, as they say, is history.

By the middle of the 18th century, the Marathas had consolidated their hold over Central India, the Malwa plateau. The Marathas wished to test the waters as well as establish the rights of all Hindus to go on pilgrimages.

In a planned move Bajirao's mother Radhabai went on a year-long visit to Hindu holy sites in the north in February 1735. Such was the awe Bajirao commanded that the Mughal emperor not only welcomed her visit but also deputed a guard of 1,000 soldiers to accompany her throughout her stay.

Radhbai returned to Pune in June 1736 after a prolonged stay at Kashi.

In 1737 Bajirao made a successful dash to Delhi and defeated the Mughal army. As Nizam Ul Mulk tried to come to the emperor's rescue, Bajirao moved against him and defeated him in the battle of Sironj in January 1738.

The Mughals ceded the province of Malwa to the Marathas. Bajirao in turn appointed the Shindes (now the Scindias) to look after Gwalior and the Holkars to take charge in Indore. Once the base in Malwa was secure, the Marathas began forays into the Indo-Gangetic plains.

On June 27, 1742, Malhar Rao Holkar, the Maratha general, with a cavalry force of over 20,000 soldiers reached the vicinity of Kashi.

Holkar planned to pull down the Gyanvapi mosque that was constructed at the site of the Kashi Vishwanath temple by Aurangzeb and rebuild the temple.

The people of Kashi were alarmed and sent a delegation requesting Holkar not to do so. The delegation argued that the Mughals were too strong in Kashi and the residents would be killed once the Marathas left.

Holkar acceded to their request and left without restoring the Kashi temple.

By 1750, after Nadir Shah's devastating raid in 1739 and the plunder of Delhi (during which he carried away the famous Peacock throne and Kohinoor diamond), the Mughal emperor was reduced to a puppet in the hands of various nobles and the Marathas. The latter had become virtual kingmakers in Delhi.

In 1752, the Mughal wazir (prime minister) Safdar Jung sought Maratha help. They agreed, but demanded more provinces and the liberation of Hindu holy places.

Safdar Jung agreed to the first condition but made various excuses to deny the Hindu holy places to the Marathas.

One of the akhbars (news reports) mentions that the general opinion among Muslims was against the move as the control over Kashi, Mathura and Ayodhya was seen by them as symbols of conquest of Islam over Hinduism.

At that time as well as in the 21st century, Shia Muslims were more accommodative than Sunnis.

Nadir Shah's invasion and Ahmed Shah Abdali's invasion in 1759 forced the Marathas to change their policy of basing only small forces in the north.

On April 14, 1760, a large force under Sadashiv Bhau marched from Pune to deal with the threat of an Afghan invasion.

Bhau was instructed to first defeat Abdali at Delhi and then turn east and liberate Hindu holy sites.

He was to further proceed to Bengal to drive away the English who had begun to pose a serious threat to Maratha domains in the north and the south.

The aim to liberate holy places had one rather unfortunate effect. Attracted by the opportunity to conduct a pilgrimage to the holy places, a large number of non-combatants joined the Maratha force.

This was contrary to Bajirao's practice of maintaining a nimble-footed army that had so successfully conquered Malwa. This was to prove a great hindrance when the Marathas faced Abdali at Panipat on January 14, 1761.

In a closely fought battle the Marathas suffered a major defeat. The Afghan losses were also considerable and Abdali returned to Afghanistan soon thereafter.

The resultant power vacuum was soon filled by the English who advanced from Bengal and established their sway over most of Doab (the Ganga-Yamuna valley).

The Marathas under the able General Mahadji Shinde re-established themselves in Delhi by 1765. However, they could never again muster sufficient strength to conquer the rest of north India.

In the second Anglo-Maratha war fought in 1803, the English defeated the Marathas in the battles of Delhi, Aligarh, Lassawari and Assye.

The English did not tinker with the ownership of Hindu holy places and the status quo established by Mughal emperors Babar and Aurangzeb continued under their rule till 1947.

Excerpted from Mighty Marathas: The Last Indian Empire by Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'He is 47 years old and not married. Since his son or daughter can contest for Parliament only 25 years after being born, the earliest, if he marries in December, would be 2043.'

'So this, pretty much, is the end of the road for dynastic rule in the party,' says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.

Arun Shourie once wrote that Indian politics needed totems around which the natives could gather, perchance to dance and feast.

He was referring to the Congress party's perennial need for a Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, and now Rahul Gandhi.

He could have talked about MGR, NTR, Jayalalithaa, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, etc. The political parties they led or lead are almost exactly like the Congress in their need for totems. None of them, however, has started political dynasties.

What Mr Shourie did not mention was that this totem approach also involves a strong element of Confucianism, wherein unquestioning obedience to the head of the family is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for survival and advancement. The Americans, precise as ever, call it brown-nosing.

But Confucian family succession is by merit. Just look at that fellow Xi Jinping. It emerges after a Mughal/Mafia/CPC style free-for-all.

In the Congress Mummy anoints the heir and no one is allowed to argue, protest, or contest.

So Indira Gandhi chose her younger son, Sanjay, as her successor.

Sonia Gandhi has chosen her older child, Rahul.

Jawaharlal Nehru, being the good man that he was, would surely have had his doubts about both of them.

In between Sanjay and Rahul lies -- or lay -- Rajiv Gandhi, a very nice guy among bad ones.

Had Sanjay not died an accidental death in 1980, Rajiv may well have retired as CMD of Indian Airlines/Air India at the age of 60.

It is now received wisdom that the Congress cannot survive without the Gandhis. The events since 1998 certainly suggest that.

But had Indira Gandhi not been killed when she was, that story could have turned out very differently. Sonia Gandhi would probably have ensured that.

She almost did in 1984, when she is said to have pleaded with Rajiv not to become PM. She even turned down the offer to make her Congress president the day after her husband died and stayed away from active politics for seven long years after her bereavement.

It was the intense rivalry in the Congress party that made her, first, the neutral umpire, and, then, the on-field umpire because useless old men in the party could not bring themselves to accept a different leader.

In fact, in 1984 Pranab Mukherjee could not even stomach Rajiv Gandhi as PM and was soon expelled. He formed a party that no one joined and quickly returned to the fold.

In the mid-1990s, Arjun Singh and N D Tiwari left the Congress and formed a party because they could not stand the idea of a south Indian as Congress PM. That venture, too, was abandoned when Sonia Gandhi became the leader in 1998.

But if the North Indians could not stomach a south Indian as PM, the south Indians could not stomach the Bihari Sitaram Kesri as Congress president. G K Moopanar formed a new Tamil Congress party, which P Chidambaram joined. When he became finance minister in 2004, it was as a member of the breakaway party.

Other Congress people left the party to join the BJP. Some succeeded, others didn't.

With disintegration looming, the older Congress 'leaders' did what K Kamaraj, S K Patil, and Atulya Ghosh had done in 1966: They turned to the Gandhi family in the hope that they too would have a totem.

But again someone objected. Sharad Pawar formed his own party, which still exists.

People, meanwhile, do wonder about Rahul's successor. He is 47 years old and not married.

Since his son or daughter can contest for Parliament only 25 years after being born, the earliest, if he marries in December, would be 2043.

You can work out the odds for the Congress party's hereditary tradition from this. They don't look too good.

So this, pretty much, is the end of the road for dynastic rule in the party.

That is why, for Rahul to lay claim to true greatness via a massive sacrifice for a greater cause, there is only the Edward VIII option left. That King of England abdicated his throne in 1936 for love.

So if Rahul loves the party and wants it to survive -- which it absolutely must -- he must quit after five years, regardless of such meagre electoral successes that come his way and let the party find a new leader.

It will be a painful process, but the party will live on.

His mother came out of retirement to save the party; he must go into it for the same reason.

IMAGE: Rahul Gandhi on the campaign trail in Padla, Gujarat, November 13, 2017. Photograph: Courtesy @INCIndia/Twitter
'It is hard to justify $225 million a plane for an increasingly obsolete mission.'

The purchase of the 36 Rafales has changed little for the IAF, explains Ajai Shukla.

Since the turn of the century, when the Indian Air Force began its quest for cheap, light fighters to replace the Soviet-era fleet of light MiG variants, the IAF's specifications for the replacement fighter have changed so much as to be almost unrecognisable.

From supporting development of an indigenous fighter to adding more fighters to the Mirage-2000 fleet, the IAF switched tack to buying medium, multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) through competitive global tendering; to eventually buying 36 Rafale fighters in a government-to-government deal with France.

In the newest twist, after Prime Minister Narendra D Modi announced on April 10, 2015, in Paris that India would procure 36 Rafale fighters from Dassault, the justification for acquiring such a high-end fighter transformed into veiled hints that it be a platform for delivering nuclear weapons in wartime.

Three days after Modi's Rafale announcement, then defence minister Manohar Parrikar said on Doordarshan: 'It is a strategic purchase and should never have gone through an RFP (Request for Proposals, or a competitive tender).'

Most nuclear strategists have taken 'strategic purchase' to mean that India would rig Rafale fighters to deliver nuclear weapons -- in place of the Mirage 2000s and Jaguars that currently do the job -- as the airborne leg of its nuclear triad.

In the calculations of many analysts, there could be no other valid reason for an air force that already operates seven types of fighters to buy just 36 aircraft of an entirely new type, further complicating a logistical nightmare.

Furthermore, nuclear strategists say in the era of highly reliable land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, delivering nuclear weapons by aircraft is a dispensable option.

Says Vipin Narang, nuclear strategist at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology: "Given India's diverse and capable land and sea-based missiles, it is worth considering whether one even needs a replacement delivery platform for nuclear gravity bombs."

"If India is committed to a triad, a more cost-effective solution may be to make Brahmos a nuclear missile and use the Sukhoi-30MKI to deliver it," adds Narang, "obviating the need to replace the Mirage and Jaguars. It is hard to justify $225 million a plane for an increasingly obsolete mission."

If indeed the Rafale's nuclear capability led to its purchase, it remains unclear why the government does not publicly state it?

The commitment to a nuclear triad -- of delivery of nukes by land, sea and air -- is publicly enunciated in India's nuclear doctrine.

It would be reasonable to state that the IAF is paying such a heavy cost to have the most seamless transition from the Mirage 2000 to another French platform, says Narang.

However, there would be questions over whether the Rafale needs to do that job. The Mirage 2000 and the Jaguar are both being upgraded, and can act as airborne nuclear vectors till 2030-35.

The nuclear talk is the latest example of the IAF shifting goalposts on its fighter purchase over the past two decades.

Since the early 1980s, when the IAF had 42 fighter squadrons but 30 of them were light MiG variants that faced obsolescence, it was decided to develop the indigenous Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) to replace them.

In 1981, the IAF defined a requirement for a light, single-engine to replace the MiGs from the mid-1990s. But the LCA eventually flew only in 2001.

The IAF, happy with the performance of the Mirage 2000 in the Kargil war, began lobbying for buying the Mirage production line that Dassault was closing down, and re-establishing it in Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to build the excellent Mirage 2000-5 fighter.

"As an air force we were very familiar and comfortable with the operational and tactical handling of the Mirage 2000," said Air Marshal Pranab Kumar Barbora (retd), who was the vice chief of the air staff till 2010.

That would have given the IAF large numbers of inexpensive yet sophisticated, single-engine fighters, ideal for replacing the MiGs.

But the National Democratic Alliance-I defence minister George Fernandes, under fire after the Tehelka exposes on defence procurement corruption, shied away from a single-vendor buy from Dassault -- ironically, considering what eventually happened with the Rafale purchase 15 years later.

In 2002, Fernandes ordered the IAF to float a global tender. Specifications were framed for a light fighter, and the IAF floated a 'Request for Information' to four global vendors in 2004.

However, in 2005, Dassault -- apparently miffed at having to compete instead of being awarded a single-vendor contract -- foreclosed the option of transferring the Mirage 2000 line to India.

It took the IAF three more years to draw up specifications of a new fighter.

On August 28, 2007, when the IAF issued an international tender for what was dubbed the MMRCA, the MiG-replacement fighter had morphed into a high-tech, medium-to-heavy fighter that could have one engine or two, and would inevitably cost far more than what was envisaged.

When responses to the tender came in, there were six aircraft in the fray: Saab's JAS-39 Gripen -- C; Lockheed Martins F-16 Super Viper; Russian Aircraft Corporation's MiG-35; Boeing's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet; Eurofighter's Typhoon and Dassault's Rafale.

Then defence minister A K Antony, while chairing a meeting of his Defence Acquisition Council on June 29, 2007, outlined three guiding principles for the MMRCA procurement: 'First, the operational requirements of IAF should be fully met.'

'Second, the selection process should be competitive, fair and transparent, so that best value for money is realised. Lastly, Indian defence industries should get an opportunity to grow to global scales.'

A decade later, none of these objectives have been met.

With the IAF's operational requirements still unmet with the procurement of just 36 Rafales, fresh tendering is under way for 114 'single-engine fighters'.

Instead of a 'competitive, fair and transparent' selection, the decision to buy the Rafale remains opaque. And, with the 'Make in India' component of the deal scrapped, the indigenous defence industry remains ignored.

Through the five years it took the IAF to conduct and conclude the MMRCA selection process, the buzz within the defence aerospace community was that the contest structure favoured Dassault.

To win, a fighter first had to meet the IAF's requirements in technical evaluation and flight tests.

In the second stage of evaluation, commercial bids would be opened of those vendors whose fighters had met the IAF's norms.

Based on a 'life-cycle costing' matrix, the lowest bidder would be declared the winner.

After lengthy flight trials, the IAF eliminated four fighters in April 2011 -- the Gripen-C, F-16, F/A-18E/F and the MiG-35.

Coincidentally, these four were significantly cheaper than the Rafale.

Only the excellent, but expensive Eurofighter Typhoon went into a commercial bidding contest against the Rafale.

On January 30, 2012, Dassault was informed it was the lowest bidder.

Among the fighters the IAF eliminated were the F-16 Super Viper and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, the world's most combat tested and proven fighters that form the backbone of the world's most formidable air force.

Ironically, the IAF is now pursuing two fresh acquisitions -- for single-engine fighter and multi-role carrier-borne fighters, respectively -- in which the F-16 and F/A-18 are hot contenders.

Evidently, the purchase of 36 Rafales has changed little for the IAF.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is all set to encash its Uttar Pradesh civic poll performance in Gujarat by utilising newly elected mayors for campaigning in the poll-bound state.

The BJP has won 14 out of 16 mayoral seats in civic polls in UP and all the newly elected leaders will be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to seek his blessings.

Thereafter, they will proceed to Gujarat for campaigning for the assembly elections which will be held on December 9 and 14.

"The newly elected mayors will meet the prime minister over tea tomorrow in Delhi. They are all devoted party workers and will be used where ever the party needs them," BJP state general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak told PTI.

Amethi Nagar Panchyat Chairperson Chandrama Devi and Jais Nagar Palika Parishad Mahesh Pratap will be among those who will be meeting Modi.

Though the Congress did not field any candidate in Amethi, the victory of a BJP candidate there is still considered a major blow to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as it is his parliamentary constituency and considered a Congress bastion.

The Congress lost in Jais and Gauriganj where Nagar Palika polls were held. In Amethi and Musafirkhana, where Nagar Panchayat polls were held, the party had not fielded anyone.

With the BJP's extensive campaign in the local polls in UP paying off, the sweeping win is considered as a boost to the saffron party in the midst of the high-decibel campaign for the Gujarat elections.

Counting of votes in Gujarat will be taken up on December 18.

The UP civic elections were touted as the first litmus test of Yogi Adityanath after the BJP stormed to power in March.

The saffron surge routed the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, both of which drew a blank in mayoral polls.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who has been drafted as the key campaigner in Gujarat and went on a nearly 90-day whirlwind tour of the state, described it as a "historic win".

He attributed the victory to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision and BJP chief Amit Shah's able guidance and added that the BJP will now look forward to achieving the goal of one hundred per cent success in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

"The victory of party has sent positive message among the people who are already admirers of Narendra Modiji. There is a significant population of people from east UP in Gujarat," said BJP leader and state spokesman Shalabh Mani Tripathi, who is campaigning in Gujarat for the past one month.

"Yogiji is already a star campaigner and our newly elected mayors with their success stories will add to our ongoing campaigning here," Tripathi said.

IMAGE: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath chaired a review meeting following civic body poll results in Lucknow. Photograph: ANI
While the Congress is not willing to campaign in Muslim areas, the BJP encourages Muslims to attend its public meetings, reports Archis Mohan.

As the Congress embraces "soft" Hindutva in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday reached out to the Muslim community in the state.

In Bharuch, Modi accused the Congress of stoking a Hindu-Muslim divide. He said Bharuch and Kutch, two districts with significant Muslim populations, are economically the fastest growing districts of Gujarat.

The PM went on to say how during the Congress rule, celebrating festivals came with the apprehension of violence.

The PMs comments come on the heels of a finely-tuned Bharatiya Janata Party outreach campaign among the minority as well as the majority communities in Gujarat, which has the Congress worried.

According to Congress workers as well as activists, the feedback is increasingly that several in the Muslim community, even if they do not vote for the BJP, might not turn up in adequate numbers to vote for Congress candidates.

Of the 43.3 million people eligible to cast their votes in the state in the forthcoming assembly polls, Muslims make a bit over nine per cent of the electorate. The state will see elections on December 9 and 14.

According to internal estimates of political parties, Muslims comprise more than 10 per cent of the electorate in 65 of the 182 assembly seats in Gujarat. Of the 65, Muslims comprise almost a fifth of the electorate on 20 seats.

In 2012, the BJP won 42 seats with a margin of almost 15,000 votes or less.

The Congress has identified 30-odd of these seats it believes it can wrest from the BJP.

With the Patidar community divided, several of the 30-odd seats are on the list of 65 where Muslims can be a factor if the BJP fails to get a consolidated Hindu vote. A low turnout of Muslim voters would hurt the Congress.

"Of particular concern for us are Muslim women, a Congress worker said, bemoaning the absence of a Congress outreach to Muslims. They believe the community might be discriminated against under BJP rule, but there will not be violence.

The Congress has fielded six Muslim candidates. The BJP has none. But these numbers conceal how roles have been reversed between the BJP and the Congress on the ground.

While BJP bosses have asked local party leadership across Gujarat to reach out to Muslims, the Congresss local leaders have, on occasions, tried to keep the community at an arms length.

If the BJP has encouraged Muslims to attend its public meetings, the Congress district units have asked their workers to be careful that Muslims do not visibly outnumber those from other communities at its party meetings.

Congress workers complain that the top leadership of the party, both its central leadership and state leaders, have been unwilling to campaign in Muslim areas or share the stage with Muslim leaders.

Congress and Youth Congress leaders from Bihar, West Bengal and other states have been brought in to oversee the partys campaign in Muslim localities.

Let alone sharing public stage, local Congress leaders arent willing to meet Muslims in closed-door gatherings, a Congress leader in Ahmedabad said.

According to a source, the Congress district unit in Surat asked its workers to ensure that Muslim men and women, at least those in traditional attire, do not attend the inauguration of the partys election office, which took place on Thursday.

The BJP has been at work to exploit this chasm, if for nothing else but to get Muslims to vote in fewer numbers on election day. It is visibly supporting Muslims who have joined the party.

Facebook pages, WhatsApp groups and Twitter handles of Muslims associated with the BJP minority cell have mushroomed. This wasnt the case until 2012 elections. Earlier, even if they were associated with the BJP, Muslims wouldnt publicise the fact, said activist Mujahid Nafees.

Faruk Patuk is associated with the BJPs minority cell in Dahod. Jafar Diwan is associated with the BJPs minority cell in Sabarkantha. Both use their Facebook pages and social media presence to promote BJP campaign material, and to attack the Congress. Patuk says the Congress stabbed his community in the back.

Under the banner of the Minorities Coordination Committee, Nafees has extensively documented the discrimination that common Muslims face in Gujarat.

How would a Congress government, keen to burnish its Hindu image, be any different than the BJPs if it has already started spurning the community. I fear it might be worse, he added.

A Congress leader said the party was working on a plan to reach out to Muslim women. It remains to be seen if it will make local leaders reach out to the community, or have its leaders from outside the state do the job.

Image: BJP members listen to PM Narendra Modi's monthly radio programmer, 'Mann Ki Baat', in Danilimda assembly constituency in Gujarat. Photograph: Courtesy @byadavbjp/Twitter.
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DRC: Heavy-handed police crackdown on protests must stop

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 1 December 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, DRC: Heavy-handed police crackdown on protests must stop, 1 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a25281e4.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo must investigate the heavy-handed police crackdown on yesterday's protests in which at least one man was shot dead and dozens more injured, said Amnesty International today.

Police also arbitrarily arrested more than 200 protesters in cities across the country. While many were released later in the day, at least 100 remain in detention, including 45 in Goma and 12 in the capital Kinshasa.

"This wanton disregard for protesters' lives and the unlawful use of force cannot be tolerated. The use of firearms against unarmed protesters contravenes DRC's obligations under international law," said Sarah Jackson, Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.

"The DRC must promptly launch an effective and independent investigation into the killing and injuries and bring all those responsible to justice. The ongoing pattern of repression against peaceful protesters and its associated impunity must stop."

Amnesty International is also calling for the all those protesters solely detained for peacefully exercising their rights to be immediately and unconditionally released.

Background

Protests took place in multiple cities across the Democratic Republic of Congo on 30 November calling for President Joseph Kabila to step down before the end of the year.

Presidential elections were originally set to take place at the end of President Kabila's second term in November 2016, but were postponed and are now scheduled for 23 September 2018.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Nothing about us without us: disability rights activists in Kyrgyzstan tell their stories

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 1 December 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Nothing about us without us: disability rights activists in Kyrgyzstan tell their stories, 1 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2528864.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

"Why should my life be dependent on others people's moods or noble intentions?" Ukei Muratalieva asks angrily.

Ukei, from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, has cerebral palsy. She wants to live independently, and is frustrated by the discriminatory practices that remain in her society.

Sunday 3 December is International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Globally one billion people, encompassing all ages, genders and ethnicities, have some form of disability. They want, and are entitled to, the same human rights, on an equal basis, as others. But in many countries around the world, this is a long way off.

One thing countries can do to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights by persons with disabilities is to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

The CRPD, adopted in 2006, is based on the understanding that disability results from the interaction of persons with impairments and the attitudinal and environmental barriers that impede their full and effective participation in society. It provides state parties with clarity and guidance on how they can realize the rights of persons with disabilities in practice.

I spoke to people in Kyrgyzstan, one of few states in the Europe and Central Asia region which has not yet ratified the CRPD, about why ratification is such an important step.

Ukei, who has worked at the Ministry for Labour and Social Development, described how she was initially denied an education, due to a combination of social stigma and lack of inclusive laws.

"First the local kindergarten refused to take me in and then the primary school. But one teacher disagreed with the headmaster and took me in to her class. Still my mother had to sign a paper to absolve the school of all liability for my health and safety."

But education became the key to Ukei's independence. In her teens she attended UNICEF seminars which taught her about her rights, and stressed that children with disabilities should enjoy all human rights on an equal basis with other children.

Ratifying the CRPD would help ensure that children with disabilities enjoy their right to education without discrimination and on the basis of equal opportunity.

Marina Fegele, a local activist in the southern city of Osh, agrees. When she was a child she was run over by a drunk driver and lost a leg, and 'well-wishers' advised her parents to give her to the state. But Marina remained with her family and friends - and now heads a public group advocating for disability rights.

She has made it her mission to advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities, especially women and girls with disabilities who are at a heightened risk of violence from partners, families and also strangers. She says:

"We need to ratify the CRPD. It won't change life in Osh overnight but it will set things in motion. To start with adding handrails to the existing ramps, make them safe to use for everyone, whether you are a person in a wheelchair or a parent with a buggy."

Rinat Janaliev was partially paralyzed in a swimming accident when he was a student.

After his accident, he had issues with equal access to education, employment and cultural life. His family, teachers, and friends tried to fill in for the missing state policies and laws - when he bought his first car, he designed a hand control which his friends then helped to build.

Like Marina, Rinat also spoke about the need for more accessibility. In 2011 he joined a building control commission that is supposed to ensure accessibility in new buildings.

"But I was never invited [to meetings]. They say that they know all the standards. So useless ramps are being built, funds wasted but no one is brought to account."

This is a common theme; far too often persons with disabilities are not given a say in decisions that they understand best, and which have a dramatic impact on their lives. This brings to mind the phrase, "Nothing about us without us." Persons with disabilities, including children with disabilities, through their representative organizations, must be consulted.

Again and again, the disability rights activists I met in Kyrgyzstan said that they were tired of being treated as objects of charity and "good intentions" - they want equal enjoyment of all human rights in law and practice.

Amnesty International is calling on the Kyrgyz government to expedite the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as soon as possible.

Furthermore, we call on all the remaining states to promptly ratify the Convention to bring it to universal ratification.

Ukei Muratalieva has no doubt about how important this is:

"Why do I need this convention to be finally ratified, after all these years? It is the same question as why do I need to wear clothes, why do I need to eat? I just want to live independently."

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Greece: Move asylum seekers to safety before winter hits

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 1 December 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Greece: Move asylum seekers to safety before winter hits, 1 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a253dbf4.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The Greek government, with the support of EU leaders, should act now before the onset of winter to end Greece's "containment policy," 12 human rights and humanitarian organizations said in a campaign that began today.

The groups began a countdown to the official start of winter, December 21, 2017. They said that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, with the support of EU leaders, should immediately transfer people to improved conditions on the mainland and take concrete measures by December 21 so that no asylum seekers are left out in the cold.





As of December 1, the hotspots on Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos are 7,400 over capacity: 12,981 people in facilities with a capacity of just 5,576. Thousands, including single women, female heads of households, and very young children, live in summer tents, essentially sleeping on the ground, and exposed to the cold, damp and rain as the weather worsens. Some women are forced to share tents and containers with unrelated men, putting their privacy and safety at risk. There is lack of access to clean water, sanitation facilities and health services.

This will be the second winter asylum seekers have had to spend in unsuitable facilities on the islands since the EU-Turkey Deal came into effect in March 2016. Last winter, three men died on Lesvos in the six days between January 24 and 30. Although there is still no official statement on the cause of these deaths, they have been attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning from makeshift heating devices that refugees have been using to warm their freezing tents. In late 2016, a blast likely caused by a cooking gas container killed a Kurdish woman and her young grandchild also sleeping in a tent in Lesvos.



EU and Greek officials have referred to the EU-Turkey Deal as a justification for the containment policy. The policy, put in place as part of the Deal, forces asylum seekers arriving on the Greek islands to remain there until their asylum claims are decided, regardless of if there is accommodation capacity or adequate access to services. However, forcing asylum seekers to remain in conditions that violate their rights and are harmful to their well-being, health, and dignity cannot be justified, the groups said. Some who arrived on the islands in the early days of the deal have remained stuck there for 20 months.

As part of the campaign, the groups are teaming up to highlight the deplorable conditions asylum seekers trapped on the islands face; to call on European citizens to get involved; and to monitor and update the public on the response of the Greek government and EU leaders.

Groups participating in the campaign:

Amnesty International, Caritas Hellas, Greek Council for Refugees, Help Refugees, Human Rights Watch, International Rescue Committee, Jesuit Refugee Service, Oxfam, Praksis, Spanish Commission for Refugees (CEAR), Solidarity Now, Terre des Hommes

Click here for more information on the digital campaign and to sign the petition.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Azerbaijan: New blow for justice as lawyers excluded from trials

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 1 December 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Azerbaijan: New blow for justice as lawyers excluded from trials, 1 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a253e3d4.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The new regulation intended to target human rights lawyers in Azerbaijan by completely barring them from court proceedings is deep blow for justice in the country said Amnesty International today.

The amendments to the Code of Civil and Administrative Procedure which came into force today exclude lawyers from court proceedings unless they are members of the Bar Association (Collegium of Lawyers) of Azerbaijan. With human rights lawyers facing harassment and disbarment, and the independence of the Bar Association of Azerbaijan seriously undermined in recent years, this is the latest in the series of restrictive means deployed by the government to hinder the work of lawyers and erode further the right to a fair trial in Azerbaijan.

"Azerbaijan is plunging ever deeper into the abyss of rightlessness and this new regulation delivers a new deep blow for justice. In a country where innocent criticism of the authorities, even on social media, is already a fast track to prison any chance of a fair trial is now more elusive than ever," said Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Europe and Central Asia Regional Office.

"The few brave lawyers who currently dare to confront the authorities in court about violations of freedom of expression and torture are already routinely harassed and disbarred. But now the Azerbaijani authorities have a new trick on their books to completely exclude these courageous front-line human rights defenders from court proceedings, effectively eliminating any last hope for justice."

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
RSF condemns murder of another journalist in northern India

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 1 December 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, RSF condemns murder of another journalist in northern India, 1 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a253ef54.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Indian authorities to take concrete steps to protect journalists after a newspaper reporter was gunned down yesterday evening in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. At least three other journalists have been murdered in India in the past three months.

A reporter for the Hindustan newspaper, Navin Gupta, 35, was riddled with bullets by four men on motorcycles as he emerged from a public toilet near the market in Bilhaur, a town 50 km north of the city of Kanpur. He died while being rushed to hospital, leaving a wife and 4-year-old daughter.





The police have begun a hunt for the perpetrators but so far without success. For the time being, the motive for Gupta's murder is unknown but Kanpur district journalists voiced concern about their safety after holding an emergency meeting.





"We support the investigation launched by the police, who must not let this murder go unpunished, but we cannot forget that Navin Gupta was at least the fourth journalist to be murdered in India in just three months," said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF's Asia-Pacific desk.





"The federal authorities must quickly adopt measures to guarantee the safety of media personnel. The Uttar Pradesh government also has a duty to provide better protection for journalists investigating sensitive subjects. With three journalists murdered in the past two years, this state has a significant history in this regard."





It was in Uttar Pradesh that the Jagendra Singh sustained fatal burns in June 2015 in connection with his investigative reporting on illegal sand mines; that local newspaper journalist Sanjay Pathak was beaten to death two months later, and that reporter Hemant Yadav was gunned down in October by a motorcycle hitman said to have been hired by the "mines mafia."





Recent media victims in other parts of India include Gauri Lankesh, a newspaper editor who was gunned down outside her home in the southern city of Bangalore on 5 September; Shantanu Bhowmick a reporter who was beaten and stabbed to death in the northeastern state of Tripura two weeks later, and Sudip Datta Bhaunik, a reporter who was shot dead in the same state just ten days ago.

India is ranked 136th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index.


Cameroon government 'declares war' on secessionist rebels

Publisher IRIN Author Mbom Sixtus Publication Date 4 December 2017 Cite as IRIN, Cameroon government 'declares war' on secessionist rebels, 4 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2540fe4.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The secessionist crisis in Cameroon's western region is deepening, with the government promising to crack down hard after anglophone militants shot dead four soldiers and two policemen last week.

The soldiers were killed in an ambush on a military convoy outside the town of Mamfe on 29 November in Cameroon's anglophone South West Region. The policemen were killed the following night in the nearby town of Eyoumojock.

The secessionist Ambazonia Defense Forces, the armed wing of the Ambazonia Governing Council, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Ambazonia is the name anglophone separatists have given to the homeland they hope to carve out of western Cameroon in this majority French-speaking country.

The shootings bring to 10 the number of security forces killed since last month.

Promising action, Defence Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said on Saturday that "measures will be taken immediately" to "eradicate this inconvenient situation", without elaborating further.

State radio was blunter. "[President] Paul Biya has declared war on these terrorists who seek secession," it announced.

Widening war

There are now fears of the start of a far more serious conflict that could drive a surge of additional refugees into neigbouring Nigeria, where Cameroon's government says some of the militants are sheltering.

What began last year with civil society-led demonstrations over the alleged marginalisation of the regions of North West and South West Cameroon now risks spinning out of control.

The initial demand was for a return to a pre-1971 federal system of government and greater autonomy for the anglophone region. But a heavy-handed response by the security forces has generated support for what was initially a fringe secessionist movement.

Over the past year security forces have shoot dead several civilian demonstrators and carried out mass arrests.

In a major confrontation on 1 October, at least 17 people were shot dead and 50 wounded as the blue and white flag of the self-styled Republic of Ambazonia was hoisted in towns across the North West and South West regions to mark a symbolic break from Cameroon.

Anglophone parliamentarians have tried to raise the issue of human rights violations and the region's underlying concerns of underdevelopment.

In chaotic scenes in parliament on 23 November, the main opposition party threatened to halt further business in the house until the 'anglophone crisis' was tabled for debate, amid chants of "How many people Paul Biya will kill?"

There have been widespread calls for dialogue, to which the United Nations has added its voice. But there appears little appetite for talks on either side.

"How can we maintain dialogue with an interlocutor whose only ideology is the partition of a state that is legitimate and recognized as such by all international bodies?" Cameroon's communications minister Issa Tchiroma said last week.

The government had earlier sent emissaries from the ruling CPDM party who hail from the English-speaking regions to try and broker talks, but they received a hostile reception.

Militancy is running high in what activists refer to as "Southern Cameroon", a historical nod to the territory administered by the British after World War I, which voted to unify with French-speaking Cameroon in 1961.

A civil disobedience campaign includes a weekly "ghost town" shutdown of all businesses, which at times has been violently enforced. Schools have also been ordered closed, and those that do open risk being firebombed.

Patience tested

But the opposition is split over the use of armed violence. The hard-line leader of the Ambazonia Defence Forces, Lucas Cho Ayaba, argues that resorting to insurgency is a legitimate response to the abuses committed by the Cameroonian security forces.

"They have shot and killed hundreds of unarmed civilians on the streets and in their homes, maimed hundreds, raped ladies on university campuses, buried some in mass graves, and abducted thousands," Ayaba told IRIN by telephone from his home in the United Kingdom.

Abaya's figures could not be independently confirmed.

"We must defend ourselves pre-emptively and reactively," said Ayaba, who also heads the Ambazonia Governing Council. It will be "block-by-block, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood, village-by-village, city-by-city."

Akwanga Ebenezer leads the Southern Cameroons Defence Forces from exile in the United States. He has promoted secession since the 1990s and argues that the time for dialogue has now definitively passed.

"We are just waiting to strike and let the world hear from us," he told IRIN.

He is critical of the more cautious approach adopted by the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUF), a coalition of opposition groups, dubbed the "interim government", which is yet to publicly support armed action.

The head of SCACUF, Julius Sessekou Ayuk Tabe, argues that it is too early to turn to war, but "all options are now available for us to use in our restoration [of Ambazonia] quest", he warned.

To try and contain the spreading rebellion, the security forces have introduced night-time curfews, roadblocks and raids. Farm tools have been confiscated and traditional single-shot hunting rifles banned.

The government says it has so far arrested 22 armed activists, some trying to cross the border into Nigeria.

Residents in a string of villages in the Manyu region, where the security forces were ambushed, were on Friday ordered to leave their homes or risk being treated as "accomplices or perpetrators" of seperatist violence.

More refugees

Manyu was the focus of a military crackdown after the 1 October protests, with civilians shot dead in army raids that sent 20,000 people fleeing into Nigeria's Cross River State.

A new military campaign is likely to create yet more anger and bitterness.

Among the Cameroonians IRIN spoke to in Calabar last week, the capital of Cross River State, all supported the idea of secession.

"I think every English-speaking Cameroonian wants an independent country and nothing else. We are not ready to back down," said businessman Olembe Olembe, whose children are now studying in Nigeria after he withdrew them from school in Limbe, in the South West Region.

"English speakers are treated as slaves in their own country. We are saying 'enough is enough'. We don't want to be Cameroonians anymore," he added.

"When we were calm and diplomatic, they saw us as fools and were not ready to listen to us," said Emmanuel Bisong, a trader who shuttles between Limbe and Calabar. "Now that we have risen up, they are seeing our seriousness."

Additional reporting by Philip Obaji in Calabar
Living with landmines in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Publisher International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Publication Date 4 December 2017 Cite as International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Living with landmines in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 4 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2544d24.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Aldin Karavdic was tending a herd of goats close to his family's home when he stepped on a landmine. The 16-year-old suffered severe injuries, especially to his right leg - luckily, doctors were able to save it. In these hills near the city of Mostar, many children used to herd the family cattle. But that was before residents learned that the area was littered with mines and unexploded ordnance from the Bosnian war.

The war ended more than two decades ago, yet over 80,000 mines and pieces of unexploded ordnance still pose a direct risk to more than a half million residents. At least 1,750 people have been injured by mines in the post-war period, and 614 of these cases were fatal. Most of the accidents are caused by PROM-1 antipersonnel mines, which were banned under the Ottawa Treaty 20 years ago. Almost 15% of the victims are children.

In the past two years alone, landmines have killed nine people and injured another twelve. Aldin is among the survivors. He has recovered some use of his leg, but he continues to dig out shrapnel, and the trauma - according to his mother - still disrupts his sleep. The monthly disability payment he receives is largely symbolic, and his family cannot afford to pay for his rehabilitation. Estimated to be 60% disabled, Aldin became a member of the civil war victims association even though he was born six years after the war ended.

During our visit, Aldin's parents spoke of their fear and uncertainty about how Aldin would recover from the injury and the trauma, but also about how to feed their five children. As they are unemployed, their goats are essential to the family's survival. "Herding is very difficult now, because we're scared to walk through the hills," they told us. Since Aldin's accident, the authorities have swept the area and found many more unexploded devices. They removed them, but local people rarely venture there anymore.

Many people living close to marked mine-contaminated areas take their life in their hands in order to collect wood and other necessities. They hope that their familiarity with the terrain will keep them safe. But it doesn't always work out that way: in April 2017, one man was killed and another injured on Ozren Mountain. Hunters are also vulnerable, like the 48-year-old man who lost his life on 5 November in Ostra Luka. That same day, three 11-to-13-year-old children ventured into a minefield close to Sarajevo out of curiosity - luckily, they were rescued by demining units.

To prevent such accidents and keep children out of harm's way, the Red Cross builds safe playgrounds in mine-affected areas. So far, thirteen safe playgrounds have opened around the country. So far, thirteen safe playgrounds have opened around the country. Working with children is an important part of the Red Cross's effort to raise awareness about the danger of mines. Every year, over 25,000 children participate in the "Think mines" primary school competitions, which are organized by the Red Cross Society of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the support of the ICRC. The Red Cross also works with other vulnerable groups, warning them of the mine threat and constantly promoting safe behaviour. It also marks minefields with warning signs, billboards and mine maps.

The authorities are heavily involved in humanitarian demining and have cleared over 120,000 landmines and pieces of unexploded ordnance so far. However, the country will fall short of its initial target of being landmine-free by 2019. This month the official deadline was moved to 2025, but even that may be ambitious given the lack of financial resources. Some experts estimate it could take several decades to clear the country of all landmines and unexploded ordnance. Until then, the Red Cross will continue to raise awareness among local residents. This devastating legacy of war has already robbed too many people of their basic sense of safety. And some, like Aldin, have lost much more.
Pakistan: Stranded in Somalia, fishermen finally return home

Publisher International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Publication Date 17 December 2017 Cite as International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Pakistan: Stranded in Somalia, fishermen finally return home, 17 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2545b04.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Joined in their grief, the other six families shared the agony that Jamal felt. The seven fishermen, stranded in Somalia after their boat capsized, were helpless as they couldn't send a message home, despite knowing that their families must be agonizing over their disappearance. The fishermen belonged to far-flung coastal areas in Balochistan and Sindh, where fishing is the mainstay.

"We did not even know if our son was alive!" said Zafar, the father of another fisherman. This deadly silence finally broke with a phone call facilitated by the ICRC and Somali authorities.

The ICRC came in contact with the stranded fishermen in Kismayo, Somalia, as part of the humanitarian work there. At the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Pakistan, the process of repatriating the seven fishermen to Pakistan was initiated and arranged by the ICRC in coordination with the Somali authorities.

The families finally reunited on 20 October 2017. Anxiety gave way to tears of joy and relief at the Karachi and Islamabad airports as the loved ones embraced each other. The families travelled to Karachi and Islamabad with the support of the Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and the ICRC. "Returning home seems so surreal; it feels like we are in heaven," said Salim, one of the fishermen.

The ICRC strives to connect people who have been separated from their families due to natural disasters, migration or violence. Where possible, we help them reunite with their families. As part of the Restoring Family Links (RFL) programme, the ICRC works closely with PRCS to facilitate this process. Earlier this year, seven other Pakistani fishermen stranded in Yemen were repatriated and reunited with their families in Pakistan after more than a decade of separation. To learn more about RFL, please visit www.familylinks.icrc.org.

Find out more about the ICRC's work in Somalia.

Names have been changed to protect their identity.
Violence in Congo's Kasai Region even harder on disabled people

Publisher International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Publication Date 1 December 2017 Cite as International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Violence in Congo's Kasai Region even harder on disabled people, 1 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2546db4.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

People with reduced mobility have been the most severely affected by the violence in the Kasai Region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). They can find themselves exposed to the worst of the violence because they cannot keep up when it is time to flee, and their families may not wait for them.

"It was everyone for themselves," said Veronique. "Everyone was fleeing to safety, and my husband abandoned me. I was helpless in the confusion." Both of Veronique's legs are paralysed as a result of polio. She was left behind with her five-year-old daughter.

The Kasai Region is located in the centre of the DRC and is made up of 5 of the country's 26 provinces. The violence there broke out in August 2016 between a local militia group and the national security services. Since January, there have also been armed clashed between communities, killing thousands and displacing over a million people.

When the violence began, Veronique was living in Tshikapa, a town in Kasai. She didn't expect to survive alone in the middle of the fierce fighting: "I thought it was the end. Because I couldn't move like everybody else, I stayed at home waiting to die with my daughter. I couldn't stop crying as I saw people fleeing without us."

A stroke of luck saved Veronique's life. She saw some friends of her husband pass by her house on their way out of town, and told them about her situation. "They put my daughter and me in their car and we left straight away. In my panic, I left everything behind."

The next day, Veronique and her daughter were in Kikwit, in the province of Kwilu, 300 kilometres away. They'd never been there, and they didn't know what to do. They had no possessions and no food. They had to beg to survive.

The authorities in Kikwit made some arrangements for people who'd been displaced from Kasai, and Veronique was placed with a host family. But the challenges were still too great. Her daughter fell ill several times and she couldn't afford proper treatment. And the host family couldn't afford to feed them every day.

It was thanks to the hot meals distributed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Red Cross Society of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that Veronique and her daughter stopped going hungry. Other displaced people helped her and her daughter to get to the closest distribution centre at lunchtime.

Veronique has received money as well as food from the ICRC. The aim of this financial support, provided in cooperation with a bank in Kikwit, is to give displaced people cash to cover many of their essential needs and, if possible, help them set up a small business to generate revenue and give them a degree of autonomy. As she left the bank, Veronique said: "First and foremost I will use the money to treat my sick daughter. Then I think I'll buy biscuits and soap to resell. I might sell packets of peanuts too, because that works well here."

Veronique still hasn't found her husband or even heard from him.

The ICRC and the DRC Red Cross are currently helping 29,000 victims of violence in Kasai. Between August and September, they provided hot meals and financial assistance to 9,000 displaced people in Kikwit.
Yemen: As threat of famine looms, UN urges Saudi-led coalition to fully lift blockade of Red Sea ports

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 December 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Yemen: As threat of famine looms, UN urges Saudi-led coalition to fully lift blockade of Red Sea ports, 2 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2562cf4.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Top officials from across the United Nations system called on Saturday for the Saudi-led coalition to fully lift its blockade of Yemen's Red Sea ports, warning that unless commercial imports are resumed, the threat of widespread famine in a matter of months is very real.

The officials also announced that the United Nations is sending a team to Riyadh to discuss any concerns the coalition and Saudi Arabia may have in relation to these ports. But we need the coalition to urgently grant unimpeded access for imports that are a lifeline for millions of people.

They acknowledged that the partial lifting of the blockade of Yemen's Red Sea ports in recent days is allowing humanitarian organizations to resume the provision of life-saving assistance to people in desperate need.

But given the massive scale of Yemen's humanitarian crisis, all this does is slow the collapse towards a massive humanitarian tragedy costing millions of lives. It does not prevent it, said the UN leaders, who added: Without the urgent resumption of commercial imports, especially food, fuel and medicines, millions of children, women and men risk mass hunger, disease and death.

The appeal came in a joint statement by the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Achim Steiner, The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, the Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Anthony Lake, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), David Beasley, the Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), William Lacy Swing, and the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock.

More than two years of relentless conflict between the Government and Houthi and allied rebels in Yemen, already the Arab world's poorest country, has devastated the lives of millions of people. An alarming 20.7 million people in Yemen need some kind of humanitarian or protection support, with some 9.8 million in acute need of assistance. This man-made disaster has been brutal on civilians.

In their statement today, the UN leaders said that the current ongoing commercial import restrictions have led to shortages of fuel, food and other essentials, driving up prices and wrecking lives and livelihoods. The price of wheat flour has risen by 30 per cent, while the price of fuel has doubled and that of trucked water has skyrocketed by 600 per cent in some locations.

Urban water networks in seven cities have run out of fuel and now depend on humanitarian organizations to fill in the gap. Other cities will shortly be in a similar situation if the blockade is not lifted, which would leave 11 million people without safe water.

In other areas, people are reducing their food consumption to dangerous levels in order to pay for the rising cost of water trucking, or are turning to contaminated water sources to meet their basic needs. This further compounds the risk of disease, especially among children.

Less than half of the health facilities are functioning, and more hospitals and health centers will close should fuel and water supplies not improve. Sewage networks in six main cities are compromised, threatening a renewed spike in the country's cholera outbreak, which has reached almost 1 million suspected cases and killed over 2,200 people.

Yemen remains on the cusp of one of the largest famines in modern times, says the statement, explaining that nearly 400,000 children suffer from severe acute malnutrition and face an increased risk of death. In addition, some eight million people could starve without urgent food assistance coming into Yemen.

With 90 per cent of the country's food imported, the lack of commercial imports through Red Sea ports would alone push a further three million people into starvation. The threat of widespread famine in a matter of months is very real, the statement warns.

This imminent catastrophe is entirely avoidable, but it requires immediate action by the coalition, says the statement, noting that while three ships carrying food have been granted permission to berth at Hudaydah port in recent days, four fuel tankers and 10 ships carrying food have all been waiting for permission to enter port.

Together, we call on the coalition to urgently open up all Yemeni Red Sea ports fully and to facilitate the entry and free-flow of humanitarian and vital commercial goods.
UN chief condemns terrorist attack against college dormitory in Pakistan

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 December 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN chief condemns terrorist attack against college dormitory in Pakistan, 1 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2563f24.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday condemned the terrorist attack against a university dormitory in northern Pakistan that killed at least nine people and injured many others.

"The Secretary-General extends his condolences to the bereaved families and to the Government and people of Pakistan. He wishes a speedy recovery to the injured," said a statement issued by his Spokesman Stephane Dujarric, following the attack that took place in the city of Peshawar when dozens of people gathered to celebrate Eid al Milad-un Nabi, a sacred Muslim holiday.
UN agency to fly 15,000 migrants home from Libya in wake of reported abuses

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 December 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN agency to fly 15,000 migrants home from Libya in wake of reported abuses, 1 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2565c84.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

With millions displaced within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and thousands more forced to flee across the border into Zambia, the United Nations refugee agency is appealing for urgent resources to make sure that relief programmes - hanging on by threads - do not collapse.

"The number of refugees fleeing militia violence in south-eastern DRC and arriving in Zambia has crossed the 12,000 mark - with more than 8,400 arrivals in the last three months," Babar Baloch, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters at a regular news briefing in Geneva Friday.

In addition, according to refugee accounts, more than four million people are displaced inside the DRC, and there are fears that many more could be forced to flee the country as fighting is intensifying.

The worst affected are women and children, who form about 80 per cent of the refugee numbers, and there are reports of civilians being killed, women being raped, private property looted and houses torched.

However, assistance programmes in both countries are "hugely underfunded" added Mr. Baloch, noting that of the $236.2 million required in the DRC, only $54.6 million has been received so far, while in Zambia, only $13.6 million has been received.

"In both cases, this is less than a quarter of what is needed," he expressed.

According to the UN refugee agency, most of the people displaced from the DRC into Zambia hail from the Haut-Katanga and Tanganyika provinces of the and many among them crossed into the Zambian province of Luapula (which borders the DRC on three sides).

People are also crossing into other northern and north-western provinces of Zambia. In total, the country hosts over 65,000 refugees, including some 33,000 from the DRC.
Security Council hails 'remarkable achievements' one year after Colombian peace accord

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 30 November 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Security Council hails 'remarkable achievements' one year after Colombian peace accord, 30 November 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2566c04.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The Security Council on Thursday marked the one year anniversary of the signing and entry-into-force of the peace agreement between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC-EP).

In a press statement, the Council circulated the document containing the Agreement for Ending the Conflict and building a lasting peace between the Government and FARC-EP, while congratulating the parties "for the remarkable achievements of the peace process."

The historic peace accord ended the Western Hemisphere's longest running conflict. The deal had been the culmination of four years of talks hosted in Havana, Cuba, between the two sides, and which had led to agreements on key issues such as political participation, land rights, illicit drugs and victims' rights and transitional justice.

"The members of the Security Council applauded the leadership and commitment of the parties to implementing the agreement over the past 12 months, which has brought to an end over 50 years of conflict," the Council said in a statement.

The Council members welcomed the successful completion of the FARC-EP's laying down of arms to UN monitors in August, calling it "a major milestone in the transition between war and peace."

"Colombia's peace process has sparked high hopes and expectations around the world and continues to provide inspiration for those seeking to end conflicts elsewhere," the statement continued.

It also reiterated the Council's "full support to the parties as they seek to turn the end of the conflict into a stable and lasting peace by working to fully implement the peace agreement beyond the laying down of arms."

Additionally, the Security Council members welcomed the report of the visit to Colombia in November by the Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Jeffery Feltman, and noted his statement in Bogota on 15 November 2017, particularly regarding the importance of advancing the reincorporation of former FARC-EP combatants into civilian life with a comprehensive strategy and concrete action plans and resources to enable success.

The statement also noted "the importance of addressing the security situation in the former conflict zones, following some attacks, including on community leaders, human rights defenders and former FARC combatants, by increasing State presence and governance to secure a lasting peace."

In this regard, the Council members urged the parties, with the support of the relevant civilian state institutions and security forces, "to redouble efforts to accelerate progress in implementation over the coming weeks and months, in accordance with the provisions set out in the peace agreement, including with respect to enacting the necessary legislation."

According to the statement, they further underlined the importance of "upholding the political participation of the FARC-EP now that they have laid down their arms, in accordance with the peace agreement" and "the international community remaining closely engaged to continue to support and encourage Colombia's work to implement the peace agreement."

The Council members recalled resolutions 2366 (2017) and 2377 (2017), which established and mandated the UN Verification Mission to verify implementation by the parties of the process of political, economic and social reincorporation of the FARC-EP and the implementation of personal and collective security guarantees.

They "appreciated the efforts of the Verification Mission to provide support and to encourage progress" and looked forward 26 December when the Secretary-General would submit the first 90-day report on its activities.
UN chief calls for end to all armed clashes, airstrikes in Yemen

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 3 December 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN chief calls for end to all armed clashes, airstrikes in Yemen, 3 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2567294.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on the parties to the conflict in Yemen to cease all air and ground assaults, expressing deep concern about the sharp escalation of armed clashes and airstrikes in the capital, Sana'a, and other parts of the war-torn country over the past several days.

A statement issued by Mr. Guterres' Spokesman Sunday evening said the fighting has already resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries, including civilians, and is also restricting the movement of people and life-saving services within Sana'a city.

Ambulances and medical teams cannot access the injured and people cannot go outside to buy food and other necessities. Aid workers are unable to travel and implement critical life-saving programmes at a time when millions of Yemenis rely on assistance to survive, said the statement.

This latest outbreak of violence could not come at a worse time for the Yemeni people, who are already caught up in the world's largest humanitarian crisis. The conflict and blockade that was put in place on 6 November  and is still not fully lifted  have caused significant shortages of critical supplies, especially food and fuel, and resulted in price hikes, curtailing access to food, safe water and healthcare.

The Secretary-General calls for the urgent resumption of all commercial imports, without which millions of children, women and men risk mass hunger, disease and death, the statement underscored.

The UN chief went on to call on all parties to the conflict to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law, with the statement emphasizing: It is paramount that civilians are protected, that the wounded are afforded safe access to medical care, and that all sides facilitate life-saving humanitarian access.

More than two years of relentless conflict between the Government and Houthi and allied rebels in Yemen, already the Arab world's poorest country, has devastated the lives of millions of people. An alarming 20.7 million people in Yemen need some kind of humanitarian or protection support, with some 9.8 million in acute need of assistance. This man-made disaster has been brutal on civilians.

The Secretary-General reiterates that there is no military solution to the Yemen conflict. He urges all parties to the conflict to engage meaningfully with the United Nations to revitalize inclusive negotiations on a political settlement, the statement concluded.
Tajikistan: Nine long jail terms  for what?

Publisher Forum 18 Author Mushfig Bayram Publication Date 4 December 2017 Cite as Forum 18, Tajikistan: Nine long jail terms  for what?, 4 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a256e734.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

At least nine Muslim men - including an imam and a well-known heart surgeon - are known to have been jailed since August in the northern Sogd Region in three separate cases. All received at least five year jail terms. Officials refused to explain what they had done wrong.
Philippines: ICC must examine 'war on drugs' crimes as child killings go unpunished

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 4 December 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Philippines: ICC must examine 'war on drugs' crimes as child killings go unpunished, 4 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a2573594.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) must urgently open a preliminary examination into crimes against humanity, including the slaughter of dozens of children, committed during Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's murderous "war on drugs", Amnesty International said today.

Thousands of people have been killed by police since Duterte took office in June 2016, yet not a single police officer has been held to account for any of the crimes committed.

"It is time for international justice mechanisms to step in and end the carnage on Philippine streets by bringing the perpetrators to justice. The country's judiciary and police have proven themselves both unwilling and unable to hold the killers in the 'war on drugs' to account," said James Gomez, Amnesty International's Regional Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

"The ICC must open a preliminary examination into the situation and cast its net widely. Responsibility is not just limited to those pulling the trigger, but also those who order or encourage murders and other crimes against humanity.

"President Duterte and other high-level government officials have openly advocated for killings, which could amount to criminal responsibility under international law."

Crimes against children

Amnesty International's call on the ICC comes amid growing evidence of crimes against humanity committed against children in the "war on drugs". As many as 60 children have been killed in anti-drug operations since June 2016.

Family members told Amnesty International they witnessed police shoot children dead at point-blank range as they were begging for mercy.

"They pointed a gun at my head [and] told me to get out I heard shouting and three gunshots, then three more shots," said O, the partner of a 17-year-old victim, who was killed after he was woken up in the middle of the night.

An Amnesty International research team witnessed how large numbers of children suspected of drug-related offences were kept in overcrowded and unsanitary holding centres for minors in the capital, Manila. Some said they had been beaten and tortured by police on their arrest, and claimed police had framed them by forcing them to pose in photographs with drugs that had been planted.

The killing of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos in August sparked a national outcry. Police claimed Kian had been shot in self-defence, but CCTV footage and eyewitness testimony showed how plainclothes officers dragged away the unarmed teenager and shot him dead in an alleyway.

More than 12 police officers have been investigated for the killing after the case received international attention, but no one has yet been held to account.

The ICC recently indicated that it will investigate and pay special attention to crimes against children.

"Police and armed persons linked to the police have killed dozens of children since 2016. Children have also been tortured and detained in appalling conditions, while families have been torn apart," said James Gomez.

"The case of Kian delos Santos has rightly sparked outrage. The blatant lies by officers to try to cover up their role in the cold-blooded murder of a child shows that the police cannot be trusted to investigate themselves."

Time for the ICC to step in

In January 2017, Amnesty International recommended that - unless Philippine authorities took key steps to end drug-related killings - the ICC should open a preliminary examination into the crimes.

The organization called for an immediate end to extrajudicial executions, plus an end to the incitement and encouragement of such killings by high-ranking officials, including the President. Amnesty also urged the authorities to launch an impartial and efficient investigation into all suspected unlawful killings.

However, the Philippine authorities have completely failed to heed any of these calls.

"How many bullet-riddled bodies must be found dumped on the streets before the international community takes action?" said James Gomez.

"The ICC must act now. We believe the "war on drugs" meets the threshold of crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute, and international pressure is needed to persuade the Philippine authorities to change course."

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Mozambique: Journalist held at gunpoint and threatened with death for doing his job

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 4 December 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Mozambique: Journalist held at gunpoint and threatened with death for doing his job, 4 December 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a25738a4.html [accessed 17 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

In response to the death threats made against Aunicio da Silva, an investigative journalist and editor of Ikweli, a weekly publication in Nampula City in the north of Mozambique, Amnesty International's Regional Director for Southern Africa, Deprose Muchena, said:

"Aunicio da Silva's life has been threatened simply because he was doing his job as an investigative journalist: holding the powerful to account.

"This incident represents yet another attack on media freedom in Mozambique and sends a chilling message to journalists across the country to stay silent or face the consequences.

"Journalism is not a crime. Mozambican authorities must protect the profession by urgently investigating these threats against Aunicio. Anyone found to be criminally responsible for threatening and harassing journalists must be brought to justice in a fair trial."

Background

Late on Saturday, 2 December 2017, a gunman threatened to kill Aunicio da Silva, an investigative journalist and editor of Ikweli, a weekly publication in Nampula City in the north of Mozambique. He accused da Silva of publishing articles that tarnished the image of Carlos Saide, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) candidate for the Nampula City mayoral by-election scheduled to take place on 24 January 2018.

On 4 October, the mayor of Nampula City, Mahamudo Amurane, was assassinated by unidentified gunmen. This followed his disagreements with the leadership of the MDM for insisting on clean governance and his fight against corruption.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Ben Lambert / Hearst Connecticut Media

TORRINGTON  As the Torrington Public Schools near state designation as an Alliance District, Superintendent Denise Clemons provided an overview of the process and what it will mean for the city schools during a recent school board meeting.

The 30 lowest-performing school districts in the state are classified as Alliance Districts by the state and receive additional funding. Torrington will be named as such a district as part of the state budget, but this status is not yet official, Clemons said.
Tugboats dock an oil tanker on a crude oil quay at a port in Zhoushan, eastern China's Zhejiang province, Nov. 11, 2016.

China's dependence on foreign oil is growing and is likely to keep rising for decades to come, experts say.

Despite increases in international oil prices this year, China's domestic crude production has continued to slide.

Asian oil prices have jumped nearly 40 percent from their low point in June to a high in November. But China's crude output has dropped 4.1 percent through October after plunging 6.9 percent last year.

China's state-owned oil giants have yet to respond to higher prices with increased production, although prices have already climbed past the range of U.S. $45-55 (297-363 yuan) per barrel, which would cover their presumed production costs.

In October, domestic output dipped below 3.8 million barrels per day (bpd) from the average rate of 4 million bpd for all of last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The October level was near a low set in August, a record since the NBS began publishing data in 2011.

While production is lagging, imports are rising to meet China's growing demand.

In September, crude imports soared 12 percent from a year earlier to a near-record of 9 million bpd. Imports have averaged 8.4 million bpd so far this year, according to customs figures.

Month-to-month changes have been attributed to a host of variables, including government-set quotas for imports by independent refiners. But the longer-term growth of imports over domestic production has been a consistent trend.

This year's spread between rising imports and falling production has already surpassed China's forecasts for 2020 under its Five-Year Energy Plan, released by the National Energy Administration (NEA) and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in January.

Falling investment at China's major oilfields, like the decades-old and now depleted Daqing field in Heilongjiang province, is likely to extend last year's drop in output through 2017.

China's import dependence first reached 50 percent in 2008, gradually rising to 64.5 percent last year. This year's pace has put China's reliance on track to reach 69 percent.

As fast as the proportion is rising, a recent study by the International Energy Agency (IEA) found no signs that it will slow down.

By 2040, China's import dependence will hit 80 percent, the Paris-based IEA said last month in its annual World Energy Outlook.

In a rare official comment on rising import dependence, a Ministry of Land and Resources research center said Saturday that China is "likely" to keep the import ratio within 70 percent until 2035, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Over the long term, the decline in China's oil output will prove "difficult to reverse" due to complex geological conditions at oilfields that "struggle to break even at (U.S.) $40-50 (264-330 yuan) per barrel," the IEA study said.

Even taking new "tight oil" and offshore resources into account, production is forecast to slip to 3.1 million bpd, while demand will rise 35 percent to 15.5 million bpd, including bunker supplies for marine and aviation fuels.

Huge appetite for oil

China will become the world's leading oil consumer sometime soon after 2030, according to the IEA forecast.

In 2040, China's net imports are expected to rise to 13 million bpd, taking up nearly 30 percent of all internationally traded oil.

China's annual costs for imported oil will grow more than fourfold from about U.S. $110 billion (727 billion yuan) now to U.S. $460 billion (3.0 trillion yuan) by 2040, the IEA said.

China has taken a series of steps aimed at reducing the risks to its energy security, including diversifying its sources and increasing its overland supplies with pipelines through Russia, Kazakhstan, and Myanmar.

But limitations of production and logistics will make these only partial solutions.

"This means that, in our projections, China has little alternative but to turn to its existing main suppliers in the Middle East for an additional 1.6 million bpd of supply," the IEA said. "This in turn would increase its reliance on trade via the Straits of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca, two potential strategic chokepoints in global trade," the IEA said.

Mikkal Herberg, energy security research director for the Seattle-based National Bureau of Asian Research, said that prospects for a turnaround in China's oil output due to this year's higher prices appear remote.

"The notion that they might somehow suddenly increase domestic oil production seems extremely implausible," said Herberg.

"Even if they can keep it flat, they're still headed toward 80-percent import dependence," he said.

While pipeline deliveries may mitigate some of China's vulnerability to supply disruptions, an estimated 80 percent of its oil imports will still come by sea.

"The 80-percent oil import dependence plus the 80 percent of that coming through the sea lanes will have pretty profound strategic implications for China," Herberg said.

The IEA estimates that the Middle East will provide about half of China's oil supply in 2040, while China will consume about a quarter of the region's oil exports.

The estimates may understate China's reliance on the Middle East for the grades of crude that it needs to refine into lower-pollution fuels.

Chinese locals walk beside oil pumps in Daqing, northeastern China's Heilongjiang province, May 2, 2016. Credit: AFP Second pipeline from Russia

China recently completed a second pipeline from the Russian border to its petroleum center at Daqing, doubling the route's import capacity to 600,000 bpd.

Russia has been China's leading supplier for nine months in a row, but it has been struggling to stem the rising sulfur content of the crude that it has available.

In October, Interfax reported that Russia is bound by contract under an intergovernmental agreement to supply China with scarce low-sulfur oil, forcing it to raise the sulfur content of oil to its other export customers in Europe.

"The sulfur content of crude (for China) must not exceed 0.65 percent, according to agreements with Chinese partners, but it could take a year and a half to implement these measures," Interfax said.

The sulfur content of oil available at some of Russia's western export terminals could rise to 1.8 percent next year as a result, the news agency said.

China's growing reliance on imports is a crucial reason for its heavy investment in its twin trade and infrastructure initiatives  the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, known as "One Belt, One Road," or OBOR, Herberg said.

These are likely to become linked through port development with growing naval access and support facilities to help protect China's energy security.

"I think it adds a very powerful driver to China's blue water naval development and power projection capacity through the Indian Ocean, and developing a whole set of strong diplomatic ties with the littoral Indian Ocean countries," Herberg said.

Herberg sees the potential for rising tensions not only with the United States over China's increased presence, but also with Japan, which depends on the same maritime routes for its energy supplies.

"To turn over those vital sea lanes to the tender mercies of the Chinese navy will put the hair up on the backs of the Japanese strategic planners," he said.

India is also greatly concerned by the implications of a Chinese buildup in the region.

"They see this as part of the Chinese encirclement of India," Herberg said.

Despite the potential consequences of China's rapidly rising reliance, the government has said little in recent years about the risks of import dependence, leaving it unclear whether it is a motive or a pretext for expanding naval power.

"It's not just about oil," Herberg said.
An ethnic Mongolian writer in China's northern region of Inner Mongolia has called on fellow ethnic Mongolians to "rise up" to reclaim their lands and livelihoods following repeated land grabs by local authorities and companies owned by majority Han Chinese.



Writer and blogger Tsetsenbaatar made the comments via the social media app WeChat after the Hangin banner government (a county-level administrative area) went ahead with its plan to sign over traditional nomadic grazing lands to a livestock breeding station.



"Nothing can be more outrageous than this," Tsetsenbaatar said in comments translated by the U.S.-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC).



"The Chinese who came to our Mongolian lands as beggars are now robbing us Mongolians in broad daylight," he wrote.



"As descendants of Ghengis Khan, we should rise up to reclaim our land, livelihood, and dignity," Tsetsenbaatar said.



Agricultural officials and employees from the Hangin banner government and the livestock breeding farm beat up Urgumulaa, an ethnic Mongolian herder who resisted the takeover of her land, her sister and elderly father, before driving away their livestock on Nov. 29, SMHRIC said.



The officials "buried our well that we and our livestock drank from, and told us that we are not allowed to graze our animals there," she said in a Dec. 2 video statement that has been circulating on social media since.



She said the requisitioning of the family's land came in spite of a recent ruling by the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Peoples High Court, which found in favor of the herders.



"Without our knowledge, how can our grazing land where we lived for generations be turned to the property of this livestock breeding station? How can our land become a property of these Chinese robbers?" Urgumulaa said in the statement.



The court found the government's claim on the land, which it expressed by granting a land-use "license" to the breeding farm, to be "unfounded."



"With no authority to override the ... High Courts decision, the Hangin banner government is apparently violating the relevant Chinese laws to accommodate the livestock breeding station, possibly due to certain under-the-table deals," SMHRIC said in statement on its website.



Petitioners blocked



Ethnic Mongolians, who make up almost 20 percent of Inner Mongolia's population of 23 million, increasingly complain of widespread environmental destruction and unfair development policies in the region.



Clashes between Chinese state-backed mining or forestry companies and herding communities are common in the region, which borders the independent country of Mongolia.



Ethnic Mongolians who complain about the loss of their grazing lands are frequently targeted for harassment, beatings and detention by the authorities.



Last week, several herders from Zaruud banner and Hangin banner arrived in the regional capital Hohhot to lodge formal petitions and lawsuits relating to land disputes, but were prevented from approaching the complaints department of the regional government, they told RFA.



"I was detained for a month last September because I reported the illegal destruction of villagers' environment and property by a commercial concern," herder Toyaa from Ulaanha village in an interview on Nov. 25.



"I was detained on suspicion of picking quarrels and stirring up trouble and released on bail, but I didn't accept the charges, so I went back to Beijing to complain, and the court sentenced me to six months' imprisonment," she said.



"All because I was reporting official corruption."



Fellow herder Wang Yatou said she was seeking compensation after her son drowned in a ditch illegally dug by a company in her village.



"After he died, the villagers all complained, but the workers just kept on digging up the sand, and destroying the environment," she said.



"They have held me and other petitioning herders in the detention center, and finally sentenced me and five other people for picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," said Wang. "I intend to take this all the way."



Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
North Korean state trading firms tasked to earn foreign currency for cash-strapped Pyongyang are evading U.N. sanctions by setting up regional branches run by private businessmen who turn over a share of their profits, 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.



With cross-border trade becoming more difficult, though, North Korea is resorting to desperate measures to increase its volume of business by mobilizing private merchants, a source in North Koreas North Hamgyong province told RFAs Korean Service.



These merchants now work out of newly forming regional branches of Pyongyang-based and government-run trading firms such as Daesung, Chilsong, and Unha, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



These branches are organized as state-run foreign currency generating firms, but if you look at them closely, they are just groups of private trade merchants operating under the names of the trading companies, the source said.



And once these traders are brought into the state-run or military corporations, they are entitled to privileges like using official company documents to travel to China, the source said.



Foreign currency generating firms under the military use military code for their regional branches, but use titles intended for public viewing on their official travel documents, the source said.



The headquarters of the military firms use three-digit codes such as 600 or 100, and their branches use two-digit codes such as 80 or 90.



Traders employed by the newly opened branches are now all private merchants, a second source in North Hamgyong told RFA, also speaking on condition he not be named.



The [state-run] trading groups used to give them a hard time, but now they are allowing anyone to become a trade worker as long as they have a connection to China, he said.



The newly established foreign currency generating firms support the trade merchants work much more than the old firms did. Once contact is established with a Chinese partner, they are easily granted approval, he said.



Reported by Jieun Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Richard Finney.
A Hindu woman and her children, who fled recent violence in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state, are members of a group of refugees that have returned to Maungdaw township where the local government is providing them with temporary shelter and food, Dec. 3, 2017.

About 350 Hindu refugees from Myanmar who fled to the state capital Sittwe amid ethnic violence during a brutal military crackdown in northern Rakhine state returned to Maungdaw township on Sunday, a Hindu leader said.

Another 200 people from 50 households will be sent back to Maungdaw via neighboring Buthidaung township on Tuesday, said Hindu leader Bu Hla Shwe.

Those who are returning will stay temporarily in a building near the Maungdaw district administration office because their homes were burned during the violence, he said.

The Hindus have requested that the local government place them near ethnic Rakhine villages to ensure their safety, he said.

Phu Boung, one of the Hindus who returned to Maungdaw, told RFAs Myanmar service that the situation in northern Rakhine is now calm, but those who are returning are having problems finding jobs.

Our houses were burned down, so we are staying at temporary houses built by the government, he said. We are experiencing problems because we cant earn enough money to survive.

Phu Boung said he used to make about 10,000 kyats (U.S. $7.25) a day locally before he fled the area, but now he can earn only half that amount.

Though officials gave each Hindu household a bag of rice, two bottles of cooking oil, beans, and some dry fish for a month, the food supplies were enough to feed his family of 16 for only 15 days, he said.

The situation in this area is calm because there are no Bengalis now, Phu Boung said, using a derogatory term for the Rohingya Muslims who were the target of the military crackdown following deadly attacks on police outposts in northern Rakhine by the Muslim militant group the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA).

The Rohingya, who are viewed as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, have faced decades of discrimination in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar where they are not recognized as one of the countrys official ethnic groups.

Rights groups and some of the Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh during the crackdown have accused security forces of committing atrocities against them. The United Nations, United States, and others have said that the crackdown amounted to ethnic cleansing.

Hindus and other non-Muslims residing in northern Rakhine have accused ARSA militants of invading their villages and driving out or killing residents.

Local Hindus and the Myanmar government in late September said that ARSA militants detained nearly 100 people from several Hindu villages in the Kha Maung Seik village on Aug. 25, killed most of them, and dumped their corpses in mass graves. The militants also forced the young Hindu women to convert to Islam and took them to a Muslim refugee camp in neighboring Bangladesh.

They cant be trusted

We would become greatly worried if they came back into this area, Phu Boung said of the Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh. They cant be trusted.

It would be best if they dont come back. I feel as though something would happen again in six months or a year, he said, adding that some of his friends who are living among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have reported that they overheard the Muslims discussing future attacks in Maungdaw.

I have never trusted these Bengalis all my life, Phu Boung said. We dont want the government to let them back in Myanmar, especially in Maungdaw.

We were attacked by them three times, he said. They burned down our houses the first time, attacked police outposts and took weapons the second time, and killed people from three Hindu villages. And some were raped during the latest attack. We cant accept them anymore.

Phu Buongs account of events, which is similar to what the Myanmar military told reporters at the time, could not be independently confirmed amid tight restrictions on access to the conflict zone.

Myanmar and Bangladesh have signed a bilateral agreement that calls for the voluntary repatriation of some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who escaped to Bangladesh as they fled outbreaks of violence and two brutal military crackdowns in Rakhine state since October 2016.

The agreement does not cover another roughly 300,000 refugees who fled earlier cycles of violence.

Last week, Bangladesh approved a U.S. $280 million plan to relocate 100,000 Rohingya refugees from the mainland to a low-lying desolate island off its southern coast, where it intends to build shelters for them.

Reported by Min Thein Aung and Khin Khin Ei for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Kachin Independence Army (KIA) soldiers take a cigarette break as they move towards the frontline of fighting with the government army near Laiza in northern Myanmar's Kachin state, Oct. 14, 2016.

Myanmars military will cut off the delivery of rice and gasoline to parts of Kachin states turbulent Tanaing township controlled by an ethnic armed group if they find that local businessmen operating "illegal" mines are receiving the supplies, a Kachin state government official said Monday.

Tensions between government soldiers and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) flared on Nov. 27-28 in the townships gold and amber mining region, forcing residents still living in local villages to flee to safety.

The KIAs territory includes the mining region on whose natural resources it depends as a source of income through the levying a five-percent tax on mine operators.

The Myanmar military has said that it will block shipments of rice and gas to KIA-controlled areas of the township if it determines that the supplies are going to those who operate "illegal" mining businesses and not to residents, said Colonel Myo Tin, security and border affairs minister of Kachin state, in response to a question posed by Zaw Win, a lawmaker in the Kachin state parliament, who represents Tanaing township.

Businessmen are doing illegal gold and amber mining in this area, and they are likely supporting the KIA, he said during a meeting of the state parliament in Kachins capital Myitkyina.

Myo Tin said suppliers can sell rice and gas only to residents and that the Northern Military Headquarters informed the state government that it will monitor the flow of goods into the area to prevent them from being sold in KIA-controlled areas.

As of now, more than 30,000 residents of Tanaing have enough rice from local farms, he said.

The Myanmar military allows sellers to bring in the 7,000 bags of rice and 2,300 drums of gas per month required by migrant workers who live in the township, he said.

Though the government military says there are enough supplies, township residents are having difficulty buying rice and gas because prices are very high, Zaw Win said.

The latest clashes between the Myanmar army and KIA broke out last week during a government army offensive in an area where KIA Battalion 14 is stationed, according to KIA information officer Lieutenant Colonel Naw Bu.

Nearly all villagers had left the area six months earlier after they received advance notice about a clearance operation by the Myanmar military, he said. Those who remained behind to safeguard the villages have been fleeing to other locales since Nov. 7 out of fear of more fighting.

The KIA, which controls large swathes of northeastern Kachin state, has regularly engaged in hostilities with the Myanmar army since a cease-fire agreement collapsed in 2011.

The KIA is one of several militias with which the Myanmar government is trying to end decades of ethnic separatist civil wars and forge peace in the country through a series of peace negotiations launched in August 2016 by de facto national leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Reported by Kyaw Myo Min for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Vietnams Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Monday ordered the temporary closure of a controversial tollbooth in the countrys southern Tien Giang province following protests by drivers who say its location is unfair and that the fees it collects for an opaque road project are too high.



Phuc ordered the month-long suspension following an urgent meeting to address public anger over the tollbooth with the Ministry of Transportation and the chairman of the People's Committee of Tien Giang, saying the stations operations required further review.



The tollbooth collects fees from drivers to finance a 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) route bypassing Cai Lay city along National Highway 1 under a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) scheme, in which developers keep all revenues from a project for a designated period of time before transferring ownership to the government.



Drivers have expressed their opposition to the tollbooth since it opened in August by paying the fees in either extremely small or large denominations, and causing the booth to open its gates repeatedly to alleviate traffic that had built up while operators attempted to make change.



In late August, fees were reduced from 35,000-180,000 dong (U.S. $1.54-7.92) to 25,000-140,000 dong (U.S. $1.10-6.10), but the decrease did little to appease drivers, and protests led to a three-month suspension of operations that ended on Nov. 30.



Drivers continued to resist through the weekendin some cases getting into confrontations with toll operators and requiring cranes to remove their vehiclescausing the station to open its gates as many as 20 times a day to free up traffic, and prompting Phucs decision to shut it down.



Prior to the meeting, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security had called on local police to investigate and gather information about anyone inciting public disorder at BOT tollbooths, including Cai Lay station.



One driver, who spoke to RFAs Vietnamese Service on condition of anonymity, said that after protests began when the station was reopened, police stripped a truck operator named Phuong Tour of his license.



They told him to get in his car and move on but he refused to go, explaining that he couldnt drive without a license, the driver said.



The police then arrested him and brought him to Cai Lay police station. After that, other drivers went to the station to demand his release. He was freed at around 11:00 p.m.



The driver said that while the Cai Lay tollbooth fees were reduced in August, theyre still very high, adding that what we really are protesting against is the location of the station.



Drivers have said that the tollbooth should be placed on the new bypass, rather than the existing highway.



Lack of consultation, transparency



Other sources told RFA that anger over the tollbooth stemmed in part from a lack of consultation with the public before it was approved and the projects lack of transparency.



I can say that there are groups who have an interest in this BOT project and there must have been a fee paid to the people who allowed the station to be built on such a wrong location, said Pham Sy Liem, Vietnams former deputy minister of construction.



To prevent this, the project should have been transparent and the people should have been consulted about it before it was started. They decided about this project on their own, ignoring what the people said, and whoever opened their mouth about it was called stupid and insolent.



Nguyen Quang A, a civil society activist based in the capital Hanoi, said that none of the BOT projects in Vietnam are transparent, creating what he called a hotbed of corruption for local officials and their cronies.



The only way to stop this is to be transparent about everything, including how much is spent on the project, the details of the contract between the investors and the government, and the ability of the public to have input on how it proceeds.



Tran Quoc Thuan, the former deputy director for the Office of the National AssemblyVietnams rubber stamp parliamentnoted that according to the law, it is not mandatory for the developers to consult with the public about state-level projects.



However, its still very regrettable that they didnt do so, he said.



They actually did discuss the project with the local government, but the authorities didnt do their duty [to assess it] and simply approved it.



Social observer Nguyen Thi Hau called consultation with local communities essential for a project the size of the bypass and highway upgrade near Cai Lay.



But hardly any [government] bodies do it, or take it seriously, he said.



As far as I know, in the case of BOT projects like this one, there is no public consultation with the local community or those who are most affected, such as transportation businesses that use BOT roads.



Tran Van Linh, a former member of the Peoples Council in Da NangVietnams third-largest citysaid the government should only build BOT roads that are truly beneficial to the people, and provide alternatives in case drivers do not want to use them, adding that the scheme requires better oversight.



It is important to strictly control the BOT to determine whether they actually disburse the reported funds, or if they are being exaggerated, Linh said.



Also, there should be strict control over their [toll] revenues so that they only receive the amount of interest allowed by the government, he added.



I suggest that an automatic toll collection system be used to avoid non-transparency.



Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Emily Peyman. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
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McGuireWoods LLP has chosen a combat-tested former Army officer as its chairman, elevating Jonathan P. Harmon to succeed Richard Cullen to lead the biggest law firm in Virginia and the 51st largest in the country.

Harmon, 52, elected on Monday by McGuireWoods board of partners, becomes one of the few African-American attorneys to lead a top 100 law firm and crowns a 22-year career he began there immediately after law school.

Ive never even given any serious consideration to leaving McGuireWoods, he said in an interview.

Harmon had been recommended as chairman by Cullen, who ends an 11-year run as chairman but will continue to practice law as a white-collar defense attorney for high-profile clients. They include Vice President Mike Pence in special prosecutor Robert Muellers investigation of potential collusion between the campaign of President Donald Trump and Russia.

Richard is not riding off into the sunset, you know, he said of his predecessor, who, like previous chairmen Robert L. Burrus Jr. and Robert H. Patterson Jr., spent his entire career in private practice at McGuireWoods.

Cullen, who also has served as state attorney general and U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said the decision is a very popular choice among the partners, the staff and our clients.

I am very confident that he will take McGuireWoods to the next level, he said Friday.

The board of partners also named J. Tracy Walker IV as managing partner of the firm, succeeding Thomas E. Cabiness, who had held the position for 10 years. Walker joined the firm in 1998 after eight years at Christian, Barton & Epps in Richmond. He has served as deputy managing partner and lead of the litigation practice since 2015.

Walker, 52, was recommended by Harmon as managing partner, which is a full-time job that will require him to stop practicing law. He and I will really work together on a regular basis in setting the strategy and vision for the firm, said Walker, a native of Albemarle County, who attended the University of Virginia as an undergraduate and Harvard Law School.

Harmon acknowledged that his election represents a milestone for other African-American attorneys at large U.S. law firms, but he also said the board could have chosen other great people at the firm as chairman.

And like everybody, I just wanted the best leader, whether it was a woman, whether it was an African-American man, a white man  whoever it is that Richard and the partnership thought of, he said. So I view it that we put the best people in the best positions.

Harmon is a native of Long Island in New York who had no experience with Richmond or Virginia until he arrived for a law internship for part of the summer of 1994. However, he was attracted to the firm by the opportunities it offered him right out of law school at the University of Texas the next year.

He said a recruiter for the firm told him then, If you come to McGuireWoods, we give our first-year lawyers trial experience.

That was the right opportunity for Harmon, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who served as first lieutenant for an armored division in the Middle East before and during the Desert Storm war with Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in mid-1990.

I use some of the same principles in preparation for trials and the leadership lessons you learn in the military, he said, citing the discipline and focus necessary in both situations.

In his first year at the firm, Harmon tried two cases, one in state and the other in federal court. He soon was handling cases around the country and the firm continued to award him opportunities, naming him partner in 2001, after just six years, and appointing him as chairman of its worldwide business and securities litigation department.

I wasnt in a box, he said. I was allowed to become who I wanted to become, and the firm recognized that.

When his 1st Cavalry Division was preparing to deploy to Saudi Arabia the month after Iraqs invasion of Kuwait, he was a newlywed whose wife, Rhonda, had served in the military and was in law school.

Rhonda Harmon was part of a team led by future Sen. Tim Kaine at Mezzullo & McCandlish in Richmond that won a $100.5 million award against the Nationwide insurance company on behalf of Housing Opportunities Made Equal, in a racial discrimination suit over so-called redlining of African-American neighborhoods.

Harmon was pregnant with the couples first child when HOME filed the suit and pregnant again when the case went to trial two years later. They have four children  two boys and two girls, ranging in age from 13 to 20.

For 20 years, he has taught Bible study, first to incarcerated youths at the state juvenile justice facility in Chesterfield County and later to adults at the federal penitentiary near Petersburg through his church, Faith Landmark Ministries. I miss it when I cant do it, he said.

Harmons principal job as chairman will be to set the strategic vision for the law firm. In real simple terms, I believe we have become a national powerhouse, he said.

But he also will continue to practice law while serving as chairman, as Cullen has done since his election at the end of 2006.

I think its important for the chairman to lead by example, Harmon said.
A team of students from Virginia Commonwealth Universitys Brandcenter won a competition to brand the Richmond region at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.

Tens of thousands of people from around the world attend the annual gathering, often referred to as SXSW after the company that operates it.

This is the third year that the Greater Richmond Partnership has partnered with the VCU Brandcenter, an internationally respected graduate-level advertising school, to devise a branding effort to attract tech executives to consider Richmond as a strong business location.

New this year is a partnership with ChamberRVA, which joined the Greater Richmond Partnership in the branding efforts for SXSW.

The winning Brandcenter team came up with a theme of "Make your mark on Richmond."

The team is Chesterfield County native Megan Reilly, an experience designer; Reston native Ariana Safari, an art director; and Hanover County native Andrew Allen, a strategist.

The winning team will be registered for SXSW and will help staff the booth during the trade show March 10-15.
During his campaign, Gov.-elect Ralph Northam wanted the regulatory process for a pair of controversial natural gas pipelines planned to be built through Virginia to be as thorough and environmentally responsible as permitted under state and federal law.

Yet on the eve of crucial votes by the State Water Control Board that begin this week for water-quality certifications for the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines, the Democratic lieutenant governor appears content to stay away from what critics contend has been a deeply flawed review of the potential water quality hazards posed by the blasting, trenching, ridgetop flattening and tree removal that construction will entail.

The citizen board, whose seven members were appointed by outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who has backed the pipeline projects as drivers of jobs and economic development, will vote over the next two weeks on whether the state will issue certifications under the federal Clean Water Act that there is a reasonable assurance that water quality will be protected during construction. The pipelines, already approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other federal agencies, will cross some of the most mountainous terrain in the state, and opponents contend they cannot be built without dislodging sediment that could damage streams, aquifers and drinking water sources.

Asked whether Northam supports the water board issuing the permits before he takes office in January, a spokeswoman said he will respect the final determination made at the end of a transparent, science-driven regulatory process. The spokeswoman did not respond when asked whether Northam thought the Virginia Department of Environmental Qualitys proposed certifications will adequately protect state waters.

The board meetings on EQT Midstream Partners Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would run 300 miles from West Virginia into Pittsylvania County, are Wednesday and Thursday. The board will take up certification for the Dominion Energy-led Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would run 600 miles from West Virginia through the heart of Virginia and into North Carolina, with an extension to Hampton Roads, on Dec. 11 and 12.

Environmental groups say the board, as a result of how the DEQ has narrowed its review, does not have the information it needs to issue legally defensible certifications.

Though DEQ Director David Paylor has insisted Virginia is going to the limits of its powers in the permitting process, the agency ceded its authority to review the actual spots where the pipeline will cross waterways to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and will approve the pipeline developers plans to manage erosion, sediment and stormwater separately. Opponents also contend the agency has not set a water-quality baseline for the waterways crossed by the pipelines by conducting whats known as an anti-degradation analysis, which refers to the requirement to protect existing uses of water.

DEQ spokeswoman Ann Regn would not answer questions about the boards options at the meetings, namely whether it can delay the permits and whether it must issue an up or down vote. Nor would she comment on the anti-degradation analysis.

Given the pending regulatory action, the agency has determined it is not appropriate to answer questions at this time about anti-degradation or the State Water Control Boards deliberations, Regn said.

Dominion sees nothing wrong with the DEQs process, and a spokesman bristled at the suggestion by environmental groups that the influential energy giant is driving the timetables for approval.

DEQ cant change the law. Theyre a regulatory agency, said Aaron Ruby, a company spokesman, noting that each of the permits at issue is administered under separate regulations. The bottom line is all of the agencies are carefully studying every aspect of the project to make sure it meets the highest water quality standards.

Ruby said DEQ, which is recommending that the board approve the certifications subject to a host of conditions, has been clear that the application and public record are complete and the board has all of the information it needs to make an informed decision.

***

During his primary race with former 5th District Rep. Tom Perriello, who opposed the pipelines, Northam, who avoided taking a yes or no position, took credit for spurring DEQ to make sure that we changed from blanket permitting to a site-specific permitting, which they followed my lead on, Northam said at a Roanoke debate.

However, seven weeks after an agency spokesman told reporters that state regulators would be performing exactly that kind of detailed review of the spots where the pipelines crossed waterways, DEQ called that a misunderstanding and said it would in fact rely on the blanket Army Corps permit, called the Nationwide Permit 12, for the crossings.

Some environmental groups and political observers say Northam, carried into a office by a progressive wave and still a member of the current administration, remains on the sidelines at his political peril.

He should get involved now, said Mike Tidwell, director of the nonprofit Chesapeake Climate Action Network, which has fought the pipelines. These pipelines, if theyre built, are going to become a PR nightmare for Dominion, for EQT and for the elected leaders of Virginia who supported them, including Ralph Northam. ... The environmental harm that we in the environmental community have warned against will become plain for the whole state to see. I believe these pipelines will shock the conscience of Virginians once the construction begins.

Greg Buppert, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville, predicted that the pipelines will be a long-term problem for the Northam administration.

These will be projects that, if approved, that he and his administration will deal with for a long time, Buppert said. If he feels this decision should be delayed, he should let DEQ know that.

Virginia State Police scheduled a lessons-learned training in August related to the Dakota Access oil pipeline construction, which featured widely covered clashes between police in riot gear and protesters over the crude oil pipeline between North Dakota and Illinois, according to emails obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In September, about 100 activists and landowners opposed to the Virginia pipeline projects held a three-day training camp that included nonviolent direct action trainings.

Theres a reasonable chance there will be some ugly protests by environmentalists in these politically active times. Thats a risk that a Democratic governor shouldnt want to take and shouldnt need to take, said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. The public hearings coming up in the coming weeks are going to be problematic from the point of view of Northams political relationship with environmentalists.

A newly resurgent, activist wing of the Democratic Party helped propel Northam to victory, Farnsworth noted, along the way gaining a stunning number of seats in the House of Delegates, including a cadre of freshmen lawmakers who vowed to reject campaign cash from the states large utilities.

Two of those newcomers were at a Saturday rally in Richmond opposing the pipelines that drew hundreds of people to Capitol Square.

Dels.-elect Chris Hurst, D-Pearisburg, and Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Stafford, joined incumbent Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, at the rally. Hurst said he intends to introduce legislation to put the brakes on the permitting process during the coming session, calling for more data, research and analysis.

The best move for the governor-elect seems to be to insist on a much more rigorous standard than is currently the case and the chips will fall where they may, Farnsworth said. Its clear Democratic activists have a lot of problems with these pipelines and in politics its smart to dance with the ones that brung you.
In July 1972, Nancy Johnson started her route as one of Richmonds first female mail carriers. Johnson was one of two women in Richmond to breach the former all-male letter carrier ranksshe was joined by Mastine Braswell. Both women were clerks at the Capitol Station post office at 10th and Main Streets.

The women delivered mail to the citys financial district which was served by the Capitol Station only on Saturdaysthe other four days they held their jobs as clerks. Daniel Lee, the Capitol Station assistant superintendent said that one of the reasons women entered the field was due to a shortage of letter carriers on Saturdays.

Johnson and Braswell expressed excitement to become mail carriers. Braswell said that the office welcomed the idea of having a woman letter carrier and Johnson said she was great with the familiar chant womens lib.
Kenya Gibson was sworn in Monday to represent the 3rd District on the Richmond School Board.

Gibson, a New England native and vice president of the Linwood Holton Elementary School PTA, won a special election last month with 46 percent of the vote, besting three other candidates to fill a seat vacated in February by Del. Jeffrey M. Bourne, D-Richmond, who had won election to the Virginia General Assembly.

The 43-year-old Gibson applied for an interim appointment, but the board chose Cindy Menz-Erb over her and a handful of other candidates. Menz-Erb was endorsed by Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney in a bid to retain the seat last month but ultimately finished behind Gibson by about 1,300 votes.

Gibson was joined Monday by her two children as she took the oath of office, which was administered by Richmond Circuit Court Clerk Ed Jewett. In the audience were co-workers, district officials and former School Board members, including Bourne.

We must defend public education, Gibson said in brief remarks after the oath, adding that its time to transform education both in Richmond and across the U.S.

Gibson attended the College of William & Mary. After a stint in Los Angeles, she moved to Richmond in 2006 with her husband and daughter. She became involved with the Linwood Holton Elementary School PTA, first as a member and eventually as vice president.

Gibsons work began less than two hours after the oath was administered, at the boards last meeting of the calendar year. She has been in attendance at recent board meetings, including a special meeting last week to discuss facilities, a long-standing division issue thats the first big vote likely to be taken by Gibson.

The board plans to vote on a facilities plan at a special meeting next week.

During her campaign, Gibson said she advocates more funding in public education, one of the main reasons for the lagging facilities problems, and would work to better support students living in poverty.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
CHRISTIANSBURG  Ralph Sergio Castrello resolved drug and property damages charges Monday with a plea agreement  handing over a restitution check, apologizing and receiving a suspended prison term for episodes in which he was caught making methamphetamine in Montgomery County and then while out on bond, moved into a nearby unoccupied rental property and ransacked it.

In a brief hearing in Montgomery County Circuit Court, Castrello, 53, entered no contest pleas to charges of possessing the precursors to manufacture meth, making meth, possessing a Schedule II drug, destroying property, interfering with someone elses property rights, and grand larceny.

Judge Robert Turk found Castrello guilty on all charges and imposed five-year prison sentences for the precursors, drug possession, larceny and property destruction charges, and 10 years for making meth, plus 12 months in jail on the property rights charge. Turk ordered that the sentences run concurrently for a total of 10 years behind bars, then suspended the entire term and placed Castrello on probation for three years.

Prosecutors dropped a charge of conspiring to manufacture meth.

Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Jennifer Wolz summarized the case against Castrello, saying that on Nov. 17, 2016, the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office received word that he was cooking meth in a shack on his property in the Walton community.

Officers found Castrello in his house with his wife and child, threatening to cut his own throat and saying he wanted to be shot. He asked to speak to a Virginia state trooper he knew and after talking to the officer, agreed to surrender, Wolz said.

A search of the property after Castrellos arrest turned up meth and ingredients for making meth, Wolz said. Then on Jan. 28, officers were called to a house on Spaulding Road, near Walton, for a report of squatters. Gerard Walsh told officers that lights had been on and trash had been sitting on the porch of a supposedly vacant house that he and his wife owned, and which they had been fixing up over a period of years to use as a rental property.

Officers found the house had extensive damage, including holes in walls, torn-up flooring and shelves, broken appliances and more. At an earlier hearing in the case, in July, Karolein Walsh testified that it had been heartbreaking to see the undoing of years of renovations. A ladder, saws and other items were missing from the house as well.

Neighbors told investigators that the Castrellos had been staying in the house and had said they were its new owners, Wolz said Monday.

Turk ordered Castrello to have no further contact with the Walshes and to stay off their property. The judge also ordered Castrello to pay the Walshes restitution of $6,657.27.

The circuit court clerks office reported that the restitution was paid after the hearing.
A woman who lured an online date to a Roanoke park over the summer, then helped rob him of his money and his car, was given more than a decade in prison at her sentencing hearing Monday.

Shareka Nicole Cobbs got five years to serve for robbery and four for abduction, plus three years for an unrelated trio of counts of obtaining money by false pretenses. She also carries 33 years in suspended time for those offenses.

Cobbs, 24, previously pleaded no contest to the robbery and abduction charges. Those came in April, after a Virginia Tech student told police hed been attacked while on a date with Cobbs. He said a man forced him into a car, blindfolded him, beat him, withdrew $40 from his bank account, took his car keys, then abandoned him near Interstate 581.

The student later identified Cobbs to police through her Facebook account, and police arrested her co-defendant, Willie Jamar Ollie, who was connected to the incident after police located the stolen car. Ollie, too, pleaded no contest to robbery and abduction and is due to be sentenced early next year. Both Cobbs and Ollie also were charged with malicious wounding and carjacking, but those were dropped as a result of their plea agreements.

At Mondays sentencing, prosecutors referenced a written statement by Cobbs in which she said the crime went bad. Nobody was supposed to get abducted or hurt. They pointed out that she had drawn a frowning face after the word abducted.

Cobbs testified in her own defense and said that, growing up, shed been hosted by 17 different foster families and had suffered abuse in some of them before aging out of the program and finding herself homeless. She suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, she said, but after she left the foster program she had no further access to medication.

One of the false pretense charges, which was filed in Roanoke, relates to the fraudulent sale of a gift card. Cobbs was ordered to pay $750 in restitution in that case, in which Ollie is also her co-defendant. The other two happened in Roanoke County, and Cobbs owes $635 and $585 on those.
Roanoke police have identified the man killed early Sunday morning in Lansdowne Park as 37-year-old Corey Tyrone Brown, and theyve arrested a man on a charge of murder.

Byron Lamont Brandon, 45, was indicted Monday by a Roanoke grand jury on charges of felony murder, using a firearm to commit murder and possession of a firearm as a nonviolent felon in Browns shooting death in the 600 block of Lucerne Street Northwest. Brandon was arrested Monday in Greensboro, North Carolina, by the Greensboro Police Departments Violent Crime Apprehension Team, Roanoke police said.

Brown, of Roanoke, was found lying in the yard of a house at about 6:20 a.m. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Browns death marks the citys 14th reported homicide this year  the most homicides in Roanoke since 2005, when the city experienced 16.

The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information can call the Roanoke Valley Crime Line at 344-8500.
Sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway will be closed during the week in December and January as work crews clear vegetation growth along the scenic road.

Parkway maintenance workers will be using tractors equipped with long arms that have cuttings heads  called boom axes  to remove shrubs, small trees and other vegetation from roadsides. The parkway will be closed in both directions during the operations.

The road will be closed in Virginia during the following days:

The section between mileposts 112 and 120, which includes the area between Vinton and Roanoke Mountain, is closed now until Dec. 22.

The parkway between mileposts 95 and 106 in Botetourt County is closed through Friday.

The area between mileposts 66 and 85 from the James River Visitor Center to the Peaks of Otter will be closed Dec. 11-15.

The section between mileposts 106 and 112 northeast of Roanoke and Vinton will be closed Jan. 2-12.

The parkway will be closed in those sections from 8 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. each weekday. The road will be open on weekends. For more information about road closures, go online to https://go.nps.gov/brp-map.
A biennial survey of Roanoke students found more than 150 who have used heroin  including sixth- and eighth-graders  and two in 10 high school students who responded said they had attempted suicide.

Results from the 2017 survey by the Roanoke Prevention Alliance were presented Monday to the Roanoke City Council.

While the survey of 1,378 city middle school students and 671 high schoolers found good news in reduced use of alcohol, tobacco and vaping, students also described a dark aspect to many of their lives.

It was very disturbing to look at these numbers, said Paula Prince of the prevention alliance.

The organization has conducted the survey of sixth-, eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders every other year for 20 years. The group uses a survey produced by the federal Centers for Disease Control that is used nationwide and administers it in school classrooms. Parents must opt their children out of the survey, Prince said.

This is the first time the completely anonymous survey has asked students about heroin use, and the council found the results alarming.

Six percent of middle school students who responded said they had used heroin in the 30 days prior to the survey. Thats 73 young teens, including 22 sixth-graders.

Another 93 high school students, or 14 percent of respondents acknowledged heroin use.

Use of other substances, including alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and prescription drugs by middle schoolers was down from 10 years ago, according to Princes presentation.

All of those but marijuana and prescription drugs were down for high schoolers in the survey. Pot smoking was up 46 percent over 2007, Prince said, while prescription drug use was up by 20 percent since 2013.

The survey found a strong correlation between pot and use of every other substance asked about, Prince said.

Questions about mental health found a prevalence of depression and hopelessness that troubled council members.

More than a quarter of middle school respondents and nearly 40 percent of high schoolers who completed the survey described weekslong bouts of depression and hopelessness in the previous year.

Fourteen percent of middle schoolers in the survey and 21 percent of high schoolers reported attempting suicide.

Of those, a third of the middle schoolers and nearly half of the high school students said their suicide attempts were serious enough to require medical treatment.

That seems like its about crisis mode, said Councilman John Garland.

Its important that we talk about and acknowledge that this is going through the minds of our youth, said Vice Mayor Anita Price, a retired school guidance counselor.

She and others called to hold up the successes and the positive aspects of teens lives in the city, something Roanoke could do as an antidote to the high instance of depression.

Councilman Bill Bestpitch was struck by the incongruity of so much hopelessness among students when the citys graduation rate, now near 90 percent, suggests greater success and more opportunity than ever.

Prince agreed, but added that graduation, while laudable, represents an end for many students, who see limited opportunity beyond it.

Bus fare increased

In other action, the council voted 6-0, with Councilwoman Michelle Dykstra absent, to approve raising the cost of a single ride on a Valley Metro bus from $1.50 to $1.75.

The increase takes effect in January.

The board of the Greater Roanoke Transit Authority  which operates Valley Metro  approved the increase last month, but rejected a proposal to restrict the number of rides on monthly passes for the systems STAR mini-buses.

Both votes followed a public hearing where many bus riders decried the lack of service after 8:30 p.m. and on Sundays.

However, the fare increase will not fund any expansion of service, but will allow maintaining existing routes and times.
The potential for war with North Korea is "increasing every day," White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Saturday. The warning follows the North's test launch of a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile last week.

Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, McMaster was asked if the North's latest missile launch had escalated the possibility of war. "I think it's increasing every day, which means that we are in a race, really, we are in a race to be able to solve this problem," he said.

"There are ways to address this problem short of armed conflict, but it is a race because [North Korea is] getting closer and closer, and there's not much time left," he added.


A total of 24 F-22 Raptor and F-35A stealth fighters are to take part in the drill, which is dubbed "Vigilant Ace" and comes hard on the heels of North Korea's latest test on an intercontinental ballistic missile last month.

A squadron of U.S. stealth fighter jets arrived in South Korea on Saturday and Sunday to participate in the largest-ever joint drill this week.

Some 230 South Korean and U.S. aircraft will practice striking North Korea's nuclear and missile bases, mobile missile launchers and long-range artillery.

A military source said the exercise had been planned well before the North's launch of a Hwasong-15 missile. "But it will be more intense because of the launch," the source added.

The Defense Ministry said the purpose of the drill is to improve the joint capability of carrying out missions in all weathers, day and night.

Other U.S. jets taking part are F-22s, F-35As, EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft, F-15C fighters, and F-16 fighters, which have already been deployed at air bases here.

Twelve F-35B stealth fighters and E-3 early warning and control aircraft, and a fleet of B-1B Lancer bombers will fly from U.S. air bases in Japan and Guam.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman in a statement on Saturday denounced the exercise. It said the Trump administration is "begging for a nuclear war" and engaged in "dangerous nuclear gambling" on the Korean Peninsula.
At least 13 people have died after a boat carrying 22 fishermen crashed into a fuel tanker off the coast of Incheon on Sunday morning.

Two people, including the ship's captain, remain missing.

According to maritime police, the 9.77-ton boat collided with the 336 ton fuel tanker at around 6 a.m. some 1.85 km southwest of Youngheung Island. Seven passengers were rescued.

The two ships collided while traveling down the same course. Police arrested the captain of the fuel tanker on charges of negligence and are questioning surviving crew to determine the cause of the collision.


MP JOHN Healey went back to school to fill pupils in on politics.

Heather Garth Primary Academy in Bolton-on-Dearne invited Mr Healey to speak to them during Parliament Week, an annual festival to encourage people to learn about and engage with the work of Parliament.

Year 6 teacher Marie Bower welcomed the Wentworth and Dearne MP, saying: At Heather Garth, we take British values and citizenship very seriously.

We believe that teaching the children and letting them experience each others opinions in a tolerant and respectful way is key to shaping their futures.

Parliament Week is a great way of getting the children involved in how their country does things.

Who knows, one day one of them could be visiting a school like John or even running the country!
On November 10-12, the Moscow International Trade Center hosted a presentation of the Carl Faberge International Jewellery Art Competition. The competition was established on the initiative launched by Russias leading public associations of the domestic jewellery industry, including the Jewellers Guild of Russia and the Club of Russian Jewellery Trade, and supported by the Moscow International Trade Center, Carl Faberge Museum and World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO).

This international Competition named after the celebrated Carl Faberge is held with the aim of "promoting the national school of jewellery mastery, returning to it the leading positions in the world and assigning Russia the status of a most important center for the preservation and development of artistic jewellery". This event should help to identify and encourage talented jewellers - craftsmen and designers, familiarize them with modern technologies of famous jewellery houses, exchange experience in developing the best traditions of jewellery art.

The program of the Competition includes nominations in jewellery design and technology, in re-creating and development of the Faberge House historical style and technology and in creating jewellery masterpieces. One of the key tasks of the Competition is to select applicants who are worthy of presenting the achievements of the Russian jewellery industry at international exhibitions.

The pieces produced by the best jewellery companies of Russia were exhibited at the Congress Center - their premium status was confirmed by the awards of the prestigious international professional competition "Jewellery Russia" and by High Artistic Value Passports certified by art critics and experts of the State Hermitage Museum, Moscow Kremlin Museums, Historical Museum, etc. A number of jewellery houses and companies, including hamovskikh, GEVORKYAN, Alexey Pomelnikov, Maxim Demidov, SARKISSIAN, Denisov & Gems, Argenta, N. Balmasov Workshop, Kierge, Diamonds of Yakutia, Bogarta, DPI Union of Artists, etc., presented their works for their judgement.

The jury of the Faberge International Competition included authoritative foreign experts on the jewellery industry and owners of well-known global brands. After officially inaugurating the Competition and cutting the tape, the organizers and guests, including Gagik Gevorkyan, President of the Jewellers Guild of Russia; Valery Budny, President of the JUNWEX Industry Media Holding; Gaetano Cavalieri, President of the World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO); Alexander Rybakov, Vice President of the Russian Chamber of Commerce; Konstantin Evstyukhin of Russian Export Center; and other participants of the event went round the exhibition admiring and discussing the jewellery presented for the Competition and talking with jewellers taking part in the JUNWEX Premium Jewellery Show.







Within this event, the organizers held a round table on "Implementing the Export Potential of the Russian Jewellery Sector: Problems and Prospects" to discuss the ways to develop jewellery exports. The discussion was joined by speakers from industry trade unions, jewellery companies, government and state agencies.

According to the official statistics voiced at the round table, the share of Russian jewellery products in the worlds total exports in 2016 was 0.1%. Russia exports less than $ 100 million worth of finished jewellery goods. Industry stakeholders also said that if they would have support from the state they would be ready to increase exports to $ 1 billion a year.

It was not by chance that this round table attended by the jewellery industrys stakeholders and federal officials was organized in the framework of JUNWEX Premium, Russias first high-end jewellery show, on the eve of the Faberge Competition. In the opinion of the round-table panelists, it is the exhibition projects that may become an effective channel for the expansion of Russian producers to foreign markets.

Until recently, about 70% of the Russian jewellery market was occupied by imported goods, but now, according to Gagik Gevorkyan, Head of Jewellers Guild of Russia, the share of imported jewellery does not exceed 5 to 6%. Domestic producers almost completely meet the domestic demand for jewellery and are ready to work for export. In the view of market players, the Middle East, Europe and America appear to be promising markets for Russian jewellery goods. The worlds export market of jewellery is estimated at $400 billion a year, and there is interest in Russian jewellery abroad, according to jewellers. Nevertheless, the imperfection of domestic legislation, which is undergoing changes, but still cannot keep pace with market trends, hampers the expansion to new markets. If introduced, preferential taxation of exporters could significantly increase jewellery exports, thus adding to the revenues of the countrys state budget.

Jewellery industry players consider it necessary to revise the system of import duties on precious stones, some of which are not mined in Russia. Also, it is necessary to abolish the obsolescent proceeding of mandatory hallmarking jewellery intended for export, as well as to simplify customs procedures for taking jewellery out of the country for display and sale and to support the participation of domestic producers in the largest professional exhibitions. It should be noted that foreign markets are highly competitive and without the assistance of the state it will be difficult for the Russian jewellery industry mainly represented by small-size companies to throw its hat in the ring.







For their part, Russian authorities express readiness to solve the problems facing domestic producers. For example, Elena Ladozhina, Deputy Head of the Department for Trade Restrictions, Currency and Export Controls of the Federal Customs Service assured that the FCS will improve the system of customs procedures by switching to electronic document circulation - this will undoubtedly simplify the declaration of exported goods and their return in case they are not sold. For his part, Semen Mashkautsan, Deputy Director of the Department of Metallurgy and Materials at the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation recalled that his department this year would be endowed with the functions of overseeing the export policy, including the jewellery industry. The Russian Export Center could also propose a range of financial and non-financial measures to this effect.

Readiness to provide assistance was expressed by foreign partners interested in the development of jewellery trade. Gaetano Cavalieri, President of the World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO) noted that these same issues also exist in Europe, so he does not exclude the possibility of creating a special commission that could solve general problems impeding the exchange of goods through a dialogue.

The round-table panelists stressed the necessity for Russian jewellers to take part in international exhibitions held abroad. Valery Budny told about the initiative to hold the Carl Faberge International Jewellery Competition organized with the support of the World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO), Jewellers Guild of Russia and Russian Jewellery Trade Club. He is convinced that this Competition will permit to discover talented jewellers and include their works in the expositions to be taken to international jewellery shows. The jewellery community is ready to take part in selecting the most visited exhibitions and determine the measures to support the most promising jewellery manufacturers in team with the Russian Export Center.

The Ministry of Industrial Policy and Trade of the Russian Federation also expressed its readiness to support the initiative of holding the international Competition. Deputy Minister Sergey Tsyb expressed confidence that this would help Russian jewellers increase their export potential and assured those present that the ministry will pay special attention to the jewellery industry.

The Russian Export Center was asked to include the Competition, which will be held across the world in stages, in the "road map" to support the export of jewellery. The next continental stages of the Faberge International Competition will be held in Vicenza, Las Vegas and Hong Kong. The awards ceremony will take place in Moscow in 2018 in the framework of the next JUNWEX Premium exhibition.

At the end of the discussion, it was decided to hand over the "road map", which will include proposals of jewellery manufacturers and associations, to the Russian Export Center and the Ministry of Industry and Trade for further development and implementation. The implementation of these plans will begin next year.

Galina Semyonova for Rough&Polished




Orion secures pre-development funding for Okiep copper project Orion Minerals has entered into definitive agreements that will see the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa (IDC) acquire 43.75% of the shares in the New Okiep Mining Company (NOM). This triggered pre-development funding...

Angolas SODIAM realises $28,7mln from fifth international diamond tender Angola's state-owned diamond trading company, SODIAM realised $28,7 million from the sale of 1,819.79 carats at its fifth international rough tender held in the capital, Luanda. The diamonds sold were special productions from Lulo, Catoca, and Luele...

Christies presents Fancy Vivid Pink Diamond of 13.15 carats Christies presents one of the finest fancy vivid pink emerald-cut diamonds ever to be offered at auction which will be part of the Magnificent Jewels sale on 6 December during Luxury Week. The Fancy Vivid Pink Diamond Ring (estimate...

Sama reports high-grade copper-nickel intercepts at Cote divoire project Sama Resources has reported high-grade copper-nickel intercepts following the drilling of 21 holes at its Samapleu deposit, in Cote d'Ivoire. Company chief executive Marc-Antoine Audet said this is an indication of the potential for additional high-grade...
Prince Harry, the fifth in line to inherit the British throne, will marry American actress, model, and humanitarian Rachel Meghan Markle. Prince Charles Monday announced the engagement of his son to Meghan Markle.

The couple had secretly got engaged earlier this month in London.

An official communique issued by the Prince of Wales said the wedding will take place in Spring 2018. The wedding day will be announced later.

Harry has informed his grandmother Queen Elizabeth and other close members of his family. The young Prince has also received the blessing of Markle's parents, Charles said.

The couple will live in Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace.

Harry, the youngest of Prince Charles and late Diana's two children, has been dating the actress since the summer of 2016.

Officially, he carries out public duties in support of the Queen alongside a number of charitable activities and projects.

After a military career spanning a decade, during which he was on active duty in Afghanistan, Prince Harry left the Armed Forces as Captain in June 2015. The 36-year old Markle, a divorcee, is three years elder to Harry.



Since 2011 Markle has portrayed Rachel Zane on the legal drama series Suits and is also known for her role as special agent Amy Jessup in the sci-fi thriller Fringe. Besides acting, she is known for humanitarian activities.

In 2016, Markle became a global ambassador for World Vision Canada, traveling to Rwanda for the Clean Water Campaign. She has also worked with the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women as an Advocate. Markle was a counselor for international charity One Young World, speaking at the 2014 annual summit in Dublin on the topics of gender equality and modern-day slavery.

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Business News
Korea will donate 50,000 tons of surplus rice to countries suffering from food shortages from next year.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs on Sunday said the National Assembly passed a bill to join the Food Assistance Convention on Friday.

The FAC, with 14 member countries or bodies like the U.S., Japan and the EU, is an international treaty for humanitarian food assistance. Once Korea's membership application is accepted, it will give 50,000 tons of its surplus rice to countries that need it through the World Food Programme.

The ministry hopes that this will improve the national image and stabilize rice supply in the domestic market, where there is an oversupply of 200,000 to 300,000 tons of rice a year.


Express Scripts (ESRX) has agreed to sell its subsidiary United BioSource to private equity firm Avista Capital Partners.

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, United BioSource provides pharmaceutical and patient support services, partnering with life science companies to make medicine and medical products safer and more accessible. The company has 13 locations in the U.S., Europe, and Canada.

Patrick Lindsay, UBC president, said, "Our team of clinical and commercial experts understands the many facets of drug development, market access, and safety. Avista's commitment to the healthcare industry makes them the ideal partner as we continue to improve patient care. Together, we will provide our clients, their patients, and their prescribers with innovative services that meet the demands of a dynamic industry."

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Business News
The US President's national security adviser has warned that the potential for war is increasing every day, while North Korea said that Monday's beginning of massive US-South Korea joint air exercise in the Korean peninsula may lead to a nuclear war any moment.

South Korea and the United States kicked off their largest ever air force drills against North Korea's threats, with two dozen U.S. stealth jets mobilized.

230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troops, are taking part in the five-day Vigilant Air Combat Exercise (ACE). Pyongyang's official organs reacted immediately with exaggerated statements.

An editorial in Rodong Sinmun, North Korea's ruling communist party newspaper, accused the Trump administration of "begging for nuclear war".

"The U.S. and south Korean puppet military warmongers should bear in mind that their escalating provocation and adding to crimes will only invite more terrible retaliation and precipitate their self-destruction," the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification, an organization handling Pyongyang's relations with Seoul, said in a statement.

South Korea's Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun dismissed the claim and clarified that the annual joint military exercise is of a defensive nature between allies.

White House national security adviser HR McMaster said the United States is "in a race" to address the threat from North Korea.

The potential for war is increasing every day but armed conflict is not the only solution, he told a forum in California. It comes less than a week after the nuclear armed North fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and declared the completion of its "nuclear force."

The latest ICBM that North Korea test fired has the potential to reach any part of the continental United States, but it would be incapable of carrying a nuclear warhead to this long distance, according to a missile defense expert.

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Business News
Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) confirmed receipt of Broadcom Limited's (AVGO) nomination of a slate of eleven candidates to replace Qualcomm's existing board of directors at the company's 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.

Qualcomm said it believes this action is a blatant attempt to seize control of the Qualcomm board in order to advance Broadcom's acquisition agenda.

"These nominees are inherently conflicted given Broadcom's desire to acquire Qualcomm in a manner that dramatically undervalues Qualcomm to Broadcom's benefit," Qualcomm said.

Qualcomm noted that its board is composed of 11 "world-class" directors, 9 of whom are independent and 4 of whom have been added in the last 3 years, and all of whom are firmly committed to acting in the best interests of all Qualcomm stockholders.

Further, Qualcomm said it is exceptionally well positioned - with and leadership positions across mobile, IoT, Automotive, edge computing and networking - and leading the transition to 5G. The company added that its stockholders are poised to participate in substantial growth and value creation as the company continues to execute its strategy across its businesses.

On November 13, 2017, Qualcomm's board of directors unanimously rejected Broadcom's non-binding, unsolicited proposal to acquire Qualcomm for per share consideration of $60.00 in cash and $10.00 in Broadcom stock.

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Business News
The Swiss stock market enjoyed a broad rally at the start of the new trading week and ended the day firmly in the green. Investors cheered the news that a bill to overhaul the U.S. tax system had received Senate approval.

With the vote to approve the bill, lawmakers from the Senate and House will need to go to conference to work out differences in the bills passed by the two chambers. Traders are hopeful that President Trump will be able to sign the bill into law before the end of the year.

The Swiss Market Index increased by 0.58 percent Monday and closed at 9,328.62. The Swiss Leader Index climbed 0.72 percent and the Swiss Performance Index added 0.63 percent.

Financial stocks jumped on the news of the U.S. tax reform bill. Credit Suisse rallied 2.4 percent, UBS rose 0.8 percent and Julius Baer added 0.4 percent. Among the insurers, Swiss Life advanced 1.5 percent, Baloise climbed 1.3 percent and Zurich Insurance finished higher by 1.3 percent.

Among the cyclicals, ABB gained 2.1 percent after Deutsche Bank rated the stock a "Buy." Kuehne + Nagel climbed 1.8 percent and Geberit rose 1.4 percent. SGS increased 1.3 percent and Schindler added 1.1 percent.

Index heavyweight Nestle advanced 0.8 percent. According to media reports, the food giant is said to be interested in the consumer division of the German company Merck.

Novartis climbed 0.4 percent, while Roche weakened by 0.4 percent.

Lonza was the weakest performing stock of the session, falling 1.3 percent. Logitech also decreased 1.0 percent.

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Market Analysis
Canadian stocks slumped Monday, unable to keep pace with surging U.S. equities as commodity prices turned lower.

There was little euphoria in Canada for the passage of long-awaited U.S. tax reforms and OPEC's supply quota extension.

The TSX Composite Index was down 69 points to 15,969.03.

Husky Energy Inc. (HSE.TO) said it is on track to exceed the 2018 targets for funds from operations and free cash flow outlined at its 2017 Investor Day.

The company expects funds from operations for 2018 to exceed $4 billion and free cash flow to be about $1 billion at pricing of $55 WTI, $2.50 AECO and a $15 per barrel Chicago 3:2:1 crack spread. Shares fell 1.4 percent.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. (VRX, VRX.TO) announced that it has launched an offering of $1 billion aggregate principal amount of unsecured senior notes due 2025. Shares rose 1.3 percent.

Bombardier Aerostructures and Engineering Services (BBD.B.TO) says it has been chosen by Airbus as a supplier on a new engine nacelle program.

The company's operations in Northern Ireland will develop and manufacture a new thrust reverser for the Pratt & Whitney powered A320neo family of aircraft. The stock rose 1.5 percent.

Crude oil futures fell Monday for the first time in three sessions, as a strong dollar dented commodity prices.

Jan. WTI oil was down 89 cents, or 1.5%, to settle at $57.47/bbl.

Gold prices fell as U.S. stocks rallied on tax reform. Over the weekend, the Senate voted 51 to 49 in favor of the bill known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

However, President Donald Trump now says he may prefer a higher corporate rate than the one Senate Republicans passed.

"Business tax all the way down from 35 to 20," Trump said "It could be 22 when it all comes out, but it could also be 20. We'll see what ultimately comes out."

Feb. gold settled at $1,277.70/oz, down $4.60, or 0.4%.

In economic news, a report released by the Commerce Department on Monday showed a modest decrease in new orders for U.S. manufactured goods in the month of October.

Factory orders edged down by 0.1 percent in October after surging up by 1.7 percent in September. Economists had expected orders to drop by 0.4 percent.

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Market Analysis
Marking a generational shift, Rahul Gandhi is all set to take over as Congress President next week as he was the only candidate to file nominations before deadline expired on Monday for the post amid opposition jibes over dynasty politics in a contest with no one else in the fray.

The 47-year-old Gandhi, who will be the sixth Nehru-Gandhi scion to helm the party, filed papers at the Congress headquarters in Delhi amid cheers and celebrations by party leaders and workers. His mother and incumbent party President Sonia Gandhi signed the first nomination paper for election of her son.

He has been party Vice President for over four years since 2013.

Among the proposers of 89 nominations -- all in support of Gandhi -- was former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who called Rahul Gandhi the "darling" of the party. Manmohan Singh accompanied Gandhi when he filed the nomination paper.

The last date for withdrawal is December 11 when he may be declared elected since there is no contest. Scrutiny of the nomination will take place on Tuesday.

"Eighty-nine nominations from various states were submitted to the returning officer. Prominent Congress leaders filed nominations (on behalf of Gandhi) including the former Prime Minister, Congress Working Committee members, MPs, state Congress leaders," Returning Officer Mullapally Ramachandran told reporters.

Though Ramachandran did not divulge details, sources said all the nominations were in favour of "one candidate" -- obviously Gandhi.

Originally 90 nomination forms were issued but one could not be filed as there were not enough number of proposers.

However, the filing of nomination was not without controversy stoked by remarks of senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar who invoked the Mughal dynasty in the Congress Presidential election that Prime Minister Narendra Modi latched on to quickly to call it "Aurangzeb Raj".

"When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any election happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen? It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go to the heir," Aiyar said, retorting to the "dynasty" jibes of the BJP on Rahul Gandhi's election.

"But in a democracy elections are held. I openly invite (Shehzad) Poonawala to file the nomination and contest," Aiyar said, adding no one had earlier heard of Poonawala.

Aiyar was replying to a question about BJP's criticism following Maharashtra Congress leader Poonawala alleging that election for Congress President was a sham and Rahul Gandhi's elevation was rigged.

Modi was quick to pounce on Aiyar's remarks. Addressing an election rally in Gujarat, Modi said: "Aiyar, who never shies away from showing loyalty to one family, proudly said -- When Shah Jahan came in the place of Jahangir did any elections happen? And when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan did any election happen?

"It was known to everyone that the throne of the king will automatically go the son. I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the wellbeing of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," he said.

The Prime Minister also said that the Congress leaders admit that it is not a party but a "kunba" (family).

Modi at a poll rally in Gujarat on Sunday lauded Poonawala for exposing lack of internal democracy in the Congress. "Those who have no internal democracy can't work for people. I want to say to this youngster Shehzad - you have done a brave thing but this is sadly what has always happened in Congress."

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said Modi was "suffering from Rahul Gandhi phobia".

Surjewala also said that Modi's "love for Shehzad, Shahzada (BJP chief Amit Shah's son Jai Shah) and Shourya (National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's son)" is well known to the world.

"But will Modiji tell when he will answer the questions of his own senior party leaders like Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha?" he asked.

Gandhi, who became the Congress Vice President in January 2013, will succeed his mother Sonia, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998. He is the sixth in the Gandhi-Nehru family to head the party after his great great grandfather Motilal Nehru, great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, grandmother Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi.

Hundreds of Congress workers and leaders from across the country supporters thronged the party office ahead of the filing of nominations.

A large crowd of party workers were seen requesting the guards for a chance to meet their leader as he made his much awaited move.

Earlier, Gandhi called on former President Pranab Mukherjee, who applied tilak mark on his head as a way of blessing.

On his elevation, Manmohan Singh said: "Rahul Gandhi is a darling of the Congress and he will carry forward the great traditions of the party."

Noting that Sonia Gandhi served as Congress President for over 19 years, Manmohan Singh said: "It will be yet another chapter for the party."

Among those who signed the various sets of nomination papers for Gandhi were Motilal Vora, Ahmed Patel, Tarun Gogoi, V.Narayansami, Ashok Gehlot, Kamal Nath, Anand Sharma, Jaipal Reddy, Sushil Kumar Shinde, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, Salman Khursheed, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and Karan Singh.
A nine-member delegation of Tripura journalists met Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Jitendra Singh on Monday to demand a CBI probe into the murder of two journalists from the state.

The team also plans to hold a demonstration in Delhi on Tuesday in front of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) office, Forum for Protection of Journalists (FFPJ) Convener Pranab Sarkar told over phone from Delhi.

The FFPJ delegation - led by veteran editor Subal Kumar Dey - would also try to meet President Ram Nath Kovind, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Press Council of India Chairman Justice Chandramauli Kumar Prasad to press for their demand.

"After a series of agitations in Tripura we came to the national capital to press for our demand to protect the media persons in Tripura," Sarkar added.

A local newspaper journalist Sudip Dutta Bhowmik, 50, was shot dead inside the Tripura State Rifles (TSR) 2nd battalion headquarters at Ramchandra Nagar in West Tripura district on November 21.

Young television journalist Santanu Bhowmik, 28, was hacked to death while he was covering protests of a tribal based political party at Mandai, 25 km from Agartala, on September 20.

PCI chairman, who is likely to visit the state to study both the incidents, took suo-moto cognizance of the journalists murder cases.

To probe the sensational killings, the state government had earlier constituted two separate Special Investigation Teams (SIT) headed by Deputy Inspector General of Police Arindam Nath and Inspector General of Police (IGP) G.S. Rao.

The SIT, led by Nath, has so far arrested four TSR personnel, including TSR second battalion Commandant Tapan Debbarma, who is a senior Tripura Police Service (TPS) officer (1998 batch) and waiting for IPS nomination.

In the Bhowmik murder case too, the SIT led by IGP Rao also arrested four youths.

The Congress has demanded a high-level inquiry into the murder. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded a CBI probe and resignation of Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, who also holds the Home portfolio.

Both parties observed a state-wide shutdown on November 23 to protest the killings.

The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has criticised the BJP for politicising the journalist's killing.

"State government is on the right track in probing the unfortunate killings," CPI-M central committee member Gautam Das told the media.
Two militants and a soldier were killed and another soldier injured in a gunfight that erupted on Monday between the security forces and militants holed up in a house in Jammu and Kashmir's Kulgam district, officials said.

Two terrorists were killed and a soldier killed in the gunfight, said Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia.

According to a police official, the gunfight broke out when militants fired at an army patrol on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway in Qazigund area of Kulgam, injuring two soldiers.

After the attack, the militants, said to be two in number, entered a private house which was surrounded immediately by the security forces.

"When the militants were challenged, they fired at the security forces, triggering a gunfight which continued for nearly four hours. Two militants have been killed, but the body of only one, who was a local, has been recovered," police said.

The house in which the militants were hiding was fully destroyed during the gunfight.

Traffic on the Jammu-Srinagar highway remained suspended because of the gunfight. Train service between the Kashmir Valley and Bannihal town in Jammu region was also disrupted.
A New Zealand-based Samoan man who contracted dengue fever in Samoa has died, a Givealittle page set to up to him while he was at the hospital has confirmed.

According to a report on The NZ Herald, Fiaalii Mariner was admitted to the hospital suffering from dengue fever.

But his condition deteriorated and he has passed away.

Attempts are being made to get a comment from the Ministry of Health.

But the Givealittle Page confirmed his death.

It is with great sadness and heartbreak to inform you all that Fiaalii has passed away, writes Christine Freebury, who set up the Givealittle page.

Please pray for Alei and her beautiful children. This page will continue to accept donations until 22 December when all funds will be given to Alei. Thank you once again for your amazing support.

In another post written last Thursday, it said: We are aware of the situation up to this morning at 11am. He has contracted Pneumonia in one lung and the hospital have advised a serious situation.

We have people on the ground in Samoa currently reviewing what options we can assist with including Air Ambulance. However, Alei has confirmed to me that the Doctor has stipulated he is not stable enough to fly home.

Alei and her sister in law have been to the NZ High Commission in Samoa but they have confirmed unable to assist. They have also contacted our New Zealand Prime Minister but I have not heard if any response was received. I today have also emailed Jacinda Ardern directly to see what assistance she can come up with. I will update when I hear back from her.

We are hoping that he will stabilise and fingers are crossed so that we can assist in getting him home for treatment.

He had a heart attack last weekend therefore his heart is weak. He is at a very critical time in Samoa.

According to The NZ Herald, more than $10,000 had been raised through crowd-funding.

Fiaalii Mariner had returned to start up a car rental business.

Visit the Givealittle page here: https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/samoa-lifestyle-leave-ends-with-critical-illness
During the faafafine forum held on Friday at the Samoa Tourism Authority, hospital nurse Maxine Faamoe Etene asked the S.F.A. if the comments from Associate Minister, Lealailepule Rimoni Aiafi about the United Nations promoting same sex marriage in Samoa, could be discussed amongst their collective.

In Etenes view Lealas comments brought up an opportunity for the faafafine collective to talk about the differences between gender and sexuality rather than what the implications a ban on same sex marriage would have on faafafine.

Today (Friday) I just want to elaborate more about which side he is talking about whether he is talking about faafafine or lesbian or gay. I think he was mainly talking about gays, Etene said.

The mentality of Samoan people is that they think that faafafine are gay but that is a totally different story. I want the S.F.A. to discuss these issues because its now in the paper and the whole country is reading the paper.

Etene does not support gay marriage and reiterates that the S.F.A., as a collective, stands firmly against the legalizing of same sex marriage.

I also saw the comments of people online and they are not supportive of gay marriage and I think that is so true. His perspective was mainly aimed at the culturally indigenous Samoans because this concept of gay marriage is not allowed in Samoa and we support that.

S.F.A. has that rule that we are not allowed to marry but we can be who we are and we can support our family and the country through our charity work.

Etene supports the human rights of gay people but that in Samoa, gay marriage simply does not align with our religious and cultural values.

We support gay people but in terms of (gay) marriage in Samoa, we dont support that.

We are Christians and we know our limits with our family, church and village. If you want to marry theres a place where you can go marry for example Australia and overseas that accept gay marriages.

Even at the expense of personal happiness?

For me I know we have feelings and that but we also have our limitations. Etene responded.

Friday was day two into The Faafafine Week 2017 which is sponsored by a sector of the United Nations, the UNDP funded by the Global Fund which Leala identified as the organization he believes has a hidden agenda in promoting gay marriage.

And also the thing is he also mentioned that the U.N.D.P. was secretly promoting that activity and he didnt like that. I think he was being paranoid.

I saw comments that the U.N.D.P. has been providing for Samoa with the youth and also they are one of our most powerful stakeholders for Samoan people so thats why I want S.F.A. to discuss this issue.
On the front page of the Sunday Samoan of 03 December 2017, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi fired a warning shot at a group of Samoans planning a protest march in Apia later this month.

But rather than saying anything of substance in response to grievances, the Prime Minister appears to downplay the threat by ridiculing and laughing at the people involved. But then whats new?

If you have been around in Samoa long enough, you would know the infamous tactics by now with the use of those wonderful terms such as the protestors are off in the head.

The protest by the way is being planned by a group known as Samoa Solidarity International (S.S.I.). The organisation was apparently founded by Samoans based in Samoa, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, to raise awareness around issues affecting Samoan people

From what weve been told so far, on 16 December 2017 they are planning a protest march from Vaisigano to Mulinuu because they are unhappy about a number of issues including what they call illegal land reform law, L.T.R. (Land Torren System) 2008. They claim the Act was passed in violation of the Samoa Constitution by removing the constitutional prohibition against Customary Land alienation.

The march also plans to celebrate the lives of the Mau Movement heroes and to draw attention to issues destroying the lives of the people of Samoa  corruption and the alienation of customary land rights of Aiga in breach of the Constitution. (see letter below)

This is serious stuff indeed.

Now when Prime Minister Tuilaepas thoughts were sought about the issue, he laughed and said: These are the same people who are hiding behind the Ole Palemia and I am happy that I will get to see their faces in public (at the march).

I know who they are. This is good as it will allow the public to know who these people are, who have been defaming and publicly criticizing our people.

The protest plan is interesting, the Prime Minister said.

Up until now, I have not received anything. They intend to go to the Malae o Tiafau and yet currently the Parliament building is not completed. Maybe theyll go and give their complaint to the roof of Parliament and maybe voice their concerns to the construction workers there.

So to me its clear they are off in the head. I mean they should bring their concerns directly to me, and then I would say leave it with me, I will pass it on to the Attorney General for a legal opinion.

As for the gist of the complaint about customary land, Tuilaepa said they have got it all wrong.

The Torren system is specifically for the private owned land, but does not apply to communal land as its prohibited under the Constitution. I am puzzled as to where these unfounded ideas come from, he said. Remember these laws are put in place, after receiving clearance from the Attorney General. Prior to introducing any act, the Attorney General goes through the Bill thoroughly and the Attorney General is the only lawyer that we listen to as this is mandated under the Constitution of Samoa.

Also at the Attorney Generals Office, there are about 30 lawyers who sort out issues that come to their office. And these people who are opposing are not lawyers.

Some of them used to work for the government and they are upset about something and this is their way of getting back to the government. They are the ones who are adding fuel to the fire, yet they used to be a part of the government and agreed to these changes.

So who is he talking about here? And why doesnt he just name them? I guess we will just have to wait for the march to find out what Tuilaepa is talking about.

In the meantime, the fact is a lot has been said, written and debated about customary land and threat that the governments plans pose.

Back in 26 October 2016, we cautioned against the use of customary land warning in an editorial titled Without land, were all dead. We believe the concerns expressed then are still relevant to whats happening now, despite the persistent reassurance from the government that we have nothing to worry about.

You see, in this day and age where the only thing on peoples mind is money, money, money and more money, nothing is what it seems. Most things we see around us are a lie. They are packaged in such a way where we can be misled  and often we are. Yet once the gloss and the novelty wears off, we find that some things are quite poisonous, theyre deadly. Thats how we see the plan to use customary land.

This issue is not new, keep that in mind. In 2012 for instance, former Member of Parliament for Faasaleleaga No, 2, Papalii Lio Masepau asked some very pertinent questions.

What about fifty years from now? What about a hundred years from now? Where will the future generations of this country go? Talofa e!, he said.

At that time, another M.P. for Faasaleleaga No 3, Tuileutu Alavaa Voi, made a point that should never be lost in these discussions.

Samoa is a small country, he said. If twenty acres is leased from one village, and then another twenty from another village and so forth, in the end thats a very large amount of land. If all the land is leased today, what about tomorrow?

Faleata West MP, Lealailepule Rimoni Aiafi, as a member of the Opposition party then, was vocal on the issue: By the end of seven years, all the customary land in Samoa would have been leased.

Former M.P. Aveau Niko Palamo reminded Parliament that customary lands are treasures that belong to families and anything that threatens the ownership of such land, should be considered carefully.

Even former Salega M.P., Afualo Dr. Wood Salele, spoke up.

Our customs, culture and land is our inheritance. It belongs to our people.

We couldnt agree more. Which is why the issue in question should not be a laughing matter.

That said, we know that the power the government possesses will enable them to do anything they want. And its probably a fait accompli that whatever it sets its mind on would be implemented  including the customary land plan.

But we should not be silent. We owe it to the future generations of this country to be that voice of dissent, even if it makes us the subject of ridicule.

Today, let us remind you one time that when we lose our land, we lose everything. You see, our land is a spirit. It is the heartbeat of a people. It is the core of who we are. When God Almighty navigated our ancestors to these shores, he didnt gift them a five star hotel or a flash plane for their perseverance on the water. He blessed them with abundant, fertile land. And that blessing is meant to be passed from generation to generation.

We are custodians and guardians, we must do whatever it takes to ensure our land is protected.

How far are you prepared to go?

Have a great Tuesday Samoa, God bless!
Dear Editor,

Re: P.M. laughs at protest plan

The Mau March on 16 December 2017 beginning at 10 a.m. at the Vaisigano Bridge is to remember our fallen Mau leaders, such as Lauaki Namulauulu Mamoe, and their families and is intended to be a yearly event. All of the public are invited to attend.

Samoa Solidarity International Group (S.S.I.G.) was founded by a small group of Samoans based in Samoa, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, to raise awareness around issues affecting Samoan people.

Apart from celebrating the lives of our Mau heroes, the march draws attention to two issues destroying the lives of the people of Samoa  corruption and the alienation of customary land rights of Aiga in breach of the Constitution.

This has led to the growth of a political class, which feasts while the majority suffer. Those who profit have no complaints and fight tooth and nail to protect their enterprise.

Yet this destroys the lives of the people within a nation. Financial resources intended for infrastructure, healthcare and education are diverted so that a few can enjoy luxuries.

The behaviour of Samoas H.R.P.P. government removes any possibility of impartial justice for all as required by Samoas Constitution.

Those who profit see themselves as above the law. They pass the proceeds of their work on to their children and it is in their interests to suppress Democracy and the proper sharing of community resources to benefit all.

As to the alienation of customary land from Aiga, in January of 1998, at the very beginning of Prime Minister Tuilaepas first term, the Asian Development Bank published a report saying they were dissatisfied with the amount of borrowing and lending going on in Samoa.

The A.D.B came to a deal with the government:

1) privatise the state-owned enterprises, and

2) pass laws allowing mortgages against customary land.

Neither the parliament nor the Samoan people were asked to help decide about these radical changes to the customary land law.

So there was no consultation at all and consultation cannot happen after the unlawful agreement was made.

We the people of Samoa formally give notice that we demand the repeal of the Land Titles Registration Act 2008.

All customary land leases of three years or more must be registered under S.32 of the L.T.R.A. 2008.

By registering customary land leases under the LTRA 2008, a forbidden alienation of Aiga land rights takes place.

Section 32 of the L.T.R.A. 2008 is quite clear that the person, who registers a customary land lease, holds it in their name absolutely free from all other estates and interests that are not so recorded.

except the State can:

1) pass laws to grant itself rights over that land,

2) enter, go across or do things on land for [a public] purpose or

3) recover taxes, duties, charges, rates or assessments by proceedings in respect of land; or

4) to expropriate (take) land.

5) to restrict the use of land.

Registering a customary land lease under the LTRA 2008:

1) Passes absolute control and ownership [sovereignty] to the HRPP State,

2) Alienates [unconstitutionally] the ancestral customary land rights of not only the person, who registers the lease but every Aiga member.

3) Grants the person on the certificate of title a freehold title and no right to protest any act of the State regarding that land.

The Constitution is quite clear that without a National Referendum of all voters in which 2/3 agree to the changes to the landholding system that the rights of Aiga may not be alienated [taken] howsoever, meaning in any way.

S.S.I.G. thanks the Prime Minister for his invitation to present our demands to Parliament and we will attend Parliament at his invitation on 19 December 2017 at the Parliamentary session to present our demands to the Speaker of the House to be tabled and discussed.

Faleauto Simi Maua Taua

03 December 2017

Spokesman for S.S.I.G.

[email protected]
There is no need to panic.

Thats the assurance from the Assistant Chief Executive Officer in charge of the Meteorological Office at Mulinuu, Mulipola Ausetalia Titimaea, following relentless downpours across the country yesterday.

It should clear out on Tuesday (today) heading out to the weekend as per our predictions so far, he said.

December should be fine for Samoa as the patterns show our tropical cyclone season will only be peaking around January to February.

Mulipola said winds would push a band of clouds to the north of Samoa giving us better weather for the end of the week.

The M.E.T. Office said yesterdays downpour was caused by a strong weather pattern around Samoas neighbouring islands including Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

There are circulations surrounding Fiji and close to Tonga. This is affecting a wider area including us.

The wind is mostly strong because of the north-easterly winds blowing in. So far, we have nothing to worry about at this time.

Mulipola reassured the wind circulations should not concern the country as they are expected to break up before reaching any serious levels.

The most active sides of our region so far, is in New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, and especially Fiji, but were good for December, he added.

Despite the good forecast for the month, Mulipola said the work is just starting for the M.E.T. office.

We have a team of 45 employees and all of them are on the roster to work throughout the festive season. We have to keep track of weather changes as we go along in the month to keep the public aware of how it goes, he said.

From the 45 staff, 20 of them will be in charge of weather operations for the end of the year.

This is a commitment we have to make as per out duty to Samoa. We have to be here and its what were called to do, he said.

We have been doing this for years, this is the sacrifice we make as a service to Samoa.

Meanwhile, they have already set plans in place including year end operations with the Disaster Management Office as the busiest time of the year closes in.
Member of Parliament, Olo Fiti Vaai, is a worried man.

He is alarmed by the number of dengue fever patients at the Motootua Hospital  especially young children.

He has also questioned why many schools remain opened when from his research; he found that many children had contracted the virus from other students at school.

Dengue Fever a serious virus and I am furious about the lack of a full force campaign to eliminate the mosquitoes breeding sites, he said.

My visit to the hospital was a clear indication about the seriousness of the problem and from speaking to the nurses and health workers, it became clear that most of the children hospitalised were affected from the schools.

Why are the schools are still open then when the government knows this is a source of the problem? They should have shut down the schools already while the government deals with this predicament head on?

There is clearly a need to clean the school campuses or target the areas where many of the patients are coming from, to eliminate dengue fever.

Olo is also concerned about overcrowding at the hospital. Security guards prohibit the media from filming and taking photos in the wards.

Im telling you the hospital is overcrowded, Olo told the Samoa Observer.

Ive seen so many children being admitted for dengue fever and some have been sent home with treatment instructions. What I want to know is why there is very minimal awareness about this?

Contacted for a comment yesterday, the Director General of Health, Leausa Dr. Take Naseri referred questions to the Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr. Leao Tuitama.

Tuitama asked to give him some time to collect the information he needs from the Ministry of Healths surveillance team.

Last month, Leausa announced the outbreak of dengue fever type two. At the time Leausa called on the public not to panic but to take immediate action to eliminate mosquito-breeding places.

We have been monitoring this but it has now reached an outbreak level, he said. This is a virus transmitted by mosquitos and its not new in Samoa, but with these viruses there are often outbreaks on and off."

But Olo said he was not happy with how things are handled by the Ministry of Health.

Dengue fever will take lives of our children if we dont act immediately, he said.

The Cabinet should have been informed of how critical the situation is currently. I visited the hospital and it was unbelievable how over crowded the pediatric ward is with the number of sick children.

I was told some of them were sent home because the hospital cannot take any more patients.

Olo said members of the public need to understand the dangers of dengue fever.

When the outbreak was announced last month, Leausa emphasized the importance of source reduction as the main weapon of prevention.

This is where the mosquitos breed and if we can control that then there will be no mosquitoes, said Leausa.

And that is why we need to control the breeding sites. It comes down to you to clean your around your house and look for anything that can store water that is where the mosquitos will breed thousands of new adult mosquitos."

We need to cut the cycle, he said.

Leausa emphasized the main method to control or prevent the transmission of dengue virus is to combat vector mosquitoes by preventing mosquitoes from accessing egg-laying habitats by environmental management and modification.

He calls for proper disposal of solid waste, cleaning of domestic water storage containers and applying of appropriate insecticides to water storage outdoor containers.

He also noted the need of using personal household protection such as sleeping in mosquito nets, long-sleeved clothes, insecticide-treated materials, coils and vaporizers and also spraying during outbreaks as one of the emergency vector-control measures.

He said there were indoor mosquitos that hid in dark places.

Samoa usually responds well to this."

When we had the chikungunya, the ZIKA, we were quite amazed with the response and we were able to control the virus within months."

So the main reason we are releasing this information is not to panic our people, but to advise and inform our people there is a dengue outbreak around.
A government official charged over the alleged sale of Samoan passports online has been granted bail.

Former Immigration Officer, David Uaine, appeared in Court for the first time before Chief Justice, His Honour Patu Tiavaasue Falefatu Sapolu, yesterday.

He had been detained since he was arrested two weeks ago. Uaine faces charges of forgery and could potentially face more charges next week.

The defendant is represented by lawyer, Unasa Iuni Sapolu. The prosecutor is, Leone Sua-Mailo, of the Attorney Generals Office.

Before His Honour Patu, Unasa made an application for her client to be released on bail. She argued there is no just cause to continue to detain Uaina.

She said if Uaine is granted bail, he could sign in at the Afega Police post, which is close by to his home.

Unasa also asked for additional time to go through her clients case before he enters a plea.

The prosecution did not object to the motion.

But Ms. Sua-Mailo asked the Court to order Uaine to surrender his travel documents, assuring he would not leave Samoa with the hearing pending.

Chief Justice Patu granted the motion.

He also ordered the defendant to appear in court next week Monday.

This will give you time to meet with your lawyer, he said.

While on release, you will first surrender your passport or travel documents.

Secondly, continue to stay in your family at Tuanai, unless an order is given by the court.

Thirdly, you must sign at the Afega Police Post on Tuesdays and Fridays before 12noon.

Uaine was arrested and charged two weeks ago following a lengthy Police investigation over claims about Samoan passports being sold online to places as far away as South Africa.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Commerce Industry and Labour, Pulotu Lyndon Chu Ling, has cautioned members of the public to take extra care with online transactions involving foreign-based traders.

Whenever you are trading with someone who isnt in the country, you have to be careful, Pulotu told the Samoa Observer.

These transactions cannot be traced and we cannot reach a country outside of our jurisdiction so the best way to avoid being scammed is to ensure you know who youre buying from personally.

Pulotus opinion was sought following concerns expressed by members of the public about a man posing as a French doctor selling a vehicle on a car buy and sell website.

The Samoa Observer understands that one family has already fallen victim to the scam. The alleged scammer contacts his victims via email and lures them to pay for the vehicle in cash via Moneygram. The vehicle he claims to be selling is a Toyota Hilux going for $10,000.

His profile on the website, Samoa Cars, shows he is registered with an incomplete cell phone number and an alias.

Email exchanges obtained by the Samoa Observer show that he pressured the buyer into making the transaction but avoids answering questions about the legitimacy of his product.

According to Pulotu and M.C.I.L., members of the public need to be alert. He reminded that if it looks too good to be true, it always is.

Thats why its important you understand and personally know who youre dealing with whenever youre online, said Pulotu.

Nowadays, there are a lot of social media buy and sell groups and these actually need to be licensed under law to be recognized.

The licensing of these businesses falls under the Ministry of Revenue where all companies are to be registered under. It was not possible to get a comment from the Ministry of Revenue yesterday.

But Samoa Cars responded to questions from the Samoa Observer.

We are really focusing on bringing as much security as possible to users, but as with online platforms, scammers are still roaming around on websites like ours or Facebook, said Axel Peyriere of Pacific Ads Group.

Pacific Ads Group is an Australia-based online marketplace platform that run seven Pacific region car resell websites including SamoaCars.com.

The difference with Facebook marketplace is that we have our own in house content quality team where we verify a lot of the content, Peyriere added.

Peyriere says their task is to provide a simple way for locals to be able to sell and buy vehicles online.

The best advice we can give to car buyers is that they need to see the car, meet with the seller, communicate with him as much as possible, to get the best possible trust relationship with him.

Always ask as many questions as possible, and also to be aware of some signals like low price point which always shows that it might be a scam, he added.

The Police Spokesperson, Auaapaau Logoitino Filipo, agrees.

Our people have to be very wary of where they buy and purchase their stuff from especially if the seller says theyre from overseas and cannot meet, Auaapaau said.

The Ministry of Police are also asking members of the public to report such incidents to them so they are aware about what is going on.
In todays back story, business reporters Phillip Molnar and Roger Showley talk about their in depth look at San Diego Countys housing crisis.

Why did you decide to write this package now?

For years the Union-Tribune has covered the housing crisis and focused on the problem and its causes. We felt that it was time to examine possible solutions, particularly the supply element.

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Why did you tell the story in a series of questions?

Rather than address the story in a traditional narrative fashion, we wanted to present answers in a direct, fact-based format. Readers can then draw their own conclusions.

Any misgivings about an article like this?

There are a lot of very smart people who have written extremely detailed reports about how to slow housing cost increases in California. So, it is a bit intimidating to try and match that. But, ultimately, we decided that we owed it to readers to lay all the issues on the table, especially considering how much we write about home prices and rent increases.

What was the biggest surprise you found?

There was widespread agreement that building more housing may be the most important solution for overcoming the housing shortage. But there is no expectation that building more homes will reduce overall San Diego prices, at least in the short term.

Are you anticipating criticism?

Yes. One of the things that makes San Diego County so special is the open space and natural beauty. The idea of densifying neighborhoods to house future growth is controversial. On the other hand, the county still has thousands of acres set aside for habitat protection and land where development isnt allowed.

Were there any crazy ideas?

Yes. One idea was to discourage businesses from growing or moving here because not enough housing is being built for those new workers. We also considered off-the-wall housing solutions that would never get approved, like building artificial islands off the coast where housing could be built, constructing massive Soviet-style apartment towers or turning San Diego Bay into a houseboat haven.

What sources did you have in the article?

We were fortunate that real estate analysts Gary London and Alan Nevin came into the office to talk at length about their ideas. Countless hours were spent on the phone or in-person with economists Chris Thornberg of Beacon Economics, Lynn Reaser at Point Loma Nazarene University, and Norm Miller at the University of San Diego; Gerd Welke at Cal Poly Pomona; builders Bill Davidson, Paul Barnes and Rich Gustafson; community activist Tom Mullaney; Mark Goldman, a real estate lecturer of San Diego State University; and others. We also used the latest in permits, population, home prices, rent and other data.

What is the next step in following this story?

We want to monitor if the county and cities loosen up regulations, lower fees and speed up permit processing. . At the same time existing neighborhoods are keenly sensitive to what new projects are being built in their midst and what streamlined processing might do to their chance to weigh in on new projects in the future. Oftentimes its the people who are absent from community meetings and city council votes who are affected most by the lack of housing they can afford. We plan to reach out to that silent group of residents and report on their concerns about where they are going to live and whether theyll be able to buy a home of their own in San Diego. We also welcome other ideas or questions readers might have on this topic.

Business

phillip.molnar@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1891 Twitter: @phillipmolnar

ALSO

The vanishing San Diego single-family home
Broadcom officially launched a hostile takeover bid for Qualcomm on Monday, nominating 11 alternative candidates to Qualcomms board of directors.

The move sets the stage for a showdown over the future of San Diegos largest tech company  one of only two Fortune 500 firms headquartered locally. Shareholders will vote to support either Qualcomms or Broadcoms board candidates, with the results expected to be announced at Qualcomms annual meeting March 6.

Broadcom did not raise the $70 per share offer price on Monday  which valued Qualcomm at $103 billion. Qualcomms board previously rejected that amount as too low.

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But Broadcom could still boost its offer before the March 6 annual meeting, making it more attractive to Qualcomms shareholders.

Qualcomm said Monday that the Broadcom offer undervalues Qualcomms growth prospects in the Internet of Things, 5G, automotive and data center/networking markets.

Tom Horton, Qualcomms presiding director, said no company is better positioned than Qualcomm to bring mobile technologies to these industries.

Qualcomms stockholders expect a board that will support this innovation while evaluating objectively the full range of opportunities available to maximize value for all Qualcomm stockholders, said Horton, a senior adviser at Warburg Pincus and former chairman of American Airlines Group, in a statement.

Broadcom Chief Executive Hock Tan said Qualcomms shareholders want the two companies to talk, but so far Qualcomm has ignored Tans attempts to begin a dialogue.

The nominations give Qualcomm stockholders an opportunity to express their disappointment with Qualcomms directors and their refusal to engage in discussions with us, said Tan in a statement. In light of the significant value our proposal provides for Qualcomm stockholders, we believe Qualcomm stockholders would be better served by new, independent, highly qualified nominees who are committed to maximizing value and acting in the best interest of Qualcomm stockholders.

Directors nominated by Tan have a wide range of experience in the financial and technology industries, including previously holding positions at Nokia, J.P. Morgan and EMC Corp., among others.

The hostile takeover bid ramps up pressure on Qualcomm to complete its bogged down, $38 billion acquisition of automotive and Internet of Things chip maker NXP Semiconductors, which aims to further diversify Qualcomms business beyond smartphones.

The NXP deal, announced more than a year ago, is still awaiting regulatory approval in Europe and China. In addition, some NXP shareholders want Qualcomm to increase its $110 per share offer, which is below NXPs current trading price.

To date, fewer than 5 percent of NXP shareholders have pledged their shares in support of Qualcomms offer. The company needs 80 percent to complete the deal.

Broadcom says its buyout bid for Qualcomm stands whether the NXP acquisition is completed or not. But Tan could condition an increase to his $70 per share offer based on what happens with NXP  including whether Qualcomm is forced to increase the price to close the deal.

Bernstein Research Analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a research note Monday that Tan now has three months to build support among Qualcomm shareholders for his slate of directors in the face of what appears, at least at the moment, to be a strategic vacuum from Qualcomm.

So far Qualcomm has yet to produce any sort of concrete response plan to Broadcoms overtures beyond trust us, which we believe is going to become increasingly untenable as things progress, wrote Rasgon. If they want to keep the company they better get cracking on a case as to why shareholders should trust in them instead of Hock, as we are not convinced Qualcomm shareholders necessarily believe that the Broadcom offer undervalues Qualcomm quite as much as Qualcomm management might believe.

Qualcomm argues that Broadcom is asking shareholders to replace its board now despite uncertainty about whether a deal could win regulatory approval. The combined company would be the leading supplier of many high-value semiconductors used in smartphones.

These nominees are inherently conflicted given Broadcoms desire to acquire Qualcomm in a manner that dramatically undervalues Qualcomm to Broadcoms benefit, the company said in a statement.

According to Tan, initial meetings with antitrust regulators give him confidence that any regulatory requirements necessary to complete a combination will be met in a timely manner. He expects the deal to close within 12 months of reaching an agreement.

Qualcomm has 11 board members  nine of whom are independent and four of whom have been added in the last three years.

If it wins, Broadcom said it would support increasing the size of Qualcomms board to re-appoint existing directors Mark McLaughlin, CEO of Palo Alto Networks; Anthony Vinciquerra, CEO of Sony Pictures; and Jeffrey Henderson, former CFO of Cardinal Health.

The three joined Qualcomm about two years ago as part of a board revamp sought by activist investor Jana Partners.

Other Qualcomm directors include former Hewlett Packard executive Ann Livermore; Blackstone Private Equity adviser Harish Manwani; former U.S. Ambassador to China Clark Randt Jr.; consultant and former UBS adviser Barbara Alexander; and former Secretary of State for Spain Francisco Ros.

Horton, the presiding director, Executive Chairman Paul Jacobs and Chief Executive Steve Mollenkopf round out Qualcomms board.

Broadcoms nominees are:

Samih Elhage, former head of Nokias mobile networks business; Raul Fernandez, former CEO of ObjectVideo; Michael Geltzeiler, ex-CFO of ADT Corp.; Stephen Girsky, former vice chairman of General Motors; David Golden, managing partner at Revolution Ventures and former executive at J.P. Morgan; Veronica Hagen, retired CEO of Polymer Group; Julie Hill, a board member of Anthem Inc.; John Kispert, managing director of Black Diamond Ventures; Gregorio Reyes, former chairman of LSI Corp.; Thomas Volpe, former CEO of Dubai Group LLC.; and Harry You, a former executive with EMC Corp. and Oracle.

Broadcoms shares fell nearly 3 percent on Monday to close at $263.61. Qualcomms shares dipped 1.4 percent to $64.56. Both trade on the Nasdaq exchange.

Business

mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com;

Twitter:@TechDiego

760-529-4973

UPDATES:

This story was updated at 8:30 am
The old resort community of Del Mar is facing a reckoning.

It has about 600 homes at beach level on the northern end of the city. They include some of San Diego Countys most expensive properties, including a home owned by Kim Fletcher, a member of one of San Diegos pioneering families who lives with his wife in a beachfront house on land his grandfather bought in the 1940s.

But rising sea levels are putting the Pacific perilously close to those low-lying homes. As a result, the state Coastal Commission says all cities must devise a plan that addresses the inevitable decline of the shoreline.

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One of the strategies the state is pushing is something called managed retreat. The concept calls for abandoning land threatened by coastal erosion, removing any structures such as houses or seawalls, and allowing the beach to return to its natural state.

It is an option that is not sitting well with residents of the small community, such as the 90-year-old Fletcher.

If you lose the houses on the beach, youre going to flood everything back to the railroad tracks, Fletcher said. The topography is terrible.

Homeowners worry that their property values would plummet, insurance rates would skyrocket, and mortgages would be harder to obtain if word gets out that the city is considering retreat. Instead, they say, the city should find more ways to pump sand onto its eroding beaches.

Much more popular with Del Mar residents is the idea of sand replenishment, which has been used for years to fortify beaches along the San Diego County coast.

We want to stress that beach nourishment and sand replenishment .. is the best sea-level rise adaptation strategy, said Jon Corn, an attorney for Del Mar property owners.

He and his 30 or more clients in the newly formed Del Mar Beach Preservation Coalition were pleased to see that the city had deleted the retreat strategy from the latest version of its sea-level rise adaptation strategy that was released last week, he said. The proposed strategy is expected to go to the City Council for approval in February, and to the California Coastal Commission next summer.

We are very happy with the direction that its taken, Corn said.

Residents strongly opposed the retreat option when it was discussed over the summer at meetings of the citys Sea-Level Rise Stakeholder Technical Advisory Committee. As a result, the committee decided to exclude that strategy from the plan.

Its too soon in the process to consider retreat in Del Mar, Principal Planner Amanda Lee said Tuesday.

The city has many options available, Lee said. Retreat is a costly choice. The best option is sand replenishment and sand replacement.

The Coastal Commission requires all cities on the coast to develop strategies for adapting to rising sea levels.

Mid-range predictions call for the average sea level to rise 5 inches by 2030 in Del Mar, 12 inches by 2050 and more than 3 feet by 2100, according to a draft report released by the city last week.

The prediction is based on averages, so flooding and destructive waves are much more likely to occur during high tides and storm surges.

Most of San Diego Countys coastal communities are built atop or behind sandstone bluffs 60 to 80 feet tall or more. Except for a relative few homes at the edge of the bluff-tops, those communities are not immediately threatened by sea-level rise, so the idea of managed retreat has been less of an issue for them.

Del Mar is different. It has hundreds of low-lying homes on the northern end of the city, south of the outlet of the San Dieguito River.

The average annual income in those households is $102,664 and the average property value is $3.5 million, according to the citys report. Homes facing the beach average more than $10 million each, and one sold several years ago for $35 million, setting a record for San Diego County.

Some of those homes date to the 1920s and 30s. Almost all were built before the Coastal Act was passed in 1976, which limits development on vulnerable coastal lands. The Fletchers home on Sandy Lane was built in 1951 for $10,000, Kim Fletcher said.

Along with sand replenishment, strategies for adapting to rising sea levels include seawalls, which are widespread in San Diego County, and elevating structures on stilts or posts, a practice more common on the East Coast. Retreat is generally considered a last resort.

Still, the Coastal Commission and environmental groups such as the Surfrider Foundation recommend managed retreat be considered among the possible strategies.

Each option has its downside. Seawalls have been shown to contribute to shoreline erosion, and the Coastal Commission discourages their use. Sand replenishment is costly and temporary, and likely to be less effective as sea levels continue to rise. Many environmentalists see retreat as the only logical long-term solution.

A Coastal Commission representative this week declined to comment on the Del Mar decision.

For now, we are monitoring the situation, but we do plan on providing more formal comments before the city takes any final action, said commission Public Information Officer Noaki Schwartz.

Surfrider policy manager Julia Chunn-Heer said retreat needs to be considered as an option in Del Mar.

I dont think sticking our head in the sand is going to do anyone any favors, Chunn-Heer said.

Beach nourishment is a great first option, and hopefully that will work, she said. But that may not be enough, so we want to have all the tools on the table.

No one wants anybody to lose their home, she said. But science shows sea levels will continue to rise, probably at a more rapid rate in the future, and there could come a time when hard choices must be made.

One of the retreat options sometimes discussed is for a city or other public agency to buy the private beachfront property, lease the structures or rent them as vacation property until the purchase costs are recovered, then demolish the buildings before the ocean destroys them.

Retreat will be considered for a few low-lying public facilities, the Del Mar report states. Those include the city fire station and nearby public works yard, both on Jimmy Durante Boulevard near the San Dieguito River, that could be moved to higher ground.

Coastal Del Mar homeowner Laura DeMarco said that wont work for private property, where the owners have no higher ground to move to. Also, the high property values limit potential buyers.

It works in areas where there is a lot less development, said DeMarco, a Del Mar resident for 30 years.

Only about 80 of the 600 low-lying homes in Del Mar are beachfront property, she said. Most of the homes are east of the beach tightly packed in a sort of bowl thats several feet lower than the beachfront properties, most of which are protected by 10- to 15-foot seawalls.

Those walls protect not just the (beachfront) structures themselves, but everything behind them, DeMarco said. Rising sea levels or even powerful winter storms have the potential to turn the residential neighborhood into a swamp.

Yet DeMarco and many of her neighbors prefer to take an optimistic view of rising sea levels, noting there is a wide range of possibilities over the years ahead.

I dont think anyone is denying it, she said of climate change and the resulting rise in sea levels. But the magnitude is in dispute.

Beach erosion is largely a man-made issue, she said, the result of inland development that blocks the flow of sand down rivers and streams, and the creation of artificial harbors and jetties that disturb the coastal ocean currents.

For decades now, there have been local and regional efforts to pump sediment from harbors, lagoons and offshore deposits to replace whats lost from the beaches as the result of coastal and upstream development. DeMarco said its time to pick up the pace.

We can do other things to improve the beach and capture more sand, she said.

For example, sand excavated from inland construction projects could be trucked to the shore and used to beef up the beaches.

Del Mars neighbors to the north, Solana Beach and Encinitas, are working together on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-led sand replenishment project that will widen their beaches by as much as 50 feet in Encinitas and 150 feet in Solana Beach over the next 50 years. The federal government is paying 65 percent of the costs, estimated at more than $135 million over the life of the project, with the rest of the money from state and local governments.

philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @phildiehl
The leader of the largest fishing federation in San Felipe was released from jail on Sunday after being arrested late last month, an event that prompted protests calling for his release from federal custody.

A federal judge ordered the release of Sunshine Rodriguez and his wife, Sara Ahumada, after finding no grounds to hold them for trial, said his attorney, Enrique Acosta Fregoso. The judge decided that the accusation by federal prosecutors was not supported, said Acosta.

There was no immediate statement from the federal attorney generals office, the PGR.

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Rodriguez had been accused by federal agents of transporting a kilo of liquid methamphetamine, Acosta said. High-level officials in President Enrique Pena Nietos administration said he was under investigation for trafficking in the swim bladders of the giant totoaba fish, an endangered species found only in Mexicos Gulf of California.

On Wednesday in Mexicali, cries of Freedom for Sunshine rose from the demonstrators gathered near the U.S. the port of entry. They waved signs calling him a political prisoner, and carried a banner calling for his release. They accused the government of arresting Rodriguez in retaliation for his opposition to a government program aimed at protecting the critically endangered vaquita, a porpoise endemic to the upper Gulf of California.

As the border protest ended, several dozen moved across town to the offices of Mexicos environmental secretariat, blocking the entrance. And later, as night fell, they closed the street outside the federal Attorney Generals Office. They shared food, chatted and held signs that read Justice for Sunshine and called him a political prisoner.

The government is acting unjustly in this case, said Daniel Nolasco, a 44-year-old fisherman and father of five. Just as Sunshine has spoken up for us, we have to now speak up for him, said Javier Nolasco, his 42-year-old brother, and fishing companion.

The Nolasco brothers belong to the federation of fishing cooperatives led by Rodriguez, and the loss of their leader had them feeling particularly vulnerable. They want to get rid of us fishermen. How are we going to pay for our childrens studies? asked Daniel Nolasco, verging on tears as he spoke.

The anxiety over Rodriguezs arrest did not just affect members of the fishing community in this town of some 30,000 residents that is about a two-hour drive from Mexicali and the U.S. border.

Following Rodriguezs arrest, the top Mexicali municipal official in San Felipe announced he would be resigning, to join the social struggle, saying there was little he could do from his government position to ease the crisis that has enveloped San Felipe.

Despite unprecedented government surveillance of the upper Gulf, the illegal totoaba trade has been rampant off the coast of San Felipe. Authorities say that the poachers are part of an organized crime network that involves catching the totoaba, smuggling their bladders to Asia and selling them on the black market.

Scientists blame the surge in the totoaba trade for the drastic drop in recent years in the population of the vaquita, a small and critically endangered porpoise that is endemic to the upper Gulf of California. Despite a government ban on gillnets in the vaquitas habitat since 2015, vaquitas have continued to drown in the illegal gillnets set by the totoaba poachers.

Rodriguezs detractors have long accused him of being part of tototaba trade, accusations he has repeatedly denied. But it was not until a report earlier this month on the Mexican television network Televisa that Mexican federal authorities stated openly that Rodriguez has been under investigation.

Without a doubt, he is one of the individuals who is most suspected of this type of activity, Rafael Pacchiano, Mexicos environmental secretary, told journalist Carlos Loret de Mola.

karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com
Headaches, rashes, infections, breathing problems.

An increasing number of U.S. Border Patrol agents at the Imperial Beach station have reported a host of health problems since February, when an estimated 143 million gallons of Mexican sewage spilled into the Tijuana River Valley they patrol.

Its not one of the risks typically associated with policing the border, said Christopher Harris, a union representative for National Border Patrol Councils Local 1613.

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Theyre willing to put up with the normal hazards of law enforcement, Harris said. We understand thats part of our job. We get shot at. We accept all that. We do our best to mitigate it. We wear vests. We have trauma kits. But we cant mitigate sewage and chemicals.

Harris has been pressing administrators at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to take steps to protect his agents from the toxins that regularly pollute the valley.

In June, he documented more than 30 agents who had reported sewage-related illnesses. Since then, that number has nearly tripled, to at least 83 agents.

The Imperial Beach Border Patrol Station has about 300 employees who patrol the U.S.-Mexico border from the Pacific Ocean through the Tijuana River Valley. Some work on foot, some in ATVs or SUVs, others on horseback.

The sewage leak in February and subsequent leaks flowed into the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park, which covers 71.5 miles of dirt roads and paths.

The muck sticks around for a long time as it makes its way to the ocean. It settles into the riverbanks, overflows during rains and dries out in hot weather. It is impossible for Border Patrol agents to avoid.

While patrolling on their ATVs on Nov. 10 after a rainstorm, Harris said three agents experienced ear, nose and throat problems. One said he had a strange rash inside his nose.

Border Patrol Agent Joel Sevilla said that last summer he had to patrol areas where much of the sewage flowed.

I had a really bad nasal infection, headaches and trouble breathing I was losing my breath really fast, he said. Im not known for that because Im very active. So I had to go to the doctors and the first time I went, they said that I had a nasal infection. They gave me some antibiotics and they treated it and it went away for like two or three days. Then it started happening againWhat was worse were the headaches because I couldnt sleep.

Sevilla went back to the doctors four or five times. He had to leave the prestigious ATV unit and now patrols in an SUV.

I dont get the headaches anymore because Im not riding around in all that dust, he said. When the water dries out, it turns into dust and thats what we breathe.

Michael Scappechio, a spokesman with the U.S. Border Patrol, said the agency is aware of the agents health problems and is assessing the problem to develop short-term and long-range solutions.

Common reported acute injuries have ranged from upper-respiratory ailments to burns on extremities, he said. Personnel have also reported damage to boots and gloves while performing their duties.

The issue of cross-border raw sewage is a complex, decades-old issue, Scappechio said, and the Border Patrol is working with a number of stakeholders to address both the remediation of the impacted areas as well as the safety challenges.

Pin-pointing the locations and sources of spills, including the contents of each incident, are critical to addressing the health and safety of our personnel, he said. It is the intent on the part of CBP and USBP, that the collaborative effort amongst the stakeholders involved, will result in both a safer and healthier environment in the Tijuana River Valley shortly and for the long run.

As the number of cases continued to rise this past summer, Harris said Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Kevin McAleenan visited the Imperial Beach station.

As a result of that visit, my understanding is every week or every two weeks he gets an update on what theyre doing, Harris said. Now, understand their constraints. Theyre not a scientific organization. Theyre not an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Theyre not a research organization. Theyre doing the best they can to find money and try to mitigate.

Harris said there was talk of building some showers where agents could decontaminate, but he wondered how you can talk about decontamination without knowing what chemicals youre decontaminating. Whats needed, he said, are more reporting on spills and more testing of the sewage water.

That responsibility falls to a small federal agency.

The International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) is in charge of documenting each spill. A branch of the State Department with approximately 250 employees, it is charged with developing binational solutions to issues that arise on water, sanitation, water quality and flood control in the border region.

The IBWC has an office in San Diego and runs the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant (SBIWTP) at the U.S.-Mexico border. Completed in 1997, the facility treats 25 million gallons of Tijuana sewage per day.

However, the plant cant treat all the sewage flowing across the border. Tijuanas population  which officially stands at 1.56 million, but unofficially may be as high as 2 million  has outpaced the citys ability to provide adequate and updated sewage infrastructure. As a consequence, sewage spills occur frequently.

Steve Smullen, the San Diego Area Operations Manager for the IBWC, must report sewage spills to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. Since February, he said he has documented 21 spills ranging from 1,560 gallons to 5 million gallons. Their causes vary from broken water mains to power failures at Tijuanas pump stations.

Problem is, not all water sources are being tested or reported. The IBWC has a NPDES permit (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) and Smullen says the permit specifies certain monitoring and testing, such as out in the ocean and the beaches. However, when it rains, the IBWC is not required to report that, even though this is when the largest amount of sewage flows into the river valley and fouls the area.

When the treatment plant opened in 1997, the IBWC built five canyon collectors located along the U.S.-Mexican border near the culverts and drains. The IBWC only reports spills during dry weather when the water rises to a high level and bypasses these canyon collectors, flowing into the valley. In addition, no collectors exist in Yogurt Canyon or the Tijuana River and the spills in those areas go unreported altogether. The IBWC says it hopes to add new testing soon.

Were going to be working with the regional board and the city to look at off-setting ocean monitoring with the land-based monitoring, which would be the main collectors and also the river, Smullen said.

Smullen said four new testing sites are under consideration: Yogurt Canyon, the Tijuana River, Hollister Street and Saturn Boulevard. He doesnt yet know when this new testing will begin.
Headaches, rashes, infections, breathing problems.

An increasing number of U.S. Border Patrol agents at the Imperial Beach station have reported a host of health problems since February, when an estimated 143 million gallons of Mexican sewage spilled into the Tijuana River Valley they patrol.

Its not one of the risks typically associated with policing the border, said Christopher Harris, a union representative for National Border Patrol Councils Local 1613.

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Theyre willing to put up with the normal hazards of law enforcement, Harris said. We understand thats part of our job. We get shot at. We accept all that. We do our best to mitigate it. We wear vests. We have trauma kits. But we cant mitigate sewage and chemicals.

Harris has been pressing administrators at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to take steps to protect his agents from the toxins that regularly pollute the valley.

In June, he documented more than 30 agents who had reported sewage-related illnesses. Since then, that number has nearly tripled, to at least 83 agents.

The Imperial Beach Border Patrol Station has about 300 employees who patrol the U.S.-Mexico border from the Pacific Ocean through the Tijuana River Valley. Some work on foot, some in ATVs or SUVs, others on horseback.

The sewage leak in February and subsequent leaks flowed into the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park, which covers 71.5 miles of dirt roads and paths.

The muck sticks around for a long time as it makes its way to the ocean. It settles into the riverbanks, overflows during rains and dries out in hot weather. It is impossible for Border Patrol agents to avoid.

While patrolling on their ATVs on Nov. 10 after a rainstorm, Harris said three agents experienced ear, nose and throat problems. One said he had a strange rash inside his nose.

Border Patrol Agent Joel Sevilla said that in the summer he had to patrol areas where much of the sewage flowed.

I had a really bad nasal infection, headaches and trouble breathing. I was losing my breath really fast, he said. Im not known for that because Im very active. So I had to go to the doctors and the first time I went, they said that I had a nasal infection. They gave me some antibiotics and they treated it and it went away for like two or three days. Then it started happening again. What was worse were the headaches because I couldnt sleep.

Sevilla went back to the doctor four or five times. He had to leave the prestigious ATV unit and now patrols in an SUV.

I dont get the headaches anymore because Im not riding around in all that dust, he said. When the water dries out, it turns into dust and thats what we breathe.

Michael Scappechio, a spokesman with the U.S. Border Patrol, said the agency is aware of the agents health problems and is assessing the problem to develop short- and long-term solutions.

Common reported acute injuries have ranged from upper-respiratory ailments to burns on extremities, he said. Personnel have also reported damage to boots and gloves while performing their duties.

The issue of cross-border raw sewage is a complex, decades-old issue, Scappechio said, and the Border Patrol is working with a number of stakeholders to address both the remediation of the affected areas as well as the safety challenges.

Pinpointing the locations and sources of spills, including the contents of each incident, are critical to addressing the health and safety of our personnel, he said. It is the intent on the part of CBP and USBP, that the collaborative effort amongst the stakeholders involved, will result in both a safer and healthier environment in the Tijuana River Valley shortly and for the long run.

As the number of cases continued to rise this past summer, Harris said Kevin McAleenan, acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, visited the Imperial Beach station.

As a result of that visit, my understanding is every week or every two weeks he gets an update on what theyre doing, Harris said. Now, understand their constraints. Theyre not a scientific organization. Theyre not an EPA [Environmental Protection Agency]. Theyre not a research organization. Theyre doing the best they can to find money and try to mitigate.

Harris said there was talk of building some showers where agents could decontaminate, but he wondered how you can talk about decontamination without knowing what chemicals youre decontaminating. Whats needed, he said, are more reporting on spills and more testing of the sewage water.

That responsibility falls to a small federal agency.

The International Boundary and Water Commission is in charge of documenting each spill. A branch of the State Department with approximately 250 employees, it is charged with developing binational solutions to issues that arise on sanitation, water quality and flood control in the border region.

The commission has an office in San Diego and runs the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant at the U.S.-Mexico border. Completed in 1997, the facility treats 25 million gallons of Tijuana sewage per day.

However, the plant cant treat all the sewage flowing across the border. Tijuanas population  which officially stands at 1.56 million, but unofficially may be as high as 2 million  has outpaced the citys ability to provide adequate and updated sewage infrastructure. As a consequence, sewage spills occur frequently.

Barbara Zaragoza writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
About 15 people were displaced from their homes early Sunday after a driver plowed into a Mid-Wilshire apartment complex, authorities said.

One person was taken to a hospital after the crash, which occurred about 3:30 a.m. at the 5900 block of West San Vicente Boulevard, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Building officials were called to evaluate the damage, and the Red Cross was brought in to assist the displaced residents.

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Ricardo Parral, co-owner of the building, told KTLA he thought there was an earthquake when the car slammed into the building.

He later saw the driver unconscious at the wheel and said that two passengers got out of the car and ran away, the station reported.

Los Angeles police are investigating the cause of the crash. As of Sunday night, no one had been arrested, authorities said.

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com

Twitter: @AleneTchek
Before dawn, a woman with her 18-year-old son in her car flagged down a sergeant at Riversides Magnolia Avenue police station with a startling request.

She said she wanted to turn in her son, who had earlier called her to say he had molested two boys, 8 and 4, in a motel room.

After interviewing her son, Joseph Hayden Boston, Riverside police jailed him at the Robert Presley Detention Center on Saturday with bail set at $1 million.

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In a statement, Riverside police said Boston confessed to sexually assaulting up to 50 children in other cities, starting when he was 10 years old.

Before moving to Riverside in early November, Boston had lived in Lakewood and Buena Park.

In Riverside he was staying at the Simply Home Inn & Suites in the 9800 block of Magnolia Avenue.

There, according to the police statement, he befriended the two boys who were staying at the motel with their parents. The boys were allowed to go into Bostons room Friday night. Hours later, police said, Boston called his mother, whose name was not disclosed, to tell her that he had molested the boys.

She then drove to the motel and took him to the police station.

Riverside County Child Protective Services responded and took custody of both children.

Lt. Joe Badali of the Los Angeles County sheriffs Lakewood station said the Sheriffs Special Victims Bureau was coordinating with Riverside detectives to determine if there is a nexus with any victims out here.

There are no reported cases with ties to the Boston case, Badali said.

A spokesman for the Buena Park Police Department said the agency is aware of the investigation and will coordinate with Riverside but does not have any active cases involving Boston.

Riverside County district attorneys spokesman John Hall said the office had not made a decision Monday whether to file charges. Boston would likely be arraigned Wednesday if charges are filed.

Riverside Det. Paul Miranda asked anyone with information about other potential victims to call him at (951) 353-7945 or email at pmiranda@riverside.ca.gov.

Maximum penalties for sexual assaults, which depend on both the age of the perpetrator and the victim, have been stiffened in recent years and can be severe, said Paul Wallin, senior partner of Wallin & Klarich, a firm that specializes in sex crime defense.

Because Boston, who turned 18 in September, was an adult when the alleged crimes were committed and because the two victims were under 10, the maximum penalty would be 15 years to life in prison for each offense, Wallin said.

According to the firms website, which cites research by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, juveniles account for more than a third of those known to law enforcement to have committed sex offenses against other minors.

doug.smith@latimes.com

@LATDoug

UPDATES:

2:30 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Wallin.

10:20 a.m.: This article was updated a statements from the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department and Riverside County district attorneys office.

This article was originally published at 9:25 a.m.
President Trump formally reconfigured two big national monuments in southern Utah on Monday, shrinking them by more than 2 million acres and establishing five smaller units within them  a public lands declaration unlike any ever made by a U.S. chief executive.

You know how best to take care of your land, the president said to a large audience at the Utah state Capitol. You know best how to conserve this land for generations.

Calling the designation of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments an abuse of federal authority and the work of distant bureaucrats, the president added: Ive come to Utah to reverse federal overreach and restore the rights to this land to your citizens.

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The proclamations Trump signed reduce the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante monument to 1,006,341 acres, while Bears Ears, which was 1.35 million acres, will shrink to 228,784 acres.

The Grand Staircase monument were was established by President Clinton and Bears Ears was established by President Obama. Both vastly increased the amount of land and water protected by the federal government in southern Utah.

Trumps decision drew immediate vows of legal challenges. Protests also occurred here on Saturday and Monday. The presidents national monuments decision forms another front line in the administrations disputed campaign to reverse Obama-era public lands and environmental policy and to energize his base of political support in the rural West.

It also subjected one of the countrys wildest regions, a three-county stretch of deep canyons, mesa, and red rock  home to few roads and roughly 28,000 people  to uncommon national scrutiny.

Trumps actions produced ample applause among supporters as Trump made his announcement. He emphasized that the boundary changes were intended to return control of public lands to those who know and use them most closely.

Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington, he told the audience. And guess what, theyre wrong.

With his redesignation, he said, Public lands will once again be for public use.

The presidents actions were a dramatic departure from conventional interpretations of the 1906 Antiquities Act, on which the monument designations are based. The act, advocated by President Theodore Roosevelt, was designed to provide safeguards to exceptional historic, cultural, and natural landscapes across the country, most of them located in the Wests public domain.

The Antiquities Act provides broad authority to presidents to act alone in establishing national monuments. Presidents have declared more than 150 national monuments, many of which became national parks. Four of Utahs five national parks started as national monuments.

Trump said the act was never designed to create monuments of the size of the two in Utah. These abuses of the Antiquities Act give enormous power to far-away bureaucrats at the expense of the people who live here and work here and make this place their home, he said.

Though previous presidents have adjusted national monuments more than 80 times, all but 18 of those changes were made to expand monument boundaries, according to an Interior Department accounting. Though President Wilson removed over 313,000 acres from the Mount Olympus National Monument in 1915, none has come close to reducing boundaries by as much as the roughly 2 million acres that Trump removed from federal protection at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.

Im a real estate developer, Trump said. When they start talking about millions of acres, I say, Say it again? Because thats a lot.

The president, who was accompanied by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, was warmly received at the state Capitol.

Zinke and other speakers characterized the boundary changes as a courageous effort by Trump to keep a promise and respond to the deep hurt that rural Utah communities say they experienced when both monuments were established.

This is about giving rural America a voice, said Zinke. There are not many presidents that do what he is about to do. He added: The president is doing this for the right reasons to make sure that Utah has a voice.

The little guys voices were heard, said state Rep. Gregory H. Hughes, the speaker of the Utah House of Representatives. Voices in the community were heard. This administration has the strength and the will to be there for us. This is a great day for Utah.

When Bears Ears was designated, it was disheartening for my community, said Rebecca Benally, a Navajo and commissioner of San Juan County, where the monument is. She added: It was insulting that bureaucrats thousands of miles away didnt believe we were capable of protecting our land.

 President Trump signed two proclamations in Salt Lake City on Dec. 4, 2017, that dramatically altered the boundaries and removed 2 million acres of protected federal land from two big national monuments in Utah.

Trumps declaration sets the stage for a court battle over presidential authority to rescind the boundaries of a national monument. Legal scholars assert that neither the Antiquities Act nor the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act allow such striking changes to national monuments by a president. That authority, they assert, rests solely with Congress.

The Inter Tribal Coalition, a Native American group, is filing a lawsuit immediately to protect Bears Ears. Patagonia, the outdoor clothing manufacturer, is joining Friends of Cedar Mesa, Utah Dine Bikeyah, and Archaeology Southwest in a Bears Ears suit to be filed later this week.

Ten national and regional environmental groups are filing a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington today to protect Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

The president lacks the authority under the Antiquites Act to repeal national monuments like he tried today, said Steve Bloch, the legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, an environmental group in Salt Lake City. We argue that when Congress passed the Antiquities Act it delegated to the president the authority to establish national monuments, not to repeal or rescind them The president is trying to take more authority than Congess has granted him.

One of the motivations for changing the boundaries is improving access to coal, oil, natural gas and uranium.

An analysis of the potential for resource development by Blochs group found that revoking the original boundaries and establishing smaller monuments opens Grand Staircase-Escalantes coal reserves to development. Uranium, and oil and gas reserves, become much easier to develop beyond the boundaries of the two smaller monuments carved from Bears Ears.

The president acted at the urging of Utahs Republican congressional delegation, which resisted the decisions by Presidents Clinton and Obama to establish the two monuments. Utahs lawmakers insist that the two Democrats overreached in establishing Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by not adequately considering the views of state residents. The Obama administration disputed that characterization, arguing that it held many public meetings and invited public comment.

Vice President Al Gore applauds after President Clinton signed a bill designating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. (Doug Mills / Associated Press )

Public opinion surveys have consistently found that Utah residents are about evenly divided on whether to shrink or maintain the existing boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

This is unprecedented  and its illegal, Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. Presidents use the Antiquities Act to create national monuments and protect our special lands and waters for future generations. This president thinks he can use it to destroy them. He does not have that authority. Whats next, President Trump  the Grand Canyon? See you in court.

In April, Trump signed an executive order that directed the Interior Department to review 27 monuments established since 1996. The department received nearly 3 million comments. Most expressed support for keeping national monument boundaries and management practices intact.

The Interior Department said it would make public the findings of its review of the 25 other national monuments on Tuesday.

ALSO

Remarkable dinosaur discoveries under threat with Trump plan to shrink national monument in Utah, scientists say

Industries that cheered Trumps climate regulation rollbacks now worry theyll go too far

Trump fully endorses Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore

Follow Keith Schneider, Western environment and public lands correspondent, on Twitter.

keith.schneider@latimes.com

UPDATES:

3:15 p.m.: The story was updated with additional details.

12:10 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details of the proclamations.

11:35 a.m.: This article was updated with Trumps announcement.

This article was originally posted at 7 a.m.
Ruptured breast implants will be the focus of a trial that begins today to determine whether a damaged sidewalk is responsible for injuries to the wife of former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock.

Attorneys in the case are disputing whether one of Cynthia Hedgecocks silicone implants ruptured when she allegedly tripped over damaged sidewalk in 2015 and fell forward onto the ground.

Hedgecock and her husband sued the city of San Diego last year over her injuries, claiming then that the fall in Pacific Beach caused the implants to leak beyond a normal enclosure of scar tissue and that the city owes the couple more than $25,000.

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Since then, attorneys for the city of San Diego have discovered medical records showing both implants had already ruptured in 2012 and were due for replacement because they were more than 20 years old.

Attorneys for the Hedgecocks dont dispute that the implants had ruptured beyond their original silicone sac. At issue is whether the fall caused a leak beyond scar tissue that normally forms around an implant, creating a second layer of enclosure.

Attorneys for the city say there is no evidence that the fall caused such a leak, that it could have begun before the incident.

In a trial brief submitted Nov. 22, attorneys for the city say one reason to doubt the fall caused the injuries is how Cynthia Hedgecock handled her medical care after the incident on July 31, 2015.

Hedgecock sought no medical attention directly after the incident and didnt mention the fall during a doctors visit five days later or during a hospital visit for an unrelated abdominal blockage two days after that, officials contend.

It wasnt until Aug. 17 that Hedgecock visited her doctor to address injuries from the fall, which she claims included persistent chest pain and rib damage.

Hedgecock and her doctor then decided the implants needed replacement and she had surgery in November 2015 to accomplish that.

In her lawsuit, she described it as a grueling procedure requiring pain medication, sleeping aides and her husbands constant assistance.

That is partly why the former mayor, 71, is a co-plaintiff in the case. The suit says he had to stay at home and help his wife every day with her recovery, prompting him to seek compensation for his own loss of income and the loss of consortium with his wife.

Court documents say Hedgecock and the city have discussed him dropping his claims against the city, but that he hadnt yet done so.

Attorneys for the Hedgecocks say Cynthia Hedgecock, 70, didnt seek medical attention for her chest injuries for more than two weeks because she hoped the pain would go away with time.

In a trial brief, they say the case will come down to her credibility.

Either she has fooled her husband, her friends, her family, her general practitioner and her surgeon and made up a story about tripping and falling and hurting her breasts, or she was really hurt, the brief says.

The lawsuit contends the city behaved with negligence and carelessness by not repairing a 2.5-inch concrete lip in a public sidewalk caused by a tree. The incident took place in Pacific Beach on Morrell Street near Grand Avenue.

The Hedgecocks case also criticizes the citys sidewalk policy.

The Hedgecocks, of Mission Beach, argue it is irresponsible of the city not to have an inspection system and repair protocol for sidewalks.

City officials have considered changes to the sidewalk policy after some large settlements, including a nearly $5 million payout last spring to a bicyclist injured after being launched by damaged sidewalk in Del Cerro. No policy changes have been adopted.

Superior Court Judge Kenneth Medel will preside over the trial, which is expected to last three to four days.

Roger Hedgecock was mayor of San Diego from 1983 to 1985, when he was forced to resign after pleading guilty to conspiracy in an illegal funding scandal involving his mayoral campaign.

An appellate judge later reduced the conspiracy charge from a felony to a misdemeanor.

david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick
The body of a man found along the coastline of Hilo Bay is believed to be George Novinger, a 61-year-old East County man who went missing when he and his wife were swept down a river in Hawaii more than a week ago.

The body was discovered in Wainaku along the shoreline about 35 feet down a cliff line on the Big Island on Friday, Hawaii police said. It was airlifted by a fire department helicopter.

Although the body has not yet been identified pending a coroners inquest, Novingers stepson said he has no doubt it is Novinger.

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It adds closure, said stepson Joseph Harmes, who was on the Hawaiian trip with the couple. It allows his parents to come to terms and it allows me to have that closure. It is a good thing.

Novinger had told friends he was taking his wife, Gladys Novinger, 62, to Hawaii as an early Christmas gift. Harmes said his mother and stepfather were taking him and his girlfriend to a special place about 100 yards above Rainbow Falls when they were swept away by the strong current on Nov. 25.

Gladys Novinger was found unresponsive in a pool and was flown to a hospital, where she died.

The couple owned Hacienda Vineyards in Rancho San Diego, which offers destination vacations and retreats, and were considered pillars in San Diegos international community.

Gladys Novinger founded the House of Peru and served on the executive board of the Museum of Man in Balboa Park. George Novinger recently retired as a diplomat for the U.S. State Departments Foreign Service and served on several local international groups.

On Monday night, the House of Peru hosted a candlelight vigil for the couple in Balboa Parks village of international cottages.

One after another, members vowed to continue working to achieve their organizations goal of building a cottage for Peru, a project that is in the final stages, according to the groups website.

For the House of Peru, we are going to continue the legacy  (the Novingers) really dreamed of, Vice President Oscar Urteaga said, surrounded by dozens of people who attended the emotional gathering.

He later added, This large showing is truly a testament to the impact they had.

In her brief remarks, George Novingers daughter, Saya, told the crowd: Its so wonderful to see you guys all here celebrating their legacy.

Harmes, Galdys son, remembered the couple as loving, giving, fun, beautiful, wonderful people.

Their connection with this part of San Diego was very beautiful for them, Harmes said. It was their escape, their way to give back.

House of Peru member Job Alvarez, who spoke to the crowd in Spanish, said: They will always live in our memories and hearts.

karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com
After days of searching, an Oceanside woman had given up hope that shed find Catalina, her 9-month-old puppy who went missing soon after Thanksgiving.

But then Salina Hurtado saw her dog on the news.

She said she watched, disbelieving, as a TV news anchor talked of a pursuit in Valley Center. A dog was shot when deputies fired at a man accused of trying to run them over in a stolen van.

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Footage of the incident showed a white pit bull with a distinctive brown spot being carried away by a deputy. The young dog was excitedly licking the womans face.

I couldnt believe it, Hurtado said. I remember thinking, My poor baby got into a high-speed chase? Is this for real? But I knew it was her.

The 35-year-old said Catalina went missing from the apartment complex where she and her husband live on Nov. 25.

We went to feed her and she was just gone, Hurtado said. They searched the area and asked neighbors to be on the lookout, but they started to believe someone had taken her.

A week after the dog went missing, a neighbor tracked down Hurtados husband. He said he thought he saw Catalina on the news.

The couple quickly Googled pit bull shot in Valley Center.

The story was everywhere, Hurtado said.

After watching a clip on CBS News 8s website, she called the television station. Someone told her the puppy had been taken to the County of San Diego Animal Services shelter in Carlsbad.

Hurtado said she went to the shelter with veterinary records and pictures of Catalina in hand to help prove her ownership. She was told, however, that they would need to wait another week before picking the pup up.

Thats because Kevin Meza, the suspect who was arrested after the high-speed chase, claimed the dog was his. Dan DeSousa, director of the countys animal services department, said since Catalina wasnt licensed or microchipped, the county is legally required to give Meza two weeks to contest Hurtados claim.

We will be holding the dog through the legally required 14 days, at which time we will allow the family to claim the dog, DeSousa said.

Hurtado said she doesnt know Meza.

While the Oceanside family waits, theyre asking the community for help. Catalina accrued hundreds of dollars in medical bills while she was being treated for her gunshot wound.

Hurtado started a GoFundMe account to help pay for the unexpected cost. Still, she said, having her puppy home in time for the holidays is worth any price.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com
If you only want to read one sentence about the problem with public schools in California, its this: As a state we seem to care more about what adults want than what our kids need.

Its honestly not more complicated than that. If we were to filter every education decision  every policy change, every funding allocation, and every unfortunate round of teacher layoffs  solely through the lens of what is best for students and student achievement, wed have a very different public education system. Wed have higher graduation rates, higher student achievement, and, in fact, more effective teachers with much higher salaries and more professional benefits.

Heres just one stark example. Last year, state Sen. Alex Padilla wrote a bill that would have made it easier to fire teachers over serious criminal activity such as inappropriate relationships with students. It was prompted by a real-life case of a teacher at Miramonte Elementary, in the Los Angeles Unified School District, who had committed sexual acts against his students.

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If we cared about our children above all else, it would be easy to get suspected criminals out of classrooms. But Sen. Padillas bill died in a state Assembly committee because several members simply refused to cast votes, effectively voting no. To make matters worse, just last week the Legislature passed a toothless bill that claims to address the problem, but will actually make it more difficult to get sexual predators out of our classrooms; that bill, AB 375, is now headed to Gov. Jerry Browns desk. He should veto it.

Protecting our kids should be common-sense stuff. If, as a state, we cant even pass a strong child-safety bill, how can we expect to do other common-sense things such as remove ineffective teachers, hold school districts accountable for their spending, and ensure parents have all the information they need to make good decisions on behalf of their kids?

In California, theres simply no momentum toward education reform. In fact, theres a concerted effort in the opposite direction. Consider this: 38 states across the country have agreed to adopt an evaluation system for new teachers that would consider student achievement as a significant part of how a teacher is evaluated. Its the framework that was set out by the Obama administration as part of the federal Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind initiatives. So youd think Democrats would be on board. But then you have California. Last legislative session in Sacramento there was a bill introduced that didnt just oppose President Obamas initiative  it would have made it illegal to evaluate teachers on the basis of how our kids grow academically.

Thats just insane. We expect our surgeons to be evaluated based on how many lives they save on the operating table. We expect that car mechanics are evaluated on whether they are able to keep a car operational. Sales people are evaluated on how many units of widgets they move every month. But as a state, are we really saying that teachers should not be evaluated  at all  based on how well the students in their classroom perform?

The obstacle in our path is that were not dealing with common sense. When it comes to public education in California, were dealing with politics and political clout.

Teacher unions are the most powerful political force in California, spending more money on lobbying and political campaigns than any other entity in the state. According to the Los Angeles Times, in the decade from 2000 through 2009, the California Teachers Association outpaced all other special interests, including corporate players such as telecommunications giant AT&T and the Chevron oil company, spending more than $211 million in political contributions and lobbying expenses  roughly twice that of the next largest spender.

We recently saw how union leadership can stymie constructive conversation simply by refusing to participate. Earlier this month. I co-hosted a teacher town hall in Los Angeles simply to bring all sides in the education debate together for a productive dialogue. The United Teachers Los Angeles, the local union, refused to participate. How can we even discuss education reforms when the organization that purports to represent teachers wont even come to the table?

Our states rank-and-file teachers know that the status quo is not whats best for kids. Theyre interested in talk about reform.

In California, one relevant policy thats gotten a lot of attention is something known as last in, first out, or LIFO. It says that, no matter how good a teacher you are, youll be laid off first if theres somebody in the school district with more years in the classroom than you. As a parent  I have two school-aged girls  thats just a crazy idea. I want the best teacher in my childs classroom, not just the one whos been working longer. So when layoffs happen, school districts end up in the position of handing a Teacher of the Year plaque to a teacher on one day and then handing that same teacher a pink slip the next day. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Research shows clearly that last in, first out policies are detrimental to schools and kids. The first reason for that is a numbers issue. When a district lays off teachers strictly by seniority that means they lay off the teachers paid the least and keep the ones paid the most. So they have to lay off a greater number of teachers  as many as 30 percent more  in order to close the budget deficit. Disrupting so many more classrooms means as many as 30 percent more kids are negatively impacted. The second reason is obvious: you lose some really incredible and effective teachers. How well an educator does in the classroom doesnt always correlate to how long theyve been teaching.

Another example is transparency in education spending. Every year in the state capital we hear cries for more and more funding. But how much is the right amount? In California, its impossible to say because we cant even track how much money is making its way into the classroom and which education programs are the most effective. A policymaker might tell you that in 2012 our state spent $9,500 per pupil. But an educator would tell you that only about $5,500 of that made its way into the classroom for instruction. That mirrors national numbers, which show that only 51 percent of taxpayer education dollars make their way into the classroom.

Education budgets, at the state and the district level, should be transparent. That is, they should be accessible and so easy to read that any parent can see not just where the money is going, but which programs are most effective for contributing to student growth.

Transparency is of particular concern for the implementation of Gov. Browns Local Control Funding Formula. The governor was right to give school districts more flexibility with some of the funding they receive and additional dollars to support high-need students. But interest groups are already geared up to fight over how that money should be used. Without maximum transparency in how those dollars are spent, well never know whether the flexibility was used for the benefit of students or for adults.

Luckily, the general public in California agrees with all of these common-sense reforms, suggesting that the state is ripe for a change, if not by lawmakers in Sacramento then by other means. Just look at a public opinion poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California in April of this year. It shows that more than two-thirds of Californians believe teachers should be evaluated in part by the academic improvement of students as measured by standardized tests. That number gets even higher  77 percent  if you poll only the parents of public school students.

More recently, USCs Rossier School of Education published a survey this month that shows an overwhelming number of voters believe that student scores on standardized tests should be considered as part of teacher evaluations. When I say overwhelming I mean about 80 percent  across all political parties and ethnicities.

Regarding that last in, first out rule, additional research shows that Californians hate it. No one wants budget issues to force teacher layoffs, but when they do, only 14.5 percent of Californians think pink slips should be issued based on seniority. More than 80 percent say layoffs should be based on teacher evaluations instead.

There are a lot of obstacles to improving public education in California. Most of those obstacles are in Sacramento. In communities throughout the state, however, its clear that the public is on the side of reform. That suggests that the path to bettering schools in our state shouldnt run through the capitol building, but instead be dictated by average Californians. No matter their ethnicity or political party preference, all Californians agree that students best interests should come first in education, not those of adults.
A new study by the McKinsey Global Institute about the potential of automation should serve as a stark warning to all world leaders that they must prepare for what may very well be the biggest societal and economic upheaval in our lifetime.

The report builds off this core finding: In about 60 percent of occupations, at least one-third of job tasks could be automated and performed much more cheaply by robots or algorithms. As a result, McKinsey estimated that at a best guess 400 million people worldwide would need to change their occupations by 2030, with the number increasing to 800 million if the transition to automation in many job categories occurs faster than expected. As many as one-third of all U.S. jobs could disappear.

But McKinsey doesnt see this as the death knell of employment. Labor markets adjusted to past technological advances, the study noted. And history suggests that by 2030, nearly 10 percent of new jobs will be in categories that didnt previously exist.

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[With] sufficient economic growth, innovation, and investment, there can be enough new job creation to offset the impact of automation, the study noted. A larger challenge will be ensuring that workers have the skills and support needed to transition to new jobs. Countries that fail to manage this transition could see rising unemployment and depressed wages.

This gets to a point The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board has made for years: Technological advances will keep disrupting one industry after another. Thats why its crucial for our government to make it much easier for younger and older workers to have access to job-skills training. To achieve this goal, though, America needs wise leaders.

Which brings us to San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim. An Associated Press story in September about her interest in taxing companies that use robots or algorithms to replace humans caused a stir, and last week The Wall Street Journal reported that Kim wants to have a statewide ballot measure on such a tax. Kims Jobs for the Future Fund says the revenue could be used on education, retraining and targeted investments in new industries. This modest tax will help smooth the transition for our workers, providing them with better opportunities.

Kim deserves credit for appreciating the coming disruption with a clarity that few politicians seem to have and her proposal has a superficial appeal. Its worth noting that Microsoft founder Bill Gates also thinks a robot tax of some kind might be good idea.

But what Kim wants is in effect a state tax on efficiency and innovation  one borne uniquely by California companies. The San Francisco Bay Area has become the de facto tech capital of the world because of bold, disruptive technologies. The last thing these communities should do is to punish their entrepreneurs for their brilliance. And the idea of the revenue from this tax being use for targeted investments in new industries is ominous. The state government must not be in the business of picking economic winners and losers.

If Kims idea jump-starts a debate about job skills in the coming automation era, that would be great. But in these angry, emotional times, its also possible her idea could morph into a Luddite populist uprising that paints tech innovators as tools of the 1 percenters. That would be the worst way to deal with the automation revolution. Being smart about this revolution is the challenge of our time.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion
Feral pigs that scientists once feared could pose a serious threat to fragile ecosystems in San Diego Countys back country have been all but eradicated, thanks to government-contracted hunters and years of devastating drought that have slowed breeding and survival rates.

Officials said this week it appears only eight wild hogs remain in the county, based on data from hundreds of wildlife tracking cameras and other forms of monitoring.

Professional hunters working with a consortium of federal, state and local agencies have successfully trapped and euthanized roughly 150 of the the animals over the past five years, some leaders in the effort said.

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The work that has been done through our group has helped quite a bit, said Megan Jennings, an SDSU research ecologist in charge of the monitoring program for the Inter-governmental Feral Pig Group. Its been a real targeted effort, wide-scale across the county and been a major contributor in getting the numbers down.

Wild hogs began showing up in the county around 2007, though no one knows for sure how they arrived. In 2010 various wildlife agencies began tracking and trying to kill the pigs and in 2014 an official eradication effort was launched. At that time, it was estimated that perhaps 1,000 of the animals could be roaming the eastern and southern portions of the region.

The pigs typically travel around in groups of up to 15 known as sounders, rooting around in fields and churning up soil like a Rototiller. Adult males can reach up to 300 pounds.

Because the pigs breed quickly the concern was that they would multiply and become an overwhelming ecological problem, destroying riparian habitats where endangered and threatened birds and animals thrive.

That doomsday scenario didnt pan out and officials now say the 2014 estimates were probably way too high, in part because they werent based on firm data and didnt take into account the continuing drought.

When the project started there were numbers being thrown around of 300 to 500 pigs, even 3,000 to 5,000 pigs, said Ryan McCreary, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services. When we started using trail cameras in several different locations it became obvious the population was much smaller.

The parched ecosystem helped keep the wild hogs in check.

If you release a population of pigs or goats or any animal and they dont know where any water is or what their resources are theyre going to struggle, particularly if there is any kind of drought, McCreary said.

Jennings said the monitoring cameras and evidence collected by field researchers indicate that only about eight pigs remain, though there may be a few additional stragglers.

Clark Winchell of the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife said most of the pigs have been captured and killed by placing a brew, a fermented, stinky bait inside a pen.

Cameras would then record the activity in the pen and when it appeared all the pigs in the area had gathered around the bait the corral door was closed. The trapped pigs were then killed and their carcasses typically buried.

Wild hogs can carry more than 24 diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control, which publishes a pamphlet on how hunters should protect themselves when handling the animals.

After the pigs were spotted in San Diego County, the first mass eradication occurred on Warner Ranch near Lake Henshaw in 2012 when 30 pigs were captured.

Since then much of the efforts have been centered in the southeastern part of the county, sometimes on private ranches south of Interstate 8, and in the Cleveland National Forest in places such as the Hauser Wilderness Area and near Cottonwood Creek not far from Pine Valley.

County officials had feared the hogs would move into county parks, but no pigs were taken in those areas, officials said.

Private hunters were also encouraged to take out hog permits but Winchell said few pigs were killed in such a way  partly because most werent big enough to make good trophies. Pig hunting is difficult because the hogs are often found in some of the remotest, most difficult terrain, in the back country, he said.

Winchell said there have been no reported sightings in vulnerable areas such as Palomar Mountain, although just a few weeks ago an unverified sighting of a single pig was reported in the Julian area.

Weve been earnestly working at this for a number of years, Winchell said. It has been very successful.

Exactly where, when and how the pigs were introduced to the county is unclear. In 2007, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that 30 wild hogs -- brought to the region by someone who wanted to start a hunting program -- had been released in the wild behind the El Capitan Reservoir. The report was confirmed by a game warden, but denied by others in the area.

McCreary said there appears to have been several intentional releases in the past decade.

Whatever the source, by 2012 a Feral Pig Working Group comprised of numerous public agencies and private conservation groups had been formed and state and federal officials were preparing environmental assessment plans to sanction the use of trapping, hunting with dogs, aerial hunts and traditional hunting to combat the problem.

At the time some animal rights activist opposed the plan, saying it was cruel to kill the pigs that were doing nothing other than trying to survive. But officials said trapping and relocating them made little sense since the pigs are not wanted anywhere, and logistically it would have been almost impossible.

jharry.jones@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @jharryjones
Stating that no university is above the norms of the University Grants Commission, the HC found Priya lacking the required teaching experience to be considered for the post of associate professor.
Dubai, UAE -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/03/2017 -- IIMSAM, the Intergovernmental Institution for the Use of Micro-Algae Spirulina Against Malnutrition, Intergovernmental Observer of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, commemorates the United Arab Emirates' 46th National Day, which falls on December 2nd, 2017.



On this special occasion, IIMSAM would like to acknowledge the UAE's role in humanitarian work, where the UAE is on the top of the list of donors for humanitarian support, development assistance and relief operations.



Through its charitable and humanitarian efforts and institutions both within the UAE, and outside, the nation's contribution to humanitarian causes worldwide has become increasingly prominent.



The UAE has been named, by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the "world's largest donor of development assistance in proportion to its Gross National Income (GNI)", a position that was formerly held by France.



The UAE has donated AED 19.4 billion in official development assistance, forming 1.34 percent of its GNI, and exceeding the United Nations' target of 0.7 percent.



In addition, the UAE has played a vital role in funding and supporting the WHO's operations and research in polio, provided aid of over AED 600 million towards the crisis in Syria, and is a signatory of the The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol.



"The Union of the UAE has made the nation a firm entity for a more prosperous future under a rational leadership that understands well the importance of preserving, developing and stabilising the country. On this auspicious occasion, it is most necessary to acknowledge the great role and contribution of the late His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan in the founding of the UAE," said H.E. Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Musallem Bin Ham Al Ameri, Deputy Secretary General of IIMSAM.



H.E. Dr. Bin Ham also added, "The Union has given the people of the UAE great attention and provided them with all the means to achieve their aspirations."



He pointed out that the UAE attaches great importance to foreign humanitarian assistance, stressing that it is one of the most active countries in terms of international humanitarian action, at the Arab, Islamic and international levels.



Its great initiatives in various issues with a humanitarian dimension in the world, such as war and political asylum, regardless of geographic or religious, ethnic or cultural differences, make its contribution even more significant and an example to follow globally.



Dubai Media Center:

Mohammed Al Sharfawi

Media Manager

4K Media Production

Dubai

Phone: 00971504761202

Email: info@4kmedia.ae

http://4kmedia.ae
Bell, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/04/2017 -- California New York Express, a leading moving company in California, is now offering quality moving solutions from California to New York. The company promises to make your relocation across long distances smooth and hassle-free. Anyone in California can enlist the services of these cross country movers New York (including families and individuals) to ease the stress that comes with packing and hauling furniture across the two states. The company offers a variety of services that include insurance, packing, pickup and storage.



"Moving to New York is a cumbersome task, but our team at California New York Express is determined to make the process easy and efficient", said a representative from the company. We are here to facilitate your move. Our teams of professional movers are highly experienced in managing different kinds of moving tasks effortlessly and with great precision. From packing to unpacking your goods, we are ready to execute each task while you relax. We have also invested in high-quality handling equipment to prevent potential damages to your valuable and essential items."



A representative from the company explains that the company provides a variety of options of moving services to ensure smooth transition regardless of what clients require. The moving experts at the company also provide valuable tips and advice for moving. This includes issues relating to information about your relocation, the cost of relocation, as well as the mode of transportation and so much more. If one is moving to New York with their children, they will receive advice on how they should prepare.



So for those about to look for cross-country movers New York, this local moving company in NY is option worthy of looking into. For more information on this topic, visit California New York Express via the details below.



California New York Express Cross Country Movers

5698 Bandini Blvd Bell, CA 90201

Phone: 888-680-7200

Email: cs@moveeast.com

Website: https://www.moveeast.com/
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/04/2017 -- Cherrystone Auctions turned 50 this year, with age showing that they are one of the oldest stamp auction houses in New York City. The family owned and managed company celebrated its 50th birthday with its customers and partners in the philatelic industry.



Cherrystone Auctions, Inc. has been in the stamp collection business for the last 50 years. During its semi-centennial celebrations in its headquarters in New York City late this year, the philatelic firm received a stream of birthday wishes from its storefront and online client base and also from the many organizations it partners with in the philatelic industry. To commemorate this incredible milestone, the company reminisced some of its accomplishments in its 50-year run. Cherrystone Auctions reaffirmed its commitment to exemplary customer service and the realization of high returns for all consigned materials. The company continues to host public auctions in its New York gallery every 6-8 weeks. This year alone, the firm has organized a total of seven public stamp sales.



Cherrystone Auctions launched an online stamp store on its website a few years ago to expand its market reach. Cherrystone Online Stamp Store features over 12,000 philatelic items from all over the globe and covering a myriad of topics and all are available for acquisition at the click of a button. The company features a wide range of philatelic collectibles in its online catalog with strengths in classics, regular issues, commemoratives, airmail, proofs & essays from all over the world including the United States, British Commonwealth, Germany and Colonies, France and Colonies, Russia, Poland, Asia, South America and more, plus U.S. possessions and back of the book items. Cherrystone Auctions its past auction exploits in the "Gallery of Rarities" section of its website where the average price of the featured lots seems to be $100,000 and above.



They company can be followed at https://www.whodoyou.com/biz/1280561/cherrystone-auctions-inc-new-york-ny.



About Cherrystone Auctions, Inc.

Cherrystone Auctions, Inc. was established as stamp retail store in 1967. The second and third generation company is currently run by the president Paul Buchsbayew, who is also the founder's son, and his vice president Joshua Buchsbayew, the founder's grandson. Paul is a recognized expert in Russian philatelic material. He is also a member of the international expertizing organization Association Internationale des Experts Philatelie (A.I.E.P.) and Club de Monte Carlo. Cherrystone Auctions is affiliated with all the major U.S. and European philatelic Societies, including the American Stamp Dealers Association (ASDA), MEPSI, Rossica, American Philatelic Society (APS), U.S. Philatelic Classics Society, Collectors Club of New York, PTS, APVH, IFSDA etc.



Reviews of the company can be found at https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cherrystone+Auctions/@40.765176,-74.0129631,13z/data=!4m18!1m12!4m11!1m3!2m2!1d-73.9786308!2d40.7655011!1m6!1m2!1s0x89c258f745eaf831:0x3afa6bcffd833576!2sCherrystone+Auctions,+119+W+57th+St+Suite+316,+New+York,+NY+10019!2m2!1d-73.9779436!2d40.7651163!3m4!1s0x89c258f745eaf831:0x3afa6bcffd833576!8m2!3d40.7651163!4d-73.9779436.



Contact:

Company: Cherrystone Auctions, Inc.

Address: 119 West 57th Street Suite 316, New York, NY 10019

Phone: 212-977-7734 or 800-886-9313

Fax: 212-977-8653

Email: info@cherrystoneauctions.com

Website: https://www.cherrystoneauctions.com
Westmont, IL -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/04/2017 -- An Illinois philatelic company is claiming to be "the oldest family owned and operated stamp auction house in the United States" after clocking 85 this year. Rasdale Stamp Company has been in the philatelic industry since it was established in 1932.



Rasdale is a third generation Stamp Company headquartered in Westmont Illinois dealing in rare stamps, coins and other philatelic collectibles. At 85 years of age, this company ranks among the most ancient philatelic dealers in the Midwest. The company has played as pivotal role in promoting stamp collection as a hobby/investment across the social divide. Rasdale Stamp Company is renowned in the philatelic industry for repeatedly bringing together stamp enthusiasts from all over the world during its quarterly public stamp sales. The firm is also credited with the introduction of several trendsetting technological innovations in the stamp business.



Rasdale was among the very first stamp companies to incorporate IT into their philatelic business models. The firm launched its website early on before e-commerce became popular. From there the company introduced Rasdale Live Auctions to complement the traditional on-the-floor bidding option. Currently the company runs a fully functional online stamp store featuring a totally secure shopping cart. Collectors are now able to buy and sell philatelic items directly from Rasdale's online "Retail Store" from any place in the world 24 hours a day. The company continues to host public stamp auctions every 8 weeks and this year it has already held three such events. This year's closing sale Public Auction #434 will be held on November 18-19 in the Rasdale Auction Gallery on 37 Chestnut Avenue in Westmont.



Further company details can be found at https://goo.gl/ZuXkL2.



About Rasdale Stamp Company

Rasdale Stamp Company was founded by Joseph Rasdale in 1932 in Elsie, Michigan. The company moved to its current premises later on and it has been expanding its market reach ever since. Rasdale has an extensive philatelic catalog featuring everything from supplies & literature, coins & currency, United States postage, picture postcards, United States & foreign covers, collections, accumulations, & stocks, miscellaneous collectables, and even some space memorabilia. Rasdale and its management team are members of all the major regional, national, and international stamp bodies including the Midwest Stamp Dealers Association, Ann Arbor Collectors Club, ASDA, National Stamp Dealers Association, Florida Stamp Dealers Association, APS, ATA, Bureau Society, Chicago Collectors Club, and the Southwest Collectors Club among many others.



The company can be followed at http://www.tuugo.us/Companies/rasdale-stamp-company/0310006246119.



Contact:

Kristin Maravelias

Company: Rasdale Stamp Company

Address: 35 Chestnut Avenue, Westmont, IL 60559

Phone: 630-794-9900

Fax: 630-794-9958

Email: info@rasdalestamps.com

Website: https://www.rasdalestamps.com/
Adjudicating the Rwandan genocide

Political science professor reflects on Rwandas grand attempt at reconciliation following genocide

Professor Anu Chakravarty's new book examines the unprecedented tribunals that followed the Rwanda genocide of the 1990s.

For roughly 100 days in 1994, as many as 800,000 Tutsi people were murdered by soldiers and members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the central African nation of Rwanda. The murders were carried out at the behest of extreme Hutu nationalists and were committed by more than a million ordinary citizens throughout the country.

The killing ended when the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front took control of the country. But that led to the displacement of millions of Hutus, who became refugees.

Ten years later, a second crisis developed when tribunals set about putting on trial the million-plus people accused of participating in the genocide. Those trials, called gacaca, put communities in charge of hearing evidence and doling out justice to their neighbors.

It was the most adjudicated conflict in recent history, says Anu Chakravarty, assistant professor of political science at Carolina. There was no wherewithal to try a million perpetrators through the regular court system. So they created 10,000 courts with community-elected panels of judges, who had a grade six or seven education.

The trials themselves took nearly 10 years. There was little hard evidence and a single accusation could get someone convicted. Judges were often from the same ethnic group as those on trial.

Informants were telling on family members, Chakravarty says. The question I looked at was why were people participating in their own punishment?

Chakravartys book, Investing in Authoritarian Rule, Punishment and Patronage in Rwandas Gacaca Courts for Genocide Crimes (2017) is an in-depth investigation of the courts legal operations and shows how incentives, like grants of clemency and opportunities for private gain or career advancement, drew people into the new regime that was dominated by the countrys minority population.

My interest is in people  why and how they fight and how they reconcile, Chakravarty says.

While projecting an image of justice, the courts revealed a sort of patronage-driven relationship, tying the interests of regular citizens to the ruling class, which could withdraw these benefits at any time.

Rwanda presented this case of a political problem that was perpetrated at an intimate level, Chakravarty says. The challenge was to tie the empirical analysis to what were the implications for political life as a whole.

The book took 10 years to research and write, including 18 months of fieldwork in Rwanda, living with families and interviewing people with local interpreters to gather data and personal stories.

The challenge of the fieldwork was that peoples lives were on the line, she says. These were highly secretive, emotionally charged issues.

She was there while the trials were still ongoing.

This kind of work changes you, shakes you, traumatizes you, hearing these stories day in and day out, she says. But I matured as a political scientist doing this fieldwork.

A native of India, Chakravarty earned her bachelors in political science from Presidency College, India, and her masters from Jawaharlal Nehru University. She got a masters and Ph.D. in government from Cornell University. It was there that she became interested in the Rwandan genocide.

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NASAs Voyager 1 spacecraft is the only human-made object in interstellar space. The spacecraft, which has been flying for 40 years, relies on small devices called thrusters to orient itself so it can communicate with Earth. Now, the Voyager team is able to use a set of four backup thrusters, dormant since 1980.

Since 2014, NASAs engineers have noticed that the thrusters Voyager 1 has been using to orient the spacecraft, called attitude control thrusters, have been degrading. Over time, the thrusters require more puffs to give off the same amount of energy.

The Voyager team assembled a group of propulsion experts at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory to study the problem.

The experts analyzed options and predicted how the spacecraft would respond in different scenarios. They agreed on an unusual solution  try giving the job of orientation to a set of trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) thrusters that had been asleep for 37 years.

In the early days of the mission, Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter, Saturn, and their moons, the researchers said.

To accurately fly by and point the spacecrafts instruments at a smorgasbord of targets, we used TCM thrusters that are identical in size and functionality to the attitude control thrusters, and are located on the back side of the spacecraft.

But because Voyager 1s last planetary encounter was Saturn, we hadnt needed to use the TCM thrusters since November 8, 1980.

With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years, said Dr. Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

On November 28, 2017, the Voyager team fired up the four TCM thrusters and tested their ability to orient the spacecraft using 10-millisecond pulses.

The engineers waited eagerly as the test results traveled through space, taking 19 hours and 35 minutes to reach NASAs Deep Space Network.

The next day, they learned the TCM thrusters worked perfectly  and just as well as the attitude control thrusters.

The test went so well, the team will likely do a similar test on the TCM thrusters for Voyager 2, the twin spacecraft of Voyager 1. The attitude control thrusters currently used for Voyager 2 are not yet as degraded as Voyager 1s, however.
[MANILA] Warnings by the pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Pasteur that its dengue vaccine is unsafe for people who have never been infected with the dengue virus has Philippine officials scrambling to contain the backlash on a decision to roll out the vaccine.



In a statement last Thursday (29 November), Sanofi said Dengvaxia, the first ever dengue vaccine, could put people at risk of severe disease if they had not previously been infected with the virus. Dengvaxia, the statement said, provides persistent protective benefit against dengue fever for those who have had prior infection.



There are four dengue strains and a first infection with any one of them is usually mild. A second infection with a different strain can result in severe disease and the vaccine apparently mimics a first infection.

The government will actively monitor all immunised children for at least five years Francisco Duque III, Philippine Health Secretary

Of the 11 countries which approved commercial release of the vaccine, only the Philippines (over 700,000 vaccinated) and the Parana state of Brazil (about 300,000 vaccinated) had mass vaccination programmes.



In the Philippines, concern focused on the 492,000 public school kids immunised last year, following assurances and recommendations by technical experts and the WHO. However, local apprehensions had been sufficient to prompt a congressional inquiry.



A statement from the office of the Philippine President said that the immunisation was the countrys biggest sham even as the Department of Justice announced it is planning to launch a probe. Centres may also be set up in the provinces for parents of vaccinated children to file complaints.



In an interview with SciDev.Net, Philippine health secretary Francisco Duque III says the government will actively monitor all immunised children for at least five years.



Duque explains that immunised children, including those with no history of dengue infection, have protection for a period of 30 months. It is after this period that an infection could be dangerous. Immunised children with no history of dengue infection who are exposed to the dengue virus after the two-and-a-half-year protection gap are in danger of possible severe disease, he says.



Independent health advocate Anthony Leachon said what this means is that all of them will have to live with this possibility (of getting severe dengue disease) for the rest of their lives.



On Monday, Sanofi tried to calm public fears explaining that a severe outcome means fever for two days, lower platelet count and bruising which is way milder from the WHO definition of severe dengue which results to bleeding and organ failure.

While the Philippines is halting the programme, Brazils Parana state in a statement said that it will maintain the offer of the vaccine against dengue in the 30 municipalities identified to receive the vaccine since 2016.In the statement , secretary of state for health Michele Caputo Neto said the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks as there are areas which faced consecutive epidemics, with high viral circulation and have recorded a large number of (severe) cases.Defending the decision to continue, the statement cited comparative figures. Since August 2016, when the vaccination campaign was defined, 1,061 cases of dengue fever (were recorded) in Parana and no deaths from the disease. Prior to the vaccination period, between August 2015 and July 2016, Parana registered 56,351 cases and 63 deaths from dengue.This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets South-East Asia & Pacific desk.
[MANILA] Warnings by the pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Pasteur that its dengue vaccine is unsafe for people who have never been infected with the dengue virus has Philippine officials scrambling to contain the backlash on a decision to roll out the vaccine.



In a statement last Thursday (29 November), Sanofi said Dengvaxia, the first ever dengue vaccine, could put people at risk of severe disease if they had not previously been infected with the virus. Dengvaxia, the statement said, provides persistent protective benefit against dengue fever for those who have had prior infection.



There are four dengue strains and a first infection with any one of them is usually mild. A second infection with a different strain can result in severe disease and the vaccine apparently mimics a first infection.

The government will actively monitor all immunised children for at least five years, Francisco Duque III

Of the 11 countries which approved commercial release of the vaccine, only the Philippines (over 700,000 vaccinated) and the Parana state of Brazil (about 300,000 vaccinated) had mass vaccination programmes.



In the Philippines, concern focused on the 492,000 public school kids immunised last year, following assurances and recommendations by technical experts and the WHO. However, local apprehensions had been sufficient to prompt a congressional inquiry.



A statement from the office of the Philippine President said that the immunisation was the countrys biggest sham even as the Department of Justice announced it is planning to launch a probe. Centres may also be set up in the provinces for parents of vaccinated children to file complaints.



In an interview with SciDev.Net, Philippine health secretary Francisco Duque III says the government will actively monitor all immunised children for at least five years.



Duque explains that immunised children, including those with no history of dengue infection, have protection for a period of 30 months. It is after this period that an infection could be dangerous. Immunised children with no history of dengue infection who are exposed to the dengue virus after the two-and-a-half-year protection gap are in danger of possible severe disease, he says.



Independent health advocate Anthony Leachon said what this means is that all of them will have to live with this possibility (of getting severe dengue disease) for the rest of their lives.



On Monday, Sanofi tried to calm public fears explaining that a severe outcome means fever for two days, lower platelet count and bruising which is way milder from the WHO definition of severe dengue which results to bleeding and organ failure.

While the Philippines is halting the programme, Brazils Parana state in a statement said that it will maintain the offer of the vaccine against dengue in the 30 municipalities identified to receive the vaccine since 2016.In the statement , secretary of state for health Michele Caputo Neto said the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks as there are areas which faced consecutive epidemics, with high viral circulation and have recorded a large number of (severe) cases.Defending the decision to continue, the statement cited comparative figures. Since August 2016, when the vaccination campaign was defined, 1,061 cases of dengue fever (were recorded) in Parana and no deaths from the disease. Prior to the vaccination period, between August 2015 and July 2016, Parana registered 56,351 cases and 63 deaths from dengue.
In the interim, Andreas Chrysostomou, vp European government & public affairs, CLIA Europe, will assume and oversee management of operations, Seatrade Cruise News learnt.

Chrysostomou joined Cruise Lines International Association earlier this year and has been managing the department of European affairs, covering public and regulatory and developing CLIA Europes strategic advocacy vision. He holds a bachelor of engineering with honours in naval architecture and a masters in business administration.

Chrysostomou is a seasoned professional in the shipping industry. Before joining CLIA, Chrysostomou was director of the Department of Merchant Shipping, the competent Authority for Maritime Affairs of the Government of the Republic Cyprus, and gm of Transmed Shipping Co., Ltd.



He held other senior management roles in fields such as safety and security, protection of the marine environment and administration. He also served as the elected chairman of the design and equipment subcommittee of the IMO and of the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC), one of the main committees at IMO. He was twice elected and re-elected chairman of the International Mobile Satellite Organization (a UN agency) and served as member of the board of governors of the World Maritime University (WMU). He also served as president of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology (IMAREST).

CLIA thanked Fecke for his contributions to the team and wished him success in his future endeavors. He became secretary general on January 3 this year, taking over from Raphael von Heereman.

Fecke started his career as a travel agent and held various management roles with Galileo/Travelport and Avis Rent-a-Car.

For more than eight years he worked for RCL Cruises as a regional general manager. In this capacity, he led the German, Austrian and Swiss markets for multiple brands including Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Club Cruises.

In other CLIA news, Cedric Rivoire Perrochet, national director France will depart at the end of December.

'Cruise Lines International Association is currently reviewing its resources in continental European markets, including France, to ensure that we are effectively supporting the industry as it continues to grow and develop,' said a CLIA Europe spokesperson.

'This will ensure that we effectively meet the needs of the industry in all fields, including government and public affairs, travel agent learning, events and stakeholders management in 2018 and beyond,' the spokesperson added.
CMPort took a controlling stake in the Shenzhen-listed company in 2012 and has been working to integrate it into its other port assets in West Shenzhen. Earlier this year, CMPort signed agreements to allow the latter to exert greater influence over the business and operations of Mega Shekou Container Terminals and Media Port Investments.

CMPort added that it will conduct its own feasibility study however the particulars of the reorganisation have not been determined yet and further announcements will be made as and when appropriate.
We are preparing a support package for the shipbuilding industry, which would build a maritime industrial park in the country along with the promotion of medium and small sized vessels particularly RoRo, Assistant Secretary for Trade Rafaelita Aldaba said.

Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said the support package is still in the planning stage but is being seriously considered to further accelerate the development of the local shipbuilding industry.

He said the incentives would be tailored depending on the needs of the industry.

Initially, however, Lopez said the target is to incentivize shipbuilders that would manufacture small and medium-sized vessels for domestic use.

According to DTI, the Philippines has an adequate supply of skilled manpower for shipbuilding and ship repair, adding that as an island nation, a shipbuilding industry is a natural development.

With a good management and skilled human resource matched with capital, technology and global market opportunities, the industry is moving forward to make the Philippines one of the largest shipbuilding nation in the world in the next five to 10 years, the DTI said.
SEN. JV EJERCITO CONDEMNS KILLING OF UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT

I strongly condemn the senseless killing of Dr. Ricardo Rotoras, University President of University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines in Cagayan De Oro, by unknown assailants.

I have worked with Dr. Rotoras, as president of the Philippine Association of State Universities and Colleges (PASUC), for the passage of higher state subsidy for State Universities and Colleges. I am truly saddened with his untimely death as he was a great and hardworking asset for the academic community.

I call on the police to thoroughly investigate, hunt, and arrest the killers at the quickest possible time.
Press Release

December 4, 2017 HONTIVEROS TO GOV'T: IDENTIFY AND PROTECT HEALTH OF 70,000 KIDS AFFECTED BY DENGVAXIA Akbayan Senator Risa Hontiveros on Monday called on the government to create a "Luzon and Cebu-wide database" to properly identify the thousands of children affected by an anti-Dengue vaccine that poses more risks for people who have not been infected by the virus before immunization. Hontiveros, who is Chair of the Senate Committee on Women and Children, made the call after French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur issued an advisory warning the public against its own vaccine, Dengvaxia. It was reported that the Philippines under the previous administration implemented a national school-based, anti-Dengue Immunization Program in 2016 using Dengvaxia. Over 700,000 Grade 4 students (at least 9 years old) in Central Luzon, Calabarzon, and the National Capital Region have been given the dengue vaccine. Of the total number, health officials said that 70,000 are at risk. Under the Duterte administration, the program was expanded to Region 7. Children aged nine to 14 in Cebu province were administered the first dose of the vaccine. "Our primary concern right now should be the health and welfare of all those children exposed to unnecessary risk as a result of the immunization program. We need a database to identify the 70,000 affected children and know where they are exactly located in order for the government to keep track of their health and prepare the needed resources and logistics that will allow for quick and appropriate medical responses, if needed. This is our most urgent task. Laxity is not an option. We are racing against time. We must protect and ensure the good health of our children," Hontiveros said. In a recent advisory, Sanofi said that new analysis of clinical data on Dengvaxia confirmed that for those not previously infected by dengue virus, more cases of severe disease could occur following vaccination upon a subsequent dengue infection. The vaccine only provides persistent protective benefit against dengue fever in those who had prior infection. "Sanofi urged to shoulder health needs of affected children, provide full compensation" Hontiveros, who is also Vice-chair of the Senate Committee on Health and Demography, asserted that Sanofi bears the legal and ethical responsibility to shoulder the health needs of the affected children and fully compensate their families. She also said that the Department of Health (DOH) owes the public an explanation on how the controversial vaccine was acquired in the first place and why it failed to heed the apprehension and warnings of medical experts on its potential dangers. "Sanofi must be held responsible and the culpable health officials accountable. While vaccination and immunization are protective and essential elements of preventive health care, implementing an immunization program that could do more harm than good to our children is the height of negligence that could border on the criminal," Hontiveros ended.
Press Release

December 4, 2017 Koko represents PDP Laban, PH in historic meeting of political parties Senate President and PDP Laban President Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III was in Beijing during the weekend to represent both the Philippines and the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino - Lakas ng Bayan (PDP Laban) in the World Dialogue of Political Parties organized by the Communist Party of China (CPC). It was the first and largest gathering of political parties around the world, with representatives of political parties from 120 countries present. "This is an excellent forum for international cooperation in bringing about a better future for all mankind. Political parties are sources of policy. When political parties around the world meet, we can determine the direction/policies of the world", said Pimentel. The PDP Laban President met with Chinese President and CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping on Friday, where he relayed the message of President and PDP Laban Chairman Rodrigo Duterte congratulating the former for the successful hosting of the dialogue, thanking him for his support of the Philippines' ASEAN chairmanship, and congratulating him for the successful and historic staging of the CPC 19th National Party Congress. Other dignitaries that met with Pimentel included Zhang Dejiang, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and a member of the CPC's policymaking Politburo Standing Committee, Wang Huning, First Secretary of the CPC's Central Secretariat and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, and Song Tao, the head of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee. Pimentel delivered a speech during the Welcome Banquet of the event on Friday, where he told the assembled delegates, "Our constituents support us because of [our] principles and values. To me, this means we are not here to represent our governments. We are here to represent the ideals of our peoples." Discussing the need for political parties to adapt and cooperate with the phenomenon of the global village, Pimentel said, "We can no longer be insular and limit our activities to our own countries. Events in one country will have ripple effects on others. Our nations are in different stages of development, yet are facing common problems." During his trip, Pimentel also visited the CPC Central Party School, which trains top government officials and CPC members in matters of governance and public administration. In the visit, Pimentel expressed hopes of looking to the school as an example of how to train party members on issues of governance and party ideology. Pimentel said, "Politics in other countries are based on ideology and policy, as put forward by political parties. In our country, our politics is still personality-based. There is no consistency in policy and institutions are weakened, leading to many of the problems that we now face. We must strengthen the party system in the Philippines." PDP Laban as a party advocates Theism, Humanism, Enlightened Nationalism, Democratic Socialism, Participatory and Consultative Democracy, and Federalism. Pimentel said, "A strong party system begins with the individual members of the party. I will report to the Party leaders on my observations in this trip so we can determine how to produce more quality members and instill party discipline among our members. The change to better Philippine politics will begin with PDP Laban."
Press Release

December 4, 2017 OPENING STATEMENT OF SEN. GRACE POE

Joint hearing of the Congressional Oversight Committee on the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines If the pioneers of commercial aviation in the country saw the airline industry today, they would feel like Alice staring through the looking glass. For instance, they would see massive airliners instead of the ten-seater, tri-engine aircraft of their heyday. There would be a sprawling commercial complex where Grace Park Airfield used to be. And if they flew via time travel from Iloilo in the 1930s to Manila today, they would not be able to land in Nielson Field, as its runways now comprise Paseo de Roxas and Ayala Avenue. Clearly, our airline industry has progressed by leaps and bounds. Our airports are now the veins of our country, pumping people, cargo, and revenue into the economy. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the air transport and storage industry contributed 7.03 billion pesos last quarter. The Department of Tourism also noted that 523,493 tourists entered the country through our airports last May 2017, comprising 98.26% of all tourist arrivals in the country. However, our airports have recently begun to show signs of strain. For instance, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), NAIA breached its rated capacity of 30 million passengers five years ago. Sixty (60) million passengers passed through NAIA's gates last year. News articles and social media posts would confirm delayed flights, stranded passengers and lines snaking around the airport. Personal ko itong naranasan noong pumila ako ng isa't kalahating oras sa NAIA Terminal 2 noong nakaraang Mayo. I have to say there has been some improvements. In addition, our best and our brightest technical people in the aviation sector are leaving because of the low pay they receive despite the responsibility on their shoulders. Due to these issues, we decided to convene the COCCAAP, which was established under Section 91 Republic Act No. 9497, otherwise known as the "Civil Aviation Authority Act of 2008" to ensure the proper implementation of the law. Airport congestion is one of the more prominent issues among the topics to be tackled today, especially as we are in the holiday season. Airport congestion will be aggravated by the impending Christmas rush. Families will be lining up outside airports with their placards para salubungin ang kanilang kapamilyang balikbayan. What steps will the CAAP take to ensure the smooth flow of our balikbayans from the passenger cabin to the exit gate? What are we doing to ameliorate those who are affected by delayed flights, lalo na para sa mga mas matagal ang pag-antay sa airport sa mismong biyahe? Dagdag pa rito, umaasa ako na walang ma-iinpsire na gumawa ng sequel sa Tanim Bala Scam na pwede nating tawaging "Isang Bala ka Lang!" dahil isang bala lang ang kailangan para maperwisyo ang mga kababayan natin at ma-hold sa airport. We are expecting the CAAP and other concerned resource persons to have clear and concise answers on their projects and programs on these issues. We also want an update on two major projects which were supposed to improve airport operations. The first of these is the Communications Navigation Surveillance/Air Traffic Management System (CNS/ATM) which was promised last June. Is it operational yet? How much did it cost? What impact has it had on air traffic management? The second major project is the proposed Rapid Exit Taxiway. From what experts have told me, the design of NAIA's two runways create difficulties for arrivals and departures. For instance, international arrivals are allowed only on Runway 24. Thus, it has been proposed that additional rapid exit taxiways be constructed. What is the status of the proposed additional rapid exit taxiways? Will they be done through Public-Private Partnership (PPPs)? Hopefully they will not stay in that dreaded category of PPPs known as Power Point Presentations. And if construction will proceed by next year, what will CAAP do to reduce disruption of existing operations? We would also like to tackle the issues around the benefits of CAAP employees which were disallowed by the Commission on Audit (COA). What are the most recent updates regarding the disallowance? This is important, especially given the ongoing exodus of aviation professionals. After all, competitive benefits are not sufficient. There must also be certainty of receipt. In the book "Philippine Wings," it is claimed that the first Filipino airplane passenger was an Igorot chieftain named Gagaban. The year was 1911, just eight years after the Wright Brothers started the pioneer era of aviation with the flight of the first airplane. In those days, the skies seemed infinite, a common resource for all of mankind. Now however, our airspace and runways more closely hew to the textbook definition of scarce resources: increasingly limited in availability, but with great potential use. Now more than ever, our airspace and runways demand more strategic and more efficient management. Let's not wait for NAIA to become the punchline of a new millennial hugot joke: "NAIA ka ba? Kasi lagi mo sinasabing kailangan mo ng space!"
Press Release

December 4, 2017 TUGADE EXPECTED AT TRANSPORT HEARING ON DEC. 11-POE The hearing on the planned modernization of public utility vehicles has been moved to Monday, December 11, instead of Thursday, December 7 as originally scheduled, Sen. Grace Poe announced today. Poe, chairperson of the Senate committee on public services, said she decided to postpone the hearing in order that Transportation Sec. Arthur Tugade can explain to the transport sector the government's plans and possible safety nets to jeepney drivers and operators when the jeepney modernization rolls out next year. Tugade is not available this Thursday due to prior engagements. "Nakiusap si Secretary Tugade kung puwedeng iurong ang hearing natin sa Lunes. Sinabi naman niya na magpapadala siya sana kung Thursday matutuloy yung hearing ng mga undersecretaries niya pero ako na mismo ang nagdesisyon at aapela ako sa Piston at sa ibang grupo, sa tingin ko naman ang layunin nila ay makaharap mismo si Secretary Tugade kaya ako na mismo ang nagdesisyon na kung Lunes siya available, hindi ko siya pinakawalan-sabi ko bigyan ninyo ako ng petsa kung hindi kayo pwede ng Thursday. Sabi niya Lunes daw available siya, kaya itutuloy natin ang public hearing kasama ang mga jeepney driver para dito sa phaseout possibility, ng December 11, Monday," Poe told reporters after emerging from a hearing. Jeepney drivers and operators, particularly from the transport group Pinagkaisang Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operator Nationwide (Piston) and the No to Jeepney Phaseout Coalition called off their December 4-5 transport strike after Poe appealed to them to halt the strike and instead discuss the issues during a public hearing, specifically with Tugade. Poe has filed Senate Resolution No. 554 calling for an investigation as several transport groups have voiced their opposition to the PUV modernization because of the seeming phase out of jeepneys despite the lack of route rationalization plans. Piston tagged the plan as anti-poor in that the estimated cost of jeepney replacement was pegged between P1.5 million to P1.8 million which they said they could not afford. "While the intent of the PUV modernization program is laudable, it may have unintended negative effects for hundreds of thousands of public utility jeepney drivers and operators and consequently, the commuting public, considering that several issues remain to be threshed out regarding the program," Poe said in filing the resolution.
Press Release

December 4, 2017 Villanueva bill mandating establishments to give 100% of tips to employees moves to Senate plenary Senator Joel Villanueva on Monday presented to the plenary Senate Bill No. 1299 or "An Act Providing that 100% of the Service Charge Collected in Hotels and Other Establishments Be Distributed to All Covered Employees and for Other Purposes" under Committee Report No. 189 making the proposed measure closer towards enactment. Villanueva, chairperson of the Senate committee on labor, employment and human resources development, said that for more than 40 years now, hotel and restaurant workers have long been calling for the passage of a law that will make tips and service charge fully distributable to all employees. Under Section 14 of Presidential Decree 850 signed in December 1975, the collection of service charge was optional but any amount collected shall be distributed 85% and 15% in favor of employees. "Unfortunately, some establishments interpret this provision of 85% for the staff and 15% for the management as a "minimum standard". There are claims that employers would stipulate in job contracts that 90% of the service charges will go to the management and only the remaining 10% goes to the employees," Villanueva said during his sponsorship speech. Villanueva revealed that many establishment owners on the other hand, think that the distribution of service charge proceeds is a "management prerogative". The senator shared that in an informal survey of restaurants conducted by SparkUp, the multimedia platform of Business World, they asked a number of wait staff if they really do get their 85%, their response was "it's the other way around." "Mr. President, our workers in this sector receive minimum wage. And our minimum wage is far from the necessary living wage to live decently. Nauunawaan natin ang National Union of Workers in Hotels, Restaurants and Allied Industries kung bakit ipinaglalaban nila na ibigay na sa mga manggagawa ang 100% service charge mula pa noong panahon ng Martial Law," Villanueva stressed. Villanueva clarified that the bill does not make the collection of service charge mandatory to avoid interference with the right of management to exercise discretion in the operation of their business but for those who will collect them, they have to give the 100% of service charge to their workers. The senator further stressed that a mandatory imposition might be economically harsh to businesses who wish to keep their prices lower to be competitive. "The proposed 100% service charge for our workers will benefit both the workers and the employers. Our minimum wage earners can receive additional compensation for good quality service," the senator explained. "Isang maganda at makabuluhang pamasko po ang pagpasa ng Senate Bill No. 1299 sa ating mga manggagawa sa mga restaurant, hotel at katulad na mga establisyemento," Villanueva said.
Press Release

December 4, 2017 Villar calls support for fisheries and aquaculture Following the 4.27 percent decline in output of the fisheries sector during the last third quarter, Senator Cynthia A. Villar exhorted all stakeholders in the fisheries and aquaculture sector to do their share to cope up with all the challenges confronting the industry. Despite the reduction, Villar, chair of the Senate agriculture and food committee, said the prospects for the fisheries and aquaculture sector are still good. She said the sub sector grossed PhP56.7 billion at current prices or 3.05 percent higher than last year's record. The entire fishery sector contributed 17.40 percent to the total agricultural production during the quarter. But still, she underscored the need to keep strengthening our competitive advantages. She said "we cannot be complacent because there are numerous challenges that we have to contend with also." She said there are still a lot of things that we have to address in the fisheries sector. "Your inputs are very important because you are the ones out there who are directly engaged and involved in the industry, Villar told the participants in the event sponsored by the Department of Agriculture- Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. During the forum on the current state of the country's fisheries and aquaculture, Villar urged everyone to help things better by implementing timely policies, responsive legislations and realistic plans. Villar assured to continue supporting and upholding the welfare of fisherfolks, fishing communities, and fisheries. "The fisheries sector is very important to an agricultural and archipelagic country such as ours. It has a direct and indirect impact on all of us Filipinos, too." The senator also said she considers Republic Act R.A. 10654 (Act to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing, Amending R.A. 8550) that amended the 18-year-old Fisheries Code as one of our legislative achievements or milestones. Villar said the legislation, which she principally authored and sponsored has brought about a lot of positive results and developments including the lifting of the yellow tag imposed by the European Union (EU). She stressed that if the ban was not immediately addressed, this would cause a ban on the exportation of fish products to one of the country's largest markets. As principal sponsor of the measure, Villar said one of her main goals also is to balance the need to increase marine life production and the need to protect the sustainability and biodiversity of our oceans.
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The richest  and glitziest  science prizes in the world were presented Sunday evening to 12 men and women working on some of the hardest-to-solve problems imaginable, and who rarely see the limelight outside their tight academic circles.

Among the recipients of this years Breakthrough Prizes, which offer a total of $22 million in cash awards, are a team of physicists who helped describe the infancy of the universe, a biologist who is thinking about ways to use plants to fight climate change, and a UCSF biochemist working on a miracle molecule that could treat dozens of conditions.

The Breakthrough Prizes were founded six years ago by a group of tech billionaires  including Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, and Yuri and Julia Milner  to celebrate transformative research in math, science and medicine.

Sundays awards ceremony was designed as a red-carpet gala more reminiscent of the Oscars than the more sedate, scholarly events that honor the sciences. Actor Morgan Freeman hosted the ceremony, held at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, with presenters including filmmaker Ron Howard and actors Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher and Kerry Washington.

Im going to be more than a little uncomfortable, joked Christopher Hacon, recipient of a prize in mathematics, before the event. Im definitely more comfortable in the math world. But this may be more appealing for a younger generation, and that wouldnt be a bad thing.

Hacon, like many if not all of the recipients, is an international expert in a field so complicated that it can be difficult to describe his work in words a layperson would understand.

A professor of math at the University of Utah, his focus is on algebraic geometry and his work is primarily theoretical. There are real-world applications of his math, but they may not be discovered until long after his time, he said.

The physics prize went to a team of scientists who used a satellite called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, to create a descriptive map of the start of the universe. Some of those scientists are now using models built from these descriptions to test theories about how the universe began.

Humans are innately curious, and curious about the big universe around us. The idea that we had the ability to probe these questions and get hard, fast answers  its fascinating to me, said Charles Bennett, the Johns Hopkins University cosmologist who led WMAP. And none of us know how far we can go with this.

Its fascinating, its exciting, its fun, he said, and its nice to be recognized for it.

Thirty years into a career spent studying plant biology and genetics, Joanne Chory is now launching real-world applications of lab-based work. Chory, a scientist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla (San Diego County) who won a prize in life sciences, is leading an initiative that would use plants to lower carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and offer some buffer against climate change.

We have this whole new initiative to try to save the world from ourselves, and Im really excited to tell our story to everybody, Chory said.

The only Breakthrough Prize recipient from the Bay Area is Peter Walter of UCSF, who studies at a molecular level how cells synthesize and use proteins, and what happens when protein regulation goes awry.

Decades of cellular biology research has led his team to study an exciting molecule that, in brain-damaged mice, can restore memory and function. Molecules with similar properties may someday prove useful in treating other kinds of neurological conditions or illnesses like diabetes.

Along with the cash awards, Walter appreciates that the Breakthrough Prize recognizes explorers. He and his co-recipients have spent their careers staring into the unknown, he said, and resolving to make some sense of it.

I find it most exciting that there is such a huge effort here to bring basic, curiosity-driven research into the stage light, Walter said, and to have us explain to a broad audience what we are doing, what the possibilities are.

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @erinallday

Breakthrough Prize winners

The team that launched the WMAP satellite, with special recognition going to the five leaders: Charles Bennett of Johns Hopkins University, Gary Hinshaw of the University of British Columbia, and Norman Jarosik, Lyman Page Jr. and David Spergel, all of Princeton University. The group shares the $3 million prize for physics.

Don Cleveland of UC San Diego, Kim Nasmyth of Oxford University, Peter Walter of UCSF, Kazutoshi Mori of Kyoto University (Japan) and Joanne Chory of The Salk Institute each win a $3 million prize in life sciences.

Christopher Hacon of the University of Utah and James McKernan of UC San Diego share a

$3 million math prize.
The Bay Bridge tollbooth a box truck slammed into over the weekend killing a worker inside remained closed Monday, slowing morning commute traffic, officials said.

Lane 14 continued to be blocked off after the driver of a box truck struck the tollbooth on the north side of the plaza at 5:11 a.m. Saturday, killing the toll collector and injuring several others, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Daniel Berk, 32, of Foster City, who was driving the box truck, was being treated at Highland Hospital for serious injuries and isnt expected to be released for at least a week, said Officer Matthew Hamer, a CHP spokesman.

Berk is facing charges of driving under the influence and vehicular manslaughter.

Si Si Han, a 46-year-old Caltrans employee, was killed in the crash. She worked as a toll collector for nearly a decade, said agency spokesman Bob Haus.

Han is survived by her husband, Ryan Saw, and 10-year-old daughter, Ashly.

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Hans booth, from Lane 14, is completely wiped out and has to be completely rebuilt, Haus said.

CHP Officer Vu Williams said the truck was filled with what he described as lighting or sound equipment. Crews worked over the weekend to repair the four toll booths that were impacted by the crash and clear the debris.

All but one, Hans booth, were open. It is unclear when the booth from Lane 14 would be functioning again, officials said.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
Contra Costa County Fire Protection District

A firefighter and an El Sobrante resident were injured Sunday in a fire at a single-family home, officials said.

Unattended cooking on a stove caused the blaze, said Robert Marshall, fire marshal of the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District.
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A Sacramento lobbyist broke her silence Monday, filing a formal complaint with the Assembly that names the lawmaker she said cornered her in a bathroom last year and masturbated in front of her.

Pamela Lopez accused Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, D-Encino (Los Angeles County), of pushing his way into a bathroom with her last year and trying to get her to touch his exposed genitals. Dababneh quickly denied the allegations, claiming they are false.

Lopez initially declined to name the lawmaker when she first spoke to the news media about the alleged incident in October, saying she didnt want the attention to be on one bad actor and that she feared her lobbying firm would lose business.

But on Monday, at a news conference with her lawyer, she said she decided to name the assemblyman  and file a formal complaint against him  after assurances from leaders in the Assembly that her allegations will be taken seriously and that she wont be retaliated against.

There is strength in numbers, and I want women to know that you can lawyer up and there are good people who will represent you and protect you, Lopez said. Im putting this in the hands of the Legislature. Matt Dababneh has abused his power.

Assemblyman Ken Cooley, D-Rancho Cordova (Sacramento County), head of the Rules Committee, which oversees human resources for the Assembly, said an outside investigator will be hired for the case and suggested Lopez file a police report because the allegation is criminal in nature.

Jean Hyams, Lopezs lawyer, said her client had not decided whether to file a complaint with police.

Dababneh issued a statement denying the allegations: I affirmatively deny that this event ever happened  at any time. I am saddened by this lobbyists effort to create this falsehood and make these inflammatory statements, apparently for her own self-promotion and without regard to the reputation of others. I look forward to clearing my name.

His lawyer, Patricia Glaser, had sent Lopez a cease and desist letter on Friday, threatening legal action if she named him.

Along with Lopez, a second woman, Jessica Yas Barker, spoke at the news conference, saying she was subjected to sexual harassment by Dababneh when he was a congressional staffer for Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks (Los Angeles County). Barker said Dababneh would routinely make inappropriate sexual comments and brag about sexual encounters with other women. She also said he would comment on her appearance, refer to her as Ellen  a reference to comedian Ellen Degeneres  and tell her she dressed like a lesbian.

Barker said she has already experienced retaliation from those who knew she was coming forward with allegations against Dababneh.

There have been some really nasty things put out about me that are not true, Barker said.

A third woman who was not at the news conference and who spoke to The Chronicle on condition that her name not be published said she left her job as a legislative staffer for Dababneh because the assemblyman would routinely make detailed sexual comments about other women that made her uncomfortable.

He was creepy, the woman said. Thats why I quit. I was taken aback by his behavior.

Jonathan Bash, a past president of the Bruin Democrats at UCLA from 2011 to 2012, wrote on Twitter and in a follow-up email to The Chronicle that it was common practice in the college Democratic club to warn women not to intern in Dababnehs office or go to events with him. The Bruin Democrats current president, NJ Omorogieva, declined to comment.

Debabneh is a UCLA graduate.

The allegations against Dababneh come after hundreds of women signed an open letter Oct. 17 calling for an end to pervasive sexual harassment and sexual misconduct in the state Capitol.

The Legislative Womens Caucus said in a statement Monday that an independent and thorough investigation is needed where the findings are made public.

If the investigation finds that these allegations are likely true, there must be swift and transparent consequences for this type of behavior, said caucus chair Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County) and vice chair state Sen. Connie M. Leyva, D-Chino (San Bernardino County), in a statement.

Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, D-San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles County), resigned from his seat amid several allegations of sexual misconduct. State Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia (Los Angeles County), was stripped of his chairmanship until an investigation into sexual misconduct is completed.

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Previously, after Lopez spoke about the incident without naming the lawmaker, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County) called the allegation horrifying and noted that it is also a crime. Rendon said at the time that if the lawmaker turns out to be an assemblyman, we will contract with an outside firm so there can be an independent investigation.

If he is found to have committed this assault or any similar harassment, I will ask for his immediate resignation and move for his expulsion if he refuses to resign, Rendon said.

Rendons office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Lopez said the incident happened on Jan. 16, 2016, in Las Vegas at a party for a mutual friend who was getting married.

She said she did not have more than a brief conversation with Dababneh before he pushed his way into a bathroom with her.

She said Dababneh kept telling her to touch his genitals. She said she refused, instead pressing herself against the furthest wall in the bathroom.

Lopez said she initially indicated the incident happened in Sacramento, explaining that she worried that naming the Las Vegas location and time frame would have made it clear who the person was when she did not plan to name him.

How the Assembly responds to Ms. Lopezs report is a test of whether it is a body governed by law, or one that considers itself above the law, said Hyams.

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez
Not only did the residents of San Franciscos exclusive Presidio Terrace win back their gated street  they also get to keep their bargain-basement tax rate of $4.28 a year for the private roadway and sidewalks.

That works out to 12 cents a year in property taxes for each of the 35 homeowners who once again jointly control the street, now that the Board of Supervisors has voted 7-4 to rescind the citys tax-default sale of the property to a South Bay couple.

Nullifying the city treasurers 2015 tax sale means that Tina Lam and Michael Cheng of San Jose will get back the $90,100 that they paid for the street in an online auction in 2015.

Nicole Boliaux/The Chronicle

It also means that the streets property tax  which went unpaid for 15 years because the city was sending the bill to the address of a long-retired accountant  reverts to $4.28 a year. Had the supervisors voted to let the sale stand, the property tax would have been $1,054 a year.

Thats correct  it reverts back like it hadnt been sold, said city Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu.

Future increases will be limited to the 2 percent a year allowed under Proposition 13.

The homeowners, however, will have to pay the $994 in back taxes and penalties that led to the property going on the auction block. The land also carries $345 in annual special assessments from the San Francisco schools and community college district.

Presidio Terrace homeowners successfully argued that the street, sidewalks and palm-lined green strips of their private enclave had been sold out from under them without their knowledge. And while they conceded they had neglected to pay their annual taxes, they blamed the treasurer-tax collectors office for sending their bills to the out-of-date address.

The $4.28-a-year tax bill is a steal, but there is nothing lawmakers can do about it, said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, one of the four supervisors who voted against reversing the sale. The assessment laws are the assessment laws in the 58 counties of California.

Supervisor Mark Farrell, whose district includes Presidio Terrace, said that if there was any steal involved, it was the bottom-feeding pirates attempting to extort and hold San Francisco residents hostage.

And he noted that even if the city wanted to raise the tax, Prop. 13 would prevent it.

The Presidio Terrace homeowners association has held title to the private street since 1906. And while assessor records cover only the last three decades or so, there is no evidence that the property has ever been reassessed.

Prop. 13, which the states voters passed in 1978, capped residential tax hikes at 2 percent, starting with a propertys 1975 assessment. No reassessment happens unless a property changes hands.

Assessors records list the Presidio Terrace propertys value at $362. Establishing the true value would not be easy, given its circular configuration and easement rights that assure those living on the street can get in and out of their homes.

Its zoned residential, so its not like someone could built a casino or pot club on it, Peskin said. Still, it does have value.

Its safe to say Lam and Cheng saw more value in a prime piece of real estate than $362. Their lawyer says theyre thinking of suing.

Matt Dorsey, a spokesman for the homeowners, said the couple met twice with his Presidio Terrace clients several months back. Lam and Cheng said the property would be worth $18 million to $34 million after it was converted to a parking lot and began generating revenue, Dorsey said.

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In fact, when we interviewed them over the summer, the couple floated the idea of using the street for parking  saying that if the Presidio Terrace residents werent interested in paying for parking privileges, perhaps some of their neighbors outside the gates would be.

Lam and Cheng insisted at the time that the property wasnt for sale. Only as the two sides were headed to last weeks City Hall showdown did members of the Board of Supervisors suggest the homeowners reach out with an offer to buy back the property for $200,000, or roughly double what they had paid for it.

Dorsey says the couples attorney, Shep Kopp, countered with an offer of $950,000. But before homeowners had a chance to consider the proposal, Lam and Cheng spoke directly to members of the homeowners association and told them the property was not for sale, Dorsey said.

And that closed the door for the final time.

Kopp declined to discuss details of his last-minute negotiations with the homeowners. But he did have some choice words for Farrell, whom he described as a craven lickspittle who is only too happy to carry water for his rich neighbors in Presidio Heights.

And its dismaying to see District Two represented by this opportunist who needs these homeowners to contribute money to his campaign for mayor, he said.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross
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The real estate ad posted by Coldwell Banker calls it a fantastic opportunity in a wonderful neighborhood. But its not the dream home you might expect in Wine Country.

Red caution tape rings the property. The charred husk of a car sits out front. And fragments of a washing machine, patio and chimney are all thats left of the house that once stood on the parcel in the Larkfield community north of Santa Rosa.

City will be finished with lot cleanup this week, the ad reads.

The property is not one of a kind. At least a half a dozen burned-out lots from the most destructive firestorm in California history have hit the market in recent days, a grim reminder of the many altered lives.

The October wildfires killed 44 people and ruined 8,900 structures statewide. With unprecedented losses raising tough questions for thousands of residents in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties, some are deciding that they have no choice but to sell.

Among those are Andrei and Rozalia Bostan, both 67, the owners of the taped-off parcel in Larkfield.

The Bostans, who came to California four decades ago to flee dictatorship in Romania, said theyre leaving their adopted home for Colorado. Despite successful careers in technology, Andrei Bostan said he cant stretch the familys finances enough to afford to rebuild with his wife and their 43-year-old son, Emanuel, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair.

I thought I had it all figured out, he said. I had a house that was paid off and a small retirement payment. But now Im forced out after I spent 40 years of my life in the Bay Area.

The burned properties, which real estate experts expect will be the first of scores to hit the market, are priced at about a third of the value they would have fetched if homes still stood  about $160,000 to $300,000. Each will be cleared of fire debris before theyre sold, giving the buyer a clean slate to shake whatever back story came before.

Some sellers simply couldnt wait the year or two, at minimum, it will take to rebuild, or they didnt want to embark on the work required to find a contractor and draw up plans. Others cite financial reality, with insurance payouts falling short of what it will cost to build a new home.

Insurance for fire victims vary based on their policies, but generally those who sell their bare land walk away with the proceeds as well as their insurance check, which would typically go toward rebuilding.

For Andrei Bostan, the insurance payment wasnt what he expected. Turns out he unknowingly bought a policy that covered only part of the homes value and not the added cost of rebuilding or renting temporary housing. When he learned that constructing a new house would eat through his insurance payout as well as a chunk of his retirement savings, he realized they had to move on.

The couple is selling their lot, located on a once leafy cul-de-sac off Old Redwood Highway now flanked by blackened trees, for $299,000. Just down the street, another resident is selling for $280,000.

The Bostans plan to use the proceeds to buy a home where their daughter lives in Arvada, Colo., for just over $500,000. That doesnt include the expense of retrofitting for their sons mobility needs, but is about half of what it would have taken to rebuild in California, they figure.

Santa Rosa is a great place, and I love the whole Bay Area, Andrei Bostan said. But I have no choice.

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

The familys rush to leave was hastened by the trauma of the fires. Andrei Bostan, a violinist, was touring with an orchestra in Eastern Europe when the Tubbs Fire struck on the night of Oct. 8 and swept west from Calistoga to Santa Rosa. That left his wife to escape the fast-moving flames with their son, who weighs 250 pounds and cannot walk.

After her struggle to get him out and into a Honda Accord  instead of the familys custom van, which was behind a garage door that wouldnt open with the power out  both were hospitalized. She underwent emergency surgery for a perforated ulcer.

Thank God there were no additional complications, said Rozalia Bostan, who has recovered and whose friends have been collecting donations to help the family. Were all going to be much better when we move into our new home.

A few miles south of Larkfield, in Santa Rosas fire-ravaged Coffey Park neighborhood, John Blood and his wife, Denise, have decided reluctantly to sell the property theyve owned for 26 years because of their age and deteriorating health.

The real estate sign that sits conspicuously on their dirt lot, freshly cleared of debris, went up Wednesday. The $160,000 parcel is flanked by other dirt lots, all in various stages of cleanup.

I love the neighborhood, love the summers, love the festivals, said Blood, 68. But when you get older, your priorities change.

The couple is hoping that money from the sale, on top of their insurance payment, will allow them to buy a home closer to their son in Southern California.

Blood said he had previously thought about leaving the old house because it was two stories, and hed prefer just one because he has trouble with stairs. While the city is allowing fire victims to rebuild with expedited permitting and low fees, the new home design must be similar to the old one.

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The Bloods are fortunate to own property in Mesa, Ariz., where theyre staying until they figure out their next move.

Their for-sale sign, one of two within a couple of blocks in Coffey Park, has become a stark reminder for neighbors that things wont be the same.

You hate to see them leave, but hopefully well see them again, said resident Brad Reid, whose nearby home survived the fires. Theres a lot of unknowns around here now. We dont know whats going to happen.

The Bloods real estate agent, Michael Williams of Coldwell Banker, said he expects to see more empty lots put on the market as people come to terms with their financial situations.

Some people will walk away, Williams said. But I think theres a strong sense of community and people want to remain.

Buyers of this type of property typically range from developers wanting to turn a profit to home-seekers looking for a deal, real estate experts said. Unlike vacant land elsewhere, the burned lots offer the benefit of being permitted for development and connected to utilities.

Realtor Shannan Luft, also of Coldwell Banker, recently listed the charred parcel in Larkfield down the street from the Bostans property. She acknowledged that the listing was outside her normal trade of modest suburban homes, but said the job was important.

Its not your dream sale, Luft said. Its helping people. Its what we have to do to move Sonoma County forward.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
The cabaret tables in the basement theater of Docs Lab were filling up nicely as San Francisco comedian Nato Green made his stoic march down the stairs and into the club. Outside, a sign parked on the neon-lit Columbus Avenue sidewalk proclaimed that the nights comedy album recording was sold out. Green wordlessly motioned with his head that I should follow him to the clubs tiny dressing room, a space so small that the rather tall comic was forced to duck his head. He plopped down his bag and looked around the all-too familiar club.

Its not that I have stage fright, Green said. I just have a chronic high-functioning baseline of anxiety and misery.

He ordered a cup of coffee and continued, I dont want to go into this being too confident.

Green might possess a permanent baseline of misery but I suspect hes not lacking in confidence. Ive seen the San Francisco native perform his stand-up on numerous occasions, and became a quick fan of his blunt, dry and aggressively progressive humor. The 42-year-old dad of twin girls has fashioned himself an almost fatherly comedic fixture in his hometown, having left San Francisco only twice: for college (in Oregon) and for a six-month New York writing gig on the underappreciated television show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.

Along the way, Green has worked as a union organizer, political activist and San Francisco Examiner columnist. And hes about to leave it all behind  indefinitely.

This Sunday, the comedian and his young family will fly to Cuba, where Greens wife will conduct academic research as a medical anthropologist, Greens 9-year-olds will attend school, and Green, perennial deadpan voice of San Francisco values, will embark into the unknown. His past couple of comedy shows, recorded for posterity in a North Beach basement, felt a bit like the final act of The Sound of Music when the von Trapp family performed in that Nazi-run talent show before they disappeared into the Alps.

Im doing this, Green said of his album recording, because Ive been doing comedy for years and now Im about to stop.

Though much of his work has focused on political humor and observation, the election of Donald Trump and subsequent policy changes have left Green with a head full of commentary and a sense of urgency.

Given this political moment in history, I have s to say, Green said. I know its going to bother me if I dont get it out of my head.

And get it out of his head, he did. The adorable Dominique Gelin warmed up the crowd before Green took the stage and unloaded a slow-paced, even-keeled tirade against Nazis, white people, the concept of positive blackface, the All Lives Matter movement, Marin County, small-town police incompetence and himself. At times, his audience was caught off guard, too cautious or sensitive to laugh. Green welcomed our discomfort, excited by his self-appointed task of challenging our perceptions while entertaining a packed house.

Green never called out anyone in the audience, nor was he ever nasty or angry. Instead, the comedian called out our culture of complicity, our breezy lifestyle habits and laissez faire resistance. One bit about a pair of tech workers lamenting San Franciscos lack of good barbecue was particularly biting. Greens point, which he made with equal measures of fact and humor, was that when we kick out the majority of the citys African American population, we also lose their delicious snacks.

I have a ground rule for myself as a comic to say things I feel like only I can say, Green said before his show. I want to do the job of being a comic. I dont want to be so marginal. But I also want to be me.

Greens is a voice I wish were more amplified, not necessarily one headed to Cuba. His Bernie Sanders-styled politics is a bit left of my own (Green once sent me a protest invitation with the note, Want to come get arrested?!) but his determined presence has helped keep us honest.

Much like the von Trapps, who escaped before they could receive their Nazi talent show winnings, Green wont be in town when his comedy album is released this January. Instead, hell be championing his wife and daughters in Cuba, likely offstage and under the radar.

Theres a homegrown comedy scene, Green said of Havana, but its in Spanish.

Do you speak Spanish? I asked.

Yes. He grinned. With sufficient rum.

Beth Spotswoods column appears Thursdays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com
A U.S. district judge wants to determine why Uber failed to turn over some explosive evidence as it battled a lawsuit alleging it stole self-driving car secrets.

Judge William Alsup, overseeing the case brought against Uber by Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Google parent company Alphabet, said Uber could have innocently overlooked the evidence. But if he finds that Uber engaged in systematic concealment of evidence, Alsup plans to tell the jury about these problems, all of Ubers making, he said at a hearing on Monday in federal court in San Francisco.

The evidence in question consists of two documents: a 37-page demand letter written in May by a lawyer for former Uber security analyst Ric Jacobs, and Jacobs resignation email, sent to top Uber executives a month earlier.

Both letters allege that Uber engaged in clandestine practices, including theft of trade secrets. They came to light in late November when the U.S. attorneys office for the Northern District of California sent Jacobs lawyers letter to Alsup, who had previously referred the case there for possible criminal investigation.

The revelations, a potential smoking gun, threw the lawsuit into turmoil, causing Alsup to delay the planned jury trial until Feb. 5.

This is not the usual case, Alsup said. Theres been a lot of this destruction of evidence; a lot of what looks like hide the ball  but not necessarily. Some of it could have been innocent.

Hearing allegations that Uber destroyed evidence could influence the jurys deliberations. If both sides are playing fair and square, and there are none of these issues, then you get to decide the case strictly on its merits; you dont get off into destruction of evidence, Alsup said.

Alsup assigned the special master in the case, John Cooper, to investigate and report back by Dec. 15 whether the ways Uber and Waymo had requested discovery should have turned up the Jacobs letters, which he called highly inflammatory, highly material documents.

Coopers probe will also cover whether Jacobs settlement agreement should have been turned over. Uber paid Jacobs $4.5 million on top of $3 million to his attorney, though Uber associate general counsel Angela Padilla disparaged him in court last week as an extortionist making fantastical accusations. Jacobs is currently working for Uber as a $1 million-a-year consultant, whose duties revolve around investigating the claims in his letter. His consulting fee is part of his $4.5 million payout from the ride-hailing company.

Jacobs alleged Uber used a variety of tactics, including self-destructing emails and non-attributable devices to cover its tracks. Alsup gave Uber permission to interview former Waymo employees now working at Uber about whether Waymo used similar tactics.

Google, Waymos sister company, makes several products, including Google Chat, Hangouts and Allo, that allow for ephemeral communications.

Alsup is concerned that ephemeral messaging could have destroyed documents that would have been relevant in the case.

If Uber says it could not find stolen trade secrets on its servers, Its a very good answer to come back and say, No, we learned they had an ephemeral system, a shadow system, a clandestine system where they destroyed everything after six minutes or six days and that helps explain why they werent on the server, Alsup said.

Alsup already postponed the jury trial once before. That delay stemmed from Ubers late production of documents Waymo had requested about its acquisition of Otto, a self-driving truck company started by Anthony Levandowski, a former Waymo star engineer who Waymo says stole sensitive data and brought it to Uber.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump said Monday that he feels "very badly" for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn because his false statements to the FBI have "ruined his life."

Trump, who tweeted over the weekend that he had fired Flynn from his White House job because he had lied to the FBI as well as to Vice President Mike Pence, told reporters Monday morning that Flynn's undoing was "a shame" and "very unfair."

"I feel badly for General Flynn," Trump said on the South Lawn of the White House, as he boarded Marine One ahead of a trip to Utah. "I feel very badly. He's led a very strong life, and I feel very badly."

Now Playing: President Donald Trump launched a fresh attack Sunday on the credibility of his own FBI, responding to revelations that an FBI agent was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian election meddling because of anti-Trump Video: KTVU

Trump tried to equate Flynn's actions with those of his 2016 campaign opponent, Hillary Clinton, though the former Democratic presidential nominee has not been charged with lying to the FBI.

"I will say this: Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI," Trump said. "Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and they destroyed his life. I think it's a shame. Hillary Clinton, on the 4th of July weekend, went to the FBI, not under oath. It was the most incredible thing anyone's ever seen. She lied many times. Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and it's like they ruined his life. It's very unfair."

Trump was referencing Clinton's closed-door interview with the FBI in July 2016, as part of the bureau's investigation into her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

Though the FBI's probe and the circumstances of Clinton's interview have drawn criticism, Clinton has not been charged with providing false statements to the bureau. White House spokesmen did not immediately respond to a request to substantiate Trump's allegation that she had "lied many times" to the FBI.

Trump's Monday morning appearance before reporters was brief. He did not respond to shouted questions from journalists about when he first found out that Flynn lied to the FBI, nor did he answer queries about his endorsement of Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore, who stands accused of making unwanted sexual advances on teenage girls when he was in his 30s.

Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn said he had agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, a wide-ranging probe that includes possible coordination with the Trump campaign as well as possible obstruction of justice by the now-president.
Tensions are so high on the Korean Peninsula that a nuclear horror  once called an apocalyptic danger  is no longer rationally comprehensible.

More serious still is the sober realization that the power to prevent the military option of using hydrogen bombs is in the hands of two narcissistic heads of state. It would be foolish to minimize the lunacy and self-induced paranoia of Kim Jong Un, whose publicly announced endgame is the rapid development and testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles now proceeding at an alarming rate.

President Trump has intensified the confrontation by declaring we are in a war and that things will happen to them (North Korea) they never thought possible if North Korea continues to use purposeful and inflammatory verbal threats against us and our allies.

Some observers have been thinking creatively about a diplomatic way out of this seemingly intractable problem. Endorsing a plan proposed by Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, they would pledge publicly to North Korea and the entire world that the United States never will be the first nation to launch a unilateral preemptive strike against another country. This would be rejected by Kim with yet another round of denunciations of American aggression. But around the world, Americas willingness to abandon its first-strike capacity to use nuclear weapons would be seen as a serious step toward a peaceful resolution of a menacing problem.

This is a bold plan, far superior to any others that have been proposed. However, it is based on a major condition that neither strengthens our position against North Korea nor deters that countrys military leaders from solidifying their single goal of remaining an increasingly expanding nuclear power.

Kim knows an attack on the United States or any other allied nation, by design or by mistake, would lead to a massive military assault on his country. Nevertheless, he has stated repeatedly and unequivocally that he will not negotiate any plan with the United States that would require him to demilitarize and dismantle his missile program. Any such plan, he has insisted, is non-negotiable.

What else can be done to avert the unimaginable? We need a new beginning.

I would start by telling North Koreas leaders that they may continue to build their nuclear state without any military interference from the United States  no conditions attached. If that is the society they want, then they can have it. We will not try to stop them. They need only be fully aware of the consequences if their plans go awry.

Many will immediately call this weakness or appeasement on our part. We must destroy North Koreas nuclear arsenal before it is in a position to attack us wherever and whenever it chooses, they would say. The truth is, North Korea already has more than enough destructive power to do irreparable damage to us.

While President Trump cannot stop North Korea solely for its continued bluster and verbal fits of anger, he can take the political and diplomatic initiative by working closely with China and South Korea and announce that the United States will implement a policy of patient deterrence and containment that is least likely to lead to the loss of life. He should declare  again  that we have no interest in regime change, and restate our readiness to take the first-strike military option off the table  unless we are attacked first, in which case we would immediately assess the situation and retaliate appropriately. He should then urge Kim to work with us in an open-ended, step-by-step process that would be nonthreatening to either nation.

It is a virtually impossible task for us to offer North Korea a plan that it would agree to negotiate. A major reason the differences are especially difficult to settle is because there are no democratic politics in North Korea. Having disallowed any dissent or disagreement at all, Kim has substituted one-man, top-down reign for democratic leadership. Only in such a closed society, where the people are accustomed to being told what is good for them, is the distinctive context of politics totally missing. There are no doubts, only certitude. There are no partial answers, just total solutions.

Not so here at home. Politics in a free society deals with the contingent and the unknown.

Politics, as Americans have experienced, is the civilizing process of conciliation and compromise. North Koreans are not free  and will not be free  until they and their differing interests can claim a share of political power. That is what democratic politics is all about.

In ruling out the use of military force, we are saying to Kim: Keep your nuclear-based society if that is not open to negotiation, but join us in trying to turn unreconciled differences into some kind of agreement that might persist for some period of time. He will turn us down, of course, but in doing so he will only have further isolated his country from the rest of the world.

I support Friedman and others who want to bombard the people of North Korea with millions of pro-democracy flyers or leaflets that will give them some idea of how an open democracy differs from their closed society. I would especially target young people who cannot express publicly their own views but  as we know from the little intelligence we have  are privately looking for every possibly way to learn how a free society works.

The most difficult problem between the United States and North Korea is this: President Trump wants to stop Kim Jong Un from making any provocative statement that could lead to war. Trump needs to let that go  Kim has the right to express his views.

Trump needs to be convinced that the worst possible outcome is having North Korea become a failed state. To date, however, nothing he has said would lead anyone to believe he thinks this to be true. Quite the opposite; he talks as if only might is right. But China and South Korea both have warned that first-strike military action would quickly turn the Korean Peninsula into a horrific war zone. They strongly believe that what is urgently needed is deterrence and containment, along with tougher sanctions on North Korea and a vigorous diplomatic peace initiative, which they have long maintained is the only realistic option.

Like it or not, Trump is the key player in keeping the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear war. We made him our president, and now he must act like a political leader who can be a bargainer, a negotiator and a conciliator who understands the relationship of means to ends, where violation of the former becomes an act of political death  and the inability to fulfill the latter can cause political extinction.

Trump has often said he relies on his gut instinct to do the right thing. Who knows  does he know?  where his gut would lead us?

John H. Bunzel is a political scientist on the faculty at Stanford University. He was president of San Jose State University in the 1970s, served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1983 to 1986, and in 1990 received the Hubert Humphrey Award for years of service as an outstanding public policy practitioner. He now resides in Mount Pleasant, S.C. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at SFChronicle.com/letters
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Years of waiting will end Saturday when a lock is opened, a gate is swung wide and the public gets its first opportunity to visit John Muirs grave site in Martinez.

On the same visit, you can see the nearby grave site of Joe Walker, often called the greatest trailblazer in history.

To visit Muirs grave site, reservations are required to join a tour, which will be available at 3 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and Wednesdays. To reserve a spot, call the John Muir National Historic Site at (925) 228-8860. You will meet at the historic site, Muirs former home at 4202 Alhambra Ave. in Martinez, and be ferried by van a short distance. A short walk is then required. Admission is free.

The site has been off limits because it was blocked by private property and fenced off, and local residents expressed concerns about parking and privacy. The National Park Service negotiated for 15 years to develop an easement.

Muir, founder of the conservation movement in America, was a self-taught scientist who invented glaciology. He also was an explorer, naturalist and author who split his time between the Bay Area in winter and High Sierra in summer.

This trip can be expanded by visiting the historic Alhambra Cemetery nearby to find the landmark headstone for Walker, as well as other legends, including David Muir and Don Pacheco.

Walkers grave site is set on a hilltop where you overlook Carquinez Strait. His marker includes the dates of some of his escapades, most notably, Camped at Yosemite Nov. 13, 1833. Walker blazed crossings into California that pioneers later followed, and told the Donner Party, before they attempted their failed crossing, they had no chance.

To access the Alhambra Cemetery, stop in at the Martinez police station and sign for the free key. The cemetery is along the right side of Carquinez Scenic Drive and is fenced, gated and locked.

Up on the hill, looking across the Lower Delta, its likely that Muir and Walker, two of Americas greatest outdoorsmen, stood at the same spot.

Tom Stienstra is The San Francisco Chronicles outdoors writer. Email: tstienstra@sfchronicle.com
A residential development boom is quietly taking shape in San Franciscos Excelsior district, an unpretentious enclave that residents often complain has been forgotten when it comes to investment and services.

On Monday, a development group is set to submit plans for a 426-unit apartment complex on outer Mission Street, a project that would include a new Safeway grocery store, a neighborhood health center and other retail.

The Mission Street project, a joint venture between nonprofit developer Bridge Housing and the National Electrical Benefits Fund, combines two of the largest plots of land in the neighborhood: the Valente Marini Perata & Co. funeral-home site at 4840 Mission St. and the Safeway at 4950 Mission St., just south of the recently closed mortuary. Combined, the two parcels cover 3 acres.

In the first phase of the plan, the funeral-home site would be redeveloped with 175 affordable units above a 53,000-square-foot Safeway and a 10,000-square-foot Mission Neighborhood Health Center. In phase two, the existing Safeway, which is 40 percent smaller than its proposed replacement, would be knocked down to make way for 251 market-rate housing units, along with about 15,000 square feet of retail.

The project is the evolution of an earlier plan by Bridge Housing that would have put about about 100 affordable units and 20 market-rate townhomes on the funeral-home site. Supervisor Ahsha Safai, who represents the neighborhood, said he pushed the property owners to go back to the drawing board and come up with a denser scheme.

I felt that the earlier plan did not take maximum advantage of the site, Safai said. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle

Meanwhile, the union pension fund that owns the Safeway property, the National Electrical Benefit Fund, had expressed interest in exploring a combined development, provided that it be timed to keep the existing Safeway open while the new one was being built.

The Excelsior has long had a lively retail strip along Mission Street, a mix of pupusa joints, Chinese restaurants, nail salons, delis, produce markets, dollar stores and cafes. But in recent years the corridor has struggled as mom-and-pop businesses have closed. The corridor now has the highest vacancy rate of any major shopping district in San Francisco, according to Safai.

Safai, who was elected to the Board of Supervisors last year, said that pumping new life into that part of Mission Street has long been a concern of the neighborhood.

There are too many empty storefronts, with sheets in the window. We are not maximizing our potential, Safai said.

The mix of housing will be 59 percent market rate and 41 percent affordable, Safai said. The developer will be seeking increased density in exchange for a level of affordable housing well above what the city requires.

Kate Hartley, acting director of the Mayors Office of Housing and Community Development, stressed that the developer and the city will embark on an intense outreach process with the neighborhood. In addition to the new Safeway, the project will have a public plaza and new retail opportunities.

We want to build in those neighborhoods, like the Excelsior, that have not traditionally had much in the way of affordable-housing resources, she said. The Excelsior, in particular, has been suffering from a high eviction rate and has a strong need for affordable housing.

The Safeway development is the biggest project in the Excelsior, but not the only one.

Other proposed developments in the neighborhood include 103 units at 915 Cayuga Ave., 125 units at 65 Ocean Ave. and 100 units next to Balboa Park BART Station. Safai said the total pipeline includes about 800 units  enough new residents to support currently missing retail like a hardware store, a bike shop and a family-oriented event space, he said. Only one project is already under construction  61 units at Mission Street and Seneca Avenue, which will be completed next year.

The new residents will help retailers thrive and reduce blight, Safai said. This is about bringing stores, service and investment into this neighborhood that has been the forgotten part of the city, he said.

Michael Tufo, an Excelsior native and owner of the Calabria Brothers Italian deli down the street from the Safeway, said, The new Safeway is going to open things up for a lot of other businesses. He said there are five or six vacancies on his block, far more than when he opened six years ago.

Im not saying we are going to be a premier neighborhood, but at least somewhere people want to come to and shop and maybe check out my deli, he said. Right now there is not much foot traffic.

Rumors about the mega-development deal have been circulating for months along with concerns that the Mission Neighborhood Heath Center would be cut out of the project. Executive Director Brenda Storey said the project will allow her to increase the health center from about 4,000 square feet to about 10,000. The center will add dental services and expanded primary care, pediatric and womens health services, Storey said.

We are happy to be able to go into a space in an affordable-housing building  our mission and our role is to serve working-class families, she said. We will have more space so we can serve more patients.

Bridge Housing President Cynthia Parker said the units would be larger than average to cater to families. She said her company has been focused on the Excelsior for several years.

The city is so compressed, and there are such pressures on the housing market, we are seeing neighborhoods that have been overlooked coming into their own as far as development, she said.

The National Electrical Benefit Fund has hired San Francisco developer Emerald Fund as its manager on the project. Emerald Fund President Oz Erickson said that building dense infill housing over grocery stores is a proven model for revitalization.

I think this is the catalyst for the neighborhood and will serve as an introduction for other people to provide housing and new retail, he said. The impact of having a first-class grocery store is enormous  other retailers want to locate next to first-class grocery stores.

The Safeway-anchored mixed-income housing community has the potential to inspire other developers to take on other underused parcels. Standing in front of the Safeway on Friday, Safai pointed to a closed, fenced-in used-car lot across the street where potential car buyers are instructed to call a number if interested in a particular automobile.

What kind of business is that? There is not even anyone working there, he said. Is that the highest and best use for that property? Anywhere else in the city, that lot would have been developed.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
The Bay Bridge tollbooth a box truck slammed into over the weekend killing a worker inside remained closed Monday, slowing morning commute traffic, officials said.

Lane 14 continued to be blocked off after the driver of a box truck struck the tollbooth on the north side of the plaza at 5:11 a.m. Saturday, killing the toll collector and injuring several others, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Daniel Berk, 32, of Foster City, who was driving the box truck, was being treated at Highland Hospital for serious injuries and isnt expected to be released for at least a week, said Officer Matthew Hamer, a CHP spokesman.

Berk is facing charges of driving under the influence and vehicular manslaughter.

Si Si Han, a 46-year-old Caltrans employee, was killed in the crash. She worked as a toll collector for nearly a decade, said agency spokesman Bob Haus.

Han is survived by her husband, Ryan Saw, and 10-year-old daughter, Ashly.

Hans booth, from Lane 14, is completely wiped out and has to be completely rebuilt, Haus said.

CHP Officer Vu Williams said the truck was filled with what he described as lighting or sound equipment. Crews worked over the weekend to repair the four toll booths that were impacted by the crash and clear the debris.

All but one, Hans booth, were open. It is unclear when the booth from Lane 14 would be functioning again, officials said.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
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The city of San Francisco took down a memorial set up for Kate Steinle at Pier 14, after family members reportedly asked city officials to have it removed.

About 50 candles, along with red and white roses, were seen Friday where Steinle was shot and killed, following the conclusion of the trial where her alleged shooter was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges.

The memorial had ties to a self-proclaimed "alt-right" group, who appeared to have started the shrine to Steinle.

SF CHRONICLE EXCLUSIVE: Kate Steinle's family talks about the anguish and frustration

Both a spokeswoman for Mayor Ed Lee and a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works confirmed its removal Saturday to the San Francisco Examiner. The reason behind the removal was not pinned to its association with the white supremacist group; officials instead said its presence violated city policy.

San Francisco typically removes memorials within 10 days of the victim's funeral service, which in Steinle's case took place in 2015.

"Whoever put that up didn't influence what we did, we just followed our procedure," said Gordon of the shrine's removal to the Examiner.

"The Steinle family placed a request with the Mayor's Office for the bench to remain as it was intended  a simple memorial in recognition of Kate and her spirit," said Lee's spokeswoman, Deirdre Hussey.

KATE STEINLE CASE: SF residents react to verdict, 'alt-right' sets up shrine

Steinle's name has been repeatedly invoked for political gain, given the undocumented immigrant status of accused shooter Jose Ines Garcia Zarate. Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump using Kate as an example on the campaign trail as to why the United States should build a wall along the Mexico border and keep immigrants out.

Trump took to Twitter to declaim the result of the trial, calling the verdict "disgraceful" and denouncing Democrats for being "weak on crime." Trump later sent out a letter to his supporters calling for an end to sanctuary cities, singling out San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago. The Twitter hashtag #BoycottSanFrancisco also began to take off following the verdict.
Labor unions representing thousands of city workers in Oakland said they will go on strike starting Tuesday, interrupting nearly all non-emergency services with the first major walkout in the city in four years, after negotiations came to a halt Monday.

Mayor Libby Schaaf said the strike would be unlawful because the two parties have not mutually declared an impasse. She said the city would file a labor complaint if workers walk off the job. But leaders for Service Employees International Union Local 1021 dismissed Schaafs concerns.

The mayor is incorrect, said Rob Szykowny, Local 1021s chief negotiator. Its an unfair labor practices strike, which is lawful, protected activity.

A UC Berkeley lecturer in labor law whose Alameda practice represents Local 1021 agreed with the union.

Mike Kepka/The Chronicle

A public-sector union has a right to strike in this context because I assume theres no contract in effect and they havent reached one. Thats basic public-sector law, David Rosenfeld, the lecturer, said. I dont know what the citys problem is.

Local 1021 represents Oakland librarians, street cleaners, sewer workers, parking enforcement officers and others. The union proposed Monday to bring in as an informal mediator former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown  a Chronicle columnist whos previously refereed BART labor disputes. But the city rejected that offer.

Willie Brown convened politicians on behalf of the union several months ago, Schaaf said, adding that she was disappointed in the union for planning to strike. I love Willie Brown. I have tremendous respect for him. But he does not appear to be neutral in this matter.

The union, which has been without a contract since June, agreed with the citys first-year contract proposal, which would increase wages by 4 percent, retroactive to July 1. The parties dispute what should happen next: The city has offered future salary increases tied to its revenue growth, but the union wants the city to commit to another 4 percent increase the following fiscal year.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Had the city agreed on a one-year deal or to Brown as mediator, Szykowny said, the strike would have been canceled.

Karen Boyd, a city spokeswoman, said the city hadnt gotten the opportunity to present the latest proposal to the City Council for consideration. The council is scheduled to meet Wednesday, which city officials said was the soonest legally possible time.

It baffles me, Szykowny said. All they have to do is sit in the room in good faith, and its shocking they wouldnt want to do that.

Other labor conditions  overtime, use of part-time workers, retention problems, vacancies, and health and safety concerns  are major issues that need to be addressed, according to union members. They say their peers are fleeing Oakland for better-paying but identical jobs in nearby cities.

We were able to get some really good noneconomic agreements, but when you get down to money, it really starts to get challenging, said Lauren Takeshita, an Oakland police administrative analyst and member of a sister union, which will also go on strike. Its their role to say no, which they unfortunately are doing very well. Its our role to say, Why not? and How come? and Be fair. We continue to chip away at it, and we continue to ask them to be reasonable.

Rising costs of pensions and employee health care are outpacing the citys revenue growth, Boyd said.

We cannot spend money we do not have, Schaaf said. We have to preserve basic services for Oaklanders  not just today, not just tomorrow  but for the long term.

The city gave Local 1021 its best and final offer Friday and said if any portion were rejected, the entire proposal would be considered null. Schaaf, who has been the target of much of the unions displeasure and its advertising campaign, said Monday night she was still hoping to avoid a strike.

This will have an impact on so many Oakland residents, particularly vulnerable residents, she said. We are continuing to ask labor to wait until we have an opportunity to present their offer to the City Council.

Local 1021 members overwhelmingly voted in late October to give its bargaining team the authority to call a strike. Another union, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21, approved a solidarity strike. And a third, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, said its members would not cross the picket line.

About 3,000 workers were expected to strike Tuesday starting at 7 a.m.

City Council committee meetings were canceled for the week. Nearly all nonemergency city services  child care programs, libraries, senior centers, parking enforcement, fire and building inspections, street sweeping and more  were suspended for Tuesday.

Police officers and firefighters are barred from participating in the strike, and emergency dispatchers will come to work too. The Oakland Animal Shelter and the citys website, including its online bill-collection services, will also remain open.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
Luggage that can help you navigate the airport or even let you know where it is if it did not follow you to your destination is the biggest innovation in baggage since wheels. But soon, it may not be welcome in airline cargo holds.

American Airlines said Friday that it would not allow passengers to check smart luggage unless they first remove the batteries that fuel the high-tech features. According to Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the airline, the new rule, which takes effect Jan. 15, comes as powered luggage is getting more popular.

Weve looked at the prevalence of these bags as they most likely are going to be a hot item, no pun intended, this holiday season, he said. We have nothing against a smart bag, we understand customers like them, but the airline also has to make sure they are safe to transport.

The bags themselves are not an issue, but the lithium ion batteries that power them have caused problems in the sky. In 2010, a United Parcel Service 747 plane was carrying tens of thousands of the batteries to Cologne, Germany, from Dubai when one battery ignited, causing a destructive chain reaction that brought down the jet. When Boeing was rolling out its 787 Dreamliners in 2013, a problem with the lithium ion batteries that powered some onboard equipment grounded the fleet in its first months of service. Boeing eventually redesigned the batteries and their housing.

Federal Aviation Administration guidelines already bar passengers from packing spare lithium ion batteries in their checked baggage, and strongly suggest that travelers keep any devices with the batteries in their carry-on bags. That way, any smoke or fire from the batteries could be quickly detected. In the cargo hold, a fire may not be noticed by the automatic suppression system until it has already become a critical problem.

American Airlines, so far, is the only U.S. carrier to announce this kind of restriction.

Feinstein said American Airlines crews are trained to deal with fires in the cabin, but there is much less they can do to extinguish flames in the baggage compartment. For that reason, American Airlines will only allow smart luggage onboard if the battery can be disconnected. The carrier will not require travelers to take out the battery if they are bringing the bag into the cabin. But they must be able to check the bag if there is not enough space in the overhead bin.

Just make sure the battery is removable, Feinstein said. If its not removable, we wont be permitting it to fly in the cargo hold or in the cabin.

Smart luggage manufacturers, however, said they were disappointed about the ban. If you make a removable battery, the suitcase will no longer be smart. It will be a stupid suitcase, said Tomi Pierucci, the chief executive and co-founder of Bluesmart. Taking away the suitcases power supply, he said, would disable features like USB charging ports and GPS tracking. If the airline loses your suitcase, you wont be able to find it.

Zach Wichter is a New York Times writer.
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The Bay Area arts scene is disappearing.

It seems that such a grand proclamation is issued every few years with a rotating adjective  dying, dwindling or any other d-word that signifies departure and diminishment.

But when artists leave, and they most certainly are leaving the Bay Area, they do not necessarily announce their departures with such vague, spectacular statements. They often go with a whisper, a quiet slinking away.

In the spirit of our ongoing Grass is Greener series, which chronicles the stories of those who left the Bay Area for elsewhere, SFGATE spoke to a handful of artists who fled the Bay Area, or plan to leave soon, to learn why they left and where they went. Some lived here a short time, trying the region on for a few months before moving on. Others grew up here, spent their childhoods doodling graffiti in San Franciscos alleyways and penning songs about the fog to be played at a warehouse gig.

An expensive city like San Francisco sometimes seems as if its full of transients  young people looking to give the Bay Area a shot before heading to a place where a house can be purchased and roots laid down.

One study estimated that somebody must make more than $110,000 to live comfortably in the Bay Area, and thats not necessarily conducive to a thriving arts scene.

Rent is too steep for a full-time artist without a steady income, said Michael Kershnar, a visual artist with a background in skateboarding. His artwork is visible throughout the Bay Area, in murals, on skate decks or at The Growlery, an artist residency and gallery space in the Lower Haight, which he manages.

Kershnar lived in the Bay Area from 2008-2011, but left when the cost of living spiked and studio space became hard to come by. He returned two years ago to manage The Growlery, but with his contract up at the end of the year, hes on to the next residency. Such is the reality for many artists, who must go where opportunity presents itself, whether in the form of a residency, teaching gig or grant.

In January, Kershnar heads to San Clemente, Calif., for a three-month residency at The House of Trestles. After that, hes not so sure.

Related video: Where people move when they leave the Bay Area

Now Playing: Bay Area residents are leaving for these US cities. Video: Ted Andersen, SFGATE, Getty



Claire George, frontwoman of indie band Heartwatch, moved back home to Seattle last year to be near her family and study music production. She lived in San Francisco for five years, and enmeshed herself in the regions lively music scene. In that time, she says she saw lots of people leaving, but at that point, the artist exodus was standard fare  San Francisco had been hemorrhaging artists for a long time, she said.

During her San Francisco tenure, George worked a full-time job in addition to making music, which she says was common practice in the scene.

Pretty much everyone in my band had a full-time job or was in school, she said.

A high cost of living doesnt just hamper the ability of an artist to make a living wage, but can also take a toll on the viability of art spaces, which often struggle to compete with the competitive set by other neighborhood tenants, like for-profit companies and businesses.

Dwindling art space is not the main incentive for artists to leave, but it doesnt help, said Erin McElroy, the founder and director of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a Bay Area digital mapping and storytelling collective that charts the effects of gentrification and displacement.

Most art venues, like galleries, concert halls and collectives, do not qualify for rent control because they are not residential spaces. Rent can increase at the whim of a landlord, McElroy says, which she sees as a big reason many informal collectives and underground spaces have disappeared in the last 10 years.

Community land trusts have been really useful in protecting tenant space, she said, but it would be great to see more land trusts for art and commercial spaces.

Local organizations have mobilized in recent years to fight these displacements, including the nonprofit Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST). On Thursday, CAST announced a pilot grant that will award $350,000 in funding to 14 Oakland-based arts and cultural organizations seeking real estate assistance. The announcement came just days before the Dec. 2 anniversary of the tragic Ghost Ship warehouse fire, which took the lives of 36 people and spurred a crackdown on underground live-work spaces across the Bay Area.

***

In many ways, yes, its harder to be an artist here than ever before, McElroy said.

McElroys statement is backed, or at least correlated with, statistical trends.

In 2015, the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) surveyed nearly 600 artists living in San Francisco. The results were frightening; Over 70 percent of respondents said they had been or were being displaced from their workplaces, homes or both. Thirty percent feared displacement would happen in the near future.

One of the things we learned through that study is that artists are very unclear about their tenancy situation, very unclear about their rights, when their leases expired, said Kate Patterson, director of communications for SFAC. She says the city realized a major pain point in artist housing advocacy was the availability of information, especially when it came to bureaucracy-heavy endeavors like applying for affordable housing.

SFAC was intended to provide grants for local artists to create new work, Patterson explained, But stability is critical when creating new work, and we dont yet have a living assistance program, she said. Thats a need area that has emerged out of the time that were in.

The commission is exploring the possibility of developing affordable housing, but Patterson says it could be years out.

We need something right now.

Earlier this month, SFAC announced plans to conduct another, more comprehensive survey of local artists in the coming year. The organization also recently launched the Mission Economic Development Agency, a $115,000 grant designed to help artists access extant affordable housing.

***

When an influx of people belonging to a certain group leave a place, a more visceral, less visible challenge arises  a lack of community, and a community forced to fight for slim resources.

Within the Bay Area music scene, George says because there are fewer players, fellow musicians arent always open to collaboration.

It becomes more competitive, she explains.

Then theres the monetary thing in San Francisco, she said, where a lack of opportunity often transforms art-making into a transactional, grabby process.

It can put a damper on your ability to feel open, she said.

But a small community can create even tighter bonds among those able to make it work, those fighting to stay in the Bay Area. A group mentality materializes.

This mentality can fuel fierce divisions among residents belonging to different communities. Many of those interviewed for this story spoke in terms of us  artists  versus them: Tech.

Unless I quit music and moved into tech, I would never live comfortably, said musician Erica Zappia, who moved to Texas in June.

Said artist Michael Kershnar, I guess my arts and relationship skillset is not as prized as being in tech.

Painter Kate Kuhne left San Francisco for Los Angeles after half a year. I found San Francisco to be creatively constipated, infested with tech zombies, she said.

Related video: What you'll miss when you leave the Bay Area

Now Playing: You may be thinking of leaving the Bay Area in search of a more affordable place to live... but think of all the things you'll miss! Video: San Francisco Chronicle

Identifying as an artist can act as a form of cultural currency in the Bay Area, says Anti-Eviction Mapping Project founder McElroy. But the definition varies. Artist could be applied to muralists and painters, but also musicians and filmmakers, even those working in the tech industry.

Designers making six-figure salaries at tech companies might identify as artists, but theyre not living as precariously as someone painting murals or creating art linked to different subcultures, McElroy said.

Sometimes the idea of an artist in the Bay Area is a white, bohemian creative person, she explained, and such a person, though living outside the dominant culture, can contribute to gentrification and displacement.

She advocates for a rejiggering of the identifier artist, to include those making political art, or art linked to various subcultures  people of color, the working class, those threatened by redevelopment and gentrification.

Once again, it comes down to a problem of identity. At least thats how illustrator and Bay Area native Anya Sapozhnikov sees it. She moved to New York City two years ago in pursuit of an art scene with more freedom and innovation.

San Francisco is a tech city, she said. Not an art city.

Such designations are ultimately fluid. Cities change, and the transformation of a place can play out over decades, or just a few years.

Change has come quickly to the Bay Area, but also to the places one goes to escape such instability. Said Baudelaire, "The form of a city changes faster than the human heart."

George, the musician in Seattle, has found many similarities to San Francisco in her new home.

"I left San Francisco excited for this new creative climate," she said. "And the exact same thing is happening here."

In January, she's moving to Los Angeles.

Michelle Robertson is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @mrobertsonsf.
He was the hero San Francisco deserved. And with his bleach-jug head, crimson cape and comically oversized needle, Bleachman might just be the one it needs right now.

In the late 1980s, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation launched a campaign targeting IV drug users. Before needle exchanges or safe injection rooms, encouraging addicts to sterilize their needles with household bleach before reusing them was one pragmatic way of reducing HIV transmission rates. Bleachman put a smiling face to the message.

Longtime city residents might remember the costumed mascot's grinning mug from bus stops, comics and posters. But despite Bleachman's kid-friendly appearance, the ads were surprisingly frank.

One surreal television commercial survives on YouTube.

"If you use the drug, you gotta use the jug," Bleachman says to the camera, standing before a shot of the pre-Salesforce Tower SF skyline. Then, he demonstrates how to clean a needle.

Behind the mask (or jug, rather) was Les Pappas, who worked at SFAF for 10 years. Bleachman was his brainchild, he said, and the costume was initially made to fit him  though according to SFAF spokesman Andrew Hattori, he wasn't the only one to wear it.

On weekends, Pappas said he and a group of T-shirt-wearing outreach workers would venture into the Mission and Tenderloin neighborhoods to distribute pamphlets and bleach. The ridiculous costume grabbed drug users' attention and, unlike more negative ad campaigns, it also "brightened people's day."

"At that time, drug users were looked down on even worse than they are today," he said. "The idea was: Why not have a superhero? Why can't they have a superhero? It was meant to be a very positive kind of thing."

"(Drug users) would see that not only did people care about them, but they cared enough to make, for (drug users), a hero of their own," he added.

As Bleachman, Pappas would take Polaroid selfies with his fans. (The photos would remind drug users to clean their needles, he said.) One day, he recounted, a woman came running up to him with a crumpled old photo in hand.

"It was probably the only thing she'd really hung onto for a while," Pappas said. "She was so excited to have the picture and then to see Bleachman again."

The jug-headed hero generated publicity wherever he went, and his appeal stretched beyond the Bay. Pappas toured with the costume to other cities, like Los Angeles and Toronto, and he credits Bleachman's success with inspiring later goofy mascots, like the anthropomorphized anatomy of the Healthy Penis campaign.

Some things have changed since Bleachman's heyday. The number of HIV infections reported annually in San Francisco has been trending downward in recent years, according to the city's Department of Public Health. There are fewer infections nationwide as well; The estimated number of new HIV infections in the U.S. decreased by 10 percent from 2010-14, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

The CDC also updated its guidelines regarding needles and bleach  it's always safer to use a new syringe, the CDC now advises, though bleach "continues to have an important role in reducing the risk for HIV transmission."

As drug use and needle waste continue to be problems, both across the country and around the Bay Area, could creating another Spandex-clad crusader be the answer? Maybe, Pappas said  but it's compassion, not a cape, that's the important part.

"The existence (of a drug-user) is very much full of negativity. If you want to help people, you can't come at it that way," he said. "There certainly could be another superhero, but the underlying things are to show respect (and) treat IV users the same as everybody else."
A teen's Sacramento dog adoption story won the country's heart, beating out thousands of shelter submissions to win a grand prize through the Petco Foundation.

A $100,000 grant was given to Front Street Animal Shelter on Tuesday for helping 13-year-old Quinn Scharn find his best friend: 3-legged dog Logan.

Quinn was diagnosed with cancer when he was 20 months old. He was then diagnosed with cancer again at 10 years old.

"(Quinn) has rhabdomyosarcoma and he went through surgery, chemotherapy and radiation," his mother Teresa Howell said. "The radiation he received as a baby caused a secondary cancer -- osteosarcoma -- and they had to amputate his right hip and leg."

When Quinn went into surgery, he had one request: to adopt a three-legged dog.

"I thought he was just being silly at first, but he was pretty persistent. Never wavered from that request," Howell explained. "For almost two years, he had been asking for a 3-legged dog -- over and over."

About a year ago, Howell came across a Facebook post from the Front Street Animal Shelter the showcased a three-legged dog named Logan.

The family lives in Napa. They made the trip to Sacramento the next day to take Logan home -- and their lives changed for the better.

"I can really relate to him. He always comforts me when I'm sad or mad. He's a really good friend to me. He went through the same thing -- sort of," Quinn said. "We just really complement each other."

Logan came into Quinn's life at the right time. The dog's life was saved thanks to funding provided to the Front Street Animal Shelter through the Petco Foundation.

"We gave them a grant to be used so they could provide medical treatment for the animals that come into the shelter," said Susanne Kogut, with Petco Foundation. "And it was actually that grant that helped save Logan."

"After treatment, (Quinn's) scans weren't clear. So, it was a very scary time for him. (Quinn) was fearful," Howell said. "Once he got Logan, that all sort of washed away from (Quinn)."

Quinn now has clear scans, as well as comfort and companionship.

"It's just nice that he has somebody -- an animal -- that is with him all the time and he can relate to," Howell said. "Quinn is much happier. He is in a better place. And of course, that's what you want as a mom for your kid."

The award comes from Petco Foundation's Holiday Wishes campaign. Adopters submit stories, photos and videos to highlight how their pet changed their lives.

The foundation received 3,500 submissions.

Front Street Animal Shelter actually had two finalist entries, bringing their total grant award to $125,000.
SEATTLE  A Mexican man who spoke with reporters about his longtime girlfriends immigration arrest has now been detained himself, and he says agents told him its because he was quoted by the press.

Baltazar Rosas Aburto Gutierrez spoke with the local Chinook Observer as well as the Seattle Times after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained his girlfriend in June. He was identified by only his nickname in the Observer, and not by name in the Times.

Aburto Gutierrez, 35, told the Times in a phone interview from the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma that he was arrested last Monday in Ocean Shores, where he lives and works as a clam digger.

He said an agent told him: My supervisor asked me to come find you because of what appeared in the newspaper.

ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley told the Times that the agency doesnt retaliate as a rule. But when pressed about Aburto Gutierrezs case, she declined to comment, the Times reported.

ICE conducts targeted immigration enforcement in compliance with federal law and agency policy, and at times, exercises prosecutorial discretion when the circumstances of a particular case have extenuating factors like the care of minor children or an aliens medical condition, the agency said in a statement sent by Haley.

This does not mean an alien is exempt from future immigration enforcement, it added.

Aburto Gutierrez has lived in the U.S. for 18 years and has children with his girlfriend, Gladys Diaz. Diaz was arrested when she took their children to meet with someone who answered an ad she placed to sell a homemade pinata; it turned out to be a sting.

Before the agents took her away, Aburto Guttierez said, they walked her home so she could drop off her children with him. Since he was also in the country illegally, he recalled, he asked: Why you dont take us all?

Diaz has since been deported and now lives near Puerto Vallarta with their children.
WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court gave President Trump a significant victory Monday, ruling he may put his full travel ban into effect while legal appeals are being weighed in lower courts.

The decision, with only two dissents, strongly suggests the justices believe the current version of Trumps broad travel ban does not exceed his powers under the immigration laws and does not reflect unconstitutional religious discrimination against Muslims.

The justices issued an order saying they had stayed or blocked lower court decisions that prevented full enforcement of the ban. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

The travel ban  the third version issued by the Trump administration after previous versions encountered legal barriers  blocks visitors and immigrants from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and North Korea.

The order had gone into partial effect based on a middle-course position the Supreme Court set out in late June. Then, considering on an earlier version of the travel order, the justices ruled the administration could refuse entry for visitors and immigrants from several Muslim nations, but not to families, travelers and others who had a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with person or entity in the United States.

In recent weeks, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, and a federal judge in Maryland adopted that standard and applied it to Trumps latest order. They agreed the ban could go into effect in part, but not against those who had close personal or professional ties to a person or an entity here. The 9th Circuit and the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, Va., are still weighing claims that Trumps order discriminated based on nationality in violation of a 1965 law. The appeals courts are also considering claims that the ban reflected unconstitutional bias against Muslims.

Trumps lawyers were not satisfied with that partial win in the appeals courts. They filed an emergency appeal Nov. 20 contending that allowing the ban to go into only partial affect will cause ongoing irreparable harm to the government and the public. They predicted the court would eventually uphold the order so the justices should permit it to go into full effect without further delay.

David G. Savage is a Tribune Co. writer.
In a legal case with profound implications for LGBT rights and religions place in public life, the opposing sides agree on this: Its not about the cake.

At its core, the case that goes before the U.S. Supreme Court for oral arguments on Tuesday is a showdown between a gay couple from Colorado and a Denver-area baker who in 2012 cited his Christian faith in refusing to make a cake for their wedding celebration.

Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, was judged through multiple phases of litigation to have violated Colorados anti-discrimination law. Through his lawyers, he now gets to argue before the highest court in the land that hes an artist who should not be compelled to create a cake that contradicts his religious views.

For Phillips legion of supporters  including conservative politicians, advocacy groups and religious institutions  the case has ramifications for creative professionals of all kinds.

Every American should be free to choose which art they will create and which art they wont create without fear of being unjustly punished by the government, Phillips recently told a rally of local supporters.

For advocates of LGBT rights, the stakes are perilously high. They fear a Supreme Court ruling in Phillips favor would open the door to discrimination by a wide range of business owners and entrepreneurs.

Cakes can often have artistic or creative designs. So can sandwiches, legal briefs, bicycles, cars, flowers, medical care, American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Chase Strangio argued in a recent blog post.

If a baker can reject LGBTQ people because of who we are, then what about the mechanic, the florist, the doctor, the teacher? Strangio asked. This is not about cake. This is not about art. This is about survival.

The case reaches the Supreme Court at a stressful time for the LGBT rights movement.

Just two years ago, the high court delivered the movement its greatest victory  a 5-4 decision paving the way for same-sex marriage to become legal nationwide. But that achievement, coming 11 years after Massachusetts became the first state to recognize gay marriage, has been partly offset by subsequent political developments.

The sweeping Republican election victory in November 2016 solidified social conservatives dominance in Congress and a majority of states and set the stage for President Trumps administration to roll back several LGBT-friendly initiatives undertaken during Barack Obamas two terms in office.

Protections for transgender students have been weakened, and Trump is seeking to ban transgender people from military service. In October, Attorney General Jeff Sessions  a longtime skeptic of LGBT-rights initiatives  issued religious exemptions guidance that could override many anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people and others.

The net result: LGBT activists see little prospect of short-term progress at the federal level, even as they remain heartened by the ever-growing ranks of corporations and local governments that are acting to make LGBT people feel welcome and to curb discrimination against them. The local laws can be important, given that only 21 states have statewide laws barring discrimination against gays and lesbians in public accommodations.

Lambda Legal, a prominent LGBT-rights group, was among dozens of organizations submitting briefs to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Colorado couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins.

The group argued that LGBT people, for all their recent civil rights advances, still encounter varied forms of discrimination in the public square. Among its examples: a lesbian couple denied infertility treatment in San Diego, a gay Iowa couple rebuffed in efforts to rent a wedding venue, a transgender man turned away from a New Jersey hospital where he sought a hysterectomy.

This is why nondiscrimination laws like Colorados are so important, wrote Lambdas law and policy director, Jennifer Pizer. So that people can live their lives without fearing that, at any moment, they may be turned away or verbally abused just for who they are.

Craig and Mullins spent only a few moments at the bakery in 2012 before Philipps rebuff hit home.

There was a horrible pregnant pause, Mullins recalls. It was publicly humiliating and it was painful.

For opponents of same-sex marriage, religious liberty and religious freedom have become watchwords for a broad campaign to carve out more public space for their viewpoints.

There have been defeats. Earlier this year, Washington states Supreme Court ruled unanimously that florist Barronelle Stutzman broke the states anti-discrimination law by refusing to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. In October, two women who specialize in hand-lettering and calligraphy for weddings lost the latest round of their challenge of a Phoenix ordinance requiring them to provide their services for same-sex weddings.

There have been some victories as well.

In Michigan, a federal judge recently ordered the city of East Lansing to make room for a farmer who was barred from selling apples at a seasonal market because he doesnt let gay couples get married at his orchard, which is a popular wedding spot. A panel of U.S. appellate judges has allowed a sweeping Mississippi law to take effect that lets government workers and business owners cite religious beliefs to deny services to LGBT people. The law, now the subject of an appeal to the Supreme Court, protects three beliefs: that marriage is only between a man and a woman, that gender cannot be changed and that sex outside of marriage is wrong.

Back in 2014, the Supreme Court declined to weigh in on a case with similarities to the Colorado dispute. The justices rebuffed a request to review a New Mexico Supreme Court decision holding that a photography studio violated the states anti-discrimination laws by refusing to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.

Three years later, the high court has opted to wade into the same high-voltage issues, assessing whether Phillips right to freedom of speech outweighs Colorados interest in protecting Mullins and Craig from discrimination. It will mark the most important LGBT-rights case for conservative Coloradan Neil Gorsuch since he joined the Supreme Court in April.

However, the outcome could turn on the vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy, as it often does in cases that otherwise break along the courts liberal-conservative divide.

Kennedys legacy is firmly tied to his authorship of major gay rights rulings dating back to 1996, including the landmark 2015 decision making same-sex marriage legal nationwide. At the same time, Kennedy, 81, has forcefully defended free-speech rights in his nearly 30 years as a justice.

Each side has tailored its arguments to appeal to one of those two strains in hopes of attracting Kennedys vote.

David Crary is an Associated Press writer.
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SALT LAKE CITY  President Trump announced he will dramatically reduce the size of a vast expanse of protected federal land in Utah on Monday, a rollback of some 2 million acres that is the largest in scale in the nations history.

The administration said it would shrink Bears Ears National Monument to 220,000 acres from 1.35 million and cut another area, Grand Staircase-Escalante to about half its current size. The move, a reversal of protections put in place by Democratic predecessors, comes as the administration pushes for fewer restrictions and more development on public lands.

Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington, Trump said, speaking at Utahs state Capitol. And guess what, theyre wrong.

The decision to reduce Bears Ears almost immediately triggered a legal battle that could alter the course of U.S. land conservation, possibly opening millions of protected public acres to oil and gas extraction, mining, logging and other commercial activities.

Earthjustice filed the first of several expected lawsuits Monday, calling the reduction of Grand Staircase-Escalante an abuse of the presidents power that jeopardizes a Shangri-la of dinosaur fossils. Native American leaders expect to file a lawsuit challenging the Bears Ears decision soon.

President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears in 2016, and President Bill Clinton set aside Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996. In both cases, Utah politicians said the actions were illegal abuses of a century-old law called the Antiquities Act.

Environmentalists and some native tribes say Trumps move will destroy the national heritage and threaten some 100,000 sites of archaeological importance tucked into the monuments desert landscapes. Conservative lawmakers and many Westerners argue that the move is the proper response to decades of federal overreach.

The announcement sparked immediate outcry from Trumps opponents.

Whats next, President Trump, said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Grand Canyon?

In April, the president ordered the current Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, to review more than two dozen national monuments created since 1996, including six within California one straddling the state line with Oregon.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Julie Turkewitz is a New York Times writer.
President Trump on Monday fully endorsed Roy Moore, acting to back the Alabama Senate candidate after conversations with his former strategist Steve Bannon, who has advocated Moores candidacy.

Trumps tweets were his first all-out endorsement of Moore, who has been accused of making unwanted sexual advances on teenage girls. They came after Republican leaders began to back away in recent days from previous threats to expel Moore if he wins the Dec. 12 election.

Trump called Moore on Monday morning. Go get em, Roy! Trump told Moore, according to a description of the phone call that Moore posted on Twitter.

Just got off the phone with President Trump who offered his full support and said he needs a fighter to help him in the US Senate, Moore wrote.

Trumps strong support came after a couple of polls showed Moore starting to re-establish a lead over Democrat Doug Jones. A Washington Post poll released Saturday, however, showed the race near a dead heat.

Overall, polling by several organizations has shown the race close despite Alabamas heavy Republican tilt. In addition to the usual margin of error in polls, the outcome is even harder to predict because of the difficulty in knowing who will turn out to vote in a special election held a couple of weeks before Christmas that has been roiled by the accusations against Moore.

Some advisers to the president were concerned that if Trump didnt come out more forcefully in favor of Moore, the former Alabama state judge could lose, according to people familiar with the conversations who spoke anonymously.

Bannon recently talked with Trump about putting the presidents full weight behind Moore, according to a person close to the White House who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Last month, Trump pointed to Moores denials of the allegations against the candidate from several decades ago and spoke against voting for Democrat Doug Jones, but did not explicitly endorse Moore.

Trump is not campaigning for Moore directly, but is scheduled to hold a rally on Friday in the Florida Panhandle, which shares a media market with Mobile, Ala.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., have previously called on Moore to step aside, saying they believe the allegations. But in a sign that the GOP is warming to the candidate, McConnell told ABC News on Sunday that the decision, at least for now, should be left to Alabama voters.

Brian Bennett and Noah Bierman are Tribune Co. writers.
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This article first appeared on The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Columbia Sportswear reopened its flagship store in downtown Portland, one day after it closed amid an organized demonstration against the company during the beginning of the busy holiday shopping season.

Customers on Sunday began to trickle into the retail chain after 11 a.m., including some who had witnessed the throng of protesters gathered outside the store's Southwest Broadway entrance on Saturday.

Activists placed Columbia Sportswear in their crosshairs after its chief executive Tim Boyle said the company was considering closing its downtown office  not the retail site  because of safety concerns stemming from the city's growing homeless crisis.

Soon after, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who counts Boyle among his top political donors, directed officials to ramp up enforcement of the city's "no-sit" policy.

The ordinance prohibits people from sitting or loitering along some commercial corridors in Portland, which critics claim target homeless women and men.

A sign that reads "This Sidewalk Is For Pedestrian Movement Only Please Keep Clear" is now posted directly in front of the Columbia Sportswear entrance.

VIDEO: Seattle among cities rocked by homeless crisis

"It's an issue that befuddles everyone," said Bill Ferron, 61, as he stepped outside the apparel store Sunday.

He and his wife, who were visiting from the Seattle area, said they were surprised to encounter the roughly 50 demonstrators seated in front of the doors the day before.

"I wouldn't fault Columbia for taking the position it has," he said. "But I also think that the protesters are doing the right thing. Everybody needs to think harder about this problem."

Paul Pappas, 51, another Columbia Sportswear, said Portland police need more foot patrols downtown and not just signs telling people to avoid loitering.

ALSO READ: Here's what to do if your Amazon package gets stolen

Pappas said he was a little frustrated that the city was so quick to respond to Boyle's outcry about public safety downtown when small businesses had for months voiced the same concerns.

"I guess when someone with a big bat says something, the city actually has to listen," Papas said.

Portland's Resistance co-founder Gregroy McKelvey, who helped organized Saturday's protest, said that demonstrators may return to the store next week.

Columbia Sportswear did not respond to a request for comment.

This article first appeared on The Oregonian/OregonLive.








MPI is drafting the strategy on attracting FDI in 2018-2023









In the context of global integration, Vietnam has to develop its economy on the basis of labor skills, technology and production chains.

After 30 years of foreign investment, 24,000 projects with total investment capital of $313 billion have been implemented in Vietnam. FDI accounts for 25 percent of total investment capital and makes up 20 percent of GDP.Vietnam, in an effort to attract FDI, has pursued an open policy, offering many incentives to investors.Analysts say the policy has problems and is no longer suited to the new circumstances. Vietnam needs a new strategy for the next development period.Most foreign investors told the World Bank that Vietnam has offered big investment incentives and has a cheap labor force.However, after a six-month study, Wim Douw, a senior expert on investment, trade and competition from the World Bank, found that Vietnams advantage of a cheap labor force is disappearing.In the context of global integration, Vietnam has to develop its economy on the basis of labor skills, technology and production chains.Commenting about the current investment situation, David Brown, WBs senior advisor on investment policy, said Vietnam relies on incentives to attract investors.Brown suggested that Vietnam needs to change its policy on attracting FDI based on low labor costs and preferential treatment, while local authorities need to stop running a race of offering incentives to lure investors. State management agencies need to remove the barriers to businesses to join the market.Nguyen Anh Tuan, former deputy director of FIA, also thinks that in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, Vietnam needs to have an FDI attraction policy which does not aim to get FDI at any cost.Meanwhile, Truong Thi Chi Binh, director of SIDEC, stressed that the next-generation FDI policy needs to set up policies that encourage foreign investors to build production networks in Vietnam.Large multinational conglomerates such as Samsung and Intel have their factories in Vietnam, but the factories only do simple assembling, Binh said.We need to think of solutions which can help retain them, encourage them to expand production chains in Vietnam and transfer technology, she said.Simon Bell from the World Bank noted that experts have emphasized the need to attract investment in projects which create high added value, but they do not show how to do it and which business fields should be the focus.Experts believe Vietnam should focus on high-tech/ICT, processing and manufacturing, supporting industries, tourism, and high-tech agriculture.
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PLEASANTON (BCN)

A Berkeley man was arrested early this morning at the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station on suspicion of battery on a BART train operator, police said.

At 12:19 a.m. police were called by someone who said a train operator was allegedly pushed by Eduardo Pazleja, 20, who allegedly would not get off the train.

Police said the train operator was not injured.

Pazleja was also arrested on suspicion of public intoxication.

ALSO: 1 person dead in Alameda house fire

Police issued Pazleja an order that prevents him from riding BART for a while and took him to the county jail.
TheatreWorks Around the World in 80 Days could have been such perfect holiday fare. Its action is zany, its aesthetics whimsically theatrical, its myriad characters fruitful showcases for some of Bay Area theaters foremost clowns.

Yet there remains a niggling problem with the show, which is only its central conceit, its raison detre. The taciturn but eccentric Phileas Fogg (Jason Kuykendall), a rich white English guy, hopscotches across the globe on a wager, plying his countrys colonialism at every stop. Natives reluctant to drop everything and ferry him along to his next destination? Just wow them with wads of English pounds over and over again! And for director Robert Kelley, how to cast the nationalities of 40-odd characters, when the script calls for just five actors? Its fine; just have your cast play members of historically oppressed races that arent their own. Its a small price to pay for theatrical whimsy.

The shows worst instance of imperialism, however, concerns its love story. When Aouda (Ajna Jai), an Indian woman, is about to die by sati  i.e., be thrown on her dead husbands funeral pyre  Fogg decides to have his servant Passepartout (Tristan Cunningham) rescue her. Call it the 1872 equivalent of a privileged Western kids voluntourism to a developing country. Most other women in her society might still be oppressed, but Phileas became the white savior for the one woman with whom he happened to cross paths. You guys, he saved India! Hes so virtuous!

Knocked out upon her rescue, Aouda, coming to, gets to have a whole moment of concern about who these strangers are and why theyre whisking her away before she falls madly in love with Phileas. Just to have her erase her background as quickly and as thoroughly as possible, he has her nix her sari for the attire of his own land, which she agrees to as if its been her lifelong dream.

None of this is to gainsay the classic status of Jules Vernes 1873 novel  a briskly told, undeniably exciting adventure. Nor is it to criticize Kelleys production of Mark Browns stage adaptation, which opened Saturday, Dec. 2, at Lucie Stern Theatre. It could hardly have been directed more precisely or more joyfully.

Puffs of locomotive steam, sea spray and costume changes all magically fly in from offstage to help whisk Phileas and his crew along. Cunninghams acrobatics could be a show all their own. In a panoply of roles, Ron Campbell creates accents that arent just guttural; he seems to have forged whole distinct continents in the bottom of the gutter. His scenes with Michael Gene Sullivans apoplectic Detective Fix are a master class in slapstick  timing pinpointed to the millisecond, every gesture, down to the waggle of a finger, rigorously defined to further develop character and situation.

But in 2017, especially in the incredibly diverse South Bay, why do we need to tell a story that uses a white English guys perspective to exoticize the rest of the world? Classics absolutely have a place on our stages, as do shows that take place in less enlightened times, when imperialism, racism and sexism would have gone unquestioned.

But its not arts job to put forth an unfiltered historical primary source. Rather, we look to art to reimagine those older times and stories for us, sitting in the theater now. We want, we desperately need it to challenge prevailing narratives, not reinforce them  to envision, chart and then push us along the journey that, today, would be just as mind-boggling and thrilling as Phileas circumnavigation once was.

Lily Janiak is The San Francisco Chronicles theater critic. Email: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LilyJaniak

Around the World in 80 Days: Adapted by Mark Brown from Jules Vernes novel. Directed by Robert Kelley. Through Dec. 31. Two hours, 10 minutes. $40-$100, subject to change. Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. (650) 463-1960. www.theatreworks.org

To see the trailer for the 1956 film version: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjiCO8k6Jhg
It's time to pull out those fuzzy slippers.

The combination of a dry air mass, clear skies and long nights is bringing cool weather to the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

Temperatures have been chilly at morning and night in recent days, and they're expected to reach their lowest point of the week on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning when they dip into the 40s, 30s and even the 20s.

Sheltered inland valley areas, particularly the North Bay and Monterey County, will likely see the coldest temperatures.

RELATED GALLERY: Warm up and get cozy inside San Francisco's smallest bars and restaurants

More for you 69 mph gust knocks Mount Diablo as windy conditions whip high elevations of Bay Area

The National Weather Service issued a freezing watch for the North Bay valleys on Wednesday night, and Brian Mejia, a forecaster with the Bay Area office expects the watch will turn to a warning, meaning the possibility of freezing temperatures is increasing.

Coastal areas won't get as cool with an onshore breeze keeping temperatures mild. San Francisco is forecast to see a low in the mid-40s on Tuesday night.

These will likely be the coldest temperatures the Bay Area has seen since February.

With clear, sunny skies during the day, afternoon temperatures will be mild in the 50s and 60s around the greater Bay Area. Night and daytime temperatures will gradually climb through the week and some inland areas will reach the 70s during the day by week's end.

National Weather Service Bay Area

The National Weather Service also issued a wind advisory for locations above 1,000 feet around the Bay Area for Monday through Tuesday at 10 a.m., cautioning people of 30 to 40 mile per hour gusts. Mount Diablo saw a 69-mile-per-hour gust on Monday morning.

There's no chance of rain in the forecast this week as a ridge of high pressure stretching from British Columbia to Southern California is keeping conditions dry along the entire West Coast.
Just days ago, the former strongman of Yemen turned against his most recent allies and publicly denounced them as a coup militia. They struck back on Monday, killing him and spreading a video of his lifeless body dumped unceremoniously in the back of a pickup truck.

The death of the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, brought to a grim end the career of a wily politician who combined charisma, duplicity and brute force to remain a giant in the politics of his impoverished Arabian country for decades.

Salehs death signaled a turning point in the countrys war by shattering the alliance between his loyalists and the rebels known as the Houthis, who had taken over the capital, prompting a punishing bombing campaign by Saudi Arabia and its allies.

That political fracturing could make it harder for the parties to negotiate an end to the conflict, analysts said, while renewed fighting in the capital, Sanaa, could worsen the humanitarian crisis afflicting Yemen, which the United Nations has called the worlds worst.

His being killed like this is going to deepen the conflict. I think the war could become more fierce. This just adds more layers of revenge, said April Longley Alley, a Yemen analyst with the International Crisis Group.

After dispatching his forces to brutalize protesters and surviving an assassination attempt, Saleh agreed to leave office in 2012 in an agreement negotiated by foreign powers who hoped he would slip into a quiet retirement abroad.

He did not, instead returning to Yemen to rally his followers and form an unlikely alliance with the Houthis, who stormed Sanaa in 2014 and later forced the internationally recognized government that had replaced Saleh into exile.

His death came at the hands of the same rebels he had used to facilitate his return to political relevance.

Saleh was killed in response to his latest political maneuver, turning against the Houthis and suggesting an accommodation with Saudi Arabia and its allies to end the war.

After years of collaborating against forces loyal to the Yemeni government, tensions between Salehs supporters and the Houthis erupted into deadly street clashes in Sanaa last week. On Saturday, Saleh condemned the Houthis in a televised speech and called for a new page with Saudi Arabia and its allies to stop the war.

The Houthis accused Saleh of treachery and said he had plotted secretly with Saudi Arabia to turn on them.

Shuaib Almosawa and Ben Hubbard are New York Times writers.
MADRID  A Spanish judge on Monday ordered that four prominent members of the Catalan independence movement should remain in custody, including the No. 2 of the ousted regional government, who will campaign in a polarized regional election from a jail near Madrid.

The judge set 100,000-euro ($118,000) bail for the six other Catalan politicians who had been jailed in early November, and ordered their passports to be confiscated.

Meanwhile, Catalan ex-president Carles Puigdemont and four of his separatist allies learned that they will be judged on whether they can be extradited from Belgium to Spain on Dec. 14, exactly one week before the election.

The group is refusing to return to Spain to face rebellion, sedition and embezzlement charges that can be punished with decades in prison under the countrys criminal laws.

Puigdemonts defense lawyer insisted the Spanish charges werent punishable in Belgium and thus there were no grounds for extradition.

Whatever decision is made on Dec. 14, two appeals will be possible and a final ruling could come after the Dec. 21 election called by Spains central authorities, in which Puigdemont is leading his pro-independence partys campaign.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoys conservative Spanish government disbanded Puigdemonts Cabinet when it took control of Catalonia shortly after separatist regional lawmakers passed a declaration of independence in late October.

The early election is an attempt to find a democratic way out of the nations crisis. But the vote is shaping up as a plebiscite between those for and against independence, with polls predicting a close race between the two camps.

Aritz Parra and Raf Casert are Associated Press writers.
HONG KONG  The United States and South Korea began large-scale combined air force drills Monday, with plans to carry out simulated strikes on North Korean nuclear and missile testing sites, military officials said.

Some 230 aircraft will take part in the drills, which will include some of the Pentagons most powerful warplanes, such as stealth F-35 Lightning II fighters and B1-B Lancer bombers. The exercises come just a week after North Korea tested a missile that analysts say has the capability of reaching much of the continental United States.

The drills were part of an annual exercise that had been planned before North Korea conducted the missile test. The exercise is aimed at enhancing the all-weather, day and night combined air power operation capabilities of South Korea and the U.S., South Koreas defense ministry said.

Such drills have drawn vigorous criticism from North Korea, whose state news media said Sunday that the latest exercises were pushing the Korean Peninsula to the brink of nuclear war. It warned that Pyongyang would seriously consider countermeasures against the drill and that the United States and South Korea would pay dearly for their provocations, the Norths Korean Central News Agency said.

Underscoring the tensions, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina urged the Pentagon on Sunday to move dependents of U.S. service members out of South Korea because of the threat of conflict. More than 28,000 U.S. troops are stationed there, many living with their families.

Its crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea, given the provocation of North Korea, Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CBS News. I think its now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea.

The military exercises that began Monday involve 12,000 personnel and also include six F-22 Raptors, representing the largest deployment of the stealth fighters to South Korea, officials said.

The drills will be conducted under wartime scenarios that include attacks on mock North Korean nuclear and missile targets, South Koreas military said.

North Koreas missile launch last Tuesday came after more than a two-month lull in the countrys nuclear and missile testing, which raised some hopes that it might be extending an olive branch to ease the hair-trigger military tensions on the peninsula.

Gerry Mullany is a New York Times writer.
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The New Zealand government's operating deficit was slightly wider than expected in the first four months of the financial year as the cost of reinstating State Highway 1 between Picton and Christchurch was more expensive than anticipated and as customs and excise duties lagged behind forecast.

The operating balance before gains and losses (obegal) was a deficit of $308 million in the four months ended Oct. 31, compared to a forecast shortfall of $217 million and widening from $131 million a year earlier. Tax revenue rose 4.4 percent to $24.17 billion, although it was $69 million short of forecast as petrol and tobacco excise taxes fell from a year earlier and missed expectations. Meantime, core Crown spending rose 5.3 percent to $26.32 billion, some $233 million ahead of forecast with the cost of reinstating the South Island highway link one of the more expensive items.

"Obegal can fluctuate from month to month as the recognition of tax revenue does not happen uniformly throughout the year, while expenditure is fairly static on a monthly basis before peaking in June," chief government accountant Paul Helm said in a statement. "As a result, it is not unusual for obegal to be a small surplus or deficit in the first part of the financial year."

The Crown accounts are the last spanning the previous administration, with the new Labour-led government sworn in in late October. Finance Minister Grant Robertson will outline his priorities at next week's half-year economic and fiscal update and Budget policy statement. The government has been softening the public for some changes to capital spending, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday saying there had been a lack of budgeting by the previous administration and that unbudgeted projects may be axed.

Today's accounts show the Crown's net debt position was smaller than expected at $61.37 billion, or 22.9 percent of gross domestic product, while the residual cash deficit of $2.02 billion was largely in line with expectations.

Total capital commitments stood at $13.59 billion as at Oct. 31, up from $12.08 billion a year earlier. Of that, $6.96 billion was earmarked for state highways and $3.14 billion for land and buildings.

The operating balance, which includes unrealised movements in the value of the Crown's investment portfolios and actuarial adjustments of its Accident Compensation Corp scheme, was a surplus of $2.08 billion, more than the $714 million expected, as investment gains offset a bigger actuarial loss in the period.

ACC's investment portfolio was valued at $40.4 billion as at Oct. 31, more than the $38.73 billion predicted, while the NZ Superannuation Fund was worth $37.87 billion, against a forecast of $35.17 billion. ACC's long-term liability was valued at $40.52 billion, more than the $38.76 billion projected.

(BusinessDesk)

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McConnell Dowell Constructors has posted a full-year loss in the face of lower sales and "material losses" at its North Otago Irrigation Co (NOIC) and Kawarau Falls Bridge contracts.

The loss was $20.6 million in the 12 months ended June 30 from a profit of $4.4 million a year earlier, the company's annual report shows. Sales fell 9.9 percent to $251 million.

Most of the deficit came from "material losses" at the two projects, according to a going concern note to its accounts that also highlighted a net working capital deficit of $16.1 million.

McConnell Dowell Constructors is the New Zealand and Pacific arm of a global construction firm that's ultimately owned by Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed Aveng. A spokeswoman for McConnell Dowell didn't respond to queries from BusinessDesk but Aveng says in its annual results that revenue at the New Zealand-based business fell as major projects were completed, such as the Waterview tunnel and its work on the Christchurch rebuild.

"Even though some projects exceeded tendered margins within the business, these performances were not sufficient to compensate for the adverse impacts of the underperformance on the NOIC and Kawarau Falls Bridge projects, resulting in an overall operating loss for this business," it said. One of these contracts has now been completed, and the other is scheduled for completion during 2018.

The irrigation project, which extends the scheme into the Kakanui Valley, suffered a "significant setback" when the pipeline failed during testing, the Otago Daily Times reported in December 2016, adding that former managing director Roger McRae had flown in to see the problems first hand and meet with shareholding farmers. In May this year, the company appointed Fraser Wyllie as managing director of its New Zealand and Pacific Islands operations.

The ODT reported in March this year that McConnell Dowell would absorb costs of drilling through harder-than-expected rock on the Kawarau Falls bridge replacement project near Queenstown.

The losses come in the same period that Fletcher Building fired its chief executive and recorded a $292 million loss at its construction division after failing to manage two major building contracts. Fletcher has said the construction industry faces capacity constraints which have driven up costs, squeezed margins and resulted in shortages of labour.

McConnell Dowell was set up in New Zealand engineers Malcolm McConnell and Jim Dowell in 1961 and within about a decade had expanded into Australia and Asia. It listed on the NZ stock exchange in the 1980s after the reverse takeover of rival construction firm Hawkins Holdings. Aveng acquired 100 percent of the business via a scheme of arrangement in 2003.

Aveng has been going through its own struggles in the face of broader losses. Chief executive Kobus Verster resigned with immediate effect in September, when the company reported its delayed full-year results, which showed a loss of 6.4 billion rand, partly reflecting 2.7 billion rand of impairments. Executive chair Eric Diack announced a strategic review of the business to turn around an unacceptable performance.

Aveng's McConnell Dowell business was restructured in 2016 with an overhaul of its management team and its focus for 2017 was to be to maintain focus on core competencies with "enhanced focus on project selection," according to the 2016 annual report. The business was restructured into four geographic business units  Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, Southeast Asia and Built Environs  "to reduce complexity and improve efficiency."

Aveng made a capital injection into its Australian operations and renegotiated its banking arrangements. It was more upbeat about New Zealand, though, noting that the market "continues to gain momentum, with government investment in large-scale transport and water projects, which will continue to fuel growth for the region and expansion of the construction industry."

(BusinessDesk)

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General Capital (GEN:NZ) Concludes Goodwill Discussions

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Until this moment I have been forced to listen while media and politicians alike have told me "what Canadians think". In all that time they never once asked.

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Canberrans accused of child sex offences may not get a fair trial under proposed changes to the Crimes Act in the wake of the Royal Commission, the ACT Bar Association has warned.

ACT Attorney-General Gordon Ramsay last week introduced a bill to make changes to key child sex offences, to help secure a surer path to successful prosecutions.

ACT Bar president Ken Archer is concerned changes to child sex offences could affect a defendants right to a fair trial. Credit:Karleen Minney

The changes create a new offence for engaging in a "sexual relationship" with a child, based on prosecutors specifying an overall period of the "relationship" and two cases of abuse within that period.

Mr Ramsay told the Assembly the changes would allow prosecutions consistent "with the ways in which victims remember abuse" and that its retrospective effect was "in recognition of the fact that delay is a typical, rather than a peculiar, feature of child sexual abuse".
Canberra track work rider and picnic jockey Samara Johnson has died in a car crash, while her partner and Thoroughbred Park trainer Garry Kirkup was seriously injured.

New South Wales Police confirmed the the 25-year-old was killed in the single-vehicle crash on Gundagai Road at Eurongilly, 41km west of Gundagai, just before 2.30pm Sunday.

A file photo of Garry Kirkup from 2004. Credit:Richard Briggs

It is understood the pair was returning from visiting Ms Johnson's family in Coolamon when the car left the road and hit a tree head-on, with Mr Kirkup at the wheel.

Mr Kirkup, 54, was airlifted to Canberra Hospital with severe abdominal injuries, before undergoing emergency surgery and remains in a critical condition.
A victim of domestic violence was nearly deported because an understaffed Canberra women's shelter almost missed the Immigration department's reporting deadlines.

Beryl Women's Shelter staff say there is a "significant risk" it may be forced to shut due to funding cuts and an increased demand for their services.

Manager of Beryl's Women Shelter, Robyn Martin. Credit:Jamila Toderas

Its staff wrote to an ACT parliamentary inquiry into government responses to domestic violence claiming the ACT Specialist Homelessness Services funding model is "inadequate and overwhelmed by demand".

The shelter is funded under the National Affordable Housing Agreement, which is matched by the ACT government.
Almost daily, newspapers in the US, Europe and China release eye-catching headlines about China's technological advances and economic prowess.

The accomplishments are real. But they're not necessarily evidence of Western failure or Chinese invincibility.

In touting such achievements, commentators too often overlook the structural factors that have shaped them.

Economists now recognise just how much of economic interaction is driven by such forces. For instance, the gravity model in international trade posits that the distance between countries impacts how much they trade. No matter how warm the ties between China and Bolivia, sheer distance will always limit their bilateral trade volumes. By contrast, despite frosty relations, large amounts of trade and investment flow between China and Taiwan owing to proximity and shared language.
Toyota will build the first megawatt-scale hydrogen fuel and renewable generation plant, setting a new energy benchmark that experts hope with pave the way for Australia's hydrogen industry.

Toyota North America will build the plant to support its operations at the Port of Long Beach, in the US, using agricultural waste to generate electricity, water and hydrogen.

By 2030, between 10 million and 15 million cars and half a million trucks will be hydrogen-powered globally. Credit:Peter DaSilva

Dubbed the Tri-Gen facility, the plant will generate around 2.35 megawatts of electricity and close to one tonne of hydrogen per day, providing enough daily power for more than 2300 homes and 1500 hydrogen-powered cars.

It will come online in 2020, and be used as proof of concept for large-scale hydrogen generation and renewable energy plants.
Anti-marriage equality members of the House of Representatives who ignore manager of Opposition Business, Tony Bourke's, call to refrain from nobbling the same sex marriage bill with unnecessary amendments do so at their own peril.

Mr Bourke rightly suggested it would be a tragedy if the same sort of shenanigans that saw last week's Senate debate degenerate into farce occurred in the House of Reps.

"We could very easily get to a situation where the Senate has approved marriage equality in one form, the House of Representatives has approved marriage equality in a different form, and we get to the end of the year and we still don't have the change," he said.

Such an outcome would not go down well with the voters who had spoken loudly and clearly on the issue.
Illustration: Andrew Dyson And we would have no idea of the depth and meaning of any of this if it weren't for the groundbreaking reporting by Fairfax Media and the ABC. Labor has been caught in a more flagrantly compromising position, but both sides of politics were in the process of being compromised. Huang Xiangmo and Bill Shorten. Credit:James Brickwood This recalls a quote attributed to one of communism's founders, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them."

The general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, has described the party's foreign influence activities as one of its three "magic weapons", a quote from founder Mao Zedong. Huang Xiangmo with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. In party argot, building foreign influence is called "united front work" and the party accordingly has a United Front Work Department. The other two "magic weapons" are activities that build the Chinese Communist Party, and military operations. Xiangmo Huang and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

As New Zealand sinologist Anne-Marie Brady of Canterbury University has written: "The Chinese government's foreign influence activities have accelerated under Xi. The focus of media attention has been on Australia, but the People's Republic of China's attempts to guide, buy, or coerce political influence abroad are widespread." But why? It's not as if the Chinese Communist Party is trying to export revolution, as the Russian Communists did. Huang Xiangmo and Sam Dastyari at a press conference for the Chinese community in Sydney in July, 2016. What is China's party trying to achieve? "At its core," says an American expert on China's influence operations, Peter Mattis, "to survive, the party has to manipulate the ideas around it. "What questions are asked, what's on the spectrum of acceptable opinion, there's a consistent effort to shape that. It's in the party's DNA, it's what they do," says the former CIA counterespionage analyst.

Is it realistic for the party, which appears so powerful, to be so fearful of its own survival? "As long as Western liberal power is stronger internationally than it is - in the US, Australia, Japan, Europe, Taiwan - there's always the fear that power will sweep into China and remove the Chinese Communist Party," Mattis tells me on a visit to Australia for a conference with Australian officials. "It's not as if we're about to invade China. But if the capability is there, you have to distrust it - it's a straight realist view." So the party is constantly seeking to shape ideas and debates at home and abroad, as well as the "day to day issues, the constant discussion about building relationships with people who have any sort of a platform - celebrities, public intellectuals, journalists." Foreign business people who are permitted to succeed in China are used as "icebreakers" to make a path for party access to their home countries, as Mattis puts it.

The prime channel for influence operations abroad is the Chinese diaspora population living around the world. Western societies have done a poor job of protecting these Chinese communities, says Mattis, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, who also happens to be a nephew of US Defence Secretary James Mattis. "In the US in the 19th century, there were Chinatowns that grew up in cities almost completely separate from the local populations. As long as trouble didn't spill over, [US authorities] were content to let whatever criminal gangs control them, not that different to the Italian or Irish communities. "Then the Kuomintang [or Chinese Nationalist Party] took over from the gangs and now the Chinese Communist Party has taken over. We are paying the consequences now of our lack of awareness." He says the US has a poor grasp of Chinese Communist Party operations inside America. For instance, as Chinese security officials go abroad in the so-called Foxhunt operation to pursue Chinese citizens accused of corruption, "there have been Chinese public security officials running around the US to deliver threats and tell people to go home, and they operate with impunity - some are known, and some aren't." He says that while the US demonstrates an impressive grasp of illegal Russian operatives and detects and arrests them from time to time, "I don't think any Western country is at a level of sophistication to be able to do that on the Chinese side." Partly it's been a "failure to take the Chinese seriously".

Mattis believes that Australia has a higher level of awareness than the US of Chinese Communist Party operations within its borders, partly thanks to the Sam Dastyari case. But he points out that Australia lacks vital legal protections - a ban on foreign political donations, for instance, and laws against agents seeking to influence Australian policy and laws on behalf of foreign political parties and governments. Attorney-General George Brandis is expected to table such a bill in the Parliament this week, and not a moment too soon. Huang is only one of the Chinese businessmen whom ASIO warned against, and influencing political parties is only one of his fields of operation. Loading If a foreign political party is going to hang us, the least we can do is refuse to sell them the rope.
Why do you think people hate on banks so much?

My hypothesis is the reasons go a lot deeper than just life insurance and financial planning scandals.

People need banks. In an individual sense we need them to keep our money safe and loan us money for big purchases. And in a societal sense, as the GFC proved, we need a strong and stable banking system.

When something crosses the line from being a "want" into a "need" it changes the whole psychology of the consumer. If you need something, it makes you vulnerable, and vulnerability implies a certain powerlessness in the transaction. Consumers have the power of choice, but when you're dealing with four main banks that are all very similar, that's not much real power.
White Ribbon has yet another black mark against its name. Fairfax's Lisa Visentin on Saturday revealed a plan by the men's organisation to accept money from a publican if the authorities let him install more poker machines in his venue. White Ribbon only changed its mind on the money when Visentin called.

The idea that White Ribbon could possibly accept money from the proceeds of gambling must be counter to the values of the organisation. Financial stress is a key indicator of family violence and there is extensive research that shows the relationship between poker machines and family violence. Francis Markham's groundbreaking study shows areas with more than seven poker machines per 1000 adults have, after controlling for all other factors, 20 per cent more family violence incidents including verbal abuse and 30 per cent more family violence assaults.

Poker machines are a danger to public health  and they are particularly dangerous to women  80 per cent of the family violence incidents in his data set were directed towards women. Fairfield Hotel, the proposed site of these new machines, would only be adding to an already saturated market. As at July 2017, Fairfield had 3841 machines, one machine per 43 people  almost double the state average of one machine per 81 people.

This governance implosion comes two years after scrutiny of White Ribbon's ambassador program. It was forced to distance itself from psychiatrist Tanveer Ahmed for his remarks about family violence (the short version of what he said is that men are violent because women are increasingly empowered). Ahmed stepped down from the role (he was not sacked by White Ribbon). Other ambassadors have been dumped after incidents of family violence were uncovered. From 2200 ambassadors on its site in 2015, now fewer than 100 men are listed. Prominent men on the list include Tasmanian former federal politician Andrew Nikolic.
The future of a controversial Queensland mega-mine has suffered another setback with project funding from China looking increasingly unlikely.

The Greens have heralded the end of the project after a second Chinese bank ruled out providing any funding for the Adani Carmichael coal mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin.

Anti-Adani coal mine protesters during the recent Queensland election.. Credit:AAP

"Any financier with any sense doesn't want Adani," Greens senator Andrew Bartlett told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

"It's time for Adani to give it up, save their money and for the politicians of Queensland to focus on the issues that will deliver genuine jobs for regional Queensland."
Constitutional expert George Williams says Katy Gallagher could survive a challenge to her eligibility to sit in Parliament, after it was revealed the Labor frontbencher was a dual citizen until more than a month after the 2016 election.

Legal advice to the former ACT chief minister from British and Australian barristers says she took every reasonable step to renounce citizenship by descent from her English-born father Charles Gallagher before nominating for the July 2 poll, and that she meets the standard set by the High Court in recent section 44 cases.

But documents provided to the Senate show the Labor frontbencher was "at the date of her nomination for the 2016 election, a British citizen by descent" and that her moves to renounce in April 2016 took until August 16 to be completed by the UK Home Office.

Amid reports she could have received Ecuadorian citizenship through her mother, Senator Gallagher gave a speech to Parliament on September 4, saying she had renounced any entitlement to citizenship through her father, who was born in the English city of Stoke-on-Trent, "out of an abundance of caution".
NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro has stood by his calls for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to resign, admitting his relationship with the PM "is broken".

Speaking at a road safety campaign launch in Queanbeyan on Monday, Mr Barilaro said he would not resign and he was a "brawler" who wore his heart on his sleeve.

Strong words: NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro says the PM should resign. Credit:Kate Geraghty

"I can't hide from it. My relationship with the Prime Minister is a broken relationship," Mr Barilaro said.

"I made those comments and I own those comments and it's something that I now will have to work through.
Looking up to the public gallery from his seat in the House of Representatives, Liberal MP Tim Wilson neared the end of his speech and paused.

"There's only one thing left to do," he said, choking up slightly. "Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me?"

It was, in all likelihood, the first marriage proposal to be made on the floor of Parliament. And the answer came back fast and loud: "Yes."

The word has been heard ad nauseam in recent weeks, but rarely in a context so personal. The Melbourne pair have considered themselves fiances for years, and now, as same-sex marriage enters the final stretch of parliamentary debate, their long-awaited wedding day finally nears.
As Tim Wilson made his first speech in Parliament on the final day of winter last year, he looked up toward the public gallery where his fiance, Ryan Bolger, watched on with pride.

He spoke of the sacrifices they had made for his career, and of the rings attached to their left hands. "They are the answer to a question we still cannot ask," he told the chamber.

Fifteen months later, standing in the very same spot in the House of Representatives on Monday, he asked the question. "Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me?"

The answer came back fast and loud: "Yes."
Former Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs has apologised for the handling of the Queensland University of Technology case in which university students were taken to court under section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act over Facebook posts about Indigenous-only computer labs.

But Professor Triggs praised the Commission's handling of the case as "excellent" despite admitting that one of the reasons the HRC never told the students accused of wrongdoing that they were being investigated for more than a year was because the commission didn't have their contact details. She conceded this was an error but blamed QUT for the mistake.

In May 2013, Cindy Prior, an Indigenous woman and administrative officer at the campus, told several QUT students to leave an Indigenous-only lab. The next day, posts on Facebook said: "Just got kicked out of the unsigned Indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation?" and "I wonder where the white supremacist computer lab is."

It was only in 2015 that the students learnt of the legal action.
As an institution, Parliament struggles almost as much with agreement as it does with division.

So much was clear as the House of Representatives embarked, somewhat quietly, on its historic journey towards marriage equality on Monday.

Initially at least, many MPs stayed away. Even the public galleries were empty. Journalists were elsewhere.

The "yes" voting Malcolm Turnbull was there though along with a smattering of Coalition figures including all the key lower house campaigners for change: Warren Entsch, Trevor Evans, Tim Wilson, Trent Zimmerman, and the Nationals' cabinet minister, Darren Chester.
The NSW government has bowed to pressure and will build a new primary school in Green Square, which is expected to become Sydney's most densely populated suburb by 2030.

The government will sign a memorandum of understanding with the City of Sydney on Tuesday at the former South Sydney hospital site.

A new school will be built to cope with the apartment boom at Green Square. Credit:Peter Rae

The decision follows ongoing criticism from community leaders including Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore, developers and community groups over the lack of plans for a new school in the rapidly-growing suburb, which is surrounded by schools that are already at or over enrolment capacity.

The City of Sydney has one of the highest projected rises in school-aged residents of 41 per cent over the next 10 years, and school enrolments have already been growing by more than 13 per cent since 2012.
The commission held (after the fact) that such involvement was of a nature requiring permission, even though the lawyer had not acted as an advocate. "The maxim of statutory interpretation that what is prohibited directly cannot be done indirectly," the full bench observed, "would tell against an overly narrow interpretation [of the relevant section] ... which permits its statutory purpose to be defeated or circumvented."

The Woolworths case encouraged commissioner Ian Cambridge, who, in late November, denied Australia Post subsidiary Startrack permission to be legally represented. Startrack's external lawyers had submitted that the complex circumstances of the case made representation reasonable and, if the application was denied, the lawyers would in any event provide help via a McKenzie friend (a common-law rule that lets unrepresented litigants receive in-court aid from a "friend", whether legally qualified or not). Cambridge rejected both submissions, holding that representation would give rise to unnecessary formality contrary to the statutory scheme's objectives, and that the Woolworths decision prevented any other form of legal help being given without permission.

Lawyers at the big end of town roundly criticised these developments, perhaps concerned about what they might mean for their employment practices. Partners variously told the Financial Review that the Woolworths decision was "outrageous", "unfair" and "ridiculous". Law Council president Fiona McLeod, SC, even suggested the judgment "raises serious access-to-justice concerns".

The other strand of jurisprudence, which at a policy level seems entirely inconsistent with the first, enabled the Australian Government Solicitor to appear for the federal government as of right  i.e. without requiring permission  before the Fair Work Commission. The AGS describes itself as "one of Australia's largest national legal services providers, with offices in every capital city and approximately 320 lawyers".

Until recently, it was common practice for AGS lawyers to seek permission to appear. However, earlier this year, lawyers at the Attorney-General's Department offshoot took the contrary view that, because they are government employees, they satisfy the in-house exception in the Fair Work Act. This interpretation of the AGS's position was upheld in Gibbens v Commonwealth of Australia.
Using labour-hire firms to provide staff to do work in the public service that otherwise would be done by public servants offends the spirit and quite possibly the letter of section 67 of the constitution and related laws. No doubt labour-hire firms are diligent in recruiting staff; however, they cannot be expected to apply the kind of recruitment assessments used in the public service that exist to serve public interest tests not relevant to the private sector. It's not good enough for a Centrelink spokesman to try to justify the use of labour-hire firms by saying: "The department has engaged contractors for many years for specialist services and to support day-to-day operations to help fill short-term requirements for finite periods." All the requirements the spokesman mentions can be readily satisfied by employment under the Public Service Act. Therefore, the Centrelink gift in the stocking must also be discarded. Treasury chief John Fraser strongly supports public service decentralisation ... to the CBDs of Sydney and Melbourne. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Now what's this down at the stocking's heel, as it were? It's a brown envelope that seems to contain some coins. No hang on, it's the Treasury, which appears to have caught a dose of Joyce-Nash syndrome, a disease named after the public service decentralisation policies of the $40,000 man, Barnaby Joyce, and his former deputy, Fiona Nash. Yes, the Treasury is also moving staff out of Canberra, although not into the bush. Thus, according to its latest report, staff in Canberra were reduced by about 45, 22 of whom went to Sydney, seven to Melbourne and one to Perth. What's going on? The Treasury's secretary, John Fraser, says these moves are intended to "foster closer ties with local stakeholders and attract talent from the private sector" allowing "us to engage more effectively with the private sector, other agencies based outside Canberra and people interested in the development of policy". It's to be hoped thinking of this calibre is not affecting the Treasury's advice to the government on economic policy. Indeed, it would be more reassuring if Fraser were to show a keener appreciation of the fact that, as amorphous as it may be, the Treasury's key "stakeholders" are its ministers and the government and, through them, all citizens. There's nothing wrong with wanting to "engage more effectively with the private sector" but bunging 30 more people into Sydney and Melbourne gives the impression that those in the private sector in these centres may get the inside running. It would be interesting to know, for example, how much time Treasury staff in the two major cities have spent rubbing shoulders with those from the business community compared to those from charitable and voluntary institutions and unions. And what about "stakeholders" in Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart, Darwin and Perth (assuming that one person in Western Australia can't do much) and, dare it be said, "rural and regional" Australia?

The Treasury's advice to governments should be based on a broad appreciation of the public interest as it affects all citizens. That cause is unlikely to be much advanced by having 70 people in Sydney and Melbourne where they can be duchessed by the self-interests that thrive there. In assessing public sentiment over and above that provided by ministers, the government and the parliament, the Treasury should, as much as possible, give all parts of the community equal chances to blow into its ears and not privilege those in some cities who already have stronger voices than most others. Sorry, Comrade Howard, the real problem is not 'rank socialism', it's 'rank capitalism'. Ross Gittins wrote recently that the Treasury's influence is on the wane. In particular, he said it "isn't up to speed on microeconomic reform" in health, education and infrastructure. It's hard to know if this is true but, if it is, the Treasury may be better off putting its eggs in these baskets rather than engaging more with elements of the private sector whose views on such matters as company tax and the bank levy are only too lamentably obvious. As for luring staff into the Treasury's nest, it's often been difficult to attract people from Sydney and Melbourne to Canberra. However, it's a step too far to accommodate those who fail to appreciate Canberra's charms by locating Treasury positions in the two major cities, where they're separated from most of their policy colleagues in the national capital. Moreover, attracting top-notch people to senior positions in Sydney and Melbourne will always be tough at pay rates the Treasury can afford under the Commonwealth's crazy remuneration policy. So far as graduate recruitment is concerned, the Treasury had over 1000 applicants last year for 35 vacancies  not much of a problem there, it would seem. So, all up, the Treasury can't be allowed to remain in the Christmas stocking this year. Sorry. That leaves only two items therein.

The first is a well-wrapped packet (possibly Janette's work) from former prime minister John Howard. It's addressed to those Coalition MPs keen for a royal commission on the banks. It contains a message in Britannic Bold font reproducing Howard's recent allegation that such an inquiry would be "rank socialism". Sorry, comrade, your gift must also be turfed out because, in this case, the real problem is not "rank socialism", it's "rank capitalism". Too bad. That leaves only one item in the stocking: a small volume in the Wit and Wisdom of Secretaries of Commonwealth Departments series. It's from Mike Pezzullo, pro tem the immigration and Border Force supremo. This work would make an excellent Christmas beach book, especially if it could be waterproofed. Thus, when you're chased from the surf by marauding schools of hammerhead sharks, and the grandchildren who've been entrusted to your care have retired to the sand dunes for a few cigarettes, you could turn to Pezzullo, whose engaging bon mots can be taken as either wit, wisdom or a happy combination of both, according to your disposition. That is to say, you can laugh and be edified simultaneously. Here are a handful of randomly selected gems that should have you itching for more: "... global contract hitmen will soon have their own apps."

"... can Leviathan protect the Shire once the Shire is connected to the internet?" (The national broadband network may have more to answer for than is generally imagined.)

"You can never stop thinking about how to improve your security settings ..."

When a youngster, Pezzullo says he "was always pouring over atlases and globes". (The text does not make clear just what he was pouring over them.)

"... I had a very boring teenage period ..."

"In the space between the force of history on the one hand and the realm of choice ... lies strategy."

" ... in the end, rules have to be enforced." Gripping stuff and the only remaining gift in the stocking for this year; no small consolation though. Let's add a dozen copies. For next year, the steps needed to get replacements for labour hire and the Treasury back into the stocking are obvious enough, and it's to be hoped Pezzullo will still be around. Fixing the abject failure of public service remuneration policy is not difficult, although the method may be worth spelling out.
A coroner has recommended the introduction of mandatory carbon monoxide alarms in all boats and vehicles with sealable cabins after a "talented and experienced" sailor died after succumbing to fumes from a gas stove he had been using for warmth.

Naval architect Nicholas Banfield, 23, had picked up his girlfriend at Glebe and sailed to Middle Harbour for a romantic meal moored off Balmoral Beach on July 1, 2016.

After a feed of nachos and one alcoholic drink, the couple retired into the cabin of his 8.4-metre timber vessel Aquarius.

And with a winter chill in the air, Mr Banfield and NL, who can not be identified, sealed the hatches and turned on the LPG stove to keep the cabin warm.
The NSW Coroner has delivered an open finding into the death of Matthew Leveson.

Mr Leveson, 20, was last seen in the early hours of September 23, 2007, when he left an inner Sydney nightclub with his boyfriend Michael Atkins.

Mr Atkins, 54, continued to claim as recently as last year that his former lover was alive and could be living in Thailand.

However, he then led police to Matthew's skeletal remains in an unmarked grave in the Royal National Park in May 2017.
A Sydney woman who fatally stabbed her cousin after a violent and prolonged argument over her Mercedes has been found guilty of manslaughter.

Katherine Abdallah, 37, submitted she had acted in self-defence when she killed Suzie Sarkis, 21, at her Brighton-le-Sands townhouse on February 9, 2013.

Katherine Abdallah, rear, is escorted to a prison vehicle after being found guilty of manslaughter. Credit:AAP

However, after almost five days of deliberations, a NSW Supreme Court jury on Monday found Abdallah guilty of manslaughter, before her bail was revoked and the case put over to December 13.

During the trial, the jury heard that Abdallah was subjected to "gratuitous, prolonged and relentless violence" from her cousin before she fatally stabbed Ms Sarkis in self-defence.
A man who allegedly attempted to abduct a young girl from Paddy's Markets in Sydney has been arrested after he was earlier seen taking an interest in two other children.

NSW Police say the 41-year-old man attended the popular markets in Haymarket on Sunday afternoon and was observed watching a small child.

Police said the man was arrested after he was seen taking an interest in a number of children at Paddy's Market. Credit:Daniel Munoz

He then approached a second child, an 18-month-old girl, before the toddler's parents noticed and picked her up.

The man was then seen ushering a four or five-year-old girl out on to Hay Street before witnesses intervened and the 41-year-old was detained.
Officers from Queensland's corruption watchdog have executed a search warrant on Logan City Council's headquarters south of Brisbane.

Councillor Darren Power said a Crime and Corruption Commission officer interrupted a council budget meeting on Monday about 1pm and told the 11 councillors present he had a search warrant.

We were able to get a copy of the warrant up on the board, we had it on the projector," he said.

There were eight grounds, but 45 areas they were actually looking at."
The legal team for the man accused of murdering Maureen Boyce has moved to discredit the dead Brisbane socialite and her husband.

New Zealand-based doctor Thomas Chris Lang is on trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court after he pleaded not guilty to fatally stabbing the 68-year-old in her Kangaroo Point sub-penthouse in October 2015.

Maureen Boyce was found dead in her Kangaroo Point sub-penthouse in 2015.

Defence barrister Tony Glynn QC started delivering his closing argument to the jury on Monday.

He read a series of messages between Lang and Ms Boyce that showed she wanted him to come and visit her in Australia.
Plane Pal's sales dropped by 70 per cent but Cardone was not prepared to give up without a fight and started lobbying the airlines. The Legs Up Plane Hammock in use. "It actually could have ruined the business but I was not willing to let it break us," she says. "I knew if the correct information could be put out there the message would get through. It was our customers who saved us, they shared their photos and videos and they campaigned the airlines for us. As a business owner there is no better compliment." Overturning the ban A spokesperson for Virgin Australia told Fairfax Media the airline's turnaround came after extensive safety testing of the products.

The Legs Up Plane Hammock has not been approved by Qantas or Virgin. "We made this change because we believe the comfort of all of our guests is important, and provided these products met our safety requirements and are used appropriately by our guests on our flights then we're happy to welcome them on board," the spokesperson says. The devices are only permitted to be used when sitting in a window seat or in the middle seat of the centre block and must be included as part of Virgin's carry-on baggage allocation. They are not permitted to be used in exit rows. Jenny Cayzer is the founder of the Legs Up Plane Hammock Sales are back on track for Cardone who has grown the business from a "one man band" to a team of six and expects Plane Pal to turn over $1 million by the end of the year.

Desperate parents Jenny Cayzer, the founder of the Legs Up Plane Hammock, still hasn't got approval for her sleep device from Virgin. Cayzer launched her business in February last year after having the device, which hangs off the back of airline seats, assessed by a CASA approved aviation engineer. "Our product was so new that the airlines were sort of taken unawares," she says. "Some airlines have embraced it and other airlines have not. That's up to them and I think eventually competition and awareness will drive them to have another look." Cayzer says there is a real need for products such as the Legs Up Plane Hammock.

"It's not just you the parent, it's the passengers around, you think 'My gosh everyone is looking at me'," she says. "This can really solve a big problem for small children." Cayzer says she hopes Virgin and Qantas will change their tune. "[Qantas] wouldn't even look at our new prototype which I think for a big company is damning," she says. "In the meantime other airlines are accepting them. Singapore Airlines accepts the product and gives guidance on where to sit, Emirates says it won't accept the devices on its website but on a day-to-day basis people will say 'I won't wake that sleeping child'." Despite the ban The Legs Up Plane Hammock has hit $1 million turnover and Cayzer hopes her new prototype will be approved by the Australian airlines.
Amazon has officially launched its Australian online store, offering everything from pyjamas to power tools, and from video games to vinyl records. While there are some good deals to be had, however, the selection is far from comprehensive.

It should come as no surprise that the Amazon store's offering isn't as robust here as it is elsewhere. You have products stocked and sold by Amazon itself, and then you have items stocked by other "Marketplace" sellers. The result in many categories is a handful of big brands at competitive prices from Amazon, and then a pretty strange collection of other stuff, often at no discount compared to other retailers.

For example if you look at shoes, there's a decent selection of Crocs, New Balance and Blundstones offered by Amazon. IFL Store has a wide range of Vans. But if you want Nike shoes, there is a total of one option, sold by GunyahOz Trading, which doesn't specify what size it is.

Other categories fare better. For example the Baby section has a big collection from the adorable kids brand Skip Hop, and they're all cheaper than you'd find at Toys R Us or Baby Bunting. There's also a banner ad on the Amazon homepage and app promoting a deal on Huggies: a "one-month supply" for $65 (this is 216 newborn nappies, but the count goes down as the nappies get bigger). This is cheaper than you'd find at Woolies, which offers boxes with a little less than half the number of nappies for $33.
Melbourne Express: Tuesday, December 5, 2017

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A man walks through flood water in Euroa. Credit:Brendan McCarthy "He'd been explaining in quite strong language to make everyone aware of the gravity of the threat. If you're going to introduce a scale of that nature, you're going to get a high number." Dr Tupper said the bureau's prediction of record rainfall had been correct but the location had changed slightly as the weather passed. A Maserati was flooded after the driver tried to navigate a flooded underpass in Seddon on Saturday Credit:Sarah Schubert/Facebook Ultimately, more than 200mm of rain fell in Kinglake, not in Melbourne where forecasters had initially predicted.

"In every event, there's a risk of under-warning and a risk of over-warning," Dr Tupper said. "We know when we went out so hard it caused a lot of disruption. People in affected areas also prepared and that was great." Mr Lapsley later told radio station 3AW the bureau needed to reassess its messaging processes for future weather events. "I think we've got some work to do [with the bureau]," he said. Mr Lapsley suggested the bureau use "spot weather warnings" with more up-to-date information on localised and changing weather conditions.

Mr Williams was the main spokesman for the bureau, but he was not the only forecaster or official to make extreme warnings. Senior forecaster Richard Carlyon said the storm was likely to be unprecedented in intensity. He said the bureau did not normally give severe weather warnings four days in advance, but had made an exception because of the level of concern last week. Mr Lapsley also made strong warnings, urging Victorians to stay indoors on Friday. "Stay at home indoors if you can, don't be outside," he said.

"Plan Friday, plan Friday afternoon in particular, know where you will be and know what you need to do for your own safety." The concern led Premier Daniel Andrews to go as far as stopping Question Time in Parliament on Thursday to warn Victorians about the threat to public safety. "This is a very serious matter and one that will pose a very severe challenge to communities right across the state and will be a direct challenge to public safety," Mr Andrews said. But Melbourne was spared the brunt of the storm, with 107 millimetres of a predicted 200 millimetres recorded in suburbs Kew, Doncaster and Blackburn. Dr Tupper said the bureau reviewed its own performance after every weather event, in terms of the accuracy of predictions and what could be done better.

He said major weather events never developed exactly as predicted but the forecasts were becoming much more accurate. "When we see a major event developing and we've got the ability to talk about it four days out ... we're always going to back our professional judgement," he said. "It's never going to be exactly right ... it's always better to speak about it." Coming up with an accurate weather prediction up to four days in advance of a storm was always difficult, he said, and not unlike forecasting the location and speed of a tropical cyclone, where forecasts can often change. "The way that this has panned out is essentially very similar to what we were predicting," he said.

"I guess the good news is, from the Melbourne perspective in particular and those in western Victoria, the event hasn't affected that area as much. "But, despite all the disruption of preparation - we know that events have been cancelled and people have put in a lot of work - it was certainly the kind of event worth preparing for. "So, if we had our time again, yes, we would put out an event with similar language to that." Melbourne's CBD received 72 millimetres over the three day period, while Ferny Creek, in the south-east, copped 154 millimetres. Coburg, in Melbourne's north, was hit with 127 millimetres.

Regional towns of Myrtleford and Euroa, however, were inundated, with some homes and a caravan park damaged. Euroa received 159 millimetres, while Rosewhite, in the state's north-eat and the closest catchment to Myrtleford, had 142 millimetres. The bureau said the worst of the weather had passed on Monday. "In most areas the worst is well and truly over," bureau forecaster Dean Stewart said. A number of moderate flood warnings remain in place including for the Yarra, Ovens and King rivers.
A loving Melbourne mother who was "at the end of her tether" when she tried to kill herself and her disabled adult son has been spared jail.

Yvette Nichol, 63, had been the primary carer for her autistic and epileptic son Brett, 34, for all his life until she tried to kill him and herself at their Eltham North home on May 27.

The court heard Yvette Nichol (left) was a loving mother who reached the end of her tether as sole carer of her disabled son. Credit:Mal Fairclough

Brett suffers harrowing night terrors, which had been getting more frequent and severe in the years leading up to the incident.

One day, after writing apologetic letters to her loved ones, she attempted to end both their lives.
A man accused of murdering a mother of three is alleged to have asked his former partner to provide an alibi for the day the woman was attacked in her home.

Police allege Scott Alan Murdoch asked Sarah Whyte to lie for him to investigators in the weeks after Kylie Blackwood was repeatedly stabbed in her Pakenham home, on August 1, 2013.

Kylie Blackwood was found dead in her Pakenham home.

"I need to ask you something but you can't go blabbering around with your big mouth," Mr Murdoch is alleged to have said to Ms Whyte, according to a prosecution summary released by Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday.

When Ms Whyte asked Mr Murdoch if he murdered Ms Blackwood, he said: "No, but I need you to be an alibi for that day. I've been questioned for that."
Two young girls who filmed themselves hitting a dog in the face with a rubber thong say they are "extremely remorseful, ashamed and embarrassed" after an RSPCA WA inspector tracked them down via a video the pair posted on social media.

The girls reportedly filmed the video at a home in Quinns Rocks last week.

It was determined that it would not be in the dog's best interest to remove it from its home at this stage.

The video shows a young girl laughing as she hits the dog repeatedly in the face with a rubber thong, while her friend films.

RSPCA WA chief executive David van Ooran put out a call for information regarding the case, and the organisation said "dozens" of people reported the video to the agency for animal cruelty.
US President Donald Trump opened himself up to obstruction of justice claims on Saturday by revealing he knew his former national security adviser lied to the FBI.

In a tweet playing down the Russian links controversy, Trump said he knew Michael Flynn lied to agents before he left the administration in February.

US President Donald Trump has opened himself up to obstruction of justice claims.

But the comment was seized upon immediately because Trump allegedly encouraged the FBI to drop an investigation into Flynn the same month.

Knowing Flynn had lied to the FBI - a criminal offence - but still telling investigators to stop their case would amount to obstruction of justice, critics said.
Homs, Syria: As the war to recapture Syria from Islamic State moves inexorably closer to completion, the scars left behind in Syria's cities are prompting serious questions about who will rebuild.

Jets believed to be Syrian and Russian have struck heavily crowded residential areas in a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus, killing at least 27 people and injuring dozens in the third week of a stepped-up assault, residents, aid workers and a war monitor say.

Damage from airstrikes hit in Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, Syria in November. Credit:AP

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said the casualties on Sunday were the biggest daily death toll since the stepped-up strikes began 20 days ago. The monitor said nearly 200 civilians were killed in strikes and shelling during that period.

Meanwhile, in the city of Homs, a once well-to-do suburb of wide streets and high-rise apartments is a ghost of its former self.
Yemen's Houthi rebels said they killed their ally and former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, as their alliance that has fought a Saudi-led coalition for nearly three years collapsed.

The Houthis announced Saleh's killing in a statement on Monday, after the al-Mithaq newspaper affiliated with Saleh earlier denied rumours of his death.

In this photo from January, tribesmen loyal to Houthi rebels chant slogans during a gathering aimed at mobilising more fighters into battlefronts to fight pro-government forces, in Sanaa, Yemen. Credit:AP

Fighting between Saleh's forces and Houthi rebels backed by Iran escalated over the weekend, with the thud of tank artillery and other heavy weapons piercing the air. Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam claimed progress, saying fighters had wrested control of homes belonging to Saleh's son, Ahmed, and nephew Tarik, the commander of the former president's forces.

For the past two years, Saudi Arabia's southern neighbour has been divided into two camps, with the government of the ousted Saudi-backed elected president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, encamped in Aden and the Iran-backed Houthis in control of Sana'a and parts of the north. The Saudi-led coalition that formed in 2015 to try to reinstate Hadi has devastated swaths of the country with airstrikes, and al-Qaeda militants have exploited the chaos to expand their foothold in the Arabian Peninsula.
Northern Irish unionists have reportedly scuppered a Brexit 'divorce deal' that was about to be agreed between Britain and the EU, because they believed it threatened the economic and political integrity of the UK.

The deal is tantalisingly close  but reports of last-minute concessions by prime minister Theresa May infuriated the DUP who are propping up her minority government in Westminster.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar Credit:AP

Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said he had been told the deal would be done on Monday, but the UK appeared to have changed its mind after DUP leader Arlene Foster told May she would not support such a deal.

The draft deal was said to promise there would be no difference in regulations between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit, in order to avoid customs checkpoints which could see a return to border tensions.
Valletta: Maltese police have arrested 10 suspects in the murder of an anti-corruption blogger, the country's prime minister said on Monday.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed almost two months ago after her car was blown up as she drove away from her house in northern Malta.

Political blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed when her car was blown up. Credit:AP

All of the suspects are Maltese nationals and most have a criminal record, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said, without providing any further details. The police have 48 hours to question the suspects, arraign them or release them.

Mr Muscat initially announced eight arrests at a press conference, then later said on Twitter that two more had been apprehended.
President Donald Trump has endorsed Alabama Republican Roy Moore in a US Senate special election, despite allegations from multiple women who accused the former state Supreme Court judge of sexual misconduct.

The move prompted the Republican National Committee and a pro-Trump fundraising body to change their minds and begin directing funding his way, boosting a candidate who had been largely cut off by his party.

Senate Republican leaders remained critical of Moore on Monday, warning that the former judge is likely to face an immediate ethics probe if he is elected next week. But the America First Action super PAC, following Trump's lead, announced that it would spent $1.1 million to elect Moore, while the RNC said it was returning to the field after pulling out in mid-November.

Moore has been accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward teenage girls  including a 14 year old  when he was in his 30s.
SIMPSON BAY:--- His Majesty King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima arrived here on Thursday, November 30th, 2017 aboard a Falcon 7X aircraft. The Royal couple landed at 12:32pm at the Princess Juliana International Airport (SXM).

The Dutch Royals arrived from Saba on Saturday, December 2, 2017 after participating in the Saba Day celebrations. They were greeted on the tarmac by His Excellency Governor Eugene Holiday, his spouse Marie Louise, the Honorable Prime Minister Rafael Boasman and the SXM Airport COO and Acting CEO, Michel Hyman.

Hyman said he was pleased that everything went smoothly with the Dutch Royal visit. He commended his team and the Police authority for making the whole operation during their arrival and departure seamless.

The Royal visit was to show support for the islands, following a catastrophic hurricane season. The visit was also meant to underline their commitment to the reconstruction of the islands and facilitate related projects.

His Majesty King Willem-Alexander had previously visited St. Maarten on September 11, 2017, to assess the islands damages in the aftermath of Category 5 Hurricane Irma which struck the island on September 6, 2017. The Kings first guided tour at the time was of the devastated Princess Juliana International Airport.

The royal visit came to an end on December 2, 2017 when the King and Queen departed SXM Airport at 8:00pm to return to the Netherlands.

PJIAE Press Release
PHILIPSBURG:--- Today Dec 3rd, the Government of St. Maarten in collaboration with the St. Maarten United Ministerial Foundation (SMUMF), Christian Council (CC) successfully hosted and celebrated the annual Thanksgiving Service and Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony heralding the end of the Hurricane Season 2017. His Excellency Governor E.B. Holiday and Mrs. Holiday, Chairlady of Parliament S. Wescott-Williams, Honorable Prime Minister R. Boasman, 1st Vice President of the Collectivite Mdme. Valerie Damaseau, Minister S. Jacobs, along with several other Members of Parliament, High Councils of State, Deputy Governor Mr. and Mrs. Reynold Groeneveldt were among the dignitaries present.

Under the theme - "Attitude of Gratitude" - the praise and worship team of the Christian Fellowship Church kicked off the service with songs of praise and thanks to God, followed by the St. Martin Song being sung by Pastor Benjamin Bell and an opening prayer by Pastor Orlando Wilson.

The service continued with poignant hymns of thanks, words of welcome from the SMUMF representative Wally Havertong and touching remarks of resilience and gratitude from the Honorable Prime Minister R. Boasman, who asked the congregation to give thanks at all times, not only in good times. Even though we have been through the devastation of the Hurricanes, we will, with an attitude of gratitude, continue to give thanks for his grace and mercy and allowing us to be here with health and strength to work together to rebuild our beautiful Soualiga.

Several Renditions, scripture readings, and prayers were contributed by representatives of the Seventh Day Adventist, SMUMF and CC.

Pastor Lewis Constant gave a heartrending and soul-searching sermon, reminding the congregation that no one is higher than the Lord, He alone is God and he sees and knows all.

Calls were made during the sermon and prayers to put God first, Unity, Forgiveness, Love, Peace, and Healing. All in all, the service was uplifting and brought participants a sense of peace and togetherness.

This sense of Peace and Hope was further realized with the commencement of caroling by the praise and worship team, and the lighting of the two Christmas trees by Prime Minister Boasman and Minister Jacobs. The service came to a close with the Vote of Thanks by Minister Silveria Jacobs who gave thanks to the organizers and participants of the service and ceremony and also took the opportunity to commend the community workers, churches and organizations who played a key role in helping the people of St. Maarten directly after the passage of Hurricane Irma and handed out certificates to the various representatives present. She also took time out to share the spirit of Christmas with those in need and to continue to look out for neighbors and others still displaced or suffering at this time. The service ended with the benediction by Rev. Dr. Joan Delsol-Meade after which the Christmas Carol Medley allowed the congregation to mingle, meet and greet before leaving for their separate homes feeling blessed and refreshed.

Press Release from the Ministry of ECYS
PHILIPSBURG:--- The year 2018 brings new challenges for the Government of Aruba and Sint Maarten due to several financial conditions in which the current Government will face a very difficult task to determine the welfare of its communities. Understanding the current financial conditions on the mentioned islands, the firm will outline facts of historical taxation concepts that just did not work in the past and will not work now.

The firm compiled a sequence of events for the analysis

Former Dutch Antilles

In the late 80s the Dutch Caribbean introduced the Solidarity tax, which was10% of the gross wage.

In the late 90s the OB or sales tax was introduced in Curacao and Bonaire at 2% (March 1997) and was increased in October the same year to 5% meaning an increase of over 250%.

In the year 2000, the Federal Tax Laws were introduced, the payroll system was changed, and import duties were increased

After the Ys Government noticed that the economy got stranded they reduced the payroll tax with 15-12.5% in 2 consecutive years.

For more than 2 decades the Dutch Tax assistance was needed to improve Government Tax Revenues.

Aruba

In the late 80s the same solidarity tax was introduced at 8.2 for 2 years and 1 year 4.1% of the gross salary.

Progressive taxation on alcohol and other cost of living products

In the 90s the Aruban Government came with the SAB concept, Sanering Achterstallige Belastingen), that squeezed the economy through taxations.

After this action was not enough, the Government came with a 70/30 deal, meaning is they tax payer (corporate) paid 70% of his back taxes, 30% would be exempted, but the question is what about those that paid correctly?

In the late 2000, as the tax revenues could not increase more, a special focus was directed on noncompliance of tax returns filing for example failure to file the profit tax returns will result in a fine of Afl. 5000,= which was a disproportional measure.

In the year 2004, the new Federal tax law was introduced

After approximately 3 decades of additional taxations and collections schemes, the Dutch Caribbean have the following characteristics:

Governments still have a deficit

Increasing unemployment, adding more pressure on the employed segment of the population

Unfriendly investment environment

High rate of tax evasion

Poor employment perspective

The fact is that 3 decades of Public Administration and no Government has been successful to address the matters effectively in the Dutch Caribbean. Benjamin & Parker will propose an alternative concept in the media this week, to create the necessary incentives to reverse the current situation. The firm hopes that politicians in the Dutch Caribbean will analyze the concept for the improvement of the Dutch Caribbean, positively.

Benjamin & Parker Press Release
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A federal judge set a Dec. 19 deadline for any last bids for the bankrupt Swim Seventy pool facility in Norwalk, with an existing $100,000 deal on the table from an investor in Rowayton.

Under owners Toni Phillips, Ashlee Bunt and Robert Polley, Swim Seventy operates Norwalks only Olympic-length pool on Willard Road. Swim Seventy declared bankruptcy in May less than two years after opening, with a Newtown-based contractor filing claims for $1.9 million due for work on the facility that carried a value of $5.1 million as of October.
For almost eight years, Theresa Hatton led Greenwichs residential real estate community as the executive vice president of the Greenwich Association of Realtors.

Beginning last month, Hatton took on a new challenge by pivoting to a different role within the real estate industry.

This fall, Hatton resigned from her post at the helm of GAR, which manages Greenwichs Multiple Listing Service, and last month joined real estate brokerage Coldwell Banker as a branch manager and vice president of its Greenwich and Old Greenwich sales office.

There was a lot to do at GAR, but in the last few years there werent as many things to be accomplished, so I started looking for opportunities across the country, Hatton said of her career move.

During her tenure at GAR, she overhauled the groups software systems and processes, taught many classes for Realtors and frequently traveled around the country for industry conferences. Theres not one software system that didnt get turned over or reorganized to make it better for agents and thus consumers during my time there, Hatton said. There was always more work and another challenge at GAR.

Prior to her move to Greenwich, Hatton had worked for several nonprofits before landing in real estate as the executive vice president of the Williamson County Association of Realtors, located in an affluent Tennessee community near Nashville. It was fate that brought me into the Realtor world, Hatton said.

Several years into her Tennessee job, Hatton discovered the opening in Greenwich and opted to check out the Gold Coast community given its proximity to her childhood home on Long Island.

Since joining GAR in 2010, Hatton has left her mark on the towns real estate community with a leadership style many have lauded. In addition to her work at GAR, Hatton has also given time to numerous community groups such as the Greenwich Chamber of Commerce, Greenwich Property Owners Association, Light Up Greenwich, Greenwich Historical Society and Greenwich Youth Cheerleading. She plans to continue volunteering, she said.

Before arriving in Greenwich, Hatton typically changed jobs every few years, she said, making her time at GAR seem lengthy by comparison. In recent years, shed entertained a variety of offers but ultimately decided to find something new in Greenwich. At the end of the day, this is such a great place to live and nothing can compare to it, Hatton said.

At Coldwell Banker, Hatton will manage its offices in Greenwich and Old Greenwich that encompass around 200 agents.

With her absence, the Greenwich Association of Realtors board of directors has considered several high-quality candidates but isnt announcing anything yet, regarding Hattons replacement, according to board president BK Bates.

Contact the writer at mbennett@greenwichtime.com; Twitter @Macaela_
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STAMFORD  Police have identified the man found dead in the driveway of a Pound Ridge home as Stamford real estate attorney Matthew Klein.

Capt. Richard Conklin said that his family reported Klein, 62, missing at about 7:45 p.m. Friday after they hadnt seen him for most of the day.

At about the same time the next day, Kleins body was discovered in the driveway of a mansion in Pound Ridge at 496 Long Ridge Road, about two miles above the New York state line, Conklin said.

Property records indicate that the home is owned by Richard Kassis, a New York City restaurateur who owns the Sutton Place Restaurant and Bar. It is not clear if Kassis was home when the body was found.

Klein was a North Stamford resident who lived on Jonathan Drive. A man at Kleins home Monday afternoon said the family was declining comment on his uncles death.

It is a shocking situation, the nephew said.

New York State police, who have taken over the investigation from Pound Ridge authorities, are being tight lipped about what they think happened in the driveway of the home.

More News Body of missing Stamford man found in New York

But police say that there appears to be no signs of foul play.

Klein was a real estate attorney in Stamford and worked for Benanti & Associates on Bedford Street in Stamford. A call to the law office for comment was not returned.

Stamford attorney Melvin Bloomenthal said that he knew Klein for many years.

I am beyond shocked, Bloomenthal said. I have always known Matthew to be the consummate family man. I know many of his family members and almost every conversation I had with him focused on his family. It is a terrible tragedy and it gives pause to all of us when we realize life it so short.

Klein was a member of Temple Beth El and for the past year was a member of the temples Board of Trustees.

Temple Beth Els Rabbi Joshua Hammerman said, Matthew was just tremendous and he was loved by all who knew him and the congregation. He was a wonderful man.
The Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services has launched a new website that provides real-time information on bed availability for addiction services.

The website tracks the availability of roughly 1,000 DMHAS-funded beds including detoxification services, residential addiction treatment and recovery housing. The information on the website will be updated by providers multiple times throughout the day.

Every city and every town in the country has been touched in some way by substance abuse, Governor Dannel P. Malloy said in a news release. We have many resources in Connecticut that are available to people who are in need of addiction services. We encourage anyone who needs help to reach out and get support as soon as possible.

The website is part of DMHAS infrastructure improvements funded by a grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The grant, which runs from September 1, 2016 through August 31, 2019, provides the state with $1 million annually to expand medication assisted treatment, strengthen outpatient resources and improve statewide infrastructure.

This website will be a tremendous help to people looking for addiction services funded by DMHAS. It gives current information on the availability of inpatient and recovery house beds available throughout the state, said DMHAS Commissioner Miriam Delphin-Rittmon in the release. A wide range of treatment and community supports are vital in helping people with substance use disorders live in recovery.

The website allows users to access the information 24 hours a day on their phones, tablets or desktop computers. The website can be accessed by visiting the DMHAS website, www.ct.gov/dmhas, or directly at www.ctaddictionservices.com.

In addition to the new website, people can be connected to addiction services and treatment by calling the ACCESS Line at 1-800-563-4086. For more information about the bed availability website or the ACCESS Line, please go to www.ct.gov/dmhas.
iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- President Trump is nearing a decision on whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, according to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.



"The president is going to make his decision," Kushner said Sunday, speaking at the Saban Forum at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. "He is still looking into a lot of facts and, when he makes his decision, he'll be the one who wants to tell you."



Kushner did not specify when an announcement would be made, but said, "He'll make sure he does that at the right time."



Meanwhile, on Fox News Sunday, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said he was unsure what Trump was planning to do.



"I'm not sure what decision he'll make, we've given him options," McMaster said. "There are options involving the move of an embassy at some point in the future, which I think could be used to gain momentum toward a peace agreement and a solution that works both for Israelis and Palestinians."



Monday in Israel, U.S. Ambassador David Friedman told Israeli reporters: "You'll learn this week, with everybody else."



The six-month waiver



By law, President Trump must decide today whether to sign the legal waiver that delays the move of the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv by another six months, State Department officials told ABC News. He has already signed the waiver once. Now he is faced with a choice between sticking to his campaign promises or taking the more diplomatic route of his predecessors.



Since 1995, every U.S. president has signed the waiver which delays the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem, despite some of their own campaign promises.



In the Spring of 2016, Trump spoke to AIPAC, one of the most powerful lobbying groups promoting U.S.- Israel relations, and said, "We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital city of the Jewish people, Jerusalem."



In the same speech, he said he was not going to repeat what other politicians had done, but would take action.



"I didnt come here tonight to pander to you about Israel," Trump said, "Thats what politicians do. All talk, no action, believe me."



Past candidates from both parties have promised to move the embassy to Jerusalem, but no one has followed through on the promise after moving into the oval office.



As a candidate for president, George W. Bush told AIPAC in 2000, "As soon as I take office, I will begin the process of moving the United States ambassador to the city Israel has chosen as its capital."



In March 1992, when Bill Clinton was a candidate, he said, "I believe in the principle of moving our embassy to Jerusalem, but again I do not think we should do anything to interfere with the peace process."



"Israel's consistent policy is that the American embassy like other embassies should be in Jerusalem, our eternal capital," Israel's Prime Minister's Office said in a statement last June.



The option to keep the embassy in Tel Aviv, but recognize a unified Jerusalem



In addition to mulling the embassy move, the White House is now considering new steps to formally recognize a "unified Jerusalem" as the capital of Israel, sources told ABC News.



But, there's a chance those two moves could take place separately.



Administration officials would not say what Trump will do, but many expect that he will advance plans to move the embassy even if he signs the waiver today.



Among the options reportedly under consideration: issuing a statement this week to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital or a directive to American diplomats to conduct all official business there.



Ambassador Friedman has consistently supported this idea. Most recently, speaking to the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post, Friedman said, "Its something we think about all the time."



When Israeli media reported this week that steps to relocate the embassy were imminent, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders called the reports "premature" but wouldn't rule anything out.



"We have nothing to announce," she said.



A U.S. embassy official told ABC News that a move to Jerusalem was a matter of time.



"Last June, the President said that it was a question of when the Embassy would move, not if," the official told ABC News.



Vice President Mike Pence suggested last week in a speech honoring the 70th anniversary of UN recognition of Israel that the administration is simply down to sorting out logistics. "President Donald Trump is actively considering when and how to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Pence said.



Effects on peace plans



Experts say that recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel right now won't serve the peace process.



"It serves absolutely no U.S. interests," Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Wilson Center and a former State Department Middle East negotiator under Republican and Democratic administrations, said in a tweet over the weekend. "And [the move] will complicate Trump's own peace initiative and injects the most volatile issue into the mix at a time that only makes sense to the interminably obtuse."



"The odds that Trump will stumble in his Jerusalem gambit are pretty good. That's because the point of the exercise does not seem designed to achieve any real foreign policy goals," Miller wrote in an op-ed.



"The only issue for the mediator is how to protect U.S. interests, image and credibility," Miller argues. "That's the key." The real question, he says, is this a one-off? Or part of a broader strategy?



"Perhaps the administration believes that a statement is less damaging than actually starting the process of opening an embassy," Miller says, "But unless the move is part of some pre-negotiated deal with Israel that offers up some significant concession to the Palestinians, it would serve no compelling US national interest."



Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk also weighed in, tweeting, "Dont underestimate Trumps desire to disrupt the status quo on Jerusalem on the theory that out of crisis can come an opportunity. He should beware: Jerusalem is a dangerous place to test a theory."



But on Sunday, Jared Kushner spoke for the first time publicly about Middle East peace. Addressing a room full of diplomats, policy wonks and former negotiators at the annual Saban Forum, he voiced optimism but never mentioned a future Palestinian state or the words, "two-state solution."



We do think its achievable," Kushner told the crowd.



Veteran negotiator Miller, however, puts the odds at achieving the ultimate deal - a conflict-ending accord between Israelis and Palestinians at "slim to none."



Kushner laid out his broad regional strategy that includes a more formalized Arab-Israeli agreement based on mutual interests.



"The regional dynamic plays a big role in what we think the opportunities are," he said. "A lot of these countries look and say they all want the same thing.



"And they look at the regional threats and I think that they see Israel, who is traditionally their foe, is a much more natural ally to them than it was 20 years ago," Kushner explained, without naming Saudi Arabia and other Arab states by name.



But before that happens, Kushner said, an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal needs to be inked. "You've got a lot of people who want to put this together, but you have to overcome this issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order for that to happen."



Speaking at the Knesset on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted the unprecedented shift in the attitude of Arab states toward his country.



During his 30-minute talk, he did not reveal any details of a possible peace plan, and Palestinian sources have denied reports in Israeli and American media that President Mahmoud Abbas was served a fully baked plan by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman two weeks ago during his visit to Riyadh.



Palestinian and Muslim leaders condemn any policy change



Israelis consider Jerusalem to be the country's capital but Palestinians also claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Moving the U.S. embassy to Israel, to Jerusalem or recognizing a "unified Jerusalem" as the Israeli capital would not be acceptable to Palestinians or leaders across the Muslim world.



"To move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize the city as the capital of Israel, both are equally dangerous to the future of the peace process and push the region into instability," said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.



Sunday night, President Abbas, a member of the Fatah party in the West Bank, spoke to the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, and the two agreed that they would not accept any change to U.S. policy on Jerusalem, according to a statement released by Hamas.



The Palestine Liberation Organization also believes changes could be destabilizing for the region.



The move "will contribute to the further destabilization of the region and will discourage many of those who still believe that a peaceful solution is achievable to end over 50 years of Israeli occupation, 70 years of exile and decades of systematic violations of Palestinian national and human rights, said Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the PLO and former chief negotiator.



Abbas has made phone calls to other Arab leaders, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to Palestinian sources, who said many in the region condemned the move as they did six months ago before Trump signed the Jerusalem wavier for the first time.



Jordan's Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi said Sunday night that he had spoken with U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson about the "dangerous consequences of recognizing Jerusalem as capital of Israel. Such a decision would trigger anger across #Arab #Muslim worlds, fuel tension and jeopardize peace efforts."



Arab League leader Abul Gheit told reporters in Cairo on Sunday, "It is unfortunate that some are insisting on carrying out this step without any regard to the dangers it carries to the stability of the Middle East and the whole world."



"Nothing justifies this act," he added, "it will not serve peace or stability, instead it will nourish fanaticism and violence."



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
#banks-interest income Banks log record interest income through Sept. on rising rates Banks in South Korea earned record net interest income in the first three quarters of the year, helped by sharp rate hikes by the central bank, data showed Thursday. Their intere...

#BTS BTS' Jin to release photo book before joining military Jin, a member of the K-pop megastar BTS, will put out his individual book of photography next month before joining the military, the group's management agency said Thursday. The...
GERING  Gering Junior High students are getting a head start on spreading holiday cheer this year by writing letters to active duty military men and women.

Shannon Kauffman teaches English at Gering Junior High. Her brother is Staff Sgt. Justin Horn, who is active duty in the United States Air Force.

Horn is part of Squadron 37 EBS, expeditionary bomb squadron, based out of Ellsworth in Rapid City, South Dakota. He and his squadron are currently deployed in Guam.

Kauffman has her five classes of seventh- and eighth-grade students writing letters to Horn and his squadron.

It was supposed to be near Veterans Day, but some things happened that changed that, Kauffman said. So theyll arrive shortly before Christmas. Im encouraging the students to give it a holiday sort of message. And then theyll decorate them, be it red and green or whatever they want, for Christmas or whatever.

Horn actually visited Kauffmans students and the rest of the junior high near Veterans Day for their special assembly.

He brought with him a neat opportunity for the school.

They do this cool program where if you buy a flag, theyll fly it in one of their bombers, Kauffman said. We got one for Gering Junior High. So he has a certificate saying that and then hell bring that back with the flag that they flew when he comes back in January.

Aside from teaching her students to be thankful to the heroes who protect their freedom, Kauffman gave an explanation of why her students are writing the letters.

Were starting a unit on correspondence, letter writing, she said. So this is kind of their kick-off project with it so I can get a sense of where theyre at with it.

This is the first time Kauffman has had her students write letters for her brothers squadron.

Well see how it goes, she said smiling. Also, I offered extra credit, so its not solely out of the goodness of their hearts, but they brought me a ton of stuff to send along with those letters. So Im going to send a care package with the letters.

Kauffmans students brought gum, drink packets  like lemonade and hot cocoa  and hard candies for Horn and his buddies.

Kauffman shared her expectations, besides letter formatting, for her students.

I would say, hopefully, that the students appreciate it more, she said. Theyre spending Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year's without their families. Some of them have young wives, young kids, so theyre doing that without them; all those holidays without them.

So to be appreciative, hopefully, that message rings clear for them.
This page is archived. Data published after 5 April 2022 can be found on the renewed website. Go to the new statistics page

Published: 4 December 2017

Average age at first confinement rose in Finland to the top level of Nordic countries

According to Statistics Finlands data on population changes, the average age at first confinement has risen exceptionally much. The average age of first-time mothers was 29.1 years in 2016 rising by 0.2 years from 2015 and by 0.4 years from 2014. The average age at first confinement in Finland has risen to the same level as in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Average age of first-time mothers and fathers in 1985 to 2016

The average age of first-time fathers was 31.2 years. The age difference of first-time parents has stayed almost unchanged for decades. First-time fathers are slightly over two years older than first-time mothers.

The average age of all women having given birth was 30.8 years and the average age for becoming a father was 33.3 years in 2016.

For a long time, first-time mothers and fathers were older in the Nordic countries than in Finland, except for Iceland. In Finland, the ages of becoming mothers and fathers have grown closer to the corresponding ages in the other Nordic countries, and in 2016, the average age of becoming a mother was nearly the same in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. In Finland, Sweden and Denmark, the average age of becoming a mother was 29.1 years and in Norway 29.0 years. In Iceland, women became mothers at a clearly younger age, 27.7 years.

Average age of first-time mothers in Nordic countries in 2000 to 2016

Men becoming fathers were oldest in Sweden and Norway, 31.5 years and youngest in Iceland, 30.3 years.

Having children is most common in the 30 to 34 age group

Altogether 52,814 children were born in 2016. Both the number of children born and the birth rate have decreased for six years in a row . The birth rate refers to the number of births as a proportion to the number of women of childbearing age.

Over the past six years, the birth rate has declined clearly in all age groups between 20 and 34. Having children is now most common for those aged 30 to 34, slightly more common than for those aged 25 to 29.

Having children is second most common for those aged 35 to 39 and 20 to 24. The birth rate has decreased considerably for those aged 20 to 24 in the past decades. The birth rate among those aged 40 to 44 has continued its slight growth, which started in the mid-1970s.

Fertility by age group in 1965 to 2016

Because people are having children at a later age, an increasing number of people in the age group 35 to 39 are having their first child. When in 1990, six women per thousand women in this age group gave birth to their first child, in 2016 the corresponding figure had grown to 14.

The birth rate is also commonly measured with the total fertility rate, which indicates how many children a women would give birth to during her life time if age group-specific fertility rates remained the same as in the year on which the calculation is based.

At the fertility rate prevailing in 2016, a woman would give birth to an average of 1.57 children. Of this total fertility rate, persons aged 30 or over formed 55 per cent. At the beginning of the 1970s, their share was one-quarter.

Number of children born in marriage has decreased

Fifty-five per cent of children were born to married parents in 2016. The number and share of children born to married couples have diminished in recent decades. In 1990, three out of four children were born to married couples.

The majority of children born outside marriage were born to cohabiting parents.

In 2016, in total 29,200 children were born to married couples, which is 6,700 fewer than in 2010. In the period mentioned above, the number of marriages entered into also went down clearly. In 2016, the number of marriages entered into was 5,500 lower than in 2010. The decrease in the number of children born to married couples is naturally also affected by the decline in the total number of children born.

Live births in and outside marriage in 1990 to 2016, per cent

Fifty-eight per cent of firstborn children were born outside marriage in 2016, while the percentage was 38 in 1990. The threshold of 50 per cent was exceeded in 1997. Of second or higher order children, 36 per cent were born outside marriage. In 1990, the corresponding percentage was 17.

According to the most recent data of Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Union, the lowest number of children in European countries in 2015 were born outside marriage in relative terms in Greece, nine per cent. In relative terms, most children were born outside marriage in Iceland of European countries, 70 per cent of children born.

Share of mothers with Finnish background in the birth rate decreases further

Fertility can also be examined based on the mother's origin. The share of people with Finnish background in the total fertility rate has gradually fallen, and that of persons with foreign background has correspondingly grown. In 1990, the share of people with foreign background in the total fertility rate was very small as the share of people with foreign background was still so low in Finland.

The share of persons with foreign background in the whole country's birth rate has increased slowly over 25 years and is currently close on 13 per cent of the countrys birth rate. In the corresponding period, the share of women with foreign background in all women aged 15 to 49 has grown, however, slightly more slowly to 9.3 per cent.

Total fertility rate by mother's origin in 1990 to 2016

According to the whole country's birth rate in 2016, women's average number of children would be 1.57 children per women. Of this, the share of persons with Finnish background is 1.37 children per woman and of persons with foreign background 0.20 children per woman.

When we examine the decrease in the birth rate that began in 2010, we notice that only the birth rate of women of Finnish background has declined. The share of persons with Finnish background in the birth rate has gone down by 21 per cent in the past six years. By contrast, the share of persons with foreign background in the birth rate has increased by 36 per cent over the same period.

Further information about the birth rate according to origin is available on Statistics Finland's Immigrants and integration thematic pages in the section Birth rate .

Source: Births 2016. Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Miina Keski-Petaja 029 551 3240, Marja-Liisa Helminen 029 551 3273, info@stat.fi

Director in charge: Jari Tarkoma

Publication in pdf-format (283.8 kB)

Updated 04.12.2017

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Births [e-publication].

ISSN=1798-2413. 02 2016. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 17.11.2022].

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Reflecting on Haskell in 2017

Alas, another year has come and gone. It feels like just yesterday I was writing the last reflection blog post on my flight back to Boston for Christmas. Ive spent most of the last year traveling and working in Europe, meeting a lot of new Haskellers and putting a lot of faces to names.

Haskell has had a great year and 2017 was defined by vast quantities of new code, including 14,000 new Haskell projects on Github . The amount of writing this year was voluminous and my list of interesting work is eight times as large as last year. At least seven new companies came into existence and many existing firms unexpectedly dropped large open source Haskell projects into the public sphere. Driven by a lot of software catastrophes, the intersection of security, software correctness and formal methods have been become quite an active area of investment and research across both industry and academia. Its really never been an easier and more exciting time to be programming professionally in the worlds most advanced (yet usable) statically typed language.

Per what I guess is now a tradition, I will write my end of year retrospective on my highlights of what happened in the Haskell scene in retrospect.

Writing

The amount of Haskell writing this year was vast and its impossible to enumerate all of the excellent writing that occurred. Some of the truly exceptional bits that were drafted in 2017 included:

Books & Courses

Vladislav Zavialov and Artyom Kazak set out to write a book on the netherlands of Intermediate Haskell development, a mythical place that we all seemingly pass through but never speak of again. The project is intuitively called Intermediate Haskell and is slated to be released in 2018

Bartosz Milewski finished writing Category Theory for Programmers which is freely available and also generated as PDF.

Brent Yorgey drafted a new course for teaching introduction to Computer Science using Haskell at Hendrix University. Dmitry Kovanikov and Arseniy Seroka also drafted a course for a wide variety of intermediate to advanced Haskell topics at ITMO university. Some of which are in Russian but nevertheless  !

GHC

The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compiler had its 8.2 release, and landed to much rejoicing. Major features such as unboxed sum types landed as planned in GHC 8.2. There were many longstanding issues that were closed and many miscellaneous fixes contributed in 2017. For instance GHC now uses alternative linkers such as ld.gold or ld.lld instead of the system default ld.

Semigroup is now a superclass of Monoid.

There was quite a bit of work on GHC cross compilation to ARM. The new build system Hadrian has been in work for the past three years, has was finally been merged into the GHC tree.

The DevOps Group has officially started and is being funded to help maintain the infrastructure used to host Haskell packages and build GHC. The general push of the group has been toward using hosted CI services, Appveyor and CircleCI and a greater use of more transparent platforms such as Github for GHC development.

There is work on a major refactor of the AST types to use the new Trees that Grow research to allow GHC API user to extend the AST for their own purposes. Eventually this may allow the split of the AST types out of the ghc package, allowing tooling authors, Template Haskell users, and the compiler itself to use the same AST representation.

GHC is partially accepting pull requests on Github although most of the development still occurs on the mailing list and Phabricator.

There was significant engineering effort to allow GHC to produce deterministic build artifacts to play nicely with caching reproducible build systems such as Buck and Bazel. Previously the emitted .hi files would contain non-deterministic data such as hashes, timestamps and unique name supply counts.

Errors

GHC 8.2 added wonderful new colorful error messages with caret diagnostics for syntax and type errors:

Compact Regions

Support for Compact Regions landed in GHC 8.2. Compact regions are manually allocated regions where the data allocated inside it are compacted and not traversed by the GC. This is amenable for long-lived data structures that are resident in memory without mutation frequently occurring.

The interface can be accessed through the ghc-compact modules and used to create compact mallocd memory.

import Control.DeepSeq import Control.Exception import qualified Data.ByteString.Char8 as B import Data.Compact main = compact (B.pack [ 'a' .. 'c' ])

The test suite inside GHC maintains the best illustrations of its use for complex non-traditional data structures.

Type.Reflection

GHC added a new more expressive Typeable mechanism using the Type.Reflection module. typeRep can be applied with explicit type applications to arrows and functions can checked for type-level equality after application.

 > typeRep @ ( -> ) ( -> ) 'LiftedRep ' LiftedRep

 > typeRep @ ( Maybe Int ) == App (typeRep @ Maybe ) (typeRep @ Int ) True

Coercible

Not new to GHC 8.2 although the base library now exposes the Coercible constraints allowing polymorphism over types which have the same runtime representations to be safely coerced at runtime. This can also be extended to polymorphic functions which take a compile-time proof of the equivalence of two runtime data layouts.

import Data.Coerce newtype Meters = Meters Integer deriving ( Num ) newtype Feet = Feet Integer deriving ( Num ) f :: ( Coercible a b, Num b) => a -> b -> b f x y = coerce x + y

 > f ( Meters 3 ) 4 7  > f ( Feet 3 ) 4 7  > f 4 ( Feet 3 ) Feet 7

GHC tracks the usage (i.e. role) of type variables used as parameters as either nominal representational or phantom allowing types that differ only in a phantom type of nominal parameters to be safely coerced.

Join Points

Luke Maurer and Simon Peyton Jones merged new work on join points which modifies GHC Core to optimize for join points in code. In Core, a join point is a specially tagged function whose only occurrences are saturated tail calls. In the actual GHC Core AST, a join point is simple bit of metadata indicated by IdDetails of the binder.

Simon Peyton Jones presented the keynote at Haskell Exchange on his collaboration on Compiling without Continuation which present the ideas and core optimizations that are allowed by the new join points.

Deriving Strategies

In GHC 8.0 there were two alternative methods for automatic deriving of typeclass instances, using GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving and DeriveAnyClass . In addition there was also the wired-in deriving mechanisms for Show , Read , etc that were hardcoded into the compiler. These all used the same syntax and would conflict if multiple pragmas were enabled in a module.

The addition of DerivingStrategies allows us to disambiguate which deriving mechanism to use for a specific instance generation.

newtype Meters = Meters Int deriving stock ( Read , Show ) deriving newtype ( Num ) deriving anyclass ( ToJSON , FromJSON )

Backpack

Edward Yang finished his PhD thesis on Backpack which was integrated in the GHC tree. The new branch adds support .bkp files , which specify abstract interfaces which can be instantiated in modules and used to construct Haskell modules which work polymorphically across multiple module instantiations.

For example an abstract string type can be written which operates over a module parameter `Str``:

unit abstract - str where signature Str where data Str len :: Str -> Int module AStr (alen) where import Str alen :: Str -> Int alen = len

We can create (contrived) instantiations of this module for lists of ints and chars which expose a polymorphic length function over both.

unit str - string where module Str where type Str = String len :: Str -> Int len = length unit str - list where module Str where type Str = [ Int ] len :: Str -> Int len = length

The modules can then be opened as specific namespaces with the exported functions able to be called over both module types.

unit main where dependency abstract - str[ Str = str - string : Str ] ( AStr as AStr.Int ) dependency abstract - str[ Str = str - list : Str ] ( AStr as AStr.String ) module Main (main) where import qualified AStr.Int import qualified AStr.String main :: IO () main = do print $ AbstractStr.String.alen "Hello world" print $ AbstractStr.Int.alen [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]

With the latest GHC this can be compiled with the --backpack which generates the sum of all the hi files specified in the .bkp file and resolves values at link-time.

$ stack exec -- ghc --backpack example.bkp

While the functionality exists today, Im not aware of any large projects using Backpack. Bolting this functionality onto an ecosystem that has spent a decade routing around many of the problems this system aims to solve, poses a huge engineering cost and may take a while to crystallize.

Summer of Haskell

Google lacked vision this year and did not sponsor the Haskell Organization for Summer of Code. But the program proceeded regardless with private sponsorship from industrial users. Fifteen students were paired with mentors and many successful projects and collaborations resulted.

LLVM

The LLVM bindings for Haskell saw quite a bit of work this year and were forked into a new organization llvm-hs and added support for LLVM 4.0 - 5.1:

In a collaboration with Joachim Breitner and myself at Zurihac a type-safe LLVM library which embeds the semantics of LLVM instructions into the Haskell type-system was written.

Siddharth Bhat started work on an STG to LLVM backend simplehxc before doing a rewrite in C++.

Moritz Angermann has been continuing to develop a Haskell library for emitting and reading LLVM Bitcode format as well as work on the llvm-ng backend which is a major rewrite of the GHC LLVM code generator.

Linear Types

Arnaud Spiwack prototyped a extension of GHC which augments the type system with linear types. Edsko de Vries wrote a detailed blog post about the nature of linearity and its uses.

The proposal extends the typing of functions to include linearity constraints on arrows, enforcing that variables or references are created and consumed with constrained reference counts. This allows us to statically enforce reference borrowing and allocations in the typechecker potentially allowing us to enforce lifetime constraints on closures and eliminating long-lived memory from being used with constructed unbounded lifetimes, thereby eliminating garbage collection for some Haskell functions.

For instance, use of the linear arrow (a ->. b) can enrich the existing raw memory access functions enforcing the matching of allocation and free commands statically. The multiplicity of usage is either 0 , 1 or  and the linear arrow is syntatic sugar for unit multiplicity are aliases for (:'1 ->) .

malloc :: Storable a => a -> . ( Ptr a -> . Unrestricted b) -> . Unrestricted b read :: Storable a => Ptr a -> . ( Ptr a, a) free :: Ptr a -> . ()

New abstractions such as movable, consumable and dupable references can be constructed out of existing class hierarchies and enriched with static linearity checks:

class Consumable a where consume :: a -> . () class Consumable a => Dupable a where dup :: a -> . (a, a) class Dupable a => Movable a where move :: a -> . Unrestricted a instance Dupable a => Dupable [a] where dup [] = ([], []) dup (a : l) = shuffle (dup a) (dup l) where shuffle :: (a, a) -> . ([a], [a]) -> . ([a], [a]) shuffle (a, a') (l, l') = (a : l, a' : l') instance Consumable a => Consumable [a] where consume [] = () consume (a : l) = consume a `lseq` consume l

As part of the Summer of Haskell Edvard Hubinette used linear types to construct a safer stream processing library which can enforce resource consumption statically using linearity.

There is considerable debate about the proposal and the nature of integration of linear types into GHC. With some community involvement these patches could be integrated quite quickly in GHC.

LiquidHaskell

LiquidHaskell the large suite of tools for adding refinement types to GHC Haskell continued development and became considerably more polished. At HaskellExchange several companies were using it in anger in production. For example, we can enforce statically the lists given at compile-time statically cannot contain certain values by constructing a proposition function in a (subset) of Haskell which can refine other definitions:

measure hasZero :: [ Int ] -> Prop hasZero [] = false hasZero (x : xs) = x == 0 || (hasZero xs) type HasZero = {v : [ Int ] | (hasZero v)} -- Rejected xs :: HasZero xs = [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ] -- Accepted ys :: HasZero ys = [ 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 ]

This can be used to statically enforce that logic that consumes only a Just value can provably only be called with a Just with a isJust measure:

measure isJust :: forall a . Data.Maybe.Maybe a -> Bool isJust ( Data.Maybe.Just x) = true isJust ( Data.Maybe.Nothing ) = false

This year saw the addition of inductive predicates, allowing more complex properties about non-arithmetic refinements to be checked. Including properties about lists:

measure len :: [a] -> Int len [] = 0 len (x : xs) = 1 + (len xs) -- Spec for Data.List exports refined types which can be statically refined with -- length constraints. [] :: {v : [a] | len v = 0 } (:) :: _ -> xs : _ -> {v : [a] | len v = 1 + len xs} append :: xs : [a] -> ys : [a] -> {v : [a] | len v = len xs + len ys}

The full library of specifications is now quite extensive and adding LiquidHaskell to an existing codebase is pretty seamless.

Foundation

Foundation is an alternative Prelude informed by modern design practices and data structures. It ships a much more sensible and efficient packed array of UTF8 points as its default String type. Rethinks the Num numerical tower , and statically distinguishes partial functions. Also has fledgling documentation beyond just

Last year Foundation was a bit early, but this year at Zurihac several companies in London reported using it fully in production as a full industrial focused Prelude.

Editor Tooling

Editor integration improved, adding best in modern tooling to most of the common editors:

Editor Haskell Integration Atom https://atom.io/packages/ide-haskell Emacs https://commercialhaskell.github.io/intero/ IntelliJ https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/8258-intellij-haskell VSCode https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Vans.haskero Sublime https://packagecontrol.io/packages/SublimeHaskell

Monica Lent wrote a lovely post on the state of art in Vim and Haskell integration.

Rik van der Kleij has done an impressive amount of work adapting the IntellJ IDE to work with Haskell. Including a custom parser handling all of the syntax extensions, name lookup, Intero integration and integration with haskell-tools refactoring framework.

Development on the haskell-ide-engine has picked up again in the last few months.

Formal Methods

The DeepSpec, a collaboration between MIT, UPenn, Princeton and Yale, is working on a network of specification that span many compilers, languages and intermediate representations with the goal of achieving full functional correctness of software and hardware. Both Haskell and LLVM are part of this network of specifications. The group has successfully written a new formal calculus describing the GHC core language and proved it type sound in Coq. The project is called corespec and is described in the paper A Specification for Dependent Types in Haskell.

In addition the group also published a paper Total Haskell is Reasonable Coq and provided a utlity hs-to-coq which converts haskell code to equivalent Coq code.

The Galois group started formalizing the semantics of Cryptol, a compiler for high-assurance cryptographic protocols which is itself written in Haskell.

Michael Burge wrote a cheeky article about extracting a specification for a domain specific browser from Coq into Haskell.

Pragma Proliferation & Prelude

Writing Haskell is almost trivial in practice. You just start with the magic fifty line {-# LANGUAGE ... #-} incantation to fast-forward to 2017, then add 150 libraries that youve blessed by trial and error to your cabal file, and then just write down a single type signature whose inhabitant is Refl to your program. In fact if your program is longer than your import list youre clearly doing Haskell all wrong.

In all seriousness, Haskell is not the small language it once was in 1998, its reach spans many industries, hobbyists, academia and many classes of people with different incentives and whose ideas about the future of the language are mutually incompatible. Realistically the reason why the Prelude and extension situation arent going to change anytime soon is that no one person or company has the economic means to champion such a change. It would be enormously expensive and any solution will never satisfy everyones concerns and desires. Consensus is expensive, while making everything opt-in is relatively cheap. This is ultimately the equilibrium weve converged on and barring some large sea change the language is going to remain in this equilibrium.

Haskell Survey

Taylor Fausak conducted an unofficial survey of Haskell users with some surprising results about widespread use of Haskell. Surprisingly there are reportedly 100 or more people who maintain 100,000 or more lines of Haskell code. Not so surprisingly most people have migrated to Stack while vim and emacs are the editors of choice.

While the majority of respondents are satisfied with Haskell the language the response are somewhat mixed the quality of libraries and the bulk of respondents reported Haskell libraries being undocumented , hard to use hard to find, and dont integrate well.

Projects

Idris, the experimental dependently typed language, reached 1.0 release and became one of the larger languages which is itself written in Haskell.

The most prolific Haskell library Pandoc released its version 2.0.

Several other groups published new compilers in the Haskell-family of languages. Intel finally open sourced the Intell Haskell compiler which was a research project in more optimal compilation techniques. Morgan Stanley also released Hobbes a Haskell-like language used internally at the bank featuring several novel extensions to row-types and C++ FFI integration. A prototype Haskell compiler was also written in Rust.

The SMT solver integration library SBV saw a major rewrite of its internal and its old tactics system. The library is heavily used in various projects as an interface to Z3 and CVC4 solvers.

Uber released a library for parsing and analysis of Vertica, Hive, and Presto SQL queries.

Wire released the backend service to their commercial offering.

The Advanced Telematic Systems group in Berlin released a Quickcheck family library for doing for property testing of models about state machines. Bose also released Smudge a tool for doing development and analysis of large state machines for hardware testing.

Florian Knupfer released a new high-performance HTML combinator library for templating.

Galois continued with HalVM unikernel development this year, and several HalVM Docker Imagaes were published allowing a very convenient way to write and test code against HalVM.

Facebook released a Haskell string parsing library duckling which parses human input into a restricted set of semantically tagged data. Facebook also prototyped a technique for hot-swapping Haskell code at runtime using clever GHC API trickery.

Chris Done released vado a browser engine written in Haskell.

Jonas Carpay released apecs an entity component system for game development in Haskell.

Csaba Hruska continued work on a GRIN compiler and code generator, an alternative core language for compiling lazy functional languages based on the work by Urban Boquist.

Dima Szamozvancev released mezzo a library and embedded domain-specific language for music description that can enforce rules of compositionality of music statically and prevent bad music from being unleashed on the world.

Conal Elliot and John Wiegley advanced a novel set of ideas on Compiling with Categories which allows the bidirectional representation of Haskell functions as categorical structures. Although currently implemented as a GHC typechecker extension it is a promising research area.

Harry Clarke published a paper on Generics Layout-Preserving Refactoring using a reprinter. i.e. a tool which takes a syntax tree, the original source file, and produces an updated source file which preserves secondary notation. This can be used to build tools like haskell-tools for arbitrary languages and write complicated refactoring suites.

Joachim Breitner contributed a prolific amount of open source projects including a new technique (ghc-proofs) for proving the equivalence of Haskell programs using a GHC plugin, (veggies) a verified simple LLVM code generator for GHC, and (inspection-testing) new technique for verifying properties of Core.

The ghc-proofs plugin allows us to embed equation and relations into our Haskell module and potentially allow GHC to prove them correct by doing symbolic evaluation and evaluating them as far as possible and checking the equational relations of the equations sides. Right now it works for contrived and simple examples, but is quite a interesting approach that may yield further fruit.

{-# OPTIONS_GHC -O -fplugin GHC.Proof.Plugin #-} module Simple where import GHC.Proof import Data.Maybe my_proof1 = (\f x -> isNothing (fmap f x)) === (\f x -> isNothing x)

$ ghc Simple.hs [ 1 of 1] Compiling Simple ( Simple.hs, Simple.o ) GHC.Proof : Proving my_proof1  GHC.Proof proved 1 equalities

Haddock

Haddock is creaking at the seams. Most large Haskell projects (GHC, Stack, Agda, Cabal, Idris, etc) no longer use it for documentation. The codebase is dated and long standing issues like dealing with reexported modules are still open.

There is a large vacuum for a better solution to emerge and compatibility with RestructuredText would allow easy migration of existing documentation.

Databases

This year saw two new approaches to Haskell database integration:

Selda - A library interacting with relational databases inspired by LINQ and Opaleye. Squeal - A deep embedding of PostgreSQL in Haskell using generics-sop.

This still remains an area in the ecosystem where many solutions end up needlessly falling back to TemplateHaskell to generate data structures and typically tend to be a pain point. Both these libraries use generics and advanced type system features to statically enforce well-formed SQL query construction.

Data Science & Numerical Computing

Chris Doran presented a concise interpretation of Geometric Algebra, a generalization of linear algebra in terms of graded algebra written in Haskell. A talk on this project was presented at the Haskell Exchange.

At ZuriHac several people expressed interest in forming a Data Haskell organization to work on advancing the state of Haskell libraries for data science and macing learning. There is considerable interest of the constructing the right abstractions for a well-typed dataframe library.

Tom Nielson is furiously working on a suite of of projects, mostly related to data science, machine learning and statistics in Haskell.

The Accelerate project has been seeing a lot of development work recently and now has support for latest versions of LLVM and CUDA through llvm-hs project.

A group at the University of Gothenburg released TypedFlow a statically typed higher-order frontend to TensorFlow.

Eta

Typelead continued working on a Java Virtual Machine backend to GHC called Eta. The project has seen considerable amount of person-hours invested in compatibility and the firm has raised capital to pursue the project as a commercial venture.

The project does seem to be diverging from the Haskell mainline language in both syntax and semantics which raises some interesting questions about viability. Although the Haskell language standard seems to be stuck and not moving forward, so theres an interesting conundrum faced by those trying to build on top of GHC in the long run.

WebAssembly

WebAssembly has been released and is supported by all major browsers as of December 2017. This is been piquing the interest of quite a few Haskellers (including myself) who have been looking for a saner way to interact with browsers than the ugly hack of ejecting hundreds of thousands of lines of generated Javascript source. WebAssembly in either standalone projects or as a target from GHCs intermediate form STG to the browser offers an interesting path forward.

Industry

An incomplete list of non-consulting companies who are actively using Haskell or have published Haskell open sources libraries follows:

Product Companies Standard Chartered Galois Intel Target Uber Vente Privee FrontRow NStack Morgan Stanley Takt Fugue Habito Asahi Net Sentenai IOHK Awake Networks Facebook Adjoint DigitalAsset AlphaSheets Channable SlamData Wire JP Morgan Bose

There are four consulting companies also supporting Haskell in industry.

Consultancies Well-Typed Tweag FP Complete Obsidian Systems

Conferences

Both the Haskell Exchange and ZuriHac conference had record attendance this year. Haskell was well-represented in many interdisciplinary conferences include StrangeLoop, CurryOn, LambdaDays, LambdaConf, and YOW.

Most of the videos are freely available online.

In 2018 I have plans to visit Zurich, Sydney, Budapest, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Paris, Copenhagen and Tokyo this year. Hopefully I get to meet more Haskellers and share some ideas about the future of our beautiful language. Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Haskell Year.
Just a few weeks after TechShop abruptly closed all of its U.S. studios last month, including in St. Louis, its assets are being sold to a new owner that plans to reopen some of the shuttered locations.

A group led by Dan Rasure of Kansas says it has a deal in place to buy the assets of San Jose, Calif.-based TechShop and plans to add new equipment to at least some of the former TechShop studios. Financial terms were not disclosed.

TechShop, a membership-based chain of studios with equipment for inventors and entrepreneurs, operated 10 U.S. studios. Before it closed, it had 9,000 members, including a studio in the Central West Ends Cortex innovation district with 500 members.

The new owner isn't saying yet which studios may reopen. TechShop 2.0 is "currently evaluating each location and will announce shop openings ASAP," the company said in a statement.

A new website, http://www.techshop2.com/, says TechShop 2.0 will require machine proficiency for staff and facilities will have newer and larger industrial machines.

Announcing the closure of TechShop was the most difficult thing Ive had to do in my career," former TechShop CEO Dan Woods said in a statement. "When the opportunity for a different path forward presented itself, we did whatever humanly possible to work with Dan Rasure and make TechShop 2.0 a reality."

After TechShop shut down, a group led by St. Louis entrepreneur Jim McKelvey stepped forward to help local TechShop members access their materials at the St. Louis studio at 4260 Forest Park Avenue and complete their projects before the holidays.
ST. LOUIS  Four people were injured in a shooting in the city's Kingsway East neighborhood Sunday afternoon, police said.

Police released few details after the shooting, but said the victims were all conscious and breathing at the scene in the 2300 block of North Euclid Avenue.

It wasn't clear if the shooting happened inside the Euclid Market; shell casings, evidence markers and victims' clothing were outside the convenience store.

The shooting happened about 12:15 p.m., police said. A witness who declined to give his name said two women were shot, one in the leg and the other in the arm, and a man appeared to be shot in the head. The witness said he heard 15 to 20 gunshots from multiple guns.

Reported crime in the Kingsway East neighborhood is down about 18 percent compared to the same six months last year.
ST. CHARLES  A St. Louis man who opened fire at a childs Chuck E. Cheese birthday party in 2015 has been given a life sentence.

The birthday girls grandfather was injured in the January 2015 shooting, but he survived. No one else was hit.

On Wednesday the gunman, Arieon Demico Ford, 25, was given a life sentence on a first-degree assault charge by Circuit Judge Deborah Alessi. In Missouri, a life sentence is calculated at 30 years.

Ford pleaded guilty to eight total felony charges in May: four counts of first-degree assault and four counts of armed criminal action.

The shooting was at a Chuck E. Cheese at 2669 Veterans Memorial Parkway in St. Charles.

Police said a woman, Aesian Anunique Clay, called Ford and told him to bring a gun to her daughters first birthday party at the restaurant. Clay was angry after getting in a dispute with the father of the child, police said.

A witness told police that Clay told her daughter: Say your last goodbye to your daddy because he is going to die today. She told the father of her daughter that she was calling her new boyfriend, according to a witness.

Ford arrived at the restaurant and began firing a semi-automatic handgun in the direction of four people. Police said at the time that the grandfather positioned himself between Ford and his son, the girls father, so his son and two other guests could escape. The girls father ran into woods near the restaurant, police said.

Afterward, Ford went outside, where he fired the gun several times in the parking lot, police said. No one else was injured.

The childs grandfather was hit multiple times in his lower body and arm, police said. He was seriously injured and underwent surgery.

Clay, 23, of St. Louis County, pleaded guilty in February to attempted first-degree assault for her role in the case. She was given a suspended sentence of 15 years in prison, which she would only serve if she fails to complete five years of probation.

Among the conditions of her probation: Shes not allowed at Chuck E. Cheese.
JEFFERSON CITY  Lt. Gov. Mike Parson and the top Democrat in the Missouri Senate are calling for the removal of top administrators at the embattled St. Louis Veterans Home.

In a press conference Monday, Parson said mismanagement at the nursing home in Bellefontaine Neighbors should trigger the firing of director Rolando Carter and his assistant, Aneeqa Khan.

He did not go as far to say Missouri Veterans Commission Director Larry Kay also should leave, saying that is for commission members to decide. Commissioners are appointed by Gov. Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL who campaigned on a platform of helping veterans.

Later, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Gina Walsh, D-Bellefontaine Neighbors, said the senator agrees with Parson that a change in leadership is needed.

The 300-bed home has been under a microscope over complaints by residents, employees and families that the facility is failing to adequately care for veterans. Complaints by veterans and family members about care at the St. Louis home were first made public in a Post-Dispatch column by Tony Messenger in October.

The concerns include improper medication, including overuse of antipsychotics, the inability to hire and retain quality personnel, a lack of transparency and honesty in investigation of complaints, and a loss of faith between veterans, families and the administration of the Missouri Veterans Commission.

The more I learn, the more frustrated I get, Parson said.

Parson is basing his call for removal on a report his office conducted on the home dating to February, which confirmed many of the concerns, including a lack of cooperation by administrators.

As a former county sheriff, Parson said the reluctance to share information got his attention.

Nobody wants to admit were not helping our veterans, Parson said.

Among his concerns is that Carter was administrator of a Chicago-area nursing home where a resident allegedly died from medication errors there in 2010. He also filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001 and again earlier this year.

Parsons comments come two weeks after Greitens announced that an outside firm  Harmony Healthcare International  will be paid $45,000 to conduct an independent investigation of the complaints.

In late October, more than 100 family members, employees and veterans asked for an independent investigation of allegations of abuse, mistreatment and neglect at the facility. Missouris two U.S. senators also asked for an investigation.

In all, the HHI probe will be the fifth time the home has been surveyed for problems in the past year.

One of the reports  a survey conducted by the federal Department of Veterans Affairs  found a clean bill of health.

A spokesman for the commission did not immediately respond to a request for reaction.

A report from HHI is expected by years end.
UPDATED at noon Tuesday with name of injured man

ST. CHARLES COUNTY  A man was seriously injured after being struck by a tractor-trailer while walking on the Blanchette Bridge Sunday night, police say.

The Missouri Highway Patrol identified the injured man as Mark A. Drape, 53, of St. Charles. Police say he suffered serious injuries and was taken by ambulance to a St. Louis hospital for treatment.

The vehicle that struck him was a 1999 Peterbilt tractor-trailer. Police say the driver of the truck, a 54-year-old man from Vancouver, Wash., stayed at the scene.

Police say the truck had been traveling east on Interstate 70 at about 9:15 p.m. Sunday. The pedestrian entered the road and "began to walk in front" of the truck, the patrol said in an accident summary. The tractor-trailer swerved to the right, to try to avoid the pedestrian but couldn't. Police said it wasn't immediately clear why the man was walking on the bridge.
JEFFERSON CITY  A new report shows the state paid nearly $320,000 in October to a former probation officer who said she was sexually harassed by one of her bosses.

It is the latest in an expensive string of harassment claims filed against the states Department of Corrections, which was facing more than 30 pending cases at this time last year.

According to the Missouri attorney generals office, former probation and parole officer Felicia Mitchell of Hayti was paid $319,000 after a Dunklin County jury sided with her in a case dating to 2012.

Mitchell complained about being sexually harassed by one of her supervisors and later alleged she was poisoned in retaliation. Her story was featured as part of a series on problems in the prison system by The Pitch, a Kansas City newspaper.

Records show Mitchells attorney, Doug Ponder of St. Louis, will receive $154,000 of the money.

The award brings the total amount paid out by the agency since 2012 for dozens of similar discrimination cases to over $7.8 million.

The high number of incidents and the cost to taxpayers spurred hearings last year by members of a House panel, who urged new DOC Director Anne Precythe to turn around the agencys culture.

In March, Precythe moved to replace a number of top administrators in the states central office, as well as in some of the states 21 prisons.

Amid a call for more transparency in the amount of money being paid out in settlements, Attorney General Josh Hawley agreed to post monthly reports online beginning in January.

In addition, Auditor Nicole Galloway investigated all department settlements following a Post-Dispatch report that a former Department of Conservation director was still being paid after leaving his post in June.
RICHMOND HEIGHTS  At least 50 people led by clergy protested at the St. Louis Galleria on Sunday.

The protesters chanted "Victory is ours," as they walked peacefully on the first level of the mall about 3:20 p.m. Then they did a lap on the second level and returned to the first level.

Some stores closed, putting down security gates as protesters chanted "No justice, no profit" to the beat of drums. Police and security guards observed, but there were no arrests, as there have been at previous protests at the mall.

The clergy and many of the protesters left shortly before 4 p.m. About a dozen remained and were ordered to leave by police. They eventually left the mall shortly after 4 p.m.

On Nov. 25 the Galleria closed for about half an hour and seven people were arrested during a Black Friday protest.

The protest was part of an economic boycott effortannounced in early November by African-American clergy and activists over issues from police treatment of blacks to bank loan practices to infrastructure neglect in the northern part of St. Louis.

The mall was also the site of a protest in late September following the acquittal of a white St. Louis police officer in the shooting of a black drug suspect. That protest ended in more than 20 arrests and generated complaints that police were heavy-handed.
WASHINGTON   Lobbing new criticism at the special counsel's Russia investigation, President Donald Trump said Monday he feels "very badly" for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who last week pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about reaching out to the Russians on the president's behalf.

"I think it's a shame," Trump said of Flynn's situation, adding that it's "very unfair" and that Flynn had "led a very strong life."

Trump tried to contrast Flynn's treatment with that of his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, whom he said "lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened."

"Flynn lied and they destroyed his life," Trump said.

The FBI didn't conclude that Clinton lied to agents, however. Former FBI Director James Comey testified last year that agents found Clinton to be truthful in her interview, telling a House committee, "we have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI."

Flynn is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Even as Trump sought to minimize Flynn's misdeeds, the Kremlin insisted that Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. had not influenced Russian President Vladimir Putin's response to sanctions imposed by Trump's predecessor.

Flynn was forced to resign in February following reports that the Obama administration officials had informed Trump's team that Flynn had discussed sanctions on Russia Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, a fact at odds with the public assertions of Vice President Mike Pence. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday it was "absurd" to suggest that the phone conversation could have influenced Putin's decision and added that "such requests couldn't have been passed on" to him.

Trump, who spoke to reporters Monday as he left the White House to head to Utah, unleashed a string of tweets over the weekend in which he criticized the FBI and raised questions about the federal investigation into Russian election meddling and possible ties to his campaign.

In one of his messages, Trump again denied that he directed Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

Trump questioned the direction of the federal law enforcement agency and wrote that after Comey, whom Trump fired in May, the FBI's reputation is "in Tatters  worst in History!" He vowed to "bring it back to greatness." The president also retweeted a post saying new FBI Director Chris Wray "needs to clean house."

Former Attorney General Eric Holder tweeted in response: "Nope. Not letting this go. The FBI's reputation is not in "tatters". It's composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. You'll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now."

Trump seized on reports that a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was removed from special prosecutor Robert Mueller's team last summer after the discovery of an exchange of text messages that were viewed as potentially anti-Trump. The agent, Peter Strzok, had also worked on the investigation of Democrat Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, said Mueller removed Strzok from the team "immediately upon learning of the allegations." He would not elaborate on the nature of the accusations. The person who discussed the matter with The Associated Press was not authorized to speak about it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump tweeted Sunday: "Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI 'agent's role in Clinton probe under review.' Led Clinton Email probe." In a separate tweet, he wrote: "Report: 'ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE' Now it all starts to make sense!"

Strzok's removal almost certainly reflected a desire to insulate the investigators from any claims of political bias or favoritism. Trump and many of his supporters have at times sought to discredit the integrity of the investigation, in part by claiming a close relationship between Mueller and Comey and by pointing to political contributions to Democrats made by some lawyers on the team.

Following the tweets, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned the president to tread cautiously. "You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril. I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I'd watch this," Graham said.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

The tweet suggested that Trump was aware when the White House dismissed Flynn on Feb. 13 that he had lied to the FBI, which had interviewed him weeks earlier. Comey has said Trump the following day brought up the Flynn investigation in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could "let this go."

With questions raised by the tweet, Trump associates tried to put distance Saturday evening between the president himself and the tweet. Trump's personal lawyer John Dowd told ABC News that he drafted the tweet and gave it to the president's social media director, Dan Scavino. Dowd had declined to comment when reached by the AP on Saturday night.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel is beginning to see "the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice" against Trump.
Missouri public school students and teachers suffered a big loss Friday when an artificially configured State Board of Education ousted Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven. The move was Gov. Eric Greitens at his cynical best, manipulating a board dominated by his appointees  and still unconfirmed by the Legislature  to execute a backdoor coup inside a supposedly independent agency.

Greitens has gambled that most Missourians arent paying attention. Maybe hes correct, but that doesnt make his actions right or necessarily legal. At least one court challenge could force the governor to retreat because he has bypassed procedures mandated by law.

For those who are paying attention, Greitens has done little to explain exactly why he felt Vandeven deserved to be fired. Her performance, by nearly all measures, has been stellar. She has won repeated accolades from lawmakers and educators.

Her classy departure Friday contrasted with the shoddy treatment shes received. Leveling no parting shots, Vandeven stated only that she was leaving Missouris public schools stronger and lamented that political forces are eclipsing educational decisions.

The commissioner is supposed to answer to a board of education evenly split among Republicans and Democrats. The idea is that no decisions get made without bipartisan consensus, which helps minimize political influence on public education.

But Greitens has spent the past several months firing and appointing members, then firing his own appointees when they wouldnt do his bidding. Members complained that Greitens never directly explained his expectations, though it became apparent that he wanted them to fire Vandeven. One former member, Tim Sumners of Joplin, has sued, accusing the governor of breaking the law by removing Sumners only three weeks after appointing him.

Greitens never articulated what his expectations were of Vandeven and why she had fallen short. Assorted tweets and Facebook postings have only made macho-sounding, vague references about fighting for our kids. His statement Friday lauded Vandevens ouster as a chance to change course: The bureaucrats took your money. Teachers didnt get a raise. Juniors in high school had the ACT cut. The bureaucrats had their chance. They failed our kids.

Vandeven had no control over funds for ACT testing. In fact, it was Greitens who cut $4 million from the states assessment funding in July. Teacher salaries are set by local school boards. How Vandeven failed our kids remains a mystery.

Republicans, including Board President Charlie Shields, a former state senator, lamented the political trickery.

Melissa Randol, executive director of the Missouri School Boards Association, said the move effectively has made the commissioner of education a political appointee of the governor.

Somehow, Greitens sees the politicization of public education as a win for Missouri teachers, parents and students. If he ever finds a way to explain that twisted logic, wed love to hear it.
Aggrieved depositors cry foul over CB liquidation move By Quintus Perera View(s): View(s):

Depositors of failed finance companies are weeping in despair, accusing the heartless brute  the Central Bank (CB)  in deciding to liquidate some of these failed finance companies, despite the repeated promises and assurances of even President Maithripala Sirisena and some Ministers.

The report 3 ailing finance companies to be liquidated in last Sundays issue of the Business Times sent shock waves through these disgruntled depositors. Many were panic stricken and some of them called at the Business Times office to give their side of the story.

The three companies proposed to be liquidated are Central Finance and Invest Ltd (CIFL), The Standard Credit Finance Ltd (SCFL) and City Finance Corporation Ltd (CFCL).

These helpless depositors indicate that already a considerable number of depositors have died either due to heart break or unable to meet their medical expenditure while there have also been some suicides due to heavy financial difficulties and they have been suffering for some as much as 10 years and, all based on false promises by the government and the Central Bank.

In these earmarked finance companies alone there are around 10,000 depositors and according to W. Gunawardene, President, CIFL Depositors Association (CIFLDA) the depositors, shareholders and savings account holders would be a massive 25,000 and the cancellation of the business licence would affect all of them.

Aggrieved depositors cry foul over CB liquidation move

Depositors of CFCL indicate that they were manipulated and defrauded by Deepthi Perera alias Chulaka Gunawardena, Chairman, Aspic Group and after nine years many of their members are dead or lying in bed without money for medical expenditure, their childrens education is lost. Some who cannot meet their daily expenses have become paupers. Now the Central Bank has ignored the multi-pronged sufferings of these depositors and try to cover-up by liquidating these companies, they allege.

They accuse Aspic-owned CIFL of running a complex financial scam and the ploy adopted by having an unregistered CIFL and registered CIFL with different colour logos. Deposits have been collected for the unregistered company on the pretext of obtaining deposits for the registered one which is 40 years old. The unregistered firm ran into difficulty in 2008 due to gross mismanagement and no funds.

According to the CIFLDA the licence of registered CIFL was cancelled last week. In 2008 CIFL Asset Management (unregistered) deposits were used to buy a licensed finance company called Industrial Finance Ltd (IFL) and the liabilities of the collapsing CIFL was transferred to IFL. In 2011 IFL and CIFL Assets Management were renamed as City Finance Ltd and given Rs. 100 million to another alleged scammer to be invested in CFCL. Some directors of IFL were alleged to be punished by foreign courts for fraud.

Ms. Sonali Dunuwila, Secretary, City Finance Depositors Society quoting media reports in 2011 indicated that the Colombo Commercial High Court noted that the intention of the directors of the company was to defraud the creditors and deprive the availability of sufficient assets to meet the debts to be settled in the course of impending winding up application in accordance with the provisions of the Companies Act

Adducing many details to support their statement, she indicated, How did the CB allow such people to be responsible for a licensed finance company? This is the same thing they are trying to do to CFCL, they have changed the name, written off the assets and now CB is trying to liquidate the company. Now, CB seems to be part of the whole criminal chain.

Meanwhile, furious over the CB issuing notice to cancel the business finance license of the CIFL, a delegation of the CIFLDA met J.T.R. Karunarate, CB Assistant Governor November 22 and has registered their vehement protest against the cancellation of the license.

Mr. Gunawardene told the Business Times that they have pointed out to the CB that the CB has blatantly violated the fundamental rights of the depositors, violated the law and acted against provisions of the Finance Act. He said that they have indicated to CB that it has violated the provisions of the Finance Act from Section 25 to 37 and preferred to act on Section 37 (1) of the said act.

They are now preparing to complain to the Human Rights Commission against this injustice and would also be taking legal action where possible against the rights violation of their members.

He said that the Swiss investor, Chancental Works GmbH had promised to bring the money to the local Security Investment Account (SIA), in the first instance US$10 million and the balance $15 million equity capital is to be transferred to the SIA totalling $25 million. He said that Mr. Karunaratne has indicated to them to ask the investor to bring the money first and then they would consider withdrawing the license cancellation notice.

He said that the depositors have invested in CIFL purely based on the license issued to the company by the CB. There is no finality of the investor proposals and accused the CB of not considering all these facts, and instead allegedly violated their rights.
Sri Lanka moving towards debt sustainability By Bandula Sirimanna View(s): View(s):

The Government will raise money through the issuance of sovereign bonds in the offshore capital market next year to beef up funds for bunched-up debt repayments amounting to a staggering US$13.8 billion before its maturity period from 2019 to 2022, a senior Finance Ministry official said.

There are no repayments for international sovereign bonds in 2018; he said adding that the debt servicing will be maintained without any hindrance as scheduled.

Sri Lanka has commenced a debt sustainability process under the supervision of the IMF, he disclosed.

He noted that the Central Bank will go to the market and use financial resources to tackle the bunching-up debt that is going to be experienced from 2019 onwards while concentrating on liability management.

A framework is also being worked out for liability management, he said pointing out that there will be a peak in domestic debt repayments in 2018.

A Liability Management Act will be enacted in parliament soon to create the breathing space to address the bunching of external debt from 2019, Governor of the Central Bank Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy said at a recent public meeting.

This will relax the ceiling on Government borrowing set out in the Appropriation Act to raise financing to reduce the costs of external obligations; he said adding that this will serve to reduce roll-over risk.

The Sri Lanka Enterprise Budget 2018 had proposed to permit the Bank of Ceylon (BoC) and the Peoples Bank to raise debt and equity capital overseas. Previously, the BoC and the National Savings Bank had gone to the international markets to raise capital.

According to Central Bank statistics, Sri Lanka has to pay $2.56 billion in 2018, $3.99 billion in 2019 and $3.46 billion in 2020 for debt servicing.

The unsustainable debt burden can only be resolved through prudent policies; proactive liability management, and above all, export transformation,

The Government also plans to utilise the proceeds of the divestment of public assets to pay the debt, the Governor revealed.

The long-lease of the Hambantota port will generate much needed non-debt creating flows for liability management which is essential to address external debt repayments from 2019 onwards, he added.

Meanwhile S&P Global Ratings recently revised its outlook on Sri Lanka to Stable from Negative.

The Stable outlook reflects its expectation that the Government will maintain the reform momentum over the next 12 months and smoothen the upcoming surge in debt redemptions, particularly in 2019, S&P said in a media release.

An investment house will be established to facilitate liability management; a senior Finance Ministry official said adding that the National Debt Management Act will also be presented in parliament shortly

The debt to GDP ratio increased to 79.3 per cent in 2016 from 77.6 per cent in 2015 reflecting the debt financing of budget deficit, lower nominal GDP growth rate and the significant rupee depreciation on the stock of foreign currency denominated debt.

According to the Finance Ministrys Fiscal Management Report  2018, the ratio will gradually reduce to 70 per cent in 2020 with the expected lower fiscal deficit supported by a higher economic growth.

The government will implement a forward looking liability management strategy for domestic and foreign debt portfolios under the Medium Term Debt Management Strategy (MTDS) as a measure of resolving high debt stock.
Sri Lankas civil aviation gets PPP wings soon View(s):

Sri Lankas domestic air services will be developed in compliance with international standards with the involvement of the private sector under a Public Private Partnership model, top official sources said.

Foreign and local air service operators are to be attracted for the improvement of local services under this new initiative, a senior official of the Transport and Civil Aviation Ministry told the Business Times.

The Civil Aviation Authority has been directed to formulate a request for proposals for this purpose in consultation with the Public Private Partnership (PPP) unit of the Treasury.

Transport and Civil Aviation Ministry will regulate air service operators standards and the fares to be levied by them.

When this matter came up for discussion at the Cabinet Committee on Economic Management (CCEM) meeting, it was decided that domestic services should be open to foreign and local competitors alike.

Transport and Civil Aviation Minister Nimal Siripala De Silva noted that his ministry has decided to develop domestic airports for the use of civilians and identify the airports that need further development.

The World Bank has agreed to provide funding for the development of civilian airports, he disclosed.

It has stepped in to guide the Sri Lankan Governments development of its domestic aviation sector, and to determine the potential for involvement by the private sector into the industry,

An Options Study for Private Sector Participation in the Development of the Domestic Airports Sector in Sri Lanka was commissioned by the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Fund (PPIAF) of the World Bank.

The study has been carried out by a team consisting of members from the World Bank and ICF Consulting Services Hong Kong Ltd with active participation from the Sri Lankan Government.

With the exception of Mattala International Airport (MIA) (which was only commissioned in 2013), the remaining 14 domestic airports were previously owned and operated directly by the government before being transferred to the Civil Aviation Authority, and subsequently AASL.

These airports were all utilised by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) during the countrys civil conflict. The SLAF is the operator of most of these airports; there are also civilian aviation services run by private sector operators on a small scale.

There are a number of companies offering plane and helicopter charter services to several airports, such as Cinnamon Air, Helitours, Simplifly and Air Senok.

Inbound tourism is expected to grow from 1.5 million in 2014 to 5.4 million in 2035, and translated into number of tourist passengers (counting in and out airport movements) at BIA airport of 3.1 million (in 2014) and 10.8 million (in 2035). Further growth is expected Sri Lankas civil aviation gets PPP wings soon from Sri Lankan travellers and passengers in transit, the study revealed.

Most of the growth is expected to be driven by tourist demand. Demand from Sri Lankan nationals is expected to grow from 2.5 million in 2014 to over 5.2 million in 2035 which is in line with projected growth in GDP per capita in Sri Lanka.

The potential domestic aviation activity is expected to rise from a base level of 135,000 airport passengers in 2014 to 307,000 in 2021, before declining to approximately 198,000 in 2024 as improvements in road networks come in place.

Thereafter, the consultants forecast that domestic aviation growth will resume, providing there are no further significant improvements in surface connectivity towards some 350,000 passengers by 2035.

The analysis suggested that five airports have the highest level of development potential: Bandaranaike International Airport  in order to facilitate direct transfers for international passengers arriving into Sri Lanka; Mattala International Airport  in order to capitalise on existing infrastructure assets and to enable continued growth within Sri Lankas most popular tourism region; Sigiriya Airport  in order to provide easier access to key tourism destinations within the ancient Cities region; Hingurakgoda has been identified as alternative airport in the region, Batticaloa Airport  in order to provide quicker access to Sri Lankas east coast and upcoming tourism destinations in the region; and Jaffna Airport  in order to provide quicker access to the north of the country. (Bandula)
Strategic plan to increase shipping sector revenue View(s):

Sri Lanka is drawing up a strategic plan to make the shipping sector a billion dollar industry taking advantage of opening it to global shipping lines, Finance Ministry sources said.

The plan aims at increasing the cash flow in this sector from a current level of around US$50 million, a senior ministry official told the Business Times.

At present global shipping lines are represented as agents by Sri Lankan companies who retain 60 per cent of the profit while 40 per cent is repatriated to the shipping line.

Currently vessel owners remit around $800 million through the Foreign Currency

Account for agents of Foreign Shipping/Airline (FCAASA) to local agents for necessary levies and chargers as well as for shipping service fares.

The profit of the shipping agent is 5 per cent of this money amounting to around $40 million. Under the present 60:40 ownership arrangement 60 per cent of the $40 million amounting to $24 million is retained in the country with the local agents.

The governments strategic plan will promote competition and allow market determination of agency prices, the official explained adding that it could lead to reduce shipping costs, improve export competitiveness and bring down the price of imports.

According to the performance review of the Colombo Port, 316 container ships arrived during the month of September this year compared to 300 during the same month last year.

The new plan anticipates that the major shipping lines could attract more ships to call at the port and expand the overall freight market and increase the aggregate shipping and allied industries in Sri Lanka creating more jobs and new business opportunities, the official said. Local agents are objecting to the liberalization saying it would impact adversely on the sector.
Warm-hearted Sri Lankans View(s):

Scene 1: As a visiting tourist goes through the aero bridge outside the flight gate into the Bandaranaike International Airport lobby, walking past airport officials and smartly-clad SriLankan Airlines ground staff, the mood is anything but welcoming. They are greeted by glum or stern faces.

As the visitor approaches the immigration counter, the officer looks at you warily as if to say, Why are you here? Do you have a proper visa? No smiles, no warm welcome. Across the airport, apart from an exceptional official, staff is generally unfriendly.

Scene 2: Last week, bringing my car to a halt at a pedestrian crossing on Galle Road near McDonalds, Kollupitiya, when the lights had turned red, I was intrigued by a young Sri Lankan who was waiting to cross the road. He was engrossed in a conversation with an elderly, respectably-dressed woman who appeared to be begging. He suddenly realised that traffic had stopped and the green indicator to cross had come on. Quickly dipping into his pocket and fishing out a note, he gave it to the woman, gently tapping her on the shoulder in a gesture of I understand or empathise with your plight and ran across the road. I quickly tooted the horn, causing him to turn around quickly as he rushed across and gave him a thumbs up to acknowledge his good gesture. Surprised at first, he then returned the smile.

While the second case exemplifies the natural Sri Lankan trait  being a generous, warm and friendly nation of people, the first case gives a wrong notion of Sri Lanka being an unwelcome place for visitors  when in fact all channels should be switched on to greet visitors with a pleasant smile.

And in the month of December where there is a lot of goodwill, sharing and pleasantry, public and private sector organisations involved in tourism should begin a crash course on making Sri Lanka a more welcome place for the four million-plus visitors the country hopes to welcome by 2020.

Sri Lankans have a good heart, a warm smile and are generous to a point  as depicted in the example above. So how can the country benefit from an asset that comes naturally (and at no cost) particularly in making tourists welcome at the first point of contact  the airport?

First impressions matter to any visitor and this is where the authorities and private sector institutions engaged in tourism have failed over the years, focusing more on the hardware than the software. Large billboards greet visitors with a woman, palms pressed together, smiling brightly. But below the poster, an official or ground steward would often have an indifferent, bored or even sullen look. There is no warm and friendly atmosphere at the airport, particularly at the unfriendly immigration counters.

With tourism taking precedence in the countrys growth model through increasing foreign exchange revenue, more employment and more benefits trickling down to community level, this years budget provided a lot of benefits to this sector.

All the good vibes in the hardware context are there: Para-tariffs removed off some imported food and beverages; home-stays encouraged with a credit facility which has been budgeted at Rs. 10 million (though this would be just enough for 10 or fewer homes @ the rate of Rs. 1 million for renovation); rationalising liquor licences; developing ancient forts as tourist attractions; enhancing the value of railway stations like Nanu Oya, Colombo Fort, Galle and Ella by declaration as archaeological sites; developing domestic airports; and holding three street festivals and exhibitions in Los Angeles, London and Mumbai during the coming year to coincide with Sri Lankas 70th Independence celebration (the trade says the Rs. 50 million allocated is peanuts compared to the cost of an event in those countries). However, lets leave those negatives for another day.

In the area of software which is the focus of todays discussion, the authorities deserve praise in introducing a tourist-friendly tuk tuk where the drivers will be provided free training as tourist guides.

As I type on the desktop  one finger at a time, the old ways of using a typewriter or computer keyboard for an untrained person  the mornings silence is broken by Kussi Amma Seras voice at the gate, reprimanding a young beggar, Aei kollo, umbatawedak karanna bari de, hinga kanne nethuwa? However, despite her severe tones and scoldings, she takes out a couple of 10-rupee coins from a hembiliya hidden, under her hette and within her buxom bosom, gives it to the man and sends him away. Generosity seems to be over-spilling this Friday morning, the first day of December despite the gloomy overcast skies, continuous rains, gusty winds and personal tragedies. December, in fact, is the month of greetings, giving, sharing of gifts and, for the high rollers, partying notwithstanding the political chaos in the city with the rumblings of thunder not in the skies but electioneering during the upcoming local government elections.

State authorities dealing with tourism must combine with the privately-led tourism industry to provide a warmer welcome to every foreign guest arriving in the country (and even on departure). It should be the kind of warmth to some extent seen at the Colombo Port where Kandyan dancers and drummers greet visitors arriving on any cruise ship.

If the tourism authorities can come up with a model where every guest arriving at the airport is greeted with a flower and a smile, with the immigration counters manned by a smiling officer, a small welcome notice and a bowl containing fresh flowers or sweets, that would go a long way in enhancing the Sri Lankan product. This is in addition to ensuring tourists not getting harassed like the case of a British national, a Buddhist herself, who was deported for sporting a Buddha tattoo on the upper arm but later awarded compensation by the Supreme Court upholding that her fundamental rights had been affected.

Being an island nation helps. Many island states have pitched their tourism product on the warmth of the country, its people, food and music. The latter two make a world of a difference to the traveller.

For instance, during the three-month closure of the airport earlier this year, there was a calypso band playing at the departure lounge which was a welcome diversion and helped passengers while away the long hours in the departure lounge. Selfies were taken, children ran around and long hours quickly went past as visitors absorbed the islands culture of music and song. Given that success, this should have been continued. It is still not too late to re-introduce this, both in the arrival and departure lounges.

If one is to play on the psyche of a traveller, first and last impressions matter more than hardware (nice hotels, good food, visiting important sites). They create an everlasting impression of a country that is warm, friendly and welcoming to visitors.

Visiting Hawaii some years back, all that I can remember is the greeting at the airport: A smiling young woman garlanding every visitor, with Hawaiian music from a typical ukulele in the background. That was more than 30 years ago and that warm welcome will always remain as the high point of a brief visit.

As an island nation, Sri Lanka is at an advantage over its regional peers in sharing the tourism pie. Islanders are often considered fun-loving, easy-going and laid-back, and lovers of music  and as the pithy Sri Lanka saying goes Neva gilunath ban choon (Even while the ship is sinking the people are partying). Come sun or rain, Sri Lankans  most of the time  are happy islanders. And, a tot of toddy with a little bite enhances the mood!
Marapana keeps an ace up his sleeve View(s):

The public of Sri Lanka need not worry. Those who seem concerned that our foreign policy is like a rudderless boat with nobody at the tiller, better think afresh. It is in safe hands whatever the loquacious members of the opposition might say. Only the other day the Foreign Minister (the third under the yahapalana administration) told our legislators that he is armed with an ace. Never mind where he keeps it  whether up the sleeve or under the pillow  he will play it when the time is ripe.

Let those-sovereign states, civil society groups, journalists and commentators who in the last decade or so have castigated Sri Lanka for the way it fought an enemy which in their expert knowledge could not be militarily defeated, take note. Our Foreign Minister is now armed and ready to press the button just like Kim Jong-un did last week sending his latest toy right into the Pacific Ocean to join the shoals of tuna which the Japanese turn into delicious sashimi.

Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana said he knows when to play the ace. My fear is that somebody else is more likely to play the joker. It is not that some have not been playing the joker over and over again, turning Sri Lankan foreign policy into a tragic-comedy, defying sense and sensibility.

So what is this ace that Marapana has armed himself with and thinks he can break the bank? Well, it is the information which Lord Naseby had been able to wrench out of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) from the war time confidential despatches sent by UKs Defence Attache in Colombo to the FCO and the defence establishment.

These vital despatches, despite being heavily redacted to save the British Government from diplomatic embarrassment, present a different picture of the last six months of the war against the LTTE, especially with regard to the number of civilian casualties, portrayed by Sri Lankas critics.

The number of civilian casualties as assessed by Defence Attache Lt. Col Anton Gash based on figures he had been able to put together with the help of information obtained from knowledgeable sources on the ground, amounts to between 7,000 to 8,000.

This is far, far less than the speculative 40,000 or more touted by some uninformed persons who served as experts to then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other parties determined to inflate the number of casualties as props to their prejudices and one-sided narratives.

What is so intriguing about this ace as Marapana calls it, is the summary treatment of it initially by the foreign ministry in a statement it made in or about October 25. On that occasion the ministry tried to dismiss-rather arrogantly too  the results of Lord Nasebys three-year struggle to get at these despatches of the British Defence Attache in Colombo, particularly those sent to London during the closing stages of the war when the LTTE was using the Tamil civilians it had corralled, literally as cannon fodder.

In fact, I had read the highly censored despatches made available to Lord Naseby some weeks before he actually used them at the Lords debate on October 12 to buttress his case. His arguments clearly presented a counter narrative to that propagated by the UK and US governments, the main architects of UNHRC Resolution 30/1, which were highly critical of Sri Lanka and its security forces. They proposed measures inimical to Sri Lanka which the yahapalana government tamely accepted by co-sponsoring the resolution.

Without being grateful for what the Lord had done to undermine the doctored case against Sri Lanka that western governments, the media and human rights activists had put together, the ministry in its peculiar statement seemed to go out of its way to belittle the result of the Naseby initiative.

Strangely enough, the Foreign Ministry appeared to be taking pot-shots at local political opponents, which was not only irrelevant to the question at issue and certainly not its task. In its statement the ministry said: Engaging in debates in the international domain over the number of civilians who may have died at a particular time in the country will not help resolve any issues in a meaningful manner, locally, except a feel good factor for a few individuals who may think that they have won a debate or scored points over someone or the other.

As I said in a previous column it is surely a rare foreign ministry that, responding to a media query on a serious matter that has not only engulfed Sri Lanka but has been, and still is, an unsettled issue for sections of the international community including the UN, would try to treat the deaths of civilians in war in such a cavalier manner.

The Foreign Ministry treats the death of thousand of Sri Lankan civilians in a disastrous and debilitating war like a plaything and with no interest in trying to reach the truth. One thought that the then foreign minister by co-sponsoring Resolution 30/1 had agreed to establish a Truth Commission. Is not trying to arrive at the truth with regard to civilian casualties of war and how it happened, a crucial task of any commission established to search for the truth?

Is it not of particular importance to the people of Sri Lanka bombarded with information (concocted or otherwise) by external sources that accuse its security forces of genocidal intent or deliberate killings, to know whether there is any truth in these accusations and whether the deaths were as high as 40,000 and even more according to some?

Having pointed a finger at a few individuals who might feel good about what Lord Naseby was able to squeeze out of his own foreign office, surely it is a duty the Foreign Ministry owes the public to identify these few individuals who seem to have been elated by Lord Nasebys disclosures which deflate some of the accusations against Sri Lankas security forces.

The whole tenor and tone of the ministry statement is that those who are elated and even overjoyed by what Lord Naseby had unearthed with much diligence are somehow traitorous for supporting the Naseby initiative.

After having put both of its feet in its open mouth, the foreign ministry tried to retract by pulling one foot out a couple of days later. But by that time the damage had been done because by then the media was digging into why the government was remaining silent over the Naseby disclosures. After all they provided vital evidence that ended the accusations levelled by our so-called friends the UK and US which the UNP was vigorously cultivating.

The few individuals that the Foreign Ministry alluded to had a few days later grown to include President Sirisena and State Minister of Foreign Affairs Vasantha Senanayake. Admittedly the government was late in recognising the value of what Lord Naseby had unearthed or there were attempts by some outside the ministry manoeuvring to downplay the Naseby findings.

It must be said in favour of State Minister Vasantha Senanayake who was the first to take cognizance of the value of the Naseby findings which his own ministry possibly dictated to by an unseen hand was trying desperately to bury. He wrote an official letter thanking the British peer.

On November 2 President Sirisena wrote to Lord Naseby thanking him for his help to Sri Lanka. Lord Naseby told me that the Presidents November 2 letter reached him at the House of Lords delivered by our High Commission in London on November 21. Perhaps the Foreign Ministry and its satellite missions still rely on carrier pigeons for delivery.

So now having done its best to denigrate Lord Nasebys efforts on behalf of Sri Lanka which the British peer did out of his genuine interest in Sri Lanka, Foreign Minister Marapana who remained silent all those weeks until the foreign ministry vote came up in parliament, has also decided to cling on to the wagon.

He has now realised he has an ace in his hand. He is only waiting for that singularly apposite moment to play it. Why? Because otherwise our critics would prepare a defence against it to destroy its impact. Minister Marapana does not realise that he is not at the bar table or even the card table. The last time he engaged in some advocacy in parliament speaking on the Avant Garde issue he had to throw in the towel and his portfolio.

Surely he must realise that this ace he is trying to keep up his sleeve is now rather passe in that it has been out in the open for six weeks or so. The arguments are well known here and Lord Nasebys entire speech is available in toto in the British parliaments Hansard. Lord Naseby has been interviewed by TV and he has said his piece.

Doesnt Marapana realise that the recent story published by Associated Press of some 50 Tamil asylum seekers who claimed to have been tortured by Sri Lankan security and played out in the media here and elsewhere was an attempt to divert attention from the Naseby story, was manipulated by the Tamil diaspora and some human rights activists?

By the time our Foreign Ministry and some of its diplomutts scattered around wake up to meeting and countering such media manipulation the sun would begin to set in the east. This foreign ministry is more concerned with covering up its tracks and scratching each others back.

Lord Naseby faced bureaucratic obstruction from the British Foreign Office when he invoked UKs Freedom of Information Act to obtain the information he sought.

Our own Right to Information Act which the Editors Guild fought for years to get on the statute book and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe advocated for nearly two decades, was made law by this yahapalana government.

The government rightly claims the RTI Act as one of the most valuable pieces of legislation that it successfully piloted through parliament.

But there are increasing signs that bureaucratic obstructionists are trying to undermine the publics right to seek and receive information so that the dark dealings of ministry bureaucrats will not reach the public.

As Lord Naseby once told me ahead of launching his quest for the Anton Gash despatches there will be bureaucrats standing in the way but one must be prepared to go up the totem pole to higher authorities and contest the decisions of officials and overcome their barriers. The same would have to be done to our own buroocrats who are trying to nullify the publics right to know in the belief that they are the final arbiters of what the public needs to know.

It would not surprise the public if they hear stories of officials whose backbone needs straightening playing around with technologically advanced mobile phones to hasten communications in the furtherance of favours. Large scale bribery and corruption are not the only obstacles that stand in the way of clean government. Officialdom has a hand in undermining the transparency, accountability and meritocracy that the government promised the people.

Now that the State Minister of Foreign Affairs Vasantha Senanayake has played a lead role in negating his ministrys attempt to undercut the Naseby initiative, he should take a hand in cleaning up his ministry and ensure that laws are obeyed and adhered to.
Political vultures and the carcass of the rainbow revolution View(s):

Vultures are circling high above in the skies as they watch what appear to be the struggling death throes of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe unity alliance with delight.

Fury in Sri Lankas hamlets

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa hypocritically thunders on the twin dangers of the sale of national assets and the betrayal of national war heroes, going on to insist that the faction of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) loyal to President Maithripala Sirisena can join his group only on their terms. His numerous hangers-on in the self-styled Joint Opposition (JO) who compete with each other for the prize of being the most unprepossessing, cackle with unabashed joy at the prospect of a settling of scores with their rivals and a quick return to power.

To be fair, the beating of the communal drum by the JO has not been that effective in the villages and provinces of Sri Lanka as even the cursory traveller will discover. In other words, there is little public acceptance of the favorite Rajapaksa bogey that the country is in the pincer grip of hostile international forces. More to the point, plainly and simply, the problem is the monumental inefficiency of this Government and the soaring cost of living.

The desperate plight of farmers having to cope alternately with prolonged drought and then flooding with little official support is just one example. This seeming inability to enforce order is replicated in other instances; a nation-wide example being the recent fuel shortage. But in the rural hamlets, the fury is even greater. Steeply increasing prices of staples like coconuts and rice have aggravated the predicament of the poor. The enthusiasm for yahapalanaya governance has waned among those who voted for a change.

An unsettling contrast

The contrast is unsettling; on the one hand, suited and black tied crooks get away with millions in the sinister form symbolized by Arjun Aloysius of Perpetual Treasuries fame and on the other hand, helpless villagers are caught in death traps of poverty, whose only recourse is suicide. In a recent casual exchange in Colombo, my conversationalist asked the incredulous if not somewhat patronizing question; are people in the villages actually aware of the so-called Central Bank bond scam and shenanigans in high financial circles? After recent visits to the Uva, Central and Eastern provinces, the answer to that query is in the positive.

In that regard, it must be conceded that the communications strategy of the Rajapaksas has been effective. And it has not helped that the much vaunted anti-corruption strategy of this Government against the crooks of the previous regime has failed miserably, part by design and part by its own inconsistency. Handled badly from the outset, this has now has become an embarrassing fiasco apart from a few stellar convictions.

True, the Supreme Court is performing its constitutional role after a lapse of close to two decades, even though this is attributable primarily to a few conscientious judges. One example is the Courts recent decision declaring the arrest, detention and subsequent deportation of a British tourist in 2014 carrying a tattoo on her arm of the Gautama Buddha seated on a lotus flower to be unconstitutional.

This case demonstrates a common pattern of Rule of Law safeguards being violated from the point of the tourist being compelled to go with a so-called civil defence officer and a taxi driver who had first spotted the tattoo to the Katunayake police station subsequent to which she was produced in the Negombo Magistrates Court, detained in the Negombo prison and later, at the Mirihana immigration detention camp. Writing for the Court, Anil Gooneratne J. summarily dismissed explanations of the police officers that the tattoo had been feared to bring about a breach of the peace, holding that there was no reasonable basis for the arrest. The manner in which the tourist was abused in lewd language by a prison guard and the constant demands for money made by the police was judicially deplored.

The privileged and the marginalized

Despite these undeniable gains, the fact remains that this Government has failed to straddle the city-rural divide in a way that harmoniously intertwines both. An active Supreme Court is a distant luxury to a milk farmer struggling to survive in the interior of the Ampara District. And visits by one delegation of the United Nations followed by another are of little comfort to a mother in Trincomalee despairingly struggling to ascertain the fate of her disappeared son.

Death is the one relief to the pain of very different victims, united by their common and desperate hopelessness. It is that disjunctive contrast between the privileged and the marginalized that the unity Government (if it lurches on) must address with all its might and main without floundering in the major cities, leveling pot shots at each other.

In 2015, the marriage of the long talked of technocratic vision of the UNPs Ranil Wickremesinghe and the homespun commonsense of the SLFPs Maithripala Sirisena was hailed. The President and the Prime Minister were expected to bring their respective and very different strengths to the unity alliance. What has happened since then is quite different. The UNP has been almost irreversibly damaged by a gigantic financial scandal in connection with the Central Bank and its own party while the Sirisena faction of the SLFP has become inextricably entangled with nationalistically populist rhetoric.

Avoiding an awaiting tragedy

In that sense, both have failed to give enlightened leadership to the national effort to lift the country out of the Rajapaksa morass of communalism and corruption. To the cocooned in Colombo, the glee that implacable rivals of the Government display at its eagerly predicted downfall may seem premature. Perhaps there is nothing wrong in wistfully (albeit vainly) hoping for a turn of the tide. This becomes even more urgent as the local government elections draws nigh amidst the failure of asinine games of some to delay the polls.

Measured even against the various idiocies committed by the flotsam and jetsam that cling to one or the other faction in the unity alliance with desperation, whoever thought of conjuring a legal challenge to the Gazette notification pertaining to the polls, deserves a rude knock behind the ears for their monumental stupidity. Even if that challenge has now been withdrawn, the bad taste that it left behind will linger even though it appeared to be an ill-advised gamble only on the part of a few.

So as the inevitable draws near and absent a course correction even at the eleventh hour, the vultures will certainly lose no time in swooping down on the carcass of what once promised to be a bright and beautiful change for Sri Lanka.

That will be the ultimate tragedy for this country and the people. Certainly it must be avoided at all costs.
What prompted President to back out of talks? Some SLPPers also blame Basil for breakdown

Sirisena meets Ranil; PM warns UNP group of action against anyone attacking the President; SLFP also will check polls leaflets to avoid mudslinging at UNP

Elections to all 341 councils likely to be held on Feb. 10; SLPP and its JO allies to contest as United Common Peoples Front

Talks between rival factions of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) have collapsed despite efforts for the first time by President Maithripala Sirisena and his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa to reunite for the local polls.

The duo appointed their respective committees to take forward the talks. This even saw a meeting between President Sirisena and Gotabaya Rajapaksa. There was mutual endorsement of the two teams then. The former Defence Secretary, who had identified the pros and cons of uniting to his leadership, was in favour of giving it a chance.

Whilst the teams were at work, Minister Susil Premjayantha, who had Sirisenas blessings at an earlier stage to broker a parntership, was the harbinger of bad news. His latest message said that the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the political party formed by Mahinda Rajapaksa, was only a faction of the SLFP. Thus, he declared, the SLFP leadership could not engage in talks for unity. Thereafter, Premjayantha left Sri Lanka on a foreign trip. Like the proverbial last straw that broke the camels back, the talks collapsed.

The SLFP rivals are still unable to fathom what prompted President Sirisena to suddenly back out and call an immediate halt to the patching up talks. Was it local or foreign pressure or both?

On the other hand, many in the SLPP blamed it on Basil Rajapaksa, widely regarded as the strategist for the new political party, the SLPP. In fact, the reconciliation efforts began with an influential non-active SLFP member approaching him. It was Basil who told him that utmost secrecy should be maintained. He had said that he would obtain the concurrence of Mahinda Rajapaksa whilst he urged the unnamed intermediary to do so with President Sirisena. This was around the time Minister Premajayantha had made his first soundings. When his verbal briefing to the Joint Opposition parliamentary group was rejected, a written request from the SLFP, as reported earlier, was handed over to Mahinda Rajapaksa by Premjayantha. It has then been given to Basil Rajapaksa for safe keeping.

With the talks collapsing, President Sirisena appeared to have embarked once again on a new course of action. He had a meeting with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. He explained to him that like his (the Premiers) task was to strengthen the UNP, it was his (the Presidents) task to strengthen the SLFP. Other than this, he insisted that he had nothing in his mind about appointing a new Prime Minister or paving the way for a new Leader of the Opposition. Earlier, Wickremesinghe had sought clarification over speculation in political circles about former Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa being made the Premier under an SLFP dispensation. In fact, when talks were under way, Chamal told leaders of the rival group he was not in favour of such a dialogue. He argued that most party supporters disliked it. Broad indications had been given by Sirisena about the non-fruition of unity talks but Wickremesinghe seemed already aware that reunification talks within the SLFP had not materialised.

During his discussion with the PM, the President had made clear, somewhat assertively, that Wickremesinghe should rein in his parliamentarians from publicly criticising him (Sirisena). He made particular reference to the outburst by State Minister for Strategic Development and International Trade Sujeeva Senasinghe. The State Minister had severely criticised Sirisena using strong words after it came to light at the Central Bank Bond Commission that Senasinghe was in cahoots with the main suspect in the bond scam, Arjun Aloysius of Perpetual Treasuries Ltd. (PTL), by exchanging dozens of calls between them. That company is the subject of a probe by a Commission of Inquiry for allegedly profiteering to the tune of billions of rupees through irregular bond transactions at the Central Bank. Senasinghe had served in the parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) and defended the role of PTL. He had even authored a book. In defending himself after the evidence transpired, he had said that all the calls were to get information for the book he was writing on the bond allegations, but in defending himself he took a swipe at Sirisena asking if the country was run by him or a businessman close to him. In fact, Senasinghe himself was an erstwhile associate of the businessman.

Just a day after his meeting, Wickremesinghe told the UNP parliamentary group last Monday that MPs should refrain from criticising the President or face disciplinary action. That the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe meeting has one more time renewed the prospect of the present Yahapalanaya (or good governance) coalition remaining in office until the end of term is one thing. Another is the move to revive the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the remaining tenure of the Government. SLFPers in particular want the inclusion of several new clauses including urging their counterparts to give them equal consideration when evolving policy issues. A ministerial re-shuffle and a prorogation of Parliament to pave the way for a policy statement for the remaining years is also under active consideration. Yet, how the two sides will resolve some of the outstanding matters, like action on high profile cases of bribery and corruption, remains to be seen. Any new MoU will only be a precursor to the next presidential and parliamentary elections.

On the other side of the divide, Basil Rajapaksa admitted that he opposed the talks at reunification at the beginning. It was on the basis that it was against the people of this country. There were both pro-Government and those opposed to it. There would be no force left for those who oppose if the Joint Opposition were to change, he told the Sunday Times this week. However, he said the Rajapaksas were at the butt-end of severe Government harassment. Therefore, Mahinda, Gotabaya, Namal and he met to discuss the situation in detail. It was noted that if the SLFP changed its present policies, the SLPP would have to take that into account. This is whether the SLFP is in the Government or not. This is notwithstanding the personal issues they face. Hence, there was general consensus to examine offers for re-unity and thus obviate blame for any outright rejection. They had noted that they should seek to stop the sale of national assets; halt Government moves to cut down subsidies; check the rising cost of living; mounting unemployment and  help to fight bribery and corruption. Particular mention was made of the Central Bank bond scam.

When we were moving forward with talks between the committees on either side, I knew I would be blamed if anything went wrong. I remained neutral. I thought if they decide successfully, I would do my best to get the rest of the party to fall in line, said Basil Rajapaksa. Saying that all Rajapaksas looked at it positively, he added, there were people who were trying to deliberately scuttle the process.

Basil Rajapaksa added, Both President Sirisena and our leader Mahinda Rajapaksa gave their genuine blessings to the respective committees. Sirisena had named SLFP senior deputy leader and Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva, Lasantha Alagiyawanna and Dilan Perera. Also included were Anura Priyadarshana Yapa and Susil Premjayantha. The team from the rival faction comprised C.B. Ratnayake, Pavithra Wanniaratchchi and Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene.

One of the pre-conditions of the rival (Mahinda) group was what it called a safety net. Should talks not succeed there should not be any reprisals on their members. There had been many examples in the past, it was pointed out.

During the talks, the rival faction had placed three demands: They were:

A proposed No Contest Pact to contest the 337 local bodies (later increased to 341 with the creation of new ones). Of this number, 37 local bodies would be contested by smaller parties now associated with the Joint Opposition. Of the remaining 300 number, 150 to be contested by the SLFP. The remaining 150 to be contested by candidates of the rival group under the Pohottuwa (or budding flower) symbol of the SLPP.

If there were serving MPs on either side seeking a particular ward, they are to be conceded. The balance number of wards to be shared equally.

To re-activate the Peoples Alliance (with the Chair symbol) and field candidates under it. At present Mahinda Rajapaksa is the Chairman and former Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne is the General Secretary.

Amend the Constitution of the PA to make provision for the creation of a 100 member Vidayaka Sabha or Executive Committee. Membership be given to the eight partners of the JO on the basis of two each. That would total 16. Thereafter, the remaining 84 members be allotted on the basis of 40 for the SLFP and 44 for the SLPP.

The Chairmanship of such a Committee will go to the SLFP whilst the post of Secretary will go to the JO. All decisions concerning the two sides to be taken by the Executive Committee.

If accord could be reached for the upcoming local council polls, to pick some 50 local bodies where a victory is not possible. For the rival group to field candidates for them. This was, however, shot down.

We were given to understand that the matters could be considered by the SLFP leadership subject to further talks. However, in the meantime, Minister Premajayanthas new message had arrived, said Basil Rajapaksa. Asked whether the rival group sought the exit of the UNP from the Government, he replied, yes, that is what we put forward earlier. This was a response to assertions by the SLFP Committee that the SLFP also wants to work with the UNP. That is also after it was made clear that the reconciliation was only for the purpose of the local polls  a statement which raised queries over what the JO would get in return for entering into an electoral arrangement with the SLFP merely to save the skin of the SLFP under Sirisena.

That development prompted the Sri Lanka Podujana Party (SLPP) to request its candidates to pay their deposits under the pohottuwa symbol. The first move was reflected in the District Secretariats in Gampaha, Kalutara and Galle. That was a precaution said Basil Rajapaksa adding that we could have withdrawn if there was any agreement with the SLFP. That came as an indication that the dialogue was not reaching fruition and was a pressure-message to the SLFP. Nevertheless, small groups from both sides are still talking in a desperate exercise amidst concerns that neither side wants to be accused of breaking off the dialogue.

Now, the SLPP and its partners under the pohottuwa symbol will be known as the Ekabadda Podu Jana Peramuna or United Common Peoples Front. Udaya Gammanpila has been named as the convenor of a campaign committee which will include Dinesh Gunawardena, Vimal Weerawansa, Dulles Allahapperuma, Prasanna Ranatunga, Pavithra Wanniaratchchi, G.L. Peiris, Basil Rajapaksa, Rohitha Abeygunawardena, Vasudeva Nanayakkara and Sanka Navaratne.

Now that the SLFP has accepted that an arrangement with its rival is not materialising, moves are afoot to field its own candidates and launch a strong campaign. This was the subject of discussion when President Sirisena, who returned from a three-day visit to South Korea, chaired a meeting at the Presidential Secretariat on Friday. Several measures were discussed for the local council elections which are now likely to be held on February 10 next year. Sirisena urged members of his personal staff, who had been assigned to prepare reports on matters relating to local polls in different areas, to submit their findings without delay.

Beginning December 6 (next Wednesday), the SLFP district leaders will undertake the task of finalising the list of their respective candidates. It will thereafter be submitted to the party headquarters for ratification. The SLFP is yet to decide on which symbol its candidates would contest. The Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) representatives sought the Betel Leaf. Others representing the hill country areas alleged that it was associated with racial overtones. Most were in favour of using SLFPs hand symbol. The matter will be finalised in the next few days, said a senior SLFPer.

President Sirisena said he would travel to each district for meetings and urged that we speak in one voice. Earlier, there were suggestions that he would not campaign at all in the local elections. In a bid to ensure the polls campaign does not cause any friction with the coalition partner UNP, all leaflets to be distributed by the candidates would require approval from the party headquarters. At another meeting to be held next week, a firm decision on the party symbol as well as the issues that should form the campaign are to be made. There was a debate when it came to choosing candidates for the Colombo Municipal Council. However, Sirisena resolved it.

Sirisena also met his party ministers on his return from Seoul to discuss issues related to the budget proposals. One was the proposal to liberalise the shipping industry. Another was proposed change to the Shop and Office Employees Act. He asked a ministerial team, named earlier, to meet Premier Wickremesinghe again and raise issue since these were in contradiction with the SLFP policy. The team is headed by Nimal Siripala de Silva. Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera has made clear there would be no change in the proposal though he would consider procedural changes.

With the voting on the budget concluding on December 9, the UNP will launch its own local polls campaign. Together with its smaller partner political parties, the UNP will contest under the Elephant symbol but as the United National Front (UNF). Among other parties in the fray is the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which is campaigning to win local bodies in areas considered its strongholds.

The Elections Commission had earlier chosen to hold local polls in only 93 local bodies in the light of two different reasons. One is a string of mistakes in the Gazette notification issued by Local Government Minister Faiszer Musthapha. That prevented the Commission from conducting polls for 40 local bodies. The conduct of polls to a further 248 were stalled by an order by the Court of Appeal.

The Court last week suspended until December 4, the operation of the Delimitation Commission report Gazetted in February this year. This, six petitioners pleaded, was on the grounds that the Minister, in terms of the law, was not empowered to alter the number of members from a particular ward in a local authority. He was only empowered to make alterations to the boundaries of the local authority. A three-judge bench observed that the Local Government Minister had acted ultra vires the powers vested in him under the Local Authorities Elections Ordinance.

This was to lead to a flurry of political activity. Speaker Karu Jayasuriya was to chair a meeting of party leaders where various options to overcome the situation were examined last Monday. Local Government Minister Musthapha is learnt to have telephoned the Speaker from Malta where he was attending a conference. He drove straight from the airport for the meeting on Monday morning. One of the options examined was to ascertain whether the six petitioners could be persuaded to withdraw their application to the Court of Appeal. Interesting enough, even if they did, at least technically there was no barrier to any other party going to courts on the same matter. Such a prospect hangs in the air even after the polls are concluded.

One party which was strongly in favour of all polls being conducted on the same day was the UNP. That it was earlier planned only for 93 local bodies caused concern at the highest levels of the party since that included many areas which were not favourable to the UNP. A loss would thus place it at a disadvantage when polls for the rest of the local bodies came. Minister Musthapha undertook to talk to the petitioners and later announced in Parliament that that they would withdraw their application.

Even before he made the announcement, Musthapha told confidants he would be able to get the application withdrawn and thus pave the way for the conduct polls to all councils. Even the mistakes in the Gazette notification related to the 40 councils were being rectified, he said.

Thus, last Thursday (November 30), the six petitioners lawyer, N.M. Shaheed, filed a motion before the Court of Appeal, noting that the application was filed on November 10, supported on November 15 and 16, notice was issued and limited interim relief was granted by the Court. Such relief was until the next date in order to enable the Court to re-assess the necessity of extending the interim order. It was to be taken up tomorrow (December 4).

The motion noted that the Petitioners and the Respondents (Minister Musthapha and his Secretary Kamal Pathmasiri) have held discussions on this matter and the first respondent (the Minister) agreed to endeavour to consider the concerns of the Petitioners.

In the said circumstances, the motion declared that the Petitioners are no longer desirous of continuing with this application and have no objection to the limited interim order issued by Your Lordships Court being dissolved. The Petitioners respectfully move that Your Lordships Court be pleased to mention this matter on 30 November 2017 to enable the Petitioners to support this motion, to respectfully move that the interim order delivered by Your Lordships Court be dissolved and to withdraw this application without costs.

As a result, the Elections Commission is now able to conduct polls to all the local councils. The original dates of nominations for the 93 local bodies will be, as scheduled, from December 11 to 14. For the rest of the local councils, nominations will be received from December 17 to 19.

The recent developments over re-unity within the SLFP and the upcoming local polls would no doubt have far reaching repercussions. The plain fact is that the votes of the SLFP would largely be divided between the Sirisena faction and those backing Rajapaksas SLPP. SLFPers who attended Fridays meeting at the Presidential Secretariat say they are confident they can hold their own and make substantial gains. However, if there is a tilt in voter preference to the SLPP, that will turn out to be a daunting challenge for Sirisena. When relations with the UNP are strained and he has just seemingly repaired the latest damage with the UNP, the re-unity efforts with the SLPP for which he gave his full blessing have misfired.

Thus, fielding candidates from the SLFP that is backing him, is an exercise borne out of no other options. Not when his backers delayed the local polls and reached a point of no return. Making matters worse are credible reports that at least four parliamentarians from within Sirisenas ranks are now set to cross over to Rajapaksas SLPP. All this, there is little doubt, would affect Sirisena in his governance as President.

For the UNP, the senior partner in the Government, there is a sigh of relief that the reunification efforts in the SLFP did not succeed. The party is confident that with what it believes is a strong voter base in most areas, it will be in a position to garner most number of local councils. However, this is the first time the UNPs own popularity is being put to the test after the Central Bank bond scandal. UNPers argue that at the grassroots level there is little or no knowledge about the bond issue. Also, the bond issue is not the only issue that is nagging the UNP voter base in the provinces. The answers, of course, will be known within weeks rather than months.
A matter of commissions and omissions View(s):

The Budget vote for independent commissions in Parliament earlier this month has led to Sri Lankas new Right to Information (RTI) Commission finally getting its own fund to the relief of the anxious people who have been ceaselessly bombarding the Commission with information requests.

The RTI Act required the Fund to be in place at the outset. But that was not to be. The Commission faced a difficult year of being crippled by bureaucrats in accessing basic allocations needed for its operationalisation.

That the Commission gamely took on the challenge despite temporary premises and minimum staff is commendable. It has released information on the admission of children to national schools, exposed missing Commission of Inquiry (COI) reports and released other COI reports, directed the Army to release information on court-martial proceedings as well as ordered the release of alleged government corruption from the North to the South including unauthorised building permissions and environmental impact assessments.

So if any believed that posing financial difficulties will impede RTI, they thought wrong. The public demand was too strong. But the Commission may have a years worth of a backlog of appeals and other work to catch up on now. That is wholly due to the Governments tardiness in failing to provide independent financial resources at the outset even though ruling politicians congratulated themselves for enacting a globally acclaimed RTI Act during the Budget vote.

In fact, the explanation that a separate budget allocation for the Commission had not been included in 2017 because it had not formally come into being when the budget was drafted in 2016 is at odds with the fact that the RTI Commission had already been established by October 1, 2016. This bungling must be attributed to bureaucratic inefficiency, if the kinder explanation is preferred. After all, an allocation for the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) has been included in the 2018 draft Budget even though not a single member has been appointed to the OMP as yet!

That being said, the Parliamentary debates during the vote indicate the tensions in the process. JVP frontliner Sunil Handunnetti, Chairman of the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE), did not mince his words when he accused the Government of trying to paralyse the independent commissions on police, elections and procurement. He protested that a 21-member Audit Commission has had to idle as the draft Audit Act had not yet been passed even though it expends rupees two million each month for its maintenance. The Bribery and Corruption Commission has also been criticised even though the anti-corruption process is being stonewalled by politicians themselves.

Meanwhile, the commissions too have their own complaints apart from lack of financial resources. A clearly frustrated Election Commission has been forced to counter public flak for the postponement of local government and provincial elections even though these unpopular decisions were made elsewhere. And the Human Rights Commission has repeatedly pointed out that draft laws are not sent to it for scrutiny even though its Act strictly mandates that!

The democratic experiment with independent commissions meant to stay the hands of unruly politicians abusing the Rule of Law dates to a decade and a half ago. These commissions must not be covertly and fatally undermined by politicians or bureaucrats to be rubber stamps for the political establishment, as was once the case. The value of checks and balances by independent institutions must be preserved. Notwithstanding flaws in the system, we see progress in that regard.

The Constitutional Council very recently made its mark by rejecting two patently bad nominations by the President to the superior courts. That development can only be to the good of Sri Lanka.

Nature takes its course

After the deluge earlier this week, tourists both local and foreign began flocking to Yala National Park in the south. Three cheers to the Prime Minister who had to step in  and put his foot down, on the vehicular traffic that was detrimental to the wildlife in the park.

Like almost everywhere else, a mafia with political patronage has taken control of the safari tours inside the park which at times looks like the Dehiwela or Rajagiriya junctions at peak hour.

The countrys next best Wilpattu National Park which re-opened after the decades long northern insurgency is facing a human invasion of a different kind, also related to politics. There, it is a case of human habitation encroaching on what was once the domain of wildlife. Deforestation is going on at rapid pace in the area despite a Presidential decree to halt it.

This felling of trees is not only happening inside the park boundaries, but to the north of it. Resettlements, new roads, places of worship are all taking shape with appeals not only to the President as Minister of Environment, but even to the Vatican to safeguard Gods creation. The Department of Wildlife is besieged by political pressure.

Floods and droughts  and landslides  throughout Sri Lanka as we witnessed this week are partly due to the islands forest cover being down to 22 per cent. With a growing population of both humans and animals, and fixed land mass, the delicate balance between nature and the human-animal conflict  environmental circles call it the Balance of Power  requires a high degree of political astuteness, and firmness.

The PMs intervention at Yala, and the Presidents at Wilpattu, are a sine quo non for the Governments economic plan for the future, Vision 2025, and beyond. Climate change and global warming are bad enough phenomena; the ice glaciers in Greenland are melting faster than thought and they say raising sea levels alarmingly. Man-made crises must not aggravate a bad enough situation.

Animals and trees have no votes, but as everyone knows, nature has its own way of being heard.
Excise Dept. in high spirits: Hard liquor production soars View(s):

Hard liquor production in Sri Lanka rose last year by 7.1 percent, with the Excise Department recording an increase of 28.2 percent in revenue collection on hard liquor, a new report shows. By contrast, beer production dropped by 58 percent, causing a decrease of 37.7 percent in excise income from that sector, states the 2016 Performance Report of the Excise Department. This downturn was partly the result of a leading brewery suspending production for five months after being hit by floods last year, according to the report, which was presented in Parliament, recently.

The Distilleries Company of Sri Lanka (Pvt) Ltd has contributed 60.7 percent of total hard liquor production and accounts for 57.2 percent of entire consumption when compared with manufacturing and consumption data of hard liquor manufacturers in the country. Moreover, it contributed 62.4 percent of total tax revenue generated from hard liquor. W M Mendis is the second largest producer at 10.5 percent.

Earlier this year, a request filed by the Sunday Times under the Right to Information Act revealed that ethanol imports for the manufacture of hard liquor had also doubled from 10.4 million bulk litres in 2013 to 20.4 million bulk litres in 2015 after the new Government took over. The high levels were maintained in 2016 when 18.4 million bulk litres were legally imported.

Between 2015 and 2017, nearly 50 million bulk litres of ethanol were imported for the domestic liquor industry. By contrast, the quantity of ethanol legally imported in 2013 and 2014 was 23.9 million bulk litres. The numbers point to a significant expansion in local production.

Overall, there was a 14 percent increase in excise revenue last year when compared with the previous year. Collection rose from Rs 105.9 billion to Rs 120.7 billion and this was also the highest revenue recorded by the Excise Department since 2012.

However, this still fell short of last years targeted income of Rs 125 billion. The Excise Department said the target could not be met due to the impact of an instant hike in liquor prices attributed to the increase of excise duty twice by the end of 2015; a temporary halt in production at a leading brewery; and a drop in liquor production owing to a price hike caused by a 15 percent value added tax (VAT) on liquor at the end of 2016.

The increase in hard liquor production was quantified as 55.5 million proof litres, when compared to 51.7 million proof litres the previous year. The Excise Department said this was due to the introduction of excise duty on imported foreign liquor, the imposition of limits on liquor transportation and raids on places selling unlawfully manufactured liquor or kasippu.

The Excise Department occupied third place among income generating departments in 2016. It said it expanded the tax base and introduced new excise taxation strategies. Rs 981.3mn was raised through the introduction of taxes on imported foreign liquor as well as imported and country made spirits.

Excise officers conducted 32,782 raids related to excise crimes last year and the fines imposed by courts amounted to Rs. 150.3 million.

Meanwhile, one licence for the manufacturing of cigarettes and 521 licences for manufacturing beedi, cigars and pipe tobacco were renewed last year.
Green port city, with solar and wind power View(s):

With the aim of building a green port city with solar and wind power, the Ministry of Megapolis and Western Development has commissioned a special Social Environment Impact Assessment Report, an official said. The decision was made after a team of officials from the Ministry and other government institutions linked to the Port City project visited several foreign port cities.

The team included officials of the Coast Conservation Department, the Central Environment Authority and the Urban Development Authority (UDA).

The visits were undertaken to study how artificially created islands could have an impact on people or communities living around them.

They visited the Palm Islands in Dubai where three artificial islands have been created, the Forest City in Malaysia and the Marine Bay Sands in Singapore.

Some of the main concerns are garbage collection and disposal, sewerage, the types of vegetation that can be planted within the newly built area and the impact on marine life. The study will be undertaken by the Central Engineering Consultancy Bureau (CECB) and will be carried out by local and foreign experts.

We want to design it as a green port city. We want to harness solar and wind power as well as make the buildings eco-friendly, Megapolis Ministry Secretary Nihal Rupasinghe said. The report is expected to be completed before the end of January.Meanwhile, the Ministry has decided that within the common area of the Port City, buildings will be designed in the architectural style of the Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Kandyan eras.

The Chinese too have been requested to adopt similar styles in the Chinese side of the project and they have agreed.From April next year, a public gallery will be opened at the Port City to enable members of the people to see the construction work on the project. There will be guided tours for school children.
NHSL heart operations stopped, theatre conditions dangerous By Kumudini Hettiarachchi View(s): View(s):

All heart operations at the National Hospital of Sri Lanka, except some emergency cases, came to a halt on Friday, December 1.

The NHSLs five cardiothoracic surgeons put down their scalpels as the conditions in the cardiothoracic operating theatres (OTs) are deemed to be unsuitable for open heart surgery, with fears of patients acquiring infections which, in turn, would lead to high morbidity (illness) and high mortality (death), the Sunday Times learns.

The Health Ministry, meanwhile, has not responded to the situation in any concrete manner, sources said. The Sunday Times in a comprehensive report headlined Heart operations may be suspended from Friday; NHSL theatres contaminated or under repairs last Sunday (November 26) revealed the deplorable state of the four cardiothoracic OTs of the NHSL, the premier heart centre of the country and the pathetic plight of adult patients.

The patients are dying and the Health Ministry does not seem to care, said another source, explaining that the longer a patient had to await open heart surgery, the weaker he or she would get and more prone to illness. Some of the emergency heart surgeries are being performed at an OT of the Neurotrauma Unit which has been loaned to the cardiothoracic surgeons, it is learnt.

Two of the cardiothoracic OTs at the Cardiology Unit of the NHSL have been under repair since April last year. Sources said the State Development and Construction Corporation (SD&CC) has indicated that the earliest when it could conclude the repairs would be at the end of next month. The two other cardiothoracic OTs, in the NHSLs main building complex, are in no condition for open-heart surgeries, with contamination levels high, the sources added. Heart disease, meanwhile, is the No. 1 killer across the world including Sri Lanka.

Other sources queried as to why plans for a National Heart Centre have been shelved. People in the know say that a 70-perch block of land behind the Cardiology Unit on Kynsey Road had been donated to the NHSL for this centre but little or nothing has happened so far. The project proposal for the state-of-the-art National Heart Centre which would have 8 OTs and 4 catheterization laboratories had been drawn up and the design completed way back in 2007. It is estimated to cost Rs. 3 billion, the Sunday Times understands.

The governments priorities for the NHSL seem to be clear  first it will construct the Outpatients Department (OPD), then the General Surgical Building and only after that will it consider the National Heart Centre, even though the treatment and management of heart disease should be a priority, a source said, adding that the rich and powerful of course could seek treatment abroad but the poor people of Sri Lanka had to depend solely on the much-touted free health system.

Another source said in disgust that the government seems to be waiting for a foreign donor without channelling some of the money being wasted by politicians on unnecessary projects, for this vital National Heart Centre. In our country, heart patients dependent on the state health system seem to be viewed as people of a lesser god by those in authority, the source added. End
Windy Wednesday: 13 killed, 100,000 affected View(s):

At least 13 people were killed, more than 60 injured and about 100,000 people affected when one of the heaviest rains and gusty winds hit Sri Lanka from Wednesday, the Disaster Management Centre said yesterday. DMC Deputy Director Pradeep Kodippili told the Sunday Times that upto yesterday about 25,811 houses had been damaged, with 694 of them being destroyed.

He said about 5,435 displaced people from about 1,420 families were being housed in 66 safe locations. Meanwhile, the National Building Research Organisation (NBRO) has also issued landslide warnings to residents of the Badulla, Ratnapura, Galle and Matara districts. People living near mountains or slopes and those living in areas identified as landslide prone were warned to remain vigilant.

Warnings were also issued to residents in previously identified landslide prone areas such as Nuwara Eliya, Matale, Hambantota , Moneragala and Kalutara. The Irrigation Departments Hydrology Division report on inland water levels, issued at 12.30pm yesterday, said that in Pandugama, the Nilwala River water level was dropping, while in Baddegama where floods were reported, the Gin Ganga water level was also going down.

Meanwhile, he Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) said the heavy rain and winds had knocked out power supplies to about one million residences, businesses and other insitutions.,

CEB spokesman Sulakshana Jayawardena said CEB crews worked around the clock from Wednesday nigh to restore power supplies. By 10 a.m. yesterday, power had been restored to about 800,000 users. The Galle District was the worst affected, with power lines and transformers damaged in many places. In addition to the crews already working 24 hours a day, Mr Jayawardena said about 20 CEB teams from areas outside the affected districts had been deployed to work in disaster affected areas.

There are obstructions that need to be cleared. We also need to consider the safety of our crews. That is why in some areas, the restoration has been delayed, he said.Meanwhile, the Power and Renewable Energy Ministry has introduced several hotlines for the public to inform authorities of power failures. Accordingly, those in affected areas could call the following numbers: CEB  1987, LECO  1910, Ministry of Power and Renewable Energy  1901, Kalutara District  0114418418 and Southern Province  0714238623.
It is a home away from home, says R.K.D.V. Piyaseeli from a village close to Ridigama in Kurunegala who has given up her job at a garment factory and brought her one-and-only son. The lives of mother and son collapsed exactly a year ago. It was on December 3, last year that her boy complained of leg-pain and they were advised to get a blood test by a doctor. Seeing the blood reports they were told to go to the Kurunegala Teaching Hospital immediately. Thereafter, everything fell into place with the free state health system taking over, with her son being sent to the Apeksha Hospital and Consultant Paediatric Oncologist Dr. Wasantha Rathnayake reassuring them. While telling them gently that her putha had leukaemia, she repeats what he told her when we meet Piyaseeli just outside Ward 15A. Kaalayak beheth karala honda karanna puluwan kiwwa, she says with a poignant smile. We see the team of Ward 15A in action  gentle tones of concern and advice to parents not to miss the clinic days or the days of chemotherapy or radiotherapy. While her mother and brothers supported her in whatever way they could financially, the battle against this curable blood cancer which had gripped her son was hers to fight and fight alone. Treatment followed, with a paralysis of her sons left limbs needing a referral to the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children and then being warded at the National Hospital for nearly two months. Later having been warded also at the Apeksha Hospital for some time, they returned home. The follow-up treatment, thereafter, was as an out-patient. Being from far away, where could she and her son stay? Within the hospital, there is a home away from home not only for Piyaseeli and her son but also for many others, parents with children like a father from Beliatte who is here with his four-year-old middle daughter who has acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), as his wife has just had a baby back home and also adult patients whom we meet a little while later. The walk around CCC (Courage, Compassion and Commitment) House is an eye-opener. A home that gives hope and saves lives is the motto of this transit home for cancer outpatients and their carers. With Piyaseeli repeating that aarakshawa thiyenawa, we see rooms with attached bathrooms for parents with smaller children, rooms with common bathrooms for bigger children and their parents and wards for men and women. In a room with two comfortable beds over which are strung colourful mosquito nets are W.M. Sriyani and 13-year-old daughter Himashi who has a le prashnaya (blood problem) from Kumbukwewa in Kurunegala. On a different floor S.P. Nalani, 64, whose womb has been removed and current allala ivarai (undergone current therapy) is ready to go home, while sitting around chatting are a knot of women from Dompe, Nawalapitiya, Galle and Polonnaruwa who still have to get a little more treatment. They have just had their lunch, while from a kitchen where a few mothers with picky children are making a little special something for them, rise mouth-watering aromas. A mother from Welimada is stirring a bitter-gourd curry and a dhal curry, while another is adding salt to taste to a dish before taking a few drops onto her palm. Loku vaasiyak, says the father from Beliatte who declined to be identified, asking CCC House nothibunanam koheda inne (where would we have stayed if CCC House was not there). Manager Laksiri Fernando relates how CCC House came into being. The Founder Chairman of the CCC Foundation, Jetha Devapura, who lives in Melbourne, Australia, had been a regular visitor to the hospital, lending a helping hand, when its Director was Dr. Kanishka Karunaratne. Once when he asked Dr. Karunaratne about anything more that he could do, he had related how the corridors were so crowded with sleeping patients and their carers that he literally had to jump over them when making his way to his office. They were outpatients from distant areas such as Jaffna, Vavuniya, Moneragala who just did not have the wherewithal to stay in the dingy cramped lodgings which had mushroomed around the hospital. Build a Transit Home, was Dr. Karunaratnes plea to Mr. Devapura who then formed the CCC Foundations in Australia and Sri Lanka. While he raises funds in Australia, the four Trustees (currently they are top business magnates Chandi Page, Suren Madanayake, Suresh Mendis and Gamini Wimalasuriya) based in Sri Lanka do the same here. The 194-bed CCC House has 45 rooms for children with two beds each and four wards with 26 beds each, for men and women. Lots of greenery, a large pond with fast-swimming fish, a play area with colourful equipment, TV areas, reading areas, meal areas, a counselling room, every little thing has been thought of. Its like a hotel, smiles Mr. Fernando who manages with a bare minimum staff of 11, explaining that while the food is provided by the hospital, everything else is looked after by the Foundations through donations. Abans contributes by providing cleaning services at no profit, charging only for the actuals and Kay Jay Security provides a safe environment also at cost and no profit.
Laaleen Sukhera: In search of modern day Austenistani heroines View(s):

What would Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan look like? LaaleenSukhera, the editor of Austenistan had some ideas. With her own writing featured in the compilation of short stories, Sukhera saw many parallels between the worlds she and Jane Austen inhabited.

Socially and culturally, the Indo-Pak subcontinent is so similar to Austens Regency era with our obsession with marrying well, our class conscious, ancestral and even feudal backgrounds, and our inherent snobbery, our countries are teeming with modern day Austenistani heroines balancing their independent spirits with societal constraints, she would tell journalists.

In India Today, a journalist who had read Austenistan enthused: From ex-husbands who are more substance abuse than substance to aunties worried about virginity; from Dubai and London-based eligible bachelors to Lahore and Rawalpindi-based smart bachelorettes, Jane Austen couldnt have found a more appropriate home for her class-obsessed, marriage-oriented society.

The connection isnt always so clear to Janeites, as devotees of the author sometimes refer to themselves. They wonder what Elizabeth would look like in Pakistan. Some of the questions Sukhera has had to field include: Will she be wearing a burqa? and Do they allow women in Pakistan to read?

For Sukhera, the delights of Pride and Prejudice are timeless. She says: Jane was far ahead of her time with her brisk dialogue, concise descriptions, biting wit and sass, the brilliant repartee between characters, and her astute social commentary. Her characters are universally appealing, relatable and will never go out of style.

This ardent fan realised she had company when she founded the Jane Austen Society of Pakistan. It started in 2015 as the Jane Austen Society of Islamabad. Within a year, they had chapters in Karachi and Lahore and became the Jane Austen Society of Pakistan. Today, theyre an online community of 1,700 from 45 countries around the world.

The group is famous for their annual costume party, which typically unfolds in a house in Islamabad or Lahore. A journalist from the Times of India described the gathering as comprising two dozen Pakistani women kitted out in empire-waist dresses and pearls, their gloved hands dangling reticules as they take their place around a table laden with cucumber finger sandwiches, Victoria sponge cake and Earl Grey tea. On their second gathering, Sukhera dressed as Caroline Bingley.

Its worth noting that 7% of their membership is male, even though one of this rare breed is yet to show up at the annual costume party.

Aside from being chair of JALFs Pakistan chapter, Sukhera is a professional advisor at the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation, founded by Ms Austens fifth great-niece.

Sukhera graduated with an MSc in Professional Communications and a BA (High Honours) in Screen Studies and Communication & Culture at Clark University in Massachusetts. Today, she wears many hats: she was the series coordinator for ITVs award-nominated documentary, After The Bradford Boil, produced a health talk show at Geo News in Lahore, field produced at the Merrill Lynch Video Network in New York, worked in advertising on Fifth Avenue and interned with the late Ismail Merchant. More recently, she has consulted on public relations including the Queens 90th birthday and Spanish cultural celebrations in Pakistan.
Visiting the ancestral village of a Kandyan freedom fighter By Randima Attygalle November 26 marked the Moneravila Keppetipola Disava commemoration day View(s): View(s):

The Chief continued to repeat some Pali verses and while he was so employed, the executioners struck him on the back of his neck with a short sword. At that moment, he breathed out the word Arahan. A second stroke deprived him of life and he fell to the ground- a corpse. His head, being separated from the body, it was (in accordance with Kandyan custom) placed on his breast. The last moments of Moneravila Keppetipola Disava- the first architect of our freedom from colonial manacles, are thus recorded by Henry Marshall, who came to Ceylon in 1808 as Deputy Inspector-General of Army Hospitals in his Description of the Island and its Inhabitants.

Upon the capture of Keppetipola Disava along with Pilimatalawe on October 28, 1818, Governor Brownrigg was so pleased with the news that he ordered an extra allowance to members of the British Army and in a Gazette notification felicitated Lieutenant ONeill on the capture of these superlative disturbers of public peace. The fearless warrior who even instructed the executioner where to strike the second blow so that he would be spared of a third, while chanting gatha, baffled the British who took his skull to the Museum of the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh to determine what rendered him incomprehensible courage.

The skull which was returned to Sri Lanka after yet another battle waged by the Keppetipola descendants, was transported on a gun carriage from Colombo port to Kandy and ceremonially interred amidst military honours on November 26, 1954 in a memorial which was constructed at the Kandy Esplanade opposite the Dalada Maligawa. Since then the Keppetipola commemoration day is celebrated every November 26th in the outer courtyard of the Kandy esplanade. Aspecial decree issued last year overturned the Government Gazette of 1818, decriminalising 19 freedom fighters including Keppetipola Disava and officially declaring them national heroes.

The Kandyan Chief known for his magnanimity towards the Sasana gifted a temple in his ancestral village of Moneravila, Pallepola. This historical site off Matale, however, is little known today. The abandoned shrine room of this temple which is presently known as Pallepola Veluwanaramaya, is crumbling.

The village derives its name Moneravila, from the water hole (vila) in which peacocks (monara) used to bathe, replaced by paddy fields today. The walls of the shrine room adorned with Kandyan art, commissioned by the warrior Chief are inhabited only by nocturnal creatures! A veeatuwa which bears signs of one-time regal Kandyan splendour including wall-paintings is left to the mercy of nature. A jewellery box, a chunam box and several artifacts which mirror Kandyan craftsmanship are deposited in the modern temple compound. These, as the temples Chief Prelate, Melpitiye Wimalaratana Thera informs us are presumed to be Keppetipola family heirlooms. A kurahan gala and a palekkiya (a type of Kandyan palanquin used among the nobility) still survive.

When the skull of Keppetipola Disava was returned to the country, it had been on display at the old bana maduwa for the villagers to pay their respects, says the prelate sharing a faded photograph from 1954. When he had first arrived in the village in 1964 as a young priest, certain portions of the ancient walauwa had existed, recalls the chief priest who adds that they were demolished to give space to the modern structures of the temple which stands there today.

Born in Udugoda, Udasiya Pattuwa, Matale as the second son to Golahela Nilame (who held the office of Diyawadana Nilame under Rajadhi Raja Sinha) and Moneravila Kumarihamy, Keppetipola Disava had five siblings-two brothers and three sisters, according to historical sources. The ill-fated Ehelepola Kumarihamy who bore the child hero Madduma Bandara was one of his sisters.

On the settlement which followed the Kandyan Convention of 1815, Governor Brownrigg appointed Keppetipola, Maha Disava of Uva. However, the Chiefs who signed the Convention soon realised the unpalatability of the new regime as Judge Walter Thalgodapitiya in his work, Portraits of Ten Patriots of Sri Lanka notes. Those were the forces working in the country in those unhappy confused times- disappointment, disillusionment and dismay, says the author who further cites a Kandyan Chief believed to have told the British  you have now deposed the King, nothing more is required; you may leave us now. But the British had no such altruistic intentions as the author observes, and the disillusioned Chief, sadder and wiser after the event (the Convention) plotted and planned with active encouragement of the priests to achieve that end. William Tolfrey, Chief Translator to the British Government who was stationed in Kandy from 1815 to 1817 perceived this spirit of revolt and wrote to the Governor that, a deep and extensive plot to annihilate British power was being organized in the Kandyan provinces.

It is in this backdrop the Great Revolt of 1818 or the Uva Rebellion broke. Keppetipola Disava who was initially sent by the British to curb the uprising, returned all arms and ammunition to the British and joined the rebels in Alupotha. He was supported by several other leaders who were ostracized as traitors by the British. While serving at Sath Korale, Keppetipola Disava had also overlooked Matale and for more efficient administration, he had resided at Matale Udasiya Pathu and also in his mothers village of Moneravila, explains Nalini Chitra Keppetipola Vidurupola Aluvihare of Diyakelinawala Maha Walauwa, a sixth generation descendant of Keppetipola Disava and the chief mobilizer of Keppetipola descendants forum. As one of the most powerful Chiefs of Sri Wickrama Rajasinghes court, Keppetipola Disava was entrusted with scores of responsibilities which in turn called for regular travelling between the royal court and his residence in Moneravila in Pallepola. As a place of rest for both Disave and his horses, another residence in Hulangamuwa, Matale was built, says Mrs. Aluvihare. The house which reflects Kandyan architectural splendour is sadly neglected today.

Keppetipola married Delwala Ethanahamy from Ratnapura and had a son who was named Loku Banda. The British wanted no direct descendant of the Disava spared and to evade the hunt, his son Loku Banda had to live in disguise and most of the Keppetipola land was confiscated, Mrs. Aluvihare says.

A man who knew not the meaning of fear, Keppetipola Disava was tried by Court Martial on November 15, 1818. Henry Marshall documents in his book that he was least cowed by his impending doom and even engaged in jovial banter.

Marshall places on record the last moments of the Chief: Kneeling before the priest upon the threshold of the sanctuary, the repository of the Sacred Relic, the Chief detailed the principal meritorious actions of his life such as the benefits he had conferred on the priests, together with the gifts which he had bestowed on the temples and other acts of piety. He then pronounced the last wish, namely that in his next birth, he might be born in the mountains of the Himalayas and finally obtain nirvana. The only worldly possessions he had- the ragged upper cloth from the waist he offered to Dalada Maligawa as his last pious act and his bana potha he gave to a local official to be delivered to Simon Sawers, an agent of the government, as a token of the gratitude he felt for his friendship and kindness while they were officially connected at Badulla.

Marshall who thus documents the end of Keppetipola Disava, on November 25, 1818, goes on to note: Had the insurrection (1818 Uva rebellion) been successful, Keppetipola would have been honoured and characterised as a patriot instead of being stigmatised as a rebel and punished as a traitor.

The sword of Keppetipola Disava and his flag, head dress and jacket are preserved in the Kandy National Museum today. Interestingly, Keppetipola who was a signatory to the Kandyan Convention as the Disava of Matale, had signed the document in Sinhalese along with the other two Chiefs-Galagoda and Galagama, unlike the others who signed in Grantha- a combination of Sinhalese and Tamil characters.

Ven. Yatigammana Vimalagnana Thera of the Malwatte Maha Vihara Sangha Sabha in his address at the ceremonial internment of the remains of Keppetipola Disava on November 26, 1954 noted: If he should be here in spirit now, he would know how well he has served his people. There have been many men of our race after him to bear steadfastly and pass on, the flame of patriotism which in death he enkindled and to encompass the end for which he laid down his life.
Beer debate is incomplete without a debate on the bigger picture By Tassie Seneviratne View(s): View(s):

I read the article titled Docs raise concern: Slashing beer prices will pave the way for gateway drinking and the editorial stating that the beer debate is incomplete without a debate on the bigger picture, in the Sunday Times of November 19, with much interest. The larger problem of illicit liquor is not something new to Sri Lanka. It is to the credit of this government that it has viewed this problem with the seriousness that it deserves.

The latest statistics of the Excise and Police Departments reveal that 97,000 illicit liquor dens have been detected within the year 2015 alone. This means that an average of 270 raids have been conducted a day and it follows that a raid has been conducted every five minutes daily. Still for all, manufacture and consumption of illicit liquor goes on unabated. Political patronage received by illicit liquor barons coupled with bribery and corruption on the part of government agencies tasked with prevention and detection of this menace, remain the drawbacks.

Police involvement in detecting and preventing illicit liquor is with a view to preventing crime. Apart from the fact that many acts of violence are committed at or in the vicinity of illicit dens, illicit liquor is tied up with gambling dens and many a nefarious activity that this country is plagued with.

The illicitly distilled liquor, specially the smaller scale kasippu that is widespread and consumed by low income labourers, lacks supervision to ensure fitness for human consumption and poses another problem to reckon with. The cost to the government of providing medical treatment for those suffering from diseases due to consumption of this poisonous liquor, is considerable.

In my experience as an Inspector of Police and up to the rank of Senior Superintendent of Police, I have had the opportunity of looking at this problem from a broad perspective  specially having been the Officer in Charge of the Central Vice Squad in the City of Colombo. I could best illustrate this with a case study of the extent to which the tentacles of illicit liquor barons have spread  Lesson from the Kalattawa murders: Having done a correspondence course in homeopathy, the villain Alfred de Zoysa adopted the prefix of Dr. to his name and wangled a post in government service as an apothecary. Later he got into private practice in Weliweriya. After some time, having accumulated enough money for the purpose, he invested in winning tenders from the excise authorities for arrack taverns in various parts of the country.

Crimes including abduction, assault, robbery and murder were part of the process at the auctions to win tenders for arrack taverns. He next resorted to adulteration of arrack sold at the taverns, with illicitly distilled liquor and amassed a fortune. To carry on in this fashion he established close connections with the underworld. In this scenario only thugs and illicit liquor barons could take arrack taverns on rent. Having become a successful arrack renter for taverns in Colombo, Negombo, Puttalam and Balapitiya, he successfully rented taverns in Anuradhapura. Although he won tenders to sell government arrack, what he mostly sold was illicitly distilled liquor from his own illicit distillery in Kalattawa and made huge profits.

With this enormous wealth he had thus amassed he was able to obtain large scale Government contracts in the northern, north western and north central provinces, including a contract with the army for the laying of railway tracts. The large number of motor vehicles and heavy machinery necessitated him to establish a garage at Anuradhapura in which he employed many workers.

With a sense of complacency coupled with his vanity, he became careless, indifferent and contemptuous of the law. Any employee who fell from his grace was tortured and killed and none complained through fear, especially due to his connections with the army and police. A civic minded cultivator however made a formal complaint and Inspector S.S. Navaratnarajah with a police party rescued a former employee who had been tortured in a most sadistic manner and was about to be burnt alive. With this arrest the wheels of the law started to roll and many other complaints too started to flow in. Finally, the long arm of the law spread its tentacles strong enough to catch up with him and on July 20, 1972 Alfred de Zoysa was executed.

Another good illustration to show how illicit liquor found its way into government rented taverns is taken from an exercise carried out at the insistance of Dr. N.M. Perera, on my suggestion, when he was the finance minister. The exercise was to compare the amounts in the tenders for the Kotahena and Kollupitya arrack taverns, with the profits from government arrack supplied to these taverns. The profits from legal sales were way below the amount paid for the tenders. This disclosed how much illicit arrack was being sold at these taverns  other taverns not excluded. It also disclosed the extent to which the sale of government arrack was undercut and the government deprived of the revenue due to it. It is a vicious circle.

Arrack taverns are no longer given on tenders by the government since the privatising of the government distilleries. Licenses are now sold by politicians to their henchmen and liquor shops are mushrooming. Adulteration and illicit bottling however goes on in a larger scale. The liquor thus produced is not subjected to any laboratory tests for poisonous chemicals.

It is not only arrack but hard liquor of popular foreign brands are also adulterated and illicitly bottled. It should be noted that the more popular Johnnie Walker Black Label and Red Label that is available in Sri Lanka relatively cheaply through discreet sources, is not genuine Scotch whisky. There have been detections of counterfeit bottling of this largest selling brand of whisky even in developed countries such as the US and the UK and in India. Only laboratory tests will reveal the highly poisonous chemicals contained therein. As much as hard liquor rakes in big money, it also attracts unscrupulous businessmen.

The arrack business has always been big business in Sri Lanka and continues to get bigger and bigger. A phenomenon observed in the arrack business is the entry of unscrupulous business magnates into this business. Since of late the monster in the central bank bond scam has also been evincing great interest in the arrack business. Arrack consumption will surely increase with the promotion of this business and so will the attendant evils as described above. Unscrupulous big timers do not stop with sale of adulterated arrack, and do not hesitate to use the same push to pedal narcotics that have speedily caught up, with the easy and undeclared money leading to money laundering. This mafia will go all out to sabotage any moves to combat its activities. They will tap experts who will prostitute their positions for big money  and such experts are a dime a dozen.

Beer is a soft alcoholic beverage brewed in hygienic conditions under strict supervision. Never has there been any complaint of beer bottles or cans being contaminated. But it has been quite a common occurrence to find bottles of arrack smelling of kerosene. The smell of kerosene is easily detected. There can be worse muck in these bottles that is not detectable by smell. This shows the extent to which illicitly bottled arrack finds its way to liquor shops.

It is a myth to say that reducing the price of beer will induce non-alcoholics to take to beer. The fact is that those who dont take alcohol at all dont take it even when offered free. It is only after one takes to alcohol that the cost factor comes in. If people take to a drink just because it is cheap, then the cheapest drink in Sri Lanka is water  in which case we will have a healthy nation. But that too will not suit the pharmaceutical mafia which is as powerful as the narcotics mafia, and is also not in the interest of doctors who benefit from big pharma.

Whilst reducing the price of beer considering it to be a soft alcoholic drink, it will also be necessary to stipulate the alcoholic content per unit of beer that will get the reduction in excise duty, and ensure that the reduction in price will only apply to beer within the stipulated alcohol content.

Reducing the price of beer with a view to weaning the people, especially youth, from poisonous liquor and narcotics, all laws and regulations having so far failed due to the reasons outlined above, is the only pragmatic solution the government has so far come up with. The bold decision of the government, vested interests notwithstanding, is laudable. (The writer is a retired Senior Superintendent of Police.)
Colombo YMBAs annual Scholarship Awards ceremony View(s):

The Colombo YMBAs annual Scholarship Awards ceremony will be held on December 9 at the Colombo YMBA Main Hall,Borella.

497 bright and deserving young minds  including 422 undergraduates from state universities and 75 AL students  will be awarded scholarships amounting to Rs. 8.5 million.. The students are selected from the neighbouring schools of Colombo YMBA, namely: Ananda Balika Vidyalaya, Devi Balika Vidyalaya, GothamiBalika Vidyalaya, YashodaraBalika Vidyalaya, D.S. Senanayake College, Ratnavali Balika Vidyalaya, Susamayawardhana Vidyalaya, Ananda College and Nalanda College, as well as students from the Kataragama National School and Sella Kataragama Vidyalaya.

The Chief Guest at the ceremony will be Prof. Lakshman R. Watawala, and special guest of honour Irvin Weerackody, Chairman/Managing Director, Ogilvy Group Sri Lanka.

Spearheading this years event are the President of the Colombo YMBA Deshabandu Tilak de Zoysa and the Associations Trust Funds and Skills Development Committee headed by Anura Serasingha. The Colombo YMBA Scholarships Trust Fund Committee has individually interviewed each of the undergraduate scholarship candidates. The AL students are recommended to the Colombo YMBA by their respective school principals.

Funds for the 2018 Scholarship Awards have been generated from various Trust Funds established by the Colombo YMBA, with primary funding coming from the late Dr. D.J. Attygalle Property Trust Fund, Irvin Weerackody Trust Fund, Matilda Hewavisenthi Trust Fund, Sir Baron Jayatilleke Trust Fund, Sir Cyril de Zoysa Trust Fund, L.R. Goonetilleke Trust Fund, Welcome Break UK Tsunami Trust Fund, Erick Amarasinghe Trust Fund, Dr. D.P. Athukorale Trust Fund, D.S.P.S. de Silva Trust Fund, D.D.M. Simon Silva Trust Fund, ShrimaJayasekara Tsunami Trust Fund, Solomon Abeyasekara Trust Fund and the A.L.D.A. Jayawardena Trust Fund.

Several other donors based in Sri Lanka and overseas  including members of the Board of Governors and Members of the Board of Management  have also made significant contributions.
Rehan Mudannayakes new short film on sexual harassment Red Mustang on December 7 View(s):

Dushy is a young graduate desperate for a job. In one of the big companies to which she applies, she faces the initial two rounds of interviews and goes for her final interview with Anu, the powerful CEO. She gets more than she bargains for, we are told. To learn more about this story, you would have to watch Rehan Mudannayakes new short film Red Mustang, which explores the issue of sexual harassment.

Its one of these huge issues which really needs to be tackled because its a massive problem out here both for men and for women, explains Rehan. The story takes place at night and has been shot from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. Although the script was written by Rehan, he explains that he discussed everything with his sister Francesca and Dulika Jayamanne (who play the roles of the graduate and the CEO), allowing them to add to their lines to give authenticity to the film.

Rehan feels that the medium is a great way to convince people. Art is a potentially more effective medium in tackling these issues of sexual harassment than through politics or through laws which sometimes alleviate the problem but I dont think they really change the way people think, says Rehan. It is appalling to note the fact that women who face sexual harassment in Sri Lanka have very few measures to address the problem. There is very little protection for you if someone tries to harass you, partly down to the way people think over here and partly down to the law system, Rehan explains.

In a job situation or something like that as a woman you dont want to come across as being rude to the person because you keep thinking do they actually mean it like that or am I being rude? There are all these complications which come into it although the bottom line is that you are right and you are innocent, states Francesca.

The Red Mustang will be screened at the National Film Corporation on December 7 at 6.30 pm. There will be a Question and Answer session with the actors and director after the screening. Entrance is free, but there will be a collection box for donations and the suggested donation amount is Rs. 300.
The right to health is universal View(s):

GENEVA  On this years World AIDS Day, on December 1, we should remember the 35 million people who have died of AIDS-related illnesses, and the 76 million who have been infected with HIV since reporting began. And we can celebrate the fact that nearly 21 million people living with HIV now have access to life-saving treatment.

But we also must not lose sight of the fact that more than 15.8 million people are still awaiting treatment, while an estimated 11 million people do not even know they have the virus. In the time it takes to read this commentary, three more young women will have contracted HIV. These figures represent an indefensible injustice: millions of people are being denied their right to health.

The third United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG3) addresses health. It aims to reduce road accidents; tackle non-communicable diseases; end AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and neglected tropical diseases; guarantee universal health coverage and access to sexual and reproductive health-care services; and substantially reduce deaths from environmental pollution  all by 2030.

Although countries around the world have committed to this goal, countless people still inhale dangerous levels of toxic particles, and lack access to safe water and adequate sanitation. Too many governments consistently fail to act on environmental and other regulatory issues, turn a blind eye to companies that profit from selling unhealthy and addictive products, and thus fail those whom they are supposed to protect and serve.

Health is neither a gift nor an act of charity. It is a fundamental human right, encompassing both freedoms and entitlements. Everyone is free to make decisions about their health, regardless of who they are, where they live, what they believe, or how they earn a living. And everyone is entitled to affordable, quality health services and freedom from discrimination and coercion. Enjoying the right to health means having ones physical and mental integrity respected, and having the ability to participate and contribute to ones community.

Today, we call on world leaders to confront health injustices wherever they see them, and to take action to respect, protect, and uphold the right to health for all people. The ambitious SDG agenda for 2030 has afforded all of us the opportunity to shape policies aimed at creating and empowering the global health citizen.

Who is this citizen? She is an individual who knows her rights and can voice her concerns, challenge injustices, and hold decision-makers accountable. He is an individual who does not just ask for but demands access to doctors, treatments, or preventive care. The global health citizen is one who becomes a part of the solution.

Empowering global health citizens will require progress in at least three policy areas: popularising participation, democratising data, and eliminating discrimination. As to the first, we must open up health programs and policies to meaningful public engagement. In the 1990s, the disability-rights movement coined the phrase, Nothing about us without us. All global health citizens, and particularly health-care leaders, should adopt this mantra.

To be sure, public and private corruption remains a significant obstacle to ensuring the right to health for all people. In many countries, health care is one of the most corrupt sectors. To address this, global health citizens will need both institutional support and better tools for demanding that their right to health be respected. They should start demanding more measures to ensure good governance and transparency, improve legal literacy, fund civil-society organisations, and reinforce legal mechanisms for holding governments accountable.

The second policy area where progress is needed is access to data for every community. At UNAIDS, we follow the adage, What gets measured gets done. Data analysis has proven to be one of the most potent tools in the fight against the HIV epidemic, because it enables us to raise awareness, identify people being left behind, guide investment, and coordinate action.

We in the global health field have always been good at estimating mortality and morbidity rates. But it is now time to look beyond epidemiological facts. Guaranteeing the right to health will require us also to monitor the effects of discrimination and stigmatisation, as well as laws and environmental factors that threaten peoples health and wellbeing. Likewise, conducting thorough assessments of the health impact of key policies and investments must become the norm, rather than the exception. The global health sector needs far more independent advocacy and accountability, which the UN and civil-society groups, in particular, are in a strong position to provide.

The third policy area  eliminating discrimination in health-care settings  must become an international priority. The central promise of the SDG agenda is to leave no one behind. Discrimination creates de facto barriers to universal health coverage, and prevents many people from accessing health services of any kind. For example, one in eight people responding to the HIV Stigma Index say they have been denied health care as a result of prejudice.

It is clear that ending AIDS will require social  not just medical  breakthroughs. Governments must redouble their efforts to protect individuals against discrimination, and create effective mechanisms for people to seek redress when private or state actors violate their right to health. We call on all health-care practitioners and institutions to resist discriminatory laws, policies, or practices.

Safeguarding the right to health provides the foundation needed to enable everyone to realise their potential and their dreams. We should demand nothing less.

(Michel Sidibe is Executive Director of UNAIDS. Dainius Puras is United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to physical and mental health.)

Copyright:

Project Syndicate, 2017. www.project-syndicate.org
Police have laid charges in relation to a fatal crash on State Highway 25.

Nineteen-year-old Melanie Dangel from Germany died in a crash between a car and truck at the intersection of SH 25 and Hauraki Road on November 24.

Police says she was a passenger in the car.

Police are supporting her family members who have flown to New Zealand, a police spokesperson says.

A 19-year-old man who was driving the car has been charged with careless driving causing death.

He is due to appear in the Thames District Court on Thursday December 6.
Tauranga musical theatre lovers are in for a treat.

Following on from successful local productions of Rock of Ages and Mary Poppins in 2017 comes a new company performing a crowd favourite.

Stage Right Trusts inaugural show is Blood Brothers, a Liverpudlian folk opera about a pair of twins separated at birth and brought up in completely different environments, as the programme so aptly describes it.

Directed by Toni Henderson, the musical is set principally in the 1960s and 1970s, and follows Mrs Johnstone (Petrina Thomas Chisolm) who falls pregnant unexpectedly with twins. Abandoned by her husband, she strikes a deal with her childless employer Mrs Lyons (Kaitlin Spedding) to give up one of the twins at birth, to be raised as a member of the Lyons household.

These twin boys  Mickey Johnstone (Matt Henderson) and Edward Lyons (Matt Glover)  later meet and become friends. Discovering they share the exact same birthday, they agree to become blood brothers. Despite the efforts of their respective mothers, their friendship endures, until the play comes full-circle and reaches the violent conclusion hinted at in the opening scene.

This production is well-polished. All of the principal actors are utterly believable in their roles, while the supporting cast jump in and out of different parts and costumes with aplomb. The live band that provides the music must also be commended  theyre so good it sounds like a studio album.

Petrina Thomas Chisolm brings a quiet stoicism to the role of Mrs Johnstone, who wrestles with her decision throughout the play. Her voice is beautiful, flawless  makes me wish Id seen her in last years Tauranga Musical Theatre production of Mamma Mia!.

The standouts of the show are the twins themselves. The two Matts come on stage first as nearly eight-year-olds, and thanks to some phenomenal acting (honed, I suspect, by excellent direction) we never for one moment doubt these boys are children. Its a remarkable spell to cast, particularly as they spend most of the musical younger than 18. But we believe were watching a couple of kids, and it makes for some brilliant, innocent humour (and, sometimes, not so innocent).

The plays narrator, Chris Traill, almost steals the show with a powerful singing voice that can only be admired or envied. Hes the constant link as the story unfolds, acting as a sort of moral conscience at times to certain characters. It works well, and makes many of the set changes seamless.

Speaking of the set: its very professional. I believe it was made from scratch for the production. If so, its inspired, with houses opening up so we can peek inside and watch the action unfold. And it all takes place, not in the Addison Theatre, but the X Space (the large room to the left as you enter the Baycourt foyer), which is a fantastic change. Theres no reason why more shows cant be produced there, and the smaller venue gives a uniquely intimate feel to this musical.

On another note, its great to see more amateur theatre happening in this town, particularly from fresh companies with no fixed abode. This is commonplace in other cities; in Hamilton, for example, I have seen productions by companies such as Carving in Ice and Apocalypse Lounge that are not based in a theatre, but hire out a space that suits their needs. A similar model can certainly be sustained in this city, which I believe is hungry for the arts, and for the creative variety niche companies can provide.

To conclude: its bloody good, brother. Catch it at Baycourts X Space from Tuesday to Saturday, this week only.
The Mount Maunganui Weetbix TRYathlon held at Arataki Park on Sunday is being hailed a success with a record number of entries this year.

A record 1400 children aged from seven to 15-years-old from around the Bay of Plenty entered this years sell out event.

The course was tailored to each age group including a 50-150m swim at Baywave, a 4-8km cycle around the streets surrounding the park and a 1.5km run.

All participants received a medal on the finish line which were handed out by the events official ambassadors including Tauranga Olympic canoe slalom silver medallist Luuka Jones and retired New Zealand heptathlete and high jump champion Sarah Cowley-Ross.
The Superyacht: Delta One

Delta One - the largest yacht ever produced at the Mulder Shipyard - is a subtle, stripped back superyacht with slight, thoughtfully created curves and a focus on life on board. The views from within are unbroken and the two-tone profile works seamlessly to create a modern solution for owners looking to cruise the world in comfort.

After Delta One, was delivered to her client we had a lovely email from both the captain and the owner, explains Mike Reeves, Founding Partner of Claydon Reeves. The project has been a great success thanks to another dream team mix of Van Oossanen, the shipyard and us. Not only does Delta One look bigger than she is but she offers a good mix of speed, range, and is a fast displacement.

For Claydon Reeves, the launch of Delta One offered a brief respite from the trajectories of the studio as they began to highlight the wide and varied projects still underway.

We're also working on a 95-metre and there is our newly launched Aeroboat S6 and the various versions offered under that brand, adds James Claydon, Then there are tenders, a couple of 110m concepts, residential and furniture projects as well as car project. Theres a lot of interesting and left field stuff were trying to get into but were a relatively small studio.

The Breakthrough: Aeroboat

The Aeroboat S6 is the studio's new form and hugely important part of the Claydon Reeves project portfolio. A 65-foot day boat inspired by the late aviation icons such as the Spitfire and Schneider Trophy planes. It is the next model up from the Aeroboat SV12, which is powered by a Rolls-Royce Merlin Spitfire engine, with the whole Aeroboat range carving a new niche and offering a call-back to classic styling.

Since July last year, Aeroboat has been a big push for us, and culminated in the launch of the Aeroboat S6 in June this year, explains Claydon. There is a lot that makes it stand out  from the overall styling to the detail of the tail, which all adds layers of superyacht-ness, but its still a production size boat. There arent many aluminium 65ft superyachts, and weve approached it from that angle  its a micro-superyacht.

The Superstructure Tail, which is what we call the back third of the boat, opens up to reveal the engines  its more like a car bonnet, adds Reeves. Speaking of the engines, this boat offers a fantastic range and will do Miami to Nassau and back on one tank.

It is available in many versions  you can have it with a hard top, a bimini or leave it open. It can also be a resort tender. Its not designed to redefine a new segment, this is the new segment. Its much more aligned with high-end supercars. As James says, all the features of the superyacht industry but just a bit smaller. It may not fit within the 30m and above rule but its more special than anyone would have seen at this size.

The Concept: Exo

From the tangible breakthrough of Aeroboat to a design that stands way ahead of its time.The thought behind Exo follows precision to a point of evolution. Exo, a design case created by Claydon Reeves, is a new approach to sailing, construction and the future of building boats.

I think its our approach and teaming up with Dykstra was an important move, adds Claydon. Were not known for sailing boats and so working together with Dykstra on the project was great because sailing yachts are what they do. They were fully onboard and we had some really exciting meetings in the development of the design. We could go in any direction and they fully supported us and still do with this particular project. The whole idea of looking to nature and organic forms helped us to evolve the project into a new way of building a boat. Wed love to make a two-metre long version, skin it and sail it to prove the point.

EXO is scalable, concludes Reeves, so you could do a racing dinghy like that where you have an incredibly cool structure with a thin transparent membrane to keep the water out. Thats the sort of thing that we like doing. Youre not going down a well-trodden path but defining a concept.

With the connecting threads of Exo on the back-burner, an exciting and top-secret car project underway, a new delivery and happy owner, Claydon Reeves is a studio actively looking to solve future problems and carve a niche out of both remarkable style and substance.
A benevolent expat musician has recorded a selection of Christmas music and traditional Irish hymns to raise money for local underprivileged families.

Dublin-born Finion Kenny plays the clarinet and saxophone during Sunday mass at the Virgin del Carmen Church in Arroyo de la Miel, and he decided to use his musical skills to produce a festive recording in aid of Caritas, a religious charity that cares for the poor.

Finion, who personally financed the project, recorded most of the CD at a studio in Malaga last month, but he had to head back home to Dublin so that his 16-year-old granddaughter could accompany him with the harp on two of the tracks.

As reported by SUR in English in August, Finion decided to make the record for Caritas because it is an organisation that has become very close to his heart.

I wanted to do my part by helping those less fortunate, especially at Christmas, when their problems are so often overlooked. All proceeds from this CD will go to the relief of disadvantaged people in our parish, the chirpy Irishman explained.

Finion, who has lived in Benalmadena since 2005, began playing the clarinet and saxophone as a teenager and by the age of twenty one he was the leader of his own seven-piece jazz band. He has worked with the Leicestershire Philharmonic Orchestra and has also made numerous recordings for the BBC in London.

The CD, which includes traditional pieces like Silent Night, The Old Rugged Cross, Walk With God and Ave Maria, costs five euros and is available from the Virgin del Carmen church or direct from Finion on 689 755 314.
The Clay and Cicero locations of Mark's Pizzeria have closed, according to a spokesman for the pizza franchise.

The locations at 5962 Route 31 in Cicero and at 8223 Oswego Road in Clay closed today, according to Mark's spokesman Joe Kondas.

"Those locations were not profitable," he said, "so we closed them."

No other closings are expected, Kondas said.

"In business, it's day by day and month by month and year by year," Kondas said. "If a location is not being profitable, it becomes easy to make that decision. Unfortunately, because we wanted it work."

Mark's Pizzeria was founded in 1982 and has more than 40 locations in Upstate New York. The company is headquartered in Fairport, near Rochester.

About 20 to 30 people worked at each location that closed, Kondas said. Those workers are encouraged to apply at other Mark's locations. "We'd love to have them," he said.

Other Syracuse-area locations include Canastota, Camillus, Manlius, Shop City in Syracuse, Skaneateles, Elbridge and Auburn.
After five years, the Supreme Court on Dec. 5 will hear the controversial case involving a Colorado baker and a same-sex couple's wedding cake.

Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission argues what constitutes free speech and freedom of religion in relation to marriage equality and discrimination.

In 2012, Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips refused to make a wedding cake for gay couple Charlie Craig and David Mullins because it violated his religious beliefs as a Christian. Gay marriage wasn't legal in Colorado at the time, so the men were set to marry in Massachusetts.

Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act prohibit discrimination against individuals on the basis of sexual orientation. However, Phillips argues that his cakes are works of art, and because of that he would not bake a cake that violates his religious beliefs. Citing the First Amendment, he says the civil-rights laws cannot prosecute him under claims of free speech.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled that cake-making was expected conduct of Phillips' business, and was not grounds for expression of free speech. Phillips was ordered to provide wedding cakes for same-sex marriages as well as change company policy regarding discrimination. In response, he decided to stop making wedding cakes.

In 2015, the Supreme Court recognized gay marriage in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case.

Aaron Hoy, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said that because of that ruling, to some extent the current case was inevitable.

"In each round prior to this, the courts have sided with Craig/Mullins, but the fact that Masterpiece is appealing yet again, and the fact that they are supported by broad range of well-funded conservative organizations, not to mention the fact that the Supreme Court decided to hear the case, all suggest that this battle over religious liberty and non-discrimination is one that has deep resonances in our society," Hoy said.

The First Amendment guarantees freedoms of religion, expression, assembly and the right to petition. For Thomas Keck, political science professor at Syracuse University, these are fundamental constitutional rights and are important to any democratic society.

"As far as the First Amendment is concerned, LGBT rights advocates should have the full and free right to advocate for their point of view and opponents of LGBT rights have the right to advocate for their point of view," Keck said. "The question in case here is a little narrower; no one is being prevented from expressing their political views. The question is whether the state of Colorado's decision to outlaw discrimination by businesses has served the public on the grounds of sexual orientation."

However, Keck said that no constitutional rights are absolute. Cases such as these are complicated, as they have competing values; here it is the values of nondiscrimination versus the values of free speech.

If the court rules in favor of Masterpiece, there is potential for damage to LGBT civil rights laws, in a context bigger than just bakeries. Using the shield of religious beliefs, florists, landlords and even funeral directors could discriminate against LGBT individuals. Some worry such a decision could be twisted to prevent people of certain races from eating in restaurants or renting a hotel room -- a throwback to the civil rights battles to desegregate lunch counters in the South in the 1960s.

Hoy said that LGBT individuals already live in a society that stigmatizes them in their relationships; if the decision favored in terms of discrimination, this problem would be exaggerated.

"They have to deal with being seen as less respectable, their relationships being seen as less legitimate, and many experience a persistent worry about whether they will be discriminated against or harassed whenever they leave home, " Hoy said.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Colorado, many believe it will sustain the belief that religion is not an exemption from state anti-discrimination laws.

In September, the Department of Justice filed a "friend of the court brief" in support of Phillips. DOJ believes the freedom of expression allows individuals the right to refuse wedding cakes to same-sex couples.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has had a long history of being opposed to LGBT rights that has sought to weaken and undermine protections, Keck said.

The deciding vote, however, will be placed in the hands of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided the crucial fifth vote and wrote the historic opinion legalizing gay marriage in 2015.

"If I had to bet, I would bet he'd say marriage equality is important," Keck said. "However there's lots of people who disagree with it and nobody should be coerced into participating into a wedding ceremony kind that they don't support."

For Hoy, regardless of the decision, the fight for LGBT rights will be a long and hard fight given the current political climate in Washington.

"My sense is that some conservative legislators see trans folks as easy targets; legislating against them might be an easy way for them to score political points. So the LGBT rights movement will need to stand guard against that."
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Jill Stein, the two-time Green Party candidate for president, chipped in a few bucks for the Syracuse mayoral race last month.

Stein cut a check to Howie Hawkins' campaign for $250 on Nov. 5, two days before the election, according to Hawkins' recently filed campaign contribution report.

Hawkins, running on the Green Party line, came in third place in the election on Nov. 7.

Stein was one of about two dozen donors to contribute $100 or more to Hawkins' campaign in its final two weeks. Most of Hawkins' donors gave small amounts: $30 here, $50 there. He received several donations for $5 or $10.

In all, Hawkins raised $31,809.75, including $17,250 in loans from himself. He made a point that he would not take money from any for-profit or corporate interests (though it's not clear if any such organizations offered).

Hawkins was largely outspent by his better-funded opponents. Ben Walsh, who won the election, raised more than $350,000.

The Stein donation, though relatively minor, reflects Hawkins' continuing influence in the Green Party of the United States, of which he is a co-founder. Stein has been the party's candidate in the last two presidential elections.

The donation to Hawkins was Stein's only contribution in New York state this year, according to Board of Elections records.

Hawkins received 1,017 votes last month, putting him in third place in the election behind Walsh (13,584) and Democrat Juanita Perez Williams (9,701). He received more votes than Republican Laura Lavine (673).

The race for Syracuse mayor attracted lots of attention from state and national political players, mostly from the Democratic Party. As the gap between Perez Williams (the early front-runner) and Walsh narrowed, politicians from Andrew Cuomo to Joe Biden offered statements of support for Perez Williams, hoping to tip the scales toward the party candidate. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee came to town to stump for her as well.
An unconscious man wreaked havoc in a Miami hospital because of a "Do Not Resuscitate" tattoo on his chest that even included his signature.

Emergency medicine doctors were baffled on what to do in the situation, as they were unsure if the request not to be resuscitated should be honored even if it was in tattoo form.

'Do Not Resuscitate' Tattoo Baffles Miami Hospital

The University of Miami Hospital presented the unusual case in the New England Journal of Medicine, narrating the events that transpired and how the doctors handled the dilemma surrounding the "Do Not Resuscitate" tattoo.

The 70-year-old man was brought to the emergency room by paramedics with elevated levels of blood alcohol. The patient was believed to have a history of a lung disease known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an irregular heart rate, and diabetes.

Without an ID on him, the medical staff was not able to identify and contact the man's family members. After a few hours had passed, his condition started to worsen, with declining blood pressure and acids building up in the man's blood.

According to the case report, the doctors of University of Miami Hospital initially decided to go against the tattoo, even as it was facing them while working on the patient. There was the possibility that the man got the tattoo while he was drunk, but there was also the chance that it was a direct message. Were they doing the right thing?

What Happened To The Man With The 'Do Not Resuscitate' Tattoo?

After the patient was stabilized, the doctors decided to call in ethics consultants on what they should do. Do Not Resuscitate requests were usually formal documents, so the question was whether a tattoo was a legal document.

The ethics consultants advised the doctors to honor the Do Not Resuscitate tattoo, as they suggested that it was most reasonable to think that the request was an authentic one.

Fortunately, social workers were able to locate information on the patient. Among the documents that they pulled out was a copy of a Do Not Resuscitate order that the man filed with the Florida Department of Health.

The man's health deteriorated over that night until he passed away. Doctors honored his unusual Do Not Resuscitate request, as they did not conduct cardiopulmonary respiration or advanced airway management procedures on the patient.

University of Toronto bioethicist Kerry Bowman admitted that it was a challenging case. Tattoos may not be representative of a patient's current thinking, but he added that the messages comes strong and clear if a man was willing to go to the extremes of having his Do Not Resuscitate request tattooed.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Shipping estimates for iPhone X has improved. In the United States, if customers order iPhone X today they will receive it within a week or less.

The Improvement In Shipping Of iPhone X

The new shipping estimates have improved from 1 to 2-week shipping estimates during the last week of November.

iPhone X shipping has also improved in Canada. Many countries in Europe have also seen an improved shipment of the phone. The countries in the Asia Pacific have only begun to experience better shipping estimates.

In Canada, the shipping estimate is 5 days.in most European countries, the online store delivery date is Dec. 11, or a little more than a week.

In countries such as Australia and New Zealand, plus other countries, the shipping estimates range anywhere from several days to two weeks.

Apple has been propping up its production of iPhone X to meet the growing demand. During the Thanksgiving holiday, Apple has sold a record number of iPhone X. The numbers reaching more than 6 million units sold over the Black Friday weekend.

The pre-orders for iPhone X started by Oct. 27. Back then the estimates were as high as 5 to 6 weeks. Apple has been able to deliver beyond the expectations. Rumor has it that the iPhone X will suffer a high degree of supply constraints. However, the improvements in the supply of the handsets suggests otherwise. Apple is likely to close the gap between supply-demand imbalance soon.

Pre-order Delivery Of iPhone X Expedited

The deliveries of the pre-ordered iPhone X has also picked up the pace. Apple is making sure that its stocks are fulfilling these deliveries first. The customers whose delivery dates were for December are receiving the handsets quicker than expected. Many received it during the month of November itself.

Tim Cook, in the beginning of November, mentioned that the phone's production will ramp up to meet the rising demands. To meet demands "as soon as possible," he said.

While the online sale has picked up to deliver on time, the brick and mortar stores are showing all iPhone X models as out of stock. For physical stores to fasten with the deliveries, there is no indication of improvement on it as of now. It seems the online shopping will remain the point of purchase for a coming couple of months.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A baby boy born in Texas is the first in the United States to be delivered from a transplanted uterus. The delivery is an important milestone in uterine transplant clinical trials in the United States.

Successful Delivery From Transplanted Uterus

A special baby boy recently born in Baylor University Medical Center makes history as the very first successful delivery from a transplanted uterus in the United States. The child's mother was just one of many women under the uterine transplant clinical trials at Baylor.

The delivery was done via a scheduled caesarean section with a multidisciplinary team present during the unique birth. It was a special moment for the team as it not only hallmarks the success of the clinical trials but also because they helped a woman who thought that she would not be able to have a child.

"Outside my own children, this is the most excited I've ever been about any baby being born. I just started to cry," said Dr. Gregory J. McKenna, the obstetrician and gynecologist who delivered the baby.

BREAKING: Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas Announces First Baby Born in United States to Mother Who Received #UterusTransplant. pic.twitter.com/Lp0RJmuRvj  Baylor Scott & White (@bswhealth) December 1, 2017

A Gift Of Life

The birth of the baby boy was a gift of life indeed, because the uterus he was delivered from was a donation from a Dallas nurse, Taylor Siler, who already had two children and wanted to give someone else the opportunity to be a mother.

According to Siler, she and her husband had already decided not to have any more kids and decided to share the gift of motherhood when she saw a feature about the uterus transplant program. She and the recipient of her uterus exchanged letters on the day of the transplant, and she received another letter from the recipient when she got pregnant.

Siler was just one of "altruistic" donors with many more expressing their willingness to donate.

Uterus Transplantation

The birth of the baby boy was a part of the Baylor, Scott & White uterine transplant clinical trials. So far, the hospital has done eight uterine transplants of which at least three were unsuccessful. However, Baylor has confirmed one more pregnancy from a living donor uterus.

Transplanted uteri may come from either living or deceased donors, and the recipients were either born without one or have a non-functioning or underdeveloped uterus. Many of them have a condition called the Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, which results in the vagina and uterus being underdeveloped or absent. The first noticeable sign of MRKH is when menstruation does not begin by 16 years old.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A new study finds that compared to just reading a text silently, reading out loud actually improves memory. What is the "production effect"?

Reading Out Loud

A pair of researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada found that reading something out loud actually helps people remember the information better. As it turns out, the mere action of speaking the word out loud and hearing oneself benefits memory.

Researchers tested four methods of learning via reading materials, namely reading silently, hearing someone else read the information, reading out loud in real time, and listening to a recording of oneself reading the information. Results of the testing with the 95 participants revealed that reading the information out loud in real time resulted in the best memory.

"This study confirms that learning and memory benefit from active involvement," said Colin M. MacLeod, coauthor of the study, also stating that adding action to a word makes it more distinct to long-term memory.

Getting Personal With The 'Production Effect'

The production effect is the advantage that one gets when one says words out loud rather than just reading them silently. In a previous study, the researchers found that reading aloud to oneself results in memory that is superior to memory gathered from hearing someone else speak, suggesting a personal and self-referential contribution to the production effect.

Basically, the results of the study suggest that the act of speaking words out loud benefits memory because of two things. First is the added act of speaking the words out loud, and the second is the fact that the person is speaking the words to himself, making them more personal. This research also builds on the pair's other past researches wherein they measured the production effect of actions such as typing and writing words to overall memory.

Practical Implications

For one thing, perhaps students studying for exams could try reading their lessons out loud so as to help them remember. What's more, researchers are reminded of how the elderly are advised to do puzzles to strengthen their memories, also suggesting that action and activity can enhance memory.

The results of the study add to the growing list of activities people can do to enhance or even strengthen memory. Some other activities that are said to enhance memory include drinking alcohol after studying and even eating chocolate, which can evidently improve cognitive performance, enhance working memory, and improve visual processing.

The study is published in the journal Memory.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
ST. JAMES  St. James Parish government is weighing again how to sell the defunct St. James Youth Center more than four years after the former juvenile facility was shuttered and failed to garner much interest from buyers despite repeated price cuts.

Armed with an opinion from the state Attorney General's Office that opens the door to a private, below-appraisal sale, parish officials are reviewing their options before they decide whether to put the complex located at the foot of the Sunshine Bridge back on the sales block, parish officials said.

Once a multiparish operation for juvenile offenders, the St. James Youth Center closed June 30, 2013, after stiffer state standards for juvenile detention centers took effect, which parish officials said made the center too costly to run.

St. James again cuts asking price for detention center VACHERIE  For a second time in less than two months, the St. James Parish Council cut the asking price for its shuttered juvenile detention c

The Youth Center was originally conceived and built as a money-making venture by earning revenue for parish government from handling other parishes' juvenile offenders, including those from neighboring Ascension and Assumption parishes.

St. James Parish President Timmy Roussel said Monday the parish has several interested buyers for the complex off La. 70: two investor groups looking to turn it into an adult rehabilitation center, an investor group led by Guillot Realty, of Donaldsonville, and River Parishes Community College in Gonzales.

Roussel said the community college, which is working with Louisiana Economic Development, might want to use the center for a training facility.

Parish Attorney Cody Martin is still reviewing the exact method the parish should use to put the Youth Center up for sale.

St. James ponders future of youth detention center VACHERIE  St. James Parish Councilman Terry McCreary has suggested housing minimum-security prisoners in the parish-run youth detention cente

Roussel was hopeful that the Parish Council might have something to consider in November on the sale's process but now says he expects it will be taken up by the council sometime in December.

Earlier in November, Martin laid out a process in which the Parish Council could put the property up for a private sale  possibly through a real estate agent  and then vote whether an offered price represented the fair market value.

Martin said the attorney general's opinion gave the parish the "green light" for such a sale in light of its previous trouble selling the complex for the appraised price through the public bid process.

The parish has put the complex out for public bid six times since it was closed, cut the price multiple times but has only received one offer.

That one bid in February 2016 was below a reappraised price of $1.28 million  down from the original appraised price of $2.5 million  and the council could not accept the offer because it was below the appraised value.

Since that last public bid process, that bidder has made an offer of $1.2 million, which the attorney general's opinion says was equal to or greater than earlier public bid. No decision has been made on that bid.

In using the public bid process, the parish was following one legally mandated for municipalities but only recommended by the Attorney General's Office for parishes as a matter of good public policy. But when the parish decided to use the bid process, it meant it could not accept a bid for below the appraised value.

The August 2016 attorney general's opinion to St. James Parish, however, notes that no law requires that a parish government follow the public bid process and that parishes can accept an offer below the appraised value if market forces dictate that the value isn't what an appraisal says it should be.

The opinion added that the repeat public bid offerings for the Youth Center have put the public on notice and allowed competitive bidding to occur.

"The initiation of another public bid process would indeed appear to be a vain and useless act," the opinion from Assistant Attorney General Chester Cedars says.

In May , the Parish Council lowered the minimum price for the complex to $1.2 million, matching that offer from more than a year earlier. Martin has recommended that the parish use that figure as the list price in any private sales offer.

The opinion notes that the parish assessor says $1.2 million is, in his view, the fair market value of the complex while parish government's own paid auditor says the acceptance of an offer below the appraised value also would be justified.
Baton Rouge police have identified the victim of a fatal shooting that occurred Friday on Scenic Highway.

Jake Reed Jr., 51, was found near the sidewalk in the 6600 block of Scenic Highway early Friday morning, police said. There is no suspect or known motive in the case.

Baton Rouge Police investigating fatal shooting of man on Scenic Highway as a homicide Baton Rouge Police are investigating the death of a man found in the 6600 block of Scenic Highway early Friday as a homicide.

Police spokesman Sgt. L'Jean McKneely said the initial call about the incident came in about 5:30 a.m. Friday morning.

A grocery bag, a full bottle and full can of alcoholic beverages and a pair of sunglasses were left behind at the spot where authorities said the man was found.
Britain's Prince Harry (L) and his fiancee, US actress Meghan Markle visit the Terrence Higgins Trust World AIDS Day charity fair at the Nottingham Contemporary, Britain, Dec 1, 2017. Photo/IC]

LONDON  Chanting "Harry, Harry!" and "Meghan, Meghan!" hundreds of people lined the streets of a central English city Friday to welcome Britain's Prince Harry and his American fiancee, actress Meghan Markle.

The couple's visit to Nottingham was their first official commitment since they announced their engagement on Monday.

They plan to tour Britain over the next six months to give Markle an opportunity to learn about the country before their May wedding in the chapel at Windsor Castle.

Markle smiled and looked confident as she basked in the adoration of a crowd that had waited for hours in the cold to catch a passing glimpse of the couple.

Dozens waved British and American flags. A few were lucky enough to see the engagement ring up close as Markle shook hands.

But the ring was old news for British commentators, who instead focused on her handbag  a Strathberry tri-color leather tote designed in Scotland and handcrafted in Spain.

The couple traveled to the east Midlands in England to visit to a youth project and to raise AIDS awareness.

Their fans followed, including Irene Hardman, 81, who brought a gift bag with fridge magnets and candy for Markle. Hardman wept with joy after handing the bag to the bride-to-be.

"I cried  she's wonderful, and it's fantastic," Hardman said. "They're so genuine."

The trip was Prince Harry's third to Nottingham since October 2016. The prince has long championed AIDS charities, following in the footsteps of his late mother, Princess Diana.

Holly Burdett, who is originally from West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, but now lives in Sydney, Australia, returned home on the "gamble" that the couple would announce their engagement while she was there.

"I always thought I'd marry Harry, but you can't win them all," Burdett joked. "As long as they're happy, that's all that matters."

AP
State Government injects $50 million into Barton Highway safety improvement

How NSW Government will upgrade Barton Highway

Barton Highway Improvement Strategy backdown by federal government Safety improvement works on the Barton Highway will begin this week and plans to duplicate part of the road will be brought forward, beginning at the ACT border, the NSW and federal governments announced on Monday. Initial works will include new signs, tree trimming and extra safety barriers. Federal infrastructure minister Darren Chester said initial funds should also allow for a section of the road to be duplicated. The Barton Highway upgrades have been discussed for decades. Sophie Wade, convenor of the Duplicate the Barton Highway Community Action Group said the latest announcement was a "win for us as a community".

"I'm pleased for safety works and I welcome the duplication  it's a relief," Mrs Wade said. "I think the challenge now is to keep pressuring state and federal governments to continue the funding because this round of funding won't do the whole 24 km of duplication needed  it may get only a fifth of the way with this," she said. NSW roads minister Melinda Pavey said that the current allocation of funding would not duplicate the full length from the ACT border to Murrumbateman. "We'll get as far as we possibly can. Then we'll see what it takes in future budget cycles," Ms Pavey said. The Australian Government has also approved a $3.25 million investment in intelligent transport systems that are designed to improve trip reliability and to better manage and reduce traffic incidents.
Convenor Helen Musa said Lea was "a very strong nomination in a strong year", with an unwavering commitment to, and focus on, making, directing and promoting dance in the ACT. Musa said Lea was a dancer who straddled both classical and contemporary forms.

Lea, who has been performing in Canberra since 2000 and was formerly artistic director of Canberra Dance Theatre, was cited for her commitment to inclusiveness - working with dancers of all ages, abilities and ethnic groups and acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which her choreography is performed.

Canberra dancer, choreographer and director Liz Lea said being named the Canberra Critics' Circle Canberra Artist of the Year was "huge ... I haven't taken it in."

"She trained in classical Indian dance and branched out into all kinds of contemporary experimentation."

In 2017, Musa said, Lea presented the BOLD Festival in March that drew attention to Canberra dance with a program of lectures, demonstrations, film and programs with participants and audience members from around the country. It received support from institutions including the National Film and Sound Archive, the National Library of Australia, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery and Ainslie + Gorman Arts Centres. And, Musa said, the committee noted this came about without any government funding but through the hard work and determination of Lea in making it happen.

Musa said the committe was also recognising Lea's enterprise in getting things together. Among her own shows this year was Reef Up!, a humorous educational show about the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef developed with the support of the Canberra Theatre Centre that went to tour 35 schools in Queensland. She also performed in India Meets, a program by Indian dance practitioners in Canberra she initiated to finish an Australian tour by dancer Seeta Patel. In That extra some, part of Escalate 11, a mentoring program for ACT-based young people, of which Lea is a primary mentor, she worked with Down Syndrome dance artist Kate Senior (and Lea and Senior were also cited by the CCC for this work). Her activities over the years have also included the senior dance group GOLD (Growing Old Disgracefully) Dancers.

Lea has also presented dance works as special events for 2017 including during Dance Week and Science Week and in 2017 received an Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in Community Dance. She now works freelance and is a part-time program Curator for Ausdance ACT

Musa said, "She's a force of nature."
Your lazy weekend mornings are about to get a whole lot lazier - and a whole lot more delicious.

Dream Cuisine has launched Canberra's first fresh croissant delivery service on Saturdays and Sundays.

You can now have fresh croissants delivered to your house on weekends. Credit:Ross Duncan

The pastries were previously available fresh on the weekends at the Southside, EPIC and Old Bus Depot markets, but now owner Owen Saddler is cutting out the travel time for customers and delivering them straight to their doors.

All pastries are made from scratch at Dream Cuisine's Fyshwick bakery and you can currently order the classic croissant, almond croissant, chocolate croissant, blueberry and lime danish or snail scrolls with vanilla curtard and sultanas, with salted caramel scrolls also being added this weekend.
BEIJING -- Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong will visit the United Kingdom from Monday to Thursday and co-chair a meeting on people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.

The meeting, the fifth of its kind in the China-UK high-level people-to-People dialogue, will be co-chaired by Liu and British Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, according to foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang.

During the visit, Liu will meet with officials of the British government and members of the royal family, and sign a host of cooperative agreements on people-to-people exchanges, Geng said at a daily press briefing.

He expressed hope that the visit will promote political mutual trust, strengthen cultural and people-to-people exchanges, and further boost bilateral ties.
A 24-year-old pedestrian is in hospital after being injured by the mirror of a passing truck on Monday.

The Emergency Services Agency said ambulance crews attended the scene of the incident in Florey, where the man had been hurt by the wing mirror of the truck passing at low speed just after midday.

He was taken to the Canberra Hospital.
A Canberra teenager accused of bashing students at Woden pleaded not guilty on Monday to assault.

The 15-year-old girl, who cannot be named because of her age, will face a hearing in the ACT Children's Court early next year over the four counts of common assault.

In a statement outside court at the time, police alleged international students had been attacked at the Woden bus interchange on October 23.

Prosecutors told the court the four alleged victims would be called to give evidence, as well as two police officers.

The hearing is expected to take about a day. It was set down for January 25.
Westridge House in Yarralumla, one of Canberra's oldest residential homes, sold for a record price for the suburb, at more than $6 million.

But the price remains a mystery and so too the new owners.

One of Canberra's oldest homes 'Westridge House' at 55 Banks Street Yarralumla sold for a record price.

The historic estate near Weston Park was built in 1928 for Charles Lane-Poole, then inspector-general of forests. It sits on a 19,210 square metre block, the largest privately owned residential block in the inner south.

Sales executive Mario Sanfrancesco, from Peter Blackshaw Manuka, said the auction had attracted a great deal of interest from foreign buyers as well as interstate. One international buyer flew a private jet to Canberra for the auction.
The father of AFL superstar Dustin Martin is taking his fight against his deportation from Australia to the Federal Court.

Shane Martin's bid to overturn the decision of Immigration Minister Peter Dutton will be heard in the court in Sydney on Tuesday.

Dustin Martin and his father Shane.

Shane Martin, who had lived in Australia since he was 20, was deported to New Zealand last year because of his links to the Rebels motorcycle club, missing his son's Brownlow Medal win and grand final triump as the Tigers claimed their first flag since 1980.

In September, the federal government pushed through a new law that prevented Shane Martin from returning to Australia.
Online gambling companies have ramped up their political lobbying efforts in an attempt to stop Victoria from adopting a 15 per cent tax on digital betting that is being rolled out in other states.

Australia's bookmakers responded angrily last week when Queensland announced it would become the third gaming jurisdiction to roll out a so-called "point-of-consumption" tax.

A 15 per cent point-of-consumption tax  under which the state where a digital bet is placed receives revenue on gambler losses  has already come into force in South Australia, while Western Australia is preparing to follow with its own tax at the same rate from the beginning of next year.

Industry insiders said Australia's bookmakers were dramatically stepping up efforts to sway government leaders in Victoria, home to the strongest horse-racing jurisdiction in the country, to consider taxing them at a lower rate than 15 per cent.
Vodafone Hutchison Australia launched its fixed-line NBN service on Monday, with an automatic 4G "back-up" for customers concerned about outages.

The new plan will allow automatic access to Vodafone's 4G network whenever there are connection problems or faults on the line for up to 30 days during NBN-related connection or line repairs.

It also offers a feature called "instant connect", which allows customers to access the mobile network while waiting for installation of the NBN.

One of the complaints from customers of NBN services from rival telecommunication companies has been stretches of time without internet due to outages or connection delays.
London-based former investment banker Simon Thompson has been given the job of leading the Rio Tinto board as the miner faces scrutiny from regulators in America and Australia over its behaviour surrounding a failed coal investment in Mozambique that it sold in 2014.

Mr Thompson will become Rio's next chairman when he succeeds Jan du Plessis in March 2018. He joined Rio's board as a non-executive director in 2014.

New Rio Tinto chairman Simon Thompson was previously an executive director of Anglo American and chairman of Tarmac. Credit:Rio Tinto

The experienced mining industry executive, who has worked in the mining and metals industry across five continents, will assume the role of chairman with the miner on a sound financial footing, earning large profits and spinning off billions of dollars a year to shareholders, yet facing uncomfortable scrutiny from regulators.

The appointment of the 58-year-old was welcomed by chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques, the Australian Shareholders' Association and investors, with shares in Rio rising 1.2 per cent on Monday to $72.05.
CVS Health has agreed to buy Aetna for about $US69 billion ($90.75 billion) in a deal that would combine the drugstore giant with one of the biggest health insurers in the United States and has the potential to reshape the nation's health care industry.

The transaction, one of the largest of the year, reflects the increasingly blurred lines between the traditionally separate spheres of a rapidly-changing industry. It represents an effort to make both companies more appealing to consumers as health care that was once delivered in a doctor's office more often reaches consumers over the phone, at a retail clinic or via an app.

CVS operates a chain of pharmacies and retail clinics that could be used by Aetna to provide care directly to patients. Credit:AP

The merger comes at a time of turbulent transformation in health care. Insurers, hospitals and pharmacy companies are bracing themselves for a possible disruption in government programs like Medicare as a result of the Republicans' plan to cut taxes. Congress remains at an impasse over the future of the Affordable Care Act, while employers and consumers are struggling under the weight of rising medical costs, including the soaring price of prescription drugs. And rapid changes in technology have raised the spectre of new competitors - most notably Amazon.

A combined CVS-Aetna could position itself as a formidable figure in this changing landscape. Together, the companies touch most of the basic health services that people regularly use, providing an opportunity to benefit consumers. CVS operates a chain of pharmacies and retail clinics that could be used by Aetna to provide care directly to patients, while the merged company could be better able to offer employers one-stop shopping for health insurance for their workers.
Even by the exhausting standards of the Trump administration, the past week has been tumultuous for the president. On Tuesday last week, North Korea launched a missile that analysts believe would have been capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as far as Washington.

The following morning, Mr Trump responded by firing off a series of pre-dawn tweets. In one he urged his followers to boycott CNN. In another he attacked NBC's Matt Lauer, who had just been fired for sexual harassment in the workplace. The missive served only to remind observers of the 20 women who have accused Mr Trump of similar behaviour.

US President Donald Trump.

He also retweeted three videos purporting to depict violence by Muslim extremists from the account of the leader of a British hate group, Britain First.

Mr Trump's tacit endorsement of Britain First caused such consternation at Downing Street that Theresa May, who had been the first world leader to visit Mr Trump to congratulate him after his election, was moved to respond, saying via a spokesman that it was "wrong for the president to have done this".
The warmth also meant Victoria set November records for state-averaged mean temperatures  taking into account minimums and maximums. The final 12 days of the month averaged above 20 degrees, eclipsing 10-day runs in 1959 and 2009. Similarly, the state's 21 days in a row of minimums above 10 degrees easily beat the previous 16-day stretches in 2000 and 2009. The state's average mean temperature was more than 3 degrees above the 1961-90 average. It was only the sixth time Victoria has notched up so large an anomaly for any month, the bureau said. Off the charts

In Tasmania  which has seen snow overnight  the November records were even more off the charts. Average maximum temperatures for the state came in 3.79 degrees above the long-run norm. That beat the previous record anomaly of 2.09 degrees set in 1914 by a whopping 1.7 degrees, and was the largest departure from the average maximum for any month. Hobart's six consecutive days of 25 degrees or warmer weather equalled the record for any time of the year. Previous such stints had all occurred between January and March. "In some cases, particularly in southern and western Tasmania, the length of the warm spell was unprecedented for any time of year," the bureau said. "Many records were set for consecutive days with maximum or minimum temperatures above thresholds."

One gauge of the influence of the high pressure over the region was Hobart setting a mean sea level pressure record for November of 1019.6 hectopascals, edging the previous high for the month set in 2007 of 1018.8 hPa. Warm waters The waters around both Victoria and Tasmania were also unusually warm, especially around the south west of the Apple Isle. (See bureau chart below for the week of November 20-26.) "By the end of the month, all of the waters surrounding Tasmania were 3 degrees above [the 1971-2000 average] and ranked as some of the highest values on record," the bureau said.

"These high temperatures existed in the top layer of the ocean only and were caused by low cloud coverage and light winds," the bureau noted. This placed the event in contrast to a marine heatwave at the end of 2015 driven by an eddy that had spun off from the East Australian Current. As reported by Fairfax Media last month, waters off south-eastern Australia have recently been one of a handful of global hot spots, relative to the average for this time of year. Sea-surface data from Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System also demonstrate how unusually warm this patch of water is compared with the rest of the region. (See chart below for November 30.)

The bureau's report noted how the blocking high pressure also contributed to milder conditions further up the east coast of Australia. Sydney, for instance, barely notched an above-average month for maximum temperatures. Virtually all of the coast further north to Cape York in Queensland had a below-average November for daytime temperatures. Those warm waters are currently contributing to a deep low-pressure trough off the south coast of NSW, that is likely to bring heavy rain to the region on Monday. "When sea-surface waters are warmer there is more evaporation and a better moisture source," Jiwon Park, a bureau forecaster, said. The contrast with land, which typically cools off at night, was creating in effect a "stationary front" offshore. The bureau has issued a warning for falls of more than 100 millimetres over a 24-hour period from Monday afternoon for an area stretching from the Illawarra south almost to the Victorian border.

A flood watch is in place for six river catchments in the region. Warm spring For Australia as a whole, temperatures last month were above average for minimum, mean and maximums, but less unusually so than the previous two months. For spring as a whole, all but South Australia and the Northern Territory recorded a spring in the top 10 warmest, in national data going back to 1910, the bureau said in a separate report.
Nationals MP George Christensen departs after question time on Monday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Before the day gets any further away from me, I need to update you on some industrial relations matters.

The opposition had hoped to reverse cuts to penalty rates and the Senate passed a bill undoing the industrial umpire's decision on this matter earlier today.

The opposition wanted to build on this by tempting Nationals MP George Christensen to cross the floor.

Mr Christensen had previously suggested he was open to the idea.

But he said today he would stay on the government's side: "I have spoken to the Minister for Employment, Michaelia Cash, and there is confusion over whether or not Labor's amendment would mean small businesses in my electorate, in cities like Mackay and Townsville, small towns like Ayr, Bowen and Proserpine, would have to give back pay, costing them thousands of dollars."

"It's an unacceptable risk for many small business owners who would not be able to afford such a move. Amendments around penalty rates must ensure that small businesses are not forced to pay back pay....As such, I can't support the amendment as it is."
Australia's "misplaced reliance" on parental choice and competition between public and private schools may have created the conditions for declining student performance, warns a new paper investigating the "unsolved mystery" of worsening test scores.

The paper looks at Australia's "significant decline" in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results between 2000 and 2015, but focuses on mathematics because maths scores have dropped more than reading or science.

Australia has seen a sustained decline in PISA scores, especially in maths. Credit:Cathryn Tremain

As well as an emphasis on school choice, the quality of teaching in Catholic schools  which has shown the greatest decline in maths scores  could be another reason for worsening PISA results, the paper says, along with different education policies and practices in NSW and Victoria.

The paper says that expert explanations have failed to answer the riddle of why Australia, along with countries such as the Netherlands, Finland and Canada, have sustained decreases in PISA scores and says despite much "handwringing" from policymakers, there is no strong empirical evidence behind the PISA results.
A psychology graduate who has completed three tertiary degrees in 20 years since arriving in Australia has had her application to practise rejected under English language competency provisions because she took a year off her studies.

In a case before the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the psychology graduate, identified only as Ms Han, appealed a decision by the Psychology Board of Australia as a "matter of principle".

While the tribunal upheld the decision under the law, its members took a thinly veiled swipe at "continuous education requirements" demanded of graduates, questioning their relevance to modern student life, particularly concerning women, given the demands on work, family, part-time study and socio-economic factors.

Ms Han was born and educated in Turkey before coming to Australia in 1995.

She received a bachelor of science in psychology from Macquarie University in 2004 followed by a postgraduate diploma in psychology from the University of Western Sydney in 2011. She had previously earned an associate diploma of social science (community welfare) from the Sydney Institute of Technology in 1999. She has worked in Australia as a family support worker and counsellor, and as a research assistant and casual lecturer.
Senator Pat Dodson has called on state governments to create new laws to protect prisoners, saying he was "absolutely appalled" at the shackling of an Indigenous inmate on his death bed in Sydney.

Prison guards from Parklea jail kept ankle cuffs on Eric Whittaker, 36, who was taken to Westmead Hospital after a brain aneurysm that led to his death on July 4.

Jamie Whittaker, photographed at the Newtown Mission Church. Whittaker has been visiting the community church since his son Eric was found dead in Parklea jail in July. Credit:Dean Sewell

A Sun-Herald investigation found the father of four had been unresponsive for at least 15 hours when his family discovered his legs chained together and complained to guards, who then removed them about 40 minutes later.

"It's so sad the family have to be exposed to that level of inhumanity to their loved one," said Professor Dodson, the shadow assistant minister for Indigenous affairs and a commissioner on the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.
An elderly woman remains in a serious condition in hospital after she was attacked by three of her pet dogs, including two cross-bred dingoes, in Sydney's south west.

The 78-year-old woman was trying to rescue her pug from her three other dogs when they attacked her.

Emergency services were called to the woman's property in Greendale about 5pm on Monday, and she was treated at the scene while the dogs were secured in kennels.

Kay Armstrong from NSW Ambulance Service told Nine News the woman's injuries were bad.
A Brisbane father who bashed his infant daughter to death could walk from jail after serving less than four years behind bars.

Rick Cataldo was sentenced to eight years' jail in the Brisbane Supreme Court on Monday for the manslaughter of Lily Rain Cataldo in April 2012.

Rick Cataldo arrives at the Supreme Court in Brisbane for an earlier appearance. Credit:AAP

But Justice Debra Mullins said he would be able to apply for immediate parole because he had already served almost three years and 10 months in jail.

The court heard Lily was less than two months old when she suffered multiple skull fractures, four rib fractures and a spiral fracture to her right arm about seven to 10 days before her death.
Controversial alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos took aim at Indigenous Australians, Muslims and Australian media personalities in an event in Melbourne marred by violent protests.

"Australia what have they done to you?" Yiannopoulos, 32, asked the crowd as he entered, clad in leather and wearing his trademark sunglasses, before getting on the back of a parked Harley Davidson motorbike in the middle of the stage.

"You used to have a really good reputation, but we're here to discuss your fall from grace."

The right-wing provocateur, who attacked Julia Gillard as he prepared to embark on his Australian tour, was unapologetic of his criticism of the former prime minister at the Melbourne Pavilion in Kensington on Monday night.
Victorian Catholic schools will soon receive millions more in Commonwealth funding for students with a disability than state schools.

The changes reflect new data  which the Catholic sector has previously described as "dodgy"  that determines funding under the Turnbull government's Gonski 2.0 model.

Credit:Phil Carrick

Funding for students with a disability was previously based on medical assessments, but is now based on teachers' assessments of students' needs.

New federal Education Department figures show that Commonwealth disability loadings for Victorian Catholic schools will increase by 26 per cent, to $188 million in 2018.
Victims of crime in Victoria will benefit from more generous taxpayer-funded compensation if the Liberals win next year's state election, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy pledged on Monday.

Victorians who are injured or traumatised by criminals will be able to claim financial compensation for 10 years after the offence, a big increase from the current six-year cut-off, if the Coalition wins power in November 2018.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy says he wants to put victims of crime first. Credit:AAP

In exceptional cases of more serious injuries or trauma, compensation could be paid and medical help provided for up to 15 years, if the victim can prove they are still suffering as a result of the original offence.

Mr Guy launched his new policy at State Parliament on Monday, surround by victims' advocates, claiming those on the receiving end of crime in Victoria were being treated like "second-class citizens" by the Andrews Labor government.
Dvate's orange-bellied parrot. Credit:Justin McManus

Mr Honig said the punk movement began with the Sex Pistols, then moved to Offspring, Green Day  then Avril Lavigne. "These murals are kind of the equivalent of Avril Lavigne," he said.

Adrian Doyle, owner of The Blender Studios, which runs Melbourne Street Art Tours, welcomed the new murals.

"I think these large-scale productions have mostly been in other parts of Melbourne like Fitzroy and Collingwood," he said. "To bring these large-scale productions to the CBD is amazing.

"These sorts of murals ... will be to kids like the Skipping Girl was for me. They become part of the vernacular; part of the myth of the place."
The drunk driver, who also died in the crash near Lara, knew she was intoxicated and still chose to drive before ending up on the wrong side of the Princes Freeway.

In December 2012, a drunk, speeding, texting driver smashed into a car, killing her 23-year-old son, Nathan Kerr, and three others in the vehicle.

Amanda Wilson and her daughter Mollie Kerr, whose son and brother Nathan Kerr was killed in a horror Christmas holiday crash. Credit:Cormac Hanrahan.

She's struggled to feel happy this time of year for a long time.

Nathan Kerr was killed in the crash at Lara.

The horror crash has tormented Ms Wilson's family, who are facing yet another Christmas without having her oldest son with them.

"It's the most unbearable pain," she said.

"It's something that is so profound, I can't really quite put into words just how awful it is to be without Nathan, who was a vibrant, happy, young man."

Ms Wilson and her two other children  Kyle Kerr, 17, and Mollie Kerr, 20  are pleading with drivers to stay safe this Christmas.
Police have accused protesters of "Kardashian-style politics" after two men were arrested and several police officers injured as violent clashes erupted outside an event hosting controversial British alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos.

However protesters have accused the police of fuelling the violence that broke out in Kensington on Monday night.

"We live in the world of Kardashian-style popularity, it's no different to the tactics that are being used by the left and the right," Assistant Commissioner Stephen Leane said on Tuesday.

"I think what we're seeing in the whole world is that if your don't have a 30-second grab of something really exciting then you're not going to make the front page of the news," Mr Leane.
A man who went on an alleged rampage through Perth's southern suburbs, smashing car windows and assaulting people who tried to offer him assistance, has been arrested by police.

The 50-year-old from Bertram was allegedly seen on Sunday riding a motorcycle shirtless along Millom Way.

Two women were injured during the alleged rampage. Credit:Georgia Matts

A police spokesman claimed the man stopped and began to damage cars parked outside a house when nearby residents came outside.

"The man then assaulted residents who came out to investigate," he said.
WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson has announced sweeping changes to how the force operates.

A seven week 'snapshot' review of the organisation has made a range of findings and recommendations.

WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson. Credit:Phil Hickey

The review took submissions and led to a series of interviews with senior management and frontline officers.

On Monday, Mr Dawson announced what the review had recommended and what changes would be implemented as a result.
Cairo: Former Egyptian premier Ahmed Shafiq says he is still considering his presidential bid now that he is in Egypt, according to a televised interview in which he denied authorities had kidnapped him.

There has been no official word yet on the whereabouts of the presidential hopeful who flew home from the United Arab Emirates 24 hours ago.

Former Egyptian prime minister and possible presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq denied had been kidnapped. Credit:AP

"Today I am here in the country, so I think I am free to deliberate further on the issue, to explore and go down and talk to people in the street ... so there's a chance now to investigate more and see exactly what is needed ... to feel out if this is the logical choice," Shafiq said.

The interview on private Dream TV channel was Shafiq's first public appearance since leaving the United Arab Emirates on Saturday for Cairo.
Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that a draft bill that sets limits on police investigators should be revised so it does not apply to criminal probes in which he is a suspect.

The proposed legislation, which has sparked protests in Israel, would prohibit the police from publicising whether they have found sufficient grounds to charge a suspect.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is the victim of a political witchunt. Credit:AP

Critics say the bill is an attempt to protect Netanyahu and keep the public in the dark regarding ongoing investigations in which he is a suspect, but its supporters said it is intended to protect suspects' legal rights and reputations.

Some 20,000 Israelis demonstrated against the bill in Tel Aviv on Saturday and, as public pressure mounted, support among coalition members for the bill began to wane on Sunday, a day before parliament was expected to ratify it.
Republicans accuse Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein of 'stonewalling'. Credit:AP Until now, Nunes said, the FBI and Department of Justice have failed to sufficiently comply with an August 24 committee subpoena - including by refusing repeated demands "for an explanation of Peter Strzok's dismissal from the Mueller probe". "In light of today's press reports, we now know why Strzok was dismissed, why the FBI and DOJ refused to provide us this explanation, and at least one reason why they previously refused to make Deputy Director McCabe available to the Committee for an interview," Nunes said. Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes is stepping up the attack over the Russia probe. Credit:AP "By hiding from Congress, and from the American people, documented political bias by a key FBI head investigator for both the Russia collusion probe and the Clinton email investigation, the FBI and DOJ engaged in a willful attempt to thwart Congress' constitutional oversight responsibility," he said

Nunes, in the statement, said the committee will move on a resolution by the end of the month unless it demands are "fully met" by the close of business on December 4. Former FBI director James Comey was fired by Donald Trump. Credit:AP He cited "a months-long pattern by the DOJ and FBI of stonewalling and obstructing this Committee's oversight work", including also withholding subpoenaed information about their use of an opposition research dossier that targeted Trump in the 2016 election. Attorney General Jeff Sessions would not be a target of any contempt action by the committee, Nunes has said, because he recused himself from any investigation into charges that Russia meddled in the election. President Donald Trump waves a she walks up the steps of Air Force One at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Saturday. Credit:AP

Justice Department spokeswoman Sara Isgur Flores said in an email that "we disagree with the chairman's characterisation and will continue to work with congressional committees to provide the information they request consistent with our national security responsibilities". The department has already provided members of House leadership and the Intelligence Committee with "several hundred pages of classified documents" and multiple briefings - including whether any FBI payments were made related to the dossier - and has cleared witnesses including McCabe and Strzok to testify, she said. Jeff Sessions, U.S. attorney general, recused himself from the investigations into Russian interference in the presidential election. Credit:Bloomberg The House committee's top Democrat, Representative Adam Schiff of California, responded in a statement that the Department of Justice inspector general is "properly investigating the handling of the investigation, including the current allegation of bias" by Strzok. "I am concerned, however, that our chairman is willing to use the subpoena and contempt power of the House, not to determine how the Russians interfered in our election or whether the president obstructed Justice, but only to distract from the core of our investigation," Schiff said.

FBI director Christopher Wray is the subject of a possible contempt of Congress action. Credit:Bloomberg The dossier, which included salacious allegations about Trump, was paid for in part by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton through a law firm. Nunes and other committee Republicans - backed by Speaker Paul Ryan - say they want to investigate whether the Justice Department and FBI may have improperly relied on the dossier to kick-start federal surveillance that caught up Trump associates, without independently confirming the information they used to justify such spying. "The DOJ has now expressed - on a Saturday, just hours after the press reports on Strzok's dismissal appeared - sudden willingness to comply with some of the Committee's long-standing demands," Nunes said. "This attempted 11th-hour accommodation is neither credible nor believable, and in fact is yet another example of the DOJ's disingenuousness and obstruction." Those agencies "should be investigating themselves", he said. If Nunes and Republicans do follow through with the contempt action, it would be a latest blow against bipartisanship on a committee that had until recently been one of the last bastions of comity in a polarised House. Democrats complain Republicans are increasingly shifting attention and limited resources in the Russian investigation away from a main focus of election interference and potential Trump campaign collusion.
Washington: The Supreme Court on Monday granted President Donald Trump's request that his revised travel ban be enforced fully while legal challenges to it proceed in lower courts.

The justices approved a request from the president's lawyers to lift restrictions on the order - which bans most travellers from eight nations, most with Muslim majorities - that had been imposed by lower courts.

President Donald Trump sought to implement the travel ban a week after taking office. Credit:AP

The court gave no reason for its decision, but said it expected lower court review of the executive orders to proceed quickly. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have kept in place partial stays on the order.

Judges in two judicial circuits - the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond and the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco - had cast doubt on Trump's third executive order banning almost all travel from certain countries.
After attending a marine biotechnology camp in North Carolina during the summer, College Station High School (CSHS) senior Madison Cornwell returned to Texas convinced a career in the growing biotechnology industry was the perfect fit.

Thanks to a new partnership between the Blinn College District and College Station ISD, Cornwell did not have to wait until after graduation to begin working toward her career aspirations. She enrolled in CSHSs Advanced Biotechnology class  a one-year dual credit course that allows high school juniors and seniors to earn credit toward a Blinn Therapeutics Manufacturing degree while fulfilling their high school science requirements.

This course is very hands-on and detail-oriented, Cornwell said. Since I have a passion for biotechnology and would like to pursue it as a career, this class is an amazing opportunity available right here in our high school.

Therapeutics manufacturing is a specialization that blends cutting-edge science with medical research to manufacture vaccines and other products used to treat, prevent, cure, or diagnose disease. Blinns Therapeutics Manufacturing Program equips students with enhanced training in current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP), quality assurance, quality control, biomanufacturing processes, and cell culturing necessary for pharmaceutical production.

Graduates of the program are eligible for entry-level positions with competitive salaries in the growing Texas biomanufacturing industry. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs for therapeutics manufacturing technicians are projected to grow 10 percent from 2016 to 2026. Workforce Solutions Brazos Valley anticipates 18 percent growth locally during that same time span, with an hourly salary range between $10.09 and $35.82.

Students who successfully complete CSHSs Advanced Biotechnology class receive credit for Blinns Introduction to Biotechnology course. This laboratory-based course provides an introduction to biotechnology concepts, including the history and applications of DNA and RNA technology, molecular biology, bioethics, and laboratory safety procedures.

The curriculum at CSHS coincided so closely with that of the Blinn Therapeutics Manufacturing Program that it was just a matter of going through the formal process to allow the students to earn college credit, Program Director Michael Johanson said. This class is a great way to introduce students to the biotechnology industry. If this field is something the student is interested in pursuing, we hope they will come to Blinn to complete the program.

In addition to learning concepts, students in Advanced Biotechnology are introduced to essential laboratory skills such as pipetting, measurement and calibration techniques, solution preparation, and biomolecule analysis. They also are exposed to a variety of laboratory instruments, including pH meters, spectrophotometers, and chromatography equipment.

This class is designed to show students what biotechnology is and what it would be like if they chose it as a career, said CSHS teacher Stephanie Garcia, who has more than a decade of industry research and laboratory experience. We are very excited to partner with Blinn to give our students a foot in the door to this growing industry.

Students interested in earning college credit for the Advanced Biotechnology class are required to apply for admission to Blinn and complete a dual credit approval form. Students pay a reduced tuition rate.

For more information on Blinns Therapeutics Manufacturing Program and its 60-hour Associate of Applied Sciences (AAS) degree and certificate programs, including the 36-credit hour Therapeutics Manufacturing Certificate and 30-credit hour Therapeutics Manufacturing Advanced Technical Certificate, visit: www.blinn.edu/therapeutics.

Registration for Blinns Winter Minimester, which runs Dec. 15-22 and Jan. 3-10, is available through Dec. 14, and registration for the Spring semester is open through Jan. 15. College officials encourage early registration for convenient scheduling and placement in high-demand courses.
DALLAS -- After her oldest daughter was killed in May 2016, Michelle McDaniel and the rest of her family isolated themselves in their small Texas town out of fear that the unknown killer could be standing in line with them at the grocery store or passing them on the street.

Then early last month, Brown County sheriff's investigators sent McDaniel a sketch of the man they suspected in her daughter's death, despite having no witnesses. The sketch was created using DNA found at the crime scene; a private lab used the sample to predict the shape of the killer's face, his skin tone, eye color and hair color.

Within a week, the sheriff's office had a suspect in custody.

For McDaniel, the DNA sketch technology known as phenotyping was an answered prayer. For law enforcement officers, it's a relatively new tool that can generate leads in cold cases or narrow a suspect pool. But for some ethicists and lawyers, it's an untested advancement that if used incorrectly could lead to racial profiling or ensnaring innocent people as suspects.

At a news conference a week after the sketch was released, Brown County Sheriff Vance Hill announced that 21-year-old Ryan Riggs had confessed to the beating death of 25-year-old Chantay Blankinship. Authorities have said they believe the killing was premeditated but have not released a motive. Riggs is being held without bond on a capital murder charge in the Brown County Jail about 170 miles (275 kilometers) southwest of Dallas.

"My son called me after seeing the sketch and said, 'Mom, I think I know this kid. He used to bully me in school.' He sat behind her in church. His mom picked her up every week and took her to church. ... He was best friends with my niece and her friends. And we wouldn't have known," McDaniel said.

Several private companies offer phenotyping services to law enforcement to create sketches of suspects or victims when decomposed remains are found. The process looks for markers inside of a DNA sample known to be linked to certain traits. Police in at least 22 states have released suspect sketches generated through phenotyping.

It works like this: Companies have created a predictive formula using the DNA of volunteers who also took a physical traits survey or had their face scanned by recognition software. That predictive model is used to search the DNA samples for specific markers and rate the likelihood that certain characteristics exist.

For some ethicists and lawyers, however, releasing a sketch of a suspect without any witnesses seems like a dangerous proposition. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that from what scientists have said and written, not enough is known about the link between genes and facial features to rely on the technology to produce a suspect.

"You can lose weight, gain weight, change gender, grow a beard, have plastic surgery," Stanley said. "It risks ensnaring innocent people in webs of suspicious investigations. It risks playing on existing societal racial prejudices. It risks diverting investigations down wild goose chases. If this technology were used to set up dragnets say to bring in every albino person in an area as a suspect because the DNA seemed to show someone had that trait, that's where we would object."

Stanley also noted previous issues with forensic science advancement in the past, including bad practices in DNA testing from hair samples a few years ago.

Steve Armentrout, the CEO of Parabon NanoLabs, which created the Brown County sketch, said phenotyping isn't meant to replace court-tested methods of identifying suspects. He said it's an investigative tool.

"In every case we are involved in there is DNA. This isn't meant to provide a positive identification. It's meant to jog someone's memory," he said. "The greatest value of the tool from an investigative perspective is efficiency, the ability to exclude portions of the suspect pool."

In the Brown County case, Hill said Riggs saw the sketch, went on the run for a few days and then confessed to the killing in front of the congregation at the church where he and Chantay both attended services. Hill had not said whether DNA tests were run yet to see if Riggs' DNA matches that found at the scene.

No attorney information was listed for Riggs, and his parents didn't return calls seeking comment on the case.

Brazos County Sheriff Chris Kirk likened the skepticism about the technology to officers saying digital cameras wouldn't hold up in court when they were introduced because the photos could be manipulated.

"Now every department in every state uses them," he said.

National Geographic paired with Kirk's department earlier this year and paid the $3,600 to submit suspect DNA from the 1981 slaying of Virginia Freeman for a sketch in exchange for being able to film the search process. The department released a sketch of the potential killer when he was in his 20s and another age progressed to about 70.

"It has definitely renewed the interest of the public in the case. We've gotten a number of tips and phone calls," said Kirk, who is the only remaining officer in his department who was around when Freeman was found bludgeoned, strangled and stabbed to death. "That was a really traumatic crime for that family, for the department and for the whole community."

As of this week, no arrests had been made.

Freeman died on Dec. 1, 1981, a half-hour after taking a call at Bryan's Real Estate Mart from a man with a "country-sounding accent," according to stories in The Eagle's archives. The man had told Freeman he was interested in buying a home on Greens Prairie Road, then a rural part of College Station, and could pay with $73,000 in cash.
The family of Kate Steinle chose not to be in court on the day jurors rendered their verdict in the case of the undocumented Mexican immigrant who was accused in her death.

It was probably for the best. In a decision many found shocking, Jose Inez Garcia Zarate was acquitted of all but the least serious charge he faced.

Who could blame them for not wanting to be part of the spectacle that was sure to follow any verdict?

At their moment of greatest pain, the family already had been forced into an unwelcome spotlight by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, who used their tragedy to fuel his anti-immigration hysteria.

The death of 32-year-old Steinle, Trump said repeatedly, was the fault of San Franciscos sanctuary city policy, which prohibits city law enforcement officers from helping federal officials carry out detentions of undocumented immigrants. It demonstrated the urgency of building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

This senseless and totally preventable act of violence committed by an illegal immigrant is yet another example of why we must secure our border immediately, Trump said two days after Steinle was killed in July 2015. This is an absolutely disgraceful situation, and I am the only one that can fix it.

On Friday, the White House press secretary echoed her boss: Kate Steinle was killed by an illegal immigrant and convicted felon who had been deported from the United States five times, she said in a written statement. He, and countless other criminal illegal immigrants like him, should never be allowed to threaten our citizens.

The politicization of Steinles death, and now her killers acquittal, has been as inevitable as it has been unfair to her grieving family.

We somehow or another amazingly got caught up in immigration, and Trump, Kates father, Jim Steinle, told the San Francisco Chronicle in a recent interview. We have our views on immigration and we have our view on Trump. But this is the death of my daughter.

On Thursday, a San Francisco County Superior Court jury found Garcia Zarate, 45, not guilty of murder or manslaughter. Instead, it found him guilty of being a felon in possession of a gun, a single count that can carry a sentence of up to three years in state prison, two years of which he already has served.

Garcia Zarates public defenders argued that he found a loaded gun, stolen four days earlier from the locked car of a federal Bureau of Land Management ranger, and accidentally fired it while sitting on Pier 14. They said the bullet struck the pavement before ricocheting nearly 80 feet, striking Steinle in the back.

Jurors, to their credit, put aside the political noise and judged the case on its facts. They decided that the death of Kate Steinle, a joyful young woman who deserved a long, full life, was an accident.

I believe the verdict was just.



In late October, I attended the trials opening arguments. I thought then, and still do, that the ranger who left his loaded gun in a part of San Francisco where parked cars frequently are targeted by thieves bears some responsibility for the chain of events that led to Steinles death, though I dont think he should be charged with a crime.

Many outraged readers told me they had no doubt that Garcia Zarate had stolen the weapon, even though prosecutors and police said they had no evidence or information that he did. Perhaps they had heard that Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan wrongly claimed that Garcia Zarate had stolen the gun, and fired it multiple times, when he proposed Kates Law, to stiffen penalties for immigrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.

Evidence in the trial seemed to contradict that.

In early November, the defense presented a grainy surveillance video that captured both the shooting and what occurred on Pier 14 the hour before. Half an hour before Steinle was shot, six people could be seen huddling around a swiveling metal chair.

For nearly 30 minutes, they repeatedly bent down around the base of the chair setting down and then picking up blurry objects, said KQED reporter Alex Emslie, who watched the video in court. Half an hour later, Garcia Zarate sat down in the same swiveling metal chair. The footage showed him reaching down, presumably to pick up the gun. Moments later, a bullet from the gun pierced Steinles heart.



The verdict, said Jim Steinle, was sad and shocking.

Justice was rendered, he told the Chronicle, but it was not served.

The dignity and restraint of this family is remarkable. They never have been out for vengeance. And they are not even opposed to the idea of sanctuary cities, they told the Chronicle.

Understandably, they are angry that federal officials returned Garcia Zarate to San Francisco in 2015 to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge when they could have, and should have, deported him. The feds, after all, were aware of San Franciscos sanctuary policy, in which its sheriff refused to communicate with federal immigration authorities. They must have known local prosecutors would drop such a minor case and put the homeless immigrant back on the street.

And understandably, the Steinles are suing the federal government for negligence in connection with the theft of the rangers gun. They wanted to sue San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, for failing to hand Garcia Zarate over to immigration, but a judge tossed out that part of their case.

In the aftermath of Steinles death, and the vitriolic presidential campaign, the city has made minor changes to its sanctuary policy. It will now honor a federal detainer request, for instance, if the detainee has committed a violent or serious felony in the past seven years. That would not have affected the release of someone such as Garcia Zarate, who in all likelihood will be deported  rightfully so  once he serves his term.

Nothing has happened, Jim Steinle told the Chronicle. Nothing has changed. Except Kates not here.

Robin Abcarian writes for the Los Angeles Times.
BRIDGEPORT  Eversource Energy has added a new utility service to its menu after sealing its $1.6 billion deal to purchase Aquarion Water Co.

The company announced Monday that its six-month-long process to acquire the Bridgeport-based water company had ended, making Eversource the only U.S.-based electric utility company to own a water utility, according to a news release.

We have worked hard to be there when our customers need us for gas and electricity. By joining with Aquarion we are excited to add clean water to that commitment to a clean, sustainable future, said Jim Judge, Eversource chairman, president and CEO, in a release. As part of Eversource, Aquarion will remain a locally owned company with access to the resources it will need for investments to ensure ongoing reliability and customer service.

Eversource set out to purchase Aquarion and its parent company Macquarie Utilities in June with a deal that included $880 million in cash and $795 million of assumed Aquarion debt.

Connecticut officials gave the green light for the Boston- and Hartford-based companys takeover deal in October.

With Aquarion now part of Eversource, the electric, natural gas and water service providers customer base has grown to nearly 4 million people throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Our complementary business lines and shared commitment to operational excellence bode very well for our customers and the communities we serve, said Aquarion President and CEO Charles Firlotte in a press release. At Aquarion, were very proud of the history of superior customer satisfaction earned by our employees and we look forward to growing it even further with the Eversource team.

The 300 Aquarion employees will join Eversources 8,000-person staff as the water company will become a wholly owned subsidiary.

jordan.grice@hearstmediact.com
Santas swarmed the streets of Stamford during the annual SantaCon bar crawl on December 2, 2017. Revelers dressed in holiday garb took advantage of drink specials at participating bars. While all the costumes were festive, some were a little extra. Take for example.....
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Were barreling along in the bus. I see snow-capped mountains, terraced fields, farmers wearing straw coned-shaped hats bent over hoes. The scene is straight out of a Chinese 16th century painting. But then we see sleek steel windmills dotting the hills, solar panels on the street lamps, a cell phone tower next to a pagoda. This is China today.

As the retired director of the Center for Global Studies, I was invited to chaperone the annual two-week study tour to China. Traveling with 11 female students and their Chineselanguage teacher, Whitney Lok-Defino, I was reminded of the value of these trips: this is where the textbook ends and authentic experience begins.

Lets start with just being there. For nine days, we traveled through Yunnan province in southwestern China, an area not commonly visited by Westerners. Our presence caused a stir. At a panda reserve in Chengdu, schoolchildren shouted, Wai guo ren!  foreigners  and Hello! They squealed with delight when we answered and waved.

People stared at our tall girls in yoga pants with long blonde hair or red ponytails. Sitting on the steps of a temple in Dali as our guide talked about Buddhism, people took selfies, slyly positioning themselves so our group was in the background. Eating dinner that night in an open-air restaurant, we saw a man video-taping us.

Our kids were philosophical. Sophomore Anna Pasiakos said, I think its because theres a lack of exposure to other cultures here. Junior Cailey Martin reflected Americans have many opportunities to interact with diverse people, and we dont realize how special that is. In China, she said, we are stared at because we are not the same type as them. Were different.

A surprise visit to a school

Yes, we were different, but the Chinese were eager to connect. Because our guides teenage daughter attended a school close to our hotel, we visited Dali #1 High School. As we walked through the schools many courtyards, we saw students peeking from classroom windows and slyly glancing out back doors. And then an English teacher invited us into her room.

Our girls entered and the room erupted in applause. Chinese students led our girls to seats, and, in moments, conversations began between our 11 girls and the 50 students in the class. Laughter and chatter rang out.

I loved going to the school. They were so welcoming, said junior Chloe Schrader. We built a connection with the students even without knowing a lot of their language. Before we left, kids shared WeChat addresses (the Chinese version of texting), and snapped countless selfies.

Classroom lessons

brought to life

Throughout the trip, students felt their classroom learning was deepened and expanded. Pasiakos said she learned about Buddhism in Chinese History class, but here you can see it in action. There were people praying in the temples we were in.

Peter, our Tibetan guide in Shangri-La, explained how Buddhism shaped his life and personality. Its not like he was preaching his religion, said Schrader, but we learned how relevant religion is to the lives of the people. Its with them at all times.

Lets not forget that these students study Chinese. Most of them, however, are only in their second year of language study. People didnt always understand what I was saying, said sophomore Camille Clark. I learned that using proper tones really mattered.

But sophomore Tess Jordan loved the challenge. The best part is interacting with people in stores, the kids in the school, and actually speaking the language to communicate with someone, to be understood.

Schrader agreed: I really liked figuring out how to bridge the culture barrier, how to use body language to get your point across.

Living with families

The homestay with Guang Ming High School in Shanghai, when students stayed in the homes of families, was even more demanding: how does an American teenager fit into a Chinese family with different norms, different values, and different bathrooms?

Clark described the toilet with a bidet top in her hosts apartment. Everytime I opened the lid, this screaming sound came from it, she said. The whole family knew when I went to the bathroom.

Sophomore Shannon Hong was flummoxed by the sink and took the drain out whenever she used it. I didnt feel close enough with them to talk about the drain, she explained.

But other moments were more familiar to them. They all agreed the Shanghai students did much more homework than they did. But still, Hong said her host was often texting with her books open. When her grandma came into the room, she pretended she was doing her homework, she said.

Final assignment, reflection

Next Saturday, the students will come to the Center for Global Studies, look at their hundreds of pictures, and decide on a unifying idea or theme. Then each student will choose a photo related to that theme and write a personal essay. It will be a time for reflection.

But Ive already started that process. My photos show our girls immersed in a different world:

Our kids doing homework in the outdoor courtyard of our traditional-styled hotel with red lanterns hanging above them.

A public toilet with stalls without doors, walls only 4 ft high, and a trough than ran through each stall that you squatted over.

An older woman in traditional Bai dress teaching our kids tie-dying in a family-owned workshop.

Sets of chopsticks plunging into the spinach, noodles, eggplant, cabbage, chicken, and dumplings.

We learn a lot about the world by reading books and studying other languages, but nothing beats experiences that go beyond where the textbook ends.
So lets talk school food. Oh no! Not school food! Everyone knows that its the epitome of despair and everything that is evil in this world. Its horrendous, its atrocious, its  bad!

Shhhhh  its OK. Were going to take a look at school food through a completely innocent, unbiased freshman. Prepare yourselves  my thoughts may be shocking.

You walk into the school cafeteria and the sight amazes you. You came from a pretty limited middle school so the idea of being able to branch off and pick from so many entrees is beyond belief. The shiny metal stands each promise something new.

Grab your scratched and dented tray and lets get rolling into the latest school stream of students: the cafeteria.

To your left theres a giant cooler that breathes the cold freshness of winter. Inside theres a wide array of drinks that youre confident are meant to be free. Everything from the widely loved chocolate milk to the more controversial strawberry to even  juice  cartons? Theyre in the form of the milk you drank back in elementary school, but the big and bright lettering on the side boasts APPLE JUICE WITH VITAMIN W (no, theres no such thing vitamin W  sadly). You decide to try out this new juice solely out of curiosity.

Next to this beverage buffet is what seems to be a container of coffee along with Styrofoam cups stacked nicely next to it. Dont touch that. Staff only.

Now we come to the salad bar. Sometimes theres a great variety of sides to choose from: craisins (cranberry raisins) that are extremely good, frozen fruit packets (surprisingly tasty) and salad. You get to choose two so like 75 percent of the rest of the school you choose to just take whatever fruit they give you and run. The salad bar is more like a vertical wrestling mat so its best to just get in and get out.

Then there is the entree line. There are three metallic stands (for lack of a better description) where kind and very nice lunch ladies hand you the entree they have. There are the two hot stations, usually containing something along the lines of a burrito and some form of pizza. It changes a lot but those are the general ideas. Both are pretty good, but if youre actually looking at a real, classic burrito just be prepared for mediocrity.

As an added bonus theres like a warm sides center stand that has like tater tots. This grand place also holds the most reliable choice for lunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a cheesestick. The cheesestick is delicious.

Now we come to the pay extra portion of the cafeteria. Your eyes begin to water as you look at all the delectable treats awaiting to be consumed. Its glorious, with the slushies and cookies and fruit drinks. Theres beef jerky that makes your mouth water and rice crispy treats that make you want to literally throw your money at them.

Stop staring, youre holding up the line behind you, kid. People push against you as you try to decide which treat to buy yourself today when a dark realization rolls over your mind.

You panic and take your sad tray and dodge, duck, and dodge over to the nearest lunch lady at a register. You scan your fingerprint like they made you do at the beginning of the school year and youre off to go sit with whatever friends youre lucky enough to sit with during the next 30 minutes.

The realization you had earlier that kept you from getting delicious treats is the echoing words of your parents: Dont waste your lunch money. No one wants an angry parent.

So lets wrap this all up everyone. Obviously school lunch food isnt the best, we all know that. Some days your choices are better than others.

The people who work in there are great and dont deserve any criticism for the food theyre given to serve. There are some great meals that you can get and it is definitely worth doing if you get free or reduced lunches. I hope that everyone weighs their options like I did!

Hope yall are having a great holiday season and that this appetizing column helps set the mood! You guys are all great and good luck holiday shopping.

Riley Hansen is a senior at Grand Island Senior High.
What do evangelicals and other social conservatives have in common with liberal feminists and the secular left? More than either side would like to admit.

Once upon a time, the religious right thought sexual misconduct  certainly involving someone holding public office  was immoral; something they simply could not tolerate. How could anyone defend a man like Bill Clinton, they asked  a man who was credibly accused of sexual misconduct by more than a few women? That, in and of itself, made him unfit for office.

That was then.

Enter Judge Roy Moore, who is running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Alabama.

Today, evangelicals  not all, of course, but a lot  want proof that Moore was really involved with teenage girls when he was in his 30s. How do we know, they ask, that the women arent just making it all up?

Funny, but they didnt need video evidence to believe Bill Clinton was guilty of exposing himself in front of Paula Jones or that he groped Kathleen Willey in the White House or that when he was Arkansas Attorney General he raped a businesswoman named Juanita Broaddrick in a Little Rock hotel room.

Back then, the allegations seemed credible and that was enough for social conservatives. Today, they demand verifiable evidence that Roy Moore did all those things to so many women who were young girls at the time.

And what about liberal feminists and the secular left? Back in the 90s, to their everlasting shame, they rallied around Bill Clinton. After all, he was a Democrat who supported abortion rights  and thats all that needed to know. And now, the same people who defended a man accused of rape denounce a man accused of fondling a 14-year-old girl several decades ago.

Its called tribal politics. And its not something partisans should be proud of.

But hang on, it gets worse.

Liberal Democrats have recently turned on the former president who they, or their ideological elders, once defended. Michelle Goldberg, one of the many liberal columnists at The New York Times, has written that she now believes Juanita Broaddrick, and that Democrats are guilty of apologizing for Clinton when they shouldnt have.

I dont recall reading stuff like that from liberal columnists in The New York Times back when it might have made a difference.

And Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a liberal Democrat from New York who holds Hillary Clintons former seat, recently said Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency because of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

And you didnt hear stuff like that from liberal Democrats who were busy rescuing Bill Clinton way back when.

But before we give them too much credit  better late than never and all that  lets state the obvious: Its not exactly courageous to speak up 25 years after the fact, when its safe; when Bill Clinton is of no use to Democrats; when his wife didnt win the presidency; and when hes the elephant sitting on the couch in the living room.

How can they go after Roy Moore, or any man accused of sexually abusing women, as long as they remain silent about the former president who was accused of sexually abusing women?

Theres just so much hypocrisy anyone can take before gagging  or laughing out loud at the double standard.

But theres another reason some on the left are no longer covering for the former president. Their newfound valor makes it a lot easier to go after the current president.

When Democrats thought they could get rid of Donald Trump because of collusion with the Russians, sex was on the back burner. But a year has gone by since he was elected and an uncomfortable possibility is starting to emerge: Maybe he wont be thrown out of the Oval Office because he and Vladimir Putin were up to no good.

What then? What could Democrats dredge up to bring him down? How about sex?

Which brings us back to Gillibrand who said we have a different standard on sexual misconduct today than we did when Clinton was president. Things have changed today, and I think under those circumstances there should be a very different reaction (to how liberals defended Clinton), she said. And I think in light of this conversation, we should have a very different conversation about President Trump.

Get it? Take down Clinton  when hes no longer a force in Democratic politics  in order to make it easier to go after the man who currently resides in the White House, a man who once bragged on a hot mic that he could grab women by the you-know-what and get away with it  because hes a star.

So what should we take away from all of this? Well, until something changes, the partisans will tend to protect their own: A 32-year-old man who decades ago allegedly undressed a 14-year-old girl is better than a liberal Democrat who supports abortion with no restrictions. And a president accused of rape was better in office than out because he supported a womans right to choose. And if going after Bill Clinton paves the way to unseat Donald Trump  hey, no one really believes politics is about principles, right?

There are exceptions, of course  Democrats who take on Democrats accused of misconduct and Republicans who condemn their own  but too many of us have chosen up sides, and our partisan passions allow us to accept bad behavior, but only if the accused miscreant is on our team. Weve become partisans without principles  and as I say, its not anything to be proud of.
Broken Bow Public Schools board member J.B. Atkins emerged victorious on Nov. 14, after a local effort to recall him failed at the ballot box. About 60 percent of school district voters chose to keep Atkins in office.

At a time when the public is chattering about political intrigue and scandal around every corner, what prompted the campaign to remove Atkins may come as a surprise to Nebraskans.

Atkins was facing a backlash for convincing his school board to lower property taxes.

Following the downturn in agricultural commodity prices and a reduction in farm incomes, Atkins, who was elected in 2016 on a conservative platform, felt obligated to do something to help area taxpayers.

He advocated for reducing the districts tax levy from $1.05 per $100 of assessed property value  the maximum allowed under state law without voter approval  to 90 cents.

We cant continue as a district to tax our patrons at the max levy for $1.05, because that has increased taxes on our patrons exponentially in some cases, Atkins told the Kearney Hub at the time.

When assessed valuations on property rise, property taxes increase even when tax levies remain the same.

And because were primarily an ag-based economy here in Broken Bow, it affects everybody, Atkins told the Hub.

While the majority of the board adopted the tax rate cut, not everyone in the Broken Bow district was satisfied.

A very loud group, but one that did not represent the majority, tried to demonize me into someone who hated kids. No one wants to be accused of harming children, so school spending gets very little oversight or questioned in any way, said Atkins.

According to Ballotpedia, voters in Nebraska can petition for a recall of local elected officials for any reason. In school board elections where voters elect multiple candidates, only a small share of signatures from registered voters are needed.

Since Atkins won in a six-way race with 1,295 votes, the recall petition required signatures totaling 35 percent of that amount, or 454 signatures.

Atkins said recall supporters had two aims: first, to improve the chance that property tax rates could be increased in upcoming budget years by replacing him only one year into his four-year term, and second, to create a chilling effect among tax relief advocates in the community.

The strategy was to ensure that no one with my conservative values would run in the next election for fear of being attacked in the same manner that I have been, said Atkins.

It demonstrates the power of the teachers union in a small community where the school is one of the largest employers in town. This power is exactly why we have property tax issues in my opinion, said Atkins.

Atkins believes his win shows there is an unmet need in Nebraskas tax and spending debate.

My takeaway is this: the public is hungry for someone to stand up for them and be unafraid of special interests. I never voted for anything extreme, said Atkins.

While many point to the Nebraska Legislature to provide a solution to high property taxes, J.B. Atkins took action at the local level, where property tax rates are set in the first place.

It seemed the harder I fought back with the facts, the more support I gathered. People appear to want someone that will fight for their fundamental beliefs and not just give in.
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Linkedin Muhamad Haripin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 12:17 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2bf57ed 3 Opinion Tito-Karnavian,Book,#bookreview,#books,book-review,police,National-Police,democracy,Indonesian-politics,#NationalPolice,#TitoKarnavian Free

Indonesias police force has been frequently condemned and depicted as a notorious security agency. Violence against unarmed demonstrators, extortion by traffic management personnel, corruption and bribery involving high ranking officers are some of the pressing cases surrounding the National Police (Polri) today.

Against this background, it's important to reflect on recent efforts of Polri chief Gen. Tito Karnavian to promote democratic policing.

Tito has been known not only as a highly accomplished officer, among others as the former counter-terrorism chief, but is also emerging as a writer. His dissertation, published in 2015, has contributed to the analysis about the nature of terrorist networks. Prior to that, his book on Poso, the location of a long manhunt against terrorists in Central Sulawesi, provides useful information about the dynamics of horizontal conflict in Indonesia.

Recently, Gen. Tito published a new book entitled Democratic Policing, a result of collaboration with Hermawan Sulistyo, a research professor at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI.

What does Titos new book tell us about Polri and democracy? How should police and community relations be developed?

The book primarily asserts Polris commitment to the nations democratic system. Tito contends this position has never been easy to maintain. Democracy is complex and challenging, enabling myriad social and political expressions manifested through different means, including violence. As law enforcers, police have had to seek a balance between public order and protecting human rights of, for instance, various groups protesting the government.

Indeed, democracy presents both opportunity and challenges for Polri. On one hand, political liberalization in the post-Soeharto era forced the separation of police from the military; thus, Polri could manage their own affairs without army intervention. Nevertheless, greater autonomy for the police also comes with a broader mission, from regulating traffic to tackling cyber crimes. As a consequence, Polri has become a regular target of criticism for their shortcomings in handling a wide range of cases, besides their involvement in graft.

Democratic Policing offers a detailed account of the problems Indonesian police encountered throughout the post New Order era and efforts taken to solve them. Tito notes notions such as o democratic policing, smart policing and community policing circulated even since the early years of reformasi.

Among others, there is the Polri Grand Strategy, a crucial document describing for the first time Polri's medium and long-term development plan after they separated from the military in 1999.The police aim to undertake structural, instrumental, and cultural reform. Polri also tried to rebuild police and community relations through concerted effort of trust- and partnership-building. In this regard, democratic policing should be a complementary agenda to further speed up police reform.

This book also highlights the role of Indonesian police in protecting human rights and nurturing economic, social and cultural rights. More than 420,000 personnel all over the country must protect and serve the public professionally. Excessive force and violent measures against citizens, as frequently mobilized during New Order authoritarian period, has become obsolete and must be replaced with dialogue and persuasive approaches. Therefore, police officers should also be armed with deep understanding of peaceful conflict resolution and negotiation skills.

Internally, Tito also argues that different generations within the force represent varying understanding about democracy and how Polri should be positioned in an increasingly transparent society. Younger generations or those who entered the Police Academy and were trained after the reform movement of1998, have been exposed to democratic ideals and good governance more than their seniors. His generation therefore, Tito asserts, must build better police management for upcoming officers.

Contents aside, this book could be seen as a reminder about the unfinished police reform. We might disagree with the glowing picture of Polri presented by Gen. Tito. Nonetheless, such publication remains significant as a means of communication with wider audiences beyond the traditional parties considered to be stakeholders in security issues.

The community must be given appropriate opportunity to learn about and criticize the internal condition of Indonesian police; therefore, police should also open their institution for public scrutiny. The publication of Democratic Policing  and probably more on the police in the near future- - helps to invite public interest and scrutiny of the police, a small step forward to improve police-community relations.

***

The writer is a researcher at the Center for Political Studies at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta.

---------------

We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to academia@jakpost.com.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin KOMINFO (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta, Indonesia  Tue, December 5, 2017

The government has stressed its commitment to developing electricity infrastructure to provide access to power to all Indonesians, including those living in the countrys easternmost regions.

Since April 21, 2017, an increasing number of regions in eastern Indonesia have been provided access to electricity. Imelda Yewen, a resident of Fef district in Tambrauw regency, Sorong, West Papua, for example, can now enjoy more of what life has to offer, especially following the provision of two diesel-fueled power plants (PLTD), with a capacity of 80 kilowatts each.

Today, people in Fef district can have a refrigerator or a television and get information or watch films, said the 24-year-old enthusiastically.

The people in the district of Springhare seeing the results of the electrification program, which continues to reach many corners of the country. As of late September, 73,656 villages have received electricity.

The government aims for more regions to enjoy electricity in the coming years. In 2018, state-owned power company PLN targets to power 5,053 villages.

On the national scale, the electrification ratio has reached 93.08 percent. According to the target it will reach 97.32 percent by 2019.

. (./.)

"Some regions still need intensive electrification efforts, such as those in Papua and East Nusa Tenggara. We are working hard in these regions," said PLN Head of Corporate Communication I Made Suprateka during the FMB9 gathering, which discussed power supply in Indonesia, held in Jakarta on Nov.30.

Papuas electrification ratio currently stands at 48.91percent and is targeted to reach 77.7 percent in 2019.

The electricity industry should be encouraged, as data from the International Energy Agency shows that power consumption per capita in Indonesia is still behind other ASEAN countries.

In 2016, power consumption per capita in Indonesia amounted to 956 kilowatts per hour (kWh). The figure is lower than in Vietnam with 1,530 kWh per capita or in Thailand with 2,620 kWh per capita.

To encourage power consumption in the country, PLN has drawn up some concrete steps, for example, by offering additional electrical power for free, so that people can use electricity for productive purposes, like starting a new business.

"This program is purely a corporate action to optimize the power surplus we have. There is no force if people dont want to do this [get additional electricity power]," said Made.

Stable Rates

The number of PLN customers has continuously grown over the past few years. If PLN had 49.8 million customers in 2012, that number had increased to 67 million by September 2017.

The power distributed by PLN also continues to rise, from 83,898 MVA five years ago to 114,348 MVA in 2016 and further to 119,809 MVA in September 2017.

The electricity rates are also relatively stable. For instance, the low-voltage rate in July 2015 was Rp1, 548 per kWh, while as of September 2017, it had dropped to Rp1,467 per kWh.

"The electricity rates in Indonesia are still below those in other countries. The rate is around 10 US cent per kWh," explained Made.

He added that the conditions in Indonesia, as an archipelagic country, were the reason for different rates in different regions.

"Nevertheless, PLN is committed to using the same tariff or rate, in Java and outer regions and islands," Made said.

The affordable rates are the result of PLNs efforts to control the cost of supply (BPP) even amid rising prices of gas and coal.

In fact, PLN continues to strive for lower rates to lessen peoples burden. To realize this, PLN has been working to innovate, for example by collaborating with the private sector.

The independent power producer (IPP) scheme results in the construction of more power plants, which allows for lower electricity rates.

Investment of Rp1,200 trillion is needed to realize the 35,000MW electrification program launched by the government. The IPP scheme is expected to contribute up to Rp615 trillion, while PLN handles the remaining Rp585 trillion.

PLN also encourages efficiency within its own walls to cut operational costs. This is deemed important to ensure continued growth in the power industry. Further, the debt-to-equity ratio has dropped quite significantly over the past three years, falling from 297 percent in 2014, to only 49 percent at present.

PLN now has total assets worth Rp1,312 trillion, marking a jump from Rp539 trillion in 2014. The significant asset growth to some degree can be attributed to asset revaluation PLN did to fund the 35,000 MW electrification program.

The improving financial condition helps the company contribute more to the state. As of September 2017, PLNs taxes and dividends reached Rp22.7 trillion.

Global Appreciation

. (./.)

The performance has generated positive results, including international recognition. In the ease of doing business survey conducted by the World Bank, the country ranks 49th this year, up from position 61 in 2016. And the ease of getting electricity as one component of the survey continues to show improvement.

According to the secretary of the Directorate General of Electricity at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, Agoes Triboesono, the survey result is the fruit of several innovative measures taken by the government.

"Previously, the procedure for getting an electrical connection consisted of five steps; now, there are only four steps, he said.

The steps, according to Agoes, are the issuance of a Feasible Operation Certificate (SLO), a request for a new electricity connection to PLN, the construction work and external inspection, and the process of providing the electricity.

Despite all the achievements, the government has no intention to relax its efforts.

"Now, our concern and focus is the eastern part of Indonesia. We hope more regions that still lag behind in terms of access to electricity can get electricity by 2019, said Agoes.

Realizing the program Bright Light Indonesia is not a walk in the park. However, with all the efforts the government has made, it is no impossible feat, either.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 18:15 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c075a2 1 Art & Culture Battle-of-Surabaya,animation,#animation,Animated-films,award,#awards Free

Indonesian animated film Battle of Surabaya has been named Best Animation film at the 2017 Milan International Filmmaker Festival, which was held from Nov. 25 to Dec. 2.

The festival is part of Film Festival International, a group of movie festivals held in five European cities, namely London, Nice, Madrid, Amsterdam and Milan.

Antara news agency reported that the movie competed with six other international animated films featured in the category.

Read also: Battle of Surabaya premieres, attracts Disney's interest

Indonesian Ambassador to Italy Esti Andayani said the achievement was a testament to Indonesia's animation skills. Esti added that the award reflected the development of the local creative industry.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Student Association (PPI) Italy head Bashofi, who received the award on behalf of MSV Pictures, said the achievement would motivate the younger generation to continue producing high quality films.

Directed by Aryanto Yuniawan, Battle of Surabaya tells the story of a boy during the war that was fought in Surabaya, East Java, between Indonesian and British forces after Indonesia declared independence. The characters in the 2D animated film were voiced by popular Indonesian actors, including Reza Rahadian and Maudy Ayunda. (jes/kes)
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Linkedin Bill Dalton (The Jakarta Post) Ubud  Mon, December 4, 2017 09:21 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2bed9a5 4 Books bali,Book,writer,Ketut-Liyer,David-Stuart-Fox,Elizabeth-Gilbert,Eat-Pray-Love Free

Author David Stuart-Foxs latest book arose out of his personal friendship with Ketut Liyer, the late folk healer made world-famous by Elizabeth Gilbert through her best-selling novel Eat, Pray, Love.

David Stuart-Fox left his career as a journalist in Vietnam and Japan for United Press International in 1968 and a tentative assignment in Jakarta  a plunge into the unknown that was to lead to a colorful and unusual life working as a writer in Indonesia and respected scholar on Balinese culture.

Traveling widely in the country for decades, Stuart-Fox has published features for magazines including Garuda Magazine and Travel Indonesia, and worked as an editor for Singapores APA Productions in the revisions of their guidebook series on Bali and Java.

Jakarta became Stuart-Foxs base from where he embarked on a six-month journey via Bali across the islands of East and West Nusa Tenggara, as far as then Portuguese Timor. This was followed soon afterwards by a six-month sojourn in South Sulawesi.

Moving to Bali in the early 1970s where he stayed in a small village south of Ubud, Stuart-Fox met the late Ketut Liyer, the celebrated folk healer and painter, who became the subject of his newest book Pray, Magic, Heal.

The chance purchase of an intriguing carved hilt of a betel pounder in the shape of a crouched human figure, said to come from a remote village called Budakeling, brought him to Balis center of Buddhism.

With an Indonesian friend, Stuart-Fox stayed for a year in a little house in the middle of the rice fields, rarely leaving the village.

From that enriching experience came his first book about Bali, The Art of the Balinese Offering, published in 1974. Like so much of his work, photography and visuals play a significant role in the book, which was published through the intermediary of the late poet WS Rendra, whom Stuart-Fox met in Yogyakarta.

For Stuart-Fox, the book was to eventually bring him into contact with a Dutch student, Francine Brinkgreve, who in 1988 became his wife.

Toward the end of the 1970s, another event had a major impact on his life: The Hindu authorities in Bali made the decision to hold the Eka Dasa Rudra ceremony, enacted only once every 100 years, at the great temple of Pura Besakih, Balis most important temple.

Granted unhindered access by the authorities, Stuart-Fox was able to carry out an exhaustive study of the ceremony that resulted in one of his favorite books, Once a Century: Pura Besakih and the Eka Dasa Rudra Festival, published in1982.

His Besakih studies led to his completing a Ph.D. on this temple at the Australian National University. It was published in 2002, with an Indonesian translation in 2010.

During his career, Stuart-Fox has written about a wide range of subjects. While living in Bali in the 1970s and 1980s, he was able to gather an impressive collection of local publications. This interest finally led to the monumental Bibliography of Bali: Publications from 1920 to 1990, published in 1992 by KITLV in Leiden, the Netherlands.

One does not take on a work of this magnitude  8,000 entries and 708 pages  but once in a lifetime if one has any sense at all, Stuart-Fox recalled. Its a thankless task that receives little recognition. But such printed bibliographies are now largely a thing of the past.

During the two years that Stuart-Fox and his wife lived in Balis beachside community of Sanur, where he worked on a project developing the Bali Cultural Documentation Center, they started on the first of their many joint book projects.

See this: David Stuart-Fox (left) discusses page proofs with Ketut Liyer during a visit in 2012 in Bali. (Francine Brinkgreve/File)

Based on her own field work and photographs by Stuart-Fox and others, Francines Offerings: The Ritual Art of Bali was published in 1992 by Image Network Indonesia.

Unfortunately, its out of print now, Stuart-Fox said. Its a lovely book.

Some of the authors finest works are now maddeningly difficult to find as well; his classic work on Pura Besakih is also out of print.

At the end of the project, with a very young family and no clear means of livelihood in Bali, the couple moved to the Netherlands, where Francine still had a job at Leiden University.

To Stuart-Foxs great amazement, at the end of 1991, he was offered the position of librarian at the prestigious National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, where he worked until his retirement in 2013.

As a researcher and writer, he took great pleasure in building up that institutes magnificent book collection. His appointment as librarian was by no means the end of his involvement in Balinese scholarship.

In 1995, the publication of Kay It: Whimsical World of a Modern Balinese Artist marked his foray into Balinese art. Kay It, of Chinese descent, was a painter and designer of great talent who died suddenly at a young age. His widow asked Stuart-Fox and photographer Koes Koesnadi to produce a book to honor this versatile artist.

The latest chapter of Stuart-Foxs research about the island was the publication of the cheekily titled Pray, Magic, Heal: The Story of Ketut Liyer (New Saraswati Press/Saritaksu, 2015).

This Ubud folk healer was made world famous for his role as Elizabeth Gilberts guru in her bestseller Eat, Pray, Love ( 2006 ) and in the 2010 film of the same name. The book and the film tell of one womans search for spiritual fulfillment and love.

The idea for Pray, Magic, Heal arose out of Stuart-Foxs personal friendship with Liyer, which began in the early 1970s when the healers home in Pengosekan was in a quiet village untouched by asphalted roads or electricity, and separated from Ubud by beautiful rice fields.

The aim of the book was to explain the significance of the magic drawings within the traditional practice of a Balinese healer and of Liyer in particular, Stuart-Fox said. For the most part, it is Liyers own story, told in his own words and recorded well before the world knew anything about him or traditional Balinese healing arts.

Gilberts encounter with Liyer in Eat, Pray, Love, which had become a worldwide publishing phenomenon, was to result in a constant stream of Western visitors to Liyers home to consult with him, have their futures told and buy his paintings.

Liyer showed Stuart-Fox several articles written about him in international magazines. The man behind the myth received even more publicity in the Indonesian press after his death in June 2016.

Looking back on his cherished friendship with the gifted healer, Stuart-Fox recalls that from the beginning, Pray, Magic, Heal was as much Ketut Liyers book as it was his.

The idea for the book had nothing to do with Gilberts book or the movie that followed. It is for the most part based on recorded interviews made in the 1970s, he said

Besides being a compelling story of an accomplished painter and holistic healer, and essential reading for anyone seriously interested in Balis healing arts, the book is also a stunning catalogue of the magic line drawings and paintings that Liyer used in his healing practice.

Particular compositions, Stuart-Fox explained, were protection against various afflictions.

Ending our conversation, Stuart-Fox acknowledged the complexity of Balinese magic and healing.

My book barely begins the investigation, he said rather cryptically.
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Linkedin News Desk (Kyodo News) London  Mon, December 4, 2017 20:04 1808 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c0bee3 2 Lifestyle employees,work,Japan,foreign-workers,job-seekers Free

European universities and employers need to improve the assistance they provide to foreign graduates looking to work in Japan, according to delegates at a recent two-day conference in London.

Participants of the Nov. 6-7 forum agreed Japanese studies departments need to broaden the range of skills students acquire so they can meet the needs of Japanese firms.

The gathering of academics, students and human resources staff from across Europe also agreed Japanese employers have to be more sensitive to the needs of overseas graduates in Japan.

Harald Conrad, a lecturer in Japan's economy and management at Sheffield University, arranged the event at SOAS University of London.

He told Kyodo News, "I think there was general agreement among the participants that universities should and can address employability more in the curriculum. I don't think Japanese studies departments have thought about this in a systematic way and we hope to change that."

Conrad also argued graduates need to understand better how Japanese companies think and operate in practice. Anecdotally, many foreign graduates drop out of Japanese firms because they have unrealistic expectations.

Human resources specialists told the conference that while a good proficiency in Japanese is often important, firms are frequently looking for graduates with additional skills. They recommended studying Japanese alongside other subjects such as business.

Ian Robinson, human resources manager for Toshiba Europe Ltd., said, "We are not necessarily looking for Japanese speakers. We are looking for people who can change how we do business in Japan and change the mindset."

Read also: Japanese firms hiring more people with mental health issues

Japanese studies departments are already adapting courses in order to ensure students are better equipped for the world of work, according to the conference.

Instead of just writing essays, students are encouraged to take part in group work that involves developing a range of business-friendly skills, including a better understanding of Japanese workplace culture and negotiation skills. They also prepare their resumes and job interviews in Japanese and carry out internships.

Boosting employability (skills which can be transferred from the classroom into the workplace) has become increasingly important as students are forced to take on more of the costs of their education.

But it is also Japanese employers who need to change their approach if they are to attract and, more importantly retain, foreign graduates.

Some companies now aim to take on 20 percent of their annual graduate intake from overseas in order to bring about innovation and improve understanding of overseas markets.

Conrad and Hendrik Meyer-Ohle, from the National University of Singapore, have recently conducted a survey of these fresh foreign graduates.

They found many complained about vague job descriptions as well as a lack of direction and feedback from their seniors. Others talked about relatively low pay and being asked to perform low-level jobs in their first few years (in order to introduce new recruits to all aspects of the company). Some spoke about being overwhelmed at the high expectations put upon them.

As a result, foreign graduates often leave Japan after just a few years and return to their home country. This can discourage firms from further diversifying their workforce.

Read also: Japan's rethinking its culture of long work hours

One recent Oxford University graduate told the conference she had been deterred from working in Japan due to the experiences of fellow students in the country.

Some firms are working hard to provide support for overseas graduates, particularly those in information technology who have little or no proficiency in Japanese.

There was general agreement the logic of the Japanese employment system -- with its emphasis on the long term in terms of pay and career progression and letting people find themselves in the first few years of a job -- should be more fully explained to potential candidates. Many job seekers said they would benefit from mentoring by previous graduates.

But while recognizing the Japanese system is different, there was a feeling companies perhaps need to give their foreign graduates clearer goals and job descriptions.

Meyer-Ohle said that rather than focus on fresh foreign graduates, firms could benefit by sending more experienced, mid-career staff at European subsidiaries to their head office in order to increase diversity and introduce fresh thinking.

Many local staff working at Japanese subsidiaries said they felt there was a glass ceiling with little career progression, although some delegates said that was now changing.

The event at SOAS is being used by Conrad to create pamphlets and workshops for academics and Japanese firms to try to improve the opportunities for foreign graduates who want to work in Japan.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 16:15 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c031ed 1 People Indonesian,aviation,expert,Kleopas-Danang,ICAO Free

While representing Indonesia at the recent International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) Next Generation Aviation Professional Global Summit in Montreal, Canada, Kleopas Danang has been selected to join the Young Aviation Professional Program.

As reported by kompas.com, Danang became the first and only Indonesian to have been selected, which had over 550 applicants from all over the world.

"We are considered as Young Professional Officer's, working together with experts in the aviation industry," Danang told kompas.com recently.

ICAO runs the program together with Airports Council International (ACI) and International Air Transport Association (IATA). ICAO itself is a United Nations agency specializing on the principles and techniques of international air navigation.

ACI, meanwhile, is a trade organization that oversees airports across the globe, including Indonesia's state-owned airport operators Angkasa Pura 1 and Angkasa Pura 2. IATA oversees airlines, including Garuda Indonesia.

Read also: Seven airplane features you may not know about

Previously, Danang said he worked for seven years as a public relations officer for an Indonesian airline.

Joining the ICAO program means Danang must give up his position as he joins a team of analysts on global aviation economic policy.

Danang is set to contribute to projections of the global aviation industry, including the challenges it faces.

One of the challenges for the next 10 years is the lack of aviation experts, he said.

"This industry needs more than 255,000 additional pilots and 180,000 captains by 2027," Danang said.

He is also set to share his experience as an airline's public communications officer, especially on how to handle a crisis. (liz/kes)
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Linkedin Jonathan Tan (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 08:27 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2bec15e 4 Art & Culture short-story,#shortstory Free

Five minutes to three in the early hours of the morning, Adinda sat upright on her bed and wiped the sweat sticking to her forehead with the back of her small bandaged left hand. Clutching the glass of water beside her bed, she took a sip thirstily, waiting.

At exactly three, she took the cell phone beside the glass of water and dialed the number she now knew by heart. She did not put the number on speed dial because she wanted the pleasure of punching in the numbers on her phone in the dark. It took a while for the connection to get through  a number for Singapore. Ten rings in, a familiar female voice barking down on the end of the line filled her ears. Without saying a word, Adinda breathed heavily in response.

The first couple of nights, the voice on the end of the line  jarred with bewilderment  bellowed exasperatedly, Hello? Hello, who is it? Adinda held her silence. Then came the familiar note of annoyance, flaring in the voice each time she did not carry out the tasks to her satisfaction, bridged to a not-too-distant past where Adinda had sought to make a better life for herself and her family. Now it was all broken and her future was dimmer than before she had set foot in Singapore.

By the 97th call  a day short of her entire stay in Singapore  Adinda broke the silence and spoke: Why you do this to me? Why you made my life susah [miserable]?

***

Given another life, Adinda would not have wanted to be where she was. Easing the curtain to one side, she took in the muggy haze outside. Even without opening the window, she could smell the stiffness of the air permeating her nostrils.

It is the smell from your home lah, her madams mother-in-law said.

She missed the sarcasm at first, but learned later that the smog blanketing the island emanated from her homeland. She marveled at how the fires raging in her part of the world were suffocating those living further away.

High over the city-state, hundreds of windows embroidered life stories of which one was now her own in the apartment she would have to call home for the next two years. As she wondered hard how things were back home, in the same breath of thought, she stole time to stare out of the windows with curiosity to find out what went on behind those windows opposite hers that she cleaned daily  a morning chore before she prepared breakfast for Sir and Madam and their toddler son.

Adinda wasnt sure life was any better in the city-state with the constant frowns that creased Sir and Madams faces as they returned home after work. Back home as evening fell, her good neighbor and friend Ainul would sit with her outside their homes chatting, taking in the bustle of villagers coming and going, exchanging hellos and words with other neighbors passing by, looking up at the stars stitching their brilliance into the skies.

Here, Adinda soon learned that Sir and Madam retreated behind the shut door, the curtains drawn as hundreds of windows, not dissimilar to theirs, were torched with lights. The whiteness shone through the darkness with dissonance as night fell.

In her homecoming, Ainuls fruits of labor in full display  modern goodies, money to rebuild her dilapidated, rotting wooden house into something sturdier  awed Adinda. She pictured in her mind the kind of life that could possibly lie ahead of her in the city-state. More so, the better life she could have in her own homecoming, to deal with her immediate wants: to patch the leaking roof over their heads, to fill sacks of rice in the lumbung (rice storage), to no longer endure hunger.

Her Madams mother-in-law was the demanding one. She would give Adinda a makeshift stick made of a half-cut bamboo pole with a cloth tied around it and asked her to extend herself out of the windows to clean the outer panels. Arching her hand against the window panels as she extended her body outwards, Adinda tried to suppress the giddiness rising up her head, resisting to either look upwards or worse, downwards, keeping her eyes peeled over to the hundreds of windows on the opposite block.

She wondered at the obsession of having the squeaky-shiny cleaned windows that served little purpose since the curtains were drawn shut most of the time. Was she being punished just because the soot from the forest fires burning back home had stained the windows?

***

Before she had the maid, Lynn Tan reminded herself not to be too fastidious, to cut her maid some slack.

Given another life, Lynn wouldnt have wanted to get a maid at all. Having someone else living in their midst was the last thing she wished for. As it was, being out and about, working long hours five days a week, she wanted the freedom and quiet in the evenings and weekends to move about in her home.

The slightest noises intruding upon her shook her with annoyance: the closing and opening of wardrobe doors as the maid placed the folded laundry back; the clattering of the plates and cutlery as the maid washed them; the dull, plodding sound of footsteps as the maid stomped heavily across the floor to pick toys up. Her presence was everywhere; Lynn did not like it at all.

But a year into taking care of her newborn, Lynn was exhausted by the never-ending regime of diaper changes, the unreasonable shrillness of her newborns crying, the dull routine that trapped her in the apartment. No longer was she able to steal time in between lunches to do up her toes or hair, to put on a dress or a pair of high-heels, to catch up with gossip over lunch with colleagues before heading back to the office.

Work in itself wasnt always pleasurable, but it offered pleasant distractions, moving her mood along the way, along a spectrum that was unavailable to the life with a newborn at home.

After her newborn was hospitalized for weeks with a viral infection, after her mother-in-laws insinuation that she shouldnt have brought the boy out shopping just because she was bored, after her husbands rationalization that she might feel better ditching the role of a stay-home mom, Lynn decided to hire a maid.

The arrangement was that her mother-in-law would watch over the maid, who would in turn take care of the daily needs of the boy, and also to complete as many of the household chores as humanly possible each day.

***

Adinda had a fitful sleep the night before she was sent off to Singapore. She dreamed about how Singapore was so clean that the pavement could be eaten off of if she was hungry enough. She was on all fours, licking the pavement that tasted of roasted pine nuts, the air sticky with cotton candy, the sun warming a toast of rendang curry.

Then it began to rain in her dreams. The skies opened up: rags after rags of damp fell, some slapping on her head, shoulder, body with a disapproving thud. Soon she found herself unable to move forward, stuck among the rags piling high as the skies gave no sign of letting up. That humid morning, as Adinda left her dreams and woke up soaking wet with sweat on her back and forehead, she was lost to the future lurking ahead.

In Singapore, her family pawned whatever little valuables they had, borrowed from their relatives too. Grateful, Adinda promised herself that once she was able to pay off the loan owed to the agent, she would start to remit as much of her wages as she could back home. She knew the first 10 months would be tough in Singapore, getting little more than 30 dollars each month from her employer, the rest going to the agent for the fees in bringing her to Singapore.

But seeing her neighbors returning home, laden with goodies and modern appliances from Singapore, it strengthened her resolve to go out there to seek a better life. She pictured herself returning home with the latest handheld game for her adik (younger brother), a wardrobe of nice clothes for her kakak (older sister), a brand new Yamaha motorbike for her abang (older brother), a good quality TV for her ailing orangtua (parents) already in their 70s, always squinting their eyes to see what was on the TV.

Sitting in the newly renovated home, she would regale her siblings and parents of life in the city-state, of the people there, of their secrets, of their success, of the modern conveniences that someday, somehow would come to their village, slowly but surely.

***

You clean like that, not clean. Must clean like that. Impatience rose up in her mother-in-laws voice as she snatched the mop from Adindas hand and showed her how to do it.

Then she ranted on again, Thought they teach you how to clean before you come to Singapore. Did Mum show you how to clean the floor? She didnt scold you?

As the weeks went on, Adinda was quick to realize the reassuring smiles that welcomed her soon ceased to bracket their faces. The voice grew harder, harsher each time she did something wrong or what they thought was wrong.

When the bowl slipped out of her hand  crashing onto the floor, sending the half-eaten rice all over the corner where she sat on a high stool to eat her dinner in the kitchen  Adinda went to bed that evening hungry.

Slipping into the bathroom to relieve herself when everyone in the household was asleep, she drank from the tap to dull her hunger. The wound stitched between her left thumb and index finger glistened in the dark as she unwrapped her bandage to take a closer look.

You are very stupid. Why use your hands to pick up the broken bowl? Use the broom to sweep it up, her Madams voice quivered in anger, as she stood with her at the accident and emergency department at Changi Hospital to get her wounds treated.

***

Just send her back lah, her mother-in-law said the next day. If your boy is near her, he could have gotten hurt also. Lucky. I can cope with the boy on my own. Now this one stupid, cannot do things properly.

Since the maid had come into the picture, Lynn was annoyed that her mother-in-law and even her husband presumably made her the custodian of the maid. Any fault with her, any complaints about her clumsiness, her inefficient cleaning that left ant trails, the inability to coax her boy to take naps, rested squarely on her shoulders: teach her, manage her, tell her. Lynn was sick of being the one telling the maid what to do.

Why cant your mom just tell her properly what to do, Lynn said to her husband.

Mom doesnt speak much English or Malay. How to communicate? She needs you to instruct the maid, her husband replied, conveniently brushing aside any responsibility.

That evening, when the decision was made to send her home, Lynn felt heaviness in her heart. But she acquiesced, hoping to put to rest her mother-in-laws nonstop complaints about the maid. The inconvenience of a maid was perhaps too much to manage, as if life hadnt put enough on her plate.

One morning the following week, while she was getting ready to clean the windows by wetting the cloth to tie on the bamboo stick, Adinda was asked to pack her belongings stuffed in the storeroom, where she also slept. The Madams mother-in-law then quickly did a thorough check by ruffling through her personal belongings.

Just to make sure she didnt steal anything, she said to Lynn, ignoring Adinda who stood by and watched on cluelessly.

At the airport, her Madam pressed two 50-dollar notes into her small hands and said: Use it to get something you like inside. It was the first time that she came into contact with so much money since coming to Singapore.

For me? Thank you, Madam, Adinda said gratefully, resolving that she would bring it home and show her family what a 50 Singapore dollar note looked like. Then she asked, Why am I going home?

Were going on a holiday. You balik kampong [go back home] first, said Madams mother-in-law, her face crowded with a disapproving glare.

***

Why? You send me back to agent I can still work in Singapore. Why you send me home? You lie. Why?

On the other side, Lynn uttered little more than a sorry  one that sounded more tired than sincere. Since the maid left, she had to face the task of coaxing her son to sleep, something she had never been good at.

Despite her mother-in-laws assurances to help out, Lynn came home mostly to unwashed laundry or dishes  the menial tasks that were once forgotten and relegated to Adinda. She had to take it upon herself to do it.

Stop calling, Adinda, Lynn begged. Im sorry, as I said.

It was barely past three in the ungodly hours of the morning when Adinda let out a loud sob on the end of the line. The 98th call, the number of days she was in the city-state. Long after she hung up, the sob stubbornly sat, ringing restively deep in the air.

***

Jonathan Tan Ghee Tiong works as the head of the Culture and Information Division at the ASEAN Secretariat.

-----------------------

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Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 12:09 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2bf5376 1 National Gatot-Nurmantyo,Air-Force Free

President Joko Jokowi Widodo has reportedly proposed that Air Force chief of staff Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto lead the Indonesian Military (TNI) after commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo retires.

House of Representatives deputy speaker Fadli Zon said Monday that State Secretary Pratikno filed a letter to the House regarding the proposed appointment of Hadi.

I saw Pratikno this morning. He handed me a letter. And [the President] has proposed Hadi as the new military commander," the Gerindra Party lawmaker told reporters.

Gatot will retire in March next year.

The House leadership board will hold a meeting this afternoon, then continue with a Consultative Body (Bamus) meeting, in which leaders of all factions will be invited to discuss the proposal.

After the House reads the letter in a plenary meeting, the House Commission I overseeing defense will conduct a confirmation hearing to evaluate the candidate. The legislative body is scheduled to have a recess period starting on Dec. 13.

Fadli said the House expected to complete all of the processes before the recess period begins. (dmr)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 15:45 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c01c6a 1 Business national-payment-gateway,launching,BI,agus-martowardoyo Free

Bank Indonesia (BI) on Monday launched the long-awaited national payment gateway, locally known as "Gerbang Pembayaran Nasional" (GPN).

Infrastructure sharing would cut the cost of interbank transactions, said BI Governor Agus Martowardojo during the launch ceremony in Jakarta.

"Usually banks charge a 2 to 3 percent merchant discount rate if a customer uses another bank's card, but now the rate is only 1 percent with the infrastructure sharing," he said during the launch event at the BI office in Jakarta.

He said four local interbank switching companies -- PT Artajasa Pembayaran Elektronis, PT Rintis Sejahtera, PT Alto Network and PT Jalin Pembayaran Nusantara -- would establish a consortium called PT Penyelengara Transaksi Elektronis Nasional to manage the infrastructure sharing.

Meanwhile, four main e-money issuers -- PT Bank Mandiri, PT Bank Central Asia (BCA), PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), and PT Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) -- had signed an agreement for their e-money interoperability.

"You can see many automated teller machines (ATM) and electronic data capture (EDC) machines in certain shops or malls. With the sharing, one machine can serve many kinds of cards with a cheaper transaction cost," Agus said. He added that fewer ATM and EDC machines were needed with the interoperability, and unused machines could be used in other locations. (bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (Rasmei Kampuchea Daily/ANN) Phnom Penh  Mon, December 4, 2017 18:11 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c070ce 2 World #cambodia,#Bangladesh,#Myanmar,#MyanmarRohingya,#Rohingya,#RohingyaCrisis Free

Cambodia hopes that Bangladesh and Myanmar find a solution allowing the Rohingya repatriation, Prime Minister Hun Sen said at the joint press conference held following his bilateral meeting with visiting Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina.

For her part, Sheikh Hasina affirmed the Bangladeshs commitment to provide shelters to some 700,000 Rohingya refugees and to continue negotiating with Myanmar for their repatriation.

Cambodia has confirmed its clear stance over Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.

On Nov. 16, 2017, Cambodian Premier underlined that Rohingya crisis is an internal affair of Myanmar and Cambodia will not interfere in this issue. The Cambodian premier also expressed his sadness over the crisis in Myanmars Rakhine State, adding that Cambodia is considering providing humanitarian assistance to Rakhines people, some of them are living in Myanmar while others fled to Bangladesh.

Topics :

This article appeared on the Rasmei Kampuchea Daily newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 22:03 1808 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c0eef6 1 City Bukit-Duri,eviction,court-ruling,appeal Free

Bukit Duri evictees, who were entitled to receive compensation following a court ruling, face a challenge to receiving their desired redress after the Ciliwung-Cisadane Flood Control Office (BWSCC), one of the defendants, decided to appeal the verdict.

"BWSCC has appealed the verdict," Jakarta legal agency head Yayan Yuhana said on Monday.



With the appeal, the city administration could not yet disburse compensation to former Bukit Duri residents in South Jakarta, unless the ruling is upheld. Each of the 93 residents were originally entitled to receive Rp 200 million (US$14,740).



The administration would not appeal the verdict, as ordered by Governor Anies Baswedan, Yayan said as quoted by kompas.com.



Meanwhile, a lawyer representing the former Bukit Duri residents, Vera Soemarwi, said she had not yet received an official notification regarding the BWSCC's move to appeal the ruling.



The Central Jakarta District Court previously ruled in favor of the residents regarding forced eviction by the administration last year.

The Jakarta administration, under former governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama evicted, Bukit Duri residents on Jan. 12, 2016, as part of the administrations plan to restore the Ciliwung River, in an effort to reduce flooding in the city. (fac)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 18:45 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c08e22 1 National Court,judicial-reform,JudicialSystem,judicial-system,LeIP,Indonesian-Judicial-Reform-Forum Free

The Institute for Research and Advocacy for Independent Courts (LeIP) is set to hold the first Indonesian Judicial Reform Forum (IJRF), scheduled for Jan. 15 to Jan. 16, 2018.

Indonesia's court system has undergone changes since the start of the Reform Era in 1998, but it remains plagued by wide-ranging problems, from long case backlogs to corrupt judges.

The institute hopes that the forum will be a biennial event that provides important feedback to the Indonesian judiciary, LeIP researcher Liza Farihah told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

"There have been several law summits in the past, but the focus has been very narrow," she said.

In contrast, the IJRF will hold eight panels on topics ranging from jurisprudence and transparency to corrupt practices. The forum will also feature panelists from the Netherlands' Constitutional Court and Australias Judicial Commission.

LeIP is holding several pre-event discussions in the lead-up to the forum. In the first of these, held on Monday, the institute invited journalists to share the problems they faced in covering the courts. Chief among the problems was the Supreme Court's perceived lack of openness toward the press.

In the coming weeks, LeIP will also conduct discussions with other non-governmental organizations and donor organizations. The results of the discussions will be further evaluated in the IJRF and will then be compiled into a set of recommendations.

"After the forum, we will compile everything that was discussed and formulate recommendations that we will submit to the Supreme Court and related government bodies," said Liza. (kmt/ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 13:13 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2bf685f 4 Business tax,collection,shortfall Free

Center for Indonesia Taxation Analysis (CITA) executive director Yustinus Prastowo has estimated that, by the end of this year, the Directorate General of Taxation will collect 90 percent of the tax revenue target of Rp 28 quadrillion (US$89.85 billion).

The government has collected 77 percent of the target as of November.

I think in December, about 13 percent of this years tax revenue target will be realized. So, in total, 90 percent of the tax revenue [target] would be met, said Yustinus as quoted by kontan.co.id on Monday.

He said an increase in government spending and increase in value added tax as a result of common household spending would result in an overall increase in tax revenue collection in December.

The implementation of Financial Minister Regulation No. 165 on the tax pardon, which required taxpayers to immediately report their undeclared assets, would also contribute to the increase, he said.

Meanwhile, the Directorate General of Taxation's tax revenue and compliance director, Yon Arsal, expressed optimism that the target would be reached because of positive growth across businesses.

He said that value added tax revenue for imported goods grew by 20 percent, while domestic value added tax revenue grew by 14 percent.

"All showed positive signs," he said.

Last year, from January to November, 71.2 percent of the targeted figure was met, he added. (bbn)

Topics : tax collection shortfall
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Linkedin Jim Mannion (AFP) Washington  Mon, December 4, 2017 07:43 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2be9870 2 World North-Korea,Korea,US,missile-launch,military-drill Free

Tensions were on the rise Sunday ahead of the largest ever US-South Korea air exercise, with Pyongyang calling it an "all-out provocation" that could lead to nuclear conflict as a US lawmaker warned of a growing likelihood of "preemptive war" on the divided peninsula.

The five-day Vigilant Ace drill -- involving some 230 aircraft including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters -- begins Monday, five days after the North test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile believed to be capable of hitting the US mainland in a new challenge to President Donald Trump.

The North's ruling party Rodong newspaper slammed the upcoming drill.

"It is an open, all-out provocation against the DPRK, which may lead to a nuclear war any moment," it said in an editorial Sunday, using the North's official name.

"The US and South Korean puppet warmongers would be well advised to bear in mind that their DPRK-targeted military drill will be as foolish as an act precipitating their self-destruction," it said.

The commentary was published a day after Pyongyang's foreign ministry accused the Trump administration of "begging for nuclear war" by staging what it called the reckless air drills.

'Preemptive war'

In Washington, meanwhile, an influential Republican lawmaker joined National Security Advisor HR McMaster in warning that time is running out on diplomatic efforts to rein in North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a foreign policy hawk, told CBS' "Face the Nation" the United States moves closer to "preemptive war" with every new North Korean missile or nuclear test.

"If there's an underground nuclear test, then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States," Graham said.

North Korea has boasted -- and Western experts agree -- that the Hwasong-15 missile tested on Wednesday is capable of reaching the United States, raising the prospect of a direct nuclear threat to Washington.

Graham's remarks echoed those of McMaster, who told a security forum in Washington on Saturday that the potential for war with North Korea "is increasing every day."

"We are in a race to be able to solve this problem," McMaster said. "This would be the most destabilizing development I think in the post-World War II period. It's something that places us at direct risk but places the world at risk."

The United States has demanded tougher international sanctions in response to the latest missile tests, including cuts in oil shipments to the isolated state.

Graham said he has had extensive discussions with the Trump administration about the situation.

US policy, he said, is "to deny North Korea the capability to hit America with a nuclear-tipped missile. Not to contain it."

"Denial means preemptive war as a last resort. That preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures. Every missile test, every underground test of a nuclear weapon, means the marriage is more likely.

"I think we're really running out of time. The Chinese are trying, but ineffectively," he said.

Beijing has backed a slew of sanctions that include bans on imports of North Korean coal, iron ore and seafood.

But it has refused to turn off its pipeline shipping crude to North Korea.

North Korea, meanwhile, has been on a tear, undeterred by international pressure.

In September, it conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.

The North says the Hwasong-15 missile can be tipped with a "super-large heavy warhead" capable of striking the whole US mainland.

But analysts remain unconvinced that it has mastered the advanced technology to allow the rocket to survive re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere.
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Linkedin Ivany Atina Arbi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 22:24 1808 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c0f0ee 1 City mass-wedding,Jakarta-administration,New-Year Free

The Jakarta administration is set to make New Years Eve a wedding date of choice for couples from lower to middle economic classes.

Jakarta Deputy Governor Sandiaga Uno said on Monday that the idea to provide free weddings was brought up by Governor Anies Baswedan during a weekly meeting with their subordinates at City Hall.

The governor had really good idea [during the meeting]. Couples from lower to middle economic classes, who wish to get married this New Years Eve will be provided with support, Sandiaga said, adding that technical matters related to the implementation of a mass wedding day would be handled by the Jakarta Governance Bureau.

Separately, Jakarta Governance Bureau head Premi Lasari said she would disclose the requirements for participation on Wednesday. One requirement would be that the couples possess Jakarta ID cards.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 17:31 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c038d9 1 City Bekasi,police,brawl,attack Free

Two police officers were attacked while carrying out their duties at Jatimakmur subdistrict in Pondok Gede, Bekasi, West Java on the early hours of Sunday morning.

A mob that attacked Chief Brig. Slamet Aji and First Insp. Panjang, were reportedly members of a gang known as Rawa Lele 212, who were celebrating the anniversary of their formation and looking for other gangs for a brawl. Several of the attackers had reportedly consumed alcohol, kompas.com reported.

While patrolling the two police officers approached a group of gang members, mostly teenagers, and ordered them to disperse. However, they attacked the officers with a variety of sharp and blunt weapons.

The police have apprehended 10 suspects and are seeking other people in connection with the attack.

"We are still hunting down other suspects that stabbed and threw rocks," Jakarta Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono said on Monday. (fac)

Topics : Bekasi police brawl attack
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Linkedin Lamat R Hasan (ANN) New Delhi  Mon, December 4, 2017 15:45 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c012ac 2 World #India,#politics,#Gandhi,#RahulGandhi Free

Once the most ridiculed political leader in India, Rahul Gandhi on Monday filed his nomination to be elevated to the top post of the country's grand old Congress party.

The 47-year-old scion of the Gandhi dynasty is set to take over the mantle from his mother Sonia Gandhi. Sonia has been party president since 1998, the longest period in the party's 132-year-old history.

Rahul, who has been holding his current position of party vice-president for close to five years, is no longer considered to be the lightweight politician who was the butt of jokes in drawing room coversations and on social media.

Political pundits who had dismissed Rahul when the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stormed to power in 2014, are now taking his surge in popularity seriously. They are seeing hope in Rahul  as the man who can take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi has been facing problems since he unleashed his grand demonetisation scheme on unsuspecting Indians last November. The move to devalue high denomination currency notes to check corruption didn't sit well with millions of Indians, neither did his biggest tax reform since the country's independence  Goods and Services Tax (GST). The slow economic growth and rising unemployment have made the going for the ruling BJP far from rosy.

Right after Rahul filed his nomination papers, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party.

Rahul-ji is a darling of the Congress and has filed his papers today. This is another step in his (Rahul) quest for serving the people of the nation through the Congress party, Singh said.

Sonia Gandhi-ji has served the party for the last 19 yearsRahul Gandhi-ji will carry on the great traditions of the Congress party, he added.

Modi termed Rahul's imminent election as Congress boss as Aurangzeb Raj. He said the the Congress party was a clan with a feudal mindset.

The much-awaited elevation of Rahul, who is spearheading the Congress' campaign for assembly polls in the northwestern state of Gujarat, has been a talking point for a couple of years. In between, there was talk of Priyanka, Rahul's sister, in whom many see shades of her grandmother Indira Gandhi, the country's former prime minister, taking over the baton from Sonia.

Following Rahul's election, a few new faces are likely to be seen in the Congress Working Committee (CWC)  the party's highest decision-making body - and a few familiar older faces may have to retire, to ease the inter-generational tension.

Rahul, whose every utterance was caricaturised by the BJP till not very long ago, has now left the ruling party worried. He is seen as an earthy and committed leader, compared to Modi who is clever and street smart.

Following his US tour earlier this year, people started perceiving Rahul differently. The BJP also sharpened its attack on Rahul, whom it started seeing as a potential threat. He took on Modi head-on and pooh-poohed his GST reform, calling it the Gabbar Singh Tax. Gabbar Singh is a famous character from a 1970s Bollywood film and the epitome of villainy.

While Rahul may not be able to make much of a dent in states that are to hold elections before the 2019 general election, he is certainly the headache the BJP, and most certainly Modi, hadn't forseen when they called him Pappu, which could roughly translate into a dullard.

In recent years, Congress has performed hopelessly in almost all states that went to the polls, except Karnataka. Therefore, Rahul is being seen by veteran leaders as the adrenaline shot that will inject fresh energy into the Congress.

Not just the Congress, other parties are beginning to take Rahul seriously. Left party leader Sitaram Yechury, who earlier claimed that Rahul will not be able to bind the Opposition parties if he takes over the top post, has had a rethink.

Modi, who promised a clean government, was caught on the wrong foot when BJP president Amit Shah's son's business earnings were revealed in a media expose. The dramatic increase in Jay Shah's businesses  the turnover of his company multiplying 16,000 times over  left the BJP red-faced.

Rahul sharpened his attack on the BJP, saying the Shahs had looted the country instead of serving as watchmen. A senior BJP leader jumped to his party's defence saying Rahul should step out of his diapers. Rahul may just have by filing his nomination for the top Congress post.
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Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 19:31 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c0b268 1 Politics setya,setya-novanto,house-of-representatives,MKD,KPK,corruption,corruption-case,corruption-eradication,graft Free

The House of Representatives Ethics Council has said that sooner or later, graft suspect Setya Novanto will resign from his post as House speaker because his detention by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) prevents him leading the legislative body.

Ethics council deputy chairman Sarifuddin Sudding said on Tuesday that Setya had expressed his willingness to step down when House lawmakers recently questioned him at the antigraft bodys headquarters over alleged ethics violations.

He [Setya] apologized to the public. He said he realized that a House speaker had many important duties that could not be delegated to a deputy speaker. He will make a decision [about his resignation] in the near future, said Sudding.

The Hanura Party lawmaker said it would be more dignified for Setya to give up his post instead of being fired.

Setya is a suspect in the high-profile corruption case related to the e-ID procurement project. The Golkar Party chairman previously sent a letter to the House, in which he asked the body not to hold any process aimed at dismissing him as House speaker until after the South Jakarta District Court ruled on his pretrial challenge to being named a suspect.

However, the ethics council continued to proceed with its investigation into ethical violations allegedly committed by Setya, including a car accident that led to him being treated at Medika Permata Hijau Hospital. Many observers dismissed the accident as a ploy to escape from the KPKs investigation. (ebf)
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Seoul, South Korea  Mon, December 4, 2017 14:30 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2bfb0c0 2 World Korea,drill,war,US,Nuclear Free

The US and South Korea on Monday kicked off their largest ever joint air exercise, an operation North Korea has labelled an "all-out provocation", days after Pyongyang fired its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile.

The five-day Vigilant Ace drill -- involving 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troops -- began Monday morning, Seoul's air force said.

Pyongyang over the weekend blasted the drill, accusing US President Donald's Trump's administration of "begging for nuclear war".

The annual exercise comes five days after the nuclear-armed North test-fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the United States within range.

As tensions surged, US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican and foreign policy hawk, warned that the US was moving closer to "preemptive war" with the North.

"If there's an underground nuclear test (by the North), then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States," Graham told the CBS show "Face the Nation".

The isolated and impoverished North has staged six increasingly powerful atomic tests since 2006 -- most recently in September.

"The preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures. Every missile test, every underground test of a nuclear weapon, means the marriage is more likely," he said.

Graham's remarks echoed those of Trump's National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who told a security forum on Saturday that the potential for war with the North "is increasing every day."

The North has boasted that the Hwasong 15 ICBM tested on Wednesday is capable of delivering a "super-large" nuclear warhead anywhere in the US mainland.

Analysts agree that the latest test showed a big improvement in potential range, but say it was likely achieved using a dummy warhead that would have been quite light.

They say a missile carrying a much heavier nuclear warhead would struggle to travel as far.

Topics : Korea drill war US Nuclear
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Sanaa, Yemen  Mon, December 4, 2017 13:50 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2bf8f1c 2 World war,Yemen,Saudi-Arabia,Iraq Free

A wave of air raids rattled Yemen's crisis-hit capital Monday, witnesses said, as clashes between rebels and supporters of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh also spread beyond Sanaa.

The strikes appeared to hit targets near Sanaa International Airport and the interior ministry, both under the control of the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, according to residents and a source inside the airport.

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, Iran's regional arch-rival, is the only party in the Yemen war known to conduct air strikes on Sanaa.

A spokesman for the coalition did not respond to requests for confirmation of the raids on Monday.

Residents near the airport said multiple air raids had shaken their homes late Sunday night and in the early hours of Monday.

An airport source said rebel bases near the location appeared to have been targeted but the airport itself had not been bombed.

Residents also reported that the fighting, which erupted Wednesday night between armed Saleh supporters and Huthi fighters, had spread outside the capital.

Tribal sources in Saleh's hometown Sanhan, south of Sanaa, on Monday reported intense overnight fighting between the Huthis and Saleh loyalists.

The clashes in the capital had killed some 60 people as of Sunday. There was no immediate information available on fresh casualties.

Yemeni territory is split between the forces and government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in the south, backed by Saudi Arabia and recognised by the international community, the northern Huthi rebels and forces loyal to strongman Saleh.

Since 2014, Sanaa has been ruled under an agreement between Saleh and the Huthis, who drove the Hadi government out of the capital, set up their own government and for two years together fought the Saudi-led coalition.

Saleh on Saturday announced he was open to talks with Saudi Arabia and its allies on condition they ended their crippling blockade on Yemen's ports and airports -- dealing a serious blow to his already fragile alliance with rebel chief Abdul Malik al-Huthi.
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Manila, Philippines  Mon, December 4, 2017 16:01 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c023c5 2 SE Asia health,Sanofi-Pasteur,vaccination,dengue-vaccine Free

A world-first dengue vaccination program in the Philippines that was suspended over safety concerns will not cause anyone who was immunized to die, drug manufacturer Sanofi and local authorities said on Monday.

The Philippines on Friday suspended the program, after more than 733,000 people had been immunized, in response to a statement from Sanofi that its vaccine could cause "more cases of severe disease" for people who had not previously had the mosquito-borne ailment.

After news outlets and some politicians in the Philippines expressed concern about the welfare of those immunized, the French pharmaceutical giant held a press conference in Manila to state the potential cases of "severe dengue" would not be fatal.

"What is this severe (dengue)? When people think of 'severe', this already includes dengue shock that could lead to death, but no," Sanofi Pasteur regional head for dengue Joselito Sta. Ana told reporters.

Sta. Ana said Sanofi's definition of "severe dengue" merely referred to symptoms including two days of fever, a lower platelet count and bruising.

Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque also sought to allay fears, stating there was "no danger" with the Dengvaxia vaccine.

"The worst that can happen is for those who have not had dengue before -- which is one out of 10 (Filipinos) -- they may get infected with dengue but falling under our previous classification of 'mild', having fever and bruises," Roque said.

Nevertheless, the justice department announced Monday that the National Bureau of Investigation would investigate the vaccination program "over the alleged danger to public health". It warned in a statement that charges could follow.

The previous administration of president Benigno Aquino launched the vaccination programme last year, making the Philippines the first nation to use Dengvaxia on a mass scale.

Although the Philippine program has been suspended, Dengvaxia remains available on an individual basis in consultation with doctors, the health department said.
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 18:04 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c06604 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Chinese-tourists Free

The Tourism Ministry promoted tourism in Indonesia at the China International Travel Mart (CITM), held in Kunming, China, on Nov. 17-19.

Among the destinations presented to the visitors were Bali, Lake Toba, Tanjung Kelayang, Borobudur Temple, Mandalika, Labuan Bajo and Manado.

The number of Chinese travelers is the biggest in the world, up to 120 million people, but only two percent traveled to Indonesia. This is the perfect timing for promotion as we are nearing the year-end holidays, explained the ministry's deputy minister for overseas promotion I Gde Pitana.

Forty tourism industry players such as airlines, hotels, travel agents, cruise ships and diving centers, as well as 11 provincial tourism agencies were present at the Indonesia booth.

The booth offered visitors with Indonesian food and beverages and performances from the Wonderful Indonesia team, as well as latest information regarding Mount Agung in Bali.

Central Statistics Agency (BPS) data shows that in 2015 Chinese tourists took the third spot for the number of foreign tourists who visited Indonesia, or equal to 11 percent (1,141,330 people) from the total number of foreign tourists.

In 2016, China went up to the second spot with 1,452,971 people, 11 percent from the total number of foreign tourists. Meanwhile the first spot was given to Singapore.

As for this year, from January until September, there were 1,103,503 Chinese tourists who came to Indonesia, up 45.68 percent from the same period last year that recorded 1,606,615 people. (kes)
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Linkedin Yukako Oishi (The Japan News/Asia News Network)  Mon, December 4, 2017 17:36 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c03b5c 2 News Japan,capsule-hotel,hotels,#hotels,tourism,travel,Accommodation Free

Many capsule hotels that target foreign tourists have opened recently, with vacationers apparently drawn to their reasonable fees, high-quality facilities and interior designs that allow guests to experience a slice of Japanese culture.

Nine Hours Woman Kanda, which opened in July near JR Kanda Station in Tokyo, is a capsule hotel exclusively for women with prices starting at 4,900 per night. According to the operator, 30 to 40 percent of its guests are foreigners.

Inside the hotel, rows of sleep pods seem to float in a dimly lit hallway, creating a somewhat futuristic atmosphere. It was established by Nine Hours Inc.  a company that develops up-to-date capsule hotels  and JR East Urban Development Corp. Both companies are headquartered in Tokyo.

The facility is equipped with comfortable mattresses and high-function showers. Signs in the locker room and other areas contain not only Japanese and English but also pictograms to facilitate understanding. Foreign tourists value such amenities because they provide a sense of security.

Nine Hours operates four similar hotels in Japan besides the one in Kanda. According to company founder Keisuke Yui, foreigners account for about 50 percent of guests at its hotel in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, and up to 90 percent of guests at its hotel in Kyoto.

Read also: Five capsule hotels to stay at in Jakarta

We work hard to ensure functionality and comfort, and our pool of users is broadening. Foreign tourists have already recognized [our hotels] as a good base from which to go sightseeing, said Yui.

Other capsule hotels allow guests to enjoy Japanese culture through interior design and services.

Nadeshiko Hotel Shibuya in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, a capsule hotel exclusively for women operated by Tokyo-based Usen Corp., features an interior design inspired by Japanese culture. Elements include group spaces with tatami mats and a bathhouse with a picture of a red-hued Mt. Fuji on the wall.

Guests can enjoy a meal in the first-floor restaurant while wearing a yukata summer kimono.

Guests can also pay extra to rent a regular kimono. The hotel offers a service in which guests in kimono stroll around Shibuya Station while being photographed by accompanying staff.

Seventy percent of our guests are foreigners. Word is spreading on the internet and other media that they can communicate with Japanese guests or enjoy Japanese culture [at our hotel], said Sayaka Shimizu, Usens public relations manager.

Read also: Smart unmanned capsule hotel opens in Chongqing

The Prime Pod Kyoto, a capsule hotel that opened in Kyoto in February, is replete with Kyotos traditional atmosphere. It features a Japanese-style shared space that resembles a traditional terrace restaurant near the river, lighting that resembles traditional lamps, and sleeping capsules made of plain wood.

There are also capsules with wide entrances so foreigners with larger frames can easily enter them.

Capsule hotels are said to have originated in Japan, with the first one opening in Osaka in 1979. Takashi Shimizu, senior consultant at Urban Research Institute Corp., said, Theyre still unfamiliar to foreigners, so staying at capsule hotels itself can be a way to experience Japanese culture.

The number of capsule hotels is expected to increase as more foreign tourists come to Japan. [The capsule hotel business] has a great advantage because facilities can be prepared speedily at relatively lower cost than creating a new facility by using vacant offices and other buildings, Shimizu said.

Topics :

This article appeared on The Japan News newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 15:08 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2bfd1f2 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,durian,durian-festival Free

Durian lovers take note, Majalengka regency in West Java is set to host Sinapeul Durian Festival 2017 on Dec. 9-10 at Lengkongkulon Village Regional Fish Market, Sindangwangi district.

Sinapeul durian will be the main star of the festival, but there are other interesting activities that will entertain visitors such as exhibition, performances, games and bazaar.

Theres also going to be helaran, a Sundanese word that means parade, told Tourism Ministrys archipelago tourism marketing development deputy, Esthy Reko Astuti.

This festival will be filled with durian-based products, handicrafts, games, local durian, cultural performances and promotion for Sindangwangi tourism, added the ministry's head of cultural promotion Wawan Gunawan.

Sindangwangi district has 16 hectares of durian plantation located at Ujungberung village, which is where Sinapeul durian comes from. (kes)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 10:09 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2beec42 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Purwakarta,Sri-Baduga-Fountain-Park Free

The Purwakarta administration claimed that four million tourists visited the regency in 2017, higher than the initial target of three million people.

The high number of tourists is the result of the administrations efforts in developing tourist attractions in the regency.

Purwakarta Youth, Sports, Tourism and Culture Agency head Heri Anwar said there are at least 45 tourist attractions in the region.

There were only 32 attractions back in 2015, now we have up to 45 attractions. Most of them are nature-based and the rest is culinary and religious tourism, told Heri.

One of the must-visit attractions is Sri Baduga Park that has a dancing water fountain. Moreover, the fountain has become the icon of Purwakarta.

Heri said around 30,000 visitors, consisting of domestic and foreign tourists, came to Sri Baduga Park every weekend.

Additionally, Purwakarta administration is set to develop 16 villages, such as Pesanggrahan and Sukamulya villages in Tegalwaru district, and Sindang Panon, Cihanjawar and Cipeundeuy villages in Bojong district, into tourist villages. (kes)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 13:04 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2bf5f7f 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,sambas,West-Kalimantan Free

Sambas regency in West Kalimantan recently hosted "One-Day AMTC Trail Adventure, Exploring the National Borders, Paradise on the Tail of Borneo" on Dec. 2-3.

The event was joined by 100 participants, of which 15 hailed from Malaysia. They took a six-hour trip, passing through places such as Camar Wulan Beach, Bahari Teluk Atung Beach, Maludin Beach, Temajuk Beach and villages around the area.

We are conducting this adventurous event on purpose. Participants have to pass through several obstacles while enjoying the beautiful view of the nature. Bahari Teluk Atung Beach has one of longest coastlines in Indonesia and the sand is so soft. Meanwhile Temajuk Beach is rather rocky, similar to Tanjung Tinggi in Belitung that also has huge rocks, told the committees head Erwanto.

The event also featured fishing competition, photography competition, art and culture performances and live music.

The advisor for the competitions, Subhan Nur, said Sambas that is listed in the national strategic tourism plan (KSPN) needs the cooperation from all parties for development and promotion.

Sambas cant be developed only from APBD [regional budget], it needs direct attention from the government. The parallel road is currently being developed; whats left is the supporting infrastructures to improve the tourism in Sambas, told Subhan.

Internet is highly needed here to promote tourism and for the locals to be more creative. Meanwhile ATM is needed for visitors to draw out their money since they dont want to keep a lot of cash, Subhan added. (kes)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 16:02 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c02f69 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,ternate Free

At the opening ceremony of Kora-Kora Festival on Dec. 2, Ternate launched its new tourism brand called Enjoy Ternate.

We dont have natural resources or natural gas that we can utilize, but we have resources for tourism that can support the peoples economy, said Ternate Mayor Burhan Abdurrahman.

Thats why we are launching Enjoy Ternate, to increase the number of tourist visits, boost local economy and achieve the governments target of 20 million tourists, he added.

Ternate has several ancient castles such as Oranje Castle from the Dutch colonization era that was built by Cornelis Matclief de Jonge and established on May 26, 1607.

The castle is located at the town center on Jl. Hasan Boesoeri. Four decades ago the castle was one of the busiest locations on Ternate island because it was used as the main camp of VOC in Dutch East Indies.

Another castle is called Tolukko Castle, which offers a panoramic view of Tidore island with Mount Gamalama in the background. In 1540, a Portuguese commander named Francisco Serao built this castle and it was later used by the Portuguese to dominate the spices from other European countries. In 1610 the castle was taken by the Dutch and went under renovation by Pieter Both.

Mount Gamalama itself is the landmark of Ternate that is located in the ring of fire area.

Mount Gamalama is a stratovolcano with an altitude of 1,715 meters above sea level. On the foot of this mountain is Batu Angus tourist attraction, which from the slope visitors can see a view of clove plantation.

On the top of Mount Gamalama, theres the sacred Abdas Water Springs. The water is said to have healing power than can cure various diseases.

Enjoy Ternate will offer tour packages to Mount Gamalama as well as other places such as Sulamadaha Beach that is the home to turtles and colorful coral reefs; Nukila Park that boasts unique shipwrecks as one of the attractions, Falajawa Beach, Hiri Island, Tanjung Rum and Kalamata waters. (kes)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 11:01 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2bf40b1 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,sleman,tourist-village Free

During the recent long weekend on Dec. 1 -3, Pentingsari Tourist Village in Sleman regency welcomed thousands of guests. Some of them were on a field trip and some others were staying for a few days.

One of the groups who went to Pentingsari was Panglipuran Tourist Village group who were there to conduct a comparative study on tourist village management.

Another group was from Al Azhar 3 Jakarta high school who stayed in Yogyakarta from Nov. 29 until Dec. 2.

This group of 199 students, teachers and school staffs came to the village for a school assignment and stayed overnight in homestays.

Our group is conducting a survey on mushroom chips as a school assignment, other groups have different assignments. Its exciting to be able to experience the friendliness of the locals here, said M. Aksan, an Al Azhar student.

World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has named Pentingsari Tourist Village one of the pilot projects for Community-based Tourism and Sustainable Tourism Development program. The village also won the Indonesian Sustainable Tourism Award 2017 for the green bronze category. (kes)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Mon, December 4, 2017 17:01 1809 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2c034aa 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,West-Lombok Free

Last weekend, West Lombok hosted an event named Topat War Festival 2017 on Dec. 3.

The festival aimed to strengthen the kinship between Hindus and Muslims in Lombok. The history of Topat War started when the Hindus came from Bali to Lombok in the 16th century. They traveled up to Lingsar Village, which was occupied by Muslims at the time.

The festival was held at Lingsar Temple in Lingsar Village. Built in 1714 by Raja Agung Ngurah Karangasem from Bali during the Karangasem Kingdom, it is the biggest and oldest temple in Lombok.

Moreover, the temple is considered a cultural heritage from the 18th century.

The festival began with pujawali procession by the Sasak tribe and Balinese who have been living in Lombok for generations. A day before, it hosted panaek gawe ceremony followed by mendak that called for spirits who rule Mount Rinjani and Mt. Agung by slaughtering a buffalo and gave offerings of nine snacks, fruits and beverages. This procession had been held since Nov. 27.

After the Hindus were done with ngaturang bakti and ngelungsur amertha, the Topat War then began. It started with circling around the purwadaksina located in Kemaliq area. Figures from Sasak tribe and Hindus came together for this procession, which also featured batek baris dance and gendang beleq art.

The war started in late afternoon, around 5 p.m., when flowers on waru trees were falling. Weapons used during the wear were ketupat (rice cones) that were presented at the ceremony. Later, visitors could take these rice cones and brought them home as souvenirs. (kes)
On Friday, World AIDS Day, local activists held an early evening vigil at Rivington House to recall the loss of the former nursing home for AIDS patients. The longtime community facility was shuttered two years ago this month when the city lifted deed restrictions and the property was sold to luxury condo developers.

A stop work order remains in place at 45 Rivington St., although Mayor de Blasio said he sees no way to reclaim the building for the community. A local group, Neighbors to Save Rivington House, is undeterred, vowing to do everything humanly possible to prevent the condo conversion.

On Friday night, people gathered on the sidewalk, holding candles and telling stories about the former residents of Rivington House. As a community, said University Settlement Executive Director Melissa Aase, we welcomed Rivington House at the height of the AIDS crisis when other communities would not. As a community, we built ties with the staff and residents and built a stronger community as a result. As more of our neighbors age in place where we desperately want them to be with us, we will need more care, not less care.

City Council member Margaret Chin attended the vigil, telling those assembled, I will continue to fight. I am not giving up. Its not a done deal, and we still have hope. During a town hall meeting over the summer, the mayor promised Chin he would try to set up a meeting with the property owners (China Vanke, Slate Property Group and Adam America Real Estate). She hopes to persuade the developers to create a new community health care facility in the building. As long as Im still here as the Council member, said Chin, we are going to fight to make sure we get this building back (The mayor) promised to set up the meeting with the developers and Im still holding him to that promise.

The mayors World AIDS Day schedule took him to Kings Theater in Brooklyn for a commemoration and to the West Village, where a new memorial was dedicated in the shadow of the former St. Vincents Hospital. The city has vowed to eradicate AIDS by 2020.

Rivington Houses former operator, VillageCare, lobbied to drop the deed restrictions and sold the Lower East Side building, saying there was no need for the treatment facility. VillageCare participated in Fridays ceremony at Kings Theater.

Last week, the mayors first deputy mayor, Anthony Shorris, announced he would not be staying on for de Blasios second term. Shorris, who was at the center of the Rivington House scandal that dogged the city administration during he past couple of years, said, I made dozens of decisions a day for four years. (The lifting of deed restrictions at Rivington House) was a mistake. It shouldnt have happened. We found it and we fixed it and moved on.
As a new week begins and the joy of Christmas (and those wonderful days off) still seem far away, we thought wed make a list of things sure to cheer you up.

1. Six-year-old sets up Christmas campaign to help keep homeless people warm this winter

A six-year-old boy has set up a Christmas campaign, Keep Warm with Frankie, to help keep the homeless warm this winter. He decided to do something after seeing so many homeless people living on the streets in the freezing cold. Despite his age, he has decided to help as many of these vulnerable people as he can. He is currently raising money to buy hats, scarves and gloves for as many homeless people as possible, with his goal being 1000. If youre interested in getting involved, you can do so here.

2. The hunt for Cheating Ben is on!

Social media was abuzz this weekend, after a passenger on the Bournemouth to Manchester train (on Friday 1st) tweeted about a conversation she heard, in which a man named Ben bragged about cheating on his girlfriend. In typical Twitter style, the tweet soon became viral, sporting 66.9K likes and 26.2K retweets at the time this article was written. This hunt showed the best of people (apart from those defending the cheater), with Cheating Ben trending on twitter as more and more joined in the search for the rascal. This is certainly a perfect example of social media as its most useful, and most amusing.

3. Firefighter saves a dogs life

Heartwarming footage has emerged of a firefighter in Canada heroically saving a dog after it fell into a frozen creek. Despite being in the water for at least half an hour, the dog was able to be saved, with only minor difficulty walking once on the ground. Once free he rushed to his owners who happily stroked him. While this touching video is sure to melt your heart, it should also act as a warning against letting your dog off the leash near water, especially when it is frozen. Watch here.

4. Hilarious Japanese game show

A Japanese game show has been making the rounds on social media, and if you havent seen it yet you need to right away! This hilarious video shows desperate contestants try running up a flight of stairs covered in oil. This task proves difficult, as every single contestant slips and falls on their journey to the top. They might all get there in the end, but its a great 9 minutes of fun before they do. Enjoy the video here.

5. Demi Lovatos new song

Whether or not youre a fan of Demi Lovato, you are bound to enjoy something about her recently released single, Tell Me You Love Me. Heartbreaking lyrics (that also happen to be very catchy), a great tune and a gorgeous video, this release has it all! Plus, the gorgeous Jesse Williams graces an already amazing video with his presence. If that isnt a Christmas gift to the world I dont know what is!

6. The Co-op has become the first supermarket to sell food beyond the best before date to reduce food waste

The Co-op has taken an important step forward in reducing food waste, announcing they will sell food beyond the best before date. This is important as it is estimated that the UK throws away around 7 million tonnes of food per year, most of which could have been eaten. To do so at a time when so many are struggling to feed their families, both around the world and in our own country, is highly irresponsible. Hopefully, the Co-ops decision will pave the way for other supermarkets to follow their example, reducing the UK food waste as a result.

7. Its nearly Christmas!

Since today is the beginning of the first week in December it seems wrong not to include it in the list. After all, were officially counting down for the happiest time of the year! Time to wrap up warm, shop for presents and start those wish lists for the new year sales. Chocolate, Christmas markets, mulled wine and festive jumpers, whats not to love?
My Friend Dahmer screened as part of the 2017 Leeds International Film Festival. Further details can be found here .

The root causes of Dahmer's shocking descent into depravity, which resulted in the deaths of seventeen young men over a period of thirteen years, have long been theorised and deliberated through a variety of mediums, albeit, usually taking a sharp focus on his crimes. In contrast, with My Friend Dahmer, Marc Meyers' cordially captures, with a caustic wit, an intimately sincere portrayal of the disturbed adolescence that Jeffrey reticently endured. Adapted from cartoonist John 'Derf' Backderf's best-selling graphic novel of the same name, the film intricately delves into the enticing nature of Dahmer's intrepid disruptions of social norms, in tandem with the progressively potent habitual tendencies that would eventually mutate into a lifestyle of which, he himself retrospectively insinuated, he had little control. For those at all familiar with Dahmer's early life, the contents of the film's opening exchanges will certainly not come as a surprise. His obsession with the plainly literal 'inner self' spawned from a penchant for collecting and experimenting with whatever roadkill he might come across during his walks home from school. By the time we join him, during his senior year at Revere High School, he has already amassed an ample menagerie of both dissolving and preserved fauna. His very own 'pet cemetery' as his father Lionel terms it.One of the most inexplicably affecting moments in Marc Meyers' intimately unsettling biopic, occurs during an oddly amusing scene in which the eponymous lead and his gleeful contingent delight in a chance meeting with the Vice President at the time, Walter Mondale, while on a field trip to the US capital. In consummate fashion, Mondale inquires as to what the boys intend to do after they graduate. To which Jeffrey, after a second or two of contemplation, simply replies "Biology". An aspiration which ordinarily would seem equally as commonplace as those of his colleagues. However, coupled with the knowledge of what his imminent future would entail, it instead, exerts the same astutely allegorical essence of one of the film's most mundanely chilling breaths of dialogue. An instance so memorable in its calmly collected nature, I feel I'd be doing it a disservice in quoting it forthrightly. It's within these cleverly interspersed flashes of the latter Dahmer, that many of My Friend Dahmer's most discerning triumphs lie. Meyers and Lynch put forward an interpretation of Dahmer that we - as the captivated onlookers - are somewhat surprisingly able to empathise with, on an uncomfortably personal level. Aided by a script so carefully charged with dramatic irony, it becomes genuinely difficult to imagine how someone so seemingly subservient could eventually leave behind a criminal legacy so unsparingly steeped in depravity. Furthermore, when you take into account that this is Ross Lynch's first starring role away from the clutches of his Disney Channel roots, the erudite assuredness with which he tackles such an insurmountably complex character like Dahmer, is quite a feat in itself. However, when you add to the mix, the fact that he is essentially embodying a historical account of the adolescence endured by a real person, it becomes a whole lot more impressive. Every facet of Meyers' intimately unsettling biopic exudes a certain foreboding sense of underhanded normality. It takes more than a substantial degree of contemplation and candour to tempestuously humanise someone of Dahmer's infamy, whilst never taking more than a brief stroll away from the sheer heinousness of his urges. A feat that My Friend Dahmer handles with great grace and virtuous vigour.
As public proposals go, they dont get much more meaningful than this.

Liberal MP Tim Wilson popped the question to his boyfriend Ryan Bolger during a debate on marriage equality, with a new law allowing same-sex marriage expected to be passed soon.

Bolger, sat in the public gallery of the parliaments lower house, said yes.

The proposal came after Wilson recounted having given his partner a ring to symbolise his commitment to formalising their relationship, with gay marriage not yet legal.

When we told others many simply didnt know how to react, he said.

Many SMSs were not responded to. In conversation some people politely changed the topic or fell silent entirely.

For a while Ryan kept pushing for an engagement party. The truth was I kept delaying it, perhaps wrongly, because the strong message I took from so many peoples silence was that no-one would come.

On informing one person of our news, they responded why bother?

At the time I fell silent, and Ive never had an answer to that question, but the Australian people have now answered it for me.

Update: Weve dug through Hansard and @timwilsoncomau appears to be the first ever Member to propose on the floor of the House. pic.twitter.com/NLGLxpYIrm  Australian House of Representatives (@AboutTheHouse) December 4, 2017

The Australian parliament is debating marriage equality after the public voted overwhelmingly in favour in a non-binding postal vote in September.

Wilson concluded by saying: In my first speech I defined our bond by the rings that sit on both of our left hands, and that they are the answer to the question we cannot ask. So theres only one thing left to do: Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me?

The bill has already passed through the senate and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said he hopes to pass a new law by the end of the week.

He said in Mondays debate: The message today, to every gay person in this nation, is clear: we love you, we respect you, your relationship is recognised by the Commonwealth as legitimate and honourable as anybody elses.
In March 2016 Brock Turner was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault including intent to rape an intoxicated woman and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object.

The attack took place on Stanford University campus in January 2015, where Turner, who was 19-years old at the time, was a student. Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail, a sentence which was widely criticised as being too lenient. Prosecutors recommended he get at least six-years, but he ended up being released early after serving only three months. Last week, on December 2nd, Turners lawyers filed an appeal against his conviction, according to CNN. Speaking to NBC, Turner's legal adviser, John Tompkins, said the original trial in 2016 was a detailed and lengthy set of lies. "What we are saying is that what happened is not a crime," he told the broadcaster. "It happened, but it was not anywhere close to a crime." Court documents show that Turners legal team are arguing that jurors received "extensive 'behind-the-dumpster' propaganda."Turners lawyers argue that Turner and the victim were found in a "completely open setting", and not behind a dumpster, which is what prosecutors in the original trial repeatedly made reference to. His legal team say that telling jurors they were behind the dumpster "implied moral depravity, callousness and culpability on the appellant's part because of the inherent connotations of filth, garbage, detritus and criminal activity frequently associated with dumpsters.

Two graduate students say they were riding their bikes through the campus when they came across the assault, at around 1am on January 18th 2015.

They testified that they saw Turner on top of the victim, who they say was motionless and appeared unconscious. When they approached the dumpster, one of the students said, "What the fuck are you doing? She's unconscious." Turner then got up and fled the scene. The students tackled him, called security and attended to his motionless victim who was naked from the waist down. The victim did not come round until after 4am, despite people trying to wake her by shaking her and shouting. Turner claimed what happened between the two of them was consensual. As part of his sentence, Turner must register for life as a sex offender. If his appeal is successful this will be overturned. The case gained worldwide attention after Buzzfeed released the victim's powerful impact statement . At the time people were critical of Turners sentence, given the graphic details of the assault. His statement to the judge, where he blamed his poor decision making on drinking and the party culture at university, demonstrated he did not acknowledge responsibility for his own actions.
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A book giving insight into the Quran through visual presentations, graphs and charts was released by Rajya Sabha MP and former Union minister Mohsina Kidwai.

Universe A Timeline, authored by Sayed Rafi Ahsan Rizvi, a former geologist with the government of India, is based on research of scientific evidence and the Quran.

At its launch last evening, Rizvi said he considers that all scriptures, having been sourced from one Almighty, contain all these explanations, in different languages and patterns.

He requested believers of all faiths to re-visit their holy books, read them in light of scientific discoveries and enduring mysteries, and deepen their understanding of their book and the universe.

The author worked for about three decades on this book, collating his experience as a geologist and an astronomer, with his reading of the Quran, and simultaneous understanding of books of other faiths.

By quoting several Quranic verses and explaining them scientifically, Rizvi demonstrated that the overall model of the universe as is known, needs to be viewed in line with information in these verses for an improved understanding.

Shamim Jairajpuri, eminent scientist and founder Vice Chancellor of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, provided the opening remarks.
The High Court of Himachal Pradesh on Monday directed the Chief Secretary to file his personal affidavit regarding unauthorised construction and running of hotels/commercial establishments without statutory sanctions, more specifically at Village Kasol in Kullu.

The Court also directed the Director General of Police, Himachal to file the action taken report in the matter. A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Sandeep Sharma passed these orders on a petition taken up suo moto by the Court as Public Interest Litigation on affidavits filed by the Zonal Director, Narcotics Control Bureau, Chandigarh, in a separate Criminal appeal.

The Court expressed concern that today drug menace is one of the serious problem in the society and it was alarmed with the sizeable increase in the charas seizures by NCB from the state as per the figures/details furnished by the NCB. The Court observed that as per reports, there is organised cultivation of cannabis in the higher reaches in Kullu District, in the Sub Division of Kullu, Sainj Valley and there is wild growth of cannabis in Chamba, Kangra, Upper Shimla and areas adjoining to Uttrakhand, but situation in Kullu-Manali Valley is alarming and despite sanction of considerable funds for destruction of illicit cannabis, situation is very distressing.

The destruction campaigns are merely on paper and nothing has been done on ground level by the NCB or State Police for curbing drug menace in Himachal as there are such mind boggling figures with regard to seizure of contrabands by NCB. Though the Court observed that the NCB is not sufficiently equipped to handle the drug menace.

The High Court of Himachal Pradesh in its earlier order had directed the Superintendent of Police Kullu as well as Zonal Director, Narcotics Control Bureau, Chandigarh on 25.10.2017 to constitute Joint Task Force to raid all Restaurants, Hotels and Dhabas in and around Kasol and Malana to stop illegal activities related to drugs.

The Court said that though situation in entire State is quite alarming, but at present Village Malana appears to be the epicentre of drug menace. The Court wondered as to how rave parties are being allowed to be organized at Village Kasol and whether foreign nationals residing in and around Malana possess valid permission from Government of India or are illegally staying there. The Court posted the matter for 7 December, 2017.
With 8853 persons contacting fatal disease AIDS in Himachal Pradesh in 2016, the government is approaching all educational institutions to spread awareness on HIV and measures to control it. The state Health department has sought the help of Education department to aware masses on HIV by way of short movies, banners and hoardings to achieve the target of becoming AIDS free by 2030.

All the schools have been asked to discuss informatory messages on HIV/AIDS during morning assemblies in the schools, Dr Manmohan Sharma, Director, Elementary Education said. All the Deputy Director Education, Block Elementary Education Officers and principals of District Institutes of Education Training have been asked to implement the awareness campaign, designed by Director, Health Services, he said. Officials of State AIDS Control Society said the HIV disease is driven by many socio-economic factors and the present health services are not sufficient to address the cause and consequences of the disease.

After detailed discussions, it has come to light that non-health sector can play a vital role in reducing vulnerability and mitigation of its impact on both the infected and impacted, officials said. This multi-pronged strategy has resulted in inclusion of all schools in spreading the message of AIDS awareness campaign and all the schools have been asked to submit compliance report within 15 days.

Under the awareness campaign, students would be told about the disease and various activities including preparing slogans and hoardings would also be organized in schools, Meena Kumari, coordinator, state AIDS Control Society told The Statesman.

Besides this, about 250 red ribbon clubs and 257 Nehru Youth Kendras have been founded and linked with special drive being carried out by Aids Control Society, according to NACO guidelines. The clubs would be asked to help the patients in fighting the social stigma of this disease. Further, the students would be asked to encourage the locals, especially pregnant women in the area to go for HIV testing and, that the testing facility is being provided free of cost at all health institutions.

In addition, the state AIDS Control Society has constituted Red ribbon at the college level to create awareness among students themselves as youth are more vulnerable to HIV infection. In order to check and control the migration of HIV with blood transfusion, efforts were being made to ensure 100 percent pure blood transfusion to patients in the hospitals. Four Blood transfusion vans have been deployed in the state; besides blood donation vans were collecting the blood from various blood camps to cater to the requirement.

It is worthwhile to mention here that more than 18.5 lakh people went for voluntary HIV testing through Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTC) in 2016, out of which over 8853 persons were tested positive for the disease.
Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan attended the wedding of her cousin in the city.

She attend the wedding of Prajwal, son of her uncle Uday Kumar Shetty, accompanied by her daughter Aaradhya and mother Vrinda Rai.

The marriage was held yesterday at the TMA Pai convention hall here.

The actor was clad in dazzling red with soft gold embroidery. Aaradhya also wore a matching outfit.

Aishwarya spoke to relatives in her mother tongue Tulu and sought blessings from her elders, said sources.

READ ALSO: Harvey Weinstein tried hard to get Aishwarya Rai alone, claims former manager
The fate of Padmavati rests in the hands of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and actor Shahid Kapoor said now as the film is with the right authority, he hopes the period drama will release soon.

The Sanjay Leela Bhansali-directed film was slated to be released on December 1, but the makers voluntarily deferred the release after the CBFC asked them to reapply for certification with complete details.

They recently applied for 3D certification.

It is a nice big circle. It is back to where we started, which is where it should have been. The CBFC should have been the right body to take a decision. I am hoping that sooner, not later, it is already pretty being long, we will get a decision.

 I saw lot of problem with Udta Punjab and eventually the film released and everybody saw it. The film was loved by the people. And I do believe that it will be similar for Padmavati, Shahid said at an event here.

The actor is unfazed by the film being pushed and said Padmavati will do well if the team has done a good job.

 Whenever the film comes out, people will react the way they would to a story that is being told. If the film has the dignity, strength, originality and cinematic effect that a good film should have, the people will speak well of it. I believe that it is a good film, he said.

Padmavati is facing trouble with several Rajput groups and political leaders, alleging that Bhansali has tampered with historical facts in the movie.

The director has been accused of using a romantic dream sequence between Rajput queen Padmini (Deepika) and Sultan Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh), a claim repeatedly denied by him.

Historians are divided over whether Padmini actually existed.

Chief ministers of BJP-ruled states such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat have also called for a ban on the period drama.

READ ALSO: Give Padmavati a chance: Shahid Kapoor
Its normal practice for village folk to travel to far-off government offices situated in towns and cities for small work which doesnt take more than a few minutes.

What a welcome change it would be if such facilities are provided in the village or close to a village. It is not only convenient for the users but also results in better use of the facility.

In one such example, the Rajiv Gandhi Sewa Kendra and Park, situated at village Awa in Fazilka district of Punjab, has proved a boon for villagers.

The Sewa Kendra was constructed under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) and is now one of the success stories of this rural employment guarantee programme.

The sprawling building with a covered area of 800 square feet has become a seat of administration in the village and adjoining area.

The gram panchayat (village council) head, Shavinder Singh, 37, said the Seva Kendra is not just helping villagers hold their meetings irrespective of weather, but also helping poor residents hold functions like marriages without any financial burden.

Besides this, with the help of MGNREGA we have developed four parks, three roads. And now we are also planning to develop our village pond as a lake which will have 400 metres running track and a cycle track. A gym will also be installed in the village with the help of MGNREGA, Singh told The Statesman over phone.

The building is also serving many purposes for the village folk. With a seating arrangement of 150 to 170 people, this building is a perfect venue for periodic meetings to be held by Gram Panchayat (village council), said a rural development department official, not wishing to be named.

The official said all the works of MGNREGA like new work demand, new job cards, updation in job cards, MGNREGA payments, etc., are now done at the village level as whenever required concerned officials visit it. Most of the MGNREGA related issues are solved at the spot. All the administrative and related work of the village council is also carried out in this building.

Situated 13 km from the India-Pakistan international border, Awa village has a population of 1150 and a total of 201 MGNREGA job cards have been made in the village. The MGNREGA job card holders got employment under this very project in their own village.

Hassle free delivery of MGNREGA and other related services at the doorstep of the residents of the village is now proving to be a best governance practice.

The residents are happy to get their work done in the village itself without making round of offices at district headquarters. This is not only saving their time and energy but also their MGNREGA related work is streamlined and their issues are being addressed.

With this hi-tech enabled Sewa Kendra in place, enrollment for all social security schemes like old age pension, widows pension, Antyodaya scheme and Atta Dal scheme has also become much easier for the villagers. Banking services are also being availed through the same centre.
With Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi set to be elevated as party president, Punjab Chief Minister (CM) Amarinder Singh on Monday said young Gandhi has the qualities to be Congress Prime Ministerial (PM) candidate in 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Calling for Rahuls projection as the PM candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Amarinder said Gandhi had generated massive enthusiasm in the party with his ability to connect with the youth.

He is very inquisitive by nature, has an eye for detail and is modern in his outlook  qualities that would stand the party in good stead if it projects Rahul as the next prime ministerial candidate, said the Punjab CM while speaking to reporters in New Delhi after nominating the party vice-president for the top Congress post.

Rejecting the charges of `parivarvad'(nepotism) behind Gandhis elevation as Congress president, Amarinder said the massive response he has been evoking in recent months on various fora, including the ongoing election campaign in Gujarat, indicates his huge popular support base.

He said the Congress vice president had the support of the people, with 100 per cent of the party workers favouring his elevation.

Terming the election in the Congress as the partys internal business, the CM said even other like-minded parties had no problems with Rahul taking over the Congress reins.

To a question about Shehzad Poonawallas critical remarks on the issue of the Congress presidential election, Amarinder questioned his locus standii, and said that no one in the party cares about what he says.

On the coming Gujarat Assembly polls, Amarinder said the Congress was on the upswing there with Gandhis rallies meeting with massive response, in contrast to the campaigning by PM Narendra Modi.

Later, in an interview with a TV channel, the CM said coming civic elections in Punjab were a challenge, and in this case, the aspirations of the people were extremely high.

He said his government was slowly implementing the various promises made to the people during the Assembly elections, with farm debt waiver also set to commence this month.

On the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), he said it continued to be on a downslide, while the Shiromani Akali Dal still remained in the bad books of the people and would lose again if elections were to be held today.

The Akalis had made a mess of everything, he said, adding that his government was trying to set things right. The CM cited the examples of desecrations, which had shown a marked decline since the Congress government took over, and the drugs smugglers, whose backbone had been broken, with drugs no longer easily available in the state.
One Pakistani terrorist was killed in an encounter on Monday in the Qazigund area of South Kashmir after the ultras attacked a convoy of the Army. Two soldiers were injured as the terrorists indiscriminately fired at the convoy on the Jammu Srinagar highway.

Reports said that another Pakistani terrorist identified as 16 years old Abu Maviya of the Lashkar-e-Taiyba is believed to be trapped at the encounter site. The J&K police DGP SP Vaid said that the security forces have cordoned the area in the Nussu Badargund village and an encounter was underway.

Army sources said that heavy exchange of fire was going on between the security forces and terrorists.
Ridiculing Rahul Gandhis soon to be announced promotion as Congress President, Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed it as Aurangzeb Raj and said that the Congress party was a clan with a feudal mindset.

In a rally in poll-bound Gujarats Dharampur, Modi quoted senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, who has in the past taken a dig at Sonia and Rahul Gandhi saying that only two people could become the next chief of the party.

Mani Shankar Aiyar, who never shies away from showing loyalty to one family, proudly said, son of Jahangeer (Mughal ruler) replaced his father Shah Jahan, were any elections held then? Modi said.

And when Shah Jahan was replaced by Aurangzeb, were elections held? It was known to all that a kings son was the heir to the throne, added Modi.

I congratulate the Congress on their Aurangzeb Raj Congress is nothing but a clan, he said further.

Modi stressed that for him, the wellbeing of 125 crore Indians mattered the most and it was the people of India who were his high command.

Meanwhile, BJP leader and Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi too mocked the Gandhi scion for his promotion without performance.

I congratulate Rahul Gandhi for his promotion without performance, can only be possible in a feudal setup, the Union Minister said.

After 19 years, Congress is all set to get a new president with party Vice President Rahul Gandhi filing his nomination papers for the party chiefs post on Monday.

Flanked by top party leadership including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Gandhi scion reached the party headquarters at around 10.30 am and shortly after, signed the sets of nomination papers before the Returning Officer.

The elevation of Rahul Gandhi, who is presently spearheading the Congress campaign ahead of the December 9 and 14 Gujarat assembly polls, has been much talked about in party circles for around two years.

With Rahul Gandhi in all likelihood to be the only candidate in the fray, he could be declared the next Congress chief on December 5 after scrutiny of nominations.

He will succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998.

Rahul Gandhi became the Congress Vice President in January 2013.
President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday greeted navy personnel and their families on Navy Day and praised their commitment to protect the nation.

In a message, Kovind said: On Navy Day, my good wishes to all officers and men and women of the Indian Navy.

Nation is proud of your commitment in protecting our maritime frontiers, securing our trade routes, and providing assistance in times of civil emergencies.

On Navy Day, my good wishes to all officers and men and women of the Indian Navy. Nation is proud of your commitment in protecting our maritime frontiers, securing our trade routes, and providing assistance in times of civil emergencies #PresidentKovind  President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) December 4, 2017

PM Modi, in his message said that the Indian Navy has served the nation with great diligence.

In a tweet, Modi said: On Navy Day, greetings to all navy personnel and their families.

On Navy Day, greetings to all navy personnel and their families. pic.twitter.com/O36rKhnC4I  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 4, 2017

Modi posted a short video along with his tweet in which he highlighted the Indian Navys moments of glory and valour.

Modi said Indias glorious naval tradition dates back to times of the Chola Empire and the empire of Shivaji Maharaj.

Indian Navy secures and protects our maritime boundaries. I congratulate all those who belong to the Navy. After Independence, our Indian Navy showed its valour on various occasions; be it the liberation struggle of Goa or the Indo-Pak war, Modi said.

The Indian Navy has served the nation with great diligence. When we talk of the Navy, we see only war but the Indian Navy has come forward in humanitarian ventures as well, he added.

We Indians, always nurture feeling of pride and respect towards our security forces- army, navy or air force; every countryman salutes courage, bravery, valour, chivalry and sacrifice of our soldiers. They sacrifice their youth for country so that 125 crore countrymen live in peace, he said further.

December 4 is celebrated as the Navy Day in India, to commemorate the start of Operation Trident during the India-Pakistan War of 1971.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi for keeping the youth of Gujarat unemployed and not implementing the 7th Pay Commission leading to the plight of contract and fixed salary workers in the state.

Keeping up at his 22 questions in the countdown to the Gujarat Assembly polls, as promised, Gandhi said: 22 salon ka hisaab, Gujarat mange jawaab. Gujarat ke haalat par Pradhanmantri se chatha sawal (as he directed his sixth query at Modi on Gujarats condition).

The double whammy of BJP government  on one side the youths of the state are unemployed, while on other hand lakhs of contract and fixed salary workers condition is miserable.

Despite Rs 18,000 salary per month as per the 7th Pay Commission, why only Rs 5,500 and Rs 10,000 is being paid to the fix and contract workers? he asked.

Gandhis question comes in the wake of the partys strategy to pose one question to Modi every day till the polling day on December 9.

Gandhi on Sunday raised concerns over safety, health, education and crimes against women in the state.

On Saturday, he questioned Modi on extraction of high fees from students by government educational institutes in Gujarat.

Polling for the 182-member Gujarat assembly will be held in two phases on December 9 and 14. The counting of votes will take place on December 18.
Two soldiers were injured on Monday when militants attacked an army patrol on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway in south Kashmirs Kulgam district, a police officer said.

The militants fired at the patrol team in Qazigund area which has been cordoned off for searches, the officer said.
Over the years and for many reasons, the defence ministry (MoD) has been viewed as a stumbling block in national security, rather than being the prime mover. It has been viewed as being antagonistic to the armed forces, rather than a supporter. Amongst all the ministries of the government, it has faced the most flak for this reason.

The UPA regime refused to clear any defence deal, creating capability shortfalls and leaving the armed forces with such shortages of ammunition that even fighting a ten-day war was difficult. For years, A K Anthony only saw the Bofors ghost lurking around each corner, viewed every deal with suspicion and worried about his clean image being damaged. It led to the ministry losing even the basic respect it deserved.

The present government appeared to begin on a positive note, with Prime Minister Modi addressing the Rewari veterans rally, promising to pay special attention to the military and its veterans. He gained full support in his campaign. With no defence minister at the helm for prolonged periods, the MoD continued with its antics. It gave false details to the pay commission, without clearing it from service headquarters leading to servicemen being degraded in status and salary in the seventh pay commission report, which the government accepted despite strong objections from the service chiefs. It was the joint decision of the service chiefs against issuing the letter of acceptance which compelled the PMO to step in.

Other issues which dominated headlines were letters degrading the status of the armed forces vis-a-vis their civilian counterparts, refusing to process their case for the grant of NFU (Non-Functional Upgradation), propelling a group to approach the courts for a decision and even supporting government decisions on cancellation of rations. It has claimed to be studying the Reddy commission report a year after it was submitted. It kept silent while veterans were hounded out of Jantar Mantar, not once but twice, and has ignored OROP anomalies.

Every day there are reports of war widows, including those of gallantry awardees and aged veterans challenging the government in courts for their rightful pensions, being denied by the accounts department of the MoD finance. This despite having obtained justice from the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT). Some officers sitting in MoD prefer to challenge these humane and just decisions of AFTs in higher courts, while the defence minister keeps quiet, adding to the suffering of widows and veterans.

Are these deliberate actions or accidental or being done to compel service headquarters to waste time and reams of paper only on resolving non-issues? It is a fact that those who serve in the MoD have little knowledge of matters military, seek privileges which flow from being a part of the armed forces but battle to remain at their helm. The impression being conveyed to the nation is that the MoD is a monster, seeking to dominate the services, subdue their voice and lower their status, while denying them the capabilities they need to ensure national security.

For every ill, the MoD is blamed, because as an organisation it has neither amalgamated the service HQs nor have its representatives as a part of it. Yet it continues to take decisions impacting the armed forces with a lack of understanding and knowledge. Publicly it is visualised as being aloof, uncaring, unresponsive and insensitive.

At the same time, the present defence minister has shown her desire to interact more with service chiefs and veterans than her predecessors and appears to be concerned about service-related issues. She is possibly the first defence minister in a long time with minimum outside responsibilities and hence is able to devote complete attention to the armed forces. If this is the truth, then the MoD must make efforts to change its image from that of an opponent to one of a friend in the eyes of the common Indian, who supports the armed forces because of its sacrifice and commitment.

The first action that the defence minister must take is to direct her staff to stop approaching higher courts, especially in cases of pensions and disability issues which concern war widows and veterans. Unless special focus is given to veteran and war widows welfare, the ministry would continue to be criticised for being insensitive. If George Fernandes, as defence minister, could threaten sending erring defence ministry officials to Siachen, she could do the same with those adding to the agony of war widows and veterans.

The next action is to withdraw the challenge of the government in the NFU case. It would resolve much of the anger which presently permeates throughout the service and would be an immense morale booster. On similar lines is the case of Military Service Pay (MSP) for Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs), a small issue but one that has immense impact on morale.

The veteran community today stands with the serving. Those in service today are veterans of tomorrow. A positive approach to their problems, resettlement and pensions would enhance the image of the MoD and of the government.

The minister must pull up ordnance factories for their tardiness and hold them accountable for their lapses, especially their poor-quality products. Decisions on defence procurements must be based more on service HQ inputs than on suggestions of her scientific advisor, who would invariably support the DRDO in its development. This would not be difficult as both these organisations directly function under her ministry.

Finally, the armed forces need to be amalgamated into the MoD. By keeping them away, they are neither in decision making, nor are their interests ever considered, only enhancing the swelling anger against the ministry. Functionally too, the present system is obsolete, especially for a rising superpower.

The MoD needs to alter its image, which has in recent times been negative. Nirmala Sitharaman has proved to be an able administrator and has indicated a desire to act. But unless she puts in concerted efforts to change the outlook of her own staff, the MoD would continue to face criticism.

(The writer is a retired Major-General of the Indian Army.)
The judiciary has stepped in where the executive had failed to tread, to use a variant of what Alexander Pope had once written so famously in his poem, An Essay on Criticism. Calcutta High Court (coram: Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya, Acting CJ, and Arijit Banerjee, J) has conveyed a resounding signal to the Government of West Bengal, directing the State to declare dengue as a notifiable disease. This in itself is testament to the gravity of what the Chief Minister, with Health under her belt, had initially dismissed as fever. Last Fridays order makes it mandatory for all government and private hospitals, that admit patients with dengue, to furnish a report on the patient to the state government as well as the Centre.

Collation of data enables the authorities to monitor the outbreak and thus emit the warning signals. The order comes in the wake of the sluggish response of the health department towards the outbreak ~ almost to the point of denial ~ over the past four months. During this period, the state has been loath to declare dengue as a notifiable ailment not least because it would have chimed oddly with its claims. Indeed, it was firm in its refusal in response to a suggestion by the Additional Solicitor-General.

The affliction has over time assumed virtually endemic proportions and the judiciary has sought a notification after enough have died ~ 40 according to the official count ~ and many more are languishing on the hospital bed when not on the floor. Markedly, the directive of the court covers the basics of public health and general administration in the wider perspective.

West Bengals Swasthya Bhavan has been directed to send mobile vans for the collection of blood samples to the remote areas of the state. Follow-through action on the reports thus becomes direly imperative when one reflects on the governments denial of platelet-count figures. The High Court has sought a compliance report in the context of its previous order. In the net, the administration has been rapped on the knuckles for its unethical and fallacious approach.

The fact that the fundamentals of public health are not in place is evident from yet another facet of the order ~ the health department has been directed to provide adequate Elisa test kits to all hospitals. Critical too must be the courts observation on the proposed compensation of Rs 2 lakh to the next of kin of a dengue victim. Though the matter will be considered on the day of the final judgment, remarkably pertinent is the courts observation that families of illicit liquor victims are also paid compensation. The administration is on the mat and must work overtime to regain the faith of the people.
OnePlus on Saturday introduced the OnePlus 5T Star Wars Limited Edition smartphone at the Comic Con India in Bengaluru.

The company will be hosting a special unveiling event in Mumbai on December 14. OnePlus and Star Wars fans can be a part of the launch event in Mumbai by booking the tickets for Rs. 999 only on Paytm, starting December 7 from 10am onwards.

Star Wars has enthralled generations with their masterful storytelling from a galaxy far, far away, with the best in technology and strong engagement with their fan community. Similarly, OnePlus too has a dedicated community that is deeply passionate about the best in technology, design and attention to detail. With this befitting association, OnePlus community will be able to thoroughly enjoy the legacy of both the brands, noted OnePlus in a press statement.

OnePlus 5T Star Wars Limited Edition: full specifications

4G VoLTE dual-SIM, Android 7.1.1 Nougat with Oxygen OS 4.7, Fingerprint sensor

6.01-inch Full HD+ (1080 x 2106 pixels) Optic AMOLED 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 5

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 64-bit SoC

6GB/ 8GB LPDDR4x RAM, 64GB/ 128GB storage

16MP + 20MP rear camera with dual LED Flash

16MP front-facing camera

3300mAh battery with USB Type-C Dash Charge

So far, OnePlus 5T only comes in Midnight Black colour option in India. The company has officially announced that the OnePlus 5T Star Wars Limited Edition will go on sale starting December 15 across all channels including Amazon.in, oneplusstore.in and OnePlus experience zones in Bangalore and Noida.
Bhutan has become the first country to pledge rapid deployment troops to the UN peacekeeping operations, keeping them at the ready for participation in missions within 60 days.

Under-Secretary-General for Field Support Atul Khare and Bhutans Permanent Representative Doma Tshering signed the Rapid Deployment Level (RDL) agreement on Friday, which the UN called the first of its kind in UN peacekeeping.

A Force Protection Company from Bhutan, which is to be a part of the Vanguard Brigade of the Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System (UNPCRS), will be able to deploy within 60 days of a request by the Secretary-General, an official statement said.

The UN can quickly provide a military element to a new peacekeeping mission area or reinforce an existing mission using the Vanguard Brigades.

The UNPCRS is designed to deal with conflicts or dangerous situations immediately before they escalate instead of the regular deployment process that takes several months to put troops on the ground.

This agreement signed by the Royal Government of Bhutan represents the highest level of readiness by a troop or police-contributing country under the UNPCRS created in 2015, the statement said.

This landlocked, mountain country is at the vanguard of this approach, contributing to the establishment of a pool of capabilities for rapid deployment when required.

Bhutans pledge is a great example of commitment to the ideals of a nimble, effective UN peacekeeping, Khare said.

As a small, developing country, we deeply appreciate this recognition of our growing capability to contribute to the implementation of the UN peacekeeping operations, Tshering said.

Bhutan currently has 45 military and police personnel  two of them women  serving in 10 regular UN peacekeeping operations. They are concentrated in the Darfur mission in Sudan, which has 22 Bhutanese peacekeepers.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau began a visit to China focused on trade Monday with a stop at social media giant Sina, where he talked up the advantages of travel to his homeland.

Accompanied by four Cabinet ministers, Trudeau is due to hold talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang later tomorrow before meeting President Xi Jinping the following day.

At Sina, owner of the phenomenally popular Twitter-like Weibo microblogging service, Trudeau took part in a panel discussion that touched on Canadian tourism draws, as well as the nations beer and wine, according to Chinese and Canadian reports.

Next year marks the China-Canada year of tourism and Canada is hoping to double the number of Chinese tourist arrivals.

China and Canada are also in exploratory talks on a framework for a trade agreement, although reports say Ottawa has been pushing for provisions on the environment, governance, labor and gender issues.

Beijing generally seeks to avoid references that might highlight the one-party authoritarian states human rights record.

China has positioned itself as a leading advocate of free trade, particularly since President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Yet foreign businesses complain often that China closes many key areas to foreign investment, while Xi is known to favor a centralized economic model with special support for state-owned industries.

Canada has remained part of a pan-Pacific trade deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even after President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the agreement.

During recent talks in Danang, Vietnam, Trudeau lobbied for strong provisions for environmental protection, labor rights, and gender issues and the name of the initiative was altered to be the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

China largely imports wood and agricultural products, ore, fuels and seafood from Canada, while Canada imports machinery, furniture and sporting goods and textiles from China. The trade imbalance has narrowed, but China still ran a surplus of about 17 billion with Canada during the first half of this year, according to the Canadian government
Protests broke out here on Monday as South Korea and the US began a major joint air combat exercise, in what appears to be another show of strength following North Koreas latest missile test conducted in late November.

Dozens of people gathered outside the US embassy in Seoul to protest against these biannual war games and demand all parties choose dialogue to resolve the current crisis peacefully, reports Efe news.

The drills, named Vigilant Ace, seek to improve the all-weather, day and night combined operational capacity of the two countries, according to the South Korean Defence Ministry.

READ MORE: South Korea, US conduct air defence drills

However, a ministry spokesperson insisted that such types of manoeuvers are of the defensive type.

Although the Ministry did not confirm whether it was the largest air combat manoeuvers ever carried out between Washington and Seoul, local media suggested that this years operation marks the two countries largest joint air drills ever recorded, with more than 230 aircraft and some 12,000 troops in participation.

The US deployed over two dozen stealth fighter jets, including F-22s and F-35s, and two strategic B-1B bombers in the manoeuvers, which will conclude on Saturday.

The joint drills were set to simulate precision attacks on mock nuclear facilities and self-propelled missile launch vehicles similar to those used by Pyongyang.

The operation is part of an agreement endorsed in October between Washington and Seoul, which aims at expanding rotational deployment of US strategic assets on the Korean peninsula and pressuring North Korea to drop its nuclear programme.

The North Korean regime, which usually considers such military exercises as an attempt to invade its territory, condemned the Vigilant Ace drills on Sunday.

On November 29, North Korea launched the Hwasong-15 rocket, its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile to date which has put Pyongyang closer to striking the US with nuclear weapons.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Light snow this morning. Then remaining cloudy this afternoon. High 31F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 80%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low around 20F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.


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Patnaik's close aides say that to understand him, one has to understand his empathy

By Pratul Sharma/Photos Sanjay Ahlawat
Actor and politician Khushbu, on Monday, hit out against internet trollers after several users maliciously implied that she was born 'Nakhat Khan', a Muslim name they wanted to highlight.

"Some trollers have made a discovery about me..my name is Nakhat Khan.. Eureka!!! Fools that's my name given to me by my parents.. AND YES I AM A KHAN..NOW WHAT???late bloomers, wake up..u are 47 yrs late..." she wrote on Twitter.

Some trollers have made a discovery about me..my name is #NakhatKhan.. Eureka!!! Fools that's my name given to me by my parents.. AND YES I AM A KHAN..NOW WHAT???late bloomers,wake up..u are 47 yrs late..  khushbusundar (@khushsundar) December 4, 2017

Khushbu is a spokesperson of the Congress party.

This is not the first time that a celebrity's faith is being highlighted on social media. Earlier, at the height of Mersal row, BJP leader H. Raja posted actor Vijay's voter ID on Twitter, in what seems to be an attempt to prove the actor was of a Christian faith.

Raja had called actor Vijay with his full name saying, Joseph Vijays hate campaign against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As cyclone Ockhi moves towards the Gujarat coast, there is a worry in the air as to which direction the storm will take. The political mind of Gujarat, too, struggles to sense the direction of the election wind.

With just four days to go for the first phase of the assembly elections, Gujarat is turning into a site of experiments of the north Indian politics. Gujarat is strong enough to prove in any election that it is not merely a state where Hindi is written without the line on top of the letters. While the sense of identity and distinctiveness of the Gujarati people are reflected in their voting pattern, political storms have dashed the hopes of some, and have helped some others keep their hopes intact. The whole country is watching keenly Gujarat, where the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress are undergoing a test by fire.

Modi, Rahul face to face

Narendra Modi knows better than any other person that the Gujarat Assembly elections, the first major elections in his home state after he became the prime minister, is an acid test for the Modi Impact. This is exactly why Modi, a three-time chief minister of the state, himself held the reins of electioneering in Gujarat, being aware of the fact that the conditions in the state have changed. Modi apparently thinks that the Lok Sabha elections have to be decided based on the results of the Gujarat Assembly elections. Around the corner are elections to the state assemblies of Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.

When he is elevated as president of the Congress party next week, Rahul Gandhi would very much like to do it with a flourish  a victory in Gujarat. Rahul, who tours Gujarat twice in a week, has already proved that he is a force to reckon with. Both he and the Congress expect to win 2-4 seats in each of the 33 districts in Gujarat, apart from the existing seats.

Rahuls questions, Modis answers

While touring Gujarat, after visiting a place of worship every day, Rahul would put questions to the BJP-led government and Modi, for which Modi would give answers. These questions and answers added considerable vigour to the last lap of the first phase of the campaign. Rahul asked the questions by keeping in mind the fact that 65 per cent of the voters are below the age of 35. Modi retorted by listing the gains of the Gujarat Model development.

Despite its sterling performance in the last Lok Sabha elections, BJP cannot expect a 'walkover' this time. Anti-incumbency factor has played a big role. After Modi, two chief ministers had to be tried in a span of five years. Anandi Ben Patel had to quit following the Patel-dalit agitations. Vijay Roopani, who took over as chief minister, could do little. It was in an attempt to overcome this poor performance and to make conditions favourable for the BJP that Modi announced the first bullet train in the country, and inaugurated large-scale projects, including the Narmada Dam.

Problems existing in the labour and of agriculture sectors have not been solved. The Congress counters the BJPs slogan of Vibrant Gujarat by pointing out the miserable conditions in the rural areas. The BJP camp hopes to surmount the crisis caused by demonetisation by advocating the special nationality of Gujarat. It is with this intention that Modi keeps repeating that I am a son of Gujarat.

Caste politics rules the roost

The BJP, which used to taste victory by consolidating the Hindu votes, has been forced to try a different track this time around. The Patidar Anamath Aandolan Samithi headed by Hardik Patel, leader of the Patel-reservation agitation, has redrawn the political map of Gujarat. Adding to the BJPs woes, Jignesh Mewani, a dalit leader, and Alpresh Thakkur, leader of the backward classes, have thrown their weight behind the Congress. It is because of this volatile situation that neither the BJP, which is adept at winning votes by playing the caste card, nor the Congress has announced the chief ministerial candidate.

The religion-wise division of Gujarats population is: Hindus 88%; Muslims 10%; Jains 1%, and Christians 0.6%. Of the Hindus, 20% belong to the Patel community. The backward classes comprise about 50%, including 18% adivasis.

BJPs dream, Congress ambition

At one point of campaigning, the revelation regarding the mysterious death of a judge who heard the fake-encounter case gave a severe setback to Amit Shah and the BJP. However, the party managed to overcome this, thanks to Modis personal charisma. While the BJP is forging ahead by cashing in on the power at the Centre and in the state as well as a strong party set-up, a weak party machinery is worrying the Congress.

While Congress is worried over the decision of NCP and former chief minister Shankar Singh Vagelas front to contest on their own, casting a shadow over the Rainbow Alliance, the BJP fears the presence of Shiv Sena in a few places.

The peoples verdict in Gujarat is most likely to depend on the sharpness of the political weapons that the BJP and the Congress have reserved for the last moment.

This article was originally published in the Malayala Manorama daily on December 4, 2017
The underlying institutional power struggle between the Executive and the Judiciary came to the fore once again with both the organs of the State indulging in one-upmanship about their powers as enshrined in the Constitution.

It happened during the commemoration of the National Law Day spread over two days at the end of last month in the national capital when President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi underlined the need for the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary to remain within their limits in fulfilling the wishes of the people.

Modi might have been conciliatory, but the issue of judicial overreach was left hanging.

The BJP-led NDA emphasised that the Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary should go about their business without stepping on the toes of one another. Modi drew pointed attention to this aspect, emphasising "the balance between the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary has been the backbone of our Constitution. Because of this balance, our nation was able to defeat the Emergency. When we are making every attempt to build a new India, these principles as outlined in the Constitution assumes significance. We have to fulfil the peoples' hopes and aspirations while remaining within our limits".

This was after the Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had spoken. It was apparent that the Centre was concerned about judicial activism, particularly with regard to the court striking down the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) in 2015.

What had troubled the government all along tumbled out into the open.

Prasad wondered why the prime minister or he himself as the law minister could not be trusted to make fair judicial appointments.

He drew attention to the case of Kolkata High Court judge C.S. Karnan having been held guilty of contempt of court for questioning the collegium system of appointment of judges.

On his part Justice Misra quoted from a judgement interpreting Article 75 observing the Constituent Assembly had reposed faith in the prime minister and said "we also repose the same trust in the prime minister". Further, the CJI dispelled the impression that judges intended to run the country and cited specific instances to drive home the point.

Nevertheless, impartial observers insist the assault on the Judiciary is by way of non-appointment of judges. When the collegium of the Supreme Court sends a list of judges to be appointed, the government seems to drag its feet. The judges have not been able to get their act together in the appointment, leading to problems.

President Kovind said the pillars of democracy were designed to lean on each other with countervailing force to strengthen the democratic processes. It is critical to keep this intricate and delicate balance when exploring the relationship among the three branches of the State. They should be careful not to disturb the separation of powers by even unknowingly intruding into the domain of either of the two other branches, the President added.

Union Finance minister Arun Jaitley said the Judiciary may intervene in the case of Executive failure but only to issue directives for taking necessary action. He had no doubt that the judiciary should steer clear of overreach by interfering in Executive functions. The argument that judicial activism was meant to fill the gaps left by other State organs was flawed, Jaitley added.

The focus was on the government and the Judiciary respecting each others' turf coupled with overcoming their deficiencies. Pragmatism is what the Judiciary and the Executive need at this juncture. It has become imperative to strike the right balance between the three arms of the government. At the same time, the Judiciary remains the unequivocal custodian and defender of the Constitution.
Navy Day this year is a good occasion to reflect on its journey and evaluate its progress over the last 70 years. The Indian Navy was an exceedingly small force at the dawn of independence and, while being a product of both its British inheritance and the maritime DNA of our forebears, is largely a post-independence construct.

Despite the many problems that besieged the newly independent countryand by extension its Navy such as low industrial base, problems on our land borders made it imperative to focus on the Army and the Air Force. But the Navy was not short on vision.

As early as 1948, it drew up ambitious plans for a balanced Navy that would consist of light aircraft carriers, submarines, destroyers, cruisers, auxiliaries and associated training and maintenance infrastructure.

Seen against this backdrop, the Indian Navy has grown quietly but steadily. From a force of less than half a dozen sloops to one that has 135 ships and 235 aircraft, most of them state-of-the-art, this is indeed an impressive story.

That we operate in all three dimensions: On, above and below water; that most of our ships are indigenously built; and that we are among the few navies to build and operate an array of platforms from aircraft carriers to nuclear submarines add further strength to the narrative. We are now among the world's leading navies.

But numbers alone do not tell the whole story. Of particular significance is the fact that the navy has built excellent capacitiesboth human and materialin several disciplines such as hydrography, special operations, integration engineering, doctrine writing, underwater medicine and disaster relief, to name a few.

These capacities have been particularly useful when the Indian Navy's achievements in different domains are analysed. If one were to evaluate in terms of roles that navies classically playmilitary, constabulary (policing), diplomatic and benign (including humanitarian assistance)the Indian Navy can be said to have ticked all boxes with high scores.

On the military front, while most readers are aware of the Navy's significant role in the 1971 war with Pakistan and liberation of Bangladesh, there are several interesting aspects to the navy's campaign.

Not only did it fight on two fronts but almost the entire gamut of naval operations came to play in this war. This included aircraft carrier operations in support of the land offensive, anti-submarine operations that led to neutralising of the Pakistan submarine Ghazi, offensive attack by missile boats and blockade of then East Pakistan coast.

More recently, during the Kargil conflict in 1999 and later during Operation Parakram, the Indian Navy, by its offensive posturing, bottled the Pakistani ships inside their harbours and effectively kept the war localised and the situation on even keel. Similarly, Indian Navy's role in Operation Pawan, our prolonged engagement in Sri Lanka, has not got the attention it, arguably, deserved.

Spread over three years, the Navy was involved in support of the army, transportation of troops and material, amphibious operations, seaward cordon militaire, shore bombardment, special operations and airborne surveillance.

Most remarkably, several smaller ships based in Visakhapatnam and Chennai excelled at giving a good account of themselves in hostile conditions.

The notable point is that it's a self-reliant force. The Indian Navy was a pioneer of 'Make in India' which was an article of faith for it. Compared to the Army and the Air Force, the Navy is way ahead in the indigenous content of its combat units.

To be sure, we have a long way to go. We need to have weapons, propulsion and many systems to be sourced from within our country. But every ship that gets constructed has more indigenous content than its predecessor and is an improvement over the previous one.

The increased mettle and muscle of our Navy provides much more traction to our foreign policy initiatives, be it in enhancing cooperation with big powers or in providing a palpable physical dimension to the Act-East Policy. Further, the Indian Navy's own international initiatives are wide and encompass several arenas.

They include multilateral forums such as Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) and the MILAN meetings, joint exercises with several nations, assistance in capacity building to nations in the Indian Ocean neighbourhood, hydrographic surveys, providing training to many foreign navy personnel and hosting events like the International Fleet Review in February 2016 or more recently the Goa Maritime Conclave last month.

The Indian Ocean is prone to natural disasters and the relatively poor disaster prevention and management infrastructure in most of the countries in the region places a bigger responsibility on the Indian Navy.

The disaster situations could be natural, such as the Tsunami of 2004 or cyclonic storms that recur with great regularity in the Bay of Bengal, or they could be caused by human intervention such as what occurred in Lebanon in 2006, Libya in 2011 or Yemen in 2015. The latter cases are often messy and often also involve evacuation of non-combatants and deployment in conflict zones.

There will indeed be some areas that provide scope for improvement. Further indigenisation of weapons, ordnance and systems and gaps in inventory are issues that are attracting the attention of decision makers. There is also need for development of expertise, among its personnel, in a range of subjects such as foreign languages, international law, energy security, area studies and economics.

But, overall, it would be fair to say that the 'Silent Service' at 70 is a success story.

IANS
Hanuma Jayanti (Hanuman Jayanti) celebrations, which was a symbol of communal harmony and peace for the past few decades in Hunsur townsome 25km from Mysuruturned into a flash point between the state government and the BJP in Hunsur on Sunday after the police detained BJP MP Pratap Simha "to prevent trouble" and lathi-charged devotees.

A day after the face-off, schools and colleges remain shut and prohibitory orders have been clamped down in the town. The BJP has also called for a state-wide protest and Hunsur bandh.

On Sunday, chaos broke out after the police stopped the BJP MP from Mysuru-Kodagu, who was on his way to Hunsur, to attend the celebrations. The district administration "feared" that if he was allowed to attend the event, the MP would violate the route restrictions imposed by them on the procession.

It is learnt the district administration had chalked out different routes for Eid Milad procession and the proposed Hanuma Jayanti procession to "avert" possible clashes. When the police tried to detain Simha, he demanded to know what his crime was and asked them if they had orders for stopping him. As the MP took to the wheels, his car brushed against a barricade, allegedly causing minor injuries to some police personnel. The MP's arrest and the police resorting to lathi-charge at the venue resulted in a volatile situation.

The police, who threatened to file criminal case against the MP for "rash driving on public roads", eventually decided against it. Instead the MP was taken around the district in a police vehicle till late in the night. Around 10.30 pm, the police seemed to have dropped all charges and gave a station bail at T. Narsipura.

Earlier, Simha had tweeted saying "Mysuru district administration n @SPmysuru is all set to file a criminal case against me in Bilikere Station for pushing the barricade near KR Nagar junction!".

Union Minister Anant Kumar Hegde, who reached Hunsur for the celebrations, was furious at the "highhandedness" of the police in arresting Simha and dubbed it as "Hitler culture" of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and alleged it was the state government's ploy to detain Simha to stall Hanuman Jayanti utsava.

The BJP supporters demanded to know why the Hanuma Jayanti celebration was obstructed while Eid Milad procession had no such hurdles. What has irked the devotees and the BJP is the district administration shifting out Lord Hanuman's idol from the venue overnight, without allowing the celebrations to take place.

Even as Hegde called for Hunsur bandh on Monday, BJP state president B.S. Yeddyurappa, who is leading the parivarthana rally in Vijayapura, hit back at the government, accusing it of creating fear and tension by arresting an elected representative. The BJP leader reiterated that the party would launch state-wide protest to oppose the arrest and stalling of the festivities.

Siddaramaiah, who was closely watching the developments in his home turf blamed Simha for driving over a barricade. "Are BJP leaders the only people who celebrate Hanuman Jayanthi and Ram Navami? Law and order is our responsibility," he added.

"My car did not climb the barricade. You may examine the footage. Why is the government stalling the celebrations and hurting the religious sentiments of people? Protecting my religion and tradition is much more important and above my political future," clarified Simha.

In a poll-bound state, the Congress government denying permission or imposing restrictions over the opposition BJP's religious celebrations and protest rallies is resulting in frequent disturbances and further polarisation of people.

After banning the BJP's bike rally to protest the killing of RSS/BJP workers in BC Road a few months back, and imposing restrictions during the launch of parivarthana rally last month, the state government is indulging in curbing the celebration of Hindu festivities too. This smacks of minority appeasement, alleged BJP leaders.

Reacting to the incident, Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy said, We had no objection. But when we gave permission to the BJP, we had give route map for the procession. But Simha was deviating from the proposed route.

Law is same for all, even for an MP. I suspect BJP leaders Pratap Simha, Yeddyurappa and Hegde have no knowledge of the law, he added.

In a counter-protest, the Congress workers staged an agitation against the rouge behaviour of the MP.
Locals forced militants to beat a hasty retreat when they were busy trying to loot a bank at Noorpora at Tral in Pulwama in south Kashmir on Monday.

According to police, the locals pelted stones on three militants belonging to Ansar Gazwatul Hind, an Al Qaeda affiliate led by Zakir Musa, disrupting their plan to loot the bank.

SSP Awantipora Mohammad Zahid Malik said around 2.10 pm Zakir and two of his associates fired several bullets after locals forced them to flee the spot.

The three militants, however, managed to decamp with Rs 97,256 from the Noorpura branch of J&K bank.

''We have established nakas on Tral-Awantipora road to nab the culprits," Malik said

After the incident, police launched search operations in the area and carried out checking of the vehicles on Tral- Awantipora road.

Zakir, a former aide of slain Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, broke ranks with Hizbul after Burhan's killing on July 8, 2016 and later formed the Ansarul Gazwatul Hind.

His group, according to police, comprises mostly militants who believe in Al Qaeda and IS ideology.

Zakir has also been very critical of militant groups who are supported by Pakistan.

In May, he threatened to kill Hurriyat Conference leaders for opposing his idea of establishing an Islamic State in Kashmir and also called Pakistan an apostate state.

He warned Hurriyat Conference leaders to desist from changing the nature of Kashmir issue from a "struggle for Islam to political one".

Police sources said militants have resorted to the looting of the banks due to tightening of the screws on hawala funding by the NIA.

Before joining the militancy, Zakir, who belongs to an affluent family, was studying engineering in a college in Chandigarh. His father Abdul Rashid Bhat is a high-ranking government engineer while his older brother is a doctor and sister a bank executive. He joined militancy on July 17, 2013, and was among the top contenders to replace Burhan.
Police launched a search operation in Sitapur on Sunday to trace two missing buffaloes of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Suresh Rahi.

The Hargaon MLA had filed a complaint in this regard after which the police began searching for the buffaloes.

"A case has been registered and the search for buffaloes is on," Sitapur circle officer Yogendra Singh told ANI.

According to the MLA, the two buffaloes are worth Rs 1 lakh each and hence he was compelled to file a complaint with the police.

In 2014, in a similar incident, dog squads, crime branch sleuths and police personnel were tasked with a 'buffalo hunt', when Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan filed a complaint after his buffaloes had gone missing.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo has issued a stern warning to Pakistan that if it did not act against the alleged terrorist safe havens inside the country then the United States would be forced to destroy them on its own.

The warning comes as Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is scheduled to arrive in Islamabad on Monday

and hold talks with Pakistan to seek their support to the new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan.

The CIA director gave this warning at the Reagan National Defence Forum in California on Saturday, when he was queried about what Trump administration was doing to make Pakistan participate in its new Afghan strategy.

(Secretary Mattis) will make clear the presidents intent (He) will deliver the message that we would love you to do that. And that the safe haven inside of Pakistan has worked to the detriment of our capacity to do what we needed to do in Afghanistan, the Dawn quoted Pompeo as saying.

And in case things go south, he added, In the absence of the Pakistanis achieving that, we are going to do everything we can to make sure that that safe haven no longer exists.
Former Stanford student Brock Turner, who served three months for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, is applying for an appeal. The swimmer who assaulted the woman behind a dumpster filed a motion on December 1. Turner's lawyers called the initial trial "a detailed and lengthy set of lies."



While not convicted of rape per say, he was convicted with three felony counts of sexual assault; namely, intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating a woman with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious woman with a foreign object.



Turner who committed the act in Januray 2015, was sentenced to six months of jail in March 2016. A legal adviser to Turner, John Tompkins told the media that "It happened, but it was not anywhere close to a crime."

Tompkins maintained that the jury was subjected to "extensive 'behind-the-dumpster' propaganda." He also went on to say that the jury did not have enough evidence about Turner's true character. The new trial is being appealed to overturn his convictions that may mark him as a sexual offender for life. Prosecuters had initially recommended a six-year sentence to Turner who spent only three months in jail. Judge Aaron Persky who presided over the case was criticized for being too lenient.

The judge in his defense said that the reason he was not convicted of rape had to do with the laws in place at the time. Persky also went on to say that he believed Turner had shown a "genuine feeling of remorse." The case inspired California lawmakers to expand the legal definition of rape to include all forms of non-consensual sex.

Turner was released after spending just three months in jail and was release due to good behaviour. Post the Turner case, Persky was removed from a sexual assault case as the Santa Clara County district attorney questioned his ability to handle the case the fairly.
US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis on Monday asked Pakistan to "redouble" efforts to confront militants operating from its soil as he met the country's top leadership here, amid Washington's concerns that Islamabad was not doing enough to dismantle terror safe havens.

Mattis held a meeting with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi after arriving here on his maiden tour to Pakistan to explore ways to effectively eliminate the threat of militancy, days after 2008 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed was released from house arrest.

The US Embassy in Islamabad said in a statement that Mattis told Abbasi to "redouble" efforts to tackle militants operating from Pakistan's territory.

"The secretary reiterated that Pakistan must redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country," Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Dana W White said after Mattis concluded his inaugural trip to Pakistan.

Mattis also met Minister of Defence Khurram Dastigir Khan, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Director General of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lieutenant General Naveed Mukhtar.

"Mattis recognised Pakistan's sacrifices in the war against terrorism," White said, adding that Mattis emphasised the vital role that Pakistan can play in working with the US and others to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that brings stability and security to the region.

Abbasi said Pakistan, in its national interest, would continue to conduct intelligence-based operations all over the country to consolidate the gains achieved in the last four years.

"The prime minister reiterated that there are no safe havens in Pakistan and the entire nation was committed to its resolve on eradicating terrorism once and for all in all its forms and manifestations," according to a statement by the Prime Minister's Office here.

Abbasi said no other country benefits more from peace and stability in Afghanistan than Pakistan.

He agreed with Mattis that both Pakistan and the US have common stakes in securing peace and security in Afghanistan for the long term stability of the broader region.

He also appreciated the US resolve not to allow the use of Afghan soil against Pakistan.

Recalling the longstanding relationship with the US, he underlined the need for a broad-based engagement to strengthen partnership and enhance cooperation between the two countries.

Mattis stated that the "purpose of his visit was to find common grounds in order to create a positive, consistent and long-term relationship with Pakistan," the statement said.

He underscored the importance of continuing and deepening cooperation for the common objective of eliminating terrorism from the region.

Relations between the US and Pakistan plummeted after President Donald Trump announced his new Afghan policy in August and directly blamed Islamabad for supporting the Taliban and the Haqqani network.

"We have heard from Pakistani leaders that they do not support terrorism. So I expect to see that sort of action reflected in their policies," Mattis said ahead of his trip.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo had said Pakistan's policy of using terrorists as leverage against India and Afghanistan has not changed.

"Not yet," he said when asked to comment on the issue even as he warned Islamabad that the US will do "everything it can" to ensure that terror safe havens no longer exist in the country.

Pompeo told the Reagan National Defence Forum in California over the weekend that this is the message that Mattis was tasked to deliver to the Pakistani leadership.

The visit of Mattis comes about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately arrest and charge 26/11 mastermind Saeed, in the absence of which it warned Islamabad of repercussions.

JuD chief Saeed, who has an American bounty of USD 10 million on his head, walked free on November 24 after a court ordered an end to his 10-month detention.

Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in Pakistan and gain their understanding.

"The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening," he said earlier, on his way to Pakistan.

Mattis is the first top American official to visit Pakistan after completion of the first 100 days of the US' new South Asia strategy unveiled by Trump on August 21.

 PTI
Former Catalonian President Carles Puigdemont will appear in a court at Brussels on December 4 for his first hearing on the European arrest warrant issued against him by Spain.



Puigdemont's hearing near the Palais de Justice could continue through December 5, the media reported.



A Belgian judge summoned Puigdemont and four other dismissed members  Antoni Comin, Meritxell Serret, Clara Ponsati, Lluis Puig  of the Catalan government on December 4, one day prior to the start of campaigning for the upcoming Catalan elections scheduled for December 21.



Puigdemont, along with the four former leaders who have been with him in Belgium since October 30, have been on probation since November 5 while the Belgian judiciary considers the arrest warrants and their extradition.



The first hearing, held on November 17 behind closed doors, concluded with the Belgian prosecution requesting the execution of the arrest warrants against Puigdemont and the four leaders, but that they were still entitled to offer written evidence in their defence.
US President Donald Trump is closely monitoring the progress in his new South Asia Strategy, which gives a major role to India, and is very much engaged in its implementation, a senior administration official has said.

Trump had sought a major role for India in bringing peace in Afghanistan and ruled out a hasty withdrawal of troops from the war-torn nation while announcing his new Afghanistan and South Asia policy in August.

"The president has been very closely monitoring the progress of the South Asia strategy. He's very interested in any progress that has been made," a senior administration official said.

Trump had a meeting with his Defense Secretary Jim Mattis before he left on his visit to Pakistan. The defense Secretary is again likely to brief the president on his return.

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly Session in New York in September, Trump met the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

"That was a good opportunity to hear from President Ghani on how the strategy was being received in Afghanistan," the official said.

Observing that Trump has been getting updates from his national security team on what's happening in Afghanistan, the official said the president is very much engaged and interested in how this strategy is progressing.

Asserting that the things are signs of encouragement in the implementation of the South Asia strategy, the official said it is moving in the right direction.

"We need to give more time for the strategy to take root," the official said.

"It's a multifaceted strategy. We're using all the tools that the US has its disposal military, economic, diplomatic.

All these parts of the strategy are important. They all need to work in tandem together. The president is very interested in keeping track of how the strategy is going. And he is receiving regular updates," the senior administration official said.

In his August 21 speech, Trump had said that terrorists who slaughter innocent people will find no glory in this life or the next.

"They are nothing but thugs, and criminals, and predators, and  that's right  losers. Working alongside our allies, we will break their will, dry up their recruitment, keep them from crossing our borders, and yes, we will defeat them, and we will defeat them handily," he had said.

"In Afghanistan and Pakistan, America's interests are clear: We must stop the resurgence of safe havens that enable terrorists to threaten America, and we must prevent nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the hands of terrorists and being used against us, or anywhere in the world for that matter," Trump said.

Announcing his strategy, Trump said a core pillar of his new strategy is a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions.

"Another fundamental pillar of our new strategy is the integration of all instruments of American power  diplomatic, economic, and military  toward a successful outcome," he said.

Describing Pakistan as an important part of his strategy, Trump had said the US can no longer be silent about Pakistan's safe havens for terrorist organisations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.

Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan. It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists, he had said.



PTI
New drink and drug-driving stats have been revealed telling you where - and who - to avoid when out of the road this festive period.

For the previous two years Crewe has been handed the shameful crown of the UK city with the highest rate of drink and drug-driving offences... but that's not the case in 2017.

The unwanted gong of drink and drug-driving UK capital this year goes to Sunderland.

Drink-drive capital: A review of more than 7 million insurance quotes identified Sunderland a the location with the highest proportion of drivers with a conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs

Analysis of more than 7 million insurance quotes by comparison MoneySuperMarket has revealed which locations have the most drivers with over-the-limit convictions on their licence in the last 12 months and also highlighted the occupations with the most drink and drug drivers in the country.

According to the research, nearly three (2.91) in every 1,000 Mackem drivers have a drink or drug driving conviction on their their licence - an increase of 1.3 compared to last year.

Truro in Cornwall (2.6) and Coventry (2.53) follow in second and third place, with all three areas entering the top 10 for the dishonourable driving offences for the first time.

Crewe, which topped the charts in 2015 and 2016, dropped to sixth place, despite its number of convictions rising overall from 1.69 to 2.29 per 1,000 motorists.

With the three cities - Sunderland, Truro and Coventry - with the highest rate of drivers with over-the-limit black marks on their licences running the length of England, you're probably wondering where in the UK you'll be safest?

According to the review of insurance quotes, the haven from dangerous drink and drug-drivers is London - though that shouldn't come as much a surprise considering the higher use of public transport and the introduction of the night tube on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Almost 3 in 1,000 drivers with a Sunderland postcode had a drink-driving conviction

Sunderland topped the charts as the location with the highest rate of drivers with drink- or drug-driving convictions

Crewe, which has been named the drink-drive capital of the UK by MoneySuperMarket in 2015 and 2016 is sixth in 2017 - that''s despite offences for driving under the influence being higher in the city than last year

North London boasted the lowest rate of drink or drug driving convictions, with just 0.59 out of 1,000 drivers having a 'driving under the influence' blemish on their licence.

No less than five other London areas also feature in the list of the 10 areas with the lowest rate of drink- or drug-driving offences: North West, West, East, South East and South West London.

Outside London, Luton also features in the bottom 10, as did Bolton, Exeter and St Albans.

The full details of the results can be seen on this interactive UK map.

MoneySuperMarket's study of more than 7 million motor insurance quotes found that men were more likely than women to have a drink-driving conviction

Drivers between the age of 25 and 29 are most likely to have a 'driving under the influence' conviction

The data shows that drink driving convictions for the two youngest and two oldest age brackets declined between 2016 and 2017, though it increased in the middling years

MoneySupermarket's research also scrutinised the differences in drink- and drug-driving conviction rates by sex and age.

In the last 12 months, both genders have posted an increased rate of drink and drug-driving offences, though men are still more likely to have one of these convictions than women - 1.68 per 1,000 drivers compared to 1.20 respectively.

The conviction rate for drink or drug driving is the lowest for over-65s with 0.21 offences per 1,000 drivers. What might be surprising to some is that they're closely followed by 17 to 19-year-olds with just 0.25 convictions.

Drivers aged 25 to 29 saw the highest rate of offenders, with three per every 1,000 drivers.

The research looking at the occupations with the highest rate of drink-driving offences didn't make great reading for mature students or white van drivers

In terms of occupations, mature students living at home are most likely to have a drink or drug driving conviction, with a staggering 28.5 per 1,000.

Mature students living away from home were second most likely to have a drink or drug-driving conviction (16.5 per 1,000 drivers), followed by a raft of construction-related workers, including scaffolders, labourers, ground workers and builders, raising some concerns for the safety of white van drivers up and down the country.

Kevin Pratt, consumer affairs expert at MoneySuperMarket, said: 'Although our analysis shows that its a minority that are offending, its worrying to see that convictions have increased since last year.

'There are serious consequences if youre caught drink or drug driving, including a driving ban of at least a year and an unlimited fine, as well as a possible jail sentence of up to six months.

'Furthermore, an endorsement for drink or drug driving will sit on your licence for 11 years and youll have to declare the offence when you apply for car insurance for five years.'

Police forces around the UK will be conducting their festive drink-driving roadside checks this month, which will also include swabbing motorists to measure if drugs are in their system

Confused.com surveyed 2,000 drivers and found that more than a third of drivers had been involved in - or nearly involved in - an accident with a drunk driver on rural roads

Separate research by Confused.com suggested that drink drivers pose the most risk on rural roads, which is where the majority of accidents take place.

According to a survey of 2,000 drivers, almost 3 million (7 per cent) of UK motorists have been involved in a drink-driving related accident or near miss, with over a third (34 per cent) reporting this took place on a rural road  the highest percentage of any road type.

The comparison website found that 44,740 motorists failed or refused breathalyser tests in 2016, according to feedback from 25 UK police forces.

Earlier this week, This is Money revealed the UK roads that registered the most collisions since 2010.
Firing line: London Stock Exchange chairman Donald Brydon

Sir Christopher Hohn is showing no sign of backing down in his campaign to oust Donald Brydon as chairman of the London Stock Exchange.

If Brydons corporate history, outlined in a circular from Hohns fund TCI, is any guide, then there is only one person qualified to take on the chief executives job vacated by Xavier Rolet.

Step forward Australian-born board veteran Philip Bowman.

Brydon was among the non-executives who ousted Tony Hales at Allied Domecq and replaced him with Bowman.

The LSE chairman was again among the directors who removed Ian Russell at Scottish Power in 2006 and yes, you guessed it, replaced him with Bowman.

And what did Bowman do with Allied Domecq and Scottish Power? He steered both into overseas hands selling Allied Domecq to French rival Pernod Ricard and Scottish Power to Spains Iberdrola.

Indeed, Bowman, who now works with Jon Moultons private equity outfit Better Capital, would be incredibly well placed to follow the Brydon dream of flogging a City crown jewel, the LSE, to a foreign buyer  whatever the consequences for the UKs status as a financial centre. The central proposition of the TCI circular is that the LSE defence of Brydon is spurious.

Far from offering a stable future following Rolets abrupt departure, Brydon is the cause of disruption. He set the LSE on a costly and failed merger track and bungled the Rolet succession.

TCI points out there are at least three sound replacements for Brydon among the LSE non-executives qualified to chair Europes most important stock exchange.

They are David Nish, former chief executive of Standard Life, Stephen OConnor, a derivatives expert, and Mary Shapiro, the former chair of the Securities Exchange Commission in the US. Each would be a fit and proper chairman, offering a fresh start.

Tax cuts

Amid the tumult over the prosecution deal with Donald Trumps former national security advisor Michael Flynn, the passage of the Republican tax reform plan by the Senate went virtually unnoticed.

At the heart of the 479-page plan is the radical corporate tax rate cut  from 38 per cent to 20 per cent  intended to encourage US-based global firms to pay their taxes in America rather than park revenues overseas.

No one can be certain how the final version of the bill will turn out after it emerges from the conference between the House and Senate.

Most US fiscal bills tend to be Christmas-tree festooned with the baubles of individual lawmakers.

The bill is controversial because it seen as giving money to corporate America while taking it away from ordinary citizens.

There is a point here. America is the home of boardroom greed and lacks most of the governance constraints we have in Britain.

So it will also be an opportunity for executives to fill their boots as earnings rise, pushing up the value of bonus schemes.

The most serious criticism is that the reforms will add $1 trillion to an already ballooning fiscal deficit over the next decade. But is that really so?

The British experience is relevant to this. George Osborne began the task of lowering corporation taxes in 2010-11 when the rate was 28 per cent and revenues were 36.2billion.

In the current year, 2016-17, the corporate tax rate dropped to 20 per cent but income will surge to 55.1billion.

In spite of scepticism, supply-side economics looks to have worked.

Clearly the mechanics in the US are very different. It is still unclear where personal tax bands will end up because of differences between House and Senate bills. So there is no clarity, as yet, as to winners and losers.

One of the ways the lower rates will be paid for is by capping state property tax deductions from federal taxes at $10,000.

There are also questions as to whether cutting taxes, when stock markets are at record highs and the US economy is going at great guns, is sensible.

After the financial crisis there was much talk of building counter-cyclical buffers. Now the US is spraying petrol on a roaring fire.

Seasonal cheer

Congratulations to Paul Manduca, chairman of the Pru. His Christmas card is the first to arrive in the City Office.

It supports a brilliant cause, Place2Be, which provides mental health services to children in difficult circumstances. So much better than impersonal, email cards.
Film making is a risky business and before any cameras start rolling a visit to FFI Holdings is usually in order.

FFI is the worlds leading issuer of completion contracts.

They do what it says on the can. If a film is not completed or runs late, the contract kicks in and it is beholden on the contract issuer to make sure the film gets made or the backers get some or all of their investment back.

These contracts help offload risks to production budgets and timelines for financiers, as well as for FFI through long-standing insurance relationships, it said.

FFI has issued contracts on films like La La Land, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone

Some of the most famous films ever made have been backed by FFI.

From the first Bond film, Dr No, in 1962 to The Hunger Games in 2012 and last years blockbuster La La Land, FFI has issued contracts on approximately 1,700 productions with gross budgets in excess of $17billion.

Having come up with the idea of completion contracts in the first place the group has an 80 per cent share of the market

Founded in 1950 in the UK, the HQ is now in Los Angeles with the first completion contracts recently signed in China.

Trading last year was good with underlying profits of $12.7million on revenues of $38.8million, up 9 per cent.

Those strong numbers helped FFI raise $35.6million when it listed on AIM in June.

Using that cash the emphasis has switched to ancillary services such as post production work and equipment rental.

FFI Holdings at a Glance AIM ticker: FFI Value: 238million Share price: 153p Listed at: 150p

November saw the acquisition of digital post-editing equipment rental group Cineworks Digital Studios, its first deal since listing on AIM.

EPS-Cineworks has a strong market presence in North America, especially in post-production work for television and independent projects.

Growth here is being driven by smaller content providers such as streaming companies that do not have post-production capabilities.

Sales were $9.4million in 2016 on which EPS-Cineworks made underlying profits of $2.7million.

EPS-Cineworks management is staying on and FFI sees many synergies between the business and Pivotal Post, which was acquired in February 2017. Kevin Hyman, Pivotal Posts chief executive, will manage the combined operation.

Steven Ransohoff, FFIs chief executive, said: [This] transaction underscores FFI's commitment to expanding its ancillary business offerings, in line with the diversification strategy we set out at the time of our IPO.

House broker Liberum said the acquisition will give FFI 50-60 per cent of the post-production market to add to its dominance in completion contracts.

FFI has also issued contracts on The Hunger Games (2012)

The Cineworks business is split 25 per cent theatrical and 75 per cent televisions, which is the mirror image of Pivotal.

Through its relationship with Spielberg, Pivotal also has some high tech equipment that it can share with EPS-Cineworks.

Post-production should be a growth market given the rise in the amount of content coming from streaming companies, who do not have traditional post production capabilities.

The business has an attractive EBITDA margin [profit] of 29 per cent, which can be increased though the synergies.

Liberum added the price for EPS-Cineworks looks modest and the broker has a target price of 182p. Shares were trading at 153p, valuing the company at around 238million.
A US hedge fund could make up to 500million from the collapse of heavily indebted care home chain Four Seasons.

Key creditor H/2 Capital Partners could take over the group within a fortnight after buying up most of the firm's debt.

Current Four Seasons owners Terra Firma are keen to do a deal and hand over the company to H/2. However, the two sides have fallen out over the future of an additional 24 care homes.

If a deal is not struck Four Seasons could go into administration. If it is done, H/2 would take over Four Seasons for a nominal sum.

Four Seasons care homes owners Terra Firma are keen to do a deal and hand over the chain to US hedge fund Key creditor H/2 Capital Partners

Either way it would take on a chain with estimated assets of 700million, but around 256million of Four Seasons debt it owns could be sold on or written off.

This would give H/2 around 444million. With interest already earned it would mean the hedge fund could make 500million from the chain.

Four Seasons houses around 17,000 residents across 343 homes but it has run in to financial trouble in recent years.

City financier Guy Hands, 58, owns Four Seasons via his Guernsey-based Terra Firma private investment group.

Former Lehman Brothers banker Spencer Haber, 49, runs 29billion New York -based H/2, which has spent the last two years buying Four Seasons' debt.

Four Seasons is on the brink of financial collapse and says it will be unable to pay a 26million interest payment due to H/2 on December 16.

A rescue plan is on the table that would see H/2 take over the business for a nominal sum and install Margaret Ford as chairman. She held the same role at rival Barchester.

But talks have stalled amid a major row over whether the extra 24 lucrative homes owned by Terra Firma should be included in the deal.

Both sides have accused each other of contributing to the delay and the homes could fall into administration if no agreement is reached by the time of the interest payment.

Four Seasons is understood to be still reviewing a proposal from H/2 to defer that payment.

Sources last night claimed agreement was delayed due to conditions such as Four Seasons having to pay restructuring fees, and H/2 being able to walk away during the first seven days.

The row appeared to deepen yesterday when Terra Firma accused H/2 of being unwilling to engage with negotiations. It claimed H/2 had refused face-to-face meetings and blocked emails.

Terra Firma urged H/2 to get on with taking over the homes. A spokesman said: 'We believe this outcome will deliver much-needed certainty for patients and employees of the Four Seasons group.'

An H/2 spokesman said it was 'totally focused on ensuring a transparent, fair and ultimately successful restructuring process for everyone involved'.

H/2 has stressed it 'cares deeply' about Four Seasons, its quality of care and the stability of the group. Care watchdog Care Quality Commission could block the homes from accepting new residents if it has concerns about the impact of the financial troubles on care.
Benny Higgins is joining the board of financial tech firm Kyckr

Departing Tesco Bank boss Benny Higgins is joining the board of a financial technology company as he moves on from mainstream banking.

The Scot, who turns 57 this month, will become chairman of Kyckr in March after he steps down as boss of Tesco Bank after a decade in charge.

Four-times married father-of-six Higgins hit the headlines last year when it emerged he had spent 18,000 on London taxis in just eight months as he was ferried to and from upmarket restaurants and private members clubs.

He was head of the retail bank at RBS, where he was accused of running off with his best friends wife, and later worked at toxic bank HBOS.
MBABANE  Great stage presence, rhythmic energy and what you would say spiritually best describes last Saturdays show.



This was at Solanis Shisanayama. It is not every day that reggae fans get treated to a live show.

Often times, they have to wait for either the Bob Marley or Peter Tosh memorial shows, for them to watch live acts and that is why when acts like Ras Haitrm come to the country, they know that they cannot afford to miss out.



Performance



Upon his performance on stage, one would think that fun lovers were possessed as they couldnt control their excitement the moment they heard Ras Haitrms voice. One fan even said; Theres a name for what we are feeling right now, its hallelujah moments.

The existential angst that plagues your daily existence becomes a faint echo and in that moment there is only you and music, nothing else.



Despite the wet weather that almost ruined the night with heavy rain fall, fun lovers kept their cool and were patient enough to wait for it to clear before moving over to the dance floor.

The Mozambican reggae superstar delivered a two-hour long set with mostly what he termed, Rastafarian spiritual songs and dance hall music, taking the audience straight to the heart of Jamaica, where the genre was founded.



Flawless



The sound and beats were flawless and the audience loved it!

During his set, Ras Haitrm played bass drums, percussion and other traditional African instruments and in-between these he got to explain how he got the name Ras Haitrm.



Anointed



My name comes from Ethiopia, anointed by a Rasta friend, and embodies the meaning Man of God, reason why I am very spiritual and my music is sentimental too, he said.

The show which lasted hours proved to be a success, having had fun lovers dance from the time it started up until around 3 in the morning when everyone was getting ready to make their way back home.
MANZINI  Has nyaope become the most famous drug in Swaziland?



Nyaope (also known as whoonga or wunga) is a highly addictive, dangerous and destructive street drug, which is common especially in South Africa. It is a fine white powder that is usually combined with marijuana (dagga) anti retroviral (ARV) drugs, among other components.



Many people have been appearing in court for being found in the illegal possession of dagga or in some instances, small amounts of cocaine.

However, a man shocked the court when he said he had been abusing nyaope which he bought from the bus rank.

Linda Tsabedze (25) of Bhekinkhosi was arrested by the police after he had stolen from his sisters home valuable items amounting to E40 000.



The accuseds sister, Phindile Tsabedze, told the court that her items, which included a Toyota engine (E5 000), tractor grass cutter (E10 000), brush cutting machine, refrigerator, car doors, fence, plates and blankets among other things disappeared from her home after her younger brother had visited. She said she went to the police station to report that her valuable items had been stolen and statements were recorded.



Phindile said upon her return, she was informed by one of her neighbours that her brother was seen carrying some of the items and leaving her home. Linda was eventually arrested and later charged with the theft of the items.

During his appearance in court before Magistrate Mthokozisi Dlamini, Linda revealed that he was addicted to nyaope and needed urgent rehabilitation.

He also admitted that he committed the theft offence and stole from his sister to support his drug addiction.



Your Worship, I am currently having difficulty quitting the drug and I need help. I have tried so many ways of getting clean and sober, however I seem to have failed. I would like the court to assist me find ways to be rehabilitated as I want to now go clean. I am tired of this drug as it has completely destroyed me and those around me, Linda said in court.

When asked where he got the drug from, Linda stated that he always bought it at the bus rank, near a popular eatery.



Magistrate Dlamini sentenced Linda to four years imprisonment without a fine option. The magistrate said he hoped that the correctional facility, which Linda would be sent to, was the best for rehabilitation and upon his release he would have been greatly assisted and clean.
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Troy

After suffering a stroke last year, Wilda Strong spent weeks in bed grappling with depression and uncertainty.

Before the stroke, the Troy resident worked with people with physical disabilities, helping them bathe, dress, take notes and maneuver safely around their homes. Now she was the one who needed help, forced to rely on a friend for assistance with the most basic tasks. She worried she wouldn't be able to find work.

"I wanted to give up every day," Strong said.

Friends encouraged her to enroll in the Jamison-Rounds Ready for Work program at YWCA of the Greater Capital Region. The Washington, D.C.-based organization works to end racism and empower women, and the group's chapter in Troy provides housing to 104 women and more than 50 children daily.

The program is designed to address barriers women face when seeking employment, such as limited work history, mental illness, literacy and academic issues, prior substance abuse or incarceration and domestic violence, with the ultimate goal of helping them achieve and maintain self-sufficiency.

Participants spend 12 weeks learning job and life skills, working on their resumes and cover letters, developing a five-year plan for their career goals and gaining confidence.

Strong forced herself to attend the classes and workshops. She was initially afraid to share her weaknesses and challenges with classmates and teachers, but over time she began to open up.

"I wanted to quit every day, but it gave me self-confidence," Strong said. "It made me feel more secure."

At a small ceremony on Thursday, Strong and her classmates received their certificates of completion in a gym at the YWCA in Troy. They held up cardboard displays, visual depictions of their future plans, while family and friends clapped and cheered. Public officials and staff praised their efforts.

"You were born with miraculous possibility, and that never goes away," Lisa Lagon, the YWCA-GCR board president, told the women. "Congratulations!"

"This is a testament to your hard work," said Troy Mayor Patrick Madden.

Strong's cardboard display included photos of smiling children and adults and the words "It takes a community." She hopes to return to working with people with physical disabilities, and eventually she may start her own company.

"I know how it feels to try to do things you're not capable of," Strong said. "I feel like I understand that now, and I want to help."

Since the program started in 2008, 176 women have graduated. They have gone on to start their own businesses, obtain their GED, work in various industries and advance to higher education.

Latisha Raymond started her own business, LNR Cleaning Services, after graduating from the program in April.

The Troy resident spent 15 years cleaning houses and hotels, earning between $9 and $10 an hour while raising two children. She dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur but said she didn't have the tools and resources to do it until she started the YWCA program.

Beyond helping her with paperwork, business cards and budgeting, teachers and staff helped Raymond's self-esteem grow. During the ceremony on Thursday, Raymond encouraged the new graduates to have confidence and continue asking for help.

"You gotta believe in yourself," she said.

Raymond is developing her client base and still pops in to YWCA to get advice and help with paperwork. While launching her own business has been frustrating at times, she is hopeful about the future.

"It changed me," Raymond said. "There are so many ups and downs, but I'm doing it. I'm doing it."

miszler@timesunion.com  518-454-5018  @madisoniszler
Washington

As the FBI's Russia investigation draws closer to him, President Donald Trump on Sunday unleashed an extraordinary assault on the nation's premier law enforcement agency, calling it a biased institution whose reputation for fairness was "in tatters."

In a series of early-morning tweets, Trump said the FBI's standing was now the "worst in history." The attack was one of the harshest in a generation on an independent agency that two days earlier had helped secure a guilty plea and a pledge of cooperation from the president's first national security adviser.

Current and former FBI officials, historians and lawmakers rebuked the president over his efforts to undermine the FBI's credibility as it investigates whether his campaign colluded with Russian officials to sway the 2016 election.

Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, admitted Friday that he had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition. As part of the bureau's inquiry, the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is believed to be examining whether Trump obstructed justice by firing James Comey, the FBI director, who was overseeing the inquiry.

Comey has said Trump asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn. But on Sunday, the president condemned Comey as a liar, saying that "I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn" and that Comey had harmed the bureau and its employees. He also accused the bureau's agents of spending years pursuing a "phony and dishonest" investigation into the email server of his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton.

Thomas O'Connor, president of the association representing FBI agents, defended their integrity in a statement. "FBI agents are dedicated to their mission," he said, asserting that they demonstrated "unwavering integrity and professionalism" on the job. "Suggesting otherwise is simply false," he added.

Trump's fury at those investigating him stunned even those with fresh memories of his repeated attempts over the past year to disparage intelligence agencies, the State Department and other parts of his government. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the frenzied nature of the president's tweets suggested that he knew that Mueller was building an obstruction of justice case against him.

"I see it in the hyperfrenetic attitude of the White House, the comments every day, the continual tweets," Feinstein said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Eric H. Holder Jr., who was President Barack Obama's first attorney general, responded to the president's tweets with one of his own defending the bureau. "You'll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now," Holder wrote.

As he sought to discredit the Russia inquiry, which he has long called a political "witch hunt," Trump on Sunday seized on reports that Mueller had removed a veteran FBI agent because he sent text messages that appeared to express views critical of Trump.

In several tweets, the president harshly criticized the agent, Peter Strzok, who had previously helped lead the 2016 investigation into whether Clinton had mishandled classified information on her private email account. Strzok is considered one of the bureau's most experienced and trusted counterintelligence investigators.

"Report: 'ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE,'" Trump said in his 10th tweet Sunday, which by the early evening had been retweeted more than 24,000 times. "Now it all starts to make sense!"

Most presidents enter the Oval Office with an instinct to defend and promote the integrity and capabilities of the nation's law enforcement agencies. Trump arrived with a different compulsion, fueled by a belief that intelligence and law enforcement officials were stoking questions about the legitimacy of his election victory.

By suggesting  as he has before  that the FBI and other agencies are motivated by politics, Trump again embraced the kind of suspicions that feed conspiracy theories about a "deep state" operating with a secret bias against him.

Still, even though Trump's attacks on government agencies are now a familiar theme, former FBI officials and veteran observers of the agency said they were surprised at the ease with which the president sought to defend himself by attacking the reputations of Comey, Mueller, Strzok and the 35,000 people who work at the FBI.
SCHOHARIE - A Herkimer man was arrested on early Sunday morning for allegedly crashing his truck into a home on Barton Hill Road, New York State Police said.

Timothy S. Sims, 54, allegedly crashed into the house at 11:35 p.m. Saturday with his 2004 Ford F350. While driving west, he veered off on the north shoulder, striking a tree and two lawn tractors before slamming into a home at 381 Barton Hill Road.
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Quiz time: How many state senators does it take to create a majority?

If you answered 32, you're right. If you answered 38, you might also be right.

With last week's announcement of a reunification plan to achieve a Democratic majority in the Senate came talk of special elections, concessions and the setting aside of egos. But less discussed were the rules, which could become central to who controls the chamber.

The current Senate rules are set for 2017 and 2018. Under the rules, the majority coalition is comprised of the Republican Conference and the Independent Democratic Conference, with the leaders acting as majority coalition leaders.

If the mainline Democrats, IDC and Sen. Simcha Felder form a 32-member majority next year  likely after the state budget is passed, when special elections to fill two soon-to-be-vacant Democratic seats are anticipated the idea is that the mainline Democrats and IDC would form their own majority coalition and their leaders would be co-leaders.

That would necessitate a rules change.

Simple enough? Not exactly.

It would seem that a majority of senators can make a motion to suspend the rules. But the rules state that "passing any such rules change shall require an affirmative vote of three-fifths of all senators election."

Translation: You need 38 senators to change the rules. Call it the "Rule of 38."

It gets messier.

While Republicans could stand by the three-fifths requirement, Democrats contend that once the rules have been suspended, new rules can be enacted by the same simple 32-vote majority.

If such bickering occurs, it's likely that senators will go to court hoping a judge decides who has control.

"Very infrequently do (the courts) like to get involved in internal legislative procedures," said one former Senate staffer who survived the 2009 coup. "The legislatures are empowered to determine the rules of their own house."

Keep in mind that the 2019 session, with the 2018 elections perhaps bolstering one side of the aisle or the other, is a different time entirely with a chance to write a potentially different set of rules.

Progressives chide unity deal

Chamber rules aren't the only hurdle to placating rank-and-file Democrats who have been gnashing their teeth over the current Senate makeup.

The Progressive Caucus within the state party had been pushing for the party to commit to chipping in money to pick up Senate seats and to coaxing Democrats in the Senate to come together as one.

"If they want to come together as a Democratic conference and then figure out within that Democratic conference what the leadership is, that's fine," caucus Chair Rachel Lavine told Capitol Confidential. "To institutionalize the IDC is just not acceptable."

Lavine wasn't alone in her criticisms of the way the deal shapes things up.

A number of advocacy groups demanded earlier in the week that the governor call special elections that will fall in mid-March so a Democratic majority is in place for state budget talks. Those talks would just be getting started in full at that time.

And while the IDC demanded that all Democrats agree to supporting myriad progressive legislation before the deal goes through, more than two dozen progressive groups took issue with rewarding the IDC "for SEVEN years of enabling the GOP." Those groups still seem hellbent on supporting primaries IDC senators.

But politics is about compromise, right? And compromise isn't going to please everyone.

"It depends on the extent of the compromise," said Elisa Sumner, the Progressive Caucus co-chair and Dutchess County Democratic chair. "While I don't think the IDC should be rewarded, if the Democratic caucus itself decides to have, say, two heads instead of one ... and that included Jeff Klein and Andrea Stewart-Cousins and that was a vote of all of them to do that, then that's a democratic process. But if the IDC is allowed to still exist, that's a different story."

mhamilton@timesunion.com  518-454-5449 @matt_hamilton10
NEW HAVEN  Adults 65 or older accounted for 40 percent of all fire-related deaths in 2015 despite only constituting 15 percent of the U.S. population, with the relative risk of dying in a fire for senior citizens being 2.7 times higher than for the general population, according to the U.S. Fire Administration Fire Risk Report.

Orange Fire Marshal Timothy Smith said the disparity is relatively consistent throughout the nation, noting that areas with higher senior populations will have higher rates for fire-related deaths.

A lot of its attributed to mobility issues, disabilities, reactionary skills arent there like they are with adults or young children or they cant self-evacuate or extricate themselves from a burning building, he said.

Now Playing: The Winter Holidays. More time to spend with family and friends.Unfortunately there are significantly more house fires nationwide. Here's how to avoid them. Video: Veuer

For Connecticut it is not clear if the specific nationwide numbers apply, due to missing information. Seven out of the 20 fire-related fatalities listed in 2016 in Connecticut do not list the individuals age. However, a state report on injury and death from 2000-04 showed the rate of death from fire for people 50 and older was about 4 times higher than that for people ages 10 to 49. There were an average of 30 fire-related deaths annually in those years, the state report noted.

With advancing age, physical and mental capabilities decline, making it more difficult for older adults to clearly see, smell and hear, increasing the risk of death or injury from fire due to decreased senses, the fire administration report noted.

Older people also can have physical disabilities or limitations that hinder their mobility, making it more difficult for them to react to the threat of a fire the way younger adults can.

The October wildfires in the heart of California wine country claimed 43 victims, and didnt discriminate by age, killing young and old. But Charles and Sara Rippey, who was confined to a wheelchair, did not make it out. The couple, married for 75 years, lived in Napa for the past 35, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, a sister Hearst newspaper of the New Haven Register. They died together in their home, unable to escape the wildfires.

Associated Press

Their bodies were found by police inside the charred ruins of their Silverado Country Club condominium on Westgate Drive. He was 100, and she was 98, according to the Chronicle.

Rippey apparently died trying to save his wife, one of their children told KPIX TV.

Alzheimers disease, dementia and other disorders that affect mental functions also increase the risk of injury or death from a fire due to erratic or even potentially dangerous behavior and the inability to recognize a hazard, according to the report.

You dont want to think, OK, Ill climb out of the window, if youre a person confined to a bed or have a walker or if you have difficulty walking normally. You have to make your plans reasonable, said New Haven Fire Chief John Alston.

To compound this problem, older adults are more inclined to accidentally start a fire than younger adults. Sometimes, they are close to the source of a flame, and their clothes or bedding ignites, according to Smith.

Cooking fires tend to be very common with the senior population because they forget they leave the stove on, and they walk away. Maybe, theres an early onset of dementia or other sort of mental issues going on. Or theyre cooking with a bathrobe and the bathrobe catches fire because they arent aware of it, he said.

Heating, in particular, also represents an elevated fire danger to older adults, who frequently feel cold. When the central heating source of a home does not work properly, Alston said older adults will often rely on temporary sources of heat, such as legal or illegal portable space heaters, fireplaces or even cooking ovens.

Its a difficult population to try to change their evacuation skills, but detection doubles your chance, doubles everyones chances, of escaping a fire, Smith said. So early detection of a fire is probably the best thing for the senior population. The sooner they know about, the sooner they can be made of aware it, the sooner they can start the self-evacuation to protect themselves.

Smoke alarms are present in most homes, having saved many lives since the mid-1970s when their use was widely encouraged for the first time. While the number of senior citizens living in housing without smoke alarms or with alarms that do not work is not well-documented, Smith said senior citizens may not have access to smoke detectors and other equipment in poorer populations due to their inability to afford the detectors and/or the batteries.

Cromwell Town Councilman Al Waters, 74, said he changes his smoke detector batteries religiously twice a year. Thats the big thing, he said of the simple action fire officials urge people to do during the Daylight Saving Time change.

The American Red Cross has even coined the phrase, Time to Turn and Test.

Waters said he is also vigilant about making sure passageways in his home are clear. I dont keep the areas of exit cluttered, Waters said.

Often during emergencies, the elderly especially can become very disorientated, he said. Any impediments will make it difficult to make it outside to safety. Many may not even realize portions of their homes could be fire hazards, he said.

Im out every day moving, Waters said. I just cant sit idle. There are people that, if theyre getting 60 years or older, probably their reflexes are not as fast.

Waters said because hes so active, he has always taken the normal precautions when it comes to fire safety.

West Haven Fire Department Chief Jim OBrien said residential sprinkler systems also help to reduce the risk of deaths and injuries, homeowner insurance premiums and uninsured property losses. While many homes do not have automatic extinguishing systems, despite them being found in hotels and businesses, OBrien said there is a major movement in the U.S. fire service to require sprinklers in all new homes.

Smith said senior citizens are considered a target population for public education and intervention, explaining that as much as fire departments visit kids at schools and teach them the basics of fire safety, they also go to senior centers to teach senior citizens about senior fire safety and home escape.

What were finding is when the seniors call us to come in and do a presentation, they want us there. So theyre truly interested in the subject and they want to learn it, as opposed to kids where the teachers are telling them they have to be there, he said. Thats a huge gap in between there. So a lot of these people, theyre upcoming seniors, they havent really had any fire safety education as theyre entering their golden years.

jessica.lerner@hearstmediact.com; @jesslerner on Twitter
Just days after the tragic death of a Nenagh woman whose use of a drug was withheld because of a row between its manufactures and the HSE, the State agency has agreed to fund its use.

According to media reports this Monday, the HSE has agreed to cover the administration costs of Respreezza, a therapy known to slow the progression of genetic emphysema.

A spokesperson told the Tipperary Star that the HSE will cover the cost of administering the drug to those who were on the original Respreeza trial for a transition period of six months.

"We are concerned about the impact on the patients of the companys decision to abruptly halt the supply of a drug that they had provided for a considerable period. So the decision is to allow the patients remain on the drug while they transition to an alternative care pathway," said the spokesperson.

Marion Kelly, 53, a grandmother from Puckane and Nenagh, died on Friday.

Ms Kelly, who was being treated for Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, was the second Respreeza user to die within two weeks.

As part of a 21-person trial group, Ms Kelly and Anna Cassidy from Donegal, had been on Respreeza for 11 years.

However, for the past month, none of them had been able to access it because of a row between the HSE and manufacturer CSL Behring over who should pay the administration fee.

Gerry McElvaney, the patients respiratory physician, said he was very worried that two of our patients have died.

However, he said that he was not saying they died because they were off the drug, but if theyd been on it, they would have felt they had done all we could to keep them alive.

Meanwhile, Johnny Hannan, who has Alpha-1 and is spokesperson for the A1 Action Group, told the Irish Examiner he was told by the HSE on Saturday that it would cover the administration cost for the next six months when CSL is due to begin another trial, though with no guarantee all the patients will qualify.

However, the HSE would not be administrating Respreeza, so patients are unclear as to how and when it might happen.

Prof McElvaney said the Alpha One Foundation, of which he is chair, would contact the HSE first thing to iron out how the drug will be administered. Ideally we would like it done in patients homes, particularly at this time of year, he said.

However if it came to it, he would administer the drug in Beaumont Hospital, where he is based.

The State has refused to reimburse the drug which costs about 84,000 per patient per annum.

Meanwhile, the Alpha1 Foundation told the Tipperary Star in a statement that they were very sorry to hear of Marions passing and offered their deepest sympathy to her family and friends.

"We will continue to offer our full support to all the Alpha One Patients at this difficult time," the statement said.

Ms Kelly's funeral took place on Sunday in Puckane Church, followed by burial in Cloughprior Cemetery.
Irelands top retailers and brands gathered at Dublins Royal Marine Hotel on the night of Wednesday 22nd November to attend the prestigious ceremony. Now in its 17th year, the C-Store Awards are the only comprehensive and independently judged business accolades for the convenience store sector.

SPAR, Tipperary Town Plaza, was honoured on the night as it was awarded with the Best Impulse Offering 2017.

Together with returning master of ceremonies Marty Whelan, ShelfLife welcomed more than 400 guests from across the industry. A total of 29 awards were presented, celebrating the industrys finest stores and people in a diverse range of categories.

Congratulating the Tipperary store, Colin Donnelly, SPAR Sales Director said: We would like to extend our congratulations to the team at SPAR, Tipperary Town Plaza on winning this prestigious national title. It is their relentless drive and ambition that sets them apart from their peers in a marketplace which is already internationally recognised as setting the standards in convenience retailing. The store and staff are very deserving of this industry accolade and they are great champions for the SPAR brand.

According to ShelfLife Publisher John McDonald, the standards are up across the board this year. There are a number of very important highlights from this years awards scheme. Standards have improved across the board, and there was a discernible percentage increase in the average score of all stores that entered. For more information please contact Fionnuala Carolan at Fcarolan@bwg.ie or 086 0412915.
Tipperary TD's, Jackie Cahill and Michael Lowry, have questioned the new Chairperson of Bord na Mona Geoffrey Meagher and have stressed the need for the redundancy process at Littleton to be brought to a satisfactory conclusion, a head of a vital meeting in Prtlaoise tomorrow (Tuesday).

Fianna Fail's Deputy Cahill, took the company to task for the unacceptable and unsatisfactory wind down of the Littleton Plant and raised his deep unease and concerns at a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment this week in Leinster House - a committee of which Deputy Lowry is also a member.

I challenged the new Chairperson Designate on three core issues: 1) the need for a fair redundancy package that reflects the loyalty and commitment of the workers over many decades, 2) the lack of planning for future employment at the site, and 3) the proposed 60 million US investment to produce wood chip for import back in to Ireland, Deputy Cahill said.

Deputy Lowry, meanwhile said that the company has an opportunity to conclude the redundancy process in an efficient manner by engaging in a generous way with the workers unions when they meet in Portlaoise. And, he encouraged the management to be generous in their offer in keeping with the level of loyalty, commitment and dedication to the areas which the workers have shown through many years.




[December 04, 2017] Government of Canada Invests in Green Jobs for Youth in the Natural Resource Sectors

OTTAWA, Dec. 4, 2017 /CNW/ - Creating green jobs ensures that the natural resource sectors remain a source of opportunity and prosperity in a world that increasingly values sustainable practices and low-carbon processes, while alleviating anticipated shortages of skilled workers by offering the next generation a real and fair chance at success. The Honourable Jim Carr, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, today announced that the Government of Canada is investing more than $16 million to create 1,200 green jobs for Canadian youth in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in the natural resource sectors, a tenfold increase in NRCan's Science Technology Internship Program. The green jobs supported by the Science and Technology Internship Program, under the Government of Canada's Youth Employment Strategy (YES), will help the development of Canada's natural resources by enhancing the employability skills o workers aged 15 to 30 in STEM, thereby increasing the number of skilled young Canadians in the workforce and advancing Canada's Innovation Agenda and working toward its climate change goals.



The Government of Canada renewed its commitment to youth employment in Budget 2017 by announcing $395.5 million over three years to further expand the YES and continue to deliver 15,000 new green jobs. Each year, 11 federal departments and agencies including NRCan invest more than $330 million through the Youth Employment Strategy to help young people gain the skills and experience they need to find and keep good jobs. Quotes

"Canadian youth have the talent and drive to succeed in the labour market. The Government of Canada's continued investment in green jobs through the Youth Employment Strategy will help them transition from school to work and kick-start their careers and drive Canada's green future." The Honourable Jim Carr

Minister of Natural Resources Related Products Green Jobs Science and Technology Internship Program (STIP)

Backgrounder Follow us on Twitter: @NRCan (http://twitter.com/nrcan)

NRCan's news releases and backgrounders are available at www.news.gc.ca. SOURCE Natural Resources Canada

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[December 04, 2017] McKesson Canada announces the acquisition of Well.ca

TORONTO, Dec. 4, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - McKesson Canada today announced the acquisition of Well.ca, bringing an offering of online commerce capabilities and a digital experience to McKesson Canada's retail assets, including Rexall Drug Store, and expanding its customer base. With this acquisition, McKesson Canada's retail operations and Well.ca will be better positioned to service customers through a strengthened portfolio of technology, distribution and innovation. "Today's customer wants a digital experience," said Domenic Pilla, CEO, McKesson Canada. "Combined with McKesson Canada's distribution network and retail footprint, patients and customers will have convenient access and more choices to achieve their healh and wellness goals."



Well.ca is Canada's leading online destination for health, wellness, natural and baby products and has been ranked in the top 5% of customer experience in Canada for the last three consecutive years. Well.ca's focus on the customer aligns with McKesson Canada's approach to patient care through efficiency and coordination across the supply chain. "Well.ca's "digital-first" approach to retail has continuously pushed the boundaries of the customer experience in Canada," said Rebecca McKillican, CEO, Well.ca. "Together with McKesson Canada, we will be able to establish new business relationships and accelerate our mission to help our customers live healthier and happier lives."

Well.ca and McKesson Canada have been working together since its inception in 2008 and McKesson Canada has become one of Well.ca's most trusted partners. Well.ca will operate as a distinct business within McKesson Canada, while retaining its existing brand and remain headquartered in Guelph, Ontario. About McKesson Canada Founded more than 100 years ago, McKesson Canada is dedicated to delivering vital medicines, supplies and information technologies that enable the health care industry to provide patients better, safer care. Our solutions empower pharmacies, manufacturers, hospitals and other health care institutions by enabling them to get closer to the millions of patients they serve every single day, while contributing to the quality and safety of care in Canada. About Well.ca Well.ca is a proudly Canadian company that's passionate about our customers, our business, and the products we offer. At Well.ca, we believe that Canadians should never have to compromise on the health, wellness, baby and beauty products that they choose for themselves and their families. With over 40,000 curated products, thousands of peer reviews, and Canada's largest assortment of green and natural brands, we make it easy to make choices you can trust. SOURCE MCKESSON CANADA

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[December 03, 2017] Dean Ward Joins Exiger as Vice President and Head of Business Development Asia Pacific

NEW YORK and HONG KONG, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Exiger, the global regulatory, financial crime, risk and compliance company, announced the appointment of Dean Ward to the post of Vice President and Head of Business Development for the Asia Pacific region based in Exiger's Hong Kong office. Mr. Ward joined Exiger from Thomson Reuters, where he led the Risk Solution Sales Specialist team in Hong Kong and North Asia. An established risk and compliance technology business leader, Mr. Ward has held senior business development roles, overseeing regional sales teams throughout the Asia Pacific region, with deep experience in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, and Australia. Prior to Thomson Reuters, Mr. Ward held management and research positions with IntegraScreen and Hill & Associates Ltd. "Dean is a recognized leader in the due diligence space in the Asia Pacific region, having spent the last decade helping the world's largest banks, software companies, energy giants, and pharmaceutical manufacturers develop robust anti-money laundering (AML), anti-fraud, and know your customer (KYC) programs," said Arun Banerjee, Exiger Managing Director and Chif Revenue Officer. "Dean will play a critical role in helping us build out our regional sales team and driving the expansion of our business in the Asia Pacific region."



As Vice President and Head of Business Development, Mr. Ward will be responsible for growing and expanding Exiger's due diligence, technology, global investigations and financial crime compliance businesses in the Asia Pacific market. "The rapid growth trajectory Exiger has already demonstrated in the Asia Pacific region has made it clear that the company's unique mix of superior technology and deep domain expertise is striking a chord with risk and compliance professionals in every industry," said Mr. Ward. "I look forward to the opportunity to help the company dramatically increase its Asian footprint as we demonstrate the value of our capabilities to ever-larger numbers of customers."

Mr. Ward holds a BA in Development Studies from the University of London. About Exiger Exiger is a global regulatory and financial crime, risk and compliance company. Exiger arms financial institutions, multinational corporations and governmental agencies with the practical advice and technology solutions they need to prevent compliance breaches, respond to risk, remediate major issues and monitor ongoing business activities. Exiger works with clients worldwide to assist them in effectively managing their critical challenges while developing and implementing the policies, procedures and programs needed to create a sustainable compliance environment. A global authority on regulatory compliance, the company also oversees some of the world's most complex court-appointed and voluntary monitorships in the private and public sectors, including the monitorship of HSBC. Exiger has four principal business units being: Exiger Advisory; Exiger Diligence; Exiger Government Services; and Exiger Tech, including AI-based automated due diligence solutions DDIQ and Insight 3PM. Exiger operates through offices in New York City, Silver Spring (DC Metro), Miami, Toronto, Vancouver, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Contacts: U.S.

John Roderick

[email protected]

631-584-2200 Europe

James Rossiter

[email protected]

44 0203 195 3240 Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/612036/Exiger_Logo.jpg SOURCE Exiger

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[December 03, 2017] Infosys Appoints Salil S. Parekh as CEO and Managing Director

BANGALORE, India, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Infosys announced today that its Board of Directors has appointed Salil S. Parekh as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director (CEO & MD) of the Company effective January 2, 2018. Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/610722/Infosys_Logo.jpg Commenting on the appointment of Mr. Parekh, Mr. Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of the Board said, "We are delighted to have Salil joining as the CEO & MD of Infosys. He has nearly three decades of global experience in the IT services industry. He has a strong track record of executing business turnarounds and managing very successful acquisitions. The Board believes that he is the right person to lead Infosys at this transformative time in our industry. The Board is also grateful to Pravin for his leadership during this period of transition." Ms. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairperson of the Nomination & Remuneration Committee, stated, "After a comprehensive global search effort, we are pleased to appoint Salil as the CEO & MD. He was the top choice from a pool of highly qualified candidates. With his strong track record and extensive experience, we believe, we have the right person to lead Infosys." Mr. Parekh joins Infosys from Capgemini where he was a member of the Group Executive Board. He has Master of Engineering degrees in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Mr. U B Pravin Rao will step down as the interim CEO and Managing Director effective January 2, 2018 and will continue as Chief Operating Officer and a whole-time Director of the Company. About Infosys Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countrie to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively. Our team of 198,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake.



Visit http://www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age. Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. These filings are available at http://www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. In addition, please note that any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of the date of this press release. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law. Media contacts:





Asia Pacific

Sarah Gideon

Infosys, India

+91-80-4156-3998

[email protected]



EMEA

Margherita Di Cerbo

Infosys, Europe

+44(0)2075162748

[email protected]



Americas

Chiku Somaiya

Infosys, USA

+1-408-375-2722

[email protected] SOURCE Infosys

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[December 03, 2017] Inuitive and SoftBank to Collaborate on AI and IoT

RA'ANANA, Israel and TOKYO, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Inuitive Ltd. (Inuitive) and SoftBank Corp. (SoftBank), a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. (TOKYO: 9984), today announced that they have agreed to collaborate through the development of artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning (DL) and advanced 3D sensing with computer vision capabilities for future IoT. This collaboration will draw from the expertise of both companies in AI by leveraging Inuitive's existing and future vision processors and its AI framework with SoftBank's IoT platforms, which offer advanced heterogeneous processing capabilities for embedded products. The companies expect the collaboration to drive the popularity and development of smart IoT devices and systems. Devices such as IoT are becoming more intelligent with the proliferation of AI. Implementing AI on the device provides a number of advantages over current market implementations, enabling edge devices to provide human-like interaction while keeping consumer market price tag. Additional benefits of on-chip AI include real-time performance, privacy protection and longer operation time. "To develop an AI framework, it takes efforts from players in multiple domains," said Mr. Shlomo Gadot, founder and chief executive officer, Inuitive. "The strategic collaboration between Inuitive and SoftBank will advance on-device intelligence by leveraging Inuitive's advanced technologies and SoftBank market proven technologies. Together we'll push the performace envelope and extend AI to places that are currently beyond reach. Our strategic collaboration will become a turning point for the whole on-chip AI industry".



"SoftBank has been conducting research in AI over a decade," said Hironobu Tamba, Vice President, Head of Smart IoT Division, SoftBank. "We look forward to the results of our collaboration with Inuitive to further accelerate new and exciting capabilities of on-chip AI for millions of devices". Currently, SoftBank is focused on optimizing the high-end platforms to accelerate AI products use cases in the areas of computer vision and neural networks and is researching broader executions in the areas of Objects recognition, Scene reconstruction, SLAM and power management. Inuitive is a leading company in vision processing and its applications. It plays an important role in deep learning algorithm innovation. The company's leading technology in deep learning makes it possible to innovate and develop a variety of algorithms with low cost and fast response time. Inuitive has also made breakthroughs in sensing technologies. Its strategic collaboration with SoftBank is expected to drastically improve the speed and efficiency of combining system with chipset, making Inuitive's AI technology more pervasive.

About Inuitive INUITIVE (http://www.inuitive-tech.com) Inuitive is the leading fabless semiconductor company in the area of 3D imaging. With the NU4000, a superior multi-core vision processor that supports 3D Imaging, it optimizes consumer experiences and enhances competitive advantages in the areas of Robots, Drones, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality to name just a few. INUITIVE intelligent offering combines algorithms, ASIC and System solution to realize the AI practice, enabling devices to acquire more human capabilities. With AI at its core, The INUITIVE platform also includes a 3D Depth Sensing Computer Vision processor and powerful deep learning capabilities to enable smart devices to become even smarter. About SoftBank SoftBank Corp., a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. (TOKYO: 9984), provides mobile communication, fixed-line communication and Internet connection services to customers in Japan. Leveraging synergies with other companies in the SoftBank Group, SoftBank Corp. aims to transform lifestyles through ICT and expand into other business areas including IoT, robotics and energy. To learn more, please visit http://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/group/sbm/ Contact:

Oriane Morley

Inuitive

+972-54-261-4671

[email protected]





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[December 04, 2017] WISeKey launches ISTANA PKI for IoT to Secure the Automobile Industry

WISeKey launches ISTANA PKI for IoT to Secure the Automobile Industry ISTANA PKI Integrates WK QuoVadis PKI with VaultIC hardware Secure Elements tailored to the needs of IoT ecosystems





ZUG, GENEVA, Switzerland - December 4, 2017 - WISeKey International Holding Ltd (WISeKey) (SIX:WIHN), a leading Swiss cybersecurity and IoT solutions company, today announced that it has launched its advanced ISTANA PKI platform specifically tailored to the needs of IoT ecosystems.



ISTANA PKI platform allows smart car manufactures to validate the authenticity of different vehicle components. Certificate-based security also protects onboard communication between vehicle components and enables secure over-the-air software updates. Additionally, authentication certificates can be used by employees, dealers and suppliers to access car components to diagnose mechanical/technical issues and update software, from any location. Finally, the ISTANA PKI platform allows users to securely interact with a car's smart features using smartphones and other devices.





Currently, WISeKey is working with several smart car manufacturers and its ISTANA PKI platform is already active in several large-scale projects. A recent example is a strategic contract signed with a leading European automobile manufacturer, cementing its role in the Connected Car sector. The agreement includes the integration of WISeKey IoT and PKI with the manufacturer's connected car solutions allowing them to authenticate legitimate car components and also enable owners to securely interact with the car's smart features.



WISeKey's total identifiable 5-year ISTANA revenues from the car manufacturing industry are expected to be in excess of CHF 30 Million, of which approximately CHF 2.5 Million and CHF 7.0 Million are expected to be realized in 2017 and 2018, respectively.



Virtually all new cars on the market today include electronic technologies that could pose vulnerabilities to hacking or privacy intrusions if data security is not addressed. Embedded WISeKey hardware security in the car protects the "identity" of each device, prevents unauthorized tampering, and protects the privacy and security of the vast amount of data these devices generate. BI Intelligence expects 94 million connected cars to be sold in 2021 (with 82% to be connected cars), representing a compound annual growth rate of 35% from 21 million connected cars sold in 2016.



A fundamental principle behind the security of WISeKey Semiconductors is that its chips not only control how devices perform under normal conditions, but also control how these devices react when attacked or tampered with in any way, including self-destruction. WISeKey Semiconductor chips are designed to authenticate individual car components within the vehicle itself, ensue that only legitimate software is installed in the car, authenticate users and ensure that only legitimate users have access to the connected car functions and encrypt data to make it tamperproof and private.



Thomas Moretti, WISeKey's Senior VP of Signing Services and IoT PKI, said, "Leveraging this heritage, the new generation ISTANA PKI provides complete identity lifecycle management for IoT ecosystems. Provided as software or a managed service, ISTANA PKI offers a platform that meets the highest standards needed to issue, manage and validate digital credentials for IoT, and is scalable to support environments with hundreds of millions of devices, by leveraging WISeKey's RoT strategy."

"As cars continue to evolve, essentially becoming motorized computers, they are vulnerable to the very same threats and attacks as home computers, laptops and smartphones. Unless appropriate cybersecurity measures are implemented, hackers can remotely access the vehicle's computer system, manipulate the brakes, engine, and transmission. Our technology is designed to help verify legitimate car systems, protect the data they create and avoid malicious hacking," said Carlos Moreira, CEO of WISeKey.

Added IoT Security from WISeKey Semiconductors In the network world, valuable encryption keys are protected in special cryptographic hardware called Secure Elements that prevent the unauthorized use or export of keys, ensure consistent handling of encryption, and even allow critical pieces of software to run in a protected environment. Examples include the secure chip on smartcards, the SIM in cell phones and encryption chips in major telecommunications devices such as Internet routers and switches.



WISeKey Semiconductor brings a 25-year heritage delivering certified Secure Elements in the most risk-sensitive applications including government ID cards and passports, credit cards and Pay TV access cards, and specialty crypto tokens. WISeKey Semiconductor's VaultIC chips are specifically tailored to the needs of IoT devices which often have low power capabilities and the need to be securely updateable in the field. Bernard Vian, General Manager of WISeKey Semiconductor, said, "Through QuoVadis Istana PKI and VaultIC, WISeKey is the only vendor able to provide both the PKI and hardware Secure Elements tailored to the Root of Trust needs of IoT and with a proven track record in delivering secure solutions to IoT manufacturers and ecosystems."



# # #



About WISeKey: WISeKey (SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN) is a leading global cybersecurity company currently deploying via a Virtual Platform large scale digital identity ecosystems. WISeKey's Swiss based cryptographic Root of Trust ("RoT") and IoT Microchips provide secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, for the Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. The WISeKey RoT serves as a common trust anchor to ensure the integrity of online transactions among objects and between objects and people. For more information, visit www.wisekey.com.



To receive WISeKey's latest news, subscribe to our Newsletter or visit the WISeKey Investors Corner.



Press and investor contacts: WISeKey International Holding Ltd



Company Contact: Carlos Moreira



Chairman & CEO



Tel: +41 22 594 3000



[email protected] WISeKey Investor Relations (US)



Contact: Lena Cati



The Equity Group Inc.



Tel: +1 212 836-9611



[email protected] Disclaimer: This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning WISeKey International Holding 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 WISeKey International Holding Ltd to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. WISeKey International Holding 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. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities, and it does not constitute an offering prospectus within the meaning of article 652a or article 1156 of the Swiss Code of Obligations or a listing prospectus within the meaning of the listing rules of the SIX Swiss Exchange. Investors must rely on their own evaluation of WISeKey and its securities, including the merits and risks involved. Nothing contained herein is, or shall be relied on as, a promise or representation as to the future performance of WISeKey.

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[December 04, 2017] ForgeRock Extends Trust Network, Adds New Technology Partner Program

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ForgeRock, a leading platform provider of digital identity management solutions, today announced an extension of the ForgeRock Trust Network partner program designed to unify its extensive community of technology partners, making it possible for new and existing customers to seamlessly integrate complementary technologies to extend and derive the highest value from their ForgeRock Identity solutions. The program establishes a marketplace where customers can discover third-party identity and access management technologies that are commonly used in conjunction with each other. Clients and partners using the ForgeRock Trust Network also have access to supporting documentation and implementation information to enable easier integration of these solutions. Participating partners can access tools and support from ForgeRock to build and validate integrations of their technology with the ForgeRock Identity Platform. Higher tier members are required to submit integrations for validation via ForgeRocks own Quality Assurance process in order to receive a ForgeRock certification. As the concept of digital identity has grown beyond employees, citizens and customers, to include services, devices and IoT connected things, ForgeRocks unique identity platform has become pervasive across industries worldwide, explained Ben Goodman, Vice President, Global Strategy and Innovation at ForgeRock. The ForgeRock Trust Network is about enabling trust beyond our own identity platform to include some incredibly inventive third party technologies, which together enable the future of digital identity from end-to-end. Launch partners for the ForgeRock Trust Network include biid, Biometric Signature ID, Callsign, Duo, Entersekt, FaceTec, HYPR, InAuth, iovation, Intensity Analytics, InWebo, Nok Nok Labs, NoPassword, ProxToMe, SecureAuth, VeriClouds, Winkk. ForgeRock expects to add more technology partners in the future. InAuth, a leading provider of device authentication solutions, will be able to provide existing and prospective clients complementary services through its participation in the ForgeRock Trust Network. Many of our clients today also work with ForgeRock as part of their overall approach tosecurity and identity management, said Lisa Stanton, President of InAuth. By joining the ForgeRock Trust Network program, we will be able to help our clients more easily integrate and deploy leading identity solutions, enabling them to further reduce risk, remove friction and combat fraud across their digital channels.



Callsign provides adaptive, multi-layered security that uses AI and deep learning to protect identities and minimize the impact of compromised credentials. Aligning with ForgeRocks identity platform brings many benefits for all parties, says Paul Anderson, Head of Strategic Alliances at Callsign. Authentication and identity go hand-in-hand, and teaming with the leading customer identity and access management vendor means we can offer customers the ability to easily and seamlessly connect Callsigns Intelligence Driven Authentication with their ForgeRock CIAM. Satya Yenigalla, COO of FaceTec, explained their rationale for joining. This new program promises to provide distinct go-to-market advantages. First, our team can utilize the direct communications channel with ForgeRocks support portal and sample code, providing high levels of customer assistance on demand. The partnership also helps customers select us confidently, knowing our advanced 3D mobile face login SDK, ZoOm with TrueLiveness, has been developed through a closely-aligned technical relationship with ForgeRock. This is particularly important in use cases where ZoOms unparalleled, AI-driven liveness detection is proving valuable by providing consistently reliable, highly secure account access on mobile.

Further information about the program, including links for prospective partners to apply, can be found at www.ForgeRock.com/partner. Additionally, ForgeRocks Goodman shares more thoughts on the merits of the Trust Network Technology Partner Program at the ForgeRock blog. Monitor the #ForgeRockTrustNetwork hashtag on social media in the coming weeks and months for news and developments on the program. About ForgeRock

ForgeRock is the Digital Identity Management company transforming the way organizations interact securely with customers, employees, devices, and things. Organizations adopt the ForgeRock Identity Platform as their digital identity system of record to monetize customer relationships, address stringent regulations for privacy and consent (GDPR, HIPAA, FCC privacy, etc.), and leverage the internet of things. ForgeRock serves hundreds of brands, including Morningstar, Vodafone, GEICO, Toyota, TomTom, and Pearson, as well as governments like Norway, Canada, and Belgium, securing billions of identities worldwide. ForgeRock has offices across Europe, the USA, and Asia. Get free downloads at https://www.forgerock.com/ and follow us on social media: Facebook |Twitter |LinkedIn. Press Contact:

Dave De Jear

ForgeRock Communications

[email protected]

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[December 04, 2017] Wipro Recognized as Market Leader in Digital Workplace Services by ISG

Wipro (News - Alert) Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, today announced that it has been recognized as a market leader in Digital Workplace Services by Information Services Group (ISG), a leading global technology research and advisory firm. According to the ISG Provider Lens Digital Workplace Services Quadrant Report, Wipro Limited was among the leading providers in Digital Workplace Consulting, Managed Digital Workplace Services (Large Market), Managed Mobile Services (Midmarket and Large Market) and Workplace-as-a-Service (WaaS). "Workplace transformation is becoming a top priority for senior management, as newer, digitally enabled workplace services move beyond the domain of the CIO and IT organization and become more closely aligned with the business and with specific industries," said Esteban Herrera, partner and global head of ISG Research. "Wipro has demonstrated experience and a highly attractive portfolio of product and service offerings in the digital workplace services space. These strengths, coupled with a track record of innovation and success, have helped make Wipro a leading choice as digital workplace transformation partner." The report states, "Wipro's services focus is on delivering end-to-end business transformation rather than just cost savings and operational efficiency improvement. Wipro is one of the key players that have developed comprehensive, business-oriented workplace services offerings." Kiran Desai, Senior Vice President & Head - Global Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited, said, "We are excited to be positioned as a 'Leader' in ISG's Provider LensTM Quadrant report, Digital Workplace Services. It is emblematic of our strong workplace portfolio, continuous investment on digital technologies for a superior customer experience and excellent delivery execution." The ISG Provider Lens Digital Workplace Services Quadrant Report evaluates 34 workplace technology and services providers serving the U.S. market across seven quadrants: Digital Workplace Consulting; Managed Digital Workplace Services (Midmarket and Large Market); Managed Mobile (Midmarket and Large Market), Enterprise Social Collaboration and Workplace-as-a-Service (WaaS). Wipro Limited was one of only a small handful of firms to be named a leader in five of the seven quadrants - the most of any service provider. The ISG Provider Lens Quadrant report series is a complement to the ISG Provider Lens Archetype reports, which offer a first-of-its-kind evaluation of providers from the perspective of specific buyer types. In the ISG Provider Lens Archetype Report for Digital Workplace Services published earlier this year, Wipro Limited was named a leader in the Transformation Oriented Archetype, Cloud Enabled Archetype and Next-Gen Sourcing Archetype.



Wipro's work-place transformation technologies include LiVE WorkspaceTM, which is an end to-end standardized and integrated workplace offering consisting of pre-defined tools, technologies and processes, enabling users to access their business applications & data, anywhere, anytime through any device of their choice. In addition, Wipro's VirtuaDeskTM, a complete desktop virtualisation desktop-as-a-service offering, enables Desktop virtualization, instantly deliver desktops and applications to any device, empowering mobile end users and increasing business flexibility. It enables clients to create a more collaborative and mobile workforce by easily securing and provisioning applications and data.

Please click here to view full report: ISG's Provider Lens Quadrant report, North America for Digital Workplace Services About Wipro Limited

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company. We harness the power of cognitive computing, hyper-automation, robotics, cloud, analytics and emerging technologies to help our clients adapt to the digital world and make them successful. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, strong commitment to sustainability and good corporate citizenship, we have over 160,000 dedicated employees serving clients across six continents. Together, we discover ideas and connect the dots to build a better and a bold new future. Forward-looking and Cautionary Statements

Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in our earnings, revenue and profits, our ability to generate and manage growth, intense competition in IT services, our ability to maintain our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which we make strategic investments, withdrawal of fiscal governmental incentives, political instability, war, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property, and general economic conditions affecting our business and industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. We may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by us or on our behalf. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171204005618/en/

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Goodwin Announces Winners of Inaugural Diversity Fellowship Scholarship Awards

Goodwin today announced the winners of the inaugural Diversity Fellowship Scholarship Awards named in honor of Goodwin lawyers and diversity champions Wayne A. Budd, Marian A. Tse, Richard A. Soden and Paul W. Lee. Designed to increase diversity at Goodwin and in the legal profession, these scholarships, as part of the firm's overall Diversity Fellowship Program, help law students defray the cost of law school tuition.

The 2017 scholarship recipients are:

Arturo Cruz, Boston University School of Law

Brittany Nieves, Boston University School of Law

Dennis Craig, Georgetown University Law Center

Dylan Lonergan, New York University School of Law

Natalie Minois, University of North Carolina School of Law

Grace Truong, Harvard Law School

"Wayne Budd, Marian Tse, Richard Soden and Paul Lee are diversity poneers who have made exemplary contributions to our law firm and the legal community," said David Hashmall, Goodwin's Chairman and head of the firm's Inclusion Advisory Committee. "They are tireless mentors for our young lawyers, as well as our leaders, and are devoted to enhancing the careers of others."







Cruz and Nieves were also Goodwin 1L Diversity Fellows and received an award of $10,000 to help cover expenses while working in a public interest law position during the summer after their first year of law school. As part of this scholarship program, named in honor of Wayne A. Budd and Marian A. Tse, they will each receive an additional $10,000 toward tuition for their third year of law school.

Craig, Lonergan, Minois and Truong, as winners of the Richard A. Soden and Paul W. Lee scholarships, will each receive a $15,000 award to offset the expenses of their legal education.

Each scholarship winner will join Goodwin as a summer associate in 2018, with two joining the firm's Boston office, two joining in Washington, D.C., and two in New York City.

"We created these scholarships to complement our other diversity-focused recruiting and retention initiatives," said Sabrina Rose-Smith, Chair of [email protected]. "These talented students exemplify accomplishment, leadership and dedication, and these awards represent our investment in the future of these young leaders."

Additional information about Goodwin's diversity fellowships is available on the firm's website and via email to [email protected].

About Goodwin

At Goodwin, we use law to achieve unprecedented results for our clients. Our 1,000 plus lawyers across the United States, Europe, and Asia excel at complex transactions, high-stakes litigations and world-class advisory services in the financial, life sciences, private equity, real estate, and technology industries. We partner with our clients to practice law with integrity, ingenuity, agility and ambition. To learn more, visit us at www.goodwinlaw.com and follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) at @goodwinlaw and on LinkedIn.

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[December 04, 2017] CadmiumCD Named Top Event Technology Company by Industry, Community, and Employees

FOREST HILL, Md., Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Event technology company CadmiumCD celebrates an award-winning 2017. Industry, community, and employees recently aligned to give this company recognition for their business growth, industry products, and employee satisfaction.

1. CadmiumCD is a Leader in Business The Inc. 5000 List For the second year in a row, Inc. recognized CadmiumCD as among this prestigious group. This year, CadmiumCD landed as #1929 on the list, with a 200% growth over the past three years. They also received an additional Inc. 5000 honor as #25 in the Top Baltimore Companies category. The Deloitte Technology Fast 500 The T echnology Fast 500 is an award program sponsored by Deloitte that recognizes 500 of the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, and energy tech companies in North America. This year, CadmiumCD landed as #387 on the list with a 3-year growth rate of 200%.



2. CadmiumCD is a Leader in the Events Industry IAEE Art of the Show

CadmiumCD took first place in the Most Innovative Use of Technology category for their work with the WVC 89th Annual Conference. CadmiumCD launched an enhanced version of the eventScribe App called eventScribe Boost. The app gave meeting planners, speakers, and staff an extra layer of tools that delivered a more relevant experience to each stakeholder. 3. CadmiumCD is a Leader in Company Culture Baltimore Magazine Top Workplaces The Baltimore Suns Top Workplaces list determines the best companies to work for in the greater Baltimore region. 92% of all CadmiumCD employees in the Baltimore metro area responded to the Top Workplaces survey, which was over 40% more than other participating companies. This year, CadmiumCD was ranked Number 40 on the list for its values, effectiveness, culture, and leadership. CadmiumCDs Future Michelle Wyatt, CadmiumCD CEO and Co-Founder, says that these awards are representative of CadmiumCDs future as a company. Many of our clients manage their own awards programs through the Scorecard product, Wyatt says. We know how vigorous the review process is, and just how difficult it is to win. Getting recognition in three unique areas tells me that CadmiumCD is headed in the right direction. We as a company are making decisions toward a common goal  internally for employees, for our clients, and for the industry. Wyatt says that CadmiumCD will continue to do what they do best: hire good people and provide relevant solutions to meeting planners and their various stakeholders. *Read the full story here. About CadmiumCD More than 3,500 meeting professionals worldwide trust CadmiumCDs award-winning software. The myCadmium platform empowers users to collect, manage and share content to all event stakeholders through its modules: Call for Abstracts, Speaker & Exhibitor Data Management, Digital Content Publication, Audio Recordings, Digital Poster Galleries, Online Itinerary Planners, Interactive Floor Plans, Native Event Apps, and Post-Conference Evaluations. For more information about CadmiumCD, visit www.CadmiumCD.com or email [email protected]

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[December 04, 2017] Orthopaedic Institute for Children Awards $200,000 Grant to Further the Dreams of Students at Orthopaedic Medical Magnet High School

The Orthopaedic Institute for Children (OIC) has awarded a $200,000 grant to Orthopaedic Medical Magnet High School (OMMHS) to help further the dreams and educational opportunities of its students. "Orthopaedic Medical Magnet High School provides students from the inner city and surrounding areas of Los Angeles with a greater chance of success in life and the opportunities to make meaningful contributions to society," said Anthony Scaduto, M.D., president and CEO of OIC. "Those who choose healthcare professions, whether as doctors, nurses, researchers or technicians, will continue OIC's proud tradition of making a difference in the world; and we are happy to be able to support their dreams in this way." The partnership between OIC and OMMHS has a long history. Representatives from OIC are active in the Los Angeles Unified School District's advisory committee to the school, while OIC physicians and scientists participate in the design of the curriculum. After-school programs, summerinternships and volunteer opportunities at OIC give students exposure to many careers in healthcare and research. In addition, representatives from OIC hold regular seminars to discuss career options with students, while researchers and other staff members assist students with their science fair projects.



Opened in 2004, the Orthopaedic Medical Magnet High School has a graduation rate of 95 percent. It currently has enrollment of more than 800 students of which 99 percent are minorities (93 percent Hispanic) and 97 percent economically disadvantaged. It is located at 300 West 23rd Street, adjacent to OIC's downtown Los Angeles campus. About Orthopaedic Institute for Children

Orthopaedic Institute for Children (OIC) was founded in 1911 as Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital. Focused solely on musculoskeletal conditions in children, OIC receives 60,000 patient visits each year. In alliance with UCLA Health and with the support of the OIC Foundation, we advance pediatric orthopaedics worldwide through outstanding patient care, medical education and research. Our locations in downtown Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Westwood and Calexico treat the full spectrum of pediatric orthopaedic disorders and injuries. For more information, visit us at ortho-institute.org. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171204005214/en/

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[December 04, 2017] Breakthrough Tech Could Save Trillions in Tax Payer Dollars

LONDON, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Everyone's heard the story about the government's promise to spend $1 trillion on fixing America's aging critical infrastructure. But there's another big money story that few investors know of. Trump's trillion-dollar pledge won't come close to fixing our infrastructure. It'll take $3.6 trillion to make this happen. And in the midst of this infrastructure crisis, one little-known company has launched an artificial intelligence coup that could save us billions. Included in today's commentary: TransCanada Corporation (NYSE: TRP), Blackberry Ltd. (NYSE: BB), Celestica Inc. (NYSE: CLS), Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE: LMT), Methode Electronics Inc (NYSE: MEI). Consider the dire straits of a massive network of critical infrastructure that industries, the environment and human lives all count on, every minute of every day: U.S. dams are failing from coast to coast: 15,500 of our 90,500 dams now a high-hazard potential for public safety and the economy and it will take $60 billion to fix them.

to fix them. 180,000 people were recently evacuated in California because of fears that the largest dam in the U.S. would collapse.

because of fears that the largest dam in the U.S. would collapse. Pipelines have caused almost 9,000 significant accidents in only 30 years, hitting us with $8.5 billion in damages, killing hundreds and injuring thousands.

in damages, killing hundreds and injuring thousands. The U.S. spends almost $3 billion every year just cleaning up spills in our waterways.

every year just cleaning up spills in our waterways. The over 140 oil refineries in the U.S. are potential disasters waiting to happen, with more than 500 accidents since 1994, and explosions killing and threatening millions with fatal toxins. A huge amount of money has been spent on remote sensing equipment to monitor 2.5 million miles of pipeline, over 90,000 dams, and 7.2 million miles of electric power lines. The amount of data collected isnt just big, its incomprehensible. One little-known company has stepped in to turn critical infrastructure big data on its head. The company is Carl Data Solutions (CRL; CDTAF), and its proprietary new Internet remote monitoring technology could be the difference between a 7-day advance warning of a major disaster and a billion-dollar catastrophe. In a remote monitoring market that will be worth over $27 billion by 2023, Carl Data is leading the next phase of the revolution. By 2020, more than 50 billion devices will be connected to this network, and Carl Data plans to turn the massive amounts of data they collect into an actionable and profitable-early-warning system. Here are 5 reasons to keep a close eye on Carl Data Solutions (CRL; CDTAF) #1 Protecting a $153-Billion Market The critical infrastructure protection market should be worth over $153 billion by 2022. And the remote sensing services market, which makes much of the data-collection possible, is expected to more than double from $10.68 billion this year to $21.62 billion in just three years. Not only is Carl Data positioning itself to disrupt these two huge markets, but it's also throwing a lifeline to multi-billion-dollar industry verticals: The oil pipeline industry brings in $11 billion in revenue

in revenue Water supply and irrigation systems in the US generate $77 billion in revenue

in revenue US gas pipeline transportation boasts $24 billion in revenue

in revenue The electric power transmission system in the US brings in a whopping $380 billion in revenue. The pipeline monitoring systems market alone is expected to double from US$4.13 billion in 2015 to US$8.72 billion in 2026. And this is just one market segment within the overall critical infrastructure monitoring sector. From Toronto to LA and Dallas; and from municipalities, engineering firms and massive infrastructure operators at every vertical, Carl Data has the potential of turning the big data industry upside down. Carl Data's AI system can predict events that may lead to critical infrastructure failures up to seven days into the future. It can use AI to compare past storm events to weather predictions to forecast whether a future storm might cause a major incident at one of America's many aging and high-hazard potential dams-before they fail.



#2 Taking North America by Cloud For major cities with aging infrastructure, it's not enough to have a bunch of sensors collecting data. You have to know what the data is telling you, and in order to do that, you have to have ultra sophisticated analytics capabilities. That's exactly what Carl Data (CRL; CDTAF) is doing for a host of North American cities where critical infrastructure is crippled by age. And its client list is big and getting bigger. This is a massive data platform that is built to service absolutely any and every industry vertical. For oil and gas stream crossings, and major pipeline operators like Kinder Morgan, Enbridge, Husky and Trans Caada, Carl Data would be essential as it uses flow and stability sensors to monitor where the pipeline crosses the stream in real-time, alerting engineers via cell phone immediately if thresholds are threatening breach. For Kinder Morgan's 1,300 LNG stream crossings in British Columbia alone, monitoring is critical.



#3 American Critical Infrastructure is Dangerously Failing More cities, and more industries should be lining up soon because this predictive data solution comes at a desperate time for American infrastructure, which earns a woeful D+ on its report card.

The country's more than 90,000 dams represent a major threat to public safety and the economy, with nearly 15,500 already considered high-hazard potential in 2016. And that's just one part of our massive critical infrastructure. From the Deepwater Horizon immolation that killed 11 workers and released 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico to the Anacortes Tesoro oil refinery explosion and the collapse of West Virginia coal mine that killed 29 miners, public safety has been comprised. And that was only in 2010-and all in a single month, April. Bigger and better monitoring measures are critical, and Carl Data Solutions not only uses the latest in artificial intelligence to alert critical infrastructure operators to impending disasters, but it is predictive-enabling a response before situations become life-threatening. For America's bursting dams, having a 7-day lead time on a pending disaster might be the difference between life and death, and could save operators tens of millions in catastrophic clean-up fees, lawsuits and damage control. #4 Multiple-Billion $ Industries Can Avoid Massive Liability One of the biggest selling points for Carl Data (CRL; CDTAF) is the huge savings its predictive solutions could mean for some of our biggest industries. A major dam failure can cost on average over $700 million in damages and close to $2 billion for clean-up. Penn West reported 93 pipeline failures in 2013 and 112 pipeline failures in 2012. One of those failures cost it $4.3 million. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill will cost an estimated $61.6 billion once all lawsuits are over.

once all lawsuits are over. The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill cost $3.8 billion -so far (and counting)

-so far (and counting) The 2015 El Capitan State Beach Spill in California cost $62 million . And those are just the biggest spills. Insurance companies have risk management consultants on the prowl for tools like Carl Data's patented system to help manage risk because they insure resource development projects, and want to prevent paying out on insurance claims. That's why Carl Data's revenue could be poised for a major boost. With the potential to tap into most industries that collect data, Carl Data already has a strong pipeline for this year, and increased revenues by over 30% from 2016 to 2017. #5 Big Data Visionaries, Big Business Brains While everyone was blindsided by the remote sensing bonanza, Carl Data CEO Greg Johnston was looking into the future. What to actually do with all that data to make it work for us. He had a big idea that he's since turned into a small-cap company with a very large-cap potential. The real gold mine is the data, not the sensors. And in Johnston's words: "We're turning the industry on its head". Johnston's idea was hard-hitting and unique. He set out to create a system that can work with any hardware vendor, giving Carl Data a rare advantage. Once it's set up, it spoon-feeds critical data to clients-filtered and relevant and in time to fix problems and avert disaster. Carl Data is about Greg Johnston's vision, and the high-tech team he put together to disrupt the future. Johnston is the former director of ecommerce marketing for Global Hyatt Corporation, where he increased online revenue by 34 percent.

CTO Piotr Stepinski is a high-level software engineer with a major track record in Kainos, Atena and Telzas and he is the tech architect for Carl Data.

is a high-level software engineer with a major track record in Kainos, Atena and Telzas and he is the tech architect for Carl Data. Director Chris Johnston , a professional engineer, is the co-founder of Flowworks.

, a professional engineer, is the co-founder of Flowworks. VP of Business Development Kevin Marsh led the industry's first successful efforts to commercialize an IoT-based Data-as-a-Service solution, overseeing its rapid market adoption.

Director Craig Tennock is a veteran civil and structural engineer who was awarded the Order of Merit by Industry Canada for designing and implementing a new way to measure open channel flow with greater accuracy. The expert management team and board has major successes behind the in launching award-winning data solutions, start-up ventures and Fortune 500 consumer programs. And they are heavily invested in Carl Data, with over 80 percent insider ownership. And the momentum is building as fast as data collection. Even more companies and governments have lined up for this proprietary technology over the past few weeks. Even better: Carl Data recently announced that its revenue could double next year. The rapid news flow and the critical timing could make this a prime target for acquisition, and investors who already have Carl Data on their radar will have noticed GE's recent $207.5-million acquisition of a similar company. Big Data is Big Money. Actionable Data is even Bigger Money. With technology that could save infrastructure companies billions in clean-up costs, even more in liability, and keep reputations intact, Carl Data (CRL: CDTAF) is poised for leadership in the critical infrastructure cloud.



Honorable Mentions :



TransCanada (NYSE:TRP) owns and operates energy infrastructure throughout North America. It is one of the continent's largest providers of gas storage, and owns and has interests in approximately 11,800 megawatts of power generations.



Blackberry Ltd. (NYSE:BB): Many don't realize that Blackberry is actually providing mobile cybersecurity for government agencies worldwide. It's also playing security consultant. A major victory for BB came in July when it won the right to sell its secure messaging tools to the U.S. government.



Celestica Inc. (NYSE:CLS) is a manufacturer of electrical devices used in IT, telecommunications, healthcare, defense and aerospace industries. The company has seen strong growth YoY which we expect to continue as the sales expectations are almost 3% better than last year's.



Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) is an American global aerospace, defense, security and advanced technologies company with worldwide interests. While Lockheed reported lower than expected third-quarter earnings, the company remains an interesting target for investors who bet on increased geopolitical tensions.



Methode Electronics Inc (NYSE:MEI): Methode, a global manufacturer of electronic components and subsystems, including wireless and sensing technologies, is also set to take advantage of the boom in big data and critical infrastructure monitoring. By: Ian Jenkins Legal Disclaimer/Disclosure: This piece is an advertorial and has been paid for. The company paid ninety thousand Dollars for this article and banner ads. This document is not and should not be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for any investment. No information in this Report should be construed as individualized investment advice. A licensed financial advisor should be consulted prior to making any investment decision. We make no guarantee, representation or warranty and accept no responsibility or liability as to its accuracy or completeness. Expressions of opinion are those of Safehaven.com only and are subject to change without notice. Safehaven.com assumes no warranty, liability or guarantee for the current relevance, correctness or completeness of any information provided within this Report and will not be held liable for the consequence of reliance upon any opinion or statement contained herein or any omission. Furthermore, we assume no liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage or, in particular, for lost profit, which you may incur as a result of the use and existence of the information, provided within this Report DISCLAIMER: Safehaven.com is Source of all content listed above. FN Media Group, LLC (FNM), is a third party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated in any manner with Safehaven.com or any company mentioned herein. The commentary, views and opinions expressed in this release by Safehaven.com are solely those of Safehaven.com and are not shared by and do not reflect in any manner the views or opinions of FNM. FNM is not liable for any investment decisions by its readers or subscribers. FNM and its affiliated companies are a news dissemination and financial marketing solutions provider and are NOT a registered broker/dealer/analyst/adviser, holds no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security. FNM was not compensated by any public company mentioned herein to disseminate this press release. FNM HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and FNM undertakes no obligation to update such statements.

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[December 04, 2017] Reynolds' Bike Build Demonstrates Spirit of Giving, Military Appreciation

HOUSTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Reynolds associates and their families gathered at the Houston offices of Reynolds and Reynolds for an annual tradition Saturday, Dec. 2, as they assembled more than 100 bicycles for the children of Texas-based military personnel. Reynolds also held a Bike Build Dec. 2 at the company's headquarters in Dayton, Ohio. "The Bike Build is an opportunity to recognize military families and to involve our families in the spirit of giving," said Jim Wright, vice president at Reynolds who was on hand at the Bike Build. "It's become one of the highlights of the holiday season at Reynolds." Receiving the bikes this year: the United States Marine Corps Reserve 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion, based out of Galveston, Texas. The 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion operates Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAV) to carry Marines from ship to shore during an assault on an enemy-held beach, as well as to transport infantry inland. Members of the 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion assisted in rescue and recovery operations in the Houston and Beaumont areas following Hurricane Harvey in August and September.



"These are the same service members who were called up from the Galveston base during Hurricane Harvey," Wright said. "They helped Houstonians during and after the storms, and we are proud to give back to them in this small way for the holiday season." Each year, Reynolds purchases and donates the bikes for the Bike Build. Reynolds employees and their families assemble all the bikes, which can range from 12-inch bikes with training wheels to 26-inch multi-speed bicycles.

About Reynolds

The Reynolds and Reynolds Company is one of the automotive industry's leading providers of software, services, and document solutions to help automotive retailers improve business results. With 4,300 associates worldwide, Reynolds is headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, with major U.S. operations in Houston and College Station, Texas, and Celina, Ohio, as well as operations in Canada, in the U.K., and across Europe. (www.reyrey.com) View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/reynolds-bike-build-demonstrates-spirit-of-giving-military-appreciation-300566151.html SOURCE The Reynolds and Reynolds Company

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[December 04, 2017] GlassView Drives Awareness for the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids with Impactful Social Video Campaign

NEW YORK, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- GlassView, the world's largest independent video platform, drove increased awareness and engagement for the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids' work supporting families struggling with their son or daughter's substance use, with a video campaign aimed at reaching millennial parents. Securing the attention of busy young parents, GlassView strategically placed the nonprofit's video featuring parents' stories of their children's experiences with substance use on top-tier media outlets. "It is very exciting to be able to partner with the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids on this campaign, which can create real change," said James J. Brooks Jr., Founder and CEO of GlassView. "There's nothing like the power of video to share compelling messages that really make a difference, and we are thrilled to be able to leverage that power to support the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids' important mission." "GlassView helped us directly reach time-pressed parents by bringing our video message where they are online," said Kristi Rowe, Chief Marketing Officer for Partnership for Drug-Free Kids. "We are fortunate to work with GlassView to ensure our important message reaches audiences where it can make the greatest impact for parents and families." The campaign included placements in key outlets, Parents and Martha Stewart, two trusted media brands, that promoted the Partnership's message to oms navigating their way through parenthood. For Parents, the organization's message was presented to readers looking for advice about making decisions for healthy living. Some 41 percent of Martha Stewart's audience, meanwhile, has children at home.



The placement helped the Partnership's campaign to reach a click-through rate of 2.7X over the industry benchmark and a completion rate that was 88 percent above the industry benchmark. About GlassView

GlassView's mission is to ensure clients' videos appear on top-tier sites reaching the most engaged influential audiences. Best known for delivering the highest level of performance, the GlassView social video platform offers access to over 1.5 billion unique users worldwide, and over 250 million unique users in the United States (comscore Nov 2016), reaching 98% of the connected country. The GlassView team and Board of Directors features executives from Conde Nast, MediaCom, and LVMH. Launched in 2015, GlassView is headquartered in New York City and has offices around the world including Singapore, Tokyo and London. For more information on GlassView, please visit www.glassview.com

About the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids

Partnership for Drug-Free Kids is committed to helping families struggling with their son or daughter's substance use. We empower families with information, support and guidance to get the help their loved one needs and deserves. On our website, drugfree.org, and through our Parent Helpline (1-855-DRUGFREE), we provide families with direct support and guidance to help them address teen substance use. Finally, we build healthy communities, advocating for greater understanding and more effective programs to treat the disease of addiction. As a national nonprofit, we depend on donations from individuals, corporations, foundations and the public sector and are thankful to SAG-AFTRA and the advertising and media industries for their ongoing generosity. We are proud to receive a Four-Star rating from Charity Navigator, America's largest and most-utilized independent evaluator of charities, as well as a National Accredited Charity Seal from The Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/glassview-drives-awareness-for-the-partnership-for-drug-free-kids-with-impactful-social-video-campaign-300566167.html SOURCE GlassView

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FSP has been quite active lately, releasing one PSU line after the other. Now the company has introduced the fresh Hydro GE line, which consists of three members with capacities ranging from 450W to 650W. All are fully modular with stealth and flat modular cables, 80 PLUS Gold certification, and the droplet-shaped thermal design of the Hydro G models. Lastly, the cooling fan has a 135mm diameter and uses a hydro dynamic bearing.

All Hydro GE units have a single +12V rail, which looks to be the preferred choice for most users nowadays, and according to FSP, at the internals of those PSUs only Japanese electrolytic caps are used. There is no mention however on the exact model of those caps, and as the most informed of you probably know, there are also low-end Japanese caps featuring a shorter lifetime compared to high-end Taiwanese caps. So the description "Japanese caps" is mostly a marketing term for most brands rather than a strong asset for the product, unless of course the manufacturer indeed uses high quality Japanese caps and not some low-end models. In our opinion, the major asset of Japanese caps is that you can take seriously the manufacturer's life expectancy claims, something that might not be so accurate in Taiwanese caps and in most cases is highly inaccurate in Chinese caps.

The Hydro GE units come replete with all the necessary protection features included, and the provided warranty is satisfactory at five years, with a two-year period for rapid replacement of the PSU according to FSP. Another interesting point is that FSP provides some spare side stickers in the bundle, which you can use to change the PSU's looks. The 450W model provides a couple of PCIe connectors and a single EPS connector, while the 550W and 650W models retain the single EPS connector but have four PCIe connectors. With a quick look at the specs of those units, we also noticed the larger-than-normal dimensions with a 17cm depth (the same with the Hydro G models). In this downsizing era, it is weird to see low- and mid-capacity PSUs with longer than 16cm chassis. Not that a 17cm depth is long enough to create any compatibility problems, though.

Unfortunately, FSP didn't provide any information about the expected availability dates in the U.S. or share the products' prices. We estimate that the street prices of the Hydro GE PSUs should be within the $60-$90 range.
"I believe that most people are kind, compassionate and giving. But those other ones, the minority of folks who are insecure, inhumane, and petty, are sure more visible right now. Most men do not treat women in the vile ways of Matt Lauer, Louis CK, Harvey Weinstein and the like . . ."
Kansas City Season Of Scams

Online purchase scams have doubled in the Kansas City area KANSAS CITY, Mo. - In the past three to four months online purchase scams have doubled in the Kansas City area, according to the Better Business Bureau. The organization had some tips for online shoppers.

Locals Cope With 2017 Disasters

Disaster Follow-Up; The Honorary Consulates Of Kansas City Three months have passed since a series of hurricanes rocked the Caribbean and the U.S. mainland. But are things improving? Today, Kansas Citians with loved ones affected by this year's bout of natural disasters give us an update on how recovery efforts are progressing.

Sleaze Scummit Tax Warning

Deadline to pay county property taxes is approaching. Here's where you can pay taxes Jackson County taxpayers, take note: The deadline to pay 2017 property taxes is coming up this month. If you live in the city of Lee's Summit, residents can pay their tax bill at City Hall. The city of Lee's Summit reminded residents in a Nov.

Celebrate Kansas City Medical Industrial Complex Building Boom

Children's Mercy seeks approval for Hospital Hill research tower - Kansas City Business Journal The Kansas City Plan Commission on Tuesday is scheduled to consider a development plan that would allow Children's Mercy to add a nine-story research tower to its Hospital Hill campus. Designed by BSA LifeStructures, which is based in Indianapolis but has an Overland Park office, the building will be constructed above an existing eight-level parking garage with four above-grade floors.

Fear Broke-Ass Kansas End Game

Show-Me Lesson In Lingering Doubts

Missouri BoE Member: Next Education Leader Will be 'tainted' "There will never be a way to disconnect the new person from the way Commissioner Vandeven's tenure ended,"

Bitter Realization For Kansas City Fanboys

The Kansas City Chiefs stink As the closing seconds of the Kansas City Chiefs loss to the New York Jets ticked away on Sunday, the CBS announcer declared "and the funk continues for K.C.". It certainly did continue on Sunday as the New York Jets out paced the Chiefs to a final score of 38-31.

One of our favorite pr0n stars calls herselfas she works to balance career, family and social media hotness in a way that inspires this blast of even more Kansas City news for right now . . .And this is thefor right now . . .
A CREW OF KILLERS ARE STILL ON THE LOOSE AFTER A DEADLY ATTACK NEAR WESTPORT!!!













Round-up of the latest local killing and a reminder about the uptick in local violence amid the holiday season.Moreover . . .Here's the roundup:Police have not yet released a detailed description of the suspects. Please call theif you have any information that could help police in their investigation.Developing . . .
KC city manager's power of the purse doesn't fly in other cities Just about any time Phoenix officials want to spend more than $8,600 taxpayer dollars, they must go to the City Council for approval. By that standard, Kansas City Manager Troy Schulte and his department heads enjoy a blank check.

Possibly one of the most worthless articles we've seen from the paper that's only "news" to people who know absolutely nothing about how KCMO government works. Fact is, the deep pockets of the City Manager have been a longstanding complaint and the only deets to be garnered from this note is that there's increasing push back against embattled bureaucratRead more:
Kansas City Carjacking Instant Karma

Carjacking suspects arrested after crashing into building, fleeing The Kansas City Police Department says two suspects have been taken into custody after a carjacking and crash Sunday night. Police said two carjacking suspects crashed a vehicle into a building near 24th and Quincy Sunday night. They then fled to the nearby Brighton Place apartments.

Kansas City Hacking Hard Time

Former Sysadmin Caught Hacking His Ex-Employer by His Replacement On Wednesday, November 29, a Kansas City court sentenced a Missouri man to six years in federal prison without parole for hacking his former employer, stealing trade secrets, and for accessing child pornography.

Meth Town Lunch Lady Big Money

Fired Independence cafeteria worker wins $340,000 lawsuit A former high school cafeteria worker has won a $340,000 judgment in her lawsuit alleging she was discriminated against by the Independence School District. Amy Stubbs filed the lawsuit after she was fired as a cook in the cafeteria at William Chrisman High School in May 2015. Her daughter attended the school.

Local Charity Dude Hard Times

Taking it to the streets founder severely burned in grill accident A man who is known for community service in the Kansas City area, now needs help of his own.

How To Live Around Kansas City On $100K

What Living On $100,000 A Year Looks Like A central question of debate leading up to the Senate's passage of a sweeping tax overhaul plan asked which Americans need a boost. Economists say the Republicans' selling point for previous iterations of their legislation, that the plan is designed to benefit the middle class, has a shaky foundation - that the rich are the big winners.

Metro Suburban Crime Scene

Grandview police investigating rash of car break-ins GRANDVIEW, Mo. -- Grandview Police are looking for the person or people responsible for breaking into about a dozen vehicles in the city's Southview neighborhood. Residents reported car break-ins and destruction of property that occurred sometime between Nov. 29 and Dec. 1. "Most criminals commit what we call crimes of opportunity.

Holiday Season Hand Up For Youngsters

Santa steps out early to help Operation Breakthrough Santa is coming to Johnson County early this year, and he's coming with toys for Operation Breakthrough.

TKC Recommended Art Link Today

Matt Bollinger's America We are unseen visitors in a world largely devoid of primary colors. When we do see these colors, it is because it is on the label on a bottle of bleach or laundry detergent.

This evening we are inspired byas we offer this collection of a great many Kansas City MSM links for late night readers.Take a look:And this is thefor tonight . . .
Court documents show Missouri man made bomb threats against local Jewish organizations A federal criminal complaint was filed Friday against a Urich, Missouri man who made bomb threats against several Jewish organizations, including local Jewish sites. Ford Coots, 25, is charged with assaulting a federal officer during the investigation.

Reality check and documentation of increased hate crimes in the Heartland. Read more:
Citizens For Responsible Government Kansas City: Hotel hits a major bump! Heroines step forward!

NOT ONE OF THE ANNOUNCED OR ANTICIPATED TO ANNOUNCE CANDIDATES FOR MAYOR STEPPED FORWARD TO CHALLENGE THE INCOMPLETE CONVENTION HOTEL PROSPECTUS.

Earlier this week our. . . And now, tax fighters are taking up the cause . . .CFRG believes no bonding company will issue bonds as long as the ordinance #170961 is on the books. This ordinance was introduced by three Councilwomen with the guts to ask the tough questions. Other councilpersons retreated into their attorney stance or their developer persona with questions like when will you guys be back?. They looked shocked as these three ladies pushed for answers. The ordinance should guarantee those answers are produced. Of course the city will try to stop the ordinance. Which brings us to the question:Who are you going to vote for mayor? The Star has shown their early favorite; more of the same. They have elected not to cover this story because it doesnt fit with City Hall directives, more sheeple with shock collars attached.This should tell us none of the announced candidates have what it takes to be Mayor. Theyre all afraid of the big bad wolf. Remember this when election time comes, we will remind you. You cannot be easily intimidated and be mayor of Kansas City.The three amigos,. They questioned How could the LCRA and the TIF Commission approve this incomplete prospectus? There is page after page left totally blank, spaces ________ left empty on many pages, missing dates and signatures yet both of these city agencies rubber stamped the project just like good little sheeple. They know if they dont the Mayor will push their shock collar button and remove them from their commission.Thank goodness for. They are the only ones looking out for the taxpayer on this deal. If you read the incomplete documents there are statements like: "The LCRA.. (which in essence is the City, which IS YOU THE TAXPAYER), is not obligated to raise any form of taxation... What it doesnt say is the LCRA cant raise taxes to pay for the bonds if necessary. The LCRA is going to own this hotel and that is you the taxpayer. If all goes south, which is the current history of these deals, the taxpayers could very easily be stuck.are looking for key parts of the deal like occupancy rate projections (room nights). The question:The chart below shows occupancy rates in Kansas City run between 55% and 60%. There have been over 1,000 rooms added in Kansas City since this chart was completed, so the occupancy rate could even be running lower. When asked about the price for a one night stay, the developers stumbled around and finally came up with $175.00 per night. Local hotel operators tell us this might not be out of line two years down the road but it will not hold for convention business which generally negotiate lower rates. How do you propose to pay for an 800 room hotel costing probably close to $400MM before all is said and done? How many room nights per year will you have at the $175 rate? What is your anticipated annual income and what are your annual expenses? Are there dollars left to cover the debt? Where are these projections?Remember a large portion of these loans are being repaid by TIFs.Developers will tell you this deal was done before the Lucas Rule but it really is a totally different company today than it was back then. It even has a different name. Of course they dont want anyone to figure that out as it might instigate another petition to put the project on the ballot.TIFs take money from schools, libraries, disadvantaged individuals, zoo, etc It is important we have all the facts and a sound feeling of comfort before we rubber stamp this deal.Please encourageto continue their fight on behalf of the KCMO taxpayers. Be prepared to challenge City Hall if they attempt to negate this ordinance, which they will do.###############You decide . . .
"Morning Glory Ministries (MGM) helps to meet the needs of the poor, needy, and homeless in downtown Kansas City. It is a part of The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, (AKA the Gold Dome) and has been active for over 40 years. Their mission is to make the lives of those in distress better. Many poor and homeless need a hot meal. Other needs may be more specific, like clothing for for a new job, or an I.D. or bus pass. Morning Glory is here to assist those in need and provide volunteer opportunities to anyone willing to be the hands and feet of Christ!"

On this Sunday night amid the holiday season we celebrate the spirit of beauty, love and truth not only withamid our ongoingbut also we direct attention to the less fortunate in Kansas City and so many people dedicated to helping their fellow humankind . . .More info . . .God Bless.
Man wrongly convicted of murder in KCK rescinds RSVP to tree lighting ceremony KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Lamonte McIntyre, the Kansas City, Kansas, man who spent 23 years behind bars for a double murder he did not commit, cancelled his RSVP to light the mayor's Christmas tree. Lamonte McIntyre was freed from prison earlier this year.

This local dude has a right to be angry and also reminds us that relatives also haven't forgotten our misdeeds this holiday season. Read more:
The knowhow of the production of Chios mastic is considered, since 2014, an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and is protected by UNESCO

Most probably, human beings have been chewing natural gum from trees or bushes much earlier than the period from which we have written evidence. We find the earliest references to mastic in Orphic Hymns andthe texts of Theophrastus, who was a botanist and philosopher of Classical times. There are also the juices from which come frankincense and myrrh; for these too are gums; and a similar substance forms on schinos and the spinous plant called ixine, from both mastic-gum [mastihe] is made. (Plants History IX 1.2).

Mastic is the resin from schinos bush, Pistacia lentiscus var. chia, that grows on Chios island, a member of the tree family thatincludes pistachio and terebinth trees. Mastiha, the crystallized tears of mastic bushes, belongs to the resin group.The croping procedures from aromatic resin producing bushes are described in Theophrastus work.

The most known resins, frankincense and myrrh, also mentioned by Theophrastus, are the gifts the Three Kings (wise men) gave to humanity, along with gold, which indicates their great worth and value. Theophrastus mentions that the pure balsam resin [of Syria] sells for twice its weight in silver. We know that during the Ottoman rule on Chios, mastic was worth its weight in gold. The external wall line of the mastichochoria of Chios houses formed high walls,without openings at street level, fortifying thus the mastic producing villages. In order to save the precious tears from invaders these villages were entered only by ladders.

By order of the sultan the penalty for stealing mastic was execution. In the Ottoman harem and still in the traditional Turkish cuisine mastic is widely used in desserts such as Turkish delight (lokum) and ice cream (dondurma), in puddings such as sutlac, in salep and in soft drinks. Turkish coffee is also sometimes flavored with mastic. In the sultans harems mastic was highly valued as a breath freshener and a tooth whitener. Mastic was then so precious that during the 1822 Chios Massacre, when52.000 Chios inhabitants were massacred and 50000 enslaved as a revenge for the Greek Revolution, the people of the Mastichochoria region were spared by the sultan, because they provided mastic. The Turkish name for the island of Chios, Sakiz Adasi, means island of gum.

Another legend that highlights the value of mastic refers to a fruitless trip of Christopher Columbus. Returning from this trip to Cuba, Columbus brought to the Queen of Spain a mastic bush, saying that he it found there, along with rare spices and exotic trees. Chios at that time was under the Genovese rule. Columbus, being a Genovese, knew the bush, the production procedure of mastic as well as its value, as he had visited Chios island in the past. By this trick, he tried to add value to his fruitless trip with the aim to persuade the Queen to continue funding him.

In Byzantine times mastic trade was the emperors monopoly, and brought the sap to every corner of the Empire. Mastic was used in Arab medicinal recipes for its digestive properties, in English aristocracy drinks, in Christian and Muslim incenses.

Today in Greece mastic flavors bread,kaimaki ice cream and the traditional ypovrichio (submarine) spoon sweet. Recently high-quality mastic liquors and distillers are produced. Mastic drinks existed in antiquity as well. We read the first mastic drink recipe in Marcus Gaius Roman Cookbook. The drink was made of wine, honey, pepper, laurel leaves, saffron, and mastic. All ingredients were boiled together and the drink was served either cold or warm. Roman emperors used mastic along with honey, pepper, and egg in the spiced wine conditum paradoxum.

The word mastic comes from the ancient Greek verb mastichao, which means to chew. The name suggests that mastic trees resin has been used as chewing gum. The first reference to mastic tears was by Hippocrates, who used mastic for the prevention of digestive problems, of colds and as a breath freshener. Dioscurides, the first-century Greek physician, refers to the healing properties of mastic in his book De Materia Medica. Galenus mentions that mastic is useful for bronchitis and for improving the condition of the blood.

Mastic contains antioxidants and has antibacterial and antifungal properties. Recent studies have shown that it can cure peptic ulcers by killing helicobacter pylori bacteria and that high consumption of Chios mastic powder results in decreased levels of total serum cholesterol, LDL, total cholesterol/HDL ratio. Chewing mastic reduces oral bacteria and has some value in preventing tooth decay and gingivitis.

The knowhow of the production of Chios mastic is considered, since 2014, an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and is protected by UNESCO.

A lot of people like chewing gums. Its better to choose the natural and healthier Chios gum than the artificial ones.

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: Ailinaleixo License: CC-BY-SA

Source: thenationalherald.com
A total of 25 immigrants were arrested on Sunday night after attempting to occupy the Sappho square on the Greek island of Lesvos. The immigrants, 20 Algerians, 2 Moroccans, 2 Tunisians and a Libyan tried to set up tents in the central square of Mytilene demanding their asylum applications be expedited.

According to the police report filed, they tried to take over the area and set up tents in an effort to push for their transfer to another area in the mainland. Of the 25 arrested, the public prosecutors office released 9 as they were under-aged, while the remaining 16 will stand trial on Monday.

Meanwhile, the occupation of the party offices of SYRIZA by 35 Afghan refugees is continuing for a 10th day in a row. They are requesting their immediate transfer to Athens.

German mass daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung referred to a growing trend of voluntary repatriations of third country migrants stranded in Greece.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Jebulon License: CC-BY-SA

Source: protothema.gr
The largest and most prestigious gathering of Islamic banking and finance leaders in the world will open today in Bahrain with the participation of over 1,300 global industry leaders, policy makers, innovators and stakeholders.

The 24th edition of the World Islamic Banking Conference (WIBC) is being held under the patronage of HRH Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, the Prime Minister of Bahrain, at the ART Rotana Hotel in Amwaj Islands. The three-day event will continue till December 6.

Convened by Middle East Global Advisors, a leading financial intelligence platform facilitating the development of knowledge-based economies in the MENASEA markets and in strategic partnership with the Central Bank of Bahrain, the forum will have the theme Drivers of Economic Growth & Risks: Policymakers & Regulators.

The conferences steady vision is to serve as a compass for the global Islamic finance and banking industry and participants will be focused on generating breakthrough insights that help navigate through the complexities of the global financial system.

Rasheed Mohammed Al Maraj, Governor, Central Bank of Bahrain, whose support has been instrumental in helping the conference touch new heights year-on-year, will inaugurate the conference and give the keynote address, with the vision of furthering the ecosystem for Islamic finance entities to thrive and grow in the global markets.

An exciting addition to this years conference will be the keynote address by Alex Tapscott, CEO, NextBlock Global, co-author of Blockchain Revolution and founding member, IMFs High Level Advisory Group on Fintech.

A globally recognised thought-leader, speaker and writer focused on the impact of emerging technologies on business, society and government, Tapscotts work has been featured in several magazines and other publications.

The significance of Islamic finance as a means to strengthen economic ties between CIS and OIC countries cannot be overlooked and will see a keynote address by Taliya Minullina, Chief Executive of the Tatarstan Investment Development Agency and member of the Investment Council of the Republic of Tatarstan. Xen Baynham-Herd, head of strategy and lead economist  Blockchain will also give a keynote address on blockchain owing to its growing significance in the digital era.

Delegates can also look forward to witnessing the 24th Annual World Islamic Banking Exhibition where they can exclusively network and connect on a one-to-one basis with leading industry players.

Speaking on behalf of WIBCs Platinum Partner, Abdul Hakeem Alkhayyat, Managing Director and CEO, KFH Bahrain, said: We are proud to sponsor the World Islamic Banking Conference. The event aims to provide a shared platform for the Islamic Banking and Finance industry professionals in the region to deliberate at length on key challenges and opportunities affecting the industry. The event, among other things, will deliver the latest advances in technology, thought leadership and intelligence. We hope the 24th edition of the conference continues to add great value to critical issues in the global arena of Islamic Banking.

Speaking on behalf of WIBCs Gold Partner, Tawfeeq Mohamed Bastaki, acting CEO/chief risk officer, Khaleeji Commercial Bank, said: Given the economic uncertainties, the Islamic economy sector has displayed a strong appetite for diversification. The time is now more than ever to facilitate thought-leadership amongst industry leaders and regulators by means of shared platform. In this relation, Khaleeji Commercial Bank is proud to be sponsoring the 24th World Islamic Banking Conference  an event that has time and again established itself as the leading compass for the Islamic finance industry.

Speaking ahead of participating in the CEO Power Debate and on behalf of WIBCs Gold Partner, Hassan Amin Jarrar, CEO, Bahrain Islamic Bank, said: While the Gulf region is experiencing low economic confidence as a whole, Islamic finance as an area has remained relatively insulated. It is a key priority for us at Bahrain Islamic Bank to improve the perception of Islamic banking and as a smaller segment we are well positioned to adopt evolving technology and mobile banking versus many traditional banks. We are proud to sponsor the 24th World Islamic Banking Conference that provides industry leaders with a suitable platform to generate thought-provoking insights that might prove to be critical in shaping the future of the industry.

Key features for WIBC 2017 include: A conversation with a distinguished Islamic finance veteran - Adnan Ahmed Yousif, Chief Executive and President, Al Baraka Banking Group on the future course of the Islamic economy; An interview with renowned Shari'ah Scholar Sheikh Nizam Yaquby on Centralized Shariah Boards, Shariah Standardization and Fostering New Generation of Sharia Experts; Digital banking-focused panel on harnessing digital technologies to stay relevant; The CEO Debate focused on increasing the market share and geographical footprint of Islamic banks; The Regulations Power-Table on fostering synergies among regulators, standard setters and global financial regularities authorities to further Islamic Finance; Panel discussions focusing on dynamic capital markets, sustainable, equitable & inclusive growth, potential of disruptive technologies, new horizons for Islamic finance, ESG, VAT, the effect of the recent global economic & political developments and more.

The 24th WIBC will also see the launch of two major financial intelligence reports from Thomson Reuters: The Islamic Finance Development Report & The Islamic Commercial Law Report 2018, arming the industry with critical insights going forward.

Delegates can also stay abreast of the latest updates on the programme, network and connect with other delegates and speakers through Direct Messaging, and engage in live interactive polling across all of the session via WIBCs very own digital Mobile App  Web Connect, making for a truly immersive experience.

Industry leaders will also be recognized for their excellence through the WIBC Performance Awards 2017, the winners of which will be honoured at the Gala Dinner on December 5. (Nominees can be viewed here: https://wibc2017.com/awards).  TradeArabia News Service
Boursa Kuwait recently hosted its first Market Maker Workshop in collaboration with global management consulting firm Oliver Wyman.



Held at Boursa Kuwaits premises, the half-day workshop saw Oliver Wyman presenting an overview of market making, its benefits and key considerations to Boursa Kuwait and investment companies in attendance in the hopes of encouraging further investment in Kuwait.



Kuwait is in the midst of great change and opportunity in support of the New Kuwait 2035 Vision. To assist in Kuwaits economic growth, it is essential that Boursa Kuwait adopts market making initiatives to transform the nation into a regional hub for trade, investment, and commerce, a statement said.



The Market Maker Workshop provided an overview of different working models for setting up a market maker scheme to attract potential firms.



With market making, Boursa Kuwait have a crucial tool that serves in boosting liquidity of securities listed in the stock market, as well as improving productivity in the market.



The Market Maker Workshop was divided into five different sessions all with the aim of providing insights and an overview on what a market maker is.



The sessions included Introductions and latest on Capital Market trends, role of Market Makers and incentive structures, Risk Management tools for market makers, and Case study examples on Market Making from peer markets. This was followed by a Q+A session in which investment companies had the opportunity to interact with Oliver Wyman.  TradeArabia News Service
Leading international real estate consultancy Cluttons has been appointed by KAR Properties to handle all aspects of property and facilities management, in addition to offering leasing services, for Busaiteen Views in Bahrain.



Busaiteen Views is a luxury development that features 34 apartments, where occupiers can choose from one- and two-bedroom apartments as well as two penthouses.



The 14-storey tower offers tenants modern spaces and access to high-end facilities, such as 24-hour security, allocated parking, an infinity pool and deck area, and a gymnasium. The leasing of apartments is expected to commence at the end of 2017.



Offering great accessibility and high visibility, Busaiteen Views is in close proximity to key landmarks such as the Bahrain International Airport, King Hamad Hospital, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), and Busaiteen beach, which is currently under construction.



Harry Goodson-Wickes, the head of Cluttons Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, said: "We are excited to be appointed by KAR Properties to manage its newest project, Busaiteen Views, and will ensure that the property follows the successful steps of Cebarco Tower and Segaya Views as it heads towards full occupancy."



Deborah Sellers, the head of Residential Property Management at Cluttons, said: "We strive for excellency at each step while operating and managing our clients developments."



"We will offer Busaiteen Views the absolute best, just as weve done with Cebarco Tower and Segaya Views - and will ensure that were continuing to attract and retain tenants through excellence in property management, as well as the quality of the development," she noted.



Khalid A. Rahim, the chairman of Cebarco Bahrain, said: "Our constant endeavour is to provide our tenants with exceptional services that match the luxurious properties we offer."



"Having collaborated with Cluttons previously, we know they share our vision and passion to offer the very best to clients. We look forward to yet another fruitful partnership with them and are confident of the success it means for Busaiteen Views," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
President Trumps former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador last December, becoming the first senior White House official to cut a co-operation deal in the special counsels wide-ranging inquiry into election interference.

Flynns discussions with Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, were part of a coordinated effort by Trumps aides to create foreign policy before they were in power, documents released as part of Flynns plea agreement show, reported the New York Times.

Their efforts undermined the existing policy of President Barack Obama and flouted a warning from a senior Obama administration official to stop meddling in foreign affairs before the inauguration.

The documents do not disclose what Trump knew about Flynns discussions. But in at least one instance, prosecutors say, Flynn was directed by a very senior member of the presidential transition team to discuss a United Nations resolution.

Trumps lawyers believe that unnamed aide was Trumps son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, according to a lawyer briefed on the matter.

The transition team was led by Vice President Mike Pence. Its top members included Kushner; Reince Priebus, Trumps first chief of staff; and KT. McFarland, who was Flynns deputy and was later appointed to be the ambassador to Singapore.

Flynn spoke to McFarland about another of his conversations with Kislyak, according to the lawyer.

Flynns decision to plead guilty to lying to investigators about those conversations marked a significant new phase in the investigation of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and a politically treacherous development for the president and his closest aides, whose activities in the West Wing are being scrutinized by FBI agents, lawmakers, federal prosecutors and the media.

He is prepared to say that Donald Trump "directed him to make contact with the Russians, according to a bombshell report by ABC News.

The claim sent the US stock market tumbling and brought the Russian election scandal a step closer to the Oval Office in a dramatic day in Washington.

Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law, was also named in US media reports as another figure who asked Flynn to reach out to officials from Russia, among other countries.

The White House fought back on Friday night, labelling Flynn a former Obama administration official who spent just 25 days in the Trump administration.

The row overshadowed news that Trump has enough Senate votes to pass major tax cuts in what would be his biggest legislative victory.

Allegations that Trumps campaign colluded with the Russian government - blamed for hacking Democratic Party emails during the campaign - to win the election have dogged his first year in office.

Flynn is the first White House official to be charged as part of an investigation into Russian election meddling led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Three other Trump campaign figures  Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and George Papadopoulos  were charged in October.
Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh has been killed in fighting with his former allies, BBC said quoting local reports.

Media controlled by the rebel Houthi movement quoted officials as declaring the "end of the crisis of the treason militia and the killing of its leader".

Al Arabiya quoted a source in Salehs General Peoples Congress as saying he was killed by sniper bullets. A Houthi video distributed on social media showed what appeared to be Salehs body, clad in grey clothes and being carried out on a red blanket. The side of his head bore a deep wound.

The radio station of the Houthi-run Yemeni Interior Ministry first reported Salehs death but his party quickly denied this to Reuters, saying he was still leading his forces in Sanaa.

Until last week, Saleh's supporters had been fighting alongside the Houthis in a war against Yemen's current president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

However, in a speech late on Sunday, Saleh formally annulled his alliance with the Houthis and pledged to step up his fight.

On Monday, Houthi forces blew up Salehs house in Sanaa and came under aerial attack by Saudi-led coalition warplanes for a second day, residents said.
Travellers expectations have changed drastically during the pandemic and the travel industry needs to better understand the behaviours and expectations of the new traveller in order to respond to them, says Roshan Mendis of Sabre.
Is Market Structure Tied up in Knots?

With a new head of trading and markets at the SEC, there is optimism that some of the complex market structure issues  such as make-taker incentives and sky-high market data costs  will be looked at in 2018. As these issues wait to be settled, buy-side traders are also grappling with the EUs MiFID II rules on unbundling research payments from executions.

Here are some key takeaways on what matters to buy-side and sell-side traders, as discussed at Traders Magazines Second Inaugural Market Structure Equity Town Hall.

Maker Taker: Dead or Alive?

After a decade of debate, the SEC is expected to roll out an Access-Fee pilot that relates to maker-taker pricing incentives. A vote by the SEC is imminent, according to two people who spoke at the Traders market structure equity town hall held on Nov. 7. SEC Chairman Jay Clayton has indicated he will green light the pilot to test the impact of reduced access fees on exchanges, which was recommended by the SECs Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee (EMSAC) in 2016.

Rebates are paid to brokers as an incentive to post prices on exchange platforms, which helps attract more order flow, while others are charged an access fee for taking or removing bids and offers on their electronic trading venues. The difference between the access fee for takers of liquidity and the rebates for makers of liquidity is kept as revenues for exchanges.

Critics of the practice say the incentives motivate brokers to route client orders to platforms paying the highest rebates, which leads to order routing conflicts of interest.

As proposed, the EMSAC pilot will not eliminate rebates or take fees, but it will test the impact that reduced access fees have on liquidity.

Exchanges are paying rebates for adding liquidity that range between 12 cents and 33 cents per 100 shares, according to a study presented by IEX. The pilot will lower the cap on access fees for different groups of stocks to 20 cents, 10 cents, and 2 cents per 100 shares.

However, several equity-trading executives at the Traders Town Hall were skeptical of the pilot, pointing to results from the small-cap tick pilot, which led to increased spreads, higher trading costs and increased routing to inverted venues.

If fees are simply reduced, then market makers will lose the rebates and spreads will widen, and probably not much will be accomplished, predicted a sell-side executive who was skeptical of how much the pilot would accomplish.

Nevertheless, the sell-side observer said the pilot was worth doing to address conflicts of interest that are of concern to the buy side as this will build up their confidence. However, some may argue its better to first address the conflicts through order routing disclosures, the sell-side executive noted.

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Bank Spending on Fixed Income Desk RegTech Tops $20B

The cost of fixed income trading desk compliance has just breached a milestone.

Fixed-income dealers are spending as much as $20 billion a year on RegTech (regulatory technology) to help them comply with the raft of regulations covering their trading desks, according to a new report from Greenwich Associates.

Thats a lot of scratch.

Ninety-four percent of the 46 sell-side fixed-income traders participating in a recent study from the market consultancy said they are spending more time speaking with compliance. Compliance demands are keeping both traders and trading desk heads away from clients, which hurts the profitability of the desk and the level of service clients receive.

In a new report, The Benefits of Trader Augmentation, Greenwich reports how dealers in the U.S. and Europe are using technology to meet these new compliance requirements while ensuring these demands do not degrade client service. The report suggests an unlikely inflection point in this process: MiFID II.

MiFID II is forcing dealers to upgrade their technology, which should bring not only new compliance checks, but also improved sales-trader tools, said Kevin McPartland, Head of Greenwich Associates Market Structure and Technology Research. A tight coupling of the two is the most efficient path forward, and MiFID II, with all of the headaches, is presenting an opportunity to move in a better direction technologically.

The new report analyzes the impact on trading desks from past regulations and MiFID II, examines how dealers are utilizing sales technology, transaction cost analysis and other forms of technology, and looks at the major third-party vendors banks are using for these systems.

Regarding the adoption of these new tools, the report presents another surprising finding: Older traders are getting more value than their younger peers from sales trading technology tools. We expected that traders on the desk with less experience  the millennial generation  would be the most frequent users of the technology, McPartland added. We were surprised to learn that the opposite was true; those gaining the most value from sales trading tools are the most senior traders.

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SUVAASA, THE RESORT MAKES ITS DEBUT IN RAMGARH, UTTARAKHAND!



(TRAVPR.COM) INDIA - December 1st, 2017 - Located in Ramgarh amidst the mighty Kumaon Himalayas, Suvaasa Resort is making its debut in Uttarakhand. The beautiful picturesque hills, chirping birds and swaying pine trees make this resort an ideal holiday retreat. Derived from the Sanskrit word Suvaasa, meaning beautiful dwelling, it was founded by Mr. Jaideep Singh Rathore. The fact that Ramgarh is a relatively unexplored tourist area is what makes it a dream come true for travellers.

Situated right in the lap of Mother Nature, Ramgarh is famous for its beautiful orchards &known as the Fruit basket of India, Nathuakhan, the captivating village hamlet, and Mukhteshwar, the well-known hill shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva. But thats not all! Suvaasa Resort has a number of interesting facilities and amenities to offer to its guests.

Wake up to a beautiful morning and get set for a piping hot sumptuous meal at Spice Curry, their Indian Restaurant or enjoy your morning hot cuppa at the Italian roof top cafe -Tamino. Suvaasa Resort has a plethora of options for its guests to let their hair down  terrain biking, trekking, paragliding and an excursion to the local fruit orchards, visit nearby Mahadevi Varma Sanghralya or trek to Rabindra Top. The resort provides its visitors with transportation facilities too. For those who want to spend their day in seclusion, the resort has a library, which boasts of a rich collection of books or you could simply relax by the cozy fireplace of the lobby proffering beautiful views. The famous tourist destinations like Nainital, bhimtal and Kainchi dhamare just 40 mins drive from the resort and mukteshwar dham is just 30 mins away!

The resort is ideal for those looking for peace and serenity and at the same time accessible to most tourist locales.

This unmatched location is idyllic for all its visitors. As Mr. Jaideep Rathore, Founder, Suvaasa Resort, says: The Suvaasa family believes in setting the bar high for the hospitality industry in Ramgarh. We want to be the pioneers of fine dining and the best services in this hitherto unexplored territory. Offering tranquility in the very lap of nature, Suvaasa is the sanctuary of peace and unparalleled luxury for all those looking for a refreshing break from the brouhaha of their lives. Taking a cue from the global concern about the need to preserve the environment, we have ensured that the Resort is in perfect harmony with nature and has been designed in such a way that it conserves nature. All in all, Suvaasa is the ideal holiday destination that will give you a warm welcome and all the comforts that you need to make your stay comfortable and pleasant.

Ms. Divya, Managing Director, Suvaasa Resort, believes: We, at Suvaasa, want to create a world influenced by exclusive personalities and passions, to offer hospitality in unique places. To begin our adventure, we chose the uncharted terrain of Ramgarh for our debut. This peaceful and serene place offers our guests relaxation and rejuvenation with unsurpassed luxury and comfort amidst nature.

While protecting & preserving our surroundings has been among the top of our priorities, we have ensured that our guests get a taste of the best of comforts and facilities that is in sync with the very needs of the ecosystem and sustainable in the long run. We take great pride in the fact that most of the greens, the fruit-bearing trees and deodars were kept intact during the construction of our resort. Mother Nature has abundant to offer and this bounty can be witnessed once you are in Suvaasa, the heavenly paradise festooned amidst fruit laden trees, wild roses and beautiful daisies.

We offer our guests:

# The Resort: Has 11 rooms and other facilities to suit different requirements

# The exclusives: Are independent bungalows more than 100 yrs old equipped with modern facilities.

All in all, Suvaasa is the best holiday destination with a diverse array of amenities and services that will keep you engrossed and give you innumerable blissful memories and anecdotes to cherish for a long time to come.

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Search News Archive : Fast Travel News Promotion Via Search, Social Media + Email Follow Us On : ALPHA DESTINATION MANAGEMENT ACHIEVES 8 PER CENT GROWTH IN 2017 Industry: Travel PR

Alpha Destination Management, the leading destination management company in the Arabian Gulf,



(TRAVPR.COM) UAE - December 4th, 2017 - Alpha Destination Management, the leading destination management company in the Arabian Gulf, has registered superb growth in 2017. Making the announcement Mr. Ghassan Aridi, CEO of Alpha Destination Management, said, 2017 had been a very good year for us. We registered a growth of almost eight per cent compared to last year which is great. Some markets such as the CIS, specifically the Russian market, came back very strongly. We have also seen a very good increase from the UK market. Both are very significant source markets for Dubai.



Talking about the new trends that emerged in 2017 in the UAE tourism sector, Mr Aridi, stressed, In 2017 many markets returned back in a big way while other markets disappeared altogether for some reasons. The UAE tourism sector under the leadership of H.E. Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General of Dubais Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM), and his team have done a great job in executing the outstanding vision of H.H. Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. As a destination, the UAE continues to impress both residents and visitors with a tourism product that never ceases to evolve.

Dubais tourism fundamentals are extremely strong and its vision incomparable. The solid foundation that the government has put in place through broadening portfolio of leisure and business attractions and facilities, diversification of source markets, collaboration between various business sectors will continue to boost and sustain demand.



Elaborating on the important developments in 2017 for Alpha Destination Management, Mr Aridi, said, We have been very active and I would like to take this opportunity to thank my team including Adnan Aridi, Samir Hamadeh, Omar Sawaya, Gisele Moubayed and all others. I cant name everybody as we are over 300 people but each one has done a fantastic job. As mentioned, we registered 8% increase in business compared to last year and the same in terms of profit. We have gained greater market share from the UK, China and CIS. In addition, we have added several activities and tours to our product. We always redesign every year. Helicopters are still doing very well, and we are trying to have several points by adding more helipads in Dubai.



Looking ahead, Mr Aridi is extremely positive and confident about the future of tourism industry in 2018. He stressed, I think the future is great and we expect to see continuous increase in tourism numbers in 2018 as compared to 2017. We are very positive about the future of the industry because the tourism authorities for Dubai know what is required to boost tourism in the emirate and one can see it from the events happening here. A whole lot of exciting activities and exhibitions are taking place which are helping us a lot to increase our business. Dubai is getting bigger and with it the tourism industry is getting bigger.



About Alpha Destination Management

Founded in 1996, by Mr. Ghassan Aridi and his partners, Alpha Destination Management is the leading destination management company and a pioneer in the tourism sector in the Arabian Gulf. Over the last two decades, the company has established itself as one of the most credible and reputed brands not only in the Gulf region but also in the international tourism industry. Controlling a significant market share of the lucrative tourism sector in the GCC, Alpha Destination Management is a market leader in the region with the largest annual turnover and wide network of international partners offering the highest levels of service and innovative and exciting experiences. Our extensive global and local knowledge and network, outstanding expertise and sound reputation is the key to success for us and all our partners.



For more information about Alpha Destination Management visit http://www.alphatoursdubai.com



For media contact:

Hina Bakht

Vice President

MPJ (Marketing Pro-Junction)

Mob: +971 50 697 5146

Email: h.bakht@mpj-pr.com

http://www.mpj-pr.com ### Please contact the person or company listed above for information regarding the content of this press release. TravPR.com are not the issuers of this press release and are not responsible for the accuracy of the content. Share Release :



CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Hina Bakht Company: Marketing Pro Junction Phone: +971 50 697 5146 Email: pressrelease@mpj-pr.com Web: PRESS RELEASE TAGS
The Hofsas House Hotel, a 38-room boutique family-owned inn in the heart of Carmel, is pleased to announce the launch of its special packages for 2018.



(TRAVPR.COM) USA - December 4th, 2017 - Salinas, CA, Dec 04, 2017 - The packages appeal to a wide variety of guests, from art and wine lovers to dog owners, chocolate lovers and those looking for a relaxing spa experience. To book any of these packages during your stay, call (831) 624-2745 or email info@hofsashouse.com.

Hofsas House Packages for 2018



Get Artsy Package

For decades, Carmel, California has been a haven for artists, from authors, poets and actors to painters and sculptors. Today there are more than 80 art galleries within walking distance from the hotel. The Hofsas House is part of that artistic tradition and has been touched by one of the worlds most famous artists. Did you know that artist Maxine Albro was commissioned by Donna Hofsas to paint the welcoming mural and the headboard featured in Room 47 of the Hofsas House? In the 1940s and 1950s, Maxine was living in Carmel and was friends with Donna. After the main four-story addition to the Hofsas House was completed in 1957, Donna asked Maxine to paint the mural and add other highlights to the front of the building to enhance the hotel's Bavarian theme. Maxine also painted the three pictures now hanging in the lobby.



The Hofsas House celebrates Carmel's artistic legacy by offering guests its special Get Artsy Package. This package includes a stay in the Room 47  the very room Maxine Albro painted! Mention the Hofsas House Get Artsy package with the code HHArt and receive a gourmet cheese tray and bottle of wine upon arrival.



Carmel continues to be an artist colony and attracts some of the worlds most famous artists, including painters, sculptors, and photographers. Hofsas House can help arrange a tour of Carmel's art galleries and artists' studios with Carmel Art Tours. Discover secret passageways, visit hand-picked galleries, both the internationally acclaimed and the hidden gems. There's also an opportunity for a chance encounter with an artist at work in a Carmel studio. Cost is $25 per person, reservations are required, and participants meet for the tour at Carmel Visitors Center. Info at www.carmelarttours.com, 800-979-3370.



Wine and Chocolate Package

Upgrade your stay at Hofsas House with a four pack of handcrafted artisanal sea salt caramels from Monterey's Lulas Chocolates and a bottle of award-winning Monterey County wine.



Monterey County wines are now on par with California's other legendary wine regions such as Napa and Sonoma. In fact, Wine Enthusiast magazine named Monterey County as one of the world's top 10 wine destinations  ahead of the Napa Valley and in the company of the other famed wine-growing regions around the world.



Monterey County produces 42 different varietals of high-quality, award-winning wines, especially Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. For this special package choose either a Monterey County Chardonnay or Pinot Noir from a personally selected list of wines.



Lula's Chocolates, founded by Scott Lund, are made the old-fashioned way, using recipes passed down from Scott's grandmother, Lula herself. To this day, Lula's makes sure each hand-dipped, small batch, deliciously fresh chocolate is an experience worth savoring.



Cost for this wine-and-chocolate package is $25. Use the code HHChoc when booking this package.



Tail-Wagging Package

Hofsas House is one of the most dog-friendly hotels in Carmel. Guests receive a complimentary Doggie Welcome Package upon arrival that includes:

Hofsas House dog Frisbee

Hofsas House collapsible dog bowl

Special dog bed

Letter from Tank, our onsite Pet Concierge

Special dog amenities package

Tips and recommendations for your four-legged friends stay

Walking trail and hiking guide

A package of treats

Coastal Canine Magazine  offering the best four-legged options for visiting Carmel



This package requires a minimum two-night stay, $30 fee per night for one dog and $50 per night for two dogs.



Relax at Cinq Mondes Spa Carmel

Cinq Mondes Spa Carmel is the French cosmetic company's first and only Cinq Mondes spa in the United States and serves as the company's flagship location in the U.S. Cinq Mondes Spa Carmel combines tradition, beauty, authenticity, and luxury, allowing guests to enjoy a soothing sensory voyage of the five different worlds in the nearby Crossroads Shopping Center in Carmel.

Cinq Mondes has gathered a selection of traditional treatments from around the world that are remarkable for their quality, authenticity and ceremonial traditions.

Hofsas House is partnering with Cinq Mondes to offer guests a relaxing and soothing spa package that includes a 60-minute massage or facial. Cinq Mondes' signature facial is the "Ko-Bi-Do" for its unique use of Dermapuncture, or "acupuncture without needles, as an anti-aging facial and its signature massage is the Moroccan massage. Price is $120 per massage or facials. All Hofsas House guests will get a special gift from Cinq Monde

This special package must be booked at least 72 hours in advance and is subject to availability.



About Hofsas House

The Hofsas House Hotel is a boutique family-owned inn with 38 uniquely decorated, spacious rooms, many with ocean views overlooking the pines in the village of Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Dutch doors appoint each room allowing our guests to enjoy the fresh ocean air. Our guests watch glorious sunsets over the Pacific Ocean from the privacy of the inn's decks or rooms. Some rooms and most suites have fireplaces, private balconies, wet bars or kitchens.

The Hofsas House is located three blocks north of Ocean Avenue, eight blocks from the picturesque white sand Carmel beach and one block from a child-friendly City park. There is plenty of off-street parking and guests delight in walking everywhere in Carmel from the inn. Enjoy a continental breakfast in the morning with French roast coffee, tea, fresh pastries delivered from a local bakery, juice, yogurt and fruit.

Other amenities include a heated swimming pool, dry saunas, view deck areas and free wireless Internet access. Some rooms are dog friendly. Casual elegance, personal service and traditional family hospitality are the trademarks of Hofsas House Hotel.



Hofsas House Hotel

Between 3rd & 4th Ave on San Carlos Street.

P.O. Box 1195

Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA 93921

Phone: (831) 624-2745

info@hofsashouse.com

HofsasHouse.com

Contact:

Marci Bracco Cain

Chatterbox PR

Salinas, CA 93901

(831) 747-7455

http://www.HofsasHouse.com

###
Azores Airlines has signed a code-share agreement with Alaska Airlines, which allows the Portuguese airline, based in the Azores, to issue tickets for flights operated by Alaska, and vice versa.



(TRAVPR.COM) USA - December 4th, 2017 - Oakland, CA --Azores Airlines has signed a code-share agreement with Alaska Airlines, which allows the Portuguese airline, based in the Azores, to issue tickets for flights operated by Alaska, and vice versa.

The agreement between Azores Airlines and Alaska Airlines allows new connections through Boston, MA. Azores Airlines offers regular service from Boston to the islands of the Azores, Madeira, Lisbon, Porto and Cape Verde, with total of 20 destinations.

Azores Airlines based is based in Ponta Delgada, on the island of Sao Miguel in the autonomous archipelago of the Azores.

Alaska Airlines is based in Seattle, Washington, serves more than 118 destinations and five countries.

One of the most exciting destinations - The Azores, embodies the sapphire blue and emerald green lakes, fertile prairies, volcanic cones and craters, colorful hydrangeas and azaleas, 15th century churches and majestic manor houses make the Azores unlike anywhere else on earth.

Azores Airlines, part of the SATA Group, has connected New England with the Azores and mainland Portugal for more than 35 years. For more information about booking flights call your travel agent or log on to www.AzoresAirlines.pt/USA. Or call (800) 762-9995

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Melbourne, December 4

Indian energy giant Adanis controversy-hit Carmichael coal mine project in Australia has hit another roadblock after China's two major state-run banks said they have no plans to finance the venture, media reports said today.

The 16.5 billion dollar Carmichael coal mine project, one of the world's largest, will start construction after being given the green light by the federal and Queensland state governments.

Adani is seeking a finance of 2 billion Australian dollars by March 2018 for the first stage of its proposed mine project in Queensland.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), in a statement, clarified that it had no intention of funding Adani's proposed mine in Queensland, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

"ICBC has not been, and does not intend to be, engaged in arranging financing for this project," ICBC said in a statement on its website.

"ICBC attaches great importance to its social responsibilities and keenly promotes green financing." While not mentioning coal, ICBC said it had provided finance in Australia "for a series of renewable energy projects," the report said.

Earlier, China Construction Bank had also refused financing the project, saying it "is not involved with, nor considering involvement with, the Adani Carmichael Mine project", the report said.  PTI
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 4

Going to work is a challenge for nearly 100 differently abled employees of the PGI. These employees expressed their grouse during a blood donation camp organised to celebrate the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

Satyaveer Dagur, president of the PGI Differently Abled Employees Union, said due to poor infrastructure, the differently abled persons working or visiting the hospital faced a tough time.

He said there were no lifts and ramps in the administrative block and differently abled employees had to climb all the way to the fourth floor to get their work done.

Though a ramp has been constructed near the back door, it is a mere eyewash and leads to the Directors office in the administrative block. One can see differently abled employees coming down the stairs with great difficulty, said Satyaveer.

He said besides the administrative block, there was an urgent need for ramps and lifts at the PGI library, the National Institute of Nursing Education (NINE) and the School of Public Health.

He said recently a delegation had met PGI Director Jagat Ram and had handed over a memorandum to him for making the institute disabled-friendly.

The project to construct ramps and escalators was approved by the director, but the file is now stuck with the engineering department, said Satyaveer.

He said at some places, parking for the differently had been notified, but the guidelines were not being followed.

Man who brought the change

Satyaveer, who is differently abled, got the job nearly 11 years ago under the general category.

After joining the job, I observed that the premier institute did not offer facilities for the differently abled. In 2010, I began raising issues pertaining to the differently abled and job reservation in the institute. I pressed the authorities to construct disabled-friendly infrastructure, said Satyaveer.

In 2014, he formed the Differently Abled Employees Union. His efforts bore fruit as besides relaxation of 5 per cent marks, the differently abled are now being offered admission forms free of cost.
Tribune News Service

Mohali, December 4

A District Revenue Officer (DRO) posted in Mohali fell victim to a debit card fraud when Rs 2.8 lakh was siphoned off from his savings bank account within seven hours. The victim, Balwinder Pal Singh, a resident of Sunny Enclave, Kharar, has submitted a complaint to the cyber cell and the bank concerned demanding an inquiry and refund.

The fraud came to light when the victim, who has a salary account with the State Bank of India in Mundi Kharar, checked his phone in the morning on December 1 and was shocked to see text messages of nine transactions in which varying amount of cash was withdrawn during the previous night.

According to his bank statement, the first transaction was of Rs 10,000, withdrawn around 11.45 pm, followed by five transactions of Rs 40,000, two withdrawals of Rs 20,000 and one transaction of Rs 30,000 in the next few hours. The last text message of a transaction was received at 6.45 in the morning, following which the victim blocked his card.

In his complaint to the cyber cell, the victim said he had been duped of the amount using a cloned debit card since the ATM card of the account was in his possession. He said, How can anyone withdraw Rs 2.8 lakh in a few hours when the daily withdrawal limit for ATM or online transaction is Rs 50,000? An amount of Rs 80,000 was transferred to another account number in two transactions of Rs 40,000 each.

The victim said according to bank officials, the ATM code where the cash was withdrawn was of Ramdas Ghati in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. Bank officials said the account where the money (Rs 80,000) was transferred was in the name of Vimal Rawat from Mani Majra, he said.

Singh said the police told him that the person could not be located at the address mentioned in the bank details.
Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 3

The Panjab University (PU) Syndicate will discuss change in the selection criteria and increase in seats for MSc in Medical Physics.

Centre for Medical Physics Coordinator Prof Devinder Mehta has proposed that BSc marks should have 40 per cent weightage and Common Entrance Test (Postgraduation) should have 60 per cent weightage in the admission merit for MSc from 2018-19 onwards. Earlier, the Common Entrance Test (PG) used to have 50 per cent weightage and BSc marks used to have 50 per cent weightage.

Earlier, there used to be 8 + 2 NRI seats for MSc. Now, 10 +2 NRI seats have been proposed for 2018-19. The Centre for Medical Physics has also proposed to enhance the laboratory charges of students from Rs 120 per month to Rs 1,000 per month.

From NRI students, it has been proposed that the development fund should be enhanced from US $ 200 to US $ 400.

It has also been proposed that a post of the Tutor-cum-Radiation Safety Officer (RSO) be created in the Centre for Medical Physics to meet the requirements, as asked by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB).

According to the Handbook of Information-2017, the Centre for Medical Physics was created in 2007, as a joint venture of the PU and Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, to utilise technology-dependent specialties coming out of the new scientific innovations.

Medical Physics is an established clinical specialty with wide ranging applications in radiotherapy planning and treatment. It can be defined as embracing all applications of radioactive sources in the treatment of cancerous and non-cancerous diseases.

AERB is the regulatory body for the MSc Medical Physics course.

Funds for accessing Swayam Prabha

The Syndicate will take a call on allowing Rs 73 lakh for furnishing two laboratories for accessing Swayam Prabha modules programme of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), under the National Digital Initiatives. Under Swayam platforms, lectures from teachers are imparted to students through remote sensing. The cost will be met from the savings of the University Institute of Applied Management Sciences (UIAMS) examination fund. There is a credit balance of Rs 22 crore in the fund, say sources. As per the minutes of a meeting of the committee set up for the implementation of the National Digital Initiatives in higher education in the PU, one lab will be set up on the top floor of the Department of Computer Science and another on the top floor of the UIAMS campus.

Asst Prof's transfer

The Syndicate will also take up the transfer of Assistant Professor Yogita Sirohi from Panjab University Regional Centre, Muktsar, to Chandigarh on the ground that her husband is working in Mohali. The Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) had sought comments from the PU on it, as Ambala MP Ratan Lal Kataria had recommended the transfer.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 3

The Crime Branch of the UT police has arrested a vehicle thief and recovered six stolen two-wheelers from his possession.

The accused had escaped from the Punjab Police custody in 2015 and was residing in the periphery of Chandigarh.

The police said the accused, Rakesh, alias Billa, a resident of Saketri village, Panchkula district, was arrested from near Punjab University on a tip-off.

The police claimed to have recovered six two-wheelers stolen from various parts of the city.

Police officials said Rakesh is a hardcore criminal. A murder case was also registered against him in 2013 at the Nayagaon police station. After the trial, he was sentenced with life imprisonment. On December 25, 2015, while he was being brought from the Nabha Jail to the District Courts, Mohali, in another case of robbery, he escaped from the police custody. A case regarding the same was registered at the Bakshiwala police station, Patiala.

Three cases of vehicle theft of the Sector 39 police station and one case each of Sector 34, 36 and Sarangpur police station has been solved with the arrest of the accused.

Hardcore criminal

Police officials said Rakesh is a hardcore criminal. A murder case was also registered against him in 2013 at the Nayagaon police station. After the trial, he was sentenced with life imprisonment. On December 25, 2015, while he was being brought from the Nabha Jail to the District Courts, Mohali, in another case of robbery, he escaped from the police custody.
Jayshree Sengupta

Jayshree Sengupta

RECENTLY all of us were shocked when a private hospital charged Rs 15.7 lakh for the treatment of a child suffering from dengue who did not even survive. Unfortunately, most of us are forced to go to private doctors and hospitals when illness strikes us because public hospitals are terribly overcrowded and the quality of care is generally low. Unless you are a VVIP you are not likely to get special care in a public hospital.

First of all one must ask why are dengue cases on the rise and why hasnt the government been able to control the disease through its much-touted Swachh Bharat drive? How is it that mosquitoes, which are the cause of the disease, are still breeding freely at all times, especially during rainy season? While there were 99,913 cases of dengue, with 220 deaths in 2015, there were 129,166 cases and 245 deaths in 2016.

Like in the case of the child who died from dengue and was in the ICU for 15 days, private hospitals are often motivated to inflate the bill by charging excessive amounts for gloves, syringes and medicines used in the treatment. The bill is often crammed with items that are hard to comprehend and cannot be challenged by the patient. It shows utter lack of ethics in private healthcare today in big cities and something urgently should be done about it, like the speedy implementation of the Clinical Establishment Act, passed in 2010, by all states.

Not only seasonal diseases need to be controlled and eradicated, but also communicable diseases like TB, from which around 5 lakh people die every year. India has the highest number of TB cases in the world. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are also on the rise. According to the Director-General, WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Bolder political action is needed to address constraints in controlling NCDs including the mobilisation of domestic and external resources and safeguarding communities from interference by powerful economic operators. Indeed, big hospitals are like big corporations and are powerful economic operators. It is very difficult for an average person to fight and sue a hospital or a surgeon.

The result of this growing power of private hospitals and doctors is that the average person is burdened by the stress of impending healthcare costs. Anybody who does not have a health insurance hesitates to go to private hospitals. In India, only about 18 per cent of the urban and 14 per cent of the population has any kind of health insurance. Many people with low incomes are reduced to penury when they go for private treatment of a disease like cancer as they have to raise their own resources from family or friends, and in many cases, the moneylender. Around 63 million people are pushed into poverty due to healthcare costs, increasing income inequality further.

Since the burden of non-communicable diseases is on the rise, what is the government doing? Cancer, diabetes and heart diseases alone account for 55 per cent of the premature mortality in India in the age group of 30-69. More and more people are suffering from cardio-vascular diseases which are the highest killer in India. In years to come, the respiratory diseases will increase manifold due to the increasing air pollution. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) claimed 3.6 million lives in 2015. More people are likely to die from it in the future.

Public health is the worst spot in Indias economic path under the NDA government despite a recent rise in GDP growth. Without a healthy population and labour force, India cannot hope to compete with countries in the West or ASEAN. Yet scant attention is being paid to the state of public healthcare where thousands are forced to go for treatment. People with limited budgets are also reluctant to go to private hospitals because they are asked to undergo a number of unnecessary tests which burn a hole in the patients pocket. Even though similar tests take a long time in public hospitals, they are often free. Private hospitals, on the other hand, are run on profit motive and each doctor has to contribute to the total revenue earned by the hospital. They are incentivised to push patients into the ICU and also fill hospital beds. Their performance and promotion depend on whether they fulfil such criteria.

There have been cases where unnecessary and costly surgeries have been performed in private hospitals and, sometimes, it has resulted in death. The overuse of antibiotics has led to their resistance in India in a big way and the appearance of superbugs.

The solution lies in the government becoming more vigilant regarding malpractices by hospitals but there is no substitute to having better public hospitals and reliable healthcare. Private hospitals should be told to charge according to the actual cost of the treatment plus a small profit margin that can be ploughed back into the hospitals improvement. And in order to have better public healthcare, there is no option for the government but to increase the budgetary allocation on health. Yet the percentage of GDP allocated for health by the Union government in the last Budget was only 1.9 per cent. It has not been increased to 2.5 per cent despite the recommendation of several expert committee reports headed by renowned doctors. In India, the out-of-pocket expenditure by a person is one of the highest in the world, where 82.2 per cent of the expenditure for treatment is borne by the patient.

Thus while the government is very keen on promoting medical tourism, there is scant attention being paid to the needs of the common person through improvement of public healthcare. While it is true that many Indian doctors are world class and can perform complicated surgeries for a fraction of the cost charged by hospitals in developed countries and many foreigners are, indeed, coming for joint replacements and bypass surgeries, the Union Health Minister ought to improve the precarious state of public healthcare. It is strange that in a country with so many super-speciality hospitals all of us are worried about the quality and reliability of healthcare.
Washington, December 4

An Indian-origin US financier has been killed in a shark attack while scuba diving off a Costa Rican island in the Pacific Ocean, officials said.

Rohina Bhandari, 49, a Wall Street private equity manager from New York City, suffered fatal bites to both her legs during the shark attack last week while she was diving with a group near Cocos Island, a national park about 300 miles off the Costa Rican mainland, New York Post reported on Sunday.

She was a senior director at WL Ross & Co LL, a firm founded by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and often attended New York City charity events.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

She was dragged from the Pacific Ocean but could not be saved. Her 26-year-old diving instructor was also badly injured in last Thursdays attack.

The male instructor, who was conscious and in relatively stable condition, told officials that the shark attacked when his group was surfacing at the tail end of the dive in the waters.

According to the Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion, the guide noticed the shark approaching his group underwater and tried to scare it away. But as they surfaced, the shark went for Bhandari, tearing at her legs. The guide, too, suffered leg injuries.

Authorities said two park rangers and several doctors who were part of the diving tourism group of 18 people on the island trip organised by the Undersea Hunter Group, offered first aid in a desperate bid to save her.

Friends paid tribute to the Manhattan resident on Facebook. Unbelievably sad and heartbreaking news that Rohina has died, wrote Julie Walker. She was such a wonderful person who loved life. I will always remember her kindness, friendship and our adventures together.

Another friend wrote: Your kindness and genuine warmth to those of us lucky enough to call you friend was a blessing to behold. IANS
MEHBOOBA Muftis unwillingness to hold the long-pending panchayat elections in J&K has confirmed that the ruling combine is adamant on denying grassroots democracy in a state yearning for governance. This exposes the double standards of the government as it cherry picks issues listed in its governance document  Agenda of Alliance (AoA)  and ignores those of concern to a large chunk of population. It appears that governance is being shelved for political issues. Mehboobas demurring is a breach of trust not only with the people, but also a complete reversal from her lofty commitment to empower the third tier of governance to enable Panchayati Raj institutions to discharge their statutory functions effectively and efficiently by giving them functional roles and fiscal responsibilities.

The indefinite pegging back of the elections is a bad omen for a state where the whole concept of democracy has been reduced to the holding of Assembly polls. Parliamentary bypoll to Anantnag constituency has been pending since Mehbooba vacated the seat after getting elected to the Assembly in June last year. There is an inherent contradiction in the state governments premise that the atmosphere is not conducive for the polls. This flies in the face of the government claims that the situation has improved vastly this year as compared to the street turbulences of last year after the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani.

Now that the Centre has initiated a dialogue and given the green signal to discharge stone-throwers, people should not be kept waiting endlessly for elected panchayats to address their developmental and day-to-day issues. It may not be incorrect to surmise that the government has succumbed to the resistance by some quarters availing of powers and privileges in the absence of the grassroots democratic institutions. The oddity becomes stark as this process was withdrawn after the CM had committed to the Centre that the poll process will begin by December 1. Mehbooba is visiting different districts as part of her outreach programme but that would be a futile exercise until the process of a three-tier governance system is first put in place.
Tribune News Service

Solan, December 4

The Paonta Sahib police today registered a case for defiling a place of worship against some miscreants. They burnt books lying in the main prayer room of a mosque at Malio village near Majra in Paonta Sahib last night.

DSP Pramod Chauhan, giving this information, said some books kept inside the main prayer room had been burnt. A team of forensic experts had lifted samples from the spot.

He said investigations had revealed that the burnt books were not the holy ones but some other books which were given to the students to read.

He said the incident took place in the midnight and it was detected by the maulvi at 5:40 am when he opened the room to offer prayers. Charred pages of the burnt books were lifted from the spot by the forensic team.

Taking a serious note of the adverse incident, Deputy Commissioner, Sirmaur, BC Badalia directed the police to thoroughly probe the matter and arrest those responsible for it.

Since there was visible resentment among the Muslim community after the incident, the Deputy Commissioner met the residents and assured them of apt action against the miscreants.

He said the police had already begun a probe and assured them that the miscreants would be arrested within three days.

The DC exhorted the people to maintain peace in the area and directed the SDM, Paonta Sahib, to convene a meeting with the members of the Muslim community to chalk out a strategy to ensure the safety of various mosques and gurdwaras in the area.

This would ensure that the anti-social elements were dealt with sternly and the areas peace was not compromised by such acts.
Vijay Arora

Shimla, December 4

Expressing concern over the illegal trade of drugs in Kullu district, the High Court has directed the Chief Secretary to file his personal affidavit regarding hotels/commercial establishments running without statutory sanctions, more specifically at Kasol village in Kullu.

Taking serious note of rave parties at Kasol, the court observed: It is not understood that how rave parties are being allowed to be organised at Kasol in Kullu valley by the district administration as well as the police. Similarly, we do not know whether foreigners residing in and around Malana possess valid permission from the Government of India to stay in Kullu district or they are illegally staying or managing their illegal stay in and around Malana village.

A Division Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Sandeep Sharma passed the orders on a petition taken up suo motu by the court as a public interest litigation on the issue. It further observed: We are told that with the passage of time, many foreign nationals have settled in and around Malana village. Rather they have opened their restaurants and have been serving drugs to foreign nationals as well as other tourists coming from other parts of the country. We have no hesitation to observe that such activities, if any, by foreign nationals, is definitely not possible without the connivance and facilitation of locals. It is an open secret that drugs are served and rave parties are organised in Kasol village, but despite that there is nothing to suggest that efforts, if any, have been put by the district administration or the police to stop such illegal activities.

The court observed: Kullu valley, which is popularly called the Devbhumi and is renowned for International Dussehra Festival is now becoming famous for drug addicts, who come here solely with a view to having a taste of the drug (psychotropic substance) commonly known as Malana Cream.

The court directed the Narcotics Control Bureau to file an action-taken report on the suggestions given by the amicus curie and on the affidavit filed by the Director General of Police and listed the matter for further hearing on December 7.
Pratibha Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, December 4

In a complete u-turn to its earlier decision of returning Rs 280 crore upfront premium paid by Adani group for the 960 MW Jangi Thopan hydro-power project, the Cabinet has decided against returning this huge amount to the business house.

It was four days back that the Cabinet by circulation decided to reverse its decision taken on October 10. It was in its last meeting on October 10 that the Cabinet had decided that it would explore various options for returning Rs 280 crore to Adani Group. The decision had been conveyed to the Adani Group and, in fact, the company had about a fortnight back sought details of the options being explored for returning the upfront premium.Surprisingly, the decision to reverse the earlier decision was taken during the code of conduct before Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh left for Delhi. The signatures of the ministers were taken through circulation.

The Cabinet move to reverse the earlier decision was taken so as to avoid any legal wrangles when the new government assumes power after counting of votes is taken up on December 18, revealed sources. The letter issued to Adani Group has been withdrawn so that he cannot drag the government to court on the issue.

The Jangi Thopan project had been allotted to Brakel about a decade back and the upfront premium for the project had been paid by Adani group. Though the project was officially allotted to Brakel for the past some time the official correspondence was being done with the Adani group. Prior to this also the Cabinet had in October 2015 decided to look for ways to return this money to Adani.

The Jangi Thopan project had been allotted to Brakel in 2007 when Congress was in power and later when the BJP assumed power it was put on halt only to be re-allotted in 2008. The allotment of the project was dragged to court by Reliance and till now the project has failed to take off.

The latest decision by the Cabinet has been prompted by the fact that officially the project was allotted to Brakel Corporation and at that time Adani was nowhere in the picture. The agreement too was signed with Brakel so it would be difficult to prove why an amount of Rs 280 crore was returned to Adani. Finance and Law Department had been averse to the Cabinet decision taken on October 10. 2017, just two days before the Assembly elections were announced to return this money to Adani.
PLATTSMOUTH  A South Dakota man who was speeding and driving drunk in Cass County earlier this year pled guilty to his fifth DUI offense on Monday morning.

Ryan G. Christiansen, 40, accepted a plea deal during an appearance in Cass County District Court. Christiansen pled guilty to one Class IIA felony charge of driving under the influence of alcohol-fifth offense. He also admitted that he had been convicted of four prior DUI offenses in South Dakota and Nebraska.

The state had originally charged Christiansen with a Class II felony of DUI-fifth offense-aggravated. Prosecutors agreed to remove the aggravated language of the felony charge in exchange for a guilty plea.

The plea deal did not contain an agreement regarding sentencing. If the court chooses to impose a statutory sentence on Christiansen, he would serve between two and 20 years in prison. If the court imposes a probation sentence, Christiansen would be required to serve at least 180 days in jail. He would have his drivers license suspended for 15 years with either a statutory or probation sentence. Sentencing will take place Jan. 29.

Christiansen had lived in Nebraska before moving to his current hometown of Chamberlain, S.D. The current charge is his sixth lifetime DUI conviction, but prosecutors were able to use only four previous DUI charges in their case. He was convicted of DUI in Douglas County in August 2003, October 2003 and October 2007. He collected DUI convictions in South Dakota in November 2013 and December 2015.

Deputy County Attorney Colin Palm told the court a Cass County resident called emergency dispatchers at 6:32 p.m. March 2 to alert them about a reckless driver. The woman said a man was driving a green Ford Explorer in Louisville and nearly struck her car when she was parked at the corner of Main Street and Highway 50. She then saw the man drive through town in a reckless manner.

A Cass County Sheriffs Office deputy was on duty on Highway 66 and began looking for Christiansens vehicle. He spotted Christiansen in the eastbound lane of the highway and then saw him pass another car at a high rate of speed. The deputy switched on his speed detector and clocked Christiansen going 92 miles per hour in a 60-mph zone.

The deputy pulled over Christiansen and smelled alcohol on his breath during their initial conversation. Palm said Christiansen told the deputy he had been drinking a lot of alcohol before getting behind the wheel. Christiansen was arrested after a preliminary breath test revealed a blood-alcohol content level of .250. Palm said a chemical blood test conducted at Cass County Jail later that night revealed a BAC level of .233.

Christiansen currently remains free on bond in a pre-trial release program. Palm said Christiansen had allegedly violated several of the pre-trial release requirements in the past month. He said the state would not be filing a motion to revoke the pre-trial release on Monday, but he warned Christiansen that it could be a possibility if additional violations take place in the future.
Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Arnia, December 4

The fear of Pakistani shelling has deepened in the mind of border villagers to such an extent that they look for safety even when celebratory crackers are burst during marriages or other occasions.

Arnia town, about 45 km from district headquarters, is located close to the International Border but it never felt the brunt of ceasefire violations by Pakistan since the 1971 Indo-Pak war till September 2014. The life of border residents has changed completely in the past three years as Pakistan has directly targeted civilian areas up to seven kilometre from the border in Arnia since then.

India shares 198-km International Border with Pakistan in the Jammu region that runs from Paharpur on the Kathua-Punjab border to the Chickens Neck area of Akhnoor.

Local people have now stopped bursting crackers in the marriages. Even when a baraat comes to the village, and people burst crackers, villagers many times run for safety inside their houses. We are quite uncertain about border skirmishes as anything can happen anytime, said Darshan Lal, a village resident.

Darshan Lal, who runs a sweetmeat shop in Arnia town, had received splinter injuries on January 29, 2015, when a shell exploded outside his shop. He underwent three surgeries and spent lakhs of rupees on his treatment but got only Rs 5,000 cash assistance from the government.

I fell unconscious and remained in hospital for 22 days. The incident completely shattered my life as I cant walk smoothly now. One of my legs was broken and a plate was inserted in it. I was the only breadwinner of the family but now I find it difficult to make both ends meet, he said while regretting that the government had offered no help to him.

Another victim, Tilak Raj, a septuagenarian, has been rendered bedridden after a shell exploded in the verandah of his kutcha house in October 2014. He sustained grievous injuries and his right leg had to be amputated. I used to earn livelihood for my family through farming, but now I am now dependent on others.

I submitted photostat copies of medical documents to officers concerned a number of times but all in vain. I got a meagre compensation of Rs 5,000 from the administration. Politicians do come to the village but only for photo-ops. The only achievement of the Modi government is that it has increased the number of physically challenged persons in border areas due to Pakistani shelling manifold and it cares least about their livelihood, said Tilak Raj.

A BSF source said Pakistan has violated the truce between the two countries 107 times this year so far while there were 221 violations along the International Border in 2016. The number was 253 in 2015 but in 2014 there had been a spurt in ceasefire violations with 430 such incidents. A total of 457 villages with a population of 4,51,856 are located along the International Border and the Line of Control in Jammu, Samba, Kathua, Poonch and Rajouri districts in the Jammu region.

Schooling badly hit

Border skirmishes have left a deep impact on the schoolgoing children because schools have become a target of Pakistani mortar shells. All government schools remained closed in Arnia from September 15 to October 3 this year but its impact was witnessed for almost one and a half months as children did not return to the schools due to the fear of shelling. We are worried about the future of the children. Any skirmish along the border puts brakes on the normal classwork. There is no dearth of talent but children need peace, said a teacher at Government High School, Arnia.
Suhail A Shah

Anantnag, December 4

One soldier and two militants were killed today in an encounter triggered by an attack on an Army convoy in the Qazigund area of Anantnag district. The attack on the convoy also left a soldier injured.

One soldier was killed in the gunfight, defence spokesperson Rajesh Kalia confirmed while adding that the injured soldier was stable and under treatment.

Director General of Police S P Vaid confirmed that two bodies of militants had been retrieved from the site of the gunfight. A search operation, however, continues, Vaid said.

According to police reports, the militants opened fire at a Srinagar-bound Army convoy about 1:20 pm near Bonigam village of Qazigund along the Srinagar-Jammu national highway.

They fired indiscriminately, leaving an Army man injured, a senior police officer said, adding that the area was cordoned off soon after the attack.

He said contact was soon established with the militants, who had taken refuge in a residential house. The militants were asked to surrender but they opened fire. The fire was retaliated, triggering an encounter, which lasted several hours, the police officer said.

The house where the militants were hiding was blasted. After the retrieval of the two bodies, a combing operation was launched in the area.

Clashes erupted in the area soon after the encounter began. Security forces used tear-smoke shells to disperse the protesting youth. Unconfirmed reports suggested that a civilian sustained a minor injury during the clashes.

Meanwhile, the Lashkar-e-Toiba claimed the responsibility for the attack. They also claimed that four Army men were killed in the attack.

Two policemen were also injured in the neighboring Kulgam district in an accidental fire at a local police station. Both are stable and under treatment, a police official said.

Clashes erupt

Clashes erupted in the area soon after the encounter began. Security forces had to use tear-smoke shells to disperse the protesting youth. Unconfirmed reports suggested that a civilian sustained a minor injury during the clashes

The house where the militants were hiding was blasted. After the retrieval of the two bodies, a combing operation was launched in the area

Two policemen injured in accidental fire

Two policemen were injured on Monday in Kulgam district in an accidental fire at a local police station. Both the policemen are stable and under treatment, a police official said
Amarjot Kaur

A fortunate stroke of coincidence led Bologna-based Italian artist Cristian Chironi to Chandigarh at the time when it is commemorating the 50th death anniversary of architect Pierre Jeanneret. Staying at House Number 57 in Sector 5, which was once home to Pierre Jeanneret and was converted into a museum on March 22 this year, Cristian has become the first guest to stay at the museum. On view are his art installations, an exhibition titled My House Is a Le Corbusier, where he extends a creative interpretation to his understanding of Jeanneret and Corbusiers architecture.

Travel diaries

Since November 9, 40-year-old Cristian has been interacting with Jeannerets house, which was also frequented by Le Corbusier, and the citys open spaces. Chandigarh is a work of art and it has kept me amused ever since I got here, India being the fourth country I am travelling to explore Le Corbusiers architecture. Before this, I have stayed in houses designed by Le Corbusier in Argentina, Italy, and France. Soon, as a residential artist, I will be headed to Russia, Germany, Belgium, Tunisia, Iraq, Japan, and the USA to stay in buildings by Le Corbusier, says Cristian.

Creative space

My house is a Le Corbusier is a project sponsored by the Le Corbusier Foundation of Paris, the Pierre Jeannette Museum, and the Le Corbusier Centre, Chandigarh. I have stayed in six houses designed by Le Corbusier and what I have loved about these houses is their dialogue with outer spaces, especially nature. Also, I love the big windows and the minimalist colour use in Corbusiers architecture, like blue, yellow, green, and red, acknowledges Cristian. He also has a special fondness for Jeannettes interior designing, especially the tables and chairs he created, though he is saddened to know about the organised smuggling of furniture created by Jeannette and Corbusier. Its a pity, and I have touched upon the topic of the furniture being sold in a 30 to 40-minute long documentary I made on my stay here in Chandigarh, he adds.

Of giving & receiving

Cristian has created 10 installations to leave behind as a present to his one-month abode. Living on the first floor of the Museum, comprising three rooms, he has made two glass-boxed installations; while one is in yellow, the other is blue. I have used cut-out images from a book I brought on the works of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeannette in Chandigarh. In the collages too, which are Corbusiers original sketches of buildings, like Assembly Hall and The Secretariat, I have arranged cut-out images to juxtapose their interior and exterior spaces to converse with its urban character, he shares.

Cristians stay is supported by collectors Anna and Francesco Tampieri, and the Institute of Italian Culture of New Delhi, in collaboration with MAN (Museo dArtedella Provincia di Nuoro, lIstituzione Bologna Musei) and MAMbo (Museo dArteModerna di Bologna, Xing, NERO).

Leaving his art behind

Cristian has juxtaposed the drawings of Corbusier with the furniture of Jeanneret, treating them as a new style of architecture. There are four collages, where he places cut-outs of furniture, lamps, and views from the inside of the buildings at Capitol Complex. Hes turned these pictures upside-down to relate them, with the outer sketch of the buildings. For instance, the Corbusier chair turned upside down on a sketch of a man sitting by the road is his idea on how the underprivileged in Chandigarh must have a home to stay. Similarly, a desk turned upside down and placed next to a cow becomes an animal shelter.

On display is his photography book titled, Broken English, on the back of its cover while its front reads My House Is a Le Corbusier. These are the places, designed by Le Corbusier, I have stayed in since January 2015, he explains. Besides a manhole cover Cristian fabricated with reference to the windows of the Jeanneret house, he has also made an embossed artwork on cement. I have used an old table cloth that belongs to my family to get this mosaic, he adds. There are two glass boxes on the first floor. I have used two papers, and folded one on top of the other to make two buildings interact with other another. In the blue box, I have used three such images, he shares.

Borrowing references from the brick jaali that defines the verandas of Pierre Jeanneret Museum, he also prepared a similar mesh and placed five tabs between the bricks that show his documentaries at Corbusier-designed places he has stayed in four countries, including India.

(On till December 9)

amarjot@tribunemail.com
Mumbai, December 4

Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif are reuniting on the screen after five years and the superstar says he is happy to romance the actor in their upcoming film "Tiger Zinda Hai".

The duo, who has previously worked in movies such as "Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya" and "Partner", will reprise their roles in the soon-to-be-released sequel to "Ek Tha Tiger" (2012).

When asked how it was to romance Katrina after a long time, Salman told reporters, "It is good. It is always good to romance. As there's no fight, so it's good to romance."

The actor was speaking on the sidelines of Star Screen Awards here last night.

Katrina recently appeared on "Bigg Boss", which is hosted by Salman, to launch the film's second song "Dil diyaan gallan'.

The 51-year-old star is happy that both the songs of the movie have been well received by the audience.

"Katrina was with me on 'Bigg Boss' when she gave me this information that 'Swag se swagat' has earned some 50 million likes. Now, we have launched a romantic song. Let's see how it is received...

"Both the songs are nice and people are loving them. So, let's see what happens on December 22 and what's the destiny of the film," he said.

The "Dabangg" star also performed some of his biggest dance numbers at the award ceremony.  PTI.
Melbourne, December 4

Indian energy giant Adanis controversy-hit Carmichael coal mine project in Australia has hit another roadblock after Chinas two major state-run banks said they had no plans to finance the venture, media reports said on Monday.

The 16.5 billion dollar project, one of the worlds largest, will start construction after being given the green light by the federal and Queensland state governments.

Adani is seeking a finance of 2 billion Australian dollars by March 2018 for the first stage of its proposed mine project in Queensland.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), in a statement, clarified that it had no intention of funding Adanis proposed mine in Queensland, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

ICBC has not been, and does not intend to be, engaged in arranging financing for this project, ICBC said in a statement on its website.

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ICBC attaches great importance to its social responsibilities and keenly promotes green financing.

While not mentioning coal, ICBC said it had provided finance in Australia for a series of renewable energy projects, the report said.

Earlier, China Construction Bank had also refused financing the project, saying it is not involved with, nor considering involvement with, the Adani Carmichael Mine project, the report said.

There was no immediate response from the Adani group regarding the latest media report.

Last month, the Labour Party-led Queensland government had said it would exercise its veto not to support the financial assistance to the project, which had been opposed by environmentalists and indigenous groups.

The Adani group had applied for Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility loan (NAIF) worth 900 million dollars for building a train line to connect its mine to the coast.

The anti-Adani lobby has hailed the rejection by two of Chinas major banks as a significant development in blocking the construction of the mine, the report said.

The Carmichael project, expected to create hundreds of jobs in Australia, has been facing opposition from environmentalists and indigenous groups.

The Indian energy giant has for more than five years battled the opposition to any expansion of the Abbot Point port, saying it will cut into the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

The Adani group entered Australia in 2010 with the purchase of the greenfield Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin in central Queensland, and the Abbot Point port near Bowen in the north.

Meanwhile, an expert said that arranging finance from China was one of Adani groups last remaining hopes after major Australian banks and also Queensland government refused to finance the project on concerns about its financial viability and the push towards renewable energy sources.

Having failed to secure finance from banks in the US, Europe and Australia, Adani has now seen the worlds largest and second largest banks by assets rule out support for its massive proposed coal mine, Market Forces executive director Julien Vincent was quoted as saying in the report.

This leaves their attempts to open up Australias largest coal mine in tatters, and increasingly reliant on public funding, he said.

He said the Indian conglomerate had been working to contract the China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CEMC) into the Carmichael mine and rail project.

However, the CEMC would potentially need to source credit and support from Chinese banks to participate in the Adani project.

Adani had, on numerous occasions, pushed back the start date for the mine, the report said. PTI
Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 3

Revealing a new dimension to the nexus between officials and prisoners, an assistant superintendent has been found using the bank account of a convicts father to stash money that he and the convict, a drug smuggler, made by smuggling drugs into the Faridkot jail.

Assistant Superintendent (Jail) Karamjit Bhullar, who has been charge-sheeted, allegedly got the bank account opened so that the trail of dirty money did not lead the authorities to him.

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An inquiry by retired Justice MS Rattu, who is on the Jail Department panel, found that the official had connived with convict Pargat Singh to open an account in the name of the latters father, Gurdev Singh. The two sold drugs inside the jail and struck deals outside. Payments by clients went directly into the bank account. Deposits were made from various places in Rajasthan and Punjab.

A modest farmer, Gurdev Singh was found to have Rs 5.5 lakh in his account.

The modus operandi has set the alarm bells ringing. Jail Department officials say they have reports of other officials acting likewise.

The ADGP (Prisons), IPS Sahota, said Bhullar had been charge-sheeted for corruption and for running a racket in connivance with a convict. The official, sources said, was reported to have been interacting with gangsters inside and outside the jail.

After the Intelligence wing of Punjab Police got to know of the jail officials modus operandi, it approached the Jail Department, informing that Bhullar was clandestinely operating the account and had the ATM card with him. An internal inquiry revealed that Bhullar and convict Pargat Singh worked together to smuggle drugs into the Faridkot jail and would extort money from inmates by threatening to get them booked for illegal activities inside the jail.
Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 4

Top Congress leaders in tow, Rahul Gandhi on Monday filed his nomination for the post of party Presidents election, making his takeover of the party a mere formality.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh led the process of nominations for Gandhi as his mother and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi refrained from attending the process physically.

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If you ask me, I think he will make a very good Prime Minister: Capt.Amarinder Singh,Punjab CM on #RahulGandhi pic.twitter.com/nTkqIahuMy  ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017



She, however, was among four lead proposers for her sons election along with Manmohan Singh and, Ghulam Nabi Azad. Singh exuded confidence in Rahul Gandhis leadership saying, We have full faith in the leadership of Rahul Gandhi. His diligence will pay off one day.

As @OfficeOfRG files his nomination to take over the Grand Old Party of India I wish him all the very best going ahead. Expectations are high, challenges are numerous & I pray for his success.  Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) December 4, 2017

Four sets of nomination papers were filed by Congress Working Committee (CWC) members and AICC office-bearers.

Each state delegation filed separate forms each requiring the signatures of 10 proposers.

Gandhi was still signing his nomination papers (he must sign each nomination form and there are around 70) when this report was being written.

As the process continued, the Congress fielded leaders of all generations in the party to demolish Prime Minister Narendra Modis charge that the election of the party president was undemocratic and rigged.

Veterans who rejected this charge included Azad, former ministers Sushil Kumar Shinde and Kamal Nath, former CMs Sheila Dikshit, Harish Rawat and Bhupinder Singh Hooda as well as a host of partys young faces. Each one of them stated their support for Gandhi on record hailing the day as historic  and saying that the Congress would return to power under Gandhi.

Anand Sharma said the BJP and the PM should introspect in their charges of dynastic perpetuation on Congress and said, We reject the allegations of the PM with contempt. Rahul Gandhi is being proposed as the Congress president unanimously. This is a democratic process.

The entire process is expected to take until 3 pm to conclude as Rahul Gandhi is to sign close to 70 nomination forms of support for him.

Gandhi is the sole candidate who filed his nomination for the election today. This is the last date for nomination filing. His anointment as party chief is now a given.
Manas Dasgupta

Ahmedabad, December 4

The Congress today released its Gujarat election manifesto which included loan waiver for farmers and quota benefits to the Patidars and other deserving people among the upper castes. To woo the minorities, the party promised a separate ministry for the minorities in the state.

The 60-page manifesto released by state party chief Bharatsinh Solanki here today included fast-track courts for crimes against women, laptops or smart phones for college students, Rs 32,000-crore package to provide employment to 25 lakh youths, Rs 4,000 per month allowance for unemployed youths, reduction in taxes to bring petrol and diesel prices down by at least Rs 10 per litre and 16-hour regular electricity for irrigation. Solanki insisted that the entire Congress manifesto had been prepared on the basis of happiness index of the people as prevalent in Bhutan and several European countries which progressed without entering into the made race for development.

On the contentious issue of reservations for the Patidars, the party reiterated its commitment and promised that the existing benefits to the OBCs, the STs and SCs would be left untouched.

To woo the minorities, the Congress promised implementation of Sacher Committee recommendations and four other wakf tribunals. The party has said it would make the contracted employees permanent and fill all government vacancies with regular employees.

Solanki said the Congress government would also review the FDI policy to protect the interests of the small traders against MNCs. The party also promised a house for all women, a 24-hour toll free phone and single-window Women Help Centre, Pink Transport facility for women, free education from primary to higher education and setting up a fast-track court for crime against women.

Solanki said the Congress would set up a special investigation team to investigate into the allegations of financial irregularities to the tune of Rs 100,000 crore during the BJP rule in the state as highlighted in CAG and other reports.
London, December 4

The extradition trial of Vijay Mallya, wanted in India on charges of Rs 9,000-crore fraud and money laundering, today began at a UK court here, with the prosecution asserting that the embattled liquor baron had a case of fraud to answer.

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The trial began with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), arguing on behalf of the Indian Government, presenting its opening arguments, which focussed on loans totalling around Rs 2,000 crore sought by the erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines from a consortium of Indian banks. The CPS admitted that there may have been irregularities in the internal processes of the banks sanctioning some of those loans but that would be a question to be dealt with at a later stage in India.

The focus will be on his (Mallyas) conduct and how he misled the bank and misused the proceeds, said CPS barrister Mark Summers. He then went on to lay out a chronology of events, with specific focus on a loan sought by Kingfisher Airlines from IDBI bank in 2009.

The loan sought amounted initially to Rs 950 crore but was later reduced to Rs 750 crore, after it had received Rs 200 crore from UCO bank.

Meanwhile, Mallya was also sanctioned a loan of Rs 150 crore from IDBI in advance of the larger loan sought from the state-owned bank to meet critical obligations to overseas vendors.

The CPS noted that in all the loans sought, loss-making Kingfisher Airlines had relied on nearly the same set of security pledges, which included the UB Groups reputation, Kingfishers own brand value, a promised infusion of equity funds and a projected return to profit by February 2011.

The first day of the trial is expected to be taken up entirely by the CPS setting out a prima facie case against Mallya, out on bail since Scotland Yard executed an extradition warrant in April, The trial is scheduled to end on December 14.  PTI

Long way to go
London, December 4

The extradition trial of Vijay Mallya, wanted in India on charges of Rs 9,000-crore fraud and money laundering, on Monday began at a UK court here, with the prosecution asserting that the embattled liquor baron had a "case of fraud" to answer.

The trial, however, was briefly halted as the courtroom had to be evacuated due to a fire alarm. The 61-year-old tycoon and others waited outside the Westminster magistrates court during the fire drill.

The trial began with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), arguing on behalf of the Indian government, presenting its opening arguments in the case which focussed on loans totalling around Rs 2,000 crore sought by the erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines from a consortium of Indian banks.

The CPS admitted that there may have been "irregularities" in the internal processes of the banks sanctioning some of those loans but that would be a question to be dealt with at a later stage in India.

"The focus of our case will be on his (Mallya's) conduct and how he misled the bank and misused the proceeds," said CPS barrister Mark Summers. He then went on to lay out a detailed chronology of events, with specific focus on a loan sought by Kingfisher Airlines from IDBI bank in November 2009.

The loan sought amounted initially to Rs 950 crore but was later reduced to Rs 750 crore, after it had received Rs 200 crore from UCO bank.

Meanwhile, Mallya was also sanctioned a loan of Rs 150 crore from IDBI in advance of the larger loan sought from the state-owned bank to meet "critical obligations to overseas vendors".

The CPS noted that in all the loans sought, loss-making Kingfisher Airlines had relied on nearly the same set of security pledges, which included the UB Group's reputation, Kingfisher's own "brand value", a promised infusion of equity funds and a projected return to profit by the airline by February 2011.

"The airline had claimed that it had put proactive measures in place to improve performance," the CPS noted.

However, it was also a time when according to an industry analysis, the state of the airline industry was described as "grim" and as being in "intensive care".

"It was not a scenario in which a state bank would have entertained such loan requests," the CPS added.

The first day of the trial is expected to be taken up entirely by the CPS setting out the Indian government's prima facie case against Mallya, a fact that was not welcomed by his defence team.

Mallya's barrister, Clare Montgomery, told the judge that she had hoped to set out the defence's opening arguments on the first day as well.

But the CPS said it will "not be rushed" as it lays out the complete chronology of events.

Meanwhile, Mallya watched the proceedings from behind a glass-windowed dock.

His defence team tried to get the judge to allow him to sit outside the dock near his defence team to access some of the complicated paperwork being relied upon, but the judge denied that request saying all defendants are expected to sit in the dock.

However, the judge has directed that a table be provided to Mallya for easier access to his paperwork.

Earlier, Mallya looked relaxed when he entered the court to stand trial on charges of fraud and money laundering related to his erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines owing several Indian banks around Rs 9,000 crore.

"These (allegations against me) are false, fabricated and baseless," Mallya told reporters outside the court ahead of the hearing.

A four-member CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) team from India had also arrived at the court ahead of the trial, one of whom nodded when asked if they were "confident" about their case.

Mallya, who has been out on bail since Scotland Yard executed an extradition warrant in April this year, will be in the dock for the duration of the trial  scheduled to end on December 14.

A judgement in the case, being presided over by Judge Emma Louise Arbuthnot, is unlikely until early next year.

The CPS will need to demonstrate a prima facie case by producing evidence to show that the criminal charges against Mallya are justified and that he should be extradited to face the Indian courts.

Prison conditions in India are expected to be at the forefront during the hearing, with the Indian government providing assurances of protection of Mallya's human rights.

The tycoon has been on self-imposed exile in the UK since he left India on March 2, 2016.

While on strict bail conditions, which include providing a bail bond worth 650,000 pounds, surrender of his passport and a ban on possessing any travel documents, the former Rajya Sabha member has been based at his Hertfordshire estate Ladywalk in the village of Tewin, nearly 50 km from London.

The CPS had presented "supplemental" charges of money laundering to previous charges of fraud against the businessman at an earlier hearing in October.

The judge had agreed to effectively re-open a fresh case so that all charges can be heard concurrently in court.

If the judge rules in favour of extradition at the end of the trial, the UK home secretary must order Mallya's extradition within two months.

However, the case can go through a series of appeals in higher UK courts before arriving at a conclusion.

Judge Arbuthnot and her colleague, Rebecca Crane, at Westminster Magistrates' Court have recently rejected two other long-pending extradition requests from India.  PTI
Bhopal, December 4

Taking potshots at the Congress' claim that party vice president Rahul Gandhi is a Janeudhari Hindu, BJP's Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy today said the 47-year-old Gandhi scion was "compelled" to wear 'Janeu' (sacred thread) to perform the last rites of his father.

Swamy also termed the Congress as a "dharmashala" of one family on the day when Rahul filed his nomination for the party president's post.

"Rahul Gandhi was compelled to wear Janeu because of his father. Otherwise, he will not be able to perform last rites," Swamy said, while questioning why the Congress leader was not saying that he was a Hindu.

The senior BJP leader arrived here to attend a conference on environmental issues.

Swamy said, "When he accepts that he is a Shivabhakt, what is the problem in accepting that he is a Hindu. We will accept it. Your (Rahul) associate asked for the register meant for non-Hindus making entries and then you make claims that you are a Shivabhakt (devotee of Lord Shiva)." The BJP leader reaffirmed that the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya would begin soon and it would be ready to receive devotees by next Diwali.

"I have seen that our pleas are stronger than the opposition. They were defeated in the Allahabad High Court.

They have now filed an appeal but they did not present new facts. So, I believe that we will win the court battle," he said.

While replying to a question, Swamy claimed BJP's victory in the Gujarat Assembly elections was a foregone conclusion.

Asked about the extradition of liquor baron Vijay Mallya, Swamy said, "The government is making efforts to bring him back to India. The government will not spare anybody." Referring about to the GST, Swamy said that after the new tax regime was implemented, the GDP has started an upward movement.

Asked if the GST would adversely affect the BJP's chances in the Gujarat polls, he said everybody was saying that demonetisation would harm the party's prospects. But, on the contrary, the BJP won 75 per cent seats in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, he added.  PTI
New Delhi, December 4

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi would carry forward the great traditions of the party.

Speaking to the media, Manmohan Singh said, "Rahul Gandhi has been the darling of the Congress and this will add yet another chapter in his quest of serving the people for the party."

Meanwhile, Congress leader Anand Sharma also hailed Rahul's elevation as party president and said it is a historic day for the party.

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"It is a historic day for Congress. It's a big day today that Rahul Gandhi is taking this responsibility at a time when there is big challenge before the party. The Congress party will always stand by him to support him in his success," Sharma told media.

Earlier in the day, Rahul filed his nomination papers for the post of party chief at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters here.

It is speculated that he is running unopposed for the post of party President, but the speculations can only be confirmed on Tuesday when the names of contenders are published after scrutiny of nominations.

Rahul is set to fill in his mother Sonia Gandhi's shoes, who has been holding the post for nearly two decades. ANI
New Delhi, December 4

The issue of making Central Delhi and New Delhi out of bounds for demonstrators today reached the Supreme Court, which said guidelines should be framed to strike a proper balance between the citizens fundamental right to protest and the need to maintain law and order.

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A Bench headed by Justice AK Sikri issued notices to the Centre and the Delhi Police on a petition filed by Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan (MKSS), an NGO, challenging the ban on all assemblies and protests in Central Delhi and the New Delhi areas.

It was important to frame guidelines so that neither the fundamental right to protest was violated, nor was any inconvenience caused to the public, it noted.

The continuous imposition of prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) was an arbitrary and unreasonable restriction on the fundamental rights of citizens to hold peaceful protest, contended the petition.

As per sub-section 4 of Section 144, an order can be issued for a maximum of two months. Therefore, the Delhi Police have adopted the tactic of issuing the same order repeatedly, the NGO said, seeking quashing of several orders passed declaring entire Central or New Delhi areas as prohibited areas.  TNS
Bharuch, December 3

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said those opposing the bullet train project should travel on bullock carts.

Modi made the comment while lashing out at the Congress for its criticism of the Rs 1.1 lakh crore projectwhich he said was a negligible priceconnecting Ahmedabad and Mumbai and to be built by Japan.

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He said the Congress government too wanted the project but failed to get it and so was now opposing it.

Those opposing the bullet train project should travel on bullock carts. We wont mind, he told an election rally at the Amod Sugar factory near this Gujarat city on the banks of the Narmada.

Modi said the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor to be built by the state-run Japan International Cooperation Agency would open up a huge employment opportunity in Gujarat.

Imagine how much employment will it generate for the region, for Bharuch. I ask you where will the cement for the bullet train (infrastructure) come from, iron come from, labourers come from? Wont that be from India? And who will be buying that? Japan. Isnt it a big deal? Modi asked.

He said the UPA government under Manmohan Singh also wanted the project but could not get it. The NDA government got it at a negligible price. So the Congress didnt like that. My only grievance against the Congress is that if they could not achieve anything, why does it pain them when someone else does it. Modi took a jibe at the Nehru-Gandhi family over what he said their claim to have Gujarati origins and doing nothing for the state.

What good did they do to Gujarat? Did they even think about project like Roll on, Roll off ferry service? Over the years, the Congress has created divisions between villages and cities, states, between people, between the educated and the uneducated, caste, communities.

But since the BJP formed the government in the Center, all these ailments have gone. When I was the Chief Minister, there was not a single day when they would not hurt Gujarat. He said the two districts of Kutch and Bharuch having large Muslim populations witnessed maximum development during the BJP rule.

He said the mega project of the Statue of Unity to install the worlds tallest statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel will also contribute to the development of the region and attract foreign visitors.

The Prime Minister said the government planned to develop some 1,300 small islands and islets around the marine border of the state, many of which are even bigger than Singapore.

Imagine these islands getting developed as Singapore. So, for a better tomorrow of Bharuch and Gujarat you should vote for the BJP. The Prime Minister is on a two-day visit to the state. On Monday, he will visit Dharmapur in Valsad district and then in Saurashtras Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar. IANS
Washington, December 4

US President Donald Trump is closely monitoring the progress in his new South Asia Strategy, which gives a major role to India, and is very much engaged in its implementation, a senior administration official has said.

Trump had sought a major role for India in bringing peace in Afghanistan and ruled out a hasty withdrawal of troops from the war-torn nation while announcing his new Afghanistan and South Asia policy in August.

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"The president has been very closely monitoring the progress of the South Asia strategy. He's very interested in any progress that has been made," a senior administration official told PTI.

Trump had a meeting with his Defense Secretary Jim Mattis before he left on his visit to Pakistan. The defense Secretary is again likely to brief the president on his return.

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly Session in New York in September, Trump met the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

"That was a good opportunity to hear from President Ghani on how the strategy was being received in Afghanistan," the official said.

Observing that Trump has been getting updates from his national security team on what's happening in Afghanistan, the official said the president is very much engaged and interested in how this strategy is progressing.

Asserting that the things are signs of encouragement in the implementation of the South Asia strategy, the official said it is moving in the right direction.

"We need to give more time for the strategy to take root," the official said. "It's a multifaceted strategy. We're using all the tools that the US has its disposal  military, economic, diplomatic.

All these parts of the strategy are important. They all need to work in tandem together. The president is very interested in keeping track of how the strategy is going. And he is receiving regular updates," the senior administration official said.

In his August 21 speech, Trump had said that terrorists who slaughter innocent people will find no glory in this life or the next.

"They are nothing but thugs, and criminals, and predators, and, that's right, losers. Working alongside our allies, we will break their will, dry up their recruitment, keep them from crossing our borders, and yes, we will defeat them, and we will defeat them handily," he had said.

"In Afghanistan and Pakistan, America's interests are clear: We must stop the resurgence of safe havens that enable terrorists to threaten America, and we must prevent nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the hands of terrorists and being used against us, or anywhere in the world for that matter," Trump said.

Announcing his strategy, Trump said a core pillar of his new strategy is a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions.

"Another fundamental pillar of our new strategy is the integration of all instruments of American power, diplomatic, economic, and military, toward a successful outcome," he said.

Describing Pakistan as an important part of his strategy, Trump had said the US can no longer be silent about Pakistan's safe havens for terrorist organisations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond.

Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan. It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists, he had said. PTI
Mumbai, December 3

London Mayor Sadiq Khan today said he was lobbying with the British government to change its stringent visa norms, which he termed as a big mistake.

Khan arrived in the countrys commercial capital as part of his first official tour to three Indian cities, others being Delhi and Amritsar, to strengthen the UK capitals trade ties. I am a big critic of the British government over the change in the visa policy. I think they have made a big mistake, as on one hand the British government is asking Indian businesses to trade there and on the other they have made it more hard (to enter the country), Khan said during his interaction with reporters.

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Recently, the Theresa May government changed its visa policy for non-EU (European Union) nationals to curb its soaring immigration figures. The policy, which came into effect in November, will affect a large number of Indians, especially IT professionals.

I want to assure you that I am lobbying with my government to change its immigration stance, because I want talented Indians to come to London and not go to Canada, Australia or the US. London is open to people, talent and partnership, the London Mayor said. India last month flagged its serious concerns to Britain over its stringent visa norms and hike in threshold limit of annual pay of working professionals to get the travel documents.

The visiting Mayor also underlined the need to forge strong cultural ties with India, particularly with Mumbai.

I believe that culture is the DNA of any city. Im meeting (Maharashtra) Chief Minister tomorrow and hoping to announce a lot of things in relation to culture as well as a joint venture on issues like ecology and climate change, he said. Hailing Bollywood, Khan said they wanted to learn how the industry can churn out so many movies in a year. One thing that we are doing in Mumbai is learning how you manage to make so many films in Bollywood what is that you are doing? Indian films post-production work is excellent.

Hollywood filmmakers come here to do their post-production work. So, one of the announcements we are making tomorrow will be of the UK and India making films together, which will be a good example, he said.

Khan said students will benefit a lot as professionals after they get education in the top universities in London. There are more international students in London than any other city in the world. Four of the worlds top 30 universities are in London. Due to the change in the visa policy, some Indian students chose to go to Canada or Australia.

However, I want to tell Indian students that our universities are brilliant. When you come to London, apart from fantastic quality of education you get, you also get the experience and the contacts you make...This will stand you in good head when you return to (your) country as executive, investor, teacher or entrepreneur, he said.  PTI
Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 4

The state government is reviewing two major doles it gives out to the people  power subsidy to the farming community and the atta-dal scheme.

With the Capt Amarinder Singh government unable to cap the rising expenditure, it is now having a relook at the two major schemes that are draining the states coffers.

Official sources told The Tribune that during the two meetings held over the past one month on how to bring the states economy back on track, one of the issues being deliberated upon was that these two expenses needed to be curbed. This year, the government will be spending over Rs 10,255 crore on power subsidy and Rs 500 crore on the atta-dal scheme.

The government has already made an appeal to rich farmers to give up their power subsidy, although it has yielded no response. A survey of the beneficiaries in the atta-dal scheme (there are 1.39 crore beneficiaries) to weed out fake enrolments was done, but it has allegedly been scuttled by political powers at the local level as they do not want to annoy their voters. As a result, all these beneficiaries will continue to get subsidised foodgrain.

Officials say they have asked DCs in some districts to start a survey of the beneficiaries and check if people are in need of these doles. Based on their responses, the government could review the two schemes. Since the states own earnings have been restricted, post the GST roll out, the government is under pressure to curb expenditure. Four major heads  salaries and wages, pensions, interest on loans and power subsidy  take away a major chunk of the earnings. Of the total revenue receipts of Rs 60,079.87 crore this fiscal, Rs 56,184 crore will be used only by these four heads. The cut on other expenditure should be imposed if the state has to function normally, said a senior government official.

In a tight spot

Unable to cap the rising expenditure, The Congress government is now having a relook at the two major schemes that are draining the state's coffers

Relief on GST front

Repeated pleas by CM Capt Amarinder Singh for release of GST collections have finally yielded results. The state received Rs 960 crore as compensation for the GST for September and October; in addition to Rs 524 crore as arrears for July and August (the compensation received for these months was less). The government has also received the IGST share of Rs 488 crore for October. Finance Department officials said after meeting its committed liabilities, they would be able to release some money for social security pensions this month.
Neena Sharma

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, December 4

For the first time, the rugged border town of Pithoragarh has caught the fancy of a film crew from Mumbai which is busy shooting a Hindi film, Sandeep Aur Pinki Farar with actor Arjun Kapoor in the main lead.

A reputation for eyeing the best locales in India and abroad, the Yash Raj banner, under whose banner the film is being shot, seems to have fallen for this rugged mountainous place in the Kumaon region.

Though, in the past, several films have been shot in Ramnagar, Mussoorie and Nainital, this is the first time Pithoragarh has been selected by Yash Raj films.

There is a general desire to look for newer and exotic locales among Hindi film makers, years ago Jammu and Kashmir was the favourite among film makers, but that came to a stop with the start of insurgency. Both Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh have benefited from what can be said as J and Ks loss, said Madan Mohan Duklain, a film actor and writer.

The film directed by Diwakar Banerjee also stars Parineeti alongside Arjun Kapoor and the film crew is likely to remain in Pithoragarh for a month.

With breath-taking scenic spots at Munsiyari, Berinaag and Chokodi, Pithoragarh can be an ideal choice for producers looking for novelty and the effort can spur interest among tourists. So far, Pithoragarh has remained hidden due to its remoteness, but I am hopeful Yash Rajs film, once complete, will change this perception, said Raju Devlal, secretary of the Hotel Owners Association.

Nevertheless, the presence of Arjun Kapoor has managed to create an exciting buzz among the people of Pithoragarh, who are waiting for the arrival of Parineeti and other members of the film.
Melbourne, December 4

An Australian conservative politician on Monday proposed to his long-term partner on the floor of Parliament, ahead of the expected passage of a measure for same sex couples to marry.

Australians overwhelmingly voted for same-sex marriage in a postal vote in September and a marriage equality bill that passed the Senate last week is being debated in the Lower House, where it is expected to pass this week.

Liberal Member of Parliament Tim Wilson proposed to his partner Ryan Bolger in the capital of Canberra, the two having already exchanged rings but having pledged to wait for the country to pass the legislation before they wed.

This debate has been the soundtrack to our relationship, an emotional Wilson said to his partner, seated in parliaments public viewing area above.

In our first speech I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands, that they are the answer to the question we cannot ask. So theres only one thing left to do - Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me? asked Wilson, who was formerly Australias human rights commissioner.

Bolger nodded yes, to applause.

Both Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbulls Liberal-National coalition government and the main opposition Labor Party have said they aim to pass the law by Dec. 7, but any proposed amendments could stretch out that timeline.

Passage of the bill will make Australia the 26th nation to legalise same-sex marriage, a watershed for a country in which some states considered homosexual activity illegal until 1997.

This is an issue of fundamental fairness, Turnbull said to parliament later on Monday. A society that promotes freedom and equality under the law should accord gay men and women the right to marriage.

About 80 percent of eligible voters participated in the voluntary survey, a turnout larger than for Britains Brexit vote and Irelands same-sex marriage referendum.

The message today, to every gay person in this nation, is clear, Turnbull added. We love you, we respect you, your relationship is recognised by the Commonwealth as legitimate and honourable as anybody elses. Reuters
Karangasem (Indonesia), December 4

Gushing ash from Balis Mount Agung volcano has dissipated into a wispy plume of steam, and Australian airlines that cancelled some flights to the Indonesian resort island on the weekend have returned to near-normal schedules.

Indonesias disaster mitigation agency on Monday said the volcano remains at its highest alert level but most of Bali is safe for tourists.

The exclusion zone around the volcano still extends 10 kilometres from the crater in some directions. More than 55,000 people are living in shelters.

Airlines Jetstar and Virgin Australia, which cancelled flights over the weekend even as the ash cloud shrank dramatically, said they were resuming services today.

The regions volcanic ash monitoring center in Darwin, Australia, has stopped issuing advisories for Agung, reflecting that its currently posing no threat to aircraft.

It would resume advisories if theres another eruption.

Tens of thousands of tourists were stranded when ash closed Balis international airport for nearly three days last week.

Indonesian government volcanologists say Agungs crater is about one-third filled by lava and there is still a high risk of more eruptions.

The volcanos last major eruptions in 1963 killed more than 1,100 people and it was active for more than a year.

David Boutelier, a geologist at the University of Newcastle in Australia, said the chance of a violent explosion is still very high but possibly not as high as several weeks ago because pressure is being released.  AP
Islamabad, December 4

US Defence Secretary James Mattis today asked Pakistan to redouble efforts to confront militants operating from its soil as he met the countrys top leadership here, amid Washingtons concerns that Islamabad was not doing enough to dismantle terror safe havens.

Mattis held a meeting with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi after arriving here on his maiden tour to Pakistan to explore ways to effectively eliminate the threat of militancy, days after 2008 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed was released from house arrest.

The US Embassy in Islamabad said in a statement that Mattis told Abbasi to redouble efforts to tackle militants operating from Pakistans territory. The secretary reiterated that Pakistan must redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country, Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Dana W White said after Mattis concluded his inaugural trip to Pakistan.

Mattis also met Minister of Defence Khurram Dastigir Khan, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Director General of ISI Lieutenant General Naveed Mukhtar. Mattis recognised Pakistans sacrifices in the war against terrorism, White said, adding that Mattis emphasised the vital role that Pakistan can play in working with the US and others to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that brings stability and security to the region.

Abbasi said Pakistan, in its national interest, would continue to conduct intelligence-based operations all over the country to consolidate the gains achieved in the last four years.

The PM reiterated that there are no safe havens in Pakistan and the entire nation was committed to its resolve on eradicating terrorism once and for all in all its forms and manifestations, according to a statement by the Prime Ministers Office here.

Abbasi said no other country benefits more from peace and stability in Afghanistan than Pakistan.

He agreed with Mattis that both Pakistan and the US have common stakes in securing peace and security in Afghanistan for the long term stability of the broader region.  PTI
Amman, December 4

Jets believed to be Syrian and Russian struck heavily crowded residential areas in a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus, killing at least 27 people and injuring dozens in the third week of a stepped-up assault, residents, aid workers and a war monitor said on Monday.

Civil defence workers said at least 17 were killed in the town of Hamoriya in an aerial strike on a marketplace and nearby residential area after over nearly 30 strikes in the past 24 hours that struck several towns in the densely populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta.

Four other civilians were killed in the town of Arbin, while the rest came from strikes on Misraba and Harasta, the civil defence workers said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said the casualties on Sunday were the biggest daily death toll since the stepped-up strikes began 20 days ago. The monitor said nearly 200 civilians were killed in strikes and shelling, including many women and children, during that period.

The Eastern Ghouta has been besieged by army troops since 2013 in an attempt to force the rebel enclave to submission.

The government has in recent months tightened the siege in what residents and aid workers have said is a deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war, a charge the government denies.

The United Nations says about 400,00 civilians besieged in the region face complete catastrophe because aid deliveries by the Syrian government were blocked and hundreds of people who need urgent medical evacuation have not been allowed outside the enclave.

Eastern Ghouta is the last remaining large swathe of rebel-held area around Damascus that has not reached an evacuation deal to surrender weapons in return for allowing fighters to go to other rebel-held areas farther north.

They are targeting civilians ... a jet hit us there, no rebels or checkpoints, Sadeq Ibrahim, a trader, said by phone in Hamoriya.

May God take his revenge on the regime and Russia, said Abdullah Khalil, another resident, who said he lost members of his family in the air strike on Arbin and was searching for survivors among the rubble.

The intensified bombardment of Eastern Ghouta follows a rebel attack last month on an army complex in the heart of the region that the army had used to bomb nearby rebel-held areas.

Residents said, however, that the failure of the army to dislodge rebels from the complex had prompted what they believe were retaliatory indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the Eastern Ghouta.

Government advances since last year have forced people to flee deeper into its increasingly overcrowded towns. The loss of farmland is increasing pressure on scarce food supplies.

The Eastern Ghouta is part of several de-escalation zones that Russia has brokered with rebels across Syria that has freed the army to redeploy in areas where it can regain ground.

Rebels accuse the Syrian government and Russia of violating the zones and say they were meant as a charade to divert attention from the heavy daily bombing of civilian areas. The Syrian government and Russia deny their jets bomb civilians and insist they only strike militant hideouts. Reuters
Islamabad, December 4

US Defence Secretary James Mattis on Monday arrived in Pakistan with the issue of terrorist safe havens high on the agenda, after the release from house arrest of 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed last month.

Mattis landed at the Nur Khan Airbase in Rawalpindi where he was received by officials from Pakistans defence and foreign ministries.

He will hold talks with civilian and military leaders, including Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Relations between the US and Pakistan have plummeted after President Donald Trump announced his new Afghan and South Asia policy in August and directly blamed Islamabad for supporting the Afghan Taliban.

Mattis is on a five-day tour to Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and Pakistan.

Visiting Islamabad about a week after the White House asked Pakistan to immediately charge and arrest 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Saeed, in the absence of which it warned of repercussions, Mattis said he needs to talk to leaders in the country and gain their understanding.

JuD chief Saeed, who has an American bounty of USD 10 million on his head, walked free on November 24 after a court ordered an end to his 10-month detention.

The Pakistan government decided against detaining him further in any other case, pushing back against Indias efforts to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack to justice.

The first thing Im going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. I need to go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening, Mattis said on his way to Pakistan from Egypt.

Mattis is the first top American official to visit Pakistan after the completion of the first 100 days of the US new South Asia strategy unveiled by Trump on August 21.

We know we have some common ground. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their troops killed and wounded by terrorists. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their innocent people murdered and wounded by terrorists, so we know that there is common ground, he said, ahead of his visit.

Similarly, he said, there is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth, that do move back and forth in order to live in one country and attack the other.

So we know theres common ground; its how much more common ground can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective, Mattis said.

But at the same time, as the General (Bajwa) has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and well find that common ground, if we have the will to. And then well work on how we address the problems where we can work together, he said.

He said he would not characterise everything over the past 16 years as failures.

There is clearly an abundance of areas where we have to double down, and I am optimistic at this point that because of what our adversaries, our mutual enemies are doing, that we can find ways to work together, he said.

Mattis said both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military, the NATO-led militaries of 39 nations have all been in fights here. Weve got to find a way to work together.

He said there is always an urgency to something when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken.

These are 39 of the most economically powerful, generally speaking, most long-term democratic institutions in the world. These are powerful nations morally, economically and diplomatically, and certainly militarily, he said.

Mattis said that it was essential in South Asia that all countries work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economy to build.

I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We can not only imagine it, its a reality right now, Mattis said.

So we have got to work together on this, and theres a sense of urgency about that, he said.

Theres people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries. So as you look at this problem, if youll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things, he said.

General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting thats characterised the area, he said.

Media reports suggested that Mattis faces a difficult task ahead as Pakistan is not happy over repeated US allegations of safe havens for militants in the country.

The Express Tribune yesterday said the civilian-military leadership will adopt a clear cut and decisive stance during the visit of Mattis that only cooperation will get cooperation. PTI
Seoul, December 4

The US and South Korea today kicked off their largest ever joint air exercise, an operation North Korea has labelled an all-out provocation, days after Pyongyang fired its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile.

The five-day Vigilant Ace drillinvolving 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troopsbegan Monday morning, Seouls air force said.

Pyongyang over the weekend blasted the drill, accusing US President Donalds Trumps administration of begging for nuclear war.

The annual exercise comes five days after the nuclear- armed North test-fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the United States within range.

As tensions surged, US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican and foreign policy hawk, warned that the US was moving closer to preemptive war with the North. If theres an underground nuclear test (by the North), then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States, Graham told the CBS show Face the Nation.

The isolated and impoverished North has staged six increasingly powerful atomic tests since 2006  most recently in September.

The preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures. Every missile test, every underground test of a nuclear weapon, means the marriage is more likely, he said.

Grahams remarks echoed those of Donald Trumps National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who told a security forum on Saturday that the potential for war with the North is increasing every day.  AFP
Sanaa/Dubai, December 4

Veteran former president Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed in a shooting on Monday after switching sides in Yemen's civil war, abandoning his Iran-aligned Houthi allies in favour of a Saudi-led coalition, foes and supporters said.

Sources in the Houthi militia said its fighters stopped Saleh's armoured vehicle with an RPG rocket outside the embattled capital Sanaa and then shot him dead. Sources in Saleh's party confirmed he died in an attack on his convoy.

Unverified footage of his bloodied body lolling in a blanket circulated just days after he tore up his alliance with the Houthis following nearly three years in which they had jointly battled the Saudi-led coalition that intervened to try to reinstate Yemen's internationally recognised government.

In a televised speech on Monday, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi congratulated the Yemeni people for what he described as a victory against a "conspiracy of treason" engineered by the group's Gulf Arab enemies. He did not mention Saleh's death.

Saleh, 75, had said in a speech on Saturday that he was ready for a "new page" in ties with the coalition and called the Houthis a "coup militia", leading them to accuse him of betrayal.

Warfare between the former allies has torn densely populated Sanaa for days as Houthi fighters seized control of much of the capital and on Monday blew up Saleh's house while coalition jets bombed their own positions.

The end of their alliance had seemed poised to transform the fortunes of war after two years of attrition along mostly static front lines, which gave the Saudi-led coalition a new advantage over the Houthis.

Stalemate in Yemen has contributed to a human catastrophe as a Saudi-led blockade and internal fighting has thrust millions to the brink of famine and accelerated the spread of deadly epidemics.

Eyes will now turn to Saleh's political allies and military commanders, whom analysts credited with aiding the Houthi march southwards in 2014 to dominate swathes of western Yemen.

"What happens now and whether his family and political allies fight on is not yet clear," said Adam Baron, a Yemen expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

"His people will be angry, and many will certainly be out for blood, but there are many in the middle especially among the tribes who will fall with whoever appears stronger," he said.

"The (Saudi-led) coalition may have put a lot of their eggs in Saleh's basket only for it to fall over now. They appeared to strongly support his attempt to confront the Houthis and now that bid may have failed."

Heads of snakes

Saleh once compared his 33-year rule over Yemen to "dancing on the heads of snakes", a period that included unification of conservative north and Marxist south Yemen, civil war, uprisings, Islamist militant campaigns and tribal feuds.

But he was forced from power in 2012 following an Arab Spring uprising that left him wounded by an attempted assassination, leading to a Saudi-brokered political transition.

He fled to his one-time ally Saudi Arabia for treatment of his injuries and the princes in Riyadh allowed him to return to Yemen months later - something they came to bitterly regret as he undermined the transition plan and later joined the Houthis.

That set the stage for his final role -- that of ally to the Houthi movement which he had previously fought six times during his own presidency, and to Iran, the Houthis' political backer.

But they vied for supremacy over the territory they ran together, including Sanaa, which the Houthis seized in September 2014, and their feud burst into open combat on November 29.

The manoeuvring ended on Monday, as footage circulating on social media appeared to show his corpse, a deep wound in the side of its head, wrapped in a red blanket and being loaded onto a pick-up truck as tribal fighters waved their weapons.

"Praise God!" and "Hey Ali Affash!" (another name for Saleh) they were shouting.

Officials in his own General People's Congress party said Saleh was killed outside Sanaa in an RPG and gun attack on his convoy along with the GPC's assistant secretary general, Yasser al-Awadi.

His death was confirmed by Saleh's nephew and former chief of Yemen's security forces, Yahya Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, who hailed him as a martyr on his official Facebook page.

Street battles ease In Sanaa

Residents reported that the situation in Sanaa had calmed.

Most people were indoors, and streets were deserted amid a state of fear as the Houthis asserted full control. Saudi-led aircraft continued to fly overhead.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam claimed significant gains in the battle for Sanaa on Monday.

"With the aid and approval of God, the security forces backed up by wide popular support were able last night to cleanse the areas in which the militias of treason and betrayal were deployed," he said in a statement.

The Houthi movement's TV channel al-Masirah and witnesses said Houthi fighters had seized the downtown home of Saleh's nephew Tareq, an army general.

Residents said the warring sides traded heavy automatic and artillery fire as the Houthis advanced in the central Political District, which is a redoubt of Saleh and his family.

"We lived through days of terror. Houthi tanks have been firing and the shells were falling on our neighbourhood," said Mohammed al-Madhaji, who lives in the frontline district.

"The fighting has been so violent we feel we could die at any moment. We can't get out of our homes." Houthi media and political sources also reported that the Houthis also advanced toward Saleh's birthplace in a village outside Sanaa where he maintained a fortified palace.  Reuters
Sanaa, December 4

Former President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been killed in fighting with the Iran-aligned Houthi militia raging in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television said on Monday, quoting sources in Salehs party.

Al Arabiya quoted a source in Salehs General Peoples Congress as saying he was killed by sniper bullets. A Houthi video distributed on social media showed what appeared to be Salehs body, clad in grey clothes and being carried out on a red blanket. The side of his head bore a deep wound.

Unverified footage that circulated earlier on social media showed armed militiamen unfurling a blanket containing the corpse and shouting, Praise God! and Hey Ali Affash!, another last name for Saleh.

The radio station of the Houthi-run Yemeni Interior Ministry first reported Salehs death but his party quickly denied this to Reuters, saying he was still leading his forces in Sanaa.

Earlier on Monday, Houthi forces blew up Salehs house in Sanaa and came under aerial attack by Saudi-led coalition warplanes for a second day, residents said.

The Saudi-led air campaign, backed by US and other Western arms and intelligence, has killed hundreds of civilians but has failed to secure the coalition any major gains in the nearly three-year-old campaign to restore Yemens internationally recognised president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power.

Salehs loyalists have lost ground on the sixth day of heavy urban warfare with the Houthis during which the death toll has jumped to at least 125 with 238 wounded, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

We are supporting the main hospitals in Sanaa who urgently need war-wounded kits, ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said in Geneva. We are also looking at donating dead body bags to hospitals which are actually asking for them and hope to donate fuel to the main hospitals because they depend on generators. The United Nations called for a humanitarian pause in Sanaa between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to allow civilians to leave their homes, aid workers to reach them, and the wounded to get medical care.

Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Yemen, said in a statement that the streets of Sanaa had become battlegrounds and that aid workers remain in lockdown.

McGoldrick warned the warring parties that any deliberate attacks on civilians and against civilian and medical infrastructure are clear violations of international humanitarian law and may constitute war crimes.

Sanaa residents reported intense fighting overnight and into the morning with families cowering in their homes as explosions rocked the city. Coalition air strikes hammered Houthi positions in an apparent bid to shore up Salehs forces, witnesses said.

The realignment of Salehs forces with the Saudis would mark a significant turn in a war that is part of a wider struggle between regional powers Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Yemens protracted bloodshed has compounded the woes of one of the Arab worlds poorest countries and left at least 10,000 dead as hunger and disease have spread.

At the United Nations, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the warring parties to stop all ground and air assaults. He also called for the resumption of all commercial imports into Yemen, saying millions of children, women and men were at risk of mass hunger, disease and death.  Reuters
Manufacturing activity in the U.S. remains strong, despite small declines recorded in three reports, while the construction sector posted its biggest gain in nearly half a year.

New orders for manufactured goods fell 0.1% in October from the month before, according to a report from the Commerce Department on Monday, but that was better than the 0.4% decline expected in a consensus estimate from analysts. This latest performance followed an upwardly revised September hike of 1.7%.

The drop in factory orders came as orders for durable goods fell by 0.8%, more than offsetting a 0.7% increase in orders for non-durable goods.

Orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, commonly referred to a core capital goods, and used as a measure of business spending plans, rose a revised 0.3% in October instead of the originally reported 0.5% drop reported earlier by the department.

Analysts at Econoday said this rise in core capital goods is worth noting because it extends what is a very strong run for a component that offers leading indications on business investment."

Shipments of core capital good, also revised higher, extend what is also an impressive run, one that feeds directly into nonresidential fixed investment and marks a strong early plus for fourth-quarter gross domestic product [performance]," Econoday notes.

In contrast, the same report showed shipments of manufactured goods, up 10 of the last 11 months, increased 0.6% in October following a September improvement of 1.1%.

Looking past the headline, this report is very solid and points squarely at a rising contribution from the factory sector, said Econoday.

Strong October Factory Activity Extends Into November

This followed two reports from Friday about the health of the nations manufacturing sector. It continued growing at a robust pace last month, although a bit more slowly.

While the closely watched numbers from the Institute for Supply Management showed U.S manufacturing activity declined slightly in November from the month before, according to its Purchasing Managers Index, it remained well in positive territory.

That PMI registered 58.2%, down 0.5 of a percentage point from October. A reading above 50% indicates expansion in manufacturing, and November marked the 15th straight month above this level.

Comments from the panel of purchasing executives reflect expanding business conditions, with new orders and production leading gains, employment expanding at a slower rate, order backlogs stable and expanding, and export orders all continuing to grow in November.

Supplier deliveries are still expanding but at slower rates, and inventories continued to contract during the period. Price increases continued, but at a slower rate.

Despite a slightly lower number for November compared to October, the measure shows solid growth ahead for the manufacturing sector, according to John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities.

The composite index is coming off a cycle high of 60.8% in September, and with a six-month average of 58.4%, the index continues to signal firmness in the manufacturing sector, he said. For the year ahead, we expect GDP gains of 2% or greater.

This came as a separate report was also released Friday by the financial information services provider IHS Markit that showed improved operating conditions across the U.S. manufacturing sector in November. The upturn was supported by solid, albeit slightly weaker, increases in output and new orders.

Its U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index registered 53.9 in November, down from 54.6 in October. Like the ISM gauge, a reading above 50 indicates expansion in manufacturing, though its not expressed as a percentage.

Goods producers increased their output at a rate only slightly below that seen in October, according to the report, while anecdotal evidence suggested that the rise was due to greater order volumes and robust client demand.

New orders received by manufacturers rose at the second-fastest pace since March in November. Panelists linked the latest upturn to more favorable demand conditions, and noted more orders from domestic and foreign clients. Furthermore, export sales rose at a rate that, though moderate, was the second-fastest in 15 months.

The rate of expansion settled slightly after Octobers rebound from the hurricanes, but still leaves the sector on course for its best quarter since the opening months of 2015, according to Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit.

Whats especially encouraging is that growth is being led by producers of business equipment and machinery, indicating investment spending is on the rise, he said. Jobs growth in the sector has also picked up in recent months compared with the subdued hiring earlier in the year, suggesting that an expansionary mood is beginning to prevail in the goods-producing sector. Business optimism is now at its highest since the start of 2016, underscoring how firms believe the upturn has further to run as we move into 2018.

Construction Spending Surges

Meantime, in the construction sector, a Friday report from the Commerce Department showed the amount of spending in October increased 1.5% from the revised September estimate, totaling $1.242 billion.

This marked the biggest increase in five months and met a consensus estimate from analysts. Furthermore, when October is compared to the same time in 2016, construction spending advanced 3.9%.

The overall gain was helped by a near 4% hike in public construction projects that included a 3.3% boost from state and local governments, while federal government spending on construction leaped by 11.1%.

There was healthy growth this October in both public and private construction spending, with an exceptionally strong surge in public educational construction, said Ken Simonson, the chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America. But for the first 10 months of 2017 combined, public investment, specifically in infrastructure, has fallen short of the already inadequate amounts posted in the same period of 2016.
On Saturday, spotlights shined bright on a stage full of hopeful candidates in the Miss Owasso Pageant held at the Owasso High School Performing Arts Center.

The evening hosted 13 girls who competed for the prestigious crown  eight contestants in the Teen Division and five in the Miss Division.

Madeline Shields, 22, of Owasso was crowned Miss Owasso, and Ella Phillips, 15, of Tulsa was crowned Miss Owassos Outstanding Teen.

Both of these girls have a passion for their platforms, for giving back and making a difference, said Brittany Gartner, pageant executive director. I have no doubt that they are going to make a lasting impact on Owasso during their year of service.

Shields is a senior at the University of Oklahoma, studying Elementary Education. Her talent was a flute solo to Habanera, and her platform is, Revitalizing Education in Oklahoma. She also won the Joe John Edwards Scholarship and tied for Talent preliminary winner.

Likewise, Phillips attends Regent Preparatory School. Her talent was a vocal performance to Live Out Loud, and her platform is, Those Who Read Succeed. She was also the Talent preliminary winner.

This year, the pageant is under new directorship with Gartner, who competed in Arkansas for six years before moving to Oklahoma. She said she is excited to give back to the system that has given her numerous opportunities.

My true passion is helping these young women find their place in this world and learning how to be confident in the person that God made them to be, Gartner said. I love the empowerment that this system gives to women, and Owasso is the perfect community to make a meaningful difference.

The new titleholders will both participate in the Owasso Christmas parade Saturday, Dec. 9, 9-10 a.m., as well as host the first annual Miss Owasso Holiday Shopping Expo at Owasso High School the same day, 12-4 p.m.

They will also be making appearances at the St. Francis Childrens Hospital Christmas party and the Tulsa Dream Center Christmas outreach project later in the month. They will represent Owasso next June at the Miss Oklahoma and Miss Oklahomas Outstanding Teen pageants.

Overall, the Miss Owasso pageant gave away 17 awards, totaling over $6,000 in cash scholarships to the finalists. All non-finalists received a $50 scholarship.
In the months leading up to his inauguration on Dec. 5, 2016, Mayor G.T. Bynum could tell you exactly how many days needed to pass before he took the oath of office.

A year into his new job, the mayor now has his watch set to tell him how many days he has left in office. As of Monday, it is 998.

Dont mistake this for a sign that he is counting down the days until he can escape the Mayors Office. Think of it, instead, as a long-range stopwatch ticking off the time he has left to get done all that he has set out to do.

I wanted us to focus on what are the biggest, hardest things that we need to focus on to accomplish to make Tulsa as competitive as it can be. A lot of those things dont happen in two months, or six months, or nine months  or a year, Bynum said. But I feel like weve spent the last year building up to what is going to be a very big year.

I mean, just think about what we have coming online in the first few months of 2018 with the public inebriate alternative opening up, with the Better Way program. ... We will open our own lock-up facility. ... All of this is happening in just the next couple of weeks, and it is all, I think, a natural evolution of what we have been building up to this year.

Some would say it was natural evolution that put Bynum in office. His grandfather, Robert LaFortune, and his cousin, Bill LaFortune, each served as mayor of Tulsa, and Bynum himself served eight years on the City Council before challenging two-term incumbent Mayor Dewey Bartlett last year.

He won, decisively, on the promise to create a city unified and determined to make its mark nationally and internationally through the use of data-driven solutions and innovative strategies.

It can sound a little hippy-dippy and wonky, but it has worked to raise the citys profile. Bynum was invited to give a TED Talk on the subject in Washington, D.C., earlier this year, and in October he flew to Paris to give a speech at CityLab 2017.

His TED talk has been viewed more than 250,000 times.

The message that I delivered about how we are using data evidence and evaluation to really hone in on specific problems and work together to find solutions rather than having these old philosophical debates, I think that got us a lot of national attention, Bynum said.

The decision to change the citys focus from squabbling with its neighbors over outlet malls and sporting goods shops to working with those same communities to build a better region informs and guides everything the city does, Bynum said.

Looking back over his first year in office, Bynum pointed to a handful of initiatives he believes best reflect that approach: the effort, through the 100 Resilient Cities program, to address the disparities between the African-American community and the rest of the city; and the creation of the Mayors Education Cabinet and New Tulsans Initiative.

Those programs  which Bynum acknowledges might not grab everyones attention  are being coupled with concrete changes in how the city operates. The changes include the hiring of more police officers and firefighters, the establishment of new development procedures and a commitment to work with local educators to raise funding for schools.

All of this ties together, though, I think, in a way that we are focused as Tulsans in working together to make our neighbors lives better, Bynum said.

The toughest moment

Asked whether the death of Terence Crutcher and its aftermath was the hardest thing he had to deal with in his first year as mayor, Bynum paused  and it was a long pause  before answering yes.

But it was not a pause prompted by uncertainty. The mayor, it seems, has thought a lot about the incident and what it meant  and could have meant  to the city.

Crutcher, an unarmed black man, was shot dead by Betty Shelby, a white Tulsa police officer, on Sept. 16, 2016. The shooting drew national attention, as did the jurys verdict in Shelbys first-degree manslaughter trial: not guilty.

It was a very tough thing to go through, but I also think it says an awful lot about Tulsa that we went through something so difficult, and yet I think we emerged from it a stronger city because we were willing as a city to talk about and have conversations about things that people had kind of been wanting to be out of sight and out of mind for years, and that now (that) we have had those conversations we are talking about how we can do better as a city, Bynum said

The work of the Tulsa Commission on Community Policing, and the 77 recommendations it has put forward, are intended in part to help ensure that incidents like the Crutcher shooting dont happen again, Bynum said.

After the Shelby verdict, Bynum and Police Chief Chuck Jordan held a press conference but took no questions. Bynum said there were legal reasons why he could not respond to questions but that he tried to use his prepared statement to address the strong emotions swirling around the city in that moment.

I recognized at the time how divided our city was, and I knew exactly what I wanted to say to the citizens of Tulsa and to the country about how we were going to move forward from this and that we recognized both the pain the Crutcher family had been through but also the difficulty that our police officers go through every day being asked to protect the rest of us, Bynum said.

Bynum said he spoke to the Crutcher family and to Betty Shelby after the shooting.

My feeling is that it was a tremendous tragedy. I dont think either of them, given the opportunity, would have chosen what happened to happen, Bynum said. It is a terrible tragedy, and that is one of the reasons that we have been so focused on our community policing initiatives.

Mayor who?

In his first few months in office, it was not unusual for Bynum to look around for his predecessor when someone called out, mayor. Now he responds to the title, but not without a modicum of humility.

Bynum said he came into office thinking he had a good appreciation for what the job entailed, but has been surprised to learn of the unrelenting nature of the work.

As a city councilor, Bynum recalled, he focused on three issues at a time.

Well, as the mayor, I work on three things in about 15 minutes, and it is all the time, every day, seven days a week, every day of the year, he said.

And they are not easy things.

The easy decisions get filtered out before they get to me, so most of the decisions that end up on my desk are the very difficult ones, Bynum said.

He also has come to learn that some problems arent as easy to fix as he might have thought. The citys dispute with the county over a jail agreement being a prime example. Bynum pledged to get a deal done within 100 days of taking office. Not only did the deal not happen in 100 days, it didnt happen at all. The city decided to open its own lock-up facility.

In retrospect, (it) seems so naive to have thought we could do that, the mayor said.

For Bynum, 40, it was another lesson learned. Over the next 998 days, he expects the demanding job will teach him a few others.

I feel like I am better at the job today than I was in the first month on it, he said. But I recognize I still have a lot of work to do in being as good as I can be, and (I) just keep working to improve every day.
RUDD | An Anamosa man died from injuries after a transit bus collided with a Jeep on Thursday on the Avenue of the Saints near Rudd.

Troopers identified the driver of the 2015 Jeep as Eugene Schipper, 76, of Anamosa.

The accident occurred after 1:30 p.m. when the bus headed northbound on Glass Avenue collided with a westbound car on U.S. Highway 18, according to Iowa State Patrol.

According to the crash report, the Cerro Gordo County transit bus, driven by Mark Helmers, was crossing Highway 18 and failed to yield to the right of way Jeep.

Schipper was transported by Nora Springs Ambulance to Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa.

The bus was carrying two passengers. Passenger Shannon Nissen, 56, was injured and transported.

The accident remains under investigation.

Floyd County Sheriff's Department, Rudd Fire Department, Nora Springs Fire and Ambulance and AMR Ambulance assisted at the scene.
Citing local residents concerns about Tulsa Police use of force, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a voluminous open records request with the Tulsa Police Department.

Since the death of Terence Crutcher at the hands of the TPD, LDF has monitored local residents concerns about excessive use of force and alleged racially-biased police arrests and stops, the LDF said in a statement accompanying a copy of the open records request.

The LDF and ACLU Oklahoma seek 39 different types of TPD records, from a department organizational chart to the date and location of each time police stopped a pedestrian, broken down by the race, gender, age and outcome of each stop.

A Tulsa Police spokesman had not reviewed the Open Records Act request but said it would be processed like any other the department receives.

I cant think of an instance where anyone did an ORA on something that was public record that we did not release, Sgt. Shane Tuell said.

Crutcher was shot to death in September 2016 by then-TPD Officer Betty Shelby.

A jury in May acquitted Shelby of first-degree manslaughter in Crutchers shooting death. In August, Shelby was sworn in as a reserve deputy for the Rogers County Sheriffs Office after resigning from the Tulsa Police Department earlier in the month.

Crutchers estate filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in June that accused Shelby of excessive force and the city of racially biased policing. The estate filed an amended 52-page complaint in October that added Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan as a defendant, alleging that his agencys unconstitutional policies and deficient training led to Crutchers death.

The LDF, in a statement, describes its records request as an inquiry regarding all aspects of the TPDs practices, policies and procedures, including but not limited to use-of-force; de-escalation; stops, searches and detentions; arrests; community policing; and all directives related to biased policing based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity and disability.

Tuell used the idea of juggling balls to describe the process of handling open records requests.

Depending on the amount of information the individual or company is wanting will depend on the turnaround time on that because sometimes its real laborious to go through such a large request, Tuell said.

If we work on a large one without trying to address some of the smaller requests, then you start creating a backlog, Tuell said. It still does drag the system quite a bit, but it is what it is.

In this day in age of transparency, weve got to stay on top of it. Weve got to turn them out as quick as we can while still fulfilling the obligations within the ORA.

The LDF describes itself as the nations first civil and human rights law organization. It has been separate from the NAACP since 1957.
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Judith Chan dedicated herself to learning Nepalese sign language over three months.  UNHCR/Emrah Gurel

GAZIANTEP, Turkey  Judith Chans experience of living with a hearing disability meant she was no stranger to adversity. Over the years, she had taught people with disabilities to swim and helped to rehabilitate drug users. But when she joined UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in 2011, she faced her biggest challenge yet  to find a way of communicating with refugees who were deaf or hard of hearing, did not know sign language and had never learned to read or write.

As part of a UNHCR team working to resettle thousands of Bhutanese refugees from camps in Nepal, Assistant Field Officer Judith dedicated herself to learning Nepalese sign language over three months. The team also photographed items and collected objects from the camps to create a set of non-verbal communication tools.

From my own experience as a person with a hearing disability, I recognized many of the frustrations and barriers that refugees encountered because I too faced these, says Judith. Without a means to communicate, we rediscovered just how important language is. It allows us to make sense of our world and enables us to communicate our wants, needs, desires and feelings.

"I recognized many of the frustrations and barriers."

The pilot Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) toolkit that emerged meant Judith and her colleagues were able to communicate during protection and resettlement interviews with refugees with disabilities. Since then, the toolkit has been used by partners, refugees and UNHCR field staff to enhance communication with refugees with disabilities and improve their ability to report GBV incidents and access crucial services and assistance, including psychosocial support.

To this day, helping to create it is one of Judiths proudest moments.

Being a humanitarian worker means constantly figuring out new ways of doing things to help people re-build their lives, by building on what we have learned today for a better tomorrow, she says.

On 3 December, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, UNHCR marked the achievements and contributions of more than 1 billion people with disabilities worldwide. The agency also renewed its commitment to promoting greater awareness and recognition of their diverse perspectives and capabilities, and mobilizing support for their rights.

Judith Chan helping to interview refugees in Nepal.  UNHCR

People with disabilities can be powerful agents of change and can help foster more open, inclusive societies in which diversity is celebrated and welcomed, said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in a video message. This is better for everyone.

At UNHCR, we are fully committed to working to remove the physical and social barriers faced by refugees, displaced people and the communities in which they live and to building an environment in which diversity is embraced in all its forms, and that enables them to fully exercise their rights, and to pursue solutions that respond to their aspirations and needs.

For Judith, every day at work  conducting interviews in the field and participating in large meetings in poor acoustic environments  can be a challenge with a hearing disability. But her UNHCR colleagues help.

People with disabilities can be powerful agents of change."

I have been lucky to work with several supportive supervisors and colleagues throughout my career with UNHCR, she says. At times colleagues help me by relaying phone messages, using text messaging, writing and typing notes so that I can follow communication in noisy environments, ensuring that I sit near the main speakers, speaking slowly, and even advocating for others to do the same.



Refugees with hearing disabilities often face stigma and discrimination in their communities. They can encounter multiple environmental, communication and social barriers when accessing services and assistance, and face a greater risk of protection concerns including violence and exploitation.

In particular, women and girls with disabilities may face a disproportionate risk of GBV, Judith points out. Due to their specific needs, they may also face social exclusion from their peers and experience isolation in their homes.

Judith knows that her work with UNHCR makes a huge difference to their lives.

I joined UNHCR because becoming a humanitarian worker comes with the added dimensions of working in complex and challenging environments requiring us to be innovative, she says. Its a really good feeling to achieve things that first seemed impossible!"
Anyone concerned by potential misconduct is encouraged to report this and contact the Inspector General's Office (IGO).

Anyone can contact the IGO if they have concerns or information about possible misconduct by any UNHCR staff member or other person/entities with a contractual relationship with UNHCR. Anyone can contact the IGO if they have reason to believe that a staff member or another person associated with UNHCR has not behaved correctly.

Learn more about the Inspector General's Office.

Contacting the Inspector General's Office (IGO)

- By using the online complaint form

- By confidential email: [email protected]

- In person or by post: 94, rue de Montbrillant, Case postale 2500, 1211 Geneva

Mark all mail as CONFIDENTIAL.

Important note before sending a complaint: The Investigation Service of the IGO does not have the authority to deal with protection/assistance related requests. This means that the IGO cannot review individual refugee claims, cannot provide individuals with assistance (in kind or in cash), and cannot provide applicants with a durable solution. For these matters, please contact the UNHCR Office where you are registered or closest to where you are located.

Investigative process

Following receipt of information about possible misconduct, the Investigation Service will register the complaint and conduct a preliminary assessment to determine whether an investigation is warranted, considering  among others  whether the issue falls within its mandate and whether the alleged facts could amount to misconduct.

If it is decided to conduct an investigation, the investigative process consists of the following steps:

If the investigation finds that a staff member failed to comply with UN Staff Regulations and Rules or the standards of conduct expected of a UN civil servant, the IGO will send an investigation report to UNHCRs Division of Human Resources (DHR). DHR has the responsibility to determine the appropriate administrative response, such as possible disciplinary or administrative measures.

The IGO ensures confidentiality of the investigation, information and reports, as well as due process throughout the investigative process.

Report other types of fraud or misconduct
MASON CITY | Authorities have identified a victim who died in a house fire Friday afternoon that destroyed the home on the 900 block of North Tyler Avenue.

Janet Huey was found in the home at 927 North Tyler by a Mason City Fire Fighter while performing a search and rescue, Fire Marshal Jamey Medlin said in a press release.

The Mason City Fire Department responded to a report of a fire and smoke at 12:12 p.m. Friday.

Medlin said the cause of the fire was a surge protector/multi-plug power tap. The fire engulfed the back of the house in flames.

Mason City Fire Capt. Jack Odegaard confirmed Friday afternoon that one person died in the house where the fire occurred. He added he could not provide any more information, pending the department's investigation.

Neighbors told the Globe Gazette on Friday that the tight-knit block has felt much loss in the past few weeks, with the loss of another neighbor who died of a heart attack.

Mason City Police Department and the State Fire Marshals Office assisted Mason City Fire Department in the investigation.
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NORA SPRINGS | The Iowa State Patrol has identified two people killed and one injured Friday morning in the train-vehicle collision in rural Nora Springs.

Driver James Blazier, 66, and front passenger Dixie Blazier, 66, both of Harvard, Illinois, both died. Back seat passenger Glenda Mundis, 55, of Harvard, Illinois was injured and transported by Mercy Air Med to Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa. Mundis was treated and released Saturday.

A 2016 Chevy Equinox northbound on Zinnia Avenue was struck on its front passenger side by a single westbound Canadian Pacific engine about 11:54 a.m., the Iowa State Patrol said in a news release.

The vehicle rolled and came to rest on its roof, the State Patrol said.

According to the Iowa State Patrol crash report, the single-engine train had no cars attached.

There are warning lights at the crossing but no stop arms. It's not known if the lights were working at the time of the crash.

The accident remains under investigation.

Cerro Gordo and Floyd County sheriff's offices, Nora Springs Police, Nora Springs EMS and Mason City Fire medics provided assistance at the scene.


On Saturday, Dec. 2, model and entrepreneur Amber Rose, in partnership with the Chocolate Lounge Las Vegas at the Fashion Show, hosted auditions for Chocolate Rose, which will debut in 2018 (Photo credit: Madison Freedle, one7communications.com).

When Rose arrived at the Chocolate Lounge showcasing her beautiful new hairstyle, she posed for pictures at the red carpet and then headed to her table to enjoy a frozen spiked hot chocolate and frozen white chocolate rock candy grasshopper.

More than 100 male models, performers, bartenders, and servers turned out to show Rose why she should pick them for her Chocolate Rose staff. Some of the men tried their best pick-up lines, showed off their top assets, and others told her where they would take someone for a romantic date. Rose was excited to meet the men and get to know each one individually.

Rose will continue her search for the perfect Chocolate Rose candidates and will host another round of auditions at the Chocolate Lounge. The date is still to be determined.
By: Dezan Shira & Associates

Editor: Koushan Das

In the last 20 years, Bac Ninh province in the Northern Key Economic zone has grown from an agricultural community to a major industrial center with the second-highest per capita income and one of the highest economic growth rates in the country. Surrounded by major economic centers such as Hanoi and Hai Phong, it has managed to establish itself as one of the major FDI destinations.

RELATED: Pre-Investment Advisory Services from Dezan Shira & Associates

Economic growth

The province has grown by an average of 15.1 percent on average for the last 20 years, the highest in the country.

2016

In 2016, the gross regional domestic product (GRDP) grew by 9 percent. Industrial production value and export turnover ranked second in the country, with industrial value accounting for almost 75 percent of the GRDP.

The industry-construction sector accounted for 74.3 percent, while the services sector accounted for 20.7 percent of the economy. Agriculture, forestry, and aquaculture accounted for 5 percent.

2017

The GRDP in the first 9 months of 2017 grew by 15.9 percent compared to same period last year. Industry and construction sector accounted for 75.2 percent, while the services sector accounted for 21.8 percent. Agriculture, forestry, and fisheries only accounted for a mere 3.0 percent.

The industry and construction sector grew by 18 percent, while the services sector grew by 9.8 percent. Agriculture, forestry, and fishery sector growth reduced by 1.2 percent compared to the same period last year.

Growing Exports

In 2016, total export turnover stood at US$ 22.8 billion, while in the first 11 months of 2017, it has already exceeded that and currently stands at almost US$ 30 billion. As of now, Bac Ninhs exports account for 14.9 percent of total national exports.

Foreign Investments

The cumulative FDI in Bac Ninh currently stands at US$ 15.8 billion invested in 1,102 direct investment projects from 32 countries, making it one of the leading FDI destinations. It ranks sixth amongst 63 cities and provinces nationwide in FDI attraction. Foreign investments mainly focus on manufacturing and processing, with registered capital for the sector accounting for 96 percent of the total invested capital. Out of the total, Korea alone invested US$ 10 billion.

The FDI sector has been the main driving force in the transformation of Bac Ninh into an industrial hub, accounting for over 85 percent of the industrial production value and 99 percent of total export turnover.

FDI in 2016 stood at US$ 924.9 million, while in the first 10 months of 2017, the province attracted US$ 3.28 billion, with Samsung being the major investor. In line with its expansion plans, Samsung Display would be investing US$ 2.5 billion in the province. It has six plants in Vietnam, with three in the Bac Ninh province. Other major firms in the province include Canon, Nokia, Pepsi, and ABB.

RELATED: Vietnams Growth Accelerates to 7.46 percent in Q3 2017

Regional Competition

According to the Provincial Competitiveness Index 2016, Bac Ninh ranks the 17th most competitive province in the country. The rankings were led by Da Nang, Quang Ninh, and Dong Thap.

In addition, the province ranked 10th in the Infrastructure Index in the Provincial Competitiveness Index 2016. Infrastructure surveyed included industrial zones, roads, energy/telecom, and internet connectivity. The region also emerged as the seventh most attractive place for future investors, with Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, and Hanoi leading the scores.

Infrastructure

Bac Ninh lies on the economic corridor of Nam Ninh  Lang Son  Hanoi  Hai Phong  Ha Long and connects the administrative capital Hanoi with the Northern midland and mountainous provinces. It lies only 30 km from Hanoi, 45 km from the Noi Bai International Airport, and 110km from Hai Phong, a major industrial city with one of the largest seaport.

Roads

The province has over 4,000 km of roads and is well connected with regional neighboring provinces through the 1A national highway linking with Ha Noi  Bac Ninh  Lang Son; highway No.18 connecting the Noi Bai International Airport with Bac Ninh and Ha Long, and national highway No. 38 connecting Bac Ninh, Hai Duong, and Hai Phong. In addition, the highways are well connected to the provincial and commune roads.

Rail

The cross-national railway system in the province runs through Bac Ninh to Lang Son in the north leading further to China.

Waterways

The province is well connected through regional river ports and seaports on the Cau River, Duong River, and Thai Binh River.

Industrial Zones

Bac Ninh has 16 industrial parks, with nine of them fully operational with an occupancy rate of 87 percent, spreading over 8,000 hectares. The industrial parks in the province have attracted major infrastructure firms such as Vietnam-Singapore Urban and IP Development Joint Stock Company, Kinh Bac Urban Development, Song Da Corporation, and IDICO Corporation who provide infrastructure facilities and services.

RELATED: TPP Revived as CPTPP: What it means for Vietnam

Major sectors

The industry and construction sector accounts for the majority of the firms in the region, followed by the services sector. Industry and construction sector is expected to grow by 12 percent, while the service sector is predicted to grow at 14 percent in the next three years.

To ensure a sustainable development, the province is pushing for investments in high-tech industries and environment-friendly projects. Firms in the electronics, information technology, infrastructure development, chemical, and industrial automation industries will find Bac Ninh an attractive location. In addition, due to the presence of major manufacturers, supporting industries will also find the province as a favorable option.

RELATED: State Divestment: Exciting Opportunities for Investors

Continuing the growth

The provincial government has to continue prioritizing the electronics manufacturing industry in the region. It has been a major source of FDI, employment, and income growth and has the potential of making the province an electronics hub not only in the country but South East Asia as well. However, this does not mean that one should overlook the services and especially the agriculture sector. Overdependence in the manufacturing sector has its own drawbacks.

In the agriculture sector, the province should focus on the rural economy and help them increase the productivity and quality of their products to ensure higher incomes. In addition, linking them with major markets such as Hanoi and other urban areas would also lead to an increase in their income. Although the region has one of the highest income per capita in the country, the income gap is rapidly increasing between the rich and poor, and the government has to ensure that the regions growth is inclusive of all socio-economic classes.

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 Vietnam 2017

An Introduction to Doing Business in Vietnam 2017 will provide readers with an overview of the fundamentals of investing and conducting business in Vietnam. Compiled by Dezan Shira & Associates, a specialist foreign direct investment practice, this guide explains the basics of company establishment, annual compliance, taxation, human resources, payroll, and social insurance in this dynamic country.



Managing Contracts and Severance in Vietnam

In this issue of Vietnam Briefing, we discuss the prevailing state of labor pools in Vietnam and outline key considerations for those seeking to staff and retain workers in the country. We highlight the increasing demand for skilled labor, provide in depth coverage of existing contract options, and showcase severance liabilities that may arise if workers or employers choose to terminate their contracts.
By: Chau Pham

The Central Highlands have long been a strategic economic, political location in the history of Vietnam. Sharing borders with Laos and Cambodia, this region is one of the most important location for the economic development of Vietnam in the next few years.

A region full of potential

The Central Highlands, or the Western Highlands, is located in the West and South West of Vietnam. The region contains five provinces: Lam ong, Daklak, Dak Nong, Gia lai and Kon Tum. These provinces are expected to show high potential for development in renewable energy, agricultural and tourism in the coming years.

According to the Minister of Public Securitys speech in the fourth conference on investment promotion in Central Highlands total investment capital has reached VND 266 trillion in 2015 with an annual growth rate of 11.3 percent between 2011 and 2015. To date, there have been 140 FDI projects worth US$772.5 million in the Central Highlands. This number is expected to grow significantly in the next few years, especially as the government is trying to improve the regions infrastructure and paying more attention to renewable projects in its long-term plan of development.

Tourism and agriculture are two important sectors that appeared very promising to foreign investors, especially investors from Korean, Japan, and China. However, Central Highlands are not being fully explored, thus, bringing more opportunities for future investors to enter the race.

RELATED: TPP Revived as CPTPP: What it means for Vietnam

Opportunities for renewable energy projects

The Central Highlands is a prominent location for solar potential maps in Vietnam. According to Vietnamese authorities, the total hours of sun in Central Highlands varies from 2000 to 2600 hours per year. Korean Solar power investors in this area are upbeat on the prospects for the region and have published findings indicating a direct solar radiation generation of 5 kWh per square meter. With this in mind, Vietnams Central Highlands is an ideal place to develop a solar power plant.

In addition, the regions wind power capacity could reach 2000MW, which is even more than the second largest hydro power plant of Vietnam in Hoa Binh.

Realizing the favorable conditions for developing renewable energy of this region, Central Highland provinces have issued a number of preferential mechanisms and policies as well as simplified administrative procedures, to attract investors. Daklak is topping the list with 4 projects worth US$3.3 billion from AES Corporation, Vietnams Xuan Thien Limited Company, South Koreas Solar Park Limited and Vietnams Long Thanh Infrastructure Development and Investment Company.

Promising land for coffee, tea, and pepper

In addition to its advantages in solar and wind power, the region is also getting more and more popular as a promising land for FDI projects in agriculture. Central Highlands cover an area of 5.46 million ha, in which 2 million ha are used for developing agricultural. Besides, the region contains 74.25 percent of the red basalt soil of Vietnam, making it an ideal place for large-scale production specialized in coffee, pepper, tea, cashew, cassava, rubber.

Realizing the growth potential of this sector, investors from Korea and Japan have launched several projects with advanced agricultural techniques to maximize production in the region. New policies and tax incentives are also available to encourage and attract investments. Although climate changes may appear to be a threat, agriculture will continue to grow and strengthen its position as an important sector of Central Highlands provinces.

Top destinations for tourism

Dalat, Kon-Tum and Gia Lai are famous destinations for eco-friendly and historical tourism. Cool weather, beautiful natural sight-seeing, historical museums and also the variety of food specialties are the reasons why more and more tourist chose these destinations for a get-away on the weekend. In 2016, Dalat city of Lam Dong province welcomed 5.4 million visitors, an increase of 6 percent compared to 2015. On top of this, the number of international visitors reached 270,000 people with most travelers coming from South Korea, China, Thailand and the United States.

The city also has been ranked by The New York Times as one of top 52 tourist destination in the world. Although the regions tourism industry used to suffer from the past because of poor infrastructure and facilities, the situation is getting better recently thanks to investments from government also foreign investors. New tourist products with better services are now provided, making the region even more attractive to tourist. Besides, many investments in hotels, amusement park, restaurants are about to kick off in the near future, helping these provinces to fully exploit tourism potential of this region.

RELATED: State Divestment: Exciting Opportunities for Investors

Conclusion

The Central Highlands contributes 9 percent of Vietnams GDP. Ignoring all the advantages it has developed in its economy, the region still remains poor compared to others. Foreign investment is limited in both quantity and quality. However, with new incentives and support from the government, the investments environment of Central Highlands becomes more and more attractive.

Beside many investment incentives such as corporate income tax exemption, land use rental reduction, import tax exemption, etc., FDI projects can benefit from province-specific investment support. For example, investment project in high-tech applied agricultural business can receive support from Kon Tum province for the development of greenhouses and net houses with a support level of VND 50,000 per square.

Each province in the region have different types of support and incentives to attract foreign direct investment, thus to maintain the sustainable growth of the region. In the future, Central Highlands will continue to consolidate its position as an important region in the economic development of the whole country.

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 Vietnam 2017

An Introduction to Doing Business in Vietnam 2017 will provide readers with an overview of the fundamentals of investing and conducting business in Vietnam. Compiled by Dezan Shira & Associates, a specialist foreign direct investment practice, this guide explains the basics of company establishment, annual compliance, taxation, human resources, payroll, and social insurance in this dynamic country.



Managing Contracts and Severance in Vietnam

In this issue of Vietnam Briefing, we discuss the prevailing state of labor pools in Vietnam and outline key considerations for those seeking to staff and retain workers in the country. We highlight the increasing demand for skilled labor, provide in depth coverage of existing contract options, and showcase severance liabilities that may arise if workers or employers choose to terminate their contracts.
In 1979, Peter van Wijk was a radio officer in the Dutch Merchant Marine. That summer, his ship docked a couple of times in New York Harbor, giving him the opportunity to visit Manhattan and wander the streets.Like all curious newcomers to New York, he brought a camera along with him, and he took photos of iconic tourist spots like the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center, and Times Square.But he also captured the seemingly ordinary street scenes that offer fleeting glimpses into the heart and soul of the late 1970s city: shoppers going in and out of mom and pop stores, musicians and vendors drawing crowds, and taxis navigating traffic-choked streets.(Photos by Peter van Wijk, via Ephemeral New York
For the past 19 months, the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HoSE) has been listing Vietnam Export and Import Commercial Bank (Eximbank) as security subject to special monitoring due to the banks accumulated loss of VND118 billion ($5.1 million).

Eximbank's shares have been under special alert since April 2016

Specifically, according to Eximbanks consolidated financial statement for the first three quarters, the bank achieved a net profit of VND602 billion ($26.4 million), down 16 per cent against the same period last year. This brought a net profit of VND80 billion ($3.5 million), a 1.2 per cent decrease on-year.

In the third quarter of 2017, although the bank downsized general provisions by 13 per cent, from VND262 to VND 228 billion ($11.5 to $10 million), Eximbank obtained a modest pre-tax profit of nearly VND60 billion ($2.6 million), signifying a plunge of 50 per cent on-year.

Additionally, over the last three quarters, Eximbanks accumulated pre-tax profit was VND457 billion ($20.06 million), 24 per cent less than the banks 2017 target.

Previously, in 2015, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) uncovered business performance-related fraud at Eximland (Eximbanks real estate development arm). Eximland borrowed funds from Eximbank to purchase real estate from Eximbank itself, artificially boosting Eximbanks income to around VND1 trillion ($43.9 million).

To boot, Eximbanks unresolved accumulated losses have a negative effect on the liquidity of the EIB stock. As of December 4, EIB plummeted to VND12,450 ($0.54), a 15.93 per cent fall compared to the tickers price at the date of listing.

Another bank struggling with a long-term weak financial performance is Vietbank with an accumulated loss of approximately VND189 billion ($8.2 million), despite its positive business results over the past nine months. The banks pre-tax profit was VND73.4 billion ($3.2 million), the double of its 2017 annual target.

According to the financial institutions official announcement regarding the handling of its non-performing loans, between 2013 and 2016, Vietbank was recorded to have accumulated a deficit of VND200 billion ($8.7 million).

Earlier, Vietbank had postponed the registration of the security deposit twice, which lessened the likelihood of the bank completing its listing on UPCoM by the end of 2017.

Apart from Eximbank and Vietbank, massive accumulated deficits also appeared on the financial statements of three other financial institutions, including Vietnam Construction Bank (CB Bank), OceanBank, and Global Petroleum Bank (GP Bank), along with an increasing negative amount of owners equity also affecting the three banks.

The financial performance of three aforementioned financial institutions was among the primary concerns raised in the State Audits report on measures to prevent and combat criminal activities, submitted to the National Assembly (NA) earlier this year.

Generali Vietnam and Eximbank establish bancassurance partnership Italian-backed life insurer Generali Vietnam and the Vietnam Export Import Commercial Joint Stock Bank, a leading commercial joint stock bank in the country, yesterday announced an exclusive bancassurance partnership in a signing ceremony at the Sheraton Saigon.

Eximbank administers sharp cut to 2016 profit target Vietnam Export Import Bank (Eximbank) is lowering its target for deposits, lending, assets, and pre-tax profit for the year 2016 deviating from the earlier plan.
A pharmacist sounded the alert after finding a canister with wires inside a package near the Christmas market in Potsdam, (AFP/Adam BERRY)

"It was not an act of terror but a common crime," said Heinrich Juncker, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.

The device, discovered late Friday at a pharmacy just off the market in central Potsdam, a picturesque city near Berlin, revived fears of a repeat of last year's deadly terror attack at a Christmas market in the German capital.

According to authorities, the device found Friday was part of an attempt to extort millions of euros from German delivery service DHL.

In a letter addressed to DHL, the blackmailers demanded "a sum amounting to several million euros" and threatened to send other parcel bombs - in the middle of the Christmas period - if they were not satisfied, said Brandenburg interior minister Karl-Heinz Schroeter.

Local authorities had said the cylindrical canister was filled with nails, powder, batteries and wires - as well as a powerful firework of a type not allowed in Germany - but there was no sign of a detonator.

However upon closer examination, police on Sunday said the device could have gone off. "It had the ability to function" and could have caused "very serious injuries and killed people," Schroeter said.

A pharmacist sounded the alert after finding a canister with wires inside the package. The pharmacist heard a "whistling" sound when opening it, which investigators believe means the explosive did not work as planned - although it was programmed to explode.

Police said this incident may be connected to one that occurred last month in the same Brandenburg region.

In that case, a parcel bomb was also sent to a local company but just caught fire when opened.

Authorities now think the suspects are from the Berlin region.

"The blackmailers warned they would continue to send parcel bombs if DHL does not pay," said local police chief Hans-Juergen Morke, calling on Germans to remain vigilant.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Endeavour Silver Corp. (NYSE:EXK) (TSX:EDR) announces that exploration drilling on the Calicanto property in Zacatecas State, Mexico has discovered high grade silver-gold mineralization assaying up to 2,043 grams per tonne (gpt) silver and 13.2 gpt gold over 2.8 m true width within the Calicanto and Misie vein systems.

Twenty-nine drill holes totaling 7,207 metres (m) of core were drilled to test the subparallel Misie-Karla-Karla HW veins, along which there are a few small historic diggings over a 1000 m strike length on the property, and the Calicanto vein, which saw historic underground mining accessed by several old shafts over an 800 m strike length on the property (view maps here).

Drilling highlights include 2,043 gpt silver and 13.2 gpt gold (2,967 gpt silver equivalent (AgEq)) over a 2.8 m true width (86.5 oz per ton (opT) AgEq over 9.2 feet (ft)) in hole CLT-15 within the Calicanto vein. Another high grade intercept assayed 932 gpt silver and 1.26 gpt gold (1,020 gpt AgEq) over a 2.7 m true width (29.7 opT AgEq over 8.9 ft) in hole CLT-20 within the Misie vein.

Results for 9 material drill holes are summarized in the table below.

Hole Structure From True Width Au Ag AgEq (m) (m) (gpt) (gpt) (gpt) CLT-04 Misie 76.55 0.9 0.14 480 490 Including 77.15 0.4 0.22 1,080 1,095 CLT-05 Karla 31.70 4.2 0.52 396 433 Including 38.20 0.4 2.16 1,255 1,406 Hw Karla 62.25 1.0 0.05 252 255 Including 62.25 0.4 0.11 593 601 CLT-06 Karla 29.20 4.1 0.14 155 165 Including 35.90 0.3 1.51 601 706 Misie 125.00 1.1 0.21 299 313 Including 125.00 0.3 0.59 1,020 1,061 CLT-15 Calicanto 257.15 2.8 13.20 2,043 2,967 Including 259.65 0.5 65.70 11,751 16,350 CLT-17 Misie 137.55 1.2 0.24 193 210 Including 138.50 0.5 0.50 342 377 CLT-19 Karla 37.10 1.6 0.23 252 268 Including 38.10 0.8 0.39 311 338 Hw Karla 62.55 1.5 0.03 208 210 Including 63.05 0.1 0.41 394 423 Misie 96.30 2.5 0.69 335 383 Including 96.30 0.3 0.67 500 547 CLT-20 Hw Karla 25.80 4.3 0.18 220 232 Including 28.20 0.2 1.82 880 1,007 Misie 87.40 2.7 1.26 932 1,020 Including 88.50 0.3 6.58 3,050 3,511 CLT-26 Hw Karla 69.75 1.3 0.08 251 257 Including 71.35 0.3 0.16 388 399 CLT-28 Misie 94.70 1.5 1.20 446 530 Including 94.70 0.6 2.13 756 905

Silver equivalents are calculated at a ratio of 70:1 silver: gold

Luis Castro, Vice President, Exploration for Endeavour Silver, commented, We were very encouraged to discover new zones of high grade mineralization within the Misie-Karla-Karla HW and Calicanto veins. Even though only one drill hole intersected high grade mineralization in the Calicanto vein, it has exceptional grades and opens up potential within the vein for drilling next year.

The Calicanto vein appears to be related to, and is possibly the same vein as, the Mala Noche Footwall Zone, on which our neighbor Capstone Mining intersected 2.2 per cent copper over a 14.4-metre estimated true width in a deep step-out drill hole close to our property boundary, as announced by Capstone on September 12, 2017.

A new resource estimate for the Calicanto property will be prepared at year-end for release in the 1st quarter of 2018 as part of the El Compas project. With the El Compas mine coming to production in the next few months, and the potential to expand the plant capacity up to double the current proposed mine output, our near term goals at Calicanto are to expand the resources, assess their economic viability, apply for mining permits, and develop a mine plan to utilize the full El Compas plant capacity.

Godfrey Walton, M.Sc., P.Geo., Endeavours President and COO, is the Qualified Person who reviewed and approved this news release and supervised the drilling programs in Mexico. A Quality Control sampling program of reference standards, blanks and duplicates has been instituted to monitor the integrity of all assay results. All samples are split at the local field office and shipped to ALS-Chemex Labs, where they are dried, crushed, split and 50 gram pulp samples are prepared for analysis. Gold and silver are determined by fire assay with an atomic absorption (AA) finish.

About Endeavour Silver  Endeavour Silver is a mid-tier precious metals mining company that owns three high grade, underground, silver-gold mines in Mexico. Since startup in 2004, Endeavour has grown its mining operations organically to produce 9.7 million ounces of silver and equivalents in 2016. We find, build and operate quality silver mines in a sustainable way to create real value for all stakeholders. Endeavour Silvers shares trade on the TSX (EDR) and the NYSE (EXK).

Contact Information - For more information, please contact:

Galina Meleger, Director of Investor Relations

Toll free: (877) 685-9775

Fax: (604) 685-9744

Email: gmeleger@edrsilver.com

Website: www.edrsilver.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States private securities litigation reform act of 1995 and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Such forwardlooking statements and information herein include but are not limited to statements regarding Endeavours anticipated performance in 2017 including changes in mining and operations and the timing and results of various activities. The Company does not intend to, and does not assume any obligation to update such forward-looking statements or information, other than as required by applicable law.

Forward-looking statements or information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Endeavour and its operations to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements. Such factors include but are not limited to changes in national and local governments, legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments in Canada and Mexico; financial risks due to precious metals prices, operating or technical difficulties in mineral exploration, development and mining activities; risks and hazards of mineral exploration, development and mining; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development, risks in obtaining necessary licenses and permits, and challenges to the Companys title to properties; as well as those factors described in the section risk factors contained in the Companys most recent form 40F/Annual Information Form filed with the S.E.C. and Canadian securities regulatory authorities.

Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable, including but not limited to: the continued operation of the Companys mining operations, no material adverse change in the market price of commodities, mining operations will operate and the mining products will be completed in accordance with managements expectations and achieve their stated production outcomes, and such other assumptions and factors as set out herein. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or information, there may be other factors that cause results to be materially different from those anticipated, described, estimated, assessed or intended. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking statements or information will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements or information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information.
What are the highlights of the new Club Marriott programme?

Club Marriott is not a totally new programme. We are re-launching Club Marriott because we merged with Starwood Hotel in late 2016. For the last six years, Club Marriott has been mainly a dining loyalty programme. Marriott International has been fairly well-known for this programme, with a large number of members around the world.

The food-and-beverage segment has become substantially important for the company, as 42 per cent of the firms total revenue across the Asia-Pacific region is generated from it. As a result, the importance of our positioning in this segment was what made us create the dining loyalty programme.

Integrating it with two other membership programmes, Star and Privilege and Eat, Drink, and More, Marriott created a new membership programme, the new Club Marriott.

The loyalty programme will be rolled out in other key countries and in the Asia-Pacific region by late December, including Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Guam, and Thailand. In Vietnam, Club Marriott will be introduced in several hotels, including two in Hanoi (Sheraton Hanoi Hotel and JW Marriott Hotel Hanoi), three in Ho Chi Minh City (Sheraton Saigon Hotel and Towers, Renaissance Riverside Hotel Saigon, and Le Meridien Saigon), one in Nha Trang (Sheraton Nha Trang Hotel and Spa), and three hotels to be opened in January 2018.

Regarding the brands partaking in the new loyalty programme, we can already reveal names such as St. Regis, Marriott Hotels, Westin, Le Meridien, Renaissance Hotels, Sheraton, Courtyard by Marriott, Four Points by Sheraton, Fairfield by Marriott, MHRS, and Aloft.

What is new about the re-launched Club Marriott programme?

Originally, Club Marriott was nothing more than a discount programme. But the company decided to work towards a different vision, with the intent of creating an experience-driven programme packed with privileges, as not everybody can gain access to exclusive events around the region.

That is why we put the food and beverage privileges into the programme. We want to be members favourite destination to have exquisite experiences in dining, drinking, and meeting new people.

Thanks to this new fusion of programmes, people can sign up for the membership with a local hotel which is directly connected to their own community, local customers, local food bloggers, and local foodies.

We have recruited a lot of talented chefs, from Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, Thailand, India, and Vietnam. This includes a three-star Michelin chef with excellent culinary skills the hotel hired for the Club Marriott programme.

How will the merger with Eat, Drink, and More and Star and Privilege benefit the existing customers of Club Marriott?

The combination of three existing loyalty programmes will include appealing perks for members such as up to 20 per cent off the best available rate on the base category of rooms, 30 per cent off food and beverage bills across participating hotels in Vietnam, and 20 per cent off said bills across all participating hotels in the Asia-Pacific region.

Loyal members of the programme can also gain access to high-end experiences in Australia, mainland China, Macau, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea.

With respect to the concept behind the Club Marriot programme, I would like to stress the sense of community, locality, and local dining experiences by offering locally relevant benefits like dining experiences to current members and future ones.

What are the benefits Club Marriott can provide for its members?

For example, only members of Club Marriott and Marriott Rewards can gain access to VIP seats to the Imagine Dragons concert in Bangkok.

Another example is the hotel inviting a limited number of Club Marriott members to partake in chef workshops for chefs around the Asia-Pacific region. Here, they can witness how we train and inspire chefs as well as assist them to get involved in the local community to create top-notch experiences incorporated with local gastronomy.

If you travel around Vietnam and select any accommodations across the hotels we mentioned, you will enjoy the same benefits and privileges as offered by JW Marriott Hanoi or Sheraton Hanoi Hotel. You can stay and enjoy the same discounts for food and beverages, catering, spas and resorts, and other benefits provided by the Club Marriott loyalty programme.
Minister Tran Tuan Anh and director general Stefano Manservisi signed the financial agreement

The programme will be carried out in 2018-2020 and make power grid and renewable energy investments to supply power to households in rural, remote, borderland, and island areas not connected to the grid under the national programme approved on August 26, 2016 through Resolution No.73/NQ-CP.

On December 1, 2017, at the headquarters of the EU in Brussels, Kingdom of Belgium, Tran Tuan Anh, Vietnamese Minister of Industry and Trade and Stefano Manservisi, director general of International Development and Co-operation on the behalf of the EU signed the financial agreement on the programme. Accordingly, the EU will provide non-refundable Official Development Aid supporting energy development and the improvement of sustainable energy access for rural, mountainous, and island areas.

According to the financial agreement, the EU will provide a non-refundable aid of EUR108 million ($128.2 million), including EUR7.5 million ($9 million) for technical support, and EUR0.5 million ($0.6 million) for the supervision and appraisal of the programme.

The programme consists of 23 subprojects connecting rural and mountainous areas in 23 provinces with the national power grid, two subprojects supplying renewable energy for rural areas in Cao Bang and Bach Long Vi Island, and two subprojects laying underground cables to connect Tran Island (Quang Ninh) and Nhon Chau Island (Binh Dinh) with the national power grid.

The programme is expected to supply power for 750 villages and a total of 60,000 households. All the subprojects will contribute to socioeconomic development and sustainably reduce poverty in the most remote areas of the country.

The programme aims to improve the performance of the electricity sector and attract new investors for renewable energy development. Additionally, it would reduce the burden on the state to invest and subsidise the field, and guarantee constant power supply.
A processing line of frozen shrimp for exports. - VNA/VNS Photo Danh Lam

Many solutions have been devised according to the EUs recommendations. They include aligning the legal framework with regional and international regulations, implementing effectively the amended legal regulations for IUU fishing, and implementing effectively the international regulations and management measures through strict punishment.

In addition to this, Viet Nam will address the shortcomings in the monitoring system to serve the certification of the origin of aquatic products, improve the fishing boat management system, enhance cooperation with regional countries, and comply with regulations on fisheries data collection and report.

Viet Nam was served with a yellow card warning by the EU in September for failing to combat IUU fishing, and it has been offered the opportunity to take measures to rectify the situation within six months.

To this end, the EC has proposed an action plan for the country. The yellow card is followed by a green card if issues are resolved or a red card if they are not. A red card can lead to a trade ban on fishery products.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development plans to organise a national conference with 28 coastal cities and provinces to discuss the IUU issue and provide them with technical guidance to ensure their compliance with IUU fishing regulations.

Viet Nam has favourable geographical conditions to develop its seafood industry, thanks to its long coastline of over 3,260km and more than 3,000 islands and islets.

Fisheries is a key sector, whose output has been consistently rising in the recent years.

The country hopes to become a leading seafood exporter by 2020.

Last year, Viet Nam earned US$1.2 billion by exporting aquatic products to the EU, $357.8 million of which was from seafood shipments. The figure hit nearly $1.05 billion in the first nine months this year.
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.
Carrie Fisher - photo source: AFP

The cast came together in a secret location in Los Angeles with director Rian Johnson to build buzz for the latest chapter in the blockbuster space saga, which hits theaters on Dec 15.

"You get to see women that are not big and strong just because they're acting like men. They're doing something else," said Gwendoline Christie, 39, who plays stormtrooper commander Captain Phasma.

"And also you're seeing a developed character, or a developing character, that is showing some complex character traits. I'm delighted that something as legendary as 'Star Wars' has decided to reflect our society."

"The Last Jedi" - filmed on the west coast of Ireland and at Pinewood Studios near London - sees the return of the characters introduced in 2015's seventh instalment, "The Force Awakens."

Christie, flanked by red-robed Praetorian guard as she took the stage, was joined by returning stars Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domnhall Gleeson, and Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pathfinder Asset Management Limited (Pathfinder) of 1320, 885 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, announces that on December 2, 2017 it acquired 4,200,000 common shares of BioHEP Technologies Ltd. (the Company) of 1320, 885 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, pursuant to the conversion of $105,000 aggregate principal amount of convertible promissory notes (the Notes) due December 2, 2017 (the Conversion), as further described below.



The Notes were convertible at a rate of $0.025 per common share (Share) of the Company. Accordingly, the conversion of the $105,000 principal amount of Notes resulted in the acquisition by Pathfinder of an additional 4,200,000 Shares of the Company, representing approximately 44.45% of the 9,448,708 now issued and outstanding common shares of the Company. Prior to the Conversion, Pathfinder owned or controlled 1,590,353 Shares, representing 37.86% of the outstanding Shares. The Conversion results in a net increase in Pathfinders security holding percentage of 39.59% to a total of 5,790,353 Shares, representing approximately 61.28% of the issued and outstanding Shares of the Company as of todays date.

Pathfinder acquired the Shares for investment purposes only and not for the purposes of exercising control or direction over the Company. Pathfinder may, in the future, increase or decrease its ownership of securities of the Company from time to time depending upon market conditions or any other factors it considers relevant.

This press release is being disseminated as required by National Instrument 62103 - The Early Warning System and Related Take Over Bids and Insider Reporting Issues (NI 62-103). Also pursuant to 62-103 an early warning report with respect to the above transactions will be filed with the relevant Canadian securities regulatory authorities via SEDAR and will be available for review at www.sedar.com under the Companys profile. A copy of the report may also be obtained by contacting Victor Chan at Pathfinder at 604-682-7312 EXT 234.

Pathfinder Asset Management Limited

604-682-7312
IRVINE, CA, Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --



Cannabis Science, Inc. (OTC PINK: CBIS), a U.S. company specializing in the development of cannabinoid-based medicines, is pleased to announce the Honorable Judge Kimberly Mueller, appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama, has laid out the next steps for the Plaintiffs, CBIS, et all, to file a preliminary injunction against the San Joaquin County.

One of the more profound facts in this case is the simple fact that the subject Industrial Hemp Grow was already pre-approved and on the 2017 San Joaquin Department of Agriculture list for approved crops and acreage. This was completed and evidenced in documented in filings with the court and with the San Joaquin County Board before they rendered any opinions. This was completed by HRM Farms Glen Burgeon, one of the area land owners and one of the expert local agricultural farming authorities, and one of the adjunct faculty members on the (California State Approved) American States University team, and another named plaintiff in the case.

The no TRO decision last Friday from the Honorable Judge Kimberly Mueller, was simple, because to me, she clearly understood our position and but did not have enough information to decide comprehensively on the case in full yet. She was astute and clear, and this is great for us, of course. She gave us a path, with clear instructions, for moving forward and we are taking it. The preliminary injunction allows the plaintiffs to outline the facts and circumstances surrounding their pre-approvals to farm directly from the San Joaquin Department of Agriculture, research exemptions, corporation registration clarity, assets, investments, and drug development programs.

This is our opportunity to help the judge clearly understand the scope and importance of the educational and drug development work being done by the University group that includes Cannabis Science and its partners, and how it all ties together with the University programs, farming partners, local community educational programs, Native American incentive packages, and entrepreneurial programs for local economic growth and stability. We will clarify how our program is designed to target multiple critical ailments illnesses worldwide. We are working to successfully have activate a preliminary injunction against the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors to stop their malicious actions against the plaintiffs preventing them from continuing to work, stated Cannabis Sciences President, CEO, and Co-founder, Mr. Raymond C. Dabney.

The preliminary injunction will include each named defendant including the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors for its purported defiant actions circumventing basic civil rights laws, due course action, Federal and State Industrial Hemp Laws and Exemptions, along with a number of other Federal and State laws, rights including purported specious actions during, before, and after the raid in order to complete their unmistakably malicious actions against the plaintiffs.

On October 27, 2017, Cannabis Science, Inc. (the "Company"), along with its partners Winnemucca Shosoni MBS, American States University, Free Spirit Organics NAC and HRM Farms filed a Complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California against ten San Joaquin County defendants including the Board of Supervisors, County Counsel; District Attorney and the Sheriff and against the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

The Complaint stems from a search warrant and subsequent seizure executed by the Defendants on the Plaintiff's 26.19-acre plot of land where it was growing industrial hemp. On November 17, 2017, CSI and the rest of the plaintiffs filed seven documents including 45 pages of pleadings, seven declarations, and 150 pages of exhibits asking the Court to issue a temporary restraining order.

Recently, the Plaintiffs learned the DEA was not involved and dismissed it. It had been surprising to discover evidence of DEA involvement at the outset because plaintiffs believed they had been operating with the blessing of the DEA. Accordingly, Plaintiffs were pleased to learn that the DEA was not involved with the subject seizure and was apparently unconcerned with the industrial hemp research project.

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. Our 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.
Clubhouse Holds Classical & Opera Fair

Clubhouse Gibraltar will be holding a Classical & Opera Fair on Saturday 9th December from 12 noon to 5pm at the Gladys Perez Centre, 304a Main Street Gibraltar.

A large collection of classical music vinyl records, books, CD's and DVD's will be available to sell at give-away prices, and all proceeds in aid of the Mental Health Charity, Clubhouse Gibraltar.
Christiane Amanpour. Photo: Kevin Hagen/Getty Images

Following Charlie Roses exit, Christiane Amanpour is headed to PBS for a nightly global-affairs show. PBS will run her CNN show Amanpour, where the journalist talks with world leaders on interim basis, retitling it Amanpour on PBS, according to the network. Amanpour on PBS adds to the long tradition of public affairs programming that has been a hallmark of public media for decades, PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger said in a statement announcing the news. Amanpours show will air on New Yorks PBS station beginning Monday, December 4, and on other PBS stations beginning December 11 at 11 p.m. PBS is also planning another public-affairs show, which was not named, to air at 11:30 p.m. PBS cut ties with Rose and ended his eponymous hour-long program after the Washington Post reported a history of sexual-assault allegations against the reporter.
Photo: Paras Griffin/Getty Images

Its late in 2017. Do you still have to hear both sides? If Joyner Lucas has his way, you do. Last week, the Massachusetts rapper released a song and video titled Im Not Racist; not surprisingly, its garnered a considerable deal of attention. Its approaching 9 million views on YouTube. CNN (the website) called it the brutal race conversation no one wants to have. Desus and Mero mocked it for a couple of minutes.

The song literally makes the listener hear both sides, both voiced by Lucas. First, a white voice recounts a list of grievances against black people. Its a long list, but it reduces itself neatly to they complain too much and produce too little. Then a black voice offers a point-by-point rebuttal. The N-word means something different when white people and black people use it. Black people today are not slaves, but the legacy of slavery persists. Trump really is bad. Tupac, actually, is good. Eminem taking a stand against Trump, in fact, is good. (Both the white voice and the black voice sound exactly like Eminem.) Its white people, in fact, who blame everyone  everyone, except themselves. And so on. The video ends with the white guy and the black guy hugging it out.

Rigid symmetry and a stilted tone reminiscent of high-school theater are nothing new for Lucas, whose best-known songs prior to Im Not Racist followed the same dramatic double-sided format. Ross Capicchioni tells both sides of the (true) story of a white Michigan teen gunned down by a black friend: The friend, it turns out, needed to kill an innocent to be initiated into a gang. (Despite having his arm and chest reduced to hash by buckshot, Capicchioni somehow survived to tell his tale in court.) Im Sorry is composed of two first-person narratives, one from the perspective of a suicide, the other from that of a friend helpless to stop it and angry that it happened. These dialogic narratives carry on in the vein of Eminem classics like Guilty Conscience and Stan in much the same way that Lucass voice replicates Eminems delivery. Lucas can rappity-rap with the best of them: his freestyles over Desiigners Panda and Kendrick Lamars DNA display first-rate technical skill.

With his rhyme-building talent and his preference for complicated tale-telling, Lucas has carved out a niche audience large enough to merit his being signed to Atlantic Records, which released his last album 508-507-2209 earlier this June. What he cant seem to do is fit in with the times. His interviews and lyrics are thick with complaints that more popular rappers (a) have no content to their music beyond drugs and swag, and (b) refuse to work with him, even though hes better than them. Lucas seems to hold a special grudge against Logic, who, like him, has a white mother and black father, made a notable song about suicidal ideation, and tends toward the nerdier side of the rap spectrum. Though his beef is ostensibly over Logic turning in a subpar performance on a Tech N9ne track they featured on, its roots run deeper than mere pique. Logic is equally corny, less verbally adept, and far more popular. Ultimately its not his actions that offend Lucas, but his status: The fact that Logic occupies a position Lucas thinks he himself deserves is enough to make him fume indefinitely.

Its not as if uncool rappers with white moms cant leverage their ability to see both sides into mainstream success. Look at Logic; look at Drake. But doing so while remaining loyal to an exhausted hip-hop paradigm is impossible. Logic succeeds by doing normcore impressions of Kendrick Lamar; Drake makes women his primary audience, sings a lot, and hops on trends. Eminem mimicry in 2017 just isnt going to cut it past a certain point, as even the progress of Im Not Racist shows. The song isnt uncomfortable so much as simply tedious; seven minutes is a long time to pore over the same tired debate about being racist.

The notion that social divisions could be reconciled through honest conversation was already a dicey proposition when President Obama represented it; after 2016s Trump election and 2017s Trump administration, its gone forever. The only reconciliation happening now is between the punitive tax bill passed by the Republican House and the punitive tax bill passed by the Republican Senate. Im Not Racist references current events, but its mindset is hopelessly outdated. It may have made a splash, but its not going to float. Even if someone still cared to revive how Eminem sounds in 2017, theres little need for Joyner Lucas when Eminem himself is still around; his new album, Revival, comes out in two weeks.
Just last week, I went on and on about Bravo giving Kim her peach back and now I have an even more pressing question: Where is Marlos peach? Whats holding this show back from giving that ridiculous woman her peach? Because if there is a moment of television this year that rivals Marlo silently and thanklessly fixing NeNes bun during an argument, Id like to see it. That was a Renaissance painting. I know that meme is overused, but that was a damn Renaissance painting. But we cant get to that brilliant moment of television without slogging through some other nonsense.

Because time is irrelevant, were still at NeNes White Seafood Gays & Never Forget Soiree and were still in the middle of Kenya and Kims fight. Kim decides that her daughter is the line that Kenya shouldnt cross after Kenya mentions that Kim offered to turn her daughter out for some John Legend tickets. In Kims defense, she didnt offer her daughter to John Legend, but just to anyone who could get her tickets. Im not sure if it helps her case, but its definitely a piece of information I want us to get correct.

Kim storms Kenya and somehow knocks over every drink and possibly cracks the coffee table itself. Something about the editing during this fight had me missing pieces. I need a few more over-the-shoulder angles. Maybe everyone should give in and have camera tracks installed in their homes. Sheree and Kroy shuffle Kim out and Kenya is left talking about how crazy Kim is with Cynthia and NeNe. The emerging story line is that Cynthia always has Kenyas back. Let Cynthia have Kenyas back. Who cares? Sheree and Kim head over to Porshas house to maximize screen time. Porsha has her assistant pour her an Olivia Popesized wine glass of Hennessy. Then everyone starts making fun of Cynthia. Why? I like Cynthia!

Up next is Kandi, she visits the studio with Ace and talks about how hard it is to be away from him, then immediately accepts an invitation from Sheree to go on a trip to San Francisco. Kandi, you are certainly allowed to do what you want, but complaining about something and then doing it again is a bad look. Sheree stops by to fill her in on the guest list. Shes inviting Kenya and Kim because everything is meaningless and chaos rules us all.

Cynthia goes with her daughter to a cupcake-making  event? Someone on the production crew had a Groupon and it was about to expire. Noelle was planning to move to Charlotte to be with some punk-ass boyfriend, but shes deciding to take some time for herself. Of all the Atlanta children, I think Noelle is my favorite. Cynthia tells her about Will and seems pretty excited about him. Cynthias in that three great dates glow. I hope dating is different in your 50, but I definitely know that it could fall apart at any moment. Will, at least, wants another date and offers to take her on a sizable boat. All Ive ever wanted is to go on a date on a boat. Cynthia is living the life.

NeNe is at home with Gregg and she pulls a Kandi. She explains how worried she is about him and how she cant tear herself away and then tells him shes going on a trip. Gregg is able to give NeNe permission. Meanwhile, Kenya is dealing with the death of her grandmother, the woman who raised her. I sympathize with Kenya, but sitting on her bed staring at photographs while she gazes wistfully in the distance seems  strange to me. Cynthia comes over and brings her flowers. Kenya needs an ally for sure. Kenyas husband is also in New York and from what Kenya says, it doesnt sound like he wants to go to the funeral? Or doesnt want Kenya to go? There are a lot of bombshells dropped and just walked away from.

Best part of the packing for San Francisco trip montage? Porsha going to a health food store and saying she doesnt eat ugly food. What food was she referring to? Beets.

Marlo goes over to NeNes house while NeNe is packing. NeNe has a walk-in closet and that whole thing is a California Closet. I have one in my house and I recognized those rhinestone handles from the showroom. NeNe and Marlo come up with a plan to get Marlo onto the trip. Marlo has to go to California to buy a car? Who does this? Is there some California car tax break? What does Marlo do for a living? I need answers.

Everyone is late to the airport and when they do show up, they bring 400 suitcases. Porsha says the truest thing shes ever said on this show: When you go on a trip with a bunch of bitches who dont like you, you better slay every occasion. That is a life philosophy I can get behind. Kim ends up not coming and everyone is weird around Cynthia. Once they get to San Francisco, everyone complains about how cold it is. Oh, those delicate little Southerners.

During the bus ride to the airport, everyone reveals how long its been since theyve had sex and Sheree reveals shes reconnected with Tyrone, that shes in love, and hes in jail. That is a list that takes you on a wild ride with each new bit of information. Everyone takes a disco nap and shows up to the rooftop dinner that Sheree set up. Shes hoping everyone can put their differences aside and have a fun time. Oh, Sheree.

Marlo is wearing a nightie with a push-up bra and one of those lacy bunny-ear headbands. Sheree is wearing the same sweatsuit she flew in. It takes approximately 15 seconds until NeNe and Porsha are in a screaming fight.

I can hardly track every piece of information in this fight because both of them are talking at the same time. But my favorite moment is when they both scream, YOU TALK ABOUT ME in unison. NeNe is angry at Porsha because she was the only one who had Porshas back when she first came on the show and Porsha is just  upset? The fight ends with them just shouting, Fuck you! over and over to each other.

To be continued 
number 10

Phantom Thread

Hushed, creepy, a shade absurd: Its Paul Thomas Andersons portrait of the artist as a man who must orchestrate every aspect of his existence in order to create, and the destabilizing impact of a love relationship in which hes forced to cede some control. As a renowned postwar British female clothing designer, Daniel Day Lewis in supposedly his last  PLEASE GOD LET IT NOT BE SO  performance is a wispy creature, floating on currents of both inspiration and self-involvement. Hes upended by a willful new muse/lover played by the Luxembourg-born Vicky Krieps, while Johnny Greenwoods string-and-piano heavy score scales the heights of romanticism. One problem: the flabbergasting resolution, which makes symbolic sense (Ibsen and Strindberg would have loved it) but is too rushed to be remotely credible.

Read the full review later this week

number 9

BPM

The title of the stark French AIDS-crisis drama stands for beats per minute, which can evoke a heartbeat or a discotheque, both of which have their place. Director Robin Campillo focuses on the Paris branch of ACT UP  whose members devise often-violent stunts to call attention to governments and pharmaceutical companies foot-dragging  and a pair of young men who find love amid the horror. As a portrait of the harshness of vital collective action, the film has no peer.

number 8

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Shut up and hear me out. Go in expecting a shambolic script and variable acting and youll thrill to this daft, virtuosic sci-fi extravaganza  what happens when an artist with an unfettered visual imagination gets hold of the latest computer technology and goes all out. Luc Besson choreographs high-speed ballets of actors, bizarro creatures, and sci-fi gizmos on a dizzying number of planes, any minute of which has more cinematic magic than the last four Star Wars movies combined.

number 7

Nowhere to Hide

It begins with the American withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, when a film crew leaves a camera with a medic, Nori Sharif, who hopes to chart his countrys rebuilding  and winds up documenting his citys destruction and his familys desperate flight from ISIS. Watch Zaradasht Ahmeds great experiential documentary (and the equally intense Last Men in Aleppo) and footage of distant, falling bombs will never seem abstract, so far removed from the hell that they bring.

number 6

Marjorie Prime

Michael Almereydas adaptation of a play by Jordan Harrison is a haunting sci-fi chamber drama set in the near future, when people can purchase holographic versions (Primes) of their dead loved ones  and end up saying things they couldnt to the people on whom the Primes were modeled. The film is suffused with despair, but also an abiding sense of forgiveness. The perfect cast features a reborn Geena Davis, Tim Robbins, Jon Hamm, and the ever-sly 86-year-old Lois Smith, who made her debut opposite James Dean in East of Eden.

number 5

Faces Places

Agnes Varda is 89, with wavering eyesight, but she still gazes on every new space like a blank canvas. In her new road picture, she and a 33-year-old photographer calling himself JR drive around rural France, finding subjects by design and happenstance. JRs photos of people and animals are printed 30, 40, 60 feet high, and affixed to buildings, water towers, even a train. It sounds both whimsical and pretentious, but it might be the least arty movie about art ever made. Watching it, I felt I could suddenly access a greater percentage of my soul.

number 4

Get Out

Daniel Kaluuya is the black photographer who travels to meet the family of his white girlfriend (Allison Williams) in Jordan Peeles paranoid horror comedy, a psychotic satire of white liberals who appropriate black culture. Peeles directorial debut feels like the work of someone who has been making features for years. You jump, laugh at your jumpiness, and then jump again. Peele hasnt just blended Guess Whos Coming to Dinner? and The Stepford Wives. He has proven that, nowadays, the former has to morph into the latter.

number 3

Lady Bird

Nearly perfect. The title character is a Sacramento high-school senior (the dreamy-prickly Saoirse Ronan) who jettisons her real name for one that captures her fluttery exuberance  and suggests shed like to fly away, especially from the tormented mother (the superb Laurie Metcalf) whos increasingly jealous of her daughters freedom. The writer-director Greta Gerwig has a rare gift. She can skip along the surface of her alter egos life, stop and go deep, and then skip forward again, evoking the tempo of a life lived whimsically but over an emotional abyss.

number 2

Call Me by Your Name

Director Luca Guadagnino creates a mood in which every moment is suffused with sexual longing  in this case of a 17-year-old (Timothee Chalamet, the years best performance) for a 24-year-old visiting scholar (Armie Hammer). Its a film in which young men are always doffing their shirts and jumping into sparkling Italian lakes or riding on bicycles along dirt roads outside medieval villages. I cant remember the mood of midsummer captured this way, lazy but so vivid that every sound registers. And that last shot! A triumph by any name.

number 1

The Florida Project

Sean Bakers follow-up to his shot-on-an-iPhone-5 hit Tangerine centers on a bunch of rambunctious children bopping around a transient motel not far from Disney World. The crazy elation of the first half  as 6-year-old Moonee (the astoundingly vivid Brooklynn Prince) and her friends dash up and down the stairs making trouble at the Magic Castle motel  gradually subsides, as Baker shows how precarious this life really is. Bria Vinaite (in her first-ever role) is very fine as the loving young single mother who maybe shouldnt have responsibility for a kid  but who are we to judge?  and Willem Dafoe is unforgettable (a career-best performance!) as the kind but firm hotel manager who in the end cant fix what most needs fixing. The eye-popping artificial Florida colors make for the most potent counterpoint imaginable to the uncertainty, the grayness of the characters existence. But therein lies the hope. The best film of 2017 by a wide margin.

*A version of this article appears in the December 11, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.
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.
The Hewitt Dollar General was robbed over the weekend, and police believe it may be connected to at least two recent Family Dollar store robberies in the Greater Waco area.

At about 9:30 p.m. Friday, police were called to Dollar General, 505 N. Hewitt Drive, after a man wearing a dark-colored hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over a hat entered the business. The man asked an employee which register was open before he displayed the handle of a handgun from inside the hoodie and demanded money, Hewitt Police Chief Jim Devlin said.

"The employee said he never pulled out the weapon from his pocket, but just showed the handle," Devlin said. "She cooperated and removed an undisclosed amount of money from the register and the suspect exited the store."

The man was last seen walking east toward Hewitt Drive, Devlin said. No one was injured during the robbery.

Devlin said the suspect, described as a man with a tattoo on his forehead, is believed to be the same man who robbed a Bellmead Family Dollar about two weeks ago and the West Family Dollar last week. The agencies are working together to identify the suspect, Devlin said.

No arrests had been made by late Monday morning. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Hewitt Police Department at 666-1661, the West Police Department at 826-5311 or the Bellmead Police Department at 799-0251.
U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, said he is unsure if special counsel Robert Muellers team represents the blind scales of justice as it investigates Russias role in the 2016 election and possible collusion with President Donald Trumps campaign.

Flores said he would not consider Trump attempting to remove Mueller a move worthy of impeachment, but did not recommend it, either.

Look, he has the right to remove him, Wacos congressman said after speaking at the State of the Nation luncheon hosted by the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce. I dont think it would be good, optically speaking. Now that were starting to see the ideological backgrounds of the roster of people (who are) part of the Mueller team, youve got to be somewhat concerned as to whether or not its going to be a transparent and fair process. That said, I wouldnt advise the president to try to remove. I just think it would not send a good signal.

Some on Muellers team have made political donations to Democrats, The New York Times has reported, and under Justice Department rules, campaign donations do not create a political relationship.

The Times also reported last week that Mueller dismissed an FBI agent this summer after an investigation found that he sent text messages showing possible bias toward Hillary Clinton and against Trump.

Again, if you look at the roster of people (Mueller has) hired to help him, you cant be sure that they all represent the blind scales of justice, Flores said. But at the end of the day, all of this stuff has to go to a court somewhere. So well assume that its going to work out the right way through the court system.

Earlier in the day, while speaking to Waco High School students, Flores rebuked the hiring of Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security adviser. Flynn on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communication with Russian officials.

He should have never hired Michael Flynn to be part of the White House, and history shows that to be right, said Flores, the former chairman of the influential Republican Study Committee. There were just some elements about Michael Flynn that were not representative of clean, constitutional government and thats about all Im going to say on it  I dont think thats going to end up hurting the president. The president should be quiet about that, but hes talking about it.

Flores talks Trump, North Korea with Waco High students Shortly before his State of the Nation luncheon in downtown Waco on Monday, U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, spoke with juniors and seniors at 

The situation could become Trumps Watergate if hes not careful, Flores said at the high school, referring to the political scandal during the 1972 presidential campaign that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Dale Mantey, a Rockdale Democrat looking to unseat Flores next year, said he would consider Trump firing Mueller an impeachable offense.

I think any American would be rightfully concerned  Unlike Bill Flores, I actually have faith and trust in our Department of Justice to do their job, Mantey said. When I say concerned, we need to be cognizant of whats going on here. This isnt a story thats going away. This isnt a political story. Political stories dont last this long.

Speaking to local business, education and city leaders at the luncheon, Flores heralded Wacos recent growth, pointing to rapid downtown development and scientific advancements from the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative.

GOP efforts toward regulatory and tax reform, Flores said, would bolster such projects. Representatives from the House and the Senate will meet over the next two weeks to iron out the differences in the tax bills passed by both chambers, he said.

Flores predicted the controversial $1.4 trillion addition to the national debt will be plugged by revenues to the gross domestic product. The Joint Committee on Taxation has reported that the Senate bill would bring about $400 billion in economic growth. However, Flores said outside experts say revenue would plug the trillion-dollar gap.

Baylor officials have balked at the House bill because it would tax tuition waivers and stipends for graduate and doctoral students. Flores, who opposes that aspect of the bill, said he believes the exemption will remain in the bill lawmakers will send to Trumps desk.

Staff writer Shelly Conlon contributed to this report.
Edward Lane Bird, lovingly known to most as "Ed", passed away on December 2, 2017, surrounded by his loving family. Family and friends will gather for a memorial visitation from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., Tuesday, December 5, at Journey Christian Community Church, 10424 China Spring Road, China Spring. A memorial service celebrating Ed's life and his faith will be at 11:00 a.m., Wednesday, December 6, at Journey Christian Community, China Spring.
Shortly before his State of the Nation luncheon in downtown Waco on Monday, U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, spoke with juniors and seniors at Waco High School about everything from immigration, health care and tax reform to the importance of education after graduation.

What seemed to garner the most interest by students were Flores answers when they asked how he felt about working with the celebrity businessman-turned-president Donald Trump, and North Koreas ongoing threat of nuclear war against the United States.

Heres the way I feel about Donald Trump: Somebody may come up to you and say, Hey, I like all these things about you, but I dont like these things about you. What you have to do, at the end of the day, in order for us to be friends, you and I have to say, We like more things than we dont like,  Flores said.   Thats kind of the same with my relationship with Donald Trump. There are some things he does that just drive me crazy. Some of the tweeting he does, and some of the things he says drive me crazy. On the other hand, the policies he wants to move forward with are the things I like.

The question-and-answer session was meant to connect the soon-to-be voters and newly registered voters to politicians beyond what students may read online or in a newspaper, said Wendy Moulds, a Waco High School government teacher who helped moderate the event.

They need to know someone is actually working for them, in the trenches. They need to feel that sometimes, with this intense of a face-to-face, because I think thats one of the reasons a lot of them choose not to vote, Moulds said. Theyre so disassociated, that takes that out of the equation.

Flores casts doubt on Mueller's investigation, but does not recommend Trump intervention U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, said he is unsure if special counsel Robert Muellers team represents the blind scales of justice as it inve

Beyond Trumps push for tax and healthcare reform, Flores praised Trumps ability to re-establish a strong congressional liaison office for Congress to better collaborate with the White House.

The fact that he gets to meet Trump is pretty cool to me, junior Jardarin Randolph said. I like the fact that Flores is not very opinionated on first impressions and hes more of a long-term guy. He evaluates people such as Trump and he compared him to (Barack) Obama. He doesnt take anything away from the previous president, he just feels one does more and ones more interactive. It was a good experience.

Students then asked how Flores felt about the relationship the U.S. has with North Korea, which has had major advancements in missile and nuclear technology in recent months, including several tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

For the last several decades, policies have been lenient toward North Korea, with the thought that some form of help might make the country behave, Flores said. But there hasnt been forward progress because of the countrys oppressive regime and the country refuses to work with other nations, he said.

What we should have been doing is dealing with them from a point of strength. You know, Dont do that, or were going to smack you down, Flores said.

This president has changed our policy toward North Korea. He says, If you mess with us, were going to make sure you feel it and its going the hurt. But the leader over there, Kim Jung Un, has not really gotten it yet, with respect to President Trump.

One of the best ways the U.S. could handle North Korea would be to get major power players, like China, involved in resolving the tensions, Flores said.

Ultimately, I think were going to get things resolved over there, because North Korea is within a few months of being able to put a nuclear warhead on an ICBM and drop it anywhere in this country, and I think they would, Flores told the teenagers.
WAHOO  A public scope meeting for two floodwater retention structures south of Prague will be held Dec. 7 in Wahoo.

The Lower Platte Natural Resources District (NRD) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) are hosting the meeting at Union Bank and Trust in Wahoo from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. to discuss the structures.

The public meeting is being held to obtain insight, address questions and hear concerns from land owners and others that might be interested in the proposed project.

NRD Assistant Manager Tom Mountford said the NRCS has already allocated $1.5 million to the structures and the NRD has applied for an additional $2.3 million from the states Water Resources Development Fund.

If the state grants the NRD the $2.3 million, then only $1.5 million will have to come from local sources, Mountford said.

Flood retention has been a large conversation by landowners and these two dams are pieces of that puzzle, Mountford said.

Sites 26 and 27 are two of 17 total structures that are part of the Wahoo Creek Watershed Plan and Environmental Impact Statement.

Seven of the original 17 structure have been completed.

Site 26 is located near County Road 28, just north of County Road O. Site 27 is located northwest of the intersection of county roads 26 and O.

After the Dec. 7 meeting, NRD committees will begin to look at engineering firms for designing the structures and getting permits for construction.

Mountford said the NRD has five years to get the dams in place and the first three years will be spent in engineering, permitting and securing land rights. The last two years will be construction.

The structures sit at adjacent sections, so thats why they are looked at together as a group, he added.

The overall scope of the Wahoo Creek Watershed Plan and Environmental Impact Statement are to reduce urban and rural flooding, reduce sedimentation and scour, stabilize streams and channels, enhance fish and wildlife habitat, enhance water quality, improve economic conditions and provide recreational opportunities.

For sites 26 and 27, recreational opportunities would be up to the private landowners, Mountford said.
The Turnbull government has been embarrassed by a shock loss on the floor of the House of Representatives.

The defeat on Monday afternoon occurred when Labor and some crossbenchers combined to back a motion supporting New Zealand's offer to resettle refugees from Manus Island.

But two members of the government - Trade Minister Steve Ciobo and Liberal National Party backbencher Warren Entsch - didn't show up, triggering the 73-72 defeat.

Speaker Tony Smith used an escape clause in the House of Representatives standings orders to allow the vote to take place again. The grounds for a new vote were that the absent MPs had not intended to abstain but were simply absent at the crucial moment due to "misadventure".
Controversial amendments to the same-sex marriage legislation are poised for defeat in Parliament this week, with key crossbenchers and Liberal MPs refusing to back them.

As debate began in the House of Representatives on Monday, supporters of the Dean Smith bill believed they had enough votes, 74, to form a blocking majority against any changes.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said gay people were better off living together than alone with their cats. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Conservative government MPs Michael Sukkar and Andrew Hastie presented nine tranches of amendments to colleagues late on Monday, including wide-ranging exemptions for civil celebrants, small businesses and organisations such as religious charities.

In a briefing, they told fellow Coalition MPs that anti-discrimination laws were "significantly unbalanced" toward protecting "same-sex oriented Australians", and offered "no protection at all" to those who support the traditional definition of marriage.
Foreign holidaymakers have launched legal action against the Turnbull government's controversial backpacker tax, arguing it breaches Australia's international tax treaties.

US-based tax accounting firm Taxback  acting on behalf of individual clients from the US, Britain and Germany  lodged the challenge with the Queensland Federal Court on Monday.

The backpacker tax was designed to slug visitors who earned less than the tax-free threshhold. Credit:File/Rob Griffith

The company argues that the tax  announced by the Abbott government but implemented at the start of this year  contravenes non-discrimination clauses built into tax treaties Australia has signed with eight countries: Britain, the US, Germany, Finland, Chile, Japan, Norway and Turkey.

The legal action seeks "declaratory relief" from the tax for all citizens of those eight nations  in effect rendering them exempt from the tax.
Access to justice is a recurring issue for small business people who are at the wrong end of a power imbalance in dealings with big business and governments.

Consumer protections don't always apply to small businesses, which have limited options in seeking resolution.

There are mediation services provided by my office and state Small Business Commissions, but if the dispute can't be mediated it starts to get expensive.

The fundamental issue is the current legal system puts small business in no man's land.
A thief who broke into a Perth veterinary hospital may not know one of the drugs they stole is used to euthanise pets, WA Police have warned.

The Forrestdale veterinary hospital was broken into at around 2.15am on Monday morning, and a large quantity of drugs were stolen.

A large quantity of drugs were stolen from the vet hospital.

The thief made away with Lethabarb, Apomorphine, Propofol, Alfaxan, Diazepam, Zoletil, Antisedan, Dozadine and ACP.

While a number of drugs the thief took are used as general anaesthetic or sedatives, WA Police warned the thief against taking anything they had stolen.
Planning Minister Rita Saffioti has indicated the state government will move to rezone Beeliar Wetlands to ensure Roe 8 can never be built.

Speaking outside Cabinet on Monday, Ms Saffioti said she would soon start proceedings to protect the reserve and commence its rehabilitation.

Protesters at the Beeliar Wetlands. Credit:ReThink The Link

The Roe 8 project, led by the former Liberal state government, planned to extend Roe Highway by five kilometres through Perth's southern suburbs to Stock Road in Coolbellup.

Following Labor's resounding victory at WA's March election, the $1.2 billion funding commitment from the federal government to build the freight link was redirected into the state's $2.3 billion road and rail funding package which includes 17 road and rail projects.
Washington: President Donald Trump on Monday said the FBI ruined the life of his former national security adviser and said his Democratic opponent for president, Hillary Clinton, suffered no consequences after she lied "many times" to the FBI.

Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser, pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI when he was questioned early this year about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. He was the fourth person charged in the investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed to lead an inquiry into Russia's influence on the 2016 election and possible ties to Trump associates.

As he left for Utah on Monday, the president said he felt "very badly" for Flynn, whom he fired in February for lying to the vice president about the content of these conversations.

Trump's comments on Monday on Flynn come at a time when the special counsel investigation is focusing intensely on the president's inner circle. Trump once encouraged Flynn to seek an immunity deal. Presidents typically do not weigh in on federal investigations to avoid appearing to influence the outcome.
Washington: Donald Trump's former campaign chief Paul Manafort has apparently come up with a novel way to try to salvage his reputation amid money laundering and conspiracy charges.

As recently as last week, Manafort was ghost-writing an editorial with a longtime colleague with ties to a Russian intelligence agency, which sought to put a positive spin on his work for the Ukrainian government, according to prosecutors for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Paul Manafort, a former campaign worker for Donald Trump. Credit:Bloomberg

The charges against Manafort relate to his work in Ukraine.

The piece flouts a judge's order "to not try the case in the press" and is grounds for denying Manafort's bid for freedom from house arrest, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Monday.
A Helena man convicted of fracturing his babys skull was sentenced to 20 years in the Montana State Prison with five of those suspended.

Aaron Joel Oliphant was convicted of felony aggravated assault in late September after a three-day trial.

Oliphant was the sole caretaker of the boy on the day of the incident in summer 2016, according to court documents. The case was brought to the attention of law enforcement officials after Oliphant and his wife took the baby to the emergency room. The boy had brain bleeding consistent with "non-accidental trauma from a caretaker," the documents state.

When medics assessed the child at St. Peter's Hospital the next morning, staff informed the couple that their baby "had bleeding in his head which was usually associated with someone shaking the baby or dropping the baby on his head," court documents state. The boy was taken to a children's hospital in Salt Lake City for further treatment.

County Attorney Leo Gallagher recommended 20 years in the Montana State Prison with no time suspended for Oliphant due to the ongoing medical issues the child is facing, including seizures, deficits with speech and balance and potential brain damage.

Its a lifelong problem for this child that he caused, Gallagher said.

Gallagher also pointed to Oliphants attempts to cover up the damage he had caused to the child.

Its a special guy who can watch a child die, Gallagher said.

Judge Mike Menahan found multiple factors surrounding the case to support the 15 year sentence, including overwhelming evidence of injuries and the suffering of the child. Oliphant is also required to pay restitution costs for health care and the lost wages of the childs mother.

There is absolutely no excuse for the injuries wrought upon this child, Menahan said.
WASHINGTON -- I bumped into Bret Baier, the Fox News host, at a Washington cocktail party Wednesday night where it seemed everybody was chatting about the latest White House insanity: President Trump joking about "Pocahontas" to Native Americans, reviving the Obama "birther" allegation, suggesting the Access Hollywood video was fake, retweeting anti-Muslim videos made by British white-supremacists.

Most assumed Trump was just being crazy, but Baier had a theory: Whenever Trump escalates such antics, he is agitated about news that is about to break. Maybe, Baier speculated, Trump knew something about the Russia probe that we didn't yet know.

Now we do. On Friday morning came former national security adviser Michael Flynn's guilty plea, the most ominous development for Trump yet in the Russia probe. Court documents show that Flynn is cooperating with special prosecutor Robert Mueller and that Flynn's Russian contacts were made under direction from higher-ups -- and there weren't too many higher than Flynn on the campaign other than Trump himself. The notion that Flynn has the goods on Trump would explain why Trump was reluctant to fire him, tried to get the FBI to stop probing Flynn -- and seemed unglued this week as the news of Flynn's cooperation was about to become public.

Though predictions are perilous in the age of Trump, this really could be the beginning of the end of the national horror his tenure has been. If Baier is correct -- as I believe he is -- that Trump gets ever more outrageous when he feels cornered, then this means the nation is entering a perilous new period. We can expect Trump to get ever more dangerous and desperate in his distractions as he hears Mueller's footsteps. Trump's erraticism is damaging in its own right, to alliances and civility, but the greatest danger is that while we chase Trump's distractions, we lose sight of real calamity.

This week was a good example. Trump raised the level of crazy. We in the media took the bait. And you, dear reader, encouraged us.

I asked my digital colleagues at The Washington Post for the top 25 pieces that appeared online in the Post this week before the Flynn news broke. Along with news stories about current intrigue -- the Matt Lauer firing, James O'Keefe's failed sting operation against the Post, Prince Harry's engagement -- the top items were dominated by Trump insanity: his Muslim-video retweets, his insult of the British prime minister, his attacks on CNN, his war on the "war on Christmas," the insults he traded with Democrats, his "unhinged" behavior and his veering past "guardrails" of what's acceptable.

But in the top 25 were only two about the monstrous tax bill as it made its way through the Senate this week. There were only two about North Korea testing a missile that could strike anywhere in America. There was only one about Trump's takeover of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And there wasn't a single story about the sprawling Russia scandal.

In other words: We are all being played for suckers as we get exercised over Trump's diversions.

It's possible that Trump does crazy things simply because he's crazy. But the outbursts serve a real purpose. They provide cover. While the nation gapes at Trump implying Joe Scarborough's involvement in the death of a congressional aide, the administration and its allies achieve all kinds of abominations.

If this tax bill were to see more sunlight, it would never become law. It adds $1 trillion in debt, ultimately increases taxes on those making less than $75,000 a year, gives most of the breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent, is forecast to add negligible economic growth and would force massive cuts to Medicare and Obamacare. But while Trump distracted the nation, GOP leaders strong-armed holdouts all week.

Likewise, the Post published several largely unnoticed pieces this week about the failure to renew the Children's Health Insurance Program, which expired on Sept. 30. States have begun to notify beneficiaries (9 million children) that they may be cut off.

I tried to ignore the Trump shenanigans this week, instead writing about the drug-industry executive Trump tapped to oversee drug pricing and about the administration lawyer who orchestrated Trump's takeover of the CFPB after serving as a lawyer for a payday lender cited by the CFPB for abuses. But such pieces generate only a fraction of the "clicks" of pieces I and others write about Trump's pyrotechnics.

Those pyrotechnics are going to increase now that Mueller has turned Flynn. Trump's distractions will be impossible to ignore. But we -- lawmakers, the media and the public -- need to keep our focus on the real damage Trump is doing.
By: Associated Press

December 3, 2017

MIAMI (AP) -- Two Florida men have been sent to prison for distributing hundreds of opioid pills to an undercover Miami police officer.

The Miami U.S. Attorney's Office says in a news release that 50-year-old Oreste Abreu of Hialeah was sentenced to just over four years in prison and 39-year-old Daniel Lezcano-Morejon of Hialeah was sentenced to more than three years.

Both men pleaded guilty earlier to drug trafficking charges.

Investigators say the pair sold more than 800 hydromorphone pills to the undercover officer over several months in 2012. Hydromorphone is sold under the brand name Dilaudid, a powerful painkiller.

The case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Miami-Dade Police Department.
After months of smoke-filled skies, the blanket of winter has returned to the Northern Rockies. Our stunning vistas are once again visible. 2017 was a record-breaking fire season here in Montana, as 141 wildfires burned across our state  affecting over a million acres. Montanans were evacuated, homes were lost, businesses were hurt, and federal and state budgets were severely impacted.

However, Montanans are a resilient bunch, and we rolled up our sleeves and helped one another. Our elected officials were there with us, providing help and taking an interest in what was happening to our forests and our communities. While the fires burned, everyone stood together. Yet as the smoke cleared, it became easier to assign blame and look for silver bullets to solve the problem.

We traveled to Washington, D.C., a couple weeks ago and were surprised to see Congress proposing new laws to reform forest management faster than one can assign them a bill number. While we appreciate the effort, this reactive frenzy of bill drafting is not in the best interest of our forests or Montanans. Most of the current bills lack bipartisan support and are likely to hurt  not help  our forests and communities. Undermining bedrock environmental laws, silencing public opinion, and weakening accountability by limiting public engagement and review are just a few of the potential outcomes of the proposed legislation.

There is one piece of legislation that will help make our forests more sustainable, fire resistant and adaptable to the changing climate: the bipartisan Wildfire Disaster Funding Act. More intense wildfires, a longer wildfire season and people moving into fire-prone areas are driving up firefighting costs. These increasing costs are chipping away at other public lands programs, forcing agencies to take funding from other programs such as forest restoration, recreation, trails and land use planning.

Have you noticed reduced levels of maintenance and public service on your national forest? We sure have. The Wildfire Disaster Funding Act fixes that problem by stabilizing suppression funding and funding the 1-2 percent of costly wildfires as we do earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes: as national disasters. This will significantly reduce the need to borrow funds, and allow more stable budgeting for fire prevention, forest restoration and other programs. Unfortunately, efforts in Congress to include more controversial proposals for changing forest management are holding hostage the solutions  like WDFA  that everyone agrees on.

As we look over the areas that were shrouded in smoke all summer, we see a significantly changed landscape. It is not 1 million acres of blackened trees but a mosaic of burned, unburned and partially burned forest and grasslands  closer to what we suspect the landscape looked like prior to mans intervention with fire suppression, early logging and grazing.

This landscape raises a lot of questions with no simple answers. Would more logging have slowed the rate of spread? Would more prescribed burning have decreased fire intensity? Where does climate change and the record setting drought fit in? All these questions should be answered in a collaborative manner with professional resource managers, the timber industry, conservation groups, business owners, ranchers, outfitters, recreationists and many more.

For years, Montanans have been meeting at kitchen tables across the state to hammer out common-sense solutions to tough issues. When we need help from Congress, we will be the first to ask.

We have asked for a fix to the wildfire funding issue, and they have responded. Lets get that bill passed and let the more complex issues concerning forest management reforms be worked out across the table and over a cup of coffee.
The holiday party can be a highlight of a small company's year  or an event everyone would rather forget. When there are problems, which can land a small business in legal trouble, they often start with people having too much alcohol.

A business owner can lessen the chance of trouble by keeping an event low-key, holding it during the day and/or limiting how much people can drink.

A company is legally responsible in most states if party guests, whether they're employees, customers or their dates, are hurt in or cause alcohol-related accidents. It doesn't have to be a traffic accident  if someone falls and is hurt at the party or on the way home, the boss can be liable. There's also the possibility that someone who's had too much to drink can say or do something offensive, sexually harassing or even violent. Again, it's going to be the boss's problem.

Human resources professionals say owners and managers need to set the tone for the party, reminding employees that while the event is intended to be a celebration, it is a work-related affair and that everyone is expected to behave accordingly. And, in the case of sexual harassment or violence, there will be disciplinary consequences. Owners and managers need to act as chaperones, making sure no one's drinking or behavior gets out of hand.

HR consultant Crystal Barnett fields more inquiries around this time of the year from small businesses needing guidance about making their parties trouble-free.

"They're asking for ideas about what other clients do," says Barnett, who's with the Atlanta office of HR provider Insperity.

Barnett is seeing companies move away from big blowout parties, preferring more intimate get-togethers or sit-down meals in a restaurant. And owners recognize that during the holidays, family time is what matters to many staffers, so their parties are being held in the afternoon. Both trends have the benefit of being safer for everyone.

"It cuts down on drinking," Barnett says.

Some companies that have afternoon parties, or that take the staff out for lunch, give employees an added bonus of the rest of the day off, Barnett says.

Companies that want to limit alcohol have several options. Some decide to make their parties alcohol-free. Others hire professional bartenders and give staffers tickets that can be exchanged for drinks. To be most effective, tickets should have employees' names or other identifying information on them, and staffers should have to show an ID card. That will prevent people from giving tickets to one another.

Another option is a cash bar, Barnett says. People tend to drink less when it's on their own tab. And there should be a cutoff time after which alcohol won't be served, so people have a chance to metabolize the alcohol in their systems before they leave.

Owners may want to have car services available in case someone has had too much and needs help getting home.

While owners and managers can put their staffers on notice that they're expected to behave, they don't have as much power over spouses, partners and clients. All the more reason to keep an eye on everyone's behavior.

Attorneys and HR providers recommend that owners be sure they have adequate insurance coverage before hosting a party. That can include property and casualty insurance and also employment practices liability insurance, which is intended to cover sexual harassment, discrimination and other problems that can arise at an event. If the party is being held off-site, an owner should make sure that location also has insurance.

And, if something does happen, a boss needs to be upfront about any bad behavior, accidents or misunderstandings, and not try to sweep it under the rug.
US 60 open after Salem fire, but may be icy
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By The Associated Press

Dec. 04, 2017 | FRANKFORT, KY

By The Associated Press Dec. 04, 2017 | 10:58 AM | FRANKFORT, KY

The spokeswoman for Kentucky House Republicans says the former GOP speaker had a sexual relationship with a woman in his office and used money from political donors to help pay her a secret settlement outside of court.



Daisy Olivo filed a lawsuit Monday saying she was retaliated against for reporting official misconduct.



Former Republican House Speaker Jeff Hoover resigned his leadership post last month after acknowledging the settlement. He acknowledged sending inappropriate but consensual text messages, but denied having a sexual relationship with the woman.



He didn't immediately return messages for comment Monday.



Olivo said she reprimanded the woman several times for what she called a consensual but inappropriate relationship. Olivo said Hoover's chief of staff tried to fire the woman. When Olivo objected, she said, she was subject to retaliation.
DECATUR  Work to finally remove enormous piles of debris from the former Aaction Equipment building is underway  almost three years after fire destroyed the 1060 E. Grand Ave. structure.

Heres what to know about the massive project:

WHATS BEING DONE

Crews are removing piles of bricks, pipes and other debris from the site, which takes up nearly an entire block along North Illinois Street between East Grand Avenue and East Locust Street. The rubble, which is believed to contain asbestos, has been sitting there since January 2015, when fire gutted the warehouse. Firefighters from across the region were called in to battle the blaze, which could be seen for miles as it lit up the night sky.

WHY THE DELAY

The building eventually collapsed but was never cleaned up. "It's just literally become a landfill," neighbor Charity Doyle, told the Herald & Review in September. The case has been tied up in a protracted legal battle between the city and those who control the property. The owner died and the building was not insured. Click here to read more about the case.

WHO IS DOING THE WORK

The city has partnered with Operating Engineers Local 965 in Springfield for the removal. The city at first said the project would cost $300,000, but officials now estimate it will be lower because of the partnership. They're not sure how long it will take.

On Monday, a crane and other equipment was brought in as the area was sprayed with a hose. The union is using the cleanup to offer training opportunities for members.

HISTORY OF THE BUILDING

The three-story warehouse starting in the 1890s housed Faries Manufacturing, makers of kitchen cabinets, mirrors, bird cages and stands. The business sold the building to Sol Tick & Co. in 1955 and moved to Elkhart, Indiana. The restaurant equipment company was housed there since the 1970s.
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Nearly 15 years after its Edinburgh Fringe beginnings as La Clique, La Soiree has landed in the West End. Variety might have gone mainstream with a little help from Simon Cowell, but Brett Haylock's circus cabaret has always been alt. The question is this: Has La Soiree come to the West End or has the West End come to La Soiree?

The answer is a bit of both. La Soiree still lives up to its name. Seven years after its first Olivier Award-winning outing, it remains the very definition of a good night out. A variety show on shuffle, combining big belly laughs with heady astonishment, it swings from raucous cabaret acts to dizzying circus. This year, we get American all-rounder Amy G popping a kazoo up her wazoo to parp a patriotic tune in President Trump's honour, and the German gymnast Lea Hinz spinning on an aerial hoop like a human catherine wheel. Exuberant, boisterous and racy as ever, La Soiree's a party in public, perfect for the festive season.

Whether it lives up to its best, however, is another matter. There's an old philosophical problem, dating back to the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, called The Ship of Theseus. It imagines a ship that has each of its component parts replaced one by one over time. Is it still the same ship? The same goes for La Soiree. With an all-new line-up, is it still the same show?

Over the years, Haylock has found like-for-like replacements for La Soiree's originals. In place of pinstriped strong men The English Gents we get the suited-and-booted Chilly Brothers, chucking each other around on the human trapeze. Trapeze acts swing by and one silly turn deserves another. As a result, La Soiree retains its own distinct flavour; the same head-spinning cocktail of sauce, silliness and spectacle. It looks and feels the same, and it works the same treat  the thrill of the risque upping that of the risky. Same old La Soiree. Still got it.

Except, it also isn't and hasn't. Each substitute is that bit more bog-standard; still extraordinary in its own right, just ordinarily so. Rather than the witty reinventions of cabaret turns, today's La Soiree is largely circus staples done well. Instead of David O'Mer's bath-based straps act  a cologne ad come to life  we get LJ Marles hanging around all insouciant and sensual hand-to-hand from Leon Fagbemi and Klodi Dabkiewicz. Miss Behave's anarchic clowning is dialled down into Amy G's mischief. Individually, each act does the trick. Together, they fall short.

The exception is La Serviette, borrowed from Quebecois duo Les Beaux Freres, which puts two naked men between two crisp white towels that fold, unfold and refold always threatening to reveal too much. Classical and coy in equal measure, it subverts striptease every bit as well as Ursula Martinez's legendary Hanky Panky. Originals Cabaret Decadanse and their club-singing puppets are as upbeat as ever, and the trashy slapstick of Daredevil Chicken (Anne Goldmann and Jonathan Taylor) is an upgrade in the silliness stakes, whether bouncing bananas mouth-to-mouth or coming unstuck at the seams mid quick-change routine.

Haylock's added diversity too with a Mallakhamb duo from Mumbai, a masculine alternative to contemporary pole dancing, and the follicle-defying hair-hanging of Fancy Chance. Without wit or self-awareness, there's a risk of exoticism; imported spectacles rather than knowing subversions. An unlikely charge for such a ludicrous evening, but La Soiree's in danger of taking itself too seriously.

La Soiree runs at the Aldwych Theatre until 3 February 2018
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DECATUR  Six months after lawmakers hastily passed their first state budget in two years, transportation advocates are sounding the alarm on a little-noticed item that will take $300 million from road repairs to pay other expenses each year.

Many lawmakers have only recently been briefed on the measure, which escaped much notice at the time. It stems from limited funding and other legislative priorities, with lawmakers acting under intense pressure after two years without a budget and the state's backlog of unpaid bills topping $14 billion.

"This (move) was a total surprise," said Macon County Engineer Bruce Bird. "You know, (county engineers) were told by the folks at (the Illinois Department of Transportation), when they had discussions with legislators, it was 'We did what?' So I'm guessing it's a surprise to just about everybody."

The result, transportation advocates say, is a fatal blow to the Illinois Department of Transportation's construction schedule that was already struggling to keep up with deteriorating roads and bridges. After the budget passed, IDOT's planned highway improvements went from 400 miles of work to 189, a fraction of the more than 3,500 miles of state roads currently in need of reconstruction across Illinois.

An IDOT spokeswoman said the department remains committed to "creating and maintaining a world-class system of infrastructure."

"The department will continue to work with all stakeholders on this mission and to strengthen the states status as the transportation hub of North America," said spokeswoman Kelsea Gurski.

Most of the diverted money is paying for bonds that were used to make already-completed improvements to the Regional Transit Authority, which serves public transit in the Chicago area.

Before the budget agreement, IDOT's capital plan said 40 percent of all state roads would be in need of repair by 2023. Now, the road fund, which is the primary bank account for Illinois' transportation spending, will be depleted well before then.

"We had a tourniquet on that was starting to fall off," said John Lowder, a lobbyist whose clients include the Transportation for Illinois Coalition. "Now we're opening up arteries, and we're bleeding out now."

When asked about the road fund diversion, the governor's office and state Senate leaders each blamed their political enemies.

"The idea for this came from the Senate Republicans on behalf of the Rauner administration," said John Patterson, spokesman for Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago.

A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Bill Brady's office responded in an email. "This was a proposal that Democrats adopted, put in their budget and passed mostly with Democrat votes in the Illinois Senate."

A spokeswoman for Rauner said Bradys proposal as the lead Republican budget negotiator included $180 million from the road fund to pay for RTA bond payments. The Democrats enacted FY18 budget, which Gov. Rauner vetoed, increased this cost shift to approximately $300 million, spokeswoman Elizabeth Tomev said.

This all comes despite the fact that transportation advocates enjoy a strong bipartisan cadre of supporters: trades unions, whose members carry out the work for capital projects, and business leaders, whose companies rely on a strong transportation network to keep up the flow of commerce.

"I have trucks going all over the place, and I can tell there are a lot of roads where you can't avoid the issues," said John Skeffington, president of Decatur-based Skeff distributing, a major beer distributor in Central Illinois. "You can really tell as you drive west, when you get back to Illinois. It's a mess."

Every $1 million in road project spending equates to about 15 (full-time construction) jobs, said David Tyrolt, president of Dunn Company in Decatur. So (that loss) of $300 million represents 4,500 jobs across the state that are going to be lost. Our employees, they'll suffer some of that loss themselves.

IDOT's highway improvement plan for the current fiscal year had to eliminate more than 200 miles of construction work. Before the July budget agreement, the agency had planned to repeat its average workload  about 400 miles a year.

Kevin Burke, vice president of the Illinois Asphalt and Pavement Association, says IDOT would need to complete work on 800 miles of state road every year in order to keep its current conditions, which are already noticeably bad. "We were bleeding at 400 miles of roads a year (before the budget deal)," he said. "Now we're bleeding at 600 miles a year."

For businesses like Skeff in Decatur, the silver lining would be that IDOT officials would likely prioritize main thoroughfares like the interstate system and national highways like Interstates 55 and 72, and U.S. 51.

"But (Illinois 121), some of the lesser routes are going to be the ones that start to deteriorate," Lowder said.

The stakes are that much higher for road funding considering the unique relationship between state and federal funding. Traditionally, the U.S. Department of Transportation has paid for close to 80 percent of states highway projects, but only after the work has been completed.

Put another way, in order for Illinois to receive the maximum amount of federal highway dollars, it has to have enough available cash. IDOT needs to be able to fund projects that are a lot larger than the actual cost, so they have to have cash flow to then get reimbursed, Burke said.

While 26 states have raised their motor fuel tax since 2013, Illinois' has stayed at 19 cents a gallon since 1990.

A lot of states have been stepping up to the plate the last few years," said Brian Turmail, director of public affairs at Associated General Contractors of America. "I think (Illinois is) in the most dire situation."

The specter of another tax increase in Illinois is daunting both for elected officials and residents, such as Jeanne Hanson in Decatur.

Theyll raise the taxes to cover that, and then theyll borrow the money to pay for something else, she said. I dont trust Illinois government.

Still, Turmail said, taxes collected and used for a specific purpose, like motor fuel taxes, tend to be more popular with voters. Focus groups show that people prefer knowing they will pay for a specific purpose, with a result that they can see will provide a direct benefit to them.

Transportation advocates say a major lift will have to take place just to prevent a slide of road conditions today, with more revenue and bond sales together.

Were not even talking about money that we need for new roads, congestion relief, or airports. This is the most important," Lowder said. "This has got to be reversed."
DECATUR  City officials gathered Monday to raise the Illinois Bicentennial Flag, joining communities across the state that took part in the ceremony at the same time.

The banner was raised by two members of the Macon County Honor Guard and will be flown under the Illinois flag for the next year.

Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe read a proclamation from Gov. Bruce Rauner.

By the numbers

1818

Year Illinois was admitted to the United States, becoming the 21st state. Its recorded history began in 1673 when missionary Jacques Marquette and fur trader Louis Jolliet became the first Europeans to lay eyes on it. The signature of President James Monroe made it the 21st state on Dec. 3, 1818.

4

Presidents who have called Illinois home: Abraham Lincoln (1861-65), Ulysses S. Grant (1869-77), Ronald Reagan (1981-89) and Barack Obama (2009-2017).

15 million

Amount, in dollars, for renovation of Illinois Executive mansion. As part of the Illinois Bicentennial celebration, first lady Diana Rauner will unveil the newly renovated Illinois Executive Mansion, which is undergoing a renovation that is being funded entirely by private donors.

What to expect

The bicentennial celebration across the state will include the #Illinoisproud awards. It is an effort to give at least one $5,000 award to a project in every county. Applications will be accepted in May 2018.

A new beer will be available that is brewed in honor of Illinois called 1818. Hand of Fate Brewing Co. of Petersburg, Illinois, won a craft brewing competition at the 2017 Illinois State Fair and the honor to make the official bicentennial beer.
LA CROSSE  Prosecutors contend Todd Kendhammer fatally beat his wife of 25 years and tried to conceal her death by staging a freak car accident. Kendhammer says she died when an airborne pipe pierced his windshield and struck her in the head.

The West Salem mans 10-day trial for the intentional death of his wife last year opens Monday in La Crosse County Circuit Court, when attorneys will narrow a pool of potential jurors to 12, plus at least one alternate, to decide the case.

Kendhammer told authorities the couple left their home at N6617 E. Scotch Coulee Road in West Salem between 7:30 and 7:45 a.m. Sept. 16 for Holmen, where he planned to pick up a truck to replace its windshield.

GPS information retrieved from Google show the couples cellphones at a neighbors house from 7:30 to 7:50 a.m., according to a La Crosse County Sheriffs Department report. The neighbor, who lives in Seattle, said Kendhammer cared for the 80-acre property that he planned to buy.

Barbara was scheduled to work at 8 a.m. at West Salem Middle School  the opposite direction from Holmen. The owner of the truck said he did not arrange for Kendhammer to repair the damaged windshield, according to a sheriffs department report.

Surveillance video captured a car matching the Kendhammers Toyota Camry at 7:57 a.m. traveling north on Hwy. M about one mile south of Bergum Coulee Road in the town of Hamilton.

Kendhammer said they were just south of Bergum Coulee Road when a 53-inch pipe fell from an oncoming flatbed truck, bounced off the pavement and passed through the passenger side of the windshield, hitting his 46-year-old wife, according to the criminal complaint. He later said the pipe did not strike the pavement before breaking through the windshield.

Kendhammer described the passing flatbed truck as a 2000s model that was blue, green or black with 18 to 24-inch metal sides. He could not identify the gender of the driver.

Authorities could not locate the truck described by Kendhammer on surveillance video from area businesses.

After the pipe penetrated the windshield, Kendhammer drove about 100 yards north while trying to remove the 10-pound galvanized steel pipe from his flailing wife, then turned east onto Bergum Coulee Road and drove another 100 yards before the car rolled backward into a grassy embankment, according to court records.

A State Crime Laboratory analyst determined the pipe hit the passenger side of the windshield at least once before it broke through.

Once stopped, Kendhammer said he removed the pipe from the windshield and threw it behind the car, pulled Barbara from the passenger seat and tried CPR for three to five minutes before calling 911 at 8:06 a.m., according to the complaint.

He told dispatchers frantically a pipe or something came through the windshield, and that it struck her in the head and the throat, I think.

The first paramedic at the scene found Kendhammer kneeling at his wifes feet. Her head was toward the road and her blood was on the rear passenger tire. Emergency responders did not find glass shards on Barbara, according to a sheriffs department report.

A passerby told investigators he saw the Camry half in the ditch, its windshield intact, the passenger door open and no one around the car, according to a sheriffs department report.

Kendhammer had bloody knuckles and scratches on his neck and chest. He attributed his injuries on working with glass, according to a sheriffs department report.

Barbara suffered extensive blunt impact injuries to her head and neck inconsistent with her husbands account, Dane County Deputy Medical Examiner Kathleen McCubbin wrote in the autopsy report.

She had three bone-deep cuts to the back of her head, a fracture to the back of her skull, a broken nose, bruises and bleeding on the interior of her lips and bruises on her biceps.

Barbara also had a fractured bone and muscle hemorrhaging in her neck consistent with strangulation, according to the autopsy report. She had possible fingernail scratches on her neck and two torn fingernails.

Evidence recovered from the car indicates Barbara was assaulted and the windshield smashed when she was not in the car, prosecutors said in court.

There was no blood on the pipe, according to the State Crime Laboratory.

Bloodstains around the passenger seat and on the inside of the windshield indicate Barbara was inside the car when force was applied, according to a crime lab report. The patterns are consistent with a beating.

Blood drip and flow patterns revealed Barbara was bleeding for a period of time in the passenger seat and that her body was at one time over the center console and passenger-side floor, according to the crime lab.

The spread of glass particles on the passenger seat indicated it was empty when the pipe penetrated the windshield. The analyst also concluded the passenger door was likely open, because there were no glass pieces in the door pocket.
Sauk County residents will have a chance this week to weigh in on current and future outdoor recreation opportunities in the area.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will hold an open house meeting Tuesday at the Baraboo Civic Center, during which attendees can speak with department officials, property managers and other DNR staff about its outdoor recreation offerings. DNR recreation specialist Cameron Bump said the meeting is part of the departments Recreation Opportunities Analysis.

Were collecting public input on a variety of things regarding outdoor recreation, he said. Primarily, what people like to do, where they like to do it, what might be some gaps of outdoor recreation and where opportunities may lie so we could meet some of those needs or gaps.

The Recreation Opportunities Analysis is examining outdoor recreation on state-managed properties in eight regions across the state. The final regions to be studied are the Southern Gateways and Lower Lake Michigan Coastal regions. Sauk County is included in the northern end of the Southern Gateways region.

Bump said breaking the state into regions helps the DNR get a sense of what recreation the public is looking for in different areas. He said he anticipates with the presence of Devils Lake and other popular state properties, Sauk County residents will show a stronger desire for hiking and camping opportunities than other regions.

What were doing is were trying to make it a more manageable analysis where we look at each region and we try to describe the region and the characteristics of recreation that happens there, Bump said. In doing so, were able to help our planning process.

Bump said there will be no formal presentation during Tuesdays meeting. Attendees can look over various displays and maps and talk with department staff about recreation at properties like Devils Lake, the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area, Pewits Nest and other local sites.

Theyre able to have conversations with us and bring forward their thoughts on outdoor recreation  maybe some particular properties in the area that they think hey this property is conducive to this activity, Bump said. Those types of comments are fantastic for us to hear.

If unable to attend the meeting, Sauk County residents can still provide feedback to the DNR online, according to a department press release.

The public is invited to participate in this analysis by providing information through an online input form by searching the DNR website, dnr.wi.gov, for keyword ROA, the release states. The public can provide feedback online or print out the questionnaire and send completed forms to the department.

Public input opportunities for Sauk County residents are open through Jan. 2.
If it werent so serious, it would have been laughable.

But there were the state Senate Republicans, with one exception, voting to give final passage to a resolution calling for a constitutional convention  what would be the first one since 1787, when our current Constitution was written  to ostensibly require Congress to pass balanced federal budgets.

The irony was delicious. Here the Republican members of the Wisconsin Senate, good Donald Trump backers virtually down to their core, passed a measure that would supposedly seek to outlaw deficit spending during the same week their GOP heroes in Congress were proudly touting a tax reform bill that is a mere $1.5 trillion out of whack.

You might think Wisconsin Republicans running state government these days just dont know what they are doing. Otherwise they wouldnt pretend the federal budget is equivalent to the budgets put together by states like Wisconsin.

Yes, most states are required to pass balanced budgets, but the states dont have to finance unforeseen natural disasters, wars and other emergencies, or deal with sudden economic catastrophes like the money manipulators on Wall Street foisted on the American people only 10 years ago.

Think about it. If the feds were required to annually balance the budget, there could have been no New Deal to pull us out of the Great Depression, nor could there have been the Recovery Act passed in Barack Obamas first year to pull the country out of the Wall Street-induced Great Recession  unless the government robbed from other programs like Social Security and Medicare.

A balanced budget requirement could spell disaster for the American economy, especially during times when it is weak and needs help to protect businesses and jobs.

The move to join 27 other states in calling for the convention was led by state Sen. Chris Kapenga, an accountant from a silk-stocking Milwaukee suburb where Republicans can do no wrong. Yet it was under their conservative champions like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush that the federal deficit soared as they irresponsibly cut taxes on the wealthy, ensuring an unbalanced budget  something that Republicans, ironically, are trying to do once again.

You might think Kapenga and his colleagues would aim their fire at their GOP colleagues in Washington, too. But no, the Donald Trump-Paul Ryan tax reform act gets good marks from Wisconsin Republican legislative leaders even though it promises to balloon the national debt.

But worse, the call for a constitutional convention  thanks to Wisconsin, it now needs the approval of just six more states  could open a Pandoras box that could cause untold havoc to our Constitution. A recent mailing from the group Convention of States Action reads: A convention of states is our only chance to pass important and long overdue measures like a balanced budget amendment, term limits on Congress and the Supreme Court, and limits on the scope and jurisdiction of the federal government.

And the convention might even try to limit the freedoms that have irritated conservative politicians and others over the years  for instance, the First Amendment, which doesnt seem to sit well with Donald Trump.
Dave Wester wrote that Trump is a terrible person, shown little compassion for people, attacks the press (Letters, Nov. 16). The real danger, however, is not Trump himself but the people who support him. Sixty-nine million people who voted for Trump, who Hillary called deplorables, are the real problem. Love you too, Dave.

You had to be on Hillarys campaign, right Dave? How else could someone come up with all this hate except a political hack? I continue to pray for unity in America, no thanks to you.

Fake news is fact, Dave. Is it any wonder why Trump is constantly after the media?

The Russian investigation has been going on for one year without any evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. I tend to believe this a vast left-wing media driven conspiracy, or at the very least, a half vast conspiracy.

Trumps positives: He reversed Obamas unconstitutional immigration actions, hes confronted the short fat man in North Korea, he just brought back billions of dollars in trade deals, two quarters of over 3 percent growth, got three UCLA players released from China, lowest unemployment in 17 years, stock market is at all-time high, a foreign policy of strength.

Fred Williams, Baraboo
The Columbia County Boards Human Resources Committees 3-2 vote on Friday to release money for across-the-board wage increases for county employees illustrates the ongoing struggle of compensating county workers in times of austerity.

The Finance Committee and the full County Board will still need to approve the resolution, before $160,000 can be released from the contingency fund in the countys 2018 budget.

If that happens, the classification and compensation plan that governs how much most of the countys approximately 550 employees are paid will be amended to raise each step in each classification by 1 percent.

At a previous Human Resources Committee meeting, a motion on the resolution died for lack of a second.

Since then,committee member Barry Pufahl of Pardeeville said he has reflected on the matter and concluded that all county employees deserve at least a small increase in compensation next year.

This is going to be the only way it will be that all employees will get a raise, Pufahl said.

Some employees qualify for longevity-based step increases, amounting to about 2.5 percent, in addition to the proposed across-the-board increase. Most county employees get an annual step raise on the anniversary of their employment, until they reach step 6  after which step increases are granted, with satisfactory job performance, every other year.

The $160,000 would cover increases for all employees except sworn deputies in the Sheriffs Office, who are represented by a union (and whose 2018 contract has not yet been negotiated or ratified), and employees of the Columbia Health Care Center and the countys Highway Department, whose 1 percent increases are already included in their departments respective budgets.

The 2018 budget year marks the fifth consecutive time that the budget is being balanced by dipping into reserves, calling for $1.4 million this year. Corporation Counsel Joseph Ruf noted that releasing $160,000 from the contingency fund would neither increase nor decrease the amount of reserves used to balance the budget.

Committee member Matthew Rohrbeck of Portage said he was torn.

On one hand, he said, its good to reward employees with annual pay increases.

On the other hand, he said, its getting harder every year to fund all the countys services. This budget was difficult for the County Board to swallow, he said.

Rohrbeck and Committee member Dan Drew of the town of Pacific voted no on the resolution, with Pufahl, Committee Chairman Bruce Rashke of the town of Wyocena and Committee member Adam Field of Portage voting yes.

Rashke said there are two ways, seemingly contradictory, that a county government can fail. It can spend itself into the hole, he said, or it can fail to compensate its employees adequately.

The classification and compensation system  designed by the Madison consulting firm Carlson Dettmann  was intended to ensure that the countys workers get compensation that is comparable to that of other employers in this area. But Rashke questioned whether that goal is being achieved.

I think, Rashke said, we are underpaying some of our people.

Rashke added that deficit spending is a reality of life for Wisconsin counties.

County Board First Vice Chairwoman Mary Cupery of the town of Fort Winnebago said the state-imposed levy limit hamstrings counties ability to raise revenue to provide the services that the state requires from counties.

Where are we going to get the money? Thats the question, she said.

Field said he thinks most Wisconsin residents want state-imposed limits on the amount that counties can collect from property taxpayers  and even with those limits, the tax burden is still significant.

County Board Chairman Vern Gove of Portage noted, however, that the countys reserves, which now stand at about $23 million, dont go down appreciably from year to year because most of the countys 24 departments consistently return a total of about $1 million in unspent money from the previous years budget. Any unspent money goes back into the general fund.

Nonetheless, Ruf said, the countys financial limitations must be addressed, even as efforts are made to attract and retain high-quality employees.

Were going to have to be more efficient, he said, or we are going to have to figure out how the county can do fewer things.
Coal is not coming back. Sorry, Wyoming, West Virginia and other states that mine the fading fuel.

Wisconsin, which imports most of its energy, is shutting down another coal plant, with plans to rely on more natural gas and renewable energy instead.

Congratulations to We Energies on its smart decision this week to close its Pleasant Prairie plant in Kenosha County. The plant burns about 13,000 tons of coal a day, most of it shipped here from Wyoming. The plants buildings and equipment will be removed, according to We Energies, which has pledged to help about 150 employees find jobs elsewhere in the company.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to end the war on coal and bring back coal mining jobs. But thats not going to happen. The free-market economy favors natural gas, and the cost of renewable energy is falling, especially for solar.

Moreover, an increasing number of customers want their power companies to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, which emit the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.

Trump this year made a big show of rescinding his predecessors requirement that utilities significantly reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions over time. Yet utilities in Wisconsin and elsewhere still plan to proceed largely as the Obama administration wanted  with some going further in reducing carbon  because thats what makes the most financial sense.

Trump can continue to undermine regulations on dirty coal. But he cant repeal reality.

The Wisconsin State Journal this week reported wind technician is the fastest-growing occupation in the United States. Wind generation employs about 102,000 workers, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. An even bigger employer is solar energy, which accounts for about 374,000 jobs.

Thats far more than the 86,000 positions attributed to coal generation, or the estimated 74,000 coal miners.

The Trump administration is aggressively trying to defy market trends. Energy Secretary and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for example, has been pushing for subsidies for coal plants that stockpile supplies as a supposed security measure. Yet despite Perrys best efforts, three coal-fired plants in Texas recently announced they are shutting down.

This is good  not just for the planet and future generations of Americans, but also for utility bills.

We Energies told the Racine Journal Times this week that its goal in shuttering its Pleasant Prairie coal plant is to reduce the cost of supplying power as well as cutting carbon-dioxide emissions. We Energies also plans to develop a large solar energy project in the state by 2020.

Despite the Republican presidents big talk about bringing coal country back, coal production has fallen below 2016 levels, according to Bloomberg News. The future is clean energy  no matter how much the president wants to return to the past.
Few authors have their first book published when they are 80, but Rose Bingham of Wisconsin Dells has.

Bingham has written a memoir of her childhood: of her mother disappearing; of being sent to an orphanage and of her vow to keep in contact with her six brothers and sisters. Buy the Little One a Dolly is Binghams memoir of the years after her mother took a trip into town and never returned.

Her book is published by Henschel Haus Books of Milwaukee, and on Saturday, Dec. 9 from 1-4 p.m., she will launch her book, give a talk, read an excerpt from it and sign copies at the Kilbourn Public Library, 620 Elm St., Wisconsin Dells.

Bingham was 15 in 1952 when her mother left, the oldest of the seven children. She and her father with help from neighbors and relatives in the small Wisconsin community where they lived tried to keep the family together. I was sad, but not bitter and judgmental, she said of her mother leaving.

Two years later, the children were sent to an orphanage, and then sent to five foster homes. Bingham made her vow to keep in contact with those brothers and sisters  one she has kept. They still get together and keep in contact 63 years later.

The brother and sister bond is beautiful, she said adding that she wonders if they would have the same bond if they had a so-called normal childhood.

In 2011, her sister Pat got a call from a young woman, who said she thought her great-grandmother might be Binghams mother. The great-grandmother was Binghams mother and since then she has met her siblings from the other family. She also said she got the answer after 59 years why her mother had left.

At that point, she decided to write the memoir for her children and grandchildren. She got encouragement from her friends, including those in the Kilbourn Librarys book club. Three of those friends, Carol Showalter, Jacqueline Zenik and Jan Hess wrote blurbs or short promotional paragraphs for the books back cover.

After deciding to write the memoir, Bingham said it was five years before the book was published. She attended the UW-Madisons annual Writers Institute to learn the ins and outs of having a book published. She learned how to pitch her books to agents at the conference. Laurie Scheer, the director, of the institute wrote the forward to the book and she told Bingham that writing the book is the easy part; marketinggetting a publisher is the hart part.

Bingham said she consider self-publishing (paying for it to be published), but the cost was quite hefty. After seven pitches to agents, she made her pitch to Kira Henschel of Henschel Haus Publishing. Henschel seemed interested and took notes. Bingham said she had been told, if an author didnt hear from an agent in six weeks, the publisher probably was not interested. After six weeks, Bingham sent an email to Henschel and received word that she was not interested at this time. Bingham sent off another email this time asking for suggestions. She was then asked to send the manuscript.

Three to four days later she received a 16-page marketing questionnaire and a draft contract. Is this really happening. Bingham said she kept asking herself. It was and then Henschel asked Bingham to meet her at Barnes and Noble. They met, and the book was on the way to being published.

Bingham said she has always written poetry. She writes a monthly poem published on her website, rosebingham.com/author. She wants to someday put her poetry into a book for her family. She also written short stories about her life on a Wisconsin farm, Christmas memories.

Professionally, she was a career nurse who graduated from St. Francis School of Nursing in La Crosse, and she received her BSN degree from the UW-Madison. She also took writing courses at the UW-Baraboo/Sauk County under retired professor David Cole.

Besides her nursing career, she and her husband, Mike raised six children. They have 17 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren as well as a spoiled dog, Rylee, her website says.

Binghams book is available on her website for $16.95, and she said she has already sold $1,000 worth. It is also available from Henschel Haus Publishing on its website, henschelhausbooks.com.
SPRINGFIELD  A Republican state legislator is making a primary challenge against Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner.

State Rep. Jeanne Ives of Wheaton officially filed her candidate papers on Monday before the 5 p.m. deadline for the March primary.

Ives said in remarks released early Monday by her campaign that she'll side with "taxpaying Illinois families" instead of the "political ruling class." She notes that she supported Rauner's campaign in 2014, but said Illinois needs a new path.

Ives tweeted earlier today that she would be traveling to Springfield to file her nominating petition.

Ives earlier said she'd selected former state Rep. Rich Morthland of Rock Island as a lieutenant governor running mate.

Ives took office in 2013 and was formerly a member of the Wheaton City Council. She's a U.S. Military Academy at West Point graduate and former Army officer.

Rauner said Monday that he's in the best position to win the general election and dismissed Ives as a "fringe" candidate. He refused to say whether he'd debate her.

Also, Democratic Sen. Michael Hastings of Tinley Park also filed petitions to challenge longtime Secretary of State Jesse White in the primary.

Hastings says he has respect for White but was unsure if he was going to seek a sixth term. He'll "wait and see" before making a final decision.

White's campaign director Rocco Claps says there's no doubt White is running.
On December 4, Armenian Minister of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies Vahan Martirosyan hosted World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) Chair Yvonne Chiu.

The parties discussed the preparation works for the World Congress on Information Technologies (WCIT), to be held in Armenia in 2019, and expressed their willingness to join efforts for a successful event.

Yvonne Chiu said that more than 4,500 delegates from 80 countries are expected to attend the conference.

WCIT 2019 will be held in Armenia with the support of the Armenian government and the Union of Information Technology Enterprises (UITE).
A holy grail of computing hidden in human speech

Talking in code: Denys Poshyvanyk, an associate professor in William & Marys Department of Computer Science, has been working to bridge the human-to-computer language gap for the better part of the past decade. Photo by Stephen Salpukas Photo - of - Hide Caption

Imagine all 30,557 words of Shakespeares Hamlet being written simultaneously by tens of thousands of people.

To maintain the elegance of the prose, there is a necessary interplay between words. Each line has to coordinate with the next to keep the overall meaning of the play intact.



For some of the most advanced computer programmers, that imaginary scenario is close to reality. Only instead of writing Hamlet, theyre writing software for self-driving cars, updating smartphones, and securing banking systems.



I think about it like trying to build a complete building on sand, without having any strong foundation. Things are constantly shifting, said Denys Poshyvanyk. Its language on top of language.



The way humans use language informs how we process information and the same goes for computers, Poshyvanyk says. Just like human speech, computer language  or source code  has its own syntax and semantics.



Poshyvanyk, an associate professor in William & Marys Department of Computer Science, has been working to bridge that human-to-computer language gap for the better part of the past decade. He and a team of nine W&M students are researching the ways code can mirror human communication.



What were doing is taking some of the techniques which have been very successful in the area of natural language processing, information retrieval and machine learning and adopting them in the field of software development, Poshyvanyk said.



From Poshyvanyks lab in McGlothlin-Street Hall, Ph.D. student Kevin Moran has been exploring what he calls the holy grail of software engineering  direct translation between source code and human language. His aim is to translate between people reporting cellphone glitches and the source code responsible for the glitch. It turns out getting humans and computers talking is no small task.



If I had to pick one word to sum up the whole field of computer science, it would be abstraction, Moran said. As a computer scientist, you are trying to get a computer to do what you want. The way you interact with source code is an abstraction of the way you would normally communicate in natural language.



In September, Moran and Poshyvanyk presented their research at the International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution in Shanghai. The paper was one of 12 co-authored by the duo in the past two years, a level of productivity that has been a hallmark of Poshyvanyks career.



Over the past decade as a researcher, Poshyvanyk has published 107 refereed conference papers, including 89 co-authored with William & Mary students. He has also published 25 journal papers, 20 of them co-authored with W&M students.



I believe that having a truly synergistic and collaborative environment is very prolific, Poshyvanyk said. When students feel they are part of a successful team, that encourages a lot of creativity.



Students say Poshyvanyks focus on teamwork has taught them accountability and fostered a collaborative lab environment, where they can have pride in what they produce.



You have this sense of ownership over the work, said Marty White, a 2017 Ph.D. graduate of the department and senior lead scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton. White has co-authored five papers with Poshyvanyk. Yes, its a frenetic pace, but you dont even really think about it. Its like one of those things, if you want something done, give it to a busy person.



Even with a high volume of research projects, students say the majority of their ideas are left on the cutting room floor.



At any given time, we have a backlog of 20 projects we want to be doing, Moran said. As a result, only the best ideas make it to the research stage.



Some of that research has recently garnered international acclaim. For the past two years, Poshyvanyk was recognized for the Most Influential Paper at the International Conference on Program Comprehension. The awards are given 10 years after a paper is published. Poshyvanyks 2007 paper introduced the idea of creating a search engine for source code.



The idea we had was to create a Google for developers, Poshyvanyk said. We wanted to develop an engine that would index your source code. You would be able to write a natural language query without any restrictions and simply search your code base.



The paper led software developers to explore entirely new ways of searching source code, Poshyvanyk said. Hundreds of papers have followed on the topic and several companies created their own Google-like code search engines.



Poshyvanyks more recent work has also gained recognition. In November, he won the Automated Software Engineering Distinguished Paper Award for a paper he co-authored with his current Ph.D. student Christopher Vendome, former Ph.D. student Mario Linares Vasquez and three Italian collaborators.



Their paper evaluated metrics to test how well programmers understand the code they are tasked with reading. They found that readable pieces of code do not have a direct correlation with understanding. While programmers are all writing in the same language, the meaning of text hinges on the author.



The abstractions you create while writing your program make it hard for me to easily jump in and read what you wrote, said Poshyvanyk. Sometimes for me to understand how one piece of source code is used, I have to look through an entire library written by other people.
Nuclear has 'clear role to play' in UK Industrial Strategy

04 December 2017

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Nuclear power accounted for a fifth of total electricity produced in the UK last year and it remains the largest single source of low carbon electricity in the UK, providing 46% of the low carbon electricity produced, with wind, solar, hydro and biomass providing the remainder, according to the Nuclear Industry Association's first Activity Report, issued today. With two-thirds of all dispatchable power capacity retiring between 2010 and 2030, including all but one of the country's existing nuclear stations, the NIA warns that this will need to be replaced with a new fleet to continue providing the reliable, secure low carbon power the UK will need.

NIA represents more than 250 companies across the supply chain serving the UK's civil nuclear industry.

Lord (John) Hutton, chairman of the London-headquartered trade association, said: "Beginning the construction of much anticipated and increasingly important new build programme and the continued progress being made across decommissioning has helped develop UK capability across its supply chains. There is also a significant opportunity for the sector in developing the first small modular reactors - a global market which could be worth up to 400 billion.

"The nuclear industry will have a clear role to play in achieving the government's aims for a modern Industrial Strategy. We have made significant progress with government through the Nuclear Industry Council, towards agreeing an early Sector Deal which will maximise these opportunities and help improve productivity, foster innovation and reduce cost."

In its Industrial Strategy White Paper launched on 27 November, the government said the nuclear sector is "integral to increasing productivity and driving growth" in the UK. The strategy states that industry-led proposals for a nuclear Sector Deal focus on how, working with the government, substantial cost reductions can be achieved across the UK's new build and decommissioning programmes.

Economic contribution



A new study compiled by experts Oxford Economics and commissioned by the NIA shows that the UK's civil nuclear sector contributed GBP6.4 billion to the UK economy last year - equivalent to the aerospace manufacturing industry; and its 65,000 employees are part of one of the most productive workforces in the country.

The report, published today, shows this economic impact increases to GBP12.4 billion and 155,000 jobs when the sectors spending on associated goods and services in the supply chain and the wage spend by employees is taken into account.

Each nuclear sector employee contributes an average of GBP96,600 in gross value added to the economy, 73% higher than the UK average, reflecting the highly-skilled nature of the workforce and the use of advanced technologies. This direct impact, while accounting for 0.3% of UK GDP, also generates substantial sums in taxes paid to the Exchequer, with the report estimating the sector paid around GBP2.8 billion in tax payments in 2016, rising to GBP4.5 billion when associated spend is included.

Progress made



The NIA's Activity Report outlines the progress made across the nuclear sector in 2016, including: a saving of 22.7 tonnes of CO2 from nuclear operations - the equivalent of removing one third of the UK's cars from the road; an increase in output from nuclear stations of 4.5 TWh meaning nuclear remained the largest single low carbon source of electricity in the UK; producing enough electricity to power 16.3 million homes; beginning construction of the first new nuclear power station in a generation at Hinkley Point C; significant contracts in the UK and overseas being awarded to UK supply chain companies; and cost savings made across all decommissioning projects, including more than GBP200 million at Sellafield.

Tom Greatrex, NIA chief executive, said: "For the first time we have comprehensive data which shows the important role the UK's civil nuclear sector plays in generating highly skilled and well-paid jobs, making a significant contribution to the economy and supplying low carbon electricity to keep the lights on.

He added: "The UK's nuclear sector is a vital part of the UKs industrial heritage and the governments Industrial Strategy and the work being undertaken to bring forward a Nuclear Sector Deal will be vital to underpinning and ultimately increasing this contribution."

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
The Court of Appeals in Armenia is now hearing a lawsuit filed by the Investigative Journalists NGO (the publisher of Hetq) to overturn a lower courts decision absolving a senior investigator at the Special Investigative Service (SIS) from any wrongdoing when he denied handing over copies of a decision of the SIS to drop its criminal investigation into the offshore business interests of Mihran Poghosyan, a former head of the Armenias Compulsory Enforcement Service.

The lower court threw out the original lawsuit seeking the copies in September.

Ara Ghazaryan, an attorney representing the Investigative Journalists NGO, told the court today that the SIS had violated his clients rights by not handing over the documents.

The SIS refused to hand over the requested documents last January, arguing that Article 262, Part 1, of Armenias Criminal Procedure Code, states that copies of a decision to drop or halt criminal proceedings are sent to the suspect, the accused, the defense lawyer, the injured party or their representative, the civil plaintiff/defendant, or their representative.

According to the law, a copy is also sent to an individual or legal entity upon whose statement the criminal investigation was launched in the first place. The SIS argued that the Investigative Journalists NGO (which published Hetq) cannot be provided a copy of the decision since the news outlet is none of the above.

The NGOs lawyers maintain that Hetq requested the document in order to carry out its mission to provide information in the public interest.

Hetq wrote about Poghosyans shady financial dealings in Panama and his Swiss banks accounts in April 2016, after data was uncovered in the Panama Papers. The data was obtained by the German newspaper SuddeutscheZeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 110 media partners from 82countries, including Hetq.

Poghosyan resigned from his post at the Compulsory Enforcement Service in April 2016, but always maintained he was not involved in any offshore business deals.
A man brought shame to the American military after raping and killing a woman near a military base in Japan.

Now, a judge sentenced 33-year-old Kenneth Franklin Shinzato to life in prison for the death of the Okinawan woman.

Shinzato, a former U.S. Marine, was employed at the Kadena Air Base by an Internet firm at the time of the incident.

According to prosecutors, 20-year-old Rina Shimabukuro went missing after going for a walk.

The police investigation led them to Shinzato.

After he was arrested, Shinzato revealed the location of the victims body. Police recovered the body in a wooded area three weeks after the victim went missing.

Prosecutors told the court that Shinzato raped the victim on a road in Uruma. He then killed the woman by hitting her head with a club and stabbing her while she was trying to fight off the sexual assault.

Shinzato denied that he intended to kill the victim. He pleaded guilty to rape resulting in death and abandoning a body.

He was sentenced to life in prison.
Around 20,000 Israelis gathered in an upscale Tel Aviv neighborhood Saturday night to protest government corruption and an impending bill in the Israeli Knesset, reported Reuters and Israeli media.

Although police officers refused to provide official statistics on the number of protesters, this march of shame clearly marked the largest in a series of anti-corruption protests that have been occurring weekly in the Israeli metropolis.

The allegations of bribery, fraud and misuse of trust driving these demonstrations against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration have been accumulating over months, but have come to a head because of the so-called recommendations bill.

According to Deutsche Welle, this piece of impending legislation, supported by Netanyahus party, Likud, creates measures to prevent Israels police from publishing findings and issuing recommendations to the prosecutor's office on indictments related to public officials.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is currently facing two separate investigations involving conflict of interest and bribery. The recommendations bill, if passed, would directly benefit Netanyahu, alleviating political pressure for him to step down in the case of an indictment.

So-called "Case 1000" involves allegations that Netanyahu accepted gifts such as cigars, champagne and bags of cash from Arnon Milchan, a billionaire Hollywood producer, and James Packer, an Australian investor, in exchange for political favors. Israeli law prohibits public representatives from receiving any gift that isnt of small value and reasonable in context, reports the The New Yorker.

"Case 2000" involves allegations that Netanyahu met with the owner of Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, asking for positive coverage, in exchange for taking measures to reduce the circulation of one of the newspapers rivals.

In another case that also implicates Netanyahus wife, Sara Netanyahu, the family was alleged to have racked-up more than US$ 100,000 in restaurant, grocery and take-out bills to their private residence using the public pocketbook.

Deutshe Welle reports that the Prime Minister and his wife both deny the alleged corruption, and blame their former housekeeper, who now helps organize anti-corruption protests, for the charges.

Netanyahu also faces scrutiny in the media for a possible third incident, related to the $2 billion purchase of submarines from the German company, ThyssenKrupp. The attorney who represented ThyssenKrupp in the acquisition is also Netanyahus personal attorney and cousin. The Associated Press and Deutsche Welle have both reported this affair.

Perhaps in response to pressure from Saturdays protests, on Sunday, Netanyahu requested that a lawmaker behind the recommendations bill ensure that it "be worded in a way that it won't apply to the investigation taking place into my affairs," the AP reported.

Although the recommendations bill was originally scheduled for a parliamentary vote on Monday, the bill was taken off of the committee agenda Sunday evening.

Netanyahu has dismissed the corruption allegations against him, at different points calling them fake news and witch hunts, Vox reported in August.

Corruption is not unknown within the Israeli executive. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was sentenced to 18-months in prison in 2016 after receiving envelopes of cash from an American businessman, as reported by The New Yorker.

However, if officially indicted on corruption charges, Netanyahu would not be legally required to abandon the prime ministry, although he might face pressure to resign or call new elections in order to restore his mandate.

According to the Associated Press, Barak Medina, a law professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said in August that formally Netanyahu won't have to resign, but if police recommend he be charged with a serious crime, it is unlikely he will be able to carry on in his job."

This could change if the recommendation bill passes because police involved in the investigations against Netanyahu would not be allowed to recommend an indictment or make their findings public.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ( photo: jewishjournal.com)

occrp.org
Councillors to scrutinise impact of Town Centre Masterplan so far

This article is old - Published: Monday, Dec 4th, 2017

Last April Wrexhams Town Centre Masterplan (complete with large greyhounds) got a green light from councillors, and this week a committee will be looking at the progress made so far.

The plan was introduced by lead councillors last year as being an aspirational document that had 323 consultation responses from the public before being firmed up.

With the plan being quite fresh, the impact on the Local Development Plan (LDP) is a common theme on its wider impact: It would be premature to discuss how the Masterplan has shaped the LDP before these meetings have been held.

The report before councillors notes the formation of a Town Centre Regeneration Delivery Group which has met three times this year, and has formed these terms of reference to their work. Their purpose is described as a forum / management network supporting the effective co-ordination of all physical regeneration activities in the town centre to ensure delivery of the agreed priorities as defined in the town centre masterplan

The membership is listed as 16 council officers from various departments, with other officers and partners possibly invited or co-opted as required. It is stated that the group will create a Delivery Plan that will progress the Masterplan aims and objectives.

There are examples of progress in a table at the footer in the report to councillors that includes Ty Pawb, the Cats Protection plans for the old fire station, the Ebenezer Chapel demolition and plans and the Welsh ICE / Town Square project.

There is analysis of planning applications in the primary shopping streets, however even with the data given it is concluded: Given the short timeframe since the Masterplan was approved it is too early to judge its success in planning terms, there will inevitably be a time lag before planning directly impacts on the town centre.

The Masterplan contained a considerable amount of study and research from Council reports and external consultant reports costing thousands of pounds, and with the Quarterbridge Report being kept confidential (Wrexham.com failed in a FOI for its release) we enquired if any of the data would be placed into the public domain as it could be useful for the public. A year later we have not spotted any being released despite being told a lot will be at the time.

Weight is again given to the Town Centre Forum and its Steering Group, in this case saying: It is recognised that in order to bring schemes forward a wider partnership approach is required to harness both the support and expertise that is present in the private sector.

The Town Centre Regeneration Delivery Group will seek full engagement with the Town Centre Forum and the Town Centre Steering Group amongst other stakeholders, once the initial mapping work has been completed and reviewed against the Masterplan framework.

Despite the table being titled Actions by Masterplan Theme and a field for Lead there is no evidence what role, if any, the Masterplan played in the actions themselves, nor on practical examples of the outreach work to encourage private investment.

There is mention of a planned application to the Targeted Regeneration Investment Programme from Welsh Government, however as with the common theme, it appears too early to judge or report on outcomes.

This week councillors will meet to scrutinise the progress, and form their own recommendations after their debate on the topic.

In what is a rarity the Committee Chair has issued a media statement  with Cllr Rodney Skelland saying: I know theres a lot of interest in Wrexham Town Centre at the moment  from the media, businesses, stakeholders and members of the public alike.

As such, I would recommend anyone who has an interest in the town centre follow the webcast of the meeting  or come along in person  and look into the kind of work thats taking place to co-ordinate the regeneration and continued health of the town centre.

I look forward to what promises to be an interesting debate.

The full final masterplan document from last year can be viewed via this PDF  be warned it is a huge 31 meg!

The meeting on Wednesday will be webcast, so for those who wish to tune in or watch in person, it is at 4pm  or you can watch via the catch up service.
Papa Johns takeaway plans for Wrexham given go ahead by councillors

This article is old - Published: Monday, Dec 4th, 2017

The opening of a new pizza franchise in town was on the menu for councillors this evening  with plans for the new store receiving unanimous support.

Back in April 2017 Wrexham.com reported that Papa Johns Pizza had submitted plans to partially convert a vacant property in Regent House, Regent Street, into a takeaway and delivery outlet.

The application submitted at the time stated that permission was being sought to install new signage for five years at the Regent Street property.

Papa Johns is known worldwide and already has 250 stores across the UK, however this will be the first Wrexham franchise.

Last week when Wrexham.com reported that the application was finally due before the planning committee, with more than 120 people commenting on our Facebook post.

There had been some concerns raised by neighbouring residents, with five letters objecting to the proposals submitted to Wrexham Council.

Such concerns include vehicle nouse, devaluation of properties, impact of car parking at the neighbouring Caxton Place, public gatherings around the takeaway, litter problems and disturbance late at night.

However today reassurance about the parking was offered by planning officer David Williams, who that the initial application for the takeaway had been amended in terms of appearance, highways and opening hours.

Mr Williams said: Due to the proximity to Caxton Place, we felt need to control the hours of use. The initial application said it would be open until 3am, we have looked at that and have expressed some concern over duration of opening times. Condition six shows it is restricted to midnight on any day

We have since had correspondence from applicants, they are happy to restrict to later than 11pm Sunday to Thursday and midnight Friday to Saturday.

The point the application is making is if its reduced further than 11pm, it would make it unviable as a commercial enterprise and the applicant wouldnt be interested in taking the scheme further.

It was also noted that five parking spaces would be provided at the rear of the property and that there is nearby 30 minute parking that customers could use if required.

However concerns about the parking were raised by councillor for the Grosvenor ward, Marc Jones, who asked for reassurance for local residents that a greater problem wouldnt be created.

He said: My concern is about the lack of parking. There will be six delivery vehicles, staff in the kitchen and people stopping there to get takeaways, there is only room for five.

We already have a parking deficit in that area. People in Caxton Place have issues accessing their own block of flats at times. I fear this is only going to make things worse.

I would like as much reassurance as possible for residents that we are not going to create a greater problem.

Cllr Jones also noted that the committee should take advantage of the option to reduce the opening hours in the week to 11pm.

Such concerns were echoed by Cllr Andrew Atkinson, who queried if signage directing customers to the parking at the rear of the property could be enforced.

Mr Williams said: The applicant has provided parking to rear for up to five and there is additional parking in close proximity.

I think it is also important to note the existing use had a parking demand, if it was used for retail use there would still be pressures in that area for parking.

Commenting on the potential litter in the area, Cllr I David Bithell requested if a condition to have bins installed in the area, could be enforced. The committee was told it was possible.

Speaking in favour of the plans, Cllr David Maddocks said: I think it is a great opportunity for the town.

Its an empty shop turned into a business and creating jobs. I think it is great for the town and I will be supporting it.

The application, along with the amended / reduced opening hours, were backing unanimously by the committee.

*Picture  Google Maps
Tax office closure will fail North Wales communities

This article is old - Published: Monday, Dec 4th, 2017

Wrexhams MP Ian Lucas says plans to move Wrexhams Tax Office to Cardiff will fail the whole of North Wales.

Ian Lucas raised the issue during a Westminster Hall debate on business support in rural Wales.

Mr Lucas Labour colleague Albert Owen, MP for Ynys Mon, had spoken in the debate to point out that Government policies  particularly those where services such as courts and tax offices were taken out of communities and centralised  harmed those communities.

He said: Many of the local economies created by solicitors offices and the extra boost given to the economy by the areas around the courts are lost for good. Many personnel move from those areas to where the courts move to. We have seen HMRC, for example, moving its offices from the west to the east, to central Wales, down to Cardiff. That does not help rural economies in north and north- west Wales.

In response, Mr Lucas added: I am afraid this is an irresistible opportunity to talk about the Governments appalling proposal to shift HMRC from Wrexham in north Wales, my constituency, which has many rural areas, to Cardiffs city centre. Is that not exactly the opposite of what we should be doing?

Mr Owen agreed and pointed out that, despite UK Ministers talking about the devolution of services to local communities, the reality was they were removing them.

Speaking after the debate, Mr Lucas said: North Wales Labour MPs have been raising concerns about the Governments slashing of our local services since 2010.

Whether that has been cuts to legal aid or courts, the removal of Army battalions to headquarters outside Wales, or the ongoing proposals to move 350 tax office jobs to central Cardiff, every proposal harms our communities.

Thats why we speak out and stand up to oppose them  because we want to see our communities and our local economy flourish.

Wrexhams HMRC Office is due to close in 2021, with 350 jobs lost or relocated  more here from a previous article
Defense attorneys staged a walkout at the Brooklyn borough criminal court after the latest immigration arrest occurred there on November 28. The Legal Aid Society lawyers action was to protest the arrest of Genaro Rojas-Hernandez by officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Rojas-Hernandez, a Mexican immigrant, had appeared in court to respond to a charge of misdemeanor domestic violence. Plainclothes ICE officers arrested him at the end of the hearing.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) had first arrested Rojas-Hernandez on November 6 after he allegedly assaulted a woman at a Midwood restaurant in violation of a previous order of protection according to a criminal complaint in his case.

He was charged with 10 crimes, including misdemeanor assault, but four charges were dismissed. Rojas-Hernandez is contesting the charges and refuses to take a plea deal, according to Rebecca Kavanagh, his attorney. Rojas-Hernandez has no prior criminal convictions.

During the afternoon of the arrest, protestors marched outside the courthouse chanting, ICE-free NYC, and Hell no, ICE must go, according to Patch.com. The Legal Aid Society led a march to the Brooklyn district attorneys office in which approximately 100 people participated, including attorneys from Brooklyn Defender Services.

The judge had told Kavanagh that ICE agents had come to arrest her client and advised her to speak to him privately outside the courtroom. ICE officers found Rojas-Hernandez before Kavanagh could speak with him, however. Legal Aid attorneys stated that court officers had helped ICE with the arrest and pushed Kavanagh aside as she tried to inform her client of his rights. When Kavanagh told the judge that the officers had taken Rojas-Hernandez, the judge ordered officers to hold him. Kavanagh was then able to speak with Rojas-Hernandez, albeit in the presence of ICE agents and another attorney.

Rojas-Hernandez told his attorney that ICE officers had questioned him without identifying themselves, according to a tweet from Kavanagh. Rachael Yong Yow, a spokesperson for ICE, denied that account, stating that ICE officers had identified themselves to the court officers and to Rojas-Hernandez.

ICE officers arrested Rojas-Hernandez based on an administrative warrant, which does not require a judges signature. This type of warrant is used for immigrants who may be deported. Rojas-Hernandez is now in ICE custody, waiting to appear before an immigration judge.

Defense attorneys object to courthouse immigration arrests, which they say make defendants afraid to appear in court. They call for court officers to stop helping ICE to conduct the arrests. This court should be a safe place for [immigrant defendants] to exercise their due process rights to respond to the allegations against them, said Adrienne Wells, a Legal Aid defense attorney who attended the protest, in a phone interview with Patch.com.

The Office of Court Administration (OCA), the New York state agency that oversees the courthouses, stated that court officers neither help nor hinder ICE arrests. Lucian Chalfen, an OCA spokesperson, claimed that the Legal Aid attorneys had caused a scene by purposely interfering in an arrest situation.

The ICE arrests in New York Citys courthouses are part of a pattern of stricter enforcement that has accelerated since President Donald Trump took office. On November 27, ICE announced that it had arrested 55 foreign nationals from 22 countries in the New York City metro region. The operation took place from November 13 to November 20 and targeted at-large criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants, and immigration fugitives, according to ICE.

Of note, 42 of the 55 people arrested had an active ICE detainer, which requests local law enforcement to hold an individual until ICE can take him or her into custody. Local law enforcement had ignored the detainers and released these 42 people.

Ten of those arrested had been previously removed from the country or were immigration fugitives. Anyone who re-enters the United States after deportation faces federal felony charges and as much as 20 years in prison if convicted, according to ICE. The agency announced that the individuals who were arrested, but will not be slated for criminal prosecution, would be processed for deportation.

Public defenders say that the threat of deportation makes many immigrants fearful of appearing in court. Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez told the press that his office opposes the courthouse immigration arrests, noting that the intervention of ICE makes victims of domestic violence less likely to report abuse.

For its part, ICE claims it needs to arrest people in courts because New York is a Sanctuary City where police are barred from detaining those wanted for immigration violations unless they are charged with or convicted of a serious crime.
While the political parties are haggling over the composition of the next federal government, leading military officials are working on a comprehensive armaments program reminiscent of the massive rearming of Hitlers Wehrmacht in the 1930s. A panel discussion involving high-ranking military brass provided frightening testimony at the Berlin Security Conference on November 28 and 29.

With the chairman of the Parliamentary Defence Committee, Wolfgang Hellmich (Social Democratic PartySPD) moderating the discussion, the leaders of the different branches of the armed forces spoke as if the crimes of German militarism had never taken place. One after another, they presented their demands to the future government and justified them by citing the foreign policy turn initiated at the beginning of 2014.

In his final plea, Inspector of the Luftwaffe (Air Force) Karl Mullner said: We have stated that as the Federal Republic of Germany, we want to take on more responsibility in the world, and I think it is important that we all realize that this is not to be had for free. In order to take on this leadership function, he said, it was necessary to sharpen the required instruments. He hoped that politicians would recognize this and provide the appropriate means.

What the Luftwaffe is expecting in the next few years had already been outlined by Mullner in earlier remarks. A major goal was mobility, i.e., the credible and rapid relocation of forces to operational areas and the development of new capabilities in ground-based air defence. But it was also time to deal with how we want to shape air attack capabilities in the future in the Luftwaffe, looking especially at the capabilities of the new generation of fighter aircraft that make it possible to identify and engage the target over long distances.

Most aggressive was Inspector of the Army Lieutenant General Jorg Vollmer. The paradigm shift back to national and alliance defence meant that now, as during the Cold War, he had to relocate troops over long distances and conduct them into battle. For the German Army, these commitments meant providing three operational divisions while also deploying troops to Eastern Europe as well as providing for the contingents in Afghanistan, Mali, Iraq and Kosovo.

That was a challenge for the force that he had to articulate clearly. The Army was pursuing the plan of having the first division replenished by 2027 and kept ready for use. Also, the introduction into digitization was long overdue. To that end, he said that we will set up a testing and trial organization that will allow us to test just what industry can deliver. In 2032, the digitized Army 4.0 would have to be standing ready.

At the end of his speech, the general spoke directly to Hellmich: If I have a wish, it is that what has been initiated will be sustained and the whole thing will go forward step by step. No one expected that everything will be in place tomorrow but it must go a bit faster. It just has to go faster.

Navy Inspector Andreas Krause presented a billion-euro shopping list of new purchases, including four new Class 125 frigates, five corvettes and six multi-purpose combat ships. The latter he described as real war fighters. Added to this would be new helicopters and submarines. Krause also made a direct appeal to the political and business representatives on the podium and in the audience. We must not lose momentum, and therefore I need you, decision-makers in all areas, to work as a close team together.

Krause made no secret of the global ambitions of German imperialism. Germanys spheres of interest in the maritime domain, he said, range equally from the northern flank down to the Mediterranean and extend into the Indo-Pacific region

He noted that in 2016, 25 percent of all imported goods arrived at German ports. In terms of exports, as much as 60 percent of all goods were carried by sea. Altogether, 90 percent of long-distance trade took place over the high seas. Germany thus had vital interests in safe and secure sea lanes and required operational capabilities ranging from light tasks to high-intensity three-dimensional warfare.

The observations of the inspector of the Joint Support Service, Martin Schelleis, made clear that the Bundeswehr is also preparing for war on the home front. He spoke of coordinating the tasks of the Bundeswehr in Germany, possibly to lead missions and to ensure the functioning of the German hub.

In most cases, Germany, due to its geographically central location and landing ports would be the transit zone for reinforcing allied forces and rear operational areas. The Joint Support Service with its inspector as national and territorial commander would be particularly challenged here, he continued, not only in performing the Bundeswehrs own tasks, but in supporting the civilian authorities, police, district administrations and civil protection authorities.

The disastrous effects German war plans will have for the general population as well as the soldiers were indicated by the statements of the inspector of medical services, Michael Tempel. Although Germany has one of the largest and best-equipped military medical services, current developments presented challenges, he said. If we go on beyond day one or two or three or four or five in major combat, in a major battle, I have to look at what I must do with the wounded How much can I rely on hospitals in the host nation, how much can I rely on the hospitals back home? How many burn beds do we have in Europe? Less than one hundred, probably. So we have to look at these specific medical problems.

The German armaments industry is already licking its lips. On the podium, the head of the armaments company MBDA, Thomas Gottschild, assured the gathering: We can produce everything, but not always very quickly. The current situation, he added, required innovative and smart national cooperation approaches.

One was in a situation where a simple ramping-up is not possible, but where we have to make certain preparations in order to bring production capacity back up to speed. Here, it was important to mention cooperation between industry and the armed forces, but European armaments cooperation was also vital. The really big armaments programs could not be undertaken by any single nation today.

The discussions at the Berlin Security Conference underscore the urgency of the demand of the Socialist Equality Party (Sozialistische GleichheitsparteiSGP) for new elections. The installation of an extreme right-wing government behind the backs of the population must not be permitted. Such a government would arm Germany to the teeth and prepare a new grab for world power, as happened twice in the last century, with catastrophic consequences. The SGP is fighting for a socialist alternative to capitalism, militarism and war.
US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster warned on Saturday that time was running out for any peaceful resolution of the tense confrontation with North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs.

Describing North Korea as the greatest immediate threat to the United States, McMaster declared: I think its increasing every day, which means that we are in a race, really, we are in a race to be able to solve this problem.

Referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the national security adviser said: Every time he conducts a missile launch and nuclear test, he gets better.

McMaster was speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California following North Koreas test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) last week that might have the capacity to reach the continental United States.

In reality, Trump administration officials are grossly inflating North Koreas nuclear capabilities in order to justify military aggression against the Pyongyang regime. The range of the latest missile that was tested is in doubt because its payload, and therefore its capacity to carry a nuclear warhead, is not known. Moreover, it broke up in flight, indicating that North Korea does not yet possess a viable re-entry vehicle.

President Donald Trumps administration has repeatedly declared that all options are on the tablethat is, including a massive military attack. At the UN Security Council last week, US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley threatened that if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.

The US is starting another major joint military exercise with South Korea today, involving some 230 aircraft and 12,000 personnel in a barely disguised rehearsal for war against North Korea. The show of force includes six US F-22 Raptorsthe most advanced stealth fighters that would be used in the first wave of any attack on North Korea.

A South Korean defence official told CNN the US was sending dozens of high-end fighters, bombers and support aircraft to participate in the week-long Vigilant Ace 18 air combat exercise. These include six F-22s, six F-35s and six EA-18Gs, as well as more than 10 F-15Cs and F-16s. They will be joined by B-1 strategic bombers and more F-35s.

The Pentagon is also bolstering its anti-missile and warning systems in preparation for war. Two US congressmenMike Rogers and Adam Smithsaid on Saturday the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) was investigating locations on the US west coast for the installation of Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) batteries. Longer-range Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) interceptors are already installed in Alaska and California.

In another indication that the US is being placed on a war footing, authorities in Hawaii have reinstated monthly nuclear attack warning tests. The Attack Warning Tone was sounded last Friday for the first time since the end of the Cold War.

Pyongyang has condemned the US-South Korean air drills. A commentary in the official Rodong Sinmun on Sunday branded the war games an open, all-out provocation against North Korea, which may lead to a nuclear war any moment.

The US has boxed North Korea into a corner, imposing crippling economic sanctions on the regime and threatening war unless it capitulates to Washingtons demands to destroy its nuclear arsenal and dismantle its nuclear and missile programs. Pyongyang is well aware of the deadly fate of the Iraqi and Libyan leadersSaddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafiwho gave in to US pressure over so-called weapons of mass destruction.

The Trump administration is recklessly placing Asia and the world on the brink of nuclear war. North Korea is never going to be in a position to match the worlds most powerful military or the thousands of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal. Faced with repeated US war games close to its borders, North Korean generals could conclude that they have to strike first to prevent being wiped out.

Warnings from Washington that time is running out only heighten the danger of war, whether by design or accident.

McMaster declared on Saturday: There are ways to address this problem short of armed conflict, but it is a race because he [Kim Jong-un] is getting closer and closer, and theres not much time left.

However, McMasters peaceful solution involves nothing less than a total economic blockade of North Koreaan act of war that could precipitate desperate actions by Pyongyang. He called for much more severe sanctions and the complete enforcement of the sanctions that are in place.

The sanctions already in place include bans on almost all North Korean exports and on a significant proportion of its imports, as well as on finance and investment. The US is now demanding that China cut off all energy supplies to North Koreaa move that would provoke an immediate economic and political crisis in Pyongyang.

McMaster said China should take unilateral action to cut off North Korean oil imports, adding, you cant shoot a missile without fuel. He said both he and Trump felt that a 100 percent oil embargo would be appropriate at this point.

Faced with the prospect of a war on its northern border, the Chinese government has reluctantly acceded to previous US demands for sanctions. However, Beijing is hostile to measures that could lead to an implosion in Pyongyang that Washington could exploit to install a pro-US regime on Chinas doorstep.

The escalating US confrontation with North Korea is part and parcel of a far broader American strategy, which began with the Obama administrations pivot to Asia, to undermine China economically and strategically.

The danger of war is compounded by the intense political infighting in Washington and the acute crisis of the Trump administration, amid rising popular resentment and opposition to social inequality. Besieged on all sides, Trump could conclude that the least worst option is to launch a catastrophic war to divert immense social and political tensions outward against an external foe.
A standoff between Indonesian security forces and a separatist group around two villages close to the giant US-run Freeport Grasberg gold and copper mine in the central highlands, points to deep tensions developing in Indonesian Papua.

The police and Indonesian military confronted the West Papua Liberation Army (TPN) from November 5 to 16 in the villages of Kimbely and Banti, threatening to trigger an armed clash. In the end, the TPN withdrew without a firefight. The security forces claimed the villagers were being held as hostages in order to hinder the mines operations.

With the incident over, 344 of the 1,300 villagers left with the military. The aim of the TPN, which is connected to the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM), appears to have been to intimidate villagers who were not indigenous Melanesian Papuans.

Many of those who left were impoverished migrant workers from South Sulawesi. Yohanis Batto told the media they were not physically harmed by the TPN but were traumatised. He said they would move to the coastal town of Tamika, the logistical base of the Freeport operation.

Increased violence in the Papuan highlands has included the ambush and murder of four road construction workers in March and the killing of two police since Augustall claimed by the TPN.

The tensions are linked to the drive by Indonesian President Joko Widodos administration to complete the long-delayed Trans Papua Highway before the 2019 national elections. The road is part of a massive infrastructure plan to open up the provinces of Papua and West Papua economically as Widodo seeks to make Indonesia a greater regional and global player.

Until recently, most internal migrants in the Papuan provinces, mainly from Java and South Sulawesi, settled in the Papuan capital Jayapura, or in towns along the coast and around Timika. The highlands remain largely Melanesian, but the new highway will change this.

The 4,325-kilometre road snakes through mountainous country from Soring in the Birds Head region and across the central highlands along the Papua New Guinea border to Merauke on the southeastern coast. A 450-kilometre section will link Wamena, the political centre of the highlands, to the new highway.

In August, a group of Papuan leaders and the Papuan Peace Network warned Widodo of a social explosion if the highlands population were left as spectators to economic growth.

Sidney Jones of the Jakarta-based think tank, the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), warned that an influx of migrants would rally support behind the Wamena-based West Papua National Committee (KNPB).

Since its banning last year, support has grown for the KNPB and raised its profile in the separatist camp. It works in collaboration with the overseas-based United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), which promotes Papuan self-determination in international bodies.

Widodo has visited the Papuan provinces five times since his 2014 election. He has made various promises, including that the economic development promoted by Jakarta would improve the lot of indigenous Papuans and poor immigrants alike.

In reality, according to the World Bank, 80 percent of all Indonesians are worse off than 20 years ago when the Suharto dictatorship collapsed in 1998. In that time, the countrys economy has grown fivefold but the richest 1 percent have come to control 50 percent of national wealth and the top 10 percent consume as much as the bottom 54 percent.

In Papua, the vast natural resources have benefitted only a tiny layer of the local elites, along with major international corporations and associated Indonesian businesses. Widodos drive for economic development will exacerbate the social divide.

Successive governments have responded to social tensions in Papua by stirring up animosities between locals and internal immigrants, and conducting brutal crackdowns on any social and political unrest. Papuan separatist leaders have exploited local anger to try to pressure Jakarta for concessions and a greater slice of the economic pie for the small indigenous elites.

Widodo has sought to defuse mounting local resentment and anger by promising to deal with human rights abuses by the police and military against Melanesian Papuans. Like his predecessors, however, Widodo will not hesitate to crack down on political opposition and social unrest. Moreover, the new highway will provide the military with far easier access to the regions mountainous interior.

Indonesian control over the former Dutch colony was formally recognised by the UN after the United States assisted the Suharto dictatorship to organise a fraudulent plebiscite of Papuan tribal chiefs in 1969.

Today, about half of the estimated 3.6 million people in Indonesias two Papuan provinces are migrants and their descendants, creating sharp tensions over land, jobs and essential services.

The separatist politics of the Papuan elites play directly into the hands of Jakarta by allowing it to divide workers from subsistence farmers on the basis of ethnicity, language and culture. Papuan leaders are not concerned about the plight of working people but in feathering their own nests.

A case in point is the dispute over the benefits from Jakartas efforts to have Freeport divest 51 percent of the shares in the Grasberg mine to the Indonesian government. Papuan governor Lukas Enembe, a highlander, demanded 20 percent go to Papua. In October, a deal was struck with the central government for a 10 percent stake.

An IPAC report on October 31 described Enembe as the unquestioned political boss of Papua and noted that anyone who opposed his preferred candidates for district heads did so at their peril. The Jakarta Post reported on October 11 that Enembe had said the provincial administration would the one door through which the divestment would be discussed with Jakarta.

The political starting point for any struggle to address social and democratic rights in Papua and right across the Indonesian archipelago is a rejection of all internecine, ethnic-based rivalry and the unity of all workers, young people and villagers against the corrupt ruling elites on the basis of a socialist perspective.
Bernie Sanders appeared at rallies in Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania this weekend as part of a three-day Protecting Working Families tour sponsored by the Democratic Party-aligned Moveon.org and the Not One Penny Coalition. The tour wrapped up last night with an appearance in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Sanders speaking tour passed through Midwestern factory and ex-factory towns, which have been devastated by decades of deindustrialization and cuts to social spending. Dayton, Ohio was formerly a manufacturing center for GM, before the company eliminated virtually all production in the city in the 1980s and 1990s. The city is now one of the centers of the opioid epidemic, which kills tens of thousands of people each year nationwide. Akron, Ohio, the former center of the rubber industry, went through similar plant closures and is now ravaged by a heroin epidemic.

Louisville, Kentucky, where Sanders addressed the audience remotely from Washington, DC, is a major transportation hub with an increasingly restive working class. Autoworkers in the area put up a huge resistance to the 2015 sellout contract pushed by the United Auto Workers, and there have been repeated threats of strikes by UPS mechanics and airplane pilots.

The Democrats suffered major declines in this region during last years election, which (with the exception of Kentucky), voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but voted for Trump in 2016. A major factor behind the support for Trump in this part of the country was the political prostration by Sanders himself before Hillary Clinton in the general election. For all of his talk about leading political revolution against the billionaire class, Sanders backed Clinton, a shill of Wall Street and the Pentagon, who has nothing but contempt for the tens of millions of workers devastated by the 2008 financial crash and Obamas pro-corporate policies.

This all but guaranteed that the only way for voters to register their social discontent within the narrow framework of the American two-party system was to vote for Trump, who appealed to widespread social anger in an attempt to corral it in a right-wing direction.

Sanders denounced the Republicans tax plan as class warfare and the biggest act of thievery in the modern history of this country at his appearance in Dayton. This is a moral outrage, it is bad economics, and we will not allow them to get away with it, Sanders declared.

Predictably, Sanders said nothing about the role of the Democratic Party, which accepts the basic framework of the Republican tax plan and has made tax cut proposals of their own. Their basic concern is that they have been shut out of a process which had previously been bipartisan political theater, with the Democrats providing a compromise solution which still results in historic cuts to social spending. Sanders also said nothing about the role of the Obama administration, which had overseen, up till now, the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history after the 2008 crash.

For all of Sanders denunciations of Republican class warfare, the basic thrust of Sanders remarks was to inure his audience to the full political significance of the tax cuts, which demonstrates not only the deep crisis of the American ruling class, but the basic incapacity of the capitalist system, a system based on exploitation in which class warfare is not one of a number of possible policies but a basic and indelible feature, to satisfy even the most elementary social needs.

Sanders, on the other hand, would have his audience believe that either one of the two parties of the American ruling class could decide not to practice class warfare and return to good economics in which the interests of the capitalists are reconciled with the interests of the working class.

Sanders promotion of illusions in capitalisms ability for self-reform found a particularly cynical expression in a statement published yesterday on his official Senate website, which called on Trump to abide by his 2016 campaign pledges and reject Republican plans to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Mr. President, you told the American people time and time again you were not going to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Today, get on the phone. Tell Paul Ryan, tell Mitch McConnell that you will veto any bill that cuts Social Security, that cuts Medicare, that cuts Medicaid, Sanders wrote.

On one level, Sanders pathetic appeal to the fascistic billionaire president to reject a plan for which Trump himself is chiefly responsible for is simply ridiculous. However, Sanders statement has a more insidious logic, promoting illusions in the economic program of the Trump campaign, based on national protectionism which scapegoated immigrants and foreign workers for poverty and joblessness in America and which was bound up with his attempt to cultivate a new far-right movement in the United States.

Sanders hostility to the political independence of the working class is demonstrated by the fact that the Vermont Senator shares Trumps basic nationalist orientation. Since first entering Congress more than a quarter century ago, Sanders has attacked trade with China and other countries under the fraudulent banner of defending American jobs. After the 2008 financial crisis, Sanders co-sponsored a bill with Republican Senator Chuck Grassley to restrict the federal visa program for companies that received federal bailout money. During his primary campaign in 2015, Sanders denounced unrestricted movements across national borders during an interview as a Koch brothers proposal that would effectively end the American nation state.

After the 2016 election, Sanders declared his readiness to work with Trump on trade war measures, stating that he would work with anybody who wants to work together to develop a trade policy which tells corporate America they have to look beyond their greed.

Sanders remains the most popular politician in the country, according to various public opinion policies. While the support for Sanders is an initial and contradictory indication of a growing move to the left and mass opposition to social inequality, Sanders himself intervened in the election to prevent this opposition from escaping the political control of the Democrats and developing into an independent, genuinely socialist movement of the working class.

Acutely aware that the partys reactionary politics have engendered mass hostility, which was expressed most strikingly in the debacle in the 2016 elections, a section of the Democrats have sought to integrate Sanders more closely into the Democratic Party leadership. Sanders, along with his supporters in the trade union bureaucracy and pseudo-left organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, are trying to reprise his role in the 2018 mid-term elections and beyond.

Their aim is to contain the growing social opposition to Trump and political radicalization of workers and youth within the confines of the Democratic Party, which is conducting a McCarthyite campaign against supposed Russian interference and a right-wing identity politics campaign over alleged sexual abuse cases. What Sanders and the Democratic Party fear the most is the emergence of powerful movement of the working class against social inequality and war, and for genuine socialism.

There is growing momentum for a potential Sanders presidential run in 2020. Last month, the Hill published the results of a poll of top Democratic Party strategists who proclaimed Sanders to be the favorite among potential primary candidates. Sanders also delivered a pro-war foreign policy speech in Fulton, Missouri in September, at the site of Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech proclaiming the start of the Cold War, which was widely seen as preparation for a 2020 presidential run.

He is now in a very different position than hes ever been in before. Hes just stepping into the role, senior adviser Ari Rabin-Havt told Politico in a recent article on Sanders presidential aspirations. Lets be clear: Hes in charge of outreach for the caucus. So when people say hes doing a better job of reaching out? Well, yeah, hes doing his job. This is a new phase of his career.

Sanders apportioned role is to use left-sounding demagogy to cover up the actual politics of the Democrats, who have responded to the defeat suffered in last years election by moving even further to the right.
1. Two years ago this month, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CNTU) and other Quebec-based unions, the Greens, myriad NGOs and pseudo-left groups, and the New Democratic Party (its own electoral debacle notwithstanding) celebrated the swearing in of the Justin Trudeau-led Liberal government. With one voice they claimed the return to power of Canadian big business traditional party of government--a party which when it last held office carried out the greatest social spending cuts in Canadian history and deployed Canadian troops in a series of US-led wars and regime-change operations--constituted progressive change.

The Socialist Equality Party challenged the fraudulent liberal-left consensus. In an Election Day statement we warned: A union-backed progressive government whatever its exact composition--whether formed exclusively by the Liberals or NDP, or involving a formal coalition or informal alliance between them--would be an instrument of big business for attacking the working class.

2. This analysis has been more than vindicated. The real change delivered by the gender-balanced, ethnically diverse, ostensibly pro-environment, pro-refugee and pro-native reconciliation Liberal government has proven to be a sham. Like Stephen Harpers decade-long Conservative government, the Liberals are pursuing an aggressive, militarist foreign policy and a domestic agenda aimed at making Canadian capitalism more globally competitive on the backs of working people.

The Trudeau government has further enshrined the reactionary fiscal regime of austerity social spending and ultra-low taxes for big business and the rich established by successive Liberal and Conservative governments. Under the guidance of BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, the McKinsey Group and other leading arms of global finance capital, the Liberals have launched a Canada Infrastructure Bank that is a mechanism for privatizing transportation, energy and social infrastructure. With just a few tweaks, they have imposed Harpers federal-provincial health care funding plan, which slashes funding for Medicare by tens of billions of dollars over the next decade, and they have approved new environmentally and socially destructive pipeline projects, while privately reassuring the oil companies that they are ready to use the army to suppress popular opposition.

3. The true character of the Trudeau government as a government of imperialist reaction is exemplified by its foreign-defence policy and drive to deepen Canadas economic and military-strategic partnership with Washington under the Trump administration, the most right-wing in modern American history.

Following on from the previous Conservative government and almost entirely behind the backs of the population, the Liberal government has expanded Canadas role in the major military-strategic offensives of US imperialism--in the oil-rich Middle East and against Russia and China. These offensives have razed whole societies in the broader Middle East, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya, and now threaten to ignite wars with Russia and China, respectively the worlds second and fourth largest nuclear powers.

The Trudeau government, as Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan recently revealed, is preparing to join a catastrophic US war on North Korea, citing as a pretext Canadas role in the US-led war coalition that waged the 1950-53 Korean War. Politically, Canada is already providing Washington with unflinching support. Trudeau and his ministers have repeatedly joined the US in condemning North Korea as a singular threat to world peace, even as Trump and US Defense Secretary James Mattis threaten the impoverished country of 25 million with annihilation, and the US and its regional allies stage military exercises aimed at goading Pyongyang into war.

4. Harper routinely boasted of Canada being a warrior nation. Trudeau and his ministers try to cloak the predatory ambitions and interests of the Canadian ruling class in progressive rhetoric referencing international law and human rights. But their policy is, if anything, more belligerent.

In a keynote address last June, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland declared war to be no less vital for securing Canadas national interests in the 21st century than in the 20th. The next day, the Liberals gave flesh and blood to their vow to use hard power, unveiling a new defence policy. It commits the government to hiking military spending by more than 70 percent by 2026, acquiring new fleets of warships and warplanes, new drone and cyber war capabilities, and working with the Trump administration to modernize NORAD.

5. Four decades ago, the Just Society rhetoric of Prime Minister Pierre-Elliott Trudeau proved to be a cruel hoax. As the post-Second World War economic boom unraveled, the government of Trudeau pere came into headlong conflict with the working class. It imposed wage-cutting wage controls and, three years before Ronald Reagan fired the PATCO air traffic controllers, threatened to fire postal workers en masse when they defied a strikebreaking law.

Today, the crisis of global capitalism is vastly deeper. In the name of austerity, governments the world over are seeking to destroy what remains of the social rights workers won through the mass and revolutionary struggles of the last century. As in the Great Depression of the 1930s, the drive to make the working class pay for the failure of capitalism goes hand in hand with the striving of each nationally-based capitalist clique to improve its position at the expense of its rivals through protectionism and trade war and by securing access to markets, natural resources and cheap labour through great power politics and war.

6. This agenda of class war and militarism is incompatible with the maintenance of democratic norms. Increasingly, the bourgeoisie is turning to authoritarian forms of rule and patronizing ultra-right forces that specialize in scapegoating immigrants such as the Front National in France and the AfD in Germany. In the name of the struggle against fake news, Western governments are moving to censor the Internet and social media, especially socialist and anti-war content. The World Socialist Web Site is one of the primary targets of this campaign.

In Canada, social opposition is increasingly being criminalized and the scaffolding of a police state erected. The right to strike--as demonstrated most recently by the outlawing of strikes by 175,000 Quebec construction workers and 12,000 Ontario college teachers--has been effectively abolished, at least whenever workers are in a position of strength. The Trudeau Liberals have retained all the key anti-democratic provisions of Harpers police state law Bill C-51, including empowering the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to break virtually any law in disrupting purported threats to public security and giving the national security apparatus unfettered access to all government information on individual Canadians.

By refusing to abrogate or even suspend the reactionary Canada-US Third Party Agreement on refugees and rushing to put in place measures to dissuade refugee claimants from fleeing the US for Canada, the Trudeau government is helping enforce Trumps anti-immigrant witch-hunt. No less politically revealing is Trudeaus full-throated support for the Spanish governments violent suppression of the Catalan independence referendum and imposition of de facto military rule on Catalonia.

7. The working class and the Trudeau government are on a collision course.

There is no popular constituency for Canadas involvement in the military-strategic offensives of US imperialism. That is why Canadas integration into these offensives is being carried out behind the backs of the Canadian people. None of the imbalances and contradictions that drove the world economy to the brink in 2008 have been resolved. The IMF and the Bank of International Settlements, among others, have repeatedly warned that Canada is especially vulnerable to a new financial crisis because ordinary Canadians, seeking to make ends meet under conditions of stagnant or declining incomes and skyrocketing housing prices, have run up unprecedented consumer and mortgage debt.

In Canada, as internationally, social opposition and anti-capitalist sentiment are growing. Recent months have seen strikes involving diverse sections of the working class including Quebec construction workers, General Motors CAMI autoworkers, Toronto airport baggage handlers employed by the transnational Swissport, and Ontario college teachers.

8. The same class logic that is impelling the working class into battle against the Trudeau government will bring it into headlong conflict with the trade unions and the social-democratic NDP. For decades, they have connived with big business in imposing concessions and dismantling public services and social protections.

The unions intimate collaboration with the Trudeau Liberal government marks a new stage in their tripartite labour-government-business alliance against the working class. The leaders of the CLC, Unifor, CUPE, the Steelworkers and CUPW quickly transitioned from stumping for Trudeau in the 2015 election as part of their Anybody but Conservative strategic-voting drive to formally pledging to work with the new government at a November 2015 meeting with the freshly minted prime minister.

The unions are working hand-in-glove with the Canadian government in the NAFTA re-negotiation and share its objective of fashioning a deal that reconciles the needs of Canadian big business with Trumps aim of forging a more explicitly protectionist North American trade bloc that will better serve American capital in fighting China, Germany and Japan for global markets.

The NDP, due to its function as an electoral rival of the Liberals and political safety valve for the bourgeoisie, is nominally in opposition to the government. But the social-democratic politicians are no less beholden to big business or vehemently opposed to any working class challenge to the Liberals than their traditional union allies. The Alberta NDP government is a close partner of the federal Liberals in working with, and for, Big Oil. With their deafening silence on the Liberals defence policy review, the social democrats are lending vital support to the Canadian ruling class plans for rearmament and war.

9. In the US, Europe and everywhere around the world, the working class confronts the same fundamental problem. The political parties and organizations, above all the trade unions, traditionally identified as left have systematically suppressed the class struggle and emerged as open advocates for imperialist war. This applies no less to Britains Labour Party, the Socialist Party in France and Germanys Social Democratic Party than it does to Canadas New Democrats.

If the working class is to mount a successful counter-offensive against the Trudeau government and the Canadian ruling class assault on its living standards and democratic rights, and the ruling class reckless drive to war, a new political perspective and new organizations of struggle are necessary.

This statement addresses key questions of working class strategy, including: how to oppose war, develop a counter-offensive against the big business assault on social and democratic rights, and mobilize the working class as an independent political force capable of imposing its own solution to the capitalist crisis. The axis of this strategy is socialist internationalism. Canadian workers must link their struggles with their class brothers and sisters in the United States, Mexico and internationally in the fight to put an end to capitalism and make fulfilling social needs, not further enriching a tiny clique of capitalists, the animating principle of socio-economic lifein other words, to replace capitalism with socialism.

The growth of Canadian militarism and the danger of world war

10. As 2017 draws to a close, humanity has not faced a greater threat of a global conflagration since the end of World War II. The unthinkable--a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula or with Russia or China--is now openly being discussed in the media and frantically prepared for.

Trump, employing language not heard from a major world leader since the rants of the Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, threatens North Korea with total destruction, while the US Pacific Command, which would spearhead any war with North Korea or China, boasts that it is ready to fight tonight.

11. American imperialism responded to the Stalinist bureaucracys dissolution of the USSR in 1991 by embarking on a drive for world hegemony. It sought to offset its already pronounced relative economic decline by employing its military might, launching a series of ruinous wars and rapidly expanding NATO across Eastern Europe.

These wars, which have targeted the Balkans, the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa, have manifestly failed to reverse the erosion of US global power. In response, the Obama administration launched military-strategic offensives directly targeting Russia and China.

12. The Canadian bourgeoisie has been completely complicit in this criminal enterprise. This is because it views the maintenance of US global dominance and its own privileged partnership with the US, through NAFTA, NATO and NORAD, as vital to the assertion of its own imperialist interests and ambitions.

Indeed, under conditions where Canadas relative importance to the US as an economic partner has declined due to the growth of US commercial ties with China and Mexico and its new reserves of shale oil and gas, Canadian big business has seen the expansion of the Canada-US military-security partnership as a pivotal means of retaining influence in Washington and securing a share in the spoils of imperialist war.

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives (now the Business Council of Canada) issued a series of policy documents in the centurys first decade demanding that Ottawa develop the means to deploy credible force anywhere in the world. Such global reach, it argued, will preserve our ability to have influence on the world stage. The CCCE, the countrys most powerful business lobby group, also worked with the Chretien-Martin Liberal and Harper Conservative governments to elaborate plans, since largely but not completely realized, to create a North American economic and security perimeter.

13. Canada has been at war almost continuously since 1999. The Chretien governments deployment of Canadian warplanes to join the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia was followed by the Canadian Armed Forces ten-year-long role in invading and waging a counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan. In 2004, Canadas military participated in the toppling of Haitis democratically elected government. A Canadian general led the 2011 NATO regime-change war in Libya, which, in the name of human rights and the responsibility to protect, killed tens of thousands and left the country in turmoil. The CAF returned to war in the Middle East in 2014 in an operation embracing Iraq and Syria that continues to this day.

14. The battle orders have been issued by successive Liberal and Conservative governments. But the entire political establishment has embraced militarism and the phony war on terror, which has been used to justify imperialist aggression abroad and sweeping attacks on democratic rights at home. The NDP has endorsed every Canadian imperialist intervention since the war on Yugoslavia, supports increased military spending, and upholds the Canada-US military-security partnership that is the cornerstone of Canadian imperialist strategy.

The Bloc Quebecois and Parti Quebecois, the sister Quebec sovereignist parties, have been even more bellicose. The BQ has repeatedly criticized the NDP for not being sufficiently full-throated in its support for Canadas wars and, in tandem with the Conservatives, the PQ and BQ have been in the forefront of promoting the anti-Muslim sentiment that is serving as ballast for the revival of militarism.

15. During the 2015 election campaign, Trudeau talked out of both sides of his mouth, promising to expand Canadas strategic partnership with the US while criticizing the Harper governments combat mission in the Middle East. Predictably, the latter proved to be an election ruse, with the Liberals announcing multiple extensions of the Mideast deployment, tripling the number of Special Forces in Iraq, and expanding Canadas contribution to the US-led war coalitions strategic command and intelligence operations.

Similarly, the Trudeau government has expanded Canadas role in both of the other major US military-strategic offensives. The Canadian Armed Forces has assumed responsibility for leading one of the four forward deployed battalions NATO has menacingly stationed on Russias borders in the Baltic States and Poland, and it is training Ukrainian Army and National Guard forces to, in the words of Trudeau, liberate eastern Ukraine.

Building on a secret 2013 agreement the Harper government signed with Washington on military cooperation in the Pacific, Canada under Trudeaus Liberals has stepped up its involvement in Washingtons war planning and provocations in East Asia. The Canadian navy recently conducted exercises in the South China Sea and Malacca Strait to test its readiness to participate in a US-led economic blockade of China in the event of a war crisis, and with the South Korean Navy further north. In explaining why the Canadian Navy is training for operations in the strait that links the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Chief of Defence Staff Jon Vance declared, If one wants to have any respect or gravitas you have to be in that region."

16. Both Washington and Ottawa view China as the real obstacle to continued US dominance over the worlds most rapidly growing economic region and the Trump-incited North Korean crisis as a means of placing pressure on China, long Pyongyangs principal ally.

Canadas ruling elite, led by the military top brass, is also using the Korean crisis to try to stampede the public behind participation in the US Ballistic Missile Shield. Its name notwithstanding, the BMD is aimed at developing the means for the US to wage a winnable nuclear war and thus goes hand-in-hand with the Pentagons plans to spend $1 trillion on modernizing its nuclear arsenal.

17. To broad applause from the political and national security establishment, including Conrad Black and the neo-conservatives of the National Post editorial board, Freeland in her June foreign policy address outlined an aggressive hard power strategy for Canadian imperialism under conditions where the US-led international order is unraveling. She called for building up Canadas independent military capacities so as to help shore up a US partner that can no longer bear the cost of world leadership alone, but also to ensure the ability of the Canadian bourgeoisie to assert its own national interests globally and as the junior member of the bilateral partnership of North Americas imperialist powers. For its part, the Globe and Mail has declared that Canada must be behind Trumps walls.

Canadian imperialism and capitalist breakdown

18. The coming to power of the billionaire, fascist-minded Trump epitomizes the turn of the international bourgeoisie to reaction. With his America First agenda and calls to make America great again, Trump advances only in a more brazen and crude manner the response of all the rival national capitalist cliques to capitalist breakdown. In a struggle of each against all, each is ruthlessly striving to assert its interests both against avowed strategic rivals and ostensible allies.

These conflicts are rooted in the very foundations of the profit system . As the International Committee of the Fourth International wrote in its 2016 statement calling for the building of an international working class-led movement against war and imperialism, The essential cause of militarism and war lies in the deep-seated contradictions of the world capitalist system: 1) between a globally integrated and interdependent economy and its division into antagonistic national states; and 2) between the socialized character of global production and its subordination, through the private ownership of the means of production, to the accumulation of private profit by the ruling capitalist class. Powerful consortia of capitalist banks and corporations utilize their state to wage a commercial and ultimately military struggle for control of the raw materials, oil and gas pipelines, trade routes and access to cheap labor and markets that are critical to the accumulation of profit.

19. All the imperialist powers are aggressively asserting their global interests and rearming.

Germany, with French support, is pressing for the development of a European military so it can assert its interests independently of and, if need be, against the US.

Japan is eagerly supporting the US war drive against North Korea, using the flaring up of war tensions as the pretext to get rid of the last constitutional impediments to its pursuing an aggressive, militarist foreign policy.

Australia--a second rank imperialist power whose development and strategic orientation have many parallels with Canadas--is playing a major role in Washingtons preparations for war with China. Both major parties of the Australian elite forthrightly declare that Canberra will join Washington in any war it launches on the Korean Peninsula.

20. The revival of such openly militarist policies, which twice in the last century resulted in a global conflagration, arises out of an historic breakdown of world capitalism. The 2008 global economic crisis was not a mere cyclical downturn, but rather the eruption of a systemic crisis. The inability of the imperialist powers to restore pre-2008 growth and profit rates is imbuing the struggle for markets and profits with an ever more fractious and venomous character, fueling economic and geopolitical rivalries the world over.

21. The Boeing-Bombardier trade conflict sheds light on the real state of commercial and inter-state relations, specifically on how, under conditions of increasingly frenzied competition, the transnational corporations are working with their respective governments to defend and expand market share.

In the run-up to Washingtons imposition of a 300 percent tariff on Bombardiers C-Series jet, the Liberal government brokered negotiations between Boeing and Bombardier, hoping to get the giant US manufacturer to withdraw its trade complaint in exchange for a stake in the C-Series or a joint agreement to refashion North American trade rules at the expense of their competitors.

But Boeing suddenly withdrew from the talks, no doubt after learning that the Trump administration was going to give it tariffs far in excess of what Boeing had sought so as to send a bellicose America First message to the world. Bombardier then struck a deal with Boeings arch-rival Airbus, with the Trudeau government again playing a central role, both to prevent the collapse of a Canadian manufacturing jewel and stop it from allying with a Chinese state-owned company.

22. In his seminal work Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin speaks of a small number of financially powerful states that stand out among all the rest and are at the centre of imperialist intrigue and aggression. Canada is such a state.

Canada was a major belligerent in the two world wars of the last century. While the wars constituted an unprecedented catastrophe for the world working class, the Canadian bourgeoisie profited from the slaughter. The wars proved to be the periods of Canadian capitalisms most rapid industrial expansion and resulted in a significant strengthening of the Canadian bourgeoisies world position.

23. Over the course of the past quarter-century, Canada has become a major exporter of capital, stretching the tentacles of Canadian imperialism across the globe. Whereas in 1971 Canadian Foreign Direct Investment totaled $6.8 billion, by 2002 it had swelled to $435 billion and by 2016 to more than one trillion ($1,050 billion), the equivalent of just over 50 percent of Canadas total GDP.

Canadas banks and other financial institutions and its energy, mining and infrastructure companies are especially active on the world stage. In Latin America and the Caribbean, where Canadian capital has had a significant presence for more than a century, Ottawa has played a major role in pressing for privatization, foreign investor guarantees and other neo-liberal policies. The Canadian ruling class is also determined to be an economic power and military-strategic player in the Asia-Pacific region, and its heavy involvement in the worlds mining and energy sectors is propelling it to play an increasingly active role in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The Canadian bourgeoisie also covets the natural resource wealth of the Arctic, which, due to the perverse effects of climate change, is becoming more readily accessible. This ambition increasingly figures in its geo-political and military strategy and is a factor in the aggressive stance Ottawa has adopted against Russia.

24. The Canadian bourgeoisie has historically been privileged, serving successively as a close partner (in some respects the closest partner) of the worlds two most powerful capitalist nation-states--Great Britain in the 19th century and the US in the 20th.

Today, however, the US is at the very centre of the global capitalist crisis and Trumps America First policies are roiling the Canadian bourgeoisie.

25. Even as they extend their hands to Trump and strive to deepen Canadas military-strategic collaboration with the US, the Liberal government and Canadian bourgeoisie are seeking to work with the many elements within both the Democratic and Republican parties and US big business who fear Trump is undermining Washingtons long-term imperialist interests around the globe with his efforts to radically restructure, if not outright repudiate, traditional US-led alliances, from NATO to NAFTA.

These differences may lead in the coming weeks and months to major political shocks and convulsions in Washington. But whatever the disagreements over the specifics of Trumps policies, there is no disagreement within the American ruling class over the drive for US world hegemony. It is an open secret that a Hillary Clinton administration would have ratcheted up the US military intervention in Syria as part of a more aggressive policy in the Middle East and against Russia. In anticipation of her election, the Canadian military prepared options for the Trudeau government to intervene in Syria. A not insignificant factor in Trudeaus subsequent naming of Freeland, an anti-Russia hawk, as foreign minister was a desire to underscore Canadas dissent from any attempt by Trump to effect a rapprochement with Moscow.

26. Important elements of the Canadian ruling class strategy are now in jeopardy. For the past quarter-century, NAFTA has underpinned its drive to create global players by providing corporate Canada with access to a large internal market and a platform from which to vie for markets in Latin America, Europe and elsewhere. While Trump has acted as an accelerant, the growing rift between Europe and the US and the fraying of NATO and more generally the trans-Atlantic alliance long predated his presidency. Ultimately, it can be traced back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which, by removing a common threat, opened the door to the resurgence of inter-imperialist antagonisms. For the Canadian bourgeoisie, membership in the worlds most important military alliance and close ties to the European imperialist powers have not only provided additional heft and influence on the world stage, they have served as an important means of offsetting the radical asymmetry in Canadas relations with Washington and Wall Street.

27. The Canadian bourgeoisies response to increased US pressure will be to lash out more violently on the world stage--as with its threat to throw Mexico under the bus and seek a separate deal with Washington should NAFTA fail--and to lash out more violently against the working class at home. Already the Business Council of Canada, led by former Liberal Deputy Prime Minister John Manley, and a host of other big business voices are insisting that Canada match Trumps lavish tax cuts for big business and the rich. This would necessitate a further massive assault on public and social services.

At the same time, the ruling elite, with the support of the union bureaucrats, the NDP and Quebec Solidaire , will use the frictions with its US rivals to promote Canadian and Quebec nationalism, the better to bind the working class to its rule and its aggressive policies.

28. The working class must oppose all of the rival bourgeois factions in the struggle for markets, profits and geo-strategic advantage, whether it takes the form of national protectionism, the strengthening of inter-state trade blocs like NAFTA and the European Union, or rearmament and war. In answer to the capitalists, who pit workers against each other in commercial and military struggle, the working class must adopt the battle cry Workers of the World Unite.

29. Canadian workers must take their place in the building of a global movement against war. Such a movement, as the ICFI has explained, must be based on the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive elements in the population. And it must be resolutely anti-capitalist. The only means of preventing crisis-ridden capitalism from plunging humanity into a global conflagration as it did twice in the last century is by disarming the bourgeoisie through socialist revolution.

Consequently, the new anti-war movement can be constructed only in irreconcilable struggle against all factions of the ruling elite and their capitalist parties. It must be linked to the defence of democratic rights and the mounting opposition to deepening economic insecurity and social inequality and serve as the cutting edge of the fight for the working class to become an independent political force.

Workers need their own independent political party, guided by the understanding that to stop war and all of the disastrous consequences it entails, a struggle against its source, the global capitalist order, is necessary. This can be accomplished only in a fight for a socialist program to place power in the hands of the working class.

The trade unions and the Trudeau government

30. The Trudeau government enjoys closer ties to the trade union bureaucracy than any federal government in decades. As Trudeaus Liberals pursue an aggressive militarist foreign policy and their closest provincial allies, the Quebec and Ontario Liberal governments, impose brutal austerity programs, Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) President Hassan Yussuff and Unifor head Jerry Dias boast of their unprecedented access to Trudeau and his ministers. Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government view us as a stakeholder, exclaims Dias. A legitimate stakeholder with a voice.

The unions partnership with what has traditionally been the Canadian bourgeoisies preferred party of government is the outcome of a decades-long march to the right on the part of the unions and their allies in the social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP). The unions have repudiated all traditions of independent working class struggle, integrated themselves into management and tripartite union-government-company structures, and developed new sources of revenue giving them a direct stake in the exploitation of the working class. With more than $10 billion in assets, the Quebec Federation of Labours Solidarity Fund is far and away the provinces largest venture capital fund. The NDP has actively participated in the dismantling of the public and social services it once held up as proof that capitalism could be humanized or even grow over into socialism, and it has abandoned even nominal opposition to NATO and Canadas participation in US wars of aggression.

31. This is part of a global process. The unraveling of the post-Second World War boom and the bourgeoisies turn to employing new computer, telecommunications and transport technology to globalize productionto maximize profits through the coordinated exploitation of the resources and workers of the worldpulled the rug out from under the unions and social democrats national-reformist perspective of restraining capitalism through state regulation, collective bargaining and social-welfare measures.

Trade union resistance to big business has collapsed, and with it, the percentage of workers enrolled in unions. Membership in the British Trades Union Congress has been more than halved, from 13 million workers in 1979 to 5.6 million today. In the US, unions are the bargaining representatives for less than 7 percent of private-sector workers, and in Canada just 15 percent. The traditional reformist parties have become instruments for redistributing wealth from working people to the capitalist oligarchy. In Britain, it was the Blair-Brown Labour government that launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, privatized vast swathes of the public sector, and in response to the 2008 financial crisis, organized the largest bailout of the financial elite in history. In Germany, the Social Democrats enforced labour market reforms that created the largest low-wage sector in Europe and decimated the social welfare system, while at the same time organizing the first foreign intervention by the German military since World War II.

32. The union-Liberal partnership emerged directly out of the unions scuttling of the mass movement against the Common Sense Revolution of Ontario Premier Mike Harris and his Tory government. Fearing that the strikes and protests that had brought hundreds of thousands into the streets in 1996 and 1997 were escaping their control and becoming a direct challenge to the governments rule, the unions shut them down. Soon after, they founded a network, subsequently renamed Working Families Ontario, to promote strategic voting on behalf of the Liberals. Since 2003, the unions have helped elect and prop up a succession of Liberal governments in the countrys largest province that have slashed social spending, outdone Harris in cutting taxes on big business and the rich, criminalized job actions by teachers and other workers and mounted a privatization drive.

In tandem with its union allies, the NDP also moved closer to the Liberals. Shortly after becoming federal party leader in 2003, Jack Layton appointed a high-powered scenarios committee, headed by party elder statesmen like former federal leader Ed Broadbent and Saskatchewan Premier Allan Blakeney, to explore opportunities for, and the logistics of, a progressive coalition with the Paul Martin-led Liberals.

The unions and NDP responded to the 2008 financial crash with an abortive attempt to create a Liberal-NDP coalition government, pledged to fiscal responsibility, implementing a $50 billion corporate tax cut, and waging war in Afghanistan through 2011. When big business made clear its support for Harpers proroguing of parliament so as to prevent the opposition from voting no confidence in his government (a de facto constitutional coup), the NDP and unions meekly acquiesced.

33. The Conservatives are openly hostile to the unions and champion measures such as eliminating tax breaks for union-sponsored investment funds that encroach on the privileges of the union bureaucracy. Trudeaus Liberals, on the other hand, are seeking to shore up the union apparatuses, the better to use them to police the working class. They calculate that the competitive position of Canadian imperialism at home and abroad can best be enhanced by incorporating the unions as partners. In her bellicose June 2017 foreign policy address, Foreign Affairs Minister Freeland made a revealing point in this regard. She characterized the loss of popular support for the capitalist world order due to ever-mounting social inequality as one of the two principal threats, along with the loss of US global dominance, facing the Canadian bourgeoisie. The Liberals rely on their union partners to exorcise the spectre of social unrest.

34. The unions and NDPs opposition to any genuine working class challenge to austerity was exemplified by their sabotage of the 2012 Quebec student strike. The unions isolated the students in the face of mounting police violence, while the NDP failed to offer so much as verbal support for the fight against university tuition fee hikes or to condemn the provincial Liberal governments draconian legislation outlawing the strike (Bill 78). Precisely at the point when the strike threatened to become the catalyst for a working class upsurge, with hundreds of thousands of working people taking to the streets to oppose Bill 78, the unions became their most adamant and energetic in shutting it down. Under the slogan,  Apres la rue, les urnes ! (After the streets, to the ballot box), the unions smothered the incipient mass movement, while politically harnessing the burgeoning opposition to austerity to the big business Parti Quebecois. Returned to power in September 2012 thanks to the backing of their traditional union allies, the PQ promptly and predictably continued the austerity drive of their ostensible federalist Liberal opponents.

35. No less revealing was the role that Unifor (the former Canadian Auto Workers or CAW) played in isolating and politically derailing this falls strike at GMs CAMI car assembly plant, the first strike at a Detroit Three facility in Canada in more than two decades. Workers were eager to put an end to multi-tier wages and benefits and other concessions, but Unifor failed to raise, let alone fight for, their demands. Instead, it declared the strike a fight for Canadian jobs and made the sole issue its call for CAMI to be named lead producer of the Equinox, so as to ensure that Mexican workers who produce the same model would be the first to be laid off come the next economic downturn.

This reactionary demand represented a doubling down on the ruinous Canadian nationalist strategy that CAW/Unifor have pursued since splitting from the UAW in 1985 and severing the organizational bonds US and Canadian autoworkers had forged in the militant struggles of the 1930s and 1940s. For the past three decades, CAW/Unifor and the UAW have greased the blades of the auto bosses whipsawing strategy, pitting workers against each other in a race to the bottom.

Unifors nationalismits vehement opposition to mobilizing Canadian, US and Mexican autoworkers against all job cuts and concessionsrendered the CAMI workers defenceless. When GM signaled it would permanently close the plant and transfer all production to Mexico if the strike continued, Unifor immediately shut the strike down and imposed yet another concessionary contract on the CAMI workers.

36. The unions role as agents of Canadian big business is epitomized by their integration into the NAFTA negotiations. CLC President Yussuff sits on the Trudeau governments NAFTA advisory council, alongside NDP apparatchik Brian Topp, ex-interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose, and Linda Hasenfratz, the CEO of Canadas second-largest auto parts manufacturer, Linamar. Unifors Dias and Steelworker President Leo Gerard are stakeholders in the negotiations, meeting regularly not only with Canadian officials, but also with Wilbur Ross, Trumps billionaire crony commerce secretary.

The unions have welcomed the NAFTA renegotiation, hailing Trudeau and even the fascist-minded Trump as workers allies in securing fair trade. They share Trumps objectives of making NAFTA a more explicitly protectionist bloc aimed at the European and Asian competitors of North American big business and punishing Mexico, advocating measures to boost Canadian manufacturing at the expense of the impoverished Mexican workers.

NAFTA is a reactionary bloc of the imperialist rulers of the US and Canada and the venal Mexican bourgeoisie for waging class war at home and trade war beyond North Americas shores. But it must be opposed by the working class from the standpoint of socialist internationalism, not economic nationalism.

37. Just as workers the world over have no interest in becoming cannon fodder in the wars the capitalists wage for markets, resources and strategic position, so they must reject the unions attempts to incite nationalist divisions with their class brothers and sisters and ensnare them in trade war.

Were Washington, or for that matter the Trudeau government, to abrogate NAFTA, it would be with the aim of strengthening the national capitalist elite economically and politically. The latter would include whipping up nationalism so as to deflect mounting anger over social inequality, legitimize a more bellicose foreign policy, and justify further attacks on the working class in the name of supporting our companies. The first casualties in the trade war and reorganization of North American capitalism that would ensue from NAFTAs abrogation would be the workers of Canada, the US and Mexico.

38. There can be no fair trade under capitalism, a social order that rests on brutal exploitation and plunder. Nor can there be any national solution to the crisis facing working people. The outmoded nation-state system with its rival capitalist cliques and their armies, borders, immigration controls and tariffs is itself a fundamental cause of the crisis.

The global integration of production and the technological revolution that has propelled it have immense progressive potential. Indeed, they have created the objective prerequisites for a global planned economy under the democratic control of working people in which the labour and resources of the world are systematically deployed to serve human needs. But under capitalism they are used to intensify the exploitation of workers the world over and to create more powerful instruments of war.

39. To defeat the transnational corporations, which scour the globe siting production where labour, taxes and other costs are the lowest, and the governments that act as their hirelings, workers need their own global strategy. Workers in Canada and across North America must unite with workers in Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia in a common struggle against austerity and war.

The allies of Canadian workers are not Canadian capitalists and CEOs and their political spokespersons, but US and Mexican workers who, like them, face an unrelenting employer-state assault on their social and democratic rights and often toil for the same firms. In opposition to all factions in the ruling class struggle over NAFTA, workers in Canada, the US and Mexico must mount a joint struggle for workers governments in Ottawa, Washington and Mexico City and the Socialist United States of North America.

40. Workers must beware: those who today wave Canadian and Quebec flags, inciting workers to align with their bosses against Mexican and Chinese workers, will on the morrow be the recruiting sergeants for war. The unions, like the NDP, are complicit in the revival of Canadian militarism. When NDP leader Thomas Mulcair sought to score some political points in the 2015 election by criticizing Canadas $15 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, Unifor demanded he shut up.

The pseudo-left and the NDP

41. With the unions and NDP increasingly exposed as pliant tools of big business, the pseudo-left plays an ever more prominent role in propping up their authority and, above all, preventing the development of an independent political movement of the working class. A key element in this is the pseudo-lefts promotion of identity (gender and racialized) politics, which, as the rhetoric and actions of the Trudeau government underline, have become a mainstay of bourgeois politics. Through Quebec Solidaire they seek to breathe life into Quebec independantiste nationalism, which has been largely discredited as a result of the Parti Quebecois imposition of savage austerity. The pseudo-left is indifferent and hostile to the struggle against imperialist war and Canadian militarism.

Whilst they mouth radical, even socialist rhetoric, the pseudo-left speaks not for the working class but for disgruntled layers within the top 10 percent of society. They seek a redistribution of wealth and power within the top echelons of society, including through the use of identity politics to secure a fair share of capitalisms managerial and professional jobs. In tandem with these wealthy and egotistical layers, the pseudo-left has moved sharply to the right, integrating themselves ever more completely into establishment politics and emerging as a new constituency for human rights imperialism.

42. The pseudo-left functions as apologists and advocates for the pro-capitalist trade unions and are themselves oriented to and embedded in the trade union bureaucracy. They have systematically covered up the unions support for the Trudeau and McGuinty-Wynne Liberal governments. Organizations like Fightback and the International Socialists hailed the Stop Hudak campaign that culminated in the reelection of Ontarios Liberal government and served as the dry run for the unions Anybody but Harper drive in 2015; and they blacked out any mention of the unions pro-Liberal strategic voting campaign, let alone their systematic suppression of the class struggle, from their appraisals of Trudeaus 2015 election victory.

Forced to concede that workers are alienated from the unions, the pseudo-left seeks to corral them into futile efforts to pressure the union apparatuses to the left. They are viscerally opposed to the SEPs call for workers to build rank-and-file committees independent of, and in opposition to, the ossified pro-capitalist unions so as to give organizational expression and politically leaven workers striving to assert their class interests.

43. The pseudo-left has responded to the growth in anti-capitalist sentiment by seeking to politically rehabilitate the NDP. Placing all blame for the NDPs Harper lite 2015 election fiasco on Mulcair and a small coterie of his advisors, they used the race to choose a new federal NDP leader to promote the lie that this wretched social-democratic party can be an instrument for opposing austerity and even fighting for socialism.

Fightback, Socialist Action and a myriad of other groups promoted the candidacy of NDP frontbencher Nikki Ashton. They claimed she could be Canadas Corbyna reference to the left-talking leader of the British Labour Partyand revive the NDPs electoral fortunes. When Ashton finished a distant third, they swiftly transitioned to promoting the supposed virtues of the winner and favourite of the party establishment, Jagmeet Singh. Fightback thundered against any break with the NDP, saying Singh is not a rightwing Blairite and can be pressured to the left, while the International Socialists enthused that Singhs victory will raise the confidence of racialized activists.

44. Corbyns evolution graphically demonstrates whose class interests are served by the pseudo-lefts attempt to revive illusions in social democracy and a national-reformist perspective. Elected Labours leader in 2015 on the basis of false promises to roll back austerity, oppose war and tackle social inequality, Corbyn has conceded to the Blairite right wing on every major issue. He allowed Labour MPs to vote for war in Syria, ensured that the party backed the renewal of Britains nuclear weapons arsenal, and ordered Labour-controlled local authorities to implement austerity programs in cooperation with the Tories. The essence of Corbyns agenda was summed up recently by his closest ally and Labours shadow finance minister, John McDonnell. To fervent applause, McDonnell told a meeting of Labour officials and pseudo-lefts that the partys principal task is to save capitalism.

45. An even more devastating exposure of the politics of the pseudo-left is provided by Greece. In Canada, as around the world, the pseudo-left hailed the January 2015 election of their co-thinkers in Syriza (the Coalition of the Radical Left) on a program that combined pledges to end austerity with support for the European Union and NATO. Utterly opposed to the mobilization of the Greek and European working class against austerity and the big business EU, Syriza turned viciously against the working class when the EU spurned its appeals for modest changes to the Greek debt repayment schedule. Six months after coming to power and just days after workers had massively rejected the EUs austerity measures in a referendum vote, Syriza imposed a program of draconian social spending cuts and privatizations that went far beyond the austerity measures imposed by all previous governments. Underscoring their role as defenders of capitalism from any revolutionary threat from below, Socialist Project leaders Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, who acted as advisors to Syriza in 2015, staunchly defend the Syriza government to this day as an uncompleted experiment in alternatives to neoliberalism.

46. For decades, the pseudo-left has promoted Quebec nationalism, labeling as progressive the program of creating a capitalist Republique du Quebec that would be a member of NATO, NORAD and NAFTA. Under the banner of Quebec Solidaire (QS), they seek to provide a left face for the PQ-led Quebec independence or sovereignty movement. A new left party that touts Syriza as an ally, QS makes no pretense to being socialist or a party of the working class. Rather it defines itself as a feminist, environmentalist, pro-sovereignist and anti-globalization citizens party.

QS has repeatedly sought electoral alliances with the PQ and has lent support to the PQs ever-more explicit promotion of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim chauvinism, declaring the PQs antidemocratic Quebec Charter of Values legitimate, albeit poorly formulated. It played a significant role in the unions derailing of the 2012 Quebec student strike with its appeal at the strikes height for a PQ-QS electoral alliance. It assisted the unions in ensuring that the 2015-16 Quebec public sector struggle was contained within the straitjacket of collective bargaining and did not become the spearhead of a mass challenge to the austerity measures of the Couillard Liberal government. As a bridge to still closer ties with the PQ and the pro-PQ trade union bureaucracy, QS is currently finalizing a merger with Option National (ON), a tiny rightwing split-off from the PQ that urges QS to abandon social issues so as to focus exclusively on the push for an independent capitalist Quebec.

Quebec Solidaire is the political voice of petty-bourgeois strata that are in the thrall of the faction of the Quebec bourgeoisie eager to secure greater autonomy from Ottawa and Bay Street so as to make its own deals with Washington and Wall Street. But its politics serve to bolster the Canadian bourgeoisie as a whole. QS supported both the abortive 2008 NDP-Liberal coalition and the 2015 Anybody but Conservative campaign. More fundamentally, with its promotion of nationalism, with its claims that Quebec workers should define themselves politically as Quebecois and align with Quebec capitalists like Pierre-Karl Peladeau rather than workers in English Canada, QS helps quarantine the struggles of the Quebec working class and perpetuate the political divide between Quebecois and English-Canadian workers that has always served as an important mechanism of bourgeois rule in Canada.

While championing an independent Quebec, QS is thoroughly provincial, seldom commenting on international questions. Nevertheless, it has repeatedly endorsed Canadian imperialisms foreign policy and wars, including the neocolonial war in Afghanistan, the US-led regime-change war in Libya, and its denunciations of alleged Russian aggression in Ukraine.

47. Over the past quarter-century, the pseudo-left in Canada, as internationally, has emerged as an increasingly explicit pro-war and pro-imperialist tendency, as exemplified by their labeling of various US regime-change operations from Libya and Syria to the Ukraine as revolutions. They conspired with the NDP top brass to keep the issue of war almost entirely out of the leadership campaign. Fightback was outraged when the World Socialist Web Site revealed that Nikki Ashton had shamelessly lied about twice voting, along with the rest of the NDP parliamentarians, for Canadian participation in NATOs war on Libya.

Oppose war and nationalism! Build the Socialist Equality Party!

48. In the coming struggles, workers in Canada, as around the world, must be guided by the lessons of the immense revolutionary struggles of the last century, above all the October 1917 Russian Revolution. One hundred years ago, the Russian workers, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, demonstrated in practice that the working class could provide a way out of imperialist war and capitalist exploitation: that it could conquer state power, establish a workers government, and organize society on socialist principles.

The Russian Revolution arose out of the breakdown of world capitalism and triumphed because, under the Bolsheviks leadership, it was infused with a socialist internationalist perspective. World Socialist Revolution was the answer of the working class to the impasse and failure of capitalism, to a breakdown that would convulse the world for the next three decades and give rise to the Great Depression, fascism and a second world war. That the first workers state remained isolated and political power was subsequently usurped by a privileged bureaucracy led by Stalin in no way lessens the revolutions historic significance, nor the contemporary relevance of the program that animated it.

49. The bourgeois pundits seized on the Stalinist bureaucracys dissolution of the Soviet Union to declare the end of history and the impossibility of any alternative to the profit system. A quarter-century later, the fatuous claims of a new golden age of capitalist progress stand as a mockery. World capitalism is mired in systemic crisis. The imperialist bourgeoisies, Canadas among them, are lurching ever further to the right, reviving militarism and recklessly steering a course toward a third world war. Bourgeois democracy is breaking down, as the rival ruling elites, unable to find a popular base of support for their program of war and austerity, turn to criminalizing social opposition and stoking bellicose nationalism, xenophobia and all forms of social reaction.

But as a century ago, capitalist breakdown is also producing the objective conditions for socialist revolution. Millions of people are being thrust into bitter class battles to defend their jobs and hard-won social and democratic rights. Hostility among working people to the squandering of vital resources on rearmament and the war intrigues of the capitalist elite is palpable. The globalization of production has been associated with a dramatic increase in the size and social power of the world working class and has created the technical means for coordinating the international struggles of the working class as never before. It is the political task of socialists to translate these objective tendencies into a revolutionary program and organization that can guide the working class in the struggles ahead.

50. The imperative of revolutionary leadership was demonstrated by the Russian Revolution and the role the Bolshevik party played in actualizing the creative power of the working class. Mighty as the revolutionary explosion in 1917 was, a vanguard party armed with a scientific Marxist perspective was needed to reveal the revolutions class logic in the struggle for workers power and to guide and organize that struggle.

The Socialist Equality Party is dedicated to building such a party todaythe Canadian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International. The SEP bases itself on the historic struggle of the Fourth International, founded by Leon Trotsky and led since 1953 by the International Committee. The ICFI has conducted a decades-long struggle to defend the heritage of orthodox Trotskyism, opposing all efforts to mislead the working class through the promotion of Stalinism, bourgeois nationalism, social democracy and the anti-Marxist, subjective idealist conceptions associated with postmodernism and the Frankfurt School.

51. We fight to rally the working class to the program of world socialist revolution. This requires an unrelenting struggle for the political independence of the working class from all the capitalist parties and organizations. This includes those like the pseudo-left who seek to keep workers in the thrall of the pro-capitalist unions and NDP and who promote Canadian and Quebec nationalism and identity politics. In conjunction with our comrades in the ICFI, we place the struggle to build a working class-led international movement against imperialist war at the centre of our political work.

The SEP fights for the unity of the working classEnglish and French-speaking, immigrant and First Nationsand to fuse all its strugglesagainst the dismantling of public services, job cuts and concessions, police violence and attacks on democratic rights, and the predations of Canadian imperialisminto a mass mobilization for a workers government committed to socialist policies.

Into all of the struggles of the working class, we systematically strive to infuse the understanding that Canadian workers must link and coordinate them with the mounting resistance of the international working class.

52. Flowing from this socialist internationalist perspective, the SEP insists, in opposition to the entire official and pseudo left, that a strategic orientation to the struggles of the American working class must be a fundamental element in Canadian workers class strategy.

The defeat of US imperialism, which emerged from the world wars and the Great Depression of the last century as the banker and policeman of world capitalism, is a strategic task of the world working class. By fighting intransigently against their own bourgeoisie and to fuse their struggles with those of their US class brothers and sisters, Canadian workers can make a mighty contribution to the development of the American working class as an independent political force and protagonist for power. Likewise, Canadian workers will be enormously strengthened in their struggles against war and the assault on their social and democratic rights by the eruption of class struggle in capitalisms greatest bastion.

As the US Socialist Equality Party has explained in a recent statement, Class Struggle or Palace Coup, the relentless deterioration of the conditions of life for the working class within the United States, and the pointless violence of the endless wars waged by the ruling class are producing a profound change in the social consciousness of masses of people The decades-long suppression of the class struggle by the trade union bureaucracy, the Democratic Party and the affluent sponsors of various forms of identity politics is coming to an end. The social counterrevolution of the ruling elites is about to encounter an upsurge of the American working class.

53. The possibility for joint revolutionary action by the North American proletariat is lodged in its history and social being. All the major upheavals of the working class in North Americafrom the Knights of Labor through the sit-down strikes of the 1930s and the social upheavals of the 1960sgalvanized support on both sides of the Canada-US border, including among the French-speaking workers of Quebec. During the past half-century, there has been a concerted attempt, spearheaded by the union bureaucracy and pseudo-left, to denigrate and efface this history of common struggle. In implacable opposition to this, and as part of its systematic exposure of Canadian and Quebec nationalism as the main ideologies of the Canadian bourgeoisie, the SEP fights, in collaboration with the US SEP, for the objective unity of North American workers in a highly integrated continental economy to become a conscious revolutionary strategy.

54. The SEP urges all our supporters, WSWS readers and those looking for a means to oppose war and reaction to study this statement. We invite questions and comments. Those in agreement should make haste to join and build the SEP as the revolutionary party of the Canadian working class.
Soviet Russia and the Central Powers agree to a 10-day truce, subsequently extended to 28 days. We have started a resolute struggle against the war brought on by the clash of robbers over their spoils, Lenin declares in a speech December 5. In the struggle for peace, the workers of Russia can and have to work hand in hand with the revolutionary class of working people in all countries.

Washington, DC, December 4: President Wilson answers Bolshevik call for peace

Woodrow Wilson, in the annual State of the Union presidential message to a joint session of Congress, answers the Bolsheviks call to the peoples of the world for peace. In a manner unusual for an American president, it seems that Wilson is addressing himself not just to the factions of the American ruling class represented by the politicians in Congress, but to the world. He has been forced onto this terrain by Lenin and Trotsky.

Wilsons central message is that there can be no genuine peace until the sinister masters of Germany [are] crushed and utterly brought to an end. Wilson understands, he says, the voices of humanity that are in the air grow daily more audible, more articulate, more persuasive, and they come from the hearts of men everywhere No annexations, no contributions, no punitive indemnities. Wilson insists that this crude formula has been used by Germany to lead the people of Russia astray and the people of every other country their agents could reach in order to secure a premature peace.

Let us take this formula and use it, Wilson tells Congress. The message of a just peace, ought to be brought under the patronage of its real friends. After Germanys defeat we shall at last be free to do an unprecedented thing, and this is the time to avow our purpose to do it. We shall be free to base peace on generosity and justice, to the exclusions of all selfish claims to advantage even on the part of the victors The wrongs, the very deep wrongs, committed in this war will have to be righted. That, of course. But they cannot and must not be righted by the commission of similar wrongs against Germany and her allies. We are seeking permanent, not temporary, foundations for the peace of the world

However, Wilsons vision of a world order dominated by the US, including a rehabilitated Germany, is not shared by London and Parisnor are his claims that Washington fights only a war of high, disinterested purpose  just and holy.

To further prosecute this just and holy war, Wilson asks for a declaration of war against Austria-Hungary. This he receives on December 7 by a unanimous vote in the Senate and only one vote against in the House.

Petrograd, December 5 (November 22, O.S.): Sovnarkom moves to dismantle old justice system

As part of the destruction of the state apparatus of the old regime, the Soviet government proceeds to abolish the old court system with the Decree of the Sovnarkom Concerning the Courts No. 1. The decree provides for the immediate abolition of the district courts, court chambers, and the governmental senate with all its departments, the military and navy courts of all names and also all commercial courts. Legal matters pertaining to civil and criminal law are to be dealt with in arbitration courts. Other legal matters become subject to the authority of local courts, the exact role of which will be defined in later decrees.

Finally, the decree provides for the establishment of revolutionary tribunals, named after their role models in the French Revolution. Their task consists in guarding the revolution and its conquests against counter revolutionary forces as well as in the struggle against plunder and robbery, sabotage and similar abuses by merchants, industrialists, officials and other people

When the Sovnarkom receives a communication from the Moscow Soviet asking the Sovnarkom to confirm the appointment of a new commissar, Lenin replies tersely by telegram on December 2: All power is in the hands of the Soviets. Confirmations are unnecessary. Your dismissal of the one and appointment of the other is law.

Lisbon, December 5: Right-wing coup brings down interventionist government

A military coup supported by monarchists and clerics brings to power General Sidonio Pais, sidelining the Democratic Party government of Alfonso Costa, who has been in France pleading with the Allies for concessions to the Portuguese bourgeoisie for its commitment to the war against Germany.

Costa and his allies have viewed the Great War as an opportunity to develop capitalism in Portugals colonies and reaffirm its centuries-old alliance with Great Britain, which has tolerated the survival of the Portuguese Empire in exchange for its near-total subordination to London.

But Portugals intervention in the war has been a catastrophe. The two divisions it has sent to the Western Front are not prepared for battle. Meanwhile, in Africa, small numbers of German forces, largely African colonials, have humiliated Portuguese regulars. In Portugal itself, the working class has emerged as the strongest social force, waging a series of bitter strikes and bread riots throughout the war, especially in 1917, that have further weakened Costas position.

Costa will be detained on his return from France, along with other interventionists, while parliament is dissolved December 9 and President Bernadino Machado deposed December 12. In spite of sweeping aside interventionists, Pais nonetheless continues Portugals involvement in the war.

Brest-Litovsk, December 5: Germany and Soviet Russia agree on 10-day truce

After two days of negotiations, Soviet Russia and the Central PowersGermany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkeyagree on a 10-day truce, which would be later extended to 28 days, in order to negotiate a peace treaty.

Around December 10 (November 27 O.S.), in connection with a discussion of what instructions should be given to the Soviet delegates to the negotiations, Lenin prepares an outline program that emphasizes that the talks shall be political and economic and the Bolshevik delegates should focus on the basic principle: No annexations or indemnities. The Bolsheviks should insist on the withdrawal of troops from occupied territories, the return of refugees displaced by the war, and the right of national self-determination.

In his speech to the First All-Russian Congress of The Navy on December 5, Lenin is recorded as saying:

We are told that Russia will disintegrate and split up into separate republics, but we have no reason to fear this. We have nothing to fear, whatever the number of independent republics. The important thing for us is not where the state border runs, but whether or not the working people of all nations remain allied in their struggle against the bourgeoisie, irrespective of nationality. [Stormy applause]  We now see a national movement in the Ukraine, and we say that we stand unconditionally for the Ukrainian peoples complete and unlimited freedom. We have to wipe out that old bloodstained and dirty past when the Russia of the capitalist oppressors acted as the executioner of other peoples. We are determined to wipe out that past, and leave no trace of it. [Stormy applause] We are going to tell the Ukrainians that as Ukrainians they can go ahead and arrange their life as they see fit. But we are going to stretch out a fraternal hand to the Ukrainian workers and tell them that together with them we are going to fight against their bourgeoisie and ours. Only a socialist alliance of the working people of all countries can remove all ground for national persecution and strife. [Stormy applause] I shall now touch on the question of war. We have started a resolute struggle against the war brought on by the clash of robbers over their spoils. Until now all parties have spoken of this struggle but have not gone beyond words and hypocrisy. Now the struggle for peace is on. It is a difficult struggle. It is highly naive to think that peace can be easily attained, and that the bourgeoisie will hand it to us on a platter as soon as we mention it. Those who ascribed this view to the Bolsheviks were cheating. The capitalists are embroiled in a life and death struggle over the share-out of the booty. One thing is clear: to kill war is to defeat capital, and Soviet power has started the struggle to that end. We have published and will continue to publish secret treaties. We are not going to be deterred in this by anyones anger or slander. The bourgeois gentlemen are beside themselves because the people see why they have been driven to the slaughter. They threaten Russia with the prospect of another war, in which she will find herself isolated. But we are not going to be deterred by the bourgeoisies fierce hatred for us and for our peace movement. It will be quite futile for them to try to incite the peoples against each other in this fourth year of the war. They are sure to fail. It is not only in this country, but in all the belligerent countries that the struggle against the imperialist government at home is welling up. There has been an open mutiny in the navy even in Germany, which the imperialists tried for decades to turn into an armed camp with the entire government machine geared to stamping out the slightest sign of popular discontent. To understand the significance of this mutiny, one has to be aware that police reprisals in Germany are unparalleled. But revolution is not made to order; it results from an outburst of mass indignation. Whereas it was quite easy to drive out a band of nitwits, like Romanov and Rasputin, it is immensely more difficult to fight against the organized and strong clique of German imperialists, both crowned and uncrowned. But we can and have to work hand in hand with the revolutionary class of working people in all countries. That is the path the Soviet Government has taken by making public the secret treaties and showing that the rulers of all countries are brigands. That is not propaganda by word but by deed. [Stormy applause]

Helsinki, December 6: Finland declares independence from Russia

The Finnish government, made up of bourgeois parties under the leadership of P.E. Svinhufvud, declares Finland an independent state. The Bolshevik government in Petrograd, based on its defense of the rights of nations to self-determination, accepts the move.

The fact that Finland is declaring independence under the leadership of a bourgeois government is the responsibility of the Russian Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, who in the eight months they held power from February to October continued to promote great Russian chauvinism to bolster their support for the war. At the Bolsheviks seventh party conference in April, Lenin pointed out that the Mensheviks refusal to back autonomy for Finland would strengthen separatist tendencies at a time where the main slogan in Finland was for autonomy, and not yet complete separation. A crisis is approaching there, dissatisfaction with Governor General Rodichev is rife, but Rabochaya Gazeta writes that the Finns should wait for the Constituent Assembly because an agreement will there be reached between Finland and Russia. What do they mean by agreement? The Finns must declare that they are entitled to decide their destiny in their own way, and any Great Russian who denies this right is a chauvinist, Lenin declared.

In July, when the Social Democratic government in Finland declared itself autonomous and the highest power in the land, the Mensheviks and SRs endorsed Kerenskys decision to send troops to suppress the Finnish parliament. The new elections ordered by the provisional government result in the defeat of the Social Democrats and victory of the bourgeoisie, which begins arming for civil war.

Finlands Social Democrats, who have been aligned with the Russian Mensheviks, have been seeking throughout 1917, following the example of their Russian co-thinkers, to govern in coalition with the bourgeoisie. This policy has proven disastrous for the Finnish working class, which after being gripped by the revolutionary enthusiasm triggered by the October Revolution, was prevented from taking power in November by the Social Democrats. The party leadership called off a general strike November 20 that had brought much of the country under workers control, handing power back to the bourgeoisie and giving it valuable time to arm for the approaching bloody civil war. The independence declaration was introduced into parliament November 15 in the midst of this struggle as the Finnish bourgeoisie sought to maintain control of the situation and divert social tensions.

The Finnish declaration of independence follows the adoption by the Bolsheviks of the Declaration of the Rights of Russian Peoples, which included a provision allowing all non-Russian peoples to secede.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, December 6: Largest ever man-made explosion kills nearly 2,000 people

At approximately 8:45 a.m., the French cargo ship SS Mont-Blanc collides with the Norwegian supply ship SS Imo while traveling at a speed of around 1 knot during its approach to Halifax harbor. The collision ignites highly flammable barrels of benzole fuel, engulfing the ships deck.

Prior to the war, ships carrying a cargo like that of Mont-Blanc would not have been allowed into Halifaxs harbor. Entering the harbor requires traveling through a slender waterway known as The Narrows, which is where the collision occurs.

Aware of the ships cargo, which includes TNT and picric acid, the captain quickly orders the Mont-Blancs crew to evacuate. Less than 20 minutes after the collision, at 9:04 a.m., Mont-Blanc explodes. The ship is torn to pieces by the force of the blast, and hunks of white-hot iron land across Halifax. The shank of Mont-Blancs anchor, weighing half a ton, is thrown for 2 miles, while its 90mm forward gun flies 3.5 miles from the explosion site.

Virtually all structures in a half mile radius of the blast are obliterated, including the community of Richmond. So much water is vaporized that the sea floor is briefly exposed. A tsunami wipes out a First Nations community at Tufts Cove.

Confirmed deaths will reach 1,950, but the figure could be higher. Over 9,000 people suffer injuries, and the explosion starts fires in the nearby populated areas. The blast is felt in Cape Breton, over 100 miles away. The explosion will remain the largest man-made blast until the advent of nuclear weapons. Firefighter Billy Well recalled: The sight was awful, with people hanging out of windows dead. Some with their heads missing, and some thrown onto the overhead telegraph wires.

The press and authorities in Halifax blame the explosion on German sabotage, and the German survivors of the explosion are all rounded up and imprisoned. The helmsman of the SS Imo is detained on allegations of being a German spy, based on the fact that a letter was discovered in his possession that was allegedly written in German. The letter was, in fact, written in Norwegian.

Petrograd, December 7: Izvestiia publishes Appeal to Muslim Peoples of the East

Izvestiia publishes an appeal by the Sovnarkom to the Muslim Peoples of the East. It is signed by Lenin in his capacity as the President of the Soviet of Peoples Commissars, as well as by Joseph Stalin, the Peoples Commissar for Nationalities. The appeal plays an important role in establishing the popularity and prestige of the October Revolution and the Soviet government among the oppressed masses around the world. It addresses itself to both the oppressed Muslims of the former Russian Empire and those that have been exploited and subjugated by the imperialist powers for decades in the Middle East and Asia. The appeal begins:

Comrades! Brothers! Great events are taking place in Russia. The end of the bloody war, which was begun with the purpose of partitioning other lands, is drawing near. The rule of the robbers and enslavers of the peoples of the earth is about to end. Under the blows of the Russian Revolution, the old world of serfdom and slavery is crumbling  A new world is being born, a world of workers and free men. At the head of this revolution stands the Workers and Peasants Government of Russia, the Soviet of Peoples Commissars. In the face of these great events we turn to you, toiling and disinherited Muslims of Russia and the East. Muslims of Russia, Tatars of the Volga and the Crimea, Kirghiz, and Sarts of Siberia and Turkestan, Turks and Tartars of Transcaucasia, Chechens and Mountaineers of the Caucasusall those whose mosques and chapels have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled under foot by the tsars and oppressors of Russia! Henceforth your beliefs and customs, your national and cultural institutions, are free and inviolable. Build your national life freely and unhindered. You have a right to do so. Know that your rights, as well as the rights of all peoples of Russia, are protected by the Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Deputies.

Buenos Aires, December 8: Argentina government assembles military against strikers

Media reports state that Argentinas government is assembling its military to disperse a strike wave that has seen a near-record of more than 136,000 workers go out on strike in 1917. American packing houses are shut down, interrupting meat shipments to Allied armies in Europe. The autumn strikes come on the heels of a September general strike of railway workers that crippled rail concerns, many of them British-owned.

December 8 (November 25, O.S.): Conclusion of Extraordinary Congress of Soviets of Peasant Deputies

The Extraordinary Congress of Soviets of Peasant Deputies, adjourning on December 8, is marked by friction between the Bolsheviks, largely based on the urban working class, and Left SR and other delegates, who are based in rural areas. Some representatives refuse to acknowledge Lenin as a representative of the new government, and the congress permits him to speak only in his capacity as a member of the Bolshevik Party. Lenin ultimately agrees to these terms, telling the congress that notwithstanding his objections, I consider it important that the opinion of the Party of the Bolsheviks should be known to this Congress of Peasants Deputies.

When he arrives, the speaker before Lenin turns to him and announces provocatively that Lenin wants to disperse the congress at the point of a bayonet. Lenin patiently addresses these concerns in his speeches to the congress.

Lenin also addresses the question of the Constituent Assembly, a vexed issue that divides the congress. During the era of the Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks had criticized the parties in power for procrastinating and delaying the convocation of the assembly. However, Lenin contends that the October insurrection has dramatically altered the situation. Lenin stresses the importance of an alliance between the Left SRs and the Bolsheviks, representing an honest alliance between the revolutionary peasantry and the revolutionary working class. In a subsequent letter to Pravda, Lenin explained that this alliance can be an honest coalition, an honest alliance, for there is no radical divergence of interests between the wage-workers and the working and exploited peasants. Socialism is fully able to meet the interests of both. Only socialism can meet their interests. Hence the possibility and necessity for an honest coalition between the proletarians and the working and exploited peasantry. On the contrary, a coalition (alliance) between the working and exploited classes, on the one hand, and the bourgeoisie, on the other, cannot be an honest coalition because of the radical divergence of interests between these classes.

December 9-10 (November 28-29, O.S.): Government resolution bans the Kadets

The Kadet leaders are gathering their strength for a counter-revolutionary offensive. In the Don region, Generals Kornilov, Alekseev, and Kaledin are working closely with Kadet leaders such as Miliukov to mobilize their forces. Meanwhile, the Kadets are campaigning for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, which they hope to use as a counterweight to soviet power.

On December 9, a procession of thousands of well-dressed citizens, fresh from religious ceremonies, marches to the Tauride Palace in Petrograd in support of the Constituent Assembly. Eyewitness accounts agree, historian Alexander Rabinowitch writes, that the appearance of workers, soldiers, and sailors was rare. The marchers fight their way into the palace, which was locked, clashing with pro-Soviet forces, and proclaim the First Unofficial Conference of the Constituent Assembly.

The march is regarded by the Trotsky and the Bolshevik leadership as nothing less than an attempted insurrection against Soviet power, orchestrated by the Kadet Party, the general headquarters for the counter-revolution. A Sovnarkom meeting on the night of December 9-10 approves a formal proclamation branding the Kadets as enemies of the people for organizing a counterrevolutionary insurgency. The Sovnarkom approves a decree providing for the arrest of Kadet leaders and their trials before revolutionary tribunals. Lenin addresses the question of the Kadet Party in a speech to the Extraordinary All-Russian Congress of Peasants Deputies on December 4:

You say that we have declared the whole Kadet Party enemies of the people, Yes, we have. And thereby we expressed the will of the Second Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. And now that we are on the threshold of peace and the cessation of the terrible slaughter that has lasted three years, we are convinced that this is the demand of all the working people in all countries. The overthrow of imperialism in Europe is proceeding slowly and painfully, and imperialists in all countries will now see that the people are strong, and in their strength will overthrow all who stand in their way. We shall not be deterred when people who are organizing revolt against the workers and peasants, against the Soviets, with the other hand show their credentials to the Constituent Assembly. In July we were told that we should be proclaimed enemies of the people. And we answered, Try it. If the bourgeois gentlemen and their followers had only tried to say that to the people openly! But they did not; they resorted to insinuation, slander and mud-slinging. When the bourgeoisie began the civil war (we witnessed it), they incited the officer cadets to revolt. And we, the victors, were merciful to them, the vanquished. More than that, we even spared their military honor. And now we see that the conspiracy of the Kadets is continuing, we see that they are organizing revolt against the Soviets in the interests of the money-bags of greed and riches, and we publicly proclaim them enemies of the people. At a time when the terms of peace will shortly be known, when we are about to have an armistice, when the members of the land committees will be immune from arrest, when the landed estates are being confiscated, and when control will be established over the factoriesat such a time they are conspiring against us, against the Soviets. We therefore declare that the party of the Kadets is a party of the bourgeoisie, that they are enemies of the people, and that we shall fight them.

Also this week: The Russian Futurists respond to the October Revolution

While the Italian Futurists under the leadership of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti embrace emerging Fascism, the Russian futurists (David Burlyuk, Alexander Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Victor Khlebnikov) turn toward the Revolution. As Trotsky writes later in Literature and Revolution, having been founded in the pre-revolutionary period gives Russian Futurism certain advantages.

It caught rhythms of movement, of action, of attack, and of destruction which were as yet vague The workers Revolution in Russia broke loose before Futurism had time to free itself from its childish habits, from its yellow blouses, and from its excessive excitement, and before it could be officially recognized, that is, made into a politically harmless artistic school [for the ruling bourgeoisie] whose style is acceptable.

The seizure of power by the working class, in Trotskys analysis,

caught Futurism still in the stage of being a persecuted group. And this fact alone pushed Futurism towards the new masters of life, especially since the contact and rapprochement with the Revolution was made easier for Futurism by its philosophy, that is, by its lack of respect for old values and by its dynamics. But Futurism carried the features of its social origin, bourgeois Bohemia, into the new stage of its development.

Mayakovsky recites poems like Left March before sailors in naval theaters during the outbreak of the revolution. In his autobiography he later writes of the October Revolution: To recognize it or not recognize it? This question did not exist for me (and the other Moscow Futurists). That was my revolution. Went to Smolny. Worked. Wherever it was necessary. Beginning of my meeting activities.

In his Open Letter to the Workers from 1918, he writes: The revolution of content  socialism-anarchism  is unthinkable without the revolution of form  Futurism. Both would require reinforcement and propaganda. The Futurists explain that the revolution of art has already taken place [prior to 1917]. They therefore call the Proletarians of the factories and of the soil to a third, bloodless but cruel revolution, the revolution of the spirit. In contrast to the Proletcultists, who prefer agitation in a less innovative form along with revolutionary content, the Futurists and their split-offs also want to revolutionize the forms of language and pictorial representation.

Many artists become active after the revolution in the building of new art schools and workshops. From 1919, Mayakovsky provides the words and images for many of the most famous Rosta windows posters, named after the telegraph agency ROSTA. The posters memorably depict political, military and economic themeseven questions of everyday life, hygiene and healthin images and verse, so that they can be grasped by people who can barely read or write.

With their conception that bourgeois art must be thrown completely overboard, the Futurists find little favor among leading Bolsheviks like Lenin and Trotsky, who believe the working class should assimilate and build upon the achievements of bourgeois and pre-bourgeois culture.

Yet in the early years of the Soviet regime, the party does not interfere in aesthetic issues. There is no question of political censorship of artistic creation. While there are lively discussions and fierce debates between artists and the party leadership, and also among party leaders, artists will develop a wealth of new styles which flourish in the years after the civil war until their strangulation by the Stalinist bureaucracy.
ALBANY, GA (WALB) - Albany police are on the lookout for a shooter who killed a man during an armed robbery Sunday morning.

Dougherty County Coroner Michael Fowler said Thomas Anthony Dixon, 50, died of a single gunshot wound to the torso.

Albany police said Dixon was shot and killed on Willis Drive shortly after 9:30 a.m.

Police said the suspect is a black male with a medium to dark skin complexion. He is about 5 6" and weighs about 160 pounds and was last seen running west, then north on Willis Drive wearing a dark gray hoodie with large gold letters.

Sunday, Dixon's family was still coming to terms with his death.

"I was in shock. I really couldn't believe it because even though he drank he didn't bother nobody," said Jerry Gibson, Dixon's cousin.

According to police, Dixon was trying to protect his 72-year-old mother from an armed robbery as she was leaving her home headed to church.

Gibson said that makes Dixon a hero.

"I mean out of the 50 some years on this street we've never had a situation like this before," said Gibson.

Gibson and Dixon grew up together in the same home.

He said Dixon was like a brother.

"He was a good guy. Everyone in the community knew him," explained Dixon. "He was aggravating at times, but he was a lovable guy. And for somebody to take his life. I can't wake up on a first Sunday knowing that this would be happening."

Now, Gibson said he'll cherish the memories he had with Dixon.

"For many years he played Santa Claus with me for my kids, for all my kids. They're grown now, but for many years we played Santa Claus together, Christmas Eve together, spent Christmas together. We shared everything together. And for somebody to take his life is just devastating."

Gibson has a message for those who consider resorting to violence.

"We can't. We killing each other, man. This is our community. This is our streets. This is our home -- Albany," said Gibson.

Dixon's death is the 22nd homicide case in 2017 for Albany. One of the cases involves a victim whose remains were only recently identified, but the crime happened two years ago.

If you know anything about this shooting, you are asked to call CrimeSTOPPERS at (229) 436-TIPS.

Copyright 2017 WALB. All rights reserved.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (WTXL) - A judge has sentenced former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown to five years in prison and a 3-year supervised release in her fraud case.

According to WFTV, Brown's attorney said she will appeal the sentence.

The 71-year-old was in court at 10 a.m. Monday in Jacksonville, a city in the Florida district she represented in Congress during her historic, nearly 25-year career.

She was sentenced for fraud and other charges related to a purported charity for poor students she used as a personal slush fund.

Carla Wiley, president of One Door for Education, was sentenced to 21 months in prison and a 3-year supervised release for her part in the case, WFTV reports.

Brown's former chief of staff, Elias "Ronnie" Simmons, and Wiley accepted plea deals and testified against Brown. They are also scheduled to be sentenced Monday.

According to WFTV, federal prosecutors said the three used One Door to bring in more than $800,000 between 2012 and 2016. The Virginia-based One Door only gave out one scholarship for $1,200 to an unidentified person in Florida, according to court documents.

Brown's former chief of staff told jurors that Brown ordered him to take cash and checks from One Door's account on dozens of occasions and deposit the money into Brown's personal account.

Brown testified in her own defense, saying she was left in the dark about the details of One Door's money, and blamed the theft on Simmons.

Brown was facing life in prison.

According to the Associated Press, she was convicted in May by a federal jury of 18 of the 22 charges against her, which included fraud, lying on her tax returns and on her congressional financial disclosures.

Her attorneys argued for leniency at a hearing last month, saying Brown's community work should mitigate her crimes.
THOMAS COUNTY, Ga. (WTXL) - Deputies have arrested a man for burning down an elementary school's storage building on Saturday.

The Thomas County Sheriff's Office says that Joseph Aracri, 18, was arrested on Sunday in connection to the arson.

The fires happened Saturday night at Cross Creek Elementary. Authorities say the school's storage building was burned.

Luckily, firefighters were able to put out the flames before they spread to other buildings on campus.

Clues lead authorities to believe it was arson.

When they talked to Aracri, he admitted to starting the fire at the storage building and another inside a dumpster at the school.

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BAINBRIDGE, Ga. (WTXL) - Firefighters saved a person from a burning apartment building.

When crews got to the scene Saturday, the King West Apartments were engulfed in flames and the victim's apartment door was jammed shut.

Firefighters reached the victim by going through a window, and the individual was flown to the hospital with burns.

How the fire started is unknown, and the cause is being investigated.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - More than 1,500 people have registered for the Angel Tree program, which gives seniors and kids clothes and toys.

The problem? Around 500 children and 100 seniors still have not had their name picked from the tree.

There are only a few days left for the Salvation Army to collect enough for the 600 people waiting in Leon, Gadsden and Wakulla counties.

You can bring new, unwrapped toys, shoes, or clothes to the Salvation Army office on Allen road.

They're taking donations through Saturday, December 9.

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PENSACOLA, Fla. (The News Service of Florida) - President Donald Trump will hold a rally in the conservative stronghold of Pensacola next week, according to an announcement Friday from his political committee.

The Dec. 8 event will take place at 7 p.m. at the Pensacola Bay Center, and it will be the Trump's fourth appearance in Pensacola since he began running for president in 2015.

The timing of the rally could not be better, Michael Glassner, executive director of Donald Trump for President, said in a news release. Nothing inspires President Trump as much as connecting with hard working Americans at campaign rallies across the country. He especially enjoys meeting with our courageous veterans and their families at these patriotic events, Glassner said.

The Panhandle event will take place just four days before a critical election across the border in Alabama. Roy Moore, a conservative firebrand twice thrown off the Alabama Supreme Court, is the Republican nominee in a U.S. Senate race.

Moore has been accused of sexually inappropriate behavior with several women, including one as young as 14. Several women alleged that Moore, now 70, made sexual advances when they were in their teens and he was in his 30s. Many Republicans, including Florida Gov. Rick Scott, have called for Moore to step down from the race.

But Trump, a close ally of Scott, is supporting Moore. Pensacola is in the same media market as areas such as Mobile, Ala.

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The internet destroyed their monopoly on textbooks. Now college bookstores are trying to find their niche
YAKIMA, Wash.  The U.S. Supreme Court will not consider an appeal from a man convicted of killing an Outlook family when he was 14 years old.
In the short time since the Senate's version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was initially released, there have been several updates, additions, and modifications designed to capture as much support among Republican senators as possible. However, the final passage of the bill occurred late on Friday night, with 51 of the 52 Republican senators supporting the legislation after a flurry of last-minute changes.

While the finer details of some of these changes are still unclear (the version of the bill that was voted on had some handwritten parts and phrases like "Add language..."), we do know what some of the major changes made to the bill are.

1. Higher deductions for pass-through businesses

In contrast to the House of Representatives' version of the bill, which provides for lower tax rates for pass-through businesses such as partnerships, LLCs, and S-Corps, the Senate's bill would continue to tax pass-through income at the regular income tax rates.

However, the bill would allow these business owners to deduct a certain percentage of their income before the regular tax rates are applied. The original version of the bill called for a deduction of 17.4% of pass-through income. The latest version got a bit more generous, increasing the allowable deduction to 23% of pass-through income.

2. Matching the House's property tax deduction

One of the most controversial parts of the Senate's version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was its complete elimination of the deduction for state and local taxes. This included the deduction for income taxes, as well as property taxes.

In order to make the bill more appealing to senators in high-tax states, the latest version of the bill matches the House version. While state and local income taxes still would not be deductible, the legislation allows for a deduction of up to $10,000 for state and local property taxes.

3. The alternative minimum tax would remain

The Senate's bill originally proposed getting rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT. The newest version keeps the AMT in order to help pay for some of the other last-minute changes.

However, it does address one of Republicans' biggest complaints about the tax by raising the amount of income necessary to trigger the AMT. While it was originally intended to ensure that high-earners paid a minimum amount of tax, in recent years it had increasingly begun affecting middle-income households.

4. Slightly more favorable business expensing

In addition to a lower corporate tax rate, another major change to business taxes would be change to how businesses write off expenses. Under current tax law, businesses are required to depreciate expenses such as equipment over several years.

The Senate's bill allows businesses to immediately deduct their entire cost, giving a bigger incentive to invest in new equipment. Originally, the bill would have allowed this for just five years, after which time it would be eliminated. Now, this benefit will begin to phase out after the initial five-year period.

5. One deduction would get better than it is now

This one might come as a surprise to many people, considering that one of the biggest themes of tax reform is to reduce or eliminate deductions.

One major complaint about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is that the medical expense deduction, which would have been retained, would not benefit nearly as many people as it currently does, due to the higher standard deduction. In response to this, the AGI threshold for deducting medical expenses has been lowered to 7.5% of AGI from 10% in the original bill.

6. Catch-up contributions would still be allowed

The previous version of the Senate's bill wouldn't make changes to retirement savings for most people, but would have eliminated the pre-tax "catch-up" provisions that apply to older workers. The version of the bill that passed does not include this, so 401(k) contribution rules would remain the same.

What will the final tax reform package look like?

To be clear, even though this legislation has passed the Senate, it will still be some time before tax reform is signed into law. There are still some big differences between the House and Senate versions, and before any tax reform law can become law, the two chambers must pass identical versions. So, it's likely that the eventual tax reform package will look substantially different than the bill just passed by the Senate, so take all of its provisions -- including these last-minute changes -- with a big grain of salt.

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Arizona News

Phoenix, Arizona - Monday, Nathan Joe, 36, of Nazlini, Arizona, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John J. Tuchi to 21 months in prison for physically abusing a child on the Navajo Indian Reservation.

In February 2014, Joe physically assaulted the minor victim, including slapping him with enough force to leave a handprint-sized bruise on the victims face. Both Joe and the victim were living on the Navajo Indian Reservation at the time the assault occurred. Joe is an enrolled member of that tribe.

The investigation in this case was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The prosecution was handled by Christine D. Keller, Assistant U.S. Attorney, District of Arizona, Phoenix.
Arizona News

Tucson, Arizona - Monday, Donnie Ray Jose, 46, of Chui Chu, Arizona, a member of the Tohono Oodham Nation, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge James A. Soto to 108 months in prison. Jose was convicted after a jury trial of assault with a dangerous weapon and assault resulting in serious bodily injury.

The evidence at trial demonstrated that Jose, during an act of domestic violence, stabbed the victim sixteen times in her shoulder area while she and her minor son were asleep in bed. The victim is also a member of the Tohono Oodham Nation, and the assault occurred on the Tohono Oodham Indian Reservation. The Court enhanced Joses sentence based on a finding that the victim was vulnerable, as she had been sleeping just prior to the stabbing and that there were minor children present during the assault.

Upon release from prison, Jose will be on supervised release for three years. The terms of his supervision include no contact with the victim, the victims family, or any of the witnesses who testified at trial.

The investigation in this case was conducted by both the Tohono Oodham Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The prosecution was handled by Serra M. Tsethlikai and Charisse Arce, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, District of Arizona, Tucson.
Elevi inghesuiti in microbuzul scolar pentru economie de combustibil

Elevii dintr-o comuna din Teleorman sunt transportati la scoala in conditii inumane pentru a se face economie de combustibil. Cei mici spun ca nu doar conditiile de transport sunt improprii, ci si modul de a se comporta al soferilor, care vorbesc urat si conduc [citeste mai departe]
Stiri pe aceeasi tema

- Angel Tilvar swore the oath of office as Minister of Defense on Monday, before President Klaus Iohannis, in a ceremony that took place at the Cotroceni Palace, told Agerpres. Fii la curent cu cele mai noi stiri. Urmareste stiripesurse.ro pe Facebook stiripesurse.ro  Help

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- President Klaus Iohannis on Monday signed a decree regarding the submission to Parliament for ratification of a loan agreement and a grant agreement between Romania and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) related to the first programmatic financing for the development
Maydm is focused on fostering entry-level skills in STEM fields to girls and youth of color at semester-long programs and tech-centric workshops.
Columbia: US President Donald Trump is close to a decision on whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel`s capital, his son-in-law and Middle East peace envoy Jared Kushner said Sunday.

Palestinian leaders are lobbying desperately against such a move, which the Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit said would boost fanaticism and violence while sinking hopes for peace.

But Kushner, the 36-year-old head of a small and tight-knit White House negotiating team, made a rare public appearance to put an optimistic face on his efforts.

"The president`s going to make his decision," Kushner told the Saban Forum, choosing not to deny reports Trump will declare Jerusalem Israel`s capital on Wednesday.

"He`s still looking at a lot of different facts and when he makes his decision he`ll be the one who wants to tell you. So he`ll make sure he does that at the right time."

On Monday, Trump must decide whether to sign a legal waiver that would delay plans to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for another six months.

Every US president has done this since 1995, judging the time not ripe for such a move, and Trump is expected to begrudgingly do so for a second time this week.

But, according to diplomats and observers, he is also now expected to announce in a speech on Wednesday that he supports Israel`s claim on Jerusalem as its capital.

Arab League leader Abul Gheit meanwhile said his organization was closely following the issue and is in contact with the Palestinian authorities and Arab states to coordinate the Arab position if Trump takes the step.

"It is unfortunate that some are insisting on carrying out this step without any regard to the dangers it carries to the stability of the Middle East and the whole world," he told reporters in Cairo on Sunday.

"Nothing justifies this act... it will not serve peace or stability, instead it will nourish fanaticism and violence," said Abul Gheit.

Palestinians have been lobbying regional leaders to oppose the decision and the armed Islamist movement Hamas has threatened to launch a new "intifada."

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas spoke to Hamas leader Ismail Haniya late Sunday, a Hamas statement said, with the two sides agreeing their opposition to any shift in US policy.

The rare call between the two comes as attempts at implementing a reconciliation deal have faltered in recent days.

But Kushner, addressing a sympathetic audience at an annual meeting of Israeli and US policy-makers hosted by businessman Haim Saban, sees grounds for optimism.

The real estate developer turned presidential adviser is working closely with Israeli officials and has developed ties with the young Saudi and Emirati monarchs.

He sees an opportunity for peace if the Sunni Arab countries of the region align themselves with Israel in opposition to the threat of Iran.

Israel`s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shares this hope, although he dares hope an accommodation with Arab countries could precede any Palestinian deal.

Kushner, in common with US official thinking under previous administrations, sees a Israeli-Palestinian settlement as coming before any great re-alignment.

"You`ve got to focus on solving the big issue," he told a friendly but frankly skeptical Saban, and an audience of dignitaries and policy experts.

"The regional dynamic plays a big role in what we think the opportunities are because ... a lot of these countries look and say they all want the same thing.

"And they look at the regional threats and I think that they see Israel, who is traditionally their foe, is a much more natural ally to them than it was 20 years ago."

"You`ve a lot of people who want to put this together, but you have to overcome this issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order for that to happen," he said.Earlier, Netanyahu also addressed the forum by video link from Israel, and also spoke of the opportunity for reconciliation in the region.

But his focus was firmly on the threat of Iran, which he again compared to Nazi Germany in its alleged determination to "murder Jews."

His address barely touched on the Palestinian issue, but did speak of regional peace, under a longer timeframe than the one Kushner has in mind.

"And that`s just one reason why I`m so hopeful about the future. Today Israel is more welcomed by the nations of the world than ever before," Netanyahu said.

"When I look forward 50 and 100 years I believe Israel will be embraced openly by its Arab neighbors rather than in secret in the way it`s done today."

Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was less optimistic, warning a change in the US stance on Jerusalem would spell disaster.

In a statement, he warned the United States would "be disqualifying itself to play any role in any initiative towards achieving a just and lasting peace."
Islamabad: Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, who earlier came in support of the terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), has now said that he would welcome an alliance with global terrorist and 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed for the general election in 2018.

Responding to a question about having an alliance with JuD chief Saeed, Musharraf in an interview to Pakistan based Aaj News channel said, "so far, there has be no talks with them but if they want to be part of the alliance, I would welcome them."

The former military ruler had last month announced the formation of a grand political alliance after a consultative meeting between representatives of around two dozen political parties, including the Sunni Tehreek, Majlis-i-Wahdatul Muslimeen, Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and Mr Musharraf`s own All Pakistan Muslim League (APML).

However, several parties dissociated themselves from Musharraf`s Awami Ittehad alliance after he announced the formation of a "grand alliance" of 23 parties.

According to media reports, two major partners of the alliance - the Pakistan Awami Tehrik and the Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen - denied being part of the coalition headed by Musharraf.

Saeed, who continues to be an influential person in Pakistan`s certain religious groups despite being an internationally designated terrorist, announced on Saturday that he would contest the general election in 2018.The announcement comes days after the Lahore High Court ordered his release from the house arrest.

However, the JuD chief did not disclose anything about the constituency he would like to contest from. Though the JuD formed Milli Muslim League (MML) in August when Saeed was detained in Lahore, the party yet to be recognised by the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Saeed is a wanted terrorist by India and the United States for his alleged role in masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives.

He even carries a bounty of 10 million USD (approx. Rs 66 crore) on his head for his role in the attack.Musharraf had recently called himself as the "biggest supporter" of the LeT and its founder Hafiz Saeed.

Speaking on Pakistan`s ARY News, Musharraf said, "I am the biggest supporter of the LeT and I know they like me and the JuD also likes me."

The former president added that he was always in favour of terrorist action in Kashmir, and the LeT and the JuD were the biggest forces to take on the Indian Army in the state.
New Delhi: The special investigation team (SIT), set up to probe the allegations of abuse of authority prima facie committed by former CBI Director Ranjit Sinha to scuttle the coal scam probe, was on Monday directed by the Supreme Court to submit a status report before it.

The apex court asked the SIT to furnish the status report in a sealed cover within four weeks with regard to the probe conducted in the matter.

"A status report with regard to investigation conducted by the SIT with respect to Ranjit Sinha, former Director of CBI, be filed in a sealed cover," a three-judge bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur said.

The bench, also comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and A K Sikri, said this after advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for NGO Common Cause, argued that several months have gone by since the SIT was formed and it should be asked to submit a report on its investigation.

The top court had on January 23 constituted the SIT headed by the CBI director to look into the prima facie allegations against the former CBI chief of trying to influence the probe in coal scam cases.

During the hearing today, senior advocate R S Cheema, who has been appointed as special public prosecutor in coal scam cases by the apex court, told the bench that eight CBI cases relating to the scam were pending consideration before the "highest authority" of the agency.

To this, Bhushan said, "why should these cases be kept pending before the highest authority? These are politically sensitive cases".

The bench, however, directed the CBI Director to finalise these eight pending cases on or before January 15, 2018.

Cheema argued that CBI had requested the West Bengal government to give some documents pertaining to the coal block allocations in the state but the documents have not yet been handed over to the agency.

The bench issued notice to the state government directing it to inform the court why the records have not been given to the CBI.

Besides these issues, the top court also dealt with the pleas filed by others in the case.

The court was earlier told that a panel headed by former CBI special director M L Sharma had held that Ranjit Sinha's alleged meetings with some high-profile accused in coal scam prima facie indicated that there was an attempt to influence the investigation.

The apex court-appointed panel was probing the alleged scuttling of the probe into coal block allocation scam cases by Sinha, whose meetings with the accused persons were held as "completely inappropriate".

On December 7, 2015, the court had ordered handing over the original visitors' diary of the official residence of the former CBI director to the Sharma-led panel.
HYDERABAD: Hyderabad police on Monday banned flying of drones, paragliders and microlight aircraft after intelligence agencies warned of possible terror attacks.

The city police are imposing reasonable checks on any suspicious activities.

The use of drones, paragliders and microlight aircraft will be allowed only if prior permission is sought from the concerned authority.

People violating the order will be punishable under section 188 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). This order will remain in force from December 8, 2017 to January 1, 2018.
Hyderabad: Osmania University students on Monday staged a protest and did not allow the police to shift the body of E Murli, who allegedly committed suicide by hanging.

The body of the first-year student of MSc Physics at the university was found hanging in the washroom of one of the hostels on the campus.

A suicide note which was found from the scene, purportedly written by Murali, stated that he did not want to fail in exams and that he had never failed in exams, police had said, PTI reported.

Police had added that the student seemed to be in depression over the matter and further investigations were currently on.

Meanwhile, speaking to ANI, OU students joint action committee leader and president of the Unemployed Youth Association, K Manavatha Rai said, "Murli committed suicide because of unemployment. The state government is responsible for his suicide. Also, the government should give Rs 50 lakh compensation to Murli's family or else we will not allow the police to shift the body from the hostel."

"The Telangana government has been sanctioning funds for many things regarding the state.then why they are not providing jobs for us. We will continue the protest and will not allow the police to shift the body until the government takes responsibility for the matter," he added.

The student hailed from Doulapur village of Siddipet district.

(With Agency inputs)
HYDERABAD: In a shocking incident, a seven-month-old pregnant lady jumped to death to save herself from rapists in Telangana on Saturday night.

The incident took place on National Highway 44 near Ravelli village in Medak district.

Thirty-five-year-old Kalavathi would sell old clothes and dresses. She was travelling with her young daughter from Medchal village to Toopran village in Medak.

The mother-daughter duo got into a DCM van, which was already boarded by two unidentified men. On way the way, the men started harassing and tried to rape her.

To save herself, Kalavathi jumped from the mobile van and died on spot.

The van driver allegedly dropped the woman's daughter by the roadside and fled.

Passers-by informed the police, who in turn registered a case based on the description given by the minor child.

The police have launched an investigation into the incident.
New Delhi: PM Narendra Modi's oratory skills were on full display all of Monday when he addressed as many as three rallies across Gujarat. Attacking Congress ahead of the state assembly elections, he questioned the party's past, present and future with much gutso.

On a day when Rahul Gandhi appeared set to take over from his mother Sonia Gandhi as Congress president, PM Modi unleashed a barrage of attacks on him and his party for resembling a clan. "I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the well-being of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," he said in Valsad. "Mani Shankar Aiyar asked 'did elections happen during Mughal rule? After Jehangir, Shahjahan came, was any election held? After Shahjahan it was understood Aurangzeb will be the leader'. So the Congress accepts it's a family party? We don't want this Aurangzeb rule."

He then turned to target the Congress party as a whole and accused it of not just being a family party but also dividing people of the country. "Congress has learnt divide and rule rather well from out colonial rulers," he said in Bhavnagar. "I fail to understand why is Congress once again doing what it always did in the past - divide people, be it on caste lines, communal lines, between villages and cities."

Accusing the party of failing to deliver on its pre-poll promises, PM Modi said that their failures have resulted in people of Uttar Pradesh rejecting Congress - an apparent reference to the recent civic polls here where BJP emerged triumphant. "I appeal to the Congress to stick to the truth. The people of Gujarat do not like poll-time lollipops and false promises of the Congress. The people of UP know the Congress and their leadership well. And see how they have rejected Congress repeatedly."

The battle for Gujarat ahead of elections on December 9 and 14 has been hotting up with PM Modi himself leading BJP's charge. He is scheduled to hold a number of rallies here ahead of polling.
New Delhi: Husband of Hadiya was allegedly in touch with two key accused in ISIS Omar-al-Hindi case before his marriage, as per NIA probe.

According to the The Times of India, Shafin Jahan was in touch with Manseed and P Safvan, via a closed Facebook group comprising activists of Popular Front of India (PFI)'s political arm SDPI.

They were arrested in October last year and have been chargesheeted by NIA in the case which pertains to a criminal conspiracy by members of an Islamic State-inspired group to target high profile people like high court judges, police officers and political leaders.



The NIA believes it was Manseed and his SDPI associates that brought Hadiya and Shafin together. They two got married in December 2016.

TOI report further says that NIA probe has reportedly found that both Manseed and Safvan were in contact with Shafin on a social media app as well as closed Facebook group of SDPI activists called 'Thanal'.

Meanwhile, Hadiya had said in the apex court on November 27 that she wanted to go with her husband, Shafin Jahan.

The 24-year-old Kerala woman had converted to Islam, changing her name from Akhila to Hadiya, and married Jahan. The marriage was challenged by her parents in court.

Jahan moved court after their marriage was annulled by the Kerala High Court and against HC's order directing the NIA to probe the case.

The Supreme Court allowed Hadiya, till now in the custody of her parents, to resume her studies.

The bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had directed the Salem college to allow her to complete her house surgeon internship. She studies in Salem's Sivaraj Homoeopathic Medical Colleges and Research Institute.



Her father, Asokan, has alleged that she was a pawn in the larger scheme of indoctrinating and recruiting of ISIS recruits. Earlier, the Kerala High Court had nullified her marriage to Jahan and she was given in the custody of her father.



Shafin Jahan had challenged the Kerala High Court order of May nullifying his marriage with Hadiya and sought a recall of the court order asking NIA to investigate the conversion of Hadiya to Islam and her marriage.



(With Agency inputs)
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Washington: The US has said that India "is a player" in Afghanistan and it supports New Delhi's move with regard to transit options to enhance its economic connectivity with the war-torn country.

"India has really shown that it is a player in Afghanistan and that it is interested in supporting Afghanistan in a very constructive way," a senior administration official told PTI.

The official speaking on condition of anonymity was reviewing India's role in the first 100 days of the South Asia Strategy that was announced by Trump in a speech on August 21.

"As you know President Trump in his August 21st speech called on India to play a bigger role in supporting Afghanistan and its economic development. I think India has been answering the call," the official said.

Referring to a very successful trade conference on Afghanistan in New Delhi in September, the official said it resulted in pledging of hundreds of millions in new deals.

India has established air corridor and now the airport door and now has sent its first wheat shipment through Chabahar port in Iran.

"So, the US is supportive of this. We totally support India building up its economic relationship and increasing the transit options so that they can be more economically engaged with Afghanistan. The US has noticed that India has been stepping up its economic engagement with the country," the senior administration official said.

Responding to a specific question on the Chabahar port given Trump Administration's policies with Iran, the official said the US does not want IRGC or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp of Iran to benefit out of any economic activities.

"But again, we understand that India has challenges in getting goods for Afghanistan," and its inability to have economic linkages because of the inability to trade through Pakistan, the official said.

"So, I think that there is an understanding (in the Trump Administration) that if India is to be more economically engaged in Afghanistan there has to be transit options for India," the senior administration official said.

First phase of Chabahar port inaugurated:

The first phase of the Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman was inaugurated on Sunday by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, opening a new strategic route connecting Iran, India and Afghanistan bypassing Pakistan.

Here is the Joint Statement of Afghanistan, India and Iran Trilateral Meeting on Implementation of Chabahar Agreementhttps://t.co/EXrPOovJ3I  Indian Diplomacy (@IndianDiplomacy) December 3, 2017

The port in the Sistan-Balochistan province on the energy-rich nation's southern coast is easily accessible from India's western coast and is increasingly seen as a counter to Pakistan's Gwadar Port, which is being developed with Chinese investment and is located at distance of around 80 kms from Chabahar.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan represented India at the inauguration ceremony of Phase 1 of the Shahid Beheshti Port at Chabahar which was also attended by ambassadors and senior officials of the region.

An India-Iran-Afghanistan ministerial-level trilateral meeting on Chabahar also took place today on the sidelines of the event where the three countries resolved to work towards integrated development of connectivity infrastructure including ports, road and rail networks to open up greater opportunities for regional market access and integration of their economies.

Under the agreement signed between India and Iran in May last year, India is to equip and operate two berths in Chabahar Port Phase-I with capital investment of USD 85.21 million and annual revenue expenditure of USD 22.95 million on a 10-year lease.

(With PTI inputs)
Dharampu: Continuing his scathing attacks on the Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday termed the party as "an empire" that can only be ruled by one single family. He also said that the Congress "disliked Gujarat and hated it" and so the people of Gujarat should "punish" the Congress.

Modi, on the second day of his two-day visit to poll-bound Gujarat, addressing a massive crowd at Malanpada in Dharampur, a Congress bastion, said: "The Congress dynasty which has reigned in Uttar Pradesh since five decades, have we ever maligned them, insulted them? Insulted other states? But not a single day passes when every Congress leader curses Gujarat. What is our fault? They cursed Sardar Patel. What was his fault? That he worked for the good of the country?"

Continuing in the same vein, Modi said, "Indira Gandhi had our Morarji Desai jailed for months. Why such animosity for Gujarat? Gujarat should teach them a lesson that they stop insulting Gujarat. Gujarat has never been on anybody`s mercy."

Speaking about the election for Congress president, the Prime Minister said, "Congress has now abandoned all shame. Such persons (Rahul) who have been charged by the court, who is on bail, such persons whom we would not entrust the president post of a district, is now being given the president`s post in the party. What kind of culture prevails in Congress?"

Citing a statement by senior Congress leader Manishankar Aiyar, who said "Did election exist when Aurangzeb came in place of Shah Jahan?", Modi taunted: "This is an empire where only the dynastic heir rules. Whereas for me, the people are my high command. We ask votes on the basis of development. You check out all the previous elections of 2002, 2007, 2012, where the Congress has only tried to paint a non secular picture of BJP."

Referring to the temple visits of the Gandhi scion in Gujarat, Modi said: "Look at the strength of the land of Sardar and Mahatma Gandhi, that after 70 years they have started visiting places. But people won`t be fooled by that. There is a conspiracy to insult Gujarat and Gujarat won`t tolerate."

Mentioning the recently held local body elections in Uttar Pradesh, Modi said: "The people of UP have now recognized the Congress and have wiped out them out, who ruled the state through five dynasties. Now the Congress has accepted that they cannot harm Modi in 2019 and now they don`t have anywhere to go. So their target is to malign Gujarat. The Congress has always made people fight against people, tribal against tribal, educated against uneducated, communities and so on. But the people of Gujarat have rejected such a disruptive party."

And in his interactive style of asking question to the audience, Modi asked, "Have you ever read in newspapers that Modi took away so much money for himself? For his brother, for his relatives? Whereas what was on the other side - scams of loot in coal deal, helicopter deal, why? Since Modi is in Delhi, he has stopped all such loot. Instead now people ask what did Modi bring in."

On demonetization, Modi said, "Congress is angry with me for demonetization. Tell me are you angry with me for demonetization?" But without waiting for an answer from the crowd as he normally does, he continued, "The Congressman are worried that their scam money, corrupt money has gone. They are angry that Modi looted us. But remember all the looters of the country, Modi will extract every penny out from you and use it for the common man of the country. The money belongs to the country."

Alleging the Congress of not doing anything for the Other Backward Castes (OBC), the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), Modi said: "All the previous governments did not do anything for these communities. As soon as our government was formed, we granted constitutional status to the OBC commission. Congress had halted that bill in the Rajya Sabha. I don`t have to go and learn what backward living is."

Urging the gathered crowd to vote for BJP, Modi said, "I can see the target of achieving 150 seats for the BJP being fulfilled right in front of my eyes here. You will be deciding the fate of Gujarat on the 9th and you will have to punish the people who have disliked Gujarat."
Indore: Girls and women are more vulnerable to their own relatives and acquaintances than unknown persons on the issue of sex-related crimes, data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) "Crime in India 2016" report has indicated.

Highlighting rape figures, the report has stated that "in 2016, the accused of rapes in 94.6 cases are none other than the victim's relatives including brother, father, grandfather, sons or acquaintances."

The report showed that in the year 2016, a total of 38,947 cases of rape were registered in the country under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) as well as Section 376 and other related sections of the Indian Penal Code.

Among these 38,947 cases, in 36,859 matters, accused are related to the victims, it said.

Similarly, it said that in 630 cases, victims were allegedly raped by grand-father, father, brother and son while in 1,087 cases the accused were acquaintances.

Besides in 2,174 cases, the accused are relatives and in 10,520 matters, it was neighbours who were facing charges of rape, it said.

In 600 cases, employers and co-workers are accused of rape, the report said.

The NCRB report also stated that in 2016, in 557 cases, the accused are live-in partners, husband and ex-husbands.

Similarly, in 10,068 cases, women were raped on the promise of marriage.

It also states that in the remaining 11,223 cases, the victims in some manner or the other knew the accused.

Expressing concern over these figures, National Commission of Women (NCW) chairperson, Rekha Sharma told PTI, "In our society, there is a lot of restrictions imposed on girls. But now it is enough. Time has come when boys should be taught from childhood how to behave with women as per our social values."

She said that porn material is easily available on internet. In such a scenario, parents should keep a watch on the mobile phones and computers.
Washington: Indian-American California Senator Kamala Harris has topped the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine's 50 Leading Global Thinkers' list which also features two others from the community

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and stand-up comedian Hasan Minhaj have also made it to the list which recognises a remarkable range of individuals who have found ways to exert enormous influence, often in unexpected ways, on a wide range of issues

"They are the doers who defined 2017," said the Foreign Policy magazine while releasing its annual list of global thinkers, which this year number 50 instead of 100 as was the case in most of the previous years

Topping the list is Harris, 53, for giving the Democratic Party a hope in the era of US President Donald Trump, the magazine said

Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, is the first-ever Indian-American to be elected to the United States Senate

Seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate, Harris is the only black woman in the Senate

"Her professional bona fides and two decades as a prosecutor, her commitment to social justice (she has made immigrants' rights and bail reform the focus of her first year in office), and her personal "firsts" make her appealing to voters still smarting from (Hillary) Clinton's loss and hungry for a charismatic non-white, non-male presidential candidate," the magazine said

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is ranked second in the list for trying to rebuild decent democratic leadership in South Korea

Popular Indian-American comedian Minhaj, 32, is placed third in the ranking for defining the narrative of a "New Brown America", it said

Early this year he was the first Indian-American to have been chosen to host the White House Correspondents Dinner

"The final comedian to be hired by The Daily Show during Jon Stewart's tenure as host, Minhaj has since joined an elite cadre of popular news satirists ? including Stewart, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, and John Oliver ? whose joyful embrace of "fake news" often gets at fundamental truths at which the mainstream media can only gesture," it said

Haley, 45, the first Indian-American to be in any presidential cabinet, figures in the list of global thinkers for trying to preserve America's traditional vision of international affairs, said the magazine

"The US foreign policy that Haley has spent just over 10 months defending smacks more of traditional Republican (and, arguably, traditional US) policies more closely in line with Ronald Reagan than with the current president," it said

Among others in the list are presidential candidate for the FARC, the Colombian rebel group that has traded in its weapons for party politics; the female director of Afghanistan's foreign-language film contender for the Oscars; the venture capitalist who is using tech companies to bridge the gap between Israel and Palestine; and an Iraqi member of parliament who is demanding her country recognise the genocide of the Yazidis

"This year's list showcases a remarkable range of individuals who have found ways to exert enormous influence, often in unexpected ways, on a wide range of issues ? from North Korea policy, to the rise of populism, to how we combat fake news, to cementing a new narrative in American culture..

to comedy," said Jonathan Tepperman, editor in chief of the magazine

"These amazing people are not only rethinking our world, but also reshaping it. They defined 2017, and we're thrilled by the chance to recognise their accomplishments ? for good, at least in most cases," he said

The list also includes Chelsea Manning, Stephen Bannon, Roya Sadat and French President Emmanuel Macron.
New Delhi: The polluted Siang river in Arunachal Pradesh has begun taking a toll on animals in a wildlife sanctuary in close proximity with several deaths reported here in recent days. The water of the otherwise pristine river has reportedly turned murky due to construction activity in China upstream.

Siang river turned a pale colour of brown last week with locals blaming China for polluting the river. Even as China continues to deny having any role in making the river - a tributary of Brahmaputra - polluted, Siang continues to flow dirty. And now, it is having an impact not just on the human population but on animals in Daying Ering Wildlife Foundation Eco-Development Society. Founder and Vice Chairman Maksam Tayeng has said that not only are animals either getting sick or dying due to drinking contaminated water, but that migratory birds too are becoming a rarity here.

Water in the Siang river has long been used for consumption but a recent sample taken by the district administration found that toxicity levels have increased exponentially.

Ninong Ering, MP from Arunachal East, previously wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked him to look into the matter.
A quick glance at the top news of the day

1. Rahul Gandhi's 6th question to PM Modi is on 7th pay commission

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's sixth question to Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on the seventh pay commission and its implementation. Read more here

2. Before marriage, Hadiya's husband was in touch with IS suspects, claims NIA

Husband of Hadiya was allegedly in touch with two key accused in IS Omar-al-Hindi case before his marriage, as per NIA probe.Read more here.

3. Cyclone Ockhi: Gujarat, Maharashtra on alert as IMD issues fresh warning

Cyclone Ockhi is now moving towards the coasts of Gujarat and Maharashtra said the Indian Meteorological Department while issuing a very severe cyclonic storm warning and advising fishermen not to venture into the sea. Read more

4. A Kohinoor paan worth Rs 5,000, meant for the newly-married

Theres a 50-year-old paan shop in Aurangabad, and is popular for a strange reason. Though there are 51 types of paan on the menu of the shop, one of it costs as much as Rs 5,000. Read more

5. Bharti Singh is Mrs Haarsh Limbachiyaa now! See wedding pics

Comedienne Bharti Singh tied the nuptial knot with beau Haarsh Limbachiyaa in a gala wedding ceremony at the Marquis Beach Resort in Goa on Sunday, December 3. Read more

6. Watch: PM Narendra Modis special video message on Navy Day

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday extended his greeting to Navy personnel on the occasion of Navy Day. The Prime Minister took to Twitter to extend his wishes for the Naval force. Read more
New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi on Monday filed nomination to take over as Congress President from his mother Sonia Gandhi. Even as the ascent to the party's top post for the 47-year-old appeared a certainty, a massive debate erupted between members of Congress and their rivals - especially those in the BJP.

While leaders in the Congress called it a historic step, BJP leaders said it the party will soon become history. (Click for pictures of Rahul filing his nomination)

Here is a quick wrap of who said what about Rahul Gandhi potentially taking over the reigns of Congress.

'For the motion'

Manmohan Singh, former PM: Rahul Gandhi is a darling of the Congress and he will carry forward the great traditions of the party. (Full report here)

Navjot Singh Sidhu, Congress leader: We are standing like a mountain behind Rahul Gandhi. He has our support and we are sure he will take the party and the country to new highs.

Farooq Abdullah, National Conference chief: It is a good sign that the young brigade is stepping forward. I hope he takes India to great heights where everyone lives with harmony.

Captain Amrinder Singh, Punjab CM: If you ask me, I think he will make a very good Prime Minister.

Dr Karan Singh, Congress leader: Sonia ji took Congress to new heights, we won many elections under her leadership and now it is time for Rahul Gandhi to take the party forward.

'Against the motion'

PM Narendra Modi: I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the well being of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command. (Full report here)

Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister: He (Rahul Gandhi) is the owner of the party. His elevation & nomination are their personal matter. They are forced to make this arrangement (election) because of the regulations of EC. However, no democracy is left inside such a big party.

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Union Minister: I congratulate Rahul Gandhi for his promotion without performance, can only be possible in a feudal setup.

Yogi Adityanath, UP CM: Congress has become a burden on this nation, now would be good if after Rahul ji's elevation once and for all this burden is removed. The party will soon be history.




New Delhi: A host of party heavyweights will be present when Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi files his nomination for the party chief's post at its headquarters on Monday.



Six Chief Ministers - Punjab's Amarinder Singh, Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Himachal Pradesh's Virbhadra Singh, Puducherry's V Narayanasamy, Meghalaya's Mukul Sangma and Mizoram's Lal Thanhawla - are expected to be present when over 90 sets of nomination papers are likely to be filed by various leaders to extend support to Rahul's candidature.



Congress state unit chiefs, senior leaders and Pradesh Congress Committee delegates will be present at the party's central office to express support to him.



The Congress vice president is likely to reach the party headquarters around 10.30 am to file his nomination.

He will sign sets of nomination papers to be filed before the Returning Officer.



Mullappally Ramachandran, the Returning Officer for the organisational election, told IANS that 90 nomination forms were taken by different states though not one has been submitted so far.



The process of nominations started on Friday. The last date for filing nominations is December 4.



On Sunday, many senior Congress leaders, its members of Parliament and PCC chiefs arrived at the party headquarters to sign the papers, including Sachin Pilot, Kapil Sibal, Rajeev Shukla, PC Chacko, Shobha Oza, Hamdulla Sayeed and others.



Apart from states and union territories, senior leaders on the Congress Working Committee (CWC), including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, AK Antony, Ahmed Patel and Ghulam Nabi Azad are likely to submit different sets of nomination papers.



Rahul Gandhi became the Congress vice president in January 2013.

Meanwhile, endorsing Congress leader Shehzad Poonawalla`s allegation about the party`s presidential election being rigged, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Sunday called out the rival party for the lack of "internal democracy" within.

"A youngster Shehzad has exposed the rigging that is taking place in the Congress president poll. And Shehzad is a senior Congress leader in Maharashtra. The Congress Party has tried to muzzle his voice and wants to even remove him from their social media groups. What tolerance is this," the PM had said, addressing a rally in Gujarat's Surendranagar, ANI reported.

PM had Modi further dubbed the discord thus exposed within the Congress Party as indicative of its ineffectuality to govern a nation.

"Those who have no internal democracy can`t work for people. I want to say to this youngster Shehzad - `you have done a brave thing but this is sadly what has always happened in Congress`," he had said.

The accusation came full force when Maharashtra Congress secretary Poonawalla called out the process of electing party president as "rigged" and said he had information that the delegates, who were going to vote for the election, were fixed.

(With Agency inputs)
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court began its final hearing in the centuries-old Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute on Tuesday, December 5. The case, which was back in the news recently after Art of Living founder Ravi Shankar's mediation, has the history that dates back to the 15th century. Last month, the Shia Waqf Board proposed that Ram Mandir be built in Ayodhya while the mosque can come up in Lucknow.

The mosque originally dates back to 1528. It was built in Ayodhya by Mir Baqi  a commander of Mughal emperor Babur  from where it gets the name Babri Masjid. However, a report by the Archaeological Survey of India suggested the existence of a 10th-century temple at the site. Timeline of the Ayodhya dispute

Here's a quick look at the top developments in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute so far in 10 points:

1. The first recorded clash over Ayodhya site took place in 1853, following which the Britishers created a fence to let Hindus and Muslims worship separately in inner and outer courtyards. In 1949, a group of Hindus allegedly sneaked in Lord Ram idol in the mosque, leading to daily offers of prayers to Ram Lalla. Muslims stopped offering namaz. The then government declares the premises a disputed area and locks the gates.

2. In the following years, several Hindus filed suits in different courts seeking exclusive rights to offer prayers to "Ram Lalla". In 1959, Nirmohi Akhara filed suit seeking transfer of disputed site. In 1961, Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Board of Waqf also sought a suit seeking possession of Babri mosque site.

3. In 1980s, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) launched a campaign to re-open the locks of the Babri Masjid so as to "liberate" the birthplace of Lord Ram and build a grand temple. The temple movement was later backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

4. In September 1990, BJP president LK Advani launched a Rath Yatra from Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhya for building a Ram Temple on the mosque site. It triggered riots across the country, especially in the North Indian belt. Later that year, Advani was arrested in Samastipur in Bihar, following which the BJP withdrew support to Prime Minister VP Singh leading early parliamentary elections.

5. In 1992, thousands amassed at Ayodhya site to demolish the Babri mosque, which triggered widespread communal riots across the country. A makeshift Ram temple was then hurriedly built and the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao vowing to rebuild the mosque.

6. In 2002, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee sets up an Ayodhya Cell in his office to talk to Hindu and Muslim leaders to resolve the dispute. The same year, the High Court begins hearing in the case to determine who owns the Ayodhya site.

7. In 2003, the Archaeological Survey of India excavates in disputed Ayodhya site on the directions of the Allahabad High Court. In its report, it claims to find evidence of a temple beneath the mosque. Muslims dispute the findings.

8. In September 2010, the three-judge bench of Allahabad High Court delivered a historic judgement. The court ruled that the 2.77 acres of disputed Ayodhya land be divided into 3 parts in the following manner:

One third of the land was given to Ram Lalla  infant Lord Ram, represented by Hindu Maha Sabha

One third was entrusted to Nirmohi Akhara

One third was to be given to Islamic Sunni Waqf Board.

9. In October 2017, spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar tried to mediate in the Ayodhya dispute, offering an out-of-court solution. It was rejected by political parties and various religious boards.

10. Last month the Shia Central Waqf Board offered a new proposal to the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi conflict in Ayodhya  a Ram temple in Ayodhya, a mosque in Lucknow. Several Muslim bodies have rejected the Shia Board's proposal.
New Delhi: Rebel JDU MPs Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar were disqualified from the Rajya Sabha tonight, according to a communication from chairman of the House M Venkaiah Naidu.

Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar disqualified from Rajya Sabha (File photos) pic.twitter.com/14U0orb5cC  ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017

Naidu in his communication said they cease to be Rajya Sabha members with immediate effect.

The Rajya Sabha chairman agreed to the JDU's contention that the two senior leaders had "voluntarily given up" their membership by defying their party's directives and attending events of opposition parties.

The JDU had sought their disqualification on the grounds that they had attended a rally of opposition parties in Patna in violation of its direction.

Yadav had joined hands with the opposition after JDU president and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kuamar dumped the Grand Alliance in Bihar and tied up with the BJP.

Yadav was elected to the House last year and his term was scheduled to end in 2022. Anwar's term was to expire early next year.

The former JDU president, who is at present in Gujarat to campaign against the BJP, is expected to respond to his disqualification tomorrow.
Security personnel shot dead two terrosists after they attacked an army convoy in Jammu and Kashmirs Qazigund. One soldier was martyred.

Heavy firing between security personnel and terrorists broke out immediately after an Army convoy was attacked on Monday. According to reports, the terrorists then took cover in a nearby building and soldiers engaged them in fire fight in which two terrorists were killed. The Jammu national highway had to be shut during the operation, leaving many passengers stranded.

Last Thursday, five terrorists had been shot dead in separate incidents. While four terrorists were killed in the Budgam district, one was neutralized by the security personnel in Baramulla's Sopore.

In a separate incident, terrorists hurled a grenade at a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp of 182 battalion in Pulwama's Tahab.
KOLKATA: A day after two physical education teachers were arrested in connection with the shocking incident of a four-year-old girl sexual assault inside GD Birla Centre For Education, were sent to two days police custody, the agitated parents on Sunday demanded the arrest of the schol principal.

The parents of the girl lodged a complaint at the Jadavpur Police station, demanding the immediate arrest of the principal of the school, S Nath, for allegedly suppressing facts about the incident and for not taking preventive measures despite a similar assault three years ago.

As hundreds of agitating people sat on a dharna in front of a Metro station today in protest, the city school said it would remain closed from Monday.

A four-year-old nursery student was allegedly sexually assaulted inside the prominent private school on Friday where a similar incident had taken place three years ago, triggering angry protests by guardians.

The agitating parents first blocked the road near the school premises in south Kolkata's Ranikuthi and then marched to Tollygunj where they held the sit in. The protesters were joined by several parents of students from other prominent schools in the city.

The agitating parents carried banners and placards condemning the assault on the minor girl. They created a massive road graffiti of a child student asking for her security, as a symbolic protest to the incident of sexual assault.

Meanwhile, Women and child activists have condemned the molestation of a four-year-old girl in Kolkata and questioned the negligence of GD Birla Centre for Education School authority.
KOLKATA: Protest by parents and guardians against a high profile Kolkata school, where a four-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by male teachers, intensified on Monday morning.

Several parents and relatives gathered in front of the school after authorities announced a sudden closure of the school from Monday onwards until further notice.

Several parents demanded the re-opening of school since as senior classes were scheduled to appear for internal assessments on Monday.

A four-year-old girl child was allegedly sexually abused inside a school by two Physical Education teachers on Thursday. The child's mother found the blood stain on her uniform while picking up from school.

Minor victim kept crying in class, asking for 'Ma'

The two PT teachers were arrested on Friday and sent to two days police custody. The school has suspended both the teachers.

The victim's parents have lodged a complaint at the Jadavpur Police station, demanding the immediate arrest of the principal of the school for allegedly suppressing facts about the incident and for not taking preventive measures despite a similar assault three years ago.
New Delhi: The Madhya Pradesh government on Monday passed a bill dealing with death sentence for convicts of rape and gang-rape involving girls of 12 years or less. State CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan also said repeated stalking will be made a non-bailable offense.

In a country where rape incidents are one of the highest, there has been a growing demand for harsher punishment. Taking cue, the MP government passed the said bill which awards 'hanged till death' for convicts of rape and gang-rape of minor girls below 12 years of age. "Those who rape 12-year-old girls are not human beings but demons. They have no right to live," said CM Chouhan. "Repeated stalking too will be a non-bailable offence and offenders will be punished."

The state may have taken steps towards stern action against those accused of rape but CM Chouhan earlier faced criticism after the Bhopal gang-rape incident.

A 19-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped for three hours by four men in the state capital early November. The four men allegedly tied the girl and took turns to sexually assault her. The accused, as per the reports, even took tea and gutkha breaks before returning to repeatedly rape her.

The victim's mother is a police constable, while her father is associated with Railway Protection Force (RPF).

CM Chouhan had ordered a SIT probe into the incident and four police officials were suspended. However, the incident was termed as a blot on the state government by many including political rivals.
Ahmednagar: A 30-year-old Pune resident called up police posing as an aide of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and got himself arrested so he could receive healthcare in prison, an official said today.

Amit Jagannath Kamble, a resident of Navi Peth in Pune, was arrested today for making calls to the Ahmednagar police and jail authorities posing as a personal assistant of Fadnavis, Superintendent of Police Ranjankumar Sharma said.

On November 29, Kamble called the police on phone and asked them to shift all the three convicts in the Kopardi rape and murder case to Pune's Yerwada jail instead of taking them to Nagpur prison, he said.

Sharma told PTI Kamble is suffering from a kidney ailment for the last four years and can't afford treatment due to his poor financial condition.

He commits petty crimes to get arrested and avail free treatment and receive healthcare inside the jail, the police officer said.

Kamble has several pending criminal cases against him in Deccan, Vishrambaug, Faraskhana and other police stations in Pune, police sources said.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court today expressed concern over failure of authorities in adopting norms of solid waste management and asked Maharashtra government to decide within a week the civic body's proposal to increase the capacity of Kanjurmarg dumping ground.

The judges said the situation was very alarming as the rules of waste management were not being followed at the dumping grounds and the state should consider providing alternative land for dumping.

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai told the HC that every day 3,000 metric tonnes of waste are transported to Kanjurmarg dumping ground.

The three dumping grounds in the city -- Kanjurmarg, Mulund and Deonar -- receive 10,000 metric tonnes of solid waste a day. Mulund and Deonar sites would soon be closed because lease of respective lands expires in November, so the capacity of Kanjurmarg site must be increased, MCGM said.

The division bench, headed by Justice Abhay Oka, was hearing a bunch of PILs alleging that solid waste management rules are not followed at the dumping grounds, leading to pollution. Some PILs filed by local residents want dumping grounds to be shifted because of the foul smell they produce.

The MCGM said its proposal to augment capacity of Kanjurmarg ground to 6,500 metric tonnes by installing modern plants and equipment was pending with the state government.

The court then asked the state government to inform by September 10 its decision on this proposal.

MCGM proposes to hand over the Kanjurmarg site to a private contractor on `build, operate and transfer' basis. To give the land at concessional rate to the contractor, it needs state government's permission.
MUMBAI: As parts of the southern states reel under heavy downpour caused due to Cyclone Ockhi, a high alert was sounded in several parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat as well. Schools will remain shut on Tuesday.

Maharashtra Minister Vinod Tawde took to Twitter and said that schools and colleges in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Sindhudurga, Thane, Raigad and Palghar Districts have declared the precautionary holiday for the safety of the students due to the serious weather predictions.

Meanwhile, Mumbai Disaster management unit of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has issued an advisory against visiting beaches in view of high tide alert.

The Central Railway Mumbai Division has released updated the emergency numbers. An emergency cell has also been opened at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus and Kalyan.

More than 250 railway police force and Maharashtra State Security Force personnel have been deployed on crowd management and other related activities at stations and yards.
New Delhi: Actor Rishi Kapoor, who was shooting for "Rajma Chawal" in the national capital, has rushed back to Mumbai to be with his family after the demise of veteran actor-producer and his uncle Shashi Kapoor.

Shashi Kapoor, the romantic screen icon of the 1970s and early 1980s, died on Monday at a hospital in Mumbai. He was 79.



"We are the airport looking at the flight schedule and want to reach Mumbai at the earliest. We might go tonight or tomorrow morning," Shanti Malik, who works closely with the Kapoor family, told IANS on Monday evening.



Malik also said that he doesn't know the cause of Shashi Kapoor's death, and would be in a position to give out details on Tuesday morning.



The younger brother of late Raj and Shammi Kapoor, who were both actors par excellence, Shashi Kapoor started his tryst with acting at the age of four, with plays directed and produced by his father Prithviraj Kapoor.



He started acting in films as a child in the late 1940s. His best-known performances as child artist were in "Aag" (1948) and "Awaara" (1951), where he played the younger version of the character played by his elder brother Raj.



When he grew up, he made his debut as a leading man in the 1961 film "Dharmputra", and went on to appear in more than 150 Hindi films.



Shashi Kapoor, whose nuanced acts in memorable films like "Deewar", "Satyam Shivam Sundaram", "Trishul" and "Kabhi Kabhie" captivated Hindi film buffs, was married to English theatre actress Jennifer Kendal.



He had three children -- Kunal, Karan and Sanjana Kapoor.
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Ram Nath Kovind paid tribute at the demise of the veteran Bollywood superstar Shashi Kapoor, who passed away on Monday evening.

President Kovind took to Twitter saying, "Sorry to hear of the demise of Shashi Kapoor, well-known actor, with a repertoire of Indian and international films. His support for meaningful cinema as a producer and pivotal role in the theatre movement in India too are cherished. Condolences to his family."

Shashi Kapoor's versatility could be seen in his movies as well as in theatre, which he promoted with great passion. His brilliant acting will be remembered for generations to come. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers.  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 4, 2017

Sorry to hear of the demise of Shashi Kapoor, well-known actor, with a repertoire of Indian and international films. His support for meaningful cinema as a producer and pivotal role in the theatre movement in India too are cherished. Condolences to his family #PresidentKovind  President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) December 4, 2017

Kapoor was 79-year-old. The thespian's death has left the industry people and fans in a state of shock.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh also expressed condolence on the veteran actor's demise. "With his impressive talent and inimitable mannerism actor Shashi Kapoor charmed a generation of Indians. He was a fine actor and a wonderful human being. Saddened to learn of his demise. May his soul rest in peace," read Singh's tweet.

With his impressive talent and inimitable mannerism actor Shashi Kapoor charmed a generation of Indians. He was a fine actor and a wonderful human being. Saddened to learn of his demise. May his soul rest in peace.  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) December 4, 2017

Others including Union Minister Smriti Irani, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis also took to Twitter to pay tribute to the veteran superstar.

Saddened by the demise of legendary actor Shashi Kapoor ji. His contribution to Indian Cinema is monumental. Shashi jis passing away marks the end of an era. My deepest condolences to his loved ones, colleagues and fans. May his soul rest in peace. Om Shanti!  Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) December 4, 2017

We are deeply saddened by the demise of veteran actor #ShashiKapoor.

The Deewaar (1975) star was also memorable in Merchant-Ivory productions The Householder (1963) and Shakespeare Wallah (1965).

He worked as a child actor in Raj Kapoor films Aag (1948) and Awaara (1951). pic.twitter.com/DakQQuFIvB  NFAI (@NFAIOfficial) December 4, 2017

A legend has passed away. Shashi Kapoor will remain in our hearts forever. My condolences to his loved ones and all his fans. pic.twitter.com/OmLvtvYZtb  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) December 4, 2017

Sad to hear about noted actor, producer #ShashiKapoor jis demise.

His contribution in Hindi film industry will be remembered forever.

My deepest condolences to his family, friends and millions of fans. December 4, 2017

Actor Mohit Marwah took to Twitter and shared the unfortunate news. He wrote: My favourite shashi kapoor rests in peace today will be remembered always.

The actor was reportedly admitted to Mumbai's Kokilaben Hospital where he breathed his last. The legendary star was under constant medical supervision and was battling health-related issues.
Washington DC: Simon Cowell, who is best known as a Britain's Got Talent judge and music producer, has recently revealed that after the scary incident at his London house, he is struggling to quit smoking and drinking.

The 58-year-old, who missed the first live shows of the current series after falling down the stairs, told the Sun that his efforts to quit the smoking and booze aren't going according to plan.

In October, the 'X Factor' boss got a shock to the system when he was rushed to hospital after passing out and falling down the stairs at his home.

He said, "I knocked myself out, and when I woke up, I thought, Is this heaven? and then after I realised it wasn't, I thought I had broken my neck because the medics wouldn't let me move. I was thinking, Christ almighty. You don't know what's wrong, and neither do they, so it is scary."

Simon, previously revealed he wanted to change his ways of life in order to be a responsible father for his son Eric.
Proud Boys members Brad, left, and Eric meet at The Explorium Brewpub at Southridge Mall in Greendale, Wis. The men, who asked that their last names not be used to avoid retaliation from anti-fascists, say the Proud Boys is a drinking fraternity that opposes white nationalism. Some members believe feminism is cancer and that women would be happier as homemakers and not in the workforce. Photo taken Oct. 4, 2017.
New Delhi: One of the most gorgeous and adorable star kids around, Taimur Ali Khan will turn a year-old on December 20, 2017. Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan's little munchkin's first birthday is reportedly going to be a grand affair ala Nawab style.

The celebrations are reportedly going to kick-off at Pataudi Palace, Haryana and that's where the royal treat will commence. Taimur's maternal grandfather and veteran actor Randhir Kapoor told Mid-Day.com, "The family will be present at the party. Saif and Kareena want to instil the right values in their children. The boy may have been born to renowned stars, but, must share a close bond with the family.

He further revealed who all are likely to be present at the birthday celebration. "Taimur's grandmother (Sharmila Tagore) will join us. Karisma (Kareena's actor-sister) and her kids, Samaira and Kiaan Raj, are also excited."

Taimur is a photographer's delight and often his pictures go viral in no time. There are several fan clubs on Twitter and Instagram on his name and this shows how much of a star he already has become.

The report quotes another source from the family as saying, "We plan to fly down to the palace by mid-December to start a week-long celebration. Friends of Kareena and Saif will also be present. Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar plan to arrive with their kids, AbRam and twins Roohi and Yash. Even Ranbir (Kapoor) and Sara (Ali Khan) plan to make it in time."

The little bundle of joy will be probably be dressed in a tux for his birthday bash and the celebration will be organised keeping the royal Pataudi tradition in place.
Chandigarh: The Congress today released its first list of candidates for the municipal corporation elections in Punjab, choosing to go with its "one family, one ticket" formula with the exception of sitting councillors.

The party, which announced names of 31 candidates for the Patiala Municipal Corporation, has decided to field all the sitting councillors, while taking a tough stand against rebels and deserters, a party spokesperson said in a release.

These decisions were taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh.

Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Sunil Jakhar was present at the meeting held in New Delhi along with AICC secretary and Punjab in-charge Asha Kumari and AICC secretary Harish Chaudhary, the release said.

The meeting decided that those who left the party in 2012 and 2014 will not be accommodated in the matter of ticket allocation for the municipal corporation polls.

However, those who contested and lost the municipal corporation elections earlier but remained steadfast in their loyalty to the party, would be considered for nomination, the spokesperson said.

In another decision aimed at rewarding loyalty and boosting party morale, it was decided to give preference to original Congress members over those who have joined from other parties, according to a party spokesperson.

There was no change in the party's policy with regard to ticket allocation from the one followed during the Punjab Assembly polls, the spokesperson said.

The success of the Congress in the state elections in February had shown that the merit and winnabilty were the right considerations in choosing the best candidates.

Elections to three municipal corporations -- Amritsar, Ludhiana, Patiala, and 32 municipal councils and nagar panchayats in Punjab will be held on December 17.
New Delhi: On 14th November, 2017, a commercial supply ship arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) carrying all sorts of goodies for the six astronauts in space.

Apart from NASA equipment, the Orbital ATK delivered a delicious haul of make-your-own flatbread pizzas and chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

While all astronauts crave pizza in space, it has been a particularly tough 4 months for Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli. He's been in space since July and has another month to go.

Reportedly, Nespoli said that the idea about making pizzas came up when his boss mentioned it during a public event.

Looks like the astronauts couldn't stay away for too much longer and decided to satisfy their cravings. A video posted by NASA on YouTube shows the astronauts preparing their respective their pizzas, sharing and eating them together.

It sure looks like one hell of a pizza party in space!

Check out the video below:

(Video courtesy: NASA Johnson/YouTube)

So did this out of the world pizza taste good? Nespoli stated it was "unexpectedly delicious", while another described it as "tasty", media reports reveal.
Chennai: Taking note of a picture in an English daily of school children hanging precariously from footboards and windows of government buses, Madras High court today directed the Tamil Nadu government to consider operating special busses exclusively for them.

The first bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice R Hemalatha gave the direction on a suo motu plea initiated by the court.

The issue was brought to the court's notice last week by a lawyer R Y George William, who sought immediate intervention of the court to ensure safety of school going children.

The court then initiated suo motu proceedings and directed the state transport department to file its reply.

In the affidavit filed today, the transport secretary said here are eight transport corporations in the state, operating 20,776 buses and carrying 1.93 crore passengers, including school/college children every day.

The bench took note of it and said the buses were obviously not sufficient to meet the demand of the people, as evident from the photograph, on the basis of which the proceedings were initiated.

"It is said that the government has extended 100 per cent free travel to school children in transport corporation buses. This was absolutely imperative to give meaningful effect to the right to education under Article 21A of the Constitution of India."

"However, merely providing free transport is not enough. The authorities concerned are also required to ensure the safety of children travelling in such buses, the court said.

The court said there can be no doubt that children tend to be adventurous, naughty and sometimes try to travel on foot boards or dangerously hang out of windows as a show of bravado. However, the photograph clearly showed that the bus was already packed.

It said the number of buses exclusively for children in school hours has to be increased. Other people might only be allowed to board the buses if there is sufficient space after the children are accommodated.

If there was demand from children, the passengers would have to get down to make room for them, the court said.

Apart from this, the transport authority should also ensure that children do not board overcrowded buses in a risky manner, the bench said and disposed of the plea.
Chennai: In a swift action, police rescued a one-year-old boy, who was allegedly kidnapped while sleeping with his parents on a pavement here, and arrested two women in this connection.

The women, who were part of a gang had lifted the child with the intention to sell him, police said today.

The toddler was found missing by his father in the wee hours of Saturday, they said.

Following a complaint, a special team was formed and the child was rescued yesterday.

Based on the inputs provided by a bus driver and an auto driver, the team intensified their probe around a nearby locality and managed to trace the child.

They apprehended two women in connection with the abduction, police said adding they are on the lookout for one more woman involved in the crime.
Hyderabad: MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi has said that the title suit of the Babri Masjid can be decided only on the basis of evidence and not on `aastha` (faith) as the Sangh Parivar is demanding.

Addressing a public meeting here on Sunday, he voiced his apprehension that the Sangh Parivar might vitiate the atmosphere in the country on the issue before the 2019 elections to gain political mileage.

The Member of Parliament condemned the statements by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders that the construction of the Ram temple in Uttar Pradesh`s Ayodhya will begin on October 18, 2018.

Owaisi wondered how they could make such a statement when the title suit was still pending in the Supreme Court.

He said such attempts could repeat the violence and bloodshed witnessed in the country in the 1990s during BJP leader L.K. Advani`s Rath Yatra and after the demolition of the Babri mosque. He warned that this could weaken the country.

The public meeting was organised by the Joint Action Committee comprising various Muslim organisations just days ahead of the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the mosque on December 6.

In 1992, on that date, a large number of religious volunteers or "Kar Sevaks" gathered in the temple town and demolished the 16th century structure, leading to widespread rioting and political crisis.

Taking strong exception to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat`s statement that only a temple could be built in Ayodhya, Owaisi said: "Muslims would not be cowed down by such threats."

"What is pending in the Supreme Court is title suit, which will be decided purely on evidence and not an aastha," he said.

Owaisi said Babri Masjid was not the issue of Muslims but an issue linked to secularism. "This is an issue which will decide the course of this country," he said.

The MP said he supports Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan`s suggestion that the title suit should not be taken up for hearing till the criminal case relating to the demolition of the mosque was disposed off.

Owaisi also quoted former Chief Justice A.M. Ahmedi reportedly saying that had Justice Venkata Challaiah not permitted Kar Seva, it would not have led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

He said even 25 years after the demolition, the contempt of court case had not come up for hearing in the apex court.

The MIM president alleged that the BJP is returning to its real agenda as it has failed to provide jobs to the unemployed and demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax has hit the people and dealt a blow to the economy.

Babri Masjid Action Committee convenor Zafaryab Jeelani said it was not an issue of "aastha" but of the political interests of some communal groups. He recalled that even the FIR registered in 1949 states that idols were stealthily kept in the mosque.

He said some elements tried to spread the falsehood that it was the birthplace of Ramchanderji (Lord Ram) but this has nothing to do with facts.

The speakers called up on Muslims to peacefully observe the shutdown on December 6 to demand reconstruction of the mosque at its original place.
Lucknow: Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Monday lauded his Uttar Pradesh counterpart Yogi Adityanath for his drive against criminals and said that he will also ask the police in the hill state to emulate the crackdown.

Addressing an event in Gorakhpur, the hometown of Adityanath, Rawat said it was heartening to see that criminals in Uttar Pradesh were being sent to the "right place".

He was referring to the spate of police gunfights in the state in which several criminals have been killed and arrested.

Rawat also urged the parents to keep pace with the changing times. "Technology is changing the way around us. Even though many parents do not like it, we will have to adjust to the change which is also for good," he said.

The Uttarakhand Chief Minister also urged students to focus on their talents so that India could become the country Prime Minister Narendra Modi has envisaged.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, who also attended the event, called for a holistic education system where education was within everyone`s reach and there was no discrimination.

Adityanath also said that there should be lesser holidays in schools and exhorted teachers and management of various schools to take part in the `Swacch Bharat Abhiyan` to make it an even bigger success.
Southern Finland: A century after gaining independence from its powerful neighbour Russia, Finland continues to consolidate its ties to the West, as tensions flare between Moscow and the West.

Russia`s 2014 annexation of Crimea and an uptick in military activity in the Baltic region have tested Finnish-Russian relations, painstakingly maintained over the years with scrupulous diplomatic efforts.

Like its neighbours Sweden, Denmark, Poland and the Baltic states, Finland has modernised its military in recent years and has stepped up initiatives tying itself closer to NATO -- but has stopped short of joining the alliance.

And Finland`s political rhetoric remains cautious when it comes to Russia, its fifth biggest trading partner.

"We are ready to defend ourselves, but we don`t speculate about the direction or the countries" the threat could come from, Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini told AFP in an interview.

"We are two independent nations, we don`t ask permission from each other" before making strategic decisions, he said.Finland belonged to Sweden for six centuries -- until 1809 -- and was then a Russian Grand Duchy until 1917, only gaining its independence at the end of World War I after the fall of the Tsarist Russian empire.

The Soviet Union recognised Finland`s independence in 1918, but the Nordic country had to fight off its great eastern neighbour during the winter of 1939-1940, and again from June 1941 to September 1944 to avoid being occupied by the Communists.

The 1947 Treaty of Paris recognised Finland`s defeat at the end of World War II, and it had to pay substantial war reparations to the USSR and permanently cede 10 percent of its territory, the eastern part of Karelia.

The human and territorial losses from these conflicts remain very present in the minds of today`s 5.5 million Finns. An old saying goes: "Nothing good comes from the East, only the Sun."

"From the Finnish point of view, (Russia) is not a real threat but rather a big neighbour they`re still a bit wary of, and with whom they have a joint history that has not always been easy," Barbara Kunz, a Nordic specialist at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), told AFP.Careful not to wake the Russian bear, Finnish leaders publicly stayed on good terms with Russia and refrained from expressing any open criticism during the Cold War, a process that coined the term "Finlandization".

But the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 changed everything. Remaining militarily non-aligned, Finland rapidly joined the European Union in 1995, swapping its currency, the markka, for the euro in 2002.

The Finnish border is now the longest EU border with Russia, stretching 1,340 kilometres (833 miles). Anchoring itself firmly to the West, Finland is keen to make sure it has a diplomatic and security "shield".

"We are a part of the West, and we need the Western power to stabilise the situation in terms of Russia," said Markku Kivinen, head of Helsinki`s Aleksanteri Institute, a centre for Russian and Eastern European studies.Unlike Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, the Baltic states which won their independence in the early 1990s and joined NATO a decade later, Finland has no intention of joining the military alliance for fear of angering Moscow.

Last month, a public opinion poll found that only 22 percent of Finns have a good opinion of NATO, a fall of three percentage points from a year earlier. The policy of military non-alignment is broadly supported in the country.

"We need to stay independent. We never know what could happen with Russia," Heini Vahtera, a Helsinki resident in her 30s, told AFP.

Joining the Atlantic alliance would "elicit a pretty harsh reaction from the Russians", noted Jean de Gliniasty, a Russia expert at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS) and a former French envoy to Moscow.

But a diplomatic source close to NATO said if Finland were to join, it would only have symbolic value as the country already joined its Partnership for Peace programme in 1994 and has participated in its joint operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan among others.

Meanwhile in Moscow, officials note that Russia has been closely associated with Finland`s centenary celebrations which will be formally marked on December 6, its Independence Day.

Visiting Finland in July, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the quality of "political dialogue" between the two neig
Jerusalem: Israel on Monday harshly criticised the European Union over a plan for its ambassador to participate in an event marking 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

The dispute comes ahead of a planned visit next week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Brussels for talks with EU foreign ministers.

"For reasons unknown, the EU people believe that the way to Israelis` hearts is by spitting in their faces," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in comments to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which he later confirmed to AFP.

"We are again seeing the same patronising approach of preaching hypocritical, condescending morality that just pushes away rather than bringing closer. It is sad and superfluous."

He was referring to an exhibition featuring portraits of 50 Palestinians born in 1967, when the Israeli occupation began, organised by Israeli rights group B`Tselem.

An EU official confirmed to AFP that the bloc`s ambassador to Israel, Emanuele Giaufret, planned to visit the exhibition in connection with International Human Rights Day on Thursday in Jaffa, part of Tel Aviv.

Israel`s right-wing government accuses groups such as B`Tselem of unfairly tarnishing the country`s image for political reasons, charges they firmly deny.

In April, Netanyahu cancelled talks with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in a rare move after the visiting diplomat declined to call off meetings with rights groups critical of Israel`s government, including B`Tselem.

Netanyahu`s talks with EU foreign ministers on December 11 are considered "informal" and come amid continuing tensions over Israeli settlement building in the West Bank.

A number of European Union states have refused for several months to approve a formal meeting with Israel`s government due to a lack of unanimity among members on how to condemn Israeli settlement building and to express frustration over stalled peace efforts.
Cairo: Five terrorists were killed today in exchange of fire with security forces in Sharqeya governorate, security sources said.

They said that terrorists clashed with security forces during a raid on Belbeis-10th of Ramadan road in Sharqeya.

The raid came over a week after a terrorist attack on a mosque in North Sinai in which more than 300 people were killed.

Terrorist attacks, targeting police and military personnel, have increased following the ouster of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 by the military, following massive protests against his rule.

Hundreds of police and army personnel have been killed since then.

The military has launched security campaigns in Egypt's restive North Sinai province, arrested suspects and demolished houses that belong to terrorists, including those facilitating tunnels leading to the Gaza Strip.
United Nations: A top UN official will travel to North Korea this week for talks with officials there, a UN spokesman said Monday, amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang`s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Jeffrey Feltman, the UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, "will discuss with DPRK officials issues of mutual interest and concern," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, using the acronym for North Korea`s official name.

Feltman will visit North Korea from Tuesday to Friday, he said.
Kano: Six police officers were killed in northeast Nigeria, police said on Monday, in an attack blamed on cattle herders following deadly clashes with farmers over land.

"We lost six policemen in an ambush by suspected Fulani herdsmen," Othman Abubakar, a spokesman for the Adamawa state police, told AFP.

"The police were on their way to Dowaya village, outside Numan (district), with the intention of disarming Fulani herders, who reports said were carrying arms."

No arrests had been made in connection with the ambush, which occurred on Friday, but it comes as the state is on heightened alert because of rising tensions between herders and farmers.

On November 20, at least 30 people were killed when farmers from the Christian Bachama ethnic group stormed four settlements of the Muslim Fulani herders in Numan district.

Herders representatives gave a higher death toll and said women and children were among those killed as they tried to flee.

Jaura Hammayidi, a herder in the area, said he did not know who was responsible for the ambush but claimed it followed a police attack on the community.

"After the attack on four villages, our people were left with no option but to relocate to other areas," he said.

"Duwaya village was one of the villages our people moved to and they began the 40-day mourning of the slain women and children.

"Surprisingly, the police came attacking and they shot two people dead."

Nigeria`s central states have been riven for decades with ethnic, sectarian and religious violence linked to tensions between farmers and herders over land and water.

But groups tracking the conflict say the unrest is spreading and non-Fulani communities have set up civilian militias because of the absence of effective law enforcement.

"This pattern is repeating itself across the country on both sides of the River Niger," SBM Intelligence said in a recent report.

"If nothing is done urgently, it is going to get worse."

The International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank, said in September that some 2,500 people were killed and tens of thousands were forced from their homes last year.

Such attacks were "becoming as potentially dangerous as the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast", it added.
Seoul: The US and South Korea on Monday kicked off their largest-ever joint air exercise, an operation North Korea has labelled an "all-out provocation", days after Pyongyang fired its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile.

The five-day Vigilant Ace drill -- involving 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troops -- began Monday morning, Seoul`s air force said.

Pyongyang over the weekend blasted the drill, accusing US President Donald`s Trump`s administration of "begging for nuclear war".

The annual exercise comes five days after the nuclear-armed North test-fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the continental United States within range.

As tensions surged, US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican and foreign policy hawk, warned that the US was moving closer to "preemptive war" with the North.

"If there`s an underground nuclear test (by the North), then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States," Graham told the CBS show "Face the Nation".

The isolated and impoverished North has staged six increasingly powerful atomic tests since 2006 -- most recently in September.

In recent years Pyongyang has accelerated its drive to bring together nuclear and missile technology capable of threatening the US, which it accuses of hostility.

"The preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures. Every missile test, every underground test of a nuclear weapon, means the marriage is more likely," Graham said.

His remarks echoed those of Trump`s National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who told a security forum on Saturday that the potential for war with the North "is increasing every day".

This year`s US and South Korean wargames feature a number of powerful jet fighters newly mobilised for the event, including six F-22s and 18 units of F-35 combat jets, the US air force said.

It also involves simulated precision attacks on the North`s military installations, including its missile launch sites and artillery units, Yonhap news agency said, citing unnamed Seoul sources.The North has boasted that the Hwasong 15 ICBM tested on Wednesday is capable of delivering a "super-large" nuclear warhead anywhere in the US mainland.

Analysts agree that the latest test showed a big improvement in potential range, but say it was likely achieved using a dummy warhead that would have been quite light.

They say a missile carrying a much heavier nuclear warhead would struggle to travel as far.

They are also sceptical that Pyongyang has mastered the sophisticated technology required to protect such a warhead from the extreme temperatures and stresses encountered as the missile hurtles back to Earth.

The latest launch, which saw the missile drop into Japan`s economic waters, was condemned by Tokyo`s parliament Monday, which slammed the North`s rogue weapons programme as an "imminent threat".

"This is a frontal challenge against the international community that must not be tolerated," added the resolution by Japan`s upper house, which came as the country`s hawish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said talking to the reclusive state was "meaningless".

The North`s leader Kim Jong-Un has presided over significant progress in the country`s widely-condemned nuclear and missile programmes since taking power in 2011.

A nuclear standoff between Kim and Trump in recent months has seen the pair trade personal insults.

The tensions have fuelled concerns of another conflict, more than six decades after 1950-53 Korean War that left much of the peninsula in ruins.

But even some Trump advisers say US military options are limited when Pyongyang could launch an artillery barrage on the South Korean capital Seoul -- only around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the heavily-fortified border and home to 10 million people.

Estimates on the potential casualties from another war vary widely.

The North has thousands of conventional artillery units along the border with the South that analysts say could kill tens of thousands.

In one of the latest estimates, Scott Sagan, senior fellow at the Centre for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said the toll could be as high as one million people from just the first day of a conflict.
FIFA World Cup 2022 Qatar: Cristiano Ronaldo to Lionel Messi, stars likely to play their last WC
December 1, 2017

CAIRO  On Nov. 16, after four consecutive meetings with all concerned parties, the Cairo "Declaration of Unification" of Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) was signed at the headquarters of the Egyptian General Intelligence under the auspices of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni. The parties agreed that the General Intelligence would follow up on the implementation of the items included in the agreement, without disclosing more details.

Following the signing, the Egyptian state agency said in a statement that the document will allow for the return of Sudanese refugees to their countries and internally displaced persons to their areas of origin under the supervision of the Egyptian intelligence.

Observers described the agreement as a successful move to heal the rift and end the ongoing South Sudanese conflict. But it raises many questions, especially since Cairo was not involved in the past in the unification of the SPLM to put an end to the conflict that has been ongoing since the South Sudanese Civil War erupted in December 2013 between the government forces of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit and supporters of his former first deputy, Riek Machar. Thousands of civilians have been killed and millions have fled to neighboring countries.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, about 1,800 refugees from South Sudan arrived daily in Uganda in the past year, and they now account for 1 million people. There are another 1 million South Sudanese refugees spread in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

The SPLM was established in 1983 when then-Sudanese President Jaafar Nimeiri deployed a military force led by John Garang from the Dinka tribe to stop the military uprising led by some 500 soldiers in South Sudan. However, Garang joined the rebels and created the SPLM, saying his move aimed at ending the control of the Khartoum central government, not achieving independence from Sudan. The war continued until 2005, when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed. As per the agreement, Garang was named first vice president of Sudan. However, a dispute over the nature of relations with Khartoum emerged between Garang and his deputy Mayardit. When Garang was killed in a helicopter crash, Mayardit replaced him and named Machar as first deputy.

In 2011, South Sudan gained independence from Khartoum, and two years later, on Dec. 15, 2013, a civil war erupted in South Sudan between Mayardit and his supporters from the Dinka tribe, and Machar and his followers from the Nuer tribe. The war ended on Aug. 17, 2015, with the signing of a peace agreement calling for the return of Machar to his position as first deputy to Mayardit.

In July 2016, Mayardit dismissed Machar following armed clashes between their supporters in Juba, the South Sudan capital. Sporadic confrontations are still ongoing between the two parties.

In his article published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Shorouk on Nov. 21, South Sudanese author Deng Aling said that Egypts interest in unifying the movement, especially at this time, mainly aims at limiting the role of Sudan, Ethiopia and Israel in South Sudan. He said, The foreign policy of the government of Juba is not yet understood, but the relations with neighboring Ethiopia are improving on one hand and deteriorating [on the other]. The same applies to the relations with Sudan. As for Israel, it wants to step in in South Sudan for several reasons.

Israel was one of the first countries to support the separatist movement in South Sudan. Israel considers South Sudan an important foothold to gain in Africa, in addition to benefiting from oil and the Nile waters. Israel signed the first joint international agreement with South Sudan for cooperation in the oil and Nile water areas on July 31, 2012.

Aling added, That is why Egypt decided to interfere and to find a solution to the issue through the reunification of the SPLM, which will eventually enable [Egypt] to be fully present in the south if the unity is to be achieved and the conflict to be resolved. This [move] would also allow [Egypt] to decrease, even if only slightly, the roles of Sudan, Ethiopia and Israel in the south, thus securing the White Nile from any attempts to use its water."

Since the civil war erupted in 2013, relations between South Sudan and Ethiopia went sour, as Juba accused Addis Ababa of sheltering, training and equipping rebel forces, which Ethiopia denies. Also, the relationship between South Sudan and Sudan is not at its best in light of pending issues that remain unsolved, such as the disputed lands in the Abyei area.

The signing of the Declaration of Unification comes at the same time as the stalled negotiations on the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan. Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Abdel Ati said in a statement Nov. 12 that there is a difference of views between the three countries, in spite of Egypt's approval of the initial report submitted by French consultancy firm BRL before completing the technical study on the effects of the Renaissance Dam on Egypt and Sudan. Ati did not specify the nature of disputes.

The radical change in Egyptian foreign policy was not limited to the African continent, as Cairo succeeded in concluding agreements in neighboring Arab countries.

In Palestine, Egypt achieved reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas on Oct. 12, in the presence of Egyptian intelligence Chief Khaled Fawzy, after a 10-year division following Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Meanwhile, Cairo is seeking to unify the Libyan army under the command of Gen. Khalifa Hifter. Three meetings were held in Cairo between military personnel from various Libyan areas. The latest such meeting was held Oct. 30, in the presence of officers from the Libyan city of Misrata and officials from the western and eastern areas. The meeting aimed at unifying the military institution in Libya and forming a unified military council that includes all members of the armed forces, away from politics, under the sponsorship of Mahmoud Ibrahim Hegazi, the chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces.

Egyptian army spokesman Tamer Rifai announced on Nov. 2 the formation of a group of specialized technical committees to look into mechanisms for unifying the Libyan military and ways to achieve this.

Hassan Nafea, a professor of political science at Cairo University, told Al-Monitor that Egypt's foreign policy changed radically in the wake of the events of June 30, 2013, that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood regime. Egypt is now focusing on confronting the group and other radical movements in other countries for fear of the return of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Nafea added, This is reflected in Egypts policy, whether in Palestine, in Libya or even in Syria. The Egyptian political system always seeks to strengthen the ruling regimes in Syria and Libya for fear of the rise of Islamic movements and their control over the government. A case in point is the huge Egyptian support to [Hifter]. In Palestine, Egypt succeeded in completing the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, one of the branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, to prevent the infiltration of extremist elements through Hamas into the Sinai Peninsula.

Nafea noted that Egypts policy also changed in Africa after the former Egyptian regimes distanced Egypt from the African continent. Egypt seeks to become a main actor in the internal scene of South Sudan in order to have pressure cards against Sudan. Such pressure would serve Egypts interests, especially since Sudan has been pressuring Cairo to give up the Halayeb area or refer to international arbitration, which Egypt completely rejects.

Nafea concluded, "Unfortunately, the current Egyptian regime is not aware that it has succeeded in exhausting the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist movements, The regime still fears these movements and the [threats they pose] on its survival.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. The State National Academic Choir of Armenia is celebrating its 80th anniversary.

The choir is preparing for an anniversary concert on this occasion on December 5.

The State National Academic Choir of Armenia was founded in 1937.

Maestro Hovhannes Chekijyan is leading the choir as its artistic director and conductor since 1961.

In addition to nationwide performances, the choir had concerts in 180 cities abroad, with a total of 820 performances. The choir has performed both Armenian and foreign classic compositions in 27 various languages in cities such as New York, Prague, Paris, Beirut and others.

A joint production of the State National Academic Choir of Armenia and Russias symphonic orchestra won the Grand Prix in Paris, with numerous other awards and titles being bestowed.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandian on December 4 received Michael Christides, Secretary General of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), press service of the ministry told Armenpress.

Welcoming the guest the Armenian FM said Armenia attaches importance to the regional economic integration processes, and guided by this principle, it actively takes part in the multisectoral cooperation within the BSEC.

BSEC Secretary General thanked for the reception and expressed satisfaction over Armenias active engagement within the frames of the BSEC.

The officials discussed Armenias upcoming chairmanship at the BSEC and its priorities.

They also touched upon the priority cooperation directions on the sidelines of the Organization, as well as issues relating to the reforms in BSEC.

FM Nalbandian said certain attempts to act against the rules of procedures and principles of the Organization within the frames of the BSEC Parliamentary Assembly are not useful and impact the structures reputation.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. The Regulatory Commission of Public Services of Armenia will debate during an upcoming December 6 session the issue of fining Electric Networks of Armenia for 5 million drams.

The Commission reported that the ENA has violated the rights of certain consumers.

The violation concern certain inconsistencies of in contract forms.

Back in October, administrative proceedings were launched on the matter, but ENA failed to produce any explanation.

If the governmental watchdog decided to fine the company, it will be bound to pay 5 million drams within two weeks.

ENA can dispute the decision both in the commission and court.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Members of the Armenian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC) assure that the formulations in the declaration, which is dedicated to the organizations 25thanniversary, over the settlement of conflicts can in no way affect the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement, reports Armenpress.

During a press conference in the Parliament, Gagik Minasyan  head of the Armenian delegation at the PABSEC, stated that this structure is not an independent body as it is subjected to the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, therefore, the Assembly is low with its status, and its decisions have no serious legal force.

The formulation in the declaration over the settlement of conflicts has been added by the proposal of the head of the Ukrainian delegation and is mainly directed against Russia, but this formulation can in no way affect the settlement of conflicts, as well as that of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Minasyan said.

He added that only the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship has a mandate to settle the NK conflict which was once again reaffirmed by the provision in the agreement signed between Armenia and the EU on the conflict settlement. The Nagorno Karabakh conflict must be settled within the frames of the Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship format based on the three main proposed principles, therefore, the formulations in such declarations regarding the settlement of conflicts can have no impact on the conflict settlement, Gagik Minasyan said.

Member of the Armenian delegation at the BSEC PA, ARF faction secretary Aghvan Vardanyan said the Assembly is exclusively an economic structure and has no mandate to give political assessments, thus, he considered unacceptable including the formulation regarding the conflict settlement in the declaration which has been made without discussing it with the Armenian delegation. That political formulation was really absurd, but it is understandable since the Assemblys session was being held in Kiev, Russia was not participating in the session and the head of the Ukrainian delegation tried to do something against Russia. They did it secretly, without discussing it with us since they knew that we will oppose as we have a clear stance that this structure should mainly focus on economic issues, Aghvan Vardanyan said.

He added that the Armenian delegation, overall, put the remaining delegations in difficult situation by leaving the session hall after making a tough statement.

Member of the Armenian delegation, Tsarukyan faction secretary Vahe Enfiajyan said the formulation on conflict settlements has been included in the declaration by Ukraine, and it was a step against Russia. He is also confident that this formulation can in no way affect the existing conflicts, as well as the NK conflict settlement. The MP informed that the final decisions are made by the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, rather than by the Parliamentary Assembly, and the Organization adopts decisions exclusively based on consensus, this means that Armenia can cancel any formulation at any moment.
President Donald Trump meets with Navajo Code Talkers, Fleming Begaye Sr., seated and Thomas Begay, center, in the Oval Office of the White House, Nov. 27, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Vice Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Eduard Sharmazanov on December 4 participated in the international conference titled Members of Parliament vs Drugs at the invitation of the Russian State Duma during which he delivered speech, press service of the Parliament told Armenpress.

Sharmazanov said the drug trafficking and their illegal circulation issues are a threat to the international community. This crime is closely linked to other challenges, including international terrorism and illegal money laundering. Given that the illegal circulation of drugs is a challenge to todays world, I want to state that it is also a threat to security. The fight against this phenomenon requires a united and coordinated effort. Armenia urges to carry out a more decisive fight against this disease and develop a common strategy to counter this threat. Armenia has a similar effective experience with the CSTO member states, and this conference can open a new page and opportunity against these threats, Eduard Sharmazanov said.

The Vice Speaker noted with regret that during the conference they once again witnessed the fake and anti-Armenian rhetoric of the Azerbaijani representatives. Instead of making meaningless accusations on Armenia and Artsakh, they would rather read the international reports about Azerbaijan. And I call on the participants of absurd remarks on Artsakh and all international partners to visit Artsakh. Visit and you will see that the citizens of Artsakh are building a democratic, free and independent Republic. I call on all of us to fight against terrorism, lie, racism, drug trafficking and all international challenges through joint efforts, he said.

Summing up my speech, taking into account the relevance of the issue, I suggest to discuss the main topic of the Members of Parliament vs Drugs conference, Sharmazanov added.
YEREVAN, 4 DECEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 4 December, USD exchange rate up by 0.13 drams to 484.34 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 2.07 drams to 574.19 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate down by 0.03 drams to 8.22 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 2.49 drams to 650.52 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price down by 67.83 drams to 19861.95 drams. Silver price down by 2.27 drams to 255.69 drams. Platinum price down by 89.50 drams to 14544.15 drams.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Defense Minister of Canada Harjit Sajjan highlights defense cooperation between Armenia and Canada.

ARMENPRESS reports, citing Horizon Weekly, the Defense Minister of Canada stressed that such cooperation in the sidelines of UN peacekeeping missions is particularly important in terms of ensuring regional stability.

The Canadian Defense Minister also referred to his countrys programs of sending peacekeeping units to regions in conflict, as well as details of Canadas military budget for the upcoming decade.

Harjit Sajjan is the first Defense Minister of Canada who represents ethnic minority - Canadian Sikhs Community.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Co-chairman of Switzerland-Armenia parliamentary friendship group Dominique de Buman has been elected President of the lower house of the Swiss parliament, the National Council.

ARMENPRESS reports de Buman told La Gruyere that Armenia will be among the first countries he will visit as President of the National Council. There will be official visits by delegations, first to Armenia during the period of February 3-8. It is the country of my preferences. I have achieved the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the parliament, he said.

Dominique de Buman added that he also plans to pay official vists to Brazil, France and Germany.
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The Courts of Appeals for the Second and Seventh Circuits upheld laws restricting retail sales of companion animals from puppy mills and other unscrupulous breeders where animals are often raised in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. Photo by Meredith Lee/The HSUS

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As we enter the final month of the year, Ill blog frequently on the highlights of 2017, beginning today with a pretty extraordinary year in the courts. The HSUSs cadre of two dozen in-house lawyers has been pushing the cause forward in the courts and in legislative assemblies at the state and federal level. Each year, the Animal Protection Litigation team pursues a bevy of lawsuits and legal petitions to support our major campaigns. They also work to defend laws under attack by government officials and by our political adversaries. And they work at the front-end of new lawmaking, by helping draft and review state and federal animal protection bills and ballot measures. They are aided in their efforts by a network of hundreds of lawyers throughout the country, including some of the best-known firms in the legal profession, from Latham & Watkins to Schiff Hardin, and many more.

This year, our legal team secured a series of wins in the federal courts, affirming the authority of states and local jurisdictions to regulate the trade in animals and animal products and to eliminate local market activity that fuels the inhumane treatment of animals, and cruel conditions in which the animals are raised. Weve racked up big wins in our campaigns against trophy hunting, puppy mills, inhumane confinement and other factory farming abuses, and much more. In particularly, the U.S. Courts of Appeals issued a series of rulings affirming the rights of states to adopt strong animal protection and food safety laws, including by restricting the sale of inhumanely produced animal parts and products.

Here is a look at the top legal victories of 2017.

WILDLIFE PROTECTION

Endangered Species Act protections restored to Great Lakes wolves: In August, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services decision to remove Endangered Species Act protection for wolves in the Great Lakes region, affirming the outcome by a U.S. District Court. The HSUS brought the original lawsuit, after polling and ballot measures showed the citizens of the Great Lakes region strongly favored wolf protection and thought federal delisting was premature. The court agreed that the Fish and Wildlife Service violated federal law by engaging in a piecemeal approach to wolf conservation, ruling that the agency must consider the impact of regional ESA listing and delisting decisions on all wolves in the lower 48 states. The decision has broader implications for ESA-listed species that exist in only small pockets of their former range. We are working hard to protect the federal court rulings from an override by some Congressional lawmakers.

Californias long-standing mountain lion protection law affirmed: Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about a legal victory for Americas majestic lions, also upheld in a critical decision by the 9th Circuit. More than 25 years ago, California voters approved Proposition 117 to codify a long-standing moratorium on lion hunting, first imposed by then Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1972. Proposition 117 prohibits the killing or injuring of any mountain lion, as well as the import into California and sale within the state of any mountain lion or any part thereof, regardless of the origin of the animal. Following the ouster of a California Fish and Game Commissioner for going to Idaho and shooting a lion in order to import it to Californiaeven though that practice was forbidden under Proposition 117, a state law he was charged with enforcingSafari Club International brought a belated challenge to the import provision of the 1990 law. In November, the Ninth Circuit upheld Proposition 117, rejecting the Safari Clubs claims that the law unduly burdened interstate commerce and that the law unfairly extended protected status to mountain lions when other species remain subject to hunting.

Aquarium fish collection industry permits disallowed without assessment of impacts: In September, the Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled in favor of The HSUS and co-plaintiffs, requiring the state of Hawaii to review the environmental impacts of commercial aquarium fish collection prior to issuing permits for those activities. This industry wreaks havoc on marine ecosystems by capturing hundreds of thousands of coral reef fish annually, often using cruel methods such as fizzing the fish by puncturing their swim bladders. The Hawaii Supreme Court decision overturned rulings by lower courts and held that the aquarium fish collection industry is subject to the Hawaii Environmental Policy Act.

FACTORY FARMING

Ninth Circuit revives California law banning the sale of products from force-fed birds: In September, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a unanimous ruling reinstating Californias law banning the sale of foie grasa fattened bird liver productmade by the practice of force-feeding birds. The court rejected foie gras producers contentions that the California law, which is focused on the way the birds are treated on the farm, was preempted by federal food safety and meat inspection laws. The court held that force-feeding is not a physical component in poultry meat and therefore the California law is not an ingredient requirement that can only be established by the federal government. Thus, the producers attempt to overturn Californias humane law fared no better than in 2013, when they failed to convince the same court that the California law violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. The court held then that California has every right to regulate activity within its state market to prevent complicity in a practice it deems cruel to animals.

U.S. Supreme Court lets appellate court ruling stand to affirm Californias anti-confinement law for laying hens: In May, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by several Big-Ag-aligned state attorneys general and governors, including former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who were seeking to overturn Californias landmark egg sales law, AB 1437, which requires eggs sold in the state come from hens not subjected to cruel confinement practices. This was the latest in a long string of failed attempts by Big Ag and its allies to overturn AB 1437 and Proposition 2, a ballot initiative which went into effect the same year mandating that laying hens, breeding sows, and veal calves must have room to stand up, lie down, turn around freely, and extend their limbs. In a 2016 decision concluding that several attorneys general bringing the case did not have standing to sue, the Ninth Circuit noted that AB 1437 does not distinguish among eggs based on their state of origin and therefore is not discriminatory. We recently launched a new initiative in California, which will be on the ballot in 2018, to build on that law by assuring that eggs, veal, and pork sold in the state, regardless of where they originate, meet even higher animal welfare and food safety standards.

Federal court vacates exemption for emissions reporting by industrial farming operations: In April, the D.C. Circuit vacated a 2008 Bush-era EPA regulation exempting the largest industrialized animal ag facilities, called CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) from their legal obligations to report releases of harmful air emissions of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. The HSUS and a coalition of public interest groups filed suit challenging the regulation, arguing that it violated the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation & Liability Act. Compliance with the D.C. Circuits ruling will mean that CAFOs must report their dangerous emissions, and there will be more opportunity for citizens and public interest groups to expose the harm that factory farms cause to humans, animals, and the environment, and for local government officials to plan for disasters and other emergency events.

PUPPY MILLS

New York and Chicago pet store ordinances upheld: Earlier this year, the Courts of Appeals for the Second and Seventh Circuits upheld laws restricting retail sales of companion animals from puppy mills and other unscrupulous breeders where animals are often raised in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, leading to health and behavioral problems for the animals, and emotional and financial burdens on consumers. The laws at issuea New York City ordinance prohibiting pet stores from selling puppies obtained from middleman brokers and breeders lacking a strong record of compliance with the Animal Welfare Act, and a Chicago ordinance requiring that pet stores only sell dogs, cats, and rabbits that have been obtained from animal control or animal rescue organizationsare aimed at curbing the sale of puppy mill dogs, and encouraging adoption of animals from the many overwhelmed animal shelters around the country.

ANIMAL CRUELTY

Ohio prohibitions on bestiality and animal fighting upheld: Three separate state courts in Ohio issued rulings preserving certain provisions of a law that make bestiality and animal fighting felony crimes in the state. The multifaceted law was challenged by municipal governments arguing that it violated a state constitutional requirement that legislation address only a single subject. The plaintiffs centered their challenge on provisions unrelated to the animal protection provisions of the law, and The HSUS filed briefs in the cases successfully arguing that the animal protection provisions are the primary subject and original focus of the law and should be retained. The new law was recently used to bring the first ever prosecution for bestiality in Ohio.

New Georgia cost-of-care law implemented in cruelty prosecution: Following up on a 2016 law that our legal team helped secure, the team assisted Habersham County (Georgia) officials with recovering almost $70,000 in costs of care in the first case involving the application of the new law. In passing the law, the Georgia legislature shifted the burden for the cost of caring for animals in cruelty cases to where it rightly belongsthe owner or custodian charged with cruelty. In April 2017, the HSUS Animal Rescue Team assisted Habersham County with a large scale animal cruelty case involving the seizure and rescue of more than 400 animals, more than 370 of who were surrendered. This fall, our lawyers were instrumental in helping the county government to recoup the costs of caring for the surrendered animals. This is an important precedent in our effort to ensure that enforcing anti-cruelty laws is not cost-prohibitive for law enforcement officials.

TRANSPARENCY

Public access to data concerning animal research facilities and hunting trophy imports: In February 2017, our lawyers sent the U.S. Department of Agriculture a notice of legal violation after the Trump administration eliminated public access to an online searchable database that included research facility annual reports, inspection reports for zoos and puppy mills, and enforcement records for Animal Welfare Act and Horse Protection Act violations. The notice alleged that the agencys action violated a 2009 settlement agreement whereby the USDA agreed to make research facility annual reports available, which led the agency to re-post those reports. In May, in response to the filing of a lawsuit over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services unlawful withholding of records regarding the importation of wildlife and wildlife parts, including hunting trophies, the federal government agreed that it had wrongfully withheld some of the redacted information and began producing responses to our requests. These advances in government transparency will help ensure that The HSUS and humane-conscious citizens have access to information so that we can advocate for policy change that benefits animals. The USDA is still withholding an enormous number of documents, and our work on this betrayal of the public trust is far from complete.

So many of the legal issues on which we work are intertwined with ongoing political fights at the state and federal level  from ballot measures to federal rulemaking to Congressional lawmaking. While we work in the courts to protect lawmaking weve done, we also work in Congress and in state legislatures to protect favorable court rulings. We build on all of this work through our public policy work, including groundbreaking ballot initiatives.
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About Censored News Censored News is published by Brenda Norrell. Since 2006, Censored News has received more than 20 million pageviews. As a collective of writers, photographers and broadcasters, we publish news of Indigenous Peoples and human rights. Contact publisher Brenda Norrell: brendanorrell@gmail.com

From the publisher Censored News is published by Brenda Norrell, a journalist in Indian country for 40 years. Norrell created Censored News after she was censored and terminated as a staff reporter at Indian Country Today in 2006. She began as a reporter at Navajo Times during the 18 years that she lived on the Navajo Nation. She was a stringer for AP and USA Today and later traveled with the Zapatistas through Mexico. She has been blacklisted by all the mainstream media for 14 years. Contact brendanorrell@gmail.com

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Canada's Trudeau says will keep exploring trade deal with China

By Michael Martina

BEIJING (Reuters) - Canada will continue to explore a free trade agreement with China, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday, as it weighs its options after the United States threatened to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Speaking after a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Trudeau said if "done properly", such an agreement would benefit both countries and strengthen the middle class.

"It's an opportunity that makes sense for Canadian businesses," he said at the start of a five-day trip to China. "Canada is and always has been a trading nation. But the landscape of trade is shifting and we need to adjust to it."

Li said China remained open to exploring a free trade deal with Canada as part of joint efforts to safeguard world trade liberalization and advance globalization.

"We have an open attitude toward the process of negotiations, and an open attitude towards their contents," Li said.

Canada is considering whether to launch talks on a free trade deal with China, which wants a trade pact similar to the ones it has with Australia and New Zealand.

But Trudeau, aware of domestic unease at the idea, is moving slowly. Although polls consistently show Canadians are split over the merits of a trade deal, Canada needs to diversify exports to offset the possible damage done if the United States pulls out of NAFTA.

Trudeau's visit, which began on Sunday, comes as plane maker Bombardier Inc is eager to win a breakthrough order from Chinese carriers for its CSeries jet, whose fuselage is made in China.

But the chance of sealing such deals has become more cloudy after Canada encouraged Bombardier to sell a controlling stake in the CSeries program to Airbus rather than a Chinese firm.

"On the agricultural front, I'm pleased to announce the Canadian beef and pork will have greater access to the Chinese market," Trudeau said, without elaborating.

Story continues

China has been loosening restrictions on beef imports this year to feed the appetite of the country's growing middle class for more Western food.

Trudeau said he also agreed with Li a joint statement that affirms a commitment to "mitigating the global threat of climate change" and lays out a plan for closer collaboration.

Earlier on Monday, Trudeau promoted Chinese tourism to Canada at an event held at the headquarters of China's Twitter-like online media company, Sina Weibo.

Canada has said it will co-host a January meeting with the United States of up to 16 foreign ministers in Vancouver to produce "better ideas" to ease tensions over North Korea's nuclear and ballistic tests.

In late November, North Korea tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile yet, putting the continental United States within range and increasing pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump to deal with the nuclear-armed nation.

Li said he discussed international and regional issues with Trudeau, but did not elaborate.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Renold Francisque wept as he stepped out of the Canada Border Services building in Edmonton.

A crimson growth on the side of his neck bulged over his shirt collar as he stared down at a letter that read to him like a death sentence.

For the past nine months, Francisque has been treated for tuberculosis. But his treatment may end abruptly on Jan. 2, 2018, if he is deported back to Haiti.

"I just go to die," he said. "I cannot stay. I have to go but my life is done. Finished."

Canadian authorities believe Francisque, 54, was a member of a brutal Haitian militia. He has been rejected three times in his bid to stay in Canada. Francisque insists he has never been involved in criminal activity.

Last week's removal order leaves him with little time left to exercise his remaining legal options. But Francisque and his supporters hope his medical condition might change that.

Francisque's symptoms, including lymphadenopathy in his neck, have recently worsened, raising the possibility he has an "acquired drug-resistant disease," his infectious disease specialist wrote last week.

"We would consider it medically inadvisable for him to travel now," said his doctor. "He will require several investigations to better determine the extent of this ongoing TB and to plan subsequent treatment."

According to his sworn affidavit, Francisque said he first fled Haiti in 1996 after his refusal to join a violent political group put his life in danger.

He resettled in Florida but his refugee application was rejected.

In 2008, he crossed the border on foot into Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que., a route thousands of Haitians would follow a decade later. After his refugee claim was rejected, he applied for permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

Over the next decade, Francisque carved out a new life Edmonton. He worked in construction, bonded with friends at church and volunteered his time driving newcomers around the city.

Story continues

His determination to stay grew stronger after his mother was killed in Haiti's 2010 earthquake that destroyed their family home. His eight children fled to various countries and his brother was murdered in 2013, he said.

"I go down there and what happens?" asked Francisque. "They're still looking for me."

This year his health began to deteriorate. As pain spread to his neck, back and limbs. he struggled to lift tools and walk. Mornings were occupied by daily trips to the hospital to take antibiotics.

Francisque was forced to give up his $30-an-hour carpentry contracts for a part-time cleaning job at West Edmonton Mall. He earned $13 an hour as his medical expenses mushroomed.

With no health-care insurance, Francisque estimated he has paid $5,000 for doctor's appointments, a biopsy and antibiotics.

'A basic human right'

But those struggles seem surmountable compared to the consequences of returning to a country with under-equipped, run-down and expensive hospitals, he said. He explained he has nowhere to live, no means to support himself and no family to care for him.

"We can't send somebody outside the country when he's sick," said Said David with the Council of Canadian-Africans, who began advocating for Francisque last January. "This is a basic human right."

In Haiti there are just two organizations that treat drug-resistant TB, according to Dr. Evan Lyon, of Partners in Health, which offers the treatment.

But Lyon said capacity for complex infections is limited while general health care is inaccessible, often unavailable and of poor quality.

"I think the greatest likelihood is he would die of the disease if he were removed," said Lyon.

"All other things considered, he has a curable disease and he deserves a chance to have that treated."

In a letter dated Jan. 6, 2017, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada accused Francisque of being a member in a militia called the Volontaires de la Securite Nationale (Tontons Macoutes).

Francisque denies that. He said he refused to be recruited by another politically violent group, making him a target in more ways than one. The group also falsely labelled him a Macoute, he wrote in his affidavit, which was submitted to Citizenship and Immigration.

'Force of terror'

The Tonton Macoutes was a militia that beat, tortured and murdered political opponents, propping up both the dictatorships of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

"It was a force of terror," said Brian Concannon, executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy. "What both Duvaliers wanted was a cowed population."

He said members ranged from "evil sadists," which included most of the leadership, to those in search of a meal or meaning. Others were influenced by friends, pressured or joined as a means of survival, he said.

"If the Tonton Macoutes were terrorizing your neighbourhood, that was one way of getting security for you and your family," said Concannon.

The militia hasn't formally existed since 1986 and hasn't resurfaced since the late 1980s, he added.

Documents from Francisque's lawyer show evidence submitted to Canadian authorities included a sworn letter from a close friend who knew Francisque in Haiti, stating he was not a member of any criminal organization.

A police certificate from the Haitian State Police indicates Francisque doesn't have a criminal record, which is also the case in Alberta.

David says the police certificate is the only criminal record check the Canadian government will recognize but that's not happening in this case.

"They still don't recognize it," said David. "They contradict themselves. This is disturbing. That's why I think he didn't receive a just hearing."

They believe Francisque was mistakenly deemed to have ties to the Macoutes during his 2008 refugee board hearing, when he tried to explain his situation in broken French. But despite requests, they say they have not received details about the allegations.

"They don't have any proof," said David. "They've just misinterpreted what he said in his first hearing."

'Mere suspicion is generally enough'

According to Sharry Aiken, an immigration law expert from Queen's University, expert counsel is required in such complex cases because the threshold of guilt is so low.

"Something akin to mere suspicion is generally enough to brand somebody inadmissible on security grounds," Aiken said.

She said the Supreme Court has been clear that although the government is entitled to protect information on the basis of national security, it's required to provide an adequate summary of allegations. If not, she said, counsel can challenge the department's failure to do so and a complaint can also be made to the Security Intelligence Review Committee.

"If you don't know what the allegations are, it's almost impossible to set the record straight," said Aiken. "On the ground when these decisions are made by frontline people working in the system they often over protect information on national security grounds such that it becomes very impossible for the person to dislodge an erroneous conclusion about them."

But it doesn't appear Francisque has exhausted his legal options. His lawyer can apply for a judicial review or a discretionary ministerial request, said Aiken. And an application for a pre-removal risk assessment is also still pending in his case.

The Canada Border Services Agency does not discuss individual cases, in accordance with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Privacy Act, said spokesperson Luke Reimer, in a statement to CBC News.

"Once individuals have exhausted all legal avenues of appeal/due process, they are expected to respect our laws and leave Canada or be removed," he said.

@andreahuncar
For nearly 30 years, the St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church has sat empty and unused behind a chain link fence on the side of the New Maryland highway.

The door of the church has a large florescent yellow 'No Trespassing' sign, next to a plaque that states the church is a provincial heritage site.

It's shame the distinctive wooden church isn't valued as the treasure it is, says well-known Fredericton architect John Leroux.

A committee formed by the Anglican Parish of New Maryland to determine what to do with the church asked Leroux to evaluate what condition the church was in, and report back to them.

While the building will need some work, Leroux says it's an "absolute stunner" inside.

Pre-Confederation building

Its history also makes it one of the most important churches in the province, he said.

The church was built between 1863 and 1864, making it a pre-Confederation building.

It was designed by Edward Medley, who was the son of Bishop John Medley, the man responsible for the Christ Church Cathedral in Fredericton.

Edward Medley designed five or six churches in New Brunswick after being trained by one of the most important architects in England. He was also an Anglican priest.

"It's a spectacular gothic revival building. It's one of the most important churches in New Brunswick and it's been kind of abandoned or forsaken for the last 30 years," Leroux said.

"I alway say, we shouldn't ignore our treasures, we should embrace them, and I think we have a chance to do that now."

Parish mulls options

Leroux presented his findings to the parish committee at a public meeting last week.

New Maryland Mayor Judy Wilson-Shee, who is the chairperson of the committee, said since the meeting she's heard from several people who are interesting developing some options for the use of the church.

"I think what stuck with a lot of people, they've never seen the inside of that church," she said.

Story continues

"The inside is in excellent condition, it's really is."

The next step in the new year will be to come up with a business plan for the redevelopment of the church, she said.

But as both the mayor and chair of the committee, Wilson-Shee says she's trying to stay neutral about the best option for the building.

In any case, a solid business plan will be necessary if the church is to be re-purposed, she said.

"Anyone can have an idea, but you have to have a business plan. You have to know how you are going to accomplish, what you're setting out to do," she said.

A community project

Ultimately, it will be up to the parish, who still own the church, to decide what happens with the church.

Leroux said he thinks the building could be used as a community centre where concerts or lectures are held.

"We want to make this a community project. This isn't about an Anglican church, this is about a beautiful piece of architecture and about returning it back to the community," he said.
A.J. Fernandez Cigar Company has named Selim Hanono as its new Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Selim comes with incredible experience and knowledge of our industry. We have full confidence that he will help lead our company and take us to the next level. He will have our full support in order to accomplish our companys exciting goals moving forward said AJ Fernandez in a press release.

Hanono has 30 years industry experience. More recently he worked at Drew Estate where he served as Vice President of Trade Shows and events.

I want to thank AJ and the Fernandez Family for this wonderful and exciting opportunity. It was important to me to join another company rich in values and tradition as well as with great leadership. It was also very important for it to be based in Nicaragua. Nicaraguas tobacco, its culture and its people have made it my second home. We will accomplish many great things together. The future is very bright at AJ Fernandez, commented Hanono.
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. Wherever possible i quote source, I don't claim ownership of what's not mine. WARNING :if you want to copy my work add credit and a link to my url, the original.
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Brussels, December 4, 2017Maltese police, armed forces, and security services today arrested 10 suspects in connection with the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat announced. Caruana Galizia was killed on October 16 when her car was blown up. In Malta, police have 48 hours to question suspects before charging or releasing them.

Malta, a member of the European Union, must ensure this investigation is swift and thorough, and meets international standards, said CPJ European Union Representative Tom Gibson. Justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia will only be achieved when every person responsible for her murder, including the mastermind, has been convicted and punished.

The journalists family has taken legal action against the police, alleging that the investigation cannot be impartial because Caruana Galizia wrote critical articles about the chief investigator and the government minister to whom he is married, according to news reports. Members of the European Parliament who visited Malta last week criticized the countrys rule of law and noted a perception of impunity among government officials, according to reports.
Vigilant Ace: South Korea, US launch largest air exercise

Published: December 4, 2017

South Korea and United States have launched Vigilant Ace, their largest-ever joint aerial drills. The exercise comes after North Korea tested Hwasong-15, its most advanced and powerful Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) as part of its weapons programme.

Vigilant Ace

Vigilant Ace is annual US-South Korean drill designed to enhance their readiness and operational capability and to ensure peace and security on Korean peninsula. More than 12,000 service members from US will join airmen from South Korea in air combat exercise. Troops from US Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy will train with 230 South Korean and US aircraft, including six F-22 Raptors and 18 F-35 Lightning II fighter jets. Of 18 F-35s, six are F-35A models from Air Force and 12 are F-35B models from Marine Corps. The fighters will fly to Korean Peninsula from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan.

Background

The isolated and impoverished North Korea has staged six increasingly powerful atomic tests since 2006  most recently in September 2017. It nuclear and missile programmes have made significant progress under leader Kim Jong-Un, who has overseen four nuclear tests and dozens of missile launches since taking power in 2011.

Recently in November 2017, North Korea had claimed that Hwasong 15 ICBM is capable of delivering a super-large nuclear warhead anywhere in US mainland. Even experts supported the claim and held that latest test showed a big improvement in potential range. They are also sceptical that North Korea has mastered sophisticated technology required to protect such warhead from extreme temperatures and stresses encountered during re-entry of missile to Earth.



Month: Current Affairs - December, 2017

Category: Defence Current Affairs

Topics: Aerial Drills  Defence  International  Military Exercises  South Korea  United States  Vigilant Ace

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Chiefs in Balaka district have called on government to permanently remove death penalty in the penal code that was suspended in 2007.





According to the Chiefs, Malawi needs to respect right to life of inmates who are sentenced to death.





Speaking at the commemoration of cities of life by Community of Saint Egidio in Balaka, Senior Chief Nsamala called on government to remove death penalty in the penal code saying the country should focus on transforming people who are sentenced to capital punishment.





We would have loved if government had removed death penalty in our penal code, some people are sentenced to serve jail terms without committing the offense and we may kill such person because they didnt have a lawyer to follow up the case for them to get justice, said chief Nsamala.





Concurring with Nsamala, Inkosi Chathunya added that government must not give capital punishment saying killing does not reflect Malawi being a God- fearing nation.





Citing a Biblical story of Moses life, Apostle Andrew Makharamba of Destiny Ministries International in Balaka said the country must transform those sentenced to have capital punishment to be responsible citizens.





When we read the Bible, Moses was a murderer, he killed someone in Egypt but look God used him to go and liberate the Israelites, what if he was sentenced to death penalty, said Makharamba.





Responsible person for the Community of Saint Egidio in Balaka Potipher Magombo said the community is to ensure that Malawi has ommitted the death penalty in the penal code despite the law being declared unconstitutional.





Every year the Community of Saint Egidio commemorate the abolition of death penalty in laws of countries in the World.





This years commemoration were under the theme No justice without life.

 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!





"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,

but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Two disgruntled shareholders who filed a lawsuit against privately owned Promega Corp. and a third shareholder accused of plotting with them are denying allegations that they conspired to coerce the company into buying back their shares at exorbitant prices or, if that failed, to take over Promega, dump founder and CEO Bill Linton, and sell the company to get a premium payback on their stock.

Longtime Promega shareholders Nathan Brand and Ted Kellner filed suit in July 2016 against the Fitchburg biotechnology company and Linton, claiming bullying tactics by Linton have kept them from getting a fair return on their decades-long investment. They tried to buy the company for $625 a share, or $1.2 billion, and when Promegas board rejected the proposal, the shareholders wanted the company to pay them $575 a share through a stock buyback  nearly $200 a share more than Promega offered to pay for its stock at the time.

In response to the lawsuit, Promega and Linton turned the tables and accused Brand, Kellner and shareholder Paul Shain of conspiracy, fraud and racketeering, saying they were ready to do whatever it takes  from digging up dirt on Linton to using pressure tactics on individual board members  to get more money for their stock. The counterclaims were based largely on correspondence between Brand and Kellner.

Shain was Brands and Kellners choice to be the new CEO of Promega, the counterclaims said.

Now the shareholders have replied to the counterclaims.

Brand and Kellner said the allegations against them are false and have no merit whatsoever. They say some of their comments, cited to demonstrate collusion, have been taken out of context.

Put simply: Mr. Linton is using the cover of a legal pleading to falsely attack the plaintiffs in a thinly-veiled attempt to distract from his own burdensome, harsh, and wrongful conduct, attorneys for Brand and Kellner said.

They are asking for dismissal of the counterclaims.

Attorneys for Shain  who served as a Promega board member for eight years and as interim general manager of Promegas North America operations from 2012 to 2014  said Promega and Linton have woefully failed to meet their burden to sufficiently allege the elements of their claims against Shain.

They say little evidence beyond implication or insinuation has been introduced to back up claims that Shain was part of a conspiracy, and neither Promega nor Linton was hurt by the shareholder efforts.

The alleged hostile takeover attempt did not succeed, Shains lawyers wrote, in their filing Nov. 2. In fact, they said, Linton now owns a higher percentage of Promega than ever  47 percent of the companys stock  and theres no allegation that the company lost business, customers or profits as a result of anything Paul Shain did.

It is clear ... that Promega and Linton did not suffer any actual damage, and for that threshold reason, all of the third-party claims must be dismissed, Shains attorneys said in their dismissal motion filed Nov. 2.

At the basis of the legal dispute is the effort by Linton, a local biotech pioneer, to keep Promega local and independent in the long term versus the shareholders effort to get what they consider a fair payback for their years of support. The shareholders also claim that Lintons true motive has been to wrest control of Promega and transfer the shares to Usona Institute, which Linton set up in 2014 to explore the use of hallucinogenic drugs to treat depression and anxiety.

Promega Corp., founded in 1978, sells 3,500 products used in research, drug discovery and DNA identification. Of its nearly 1,500 employees, nearly 900 are in the Madison area. The company had $386 million in revenue in the 2017 fiscal year and has branches in 16 countries.

The case is before Dane County Circuit Court Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn. No trial date has been set. Oral arguments on Shains motion to dismiss are scheduled in January.
Through its Bi-national Commission with Nigeria, the U.S. hopes to find new areas of collaboration with regard to security cooperation; economic growth and development; and democracy and governance.

In the Northwest region of Nigeria, Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa have wrought a great deal of destruction on the Nigerian people  forcing more than two million to flee from their homes. Speaking in Nigeria, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan said, I want to emphasize. . .that the United States is Nigerias partner in this fight. We are committed to helping the Nigerian people provide their own security.

The U.S. has helped Nigeria modernize its military. But a military response alone in the Northeast cannot lead to sustained peace, said Deputy Secretary Sullivan. Nigerias success requires improvements to the economy and governance off the battlefield, including credible investigations of human rights violations and mechanisms to hold those found guilty accountable for their actions.

To help those affected by Boko Haram rebuild their lives, Deputy Secretary Sullivan announced that the U.S. Agency for International Development will contribute an additional $45.5 million.

The United States will continue to support food security and nutrition programs in Nigeria including development programs focused on the Northeastern states.

Predictable economic policies and a transparent justice system are necessary to create an environment for growth and to attract businesses and investment to Nigeria.

Sufficient energy resources are critical to fueling growth in Nigeria. Through the U.S. governments Power Africa Initiative, the U.S. will help the Nigerian government serve the majority of Nigerians who currently lack access to electricity. In particular, Deputy Secretary Sullivan announced a $1.3 million project to address the shortage of gas available for gas-fired power plants under the Power Africa Initiative.

Finally, in addition to supporting the security and economic growth of Nigeria, the United States recognizes that good governance is necessary to sustain both over the long-term. Fighting corruption and ensuring free and fair elections, will make the government of Nigeria more accountable to its people and better equipped to secure its citizens and keep its economy growing.

The United States looks forward to working with Nigeria to reach their shared security, development and governance goals.
The instant translation device Pilot. Waverly Labs

Language barriers may no longer be a problem thanks to Travis the Translator, a new device capable of translating 80 languages in real time.

And with more than 42,500 people around the world forced to flee their homes each day, the device is set to provide much-needed assistance to NGOs that help those affected by the refugee crisis.

More than 200 devices have been given to Open Learning Exchange, a UN program aimed at improving access to basic education, as well as Movement on the Ground, an organization that supports refugees.

Language is much more than putting across a concrete idea

Sonia Pratt, Barcelona Autonomous University

But Travis the Translator has also raised concerns. Could it be an alternative to learning a language? Will devices like it replace professional translators and interpreters?

Travis the Translator, like Pilot or Google Pixel Buds, works on a very simple premise: two people who speak different languages put in an earpiece, which almost instantly translates the conversation.

The vice dean of Innovation and Technology in the Philology Department at Madrids Complutense University, Jorge Arus, says devices such as Travis the Translator are about making the speaker feel more secure: They help get rid of the fear of speaking a foreign language in another country.

Multinationals are also interested in Travis. International companies such as IKEA have shown interest in our product; they think that it will help their staff at international meetings and on business trips, said sources at the global company. Meanwhile, Google says that it has already sold Google Pixel Buds to companies based in Europe and South East Asia.

Google Translate has the level of comprehension of a six-year-old child ATRAE vice president Eugenia Arres

Most instant translation devices cost around 200 but more affordable translation apps, such as Speak & translate, iTranslate and Skype Translator, are also gaining popularity.

Industry representatives argue their products are especially useful for travel, allowing users to find out about the local food and attractions. If youre going on a short trip, are you going to spend months learning a language you will use for a week? Most people dont have time to do this, say the makers of ili Wearable Translator.

For Sonia Prats, the director of language studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, language is much more than putting across a concrete idea. While Prats recognizes these systems could help people when traveling, she thinks they will never replace the real need to communicate with other human beings.

Arus doesnt believe that instant translation devices are going to stop people from learning languages, instead people could learn more having been exposed to the language by the device.

But new technology continues to advance at vertiginous speeds. We are in a boom era for artificial intelligence, says Juan Salvador Castejon, spokesman for the general council of Spains IT engineering associations (CCII). The specialist in voice-recognition systems claims that technology has evolved more quickly in the last year than in the last five.

Only jobs where people provide extra value by making decisions or interpreting something that is non-technical will survive

Computer engineer Juan Salvador Castejon

Indeed, according to Alfonso Urena, president of the Spanish society for natural language processing, it is only a matter of time before translation programs become perfect. But while voice-recognition technology is very advanced, it is not at the same level as human communication. The devices still make mistakes when it comes to context or translating phrases. Google translate for instance, can will literally translate high five to cinco altos  instead of the Spanish chocala.

But if instant-translation programs continue to improve at the same rate, some people expect to see big changes. For example, Salvador Vaticina, an interpreter in the European Parliament, could be replaced by one of these devices. But Eugenia Arres, the vice president of Spanish Association of Audiovisual Translators (ATRAE), believes theres nothing to worry about. She argues that the devices rely on artificial intelligence, which is still in its infancy today when it comes to translation.

Google Translate has the level of comprehension of a six-year-old child. I dont see these devices interpreting for businesses for the same reason that we dont send text translated by Google Translate without revising it first, she says.

Arres has a different concern: privacy. She questions the degree to which translated recordings belong to device makers, and whether those firms are free to do what they like with them. We have signed confidentiality agreements and at this point, I dont think these devices will affect our work, she adds.

That said, Arres recognizes that the work of interpreters is likely to change just as has happened to translators, who spend an increasing amount of time editing rather than translating. Computer engineer Juan Salvador Castejon believes the best option for people in these industries is to build instant-translation devices: Only jobs where people provide extra value by making decisions or interpreting something that is not simply a case of mechanical work will survive.

The dubbing actress is convinced she falls into this category: In films, you dont translate words, you translate feelings. She also draws attention to the difference between simultaneous translation, which has has a slight delay, and synchronicity, where the words and mouth movements match perfectly. It is the same case with guides. Almudena Cencerrado, president of the Spanish Confederation of Tourists Guides, says earpieces cant capture the experience: Its impossible to translate terminology or personal experiences without losing the human quality.

English version by Melissa Kitson.
Suspects entering the Supreme Court. Julian Rojas (EL PAIS)

Spains Supreme Court has decided to release six Catalan politicians from pre-trial custody but to keep the two most prominent ones behind bars.

Former deputy premier Oriol Junqueras, of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), and his ex-minister for interior affairs Joaquim Forn will remain in detention after Justice Pablo Llarena determined that there is a risk that both would go back to committing the same crimes if released.

The group had argued that failing to release them would violate their legal right to participate in political life

The heads of two prominent pro-independence associations are also being kept in custody while an investigation into rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds is underway in connection with the illegal independence drive.

Justice Llarena set bail of 100,000 for each of the other six former officials. By Monday afternoon all six had posted bail, and at 2pm they were informed that they were free to go. Before walking out of Estremera and Alcala-Meco penitentiaries, in the Madrid region, the former officials were reminded of their obligation to report to a court weekly, and to remain within Spanish territory.

A few minutes before 4pm, Dolors Bassa and Maritxell Borras left Alcala-Meco, where they were greeted by members of the Democratic Party of Catalonia (PDeCAT).

Ive been able to hug Meritxell Borras, minister of my country. We never want to go back to Alcala Meco, tweeted David Bonvehi, the organization secretary at PDeCAT, the leading party in the Junts pel Si coalition that governed Catalonia until its ouster under Article 155 of the Constitution.

Marta Pascal, the PDeCAT, was at Estremera, where she alluded to the four individuals who remain in pre-trial detention: We are dismayed and angry that they will not all sleep in their homes, and we believe this is arbitrary and unacceptable. We disagree with the decision.

The decision will influence the Catalan election campaign, which officially kicks off tonight at midnight. Seven of the jailed politicians are candidates for separatist parties in the December 21 election, and on Friday they had given the court assurances that from now on they would pursue their political goals within the bounds of the law.

It had been widely expected that Justice Pablo Llarena would release the entire group as a further step towards restoring normalcy in a region where the entire government was ousted by the central administration following the independence declaration of late October.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy invoked Article 155 of the Constitution for the first time in Spains modern democratic history. Under the emergency powers granted by this provision, Rajoy also called an early election in Catalonia, where it is hoped that the new government that emerges from the polls will no longer overstep Spains legal framework, regardless of its political beliefs.

The former government officials, including ex-deputy premier Oriol Junqueras of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), were placed in pre-trial custody on November 2 by a judge at the Audiencia Nacional, Spains High Court, after she took statements from them. The heads of two leading pro-independence associations are also in custody. All of them are being investigated for rebellion and sedition.

But several other suspects, including Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell, were heard by the Supreme Court, which decided to release them on bail after they pledged to observe Article 155 of the Constitution.

This court recently took over from the Audiencia Nacional, bringing together all related cases under Justice Llarena, who heard Junqueras and his aides last Friday. In their petitions for release, all eight pledged to abide by Article 155 despite disagreeing politically and legally with it.

The group had argued that failing to release them so they can campaign for office would violate their legal right to participate in political life, and would also violate voters right to elect them. The pro-independence association heads Jordi Sanchez, of Asamblea Nacional Catalana (ANC), and Jordi Cuixart, of Omnium Cultural, similarly said that they will observe constitutional legislation from now on.

But prosecutors remained unconvinced and say that the accused represent a flight risk, that they might destroy evidence or commit the same offenses all over again. Justice Llarena said that Junqueras and Forn are not a flight risk, but that they may commit the same crimes again if released.

English version by Susana Urra.
Opinion articles written in the style of their author." These texts are to be based on verified facts and must be respectful towards people, even though their actions may be criticized. shall feature, along with the author's name (regardless of their greater or lesser renown), a footer stating their office, academic title, political affiliation (if any) and main occupation, or the occupation related to the topic being assessed

The Kremlin. ALEXANDER NEMENOV (AFP)

Spain: welcome to the 21st century. Its now your turn to experience the digital delights of Moscows use of bots, hacks, trolls and state media to cause chaos and confusion. The Kremlin has been trying out these tactics among its neighbors for years. As early as 2007, for example, it used a mix of DDOS attacks and fake stories to fan ethnic riots in Estonia and incapacitate the tiny countrys banking and government systems. In Ukraine it used lies on broadcast and social media to polarize the country to such an extent that it paved the way for a covert invasion. In Germany it helped boost anti-immigrant protests by pushing a made-up story about a Russian girl raped by a refugee. Most recently it has even experimented with placing dark ads on Facebook in the US to exacerbate tensions around race and immigration.

Its an approach that was first honed in the Soviet KGB, who had thousands of agents working on what were known as Active Measures

Its an approach that was first honed in the Soviet KGB, who had thousands of agents working on what were known as Active Measures: the use of fakes and forgeries to sow discord in the West. Stories ranged from President Carters Secret Plan to Put Black Africans and Black Americans at Odds; blaming the US for the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II; blaming the US for a coup attempt against French President De Gaulle; forged letters from the Ku Klux Klan that threatened athletes from African countries perhaps the most famous was Operation Infektion, a carefully concocted story that alleged the CIA had designed the AIDS virus as a weapon.

But there is one great difference between the Kremlins activities then and now. Back then the Soviets spent a lot of effort making their lies seem real. Operation Infektion involved medical evidence provided by East German biologists, forged CIA letters and a front newspaper in India to place the story in. When the US government accused the Soviets of spreading lies this was met with outraged denial from the Gorbachev regime: how dare they accuse the Soviets of falsehoods?

When Putin denies that Russian soldiers are present in Ukraine he isnt so much lying as saying facts dont matter

Today the Putin regimes disinformation can be very reminiscent of those days, with stories about how the US designed the Ebola virus, or that a secret US base was producing the Zika virus in Ukraine. This time around, however, the Kremlin does not bother with trying to convince anyone its lies are true. It simply pumps the stories out online, and spreads them further with bots. The Kremlins post-fact approach goes with the grain of todays media environment. Back in the Cold War there were a limited number of broadcasters and newspapers, a large but just about graspable information space where you could contest your version of reality. The information revolution changed all that. Search engines and social media allow people to self-select the news that suits them and to dwell in ever more enclosed echo chambers where truth is whatever you want it to be. Likewise when Vladimir Putin first denies that Russian soldiers are present in Ukraine  and then just as easily admits that they are there after all  he isnt so much lying in the sense of trying to convince someone of a false reality as saying facts dont matter.

The only unifying characteristic is hostility and mistrust toward the system

Similarly, modern Kremlin propaganda no longer focuses on the left-wing, anti-colonial and labor causes that it cherished during the Cold War. In place of those ideologies is a post-modernist denial of the whole liberal concept of Western society. Democracy is a sham; politicians are crooked and ridiculous. Russian propaganda supports far-left and far-right movements, and any form of protest in between. The only unifying characteristic is hostility and mistrust toward the system, the destruction of a public space where evidence-based, deliberative democracy can flourish.

The most catastrophic mistake one can make in responding to the Kremlins games is to take actions that exacerbate the very divisions the Kremlin wants to amplify. From Eastern Europe to the US a first reaction has been to accuse anyone whose cause the Kremlin has attached itself to as being some sort of traitor or useful idiot. This has only served to help the Kremlin, falling for the apple of discord it has thrown in the room. If the Kremlins aim is to help destroy trust  the challenge is how can one rebuild it.

Peter Pomeranzev is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs and Co-Director of the Arena Program at the London School of Economics.
Basque regional premier Inigo Urkullu has come out strongly in defense of the regions special fiscal regime, the Cupo vasco  a deal in which the Basque government gets to collect its own taxes and return a sum to Madrid for services rendered by the state, rather than the other way around as is the case elsewhere.

Basque Premier Inigo Urkullu (center) during Sundays Basque National Day celebrations. DAVID AGUILAR (EFE)

In an article published in EL PAIS, the leader of the wealthy Spanish region has defended the system amid a flurry of criticism from regions around the country over the fact Spanish Congress recently signed off on the latest version of the Basque deal, which is renewed every five years, before the government tackled the key issue of an overhaul of financing for Spains other autonomous regions.

The PP and the PNV believe the Basque example shows it is possible for regions to have a different relationship with the Spanish state

The issue is particularly thorny given the question of financing has been a key source of friction in relations between Catalonia and Madrid in recent years. The pro-independence movement has always used fiscal balance data to convey the notion that Catalonia is getting a raw deal by paying in more to state coffers than it receives back.

But Urkullu argues the Basque system, enshrined in the Spanish Constitution, can be used as a reference point for a new decentralized system in Spain in which revenues guarantee the future of the welfare state in all of the countrys regions. The Basque leader argues, too, that joint fiscal responsibility could be a cornerstone in achieving more efficient financing of the regions.

The latest update of the Basque financing deal was backed by all the major parties in the Spanish Congress but regional leaders remain highly critical of the ruling Popular Party (PP) over its failure to fulfill promises on the issue of regional financing and of a Basque deal seen by many as an example of preferential treatment.

Meanwhile, the Basque premier maintains the debate could be a positive jumping-off point in the bid to establish a clear and simple system of financing where regions have access to sufficient funds of their own and where tax collection is decentralized to give autonomous regions more room to move on spending.

Urkullu explains that the Basque model, which has its origins in the 19th century, is a transparent fiscal regime in such a way that if the Basque country wants to spend more on services, it has to come from higher taxes or from cuts to other costs of its own. He adds he is not in favor of the reduction of taxes or of the possibility of the Basque Country becoming a fiscal paradise.

Financing has been a key source of friction in relations between Catalonia and Madrid in recent years

In reality, the average tax burden in the Basque Country has been higher than in Spain since 1981, states Urkullu in response to criticism that the region was gifted a special deal after the regions ruling Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) supported the budget of the minority PP government of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Urkullu argues the debate of the financing of Spains regions should not be focused on the amount of money paid by the Basque Country via the Cupo vasco because it is obvious the viability of the model of regional financing does not depend at all on this amount. Rather it depends on regions truly having more guaranteed resources from taxes.

The Basque leader also bats away claims the regional financing deal is opaque, stating it is an agreed-upon, efficient and administratively transparent system for tax resources, which has full legal backing and enjoys generalized support. He goes on to note that the Basque Country pays 6.24% of costs for state institutions such as the Spanish military and the royal family, among others  despite the region only being home to 4.67% of the national population.

The 6.24% figure is also above the regions relative weight in terms of wealth or [share of Spains] gross domestic product, which is 6%, Urkullu notes.

Both the PNV and the PP have stressed the constitutional context of the Basque financing deal to send a clear message both to Catalonia and the European Union that it is possible for a Spanish region to have a different relationship with the state, and one that is within the framework of the law. The two parties, both in charge of minority governments, argue that calling into question the Basque deal is a case of creating a problem where there is none, and is especially problematic in the context of high tensions in Catalonia over the issue of independence.

English version by George Mills.
The history of art is, in large part, the history of plunder. Vikings, conquerors, Napoleon, colonial powers, Hitler... they all pillaged art on a monumental scale. The French colonial army helped transport tons of Egyptian artworks to Europe. Around the same time, the British shipped over the Greek Parthenon Marbles. Later, as part of the Benin Expedition of 1897, British troops pillaged all the art  including the Benin Bronzes  from the palaces of the African kingdom. The collections of the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London and the Neues Museum in Berlin have all been enriched by this plunder.

The Pergamon Museum in Berlin. MAURIZIO GAMBARINI (EFE)

But the story doesnt end there. Countries, whether they were once invaded territories or former colonies, are demanding their treasures be returned to them, and with them their identity. Since 1934, Turkey for instance has demanded Berlins Pergamon Museum return two sphinxes that were taken from Hattusas, the capital of the Hittites empire. Fed up after over 80 years of inaction, the Turkish government has created a commission to trace its stolen patrimony.

Holding onto antiquities through punitive campaigns is an intolerable continuation of colonial violence

Archeologist Sam Hardy

The governments of Aragon and Catalonia are in a similar face-off over the treasures of Sijena, a 12th-century monastery in Huesca. Spain has also come under attack from countries such as Colombia, which has demanded the return of the Quimbaya treasure, a collection of 122 gold pieces that president Carlos Holgin gifted to the country in 1893.

We live in a time in which the great Western museums heavily protect their patrimony and think little about restitution. They excuse this attitude arguing that they take better care of the works. When works are on display and accessible to the public this helps diffuse questions over ownership because what is important is that they can be seen by as many people as possible, says Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery in London.

Golden treasures from Colombia, on display in Madrids Museo de America. BERNARDO PEREZ

This thinking falls in line with the idea that the art should be shown there because more people can enjoy it. But there is another side of the argument. The ethical and legal circulation of cultural goods benefits the country where they come from, argues archeologist Sam Hardy. Holding onto antiquities that have been stolen through punitive campaigns is an intolerable continuation of colonial violence. It seems impossible for these two sides to find a happy meeting point.

French public collections are considered inalienable and cannot be given away

Meanwhile, Greece continues to wait for the Parthenon marbles to be returned to Athens. A museum has been built to house the works and even the British public are in favor. But it makes no difference. The British Museum has slammed the door. Until the museum changes its board, who all come from the establishment, it is unlikely we will see a different position, says Tom Flynn, member of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.

But there is still hope. This week, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that over the next five years he would work on creating the conditions needed to temporarily or permanently return the African patrimony taken from former French colonies. In the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum in Paris alone there are 70,000 works from Sub-Saharan Africa. Some believe this could encourage other countries to reclaim their stolen heritage. It sends a dangerous signal to all countries (former colonies but also Greece and Egypt) that have works that, in their opinion, have been illegally taken. Now they can reclaim them, says Yves-Bernard Debie, a lawyer specializing in cultural property. But before Macron can fulfill his plan he has to change the law, because French public collections are considered inalienable and cannot be given away. Just like in Spain. Were pretty lucky, says Andres Ubeda, assistant director at the Conservation and Investigation of Madrids Prado Museum, because were not affected by the two most contentious issues: colonial and Nazi pillaging.

Ownership vs. custodianship

Countries are, for now, becoming more entrenched over their cultural legacies. Perhaps its due to the resurgence of nationalism, or the skyrocketing value of artwork. But emphasizing ownership dilutes what is truly precious in art. Art is a manifestation of the people. It is not private or public. It is like water, or the forests, says Manuel Borja-Villel, director of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. We need to swap the concept of ownership for that of custodianship, he adds.

But the world is becoming increasingly protective of its treasures. Italy is calling for an export permit for works that are older than 50 years, Sicily charges those who want to borrow Caravaggios paintings and Germany demands a special permit before allowing canvases valued over 150,000 to be taken out of the European Union. Protectionism has become part of the art world and led to new ways of possessing it.

Masterpieces from the ancient world belong to everyone. But in a culture based on property instead of common rights, there are interminable disputes over ownership, says Jason Felch, an expert in antiques trafficking. Perhaps we should remember that big museums keep around 90% of their works in the basement. Finding new stories in our collections, offering visibility to the forgotten and hidden is a very different kind of possession, one that is less materialistic and more poetic, says Miguel Zugaza, director of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. Today, these words sound like a song unsung.

Art backs microcredits There are two competing forces in the world of art. A centrifugal force that pushes works out from their place of origin, and a centripetal force that demands they stay. The Culture Bank (founded in Mali in 1995 by the activist Todd Crosby) belongs to the latter. It helps create local museums to help countries from the most disadvantaged parts of the world retain their cultural patrimony. The locals are invited to showcase works from their family. With these pieces they can also ask for small loans.

English version by Melissa Kitson.
Educational exposure of ideas, assumptions or hypotheses, based on proven facts" (which need not be strictly current affairs) Value in judgments are excluded, and the text comes close to an opinion article, without judging or making forecasts , just formulating hypotheses, giving motivated explanations and bringing together a variety of data

Former regional premier of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol. Carles Ribas

Compendium of grievances: Catalonia is a nation that is being discriminated against, that cannot freely develop its cultural and economic potential. Uncover, establish, assess and disseminate evidence of discrimination, deficiencies, etc. in a clear, assertive and systematic way. Underscore the negative effects that this has on the Catalan people as a whole and on each one of its citizens.

This quote is not taken from anything written in recent years, when the separatist process officially got underway. It actually dates back to 1990, when the Catalan government  then still under longtime leader Jordi Pujol  entrusted a group of Catalan intellectuals with the drafting of a document entitled The Strategy of Catalanization.

What Rajoy has managed to do is to lob the conflict back into Catalonia

Joan Navarro, sociologist

The 20-page document was presented in the fall of that year, and it marked the beginning of the creation of a pro-independence rhetoric that would ultimately turn Spain into the source of all evil. Thats when construction work began on creating an enemy of the Catalan people. First it was Spain doesnt understand us. Later it became Spain is robbing us. And finally, the message evolved into Spain is oppressing us.

It is a classic strategy in politics, as in war, to create an enemy so inhuman that the only possible way to deal with him is to destroy him. Its either us or them.

Now, 27 years after that seminal document first saw the light, the separatist movement has managed to attract the vote of over 40% of Catalans who went to the polls at the regional election of September 2015. And two million citizens voted in favor of a Catalan republic at the unconstitutional referendum of October 1. These figures are far from negligible.

Former Catalan premier Artur Mas at the Supreme Court in Madrid. Julian Rojas

Even though the referendum was illegal, lacked basic democratic guarantees and failed on transparency requirements, it nevertheless reflected a growing tide of separatism in Catalonia, where pro-independence sentiment has doubled since 2010. Opinion polls currently suggest a tie between separatists and unionists at the upcoming snap election of December 21.

Gone are the days when Jordi Pujol used to offer himself as a bulwark against separatism in exchange for a different model of relations between Madrid and Barcelona. Or when his successor, the Socialist Pasqual Maragall, said that he wanted a new regional Statute with the soul of a Constitution.

So what has happened since then to damage relations between Spain and its wealthiest region? First, there were mistakes made by the various Popular Party (PP) and Socialist Party (PSOE) administrations, which played at securing support for their minority governments from nationalist parties in Catalonia and the Basque Country in exchange for more money transfers and devolved powers. The message was essentially: Support me in Madrid and do whatever you want back home. This policy has proven inefficient in the long run.

Reprogramming

Even worse was Madrids complete lack of awareness about what was going on in Catalonia: a stealthy nationalist reprogramming effort endorsed by the Catalan government, and affecting all spheres of life from education to universities, research, the media, cultural organizations, the business fabric, infrastructure, government agencies and Catalonias outside image.

These are the nine chapters of the 1990 document whose goal was to build an image of Spain as Catalonias enemy, and to ensure the ultimate goal of independence.

In 2012, the Italian writer Umberto Eco published an essay titled Inventing the Enemy, in which he explained the value of having adversaries in politics.

Having an enemy is important, not just to define our own identity but also to provide us with an obstacle against which to measure our own system of values and, in seeking to overcome it, to demonstrate our own worth, wrote Eco. So when there is no enemy, we have to invent one.

For 30 years, Catalan nationalism had been defending its differences in Madrid and obtaining good results

This theory explains most of the populist movements that have surged across the world in the 21st century: from US President Donald Trump (who created the immigrant enemy, citing international terrorism) to the promoters of Brexit (who also used immigrants as the enemy, along with European bureaucracy), to far-right and xenophobic movements in various European countries, and far-left groups. In Spain, the latter are represented by Podemos and by Catalonias CUP, whose adversary is what they like to call the Regime of 78, alluding to the Constitution of 1978 that encoded the new democratic laws following four decades of rule by Franco. Jihadism has also managed to grow after constructing a global enemy for itself.

Ecos essay adds: From the very beginning, however, the people who become our enemies often are not those who directly threaten us, but those whom someone has an interest in portraying as a true threat even when they arent. Rather than a real threat highlighting the ways in which these enemies are different from us, the difference itself becomes a symbol of what we find threatening.

The psychiatrist Enrice Baca goes even further when he explains that constructing the enemy involves a process of divesting the other, the potential target of aggression, of all human characteristics. This means eliminating all personal traits that might make him seem like ourselves, that might elicit feelings of mercy, solidarity or empathy.

In other words, the enemy must become a thing to be eliminated.

Mass helicopter

No doubt, former Catalan premier Artur Mas did not wax so philosophical on June 15, 2011. But he nevertheless embarked on the final phase of enemy-building that would ultimately lead Catalonia and the rest of Spain into the biggest institutional crisis since the transition to democracy 40 years ago.

On that day, Mas was forced to fly into the regional parliament by helicopter because there were hundreds of protesters surrounding the building down on the street to protest the budget cuts enacted by the Catalan government that year. Meanwhile, dozens of lawmakers were forced to take detours through the Barcelona zoo to avoid the angry crowds.

The sociologist Joan Navarro, vice-president of public affairs for the consulting firm Llorente y Cuenca, explains that right at that moment, the Catalanist movement of CiU [the ruling federation in Catalonia from 1980 to 2003 and again from 2010 to 2015] understood that everything had changed, and it made the decision to walk down the road of independence as a form of self-defense against the effects of the economic crisis and under pressure from the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) and CUP. At the time, CiU was also struggling with a string of high-profile corruption cases.

Supporters of independence waving an 'estelada,' the unofficial flag of Catalan separatists.

Up until then, a majority of Catalans had been content with the traditional line that Spain does not understand us and with upholding their history, language and desire for nationhood as differentiating factors within Spains system of regions. But, notes Navarro, from this point on, things moved to Spain is robbing us, a decisive step up in the construction of the enemy.

For 30 years, Catalan nationalism had been defending its differences in Madrid and obtaining good results from the minority governments of the PSOE and PP. But when the conservative Jose Maria Aznar secured a second term in office in 2000 with an absolute majority in Congress, it signaled a change of tack in Madrids relations with all other regional governments.

The re-centralizing movement did not last long. In 2004, Spanish voters elected the Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who inaugurated a new period of bilateral relations between Madrid and Barcelona. This was the time when a new regional charter for Catalonia, the Estatut, was drafted. But sections of the new document were legally challenged and the Constitutional Court struck some of them down, exacerbating the confrontation between Catalan and national parties at a time when the country was already struggling with the economic crisis. In November 2011 Mariano Rajoy of the PP became the new prime minister, adding fuel to the fire. As ERC and CUP gained ground back home, they increasingly pointed at Spain as the enemy to combat.

Following the Catalan elections of 2015, which were widely portrayed as a gauge of pro-independence sentiment in the region, radical secessionists managed to push Artur Mas out of the picture  the CUP, whose support was essential to the winning Junts pel Si coalition, viewed Mas as a symbol of CiUs corruption and refused to endorse him. Instead, a new regional president was found: Carles Puigdemont, who would lead his government down the road to consolidating Spain as an enemy to fight.

The prevailing line changed once again, from Spain is robbing us to Spain is oppressing is. The enemy was pictured as someone unwilling to negotiate, or even to talk, thus forcing Catalonia to bypass the law. And it is certainly true that ever since the Constitutional Court struck down parts of the new Catalan Statute in 2010, the two successive Rajoy administrations were very unsympathetic to Catalonias demands.

Constructing the enemy involves a process of divesting the other of all human characteristics

Enrice Baca, psychiatrist

As time went on and the secessionist process continued, its leaders realized that they had no support, no international recognition, not even enough power to go through with independence, explains Navarro. So in the last phase they resorted to the mirror war, which involved forcing the Spanish government to face its own demons and become an oppressive, occupying force.

This last period included the illegal referendum of October 1. Separatist forces were aware that despite their numerical majority inside the Catalan parliament, they lacked the support, the legal backing and the structure to get a Catalan republic up and running. So they pushed for a head-on collision with the Spanish state using an old tactic: putting the enemy in a situation where it becomes a case of damned if you do and damned if you dont. And thats the way it was.

Secessionists decided to violate the law in order to force the Spanish state into resorting to the principle of force, and it worked. The images of Spains National Police and Civil Guard officers striking civilians on their way to the polls made world headlines, benefiting secessionists and hurting a democratic state that was now depicted as a cruel, oppressive enemy headed by a latter-day version of Francoism. Add to this mix a courts decision to hold ousted Catalan officials in pre-trial custody  those who did not flee the country, that is  on very serious charges, and the story of Spain is oppressing us is complete.

What separatist ideologists were not counting on was the joint decision by Rajoy, Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez and Ciudadanos chief Albert Rivera to combine the application of Article 155 of the Constitution (which gave Madrid the power to oust the rebel Catalan government) with a snap election at the earliest possible date: December 21. The allegations of repression, aggression, oppression and occupation were undermined by the Spanish governments announcement that Catalans were being called to the polls to decide on their future.

If we add to this some secessionist leaders public renunciation of the unilateral independence declaration, and even their rejection of the unlawful acts that took place inside the Catalan parliament in recent months, what emerges is a somewhat confusing picture.

At the present moment, there are two million Catalans who have been betrayed because their leaders did not live up to their promise of giving them a Catalan republic, and there are millions more who are afraid that the independence process will make a comeback, says Navarro. What Rajoy has managed to do is to lob the conflict back into Catalonia.

English version by Susana Urra.
Restrictions on Iranian universities have been tightened ahead of Iranian Students Day on December 7, local media have reported.

Many gatherings planned by student associations have been rejected by the authorities, daily Jameeye Farda (Tomorrows Society) said on December 3.

A number of universities have presented a list of political figures, insisting that only they can attend student gatherings and deliver speeches, Jameeye Farda noted.

Based on reports received by Radio Farda from student activists in Iran, groups of students gathered on university campuses on Monday to protest various restrictions imposed on students and their events in universities.

They were also protesting raising tuition on some students and also gender discrimination and inequality.

So far, gatherings have been reported in Tehran University and Allameh Tabatabai University also in Tehran.

Radio Farda reported on December 2, that more than a hundred students received stars next to their names and have been barred from registering in this academic year.

During the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the security and intelligence organs started a practice of marking politically suspect students who were then banned from continuing their education. As a result, the term "starred student" was coined in Iranian media and student circles.

Monday's student protests were meant to highlight both the Students Day restrictions and also the banning of "starred" student from education.

For the Students Day, the state-run Iran Labor News Agency (ILNA) published a list of prominent reformist figures who have been banned from delivering speeches at Iranian universities.

The University of Hamadans medical college rejected all student proposals for gatherings on National Students' Day. The cultural department of the college announced that it will officially celebrate the day and invited students to attend.

However, a number of political figures close to reformists, including MP Mahmoud Sadeqi, mid-ranking cleric and lawyer Mohsen Rohami, and former UN ambassador Sadeq Kharrazi have been listed as licensed to deliver speeches on the occasion.

In a Radio Farda round-table discussion, a political analyst, Mehdi Mahdavi Azad said, "One of the main goals of the regime is to control of universities, by using various means of pressures...universities present a danger of a political explosion".

Barring reformists from delivering speeches at student assemblies appears to contradict what President Hassan Rouhani said about the necessity of granting students more freedom.

In a speech on December 2 in the city of Zabol in Sistan and Balouchestan Province, southeastern Iran, Rouhani maintained, "We are very happy that our students are now speaking loudly and clearly."

Expressing satisfaction over Students' Day being celebrated across the country, Rouhani affirmed, "Universities must be independent and free, and this was one of the aims of the [Islamic] Revolution."

Rouhani asserted that universities must be free to criticize like seminaries, adding, Students speak without stammering."

Nevertheless, 92 student associations, 813 staff at student publications, and 8,000 student rights activists wrote letters in recent years protesting the police state and threatening atmosphere ruling over Iranian universities, as well as annulling student gatherings, illegal and extrajudicial interferences in holding them.

According to daily Jameeye Farda, many student associations are under backbreaking restrictions but prefer not to publicize or abandon their gatherings.
A carbon monoxide leak at an East Side restaurant forced the evacuation of the business Saturday afternoon, but customers were back inside less than an hour later.

Madison Fire Department firefighters were called to That BBQ Joint, 901 Williamson St., at about 4:45 p.m. Saturday, after complaints of an "odd smell" at the restaurant.

Firefighters were on scene in minutes since Station 3 is three blocks away.

Sensors showed slight levels of carbon monoxide in the main level of the building, but the owner told firefighters the smell was coming from the basement.

"Readings spiked to 800 ppm, so patrons were directed to evacuate the building until the carbon monoxide could be cleared out and the source identified," said spokeswoman Cynthia Schuster.

Madison Gas and Electric was called in after the leak was determined to be coming from the boiler room.

The building was ventilated, carbon monoxide levels went to zero and patrons were let back into the restaurant.
The head of the Islamic Republics judiciary has accused twice former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of high treason.

Retaliating against recent Ahmadinejads anti-judiciary vitriolic remarks, ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani accused him of drawing the sword against the ruling system in Iran and delivering fifty different lies.

Amoli Larijani, in a speech on Sunday, December 3, insisted, Sadly, not only foreign enemies but also a number of insiders stoke the fire of the enemy and present weird lies while stabbing the country in the back.

According to the governments official news agency, IRNA, Amoli Larijani, without directly naming Ahmadinejad, also asserted, A gentleman, who once was responsible for the countrys affairs, has repeated fifty different lies in a matter of minutes.

The head of the judiciary went further, saying Some see themselves as the savior and try to make a business [out of it]

Defending himself, Amoli Larijani noted Some are desperately trying to defend their companions and question the ruling system and try to ruin the head of the judiciary and damage the whole justice system.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has recently intensified his attacks on the judiciary, particularly targeting its head.

The war of words between the two sides began when the judiciary charged Ahmadinejads close ally, Hamid Baghaei with financial corruption and put him behind bars. Baghaei was later released on a heavy bail.

Another close ally of Ahmadinejad, his former chief of staff, Esfandyar Rahim Mashshayee has also been summoned to court.

In his last attempts to defend them, Ahmadinejad wrote an open letter to the Supreme Leader and bitterly criticized what he described as judiciarys tyranny.

Ahmadinejad accuses the judiciary of illegally and unjustifiably serving the personal and political interests of its own leaders.

The Supreme Leader, ayatollah Khamenei has yet to respond to the letter.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.4

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Holding EXPO 2025 in Azerbaijan would extend the geography of world expos to a new region, Arye Gut, head of the Israel branch of the Baku International Center for Multiculturalism, said in his article published in The Jerusalem Post.

Azerbaijans experience in previous editions of universal and specialized Expos bodes well for the success of the potential Baku EXPO 2025, said the author.

Gut pointed out that as part of the national communication strategy and desirous to strengthen its image at the international scene, since 2000 year Azerbaijan has been an active member of the EXPO movement.

The author recalled that Azerbaijan's pavilions received awards in the last three exhibitions in Milano in 2015 with more than 3 million visits, in Antalya in 2016 and in Astana in 2017.

Azerbaijan is aimed at showing to the world community that being a young country with strong economic potential, political stability, high levels of safety and security, it is able to host huge events like a World Expo, said the article.

Gut believes that the theme chosen by Azerbaijan for the World Expo  Developing human capital, building a better future  is of global importance and of universal concern.

Three sub-themes  Talent, Vitality and Achievement  align with three of 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals related to education, health and employment, he added.

Among the advantages of hosting a world expo one may, among other things, enumerate the following: significant economic benefits for the host country, 18 million expected visits to Baku Expo 2025, creation of new jobs, establishment of new business relations, improvement of business investment deliverables and of the tourism strategy, according to the article.

It will also extend the geography of world expos to a new region, a new territory, create a new platform and give a chance to young independent states to welcome the whole world in the best possible conditions, said the article.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The United Arab Emirates has always supported Azerbaijan's fair position in the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev said.

Mammad-Guliyev made the remarks at an event in Baku dedicated to the 46th anniversary of establishment of the United Arab Emirates on Dec. 4.

The UAE was among the first Muslim countries to recognize the independence of Azerbaijan, which was a significant support for the country, he said.

Mammad-Guliyev added that cooperation between Azerbaijan and the UAE is developing in many areas.

He added that the two countries also successfully cooperate within international organizations.

Azerbaijan attaches great importance to development of economic relations with the UAE, he said. The two countries have an economic commission. Its recent meeting was held in April.

Mammad-Guliyev said Azerbaijan welcomes the participation of the UAE in transport projects of the country.

Moreover, he stressed that Etihad Airways will launch the UAE-Azerbaijan flights in March 2018.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

Trend:

The 10th meeting of the Azerbaijan-Turkey High-Level Military Dialogue will begin its work in Baku on December 5, the press service of Azerbaijans Defense Ministry told Trend.

During the meeting, the delegations will consider the current state of bilateral relations and discuss key areas of cooperation for the implementation of the upcoming objectives within the framework of the working groups.

The co-chairman of the meeting from the Azerbaijani side is deputy minister of defense for personnel, Lieutenant General Karim Valiyev, and from the Turkish side  chief of the Main Directorate for Plans and Principles of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Yavuz Turkgenci.

Discussions within the framework of the military dialogue will end on December 7.

The 9th meeting of the Azerbaijan-Turkey High-Level Military Dialogue was held in Ankara December 2016.
Details added

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

Trend:

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received a delegation led by the newly-appointed EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, Toivo Klaar.

Saying this is his first visit to Baku and that he is deeply impressed with development processes he witnessed here, Klaar stressed his interest in familiarizing himself with Azerbaijan.

The head of state said he is hopeful that Toivo Klaar will frequently visit Azerbaijan, including regions of the country.

President Aliyev wished Klaar success in his activities.

They exchanged views over the current state of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and negotiations on the dispute.
Details added (first version posted on 10:50)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

Trend:

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has viewed work carried out in "Baku Agropark" in Zira settlement, Khazar district.

Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev and entrepreneur Samad Qurbanov informed the head of state about the agropark.

Baku Agropark Ltd costs nearly 68 million manats. It includes a greenhouse complex for growing tomato, which occupies an area of 10 hectares. The complex has an annual production capacity of 3.3 million tons. The first stage of the project, which included construction of infrastructure, cost 21.7 million manats, of which 10 million manats were provided by the Entrepreneurship Support Fund in preferential loans.

The greenhouse features the fourth generation Dutch technology of growing tomato. The complex exports its products under Tomat.az brand.

The project created 140 jobs. Once fully operational, the complex will create more jobs.

President Ilham Aliyev met with the staff of the complex and posed for photographs with them.
Details added (first version posted on 13:54)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.4

By Leman Zeynalova - Trend:

Azerbaijan has played a strong role in NATO missions, said US Permanent Representative to NATO, Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison at a press briefing Dec.4 in response to Trend's question.

"We recently had the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev at NATO headquarters. That was a very good meeting. We want to keep close ties with Azerbaijan," she added.

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev attended a meeting of the North Atlantic Council of NATO in Brussels Nov.23.

During the meeting, the head of state noted that Azerbaijan and NATO maintain successful cooperation in various areas.

Stressing Azerbaijans active involvement in different missions and operations of NATO, President Ilham Aliyev hailed the alliances contribution to mine clearance operations in Azerbaijan.

The head of state said Azerbaijan is expanding its peacekeeping activities in Afghanistan and is cooperating with this country at the bilateral level in economic and other areas.

Relations with NATO started when Azerbaijan joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (1992) and the Partnership for Peace (1994).

The countrys program of cooperation with NATO is set out in an Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP), which is agreed every two years.

Azerbaijan has long been an active contributor to NATO-led operations  it deployed troops to Kosovo in the past.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Samir Ali  Trend:

Azerbaijan will increase its peacekeeping contingent in NATOs Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, said the countrys defense ministry Dec. 4.

The peacekeeping contingent will be increased in accordance with the relevant instruction given by president of Azerbaijan, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev.

It is planned to increase the number of peacekeepers before the first quarter of next year, according to the ministry.

The peacekeeping contingent of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces has been serving under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan since November 20, 2002.

Currently, 90 servicemen, 2 medical officers and 2 engineer officers of Azerbaijani Armed Forces are participating in a mission in Afghanistan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.4

Trend:

The European Union's position on separatism in recent years is now becoming a boomerang, Novruz Mammadov, assistant to the president for foreign policy issues, head of department, wrote on his Twitter page on Dec.4.

"The European Union's position on separatism in recent years is now becoming a boomerang for the European nations. There is a historical patterns: Errors of the large nations eventually engender problems for them," he tweeted.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

Trend:

Observations of the ongoing processes in the international scene, prompt, regrettably, such a conclusion that starting with the UN, the international organizations, alliances, leading countries and their leaders are falling behind in addressing a certain process instead of preventing them and emerging on top, Novruz Mammadov, assistant to the Azerbaijani president for foreign policy issues, head of department, tweeted Dec. 4.

That situation is a major and perilous problem for todays international relations given the current advanced level of human intellect and development, added Mammadov.

The attitude of the international community to the problem of climate change is of the same nature.
A man trying to help a woman who appeared to be in trouble early Sunday morning at a Downtown parking ramp had a gun pointed at him by a man the woman was attempting to stop exiting the ramp.

The man who allegedly pulled the gun, Davonte Howard, 22, of Madison, was arrested and tentatively charged with carrying a concealed weapon, recklessly endangering safety and endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon, Madison police said.

The incident happened around 1:45 a.m. Sunday in the State Street Capitol parking ramp, 214 N. Carroll St.

Police said the woman and Howard had been quarreling when he started to drive out of the ramp, before she was in his car.

"She jumped on the hood of the car, attempting to stop him, but as she did this, she dropped her purse," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain.

A 23-year-old man from Juneau picked up her purse and was trying to return it to her when Howard allegedly pulled out a gun and pointed it at him.

"The victim explained (to Howard) what he was trying to do, returned the purse and slowly started backing away," DeSpain said.

Police were called and the suspect was arrested while he was still in the parking ramp.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

Trend:

Azerbaijan's export opportunities will considerably increase, said President Ilham Aliyev addressing the staff of the Baku Agropark in Zira settlement, Khazar district, after reviewing the complex's operations, Dec. 4.

A beautiful agro-park was constructed on a 10-hectare area, said President Aliyev.

"The working conditions and productivity are good. The latest technologies have been applied. This enterprise increases the economic potential of our country. Export-oriented products are produced here, which is very important for diversifying our economy under the current conditions," said the President.

The head of state stressed that the development of agriculture is a priority issue.

"According to the information provided to me, greenhouse complexes are being created on an area of more than 400 hectares," President Aliyev said, adding that the agro-products to be grown there will be completely exported.

"We have provided ourselves with vegetables and the sphere that brings us the biggest income is connected with tomatoes. Exporting tomatoes for 10 months of this year brought us $130 million. Now imagine if at the next stage we put into operation greenhouse complexes on an area of 400 hectares - and that, of course, will happen - then our export opportunities will considerably increase. This means new jobs; almost 200 citizens are provided with jobs here. Women also work here, which is very important. I see that most of the working here are women and working conditions are good," the head of state said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

Trend:

Representatives of BP company in Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey Region (AGT) including Completion Engineering Manager AGT Ann Davies; Human Resources (HR) and Recruitment Advisor Mehriban Shikhzamanova; Completion Engineer, Central Azeri, Samir Veliyev; and HR/Recruitment Coordinator Sabina Valiyeva made a presentation of the company internship program at Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS). It was conducted for third, fourth and fifth-year students.

Opening the meeting, BHOS Vice Rector for Training, Science and International Relations Ramiz Humbatov said that every year the Higher School undergraduates successfully participate in BP internship program in the framework of the long-term cooperation between BHOS and the company. In her introductory speech, HR/Recruitment Advisor Mehriban Shikhzamanova outlined main directions of BP HR policy and internship opportunities provided to students. Telling about her professional experience and growth, Completion Engineering Manager AGT Ann Davies said that her career at the company started after she took on-the-job training at BP.

Fifth-year Petroleum Engineering students Narmin Abbasly and Farhad Gadimov shared their impressions and presented a report about their internship at BP facilities in Azerbaijan in summer this year. As they said, the BHOS undergraduates were assigned to solve real engineering tasks and were given an opportunity to work with experienced specialists. In their words, this internship enabled them to participate in large-scale projects implemented by BP in the region and to test their own professional, business and personal skills and qualities.

Recruitment Coordinator Sabina Veliyeva informed the students about graduates recruitment and student internship program of BP company in Azerbaijan. She also provided detailed information about admission procedures and interns selection criteria. As she emphasized, the number of BHOS undergraduates selected for the internship at BP is always higher than the number of students from other educational institutions.

At the meeting, representatives of BP in AGT region also provided detailed answers to numerous questions asked by the students.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.4

Trend:

The US-Educated Azerbaijani Alumni Association organized the Final stage of Azerbaijan Business Case Competition at Hilton on Dec.3. This year competition is performed in virtue of BP, SOCAR-AQS, Azercell, Engin, Azr Turk Bank, AzSgorta, Deloitte and EY sponsorship, as well as by organizational support of U.S. Embassy in Baku.

Azerbaijan Business Case Competition is the most prestigious business competition among undergraduate and graduate students who are studying in the field of finance, business and economics. During the competition, students were given Cases of Harvard Business School for analysis based on real-life business problems companies have faced.

This year 26 teams from 5 universitiess, inclduing ADA University, Baku Engineering University, Azerbaijan State Economic University, Academy of Azerbaijan State Customs Committee and Baku Higher Oil School participated in the competition. Only 16 teams out of 26 earned the chance of passing to the Semi-final stage and 4 teams left for Final.

Finalists were required to find solutions for cases and evaluation of the team was based on their critical business thinking, financial analysis, marketing strategy, presentation skills, including their preparation for Q&A stage. Winning teams received 10.000 AZN in total (1st place  6.000 AZN-, 3.000 AZN - 2nd place, 1.000 AZN - 3rd place).

The first place won students of Baku Engineering University: Huseyn Mammadov, Jafar Jafarov, Lala Rustamli and Gazanfar Karimli.

The competition has been held since 2002 and this year ABCC celebrating its 15th Anniversary. Considering the lack of practice of business case analysis in Azerbaijan, the volunteers of MBA Enterprise Corps decided the launch of this project. Since 2006, the right of conducting this competition has been given to the US-Educated Azerbaijani Alumni Association (AAA). Over 1000 very talented students so far participated in this project.

Azerbaijan Business Case Competition plays a significant role in the development of students analytical and presentation skills, as well as contributes to the career development and management skills.

The US-Educated Azerbaijani Alumni Association (AAA) is a non-governmental, non-profit organization that unites alumni of the State Department educational exchange programs, Azerbaijan State Program alumni and self-funded students studied in Azerbaijan. The AAA was established in October 2003 by a group of US-educated Azerbaijani alumni with the aim of uniting all alumni of Azerbaijan under one umbrella and using their knowledge and skills to help developing Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Samir Ali  Trend:

The representatives of the Azerbaijani prosecutors office, as well as a medical expert inspected a prison cell in a specialized medical facility of the Penitentiary Service of the countrys Justice Ministry in connection with Haji Mammadov's suicide case, PR department of the Penitentiary Service of the countrys Ministry of Justice said Dec. 4.

On Dec. 3, Mammadov, former chief operating officer at the Main Crime Investigation Department of Azerbaijans Interior Ministry, hanged himself.

A suicide note was found in Mammadov's prison cell. In his suicide note, Mammadov apologized to his family members and prison staff.

A criminal case was filed in the Baku city prosecutor's office. The investigation is underway.

Mammadov was sentenced to life imprisonment as head of an organized crime group that committed numerous killings, kidnappings and other serious crimes.

Haji Mammadov was transferred to a specialized medical facility of the Penitentiary Service in Bakus Bina settlement due to health problems on April 25, 2016.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 21

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

To date, 338 entrepreneurs and managers took advantage of the joint German-Azerbaijani program to upgrade the skills of managers, Deputy Minister of Economy of Azerbaijan Sahib Mammadov said at a seminar on the role of this program in the development of small and medium-sized businesses on Dec.4.

He said the participants of the program showed very successful results, which have a positive impact on the development of small and medium-sized businesses, as well as on the expansion of geography and export volumes of Azerbaijani products.

"Many of the managers and entrepreneurs who took part in this program were able to find new business partners, which led to an increase in exports and the expansion of its geography," Mammadov said.

He said that the research results and statistics show that the private sector as a whole plays a big role in the country's economy.

"Today, the share of the private sector in Azerbaijan's GDP exceeds 80 percent, and its share in employment is 75 percent. The number of registered business entities today exceeded 880,000, all of which are the results of successful economic reforms in the country, "Mammadov said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 29

By Fatih Karimov Trend:

Turkeys gas import from Iran amounted to 530.54 million cubic meters in September, 2.3 percent more year-on-year.

Natural gas imports from Iran accounted for 14.4 percent of the countrys total gas imports in the one-month period, according to a report released by Turkeys Energy Market Regulatory Body.

Turkeys gas suppliers in September 2017

Iran was Turkeys third gas supplier in the period, after Russia and Azerbaijan.

Turkeys gas import from Iran in January-September 2017 stood at 6.9 billion cubic meters (bcm).

Turkeys total natural gas import stood at 3.681 bcm in September, registering a rise by 22.38 percent year-on-year.

Irans overall gas exports to Turkey reached 7.7 billion cubic meters last year.

Gas import sources September (mcm) Share (%) Y/Y change (%) USA 92.07 2.50 13.50 Azerbaijan 580.04 15.76 11.71 Algeria 356.17 9.68 19.39 Iran 530.54 14.41 2.30 Russia 2,121.94 57.65 40.77 Total 3,680.77 100 22.38

Turkey also exported 57.99 million cubic meters of gas to Greece in August, indicating a fall by 1.92 percent year-on-year.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) sold $208.9 million at the currency auctions organized by the countrys Central Bank (CBA) in November 2017, SOFAZ said Dec. 4.

SOFAZ sold over $3 billion at the currency auctions in January-November 2017. In total, the Azerbaijani banks bought about $4.92 billion from SOFAZ in 2016.

SOFAZ will continue selling the currency through auctions in 2017.

The currency is sold as part of SOFAZs transfers to the Azerbaijani state budget, which are envisaged in the volume of 6.1 billion manats for 2017.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev signed the law "On guaranteed transfer from the National Fund of the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2018-2020", the press service of the Kazakh president said in a message.

The law provides approval of the size of the guaranteed transfer from the National Fund of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the republican budget for 2018-2020.

In accordance with the Decree of the Kazakh president dated December 8, 2016 "On the Concept of Formation and Use of funds of the National Fund of the Republic of Kazakhstan", a guaranteed transfer to the republican budget will be fixed in absolute value in tenge and set at a rate of 2 trillion tenge starting from 2020.

At the same time, the amount of the guaranteed transfer from the National Fund to Kazakhstans national budget will be gradually phased down.

In 2018 it will amount to 2.6 trillion tenge, in 2019 - 2.3 trillion tenge, in 2020 and subsequent years - 2 trillion tenge.

The amounts of the guaranteed transfer from the National Fund in 2018-2020 ensure compliance with terms on the minimum balance of funds in the National Fund of Kazakhstan, amounting to 30 percent of the forecasted GDP.

(Exchange rate for 04.12.2017: $1 - 331 tenge)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

An export mission of Azerbaijani entrepreneurs will visit Saudi Arabias Jeddah city on Dec. 6-8, Azerbaijans Economy Ministry said in a message Dec. 4.

The mission will include representatives of 13 Azerbaijani companies, operating in the spheres of production of fruit juices, dried fruits, canned products, honey, tea, as well as manufacturing and processing of meat and dairy products.

Azerbaijani entrepreneurs will also visit large supermarket chains, as well as hold bilateral meetings with representatives of companies operating in Saudi Arabia, within the framework of the mission.

Azerbaijans trade turnover with Saudi Arabia amounted to $14.64 million in January-October 2017, according to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.4

By Gulgiz Muradova -Trend:

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is planning to provide support to Azerbaijan in the establishment of food and nutrition governance systems.

FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Europe and Central Asia Vladimir Rakhmanin made the remark in an exclusive interview to Trend.

Rakhmanin explained that accordingly the access of society to healthy food without interruption and its use in full effectiveness including vitamins and minerals will be closely monitored by the Government involving all the relevant institutions. As a result, the government policies will be designed more efficiently, he added.

"We will continue to support the Government of Azerbaijan to achieve its goals in improvement and maintenance of food and nutrition security and food safety," Rakhmanin said.

He stressed that achieving healthy diets, adequate nutrition, good health and wellbeing for all in a sustainable manner while managing responsibly natural resources are at the core of the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals.

"Yet, the human food value chains are continuously threatened by outbreaks of transboundary pest and animal diseases," he said, adding that FAO addresses threats to the human food chain in an integrated and interdisciplinary manner.

Azerbaijan has been a member of the FAO since 1995. The organization's office in the country has been operating since 2007.

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Follow the author on Twitter:@GulgizD
SUN PRAIRIE  Cardinal Heights Upper Middle School students are supplying one of the items veterans receive in their gift bags after returning from Badger Honor Flights.

Ninth-grade students in classes that explore technology, engineering and woodworking at the Sun Prairie school are making writing pens with shafts they craft out of redheart wood. Each one comes with a signed note thanking the veterans for their service and sacrifices.

It just makes me realize how its going to affect their lives when we make (pens)  bringing joy to them, said ninth-grader Tanner Scherer as he worked on his estimated 13th pen for the cause. Theyre really fun to make.

In the fourth year of the project, the students are making enough pens to supply gift bags for at least two honor flights a year. The students teacher, Mike Roth, said he would like to get other schools on board so there would be enough for all of the Badger Honor Flights each year.

About 90 veterans go on each flight and there are four flights each year to Washington, D.C. to see the memorials erected in their honor. The students made 238 pens last school year.

Roth said he already has worked with a teacher in Prairie River Middle School in Merrill who is now running the project for Never Forgotten Honor Flight and other interested teachers can contact him.

Roth said he and former colleague Ken Bremer, who were co-teaching at the time, came up with the idea when they decided they wanted to have their students get involved in some community service. Roth said the project is particularly dear to him because his father, Richard Roth, enlisted at age 19 and flew 42 missions in the South Pacific during WWII as a waist gunner on a B-24 bomber.

After he started the project, Roth was encouraged to go to the Dane County Airport when the veterans got off their flight, and he said he was touched by the experience.

Theyre getting the heroes welcome they never got when they returned home, Roth said.

The first year Roth and Bremer received a grant of about $400 from the Sun Prairie Education Foundation to fund the project. Now they get funding from the Badger Honor Flight, an affiliate of the national Honor Flight Network.

Bremer said most importantly the project is a chance for students to make something for someone unknown from another generation, rather than an item they can take home. Other incentives include the community service they earn toward whats required for graduation. Each time they craft a pen for Badger Honor Flight, they also earn a pen kit so they can make another pen for themselves.

Students like Tanner, who has made about 25 pens total, said it was nice getting the pen kits.

Part of it is so you can feel good. Part of it is you get another pen kit so you can make more, said ninth grader Doug Vigil about making the Badger Honor Flight pens.

Roth said he steers the students toward making pens that have a traditional and eye-pleasing look.

Theyre really easy to make and theyre fun to make, said ninth-grader Mitchell Ring. It is such a lightweight wood that when you are sanding it and shaping it, its almost like butter.

Roth has the students sign the notes, and about 20 to 25 percent of the time they get a thank-you note, sometimes with a photo enclosed. He is impressed by the gesture of the veterans to send a note for something in a gift bag, especially given the age of some of the veterans.

Its just satisfying knowing where they are going and that you spent time on them, ninth-grader Max Saron said about the pens.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Dec. 4

By Diana Aliyeva Trend:

The products produced in the personal farms of the Uzbek residents can be officially sold to the organizations of the Uzbekozikovkatzakhira Association of Wholesalers in accordance with the Uzbek presidents order # PP-3418 dated Nov. 30, 2017.

Such agricultural products as vegetables, potatoes, melons and gourds, fruits, grapes, rice, legumes, beef, lamb and poultry are meant as part of the Regulations on the procedure of purchase of agricultural products by organizations of the Uzbekozikovkatzakhira Association of Wholesalers from personal farms.

Agricultural products are purchased upon the sale and purchase contracts.

The document came into force on December 1, 2017.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

Staff changes were made in the Azerbaijani Taxes Ministry.

Faig Shahbazov, director general of the HR department of the Azerbaijani Taxes Ministry, was dismissed, said a message posted on the Azerbaijani Taxes Ministry's website.

Currently, Junior Tax Service Advisor Elmaddin Suleymanov serves as acting director general of the HR department.

Shahbazov has served as director of the HR department since October 2011. He has been working in the ministry since 2000. There is no information on his appointment to the new post yet.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

Azerbaijan delivered about 4.86 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to Turkey in January-September 2017, as compared to 4.84 bcm in the same period last year, says the report posted on the website of the Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK) of Turkey.

In 2016, Azerbaijan delivered 6.48 bcm of natural gas to Turkey, compared to 6.17 bcm in 2015.

According to the report, in January-September Turkey imported 39.62 bcm of gas, of which 32.73 bcm were imported through pipelines, and 6.89 bcm fell on LNG imports.

The share of Azerbaijan in the total volume of gas imported to Turkey for the reporting period was 12.3 percent.

Turkey imports gas from Azerbaijan via the South Caucasus gas pipeline (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum). Turkey has signed a contract for the annual purchase of 6.6 bcm of gas from the Azerbaijani offshore gas condensate field Shah Deniz.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

Turkey imported 20.93 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia in January-September 2017 as compared to 16.99 billion cubic meters in the same period of 2016, says a report posted on the website of Turkeys Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK).

Russia delivered 24.54 billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey in 2016 as compared to 26.78 billion cubic meters in 2015.

The report says that Turkey imported 39.62 billion cubic meters of gas in January-September 2017, of which 32.73 billion cubic meters were imported via pipelines and 6.89 billion cubic meters accounted for import of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Russias share in Turkeys total import of gas was 52.8 percent in January-September 2017.

Russia supplies gas to Turkey via the Blue Stream and Trans-Balkan pipelines. Blue Stream is a major trans-Black Sea gas pipeline with a capacity of 16 billion cubic meters per year that carries natural gas from Russia into Turkey.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

Crude oil held steady after Opec and Russia showed unity and extended production cuts until the end of 2018, Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, told Trend Dec. 4.

Gold's November trading range was the tightest since 1999 while industrial metals retraced on continued worries that the outlook for Chinese growth and demand may underwhelm, he noted.

Oil traders attention were fixed on Vienna where Opec and non-Opec producers met to discuss how to proceed with the process of bringing balance between supply and demand for crude, he said. In the end they delivered what the market had been pricing in: A nine-month extension of the current deal to keep 1.8 million barrels/day from the market until the end of 2018. In addition, Libya and Nigeria agreed not to lift production beyond their respective 2017 peaks while Russia was appeased with a review date in June next year.

Gold traded within its tightest monthly range (measured in percent) since 1999 last month while a lower monthly trading range than November's 33 dollars was last seen in 2005 when gold traded at $465/oz. The market remains stuck between the negative pull of rising rates and underlying demand from investors seeking tail-end protection against geopolitical events and the rising risk of a stock market correction.

Gold has now been range-bound in a relatively tight range around $1282/oz for the past three months, he noted. Resistance at $1300/oz was challenged this week during the Japanese yen's failed attempt to break higher. A stronger dollar, higher bond yields and speculation that the US tax bill would pass helped send the yellow metal straight back down to test support located just below $1270/oz.

The Bloomberg Industrial metals index was on track to record its worst week since March. The weakness was led by nickel which continued to pare back recent gains which were driven by euphoria about future demand from the electric vehicle industry. Copper lost more than 3% with this bellwether metal seeing funds selling in response to rising concerns about the prospects of the Chinese economy over the coming year. The weakness occurred despite Eurozone data continuing to point towards the best year for its economic growth in a decade.

Weakness among industrial metals added to silver's woes as it recorded its worst week in five months, he said. This resulted in the gold-silver ratio breaking to the upside and touching its highest level since April 2016. Silver tends to struggle relative to gold when the demand is driven by diversification and safe haven demand. Adding to this its credentials as a high beta gold meaning it tends to swing more violently, not least to the downside, given the current reductions in ETP holdings and a relative elevated hedge fund long.

Crude oil held steady Friday just below a two-year high. This following Opec and non-Opec producers' decision to play safe and maintain output cuts throughout 2018. Russia had raised some concerns ahead of the meeting as it seemed they were balking at the prospect of ordering their producers to keep the taps turned down for another nine months. In order to meet Russian concerns it was agreed to review the deal at the next ordinary Opec meeting on June 22 while Libya and Nigeria agreed not to lift production beyond their respective 2017 peaks.

The show of unity in Vienna was a classic example of realpolitik with the economic importance of keeping prices supported outweighing fraught relations between several countries, not least between Saudi Arabia supported by its GCC allies and Iran, often supported by Russia, he noted.

Much now hinges on continued compliance from the group with Iraq potentially being one of the candidates struggling to keep its commitment, he added. While southern Iraqi oil sales have jumped to a record, Jabbar al-Luaibi, the oil minister, in Vienna expressed some very ambitious plans to improve the fields around the northern city of Kirkuk. Back in October Iraq regained control of the area from the Kurdish Regional Government. A move which led to a temporary drop in supplies from northern Iraq to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and which helped support the oil rally back then.

Attention will now increasingly turn to the US with the market trying to gauge the impact on production growth from a price trading well above $50/b. Weekly production estimates continue to reach new highs and during the past three weeks US drillers have added back almost half of the rigs that were pulled during the previous three months.

A major shift in US oil and products trading with the rest of the world has occurred this year, he said. Rising production of oil has increasingly found its way into the global market, both as refined products and since 2014 increasingly also as crude oil exports. Last week the net-import of crude oil and products slumped to just 1.8 million barrels/day, a far cry from the 10 million plus barrels witnessed just six years ago.

While rising US production may pose a medium-term challenge to oil prices the biggest short-term challenge remains the near record long position currently being held in WTI and Brent crude oil futures. Money managers have been active buyers of crude oil since July. The combined net-long in Brent and WTI was close to 900 million barrels in the week to November 21, not far from the February record of 930 million.

Opec has over the years become increasingly aware of the impact of speculative positioning in the oil market and meeting in Vienna this week they knew that failing to deliver what the market expected could have triggered a major correction due to position adjustments, he added.

A position this size needs to be fed bullish news in order to avoid the temptation of booking profit, he said. The period ahead of the holiday season and New Year tends to see reduced liquidity and this could make the oil price particularly vulnerable should the Opec focus be replaced by worries about rapid US production. Rystad, the respected independent oil and gas consulting service company based in Norway, this week forecast that US oil production could reach 9.9 million barrels/day this month, well above what anyone, including the EIA, had been forecasting up until now.

With the Opec meeting behind us the short term risk to oil looks skewed to the downside during what is normally a low-demand season. WTI crude oil has spent the past few weeks consolidating above $55/b, currently the level of support. The upside potential is focusing on $60/b, a key psychological level around which we saw nine weeks of trading during the second quarter of 2015.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Huseyn Valiyev- Trend

Presentation of a system of integration of e-signature certificates into new IDs will be held within the framework of the 23rd Azerbaijan International Telecommunications and Information Technologies Exhibition and Conference Bakutel 2017, the countrys Deputy Minister of Transport, Communications and High Technologies Elmir Valizade said.

He made the remarks Dec. 4 in Baku at a press conference dedicated to the opening of the Bakutel 2017 Exhibition.

The Bakutel 2017 Exhibition will be held Dec.5-8.

Valizade said that the issuance of new IDs will start in 2018.

The ID cards will have carriers, into which e-signature certificates will be integrated, thus each citizen will be able to take advantage of the e-government portal, Valizade said.

E-signature certificates will be integrated into ID cards free of charge, he said, adding that the validity period of e-signature certificate in new ID cards will be five years.

At the end of this period, it will only be necessary to extend the certificates validity period, he noted.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Nigar Guliyeva  Trend:

A draft law on external labor migration has been developed in Uzbekistan. The document was posted on the portal on evaluation system of legislative acts in Uzbekistan.

The law will apply to citizens of Uzbekistan working abroad, as well as individuals and legal entities of all forms of ownership participating in the processes of external labor migration.

Under the document, the Agency for External Labor Migration under the Ministry of Labor, structural units of the Agency, as well as recruiting organizations will be engaged in the employment of citizens of Uzbekistan abroad.

These structures will carry out an organized recruitment of citizens who have expressed a desire to work abroad, at the request of foreign economic entities.

The basis for sending citizens to work abroad will be employment contracts concluded by the sending organization with a foreign employer and a citizen of Uzbekistan intending to leave for work.

The document also features the basic duties of the migrant.

The Agency will also have a foundation to provide legal, social and material support to migrant workers. Its main tasks will be to assist in the employment of citizens of Uzbekistan abroad and on their return.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Dec. 4

By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend

Political consultations were held in Ashgabat between representatives of foreign ministries of Turkmenistan and Austria, the Turkmen foreign ministry said in a message Dec. 4.

According to the message, Viennas delegation was headed by Katharina Wieser, head of the Department of Eastern and Southern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia of the Ministry for European Affairs, Integration and Foreign Affairs of Austria.

Mutual relations in politics, economy, energy, transportation, cooperation within international organizations, in particular the UN and the EU, were discussed during the meeting.

The sides exchanged views on a number of regional issues and aspects of international security. They also touched upon cooperation in culture, art, education and healthcare.

Stressing the importance of continuing the established dialogue that meets mutual interests, the sides agreed to hold another round of political consultations in Vienna in 2018 to further diversify fruitful cooperation.
France and Germany agree that Iran must reverse its ballistic missile program and end its hegemonic temptations across the Middle east, the French foreign minister said on Monday, Reuters reports.

We also have the same view on the necessity for Iran to go back on its ballistic missile program and its hegemonic temptations, Jean-Yves Le Drian said at a news conference alongside his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 30

By Umid Niayesh  Trend:

Despite the fact that Iran and Russia enjoy very close political ties at a strategic alliance level, the alliance is not reflected in trade ties.

The sides have failed so far to boost the volume of the trade, as obstacles still exist. After the tension between Moscow and West escalated in recent years, there was a big opportunity for Iranians to pave their way to Russias food market, but the expectations did not materialize due to various obstacles.

Experts believe that shortcomings in banking ties, transportation issues, lack of proper marketing and unawareness of the Russian markets capacities, different hygienic standards applied in the two countries and low quality of Iranian products, visa complications, the tendency to consume European goods by Russians and a lack of reciprocal trust between merchants of the two sides are among the main obstacles ahead of Iranian exporters to find a foothold in Russian market.

Some Iranian businessmen are satisfied that the trade relations, which have been hampered for many years, will not be established overnight.

Earlier, Secretary General of Iran's Aquatics Producers' Association Ali Akbar Khodaei said that the export of aquatics to Russia is a long process and needs much ground preparation.

The two parties also have established an arrangement of oil for goods barter, which is expected to come into force in the near future.

The arrangement dates back to 2014 when Iran tried to boost vital energy exports in the face of intensified Western sanctions. At the time, it was said that Moscow and Tehran were discussing a barter deal that would see Moscow buy up to 500,000 barrels a day (bpd) of Iranian oil in exchange for Russian equipment and goods.

Hereinafter, we will take a look at the Islamic Republics trade with Russia in recent years, comparing the trade value before intensification of the international sanctions against Tehran in 2012, under the sanctions, and in post-sanctions era.

The figures show that Iran-Russia trade balance was in favor of Moscow in all years of the study period.

Despite the fact that Irans exports to Russia did not witness big changes in these years, the countrys imports have experienced significant fluctuations.

Russias exports to Iran jumped by 115 percent to $1,632 million in the fiscal year of 2012/2013, when the intensified sanctions hit Irans economy. However the figure decreased by 58 percent in the succeeding year and did not revive till the removal of international sanctions in 2016.

In 2016/2017 Russias exports to Iran hiked by 198 percent to $1,541 billion.

Comparing the prices of the exported and imported goods, indicates that Irans exports to Russia were more valuable goods in comparison to Russian ones.

Food, agricultural products and cement form the lion share of Irans export basket to Russia.

The following table, extracted from the data of Irans state-run Trade Promotion Organization (TPOI) and Tehran Chamber of Commerce shows Irans non-oil trade values with Russia in recent years.

Year (Iranian fiscal) Export, million USD Growth % Price ($/kg) price change% Import, million USD Growth % Price ($/kg) price change% Trade balance, million USD Trade volume, million USD 84 (March 2005-2006) 183 - 0,9 - 1034 - 0,4 - -851 1217 85 (2006-2007) 289 58 1 11 665 -36 0,6 50 -376 954 86 (2007-2008) 367 27 1,5 50 866 30 0,7 17 -499 1233 87 (2008-2009) 358 -2 1,8 20 1193 38 0,7 0 -835 1551 88 (2009-2010) 333 -7 1,7 -6 908 -24 0,6 -14 -575 1241 89 (2010-2011) 330 -1 1,4 -18 433 -52 0,6 0 -103 763 90 (2011-2012) 371 12 1,1 -21 759 75 0,6 0 -388 1130 91 (2012-2013) 501 35 0,5 -55 1632 115 0,5 -17 -1131 2133 92 (2013-2014) 317 -37 0,3 -40 689 -58 0,5 0 -372 1006 93 (2014-2015) 295 -7 0,4 33 639 -7 0,5 0 -344 934 94 (2015-2016) 173 -41 0,4 0 517 -19 0,4 -20 -344 690 95 (2016-2017) 219 27 0,6 50 1541 198 0,7 75 -1322 1760

Despite the fact that Russias exports to Iran flourished during the first year following the removal of the sanctions, the latest statistics by Irans Customs administration indicate that the trend has changed downward again.

Russia exported $419 million worth of goods to Iran in the first seven months of the current fiscal year (started March 20, 2017), 63 percent less year-on-year.

However, the volume of exports was 909,000 tons, 1 percent more compared to the seven-month period of the preceding year. This indicates that the Russia has exported more goods but with less value to the Islamic Republic in the period.

On the other hand, Irans exports to Russia accounted to $228 million in the first half of 2017, 36 percent more year-on-year, a sign that Iran is gradually increasing its share from Russias food market.
A UW-Madison graduate focusing on breaking down voting barriers has been selected as one of 43 students in the U.S. to receive the Marshall Scholarship to study in the United Kingdom.

Phoenix Rice-Johnson, a native of Hawaii who was attracted to UW-Madison while taking summer trips to visit her grandparents in Wisconsin, will attend Kings College London in 2018, pursuing a master's degree in public policy.

She is currently in New York at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute at the New York University School of Law, working as a research and program associate, focusing on breaking down barriers that keep marginalized people from voting.

Her blue-collar background is helpful in her studies.

"It's so important to have working-class people in decision-making spaces," Rice-Johnson said in a statement Monday. "It's why I'm inspired to do what I do. That voice needs to be heard."

While at UW-Madison, Rice-Johnson was active in politics, rising to the presidency of College Democrats of Wisconsin, and also helped run political campaigns as well as interning at the White House.

She also received several UW-Madison awards, including the College of Letters and Science Dean's Prize, the Teddy Kubly Award for most outstanding graduating senior, and the 2015 Truman Scholarship, awarded to 58 students nationwide.

"I can't overstate my admiration for Phoenix, who is a true scholar-activist," said Julie Stubbs, director of undergraduate academic awards at UW-Madison.

"She's chosen to study pressing social problems and fight for change through advocacy work and the political process," Stubbs said. "While building an exceptional record of leadership at UW-Madison and beyond, she's always found time to mentor and create opportunities for her more junior colleagues."

Senior Ross Dahlke, a journalism and political science major from Westfield, also was a finalist for the Marshall Scholarship.

The most recent Marshall winners at UW-Madison were Deshawn McKinney from the class of 2017 and Andrew Bulovsky from the class of 2014.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Fatih Karimov Trend:

Hungary is interested in boosting oil purchase from Iran in the future, Hungarys Minister of National Economy Mihaly Varga said.

The visiting Hungarian minister made the remarks after a meeting with Irans oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, Dec. 4, the oil ministrys official website reported.

The Hungarian multinational oil and gas company MOL has already received a 1-million barrel oil shipment from Iran after removal of international sanctions against Tehran in 2016.

Negotiations for crude export to Hungary were launched in early 2016. In mid-July 2016, Iran said MOL had called for importing 40,000 barrels of light crude oil per day from Iran. However, at the time, Tehran was not ready to provide MOL with light crude.

The Hungarian minister further said that Iran and Hungary are determined to facilitate banking ties.

There is no obstacle to reviving the pre-sanctions banking ties between Tehran and Budapest, Varga added.

Varga, who is in Tehran for an official visit, held meetings with senior Iranian officials, including his counterpart, Masoud Karbasian.

Four memorandums of understanding for cooperation in various sectors, including manufacture of hybrid cooling systems, electric vehicles, electric rail equipment and buses were signed between Iranian and Hungarian entrepreneurs during the visit.

The Hungarian minister said mutual trade between his country and Iran has witnessed a twofold increase in post-sanctions era.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 2

By Fatih Karimov Trend:

Irans oil exports to Japan (including gas condensates) in October 2017 decreased by 18 percent year-on-year and reached 5.13 million barrels.

Compared to the preceding month, the figure indicates a fall by 20.6 percent, Japans ministry of economy, trade and industry said.

The figure includes 487,510.7 barrels of condensates exported from Irans South Pars gas field.

Iran was Japans fifth oil supplier after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, with a share of 5.7 percent in October 2017, while the country supplied 6.6 percent of the Asian countrys oil demand in October 2016 (6.26 million barrels).

Saudi Arabia exported 36.039 million barrels of oil to Japan in October (39.7 percent of the countrys total crude imports.)

Irans oil exports to Japan reached 83.94 million barrels in the fiscal year of 2016, which is a 38-percent increase compared to the preceding year.

Iran supplied 7 percent of Japans oil demand in 2016.

Irans oil exports increased by 1 million barrels per day (mb/d) last year to 2.42 mb/d and the figure would increase to 2.5 mb/d in 2017 and 2.59 mb/d in 2018, IMF previously said in a report.

Irans oil and condensate exports amounted to 2.6 mb/d in September 2017, the countrys oil ministry said recently. The country exported 2.25 mb/d of oil to Asian and European markets in the mentioned period. China, India, South Korea and Japan imported more than 1.9 mb/d in September, highest level since March 2017.
Tehran, Iran, December 2

By Mehdi Sepahvand  Trend:

Irans economy is most probably going to become heavily reliant on gas, although gas already looms large in the country and has been a source of blessing for the government.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has in its World Energy Outlook 2017 it made a strong statement of how big the potential of Irans gas industry is: "In our projections, Iran leads gas output growth in the Middle East, adding 150bn cubic metres [a year] to the region's gas supply in the period to 2040," the agency has said.

Last year, when asked by Trend what comprised the Iranian economys propelling sections, government spokesman Mohammad Baqer Nobakht put strong emphasis on petrochemicals, all of which is a gas-based business.

According to the Iran Petroleum Ministry, the proved natural gas reserves of Iran are about 1,201 trillion cubic feet (34.0 trillion cubic meters) or about 17.8 percent of world's total reserves, of which 33 percent is as associated gas and 67 percent is in non-associated gas fields. Iran has the world's second largest reserves after Russia. As it takes approximately 5,850 cubic feet (166 m3) of gas to equal the energy content of 1-barrel (0.16 m3) of oil, Iran's gas reserves represent the equivalent of about 216 billion barrels (3.431010 m3) of oil.

At present, Iran's gas production is around 200 bcmpy. Of this, less than 10bn cm/y is exported.

Meeting the growing domestic demand for gas is the priority for Iranian gas producers, especially because they have an eye on situations when, like the early 2010s, the country is under sanctions and relying on gas for running power plants, factories, vehicles, and warming buildings would be the safest approach.

But as output from South Pars expands and capacity starts climbing towards the forecast 350bn cm/y by 2040, the IEA anticipates "some export growth via links to Iraq and Oman, as well as further deliveries to Turkey and, much later on [in] the projection period, the start of a pipeline connection with Pakistan".

In July, Amir Hossein Zamaninia, Irans deputy oil minister for trade and international affairs, said Irans gas production would rise to 1 billion cubic meters a day by the end of the year from that times 800 mcmpd.

In the seventh month of the current fiscal year (September 23-October 21), gas power plants in Iran received a daily average of 196 mcm of gas. Iran has the worlds largest CNG-powered car fleet, near 4 million. Almost all cities and big villages in the country also use gas for warming.

Iran's gas production capacity in South Pars, the world's largest gas field in the Persian Gulf that stretches into Qatar's territory, has reached 575 million cubic meters per day. That constitutes nearly two-thirds of Iranian gas output capacity.

The country hopes to develop its South Pars deposit using the investment and technology of Total that became the first major Western energy firm to sign a deal after the lifting of economic curbs in January 2016.

Currently, Iran exports about 1 mcmpd of gas to its northwestern neighbor Armenia, according to a 20-year contract signed in 2004 and put to force in 2009.

Iran is also exporting about 30 mcmpd of gas to its other northwestern neighbor Turkey. This is based on an annually renewed contract.

Iran is also exporting about 14 mcmpd of gas to its western neighbor Iraq. Based on agreements, the exported amount should stay somewhere between 7 and 25 mcmpd.

The Ministry of Petroleum plans to increase Irans share of global gas trade to 10 percent, which would be 7 times the current volume.

Nevertheless, just this week Iran signed a contract with Oman over the export of 1.5 bcfpd of gas to Oman. The project is expected to go on stream by 2020.
Tehran, Iran, Dec. 4

By Mehdi Sepahvand  Trend:

The fact that Irans trade relations are turning to Asia more and more comes with well-established reasons, according to a former member of parliament.

The reasons have to be found in the partners with which we consider working, Iraj Nadimi, currently a top adviser to the head of Management and Planning Organization, told Trend December 4, adding, The fact is that European countries have not been quick enough in reestablishing ties with Iran.

Iran and Europe used to cherish hopes of trade reunion as they brought the landmark Iran nuclear deal (aka Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)) into force in 2016. However, major companies and banks in Europe still fear US punishments for engaging Iran.

Under such circumstances, China has started financing billions of dollars worth of projects in Iran, making deep inroads into the economy and leaving Europe behind.

State-owned investment arm CITIC Group recently established a $10 billion credit line and China Development Bank is considering $15 billion more.

Iranian officials say the deals are part of Beijings $124 billion Belt and Road initiative, which aims to build new infrastructure - from highways and railways to ports and power plants - between China and Europe to pave the way for an expansion of trade.

South Korea has also proved a willing investor, with Seouls Eximbank signing an 8 billion euros credit line for projects in Iran in August, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

Nadimi noted that the inertia in Europe against making bonds with Iran is probably a remnant of the days of sanctions.

With Europeans, it is so that they face more problems compared to China or Korea for starting projects with Iran, he said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.4

By Fuad Aslanov - Trend:

The Armenian population, which witnesses the careless attitude of their government towards them, have already given up hope of having a normal leadership in the country.

For this very reason, tens of thousands of people leave the country every year, thus constantly reducing the population of Armenia. However, the government, probably, does not perceive this as a serious problem. Instead, the authorities continue to plunder the countrys internal resources and misappropriate billions of foreign currency incomes.

The outflow of population negatively affects the number of private money transfers as well as foreign investment into the country. The Armenian newspaper Zhamanak reports that the volume of net cash flows in January-September 2017 was by $1.8 million less than those that Armenia received in the same period last year.

Armenian economists, in turn, note that the change of heads of several government agencies in Armenia led to an outflow of capital, since some dismissed persons have powerful financial and other kind of resources.

It should be noted that since taking office last year, Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan promised the development of the Armenian economy due to a number of factors. In particular, he promised to bring investment in the country, but today it is not even felt when we take a look at the current state of the Armenian economy.

Currently, the investment indicator in Armenia is negative, that is, Armenians withdraw investments more than attract them. Obviously, few people dare to invest in the impoverished and corrupt country. Even the richest foreigners from affluent countries hesitate to invest their money in Armenia, known for extreme corruption and many other drawbacks. The Armenian businessmen themselves do not invest money in the countrys business spheres because they are afraid of losing the funds. They understand unreasonableness of investing in the Armenian economy which is heading towards a default.
The territory of Moscows Domodedovo Airport is being checked after a passenger said he has an explosive device, an emergency official told TASS on Sunday.

"Overnight into Sunday, a passenger on the territory of the Domodedovo Airport said he had an explosive device," the source said.

Security is tight at the airport, he said, and police are working on the site.
US F-22 fighter jets roared into the sky over South Korea on Monday to start air combat exercises that North Korea says are pushing the peninsula to the brink of nuclear war, CNN reports.

A US 7th Air Force official said the top-of-the-line F-22s are being joined by Air Force and Marine Corps F-35s in the largest concentration of fifth-generation fighter jets ever in South Korea.

The stealthy F-22s and F35s are among 230 US and South Korean aircraft participating in the annual Vigilant Ace 18 air combat drills.

The drills begin after a weekend that saw official sources from both North Korea and the US say the chances of war are growing.

North Korea's bellicose rhetoric came in two phases: On Saturday, a statement from its Foreign Ministry said US President Donald Trump is "begging for a nuclear war" through what it called an "extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean Peninsula."

A day later, a commentary from Pyongyang's Rodong Sinmun newspaper, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, said US-South Korea joint air exercises scheduled for Monday to Friday are a "dangerous provocation" pushing the region "to the brink of a nuclear war."

From the US side, White House national security adviser HR McMaster told a conference in California on Saturday that the chances for war on the Korean Peninsula grow daily.

"I think it's increasing every day, which means that we are in a race, really, we are in a race to be able to solve this problem," McMaster told an audience at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley.

McMaster made the comment when asked if North Korea's launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile in the early hours of Wednesday morning local time had increased the chance of war.

"There are ways to address this problem short of armed conflict, but it is a race because he's getting closer and closer, and there's not much time left," McMaster said, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

With every missile launch or nuclear test, Kim has improved his country's capabilities, McMaster said.

US Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican hawk who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CBS News that North Korea's advancing military technology makes the possibility of pre-emptive war more likely.

"I think we're really running out of time," he said.

Graham also said he will urge the Pentagon not to send any military dependents to South Korea.

"It's crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea, given the provocation of North Korea. So I want them to stop sending dependents. And I think it's now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea," he said.
The United States and nine other nations agreed to a 16-year ban on commercial fishing in the Arctic Ocean to give researchers time to study the area's ecology and the effects of climate change, UPI reports.

The agreement, which was reached after a meeting between the various countries' delegations late last month, establishes and operates a joint scientific research and monitoring program to understand the ecosystem of and determine whether fish stocks exist and could be sustainably harvested, according to a statement from the Chairman of the meeting between the 10 nations.

Joining the United States in the agreement were Russia, China, Denmark, Iceland, South Korea, Japan, Norway and the European Union.

The Arctic Ocean has not been a target for large scale commercial fishing. But as the ice melts and its waters become more open, that could change. And since the waters are international, fishing would be legal and unregulated, which some researchers, environmental groups, and policymakers fear could cause vast damage to the area's ecosystem, Science Magazine reported.

The international agreement to ban fishing prevents that from happening.

"For the first time, nations are committing to scientific research in a high seas area before commercial fishing begins," said Scott Highleyman, the vice-president of conservation policy and programs at Ocean Conservancy and a the U.S. delegate involved in the agreement's negotiation. "This precautionary action recognizes both the pace of change in the Arctic due to climate change as well as the tradition of Arctic cooperation across international boundaries."
France is close to finalizing major military and transport contracts during a visit by Emmanuel Macron to Qatar on Thursday, a French presidential source said, Reuters reports.

Qatar has an option to buy 12 more Dassault-made Rafale fighter jets after buying 24 planes in 2015 for about 6 billion euros ($7.11 billion) and officials have said that the deal could be concluded this week.

The two sides are also in talks for sale of 300 VBCI armored vehicles from French firm Nexter and a contract worth some 3 billion euros to manage the Doha metro for 20 years.

Discussions are ongoing, a French presidential source told reporters on Monday ahead of the visit. You spoke about several dossiers for which the point of maturity is close, but I prefer to remain a little bit prudent and wait until Thursday.

Paris has close commercial and political ties with Qatar and has pushed further business interests in the country as well as encourage investment into France, where the gas-rich Gulf state already has assets of about $10 billion.

It has also sought to play a role as a go-between in a row, which began in early June when Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut political and trade ties with Qatar.

Since then Qatar has sought to strengthen its military, including signing military equipment deals with the United States, Russia and Britain.
Britain agreed on Monday to keep Northern Ireland in regulatory alignment with the European Union after Brexit, Irish government sources said, raising hopes Prime Minister Theresa May can strike a deal in Brussels to start free trade talks, Reuters reports.

After intensive negotiations in recent days, Britain made what the Irish sources called a clear commitment to keep economic rules on both sides of the new UK-EU land border across the island of Ireland similar enough to allow no frontier.

That is seen as a key way to avoid customs and other infrastructure which might jeopardize the peace in Northern Ireland. How far Britain would then be permitted to change rules on the mainland as Brexit supporters want was not immediately clear. May and her Northern Irish allies want no new regulatory barriers erected between the province and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Agreement has been reached on an overall deal for the Irish issues, one of the Irish government sources said.

The key phrase is a clear commitment to maintaining regulatory alignment in relation to the rules of the customs union and internal market which are required to support the Good Friday Agreement, the all-island economy and the border.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said he hoped to make a positive statement shortly, adding that British-EU negotiations on post-Brexit trade would start and that the Irish border would not change its physical appearance after Britain leaves the EU.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar by phone. EU lawmaker Philippe Lamberts, who met Juncker earlier on Monday, said the draft text on Ireland would commit Britain to full alignment on rules.

Donald Tusk, the EU summit chair, tweeted ebulliently after speaking to Varadkar that there was good progress on the Irish issue to unblock UK-EU trade talks: Tell me why I like Mondays! the former Polish premier wrote. Getting closer to sufficient progress at December (EU summit).

London has broadly agreed to many of the EUs divorce terms, including paying out something like 50 billion euros. But the issues of the rights of expatriate citizens and the UK-EU border on the island of Ireland defied a deal until the last minute.

Elmar Brok, another member of the European Parliament who met Juncker and his Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, before they met May, said just a few words separated the sides.

In London, Mays spokesman said: Progress is being made. Theres more still to agree upon.
At the funeral home after her husband died in a June crash, Jessica Steinhorst was handed a bag of his belongings. She really didnt care about anything other than his wedding ring, and it wasnt there.

She was told the damage to her husbands left side was extensive, and his ring wasnt recovered.

It was the one thing that was important to me. I didnt care about his phone. I didnt care about his clothes. I didnt care about his wallet. I wanted his ring, said Steinhorst, 32.

Then, in mid-October, Steinhorst, of Wauzeka, two hours west of Madison, got her late husbands ring back thanks to the expertise of a town of Middleton man with a ring-finding business.

Steinhorsts grandmother lives in Madison and is well-known for cutting out articles on just about anything and sending them to loved ones. When Steinhorst found an article in her recent birthday card, she didnt think much of it  at first.

But when she saw the Wisconsin State Journal article about ring finder Dan Roekle, who by then had turned up 60 lost rings, she knew she had to contact him.

Turns out, the recovery of Lee Steinhorsts ring would become the most significant in the two-plus years Roekles been in the ring-finding game.

Every ring hunt is meaningful because the ring means something, Roekle said. Either it was a family members or the fact that its a wedding ring. But this one just takes it to a different level of what it means to both her and, ultimately, to her kids one day.

Lee Steinhorst, 33, was killed about 4:15 a.m. June 27 when his minivan crossed the center line of Highway 61 in the Grant County town of Fennimore and struck a semitrailer head-on, the Sheriffs Office said.

Jessica Steinhorst said her husband worked as a security manager at Walmart in Platteville, and was coming home from an overnight shift he worked once a month or so.

Roekle, whos been successful in his hunts 53 percent of the time, told Steinhorst that side-of-road searches are really hard because of the roadside trash.

Theres just so much stuff there from the years, and then snowplows push everything into the ditch, said Roekle, who often collects trash during side-of-the-road searches.

What made Steinhorsts search successful was that, although it was in a rural area, Roekle found the ring near a house with a relatively well-maintained yard. Along on the search was Roekles son Carter, 14, and a volunteer from a Facebook metal-detecting group in the area.

Roekle said he started losing hope as they got into a section that was thick with brush. But on the edge of some tall grass, pressed into the ground, he spotted it. It was sitting there, plain as day, just waiting to be found, he said.

Having the ring back means the world to her, Jessica Steinhorst said. It means she can hold it and feel some sort of connection.

Its something her children, ages 9, 2 and 8 months, can have one day, to just feel close to him in some sort of way, she said.

Steinhorst tried to give Roekle a reward, but he didnt take it or charge her his usual call out fee. He even took steps to set up a GoFundMe site for the family, which was ultimately handled by Jessica Steinhorsts sister.

Life changes in an instant, but luckily we were able to return something to her to remember him, Roekle said.

Steinhorst hopes to wear the ring in a chain around her neck, but still needs to find a chain thats sturdy enough. I dont want to lose it again, she said.

The ring was a custom-made, one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry with her fingerprint imprinted inside. It symbolized what it did when they married, their love and connection  a connection Steinhorst felt shed lost for a while.

This gives me something to hold and to remind me of our love and how this was our life together. Hes still, hopefully, with me, she said.
The ministers of foreign affairs of the Caspian "five" - Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan - Sergey Lavrov, Elmar Mammadyarov, Javad Zarif, Kairat Abdrakhmanov and Rashid Meredov will discuss on Tuesday in Moscow the development of a document on the legal status of the Caspian Sea, TASS reports.

The ministerial meeting precedes the summit in this format, which may take place in early 2018. "Work in this direction is underway, now we are trying to complete certain details of this document," said Grigory Karasin, State Secretary and Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation.

Karasin noted that the Caspian Sea should become an example of cooperation against the background of "unpredictable different approaches to major international problems." "And this will give the opportunity for all five not to wait for favors from extra-regional players, not to wait for some more rapid development of the international situation, it will enable them to act independently and become an example of good, regional interaction," he added.
Half of Britons support a second vote on whether to leave the European Union and a majority think the government may be paying too much money to the EU to open the way to trade talks, according to a new opinion poll, Reuters reported.

The poll, published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, found 50 percent of people supported another vote on the final terms of Britains exit deal, 34 percent rejected another referendum and 16 percent said they did not know.

The newspaper said it was the first major opinion poll since last weeks media reports that Britain is preparing to pay about 50 billion euros ($59 billion) to help to move on to talks on a future trade pact with the EU.

Brexit supporters argue any attempt to halt the exit process would be anti-democratic.

According to the Survation poll only 11 percent of voters said Britain should pay 50 billion pounds to quit the EU, while 31 percent said the government should not pay anything at all.

The poll also found 35 percent of those surveyed said they would be worse off financially after Brexit, while 14 percent said they would be better off.
A bus carrying young holidaymakers overturned in Tunisia, causing 52 injured, including 10 in critical condition, Xinhua reported, citing the private-owned Nessma TV.

Local sources told Xinhua that the bus skidded off the road in the governorate of Beja in northwest of the country before plunging into a river in the area.

The identities of the injured remained unknown.

The bus was headed to the town of Ain Draham in the governorate of Jendouba, which is known to be one of the best tourist destinations in Tunisia for snow sightseeing and sports.

The National Institute of Meteorology of Tunisia has forecast the arrival of a strong cold front that could persist until half of next week with rains and snowfalls in the northern and northeastern governorates of the country.
Details added (first version posted on 13:39)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.4

By Leman Zeynalova - Trend:

Looking forward for a very productive NATO ministerial, said US Permanent Representative to NATO, Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison at a press briefing Dec.4.

"We are looking forward for a very productive session. First of all, our priority will be the fight against terrorism and particularly, the Resolute Support Mission, she said.

Hutchison noted that the second area of discussions will be the NATO-EU cooperation that is coming to a much better position. It is very important for us," she added.

She said that increased military mobility in Europe within that cooperation will also be discussed at the ministerial.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

A special commission has been set up in Turkey to study financial consequences of the military coup attempt in the country, the Turkish media reported Dec. 4.

The commission will be headed by the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund of Turkey (TMSF) and the countrys Cabinet of Ministers, according to the report.

Until Dec. 31 this year, the commission has to prepare a report on the financial consequences of the military coup attempt.

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.

Turkish authorities are accusing Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the US, of supporting the attempted coup.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 4

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Nineteen MPs from Turkeys Democratic Peoples Party may be deprived of parliamentary immunity, the countrys media reported Dec. 4.

On Dec. 4, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office appealed to the Ministry of Justice with a demand to lift the immunity of a number of MPs from the Democratic Peoples Party.

The decision is related to the statements of MPs from the Democratic Peoples Party in support of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) terrorist group.

In June, the police of Turkeys southeastern Diyarbakir Province detained an MP from Democratic People's Party, Osman Baydemir.

In general, 11 MPs from Democratic People's Party, including co-chairs of the party Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, have been recently arrested in Turkey.

The MPs from Democratic People's Party are accused of creating a criminal organization, membership in a terrorist organization, and other crimes.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
KYODO NEWS - Dec 4, 2017 - 12:13 | Feature, All

Local restaurants, souvenir shops and even some temples and shrines are hoping to cater to foreign guests with an international custom yet to be adopted in Japan: letting customers pay their bills with credit cards instead of cash.

As the country braces for a further tourism boom in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, major credit card companies are providing local businesses with portable devices so foreign customers can pay at the table -- a practice customary in their home countries.

In mid-September, a customer from Sweden seated at the bar at The Rigoletto, a restaurant serving Southern European cuisines in Tokyo's busy Shibuya district, swiped his card at his table. He said the convenience reminded him of being back home.

The format, in which customers simply enter their PIN numbers for verification into portable devices after a waiter presents the bill on a tablet, was introduced at the restaurant in April.

"More cards are being used, and these terminals are convenient for foreign guests who are used to paying at their table," said a restaurant employee.

Card company Mitsubishi UFJ Nicos Co. launched the system at affiliated stores nationwide in November last year. Simply by downloading the app, customers can exchange data wirelessly with the portable device.

A company official who works in systems development said there has been a high demand for a payment method "which can be used anywhere inside shops," particularly among restaurants.

The Japanese government is aiming to see the rate of cashless payments via credit cards and other means double in the next 10 years to about 40 percent within the country.

Tourist spots including traditional places such as temples have slowly come to accept plastic.

Kongobuji, the head temple of Koyasan Shingon Buddhism, on Mt. Koya in Wakayama Prefecture in western Japan, began in April to accept credit cards for admission fees.

Card payments are becoming popular also at ski resorts in the northernmost Japanese prefecture of Hokkaido and Nagano Prefecture, central Japan, which attract many international skiers.

Domestic tourist spots have been reluctant to accept credit cards until now because customers usually only pay a small amount on entrance fees or souvenirs, making it not worth the investment.

Square, Inc., a U.S. based IT company, uses a small device to connect to mobile devices, such as iPhones, to accept credit card payments without the hassle of using cash registers.

The company, which launched its business in Japan in 2013, says the system has proven popular especially among small shops.

In the last few years, the company has seen a steady increase in the number of stores that have adopted the system.

The company's Japanese arm said it expects to a see a further expansion of the system toward the 2020 Tokyo Games.
KYODO NEWS - Dec 4, 2017 - 13:57 | All, Japan

A range of electronic and other products, including home appliances and a solar power panel, were found missing on an uninhabited islet off the northern main island of Hokkaido where North Korean crewmen took shelter due to bad weather, Japan Coast Guard officials and sources familiar with the matter said Monday.

Police and coast guard officials searched the islet on Sunday. According to the sources, a TV, a motorbike, a refrigerator, a rice cooker and a power generator were found missing from a refuge hut. The hut had been locked, but it was broken into and its inside was disarranged.

A wooden fishing boat with 10 North Korean men on board was found drifting in waters near the islet last Wednesday. The fishermen, who were later rescued by the coast guard, were seen dumping some home appliances into the sea from their boat.

Japanese authorities found several home appliances, including a TV, from the boat while a coast guard patrol boat has collected some of the appliances thrown into the water.

The coast guard said some solar power panels used to power a lighthouse on the islet were also missing.

The North Korean crewmen have told the officials they left the port of Chongjin in northeastern North Korea in September for squid fishing in the Sea of Japan before the steering wheel failed around a month ago.

The crewmen also said they temporarily took shelter on the islet due to bad weather, the coast guard said.

The wooden boat was towed into a port outside Hakodate in Hokkaido on Sunday for inspection by police and the coast guard. The officials are also questioning the crewmen.

In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, the top government spokesman, said he would like to "refrain from commenting (on the discovery of missing items on the islet) with prejudgments as investigations are ongoing."
A new report highlighting how vital mental health services were developed in Sierra Leone during the response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak is published today in the WHO Bulletin.

The report, which the WHO hopes will act as a blueprint on how to address such emergencies in the future, was written jointly by Sierra Leonean health workers and the King's Sierra Leone Partnership (KSLP). KSLP brings together expertise from King's Health Partners and three leading Sierra Leonean health institutions.

The report charts the steps taken to develop an effective mental health care service in a country with a fragile health system. At the time of the Ebola outbreak Sierra Leone had only one specialist psychiatric hospital to serve a population of seven million.

Prior to Ebola establishing itself in the country the Sierra Leonean government had been working with KSLP and other partners to address the lack of mental health service provision. However, the fallout from the outbreak, which included the psychiatric hospital closing its doors to new patients in order to prevent disease transmission, saw government plans to create new mental health units across the country brought forward.

As part of the response a treatment model was created at Connaught Hospital - the adult referral and tertiary government hospital in the capital Freetown - that saw the development of a nurse-led mental health and psychosocial support service, with an inpatient liaison service and outpatient clinic.

To strengthen the skills of the hospital's non-specialist nurses, mental health awareness training was provided by a mental health nurse and KSLP volunteer.

Mental wellbeing workshops, created and led by the mental health nurse, were held for nurses, auxiliary staff and physicians at Connaught hospital, including those working within the Ebola holding unit. The workshops were made up of a series of half-day sessions which focused on coping with stigma and discrimination, stress management, and self-care.

From March 2015 to February 2016, 143 patients with a wide range of conditions were seen. 20 had survived or had relatives affected by the Ebola virus; half the patients (71) had a range of conditions including mild distress or depression, anxiety disorders, grief, or social problems, while 30 patients presented with psychosis requiring medication.

Speaking about the report Dr Stania Kamara, a KSLP volunteer from the King's Centre for Global Health and Health Partnerships, said: "The Ebola virus outbreak weakened an already fragile health system and disrupted existing plans to develop mental health services across the country. However, the emergency response provided the opportunity, resources and focus necessary to create new mental health units.

"Our experience in Freetown has guided the establishment of other mental health units across the country; there are now 15 units across Sierra Leone. We hope that our experiences and the models applied will help others around the world successfully implement similar services within an emergency response."

KSLP continues to support the development of mental health services across the country. It is currently supporting a national network of mental health nurses, in a programme funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), through John Snow International.

The KSLP team remains in Sierra Leone and continues to work alongside local partners to help build a strong and resilient national health system that can not only better stand up to disease outbreaks such as Ebola, but can provide high quality care to meet the population's health needs. Find out more about the partnership's work on the KSLP website: http://kslp.org.uk/

###

Notes to editors:

The King's Sierra Leone Partnership (KSLP) is working alongside local partners to build a strong and resilient health system in Sierra Leone. KSLP brings together King's Health Partners - itself a partnership between King's College London, and Guy's and St Thomas', King's College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts - and three key Sierra Leonean institutions: Connaught Hospital, the country's main teaching and referral hospital; The College of Medical and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS), Sierra Leone's only medical and pharmacy school, and the main institution for basic and specialist nurse training and The Ministry of Health and Sanitation, the branch of government which focuses on issues related to the general health of Sierra Leone's citizens.

King's College London King's College London is one of the top 25 universities in the world (2017/18 QS World University Rankings), among the oldest in England and has an outstanding reputation for world-class teaching and cutting-edge research.

Since our foundation, King's students and staff have dedicated themselves in the service of society. King's will continue to focus on world-leading education, research and service, and will have an increasingly proactive role to play in a more interconnected, complex world. World-changing ideas. Life-changing impact: https://spotlight.kcl.ac.uk/

King's Health Partners is one of only six Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs) in England and is a partnership between King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas', King's College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts.

With a combined budget of more than 3.7 billion, nearly 4.8 million patient contacts every year and 40,000 staff, King's Health Partners leads two National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs), a wide range of world-leading research programmes, and a comprehensive portfolio of high quality clinical services. kingshealthpartners.org
BEIJING  Chinese banks are looking to tap the opportunities arising from the huge investment and financing demands in the Belt and Road regions, where investors are attracted by the potential of infrastructure and less-developed industries.

"Most countries along the Belt and Road are developing economies that have numerous opportunities in infrastructure, rail transit, urban development, logistics, cross-border e-commerce and other areas," said Hong Qi, chairperson of China Minsheng Bank, a leading joint-stock commercial bank.

Infrastructure financing demand alone will amount to $10 trillion in the next five years, Hong said at a recent forum.

Betting on these prospects, the Beijing-based lender has signed lending agreements worth over $10 billion with businesses from more than 30 countries and regions, with more projects financed via public-private partnership in the pipeline.

Minsheng is not the only bank that has strengthened its push in the Belt and Road Initiative. Other lenders including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Everbright Bank have also jumped into action. By the end of 2016, nine Chinese banks had set up 62 branches in 26 countries and regions along the Belt and Road, data from the China Banking Regulatory Commission showed.

"There are bright prospects for banks to finance the Belt and Road Initiative," former Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister He Yafei has said.

Proposed by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa based on ancient land and maritime trade routes. Analysts believe opportunities are sprouting for global businesses to increase their presence and investment in the to-be-booming regions where public facilities still lag behind.

Multilateral lender the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund were founded to finance the Belt and Road.

Backed by financial support, investment went up steadily along the Belt and Road. During the first 10 months of 2017, Chinese investors put forward $11.2 billion in 53 countries and regions along the Belt and Road.

Thanks to the capital pumped in, Asian infrastructure is improving rapidly, with transportation networks improved and more public facilities erected, ranging from power stations to hospitals.

"More tangible progress will have been made by 2020," said Zhang Yansheng, a researcher at China Center for International Economic Exchanges, citing railroads and expressways that will stretch to more areas including Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean.

"Investment growth in the Belt and Road will pick up pace in a couple of years, with double-digits compound increase expected in 2018 and 2019," said Robin Xing, Morgan Stanley's chief China economist.

Not only will infrastructure improve, but global trade will also benefit, Xing said. "Belt and Road countries will see a 10-percent increase in their exports in ten years because of Chinese investment as better ports and railways will facilitate cargo flows."

While Belt and Road construction is in full swing, concerns about investment risks also linger mainly due to regional political and economic instability.

Risks facing Chinese State-owned enterprises (SOEs), major investors in the Belt and Road regions, are completely controllable, Xiao Yaqing, head of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), has said.

Over the last three years, 47 Chinese SOEs supervised by the SASAC have taken part in 1,676 projects in countries and regions along the Belt and Road spanning energy, infrastructure and industrial cooperation. The investment was well-planned and organized, and supervision of the decision-making process has been toughened, Xiao said.

Xing said the risks will be low. "Even if investment amounted to $60 billion a year...it still only accounts for less than a third of China's current account surplus and around 0.5 percent of the nominal GDP."
A program that since 1999 has sheltered homeless families in Madison-area churches and synagogues will end  at least partly because progress is being made finding such families permanent homes.

The Road Homes Interfaith Hospitality Network Shelter Program  the smallest family shelter in Madison  will end this spring, according to executive director Kristin Rucinski. Thirteen congregations currently take week-long turns hosting as many as 14 people, or three or four families. Some 40 other buddy congregations provide meals and other help to the sheltered.

The Road Home boards unanimous decision to end the program was not made because of a lack of funding, Rucinski said. Rather, she pointed to plans by social-service providers and developers for low-cost housing projects, and to a decrease in the number of homeless families.

Point-in-time counts of homeless families have decreased from 108 in 2014, to 99 in 2015, 93 last year and 84 this year, she said. The Road Home sheltered 27 families last year and provided case management, help finding housing and other services to 156 more.

Rucinski said the Salvation Armys family shelter program  the largest in the city  went about six months over the last year in which it didnt have to turn any families away due to lack of space.

At the same time, in the summer months of 2017, even with our small shelter operating, our community had to turn some families away, she said. Summers are always the busiest months for family shelters and we are working with (Dane) County staff and other shelter providers to see what solutions we can come up with, as a community, for that bigger capacity issue during a few months a year.

The end of The Road Home shelter leaves the Salvation Army and the YWCA as the only family shelters in Madison, although Domestic Abuse Intervention Services provides shelter in cases of domestic abuse.

Amid rising rents and low vacancy rates, Madison launched an effort in 2014 to spend more than $20 million over five years as part of a broader effort to create 1,000 low-cost housing units, including 250 for the homeless. Dane County in October opened a long-anticipated day resource center for the homeless, called The Beacon, on East Washington Avenue.

Gov. Scott Walker also signed bills last month to bring together state agency heads to find solutions to homelessness and to prioritize the chronically homeless for federal housing assistance.
Open a bank account using a stolen identity and you might find yourself behind bars.

Open millions of accounts using stolen identities, and you might be the worlds second largest bank.

Between 2009 and 2016, Wells Fargo created an estimated 3.5 million sham deposit and credit card accounts created under customers names.

Scandals like this one are why we have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which fined Wells Fargo $100 million for its scam. Now more than ever, the nation needs a strong CFPB to help keep big banks in line.

Youd think that a president who once accused hedge funds of getting away with murder would find common cause with this regulatory agency. Instead, Donald Trump wants the watchdog to go belly up for the wolves of Wall Street.

The CFPB director, Richard Cordray, resigned this month, and Trump is trying to find a temporary replacement in Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney (For those checking, thats the same OMB director who has failed to deliver on a once-promised Hurricane Harvey recovery package).

Consider this just another example of Trumps compulsion to stand on the side of the rich and powerful against the American middle class. He might as well put an arsonist in charge of a fire department. Mulvaney has a record of trying to eliminate the CFPB, including cosponsoring a bill to do just that when he was in Congress.

His appointment would also open the bureau to potential back-door dealing  a longtime Mulvaney aide now works as a key lobbyist for a major bank, Santander, which faces a $10 million fine for illegal overdraft fees.

A bureaucratic battle has Mulvaney fighting with Leandra English, the CFPBs deputy director, for legal control over the agency. All this wrangling for power should be unnecessary. Trump needs to pick a formal appointee and submit that person to Senate approval.

Corporate profits are sky high and the stock market continues its eight-year-long surge, but paychecks remain stubbornly stagnant. The middle class deserves a qualified director to head up the only federal agency solely dedicated to balancing the playing field between Main Street and Wall Street.

When debt collectors illegally threaten veterans, or payday lenders trick working families into a pit of debt, or mortgage companies charge more on the basis of a customers skin color, the CFPB must be fully empowered to set things right.

Less than a decade has passed since reckless financial institutions brought the global economy to the brink of collapse. The American people may have forgiven banks for their sins, but the CFPB exists to ensure that we dont forget.
Motley Fool

Cathie Wood kicked off the first two weeks of November with a buying spree. It certainly appears that the co-founder and CEO of Ark Investment Management has been combing through recent third-quarter financial reports in search of beaten-down tech stocks to buy, and some of her picks might surprise you. While other investors have left Roku for dead, Wood has been buying the streaming specialist's stock like there's no tomorrow, adding more than 250,000 shares to her various ETFs over the past two weeks alone.
Aside from being a nominee for worst company name of the year, Baker Hughes, a GE Company (NYSE: BHGE) had a tough first quarter as a combined company as restructuring costs led to a big hit to the bottom line. For now, management gets an incomplete grade because the business is still going through the growing pains that come with such a large integration.

As is the case with any oil services company this size, though, it is worth listening to what management has to say on its earnings conference calls because it typically provides some interesting insights into the industry. On BHGE's most recent call, CEO Lorenzo Simonelli gave some interesting commentary on the direction of the market as well as how BHGE now fills an interesting role in a rapidly changing market. Here's a few snippets from the call to which investors should pay attention.

Oil service workers installing equipment in black and white.

Image source: Getty Images.

Is the pickup in international oil drilling revving back up?

The oil story of 2017 has been the success of shale drilling in North America. The industry's ability to lower breakeven costs has allowed producers to boost production at oil prices that would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago. As a result, the declines in production internationally and OPEC's self-imposed limits -- things that would have sent prices skyrocketing in years past -- have barely moved the needle.

For all the changes in the market, though, there is an expectation that drilling activity internationally will pick back up again. For all the success of North America, there are some infrastructure limitations that will likely prohibit it from offsetting all of those international losses. That means, eventually, international drilling activity will pick back up again. According to CEO Lorenzo Simonelli, that time has yet to arrive in earnest.

International activity in oilfield services remains muted with rig count flat year-to-date. However we are seeing signs of activity increase both in the volume and size of tenders for new work as customers feel more confident about their operating cost and commodity price stability. To that point we were awarded a large multi year integrated drilling contract with an important customer in the Middle East as well as two critical deep water completion contracts in Latin America offshore.

Story continues

A unique offering that no other oil services company can replicate

The combination of Baker Hughes and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) oil & gas division was something that the industry hasn't seen in a long time: A company that is both a provider of equipment and a services contractor. With this combination, BHGE can do some things that no other oil services company can do. Here's Simonelli explaining that offering.

During the quarter we also announced what is the first demonstration of our ability to generate value for our customers through our full stream offering. The agreement executed with Twinza Oil will provide support for an offshore development project in Papua New Guinea. This business model is an exciting development for the industry. With the combination of capability between our oilfield equipment, oilfield services and turbomachinery segments can provide a unique high productivity value proposition for our customers and commercial differentiation.

Historically, equipment and services were separate because an equipment supplier didn't want to restrict its sales to a single service provider. Likewise, services providers didn't want to tie in with equipment manufacturers because it allowed them to shop for the best price in a competitive bidding process.

Over time, though, this manufacturer/service provider line has blurred as technology and data require equipment and services to integrate on common software platforms. Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB) made a similar move with the acquisition of Cameron International, which meant Schlumberger could present complete equipment and service packages for deepwater clients.

The BHGE full stream deal is like the Schlumberger deal on steroids. It can offer just about every service and piece of equipment necessary to go from a prospective reservoir all the way to late-life production management as well as provide the equipment for midstream and downstream investments. BHGE is betting that more and more producers will want to go down this route to cut costs through the efficiency that a single service provider and using a common software to handle all the data that comes from a drilling operation today can provide.

BHGE Chart

BHGE data by YCharts.

Where can we find growth now?

Even when equipment and services companies combine, their business will still wax and wane drastically with the spending habits of oil and gas producers and the upstream side of the business. This typically means the industry goes through times of feast and famine depending on oil prices and producers' appetite for capital spending. These past few years have been evidence of how that can spell big trouble for these companies as many small players have gone bankrupt and the larger ones have tried to consolidate.

With the addition of the GE oil & gas division, though, BHGE has exposure to other parts of the oil and gas value chain. Which, according to Simonelli, could drive earnings over the short term.

Opportunities for growth in the short to midterm exists across the board in mid-stream and downstream segments in which we participate, these include, gas to power projects, stranded gas monetization, pipelines and surface compressions to name a few. Many of these applications acquire a range of turbomachinery equipments that is fit for purpose in terms of both cost and function.

Typically, capital spending in the midstream and downstream segments are lower than on the upstream side because the life of assets such as pipelines or refineries are much longer than that of an oil reservoir. Therefore, companies in this part of the value chain don't need to spend nearly as much to maintain their current business. Also, growth in these businesses is much more measured.

At the same time, though, capital spending in these industries is much more consistent than on the upstream side of the business. This could make BHGE a company that is better suited for the ups and downs of the market than its upstream only brethren.

What a Fool believes

BHGE has a lot of potential as an investment in the oil and gas industry. The unique combination of services and equipment that serves all aspects of the industry could prove to be incredibly valuable as others grabble with the volatility of the upstream industry. The issue that comes with serving all of these segments is bloat that could impact margins. Management thinks it can wring out $1.6 billion in revenue and cost efficiencies between now and 2020, but it remains to be seen that it can do that. If the company can deliver progress on this substantial synergy plan and prove that serving all parts of the oil and gas industry has inherent advantages over the traditional model, then BHGE's stock could be a stock worth examining.

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Tyler Crowe owns shares of General Electric. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
In the early hours of Dec 2, 2017, Senate Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul package proposed by President Donald Trump in a 51-49 voting. The White House hopes that the bill becomes law by the end of the year. While the tax reform bill has resulted in a series of controversies among several economists and financial experts, we believe the U.S. telecommunications industry is going to be a major beneficiary.



Growth-Induced Polices



Trumps proposed policy changes have made the overall economic outlook fairly bullish. The two pro-growth agendas of Trump, namely, a significant cut in corporate taxes and deregulation are major catalysts to the U.S. economy.



The proposal to reduce corporate taxes from the current 35% to 20% is likely to bring corporate tax rate at its historic low in 78 years. Large telecom operators book much of their revenues in the homeland. Therefore, a significant reduction in corporate tax rate faced by telecom carriers would be immediately accretive to cash flow. Moreover, the tax proposal offers to provide incentives to companies to repatriate accumulated profits from overseas with an even lower tax rate.



Capital-intensive Nature of Telecom Industry



The telecom industry is highly capital-intensive in nature. Therefore, the immediate expensing of investment in all tangible, intangible and real property (other than land) would significantly benefit telecom carriers. This would encourage telecom operators to increase investment for capital expenditure.

Major proposals like a pledge to spend $1 trillion in infrastructure projects over a period of 10 years coupled with the above-mentioned policy changes are likely to spur higher consumer spending. This may create about 25 million new jobs over a decade, which in turn will fuel long-term economic growth.



Effect on Upcoming 5G Wireless Network



Fifth-generation (5G) superfast wireless networks will provide the primary impetus to the telecom industry. In September 2017, Moody's Investors Service stated in a report that the evolution towards 5G wireless networks will result in higher capital spending for U.S. wireless carriers. Trumps tax proposal will result in a huge windfall for telecom operators. The carriers can utilize this money for 5G network R&D and its deployment.



In this context, Internet-of-Things (IoT) holds the potential of becoming the numero uno factor in driving growth in the space. Upcoming 5G mobile networks will be of utmost importance in the management of exponential growth in IoT. Lower taxes would also enable telecom operators to increase capex budgets to build and upgrade their networks in order to make it IoT ready.

Story continues

According to a report by research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide spending on IoT is expected to grow at a 17% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to nearly $1.3 trillion in 2019 from $698.6 billion in 2015.



Easy Regulatory Policies



President Trump has stated that he wants to do away with nearly 75% of all governmental regulations during this term as the President. We believe that the telecom industry will be one of the major beneficiaries of this policy change. A new Federal Communications Commission (FCC), headed by Ajit Pai, exercising lesser restrictions, certainly augurs well for the ISP (Internet Service Providers) industry.



On Apr 3, 2017, Trump signed a repeal of the Obama-era broadband privacy rules. This has given a major boost to the ISPs. The digital advertisement market is growing exponentially and ISPs have been increasingly investing resources to cash in on bountiful opportunities. However, the FCCs previous directive stipulated that the ISP should notify customers before sharing any user data for advertising. This would have marred ISP prospects.



More importantly, on Nov 21, Pai revealed a draft plan for a complete roll back of Net Neutrality. The FCC is set to vote on the proposed changes during its upcoming Dec. 14 monthly meeting. There is little doubt that if the new FCC scraps Net Neutrality laws, the ISP industry will be the major beneficiary. The current FCC's less restrictive regulatory attitude may also pave the way for new mergers and acquisition deals between ISPs and online digital media companies.



Stocks in Focus



We believe that the major beneficiaries of the U.S. Tax Reforms bill will be the four large national telecom operators. Significant tax relief together with the strong underlying policy of ensuring that Americans have access to high-speed mobile broadband in rural and urban areas alike, should help large telecom operators going forward.

Notably, all four national telecom operators currently carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Verizon Communications Inc. VZ: Headquartered in New York, the company is one of the largest communication technology companies offering all kinds of wireless and wireline services. For 2018, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings per share (EPS) is pegged at $3.88, reflecting year-over-year growth of 2.75%. The consensus estimate for revenues is $127.31 billion, up 1.64% year over year.



AT&T Inc. T: Headquartered in Dallas, TX, the company is also one of the largest communication technology companies offering all kinds of wireless and wireline services. For 2018, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for EPS is pegged at $2.96, reflecting year-over-year growth of 1.32%. The consensus estimate for revenues is $160.59 billion, up 0.32% year over year.



T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS: Headquartered in Bellevue, WA, the company is a leading wireless service provider in the United States. For 2018, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for EPS is pegged at $2.69, reflecting year-over-year growth of 11.47%. The consensus estimate for revenues is $43.09 billion, up 5.88% year over year.



Sprint Corp. S: Headquartered in Overland Park, KS, the company is a leading wireless and wireline service provider in the United States. For 2018, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for loss per share is pegged at $0.02, reflecting year-over-year improvement of 17.90%. The consensus estimate for revenues is $32.98 billion, up 1.25% year over year.



Bottom Line



Telecommunications is one of the few industries to have seen rapid technological improvement even during the recession. Owing to the significance of this service as an infrastructure product, we expect the overall economic dynamics to shift in favor of the industry. At this stage, we believe that these four stocks are poised to capitalize on the growing opportunities of major tax relief.

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In the short time since the Senate's version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was initially released, there have been several updates, additions, and modifications designed to capture as much support among Republican senators as possible. However, the final passage of the bill occurred late on Friday night, with 51 of the 52 Republican senators supporting the legislation after a flurry of last-minute changes.

While the finer details of some of these changes are still unclear (the version of the bill that was voted on had some handwritten parts and phrases like "Add language..."), we do know what some of the major changes made to the bill are.

Notebook with Tax Reform written on the cover in yellow lettering.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Higher deductions for pass-through businesses

In contrast to the House of Representatives' version of the bill, which provides for lower tax rates for pass-through businesses such as partnerships, LLCs, and S-Corps, the Senate's bill would continue to tax pass-through income at the regular income tax rates.

However, the bill would allow these business owners to deduct a certain percentage of their income before the regular tax rates are applied. The original version of the bill called for a deduction of 17.4% of pass-through income. The latest version got a bit more generous, increasing the allowable deduction to 23% of pass-through income.

2. Matching the House's property tax deduction

One of the most controversial parts of the Senate's version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was its complete elimination of the deduction for state and local taxes. This included the deduction for income taxes, as well as property taxes.

In order to make the bill more appealing to senators in high-tax states, the latest version of the bill matches the House version. While state and local income taxes still would not be deductible, the legislation allows for a deduction of up to $10,000 for state and local property taxes.

3. The alternative minimum tax would remain

The Senate's bill originally proposed getting rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax, or AMT. The newest version keeps the AMT in order to help pay for some of the other last-minute changes.

Story continues

However, it does address one of Republicans' biggest complaints about the tax by raising the amount of income necessary to trigger the AMT. While it was originally intended to ensure that high-earners paid a minimum amount of tax, in recent years it had increasingly begun affecting middle-income households.

4. Slightly more favorable business expensing

In addition to a lower corporate tax rate, another major change to business taxes would be change to how businesses write off expenses. Under current tax law, businesses are required to depreciate expenses such as equipment over several years.

The Senate's bill allows businesses to immediately deduct their entire cost, giving a bigger incentive to invest in new equipment. Originally, the bill would have allowed this for just five years, after which time it would be eliminated. Now, this benefit will begin to phase out after the initial five-year period.

5. One deduction would get better than it is now

This one might come as a surprise to many people, considering that one of the biggest themes of tax reform is to reduce or eliminate deductions.

One major complaint about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is that the medical expense deduction, which would have been retained, would not benefit nearly as many people as it currently does, due to the higher standard deduction. In response to this, the AGI threshold for deducting medical expenses has been lowered to 7.5% of AGI from 10% in the original bill.

6. Catch-up contributions would still be allowed

The previous version of the Senate's bill wouldn't make changes to retirement savings for most people, but would have eliminated the pre-tax "catch-up" provisions that apply to older workers. The version of the bill that passed does not include this, so 401(k) contribution rules would remain the same.

What will the final tax reform package look like?

To be clear, even though this legislation has passed the Senate, it will still be some time before tax reform is signed into law. There are still some big differences between the House and Senate versions, and before any tax reform law can become law, the two chambers must pass identical versions. So, it's likely that the eventual tax reform package will look substantially different than the bill just passed by the Senate, so take all of its provisions -- including these last-minute changes -- with a big grain of salt.

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President Donald Trump's attacks on the news media continue to spook journalists, First Amendment defenders and government ethics experts. His comments are scaring the media and generally are unprecedented in U.S. history.There's only one problem: Trump's got a point. We all saw that in the starkest terms on Friday, as ABC News broke into its regular programming with a special report saying then-presidential candidate Donald Trump had directed Gen. Mike Flynn to make contact with the Russians in 2016. It turned out that report was woefully incorrect. The network had to clarify and then correct the story before suspending the reporter responsible, Brian Ross, for four weeks without pay. There are a million possible excuses for a mistake like this that have nothing to do with politics or decay in the journalism profession overall.First off, we know that working breaking news can be a pressure-filled environment that produces many honest mistakes. Journalism is often an ultra-competitive profession, especially in a high-profile story like this one involving Trump and the Russia investigation. It could also be this was an isolated incident because the report came from Ross, who has made major errors in the past. For example, a few years ago he suggested that Aurora, Colorado, movie theater mass shooter James Holmes might be a member of the tea party because someone named "Jim Holmes" was listed on a tea party website. ABC had to apologize for that as critics believed Ross was trying to insert a left-leaning political bias to boost interest in the story. In an even worse example, Ross reported that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein may have been behind the 2001 anthrax attacks on the U.S. The White House said there was no evidence to back up those claims and then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said he warned Ross and ABC not to report that claim. Fleischer took to Twitter this weekend to remind the public of that incident: Fleischer tweetYes, Ross is definitely someone with a track record that makes him look a lot like an outlier in the news media. But the danger here would be to use that as too much of an excuse. Ross is just a reporter, and not someone who can just make live special reports happen. There are supposed to be more safeguards against something like this happening.It doesn't take a Trump apologist to feel ABC or other networks and newspapers are so willing to bash Trump that these kinds of mistakes have been inevitable. And if the industry tries to palm all on Ross himself, it will surely be repeated by others. Naturally, it didn't take long for Trump and his allies to respond with a new round of attacks on ABC and "fake news." In this case, there was no doubt that Trump's enemies had handed them the opportunity on a silver platter. The problem goes much deeper than what happened with ABC. Consider Trump's most recent attacks on CNN and the way the network responded:Trump tweet Several CNN anchors and programs decided to not just respond to the president on Twitter, but they devoted significant portions of their live news programs to fight back. Perhaps the most unequivocal response came from Wolf Blitzer on his "Situation Room" program:"For nearly four decades CNN has been constant here in the United States and around the world. Our journalists, in front of and behind the camera, risk their lives in the most dangerous of places every day, so you know the truth."There's one problem with that bold response: We know it isn't true. We know that because CNN itself admitted to the world back in 2003 that it routinely suppressed important stories of Saddam Hussein's atrocities and brutality in Iraq. Then-chief news executive Eason Jordan wrote the network wanted to protect the safety of its reporters and other staff in Baghdad. That was his explanation for why CNN didn't report what it knew about Saddam's regime in between the two Gulf wars. At the time it seemed Jordan was expecting to be lauded for his efforts. The result was the opposite. Critics from the right and left pilloried him and the network for keeping a bureau open to continue to pump out sanitized, or as some would even call it, "fake" news. We'll just have to take Blitzer's word for it now that CNN isn't continuing that self-censoring practice. But we do know that the "nearly four decades" part of his rebuttal is a documented untruth. Of course, ABC News, CNN and CNN.com are competitors with us at CNBC and CNBC.com. But this column is not meant to bash a rival for competitive reasons. And, of course, Trump has bashed our parent company several times as well.But the problem here goes beyond intramural rivalries and competition. The overall news media's credibility and viability is being threatened mostly by itself  far more than by Trump.It's as if too many of us in the news media are taking Trump's attacks too personally. It has become an excuse to abandon journalistic ethics and safeguards that make journalism a profession in the first place.Professionalism in journalism means more than just sticking to facts and fairness. It also means that we cannot take time out of our reporting duties to get into wars of words with the president of the United States or any other newsworthy figure. If we need to defend ourselves, that's best left to our lawyers and public relations departments.We want a vigilant and skeptical news media to keep the White House and all our elected leaders honest. But Trump's first 10 months in office have exposed a news media that seems more like an opposing party hopeful for a chance to bring him down at any cost. It sure seemed like that hope turned into desperation Friday in the ABC News debacle. And the reaction to it from other corners of the network was beyond unseemly, most notably during ABC's talk show "The View" when Joy Behar read that erroneous Ross report while she and the audience went wild. Any objective person is left with an image of a media outlet squarely focused on attacking the president and then wildly celebrating the chance he has been weakened.One final problem is that the news media is using Trump's attacks as a way to abandon all self-criticism. That self-examination and striving for improvement is the epitome of what it means to be a professional in any industry. No matter how dangerous Trump's criticisms of the news media may be, now is not the time to drop our standards. Too many news organizations now openly pit themselves as combatants against the Trump agenda. American journalism can't become like a European trade unionist movement that pushes for short-term goals but forgets to get better at its job.Despite's Flynn's guilty plea Friday, Trump scored a major victory anyway. He can thank an unforced error by an overzealous reporter and an all-too-eager news department. This dangerous pattern will be repeated until top news organizations re-examine their operations and institute a better set of best practices.If they don't, Trump won't have to destroy the American news media. It will simply destroy itself.Commentary by Jake Novak, CNBC.com senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter@jakejakeny. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. President Donald Trump's attacks on the news media continue to spook journalists, First Amendment defenders and government ethics experts. His comments are scaring the media and generally are unprecedented in U.S. history. There's only one problem: Trump's got a point. We all saw that in the starkest terms on Friday, as ABC News broke into its regular programming with a special report saying then-presidential candidate Donald Trump had directed Gen. Mike Flynn to make contact with the Russians in 2016. It turned out that report was woefully incorrect. The network had to clarify and then correct the story before suspending the reporter responsible, Brian Ross, for four weeks without pay. There are a million possible excuses for a mistake like this that have nothing to do with politics or decay in the journalism profession overall. First off, we know that working breaking news can be a pressure-filled environment that produces many honest mistakes. Journalism is often an ultra-competitive profession, especially in a high-profile story like this one involving Trump and the Russia investigation. It could also be this was an isolated incident because the report came from Ross, who has made major errors in the past. For example, a few years ago he suggested that Aurora, Colorado, movie theater mass shooter James Holmes might be a member of the tea party because someone named "Jim Holmes" was listed on a tea party website. ABC had to apologize for that as critics believed Ross was trying to insert a left-leaning political bias to boost interest in the story. In an even worse example, Ross reported that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein may have been behind the 2001 anthrax attacks on the U.S. The White House said there was no evidence to back up those claims and then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said he warned Ross and ABC not to report that claim. Fleischer took to Twitter this weekend to remind the public of that incident: Fleischer tweet Yes, Ross is definitely someone with a track record that makes him look a lot like an outlier in the news media. But the danger here would be to use that as too much of an excuse. Ross is just a reporter, and not someone who can just make live special reports happen. There are supposed to be more safeguards against something like this happening. It doesn't take a Trump apologist to feel ABC or other networks and newspapers are so willing to bash Trump that these kinds of mistakes have been inevitable. And if the industry tries to palm all on Ross himself, it will surely be repeated by others. Naturally, it didn't take long for Trump and his allies to respond with a new round of attacks on ABC and "fake news." In this case, there was no doubt that Trump's enemies had handed them the opportunity on a silver platter. The problem goes much deeper than what happened with ABC. Consider Trump's most recent attacks on CNN and the way the network responded: Trump tweet Several CNN anchors and programs decided to not just respond to the president on Twitter, but they devoted significant portions of their live news programs to fight back. Perhaps the most unequivocal response came from Wolf Blitzer on his "Situation Room" program: "For nearly four decades CNN has been constant here in the United States and around the world. Our journalists, in front of and behind the camera, risk their lives in the most dangerous of places every day, so you know the truth." There's one problem with that bold response: We know it isn't true. We know that because CNN itself admitted to the world back in 2003 that it routinely suppressed important stories of Saddam Hussein's atrocities and brutality in Iraq. Then-chief news executive Eason Jordan wrote the network wanted to protect the safety of its reporters and other staff in Baghdad. That was his explanation for why CNN didn't report what it knew about Saddam's regime in between the two Gulf wars. At the time it seemed Jordan was expecting to be lauded for his efforts. The result was the opposite. Critics from the right and left pilloried him and the network for keeping a bureau open to continue to pump out sanitized, or as some would even call it, "fake" news. We'll just have to take Blitzer's word for it now that CNN isn't continuing that self-censoring practice. But we do know that the "nearly four decades" part of his rebuttal is a documented untruth. Of course, ABC News, CNN and CNN.com are competitors with us at CNBC and CNBC.com. But this column is not meant to bash a rival for competitive reasons. And, of course, Trump has bashed our parent company several times as well. But the problem here goes beyond intramural rivalries and competition. The overall news media's credibility and viability is being threatened mostly by itself  far more than by Trump. It's as if too many of us in the news media are taking Trump's attacks too personally. It has become an excuse to abandon journalistic ethics and safeguards that make journalism a profession in the first place. Professionalism in journalism means more than just sticking to facts and fairness. It also means that we cannot take time out of our reporting duties to get into wars of words with the president of the United States or any other newsworthy figure. If we need to defend ourselves, that's best left to our lawyers and public relations departments. We want a vigilant and skeptical news media to keep the White House and all our elected leaders honest. But Trump's first 10 months in office have exposed a news media that seems more like an opposing party hopeful for a chance to bring him down at any cost. It sure seemed like that hope turned into desperation Friday in the ABC News debacle. And the reaction to it from other corners of the network was beyond unseemly, most notably during ABC's talk show "The View" when Joy Behar read that erroneous Ross report while she and the audience went wild. Any objective person is left with an image of a media outlet squarely focused on attacking the president and then wildly celebrating the chance he has been weakened. One final problem is that the news media is using Trump's attacks as a way to abandon all self-criticism. That self-examination and striving for improvement is the epitome of what it means to be a professional in any industry. No matter how dangerous Trump's criticisms of the news media may be, now is not the time to drop our standards. Too many news organizations now openly pit themselves as combatants against the Trump agenda. American journalism can't become like a European trade unionist movement that pushes for short-term goals but forgets to get better at its job. Despite's Flynn's guilty plea Friday, Trump scored a major victory anyway. He can thank an unforced error by an overzealous reporter and an all-too-eager news department. This dangerous pattern will be repeated until top news organizations re-examine their operations and institute a better set of best practices. If they don't, Trump won't have to destroy the American news media. It will simply destroy itself. Commentary by Jake Novak, CNBC.com senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny . For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.



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CHAMPAIGN - If you're unhappy with Illinois Democrat or Republican March 2018 gubernatorial candidate options, there are three Libertarians that would like your consideration.

Three Libertarian candidates for Illinois Governor will meet in Champaign Tuesday, Dec. 5, at 7 p.m. for the first of a series of public debates between the candidates.
Aeromexico aeroplanes are pictured on the airstrip at Benito Juarez international airport in Mexico City, Mexico, November 28, 2017. REUTERS/Ginnette Riquelme

By Allison Lampert and Christine Murray

MONTREAL/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Aeromexico (AEROMEX.MX) has held preliminary talks to take some Bombardier (BBDb.TO) CSeries jets orders from Delta Air Lines Inc (DAL.N), which owns a stake in the Mexican carrier, to avoid possible U.S. trade duties levied on the planes, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Mexico's largest carrier, 49-percent owned by Delta, is considering taking an unknown number of the 75 CSeries planes ordered by Delta in 2016, one of the sources said. Delta's CSeries deliveries, scheduled to begin in spring 2018, face a possible 300 percent U.S. duty stemming from a trade dispute with Boeing Co (BA.N).

In October, Bombardier gave a controlling stake in the CSeries program to Airbus SE (AIR.PA), which would enable assembly in the United States in a move it says will help bypass potential import duties.

Under the proposed Aeromexico deal, the single-aisle jets would be sold to Aeromexico and fly under the banner of the Mexican carrier which would not have to pay a U.S. duty, one of the sources added.

"It's not a way for Aeromexico to fly for Delta," the same source said. "But it keeps the planes within the Delta family."

Aeromexico is now reviewing its fleet, a third source said, which is composed of Boeing and Brazil's Embraer SA (EMBR3.SA) jets. The carrier received a presentation about the 110-to-130 seat CSeries last week, and is expected to receive another from Bombardier's Brazilian rival, the source said.

Sources spoke on condition of anonymity as the talks are confidential. They cautioned that no final decision has been made and Aeromexico could still buy planes from Embraer.

Embraer and Bombardier both declined to comment. Aeromexico referred questions to Delta. Delta did not comment on any specific deal, but spokesman Morgan Durrant referred to recent remarks by the company's CEO who said the carrier would not pay any duties, but still intended to "take the aircraft."

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An Aeromexico deal would offer a short-term solution to Bombardier and Delta in the trade dispute.

A U.S. trade agency is expected to decide in early 2018 on Boeing's complaint that the Canadian company benefited unfairly from subsidies and dumped the 110- to 130-seat CSeries jets in the U.S. market below cost.

The case has fueled trade tensions between Canada and the United States and comes as the two countries, along with Mexico, are engaged in tense negotiations to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Bombardier has said it would assemble the CSeries jets destined for U.S. airlines at Airbus' Alabama plant, which the two companies say would exempt them from duties.

Boeing has countered that the CSeries should still be subject to duties, even if the planes are assembled in the United States.

(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and Christine Murray in Mexico City; Editing by Denny Thomas and Lisa Shumaker)
A Cathay Pacific flight crew reportedly witnessed North Korea's latest missile test last Wednesday, the airline announced today.

Flight 893 was en route from San Francisco to Hong Kong when the crew saw what it believes to be a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, break up, and fall out of the sky. The flight was far enough from the missile test not to be in danger, but The Guardian says the incident highlights the "unforeseen danger" of North Korea's tests. For the time being, there are no planned changes to existing Cathay Pacific routes.

North Korean missile tests in the past several months have led to tensions with the U.S., as President Donald Trump has made multiple threats against the rogue nation and its leader Kim Jong-un, whom Trump has deemed "little rocket man."

Wednesday's missile test reached the highest altitude ever recorded by a North Korean missile and the state-run Korean Central News Agency claims its capable of reaching the U.S. In response to the test last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on China to do more to rein in North Korea, specifically through restraining the country's oil supply.

Defense Secretary James Mattis said he still had confidence in diplomatic efforts to address the North Korea situation, but that the U.S. also has military options available.

Meanwhile, Senator Lindsey Graham said Sunday on "Face the Nation" that preemptive war in North Korea is "becoming more likely" as the country's improving missile technology presents an increasing threat.

See original article on Fortune.com

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FILE PHOTO: A copy of bitcoin standing on PC motherboard is seen in this illustration picture, October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo (Reuters)

By Jemima Kelly

LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin dipped back under $11,000 on Monday, coming off a record high just shy of $11,800 it hit on Sunday after a surge from less than $1,000 at the start of the year.

The cryptocurrency, which trades 24 hours a day and seven days a week, climbed as high as $11,799.99 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange at around 2100 GMT on Sunday.

It was not clear what caused the move higher over the weekend other than new investors joining the upstart market, with so-called wallet-providers reporting record numbers of sign-ups over the past week.

Analysts said Friday's announcement by the main U.S. derivatives regulator that it would allow CME Group Inc and CBOE Global Markets to list bitcoin futures contracts had turned sentiment positive after a choppy week.

"The price rises are triggered by continued media interest driven by the expectation of futures trading on CME," Charles Hayter, founder of data analysis website Cryptocompare, said.

By 1310 GMT on Monday, bitcoin had slipped back to around $10,919, down 2 percent on the day but still up more than 100 percent over the past three weeks. Sunday's high marked a 1,121 percent increase since the start of the year.

Think Markets analyst Naeem Aslam said reports Britain wants to increase regulation of bitcoin and other digital currencies by expanding the reach of European Union anti-money-laundering rules that force traders to disclose their identities and report suspicious activity, had knocked bitcoin off its highs.

But others said greater regulatory scrutiny would help.

"If anything, regulation will only increase bitcoin's rate of growth as regulation lends credibility and engenders trust," Nicholas Gregory, CEO of London-based cryptocurrency firm CommerceBlock, said.

Sunday's record high for bitcoin came as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the launch of the "petro", which he said would be a cryptocurrency backed by oil reserves, to shore up a collapsed economy.

Opposition leaders said the digital currency would need congressional approval and some cast doubt on whether it would ever see the light of day in the midst of turmoil.

(Reporting by Jemima Kelly; editing by Alexander Smith)
Bitcoin holding below record highs

Investing.com - The price of bitcoin was holding below all-time highs on Monday after rising above the $11,800 level on Sunday for the first time in its nine-year history.

On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, Bitcoin was at $11,315.00 by 05:44 AM ET (10:44 GMT) near an intra-day high of $11,545.00.

Bitcoin peaked at $11,842.00 on Sunday, capping a surge of around 30% since Thursday, when prices fell to a low of near $9000 after tumbling more than 20% from last weekends high.

Bitcoin, which is known for wild swings, has tended to rebound quickly from pullbacks.

Prices have rallied ahead of the start later this month of bitcoin futures trading, a potentially major step in the evolution of the digital currency.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Friday it would allow two major exchanges to launch bitcoin futures.

CME Group, the world's largest derivative exchange operator, said its bitcoin futures would launch December 18 while Cboe Global Markets said it will shortly announce the start date for its new bitcoin contract.

Bitcoins price has risen dramatically in 2017. For the year, bitcoin is up around 1,000%, having started 2017 at $968.23 and is the biggest gainer of all asset classes this year.

Its meteoric rise has prompted warnings of an increasingly volatile bubble amid signs that it is moving from the periphery of finance towards the mainstream.

CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo on Friday warned investors over bitcoins extreme volatility.

Market participants should take note that the relatively nascent underlying cash markets and exchanges for bitcoin remain largely unregulated markets over which the CFTC has limited statutory authority, he said.

There are concerns about the price volatility and trading practices of participants in these markets.

Last week Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein claimed that Bitcoin was a vehicle to perpetrate fraud as the value of the cryptocurrency plunged 20% in less than 24 hours.

Story continues

Blankfein became the latest boss of a major bank to criticize bitcoin, after JP Morgans chief executive Jamie Dimon described it as fraud that would ultimately blow up.

Meanwhile, reports on Monday said that Britain wants to step up regulation of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by expanding the reach of European Union anti-money-laundering rules that force traders to disclose their identities and report suspicious activity.

Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading, Bitcoin Cash was last at $1,501.20, while Bitcoin Gold was at $307.00.

Ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap after bitcoin, was at $495.93.

Related Articles

Bitcoin Holding below Record Highs

Enter the 'petro': Venezuela to launch oil-backed cryptocurrency

UK pushing to include Bitcoin under money-laundering rules
traders cboe

Scott Olson/Getty

Cboe Global Markets announced Monday it will offer trading of bitcoin futures on December 11.

Chairman and CEO Ed Tilly told Business Insider that the firm is prepared to "redesign and relaunch" bitcoin futures, if appropriate.

Cboe Global Markets, the Chicago-based options and derivatives exchange, announced Monday it'll offer trading of its bitcoin futures product on December 11.

Cboe and its cross-town rival CME Group got clearance from the US Commodity Futures Commission on Friday to launch bitcoin futures, which would allow investors to bet on the future price of the red-hot digital currency. CME announced Friday it would launch bitcoin futures on December 18.

Ed Tilly, chairman and chief executive officer of Cboe Global Markets, described the interest in bitcoin futures as unprecedented.

"It has really been the driving force," Tilly told Business Insider."We are not new to launching new products so this is remarkable."

Tilly declined to comment on the degree to which that interest will translate into trading volume. Still, he said the firm designed the product to ensure it'll provide the best, most liquid market.

"We dedicated significant time hardening our systems, talking with market makers, and this will continue to be a work in progress," he said. "With other products we've gone back, we've redesigned, we've relaunched."

Tilly said the firm is being intentional and taking a "disciplined and measured approach."

Trading for bitcoin futures on Cboe will be free throughout the month of December and will trade under the symbol "XBT."

Terry Duffy, the CEO of CME, said the path forward for bitcoin futures is relatively uncertain.

"Though we have worked through a lengthy, comprehensive process with the CFTC to get to this point, we recognize bitcoin is a new, uncharted market that will continue to evolve, requiring continued collaboration with the Commission and our clients going forward," he said in a statement.

Story continues

As for bitcoin, the cryptocurrency itself is up more than 1,000% at $11,389 at last check.

NOW WATCH: Economist Jim Rickards on gold versus bitcoin  intrinsic value is meaningless for both but the bitcoin prices aren't real

See Also:

SEE ALSO: Cboe's president hints at ether and bitcoin cash futures
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump on Monday fully threw his support behind Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, after weeks of defending him from sexual misconduct allegations and attacking his Democratic opponent.

At least nine women have come forward to accuse Moore of sexual harassment and assault, including several who have said they were in their teens at the time of the misconduct.

In a tweet early Monday morning, Trump used Senate Republicans tax bill  which their Democratic counterparts are overwhelmingly opposed to  as an argument for why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama.

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017

The president reiterated his support during a phone call with Moore later on Monday, according to the Senate candidates wife, Kayla Moore.

White House officials confirmed that Trump had a positive call with Judge Roy Moore during which they discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and the President endorsed Judge Moores campaign.

Moore responded in a tweet that he was [t]hankful for President Trumps support, and said that the president told him during the phone call: Go get em, Roy!

Trump on Monday twice attacked Democratic Senate candidate Doug Jones as a liberal puppet of his partys leaders.

Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders...& so much more. Look at your 401-ks since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017

After dodging questions for nearly two weeks about the accusations against Moore  which were first revealed in a bombshell Washington Post report  Trump implicitly endorsed the candidate on Nov. 21 by proclaiming that we dont need a liberal person in there.

Story continues

When asked if he believes Moores accusers, Trump would only say that Moore totally denies it.

Moore has vehemently denied all of the allegations, claiming that they are a conspiracy created by Democrats and reporters who have investigated the claims. His campaign has also tried to attack the credibility of the women who have come forward with allegations.

Recent polling suggests that the Dec. 12 special election between Moore and Jones will be close, but that most Alabama Republicans do not think that the allegations against Moore are credible.

A CBS News poll released Sunday found that 71 percent of Alabama Republicans surveyed said that they believed that the allegations are false, and those who believe this also overwhelmingly believe Democrats and the media are behind those allegations.

Many Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have called on Moore to exit the race. On Sunday, McConnell softened his stance on Moore, saying, In the end, the voters of Alabama will make their choice.

This article has been updated with information about Trumps phone call to Moore on Monday.

Also on HuffPost

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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.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Donald Trump is seizing on ABC News Brian Ross inaccurately reporting details of Michael Flynns cooperation with the FBI.

In a series of tweets that began Saturday night and continued into Sunday morning, the president congratulated the news organization for suspending Ross for four weeks. ABC made the decision after learning that Ross erroneously reported that a source told him Flynn was set to testify that Trump, while still a candidate, directed him to make contact with Russian officials. (Ross later clarified, via his source, It was shortly after the election that President-elect Trump directed Flynn to contact Russian officials.)

Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt, Trump wrote Sunday. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News!

Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Ross report came just hours after the bombshell news that Flynn, President Trumps former national security adviser, was cooperating with Robert Mueller and the special counsels office and that he would plead guilty to the charge of willfully lying to the FBI. ABC was reportedly embarrassed over the matter, and Ross accepted the disciplinary action his employer took without qualification. My job is to hold people accountable and thats why I agree with being held accountable myself, he wrote in a statement on Twitter.

My job is to hold people accountable and that's why I agree with being held accountable myself.  Brian Ross (@BrianRoss) December 3, 2017

When Ross erroneous report first broke Friday morning, the case for collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government was considerably bolstered in the minds of many, and the stock market took a temporary nosedive. (It gradually recovered when the report was corrected.) On Sunday morning, Trump returned to the topic of Ross, suggesting that the people who lost money sue ABC for damages.

People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused, Trump argued. Many millions of dollars!

People who lost money when the Stock Market went down 350 points based on the False and Dishonest reporting of Brian Ross of @ABC News (he has been suspended), should consider hiring a lawyer and suing ABC for the damages this bad reporting has caused - many millions of dollars!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Trumps Sunday comments about Ross came near the end of a busy Twitter morning for the president. Michael S. Schmidt, Washington correspondent for the New York Times who covers the FBI and the special counsels investigation, noted that within a 90-minute span, five of Trumps tweets and retweets were about and aimed at the FBI.
Heres a look at some of the companies the Yahoo Finance team will be watching for you today.

ExxonMobil (XOM) is keeping a close eye on Egypt. Reuters is reporting that the worlds largest listed oil producer recently held talks with Egypts petroleum ministry about investing in its its offshore oil and gas reserves. If the two team up, Egypt would get an economic lift while Exxon could boost production.

Broadcom (AVGO) is stepping up its hostile bid to buy rival Qualcomm (QCOM). Today Broadcom is set to propose a slate of 11 directors to replace the entire board at the semiconductor. Last month, Qualcomm rejected Broadcoms $103B cash-and-stock bid saying it undervalued the company.

21st Century Fox (FOXA) has reportedly revived talks to sell parts of its business to Disney (DIS). The House of Mouse is looking to buy some of Foxs movie and TV businesses as well as its stake in UK TV provider Sky and Indias Star TV. Founder Rupert Murdoch is expected to decide whether or not to pursue the deal by years end.

Nearly 3 months after filing for bankruptcy in the US, Toys R Us says it will close at least a quarter of its stores in the UK early next year. Hundreds of job cuts are expected. The store closings are part of a restructuring deal with its creditors in the UK.
WHEATON - State Rep. Jeanne Ives announced officially Sunday night in an invitation-only gathering in her home district that she would be a candidate for governor in the March 2018 Illinois Republican Party primary. She was introduced to the crowd by her running mate, former State Rep. Rich Morthland from the Rock Island area.

In Illinois state government right now, you choose to be popular with the Illinois political ruling class and become an enemy of Illinois taxpayers or you choose to represent taxpaying Illinois families and make enemies of the political ruling class," Ives said. I choose taxpaying Illinois families. Governor Rauner chose the political ruling class. Thats the difference. Thats the choice in this election."

Ives said she supported and helped get Bruce Rauner elected governor in 2014.

"I believed his argument that his personal wealth would free him to do right by Illinois and lead the revolt against the political ruling class," she said. I was wrong. The tough-talking dude on a Harley with no social agenda turned out to an empty Carhartt jacket. We were promised a conservative reform governor. Instead we got an Ivy League gender studies professor."

Ives will be submitting her petitions for candidacy in Springfield Monday afternoon, her campaign said over the weekend.

As of Monday morning, the only gubernatorial candidate that has filed to be on the IL GOP March 2018 ballot is Governor Bruce Rauner.
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Federal Communications Commission building in Washington, D.C. Photo Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM[/caption] The Federal Communications Commissions Office of Inspector General has agreed to cooperate with New Yorks investigation into allegedly fake public comments on net neutrality that were posted to the commission's website, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Monday. Meanwhile, an FCC member called on the commission to delay a scheduled Dec. 14 vote on repealing net neutrality rules enacted under the Obama administration until an investigation can be completed. During a news conference in Manhattan, the Democratic attorney general said he received notification Monday morning that the FCCs inspector generals office would offer assistance in Schneidermans probe into thousands of possibly phony comments that were left on the FCC's public comment section on the topic of net neutrality, the existing principle that internet service providerssuch as Comcast or Verizoncan't slow down, speed up or block internet access for some web sites relative to others. The FCC received a total of 21.7 million comments but a Pew Research Report found 57 percent of the comments used either duplicate or temporary email addresses and many individual names reappeared thousands of times. Schneiderman, along with FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat who is a lawyer, called on the FCC to delay the vote rolling back net neutrality rules, which is expected to be approved by the committee later this month. It is clear that our process for serving the public interest is broken and I do not believe that the agency should move forward until a credible investigation is completed. So I call on my colleagues to halt this vote until we get to the bottom of what has happened with these stolen identities and the quality of our public record, said Rosenworcel, who was nominated by President Barack Obama to the FCC. Before entering public service, Rosenworcel practiced communications law at Drinker Biddle & Reath. The New York Attorney General's Office also has introduced an online tool that the public can use to see if their identity was used to post a comment on the site without their knowledge or consent. In an open letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai published on the website Medium on Nov. 21, Schneiderman said he was investigating a massive scheme to corrupt the FCCs notice and comment process through the use of fake public comments on the subject of net neutrality. Schneiderman had argued that "hundreds of thousands of identical anti-net neutrality comments under the names and addresses of unwitting Americans constitutes illegal impersonation and misuse of a person's identity. Schneiderman, a Democrat who has been a longtime nemesis of Republican President Donald Trump, said his office first contacted the FCC in June for records related to its public comment system that were necessary to investigate which bad actor or actors were behind the misconduct, he said in his open letter to Pai. Between June and November, Schneidermans office requested logs and other records from the FCC nine times, but has received no substantive response to our investigative requests. None, Schneiderman said in the letter to Pai. Since the open letter was published late last month, roughly 3,000 people from across the country have reached out to Schneidermans office, including 350 New Yorkers, claiming that their names were used to submit comments without their knowledge, Schneiderman said. One of the people whose name was used to submit a fake net neutrality comment included Schneiderman's assistant press secretary, he said. The inquiry into the fake comments began in the spring, Schneiderman said, amid media reports and research claiming that several people were impersonated by anti-net neutrality commenters and allegations that bots were being used to submit comments opposing net neutrality rules. Schneiderman said his team discovered lots of anecdotal evidence that some of the comments left on the FCC website appeared to not be legitimate, which ultimately led to his offices investigation. Based on Schneidermans investigation, residents of California, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas may have also had their personal information used to submit comments on net neutrality, Rosenworcel said. Pai, who was once the associate general counsel for Verizon and was nominated to the commission by Obama, has favored rolling back net neutrality regulations, an Obama-era rule that treats broadband like a public utility. Pai, who was appointed by Trump to lead the FCC, has argued that these heavy-handed regulations restrict internet service providers and make it harder for providers to build out their networks, he said in a statement last month. The FCC did not immediately reply when asked why it decided to cooperate with the investigation or whether it would delay the vote.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel may have to make adjustments to its corporate tax rate, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon said on Saturday in response to a tax slash approved by the U.S. Senate. U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. tax overhaul could cut the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent once the Senate and House of Representatives reconcile their respective versions of the legislation. The corporate tax rate in Israel is to be reduced this month from 24 to 23 percent. But a lower, more attractive, rate in the United States could lead Israeli companies to consider moving there. "We will receive all the details from our companies abroad about the tax reform and we must address it," Kahlon told Channel 10's weekly politics show Hamateh. "What the danger is of companies here packing up and moving there? There are many implications. We will have to make adjustments." Many Israeli high-tech companies have operations in the United States but research and development centers in Israel. Israels technology industry is one of the worlds largest behind Silicon Valley, accounting for about 14 percent of the countrys economic output, 50 percent of industrial exports and about 10 percent of its workforce. (Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Stephen Powell)
I grew up watching The Today Show with my mom every weekday morning as I got ready for school. It was a special routine we shared to ease the pain of early mornings; watching these lighthearted news anchors deliver (often) sweet stories and greet fans outside. I yearned to be one of those people holding signs with messages for loved ones back home.

Matt Lauer at the Today show in 2012. (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)

Katie Couric and Matt Lauer were like the mom and dad of this on-air family, Ann Curry and Al Roker their responsible and goofy neighbors.

Lauer was the wholesome dad, the Danny Tanner of news. He seemed warm, casual, and reliable. Ever since I was a kid, thats what Lauer has represented to me. The most wholesome man in TV news. That is, until Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2017, when we learned the story of the lewd life he was secretly leading.

As the stories of his sexual misconduct unfolded, something within my perception of him began to change. I had always thought of Lauer as wholesome, professional, good looking. But over the course of last week, that same crooked smile, that buzzed head, those warm eyes took on an entirely different image: He looked creepy.

But how is that possible?

Certainly, Lauers look hasnt changed so dramatically that quickly. Not to mention, most of the photos being posted were old stock shots  pictures in which he once looked warm. Now in those same images, he looked like a different man.

Of course he represents something completely different to me now; but that cant change his physical appearance, can it? How did this man who I once saw as safe suddenly look so predatory?

Theories of embodied perception suggest that nonvisual factors impact what we actually see, says Elise Clerkin, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at Miami University, whos studied clinical phenomena like fear and visual perception. In this case, the nonvisual factor is what we know about Lauer; originally that he was married with children and got along really well with Couric (at least, it appeared that way). Now, its that for years he had been taking advantage of women he worked with, in inappropriate and sexually aggressive ways. These two sets of factors paint two very different pictures. And while this cant actually change the way Lauer looks, this knowledge can certainly color his appearance, applying a murky and mysterious filter.

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If ones visual perception is influenced not only by sensory input, but also by nonvisual factors, it makes sense that your visual perception of Lauer has recently changed, Dr. Clerkin confirms.

This is all based on person perception and the expectations that we have about people, adds Ronald Riggio, Ph.D., professor of leadership and organizational psychology at Claremont McKenna College, who specializes in topics including nonverbal communication and has written about why power players like Harvey Weinstein commit these heinous acts. We construct images of people and associate those images with qualities that we believe the individual possesses. So, Lauers appearance, when people thought he was wholesome, gracious, and kind, was interpreted to be consistent with those qualities. He appears innocent, his smile boyish and endearing. Now, after the revelations, we see that smile as a smirk, he explains. The same smile is interpreted differently based on our constructed image of him.

Dr. Riggio uses the clown analogy to explain this idea further. Clowns used to be seen as comical, friendly, and nice, but after It and some other movies (not to mention killer John Wayne Gacy), we may start to view clowns as scary, evil, and dangerous. Same clown face, different interpretation.

It happens all the time in relationships. Think about a lover  his/her face is precious and attractive to you. After the breakup, you cant stand looking at the person, Riggio points out. Our attitudes about the person affect our interpretations of their appearance.

When you learn someone you trusted did something bad, fear affects how you perceive their appearance too. There is data to suggest that fear can change the way we actually see things, Dr. Clerkin says. According to Dr. Dennis Proffitt at the University of Virginia, visual perception promotes survival by making us aware of both the opportunities and costs associated with action, she notes. Applying this theory to better understand clinical phenomena, my colleagues and I have shown that under certain conditions, people who are afraid of heights, for example, may actually see heights as higher than those with less height fear.

In this instance, fearing Lauer because of what he is accused of could change the way he looks to you, Dr. Clerkin says. Here is a man who has been accused of terrible acts; consequently, your assessment of the costs and risks of interacting with him have likely increased, and in turn, you may actually see him differently than you did just one week ago  i.e., as less wholesome. The same is true for ones visual perception of sexual predators more generally.

Dr. Clerkin notes that this theory is a little controversial, as there are visual scientists who believe that vision is a modular process that is unaffected by nonsensory input. But, we cant deny the fact that it feels right in this scenario.

Its safe to say that within a few months or years, the men being brought down in this major media and Hollywood movement will change physically due to aging. They may lose hair, acquire more wrinkles, or gain weight due to stress. Or they might get work done, dye their hair, or lose weight in efforts to remake themselves. For now, they technically look the same: like traitors.

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Asked by @GStephanopoulos if he believes Roy Moore should be in the Senate, @SenateMajLdr says, Im going to let the people of Alabama make the call.

Asked by @GStephanopoulos if he believes Roy Moore should be in the Senate, @SenateMajLdr says, Im going to let the people of Alabama make the call. https://t.co/grERTlnlwr #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/s934L8feMB  This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 3, 2017

WASHINGTON  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has shifted his stance on Roy Moore, the Republican Senate nominee in Alabama whom McConnell previously called unfit to serve in public office.

The people of Alabama are going to decide a week from Tuesday who they want to send to the Senate, McConnell said Sunday in an interview with CBS Face the Nation. Its really up to them. Its been a pretty robust campaign with a lot of people weighing in. The president and I, of course, supported somebody different earlier in the process. But in the end, the voters of Alabama will make their choice.

Multiple women have accused Moore of pursuing them while they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. One woman told The Washington Post said she was just 14 years old when he took her to his home, partially undressed her and groped her.

Last month, as additional women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Moore, McConnell said he believed the women and called on the former Alabama Supreme Court justice to step aside for a more qualified candidate. The Kentucky Republican further warned that Moore would immediately face an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee upon being sworn in, a process that could lead to expulsion.

Moore refused to drop out, however. Instead, he mounted an aggressive campaign against the women, whom he said were all lying under the direction of the Democratic Party and the media. His campaign aides threatened to reveal damaging information about the women in an attempt to discredit their allegations. The candidate, meanwhile, has kept a low public profile with zero campaign events on his schedule

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Moores bid to weather the storm received a significant boost after President Donald Trump refused to echo GOP calls for him to step aside in the race. In private conversations with aides and GOP senators, Trump doubted the stories presented by Moores accusers and questioned why they were emerging now, according to Politico.

Roy Moore denies it. Thats all I can say. He denies it. And, by the way, he totally denies it, Trump told reporters last month when asked whether he believed Moores accusers.

In the latest sign of support for Moore, the White House announced that Trump will hold a campaign-style rally in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday. The city is just 25 miles from the Alabama border and shares a television market with Mobile, Alabama, ensuring that voters there will get an opportunity to see and hear the presidents remarks about the Alabama Senate race if he decides to address it.

The presidents daughter-in-law appeared to be inviting Alabamans to the event:

Just received a taped call from Lara Trump, inviting me to an event with the president in Pensacola, Fla., which is in my area, she says. 311 miles and nearly 5 hours away. Sounds like hes campaigning...  WilliamThornton (@billineastala) December 2, 2017

Moores strategy to wait out the outrage over the allegations  one that Trump similarly employed after the infamous Access Hollywood tape was made public a month before the 2016 presidential election  may be working.

Doug Jones, the Democratic nominee, led in several Alabama polls after the allegations against Moore first surfaced. Now, however, the momentum seems to be shifting back in Moores favor. According to a CBS News poll released Sunday, Moore leads Jones, 49 percent to 43 percent. In a more stunning statistic, 71 percent of Alabama Republicans surveyed by CBS said the allegations against Moore are false. (Another poll, released by The Washington Post on Saturday, however, found Jones leading by 3 percentage points.)

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From Cosmopolitan

This weekend, Senate Republicans passed their version of a far-reaching tax bill with amendments handwritten into the margins that no one had time to read in full  Democrats even asked for an extension to fully read what they were being asked to vote on, and they were refused. While all Democrats voted against the bill, enough Republicans signed on that it passed (only one Republican voted against it); House Republicans passed a similar bill last month. Its a sweeping piece of legislation that has the potential to change much of American life, from education to health care, and not for the better. It hurts the poor while lining the pockets of the very rich. Its chock-full of giveaways to far-right special interests. And it will drive up the national debt so much that Republicans are already planning to cut social safety net programs, including Social Security and Medicare, to pay for this boondoggle for the wealthy. The bill isnt final yet  the House and the Senate have to reconcile the two versions of it in conference committee and vote again before it goes to the president  but theres little doubt that the final bill will remain as outrageous a gift to the rich as the two current versions.

Some of the provisions of the bill arent just about taxes  theyre about catering to the financial interests of big-money GOP donors and the social interests of very conservative voters (if not their pocketbooks). And these provisions will do a lot of damage should they become law. Here are four things the Senate tax bill does as well as more disastrous things that could happen before it becomes law.

1. Undermines abortion rights

One of the most obvious and egregious incarnations of Republicans toxic political strategy is the inclusion of anti-abortion language in a provision of the bill specifying that an embryo or a fetus, which the bill calls an unborn child, can be the beneficiaries of a type of college-savings plan called a 529. This is a big deal, because asserting fetal personhood is a long-standing pro-life strategy; that is, anti-abortion groups want to enshrine into law that a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus is a person with full rights and liberties, because they believe that will help to eventually outlaw abortion. Personhood legislation  laws saying that life begins at conception  typically has a tough time passing when its put to a vote, because it has the potential to outlaw abortion in the most extreme cases (rape, incest, threat to the pregnant womans health or life) and even outlaw many popular forms of birth control. Its also not particularly tenable given the realities of reproduction  theres a reason that people are invested with their rights under the law when theyre born (under embryonic and fetal personhood laws, would every fertilized egg get a Social Security number? What about the more than half of fertilized eggs that dont implant  would our infant mortality rate just go up to more than 50 percent?). Instead of having to debate what is a plainly terrible idea, Republicans gave their far-right base a gift of laying some of the legal groundwork for egregious encroachments on abortion rights.

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2. Helps to fund private schools while making it harder to fund public education

The tax bill is also a gift to private and religious schools, as well as parents who home-school. It will let them use special accounts previously dedicated to college savings to pay for their childrens private educations  in other words, its a provision that will mostly benefit rich families who can afford to send their kids to private schools. At the same time, the bill kneecaps public school districts from some of the most effective ways of raising money. Most public schools are funded by state and local taxes; the tax bill removes the deduction for these taxes.

3. Guts the Affordable Care Act

Republicans couldnt adequately destroy the ACA through normal legislative means, so theyve snuck one attack into the tax bill. This bill gets rid of the ACAs mandate that Americans buy health insurance or pay a penalty  the only way to make sure theres a large enough pool of insured people to keep costs down for everyone (without a mandate, sick people are more likely buy health insurance while healthy people opt out, making it much more expensive). As a result, experts predict that insurance costs could spike, and 13 million Americans could wind up without health insurance over the next 10 years.

4. Ravages Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by allowing more oil and gas drilling

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is a 19 million acre reserve, the largest publicly owned nature reserve in the United States, and a gem of unspoiled natural beauty that environmentalists have been trying to protect. Drilling  and the potential environmental disasters it could bring  could devastate not just the land, but the indigenous tribal communities that rely on it. Republicans have gotten around Democratic opposition to drilling in ANWR by tying a measure allowing it to the budget process used to approve this tax bill  with the passage of the tax bill came the approval of ANWR drilling. At the same time, the tax bill creates financial incentives for reliance on fossil fuels, and creates costs for investing in clean energy, even though clean energy technologies have helped to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. In other words, the GOP plan is bad for the economy and the environment because they want to send a bizarre social message to their base that they dont care about the environment and will return us to a day when coal jobs were plentiful (at this point, an impossibility).

And there could be more in the final bill.

The next step is for the Senate and the House to reconcile their two bills. Theres already significant overlap, but there are some areas where the House bill went further than the Senate, and the two houses will have to come to some middle ground. Here's what some of the House bill provisions under consideration do:

Penalize families with high medical costs

As it stands, people who spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care  so typically, the elderly or people with serious chronic conditions  can deduct some of that from their taxes. Under the House version of the tax bill, thats no longer the case, meaning that the old and the sick will be paying more to keep themselves healthy and alive.

Annihilate graduate education

In order to make sure the richest Americans and corporations pay less, House Republicans made it harder for many students, but especially graduate students, to afford higher education. For the many of us who have student loans, our taxes will go up under the House version of the bill, because we will no longer be able to write off a portion of our student loan interest. Its even worse for graduate students, who will find themselves taxed on the tuition wavers they commonly receive  in other words, if a graduate student gets $20,000 of tuition waved (a common feature of graduate education), she will still have to pay taxes on that $20,000, even though she didnt actually receive that money. Where a graduate student will find the money to pay for that massive increase is unclear. Instead, many universities suspect that many students will simply decide not to attend graduate school in the first place  hardly a way to make America great in an economy that needs more engineers, doctors, scientists, and other highly educated professionals to compete in an increasingly creative and information-centered global economy. Not to mention the fact that education is a good thing, and we should be promoting it rather than discouraging it by making it more expensive and only available to the already-wealthy.

Let religious groups be both tax exempt and politically meddling

As it stands, religious organizations like churches are exempt from taxation. But one key to that exemption is that these groups, like tax-exempt nonprofits, cant endorse candidates or use their pulpits to push partisan electoral politics. They can, of course, have a stance on particular issues and encourage civic participation generally  Catholic priests can preach against abortion, Evangelical pastors can say marriage should be between a man and a woman, a rabbi can say its important to vote  but your minister cant take to the pulpit on Sunday to tell everyone they should cast their ballot for Donald Trump or risk eternal damnation. If religious individuals want to advocate for candidates, they are free to do that; but religious institutions that enjoy a near total exemption from paying taxes cant tell you who you should vote for. Or at least, they couldnt  the House version of the tax bill gets rid of the long-standing amendment barring these institutions from political activism. This could be a bargaining chip in the reconciliation process with the Senate version of the bill. If removing the bar on political activism at church goes into the final version, more politics may be coming into a church (or synagogue or mosque or temple) near you.

Jill Filipovic is the author of The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. Follow her on Twitter.

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From Country Living

NBC is standing firm against giving fired "Today" host Matt Lauer a payout on the multimillion-dollar salary he's leaving behind, according to a person at the network.

Lauer, said to have earned around $25 million a year, reportedly is negotiating to receive the remainder of his salary for the current contract that runs through 2018 and made him one of TV's highest-paid journalists.

But NBC won't agree, said the person, who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because a personnel matter was involved.

Some NBC News employees who raised the question of Lauer's compensation at a staff meeting were told that he was fired "for cause" and wouldn't be paid beyond his last day worked, according to a Variety report Friday.

A representative for Lauer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Also Friday, NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack said an internal review into Lauer's alleged sexual misconduct is underway, including how it happened and why it wasn't stopped earlier.

In a company-wide memo released publicly, Lack said those are among the questions NBC employees are asking in the wake of the "Today" host's firing for what Lack labeled "appalling behavior."

A team of NBCUniversal legal and human resources leaders have started a "thorough and timely review" of what occurred and how the company can foster greater transparency and mutual respect, Lack said in the memo.

"At the conclusion of the review we will share what we've learned, no matter how painful, and act on it," he said.

His memo didn't address if the report will be made public. NBC News publicists didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reiterating comments from a memo he sent Wednesday, Lack said the top priority is to create a safe workplace environment and that unacceptable actions are "met with consequences, no matter who the offender."

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NBC's announcement Tuesday that Lauer was being fired for "inappropriate sexual behavior" meant that the network was cutting loose the popular, long-established star of its highly lucrative morning show.

How much Lauer's status may have protected him from allegations is among the questions raised by observers. NBC has said current executives didn't receive any complaints before the one Monday that triggered Lauer's immediate dismissal the next day.

Two other women came forward with accusations, with one telling The New York Times that Lauer had sexually assaulted her in his office in 2001. A Variety magazine investigation outlined a pattern of alleged salacious behavior, including three women who said Lauer harassed them.

In his first public response, Lauer said in a statement Thursday that some of the allegations were untrue but others had enough truth that he felt "embarrassed and ashamed."

Repairing the damage caused is his "full-time job," Lauer said.

He joined a lengthening list of prominent men toppled by misconduct claims, starting with movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and expanding out to others in Hollywood, media and politics.

In his memo, Lack said the company's mandatory online training on sexual harassment and other workplace issues will be augmented in the news division by in-person training

"This week we saw that when an employee comes forward to report misconduct, the system works. The complaint is quickly assessed and meaningful action is taken," he said. But workers must be empowered to "take the crucial first step of reporting bad behavior."

NBC has been caught up in other misconduct-related matters.

Last fall, the network was accused of sitting on an "Access Hollywood" audio tape in which then-candidate Donald Trump was heard telling Billy Bush that prominence came with a license to grope women. The exchange was first reported by the Washington Post.

In the Weinstein scandal, the first report was by The New York Times while a story by Ronan Farrow did for NBC News went unaired. Reporting by Farrow on Weinstein was subsequently published in New Yorker stories.

Earlier this month, NBC News fired the man who headed its talent booking department after multiple women accused him of inappropriate conduct.

Read Lack's full memo below:

Many of you have asked what we are doing to learn as much as we can about the circumstance around Matt Lauer's appalling behavior, why this was able to happen, and why it wasn't reported sooner.

This week we saw that when an employee comes forward to report misconduct, the system works. The complaint is quickly assessed and meaningful action is taken. But we also learned that we must do a much better job of making people feel empowered to take that crucial first step of reporting bad behavior.

To that end, I have three things to share with you.

A team of the most experienced NBCUniversal Legal and Human Resources leaders havebegun a thorough and timely review of what happened and what we can do to build a culture of greater transparency, openness and respect for each other. At the conclusion of the review we will share what we've learned, no matter how painful, and act on it.

Second - while our company has had mandatory online training for all employees on sexual harassment and other workplace issues, we need to do better. Therefore, in addition to what is already in place, the News Division is launching an immediate effort to implement in-person training on sexual harassment awareness and appropriate behavior in the workplace. We will share more details on this effort very shortly.

And third - we need to keep communicating. In addition to the meetings we've had this week with various show teams and departments, we are encouraging the leaders of every group to have smaller, more informational gatherings to further discuss this crucial issue now and on an ongoing basis.

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The Federal Communications Commission is on the verge of a historic vote to gut net neutrality rules and potentially ruin our internet. Unlike legislative votes in Congress, concerned citizens dont have a local senator to complain to, and the FCCs comment process has left a lot to be desired.

So, because angry voices need to be heard somewhere, activists are organizing votes outside Verizon stores nationwide. Verizon has been a proponent of the FCCs move to repeal net neutrality, and new FCC chairman Ajit Pai is a former Verizon lawyer, so protesting Verizon stores makes about as much sense as anything else.

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The protests are scheduled for Thursday, December 7th, in over 600 cities nationwide. The protests are being organized by Team Internet, a grassroots network of nearly half a million volunteer activists spearheaded by Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, and Free Press Action Fund, three of the groups behind the massive July 12 net neutrality day of action that drove millions of comments, emails, and phone calls to the FCC and Congress.

A map of all the protests can be found here, while a ZIP-code search for protests, details of local actions, and the option to host your own protest can be found at the Battle for the Net website.

The FCC vote to repeal Title II classification for telecoms companies is scheduled for Thursday, December 14th. The FCC announced its plan  which would basically give all telecoms regulation duties to the FTC, an organization poorly-equipped to deal with the telecoms companies  early this year, and the public comments section has been open since then. Over 23 million comments were submitted to the FCC, but allegations of fraud and fake comments have destroyed the integrity of that process, enabling the FCC to ignore public feedback.

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A crew on board a Cathay Pacific aircraft saw a North Korean missile blow up over the Sea of Japan last week, the airline told CNBC on Monday. Pyongyang launched the latest in a series of ballistic missiles last Wednesday in defiance of international sanctions and warnings against provocations . The rocket, which the regime said could reach the U.S. mainland, crashed into the sea near Japan. The crew of Cathay Pacific CX893, which was traveling to Hong Kong from San Francisco, reportedly saw the missile from their plane as it was passing over Japan and alerted the country's air traffic control."On November 29, the flight crew of CX893 reported a sighting of what is suspected to be the re-entry of the recent DPRK test missile. Though the flight was far from the event location, the crew advised Japan ATC (air traffic control) according to procedures," Cathay Pacific told CNBC in an emailed statement."Operation(s) remained normal and was not affected," the company added.Reporting the story Monday, the South China Morning Post added that the airline's General Manager of Operations Mark Hoey had posted on a staff communication platform that: "The crew of CX893 reported, 'Be advised, we witnessed the DPRK missile blow up and fall apart near our current location.'""We advised ATC and ops [operations] normal." Hoey added, according to the paper. Despite the danger and unpredictability of North Korean missile tests, Cathay Pacific told CNBC that the airline had no plans to alter its routes in the region or its operating parameters. "We have been in contact with relevant authorities and industry bodies as well as with other carriers. At the moment, no-one is changing any routes or operating parameters," Cathay Pacific said in its statement. "We remain alert and review the situation as it evolves." A crew on board a Cathay Pacific aircraft saw a North Korean missile blow up over the Sea of Japan last week, the airline told CNBC on Monday. Pyongyang launched the latest in a series of ballistic missiles last Wednesday in defiance of international sanctions and warnings against provocations . The rocket, which the regime said could reach the U.S. mainland, crashed into the sea near Japan. The crew of Cathay Pacific CX893, which was traveling to Hong Kong from San Francisco, reportedly saw the missile from their plane as it was passing over Japan and alerted the country's air traffic control. "On November 29, the flight crew of CX893 reported a sighting of what is suspected to be the re-entry of the recent DPRK test missile. Though the flight was far from the event location, the crew advised Japan ATC (air traffic control) according to procedures," Cathay Pacific told CNBC in an emailed statement. "Operation(s) remained normal and was not affected," the company added. Reporting the story Monday, the South China Morning Post added that the airline's General Manager of Operations Mark Hoey had posted on a staff communication platform that: "The crew of CX893 reported, 'Be advised, we witnessed the DPRK missile blow up and fall apart near our current location.'" "We advised ATC and ops [operations] normal." Hoey added, according to the paper. Despite the danger and unpredictability of North Korean missile tests, Cathay Pacific told CNBC that the airline had no plans to alter its routes in the region or its operating parameters. "We have been in contact with relevant authorities and industry bodies as well as with other carriers. At the moment, no-one is changing any routes or operating parameters," Cathay Pacific said in its statement. "We remain alert and review the situation as it evolves."



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FILE PHOTO: Crude oil is dispensed into a bottle in this illustration photo June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo

By Julia Simon

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil fell more than 1 percent on Monday on profit-taking as the market eyed signs of rising U.S. production, though prices remained close to recent two-year highs thanks to last week's decision by OPEC and other producers to extend output cuts.

Brent crude futures (LCOc1) settled down $1.28, or 2 percent, at $62.45 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures (CLc1) were down 89 cents, or 1.5 percent, at $57.47.

Brent hit a two-year high of $64.65 a month ago and has since attracted record investment by fund managers. Hedge funds and money managers also boosted bullish wagers on U.S. crude to the highest on record.

"Managed money is very long - both futures and options," said Tony Headrick, energy market analyst at CHS Hedging. "If the bulls are not fed, we're subject to a bit of profit-taking that I think we're seeing today."

John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital Management in New York, said the market could correct slightly, pulling further downward.

"We're in a situation where there might not be much more ammunition on the bullish side," he said.

The market is continuing to watch U.S. crude production, which is nearing a record high, according to data last week.

U.S. output rose in September to 9.5 million barrels per day (bpd), the highest monthly output since 2015, government data shows. On an annual basis, U.S. output peaked at 9.6 million bpd in 1970.

Additionally, drillers in the United States added two oil rigs in the week to Dec. 1, bringing the total count to 749, the highest since September, energy services company Baker Hughes said on Friday.

The U.S. rig count, an early indicator of future output, has risen sharply from 477 active rigs a year ago after energy companies boosted spending plans for 2017.

"Even higher prices are likely to be precluded by news from the U.S., where drilling activity is being stepped up," said Commerzbank analyst Carsten Fritsch.

U.S. producers were encouraged during 2017 to increase activity as crude prices started recovering from a multi-year price slump after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and some non-OPEC producers, including Russia, agreed to production cuts a year ago.

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Last week the producers agreed to extend those cuts of 1.8 million bpd until the end of next year.

"Market reaction has been positive so far. There are only two worrying aspects .... One is that Iraq's indiscipline has not been discussed, at least not publicly," PVM Oil Associates strategist Tamas Varga said, referring to Baghdad's compliance with output cuts.

A Reuters survey of output from the 13 OPEC members indicated production fell by 300,000 bpd in November. Supply from the 11 members with production targets under the original accord fell by 230,000 bpd.

The latest agreement allows for producers to exit the deal early if the market overheats. Russian officials had expressed concern that extending the cuts might encourage U.S. shale oil companies, which have been a thorn in OPEC's side, to pump more crude.

(Additional reporting by Aaron Sheldrick in TOKYO and Emily Chow in KUALA LUMPUR and Amanda Cooper in LONDON and Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Richard Chang)
"While representing the men and women of the 50th District has been one of the great honors and privileges of my life, it is clear that the Illinois Republican Party, including several of the county party organizations, has lost its way under Governor Rauner," McCann said.

PLAINVIEW - Monday, State Senator Sam McCann (R-Plainview) announced he would not be seeking re-election for his 50th State Senate seat. In his announcement, McCann expressed dismay with the state's Republican Party:

McCann would have faced a GOP primary challenger - Springfield's Steve McClure - if he had chosen to seek re-election. In August, the local GOP party voted to back McClure instead of the incumbent McCann.

In 2016, Rauner-affiliated groups such as the Illinois Opportunity Project spent between $4 and $5 Million to challenge McCann in the GOP primary. McCann opposed Governor Rauner's efforts to reform state union pensions.

McCann told NBC news earlier this year that he was considering an independent bid for governor in 2018. He would be pro-union and pro-Trump, the report said.

"I am unable to continue on with a party or a governor who continually attack working people; who support forcing taxpayers to fund abortions; who have turned Illinois into a sanctuary state; who have advanced the most liberal standards in the nation giving transgender individuals the ability to alter their birth certificates; and who have destroyed Illinois Right of Conscience Act so as to force pro-life doctors, nurses and other providers to violate their consciences and be denied their Constitutional Rights. This is no longer a Republican Party that is recognizable to me," McCann said.

McCann said he plans to stay in office and continue to represent the constituents of the 50th District until his term is over in January 2019. He was first elected to the seat in November, 2010 and took office in January, 2011.

UPDATE: McCann may have an independent opponent for governor - Once-Republican Party affiliated William Kelly said Monday he is also now running for governor as an independent in 2018.
MGIC (MTG) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues.

Investors in American Eagle Outfitters, Inc. AEO need to pay close attention to the stock based on moves in the options market lately. That is because the Dec 8, 2017 $9.50 Put had some of the highest implied volatility of all equity options today.

What is Implied Volatility?

Implied volatility shows how much movement the market is expecting in the future. Options with high levels of implied volatility suggest that investors in the underlying stocks are expecting a big move in one direction or the other. It could also mean there is an event coming up soon that may cause a big rally or a huge sell-off. However, implied volatility is only one piece of the puzzle when putting together an options trading strategy.

What do the Analysts Think?

Clearly, options traders are pricing in a big move for American Eagle Outfitters shares, but what is the fundamental picture for the company? Currently, American Eagle Outfitters is a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) in the Retail - Apparel and Shoes industry that ranks in the Top 30% of our Zacks Industry Rank. Over the last 30 days, two analysts have increased their earnings estimates for the current quarter, while one analyst has revised the estimate downward. The net effect has taken our Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current quarter from 38 cents per share to 39 cents in that period.

Given the way analysts feel about American Eagle Outfitters right now, this huge implied volatility could mean theres a trade developing. Oftentimes, options traders look for options with high levels of implied volatility to sell premium. This is a strategy many seasoned traders use because it captures decay. At expiration, the hope for these traders is that the underlying stock does not move as much as originally expected.

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Each week, our very own Dave Bartosiak gives his top options trades. Check out his recent live analysis and options trade for the NFLX earnings report completely free. See it here: Bartosiak: Trading Netflix's (NFLX) Earnings with Options or check out the embedded video below for more details:

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Gold prices are being pressured early Monday by rising U.S. Treasury yields, a stronger U.S. Dollar and increased appetite for higher-yielding assets. The moves are being fueled by expectations that the U.S. economy will expand further after the Senate passed a bill to overhaul the countrys tax system over the week-end.

At 0737 GMT, February Comex Gold futures are trading $1275.60, down $6.6 or -0.51%.

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, the U.S. Senate narrowly approved the overhaul of the U.S. tax system, bringing the Republican Party and President Trump closer to their goal of slashing corporate taxes and the rich while offering middle class Americans a less-pronounced number of changes.

In other news, hedge funds and money managers raised their net-long positions in COMEX gold in the week to November 28, U.S. data showed on Friday.

Daily December Comex Gold

Forecast

Gold is threatening key support early in the session. The trend turned down last week, but there wasnt much of a follow-through to the downside. The first key level on the charts today is $1272.30, followed by previous bottoms at $1268.10 and $1267.00. Given the recent price action, I think buyers are going to have to take out $1312.70 before investors will trust this market on the upside.

And why would anyone trust a rally in gold right now with the U.S. set to raise rates later this month and perhaps as many as three times in 2018. Additionally, money continues to pore into U.S. equity markets, helped by the possibility that U.S. tax reform will become law later this week, or sometime before Christmas.

Even another ballistic test by the North Koreans couldnt encourage investors to buy the precious metal in a major way last week. We did see some movement to the upside on Friday when Michael Flynn, a previous ally of President Trump pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. This news drove stocks sharply lower, underpinning gold prices.

This tells me that the only way gold is going to make any meaningful rally over the near-term is if there is a major sell-off in the stock market. Otherwise, were expecting support to continue to erode.

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This article was originally posted on FX Empire

More From FXEMPIRE:
A senior director of the private equity firm founded by U.S. Commerce Secretary and investor Wilbur Ross died after being attacked by a tiger shark Thursday while scuba diving off the coast of Costa Rica.Rohina Bhandari, 49, was a senior director at WL Ross & Co., the buyout fund acquired by Invesco in 2006. She was part of a group of people diving in the area at the time of the attack, according to multiple press accounts.According to her LinkedIn profile, Bhandari joined WL Ross in 2013 and previously worked at PineBridge Investments (the former AIG Investments) and Credit Suisse. On her Facebook page, friends posted tributes. "Rohina always had a smile, always a kind word," wrote one.Another Facebook commenter mentioned Bhandari was planning a birthday holiday celebration in the coming weeks. A senior director of the private equity firm founded by U.S. Commerce Secretary and investor Wilbur Ross died after being attacked by a tiger shark Thursday while scuba diving off the coast of Costa Rica. Rohina Bhandari, 49, was a senior director at WL Ross & Co., the buyout fund acquired by Invesco in 2006. She was part of a group of people diving in the area at the time of the attack, according to multiple press accounts. According to her LinkedIn profile, Bhandari joined WL Ross in 2013 and previously worked at PineBridge Investments (the former AIG Investments) and Credit Suisse. On her Facebook page, friends posted tributes. "Rohina always had a smile, always a kind word," wrote one. Another Facebook commenter mentioned Bhandari was planning a birthday holiday celebration in the coming weeks.



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By David Morgan and Amanda Becker WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate narrowly approved a tax overhaul on Saturday, moving Republicans and President Donald Trump a big step closer to their goal of slashing taxes for businesses and the rich while offering everyday Americans a mixed bag of changes. In what would be the largest change to U.S. tax laws since the 1980s, Republicans want to add $1.4 trillion over 10 years to the $20 trillion national debt to finance changes that they say would further boost an already growing economy. Trump, speaking to reporters as he left the White House for New York hours after the pre-dawn vote, praised the Senate for passing "tremendous tax reform" and said "people are going to be very, very happy". Once the Senate and House of Representatives reconcile their respective versions of the legislation, he said, the resulting bill could cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent "to 20 (percent). It could be 22 (percent) when it comes out. It could also be 20 (percent)." U.S. stock markets have rallied for months on hopes that Washington would provide significant tax cuts for corporations. Celebrating their Senate victory, Republican leaders predicted the tax cuts would encourage U.S. companies to invest more and boost economic growth. "We have an opportunity now to make America more competitive, to keep jobs from being shipped offshore and to provide substantial relief to the middle class," said Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. The Senate approved their bill in a 51-49 vote, with Democrats complaining that last-minute amendments to win over skeptical Republicans were poorly drafted and vulnerable to being gamed later. "The Republicans have managed to take a bad bill and make it worse," said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. "Under the cover of darkness and with the aid of haste, a flurry of last-minute changes will stuff even more money into the pockets of the wealthy and the biggest corporations." No Democrats voted for the bill, but they were unable to block it because Republicans hold a 52-48 Senate majority. Talks will begin, likely next week, between the Senate and the House, which already has approved its own version of the legislation, to reconcile their respective bills. Trump, who predicted that the negotiations would produce "something beautiful," wants that to happen before the end of the year. This would allow him and his Republicans to score their first major legislative achievement of 2017 after having controlled the White House, the Senate and the House since he took office in January. Republicans failed in their efforts to repeal the Obamacare healthcare law over the summer and Trump's presidency has been hit by White House in-fighting and a federal investigation into possible collusion last year between his election campaign team and Russian officials. The tax overhaul is seen by Trump and Republicans as crucial to their prospects at mid-term elections in November 2018, when they will have to defend their majorities in Congress. In a legislative battle that moved so fast a final draft of the bill was unavailable to the public until just hours before the vote, Democrats slammed the proposed tax cuts as a give-away to businesses and the rich financed with billions of dollars in taxpayer debt. The framework for both the Senate and House bills was developed in secret over a few months by a half-dozen Republican congressional leaders and Trump advisers, with little input from the party's rank-and-file and none from Democrats. Six Republican senators, who wanted and got last-minute amendments and whose votes had been in doubt, said on Friday they would back the bill and did so. Senator Bob Corker, one of few remaining Republican fiscal hawks who pledged early on to oppose any bill that expanded the federal deficit, was the lone Republican dissenter. "I am not able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that ... could deepen the debt burden on future generations," said Corker, who is not running for re-election. KEY CHANGES Numerous last-minute changes were made to the bill on Friday and in the early morning hours of Saturday. One was to make state and local property tax deductible up to $10,000, mirroring the House bill. The Senate previously had proposed entirely ending state and local tax deductibility. "The tax reform measure that passed the Senate is negative overall for state and local government finances. Lower federal tax rates for businesses and individuals could result in a modest boost to hiring and consumption, positively affecting state and local revenues," Nick Samuels, Vice President at Moodys Investors Service, said in a statement. "However, the change to the state and local tax (SALT) deduction would reduce disposable income for many taxpayers, likely outweighing the positive effect of lower federal rates on consumption in many communities and states." In another change, the alternative minimum tax (AMT), both for individuals and corporations, would not be repealed in full. Instead, the individual AMT would be adjusted and the corporate AMT would be maintained as is, lobbyists said. Another change would put a five-year limit on letting businesses immediately write off the full value of new capital investments. That would phase out over four years starting in year six, rather than be permanent as initially proposed. Under the bill, the corporate tax rate would be permanently slashed to 20 percent from 35 percent, while future foreign profits of U.S.-based firms would be largely exempt, both changes pursued by corporate lobbyists for years. On the individual side, the top tax rate paid by the highest-income earners would be cut slightly. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, analyzed an earlier but broadly similar version of the bill passed by the Senate tax committee on Nov. 16 and found it would reduce taxes for all income groups in 2019 and 2025, with the largest average tax cuts going to the highest-income Americans. Two Republican senators announced their support for the bill on Friday after winning more tax relief for non-corporate pass-through businesses. These include partnerships and other companies not organized as public corporations, ranging from mom-and-pop concerns to large financial and real estate groups. The bill now features a 23 percent tax deduction for such business owners, up from the original 17.4 percent. The Senate bill would gut a section of Obamacare by repealing a fee paid by some Americans who do not buy health insurance, a step critics said would undermine the Obamacare system and raise insurance premiums for the sick and the old. Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, said she obtained commitments from Republican leaders that steps would be taken later in separate legislation to minimize the impact of the repeal of the "individual mandate" fee. (Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Susan Heavey, Richard Cowan and Patrick Rucker in Washington; Caroline Valetkevitch in New York; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Kieran Murray and Alexander Smith)
FILE PHOTO: A Bank of America logo is seen in New York City, U.S. January 10, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith/File Photo

By Aparajita Saxena

(Reuters) - Shares of the biggest U.S. banks rose on Monday, after the Senate approved a tax overhaul bill on Saturday, raising investor hopes that their earnings would get a boost from a significantly lower tax bill.

JPMorgan Chase rose 2.4 percent to hit a record on Monday, while Bank of America rose 3.5 percent to its highest since October 2008. Both were the top performers on the S&P 500 Index, which was up 0.7 percent.

Mid-cap and regional banks also gained, with KeyCorp, Citizens Financial and M&T Bank Corp rising almost 4 percent. Zions Bancorp and Comerica Inc rose more than 2.5 percent.

"Banks might be the biggest winners from the tax reforms," Michael Mayo, a senior Wells Fargo analyst said.

Of the major S&P sectors, financials pay the highest effective tax rate at 27.5 percent, a Wells Fargo analysis of historical tax rates showed.

The tax cuts could add 16 percent to median bank earnings in 2018 and 18 percent in 2019, said Brian Klock, managing director in equity research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, who covers large regional banks.

Among large regional banks, Zions Bancorp, M&T Bank Corp and Comerica Inc stand to benefit the most, Klock said.

Talks will begin, likely next week, between the Senate and the House, which has already approved its own version of the legislation, to reconcile their respective bills.

While negotiations are ongoing, the legislation could cut the corporate tax rate to as low as 20 percent from 35 percent.

The tax overhaul is seen by President Donald Trump and Republicans as crucial as they head into mid-term elections in November 2018, when they will have to defend their majorities in Congress.

The S&P financial index rose nearly 2 percent to its highest since 2007, while the KBW Bank Index rose 2.7 percent.

(Reporting By Aparajita Saxena; Additional reporting by Roopal Verma in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Sheryl Sandberg and Sallie Krawcheck weigh in on the recent influx of sexual harassment news, poor girls are doing better in school than boys, andsurprise, surprisemore powerful men get accused of harassment. Have a productive Monday.

EVERYONES TALKING

Its the power, stupid. Two powerful women wrote editorials responding to the wave of sexual harassment allegations over the weekend. Interestingly, both of their takes focus on a single theme: power.

Sheryl Sandbergs essay, which she posted on Facebook Sunday morning, begins: The 1992 presidential race was once summed up in a pointed phrase: Its the economy, stupid. Today, as headlines are dominated by stories about sexual harassment and sexual assault at work, a similar phrase comes to mind: Its the power, stupid. The Facebook COO goes on to talk about how, when she experienced harassment, the perpetrator always had more power than she did. Thats not a coincidence. Its why they felt free to cross that line.

The New York Times, meanwhile, published an editorial by Sallie Krawcheck, former CEO of Smith Barney and of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and co-founder of robo-advisor startup Ellevest, on Saturday. Krawcheck writes that even when she moved up the corporate ladder, and it felt a little less fraught to deal with the inevitable, she still experienced unwanted advancesbut was able to decline them. I was able to say no to the senior government official who said, How about we go up to my hotel room? before obscenely wagging his tongue at me in front of my colleagues. I could knock the portfolio managers hands off my leg without too much fear of retribution.

Both women are advocating for the same solution to the on-going sexual harassment epidemic: get more women in power.

That, of course, is much easier said than done. The gender gap at the top of corporate Americajust 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs are femaleis the result of a confluence of sociocultural factors (women as primary caretakers, implicit biases against women leaders, lack of paid family leave, absence of role models, etc.) And yet, while its unlikely that well solve all of those in the next decade, it is heartening to know that the few women who are at the top are pushing to get more of us up there with them.

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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

 Billy begs to differ. Billy Bush, the Access Hollywood host to whom President Trump was speaking in the now-infamous 2005 tapes in which he told a bus full of men to grab em by the pussy, accuses the presidentwho has been suggesting that the voice on the tape is not hisof indulging in some revisionist history. Bush goes on to explain that while he thought Trump was performing a crass standup act back then, he knows better know; I believe her, he says of one of Trumps many accusers. New York Times

And in whats becoming a daily list of sexual harassment accusations against powerful men

 Shervin Pishevar. Five women have accused venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar of sexual misconduct. Uber employees also tell Bloomberg that Pishevar, an early investor in the ride-hailing startup, made unwanted advances towards Austin Geidt, Ubers fourth employee and now head of operations for Ubers autonomous driving unit. Pishevar denied touching Geidt inappropriately then or making sexual advances toward her at other events. His spokespeople didnt comment on the other allegations, but said, We are confident that these anecdotes will be shown to be untrue. Bloomberg

 Vices vices. Vice Media fired three employees for verbal and sexual harassment and other behavior that is inconsistent with our policies, our values, and the way in which we believe colleagues should work together, the companys new CHRO, Susan Tohyama, wrote in an internal memo Thursday. One of the three is Jason Mojica, head of Vices documentary films unit. (He said he was deeply disappointed by this outcome.) New York Times

 Molto agitato at The Met. The Metropolitan Opera has suspended James Levine after three men came forward accusing him of sexual harassment (all of them were teens at the time). Levine had been the Mets music director for four decades and is currently a conductor at the storied opera house. Rumors about him and sexual abuse have been circulating since 1979 and the allegations stretch back to 1969. I dont have the faintest idea where those rumors came from or what purpose they served, Levine said back in 1987; his spokesman didnt comment on the suspension. New York Times

 Where your tax money goes. Citing people familiar with the matter, Politico reports that Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) used $84,000 of taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment claim brought by his former spokeswoman. Lauren Greene sued the lawmaker in 2014 over allegations of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and creating a hostile work environment. Farenthold is the only known sitting member of Congress to have used a congressional account to pay an accuser. He did not confirm or deny Politicos report that his office was responsible for the payout. Politico

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Cynthia Collins, who was appointed CEO of genetics startup Human Longevity in January, is out after 11 months on the job.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

 Sorry-ish. New York Times journalists annotated the apologiesand non-apologiesissued by high-profile men accused of sexual misconduct. Gender editor Jessica Bennett writes about one portion of Harvey Weinsteins statement: These sound like the ramblings of your crazy uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. New York Times

 The woman behind the CFPB. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been in the headlines lately thanks to the fight over who will succeed its director, Richard Cordray. (A federal judge last week refused to block Donald Trumps pick Mick Mulvaney; Cordrays hand-picked successor Leandra English says shell seek an injunction against Mulvaney.) English isnt the first woman to be involved with the CFPB; the bureau owes its existence to a 2007 article Warren wrote for the journal Democracy, arguing that consumers needed a federal agency to regulate defective mortgages the way the Consumer Product Safety Commission regulates defective toasters. Politico

 Out-learning the boys. Women from low-income and minority families are vastly outpacing men when it comes to education: 17.6% of women who were high school sophomores in 2002 had received a bachelors degree by 2013, compared to 12.4% of men. One reason has to do with how theyre socialized: Girls derive more satisfaction from pleasing parents and teachers than boys do, according to sociologist Claudia Buchmann, while boys often feel pressured to act masculine, which can lead them to eschew school. The Atlantic

 The Econ gap. One field in which female students are still not nearly as well-represented as their male counterparts is economics. According to new research from the Federal Reserve, women make up about 30% of the nations economics majors, while minorities represent just 12%. The lack of diversity is limiting to economics policy, the reports authors note, as white male policymakers are likely to see one particular set of solutions as providing the most compelling remedies to social problems. Wall Street Journal

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ON MY RADAR

The women who turned their food woes into a meal delivery company Motto

The 92-year-old woman who is still shaking up Wall Street Wall Street Journal

Meet Supergirl, the worlds strongest teenager New York Times

Should women be paid for donating their breast milk? The Atlantic

QUOTE
Electric utility firm The Southern Company SO finally reached a settlement with the Mississippi Public Utilities Staff regarding the rate issue concerning the controversial Kemper Project. Mississippi Power, subsidiary of Southern Company and in charge of the Kemper Project, has agreed to lower the price tag of the Kemper Project by $85 million. This will help to lower the amount the company needs to recover from customers by $13.4 million.

Looking Back

The Kemper plant had been central to ex-President Obamas Climate Plan and was designed to reduce up to 65% of carbon dioxide emissions. Notably, the project also received the support of President Trump.

However, the project has been facing continuous criticism owing to its poor execution, cost overruns and multiple delays. The plant is already three years behind schedule and is over $4 billion beyond the stipulated budget. The overall cost of the plant was estimated to be around $3 billion in 2010. However, with several delays adding to the projects cost, the current price tag of the plant has ballooned over $7.5 billion. In the past 18 months, the company has announced 10 delays due to project management problems. The project found it difficult to get its two gasifiers to operate consistently. Mississippi Power has been unable to make the project economically viable in the face of volatile natural gas prices.

In June, Mississippi Public Service Commission (MPSC) issued an ultimatum ordering Southern Company to redesign plans and run the Kemper Project solely on natural gas. Thereafter, the company suspended all coal gasification operations at its Kemper plant.

Mississippi regulators, who do not wish ratepayers to incur additional costs, ordered the company not to increase the rates for Mississippi Power customers. In fact, they want the company to lower the rates, if feasible.

Recent Updates

Mississippi Powers settlement deal has resulted in the rate reduction for the customers from $126 million to $112.6 million. The move entitles customers to pay $1 less every month than what they are currently paying.

Story continues

The company believes that it has complied with all the requirements of Public Service Commission including the rate reductions and the operation of the plant solely as a natural gas facility. The company now thus wants the MPSC to re-evaluate the settlement agreement. The final decision on which is expected by January.

Zacks Rank

Southern Company is one of the largest generators of electricity in the nation along with the likes of Exelon Corporation EXC, Atlantic Power Corporation AT and RWE AG RWEOY among others.

Southern Company carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Southern Company (The) Price

Southern Company (The) Price | Southern Company (The) Quote

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Daisy Ridley, pictured, spoke of growing up in London in a liberal household where sexism wasn't an issue -- and of being overwhelmed by the rapturous response to her appearance as a rare female action star in "The Force Awakens" (AFP Photo/RONALDO SCHEMIDT) (AFP/File)

Los Angeles (AFP) - Carrie Fisher's death caused a huge disturbance in the Force, but the women of "The Last Jedi" vowed Sunday to honor her legacy in the latest girl-powered "Star Wars" chapter.

The cast came together in a secret location in Los Angeles with director Rian Johnson to build buzz for the latest chapter in the blockbuster space saga, which hits theaters on December 15.

"You get to see women that are not big and strong just because they're acting like men. They're doing something else," said Gwendoline Christie, 39, who plays stormtrooper commander Captain Phasma.

"And also you're seeing a developed character, or a developing character, that is showing some complex character traits. I'm delighted that something as legendary as 'Star Wars' has decided to reflect our society."

"The Last Jedi" -- filmed on the west coast of Ireland and at Pinewood Studios near London -- sees the return of the characters introduced in 2015's seventh installment, "The Force Awakens."

Christie, flanked by red-robed Praetorian guard as she took the stage, was joined by returning stars Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domnhall Gleeson, and Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill.

There were new faces too: Kelly Marie Tran as Resistance maintenance worker Rose Tico and Laura Dern, who plays Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo.

Ridley, 25, spoke of growing up in London in a liberal household where sexism wasn't an issue -- and of being overwhelmed by the rapturous response to her appearance as a rare female action star in "The Force Awakens."

"When I got involved, I knew it was a big deal, but the response was so beyond anything I could have imagined, that it was only afterward that I was like 'Oh -- oh yeah,'" she said.

Tran, 28, spoke of the "honor and responsibility" of playing a prominent female character and wanting to do the role justice.

Story continues

"And the girls in this movie kick some butt. Every single one is so good," she said.

Fisher -- who played General Leia Organa when she was known simply as Princess Leia in the original 1977-83 trilogy -- died in December, having already wrapped her scenes for "The Last Jedi."

"I watched TV and film obsessively from such a young age, but [she] stayed with me throughout my formative years," said Christie, who plays warrior Brienne of Tarth on HBO's "Game of Thrones."

"She's really interesting, she's really smart, she's really funny, she's courageous, she's bold, she doesn't care what people think, and she isn't prepared to be told what to do."
The November 21st MAGA rally opened with prayer, the National Anthem sung by Raquel Mitchell of the Frederick Douglass Foundation of Illinois (The Largest Christ-Centered, Multi-Ethnic and Republican Ministry in America), the Pledge, and a Moment of Silence for fallen Rockford police officer.







Police Officer Jaimie Cox was killed during a traffic stop at age 30, on Sunday, November 5, 2017. He had served with the Rockford Police Department for one year and had previously served with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources - Division of Law Enforcement. He was a veteran of the U.S. Army National Guard, serving from 2004 to 2010. He was part of an Army National Guard contingent deployed from 2008 to 2009 to Nangarhar province in Afghanistan and received honors including the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal and the Combat Infantryman Badge. He was also awarded the Illinois National Guard Abraham Lincoln Medal of Freedom Ribbon. It was noted how the coming holiday season will be a very difficult for his family. Link

Introduction of host Joe Walsh

It was now time for special host of the evening, Joe Walsh, a former Illinois U.S. congressman and host of the weekday Joe Walsh Show on AM 560, to step forward to receive the enthusiastic welcome extended by those in the room, many of whom are faithful listeners to the Joe Walsh Show. Raquel Mitchell of the Frederick Douglass Foundation introduced Walsh.

Joe Walsh described his job of the night as firing up those who are in the battle. Joe then expressed disappointment that there weren't 1,000 people in attendance at the rally. Joe bemoaned that conservative Americans are not fired up, with good reason not to feel enthusiastic, as Republican U.S. legislators are not following through on Trump's campaign promises. "But we better get fired up," said Walsh, "as the other side is raging with uncontrollable anger. Walsh then asked how it felt when Barack Obama was elected? Now the other side is fired up in much the same way as we were over Obama's election. Democrats never expected Trump to win, but Hillary is gone, and Democrats are now "running through the wall" to come out and vote.

American Eagles' Ed Martin

Next up was Ed Martin, President of Phyllis Schlafly American Eagles and Education Fund which, in part, sponsored the MAGA Illinois 2017 event.

Ed spoke about Phyllis' meeting with candidate Donald Trump. Knowing that Trump was a formidable deal maker. Phyllis Schlafly told Trump that before she could endorse him, he must help her make the Republican Platform in a few months a conservative one, putting country first, family first, and with a pro-life agenda. Phyllis got everything she asked of Trump. This resulted in the Republican Platform at last summer's Republican Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, the most conservative ever adopted.

Trump also promised Phyllis that he would never let her down. Phyllis believed that politics was where the action was to effect change. When Trump won the presidency in November of last year, in what Ed called a "God-given miracle", Trump followed through with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, thereby fulfilling his promise to appoint a replacement for Scalia that that was in his same image.

If Republicans lose big in 2018, we will lose the keys, not only to take back America, but to make America great again. Phyllis Schlafly Speaks on Donald Trump, Vol. 2, was available for participants free of charge, courtesy of Phyllis Schlafly American Eagles and Education Fund. Jordan Henry, Director of Research at Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, was eager to engage in conversation with Expo attendees about Phyllis Schlafy, as they visited his Expo table for free books.

Political operative, Jack Posobiec

A young and dynamic speaker was next heard from, Jack Posobiec, who was a political operative in the 2016 Presidential Elections. In that Mr. Posobiec still lives in the Washington swamp, it feels to Jack that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are still in charge. In that Paul Ryan and Mich O'Connell couldn't get Obamacare passed, Jack further suggested that both should have stepped down because of their ineffectiveness. Posobiec observed how something has shifted drastically in this nation when "Making American Great" is now considered a racist term. From day one in office, many in Congress, the Left, and the media have had nothing good to say about President Trump. As Posobiec remarked, "Congress is more worried about the KGB hiding behind every tree than working for the good of the American people."

Turning Point's Charlie Kirk

In introducing Charlie Kirk, Founder and President of Turning Point USA, Joe Walsh said 24-year-old KIrk is one of the most important speakers in our country today. In only five years, Charlie built the largest youth group in this nation to promote conservative ideas with 1,250 chapters located on high school and college campuses, and the movement continues to grow.

Charlie Kirk turned his speaking time over to Candace Owens who is with Kirk's Turning Point. Her blog is "Red Pill Black." Without hesitation, Ms. Owens announced that by the end of 2018 she was going to "lead the Black revolution against the Democratic Party." Candace then commented how Blacks have an unfavorable reputation in the media, that they hate white people, and that they just want free stuff. "Not so," said Candace. In bringing up the name Turning Point U.S.A. to Charlie Kirk, Candace asked of Kirk, "whose point was being turned?" Thereafter, Candace requested that Charlie put her on the ground to speak to her own people. As Candace remarked: "Some Blacks don't even know they are conservative."

Rick Manning advocates limited government

Rick Manning, from American for Limited Government, offered comments that were well received, first relating how The Paris Climate Agreement was an attempt to export American wealth to other countries. In spite of intense lobbying efforts to convince the U.S. to stay on board, Trump realized the agreement would only hurt the economic engine of the United States in limiting our electricity generating capacity. As Manning remarked, The Paris Accords was all about reducing global warming through the reduction of CO2 emissions, which would have required the curtailment of fossil fuels (We do have 300 years of coal sitting in the ground.) in favor on green sources of energy. Mr. Manning further stated, "People will respect America when we are the wealthiest and the strongest nation." Manning, in an unspoken reference to Trump, spoke of how great men arise at times when God needs them. Manning emphasized that Republicans will be unable to survive another election cycle if they tell themselves that voting is not worth their time, for the Democrats are motivated come out and vote.

"Diamond" and "Silk" reinactment



In what was a play on the comedy team of Diamond and Silk, Raquel Mitchell and Babette Holder, President of the Illinois Chapter of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, presented their version of the Diamond and Silk comedy team of Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, who are better known by their stage names Diamond and Silk. They became active American video bloggers and YouTube personalities as black women in support of Trump during the Trump campaign.

Nehlen and Marter challenge incumbent Republicans

The last two rally speakers were patriots who are running to unseat Republican Party incumbents. Even though the MAGA event was geared toward targeting state and federal elected officials in Illinois who are not supportive of the Trump agenda, Wisconsin Congressional candidate Paul Nehlen, who is running to defeat RINO speaker of the House Paul Ryan, was a welcome addition to the rally. Nehlen criticized Ryan for not being a conservative voice and thought the time had come for Ryan to return home. Furthermore, Ryan is not fighting for Trump's agenda. Big business continues to love Ryan because of his handouts. On immigration, Ryan doesn't favor building a wall, and he's perfectly fine with DACA individuals obtaining citizenship. This would enable millions of DACA relatives to enter this nation through chain migration. Illinois Congressional candidate James Marter seems up to the challenge to defeat incumbent 16th District Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who has been a big disappointment in his failure to support President Trump in the U.S. House. Marter wants to cut spending in D.C. and drain the swamp. He also believes in limited spending and is a strong advocate of 2nd Amendment rights. Marter was well received. Many rally attendees were from Kinzinger's 16th Congressional District. Closing remarks
President Trump on Monday tweeted his endorsement of Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Alabamas U.S. Senate seat, despite multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and assault against the former judge.

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more, Trump tweeted. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017

Trump again tried to tie Moores Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, to Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders& so much more, the president added. Look at your 401-ks since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!

Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders& so much more. Look at your 401-ks since Election. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2017

Moore, in turn, tweeted that he was thankful for Trumps support.

The America First agenda will #MAGA, Moore added. Cant wait to help him #DrainTheSwamp.

Story continues

Thankful for President Trump's support. The America First agenda will #MAGA. Can't wait to help him #DrainTheSwamp.#ALSEN https://t.co/pYu9h7TYVN  Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) December 4, 2017

Trump and Moore spoke by telephone later Monday morning.

According to White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah, Trump had a positive call with Judge Roy Moore during which they discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and the President endorsed Judge Moores campaign.

Moore said that Trump told him, Go get em, Roy!

"Go get 'em, Roy!"  President Trump Just got off the phone with President Trump who offered his full support and said he needs a fighter to help him in the US Senate. I look forward to fighting alongside the President to #MAGA!  Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) December 4, 2017

Last month, Trump twice offered his tacit support for Moore by blasting Jones, telling Alabama voters to oppose the Democrat. Jones and Moore are competing in the Dec. 12 special election to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessionss former Senate seat.

Roy Moore and President Trump (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Brynn Anderson/AP, Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES TAXES TO THE SKY, Trump tweeted. Jones would be a disaster!

I endorsed Luther Strange in the Alabama Primary, the president added. He shot way up in the polls but it wasnt enough. Cant let Schumer/Pelosi win this race. Liberal Jones would be BAD!

The last thing we need in Alabama and the U.S. Senate is a Schumer/Pelosi puppet who is WEAK on Crime, WEAK on the Border, Bad for our Military and our great Vets, Bad for our 2nd Amendment, AND WANTS TO RAISES TAXES TO THE SKY. Jones would be a disaster!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017

I endorsed Luther Strange in the Alabama Primary. He shot way up in the polls but it wasnt enough. Cant let Schumer/Pelosi win this race. Liberal Jones would be BAD!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017

Trumps support of Moore runs counter to many congressional Republicans, who have called for Moore to exit the race amid allegations from nine women ranging from uncomfortable and unwanted overtures to sexual assault. Most of the accusers said the misconduct occurred when they were teenagers and Moore was in his 30s. Moore has fiercely denied the allegations.

And when asked by reporters if having an alleged molester in the Senate was preferable to seating a Democrat, the president pointed to Moores denials.

Well, he denies it, Trump said. Look, he denies it.

He says it didnt happen, and you know, you have to listen to him also, he added.

The president himself has faced more than a dozen allegations of various forms of misconduct, with most of the women coming forward during last years campaign. The October 2016 release of an Access Hollywood tape revealed that Trump bragged in 2005 that he could grope and forcibly kiss women without their consent. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders has said the administrations position is that all of Trumps accusers are lying.

Before Thanksgiving, Trump did not rule out campaigning for Moore like he did for Strange during the Alabama primary. But the White House has since said the president has no plans to hit the campaign trail on Moores behalf.

Read more from Yahoo News:
President Donald Trump has called his fellow Republicans unbeatable as he revels in the passage through the Senate of a sweeping tax reform bill which should secure his first major legislative victory since entering office.

In a 51-49 pre-dawn vote, Republicans approved a measure that Mr Trump claimed was the largest tax cut in the history of our country, but will seemingly benefit the wealthiest Americans most and would also add $1 trillion to the national debt over 10 years.

Calling it one of the big nights, Mr Trump swept into New York for a number of political fundraising events delighted at the thought of the largest changes to tax laws since the 1980s. As he left the White House he praised the Senate for passing tremendous tax reform and said that people are going to be very, very happy.

The legislation now goes to the House-Senate committee to reconcile the differing bills the House and the Senate passed, before landing on the presidents desk to sign  but Mr Trump appeared unfazed. Something beautiful is going to come out of that mixer, he said.

Right now unless they have somebody that we dont know about, right now were unbeatable. Were unbeatable, Mr Trump said. And one of the reasons is whats happening with the markets, whats happening with business, whats happening with jobs.

He made clear that voting against tax cuts would create a problem for Democrats in next years mid-term elections.

Speaking at a fundraising event at New York restaurant Cipriani, Mr Trump said: We got no Democrat help and I think thats going to cost them very big in the election because basically they voted against tax cuts. And I dont think politically its good to vote against tax cuts.

On the way to the event, Mr Trump's motorcade drove past several hundred protesters decrying the make-up of the tax bill.

Over the previous 24 hours, multiple last-minute alterations were made to the legislation to win support from sceptical Republicans.

Story continues

There are changes apparently worth billions and billions of dollars said Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who took to the Senate floor several times throughout the day to criticise the bill and the process being used to pass it.

The final text of the bill was not released until a few hours before the vote, with Democrats angry at the speed of the passage of the bill.

The American people have a right to know the tax policy being made in the dark, Mr Wyden added.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had promised Mr Wyden that he would have plenty of time to review the final text, even though the bill is more than 500 pages and includes highly technical language.

Speaking after the passage of the bill, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer bemoaned the last minute changes.

The Republicans have managed to take a bad bill and make it worse, said Mr Schumer. Under the cover of darkness and with the aid of haste, a flurry of last-minute changes will stuff even more money into the pockets of the wealthy and the biggest corporations.

The national debt increase was an issue for Republican Senator Bob Corker, who was the only member of his party to vote against the measure.

This is yet another tough vote. I am disappointed. I wanted to get to yes, Mr Corker said in a statement. But at the end of the day, I am not able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that I believe, based on the information I currently have, could deepen the debt burden on future generation.

While he supports parts of the Senate legislation and believes it could be made more fiscally sound, he said, it is clear the caucus is in a different place.

Mr Corker had attempted to add $350bn in tax increases to the Senates tax bill  a proposal that was ultimately rejected.

But despite Mr Corkers decision to vote against the measure, the Republican leadership was still able to secure the 50 yea votes needed to pass it.

Republican Senator Susan Collins  seen as a wildcard because of her summer spent bucking leadership on healthcare legislation  announced her support for the tax bill earlier in the day after changes she wanted were made to the legislation.

Having secured these key improvements in the bill, as well as the commitments to legislation to help lower health insurance premiums, I will cast my vote in support of the Senate tax reform bill, she said. As revised, this bill will provide much-needed tax relief and simplification for lower- and middle-income families, while spurring the creation of good jobs and greater economic growth.

Mr McConnell celebrated the passage by predicting the bill will lead to an economic boost. We have an opportunity now to make America more competitive, to keep jobs from being shipped offshore and to provide substantial relief to the middle class, he said.

The Senate tax bill tacked on some controversial Republican-favoured extras, including repealing Obamacares requirement that most people have health insurance. The proposal, which is part of efforts to repeal Obamacare, would lead to 13 million people losing their health insurance over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during an event with supporters in Caracas, Venezuela December 1, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS

By Alexandra Ulmer and Deisy Buitrago

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday gained more powers over the OPEC member's oil contracts, as a deepening purge looks set to strengthen the leftist leader's control of the key energy sector amid a debilitating recession.

A months-long crackdown on alleged graft in Venezuela's oil industry has led to the arrest of some 65 former executives, including two prominent officials who used to lead both the oil ministry and state oil company PDVSA.

Corruption has long plagued Venezuela, home to the world's biggest crude reserves, but the socialist government usually said "smear campaigns" were behind accusations of widespread graft.

Maduro has recently changed his tack, blaming "thieves" and "traitors" for the country's imploding economy.

PDVSA's new boss, former housing minister Major General Manuel Quevedo, said on Sunday that all oil service contracts and executive positions would be reviewed by Maduro as of Monday.

"There aren't going to be any more contracts backed by the board to keep pillaging, as has happened in some instances," said Quevedo during a visit to the ailing Paraguana Refining Center.

Further details were not immediately available. PDVSA did not respond to a request for information.

Maduro said former energy minister Ali Rodriguez had been appointed honorary president of PDVSA and had met with Quevedo for six hours over the weekend.

ART, WINE, GOLD CHESS SET

The most recent high-profile sweep saw Diego Salazar, a relative of former oil czar Rafael Ramirez, detained on Friday on charges of helping launder some around 1.35 billion euros to Andorra.

During his Sunday television program, Maduro flashed a painting by Venezuelan painter Armando Reveron and pictures of luxury goods, including bottles from an alleged 300,000-euro wine cellar and a gold chess set, he said belonged to Salazar.

"Thieves!" said Maduro, banging his fist on the table, during the near five-hour broadcast. "All your assets must be expropriated," he added, stressing that the money should go to state coffers.

Story continues

Reuters was not able to confirm Maduro's accusations or contact a representative for Salazar.

His detention has spurred speculation that authorities are after Ramirez, who was the powerful head of PDVSA and the oil ministry for a decade before Maduro demoted him as an envoy to the United Nations in 2014.

A protracted rivalry between Maduro and Ramirez has increased in recent weeks, insiders say, especially after Ramirez wrote online opinion articles criticizing Maduro's handling of Venezuela's economy.

Maduro fired Ramirez last week and summoned him back to Caracas, according to people familiar with the clash.

When asked by Reuters on Whatsapp whether Ramirez was being investigated, chief state prosecutor Tarek Saab on Sunday replied there were "no exceptions" in the investigation.

(Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Sandra Maler)
(Adds detail on ISDA committee, statement)

By Corina Pons

CARACAS, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Venezuela's cash-strapped leftist government has defaulted on sovereign debt and bonds issued by state oil firm PDVSA after failing to make timely payments, a New York-based derivatives group ruled on Thursday.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) committee's unanimous decision that the delays constitute a "credit event" triggers limited payouts on credit default swaps (CDS).

But investors said they did not expect a significant market reaction from the ISDA decision, given that Venezuela is making efforts to pay, and that holders of some of the world's highest yielding debt have so far been tolerant of the delays.

They also noted that the values of the CDS - the derivative contracts investors use to protect themselves against a default - were not large compared to the overall bond amounts.

The net value of CDS on Venezuela's sovereign bonds is about $1.3 billion.

For PDVSA, the net value is around $250 million.

The ISDA committee said it would reconvene on Monday at 3 p.m. New York time (2000 GMT) to discuss an auction that will eventually determine the amount paid out to buyers of CDS protection.

Venezuela, reeling from a four-year recession that has led to widespread shortages of food and basic goods, said on Wednesday it had started transferring $200 million in interest payments on sovereign bonds which mature in 2019 and 2024.

PDVSA also said it made the interest payment on its 2027 bond and "successfully completed" capital payments on the 2020 and 2017N bonds.

Two ratings agencies declared President Nicolas Maduro's government in "selective default" earlier this week for failing to make overdue coupon payments within a grace period.

BONDHOLDERS STAYING CALM

All 15 members of ISDA's financial committee voted in favor of statements that "a failure to pay credit event had occurred with respect" to Venezuela and PDVSA.

The ISDA committee members are global financial institutions that include Bank of America, Barclays Bank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

Story continues

Investors said the ISDA decision would not rattle markets, however, given Venezuela's efforts to pay - albeit late.

"This is just a continuation of bad headlines," said Ray Zucaro, chief investment officer at RVX Asset Management.

"But as long as the government tries to pay, and bondholders get their late payments, they're really not incentivized to do anything ... It's a really unusual situation."

Venezuelan bond prices have been on a roller-coaster over the past two weeks, as Maduro called investors to inconclusive debt restructuring talks, while also pledging to keep honoring the OPEC nation's obligations.

Venezuelan officials blame payment delays on U.S. sanctions, which have made banks warier of dealing with funds from Caracas, thus clogging transfers.

Venezuela and PDVSA have around $60 billion in outstanding bonds, while private estimates put total foreign debt between $120 billion and $140 billion.

One source at a large holder of Venezuela bonds said investors were holding back from an aggressive course of action against the Maduro government while payments were still coming through.

"Even after the ISDA decision, it's not the best idea for anyone to accelerate a default if there's a chance they are going to be able to receive an amortization or interest payment any time soon," the source said.

"As long as Venezuela and PDVSA pay, most bondholders will likely prefer to deal with the delays."

Critics say nearly two decades of recklessly dogmatic and corrupt socialist rule have destroyed a once-prosperous economy, while the government blames the fall in oil prices and a U.S.-led "economic war" for Venezuela's financial mess.

Many in the nation of 30 million are skipping meals, and increasingly suffering from malnutrition or preventable disease. Prices are rising higher than anywhere else in the world, and there are shortages of basics from milk to car batteries. (Reporting by Corina Pons; Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne in Caracas, Marianna Parraga in Houston; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
A New York woman was killed by a shark while scuba diving off the coast of Costa Rica, officials said.

Rohina Bhandari, 49, was attacked by a tiger shark while at the Manuelita dive site at Isla del Coco National Park Thursday, the countrys Ministry of Environment and Energy and the National System of Conservation Areas said.

This is the first occurrence of this magnitude in the Isla del Coco National Park, the agencies said in a statement Friday.

Bhandari suffered severe bites to both of her legs before she was pulled from the water. Park officials and doctors vacationing on the island tried immediately tried to treat Bhandaris extensive wounds, but she could not be saved, authorities said.

The government-issued statement only identified Bhandari by her last name, but loved ones of the private equity director took to social media to mourn her death.

You were one of a kind, Norah Lawlor wrote on Facebook. You will be truly missed my friend!

One of a kind couldnt be a better description, echoed Jordan Robinson. She was tough as nails with her career goals and soft as a loyal friend outside of work. I am so fortunate I had the time to know her, tonight I am so sad.

Bhandari was a senior director of marketing and investor relations at WL Ross & Co. LLC. She attended the Asian Institute of Management before getting her Master of Science in Finance at George Washington University.

The Upper East Side woman was a regular at charity events in Manhattan, attending benefits support organizations including Oceana, the Humane Society of New York and the Fisher House Foundation in recent years.

She also loved to explore new things, friends said.

This is so awful  Rohina was an adventurer and I had many with her, Nancy Pearson wrote on Facebook. Im confident that the next one will be even better. Its a terrible loss for her friends of which there are many. Thinking of the good times. Lovely girl.

Story continues

Rohina Bhandari, you lived your life fully, always challenging yourself with great courage. I admire you for this, Silvia Francescon posted. You were fun, kind and full of life. RIP beautiful soul.

A diving instructor with Bhandari also suffered a shark bite, but his injuries were not life-threatening and he was conscious during the incident.

He told officials that a female tiger shark attacked as his group ascended to the surface of the water.

Bhandari was one of 18 people diving in an area known to be populated with many species of sharks.

Officials said researchers in 2012 tagged five tiger sharks near the dive spot and called Thursdays attack an isolated event and the first of its kind for the area.

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(Reuters) - Since U.S. forces began stepping up air strikes against the Taliban, Kunduz shopkeeper Najibullah no longer fears another insurgent takeover of the northern Afghan city. But he does fear robbery or kidnap by militia gangs.

With Afghan forces improving and on the offensive, U.S. commanders have more freedom to attack the Taliban and insurgents no longer threaten any major urban centers.

Although Taliban-controlled areas begin within a 10-minute drive of the city, Kunduz - a strategic hub that fell twice in the past two years - is largely calm. But there is a long way to go to build confidence in daily security.

"In the past, people were afraid that the Taliban would come but no-one talks about that now," said Najibullah, who like many Afghans, uses only one name.

"Now we have internal problems," he said, leaning over the counter of his shop in the city center and talking softly to avoid being overheard. "There are gunmen that do anything they want. There are people in this city, if they know you have money they'll come to your shop and rob you in broad daylight."

Outside the city, where the Taliban still hold sway, the risk of being caught between helicopter gunships and the insurgents or swept up in a clearing operation means life is also more difficult for villagers on the front line.

Last month, locals say 16 people were killed by U.S. helicopters in a night raid near the villages of Qatl-e Am and Gharow Qushlaq in Chardara district, an area largely controlled by the Taliban.

A U.S. investigation concluded there was no evidence any civilians were killed.

"Since the Americans announced their new strategy and signed the new agreement, the situation has been getting worse," said Atiqullah, a villager who said he was about three kilometers away when the raid took place.

Not Safe

The shift in perceptions on the ground suggests ordinary Afghans are seeing the fresh strategy is hitting the insurgents. But their new fears underline how much more is needed to build trust in the Western-backed government.

"I'm a businessman but I can't go anywhere without a gun," said Jamal Nasir Aymaq, who owns a number of bakeries in the city. "Our businessmen and rich people have already escaped Kunduz and children are not safe."

Kidnapping and robbery are rife and there is little confidence of justice from a government many see as deeply implicated in abuses by rogue militia "commanders" who operate with impunity.

"We all know peace cannot be achieved by force alone, it needs development and the economy," said Kunduz police chief Abdul Hameed Hameedi. "Security is much better than last year but we haven't got what people are expecting yet."

Kunduz Governor Asadullah Omarkhil dismissed talk of any official collusion in kidnapping as "baseless", but while many people fear the Taliban, many also feel they are more honest and efficient than city officials.

"If there were a real government in the center of Kunduz, people wouldn't be going to the Taliban for legal decisions," said Mawlawi Khosh Mohammad Nasratyar, a member of the Kunduz provincial council. "Now, even people from the center of Kunduz go to the Taliban to settle legal cases."

Optimism

The wariness among many Afghans contrasts with optimism among Western officials, who say the new approach is starting to turn a stalemate with the Taliban around.

"The air strikes have made all the difference," said one Western diplomat in Kabul. "When you go to [the NATO-led Resolute Support mission] headquarters, there's a bit of a buzz about the place that wasn't there before and a feeling they're back on the front foot."

So far in 2017, U.S. forces have dropped three times the quantity of bombs as last year and special forces units have been in regular action with their Afghan counterparts.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters and many senior leaders have been killed, including Mullah Abdul Salam, mastermind of the assault that saw the Taliban flag raised over Kunduz in 2015, the first time the insurgents had taken a major town.

Similar successes have been seen in other towns including Tarin Kot in the central province of Uruzgan, which the Taliban briefly overran last year, or Lashkar Gah in Helmand, which they have also come close to taking.

"Two years ago, there was a fear of Taliban attack on the city every minute and we couldn't come into the office," said Kunduz provincial council secretary Fawzia Jawad Yaftali. "But now everything is different, the shops are open and I'm sitting in my office without any fear," she said.

Civilian Casualties

The campaign has not been without cost however and hanging over it is the fact that the air strikes have inevitably brought more civilian casualties in their wake, even if their numbers are still well below those killed by roadside bombs.

In a briefing this week, the commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan General John Nicholson said they go to "extraordinary lengths" to avoid civilian casualties and have "a rigorous process" to investigate allegations.

But people from Chardara react with deep anger to official denials that the raid on Nov. 3-4 killed at least 16 civilians.

"The helicopter started bombing at three in the morning. Afterwards, at about 6 o'clock a lot of people gathered to help and then the helicopter came back. That was the big bomb," said Mohebullah, a village elder.

"Sixteen people were killed and six wounded," he said, showing a handwritten list of names. "They have advanced equipment, they should be sure of who they are attacking. They should target criminals not innocent and helpless people."

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said reports of at least 10 deaths were "credible". A U.S. investigation found no evidence of any civilian casualties but Capt. Thomas Gresback, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said they would engage in dialogue with anyone who came forward with information.

"Most of the propaganda about civilian casualties comes from the enemy," said Governor Omarkhil, who said only one person was killed in the incident. "In Chahardara, the Taliban made people go to the battle zone and take out dead bodies."

The U.S. military says the Taliban deliberately shelters in houses and schools but the issue, over which former Afghan President Hamid Karzai repeatedly clashed with Washington, causes deep resentment, sapping support for the government.

"The people who were killed were all civilians, they had nothing to do with the government or the Taliban," said Mohebullah. "Everyone lost a family member, everyone is shocked and in grief. The governor is lying."
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has met with Pakistani leaders in Islamabad as Washington looks to bolster the fight against terrorism amid U.S. complaints that Pakistan is not doing enough against insurgent groups within its borders.

Speaking before his talks with Mattis on December 4, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that his country was committed to the war against terrorism and shared the same objectives as the United States.

"Engagement is there," Abbasi said.

The U.S. defense secretary also met with U.S. Ambassador David Hale, Pakistani military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, as well as other top security officials and several ministers.

Ahead of his arrival in Islamabad, Mattis said on December 3: "We have heard from Pakistan leaders that they do not support terrorism. So I expect to see that sort of action reflected in their policies."

However, he said he wanted to work with the Pakistanis and not to exert pressure on the countrys leaders in the counterterrorism fight.

"That's not the way I deal with issues. I believe that we work hard on finding the common ground and then we work together," he said.

Washington in the past has complained about what it sees as Pakistani efforts to provide "safe havens" for Taliban militants who stage attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.

U.S. officials say militants have crossed the mountainous and ill-defined Pakistani border to attack U.S., Afghan, and allied forces in Afghanistan.

The officials say insurgents then return to the safe havens in Pakistan, aided by the ISI, Islamabad's intelligence agency. Pakistan has denied the allegation.

U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Islamabad of harboring "agents of chaos" and vowed to get tough with Pakistan unless it changes its behavior.

Mattis told reporters in Kuwait before his departure to Pakistan that he will be "reinforcing President Trump's call for action against terrorist safe havens."

U.S. General John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, expressed disappointment last week about the lack of progress, saying there had been no change in Pakistan's support for militant networks.

The United States in August said it would hold up $255 million in military assistance for Pakistan until it cracks down on the extremists threatening Afghanistan.

Islamabad is the final stop of Mattis's trip after stops in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait.

With reporting by AP, Dawn, VOA, The Hindu, and Geo News
SYDNEY, Australia, Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SpeeDx Pty. Ltd, a developer of advanced multiplex molecular diagnostic solutions, announced the incorporation of a US-based subsidiary company, SpeeDx Inc. The parent company, headquartered in Australia, will use the US base to support current clinical trial activity for ResistancePlus MG (not currently for sale in the US), in preparation for an expected 2018 launch. The SpeeDx ResistancePlus MG test detects the sexually transmitted bacteria Mycoplasma genitalium along with mutations that confer resistance to azithromycin, the front-line antibiotic treatment of choice.



ResistancePlus MG will potentially be a first-to-market molecular diagnostic test in the US, providing both detection of the MG infection along with information about antibiotic resistance of the disease. The test previously received regulatory clearances in Europe, Australia and New Zealand and is already experiencing strong sales in those locations. SpeeDx recently signed a partnership agreement with Thermo-Fisher to help bring the ResistancePlus MG test to the US and a distribution agreement with Cepheid in Europe for their PlexPCR and ResistancePlus tests.

We have always had the goal of bringing ResistancePlus MG to the US market, said Colin Denver, CEO of SpeeDx, local offices and staff will allow us to more easily navigate the FDA approval process and keep us on track for our product launch next year.

A rapid rise in resistant strains of M. genitalium across the globe has led to international guidelines for the management of M. genitalium infections that recommend testing for macrolide resistance to better inform treatment options.1 With M. genitalium prevalence rapidly increasing in the US, and in some instances exceeding that of Chlamydia,2 it is expected that US guidelines will also be updated to address antimicrobial resistance in this significant sexually transmitted disease (STD).

Our aim is to empower clinicians and physicians to make the best treatment decisions about the diseases they are faced with, said Colin Denver. Ultimately, we want to support individualised patient management and better antimicrobial stewardship, which will help patients quickly receive the best treatment for their disease and for physicians to better address antibiotic resistance challenges.

About MG

Mycoplasma genitalium can cause symptoms such as urethritis, cervicitis, endometritis and pelvic inflammatory disease. In recent studies, it has been found to have a higher prevalence than Gonorrhea.3 Like Gonorrhea, MG is also evolving into a so-called STI superbug that is becoming resistant to many antibiotic treatments, leading to exceedingly difficult-to-treat infections and threatening global public health.4

Macrolide antibiotics, specifically azithromycin, are the first-line treatment for M. genitalium infections, but resistance to these antibiotics has increased up to 50 percent in several countries.4 New European Guidelines for the treatment of M. genitalium infections were released last year recommending the molecular detection of M. genitalium with an assay capable of detecting macrolide resistance-associated mutations.1 Timely detection of antibiotic resistant infections enables better treatment of the disease, lessens the potential for spreading among vulnerable populations and combats the rising level of antibiotic resistance.

Currently, there is not a commercially available, FDA-cleared molecular diagnostic test for the detection of MG.

About SpeeDx

Founded in 2009, SpeeDx is an Australian-based private company with offices in London and distributors across Europe. SpeeDx specializes in molecular diagnostic solutions that go beyond simple detection to offer comprehensive information for improved patient management. Innovative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) technology has driven market-leading multiplex detection and priming strategies. Product portfolios focus on multiplex diagnostics for sexually transmitted infection (STI), antibiotic resistance markers, and respiratory disease. Currently, SpeeDx markets the only CE-marked and TGA approved commercial molecular test for the STI M. genitalium (ResistancePlus MG) that combines detection of the disease with detection of markers for antibiotic resistance. For more information about SpeeDx please see: http://www.plexpcr.com

1 Jensen, JS. et al 2016. 2016 European Guidelines on Mycoplasma genitalium Infections.

2 Getman D et al. Mycoplasma genitalium prevalence, coinfection, and macrolide antibiotic resistance frequency in a

multicenter clinical study cohort in the United States. J ClinMicrobiol 2016; 54:22782283.

3 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015 Sexually Transmitted Diseases Treatment Guidelines.

4 Unemo, M & Jensen, JS. Antimicrobial-resistant sexually transmitted infections: gonorrhoea and Mycoplasma genitalium. 2016. Nat. Rev. Urol. 268. Published online 10 Jan 2017. doi:10.1038/nrurol

Contacts for SpeeDx:

Madeline ODonoghue

madelineo@speedx.com.au

+61 2 8212 8512 (ext 008)
HONG KONG and LOS ANGELES, Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Two world-class light and special effect shows illuminated the sky over Hong Kong's world-famous Victoria Harbour as the city welcomed the holidays with the unveiling of spectacular enhancements to the internationally-acclaimed A Symphony of Lights show and the winter version of the Hong Kong Pulse Light Show.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/703c67a9-127e-43a3-8ec8-f26a65cd8327

The re-imagined light shows, free for general viewing, will dazzle viewers with dynamic lighting effects and create an illusion of a winter wonderland inside Hong Kong's Cultural Centre.

The 10-minute A Symphony of Lights show, best viewed from the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, features dynamic rays of light sent out in rhythm from 40 buildings and locations on both sides of Victoria Harbour. The newly enhanced show incorporates a variety of exciting lighting effects such as colorful searchlights, lasers, and all-new beam lights sent out like a special fan-shaped lighting effect from the roof of the Central Government Offices and the Revenue Tower. For the first time in the show's history, LED panels have been placed on harbor-side buildings, displaying interactive images and messages to encourage audience participation. In addition to special effects, the program is complemented by music from Asias leading classical orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, providing visitors with a thrilling and unforgettable sound-and-light experience.

Organized by the Hong Kong Tourism Board in 2004, A Symphony of Lights is recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's largest permanent light and sound show. Travelers can enjoy the show free of charge from various vantage points, including the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront outside the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, and the promenade outside the Golden Bauhinia Square in Wan Chai. Harbor cruises are also available to book and offer dramatic viewpoints of the colorful show from the famous Victoria Harbour. The 10-minute show operates daily starting at 8 p.m. (Hong Kong time). In coordination with the new show, A Symphony of Lights mobile app is available to download, allowing visitors to listen to music simultaneously and share their photos on social media.



The winter version of Hong Kong Pulse Light Show immediately follows A Symphony of Lights with a dramatic 3-D projection of a snowstorm covering the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Intense snow and ice conditions blow away the numbers on Hong Kong's 145-foot Clock Tower, stopping time just before Christmas arrives, prompting an ingenious dragon to find the missing numbers scattered across Hong Kong landmarks. During the show, the piazza is blanketed with snow falling from above, along with glowing LED balls and a giant crystal ball. The free performance will run five times in the evening through December 28, 2017 at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui.

For more information, visit Discover Hong Kong

About Hong Kong: Hong Kong's storied history, award-winning food and libations, vibrant arts and culture scene, and stunning great outdoors has made it widely-known as one of the most exhilarating and sophisticated destinations in the world. Its mesmerizing contrasts of east and west, modern and ancient, and urban and natural leaves its visitors endless choices when planning a trip to Asia's World City. Visit www.discoverhongkong.com for more information; follow Hong Kong Tourism Board on Twitter at @HongKongTourism for the latest Hong Kong news.
TORONTO, Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The international network, M&A Worldwide, brought together more than 80 members/consultants in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from all over the world to Barcelona on October 26 and 27.



For 2 days, top M&A experts met together with executives from large companies and groups to forge large-scale corporate deals and to study possible cross-border business transactions.

At this, the 27th Rainmaker Summit, various sectoral panels including: Agriculture, Food and Beverage, Biotech, Pharmaceutical, Health Sciences and Information Technology were held to examine the challenges and opportunities that exist and are to be discovered in relation to the M&A business industry. Directors and executives in charge of such deals in their respective markets were also present.

An interesting presentation was initiated by the conference chair to have a number of members comment on the geo-political influence various countries political/governance has on the M&A profession.

As the exclusive member representing Canada, it was fascinating to hear perspectives from around the world regarding our changing world.

A quick look at geo-politics and the effects and risks of political interventions

as they relate to M&A practices in various countries:

USA:

Business is returning to the new normal after the Trump election. The day after and for weeks following the election existing contracts were closed and new mandates decreased by 90%. However the M&A business is returning to normal activity levels. It is noted that no laws relating to M&A have been passed in Congress and Trumps twitter is not government. With the exception of the odd challenge the M&A business has largely returned to normal.

Mexico:

The US election did cause one large transaction between a US PEG and our partners in Mexico to go off the rails. The firm suffered greatly and had to lay off employees etc. They were not able to join us in Barcelona because of the difficult year they have had but they are now on the rebound.

UK:

Despite the unstable political situation as a result of Brexit, the M&A outlook has been more positive in recent weeks. Although there has been some impact on currency rates, there has been little or no impact otherwise on M&A transactions.

Turkey:

Turkey has experienced a very challenging M&A environment over the past couple of years, lower foreign investment and smaller deal sizes. The political unrest and the influx of refugees has definitely hurt the M&A business. However, the growth rate remains at 5-6% with the primary interest in investments in multinational technological firms.

Russia:

Cross border M&A activity is closed due to western world sanctions.

Germany:

The governments main concerns are to protect the security of its people. Its laws are focused primarily in areas of industry, labour laws, housing and education. These laws affect the entire economy including M&A.

Hungary:

Although geo-politics and the electronic network dominate business worldwide, M&A remains very much a people business based on trust and relationships. Although progress in recent years has been slow to develop Hungary has 77 active company transactions in 40 countries and the future appears promising with a steady increase in cross border deals.

China:

Realistically China has no free trade and no free flow of capital. The reality is that Communism is viewed as the only true success. Chinese financial institutions are stressed. Chinese company investments are restricted and will be more restricted in the future. There are strong foreign exchange rules on currency, in fact there were problems changing enough Chinese currency to Euros for the M&A Worldwide member to attend the conference. The goal is to strengthen, merge and fund government owned corporations not private companies.

All M&A companies must be government approved. The Chinese government must pre-approve transactions. In essence the M&A business is government controlled.

The government is forcing companies to sell foreign investments: i.e. Waldorf Astoria Hotel purchased in 2015 at what is believed to have been an over-valued price of $2B, the hotel closed in March 2017 for renovations that will take 2-3 years to complete. Now the government wants the insurance group that purchased the hotel to sell it at what would likely be a huge loss and reinvest the money in something that would promote the governments interests.

Australia:

Has a need to attract capital and investment. There are government programs available to support infrastructure and as a result contracting and building industries are strong. Free trade exists with Korea, Japan and much of Asia.

Barcelona/Catalonia:

From discussions with a pharmaceutical company based in Catalonia, the interim political situation is hurting investment in the Catalan region  for example, some anti-separatist doctors refusing to prescribe drugs from Catalan based companies. This seems like it is more heat of the moment decision making and should return to normal after the dust has settled.

South America:

Global politics, the government of various countries, as well as regional concerns all affect South American countries. Although regional investments vary, the main focus is on agriculture and minerals and the ability for companies to have a minimum of 3-5 years of stability.

Conclusion:

Change is both constant and inevitable, and one must be aware of the changes and the impact, both immediate and longer term, governments will have on our clients and ultimately our practices.

Contact us for a list of the opportunities we have available outside of North America through our exclusive membership in M&A Worldwide.

---

About Robbinex:

Robbinex is a mid-market business broker and Canadas exclusive advisory firm to M&A Worldwide, the leading global network for mergers and acquisitions. Robbinex has specialized in helping owners of mid-sized companies with business transitions since 1974.

For more information please contact:

Dana Rennie

Senior Manager, Marketing & Client Relations

Robbinex Inc.

Consulting Intermediaries

Securing Legacies Since 1974

41 Stuart Street, Hamilton, ON L8L 1B5

Phone: 905.523.7510 ext. 217

Cell: 905.537.2597

Toll Free: 1.888.762.2463

Website: www.robbinex.com

A Member of M&A Worldwide




English French

MONTREAL, Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- La Soiree Montreal inc. celebrated entrepreneurship Thursday evening at the new Marine Terminal hall in Old Montreal. Under the honorary presidency of Mr. Lucien Bouchard, Chairman of the Board, Eric Boyko, President and CEO of Stingray Digital, received a tribute for his impact on entrepreneurship. The 2017 Prix Montreal inc. was awarded to Sensequake. La Soiree Montreal inc. is an annual event to the benefit of Fondation Montreal inc. which invests in the creation, expansion and ongoing support of young businesses.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/150c0efa-9adc-4343-bc7a-0b59547dd85b

Sensequake, winner of the 2017 Prix Montreal inc.

Over 450 guests from the Montreal business community chose the winner after Desjardins Entreprises presented the 3 finalists for the Prix Montreal inc. The Prix Montreal spotlights the most successful young entrepreneurs among the laureates of Fondation Montreal inc. over the past 12 months.

Sensequake is the initiative of the two Mirshafiei brothers, engineers by training. Sensequake has developed a technology that allies sensors and collection and analysis software, allowing data gathering on buildings and infrastructure. An algorithm can determine the DNA of a building's structure and predict its vulnerability. www.sensequake.com

The other two businesses in convention were:

Epicerie LOCO: Founded by four women entrepreneurs in environmental sciences, LOCO is committed to supply a full line of healthy, ecological, packaging-free food and everyday products. www.epicerieloco.ca

Local Logic: Co-founded in 2014 by urban planners specializing in data science, Local Logic excels in the collection, cleansing and combination of data used in scoring businesses in real estate, tourism, traditional commerce and the web. www.locallogic.co

"Congratulations to the finalists and bravo to the organizers of this evening, which encourages and promotes the dynamism of our Montreal businesses. Desjardins is proud to support Prix Montreal inc. and to be a partner of Fondation Montreal inc., a philanthropic business model with real value-added for our entrepreneurs," declared Luc Menard, Chief Operating Officer of Desjardins Capital.

Tribute to Eric Boyko

The contribution of Eric Boyko, founder of Stingray, to the Quebec entrepreneurial ecosystem, was highlighted during the evening. His energy, daring and team-building skills have propelled Stingray into the ranks of the world's biggest players in the music publishing industry, operating in no less than 156 countries.

Thank you to the businesses that contributed to La Soiree Montreal inc. :

Table Hommage : Ampme. Attraction Media. Banque Nationale. Bouclair. Couche-Tard. Davies Ward Philips et Vineberg. Quebecor Media

Table Montreal inc. : Banque de developpement du Canada. Banque Nationale. Banque Scotia. Banque TD. BCF avocats. Bell Canada. BMO Nesbitt Burns. BonLook. Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec. Cogeco. Desjardins. DIVCO. EY. Financiere Banque Nationale. Fonds de solidarite FTQ. Gestion immobiliere Luc Maurice inc. GMP Securities. Grooupe Park Avenue. KPMG MSLP. LHC inc. Lumenpulse group inc. Manuvie. McGill St-Laurent. Walter Capital Partners. PowerCorporation du Canada. Sanimax San inc. Stingray Digital. Trans-Pro Logistique.

The funds raised during La Soiree Montreal inc. will be invested in grants and support services for young Montreal entrepreneurs.

About Fondation Montreal inc.

Fondation Montreal inc. propels towards success the most promising entrepreneurs through grants, access to a high-level business network and the expertise of experienced business volunteers. Fondation Montreal inc. awards annually over $700,000 in grants, without taking any participation, offers young entrepreneurs personalized a la carte services and opens the Montreal inc. doors to them thanks to its vast network of more than 450 business volunteers. A charitable organization, Fondation Montreal inc. is 80% funded by the private sector and has contributed, since 1996, to the creation of more than 900 businesses. www.montrealinc.ca

About Prix Montreal inc., presente par Desjardins Entreprises

Fondation Montreal inc. shines a light, annuallys, on its recent laureates who have distinguished themselves by their remarkable achievements since obtaining a grant. The Montreal inc. community  donors, members of the board, volunteers, partners of the ecosystem  is invited to celebrate the evolution of these young entrepreneurs and to choose the big winner during the Soiree Montreal inc. The 3 finalists share many prices such visibility in Les Affaires, media partner, a training at Ecole dEntrepreneurship de Beauce and services from BCF, Cabinet de relations publiques NATIONAL, et KPMG.

Source : Fondation Montreal inc.

Valerie Danger - Director communications  Tel. 514 872-5768 - vdanger@montrealinc.ca




anurag16 wrote:

Hi Everyone,



I started researching for the B-schools of late and the easiest way to do the initial screening was through rankings and avg GMAT score. However, I was amazed to see that few B-schools, ranked in the top 50, (Specifically UK based schools) require considerable less GMAT score in comparison to some schools, that are not even in top 100 (Specifically Indian B schools).



I understand that GMAT is not the only criteria used by ranking agencies, but I would be really interested to know about the possible factors that would have resulted such a huge gap in the rankings? Thanks in advance!

Namita Garg,

http://www.mbadecoder.com



Some of our most recent admits are going to: Wharton. Kellogg, NYU Stern, LBS, INSEAD, Ross, UCLA, Tepper, IESE, HEC Paris, Emory and ISB.

Among the profiles we regularly work with are: Consultants, Finance specialists, Marketeers, Lawyers, Operations Managers, Product Managers, Social Impact Fellows, Software Engineers, Marine Engineers and Doctors



Book a contact@mbadecoder.com Book a FREE profile evaluation with us OR write to us at: Signature Read More

Anurag,The rankings are a great way to get to know business schools at a top level.Which schools you find in a ranking depends on which rankings you were looking at. They are some predominantly US based rankings (Business week, US News, Forbes) and mix of the US and Europe and other regions (FT and Economist). You are likely to find more US MBAs in rankings because more of these exist!For the GMAT, American programs place more emphasis on GMAT as compared to European MBAs.Hope this clarifies your doubts._________________
Dont mess with Americas Dairyland.

That was the message sent loud and clear by Wisconsins agricultural community when the head of a business lobby group suggested that Americas Dairyland be removed from the states license plates.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce President Kurt Bauer posed the idea at a luncheon last Monday that was attended by hundreds of state business leaders. As reported in the Wisconsin State Journal, Bauer said that other slogans like "Forward" (which is the states official motto) might be more suitable to update perceptions of the state's economy beyond agriculture.

Word of this comment quickly spread on social media, and soon farmers and dairy organizations were voicing their concern over the thought. Considering dairys $43.4 billion impact on the states economy, many feel that Americas Dairyland still represents Wisconsin well. The Badger State ranks first in the nation in cheese production and second in milk production behind California. It is also home to more dairy farms than any other state.

The Wisconsin State Journal said that Bauer later clarified in an email that his organization would not lobby lawmakers for this change, and that it was merely meant to be a conversation starter.

This is not the first time removal of the iconic slogan has been discussed. A few decades ago, policymakers talked about the need for a new tagline, but after more than 111,000 ballots were cast, Americas Dairyland remained a focal point on the newly designed license plate.

To comment, email your remarks to intel@hoards.com.

(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2017

October 23, 2017
From a young age, I knew I wanted to study agriculture in college. During my youth, my involvement in dairy judging, showing cows, FFA, among other activities in the dairy industry, lead to my decision to choose a college with a dairy science major. As many universities have animal science majors, I wanted to find a school that I could concentrate the majority of my classes in dairy. I love being a dairy science major because I get to focus on the industry that I am interested in pursuing a career in. But I am glad I choose an agriculture major even more for these reasons:

Labs. A huge portion of agriculture science based classes feature labs. A 2-3-hour period of each week where topics from the lecture are brought to life. This also means I get to spend time on the on-campus dairy learning hands-on activities about herd health, nutrition, and management practices.



Students I can relate to. Many of my classmates in my agriculture classes were involved in the same activities I was in high school like FFA or the Holstein Association. Growing up on a farm or ranch is another common trait of some of my peers. These classmates understand where I came from and can relate to my life.



Agriculture classes. As I am a dairy science major, I take primarily classes relating to the dairy industry. But, to fill my course requirements for graduation, I can pick from a list of approved electives. Many of these electives are classes within other agriculture majors like agribusiness, agricultural communication, crop science, agricultural engineering, and more. I get the chance to learn about other industries within agriculture that have expanded my view of industries other than dairy. I am more knowledgeable about areas of interest that students of other majors in my college focus on.

I am glad I chose to be an agriculture major as I feel at home with my peers, all while learning about an industry I care about each day.

Elise Regusci grew up on her family's farm in Modesto, Calif. Regusci attends Cal Poly University, majoring in dairy science with an agricultural communication minor. On campus, she is the Los Lecheros Dairy Club Ag Council representative and a member of the Cal Poly dairy judging team. Regusci is the current Brown Swiss Youth Ambassador and is the 2017 Hoard's Dairyman summer editorial intern.





The webinar Troubleshooting mastitis and milk quality problems will be held on Monday, December 11, at noon (Central time) Have you ever wondered why some herds have few mastitis cases and others have many? In this webinar, Paul Virkler, Cornell Universitys College of Veterinary Medicine will outline some differences and explore how you can evaluate your dairy, looking for opportunities to prevent this costly disease. Register at www.hoards.com/webinars
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
New Delhi, Dec 3 (IBNS): Indian Navy's search and rescue operations continued for the third day over Southeast Arabian Sea and Lakshadweep and Minicoy islands in the aftermath of severe cyclonic storm 'Ockhi' on Sunday.

The ships deployed by the Southern Naval Command include IN Ships Sagardhwani, Jamuna, Nireekshak, Kabra and Kalpeni off the Kerala coast and Sharda , Shardul towards Lakshadweep islands.

Besides this three air craft viz, Dornier (Do) fixed wing aircraft, Seaking Helicopter (SK) and Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) were also deployed throughout the day.

A total of 84 personnel have been rescued over the last two days which includes 62 by aircrafts and 22 by ships. Additionally, transfer of two dead bodies was also effected through ALH to Thiruvananthapuram after being picked up by INS Sagardhwani.

Of the 62 people rescued by naval aircraft 8 personnel were transferred to Kochi in batches of four after being picked up 20 Nautical miles southwest and 80 nautical miles west of Kochi respectively.

Those evacuated to Kochi were given preliminary first aid at naval clinic at INS Garuda before being handed over to the civil administration. The rest of the rescued persons have been transferred to Thiruvananthapuram.

INS Shardul from Kochi is heading towards Minicoy islands with Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) bricks, which includes water, dry provisions, medical equipment, blankets, diving team, generators, salvage equipment, desalination and decontamination kits, diving team and has a Chetak helicopter embarked.

The relief material would sustain 2000 persons for over a period of seven days. INS Sharda is heading towards Kavaratti islands with HADR material sufficient to last for more than seven days for 500 people. The ship while proceeding to the islands, saved nine lives from a capsized boat in distress enroute.

Naval ships fom Mumbai, INS Chennai, Kolkata and Trikand have also sailed out from Mumbai for Lakshadweep and Minicoy (LAM) islands with HADR material sufficient for approximately 5000 persons and would last for more than seven days.

Androth and Kavaratti are reported to be experiencing strong winds of 40-60 knots coupled high swells of 3-4 metres with a sea state of 5-6. All the ships are expected to reach LAM by Monday morning.

In addition to the aircraft from Kochi, the P8I aircraft from Arakkonam with greater reach is being used to maintaining a close vigil continuously over the sailing ships and provide inputs if any.

The areas close to coast would continuously monitored using DO aircraft from Kochi.




Islamabad, Dec 4 (IBNS): At a time when US Defence Secretary James Mattis is visiting Pakistan, country's CIA Director Mike Pompeo has warned the south Asian nation to eliminate alleged safe havens present within its territory, according to a Pakistan media report.

He said US will will do everything we can to destroy them in case actions are not taken against them.

" CIA Director Mike Pompeo has warned Pakistan that if it does not eliminate the alleged safe havens inside its territory, the United States will do 'everything we can' to destroy them," Dawn News reported.

According to The Express Tribune in Pakistan, the warning came when he was asked at the Reagan National Defence Forum in Simi, California, on November 2, how the Trump administration would persuade Islamabad to adhere to its new Afghan strategy.

You begin by seeking their assistance, Pompeo said, the media reported. Pompeo said safe havens inside Pakistan have been detrimental in allowing the US to do what we needed to do in Afghanistan, the paper reported.

Though Pakistan denied offering safe havens to terrorists groups, the US has blamed it for supporting the Haqqani network - a dangerous insurgent groups in Afghanistan- and the Talibans.

USA earlier warned to hold up $255 million in military assistance for Pakistan until it acts against the groups threatening Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Mattis is currently visiting Pakistan. He met Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi .

Matters of mutual interest, including the US policy in South Asia and Afghan peace efforts, are being discussed in the meeting, sources told Geo News.

Before arriving in Pakistan, Mattis was quoted as saying to Geo News that he intends to work hard on finding the common ground and work together with Pakistan.



Image: US Defense Website / Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons
Babak Zanjani, Zarrabs boss, has been sentenced to death in Iran because he cannot explain a multi-billion dollar discrepancy in accounts with regards to trade made for the former Mahmoud Ahmadinejad administration.

There are questions about Turkeys move towards Iran and Russia, but the biggest issue right now for the United States is Iran.

The Trump administration is undergoing a very challenging time. The U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced his resignation during the Mediterranean Dialogues Forum at the end of last week, surprising many, but coming as no surprise to many others.

There have been rumours that the head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, will replace Tillerson and Senator Tom Cotton would replace Pompeo.

One of the major points of contention in the Trump administration is the subject of Iran. It caused a rift between many members. Some believe that Trump has been too hard or is overpromising, whereas others agree that Trump needs to continue with the tough rhetoric.

Cotton and Pompeo have both talked about regime change in Iran and it is something that many believe should happen in Iran.

This would not be the first time that the United States would intervene to bring regime change to Iran. In 1953, the United States and the United Kingdom, helped overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.

Leaders in Europe are slightly more hesitant to say too much about Iran. At the Mediterranean Dialogues Forum, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that the EU wants to ensure that the Iran nuclear deal remains intact and said that the main priority is its implementation.

At the same forum in Rome, the chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Peoples Congress of the U.N. Security Councils permanent member China Ying Fu said that the nuclear deal is effective and must be linked to the North Korean threat.

Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister for Russia, however, said that Iran is complying with the nuclear deal and that the United States decides otherwise, then it is the United States that will be in violation of the deal. He also warned that North Korea would see the US as a very unreliable and untrustworthy player if it were to pull out.

Irans support from the EU, China and Russia just highlights how much of a threat it really is. It is fuelling chaos across the Middle East with the intention of becoming a regional power. It is fuelling civil wars that are causing nothing but devastation and destruction and it is neglecting its own people in favour of terrorism.
US policy towards Iran has taken a drastic turn. When former president Barack Obama was in office, Iran was free to act how it pleased and it was safe in the knowledge that the US administration would not say anything.

Obama was so keen to leave the Iran nuclear deal as his legacy that he granted Iran concession after concession and led a policy of appeasement.

Even before being elected, Trump spoke about Obamas failed policy and said that he would approach the situation differently if took office. He did get elected and he did change the direction of foreign policy. He has warned Iran about its behaviour on many occasions and is following through on the threats he makes.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration sent a warning to Qassem Soleimani  the commander of the countrys Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It also reaffirmed that it was going to take action to curb Irans use of proxy groups across the whole region.

Mike Pompeo, the director of the CIA, said that he wrote to Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force  the IRGCs foreign operations arm. He said that this action was prompted by Soleimanis indication that forces he controls could go after US interests in Iraq.

Pompeo said that the letter was a warning to Soleimani that the United States would hold him and his country accountable for any attacks on American interests in Iraq by forces that are under their control. He added: We wanted to make sure he and the leadership in Iran understood that in a way that was crystal clear.

The Iranian media reported that a senior official of the Iranian regime said that Soleimani refused to take the letter because he has nothing to say to the US administration.

National security adviser HR McMaster said that Iran is fuelling and accelerating the violence that already exists across the Middle East and explained that it is doing so because it wants to take advantage of chaos and weak states to make them dependent on Iran for support.

Speaking about the failed policy of appeasement and the badly-negotiated nuclear deal, McMaster said: In recent years, what we can say in retrospect, it was unrealistically hopeful [US] strategy that, given the nuclear deal  that this president called worst deal ever  that this deal will result in an Iran that would integrate effectively in region. The exact opposite happened. The fact that we were trying to accommodate Iran has empowered Iran across the globe, and when president says he inherited a mess that is in greater Middle East, we have to address growing Iranian capability, and their use of militias, proxies and terrorist organisation.
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The United States and South Korean air forces are holding one of their largest ever joint exercises.

The five days of exercises are named Vigilant ACE. South Korean troops are training with more than 230 airplanes and 12,000 members of the U.S. armed forces.

The planes include a number of U.S. stealth warplanes. The high-technology aircraft are designed to avoid discovery by radar.

The exercises began less than one week after North Korea tested its most advanced long-distance missile. The North Korean government said it launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, last Tuesday. The Hwasong-15 rocket traveled farther than any of the countrys earlier rockets.

New missile approaches red line?

The new rocket was said to be able to reach anywhere in the United States.

However, experts are wondering whether the missile is ready to carry a nuclear weapon. Some say the North needs months or years before it can develop a missile equipped to carry a warhead to a target without burning up.

South Korea has yet to confirm that the Hwasong-15 missile successfully reentered the atmosphere.

South Koreas Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun told reporters Monday that, We are making efforts to resolve the Norths nuclear issue peacefully with the international community. But he added, The government does not accept the Norths unilateral claim to completing its nuclear program.

In July, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said that North Koreas possession of a fully operational ICBM would represent a red line for possible military action.

U.S. officials have warned that they will not let North Korea threaten the South with a nuclear missile.

The North Korean government denounced the military exercises this week. The country has long said that such activities are preparations for an attack. North Koreas state-operated Korean Central News Agency warned that the United States was driving the Korean peninsula to the brink of war.

This weekend, U.S. officials voiced concerns about the intensity of tensions.

H.R. McMaster serves as National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump. McMaster said on Saturday that the chance of war with North Korea is increasing with every day.

Also, Senator Linsey Graham of South Carolina called on the U.S. Defense Department to remove the families of armed forces members from South Korea. Graham is a member of Trumps Republican Party.

The president has threatened to act against North Korea if it attacks the United States or its allies.

In November, the U.S. government again placed North Korea on its state sponsors of terrorism list. That move permits adding to already highly restrictive trade sanctions against the North.

Ralph Cossa is president of Pacific Forum CSIS, a private, foreign policy research center. He said that military action, with its deadly results for South Korea, is only one idea for answering the Norths tests.

Red line responses dont have to be military but they should be significant and painful politically and economically, if not militarily, said Cossa. He added, They are also most effective if spelled out in advance and then acted upon.

However, the Defense Department has said the Norths tests are not yet a threat to the United States' mainland. The government has set up missile defense systems in South Korea and Guam, as well as the states of Alaska and California, in an effort to protect the U.S. and its allies.

After launch, future of talks unclear

North Koreas neighbors, China and Russia, have supported a plan called dual suspension. Under the proposal, the United States and South Korea would halt military exercises in exchange for North Korea stopping its weapons programs.

Chinas Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the two months in which North Korea did not test a missile had not been effectively used for diplomacy. He said that the parties involved in tensions on the Korean peninsula had not grasped the window of opportunity.

Ralph Cossa of the Honolulu-based Pacific Forum CSIS said that additional restrictions are likely.

The U.S. seems to be warning that it will seek ship inspections and more intrusive maritime measures, but it is unclear Beijing and Moscow will go along, he said.

Other observers say another possibility is that North Koreas declaration of having completed its nuclear program may signal a change. They say the North Korean leadership may want to improve the countrys economy instead of continued weapons testing.

The United Nations has said that one of its officials will visit North Korea for the first time since 2011.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman is expected to visit the Norths capital, Pyongyang this week.

Feltman is expected to meet with North Koreas Foreign Minister and Vice-foreign Minister.

A UN spokesman talks will include wide-ranging policy discussions.

Im Mario Ritter.

Daniel Schearf reported this story for VOA News. Mario Ritter adapted his report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

vigilance  n. the state of being watchful

advanced  adj. modern, highly developed

unilateral  adj. involving only one side or group

brink  n. the edge

sponsors  n. those who support a person, group or activity

sanctions  n. actions, usually to limit trade, that are meant to cause a country to obey international rules

grasp  v. to take hold of

maritime  adj. of or related to the sea

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Japanese officials are trying to decide what to do with thousands of tons of radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

More than six years have passed since a powerful earthquake and tsunami severely damaged the power plant.

Some parts of cleanup efforts have gone well. People can now work in the area although they take special measures to avoid overexposure to radioactive substances.

The water remains a big problem however. Currently, the water is being stored in 900 large tanks near the nuclear center.

Conflicting opinions between two groups have kept Japanese officials from doing anything about the water.

Radiation experts advise the government to slowly release the water into the Pacific Ocean. They note that special treatment has removed the radioactivity from the water except for tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. The experts say tritium is safe in small amounts.

But local fisherman oppose the release of the water into the sea. They say people will not buy fish from waters near Fukushima if the water is released.

The fisherman lost their livelihoods for a long time after the disaster. Local fisheries are slowly recovering.

Fumio Haga fishes about 50 kilometers from the power plant. He said, People would shun Fukushima fish again as soon the water is released.

Fukushima disaster affected land and sea

The disaster was both deadly and had long-lasting environmental and economic effects.

An extremely powerful magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011. The quake caused deadly tsunami waves on the countrys northeastern coast. More than 18,000 people were killed.

The earthquake and waves caused the electricity to go out in many places including Fukushima. As a result, the cooling system failed in three of the six nuclear reactors which caused the nuclear fuel to overheat and partly melt structures in the power plant.

Radiation entered the air and contaminated water flowed into the sea.

That event hurt the livelihoods of people throughout the area. Although there are about 1,000 fishermen in the area today, only half still fish and they go out only two times a week because demand is low.

To be sold, the fish have to meet, what might be, the worlds most demanding requirements. Laboratory workers at Onahama test the fishermens catch, recording who caught the fish and where. And fish from the area is sold with official safe stickers.

Fifteen months after the disaster in 2012, only three kinds of fish could pass the safety inspection. Now the number has increased to over 100.

Yoshiharu Nemoto is a researcher at the Onahama test station. He said the fish may contain less than half of the radioactive cesium level permitted under Japans national standard and one-twelfth of the U.S. or European Union limit.

But consumers have not heard that message.

Over the years, fewer Japanese consumers avoid fish products from waters near Fukushima. But a study by Japans Consumer Agency in October found that 20 percent still do. The study found that consumers were more likely to pay attention to information about possible bad health results than to facts about radiation and safety standards.

Naoya Sekiya is an expert on social research and social psychology. He said the water from the nuclear power center should not be released until the public is well-informed about the facts.

A release only based on scientific safety, without addressing the publics concerns, cannot be tolerated in a democratic society, he said. He said a release when the public is not prepared would only make things worse.

Kikuko Tatsumi is a representative of a consumer group and serves on a government expert panel with Sekiya. The group has been trying to decide what to do with the water for longer than one year.

Tatsumi said the delay in making a decision may be increasing concerns among the public. Many people believe the water is stored because it is dangerous and they think Fukushima fish are not available because they are not safe to eat.

Water from the center is a continuing problem

The Associated Press reports the amount of radioactive water at Fukushima is growing by 150 tons a day. This is because new water is used to cool the damaged reactors and ground water also enters the reactor area through cracks.

The water is a costly problem for the utility company Tokyo Electric Power Co, or TEPCO which owns Fukushima. Last year, another group of government experts recommended that TEPCO should dilute the water by about 50 times and release it into the sea over time. The process could take 10 years to complete.

The new chairman at TEPCO, Takashi Kawamura, caused a strong reaction in the fishing community in April. He had expressed support for releasing the water.

But after strong opposition, the company withdrew the idea and said it had no plans for an immediate release and can continue storing water until 2020.

So, the problem continues, and the amount of radioactive water at Fukushima is growing.

Im Mario Ritter.

Mari Yamaguchi reported this story for AP. Mario Ritter adapted it with additional materials for VOA Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

_______________________________________________________________

Quiz

Now, test your understanding by taking this short quiz.

Quiz - What to Do with Radioactive Water from Fukushima Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

nuclear reactor n. a complex device that uses radioactive fuel to create heat and electricity

contaminated adj. having something added that should not have been added

stickers n. small signs that can be stuck onto products with adhesive

tolerated adj. to stand, to permit without showing approval

panel n. a group of people who answer questions, give advice or opinions about a subject

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Chinese police are developing a computer-based policing program that can study large amounts of citizens' personal information. The program examines the information to discover patterns in human behavior.

Human Rights Watch says the police plan to use this information to closely watch rights activists, political opponents and ethnic minority groups.

The rights group called on the Chinese Communist Party to stop this "abusive" system, called the Police Cloud.

Sophie Richardson is following developments in China for the group. In a statement, she said, "It is frightening that Chinese authorities are collecting and centralizing ever more information" about hundreds of millions of citizens.

Richardson said the system will target people who deviate from what officials see as "normal thought." She added that the issue is not just one of peoples privacy, but many of the rights they have.

Last week, Human Rights Watch reported that China is looking at new technologies to study large amounts and different kinds of data. This includes written information, such as text messages, video and pictures.

The report said the Police Cloud tracks things like a persons medical history, supermarket purchases and products shipped to homes. It links this information to each person's national identification card number.

"This allows the Police Cloud system to track where the individuals have been, who they are with, and what they have been doing, as well as make predictions about their future activities," the report said.

It said a major concern is that these systems are created, in part, to watch groups officials consider threatening, which "raises serious concerns about social and racial profiling."



No legal protection

The Police Cloud has the ability to watch people involved in crime, such as terrorism or drugs, and people with mental health issues who cause "disturbances," the group said.

The report says local police can decide anyone is a threat and must be watched, especially if they are listed as a threat to "stability." By law, the government can do this without informing people that they are listed in this way.

Human Rights Watch found that the Police Cloud targets people who use the petitioning system to criticize the government. Ethnic minority Uyghurs from Xinjiang are also targeted, the group said.

The report said Police Cloud systems are now in full operation in some areas, including Tianjin Municipality and Jiangsu province.

The data can include the name of the street and city where a person lives, family relations, birth control methods and religious ties. Also being added are travel records, closed circuit television videos and information from government agencies and even private companies.

The system helps the Chinese police to study individuals who travel, who live, (and) who work together, the report said.

Nationwide in five years

Political activist Wu Shimin is based in Jiangsu. He said the system seems to be already in use in some parts of China, and will likely be fully operating in about five years.

Wu said that to prevent the Police Cloud from watching you, you would need to change your telephone number. And, you would probably need to use someone else's identification card to buy a train ticket and live somewhere other than your home.

But, he said, you would also have to be sure that whoever you stay with  friends or family  has no history of petitioning the government.

Zhang Enguang is a rights activist in Shandong, China. He said he is probably a target of the Police Cloud. But, he said, rights groups and some citizens will likely oppose the new system.

But even if you do protest, he warned, the police will still collect information in the same way. Then, they will use it in any way they can to frame you, and then they can detain you, he said.

Currently, Chinas privacy laws don't meet the goals of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. China signed the covenant, but has yet to have it approved by lawmakers.

The agreement states that collecting and using people's personal information for policing purposes must be based on a real threat to national security or public order. And, it should use the least invasive measures to deal with the threat.

I'm Alice Bryant. And I'm Anna Matteo.





Hai Nan and Lin Ping reported this story for Radio Free Asia. Alice Bryant adapted their report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

pattern  n. the regular and repeated way in which something happens or is done

deviate  v. to do something that is different from what is expected

data  n. information used usually to plan or predict something

track  v. to watch or follow the progress of something

profile  v. to use race, ethnicity or some other quality as grounds for suspecting someone of committing an offense

disturbance  n. the disruption of a settled or peaceful condition

petition  v. to ask a person, group, or organization for something in a formal way

stability  n. the strength to survive; the quality of something that is not easily moved


One week after the Nov. 26 Honduran presidential election, there is still no winner.

With 99.96 percent of the votes counted, President Juan Orlando Hernandez holds a small lead. But his opponent, Salvador Nasralla, has accused the government of stealing the election and called for street protests.

Hernandez had 42.98 percent of the vote and Nasralla received 41.39 percent, after a partial recount of more than 1,000 voting locations.

Nasralla and his supporters have boycotted the results. They said the recount did not go far enough. They said it only reviewed about 1,000 polling stations instead of the more than 5,000 they had demanded.

David Matamoros is a member of Hernandezs party and head of the countrys electoral tribunal. He refused to declare a winner. He told reporters that parties can still file legal challenges, and a wider recount is possible.

The Organization of American States said on Sunday that Nasrallas demands to recount more than 5,000 polling stations were possible. It urged the tribunal to make further checks.

Nasralla had an early lead

Early last week, Nasralla, a former television presenter, appeared set to win the election over the current president. He had a five-point lead with more than half of the ballots counted.

Then, the vote counting was suddenly stopped. When it restarted more than a day later, the vote count began to favor Hernandez.

The government ordered a curfew last Friday. It also expanded the armys power to detain people and break up barriers of roads, bridges and public buildings.

Nasralla asked the armed forces not to enforce the curfew. He urged his supporters to start a national strike on Monday.

I call on all members of the armed forces to rebel against your bosses, Nasralla told a crowd of supporters Sunday at a large rally in the capital city of Tegucigalpa.

Television images showed similar protests in other major cities. While there were no reports of violence on Sunday, hundreds have been arrested and at least three people have been killed in recent days.

Also on Sunday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused the United States of backing vote fraud in Honduras.

But officials at the U.S. embassy praised the peaceful protests and the orderly final count that was underway.

Honduras has struggled with violent drug gangs, high murder rate and poverty. After taking office in 2014, Hernandez began a military-led crackdown on gang violence. He has been supported by U.S. President Donald Trumps chief of staff, John Kelly.

Nasralla is a well-known television star. Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya is among his supporters. Zelaya was removed from office in a coup in 2009.

I'm Jonathan Evans.

Hai Do adapted this story for Learning English based on Reuters and other news reports. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

partial - adj. not complete

tribunal - n. a court that has authority in a specific area

challenge - n. a refusal to accept something as legal
Houthi rebels in Yemen say former president Ali Abdullah Saleh has been killed.

The death was announced Monday by a Houthi-run television station. An official with Yemens internationally recognized government confirmed to the Associated Press that Saleh had been killed.

A video published on social media appeared to show Salehs body being carried away by a group of armed men. The bloodied body wrapped in a blanket had severe head injuries.

A top Houthi media official told the AP the ex-president was killed near Marib, an eastern province bordering Saudi Arabia. The official said Saleh was trying to flee to Saudi.

Saleh ruled the country for 33 years and played a major role in Yemens ongoing civil war. He was ousted in 2012 under popular and political pressure.

The Saudi government leads a coalition that has been fighting Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen during a nearly three-year-old war. The campaign is aimed at returning to power the countrys internationally recognized president, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi. His government was driven out of Yemens capital Sana'a in 2014 by Houthi-led forces.

The leader of the countrys Houthi rebels, Abdul-Malek al-Houthi, said in a speech Monday that his forces had killed Saleh for treason. He said Saleh had turned on the Houthis by communicating with and supporting the Saudi-led coalition.

The Houthi leader said he had sent several warnings to Saleh not to cooperate with the coalition. He called Salehs killing a historic defeat to the forces of the coalition.

A breakdown in the rebel alliance last week led to heavy fighting in Sanaa between Houthi rebels and forces loyal to Saleh. Houthi fighters took control of much of the capital, but the coalition stepped up its attacks on rebel positions.

Hours after Salehs killing, Hadi urged Yemenis from exile in Riyadh to unify against the Houthi rebels. He described the militants as Iranian militias.

He offered condolences for the death of Saleh, describing him and others killed in recent days of fighting as martyrs.

Let's put our hands together to end this nightmare,'' Hadi said.

He added that government forces would support any uprising against Houthi fighters in Sana'a.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from VOA News, the Associated Press and Reuters. Hai Do 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

condolence  n. feeling or expression of sympathy and sadness especially when someone is suffering because of the death of a family member, a friend, etc.

martyr  n. person who is killed or suffers greatly for a cause

nightmare  n. very bad or frightening experience or situation
Banco Santander-Chile, together with its subsidiaries, provides commercial and retail banking products and services in Chile. It operates through Retail Banking, Middle-Market, Corporate Investment Banking, and Corporate Activities segments. The company offers debit and credit cards, checking accounts, and savings products; consumer, automobile, commercial, mortgage, and government-guaranteed loans; and Chilean peso and foreign currency denominated loans to finance various commercial transactions, trade, foreign currency forward contracts, and credit lines, as well as mortgage financing services. It also provides mutual funds, insurance and securities brokerage, foreign exchange, financial leasing, factoring, financial consulting and advisory, investment management, foreign trade, treasury, and transactional services, as well as specialized services to finance projects for the real estate industry. In addition, the company offers short-term financing and fund raising, and brokerage services, as well as derivatives, securitization, and other tailor-made products. It serves individuals, small to middle-sized entities, companies, and large corporations, as well as universities, government entities, and local and regional governments. As of December 31, 2021, the company operated 326 branches, which include 220 under the Santander brand name, 14 under the Select brand name, 7 specialized branches for the middle market, and 22 as auxiliary and payment centers, as well as 1,338 ATMs, including depository ATMs. Banco Santander-Chile was incorporated in 1977 and is headquartered in Santiago, Chile.
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Energizer Holdings, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, manufactures, markets, and distributes household batteries, specialty batteries, and lighting products worldwide. It offers lithium, alkaline, carbon zinc, nickel metal hydride, zinc air, and silver oxide batteries under the Energizer and Eveready brands, as well as primary, rechargeable, specialty, and hearing aid batteries. The company also provides headlights, lanterns, and children's and area lights, as well as flash lights under the Energizer, Eveready, Rayovac, Hard Case, Dolphin, Varta, and WeatherReady brands. In addition, it licenses the Energizer and Eveready brands to companies developing consumer solutions in gaming, automotive batteries, portable power for critical devices, LED light bulbs, generators, power tools, household light bulbs, and other lighting products. Further, the company designs and markets automotive fragrance and appearance products, including protectants, wipes, tire and wheel care products, glass cleaners, leather care products, air fresheners, and washes to clean, shine, refresh, and protect interior and exterior automobile surfaces under the brand names of Armor All, Nu Finish, Refresh Your Car!, LEXOL, Eagle One, California Scents, Driven, and Bahama & Co; STP branded fuel and oil additives, functional fluids, and other performance chemical products; and do-it-yourself automotive air conditioning recharge products under the A/C PRO brand name, as well as other refrigerant and recharge kits, sealants, and accessories. It sells its products through direct sales force, distributors, and wholesalers; and through various retail and business-to-business channels, including mass merchandisers, club, electronics, food, home improvement, dollar store, auto, drug, hardware, e-commerce, convenience, sporting goods, hobby/craft, office, industrial, medical, and catalog. Energizer Holdings, Inc. was incorporated in 2015 and is headquartered in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Prosperity Bancshares, Inc. operates as bank holding company for the Prosperity Bank that provides financial products and services to businesses and consumers. It accepts various deposit products, such as demand, savings, money market, and time accounts, as well as and certificates of deposit. The company also offers 1-4 family residential mortgage, commercial real estate and multifamily residential, commercial and industrial, agricultural, and non-real estate agricultural loans, as well as construction, land development, and other land loans; consumer loans, including automobile, recreational vehicle, boat, home improvement, personal, and deposit account collateralized loans; and consumer durables and home equity loans, as well as loans for working capital, business expansion, and purchase of equipment and machinery. In addition, it provides internet banking, mobile banking, trust and wealth management, retail brokerage, mortgage services, and treasury management, as well as debit and credit cards. As of December 31, 2021, the company operated 273 full-service banking locations comprising 65 in the Houston area, including The Woodlands; 30 in the South Texas area including Corpus Christi and Victoria; 63 in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas area; 22 in the East Texas area; 29 in the Central Texas area, including Austin and San Antonio; 34 in the West Texas area, including Lubbock, Midland-Odessa and Abilene; 16 in the Bryan/College Station area; 6 in the Central Oklahoma area; and 8 in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area doing business as LegacyTexas Bank. Prosperity Bancshares, Inc. was founded in 1983 and is based in Houston, Texas.
United Parcel Service, Inc. provides letter and package delivery, transportation, logistics, and related services. It operates through two segments, U.S. Domestic Package and International Package. The U.S. Domestic Package segment offers time-definite delivery of letters, documents, small packages, and palletized freight through air and ground services in the United States. The International Package segment provides guaranteed day and time-definite international shipping services in Europe, the Asia Pacific, Canada and Latin America, the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East, and Africa. This segment offers guaranteed time-definite express options. The company also provides international air and ocean freight forwarding, customs brokerage, distribution and post-sales, and mail and consulting services in approximately 200 countries and territories. In addition, it offers truckload brokerage services; supply chain solutions to the healthcare and life sciences industry; shipping, visibility, and billing technologies; and financial and insurance services. The company operates a fleet of approximately 121,000 package cars, vans, tractors, and motorcycles; and owns 59,000 containers that are used to transport cargo in its aircraft. United Parcel Service, Inc. was founded in 1907 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
A former Croatian general who died after swallowing a liquid at a war crimes hearing in the Netherlands had cyanide in his system, Dutch prosecutors said after an autopsy was performed Friday.

Preliminary results from a toxicological test revealed a concentration of potassium cyanide in Slobodan Praljaks blood, the Hague Public Prosecutors Office said in a statement.

The cyanide caused heart failure, which investigators pointed out as the 72-year-old Praljaks suspected cause of death, according to the prosecutors statement.

On Wednesday, Praljak drank from a small bottle that he said contained poison seconds after an appeals judge at the U.N.s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia confirmed his 20-year sentence for crimes during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital a little while later.

Meanwhile, the United Nations tribunal ordered an independent review of its internal operations following the dramatic event in its courtroom. The tribunal said its review was meant to complement the ongoing investigation of Praljaks death by Dutch prosecutors.

The announcement came after Croatias justice minister raised doubts about whether security and medical staff at the tribunal responded quickly enough when Praljak raised the bottle to his lips with a trembling right hand and consumed its contents.

Before the toxicological test results came back, Dutch prosecutors had confirmed the bottle carried a toxic chemical. It remains unclear how Praljak, who was in custody before the hearing, obtained the substance and managed to smuggle it into the courtroom.

Cyanide is a fast-acting chemical that can be deadly in different forms. Cyanide gas is considered the most harmful, but swallowing cyanide can also be lethal.

Potassium cyanide, found in Praljaks blood, is a white powder that can have a bitter, almond- like odor. Cyanide kills by preventing the cells of the body from using oxygen, and is particularly harmful to the heart and brain, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The tribunals review will begin next week and be led by Hassan Jallow, a former prosecutor with the U.N.s Rwanda war crimes tribunal. It aims to file a report by Dec. 31, when the tribunal formally closes its doors, having completed all its cases.

The court says Jallow is mandated to undertake an assessment of relevant existing procedures as well as make any recommendations which may assist other courts in the future.

Tribunal spokesman Nenad Golcevski said it is not the first time such a probe has been ordered by the court.

Similar internal reviews have been initiated, for example, after the death of Slobodan Milosevic, Golcevski said, referring to the former Yugoslav president who died in his tribunal cell in 2006 before judges could deliver verdicts in his trial.

Two Croatian experts observed the autopsy on Praljaks body at the tribunals request.

Late Thursday, Croatian Justice Minister Drazen Bosnjakovic said the country would ask Dutch authorities to be included in the ongoing investigation into Praljaks death.

Bosnjakovic told Croatias state TV that much remains unclear, including how the poison was taken in, why security didnt react in time and why medical help arrived so late. He added that Croatia wants all facts cleared about this tragic event.

Praljaks defense lawyer, Nika Pinter, told Croatias Nova TV she did not know how Praljak managed to get the bottle past security.

But that was his decision, his decision, Pinter said. He would not want to live for one day with handcuffs on his hands, and [the] stigma of war criminal on his back.Mike Corder, The Hague, AP
A former Hong Kong government official was denied bail on Friday in a U.S. case accusing of him using bribes to secure business deals.

Dr. Chi Ping Patrick Ho was jailed last week after being charged with paying bribes on behalf of a Chinese energy conglomerate to the president of Chad and the Ugandan foreign minister.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman rejected a bid by lawyers for the 68-year-old Ho to have him released on USD1 million bond and put under home detention with electronic monitoring at a rented Manhattan apartment, saying she agreed with prosecutors argument that he was a flight risk.

Hos attorney said he would appeal the bail decision.

Ho, 68, of Hong Kong, and Cheikh Gadio, 61, of Senegal, were charged in Manhattan federal court with violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, international money laundering and conspiracy.

Prosecutors allege that Ho hatched the scheme at the United Nations when the Ugandan foreign minister was president of the U.N. General Assembly. Beginning in October 2014, the pair arranged bribes to secure business advantages for a Shanghai-headquartered multibillion-dollar conglomerate that operates internationally in the energy and financial sectors, court papers say.

Arguing against bail on Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Richenthal told the judge that Ho is worth up to $8 million, has no ties to the United States and is facing more than 10 years in prison if convicted.

His incentive to flee is massive, Richenthal said. His ability to flee is massive.

He also argued that the officials Ho allegedly bribed would have incentive to help him get out of the United States and into countries without extradition treaties, he said.

There are a lot of people who would rather not see what the defendant did aired in open court, he said.

Defense attorney Edward Kim described his client as a respected U.S.- trained eye doctor and former cabinet-level official in Hong Kong, where he served as home affairs secretary. To flee would be a disgrace, Kim said. It would destroy everything he worked for. It would destroy his reputation. AP
Israeli police yesterday questioned a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges dating to his pre-parliament days as he was pushing for pro-Netanyahu legislation widely seen as stifling police investigations.

Coalition whip David Bitan was grilled in relation to accusations that he promoted the interests of criminals in return for debt relief while he was a municipal politician years ago.

Bitan is the driving force behind a legislation push seen as aiding the beleaguered Netanyahu, who faces multiple corruption accusations. Bitans so-called recommendations bill would end the polices current practice of recommending to the state prosecution office whether to indict suspects upon completing their investigations.

It also aims to stem leaks from the investigations themselves, stating that no police recommendations be made public and penalizing those found leaking to the media.

Netanyahus Likud party was set to bring the bill for a parliamentary vote today, but appears to be short on numbers and will likely delay it. Their hope is to move the bill forward quickly so that it will also apply to investigations currently taking place regarding Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has been questioned in two cases and police say they suspect him of being involved in bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Police have already grilled him six times regarding gifts he received from Hollywood and business figures, and in another probe about secret talks with the publisher of a major Israeli newspaper in which Netanyahu allegedly requested positive coverage in exchange for reining in a free pro-Netanyahu daily. One of his closest former aides has become a states witness against him.

Netanyahu has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and calls the accusations a witch hunt orchestrated by a hostile media.

Another investigation has engulfed his close associates and dominated news in Israel. The probe relates to a possible conflict of interest involving a USD2 billion purchase of German submarines.

Netanyahus personal attorney, who is also his cousin, represented the German firm involved and is suspected of trading his influence over the prime minister in return for a hefty cut of the deal. A former Cabinet minister and top former navy and security officials have been questioned by police. Netanyahu has yet to be named a suspect in that probe.

Bitans questioning comes a day after tens of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets of Tel Aviv Saturday night for an anti-corruption rally calling on Netanyahu to resign. It was one of the largest demonstrations yet against Netanyahus lengthy rule.

I think the time has come to change the government. The government is corrupt. Were sick of the corrupt, said protester Avi Elmozlinu.

Organizers are hoping that the grassroots movement picks up steam and becomes a regular Saturday night ritual that eventually forces Netanyahu from power. Aron Heller, Jerusalem, AP
Stroke and brain injury patients are being guided on the best choice of digital help thanks to students in the School of Health Professions at the University of Plymouth, in collaboration with a national network of healthcare professionals.

Alongside organisations including Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust (NDHT) and Livewell Southwest, students are clinically testing apps to see if they are suitable to be part of the mytherappy website  a database of clinically recommended health apps developed by the stroke and neuro rehab team at NDHT.

The mytherappy website is an app review website that helps patients, carers and clinicians find the best apps to help with rehabilitation and recovery following a neurological disorder, such as a stroke or brain injury.

Now the collaboration will see undergraduate and postgraduate students test new apps on a monthly basis. They are joining mytherappy's national network of app testers, which includes clinical specialists in stroke, neurology and head injuries, therapists, nurses, psychologists, patients and carers. Apps that have been tested by the network and meet mytherappy's robust set of testing criteria are featured on the mytherappy website, which anyone can access.

Occupational therapy and physiotherapy students were the first students to be trained in how to test apps, with Ruth Siewruk, advanced practitioner occupational therapist for neuro and stroke, and Louise Holmes, both from NDHT, attending to deliver the session.

Louise, who is also a student on the University's MSc Advanced Professional Practice Neurological Rehabilitation, said:

"There are a host of apps available to help patients through their rehabilitation after they've suffered a stroke or other brain injury  and our patients often ask us which ones are the most effective. So colleagues at the Trust set up mytherappy, where patients can see which apps are recommended by clinicians and other users. This is where the students come in  by using their theoretical and practical skills they can help analyse the apps' effectiveness for people at various stages of rehabilitation."

Amanda Denton, Lecturer in Neurological Rehabilitation, said:

"It's great that the University is collaborating on this project and we're pleased to be able to help and guide patients' choices. The training session was really helpful for our students and, as well as learning more about the technology available to help patients, they can also understand how the technology can help those delivering rehabilitation. The students are looking forward to testing apps over the course of the year."

The mytherappy website is having a global impact  with more than 20,000 users worldwide. Following a six-month audit of neuro patients at NDHT, 93 per cent of the patients who used apps said they would recommend mytherappy and app usage as part of their treatment. When comparing patients who used apps with those who didn't, the outcomes of those who used apps were improved by 10 per cent.

Ruth Siewruk, occupational therapist at NDHT and founder of mytherappy, said:

"I am delighted that students from the University of Plymouth have joined our testing network after training with us. We want to empower patients to manage their health in the way that is right for them, and the mytherappy website helps those who are recovering from a stroke or brain injury to do exactly that."
(HealthDay)U.S. consumers stand to benefit from CVS Health's planned purchase of insurance giant Aetna, executives from the two corporations say.

Other health care industry observers aren't so sure.

The $69 billion deal was announced Sunday.

Merging CVS, which has 10,000 retail clinics and pharmacies, with Aetna means more health services will likely move out of doctors' offices to store-based providers across the nation.

Pharmacies already provide vaccinations and blood pressure checks. Now, they could offer one-stop shopping for insurance and certain diagnostic services.

On-site lab work and diabetes counseling are two other possibilities, said Larry Merlo, CVS Health president and CEO.

Customers should also expect lower prices, Merlo said.

"We know we can make health care more affordable and less expensive," Merlo told The New York Times. "We think of it as creating a new front door to health care in America."

But others aren't convinced this is a win-win for the general public. Some fear that less competition will drive up drug prices. Others worry that consumers insured by Aetna might be restricted in where they can get health care or fill prescriptions.

Mark Bertolini, Aetna's CEO, said the companies would not raise prices for consumers.

"It doesn't make sense for us to charge people more when we want more people in the store," Bertolini told the Times. "CVS has the draw. People trust their pharmacist," he added.

But some critics predict the merger will run afoul of federal antitrust officials.

David Balto, an antitrust lawyer, told the Times that doctors may be in a better position to treat illness than retail executives.

"Who do you want to run the health care system?" he said.

Others, however, say there is no conflict since CVS and Aetna aren't in the same line of business.

The mammoth sale comes amid a rocky period in the U.S. health care landscape. Provisions of the Affordable Care Act remain in jeopardy, and potential tax cuts debated in Congress could affect out-of-pocket spending on insurance, drugs and medical care.

More information: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can help you prepare for a The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can help you prepare for a doctor's visit

Copyright  2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
The US Food and Drug Administration has given the green light to Roche for its FoundationOne CDx personalised diagnostic cancer test, the Swiss group said Monday.

Roche said the FDA had approved the test helping doctors understand the genetic profile of patients' tumors to enable better-targeted therapies and clinical tests.

"The approval of FoundationOne CDx represents a major advance in the personalisation of cancer care, facilitating access for patients in the US to a comprehensive pan-tumour companion diagnostic that will help identify approved treatment options based on the molecular footprint of each individual's cancer," said Roche's Chief Medical Officer Sandra Horning, also the firm's head of global product development.

"Our belief is that profiling will increasingly become routine in clinical practice, so we have worked closely with Foundation Medicine to develop an extensive clinically and analytically validated platform that can support both existing and future companion diagnostic needs," Horning said in a statement.

Pharmaceutical companies see development of personally tailored treatment as the way ahead to tackle cancer.

 2017 AFP
If the Community Health Center Fund is not restored, millions of patients served by community health centers may lose access to crucial health care and up to 161,000 jobs could be lost in communities across the nation. That's the conclusion of an analysis produced by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative at the George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH).

The analysis is the first to look at what might happen nationwide if Congress fails to renew the Community Health Center Fund, which expired September 30th. In 2016, these health centers served 26 million people at nearly 10,000 locations.

"The current delays in funding have already caused major problems for community health centers, which are the backbone of the nation's safety net for medically underserved communities," says Leighton Ku, PhD, professor of health policy and management at Milken Institute SPH and lead author of the report. "Further delays or loss of funding could be devastating, not only to community health centers and their patients, but to workers and businesses across the country."

The analysis addresses the state-level economic and employment consequences that would occur if the Community Health Center Fund is not renewed. Here are some findings of the report:

Community health centers' ability to provide care to underserved patients will be seriously compromised if the $3.6 billion cut in funding is not immediately restored. Nine million patients, a third of those currently served, may lose care.

As many as 76,000 to 161,000 jobs could be lost nationwide in 2018. About two-fifths of jobs lost would be in health care, but the majority would be workers in other sectors, such as retail, construction and other fields.

State economies would be shortchanged by $7.4 to $15.6 billion in 2018.

Because health centers are located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories, substantial losses would occur in all areas and could be especially severe in states that did not expand Medicaid. Community health centers are not-for-profit organizations that operate at low margins; without restored funding they would be forced to downsize staff, reduce their purchasing of goods and services, curtail services or even shut down clinical sites.

"Health centers are important anchors in their communities, and serve as economic engines," said Feygele Jacobs, DrPH, President and CEO of the RCHN Community Health Foundation. "Unless policymakers act now to restore the Community Health Center Fund, we are putting our communities at risk."

The harm to patients and communities could be especially serious in areas hard hit by the recent hurricanes, like Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Displaced community health center patients with no health insurance in those places-and in other parts of the country-will have fewer options for health care, the report warns.

The brief, "State Economic and Employment Losses If Community Health Center Funding Is Not Restored," can be accessed here.
Scientists have identified five genes that are associated with help-seeking behaviour in dogs. Credit: Pixabay/ Kat Jayne

The chemistry behind social behaviour in animals, including the bond between people and dogs  and the lack of one between humans and wolves  could help scientists identify new ways of treating social disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

'We think that the genetic foundation for social behaviour is very similar in dogs and humans. There is kind of a common genetic architecture or social behaviour that humans have tapped into and that has led to the most suitable dogs being chosen for domestication,' said Professor Per Jensen from Linkoping University in Sweden.

He coordinates the EU-funded GENEWELL project, which is looking at how stress responses are controlled in animals. In their research on dogs, his team has focused on oxytocin, a chemical also known as the love hormone, which is known to strengthen social bonds in both animals and humans.

'Oxytocin is an extremely strong mediator of the dog-human bond,' said Prof. Jensen. 'People have looked at the effects of oxytocin levels on both physical contact and eye contact and there's no doubt that oxytocin is a really important player in maintaining and establishing the cooperation and the contact between dog and owner.'

To investigate how the hormone works, researchers sprayed dogs' noses with either saltwater or oxytocin, and then monitored how they responded to different tasks.

Many dogs that received oxytocin quickly turned to their owners for help when the tasks became too difficult. But even though the oxytocin-sprayed dogs were often faster to ask for help than those who received just saltwater, the scientists noticed that the time taken to ask for help still varied considerably among the oxytocin-sprayed dogs. The hormone itself wasn't the only factor at play.

Receptor

Within the brain, oxytocin must attach to a receptor to begin working. Dogs can possess one of several different variants of oxytocin receptor, depending on their genes. What the researchers noticed was that some dogs, all with a particular kind of receptor, responded very strongly to the oxytocin spray. They turned to their owners for help a lot faster than dogs with other variants.

Other research groups have carried out similar tests on wolves. Unsurprisingly, the wolves almost never went to humans to ask for help to complete their task. But, after examining some samples of wolf DNA, the researchers found the same variants of oxytocin receptors as in dogs.

The results show that wolves can possess a type of oxytocin receptor that makes them more likely to engage with people. Although not the full story, that's probably part of the reason the first wolves became domesticated.

The researchers think that human-wolf friendships were more of a mutual cooperation than a human-driven endeavour  that more friendly wolves, possessing certain oxytocin receptors, were much more willing to approach people and so relationships developed.

Back in Sweden, the scientists' next move was to examine the dogs' genomes more closely. They isolated five different genes that were most strongly associated with the dogs' help-seeking behaviour.

Prof. Jensen says that, interestingly, four out of these five genes are also associated with autism, ADHD and schizophrenia. In the future, this may open the way for using dogs as model animals to study social impairments in humans.

Therapeutic

Giving oxytocin to people with such social disorders is already thought to have a therapeutic effect. A characteristic of autism is to not look others in the eye, and oxytocin increases the likelihood that a person (or a dog) will do this. Trials are currently underway where oxytocin is given to treat patients with autism and schizophrenia.

The EU-funded BIOSOCIOCOG project, however, suspects that the oxytocin system needs another chemical, dopamine, to work properly. Dopamine is known to be important in the reward system of the brain, and the researchers think that oxytocin and dopamine need to work together to encourage social and cooperative behaviour.

Studies have already shown that both hormones are needed for any selfless action to take place in the animal world  for example, vampire bats sharing blood with each other, mother voles showing affection to their infants and apes performing group grooming. The project is now investigating whether the same is true for humans.

'My theory was that for pro-social behaviour, you need both systems to interact. The oxytocin system depends on the dopamine system,' said Professor Diana Prata, from the Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Lisbon, Portugal, who is the lead researcher of the BIOSOCIOCOG project.

'There was some evidence in animal studies where they promote affiliative (relationship-building) behaviour with oxytocin, but then, when they (the researchers) blocked the dopamine system, that social behaviour was decreased. We are trying to also demonstrate that the two systems interact in humans.'

Prof. Prata's research is largely based on MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans. The researchers view what happens in the brain when people play the prisoner's dilemma game, where people are asked to choose either to cooperate with or betray a partner, without ever having met them. If they cooperate, they each receive a small and equal proportion of a reward. If one cooperates and the other does not, the one who does not will win all of the reward, while the one who did cooperate gets nothing.

The BIOSOCIOCOG team are specifically interested in which, and how much, brain areas are illuminated when participants experience a social reward or punishment. Oxytocin is then delivered to see if anything changes.

This research will indicate whether drugs for social disorders should take a combined approach using both oxytocin and dopamine, which could lead to the development of new, more effective treatments.
While young people with parasite worms currently have a four times higher risk for developing allergies and asthma than others. Their parents are generally unaffected.

Researchers at the University of Bergen (UiB) in Norway were surprised when they found that intestinal worms, so-called Helminths (Toxocara Canis) from animals, actually have an influence on allergy- and asthma risk in humans.

Their results showed that young people who test positive for this parasite, have a 4 times higher risk of developing asthma and allergies than others.

"Usually, we consider a 50% higher risk as being high, but here we see a 400% higher risk," says Professor Cecilie Svanes at Centre for International Health, UiB.

Key to allegy puzzle

According to Svanes, what is interesting in these results is that it seems to be only the young generation who has higher risk of getting asthma and allergies if they test positive on helminths, and not their parents.

"We do not know why the parasite only influences the young generation in a negative way and not their parents. If we can discover the reason for this, I think we will have solved the puzzle of why allergies have increased enormously over the past few decades," says Svanes.

Allergy explosion

Many studies show that the numbers of people with asthma and allergies have increased enormously over the past few decades. The reason for this is unknown.

"One of the most common hypotheses is that we have become more in contact with chemicals and less in contact with microbes and bacteria," Svanes explains.

"There are, however, many things that have changed during the last decades. Nobody knows why allergy and asthma levels have increased. The phenomena is happening all over the world. It probably relates to urbanisation among other things."

More information: Nils Oskar Jogi et al. Zoonotic helminth exposure and risk of allergic diseases: a study of two generations in Norway, Clinical & Experimental Allergy (2017). Journal information: Clinical & Experimental Allergy Nils Oskar Jogi et al. Zoonotic helminth exposure and risk of allergic diseases: a study of two generations in Norway,(2017). DOI: 10.1111/cea.13055
On the left: minimal development after transplant. Right: transplanted cells generated all cell types of the nasal tissue. Credit: Jim Schwob and Brian Lin in Cell Stem Cell

Researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine, led by Dr. James E. Schwob, are examining the behavior of adult stem cells within the context of aging and, specifically, the sense of smell. As part of the normal aging process, older adults frequently experience a decline in their olfactory function, resulting in a compromised or complete loss of sense of smell. The loss of sense of smellwhether as a result of aging, medication, illness or injuryaffects sense of taste; when the sense of smell is intact, it combines with the sense of taste to communicate the flavor of food. Smell loss in older adults reduces quality of life, compromises nutritional status, and puts the health and safety of the elderly at risk.

The focus of the research at Tufts is on enlarging the population of adult stem cells that maintain the sense of smell in young adults, but which deteriorate with aging. The ultimate goal is to identify a pharmaceutical preparation that has that effect.

In a study published in the December 7 issue of Cell Stem Cell, the researchers provide the first evidence that it is possible to regenerate stem cells of the nasal tissue in mice, thus enlarging the population of adult stem cells.

Stem cells are undifferentiated, or unspecialized; they are highly potent and able to generate many different types of cells. Embryonic stem cells can give rise to any cell type in the body, while adult or tissue stem cells have a more limited potency. Adult stem cells are responsible for maintaining the structure of the tissue in which they are found and repairing it after injury. There is evidence that adult stem cells may be able to regenerate in response to injury to tissue as part of a natural healing process.

The team took advantage of that natural healing process. Adult stem cells regenerated in mice with injured nasal tissue. When those adult stem cells were transplanted into other mice, they were able to regenerate all the different cell types in the nasal tissue, also called the olfactory epithelium. This expansion of the stem cell population improved when the researchers swabbed a pharmaceutical preparation into the nose; the drug combination pushed progenitor cells to remain upstream as adult stem cells.

Though the response involved the now-famous Yamanaka factors, the strategy developed by Schwob and his team is more efficient and less complicated than the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) Nobel Prize-winning approach developed by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka. Yamanaka's approach was designed to replace stem cells lost to aging by inducing cells taken from adult tissues to behave like embryonic stem cells, by forcing them to express four genes that are usually expressed in embryonic stem cells.

The research team from Tufts determined that only two of the four factors used by Yamanaka to artificially reprogram adult cells into iPSCs are critical to the process of pushing the olfactory cells to become more stem cell-like.

"We are the first researchers to gain insight into the molecular mechanism responsible for allowing these adult progenitor cells to become more potent. We were intrigued that the process shared such a core similarity with iPSC technology, which provides a potential explanation and natural origin for the mechanism that the scientific community has harnessed to great effect," said first author Brian Lin, a Ph.D. graduate of the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts and now a postdoctoral fellow at Mass General Hospital.

"The direct restoration of adult stem cells has implications for many types of tissue degeneration associated with aging, though we are several years away from designing actual therapies based on this work. The olfactory epithelium is a singularly powerful model for understanding how tissues regenerate or fail to do so," said senior author Jim Schwob, M.D./Ph.D., a professor of Developmental, Molecular & Chemical Biology at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.

"If we can restore the population of stem cells in the olfactory epithelium by regenerating them or by administering the right drug as a nasal spray, we may be able to prevent deterioration in the sense of smell," he continued.

More information: Brian Lin et al, Injury Induces Endogenous Reprogramming and Dedifferentiation of Neuronal Progenitors to Multipotency, Cell Stem Cell (2017). Journal information: Cell Stem Cell Brian Lin et al, Injury Induces Endogenous Reprogramming and Dedifferentiation of Neuronal Progenitors to Multipotency,(2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2017.09.008
(HealthDay)It's been used by many people to help ease sleep apnea, but new research suggests the CPAP mask may also help ease seizures in people with epilepsy.

CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) involves wearing an airflow mask over the nose or mouth each night, to help keep the back of the throat open for better breathing.

Many people with epilepsy often have sleep apnea, the researchers said. In fact, of the 197 patients enrolled in the new study, only 75 didn't have sleep apnea.

Poor sleep is also a known risk factor for increased seizure frequency, the research team added.

"Sleep apnea is common in people with epilepsy, but few physicians screen for it," explained lead investigator Dr. Thapanee Somboon, a research fellow at the Cleveland Clinic's Sleep Disorders Center.

"All patients with epilepsy should be checked for sleep disorders, including insomnia and sleep apnea, because there are effective treatments," Somboon said in a news release from the American Epilepsy Society.

His team was to present its findings Saturday at the society's annual meeting, in Washington, D.C.

Among the 122 patients who had both epilepsy and sleep apnea, 73 used the CPAP device each night, while 49 did not.

After about a year, more than 60 percent of the CPAP-treated patients saw a 50 percent or greater drop in seizures, compared with their pre-CPAP days. This compared with just a 14 percent drop for those not using CPAP, the investigators said.

Also, by a number of measures, the team found that 85 percent of those undergoing CPAP experienced a "successful" measure of seizure control, compared with just 55 percent of those who did not.

Two experts in epilepsy care who reviewed the findings said they make sense.

Dr. Fred Lado is Northwell Health's regional director of epilepsy care for Queens and Long Island, N.Y. He called the findings "striking" and said epilepsy specialists should certainly consider sleep apnea tests for their patients.

He added, however, that because this new research isn't the "gold standard" prospective, randomized trial, such a trial may be needed to first confirm these results. And findings presented at medical meetings are also typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Dr, Vahid Ghasian directs the Epilepsy Center at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City. He said health experts have long seen links between epilepsy and sleep apnea, and now "accepted practice is to manage both disorders at the same time."

But, as Somboon pointed out, "many people with epilepsy don't realize they have sleep apnea. Being diagnosed is the first step towards getting effective treatment and potentially decreasing the risk of seizures."

More information: Fred Lado, M.D., Ph.D., Northwell Health's regional director of epilepsy for Queens and Long Island, N.Y.; Vahid Ghiasian, M.D., director, Staten Island University Hospital Epilepsy Center, New York City; Dec. 2, 2017, presentation, Ameican Epilepsy Society's annual meeting, Washington, DC Fred Lado, M.D., Ph.D., Northwell Health's regional director of epilepsy for Queens and Long Island, N.Y.; Vahid Ghiasian, M.D., director, Staten Island University Hospital Epilepsy Center, New York City; Dec. 2, 2017, presentation, Ameican Epilepsy Society's annual meeting, Washington, DC There's more on sleep apnea and epilepsy at the Epilepsy Foundation.

Copyright  2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Australia ranked poorly in reducing its stillbirth rate over the past 15 years. Credit: University of Queensland

Forty two babies are stillborn in Australia every week, and 60 per cent of them are recorded as "unexplained".

Mater Research Institute-University of Queensland researchers undertook a global review of stillbirth reporting and classification, seeking ways to improve procedures.

Dr Hanna Reinebrant from UQ's Centre of Research Excellence in Stillbirth said the study found stillbirths were most commonly categorised as "unexplained", "other" and "haemorrhage".

"If we can't explain why a stillbirth has happened, it's impossible to know what to target to prevent it in future," Dr Reinebrant said.

She said the Australian Government should establish national guidelines for investigating stillbirths.

"It's important to establish a cause of death to help parents understand what went wrong and to guide clinical care for any future pregnancies.

"It would also help in developing prevention and education programs for women."

Researchers reviewed 85 reports on stillbirths across 50 countries and found wide variations in investigation and classification systems, with only 13 considered good quality.

Stillbirths were defined as the loss of a baby at 28 weeks' gestation or more.

"Placental problems are frequently reported across middle and high-income countries, but we found that in low-income countries, labour complications and infection were most common," Dr Reinebrant said.

The World Health Organisation has set a global target of 12 stillbirths or fewer per 1000 births by 2030, but Dr Reinebrant said even high-income countries needed to reduce their stillbirth rates.

Australia has the 15th lowest rate in the world, with 2.7 stillbirths for every 1000 births, behind countries like Iceland (1.3), Finland (1.8), Japan (2.1) and New Zealand (2.3).

Australia ranked poorly in reducing its stillbirth rate over the past 15 years.

"We urgently need to address the reporting and categorising of stillbirths so we can better understand what causes stillbirths and improve outcomes for families," Dr Reinebrant said.

The review is published in BJOG.

More information: Making stillbirths visible: a systematic review of globally reported causes of stillbirth BJOG. DOI: 10.1111/1471-0528.14971 Making stillbirths visible: a systematic review of globally reported causes of stillbirth
Unemployment in Spain up minimally in November but 8.3 per cent lower than a year ago



ARCHIVED ARTICLE

The November increase in Catalunya was the sharpest since 2009

November is traditionally a month in which unemployment figures in Spain rise slightly, and data released on Monday morning by the Ministry of Employment confirm that 2017 was no exception, with the number of people registered as out of work going up by just 7,255 during the month.

This represents an increase of 0.2 per cent, bringing the total to precisely 3,475,281, but the rise compares favourably to the same month in 2016, when the number of people officially registered as out of work went up by around 25,000. At the same time, over the last twelve months the figure has fallen by 8.33 per cent, or just over 315,000, and the peak of over 5 million which was reached early in 2013 has been left a long way behind.

By far the most significant increase during November was the one reported in the Balearic Islands (24.5 per cent), where the tourist sector tends to be dormant over the winter, and although such a sharp rise may sound alarming the total in the islands is still well over 6 per cent lower than at the same point last year.

In Catalunya, meanwhile, the continuing political uncertainty may have contributed to the unemployment figure rising by between 3 and 5 per cent in the provinces of Tarragona, Lleida and Girona, although in Barcelona the increase of only 0.9 per cent is much more in line with the trend across Spain as a whole. The overall increase of over 7,000 in the region was the largest since 2009, adding weight to the speculation that the unilateral declaration of independence on 27th October affected the Catalan economy during the following month.

Over the last twelve months, though, the fall in unemployment has been universal across Spain, with the most significant decreases reported in Aragon (-12.9 per cent) and Castilla-La Mancha (-11.3 per cent).

It should be remembered that the monthly data regarding unemployment which are produced by the Ministry of Employment are always significantly lower than those featured in the quarterly Active Population Survey (EPA), because the EPA also takes into account those who are out of work but for one reason or another have chosen not to register as such at employment offices. The latest EPA for the third quarter of 2017 reports that there were 3.73 million unemployed in Spain at the end of September, 13.6 per cent fewer than twelve months previously.

Follow Murcia Today on Facebook to keep up to date with all the latest news, events and information in the Murcia region: https://www.facebook.com/MurciaToday/
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Central Bank head: State Budget deficit in Armenia to grow to 3.1% of GDP in 2023

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Gold price remains stable

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Microsoft to leave Azerbaijan
YEREVAN.  Arriva transport company of the Czech Republic is interested in the single public transport network project in Armenia.

Minister of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies of Armenia, Vahan Martirosyan, on Monday received Czech Ambassador Petr Mikyska, and Arriva CEO Daniel Adamka.

The ambassador presented to the minister the Czech track-record on transport system operation and Arrivas respective part, and expressed the hope that they can start mutually beneficial cooperation.

The Arriva CEO, for his part, gave details of this companys activities, and expressed a wish to be included in the transport system implementation plan in Armenia.

Martirosyan, in turn, noted that the transport system management of Armenia is planned to be changed, and that he will be happy if Arriva also were to take part in the competition for a pilot project that is planned in one of the provinces of Armenia.

Also, the minister proposed to submit a plan, and then to continue the discussions on specific directions of cooperation.
YEREVAN.  The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Vision Armenia, and the Child Development Foundation announced the launch of the Community Level Access to Social Services project during a public event held in Yerevan on Monday.

In attendance at the event were Armenias Minister of Territorial Administration and Development, Davit Lokyan; USAID Armenia Mission Director, Deborah Grieser; Country Programme Director of World Vision Armenia, Zhirayr Edilyan; Director of the Child Development Foundation, Lusine Simonyan, and representatives of organizations working in the field, the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Development of Armenia informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The Community Level Access to Social Services or CLASS is a three-year project, funded by USAID and implemented by World Vision Armenia and Child Development Foundation. The project will target capital Yerevan and all the ten provinces of Armenia, supporting the establishment of a community-based social worker position within the structure of local governments and enhancing the communities ability to identify, prevent and address their social issues, with the ultimate goal of promoting the establishment of community-based social services in Armenia.

We appreciate our close and continued partnership with local organizations and the Government of Armenia in strengthening social protection in the country, the head of USAID Armenia, Deborah Grieser noted in her welcome remarks. The new project will build on the accomplishments of USAIDs projects supporting the Armenian governments reforms in the areas of social protection and local governance. The project will introduce over 50 community social workers in the 264 targeted communities of Armenia.

This project will help bring social services even closer to the community, said Zhirayr Edilyan, Country Programme Director of World Vision Armenia. The services will become more accessible, while the enhancement of cooperation between different levels of social services will positively contribute to the improvement of the quality of life for most vulnerable families.

The Child Development Foundation is pleased to implement the project in 4 marzes [provinces] of Armenia where no complex activities promoting social work have ever been carried out, noted Lusine Simonyan, Director of Child Development Foundation. Through this project, community social workers will use the same methodology of work throughout the entire country. They will stand closer to the population, helping to best address the existing issues.
By PTI: Jammu, Dec 4 (PTI) Seventy seven residents of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) today travelled by the cross-LoC bus to meet their relatives on the two sides of the Line of Control, officials said.

Fourty eight PoK residents arrived here on the cross-LoC bus service via Poonch-Rawalakot in Jammu and Kashmir, a senior official said.

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From India, 22 PoK residents returned on the LoC bus, while six freshers from India travelled on the LoC bus to PoK, he said.

The weekly bus service, popularly known as paigam-e-amun or message of peace, resumed on November 6 after remaining suspended for nearly four months owing to heavy Pakistani shelling along the LoC in Poonch district.

Billed as the biggest confidence building measure, the bus service was started on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad route in the Kashmir Valley in April 2005 and the Poonch-Rawalakot route in the Jammu region on June 20, 2006, to facilitate easier trade and travel between the divided families of Jammu and Kashmir and the PoK.

The trade between the two parts of Kashmir started in October 2008 on barter system. PTI AB KJ

--- ENDS ---
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Monday met Pakistans civilian and military leaders and urged them redouble their efforts to rein in militants accused of using the country as a base to carry out attacks in neighboring Afghanistan, Reuters reported.

Mattis, on a one-day visit to Pakistan, said the South Asian nation had made progress in the fight against militancy inside its borders but needed to make more.

U.S. officials have long been frustrated by what they see as Pakistans reluctance to act against groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network that they believe exploit safe haven on Pakistani soil to launch attacks in Afghanistan.

The Secretary reiterated that Pakistan must redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Mattis, who visited Pakistan for the first time as defense secretary, said before the trip that the goal for his meetings with Pakistani officials would be to find common ground.

In his discussion with Mattis, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the two allies shared objectives.

Were committed (to) the war against terror, he said. Nobody wants peace in Afghanistan more than Pakistan.

Mattis also met with high-ranking officials from Pakistans powerful military, including army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Lieutenant-General Naveed Mukhtar, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency that U.S. officials say has links with Haqqani and Taliban militants.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 4 (PTI) Senior IAS officer Anshu Prakash today took charge as the Delhi chief secretary, replacing M M Kutty who was sent to the Union finance ministry as an additional secretary last week.

Prakash, a 1986-batch IAS officer, will have to walk a tightrope as there had been differences in the past between the ruling AAP and the bureaucracy over a range of issues.

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The bureaucrat will have to strike a fine balance between the Kejriwal-led government and the office of the Lieutenant Governor.

"Amshu Prakash took charge as Delhi chief secretary today," an official said.

The IAS officer had worked with the Delhi government as a principle secretary (health) and also in the municipal corporation of the city.

He has also served as health secretary in his previous postings in Arunachal Pradesh and Andaman and Nicobar Islands administration.

Prakashs predecessor Kuty had been at loggerheads with Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his cabinet over many issues, including the Delhi Metro fare hike and desilting of drains.

The chief minister had, last month, sought an explanation from Kutty over his absence from Lal Bahadur Shastris birth anniversary event organised by the AAP government.

The Kejriwal government has maintained that the files pertaining to their work are not shown to the ministers concerned by the bureaucrats. PTI BUN SRY

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Hyderabad, Dec 4 (PTI) Apollo Hospitals today said it has reached a milestone by performing over 100 robot assisted myomectomies.

Dr Rooma Sinha, Senior Consultant Gynaecologist, Minimal Access & Robotic Surgeon, Apollo Health City, accomplished this distinction of performing the "largest series of robot assisted myomectomies, in South Asia", Apollo Hospitals said in a statement.

Removal of symptomatic fibroids with uterine preservation in women who wish to conceive or otherwise retain their uterus is called myomectomy.

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Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals, said," Robot assisted surgery enables greater reach, manoeuvrability, very little blood loss and minimises internal disruption. This technique will become the mainstream in due course." PTI RS RSY

--- ENDS ---
The countdown is on! Tune in Sunday at 10/9c. #90DayFiance pic.twitter.com/pRON0E7vSt  TLC Network (@TLC) November 30, 2017

On tonights episode: Molly asks Luis to step up as a parent; Elizabeth and Andrei have new plans for the wedding; David won't talk about the wedding night with Evelyn; Nicole and Azan have a big decision to make; Josh and Aika argue about babies.If this is your first time watching this show, enjoy with us. If youre lost, revisit this long ass description Im about to give to understand these couples.Brunette Paula Deen and Great Value Pedro (Molly and Luis)Molly, 41, is a lingerie boutique owner in Georgia who is with Luis, a bartender from the Dominican Republic. Molly has two daughters, Kensley and Olivia, who have made it clear they are not loving Luis and his behavior proves their instincts. He tries to usurp his position as their father while inquiring whether 17-year-old Olivia is just using her boyfriend to f*** (his words, not mine). Mollys father doesnt seem to take a liking to Luis, however this edited to look as though hes racist or hes genuinely concerned. Either way, Mollys brother Jess is just along for the ride.Bahtman and Annie (David and Annie)48-year-old broke, divorced and suspected deadbeat dad, David has lived in Thailand for about three years in order to have some fun (EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW) after going through a tumultuous split. He met 24-year-old Annie while in a karaoke bar. David is scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to finances, so much so that hes constantly borrowing money from his longtime friend Chris. The issue? Annies family needs a dowry in order for the engagement to commence. They require 500,000 baht (15,000 USD) and two water buffaloes. Of course he can only afford to pay 50,000 baht because hes a sugar-free sugar daddy. They eventually get engaged and arrive in Los Angeles to live with Chris, his wife and their two children. David constantly embarrasses Annie due to his drinking which leads to a chaotic dinner with Chriss brother-in-law, Antonio (not airport-phobic model Antonio).Christian Predator and Apple Connoisseur and Apple Connoisseurs family (David and Evelyn and Evelyns family)Please tell me Chris Hayess flight to New Hampshire is already scheduled because I am skeeved out by this couple (not as nearly as skeeved out as I am with Nikki and Mark). High school graduate Evelyn is pretentious, smug, stubborn teenager who makes Christian music with her family. She posted her music on Instagram and other things like teenagers do which caught the attention of 27-year-old Grenada resident David. He began chatting her up when she was only 15, but her parents were too busy to intercede because they were protesting gay people and obese people. But its not like that matters because they support this damn union. Watching them is incredibly uncomfortable with a lot of one-upping each other, not agreeing on anything and just being insufferable together. When the only person with some damn sense in Claremont, Mikayla, takes issue with Davids age, shes immediately shut down with rude and snappy remarks from David and Evelyn. I can just envision the decades of love with these two and by love, I mean eternal passive-aggressiveness and general unpleasantness while chomping on apples.Midlife-Crisis by Faith No More and Aika (Josh and Aika)Josh is 43-year-old man with children that dont speak to him and lives with roommates. Hes always wanted a trophy wife and dreamed of being the guy that landed the hot cheerleader in school (blech, grow up my guy). Aika a 36-year-old from the Philippines enters and Josh believes he found the woman that he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Aika makes is clear that she would like to settle down with a stable career and have children. Josh seems to take umbrage with that because its up to him to reveal thats he had a vasectomy, something he has never mentioned before. However, he wants to push her into modeling which leads to a very uncomfortable moment where she reads a script for a local commercial, but Aika rejects the modeling offer because she knows that she wants to settle down. Josh is the man who wants a trophy wife but is only deserving of a participation ribbon.Bonus Fact: Josh gave Aika an engagement ring, but it is the ring that belonged to his second ex-wife.Real Househusband of Moldova and Libby McGuire (Andrei and Elizabeth)Elizabeth describes herself as rebellious (she just has money to travel thats all) and met 31-year-old former club bouncer Andrei in Dublin. Honestly, theres really nothing that great about them, its her family that is so irritating. Her sisters led by a Becky named Becky want to take Elizabeth out to a strip club which Elizabeth doesnt like and Andrei doesnt like either. She thinks she is to be submissive when she gets married which her friends and family oppose, however Andrei sees it as maturing and going to a club to get wild isnt what they should be doing as a couple. Becky is really hell-bent on having balls fly at her sisters face thoughDanielle and Mohammed sorry I meant Nicole and Azan24-year-old Nicole is in Morocco once again to be with the luv of her life, 24-year-old vegetable obsessed Azan. This is her second season to appear and now she finally got her dad and stepmother to sponsor Azan for the K-1 visa because she doesnt make enough money. They really only did this because Nicole threatened that if they didnt, she would permanently move to Morocco with May. This time Nicole brought her young daughter, May with her and insists that May call Azan daddy. Nicole is experimenting to see whether Azan is going to make a good father. The family adores May and they loved Nicole until she brazenly asked Azan to ask his aunt if they could sleep in the same room. (Thats why his auntie cooked the sheeps head for you, girl.) Unfortunately for Azan, if things dont go Nicoles way and shes not given attention constantly, she physically lashes out at Azan.This show has put me THROUGH it, yall.Note: The embedded tweet promotes the episode as being on 10/9CST when it's really 8/7CST. TLC done frauded us again!Current Location: eating lechon at a water buffalo sales training convention in Claremont, NHSources: 1 and 2
An Army jawan, Santosh Bakdu, committed suicide this morning at the Pokhran firing range in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.

By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: This morning, jawans at the Pokhran firing range in Jaisalmer heard a gunshot they will likely remember for as long as they live: Their brother-in-arms, Santosh Bakdu, had shot himself with his own weapon.

Bakdu was declared dead at the hospital they took him to.

But why did this native of Karnataka's Belagum, who was young (he was just 38) and married, decide to end his life?

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An investigation revealed that he did so due to family reasons (More specific information was unavailable at the time when this report was filed).

Bakdu's body was handed over to officials of the Army unit after a post-mortem analysis.

--- ENDS ---
I have no use for the Stark family.





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Sansa Stark for Queen of the North with Brienne as Commander of the Queensguard.

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LMAO.



Where is the lie tho.



Show Sansa is like a barbie version of fanfic Queen in the North! Sansa come to life. As long as she's rocking the outfit and being sassy to Arya and Jon that's enough to make her a good, effective leader.

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Oh I know the show version of her is dumb, but so are all the other characters. And if she survives in the show then she survives in the books.

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Brienne surviving this war (and banging Jaimie during or after) is all I want.

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As time has passed on, its become clear that Ned was the only Stark the show did any justice.



The other starks have become different versions of unlikeable and annoying as the show has gone. Jon is an un-charismatic boring gary stu with no depth, turned arya into a 1D revenge cartoon character, bran into an emotionless creepy robot and Sansa is just ?????

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IA with you. I genuinely do enjoy the show for what it is, and I try to separate the books and show as far as I can (it helps to be invested in the ironborn; they cut out half the Greyjoy family), but I can't help but feel the salt. They even failed pretty miserably with Robb, imo, but Bran especially is just...the most disappointing failure a character arc that seems to be going a very interesting direction in the books. I love Bran, but it seems like they legitimately gave up on him in the show. They didn't know what to do with him and they didn't want to try to find a creative place for him in the bigger picture.

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Pretty much, they clearly have no interest in portraying the remaining Starks with any depth.

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sad. Especially with arya who's one of the most complex characters in the books.

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ia but that's probably bc ned died early and season one is the most faithful adaptation of the books

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speaking of... some of the sansa haters are super gross... you know. white male reddit users,. the ones who despise sansa from the start, and blamed an 11/13 year old for her father's death. even though as much as i loved him... it was ned's dumb ass that got himself killed. littlefinger warned him, cersei gave him an out, and while he was dong what was right... he still got his own dumb self killed.

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Kit Harrington is as charismatic as wet cardboard.

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but...his manbun tho.

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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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Edited at 2017-12-04 04:38 am (UTC)

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imo Cersei is quite chaotically evil as well, while Brienne is more lawful/neutral good and I don't think he Hound showing character growth merits the chaotic neutral label

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The fandom discourse around Sansa is so exasperating. It's like some weird circle of life of Tumblr feminism where what started as defense of acharacter evolved into "defending" her traditional femininity by attacking every other female character in the series, especially those who have more hard power, or are fan favorites.

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Yeah I still love book Sansa, but everything to do with the fandom surrounding her is tiring, from the people that hate her for no reason to the people that refuse to see any fault in the way she's written (particularly in the show). It's all very exhausting.



I've also noticed a disturbing trend in Dany vs. Sansa discourse since the seventh season ended, it's like Westeros only has space for one major female character in the fandoms eyes (Arya seems to have become a non-entity for show watchers unfortunately).

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This isnt just a Sansa thing, its exactly the same discourse for Dani. Also there is a weird obsessiveness with Emilia that even people here show, and Im pretty sure its because of her IRL personality and she seems to be quite a down to earth woman so people connect with her. That bleeds into their overzealous stanning and people outside of this site basically make every other female character nonexistent in the narrative of fan theories as if the books dont exist just like you mentioned with Arya. Its really fucking tiring.

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The Dany vs. Sansa is mostly from the shippers. The Jon/Sansa ship has become quite big since season six and a lot of them still believe it has the possibility of happening. Then you also have those who just want Sansa to become Queen. Neither of those scenarios work with Dany still in the picture so Dany fans get defensive and start shitting on Sansa.

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i 100% hope they get it bc i love hello kitty and also bc 2018 pyeongchang olympics, 2020 tokyo olympics, 2022 beijing olympics, and 2025 osaka world expo? i would absolutely NUT

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I recently found out that the headquarters for Sanrio are in my town. One time I was just driving in the area, and I saw the familiar font and a Hello Kitty statue outside! I still haven't actually gone inside to check out the store though

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Plz sent me hello kitties 

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you best believe i would go there daily omg

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wow, they finally brought misty back, i never thought it'd happen

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And her and Ash battled, and she had a Gyrados, and it was like being 8 again. I just wish the animation had been this great when we were kids, ha



I watched the episode, and it was really cute (though maybe it's the more laid back animation style). Her and Brock still giving him shit for not actually winning their badges, lolAnd her and Ash battled, and she had a Gyrados, and it was like being 8 again. I just wish the animation had been this great when we were kids, ha

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Yass my bitch going on to big things 

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oh man, pikachu's jukebox was great. pretty sure i still have most of the songs memorized lol

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My brother and I used to sing along to all the songs. I think I still could, lol.

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Its so hard to find hello kitty stuff in the US nowadays. Plus they closed all the Sanrio stores

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ia it bums me out

tho in fairness i was always the only soul in my mall's sanrio store and i never even bought anything, i just like looking @ cute stuff

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I read that as PROTECT and thought "hell yeah, Hello Kitty is now a superhero."

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ANd holy shit, you can buy Hello Kitty as DC Heroe plushies



I could believe that too, haANd holy shit, you can buy Hello Kitty as DC Heroe plushies

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this is cute af

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Wow, I need this.

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WTF did they do to Mistys voice!



I left Pokemon when Misty left. Getting rid of her was a mistake.

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I followed loosely for a bit after she left and I liked May well enough-- Ash having the opportunity to act as someone's mentor was kinda cute-- but it wasn't right without her. I basically dropped it and only came back for the couple of Misty reunion episodes. Hers were the only episodes of Pokemon Chronicles I cared about either.

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ot-ish lol



does anyone know where i can watch Mary and the Witch's Flower?

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I live in the US.



Our cultural ambassador should be the poop emoji. It was invented in Japan, but it's ours now, bitches!

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lmao I was gonna come here and say our ambassador should be a shitpile so IA

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Like that shit monster from Dogma

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when I was a little kid I was Hello Kitty obsessed. I had everything: hello kitty stationary, purses, keychains, wallet etc.



I recently was looking for something in my old bedroom and found a set of pristine Hello Kitty pencils I had never sharpened because I loved them so.

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Ha, that's cute about the pencils. I always hated sharpening themed/decorated/"fancy" pencils.

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why are they always paying dust to ash & misty tho?

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IA they were my first ship lmao

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Jesus now that I say that (kinda) out loud I realise how weird it is lol they're CHILDREN!



But tbh I was a child when I shipped them so it hadn't occurred to me until now that I have grown up whilst the characters haven't.

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lmaooo they're literally supposed to be ten when it starts but they've never come off that way so you're fine.

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You mean Brock and Misty

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japan olympics looks like it's gonna be fucking awesomeeee, i wanna go!

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Wow that art is horrendous

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That and I guess it allows them to do weird dramatic goofy detailed shit like this every once in awhile, lol





Awww. It was pretty jarring, but I sort of like the noodle-y/loosey goosey lookThat and I guess it allows them to do weird dramatic goofy detailed shit like this every once in awhile, lol

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Kid President tbh, or Mr. Rogers, or Bob Ross.

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man i miss her so much, her videos were the greatest



"ONTD, has your dating life been harder because of your race?"





lol yeah i grew up in a majority white area in podunk il and im not gonna pretend that had no effect. tho i did see a lil decent group of mixed couples by the time i got to high school. generally tho people who dated black girls out of their race had some expectations, like dudes who wore gold chains and expected u to wear a weave or have ur hair pressed -- justin timberlake mid-nsync vibes. it's weird looking back on it because it feels like it was such an Era of dudes feeling like they needed to wear these costumes to date black women



"Dr Jane agrees and says that its probably because he won't age as well as Nat and to other people she may appear to be his mail-order bride"



lol i know that's not how they meant it but damn go in. not your wife's fault u age like whole milk





Edited at 2017-12-04 03:30 pm (UTC)

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I mean likely, I def have heard black women are ________. But I don't really dwell on that anymore and I don't really date so it's w/e now.



Thanks op I'll listen to this today



Edited at 2017-12-04 03:31 pm (UTC)

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ONTD, has your dating life been harder because of your race?



Even though I've been in a happy relationship for years, it does still sting a bit thinking about all the shit I've had happen before just because of my race. I remember liking a guy in class all of this one semester and on the last day he made a move to get my number and acted really into me but the second he found out I was half Black, he pretty much pretended I didn't exist. As far as dating, nothing would really come from me being half Indian but with every dude I was into before my husband, no matter the race, I had to worry about if they liked black women even if they were black.

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That's rough to hear. I always fear that I won't ever be accepted by my spouses family that I feel the need to overcompensate about how good I am on paper (kind, compassionate, well traveled, cultured, highly educated) but at the end of the day if the parents don't accept me there's nothing I can do. I would just want to have a good relationship for the sake of my future kids.



But my past two relationships the families have been great so here's hoping that continues.

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bookmarking to watch for later since I used to stan Natalie back when she put out more content...



ONTD, has your dating life been harder because of your race?



it's made me more wary, for sure. i'm mixed but more Chinese than anything and whenever I date, I always have this feeling that I'm more an accessory/prize to be won, more than anything?



also, adding to the commentary of asian women only dating white men, I've a few friends like that and while they do echo the comments discussed (not having to answer to stereotypes and expectations placed upon them by the men of their own race), there's also an added layer of them feeling like they're not stereotypically pretty (not looking like Zhang Ziyi, Fan BingBing, etc) and really, not thin and pale, which a lot of East Asian men see as a requirement... not saying it's a valid argument or even an invalid one but just adding to the commentary

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expectations placed upon them by the men of their own race), there's also an added layer of them feeling like they're not stereotypically pretty



Yes this. I think my friends and I were maybe 14 when my bff at the time figured this out. some of my friends are trini Chinese and the rest of us are too ~whitewashed~ for a lot of Asian guys although no one's mixed. The friends who are more stereotypically hk etc all married Asian dudes and everyone else is with a ~Canadian ~ or in the case of the bff a trini dude who doesn't have a Chinese background. I think I've dated like 2 Asian dudes in my life cause they're no interested, but I've also been on the receiving end of a guy with an Asian fetish more than once.



meanwhile my brother to the surprise of like everyone married a Chinese girl, cause he is the biggest banana out of everyone.

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OMG are you me? 



i'm filipino-chinese in canada and i mostly pass for full-on chinese but since i'm over 100lbs soaking wet and not a delicate flower, most asian dudes just don't seem to find me attractive. most of my friends are (for a super relative meaning of the word & a whole nother discussion about colourism in asian culturea) darker in colouring and bigger girls, which really, sets them up for almost ridicule by asian guys. as a result, they've mostly dated white dudes...



nb: my banana younger brother hasn't brought a girl home yet but it wouldn't surprise me if he were the same lol

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On another note, I honestly have actively avoided dating white guys because 1) i am WAY too scared of being an asian fetish 2) i just don't think i could handle the amount of white privilege. I'm aware that #2 is my own bias and yes i can relate! i'm fully asian, with tan skin, and very tall and with a bigger build than most asian girls (who are about 5'2" and 100 lbs.) I got told my entire life by relatives including uncles / cousins etc that I was "SO TALL" and "SO BIG" and guys wouldn't want to date me. i think some asian guys WERE insecure to date me bc we end up being the same height or they'd be skinnier than me. They always would make comments about how tall I was. It almost seemed easier to date outside my race if the ones within my race were repulsed/intimidated by my size. However all four of my ex boyfriends and my current bf have been asian and happen to be taller/bigger than me so "shrug." It's not impossible.On another note, I honestly have actively avoided dating white guys because 1) i am WAY too scared of being an asian fetish 2) i just don't think i could handle the amount of white privilege. I'm aware that #2 is my own bias and #notallwhitemen but I'm pretty sure I'm done with dating so I guess I'll never know first hand

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Yes, dating as a black American woman is hard especially in this current climate but if theres one thing 2017 has been successful at is completely turning me off from men this year



Sadly Ive been hold by black men that they do not date black women, and it stings



Edited at 2017-12-04 03:41 pm (UTC)

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Love her and her vids so much.

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Thank you for sharing, really. I think I understand where youre coming from a little. Once we were stationed in Washington, I got kind of shocked into accepting the fact that I was not like the other full-[ethnicity] kids out there. Especially when those kids actively shunned others who were half. It was a predominantly white community, so I would try (unsuccessfully) to fit in there too.



I think having a large group of mixed friends in high school prevented me from fully accepting that internalized racism. I shudder to think of what wouldve happened if I went to any other school at any other time (it was a diverse school, and it was the 90s because I belong in an ONTD retirement home).



Edited at 2017-12-04 04:13 pm (UTC)

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i don't refuse to date any races bc the lesbian dating pool is small enough as it is lmao, but i'm definitely warier of white girls. non-asian woc, even if they don't necessarily understand/experience specifically anti-asian racism, generally tend to relate/empathize more as a whole ime.



i feel like racism in the lesbian dating world is a lot less overt than in the gay male dating world, i've never come across a tinder or her profile that says "vanilla or spice, no chocolate or rice~" but i think that at most that just says that lesbians have enough sense/shame to not be openly racist lmao. i mean i've had decent luck on tinder and have never had to deal with racist assholes but they're the ones who swiped right on me in the first place so that doesn't mean anything.



Edited at 2017-12-04 03:48 pm (UTC)

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ia w/ all of this. tho i do exclude white girls because i live in nyc and have a big enough dating pool to get away with it.



interestingly the two east asian girls who i dated for a little would both get a bit nervous talking to me as a black woman about anti-asian racism, especially if it was in the context of college. they'd always feel the need to qualify it with "i know it's not the same but-" then i'd have to reassure them that i empathize/obviously recognize that asians also face racism.

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lmao i live in nyc too. maybe i'm just greedy!

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totally relate to all of this as a fellow #lesbianofcolor

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People have been making a point that the issue that needs to be addressed is the portrayal and perception of *Asian* men. But I don't think it's just that. Because Asian women disproportionately date *white* men versus *any* MOC, not just Asian men.

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+1



There's a colonialism/imperialism angle here (and how that interacts with female subordination/male supremacy & white supremacy in extremely gross ways) we're not sufficiently discussing (i'm assuming the vid doesn't based on your comment - haven't watched it yet)



Edited at 2017-12-04 06:10 pm (UTC)

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THANK YOU, I roll my eyes whenever people try to pass off their preference for white partners as just wanting to avoid whatever baggage comes with dating within their own race. Unfortunately Asian men have used accusations of white worship as a bludgeon against Asian women so it's hard to have a constructive conversation about it, even when they have a point.

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Pretty much. There's a way to critically tackle this conversation but it's hard when you're dealing with the misogyny from the men from your own community that you can even tackle a constructive conversation. And the same dudes also then go and worship white women at the same time. It's a lose/lose situation.

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What grinds my gears is when these women try to rationalize their choices to date white men by complaining about how Asian men ridicule Asian women if they don't fall within sexist beauty standards. It's a valid complaint but it's funny that they give white men the benefit of individual judgment while Asian men get entirely cast aside and painted with a broad brush.



Edited at 2017-12-05 05:13 am (UTC)

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Oh man do I have a story. Im Mexican and I was questioned by fam if I only dated white guys and I was so confused but I realized that they thought I thought Latino men were inferior. When I told them I had never been with a white guy, it was the most bizarre realization on their faces like oh she thinks were all right.



Im too attached to my culture to even begin to wonder what that would be like. I just honestly feel like anyone else, Asian, black etc would be more understanding of the rituals and celebrations and the need to give extended family my time without asking why. To each their own.

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People (mostly other Asian women) have gotten shocked when I've said I've never dated white guys and I don't have a preference for them. WTF. What's sadder is that they try to "disabuse" me of that.

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I'm Mexican-American and my parents also want my siblings and I to all date white people. My sister is currently dating a white guy and my mom loves him to death. She keeps talking about how beautiful their babies would be because it would have green eyes. This whole mejorando la raza shit is so disgusting.



Edited at 2017-12-04 06:00 pm (UTC)

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This is so weird to me bc i feel mexican (-americans) as whole would rather their kids be with other mexicans, i dont really see many mexican parents encouraging dating outside the culture

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i'm latina and i live in a small religious town so i'd never date the latinos here lol (or basically anyone from this town). mostly because they want a wife that is traditional. i'm open to dating someone from my race or outside of my race, but they just have to have a job and be educated tbh, and have common interests with me.

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I dont know if its made it worse because being mixed is hard enough as is. I feel lucky to have a mixed parent, though, and one that was raised to be proud of their non-white heritage.



Regarding dating, the only difficult thing for me is perception. My major relationships have ended up being with white men, so Im sure that everyone thinks I have a preference. I dont, and I struggle with that perception because my relationships with POC happened to be with closeted people or short because they broke it off with me, so they never got to the point where I was introducing them to friends or family.

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Omg yas hft! As a mixed black Korean/PI, dating in America esp in a conservative city in California is hard. I do notice how white men are attracted to me and basically want to dick me just because how I look and have the ability to communicate etc in a way I'm dateable to them. The trouble is that men seem not to lock down on fully making a commitment when I just want a boyfriend to chill with. I recently had sex, dry spell is ovah, great but like damn tho why can't I have a irl boyfriend who's genuine and getting his shit together?

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Is there any data that suggests (East?) Asian men date more East Asian women than vice versa?

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tbh i feel like the asian guys that whine about asian women who won't date them a la "white guys are stealing our women" (bc asian women are a possession!) would be more than happy to date white women if white women gave them a chance...their attitudes suggest that they view white ppl as a prize, and they're just resentful that they're considered second best~ by asian women and undesirable by white women. but give them a chance to be "on top" by dating white women and they'll trip over their own dicks to take it.

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lol so accurate

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this truth

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This right here is the truth. I see it all the fucking time.

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http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/05/18/intermarriage-in-the-u-s-50-years-after-loving-v-virginia/



"There are dramatic gender differences among Asian newlyweds as well, though they run in the opposite direction  Asian women are far more likely to intermarry than their male counterparts. In 2015, just over one-third (36%) of newlywed Asian women had a spouse of a different race or

ethnicity, compared with 21% of newlywed Asian men." there's a ton of stuff in here:"There are dramatic gender differences among Asian newlyweds as well, though they run in the opposite direction  Asian women are far more likely to intermarry than their male counterparts. In 2015, just over one-third (36%) of newlywed Asian women had a spouse of a different race orethnicity, compared with 21% of newlywed Asian men."

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I'm Indian and grew up in a predominantly Vietnamese/Eastern Asian community in Chicago. Which always left me feeling slightly out of place because I never felt like I was "feminine" enough if that makes sense? A lot of the Asian boys that I had a crush on kind of thought of me as one of the boys cuz I was this really tall, athletically built girl.



And then I moved to a white suburb and felt even more out of place. It wasn't until I hit college and worked at a Latino Cultural Center that I learned to embrace my culture and skin more.



I think in a lot of ways it's easier for me to date someone from my own background because then I don't have to explain everything in my life that relates to being Indian. I can also cook Indian food everyday and not have to worry about if this guy who isn't Indian will eat it.

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Venezuela's Avior Airlines Added to EU Safety List

The addition means it is subject to an operating ban or operating restrictions within the European Union. Mustique Airways (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) and Urga (Ukraine) were removed after they made safety improvements.

The European Commission on Nov. 30 updated the EU Air Safety List, which is its list of non-European airlines that do not meet international safety standards and are subject to an operating ban or operational restrictions within the European Union. There were three changes: Venezuela's Avior Airlines was added while Mustique Airways (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) and Urga (Ukraine) were removed after they made safety improvements. They had been included on the list in May 2017.

"Our objective is to offer the highest level of safety in European skies. The EU's Air Safety List remains one of our most effective tools to achieve this. Today we are showing that with our help, airlines can be quickly removed from the list when they tackle their safety issues. Work pays off, and I hope that the example of Mustique Airways and Urga will inspire others," said Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc.

The commission announcement said Avior Airlines was added to the list due to unaddressed safety deficiencies that were detected by the European Aviation Safety Agency during the assessment for a third country operator authorisation. The latest changes mean 178 airlines are banned from EU skies:

172 airlines certified in 16 states are listed because of a lack of safety oversight by the aviation authorities from those states.

Six individual airlines are listed based on safety concerns with regard to the airlines themselves: Avior; Iran Aseman Airlines (Iran); Iraqi Airways (Iraq); Blue Wing Airlines (Suriname); Med-View Airlines (Nigeria); and Air Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe).

Six other airlines are subject to operational restrictions and can only fly to the EU with specific aircraft types: Afrijet and Nouvelle Air Affaires SN2AG (Gabon); Air Koryo (Democratic People's Republic of Korea); Air Service Comores (the Comoros); Iran Air (Iran); and TAAG Angola Airlines (Angola).
By Steve Buckstein

Oregonians will have the opportunity in January to vote No on Ballot Measure 101, thus rejecting new taxes that the state legislature and the governor tried to impose on health insurance premiums and hospital services. While these and other taxes are meant to shore up state funding of Medicaid services to low-income Oregonians, it has become clear that the state has been misspending such funds for years.

Voters Pamphlet statements for and against Measure 101 were due by November 13, and Cascade Policy Institute submitted an Argument in Opposition which you can read below. In it, we noted three ways that the state has mismanaged over $650 million in health care funds entrusted to it by state and federal taxpayers. But, that may be far from the final number.

On November 17, four days after the Voters Pamphlet deadline, Oregonians learned that the state may have erroneously paid, allocated, inaccurately recorded or over-claimed $112.4 million in health care funds, according to a letter Oregon Health Authority (OHA) Director Pat Allen sent to Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. Allen also told state legislators that the state was likely to see more processing problems come out of the states health agency.

These revelations were too late for Cascade, or anyone else, to include in our Voters Pamphlet statements. So voters will need to keep up with all the reasons to vote No on Measure 101. More reasons may emerge when the Secretary of State releases an expected audit of the OHA by early December.

An early version of the Voters Pamphlet for Measure 101, including the full text of the Measure and Arguments in Favor and in Opposition can be found at the Secretary of States website.

Here is Cascades Argument in Opposition:

STOP NEW SALES TAXES ON HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUMS

AND HOSPITAL SERVICES

Vote No on Measure 101.

Oregon state government has a long history of mismanaging other peoples health care dollars, including:

Wasting $300 million federal tax dollars building a website, Cover Oregon, that wasnt able to sign up a single person for health insurance.

Paying $280 million a year for nearly 55,000 Medicaid recipients recently found to no longer qualify or who failed to respond to an eligibility check.

Overpaying health care organizations $74 million over three years to provide expanded Medicaid coverage to some Oregonians. The state initially only asked for $10 million of those overpayments back, and under political pressure eventually asked for the rest.

As one Oregon economist notes about the taxes in Measure 101:

The law explicitly allows the new taxes on health insurance providers to be passed on to consumers. With these new taxes, that Silver ACA plan will cost about $625 more in 2019 than in 2018. Its not just 40-year-olds who will get hit with the insurance tax. Nearly 12,000 college studentswill pay the tax. Small group employerswill pay the new tax.

Taxes on hospitals will raise the costs of care across the board.The cost of these taxes also will be passed on in the form of higher deductibles and premiums. Even if you dont go to the hospital, you will be paying the hospital tax through higher insurance prices.*

The cost of health care is already too expensive for many Oregonians. Dont let the state add even more taxes onto services that are expensive enough already, especially when it has such a poor track record spending the health care tax money it already gets from us.

Say No to these new health care sales taxes.

Vote No on Measure 101.

*source: Health Care Tax Would Hurt Middle Class

at: CascadePolicy.org/Health-Care

(This information furnished by Steve Buckstein, Cascade Policy Institute.)

Steve Buckstein is Senior Policy Analyst and Founder of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregons free market public policy research organization.
Thousands of Hondurans took to the streets in protest against "electoral fraud" Sunday, as vote counting resumed a week after President Juan Orlando Hernandez and opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla went head to head in the polls. Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) president David Mataramos announced a review of 1,006 votes presenting inconsistencies -- despite the opposing Alliance Against the Dictatorship calling for 5,173 votes to be scrutinized. "We feel that the Honduran people deserve the results and this (count) cannot be stopped," Mataramos said. Nasralla supporters in the capital Tegucigalpa marched near to where the count was resumed, banging on pots, blaring vuvuzelas and singing campaign songs including insults towards Hernandez. "They are stealing our votes," Jesus Elviz, a 58-year-old accountant, told AFP, visibly angry. Meanwhile, a group of women handed out flowers to demonstrators, and threw petals at riot and military police nearby. On Friday, 19-year-old Kimberly Fonseca was killed by a bullet during a confrontation between protesters and the police. Her family say she was killed by police, a claim authorities are "exhaustively" investigating. After the violent protests erupted -- with some reports of looting -- the government declared a state of emergency and imposed a 10-day curfew in an attempt to curb the unrest. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the UN Office for Human Rights in Honduras Sunday urged the authorities to act "within the framework of human rights, respecting people's lives and physical integrity." Their joint statement also expressed concern at preliminary figures which said 11 people have died and at least 15 others have been injured during the violence. A week after the election, Hernandez maintains an advantage with 42.92 percent of votes against Nasralla's 41.42 percent, with 94.45 percent counted, according to the TSE. The first partial election results were released early Monday, 10 hours after the polls closed. However, when the figures began to be updated on Tuesday, Hernandez's lead was falling and he took charge of the count on Wednesday, following a series of interruptions in the TSE's computer system.
Credit: Oliver Rauhut

Paleontologists at LMU correct a case of misinterpretation: The first fossil "Archaeopteryx" to be discovered is actually a predatory dinosaur belonging to the anchiornithid family, which was previously known only from finds made in China.

Even 150 million years after its first appearance on our planet, Archaeopteryx is still good for surprises. The so-called Urvogel has attained an iconic status well beyond the world of paleontology, and it is one of the most famous fossils ever recovered. In all, a dozen fossil specimens have been assigned to the genus. Archaeopteryx remains the oldest known bird fossil, not only documenting the evolutionary transition from reptiles to birds, but also confirming that modern birds are the direct descendants of carnivorous dinosaurs. LMU paleontologist Oliver Rauhut and Christian Foth from the Staatliches Museum fur Naturkunde in Stuttgart have re-examined the so-called Haarlem specimen of Archaeopteryx, which is kept in Teylers Museum in that Dutch city and has gone down in history as the first member of this genus to be discovered.

In the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, Foth and Rauhut now report that this fossil differs in several important respects from the other known representatives of the genus Archaeopteryx. In fact, their taxonomic analysis displaces it from its alleged perch on the phylogenetic tree: "The Haarlem specimen is not a member of the Archaeopteryx clade," says Rauhut, a paleontologist in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at LMU who is also affiliated with the Bavarian State Collections for Paleontology and Geology in Munich.

Instead, the two scientists assign the fossil to a group of bird-like maniraptoran dinosaurs known as anchiornithids, which were first identified only a few years ago based on material found in China. These rather small dinosaurs possessed feathers on all four limbs, and they predate the appearance of Archaeopteryx. "The Haarlem fossil is the first member of this group found outside China. And together with Archaeopteryx, it is only the second species of bird-like dinosaur from the Jurassic discovered outside eastern Asia. This makes it even more of a rarity than the true specimens of Archaeopteryx," Rauhut says.

Made in China

The Haarlem specimen was found about 10 km to the northeast of the closest Archaeopteryx locality known (Schamhaupten) a full four years before the discovery of the skeleton that would introduce the Urvogel to the scientific world in 1861. Schamhaupten was once part of the so-called Solnhofen archipelago in the Altmuhl Valley in southern Bavaria, the area from which all known specimens of the genus Archaeopteryx originated. Its taxonomic reassignment therefore provides new insights into the evolution of the bird-like dinosaurs in the Middle to Late Jurassic. "Our biogeographical analysis demonstrates that the group of dinosaurs that gave rise to birds originated in East Asia  all of the oldest finds have been made in China. As they expanded westward, they also reached the Solnhofen archipelago," says Christian Foth. Thus, the fossil hitherto incorrectly assigned to the genus Archaeopteryx must have been one of the first members of the group to arrive in Europe.

Around 150 million years ago, the area known today as the Altmuhl Valley was dotted with the coral and sponge reefs and lagoons of the Solnhofen archipelago, and the open sea lay to the West and South. The Haarlem fossil was originally recovered from what was then the eastern end of the archipelago, quite close to the mainland. Unlike Archaeopteryx, anchiornithids were unable to fly, and might not have been able to reach areas further offshore. On the other hand, all true fossils of Archaeopteryx found so far were recovered from the lithographic limestone strata further to the west, closer to the open sea. Based on the new findings, Rauhut argues that other known Archaeopteryx fossils may need reassessment: "Not every bird-like fossil that turns up in the fine-grained limestones around Solnhofen need necessarily be a specimen of Archaeopteryx," he points out.

The authors of the new study have proposed that the Haarlem specimen be assigned to a new genus, for which they suggest the name Ostromia  in honor of the American paleontologist John Ostrom, who first identified the fossil as a theropod dinosaur.

More information: Christian Foth et al. Re-evaluation of the Haarlem Archaeopteryx and the radiation of maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs, BMC Evolutionary Biology (2017). DOI: 10.1186/s12862-017-1076-y Journal information: BMC Evolutionary Biology
Yale-NUS College Postdoctoral Fellow Eunice Tan has discovered that the bright colour patterns of beetles are not a warning signal to predators as previously believed, but actually a form of camouflage, turning an old assumption on its head. Dr Tan, along with four collaborators from Australia and Spain, examined 51 species of Australian leaf beetles in their natural habitats, and discovered that each beetle's colour pattern is similar to the host plants that the beetle lives on, suggesting that those conspicuous colours help the beetle blend in with the plants it inhabits. The study was recently published as an open-access article in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

As the first ecologist to examine the colour patterns of live leaf beetles in relation to their host plants, Dr Tan contextualised the colour patterns of beetles to their natural habitats, which allowed her to challenge the prevailing theory among coleopterists - scientists who study beetles - that the bright colours of leaf beetles developed as a deterrent signal to predators. These colourful markings were assumed to be a warning to predators against eating the beetles, which are able to secrete poisonous chemicals in self-defence. However, this idea was based on earlier studies, which focused on using museum collections of beetle specimens for their analyses. While this method affords researchers a large number of samples, the discolouration of deceased specimens made accurate colour analysis of the beetles impossible. Furthermore, such methodology also fails to take into account the colouration of each beetle's natural environment.

Dr Tan and her team spent 17 months photographing live beetles in 32 locations across four Australian states, in order to compare each beetle's colouration to the colour of the leaf it was found on. Taking into account the evolutionary relationship between the different beetle species, Dr Tan discovered that different species of beetles had colour patterns similar to those of their host plants. This suggests that the colourations have a camouflaging effect, rather than serving an aposematic (predator-deterring) function. This camouflage effect was particularly pronounced in beetles which fed on multiple types of plants, as they had to blend into many different environments.

"It was long thought that conspicuous colour patterns served to advertise the distastefulness of an organism to its predators. However, we have found that this cannot be the sole reason that conspicuous colour patterns developed in leaf beetles. In general, the beetles had colouration similar to that of their host plants, suggesting that there is natural selection at play and therefore some evolutionary advantage for these beetles to use camouflage as a defensive strategy against predators," shared Dr Tan.

Through her field studies, Dr Tan also observed the impact of ecological factors on the evolution of different beetle species' colouration patterns. Dr Tan's study found that both larger and smaller beetle species in her sample had similar levels of colour contrast against their backgrounds. However, the larger beetle species were more likely to be found in darker environments than their smaller cousins, suggesting that they were employing a hiding strategy against predators, despite having similar conspicuous colouration to their smaller cousins. An ecological property, the brightness of the environment, was therefore a potential factor influencing the evolution of beetle colouration.

Taken together, the findings of this study "point to a complex suite of factors driving natural selection, such as types of predators and host plant choice, which affect the evolution of colouration in leaf beetles", said Dr Tan. Challenging the assumption that the sole explanation for bright coloration in leaf beetles is meant to ward off predators, Dr Tan postulated that the variety of anti-predator strategies in leaf beetles that she has found may explain their successful spread into a variety of habitats.

More information: Eunice J. Tan et al, The Role of Life-History and Ecology in the Evolution of Color Patterns in Australian Chrysomeline Beetles, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2017.00140
You may already be surprised to hear there are iron objects dating back to the Bronze Age, but their meteorite origin is even more astonishing. Though meteorites had already been recognized as one source of this metal, the scientific community couldn't determine whether they accounted for most or simply a few Bronze Age iron artifacts. Albert Jambon, as part of his work at the Institut de mineralogie, de physique des materiaux et de cosmochimie (CNRS / UPMC / IRD / Museum national d'Histoire naturelle),1 has demonstrated that iron used during the Bronze Age is always meteoric and he explained how this practice was abandoned during the Iron Age. His work is published in the December 2017 issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The Iron Age began in Anatolia and the Caucasus around 1200 BCE. But nearly 2,000 years earlier, various cultures were already fashioning objects out of iron. These items were extremely rare and always greatly treasured. Iron ore abounds on the Earth's surface. So what made these artifacts so valuable? Initial research had shown that some were made with iron from meteorites, which led scientists to wonder how many others were. Albert Jambon gathered the available data and conducted his own nondestructive chemical analyses of samples using a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. His collection of iron artifacts includes beads from Gerzeh (Egypt, 3200 BCE); a dagger from Alaca Hoyuk (Turkey, 2500 BCE); a pendant from Umm el-Marra (Syria, 2300 BCE); an axe from Ugarit (Syria, 1400 BCE) and several others from the Shang dynasty civilization (China, 1400 BCE); and the dagger, bracelet, and headrest of Tutankhamen (Egypt, 1350 BCE).

His analyses revealed that each of these Bronze Age artifacts was made with meteoric iron. When large celestial bodies like our planet are forming, nearly all nickel drifts towards the molten iron core. Thus, it is extremely rare to find nickel on the surface. However, some meteorites are created when celestial bodies are shattered. If these meteorites are composed of core material, they mostly contain iron with high levels of nickel and cobalt. This characteristic makes it possible to identify the source of iron. Meteoric iron is also already in a metal state, ready for use, which explains why it went into all Bronze Age iron artifacts. In contrast, the iron compounds in terrestrial ores must first undergo the process of reduction, which removes bound oxygen to yield the desired metal. This is the basis of smelting in furnaces, a breakthrough that marked the beginning of the Iron Age. With smelting, Iron Age cultures could forget rare extraterrestrial metal and tap into terrestrial iron ores, which were far more abundant and easier to procure. Albert Jambon's findings refute certain theories proposing that nickel-laden iron alloys were obtained from terrestrial ores.

More information: Albert Jambon. Bronze Age iron: Meteoritic or not? A chemical strategy., Journal of Archaeological Science (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2017.09.008 Journal information: Journal of Archaeological Science

Provided by CNRS
By PTI: By Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Dec 4 (PTI) A powerful bomb blast at a poll rally of the ruling Nepali Congress today injured 11 people including the former health minister here, police said, days ahead of the last phase of provincial and parliamentary polls.

The police said that 30 suspects have been arrested in connection with the incident which occurred at Chapali area in Budhanilakantha municipality, 10 kms north of Kathmandu.

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The injured including Nepali Congress candidate Gagan Thapa were rushed to the Tribhuvan University Teaching hospital here.

Thapa, a former health minister who is contesting election from the Kathmandu constituency Number 4, has been discharged from the hospital.

The condition of one of the injured people is said to be critical.

Election campaign for Thursdays second phase of parliamentary and provincial elections will end at mid-night tomorrow.

The blast occurred three days before the second phase of the provincial and parliamentary elections on December 7.

Around 65 per cent votes were cast on November 26 in the historic first round of elections that many hope will bring the much-needed political stability to the Himalayan nation.

Of the total 15.4 million voters, 3.19 million were eligible to cast their votes in the first phase while the rest will exercise their franchise during the second phase.

The elections are being seen as the final step in Nepals transition to a federal democracy following a decade-long civil war till 2006 that claimed more than 16,000 lives. PTI SBP CPS

--- ENDS ---
From 2011 to 2014, the state of California experienced the worst drought in its recorded history. With that drought came a shortage of agricultural water suppliesin a state that produces nearly half of the fruits, nuts, and vegetables grown in the United States. Though the area has since seen a slight rebound, the central California region is still experiencing a significant loss of agricultural yield and revenue. The primary culprit? Soil salinity.

"Soil salinization is a global phenomenon that threatens the sustainability of agricultural production," says EPP Assistant Professor Meagan Mauter, "at a time when food demand is increasing."

While salts naturally occur in soil and water, they build up in the soil when irrigation water is saline and the rate of evaporation is high. Under Mauter's advisement, Ph.D. student Paul Welle has been studying just how heavy the impact of soil salinization has been on California's annual agricultural yield.

Taking advantage of high-resolution satellite data for crops grown in CA and recently released information on soil salinity, Welle was able to estimate the effect of soil salinity on crop yield. What the data revealed was shocking.

"Using this data, we can implement field scale models to predict how individual crops would be effected by ongoing, increased salinity levels," Welle said. "What we found is that the central California region is losing approximately $3.7 billion in annual agricultural revenue due to salinity levels in the soil. This is about 10% of the region's annual agricultural revenue."

This is a tremendous loss, but surprisingly, Welle's analysis reveals that this may not be a problem worth fixingat least not now. And it's not because it isn't good for the environment. In the end, it all comes down to money.

"Current de-salinization technology, unfortunately, is very expensive," he says. "Even with this high $3.7 billion loss of revenue, the cost of current desalinization technology would be even more expensive. Barring substantial cost reduction, policymakers should not rely on current desalination tech to offset salinization."

More than anything, however, Welle's research highlights the importance of high-resolution data when modeling agricultural systems. Because the mechanisms of yield reduction impact different crops differently, modeling yield loss due to soil salinization at the level of individual fields produces much more accurate results than estimating yield losses at the county level.

Continuing innovation in both high resolution data collection and models for agricultural decision making has the potential to significantly improve our understanding and management of agricultural systems.
Credit: kdshutterman/Shutterstock.com

People have been dreaming about space travel for hundreds of years, long before the arrival of the spectacular technologies behind space exploration today  mighty engines roaring fire and thunder, shiny metal shapes gliding in the vastness of the universe.

We've only travelled into space in the last century, but humanity's desire to reach the moon is far from recent. In the second century AD, Lucian's True History, a parody of travel tales, already pictured a group of adventure seekers lifted to the moon. A whirlwind delivered them into the turbulence of lunar politics  a colonial war.

And much earlier than any beep of a satellite, these dreams of moon travel were given real, serious thought. The first technical reckoning of how to travel to the moon can be found in the 17th century.

This was inspired by astronomic discoveries. For a long time, it was thought that the world was encapsulated with ethereal or crystal spheres in which nested celestial bodies. But then Galileo managed to compile enough observational data to support Copernicus's theory of heliocentrism. This meant that the moon began, for the first time, to be considered an opaque, Earth-like object.

Galileo's Starry Messenger, published in 1610, even featured some sketches of the eerie moon relief. In 1620, Ben Jonson's masque News from the New World Discovered in the Moon was performed before King James I, entertaining the court with satire but also elucidating the newest astronomical viewpoints.

It was in the context of this moon fervour that John Wilkins, a 24-year-old graduate of Oxford University, published in 1638 the first edition of his book The Discovery of a World in the Moone. The book popularised Galileo's description of the moon as a solid and habitable world.

Frontispiece from The Man in the Moone, Francis Godwin (1562-1633). Credit: Houghton Library, Harvard University

A World in the Moone

When preparing the much edited and lengthened second edition of the Discovery, eventually published in 1640, Wilkins was impressed by Francis Godwin's story The Man in the Moone, also appearing in 1638, in which a character named Domingo Gonzales is transported to the moon in a chariot towed by a flock of geese.

After reading this piece of 17th century science fiction, Wilkins suggested that not only must occasional travel to the moon be possible, but also regular visits and habitation. The moon was the ultimate travelling destination of his time, and moon travel a technological achievement pushing the historical and providential limits for mankind.

Appreciating various fictional scenarios, Wilkins aimed to "raise up some spirits eminent for new attempts and strange inventions" and to contemplate practical ways of "bringing the moon closer" by travelling through space. In the pragmatic tone of an artisan, the second edition of the Discovery ruminates on the technicalities:

"I do seriously, and upon good grounds, affirm it possible to make a flying chariot."

Wilkins describes and designs various flying apparatuses driven by manpower, or towed by majestic exotic birds, and even imagines an engine to be contrived on the same principles as the legendary mechanical doves and eagles.

Map of the Moon engraved by the astronomer Johannes Hevelius, 1645. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

He was also alerted to the challenges of moon travel, and even expressed a slight vexation that divine providence did not endow the human body with any natural means of flying. Enumerating the impediments to flight from the Earth, he humorously warns that there won't be any "castles in the air to receive poor pilgrims, or errant knights". He discusses the nature of gravity, how difficult it would be to bring food and water to the moon, and to survive the cold and thin lunar air.

In perspective

But Wilkins also states with perfect assurance that the ways of conveyance through space would eventually be discovered. He predicts that "as soon as the art of flying is found out", humans "will make one of the first colonies, that shall transplant into that other world", all glorifying the future of air travel.

The Discovery ends with Wilkins prophesying that posterity will likely be surprised at the ignorance of his age. But this isn't the feeling kindled in his modern readership, although many of his conclusions about the moon are indeed mistaken. Even though the answers were premature, our contemporary investigations of the moon still follow the same trajectory of questions as did his Space Odyssey 1640: the presence of water, the possibilities for regular travel and colonisation. Young John Wilkins meant to provoke the readers' curiosity concerning "secret truths" about nature, and fulfilled this purpose for centuries ahead.

Space explorations tend to be viewed primarily as manifestations of spectacular and, alas, costly technologies. Is this not the reason why the moon flight program has been jammed for years? In the 17th century, motivation to design the means of travel to the moon was similar to our contemporary stimuli for space exploration as they were formulated at the dawn of the Apollo spaceflight program. People dreamed of pushing the boundaries of humankind and of bringing to life a great deal of useful knowledge.

After all, it is not only machinery that drives human beings into space, but humanity's curiosity and imagination prompting the desire to reach beyond the possible.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

An international team of scientists, led by the University of Leeds, has quantified the relationship between natural sources of particles in the atmosphere and climate change.

Their study, published today in Nature Geoscience, shows that the cooling effect of natural atmospheric particles is greater during warmer years and could therefore slightly reduce the amount that temperatures rise as a result of climate change.

Particles in the atmosphere can alter Earth's climate by absorbing or reflecting sunlight. These particles are often produced by human activities, such as from cars and industry, but there are also naturally occurring particles.

The team combined atmospheric measurements with a computer model to map the effects of two natural particle sources: smoke from forest fires and the gases emitted by trees that can stick together to form tiny particles.

Study lead author Dr Catherine Scott, from the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds, said: "Natural particles can alter the climate, but they are also strongly controlled by it.

"As the Earth warms, plants release more volatile gases from their leaves - these are the gases that, for example, give pine forests a piney smell. Once in the air these gases can form tiny particles. More particles in the atmosphere reflect away the Sun's energy, which helps to cool the planet.

"This cooling offsets some of the temperature rise and is known as a negative climate feedback. We can think of forests acting as giant air conditioners slightly reducing the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions."

Study co-author Dominick Spracklen, Professor of Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions at Leeds, said: "Overall the response of the climate to an initial warming is to amplify that warming, i.e., a positive feedback.

"This natural negative feedback might act to offset a small amount of warming due to climate change but it is not enough to counteract other strong positive feedbacks in the climate system. This means reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are still required to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

"Our research highlights the need for these complex interactions to be well represented in climate models. The latest generation of models being used for future climate projections include more detail about the way that the atmosphere and the land surface interact than ever before - but it's important that we can isolate the role that these processes are playing as the climate evolves."

The research paper, "Substantial large-scale feedbacks between natural aerosols and climate", is published in Nature Geoscience 4th December 2017.

More information: C. E. Scott et al, Substantial large-scale feedbacks between natural aerosols and climate, Nature Geoscience (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-017-0020-5 Journal information: Nature Geoscience
The internet is about to change dramatically. Unless it isn't.

On Dec. 14, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to approve a plan to reverse rules passed in 2015 that prevent internet service providers from blocking, throttling or prioritizing online content.

The repeal of net neutrality is seen as a victory for large telecommunication companies such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, which stand to benefit from less-stringent regulation, but it is opposed by many tech companies, entrepreneurs and concerned citizens. The FCC has received millions of public comments on the matter on its website, and nationwide protests are planned for Dec. 7.

Justin "Gus" Hurwitz, assistant professor of law and co-director of the Nebraska College of Law's Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law program, researches the intersection between law and technology and the role of regulation in high-tech industries. In a recent interview with Nebraska Today, he said net neutrality is widely misunderstood and that the new plan should not be seen as an existential threat to the internet, but as a regulatory shift that could benefit consumers and businesses while maintaining a "cop on the beat" to take action should problems arise.

What is net neutrality, and why should the average person care?

Net neutrality is basically the idea that ISPs should treat all data traversing their networks the same. The underlying concern is that, because there isn't a great deal of competition in the market for internet access, ISPs will be able to act anti-competitively to benefit themselves in ways that will harm consumers.

While these concerns are not entirely unreasonable, consumer concern about net neutrality dramatically exceeds either the likelihood or magnitude of potential harms. One reporter who has been covering these issues for several years recently explained this well, saying that concerns about net neutrality are similar to the alarm over the Y2K bug at the turn of the century: People were literally preparing for the end of society due to the Y2K bug, and there ended up being almost no actual effects.

This isn't to say that consumers are wrong to be concerned about a lot of what is going on with the internet, or that net neutrality isn't part of this matrix of issues. But the overwhelming majority of examples that folks point to to demonstrate why net neutrality is a problem are unrelated to net neutrality and are actually examples of things that have been good for consumers, or have been addressed by the government without need for strict net neutrality rules.

Opponents of net neutrality say that current rules are heavy-handed and are stifling growth. Supporters say this repeal could mark the end of the open internet. How do you see the situation?

The internet was "open" for decades prior to adoption of the 2015 rules, and things went pretty well. In fact, in most of the rest of the world, internet access was strictly regulated (or even run) by the government. The United States was the only major economy that expressly adopted a hands-off, competition-based approach in the 1990s, under President Clinton  and today, nine of the 10 largest internet companies in the world are located here.

The 2015 rules were premised on a contentious idea called the "virtuous circle," which argues that strict rules would encourage more investment by "edge companies" to develop innovative internet services which, in turn, would increase consumer demand for internet access which, in turn, would encourage ISPs to invest more in building out bigger, better, faster networks. That is, if the theory of the 2015 rules is correct, we should have seen ISPs investing more in their networks since 2015.

In fact, if anything, we have seen the opposite. No credible studies show an increase in investment by ISPs since that time; other studies suggest that investment has decreased by a meaningful amount.

One of the most pressing issues we face today is building out more networks to un- and underserved communities. If the effect of the 2015 rules has been to decrease network investment, this means that the effect has been to slow down these efforts. Under the 2015 rule, those who do not have sufficient internet access are less likely to get that access.

Some are saying this new plan could lead to a tiered internet, with a fast lane and a slow lane (or several lanes). How likely do you think this is, and what might the consequences be?

It's likely, and it's likely a good thing. This is actually an intensively studied question in the economics literature. In the early 2000s, there was basically a new subfield of economics developed to study just this question  the effects of paid prioritization on consumers. These studies consistently show that paid prioritization ("fast lanes") can be good for consumers. They also show that they can be bad for consumers and that it's hard to tell beforehand what the outcome will be. But if the outcome is bad, any number of government entities and consumer groups can take action against ISPs to change course.

But there is something more important going on in the background: We already have a tiered internet. The major edge companies  Google, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, etc.  invest hundreds of millions of dollars in private "content delivery networks." These are networks that they use to bypass the vast majority of the internet to offer consumers better service. In other words, they are already paying for prioritized access  they're just not paying the ISPs for it directly.

This puts startups at a serious competitive disadvantage. If your new service needs very high speed or low latency access, today there is no way for you to get that sort of service, short of paying a great deal of money to a content delivery network. Allowing ISPs to charge for prioritization actually could dramatically benefit startups by giving them a competitive alternative that is easier to implement and can offer even better service than what a content delivery network can offer. That is, paid prioritization can allow startups to overcome a competitive disadvantage that they face today, allowing more innovative services to be brought to consumers.

Several telecom companies have vowed to maintain an open internet regardless of the vote, but promises aren't guarantees. Is the FCC putting too much faith in these for-profit companies? What's to stop them from going back on their promises?

This is the key element of the proposed new rules: ISPs will still be subject to a transparency rule that requires them to disclose how they handle traffic traversing their networks. Both the Federal Trade Commission and state Attorneys General and consumer protection agencies have substantial legal authority to take action against firms that engage in fraudulent or deceptive conduct. So those promises actually are guarantees.

An ISP could change its policy but would need to be up front about that. And this is a critical point: ISPs are hated, reviled companies. If they abuse this, there will be investigations at every level of government. If ISPs implement rules that are actually bad for consumers, Congress will take action. I almost never say that Congress will pass a law to do anything nowadays  this is an exception.

What about local communities that only have one or two viable options for internet service providers? How might they be affected?

Most ISPs that service communities operate on a much larger geographic scale and set their policies on a systemwide basis. So even if a given community only has one or two ISPs, those ISPs likely operate in some areas where they compete with a few more. Even then, the market isn't robustly competitive  but it is more competitive than it appears on its face.

But even then, our goal should be to get more people more options for getting online. Even more important than areas with only one or two options are those with no ISP options. This brings us back to the question of investment. If we want telecom companies to build networks, it needs to be profitable for them to do so.

If the repeal passes, is that it? Or could net neutrality rules be reinstated?

The new rules are almost certainly going to be challenged in court  and they'll almost certainly be upheld. For that matter, the judicial challenge to the 2015 rules is actually still pending, with petitions for review before the Supreme Court. That's a stark reminder about how long the review process can take  easily three or four years.

That said, the way that the law currently works, federal agencies face relatively modest burdens when they want to change rules. This means that if there is a change of administration, the rules may change. And they may then change again, and again.

For many of us working in this area (myself included) this is the most important issue in net neutrality. Most of the attention focuses on concerns about what ISPs may or may not do. As I've said, there is actually very little effect that these rules are likely to have on consumers. The rules' biggest effects are on the relationship between the FCC and ISPs, and how intrusive the FCC can be into ISPs' operations and business decisions. The bigger problem is that the Communications Act, which tells the FCC how to operate, is exceptionally unclear about how the FCC should deal with ISPs (unsurprisingly, given that it was written in the early 1990s). This alone creates a great deal of uncertainty (and costs), and the fact that the FCC can change its rules as the political winds change amplifies this uncertainty (and costs).

What we really need is for Congress to step in to give the FCC clearer guidance about how it is supposed to regulate the ISP market. There is also a great deal of discussion that we really need the courts to impose stricter review on agencies to make it more difficult for them to flip-flop between policies.
This is a long-exposure image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of massive galaxy cluster Abell 2744. It shows some of the faintest and youngest galaxies detected in space. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI

When galaxy clusters and globular star clusters form, a phenomenon called "violent relaxation" occurs. After interacting intensely, the thousands or even millions of bodies reach a state of relative gravitational equilibrium and a fairly long-lasting spatial distribution.

A new study developed by Brazilian researchers and published in The Astrophysical Journal argues that astrophysicists' understanding of violent relaxation is wrong and sets out to correct it.

"The problem is that Vlasov's Equation assumes constant entropy in the system, meaning there's no production of entropy. This is equivalent to saying the situation is symmetrical in time, since the arrow of time is determined by increasing entropy. It evidently isn't in the actual phenomenon," says Laerte Sodre Junior, one of the authors of the study, full professor, and ex-director of the University of Sao Paulo's Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics & Atmospheric Sciences (IAG-USP) in Brazil.

According to Sodre, the relaxation process has always been analyzed using the Vlasov Equation, a differential equation proposed in 1931 by Russian physicist Anatoly Alexandrovich Vlasov [1908-75] to describe the kinetic processes that take place in plasma.

If it were true, a process of this kindreversible in timewould require a revision of the very foundations of physics. For this reason, the specialized literature refers to it as "the fundamental paradox of stellar dynamics."

"It was clear to us that something was wrong, and our suspicion was confirmed by the study," Sodre said. "The solution we found to the purported 'paradox' can be summed up in one short sentence: The Vlasov Equation simply doesn't apply to this case."

Virial equilibrium

The researchers leveraged powerful computational resources, such as employing a computer cluster as a means of proving this intuitive idea. As expected, the simulations showed that entropy increases, but another outcome was hard to understand: While entropy increases in the long run, at the start of the relaxation process, it fluctuates, alternately increasing and decreasing.

"It may seem to contradict what we know about entropy, which is understood to be a quantity that always increases. It certainly does increase inexorably in the long run, but not all the time. Owing to the large scope of gravitational interactions, bodies establish correlations with each other, and these correlations determine the oscillatory nature of entropy in the initial stage of the process," Sodre said.

"We can think about the question like this. Entropy has two aspects. One is purely chaotic, associated with the second law of thermodynamicsthis is conventional entropy. The other derives from these correlations, which fade away over time, albeit slowly. This is what determines its oscillatory behavior."

It might be easier to understand the problem by imagining a cluster of 1,000 stars or 1,000 galaxies confined in a certain volume. They initially have zero velocity, but owing to gravitational interaction, each one begins to attract all the others, and the initial distribution changes, alternately contracting and expanding.

This to-and-fro determined by long-range interactions is associated with oscillations of entropy. It lasts until the entire system reaches a state of relative equilibrium, in which it remains somewhat stable in terms of its general properties. In the 19th century, this state was given the name "virial equilibrium," a term that is still in use.

"It's a specific feature of gravitational interactions. Electromagnetic interactions are also long-range, but because matter is in general electrically neutral, their effects are confined to a limited volume. The shielding effect doesn't occur with gravitational force. In principle, it can extend to infinity. This is what creates those correlations," Sodre said.

Although galaxy clusters and globular star clusters interact with the entire universe, they can be thought of here as closed, "non-dissipative" systems, meaning that their total energy is not lost to the external medium, but conserved.

Some bodies acquire large amounts of kinetic energy and accelerate beyond escape velocity, becoming detached from the system, but this is not especially significant, overall. Entropy oscillation generally should be considered an internal process, which does not involve an exchange of energy with the medium.

"No other types of system display entropy oscillations that I know of, bar one: chemical reactions in which the compound produced serves as a catalyst for the inverse reaction. As a result, the reaction switches to and fro, and entropy in the system oscillates," Sodre said.

The new study resolves the "fundamental paradox of stellar dynamics," and describes the formation of cosmic macrostructures more realistically. The other researchers who took part were Leandro Jose Beraldo e Silva, Walter de Siqueira Pedra, Eder Leonardo Duarte Perico and Marcos Vinicius Borges Teixeira Lima.

Methodology

The gravitational interaction between these celestial bodiesgalaxies or starsis well described by Newton's law of universal gravitation, published 330 years ago. The problem is mathematically easy to solve for a two-body system, but the analytical solution becomes unworkable in systems involving thousands or millions of bodies, each of which interacts gravitationally with the rest. Hence the need to resort to complex numerical simulations.

"We used numerical techniques developed by Norwegian astronomer Sverre Aarseth, the leading expert on this kind of simulation involving many bodies," Sodre said. "These simulations require so much computer power that we had to use clusters of GPUs, which was far more efficient than the more usually deployed CPUs. Even so, each simulation took several days."

During the project, the Brazilian researchers were actually visited by Aarseth, who remains highly active at age 83. In addition to being a leading astronomer, the prizewinning Norwegian scientist is a keen trekker, mountaineer and nature lover, and he is ranked as an International Correspondence Chess Master.

"Aarseth's computer programs enabled us to solve the problem efficiently and reliably," Sodre said. "We then tested the results by comparing them with the solutions obtained using other cosmological programs. They matched."

More information: Leandro Beraldo e Silva et al, The Arrow of Time in the Collapse of Collisionless Self-gravitating Systems: Non-validity of the VlasovPoisson Equation during Violent Relaxation, The Astrophysical Journal (2017). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aa876e Journal information: Astrophysical Journal

Provided by FAPESP
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

(Phys.org)A small team of researchers from Fordham University and Providence College, both in the U.S., has found that there are small but discernible genetic differences between rats living uptown versus downtown on the island of Manhattan. In their paper published in the journal Molecular Ecology, the group describes trapping rats from one end of the island to the other, conducting genetic tests on them and outlining what they found.

New York City, like other major cities in the world, hosts a very large population of ratsin this case, mostly brown rats. Most people that live there find them to be a problem, because in addition to being destructive and carriers of disease, they are also considered to be disgusting. In this new effort, the researchers sought to learn more about the rats that live only on Manhattan Island, noting that little work has been done to understand the rats that live there.

The study consisted of trapping rats, moving north to south on the island, cutting off their tails, and using them as a source for DNA analysisand then comparing the genomic results by geography.

The researchers report that the vast majority of the rats were descendants of rats from western Europebrought over on ships over 200 years ago. But the analysis also revealed that the rats have been in the area long enough to have developed minor genetic differences depending on where they lived. This, the team notes, was not particularly surprising due to rat behaviorthey rarely stray far from home. Nor was it surprising to see differences between the uptown and downtown ratsthe two areas are separated by the commercial district, which is not particularly favorable to rats. Thus, those that live uptown have little incentive to move downtown, or vice-versa. Surprisingly, the analysis showed that there were even slight differences between neighborhoodseach had their own distinct rats. The researchers could tell, for example, by looking at an individual rat profile, if it had resided in the East or West Village.

The group plans to continue their study of urban rat populations, looking for patterns that might help city planners reduce the number of rats, making cities safer and less disgusting places to live.

More information: Matthew Combs et al. Spatial population genomics of the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus ) in New York City, Molecular Ecology (2017). DOI: 10.1111/mec.14437 Abstract

Human commensal species such as rodent pests are often widely distributed across cities and threaten both infrastructure and public health. Spatially-explicit population genomic methods provide insights into movements for cryptic pests that drive evolutionary connectivity across multiple spatial scales. We examined spatial patterns of neutral genome-wide variation in brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) across Manhattan, New York City (NYC) using 262 samples and 61,401 SNPs to understand: 1) relatedness among nearby individuals and the extent of spatial genetic structure in a discrete urban landscape; 2) the geographic origin of NYC rats, using a large, previously-published dataset of global rat genotypes; and 3) heterogeneity in gene flow across the city, particularly deviations from isolation-by-distance. We found that rats separated by 200m exhibit strong spatial autocorrelation (r = 0.3, p = 0.001) and the effects of localized genetic drift extend to a range of 1400m. Across Manhattan, rats exhibited a homogeneous population origin from rats that likely invaded from Great Britain. While traditional approaches identified a single evolutionary cluster with clinal structure across Manhattan, recently-developed methods (e.g., fineSTRUCTURE, sPCA, EEMS) provided evidence of reduced dispersal across the island's less residential Midtown region resulting in fine-scale genetic structuring (FST = 0.01) and two evolutionary clusters (Uptown and Downtown Manhattan). Thus, while some urban populations of human commensals may appear to be continuously distributed, landscape heterogeneity within cities can drive differences in habitat quality and dispersal, with implications for the spatial distribution of genomic variation, population management, and the study of widely distributed pests. Journal information: Molecular Ecology

 2017 Phys.org
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Researchers from the University of Birmingham, University of Tubingen and University of St. Andrews have suggested that gorillas are capable of learning food cleaning behaviours without having to witness it in others first.

Though the authors acknowledge that general purpose social learning between individuals can help to increase the behaviour in frequency, their study of captive gorillas - who haven't crossed paths with those who are already known to show the behaviour - shows that food cleaning can be reinnovated spontaneously.

Their findings, published in PLoS ONE, challenge the interpretation of recently published data that suggested that wild gorillas acquire food cleaning primarily by learning from others.

A captive population of western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) at the Wolfgang Kohler Primate Research Centre in Leipzig Zoo, Germany, was provided with clean and dirty apples by the research team.

When the gorillas were provided with dirty apples, coated with sand, all subjects showed evidence of food cleaning in at least 75% of trials.

Lead author Damien Neadle, from the University of Birmingham, explained, "In four of our five gorillas, at least one of the techniques for cleaning was similar to that observed in the wild. Given that these two groups are culturally unconnected, it suggests that social learning is not required for this behaviour to emerge"

"This fact does not discount the importance of social learning, but simply emphasises the role of individual learning in the emergence of food cleaning behaviour in western lowland gorillas. Here, we argue that individual learning is responsible for the form of the behaviour, whilst social learning possibly contributes to its frequency."

"Rather than being a binary consideration of either cultural learning or not, behaviours like food cleaning, which can be propagated by shared learning but are also capable of being learnt spontaneously by individuals, could be deemed to be 'soft culture'."
Velvetleaf represents one of the many invasive plant species that was tested by Dan Atwater and Jacob Barney. Credit: Virginia Tech

It's no secret that globalization, aided by climate change, is helping invasive species gain a foothold across the planet. What came as something of a surprise to Virginia Tech researchers was just how mutable these invaders are.

The scientists discovered that invasive plant species are not only highly adaptive, they are essentially able to change in order to thrive on new continents and in different types of climates, challenging the assumption that species occupy the same environment in native and invasive ranges.

The study, by Jacob Barney, an associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science and Dan Atwater, a lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University and Barney's former post-doctoral advisee, was published Tuesday in Nature Ecology and Evolution, an online journal.

"This is important for both changing how we think about species and where they grow," said Barney, who is also a fellow in the Fralin Life Science Institute and an affiliate of the Global Change Center. "The findings also change our ability to predict where they will grow, and how they may respond in a changing climate. This could be a game-changer for invasive species risk assessment and conservation."

Atwater used data compiled by undergraduate Carissa Ervine, also an author on the paper, to test a long-held assumption in ecology - that the climate limitations of plants do not change, which means we can predict where they will grow. Small studies supported this supposition. However, the Virginia Tech researchers blew this assumption away by testing more than 800 species using new models developed by Atwater and Barney.

"Some people would say that invasive species have different distributions in a new climate. But we found they are occupying a wider range of new climates," said Atwater. "Species are changing in their ecology when they move from one continent to another. We should expect species to change, possibly permanently, when they cross continents."

The results have major consequences for applying environmental niche models to assess the risk of invasive species and for predicting species' responses to climate change. Species capable of changing their ecology and the climates they call home may pose a challenge to researchers using native range data to forecast the distribution of invasive species.

The driver behind the study was a desire to forecast the future distribution of invasive species which pose a serious threat to human, environmental, and economic health. The researchers began by posing the question: Do invasive species occupy the same climate in invasive range that they do in their native range? To find out, they compared native and invasive species.

Barney and Atwater examined 815 terrestrial plant species from every continent, along with millions of occurrence points, or locations where the plants have been known to occur, and compared models in the largest global invasive species study to date. They found evidence of climatic niche shifts in all of the 815 plant species introduced across five continents. A climatic niche refers to the set of climates in which a species has a stable or growing population.

Generally, their findings suggest that niche shifts reflect changes in climate availability at the continent scale and were the largest in long-lived and cultivated species. If species move to a warmer continent, for instance, they tend to shift towards occupying warmer climates. In short, cultivated plants with long lifespans are particularly adept at making themselves home in brand new climates.

"There are not only implications for predicting where invasive species will occur, there are management repercussions as well," said Barney. "As an example, for certain species we use biocontrol, introducing one organism to control another, an approach that may not be effective or safe if the targeted species undergoes ecological change. When we do climate modeling, we assume the climate niche may be the same when it may not be. So, there are a broad range of implications in a broad range of fields."

Barney raised another concern.

"By cultivating speciesbending them for agricultural or ornamental purposes and selecting for traits such as cold-hardiness, we push them into environments they would not have occupied," he said. "Those selection pressures in breeding, plus the environments we put them in, may exaggerate this change. Short-lived species, for example, go into dryer climates. So the take home is that different species' traits influence the direction of a niche shift."

Once Atwater and Barney understand these drivers more fully, they hope to be able to predict how the geographic range of an invasive species will increase in order to pinpoint areas likely to be invaded.

"The other piece layered onto this is the assumption that the climate is stable, which is not the case," said Atwater. "We have also relied on the assumption that a species is a species and its ecological tendencies remain constant. This too is not the case. Species vary in space and time. They behave differently on different continents and in different climates. Consequently, the concept of a species climatic niche is less stable and less clearly defined."

With food production, human health, ecosystem resilience, and biodiversity at stake as global invasions outpace our ability to respond, a greater understanding of climatic niche shifts is critical to future attempts to forecast species dynamics, according to the researchers.

More information: Daniel Z. Atwater et al, Climatic niche shifts are common in introduced plants, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0396-z Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution
The swamp wallaby (Wallabia bicolor) is more closely related to the remaining wallaby species and the large red and grey kangaroos and wallaroos than previously assumed. Credit: Queensland University of Technology, Matthew Phillips

Ironically, it is jumping genes that indicate the need for a reorganization of the kangaroos' phylogenetic tree. According to a new study by a Senckenberg scientist, published recently in the journal Scientific Reports, the swamp wallaby is more closely related to the remaining wallaby species and the large red and grey kangaroos and wallaroos than previously assumed. Together with her Australian colleagues from QUT in Brisbane, the researcher was the first to examine the relationships within the kangaroo genus Macropus on the basis of retrotransposons, genes that literally jump across the genetic material.

Like their larger relatives, the kangaroos, the smaller wallabies are an iconic part of the fauna "down under." Even the Australian National Rugby Team is named after them. However, one wallaby stands out among the rest  the swamp wallaby. It is the only marsupial that is able to switch to "turbo speed" during reproduction, becoming pregnant again before giving birth to the first set of offspring. The animal, which is widespread on the east coast of Australia, also differs from the other wallabies in its appearance, e.g., the shape of its teeth and its more crouched hop.

Until now, the swamp wallaby was placed in its own genus, Wallabia, which only comprises one single species. However, this outsider role is actually not justified  as recently shown by the molecular-genetic studies at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre.

"At the genetic level, the swamp wallaby does not represent a sister genus to the other wallabies, but it belongs to the genus Macropus, like all remaining wallaby species. Thus, it is not only more closely related to the other wallabies than previously thought, but also to Australia's icons, the large red and grey kangaroos and the wallaroos," explains Dr. Maria Nilsson, head of the study.

The red-necked wallaby (Macropus rufogriseus) is one of the "woodland wallabies" - the group the researchers found the swamp wallaby to be closest related to. Credit: Queensland University of Technology, Matthew Phillips

Of all things, it was retrotransposons  genes that literally jump across the genetic material  that shed new light on the relationships among wallabies and kangaroos. These mobile genetic elements are able to make copies of themselves and reinsert these at a different location in the genome. If they occur in the same areas in different species, these species have a common ancestry.

Nilsson elaborates: "Therefore, such jumping genes are also referred to as molecular fossils, which allow inferences on the phylogenetic history. They occur in almost all organisms; due to their properties, they have gained an increasing importance in evolutionary research in recent years."

According to the analysis, the modern subgenera of the kangaroo genus Macropus as well as the swamp wallaby subsequently evolved from a common ancestor approximately five to seven million years ago. During this time period, the forests in Australia began to open up, many later being replaced by spreading grasslands. This habitat was colonized by new species of large red and grey kangaroos and wallaroos. "The wallabies and the swamp wallaby arose at a later date, and they inhabit woodlands," says Nilsson.

According to the research the swamp wallaby belongs to the genus Macropus like the the red kangaroo (Macropus rufus) one of Australias icons. Credit: Queensland Museum, Gary Cranitch

Even in this genetic analysis, the swamp wallaby retains a special status. Although it now falls within the genus Macropus, it constitutes a subgenus within it  and, not surprisingly, this subgenus only consists of one lone species.

The research also still leaves some mystery to be solved as fellow researcher, Matthew Phillips, Associate Professor at the Queenland University of Technology points out in conclusion: "Although we show that the swamp wallaby clearly falls within Macropus, we also found some evidence for a small portion of it' s genome being a relic of an ancient, now extinct kangaroo. It might be interesting to investigate this further."

More information: William G. Dodt et al. Resolving kangaroo phylogeny and overcoming retrotransposon ascertainment bias, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-16148-0 Journal information: Scientific Reports
Maps show the density of aboveground carbon stocks in the Sabah state of Malaysia on the island of Borneo. Mapping forest carbon is an important step in identifying areas for conservation, but is tremendously difficult to accomplish without airborne and satellite technology. Credit: Greg Asner/Carnegie Airborne Observatory.

About 40 percent of northern Malaysian Borneo's carbon stocks exist in forests that are not designated for maximum protections, according to new remote sensing and satellite mapping from Carnegie's Greg Asner and his colleagues.

Asner's flying laboratory, the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, was able to map carbon stocks thattogether with satellite imaging and other geospatial datawill guide conservation efforts undertaken by the Sabah Forestry Department in Malaysian Borneo, the Southeast Asia Rainforest Research Partnership (SEARRP), the PACOS Trust, BC Initiative and other organizations.

"We are proud to be part of this groundbreaking endeavor in the state of Sabah, which sets us apart in accelerating the quest and capacity to protect, restore, and conserve more high-conservation and high-carbon forests in this country," said Sam Mannan, Chief Conservator of Forests. "We shall apply the information gathered for the common good of society, particularly, in mitigating against the worst effects of climate change. This project is of immense value to tropical forest management."

Why is measuring carbon stocks so important?

Because tropical forests like those in the Sabah have converted large quantities atmospheric carbon into organic materialand they accomplish more of this than any other terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. But when this forest land is repurposed for agriculture, logging, or mining, carbon is released into the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change. Tropical deforestation and forest degradation account for about a tenth of the world's carbon emissions each year.

So, figuring out which segments of Sabah's forests contain the most carbon in the form of biomass is an important first step in helping the government of the Sabah meet its goal of increasing protected forests from 1.8 to 2.2 million hectares.

"The nearly 4 million hectares of Sabah's forests are a kaleidoscope of many different habitats and management histories, which required a wall-to-wall mapping effort to truly quantify the amount of carbon they contain," Asner explained.

Using the Carnegie Airborne Observatory's signature technique, called airborne laser-guided imaging spectroscopy, integrated with satellite imaging, and other geospatial data, Asner and his team were able to provide high-resolution maps of Sabah's forests. In addition to finding 50 trees of the tallest tropical trees ever measured, the CAO team pinpointed important targets for conservation efforts.

They found that about 40 percent of the state's carbon is contained in forests that are not protected at the highest designation. What's more, they discovered that Sabah could double carbon stocks by allowing previously logged forests to regeneratea process that they estimate would take about a century.

SEARRP's Glen Reynolds said: "it's a rare opportunity to work with state-wide datasets of this quality. By integrating the CAO maps with ground-based biodiversity data and information on the use of forests by local people, we should be uniquely well placed to identify hundreds of thousands of new conservation areas in Sabah that not only protect key habitats, but also the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities".

"Forest carbon is an important factor in locating places where conservation efforts could make the greatest impact," Asner added. "But other data on canopy biodiversity and animal habitats, such as our work on Bornean orangutans, will also help inform decisionmakers."
By PTI: Mumbai, Dec 3 (PTI) The fate of "Padmavati" rests in the hands of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and actor Shahid Kapoor said now as the film is with the right authority, he hopes the period drama will release soon.

The Sanjay Leela Bhansali-directed film was slated to be released on December 1, but the makers "voluntarily" deferred the release after the CBFC asked them to reapply for certification with complete details.

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They recently applied for 3D certification.

"It is a nice big circle. It is back to where we started, which is where it should have been. The CBFC should have been the right body to take a decision. I am hoping that sooner, not later, it is already pretty being long, we will get a decision.

"... I saw lot of problem with Udta Punjab and eventually the film released and everybody saw it. The film was loved by the people. And I do believe that it will be similar for Padmavati," Shahid said at an event here.

The actor is unfazed by the film being pushed and said "Padmavati" will do well if the team has done a good job.

"... Whenever the film comes out, people will react the way they would to a story that is being told. If the film has the dignity, strength, originality and cinematic effect that a good film should have, the people will speak well of it. I believe that it is a good film," he said.

"Padmavati" is facing trouble with several Rajput groups and political leaders, alleging that Bhansali has tampered with "historical facts" in the movie.

The director has been accused of using a romantic dream sequence between Rajput queen Padmini (Deepika) and Sultan Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh), a claim repeatedly denied by him.

Historians are divided over whether Padmini actually existed.

Chief ministers of BJP-ruled states such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat have also called for a ban on the period drama. PTI KKP SHD/RDS RDS

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Conventional WIMP theories predict that dark matter particles rarely interact with one another, and only weakly with normal matter. Hitoshi Murayama of UC Berkeley and Yonit Hochberg of Hebrew University predict that dark matter SIMPs, comprised of a quark and an antiquark, would collide and interact strongly with one another, producing noticeable effects when the dark matter in galaxies collide. Credit: Kavli IPMU graphic

The intensive, worldwide search for dark matter, the missing mass in the universe, has so far failed to find an abundance of dark, massive stars or scads of strange new weakly interacting particles, but a new candidate is slowly gaining followers and observational support.

Called SIMPs - strongly interacting massive particles - they were proposed three years ago by University of California, Berkeley theoretical physicist Hitoshi Murayama, a professor of physics and director of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) in Japan, and former UC Berkeley postdoc Yonit Hochberg, now at Hebrew University in Israel.

Murayama says that recent observations of a nearby galactic pile-up could be evidence for the existence of SIMPs, and he anticipates that future particle physics experiments will discover one of them.

Murayama discussed his latest theoretical ideas about SIMPs and how the colliding galaxies support the theory in an invited talk Dec. 4 at the 29th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in Cape Town, South Africa.

Astronomers have calculated that dark matter, while invisible, makes up about 85 percent of the mass of the universe. The solidest evidence for its existence is the motion of stars inside galaxies: Without an unseen blob of dark matter, galaxies would fly apart. In some galaxies, the visible stars are so rare that dark matter makes up 99.9 percent of the mass of the galaxy.

Theorists first thought that this invisible matter was just normal matter too dim to see: failed stars called brown dwarfs, burned-out stars or black holes. Yet so-called massive compact halo objects - MACHOs - eluded discovery, and earlier this year a survey of the Andromeda galaxy by the Subaru Telescope basically ruled out any significant undiscovered population of black holes. The researchers searched for black holes left over from the very early universe, so-called primordial black holes, by looking for sudden brightenings produced when they pass in front of background stars and act like a weak lens. They found exactly one - too few to contribute significantly to the mass of the galaxy.

The fundamental structure of the proposed SIMP (strongly interacting massive particle) is similar to that of a pion (left). Pions are composed of an up quark and a down antiquark, with a gluon (g) holding them together. A SIMP would be composed of a quark and an antiquark held together by a gluon (G). Credit: Kavli IPMU graphic

"That study pretty much eliminated the possibility of MACHOs; I would say it is pretty much gone," Murayama said.

WIMPsweakly interacting massive particleshave fared no better, despite being the focus of researchers' attention for several decades. They should be relatively large - about 100 times heavier than the proton - and interact so rarely with one another that they are termed "weakly" interacting. They were thought to interact more frequently with normal matter through gravity, helping to attract normal matter into clumps that grow into galaxies and eventually spawn stars.

SIMPs interact with themselves, but not others

SIMPs, like WIMPs and MACHOs, theoretically would have been produced in large quantities early in the history of the universe and since have cooled to the average cosmic temperature. But unlike WIMPs, SIMPs are theorized to interact strongly with themselves via gravity but very weakly with normal matter. One possibility proposed by Murayama is that a SIMP is a new combination of quarks, which are the fundamental components of particles like the proton and neutron, called baryons. Whereas protons and neutrons are composed of three quarks, a SIMP would be more like a pion in containing only two: a quark and an antiquark.

The SIMP would be smaller than a WIMP, with a size or cross section like that of an atomic nucleus, which implies there are more of them than there would be WIMPs. Larger numbers would mean that, despite their weak interaction with normal matter - primarily by scattering off of it, as opposed to merging with or decaying into normal matter - they would still leave a fingerprint on normal matter, Murayama said.

He sees such a fingerprint in four colliding galaxies within the Abell 3827 cluster, where, surprisingly, the dark matter appears to lag behind the visible matter. This could be explained, he said, by interactions between the dark matter in each galaxy that slows down the merger of dark matter but not that of normal matter, basically stars.

Conventional WIMP theories predict a highly peaked distribution, or cusp, of dark matter in a small area in the center of every galaxy. SIMP theory predicts a spread of dark matter in the center, which is more typical of dwarf galaxies. Credit: Kavli IPMU graphic based on NASA, STScI images

"One way to understand why the dark matter is lagging behind the luminous matter is that the dark matter particles actually have finite size, they scatter against each other, so when they want to move toward the rest of the system they get pushed back," Murayama said. "This would explain the observation. That is the kind of thing predicted by my theory of dark matter being a bound state of new kind of quarks."

SIMPs also overcome a major failing of WIMP theory: the ability to explain the distribution of dark matter in small galaxies.

"There has been this longstanding puzzle: If you look at dwarf galaxies, which are very small with rather few stars, they are really dominated by dark matter. And if you go through numerical simulations of how dark matter clumps together, they always predict that there is a huge concentration towards the center. A cusp," Murayama said. "But observations seem to suggest that concentration is flatter: a core instead of a cusp. The core/cusp problem has been considered one of the major issues with dark matter that doesn't interact other than by gravity. But if dark matter has a finite size, like a SIMP, the particles can go 'clink' and disperse themselves, and that would actually flatten out the mass profile toward the center. That is another piece of 'evidence' for this kind of theoretical idea."

Ongoing searches for WIMPs and axions

Ground-based experiments to look for SIMPs are being planned, mostly at accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, where physicists are always looking for unknown particles that fit new predictions. Another experiment at the planned International Linear Collider in Japan could also be used to look for SIMPs.

As Murayama and his colleagues refine the theory of SIMPs and look for ways to find them, the search for WIMPs continues. The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment in an underground mine in South Dakota has set stringent limits on what a WIMP can look like, and an upgraded experiment called LZ will push those limits further. Daniel McKinsey, a UC Berkeley professor of physics, is one of the co-spokespersons for this experiment, working closely with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where Murayama is a faculty senior scientist.

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the galaxy cluster Abell 3827 shows the ongoing collision of four bright galaxies and one faint central galaxy, as well as foreground stars in our Milky Way galaxy and galaxies behind the cluster (Arc B and Lensed image A) that are distorted because of normal and dark matter within the cluster. SIMPs could explain why the dark matter, unseen but detectable because of the lensing, lags behind the normal matter in the collision. Credit: University of California - Berkeley

Physicists are also seeking other dark matter candidates that are not WIMPs. UC Berkeley faculty are involved in two experiments looking for a hypothetical particle called an axion, which may fit the requirements for dark matter. The Cosmic Axion Spin-Precession Experiment (CASPEr), led by Dmitry Budker, a professor emeritus of physics who is now at the University of Mainz in Germany, and theoretician Surjeet Rajendran, a UC Berkeley professor of physics, is planning to look for perturbations in nuclear spin caused by an axion field. Karl van Bibber, a professor of nuclear engineering, plays a key role in the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment - High Frequency (ADMX-HF), which seeks to detect axions inside a microwave cavity within a strong magnetic field as they convert to photons.

"Of course we shouldn't abandon looking for WIMPs," Murayama said, "but the experimental limits are getting really, really important. Once you get to the level of measurement, where we will be in the near future, even neutrinos end up being the background to the experiment, which is unimaginable."

Neutrinos interact so rarely with normal matter that an estimated 100 trillion fly through our bodies every second without our noticing, something that makes them extremely difficult to detect.

"The community consensus is kind of, we don't know how far we need to go, but at least we need to get down to this level," he added. "But because there are definitely no signs of WIMPs appearing, people are starting to think more broadly these days. Let's stop and think about it again."
Credit: NASA/JPL

Three times further away from the sun than the Earth lies an enormous lump of metal. Around 252km in diameter, the metallic "M-class" asteroid 16 Psyche is the target of NASA's next mission to the belt of giant rocks that encircles the inner solar system. And the space agency now plans to visit it much sooner than originally planned.

Not only has the launch has been brought forward one year to the summer of 2022, but NASA's scientists have also found a way to get to Psyche (pronounced SYKe-ee) much faster by taking a more efficient trajectory. The new route means the Psyche spacecraft won't have to swing around the Earth to build up speed and won't pass as close to the sun, so it needs less heat protection. It is now due to arrive in 2026, four years earlier than the original timeline.

The main aim of the journey to Psyshe is to gather more information about our own solar system. Psyche is one of many wandering members of the asteroid belt. Unlike the rest of its rocky neighbours, Psyche appears to be entirely made of nickel and iron, just like the Earth's core. This, together with its size, has led to the theory that it might be the remains of the inside of a planet.

Asteroids are made up of primitive materials, leftovers from the dust cloud from which our solar system originated. Different types of asteroids resemble the various steps it took to form planets from this dust cloud. This means they reveal a lot about the origin and evolution of our solar system. Scientists think Psyche could be what's left of an exposed metal core of a planet very similar to Earth.

We actually derive much of our knowledge about asteroids and the evolution of planets from the study of meteorites. Many asteroids and comets are primitive protoplanetary bodies accumulated from the same dust cloud our solar system originates from. As these protoplanetary bodies collide, gravity pulls them together into ever-larger bodies. Eventually these bodies become big and hot enough to partially melt, allowing heavy materials such as iron to sink to the core  and lighter material such as silicon to rise to the surface.

This process, known as differentiation, explains why Earth and other planets such as Mercury, Venus or Mars have an iron core and silicon-rich mantle and crust. The 16 Psyche asteroid is thought to be the leftover iron core of a planet stripped of its mantle in a giant collision.

Psyche shares its home on the asteroid belt with more than 7,000 other planetoids. Credit: Shutterstock

But many questions regarding the formation of Psyche remain. How do you strip a planet of its mantle only leaving the core? Perhaps there is an alternative formation mechanism of an iron-rich body that does not involve differentiation? Psyche may once have been molten and, if so, did it cool from the inside out or from its surface to the core?

Also, Earth's magnetic field comes from a liquid outer core circling around a solid inner core. Did these processes occur on Psyche and create a magnetic field? What elements other than iron accumulate in a core? And how does the surface geology of an iron body look compared to a rocky or icy body?

Avoiding collisions

There are other reasons for visiting asteroids. For one thing, possible collisions with Earth can have devastating effects. The impact of an 15km-wide asteroid approximately 65m years ago is linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs. And the explosion of the 30m-diameter Chelyabinsk asteroid over Russia in 2013 led to injuries and damage on the ground. We need to know as much as possible about the composition and physical make-up of asteroids to devise the best ways to defend our planet.

Asteroids also provide resources. Those containing water or other valuable materials may act as stepping stones for human exploration of the solar system. And asteroids crossing Earth's orbit may become convenient targets for mining operations, providing materials that are running out on Earth and potentially taking environmentally detrimental extraction methods off Earth. Companies including Planetary Resources and countries like Luxembourg have already started to pursue these ideas in earnest.

The Psyche spacecraft will carry four instruments to gather as much information about the asteroid as it can: a camera, a gamma-ray spectrometer to record what chemical elements are there, a magnetometer, and a radio gravity experiment. The data these devices collect should help us work out if Psyche is the frozen core of a former planet or simply a lump of unmelted metal. If it is a core, then it might help us determine exactly what's at the centre of our own planet.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the lead scientist of the mission, probably summarised it best: "We learn about inner space by visiting outer space".

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
BiliSpec is a low-cost, battery-powered reader designed to diagnose jaundice by immediately quantifying serum bilirubin levels from a small drop of whole blood. Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

The first clinical study of a low-cost, hand-held jaundice detector invented by Rice University students couldn't have come at a better time for NEST360, an international team of scientists, doctors and global health experts preparing for a Dec. 11 competition for $100 million from the MacArthur Foundation. The money would allow the team to carry out its visionary plan to halve the number of newborn deaths in African hospitals within 10 years.

"As the clinical study of BiliSpec shows, saving newborn lives in sub-Saharan Africa is achievable," said NEST360's Rebecca Richards-Kortum, a Rice bioengineering professor and study co-author who has worked for more than a decade to bring effective, affordable neonatal technologies like BiliSpec to Africa. "It simply requires the right tools in the right hands at the right time."

The clinical study, which is based on tests in February and March on 68 patients at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, will appear this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

BiliSpec is a low-cost, battery-powered reader designed to diagnose jaundice by immediately quantifying serum bilirubin levels from a small drop of whole blood. Jaundice, which is caused by the buildup of bilirubin in the bloodstream, affects about 60 percent of newborns and can cause severe, untreatable brain damage or death if it is untreated. Standard jaundice tests require multiple expensive disposables and laboratory equipment like centrifuges or spectrophotometers that African hospitals typically cannot afford.

Rice University students (from left) Mathieu Simeral, Pelham Keahey and Kristofer Schroder helped complete the first clinical study of BiliSpec, a low-cost, battery-powered reader designed to diagnose jaundice by immediately quantifying serum bilirubin levels from a small drop of whole blood. BiliSpec is one component of a 17-piece neonatal package called NEST, short for Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies, that is designed specifically for African hospitals by NEST360, an international team of scientists, doctors and global health experts. Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

Babies in sub-Saharan Africa are about 100 times more likely to die of jaundice than are babies in the U.S., partly because doctors diagnosing jaundice in sub-Saharan Africa have little to go on other than what their eyes tell them.

"Clinicians in sub-Saharan Africa typically diagnose jaundice by looking at a child and gauging the color of their skin or the whites of their eyes," said study co-author Pelham Keahey, a Rice applied physics graduate student who worked alongside clinicians at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital to gather data for the study.

The study showed that BiliSpec has comparable accuracy to the more expensive laboratory tests found in high-resource settings. Each BiliSpec test costs about 5 cents and can be performed in about two minutes right at the patient's bedside. The price is important because it could bring testing for jaundice within reach for cash-strapped hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa.

"The next step is a larger, two-year follow-up study of efficacy and usability that will be conducted at five hospitals in Malawi," Keahey said. Rice won funding for the follow-up study in August from Saving Lives at Birth, a joint undertaking by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the governments of Norway, Canada and South Korea.

BiliSpec is one component of a 17-piece neonatal package called NEST, short for Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies, that is designed specifically for African hospitals.
Credit: University of Salford

Marine ecologists have shown that traces of DNA in the sea can be used to monitor shark populations.

Current methods of baiting, hooking and filming sharks, rays and other large fish are invasive and costly and require teams of scientists spending much time at sea.

Now, a U.K. study, published today in Scientific Reports, has shown it is possible to monitor these animals via environmental DNA (eDNA), whereby a sample of seawater can provide the identifiable 'tracks' of numerous species of shark.

"Water contains minute fragments of the skin, excretions, blood of animals that have swum through there," explains Stefano Mariani, professor of conservation genetics at the University of Salford.

"It's just like when detectives do a forensic search of a crime scene, and can locate tissues and cells that contain the DNA of the suspects"

Almost half of all known shark species are classified as 'data deficient," in part, because of the expense and complexity of finding the animals in the first place.

"The beauty of our method is that we can get a picture of shark diversity without the need for chasing, baiting and hooking them  so it is a lot faster for conservation scientists and less traumatic for the animals," added Judith Bakker, the lead author of the study.

The team, which included scientists from six countries, from Europe and the Americas, took water samples in four sites in the Caribbean and three in the Pacific Coral Sea. Using a process called metabarcoding, the team recovered significantly more shark DNA sequences in less anthropogenically impacted areas. In the Caribbean, the most diverse site was the Bahamas (a shark sanctuary) where 11 species were identified; in the Pacific, the samples from the remote, inhabited archipelago of Chesterfield proved to contain the largest amount of shark DNA .

Bakker said: "To be able to glean so much information about these charismatic predators by simply sampling a few litres of water is truly astonishing."

"Sharks are vulnerable to overfishing, often have slow growth rate and low fecundity, and therefore are a flagship species in marine conservation.

And Professor Mariani believes this flexible and cheap new way of tracking sharks will help improve conservation: "In order to protect these elusive animals and their ecosystems, we must be able to rapidly assess many areas at repeated time intervals.

"eDNA should prove a big step forward because basically anyone can collect water samples, and every bottle of water is a potential gold mine of data.

Of course much remains to be done to make the approach more effective: the molecular tools can be improved, so that every species of interest can be identified unambiguously; and finer-scale studies are required to understand the impact of oceanic currents and depth on the transport of trace DNA."

More information: Judith Bakker et al. Environmental DNA reveals tropical shark diversity in contrasting levels of anthropogenic impact, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-17150-2 Journal information: Scientific Reports
A steam plume rises from Bogoslof volcano as hot lava heats the seawater during an eruption in August 2017. Credit: Dave Withrow (NOAA/Fisheries)

Most volcanoes erupt beneath the ocean, but scientists know little about them compared to what they know about volcanoes that eject their lava on dry land. Gabrielle Tepp of the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the U.S. Geological Survey thinks that with improved monitoring, scientists can learn more about these submarine eruptions, which threaten travel and alter the ocean soundscape.

During the 174th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, held Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans, Louisiana, Tepp will discuss the challenges and benefits of remote monitoring and what it can teach us about submarine volcanoes.

"It's very difficult to study underwater volcanoes because it's hard to put instruments in the water, especially long-term," Tepp said.

Depending on the size and depth of an underwater eruption, gas and ash may never break the ocean surface, or the gas and ash could create a volcanic plume with the potential to interfere with air travel. "The ocean is a big place so it's pretty unlikely that you're going to have a situation where a ship haphazardly wanders over an eruption, but there are a few that have come close," Tepp said. These unpredictable eruptions may also create a floating blanket of rocks, called a pumice raft, which can clog harbors and damage boats.

Tepp is presenting observations from two submarine volcanoes: Ahyi, a seamount in the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean, and Bogoslof, a shallow submarine volcano in the Aleutian Islands. The volcanoes made very different sounds, suggesting that different processes occurred during eruption. In 2014, Ahyi erupted for two weeks, with short, repetitive gunshotlike explosions every few minutes. In 2016 and 2017, Bogoslof had more sustained eruptions, lasting minutes to hours, which occurred every few days.

Evidence of these eruptions showed up on distant seismometers, which measure waves passing through the ground to record earthquakes, and hydrophone arrays that pick up underwater sound to detect covert nuclear detonations. When volcanoes erupt directly into the water, the sounds can travel for thousands of miles before dissipating.

Questions remain, however, such as if seismometers are sufficient for remote monitoring or if the more accurate information provided by cabled hydrophone arrays is worth the greater expense. Researchers are also interested in how the movement of waves from water into rock, and vice versa, affects signal detection.

Tepp and colleagues at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and USGS recently deployed a hydrophone array in the Northern Mariana Islands. They will collect the data next summer and hope to determine where and how often local volcanoes erupt to see if the area needs better hazard monitoring.

Due to the long distances that eruption signals travel, they likely show up as anomalies on far-off monitoring devices used to study earthquakes, land-based volcanoes or even whale songs.

"Eruptions that create a loud enough sound, in the right location, can travel pretty far, even from one ocean to another," Tepp said. "It makes you wonder, how many of these signals have we seen on distant instruments where nobody knew what they were, and it's a submarine volcano from halfway around the world?"

More information: Abstract: 1aAO5: "The Sounds of Submarine Volcanoes," by Gabrielle Tepp, Matthew Haney, John Lyons, Robert Dziak, Joe Haxel, Del Bohnenstiehl and William Chadwick, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Salon F/G/H in the New Orleans Marriott. asa2017fall.abstractcentral.com/s/u/OajXUcch9zc
By PTI: Amaravati, Dec 4 (PTI) Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today began his three-day tour of the Republic of Korea, urging its industrialists to make the state their second home and invest big in it.

The Chief Minister held meetings with a host of Korean industrialists and told them that AP would like to make rapid strides, inspired by South Koreas success in manufacturing and technology.

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Explaining what all his government had been doing to propel growth and prosperity in the sunrise state in the aftermath of bifurcation, Naidu made a strong pitch for Korean investments in different sectors like automobiles, power, textiles, food processing, electronics, etc, an official release issued here said.

"India?s Look East Policy will bear fruit only from our state," Naidu told the Koreans.

He also invited them to attend the Partnership Summit to be held in Visakhapatnam in February, it added.

Showcasing Kia Motors -- which is now setting up its car manufacturing plant in Anantapuramu district of AP -- as a mascot, the Chief Minister asked the South Korean business houses to explore possibilities of investing in AP as both of them shared many similarities like population and (geographical) size, said the release.

A group of 37 South Korean industries already signed Letters of Intent to invest a sum of Rs 3,000 crore in the state, he said.

Many ancillary units of Kia Motors confirmed a total investment of Rs 4,995 crore and provision of employment to 7,171 persons, the Chief Minister added.

A Korean township would soon be developed in the state, he said.

Naidu requested Hwang Chul-joo, CEO of Jusung Engineering that has 3.5 GW of solar power plants in different states of India, to set up a research and development facility in AP.

Jusung is currently developing the next-generation OLED bulbs and also has plans to set up a further one GW of solar power generating plants in India.

The Chief Minister, who is accompanied by Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, Industries Minister N Amarnath Reddy and senior officials, visited the automobile manufacturing plant of Kia Motors. PTI DBV NRB

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A wave of Syrian air strikes on Sunday killed at least 25 civilians and wounded dozens across the besieged rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, a monitor said. The deadliest raids hit the town of Hammuriyeh, killing 17 civilians including six children, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Other air strikes on the towns of Arbeen, Beit Sawa, Harasta and Misraba killed eight civilians. The Observatory said at least 75 people were wounded and the death toll was likely to rise given the critical wounds suffered by dozens of people. In Hammuriyeh, an AFP photographer saw men carrying the body of a victim wrapped in a blue blanket across a rubble-littered street, a shoeless foot sticking out. The strikes appeared to hit a modest residential neighbourhood, smashing a small convenience store and caking a vegetable stand in a layer of dust. Victims were taken to a nearby clinic where doctors could be seen treating a man wincing from a gash above his knee. In another room, the lifeless soot-covered body of a boy lay in a pool of blood. Eastern Ghouta, one of the last remaining rebel strongholds in Syria, has been under a heavy government siege since 2013 that has caused drastic food and medical shortages. An estimated 400,000 people still live in the enclave, and the United Nations has warned that hundreds are at risk of death if they are not evacuated for urgent medical treatment. The area is one of four "de-escalation zones" agreed earlier this year by regime allies Russia and Iran and rebel backer Turkey aimed at curbing violence across war-ravaged Syria. Syria's government agreed last week to a ceasefire in the region to coincide with the resumption of UN-led peace talks in Geneva. But heavy bombardment of the opposition enclave near the capital has resumed, with another 11 civilians killed on Saturday. The Observatory said Sunday's deaths took the number of civilians killed in regime bombardment of Eastern Ghouta to at least 191, including 43 children, in nearly three weeks. More than 340,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.
By PTI: Itanagar, Dec 3 (PTI) Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu has expressed concern over the hight content of Nephelometric Turbidity Unit (NTU) in the Siang river in the state and said his government was in constant touch with the Centre so that New Delhi could take up the issue with China.

The Siang river, which flows as Yarlung Tsangpo from southern Tibet, becomes the Brahmaputra river in Assam.

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Khandu is also likely to meet Home Minister Rajnath Singh over the issue.

Talking to reporters at Pasighat Advance Landing Ground yesterday, Khandu said his government has taken up the issue of sudden change in water quality of the Siang river and high content of NTU in the water causing death of aquatic lives and even livestock in the state.

The chief minister was apprised of the situation at Pasighat by the Disaster Management Parliamentary Secretary Kaling Moyong, who is also the local MLA, Lok Sabha MP Ninong Ering and deputy commissioner Tamiyo Tatak.

Ering had recently written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a request to take up with the Chinese government regarding sudden change in water quality of the Siang river.

The deputy commissioner briefed Khandu about the current situation of the river flow where NTU was found to be very high to the extent of 425 and said that if exposed for a long period it might affect aquatic lives.

A report prepared by East Siang Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department executive engineer, Bimal Welly, said that the Siang water is high on iron content.

Based on water sample collected on November 27, the report said that NTU caused by concentration of suspended or dissolved particulate materials in the river water is 425 NTU, whereas the permissible range is 0-5 NTU.

The report also confirmed higher degree of iron content in the river waters, 10 PPM (particles/million), against the permissible limit of just 0.1 to 2 PPM.

The same sample will be sent to the State Water Testing Laboratory in Itanagar.

The sample has been sent to the North East Regional Institute of Science and Technology in Nirjuli for further studies. PTI UPL RG KJ

--- ENDS ---
Foreign interference in Australian politics has become a "serious problem", a top official said Monday, with tougher laws on espionage and overseas donations to be introduced to parliament. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ordered an inquiry in June after media revelations that the nation's spy agency had warned the country's political elite two years ago about taking donations from two billionaires with links to the Chinese Communist Party. The probe, by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Fairfax Media, said that despite being cautioned, both the Liberals and Labor continued accepting substantial sums of cash. It said intelligence agencies had major concerns that China was interfering in Australian institutions and using the political donations system to gain access. Beijing denied the allegations as "totally groundless". Since then concern over foreign interference has gathered momentum, heightened by ongoing revelations of Russian meddling in the American political system. "The issue of foreign interference in our politics is an extremely serious problem," Attorney-General George Brandis told parliament on Monday. "So I can tell the Senate that later this week, the government will introduce a milestone legislative package to reform Australia's espionage and foreign interference legislation." He said the new laws would strengthen and modernise a range of offences "for the purposes of investigating, disrupting and prosecuting acts of espionage and covert interference in the Australian political process". There would be a new transparency scheme, providing "visibility of the nature and extent of influence over Australia's government and political processes by foreign interests". "It will introduce new offences targeting foreign interference and economic espionage, including offences that criminalise covert and deceptive activities that support the intelligence activities of foreign actors," he added. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said in response on Monday that Beijing "always stays committed to following the principle of mutual respect for sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs" of other countries. "At the same time we urge the relevant people on the Australian side to abandon prejudices," Geng Shuang told a regular press briefing. Last week, a key Australian Labor MP, Sam Dastyari, was forced to resign as deputy opposition whip after reports that he told a Chinese businessman his phone was likely being tapped by intelligence agencies. The man, Huang Xiangmo, is a prominent Chinese political donor.
Faizal Ali (centre, in cap), his brother Shah (third from right, in cap) and the rest of their extended family, shortly after landing at Changi Airport Terminal 1 from Surabaya on Sunday (3 December) morning. (PHOTO: Nicholas Yong/Yahoo News Singapore)

UPDATE: Singapores Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave details of its Bali airport counter.

By Nicholas Yong and Nurul Azliah

What was meant to be their first-ever family vacation turned into an expensive and extended trip for one Singaporean clan, thanks to the volcanic eruptions from Balis Mount Agung, which disrupted travel plans for thousands.

For marketing analyst Faizal Ali, 40, his musician brother Shah, 42, and 16 other members of their extended family, it was a long journey home following the cancellation of their return flight from the Indonesian island.

After a 17-hour car and ferry journey from Bali to Surabaya, and then a three-day wait for the first available flight home, the family finally arrived in Singapore early on Sunday morning (3 December).

Faizal reckoned that his family exceeded their planned budget by some $9,000  or about $500 per person  thanks to the additional travel and accommodation arrangements, not to mention daily expenses.

We really overspent, we kept going to the ATM to withdraw money, he said. To make matters worse, they did not purchase travel insurance as they thought that it would be a short trip.

Instead of the planned four- to five-day getaway, they spent almost a full week in Indonesia.

Faizal and Shah, who play in a band together, ended up having to cancel a performance scheduled for 29 November. Other family members, such as their 25-year-old cousin Nisa Anuar, a customer service officer, had to take no-pay leave to make up for the extended time away.

The whole thing was very frustrating, said Nisa. The family had been planning their trip since April this year.

Holiday gone wrong

The family arrived in Bali on 26 November, the day that Mount Agung erupted for the second time in a week. Ngurah Rai International Airport was closed that day, leaving thousands of tourists stranded, including many Singaporeans who were meant to fly home on airlines such as Singapore Airlines, Scoot and Jetstar.

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The family proceeded with their plans in Bali, where the main tourist areas are at least 40km away from Mount Agung, as they had been scheduled to leave via Scoot on Wednesday and Thursday.

But on Tuesday morning, they heard about the airport closure for the first time from news reports. This led Faizal, Shah and a family friend, 46-year-old Sri Rahayu, to head to the airport to get an update on the situation.

They found hundreds of fellow tourists already there, with the crowd steadily building up, said Shah. The trio then went to the Scoot counter, where they discovered a solitary staff member who gave them a list of numbers to call.

While there were Critical Response Teams from various countries to help out different tourists, the trio reported that the Singapore counter was not manned. The trio waited for some time along with a crowd of about 10, but no one came.

That night, the family were informed by Scoot via e-mail and text message that their flights had been cancelled.

Singapores Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) told Yahoo News Singapore that its Bali airport counter had been operating since the morning of 27 November 2017, at varying timings based on operational requirements. A contact number was also left for Singaporeans to call outside of the operating hours of the counter, MFA added.

Nisa Anuar, her cousin Shah Ali (in cap) and their family friend Sri Rahayu (right) speaking with Yahoo News Singapore senior correspondent Nicholas Yong. (PHOTO: Nurul Azliah / Yahoo News Singapore)

Long way home

After a long and fruitless international call with a Scoot official in Singapore, the family decided to make their own travel arrangements. With four elderly people and several young children in tow, Faizal and Shah explained that they were concerned about what would happen if Mount Agung erupted again.

We just worried that if it erupted, we might be stuck there for months, said Faizal.

Nisa also took issue with what she felt was Scoots poor customer service. The family members were informed that they had to be at the airport on the day of their flights to find out about alternative travel arrangements, which were also not guaranteed.

You cannot expect the 18 of us to be at the airport waiting for five to eight hours, and then get nothing out of it. We expected Scoot to be more responsive, to indicate clearly in the e-mail what they can offer and be very clear in whether the transfer (to Surabaya) has to be borne by ourselves. It was very vague, said Nisa.

In response to queries from Yahoo News Singapore, Scoot said that passengers booked for travel to and from Bali between 27 November and 4 December period were given the option of cancelling their bookings for a full refund, rebooking themselves onto other Bali flights or to other destinations.

Change fees are waived, but fare differences may apply, said the airline in a travel advisory posted on its website on 27 November.

Regarding the Denpasar airport closure, Scoot said its staff tried their best to assist affected passengers. This included providing free coach transportation to Surabaya where passengers were put on SurabayaSingapore flights on top of the refund/rebooking options.

We had to do our own searching for the drivers in Bali, we had to fork out our own money, said Nisa, who added that the family will be seeking compensation from Scoot.

Asked how it felt to be home, she replied, Good, very good. I just want to sleep.

This story was updated at 1.45pm on 4 December 2017 to reflet Scoots response to Yahoo News Singapores queries.

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(AFP file photo)

Suspicious that his wife was having an affair with her colleague in Singapore, a Chinese national confronted the man and hit him with a metal tool. Later, when all three were at a hospital, he also offered a police officer $50 to avoid arrest.

Lei Yanchen, 39, pleaded guilty in the State Courts on Monday (4 December) to voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous means. He was jailed six months for the offence and was given an additional months jail for attempting to bribe a police officer. Both of Leis sentences will run consecutively from his date of remand on 8 August.

The court heard that Lei came to Singapore in August this year on a social visit pass, hoping to apply for a work permit. On 6 August, Lei asked to meet his compatriot Zhong Bo because he suspected Zhong was having an affair with his wife Wang Yu. Both Wang and Zhong are colleagues in Singapore.

Prior to their meeting at Jurong West Street 64, Lei took a hammer-like tool from a nearby construction site and concealed it. Together with Wang, the couple waited for Zhong at the void deck of a block. When Zhong arrived, Lei asked him how the latter had obtained the phone number of his wifes landlord.

Wang interrupted saying that she had given Zhong the phone number, which is when Lei began slapping her on her arm. Lei also tried to kick his wife. Zhong then tried to protect Wang by restraining Leis arm. Lei then took the tool and hit Zhongs forehead and left side of his head. This left Zhong bleeding and clutching his head in pain.

All three then went to Ng Teng Fong General Hospital for Zhong to seek treatment. Zhong called the police on the way to the hospital. At the hospital, two police officers attended to the case. One of the officers, Sergeant Mervyn Pea, informed Lei that he had committed a serious offence.

While Pea was making a phone call outside the hospital, Lei approached him and tried to slip $50 into Peas right pocket as a bribe in order to avoid arrest. Deputy Public Prosecutor Ang Sock Chin asked for a jail term of six months for causing hurt.

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Leis lawyer Melvin Loh, who was assigned by the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, said in mitigation that Zhongs injuries were not major and that he did not suffer permanent damage. He said that Lei is the sole breadwinner for his family and that he has an aged mother and a 13-year-old child in China.

Loh pointed out that Lei accompanied Zhong to the hospital after seeing his injuries and even used a shirt to help stem the bleeding. He added that Lei would already be punished for his actions by being asked to return to China after serving his sentence.

Lei is also a first-time offender and did not have the means to compensate his victim, said Loh.

District Judge Jasvender Kaur noted that Lei confronted Zhong armed with a deadly weapon and attacked the victim at the temple region not just once but twice, and that his injuries are not insignificant because they required sutures. She also said that there was no provocation on the victims part.

DJ Kaur noted that Lei had accompanied Zhong to the hospital but agreed with the prosecution that the sentencing was appropriate. She sentenced Lei to six months jail for voluntarily causing hurt using a dangerous weapon, and one months jail for offering a bribe to the police officer. Both sentences will run consecutively from Leis date of remand on 8 August.

For voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapon or means, Lei could have been jailed up to seven years, fine, caned or given any combination of said penalties. For corruptly offering gratification, he could have been fined up to $100,000, jailed up to five years or both.

More Singapore stories:
Honduras on Monday finally concluded a much-delayed count from a presidential election held more than a week ago, but refrained from declaring incumbent leader Juan Orlando Hernandez the outright winner as soldiers tried to keep a lid on simmering post-poll unrest. The small Central American nation of 10 million, which suffers chronic violence and prolific gang activity, has been put under nighttime curfew after clashes during protests and some reports of looting. Late Monday, some police were refusing to enforce the curfew; the public safety minister said the row could be part of a dispute over pay and Christmas bonuses. On Friday, a 19-year-old woman was fatally shot during a confrontation between protesters and the police. Her family said she was killed by police, a claim authorities are "exhaustively" investigating. On Monday, police said two officers were fatally shot by unidentified assailants while patrolling during the curfew in the eastern province of Olancho. The deaths were not immediately linked to the political unrest. - Suspicions of fraud - Hernandez's leftwing rival, Salvador Nasralla, a charismatic former TV presenter, aged 64, repeated allegations of "fraud" in the wake of the November 26 election. "I cannot accept anything" from the final results released Monday, Nasralla told AFP, refusing to recognize the figures as valid. "They are not official or final," he said, reiterating a demand that 5,173 ballots be recounted. His supporters have taken noisily to the street in past days, banging on pots, blaring vuvuzelas and singing campaign songs which included insults towards the conservative Hernandez. "They are stealing our votes," a visibly angry Jesus Elviz, a 58-year-old accountant, told AFP during a march on Sunday. Suspicions were triggered by the drawn-out ballot count. In the hours after the vote, an initial tally of more than half the ballots gave the lead to Nasralla, who claimed victory. But then his margin shrank. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal subsequently said its computers had suffered interruptions that slowed counting, and credited Hernandez with a tiny lead. The tribunal's president, David Matamoros, announced Monday that the final count showed Hernandez with 42.98 percent of the vote compared with opposition leader Nasralla's 41.39 percent. But he said the tribunal was not declaring a winner yet, because of possible appeals that could go on up to late December. "We urge all candidates and all parties to put Honduras first," Matamoros said. A group of European Union election observers echoed that. "The electoral process is far from finished," the coordinator of the EU group, Portuguese member of the European Parliament Marisa Matias, told a news conference in Tegucigalpa. "Please make no declaration of the winner until the process is completed," she said. - Election upset - Hernandez, a 49-year-old lawyer who has been president since 2014, had sought re-election despite a constitutional ban on serving more than one term. His conservative National Party had argued that a 2015 ruling by the Supreme Court voided that ban. Going into the election, he was seen as the clear favorite on the strength of his policies clamping down on Honduras' gang violence and endemic corruption. He had backing from the United States, which is pouring $750 million into Central America's so-called Northern Triangle -- the poor, gang-infested trio of nations made up of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala -- to try to stem the outflow of its citizens to the US. Nasralla, though, provided an upset to the voting prognostics. He and his leftist coalition, the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship, denounced Hernandez's bid as illegal. The issue of re-election is especially charged in Honduras, following the toppling of a former leftwing president, Manuel Zelaya, in a 2009 coup. Zelaya, who had been seen as angling to change the constitution to allow for re-election, ended up returning to Honduras and is part of the coalition backing Nasralla.
Shrieks of laughter by non-disabled and disabled children having fun together at Hungarian playgrounds are becoming more common thanks to some determined parents turned innovative designers.

"Disabled kids have the right to play too," says Eszter Harsanyi, 44, one of the co-founders of MagikMe, a start-up designing playground equipment.

Her son Aron, seven, was born with epilepsy and for years had to sit and watch his non-disabled brother bounding through playground climbing frames, or joshing in sandpits.

Now he too can join in at some 30 playgrounds in Budapest -- and another 30 nationwide -- that have installed MagikMe equipment.

"It helps Aron a lot to mingle with able-bodied peers," Harsanyi told AFP as she helped him onto a funky bright red modified see-saw called the "Butterfly".

With two extra legs for laying on, and hand-grips and "wings" along the sides to prevent falls, children can climb out of wheelchairs or be laid down to enjoy the ride without needing a helper to hold them.

"It's also safe for non-disabled babies who cannot sit up yet," Harsanyi says.

Harsanyi and four other parents with disabled children hatched the idea in 2013.

"We were frustrated that our kids -- disabled and non-disabled -- played happily together at home but couldn't at the playground," she says.

- On a mission -

After bringing a designer friend on board and setting up a firm in 2014, a key part of the parents' mission was making the equipment cool for able-bodied kids too.

Another piece, an elevated sandbox called "Dune" allows children to dig together standing up or laying down.

Such "inclusive" playgrounds can make society more tolerant in the long-run, Harsanyi believes.

"Playing together shows healthy children what it means to be different, and how to talk, laugh, listen to, and even touch disabled kids," she said.

Another parent at the playground, Arpad Koncz, said he was "surprised and saddened" to learn that most playground equipment is effectively off-limits to disabled kids who cannot sit unassisted.

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"The first time my (non-disabled) child met someone who is different from her was here. It's good that they experience that early in life," he told AFP.

As well as designing new sensory and tactile equipment, the firm plans to branch out to neighbouring Austria and Slovakia, and further afield, said Harsanyi.

"Lack of playground access for disabled kids is not a Hungarian problem, but a global one," she added.

This Sunday is the International Day of Disabled Persons, which aims to promote understanding and awareness of disability issues.
AFP News

Kenya's former president Uhuru Kenyatta arrived Tuesday in eastern DR Congo's main city of Goma, as fresh clashes with M23 rebels occurred just to the north, sending thousands fleeing. Troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were battling M23 fighters in Kibumba, 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Goma, security officials and local residents said. The M23 has recently seized swathes of territory in North Kivu province, displacing tens of thousands of people in their advance. Kibumba is considered one of the last obstacles to the rebels before Goma, a commercial hub of one million people on the Rwandan border. On Tuesday afternoon, rumours that the M23 was approaching sent a fresh wave of people fleeing to the Kanyaruchinya displacement camp, south of Kibumba. About 40,000 people are currently in the camp, according to its head. A security official who asked for anonymity said that people began to flee after seeing soldiers themselves retreating towards Goma after clashes with M23 rebels. North Kivu's military governor, General Constant Ndima, urged people to remain calm late Tuesday. "I want to reassure you... Loyalist forces are containing the enemy on the heights of Kibumba," he told reporters. The crisis has cratered relations between the DRC and its smaller central African neighbour Rwanda, which Kinshasa accuses of backing the militia. Uhuru Kenyatta, a mediator for the seven-nation East African Community (EAC), arrived in Goma on Tuesday and visited Kanyaruchinya. He told reporters late Tuesday that the stories he had heard were "heart-breaking". "I cannot ignore what I have seen," Kenyatta said. "I must say to all parties: You cannot negotiate in the face of human catastrophe". - 'De-escalation' - Kenyatta's visit to the DRC is the latest in a round of diplomatic bids to defuse the crisis in the impoverished country's volatile east. The former president landed in the Congolese capital Kinshasa on Sunday for talks, following on the heels of a visit from Angolan President Joao Lourenco. The EAC has also called for a "peace dialogue" in Kenya's capital Nairobi on November 21. In addition, the bloc has agreed to send a peacekeeping mission to eastern DRC. Kenyan troops arrived in Goma over the weekend, as part of that operation. On Monday, Kenyatta urged armed groups to put down their arms and return to the negotiating table. "There is nothing that can be gained through the barrel of a gun," he had told reporters. On Tuesday, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had discussed the situation with Rwanda's Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta, on the margins of the G20 meeting in Indonesia. "I underscored the United States deep concern about the continuing violence in eastern DRC, and called on Rwanda to take active steps to facilitate de-escalation," he said in a tweet. - Rebel return - Biruta, for his part, tweeted that Rwanda is committed to regional diplomatic mechanisms to bring peace to eastern DRC, as well as to finding a political solution to the crisis. Over 120 armed groups roam the region, many of which are a legacy of regional wars which flared at the turn of the century. The M23 -- a mostly Congolese Tutsi group -- first leapt to prominence in 2012 when it briefly captured Goma before being driven out. But the rebel group returned in late 2021 after years of dormancy, claiming the DRC had failed to honour a promise to integrate its fighters into the army, among other grievances. It captured the strategic town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border in June. In recent weeks, the rebels have also won a string of victories against the Congolese army, edging closer towards Goma. The DRC expelled Rwanda's ambassador in late October amid the renewed M23 offensive. Despite official denials from Kigali, an unpublished report for the UN seen by AFP in August pointed to Rwandan involvement with the M23. Rwanda accuses the Congolese government of colluding with Hutu militants who fled across the border after the 1994 Rwandan genocide. hbm-at/eml/kjm
Macau's youngest-ever lawmaker, a leading pro-democracy advocate, has been suspended from the city's legislature in an echo of the disqualification of rebel Hong Kong legislators as China's pressure on political opponents grows. The government of the semi-autonomous southern Chinese gambling enclave is largely pro-establishment but Sulu Sou, 26, was voted into the legislature in public elections in September. His party, the New Macau Association, advocates universal suffrage for the territory's parliament, where more than half the representatives are selected by special interest groups or by the pro-Beijing city leader. The opposition won five of 14 directly elected seats in the 33-strong legislature in September. Sou's suspension comes as China has spoken up against any challenges to its sovereignty across its territories. A statement from Macau's parliament said 28 lawmakers had voted to suspend him, with four voting against. Local media said it meant he could now be investigated on a charge of "aggravated disobedience" over a protest last year. Serving lawmakers are immune from prosecution. Sou said the move was politically motivated when he addressed a rally before the vote. "Promise me: don't give up, keep moving forward!" he posted on Facebook after his suspension. The pro-democracy movement in Macau is far smaller than in nearby Hong Kong, where massive rallies brought several major roads to a standstill in 2014. But there have been outbursts of frustration against the government. Sou was among the leaders of one of Macau's largest anti-government protests in 2014, when 20,000 people demonstrated against generous retirement packages for outgoing officials. Two pro-independence and four pro-democracy lawmakers have been disqualified from Hong Kong's parliament following a special ruling from Beijing last year. They were ejected for inserting protests into their oaths of office and accused authorities of a political witch-hunt. Sou's election victory in September was seen as a slap in the face to local officials over Typhoon Hato, which devastated Macau less than two weeks before the vote. Authorities stood accused of failing to alert the public before the storm, which caused widespread destruction. Some said the government had hesitated to issue a severe storm alert for fear of affecting the casino business.
People place candles at a memorial for investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered in a car bomb attack, during a vigil in Valletta, Malta November 16, 2017. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi (Reuters)

VALLETTA (Reuters) - Maltese police have arrested 10 suspects in the murder of anti-corruption blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia, the country's prime minister said on Monday, almost two months after she was killed when her car was blown up.

All of the suspects are Maltese nationals and most have a criminal record, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said, without providing any further details. The police have 48 hours to question the suspects, arraign them or release them.

Muscat initially announced eight arrests at a press conference, then later said on Twitter that two more had been apprehended.

"Authorities have all areas of interest under control since early this morning and searches are underway," he said.

A section of Lighters Wharf in Marsa was sealed off early on Monday as helicopters circled above. Military and police used sniffer dogs to search.

Caruana Galizia, 53, was murdered on Oct. 16 as she was driving away from her house in northern Malta.

She wrote a popular blog in which she relentlessly highlighted cases of alleged graft targeting politicians from across party lines.

Galizia was following leads from the Panama Papers, which were leaked in 2015 and show how the world's rich use offshore firms to hide their wealth. She had also accused senior figures in the government and opposition of corruption and money laundering.

All have denied the accusations and Galizia was hit with 36 libel suits in the nine months preceding her death.

Her murder shocked Malta and raised concern within the European Union about the rule of law on the Mediterranean island. Concluding a fact-finding mission on Friday, a group of EU lawmakers said there was a "perception of impunity" in Malta.

(Reporting by Chris Scicluna, writing by Steve Scherer, editing by Crispian Balmer and Larry King)
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) agreed at meeting with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Thursday to start exploratory talks on forming another grand coalition, Bild newspaper reported on Friday.

The newspaper said the participants - Merkel, her Bavarian ally Horst Seehofer and SPD leader Martin Schulz - had discussed various options for forming a government - from forming a grand coalition, setting up a minority government under Merkel and holding new elections. But they ultimately agreed to start talks about a re-run of the conservative 'grand coalition'.

Merkel is casting around for a coalition partner after her centre-right bloc shed support to the far right in a Sept. 24 election. Her attempts to form a three-way tie-up with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens failed.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Michael Nienaber)
Congress in Gujarat has largely been perceived as a pro-poor party, but this time they have also reached to the urban electorate. (Photo courtesy: Jumana Shah)

By Jumana Shah: As the state goes to polls for the first phase on December 9, Gujarat Congress released its manifesto on Monday evening and as manifestos go, this is an ambitious one! The most ambitious among all promises made was the inclusion of Patidars and other sections of society - currently not included in reservation - under a 'special category' without affecting the incumbent reservation formula.

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The manifesto also includes up to 50 per cent reduction in electricity rates, reduction in petrol and diesel rates of up to Rs 10 per litre, 50 per cent reduction in property tax, exclusion of businesses less than Rs 1.5 crore turnover from GST, which would not fall in the ambiguous realm of political will vs policy.

With just five days to go for polling day, BJP is yet to release its manifesto.

Congress in Gujarat is mostly perceived as a pro-poor party. About 60 seats that fall under the urban category is the Congress's steepest battle. According to the 2011 census, 42.6 per cent of the state's population is urban - one of the highest in the country. Undermining the importance of the urban electorate has been the Congress's bane for a long time.

This time however, the party has unapologetically reached out to them - the BJP's core constituency. A bulk of Patidars, especially the influential sections, reside in semi-urban areas. The party is also targeting the under-25 year-old demographic who have not seen a non-BJP government. This is their way perhaps to cash in on the anti-incumbency.

The most intriguing aspect of the manifesto this time, besides the Patidar reservation of course, is the mention of 'ensuring happiness for every Gujarati family - towards a 'Khushaal Gujarat'. "We intend to move towards a more inclusive indicator of progress. Instead of GDP - we would consider a more holistic progress indicator like Gross National Happiness Index (GNHI)," Congress state president Bharatsinh Solanki said.

However, when prodded further on happiness being an abstract concept, Solanki said, "In western countries, especially Scandivanian countries, there is no mad clamour for development. People live a stress-free life. Because their basic needs like affordable and good health, education, job are provided for. This is what we will strive to bring in Gujarat."

The manifesto has been prepared following a five-day visit by Sam Pitroda and Deepak Babaria, along with the manifesto committee chairman Madhusudan Mistry to different parts of Gujarat. The manifesto also has Rahul Gandhi written large on it as it includes most of the points made by him during his various visits over the last two months. He has spoken about happiness being the right indicator of vikas and not money spent on schemes.

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For instance, the exclusion of small traders and manufacturers from GST was an ardent appeal of small businessmen across the state. This would take the unorganised sector out of the GST ambit. If Congress markets this effectively, this could be a huge draw for urban middle class voters, who are currently the BJP's loyal vote bank.

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North Korea's missile tests are an "imminent threat" to Japan, the Japanese parliament declared Monday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said talking to the reclusive state was meaningless. The upper house unanimously adopted a resolution protesting against the North's firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile that dropped into the sea inside Japan's exclusive economic zone last week. The launch showed Pyongyang was determined to continue its nuclear and missile programmes and constituted "an unprecedented, significant and imminent threat against the safety of the region, including Japan." "This is a frontal challenge against the international community that must not be tolerated," added the resolution. Tensions on the Korean peninsula are high after last Wednesday's missile launch. On Monday the US and South Korea began their largest-ever joint air exercise, described by Pyongyang as an "all-out provocation". Abe vowed to put pressure on North Korea until it changes its ways and gives up its missile and nuclear technology in a "verifiable" and "irreversible" fashion. "In order to press North Korea into changing its policies, we shall take a resolute attitude in our diplomacy," he told the upper house. "Dialogue for the sake of dialogue is meaningless," Abe said. Global anxiety about North Korea has steadily risen this year, and Washington last week called on other UN members to cut ties with it in order to squeeze the secretive regime. The call, however, has fallen short of persuading key North Korean backers -- China and Russia -- to take steps to isolate the regime.
A three-metre-high metal fence topped with razor wire in a North Korean port marks the front line of the United Nations' ban on coal exports by Pyongyang. A mountain of North Korean coal -- which would once have been bound for China -- is piled up on one side of the barrier in Rajin harbour, stranded by the interdiction. On the very next dock, around two million tonnes of Russian coal has come in by train and been shipped on to China this year by Russian port operator RasonConTrans. Its activities are specifically excluded from the UN Security Council's sanctions resolutions - but attempts have been made to use it as a way to bypass the restrictions. "They asked but we said no, we dont do it," said RasonConTrans' deputy director Roman Minkevich. The black mounds on the neighbouring wharf were evidence his firm was complying with the rules, he added. "Behind the fence it's Korean coal, it's under sanctions now so it's still here," he told AFP. He declined to elaborate on the source of the requests. "People," he said. "Different people." The UN Panel of Experts on North Korea said in its midyear report that Pyongyang has been "deliberately using indirect channels to export prohibited commodities". For years the coal trade was a lucrative earner for Pyongyang -- its main ally and key economic partner China imported 22 million tonnes worth nearly $1.2 billion in 2016. But while Beijing says North Korean imports have come to a halt, RasonConTrans' business is booming. Since starting operations in 2015 its volumes have doubled each year, and Minkevich is targeting three million tonnes next year, with a goal of five million in future. It has between three and six ship movements a month at its pier - number 3 in the port, which can take vessels up to 180 metres (600 feet) long - loading 50,000 tonnes of coal on each, most of them heading for Shanghai. - Women crane operators - Over a hill at the back of Rajin town stands a sprawling disused oil refinery, originally built to process crude from the Soviet Union, in the days of Communist brotherhood provided Pyongyang with cheap or free materials. Locals blame sanctions for the closure but it has been inactive for years, its throttled chimneys standing sentinel over an unfulfilled economic dream. Two large bronze statues of the North Korea's founder Kim Il-Sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-Il look out over Rajin. Despite the looser economic rules applying in the area, the town is bedecked with propaganda slogans seen throughout the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as the country is officially known. Using North Korean labour -- North Korean women are particularly skilled crane operators, Minkevich notes, probably due to their care in performing repetitive tasks -- costs at Rajin are 30 to 40 percent cheaper than at Russian ports. Those competitors on the Russian Pacific coast are also close to capacity, he says, as China and the energy-hungry but resource-poor economies of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan suck coal from Russia's vast reserves. Moscow and Pyongyang have long had fraternal relations, and a picture of North Korea's late leader Kim Jong-Il meeting Vladimir Putin in the Russian capital in 2001 hangs in a RasonConTrans office. The company is 70 percent Russian-owned, with 30 percent held by the port of Rajin. It is the third-biggest taxpayer in the Rason Special Economic Zone, set up by Pyongyang to try to attract trade and businesses to the area where North Korea, China and Russia meet. North Koreans need special permits to enter the SEZ, and a large checkpoint at its southern entrance enforces the rules. RasonConTrans has around 300 North Korean personnel and 110 Russian staff, and brings in much of its needs, such as diesel for its generators, directly from Russia. It is almost entirely independent of the rickety local electricity supply, which Minkevich said was offline around 30 percent of the time. Some aspects of the North reminded him of the former Soviet Union, said the Muscovite, but working under the sanctions regime was a "unique experience". There were difficulties importing parts and building supplies, he said, and "much more paperwork". "It's interesting but it's hard."
Singapore celebrity Jaime Teo launches new range of cookies for Twelve Cupcakes. Photo: Jaime Teo/Instagram

Singapore actress Jaime Teo remains very much involved with Twelve Cupcakes after selling the business to an Indian tea company in January this year. On Monday (4 December), the winner of Miss Universe Singapore 2001 announced the cupcake chains launch of a new range of chewy cookies that will come in six flavours.

According to her post on Instagram, they will be available at chains outlets in Bugis Junction, Changi City Point, Jurong Point, Nex and Orchard Gateway. Its today!!! We are launching The Cookies!! she said in her post. They are chewy and big and yummy.

According to an interview with local magazine 8Days, Teo is still involved with Twelve Cupcakes in terms of creative consultation and marketing.

Twelve Cupcakes experienced rapid growth since its founding years. Today, the chain has a total of 29 stores across Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Taiwan, among others, with subsidiary brands such as Honey Cakes and Dulce and Sucre. The cupcakery has since been acquired by Indian tea company Dhunseri Group.

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A Syrian child is taken for treatment at a hospital following a reported airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Arbin, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Photo:Abudlmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images

Five hundred critically ill Syrian patients, including scores of young children, are trapped with dwindling access to medical supplies in a besieged rebel-held district northeast of Damascus in what some aid workers are calling a humanitarian catastrophe.

In recent weeks, drawing relatively little international press coverage, forces of the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad have pounded the area with airstrikes  including cluster bombs  as part of a ferocious assault on eastern Ghouta, just 12 miles from the countrys capital. The region is the larger of two Damascus suburbs still under the control of rebels who have been fighting Assads regime for the past six years.

As the government offensive escalates, hundreds of patients in the district who suffer from malnutrition, cancer, kidney failure and other diseases have been unable to receive treatment or evacuate, the aid monitors say, warning that siege conditions verge on famine. The UN declared the situation a humanitarian emergency on Thursday after its top humanitarian advisor, Jan Egeland, called situation a catastrophe.

Siege conditions in Eastern Ghouta are at their worst point since the siege began in 2013, said Valerie Szybala, director of the Syria Institute, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that is monitoring the crisis. Since this summer, we have seen a growing number of civilian deaths due to the lack of access to medical care and malnutrition. With winter beginning, the conditions will only grow worse, as people do not have electricity or fuel to make fires.

A Syrian man carries the body of a child who was killed in a reported airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Hamouria, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Photo:Abudlmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)

Of the 502 patients who are at most serious risk, 63 are children younger than 5, Dr. Mohamed Katoub of Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), a nonprofit medical relief organization, told Yahoo News in an interview from Gaziantep, Turkey. In the past, Katoubs organization was able to treat patients with supplies smuggled in through tunnels connecting the area to the opposition-controlled neighborhoods of Barzeh and Qaboun.

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But the Syrian military shut the tunnels in May, and basic medical supplies such as anesthetics and surgical gloves are quickly running out  and the patients have nowhere else to go. Now we dont have access for patients to go to Damascus. We dont have access to medicines to bring inside, so we started seeking evacuation, said Katoub.

A Syrian child receives treatment at a hospital following a reported airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Arbin, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Photo:Abudlmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)

Doctors began requesting evacuations in July. Since then, Katoub says, only eight patients have been evacuated and 11 have died, because diseases that usually can be treated or managed have become fatal. Local doctors must wait for the government to approve aid convoys and ambulances to evacuate patients. Yet only ten aid convoys have passed through the regime checkpoint this year, each delivering barely enough supplies for a month, says Katoub. The regime removes surgical items from the convoys as well, he added  even from caesarean section kits.

One of the families Katoub is most concerned about is in Irbin and has four boys younger than 12 who have hemophilia. Hemophilia, a congenital failure of blood-clotting, was once frequently fatal but now be managed with clotting factor replacement therapy.

But in siege conditions, without treatment, any wound might be a killer, said Katoub. This disease is not killing in other places. Any medical procedures that can cause bleeding, such as dental work, can become catastrophic.

For Katoub, the frustration is compounded because adequate medical care can be accessed just a few miles away. But evacuation does not guarantee safety for residents from the longstanding opposition stronghold. A 5-year-old boy with a suspected case of polio was one of the few patients moved to Damascus. Born after the siege of Ghouta began, he had no official identification papers. After the hospital told the boys father to obtain certain papers, he headed to the civil records office. There, he was arrested.

A Syrian man looks after his son, who is receiving treatment at a hospital after he was injured and his sister was killed in a reported airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Hamouria, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Photo: Abudlmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)

Though relatively unknown to foreigners before the war, eastern Ghouta has been permanently inked on the map in blood. The agricultural periphery of Damascus emerged as a key battleground against the regime, led by rival rebel groups that eventually came under the control of the Saudi-backed Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam). These opposition factions built and operated the tunnels for smuggling that helped sustain the resistance to Assad in his backyard. Rebel groups competed not only with each other, but also with regime-backed war traders running goods and supplies through the Wafideen crossing point into eastern Ghouta.

Eastern Ghouta has paid dearly for its resistance. Residents have endured a grueling siege punctuated by chemical-weapon attacks that horrify the international community but fail to spur action. The population has declined by more than half  from 1.2 million to about 400,00. Since the tunnels were closed, the price of goods has skyrocketed. Last Sunday, the government imposed an exorbitant tax of 2,000 Syrian pounds (a little less than $4) on every kilo of food coming through the regime crossing point.

Eastern Ghouta is one of several de-escalation zones negotiated between Russia, Iran and Turkey in September during the Astana ceasefire talks. Under the agreement, a cessation of hostilities would allow for unimpeded access to humanitarian aid. Instead, the Syrian regime has launched a final campaign to crush the remaining rebel resistance in eastern Ghouta, recalling the brutal offensive to recapture eastern Aleppo last year.

A Syrian man grieves over the body of his son following a reported airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Arbin, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Photo:Abudlmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)

But unlike the outcry that met the regimes onslaught then, Assads final play for eastern Ghouta is unfolding with impunity and in silence. The Trump administration recently ceded to Russia political and military authority to end the war, further closing the door to Western aid and support. If something is not done immediately, thousands of innocent civilians will die, said Szybala. Unfortunately, based on the lackluster response from international actors it seems quite clear that nothing will be done.

The pattern of political cover repeated last week: Russia proposed a ceasefire, which the Syrian government accepted. Syrian forces bombed eastern Ghouta the next day.

Shilpa Jindia is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who specializes in Mideast affairs.

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A senior United Nations envoy arrived at Beijing's airport on Tuesday on his way to North Korea for a rare visit aimed at defusing soaring tensions over Pyongyang's intercontinental ballistic missile launch. The unusual trip by Jeffrey Feltman, which runs to Friday, comes less than a week after North Korea said it test-fired a new ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States. AFP journalists saw Feltman arrive in a UN-flagged car at the Chinese capital's international airport in the morning. North Korea's Air Koryo airline has a 0455 GMT flight to Pyongyang on Tuesday. His trip comes a day after the United States and South Korea launched their biggest-ever joint air exercise -- manoeuvres slammed by Pyongyang as an "all-out provocation". The five-day Vigilant Ace drill involves 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troops, Seoul's air force said. Feltman arrived in China on Monday as Beijing is one of the few transit points to North Korea in the world. China is Pyongyang's sole major diplomatic and military ally, and its main trade partner. Once in the North, Feltman will discuss "issues of mutual interest and concern" with officials, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, adding he was unable to say whether Feltman will meet with the reclusive state's leader Kim Jong-Un. It will be Feltman's first visit to North Korea since he took office five years ago, and the first by a UN under-secretary-general in more than seven years. The UN envoy is also planning to see foreign diplomats and UN workers in the North on humanitarian missions, Dujarric said. - 'Vigilant Ace' - The UN Security Council has hit the isolated and impoverished North with a package of sanctions over its increasingly powerful missile and nuclear tests, which have rattled Washington and its regional allies South Korea and Japan. Pyongyang ramped up already high tensions on the Korean Peninsula five days ago when it announced it had successfully test-fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the continental United States within range. Analysts say it is unclear whether the missile survived re-entry into the earth's atmosphere or could successfully deliver a warhead to its target -- key technological hurdles for Pyongyang. A Cathay Pacific crew spotted what was "suspected to be the re-entry" of the missile as they flew from San Francisco to Hong Kong, the airline said. In a separate message to staff, Cathay general manager Mark Hoey said the crew described seeing the missile "blow up and fall apart," The South China Morning Post reported. - 'Begging for nuclear war'? - In recent years, Pyongyang has accelerated its drive to bring together nuclear and missile technology capable of threatening the US, which it accuses of hostility. US President Donald Trump has engaged in months of tit-for-tat rhetoric with Kim, pejoratively dubbing him "Little Rocket Man" and a "sick puppy". North Korean state media has hit back with a flurry of its own colourful insults, calling Trump a "dotard", a "frightened dog" and a "gangster." Over the weekend, Pyongyang countered that Washington was "begging for nuclear war" as the North blasted the joint US-South Korean drills. As well as featuring the latest generation of stealth fighters, this year's war games involve simulated precision attacks on the North's military installations, including its missile launch sites and artillery units, Yonhap news agency said, citing unnamed Seoul sources. As tensions surged, US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican and foreign policy hawk, warned that the US was moving closer to "preemptive war" if the North continued its nuclear tests. His remarks echoed those of Trump's National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who told a security forum on Saturday that the potential for war with the North "is increasing every day." But some Trump advisers say US military options are limited when Pyongyang could launch an artillery barrage on the South Korean capital -- only around 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the heavily-fortified border and home to 10 million people. Tokyo's parliament on Monday slammed the North's weapons programme as an "imminent threat". Last week's missile landed in Japan's economic waters. China's foreign ministry warned that the situation on the Korean peninsula remained "highly sensitive" and called on all sides to "do more things to ease the tension and avoid provoking each other." The North has boasted that the Hwasong 15 ICBM tested on Wednesday is capable of delivering a "super-large" nuclear warhead anywhere in the US mainland. While analysts agree the latest test showed a big improvement in potential range, they say the North may not have yet mastered all the technology required to successfully hit the US with a nuclear warhead. burs-bar-lth/jta
US Forces in Japan banned all personnel from consuming alcohol after a drink-driving accident on the island of Okinawa where anti-base sentiment runs high. A US Marine crashed his vehicle into a mini-truck at an intersection on Sunday, killing the other driver, 61. The 21-year-old, whose breath test showed an alcohol level three times the legal limit, was arrested and charged with negligent driving resulting in death, police said. All US servicemen stationed in Japan are now banned from drinking, both on and off base, the US Forces in Japan said in a statement. In Okinawa, personnel are also restricted to base or to their residences. "When our service members fail to live up to the high standards we set for them, it damages the bonds between bases and local communities and makes it harder for us to accomplish our mission," the statement said. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Tokyo made an immediate complaint about the case to the US side, demanding the US military enforce strict discipline and take preventive steps. "It is extremely regrettable that this accident happened even though the Japanese government has repeatedly asked them for the thorough implementation of preventive measures and enforcement of disciplines," Suga told reporters. The US has several military bases in Japan and stations about 47,000 troops in the country as part of a joint security treaty. But crimes by US personnel have seen relations with locals strained. In the most recent case, a former US Marine employed at the US Air Force's sprawling Kadena Air Base on Okinawa was charged with the murder of a 20-year-old woman last year. The incident intensified longstanding local opposition to the American military presence on the island. Commanders across Japan will immediately lead mandatory training to address responsible alcohol use, risk management and acceptable behavior, the US statement added. Okinawa accounts for nearly 75 percent of land allotted for US bases in Japan, despite being only a fraction of the country's total area.
The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican Party

Posted on 5 December 2017 by dana1981

The parallels between the Republican Party positions on taxes and climate change are striking. Both are morally appalling and reject the available evidence and expert opinion.



The Initiative on Global Markets panel of economic experts was recently asked about the Republican tax plan. Among the experts who took a position either way, there was a 96% consensus that the plan would not substantially grow the economy more than the status quo, and a 100% consensus that it would substantially increase the national debt.

Those numbers are quite similar to the 97% consensus among climate scientiststhat humans are driving global warming and the 95% consensus among economists that the US should cut its carbon pollution.

The House and Senate Republicans have passed similar versions of their tax bill, and neither chamber is allowing any climate policy to move forward.

So whats making Republican Party leaders reject the expert consensus on these incredibly important issues?

Unwavering faith in the face of contradictory facts

Sometimes tax cuts make sense; for example, when trying to stimulate a depressed economy, or when operating with a budget surplus. Neither is currently the case. This message from the president:

Donald J. Trump ? @realDonaldTrump Unemployment is down to 4.1%, lowest in 17 years. 1.5 million new jobs created since I took office. Highest stock Market ever, up $5.4 trill

Is incompatible with Senator Lindsey Graham saying the economy needs a tax cut. The tax cut plan, which by design will increase the US national debt by $1.5tn, is also incompatible with Republican opposition to increased deficits. Just last year the Republican National Committee was warning of an unsustainable path toward crippling debt.

Economists also agree that we should be paying down the debt when the economy is going strong. When the next recession inevitably strikes, governments need monetary flexibility to respond. Thats when it makes sense to run a deficit (for example, see the 2009 stimulus package, which helped pull the US out of the Great Recession and cost less than the Republican tax plan).

These Republican economic contradictions make no sense, but theyre familiar to those of us who follow climate change news. The only consistency in climate denial is in its contradictions  deniers claim global warming isnt happening, but its a natural ocean cycle, and caused by the sun, and galactic cosmic rays, and Jupiters orbital cycles, and its really just a Chinese hoax, and in any case its not bad.

On taxes, the Republican argument is cuts pay for themselves by stimulating economic growth and creating jobs.

But the economic literature is far from clear about whether tax cuts necessarily spur economic growth at all, let alone enough to pay for themselves. Moreover, corporate CEOs have repeatedly said that the Republican tax plan wont spur investment or job creation  instead theyll mostly pass the gains to their wealthy shareholders. There was an embarrassing video clip when Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn was confronted with this inconvenient truth:

When presented with the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation analysis concluding the bill would increase the national debt by over $1tn even when accounting for associated economic growth, Republicans immediately rejected the results.

As Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said, Either its a religious belief, a belief where no amount of evidence would change that, or they are using the argument cynically and they just want more money for themselves. He was talking about trickle-down economics, but just as easily could have been describing climate denial.

A growing disdain for nerds

Im old enough to remember when the GOP considered itself the party of intellectuals, back in the days when Republicans invented the concept of pollution cap and trade systems, for example. It wasnt long ago that party leaders like Newt Gingrich and 2008 GOP presidential candidate John McCain were calling for the party to support climate policies.

Starting with the brief rise of the Tea Party in 2010, that all changed, and the intellectual rot of the GOP has accelerated under President Trump. In a July 2017 Pew poll, just 36% of Republicans said colleges and universities have a positive impact on America, and a stunning 58% said they have a negative effect.

Similarly, in an August 2017 Gallup poll, just 33% of Republicans expressed confidence in higher education. Worst of all, the Republican tax bill even penalizes American graduate students.

Eating away at the GOP intellectual core: Fox News

A 2012 survey found that Americans who only watch Fox News are less informed than Americans who watch no news at all. At the time, 55% of Americans including 75% of Republicans reported watching Fox News. The network is powerful  a recent study found that Fox News might have enough influence to tip American elections  and on the whole it prioritizes ideological messaging over factual accuracy.

Trumps attacks on the so-called fake news media have further eroded Republicans trust of news sources that lack a conservative bias. As David Roberts wrote for Vox:

The US is experiencing a deep epistemic breach, a split not just in what we value or want, but in who we trust, how we come to know things, and what we believe we know  what we believe exists, is true, has happened and is happening  the right has created its own parallel set of institutions, most notably its own media ecosystem  conservative media is more partisan and more insular than the left.

Truth papered over by lies

Because so many conservatives rely on right-wing media sources for their news, its easy to misinform them through a constant stream of lies.

For example, Trumps Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin promised that his department would produce an analysis showing that the tax cuts will pay for themselves. One economist in the department leaked to the New York Times that such an analysis doesnt exist and Treasury staffers werent even asked to study the issue. It was a lie. Mnuchin also claimed the plan would only raise taxes on Americans who earn more than $1 million a year  the exact opposite of reality and another blatant lie. In fact, the entire Republican case for their tax plan was based on lies.

Similarly, climate denial is based on endless myths and misinformation  Skeptical Science has catalogued and debunked about 200 of them. And recent research showed that these myths are quite effective at misinforming their audience.

Click here to read the rest
Chiles Political System Shaken by Rise of New Anti-Neoliberal Left

Latin America  December 4, 2017  Luis Thielemann

The first round of Chiles presidential election was held on November 19. The right-wing candidate, ex-president Sebastian Pinera, won with 36% of the votes. He will compete in the second round against centre-left candidate Alejandro Guiller. But the big surprise was the result for the Broad Front (Frente Amplio, FA), a heterogeneous left coalition headed by Beatriz Sanchez. The FA candidate came in third, with 20% of the vote (just two points short of making the second round). The coalition also won 18 deputies and a senator, which is unheard of for an anti-neoliberal force outside of the traditional parties. Viento Sur s Brais Fernandez spoke with Luis Thielemann, an activist with Autonomous Left (one of the organizations with parliamentary representation within the FA), about the elections and the rise of this new left formation.

Brais Fernandez (BF): What is your analysis of the results of Chiles elections?

Luis Thielemann (LT): First, its clear that the result, for any observer, was a complete surprise. Although looking at it now we can see that there were many signs pointing to the possibility of a high vote for the FA, the truth is that no one believed it was possible to go into double digits. Polls showed it with about 8% support, and the history of the left in the past three decades in Chile is one in which it has never surpassed this limit.

Moreover, the FA went to the elections without the backing of the biggest left force in the country  in terms of history, number of activists and organising capacity: the Communist Party. In this context, the first point is the surprise factor.

The second is the political chaos that has been generated in Chile. If the FA is seeking to alter the balance of forces that has dominated Chile for almost three decades since the final years of the dictatorship, it has still not achieved this. But [the election] was a big step forward in this direction: it created electoral uncertainty, not only in terms of the second round, but for years to come in Chile.

In this way, the FA went from being ignored by the traditional political forces, to being the third political force in a system accustomed to only two players. And it is not just any third force, but one whose program is based on the big anti-neoliberal social struggles of the past decades.

Lastly, it was a gratifying vote for the FA, which had been accused of elitism by Communist and Socialist Party activists, due to its origins on the university campuses and middle-class neighbourhoods.

In the poorest neighbourhoods of Santiago, the FA vote was surprisingly high, in many cases beating the candidate of the New Majority (Nueva Mayoria), Alejandro Guillier.

This demonstrated grassroots work among the popular classes that, perhaps because of its incipient and discreet nature, had been missed by many observers, including those from the left.

BF: What is the FA, where does it come from, who is part of it?

LT: The FA was officially created in 2017, but the idea of its formation has been broadly shared by the left since the 2011 student mobilizations [for free education].

That it was broadly held does not mean that there were no important tactical and strategic differences between the different forces, as its formation has been one of the main discussion points within the left for the past few years.

It is made up of 13 organizations, that go from the small but important Liberal Party to Marxist and libertarian organizations.

The broadness of the FA reflects two aspects of Chilean politics: how far to the right politics has shifted (to the point where the Liberal Party feels comfortable in a coalition to the left of [incumbent New Majority president Michelle] Bachelet), where a minimal reform of neoliberalism is seen by the Chilean right as a Jacobin proposal.

And second, the social and political diversity of the opposition to neoliberalism and the authoritarian democracy inherited from the dictatorship [as part of the post-dictatorship transition pact between the parties of the right and centre-left].

The FA was the result of a maturing of various experiences. The first was the defeat of the 2006 student movement, which was defeated by the technocratization of its conflict by [the parties of] the transition pact in 2008.

Then there was the process of learning that the student and social movements of 2011 went through as a result of the creation of its own autonomous political leadership and its open rupture with the transition pact parties.

These movements  in particular the student movement  set up a series of radical left political organizations before, during and after 2011. Some of them have since disappeared, been refounded, split or fused.

The stand out organizations are Democratic Revolution (the strongest group in the FA), Autonomous Left (iA) and Autonomist Movement (a group that emerged out of a split from iA), among others. To these groups we can add those small parties that come from the extra-parliamentary left that emerged during the decades of the transition, such as the Humanist Party, the Green Ecologist Party, Equality Party, etc.

A third camp includes those parties that were formed as split-offs from the Coalition of Parties for Democracy [the centre-left coalition known as Concertacion, which predates the New Majority]. They saw in the FA the possibility of having a political impact, even if they do not have a clear or ideologically coherent left position. Within this group are parties such as Power or the Liberal Party.

The unifying element has been, on the one hand, the political window of opportunity that the crisis of the transition pact represents. Within this is seen the possibility of imposing or pushing forward the demands of the social movements that have challenged neoliberalism. These include the movement for public education, the university professors strikes, the movement against the AFPs (private administrators of pension funds), environmental struggles, to renationalize water and natural resources, etc.

What these struggles have tended to unite a social layer that has decided to stop looking to the Concertacion as a vehicle for potentially putting an end to the enduring legacy of the dictatorship; who got tired of seeing promises for reforms converted into the deepening of the model. This layer revealed itself on November 19 to be the third political force and 20% of voters.

BF: What position will the FA take in the second round?

LT: This is the main issue of debate for the coming weeks. The second round will be on December 17, which means we dont have much time.

We knew there would not be any time to debate this issue, nor peace of mind, as the level of political pressure placed on the FA since [November 19] has been enormous. But of course, no one thought that the FA would be key to the outcome of the presidential elections, as no one expected we would win 20% of the vote.

Given all this, some forces, such as iA, argued that the issue of negotiating with Guillier on the basis of the programmatic points put forward by FA candidate Beatriz Sanchez, and that have emerged out of the social struggles (end AFPs, free education, etc.), should have been resolved before the first round.

Despite there being no debate, the FA has shown clarity on two important points: it will not accept positions in any eventual Guillier government, and will only support him on the basis of Guillier publicly committing to aspects of the FA program and with the aim of avoiding a right-wing government.

We are not dealing here with left forces that are debating among themselves on a university campus, but a political alliance in which one out of five voters has deposited their faith. These voters have not asked the FA to adopt a maximalist anti-everyone position, or to give carte blanche support to Guillier and the transition pact.

Instead, voters want us to, as much as possible, put an end to the legacy of the dictatorship, and begin a new cycle of democratization and expel the market from peoples everyday lives.

We know that this is very little and mediocre compared to the dreams of those in Petrograd 100 years ago [during the Russian Revolution]. But before dreaming about storming the Winter Palace, before even thinking whether it makes sense to storm palaces, we have to at least build the conditions to make this possible; we have to at least recuperate the possibility of doing left politics in Chile.

But the FA is 13 groups. Some have already said that they will decide their position internally and without discussing it with others, abusing their parliamentary hegemony within the left.

Others have said that they will not negotiate at all, which also prevents us from doing politics this month.

It is important to make a point here: left politics is not about remaining pure, about being the best martyrs.

Left politics is about provoking chaos, the decomposition of the forces of capital, and at the same time, rebuilding a force capable of imposing another politics, new relations of power, that tend towards expelling capitalism and building communism.

It is a slow process, but it is fought at every step, no matter how institutional or unimportant they seem to be.

Refusing to support Guillier in the second round might seem like the most radical position, but in reality it is a conservative position: it gives the political initiative to those who have always held it, reducing the FAs electoral result to a mere protest vote.

The FA should propose a negotiation tha, whether accepted or rejected, will produce chaos among the neoliberal parties and the party system that has maintained them for decades.

If Guillier accepts the proposal for a government that pushes genuinely anti-neoliberal reforms, the transition pact will end up being destroyed; if, on the other hand, he makes no changes that are of interest for the FA, he will not be able to win the presidential elections.

What the FA is seeking in the second round is the possibility of directly impacting on the level of decomposition of the transition pact, and perhaps even beginning the process of its open destruction. 
The Bihar Chief Minister's comments came on a day when Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination for the President's post.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar took pot shots at the Congress maintaining that the top post in the party has always been reserved for the Nehru-Gandhi family. He said this has been the culture of the party for decades.

"Elections within the Congress took place for the number two post and other remaining posts. This is the party's culture," Nitish said.

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The Bihar Chief Minister's comments came on a day when Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination for the President's post on Monday.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of his weekly Lok Samvad programme, Nitish again spoke on the controversial film 'Padmavati' and demanded that director Sanjay Leela Bhansali clear the air on objections that have been raised by the Rajput community regarding the film.

"I believe that Sanjay Leela Bhansali should come forward and clarify. I don't understand why the director has still not screened the film for Central Board of Film Certification?" Kumar said.

Speaking about the upcoming Gujarat elections where Congress is giving BJP a tough fight, Nitish exuded confidence that the saffron party will emphatically win the Gujarat polls.

"I have said this several times that BJP will win big in Gujarat. Media is creating the news that there is a fight in Gujarat," he said.

He however defended Rahul Gandhi on his temple-hopping spree in Gujarat, asserting that politicians do everything possible to woo voters. The Bihar Chief Minister raised questions as to why the Congress has not given enough tickets to Muslim candidates to fight elections.

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The premises of Galanta-Gan park now has new owners from China. (Source: Courtesy of Prologis)

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The market for logistics and industrial real estate in Slovakia is thriving especially due to the growth of the automotive industry, as well as e-commerce. The prospects of Slovakia as a region with a positive outlook were proven by a September deal, the largest in both area and investment volume in central and eastern Europe, which even reshuffled the ranking of companies active in this sector.

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The post-crisis period is characterised by constant growth in the logistics and industrial real estate sector, of which the years 2016 and 2017 are setting all-time records in Slovakias history, Peter Janosi, director of P3 for Slovakia told The Slovak Spectator when assessing the development of the sector over the last five years. 2016 and probably also 2017, has outperformed the record pre-crisis years of 2006 and 2007.

Samuel Sporka, head of the department of industrial and logistics real estate at JLL Slovensko, added that since 2012 to the present, the area of logistics and industrial real estate in Slovakia has almost doubled, from 1.16 million square metres to 2.01 million.

This favourable development reflects the positive economic situation in Slovakia and especially in western Slovakia, where more than 90 percent of all logistics real estate are concentrated, Sporka told The Slovak Spectator.

Martin Varacka, head of the department of industrial real estate at CBRE Slovensko added the market has gradually recovered from the recession and expanded.

Developers have taken a lesson from excessive speculative projects and their approach to construction is now more conservative, said Varacka, adding that they start building a new hall only when 30-50 percent of the project, depending on its size, is pre-leased.

(Source: JLL)

Carmakers and online shops

Consultancy companies, as well as developers and operators of logistics and industrial real estate, see the automotive industry and e-commerce to be the main driving forces of the growth.

New projects in the automotive sector and the arrival of Jaguar Land Rover in Nitra even strengthen this effect, said Varacka.

The arrival of new players along with their suppliers has stimulated demand for modern logistics and industrial real estate.

In terms of the new projects under construction, we see the biggest activity around Nitra due to the arrival of the carmaker JLR, said Jan Rakovsky, a consultant in the industrial agency at Cushman & Wakefield Slovakia.

The plant the British carmaker is building here will be 300,000 square metres large. Total investments are projected at 1.4 billion while serial production is planned to start in late 2018.

The biggest player on the Slovak market, Prologis, is one of the developers that took the opportunity. In September, it launched the construction of two out of three projected halls in the new park in Nitra. Their construction is planned for completion during the second quarter of 2018. New customers have already secured 80 percent of the total area of 62,325 square metres in advance, said Martin Polak, senior vice president and regional head of Prologis Central and Eastern Europe. They are ready to start construction of the third hall after it is pre-leased at about 50 percent, expects Polak, which may happen next year.

Nevertheless, Prologis considers e-commerce as the main factor behind the growth of the sector in the last five years.
By: Rolf PottsBallantine Books; 1st edition (December 24, 2002)224 pages

Who does not dream of travel? Not a vacation for a week or two. I mean leaving it all behind. Just walking away from it all one day. (You take your family with you if you have one  lets not be ridiculous.) Maybe you move to Argentina for a year. Maybe two years. Or, maybe Australia. If Vagabonding does not inspire you to go, and help you plan the trip, nothing will.

Two of my favorite quotes:

The more we associate experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live. And the more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that were too poor to buy our freedom.

Thus, the purest way to see a culture is simply to accept and experience it as it is now even if you have to put up with satellite dishes in Kazakhstan, cyber cafes in Malawi, and fast food restaurants in Belize. After all, as Thomas Merton retorted when asked if hed seen the real Asia during his trip to India, Its all real as far as I can see.
Red Hat, Inc. provides open source software solutions to develop and offer operating system, virtualization, management, middleware, cloud, mobile, and storage technologies to various enterprises worldwide. It offers infrastructure-related solutions, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, an operating system platform that runs on hardware for use in hybrid cloud environments; Red Hat Satellite, a system management offering that helps to deploy, scale, and manage in hybrid cloud environments; and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, a software solution that allows customers to utilize and manage a common hardware infrastructure to run multiple operating systems and applications. The company offers application development-related and other technology solutions, such as Red Hat JBoss Middleware, a solution for developing, deploying, and managing applications; integrating applications, data, and devices; and automating business processes in hybrid cloud environments; The company's application development-related and other technology solutions also includes Red Hat cloud offerings, a software solution that enables customers to build and manage various cloud computing environments; Red Hat Mobile, a software development platform that enables customers to develop, integrate, deploy, and manage mobile applications for enterprises; and Red Hat Storage, a software solution that enables customers to manage large, unstructured, or semi-structured data in hybrid cloud environments. It also provides consulting, support, and training services; and realtime operating system, distributed computing, directory services, and user authentication. Red Hat, Inc. has collaboration with Juniper Networks Expand to provide a unified solution for enterprises designed to manage and run applications and services. The company was formerly known as Red Hat Software, Inc. and changed its name to Red Hat, Inc. in June 1999. Red Hat, Inc. was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Cyclone Ockhi, labelled as a "very severe" cyclonic storm, has been moving northwards with a speed of 18 kmph during the past six hours, an update from IMD said. The storm, by the time it reaches Gujarat, will weaken.

By India Today Web Desk: The cyclone which battered Tamil Nadu and Kerala, moved beyond Lakshadweep. Local MP Mohammad Faizal said that Lakshadweep suffered a loss of over Rs 500 crore and requested the Centre for help.

The death toll in Kerala has increased to 23 after 9 dead bodies were recovered from the sea.

More are feared stranded or dead as it would be difficult for small fishing boats to survive the rough waters for over 3 days. After their were complaints that the government machinery is not acting promptly, fishermen themselves ventured out into the sea yesterday.

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Over 15 fishing boats from Vizhinjam conducted search efforts in the sea and returned with a dead body of one fisherman who is yet to be identified.

The combined search and rescue operations continued to for the 5th day in the Arabian Sea. Coast Guard and Navy have deployed over 15 vessels in the sea, while Airforce and Navy aircraft continued to shuttle between the Navy vessels and airport in Thiruvananthapuram with fishermen who were under critical condition.

In Tamil Nadu, authorities have stated that at least 690 people have been rescued so far. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman visited Kanyakumari on Sunday and said "Indian Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force are still engaged in rescue operations to save the lives of fishermen affected by Cyclone Ockhi."

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman guaranteed the fishing community that the search and rescue operations will be conducted in the sea until the final fisherman is traced.

The Navy, on Sunday, said 10 of its ships and eight aircraft were involved in the continuing search and rescue operations in the southeast Arabian Sea and Lakshadweep and Minicoy islands following Cyclone Ockhi.

Meanwhile, alert has been issued for fishermen in Maharashtra and Gujarat as the condition of the sea will be "very rough" on Monday and Tuesday.

According to an update issued by IMD at 8:30 am on December 4, "light to moderate rainfall is very likely at a few places over Saurashtra and south Gujarat region on 4th December.

Light to moderate rainfall at many places with heavy rainfall at isolated places is very likely over Saurashtra and south Gujarat region on December 5 and light to moderate rainfall over Gujarat region on 6th December (till noon). Light to moderate rainfall at many places with isolated heavy rainfall is also likely over north Konkan on December 5".

The update said that the sea condition would be "rough to very rough along and off north Maharashtra and South Gujarat coasts from today, the 4th night to 6th December 2017 morning."

IMD advised fishermen in south Gujarat and Maharashtra coasts not to venture into the sea from December 4 to 6.

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By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 4 (PTI) The Delhi government will soon make the remaining two crucial drugs for treating Hepatitis C free of cost, Health Minister Satyendra Jain said today.

Out of the four drugs available for treating the disease, two are already being provided free of cost by the city government.

Speaking at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) here on the occasion of 20th Hepatitis Day, the minister underlined the AAP governments commitment in fighting the hepatitis infection.

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"We will cooperate with health institutions like ILBS to promote health and well being of people of Delhi," a statement quoted him as saying.

ILBS director S K Sarin said children get hepatitis from their mothers for no fault of theirs.

"Everyone should be aware and take a pledge to get every new-born vaccinated. And I request the government to make Hepatitis a notifiable disease," Sarin said.

The health minister also inaugurated state-of-the-art Mobile Liver Screening Van and Healthy Liver Healthy Delhi Project.

Launched under the project titled Healthy Liver Healthy Delhi, the liver screening van aims to raise awareness about Hepatitis and provide free liver screening to people of Delhi NCR.

The van will have on-board Fibroscan ? a test that assesses stiffness of liver without the need for skin invasion. It will also collect blood from volunteers for liver screening tests for Hepatitis B and C, and other parameters associated with liver diseases. PTI CPB SRY

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A 20-something youth set himself afire at a railway station in Delhi, his charred body remained at the platform for over three hours- and all the passersby did was videotape the whole incident.

By Ajay Kumar: In a shocking incident on Saturday, a youth, who is in his twenties has immolated himself at Sakur Basti railway station. Surprisingly, none of the passengers nor any GRP official come forward to his rescue though. Instead, they immediately got busy shooting the incident on their mobile phones. The deceased, an unidentified Sikh youth, wearing a turban, squirmed for about 10 minutes after the act of immolation before eventually breathing his last on the spot.

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The incident took place at around 6pm on Saturday, after the youth had reportedly roamed around the railway track of Sakur Basti for more than an hour or so. "He looked depressed while he was roaming on and off the track.

His act drew all attention only after he ended up taking out a bottle of kerosene from his bag and poured on his own body. After only a few seconds, he lit up a match stick and set himself on fire," informed an officer of GRP, Sarai Rohilla station.

The passengers present on the platform called the GRP.

However, the fire by then had engulfed his body. The helpless youth cried for help but none came forward to douse the flame. The body remained at the station for at least three hours - thanks to a blame game played by the GRP and the Delhi Police over the jurisdiction of the area. When contacted, Aslam Khan, DCP (Northwest) said that the incident took place on the railway track and therefore it was a case of the GRP.

Parvej Ahmad, DCP, Railway, however contradicted him and said that the case will be looked after by the local police and also that the body was not found on the track. The body was finally taken to the mortuary by the GRP. "We are waiting for the claimant of the body. We will then perform a post-mortem," an official said.

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Credit: Samsung

(Tech Xplore)Samsung fans get to say Cool. A 5G test on an over-100KM/H train (over 60 mph) scored results that are apt to please the corporate insiders, considering all the attention being paid to 5G in the pre-standard stage.

Daniel Fuller in Android Headlines made the observation that many companies involved in 5G research and development are almost ready to start working with carriers on deployment, as soon as the official standard is announced.

Once the standard is announced, giants like Samsung want to be ready to roll.

"At this point, 5G is mostly a matter of fine-tuning the software running on the equipment to ensure that it's up to par with the official standard once the 3GPP announces it. This means that carriers can begin deploying true 5G very soon after the announcement, and some have already begun deploying 4.9G and pseudo-5G solutions in commercial network markets, with plans to refarm them into actual 5G access points once the standard is announced," said Fuller.

This train scene was a joint test in October, by both Samsung and Japan-based operator KDDI. It was carried out in Japan, over a 1-mile stretch of track with a moving train.

Fuller noted the test took advantage of two fixed wireless points that used Samsung's equipment and KDDI's network backhaul.

Samsung used a 5G router (CPE), radio access unit (5G Radio), virtualized RAN and virtualized core, for testing.

Results? Samsung reported a "5G uplink and downlink handover" and achieving a peak speed of 1.7Gbps.

Fuller commented that "this test sticks out because of the sustained speed and uninterrupted connection over the of 1.5 kilometers, close to a mile, running a section of track that length between two substations." No issues"and 5G speeds were sustained on the uplink and downlink throughout the entire trial, with peak speeds reaching as high as 1.7 gigabits per second."

All in all, the Japan trial involved a speed test and a testing the connection by streaming 8K video to the train; and uploading 4K video from a special camera mounted on the front of it.

Daniel Fuller, Android Headlines: "Technology conglomerate Samsung does not think that a fast-moving train is a strange place for consumers to demand access to 5G mobile internet, and neither does Japanese mobile carrier KDDI."

Samsung connected the dots between 5G's future and high speed trains.

"The demonstration leveraged capabilities driven by 5G, such as high throughput, low latency and massive connections, which verified potential services and use cases that would be highly-beneficial to passengers and operators of high-speed trains. This could pave the way to vastly improved backhaul for onboard WiFi, superior passenger infotainment and increased security and analytics."

KDDI also commented.

Yoshiaki Uchida, KDDI, said the success of the demonstration in everyday locations such as a train and train station was an important milestone indicating 5G commercialization was near. Uchida also said that to fulfill their aim to launch 5G by 2020, "KDDI will continue exploring real-life scenario experiments for diverse 5G use and business cases together with Samsung."

 2017 Tech Xplore
I was at a recent cybersecurity conference where the head of Europols European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) was talking about the threats we face today from the dark web. After Silk Road, much of its illegal business switched to Alpha Bay. The authorities took out Alpha Bay and Hansa business increased almost eight-fold overnight. The authorities take out Hansa and then there are more. Can we ever get on top of this?

The answer is yes, as the Alpha Bay and Hansa takedown was planned and co-ordinated. Its a fascinating case study that I missed during the summer, but worth repeating here now as did cover the Silk Road story before.

What happened in July is that the worlds largest dark net trading venue for drugs and other illicit materials was Alpha Bay and suddenly, on July 4 (Independence Day), it was seized in a joint operation between Europol and the US Department of Justice.

OMG! The criminal community were up in arms, seeking to find alternatives, and most flocked to Alpha Bays nearest rival Hansa.

Hansa accepted their credentials and registrations for two weeks and then that site disappeared just as quickly too, seized by Europol and the DoJ on July 20.

This is because the authorities had been monitoring all the dark web traffic and accepting all of those online applications, as it gave them immediate access to who the illegal protagonists were.

Europol estimates that Alpha Bay generated more than a billion dollars in sales of drugs, stolen data, and other illegal goods over its three years online and, by the time of the seizure, was selling up to $1 million a day. Apparently, there were 250,000 listings on AlphaBay alone, with 200,000 members and 40,000 vendors. You may wonder if thats substantial, and it is. For example, there were over 100,000 live listings when the site was taken offline; compare that with Silk Road which had 14,000 listings when the FBI shut it down in 2013 and you get the idea.

The FBI and DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) had sought the extradition from Thailand of one AlphaBay administrator, Canadian Alexandre Cazes, but the target was found hanged in a Bangkok jail cell in an apparent suicide before an arrest could happen. Nevertheless, the PR manager for Alpha Bay (really?) was arrested two weeks ago.

Equally, the outline of the operation is fascinating, in that Alpha Bay users flocked to Hansa in their droves, with Interpol recording an eight-times increase in the number of new users on Hansa immediately following the takedown of Alphabay. That means that law enforcement agencies now have identifying details on an untold number of dark web sellers and buyers. Europol claims that it gathered 10,000 postal addresses of Hansa customers, and tens of thousands of their messages from the operation.

How the authorities seized these anonymous sites involved a co-ordinated effort as AlphaBays servers were seized with the help of authorities in Thailand, Lithuania, Canada, Britain and France, and Hansas were operating in Lithuania, the Netherlands and Germany. This shows that a lot has changed in the four years since the Silk Road takedown, with vast improvements in the pooling of intelligence with international partners, such as Europol.

But how did they find Cazes in the first place? Hmmm, like Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road), basically Cazes was foolhardy. Despite the sophistication of tools like Tor and bitcoin police discovered Alexandre Cazes, AlphaBays founder, through his hotmail email address Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com, which was used to send out password recovery emails for AlphaBay. That led investigators to Cazes LinkedIn account, where he listed awfully familiar skills like website hosting and cryptography, making his prominence as a suspect in the case only continue to grow. As a final nail in the coffin, authorities acquired Cazes PayPal records, which listed Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com as contact information, directly tying Cazes payment information back to the incriminated address. This put a swift end to Cazes almost three-year-old eBay-style illegal goods site

What Cazes should have done is create an anonymous John Doe persona, complete with a fake email address, phone number, home address, and life history. That way when he makes mistakes, which always will occur, you expose John Doe as the target, a non-existent nobody.

What is interesting for me is that, with these two major dark markets shut down, the underground still sought alternatives and many focused upon another new service called Trade Route. But guess what? Nope, the authorities didnt shut it down. It just shut down itself and made off with the money  cryptocurrencies  in what is called an exit scam. Exit scams occur often in the dark markets, and is basically where the operators of a darknet marketplace abscond with users cryptocurrency, which is usually bitcoin but more often now is Monero, as it is harder to track and trace.

Even so, FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe acknowledges that shutting down such markets was like playing whack-a-mole. His agency would likely have to take on more massive dark web marketplaces in the future, he said.

Critics will say as we shutter one site, another will emerge, McCabe said at a press conference. But that is the nature of criminal work. It never goes away, you have to constantly keep at it, and you have to use every tool in your toolbox.

This is obviously the truth as the European Union reported just last week that the online, illegal drug trade is growing rapidly. The report by Europol and EMCDDA found that two thirds of dark web transactions involve drugs, and the rest generally involves guns, explosives and computer hacking tools. The biggest European markets are Germany, Britain and the Netherlands. There are now 14 dark web markets in operation with names like Darknet Heroes League and House of Lions market.

A problem that will never be eradicated and just means that for every seizure of illegal goods and services, there will always be another one to catch.
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.
While online shopping platforms extend themselves to ensure they have adequate infrastructure to meet rising demand by Vietnamese consumers, they are still failing to satisfy when it comes to shipping, which is mostly done by third parties.

More and more Vietnamese consumers are turning to e-commerce instead of jostling with crowds during shopping events like Black Friday.

In previous years, online shopping websites became overloaded with orders, many of whom eventually failed to receive their purchased goods.

This year, such technical problems were widely resolved and most online platforms have run smoothly, especially during the Black Friday season from November 24 to 26.

However, customers have still filed complaints with e-commerce sites after their goods were delivered much later than scheduled.

In some cases, deliveries were not made until two weeks after the time of purchase.

Late delivery

Luu Huynh, who works for a food company in Ho Chi Minh City, bought a Wi-Fi modem on Lazada in November and was told that delivery would take five to seven days.

However, after two weeks of waiting, Huynh contacted the Lazada hotline and received an auto-reply that told him to go to the website and check the order status.

The problem is, Huynh said, that the order status simply stated that his purchase had been transferred to a third-party shipping service.

Alexandre Dardy, CEO of Lazada Vietnam, officially responded to Huynhs complaint, admitting that the shipping service was poor during the promotional campaign as the system had become overwhelmed with orders.

During the November 24-26 campaign, Lazada managed to sell 1.5 million products, a threefold increase on last year, according to Dardy.

The executive did, however, admit that multiple orders placed during the Black Friday shopping spree remained undelivered two weeks after the campaign, with the shipping service to blame.

Many online shoppers have moaned that they received notifications of delayed delivery from the e-commerce websites as there were too many orders to process.

The overloaded systems also resulted in the delivery of goods different from what some customers had ordered, according to other complaints.

Rapid growth but immature infrastructure

Most major online shopping websites utilize a third party to handle shipping and delivery, which ensures their service quality remains a headache.

A representative of Lotte Vietnam, which has recently joined the e-commerce market, said more than 80 percent of its orders are being delivered by the companys partners, so a certain proportion of deliveries are made behind schedule.

Minh Bui, an online shopping expert, said the overloading of online retailers proves that Vietnams e-commerce infrastructure remains immature compared to the growth of the industry.

Thomas Harris, managing director of DHL eCommerce Vietnam, cited a company research as saying that most online shoppers in Vietnam are not satisfied by the shipping services of local retailers.

Sixty-six percent of online shoppers in Vietnam have demanded their goods be delivered by a trustworthy company, Harris added.

While e-commerce currently only makes up one percent of Vietnams total retail market, the online shopping industry is growing steadily in the Southeast Asian country.

David Anjoubault, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel Vietnam, says that the Vietnamese e-commerce market still has strong potential, even though its size is small when compared to others.

Online sales of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) reached 0.5 percent of the total market in Vietnam in the 12 months to March 2017, representing a significant lift of 69 percent in comparison to last year, Anjoubault said, citing the Future of E-commerce in FMCG report by Kantar Worldpanel, which they published on November 21.

[This] makes Vietnam one of the countries with the highest e-commerce growth in the world, he said.

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The Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT), Vietnams leading polytechnic university, has become the countrys first university accredited at institutional level by the ASEAN University Network  Quality Assurance (AUN-QA).

The news was confirmed by Dr. Vu Dinh Thanh, rector of HCMUT, which is a member college of the Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City.

AUN-QA is a higher education quality assurance network among countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, with a remit to raise the standard of higher education in collaboration with both regional and international bodies for the benefit of the ASEAN community.

HCMUT was found to have met all the criteria set forth by the quality assurance network, whose assessors visited the university between September 5 and 9, Thanh said.

The assessors were selected from a pool of ASEAN professionals based on their individual competencies and personal attributes, as well as their level of education and work experience.

The university was assessed across 25 criteria and 111 normscategorized into four groups: strategic quality assurance, systemic quality assurance, functional quality assurance and results.

The accreditation of HCMUT at institutional level makes it the first university in Vietnam, and the third in ASEAN, to receive the honor.

HCMUT is a flagship university in technology teaching and research activity in Vietnam, offering top-notch undergraduate and graduate programs in tech-industries as well as management training.

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Free factory visits that offer an insight into how tea and silk are produced in Vietnams Central Highlands will be available as part of the 2017 Da Lat Flower Festival.

Running from December 23 to 27, the event is Vietnams biggest flower festival, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors to Da Lat City in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong.

This year, the festival includes a cultural week featuring the craft of making tea and silk by Vietnamese highlandersthat will be held in Da Lat's neighbor, Bao Loc City.

Tourists who are in Bao Loc during the flower festival can register with organizers to be taken on a complimentary trip to one of the major tea and silk factories in the city.

The experience will include witnessing the entire process of producing a finished product and learning about what makes Lam Dong silk and tea unique.

The year 2017 marks the seventh edition of the biennial flower festival, which is themed Da Lat Flowers  The Crystallization of Earths Marvels.

Fifteen main events and 14 complimentary programs will be organized over the five-day period, including a wine festival, flower displays, and a greens market.

The opening ceremony will be held at 8:00 pm on December 23 at Da Lats lakeside Lam Vien Square.

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According to recent reports, Dulquer Salmaan will star in Manmarziyan, alongside Taapsee Pannu and Vicky Kaushal.

By India Today Web Desk: There has been much buzz around the film Manmarziyan, directed by Anurag Kashyap and produced by Aanand L Rai. The film starring Taapsee Pannu and Vicky Kaushal, is a love triangle, and will kick off in January.

And now, according to a report in Mumbai Mirror, the makers have found their third angle in Malayalam star, Dulquer Salmaan.

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According to a source close to the team, the makers had been on the hunt for a second lead, opposite Taapsee, and Dulquer was perfect for the role.

Meanwhile, Dulquer is busy with his Bollywood debut, Karwaan, starring Irrfan Khan and Mithila Palkar.

Manmarziyan has had quite a history. In 2015, it was announced that Ayushmann Khurrana and Bhumi Pednekar will star in the lead roles. However the film was shelved, after a few professional disagreements. Rai then took the story to Kashyap, who decided to take it on.

ALSO WATCH| India Today Woman Summit 2017: I am in no way less in power and strength, says Taapsee Pannu

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Ho Chi Minh City authorities are planning to establish separate areas for street food vendors along some 159 routes following the successful operation of its food streets in the past months.

Leaders of district-level administrations across the southern hub have proposed reserving specific zones for local street food sellers.

Surveys are being carried out on 159 streets in the city to prepare for the potential establishment of such food hubs.

The proposal is aimed at providing a legitimate place for vendors and ensuring order along city sidewalks.

It follows the opening of the first food streets on Nguyen Van Chiem Street and at Bach Tung Diep Park in District 1.

The Nguyen Van Chiem food street was opened on August 28. A total of 40 businesses take turns to operate on two shifts: between 6:00 am and 9:00 am in the morning, and 11:00 am to 1:00 pm in the afternoon.

The second food hub was introduced at Bach Tung Diep Park in early October. It is home to up to 30 catering businesses run by former street vendors, who also take turns to occupy the stalls on two shifts: from 6:00 am and 9:00 am, and from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm.

L., a vendor on Nguyen Van Chiem Street, said the new venue has helped her sell more food compared to when she was operating along local sidewalks.

The food hub at Bach Tung Diep Park in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Officials at seven out of 10 wards in District 1 have already submitted their proposals on similar models.

In Binh Thanh District, an examination is being carried out to prepare for the trial of a food hub on the promenade of Dien Bien Phu Street, in front of HUTECH University.

About 20 stalls will be established for local residents to sell their dishes, said Duong Hong Thang, vice-chairman of the Binh Thanh Peoples Committee.

More food streets will be opened in the neighborhood following the test run, Thang added.

According to Tran Thanh Binh, vice-chairman of the Peoples Committee in District 3, the administration is mulling over several food corners at the Turtle Lake and nearby streets, namely Vo Van Tan, Tran Cao Van, and Pham Ngoc Thach.

The plan is to provide favorable conditions for street vendors to earn a living, Binh elaborated.

Careful consideration

The citys Urban Traffic Management Zone No. 3 has recently suggested the establishment of a food hub at Gia Dinh Park, Go Vap District.

According to Deputy Chairman Nguyen Huu Nghia, authorities are weighing whether the size of the park is sufficient given the large number of vendors in the district.

A vendor sells his food on a street in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

If there is not enough space, the plan will go sideways, resulting in more regular occupation of sidewalks and roadways, Nghia explained.

The Urban Traffic Management Zone No. 3 is expected to pool statistics from the operation of the Nguyen Van Chiem food street before coordinating with the Go Vap administration to realize the scheme.

It is necessary to open more food centers to provide business opportunities for poorer residents, Nguyen Van Dung, deputy head of the Urban Traffic Management Zone No. 1 said, adding that order, hygiene, and esthetics should be taken into account.

Dung listed some potential streets for the plan, including Pham Ngu Lao in District 1 and Nguyen Trai in District 5.

This is an effective measure to ensure livelihoods for citizens and preserve urban and traffic order, said Vu Viet Ha, deputy chief inspector of the municipal Department of Transport.

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A Spanish publisher has bought the rights to translate Long Than Tuong (Holy Dragon Imperator), a series of fictionalized historical comics by young Vietnamese artists, into Spanish for their publication in Spain.

The news was announced by Nguyen Khanh Duong, the author of Long Than Tuong and co-founder of online Vietnamese comic alliance Comicola.

According to Duong, a representative from the Spanish publisher, Amok Books, had shown interest in the comic series while touring Southeast Asia on the search for rising comic talents.

Prior to arriving in Vietnam, Enrique Larrea had already signed a deal to buy the translation and publishing rights to a comic by Singaporean artist Sonny Liew, whohad won three prestigious Eisner Awards for his work, Duong said.

The Eisner Awards, or Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, are given for creative achievement in American comics, and are often referred to as the Oscars of the comic industry.

Six months ago, Enrique Larrea visited the Dinh Le book street in Hanoi and asked book sellers for their best-selling Vietnamese comic book, Duong said.

After consistently being handed the first volume of Long Than Tuong, he decided to contact us for the English version of the comic to read.

Impressed by the comics artistic style and storylines, and convinced that it would be a hit in Spain, the Amok representative wasted no time initiating negotiations to acquire translation and publication rights to the comic in Spain, Duong recalled.

The English cover of Long Than Tuong (R) is displayed on the homepage of Spanish publishing house Amok Books in this screen capture.

Confident as we are of our work, we were at first anxious about whether such a Vietnamese story would appeal to international readers, Duong admitted.

But after getting positive reactions from Larrea as well as from the Japanese and American markets where Long Than Tuong has also been well received, we are truly thrilled.

Duong said he did not expect the comic to become a best-seller in Spain, but said it was a joy in itself to see a product of Vietnamese culture being introduced to Spanish readers.

Long Than Tuong, translated into English as Holy Dragon Imperator, is a series of fictionalized historical stories about a young 13th-century Vietnamese man, Long, and his adventures in helping to defend Vietnam against the Mongol Empire.

Drawn by young Vietnamese artists Thanh Phong and My Anh with storylines written by Duong, the first volume of the comic was released in November 2014 thanks to financial support from a crowd-funding project on Comicola.

Last February, Long Than Tuong was honored with a silver prize at the 9th International Manga Award in Japan.

According to Duong, his team intends to finish translating the comic into English in 2018 in order to be published and sold to foreign visitors to Vietnam as well as exported to other international markets.

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An express boat plying between Ho Chi Minh City and the southern city of Vung Tau is expected to open later this month.

The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport has carried out a technical examination of the express boat route linking Ho Chi Minh City, outlying Can Gio District, and Vung Tau, a popular beach city in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau.

The waterway route has been developed by the Ho Chi Minh City-based GreenlinesDP Company.

According to Bui Xuan Cuong, director of the transport department, the express boat service will officially open to the public on December 23.

The GreenlinesDP K6 vessels are specifically designed to operate on this journey, and are equipped with four air-conditioners, a big-screen TV, a security camera system, Wi-Fi, fire alarms and life jackets.

Each boat also includes a ten-passenger capacity VIP corner, which comes with its own mini-bar.

The boats will launch from Bach Dang Wharf in District 1 before traveling to Thach An Station in Can Gio District, and then stop at Ho May in Vung Tau.

Four trips will be provided daily for the Ho Chi Minh City-Can Gio route and eight for the Ho Chi Minh City-Vung Tau journey.

The VIP corner on one boat. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Extra trips are expected be added on weekends.

Each trip will cost VND200,000 (US$9) per person. Passengers who are residents of Can Gio as well as public servants who regularly travel the route will be entitled to a 50 percent discount.

Disabled people will be allowed to travel free-of-charge.

Three types of boat with capacities of 50, 96, and 136 seats will be made available.

This is the first express boat route connecting Ho Chi Minh City, Can Gio, and Vung Tau, said Pham Cong Bang, head of the waterway management division under the transport department.

More routes will be added in the future according to demand, to promote waterway tourism, and help relieve traffic pressure on city streets.

Given its network of rivers and canals stretching a total of 1,000 kilometers, this and similar projects make use of the potential for water transport in the southern metropolis, Bang elaborated.

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SBS documentary series Marry Me, Marry My Family will look at cross-cultural marriages in Australia, in early January.

This is a 3 part series produced by CJZ which will presumably offer an alternative view to that by Sevens Bride & Prejudice (which is not returning).

Walk down the aisle with SBS this summer, as we explore the chaotic and colourful road to intercultural weddings. At the best of times, weddings are filled with tears, stress and anxiety, but when you throw two vastly different cultures into the mix, you get double the drama in an epic tale of love against the odds.

Over three weeks, follow six couples as they try to straddle the gulf between cultures and the gap between their parents expectations and their own dreams. The series seats us at the front table of diverse, multicultural weddings and provides intimate access to the couples and their families, through the tears and joy, as they get ready to tie the knot.

In the first episode, theres nothing Armenian born Nancy wants more than for her family to accept her Indian Hindu fiance, Ashu. The relationship caused an 18-month estrangement from her heartbroken mother, who doesnt understand why her daughter cant marry a handsome Armenian man. Their wedding is set to be an authentic Armenian affair, but first Nancy must try to glue back the pieces with her mother in time for the wedding. Meanwhile, in the suburbs of Adelaide, skip truck driver Mark is heading to Nairobi, Kenya, where he will negotiate a dowry for his other half, Wambui. Having met on the dancefloor of a casino, the two will be married in a traditional Kikuyu wedding ceremony which will see Mark barter for his bride with goats, and choose her out of a line-up of completely covered women.

Next up is a real life gypsy wedding where high school sweethearts Derian and Jye will tie the knot in an extravagant, three-day affair. Derians family are Muslim Gypsies from Macedonia. Never in their wildest dreams did they imagine their daughter would marry Jye  an easy-going Maltese Australian, but an outsider nonetheless. Their success as parents depends on one detail: whether Derian is a virgin until her wedding night. In an ancient tradition, her marital sheets will be inspected to confirm her virginity and her fathers success as a parent, otherwise she will be disowned. Sri Lankan Hindu Lalith has gone against his parents wishes for an arranged marriage and chosen Chinese Australian, Louise. His parents refuse to speak to her and they wont be attending the wedding. Lalith has a tough job on his hands, trying to persuade his parents to acknowledge his bride-to-be before the big day.

When Travis swiped right on tinder to Pakistani Australian Rabia, little did he know hed be saying yes to a new partner, a new family and a new religion. Married at a young age, but now divorced, Rabia has two teenage girls, and faced a lot of pressure when she started dating Travis. Even though Travis chose to convert to Islam and marry Rabia immediately, the couple still face an ongoing struggle within Rabias Pakistani community, particularly with her devout mother who thinks Travis has converted purely for the sake of marriage. Meanwhile, Indigenous Wiradjuri woman Jessa plunges into Maori culture. Her wedding to Areti, the grandson of a prominent Maori leader, will be heavy on protocol, with indigenous elders, politicians, and even royalty on the guest list. Aside from the mammoth task of finalising a hierarchy-based seating arrangement, Jessas greatest challenge will be performing an ancient Maori song at the wedding reception. Shes under pressure to get it right, or risk causing offence.

Marry Me, Marry My Family is the familiar story of multicultural Australians, as they are today  trying to embrace their Australian identity, whilst staying true to their culture, identity and family. Its a heart-warming update on how multiculturalism is working in Australia and a colourful account of the country that we are evolving into.

Tuesday, 9 January at 8.40pm on SBS.
Filming begins today on Gristmills Back in Very Small Business, the reprisal of ABC comedy series Very Small Business featuring Wayne Hope & Kim Gyngell.

The pair return as Don Angel and Ray Leonard, respectively. Don is at the helm of the World Wide Business Group, where he and Ray have found success with their Dons Dirty Dog Wash franchise and are running five other small businesses, staffed by an ethnically diverse, gender fluid, psychologically fragile menagerie, all hired on government subsidies.

Joining them are Robyn Nevin, Molly Daniels, Liv Hewson, Rick Donald, Aaron Chen, Rachel Gordon, Marg Downey, Jane Harber, Pia Miranda, Heidi Arena and newcomer Roman Hadley-Lund.

ABC Head of Comedy, Rick Kalowski said The amazing full cast Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope have assembled for Back in Very Small Business speaks volumes for their reputation as one of the most talented comedy production outfits our country has ever produced.

Film Victoria CEO, Jenni Tosi said We congratulate Robyn and Wayne as they get back into business with a terrific ensemble cast to produce the return of this entertaining comedy. Were also thrilled to support Lisa Marie Corso as a writers attachment on the production where shell be able to hone her screenwriting skills under the guidance of two of the best creatives in the business.

Screen Australias Head of Production Sally Caplan said: Were thrilled to see Back in Very Small Business commence production with such an impressive cast of top-tier Australian comedic actors working alongside some of our most exciting new talent. This sharp satire looks set to be another hit for the talented team at Gristmill.

Gristmill co-founders Wayne Hope and Robyn Butler are executive producers alongside Greg Sitch and the ABCs Rick Kalowski. Hope and Butler have written the series with Gary McCaffrie (Upper Middle Bogan, Shaun Micallefs Mad as Hell and Very Small Business) and Butler will direct all eight episodes. Lisa Marie Corso is the writers attachment, as part of Film Victorias Key Talent program.

Back in Very Small Business has principal production investment from Screen Australia in association with Film Victoria and will air on the ABC in 2018.
ABC ME host Nathan Bazley will wrap as presenter of Behind the News after a decade in the role, but continue as Series Producer.

Launched in 1968, BTN is the third longest-running program on Australian television, behind Four Corners and Play School and Bazley is its longest-serving host after joining in 2007. Previous hosts have included Richard Morecroft and Paul Higgins.

As well as remaining behind the scenes Bazley will mentor its young reporters.

ABC Director, News Gaven Morris said: For the past decade Nathan has been a trusted and influential figure in the lives of millions of Australian children. He has played a pivotal role in the Behind the News team, inspiring young people to develop an interest in news and current affairs.

His final episode airs at 10am tomorrow on ABC ME.

A new host will be named in the new year.
A display featuring missiles and a portrait of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is seen at Baharestan Square in Tehran, Iran September 27, 2017. Picture taken September 27, 2017. Nazanin Tabatabaee Yazdi/TIMA via REUTERS

Thomson Reuters

BEIRUT (Reuters) - France should know that Irans missile program is not an issue that can be negotiated, Irans foreign ministry spokesman, Bahram Qassemi, said in an interview with state media on Monday.

"French official, other officials, who want to speak about Irans affairs need to pay attention to the deep developments that have come to pass in the region in past decades and the big changes between the current situation and the past, Qassemi said Monday, according to state media.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely not negotiate on defense and missile issues."

Tension between Iran and France increased last month when French President Emmanuel Macron said that Iran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify its ballistic missile program.

His foreign minister also denounced, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran's hegemonic temptations.

France could play a productive role in the Middle East by taking a realistic and impartial approach, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told Macron in a telephone call two weeks ago, according to Iranian state media.

Iranian state media said Rouhani told Macron that the Islamic Republic was ready to develop its relations with France on all bilateral, regional and international issues based on mutual respect and shared goals.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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<p>Feeling under the weather? Try the rom-com remedy  three in five Americans say its their go-to movie genre when down for the count.</p><p>Thats according to a new poll of 2,000 millennial parents of kids ages 4-12, where theyre also watching action and adventure movies (37%) and series like Harry Potter or the Hunger Games (36%).</p><p>When sickness strikes, more than four in five (82%) spend most of their time in their bedroom, with 42% staying put on the couch in their living room.</p><p>This may contribute to the fact that the average parent watches five hours of TV or movies each sick day.</p><p>Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of <a href="https://delsym.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="1">Delsym</a>, results showed how respondents are optimizing comfort with their favorite things.</p><p>Results revealed that respondents get sick about three times per year.</p><p>Respondents were more likely to prefer old favorites than to wrap their heads around new content when feeling ill. (23% vs 15%).</p><p>When parents are sick with their children, the most popular movies to watch are the Harry Potter series (32%) and the Toy Story series (32%).</p><p>They also watch movies like Frozen (30%), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (28%) and Moana (25%).</p><p>More than half (56%) of respondents have a go-to or favorite feel-better comfort movie, with the average person saying they can watch it four times in a row without getting sick of it</p><p>In fact, 45% of those admit they can watch it more than four times and one in 10 of those (11%) even say they can watch it an infinite amount of times.</p><p>In total, respondents have watched their feel-better movie about 34 different times.</p><p>This movie has been respondents favorite for about six years, perhaps because it reminds them of good times (61%) and makes them laugh (53%).</p><p>Parents report feeling relaxed (54%), happy (48%) and calm (40%) after watching their favorite movie.</p><p>Almost two-thirds (63%) of parents agree that theyve passed their love of their favorite movie along to their child.</p><p>Nothing brings a family together quite like movie night, and nothing makes movie night better than a feel-good flick that fills you with warm, fuzzy feelings  especially when youre sick. We understand that feeling better means more than just relieving your cough symptoms  its about cozying up on the couch as you and your family work to feel better together, said Albert So, Marketing Director, Upper Respiratory Brands at Reckitt, including Delsym.</p><p>The survey also delved into how respondents are remedying their ailments by caring for their five senses. </p><p>In order to alleviate their symptoms, parents tend to want to taste soup (42%) and hot beverages like tea or coffee (26%).</p><p>They also want to touch things like their favorite blanket (40%), their significant other (19%) and their pet (14%).</p><p>When it comes to smell, respondents like to breathe in something clean like fresh linens (42%), medicine (36%) and something cooking in the kitchen (26%).</p><p>And while trying to feel better, respondents like to listen to music (58%) and their friends and family talking (29%).</p><p>When a family member is under the weather, the entire household is caught in the storm and that daily routine can be thrown off course, bringing with it discomfort and chaos. Families not only need fast-acting relief, but they need comforting remedies to help them navigate that storm, said So. Whether its moms chicken soup, your go-to feel better movie or cozying up with your kids, whatever it is that makes you feel better can go a long way.<br><br></p><p><em>Survey methodology:</em></p><p><em>This random double-opt-in survey of <strong>2,000 millennial parents of kids aged 4-12</strong> was commissioned by <strong>Delsym</strong> between <strong>October 6</strong> and <strong>October 10, 2022</strong>. It was conducted by market research company <a href="https://www.onepoll.us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="2">OnePoll</a>, whose team members are members of the <a href="https://www.mrs.org.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="3">Market Research Society</a> and have corporate membership to the American Association for Public Opinion Research (<a href="https://www.aapor.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="4">AAPOR</a>) and the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research (<a href="https://www.esomar.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="5">ESOMAR</a>).</em></p>
By PTI: Mumbai, Dec 4 (PTI) Essel Mutual Fund today said it will bear the 18 per cent GST on behalf of fund distributors. The move would help insulate distributors against the impact of GST, Essel said in a statement. The offer would be available on all present and future schemes of Essel Mutual Fund, till March 2019.

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************* Axis Sec gets registered on NCDEX exchange platform *

With Axis Securities taking membership of the agri-commodity exchange National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX), the commodity market space has registered the first ever bank broking arm on its platform.

Till recently the financial regulator had not allowed any institutional investors including banks, to participate in agri derivatives space.

"We will focus to penetrate clients for agri and non-agri commodities business across the country, especially from semi-urban & rural pockets of India," Axis Securities managing director Arun Thukral said. ************************** Peru seeks Indian investments in hydrocarbon, mining, agri *

Latin American country Peru, with the fastest GDP seeks Indian investments in manufacturing, hydrocarbon, mining, agri and agro-processing sectors with low custom tariffs and open investment regime, Embassy of Peru in India Commercial Counsellor Luis Cabello said here.

India is one of the biggest importers of oil and gas from Latin America and is one of the largest exporters of steel, automobile, IT and pharmaceutical products. The bilateral trade between India and Peru is more than USD 1700 million in 2016-17, which has a great potential to expand, he said. **************** Tata Motors partners with financiers for 100% funding schemes *

Auto major Tata Motors today said it has partnered with leading financiers and banks to offer up to 100 per cent funding through various finance schemes for buying a Tata car.

As part of its ?Mega Offer Max Celebration campaign?, launched today, the customers can drive home a Tata car at a down payment of just Rs 1, a release said. PTI SSM AP IAS DSK DSK RDS

--- ENDS ---
Crew aboard a flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong witnessed the remnants of North Korea's latest missile test.

Cathay Pacific flight CX893 was making its way over Japan when Pyongyang fired the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile.

Those on board reported seeing what they thought to be the missile re-entering the atmosphere.

After last week's launch , the rogue state boasted that the weapon was capable of hitting the US mainland.

A spokesman for the airline told Sky News: "On 29 November, the flight crew of CX893 reported a sighting of what is suspected to be the re-entry of the recent DPRK test missile.

"Though the flight was far from the event location, the crew advised Japan ATC (air traffic control) according to procedures. Operation remained normal and was not affected.

"We have been in contact with relevant authorities and industry bodies as well as with other carriers. At the moment, no one is changing any routes or operating parameters. We remain alert and review the situation as it evolves."

The South China Morning Post reports that the airline's general manager of operations Mark Hoey posted on the internal company communications platform to warn colleagues of the flight's proximity to the missile.

He said the crew had witnessed the missile "blow up and fall apart near our location" and that another Cathay Pacific flight - CX096 between Hong Kong and Anchorage in Alaska - may have been even closer.

Tensions in the region are likely to escalate even further this week, with North Korea declaring a five-day joint military drill between the US and South Korea as an "open, all-out provocation".

The two allies began their largest ever co-operative air exercise - dubbed Vigilant Ace - on Monday, with 230 aircraft, including 24 stealth fighter jets, set to take part.
FILE PHOTO - Finland's Prime Minister Juha Sipila listens to media after government's open session for members of public took place during the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Finnish independence in Porvoo, Finland May 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins (Reuters)

By Tuomas Forsell and Jussi Rosendahl

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland should remain militarily neutral because it helps ensure security in the Baltic Sea region, Prime Minister Juha Sipila said in an interview ahead of celebrations of the country's 100 years of independence.

The EU member state was part of the Russian Empire and won independence during the 1917 Russian revolution but it nearly lost it fighting the Soviet Union in World War Two.

The centre-right government retains the option of seeking NATO membership but remaining non-aligned and increasing defence cooperation with Sweden and the EU was Finland's way, Sipila said.

"At the moment, to have Finland and Sweden forming this militarily non-aligned zone, I think that increases the security and stability in the Baltic Sea region ... I see no reason to change this," Sipila told Reuters by phone.

Finland has stepped up military cooperation with Sweden and forged closer ties with NATO because it is concerned about Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and heightened East-West tensions in the Baltic Sea.

However, the government has opted to stay out of NATO in line with its tradition of avoiding confrontation with Russia.

A report commissioned by the government said last year that if Finland joined NATO it would lead to a crisis with Russia, which is also a major trade partner for Finland.

Moscow has hinted that it could move troops closer to the Finnish-Russian border if Finland joins NATO.

"It is clear that Finland is part of the West and the western community. That is our place," Sipila said.

"We want to be ... at the core of the European Union, influencing EU's future. But the main difference between us and the majority of EU states is our military non-alignment."

Polls show that only 22 percent of Finns support NATO membership, while 62 percent are opposed. Sipila, who leads Finland's Centre party, said any move to join would need public approval via a referendum.

Finance Minister Petteri Orpo from Finland's poll-leading National Coalition party told Reuters last week he believed that joining NATO would improve Finland's security.

(Reporting by Tuomas Forsell and Jussi Rosendahl; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
FILE PHOTO: A display featuring missiles and a portrait of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is seen at Baharestan Square in Tehran, Iran September 27, 2017. Nazanin Tabatabaee Yazdi/TIMA/File Photo via REUTERS (Reuters)

BEIRUT (Reuters) - France should know that Irans missile programme is not an issue that can be negotiated, Irans foreign ministry spokesman, Bahram Qassemi, said in an interview with state media on Monday.

"French official, other officials, who want to speak about Irans affairs need to pay attention to the deep developments that have come to pass in the region in past decades and the big changes between the current situation and the past, Qassemi said Monday, according to state media.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely not negotiate on defence and missile issues."

Tension between Iran and France increased last month when French President Emmanuel Macron said that Iran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify its ballistic missile programme.

His foreign minister also denounced, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran's hegemonic temptations.

France could play a productive role in the Middle East by taking a realistic and impartial approach, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told Macron in a telephone call two weeks ago, according to Iranian state media.

Iranian state media said Rouhani told Macron that the Islamic Republic was ready to develop its relations with France on all bilateral, regional and international issues based on mutual respect and shared goals.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Panorama alleged taxpayer money was reaching the hands of extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria (AP)

A foreign aid scheme has been suspended by the Government after an investigation claimed that taxpayers money was being used by extremists in Syria.

Officers from the Free Syrian Police (FSP), the civilian police force backed by Britain, have also been working with courts accused of torture and summary executions, BBC Ones Panorama alleged.

According to documents seen by the programme, police officers in Aleppo province were forced to hand over funds to the extremist group in control of the area, Nour al-Din al-Zinki.

Evidence also showed that the Syrian branch of al Qaida, Jabhat al-Nusra, had handpicked police officers for two stations in Idlib province, it said.

Britain is one of six countries funding the FSP, which was set up after the Syrian uprising.

Officers from the Free Syrian Police have allegedly been working with courts accused of torture and summary executions (Rex)

Adam Smith International (ASI), the British company that runs the project, said it had managed taxpayers money effectively to confront terrorism.

The programme Jihadis You Pay For, which will air on Monday evening, claims the documents also showed that dead and fictitious people were on the FSPs payroll.

When the company visited one police station, supposedly the base for 57 police officers, they could not find a single officer, the investigation found.

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ASI said it accounted for the officers on subsequent visits and that it had found very few instances of dead officers remaining on the salary list in Syria.

It said it used cash because there was no practical alternative and that officers imposed by Jabhat al-Nusra were detected within two months.

Payments to the stations funding the extremist group Nour al-Din al-Zinki were stopped in August 2016, it added.

Story continues

Kate Osamor, Labours shadow secretary of state for international development, said that British taxpayers would be rightly outraged by the claims (PA)

ASI said: ASI has managed the project successfully alongside our partner in an extremely challenging, high-risk environment under the close supervision of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and five other governments.

Kate Osamor, Labours shadow secretary of state for international development, said that if the allegations were true, British taxpayers would be rightly outraged.

She said: This investigation is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg: the Government must now open up its books so the public can understand the true extent of the problem.

An FCO spokesman said: We take any allegations of co-operation with terrorist groups and of human rights abuses extremely seriously and the Foreign Office has suspended this programme while we investigate these allegations.

We believe that such work in Syria is important to protect our national security interest but of course we reach this judgment carefully given that in such a challenging environment no activity is without risk. That is why all our programmes are designed carefully and subject to robust monitoring.

BBC Panorama: Jihadis You Pay For, is on BBC One at 7.30pm on Monday.
Pro-democracy campaigners in Hong Kong marched with previously jailed Occupy leader Joshua Wong Chi-fung through the city on Sunday, December 3, to protest against authoritarian measures by the government and mainland China.

Protesters voiced their opposition to harsh measures by the authorities against several pro-democracy activists, including Wong, who faced being re-jailed on Thursday for his actions during the 2014 Occupy protests, according to the South China Morning Post. This video shows protesters booing the Chinese national anthem, an act which could be outlawed by 2019, according to the South China Morning Post, as they marched along Queensway in Central. The woman seen in the footage holds a doll, a small stereo and a sign that reads: When you hear the national anthem, dont eat. Stand up immediately, Hong Kong Free Press reported. Some pro-democracy activists said the decision to outlaw protest against the Chinese national anthem in Hong Kong signifies the declining freedom in the Special Administrative Region, a former British colony. About 2000 people joined the protest from Wan Chai to the Court of Final Appeal in Central, according to the South China Morning Post. Credit: Twitter/Alex Hofford via Storyful
A hunter has been killed by a wild boar which attacked him as he tried to shoot it, say police in Germany.

The 50-year-old man was part of a shooting party with a dozen others who were searching for the pigs near the northeast German town of Greifswald on Sunday.

He was attacked by the male boar after firing off a shot and moving into reeds where he came face-to-face with the mammal, witnesses said.

Police said the man, who has not been identified, suffered severe injuries to his left thigh and fell into some water nearby.

He was taken to hospital where he later died.

Officers say they have not tracked down the boar and it is unclear whether the animal was injured.

About half a million wild boar are killed each year in Germany, but experts say the numbers killed are not enough to stop the burgeoning population.

In Berlin alone, about 6,000 boar live in forests on the city's outskirts.

In November, four people in the northern city of Heide were injured after a male and a female boar entered a city centre bank and attacked customers.

A local hunter shot the male boar but the second pig managed to escape during the commotion.

Bank customers escaped from the building using ladders provided by the emergency services.
Saad al-Hariri who suspended his decision to resign as prime minister talks at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon November 22, 2017. REUTERS/Aziz Taher (Reuters)

PARIS (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri will meet ministers from major powers in Paris on Friday to discuss ways of stabilising his country a month after his shock resignation plunged it into political turmoil, three diplomats said.

The Arab and European diplomats said Hariri would take part in the meeting of the International Lebanon Support Group, a body that includes the five members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

Hariri resigned as prime minister in early November while he was in Saudi Arabia, prompting a political crisis in Lebanon and thrusting it back into a regional tussle between Riyadh and its main regional foe, Iran.

Hariri has now returned to Beirut and indicated that he might withdraw his resignation, which was never accepted by the president.

Lebanese officials say Saudi Arabia had coerced Hariri, a long-time ally of the kingdom, into resigning and held him there against his will until an intervention by France led to his return to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia denies this.

A European diplomat said the aim of the meeting would be "to put pressure on the Saudis and Iranians".

He added that the meeting would be an opportunity to reinforce that the Lebanese must stick by the state policy of "disassociation", or keeping out of regional conflicts.

Before Hariri sets off, Lebanon's cabinet is this week set to meet for the first time since the political crisis erupted.

The date of the cabinet meeting has not yet been confirmed but it is expected to address Hariri's resignation.

A Lebanese MP who met Hariri on Monday said discussions among politicians were "moving positively" and would result in a "unanimous stance" by the cabinet soon.

The comments from MP Wael Abu Faour were published by Hariri's office on Monday.

The Lebanon support group, launched in 2013, also includes the European Union, the Arab League and the United Nations.

(Reporting by John Irish in Paris and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
News of Shashi Kapoor's death made ripples not only in India, but also in international media, which carried obituaries or news reports encapsulating the star's life.

By Dev Goswami: "Kapoor was a scion of the celebrated Indian film-making dynasty, the son of Mughal-E-Azam star Prithviraj Kapoor, and brother of Raj Kapoor."

"Kapoor, who acted in huge hits like Deewar and Kabhie Kabhie, had been ill for some time and was in hospital."

"Shashi Kapoor, the charming, romantic hero of numerous Indian films..."

Those were some of the ledes published in leading international publications after the death of Shashi Kapoor.

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The veteran Bollywood actor, once called the best-looking Kapoor by contemporary actor Sharmila Tagore, died today at Mumbai's Kokilaben Ambani Hospital.

News of the star's death made ripples not only in India, where everybody from leaders such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the entire Hindi film industry paid tributes, but also in international media. Foreign publications carried largely straight-forward obituaries or news reports encapsulating Shashi Kapoor's life.

American publications The Washington Post and the New York Times lead with wire stories filed by news agency the Associated Press. The AP noted Kapoor's massive contribution to the Hindi film industry, writing in its report, "Kapoor acted in more than 100 Hindi films and was also a key theater personality."

The AP also wrote about how Shashi Kapoor had wowed not just Bollywood audiences in India but cinema lovers in the West as well. "He appeared as well in British and American movies produced by Merchant Ivory productions, run by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory," the report read.

The agency also carried English translations of some of Shashi Kapoor's most iconic films. "Some of his popular Bollywood films were "Deewar (Wall)," "Kabhie Kabhie (Sometimes)," ''Namak Halal (Loyal Servant)" and "Kaala Pathar (Black Rock)." He co-starred with Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan in each," the AP wrote.

US News network CNN focused on Shashi Kapoor's birth into a "talented family". Shashi Kapoor's "father (Prithviraj Kapoor) was an actor and playwright, performing all over the country during the Partition era with his repertory company the Prithvi Theaters," CNN noted before going on to devote two paragraphs to the iconic 'mere paas maa hai' exchange between Shashi Kapoor and contemporary Amitabh Bachchan.

Shashi Kapoor. Thank you and farewell: https://t.co/i9K88akIio- Salil Tripathi (@saliltripathi) December 4, 2017

In the United Kingdom, both The Guardian and the BBC carried desk reports on Shashi Kapoor's death. "Kapoor was a scion of the celebrated Indian film-making dynasty, the son of Mughal-E-Azam star Prithviraj Kapoor, and brother of Raj Kapoor," The Guardian wrote, tracing the departed star's cinematic lineage.

The BBC, which also has a presence in India, wrote about Shashi Kapoor's many awards. "He won several national film awards and was awarded the Padma Bhushan civilian honour by the Indian government in 2011," the British public-owned broadcaster said in its report of the star's death.

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And, in a nod to how the young generation in India remembers Shashi Kapoor, the BBC wrote about his most iconic dialogue: "His comment "Mere paas maa hai" (But I have mother's support) - from Deewar during a tense confrontation with screen-sibling Bachchan tops the list of best Bollywood lines for millions of fans across the globe."

Other publications that covered Shashi Kapoor's death included the Qatar-based Al Jazeera, which called the actor a "charming, romantic hero of numerous Indian films", and international news agency Reuters, which wrote about Kapoor's "easy charm and intense demeanor".

WATCH | Shashi Kapoor no more: A tribute to Bollywood's handsome actor

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Nicola Sturgeon has suggested that Scotland be given the same Brexit concessions as Northern Ireland (Rex)

With Britain and the European Union moving closer to an agreement on the Irish border, the SNP are questioning why Scotland cant have the same Brexit concessions.

How to maintain a soft Irish border had emerged as the key sticking point to getting agreement from the EU to move on to phase two of negotiations.

Reports suggest the UK government had conceded there would be continued regulatory alignment on Ireland, suggesting Northern Ireland could stay in the customs union and the single market.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has jumped on the news, saying there was no good reason that Scotland could not do the same with the EU and effectively stay in the single market.

The Scottish First Minister tweeted: If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others cant.

If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others cant.  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) December 4, 2017

SNP MP Angus MacNeil also believes the concession paves the way for Scotland having a similar deal, even if other parts of the UK leave the EU altogether.

He told BuzzFeed News: Yes, [its] completely impossible [to deny Scotland the same deal as Northern Ireland]. Why should Scotland have a terrible deal and Ireland a good deal?

Irelands deputy premier and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said the Dublin governments concerns over the post-Brexit border were set to be addressed fully.

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London Mayor Sadiq Khan echoed the SNPs sentiments, tweeting that London should get the same Brexit deal as Northern Ireland.

He tweeted: Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs.

Regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic is likely to mean both sides following the same rules governing trade, to ensure that goods can continue to move freely across a soft border with no checks.

Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that its possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market & customs union after Brexit. Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs.  Mayor of London (@MayorofLondon) December 4, 2017

Lord Trimble, former leader of the Ulster Unionists and ex-Northern Ireland first minister, said he was left shocked and scratching his head at reports of a deal allowing continued regulatory alignment across the border.

He told BBC Radio 4s World At One: We need to see the detail of this. I think its a thoroughly bad idea. If this operates purely on a Northern Ireland basis, its going to put Northern Ireland businesses  potentially, at a very significant disadvantage.

Because, they would be locked into European regulatory provisions, whereas the rest of the United Kingdom, which is their major market, is free from those, and may have different regulatory provisions entirely.

The Government has reportedly made Brexit concessions when it comes to the Ireland border (PA)

DUP Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson, whose party is effectively keeping Mrs May in Downing Street in a confidence and supply deal with the minority Tory Government, also warned her not to proceed with regulatory alignment.

He said: I think that this is emanating from the Irish Government, obviously, trying to push the UK Government into a corner in the negotiations.

It is not well thought through. I dont think, given its promises, the British Government could concede on this.

European Council president Donald Tusk believes talks could soon move on to the second phase (Rex)

He added: Potentially, this is very bad news for Northern Ireland, if it happens.

The issue of the Irish border is one of the sticking points stopping Britain and the EU reaching a deal before they can move on to the next phase of talks, dealing with trade and a transition period.

European Council president Donald Tusk said the two sides were getting closer to making the required sufficient progress for him to recommend that negotiations move on.
Protesters rallied on the streets in Honduras on December 3 as chaos mounted amid confusion over the November 26 presidential election

These videos show opposition groups marching and chanting in the city of La Ceiba, about 250 miles north of the capital of Tegucigalpa. One man died in protests in La Ceiba on Friday, December 1, Honduran newspaper La Prensa reported.

The countrys residents faced a dusk-until-dawn curfew after protests and rioting spread in multiple towns and cities, CNN reported.

Meanwhile, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral said Sunday it would recount the votes submitted for the countrys presidential election. Both current president Juan Orlando Hernandez and opposition leader Salvador Nasralla declared victory after the election, sparking the demonstrations. Hernandez was yet to directly respond to accusations of vote rigging. Credit: Facebook/Renext Bon via Storyful
Police really want to speak to these men

Police are searching for these men in connection with a homophobic attack on a tube train in London.

The victim, a 19-year-old man, was travelling on a westbound Jubilee line train between West Ham and North Greenwich with his friends on October 21 when the assault happened.

According to officers, the offenders boarded the train at around 11.10pm at West Ham and began verbally abusing the victim and his friends, who were in fancy dress, using homophobic language.

The first offender then pulled the victim from his seat into a headlock, strangling him, while the second offender took the victims phone made threats to stab him.

British Transport Police said they are treating the incident as a hate crime.

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The offenders demanded the victim apologise for being gay while they choked him, before a fight broke out between the victims friends and the offenders, police said.

One of the victims friends, a 25-year-old woman, sustained bruising after she was punched and pushed to the ground.

Police would like to speak to the people shown in the images as they may have information, which could help the investigation.

A BTP spokesman said: They demanded the victim apologise for being gay which eventually the victim did as he was struggling to breathe. They then let him go and handed back his phone and a fight ensued between the victims friends and the offenders.

One of the victims friends, a 25-year-old woman, was punched and pushed to the ground. She sustained bruising.

The added: Hate crime will not be tolerated by British Transport Police. We believe that everyone has the right to travel safety.

We wont tolerate behaviour where someone is targeted because they are perceived to be different, or made to feel uncomfortable on their journey.

Police urged anyone with information to call BTP on 0800 40 50 40 or text 61016, quoting reference number 273 of 1/12.
TIRANA, Albania (AP)  Albanian authorities say that despite less rainfall and lower river levels, thousands of homes and scores of schools have been damaged, and agricultural land is still submerged.

The government said Sunday that 600 families were evacuated Saturday in two southwestern districts.

More than 3,000 homes, 56 schools and 16,000 hectares (40,000 acres) of agricultural land have been flooded. Many roads and 28 bridges have been damaged.

Authorities have started calculating the damage to consider financial compensation.

At least one person has died in the last several days of heavy rainfall that has flooded many parts of Albania. Ports and the only international airport were temporarily closed for part of the weekend.

Schools were closed Friday and the Education Ministry will make a decision soon about Monday's classes.

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AIM-listed software and service company Intercede has signed a contract with a UK government ministerial department that will generate revenue of around 250,000 in the current financial year and up to 500,000 in the following year.

Intercede will supply services to enable the customer to embed its MyID product for employees into its network infrastructure. This will be used to provide digital identities to staff involved in international collaboration.

MyID will enable this customer to eliminate a reliance on the use of potentially insecure passwords for secure authentication. In doing so, the department will become more resistant to social engineering and other cyber-attacks based on compromising employee login details. This makes it easier for the UK government to meet its international obligations for secure partnership with other governments around the world.

Chairman and chief executive Richard Parris said: "This contract was secured following a competitive tender process. Our success demonstrates that Intercede's MyID product and services remains the first choice for security aware customers seeking to replace password-based authentication with strong digital credentials. This deployment is similar to solutions previously sold to the Australian, Canadian and US governments."

At 1034 GMT, the shares were up 5.1% to 31p.
Congress has nearly 45,000 WhatsApp groups in Gujarat and a YouTube channel of 'Pakka Gujarati'. The team is being led by 15 office bearers at a controlled unit in Ahmedabad.

By Arpan Rai: While the BJP's social media machinery has roughly 25,000 cyber warriors, the Indian National Congress is scores ahead with its WhatsApp groups, days before first poll date of Gujarat elections.

Rohan Gupta, the IT cell head of the Grand Old Party, monitoring the cyber operations with his team of 2,000 party volunteers, says Rahul Gandhi's religion is a non-issue and is being used by BJP to divert voters' attention, "Rahul's religion has nothing to do with Gujarat elections and people in Gujarat will gain nothing from his religion. 75 per cent of the Prime Minister's speech is devoted to Congress," said the social media head.

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The party has nearly 45,000 WhatsApp groups in Gujarat and a YouTube channel of 'Pakka Gujarati'. The team is being led by 15 office bearers at a controlled unit at Ahmedabad - which is the central war room.

The 15 office bearers, in coordination with a mix of professionals and volunteers, are responsible for ideation, creation of content and execution on Twitter and Facebook.

The content is then sent to 2,000 volunteers, who forward it to the party supporters in every booth.

"Cyber operations, ranging from Facebook lives, posts on temple visits and live tweeting of rallies, were started in 2012 and have picked momentum in the last few months," Rohan told Mail Today.

"It is not like we will stop working after the results are declared in Gujarat. We will operate similarly, 24x7, even after the Gujarat elections are over, he also said."

As opposed to BJP social media head's strategy, which is focusing solely on developmental work done by the party, Congress IT cell head maintains that BJP is talking less about their achievements. "Had they performed in the last 22 years for being the elected party by Gujarat, they would not have felt the need to talk about Congress at all. "They are shying away from talking about their achievements and presenting data. Instead, they have an anti-Congress message for the people of Gujarat," Rohan said.

The social media campaign has taken a sharp turn five days before the first polling round, where the Congress will talk about the issues its manifesto will focus on - from party's vice-president Rahul Gandhi's Twitter account to Congress' official handle. Starting with women's safety, education and health, the party has questioned low conviction rate for those committing crimes against women.

"Why no justice for women as only 3 per cent of those accuse of crimes against women are convicted?", "Why does Gujarat lag behind at 20th place in girl child education?" and "Why has Maternal Mortality Rate risen to 85 putting the state at number 11 among 15 states in reduction of MMR?" were among the few questions party has raised and the social media followers can expect discussion on similar such issues in the next week.

--- ENDS ---

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Nigel Farage has resigned as the leader of the UK Independence Party.

In a speech in London, Farage said he felt he had done his bit and couldnt possibly achieve more.

"I have never been, and I have never wanted to be, a career politician. My aim in being in politics was to get Britain out of the European Union," he said.

The eurosceptic MEP, who stepped down last year only to return to the role within days, joked that he wanted his life back after eight years in the role.

I wont be changing my mind again, I assure you, he said.

Farage said Ukip could be on track to do well in the 2020 election, pointing in particular to the potential to win over Labour supporters.

Whilst we will now leave the European Union, the terms of our withdrawal are unclear. If there is too much backsliding by the Government and with the Labour Party detached from many of its voters then Ukips best days may be yet to come.

The outspoken politician said a new leader would be in place in time for the autumn conference but did not back a particular candidate.

Farage has been serving in the European Parliament since 1999 and will continue to do so until Britain leaves the European Union.
Shares in Sky were lifted on Monday after reports that Walt Disney has restarted talks with Rupert Murdochs 21st Century Fox over acquiring most of the broadcaster's assets, including the stake in the UK business.

Fox, which is controlled by Murdoch and his sons, is negotiating the potential sale of its film studio, cable channels and international businesses, which include Indias Star network and Sky, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

UK regulators are currently scrutinising Fox's 11.7bn bid to take full control of Sky, with the government having admitted some concerns about broadcasting standards and UK media plurality.

Fox, where Murdoch's younger son James is chief executive officer, has a 39% stake in Sky, where James is also chairman.

Talks with Disney are not exclusive, with Fox also said to be engaging with US cable networks Comcast and Verizon Communications, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Investors have bid up Fox's shares, noted analysts at Citi, who said "questions remain" on potential tax leakage.

Citi sees the "most likely" scenario as a swap of Disney's sports assets, namely ESPN, for Fox assets such as the film studio, non-sports cable networks, Hulu and the Sky stake.

"This would put both firms on a firmer strategic footing and reduce tax leakage," Citi said, adding that it expects the swap will occur.
Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan is requesting a special Brexit deal to allow London to stay within the European Unions single market and customs union.

Earlier today, following talks between the Prime Minister and EU Commission head Jean Claude Juncker, a draft text for the agreement on the Irish question was released stating that there will be no "regulatory divergence" on the island after the UK leaves the bloc.

DUP leader, Arlene Foster responded angrily, saying that the party would by no means accept a deal where Northern Ireland doesnt leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the UK.

In an unexpected turn of events, that was followed by both Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon releasing statements in which they requested special deals for both London and Scotland too, as most of their citizens had voted to remain.

Sturgeon took to her Twitter account to say: "If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others cant".

Khan was in a similar frame of mind, arguing for a similar arrangement to be put in place for the capital.

Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it's possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market & customs union after Brexit. Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs.  Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) 4 de diciembre de 2017

Khan added: "Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs."

"Weve got to recognise that leaving the EU poses huge challenges and the best way to mitigate that is to attract talent from India."

Speaking earlier from Mumbai, at the start of his six-day visit to India and Pakistan, Khan did his best to attract Indian talent to London, telling his audience that "London is open for talent".

"One of the justifications that some ministers in the government give to leave the EU is to have better trade relations with many countries like India. One of the best ways to encourage trade with India is to invite talent to London and UK, he said.

Sadiq Khan has been adamant that London must remain 'open', despite Brexit and stringent visa norms. He told BloombergQuint in an interview: "Weve got to recognise that leaving the EU poses huge challenges and the best way to mitigate that is to attract talent from India.

The Mayor was also very critical of the decision to remove post-study work visas which had led Indians to choose to study in Canada or the US instead.
Warren Bickel (left), the Virginia Tech Carilion Behavioral Health Research Professor, and Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, hope to end the problem of repeated opioid overdoses during addiction treatment. Also pictured are technicians at the VTCRI Addiction Recovery Research Center.

Warren Bickel (left, standing), the Virginia Tech Carilion Behavioral Health Research Professor, and Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, hope to end the problem of repeated opioid overdoses during addiction treatment. Also pictured are Lexie Mellis, a translational biology, medicine, and health graduate student, and research technician Natalie Popsuy.
By PTI: Indore, Dec 4 (PTI) Girls and women are more vulnerable to their own relatives and acquaintances than unknown persons on the issue of sex-related crimes, data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) "Crime in India 2016" report has indicated.

Highlighting rape figures, the report has stated that "in 2016, the accused of rapes in 94.6 cases are none other than the victims relatives including brother, father, grand-father, sons or acquaintances."

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The report showed that in the year 2016, a total of 38,947 cases of rape were registered in the country under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) as well as Section 376 and other related sections of the Indian Penal Code.

Among these 38,947 cases, in 36,859 matters, accused are related to the victims, it said.

Similarly, it said that in 630 cases, victims were allegedly raped by grand-father, father, brother and son while in 1,087 cases the accused were acquaintances.

Besides in 2,174 cases, the accused are relatives and in 10,520 matters, it was neighbours who were facing charges of rape, it said.

In 600 cases, employers and co- workers are accused of rape, the report said.

The NCRB report also stated that in 2016, in 557 cases, the accused are live-in parthers, husband and ex-husbands.

Similarly, in 10,068 cases, women were raped on the promise of marriage.

It also states that in the remaining 11,223 cases, the victims in some manner or the other knew the accused.

Expressing concern over these figures, National Commission of Women (NCW) chairperson, Rekha Sharma told PTI, "In our society there is lot of restrictions imposed on girls. But now it is enough. Time has come when boys should be taught from childhood how to behave with women as per our social values."

She said that porn material is easily available on internet. In such a scenario, parents should keep a watch on the mobile phones and computers. PTI HWP MAS ADU BNM BAS

--- ENDS ---
First Republic Bank was founded by Jim Herbert with the intention of providing exceptional levels of customer service. It was his belief that customer service would set the bank apart and create a profitable investment for its shareholders. After 35 years, his vision has proven true with a 25% CAGR that continues to this day. The initial enterprise value has grown from only $8.8 million in that time, to over $19 billion making it the 14th largest bank in the US. First Republic Bank was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

First Republic Bank with its subsidiaries operates in two segments and provides personal banking, business banking, and wealth management services to individuals, families, organizations, and small businesses in the United States. The companys services are available in-person at one of the more than 80 offices or via ATM, online, mobile, and debit cards.

The company offers deposit products including checking and saving accounts, money market, and CDs as well as a range of lending products. The full range of lending products includes but is not limited to residential mortgages, home equity lines of credit, commercial real estate and construction loans, and personal and business loans.

The companys wealth management services include advisory services, online investment management, trusts, estate planning, and alternative investments as well as insurance and foreign exchange. The online brokerage service is available to all clients and can be accessed at any time via a web browser or mobile device.

First Republic Bank operates a network of more than 80 deposit-taking branches and 12 wealth management offices. The network is located primarily in California with additional branches in major metropolitan areas and two destination locations that include Portland, Boston, Palm Beach, Greenwich, New York, and Jackson, Wyoming.

First Republic Bank has proven its worth over the year by maintaining a consistently strong capital level, asset quality, and liquidity position. Its prudent management has allowed it to weather market ups and downs while commanding investment grade ratings for its bonds and preferred stock.
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Bharatpur police issued a challan for Rs 200 to a man as he was driving a van without a helmet. Now he wears the head gear whenever he drives.

Vishnu was on his way to Bharatpur from Agra when he was stopped at Chiksana police crossing. (Photo courtesy: Dev Ankur Wadhawan)

By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: A man in Rajasthan's Bharatpur was issued a challan for not wearing a helmet. Nothing unusual about that, right? Well, except that he was driving a car and not riding a bike or a scooter.

Bharatpur police achieved this unenviable task on December 1.

Vishnu Sharma was driving a Maruti van when police personnel stopped him and told that he to pay a challan.

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Vishnu was on his way to Bharatpur from Agra when he was stopped at Chiksana police crossing and told he will have to pay. According to sources, even though Sharma told police that his papers were in order, they remained adamant on ensuring that he paid up. According to the challan accessed by India Today, Vishnu had to cough up a fine of Rs 200.

Ever since the incident, Sharma has become a subject of curiosity as he has started to wear a helmet everytime he drives his car.

"I wear the helmet while I drive so that I'm not issued any more challans," Sharma said.

A senior Bharatpur police official claimed he was not aware of the incident. "No such thing has come to my knowledge so far. If it does, then we will investigate," Suresh Kumar Khinchi, additional Superintendent of Police, Bharatpur.

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Inc., Virginia Power Services LLC, Virginia Solar 2017 Projects LLC, Wakefield Solar LLC, Watercress Holdings LLC, Wexpro Company, Wexpro Development Company, Wexpro II Company, Wilkinson Solar LLC, Yemassee Solar LLC, and Yorkshire Holdings LLC.

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Best Buy Co., Inc. retails technology products in the United States and Canada. The company operates in two segments, Domestic and International. Its stores provide computing products, such as desktops, notebooks, and peripherals; mobile phones comprising related mobile network carrier commissions; networking products; tablets covering e-readers; smartwatches; and consumer electronics consisting of digital imaging, health and fitness, home theater, portable audio comprising headphones and portable speakers, and smart home products. The company's stores also offer appliances, such as dishwashers, laundry, ovens, refrigerators, blenders, coffee makers, and vacuums; entertainment products consisting of drones, peripherals, movies, music, and toys, as well as gaming hardware and software, and virtual reality and other software products; and other products, such as baby, food and beverage, luggage, outdoor living, and sporting goods. In addition, it provides consultation, delivery, design, health-related, installation, memberships, repair, set-up, technical support, and warranty-related services. The company offers its products through stores and websites under the Best Buy, Best Buy Ads, Best Buy Business, Best Buy Health, CST, Current Health, Geek Squad, Lively, Magnolia, Best Buy Mobile, Pacific Kitchen, Home, and Yardbird, as well as domain names bestbuy.com, currenthealth.com, lively.com, yardbird.com, and bestbuy.ca. As of January 30, 2022, it had 1,144 stores. The company was formerly known as Sound of Music, Inc. The company was incorporated in 1966 and is headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 4 (PTI) India and Germany today signed several agreements, including a 200 million euro funding pact for climate-friendly urban mobility project.

The Government to Government Umbrella Agreement concerning financial cooperation in 2016 (II) under the Indo- German Development Cooperation was formalised here.

"An amount up to 200 million euro for the financial cooperation in form of loan for project Climate Friendly Urban Mobility III and 11 million euro accompanying measures in form of grant for four projects," was signed, said an official statement.

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The Part I of the agreement had already been signed in May.

In addition, four other agreements were signed between Department of Economic Affairs with KfW, Germany under Indo- German Bilateral Development Cooperation.

One loan agreement is for the project Community based sustainable Forest Management ? Component I Manipur. It was signed with KfW for a loan of 15 million euro.

The broad objectives of the project are restoration of degraded forests in upper watersheds, reclamation of abandoned shifting cultivation areas, biodiversity conservation, water resources conservation and livelihood improvement of forest dependent rural tribal people in the project area.

The other agreements were for projects namely Madhya Pradesh Urban Sanitation and Environment Programme; Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Development Odisha ? Phase II; and Green Energy Corridor ? Intra-State Transmission System in Maharashtra. PTI NKD CS ANU

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DENVER  In an American West that has a love-hate relationship with the federal governments ownership of a checkerboard of parks, monuments, forest and desert in states from Washington to New Mexico, Utah stands out.

The state has gone well beyond any other in the region in trying to pry the federal governments hands off land it sees as belonging to its residents.

In 2012, its Legislature passed a law demanding the federal government give 30 million acres (121,000 square kilometers) of the land it owns in Utah to the state government  a measure other Western states have balked at replicating, even deeply conservative ones like Idaho.

Earlier this year, a Utah congressman introduced a bill to sell more than 4,600 square miles (11,900 square kilometers) of Western federal land to private entities but pulled it after a backlash. And on Monday, President Donald Trump is expected to announce hes significantly reducing the size of two national monuments in southern Utah, the first such act by a president in half a century.

Utahs certainly on the tip of the spear, said state Rep. Mike Noel, who represents south-central Utah, where some residents have fought to shrink or eliminate Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument since President Bill Clinton created it in 1996.

Polls have repeatedly shown Westerners cherish national monuments and other protected federal land  even in Utah  but the states political leaders have been united in celebrating Trumps expected move.

The presidents decision has already sparked protests. On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators holding signs with messages like Protect Wild Utah converged on the steps of the Utah State Capitol.

The president is considering changes to other Western monuments as well, as recommended by his interior secretary, Ryan Zinke. But no state has been agitating for reductions like Utah. In a telling move, at the same time Zinke recommended the Utah shrinkage, he urged the creation of a new national monument in his conservative home state of Montana, where hes believed to harbor political ambitions.

Theres nothing in our data thatd say, politically, that this is popular, said Lori Weigel, a Republican pollster in Denver, said of efforts to trim monuments. Weigel has done surveys on Western land conservation for years, including recent ones for supporters of the monuments that found Utah voters back them by a 2-1 margin.

I cant say why Utah elected officials have taken this on more than in other states, she said. But we see widespread recognition that designation of protected land is valued.

The reasons range from geography to politics to Utahs unique Mormon history and culture.

Even Utahs sharpest critics of federal land bristle at the notion that they are against conservation. They say they treasure the states five national parks, many national forests and even some of its monuments.

The state itself conserves lands in expansive state parks, they add, and would protect its scenic treasures. But the nearly 3,000-square-mile (7,770-square-kilometer) Grand Staircase and the 2,000-square-mile (5,180-square-kilometer) Bears Ears National Monument that President Obama created last year in the southeast part of the state are simply too intrusive on local communities and ranchers, they argue, and too much of the state is locked up by the federal government and barred from energy development. Washington, D.C., owns two-thirds of Utahs land, a greater percentage than in any other state in the lower 48 other than Nevada.

If you live in Colorado, you live in Arizona, you are not dealing with the federal lands that we are, state Senate President Wayne Niederhauser said.

Like much of the West, Utah is actually a very urban state. All that protected  and arid  land means most residents pack into the fast-growing corridor between the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch mountains, in the northern part of the state near Salt Lake City.

But unlike other heavily urban Western states such as Nevada that are destinations for transplants from across the country, many of Utahs urbanites  especially the politically active ones  are descendants of its rural areas who are more sensitive to complaints from people like Rep. Noel.

Every single one of the people in that Legislature, they have a connection to rural Utah, said Noel, an avid birder and former employee of the Bureau of Land Management, the Interior Department agency that oversees some 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the West.

Also, until the Legislature changed the law in 2014, Utahs political parties mostly chose their candidates at party gatherings. Since Republicans are virtually guaranteed to win elections in most of the state, that system allowed a tiny handful of dedicated activists to gain outsize weight in selecting elected officials.

Finally, there is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the religion that makes Utah unlike any other state. It was founded in the 19th century by Mormons who fled massacres in the Midwest and were desperate to have a land they could call their own  and to control their economic destiny, said Mathew Bowman, author of a history of the faith called The Mormon People.

There was a desire for Mormons to be economically independent and self-sufficient, Bowman said. A lot of the prominent Mormon leaders of the early 20th century came out of this.

Even now, he added, that legacy lingers. These ideas arent very personal, but theyve been floating around in the atmosphere here. Today, as much as two-thirds of the states 3 million residents are Mormons, including many state lawmakers and Utahs entire congressional delegation.

Sometimes extremists seize on the LDS connection. The Bundy family of Nevada ranchers, who brandished guns during a standoff with BLM agents in rural Nevada in 2014 and last year helped seize an Oregon wildlife refuge, identify as Mormon and have sometimes pointed to scripture to justify their actions. But the Mormon church condemned their takeover of the refuge, and even some LDS members frustrated with federal control of Western lands have expressed revulsion at the familys actions.

Ken Ivory, a state lawmaker from suburban Salt Lake City who has led the campaign to get other states to try to take over federal land, acknowledges Utahs religious tradition is a factor in its desire to take care of its terrain.

Self-reliance is something ingrained in our lives, Ivory said.
First in a two-part series on conversations with Geronimo Gutierrez, Mexicos ambassador to the U.S.

On Nov. 16, I spent the better part of the day with Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Geronimo Gutierrez, who visited the El Paso/Juarez/southern New Mexico region.

In the morning, I was part of a small delegation that had breakfast with Gutierrez at the Foxconn plant just across the border from Santa Teresa, N.M., in San Jeronimo, Chihuahua. After breakfast, we toured the Foxconn facility, which is making Dell computers and HP tablets, followed by an interactive lunch at the El Paso Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Within the past 25 years, Gutierrez has worked in various high-level positions in the Mexican federal government, including stints in Mexicos Treasury Department, Banobras (the Mexican development bank), the Mexican Interior Ministry, and the Secretariat of Foreign Relations. Most recently, he was the head of the North American Development Bank, which is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.

Gutierrez presented a model of a well-informed and polished diplomat. It seemed to me that his personality and intellect made him a natural to rise to the position of ambassador to the U.S., Mexicos most important diplomatic post.

During his visit, he provided insight on the U.S.-Mexico relationship and the ongoing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations. He was very open and honest in answering questions, and the people who joined him were eager to ask his opinion on a myriad of issues, and to also provide the ambassador with personal feedback on a variety of subjects.

On U.S.-Mexico relations, Gutierrez stated that it is better for both countries to cooperate, rather than pointing fingers. This applies not only to a secure border, which he believes is in the best interest of both nations, but also to better economic integration, of which NAFTA has been the backbone. The ambassador talked about how there were strong concerns in the U.S. concerning globalization, security, and job losses. He believes these are legitimate concerns; however, appealing to fear is not a good approach.

Gutierrez believes the U.S. and Mexico must work closely together on border infrastructure. We have to come up with 21st Century ports of entry at our borders, he said. Maybe we need to establish a joint toll so that we can pay for infrastructure, which everybody says that they want, but nobody wants to pay for.

Gutierrez also believes that Mexico has an image problem in the U.S., and that his country needs to let people know that there are far more positive things happening in Mexico than negative. In short, Mexico needs to do a better job in the U.S. presenting itself. According to the ambassador, During the last 30 years, there have been many Mexicans who have come to the U.S. in search of a better life  that is our fault. This is changing in Mexico, as jobs are being created.

A major part of immigration reform will entail addressing the visa issues in the U.S., which Gutierrez believes need to be worked on. He pointed out that Mexico has the labor that the U.S. needs. In sectors such as agriculture, both countries can benefit from this situation.

At the beginning of the year, Gutierrez believed there was an 80-20 percent chance that the three North American partners would end up rescinding the agreement. He now believes that the odds are 50-50. He said that his confidence was growing but tempered with pragmatism. He stated, If the U.S. does leave NAFTA, we cant count on the people who follow Trump to put another free trade agreement in front of the U.S. Congress for another 25 years. If NAFTA fails, it will hit Mexico hard, but we will survive.

Gutierrez believes that rather than focusing solely on North American trade, the three NAFTA partners should focus on what they produce together. He emphasized how economically integrated the partners are, and how this integration allows them to compete against other parts of the world. He pointed out that while the U.S. has a $347 billion trade deficit with China, Mexico also runs a $65 billion trade deficit with this Asian nation, and that a lot of this is due to the electronics industry, which has migrated from both the U.S. and Mexico to China. One solution might be for Mexico to explore sourcing more electronics from the U.S., which will help both NAFTA partners and would keep more capital flowing in North America.

Next: The critical NAFTA renegotiation points and potential deal breakers.

Jerry Pacheco is the executive director of the International Business Accelerator, a nonprofit trade counseling program of the New Mexico Small Business Development Centers Network. He can be reached at 575-589-2200 or at jerry@nmiba.com.
SEATTLE  For most of the time Syrian refugee Mohammad Al Zayed has been in the United States, judges have been wrestling with the Trump administrations efforts to impose travel restrictions that he says would keep him from seeing relatives who remain overseas.

Its taken an emotional toll  one that continues this week as two U.S. appeals courts take up the issue yet again.

Its been 10 months, and were stuck, Al Zayed, a janitor at OHare International Airport in Chicago, said through an Arabic interpreter. We cant go back. We cant bring our loved ones here.

Citing national security concerns, President Donald Trump announced his initial travel ban on citizens of certain Muslim-majority nations in late January, bringing havoc and protests to airports around the country. A federal judge in Seattle soon halted that ban as discriminatory, and since then, the restrictions have been up to the U.S. Supreme Court and back down to the federal district courts as the administration has rewritten them.

The third and latest version targets about 150 million potential travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, along with some Venezuelan government officials and their families.

The administration said the latest ban is based on assessments of each countrys security situation and their willingness to share information about travelers. But judges in Hawaii and Maryland blocked it to varying degrees just before it was due to take effect in October. The judges found that the ban appears impermissibly discriminatory, has no legitimate national security purpose and violates U.S. immigration law.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments in Seattle on the governments appeal of the Hawaii judges ruling. The panel has already narrowed that decision to allow the administration to bar travelers who do not have a bona fide relationship with people or organizations already in the U.S.  an approach that echoed the Maryland judges ruling as well as an earlier travel ban decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.

A full complement of 13 judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is due to hear the governments appeal in the Maryland case on Friday in Richmond, Virginia.

Critics of Trumps travel restrictions insist that they make up the Muslim ban he promised during his campaign, and judges have seized on the presidents public statements on Twitter and elsewhere in finding them unconstitutionally discriminatory.

This weeks arguments arrive as Trump continues to stoke those anti-Islam sentiments: Just last week, he drew a sharp condemnation from British Prime Minister Theresa Mays office when he retweeted a string of inflammatory videos from a fringe British political group purporting to show violence being committed by Muslims.

Government lawyers argue in briefs filed for the Maryland case that Trumps comments primarily reflect an intent to protect the United States from the threat of terrorism by nationals from countries that pose heightened risks. The Trump administration says the travel policy will be reviewed periodically and the named countries are encouraged to work with the U.S. to address inadequacies and risks so that the restrictions may be relaxed or removed as soon as possible.

The fact that serious national-security risks are posed by some Muslim-majority nations cannot prevent the government from addressing those problems, especially after the kind of extensive, multi-agency review process that occurred here, the administration argues.

The lower court rulings threaten the ability of this and future Presidents to address national-security threats and advance foreign policy interests, the Justice Department wrote in its 9th Circuit appeal. Further, the government says, courts dont have the authority to review the presidents decision to exclude foreigners abroad unless Congress authorizes them to, and Congress has provided no such authorization.

Al Zayed, 50, arrived in the U.S. via Jordan in September 2016 with his wife, two sons and daughter after fleeing horrific fighting in Syria, which destroyed the textile factory where he worked and prevented his children from attending school. Al Zayeds case is among several laid out in friend-of-the-court briefs filed by labor organizations opposed to the travel ban.

Al Zayed says hes afraid he wouldnt be able to return if he visited family overseas. His two brothers and parents remain in Syria, and hes afraid hell never see his 85-year-old father again if the travel ban is upheld. Nevertheless, he says hes happy to be here.

Syria was very difficult  an impossible life for us, he said. So despite that they have the Muslim ban, I think, Thank God that we are here.'

Critics said that while North Korea and Venezuela are not predominantly Muslim, the ban would affect very few travelers from there, and their inclusion on the list may have been designed to avoid discrimination allegations.

There are millions of people who are being separated from family members and prevented from doing their important business  lawful business  in the United States, all because of the presidents rampant and blatant anti-Muslim bias, said Cecillia Wang, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who will argue before the 4th Circuit.

It is unclear when the courts will rule. Whatever they decide, the rulings are expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

___

Lavoie reported from Richmond, Virginia.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

As students filtered toward the exit of the Downtown Albuquerque studio on a recent weeknight, the propertys famed former owner met them near the door.

He signed their books. He took pictures with them. He encouraged them to keep coming back.

Great seeing you guys, Antoine Predock told the undergraduate architecture class as it left the University of New Mexicos newly developed Predock Center for Design and Research. This is your center now. Come hang out here. Use it. Seriously.

A renowned architect and longtime Albuquerque dweller, Predock recently donated the Downtown property where he once lived and practiced to UNM  the school that helped turn the once-budding engineer into an artist.

In the more than 60 years since he matriculated at UNM, Predock has designed projects all over the world, from residences and resorts to the San Diego Padres stadium and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.

But he has maintained ties to UNM, even designing the building that houses its School of Architecture and Planning.

So when his wife, Constance DeJong, urged him to find a forever home for the myriad models, sketches and the other physical manifestations of his design process  a collection he estimates at 10,000 pieces  he chose to give his archives to UNMs Center for Southwest Research.

My wife kept bugging me, Hey, man, when you die, where is this going to go?  recalled Predock, explaining it as an easy call. I thought, what is my spiritual home? New Mexico  period. No-brainer.

More recently, the couple also gifted the residence and studio space to the architecture school in order to develop the new center.

The property will likely coalesce into space for student studios and as a showcase for the Predock archives, according to School of Architecture and Planning Dean Geraldine Forbes Isais, though it remains a work in progress.

Forbes Isais said the propertys buildings need at least $1 million in upgrades  the original home is more than a century old  to prepare them for formal university use. They will require even more to carry out the grander vision of a fully functioning modern workspace and research center.

I want students to walk in there and just be bowled over by the sense of the place, she said. I want them to leave that studio not just inspired, but much better at their craft than when they walked in that studio. I want their imagination to be opened up to possibilities that they would not have been privy to prior to walking in there.

It was a drawing class taught by UNM architecture professor Don Schlegel that helped open Predocks own mind to new possibilities, laying the foundation for his shift away from engineering studies and toward architecture. He ultimately finished his degree at Columbia University and launched his own practice, operating from offices in Albuquerque and Los Angeles.

He developed an international reputation for buildings that fellow architect Thomas S. Howorth  in nominating Predock for the American Institute of Architects 2006 gold medal  said grow out of their unique landscapes, creating, at the same time, symbols that are fearlessly expressive and sincere, simultaneously complex and guileless.

Predock, still active and fit at age 81, continues to practice. He is finishing a condominium tower in Taipei and working on a house in Provence  a tough assignment, he deadpans.

He continues to call Albuquerque home and has remained a fixture at the new center bearing his name. The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture convened for a conference in Albuquerque last month, holding a reception at the center, and Predock gave the keynote address to a crowd that included academic officials from around the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe.

And as undergraduates filtered through on a recent class visit, he relished the chance to talk shop among the expansive three-dimensional models, pastel illustrations and project photographs that still fill many rooms and hang from the walls. An avid motorcycle rider, some of his bikes are still in place, too.

I eat it up, he said of the interactions he has with aspiring architects.

Forbes Isais wants to keep that dialogue going. She said fundraising has begun to cover the building improvements needed to make it available for regular activities.

We want this to be an active research center, particularly since Antoine is here and willing to work on it and inspire students, because hes so inspirational.  Hes infectious, and its not a bad thing for students to see someone who found their calling in life and made it their life, she said.

Jacqueline Smith, one of UNMs undergraduate architecture students, said Predock has celebrity status around UNM and has demonstrated the possibilities that exist in the field.

If I were to end up somewhere half as creative as this, then I would be very lucky, she said as she left the center. And the fact that its here in New Mexico and he was here and we have access to it is great.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

He was criticized after initially terming the fatal shooting of a mentally ill, homeless man as justified.

He spent long hours in hospitals as his officers clung to life.

He consoled victims of some of Albuquerques most heinous crimes.

Gorden Edens tenure as Albuquerque Police chief was mired in tough days.

Thursday was his last.

He retired from a department that he led starting Feb. 27, 2014. Interim Chief Michael Geier replaced him Friday.

Eden received mixed reviews from people who interacted and worked with him during his years as chief of the Albuquerque Police Department.

He was described as a nice and caring man who worked tirelessly to reform the department. But he ultimately failed to achieve the success for which many had hoped.

Some observers speculated that Eden lacked the managerial experience to oversee the largest police department in the state. Others cited the high-ranking officers he surrounded himself with.

He is a person of principle in the way he holds himself. Hes a religious person, said Joanne Fine, chairwoman of the Police Oversight Board, which Eden has consistently disagreed with.

When he got named as chief I thought to myself, I wonder if he can deal with the adversarial (nature) of this. Because he hadnt run a police department before. He had been in political positions and I worried because I didnt know that his skill set included running  a police department.

Eden declined numerous requests from the Journal for an interview about his time as police chief.

Before former Mayor Richard Berry tapped Eden for the position, he led the state Department of Public Safety, had been the U.S. marshal for the District of New Mexico and headed the state Motor Vehicle Division.

Eden was also a New Mexico State Police officer from 1975 to 1985, where he patrolled the South Valley, which is where he was raised.

A complete mess

When he took over, he took over a complete mess, said Peter Simonson, the executive director of the ACLU in New Mexico.

Berry said the job of chief of police is one of the hardest in city government, and the reforms and national attitudes toward law enforcement made the job even more difficult during Edens tenure.

All things considered, when you look back at what the chief and his team have been able to accomplish  he brought that effort that I was hoping for to the equation, Berry said. Ive never been in a meeting with the guy where I didnt feel he had his heart and soul into it.

But controversy came quickly.

Less than three weeks after becoming chief, two Albuquerque police officers shot and killed James Boyd in the Sandia foothills. Video of the shooting went viral and led to street protests. The officers were eventually charged with murder, though the case ended in a mistrial and charges were dropped.

But shortly after the shooting, Eden held a news conference to discuss what had happened and said the shooting was justified. He later walked back that comment and apologized.

He basically told the public that in his assessment it looked like a justified shooting. If you fast-forward years from that time, hes proven right. Those officers were acquitted, said Shaun Willoughby, the president of the Albuquerque police union. He was immediately sent down a different path by the administration. I believe that immediate change from telling the public what he believed was true to being forced to say something different  immediately put him down the wrong path.

After the Boyd shooting, Eden rarely spoke publicly about the circumstances associated with police shootings. And when he did, he avoided answering tough questions.

For example, after the city settled a lawsuit with Jacob Grant, a former detective who was shot by his own lieutenant during a botched drug sting, Eden was asked what went wrong with the operation. He said he would issue a public report outlining mistakes that were made, which he never did.

Not communicating directly as the leader is problematic, Fine said. The public is no better educated now than it was before.

Enter the Department of Justice

The job didnt get any easier after the Boyd shooting.

On April 10, 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that its investigation into the Albuquerque Police Department  which was started before Eden was chief  had found a pattern of excessive force, including police shootings.

That finding set in motion negotiations between the city and the DOJ, which ultimately led to a settlement agreement that outlined a series of reforms the department was required to begin working on.

Statistically, the department has completed about 75 percent of those reforms. But many of the tasks that lie ahead are some of the more difficult challenges, and the department has failed to achieve benchmarks that advocates for police reform were hoping for, Simonson said.

He was always responsive to us, Simonson said of Edens work addressing concerns of community groups. But at the end of the day, he wasnt able to get the reform done in a way that would have satisfied us.

James Ginger, the court-appointed monitor overseeing the reform effort, has regularly criticized APD leadership in his periodic reports.

Tension between the police administration and Ginger reached its peak recently, when the city filed a document and video in court that showed Assistant Chief Robert Huntsman, the man Eden hired to oversee the reform effort, had secretly recorded a conversation between Ginger and police officials. The city filed the video in court in an attempt to show Ginger was biased against police.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Robert Brack lashed out at Huntsman and city officials from the bench for trying such a maneuver. But the judge ended his tirade by wishing Eden well.

No one could have blamed you, chief, if you decided to just sit this one out. But that wouldnt have been your way. You jumped into the storm, Brack said.

Chief consoler

Eden didnt always struggle to communicate.

The chief was known for spending time consoling the victims and survivors of some of the most horrific crimes in Albuquerque that happened under his watch.

And Eden and his wife spent numerous hours at hospitals when officers were shot in the line of duty. He also spoke at their funerals.

I have been with chief in those darkest moments when we have an officer struggling for life in the hospital. And hes not just there when the cameras are on and reporters are there. Hes there all night, Berry said.

Hes been with me in living rooms when families in this community are planning funerals for their children. Ive seen the guy when nobodys looking, and he gives it everything he has.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

Editors Note: As the 45th anniversary of Apollo 17 approaches, New Mexico astronaut Harrison Schmitt says there are important reasons for the U.S. to invest in space. This is Part 2 of his interview with Senior Editor Kent Walz.

A settlement on the moon.

Mankind well on its way to Mars.

A potential clean power source so powerful that about 200 pounds could provide electricity to a major city for a year.

New Mexico astronaut Harrison Jack Schmitt says these are a few of the possibilities that might well have been reality by now had the administration of President Lyndon Johnson not decided to limit production of the massive Saturn V rockets that carried Apollo astronauts, including Schmitt, to the moon.

Had things gone differently we could be much further along than we are today, he said in a recent interview. No question we would have a settlement on the moon and would very seriously have a program going to Mars if not already there.

The budget-driven decision made in the Johnson administration and confirmed in the Nixon administration was to fly only 15 of these large Saturn rockets, Schmitt said. That immediately limited the amount of exploration we were going to do in deep space. You need rockets of that size to go to the moon or to Mars. We really gave up on deep space exploration.

Schmitt, Eugene Cernan and Ron Evans were the astronauts on the last moon mission, Apollo 17, which launched 45 years ago Thursday for a record-shattering mission highlighted by Schmitt and Cernan spending three days on the surface deploying scientific instruments and collecting samples.

Schmitt, a Silver City native and geologist who graduated from Cal Tech and earned a Ph.D. at Harvard, is the only scientist ever to fly on a moon mission and is the 12th and last man to step on the lunar surface. He is writing a book on the mission: Apollo 17: Diary of the Twelfth Man.

Energy source

Schmittt says one of the important discoveries from Apollo was the resources present in the lunar soil.

Those are resources derived from the solar wind and particles of the sun. One of those, Helium-3, isnt readily available on Earth but it is embedded in lunar soil. It is a nearly ideal fuel for fusion power. If we had it here on Earth Im convinced we would be using it right now. It doesnt produce neutrons but it does produce alpha particles and protons and those can be converted directly to electricity without any waste products.

We would have a plentiful clean power source, he says, adding that its still there and its not going anywhere.

Schmitt says roughly 220 pounds of Helium-3 would provide the power necessary to serve Dallas for a year  You would have to mine a fair amount of lunar soil to produce 100 kilograms, but its certainly feasible.

Could a moon settlement mine Helium-3 and ship it back to Earth?

In theory, although the economics would dictate.

What about water?

Some of the hydrogen in the moons soils react with minerals at a few hundred degrees centigrade and will produce water. So anywhere on the moon you can produce water.

Commercial flight

While NASA works toward expanding deep space exploration, there is a flurry of private activity with some of Americas biggest high rollers, including Elon Musk, developing their own rocket and flight systems.

But the one company I think you really have to keep an eye on for purely commercial activities is Blue Origin, Schmitt said.

Blue Origin is the brainchild of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon guru. It has headquarters and an engine plant in Kent, Wash., and a launch site in Texas.

I visited their engine plant and it was very impressive, Schmitt said. They are building new engines, which havent been built for a long time in the U.S. and he (Bezos) is putting entirely his own money in.

The company wants to put low-cost satellites, and eventually people, into orbit and expects to launch its newest rocket, the Glenn, in 2020.

Schmitt said the company is even looking at lunar missions to take payloads to the moon for whatever customer might want it.

Bezos, he said, is a bright guy with a lot of money and I wouldnt bet against him.

He said publicly at a fundraiser for (astronaut) Buzz Aldrins STEM foundation in Florida last fall that I won the Amazon lottery and Im going to use those winnings in order to get us into space.'

Spaceport

As for New Mexicos Spaceport America, which cost over $200 million, Schmitt says, Im not sure theres a long-term business case that doesnt depend on space-related business.

The primary tenant, Virgin Galactic, has been slowed by problems in developing its craft designed to carry tourists and others into low Earth orbit.

Schmitt sees no technical obstacles to that or to the vision of international suborbital travel from a site like the Spaceport to Tokyo or London, making global air travel the equivalent of commuter airline flights. But, he says They have a long way to go before that business reaches the level of reliability and acceptance that the airline industry has. There will be hiccups, but I dont know why there would be roadblocks to suborbital space travel of that kind, and it has potential military applications as well.

Schmitt says the Spaceport has the same challenge New Mexico did when the state finished second only to what was then Cape Canaveral for the nations primary space launch site  something he says is a little-known fact.

The main thing that kept us from getting it was transportation issues. How do you get very large rocket components into the state and to a launch site? It would take a whole new rail system of some kind  where they could use barges to get things into Canaveral.

Mars ahead

Schmitt said one of the challenges for a Mars mission is that NASA needs to be a young agency.

The effort to go to Mars is going to be multigenerational and it needs to stay young. It needs to have that stamina, motivation and courage young people bring to a program, like they do in the nuclear Navy.

But Schmitt believes America will return to space  in large part for the same reason President John F. Kennedy pushed hard to put a man on the moon after the Soviets put the first man into orbit: Competition with other countries on Earth.

In the Apollo era it was the Soviet Union that was our primary geopolitical competitor.  Today its probably more China, although Russia is still a player. China is really the most ambitious spacefaring nation today.

Some blogs contend China is working on a plan to mine Helium-3 on the lunar surface.

And with no large rocket capability, the U.S. now pays Russia a lot of money to carry our astronauts to the International Space Station.

Many other scientific and technological benefits will flow from future space exploration, as they did from Apollo, but, Schmitt says, The overriding rationale has to be geopolitical.

He believes the current administration is committed to continuing construction of a large rocket called the space launch system. It is designed to carry Orion, NASAs new spacecraft, which is a larger and newer version of the Apollo capsules. NASA says Orion is built to take humans farther than theyve ever gone before.

Schmitt says there is another benefit to America having a large rocket system.

Settlements off the Earth can be very important philosophically into the future, he said. It is one way in which the human species can perpetuate itself against the very remote possibility of a very large asteroid impact on the Earth.
Salil Parekh, who will take over his role at Infosys on January 2, 2018 for a period of five years, was a member of the Group Executive Board at French firm Capgemini.

Infosys has appointed Salil Parekh as its new CEO. Photo: Reuters.

By PTI: Shares of Infosys today surged four per cent in morning trade on the bourses after the company announced the appointment of new CEO and MD Salil Parekh.

On December 2, Infosys said it has appointed Parekh as its CEO and Managing Director, concluding the three-month high-profile executive search at the country's second largest IT firm.

Following the announcement, shares of the company today opened on a bullish note at Rs 983.00, then gained further ground and surged 4.01 per cent to touch an early-day high of Rs 996.95.

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Similar movement was seen on NSE, where the stock opened at Rs 980.00, then surged to an early-high of Rs 996.80, registering a jump of 3.96 per cent over its previous closing price.

The Bengaluru-based firm had initiated the executive search after CEO Vishal Sikka resigned in August following a protracted acrimony between the management and the founders.

UB Pravin Rao, who was filling in the CEO role on an interim basis, will now continue as Chief Operating Officer and a whole-time Director of the company, Infosys said in a statement.

Parekh, who will take over his role at Infosys on January 2, 2018 for a period of five years, was a member of the Group Executive Board at French firm Capgemini.

--- ENDS ---
The University of New Mexico is considering a possible partnership with a Singapore-based for-profit education company that could help expand its presence in northern New Mexico.

The states largest university is currently vetting Raffles Education Corp. as it weighs a collaboration to use a college campus in Santa Fe, interim President Chaouki Abdallah said at a meeting last week.

Raffles and UNM could work together to backfill the city of Santa Fe-owned property after the current tenant, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, shutters.

Abdallah told UNMs Faculty Senate last week no decisions have been made but that a team assembled to investigate the idea should have a recommendation by years end.

UNM officials say it would not be a full-fledged branch campus but rather a place to offer classes in partnership with other entities.

UNM would not consider moving into Santa Fe without a partner to shoulder the purchase or lease costs for the space, interim Senior Vice Provost Rich Wood said. Raffles has not directly told UNM it is willing to do that, according to Wood.

But the company previously has shown interest. It tried to buy SFUAD from Laureate International Universities, the for-profit, Baltimore-based company that operates it. That deal died earlier this year.

A Raffles representative did not respond to a Journal email last week.

The financially troubled SFUAD will close in the spring, leaving the city of Santa Fe plotting the future of the property it bought in 2009 for $19.5 million. It still owes $2.2 million annually in debt service.

City Councilor Mike Harris said the zoning overlay allows for many possibilities, but there is interest in having a higher education component on at least part of the 64 acres.

Should UNM partner with Raffles, UNM would offer the courses with faculty and instructors it hires and in that sense control content, Wood said in a written statement. It could include degree programs that leverage offerings by UNM-Albuquerque, Santa Fe Community College or UNM-Los Alamos, he added.

Wood said UNMs accreditation would cover degrees that meet UNMs standards, are taught by UNM faculty and vetted by UNMs Faculty Senate.

Raffles describes itself online as a premier private education provider, owner and manager of educational assets and facilities, and education-linked real estate investor and developer. It has 25 colleges in 13 countries, with its heaviest presence in China, India and Indonesia.

Abdallah said hes mindful of UNMs budgetary challenges  If doesnt make financial sense were not interested  and concerns about New Mexico college campus proliferation. The states 31 public institutions have a combined 77 access points around the state.

Some faculty members at this weeks meeting raised questions about already under-utilized spaces like UNM West and the financial implications of further expansion. Others, however, showed more optimism.

As an artist, a musician, Im pretty darn excited about the possibility, said Faculty Senate President Pamela Pyle, an associate professor of piano who has toured the Santa Fe grounds and cited the propertys various assets. It houses to Greer Garson Studios, Greer Garson Theatre, The Screen movie theater and a recording studio.
WASHINGTON  Its a truism of Washington scandals that its not the initial actions that lead to legal disaster, but the attempt to cover them up. Its possible that is the case with Fridays indictment of former national security adviser Michael Flynn  and in the broader investigation of the Trump teams contacts with Russia. But there is much we still do not know.

This sweater has been unraveling from a thin initial thread. When I reported on Jan. 12 the phone calls between Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29  which were at the center of Fridays indictment and guilty plea  the propriety of Flynns actions was a matter of legitimate debate.

Because the Obama administration had expelled 35 Russian diplomats that same day to retaliate against Moscows meddling in the 2016 campaign, my column posed the basic question: What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? But even if it had undermined Obamas move and checked Russian reprisal, that wasnt a capital crime. If the Trump teams contacts helped discourage the Russians from a counter-retaliation, maybe thats a good thing, my column noted. But we ought to know the facts.

Flynns catastrophic mistake was that he lied about the Dec. 29 calls, first in denials to Trump spokesmen that were shared with me and other reporters on Jan. 12, then to Vice President Mike Pence and, most important, to FBI officials who interviewed him on Jan. 24. The indictment specified that Flynn made false, fictitious and fraudulent statements when he told FBI agents he hadnt urged Kislyak to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day.

Why was Flynn lying about the Kislyak calls? What was he covering up? We have one hint in the Statement of the Offense that accompanies the plea agreement. The prosecutors say that Flynn cleared his comments to Kislyak beforehand with an unnamed official who is described as a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team who was staying with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Only then, with top-level approval to discuss sanctions, did Flynn call the Russian ambassador.

Say what you like about Flynn, but an ex-general follows the chain of command. Given his seniority as the designated national security adviser, there are only two people who would likely have authorized this contact with Russia: Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and senior adviser, who had been conducting his own extensive back-channel contacts with Kislyak and other Russians, and the president-elect himself, who had said throughout the campaign that he wanted to improve relations with Russia.

The public lies about the Dec. 29 call began to cascade. But the most senior levels of the Trump transition team were aware, from the first, of what really happened. Their silence condoned the lies. Given that Trump publicly thanked Russian president Vladimir Putin on Dec. 30 for not retaliating, it has always been hard to believe that Trump wasnt aware of the Flynn-Kislyak discussions. Now well know the truth. The plea agreement makes clear that Flynn is cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller about his discussions with the senior official and others.

And then, as happens in a cover-up, the lies began to get twisted. Flynn resigned under pressure on Feb. 13, following The Washington Posts disclosure that he had, indeed, discussed sanctions. The next day, Trump met privately with then-FBI director James Comey. According to a memo Comey wrote afterward, Trump said: I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.

This attempt to curb prosecution of Flynn was part of the chain of events that led to Muellers appointment as special counsel. This part of the circle closed Friday, as Mueller obtained a guilty plea from the man Trump had sought to protect from investigation.

At the center of this story is a mystery that will propel the rest of the inquiry: What was Trump so worried about, that made him deny contacts with Russia and denounce attempts to investigate those contacts? What was he afraid might emerge?

Was it the 30-year history of his dealings with Russian business and political leaders in his attempts to do big business deals, described in a recent column? Was it the help Russian operatives were offering in dishing dirt on his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as documented in the email correspondence of Donald Trump Jr., and in Muellers plea agreement several weeks ago with campaign aide George Papadopoulos?

What was Trump afraid of? Week by week, more pieces of this puzzle emerge.

Email: davidignatius@washpost.com. Copyright, Washington Post Writers Group.
I DONT KNOW ART BUT I KNOW WHATS NOT DONE: Last weeks inaugural runs on the $126 million Albuquerque Rapid Transit system prompted EJG to email, If the ART project is done, why is Central west of Rio Grande still a mess with lanes still closed?

Joanie Griffin of Griffin & Associates, which is handling public information for the project, says that work is ART and also El Vado (redevelopment construction). ART heavy construction wont be done til year end.

FYI, the partially operational ART is offering free service to and from the Albuquerque BioParks River of Lights on Friday and Saturday nights.

AND TURNS ARE LEFT OUT: Ruth Schultz called to ask if now that ART is here, can you turn left or make U-turns on Central in Nob Hill anywhere, or just at signals?

One driver found out the answer the hard way. On one of the first runs Nov. 25, an ART electric bus was hit by a car whose driver made an illegal left turn.

Griffin says drivers can make left turns and U-turns at signals only. Drivers may not cross the ART Bus-Only lanes ever. They are for the ART buses and emergency vehicles only.

The main thing is for drivers to pay attention. There are rumble strips to alert them if theyve accidentally entered the ART Bus-Lane only. And at every signalized intersection, there is a left turn arrow  when that is illuminated they can turn left or make a legal U-Turn.

WHY ARE VENDORS STILL ON TRAMWAY? Five years ago, Wallace E. Anderson sent that question in.

And five years later, he is again asking, Why are the wood sellers, tree and shrub venders, and all other venders allowed to use the shoulder of Tramway from Lomas to Academy to sell their wares? We know this is illegal and dangerous, but apparently no one cares. The scraps of wood left behind by these venders can injure a cyclist like it has in the past  not to mention the danger of these vehicles and trailers pulling on to a fast moving highway. Why isnt this addressed by our law enforcement?

The New Mexico Department of Transportation says the rules havent changed:

In a January 2013 column, a spokesman explained, The New Mexico Administrative Code states no vending on highway right-of-way shall be permitted and that it could be deemed as criminal trespass (NMSA 1978, Section 30-14-1). Article 14 Trespass states that whoever commits criminal trespass is guilty of a misdemeanor. The law enforcement authority having jurisdiction would be the Albuquerque Police Department or Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office, depending on the location along N.M. 556 (Tramway).

And NMDOT also provided a copy of the letter given to vendors. It cites the state administrative code, 18-NMAC 20.5.10, and says in part vending/parking is not permitted in the highway right of way and must cease immediately. If the vending does not cease immediately, the department representative may file a complaint of criminal trespass with the law enforcement authority having jurisdiction.

CANT SEE THE LINES ON N.M. 528: Mary Jo Hoak emails that the striping on N.M. 528 from Westside Boulevard from Rio Rancho to Ellison Boulevard is almost impossible to see, especially with the glare of the sun as you come down the hill. It is a bit harrowing, and at the speed almost all of the cars are traveling down hill, I feel it is unsafe as cars get uncomfortably close to each other. Any chance the state highway department could re-stripe soon?

Yes.

NMDOT District 3 spokeswoman Kimberly Gallegos says, This section of roadway is scheduled to be re-striped in the spring of 2018.

Editorial page editor DVal Westphal tackles commuter issues for the Metro area on Mondays. Reach her at 823-3858; dwestphal@abqjournal.com; or P.O. Drawer J, Albuquerque, N.M. 87103.
SEOUL, South Korea  Hundreds of aircraft including two dozen stealth jets began training Monday as the United States and South Korea launched a massive combined air force exercise. The war games come a week after North Korea test-fired its most powerful missile ever, an ICBM that may be able to target the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The five-day drill, which is called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies wartime capabilities and preparedness, South Koreas defense ministry said.

The U.S. Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets, including an unusually large number of the latest generations of stealth fighter jets, for the annual training in the Korean Peninsula. They include six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets. About 12,000 U.S. military personnel are participating. In total, 230 aircraft will be flying at eight U.S. and South Korean military installations in the South.

An official at the South Korean Defense Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of office rules, corrected his earlier statement that the exercise was the biggest ever.

Some local media report that B-1B bombers will also join aerial drills, but officials did not confirm their participation.

The training, held each year in late fall, is not in response to any incident or provocation, the Seventh Air Force said in a statement.

North Koreas state media said the drill pushes the Korean Peninsula to the brink of nuclear war. Such language is typical in North Korean propaganda because the country claims U.S.-South Korean drills are preparation for invasion.

Still, always bad tensions are at a particularly dangerous point as North Korea edges toward its goal of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, and as President Donald Trump ramps up his rhetoric toward the North, threatening, for instance, to unleash fire and fury against the country.

Pyongyang will seriously consider countermeasures against the drill, and the U.S. and South Korea will pay dearly for their provocations, the Korean Central News Agency said on Sunday before the start of the exercises.

While many South Koreans typically ignore North Koreas rhetoric, some senior American officials have expressed worry following the ICBM test, North Koreas third.

On Sunday, Lindsey Graham, a Republican U.S. senator from the state of South Carolina, said he believes that its time for U.S. military families in South Korea to leave the country because conflict with North Korea is getting close. The U.S. government has not announced a formal decision to evacuate U.S. citizens from South Korea, and there were no such signs in the diplomatic community in Seoul. An evacuation of dependents by Seouls closest ally and major military defender could prompt a panicked reaction by other countries, and among South Koreans.

In addition to American diplomats and other embassy workers, about 28,500 U.S. troops operate in South Korea, and many come to their posts with their families, who often live on huge, well-guarded military bases.

Also on Sunday, the White House national security adviser said that Trump will take care of North Korean threats by doing more ourselves.

The priorities that the presidents given us to move as quickly as we can to resolve this crisis with North Korea, General H.R. McMaster told Fox News in an interview.

If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it, because he has said hes not going to allow this murderous, rogue regime to threaten the United States.

___

This story was corrected to reflect South Koreas defense ministry retracting statement that this was the largest-ever joint air force exercise.
WASHINGTON  The shifting explanations for why President Donald Trump fired national security adviser Michael Flynn have revived questions about whether the president may have obstructed an ongoing investigation of potential contacts between his campaign and Russia.

Pressure on the administration has mounted since Flynn last week pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, with prosecutors revealing that he is now cooperating with special counsel Robert Muellers investigation. And a muddled White House response, including a problematic presidential tweet, has left some Trump confidants worried that the president is not being well-served by his legal team and believing his lawyers have painted a too-rosy picture of the presidents potential plight.

The presidents aides and legal advisers have scrambled for 48 hours to explain a presidential tweet that raised the specter of obstruction. It read: I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pleaded guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

That tweet appeared to indicate a change in the White House explanation for Flynns firing, suggesting Trump was aware when the White House dismissed Flynn on Feb. 13 that the national security adviser had lied to the FBI, whose agents had interviewed him weeks earlier. Former FBI Director James Comey has said Trump the following day brought up the Flynn investigation in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could let this go, raising the possibility he knew Flynn had lied and was looking to cover up the offense.

With questions raised by the tweet, Trump associates tried to put distance between the president and the potentially incriminating message.

One of Trumps attorneys, John Dowd, told CNN on Sunday that he was responsible for crafting the tweet.

Dowd declined to comment to the AP but replied with a Fox News story Monday quoting prominent lawyer Alan Dershowitz as saying Trump couldnt have committed obstruction of justice by urging Comey to drop the FBI investigation of Flynn.

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, backed up Dowds claim that he wrote the tweet, saying the lawyers are the ones that understand how to put those tweets together.

I was with the president on Saturday all day, frankly, and I know that what he said is correct, Conway continued, referring to Dowd. What he says is that he put it together and sent it to our director of social media.

A White House spokesman declined to answer whether Dowd dictated the tweet word-for-word to the White House director of social media, Dan Scavino, or whether Scavino, who has access to the @RealDonaldTrump account and its 44 million followers, put the sentiment into something resembling Trumps own voice.

The president angrily scolded aides for the tweet over the weekend, according to a person familiar with private conversations but not authorized to discuss them publicly. The White House is considering reviewing how some tweets, particularly related to the Russia probe, get posted.

The episode has rattled some of Trumps outside advisers, who have pressed upon Trump since Flynns guilty plea that he needs to change legal strategy. White House lawyer Ty Cobb has repeatedly offered public assurances that the investigation into the administration would soon be over, with the president exonerated.

Trump has taken that counsel to heart, telling two close allies over the weekend that he believed he was in the clear and that Muellers team wouldnt unveil any further charges, according to the advisers who discussed the private conversations under the conditions of anonymity. Both of the confidants said they disputed that assessment and urged Trump to go on the offensive, perhaps by firing his current lawyers or triggering a series of events that could lead to Muellers dismissal.

Trump did not suggest he was considering that approach. And one of the advisers, who speaks to Trump regularly, said the president had not discussed with him the possibility of issuing any pardons.

The president did lob new criticism at the special counsel investigation Monday, saying he feels very badly for Flynn.

I think its a shame, Trump said of Flynns situation, adding that its very unfair and that Flynn had led a very strong life.

In the wake of the controversial tweet, Trump launched a fresh denial that he had pressured the former FBI director, tweeting Sunday that I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!

Trump fired Comey in May, leading to Muellers appointment.

Any proof that Trump knew before he spoke with Comey in February that Flynn had lied to the FBI could bolster obstruction of justice allegations against the president and raise the prospect that he was trying to protect a key member of his inner circle from probable prosecution, said Jimmy Gurule, a Notre Dame criminal law professor and former federal prosecutor.

Though the president has previously said he was thinking of this Russia thing when he fired Comey, Gurule said it was reasonable to infer from the weekend tweet that the dismissal of Comey was done in the hope of terminating the FBI investigation.

If you have knowledge of a crime, a reasonable person would disclose that information to law enforcement. The president did not, Gurule said.

But David Rivkin Jr., a Washington lawyer specializing in constitutional law who worked in the Justice Department under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said that even if the president knew that Flynn had lied to the FBI, his authority as the chief executive is perfectly sufficient and appropriate to decide that this matter should not be investigated any further.

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Lemire reported from New York.

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Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com///twitter.com/@etuckerAP
ISLAMABAD  Defense Secretary Jim Mattis pressed top Pakistani leaders Monday to redouble efforts to go after insurgents operating in safe havens, the Pentagon said, underscoring a long frustration with Islamabad over Taliban-linked militants that freely cross the border to conduct attacks against the U.S. and allies in Afghanistan.

Both sides released comments saying that the U.S. and Pakistan want to continue to work together and that Islamabad plays a key role in the struggle for peace in Afghanistan.

In brief comments before their meeting, Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said his country is committed to the war on terror and shares the same common objectives as the U.S.

Engagement is there, he said, adding that they need to move forward with (the) issues at hand.

Mattis did not speak while reporters were present. A Pentagon statement said that during the meetings Mattis discussed Pakistans role in the peace process and reiterated that Pakistan must redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country.

A senior U.S. official said the meetings were straightforward, and that Mattis was very specific about what Pakistan needs to do to show it is taking action against the militants. Asked if Mattis set any timelines, the official said the urgency of the matter was communicated.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings, said Mattis also made it clear that Pakistan must do its part to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table with Afghanistan.

A statement from Abbasis office said the prime minister talked about recent counterterrorism operations and said Pakistan would continue to conduct intelligence based operations all over the country. And it said Abbasi appreciates the U.S. resolve not to allow the use of Afghan soil against Pakistan.

Earlier, Mattis told reporters traveling with him that he wants to work with Pakistan to address the problems, adding that the U.S. is committed to a pragmatic relationship that expands cooperation while also reinforcing President Trumps call for action against terrorist safe havens.

We have heard from Pakistan leaders that they do not support terrorism. So I expect to see that sort of action reflected in their policies, Mattis said before his trip to Islamabad.

Mattis met with Abbasi and army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, as well as a number of senior Pakistani leaders and military officials and U.S. Ambassador David Hale. It was Mattis first trip to Pakistan as secretary.

Bajwa, in a statement, said Mattis expressed concern about militants in Pakistan trying to further their terrorist agenda in Afghanistan, and said he is prepared to look into the possibility of miscreants exploiting Pakistans hospitality.

Mattis statement reflects persistent U.S. assertions that Islamabad is still not doing enough to battle the Taliban and allied Haqqani network insurgents within its borders.

Since the start of the war in Afghanistan, militants in Pakistan have crossed the mountainous and ill-defined border to wage attacks, then return to safe havens in Pakistan, where they have had a long-standing relationship with the ISI, Islamabads intelligence agency.

In a blunt assessment early last week, Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said there have been no changes in Pakistans support for militant networks.

He said Pakistani leaders went to Kabul and met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

They identified certain steps that they were going to take. Weve not yet seen those steps play out, Nicholson told reporters in a recent briefing.

The U.S., he said, has been very direct about what it expects Pakistan to do in the fight against the Taliban.

Were hoping to see those changes, he said.

Following Mattis visit, Pakistans prime ministers office released a statement saying there are no safe heavens in Pakistan and that the nation was committed to eradicating terrorism once and for all.

In August, the United States said it would hold up $255 million in military assistance for Pakistan until it cracks down on extremists threatening Afghanistan.

Imtiaz Gul, an Islamabad security analyst, said U.S. officials always come to Islamabad with their own wish list.

I am sure the U.S. defense secretary is also carrying a wish list with him but I dont think Pakistan will accept any dictation as it has already demonstrated its seriousness in fighting terrorism, and Washington in recent weeks has appreciated and acknowledged Pakistans sacrifices in war on terror, he said.

Gul said relations between Pakistan and the U.S. have gone from bad to worse since the Trump administration announced Afghan strategy in which Pakistan was degraded and India was elevated.

President Donald Trumps tough words about Pakistan as he unveiled the updated U.S. strategy for the war in Afghanistan, infuriated Islamabad and triggered anti-U.S. protests there that Pakistani police had to use tear gas to disperse

Mattis trip to Pakistan comes at the end of a short trip to the region, including stops in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait.

___

Associated Press writer Ahmed Munir contributed to this story from Islamabad
SANAA, Yemen  Yemeni rebels on Monday killed their onetime ally Ali Abdullah Saleh, the countrys former president, as they gained the upper hand in days of fighting with his forces for control of the capital, Sanaa. The tumult threw the countrys three-year civil war into an unpredictable new chapter just as Yemens Saudi-backed government had hoped the Shiite rebels would be decisively weakened.

Salehs recent defection from the rebel camp and now his death shattered the alliance that had helped the Iranian-backed rebels, known as Houthis, rise to power in 2014  giving the government and the Saudi coalition supporting it with airstrikes hope for a turning point in a stalemated war that has brought humanitarian disaster.

But with Salehs forces seemingly in disarray, it was not immediately clear if the Saudi-led coalition fighting the rebels will be able to turn the split to its advantage in the war.

It was a grisly end for Saleh, who ruled Yemen for more than three decades until an Arab Spring uprising forced him to step down in 2012. He later allied with the Houthi rebels hoping to exploit their strength to return to power. That helped propel Yemen into the ruinous civil war that has spread hunger and disease among its 28 million people.

Salehs death was announced by the Houthis and confirmed by two Saleh associates and a Yemeni government official. The exact circumstances were unclear: Houthi officials said their fighters killed him as he tried to flee the capital for his nearby hometown of Sanhan. The Houthis top leader said Saleh paid the price for his treason, accusing him of betraying their alliance to side with the Saudi-backed coalition.

A video circulated online showed Salehs bloodied body with a gaping head wound as he was carried in a blanket by rebel fighters chanting God is great! as they dumped it into a pickup truck. The images recalled the death of another Arab leader slain in the midst of his countrys uprising: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, whose body was shown in a video being abused by rebels who killed him in 2011.

Salehs killing appeared to stun members of his camp and to help consolidate the position of the Houthis  at least for now.

Houthi and Saleh-loyalist forces have been fighting in Sanaa since late last week. In response, the Saudi-led coalition threw its backing behind Saleh, hitting Houthi positions with airstrikes, hoping that having Saleh on its side could provide a foothold in the capital for the forces of the Saudi-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

But by Monday evening, hours after Salehs death, witnesses said his forces had abandoned some of their positions in Sanaa and that Houthi fighters had moved into one of the most heavily contested districts, seizing Salehs house and those of some of his family members. Saudi airstrikes hit several Houthi positions in the evening, but otherwise the city saw the first easing of fighting in days.

In a televised speech, the Houthis top leader, Abdul-Malek al-Houthi, called Salehs killing a dark day for the forces of the coalition. He said he had known Saleh was communicating with the coalition and had warned him to stop.

Hadi, in turn, gave a televised speech of his own from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, where he has been in self-imposed exile for most of the war. He tried to rally Salehs allies to keep up the fight against the Houthis.

Lets put our hands together to end this nightmare, Hadi said. He said his government forces would support any uprising against the Houthis in Sanaa.

An official in Hadis government told The Associated Press that members of Salehs political party and military forces were cooperating with the coalition and would provide coordinates for airstrikes against the Houthis. He said strikes will intensify so that the closest pro-Hadi ground troops  located at Nihm about 30 miles northeast of Sanaa  can push toward the capital. The hope is that as the forces advance, tribes in the area will be encouraged to rise against the Houthis, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the plans.

One of Salehs sons, Salah Saleh, posted a call on his Facebook page for his allies to take up the fight against the rebels. He also urged the United Arab Emirates to allow Salehs most prominent son, Ahmed Saleh, who headed the elite Republican Guard under his fathers rule, to return to Yemen and lead forces against the Houthis. It has been reported that the UAE had been preventing his return throughout the conflict

Revenge for my father and for every Yemeni, Salah Saleh wrote. Fight them wherever you find them. God bless you, my father.

But it was unclear whether the break with Saleh weakens the Houthis.

When Saleh left power, he stayed in the country and kept the loyalty of many military commanders, splitting the armed forces between himself and Hadi. Salehs forces were key to helping the Houthis overrun Sanaa in 2014 and then much of the north and center of the country.

But over the past year, the Houthis appear to have undermined Saleh, wooing away some of his commanders, strengthening their own fighters and reducing their need for him. It appears that pushed Saleh into flirting with the coalition, ultimately leading to the breakdown of the alliance with the Houthis and the recent outbreak of clashes.

The fighting has brought new suffering to Sanaas residents as Houthi forces battled Sunday and into Monday morning to uproot the Saleh loyalists centered in the southern part of the city, battering buildings with artillery.

Suze van Meegen, the Sanaa-based protection and advocacy adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said the violence left aid workers trapped inside their homes and was completely paralyzing humanitarian operations.

No one is safe in Sanaa at the moment. I can hear heavy shelling outside now and know it is too imprecise and too pervasive to guarantee that any of us are safe, she said.

Massive urban clashes with heavy artillery and airstrikes. Yemenis stuck in their homes, too scared to go out. Reduced access to water, health care, food and fuel, Robert Mardini, the regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross, posted on his Twitter account.

Residents said the night was shattered by the sounds of gunfire and children screaming.

Its like horror movies, said Bushra, a local woman who asked that her last name not be published for fear of retribution. I have lived through many wars but nothing like this.

Witnesses said the bodies of slain civilians and fighters littered the streets as no ambulances were able to reach the area. The ICRC said at least 125 people had been killed and some 240 wounded in Sanaa since the fighting began last week.

___

Michael reported from Cairo. Associated Press reporter Sam Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.
MADRID  Political parties in Catalonia, including candidates either in jail or out of the country to avoid arrest, started campaigning at midnight Monday for the early regional elections called by Spains government seeking to quash the Catalan independence movement.

The highly polarized Catalan parliament elections set for Dec. 21 is shaping up as a close fight between Catalans who support secession and those who favor remaining in Spain. Voters are choosing regional lawmakers and top government officials to replace the pro-independence officials removed by the national government in late October.

Hours before pro-secession parties held evening rallies to launch their campaigns, a Supreme Court judge in Madrid ruled that four prominent members of the regions independence movement must remain jailed without bail. They include former regional Vice President Oriol Junqueras, who heads the slate of the left-republican ERC party. Junqueras was unseated in late October along with former President Carles Puigdemont and the rest of Puigdemonts Cabinet after regional lawmakers passed a declaration of independence that Spanish authorities deemed illegal.

Six other Catalan politicians who had been jailed with Junqueras since early November were released late Monday after the posting of 100,000-euro ($118,000) bail set earlier for them by a Supreme Court judge.

Meanwhile, Puigdemont and four of his separatist allies learned Monday that a decision on Spains request for their extraditions from Belgium will be made Dec. 14. That is one week before the elections, in which Puigdemont is leading his pro-independence partys ticket as its presidential candidate.

However, a final decision may not come until well after the election because of appeals.

The five Catalan officials fled to Belgium and are refusing to return to Spain to face possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement over the push for independence. The charges carry maximum penalties of decades in prison.

Puigdemonts Belgian defense lawyer, Paul Bekaert, insisted there are no grounds for extradition because the Spanish charges were not punishable in Belgium.

We also highlighted the danger for the impediment of their human rights in Spain, Bekaert said.

Hours after the judge postponed deciding his fate, Puigdemont addressed a political rally in Catalonia via video conference at the official midnight kickoff of the campaign.

Puigdemont told the other candidates running for his Together for Catalonia list that the vote should be the second part of the referendum that his government held on secession Oct. 1 despite it being banned by Spains highest court.

The results of Oct. 1 are still valid, Puigdemont told Catalan public television TV3. There are many of us who dont give the Spanish government the authority to dissolve a legitimate legislature.

The Spanish government has said the early election is an attempt to find a democratic way out of the nations worst crisis in nearly four decades. Polls predict a close race between the pro- and anti-independence camps.

A government-run poll published Monday indicated that pro-independence parties would lose their slim majority in Catalonias parliament. It had ERC, Together for Catalonia and the far-left anti-establishment CUP party winning 66 or 67 of the parliaments 135 seats.

The poll forecast a boost for the anti-independence Citizens party, which could dispute the victory with the pro-secession ERC.

The secession movement is a black hole that has swallowed everything up in recent years, Ines Arrimadas, Citizens leading candidate, told TV3. We have it in our hands to end the independence movement and start a new era for Catalonia.

The CIS survey said the poll had a margin of error of two percentage points. The poll of 3,000 people was conducted by telephone Nov. 23-27.

Before campaigning officially started, Catalan pro-independence groups held protests in front of town halls to oppose the Supreme Courts decision to keep some of the independence movements leaders in custody.

Pilar Gonzalez, 76, said while walking her dog in Barcelona that the jailed Catalan political leaders were political prisoners. But 53-year-old contractor Jose Luis Aguirre said the attempt to unilaterally break away from Spain is an act that cannot be allowed.

In the hope of being freed, Junqueras and the other jailed politicians pledged last week to give up on efforts to seek unilateral independence for the wealthy northeastern region. But Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena said Monday that it remains to be seen if Junqueras pledge was truthful and real.

ERC spokeswoman Marta Rovira described the jailing as a covert attempt by Spains central authorities in Madrid to get ERC out of the picture before this months voting.

This is a very clear attempt to win these elections without political adversaries, she said.

Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido was unmoved by the arguments of Junqueras supporters.

Those who commit criminal acts must place themselves at the mercy of legal rulings, Zoido said.

The Supreme Court judge also upheld custody orders without bail for the former regional interior minister, Joaquim Forn, and the leaders of Assemblea Nacional Catalan and Omnium Cultural, two grassroots groups that have been the main drivers of the separatist bid.

Puigdemont and the other separatist leaders claim a mandate for independence from the Oct. 1 referendum, which was boycotted by parties against secession. The vote drew 43 percent of the electorate, failed to meet international standards, and was marred by police raids.

Spains constitution says that the nation is indivisible and that matters of national sovereignty pertain to its national parliament in Madrid, where Catalan secessionists are represented.

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Associated Press writer Aritz Parra reported this story in Madrid and AP writer Raf Casert reported from Brussels. AP writer Joseph Wilson in Barcelona contributed to this report.
SANAA, Yemen  Ali Abdullah Saleh survived for decades as Yemens strongman, the master of shifting alliances, playing both sides  or flipping sides freely  in the multiple guerrilla conflicts and civil wars that tore apart his impoverished nation throughout his life. But his last switch proved his end.

Saleh, who was Yemens president for 33 years until he stepped down in 2012 amid an Arab Spring uprising, was killed Monday by the Shiite rebels known as Houthis whom hed once allied with in hopes of a return to power but then turned against in recent months.

A video circulating online showed Salehs body, his eyes open but glassy, motionless, blood staining his shirt and a gaping wound In his head. He was being carried in a blanket by rebel fighters chanting God is great who then dump him into a pickup truck. His grisly end recalled that of his contemporary, Libyas Moammar Gadhafi, whose body was shown being abused by the rebels who killed him in that countrys 2011 civil war.

During his rule, Saleh was known as the man who dances on the heads of snakes for his ability to manipulate friends and enemies alike, using patronage, family bonds and brute force. That skill enabled him to stay on top in the Arab worlds poorest nation and one of its most unstable, where tribal and regional alliances and the sheer geography of mountains and deserts made central rule weak.

But the decades of manipulation, corruption and conflict under Saleh left Yemen underdeveloped and dangerously fragile. Now the civil war, in large part caused by his maneuvering, has pushed it to near societal collapse: With hospitals and food distribution networks in a shambles, hunger is widespread among its population of nearly 28 million and it faces a ferociously fast-spreading cholera outbreak.

In the 2000s, Saleh was a vital ally of the United States in fighting al-Qaidas branch in his country, a top priority for Washington after the branch tried to blow up a passenger jet an carry out other attacks on American soil. Even while taking millions in U.S. aid, Saleh was suspected of striking deals with the militants and enlisting them to fight his battles.

Officials in his ally, Saudi Arabia, fumed privately to American diplomats that he was corrupt, unreliable and largely ineffective, then rushed to help him fight civil wars and domestic conflicts because they needed him. During one of those wars, a leaked U.S. diplomatic memo suggested that Saleh tried to trick Saudi Arabia into killing his own military commander-slash-ally-slash-rival, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, by calling in a mistaken Saudi airstrike on his home. Saudi Arabia realized what the target was and called off the strike.

After a popular uprising against his rule erupted in 2011, Saleh cannily managed to hang onto power for months, even surviving a bomb that detonated in the presidential palace mosque as he prayed there, severely burning him. Still, he stayed on, only finally resigning in early 2012 under a Saudi-brokered deal.

As president, Saleh fought multiple wars against the Houthi rebels in their heartland in northern Yemen, each time failing to crush them completely. Then after his fall, he allied with the Houthis against his own former vice president and successor, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi  likely in hopes he could ride them back into power.

Salehs loyalist military units helped the Houthis overrun the capital, Sanaa, and much of the north and center of the country. Hadi fled, his government moved to the southern city of Aden and Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a coalition air campaign in early 2015. Then in recent months, Salehs alliance with the Houthis fell apart as the rebels moved to weaken him and Saleh flirted with switching to side with the Saudi-led coalition.

Saleh rose to power in an era when Yemen was divided into two nations, north and south. He was born into a small tribe allied with one of the countrys mightiest clans, al-Ahmar. He did not stay long in school, leaving before he was a teenager and enlisting in the armed forces.

His age wasnt known for sure. His website gives his birth date as March 21, 1946, but many in Yemen say he was born four years earlier. On the other hand, he just happened to be 40 when he took power in 1978  when the constitution said the president had to be 40. And in the 2006 election, official statements alternated between saying he was 64 or 65.

Whatever his age, Saleh was ambitious and soon caught the eye of North Yemens president, Ahmed bin Hussein al-Ghashmi, who appointed him military chief in the city of Taiz, south of Sanaa.

Salehs moment came after a bomb in a briefcase killed al-Ghashmi in June 1978. Within a month, Saleh was North Yemens president, backed by Saudi Arabia. Among his first acts was to order the execution of 30 officers  some his former friends  convicted of being conspirators in al-Ghashmis assassination.

His reputation cemented as a tough leader, he also knew how to play Cold War politics. Marxist South Yemen was a Soviet client state, so Saleh reached out to Western leaders to leverage aid for North Yemen.

In 1990, with the Soviet Union unraveling, Saleh negotiated unity with the south, ensuring his place as the president. On May 22, 1990, he raised the flag of the Republic of Yemen at the southern port of Aden. Four years later, he crushed an attempt by the south to break free.

His powerful nexus of the military and tribes made him virtually untouchable. He also sought to harness a dangerous new force in the country. Arab militants who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s needed a new home, and the deal apparently offered by Saleh was sanctuary in exchange for respecting his authority.

In 2000 that legacy came back to haunt him when the Navy destroyer USS Cole was bombed in Aden harbor, killing 17 American sailors. Washington demanded Saleh to crack down on suspected Islamic militants.

Salehs efforts against extremist groups were widely criticized as spotty and ineffective. In 2006, a band of al-Qaida militants made a bold escape from a Sanaa prison that U.S. and Yemeni officials believed had help from regime insiders. The band went on to form al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror networks Yemen branch. The group was linked to the attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009 and a shipment of explosive-rigged packages intercepted in Britain and Dubai in 2010. Still, the U.S. saw little choice but to partner with him.

Salehs tribal and political allies were growing impatient, complaining that he was ignoring widespread poverty and that corruption was undermining development. Most disturbing to them, he was centralizing power in his and his familys hands. He put his sons and nephews in command of his strongest security units. He appeared to be grooming his son Ahmed, commander of the elite Republic Guard, to succeed him.

When a popular uprising broke out against him in 2011, he responded with token promises of reform, then bloody attacks on the protesters. He faced a stream of defections from his party, lawmakers, Cabinet members, tribal allies and military units. Still, he managed to cling to power, then negotiate an exit deal that not only protected him from arrest and prosecution and let him stay in the country but kept many of his loyalists in place in the military.

That made Saleh a player in the civil war between the Houthis and Hadi. But the Houthis succeeded in weakening him in recent months, reducing their alliance on him. In the hours after his death, many of the Saleh loyalist units were reportedly pulling back from their positions in Sanaa.
By PTI: Jaipur, Dec 4 (PTI) The Pink City of India is not a safe zone for married women as figures show it is among the top three cities that have reported maximum cases of cruelty by husband or his relatives.

As per the recently released National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, Jaipur along with Delhi and Hyderabad shares top three positions in cases of cruelty by husband or his relatives against women, crime/atrocities against scheduled castes, economic offences, cyber crime and auto thefts.

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Out of the total, 12,218 cases of cruelty by husband or his relatives, Jaipur reported 1,008 cases. Delhi was at the top with 3,645 cases and Hyderabad 1,311.

Under crime/atrocities against scheduled castes, Lucknow reported the highest number of cases of atrocities accounting for 16.2 per cent (262 cases) followed by Patna with 14.9 per cent (241 cases) and Jaipur with 13.5 per cent (219 cases) during 2016.

A total of 30,734 economic offences cases were reported in 2016.

In 19 metropolitan cities, out of four specified category of economic offences, including criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery and counterfeiting, maximum cases were reported under cheating (25,658 cases) accounting for 83.5 per cent during 2016.

In economic offences, Jaipur ranks second with 4,742 cases after New Delhi where 5,942 such cases were reported.

Mumbai registered 4,191 cases accounting for 13.6 per cent of such cases during 2016.

As per the NCRB report, Rajasthans state capital is also leading in cyber crimes.

Mumbai has reported maximum number of cases under cyber- crime accounting for 23.5 per cent (980 cases) followed by Bengaluru 18.3 per cent (762 cases) and Jaipur 12.6 per cent (532 cases) during 2016.

During 2016, out of total 1,94,558 cases of theft, 74,293 cases (38.2 per cent) were auto theft cases, of which Delhi (37,147 cases) reported maximum auto theft cases followed by Bengaluru (5,843 cases) and Jaipur (5,271 cases). PTI AG DV

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RJ Mitte made a connection with New Mexico during his time filming Breaking Bad.

Since, the actor has been in some projects in the state. He will return to the state in March for the Las Cruces International Film Festival.

At the festival, Mitte will be a celebrity presenter and inducted into the New Mexico Film and Television Hall of Fame. The festival runs March 7-11, 2018.

I am very excited for this years festival. It is going to be our biggest and best yet, says Ross Marks, LCIFF executive director. We wanted to honor RJ, not only for his incredible work as an actor, but for his contribution to film and TV in New Mexico. I am thrilled to be able to give him the NM Film & TV Hall of Fame award at the festival.

Marks says the LCIFF, presented by NMSU and Visit Las Cruces, will once again transform the community into the Hollywood of the Southwest hosting various celebrities, filmmakers, workshops, and special VIP events and parties.

Mitte is best known for his powerful performance as Walter Flynn White Jr. in AMCs highly-acclaimed and widely popular dramatic thriller Breaking Bad.

He played the pivotal role of the disabled teenage son of a high school science teacher turned drug dealer, played by Bryan Cranston.

Along with acting, Mitte is also a model and has walked in Mens Fashion Week in Milan, Berlin and New York City.

Mitte has brought attention to Cerebral Palsy, which he was born with. He hopes of removing the stigma associated with disabilities. In order to bring awareness to his own issues with bullying and prejudice, Mitte has engaged in public speaking and serves as the official Ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Hospitals for Children.

He transitioned into film as he starred in his first non-handicapped leading role alongside country music superstar, Faith Hill, in Dixieland.

Mitte also aims to produce several of his own film projects, one of which was filmed in New Mexico.
VALLETTA, Malta  Ten suspects were arrested Monday for the car bomb slaying of a prominent Maltese journalist who covered corruption, the prime minister and other authorities said.

The arrests came seven weeks to the day after the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. They were the first known break in a crime that shocked Malta and motivated European Union officials to look into the EU island nations laws and government.

Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed Oct. 16 when a bomb destroyed her car as she was driving near her home. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who was among the subjects of the late reporters investigations, declined to say who the suspects were or why they were arrested.

Eight Maltese citizens were arrested because of reasonable suspicion for their involvement in Caruana Galizias killing, Muscat told reporters at a news conference.

A little while later, Muscat tweeted that two others had been arrested. They also are Maltese, Home Minister Michael Farrugia said. Authorities did not release the names of any of the 10 suspects.

Explaining the reason for staying tight-lipped, Muscat cited concerns that divulging information could compromise the prosecutions. Farrugia said he wouldnt disclose anything because I have been already threatened by legal action by the Caruana Galizia family.

The journalists family alleged last month that Farrugia had put the investigation at risk by sharing confidential information with lawmakers. The minister brushed off the allegation, but the family said it was prepared to take legal action to prevent the government from sabotaging the case.

Caruana Galizias family reacted angrily to how the arrests were announced on Monday, saying police should have informed them before the prime minister. They reiterated their skepticism that justice would be carried out, despite Muscats public insistence that all would be done to find and punish the killers.

Muscat appears to view the investigation into Daphne Caruana Galizias assassination as a marketing exercise for his government and not as a contract killing, which has left surviving family members wondering what happened and how justice can be truly served, the family said in a statement.

They said they had already written to the police commission about the constant stream of leaks which prejudice the integrity of the investigation, but never received a response.

The family contended the police had leaked information about the identities of seven suspects.

It is important to ask whether they are not also leaking information to other suspects, some of whom could be in or close to government, the statement continued.

The blurring of boundaries with the executive  and this in a case which has political implications  is disturbing, the family statement said. When the handling of an investigation is not sound, it is difficult to have faith in its outcome.

The arrests coordinated among the Police Corps, the Armed Forces of Malta and the Security Services. The investigation appeared to be continuing Monday as police and military members cordoned off an area in Marsa, a small port town close to Valletta, the capital of Malta. Marsa is where most of the arrests were made.

Video released later by Maltese police showed officers and members of the security service and armed forces making some of the arrests. Some officers arrived in Marsa by boat and apprehended suspects in waterfront warehouses.

Maltese media, citing unidentified police sources, said two brothers were among the suspects. One of them was acquitted of a 2015 armed robbery charge for lack of sufficient evidence. The other has been charged with possession of unlicensed weapons and tools used to pick locks.

Investigators have 48 hours to question the suspects to decide whether to seek charges, in accordance with Maltese law.

A court hearing was set for Tuesday, when the police can officially file charges. The suspects then can either plead innocent or guilty. The magistrate will decide whether to set bail or remand them in custody.

Europol, the European Unions police agency, has sent a team of organized crime experts to help Maltese police investigate the assassination, joining the FBI and Dutch forensic experts.

Muscat told reporters Monday that when the evidence is compiled, during court proceedings all the relevant information will be made public, including input from the FBI and European investigators, including from Finlands National Bureau of Investigation, as well as Maltese investigators.

Just before her death, Caruana Galizia, 53, had posted on her closely followed blog, Running Commentary, that there were crooks everywhere in Malta.

Malta has a reputation as a tax haven in the European Union and has attracted companies and money from outside Europe as well.

Last week, a visiting delegation of European Parliament lawmakers left the island expressing concerns over the rule of law in the country and issued a warning that the perception of impunity in Malta cannot continue.

Low tax rates and a popular government program that allows wealthy foreigners to buy Maltese citizenship have made the country an attractive place for investment, financial and other companies. Authorities, including anti-Mafia investigators in nearby Italy, worry that Malta is eyed by criminals on the lookout for money-laundering schemes.

Caruana Galizia focused her reporting for years on investigating political corruption and scandals, and reported on Maltese mobsters and drug trafficking. She also wrote about Maltese links to the so-called Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.

Many top officials had sued her over her reporting. Caruana Galizia made plain she didnt trust the islands police or judiciary to adequately investigate many of the wrongdoings she alleged.

Muscat said Monday of the slaying: As I stated as soon as I learned about this barbaric act, we will leave no stone unturned to get this case solved.
AUSTIN, Texas  The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a Texas ruling that gay spouses may not be entitled to government-subsidized workplace benefits  a potential victory for social conservatives hoping to chip away at 2015s legalization of same-sex marriage.

In June, the Texas Supreme Court overturned a lower courts decision favoring spousal benefits for gay city employees in Houston, ordering the issue back to trial. That was a major reversal for the all-Republican state high court, which previously refused to even consider the benefits case after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision that the Constitution grants gay couples who want to marry equal dignity in the eyes of the law.

The Texas court changed its mind and heard the case amid intense pressure from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as dozens of other conservative elected officials, church leaders and grassroots activists. They argued that the case may help Texas limit the scope of the Supreme Court ruling, especially in how it is applied to states.

Mondays U.S. Supreme Court decision to reject Houstons appeal of the Texas court decision came without dissent or comment. The case began with a coalition of religious and socially conservative groups suing Americas fourth-largest city in 2013 to block a move to offer same-sex spousal benefits to municipal employees.

Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of the civil rights group GLAAD, said the U.S. Supreme Court has just let an alarming ruling by the Texas Supreme Court stand which plainly undercuts the rights of married same-sex couples.

Todays abnegation by the nations highest court opens the door for an onslaught of challenges to the rights of LGBTQ people at every step, Ellis said in a statement.

But other advocates said Mondays action simply shows the Texas case is not fully concluded, rather than indicating how the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately rule on the larger issue.

There was high hope that the Texas decision was so wrong that the court wouldnt sit by and let it go, said Kenneth Upton, a Dallas-based attorney for the prominent LGBT-rights group Lambda Legal. Thats not how it works with the Supreme Court.

Houston has been paying same-sex benefits amid the cases developments and will continue to do so while it progresses through lower Texas courts. The city argues that the 2015 legalization of gay marriage meant all marriages are equal, so anything offered to opposite-sex couples must be offered to same-sex ones.

Conservative groups counter that the U.S. Supreme Court didnt declare spousal benefits a fundamental right of marriage two years ago, and that it should be up to states to decide. They also see a chance for Texas to defend religious liberty under a state gay marriage ban that voters approved in 2005.

Jared Woodfill, a Houston attorney and conservative activist at the center of the case, called Mondays action by the nations high court, A nice early Christmas present.

The U.S. Supreme court could have taken the case and used it to further expand Obergefell. They chose not to, he said. Its confirmation that the Texas Supreme Court got it right.

Woodfill said that religious liberty groups in two other states had contacted him in years past, seeking information about Texas legal challenge.

It obviously has precedential value, not just for Texas but the entire country, Woodfill said. However, the court has said on several occasions that the denial of such petitions without more has no significance as a ruling.

In August, three Houston city employees and their spouses sued the city in federal court, concerned that the civil case could force the city to stop paying same-sex benefits. A federal judge dismissed that case last month, saying it was too early since the civil case was still proceeding. Upton, who represented the city employees, said they were ready to sue again depending on what happens in Texas courts.

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This story has been corrected to show the name of the prominent LGBT-rights group is Lambda Legal, not Lamda Legal.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

A federal court has ruled against a payday loan company in New Mexico in a class action lawsuit that requires the company to return $7.3 million to a group of nearly 10,000 New Mexicans.

The U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico ruled that Community Financial Loan Service Centers LLC, which operates here as Speedy Loan, had charged its customers millions of dollars in illegal loans from 2010 to 2014.

As a result of the ruling, handed down Friday, the company must pay a total $7.3 million to 9,672 New Mexicans involved in the lawsuit. The lead plaintiff was Clara Daye of Gallup, who will receive an additional $400 in statutory damages and attorney fees.

Donald Kochersberger, an attorney for Speedy Loan, said in a statement that the lawsuit was the result of a persistent unknown error in Speedys internal processes and software resulting [in] the court ruling that it failed to comply with the letter of the law.

Nicholas H. Mattison, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said arbitration clauses in the contracts signed by payday loan users often make it impossible to win lawsuits against them. In this case, Speedy Loan did not require its customers to sign a contract that included such a clause, according to Mattison.

Its fantastic for the people who were harmed by this company, he said.

Donald Kochersberger, an attorney for Speedy Loan, said in a statement that the lawsuit was the result of a persistent unknown error in Speedys internal processes and software resulting (in) the court ruling that it failed to comply with the letter of the law.

The 2007 New Mexico Small Loan Act sets several limitations on payday loan providers, such as restrictions on renewal of the loans, the right to unsecured repayment plans and a fee cap of $15.50 per $100 borrowed.

The court ruled that Speedy Loan collected illegal fees on 31,074 loans.

The $7.3 million judgment represents the amount the court said Speedy illegally collected from its customers.

While company is greatly disheartened by it, Speedy respects the courts ruling, Kochersberger wrote in his statement.

Speedy Loan operates payday loan sites throughout New Mexico, including three in Albuquerque.
Inside the police station, Joseph Boston told investigators that, yes, he had lured two boys into his motel room and molested them  but there was much more to his story than that, according to police in Riverside, California.

Riverside police said that on Saturday the 18-year-old went on to detail how he had molested upwards of 50 children in cities across Southern California for nearly a decade. Hed been molesting children since he was 10, police said.

The open confession rattled investigators, who spent the weekend retracing Bostons tracks over nearly half his life, looking for a trail of young victims, police said.

This is going to affect not only the victims for a long time but also our detectives and officers involved in this  to hear someone just be very open about what theyve done, and theyre only 18 themselves, Officer Ryan Railsback, of the Riverside police, told Los Angeles ABC-affiliate KABC.

Bostons mother contacted police around 3 a.m. on Saturday, saying she wanted to turn her son in for suspected molestation, police said in a news release. According to police, Boston had called his mother and said he had molested two children a short time earlier.

He had been staying at the Simply Home Inn & Suites, a motel that caters to travelers in Riverside. There, he had befriended an 8-year-0ld and a 4-year-old, brothers who were staying at the hotel with their parents, the police statement said. The parents allowed the children to go into Bostons room on Friday night, where the molestation happened, police said.

Police brought him in for questioning, where they said he made the bigger revelations. Meanwhile, the boys who police suspected were Bostons victims Friday were taken into custody by the County of Riverside Child Protective Services.

It was unclear why the childrens parents might have allowed the boys to go with Boston.

Boston is charged with oral copulation on a child under the age of 10 and has been booked into jail with bail set at $1 million. Hes scheduled to make his first court appearance on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. It wasnt immediately clear if he had hired an attorney.

According to investigators, Boston has lived in Riverside since early November. Before that, he lived in Lakewood and Buena Park in Southern California.

A Facebook page alleged to be Bostons was taken down but not before several news organizations had taken images of posts that seem chilling in hindsight.

One shows a person alleged to be Boston lying on a floor or a bed with a young girl by his side. Hes looking at the camera, and she appears to be playing with a toy. Theres a container of food open nearby. The emoji-filled caption on the post reads: I like Making New friends.

Another post shows a photo of a sleeping boy wearing a Batman T-shirt. What a cute kid, the caption reads. And they are way easier to control when they are sleeping and not in a bad way!!
Zenith has predicted that global ad expenditure will grow 4.1 per cent in 2018, reaching US$578 billion by the end of the year in its annual Advertising Expenditure Forecast. This forecast is fractionally below the 4.2 per cent rate Zenith had predicted for 2018 in September, with marginal downgrades in North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific, and upgrades in Latin America and Central & Eastern Europe.

The agency expects advertising expenditure to grow more slowly that the global economy as a whole out to 2020.

According to the forecast India is placed No. 4 in the Top Ten contributors to global adspend growth 2017-2020. India follows the US, China and Indonesia in that order.

Between 2017 and 2020, Zenith forecasts global advertising expenditure to increase by US$72 billion in total. The US will contribute 27 per cent of this extra ad expenditure, while China will contribute 20 per cent, followed by Indonesia, India, the UK and Japan, which will contribute 4 per cent each.

Five of the ten largest contributors will be the Rising Markets (China, Indonesia, India, Brazil and Russia), and between them they will contribute 33 per cent of new adspend over the next three years. Overall, the Rising Markets are expected to contribute 54 per cent of additional ad expenditure between 2017 and 2020, and to increase their share of the global market from 37 per cent to 39 per cent.

The worlds top ten advertising markets by size will remain stable between 2017 and 2020, with only one change in the ranking when Indonesia replaces Canada in tenth place in 2019.

Forecast for India

The year 2017 will close at Rs 53,918 crore, registering a slightly slower pace of growth is on account of demonetisation introduced in November 2016. Total adex for India will climb up to Rs 58,422 crore, growing at 8.4 per cent in 2018, led by television.

In India, internet adspend is expected to capture 11.6 per cent of the market in 2017. As per Zeniths forecast, internet advertising in India is slated to grow 20.4 per cent in 2018, compared to 8.4 per cent growth for the market as a whole. By 2020, internet will account for 15.4 per cent of total adspend in India.

Growth rate for television is pegged at 9 per cent, while newspapers will grow at 5 per cent. Radio will grow at 10 per cent, while cinema and out of home will grow at 5 per cent, respectively.

Tanmay Mohanty, Group CEO, Zenith India, commented, Growing Internet penetration accelerated by operators such as Jio will significantly enhance digital adspends in India and give access to previously untapped markets. India has seen some fluidity in overall ad-expenditure but remains one of the fastest growing advertising markets globally. With the dust settling down on demonetisation and GST, we expect a measured recovery on ad spends. Consumer confidence is definitely on the rise. In 2018, Mobile Handsets, FMCG, Automobiles, BFSI, Travel & Tourism and Political ads will drive up the pace on adspends.

Big countries are adding most ad dollars

In dollar terms, most of the growth in global adspend is coming from a few big markets. We forecast that just two countries  the US and China  will contribute 47 per cent of new ad dollars between 2017 and 2020. The five biggest markets  the US, China, Japan, the UK and Germany  will contribute 57 per cent.

Big cities are driving global adspend growth

Big cities are driving global adspend by concentrating growth in productivity, innovation and trade. Zenith has conducted a unique study that attributes adspend to individual cities by estimating the value of their inhabitants to local, national and international advertisers. The agency forecasts that the top 10 cities alone will contribute 12 per cent of all global adspend growth this year, and that the top 725 will contribute 60 per cent.

Zenith predicts that between 2016 and 2019, adspend in the 10 biggest-contributing cities will grow by a total of US$7.5 billion, representing 11 per cent of growth over these years. These ten cities will be, in descending order: New York (where adspend will grow by US$1.4 billion), Tokyo, Jakarta, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Houston, Dallas, Beijing, London and Chicago (which will grow by US$0.6 billion).
Amid growing debate as to whether brands are overspending on digital media, Zenith research has found that the effectiveness of internet advertising has now caught up with digital adspend.

Until 2015, brands struggled to make effective use of internet advertising, and their spend was not matched by the resulting brand experience. However, by 2016, internet advertising accounted for 34 per cent of global ad budgets, but produced 35 per cent of brand experience. Internet advertising is now, therefore, working harder than advertising in other media.

For many years, Zeniths Advertising Expenditure Forecast reports have consistently reported sizeable increases in the internet share of advertising budgets. In its December 2017 edition of the report, for the first time Zenith has been able to demonstrate the ROI of internet adspend, not just its scale. The agency used its proprietary Touchpoints ROI Tracker tool to compare internet adspend to internet brand experience over the past few years.

In 2014, advertisers spent 27 per cent of their budgets on internet advertising, which produced only 21 per cent of brand experience. By 2015, though, brands were using internet advertising more effectively: it accounted for 30 per cent of both budgets and paid brand experience, before tipping over in 2016, when brand experience exceeded budget share.

Zenith expects internet advertisings share of global adspend to continue to rise, reaching 40 per cent in 2018 and 44 per cent in 2020. Its value will rise from US$203 billion in 2017 to US$225 billion in 2020. The share of advertising expenditure allocated to internet advertising varies widely across the world. In the most advanced markets (Sweden and the UK), it will account for more than 60 per cent of total expenditure next year, and it will account for between 50 per cent and 60 per cent in another six (Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Norway and Taiwan).

In India, internet adspend will capture 11.6 per cent of the market in 2017. India is, therefore, a leading digital market/ keeping pace with global developments/ has a lot of scope for growth in internet advertising. Zenith forecasts 20.4 per cent growth in internet advertising in India in 2018, compared to 8.4 per cent growth for the market as a whole. By 2020, internet will account for 15.4 per cent of total adspend in India.

Big platforms are capturing digital growth

The internet is driving the great majority of global growth in advertising  it will account for 94 per cent of the growth in adspend between 2017 and 2020. And most of this will be captured by just five big platforms  Google and Facebook, plus the Chinese platforms Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Between them, these five platforms increased their share of global internet adspend from 61 per cent to 72 per cent between 2014 and 2016, and captured 83 per cent of the growth in internet adspend over that time. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent accounted for 54 per cent of the growth in internet adspend in China, while Google and Facebook accounted for 96 per cent of the growth in internet adspend in the rest of the world. Between them Google and Facebook accounted for 76 per cent of internet adspend outside China in 2016.

Internet advertising is the biggest advertising medium in the world and the biggest driver of growth, said Jonathan Barnard, Head of Forecasting and Director of Global Intelligence at Zenith. Our unique research shows that brands are starting to use it effectively after struggling to adapt over the last few years.

Advertisers feel the pressure from digital transformation and polarisation of growth

Advertisers are feeling pressure from the rapid transformation of their businesses, exemplified by the rapid shift of marketing communications to online media in response to changing consumer behaviour, and the polarisation of growth to big platforms, big countries and big cities.

At the end of November, Zenith conducted the third in its series of exclusive surveys about brand growth among key clients. On a scale from 0 to 100  where 0 means everyone expects decline in 2018, 100 means everyone expects growth, and 50 means the average expectation is for no growth  the average response was 57, down from 67 this time last year. Food and drink brands have been the least affected, with a score of 66 this year, down just a point from 67 last year. Packaged goods, retail and telecom brands have all fallen to 50, expecting no growth, down from positive scores last year.

We are seeing a battle played out in business, marketing and media between big players and small players, said Vittorio Bonori, Zeniths Global Brand President. Growth is coming from big countries and big cities, and being captured by big platforms. Brands should focus on upstream strategy, data-informed UX planning and downstream automation.
Katrina Kaif in this cream saree is going to soothe your heart.

By Shivani Chhabra: It's not an easy task to stand out at an event that has superstars like Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan--but not when you're Katrina Kaif.

Recently, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, arrived in Mumbai, where he was given a warm welcome at a star-studded bash thrown by industrialist Mukesh Ambani. Now, we're all aware of how glamorous and grand Ambani's parties are, and this one was no different.

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Amidst the pomp and show of the stars, who had gathered to welcome the politician to their city, one celebrity outshone everyone else with her serene outfit. The celebrity in question is actress Katrina Kaif, who looked like a rather mesmerising picture of poise at the event.

Also Read: 6 pictures of Katrina Kaif playing a bold and beautiful bride will make you go weak in the knees

Draped in a beautiful, cream-coloured saree, Kat embodied class and youthfulness. The surreal colour of the net saree was dripping elegance, while the intrinsic, floral embroidery on it looked absolutely rejuvenating. The smart choice of soft-pink and light-blue colours for flowers really enhanced the look of the dainty embroidery, and provided a soothing contrast against the primary shade of the ensemble.

Pictures courtesy: Instagram/koffee_with_bollywood

Also Read: This picture of Katrina Kaif is all you need to get ready for yet another week

While Kat's nine-yard outfit was an absolute stunner, she further aced this magnificent look with her choice of a full-sleeved blouse. The actress opted for a well-matched, sheer blouse, which retained the grace of the ensemble, while also exuding simplicity with its crew-neck design.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/shraddha_katrina_fc

The starlet completed the look with a pair of subtle, drop-down earrings, minimal makeup and untied, long and wavy locks.

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Sonakshi Sinhas latest movie is all set for World Television Premiere on Sony MAX, the leading Hindi movies channel from Sony Pictures Networks, on Friday 8th December 2017 at 8:00 PM. Noor features Sonakshi Sinha in never seen before avatar of investigative journalist along with Purab Kohli, Shibani Dandekar, Suchitra Pillai and Kanan Gill in pivotal roles.

Noor narrates the story of Noor Roy Choudhary (Sonakshi Sinha), a 28-year-old clumsy journalist who is trying to cope up with her day-to-day issues like weight gain, EMIs and negligible love life. While Noor is struggling with her life and job, she meets Ayanaka Banerjee (Purab Kohli) a former CNN reporter and war correspondent and instantly fall for him. On one hand her personal life is at a beautiful juncture, and on the other hand her professional life takes a dramatic turn as her boss Shekar (Manish Chaudhary) sends her to interview famous doctor, who treats poor people for free. During the course of interview, Noor comes across an eye-opening investigative news story as she finds out from her house-maid that the doctor is into the business of organ harvesting. While she is struggling to unleash this truth, Ayanaka cheats on her and presents her story as his investigation in front of entire world. A series of events changes Noors outlook towards her profession making her a responsible journalist of the country. Will Noor be able to successfully expose the doctor and break the organ harvesting racket?

Comments:

Sonakshi Sinha:

Noor is the most organized, fastest and the most real film I have done so far. Noor is a very relatable character; she is an ordinary girl who wants to achieve everything in the world. Despite being an actors daughter I have lived the life of a normal girl. I have grown up in city like Mumbai, gone to regular school and college, travelled in train and autos. But now I miss that kind of stuff so it was nice to be back to normal life with Noors character.

To find out, watch Noor only on Sony MAX on Friday, 8th December at 8pm
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a New York Times profile the Sunday after Thanksgiving, California's Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the philosophy of the Democratic Party leaders should be, "If you work hard and play by the rules, we've got your back." Becerra doesn't believe the Trump Administration has been following the rules and since becoming Attorney General he's been pushing back against the White House. California has filed roughly two dozen lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration's efforts to make changes that affect immigrant rights, civil rights, environmental standards and consumer protections. Becerra will discuss these legal actions and other issues at a National Press Club Headliners Newsmaker news conference at 10 a.m., Wed., Dec. 6 in the club's First Amendment Lounge.

The news conference will be moderated by Los Angeles Times reporter Chris Megerian, and is open to credentialed media and National Press Club members free of charge, with advance registration required. Please click here to register.

Prior to being nominated as California's Attorney General by Gov. Jerry Brown late last year, Becerra served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 24 years, 10 of those years he was in the House leadership. He also was the first Latino to serve on the Ways & Means Committee.

The son of immigrants, Becerra attended Stanford University for both his undergraduate and law school education. He worked as a Deputy Attorney for the State of California and was elected to the State Assembly before running for Congress.

The National Press Club is located on the 13th Floor of the National Press Building at 529 14th St., NW, Washington, D.C.

Contact: Lindsay Underwood, lunderwood@press.org, (202) 662-7561

View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/california-attorney-general-xavier-becerra-at-national-press-club-headliners-newsmaker-this-wednesday-10-am-300565957.html

SOURCE National Press Club
Nearly 6,000 workers continue work on two new nuclear reactors at Georgias Vogtle project.
November 29, 2017

RAMALLAH, West Bank  Around 300 Palestinians in the northern Jordan Valley are anxious about their fate after the Israeli authorities decided to evict them from their homes.

Haaretz reported Nov. 13, This is the first time the army is using an eviction order against Palestinians based on a military order meant to enable the evacuation of unauthorized settlement outposts." The order in question is known as the order regarding unauthorized buildings.

On Nov. 9, the eviction notice, dated Nov. 1, was left near primitive houses in the Ein el-Hilweh and Umm al-Jamal regions, inhabited by their residents since 1967. It ordered their evacuation within days and referenced the residents right to appeal within a period not exceeding eight days of the date of issuance.

Israeli authorities tried to deny the residents this right by giving out the notice nine days after its issuance, Nabil al-Jamal, a farmer in Umm al-Jamal, told Al-Monitor. They broke into the area on Nov. 10 and photographed the houses and barns. When they left, we found the notice with a map of Umm al-Jamal and Ein el-Hilweh near one of the houses. By that time, the deadline for raising an objection had elapsed.

Jamal and his family of 12 live in a tin house because the Israeli authorities ban the residents in Area C from building cement structures. Like other residents, he suffers daily harassment impeding him from making his living by herding sheep. Israel does not allow residents to lay down water pipes, bans grazing, closes roads and allocates land only to settlers.

Perhaps what most pains Jamal  who insisted that he and his family will not leave their home and land despite the Israeli measures  is that the directive under which the eviction notice is issued was initially dedicated to the evacuation of unauthorized Jewish settlements.

My father and my ancestors settled in this land before the establishment of Israel. We are now being treated as illegal settlers and being denied the right to object to this eviction decision, he said.

It should be noted that this military directive was drafted in 2003 to ban the construction of unauthorized settler outposts and was amended on Nov. 20, 2015, to apply to Palestinians. On Nov. 18, Haaretz was the first to reveal the amendment introduced in 2015, and it was only after an Arabic translation was published that the news made its way into the Palestinian press.

Under this directive, the Israeli army commander of the area was empowered to enforce the eviction decision without advance notice, whenever he wanted and by force. This is dangerous to all villages in Area C, not just to Umm al-Jamal and Ein el-Hilweh, said Moataz Bisharat, the head of Jordan Valley affairs in the province of Tubas.

He told Al-Monitor that the province turned to a committee of lawyers to object in the name of the residents. These lawyers argued that the 2003 military directive applies only to the settlers and not to the indigenous population in the Palestinian territories.

If this decision is implemented, the entire population of the Jordan Valley amounting to 6,000 Palestinians will be evicted and [Israel] will take over the Jordan Valley area, which constitutes 30% of the West Bank, Bisharat added. The Israeli authorities were able to divide the Jordan Valley into military zones, settlements and nature reserves, leaving only the areas inhabited by the residents. When these residents are evicted, Israel will have full control over the Jordan Valley.

However, the appeal does not seem to be helping the residents, who face a tougher battle against the 2015 amendment of the military directive to apply to Palestinians in Area C.

For his part, Antoine Shalhat, the director of the Madar Center for Israel Studies, made a connection between the timing of the eviction notice and the unprecedented pro-settlement activities of the Israeli Cabinet.

He told Al-Monitor that Israel is trying to resolve the issue of these areas in favor of Israeli settlement activity in anticipation of any regional political development that could lead to resuming direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.

Shalhat said, This order was formulated in 2003 to stop the phenomenon of building illegal settlement outposts and to end the construction of settlements by radical settlers in areas where Palestinian attacks were being carried out against settler targets. The order authorized the Israeli army commander in the area to evict the settlers violating the laws of the Israeli government regarding settlement in the West Bank.

He noted that the newly revealed amendment includes Palestinian residential communities deemed illegal by Israel, such as the communities concentrated in villages and towns in Area C, mostly in the Jordan Valley and the northern mountains of Jerusalem, home to the Bedouin communities.

Shalhat explained, This directive is dangerous, as it provides the legal mechanisms to allow Israel to take hold of these areas by deporting the entire residential communities, despite the existence of documents and aerial photographs proving that they are the indigenous population and legal owners of the land.
By PTI: Chennai, Dec 4 (PTI) The Madras High Court today rejected a plea for a direction to the Presidents office in New Delhi to consider the immediate release of Justice (retd) CS Karnan, who is serving jail term in the Presidency Prison in Kolkatta in a contempt of court case.

The Supreme Court had on May 9 convicted Justice Karnan, former judge of the Calcutta High Court, under the Contempt of Courts Act of 1971, and sentenced him to six months in jail.

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He retired from the service on June 9 and was arrested on June 20.

The bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice R Hemalatha rejected a public interest litigation filed by AP Gowthama Sidharthan, managing director of Dr Ambedkar Educational Foundation, New Delhi, for the release of Justice Karnan.

Sidharthan in the plea had claimed that Justice Karnan, a Dalit, had been victimised and was meted out social injustice.

The judges said they did not find any reference (in the petition) to the circumstances which led to the incarceration of Justice Karnan, who had been a judge of the Madras High Court and transferred to the Calcutta High Court.

At the time of arrest, he was no longer a judge of any high court. The respondents in the PIL - secretaries of the office of the President of India, department of Law and Justice, and secretaries general of the National Commission for Human Rights and the secretary of the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment -- are located in New Delhi, the judges observed.

"No case has arisen within the jurisdiction of the Madras High Court. Hence, the PIL is not maintainable and dismissed," the bench said. PTI Corr APR GVS SK GVS

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December 4, 2017

For Marianna Musotto, playing Verdis "Aida" at the World Youth Forum in November was a joint homage to her homeland, Italy, and her host country, Egypt.

Bringing in foreign musicians such as the young Italian trumpeter who joined in September is one of several initiatives by the Cairo Opera House to modernize its image. The goal is to lure a diverse audience and revive some of its old glory from the 1950s and '60s.

The Opera House, which houses the Symphony Orchestra and the State Ballet, is reaching out to various sectors of society, particularly young people. As part of these efforts, the Cairo Symphony Orchestra was invited to play at the World Youth Forum, a prestigious international conference in Sharm el-Sheikh that took place Nov. 4-10.

The orchestras choice to play "Aida," Italian composer Guiseppe Verdis four-act opera that takes place in ancient Egypt, at the opening of the forum was deliberate and nostalgic. The original plan for the opera house's grand opening in 1869 was to stage "Aida," but the Franco-Prussian War had made the transportation of sets and costumes from Paris impossible and the opera opened its doors with "Rigoletto" instead. "Aida" had its world premiere at the Cairo Opera House in 1871, two years later.

When the impressive opera house burned down in 1971, it took 17 years to rebuild and reopen it in Cairos wealthy district of Zamalek. Its audience grew discouraged and lost interest during the extended closure; a growing conservatism in the country also took its toll on audience interest. There often was little or inconsistent information about the opera schedule and the tickets were very expensive for a country where the average monthly income is $300. Although the orchestra found an audience on TV, especially during Ramadan, it has long been unable to attract large audiences to its halls.

Cairo Opera spent the last 50 years in darkness. Most of the blame goes to the education system, Beram El Merghany, first French horn player in the operas orchestra for over two decades, told Al-Monitor. Public schools dont teach kids to appreciate music as they used to. This is only done at international private schools.

He said that if there is to be a change of attitudes toward the opera and classical music, it must start with education. All education levels should offer music classes or musical events in their curriculum. We organized concerts for children but there has been little interest. Kids prefer sports, he added.

Today the Cairo Opera House boasts a diverse program with various kinds of music, dance events and festivals, from jazz performances to cinema galas. Arab popular music, which celebrates national pride and traditions, offers a departure point to lure a young audience back to the Cairo Opera House. The new programming now includes Arabic music festivals, local jazz players and a bit of pop music to attract the 52% of the Egyptian population under 25. El Merghany believes the administration did well in diversifying the musical offerings and hopes this will help it become both locally and internationally relevant again. It was the strategy we needed to overcome the crisis. Now more concerts of Arabic music and collaborations with modern local composers are bringing some audiences back, he said. But the road is still long, he added.

The Cairo Opera is also offering international folkloric music events and attracting foreign orchestra players, both seen as marks of sophistication and prestige.

Many young musicians come to Egypt from Eastern Europe, France, other parts of the Arab world and even Asia. Masaki Okajima is from Japan, a country with historical links to the Cairo Opera. The Empire of the Rising Sun donated the funds to complete the new opera house building, and the brother of the Japanese emperor brought a kabuki performance, the first ever to be staged in the Middle East and North Africa region. A tuba player with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra since 2007, Okajima claims to be very satisfied with the opportunities he was given in Cairo. I think now is the real Cairo Operas golden age, because today our programming has much more to offer than it did in the 1960s, he said.

Many of those foreign players are Italian. The reported stagnation and intense competition in Italys music sector led them to seek a career in Egypt. The Cairo Opera House has always enjoyed a special connection with Italy, despite the recent diplomatic crisis between the two countries over the torture and murder of Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni, after which the two countries withdrew ambassadors.

Egyptian players have a really high artistic sensitivity, something I didnt expect at all before coming here. Their professionalism and capabilities didnt make me feel a huge difference with Europe, Musotto told Al-Monitor. She said that despite cultural differences, all musicians and employees know each other and collaborate well, making the work environment that of a family business.

El Merghany said Egyptian musicians who study and play abroad can bring back new energy and restore the opera's appeal to local audiences.

Ahmed Ashraf, first violin since 2011, is hopeful that Egyptians can rediscover their passion for art. He pointed to the presence of venerable music schools, such as the prestigious Cairo Conservatory and the Royal Academy of Music. All kinds of art have developed in Egypt, and Egyptians appreciate all of them. They just need the means to rediscover their dormant passions, he said.
December 4, 2017

TEHRAN, Iran  Turkish-Iranian business tycoon Reza Zarrabs testimony in a US court has received extensive coverage in Iranian media; however, this coverage doesnt stem from his real charge in the United States, which is bypassing the sanctions against Tehran, but rather because he has been linked to a controversial billionaire tycoon who is now in jail in Iran: Babak Zanjani.

Prior to reaching a deal over its nuclear program in 2015, Iran and its oil industry were under heavy sanctions. Sanctions were circumvented through middlemen who arranged oil exports and received the money instead of the government in Tehran. Zanjani was one of the most important middlemen; he made a lot of money and lived luxuriously. One report even said he was the 65th richest man on earth, with an estimated wealth of $13.5 billion. However, Irans Oil Ministry filed a lawsuit against him for not paying back money owed to the ministry from oil exports, and Zanjani was jailed and sentenced to death.

Amir Abbas Soltani, a former Iranian lawmaker and a former member of the parliamentary committee tasked with pursuing the Zanjani case, said Zarrab is the black box of Zanjanis case.

Zarrab, according to news reporting about his testimony, explained his connection to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13) and Zarrab's meeting with the chairman of the Central Bank of Iran under Ahmadinejad.

Soltani, asked about Zarrabs testimony about his ties inside Iran and with the Ahmadinejad government, said, Im not aware of the details of his meeting with Ahmadinejad, but he had meetings with the financial team of the previous government [Ahmadinejad's] and this is not deniable.

Soltani added, What was discussed is unknown but he had meetings with the head of the Central Bank and the economy minister as well as Ahmadinejad.

Noting that Zarrab had mostly operated out of Turkey, the former Iranian member of parliament said, Zarrab was the manager of all of Zanjani's financial plans.

Soltani said, In fact, Reza Zarrab is the black box of Babak Zanjani, adding, Zarrab managed many of Zanjani's companies and his communications.

Soltani continued, The support Turkey has [shown] for Zarrab and the assets of Zanjani in Turkey is proof that they had close relationships and the director of Zanjanis plan was Zarrab.

The former legislator said, These guys form a mafia group with Zanjani as the head of it, and Zanjani standing behind [the scenes] directing everything, and they have a lot of people in Iran and had an organized group.

Soltani also said, Most of Zanjanis assets in Turkey are in the name of Zarrab.

Asked about Zarrabs family, Soltani said: Zarrabs father is a merchant and lives in Iran and he asked for a meeting with me a few times, but I didnt agree to it. They sought to tell me that Zarrab is innocent and has no ties to the Zanjani case. 

According to the Turkish paper Hurriyet, Zarrabs father, Hossein, was among a team of people that Ahmadinejad assembled after he was elected president in 2005 to help work around US sanctions.

Furthermore, a report says that in a ceremony in the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz in 2007, Hossein Zarrab gave Ahmadinejad a proposal for the establishment of the SFK steel company, a proposal accepted by the president right away and at the end of the ceremony.

What does Zanjani say about Zarrab?

On Nov. 23, 2015, in an Iranian court session, the judge addressed Zanjani, saying: You deposited 445 million euros [in an account belonging] to the company of Safir Altin belonging to Zarrab, and he received 12 million euros for his service.

Zanjani responded by saying, The Central Banks money was in the Parsian and Sarmayeh banks. These banks had to deposit the money into Turkeys Halkbank, [but prior to depositing the money] the Turkish banks fee and [the fees of the involved Iranian banks] had been deducted [from the original amount of money]. In fact, Zarrab didnt receive any fee; however, when the money was deposited into his account, 12 million euros had already been deducted for the banking fees.

Moreover, Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholam-Hossein Moseni Ejei said on April 10, 2016: In Zanjanis case, various names have been mentioned including Zarrab.  [Zarrabs] name has been brought up by Zanjani and other defendants." The spokesman said no lawsuit has been filed against Zarrab.

Iranian lawmaker: We are suspicious of the US court

Mohammad-Ali Pourmokhtar, an Iranian lawmaker and a former member of the special legal committee of the parliament, told Al-Monitor, In the meetings we had with Zanjani, he never mentioned Zarrab. However, eight months or nine months after Zanjanis arrest, Zarrabs case was brought up. The legislator added, It is not clear how serious Zarrabs violations of the law are in Iran.

Pour Mokhtar added, However, if Zanjani himself says that his assets were in Zarrab's hands and that they were associates, then we should pursue him legally.

Downplaying Zarrabs claim about his ties with Ahmadinejad, Pour-Mokhtar said: There are people who meet once and consider that as a relationship. 

He also slammed the United States, saying What the US is doing with Zarrab is suspicious; they dont inform the public correctly.

Zarrab was arrested during a trip to the United States on March 19, 2016.
December 1, 2017

Kurdistan Region parliament Speaker Yusuf Mohammed Sadiq has criticized the way the recent independence referendum was organized and accused the government of not properly involving the parliament.

In an interview with Al-Monitor from his office in the hillside neighborhood of Ali-Naji in Sulaimaniyah, Sadiq spoke about the ongoing crisis between Erbil and Baghdad and his vision for going forward. He said that the first priority of the Kurdistan Region should be to restore the role of parliament and to prepare for negotiations with Baghdad over all disputed issues. He said the negotiations would first require an internal review. We cannot negotiate with Baghdad with the same old mechanisms, he said.

While he preferred not to voice an opinion on whether the results of the recent independence referendum should be annulled, he said that if it had not been held, conditions in the Kurdistan Region and the disputed areas might not have deteriorated.

Sadiq said that since he was abroad following the referendum, he was unaware of the details concerning the peshmergas loss of Kirkuk. The parliament must establish a special investigation committee to investigate all the events related to the referendum, [including] the events in Kirkuk, he stated. The most important question to ask is why we reached this point.

Sadiq did, however, praise former President Massoud Barzani for stepping down from power. [W]e need to respect democracy and learn to distribute and hand over power. From this aspect, Barzanis leaving power was a good thing.

The text of the interview follows:

Al-Monitor: After having suspended its work for more than two years, the Kurdistan Region parliament resumed sessions on Sept. 15, 2017, without you. What is preventing you from returning to Erbil?

Sadiq: We do not believe that parliaments return to work was done properly. After having been suspended for more than two years, parliament resumed sessions only to legalize the decision that some parties made to hold the Kurdistan Region [independence] referendum, and then the parliament endorsed that decision as a recommendation. This is not the right way to deal with the legislative power in a democratic system. The issue of the referendum should have been discussed in parliament, and all the political, economic, security and military aspects of the referendum should have been calculated; all preparations should have been evaluated, and then a decision should have been made. But they [the two main political parties: the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan] even set the referendum date without consulting parliament, and didnt consider the consequences. Ten days before the referendum was held, they brought those decisions into the parliament [for a vote] only to legitimatize them. This is not acceptable in a democratic system.

Now, my decision not to return to Erbil is because we are still working with the same previous mechanisms that have been proved to bring nothing but defeat and failure to the region. The parliament is still not being taken seriously by the dominant political parties.

The region was hit with a great defeat after holding the referendum, because [those involved] did not take into consideration its consequences and neglected calls by all our friends to suspend it. We saw the big defeat that happened to the people of Kurdistan.

Al-Monitor: Is it true that the Movement for Change [Gorran] is now agreeing to replace you?

Sadiq: My party has not agreed on changing the parliament speaker. The National Assembly of the Movement for Change, in its last meeting, asked me  after evaluating the situation and contacting different parliamentary fractions  to make my decision and [determine] how to deal with these issues.

The only reason for not attending parliament is that I want to see if parliament is able to do its work without any hindrance, with transparency to be brought into Kurdistans financial process and with political parties stopping interference in the security forces. We need a new stage of governance in the region. I am waiting to see whether or not we can launch this.

Al-Monitor: What is your stance on Mr. Massoud Barzanis decision to step down and distribute his powers to the Kurdistan Region parliament, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the judicial authorities in the region? Do you have any plans to step down?

Sadiq: I think Mr. Massoud Barzani [did a good thing by quitting] the authority of the Kurdistan Region presidency. I wish he had done so earlier so that the process of the peaceful handover of power might have become normalized in the region. The issue of whether Mr. Barzani has ruled well or badly  this evaluation should be left for another time. But we need to respect democracy and learn to distribute and hand over power. Therefore, from this aspect, Barzanis leaving power was a good thing. The decision to distribute his authorities is a good decision, though it requires much legislation.

Al-Monitor: According to the law, after the two-year extension of Barzanis term expired in 2015 and before parliament was suspended, you had the authority to assume the de-facto authorities of Mr. Barzani. Why did you not do so?

Sadiq: I did not want Kurdistans conditions to be further complicated, since I had known that Mr. Barzani would remain in his position. We were at war against the Islamic State [IS] terrorist group; we were facing a harsh economic situation in the region. It was not proper in all these complicated conditions to claim the presidency and compete with Barzani. My goal was not that at all. I wanted instead a peaceful handover of power. If I had shouldered the presidency, it could have been viewed as my seeking power and the presidency post.

Al-Monitor: What is your understanding of the peshmerga defeat in Kirkuk and other disputed areas in mid-October? Who ordered them to withdraw? Why did they not fight?

Sadiq: I am not aware of the details of the issue. I was in Germany when, unfortunately, that happened. The parliament must establish a special investigation committee to investigate all the events related to the referendum, before and after holding it, as well as the events in Kirkuk. The most important question to ask is why we reached this point. How did we lose all the gains we had made since 2003? Why did we lose nearly 49% of Kurdistans territory? The consequences of unwise KRG policies in suspending parliament and holding the referendum are not only that some peshmerga forces were defeated in Kirkuk, but that a large number of peshmerga brigades  for whom a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars from the KRG and the international coalition against IS was spent  are currently dissolved.

Al-Monitor: On Oct. 30, angry protesters stormed the parliament building, fiercely struck journalists and attacked Kurdish lawmaker Rabun Maruf, a former Kurdish MP from your own parliamentary faction. Who was behind the incident?

Sadiq: Those attacks were an evil endeavor and were pressures from outside the parliament from groups affiliated with some political parties against parliament. Parliament cannot work in this way  where one day the speaker of the Kurdistan parliament is not allowed to enter Erbil and another day they launch an attack on parliament and hit journalists and legislators inside parliament. This all should be stopped.

I made a statement on the evening of those attacks against parliament, and I sent a message to the foreign consulates in the region, asking them to help stop those assaults. Assaulting parliament was a very bad deed.

Al-Monitor: If you decide to return to Erbil, what will be the parliaments priorities?

Sadiq: The first priority is finding a way to negotiate with Baghdad to deal with the problems and salaries of the public servants of Kurdistan. The second priority is bringing more transparency to Kurdistan and enforcing parliaments local observation role. The third priority is passing several draft laws associated with the life of our people, including a bill for social insurance, and several other draft laws related to the life of the people of Kurdistan  but a review and an investigation into all that has happened in the past also needs to be on parliaments agenda.

Al-Monitor: In the period of parliament suspension, the KRG  headed by Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani  made several financial decisions such as decreasing salaries of state employees. To what extent are these measures legal?

Sadiq: All salaries of the people of Kurdistan, including civil, military and pensions, are regulated by law. And according to the law, the government cannot amend them in any way. All those measures that were taken in the past, including decreasing salaries, and all those taxes and customs that were increased by law, are illegal deeds. Currently, the KRG is in debt to its citizens; these debts should be fixed by the government in order to repay our citizens.

Al-Monitor: Baghdad has cut the Kurdistan budget from 17% to about 13%, in addition to a variety of other punitive measures after the referendum. What is your and your party's stance on this? Do you plan to challenge these measures, and if so, how?

Sadiq: The Movement for Change has members in the Kurdistan parliament and in the Iraqi Council of Representatives, which are working on these issues. The budget must be divided according to the Iraqi Constitution. Article 121, Item 3 of this constitution guarantees that the Iraqi federal government allocate a budget for the regions suitable to their works, needs, activities and the ratio of their populations. Therefore, we will discuss this issue with Baghdad according to the above-mentioned criteria.

Al-Monitor: So, would you agree with the 13% portion of the Iraqi budget?

Sadiq: Distributing the budget according to the population is a key, but the needs of Kurdistan are important as well. No population census has been made in Iraq, and Iraqs population is unknown. Thus, it is better we continue with the other past agreement, which is the 17% portion of Iraqs budget, until a population count can be made in Iraq. But we in the Kurdistan parliament and the Iraqi government should also confirm that total transparency in spending the incomes be brought about. I am fully with the Iraqi governments steps for carrying out transparency in Kurdistan as well as in Iraq itself, but reducing civilians income is an unsuitable action that must be corrected.

Al-Monitor: What is your position on the Sept. 25 Kurdish referendum? Can Kurds use the results of the referendum as a document to declare their own state, or do you think now that the results of the referendum should be annulled?

Sadiq: The referendum indeed has brought us many complications and led us to the current crisis. If the referendum had not been held, conditions in the Kurdistan Region and the disputed areas might not have deteriorated, and we could have better negotiated with the Iraqi government in a position of power; hence, the international community could have further supported us.

As for nullifying the referendum results, I do not have any comment. Since the beginning of the referendums process, I was not a participant, because I knew it would cost the region.

Al-Monitor: According to your perspective, when and how can an independent Kurdish state be established?

Sadiq: To create a state, you need to build a powerful economy; you need to establish a systematic system of governance. You need an effective judicial authority, and you need one regular armed force within which no figure or party can have a role.

You should internally build the states fundamentals, even if you would not declare independence, the international community will deal with you as a state. States are built internally, not from the outside.

Al-Monitor: What is your opinion on neighboring countries interfering in the region? How can the Kurdistan Region have balanced relationships with neighboring countries  Iran and Turkey in particular?

Sadiq: We first need to reorganize our own affairs at home in order to reduce foreign interference in the Kurdistan Region. We as the Kurdistan Region need to have very good relations with all the neighboring countries; in addition, we need to re-establish good relations with the Iraqi federal government.

On the international level, we also need good relations with all neighboring countries and all of our friends  especially the United States, which was a key supporter of us in the fight against IS. The United States and Iran have a big conflict in the areas, but both countries were big supporters of us in the first days of the IS attacks on areas near Erbil; thus, we should keep our friendly relations with all countries.

Al-Monitor: How do you describe the agreements that the KRG signed with Rosneft  the state-owned Russian oil company  for investment in the regions oil and gas sector, without having consulted parliament?

Sadiq: The KRG signed those contracts with Rosneft at a time when the Kurdistan parliament was suspended. Thus, those agreements and contracts are under serious question. Hence, the contracts should be examined by the Kurdistan parliament first and then come into effect.

Al-Monitor: Kurdish opposition demanded the formation of a transitional government to replace the current KRG. What is your view on the transitional period?

Sadiq: We need a transitional period until the next election is held. This transitional period may need a transitional government, but a transitional government, or reshuffling the current KRG government, needs a settlement between the political parties.

We need an internal revision before starting negotiations. We cannot negotiate with Baghdad with the same old mechanisms since it has disadvantages for the region rather than being in our interests.
December 4, 2017

Over the past few days, media outlets have been claiming that President Donald Trump is about to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. These and other reports generated an immediate Palestinian reaction, and a senior delegation was dispatched to Washington on Dec. 2 to campaign against such American intentions.

But already 24 hours after Director of Palestinian Intelligence Majid Faraj landed in Washington, Ramallah started receiving tentative signs of the crisis calming, at least partially. While Trump has not retracted his decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, Faraj understood from his counterparts in the American capital that the decision is not final. It may not be too late to change what the Palestinians view as an unfortunate decision.

A senior Palestinian source told Al-Monitor that during this past weekend (before the delegation was dispatched to Washington), it became clear to the Palestinian leadership that Trump is determined to carry out the declaration regarding the Israeli capital. However, it was also clear that Trump intends to delay the actual relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to a later date. The Palestinians understood that the American president will use the embassy issue as an incentive in the diplomatic relations between Israel and the Palestinians: If the Palestinians are the recalcitrant ones, then Trump will threaten them (again) with the relocation of the American legation to Jerusalem.

Indeed, on Dec. 3, the situation seemed less definitive. The presidents son-in-law, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, told the Saban Forum in Washington that Trump has not yet reached a decision regarding the recognition of Jerusalem and that he is still weighing the matter. Kushner noted that even though many correspondents say they know what the president decided, ''He's still looking at a lot of different facts, and when he makes his decision he'll be the one who wants to tell you.'' Nevertheless, Kushner did not deny reports that Trump does want to realize his election promise of relocating the US Embassy to Jerusalem, but apparently he would rather realize it later on.

Faraj heard things in this vein in his meetings in Washington. According to the Palestinian sources assessment of the situation, the reason that Trump has not yet announced his recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital is due to the talks being held by his administration with Jordanian King Abdullah II, Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

In fact, the information about Trumps decision to make a public statement regarding Jerusalem reached the Palestinian Authority (PA) from Trumps envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt. Similar reports were conveyed by PLO representative in Washington Husam Zomlot. According to the information received, Trump will declare Jerusalem as the capital of Israel but will delay the physical relocation of the embassy to a later date. Those in Abbas bureau understood from this that the embassy issue will be used as a diplomatic weapon against them. As aforementioned, the goal will be to encourage them to make progress in the American peace initiative that Trump will present in 2018.

The information received in Ramallah last week was accompanied by American explanations and a list of reservations. For example, the Americans said that the Jerusalem-as-Israeli-capital declaration in no way abrogates the American recognition of the rights of Palestinians and Muslims everywhere to carry out their religious rituals in the city. It was also clarified that parallel to the presidents preparations for his declaration, an American team headed by National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster was examining alternatives to a declaration  an alternative that would not harm new attempts to renew negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel. The final decision is expected to be made by the end of December.

Ever since Trump took office, his intentions of relocating the embassy to Jerusalem kept surfing up. The Palestinians for their part kept transmitting to Trumps advisers the following message: As far as Abbas is concerned, any declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and a physical relocation of the embassy would put an end to Abbas efforts to reach peace with Israel. In addition, such steps could well lead to the collapse of the PA. It was also explained to the Americans that after taking such a step, Palestinian public opinion could never be convinced that the United States is truly a fair and objective honest broker in its mediation efforts. This, in turn, would transform any diplomatic initiative of the White House into a foretold failure.

From the moment Trump entered the White House, Ramallah searched for the key to the presidents heart, as Trump had never tried to hide the fact that he was a supporter of Israel. The brainstorm team established by the PA after the American elections tried and succeeded in convincing American envoys Greenblatt and Kushner (and, later on, CIA Director Mike Pompeo who befriended Faraj, his counterpart in the PA) that they should take the Palestinian position into account when making decisions that may well affect the Middle East and American interests in the region.

On June 1, Trump signed the waiver that delays for six months any plans to relocate the US Embassy to Jerusalem  exactly what previous US presidents have done over the years. The explanation given then for this decision was that Trump wanted to give peace a chance between the sides and that his decision serves American interests. In addition, the American administration was also concerned then, as now, that recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel may well lead to threats on US embassies throughout the Arab world that would endanger the American diplomats serving in them.

The six-month period from the signing of the waiver expired on Dec. 1, with a new waiver expected to be signed shortly. Still, half a year later, the Palestinians understand that Washingtons policy toward Jerusalem has changed. The Palestinian source who spoke with Al-Monitor explained that the information on the subject that reached Ramallah was worrisome enough to cause us to quickly send Majid Faraj to Washington. It is not clear if it was Faraj who convinced the Americans to think twice about Trumps planned step. However, the words uttered by McMaster in a Dec. 3 interview on the Fox network served to calm things down somewhat in Ramallah. According to McMaster, no decision had been made yet regarding the embassy relocation, and in addition, Trump had not even made a final decision to declare Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Still, judging by past experience, the Palestinians know that the president changes his mind every few months. And so they know that they must continue staying on high alert.
December 4, 2017

The five-month Jordanian-Israeli diplomatic crisis could be claiming a major multimillion-dollar regional water project as its latest victim as both countries remain deadlocked over a July 23 incident, when an Israeli Embassy guard in Amman shot and killed two Jordanian citizens. According to Al-Ghad newspaper on Nov. 27, Jordans Minister of Water and Irrigation Hazim el-Nasser had sent a letter to his Israeli counterpart asking for an official answer as to whether Israel was still committed to a joint agreement for the construction of a pipeline transferring water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. The paper said Jordan wanted an answer before the end of the year. But it also added that secret talks were underway between Israel and Jordan over implementing the first phase of the plan, scheduled to begin next year.

The Jordanian move came in the wake of reports in the Israeli media claiming that Israel had informed the Jordanian side that it would freeze work on the project until its embassy in Amman is reopened and Ambassador Einat Schlein and her staff were permitted to return to their posts. But on Nov. 30, Reuters quoted a Jordanian official source as saying that the embassy will remain closed until legal procedures are taken against the Israeli guard accused of killing two Jordanians. King Abdullah had insisted on numerous occasions that the Israeli Embassy in Amman will remain closed until the Israeli guard is put on trial.

Israel has refused to take legal action against Ziv Moyal, who claims that he had acted in self-defense. Jordan has rejected his claim and demanded that Israel initiate an investigation and put Moyal on trial. It also called on Israel to replace the Israeli ambassador. In addition, Jordan wants Israel to make a public apology and pay compensations to the families of the slain Jordanians. And on Dec. 1, Al-Ghad reported that Jordan had added an extra condition concerning the fate of an unknown number of Jordanian citizens detained by Israel.

On Nov. 29, Reuters reported that Israel was looking to replace its ambassador to Jordan. The move was seen as an attempt by Israel to defuse the crisis, which Jordan has reportedly ignored.

Meanwhile, the future of the $900 million Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project, which was agreed upon by Jordan and Israel in February 2015, remains in the balance. The project, which will produce power to desalinate seawater, involves Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but is of strategic importance to water-starved Jordan. Since the diplomatic crisis with Israel erupted, there have been reports that Jordan was ready to execute the project on its own. But that would create financial and political challenges for the kingdom.

Former Jordanian Water and Irrigation Minister Raed Abu Saud, who was involved in drafting the feasibility studies for the project, told Al-Monitor, We have no other choice but to go ahead with the Red Sea-Dead Sea pipeline  because of the kingdoms endemic water shortages.

He said Jordan cannot carry out the project on its own even if it wants to. We are bound by international law and because the project runs along a common border [with Israel] and since there are no international waters separating the two sides, we need Israels approval, Abu Saud said.

Abu Saud added that by the year 2022, Jordans domestic needs of drinking water will be about 1.6 billion cubic meters, of which only 1.1 billion cubic meters will be available. The rest will have to come from the Red Sea-Dead Sea pipeline, he said.

He said that the project, which should have started this year and will be finished by 2030, will also save the Dead Sea whose surface area had shrunk to 600 square kilometers from about 1,000 square kilometers, mostly as a result of industrial exploitation along its shores.

With both sides sticking to their positions over the embassy incident, there is little chance that normal relations will be restored in the near future. The Jordanian side risks facing public backlash if it is seen to walk back on its demand that Israel take legal measures against Moyal. But the issue goes deeper than that in the view of local observers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government are seen to be adopting increasingly anti-Jordanian policies. Continued incursions by Jewish zealots at Al-Aqsa Mosque, where Jordan holds a special role, and provocative statements by Israeli ministers that point to Jordan as a Palestinian state have put unprecedented strain on bilateral ties.

Jordans first ambassador to Israel and former Foreign Minister Marwan al-Muasher underlined the level of distrust between the kingdom and Israel when he stated in a seminar in Amman on Nov. 7, Israel today is not the same one that we had signed a peace treaty with 25 years ago. He said that Israel, both as a society and political parties, has veered to the right and is no longer interested in peace or in recognizing Palestinian rights.

Former Prime Minister Taher al-Masri told Al-Monitor that Israels intransigence over the embassy incident had left the king with no option but to insist on Jordans demands. But he admitted that Jordan now finds itself in a difficult position. Five months now and there is no indication that the crisis will be resolved. But any talk about freezing the peace treaty with Israel or even terminating it is dangerous and will be costly for both sides, he said. We find ourselves stuck in a corner and there is no easy way out.

Meanwhile, a prominent Jordanian commentator has raised questions about Jordans ability to unilaterally build the Red Sea-Dead Sea water project. In his Al-Ghad column on Nov. 16, political analyst Fahd al-Khitan wrote, International financing for the project was secured on the basis that it was to be a three-way undertaking and accordingly tenders were issued for the project.

He warned the government that Israels withdrawal could jeopardize international financial commitments. If our government is confident that it can execute the project without Israel then it should have said so publicly and from the beginning, otherwise it should not put itself in a position where it may incur a hefty political cost, Khitan concluded.
December 4, 2017

It's unclear what effect Greece's pending F-16 upgrades might have on the country's ties with Turkey, but the often-antagonistic nature of their relationship is unlikely to change much.

The United States and Greece recently agreed to an upgrade of Greeces F-16s at an estimated cost of $2.4 billion, although the final price hasn't been determined. The sale includes more than 120 upgrade kits from Lockheed Martin to retrofit Greeces fourth-generation fighter jets.

Greece has always been a reliable ally, and weve always been very reliable to them, US President Donald Trump declared at an Oct. 17 joint press conference on the White House lawn. At the adjacent podium, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras added that the countries' bilateral relations were at their best since World War II.

Dimitris Tsarouhas, an associate professor in the department of international relations at Bilkent University in Ankara, told Al-Monitor, Tsipras' visit to the US was a foreign policy success for a government that is under domestic pressure. The secured deal is one that Greece had requested for some time.

Much of the reaction in Greece, however, focused on the controversial aspects of the deal. Members of Tsipras left-wing Syriza Party were shocked that the cash-strapped government would be investing billions with the United States. Creditors in Brussels were also reportedly upset, as they had not been consulted.

Less attention was paid to what implications the military sale would have outside of domestic politics  specifically for Turkey.

The [upgrade] decision is partly motivated by Turkeys planned acquisition of the F-35 next-generation fighter from the US, as well as of the S-400 long-range air-defense system from Russia, Thanos Dokos, the director general of Athens-based ELIAMEP (Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy), told Al-Monitor. The US sale to Greece also comes on the heels of the United Kingdom's $135 million defense deal to assist the Turkish air force in developing fighter jets.

Relations between Turkey and Greece have fluctuated since the Ottoman Empire. Maritime and airspace demarcations provide constant sources of tension. In 1931, Greece declared a 10-mile airspace radius, recognized by Turkey until its 1974 invasion of Cyprus. Turkey later refused to acknowledge the airspace, which extends 4 miles beyond Greeces waters. The first airspace violation occurred the following year, and violations are ongoing. Turkey cites the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) of 1948. Greece counters this point on the grounds that its 1931 border, originally recognized by Turkey, predates the ICAO.

During the last few years, Turkey has been conducting frequent low-level overflights of Greek islets and islands whose sovereignty Ankara started disputing rather recently, explained Dokos. Diplomatic conflicts have persisted into 2017, most recently over the Kardak (Turkish) or Imia (Greek) islets near the Turkish coast, after the Greek deputy minister of shipping and island policy announced new plans to bring residents to the previously uninhabited islands.

Turkeys political objective is to promote its claims regarding maritime zones in the Aegean. Challenging the sovereignty of inhabited islands is a highly escalatory and potentially destabilizing policy of brinkmanship, however, said Dokos.

Both Turkey and Greece routinely violate each others air and maritime space. Turkish military planes fly over Greek airspace and are intercepted by the Greek military on an almost weekly basis. Citing civil aviation safety, Greece requires foreign planes entering Greek airspace to submit flight plans. Turkish military planes refuse to do so, Dokos told Al-Monitor.

During one day in May, Turkey entered the disputed airspace a staggering 141 times, prompting the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs to declare it a flagrant violation of international law."

"It is clear that there are forces in Turkey that do not want understanding and good neighborly relations between the two countries," the ministry said.

Tsarouhas said, "[Such encounters] over the Aegean will persist for as long as there is no political settlement between the two sides." He noted, however, that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is making a historic trip to Athens Dec. 7-8 as the first Turkish president to visit the country in 65 years. This indicates avenues of dialogue remain fully open  thus minimizing the possibility of conflict escalation, he added.

While it is in both countries interests to pursue peaceful relations, Greece's security relationship with Turkey is [also] on rocky ground due to deepening tensions between Turkey and the West, James Sawyer, a researcher at the London-based Eurasia Group, told Al-Monitor.

With this F-16 upgrade, are Athens and the United States signaling to Ankara their refusal to put up with more airspace violations?

Not entirely. The United States has historically taken no position on the Aegean disputes, as both Turkey and Greece are NATO allies. Sawyer noted, Turkey has also irritated ties with NATO allies by detaining foreign nationals and threatening to use hostage tactics to compel other countries to hand over suspected Gulenists. He was also quick to point out, however, that the United States and the EU  Greece included  are keen to maintain pragmatic ties with Turkey.

Sawyer added, The EU continues to view Turkey as a vital partner in its effort to control refugee flows. Greece has likewise opposed other member states that have pushed for the EU to sever ties with Turkey, preferring instead to remain engaged. Even as the US views Turkey with growing suspicion and frustration  in particular due to Turkey's unscrupulous attempts to arrest locally employed staff of the US mission in Turkey  they are still looking for ways to keep the embers alive in the hopes that the relationship improves with time.

And while the airspace encounters are likely to continue, Greece and Turkey perhaps feel more important things are at stake: a trio of joint projects including a border bridge, high-speed train and ferry connections; refugee migration between the two countries; and intelligence cooperation against terrorist organizations.
December 4, 2017

ANKARA  Seemingly contradictory statements by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and government ministers on how much money Turkey has spent on Syrian refugees are raising further question marks on an already controversial issue in the country. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of the main opposition Republican Peoples Party, has turned up the pressure on Erdogan to explain in detail the $30 billion that the president says the Syrian refugees have cost Ankara.

Addressing Erdogan in a speech in parliament Nov. 28, Kilicdaroglu said, Wherever you went, you said you had spent $30 billion for the Syrians. Easier said than done. We look at the Syrians and most of them are beggars or poor fellows. Some have even died from hunger. Even at the United Nations General Assembly, you spoke of spending $30 billion. I am asking you to explain [the figure]. When, where and for whom did you spend that $30 billion?

In February, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu had put the Syrian refugee bill since 2011 at $25 billion. Erdogan then put the figure at $30 billion  first July 8 at the G-20 summit in Hamburg and then Sept. 19 at the UN General Assembly. Similarly, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in August that Turkey had spent $30 billion for the Syrians, stressing that Turkey had the largest number of refugees in the world. In further remarks in London on Nov. 27, Yildirim said that 250,000 Syrian babies had been born in Turkey and that 600,000 Syrian children were receiving education in schools in the country. In September 2015, then-Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus had put the sum spent on Syrians at $7.6 billion.

According to these figures provided at different times, the bill of the Syrians swelled by more than $22 billion in two years time and $5 billion in five months time, even though the number of Syrian refugees has not seen an extraordinary increase in the past few years. The regularly updated statistics on the website of the General Directorate of Migration Management show that the total number of Syrian refugees stood at 3,320,814 as of Nov. 16, with only 228,408 of them in refugee camps and the remaining living across Turkey via their own means.

The $30 billion bill suggests that Turkey has spent roughly $9,000 per Syrian. This means about $36,000 per family of four and even more for larger families with more than two children, which are typical for the refugee community. Of note, the minimum wage in Turkey is 1,400 Turkish lira ($368) per month, and millions of Turks survive on that much money.

Meanwhile, Syrians have set up more than 8,000 companies in Turkey, employing close to 100,000 people, according to Vural Cakir, the head of the Human Development Foundation. In the border province of Gaziantep, for instance, those companies have come to figure prominently in the local food and clothing sectors. In short, thousands of Syrians have become contributors to the Turkish economy, paying taxes and creating jobs.

According to data by the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD), which is attached to the prime ministers office, Turkey has spent $25 billion on the Syrian refugees and 510,000 Syrian children go to school in the country. AFAD is the agency that manages Turkeys aid for refugees and coordinates the spending of other institutions from their own budgets. Even AFADs figures do not match Erdogans $30 billion.

Deputy Prime Minister Recep Akdag claims the bill is even higher than $30 billion. Referring to Ankaras investments and spending on public services such as health care, education and transport, he uses the argument that the Syrians, too, are using the roads built in the country. According to Ankaras calculations, Akdag says that European countries spend a daily sum of 40 euros ($47.4) per refugee, which, based on 3 million refugees, would mean 120 million euros ($142.2 million) per day.

In a Nov. 29 speech, Erdogan, who had previously spoken of more than 3 million refugees, mentioned a four-fold number this time, saying, Turkey has spent $30 billion over seven years for refugees, whose total number exceeds 12 million. He offered also a breakdown of the bill: $2.3 billion spent through AFAD, municipal services worth $6 billion and $1.2 billion spent through nongovernmental organizations.

The total of this breakdown amounts to $9.5 billion. So what about the remaining $20.5 billion? Erdogan said it reflected the cost of training and health care services provided within and outside [Turkeys] borders, the personnel assigned to those services and the work carried out for public order and security. According to Erdogan, the really big assistance came from the Turkish people, which did not figure in the records. Adding up all of these, we get a sum of about $30 billion [in aid] in line with international standards, he said. Yet the amount of aid provided by the Turkish people remains unknown, even though it is included in the $30 billion total.

While Erdogan lauds the generosity of the Turkish people, millions of Turks receive poverty and neediness aid from the state. In a parliamentary debate on her ministrys 2018 budget last month, Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya said the amount of government aid offered to millions of needy people would reach 38.3 billion Turkish liras (nearly $10 billion) this year, and that some 95% of the ministrys 2018 budget was allocated to welfare assistance.

Kilicdaroglu appears determined to keep up the pressure on Erdogan. Arguing that $30 billion is a huge sum that would have made all Syrian refugees prosperous, he said, Yet there are Syrians who have died from hunger. If you have not [defrauded the people], you must give an account to this nation  penny by penny  of how you spent 30 billion in taxpayers money.

The refugees, who have spread across the entire country since the Syrian war erupted in 2011, have had serious political, security, economic and social implications for Turkey. More than half a million Syrians live in Istanbul alone, while in some border provinces such as Kilis, they have outnumbered the local population. Erdogans claim of spending $30 billion on the refugees has now become the source of domestic political tensions, which appear unlikely to die down soon.
Broadcom on Monday nominated 11 people who it suggested should replace Qualcomms existing board of directors, having publicly signaled the start of a hostile takeover attempt. The San Diego, California-based company harshly criticized the proposal as an attempt of pressuring its investors into agreeing to a bid that it believes severely undervalues the firm and comes with significant uncertainty. Regulatory issues attached to the proposed deal could potentially prevent it from ever being completed, Qualcomm said, adding that even if the merger was to survive antitrust scrutiny in all parts of the world, it still wouldnt be finalized for at least one more year which makes Broadcoms director nominations even more misleading and premature.

The unsolicited bid launched by Broadcom last month amounts to $130 billion including $25 billion in debt and would be by far the largest tech acquisition in the history of the technology industry, albeit Qualcomms board unanimously rejected it as being too low. While Broadcom is presently said to be considering raising the bid to convince more investors to sell, its historic M&A practices suggest that even if the deal goes through, it wouldnt end up being significantly more valuable than the initial offer. The first bid was still more than enough to convince some shareholders to start putting pressure on Qualcomms board to haggle with Broadcom while simultaneously flirting with the propositioning entity.

Qualcomms Monday remarks are seeking to remind investors that Broadcoms bid doesnt encompass committed financing, with the company also failing to commit itself to resolving major regulatory issues attached to the deal. The tech giant added that all of its current directors are entirely committed to acting in the best interest of investors, whereas Broadcoms nominations are just a blatant attempt of taking over Qualcomms board in order for the hostile takeover to be completed. Its currently unclear how likely is Broadcom to gain the majority of Qualcomms board seats, though investors will have a chance to (not) vote for its nominees at Qualcomms next Annual Meeting of Stockholders scheduled for March 6th. The nominees themselves were recruited by Broadcom and its investor Silver Lake, whereas the conglomerates bid still amounts to $70 per share, with $60 being meant to be paid in cash.
Google has inked several deals with four different power plants to purchase 536 megawatts of combined wind power as part of its efforts to fulfill its growing energy demands, as well as intensify its commitment to renewable energy. The wind power plants set to supply energy to Google, however, have not yet started their operations, with 196 megawatts of wind power being meant to come from two power plants currently being developed by Avangrid Incorporated in South Dakota. Additionally, Google has also signed separate contracts to procure 140 megawatts of energy from a wind power plant being built by Enel SpA in Oklahoma and 200 megawatts of wind energy from a wind power project being constructed by EDF Renewable Energy in Iowa, which is set to begin operating in December 2019.

Avangrid, meanwhile, will supply wind power to Google by using the energy generated from its sites in Coyote Ridge and Tatanka Ridge wind projects, with each power plant capable of producing 98 megawatts. Enel, on the other hand, will kick off operations for its 300-megawatt Red Dirt wind farm in Kingfisher and Logan counties in early 2018. No information regarding the length of Googles new energy contracts have been revealed by the company which also didnt disclose any financial details attached to the deals.

The new energy sources will complement Googles other related efforts to meet its energy requirements in the future. Last July, Google said it would use Norwegian wind power to fuel at least one data center it operates in Europe starting in September of this year as part of a deal it signed with the Tellenes Wind Farm, with the wind power plant being expected to supply wind energy to Googles data center over a period of 12 years. In addition to wind power, Google also relies on solar power and invests in this form of renewable energy. In 2014, for example, Google announced a $145 million investment into an 82-megawatt solar power plant built in Kern County, California. Simultaneously, Googles parent company Alphabet is experimenting with new methods of storing renewable energy. Recently, Alphabets moonshot lab X created a technique to store a large amount of electricity generated by renewable energy sources in a relatively efficient manner.
HMD Global is planning its next product even in early 2018 and will simultaneously announce the Nokia 9 and Nokia 8 (2018) come January 19th, according to recent reports from China. While the first bezel-free smartphone from the Finnish company has already been the subject of many rumors in recent months, a follow-up to the Nokia 8 hasnt been discussed until now and the claim that one is set to debut so soon after the original flagship still appears to be somewhat dubious. According to the latest report, the Nokia 8 (2018) may be a tentative name but the device is set to be localized for China as HMD is presumably seeking to seize a more significant portion of the worlds largest smartphone market. The Nokia 9 is also said to be targeted at the Far Eastern country, yet at least one of the two Android flagships will be made available on a global level, insiders claim.

The two handsets will reportedly be powered by the Qualcomm-made Snapdragon 835 SoC and boast IP67-certified resistance to dust particles and water which would be an improvement on the IP54 rating of the first Nokia 8 which was only designed to resist splashes and not submersion. Neither device will sport a 3.5mm headphone jack, sources claim, without elaborating on the reasoning behind that supposed decision. If recent industry trends are any indication, HMD may have opted for the exclusion of the conventional audio port in order to make the phones even thinner than the 7.9mm thick Nokia 8. The new Nokia 8 and Nokia 9 should both boast dual-camera setups supported by dual-LED flash units and designed by Carl Zeiss. The companys supposed decision to go with the Snapdragon 835 instead of the Snapdragon 845 thats expected to be announced this month was likely motivated by its ambition to commercialize its upcoming offerings before spring, i.e. before Samsung stops buying all chips Qualcomm can manufacture and leaves some stock for the rest of the industry.

If HMD is truly adamant to release two high-end Android devices as soon as January, it remains to be seen how the company is planning on differentiating them, especially since both should sport minimal bezels and 18:9 screens. HMD is also yet to bring the mid-range Nokia 7 to markets outside of China, so even if the company ends up launching new mobile offerings in the country next month, it may not be until spring that its devices start retailing around the world.
By PTI: Colombo, Dec 4 (PTI) The Maldives is keen to seal a free trade agreement with China despite murmurs of disapproval from the main opposition MDP, as it will aid in economic growth in the Indian Ocean archipelago, a senior minister said today.

"China is eager to sign and the Maldives has seen the opportunity for the Maldivian economy to grow with it," Mohamed Shainee, the Maldives minister of fisheries and agriculture said here.

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He said the Maldives has seen that arrangements like the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) have not worked well in the region.

The landmark deal between the Maldives and China was rushed through parliament last week, hours after President Abdulla Yameen sought approval for its ratification.

The FTA would ensure zero tariff for Maldivian fish exports to China. Maldivians would also benefit in the health care and construction industries with value addition to Chinese imports from the country.

The opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has said it is deeply concerned over the "sudden and rushed" FTA with China.

"The MDP is deeply alarmed that the Yameen government is entering a trade deal that will have immense economic repercussions on the Maldivian economy," a statement said.

The MDP has also urged the government to "suspend the implementation of the FTA to ensure the agreement does not place the Maldives in a geopolitically vulnerable position".

On ties with India, Mohamed Sharif, the Maldivian Ambassador to Sri Lanka, said Chinas position as Maldives No 1 tourism market has taken a beating with number of tourist arrivals dropping.

"We are now looking to develop India as a tourism market. We have seen an increase in the number of young Indians travelling to Maldives. Maybe we can attract Bollywood stars to the Maldives," he said. PTI CORR KUN

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1. To devastate or to solve. Catalonias political landscape is still rife with bewilderment and it will be weeks before any political proposals for the new chapter that began with the parliamentary declaration of October 27 can be articulated clearly. With the main pro-independence leaders either in jail or in Brussels, it is hard to do a warts-and-all analysis about the future, and Catalan secessionist parties are sending mixed messages of either resistance or self-criticism brimming with euphemisms. In contrast, Spain is experiencing an outburst of nationalistic pride following Madrids takeover of the Catalan administration, the calling of snap elections and the imprisonment of most of the Catalan cabinet, plus grassroots leaders Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart.

Despite appearances, the Spain that is represented by the PP, Ciudadanos and the PSOE is running in the Catalan elections with a message of stability based on a fiction: an artificial construct which claims that Spain can survive without changing. The states victory is uncritical and based on abuse of power. It is grounded on the premise that Catalonias need and willingness to rule itself will go away, even though it has proven to be very resilient throughout history.

Spain can attempt to restore a modicum of normality, but it is facing a historic hurdle that will force it to choose between devastating or solving, to quote the leader of the Basque Nationalist Party speaking in the Spanish parliament a few months ago. Devastating means pressing on with the humiliation of independence supporters and of an even greater majority: those who support Catalonias right to decide her future. Solving would require a political strategy to democratically rethink Spains model and its ties with Catalonia, regardless of the Catalans decision.

For now, the PP, Ciudadanos and the PSOE are wallowing in their victory over Catalonias Generalitat, a triumph achieved thanks to the control provided by the States mechanisms, but they have no new political proposals. The PP is sticking to its guns in their promotion of a homogenous, uniforming Spain. Ciudadanos is after the same conservative segment of the electorate, endorsing the same tattered model, and their only nuance is a criticism of the Basque Countrys unique finance system that aims to weaken the PP and be a friendly nod to Spains underfunded Mediterranean regions. The PSCs offerings merely seek to revive Catalonias Statute and has proposed a treasury consortium which Spains socialist party put on the back burner. Seven years after the Spanish Constitutional Court struck down the Statute, the PSC suggests going back to square one.

Soon we will find out whether the PP opts to solve or stays in devastation mode. It will be easy to ascertain. Now that Barcelona has been ruled out as the new headquarters of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the city will need to revive its economy and will strive to lure new investors and regain some dynamism. It also needs a joint effort to retain talent and opportunities, such as the Mobile World Capital. On this point, it will be interesting to see what Madrids first initiatives are, as well as those of the large telecom operators, such as Telefonica. The extent to which they choose to muck in to ensure the success of the Mobile World Congress will be much more revealing than any well-meaning public statement or any words spoken at a political rally. In the last few weeks Catalonia has paid a toll in terms of its reputation, but everyone realises that any stories printed in international media also affect Spain as a whole.

2. A surreal campaign. Tomorrow will see the start of the oddest campaign ever. Anything yellow has become so suspect that a group of elderly ladies arent even allowed to walk freely in Mataro and public fountains are not allowed to be lit up in that colour (1). Even worse, any word uttered by a journalist on Catalonias public broadcaster is scrutinised and their editorials are censured. The magnitude of the arbitrariness is such that we still dont know if the main candidates will be allowed to campaign and the Supreme Courts decision to release them or not has been put off until shortly before the campaign kicks off. Obviously, the judge is perfectly entitled to that, but any delay merely adds to the uncertainty of the detainees and their families, fuelling revenge by some in the news and political spheres.

3. The Catalan government in Belgium projects an unreal image of the political situation. President Puigdemont cannot avoid being encapsulated and the emotion that stems from the injustice he has experienced can fuel a message that is inconsistent with the political temperature in Catalonia. Opinion polls show it will be neck and neck between the two blocs and forming a government will require dedication and flexibility, as snap elections may not be called until after a year following December 21. We will need responsible leaders who are able to see the big picture rather than only their followers, leaders who are limber enough to reach a viable agreement and can find the common denominator that shows us a way to break the current deadlock and gain the publics renewed trust.

_________

Translators note:

(1) In Catalonia yellow ribbons on peoples lapels (or larger ones displayed anywhere, for that matter) denote support for the release of the political prisoners, and Spains Electoral Board has recently ruled that it is unacceptable to hang them on public buildings because it is detrimental to the neutrality of the administration ahead of the December 21 polls.
Rajnath Singh scheduled to hold a meeting in West Bengal on border security with chief ministers of five states, sharing their borders with Bangladesh.

By Romita Datta Sengupta: With union home minister Rajnath Singh scheduled to hold a meeting in West Bengal on border security with chief ministers of five states, sharing their borders with Bangladesh, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee like a perfect hostess is not crossing swords with the Centre, even though the state is supposed to get Rs 13,000 crore on account of various centrally sponsored schemes.

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Banerjee has always had maintained a good relation with Singh. So his coming to Bengal and holding such an important meeting in Bengal has acquired a different dimension.

The meeting is scheduled on December 7th.

After a long administrative meeting at the state headquarters at Nabanna, Banerjee said that central fund for schemes such as MNREGA, National Rural Livelihood Mission, drinking water and national disaster are pending.

However, she said nothing about taking up these cases with the Centre. The caustic barbs were missing.

The chief minister also said nothing as to what would the state's next course of action-- whether the Parliament would see stormy debate from the Trinamool Congress MPs or if she would take it up with Mr Singh.

Banerjee is careful not to hurt her guests or kick up a row on the eve of Rajnath's visit.

West Bengal is the only state which has not got any financial assistance from the Centre on account of flood. Though the government is aggrieved about this, it will not raise the issue at the union home Minister's meeting.

With the BJP raising a strong anti-Trinamool Congress pitch, Rajnath Singh and Banerjee's meeting is likely to dampen the spirit of the saffron party. However, Mamata is keeping the windows of rapprochement open, in case the secular front fails to materialise.

A week ago at India Today Conclave East Mamata said that she maintains good relation with some people in BJP, not all. Rajnath Singh happens to be one with who Banerjee had been through thick and thin.

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AMG

Not that we're complaining, though. There are plenty of rivalries in the automotive industry, but none is more fiercely fought - especially among the three brands' fans - than that between the three premium German carmakers. Though, despite having more than decent performance, Audi might feel like the third wheel occasionally.The war has waged for a long time and, after numerous clashes, one side seemed to settle for "sportiness" while the other conquered "luxury," and even though they both would venture into the other one's territory now and then, the spoils seemed to be distributed among the belligerents.Last year, though, Mercedes-came up with the E63 S sedan. The Affalterbach company appeared to have mistuned the sedan since it offered much better performance than the aging BMW M5, and so the non-aggression truce appeared to be broken.BMW fought back with the 2018 M5 , the sporty version of its recently-launched sedan. It had a larger engine than the AMG - 4.4-liter as opposed to 4.0-liter) but made less power (600 hp vs. 612 hp). It also came, for the first time, with an all-wheel-drive system, meaning it could now accelerate quicker off the line than the previous model.And yet, despite these differences, the two are perfectly matched on paper when it comes to reaching the 62 mph (100 km/h) benchmark: 3.4 seconds. Taking full advantage of having tested the AMG E63 S recently, Matt from carwow decided to see which was faster the second he got his hands on the new BMW M5.Well, we're really dying over here to spill the beans, but you should really watch the clip. The acceleration run is featured early on so you can skip the rest if you like, though we wouldn't recommend it since you'll be missing a nice and quick review of the Bavarian. Oh, and just so you know what the times to beat were: 3.2 seconds for the 60 mph mark and 11.2 seconds for the standing quarter.
AMG

SUV

With brands such as Porsche and Bentley having educated consumers in terms of such logos being places on SUVs, the newcomer is no longer a source of controversy, with the only such aspect being tied to its interior (more on this below).The road to the showroom hasn't seen the Urus losing any of its Lamborghini charm. Nevertheless, the front end has become a bit more complicated, as the concept simply appeared to be a high-riding supercar when viewed from this angle.Overall, the car is slightly larger and rounder, while its rear end appears to be a tad more generous.The posterior of the Urus seems even more Sant'Agata Bolognese than the otherwise spectacular front end, with the aggressive compact rear window being mixed with full-width taillights.And if you think that the 2019 Porsche Cayenne , which shares its platform with the Urus, the second-generation Audi Q7 and the Bentley Bentayga, looks sporty, the Lambo is here to change that.The Urus promises to mix its coupe-ish roofline with the kind of rear passenger headroom that could make machines such as the BMW X6 M or the Mercedes-GLE63 Coupe jealous.Generous cabin and visibility (at least for a Raging Bull) aside, the Audi bits are obvious inside the Urus. Nevertheless, when you have a melange involving the new A8's all-intelligent infotainment system and a center console packing Lamborghini's usual visual drama, there's not that much to complain about.As for the seating, the driver and front passenger enjoy 12-way adjustable power seats, with 18-way adjustable seats as an option. The Italians went all the way in their quest for practicality, so the rear passengers don't have to stick to the pair of seats shown on the flashy press car - a three-seat bench is also available.Got stuff to haul? The Urus doesn't share the wealthy-people-only-travel-with-their-credit-cards attitude displayed by its range mates. Instead, its luggage compartment can swallow 616 liters of your goodies.As announced, the engine compartment of the Lamborghini Urus is occupied by the twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8 we've met on various Audi, Bentley and Porsche models.Packing 650 hp at 6,800 rpm and 627 lb-ft (850 Nm) of twist between 2,240 and 4,500 rpm, the Urus delivers the kind of effortless torque required for offroading.The scale footprint of the Urus might not be fit for a vicious animal, but this Lamborghini must stop like one. And it does. Thanks to carbon ceramic brakes measuring 440x40mm up front and 370x30mm at the rear, this Lamborghini can play the 62-0 mph game in 33.7 meters.Lamborghini's go-anywhere machine packs adaptive air suspension, which allows the ride height to go from 158 to 248 mm. While adaptive dampers and electromechanical roll stabilization are also on the menu, the wheel lineup goes from 21 to 23 inches. The rims are shod in Pirelli rubber that thas been tailored to this application.Of course, everybody wants to know about its on-road numbers, so here we go: channeled though an eight-speed automatic, the said output allows the 2.2-ton Urus to play the 0 to 62 mph/100 kph game in 3.6 seconds. And yes, that does sit above the sprinting number of the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk (the Hellcat-izedneeds 3.6s for the 0 to 60 mph/96 kph sprint). The hierarchy is also maintained when it comes to the top speed. In fact, the 190 mph/306 kph maximum velocity (180 mph/290 kph for the $86,995 Jeep) makes the Urus the world's fastest SUV.Oh, and we can also expect Lamborghini to grab the Nurburgring SUV record, which currently sits with the 510 hp Alfa Romeo Stelvio Q, which needs 7:51.7 for the job (two of the press photos seems to portray the Urus attacking the Carousel). For one thing, Lamborghini R&D boss Maurizio Reggiani has talked about the planned Ring dominance of the Italian SUV.For now, all the handling chat we can engage in has to do with the four-wheel-drive system of the Urus. The standard torque split sits at 40/60 (front:rear), but the system can send up to 70 percent of the torque to the front wheels and 87 percent to the rear. Note that the rear diff involves active torque vectoring.And, as is the case with the Aventador Superveloce and the Aventador S, the Urus packs rear-wheel steering.The first Lamborghini Urus customers will take delivery of their all-wheel-drive behemoths in spring next year. Speaking of which, the SUV will see Lamborghini doubling its annual sales volume to 7,000 cars by 2019.When it comes to the financial side, the Urus comes with a starting price of $200,000 (taxes excluded) or EUR 171,429 (plus taxes). So yes, justifying that Huracan purchase, which requires a heftier budget, has just become even more difficult.However, there's no need to worry about coming across an Urus just like yours while waiting for the traffic lights to turn green. And that's because, not least thanks to the Ad Personam customisation program, configuring one of these SUVs will be quite an adventure. In fact, as you can notice in the press images, the carmaker shows two faces of the Urus - the yellow car is here for the extroverts, while the grey machine packs more black-out elements, catering to the needs of those who aren't all that in love with attention.
We are excited to announce our most extreme road going model to date; the race-inspired Aero GT. Discover more at www.morgan-motor.co.uk/aerogt #AeroGT ic A post shared by Morgan Motor Company (@morganmotor) on Dec 4, 2017 at 3:55am PST

The Malvern-based British automaker confirmed that production is limited to eight examples, all of them sold to Morgan loyalists. Every car will leave the factory with bespoke add-ons as requested by the owners, with every component aligned with the companys hand-crafted approach A great deal of emotion is invested in every decision and this experience is only enhanced by the joy of then driving such powerful and unique vehicles. The Aero GT is the ultimate ensemble of this formula, commented Steve Morris, managing director of Morgan Motor Company From the teasers, its easy to tell the Aero GT is a gloves-off approach to the Aero 8 , flaunting aggressive wing louvers and super-sticky Continental tires. A motorsport-inspired rear diffuser is also confirmed, though Morgan has yet to provide photographic evidence of the downforce-producing element.Plans for the GT stemmed during the development of the 2015 facelift of the Aero 8. And as with the 8, the GT will rely on the 4.8-liter BMW N62 free-breathing V8. Tuned to develop 367 bhp and connected to a six-speed manual transmission, Morgan's most extreme road car will thrust from naught to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 4.5 seconds, maxing out at 274 km/h (170 mph).On an ending note, The N62 will die along with the Aero 8 once all GTs are delivered to their rightful owners. Wiesmann signed a deal with BMW M for the 4.4-liter S63 twin-turbo V8 for its future models, and Morgan is likely to do the same if the company will replace its range-topping model.
Case in point with the drag race we have here, which sees the Model S duking it out with a Ferrari FF Of course, since we're talking about a four-seater Maranello machine animated by a naturally aspirated V12 and an electron juice sipper, this is an apple-to-orange comparo.With that out of the way, we'll proceed to mention that this Prancing Horse has been taken down the aftermarket route, albeit only receiving light touches.To be more precise, the FF was gifted with an x-pipe that saw the cats being retires, as well as with an iPE exhaust - the Taiwan-based specialist delivers some of the loudest hardware out there, so the atmospheric 6.5-liter V12 of the FF can fully express its feelings and emotions.The Maranello machine was also gifted with a set of custom wheels, but there have more to do with grabbing attention than weight reduction.The Ludicrous Mode-gifted Tesla and the Ferrari unfortunately duked it out on the street. Nevertheless, the drivers did take the time to fight on three separate occasions, two of which saw the velocity demons going for standing starts. So yes, Launch Control shenanigans were involved, but the adventure we're talking about also included a rolling take-off.As for the number aficionados among you, the video of the speed brawl delivers all the figured you need.P.S.: Make sure to turn up the volume before reaching for that "play" button.
When I was in junior high and going to Air Explorer meetings at the Des Moines Airport, I was like every other kid in our group. During breaks from the private pilot ground school, wed go into the maintenance hangars and out on the ramp to get close to the airplanes that we dreamed of someday flying. While I hungered to fly one of the growling Beech 18s or slippery-looking Learjets, the airplane that somehow seemed within the range of a possibility of someday owning and flying was the Cessna 210.

There would always be at least one 210 on the ramp during those evening meetings. Id invariably walk over and look at it, standing there sleek and somewhat aloof, curved the way airplanes should be and reeking of speed and flights to places far over the horizon. Sometimes Id get to talk with one of the pilots and listen to their praise of their Centurions. Even the name was coola professional officer in the armies of ancient Rome.

History

I learned that the 210 had started life as pretty much a retractable Cessna 182 with a 260-HP engine. The hydraulic landing gear retracted into the fuselage, with the mains twisting 90 degrees in the process. Where some pilots made fun of the motion going on during retraction, I thought of the F4U Corsairs gear and saw elegance. I did learn that the complexity of the landing gear system meant it had to be maintained assertivelysquawks couldnt be deferred. I just took a look at the accident data on the 210 published in our sister publication Aviation Consumer and noted that gear hangups and collapses still are the source of some 12 percent of 210 accidents. Earlier 210s had an engine-driven hydraulic pump powering the gearlater Cessna switched to an electrohydraulic system that was more reliable. Still, there is only one set of hydraulic linesif a line or connection fails and the fluid is lost, there is no alternative method of extending the gear. The good news is that I could find no evidence that anyone had ever been hurt in a gear-up landing of a 210 so long as the pilot didnt shut the engine down and try to glide to the runway in hopes of saving the prop. There were fatal accidents due to that foolishnesssome pilots discovered they hadnt practiced prop-stopped glides recently and couldnt hit a runway.

The Centurion was first turbocharged in 1965, boosting the airplane into the flight levels where it could hit speeds of 200 knots. Unsurprisingly, the turbocharged models outsold the normally aspirated versions two-to-one for the rest of the time the 210 was in production.

The cabin was stretched to accommodate six people, first with two child seats aft and then with seats where moderate-sized adults could sit.

In 1967 the 210 was the first of the Cessna singles to undergo a major airframe redesign to allow it to switch over to a cantilever wing as part of a plan Cessna had in place to go back to its roots from 1929 and build strutless airplanesCessna never put a wing strut on an airplane until the models 120 and 140 in 1945. The aerodynamic cleanup turned the 210 into a machine that would cruise an honest 170 knots at 75 percent power. The airframe redesign enlarged the cabin.

As an aside, Cessna only continued the cantilever wing change through the next year when it stopped production of the 172 in favor of the 177 Cardinal. Cessna apparently misjudged the skill level of the average pilot as the 177 required more finesse to fly than the 172 and pilots crashed them all over the landscape. The 172 was reintroduced with a Cardinals engine and the 177 was bumped up into a different competitive niche by going to 180 horsepower up front. The cantilever-wing replacement for the 182, the 187which even had the then-popular T tailwas test flown but never put into production.

Changes

Incremental changes followedtakeoff power was boosted to 300 horsepower with max continuous being 285, gross weight and useful load continued to climb, the gear system was simplified with the removal of the aft gear doors and a 90-gallon fuel system was made standard. By the early 1970s the T210 was the only six-place single that could fill the seats with 170-pounders, fill the fuel tanks and still be under gross weight.

A pressurized 210 came out in 1978. It was the poster child for eight pounds of stuff in a five-pound bag. Cramming all the needed hardware for pressurization inside the airplane was challengingcooling the engine was a big challenge. Maintenance, initially, was a nightmare. Over the years mods, including intercoolers, turned the P210 into nearly the perfect personal hotrod.

Even though it wouldnt fit in a T-hangar, the Piper Malibu got some noses out of joint at Cessnait was faster than the P210. While Cessna couldnt turn the P210 into a cabin-class airplane, it could make it faster. In 1985 Cessna came out with the R model of the 210 line. It had more power, longer wings and a redesigned horizontal tail giving it the lightest pitch forces of any 210. Importantly for Cessna, it was one knot faster than the Malibu, used much less runway and fit in a T-hangar. Sadly, the bottom was falling out of general aviation and Cessna stopped producing piston-engine airplanes at the end of 1986beginning a 10-year hiatus. When piston production resumed, Cessna made the decision not to restart the 210 line.

It was 1974 before I flew a 210. I was an instructor at a Cessna dealer and there was always a brand-new 210 on the line. One day the chief pilot handed me the Owners Manual for the T210 (Pilot Operating Handbooks were a couple of years in the future) and told me to read it, make sure I understood the turbocharging system and be ready to give a flight review in one in an hour. Apparently, because I had a fair amount of time in 182s and 206s, the chief pilot figured I could fly a 210. He was right; there was not much of a transition other than the gear and learning the speeds and turbocharging system.

Turbo

The turbocharging system confused me at first until one of the charter pilots walked me through it. From a pilots standpoint its dirt simpleyou set the manifold pressure and RPM you want and the system keeps it there. So long as the engine oil is warm and everything is working, the system automatically sets the manifold pressure and fuel flow at redline when you firewall the throttle on takeoff and holds the selected manifold pressure as you climb. Simplified, the system monitors the manifold pressure and uses engine oil to control the wastegate that controls the ratio of exhaust gas that goes out the tailpipe versus through the turbosupercharger. On the first takeoff on a cool day, the pilot does have to monitor manifold pressure and fuel flow as the engine oil may be too sluggish to flow as needed to prevent the wastegate from routing too much air into the turbo and the manifold pressure and fuel flow will go over redline. The solution is to simply stop pushing the throttle forward when redline is reached.

As I went through the Owners Manual I ran some sample weight and balance calculations and was impressed that I could carry a full load of 170-poundershey, I was a starving college student as were my friends and none of us weighed more than that. Even more important, baggage could be carried aft of the rear seats even with passengers in the fifth and sixth seats.

In later years, when I flew the six-place Beech 36 series, the Piper Lance and Saratoga and Malibu, I was frustrated at the limited c.g. range of those airplanes. They were difficult to load with six people without going out the aft c.g. limit. It was about then that I learned that the 210 had the longest c.g. range of any six-place single. The tradeoff was that to get that range, the control system required a downspring arrangement that made the airplane heavy in pitch, much like the Cessna 206. With a forward c.g., it required making sure to pull as hard as necessary to get the nose up on landing to avoid touching down on the nosewheel.

After I gave that flight review, I started flying the FBOs 210s with some regularity and the initial attraction Id had for the airplane turned into true affection. Because of the FBOs T210, my parents could afford to take their three children to my grandmothers funeral in southeastern Georgiathey could not afford five airline tickets.

Load Carrier

Being broke college kids, the 210 was the ideal airplane for us for the annual day trip from Des Moines to Oshkosh. Splitting the aircraft rental six ways was cheaper than the four-way split of any of the other rentals we had access to and, besides, the 210 went like stink, so we didnt put that much time on it.

About that time I started flying Bonanzasairplanes I like a lotbut I discovered I dont fit well. At 64 tall, there isnt enough head and legroom for comfort. The man who pulled Cessna out of bankruptcy in 1934, Dwayne Wallace, and who ran the company for the next 40 years, was also 64 tall, so he had to fit into all of the airplanes Cessna built. Thank you Dwayne for making sure I could fit comfortably in the 210.

When I worked for Cessna, the employees flying club always had two or three T210s that were rented wet, with oxygen, for prices that reflected the fact that the club was subsidized by the companyit was wonderful. Splitting the rental five or six ways meant a weekend trip to a coast wasnt unreasonable. One time five of us departed from Wichita on a Thursday evening and flew all night to time our arrival at Customs on Treasure Caye, Bahamas, when it opened on Friday. We had three days on the beach, then flew all night Sunday and went to work a little bleary-eyed on Monday. With three of the five occupants of the airplane pilots, we could trade off the flying and get some sleep.

Ownership

Over the next 20 years I had the chance to fly various models of the 210 and P210 from time to timeand kept saying to myself that I would find a way to own one someday.

Seven years ago I finally had the chance to become a 210 ownerwell, the owner of a quarter of the corporation that owned a 1973 T210L. Based at Denvers Centennial airport, it had been beautifully maintained, with updated avionics, recent paint and interior and co-owners that recognized that its not cheap to own and operate a 210so they had set up an ownership agreement that made sure there was money on hand to take care of unexpected maintenance costs. I particularly liked that they had never had to do a special assessment on the shareholders to cover an upgrade or heavy maintenance hit. And, yes, a carefully done annual on a T210 is probably going to be in the $5000 range.

The engine was some 150 hours past TBO, which was the way I prefer to buy airplanes. You essentially get free engine time and then have control of how the overhaul is done.

My initial long trip in N76BLwhich we just called Bravo Limawas not auspicious. The engine kept throwing the alternator belt. Once at our destination in California my wife and I played tourist and bought a lot of things to bring home with usafter all, it was just the two of us in that big airplane. I also had things checked at the local FBO, which assured me that all was well. I did some research and found that a symptom of worn out and locked-up crankshaft counterweights is that the engine will vibrate in an unusual fashionnot noticeable to the occupantsand throw the alternator belt. The engine may then seize.

On the first leg home, the alternator belt left the premises as I was starting the climb to clear the Sierras. I diverted into Sacramento and, after discussions with my co-owners, decided that my wife and I would airline home (we shipped a lot of boxes) and that it was time for the engine overhaul.

We made the decision to have Mike Buschs Savvy Aircraft Maintenance Management company manage the engine overhaulone of the smartest things wed ever done. The engine was pulled, shipped to Powermaster in Tulsa, Oklahoma, overhauled (the crankshaft counterweights were in bad shapeI saw them later), returned, reinstalled and tested. Co-owner Dan Travis flew Bravo Lima home without a problem.

It Keeps Getting Better

Since then, my affection for the 210 did nothing but deepen. Other co-owners Garry Schubert and Rod Eisenbraun turned out to share a desire for dispatch reliability of our airplane, so Dan Travis acted as maintenance managergetting squawks repaired immediately. We came to socialize together, one of the advantages of airplane group ownership. We even threw a 40th birthday party for Bravo Lima in its hangar.

My daughter spent some time living in rural areas of a number of states as she pursued a career around horsesthe 210 proved to be an ideal way to visit her because there was always a general aviation airport nearby and taking the airlines would have taken time that we might not have been able to take off work.

My mother also liked the 210 because it meant my wife and I (and later, our dog) could visit her on short notice. She generally thought airplanes were pretty good thingsher sister had learned to fly before WWII. Mom joined the Navy in WWII, becoming a member of the WAVES. She married my father, a naval aviator, the day he received his wings of gold. It always made me incredibly proud when Id be with themand later just herat functions where veterans were asked to stand up and be recognized, and they would stand up. Because of her knowledge of airplanes and pilotsher sisters son learned to flywhen my brother and I said we wanted to learn to fly, she didnt stand in our way as did the parents of so many of my friends who said they wanted to fly.

With well over six hours endurance when flown lean of peak, Bravo Lima became my seven league boots. As an aside, with little wing dihedral, its essential that the airplane be level when fueled or it may not be possible to fill the tanks. Ive normally run the engine LOP at 13.5 GPH and cruise speed has ranged from 160 knots at 10,000 feet to nearly 200 at FL230. Each summer I would fly it to Michigan to unite with friends and my daughter to fly seaplanes. My daughter and I, and one or two others, would then fly to Oshkosh, where we reveled in the excitement of the arrival. The maneuverability and speed range of the 210 made the arrival less hectic. When IFR, we could blast along at nearly any speed ATC needed and then, because gear speed is usually above cruise speed, throw the Firestones out as speed brakes, along with approach flaps, and slow to a crawl in no time. A low stall speed and the ability to fly short final at 70 to 75 knots meant it was a piece of cake to land on whatever dot the controller wantedeven if he or she suddenly changed the dot as we were going into the flare.

The cabin became a place of delight. It took my wife and me over some of the most beautiful scenery in the west. I reveled in the reactions of passengers to the outside view. A French air force pilot who rode to Oshkosh with my daughter and me expressed utter astonishment as the airport came into view. She grabbed the back of my daughters seat and exclaimed, I dont think there are that many airplanes in all of France!

The 210 proved the ideal vehicle for LightHawk flights in support of conservation. Researchers and activists working on projects supporting our natural resources had a clear, unobstructed view of the world. I did discover that when doing turns around a point at 15,500 feet, looking for sites for some remote sensing stations on the top of a New Mexico mountain, that the true airspeed involved means youve got to allow a lot of room to get turned around. Because the 210 is so solid and stable and theres no speed limit on opening the cabin windows, its an excellent photo platform. It also has an excellent heater. Recently I was flying researchers who needed to open the window for photos at 14,500 feet just east of Colorados Mount Evans. Everyone in the cabin was comfortable, although the photographer had the window open all the way so that she could hang out in the slipstream to get the shots she needed. She said she was chilly.

On weekend mornings the 210 proved to be a fun machine for breakfast runs or simply staying in the pattern for a few touch and goes. It is not a particularly easy airplane to land welland coming into the flare at anything over 80 knots means it will float, even with full flaps. That makes it a challenge to try to roll it on. When light, the power means the airplane will climb like crazy, so by flying a very tight pattern, you can get in a lot of touch and goes in a half houra nice way to recharge your personal batteries. Its probably both cheaper than therapy and more effective.

Were On Our Way, Mom

In the last few years, I found that I was primarily using the 210 to visit my mother. A 3.5-hour flight beat a 12-hour drive all hollow. It meant we could take our dog, something that delighted Mom. A year ago, her health started to deteriorate. We made our last flight to see her early this year. We got word that she had taken a turn downward, but we hadnt realized how fast things were going. Even with the speed of the 210, she was unresponsive by the time we arrived at the hospice. She almost made her 94th birthday.

My wife and I are soon to move further west. In one of the hardest decisions I ever made, I put my share of Bravo Lima on the market. If I could afford it, Id buy the airplane outright and keep the joy and memories going. Im hoping that Ill someday again fly a 210 regularly. After all, its only been 43 years. Im just getting to know those wonderful machines. Machine? No way, its a part of the family.

Rick Durden is a CFII, holds and ATP with type ratings in the Douglas DC-3 and Cessna Citation and is the author of The Thinking Pilots Flight Manual or, How to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and Have a Ball Doing It, Vols. 1 & 2.
Introduction:

Boffi is a company focused on high-end design kitchens, with a strong component of craftsmanship and customization. In more than 80 years in the business, Boffi has become one of the most iconic Italian design brands in the world, attracting an increasingly sophisticated and attentive audience, including internationally renowned architects such as Zaha Hadid.

Our Challenge:

Transform boffi.com into a brand platform that can convey the world of excellence that Boffi represents: its products, its stories, its initiatives and its projects. The website is the strategic media for marketing and business development activities to gather and distribute the right content to the right audience, through a modern and functional graphical interface that reflects the innovation and design values that define its brand identity.

RWD interface

Concept: A global platform, with a tailored experience.

Every aspect of the project, from information architecture to technological development, has been designed to provide a valuable experience for different targets. The system offers adaptive content based on the geographic location of the user with the aim of offering a seamless experience between global content and a custom conversion funnel, generating lead to the sales network.

Technical Approach:

The project was developed as a Single Page Application to provide a smooth and seamless experience. We took particular care of in-view parallax effects, animations and page transitions, to increase the flow from the overviews to the insights and vice versa.

A modular and compact system of JSON-driven components was created for easy and fast instantiation, taking advantage of flex-box layout model at CSS level and ES6 Class inheritance on the JavaScript side.

To specifically fit our needs, we created a custom-made, minimal JS-ES.next framework to manage core and abstract functionalities such as:

Data fetching;

Routing;

Templating

Views rendering;

Transitions;

Components instantiation;

Inter-communication;

Disposal;

Due to the fact that the majority of the content is images we invested a good amount of time in enhancing the HTML <picture> element experience:

Each image has been created server-side (with a custom cropper UI) in various aspect-ratio and dimensions, plus each .jpeg/.png was also converted in .webp format.

On front-end we used 8 different media-query as preset for the <picture> element with the scope of load the best possible format, aspect-ratio and dimension. Each media has been loaded using the lazy loading technique, that prioritizes resources according to their distance from the viewport. In addition the use of HTTP2, that allows resources multiplexing, led a huge impact on the load-time global performance.

The platform has been also integrated, through an API, with the client's CRM system, enabling a streamlined experience in signing up signup, sending and monitoring custom marketing campaigns.

Technologies:

Protocols: HTTPS/HTTP2;

Frontend Frameworks and Libraries: Abstract Manager (internal micro-framework), Bootstrap 4, SCSS, JS-ES.next, GreenSock, LazySizes;

Backend technologies: Wordpress 4 & Wordpress API, Agile CRM;

Tools: Grunt, NPM, Bower, Adobe Brackets;

Company Info:

ThinkingAbout is an Italian independent digital creative studio.

We merge design and technology to transform creative ideas in a meaningful digital experience.
Miss World 2017 Manushi Chhillar was spotted enjoying herself at the Hardwell India concert last night.

By India Today Web Desk: Last night, Mumbai saw a carnivalesque, winter extravaganza, with hundreds of people cheering to the music of Dutch DJ, Hardwell.

The musician was in the country to perform as part of the Guestlist4Good music concert that was held at DY Patil Stadium. But the artist's rocking performance wasn't the only highlight of the grand show. What added further lustre to the night was a host of celebrities who were spotted in the audience.

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Among them was Miss World 2017, Manushi Chhillar, who seemed to be enjoying the concert to bits, with her friends and colleagues.

Ever since Manushi landed in India, she has been busy attending press conferences, programmes and ceremonies. And yet, amidst all of her commitments, she managed to spare time to attend the concert.

Also Read: Manushi Chhillar: As a doctor and Miss World, my purpose is the same

Sporting a sheer, black dress by Falguni & Shane Peacock, Manushi looked all geared up to groove to the music. Here's a glimpse of the beauty queen, having fun with her gang of girls.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/navelideshmukh Picture courtesy: Instagram/navelideshmukh

She took to the stage to wave the Indian flag, to greet the spectators at the concert, which was met with a lot of cheer from the crowd.

The diva was also spotted clicking selfies with her friends. In one of them, she posed with Mr World 2016, Rohit Khandelwal and DJ Hardwell himself.

Picture courtesy:Instagram/missindiaorg

--- ENDS ---
President Trump has signed off on the core elements of the National Security Strategy (NSS).

The draft is almost completed, and all the principals  James Mattis, Rex Tillerson, Steven Mnuchin, etc.  have agreed on its core components. The document will be rolled out soon.

Why this matters: The NSS is as important as strategy documents get. It will explain how Trump's "America First" mantra applies to the vast range of threats America faces, including Chinese economic competition, Russian influence operations, and the weaponization of space. It's designed to guide the Trump administration's foreign policy and national security decisions, according to three sources familiar with it.

Behind the scenes: Nadia Schadlow, a well-respected member of the National Security Council and trusted confidant of H.R. McMaster, spent months drafting the document, working with Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell and McMaster.

Schadlow and Powell met with dozens of members of Congress, cybersecurity and foreign policy experts, military strategists and CEOs.

The big players across the agencies  including Mike Pompeo, Dan Coats, Jeff Sessions, Gen. Mattis, Wilbur Ross, Mnuchin, Tillerson, and, naturally, McMaster  all support the strategy.

They'll review the document this week at their cabinet meeting.

What's different: Sources familiar with the document call it "hard-nosed" and "realistic"  and less ambitious and idealistic than prior efforts. Critics will likely argue it forfeits American values and moral leadership  a continuation of Trump's lack of interest in fighting climate change and spreading democracy, his exit from the Paris climate deal and the Pacific trade deal.

One source described the Trump NSS as a "corrective" to George W. Bush's 2002 strategy, which promised to "champion aspirations for human dignity" and to prioritize democracy promotion around the world.

That source said Bush's team overestimated America's influence and lost track of priorities, and that Trump won't.

I haven't seen the Trump NSS, which remains under close hold. But sources familiar with it tell me to expect three things:

"There is more focus on homeland security and protecting the homeland than any NSS before," said one source with knowledge of the document. The strategy will focus on economic competitiveness as a national security imperative, especially regarding China. That fits into Trump's long-held belief that foreign countries have been taking advantage of America and stealing U.S. jobs. The document will highlight the emergence of technological threats, including  per Newt Gingrich, who has worked with Schadlow and Powell to draft the document  Russia's hybrid warfare and new breakthroughs in the weaponization of space.

Looking ahead: Jeremy Bash  formerly Leon Panetta's chief of staff at the CIA and Defense Department  told me it's unusual for a White House to complete the NSS in its first year, and said Powell and Schadlow deserve credit for building consensus so quickly. But he added it will only be useful if tethered to achievable goals. "The hard part begins now," he said.
CVS Health, which has been in talks to buy the health insurance company Aetna, will make the purchase for $69 billion in cash and stock, the Wall Street Journal reports. The merger will bring together health insurance and pharmacy services in the same company.

Why it matters, per Axios' Bob Herman: CVS and Aetna, which already have a pharmacy contract together, join to create a behemoth health care company with roughly $240 billion in annual revenue and substantial bargaining power over hospitals, drug makers and employers. Only Walmart will be bigger than CVS in terms of annual revenue among U.S. companies. The deal also displaces UnitedHealth Group as the largest health insurer and pharmacy benefits manager.
Two separate lobbying pushes are underway urging Congress to create new multi-billion dollar tax credits benefiting virtually all coal and nuclear power plants across the United States. The price tags: up to $65 billion for coal and $4.8 billion for nuclear.

My thought bubble: The efforts show the aggressive lengths companies are going trying to survive in a hyper-competitive electricity market while also seeking to take advantage of President Trump's vows to boost coal and nuclear power, which has Republican backing in Congress. The tax credit proposals, which have not been publicly disclosed, face skepticism from others in the coal and nuclear industries and are sure to face criticism that they're handouts to legacy energy sources.

Companies and groups involved in the separate efforts, including coal-heavy utility American Electric Power, coal trade group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and nuclear utility Exelon, are working to persuade senators to introduce proposals in the coming weeks that are separate from the broader tax overhaul.

No senator has signaled public support to either effort, according to executives involved and inquiries made to numerous offices. Both measures face long odds, though the coal push is the tougher ask given its bigger price tag and nuclear power's bipartisan backing. The companies are pushing for the proposals to be included as part of any broader tax-credit extension legislation Congress could take up before the end of the year or, more likely, next year.

Executives involved acknowledge their uphill battles.

On coal: "Frankly, this is a novel idea to people who are used to nuclear tax credits and renewable tax credits," said Paul Bailey, CEO of the coal group. "They're used to all kinds of tax incentives and credits, but this is the first time anyone has thought about one for the existing coal fleet like this."

"Frankly, this is a novel idea to people who are used to nuclear tax credits and renewable tax credits," said Paul Bailey, CEO of the coal group. "They're used to all kinds of tax incentives and credits, but this is the first time anyone has thought about one for the existing coal fleet like this." On nuclear: "I think we recognize the challenges that we face," said David Brown, a lobbyist with Exelon, the U.S.'s largest nuclear operator. "But we also recognize that this is a technology that enjoys bipartisan support and we're going to continue to educate policymakers and encourage them to support it."

The tax proposals are different from a Trump administration effort to overhaul electricity market rules benefiting a smaller number of coal and nuclear plants. That effort, underway at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is seeking to ensure the electric grid remains resilient. Coal and nuclear provide continuous electricity and can store fuel on site, unlike most other electricity sources.

The big picture: Trump is presiding over an arranged marriage between two industries previously at odds. Nuclear power is America's biggest carbon-free electricity source, and coal is the dirtiest of any electric fuel. They're now finding themselves awkwardly aligned, with Republicans running government and both industries struggling to remain economically viable as cheap natural gas, solar and wind grab bigger pieces of the electric pie. They're not collaborating on their lobbying pushes. Each side was either unaware or nominally aware that the other is pushing a tax credit.

The gritty details about each tax credit, according to numerous industry officials either backing each proposal or aware of them.

On coal:

Pushed by American Electric Power, coal producers Peabody Energy and Arch Coal and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coalition of coal producers and coal-dependent utilities.

Would cost between $6 billion and $6.5 billion a year and last 10 years. That's a little less than the annual combined average cost of wind and solar tax credits extended in 2015, Bailey said.

All coal plants that comply with major Clean Air Act regulations would qualify, which is most if not all coal plants operating today that aren't already scheduled to shut down.

Bailey said this tax credit is necessary because whatever FERC may do would apply to about 40,000 megawatts of coal. The U.S. coal fleet is six times that. "This tax idea is designed to help the entire coal fleet, and not conflict with what FERC is doing," Bailey said.

Would allow coal plant operators to recoup half of their fixed operation and maintenance expenses up to a limit of $26 per kilowatt of installed capacity.

A spokeswoman for AEP said the credit "would be an interim solution" as the FERC process unfolds. Requests for comment to Arch Coal were not returned. Peabody deferred to the trade group.

On nuclear:

Brown, the Exelon lobbyist, says other companies are likely to come out in support of its proposal soon.

Early internal estimates of the cost are between $1 billion and $1.2 billion a year.

It would be a 30% investment tax credit for capital expenditures at existing nuclear units that would run for four years.

Exelon floated a similar version of this tax credit last year, but the issue wasn't as ripe then as it is today, Brown said, thanks in part to Trump's elevation of the issue.

Brown said this proposal is necessary because whatever FERC may end up doing would take at least three years. "We see this investment tax credit as a bridge," Brown said.

This measure may help Exelon reverse its decision to prematurely close its nuclear plant Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania if other action, such as at FERC, is also taken, Brown said.

What's ahead: Even skeptical officials in the same industry say these proposals face a fighting chance in the longer term given the unpredictable nature of Washington these days.

"This year it's going to be hard to add tax benefits outside tax reform just because there is a cost to anything you do," said an industry official not involved but aware of both efforts. "But I think anything is in play down the road."
Trump walks up the steps of Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base on Saturday, en route New York for GOP fundraisers. Photo: Susan Walsh / AP

John Dowd, President Trump's outside lawyer, outlined to me a new and highly controversial defense/theory in the Russia probe: A president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice.

The "President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," Dowd claims.

Dowd says he drafted this weekend's Trump tweet that many thought strengthened the case for obstruction: The tweet suggested Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when he was fired, raising new questions about the later firing of FBI Director James Comey.

Dowd: "The tweet did not admit obstruction. That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion."

Why it matters: Trump's legal team is clearly setting the stage to say the president cannot be charged with any of the core crimes discussed in the Russia probe: collusion and obstruction. Presumably, you wouldn't preemptively make these arguments unless you felt there was a chance charges are coming.

One top D.C. lawyer told me that obstruction is usually an ancillary charge rather than a principal one, such as aquid pro quo between the Trump campaign and Russians.

told me that obstruction is usually an ancillary charge rather than a principal one, such as aquid pro quo between the Trump campaign and Russians. But Dems will fight the Dowd theory. Bob Bauer, an NYU law professor and former White House counsel to President Obama, told me: "It is certainly possible for a president to obstruct justice. The case for immunity has its adherents, but they based their position largely on the consideration that a president subject to prosecution would be unable to perform the duties of the office, a result that they see as constitutionally intolerable."

will fight the Dowd theory. Bob Bauer, an NYU law professor and former White House counsel to President Obama, told me: "It is certainly possible for a president to obstruct justice. The case for immunity has its adherents, but they based their position largely on the consideration that a president subject to prosecution would be unable to perform the duties of the office, a result that they see as constitutionally intolerable." Remember: The Articles of Impeachment against Nixon began by saying he "obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice."

Bob Woodward tells me this "is a legal thicket and really has not been settled":

"I think a president can only be reached through impeachment and removal. But the House and Senate could conclude a president had obstructed, and conclude that was a 'high crime.'"

a president can only be reached through impeachment and removal. But the House and Senate could conclude a president had obstructed, and conclude that was a 'high crime.'" "In Watergate there was political exhaustion  plus, as Barry Goldwater said, 'too many lies and too many crimes.' These questions are now, in the end, probably up to the Republicans. The evidence was in Nixon's secret tapes. Is there such a path to proof now is one way or the other? We don't know."

Be smart: The one thing everyone agrees on is that the House of Representatives, with its impeachment power, alone decides what is cause for removal from office. For now, at least, the House is run by Republicans.

Editor's Note: Get more stories like this by signing up for our daily morning newsletter, Axios AM.
Mila Kunis (left) and Ashton Kutcher (right) with 2018 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences winner Kim Nasmyth from the University of Oxford. Photo: Peter Barreras / Invision / AP

This year's Breakthrough Prizes  started in 2012 by tech investor Yuri Milner and backed by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Google's Sergey Brin, 23andMe cofounder Anne Wojcicki and Tencent cofounder Pony Ma  went to researchers working in cell biology, astrophysics, neurobiology, plant biology, and mathematics.

The prizes: Seven $3 million awards and six $100,000 prizes for physicists and mathematicians early in their careers were presented on Sunday in Silicon Valley. They're the largest monetary prizes for fundamental scientific research and, unlike the roughly $1 million Nobel Prizes, recognize mathematicians.

Why it matters: "The point is not to make rock stars of us, but of the science itself," Johns Hopkins University physicist and awardee Charles Bennett told the Guardian. "I don't think people realize how big a role science plays in their lives."

The winners:

Joanne Chory from The Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Over the past 30 years, she has studied the genetic and molecular mechanisms underpinning a plant's response to light. Chory is now trying to apply those findings to breed plants that can remove 20 times more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they usually do. Go deeper: Popular Mechanics Avery Thompson on Chory's big plan to combat climate change.

from The Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Over the past 30 years, she has studied the genetic and molecular mechanisms underpinning a plant's response to light. Chory is now trying to apply those findings to breed plants that can remove 20 times more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they usually do. Popular Mechanics Avery Thompson on Chory's big plan to combat climate change. Kazutoshi Mori from Kyoto University and Peter Walter from the University of California, San Francisco and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who discovered a "quality-control system" in cells that allows them to detect misfolded or unfolded proteins that can cause diseases and then signal the cell to correct them.

from Kyoto University and from the University of California, San Francisco and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who discovered a "quality-control system" in cells that allows them to detect misfolded or unfolded proteins that can cause diseases and then signal the cell to correct them. Kim Nasmyth from the University of Oxford, "for elucidating the sophisticated mechanism that mediates the perilous separation of duplicated chromosomes during cell division and thereby prevents genetic diseases such as cancer."

from the University of Oxford, "for elucidating the sophisticated mechanism that mediates the perilous separation of duplicated chromosomes during cell division and thereby prevents genetic diseases such as cancer." Don Cleveland from the University of California, San Diego for his work on the molecular mechanisms of Lou Gehrig's disease and discoveries about the role of the brain's glia cells in neurodegeneration.

from the University of California, San Diego for his work on the molecular mechanisms of Lou Gehrig's disease and discoveries about the role of the brain's glia cells in neurodegeneration. The 27-member team of astrophysicists behind the WMAP space telescope used to map the radiant heat leftover from the Big Bang. The team's five leaders were recognized: Charles Bennett from Johns Hopkins University, Gary Hinshaw from the University of British Columbia, and Norman Jarosik , Lyman Page and David Spergel , all from Princeton University.

behind the WMAP space telescope used to map the radiant heat leftover from the Big Bang. The team's five leaders were recognized: from Johns Hopkins University, from the University of British Columbia, and , and , all from Princeton University. Mathematicians Christopher Hacon from the University of Utah and James McKernan from the University of California, San Diego for contributions to birational algebraic geometry. As Kerry Dolan puts it in Forbes, "While it's almost impossible to visualize beyond even 3 dimensions, Hacon and McKernan use algebra to establish the rules for projecting objects from 1000+ dimensions onto lower-dimensional surfaces."

Early-career physicists Christopher Hirata (Ohio State University), Andrea Young (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Douglas Stanford (Institute for Advanced Study and Stanford University) were also recognized along with mathematicians Aaron Naber (Northwestern University), Maryna Viazovska (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne), Zhiwei Yun (Yale University) and Wei Zhang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University).
White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said yesterday at the Reagan Presidential Library in California that North Korea is "the greatest immediate threat to the United States":

"I think it's increasing every day , which means that we are in a race, really. We are in a race to be able to solve this problem." (CNN)

it's , which means that we are in a race, really. We are in a race to be able to solve this problem." (CNN) "The U.S. agency tasked with protecting the country from missile attacks is scouting the West Coast for places to deploy new anti-missile defenses, two Congressmen said." (Reuters)

tasked with protecting the country from missile attacks is two Congressmen said." (Reuters) "North Korea said the U.S. is 'begging' for a nuclear war by planning the 'largest-ever' joint aerial drill with South Korea just after concluding an exercise with nuclear-powered aircraft carriers." (Bloomberg)
A source who spoke to Trump last week told me he left the conversation concerned that the president "actually believes" Ty Cobb's "happy talk." What the source meant was that the White House lawyer has been naive in his view that the Mueller investigation  as it relates to the White House  will be wrapped by end of year or shortly after.

I emailed Cobb today to ask whether he still believed his previous public statements that the White House would be free of the investigation by the end of this year or January. (He'd originally said before Thanksgiving.)

Cobb's reply: "Yes Jonathan, still believe shortly after the first of the year absent some unforeseen delay. People keep confusing that estimate with the Manafort/Flynn silos which will certainly continue to be active. My August estimate of when interviews would be completed was less than two weeks off, and that was despite the China trip which cost us 2 weeks, and half a dozen international crises."

I told Cobb I still didn't understand what he meant. Was he saying Mueller has 100% completed all interviews with White House staff? And if the Manafort and Flynn "silos" continue to be active, couldn't they potentially implicate people who currently work in the White House?
President Trump told reporters while boarding Marine One Monday that he feels "very badly" for his fired National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI on Friday.

He also claimed that Hillary Clinton has lied repeatedly to the FBI "and nothing happened to her," while Flynn's life has been ruined by doing the same. "I think it's a shame," he said. (Note that Former FBI Director James Comey said in July 2016 that Clinton never lied to the bureau).

Why it matters: Trump has consistently defended Flynn despite his lying to both the FBI and Vice President Mike Pence about his communication with Russian officials, to the point where it's gotten the president in hot water. Former FBI Director James Comey has accused Trump of telling him to drop the investigation on Flynn, and critics said Trump may have admitted to obstructing justice Saturday when he defended Flynn in a tweet.

Full quote: "I feel badly for Gen. Flynn. I feel very badly. He's led a very strong life, and I feel very badly. I will say this, Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and they destroyed his life, and I think it's a shame. Hillary Clinton on the 4th of July weekend went to the FBI, not under oath, it was the most incredible thing anyone has ever seen. She lied many times, nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and it's like  they ruined his life. It's very unfair."
This week will be the most important so far in the Trump presidency for supporters of Israel:

Move 1: Trump will recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital in a speech on Wednesday. (The administration still refuses to confirm this and has been sticking with the line that Trump is still considering his options. Jared Kushner was guarded in rare public remarks Sunday at the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C.)

The Trump administration won't move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem  for now. But the Jerusalem announcement is a big deal. No American president has recognized the city as Israel's capital since the state was established in 1948. As my colleague Barak Ravid has written, news of Trump's decision  which Axios broke  has angered Palestinians and could derail the Middle East peace negotiations brokered by the Trump team.

Why this matters: Per the NYT  "The diplomatic status of Jerusalem is one of the world's most contested issues, with Israel and the Palestinians claiming it as their capital. Its holy sites are sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, and any change in its status would have vast repercussions across the Middle East and other Islamic-majority countries worldwide."

Move 2: The Republican-led House will vote Tuesday on the Taylor Force Act. The bill would restrict U.S. funding for the Palestinian Authority unless they stop paying terrorists and the families of dead terrorists who attack Americans and Israelis.

Move 3: The White House is hosting its Hanukkah party on Thursday night. It's been a hot topic in Republican Jewish circles  and not for good reasons. A number of Republican Jewish leaders, including major party donors, were upset they weren't invited. The White House apparently wanted a "more intimate event," said a source close to the process, who argued it was a mistake and revealed this administration's political ineptitude.
Verily Life Sciences, Alphabet's biotech and health data startup, hired D.C. lobbying shop Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas this week for various health care and data science issues, according to federal lobbying records  the first such lobbying registration for Verily. The company declined to comment.

Why it matters: Verily, by its nature of being tied to Google and Alphabet, is a highly watched health care startup still in its early stages that clearly wants to build its federal presence. It's not all smooth sailing, though. A STAT investigation from 2016 revealed many top employees have left Verily due to its "divisive" CEO Andy Conrad.

Worth noting: Robert Califf, a former FDA commissioner under President Obama, is an adviser at Verily.
By Mayuresh Ganapatye: As the Gujarat election day draws closer BJP has trained its guns on Congress and Rahul Gandhi in particular. PM Narendra Modi criticised Congress for defending Rahul Gandhi for being Hindu.

He addressed people in Junagarh, Jamnagar , Dharampur and Bhavnagar in rallies.

"After 70 years these people are calling themselves Hindu and running from one temple to another. This is what power of Gujarat elections has done to them" said PM Modi "

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Continuing his attack on the Congress he pointed out that this time around congress leaders are not calling BJP 'a communal party' whereas previously there have been numerous instances where the congress has regarded BJP to be a communal party.

"This shows that Congress has also admitted that we are not communal" added Modi

The Prime Minister also took a dig at soon-to-be party president Rahul Gandhi. Referring to Congress leader Manishankar Iyer's latest jibe at his own party Modi said that if a senior Congress leader is speaking about dynastic politics then no other proof is required. Continuing his verbal assault on Rahul Gandhi he wondered how the nomination of the person out on bail can be accepted by the party.

Hinting at Congress, he appealed to the people of Gujarat to show their place to them who malign the image of Gujarat by calling it a communal state.

"Those who were previously in power in centre and in UP did nothing, and now they are talking about development of Gujarat" Modi remarked Mentioning recently concluded UP civic polls he encouraged people of Gujarat to express what they believed and give BJP a clear victory in upcoming Gujarat assembly elections.

Watch: Congress internal polls fixed?

--- ENDS ---
Meet the new boss: Actually there is no new boss yet, but you probably know that yesterday brought fresh signs that the White House could push out Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replace him with current CIA chief Mike Pompeo.

The climate stakes: At first blush this would be a move even further to the right atop the agency that represents the U.S. in global climate change talks.

Pompeo has voiced skepticism about the scientific consensus on human-induced climate change and, according to multiple reports, in 2015 called the Paris agreement a "radical climate change deal."

E&E News published a story yesterday on the potential move that looks at Pompeo's record. It notes that the former Kansas House member would "bring a careerlong skepticism of climate science with him to Foggy Bottom," but at the same time points out that Pompeo "has been more tight-lipped about climate science in recent months."

What we're hearing: While Pompeo is a contrast to Tillerson, who had unsuccessfully argued for remaining in the Paris treaty. He's also close to President Trump, which could make for a less disjointed U.S. posture at global summits, where nitty-gritty decisions are hashed out.

"Governments won't have to ask themselves whether or not the Secretary of State has the ear of the President," one veteran of global climate diplomacy tells Axios.

"Drilling down on the UNFCCC and Paris, that means we'll have more clarity on the strategic approach and fewer last minute decisions (as we saw with the delegation) once he's in place," this source adds, referring to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which the U.S. has been a party to for decades.

One big question: How Pompeo currently views the nexus between climate change and national security now that he's been heading the CIA for almost a year.
President Trump's son in law and senior adviser Jared Kushner was the administration's key note speaker today at the Saban Forum in Washington. It was the first time Kushner spoke publicly about the administration's efforts to promote "the ultimate deal" between Israel and the Palestinians.

Kushner was very careful in his remarks, but these three points are worth noting:

In order to create more stability in the Middle East we have to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We need to overcome the Israeli-Palestinian issue in order to improve relations between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. Many of the day-to-day crises between Israel and the Palestinians are caused by the fact there is no final status agreement, and that's why we need to solve the big issues (i.e. borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem etc.)

The big picture: Kushner's comments showed the Trump "peace team" is drafting a comprehensive deal aiming at a final status agreement that solves all core issues  and not a plan that aims at partial or interim agreements. Kushner's comments also showed that the Trump administration see the "ultimate deal" between Israel and the Palestinians as a centerpiece of its Middle East policy and a key to promoting other policies in the region  mainly an alliance between Israel and the Gulf states against Iran.

Netanyahu wouldn't necessary like this: Kushner wasn't critical either of Israel or the Palestinians, but some of the points he made are contrary to Netanyahu's positions. Netanyahu stressed time and time again that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't the cause for other problems in the Middle East and that solving it, as important as it might be, will not solve issues like ISIS or the Sunni-Shia confrontation. Netanyahu also said time and time again in the last year that he thinks Israel's relations with the Gulf states can get warmer regardless of whether there is progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
4 December 2017 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 141 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said on December 4.

Armenians were using grenade launchers.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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4 December 2017 15:16 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The constant stress the Armenian soldiers experience while serving in their armed forces makes them take desperate steps that often destroy their entire future life.

One of such cases is the story of a 19-year-old Armenian soldier Hovhannes Khudaverdyan. Native of Mkhchyan village of Armenias Ararat province, the serviceman pleaded guilty to the murder of a fellow soldier Vahagn Virabyan and was sentenced to nine years and nine months of imprisonment, Armenian media report.

The two soldiers had an argument on October 14, 2016, while serving in one of the military units in the south of occupied Nagorno-Karabakh. The reason was that Khudaverdyan told the military command that Virabyan was allegedly sleeping in a fighting position. After that, Virabyan cursed and insulted Khudaverdyan, according to the latters testimony. Thus, Khudaverdyan several times fired from his assault rifle into Virabyan.

The forensics showed the murderer was sane and realized his actions when committing the crime. The witnesses informed that he was saying he swore right in my face, how could I not kill him? let them judge me  I will not stand for curses.

It is worth noting that this murder is far from the first of such cases happening in the Armenian troops. Armenian soldiers often became victims of hazing that continues to flourish in the Armenian army, especially in the occupied lands of Azerbaijan. These soldiers serve under constant fear and stress.

For instance, in October this year, Arthur Khachaturyan, an Armenian soldier who served in the occupied Aghdara region of Azerbaijan, could not withstand insults in army and shot a fellow soldier. In May, a Junior Sergeant of the Armenian army Gagik Mesropyan was fired by a fellow soldier in a combat position and later died on the way to the military hospital.

All the hazing and humiliation has a detrimental effect on the nervous system of young Armenian soldiers. Depressed servicemen are ready to shoot themselves or kill fellow soldiers due to even small problems with them. However, the Armenian government turns a blind eye on these issues, as the primary aim of the current regime is only to constantly stuff the army with soldiers. Everything that happens after conscription is not a matter of concern for the Armenian authorities and military command.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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4 December 2017 11:28 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Gazakh Literature Museum will mark the 300th anniversary of Azerbaijani poet Molla Panah Vagif on December 4.

The event within the large-scale project "Treasury of Secrets" was co-organized by the International Mugham Center, the National Library, and the National Conservatory with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Executive Power of Gazakh region.

Chairman of the Ataturk Center in Azerbaijan, member of the Parliament Nizami Jafarov, director of the Azerbaijan National Library, professor Kerim Tahirli, chairman of the Azerbaijan Ashugs Association, professor Maharram Gasimli, professor Rustam Kamal, chairman of the Karabakh regional department of Azerbaijan's Writers Union, doctor philosophical sciences, professor and poet Anvar Akhmad, chairman of Gazakh regional branch of Azerbaijan's Writers Union, poet Barat Vusal and others will take part in the event, Trend Life reported.

Actress of the Yerevan State Drama Theater named after Jafar Jabbarli, Ph.D. in philology, Zulfiya Eldargizi, will read lyric poems and gazelles written by great poet.

The event starts at 15:00.

The founder of the realism genre in the Azerbaijani poetry established himself as one of the most influential Azerbaijani poets. He was also a prominent statesman and diplomat, vizier  the minister of foreign affairs in the Karabakh khanate.

After coming to Shusha, the capital of the Karabakh khanate at the time, Vagif became popular and beloved among the people due to his knowledge and talents. There was even a saying: "Not every literate person can be Vagif".

He was one of the most educated personalities of his time, who knew Arabic and Persian languages, studied astronomy and architecture.

With his participation, a defense alliance was concluded between Karabakh, Georgia, Talysh and Erivan khanates against Iran. He was the initiator of negotiations with Russia.

After the death of Vagif, manuscripts of his poems were destroyed or robbed.

Nevertheless, some of the poems remained in the memory of ashugs, and many people even collected and copied his works in special books named "jungs".

The first collection with his poems "Vagif and his contemporaries", which included 70 works, was published in 1856 by the historian Mirza Yousif Karabakhi in Temir Khan Shura, Dagestan.

Molla Panah Vagif was one of the most outstanding Azerbaijani poets in the Middle Ages. His works had a great influence on the further development of national poetry. The poet used all the classical forms of Eastern poetry.

A special place in his work is taken by the poetic form-goshma. The lyrics of the poet are cheerful. In his poems, Vagif honestly talks about life and its hardships, finding philosophical meaning even in sorrows. Many works are also devoted to love theme.

His work had a great influence on the further development of national poetry.

Notably, a number of events devoted to the creativity of poet and thinker Muhammad Fizuli, Azerbaijani poetess Khurshidbanu Natavan, mugham master Yagub Mammadov were also held as part of the project.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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4 December 2017 18:13 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

The Days of Greek Culture will be held in Baku on December 7.

The event is organized with the support of the European Union Delegation, the United Cultures international organization and the Embassy of Greece in Baku.

Within the framework of cultural days, an exhibition of Greek Ambassador to Azerbaijan Nikolaos Kanellos has opened for the first time in Landmark Business Center on December 2, Azertac reported.

Addressing the event, Mr. Kanellos said that the exhibition aims to familiarize Baku residents and city's guests with the Greece culture. The diplomat stressed that a number of events will be held to expand cultural ties between Azerbaijan and Greece.

The exhibiting featured more than 30 paintings, some of which were drawn in Azerbaijan. Each of his works portrays his Greek soul and the passion for his wonderful land.

Notably, Greek films will also be screened within the Days of Culture.

The relations between Azerbaijan and Greece are successfully developing in various spheres. The cultural relations between the two countries have been marked by high-level events.

"Azerbaijani caricature" international exhibition was organized in the village of Lafistio, Greece last year. The exhibition featured more than 100 works of famous Azerbaijani cartoonists.

Besides, an art exhibition entitled "Hellas" was opened in Baku in 2016. The childrens artworks have been inspired by Ancient Greece, the cradle of European civilization.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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4 December 2017 13:36 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Annual show of Armenians celebrating the so-called Independence Day of Nagorno-Karabakh was held in Boston on December 2. During the event, organized by the eastern branch of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), representatives of Armenian lobby gave out awards to some American legislators representing the counties where there are Armenian communities.

However, Azerbaijan, as always, did not remain indifferent to another Armenian provocation. The Azerbaijani community of Boston organized a protest involving members of the Azerbaijani and Turkish communities of the city and its environs.

The banners of the protesters contained facts about the aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan, statistical data of the consequences of the occupation of the Azerbaijani territories, lack of independence in the political course of Armenia, Khojaly massacre as well as other facts.

The participants chanted slogans such as Stop Armenian terror against Azerbaijan, Nobody and nothing will be forgotten, Armenia go out of Azerbaijan, No repeating Khojaly massacre, Armenia expelled hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis from occupied Karabakh, Armenia is guilty for ethnic cleansing, Shame on Armenia, Hands off Azerbaijani lands, etc. The demonstration involved more than 30 people.

Despite the fact that the Armenian lobbying organizations have sent letters to the U.S. legislators for several weeks, luring them to their event, these efforts failed. The U.S. Azeris Network conducted a letter-writing campaign to inform lawmakers about the Armenian aggression and urged Congress representatives to ignore the calls of Armenian lobbying organizations and condemn Armenia, whose policy does not correspond to the national interests of the U.S.

Armenian lobbies and Diaspora quite often resort to provocations in order to present the Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh, invaded by the Armenians in early 1990s, as an Armenian territory. However, every time Azerbaijani diplomats and citizens manage to thwart such provocations.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

Peace talks mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. within the OSCE Minsk Group have produced no tangible results so far.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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7 December 2017 15:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Aygul Salmanova

Wine, for every taste, is not just another alcoholic drink, as it is often called the nectar of Gods, which has been around for thousands of years, being probably the oldest known alcoholic drink.

Azerbaijani wine, with its unique distinction, delicate aroma and velvety taste, is becoming more and more popular in international markets.

Today, the wine industry is a promising segment of the national economy. The country is actively engaged in the development of viticulture and winemaking.

This year the country is experiencing an upward trend of 17 percent in the development of wine production compared to the previous year, Executive Director of Azerbaijan Wine Producers and Exporters Association Ilham Idayatov told Azernews.

Export of Azerbaijani wine to foreign markets has a positive impact on the economy of the country, the expert noted.

Some 190.000 decalitres of wine amounting $3,5 million were exported to foreign markets in 2016. For the first six month of 2017, however, this amount has increased by 13 percent, he said.

He noted that from 38 alcohol producing companies operating in the country, 23 are engaged only with wine production. Idayatov added that while 20 of these alcohol producing companies are export oriented, the remaining 18 are supplying the internal market. The Association cooperates with all the existing companies in the country, he said.

The expert noted that some local companies import different substances necessary for stabilization of wine and it compliance with international standards from such countries as Austria, Germany and France. With addition of these substances, wine producers fulfill all standardization requirements, which, in turn, have a positive impact on export of the domestic wine product abroad.

Currently the country is exporting its wine products to Russia, China, Turkey, Korea, France, Ukraine, Germany, Japan, Belarus, Georgia.

Some 85 percent of Azerbaijani wine is exported to Russia, while China imports 8 percent of the total amount of wine produced in the country. The remaining 7 percent is shared by Turkey, Korea, France, Ukraine, Germany, and Japan.

One of the main reasons why China, the world's second-largest economy, has recently become one of the most popular destinations for exporting Azerbaijani wine is the great demand in the country for all sorts of wine and its huge market, according to Idayatov.

In addition, the payment procedures with China are facilitated and carried out faster than with any other country, he said.

As one of the main wine producers in the Caspian Sea region, Azerbaijan also plans to open a wine house in China, within the promotion of its brand. The relevant agreement was reached by the national export mission in Shanghai, organized by Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) with the support of the Ministry of Economy to promote the countrys brand.

The expert also noted that previously the Soviet Azerbaijani wine was exported abroad as raw material. Now however, the country exports its products under Made in Azerbaijan brand.

Idayatov notes that for now the country has no considerable impact in world wine market but as wine industry develops, Azerbaijan will take its place in the world as a wine producing country.

The expert said that currently there are four wine producing companies that have a direct access to European markets.

Some raw material wine products are also produced in the country, about 70 percent of which is exported to foreign countries and there they are manufactured as Azerbaijani products, Idayatov added.

He noted that there is no high demand for wine inside the country as people prefer other alcohol drinks, most of all, vodka.

Being the Senior Technologist in Spult wine company, Idayatov said that the company delivers seminars and trainings where people are told about the benefits of wine and advised to buy alcohol drinks from official distributors only.

--

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4 December 2017 10:09 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The Pakistan-Azerbaijan-Turkey trilateral format has emerged as an innovative and important platform for devising common strategies and developing several projects for joint benefits of the countries.

Muhammad Asif Noor, director of the Institute of Peace and Diplomatic Studies and president of the Azerbaijan-Pakistan Friendship Forum made the remarks while commenting on the recent trilateral meeting of the foreign ministers of the three countries in Baku.

Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Turkey are brotherly countries and there are no hidden agendas between the three, keeping in view their relationship in the historical context along with the regional peace and stability, he said.

Asif Noor stressed that the states also have similar standpoint related to Kashmir and Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts. He reminded that Pakistan does not recognize Armenia as a legitimate state, while Turkey ceased its diplomatic ties with it because of Armenias aggressive behavior towards Azerbaijan.

The three states also have deep-rooted respect and support to the territorial integrity and inviolability of international borders, he added.

Asif Noor further added that role of Pakistan, Turkey, and Azerbaijan in pivotal in the regional peace Asif Noor and stability.

The main focus of this new format is the recently launched connectivity projects, including Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad, Baku International Sea Trade Port, logistic center at the Caspian Sea, railway link connection with Azerbaijan with Iran and several other important projects that will benefit the entire region, he said, adding that the main beneficiary will not only be the project partner countries, but in fact Afghanistan as well.

Asif Noor stressed that as Pakistans role is significant in the Afghanistan peace process, the trilateral meeting will also enhance the influence of the countries over Afghanistan for increasing connectivity and participation in the region.

"The main focus of this trilateral dialogue will remain on the ways to develop the deeply-rooted cooperation among the states, especially for the regional peace and stability. As the three states are influential players in the region, such cooperation and dialogue are significant in order to enhance further sharing of ideas for the promotion of the region's development," he concluded.

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4 December 2017 13:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

A criminal case has been initiated in the Baku city Prosecutors Office in connection with the suicide of Haji Mammadov, former chief operating officer at the Main Criminal Investigation Department of Azerbaijans Interior Ministry, Eldar Sultanov, head of the press service of the Prosecutor Generals Office, told Trend on December 4.

Mammadov was sentenced to life imprisonment as head of an organized crime group that committed numerous killings, kidnappings and other serious crimes, Sultanov added.

On December 3, Mammadov hanged himself in a specialized institution of the Penitentiary Service of Azerbaijans Justice Ministry, where he was undergoing treatment.

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By PTI: (Eds: Updating with more details)

Bhopal, Dec 4 (PTI) Madhya Pradesh may soon become the first state in the country where raping a girl aged 12 years or less could invite death penalty, with the state Assembly today passing a bill to this effect.

The landmark legislation, passed unanimously by the House, also provides for tougher punishment for stalking a woman and some other offences against them.

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The Penal Law (Madhya Pradesh Amendment) Bill-2017, introduced by Minister for Law and Legislative Affairs Rampal Singh, was passed after a debate during which some Congress members voiced apprehension over tougher sentence for stalking, insisting cases may be registered against innocent people to settle personal scores.

The bill introduced a section--376 (A) (A)--to the Indian Penal Code (IPC) under which a person convicted of raping a girl aged 12 years or below may be awarded death penalty, life imprisonment or a minimum imprisonment of 14 years with a fine.

Similarly, section 376 (D) (A) was introduced for gang rape with girls up to 12 years of age. The convict under this section may be awarded capital punishment, life imprisonment or a minimum of 20 years in jail, besides a fine.

Under both the sections, the convict awarded life sentence will have to remain in jail till death.

The bill also amended the IPC section 493 (A) (cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage), under which a person could be jailed up to three years for establishing sexual relations with a woman on the pretext of marrying her.

The legislation provides for a minimum imprisonment of 3 years that may be extended up to 7 years for people caught stalking a woman or a girl for a second time and convicted for committing the offence. The amendment to section (354 D) relating to stalking says those convicted will also have to pay a minimum fine of Rs 1 lakh. The first time offender will face jail term up to 3 years in addition to fine.

Similarly, the second time offender in cases under section 354 (B) (assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to disrobe) of the IPC would face a minimum punishment of 7 years in jail which may extend up to 10 years, besides a minimum fine of Rs 1 lakh.

For the first time offender, the punishment is between 3 and 7 years of imprisonment in addition to fine.

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Except for the first time offence under section 354(D), all offences would be cognisable and non-bailable.

During the debate, some Congress MLAs, including Ramnivas Rawat and Govind Singh, voiced apprehension about possible misuse of some of the provisions. They said some women may file a stalking case to settle a personal score.

They said the perpetrators may kill the victim after raping her in an attempt to destroy evidence out of fear of severe punishment.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan assured the members that the government would take appropriate measures if these provisions were misused.

Chouhan said smartphones and Internet are spreading vulgarity among children.

The chief minister said girls are vulnerable to sexual assault from people known to them, with acquaintances and family members being involved in 98 per cent of the rape cases.

The bill was later passed unanimously.

It will now be sent to the President for his assent before it become a law.

"It was a historic day for Madhya Pradesh as the state Assembly, as per the wish of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, passed a bill making a provision to award capital punishment to those indulging in such crimes (raping girls aged 12 or below)," Singh said.

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Chouhan said there are people in society who can be set right only by severe punishments. The legislation will deal with them, he said, adding the government will also raise awareness in society against such crimes.

Madhya Pradesh, the fifth most populous state, earned the dubious distinction of topping the list of rape cases among states. According to the latest National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data, 4,882 rape cases were reported in the state in 2016.

In 2015, too, Madhya Pradesh had recorded the highest number of 4,391 rape cases in the country. PTI ADU MAS NSK RSY SK SK

--- ENDS ---
4 December 2017 15:29 (UTC+04:00)

By Aygul Salmanova

Azerbaijan and NATO, an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European states, continue to successfully develop cooperation.

Azerbaijan has played a strong role in NATO missions, said US Permanent Representative to NATO, Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison at a press briefing in response to Trend's question.

"We recently had the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev at NATO headquarters. That was a very good meeting. We want to keep close ties with Azerbaijan," she added.

Hutchison noted that she is looking forward for a very productive NATO ministerial.

"We are looking forward for a very productive session. First of all, our priority will be the fight against terrorism and particularly, the Resolute Support Mission.

Hutchison also mentioned that the second area of discussions will be the NATO-EU cooperation that is coming to a much better position. It is very important for us," she added.

She said that increased military mobility in Europe within that cooperation will also be discussed at the ministerial.

President Ilham Aliyev attended a meeting of the North Atlantic Council of NATO in Brussels on November 23.

During the meeting, the head of state noted that Azerbaijan and NATO maintain successful cooperation in various areas. Stressing Azerbaijans active involvement in different missions and operations of NATO, President Aliyev hailed the alliances contribution to mine clearance operations in Azerbaijan.

The head of state said Azerbaijan is expanding its peacekeeping activities in Afghanistan and is cooperating with this country at the bilateral level in economic and other areas.

The history of Azerbaijan-NATO relationship dates back to March 1992 when Azerbaijan together with some Central and Eastern European countries, joined a newly established consultative forum  the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC), which was transformed into the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council later in 1997.

The Azerbaijan-NATO cooperation is carried out within the "Partnership for Peace" program. Earlier, NATO adopted a document of the fourth stage of the Individual Partnership Action Plan for 2015-2016. The country makes significant contributions to freight transport for peacekeeping operations, while Azerbaijani servicemen contribute to ensuring security in Afghanistan.

Besides, NATO keeps in the focus the issue of security of the oil and gas pipelines in the South Caucasus region that pass through the territory of Azerbaijan as well.

NATO and Azerbaijan are actively cooperating on democratic, institutional, and military reforms, as well as conducting practical cooperation in various areas.

Azerbaijan aspires to achieve Euro-Atlantic standards and get closer to Euro-Atlantic institutions. In this regard, supporting the security sector reform and establishing democratic institutions are the key elements of the NATO-Azerbaijan cooperation.

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4 December 2017 17:26 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijan will increase its peacekeeping contingent in NATOs Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, Azerbiajani Defense Ministry told Trend on December 4.

The peacekeeping contingent will be increased in accordance with the relevant instruction given by President of Azerbaijan, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev, noted the ministry.

It is planned to increase the number of peacekeepers before the first quarter of next year, the message says.

The peacekeeping contingent of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces has been serving in Afghanistan since November 20, 2002. Currently, 90 servicemen, two medical officers and two engineer sappers of Azerbaijani Armed Forces are participating in a mission in Afghanistan.

Azerbaijan, as a reliable partner of NATO and friend of brotherly Afghanistan, is committed to continue its significant contribution to the Resolute Support Mission by providing troops, multi-modal transit, training and financial assistance.

The country has several times made substantial donations to the Afghan National Army (ANA) Trust Fund. Moreover, Azerbaijan supports Afghanistan on its path of reforms towards integrating into regional and global economy.

Furthermore, Azerbaijan allowed the NATO planes carrying non-combat loads for a mission in Afghanistan to fly through Azerbaijans airspace and to use the countrys airports. About 40 percent of all cargo destined for the NATO mission in Afghanistan pass through Baku. In addition, Azerbaijan has for many years participated in peacekeeping missions in Iraq and Kosovo.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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4 December 2017 10:16 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Greece on December 7-8 this year, the Turkish presidential administration said in a message.

During his visit to Greece, Erdogan will hold a number of important meetings with the official representatives of the country, according to the message.

Economic and political issues between Ankara and Athens will be discussed within the framework of the visit, the message said.

Earlier, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Hakan Cavusoglu said that the visit is important in the history of the two countries as none of the Turkish presidents visited Greece over the past 65 years.

Turkey and Greece have a disagreement over Cyprus. For the last time, Turkish President Celal Bayar visited Athens in 1952.

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4 December 2017 11:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Russias energy giant Gazprom increased the supply of gas to Turkey by 20.4 percent in January-November 2017 compared to the same period in 2016, according to the companys message.

In January-November 2017, Gazprom increased gas supplies to the countries targeted for the Turkish Stream project, in particular, to Turkey - by 20.4 percent (or 4.48 billion cubic meters) compared to eleven months of 2016 , to Greece - by 11.6 percent, to Bulgaria - by 6.8 percent, to Hungary - by 22.3 percent, as well as to Serbia - by 26.1 percent, the company said.

Gazproms gas exports to the far abroad in January-November amounted to 175 billion cubic meters and increased by 8.3 percent compared to the same period last year.

In late November, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said that in 2017 the company expects an absolute record for gas exports to non-CIS countries - 192 billion cubic meters.

In 2016, Gazprom increased gas supplies to the far abroad by 12.5 percent  more than up to 179.3 billion cubic meters, which became the historical maximum.

Energy cooperation has always been of strategic importance for Moscow and Ankara, as Turkey with its growing demand and Russia with its vast energy resources complement each other well. In this regard, the Turkish Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey and the Akkuyu nuclear power plant (NPP) being built in Turkey with Russian collaboration are expected to benefit both countries energy sector.

The Turkish Stream envisages the construction of a gas pipeline along the seabed of the Black Sea to Turkeys European part and further on to the border with Greece. Russia and Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement on the implementation of the Turkish Stream project in October 2016.

The first stretch will be intended for the Turkish market and the second will supply natural gas to countries of South and Southeast Europe. Each stretch will have a capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually. The pipeline is expected to annually pump 31.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

Gazprom launched the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipelines offshore section near the Russian coast of the Black Sea on May 7. The company has already built around 300 kilometers of the Black Sea segment of the TurkStream gas pipeline. The first line is scheduled for completion in March 2018 and the second in 2019.

Turkey is the second largest market for Gazprom as it imports about 60 percent of its gas from Russia.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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4 December 2017 15:50 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

The United States continues its way towards withdrawing from major international agreements and initiatives.

Since President Donald Trump took his office, the country has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and UNESCO.

Its next target became an international declaration aimed at improving global migration and refugee issues.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent an official statement to the UN which stated that Washington will no longer participate in the Global Compact on Migration as it doesnt correspond to the immigration policy pursued by the country.

Although we will continue to work in a number of directions in the UN, in this case, we simply cannot faithfully support a process that could undermine the U.S. sovereign right to apply our immigration laws and ensure the security of our borders, the statement said.

According to Tillerson, the U.S. supports international cooperation on migration issues, but sovereign states bear the main responsibility for ensuring that migration is safe and legal.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said the declaration's approach is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty.

No country has done more than the United States, and our generosity will continue. But our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country, Haley said in a statement.

The UN General Assembly expressed disappointment over the U.S. latest decision.

The U.S. has been a part of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants since it was unanimously adopted by approved by 193 members of the UN General Assembly in 2016.

The declaration reached last year called for protecting the rights of refugees and migrants and helping them resettle and providing access to education and work.

The decision to withdraw from the declaration is consistent with the efforts of U.S. President Donald Trumps administration to limit immigration and refugee settlement.

In January, Trump signed an executive order that temporarily banned citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the U.S. European leaders, the United Nations and international groups have condemned Trumps order. The UN refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration called on the Trump administration to continue offering asylum to people fleeing war and persecution, saying its resettlement programme was vital.

In October, the ban ended, althouh the White House announced that the U.S. would temporarily delay processing for refugees from eleven high-risk countries.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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4 December 2017 16:05 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

North Atlantic Treaty Organization will discuss the strengthening of cooperation on the security situation in the Black Sea with Georgia at a ministerial meeting on December 6.

This was stated by NATOs Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at a press conference on the eve of a meeting of foreign ministers of the alliance in Brussels.

The foreign ministers of NATO countries will hold a regular meeting on December 5-6. The meeting of the Georgia-NATO Commission is scheduled for December 6.

We will consider areas in which we can cooperate even more closely, including security in the Black Sea, Stoltenberg told journalists presenting the agenda of the upcoming meeting.

He also added that rumors about the resignation of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will not undermine the effectiveness of the meeting.

We have seen many times that the alliance and the ministers of NATO countries are able to focus on the most important tasks, the work that we need to do despite all the speculation and rumors. I am absolutely sure that the same will happen now, he said.

Georgia is an aspirant for NATO membership. It actively contributes to NATO-led operations and cooperates with allies and other partner countries in many other areas.

At the Bucharest Summit in April 2008, Allied Heads of State and Government agreed that Georgia will become a member of NATO. This decision was subsequently reconfirmed at successive NATO Summits. The NATOGeorgia Commission (NGC) provides the framework for cooperation between NATO and Georgia.

Created in September 2008, the NGC serves as a forum for both political consultations and practical cooperation to help Georgia advance its Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

In December 2008, NATO foreign ministers decided to further enhance the NGC through the development of an Annual National Programme (ANP). In addition to Georgias contributions to EuroAtlantic peace and stability, key areas of cooperation under the Annual National Programme include political, military and security-sector reforms.

NATO supports Georgia in these reforms by providing focused and comprehensive advice and activities in several frameworks, both civilian and military.

--

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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4 December 2017 17:35 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Chinese corporation Tianjin Bohua Petrochemical will invest $4 billion in the construction of a factory which is expected to produce polyethylene and polypropylene from natural gas in the Aktyubinsk region of Kazakhstan.

The memorandum of cooperation was signed within the framework of the working visit of the Akim of Aktobe region Berdybek Saparbayev to Beijing.

The project is planned to be implemented in two stages - the production of 1.8 million tons of methanol from natural gas with two complex installations a year, as well as 300,000 tons of ethylene, 300,000 tons of polyethylene and 300,000 tons of polypropylene with two complex installations per year.

The construction of the plant will create 3,000 new jobs. The main markets will be China and Kazakhstan. The products can also be supplied to neighboring countries.

Saparbayev and President of Tianjin Bohua Petrochemical (a subsidiary of Tianjin Bohai Chemical Industry Group) Zhou Kai discussed the training of Kazakh personnel in the framework of the project, the use of new technologies, the provision of natural gas and electricity required for the production process, as well as compliance with the environmental legislation of Kazakhstan.

The project is planned to be implemented within two to three years after the preparatory work.

In the course of Saparbayevs visit four more documents on cooperation were signed. The documents provide for the implementation of investment projects in the production of chemical products for the oil and gas industry in the Aktyubinsk region (Shandong Petroleum Engineering Company Qihai), electronic equipment for geophysical and seismic exploration (Gianfoshi Technology Company Xian Luhai), drilling tools (Dongying Weima Petroleum Drilling Tool), as well as the construction of a cement plant with a capacity of 2,500 tons per day (Hong Kong company Sino-Harbor Construction Group).

The foreign trade turnover between Kazakhstan and China in the first eight months of 2017 increased by 31 percent and amounted to $6.5 billion. Kazakhstans exports amounted to $3.5 billion showing an increase of 28 percent, while imports grew by 36 percent and equaled to $3 billion.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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Houston-based Nobilis Health opened a new ASC in El Paso, Texas.

Here are five things to know:

1. The new facility includes two operating rooms and two procedure rooms. It will provide multispecialty services, including several offered by Nobilis' direct to consumer marketing brands.

2. With the new center, Nobilis expects to capture patients from the West Texas and New Mexico markets. The ASC will generate revenue through in-network commercial payer contracts.

3. Nobilis now includes 32 locations  14 of which are ASCs  across Texas and Arizona. The company also partners with 36 facilities across the country to market nine independent brands as well as a unique patient acquisition strategy driven by proprietary, direct-to-consumer marketing technology.

4. Kenneth Efird, Nobilis president, expects the company to drive volume to its new center through its sales and marketing division. "The ASC will operate under in network contracts with major commercial payers and is a continuation of our stated strategy to grow our portfolio with in network volume and revenue."

5. Nobilis has made several moves toward growth in the past year, including the deal to acquire 50.1 percent ownership of Houston-based Elite Surgical Affiliates' three ASCs and one surgical hospital for $60 million in November.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb released an update on hurricane-caused drug shortages, saying while IV saline product inventory is improving, production capacity issues remain throughout Puerto Rico.

Here's what you should know know:

1. Dr. Gottlieb said power is being restored at manufacturing plants across Puerto Rico, but he anticipates that many plants will continue to run on generators and will not return to baseline production levels for some time.

2. Concerning IV saline product shortages, the FDA worked with Baxter to restore operations in the company's Puerto Rico facility. The FDA also approved IV solutions from Fresenius Kabi and Laboratorios Grifols to help mitigate the shortage. Both newly-approved companies are ramping up production. Dr. Gottlieb said, "We now believe that the shortage situation related to IV saline products will improve by the end of 2017."

3. Despite the efforts to mitigate saline shortages, the FDA is now concerned about amino acids for injections shortages. Puerto Rico-based manufacturers have been unable to return to baseline production levels for amino acids as well. The FDA is working with Baxter to import amino acids from Baxter's United Kingdom-based facilities. ICT Medical is expected to return to market soon as well.

Dr. Gottlieb concluded, "We continue to work closely with federal and Puerto Rican authorities to address the needs of manufacturers on the island for power and other resources. These efforts have been focused on the needs of patients  to prevent potential shortages of medically important products where possible, and help ensure that any shortages that do occur are mitigated as quickly as possible. We understand the burden and stress drug shortages have on patients, health care providers and hospitals." He reaffirmed the agency's efforts to prevent medical supply shortages.
Former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt said during a Nov. 30 Q&A discussion the shortest meeting of his career was with Judy Faulkner, founder and CEO of Epic, during the mid-1990s, according to Xconomy.

The discussion was part of an event for Healthegy's annual Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit. This year's summit took place in Boston.

Mr. Immelt said in 1996  when he led GE Healthcare  he visited Epic's headquarters in Verona, Wis., to meet with Ms. Faulkner. He said he proposed the two companies collaborate and suggested GE acquire parts of Epic's business.

"She just said, 'No, no interest,'" Mr. Immelt recalled. "It was a five-minute meeting."

Mr. Immelt also shared GE had considered acquiring Cerner, but determined the price point the EHR vendor discussed was too expensive at $2 billion. He did not specify during the Q&A discussion when the deal had been under consideration.
Condoling the death of Shashi Kapoor, Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the enigmatic actor for this versatility, passion for theatre and brilliant acting that will be remember for generation to come.

By India Today Web Desk: Shashi Kapoor's versatility could be seen in his movies as well as in theatre...

This was not a movie critic reviewing a performance of the now late Bollywood legend Shashi Kapoor, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi condoling the death of the 'best-looking Kapoor'.

Shashi Kapoor promoted theatre with "great passion", PM Modi said, saying his brilliant acting will be remembered for generations to come.

Shashi Kapoor's versatility could be seen in his movies as well as in theatre, which he promoted with great passion. His brilliant acting will be remembered for generations to come. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers.- Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 4, 2017

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"Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers," the Prime Minister added.

President Ram Nath Kovind too sent out a tweet condoling the enigmatic actor's death and noted his repertoire of Indian as well as international films.

Sorry to hear of the demise of Shashi Kapoor, well-known actor, with a repertoire of Indian and international films. His support for meaningful cinema as a producer and pivotal role in the theatre movement in India too are cherished. Condolences to his family #PresidentKovind- President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) December 4, 2017

"His support for meaningful cinema as a producer and pivotal role in the theatre movement in India too are cherished," the tweet signed by President Kovind himself added.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was among the others who tweeted his condolences on Shashi Kapoor's death. "His (Shashi Kapoor's) contribution in (sic) Hindi film industry will be remembered forever," Fadnavis said.

Sad to hear about noted actor, producer #ShashiKapoor jis demise.His contribution in Hindi film industry will be remembered forever.My deepest condolences to his family, friends and millions of fans.- Devendra Fadnavis (@Dev_Fadnavis) December 4, 2017

Congress leader Sashi Tharoor, on the other hand, had a truly emotional resposne, saying he feels as though a part of him is gone. A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome & w/a (with a) name that was often confused w/mine (with mine)," Tharoor added before providing an example of just how easily the two Shashis are mistaken by people.

I feel a part of me is gone. A great actor, smart, cosmopolitan, impossibly handsome & w/a name that was often confused w/mine. (My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health!) I will miss #ShashiKapoor. Condolences2his family&all his fans pic.twitter.com/fSz3jafPZJ- Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) December 4, 2017

"My office got two calls from journalists today about my reportedly serious ill-health," Tharoor said.

WATCH | Bollywood reacts to Shashi Kapoor's death

--- ENDS ---
Julie Leonard, CFO of Tonasket, Wash.-based North Valley Hospital, tendered her resignation, according to an Okanogan Valley Gazette-Tribune report.

Here are three takeaways:

1. In her resignation letter, Ms. Leonard stated personal reasons prompting her decision to step down.

"I will not pretend to make up reasons, it is simple, I miss my husband, so we decided I will move home," Ms. Leonard stated in the letter, the Okanogan Valley Gazette-Tribune reports.

2. She assumed the CFO role in January 2017.

3. She submitted her resignation letter Dec. 1. The resignation is effective Dec. 15.

Editor's note: This article was updated Dec. 7 at 4:36 p.m.
Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare plans to eliminate 1,300 jobs as part of an enterprisewide cost reduction initiative, and 150 of those job cuts will occur at Detroit Medical Center, three sources briefed on the matter by senior DMC officials told Crain's Detroit Business.

Tenet launched its cost reduction initiative after reporting a net loss from continuing operations of $366 million in the third quarter of 2017, compared to a net loss from operations of $9 million in the third quarter of 2016.

Detroit Medical Center, which operates seven hospitals, confirmed to Crain's that it is reducing its workforce, but declined to provide the exact number of employees affected.

According to Crain's Detroit Business, Detroit Medical Center CFO Victor Jordan was asked to step down earlier this month by CEO Tony Tedeschi, MD. However, health system officials told Crain's Mr. Jordan's exit was a "mutual decision."

One source told Crain's Detroit Medical Center is laying off 15 to 20 ambulatory care department employees at Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit due to dwindling patient volumes. Another source said several employees in DMC's quality department have recently been transferred to other duties or laid off.

The 150 layoffs represent less than 2 percent of Detroit Medical Center's 12,000-person workforce, according to the report.

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The former head of IT for North County Health Services, which offers healthcare services at clinics in San Diego County, is accused of stealing nearly $800,000 from the nonprofit organization over an eight-month period, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Prosecutors allege Hector Ramos, who was hired in January 2015 to lead North County Health Services' IT department, submitted false invoices to NCHS from two fraudulent corporations he created. He allegedly told employees in the purchasing department NCHS' computer system might shut down if the invoices were not paid promptly to create a sense of urgency, according to the report.

According to prosecutors, bank statements revealed Mr. Ramos spent the money obtained from NCHS on international vacations, wine, cigars, clothing and a luxury vehicle, according to the report.

Mr. Ramos, who faces 49 counts related to the loss of money, pleaded not guilty on Friday. He faces up to 36 years in state prison if convicted of all charges, according to the report.

In addition to the criminal case, NCHS' insurance company sued Mr. Ramos in July for nearly $800,000. That lawsuit is pending.

More articles on legal and regulatory issues:

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A man was shot by police Friday after he opened fire at Bakersfield (Calif.) Heart Hospital, according to CNN.

Police responded to the hospital after receiving reports of an active shooter. Police said the suspect, who was later identified as 44-year-old Brandon Clark, first fired several shots into a glass door at the rear of the hospital. He then entered the facility with a handgun and an assault rifle, according to the report.

Inside the hospital, Mr. Clark encountered a security officer, but no shots were fired. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Clark exited the hospital and was shot by police. Authorities said Mr. Clark is in critical condition and will be arrested on assault and firearm charges once his condition stabilizes, according to The Californian.

Bakersfield Heart Hospital President and CEO Michelle Oxford said the facility went on lockdown after an employee told administrators there was a person in the back parking lot with a gun. The lockdown was lifted shortly after the officers shot Mr. Clark.

Mr. Clark's motive remains unclear. Authorities said Mr. Clark is related to an employee of Bakersfield Heart Hospital, but he had no contact with him prior to the incident Friday.

More articles on legal and regulatory issues:

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Concurrent surgeries in which a surgeon runs two operations at once increase the risk of surgical complications for patients undergoing hip surgery, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Members of the healthcare community have argued over the safety of overlapping surgeries ever since The Boston Globe's Spotlight Team issued a controversial report about Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital's use of the surgical practice in 2015. Since then, researchers have published numerous peer-reviewed studies, which showed little difference in complication rates between single and concurrent surgeries in U.S. hospitals.

"This seems to be the first study to show an adverse effect from the practice of overlapping surgery," Alan L. Zhang, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at UC San Francisco Medical Center, wrote in an op-ed accompanying the study.

For the study, researchers analyzed clinical data from several health administrative databases for more than 90,000 hip operations at about 75 hospitals in Ontario, Canada. Researchers also looked at patient outcomes one year after surgery.

Of the procedures analyzed, 2,520 overlapped by more than 30 minutes with another surgical procedure performed by the same attending surgeon. Most surgeries overlapped for 30 to 60 minutes, although some were performed concurrently for up to three hours. Researchers found the longer the surgeries overlapped, the more likely patients were to experience a serious surgical complication within one year.

The risk of a surgical complication increased from 1.4 percent to 2.3 percent for patients undergoing elective hip replacements when the surgery overlapped with another procedure. For patients who underwent a hip fracture surgery, the risk rose from 6.4 percent to 10.4 percent.

"If your surgeon is in multiple places, there's an increased risk of having a complication," lead study author Bheeshma Ravi, MD, PhD, a hip surgeon at Sunnybrook Health Sciences, told The Boston Globe. "I think that just makes sense."
While patients may think tattooing "do not resuscitate" on their bodies is a clear way to communicate their care preferences during a medical emergency, the body ink can actually create confusion and uncertainty for physicians, according to Reuters.

Physicians are often hesitant to follow the tattooed DNR order unless the patient has an accompanying DNR form, living will or advanced care directive documented on paper. Tattoos are a permanent commitment, and patients may change their care preferences after receiving the tattoo, according to Gregory Holt, MD, PhD, a physician at Miami-based Jackson Memorial Hospital who recently encountered an unconscious patient with a DNR tattoo on his chest.

Another concern among physicians is that the patient got the DNR tattoo as a joke or when they were intoxicated. Lori Cooper, MD, a private practice endocrinologist in Seattle, once treated a 59-year-old patient at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco who had gotten "D.N.R." tattooed on his chest after losing a bet playing poker and wanted to be resuscitated if he went into cardiac or respiratory arrest.

"We deal with code status so much and everyone says, 'I'm just going to tattoo it on myself.' But that  creates a lot of confusion," Dr. Cooper told Reuters. "It can change with the person's health at the time, or their age, and you have to ask if it reflects their wishes down the road.  It's not a great idea."
More than two-thirds of Northern Ireland businesses have said they expect to grow and see activity increase in the next year despite uncertainties.

That's according to the latest UK Salary & Recruiting Trends 2018 guide from recruitment firm Hays.

Around 69% of companies have said they expect business activity to increase over the coming year, which is higher than the UK average of 59%.

And up to 76% of employers are planning to recruit over the next 12 months, ahead of the UK average of 71%. The survey includes the views of 17,500 firms across the UK, including almost 700 in Northern Ireland.

It also found skills shortages "remain an issue" for the majority of employers, with two-thirds reporting a shortage of suitable applicants as their biggest recruitment challenge this year.

John Moore, regional managing director of Hays in Northern Ireland, said: "Despite the economic and political uncertainty, employers are broadly optimistic about the opportunities that lie ahead and are forging ahead with recruitment plans.

"Many professionals in Northern Ireland are proving to be pragmatic when weighing up new opportunities. Whilst salary remains the single biggest factor in deliberating over whether to remain within a firm or to move jobs, it's heartening that the other elements - environment, progression, training, benefits - outweigh salary alone for the majority of employees."

Northern Ireland workers saw average salaries increasing by 2.8%. That growth was led by digital technology roles, which saw the highest rise at 4.5% with engineering and manufacturing, posting an average increase of 3.9%.
An activist investor has claimed shareholders have lost faith in London Stock Exchange (LSE) chairman Donald Brydon as it released a damning dossier ahead of a crunch vote on his future.

Christopher Hohns Childrens Investment Fund Management (TCI) is pressing for the immediate removal of Mr Brydon, who it accuses of pushing out chief executive Xavier Rolet.

TCI, which owns more than 5% of the LSE, has secured a shareholder vote to decide on Mr Brydons fate, but its bid to retain Mr Rolet until 2021 was ended when the Frenchman stood down last week.

Mr Rolet left after more than eight years in the role amid an increasingly bitter dispute that has dogged the exchange operator.

On Monday, TCIs meeting document said Mr Brydon has run a poor process with regards to CEO succession and shareholder engagement, as well as accusing the LSE of dismissing a world class CEO without providing any good reasons.

TCI also said that Mr Brydon has a long track record of dismissing chief executives and it would be difficult to find someone of Mr Rolets calibre to serve under him.

Pre-empting the December 19 shareholder vote on whether to ditch the chairman, TCI added that LSE should begin the succession process immediately for Mr Brydon and named three non-executive directors who would be capable to take up the role on an interim basis.

They are David Nish, Stephen OConnor and Mary Shapiro.

Donald Brydons continuation as chairman until 2019 will be damaging, TCI said.

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The LSE confirmed last week that Mr Brydon will not stand for re-election in 2019, but this stopped short of meeting the TCIs demands for his immediate removal.

The raging controversy at the LSE has even drawn comment from the Bank of England, with Governor Mark Carney earlier this week saying he was mystified by the tussle.

Mr Rolets departure comes after more than eight years in the top job, during which time the LSE has seen its stock market value soar from 800 million to nearly 14 billion.

His tenure has seen LSE seal a string of acquisitions, although it was marred by the recent failed attempt at a 21 billion merger with German rival Deutsche Borse after it was blocked by the European Commission in March.
Christmas celebrations are in full swing with everything from the Coca-Cola Truck tour to numerous special events happening across Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile Mrs Brown's boys also makes a return to Belfast this week, along with a few concerts.

Take a look at what's on this week:

1. Christmas Evenings at Ulster Folk & Transport Museum,

Co. Down, December 1-15

Leave the hustle and bustle of the high street behind and step back in time into the candlelit Ballycultra village to experience a traditional Christmas from 100 years ago at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

Includes Christmas carolling, traditional Christmas fayre, make your own Christmas decoration and much more.

For more information, visit www.nmni.com/ulster-folk-and-transport-museum

2. Christmas Craft Workshops

The Tower Museum, Derry~Londonderry, December 2-9

The Tower Museum will be offering visitors the chance to revisit the ghosts of Christmas past throughout December by hosting three special workshops focusing on Christmas crafts through the decades.

At each of the workshops participants will have the opportunity to create Victorian style decorations and cards which they can take home to give to friends and loved ones.

To book call 028 7137 2411

3. Coca-Cola's Christmas Truck Tour 2017

SSE Arena, Belfast, December 6

Holidays are coming back to Northern Ireland as the famous Coca-Cola Christmas Truck pulls into town.

Arriving at 2pm to the SSE Arena, the public will have an opportunity to take a souvenir photo with the Coca-Cola Christmas Truck.

For more information, visit www.ssearenabelfast.com

4. The Divine Comedy

Millennium Forum, Derry~Londonderry, December 6

After a run of sold out, acclaimed shows in 2016 and early 2017, The Divine Comedy announced an Irish tour which will make stops in Cork, Limerick, Derry / Londonderry, Belfast and Dublin.

The Northern Ireland band's new album Foreverland was hailed as one of the albums of the year by the critics and debuted at Number 7 in the UK Chart.

They also perform at the Ulster Hall in Belfast on December 7.

For more information, visit www.millenniumforum.co.uk

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5. Russell Watson

Waterfront Belfast, December 6

The UKs best-selling classical crossover artist of all time returns to the stage with Songs from The Heart, featuring a stunning collection of our best loved songs along with tracks from his new studio album True Stories.

Show kicks off at 7.30pm.

For more information, visit www.waterfront.co.uk

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6. Good Mourning Mrs Brown

SSE Arena, Belfast, December 7-9

Brendan O'Carroll and co are back with this latest live show where we see Agnes Brown planning Granddads funeral. The only problem is granddad is not dead.

What could possibly go wrong?

For more information, visit www.ssearenabelfast.com

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7. Chris Rea

Waterfront Belfast, December 7

Chris Rea returns to Belfast as part of a European tour to celebrate the September release of his new album Road Songs for Lovers.

Doors open at 7.30pm

For more information, visit www.waterfront.co.uk

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8. The Winter Circus Show

Writer's Square Belfast, December 8-23

Tumble Circus are back again with their huge show which boasts modern, high skilled acts, including acrobats, aerialists and jugglers.

The Family Circus Shows will be a spectacular circus with an inspiring modern soundtrack, international circus artists and comedy characters that both young and old can enjoy.

For more information, visit www.tumblecircus.com

9. Magical Christmas at Castle Coole

Co. Fermanagh, December 9-17

Visit Santa and Mrs Claus in their festive home as they prepare for the busy Christmas season.

Each child receives a present and grown-ups can enjoy warming mulled wine and mince pies.

To book visit www.NationalTrust.org.uk

10. The Magical Christmas Vintage & Handmade Fair

Belfast Castle, December 10

Frock Around The Clock will return to beautiful Belfast Castle for The Magical Christmas Vintage and Handmade Fair.

The fair will feature over 50 fantastic stalls of vintage, handcrafted and upcycled fashion, furniture, homewares and collectables, textiles and decor, jewellery, sweet treats, toys, art, craft, gifts, artisan food, Christmas crafts and decor and much more.

For more information, visit www.belfastcity.gov.uk/belfastcastle

11. Belfast Community Gospel Choir Christmas concert

Waterfront Belfast, December 10

The Belfast Community Gospel Choirs annual Christmas concert has become a not to be missed event in Decembers calendar.

Hailed as the Soul of Belfast BCGC performances are charged with passion and energy and the sheer joy they exude from the stage is infectious.

Show starts at 7.30pm.

For more information, visit www.waterfront.co.uk

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12. Andre Rieu

SSE Arena, Belfast, December 10

Andre Rieu is a musical phenomenon like no other, having sold a massive 40 million CDs and DVDs and notched 30 Number 1 chart positions worldwide.

Along with his 60-piece Johann Strauss Orchestra (the largest private orchestra in the world), Andre has created a global revival in waltz music, staging spectacular extravaganzas which are second to none.

For more information, visit www.ssearenabelfast.com
Christmas shopping is in full swing and as parents scour the internet for gift ideas, Asda has helpfully released a range of toys that - for the first time ever - has been chosen entirely by children.

Some 400 boys and girls, aged 18 months to 12 years, from across the UK, were invited to help the supermarket put together a giant selection of over 100 top toys. Everything was played with and marked by kids, while 'play inspectors' watched on, also assessing the facial expressions of the children, as well as dwell time and general enjoyment.

"Many retailers publish top toy lists for Christmas, but they're normally based on the industry big bets, which can lead to some damp squib products," says Asda toy buyer Kate Briggs. "We decided it was time to turn to the real experts - meaning Chosen by Kids features the latest toys, but not at the expense of old favourites people find harder to get - and the result is our most impressive toy collection for many years."

But what are the top 20 toys? Well, there are some brands you would definitely expect - Nintendo's new 2DS XL, Lego's Ninjago Fire Mech and The Batmobile, Baby Annabell and Barbie, along with some eye-boggling big stuff, like the Nerf Battle Racer go cart and Dareway Revolution Ride On (like a Segway for kids).

Happily, there are some innovative ideas too. Laser X allows you to recreate LaserQuest in your own home and Soundmoovz are funky little speakers that you wear on your wrists and ankles, and they only play music when you dance.

But never mind the small people - what about the older folk who are going to have to shell out for all this? We asked real parents what they thought about 10 of the top 20 toys...

1. LEGO Ninjago - Fire Mech - 70615, 50 (currently reduced from 59.97)

"Lego is always a great gift and a brilliant way to get parents involved," says Catherine Fletcher, a mum-of-two. "I love the fact that it's movie-related, too. What's always exciting about Lego is that you can take it apart and do it all again - and it keeps the children entertained for hours."

2. Laser X 2 Player Pack, 45

"I really like this," says mum-of-two, Tonia Prestney. "It's cheaper than the competition, great for children's parties and you can use it indoors or outside. It's something both our kids can use together (and dad) and you can use it straightaway. I'm not sure if the novelty factor will wear off though, and while I like the fact you can buy additional packs if you want to make a party of it, it would be expensive to do that. But on the whole, it's a good entry point for a fun game, and we can see the kids having a blast with it."

3. Barbie DreamCamper, 67 (currently reduced from 99.99. Stock is limited, but it's also available from Tesco and Smyths)

"I already know how much my kids want this as they've told me all about it," says Claire Richardson, who has two daughters. "They're particularly excited about the teeny-tiny marshmallows Barbie can toast on the campfire. It is a pretty cool present but it's a lot of money. I certainly wouldn't pay the full price for it."

4. Paw Patrol Jungle Patroller, 50 (currently reduced from 64.97)

"This is like the new Optimus Prime!" Martyn Blanchard, dad-of-one, says. "Every child aged five and under would love this. Paw patrol is always on in our house. It looks nice and chunky for little hands. The quad is a nice touch to drive in and out of the back. My only negative is, it's 50."

5. SoundMoovz, 45

"This is one I'm really surprised about," comments mum-of-two Claire Spreadbury. "I love this. It's a quirky idea, encourages kids to get active, is pretty techy and plays music. It's a winning gift from a parent's perspective - although it's quite a steep price point. But kids obviously love it too. I can see the whole family getting involved on Christmas Day, strapping on the speakers and doing some dodgy dancing in the lounge - although it's one for parents to sort out before the unwrapping begins, or it'll be a pain to set up on the actual day."

6. Little Live Pets My Dream Kitten, 38 (stock limited but other Dream Kittens are available from Toys R Us, Smyths and Tesco)

"This is the sort of toy you always expect to be a hit with kids," says James Richardson, who has two children. "It's not often a hit with me though - just another mechanised furry thing that will grab their attention when it's new, and every so often after that, but is just something else to clutter up their bedroom. Like the Hatchimal last year, and the Furby before that. I can see why children like it, though."

7. Play-Doh Kitchen Creations Magical Oven, 20 (stock is low everywhere for this, but it's also available on Amazon and eBay)

"Oh no, the dreaded Play-Doh," says mum-of-two Claire Richardson. "My little ones love the stuff but it gets everywhere. We're picking bits up weeks after they've played with it, so my reaction to Play-Doh isn't normally a positive one. Having said that, it does keep them entertained for ages and everything's a mess at Christmas, so who cares?! It's also much more affordable than most of the other items, so great value for money."

8. Little Tikes My First Drone, 30

"This is cheaper than a lot of other drones on the market, and it's very simple to use," says Ben Prestney, who has a son and a daughter at primary school. "It's a good activity to play in the house in the winter and is simple, but not basic. (Sometimes these things are complicated and, as a result, the children lose interest as the adult is busy trying to work out how to use it). And it seems pretty robust, though I'm not sure how it will last with constant crashing."

9. Ben 10 Rust Bucket Playset, 49.97

"I can see why kids would like this, but I'm not drawn to a massive hunk of plastic that costs a lot," says James Richardson. "One for the serious Ben 10 fans, I guess, but I'll certainly be avoiding this one on the Christmas list."

10. Nikko Air DRL 115 Air Elite Drone Race Set, 50

"This looks fantastic," Martyn Blanchard says. "An affordable and capable drone for children. I love the fact you don't need to be a pilot to operate it, as it has auto take off, hovering, landing and can do 20 in-built tricks. Sod the kids, I want one."
Modi said the Congress government itself wanted the project earlier but failed to achieve it, the reason why they are opposing it now.

By India Today Web Desk: On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi lashed out at those opposing the Rs 1.1 lakh crore bullet train project by asking them to travel on bullock carts instead. Congress has criticised the high budget project, which will connect Ahmedabad and Mumbai and is to be built by Japan.

Lashing out at Congress, Modi said the Congress government itself wanted the project earlier but failed to achieve it, the reason why they are opposing it now.

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"Those opposing the bullet train project should travel on bullock carts. We won't mind," he said at the election rally in Gujarat.

He said the UPA government under Manmohan Singh also wanted the project but could not get it. "The NDA government got it at a negligible price. So the Congress didn't like that. My only grievance against the Congress is that if they could not achieve anything, why does it pain them when someone else does it."

Modi pressed the importance of Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor project by highlighting the huge employment opportunity it would bring in Gujarat.

"Imagine how much employment will it generate for the region, for Bharuch. I ask you where will the cement for the bullet train (infrastructure) come from, iron come from, labourers come from? Won't that be from India? And who will be buying that? Japan. Isn't it a big deal?" Modi asked.

Modi also took a jibe at the Nehru-Gandhi family over what he said their claim to have Gujarati origins and doing nothing for the state.

"What good did they do to Gujarat? Did they even think about project like Roll on, Roll off ferry service? Over the years, the Congress has created divisions between villages and cities, states, between people, between the educated and the uneducated, caste, communities.

"But since the BJP formed the government in the Center, all these ailments have gone. When I was the Chief Minister, there was not a single day when they would not hurt Gujarat."

He said the two districts of Kutch and Bharuch having large Muslim populations witnessed "maximum development during the BJP rule".

He said the mega project of the Statue of Unity to install the world's tallest statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel will also contribute to the development of the region and attract foreign visitors.

The Prime Minister said the government planned to develop some 1,300 small islands and islets around the marine border of the state, many of which are even bigger than Singapore.

"Imagine these islands getting developed as Singapore. So, for a better tomorrow of Bharuch and Gujarat you should vote for the BJP."

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The Prime Minister is on a two-day visit to the state. On Monday, he will visit Dharmapur in Valsad district and then in Saurashtra's Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar.

VIDEO | Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train: PM Modi, Shinzo Abe launch project

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The Bombardier Aerospace plant in Belfast builds the wings for the C-Series aircraft

Trade unionists have said a dispute between US planemaker Boeing and its Canadian rival Bombardier should be referred to the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The US is threatening to impose a 300% tariff on imports of the Bombardier C Series aircraft.

The plane's wings are made in Northern Ireland and Unite the Union warned thousands of Northern Ireland jobs could be threatened should sales be badly affected.

Gaye Partridge, chair of Unite the Union's shop stewards committee in Bombardier, said the mooted levy effectively closed the US market to the C Series.

"Repealing this through the courts will take years and the punitive rate is designed to kill the potential that the C Series could ever compete in the future."

Her union is calling on Theresa May to use 4.6 billion of official contracts with Boeing as leverage to force the aerospace giant to drop its case.

She briefed Belfast City Council on calls for action from political leaders, urging councillors to follow other local authorities in lending their unanimous support and agreeing to write to the Prime Minister and EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom.

She asked the Prime Minister to ensure US President Donald Trump removed the proposed tariffs his administration wants to impose on imports of the new aircraft into the US.

"We also call on Theresa May to escalate this case to the WTO with immediate effect."
More than 2,000 paid to hire a conference room for far-right group Britain First will be donated t o charity by the hotel where the meeting was held.

The Wyboston Lakes resort in Bedfordshire said it was "deeply offended" by the controversial organisation's presence on their property.

Pictures posted online by the fringe political group's leader Paul Golding appeared to show dozens of people sitting in a room decked with banners declaring "Taking Our Country Back!"

The resort faced criticism online when news of the conference, the location of which had not been made public by Britain First, became clear.

The meeting was booked at short notice under the name Patriot Merchandise, which the resort said had no obvious connections to Britain First.

Patriot Merchandise is listed at Companies House as a private limited company based in Belfast.

No staff entered the meeting room during the event and the banners were erected only in the "closed off conference room", a resort spokesman said.

The 2,250 cost of the five-hour event on Saturday will now be donated to an as-yet undecided charity.

In a statement released on Sunday evening the resort spokesman said: " For the sake of clarity, had we known the nature of the event being held by Britain First, we would not have taken the booking, as the values of our organisation conflicts with theirs in totality."

Wyboston Lakes, which was ranked at 28 in this year's Sunday Times best 100 companies to work for list, said it "embraces diversity".

The spokesman added: "We can fully understand the concerns expressed, but we can only refer to our company values and principles, our standing as an award-winning employer and assure everyone that we are deeply offended by their presence on our property."

Britain First's conference came days after Donald Trump retweeted three anti-Muslim videos posted by the group's deputy leader Jayda Fransen.

Two featured violent scenes, including someone being pushed off a roof and another person being assaulted.

The group has since boasted they gained hundreds of new membership applications and said its Facebook posts were reaching hundreds of thousands more users.

Fransen, 31, from Penge, south-east London, is on bail facing trial over four charges of causing religiously aggravated harassment as part of a Kent Police investigation into the distribution of leaflets and the posting of online videos during a trial held at Canterbury Crown Court in May.

She will go on trial at Folkestone Magistrates' Court on January 29 alongside Golding who faces three similar charges.

Fransen will also appear in court in Northern Ireland in December charged with using threatening and abusive language in connection with a speech she made at an anti-terrorism demonstration in Belfast on August 6.
An award-winning resort has been left " deeply offended" after unwittingly hiring out a meeting room to far-right group Britain First.

The Wyboston Lakes resort in Bedfordshire said the controversial organisation booked the 2,250 room under a different name for its conference.

Pictures posted online by the fringe political group's leader Paul Golding appeared to show dozens of people sitting in a small room decked with banners declaring "Taking Our Country Back!"

The resort faced criticism online when news of the conference, the location of which had not been made public by the group, became clear.

The meeting was booked at short notice under the name Patriot Merchandise, a resort spokesman said, and did not appear to have any obvious connections to Britain First.

Patriot Merchandise is listed at Companies House as a private limited company based in Belfast.

No staff entered the meeting room during the event and the banners were erected only in the "closed off conference room", the spokesman said.

The hire cost of the five-hour event on Saturday will now be donated to an as-yet undecided charity.

In a statement released on Sunday evening the resort spokesman said: " For the sake of clarity, had we known the nature of the event being held by Britain First, we would not have taken the booking, as the values of our organisation conflicts with theirs in totality."

Wyboston Lakes, which was ranked at 28 in this year's Sunday Times best 100 companies to work for list, said it "embraces diversity".

The spokesman added: "We can fully understand the concerns expressed, but we can only refer to our company values and principles, our standing as an award-winning employer and assure everyone that we are deeply offended by their presence on our property."

Britain First's conference came days after Donald Trump retweeted three anti-Muslim videos posted by the group's deputy leader Jayda Fransen.

Two featured violent scenes, including someone being pushed off a roof and another person being assaulted.

The group has since boasted they received hundreds of new membership applications and said its Facebook posts were reaching hundreds of thousands more users.

Fransen, 31, from Penge, south-east London, is on bail facing trial over four charges of causing religiously aggravated harassment as part of a Kent Police investigation into the distribution of leaflets and the posting of online videos during a trial held at Canterbury Crown Court in May.

She will go on trial at Folkestone Magistrates' Court on January 29 alongside Golding who faces three similar charges.

Fransen will also appear in court in Northern Ireland in December charged with using threatening and abusive language in connection with a speech she made at an anti-terrorism demonstration in Belfast on August 6.
North Belfast republican Damien 'Dee' Fennell was acquitted on Monday of terrorist offences arising from a speech he gave at an Easter Rising event in Lurgan in 2015.

In a ruling delivered at Belfast Crown Court, Judge Geoffrey Miller QC said that while some of the words used by Mr Fennell in his speech could be deemed offensive "in the ears of many right-thinking members of society", they were his personal opinion - and did not amount to inviting and encouraging people to join the IRA.

Judge Miller presided over the non-jury trial in September, when the Crown made the case that Mr Fennell was guilty of three terrorist offences - namely encouraging terrorism, inviting support for the Irish Republican Army and encouraging support for the IRA.

The charges arose from a speech lasting eight minutes and 22 seconds which was delivered by Mr Fennell - who was introduced at the event as a 'dedicated Republican activist' - to a crowd of around 70 people on April 5, 2015 at St Coleman's cemetery in Lurgan.

The speech was later uploaded onto the Irish Republican Prisoner Welfare Association's YouTube and Facebook pages.

It was the Crown's case that some of the words and messages that were said and subsequently published online amounted to both encouraging terrorism and encouraging support for the IRA.

A section of the speech criticised Sinn Fein for welcoming the Queen to Ireland, with Mr Fennell telling those at the cemetery: "The only welcome the IRA gave to a member of the British Royal family was delivered in a boat off the coast of Sligo."

Saying this was a specific reference to the 1979 murder of Lord Mountbatten, Judge Miller said that while there as "little doubt" most people would find these comments "deeply objectionable", it did not amount to encouraging or inviting support for the IRA.

When he was arrested a fortnight after making the speech, Mr Fennell was taken to Antrim Serious Crime Suite. He declined to answer police questions, but a pre-prepared statement was handed to police on his behalf by his solicitor.

The father of six made the case that he gave his personal opinion as opposed to encouraging anyone to engage in violence. He said the Sinn Fein rebuke and the anti-monarchy elements of the speech were his own personal option, and denied encouraging anyone to join the IRA.

Mr Fennell also declined to give evidence during the Diplock trial - a move Judge Miller said had "effectively closed the door to any cross-examination" which may have determined his intention.

Regarding the charge of encouraging terrorism, Judge Miller said everyone had the right to freedom of speech in a democratic society. Pointing out that Mr Fennell was not responsible for uploading the material, Judge Miller said: "He is entitled to be acquitted on count one as he is entitled to free speech."

Acquitting Mr Fennell of the remaining two charges, the Judge said: "However offensive the words used by the defendant might be in the ears of many right-thinking members of society, they were expressions of personal opinion, which did not invite or encourage support for the IRA."
Declan Kearney accused the DUP and the UK Government of creating the continuing political crisis at Stormont

The Good Friday Agreement is facing its most serious threat since its implementation, Sinn Fein's Declan Kearney has warned.

Mr Kearney accused the DUP and the UK Government of creating the continuing political crisis at Stormont, which is threatening "the entire basis of the Good Friday Agreement".

"The British government and DUP alliance is based upon a unionist agenda defined in terms of support for Brexit, austerity and opposition to a rights-based framework for government.

"They have created the current crisis and, as a result, the entire basis of the Good Friday Agreement is now faced with its most serious threat in the history of the peace process," said Mr Kearney.

Speaking in Stormont at the launch of a new Sinn Fein booklet entitled No return to the Status Quo, the party's national chairman added that a " successful resolution hinges on whether political unionism can accept, and co-exist in partnership, with the Irish cultural tradition, and Irish nationalist and republican identity".

"The only way this can be achieved is through the implementation of the equality-based framework of the Good Friday Agreement to guarantee the rights of all citizens and sections of society, regardless of creed, culture, colour, class, political allegiance or sexual orientation.

"The political institutions will either be re-established and sustained on this basis, or they will not," he said.

Mr Kearney added: "Fifty years on from the civil rights campaign the rights and equality agenda must not be short changed.

"The days of anyone using the political institutions in the north of Ireland to show disrespect, and contempt or to deny rights are over.

"This much is certain, the new momentum for full delivery of rights for all citizens will not be going away."
Nigel Brown, one of two convicted over his killing

A sectarian killer was rushed to hospital after reportedly making a suicide attempt.

Nigel Brown (33), who is serving a 20-year sentence for the 2005 murder of schoolboy Thomas Devlin in north Belfast, is said to have been discovered by other inmates at the maximum-security Maghaberry prison.

Brown tried to end his own life one week ago, the Sunday Life reported.

The newspaper said he was in a critical condition in hospital.

A source at Maghaberry claimed that Brown is amongst the most hated inmates on his wing.

He said: "A prisoner found him at the start of the week and raised the alarm. The doctors arrived a short time later and they took Brown away.

"Nigel Brown is one of the most hated men in the prison.

"He hardly leaves his cell due to the amount of hidings he has got for murdering that wee lad Devlin."

When contacted, the Department of Justice declined to comment, saying it does not talk about individual cases.

Brown has spent the last eight years behind bars for his part in a murder which shocked Northern Ireland.

In 2010 he and his accomplice, Gary Taylor, were found guilty of killing Thomas Devlin.

Thomas (15) was knifed to death near his north Belfast home on August 10, 2005. He suffered multiple stab wounds to the chest, abdomen, right upper arm, hip and face. His friend, Jonathan McKee, was also attacked and was stabbed in the stomach.

Taylor (now 30), of Mountcollyer Avenue, Belfast, and Brown (33), from Whitewell Road in the city, were both convicted in 2010 of murder and attempted murder.

The victims had been walking back home with a third teenager, Fintan Maguire, from a shop, when the killers struck on the Somerton Road.

Brown and Taylor have been behind bars since 2010.

Brown, who is housed in a non-paramilitary wing at Maghaberry, is said to be despised by his fellow inmates and has been subjected to frequent attacks and assaults.

Isolated from the rest of the prisoners for his own protection, he was rarely seen outside of his own cell.

A source at the prison reported that Brown was discovered barely breathing last Monday.

Emergency services were called to his cell where he was given first aid before being transferred to hospital. Brown is expected to be returned to Maghaberry once doctors deem him fit enough, where he will serve out the remainder of his sentence.

Jailing Brown and Taylor in 2010, a judge said it "was a murder which completely shocked this entire community, but especially the community of north Belfast".
Irish Taioseach Leo Varadkar has been accused of disrespecting the people of Northern Ireland by a DUP MP.

Jim Shannon said the power for Northern Ireland politics rested at Westminster and "certainly doesn't lie" with the Irish Taoiseach.

It came as former shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray said the DUP were "holding this Government round the neck" as Theresa May attempted to hold on to power.

Reports suggested that DUP leader Arlene Foster had voiced strong opposition to a proposal she claimed would see Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK, as part of Brexit negotiations over the Irish border.

The Government's majority in the Commons is dependent on its confidence and supply deal with the DUP at Westminster.

Strangford MP Mr Shannon told Mr Murray: "Will he also acknowledge the disrespect that the Taoiseach has shown to the people of Northern Ireland today, whenever he said that he now speaks for the people of Northern Ireland, and the DUP and other elected parties don't.

"Is it not time that he knows exactly that the power for Northern Ireland, for democracy, for the political process, is here in this chamber.

"And it certainly doesn't lie with Leo Varadkar, as the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland."

Labour MP Mr Murray replied: "I think in the chamber, in the country or anybody who happens to be watching these proceedings will see that the three members of the Democratic Unionist Party that are sitting in this chamber are the real government in this House.

"They are dictating the terms of Brexit. The member who's just intervened on me, the honourable gentleman, is no doubt the de facto secretary of state for exiting the European Union, in terms of the power they have over the Prime Minister.

"It's clear, as I said earlier, that between courses at lunch this afternoon the Prime Minister has gone from a negotiated agreement to a set of texts, to throwing it in the bin alongside any leftovers from the lunch.

"It's clear that the Democratic Unionist Party, 10 members of Parliament from Northern Ireland, are holding this Government to account, are holding this Government round the neck, because it's much more important for the Prime Minister to hold on to power than it is to do what's in the best interest of all of our nations."

Mr Murray had earlier said events in Brussels on Monday were a "farce" and that Mrs Foster "controls the Government" and was "the real de facto Prime Minister in this country".

He also bemoaned the fact that journalists on Twitter appeared to have more information on Mrs May's meetings on Monday than other MPs.

DUP MP Ian Paisley (North Antrim) said: "I don't think anyone should get their news constantly from Twitter.

"But on the key point, on all of these clauses, should we not show discernment and skill and make sure that we don't fall for the spin, whether it comes out of Dublin or London or Brussels?

"Let this negotiation run and let's see what comes out of it at the end."

Reacting to the news that Ms May had failed to reach agreement over the Irish border, Labour former minister Vernon Coaker accused the Government of "undermining" the peace process.

Mr Coaker said: "What we saw this morning with the Government saying there was going to be a deal with respect to the border in Ireland and then the PM going for lunch, coming out of lunch because the DUP hadn't been consulted or hadn't agreed to those arrangements.

"What does it do for both unionism and nationalism within Ireland when that sort of event takes place?

"Frankly it looks as though the Government is in chaos, doesn't know what it's doing and in pursing that undermines the whole peace process in the Northern Ireland."
Devenish Island near Enniskillen, close to where the tragedy occured. Picture: Ronan McGrade/Pacemaker Press

A 41-year-old man has been charged with the murder of a woman on a boating holiday in Northern Ireland.

Lu Na McKinney, aged 35 and from Co Donegal in the Irish Republic, was in a hired cruiser in Co Fermanagh when the incident happened early in the morning last April.

After a review of the circumstances police arrested a 41-year-old on suspicion of murder on Thursday.

After a court hearing on Friday night, police were granted a further 36 hours to question the suspect.

On Monday detectives charged the 41-year-old man with murder.

The man has also been charged with possession of a Class C controlled drug.

He will appear in Omagh Magistrates Court on Tuesday December 5.

As is normal procedure all charged will be reviewed by the PPS.

The boat was moored at Devenish Island, a popular visitor attraction near Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh.

Emergency services found her body but intensive attempts to resuscitate her failed.

The PSNI is working with the Garda in the Republic to investigate the death. They have appealed for anyone with information to contact their officers.
By PTI: By Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Dec 4 (PTI) Nepals first ever billionaire, Binod Chaudhary - who recently joined the ruling Nepali Congress - is set to contest elections even as he canvasses support for the party ahead of provincial and parliamentary polls this week.

Chaudhary, 62, whose ancestors migrated to Nepal from India around 150 years ago, has become a crowd puller on the campaign trail, addressing over 50 election rallies across the Himalayan nation.

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He heads the USD 1.1 billion Chaudhary Group which runs 136 companies on five continents.

The second phase of elections to provincial assemblies and the parliament is scheduled for December 7 in 43 districts across Nepal.

Today is the last day of campaigning for the elections before the Election Commission deadline.

He is contesting the election on a Nepali Congress (NC) ticket to become an MP under the proportionate representation system.

In his campaign, Chaudhary has claimed that the economic road map drawn by him on behalf of the Nepali Congress will be the foundation for economic prosperity of the country.

"I have joined the Nepali Congress party to do something concrete for the country in the economic field. I had no more joy in being the only billionaire of a poor country. I would rather want to be a citizen of a country of billionaires," Chaudhary said.

"I would devote my time and energy to make the country prosperous so as to enable it to produce many billionaires like me," he said.

During a recent NC election rally in Nawalparasi district, where Chaudhary Udhyog Gram - an industrial area developed by his Chaudhary Group - is located, a huge number of locals had gathered to see the countrys only billionaire.

Chaudharys name first appeared in Forbes in 2013 on the list of the worlds billionaires.

He also appealed to voters to vote for NC general secretary Shashanka Koirala, who is contesting the election to become a Member of Parliament from the district.

Chaudhary said a Nepali Congress-led majority government was essential for attaining political stability and economic prosperity for the country.

His joining the NC is seen as a major blow to the electoral alliance between CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre, in their bid to capture power at the Centre.

Prime Minister and Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba has not only handed the partys general membership to Chaudhary but also appointed him as the chief of its central economic committee. PTI SBP KUN

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Christmas came early for Belfast's dog lovers yesterday when Santa Claus came to town.

Hundreds of pooches and their pals from the city and beyond flocked to the Dirty Onion bar in the city's Hill Street to get their photo taken with, and receive a present from, Santa.

Ballyrobert man - and Belfast Telegraph reporter - Allan Preston, who had brought his labrador pup Bonnie to see Santa Paws, and support the Lucy's Trust dog charity in the process, said the turnout at the event was amazing.

He said: "There were hundreds of people queued along Hill Street, all with their dogs - all shapes and sizes.

"There was even a man dressed up in a dog suit, playing with the pups. They went bananas. It was really good fun."

One east Belfast woman brought her boxer dog to get his Christmas treat.

Like Allan, she reckoned the organisers were overwhelmed by the numbers of dog lovers who'd turned up.

"There were hundreds and hundreds," she said.

"It took us three hours to get in to see Santa - but it was worth it. Despite the long wait, everyone was very well behaved - it was a good event.

"Ernie was knackered after meeting Santa," she added, "but the special doggie dinner he got soon perked him up.

"Poor Santa Paws. He had to work a lot longer than perhaps he'd expected."

Dog owner Julie Causby wrote on the Lucy's Trust Facebook page: "We waited nearly three hours, but it was so well worth it. Met lovely people and beautiful dogs. Thanks for putting this event on and for bringing the real Santa!"

Proceeds from the fun event will go to the Lucy's Trust dog charity, formed in memory of "the best dog in Ireland" in 2010, initially in response to the growing need for rescue space for dogs from Craigavon pound.

Run by vet Olivia Kennedy and her partner Rob Durston, the Northern Ireland charity is a sanctuary for dogs who cannot be rehomed due to behavioural issues, those which are in most need of a rescue place, and dogs needing assistance to overcome difficulties.
Northern Ireland has the highest percentage of childhood disability in the UK, a new study has shown

Northern Ireland has the highest percentage of childhood disability in the UK, a new study has shown.

The average across the province is 5.5%, significantly higher than in England where the level of childhood disability is 3.7%, while in Scotland it is 4.4% and Wales 4.3%.

Complied by Contact - a charity for families with disabled children - in conjunction with Leeds University, the study also shows that families with a disabled child face significant disadvantages.

Lindsay Wallace, Contact manager in Northern Ireland, called for more investment in health and social care services.

She said: "There is an unacceptable and marked difference between the quality of life and opportunities available to disabled children and their families compared to those without disabilities in terms of housing, their economic situation and their employment status.

"This means parent carers are more likely to be managing on a low income, struggling without a car or central heating.

"We want to see a restored Northern Ireland Executive tackle the never-ending cycle of disadvantage faced by families with disabled children by investing in health and social care services."
The Marshes housing development on the old warrenpoint road, Newry.

Police are investigating after a man in his 30s was found dead in a house in Newry yesterday morning.

Detectives and forensic officers attended the scene in The Marshes housing development on the Old Warrenpoint Road.

The body was discovered just before 9.30am.

Police said they were investigating the circumstances surrounding the death.

"A post-mortem examination will take place in due course to determine the cause of death," a PSNI spokesman said.

Independent councillor David Hyland, who lives close to where the man's body was found in the housing development, said the community in Newry had been left "in shock that someone so young had passed away".

"It's sad that such a tragedy should befall someone, and my thoughts are with their family," Mr Hyland told the Belfast Telegraph. "This is a time when people should be looking forward to celebrations with their loved ones."

SDLP councillor Gary Stokes also extended his sympathy to the man's bereaved relatives. "To lose a life, particularly a young life which has been cut off in its prime, is a huge shock for the family," he said.

"I would like to offer my condolences to them.

"This is a terrible tragedy to happen in the run-up to Christmas."
Police still have far to go to ensure victims of rape have the confidence to come forward, it has been claimed.

It comes after the PSNI took to social media to warn festive revellers to be wary of potential predators under the mistletoe this Christmas.

The tweet was later deleted.

In the Saturday night post, the PSNI said: "If you bump into that special someone under the mistletoe tonight, remember that without consent it is rape."

The tweet was signed off "season's greetings".

Green Party MLA Clare Bailey described the tweet as "twee for a very serious crime".

It also sparked a backlash on Twitter with users from across the UK commenting. Some described it as flippant and "trivialising rape".

"There's much better ways to put a serious message across than this," said one twitter user in response. Some were astounded the tweet did not come from a parody account, while others even questioned if the PSNI knew the exact details of the law around rape.

"The PSNI has a warped view of the world," added another.

Clare Bailey campaigns for women's rights, and has previously called on the government to scrap the so-called rape clause for benefit claims, which required women to prove that they conceived through rape to access tax credits for a third child. She has worked for Nexus, the Northern Ireland charity which supports those who have experienced sexual abuse.

"I can understand the PSNI intent, but this was a twee tweet on a very serious crime to which many women will be victim," she told the Belfast Telegraph.

"Statistics show that Christmas is a peak time of the year when violence against women at all levels increases. What needs to be made crystal clear to every victim of sexual assault and rape is that it is never their fault and they will be believed if they come forward to report.

"While much education around consent is needed, all our judicial agencies have far to go to instil the confidence that will allow victims to come forward and believe they will receive justice."

Police have been forced to remove similar tweets in the past. Previously they were accused of "victim blaming" for a similar message earlier this year. The latest tweet was taken down yesterday morning. The PSNI said: "We posted a message on Twitter yesterday that some may have taken out of context but the message remains the same, when you are out socialising over the Christmas period, please remember without consent it is rape."
It was reported to police that shortly after 7.40pm a man had "approached a number of women and touched them inappropriately".

Police are investigating after a number of reports of women being "approached and touched inappropriately" by a man in Belfast city centre.

The PSNI is appealing for witnesses following a number of reports of suspicious behaviour in the Church Lane and Royal Avenue areas of Belfast on Saturday, November 25.

It was reported to police that shortly after 7.40pm a man had "approached a number of women and touched them inappropriately".

Constable Carter said: A 29-year-old man was subsequently arrested on suspicion of disorderly behaviour and sexual assault. He has since been released on police bail, pending further enquiries.

It is believed three to four women may have been approached by this man who is described as being 5ft 5inches in height, wearing a hooded top and ripped jeans. He also had his left hand bandaged.

We would appeal to these women to come forward and speak to police as we believe they may have information that could help with our investigation. They should call us on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference 1271 of 25/11/17.

Alternatively, information can also be provided to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 which is 100% anonymous and gives people the power to speak up and stop crime.
There is "no desire" in Ireland to delay progress on the Brexit negotiations, according to the Tanaiste.

Simon Coveney said his government did not want to veto the talks, after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar warned he was prepared to stand firm on the Irish border issue.

Mr Coveney told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show that Ireland wants a solution on the border that "involves all of the United Kingdom acting as one".

Asked whether the Irish government was prepared to use a "veto" over the Brexit talks, he said: "We certainly don't want to be vetoing anything - I mean the Irish government, just like the British government, wants to be able to move the Brexit process on to phase two and we want to be able to provide the kind of certainty that many businesses are calling for in Britain and Ireland and indeed in other parts of the European Union.

"So there is no desire, I can tell you, in Ireland to delay this process, but at the same time we have a responsibility as a government to represent the interests on the island of Ireland -north and south - and let's not forget that next year will be the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement which is the basis for the peace process and relations between Britain and Ireland on the island of Ireland.

"And we believe that as an island, Ireland is uniquely vulnerable and exposed to a potential bad outcome from Brexit and that is why we are looking for more progress than we have in terms of understanding how the border issues in particular on the island of Ireland, and the north and south cooperation that has created a normality on the island of Ireland which is a hugely positive thing."

The leaders of the remaining 27 EU states, including Irish premier Mr Varadkar, have a veto on triggering the second phase of talks, meaning Prime Minister Theresa May must be sure of support from Dublin for progress to be made.

European Council President Donald Tusk has said the Irish would be consulted on whether the UK's offer was sufficient.

Mr Coveney said Ireland was not looking for the "full detail" on the border solution in phase one of the talks. He told the Andrew Marr show yesterday: "What we are looking for though is the parameters within which we can be more confident that a solution can be found within phase two - and that is not an unreasonable ask.

"We would like to see a solution here that solves the border issues, that involves all of the United Kingdom acting as one."
By PTI: questioning

New Delhi, Dec 4 (PTI) Police have asked doctors and some other staffers of the city-based Max Hospital to appear for interrogation in connection with the case of a premature baby being wrongly declared dead.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Northern Range) Sagar Preet Hooda said the hospital had been asked to furnish the duty roster.

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Police were also seeking opinion of experts in the case, he said.

Another official said they had asked doctors and operation theatre staff to appear for interrogation.

Investigators had yesterday sent a notice to the hospital to join the probe and share documents and the CCTV footage.

The case pertains to the birth of twins (boy and girl) on November 30. Both the babies were allegedly declared dead by the Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh. However, the family later found the boy was alive.

Police have already registered a case of attempt to commit culpable homicide against two doctors. PTI SLB GVS

--- ENDS ---
The boot used in the attack

Police have charged a woman with common assault after a female tourist was attacked with a boot in Belfast.

The victim was attacked out of the blue while enjoying a night out in the city on Saturday night.

Police said she was "savagely attacked by a boot wielding female".

"This attack was unprovoked and left her with heavy swelling," said a PSNI constable in a social media post.

"Our victim required medical attention, her night totally ruined. The assailant had left this boot at the scene of the assault."

The 23-year-old suspect is to appear in court on December 29 and charges will be reviewed by the Public Prosecution Service.
A British engineer who has developed an environmentally-friendly food growing system that can be deployed in disaster-hit areas has won backing from the UN.

Adam Dixon, from Pocklington, Yorkshire, has designed a hydroponics system which grows horticultural crops in water encased in a recyclable polymer film, requiring 10 times less land and water to produce food than conventional systems.

Mr Dixon, who studied mechanical engineering at Cardiff University, said his technology was a flat pack system which could be deployed in refugee camps or areas hit by hurricanes or tsunamis to deliver fresh food where good soil or land was not available.

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The entrepreneur has been honoured with a UN Young Champion of the Earth award, one of six people aged between 18 to 30 each representing a region of the world to get the prize for big ideas to protect or restore the environment.

The awards are being given out for the first time by UN Environment with Covestro, a major supplier of high-tech polymer materials, alongside the existing Champions of the Earth prize, and aim to support environmental innovation in younger generations.

The 25-year-old, who is receiving his award in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday, receives 15,000 US dollars (11,000) seed funding, training and mentoring to help bring the idea to life.

His company, Phytoponics, is raising investment to develop the technology at a commercial scale. He was prompted to come up with the technology in the face of deforestation and growing loss of habitats converted to farmland to feed the worlds increasing population.

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But he said he was interested in plants and hydroponics from a young age, first growing carnivorous plants and then using the hydroponics to grow plants in his bedroom as a teenager.

As an engineer, I developed my own systems, I was frustrated by the high cost and low usability of existing hydroponics, he said.

There hasnt been much evolution in the systems for a long time, and I think its ripe for development.

Its very sustainable because it uses much less land and water, he said, adding that it also reduced risks from food production as it delivered a more consistently high yield.

It is a sustainable food technology for our growing population, both in terms of reliability and reducing risk, and protecting the environment.

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The cost-effective, rapidly deployable technology was being piloted for use in refugee camps by the World Food Programme to support the supply of fresh produce to thousands of people.

Mr Dixon also said it could be used in places hit by natural disasters, for example after tsunamis where the land had been come unusable for crop growing due to salt influx.

His current focus was on designing hydroponics solutions for greenhouses where much of the fresh produce people ate was grown and creating efficient farms on the edge of cities to boost local produce.

But he has a vision that by 2050, the world will be using just 10% of its land for agriculture.
Prince Harry has paid tribute to Londons firefighters, meeting those who dealt with the horrors of the Grenfell Tower disaster at the brigades annual carol service.

The prince spoke to London Fire Brigade (LFB) commissioner Dany Cotton, who oversaw the fire and rescue services response at Grenfell, which claimed 71 lives.

Ms Cotton said the prince praised the work of firefighters, especially after this year.

Harry was attending the service at Westminster Cathedral without bride-to-be Meghan Markle following news of their engagement last week.

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She said that going to church was important for firefighters to mark the respect for the terrible tragedy weve seen.

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Gemma Bloxham, a firefighter in Lambeth, said the prince commended us on the work we do.

She said: He said more people should sign up for a uniform service and that the public sector should get more money.

The prince joked with one senior firefighter about whether his desk job prevented him from sliding down traditional firefighters poles.

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Harry also told Adam Toy, a 17-year old fire cadet from Havering, that you should be respected for your work whatever your age.

The service included a reading by TV chef and former Great British Bake Off presenter Mary Berry, who read an excerpt from Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol which focused on descriptions of pastry, custard and caramel.

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Mia Hilborn, the chaplain of the London Fire Brigade, led a prayer for Harry and Ms Markle, adding: We pray that God will bless their upcoming union and that You will bless all couples.

We give thanks for the happiness that they have brought the nation.
The victim and his friends were wearing fancy dress when they were approached by the two youths who boarded at West Ham. ( Gareth Fuller/PA Archive/PA Images)

Police are trying to track down two youths after a teenager was attacked on a train and forced to apologise for being gay.

The 19-year-old man was placed in a headlock and strangled until he eventually did what they said because he was struggling to breathe.

The incident occurred on a westbound Jubilee line train between West Ham and North Greenwich on October 21 at around 11.10am.

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The victim and his friends were wearing fancy dress for an event they were attending when they were approached by the two youths who boarded at West Ham.

The two suspects verbally abused the victim for being gay and turned aggressive when they were challenged.

They forced him into a headlock, snatched his phone and threatened to stab him until he apologised for being gay.

Although they returned the phone, the two youths then got into a fight with the victims friends in which a 25-year-old woman suffered bruising after being punched and pushed to the ground.

The victims left the train at North Greenwich.

The British Transport Police (BTP) released images of the two men on Monday and urged anyone who recognises them to come forward.

The BTP said in a statement: Hate crime will not be tolerated by the British Transport Police. We believe everyone has the right to travel safely.

We wont tolerate behaviour where someone is targeted because they are perceived to be different, or made to feel uncomfortable on their journey.
Theresa May pulled out at the last minute from a deal to break the Brexit logjam after meeting fierce resistance from the Democratic Unionist Party, Irelands prime minister has claimed.

Crunch talks between Mrs May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker ended in Brussels without a deal after the DUP  which props up the minority Conservative Government in Westminster  made clear it would not accept any arrangement which saw Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK.

Irish Taioseach Leo Varadkar said he was surprised and disappointed by the break-up of talks just hours after all sides confirmed they were satisfied with a text which would guarantee regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic in order to prevent the imposition of a hard border.

Downing Street made no response to Mr Varadkars claim.

But it is understood that, as well as the impasse over Ireland, disagreement remains over the role of the European Court of Justice in overseeing EU citizens rights in the UK after Brexit.

Both Mrs May and Mr Juncker said they were confident of reaching agreement in time for a key summit of the European Council on December 14, when it is hoped that leaders of the remaining 27 EU states will give the green light for the start of trade talks.

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The Prime Minister is expected back in Brussels for further talks before the end of the week, though sources declined to confirm reports that she would meet Mr Juncker and chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier on Wednesday.

European Council president Donald Tusk later disclosed that he had been preparing to move negotiations on to the second phase  dealing with trade and the transition to the post-Brexit EU/UK relationship  until the last-minute call for more time.

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Mrs May arrived for her lunchtime talks with Mr Juncker with expectations high for a breakthrough on remaining divorce issues which might allow Brexit negotiations to move on to their second phase by Christmas, easing the pressure on businesses to activate contingency plans to move staff and activities outside the UK.

But Irish pronouncements over an imminent deal on the border sparked a firm response from the DUP, which has previously warned it could withdraw its support for Tories in Westminster if a deal is proposed which threatens the integrity of the United Kingdom by effectively establishing a customs border in the Irish Sea.

Speaking at Stormont, DUP leader Arlene Foster said: We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom. We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

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Her comments were swiftly followed by statements from the leaders of devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and London, making clear that any special status for Northern Ireland would prompt demands from other parts of the UK for their own tailor-made Brexit.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that if one part of the UK could stay in the single market, there was no good practical reason why others cannot do the same.

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Allowing Northern Ireland alone to retain regulatory alignment with the EU would put Scotland at a double disadvantage when it comes to jobs and investment, she said.

Wales would fully expect to be offered the same deal as Northern Ireland to stay in the single market and customs union, said First Minister Carwyn Jones, while Londons Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan said a similar deal could help preserve tens of thousands of jobs in the capital, which voted overwhelmingly to Remain in the EU.

Mrs May broke off from talks with Mr Juncker to speak by phone with Mrs Foster, and it was shortly afterwards confirmed that talks were ending without a deal.

The Prime Minister said a lot of progress had been made, with a common understanding on many of the divorce issues.

But she added: On a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation.

Mr Juncker said that the EU and UK were narrowing our positions to a huge extent, but that two or three issues remained open for discussion.

In a press conference in Dublin, Mr Varadkar said that representatives of the UK Government and Mr Barniers team informed Irish negotiators early in the day that a form of words had been found which might satisfy the Republics demand for a cast-iron guarantee of no hard border after Brexit.

The Irish negotiating team received confirmation from the British Government and the Barnier taskforce that the United Kingdom had agreed a text on the border that met our concerns, said Mr Varadkar, adding that he confirmed Irelands support for the text to Mr Juncker and Mr Tusk.

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I am surprised and disappointed that the British Government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today, he said.

I accept that the Prime Minister has asked for more time, and I know that she faces many challenges and I acknowledge that she is negotiating in good faith.

Ireland wants to proceed to phase two  its very much in our interests to do so. However we cannot agree to do this unless we have firm guarantees that there will not be a hard border in Ireland under any circumstances.

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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the failure of talks showed Mrs Mays Government was completely ill-equipped to negotiate a successful Brexit deal for our country, while former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said she should leave office now.

But Tory MPs and peers who attended a briefing at Westminster from the PMs chief of staff Gavin Barwell and Brexit minister Steve Baker voiced satisfaction that divisions between Northern Ireland and the mainland had been avoided.
An 82-year-old man who claims to be the UKs longest-serving Father Christmas has said he has no plans to retire despite racking up 53 years in the job.

Ron Horniblew, who first wore his red and white suit for his son in 1964, has travelled the world and met countless families in a bid to spread festive cheer.

The pensioner said he still got a thrill from making people smile but said he longed for a return to the old days when children received just a few presents and not big, expensive gifts.

Mr Horniblew, who lives in Luton with his wife Betty and also works in the furniture business, said: If I can make one person happy and smiley, then thats great.

And youll get some people who are a bit miserable and think, silly old fool, but Im the one whos the clever one because Im happy and it makes me feel young.

Asked if he was tempted to throw in the sack, he said it was just his old knees which held him back and added: (Ive) no plans at all to retire, no.

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Im going to make it hard for the next person who says he is the longest-running Santa.

Mr Horniblew has visited countries including Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Kyrgyzstan to compete against other Santas and was once crowned world champion Father Christmas at the annual games.

He said one of his most moving experiences was during a trip to the Bahamas, where he visited an orphanage run by nuns.

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They were the best-mannered children I have ever seen, they were so polite and so happy to see me, he said.

He said they loved their simple gifts of tangerines and sweets wrapped in napkins tied with ribbons, which he believes would not have been received with the same enthusiasm by children at home.

Mr Horniblew, who is currently raising money for the East Anglian Air Ambulance through his festive endeavour, said he felt it was too much for children to be given top range gifts such as iPads.

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He admitted he also struggled to understand the huge numbers of presents they now receive.

He said: I say to parents, if you want a toy for a baby, the best toy is a cardboard box with some paper in it and they will play for hours with it. Plus, theyre using their imagination.

I go to peoples houses on Christmas morning, just to make sure that Ive delivered the right presents, and sometimes I have one or two presents left over on the old sleigh, and sometimes I cant walk across the lounge because theres so many presents.

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How on earth can children play with all these presents? In my days you had one or maybe two presents and that was it.

I think we ought to go back to those old days.
Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard has called on MSPs to back a campaign to stop RBS from closing more than a third of its branches.

He lodged a motion for debate in the Scottish Parliament, urging members to get behind calls for the UK Government to intervene.

RBS announced plans to close 62 branches in Scotland with the loss of 158 jobs, in a move driven by the fact more people are choosing to bank online or on mobile phones.

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The state-backed lender also plans to close 197 NatWest branches in England and Wales by mid-2018.

Trade union Unite described the decision as morally bankrupt.

Mr Leonard said the closures went against the banks 2010 promise not to shut branches if they were the last bank in town.

He said: This announcement by the Royal Bank of Scotland will damage high streets the length and breadth of Scotland.

It will lead to the direct loss of more than a hundred of jobs  and the indirect loss of many more.

It will hurt the elderly and the vulnerable, who depend on local banks the most.

The people of the UK own a majority of RBS and  if RBS bosses wont listen to reason  the UK Government must intervene to stop these closures.

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Unite has called on the Scottish Government to act to convince the bank to change course.

Business minister Paul Wheelhouse said legal and regulatory powers over banking are reserved but he is seeking a meeting with RBS and the UK Government as a matter or urgency.

The Treasury has said branch closures were commercial decisions in which it did not intervene.

A spokeswoman for RBS said the majority of branches closing in Scotland (72%) would have either a community banker or mobile branch stop available.

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She said: We have listened closely to feedback from local communities and have extended the time between announcing our decision and the branch closure to six months.

This has been done in order to ensure our customers have time to consider the right banking options for them.

Customers will also have a range of alternative ways to bank, including online and mobile for simple transactions, telephony and webchat for assisted help, and the Post Office for face-to-face interactions.
Tony Blair has been criticised after claiming the Good Friday Agreement is at risk because of Brexit.

The former PM said UK and Irish membership of the EU was "central" to the deal, and that free movement over the border had been a key factor in reaching a consensus.

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However, one of the main negotiators at the 1998 talks, Ulster Unionist peer Lord Empey, said Mr Blair's comments "lacked credibility".

"I was at the negotiations practically every day over the course of two years and the EU was only mentioned as a source of help for Northern Ireland to rebuild after 1998. This the EU did and we are grateful for that," he said.

"Europe was barely mentioned during the negotiations and was certainly not central to the Agreement.

"Unfortunately, like others, Tony Blair is now jumping on the bandwagon and attempting to use the Northern Ireland peace process as another means to refight the EU referendum."

Mr Blair, who helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement, had told BBC Radio 4's The World At One that the UK's decision to leave the EU was "problematic" for the peace process.

"One of the elements that was central to the Good Friday Agreement was that because the UK and the Republic of Ireland were both in the Europe Union it was easy to have arrangements which gave expression to the nationalist feelings in the North," he added.

"Free movement of people, free movement of goods, an open border was one part of that expression that the island of Ireland was together, even though strictly and constitutionally one part was in the UK, one part was in the Republic of Ireland.

"If you end up with a hard border, obviously that causes tensions. It doesn't mean that you should abandon the Good Friday Agreement, but it poses real challenges to it."

Mr Blair's intervention came as Sinn Fein MLA Declan Kearney warned that "Brexit, Tory austerity and the DUP's denial of rights" had combined to leave the Good Friday Agreement facing its most serious threat yet.

"The British Government and DUP alliance is based upon a unionist agenda defined in terms of support for Brexit, austerity and opposition to a rights-based framework for government," Mr Kearney said.

"They have created the current crisis and, as a result, the entire basis of the Good Friday Agreement is now faced with its most serious threat in the history of the peace process."

Meanwhile, Mr Blair has said the EU cannot allow the continued free flow of goods across the border if Britain is outside the single market and the customs union.

He said the UK could, if it chooses, permit the free movement of people between Northern Ireland and the Republic to continue - although it would make a "nonsense" of the argument Britain was leaving to take back control of its borders.

However, he said it would be a different matter as far as Brussels was concerned when it came to goods and services.

The only alternative, he said, was a "bespoke" deal specifically for Northern Ireland, separate from the rest of the UK.
When a Twitter user asked the internet to name a bitch badder than Taylor Swift, its safe to say the internet answered.

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The thread  which quickly became a history lesson on some of the most remarkable women from the past  has received over 8,800 replies.

The supposedly rhetorical question resulted in tributes to women who have demonstrated social resistance, Holocaust survivors and even female pirates.

And here are some of our favourite replies:

There were those who paid homage to warrior queens

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Others mentioned World War II Heroes

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These users paid tribute to social justice fighters

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Not forgetting these bad-ass pirates

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These awesome astronauts also made the list

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These more modern heroines were mentioned too

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Some took the opportunity to tribute some of the powerful women within their own lives

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Others even nominated themselves

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And of course no bad-ass female list would be complete without Stranger Things Eleven
By PTI: Islamabad, Dec 4 (PTI) Pakistans high court today questioned the legal standing of the agreement reached between the government and Islamist protest leaders, saying that none of the terms could be legally justified.

Activists of Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat, Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLY) and Sunni Tehreek Pakistan (ST) religious groups started protests last month.

After the weeks-long protest that had virtually paralysed the capital, the government and leaders of the TLY reached an agreement on November 26 in which the former conceded to the latters demands ? including dropping all the cases against the protesters.

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"How can cases filed under the Terrorism Act be dismissed?" Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui asked during the hearing regarding the recent sit-in at the Faizabad Interchange in the capital, Dawn News reported.

The Islamabad High Court (IHC), however, had noted a "number of serious objections on the terms of agreement" and expressed its displeasure over the armys role in the settlement made with the protesters.

"Who is the army to adopt a mediators role?" Justice Siddiqui had inquired in the previous hearing. "Where does the law assign this role to a major general?"

The IHC recommended that the legal standing of the agreement should be discussed in a joint session of parliament.

Attorney General of Pakistan (AGP) Ashtar Ausaf, however, disagreed with the recommendation, saying that since the high court had taken suo motu notice of the matter, the judiciary should oversee it. He had appeared in court on Justice Siddiquis orders, the report said.

The AGP requested the court to grant him some time to determine the legal position of the armys role as an arbitrator in the negotiations, saying that he was not in the country and needed time to prepare the report.

In a written order on November 27, the IHC bench had directed the attorney general to help the court determine how the armed forces could act as an arbitrator.

The Intelligence Bureau also presented a report on the botched operation against the protesters by the police while the chief commissioner of Islamabad submitted a detailed report on the protest.

The judge remarked that the protesters were guilty of blasphemy, pointing to the language used by the protest leaders and participants during the sit-in.

Pakistans law minister Zahid Hamid was accused by the protesters of blasphemy after a reference to the Prophet Muhammad was left out of a revised version of the electoral oath. He called it a clerical error.

Hamids resignation cleared the main hurdle in the lifting of siege of the capital by protesters. PTI AMS AKJ AMS

--- ENDS ---
A story of a friendship made through a word game app is warming the hearts of thousands of Twitter users.

On Friday, Twitter user @Filth800, also known as Spencer, flew to Florida to meet a woman he has played over 300 games of Words With Friends with, and shared the pictures of their first meeting online.

Spencer is 22 and his favourite competitor, Roz, is 86.

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The meeting was set up by pastor Amy Butler, who flew with Spencer from Harlem to his meeting with Roz.

From the photos, it looks like the pair have really hit it off.

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Words With Friends is a crossword-style game which operates like an online version of scrabble. Players can challenge people they know, or choose to play strangers.

After rumours emerged that Roz had taken the upper hand in their long-running game, Spencer felt the need to clarify. It turns out hes beating her by quite a margin.

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Twitter absolutely loved the story and the Words With Friends app even chimed in.

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This woman even shared her own Words With Friends story.

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What a beautiful story.
Australians voted in favour of legalising same-sex marriage in a non-binding postal survey this year

A politician proposed to his partner during a debate on a bill which could soon legalise same-sex marriage in Australia.

The country's House of Representatives resumed on Monday for its final two-week session of the year, which is giving priority to achieving same-sex marriage reform.

The major parties want the legislation passed this week after a majority of Australians endorsed reform in a postal ballot last month.

Last week the Senate approved the bill and rejected all proposed amendments that would have increased legal protections for those who would discriminate against gay couples on religious grounds.

But several politicians, including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, intend to persist with amendments rejected by the Senate.

Mr Turnbull, a gay marriage supporter, says he wants wedding celebrants, not just those affiliated with churches, to have the right to refuse to officiate at same-sex marriages.

Mr Turnbull later told Parliament that nothing in the bill threatened religious freedoms.

"We must not fail to recognise that there is sincere, heartfelt anxiety about the bill's impact on religious freedom," he said.

"That is why I will support several amendments to the bill which will provide that additional reassurance in respect of their fundamental rights and freedoms," he added.

If the House of Representatives supported such an amendment, then the altered bill would have to return to the Senate for ratification, delaying the reform.

Tim Wilson, who is part of the conservative coalition, was among the first politicians to join the debate and used his speech to propose to his partner Ryan Bolger, who was watching from the public gallery.

"In my first speech I defined our bond by the ring that sits on both of our left hands," Mr Wilson said. "There's only one thing left to do: Ryan Patrick Bolger, will you marry me?"

The 33-year-old primary school teacher responded: "yes," which was recorded in the official parliamentary record.

Warren Entsch, a long-term advocate of marriage equality within the conservative government, helped draft the bill and was the first to speak for it in the House on Monday.

"The bill which the Senate passed is a robust bill, a whole range of religious protections are already in place," Mr Entsch said as he introduced the bill.

"We have made sure that we have removed any element of discrimination in this bill while ensuring that religious freedoms are protected."

Mr Entsch said related amendments to bolster freedoms of speech and education rights could be debated in a separate bill next year and should not be used to delay the reform.

"Australians are sick of excuses and they're sick of delays," Mr Entsch said.

A nonbinding postal survey found that 62% of Australian respondents wanted reform.

Almost 80% of Australia's registered voters took part in the two-month survey. While marriage equality could become law this week, state marriage registries say they would not have the paperwork to proceed with weddings until January.

AP
Former Salvadoran Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano Morales seen before boarding his flight to Madrid (AP)

A former Salvadoran colonel has denied being involved in the massacre of five Spanish priests in El Salvador 28 years ago, lawyers have said.

Two lawyers familiar with the proceedings said Inocente Orlando Montano told a Spanish National Court judge on Monday that no mention of plans to assassinate the priests was made during a November 15 1989 meeting he attended.

Father Ignacio Ellacuria and five other Jesuit priests were killed the next day along with their housekeeper and her daughter.

Fr Ellacuria was mediating talks at the time to end the Salvadoran civil war.

The United States extradited Montano to Spain last week to face charges in the deaths of the five priests who were Spanish citizens.

He was El Salvador's vice minister for public security during the 1980s.

AP
A conversation between US President Donald Trump's former national security adviser and the Russian ambassador to the United States did not influence Russian President Vladimir Putin's response to sanctions imposed by Mr Trump's predecessor, the Kremlin has said.

Former adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI about reaching out to Russian officials.

Prosecutors have said Mr Flynn in December asked Russia's ambassador to the US, Sergei Kislyak, "not to escalate the situation" after the outgoing Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia in retaliation for suspected election interference.

Just days later, Mr Putin opted not to retaliate.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday it was "absurd" to suggest that the phone conversation could have influenced Mr Putin's decision and added that "such requests could not have been passed on" to the president.

AP
The Palestinian president has warned that US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital would jeopardise the White House's nascent Mideast peace efforts.

President Mahmoud Abbas' comments came amid a diplomatic push by the Palestinian leader to rally international support against the possible US move later this week.

"Any American step related to the recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, or moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, represents a threat to the future of the peace process and is unacceptable for the Palestinians, Arabs and internationally," Mr Abbas told a group of visiting Arab politicians from Israel, according to the official Wafa news agency.

US officials have said President Donald Trump may recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital this week as a way to offset his likely decision to delay his campaign promise of moving the US embassy there.

Israel regards Jerusalem as its capital, with most government functions, including the prime minister's office, Supreme Court and parliament, located in the holy city.

But the international community says the city's status should be determined through peace talks. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as their capital.

Abbas' spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeneh, said late Saturday that the president had been in touch with Arab and world leaders to rally opposition against any US move on Jerusalem.

He said Mr Abbas had been in contact with leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and France.

"We believe that such an American step, if it takes place, will enter the region in a new course, and a dangerous phase whose results cannot be controlled," he said.

The White House, led by Mr Trump's adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has held months of meetings with leaders across the region ahead of an expected peace initiative.

While the proposal is expected to be regional in scope, little is known about the details, including whether Mr Trump will continue the policies of recent predecessors in supporting the notion of an independent Palestinian state.

Mr Kushner said Sunday that Mr Trump has not yet decided whether to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital or whether to proceed immediately in moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

"He is still looking at a lot of different facts," Mr Kushner said at the Saban Forum, an annual Mideast policy conference in Washington.

Ahead of Mr Kushner's comments, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, urged the US not to move forward with any change on Jerusalem's status.

Doing so, he said, "is not only going to promote international anarchy and disrespect for global institutions and law, but it will also be disqualifying itself to play any role in any initiative toward achieving a just and lasting peace".

AP
Pope Francis urged Bangladeshi priests and nuns to resist the "terrorism of gossip" that can tear religious communities apart as he ended his Asian tour.

Francis told the priests and nuns gathered in Chittagong's Holy Rosary Church on Saturday that he was ditching his eight-page speech and would instead speak from his heart.

For the next 15 minutes he drew laughter from the crowd, mixing paternal advice with gentle warnings about the havoc of gossip "bombs".

"How many religious communities have been destroyed because of a spirit of gossip?" said Francis, adding that he was speaking from personal experience. "Please, bite your tongue."
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House (AP)

President Donald Trump has said he feels "very badly" for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who last week pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

The president said it is "very unfair" how Flynn has been treated, adding "it's like they ruined his life".

Mr Trump tried to contrast Flynn's treatment with that of his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, whom he says "lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened".

Mr Trump spoke to reporters on Monday as he departed the White House to head to Utah.

Mr Trump fired Flynn for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russia.

Mr Flynn left the White House in February after acknowledging that he had given an incomplete account to Mr Pence about his contacts regarding Russia.

He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about reaching out to the Russians on Mr Trump's behalf.

He is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

AP
Heavy snow in Germany has been blamed for two deaths, several accidents and dozens of cancelled flights.

The German news agency dpa reported that an 86-year-old woman died in Uelzen in Lower Saxony on Sunday when a car veered on a slippery road and crashed into another vehicle travelling in the opposite direction.

Police said an 83-year-old man with dementia froze to death in Kolleda in eastern Germany. Officers found his body in the snow on the side of a road near the nursing home where he was living and believe he may have got lost.

In Frankfurt, more than 80 flights had to be cancelled Sunday because of the weather.

Several high-speed InterCity Express trains were ordered to slow down in central and southern Germany because of the snow.

AP
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un thanked workers at a factory that built the tires for a huge vehicle used to transport a new intercontinental ballistic missile that was test-launched last week. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)

Hundreds of aircraft including two dozen stealth jets began training on Monday as the United States and South Korea launched their biggest-ever combined air force exercise.

The war games come a week after North Korea test-fired its most powerful missile ever, an ICBM that may be able to target the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The five-day drill, called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies' wartime capabilities and preparedness, South Korea's defence ministry said.

The US Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets that include six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets for the annual training exercise in the Korean Peninsula. About 12,000 US military personnel are participating.

In total, 230 aircraft will be flying at eight US and South Korean military installations in the South.

Some local media report that B-1B bombers will also join aerial drills, but officials did not confirm their participation.

The training, held each year in late autumn, is not in response to any incident or provocation, the Seventh Air Force said in a statement.

North Korea's state media said the drill pushes the Korean Peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war". Such language is typical in North Korean propaganda because the country claims US-South Korean drills are preparation for invasion.

Nevertheless, tensions are at a particularly dangerous point as North Korea edges toward its goal of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, and as US President Donald Trump ramps up his rhetoric toward the North, threatening, for instance, to unleash "fire and fury" against the country.

Pyongyang will "seriously consider" counter-measures against the drill, and the US and South Korea will "pay dearly for their provocations", the Korean Central News Agency said on Sunday before the start of the exercises.

While many South Koreans typically ignore North Korea's rhetoric, some senior American officials have expressed concern following the ICBM test, North Korea's third.

On Sunday, Lindsey Graham, a Republican US senator from the state of South Carolina, said he believes it is time for US military families in South Korea to leave the country because conflict with North Korea is getting close.

The US government has not announced a formal decision to evacuate American citizens from South Korea, and there were no such signs in the diplomatic community in Seoul. An evacuation of dependants by Seoul's closest ally and major military defender could prompt a panicked reaction by other countries, and among South Koreans.

In addition to American diplomats and other embassy workers, about 28,500 US troops operate in South Korea, many of whom take their families on their postings and live on huge, well-guarded military bases.

Also on Sunday, the White House's national security adviser said Mr Trump will take care of North Korean threats by "doing more ourselves".

"The priorities that the president's given us to move as quickly as we can to resolve this crisis with North Korea," General HR McMaster told Fox News.

"If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it, because he has said he's not going to allow this murderous, rogue regime to threaten the United States."

AP
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House (AP)

The US Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to fully enforce a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries.

The justices, with two dissenting votes, said Monday that the policy could take full effect even as legal challenges against it make their way through the courts.

The action suggests the high court could uphold the latest version of the ban that US President Donald Trump announced in September.

The ban applies to travellers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Lower courts had said people from those nations with a claim of a "bona fide" relationship with someone in the United States could not be kept out of the country.

Grandparents, cousins and other relatives were among those the courts said could not be excluded.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have left the lower court orders in place.

The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals and the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, will be holding arguments on the legality of the ban this week.

Both courts are dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expected those courts to reach decisions "with appropriate dispatch".

Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.
By PTI: Peshawar, Dec 4 (PTI) A Pakistani youth, who wrote Hindustan Zindabad on the wall of his house in Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province, has been booked for treason, a media report said today.

Sajid Shah had written Hindustan Zindabad on the outer wall of his home in Nara Amazi area of the province, Daily Express quoted police as saying.

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He has subsequently been booked for treason, they said.

Some local people told him to erase the slogan from the wall as it hurt their national pride, the police said.

Some people took pictures of the wall on their smartphones and emailed them to senior police officials.

"We have booked the young man on orders from the high- ups", the officer said. PTI CPS AKJ CPS

--- ENDS ---
Library picture of the aftermath of a bombing raid in Yemen

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has urged Yemenis to unify against the country's Shiite Houthi rebels, describing them as "Iranian militias" and a "nightmare".

Mr Hadi, who has been in self-imposed exile in Riyadh in recent past years, delivered his televised speech hours after the Houthis killed their onetime ally, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Mr Saleh's forces and Houthis joined ranks in 2014 against Mr Hadi's government, forcing him to seek military intervention by his Gulf neighbours.

When the Saleh-Houthi alliance began to unravel, Mr Hadi offered the opportunity of a fresh start in relations with Mr Saleh, days before his death.

"Yemen is passing through a decisive turning point that needs our unity and steadfastness in the face of these sectarian militias," Mr Hadi said, referring to the Houthis.

He offered condolences for the death of Mr Saleh, describing him and others who were killed in the past days of clashes as "martyrs".

"Let's put our hands together to end this nightmare," said Mr Hadi, who succeeded Mr Saleh in 2012.

He added that government forces would support an "uprising" against the Houthis in Sanaa.

Mr Saleh, Yemen's former president and long-time strongman, has been killed as his loyalists and Shiite rebels battled for control of the capital.

A video circulating online purported to show Mr Saleh's body, his eyes open but glassy, motionless with a gaping head wound, as he was being carried in a blanket by rebel fighters chanting "God is great" who then dumped him into a pickup vehicle.

Blood stained his shirt under a dark suit.

Circumstances of his death remained unclear but some officials said rebels killed him as he tried to leave the capital.

Mr Saleh's death was announced on Monday by the rebels, known as Houthis, who have been fighting Mr Saleh's forces for the past week.

Two of Mr Saleh's associates and a third official from the government of Yemen's internationally recognised president, Mr Hadi, confirmed the death.

His death and the fighting between his supporters and the Houthis puts the civil war on an unpredictable path.

Mr Saleh allied with the Houthis in the years after he was ousted from power in 2011, and the support of his loyalist military units was key to helping the Houthis overrun the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, driving out Mr Hadi's government.

But in recent months, the alliance frayed amid Houthi suspicions Mr Saleh was leaning toward the Saudi-led coalition backing Mr Hadi.

Mr Hadi's forces, trying to take advantage of the collapse of the alliance, announced they would march on Sanaa.

But even without Mr Saleh's loyalists, the rebels remain a powerful force.

"The leader of treason has been killed," Houthis' TV network al-Masriah said.

Several Houthi military officials said Mr Saleh was killed as he headed along with top party leaders from Sanaa to his hometown of Sanhan, nearby.

Houthi fighters followed him in 20 armoured vehicles, attacked and killed him and almost all those with him, the officials said.

A Houthi media official, Abdel-Rahman al-Ahnomi said Houthi fighters killed Mr Saleh as he tried to flee to Saudi Arabia though the province of Marib, to the east of the capital.

Mr Saleh ruled Yemen for more than 30 years.

He was forced to resign after months of protests against him during an Arab Spring uprising in 2011.

AP

The UN urged an immediate halt to fighting in Sanaa .

Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that "it is paramount that civilians are protected" and reminded all parties that deliberate attacks on civilians, hospitals and other civilian sites "may constitute war crimes".

AP
Everyone claims to be a feminist these days - Meghan Markle has affirmed her feminist credentials. But feminism is a wide agenda, and that's why I wrote a book to try and clarify, to myself as well as others, what being a feminist now means. Are you a feminist? Take this test

Questions

1. Do you have your own bank account or do you share one with a partner or spouse?

2. Do you believe in solidarity between women in the workplace and elsewhere?

3. If you plan to marry, will you take your husband's name?

4. The title of 'Ms' entered the English language around 1970, coined by the American feminist Sheila Michaels (although it had first appeared in 1901) and has since become standard. But should we always address a woman as 'Ms'?

5. Would you vote to remove Article 41.2 of the Irish Constitution which affirms that "the State recognises that by her life in the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved"?

6. Philosophers say that you cannot have both 'equality' and 'freedom', since once equality is enforced, it must curtail certain freedoms. For example, in the 'gay cake' row, those who ordered a cake celebrating a gay wedding affirmed their right to equality, whereas the cake providers argued their freedom to choose what they baked. Which would you favour - equality or freedom?

7. Are you opposed to the gender pay gap?

8. Is prostitution the exploitation of women?

9. Should there be a law enforcing consent in sexual interchange?

10. In the debate over abortion, does a feminist say:

(a) It's my body and it is always my right to choose;

(b) I support a woman's right to abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy - after that the foetus begins to acquire rights;

(c) I believe life begins at conception, and mother and baby should not be seen as being mutually hostile.

ANSWERS

1. Establishing a married woman's entitlement to make her own financial arrangements was an important issue for Women's Liberation. Yet some women freely choose to share a bank account or credit arrangement. Women who earn more than spouses or partners can be more relaxed about this than women who earn less. They feel more in control anyway.

2. You're supposed to, but apparently it doesn't always happen. Only last week a young woman told me: "Men are more helpful to me at work than other women."

3. There has never been a legal obligation to do so and today all kinds of compromises can be reached. The American solution is sometimes useful, as in Hillary Rodham Clinton, although eventually she seems to have decided that Clinton was a better brand than Rodham Clinton.

4. Surely it's up to the person herself? Theresa May chooses to be called Mrs May, though some still insist on calling her Ms May. Nomenclature variation can lead to confusion, especially where there are children involved. 'Mrs' has the virtue of clarifying that it's a married name and not a patronymic. You can also keep one name for the private sphere and one for the professional. Handy.

5. Many feminists consider the Republic's 1937 formula totally archaic. Yet it's been suggested that in divorce or separation cases, this clause may support a fairer deal for homemakers. A compromise might be to amend or update the clause to include respect for all homemakers, who surely do contribute to "the common good".

6. All societies which enforce equality forfeit certain freedoms. People who have less access to opportunity tend to prefer equality; people who have more advantages in life tend to prefer freedom.

7. Almost everyone is (and should be) opposed to the gender pay gap, but it's more complicated than it seems because pay scales are often calculated on 'averages', and women sometimes make choices which reduce the female average. More women work part-time than men. Men often work in riskier jobs (construction workers are seldom female). The best advice to give a daughter would be: go into STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) - not into care work, the acting profession or the humanities. Also: marry a man in a stay-at-home profession, and support more childcare to provide more workplace choice.

8. There is a long tradition in feminism, going back to Josephine Butler, the anti-slavery campaigner, of helping women get out of sex work, especially where they've been forced into it by circumstances. But there are also libertarian feminists who say that if a woman wants to sell her body, that's her call.

9. Even lawyers concede that consent can be non-verbal, and a non-verbal signal would be difficult to establish in law. Shakespeare wrote: "Sometimes from her eyes I did receive fair speechless messages." No woman should ever be coerced (let alone raped) in a sexual relationship, and a revival of the rule of manners and morals might not go amiss. Yet if we are really and truly honest with ourselves, we know how many layers of complexity there can be in those non-verbal signals, and feminism should also mean taking responsibility for our own actions, inclinations and feelings.

10. Women who identify as feminists have given all of these responses.
I'm delighted that, as his constant whingeing demonstrates, despite having a brass neck Gerry Adams also has a thin skin. Increasingly - as he gets older and even more pompous - he takes any kind of criticism as lese-majeste (an offence against a ruler's dignity).

Criticism from uppity journalists infuriates him.

He was moaning again the other day in the course of a speech in Cork intended to stir up more alarm and despondency about Brexit.

"There are some journalists who do their job as fairly as they can but the likes of the Irish Independent group are on the same agenda as when they vilified John Hume for even talking to me as one MP to another MP about peace," he said.

My colleagues and I didn't vilify John Hume.

But some of us certainly criticised his pan-nationalist strategy as undemocratic and ill-advised, and thought that bringing the IRA into talks was both wrong and foolish.

I was appalled that his lead was slavishly followed by Irish Governments who didn't themselves understand unionists and therefore failed to grasp that Hume simply disliked them. He didn't want them killed, but wanted them bullied, not persuaded.

As the late Sean O'Callaghan wrote in April 1998 in Prospect magazine "without any debate, and denouncing his critics as 'anti-peace'", Hume "blurred the clear dividing line between extreme violent nationalism and constitutional nationalism" that had been a feature of the independent Irish state.

"He has brought the political arsonist into the house without taking the box of matches from his pocket."

Peace, as was shown in South Africa, needed to be made from the centre outwards.

But in Ireland the perversion of the peace process was to make it from the paramilitaries inwards.

It was a gift to extreme republicanism that would in time destroy the centre parties by rewarding intransigence and thus exacerbating tribalism.

Although I think patriotism is a virtue, I'm no fan of nationalism, which has little to do with reason and much to do with prejudice.

I hear Irish people lamenting that Brexit is a manifestation of English nationalism.

Not in my book, it isn't. It's a legitimate patriotic desire to regain sovereignty.

Nationalism, as George Orwell pointed out, is always focused on "victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliation".

Just listen to the language of Sinn Fein, who peddle a particularly toxic version of Irish nationalism north and south in which anyone who doesn't share the party's aspirations to power is an enemy.

These days this is anyone who wants to find helpful solutions to the problems posed to the island by Brexit.

The party has no love for the European Union.

In 2008 and 2009 it was the most vociferous opponent of the Lisbon Treaty.

Now, however, Adams and his band of IRA veterans who dictate republican strategy see Brexit as an opportunity to make mischief that will undermine the stability of Northern Ireland, encourage confrontations between the British and Irish Governments and spread the virus of Anglophobia.

Last week Adams was warning the Cork audience "that a 'Tory-led' Brexit will be equally as bad for Munster as for the border counties" and said "the time is right for the Government to push for a referendum on a united Ireland".

Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail want the Republic to be on cordial terms with unionists and the British Government, but at every turn they have Sinn Fein activists singing in unison from a negative and aggressive playbook.

What makes sense for Ireland is to use its clout to encourage the achievement of the soft border almost everyone wants through technological innovation (as supported by Enda Kenny and Bertie Ahern), legal ingenuity and the best possible free trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the EU.

What Sinn Fein demands is the fracturing of the United Kingdom by keeping Northern Ireland in the EU, and it keeps up the pressure on the Irish Government.

"I raised this with the Taoiseach today," said Mr Adams in Cork. "I said, 'you have a veto, use it'."

What responsible Irish politicians should remember is that the arsonists still have their matches in their pockets.

And I'm pleased that responsible journalists will go on pointing that out.
We live in an age in which computers and the internet are impacting on everyone's daily life.

Personally, I do not like the idea of having everything connected to the internet as it poses potential data and security risks.

Already there have been numerous reports of the hacking of websites and data breaches. These data security issues are getting worse - just imagine what could well happen with self drive cars!

My daughter, who lives in Heidelberg, tells me that the German government has now banned the sale of smart watches and toys for children, such as smart dolls, over concerns with surveillance and spying.

I understand a German university is carrying out research to address this ongoing problem to combat the hackers, especially regarding smart medical devices such as MRI and CT scanners, home monitors and pacemakers.

The government should introduce a total moratorium on their further implementation before disaster strikes.

Already the UK Information Commissioner is now advising that smart toys and watches should have their cameras turned off to prevent possible spying.

I am reminded of the remark made by the Duke of Wellington to Colonel Sir William de Lancey on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo: "If I thought my hair knew what my brain was thinking, I'd shave it off and wear a wig."

Cadogan West

Strangford,

Co Down
The people in the North voted to remain in the EU. Yet on March 29 Theresa May signalled to the European Council the British Government's intention to leave the EU and drag us out.

The first phase of a two-year negotiation on Brexit started in June and prioritises the British Government 'divorce bill' financial settlement with the EU, the rights of EU citizens, and how Brexit will impact Ireland.

Read More

The EU made clear this Brexit process must safeguard the Good Friday Agreement in all its parts, the rights of citizens, North-South co-operation including no hardening of the border. Yet there was no serious offer of workable political solutions by Britain.

Theresa May has been given until today as an "absolute deadline" to spell out how she intends to precisely resolve these issues.

Her meeting today with president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, comes at a critical juncture.

The EU is waiting to see what she will present as "sufficient progress", and what this means for our island.

Last Friday the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, visited Dublin.

He said if the British Government's offer on the border is unacceptable for Ireland, then it will also be unacceptable for the EU. This strong stance is welcome.

It will be a test for the Taoiseach to stand up against the British Government, DUP and the right-wing Press if she fails to bring forward certainty and clarity for citizens and businesses.

The DUP are Theresa May's partners in this sorry mess.

They are showing a reckless disregard for the people who elected them for self-serving party gain in London.

I have been back and forth to London and Dublin and met with the key EU negotiators in Europe.

I made it clear the DUP do not speak for the cross-community majority here who voted Remain.

No one has made a credible case we will be better off outside the EU - how we will maintain cross-border services such as the cancer centre at Altnagelvin or the freedom to travel and trade across the EU.

Brexit will mean our economic growth will be hampered because of our restricted competitiveness and market reach.

The cost of doing business here risks being sky high due to imposed trade tariffs and regulatory divergence.

All of this against a backdrop of brutal Tory austerity, severe cuts to the block grant and limited public investment.

The lie is that Theresa May says Brexit represents stability when it does the opposite.

The EU fully recognise the unique and special circumstances in Ireland and the need for a bespoke solution. We believe this means special status for the North remaining within the EU, including the customs union and single market.

This is a common sense, practical and achievable solution. And despite the claims of the DUP, it will not change the constitutional position of the North.

We are told Brexit is happening and just accept it. I will never countenance such a complete abdication of political leadership.

We are at a crucial juncture in the process. The Irish Government have a veto and must demand clarity and certainty from the British Government.

However, it is not up to the Irish Government alone.

When we voted in the referendum, we voted as a single community united to remain in the EU.

We all must stand up to challenge those promoting Brexit.

It is therefore essential now that every sector of society, regardless of political allegiance, who want to protect our interests and future, speak out and make sure the European Council hear our voice and we make it count.

The stakes are too high, and to do anything less is surely not an option.
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By PTI: Bengaluru, Dec 4 (PTI) A political slugfest has erupted over the arrest of BJP MP Pratap Simha, with the party today holding protests against it, alleging that it was a "political vendetta" by the Congress government headed by Siddaramaiah.

Simha, arrested at Hunsur near Mysuru ahead of a Hamnuman Jayanti procession yesterday, is now out on a station bail which is granted at police station-level.

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While the BJP alleged that Simhas arrest was part of a political vendetta and held protests at Bengaluru, Mysuru and other places, the ruling Congress chided him for his conduct.

Accusing Simha of attempting to dictate the police, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah questioned whether his conduct was befitting a person holding the position of an MP.

The chief minister said a case was registered against Simha on charges of assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty, rash driving and endangering life or personal safety of others, which were non-bailable.

"We could have arrested and sent him to jail, but considering that he is an MP I said not to do it," he told reporters in New Delhi.

Simha and others were taken into preventive custody and later arrested after he along with the organisers allegedly insisted on making changes in the specified route for the Hanuman Jayanti procession, ignoring the advice of the administration.

On being stopped by the police for his preventiveAarrest yesterday, Simha allegedly took the drivers seat of theA vehicle he was travelling in and tried to drive off byA knocking down barricades in the area.

Questioning the intentions of the government inA restricting the procession, BJP state Chief B S YeddyurappaA accused the chief minister of indulging in vendetta politics.

"Do we have to take your (Congress government) permission for celebrating Hanuman Jayanti?" he asked.

Hitting out at Simha, state Home Minister Ramalinga ReddyAalleged that the BJP was making such politically motivated statementsAkeeping in mind the upcoming assembly elections, followingAinstructions from party chief Amit Shah.

Noting that the law was same for all, he claimed the BJP leaders, including Yeddyurappa, lacked basic knowledge of law. "It is high time that a workshop is conducted for them about it," he added. PTI KSU RA VS AAR

--- ENDS ---
Manushi Chillars Enthralling Look For A Press Meet Bollywood Wardrobe Dona

Manushi Chillar was spotted in New Delhi while attending a media event. She was wearing an off-shoulder statement suit in a very classy way. The blue coloured off-shoulder attire was a perfect style statement for a formal press meet.

This is one of the best style books carried by Manushi until now and she matched it elegantly with a rectangular clutch and black heels.

By far, all the looks that we have explored of Manushi, it is crystal clear that she is the emerging style icon of the tinsel town. We are totally amazed by her capability to carry every kind of style book so well. No wonder, she beholds the Miss World title.
Astonishing Girl Who Can Read Blindfolded After Activating Her Third Eye Life oi-Syeda Farah Noor

We all wish to have super powers and what if we were blessed with any of it? Sounds interesting, right? There are many ways as to how one can fool others about their super natural powers by just tricking the other person.

But do you know that there is a little girl out there who has superpowers and she calls herself as Ma Yogamaatha? She claims to read while she is blind-folded and when you witness the video of her superpowers, you would be shocked as we are too!

You May Also Like To Read: Superstitions That People Follow Around The World

Here are some of the details of Ma Yogamaatha, the little girl who is stunning the world with her special talent of reading anything while being blind-folded.

Who Is Ma Yogamaatha? She is a 9-year-old girl from North Carolina. Apparently, she is tagged as the girl with a third eye, as she can sense and act even when she is blind-folded! Yogamaatha says that this power is a learned ability. Also Read:List Of Crazy Superstitious Beliefs In India How Is This Possible That She Can Read? Her unique talent of reading stuff while being blind-folded is attained after Yogamaatha attended a course at Gurukul in India. The course was initiated by Guru Nityananda. Her Talent Includes Initially, it was believed that this was a trick to fool the audience, but as she revealed her powers, people were stunned to see that she can read, play games, draw, etc., while being blind-folded! Apart from this, she even stated that she can also ride a bicycle through traffic and dodge cars!! In One Of Her Seminar's She Even In one of her public performances, she not only read books while being blindfolded, but also played tic-tac and even mimicked the arrangement of plastic dough nuts! Her mum claims that her daughter is a more positive and confident person after she has learnt the tactics of reading books while being blind-folded. Is This Talent For Real Or Fake? Though the various videos of the little girl displaying her talent are going viral, it raises many questions on the minds of the readers of this news being real or fake, which still is debatable. Our Opinion We wonder if this is real talent or just a way of tricking people and earn money, as there are no much real details of the little girl who is known by her pseudo-name and no details about her family are revealed as well. Anyhow, Do Watch The Unbelievable Video And Do Decide For Yourself Also, let us know what would you do if you were able to read while being blind-folded?.
Daily Horoscope: 4th December 2017 Life oi-Lekhaka

4 December Horoscope |4    | Daily Horoscope Astrology | Boldsky

There are 12 zodiac signs divided in a year. But have you even wondered why the first zodiac house doesn't start from the 1st of January? That is because in the 17th century, the beginning of the year was considered to be the spring equinox. All the signs were subsequently placed after that.

The start and end dates of each zodiac depends upon the time the sun stays in their respective houses. There are different variations of the start and end dates of each zodiac calculated by different astrologers, usually up to a day. That is because of the change in GMT and dates in different countries. Also, did you know that people who are born in between two zodiac signs are called Cusps? In such cases their zodiac sign depends on studying the exact position of the sun during the time of their birth.

Your daily horoscope will determine the events happening in your future. However, we alone have the power in our hands to change it. Though astrology is very accurate, free-will will always prevail with us.

Here is your Daily astrology Horoscope for December 4th 2017.

Aries You will be blessed by Goddess Lakshmi and will gain wealth. You will be bombarded with Success, fame, Respect and recognition. Your Business will earn you profits. Taurus It will be a lucky day for you today. Matters will be good economy-wise. Your good work will be the subject of discussion in your social circle. You will achieve recognition in your social and work life. Gemini You will come across opportunities to get involved in tasks relating to Religion and meditation. Make sure to make a donation if visiting a religious place. Your economy will be good. Cancer You are advised to take precautions and not get involved in unnecessary arguments. Take the advice of seniors in the field before taking any decision as today is not a good day for you. Leo You will spend your day partaking in religious activities and are predicted to undertake a journey to a religious place with friends and family. You may work towards serving justice and may be successful in this endeavor. Virgo You may show empathy in your work today. Your state of mind will be happy. Gaining recognition, fame and fortune are predicted for you today. Libra Peace in your domestic life is predicted. Your income in business will also increase. However, you may be worried over an issue. Scorpio It is a good day for students today. Any travel you undertake for educational purpose will be successful. You are also predicted to gain through the help of old contacts. Sagittarius You will be troubled, both physically and mentally. Special attention should be given to health. Controlling your anger will help you stay away from troubles. You may be inclined towards artistic pursuits. Capricorn You are advised to stay away from arguments as they may put you in a tight spot. Involve yourself in religious events to keep your mind occupied and your thoughts constructive. Aquarius It is an auspicious day for you today. People will be drawn to you due to your excellent way with words, even those who are complete strangers to you. Peace is predicted to prevail in your domestic life. Pisces You will be a bit worried over issues regarding money barter. It is a good day to invest in shares, but with precaution. You might go on a trip to an important place with friends. Gain of wealth through Wife and Son is foreseen.
In case of no contest, Rahul Gandhi will be elected as the Congress president unopposed later today.

By India Today Web Desk: With decks cleared for the Gandhi scion to take over the reins of Congress, incumbent vice-president Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination for the party presidential election around 11am at the party headquarters.

Today is the last date for filing candidacy for the Congress party's president post, whereas scrutiny of papers would be done tomorrow.

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Names of candidates (if any apart from Rahul Gandhi) will be announced on Tuesday itself. The last date of withdrawal of candidature is December 11.

In case of no contest, Rahul Gandhi will be elected as the Congress president unopposed later that day.

But, if nomination(s) are filed, then the polling will take place on December 16 and the results will be announced on December 19.

HERE ARE THE LIVE UPDATES:

Rahul Gandhi is a darling of the Congress and he will carry forward the great traditions of the party: Dr Manmohan Singh.

Congratulating Rahul Gandhi, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah said, "I am confident that the party will renew itself with greater vigour and scale new heights under your able leadership. I wish you success!"

As Mr Rahul Gandhi files his nomination, I wish him the very best as Congress President. #IndiaWithRahulGandhi&; P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) December 4, 2017 "Have no doubt that we will make tremendous strides under your unifying & progressive leadership @OfficeOfRG! Wish you the very best! Look forward to undertaking this journey of building an India of energy, opportunity & unity with you. #IndiawithRahulGandhi," MP Jyotiraditya Scindia posted on Twitter.

The Gandhi scion is likely to be elected unopposed as no other leader has filed nomination yet.

Rahul Gandhi with Dr.Manmohan Singh and other senior party leaders at AICC HQ after filing nomination pic.twitter.com/ilzQEu68tH&; ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017 Senior leader Ahmed Patel, Puducherry CM Narayanswamy, Motiwal Vohra, former Assam CM Tarun Gogoi and former Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot present at the Congress heaadquarters.

Rahul meets senior party leaders including Sheila Dikshit and Mohsina Kidwai after filing nomination.

Rahul Gandhi files nomination for Congress president post at party headquarters in Delhi.

If you ask me, I think he will make a very good Prime Minister: Capt.Amarinder Singh,Punjab CM on #RahulGandhi pic.twitter.com/nTkqIahuMy&; ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017 Rahul reaches Congress headquarters, to file nomination shortly. Sonia, Manmohan accompany him.

Rahul Gandhi meets former President Pranab Mukherjee.

Rahul reaches Manmohan Singh's residence ahead of nomination.

Rahul Gandhi meets mother Sonia at 10 Janpath.

Congress Working Committee (CWC) leaders will first propose Rahul Gamdhi's name, following which State leaders will do.

Do BJP presidents get elected? Did Nitin Gadkari get elected through a ballot process? Let them answer that first: Kamal Nath,Congress pic.twitter.com/7nkYPYeyhi&; ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017

Sonia Gandhi, former PM Manmohan Singh, Leader of Oppositon- Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azab and senior Congress leader and MP AK Antony are key proposers.

Rahul Gandhi leaves for Rajghat.

Rahul likely to visit Shiva temple before filing nomination.

Janeu sporting Hindu brahmins will accompany Rahul to the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is expected to reach 10 Janpath at 10.30 AM to meet incumbent party president Sonia Gandhi.

Rahul Gandhi in all likelihood will succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving Congress chief who has helmed the party since 1998.

ALL FOR RAHUL GANDHI

Rahul Gandhi is likely to emerge as the lone candidate in the fray as up till now no one else has filed papers for the Congress' top post.

"So far 90 nomination forms have been given out to state unit delegates. No application for nomination has been submitted so far," Chairman of the party's Central Election Authority Mullapally Ramachandran said.

As many as six chief ministers - Punjab's Amarinder Singh, Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Himachal Pradesh's Virbhadra Singh, Puducherry's V. Narayanasamy, Meghalaya's Mukul Sangma and Mizoram's Lal Thanhawla - are expected to be present today when over 90 sets of nomination papers are likely to be filed by various leaders to extend support to Rahul Gandhi.

In addition, incumbent Congress president Sonia Gandhi will be the first proposer for the candidature of her 47-year-old son.

-With inputs from Supriya Bharadwaj

--- ENDS ---
By Jumana Shah: Congress vice President Rahul Gandhi is likely to meet family members of two Kargil war martyrs who were unceremoniously removed from CM Vijay Rupani and PM Modi's rallies

BSF martyr Ashok Tadvi's daughter Rupal was taken out of Rupani's rally in Kevadia, Narmada district on Friday. On Sunday, a similar incident occurred in PM Narendra Modi's rally in Surendranagar. Sister of BSF martyr Bashir Ahmed Multani, Naseem stood up with a paper in her hand to make her representation to the PM asking why the family was not given the promised plot of land for residence and a petrol pump.Videos of these two instances went viral on social media putting BJP on back-foot as negative reactions on the ill treatment of the people poured in on social media.

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Rahul Gandhi looks to corner BJP on this as he tours Gujarat for two days - Tuesday and Wednesday. He will likely meet the two families in Surendranagar and Rajpipla respectively.

Gandhi had tweeted video of Rupal being dragged out of the CM's rally along with a caustic remark about 'BJP's arrogance' and how 'patriotic' BJP CM is ill-treating a martyr's daughter.'

On Saturday however, officials from Narmada Collectorate visited Rupal and came to an agreement about the specific plot of land to be given to her. The issue was pending since 15 years. Narmada Collector RS Ninama told India Today, "We had given her four acre land for agriculture in 2011, but she and her mother (the widow of Tadvi) were insisting on land for petrol pump. As for the residential land, there was a dispute over her choice of plot. We sorted it out the next day and it has been resolved."

After receiving the land on Saturday, Rupal mentioned Rahul Gandhi's tweet while accepting that she was happy that her demands were met.

Multani on the other hand said they had only received some cash after the death of her brother, but no land, be it for residence or for building a petrol pump or agriculture has not been received by her family. Multani also alleged that the Collector office had misbehaved with her, categorically asking her not to come back with her demands.

Surendranagar Collector Udit Agrawal told India Today that these allegations were false. He however said he would look at her file properly and comment later.

BJP spokesperson Yamal Vyas however did not attach excessive significance to the incidents. "These kind of things keep on happening during election time" he said "There are a few people, who are so frustrated with their problems, that they want to get it sorted as election is the only time politicians are accessible."

Watch: Rahul on Somnath row: BJP wrote my name in another book

--- ENDS ---
The annual Fraser Institute Petroleum Survey ranks 97 global energy jurisdictions by perceived petroleum industry investment attractiveness and policy perception, and has shown an oil and gas industry divided in its view of Australia.

South Australia was ranked as one of the top 10 attractive investment regions for the petroleum industry globally.

Moratoriums and restrictions on oil and gas exploration has seen a number of Australian regions ranked as some of the least attractive investment destinations for industry around the world. Credit:Jessica Shapiro

An industry head said South Australia's Plan for Accelerating Exploration (PACE) scheme to explore and develop the state's gas resources was a world leader.

"South Australia successfully ensures that government is accessible and willing to respond to issues in a practical manner," the source said.
An Aboriginal Tent Embassy activist looks set to fight a charge he refused to leave a disused restaurant in Canberra's parliamentary triangle after a controversial occupation staged by Indigenous land rights supporters last month.

Adrian Charles Davis, 63, was arrested after Ngunnawal elders and Tent Embassy campaigners allegedly forced their way into the Lobby restaurant in an attempt to reclaim what they described as Ngunnawal sovereign land in November.

Adrian Charles Davis, 63, speaks outside the ACT Magistrates Court on Monday. Credit:Alexandra Back

Police removed several members of the group from the restaurant, near Old Parliament House, shortly after negotiations between authorities and group leaders broke down, sparking a stand-off.

Davis faced the ACT Magistrates Court, where he was represented by fellow activist Lee Nangala Daylight Lacey, on Monday charged with refusing to leave a Commonwealth premises when directed.
A group of protesters who broke into a top-secret military intelligence base in the Northern Territory has avoided jail.

Supporters erupted in applause and cheers in the NT Supreme Court, sitting in Brisbane, on Monday after it was learned the five men and one woman would not be imprisoned.

The six Pine Gap protesters: (L-R) Andy Paine, 31, Franz Dowling, 20, Tim Webb, 23, Jim Dowling, 63, Margaret Pestorius, 53, and Paul Christie 44.

Queenslanders James Dowling, Franz Dowling, Andy Paine, Tim Webb and Margaret Pestorius were found guilty of scaling the 1.2m fence of the joint US defence facility at Pine Gap on September 29, 2016.

Paul Christie followed suit a few days later.
Tiger Zinda Hai will see Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif pairing up after five years.

By India Today Web Desk: Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif have always created much buzz, owing to their rumoured romantic relationship. They share a sizzling chemistry, both on and off-screen, and it's no surprise why their fans are eagerly waiting for their film, Tiger Zinda Hai.

The film, a sequel to 2012 Ek Tha Tiger, is a reunion of the pair, after five years.

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At an event, Salman said that it is always good to romance Katrina. "It is good. It is always good to romance. As there's no fight, so, it's good to romance," he answered when asked about re-teaming up with Katrina, who is also his close friend.

Tiger Zinda Hai has already created much hype and excitement with its action-packed trailer, and two songs.

"Both the songs are nice and people are loving them. So, let's see what happens on December 22 and what's the destiny of the film. Yesterday Katrina was with me on Bigg Boss when she gave me this information that Swag Se Swagat has earned some 50 million likes," said Salman.

The film will release on December 22.

ALSO WATCH: Mind Rocks Guwahati 2017: Katrina Kaif talks about working with Salman Khan

--- ENDS ---
Queensland dam engineers defied both common sense and their own manuals in the lead-up to 2011's devastating floods, a class-action trial has heard.

On the evening of January 11 that year, releases from Wivenhoe Dam west of Brisbane reached the extraordinary rate of 7464 cubic metres per second. It had more than doubled since 10am the same day.

Roofs of houses were visible above flood waters west of Brisbane January 13, 2011. Credit:Reuters

Law firm Maurice Blackburn on Monday launched a case against the dam operator, Seqwater, on behalf of more than 6000 people and businesses, arguing dam engineers acted negligently.

Lawyers are seeking "hundreds of millions of dollars" in damages.
A man will face court on Monday over multiple historical sex offences alleged to have occurred in Brisbane between 1981 and 1995.

Police charged the 71-year-old on Monday with seven counts of indecent treatment of boys under the age of 17, four counts of carnal knowledge and eight counts of unlawful anal intercourse.

He was also charged with deprivation of liberty, indecent assault, indecent treatment of children under the age of 16 and one count of procure act of gross indecency without consent.

The man was expected to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Monday.
A key figure in a violent Middle Eastern crime gang accused of supplying drugs in Brisbane and the Gold Coast has "swapped his high-end accommodation for a watch-house cell", according to police.

Detectives from Taskforce Maxima arrested Jaymin Ray Higham, 31, on Saturday at his Surfers Paradise unit after a 15-month investigation.

Police will allege Mr Higham was found in possession of almost $10,000 in tainted money, the dangerous drug methylphenidate as well as mobile phones suspected of being used in criminal activity.

It will be alleged the accused was one of two men who assaulted and threatened a man at a Gold Coast apartment complex in June, leaving the victim with serious injuries.

It will further be alleged police found Mr Higham carrying a semi-automatic pistol in a hidden compartment of his car in October last year.
An outspoken cop has raised the spectre of Melbournes deadly Bourke Street attack in making the case for overhauling Queenslands controversial police pursuit policy.

Admitting he would be unlikely to ever rely on it, Senior Sergeant Phil Notaro argued the Active Armed Offender (AAO) policy designed to stop major threats could be used to justify chasing dangerous drivers.

PolAir tracks an alleged offender at night. Credit:QPS Media

Weve had now a number of terrorist incidents that have involved vehicles (overseas) and if we continue to simply ignore offenders in vehicles, is it going to be too late when it is actually a terrorist incident? he told Fairfax Media.

How are we going to know?
The questions asked by life insurance companies to someone applying for coverage can sometimes feel like an intrusion into their personal life.

The question of genetic testing has arisen recently  can these companies force you to undergo tests or reveal results of tests you have previously had and does this mean your premium will skyrocket?

A healthy and safe lifestyle may provide no advantage when applying for cover.

We cannot choose the gene pool we come from or live a lifestyle that changes our predisposition to suffering from certain genetic conditions or illnesses.

Anyone with a genetic predisposition may be at a disadvantage when applying for life insurance. We can choose to live a healthy and safe lifestyle  both of which reduce our risk of early death, but this may provide no advantage when applying for cover.
A Navy veteran whose son is accused of helping him kill himself did not actually commit suicide, a Supreme Court jury has been told.

Defence barrister Dean Wells also argued the ailing 88-year-old was already sick with the disease that killed him before Peter John Nixon gave him the drug-laced concoction that allegedly led to his death as the Crown argued a "desire to give his father a dignified death is not a defence".

Peter John Nixon is seen leaving the Supreme Court in Brisbane. Credit:Darren England/AAP.

The 59-year-old is on trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court on a charge of assisting the suicide of his father, John Stephen Nixon.

The Crown alleged he gave the man a concoction of Coca-Cola, oxycodone and diazepam (commonly found in Valium) on April 27, 2015, with the intention for his father to drink it to end his life.
Accused killer Dimitrious Gargasoulas appears more likely to use mental health issues as his defence over the Bourke Street tragedy, after bureaucrats made his medical records available to lawyers.

Victoria's Department of Justice passed on Mr Gargasoulas' medical records to defence lawyers days after the Supreme Court was told that bureaucrats' heavy workload had prevented them from releasing all 1100 pages earlier.

The court heard last week that Mr Gargasoulas' lawyers could not determine how his case would proceed without the files.

This frustrated Justice Lex Lasry, who several times this year has had prosecutors and defence lawyers appear to update him on the case given its slow going before the courts.
The Turnbull government has abandoned its landmark industry superannuation changes for this year, bowing to intense lobbying of crossbench senators and clearing it off the table for what is likely to be the last week of Parliament.

The changes would have forced the $600 billion industry super fund sector to appoint independent directors, compelled not-for-profit funds to disclose administrative expenses, and handed more powers to regulators to police the sector.

The retreat could push out any meaningful reform of the union-run funds until after the royal commission into the financial services sector hands down its findings in February 2019.

Crossbench senators have been lobbied by the Australian Council of Trade Unions and Industry Super Australia since the Turnbull government first proposed the changes to the funds, which boast five-million members, in 2015.
If you own an iPhone or a Pixel phone, you can get wireless buds to match from Apple or Google, which is a safe choice that you can be assured will work seamlessly. But both these headsets will actually work with any phone, and they're two of the best sets out there. If you're tossing up between the two it will largely come down to aesthetics (shiny and technological versus warm and organic) and functionality (true wireless versus tethered).

Bluetooth headphones  the bulky, headband style ones  have been around for ages, but the latest trend in wireless audio is miniaturisation. Wireless earbuds  with their own tiny batteries, Bluetooth radios and drivers  are now viable as a way to enjoy music and take phone calls on your commute or while out and about.

Apple AirPods are probably the easiest wireless buds to use. The plastic tips feel just like the iconic white headphones you're used to getting with iPhones, and connecting to your phone is as simple as taking the buds out of their tic-tac-style charging case. Their long stems make them look a little like you have drinking straws sticking out of your head, but the tradeoff is they're unlikely to pop out and go missing. You'll get around five hours of sound out of the AirPods, at which point you can return them to the case to fill up with juice.

The audio quality is around on par with what you get from wired iPhone headphones, which is a bit disappointing given the $229 price tag. On an Android device the AirPods work great, aside from standard Bluetooth niggles like clumsy first-time pairing. iPhone-only features include pausing when you remove a bud from your ear and double-tapping the bud to talk to Siri. On Android, double-tapping pauses music or answers calls.

Google Pixel Buds are a similar story, offering bonuses when used with a Pixel phone but working fine elsewhere. These are tethered together with a soft braided cable you wear behind your neck, which is comfy enough but not as convenient as truly wireless buds. Rather than hook into the bottom of your ears like the AirPods, or push deep into your ear canal like many earphones, these have an adjustable loop to keep the buds sitting in place. This is a nice change if you don't like buds sticking deep into your ears, but it takes some getting used to.

Pairing with a Pixel phone is as painless as AirPods are with an iPhone, but pairing to other phones is more work than it should be. Once that's done though you get the same easy connection by opening the charging case and lifting them out, and you get the same five-hour battery life. Again you can tap the Buds to pause or start music, but you can also swipe to change volume, which is handy. Google Assistant is available through the Buds on compatibles device, so you can search the web with your voice or have incoming notifications read out to you. If you have a Pixel phone, you can also access live translation, which is a cool trick that you probably won't ever need. Sound quality is good for Bluetooth earbuds, but not fantastic. At $249, you'll want to be sure you'll get value out of the Google-powered features.
By PTI: (Eds: Updating with another schools case; police action)

Kolkata, Dec 4 (PTI) Amidst the controversy over a nursery students alleged sexual assault by two teachers at a city institute, another reputed school here today suspended a member of its service staff following a three-month old case of sexual abuse of a child inside the school.

A large number of guardians today demonstrated before the M P Birla Foundation Higher Secondary School, which said that it suspended its service staff after discussion with the police, pending further investigation.

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In a statement, the school authorities said, a complaint was received from parents of a girl student about alleged sexual misconduct against her in September, 2017, but the complaint did not point out any individual.

"The parents had also lodged a complaint with the local police station. The school has been thoroughly cooperating with the police in the investigations," it said.

Hours of CCTV footage were reviewed by the school and the police, the statement said, adding that the police also questioned several members of the support staff and teachers.

"We are committed to ensuring that the child gets justice. However, we also hope that no member of the staff of our school should be judged in the matter except according to law. We are confident that members of the staff are committed to the safety of the children. Anyone found wanting in this regard will be prosecuted as per law," it said.

Meanwhile, a section of guardians demonstrated before the school building for hours today alleging the school and the police did not take much action to find out and prosecute those responsible for the alleged molestation of the girl.

The guardians were joined by the mother of the child who claimed she has been still traumatised and unable to attend classes.

They refused to leave the premises even after it was announced that one service staff was suspended, and demanded increase in number of female attendants and periodic police patrolling during school hours.

After the guardians blocked the arterial James Long Sarani, police dispersed them.

Meanwhile, the Kolkata Police today formed a special committee to look into the allegations of negligence and false representation on part of the G D Birla Centre for Education where a 4-year-old girl was sexually assaulted on November 30 allegedly by two male PT teachers, who were later arrested.

A senior police officer said a complaint in this regard has been lodged with the Jadavpur police station.

The committee consists of representatives from the West Bengal State Education Department, West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights and the ICSE Board, New Delhi and Kolkata Police, he added.

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The West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WBCPCR) today sought the arrest of the principal of the G D Birla Centre for Education in connection with the incident.

Principal Sharmila Nath could have dealt with the matter in a sensible manner, WBCPCR Chairperson Ananya Chatterjee Chakraborti told PTI.

The two arrested teachers were today produced before a city court that remanded them to police custody till December 15. PTI SUS SCH NN SRY

--- ENDS ---
Washington: President Donald Trump's assertion that he fired his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in part because he knew that Flynn had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador -- for which Flynn pleaded guilty Friday -- has intensified accusations that the president committed obstruction of justice.

Critics of Trump have portrayed the statement as a confession that he knew Flynn had committed a crime -- not just that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence, the initial justification the White House gave for his firing -- when he pressured James Comey, the FBI director at the time, to drop the investigation into Flynn, according to Comey's testimony before Congress. Trump later fired Comey.

Trump has denied that he pressured Comey to drop the investigation. And one of Trump's lawyers, John Dowd, has since said that he, not the president, drafted the tweet about firing Flynn because he lied to the FBI. Dowd has also claimed that the president, as a matter of constitutional law, cannot violate obstruction of justice statutes anyway.

Here is what you need to know to make sense of this.
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The battle over this military structure is heading to court.

A group of pro-bono legal eagles sued the city over its controversial scheme to redevelop the Bedford-Union Armory, filing suit in state Supreme Court the day before Council voted to approve the plan on Nov. 30.

Attorneys at the Legal Aid Society allege the DeBlasio Administration is clueless to the negative effects that the projects massive amount of market-rate apartments will have on Crown Heights residents because of a flawed environmental-review process for the development and other building proposals city-wide.

The citys methodology not only puts Crown Heights tenants at risk, but others barely making rent in every borough, said Judith Goldiner, the lead Legal Aid lawyer on the armory suit.

Hizzoners hotly contested proposal to lease the publicly owned military structure at 1579 Bedford Ave. to developer BFC Partners survived its months-long public-review process after the real-estate company and the citys Economic Development Corporation agreed last month to axe 48 luxury condos from and include more affordable housing in the plan in order to win the approval of Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo (DCrown Heights), which was key to its success.

But opponents of the scheme, which also calls for 149 market-rate units, argue that building those apartments on public land is unacceptable, and that the influx of wealthy occupants they will draw will push less-affluent residents out, according to the head of a tenants rights group that supports the suit.

We joined this lawsuit because we are opposed to market-rate housing on public land, said Katie Goldstein, who runs Tenants & Neighbors. We believe that a market-rate project of this magnitude in this neighborhood will lead to displacement of both unregulated and regulated tenants.

Legal Aids complaint alleges that a city rule requiring developers to study the effects of new housing on tenants who occupy market-rate apartments  but not rent-regulated units  is unfair, claiming that some residents who benefit from rent stabilization could be harassed by greedy landlords as area rents rise, according to Goldiner.

Gentrification affects all apartments  regulated or unregulated  and the citys land-use decisions need to factor in that reality, she said.

For instance, a legal loophole allows landlords of stabilized buildings to entice tenants by charging a preferential rent that is less than the maximum legal rent they could collect in any given year, and then increase the rent  sometimes drastically  to the legal limit when renewing occupants leases, a practice that could occur more frequently as neighborhoods rents rise.

The lawsuit also claims that residents never received their legal right to publicly comment on and request changes to the manual by which city officials conduct a projects environmental-review process, Goldiner said.

A state Supreme Court judge denied a restraining order Legal Aids attorneys sought to halt construction on the armory development, but allowed the case to move forward, according to the organizations spokesman, who said a ruling is expected before the city officially awards the contract to BFC Partners in June.

And if the justice rules in Legal Aids favor, the decision could have wide-ranging effects on several ongoing developments and rezoning initiatives throughout the city, which would have to repeat environmental reviews and potentially alter existing schemes, Goldiner said.

They would have to go back and make sure that in pending and future actions where theyve done an environmental review that they study that issue, the lawyer said.
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The Double D is getting a double!

The Feds promised to build a temporary watering hole in Gowanus before draining and demolishing the nabes beloved Double D pool in order to remove toxic waste that a former gas plant left buried beneath the recreation area, leaders of the Gowanus Canal cleanup announced.

We wont allow that to happen until a replacement pool is built, and nothing will happen at the park until the temporary pool is up and operating, Environmental Protection Agency honcho Walter Mugdan said at a Nov. 16 meeting about scrubbing the Superfund site.

But agency officials could not confirm where the new pool will go or when, exactly, it will be built.

Utility company National Grid, under supervision of the federal agency, must dig up the sludge below the public watering hole in Gowanuss Thomas Greene Playground as one of the polluters required to fund the cleanup of the fetid waterway and its surrounding banks.

The utility provider  which owned the gas plant that formerly occupied the parkland  must also replace the Double D once the ground beneath it is purged of toxins, and Mugdan said the city could kick in some dough towards the restoration in order to build an even better facility than before.

The obligation then is to provide the city with a replacement of the same kind as what was there, he said. It would be silly not to take that wonderful opportunity to improve the facilities that are there for the community.

Environmental Protection Agency honchos wanted to use the site of the exhumed Double D as the permanent storage space for two several-million-gallon sewage tanks  which will hold raw waste and storm water so neither floods the canal when it rains  claiming the pool needed to be removed anyway in order to extract the muck underneath it and that filling the ditch with the tanks would kill two birds with one stone.

But locals slammed the proposal, charging that neighborhood youngsters would have nowhere else to take a dip during the summer months and demanding the federal agency park its sewage-packed cisterns elsewhere than the city park.

The Feds ultimately gave the city the authority to choose where the four and eight-million-gallon waste tanks should go, and the local lawmakers acquiesced to residents demands and proposed seizing private land on Nevins and Butler streets along the canal to house the underground vessels.

City officials claimed this solution, which Community Board 6 voted to approve last month, would only require the pool to close for as long as it takes to scrub the park clean, as opposed to shuttering for the entire duration of the Superfund cleanup, which they said could take as long as a decade, according to Mugdan.

This part of the park has to be dug out anyway, but the city of New York had reasons  quite strong reasons  why it didnt do that, he said. And quite a number of you in the community also said, Its one thing to lose our pool for two, three, maybe four years, but to lose it for eight to 10 years is no good.

But if the city  which kicked-off its attempt to use eminent domain to seize the canal-adjacent land with a Nov. 27 public hearing as part of the Uniformed Land Use Review Process  cant acquire the parcels by 2020, the Feds will move forward with installing the tanks in the Double Ds grave anyway.

And conducting a lengthy and expensive process to get the private properties  which could cost taxpayers as much as $70 million, Crains reported  for the sake of keeping the pool at its original site seems ludicrous, especially when the amenity is only used for a few months each year, according to a Gowanus resident who spoke at the hearing.

We are told that we are supposed to buy into this other alternative site merely because of the environmental injustice of our neighbors, my neighbors, losing the use of the swimming pool, said Marlene Donnelly, a member of Friends and Residents Of Greater Gowanus. Lets put our money in sewage infrastructure, not land acquisition.

The beep will next weigh in on the land-seizure proposal, followed by the Department of City Planning and then Council before it lands on Mayor DeBlasios desk.
Britain agreed on Monday to keep Northern Ireland in "regulatory alignment" with the European Union after Brexit, Irish government sources said, raising hopes Prime Minister Theresa May can strike a deal in Brussels to start free trade talks.

After intensive negotiations in recent days, Britain made what the Irish sources called a clear commitment to keep economic rules on both sides of the new UK-EU land border across the island of Ireland similar enough to allow no frontier.

That is seen as a key way to avoid customs and other infrastructure which might jeopardise the peace in Northern Ireland. How far Britain would then be permitted to change rules on the mainland as Brexit supporters want was not immediately clear. May and her Northern Irish allies want no new regulatory barriers erected between the province and the rest of the United Kingdom.

"Agreement has been reached on an overall deal for the Irish issues," one of the Irish government sources said.

"The key phrase is a clear commitment to maintaining regulatory alignment in relation to the rules of the customs union and internal market which are required to support the Good Friday Agreement, the all-island economy and the border."

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said he hoped to make a positive statement shortly, adding that British-EU negotiations on post-Brext trade would start and that the Irish border would not change its physical appearance after Britain leaves the EU.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar by phone. EU lawmaker Philippe Lamberts, who met Juncker earlier on Monday, said the draft text on Ireland would commit Britain to "full alignment" on rules.

Donald Tusk, the EU summit chair, tweeted ebulliently after speaking to Varadkar that there was good progress on the Irish issue to unblock UK-EU trade talks: "Tell me why I like Mondays!" the former Polish premier wrote. "Getting closer to sufficient progress at December (EU summit)."

This is code for Britain complying with a set of conditions the EU wants met on divorce terms before leaders will agree to launch talks on a future trade deal at a summit next week.

May and Juncker made no comment to reporters when they met at the EU executive's Berlaymont headquarters for a lunch that diplomats and officials hope can seal a breakthrough that would open the way to negotiations on future trade relations.

Tusk cancelled a trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah and hastily scheduled his own meeting with May for after lunch. Officials said he was preparing to call round EU leaders to get agreement on trade negotiations. National envoys handling Brexit were also summoned urgently to a meeting in Brussels later on Monday.

London has broadly agreed to many of the EU's divorce terms, including paying out something like 50 billion euros. But the issues of the rights of expatriate citizens and the UK-EU border on the island of Ireland defied a deal until the last minute.

Elmar Brok, another member of the European Parliament who met Juncker and his Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, before they met May, said "just a few words" separated the sides.

In London, May's spokesman said: "Progress is being made. There's more still to agree upon."

Dublin, backed by the rest of the EU, wants strong assurances that London will commit to keeping business regulations in Northern Ireland the same as in the EU.

Britain is seeking to keep its options open, having rejected a commitment to leave NorthernIreland in a full customs union with the EU or to keep the whole United Kingdom in one.

Juncker and Barnier met the European Parliament's Brexit team to brief them on progress. The legislature, which must approve any withdrawal treaty if a disruptive Brexit is to be avoided in March 2019, has demanded that EU courts have the final say in guaranteeing rights for 3 million EU citizens in Britain. Britain insists that it will no longer accept the supervision of the European Court of Justice. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Irish households will spend an average of 2,654 in shops this December, approximately 870 more than any other month of this year and roughly 2.6% more than Christmas 2016. This is according to Retail Ireland, the Ibec group that represents the sector, who today published its Christmas Retail Monitor 2017.

The monitor predicts an increase in total sales of over 100 million, with sales over the Christmas season expected to top 4.5 billion, up from 4.4 billion in 2016. However, Retail Ireland warn that with a greater number of Irish shoppers now choosing to shop on foreign websites, the challenge for Irish retailers will be to ensure that this buoyancy is felt locally and that Irish based retailers benefit from this anticipated additional spending.

It is estimated that consumer goods prices have fallen by 2.2% in the first ten months of 2017 and by 8.4% in the last three years. This pattern is set to continue as consumers avail of record discounts arising from Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Retail sales in the first ten months of this year are up 3.9% in value terms on the same period in 2016

Commenting on the figures, Retail Ireland Director, Thomas Burke said, "The growing migration by Irish consumers online over recent months is creating a challenge for Irish retailers. Local traders have to date been unable to stem the flow of close to 75% of online consumer spending that currently leaves these shores. Irish retailers are reacting however, and the online consumer offer is stronger than at any point in times past."

He concluded, "Irish retailers also continue to focus on getting their instore activity right in these crucial trading weeks and will be seeking to capitalise upon an increasing willingness on the part of consumers to spend their greater levels of disposable income."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
It is not yet clear if Britain and the European Union can agree on written assurances to avoid a hard Northern Ireland border by a Monday deadline, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Sunday.

But he said he was hopeful a meeting between British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Council President Donald Tusk on Monday would lead to a deal in time for a Dec. 14-15 EU summit. That would allow Britain to move on to talks on its future trading relations with the bloc.

Avoiding a so-called hard border on the island of Ireland is the last major hurdle before talks begin on the future trade relationship and a two-year Brexit transition .

Tusk said he had asked May to "put a final offer on the table" by Monday, but Coveney suggested agreement on the wording of written reassurances may come later.

"The hope is that those meetings will result in a momentum that can be carried into the leaders' summit the week after ... and can allow this Brexit negotiation process to open up to phase two of discussions," Coveney told RTE radio.

Asked if he expected an agreed text of written British assurances on the issue Monday morning, Coveney said: "Let's not run before we can walk here. Obviously, we would like that to be the case."

The Irish cabinet is to meet at 0900 GMT on Monday and give Taoiseach Leo Varadkar a mandate to make a decision on the border issue.

"That may or may not be on the back of an agreed wording. That remains to be seen over the next number of hours," Coveney said.

Ireland is not asking the British government to "do the impossible" and provide a detailed plan border will work, but rather for "clear principles" for the second phase of talks to eliminate the possibility of a hard border.

"What we have to make sure here is that we don't have an unintended consequence of the re-emergence of a border," he said. "We can't allow that and we won't allow that." (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Britain wants to increase regulation of Bitcoin and other digital currencies by expanding the reach of European Union anti-money-laundering rules that force traders to disclose their identities and report suspicious activity.

With demand for Bitcoin surging, fueling a 1,000% rally in its value so far this year, the British finance ministry said it expected negotiations over changes to the EU rules would conclude later this year or in early 2018.

Stephen Barclay, economic secretary to Britain's Treasury, told parliament in a notice dated Nov. 3 - but only reported by media on Monday - that the amendments "bring virtual currency exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers into Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing regulation."

That would mean those companies would be overseen by national competent authorities, the statement said.

The main U.S. derivatives regulator said on Friday it would allow CME Group Inc and CBOE Global Markets Inc to list Bitcoin futures contracts, opening the door to added regulation.

Australia has also said it would strengthen its money- laundering laws by bringing Bitcoin providers under the government's financial intelligence unit. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
European stocks rallied strongly on Monday after the U.S. Senate passed a tax package delivering significant fiscal stimulus, which investors have been anticipating would give extra legs to the bull run in equity markets.

The tax overhaul delivered some relief in early European trading after benchmarks hit multi-week lows on Friday.

Strong gains in the U.S. dollar helped Germany's dollar-exposed DAX shoot up from a two-month low, last up 1.1%. The euro's strengthening has weighed on earnings expectations for stocks across the euro zone this quarter.

Bank stocks, seen as the biggest beneficiaries of tax cuts, led gains, up 0.9% on the day.

The pan-European STOXX 600 gained 0.7% while euro zone blue chips jumped 0.8%, set for their best gains in five weeks.

Autos stocks, which also have large exposures to the U.S., shot higher with Fiat Chrysler leading Italy's FTSE MIB, up 3.2%.

Elsewhere dealmaking moved some stocks. Denmark's largest insurer Tryg jumped 3.9% after agreeing to buy unlisted competitor Alka Forsikring.

Italian cable maker Prysmian meanwhile fell 2.9% after agreeing a $30 per share all-cash deal to buy Kentucky-based rival General Cable.

Chipmaker ams led European gains, up 4%. Peer Dialog Semiconductor however slipped 4.1% after the iPhone supplier said top customer Apple could be working on building its own power-management chips rather than procuring them from the German microchip maker. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
The report will aid India's extradition case against the beleaguered liquor baron in the trial at the Westminster Court today.

By Munish Pandey: The Serious Frauds Investigation Office (SFIO) of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs claims that beleaguered baron Vijay Mallya used his political connections to commit financial irregularities that snowballed into a Rs 9,000-crore loss to banks.

The report is part of documents Indian agencies will present before the Westminster Court, London, as evidence to ensure Vijay Mallya's extradition to India.

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The court heard the case on December 4 and the hearing will go on till December 15.

The SFIO reports connect the dots on how Mallaya evaded regulation and how favours were extended to the most powerful politicians to ensure no one questions his wrongdoings.

This report, a copy of which is with India Today, has been submitted before the Crown Prosecution Service representing the Indian Agencies before the London Court.

The report names then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar and then Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah as people Mallaya sought help from.

A mail trail reveals Mallya - on February 18, 2009 - had written to chief financial officer AK Ravi Nedungadi and others informing that Kingfisher's financial restructuring presentation had been approved by then finance minister.

He had also advised then Chief Economic Adviser in the presence of Sharad Pawar that the government will support Kingfisher Airlines (KFA). Mallya had a meeting with then Secretary of Banking and Chairman of State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank on 25-26 February 2009 in Delhi.

In a 2010 correspondence via email between Mallya and then joint-secretary of banking Amitabh Verma, questions were raised on the fund requirement of Kingfisher Airlines Limited (KFAL). Vijay Mallya's response on May 13, 2010 read that he had asked Sharad Pawar to speak with then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Another email from Vijay Mallya reveals that he spoke with Jammu Kashmir National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah asking him to resolve a potential problem involving J&K Bank.

A mail from Mallya also alludes to then civil aviation minister Praful Patel helping decide in favour of KFAL's financial restructuring to help Mallya's beleaguered aviation business.

Mails between KFAL sales team managers show the airline frequently upgraded politicians and their families to business or first class without any additional payment to be in their good books. One such mail refers to an upgradation for Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her companions.

According to another email correspondence, Vijay Mallya waived off payments for a chopper used by Farooq Abdullah during the Jammu and Kashmir election campaign. This waiver was later used to pressure the top management of J&K Bank to tow the lines of other leading banks for the benefit of KFAL.

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Favours were also sought by officials of the Ministry of Finance, Customs, Income Tax, Directorate General of Central Aviation and Airports Authority of India. The SFIO report concludes that Vijay Mallya and his top managers used free tickets as a bait to appease key officials of various ministries and departments and work in connivance with them to carry on with the irregularities at KFAL.

Vijay Mallya successfully used gratis tickets as a weapon to shield himself from authorities taking any actions against him and his company.

Watch: Vijay Mallya's extradition trial begins in London

--- ENDS ---
In a rare move, Chinas foreign exchange regulator named Friday four banks that have violated rules on providing guarantees for loans issued by offshore banks, amid broader efforts to crack down on illegal capital outflows.

The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) targeted branches of China Minsheng Bank and Xiamen International Bank Co. Ltd. on the Chinese mainland, the mainland subsidiaries of Hong Kong-based OCBC Wing Hang Bank Ltd. and South Koreas Industrial Bank of Korea.

The banks were criticized for failing to conduct due diligence regarding transaction details, the use of funds and debtors' qualifications and repayment abilities.

An onshore company is permitted by Chinese law to pledge domestic collateral in exchange for a local banks guarantee letter for a loan issued by an overseas bank to the onshore companys offshore subsidiaries.

While this system helps Chinese companies engaged in trade or investment abroad get financing more easily and cheaply, it also creates opportunities for money laundering or the illegal transfer of assets. Thus, banks are required by the forex regulator to tighten their scrutiny of debtors information and projects.

The four bank branches were fined between 1 million yuan ($151,000) and 8 million yuan. A Zhuhai branch of Xiamen International Bank in Guangdong Province was ordered to suspend the sale of foreign currencies to corporations for three months, while a Beijing branch of OCBC Wing Hang Bank was told to halt all forex sales for three months.

The earliest incident of misconduct among the banks was in August 2014, while the most recent was in December 2016, according to SAFE. The regulator did not disclose the identities of the borrowers involved.

Several banks, companies and individuals have been punished for violations of forex rules in recent years. Since late last year, Chinese regulators have enforced multiple measures to control capital outflows to prevent capital flight, as well as to respond to the weakening yuan.

Contact reporter Lin Jinbing (jinbinglin@caixin.com)
A recent article in the British medical journal Nature argued that minimizing clinical-trial requirements could put more patients at risk. However others have claimed that this new rule is similar to the EU's regulations on herbal medicines. Photo: Visual China

Some traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) will soon be allowed to launch in China without effectiveness trials, a reform the industry has sought for almost a decade despite raising concerns.

TCMs whose formulas are based on classic medical texts published through the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), will be exempt from time-consuming effectiveness trials if manufacturers prepare ingredients by essentially the same method and claim the same curative effect as the books do, according to a policy published in October by the China Food and Drug Administration.

The rule repeated a 2008 document that was never implemented, partly because the list of acceptable classical medicines was never published. But the list has now been completed, and includes 100 drugs. It will be made public as early as this month, a TCM professional surnamed Ding told Caixin.

As the date of loosened oversight approaches, some people have expressed concerns about the quality of drugs that will become eligible for sale without effectiveness testing. A recent article in the British medical journal Nature argued that minimizing clinical-trial requirements could put more patients at risk.

And just because some drugs have been used for centuries doesnt mean they are always safe, some say. An October study in the journal Science Translational Medicine found that aristolochic acid, a herbal substance found in dozens of TCMs and already known to cause kidney failure, was also linked to liver cancer.

But some experts said drug formulas dating back centuries should be reliable, and the reform, which only removes effectiveness trials but not safety checks, will help save time for TCM-makers looking to launch their products.

Pharmaceutical formulas and methods recorded in classical medical texts were very strict, said Shan Xiaopeng who studied TCM in college and has worked in Chinas pharmaceutical industry for 17 years. He added that some techniques are no longer used by modern drugmakers, which means they wont be exempt from effectiveness trials under the new policy.

The new rule is also in line with the European Unions regulation on herbal medicine, Shan said. In 2004, the EU amended its drug law, stipulating that clinical trials werent required for any traditional herbal medicine that has been used for at least 30 years preceding the date of the application, including at least 15 years within the EU.

So far, at least three TCM drugs have been launched within the EU thanks to the simplified rule. But no products have been recognized by the U.S. system, considered the worlds toughest, requiring all medicines to go through safety and effectiveness tests.

Both EU and U.S. ways of approving drugs have no difference in quality control, said Mei Wang, chairperson of the Leiden University European Center for Chinese Medicine and Natural Compounds.

Contact reporter Coco Feng (renkefeng@caixin.com)
Nearly a thousand educational institutes running B.Ed and D.Ed courses have been issued a show cause notice by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) for non-compliance to the stipulated norms.

Why are the courses terminated?

These courses will face closure due to failing to submit required data through affidavits, a senior Union Human Resource Development Ministry official announced on Saturday.

"NCTE has already issued 1,000 show-cause notices to stop affiliation with NCTE and thereafter, these colleges will not be able to admit students for B.Ed and D.Ed courses. 3,000 more show cause notices will be issued soon," said Anil Swarup, Secretary, School Education and Literacy, in the ministry.

How did it all start?

According to him, the NCTE had asked 16,000 B.Ed and D.Ed colleges in India to submit an affidavit in respect to all the data, but only 12,000 of them did so. "I think the biggest mafia in the education sector are some B.Ed and D.Ed colleges. Some of them exist in name only. We took them on," he said at an interaction held by the Merchants' Chamber of Commerce.

PSU Bag The Best of Talents From IIT Placements

Further course of action

He said the NCTE engaged the Quality Council of India for quality assessment of these colleges, so that they could be "star rated". "The system will likely be in place within this financial year and the rating will happen thereafter," he added.

Pre-school norms

"It is too premature to make any comment on what should happen to pre-schools because there are other ministries involved in it." "That is the area which we have to look into," Swarup said.

On child safety in schools

Swarup said that Ministry has been pushing the schools to install surveillance system as far as the CBSE run one concerned. "The rest is in the state's hands," he said.

UGC Orders Varsities to Drop University Status for Non-Compliance
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
Cement industry convenes in Rome

ICR Research By

Published 04 December 2017

On 1-4 October 2017, representatives from 40 nations gathered in Rome for Cemtechs annual European cement conference and exhibition. Cement producers, equipment suppliers and other industry stakeholders discussed market and corporate developments with a strong focus on Italy, where the industry is undergoing large structural changes following the acquisition of Italcementi by HeidelbergCement.

Cemtechs annual European conference returned to Rome, one of Europes greatest cities, for the first time in a decade this year. Opening the conference, Thomas Armstrong, managing editor of International Cement Review, observed that while Cemtech Rome in 2006 had taken place at a time of rapid industry expansion and investment in new capacity, the agenda for 2017 would assess a completely different industry landscape.

Having welcomed delegates on behalf of the cement industry in Italy, Paolo Bossi, CEO of Cementir Italia SpA (Italy), provided a detailed account of the recent dramatic industry developments. Driven by the collapse in domestic demand in Italy from 48Mt in 2007 to 18Mt in 2016, the industry is attempting to scale down capacity and consolidate the fragmented sector where there are still over 20 players in the market. With overcapacity estimated at 15Mta, consolidation is crucial to restore balance and return to profitability.

Cementir tried to play a leading role in domestic consolidation and in 2016 acquired the operations of Sacci. However, explained Mr Bossi, when further efforts to acquire other smaller players were unsuccessful, the company decided to exit its home market and sell its 6.3Mta operation to HeidelbergCements subsidiary, Italcementi, for EUR315m.

Cementir, which now only generates 10 per cent of its revenues in Italy, will not leave the cement sector entirely and will continue to build its international portfolio with a specific focus on white cement, where the company is the global leader, confirmed Mr Bossi.

Dr Giuseppe Schlitzer, CEO of Italys cement association, AITEC, provided further analysis of Italys market, where demand has at last reached the trough after 10 consecutive years of contraction. The industry has initiated a deep restructuring, closing 26 kilns over the last decade, but more changes need to be implemented, he argued. Demand in 2017 is expected to finally turn positive and expand by 0.6 per cent to 18.8Mt. In the long term, consumption will recover partially, but not exceed 25Mta, he added, given that per capita cement consumption is in line with similarly-advanced economies.

John Fraser-Andrews, Global Equity Head of Building Materials, HSBC Bank Plc (UK), presented his latest scenarios for global cement demand, with a positive three per cent growth forecast for the US and Europe, backed up in part by a recovery in France. He expects a slower expansion of around 0.7 per cent in the rest of the world.

In terms of global corporate trends, Jean-Christophe Lefevre-Moulenq, CM-CIC Market Solutions (France), provided a comprehensive history of recent merger and acquisition (M&A) trends. He sees CRH as being in pole position for future acquisitions due to its high levels of free cash flow, followed by HeidelbergCement. On the other hand, Cemex will have to make a move if it wishes to continue existing, he argued. One possible deal could be a merger between Cemex and Argos, which would create a coherent leader in the Americas with 120Mta of capacity.

Trade in the Mediterranean was the focus for Sylvie Doutres, DSG Consultants (France), who noted a decrease in overall exports of cement and clinker for the Euro-Med exporting countries in 2016, followed by an expansion in 2017, led by Turkey, Portugal and Morocco, with North America and Africa the key destination markets.

Sustainability

A trio of presentations focussed on the role of cement in society and the performance of the industry with respect to carbon emissions and other sustainability benchmarks. Emir Adiguzel, CEO of HC Trading (Germany), highlighted the need for the cement industry, which is seen as a polluter, to improve its global image as well as address climate change and its impacts on a global scale.

The performance of the industry was analysed by Jim OBrien who explained that the leading cement producers achieved a 15-20 per cent specific net CO2 reduction between 1990 and 2016 (equivalent to a 0.6-0.8 per cent reduction per year). At this rate, a further 7-10 per cent reduction will be achieved by 2030, placing the industry on track to achieve its targets, as set out in the Low Carbon Technology Partnerships Initiative (LCTPi).

However, according to Peter Hoddinott (UK), previously a senior executive with Lafarge, the biggest future gains will need to be made down the chain from clinker production in concrete construction and buildings. The cement industry contributes around five per cent of global man-made emissions, but these are in fact dwarfed by those of buildings and transportation. These are the areas where it will be possible to make the biggest savings in CO2 emissions going forward, especially given the pressures of population growth and urbanisation.

Alternative fuels

Technologies relating to alternative fuels (AFs) formed the core of the conferences technical proceedings. Daniele Gizzi, AITEC (Italy), reviewed AF utilisation in Italy, where the dominant wastes are RDF, followed by plastics and tyres, then dried sewage sludge. However, with a current thermal substitution rate (TSR) of 16.5 per cent (based on a study by Ecofys in 2017), Italy has the potential to raise its TSR to 40 per cent in the medium term.

AF preparation was the focus of Daniel Wresniks presentation who introduced UNTHAs single-step, mobile shredding system. It can produce solid recovered fuel (SRF) at fractions as fine as 40mm and move to the source of the fuel for additional flexibility.

Brian Smith, N+P Alternative Fuels (UK), described a successful trial of Subcoal, a pelletised high-grade SRF. Subcoal pellets were ground with coal in a Loesche vertical roller mill at Vassiliko Cement in Cyprus at a substitution rate of 10 per cent with no negative impact on clinker quality.

Joel Maia, FCT Combustion GmbH (Germany), reviewed the principles of AF combustion, considerations for AF injection in the calciner versus the kiln burner, and issues surrounding the sulphur and chlorine cycles. Francisco Leitao, Cimpor (Portugal), described the innovation of an AF waste pre-drying system at the companys Souselas plant, where the TSR is 33.4 per cent. The moist RDF/MSW passes through a 12m conveyor equipped with porous polyester and is dried with hot air from the coolers bag filter fan exit. With the new installation, the RDF feed to the main kiln burner was increased from 2.5 to 7tph, while moisture is reduced from 40 to 15 per cent.

Technical advances

Roberto Fedi of Teamnetwork Srl (Italy) presented an important case study from Italcementis Rezzato cement plant, demonstrating the potential of an SCR technology, already commonly used outside the cement industry, to achieve a NOx emission limit of 200mg/Nm3 at 10 per cent O2. Mr Fedi argued that SCR technology has advantages over SNCR systems and will become more applicable as NOx limits become more stringent.

Guido Ceccherelli, Ecospray (Italy), described a new hybrid ESP upgrade solution: instead of a typical ESP conversion to baghouse, the existing ESP is retrofitted with the embedding of a layer of wall flow filtering elements, capable of working at temperatures of over 600C. The ESP continues to work as the primary separator, while the new filter elements lower dust elements downstream of the ESP to a level equal to 2-3mg/Nm3. The hybrid unit requires no energy for the gas cooling stage that would normally be required by the baghouse alternative.

Extended programme

Cemtechs extended programme featured a special break-out seminar led by Thierry Bogaert (France), who introduced participants to the concept of industrial architecture and its role in enhancing the visual impact of cement plants.

The Cemtech plant tour was to Italcementis 1.5Mta Colleferro works, where environmental improvements have included the installation of an SNCR system for the non-catalytic reduction of NOx emissions as well as continuous emissions monitoring system (CEMS).

The accompanying exhibition saw 30 exhibitors showcase their latest services and technologies, and provided the perfect venue for evening reception drinks and lunches. A gala dinner rounded off proceedings with a wonderful opera performance treating delegates to the perfect conclusion to this busy Europe cement conference.

The next Cemtech will be held in Dubai, UAE, on 17-20 February 2018.
Veteran actor Shashi Kapoor died at the age of 79 today. He straddled both the Hindi and English film industries and made an indelible mark on both.

By India Today Web Desk: Shashi Kapoor, arguably the best-looking Kapoor, the youngest son of legendary actor Prithviraj Kapoor, died today at the age of 79.

Kapoor, who made his debut in 1961 with the film Dharamputra, has featured in over 160 films.

Kapoor, a three-time National Award winner, was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 2011 and the Dadasaheb Phalke award in 2015.

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Shashi Kapoor, who ruled the silver screen for decades, is also known as a crossover star, for his work in Hollywood films like The Householder and Shakespeare-Wallah.

India's first international star, Shashi Kapoor made an indelible mark on Hollywood too.

Here are his notable works in the West:

1. The Householder (1963)

2. Shakespeare-Wallah (1965)

3. A Matter of Innocence (1967)

4. Bombay Talkie (1970)

5. Siddhartha (1972)

6. Heat and Dust (1982)

7. Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987)

8. The Deceivers (1988)

9. In Custody (1993)

10. Jinnah - as narrator (1998)

11. Side Streets (1998)

12. Gulliver's Travels (1996)

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Cementir - December 2017

Cementir's turnover for the first nine months of 2016 rose by 31.6 per cent to EUR963.8m thanks to the Belgian acquisition and good Nordic performance, while Italy and Turkey contributed less. EBITDA rose by 28.3 per cent to EUR152.1m but by just 0.6 per cent on a comparative basis. The trading profit was ahead by 34.1 per cent to EUR78.3m. After a net financial charge of EUR14.9m compared with EUR14.4m, the pretax profit rose by 40.1 per cent to EUR66.9m. Net debt at the end of September was 79.8 per cent higher at EUR630.3m, largely reflecting the acquisition of the Belgian cement producer Compagnie des Ciments Belges by Aalborg Portland Holdings for EUR312m in October of last year.

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Israel will not go ahead with its planned exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Frankfurt, Germany because the German government has said it cannot guarantee that the scrolls will be returned if the Palestinians or Jordanians claim them.

The Frankfurt Bible Museum said it would cancel the exhibit, which was slated to open in September 2019.

Because of the unwillingness of both ministries to give the necessary declaration, as Qumran lies in todays West Bank, the Israel Antiques Authority is not letting the material out of the country and the Bible Museum had to cancel its plans, Uwe Becker, the deputy mayor of Frankfurt, told The Jerusalem Post.

Becker said he had sent letters to Culture and Media Minister Monika Grutters and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, asking them to support the exhibition.

The Israeli Antiquities Authority, that agency that oversees the archaeological heritage of the country, had worked with the Frankfurt museum to coordinate the exhibit.

Israel claims ownership and possession of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but Jordan and Palestine both also claim them and have demanded they be returned.

Each visit the Dead Sea Scrolls tour, Jordan and Palestine governments have demanded they be returned, but those claims are ignored.

Germany, however, said it couldnt ignore those claims.

Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Publication date: December 4,2017
Progressives and Idol Worship The election of Donald Trump brought out the worst in progressives, and they want to make sure that he is punished for his sins. What sin did Trump commit against the progressives?

The election of Donald Trump brought out the worst in progressives, and they want to make sure that he is punished for his sins. What sin did Trump commit against the progressives? My best answer is denying their next messiah Hillary Clinton the oval office. They are acting the same way they did when Al Gore was denied office. If the progressives had it their way they not would not only do away with the 22nd Amendment of our U.S. Constitution they would make sure that term limits would stay out of the question (and impeaching those who stood in the way of their 'anointed' idols). In other words, in the name of "helping" the people, the President can once again forever run and make himself (or herself) a demi-God just like FDR did back in the 20th Century.

With a certain faction of progressives who go out of their way to deny the existence of God in the general public and limit it to just the four walls of a church, their grows a desperation to have faith in someone or something. Friends we are made to worship, and Bob Dylan got it right when he said you "Gotta Serve Somebody."

Rush Limbaugh on his November 28, 2017 broadcast pointed out (via a Breitbart story), the first-year anniversary of Fidel Castro's passing (November 25, 2016) and how children of Cuba are still forced to honor the long reigning 'Messiah' of Cuba as part of the "Young Pioneers" club. Even after a year of taking the dirt nap Fidel Castro is still honored and worshiped. They made Cuban boys into Men and every Cuban girl their girlfriend. Perhaps even worse. Do you understand the heart of Marxist statism now and why they forbade the Judeo-Christian faiths? It is truly a conflict of interest. Castro must become the idol, the God, the savior and messiah of the people.

Castro was no different than Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Chavez, Pol Pot, Ortega and at one time before the progressives were forced to disown him, Hitler. Most of these men never know when to quit, and why should they? They place themselves about God almighty. Most of today's gods may not have a supernatural connection or belief like in the past, but they still want to elevate themselves to Godhood anyway.

The reason why the God of Abraham and His son Jesus Christ have been forever rejected by the people of world is that the Holy Trinity (including the Holy Spirit) does not conform to it. All of the false gods that have come and gone have one thing in common. They are of this world and supposedly bring some kind of earthly benefit to the people of this world. No mater how great or small or how much misery they truly bring. These false gods brought some benefit to the carnal heart and mind. The Bible constantly emphasizes the dangers 'other gods' throughout the scriptures and for a good reason. Their will always be those who will compete with God's affections, and their will be people that will elevate others or even things above the jealous God Himself. Yes friends, God admits He is jealous and sadly, He has that right.

We are all guilty of worshiping false gods in one degree or another. But thank goodness for one man who we now are about to focus on his days of being born in manger, 30-plus years later rejected the religious leaders of the day to fight against the Romans but rather tell it like it is, and die on a Cross for all our sins.
'Dark' Netflix series news: New show compared to 'Stranger Things'

It seems Netflix is not leaving its viewers in the dark after the finale of "Stranger Things" season 2, as their newest science-fiction thriller "Dark" has gained much traction.

The German-language series about a time-traveling mystery premiered late last week on the streaming service and has so far gotten favorable reviews. "Dark" could also pave the way for more imported and foreign-language series in Netflix since the success of the series may contribute to the popularity of the niche. Should it pick up, Netflix may yet again set the trend in the streaming service market.

"Dark" being compared to "Stranger Things" is no strange thing indeed, as both share a similar premise, being set in a small town with a large but tightly knit cast. The plot also involves a group of teenagers along with some adults getting implicated in a problematic and mysterious nearby power plant operation, similar to Hawkins Lab in "Stranger Things." Last but not the least, the said power plant was also instrumental in the disappearance of two children in the small town.

While it bears striking resemblances to "Stranger Things," "Dark" may not be as light-hearted as the American series. Critics, while generally praising the show, have stated that at times, the German show becomes too heavy to digest. Being a time-travel tale, of course, this is to be expected, as some plot points and interlayered twists may contribute to the show's convoluted premise.

"Dark," while being able to sate some viewers' hunger for "Stranger Things," is somehow more akin to Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi style or David Lynch's crime drama, "Twin Peaks." This means that it does not share the same "feel-good" vibes and twists of "Stranger Things" as well as its penchant for nostalgia. "Dark" is also set in two time periods from 1986 to 2019, with time travel being the key, as well as the source of the mystery.

"Dark" is now available on Netflix.
In time for Christmas, 700 World Vision teddy bears arrive for refugee children in Uganda

A motley crew of 700 British teddy bears have brought a touch of Christmas joy to refugee children in northern Uganda, where thousands of children continue to cross the border from war-torn South Sudan.

World Vision, the international children's charity that organised the donations of the teddy bears, says that many of the children are alone, sick or separated from their parents and have no possessions  not even toys.

The teddy bears, who were mostly donated by UK churches, first came together in a flash-mob outside St Paul's Cathedral in July when World Vision UK organised a sit-down stunt on the steps of the cathedral to highlight the plight of children fleeing conflict in South Sudan.

World Vision UK's star teddy bear Precious today arrived in Imvepi refugee settlement with all 700 teddy bears in tow, having made the 6,000-mile journey from Milton Keynes in south-east England to Arua in northern Uganda.

Children will now play with the teddies at World Vision's 31 child friendly spaces in the settlements. The spaces provide young people with a safe place to play, recover steadily from distress, gain a basic education, engage in peace-building activities and learn about their rights and protection. They also allow children to return to healthy routines and begin to feel normal again.

World Vision's response director for northern Uganda, Paul Sitnam, said: 'Children at our centres were so happy and excited to welcome Precious and her furry friends. These children have already gone through so much  it's heart-warming for them to know they are not forgotten, especially during the festive period. We're very grateful to people in the UK who donated these bears. Thanks to them, Christmas has come a little early for children here!'

The initiative was carried out by World Vision UK in partnership with the leading African airline, Kenya Airways. World Vision said that the collaboration was born out of a mutual commitment to supporting vulnerable communities in the developing world.

Katrina Hanson, the area manager for Europe and the US at Kenya Airways Cargo, said: 'We hope Precious and the bears enjoyed their flight with us. Kenya Airways was delighted to help take the teddies to refugee children in Uganda. Everyone remembers having a teddy bear as a child, so to love and hold a bear will delight children who could do with some comfort at a challenging time.'

Conflict and a famine in South Sudan have forced hundreds of thousands of families to flee their homes. Funds raised for World Vision will make a real difference to children from the world's youngest country. Click here to find out more.
Liu Yifei news: Live-action 'Mulan' actress not favored by China?

"Mulan" is finally coming into the live-action spotlight, as Disney's remake of the animated movie has finally found its new face in the form of Liu Yifei. However, the Chinese people do not seem to share the same sentiment towards her as Disney and most of the movie's western fan base.

According to the reports of website Quartzy, Yifei is apparently one of the worst Chinese actresses. This was based on China's own movie portal similar to IMBD, named Douban. Though the website is in Mandarin, it can be seen that Yifei's score based on the roles she has fulfilled only amounts to 5.2 out of 10. This is quite a low average score considering the two dozen movies she has acted in.

Based on the calculations of the Chinese website, a score of 7 out of 10 would be necessary for a star to be considered good by Chinese standards. It also seems that a lot of Chinese moviegoers do not like Yifei, with some even writing destructive criticism on one of the pages of her movies. The said criticism has also garnered 8,000 likes, which could mean that a lot of people agree with the commenter's idea that Yifei is bad.

Apart from that, Yifei has also been nominated for Douban's annual mock award, which lets user nominate who they think is the worst actress or actor for the year. Yifei was nominated as the worst actress in the years 2012, 2013, and 2016. One criticism towards Yifei was that the beautiful actress is afraid of being ugly, hence the apparent lack of facial expressions in most of her roles, both in movie and television.

Still, it does not seem to matter to Disney, as the actress has already been chosen for the role of Mulan. In addition, out of the 1,000 candidates who applied for the coveted Hollywood role, Yifei was considered by Disney as the perfect one. This was probably due to Yifei's impressive background of solid martial arts skills, fluent English, and her star quality. Whether this will affect the movie's critical and commercial standing in China remains to be seen once the movie gets released on 2019.
By IANS: Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka has said that the government may ban the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) even before the people ask for it.



According to reports in the state-run media, Wickramanayaka said on Tuesday that the ruling coalition headed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, which has been carrying forward the military campaign against the Tamil Tigers at the request of the people, could ban the Tamil Tigers before people "requested for it".



"The government continued the humanitarian operation launched from Mavil Aru because the people requested it. Now the government may even proscribe the LTTE before the people requested for it," the state-run Daily News on Wednesday quoted him as saying in a discussion on state-run radio.



The LTTE has been listed as a terrorist organisation in various countries, including India, Britain, the US and the EU.



The comment comes as the military has stepped up its campaign against the Tamil Tigers in the north. The present phase of full-scale war broke out in June 2006 when the LTTE closed the sluice gate of the Mavil Aru anicut in the eastern province.



Claiming that the country was "indirectly subjected to division" when President Rajapaksa took over exactly three years ago, the prime minister said the Norwegian-brokered truce pact "had offered the LTTE an opportunity to operate an administrative mechanism with its own banks, police service and courts".



"The President abrogated the CFA (ceasefire agreement) and took over the responsibility of liberating the country with the people's blessings. The humanitarian operation launched from Mavil Aru had been extended to the eastern province and Pooneryn," Wickramanayaka has been quoted as saying.



"It was crystal clear that our security forces would be able to march victoriously into Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi within the next few days. Today the LTTE terrorists were running for their lives in the face of advancing security forces," he said, adding that the possibility of proscribing the LTTE "loomed large".



President Rajapaksa, who turned 63 on Tuesday, is marking the completion of three years in office on Wednesday.



--- ENDS ---

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Months after deadly Palm Sunday attack, Egypt's St George's church re-opens

The Mar Girgis (St George) Church in Tanta, Egypt was inaugurated at the weekend after renovations were completed, months after the church was blown up during a Palm Sunday prayer service amid a wave of terrorist attacks.

Large numbers of Christians flocked into the church on Saturday morning to attend the first mass there since the attack, amid intense security, according to Egypt Today.

The reopening of the church followed renovations helped by the armed forces after the blast at the church on April 9 which left at least 40 dead and more than 70 injured. Another attack four hours later targeted Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Alexandria, leaving 16 dead and at least 40 injured.

Back then, Abanoub Gamal, a member of St George's, told World Watch Monitor: 'I was standing behind the back pews, next to the church door. At about 9.05am I noticed a man wearing a brown jacket enter the church and walk among the pews from the back to the front ... [He] stood in front of the church altar and he then exploded himself.'

He continued: 'Then there was a huge explosion, the lights went off, all the people screamed, the situation was terrible. The church was filled with the bodies of the dead, body parts and the injured. Blood was splattered all over the place and reached the church ceiling.'

Last month, a further attack at the church was foiled by security services outside the building.

Egypt has suffered increasingly from attacks by Islamist extremists, not only on its Christian minority but on its armed forces. Sixteen police officers were killed in October during an ambush in its western desert in an attack condemned by the Churches.

On November 24 more than 300 people were killed in a devastating attack on a mosque in North Sinai.
Ravi Zacharias denies 'grooming' accusations: 'I have learned a difficult and painful lesson'

Ravi Zacharias is being forced to defend himself over allegations around a lawsuit involving a married woman who sent him nude pictures as well as against claims he misled supporters by exaggerating his academic achievements.

The Indian-Canadian is a well-known apologist for the Christian faith and travels around the world for speaking events. Zacharias, 71, has also written dozens of books on faith and heads Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), a worldwide organisation with an annual revenue of $24m that sponsors preachers and Christian academics around the world.

A statement on Sunday comes after allegations on a number of blog posts that Zacharias 'groomed' a married woman and then threatened to take his own life when she said she would tell her husband. An email exchange purportedly between the pair, with the addresses redacted, was posted online and seen thousands of times before being removed. It appeared to show Zacharias pleading with the woman not to tell her husband about an apparent affair and claiming if she did he would end his own life.

But Zacharias, who has been married to his wife Margie for 45 years, said what started with friendly correspondence after meeting a couple at a speaking event in Canada escalated when the wife started sending 'extremely inappropriate pictures of herself unsolicited'. In Zacharias' account he said: 'I clearly instructed her to stop contacting me in any form; I blocked her messages, and I resolved to terminate all contact with her.'

The couple then demanded several million dollars from Zacharias in exchange for keeping their message exchange secret.

Zacharias sought legal advice and launched a legal suit which, on the couple's request, was settled through mediation rather than going to trial. The case was dropped last month when an agreement was made and both sides agreed to confidentiality.

'Unfortunately I am legally prevented from answering or even discussing the questions and claims being made by some, other than to say that each side paid for their own legal expenses and no ministry funds were used,' Zacharias' statement on Sunday read.

'I have learned a difficult and painful lesson through this ordeal,' he said. 'As a husband, father, grandfather, and leader of a Christian ministry I should not have engaged in ongoing communication with a woman other than my wife. I failed to exercise wise caution and to protect myself from even the appearance of impropriety, and for that I am profoundly sorry. I have acknowledged this to my Lord, my wife, my children, our ministry board, and my colleagues.

'Let me state categorically that I never met this woman alone, publicly or privately. The question is not whether I solicited or sent any illicit photos or messages to another woman  I did not, and there is no evidence to the contrary  but rather, whether I should have been a willing participant in any extended communication with a woman not my wife. The answer, I can unequivocally say, is no, and I fully accept responsibility. In all my correspondence with thousands of people in 45 years of ministry, I have never been confronted with a situation such as this, and God and my family and close friends know how grieved I have been.'

In the couple's account, Zacharias deliberately pursued the relationship in order to take advantage of the woman. 'As a result of your actions, she eventually opened up her life to you to the point where you exercised a controlling influence over her as one with spiritual authority,' their attorney, Mark P Bryant, of Bryant Law Firm wrote in the demand letter, according to Christianity Today. 'Armed with that information and your excellent grooming skills, you chose to exploit her vulnerability to satisfy your own sexual desires.'

Raising concerns about Zacharias being a 'possible predator' and making suggestions of 'sexual misconduct', blogger Julie Anne Smith initially published the email chain before saying the woman had asked her to remove them.

Zacharias ended his own statement saying he bore 'no ill will toward anybody' but insisting he had 'never engaged in any inappropriate behavior of any kind' and had 'exercised extreme caution in my daily life and travels, as everyone who knows me is aware.

'I have long made it my practice not to be alone with a woman other than Margie and our daughters  not in a car, a restaurant, or anywhere else. Upon reflection, I now realize that the physical safeguards I have long practiced to protect my integrity should have extended to include digital communications safeguards. I believe  and indeed would counsel others  that the standards of personal conduct are necessarily higher for Christian leaders.'

The allegations comes after longstanding claims from a separate blogger resurfaced, suggesting Zacharias had exaggerated his own academic credentials and falsely implied he had earned a doctorate degree.

As recently as April 2017 RZIM referred to Zacharias as 'Dr' Ravi despite his doctorates only being honorary awards, according to the blogger Warren Throckmorton. He claims a systematic overrall of the RZIM website in recent days has removed all references to Zacharias as 'Dr'.

In a separate statement from RZIM on Sunday, the organisation said: 'Neither Ravi nor his ministry has ever claimed he had an earned doctorate.'

It added: 'In earlier years, "Dr." did appear before Ravi's name in some of our materials, including on our website, which is an appropriate and acceptable practice with honorary doctorates.'

It went on: 'However, because this practice can be contentious in certain circles, we no longer use it.'

Atheist blogger Steve Baughman has claimed credit for forcing RZIM to adjust Zacharias' biography on their website and also accused him of exaggerating his roles at academic institutions including Oxford University, Cambridge University, and Alliance Theological Seminary.

For example a previous biography of Zacharias on the RZIM website stated he was a 'visiting scholar at Cambridge University' when in fact he took a sabbatical term at the theological college Ridley Hall, which at the time was affiliated with Cambridge University but is now just allied with Cambridge and affiliated with Durham University.

In response RZIM vowed: 'We will be more vigilant about editing and fact-checking at every stage.'

It added: 'Ravi's desire and our desire as an evangelistic ministry is to engage the honest skeptic, to take questions seriously, and to be as clear as possible in our communication. We therefore have restructured Ravi's biography to better reflect his 45 years as an itinerant evangelist and apologist with a passion and a calling to reach those who shape the ideas of culture with the beauty and credibility of the gospel.'

You can read RZIM's full statement on the allegations around his biography here:

The veracity of some of the educational credentialsspecifically the use of the "doctorate" designationof our Founder and President, Ravi Zacharias, have been called into question. While Ravi personally does not brandish his credentials and routinely asks not to be referred to as "Dr. Zacharias"even by employeesour organization bears his name and, as such, we would like to take this opportunity to clear up any misunderstanding.

Neither Ravi Zacharias nor Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) has ever knowingly misstated or misrepresented Ravi's credentials. When it has been brought to our attention that something was stated incorrectly with regard to Ravi's background, we have made every effort to correct it. Sometimes other entitiessuch as publishers or institutions where Ravi was speakinghave incorrectly presented aspects of his credentials. We were not aware of these errors when they were made; however, in some instances RZIM should have caught them and sought to have them corrected. We regret any and all errors, as well as any doubt or distraction they may have caused.

Currently, eleven RZIM team members have earned doctorates. Ravi is not one of them, nor has he ever claimed to have an earned doctorate. In fact, Ravi often states that he wishes he had done more formal studies, as he values and understands the importance of higher learning. Ravi has a Masters of Divinity from Trinity International University, and has also been conferred with ten honorary doctorates. Ravi is grateful for and humbled by where the Lord has taken him during his 45 years of ministry thus far.

In earlier years, "Dr." did appear before Ravi's name in some of our materials, including on our website, which is an appropriate and acceptable practice with honorary doctorates. However, because this practice can be contentious in certain circles, we no longer use it.

In addition, some confusion may have arisen from a difference in cultural norms, as we are a global organization with staff members based in sixteen countries. In Ravi's homeland of India, for example, honorific titles are customary and are used frequently out of respect for elders, including by the RZIM India team when addressing Ravi. Still, it is Ravi's custom to request for the inviting parties not to use "Dr." with his name in conjunction with any speaking events. Despite this, on occasion it has been our experience that we arrive to find promotional banners and materials welcoming "Dr. Ravi Zacharias." We will continue to do our best to ensure consistency; however, we recognize that certain aspects are sometimes beyond our control.

The nature of our work at RZIM can evoke criticism, sometimes fairin which case we address itbut sometimes completely unfounded and without merit. For example, recently a couple of inquirers claimed to have information that Ravi was facing discipline from his denomination. This is simply false and has never been the case, and it serves as an example of why we choose not to address certain accusations that come our way.

We will be more vigilant about editing and fact-checking at every stage. Our hope is that this will enable us to focus on our primary calling of helping people to encounter the claims and person of Jesus Christ, and will enable others to focus on the strength and merit of our message.

Ravi's desire and our desire as an evangelistic ministry is to engage the honest skeptic, to take questions seriously, and to be as clear as possible in our communication. We therefore have restructured Ravi's biography to better reflect his 45 years as an itinerant evangelist and apologist with a passion and a calling to reach those who shape the ideas of culture with the beauty and credibility of the gospel.



Here is RZIM's full statement about his lawsuit:

In October 2014, I spoke at a conference in Canada. At the conclusion of my talk, I met a couple who expressed an interest in our ministry. The wife asked if I would reach out to her husband because he had questions about the Christian faith. As requested, I followed up by sending an email and a book to him, and invited him to consider attending one of our educational programs at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM).

Some months later, I traveled with my wife and one of our daughters to another part of Canada for a speaking engagement. The couple attended this event and invited my wife and me to dinner at a local restaurant afterwards. That was the second and last time I was ever in the same room with either of them.

Subsequently, she began to contact me via the email address I had used to contact her husband after first meeting them. My responses were usually brief. Then, last year, she shockingly sent me extremely inappropriate pictures of herself unsolicited. I clearly instructed her to stop contacting me in any form; I blocked her messages, and I resolved to terminate all contact with her.

In late 2016, she sent an email informing me she planned to tell her husband about the inappropriate pictures she had sent and to claim that I had solicited them. In April 2017, together they sent me, through an attorney, a letter demanding money. I immediately notified members of my board, and as they advised, I personally engaged legal counsel.

In response to the demand for money, my attorneys filed a publicly available lawsuit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The other side requested mediation rather than going to trial. We agreed to mediation and we reached an agreement in November 2017 to resolve the matter and dismiss my lawsuit. All communication with both of them has concluded, and the legal matters have been resolved. However, at this time, unfortunately I am legally prevented from answering or even discussing the questions and claims being made by some, other than to say that each side paid for their own legal expenses and no ministry funds were used.

I have learned a difficult and painful lesson through this ordeal. As a husband, father, grandfather, and leader of a Christian ministry I should not have engaged in ongoing communication with a woman other than my wife. I failed to exercise wise caution and to protect myself from even the appearance of impropriety, and for that I am profoundly sorry. I have acknowledged this to my Lord, my wife, my children, our ministry board, and my colleagues.

Let me state categorically that I never met this woman alone, publicly or privately. The question is not whether I solicited or sent any illicit photos or messages to another womanI did not, and there is no evidence to the contrarybut rather, whether I should have been a willing participant in any extended communication with a woman not my wife. The answer, I can unequivocally say, is no, and I fully accept responsibility. In all my correspondence with thousands of people in 45 years of ministry, I have never been confronted with a situation such as this, and God and my family and close friends know how grieved I have been.

In my 45 years of marriage to Margie, I have never engaged in any inappropriate behavior of any kind. I love my wife with all my heart and have been absolutely faithful to her these more than 16,000 days of marriage, and have exercised extreme caution in my daily life and travels, as everyone who knows me is aware. I have long made it my practice not to be alone with a woman other than Margie and our daughtersnot in a car, a restaurant, or anywhere else. Upon reflection, I now realize that the physical safeguards I have long practiced to protect my integrity should have extended to include digital communications safeguards. I believeand indeed would counsel othersthat the standards of personal conduct are necessarily higher for Christian leaders.

The Lord rescued me at the age of seventeen, and I promised to leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth. He entrusted me with this calling, it is His; any opportunities I have been given are from Him. My life is not my own, it belongs to God. As long as He gives me life and breath I will serve out this calling He has given me. I am committed to finishing well, using whatever years He grants me to share His love and forgiveness, truth and grace, with people everywhere who are looking for meaning and purpose and hope. I bear no ill will toward anybody. God is the God of healing, and He promises a new day. May that be true by His grace.
These breakaway Anglican ordinations are a wake-up call

On Thursday this week a potentially historic event will take place. Nine men will be ordained as Anglican ministers  but not in the Church of England.

Instead, as Christian Today has reported, they will be part of the new Anglican Mission in England (AMiE), a grouping formed in reaction to a perceived liberal drift in the C of E. AMiE is linked to the international conservative Anglican movement GAFCON  and even has its own 'missionary bishop', Andy Lines, who is also director of Crosslinks, a mission agency about a century old.

It would be easy in the black and white world of social media to default to one of two extremes: either regarding this latest move as shocking schism to be roundly condemned, or, alternatively, to see this latest grouping as the one true hope for all genuinely faithful and discerning Anglicans. But of course, as with most of life, it's more complex than that. So what does this development tell us in the light of the wider issues facing the worldwide Anglican Communion?

1. It's a wake-up call for Anglicans. Nine new church ministers is scarcely comparable with the thousands of already-ordained Church of England ministers in the established church. Nonetheless, it is a sad indictment of mainstream Anglicanism that these men either wouldn't  or couldn't  be ordained in the C of E. They are undoubtedly conservative on the issues of women's ministry and sexual morality  but no more so than many Anglicans, Baptists, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians of course. Their views are well within the mainstream.

Most Anglican bishops may regard the AMiE ordinations as a sideshow  but they ought to be concerned if thoughtful, committed and gifted believers no longer feel (rightly or wrongly) that the Church of England has a place for them. And if they are secretly rather glad to be rid of people like this then they have some real soul-searching to do.

2. It's a wake-up call for evangelicals. It ought also to function as a wake-up call for Anglican evangelicals. Gone are the days when we were all singing from the same hymn sheet behind theologians like John Stott and JI Packer. Some might say that is a good thing  and that we are looking now more to Christ than to human leaders.

Nonetheless, there is a very real fragmentation of Anglican evangelicals of which the AMiE ordinations are but one symptom. Within the Church of England there are a plethora of groups and tribes claiming to represent various shades of evangelicalism  Reform, Fulcrum, Church Society, the Fellowship of Word and Spirit, New Wine, the Church of England Evangelical Council, Co-Mission and the HTB church-planting network. It's sometimes bewildering even for those us who want to be supportive. How can all these groups learn to understand each other and work together better?

And outside the Church of England, AMiE is not the only show in town  for other disaffected Anglican evangelicals are linking up with the Free Church of England, which currently has 20 churches and about 1,000 members, while a few others in the UK have aligned with the REACH-SA (the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa).

It has always seemed to me that the sort of Christian unity Jesus has in mind is rather more 'organic'  in terms of fellowship between believers of different backgrounds  than 'organisational' through everyone uniting in one bureaucratic mega-denomination. But even so, the splintering of evangelicals into all these different groups is a cause of concern. Moreover, the setting up of a evangelical Anglican structures outside the Church of England has the potential, some would say, of weakening the evangelical constituency in the C of E at a critical time.

3. It's a gospel opportunity. Whatever one makes of all this, one thing is clear: England  indeed the whole of the UK  desperately needs revival. Only the Holy Spirit can ultimately bring that. But we can pray for it. And we can work for it. And part of that work has to be the planting of new churches, as well as the nurturing of existing congregations.

If AMiE can come anywhere close to its goal of planting 25 churches by 2025 and 250 by 2050, well, what's not to like about that? There are plenty of unchurched people yet to be reached, even in areas with existing healthy congregations. We can say with St Paul: 'The important thing is that in every way...Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.'

Whatever our precise thoughts about these ordinations, we perhaps do well to heed the wise words of the teacher Gamaliel about the first Christians recorded in Acts 5: 38-39: 'If their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.' So whatever our thoughts about AMiE's strengths and weaknesses, let us above all else pray for God's blessing upon them.

David Baker is a former daily newspaper journalist now working as an Anglican minister in Sussex, England. Find him on Twitter @Baker_David_A
U.S. Military must start admitting transgender troops on Jan. 1, 2018, judge rules

The efforts of U.S. President Donald Trump to prevent transgenders from entering the U.S. military have now been shattered, with a federal judge, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, deciding to retain the opportunity of transgenders to serve in the military. This will take effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

Kollar-Kotelly wrote, "Those policies allowed for the accession of transgender individuals into the military beginning on January 1, 2018." The statement emphasized, "Any action by any of the Defendants that changes this status quo is preliminarily enjoined."

After Trump's firm announcement on not accepting transgenders in any position in the U.S. military on Twitter last July, he commanded the Defense Department to create a memo banning transgenders within a six-month period. This decision created mixed opinions and made some of his rivals furious. Trump's arguments revolve around creating a decisive workforce in the U.S. military, which could be pulled down by medical expenses and any untoward circumstances that transgenders could cause the Defense Department.

Trump's ban will end in March 2018. However, now that a court decision has been made in favor of transgenders entering the U.S. military, this might be the end of his memo. However, they can still appeal to the court for reconsideration.

Attorney Joshua Block from American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the service members who filed the lawsuit against Trump's transgender ban in the U.S. military, was overjoyed with the judicial decision. He stated last November, as reported by Reuters, "We're pleased that the courts have stepped in to ensure that trans service members are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve."

Not everyone is in favor of the court ruling, though. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins pointed out in a statement last October, "This is where judicial activism is leading us. The courts have moved beyond legislating on the invented rights of abortion and same-sex marriage to clearly usurping the constitutional authority of the executive branch."

Perkins also called out the courts for getting in the way of the president's immigration policies that have been put in place to safeguard the country and for "telling the commander-in-chief how to run the military."
'Young Sheldon' spoilers: Meemaw and George Sr. to fight over Brisket recipe in the seventh episode

On the next episode of the American sitcom "Young Sheldon," Meemaw (Annie Potts) and George Sr. (Lance Barber) are going to lock horns over a brisket recipe. Episode 7 of the CBS series will air on Dec. 7 at 8:30 p.m. EST on CBS.

The next episode, titled "A Brisket, Voodoo, and Cannonball Run," centers on a feud between Meemaw and George Sr. The father of the Cooper household is hoping to acquire Meemaw's legendary brisket recipe, but the latter will not budge. In the promo video of the episode, Meemaw calls the recipe "A Holy Grail."

Sheldon (Iain Armitage), George Jr. (Montana Jordan), and Missy (Raegan Revord) are putting their minds together to solve the dispute between their father and their grandmother.

Brisket has been mentioned a lot in "The Big Bang Theory." According to several episodes, brisket is a favorite not only in the Cooper home but also in the Wolowitz dome. The dish has been included in a few episodes that featured Howard Wolowitz's (Simon Helberg) mother, Debbie Wolowitz (Carol Ann Susi).

There are no further information if the upcoming episode will feature new characters.

Meanwhile, the previous episode featured a world-renowned inventor and a man who wants to transport people to Mars. CEO of SpaceX, Elon Mush, appeared in the last part of "Young Sheldon's" sixth episode titled "A Patch, A Modem, and A Zantac." The episode ended with the reveal that Musk got the idea to successfully land the Falcon9 safely to the ocean from Sheldon's research. The most recent episode focused on Sheldon's research that will help The National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA save millions of money when launching their rockets. The previous episode established Sheldon's main reason for taking up Theoretical Physics.

The show released a set tour featuring young actress Revord. The short tour clip reveals one thing about Revord aka Missy. The little girl happens to be a vegetarian so she explained that she eats fake bacon during production.
IRCC pledges to have most PR applications from Live-in Caregiver Program completed in 2018 Stephen Smith Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

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Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says it will have the backlog of permanent residence applications through the old Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) largely cleared by the end of 2018.

In an announcement on Dec. 3, IRCC said its goal is to finalize 80 per cent of applications for permanent residence submitted on or before Oct. 1, 2017, by caregivers and their family members through the LCP.

The commitments the government has made today will mean that many Live-in Caregiver Program applicants who have faced long delays and family separation may soon reach their goal of permanent residence, Canadas Immigration Minister, Ahmed Hussen, said in a news release. After diligently providing care for Canadians, they may soon be in the company of their own loved ones, together in Canada.

The program provided foreign nationals with at least two years of full-time, live-in employment as a caregiver in Canada with a direct pathway to permanent residence. The program was closed in 2014 but thousands of caregivers who were working in Canada were given an extended opportunity to apply for permanent residence.

As many as 6,000 more applications for permanent residence under the LCP could still be submitted, IRCC says.

In its announcement, IRCC also committed to processing 80 per cent of new, complete LCP applications submitted on or after Oct. 1, 2017, within 12 months.

As of Oct. 1, 2017, IRCC said the number of caregivers and their family members waiting for their applications to be finalized had been reduced by 63 per cent. This reduction was due in part to additional resources that IRCC dedicated to processing the backlog of applications.

IRCC says this push has it on track to finalize 5,000 more cases than it had originally forecast for 2017. In total, 20,000 new permanent residents will be welcomed to Canada this year in the caregiver category.

IRCC also said that developments could soon be announced regarding a proposal to eliminate the $1,000 Labour Market Impact Assessment fee for Canadian families looking to hire a foreign worker to care for a person with high medical needs. The fee would also be eliminated for Canadian families with an income of less than $150,000, who are looking to hire a foreign worker to provide childcare.

To find out if you are eligible to immigrate to Canada permanently, fill out a free online assessment form.

 2017 CICNews All Rights Reserved
How extraordinary to see a world-historical revolution unfolding before ones eyes and not know how it will turn out: thats whats happening right now in Saudi Arabia. Mohammad bin Salman, a 32-year-old too young to be a partner in most law or finance firms, has managed, by intrigue not yet fully disclosed, to supplant his cousin Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef as heir to the throne and to carry out a purge of the royal family breathtaking in its sweep. Imagine: not only did bin Salman order the arrest of at least ten other princes and a score of former government ministers, now held in luxurious restraint in Riyadhs Ritz Carlton; he also supposedly had Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, one of the worlds richest men and a major shareholder of 21st Century Fox, Citigroup, Apple, Twitter, and a host of other giant Western corporations, hanged upside down and beaten in an anti-corruption investigation.

No matter that wastacorruption, kickbacks, and cronyismhas long governed Saudi Arabian business dealings. Now, the kingdoms economic crown jewelAramco, the Saudi state oil companyis headed for sale on the public stock markets, and the financial future of the kingdom and its oligarchs is on the line. Sadly for the Saudis, Aramco is no longer as valuable, economically and geopolitically, as it once was. Natural gas from fracking has displaced oil as the fuel of the Western economy, with the result that OPEC (and, less critically, Russian oil) can no longer hold anybodys economy hostage. For the Saudi government, moreover, no longer can cartel-inflated oil revenues pay for the gigantic welfare state that supports so much of the population in nonworking, gilded, state dependency. What cant go on, wont, said economist Herb Stein sagely; and MbS, as the new crown prince is called, saw this reality and stepped in to take precautionary measures before a rapidly collapsing economic order sparked social anarchy, with an outcome no government could foresee or control.

Economic modernization and diversification, the prince saw, were essential, and they required social liberalization as the first order of business, beginning with allowing women to drive cars, the royal road to womens liberation. Already, Saudi women are casting off the hijab and seizing modern social pleasures. The important point is that half the kingdoms potential workforce will become free to produce, with hugely positive consequences for the economy.

But thats only part of the social revolution that the princes economic transformation entails. Crucially, the royal family will find it harder to fund the radical Wahhabi Islam that OPEC has let grow like mushrooms. Its hard to imagine that this well-established, well-fed worldwide network of terrorist-supporting fanatics, in their opulent mosques and madrassasand especially in the more Spartan ones in Pakistanwill go quietly; little wonder that the prince has surrounded himself with a repressive security apparatus reminiscent of the Shah of Irans. He appears to be a quiet but inexorable foe of Muslim extremism, and consequently it is uncertain that he will emerge from his heroic and visionary remaking of the Saudi order with his head intact on his shoulders. Many a social liberalization has spun out of control and produced anarchy or fascist counterrevolution. But well-wishers have long hoped that some Muslim Martin Luther would purge Islam of its quotient of bloodlust and allow the self-perfecting, ethical version of its peaceful adherents to prevail in a secular society, where separation of mosque and state makes religion a private matter. In a medieval region like Arabia, it turns out, a king might do the job equally wellif he can survive to inherit the throne and rule from it. And then the question will be whether his revolution can last, as the Pahlavis and Mustafa Kemal Ataturks did not.

Its not just the Wahhabi mullahs, along with the royal kleptocrats, who will try to kill this project in its infancy. So will the Iranian Shiite fanatics, who, for all their vehement and resentful disagreements with their Sunni brethren, dont want to see a strain of moderation take hold. So will a SunniShia war ensue?

Recall that the Protestant Reformation ignited three decades of ferocious religious warfare in Europe, laced with massacre, torture, and forced exile. Lets hope that the Islamic version is short and mild, but conclusive enough to deglamorize the dream of terrorism not only in the Middle East but also in the minds of those Western Muslims whose cultural alienation has sparked so much vile carnage. They, like so many others, have nothing to lose but their ideological chains.

Photo by Nicolas Asfouri - Pool/Getty Images
The Shaw Trust has bought employment and skills company the Prospects Group, which has a revenue of 76m, making the charity the 14th largest in the UK.

A charity spokesman refused to say exactly how much the Shaw Trust paid for the company, which is employee-owned, but said it was a fair and proportionate price in line with the commercial valuation of the business.

He said the Shaw Trust purchased all of Prospects shares so is now the sole shareholder. Prospects will remain a for-profit subsidiary of Shaw Trust in the immediate future, and there are no plans to convert it into a charity.

There will be no immediate redundancies or changes in the management of either organisation, he added.

The two organisations have been working together for a number of years, including on Shaw Trusts Work Choice project in Dorset, and the Prospects shareholders voted in favour of the acquisition on 30 November.

Roy OShaughnessy, chief executive of the Shaw Trust Group, said: I am delighted that Prospects has joined our group. We deliver many complementary services and now, together, we can offer an even greater range of support to our customers.

Nick Bell, chief executive of the Prospects Group, said: Prospects is excited about joining the Shaw Trust Group.

We have a very similar mission and values to Shaw Trust, and the merger of our organisations will enable us to create new opportunities and inspire more young people and adults a year to develop their potential.

The two organisations, along with Shaw Education Trust, Ixion, Forth Sector and Disabled Living Foundation, form the Shaw Trust Group, which employs almost 3,200 staff and has a combined turnover of 250m.

A group leadership team has been appointed to oversee the activities of the Shaw Trust Group as a whole. This team will be reviewing the shape and structure of the group.

The Shaw Trust currently sits in 40th place in the haysmacintyre / Charity Finance 100 Index of the UK's largest charities, but would rise to 14th place following this acquisition.
Gerald Bates, an international aid auditor at Moore Stephens, gives his top tips for understanding a donor audit and how to make it the most succesful your your aid charity.

When one of your funders commissions an audit or other assurance assignment over your organisations use of their funds, you may be immediately tempted to switch on your out-of-office and book an extended period of annual leave. Too often, such assignments are seen as something to be endured, rather than as an opportunity to obtain impartial guidance, reassurance, feedback and suggested improvements.

At Moore Stephens Top 10 accounting and advisory firm, we have a dedicated donor team based across 15 countries. Our team perform over 2,500 assurance assignments each year for a wide range of publicly and privately-funded donors, as well as recipients of donor funds, undertaking fieldwork in more than 150 countries. Weve drawn on this experience to pull together some top tips to ensure that you maximise the benefit of any donor-engaged assurance assignment and avoid the common pitfalls.

1. Understand the scope of work

As a starting point, its important to clarify the scope of the work. Knowing this is vital to ensure you can properly prepare for the process  dont be afraid to ask for this information if its not readily given to you. Its also important to understand the objectives of the assignment, the procedures that will be applied and the expected output. To what extent you can contribute to the final output draft?

2. Be an active participant

A successful audit will involve teamwork, collaboration and respect. Auditors should show humility in appreciating that you are the expert on your systems and processes. If you believe, therefore, that there may be a better way to gain the assurance needed over a particular area then dont be afraid to suggest amendments to the approach.

Too often the recipient is passive in discussions regarding the process to be undertaken. Though auditors will apply the judgment and experience of performing similar assignments, your input could result in a more bespoke and efficient approach.

3. Agree a communication protocol

Assurance engagements by nature involve the dissemination and consideration of a wide range of information. One way to streamline the process is to agree, at the planning stage, the information that will be necessary, what format it will be provided in, when it will be provided and by whom. While it may be tempting to send every system manual and all of your accounting data, this will only lead to numerous requests for clarification. It is much better, therefore, to invest the time at the planning stage.

Rarely will an assignment only require input from the finance team; you may well need to include staff from the programme, logistics, procurement, internal audit and HR departments. A further complication arises when programmes are delivered across multiple locations. To what extent will all information be available from your office? What information may need to be retrieved from other sites? Will this cause delays to the process? Providing clear, targeted information will substantially reduce our queries and improve the efficiency of the assignment.

While the audit team are on-site, ground rules should be agreed regarding communication. You may prefer to have all requests for information channelled, in writing, through a set focal point, or you may designate key individuals to be responsible for providing information in certain key areas. You may want to fix times in diaries for any meetings or, alternatively, you may prefer a more open-door approach. Different individuals and organisations will have their own preferred style, so its important to agree your preferred approach in advance.

4. Make the most of the time together

Fieldwork should be bookended with formal opening and closing meetings. The opening meeting represents an opportunity for the audit team to be introduced to all key stakeholders at your organisation in the assignment, confirm their approach while on-site and answer any outstanding queries that you may have. The closing meeting is a vital step for presenting provisional observations. We recommend this is held early on the last day on-site, to allow sufficient time for any disputed observations to be cleared up through the provision of additional information before the audit team leave your premises.

Often, the closing meeting will focus on areas of improvement and any identified weaknesses in the procedures. However, its also a good opportunity to ask for advice on areas found to be performing well. Remember, auditors who perform this work full-time for donors will have a wide-range of exposure to systems operated by other recipients and, therefore, a good idea of what works well.

If there are areas of ambiguity or uncertainty in the donors contractual conditions or frustrations with their management of the programme, this can be an opportunity to raise your concerns. With a working knowledge as to how donor rules are to be applied, auditors can then feedback any weaknesses in the donors systems; indeed, some donors actively request such feedback.

Finally, the closing meeting represents an opportunity to work together to identify the practicable remedial steps to take to address any identified weaknesses. To be valuable, it is imperative that these recommendations are suitable for your particular needs and not just boilerplate advice thats not workable for you in practice.

Gerald Bates is an international aid auditor, within Moore Stephens dedicated donor department.

Civil Society Media would like to thank Moore Stephens for their support with this article.
Shashi Kapoor saw acting as a skill that transcends the boundaries of Bollywood.

By India Today Web Desk: Veteran actor Shashi Kapoor's contributions to the Indian film industry are known to one and all.

Having acted in over a hundred films, Shashi Kapoor has left behind some of the most memorable characters that the audience would cherish for years to come.

But the actor's contributions were not just limited to Bollywood. The Sharmilee actor gave new impetus to art in general, especially in the field of acting. And as one of its greatest manifestations stands the Prithvi Theatre.

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One of the best known theatres in Mumbai, Prithvi Theatre was built by Shashi Kapoor and his wife Jennifer Kapoor, in memory of his father, Prithviraj Kapoor.

Prithvi Theatre

Prithviraj Kapoor had always dreamt of having a permanent ''home'' for his travelling theatre company, Prithvi Theatres, which was founded in 1942.

It was in this very theatre group that Shashi Kapoor trained as an actor and director.

After his father's death, the actor and his wife turned Prithviraj's dream into reality, by buying a plot of land in Juhu, Mumbai, and setting up the Shri Prithviraj Kapoor Memorial Trust & Research Foundation, to promote Hindi theatre and performing arts.

Finally, Prithvi Theatre, as we know it today, was inaugurated on November 5, 1978.

Picture courtesy: Facebook/prithvitheatre

The theatre began its journey with G P Deshpande's play, Udhwastha Dharmashala, featuring Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri and Benjamin Gilani.

At that time, the realm of drama in Mumbai was dominated by English theatre, Gujarati farce and low-key Marathi theatre. It was Prithvi Theatre that provided a new avenue for Hindi drama, which experimented with new art forms and styles.

Even today, Prithvi Theatre continues to acknowledge new talent and serve as a source of inspiration for many, with numerous shows organised per year.

Shashi Kapoor's daughter and son, Sanjana and Kunal Kapoor, take care of the theatre now.

--- ENDS ---
For journalists covering the administration, few stories have higher stakes than the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. So when ABC Newss Brian Ross was forced to correct his report that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that Trump, as a candidate, directed him to contact the Russians, it was a very big deal.

Ross offered a clarification on Friday evenings World News Tonight, saying that it was as president-elect, rather than as a candidate, that Trump had given Flynn the instruction. But by that point, the damage had been done. On Saturday, ABC suspended Ross for four weeks without pay, saying in a statement, It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audiencethese are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday.

RELATED: A feud between two media giants

Ross accepted the punishment, writing, My job is to hold people accountable and thats why I agree with being held accountable myself. But ABC has not yet fully explained how his single-sourced report made it to air without being properly vetted.

CORRECTION of ABC News Special Report: Flynn prepared to testify that President-elect Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians *during the transition*  initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria, confidant now says. https://t.co/ewrkVZTu2K pic.twitter.com/URLiHf3uSm  ABC News (@ABC) December 2, 2017

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The president quickly waded into the fray, tweeting, Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News! Trump also suggested that those who lost money when the stock market plunged after Rosss initial report (it later recovered most of its losses) should sue ABC.

Rosss error hands a press-bashing administration a cudgel that will no doubt be used again and again to discredit serious reporting. Remember the mileage that Trump, Sean Spicer, and Sarah Sanders got from Zeke Millers incorrect report that Trump had removed a bust of Martin Luther King from the Oval Office? Expect more of those sorts of deflections every time a question is raised about the Russia investigation.

ICYMI: Ouch! These are headlines editors probably wish they could take back

Below, more on the fallout from ABCs costly error.

Frustration in the newsroom: CNNs Oliver Darcy reports that Rosss report caused embarrassment in the ABC newsroom. It makes me cringe, one staffer told him. This is not what any [network] needs when people are so quick to say fake news to you. It makes me sick to my stomach.

CNNs Oliver Darcy reports that Rosss report caused embarrassment in the ABC newsroom. It makes me cringe, one staffer told him. This is not what any [network] needs when people are so quick to say fake news to you. It makes me sick to my stomach. Taking ABC to task: The Washington Posts Erik Wemple doesnt pull any punches in criticizing ABC for what may endure as the most cowardly clarification in modern journalism.

The Washington Posts Erik Wemple doesnt pull any punches in criticizing ABC for what may endure as the most cowardly clarification in modern journalism. Flashback: In 2012, Dylan Byers (then at Politico), reported on Rosss controversial record. The occasion at the time was Rosss erroneous report that Aurora movie theater shooter James Holmes may have had ties to the Tea Party. (h/t Michael Calderone)

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Pete Vernon is a former CJR staff writer. Follow him on Twitter @ByPeteVernon.
Officials say the Ohio state agriculture department has decided not to fine the operators of a thrill ride that broke apart at the Ohio State Fair, killing one.

The Dayton Daily News reports that an investigative summary released Friday says the Ohio Department of Agriculture will not fine Amusements of America even though the company failed to report the accident without 24 hours as required by law.

The summary says the group, however, did notify the state immediately.

A four-passenger carriage on the swinging and spinning ride called the Fire Ball broke apart July 26 and flung one of the rides carriages into the air. Eighteen-year-old high school student Tyler Jarrell died.

Dutch manufacturer KMG says excessive corrosion within a support beam wore away the steel walls thickness over the years, causing the catastrophic failure of the swinging and spinning Fire Ball ride.

Corrosion experts say the companys account points to water or wet debris being trapped within the hollow support arm, likely while it was being transported or stored during the winter.

The rides operator, Amusements of America, submitted paperwork to the Ohio State Fair showing it completed ultrasonic testing of the rides 24 gondola arm pins last October. But its not clear whether the tests examined the area where the carriage broke on July 26.

John Seewer of the Associated Press contributed to this article.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
When it comes to sexual harassment allegations, no employer wants to find itself in the position an Indiana university was in during the 1990s, when a woman complained to a senior administrator that the schools chancellor had groped her.

Oh, no, not again, said the administrator at Indiana Universitys South Bend campus.

A jury awarded the woman $800,000.

Although a judge later slashed that to $50,000, the message was clear: Failing to address allegations of sexual misconduct in the workplace can have expensive legal consequences for employers.

You dont have to fire people necessarily, but doing nothing is usually not helpful, said Camille Hebert, an employment discrimination professor at the Ohio State law school.

Earlier this year, a former University of California, Santa Cruz student who alleges she was raped by a professor settled her claim against the university system for $1.15 million over what she says was its failure to address previous allegations of sexual harassment and sexual violence by the faculty member.

It is with that reality in mind that companies are swiftly firing powerful men accused of misbehavior and taking a zero-tolerance attitude toward such wrongdoing. But whether a no-mercy approach is a good idea is a matter of debate.

While businesses are usually within their rights to swiftly fire employees accused of misconduct, as was done this week with former Today show host Matt Lauer and former Prairie Home Companion personality Garrison Keillor, such actions can also backfire, legal experts say. For example, they say, women who just want the harassment to stop and dont want to see anyone get fired might hesitate to come forward.

Philadelphia-based employment attorney Jon Segal said zero tolerance for harassment is important, but the consequences should be commensurate with the offense and should include steps short of firing, such as mandatory training, suspension or demotion.

You dont want to send the message to people that if there is an allegation and its found to be true, its automatic termination, Segal said.

For employees who choose to sue, the timeframe can be short for raising the allegation: 300 days if employees want to sue in federal court. States often have more generous deadlines  six years in Ohio, for example  and fewer caps on financial damages.

Time limits dont mean lawsuits cant be brought over older complaints of harassment. For example, employees can argue that a recent incident within the 300-day limit allows them to revisit an older complaint outside that window.

Employers can also inadvertently breathe new life into old complaints by threatening employees with retaliation.

That is very high on the list of dumb moves for employers to make, said Washington-based labor attorney Richard Seymour.

Last year, a federal appeals court agreed that an Illinois circuit board company retaliated against a woman who brought sexual harassment allegations by firing her. She was awarded $300,000, even though her actual harassment claims were dismissed.

Employers can also take actions they think are fixing a problem but often end up hurting them in court, such as transferring a woman who complained of harassment but not the man who harassed her.

As new allegations crop up daily, labor attorneys say they are already hearing of a troubling trend: men unwilling to interact with female co-workers for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing.

Such behavior is a mistake since it contributes to a new form of discrimination by putting opportunities for women out of reach, experts say.

The answer to no sexual harassment isnt polarizing the workforce into male versus female camps. That would be the very definition of sex discrimination, said Washington labor attorney Deborah Kelly.

But Hebert, the Ohio State law professor, is skeptical of men who say theyre worried about getting accused.

Most men understand the difference, she said. I always say, If youd feel uncomfortable with it happening to your daughter or your wife, maybe you shouldnt be doing it.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A U.S. lawmaker wants the Homeland Security Department inspector general to review contracts worth $30 million awarded to a fledgling company for Hurricane Maria disaster supplies it failed to deliver to Puerto Rico.

Rep. Sean Maloney, D-N.Y., asked for the review in an amendment to the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2017 during a meeting of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He cited reporting by The Associated Press this week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded contracts for tarps and plastic sheeting to Bronze Star LLC of St. Cloud, Florida, that were never delivered. The agency ultimately terminated the contracts earlier this month without paying any money, but the episode caused a delay of four weeks.

We still havent got that job done, because now seven weeks have elapsed, Maloney told the committee. Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, tens of thousands of families are exposed to the elements at the worst time of year. Its completely unacceptable, and it cries out for a professional and independent review of the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security.

Temporary tarp installed on roof requiring repairs after Hurricane Irma. Photo by Robert Kaufmann  Sep 30, 2017

It is not clear how thoroughly FEMA investigated Bronze Star or its ability to fulfill the contracts. Formed by two brothers in August, Bronze Star had never before won a government contract or delivered tarps or plastic sheeting. The address listed for the business is a single-family home in a residential subdivision.

Though both the brothers are veterans, neither was awarded a Bronze Star, a medal earned by service members who serve heroically in combat.

FEMA awarded the company two contracts Oct. 10 to provide 500,000 tarps and 60,000 rolls of plastic sheeting. More than a half dozen others also bid, but FEMA said it could not provide details about their identity or their bids.

After the APs story ran, FEMA said a second company, Master Group, was the second-lowest and technically acceptable bidder and was ultimately awarded the tarp contract.

The agency provided no additional details on Master Group or a copy of the award, which was not listed in federal data. A man who identified himself as the CEO of The Master Group, with offices in England and Los Angeles, answered what appeared to be his cell phone and said he was in Europe, then hung up.

He did not respond to an email inquiry.

Maloneys amendment cleared the committee with unanimous bipartisan support, though it was unclear when the House will vote on the measure.

The amendment specifically requests an inspector general audit of all contracts awarded for tarps and plastic sheeting for the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The review would include the contracting process used to evaluate bidders and award the contracts; the assessment of past performance and technical capacity to fulfill the contracts; and how FEMA ensures the contractors meet the terms.

The audit would also include a review of whether the failure of contractors to meet the terms affected the provision of tarps and plastic sheeting to these areas.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The deadliest U.S. building fire in more than a decade has left David Gregory with a recurring nightmare that still wakes him up in tears.

Gregorys 20-year-old daughter, Michela, was among 36 people who died in the Dec. 2, 2016, blaze at an Oakland warehouse, and in the dream Gregory can hear her calling his name and screaming for help.

And theres nothing I can do, he said during a recent telephone interview, his voice quivering with emotion. I always wake up crying, and it happens a lot.

The one-year anniversary of the fire at the building known as the Ghost Ship is bringing back painful memories for Gregory and other victims families.

You never recover from it, said Mary Alexander, an attorney who is representing Gregory and other victims families in a lawsuit that names the city, the warehouses owner and its operator. All of them are anxious about the one-year. Its creating a lot of emotions.

The anniversary is also refocusing attention on Oakland, a beleaguered San Francisco Bay Area city that was excoriated following the blaze for a series of failures that allowed the warehouse to function illegally as a cluttered living space for artists with no fire alarms or sprinklers. The fire occurred during an unpermitted electronic music concert.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf in January vowed never to forget the victims.

We will learn all we can from this horrific tragedy to make Oakland a safer and more resilient community, she said in an executive order directing city officials to prioritize building inspections, audit the fire departments inspection bureau and create a database to share information about problem buildings across city departments.

A city report in November touted Oakland as safer since the blaze, but some officials have a more mixed assessment of the citys efforts, criticizing them as slow and incomplete.

Just months after the Ghost Ship blaze, a fire at a dilapidated building killed four people, reinforcing criticism that Oakland was inept after emails showed a fire captain recommended shutting the place down weeks earlier and another fire official warned it was dangerous.

The city is more than doubling its number of fire code inspectors, but the full contingent of 20 inspectors wont be in place until the end of 2018. The database to share information about problem buildings also wont be up and running until next year.

The system is considered vital after the Ghost Ship fire exposed communications breakdowns between officials. Records show in the months before the blaze, city officials received numerous complaints about the warehouse and police repeatedly visited the site. Inspectors had knocked on the Ghost Ships doors a few times, but none had stepped inside the warehouse for at least 30 years.

Dan Robertson, head of the union that represents city firefighters, said the city is moving in the right direction.

But wed like to see change come a little bit faster and perhaps with more dedication of resources coming directly to the fire department, he said.

Rebecca Kaplan, an Oakland councilwoman, said she was very concerned about the number of things that havent been done yet.

City spokeswoman Karen Boyd did not comply with a request for interviews with city officials.

Since the Ghost Ship fire, the city has investigated 32 warehouses or commercial spaces that were suspected of serving illegally as housing, work or gathering spots and scores of other properties with multiple hazards identified by firefighters, according to its November report.

The city also got a new fire chief in October.

The Ghost Ship fire highlighted the precarious living situations of artists seeking affordable housing amid skyrocketing rents in the Bay Area.

In its wake, Los Angeles, Baltimore and other cities cracked down on commercial spaces that were used illegally as housing or performance venues.

Schaaf said in her January executive order that Oakland wanted to avoid displacing vulnerable community members while improving safety  a balance that can be tricky to achieve.

The city is working with the owners of 16 of the 32 commercial properties to address residential violations, but acknowledged many owners have evicted tenants instead of trying to bring their properties up to code.

Prosecutors, separately, have charged two men, Derick Almena and Max Harris, with involuntary manslaughter in the blaze. Almena rented the warehouse and lived there with his family. Harris also lived in the building and helped Almena book musical acts and sublet the space to artists looking for affordable housing.

Prosecutors say the men knowingly created a firetrap and deceived the buildings owner, police and fire officials about the fact that people were living there. The two have pleaded not guilty and say they are being scapegoated.

In their lawsuit, the victims families say the city knew the Ghost Ship was a major fire risk but took no action to protect its occupants. Police body camera footage obtained by the East Bay Times shows officers visited the warehouse site multiple times in 2015, once talking to Almena and threatening to shut it down.

A judge in a Nov. 8 ruling indicated he was not inclined to allow the city to avoid the suit, saying there was no question of the authority and obligation of the city to act when faced with an unsafe and substandard building.

Gregory, 49, said he hopes the city will do whats right. He recalled going through denial in the hours after the fire, as he tried to contact his daughter but didnt want to believe she was at the party.

I know it happened, he said. Its been 12 months. Shes not coming home. But it hasnt gotten any easier.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By Prabhash K Dutta: Shashi Kapoor, who breathed his last today in Mumbai, was known as an actor with the cutest smile in the Hindi film industry. He came from a family that dominated Hindi filmmaking since 1950s. In the 1970s, Shashi Kapoor was at the pinnacle of his popularity.

It was the time when Raj Kapoor planned one of his iconic and most talked about films, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, that explored the distinction between physical love and spiritual love. In Raj Kapoor Speaks, his daughter Ritu Nanda says that Lata Mangeshkar was the inspiration behind Satyam Shivam Sundaram, that released in 1978.

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Raj Kapoor was convinced that the male protagonist of the film, Rajeev, could only be played by Shashi Kapoor, thought to be the prettiest face in Bollywood back then. The story was about a man falling in love with a woman with a silken voice but a disfigured face.

During those days, Shashi Kapoor was sought after by all the top directors and he had already committed dates to four or five filmmakers. But Raj Kapoor wanted dates in a bunch and that too, with a rider that the day when Shashi Kapoor shot for Satyam Shivam Sundaram, he would not shoot for any other film.

This was one condition imposed on him by his older brother that Shashi Kapoor was not in position to honour. In an interview later, Shashi Kapoor would tell that to accommodate Raj Kapoor, he had to work round the clock. Shashi Kapoor would do four to five shifts a day and sleep in a car - his own or a taxi that he hired.

To Raj Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor always looked like "running away in taxi" and he gave him this nickname, more out of frustration at not having enough time from his younger brother on his film. Raj Kapoor addressed as 'Taxi' not only Shashi Kapoor, but many others actor-stars too.

Raj Kapoor would tell Shashi Kapoor, "You people aren't artists. You are all taxis. Someone puts your meter down; you go there. Then someone else puts your meter down, and you go there."

But, this moniker stayed with Shashi Kapoor for another reason. He was known to pick up or drop any of his co-actors in his car or taxi as he shuttled between places and shifts for shooting for his films.

Watch: Bollywood reacts to Shashi Kapoor's death

--- ENDS ---
UPDATE: Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, according to several published reports, became the first bitcoin billionaires over the weekend as the cryptocurrency surged to an all-time high of $11,773 on Sunday, a recovery from last week's 20 percent drop. Bitcoin prices weren't quite at records on Monday. But at a market value of nearly $191 billion, bitcoin was about halfway to the "small bull case scenario" described by the Winklevosses in 2013. Here's a story on the interview they did four years ago:

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The Winklevoss twins are screaming bulls on bitcoin. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss  big investors in the digital currency  said Tuesday that bitcoin should be worth at least 100 times more than it's valued today. "The small bull case scenario is a $400 billion market cap. So the market cap is around $4 billion right now," Tyler Winklevoss said in an interview at the DealBook conference that aired on CNBC's "Squawk Box." The twins, who famously battled Mark Zuckerberg over the origins of Facebook , started buying bitcoin at $9. Their investment was worth $11 million in April at $120 per coin. After a sharp drop, bitcoin has surged into record territory again, hitting $385 in early Tuesday trading on Mt. Gox  one of the many exchanges for the digital currency. Cameron Winklevoss said he views their investment in bitcoin as a gold 2.0 play but also a bet on the technology: "The idea that payments are increasingly going to use a network like the bitcoin network to move money around the world."

Cameron (L) and Tyler (R) Winklevoss. Adam Jeffery | CNBC
I'm 22 years old and have never sent a fax in my life. In fact, I am surprised to learn that our all-in-one office printer-scanner even has faxing capabilities. So naturally I've been assigned the task of figuring out and then explaining how fax machines work. From what I have gathered, fax is short for facsimile and it's essentially a medieval version of scanning. Scanning, meanwhile, is an outdated version of taking a picture of something with your iPhone and emailing it to yourself. So, OK. I can do this. When I first begin tampering with fax machine, it's unresponsive. I realize I need to scan my ID card, and then it comes to life like that creepy carnival fortune telling machine Zoltar in "Big," the one that transforms the kid into Tom Hanks. I have to admit I am a little intimidated by all the setting options. I can adjust things like transmission density and image resolution. I didn't even realize you could fax in color.

But overall, unsurprisingly, it's pretty straightforward. I mean, I, a young millennial, can text with one hand and Snap selfies of my face crossed with Bernie Sanders' all while simultaneously being incredibly anxious. Grandpa's texting is easy. You just put a document in the feeder  a small icon indicates which way is "face up"  dial in the fax number destination including extensions and international codes and send it off. You might then receive a confirmation page, if you have such a feature enabled. Most computers have software now that allows you to fax documents directly from them without a separate machine, which sounds suspiciously like scanning. But after some thorough investigation, I've discovered that faxing, not unlike my Uncle Morris, does not rely on Internet. You just need a phone line. (Also not unlike my Uncle Morris, who still has a house phone.)

All the machine does is take a hard copy of some document, digitize it with an optical scanner and transmit it as an electric signal through a telephone wire to another location. The oldest version of this technology was patented in 1843 and actually predates the invention of the telephone, which is, itself, by the way, older than the light bulb. Fun, right? The modern fax machine wasn't popularized until the 1980s. Although it has managed to lumber into the Information Age without going extinct, from what I can tell, the consensus seems to be that any advantages it offers are outweighed by its drawbacks.

Grandpa's texting is easy.
When you think about a trip to the Bahamas, certain details spring to mind: the clear blue ocean, sandy beaches and maybe even a fruity cocktail. What might not be so obvious, are snorting, swimming pigs.

Getty Images | Barcroft

On Big Major Cay, an uninhabited island in the Exumas, that is what you'll find. A group of wild but adorable pigs swim freely through the waters, wander the island and rush out to meet boats bringing tourists and snacks. The pigs are now celebrities, from fans posting on Instagram, visits from celebrities ranging from Donald Trump Jr. to Bella Hadid, and an appearance on ABC's "The Bachelor."

"Pig whisperer" Nadine Umbscheiden snorkels with a pig in the Bahamas Getty Images | Barcroft

The real story about how the pigs got to the island may be lost to history but local lore abounds: They are rumored to have been "left by a group of sailors, who planned to come back and cook them" or some say they swam "over from a shipwreck nearby," according to the Islands of the Bahamas site. The TODAY Show reports that a man named Wayde Nixon brought the pigs to the island to create a farm in preparation for Y2K in the 90s. However it happened, the pigs now number near 40, according to the Bahamas Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources. (Sadly, several pigs unexpectedly died earlier this year, but the Ministry says that the pigs are now doing just fine.)

Getty Images | Barcroft

In order to get to "Pig Island," as it's affectionately known, you'll first need to fly to the Exumas, a stretch of 365 cays and islands in the Bahamas about 35 miles southeast of Nassau, where stars like Johnny Depp and Faith Hill and Tim McGraw own private islands.

Getty Images | EyesWideOpen

The Staniel Cay Yacht Club is a popular place to stay (Jimmy Buffett is reportedly a fan of the bar there). Or you can really splurge and do a private island resort, like Fowl Cay, where a stay comes with your own boat to tool around. Once there, you'll need a boat, which you can charter, or you can take a guided tour. Travel + Leisure recommends 4C's Adventures for a tour and exumavacation.com to rent your own.

Getty Images | Barcroft

Take as many pictures of the doggy-paddling pigs as you want. But if you choose to swim with them, stay further off shore where you can stand but the pigs can't. And be cautious if baby piglets are around. Video by Jon Fazio Don't miss: 20 trips you have to take in your lifetime
During President Trump's visit to Beijing, he appeared on screen for a special address at a tech conference.

First he spoke in English. Then he switched to Mandarin Chinese.

Mr. Trump doesn't speak Chinese. The video was a publicity stunt, designed to show off the voice capabilities of iFlyTek, a Chinese artificial intelligence company with both innovative technology and troubling ties to Chinese state security. IFlyTek has said its technology can monitor a car full of people or a crowded room, identify a targeted individual's voice and record everything that person says.

"IFlyTek," the image of Mr. Trump said in Chinese, "is really fantastic."

As China tests the frontiers of artificial intelligence, iFlyTek serves as a compelling example of both the country's sci-fi ambitions and the technology's darker dystopian possibilities.

The Chinese company uses sophisticated A.I. to power image and voice recognition systems that can help doctors with their diagnoses, aid teachers in grading tests and let drivers control their cars with their voices. Even some global companies are impressed: Delphi, a major American auto supplier, offers iFlyTek's technology to carmakers in China, while Volkswagen plans to build the Chinese company's speech recognition technology into many of its cars in China next year.

At the same time, iFlyTek hosts a laboratory to develop voice surveillance capabilities for China's domestic security forces. In an October report, a human rights group said the company was helping the authorities compile a biometric voice database of Chinese citizens that could be used to track activists and others.

Those tight ties with the government could give iFlyTek and other Chinese companies an edge in an emerging new field. China's financial support and its loosely enforced and untested privacy laws give Chinese companies considerable resources and access to voices, faces and other biometric data in vast quantities, which could help them develop their technologies, experts say.

China "does not have the stringent privacy laws that Western companies have, nor are Chinese citizens against having their data collected, as (arguably speaking) government monitoring is a fact of China," analysts with the research firm Sanford C. Bernstein wrote in a report in November.

Already, China's companies have at times edged out foreign rivals. IFlyTek has won major competitions for speech recognition and translation. Two years before Microsoft did, Baidu, the Chinese internet search company, created software capable of matching human skills at understanding speech. This year the Shanghai-based start-up Yitu took first place in a major facial recognition contest run by the United States government.

Read more on the New York Times:

China's Technology Ambitions Could Upset the Global Trade Order

Targeting China's Purchases, Congress Proposes Tougher Reviews of Foreign Investments

Trump, Defending Himself After Flynn Guilty Plea, Says F.B.I. Is in 'Tatters'

IFlyTek and other Chinese companies say they follow China's laws and protect user data. But they agree that the sheer number of users in China, plus the government's single-minded drive to dominate the new technology, puts them at an advantage.

"China has entered the artificial intelligence age together with the U.S.," said Liu Qingfeng, iFlyTek's chairman, at the Beijing conference. "But due to the advantage of a huge amount of users and China's social governance, A.I. will develop faster and spread from China to the world."

An iFlyTek spokeswoman said the company had yet to receive required permission from officials in Anhui, the Chinese province where it is based, to speak with the foreign news media.

IFlyTek is portrayed in the Chinese media both as a technology innovator and as an ally of the government. Last year iFlyTek helped prevent the loss of about $75 million in telecommunications fraud by helping the police target scammers, according to The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid controlled by the Communist Party. Its article quotes a Chinese security official as saying collecting voice patterns is like taking fingerprints or recording people with closed-circuit television cameras, meaning the practice does not violate their privacy.

"We work with the Ministry of Public Security to pin down the criminals," said Liu Junfeng, the general manager of the company's automotive business, at a conference in September.

Where iFlyTek gets its data is not clear. But one of its owners is China Mobile , the state-controlled cellular network giant, which has more than 800 million subscribers. IFlyTek preloads its products on millions of China Mobile phones and runs the hotline service for China Mobile, which did not respond to a request for comment.

"Data is gold," said Anil Jain, a professor who studies biometrics at Michigan State University. "These days you cannot design an accurate and robust recognition system for anything" without data.
A Manhattan woman died after being mauled by a tiger shark while diving with a group of tourists off the coast of Costa Rica on Nov. 30, according to local officials.

Rohina Bhandari, 49, suffered fatal bites to both of her legs while at the Manuelita dive site in Costa Rica's Isla del Coco National Park, according to a statement released Friday by the country's Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) and the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC).

Bhandari, who was identified only by her last name in the government-issued statement, was later identified by friends and was a senior director at WL Ross & Co. LL. She was a staple of many charity events in New York City, according to the New York Daily News.

The 49-year-old was ascending to the surface, when her instructor noticed a female tiger shark nearby, according to the statement. According to the newspaper, La Nacion,the instructor, identified only as Jimenez, tried to scare the shark away, but was unsuccessful.

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The dive instructor was also bitten, but was conscious and suffered a serious wound in one of his extremities, according to the Ministry.

Bhandari was pulled from the water, and her death was later confirmed by several on-site doctors, according to La Nacion.

The Ministry said the attack was an isolated incident.

According to the statement, researchers tagged five tiger sharks, three females and two males, near the dive area in 2012.

According to La Nacion, tiger sharks were not found in the area for three decades, but returned to the protected area about 10 years ago.
A crew on board a Cathay Pacific aircraft saw last week, the airline told CNBC on Monday.

Pyongyang launched the latest in a series of ballistic missiles last Wednesday . The rocket, which the regime said could reach the U.S. mainland, crashed into the sea near Japan.

The crew of Cathay Pacific CX893, which was traveling to Hong Kong from San Francisco, reportedly saw the missile from their plane as it was passing over Japan and alerted the country's air traffic control.

"On November 29, the flight crew of CX893 reported a sighting of what is suspected to be the re-entry of the recent DPRK test missile. Though the flight was far from the event location, the crew advised Japan ATC (air traffic control) according to procedures," Cathay Pacific told CNBC in an emailed statement.

"Operation(s) remained normal and was not affected," the company added.

Reporting the story Monday, the South China Morning Post added that the airline's General Manager of Operations Mark Hoey had posted on a staff communication platform that: "The crew of CX893 reported, 'Be advised, we witnessed the DPRK missile blow up and fall apart near our current location.'"

"We advised ATC and ops [operations] normal." Hoey added, according to the paper.

Despite the danger and unpredictability of North Korean missile tests, Cathay Pacific told CNBC that the airline had no plans to alter its routes or its operating parameters.

"We have been in contact with relevant authorities and industry bodies as well as with other carriers. At the moment, no-one is changing any routes or operating parameters," Cathay Pacific said in its statement. "We remain alert and review the situation as it evolves."
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China is outpacing the U.S. and other countries in a global race to secure supplies of an all-important element for electric cars. China has emerged as the leading market player for electric and hybrid cars, accounting for approximately half of global sales. And with the world's second-largest economy keen to develop the industry within its own borders, Beijing is looking to import a lot more lithium. "Lithium is coming of age in a big way. It's the core ingredient to 99 percent of electric vehicles and as a result, demand is going through the roof," Simon Moores, managing director at research and data provider at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, told CNBC in a phone interview. As , Chinese firms have rapidly been making deals in a bid to secure supplies of lithium  a vital component used in batteries for electric vehicles. Demand for lithium had been "bubbling under the surface" for several years, Moores said, before a renewed interest in electric cars about 18 months ago triggered a "desperate" global pursuit.

China wants 'to control electric vehicle supply chain'

Governments and car manufacturers worldwide have taken steps to electrify fleets and further phase out the combustion engine. The lithium-ion batteries are able to produce more electricity per unit than conventional batteries. The global push to roll out electric cars  which emit less climate-warming carbon emissions  has been amplified by concerns over air pollution, particularly from diesel cars. And Beijing's pursuit of lithium for electric cars appears aligned to the plans of Chinese President , although industry analysts said cost, rather than environmental concern, was the primary reason for China to pivot toward alternative energy.

A BYD Concept car is displayed during the first day of the 17th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition in Shanghai on April 19, 2017. STR | AFP | Getty Images

"Given the government's power in China to direct the economy, if they want to become the world leaders in electric vehicles, they can likely achieve it," Jay Jacobs, director of research at Global X, told CNBC in an email. "China is not just focusing on electric vehicle manufacturing, but also buying up lithium projects and supporting the growth of battery producers, so they can control even more of the electric vehicle supply chain," he said.

Electric vehicle revolution 'grossly misunderstood'

Western companies have yet to show the same levels of interest in lithium supplies compared to their Chinese counterparts, analysts said. Like Beijing, the U.S. and Europe also have limited lithium resources of their own and rely on imports from elsewhere. Lithium is most commonly mined from rocks in as well as brine pools in South America, in countries such as Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

Employees shovel salt into mountains at the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flats) in Potosi, Bolivia, on Sunday, Dec. 11, 2016. Marcelo Perez del Carpio | Bloomberg via Getty Images
A digital currency has added more than $12 billion to its market value after the firm behind it said it was teaming up with a number of big tech firms, including Microsoft and Samsung on a "data marketplace."

Called IOTA, the cryptocurrency saw a spike on Wednesday, rallying more than 90 percent in the last 24 hours, according to data from industry website Coinmarketcap. Its price soared to an all-time high of $5.55 at 8:27 a.m. London time, almost doubling Tuesday's price of $2.78. It is now the fourth-largest digital asset by market capitalization, dethroning Ripple's XRP.

The rally followed an announcement by the IOTA Foundation, a German non-profit firm that oversees the virtual currency, last Tuesday, that it had partnered with the likes of Microsoft, Samsung and Fujitsu on a blockchain-based marketplace that lets them sell data.

David Sonstebo, IOTA's co-founder and CEO, said data is "the new oil," and that the marketplace project is letting firms sell data to incentivize them to share this data that would otherwise be wasted.

"At present, up to 99 percent of this precious data gathered is lost to the void," he told CNBC in an email. "IOTA incentivize sharing of data through its zero fee transactions and by ensuring data integrity for free on the decentralized distributed ledger."

He added that the marketplace is currently a pilot project, and that examples of data being shared included weather and air quality data.
By Shivani Chhabra: If there had to be a king of fabrics, it would most certainly be denim. While denim is that one fabric that never goes out of style, it also has the ability to look brilliant in almost every fashion.

While denim continues to be an evergreen fabric, yesteryear actress Sridevi has given us one of the worst denim-looks we've seen in a long time. Clad in a sad-looking, denim outfit, Sridevi graced a star-studded party thrown by industrialist Mukesh Ambai, to welcome the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to Mumbai.

Photo: Yogen Shah

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The actress called dibs on the position of the worst-dressed celeb, as she showed up in a baggy, denim jacket, which looked rather dud for the occasion. The massive, golden motif on the jacket was downright tacky, and ruined the look further.

Photo: Yogen Shah

Also Read: Sridevi in this tacky lehenga is the stuff of nightmares

Adding insult to injury, Sri teamed the jacket with an ill-fitted, denim skirt, which looked just so ancient. The well-matched, long, A-line skirt was a really poor pick to team with the denim jacket, and Sri exhibited just how not to wear denim-on-denim.

Photo: Yogen Shah

In a vain attempt to glamourise the bland attire, Sri tried to infuse a touch of gold with her structured-bag, which looked quite gaudy.

She finished the look with a pair of chunky, drop-down, gold earrings, and failed to leave an impact.

--- ENDS ---
Telemedicine, or virtual medical consults by phone or video, has been the "next big thing" in health care for more than a decade. But year after year, countless studies have found that telemedicine companies are held back by a lack of awareness among consumers.

Now, thanks to a marketing boost from behemoths like Apple , Aetna and CVS, telemedicine might finally take off.

When pitching the benefits of a merger with CVS, Aetna's chief executive, Mark Bertolini, detailed how technology that monitors patients from home  like bluetooth-connected glucose meters coupled with apps for virtual providers to nudge patients when their glucose levels are off  is a key part of his strategy. In other words, telemedicine.

He described this strategy as an approach that will improve care and lower skyrocketing health costs for consumers by providing "a more holistic view of each individual."

Apple's COO, Jeff Williams, also advocated for virtual medicine last week, when detailing the company's plans for its new heart-health study. In an important move, Apple chose to work with one of the largest telemedicine start-ups, American Well, so that even those without easy access to a doctor's office can still get the help they need.
Facebook is to create 800 new U.K. jobs next year within its new London office.

The move will take the social media giant's total employee presence in Britain to 2,300. The London office will be Facebook's largest engineering hub outside the U.S.

Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook's Europe, Middle East and Asia vice-president, praised the U.K. as a tech company base.

"The U.K.'s flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem and international reputation for engineering excellence makes it one of the best places in the world to build a tech company," she said.

Mendelsohn added that the decision indicated Facebook was "more committed than ever to the U.K."
Germany's anti-euro, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party appeared to take a lurch further to the right at the weekend, with party members electing a hardline nationalist as co-leader of the party and eschewing more moderate candidates.

During the AfD's first party congress since German elections in September  which saw the party gain enough votes to enter parliament for the first time  delegates elected Alexander Gauland to co-lead the party along with Jorg Meuthen.

Gauland replaces Frauke Petry who shocked many by quitting the party after its election success to become an independent member of parliament. The move disappointed more moderate members who had hoped to elect Georg Pazderski, leader of the AfD's Berlin branch.

The election of Alexander Gauland, who has courted controversy for various remarks relating to World War II, seems to cement the party's move towards the right. However, speaking to CNBC on Monday, moderate candidate Pazderski denied this.

"I think we had a good result (at the congress). It's not a move to the right and now I'm number three in the party and before I was not in the top leadership. And the board of the party is now a very moderate party board because a lot of people have been elected to it that share my view of how the party should be developed in the future," he said.

The AfD was founded in 2013, largely as a oppositional response to euro zone bailouts at the time, but it has gradually changed into more of an anti-immigration party particularly during Europe's migration crisis which started in 2015.

Over one million refugees and migrants arrived in the country in 2015 alone, largely thanks to Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to open up the country amid the crisis.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, talks with reporters before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced that Republicans have enough votes to pass the tax reform bill on December 1, 2017.

This week, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) helped push a tax bill through the Senate that will cost about $1 trillion. At the same time, he lamented the difficulties of finding the money to fund the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which pays for healthcare for nine million children and costs about $14 billion a year  a program Hatch helped create.

A Sunday-morning tweet from MSNBC's Joe Scarborough quoting Hatch kicked off a dustup on Twitter over the Utah Republican's take on CHIP. Funding for the program  which was created as a joint effort between Hatch and Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy in 1997  expired at the end of September; Congress has yet to reauthorize it. That puts health care for millions of American children at risk.

On Thursday evening, as the Senate debated the Republican tax plan, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) asked whether there's "something we can do to get the children's health insurance program done."

Hatch's response, in a nutshell: Yes, we'll fund the program, but we're really short on money.

"We're going to do CHIP, there's no question about it in my mind. And it's got to be done the right way," Hatch said. "But the reason CHIP's having trouble is because we don't have money anymore, and to just add more and more spending and more and more spending, and you can look at the rest of the bill for the more and more spending."

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4 winners and 3 losers in the Senate tax bill

This came as he advocated for a tax bill that, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation's latest estimate, will add approximately $1 trillion to the deficit even when adjusted for economic growth, and which disproportionately benefits corporations and the wealthy.

In his speech, Hatch also said he thinks CHIP has done a "terrific job for people who really need the help" and noted that he had advocated for helping those who can't help themselves throughout his Senate career. But, he continued, "I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won't help themselves, won't lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything." He blamed a "liberal philosophy" for creating millions of people "who believe everything they are or ever hope to be depend upon the federal government rather than the opportunities that this great country grants them."

It's been two months since CHIP funding expired, and Congress still hasn't acted

Signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1997, the Children's Health Insurance Program provides coverage to children in low-to-moderate income families and to pregnant women. The percentage of uninsured children in America dropped from 14 percent when it started to 4.5 percent in 2015.

Congress last reauthorized the program in 2015 and was due to do so again by September 30, 2017. Except this time around, congressional leaders let that deadline pass. And while states contribute some money to the program, it is primarily funded by the federal government, which means its money will soon start to run out.

According to the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute Center for Children and Families, at least six states  Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Minnesota, Ohio, and Oregon  are predicting they will run out of money by early January if CHIP isn't reauthorized. And six other states  Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington  have said they'll take action and notify families their coverage is about to be cut off before the end of the year even if funding isn't running out yet.

There are some backstops in place. States can keep covering children through Medicaid programs or send children to the Affordable Care Act's marketplaces to buy coverage. But those aren't options everywhere, and it's likely some children will fall through the cracks regardless of whether Congress reauthorizes CHIP given the current uncertainty in funding the program.

"Every time one of those kinds of things happens, we have to retool our relationships with families," Steve Freedman, a University of South Florida health policy professor who sits on the CHIP board there, recently told Vox's Dylan Scott. "When you start fiddling with people's economic security, particularly their children's health care, that's a really sensitive place to screw around."

On Thursday, Hatch seemed to acknowledge the potentially disastrous consequences of the CHIP standoff. But what he failed to recognize is that, at least in some cases, the damage might already be done.
Greece is taking precautionary fiscal measures in case the political uncertainty in either Italy or Germany worsens, the country's economy minister told CNBC on Monday.

"We don't know what's going to happen in Italy, we don't know what's going to happen in Germany yet, so there are significant questions here," Dimitris Papadimitriou, Greece's minister of economy and development, said in Athens.

Greece is on track to end its current bailout program in August 2018, but it is "making provisions" in case something happens within another European Union (EU) member state that causes nervousness among European investors.

"I foresee a very clean exit, but what I am saying is that we are making provisions so that in case something happens, not necessarily Greece's doing, but you know we are in an unstable European Union," Papadimitriou said. "One has to be prepared not only for your own house but also for what happens in your neighbor's house."

Italy's election, due to be held in the spring, has been singled out by many market players as a top risk for 2018. As more voters have expressed that they are fed-up with mainstream politics, whether in the U.K. or the U.S., this has raised the possibility that the next Italian government may try to divert from tough fiscal rules imposed upon it by the EU.

At the same time, there are also concerns over the ongoing political impasse in Germany and what it might mean for the EU's future.

Despite his concerns over potential shocks coming from Italy and Germany, Papadimitriou said they will not derail the much-promised talks to restructure Greece's debt.

"They (European leaders) have recognized that something has to happen with the Greek debt, even the outgoing finance minister (Wolfgang) Schauble indicated that, in fact, Greece has done what it was supposed to do and more and therefore we have to deal with the Greek debt," Papadimitriou said.

Though he would prefer a nominal haircut  which many European countries oppose  Papadimitriou said there "there will be some kind of restructuring" even though it is currently unclear what that will look like.

Greece and its lenders concluded over the weekend the third bailout review, paving the way for talks on debt to kick off in the new year.

Papadimitriou said that "it would be better" for the debt talks if Martin Schulz, head of the German socialist party, agreed to enter a coalition with the Christian Democrats.

On Monday, Schulz told reporters that party members would discuss later this week at the party congress whether they should start coalition talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. If they give the green light, these could start as early as next week.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, right, speaks during a news conference on tax reform in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 30, 2017. Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Small-business owners can expect a bonanza in tax savings, thanks to the GOP's proposed tax bill. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's smart for freelancers, independent contractors and other solopreneurs to incorporate. The Senate voted 51-49 on its version of the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" early Saturday morning. The 479-page bill includes an array of sweeping changes to the tax code, including the reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent as of 2019. Big businesses aren't the only ones who'll benefit from the tax overhaul. Small businesses  namely, pass-through entities such as S corporations and limited liability companies (LLCs)  get a break, too. That's because under current law, profits from a small business "pass through" to the owner and is taxed at his or her individual rate, which can be as high as 39.6 percent. The Senate's bill will allow business owners to deduct 23 percent of their income, which will help them save on taxes.

Which tax proposal is better for you depends on your income level. The nature of your business also has a big impact on how you'll benefit. Tim Steffen Robert W. Baird

But don't run off and become an S-corp just yet. In exchange for those lower rates, pass-through owners may take on an even greater deal of responsibility and expense in bookkeeping and payroll needs. "They have to make sure the benefit they get is worth the aggravation they have to deal with," said Howard Samuels, a certified public accountant at Samuels & Associates in Florham Park, New Jersey. Here's how to register as a pass-through entity, and when it's worth considering:

Choosing an entity

Entrepreneurs like limited liability companies because they protect owners from having their personal assets seized by creditors of the business. You can file paperwork with the state in which your business will be based, and pay anywhere between a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars to set it up.

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Though LLCs are a legal structure, they aren't recognized by the Internal Revenue Service for tax purposes. You'll need to tell the IRS how your business should be levied. To do that, you'll file a Form 8832 with the "tax man" to indicate how you'd like to be levied: as a corporation, a partnership or as part of your personal tax return. What you choose matters. For instance, if you file as an S-corp, any profits that pass through are subject only to income taxes and not self-employment taxes of 15.3 percent. Instead, you pay your self-employment tax from your salary.

Steady profits

Business owners can start thinking about establishing an S-corp once they clear about $70,000 in annual profits after expenses from 1099 (not W-2) income, and can do so consistently, said Samuels.

They have to make sure the benefit they get is worth the aggravation they have to deal with. Howard Samuels Samuels & Associates

That's because S-corps and multimember LLCs require extensive bookkeeping. Business owners will need to file two tax returns each year: That of the company and their own. They will also need to hire a payroll company to ensure employees are paid and taxes are properly deducted. "How much money will you save on self-employment taxes, versus all this money that it will cost in order to set up the corporation?" asked Samuels.

Know your profession

Both the House and Senate bills have provisions related to pass-through entities. While the House calls for an income tax rate of 25 percent on these businesses, the Senate allows entrepreneurs to exclude 23 percent of their income from taxes. The remainder of the income is taxed at normal rates. The difference is that the House bill places restrictions on which businesses can qualify for that rate  and lawyers and accountants wouldn't be able to qualify. In the Senate bill, those lawyers and accountants are prohibited from taking that 23 percent deduction unless their taxable incomes are below $250,000 if single, or below $500,000 for married couples.

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Business owners ought to watch Congress' next steps to see which of these elements will ultimately make it into the final piece of legislation. "Which tax proposal is better for you depends on your income level," said Tim Steffen, director of advanced planning at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee. "The nature of your business also has a big impact on how you'll benefit." More from Personal Finance: 6 year-end, pre-reform tax moves Tax reform could hit some states harder than others Here's how homeowners can benefit ahead of tax reform

WATCH: Cutting pass-through rate will be costly
Taking questions from both Shahidi and the audience, Clinton spoke about a time in her career where she wishes she had exercised her voice more.

"Vote. This is the most inclusive, diverse, thoughtful generation," the Hollywood Reporter reports her saying. "If you vote, we're going to win."

At Teen Vogue's Summit in Los Angeles, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke with "Black-ish" star Yara Shahidi about the state of politics today and the need for the next generation to exercise their voice.

In light of the recent wave of against powerful men in politics, Hollywood and several other professional spaces, the 17-year-old actress asked Clinton if she regretted not speaking up when Donald Trump followed her onstage during the second presidential debate last year.

"I knew he'd be desperate because the 'Access Hollywood' tapes had just came out where he basically confesses to sexual assault," the former Secretary of State explained. "So I said, we have to be calm and I maintained my composure.

"But afterwards, I thought about that, and what would have happened if I spun around and said, 'You love to intimidate women, but back up you creep!' I think it would have been really satisfying. But I also think given the way women are covered...they would have said she can't take it...or we don't want an angry woman in the Oval Office."

She continued by warning the young women about the unequal playing field that currently exist and the need for them to help change the status quo.

"We have to make it not only safe for women, we have to make it possible for us to express a full range of human emotionwithout being so negatively judged," she said. "Remember when he called me a 'nasty woman?' All of that stuff he did didn't end up hurting him that much because men are given a much broader range of emotions to demonstrate their authentic feelings."

Clinton's appearance at the Teen Vogue Summit was one of her latest book tour appearances for "What Happened." In the details of her presidential campaign, the discomforting moments she felt while running against Trump and the advice Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg gave her about the sexism she would face.

Talking to the audience about her first-hand encounters with gender bias, Clinton advised the young leaders to "be part of the changing culture, so it's not viewed as disqualifying if you're standing up for yourself and speaking up for yourself."

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CVS Health's $69 billion acquisition of Aetna will change the pharmacy and health-care industries alike. The deal creates the first health-care triple threat, combining CVS' pharmacy and pharmacy benefits manager platform with Aetna's insurance business.

The threat to pharmacies  or those that own them  is the way in which the two will leverage Aetna's network of 46 million members to drive traffic to CVS stores. Aetna subscribers will be able to pick up prescription medicine in CVS stores while receiving pharmacy and medical services. Eventually, they may also be able to find lower copays only at CVS.

"Over the next couple of years, you'll see a dramatic change in terms of the store not just being about products but also service offerings that can help people on their path to better health," CVS CEO Larry Merlo told CNBC on Monday.

Retailers are now facing an entirely new form of competitor while contending with the potential threat of Amazon encroaching into their space. They have already begun to examine what the deal means for their business, and the solution may entail acquisitions, industry advisors say.

The pool of retailers directly affected is relatively small. They include Kroger , Wal-Mart , Walgreens Boots Alliance and, to a lesser extent, Rite Aid .

Of the retailers, Walgreens arguably has the most to lose. It is the most similar to CVS in business model and the most reliant on drug sales to drive traffic into stores. The household and personal care products it sells can now be found online and often for less. The retailer generated 69 percent of its U.S. sales in its pharmacy. Abroad, where the retail industry is less competitive, it generated 35 percent of its sales in its pharmacy.

But Walgreens many years ago set itself down a road different from that of CVS. Rather than diving into health care, as CVS did, Walgreens doubled down on real estate and international expansion. It acquired British pharmacy giant Alliance Boots in 2014, opening it up into Europe. It attempted to acquire Rite Aid a year later, in a $17.5 billion deal that looked to bring with it 4,600 stores. Regulators, though, whittled the deal down to a purchase of 1,932 stores for $4.37 billion.
While hoping a GOP tax overhaul becomes law, Ken Langone told CNBC on Monday the only way to really get America's financial house in order is to cut the federal debt.

The billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and longtime Republican backer went so far as to say that the U.S. should risk a "very significant recession to get it done."

If that happens, Langone said in a "Squawk Box" interview, "the stock market is going to take a big hit." But he said it would be worth it to reset the spiraling debt and deficit trajectory.

While arguing the GOP tax plan would "unleash economic forces all to the good for a lot of people," Langone also said he would "feel better when we address the debt, when we address the deficit, in a way where we're doing this over a period of time."

The Senate early Saturday passed its approach to cutting taxes for individuals and corporations. The House approved its bill last month. Lawmakers must now craft a compromise bill that would need approval by from both chambers before going to President Donald Trump.

Langone, who supported Trump for president after first backing Chris Christie and then John Kasich, said he and other successful investors will face higher taxes under the GOP reform plan and "have no problem with it."

"My taxes are going to go up. And I think that's wonderful," he said, adding that he supports "anything we can do to enhance" the system in which he found success and was "blessed to be born into."

"Nothing is going to change in my life if I pay more taxes," said Langone, founder and chief of investment bank Invemed Associates, specializing in health-care companies. "I am a New York resident. And I'm staying a New York resident," addressing a question about whether he would change his residency to a lower tax state.

Also on Monday, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told CNBC that Senate passage on schedule proves legislation can be done this year.
As House and Senate Republicans get set to nail down a final tax bill, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy outlined what he wants to see in the plan.

The Senate early Saturday passed its tax bill, which contains key differences from one approved by the House last month. This week, the House and Senate are expected to vote to go to a conference committee, where lawmakers will hash out a final proposal that both chambers will need to pass.

To do so, lawmakers will need to compromise on multiple key differences between the bills. McCarthy told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday where he stood on some of those issues.

Corporate alternative minimum tax: In a final rush to pass its plan, the Senate restored a corporate alternative minimum tax, which it initially proposed to eliminate. The House proposal would scrap that tax. McCarthy took a hard line. "I think that has to be eliminated because that would destroy [research and development]. ... That should be eliminated for sure."

In a final rush to pass its plan, the Senate restored a corporate alternative minimum tax, which it initially proposed to eliminate. The House proposal would scrap that tax. McCarthy took a hard line. "I think that has to be eliminated because that would destroy [research and development]. ... That should be eliminated for sure." Individual tax rates: The House plan would collapse the current seven individual tax brackets into four but keeps the top rate at 39.6 percent. The Senate bill would keep seven brackets and drop the top rate to 38.5 percent. "I think we can work that out," McCarthy said of the bracket differences. He added that he "would actually like to see the rates go even lower, if possible."

The House plan would collapse the current seven individual tax brackets into four but keeps the top rate at 39.6 percent. The Senate bill would keep seven brackets and drop the top rate to 38.5 percent. "I think we can work that out," McCarthy said of the bracket differences. He added that he "would actually like to see the rates go even lower, if possible." Mortgage interest deduction: The Senate plan would not make significant changes to the mortgage interest policy, keeping the $1 million deduction cap. The House bill would cap the deduction at $500,000 in home loans. McCarthy said "I think we would have to adjust" the House policy and "let that move a little higher."

The Senate plan would not make significant changes to the mortgage interest policy, keeping the $1 million deduction cap. The House bill would cap the deduction at $500,000 in home loans. McCarthy said "I think we would have to adjust" the House policy and "let that move a little higher." Estate tax: The House bill would double the exemption for the so-called death tax and then eliminate it starting in 2024. The Senate plan would would double the exemption but leave the tax in place. "I think we'll find a common ground in there," McCarthy said.

McCarthy's stances open up new questions about how to pay for the tax plan. Scrapping the corporate alternative minimum tax and cutting individual rates more dramatically would leave even less revenue going to the government than under the Senate proposal.
Mohammad Suleiman, a student at the CJ Harris Elementary School was being investigated by the Pearland police department after his teacher reported that he kept on repeating the words "Allah" and "boom" in the classroom.

By India Today Web Desk: A six-year-old Muslim boy was reported to police after his teacher feared him for being a terrorist.

Mohammad Suleiman, a student at the CJ Harris Elementary School in Texas was being investigated by the Pearland Police Department after his teacher reported that he kept on repeating the words "Allah" and "boom" in the classroom.

The police after investigating the matter found that Suleiman was suffering from congenital Down's Syndrome and cannot speak at all. He has the mental capacity of a one-year-old.

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The child's parents live in Texas city of Pearland, twenty miles away from Houston.

Mohammad Suleiman's father said that they suffered a lot due to the investigations carried out by the police and social services department.

"The last three or four weeks have been the hardest of my life. My wife and kids were crying a few days ago and I told them everything is fine. They claim that he's a terrorist. This is so stupid, this is discrimination actually. It's not implied discrimination, it's a hundred per cent discrimination.", he told Fox channel.

The teacher who made the complaint was a substitute for a regular teacher at the school. He told the officer in charge that Mohammad Suleiman could talk.

The Pearland Police Department has completed its investigation and said there was no need for further action. The Child Protection Rights Department however, is still investigating the matter.

--- ENDS ---
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond on Monday named former McKinsey & Co. executive Thomas Barkin as its next president and CEO.

Word of Barkin's appointment was first reported in The Wall Street Journal.

Barkin will replace Jeffrey Lacker, who retired in October after 28 years at the Richmond Fed.

Lacker resigned after admitting he confirmed sensitive Fed-related business with an analyst at Medley Global Advisors regarding the September 2012 meeting of central bank policymakers. However, he did not admit to actually leaking the information.

The issue related to plans the Fed had to kick off the third round of its bond-buying stimulus program known as quantitative easing.

Lacker's failure to disclose the conversation became a significant headache for the Fed and its decision not to refer the matter to the Securities and Exchange Commission or the FBI. Instead, the Fed initiated an internal probe.

The Inspector General's office recently ended a probe into the matter without disclosing the leaker's name.

As for Barkin, he is a senior partner and chief global financial officer at the Atlanta-based privately held McKinsey and vice chair of the Atlanta Fed.

McKinsey recently has come under fire for its involvement in a South Africa bribery scandal. Barclays Africa and Standard Bank recently halted business with McKinsey after the consulting firm faced questions over its involvement with a firm accused of wielding improper influence on government contracts.
The peace wall along Cupar Way in Belfast, seen from the Protestant side. It is the biggest peace wall in Belfast and divides the east Belfast loyalist area of Shankill Road from the Catholic Springfield/Falls Roads area of west Belfast.

In March 2017, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier was standing in a field in South Armagh, just above the border between Ireland and the U.K. province of Northern Ireland. Peter Sheridan, his host, pointed into the distance and asked: "You see the border?" To which Barnier replied, "No, where?" "That's the idea," Sheridan said. The "Irish question" has emerged as an intractable thorn in Brexit negotiations. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May faces a momentous day in Brussels on Monday  the EU has given her government until December 4 to "put a final offer on the table" for a solution on the future of the Northern Irish border before any trade talks can proceed. Uncertainty over a potential hard border between Ireland and its northern neighbor has evoked memories of a darker time before the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended large-scale sectarian violence in the border region and allowed for the free movement of people and goods. The U.K. wants to exit the EU customs union, taking Northern Ireland along with it, something many fear cannot be done without the imposition of a physical border. A cornerstone of the EU, the customs union exempts EU member states and select outside territories from paying customs duties on all goods traveling within the union. Concerns about renewed sectarian tensions and political divisions surrounding a possible border are now front and center.

Traffic passes a Brexit Border poster on the Dublin road Co Armagh border, between Newry in Northern Ireland and Dundalk in the Irish Republic, on December 1, 2017. Paul Faith | AFP | Getty Images

"The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is no longer a symbol of division, it is a symbol of cooperation. And we cannot allow Brexit to destroy this achievement of the Good Friday Agreement," European Council President Donald Tusk told press on Friday. Ireland's government has staunchly opposed the prospect of a hard border and asked that Northern Ireland remain in the customs union, threatening to veto progression of Brexit talks unless Westminster offers a sufficient solution to the current impasse.

'Sectarianism is alive and well'

Peter Sheridan spent 33 years as a police officer in the Police Service Northern Ireland  formerly the Royal Ulster Constabulary  and oversaw Northern Ireland's murder unit until his retirement in 2008. He now heads Co-operation Ireland, a U.K., Irish and U.S.-registered charity working to promote dialogue and practical collaboration between Irish and Northern Irish communities. "I moved out of my house twice when people who didn't like me thought that I should go to the next world faster than I wanted to. My house had fortified armored glass and other security measures  And this went into the 90s," Sheridan told CNBC in a telephone interview. Nearly two decades after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, which was underpinned by the EU and effectively ended more than 30 years of conflict known as "The Troubles", the progress is obvious. Large scale violence has ceased, as well as the threats to Sheridan's life. But pockets of trouble persist. "There are still people who see physical force as a way forward  they're small in number but can be dangerous. You're still seeing young people shot in the legs, people who aren't conforming on both sides. The violence is certainly reduced, but it still exists," he said. "Sectarianism is alive and well."

The 'Peace Line' fence is seen on February 9, 2005 that stretches between the Catholic and Protestant areas of West Belfast, Northern Ireland. Christopher Furlong | Getty Images

The lengthy Northern Irish guerrilla war over the province's constitutional status saw more than 3,500 people lose their lives in bombings, indiscriminate shootings and assassinations carried out by both Irish nationalist and Northern Irish loyalist paramilitaries like the Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Volunteer Force, among others. British troops were deployed to the conflict as well. Northern Ireland's majority Protestant population, which largely identified as British, had no desire to live as a religious minority under an Irish government. Meanwhile, Catholics living in the northern province, who saw themselves as Irish, suffered persecution at the hands of Northern Irish authorities and sought a united Ireland free from British rule. "What you got with the peace agreement was an agreement on the systems and institutions of government," Sheridan said, describing the Good Friday Agreement's fundamental achievement of a power-sharing system for the region's political and religious groups. "The question is how do you underpin that politically, by normalizing relations in society where people who were former enemies learn to live together as citizens? That's what we needed to be doing next." Some 95 percent of social housing in Northern Ireland is segregated along religious lines, Sheridan explained. And only 6 to 7 percent of children and adolescents attend integrated schools.

'RIRA' (Real Irish Republican Army) graffiti is seen in the Bogside area of Londonderry close to where the Bloody Sunday killings took place in 1972 on June 14, 2010 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Oli Scarff | Getty Images

The New York Times reported that a new integrated housing development built in a Protestant area has only led to Catholics being intimidated out of their homes  at least 30 people are left homeless annually for this very reason, the NYT discovered. "Some paramilitary organizations still have coercive control and influence over some communities," Sheridan pointed out. "You have to ask, what are they doing around 20 years after the ceasefires?"

A conflict of identity

While the vast majority of Irish Republicans were Catholic, and most Unionists, who saw themselves as part of Britain, were Protestant, the conflict was not fundamentally a religious one. "It was a conflict of identity," Sheridan explained. "Some people saw themselves as Irish, and their allegiance was to Dublin; some people saw themselves as British and their allegiance was to London. "What the Good Friday Agreement did was to give people the identity they wanted." Sheridan has made a point of holding both Irish and British passports to embody this. "Brexit poses the danger of unraveling that."

Ulster Defense Association murals are seen on February 9, 2005 in the loyalist Shankill area of West Belfast, Northern Ireland. Christopher Furlong | Getty Images

"If people feel that their sense of identity is being diluted by creating a border between them and the country they feel they identify with, you're inevitably going to create tensions."

'The transformation has been remarkable'

Conor Patterson, head of local business organization Newry and Mourne Enterprise Agency, has dedicated his career to improving employment prospects in his district, which sits just above the Irish border. "Having experienced that hardest of hard borders, we don't want to see anything return that will put barriers to movement," Patterson told CNBC.

The scene in Newry after one of the worst nights of street violence for years when anger exploded after the Orange Order Drumcree parade went ahead (1997). John Giles - PA Images | PA Images via Getty Images

He recalled when his town of Newry, once a flashpoint of sectarian violence just on the north side of the border, was at 30 percent unemployment in 1972  the highest in Western Europe. Now it's at 2 percent. "The transformation has been remarkable. I attribute the transformation to a number of factors  important among those was the dissolution of the border as a barrier to the movement of goods and people." Growing up, Patterson would frequently drive to Dundalk, south of the border, to visit his mother's family. "The road we had to travel was formerly the most dangerous road in Western Europe, there were so many attacks," he recalled. "Now, it's an open motorway. It was completed in 2008, and the border link was 40 percent from the EU." Newry's last military watchtower was removed in 2003  the town still witnessed bomb scares until 2010. "Once there was no barrier to movement, that allowed people to relax a bit with regard to where they sat in terms of their nationality," Patterson remarked. "My ambition is stability. My ambition is to get back to what my job is about, and that's creating employment. We just want to get back to living the life we had before this crisis," he said. "Ireland and the U.K. were each other's best allies within the EU," Patterson added. "For Ireland to be so at odds with the U.K. should be concerning to the U.K."

Conor Patterson, Chief Executive of Newry & Mourne Enterprise Agency, stands in front of the building in which he works on November 30, 2017. Newry, a city of 30,000 just above the Northern Irish border, was once a flashpoint for violence during the decades-long conflict known as the Troubles, but now enjoys stability and nearly full employment. Natasha Turak | CNBC

'Where we were was a nightmare'

At a newly opened cafe in central Belfast, Sinn Fein lawmaker and former Belfast mayor Mairtin O Muilleoir recounted his first days in politics in the 1980s. "Thirty years ago this month, I started my first day at Belfast City Council. I wore a flak jacket  you had to," he said. "Our offices got blown up, I had many friends shot, some killed." Sinn Fein was the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, and is currently the second-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly by one seat.

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With the new hotels and stunning Titanic Museum in the Northern Irish capital's central Titanic Quarter, it's hard to imagine a time when the location was a war zone. "Where we were was a nightmare," O Muilleoir recalled. "And the progress you see all around us, the resurgent city center  all that's built on the foundation of peace, of reconciliation, of trying to find a compromise. That compromise was the Good Friday Agreement, which placed us clearly within the EU." "I think that any attempt at replacing borders on the island of Ireland is a mistake, not just because it's a threat to the peace process, but because it damages the process of reconciliation, of the healing of wounds, of building a new type of society," O Muilleoir stressed.

The British Army In Northern Ireland, 1969 - 2007, A soldier on patrol walks past IRA graffiti sprayed onto a wall in Newry, County Down, circa 1986. Sgt. M Timbers | Crown Copyright. IWM via Getty Images

'A bit overdramatized'

Gary Bassett grew up in central Belfast, and was a teenager when the Good Friday Agreement was signed. "I think they're just exaggerating a bit about it, it's a bit overdramatized," he told CNBC while driving his taxi in the Northern Irish capital. "None of the young people want this. I think the older generation keeps it up." "I'm 37, but I can remember what it was like. My parents wouldn't take us into town for a meal or a drink because you never knew when the next bomb would go off."

Fresh graffiti in a Loyalist area of Belfast as Northern Ireland's political parties faced increasing pressure to agree a deal to save the region's power-sharing government (2010). Paul Faith | PA Images via Getty Images

Bassett maintained that his own generation wants peace. "I have kids," he said. "They don't even know the difference between Protestant and Catholic." "Young people are our saving grace, and young people overwhelmingly wanted to stay in the EU, because they're outward looking," O Muilleoir said. He lamented Brexit as what he viewed a betrayal of the U.K.'s youth, as the vast majority of those under the age of 25 did vote to remain in the EU. He also noted that 56 percent of Northern Irish voted to remain as well. Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Robin Swann rejected the possibility of revived sectarian conflict. "That's what we hoped the last 20 years would be about  moving away from that civil conflict. I think we're far enough, we're mature enough in Northern Ireland to realize that this has to be solved politically," he told CNBC in Belfast. The UUP is the fourth-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly with 10 seats. Unionist parties support leaving the customs union along with the rest of the U.K.

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David McCarthy, a bartender at downtown Dublin's high-end Marion Hotel, agreed: "If you ask me, it's over and done with. I'm 25, and I talk to 35-year-olds who are still bitter. But for my generation, it's in the past. We joke about it." Patterson, however, wasn't entirely convinced by the optimism of some of his more youthful counterparts. "Is this exaggerated? Maybe younger people don't see all the angles," Patterson warned. He pointed to Sinn Fein MP Chris Hazzard, who in late November warned that civil disobedience could arise in response to a hard border. "I'm old enough to remember how civil disobedience escalates," he said. "The point about escalation is that it doesn't have to be pre-planned."

A hard border 'in nobody's interest'

Politicians, meanwhile, maintained their desire to put an end to any ongoing violence. "In terms of those who are still involved in violence, extortion or criminality, it's our intention to face them down," O Muilleoir emphasized. "Those of us who have experience the peace over the last 20 years recognize it as the greatest gift ever given to this country, a gift which absolutely transformed our community prospects, our cultural prospects, our economic prospects. We refuse to contemplate any collapse, any return to the bad old days."

European Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier visits the Northern Irish border areas with Peter Sheridan of charity Co-operation Ireland in County Lough, March 2017. The issue of the Irish border has emerged as a major obstacle in Brexit negotiations between the EU and UK. Natasha Turak | CNBC
A file photo of cannisters containing Patriot missiles to intercept missiles fired at Saudi Arabia or its neighboring countries.

New information calls into question whether an American-made Patriot missile defense system stopped a ballistic missile attack last month by rebels in Yemen at Saudi Arabia's capital city of Riyadh, The New York Times reported Monday.

President Donald Trump even touted the U.S. missile system to reporters the day after the incident happened.

"Our system knocked the missile out of the air," Trump was quoted as saying aboard Air Force One on his way to Japan on Nov. 4. "That's how good we are. Nobody makes what we make, and now we're selling it all over the world."

But the Times said a research team looking at evidence in photos and videos now believes those early reports were wrong and that "the missile's warhead flew unimpeded over Saudi defenses and nearly hit its target, Riyadh airport. The warhead detonated so close to the domestic terminal that customers jumped out of their seats."

CNBC reached out to the Pentagon for comment but a spokesman referred questions to the Saudis. CNBC also reached out to the Saudi Ministry of Defense but it didn't respond to an email request for comment.

U.S.-made air defense systems are relied on not only by the Saudis to defend against missile attacks from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen but by South Korea, Japan and American forces to counter against North Korean missiles. But experts say the defense systems can miss targets and are not foolproof.
President Donald Trump's legal team may be preparing a new defense against Justice Department special counselor Robert Mueller, Axios reported Monday.

A "president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," Trump's personal lawyer John Dowd told Axios. He later made similar comments to NBC News.

This new statement comes after Dowd told NBC he dictated the tweet from Trump's account on Sunday that implied the president knew former security adviser Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI.

Trump tweet: I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

Dowd told NBC "the tweet did not admit obstruction."

"That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion," Dowd added.

Trump's tweet  and a series of others about the investigation into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia  prompted concerns on Sunday among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

"I would just say this with the president: There's an ongoing criminal investigation," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril," he added.

Read the full report from Axios. Reuters contributed to this report.
A senior director of the private equity firm founded by U.S. Commerce Secretary and investor Wilbur Ross died after being attacked by a tiger shark Thursday while scuba diving off the coast of Costa Rica.

Rohina Bhandari, 49, was a senior director at WL Ross & Co., the buyout fund acquired by Invesco in 2006. She was part of a group of people diving in the area at the time of the attack, according to multiple press accounts.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Bhandari joined WL Ross in 2013 and previously worked at PineBridge Investments (the former AIG Investments) and Credit Suisse. On her Facebook page, friends posted tributes. "Rohina always had a smile, always a kind word," wrote one.

Another Facebook commenter mentioned Bhandari was planning a birthday holiday celebration in the coming weeks.
Access to private plays for accredited investors have increased in recent years, and some financial advisors are using this as a point of differentiation for their practices.

"This is just the beginning," said Eric Mancini, certified financial planner and wealth advisor with Traphagen Financial Group. "It's only in the last couple of years we're seeing any sustained push from [private equity] companies."

In fact, according to Bloomberg, "private equity is trying to cut out the middleman  namely, the brokers at big money-management units at large banks [and]  could potentially automate a lot of the paperwork and tax documentation."

Mancini sees it as a growing trend for several reasons, such as emerging technology platforms that facilitate the extensive paperwork, client tracking and communication specific to private investments. In addition, there is greater interest from advisors due to anticipated low returns from public investments and concerns about valuations, and private equity companies are now starting to understand how to package deals for accredited retail clients.

Private equity is an area of specialty for Matt Chancey, a CFP affiliated with the Clariphi Advisory Network. He also sees private investment options increasing and says some of the reasons are due to the fact that they are more:

Attractive. As competition grows, companies are putting deals together to benefit the investors  for example, giving a higher share of profits.

Accessible. Minimum investment levels are dropping, sometimes to as low as $25,000.

Transparent. Ownership partners are putting in their own money, with higher-quality management teams.

Niche. Deals are more sector-specific (e.g., fast food, auto dealers, IT services, waste management), resulting in more and smaller transactions.

"There are risks, and it's important to understand each deal before committing client capital," Chancey said. "But with appropriate position sizing and diversification across multiple deals, it's a benefit to many investors."

He cites the benefits over traditional equity and fixed-income investments as lack of liquidity, which keeps investors committed to the planning; enhanced return stream; potentially tax-advantaged returns; and lower volatility, because private equity does not trade in the liquid markets.

Chancey sees his expertise in private investing as a differentiator for attracting new clients.

More from Smart Investing:

Bitcoin too risky for "serious" investing, say advisors

Millennials lack confidence to invest: Bank executive

What investors should do before market gets gored

Similarly, private investment is a key component of LotusGroup Advisors' investment strategy, according to Andy Seth, founding partner. The practice has executed 484 individual placements in the past five years.

Seth sees private equity as an important tool for generating cash flow, averaging $70,000 per year per client.

"Our selection criteria currently include only recession-resilient deals, such as mobile homes, affordable housing or skilled nursing facilities," he said. "The deals are 'stacked,' and we educate and encourage all our [eligible] clients to make at least five private investments within two years of onboarding."

Seth's practice has a particularly high level of expertise in due diligence because of his in-house team of four, who just source private equity deals. "The work is very resource intense  there's way more work in sourcing," he said. "As a result, we are able to find valuations that are 50 percent less than in the public markets."

This is because the public markets have a larger demand for shares, which increases their value, he said. In contrast, the private markets have less accredited funding available, which means companies need to make their shares cheaper, with higher returns.
Quanta Computer  a major supplier of components for the Apple Watch  announced a major deal on Monday that would significantly expand the availability of augmented reality glasses by 2019.

The licensing deal is with Lumus, an optics company that makes the core display components for augmented reality glasses. Lumus provides a projector-like technology that overlays images onto the "screen" of a spectacle lens.

Lumus, founded in Israel in 2000, has a long patent history in the augmented reality arena. In particular, the company focuses on embedding multiple prisms into a single piece of glass, to increase the size and breadth of images while keeping the lenses discreet and "non-dorky," CEO Ari Grobman said.

Augmented reality, unlike virtual reality, has to adjust colors and displays for conditions such as fog and sunlight  which, until now, has been a major bottleneck for big manufacturers like Quanta. This deal could pave the way for headsets that are $1,000 or less, Grobman said.

Quanta, which is also known for laptop computers, has already laid out an ambitious plan to move toward augmented reality manufacturing by 2019, something Lumus said it can do. Like top computer brands advertise processing power as "Intel inside," the new glasses could be designed to the specifications of top brands with Lumus inside.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has swatted down rumors that the company is working on an augmented reality headset, saying that he didn't think the technology existed to bring AR glasses up to Apple's standards "any time soon."
By PTI: Karimnagar, Dec 3 (PTI) Two persons have come forward with complaints that a Bengaluru-based pharmaceutical firm conducted unauthorised clinical trials on them, police said.

Jammikunta Circle Inspector Pingili Prashanth Reddy on Sunday said that Boga Suresh, 30, of Kothapalli village in Jammikunta mandal filed a complaint on Saturday.

Reddy said that the complainant alleged that he was subjected to clinical drug trials while he was working as a volunteer with a Benguluru based pharma company.

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Suresh told local media that he was given Rs.24,000 by the pharma company for the drug trials.

A similar complaint was made by Chiluveru Ashok Kumar, 27, of the same mandal, said police. He is undergoing treatment in a hospital, police added.

Police said that Vangara Nagaraju, 39, a resident of Nagampet village in the same mandal as the above two complainants, allegedly died in June this year due to complications rising from clinical drug trials.

Notices have been issued to the pharma company and investigations are on, police said.

Telangana finance minister Etela Rajender has also asked for an inquiry into the incidents.

Karimnagar District BJP President Kotha Srinivas Reddy asked the state government to investigate the allegations and take action against the pharma firm. He also asked the state government to pay compensation to the victims. PTI COR BNM

--- ENDS ---
Jay Claton testifies before the Senate Banking Committee during his confirmation hearing to be chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill March 23, 2017 in Washington, DC.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is getting tougher on token sales.

The agency said Monday it has obtained an emergency court order to freeze the assets of two individuals and a company to "halt a fast-moving Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fraud."

PlexCorps raised up to $15 million from thousands of investors since August by selling "securities called PlexCoin on the internet" and "falsely promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month," the SEC said in a release.

Although PlexCorps has 10,350 "likes" on Facebook, the company has no whitepaper available on its website. The company's latest Facebook post from Friday boasted to "dear members" how PlexCoin was up 698.03 percent at 73 cents on CoinMarketCap as far and away the top gainer. PlexCoin was worth 8.5 cents Monday, according to CoinMarketCap.

The SEC's cyber unit has filed charges in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York, against Dominic Lacroix, who the agency described as a repeat violator of Canadian securities law, and his company, PlexCorps. The SEC also charged Lacroix's partner, Sabrina Paradis-Royer.

"This is an escalation of [the SEC's] actions, and they are showing their intentions. It's a good signal for the market they will not tolerate abuses and scams," William Mougayar, organizer of The Token Summit conferences in New York and San Francisco, said in an email.

Source: CoinDesk

The asset freeze is the latest SEC effort to increase its oversight of initial coin offerings, a hot fundraising trend that gained popularity over the summer. Industry estimates show early stage start-ups have raised well more than $3 billion this year by selling digital coins. The coins, based on the same blockchain technology as skyrocketing digital currency bitcoin , purport to give investors future value in return for monetary contributions.

It's unclear whether the coins are utility tokens or securities that would fall under the SEC's oversight. Many of the projects also barely exist beyond a whitepaper. As a result, many start-ups have prevented U.S. residents from officially participating in the token sales. China also banned initial coin offerings in September.

Meanwhile, the SEC has become increasingly vocal on initial coin offerings.

In late July, the agency indicated securities law may apply to digital coin offerings and issued an investor bulletin warning about the risks of participating in token sales.

Then in August, the SEC temporarily suspended trading in three tiny stocks due to questions about the companies' claims regarding investments in initial coin offerings or other token-related news. Some companies' stocks have leaped dramatically after news about an investment, name change or business link to cryptocurrencies.

The following month, the commission launched the cyber unit to increase enforcement on cyber-based threats to retail investors, including "violations involving distributed ledger technology and initial coin offerings." Monday's news of an asset freeze on an ICO founder was the cyber unit's first case.

It "is exactly the kind of misconduct the unit will be pursuing," Robert Cohen, chief of the SEC's Cyber Unit, said in a statement. "We acted quickly to protect retail investors from this initial coin offering's false promises."

The SEC on Sept. 29 froze the assets of a businessman and his companies who were charged with defrauding investors with two initial coin offerings.

On Nov. 1, the commission also warned that celebrity endorsements of initial coin offerings may be illegal if the celebrities do not disclose how they are benefiting.

As a result of increased scrutiny from the SEC, and revelations of issues with high-profile ICOs earlier this year, the pace of token sales has slowed.

As of Wednesday, November was on track to be the slowest month for ICOs since August, according to industry analytics firm TokenData. The fundraising success rate has also fallen from 41 to 57 percent in the April-to-June period to 23 percent in November, the data showed.

"I think what's changed recently is they are spending more time on the legal aspect, so they are not developing these ICOs as quickly as they were before," Mougayar said in a phone interview last month. "The SEC has been making calls to certain high-profile ICOs and asking questions."



PlexCorps did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Strong and stable leadership is difficult to come by these days across Europe.



The countries that have traditionally been the bastion of reliable leadership  Germany and the U.K.  are leaving citizens feeling disappointed  and more worryingly, it is having spillover effects into matters outside of domestic politics.

Brexit and U.K. leader Theresa May's ill-fated snap election have left the Conservative government hamstrung and weakened, as the prime minister seems to be hanging onto her position by a thread.

The latest installment of this political vacuum was showcased by Ireland, where the minority government was at risk of collapsing after a no-confidence motion was tabled against the Deputy Prime Minister Frances Fitzgerald over a police whistleblower scandal. This could have led to new elections in December.

And in Germany, which is usually considered an absolute beacon of stability, we are facing a political earthquake as exploratory talk on a potential "Jamaica" coalition have faltered spectacularly after the FDP's (Free Democratic Party) Christian Lindner proclaimed blearily after another long night of talks that he would pull his support for further discussions to form a government.

As I am writing this, the parties in Germany are under pressure to deal with shock of the unprecedented nature of the collapse and the utter lack of workable alternatives. New elections have been favored by Chancellor Angela Merkel but talks are still ongoing about a potential return of the much-loathed, yet functioning "grand coalition" between the CDU (Christian Democratic Union), its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). A revival of talks about a potential Jamaica coalition including the Greens, CDU/CSU and the liberal FDP party has now been ruled out by Lindner.
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Tax reform has gone from a market dream to a near reality, and investors are positioning themselves for the road ahead. Banks, media and transports were the big winners Monday, the first day after the Senate approved its version of the Republican-sponsored plan. Tech stocks took a beating in what could be an ominous sign for the sector, while health care and utilities also fared poorly as investors demonstrated a preference for cyclicals over defensive. related investing news The Fed 'pivot' is dead, says strategist, who shares where to invest right now Analysts think these battery-related stocks could be winners, and one is a Buffett favorite What is in store longer term for the market, though, is cloudier. Multiple factors will come into play, from effective tax rate calculations to consumer impact to how companies will put to use the expected windfall they'll receive from a sharp reduction in their currently highest-in-the-world nominal rates. "Even after the President signs tax reform into law, company-level implications will remain unclear for quite some time," Jonathan Golub, chief U.S. equity strategist at Credit Suisse, told clients. "The full impact of the new tax code is impossible to calculate given yet unknown behavioral changes." Still, Wall Street strategists will try to gauge the effects, and had their pencils out again Monday looking to discern where the biggest impacts will fall.

Starting from the top

On the surface, it's only logical to figure that sectors with the highest effective tax rate  what they pay after deductions  would stand to gain the most at least on proportion. That would put retailers, telecom, industrial services, utilities, retail staples, and health-care equipment and services at the front of the line, as each has an effective rate above 30 percent, according to Credit Suisse. On the opposite side, real estate investment trusts, energy, autos, pharma and biotech, semiconductors, and software and services would benefit the least, as those sectors have effective rates under 20 percent. On the overall, companies in the pay a 26.2 percent effective rate, compared with the 35 percent top nominal rate in place now and the 20 percent where the reform bill would go. But Golub said there are other things to consider, including how companies would use the savings  whether it would go to growth measures like capital expenditures and acquisitions or to shareholder benefits like dividends and buybacks.

Homegrown help

With the reform plan aimed at spurring activity domestically, companies that do more business in the U.S. should be prime beneficiaries. That's why Morgan Stanley likes small- and mid-cap stocks as a reform play, and is growing wary of the high-flying tech sector that has led the market so far in 2017. "Part of our call on the cycle has been our call on SMID cap stocks, which we believed would be relatively large beneficiaries of tax reform, deregulation, and animal spirits as domestic activity and M&A picked back up," equity strategist Michael Wilson said. "As sentiment has grown around tax reform since the late summer, this trend has been playing out but we think it has further to go." While the firm still has an overweight rating on technology, Wilson said the latest sell-off could be "a cautionary note about what may eventually unfold in the sector as the market starts to price in a tired cycle over the course of 2018." He suggested investors may want to buy tax reform winners by selling this year's tech proceeds. The trend could be played out by funds that hold high concentrations in tech. Hedge funds are 40 percent weighed in a sector that David Kostin, chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, said would receive "limited relative benefits from tax reform, elevated valuations, and risk of government regulation." One other area that could benefit, though: aerospace and defense. Analysts at Baird said the average tax rate for the industry is 28 percent and the sector generates about three-quarters of its revenue domestically. Among the stocks that Baird likes are BWX Technologies , Mercury Systems and Spirit AeroSystems Holdings . WATCH: A look inside the tax reform rally.
U.S. stock futures sharply were higher this morning after sentiment was boosted by the Senate passing tax reform over the weekend. The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all finished in the red Friday after former national security advisor Michael Flynn's guilty plea in the federal Russian investigation. (CNBC)



* Cramer's game plan: Play the political roller-coaster ride to your benefit (CNBC)

Aetna (AET) stock was 2 percent higher premarket after CVS Health (CVS) announced it would acquire the health insurer for about $69 billion in cash and stock aimed at fending off challenges in retail and health care. CVS shares were 2 percent lower. (CNBC)

* CVS and Aetna CEOs: We will reduce health costs for consumers immediately (CNBC)

* CVS-Aetna deal to change how big employers buy health benefits (Reuters)

Bitcoin surged to a record high of nearly $11,774 on Sunday, rebounding from last week's 20 percent plunge. The cryptocurrency topped $11,000 on Wednesday, only to drop more than $1,000 a few hours later. Bitcoin was around the $11,200 level this morning. (CNBC)



* Venezuela is launching a cryptocurrency backed by oil, gas, gold and diamonds (Reuters)

On the data front, factory orders are out at 10 a.m. ET. Ascena Retail (ASNA), the company behind the brands including Ann Taylor Lane Bryant is among the earnings today.
Sale signs outside a Toys R Us store in Basingstoke, Hampshire, as the company has put forward plans to close at least 26 U.K. stores, putting up to 800 jobs at risk.

Toys R Us U.K. is to seek creditor approval for a restructuring plan involving closing at least 26 of its 105 stores in Britain in 2018, it said on Monday.

The British arm of Toys R Us Inc of the United States, which in September, said it had submitted a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) plan to its creditors and would seek their approval in the next 17 days.

Toys R Us U.K. said that if approved by the creditors the CVA plan would substantially reduce its rental obligations and allow the business to move to a new, viable business model.

The firm said it anticipated redundancies among its workforce of 3,200 but did not give a specific number.

Toys R Us U.K. said all its stores would remain open as normal through Christmas and into the new year.
Five of seven planned rounds of negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement recently concluded in Mexico City, yet we remain far from a deal. As an investment banker and trade negotiator who has seen many deals crater because one party overplayed its hand, risk of a failed negotiation is real.

The toughest issues in a complicated negotiation are often saved for last. Still unresolved are the so-called "poison pills" that the administration has positioned as take-it-or-leave-it items. Those include the proposed sunset clause, which dissolves the agreement after five years if the three countries do not agree to continue it, and unrealistic demands that 50 percent of car parts come from the U.S.

The Trump administration's tough posture and its apparent willingness to pull out of Nafta is the result of its notion that our relationship with many of our trading partners, and Mexico in particular, is a net loss for American businesses and workers and a zero-sum game for our economy. Clips of President Trump claiming that Mexico is "killing us on jobs and trade" play on a loop on cable news and social media daily.

But to use the current administration's vernacular, this is "fake news." The reality is that when it comes to renegotiating Nafta, the best way for the administration to deliver on its promise of putting America first, is to put North America first.

Some 80 percent of economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal predict that a Nafta withdrawal would depress U.S. growth and even possibly trigger a recession, while causing enormous and potentially irreparable damage to our integrated supply chains. Additionally, a North America first approach aligns with the incredible growth and demand predicted for the region over the next several decades. PwC's "The World in 2050" report estimates that North American GDP will practically double from $22.5 trillion to over $44 trillion in the next 33 years, with Mexico emerging as a top 7 global economy by 2050. Erecting barriers with neighboring markets makes little sense now, and it will make far less sense as Canadian and Mexican economic strength and consumer demand continue to grow.
President Donald Trump arrives at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., upon his return to Washington from New York, December 2, 2017.

President Donald Trump formally endorsed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore on Monday, following a phone call between the two men.

"The President had a positive call with Judge Roy Moore during which they discussed the state of the Alabama Senate race and the President endorsed Judge Moore's campaign," said White House principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah.

The endorsement came despite nearly a half-dozen, decades-old sexual misconduct claims against Moore by women who were teens at the time. Until now, Trump had avoided issuing a full endorsement of Moore, choosing instead to attack Moore's opponent, Democrat Doug Jones.

Moore's campaign announced the presidential endorsement in a tweet, saying Trump "offered his full support and said he needs a fighter to help him in the US Senate."

Moore Tweet

The endorsement could put the president at odds with some of the most senior members of his party, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who previously called on Moore to drop out of the Dec. 12 special election.

In recent weeks, however, both GOP senators and the White House have tempered their initial criticisms of Moore, paving the way for Trump's endorsement.

Trump's turnabout on Moore initially took the form of increasingly sharp attacks on Jones, but slowly shifted from anti-Jones to pro-Moore. A few days before Thanksgiving, Trump repeated Moore's denials when reporters asked him about the allegations. "He totally denies it.  He says it didn't happen, and you have to listen to him, also," Trump said.

At least five women have alleged that Moore pursued unwanted sexual relationships with them when they were teenagers and Moore was in his 30s. Two of them alleged that Moore sexually assaulted them when they were minors. Moore has denied any allegation of sexual misconduct, but said he could not recall if he dated teenagers when he was in his 30s.

Following the initial spate of allegations, McConnell told reporters in Kentucky last month that he believed Moore's accusers, and that Moore "should step aside." The leader of the Senate Republicans' campaign arm, Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., went a step further, saying that if Moore were to be elected, his fellow senators should vote to expel him from the Senate.

Moore has vehemently refused to drop out of the race, however, and his campaign has portrayed the allegations as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by Democrats and Senate Republicans, designed to keep the controversial former judge out of the Senate.

The allegations were reported by multiple news outlets, including The Washington Post and AL.com, and were backed up by the women's relatives and friends. Recent polls show Moore and Jones locked in an extremely tight race in Republican-controlled Alabama  evidence of how much the allegations have damaged what was once viewed as an easy victory.

Trump and the White House hope his endorsement, as well as a planned Trump campaign rally in a neighboring area of Florida, will help to rally Trump's base to turn out and vote for the Republican candidate. Should Moore win, he would help to protect the GOP's razor-thin majority in the Senate.

Still, it's unclear what Trump or the Republican Party would gain in the long run by helping to elect Moore. Republican senators have promised to launch an immediate ethics investigation into Moore's conduct if he is elected, which would keep the allegations against Moore in the news for months. Democrats, meanwhile, would relish the opportunity to tie Republican candidates to Moore and his alleged misconduct in the 2018 midterm elections.
When Sonia Gandhi became the Congress president, she was a novice in politics for all practical purposes. But, Rahul Gandhi has learnt the art of politics as an apprentice under Sonia for 13 years.

By Prabhash K Dutta: Rahul Gandhi is now the undisputed boss in the Congress party. Insiders say that for the past two years, Rahul Gandhi has been taking all important decisions in the Congress and it is also the time when party president Sonia Gandhi has preferred to take back seat.

Rahul Gandhi has his own challenges as he becomes the president of the party. The Gujarat Assembly election is the first official test of his political acumen that he has acquired over 13 years, virtually doing 'internship' under mother Sonia Gandhi.

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Rahul Gandhi actively joined the Congress in 2004 Lok Sabha elections. Three years later in 2007, he was made the general secretary of the Congress while in 2013, he was appointed the vice-president of the 132-year-old party.

Sonia Gandhi has been the Congress president all this while and practically shielded Rahul Gandhi from all kinds of attacks. But, there was no motherly figure protecting Sonia Gandhi, when she became the Congress president in 1998.

HOW SONIA GANDHI BECAME CONGRESS CHIEF?

Sonia Gandhi is relinquishing Congress president's post after 19 years. She served in the post for the longest period in the history of the Congress party. But, her direct association with the Congress had a reluctant and hesitant beginning.

Senior Congress leaders had offered her the Congress president's post days after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. She had politely declined the offer showing reluctance. Another serious offer was made to her in 1995, when Narasimha Rao was the prime minister and the Congress president. Sonia Gandhi declined the offer again.

With the loss of the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections in 1996, a bunch of senior leaders again started canvassing for a takeover of the party by a member of Nehru-Gandhi family. There was none more eligible than Sonia Gandhi, who took time before dropping a hint just before the 1998 Lok Sabha elections.

Sitaram Kesri, the shrewd long-time treasure of the party, was the Congress president when Sonia Gandhi agreed (in December 1997) to campaign in the Lok Sabha polls in 1998. The Congress failed to inspire confidence and Atal Bihari Vajpayee returned as the prime minister of India.

The Sonia loyalists in the Congress party diverted the blame on Team Kesri for the defeat in the general elections. By mid-March, Sonia Gandhi had given assent for her ascent to the top post in the Congress.

On March 14, the Congress Working Committee passed a resolution asking Sitaram Kesri to step down as party president. By the evening, Sonia Gandhi entered the Congress headquarters and assumed the office of party chief.

SONIA AS CONGRESS PRESIDENT

Sonia Gandhi began her presidentship with a hat-trick win in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi. Talks of return of the Congress were in the air. The party cadres were galvanised.

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But, there was also revolt in the Congress. Senior leaders and credible faces of the Congress, Sharad Pawar and PA Sangma quit the party to form their own outfit. Sonia Gandhi did not make any attempt to hold them back.

On the other hand, Sonia Gandhi allied with late J Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK with the help of the then Janata Party leader and now BJP MP Subramanian Swamy to topple the Vajpayee government necessitating the Lok Sabha polls in 1999.

The Lok Sabha elections again brought back the question of credibility of Sonia Gandhi as Congress chief. Vajpayee returned with more seats and stronger alliance partners. The Congress seemed to fritter away.

However, Sonia Gandhi emerged as the unifier, as expected of a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family. She tried not to disturb the existing internal set-up of the Congress.

She formed a team with Arjun Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, AK Antony and Janardan Dwivedi. Later Digvijay Singh would join the group. Ahmed Patel became her political advisor. Both preferred to keep it low-profile affair.

Sonia Gandhi's inclusive formula worked and when the Shining India campaign of the Vajpayee government crumbled under the weight rural distress, the Congress-led UPA came to power in 2004.

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SONIA IDENTIFIES HER POLITICAL LIMITS

After UPA's victory in the Lok Sabha elections, there were talks about Sonia Gandhi becoming the prime minister. BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Uma Bharti announced that they would get their heads tonsured if Sonia Gandhi became the prime minister.

There was total support for Sonia Gandhi in the Congress for heading the UPA government. But, having sensed that her foreign origin may work against her as the head of the government, Sonia Gandhi realised her limitations and anointed Manmohan Singh for the post.

Over the next ten years, Sonia remained the most powerful person in the ruling dispensation. But, during this period, she also allowed the Congress organisation to go weak at the grassroot level. This is why when the then BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi launched a whirlwind election campaign in 2013, the Congress was literally blown away.

TRANSITION FROM SONIA TO RAHUL

The Congress recorded its worst tally in the Lok Sabha and has lost most of the states after 2014. Punjab is one noticeable exception to the rule. There is an argument that this is the best time for Rahul Gandhi's elevation as the Congress has reached its nadir.

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Rahul Gandhi was allowed to have his say, under Sonia Gandhi, first at the Youth Congress and then at the national level. Rahul played key roles in implementing MNREGA under UPA and stalling Ordinance that was meant to protect corrupt politicians.

Sonia Gandhi has not chaired any meeting of significance in the last six months allowing Rahul Gandhi to decorate the stage for his own elevation. Rahul Gandhi took all the decisions regarding alliance in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and now Gujarat Assembly elections.

When Sonia became the Congress president, she was a novice for all practical purposes. She was not associated with the Congress in any capacity before becoming the president. Yet, she showed astute political acumen in deciding complex issues over next 19 years, for 13 of which Rahul Gandhi learnt the art of politics as apprentice.

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President Donald Trump's attacks on the news media continue to spook journalists, First Amendment defenders and government ethics experts. His comments are scaring the media and generally are unprecedented in U.S. history.

There's only one problem: Trump's got a point.

We all saw that in the starkest terms on Friday, as ABC News broke into its regular programming with a special report saying then-presidential candidate Donald Trump had directed Gen. Mike Flynn to make contact with the Russians in 2016. It turned out that report was woefully incorrect. The network had to clarify and then correct the story before suspending the reporter responsible, Brian Ross, for four weeks without pay.

There are a million possible excuses for a mistake like this that have nothing to do with politics or decay in the journalism profession overall.

First off, we know that working breaking news can be a pressure-filled environment that produces many honest mistakes. Journalism is often an ultra-competitive profession, especially in a high-profile story like this one involving Trump and the Russia investigation.

It could also be this was an isolated incident because the report came from Ross, who has made major errors in the past. For example, a few years ago he suggested that Aurora, Colorado, movie theater mass shooter James Holmes might be a member of the tea party because someone named "Jim Holmes" was listed on a tea party website. ABC had to apologize for that as critics believed Ross was trying to insert a left-leaning political bias to boost interest in the story.

In an even worse example, Ross reported that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein may have been behind the 2001 anthrax attacks on the U.S. The White House said there was no evidence to back up those claims and then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said he warned Ross and ABC not to report that claim. Fleischer took to Twitter this weekend to remind the public of that incident:

Yes, Ross is definitely someone with a track record that makes him look a lot like an outlier in the news media. But the danger here would be to use that as too much of an excuse. Ross is just a reporter, and not someone who can just make live special reports happen. There are supposed to be more safeguards against something like this happening.

It doesn't take a Trump apologist to feel ABC or other networks and newspapers are so willing to bash Trump that these kinds of mistakes have been inevitable. And if the industry tries to palm all on Ross himself, it will surely be repeated by others.

Naturally, it didn't take long for Trump and his allies to respond with a new round of attacks on ABC and "fake news." In this case, there was no doubt that Trump's enemies had handed them the opportunity on a silver platter.

The problem goes much deeper than what happened with ABC. Consider Trump's most recent attacks on CNN and the way the network responded:

Several CNN anchors and programs decided to not just respond to the president on Twitter, but they devoted significant portions of their live news programs to fight back. Perhaps the most unequivocal response came from Wolf Blitzer on his "Situation Room" program:

"For nearly four decades CNN has been constant here in the United States and around the world. Our journalists, in front of and behind the camera, risk their lives in the most dangerous of places every day, so you know the truth."

There's one problem with that bold response: We know it isn't true.

We know that because CNN itself admitted to the world back in 2003 that it routinely suppressed important stories of Saddam Hussein's atrocities and brutality in Iraq. Then-chief news executive Eason Jordan wrote the network wanted to protect the safety of its reporters and other staff in Baghdad. That was his explanation for why CNN didn't report what it knew about Saddam's regime in between the two Gulf wars.

At the time it seemed Jordan was expecting to be lauded for his efforts. The result was the opposite. Critics from the right and left pilloried him and the network for keeping a bureau open to continue to pump out sanitized, or as some would even call it, "fake" news.

We'll just have to take Blitzer's word for it now that CNN isn't continuing that self-censoring practice. But we do know that the "nearly four decades" part of his rebuttal is a documented untruth.

Of course, ABC News, CNN and CNN.com are competitors with us at CNBC and CNBC.com. But this column is not meant to bash a rival for competitive reasons. And, of course, Trump has bashed our parent company several times as well.

But the problem here goes beyond intramural rivalries and competition. The overall news media's credibility and viability is being threatened mostly by itself  far more than by Trump.

It's as if too many of us in the news media are taking Trump's attacks too personally. It has become an excuse to abandon journalistic ethics and safeguards that make journalism a profession in the first place.

Professionalism in journalism means more than just sticking to facts and fairness. It also means that we cannot take time out of our reporting duties to get into wars of words with the president of the United States or any other newsworthy figure. If we need to defend ourselves, that's best left to our lawyers and public relations departments.

We want a vigilant and skeptical news media to keep the White House and all our elected leaders honest. But Trump's first 10 months in office have exposed a news media that seems more like an opposing party hopeful for a chance to bring him down at any cost.

It sure seemed like that hope turned into desperation Friday in the ABC News debacle. And the reaction to it from other corners of the network was beyond unseemly, most notably during ABC's talk show "The View" when Joy Behar read that erroneous Ross report while she and the audience went wild.

Any objective person is left with an image of a media outlet squarely focused on attacking the president and then wildly celebrating the chance he has been weakened.

One final problem is that the news media is using Trump's attacks as a way to abandon all self-criticism. That self-examination and striving for improvement is the epitome of what it means to be a professional in any industry. No matter how dangerous Trump's criticisms of the news media may be, now is not the time to drop our standards. Too many news organizations now openly pit themselves as combatants against the Trump agenda. American journalism can't become like a European trade unionist movement that pushes for short-term goals but forgets to get better at its job.

Despite's Flynn's guilty plea Friday, Trump scored a major victory anyway. He can thank an unforced error by an overzealous reporter and an all-too-eager news department. This dangerous pattern will be repeated until top news organizations re-examine their operations and institute a better set of best practices.

If they don't, Trump won't have to destroy the American news media. It will simply destroy itself.

Commentary by Jake Novak, CNBC.com senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.
President Donald Trump expressed sympathy on Monday for Michael T. Flynn, saying the FBI "ruined" the life of his former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI.

"I feel badly for General Flynn. I feel very badly. He's led a very strong life, and I feel very badly," Trump told reporters as he boarded Marine One on his way to Utah.

Trump pointedly ignored questions about exactly when he learned that Flynn had lied to FBI agents in January about conversations Flynn had with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Instead, the president pivoted to attacking Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival in the 2016 election.

"I will say this, Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI. Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and they destroyed his life. I think it's a shame," Trump said.

"Hillary Clinton, on the Fourth of July weekend, went to the FBI, not under oath. It was the most incredible thing anyone's ever seen. She lied many times; nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and they ruined his life. It's very unfair."

Trump was referring to a July 2, 2016, interview the FBI conducted with Clinton about her use of a private email server. According to the FBI, Clinton said repeatedly in the interview that she couldn't recall key details about the handling of classified materials.

Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of lying to the FBI, making him the fourth former Trump campaign official to face charges in the ongoing special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the election.

In his plea, Flynn described how he was directed to contact Kislyak to request that Russia issue a muted response to new Obama administration sanctions announced last December for suspected election meddling. Flynn also said he was directed to contact Russian officials, as well as officials from other nations, to urge them to delay or postpone a vote on a U.N. resolution condemning Israel's continued building of settlements in the occupied West Bank.
In the wake of CVS Health announcing its plans to acquire insurer Aetna for roughly $69 billion, aiming to safeguard against challenges in retail and health care, Walgreens is taking a different approach to grow, starting at the front of its stores.

The Illinois-based drugstore chain announced Monday a rebranding strategy aimed at educating consumers on Walgreens' long-standing history, and stepping up efforts to target a younger demographic, particularly females.

Earlier this year, Walgreens said it would acquire roughly 1,900 stores from the Rite Aid nameplate, which are still being transferred over. Initially, Walgreens tried to outright buy the chain in 2015, and has since scaled back the number of stores in the purchasing agreement when met with regulatory scrutiny.

"This comes back to having [pharmacy] professional and experts within our stores," Walgreens Chief Marketing Officer Adam Holyk told CNBC about the Rite Aid deal. "Customers like knowing there's someone there to help them when they need it."

Even as internet giant Amazon threatens to enter the drug industry, having already held preliminary talks with generic drug makers about potentially entering the space, Walgreens is pouring money into its own store renovations and now a reinvented marketing campaign.

The company will add a new tagline to its logo: "Trusted Since 1901." Meantime, Walgreens is modernizing its business, showing off an updated mobile app, a strong loyalty program, and a website where shoppers can buy online and pick up in store.

"We are pharmacist led, in the services we provide, [but] we do view the retail aspect as important," Holyk said. "The question for Walgreens becomes: 'How can we translate our brand into the other products we sell today?'"

The company said its repositioning intends to reach two demographics of female shoppers  millennials and Gen X  to make Walgreens their "preferred pharmacy of choice."

Walgreens has already brought in more "appropriate" brands for younger shoppers, with a big emphasis on its beauty aisles, according to Holyk.

Walgreens has revamped the aisles where it sells CoverGirl and Maybelline cosmetics, among other brands, in more than 1,000 stores. Though the company didn't offer a timeline on future remodels, the process is ongoing.

Roughly 3,000 beauty specialists have been hired to offer product expertise, aiming to make its stores more of a go-to destination for makeup.

In acquiring European drugstore chain Alliance Boots roughly three years ago, Walgreens was able to bring more higher-end beauty labels to its shelves. Now, the company is mixing up even more of that merchandise today, where there's money to be made off millennials.
With a famously attractive pro-business approach, both from the market directly and supported by government initiatives, Ireland has long been a go-to market for foreign investors. There are few restrictions in the way for overseas companies looking to invest here, and a stable gateway market is a motivating factor for leading global names such as JP Morgan, Legal & General and Beazley  just a few of the players that have opted to have a presence here post Brexit.

It's a remarkable turnaround for a country that was forced to bring in a strict but ultimately highly effective austerity plan. It was hit hard in the financial crisis but these measures, plus the high number of international companies that have driven their European expansion from an Irish base, means that it has been able to bounce back admirably.

Established sectors such as commercial property and manufacturing have been the cornerstones of international investment in Ireland. Recently, however, sectors such as technology and life sciences  which have been supported in growth by the country's revived financial services sector  are of increasing interest for overseas investors looking to take advantage of a stable and competitive market and gain valuable access to the wider EU market.
The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
How a growing Bihar has continued to top country's tally of murders for property, year after year.

By Amitabh Srivastava: 57-year-old Gulab Chand Shah lynched to death by his three grandsons in Saran, Bihar. A family of four burnt to death in Katihar. Five-year-old son of a property dealer Mehboob Khan accidentally killed in Munger when assailants fired at his father.

The one common thread that binds all these murders is the motive-property.

The jarring irony is that headline like these have become more of a rule in Bihar. Though Bihar is currently ranked 22nd in India in terms overall crime index according to latest National Crime Record Bureau report has much improved law and order, it has remained the most infamous dateline in India when it comes to murder for property. The position has remained unchanged for Bihar for over a decade.

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The latest National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) "Crime in India" attests as much. According to the report, with 946 murders for property registered in 2016, the State alone accounted for nearly 28 per cent of such murders committed in India last year.

Uttar Pradesh, which is twice bigger than Bihar in both population and area, is a distant second with 536 murders for property registered last year.

Worse still, while the numbers have been varying over the years, Bihar has earned the dubious distinction of being at the top of the murder tally in India, almost always.

An analysis of the NCRB report also makes it clear that while Bihar otherwise accounts for just about one-tenth of the total murders committed in the country, its share shoots up to one-third when it comes to property related murders. Simply put, there is higher probability of property rows turning bloody in Bihar.

Ironically, the rate of murders committed for property is directly proportional to Bihar's amazing growth rate in recent years. Bihar's growth rate is primarily boosted by booming construction sector, which as a key growth driver has almost doubled its share in the state growth trajectory.

Real estate prices have appreciated more than 500 per cent in the last five years.

Bihar case study has in fact has negated the widely believed assumption that there is more crime in economically depressed environment. Here, as the state became more prosperous, crime rates have also gone up.

Bihar economy has rebounded ever since Nitish Kumar government assumed power in November 2005. Five years ago, one could buy a 1500 sq feet apartment in about Rs 18-20 lakh. Now, for a similar flat one will have to shell out over Rs 75 lakh. This escalation has been primarily caused by huge demand.

A 1500sqft 3BHK (3 bedrooms, hall and kitchen) apartment in Noida or Delhi suburbs costs around Rs 40-50 lakh. But, for a similar flat one will have to pay Rs 60-80 lakh in Patna's prime locations.

Few years ago, land was cheap and easily available in Bihar's capital. That was the time when business class preferred to pull out from Bihar because of growing extortion threats and general lawlessness.

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Things have changed since then. And those with land started seeing their cash registers ringing with rising demand. The builders and developed have moved in for the kill, negotiating and settling new land deals.

They bargain hard, and as their confidence and profits grew, so did the confrontations with other stakeholders, which has also contributed in the shooting murder tally for property in Bihar.

WATCH VIDEO | Politicians play blame game as Bihar crime rate spikes

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Reports are piling in from afar that Windows Update in Win7 is broken. My first sighting was late Sunday afternoon, when KarenS posted on the AskWoody Lounge:

When I clicked on the Windows Update icon today to start the updates it said that my computer was up to date and that there were no updates available which I know was not the truth because I hadnt installed any of the [recent ones]

KarenS reported that the machine would only regurgitate the message shown in the screenshot.

Woody Leonhard/IDG

There was an attempt to isolate the problem on KarenSs computers, to no avail  the update service was working fine.

Theres a parallel thread  a long one  on the Microsoft Answers forum, where JimLewsSE asked how to fix error code 80248015 when trying to access Windows Update.

[ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ]

An anonymous poster on AskWoody had this fascinating observation:

Did you realize that weve passed ExpiryDate? I didnt so I had problems with Windows/Microsoft Update. Look at c:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\AuthCabs\authcab.cab file. There is information about valid date: <IssuedDate>2013-12-03T11:59:25.5067616-08:00</IssuedDate> <ExpiryDate>2017-12-03T11:59:25.5067616-08:00</ExpiryDate> We must wait for newer file  or revert systems date to older than 2017-12-03.

A more detailed observation in the same vein was posted on the Answers forum by ArgHereBeDragons early this morning. Microsoft, characteristically, has yet to weigh in on the subject. I guess everybodys on their way to Hawaii, to see Win10 run on ARM chips.

Three years ago, we had a similar problem with XP and Server 2003.

Short answer: Its Microsofts fault. It let the ExpiryDate pass without updating it. You can tweak your machine (e.g., set the date back), but for now Win7 users just get to wait until Microsoft acknowledges and fixes the bug.

In the interim, half of all Windows users around the world are unable to run Windows Update.

Have a Win7 update problem? Hit the AskWoody Lounge.
Long-serving (and long-suffering) Brussels-watchers will be aware that the EU brings a slightly Alice in Wonderland approach to business. Things are concrete and certain, but simultaneously changeable and temporary  black and white guarantees can dissolve overnight, immovable legal principles can be disregarded when inconvenient, and hard deadlines can slip and slide when required.

So when I lay out below the timeline for whats about to happen in the Brexit talks, readers should bear in mind that all this could be flipped on its head if it becomes convenient or necessary to do so. But anyway, here it is:

Monday 4th December  Morning: The Commission (in the person of Jean-Claude Juncker), the European Parliament (represented by Guy Verhofstadt) and Michel Barnier, the EUs Brexit negotiator, meet to discuss the state of the talks. Verhofstadt is seeking assurances about the Parliaments declared priorities, including EU citizens rights. Also this morning, the Irish cabinet is meeting to consider next steps on the question of the border.

Monday 4th December  Lunchtime: Theresa May meets Juncker and Barnier for a working lunch. Donald Tusk, the European Councils President, described this as the absolute deadline for Prime Minister May to improve her Brexit divorce offer or face failure. The goal is to reach agreement in principle between the three that sufficient progress, those golden words, has been secured on the EUs three stage one priorities  EU citizens, money, and the Northern Ireland border. Even if there is agreement in principle, such a verdict cant be made official and thereby becoming meaningful until the wider institutions including the Council agree. If there is no agreement, then that absolute deadline could yet slide into a flurry of offer and counter-offer tonight and tomorrow  its notable that there is a gap of almost two days between this meeting and the next official step.

Wednesday 6th December  Morning: Barnier formally reports to the European Commission about the progress of the talks. Juncker will presumably then give his view to his colleagues, and the assembled Commissioners will discuss and come to an official verdict on whether the progress of talks is sufficient to proceed on to discussing trade and the future relationship.

Wednesday 6th December  Afternoon: Representatives of the remaining EU member states meet to discuss the Commissions view on the talks, and to prepare for the forthcoming EU Council meeting. The official decision still will not have been taken, but the meeting might give some idea of where the different national governments stand on the question of progressing to the next stage  if theyre all discussing how such Stage Two talks would work, thats a good sign, but if one or more are still objecting to advancing at all, then theres trouble ahead.

Tuesday 12th December: The Europe ministers of the remaining EU member states meet in preparation for the forthcoming Council meeting. Like the discussions on the afternoon of the 6th, this wont formally conclude the matter but could offer some insight into the state of play. If there were still issues to be worked out the week before, then this will be a moment to seek signs of movement that might have been produced by further discussion and consideration over the intervening weekend. It is at this stage that the agenda for the Council meeting is officially set.

Thursday 14th December: The European Council  the leaders of the member states  will meet as normal, with an agenda including defence, migration and social policy. Theresa May will be in attendance, so this is another opportunity to influence those around the table  be it through soft diplomacy or firmer policy offers on issues technically unrelated to Brexit. Despite Tusks absolute deadline, the reality is that the bartering process may well still be going on at this stage.

Friday 15th December: The Article 50 version of the European Council  all the members except May  meets at last to officially discuss and deliver a verdict on the progress of Stage One of the Brexit negotiations. There is no official definition of what sufficient progress means  that was a deliberate decision, both to maintain agreement among the member states and to avoid disclosing too much of their negotiating strategy to the UK. Essentially, itll be a decision based on the politics and the feel of the situation as much as on any formal criteria. The EU loves to demonstrate a bit of tension and drama followed by a supposedly hard-won solution, apparently to make it all seem a more worthy process, so these meetings can and do go on into the early hours sometimes. We could get no agreement, or full agreement to proceed to the next stage, or a fudged semi-agreement of some sort  its all to play for in the next few days.
Corning Incorporated (NYSE: GLW) today announced an investment in Corning Valor  Glass that will create 185 new jobs and support more than 380 jobs overall in the Southern Tier of New York.

The new jobs will be located at the Corning Innovation Support Center (CISC) in Big Flats and at Cornings Research and Development Facility at Sullivan Park in Erwin. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Cornings investment during a visit at Sullivan Park hosted by Wendell P. Weeks, Corning chairman, chief executive officer, and president.

Corning has been a beacon of enterprise and innovation for decades, and this new expansion builds on our efforts to spur development and job growth for the Southern Tier, Gov. Cuomo said. By working with local leaders and the Regional Economic Development Council, our strategic Southern Tier Soaring plan is putting the region on the right track and giving Corning the tools and confidence to grow and expand their world-class products in the region.

Corning has been awarded incentives from Empire State Development, New York States chief economic development agency, in the form of a $6 million capital grant through the Upstate Revitalization Initiative to purchase manufacturing equipment and make infrastructure improvements; and tax credits through the Excelsior program.

Valor Glass was invented right here in the Southern Tier so it is only fitting our first significant manufacturing operation be located here, Weeks said. Thanks to the Southern Tier strategic plan and Governor Cuomos ongoing investment in this region through initiatives like the Upstate Revitalization Funding program, I believe the future of our community is brighter than ever.

Developing and manufacturing Valor Glass in the Southern Tier is part of Cornings plan announced in July to invest $500 million and create 1,000 new U.S. jobs. To further support the production and delivery of Valor Glass, Corning will also add jobs in the future at an existing facility in Vineland, New Jersey, and at a location in the Southeast United States.

Valor Glass dramatically reduces particle contamination, breaks and cracks while significantly increasing throughput. As a result, Valor helps protect patients and improves pharmaceutical manufacturing.

For background, supporting information, and images please visit our media resource center .

Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995), which are based on current expectations and assumptions about Cornings financial results and business operations, that involve substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include: the effect of global political, economic and business conditions; conditions in the financial and credit markets; currency fluctuations; tax rates; product demand and industry capacity; competition; reliance on a concentrated customer base; manufacturing efficiencies; cost reductions; availability of critical components and materials; new product commercialization; pricing fluctuations and changes in the mix of sales between premium and non-premium products; new plant start-up or restructuring costs; possible disruption in commercial activities due to terrorist activity, armed conflict, political or financial instability, natural disasters, adverse weather conditions, or major health concerns; adequacy of insurance; equity company activities; acquisition and divestiture activities; the level of excess or obsolete inventory; the rate of technology change; the ability to enforce patents; product and components performance issues; retention of key personnel; stock price fluctuations; and adverse litigation or regulatory developments. These and other risk factors are detailed in Cornings filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the day that they are made, and Corning undertakes no obligation to update them in light of new information or future events.

Digital Media Disclosure

In accordance with guidance provided by the SEC regarding the use of company websites and social media channels to disclose material information, Corning Incorporated (Corning) wishes to notify investors, media, and other interested parties that it intends to use its website (http://www.corning.com/worldwide/en/about-us/news-events.html) to publish important information about the company, including information that may be deemed material to investors. The list of websites and social media channels that the company uses may be updated on Cornings media and website from time to time. Corning encourages investors, media, and other interested parties to review the information Corning may publish through its website and social media channels as described above, in addition to the companys SEC filings, press releases, conference calls, and webcasts.

About Corning Incorporated

Corning (www.corning.com) is one of the world's leading innovators in materials science, with a 166-year track record of life-changing inventions. Corning applies its unparalleled expertise in glass science, ceramic science, and optical physics along with its deep manufacturing and engineering capabilities to develop category-defining products that transform industries and enhance people's lives. Corning succeeds through sustained investment in RD&E, a unique combination of material and process innovation, and deep, trust-based relationships with customers who are global leaders in their industries.





Corning's capabilities are versatile and synergistic, which allows the company to evolve to meet changing market needs, while also helping our customers capture new opportunities in dynamic industries. Today, Corning's markets include optical communications, mobile consumer electronics, display technology, automotive, and life sciences vessels. Corning's industry-leading products include damage-resistant cover glass for mobile devices; precision glass for advanced displays; optical fiber, wireless technologies, and connectivity solutions for state-of-the-art communications networks; trusted products to accelerate drug discovery and delivery; and clean-air technologies for cars and trucks.
CORNWALL, Ontario  As November draws to a close, so, too does Woman Abuse Prevention Month. This province wide campaign focuses on womens fundamental right security within her community; without fear of violence.

Spousal violence is one of the most common forms of violence facing women in Canada. However, the province is hoping to change this statistic through outreach and education.

While November is the official month of recognition, many campaigns extend into December, wrapping up on Dec. 10 or National Human Rights Day.

Executive Director of Sexual Assault and Support Services, Angela Vinet says that awareness on topics like consent and abuse are growing, thanks to programs now offered in schools.

We had Shine the Light going on throughout the whole month of November, as well as the White Ribbon Campaign, which is the mens movement to end violence against women, said Vinet.

She says that the White Ribbon Campaign is focused more on high schools, where she and her colleagues talk to students about healthy relationships, and the role men can play.

I think if we can get in and provide the education at that point in their lives, were going to see a shift in years to come, said Vinet. Prevention is key, and thats why we try to do this kind of stuff.

The White Ribbon Campaign concludes on Wednesday, Dec. 6; Canadas National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. For more information, visit the official website at whiteribbon.ca
CORNWALL, Ontario  Royal LePage Cornwall held their annual peanut butter challenge this year and it was the most successful one yet.

This is the fourth year for the fundraiser and this year Royal LePage collected 351 jars of peanut butter.

All of the peanut butter was donated to the Agape Centre.

Royal LePage took a new approach to their peanut butter drive this year. This year, they challenged other businesses through social media to donate peanut butter and encouraged those businesses to extend the challenge to others. The challenge helped bring the peanut butter drive to brand new heights, with Service Canada contributing the most to the cause with 38 jars.

Peanut butter is the most sought after product in the Agape Centre food bank. The food bank serves nearly 1, 100 people each month, 40 percent of whom are children.
CORNWALL, Ontario  Justin Levesque, 22, of Cornwall was arrested on Dec. 1, 2017 and charged with possession of property obtained by crime, fraud under $5,000 and breach of recognizance for failing to reside at a specific address and failing to keep the peace.

It is alleged during the month of Nov., 2017 the man attempted to cash a stolen cheque at a local business and police were contacted to investigate. The man was located on Dec. 1, 2017, taken into custody, charged accordingly and held for a bail hearing.

WARRANT

CORNWALL, Ontario  A 17-year-old Cornwall youth was arrested on Dec. 1, 2017 on the strength of a warrant. It is alleged the youth breached his probation order a warrant was issued for his arrest. On Dec. 1, 2017 the youth attended police headquarters to deal with the matter. He was taken into custody on the strength of the warrant and held for a bail hearing. His name was not released as per provision of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
MSC Cruises announced today that MSC Meraviglia will kick off its inaugural season in North America making its maiden call in New York on Oct. 7, 2019 and offering three sailings departing from New York.

The MSC Meraviglia will sail two 10-night round trip itineraries from New York, as well as a third 13-night itinerary through the Caribbean, ending in Miami. In addition, prior to arriving in New York, MSC Meraviglia will sail a 17-night trans-Atlantic cruise from Kiel.

MSC said the Meraviglia, Divina and Seaside will homeport in Miami for the winter 2019-2020 season, offering Caribbean itineraries.

New York has been a market that MSC Cruises has been exploring for a number of years, said Rick Sasso, chairman of MSC Cruises USA. We are thrilled that for the first time in MSC Cruises history we are now able to offer sailings from this important region and meet the expectations of both our travel agent partners and guests.

Bringing MSC Meraviglia to New York is the perfect introduction for the ship to the U.S., providing travelers an option to check out new itineraries with MSC Cruises and, for those in the region, a convenient way to discover MSC Meraviglias style, sophistication and stellar on board features, said Roberto Fusaro, President of MSC Cruises USA. With MSC Meraviglia coming to New York, and eventually to Miami, we are bringing the three most innovative and modern classes of MSC Cruises ships to the U.S., offering a wider range of memorable experiences for guests.

October 8, 2019: The first of the two 10-night sailings from New York will tour Canadian destinations during the regions most colorful time of year. Calls include Sydney, Nova Scotia; Corner Brook, Newfoundland; Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; and an overnight stay in Quebec City, Quebec, before returning to New York.

October 18, 2019: The second 10-night sailing for MSC Meraviglia departing from New York will explore Canada as well as the New England region, with ports of call in Bar Harbor, Maine; Saint John, New Brunswick; Halifax, Nova Scotia; Sydney, Nova Scotia; Portland, Maine; and Boston, Massachusetts.

October 28, 2019: MSC Meraviglias final sailing from New York will journey to Miami through the Caribbean on a 13-night sailing. Port calls include Philipsburg, St. Maarten; Fort de France, Martinique; Bridgetown, Barbados; Saint George, Grenada; Willemstad, Curacao; and Oranjestad, Aruba, before arriving in Miami.
Germany is sliding closer to an Orwellian nightmare in which companies responsible for tech connected to the internet  even cars  legally would be required to build in backdoors to allow for secret surveillance of citizens inside their homes and vehicles.

If the countrys Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has his way, then German security agencies and law enforcement would be able to tap in and spy on people via devices in their homes and in their cars. He even wants to add a type of kill switch to kick their computers from the internet.

RND (RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland) explained that the interior minister believes it has become increasingly difficult to install and hide bugs and pull off eavesdropping attacks, so the answer is to use technical means against individuals. De Maiziere wrote a proposal that would require backdoors for covert information gathering in devices that make up the Internet of Things. In reality, that would mean everything from smart toys, modern vehicles, computers, tablets, smartphones, TVs, networked sex toys, digitized kitchen appliances  the list goes on and on.

De Maiziere expects the automotive industry to comply with adding these backdoors and even be able to block text notifications that would alert vehicle owners that something is happening to their cars. Granted, most of this news is being gleaned via translated news, but an example given about notifications included how the locking systems on modern cars are so secure that the owner is notified if the car is shaken a little bit.

But it is not just about locked cars, as Golem.de added that manufacturers of alarm and security systems could be required by law to cooperate with the authorities and, for example, suppress warnings by SMS to the suspects.

Why stop at covertly using backdoors to spy on people and killing off notifications when a device could also be kicked off the internet? De Maiziere proposed a botnet takedown concept that would allow security authorities to kick infected computers from the internet. Computers aren't the only connected-devices that can be infected, so it is unknown if infected routers, for example, would also be kicked.

RND said the authorities would be allowed to use private data from computers to alert end users in good time if hackers want to misuse their computers for criminal purposes. If an ISP refused to cooperate and flick the kill switch to kick a computer off the internet, then it would face far-reaching penalties.

This Orwellian nightmare is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad plan

It comes as no surprise that critics are pointing out that backdoors weaken security and bad actors might also take advantage of them. Others point out that the proposal would be a death knell for privacy.

Frank Rieger, spokesman for the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), told Netzpolitik the proposed law is a frontal attack on the digital and physical security of all citizens. As devices are increasingly connected online, that would mean a future where any everyday device could legally be remotely turned into a secret service bug. And access to the IT system of a car means danger to life and limb  it is a literal kill switch.

Volker Tripp of the Digital Society warned that if de Maizieres draft proposal moves forward, there would be no privacy, no room for retreat and no impartiality.

In the future, all devices, buildings and moreover almost all people will be connected to the internet, Bernhard Rohleder, managing director of Bitkom, told Spiegel Online. Minister de Maizieres move is therefore about gaining state access to just about everything and everyone.

The Home Secretarys plans read like an Orwellian nightmare, and soon all the homes in the Federal Republic will be equipped with potential bugs, and the physical hurdle of a big eavesdropping will fall, added Konstantin von Notz, deputy leader of the Green Party. We need to think hard about whether, with two dictatorships in recent history, we want to live in a country where there is no private retreat and the state can do whatever is technically possible.
By their nature, new situations have a way of giving us a fresh perspective. As the newest member of the YMC team, I am enjoying this fresh set of eyes as I look at even familiar things. Take, for example, a Thanksgiving turkey.

The week of Thanksgiving, a YMC team volunteered at Miracle Hill Ministries Great Possible Turkey Fry in Spartanburg, S.C. Three of us were turkey pickers, one was a turkey prepper (which is not to say he was a turkey preparing for the end of the world), one was a potato transporter, and two, the real heroes, were onion cutters. For a couple of hours, we worked side by side with each other and volunteers from all over Upstate.

We chatted about how ready  or not  we each were for the holidays, favorite Thanksgiving dinner recipes, and other topics you address with strangers the week of Thanksgiving.
STORY LINK GBP to USD Exchange Rate Surges on Hopes of Brexit Breakthrough

GBP Surges as UK and EU Seen Closing in on Brexit Deal

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said late last week that the EU would not agree any deal that Ireland did not support, in effect giving a veto over the talks to Leo Varadkar, Irish prime minister, who convened an emergency cabinet meeting on Brexit on Monday morning.



The compromise proposed by EU negotiators refers to the need for continued alignment with single market rules that support co-operation between Northern Ireland and the Republic, according to a person familiar with the text.

USD Supported by US Tax Bill Progress

With this tax deal, markets could pick up speed into the end of the year. It looks like the ingredients for a year-end rally are there,

GBP/USD Forecast: Brexit Developments Remain in Focus

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Could the Pound to US Dollar exchange rate be in for another week of gains? That could be the case if major breakthroughs are made in UK EU Brexit negotiations in the coming sessions. On Monday, it emerged that EU negotiators were optimistic about a deal being reached, boosting Sterling.Despite improving demand for the US Dollar, last week saw GBP/USD rise from 1.3336 to 1.3471. The pair was unable to hold above the key level of 1.35 last Thursday, but tested those highs again on Monday.Strong UK PMIs in recent sessions have only further supported a strong Pound, as Sterling investors have been excited by hopes that the Brexit process could see significant progress this month.Last week, it emerged that the UK and EU were coming closer to reaching a deal on the highly contentious Brexit divorce bill.The divorce bill had caused months of deadlocks, but concessions made by the UK government appeared to have helped talks to proceed.Another major issue, the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, remained a concern over the weekend and continued to threaten further delays to Brexit talks.However, Monday saw reports emerge that the UK government would also make concessions on the Irish border, though confusion remains about whether the concessions amount to no divergence on regulations or continued regulatory compliance. This remains a key uncertainty.There also remains the issue of Northern Irelands DUP Party, which remains opposed to the possibility of Northern Irelands economy being run separately to the rest of Britain.Even though the Brexit divorce bill appeared to be close to reaching an agreement, it is possible for Ireland to completely veto progress on Brexit negotiations if it was not satisfied with how the border is handled. According to a report from the Financial Times If not for the latest Brexit developments, the US Dollar could be pushing GBP/USD lower this morning, as Fridays news that the US Republican Party successfully pushed its tax bill through a Senate vote caused Greenback strength when markets opened on Monday.The tax bill is set to see further scrutiny under Congress this week, but investors are largely optimistic about the bills chances and this is boosting US Dollar demand.According to Angelo Meda from Banor SIM in Milan;With Decembers EU summit set to take place on the 14th of December, Brexit news is likely to remain a major point of influence for Pound trade in the coming week.The Pound to US Dollar exchange rate is most likely to react to Brexit news. With a deal seemingly increasingly close to being made, further hopes of the first phase of talks being closer to being finalised would boost hopes of trade talks beginning in the coming months.This would cause hard Brexit concerns to fade and the Pound outlook would be considerably higher.UK data due later in the week, including UK trade data and production stats from October, are likely to take a backseat to Brexit news.US Dollar trade will be similar over the coming week. Investors will highly focus on US tax bill developments and any signs that the tax bill will fail could lead to some strong GBP/USD gains as the Greenback is sold.On the other hand, success in the US tax cut plans could limit this weeks potential for GBP/USD gains.US data could support the US Dollar too if it hints that the Federal Reserve is likely to continue its hawkish stance in 2018.

International Money Transfer? Ask our resident FX expert a money transfer question or try John's new, free, no-obligation personal service! ,where he helps every step of the way, ensuring you get the best exchange rates on your currency requirements.

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Poor North Korea Is A Cyber Superpower

There's no war, but a war-like situation prevails online between the United States and North Korea.

The West often calls the communist country impoverished. A naive assessment if you consider Pyongyang's proclivity for destruction, even if it's of the virtual kind.

The North may be poor, it may be a hermit kingdom, but it's definitely not short of ideas that go a long way to punish its enemies and scuttle their plans even before a single bullet is fired. A cyber war is in full swing.

Hackers from the North are busy, stealing, pilfering from the West and the South. Seoul must be worried about the latest revelations of hacking.

It said war plans were stolen from the South's defence ministry a year ago. Which means the Kim regime was aware of an assassination plot against the feared and dangerous leader for a while.

One reason why the North's foes have not been able to make much headway with the secretive regime because their plans were not and are not secret. They are putting it out there, online, and Kim Jong-un and his cohorts are having a field day. They must be laughing all the way to their villas, mansions or their nuclear bunkers. Who needs friends when you have foes like these who don't know how to cover their tracks?

It doesn't help that US President Trump is creating a much needed cyber diversion for North Korea with his comments. So much has been said after he promised 'fire and fury' that he is now beginning to sound comical.

'One thing will work' with N. Korea, he said, but we are certain that he will not launch any strike on an opponent who loves to taunt knowing that he has nuclear leverage.

These attacks from the North not only lay bare the West's and South Korea's vulnerabilities but also reveal its plots which kills the element of surprise.

Ein News: Chart: Mark Humphrys

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Somerset County inundated with accidents after Tuesday snowstorm

Somerset County 911 dispatchers said they were inundated with emergency calls Tuesday because of the snow.
It is appalling that sexual assault on school campuses is no stray incident anymore. Amid raging debates over campus safety and responsibility of teachers, the number of such incidents is rising across the country. What shakes us is that in many cases, teachers  who are supposed to be the protectors  are becoming the perpetrators. And all words fall silent when a principal molests an upper kindergarten student and then offers a justification by saying that it wasnt a big mistake as there was no intercourse involved.

S Xavier, a school principal in Jharkhands Koderma district, reportedly molested a seven-year-old child on Wednesday: according to the childs account, he stripped and touched her inappropriately. He also gave her some money and asked her not to report the incident to anyone.

And when his abominable act was exposed, he admitted to it, presenting a justification for violating the child  expressing no remorse for the crime.

Yes I did, but it wasnt such a big mistake. There was no sexual intercourse. Let me be frank, I could not even have done it, Im old now. It was an accident, the 65-year-old principal said.

I am under a lot of stress. My work is not going well. I have heart trouble. I cant sleep at night sometimes. I have insomnia, he added, as an excuse for the crime .

Nothing can justify sexual assault

The constant attempts to justify and cover up such incidents reveal how our education system is failing our children  the very future of this country. First, there aren't adequate safety measures. There aren't enough teachers to monitor the children. Forget about CCTVs. In cases like this, where a principal takes a child to the washroom, no safety measure could have saved the child.

Then, there are powerful attempts to dismiss and whittle down such cases. The parents will be threatened. Taking children out of schools can't possibly better the situation, as other schools may not agree to admit a victim of sexual assault  as was witnessed in a recent case in Delhi, where schools denied admission to a four-year-old sexual assault survivor.

Qualifying an act of sexual assault sans penetration as a small mistake does not behove any human being. In a similar incident at Kolkatas GD Birla school, where a four-year-old has been molested by two physical training teachers, fellow teachers qualified the crime as a mischief.

Principal S Xavier

Not having intercourse is not a leeway. A principal should have known that

According to the Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Act, 2012, sexual assault does not necessarily have to penetrative. Whoever, with sexual intent touches the vagina, penis, anus or breast of the child or makes the child touch the vagina, penis, anus or breast of such person or any other person, or does any other act with sexual intent which involves physical contact without penetration is said to commit sexual assault.

Whoever, commits sexual assault, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than three years but which may extend to five years, and shall also be liable to fine.

This principal is not aware of this. So, what if somebody else (any staff of the school) had subjected another student of his school to similar assault? He would not have found anything wrong as he thinks it is quite okay to strip a girl in the washroom and touch her inappropriately as long as there is "no penetration". In his own case, he tried to use age in his defence.

Such principals sustain our education system

The principal said that he could not have raped the girl given his age. We should hang our heads in shame that we have developed an education system in which such a person could become a school principal. Who could even anticipate such a situation involving a seven-year-old? It is every parent's waking nightmare.

Besides the remorselessness, the principal is guilty of what he said  of pushing down a childs development down the priority list as the head of an educational institution.

Nobody is talking about mental health

Dismissing non-penetrative sexual assault, as the principal has done, reveals the little value we attach to mental health as a society. Teachers cant afford to be this blunt; they must understand that they are not dealing with machines. They are dealing with children who dont know what intercourse is, or the difference between penetrative and unpenetrative assault. They may not have any visible wound. But harrowing memories like this will haunt them for long.
Williams-Sonoma, Inc. operates as an omni-channel specialty retailer of various products for home. It offers cooking, dining, and entertaining products, such as cookware, tools, electrics, cutlery, tabletop and bar, outdoor, furniture, and a library of cookbooks under the Williams Sonoma Home brand, as well as home furnishings and decorative accessories under the Williams Sonoma lifestyle brand; and furniture, bedding, lighting, rugs, table essentials, and decorative accessories under the Pottery Barn brand. The company also provides home decor products under the West Elm brand; kids accessories under the Pottery Barn Kids brand; and an organic bedding to multi-purpose furniture under the Pottery Barn Teen brand. In addition, it offers made-to-order lighting, hardware, furniture, and home decors inspired by history under the Rejuvenation brand; and women's and men's accessories, travel, entertaining and bar, home decor, and seasonal items under the Mark and Graham brand, as well as operates a 3-D imaging and augmented reality platform for the home furnishings and decor industry. The company markets its products through e-commerce websites, direct-mail catalogs, and retail stores. It operates 544 stores comprising 502 stores in 41states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico; 20 stores in Canada; 19 stores in Australia; 3 stores in the United Kingdom; and 139 franchised stores, as well as e-commerce websites in various countries in the Middle East, the Philippines, Mexico, South Korea, and India. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
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.

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Ashford Hospitality Trust is a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on the hospitality industry. The companys portfolio is concentrated in upper upscale, full-service hotels across the US. The portfolio strategy seeks to optimize total returns by maximizing the value of new acquisitions while paying dividends over time. The company boasts a geographically diversified portfolio of dominant branded full-service hotels. Ashford Inc externally advises Ashford Hospitality Trust.

Ashford Hospitality Trust is the culmination of decades of real estate experience dating back to the 1960s. Now based in Dallas, TX, the company was founded and went public in 2003. The company is geared to withstand the ups and downs of the hospitality and hotel cycles. The company is committed to disciplined capital market activities, has a successful transaction track record, and brings value-added asset management to the table.

Ashford Hospitality Trust is guided by five principles that best describe the company. These are Ethical, Innovative, Profitable, Engaging, and Tenacious and all key components of its reputation for integrity.

The companys portfolio is well-diversified across brands and includes but is not limited to Courtyard, Crown Plaza, Embassy Suites, Hampton Inn, Hilton, Marriot, Ritz-Carlton, and Sheraton. Properties are located in 25 of the 50 US states and Washington, D.C. targeting the top 25 markets in the nation. The company also owns a number of private and boutique names as well.

Ashford Hospitality Trust was founded by Monty J. Bennet who is the Chairman of the Board as well as Chairman, CEO, and President of Ashford, Inc which also trades on the NYSE. Mr. Bennet has more than 25 years of experience in the hospitality industry including owning and operating major hotels.
The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation provides a range of financial products and services in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Securities Services, Market and Wealth Services, Investment and Wealth Management, and Other segments. The Securities Services segment offers custody, trust and depositary, accounting, exchange-traded funds, middle-office solutions, transfer agency, services for private equity and real estate funds, foreign exchange, securities lending, liquidity/lending services, prime brokerage, and data analytics. This segment also provides trustee, paying agency, fiduciary, escrow and other financial, issuer, and support services for brokers and investors. The Market and Wealth Services segment offers clearing and custody, investment, wealth and retirement solutions, technology and enterprise data management, trading, and prime brokerage services; and clearance and collateral management services. This segment also provides integrated cash management solutions, including payments, foreign exchange, liquidity management, receivables processing and payables management, and trade finance and processing services. The Investment and Wealth Management segment offers investment management strategies and distribution of investment products, investment management, custody, wealth and estate planning, private banking, investment, and information management services. The Other segment engages in the provision of leasing, corporate treasury, derivative and other trading, corporate and bank-owned life insurance, renewable energy investment, and business exit services. It serves central banks and sovereigns, financial institutions, asset managers, insurance companies, corporations, local authorities and high net-worth individuals, and family offices. The company was founded in 1784 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
CarMax, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a retailer of used vehicles in the United States. The company operates through two segments, CarMax Sales Operations and CarMax Auto Finance. It offers customers a range of makes and models of used vehicles, including domestic, imported, and luxury vehicles, as well as hybrid and electric vehicles; and extended protection plans to customers at the time of sale, as well as sells vehicles that are approximately 10 years old and has more than 100,000 miles through wholesale auctions. The company also provides reconditioning and vehicle repair services; and financing alternatives for retail customers across a range of credit spectrum through its CarMax Auto Finance and arrangements with various financial institutions. As of February 28, 2022, it operated approximately 230 used car stores. CarMax, Inc. was founded in 1993 and is based in Richmond, Virginia.
Validus Holdings, Ltd. provides reinsurance coverage, insurance coverage, and insurance linked securities management services worldwide. It operates through three segments: Reinsurance, Insurance, and Asset Management. The Reinsurance segment underwrites property reinsurance products on a catastrophe excess of loss, per risk excess of loss and proportional basis; and aerospace and aviation, agriculture, composite, marine, technical lines, terrorism, trade credit, workers' compensation, and other specialty lines, as well as casualty and financial lines. The Insurance segment underwrites property, accident and health, agriculture, aviation, contingency, marine, and political lines insurance products; bankers blanket bond, commercial crime, computer crime, cyber- crime, professional indemnity, and directors' and officers' insurance products for various financial institutions and other companies; and commercial and institutional risks comprising general, professional, and product liability, as well as miscellaneous malpractice insurance products. This segment also underwrites marine and energy liability, and political risk insurance products, as well as insurance products for repair, maintenance, and upkeep of aircrafts and premises for small companies. The Asset Management segment manages capital for third parties through insurance-linked securities, and other property catastrophe and specialty reinsurance investments. Validus Holdings, Ltd. was founded in 2005 and is based in Pembroke, Bermuda.
Navigant Consulting, Inc. provides professional services worldwide. It operates through three segments: Healthcare, Energy, and Financial Services Advisory and Compliance. The Healthcare segment offers consulting and business process management services to healthcare providers, payers, and life sciences companies. This segment helps clients respond to market legislative changes, such as the shift to an outcome and value-based reimbursements model, ongoing industry consolidation and reorganization, Medicaid expansion, the implementation of a electronic health records system, and product planning and commercialization expertise. The Energy segment provides life-cycle solutions that help clients businesses in changing energy environment, manage complexity, accelerate operational performance, and meet compliance requirements, as well as transform its organizations and systems; and various benchmarking, and data and market research services. This segment serves utility and energy companies, government and nongovernmental organizations, large corporations, product manufacturers, and investors. The Financial Services Advisory and Compliance segment provides strategic, operational, valuation, risk management, investigative, and compliance advisory services to financial services industry, including financial and insurance institutions. This segment also offers anti-corruption solutions and anti-money laundering consulting, litigation support, and tax compliance services. Navigant Consulting, Inc. was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
Halma plc, through its subsidiaries, provides technology solutions in the safety, health, and environmental markets. It operates through three segments: Safety, Environmental & Analysis, and Medical. The Safety segment provides fire detection, specialist fire suppression, elevator safety, security sensors, people and vehicle flow technologies, specialized interlocks that control critical processes safely, and explosion protection and corrosion monitoring systems. This segment serves elevator safety, fire suppression, people and vehicle flow, fire detection, pressure management, industrial access control, and safe storage and transfer markets. The Environmental & Analysis segment offers optical, optoelectronic, and spectral imaging systems; water, air and gases monitoring technologies; instruments that detect hazardous gases and analyses air quality; and systems for water analysis and treatment. It serves the optical analysis, water analysis and treatment, gas detection, and environmental monitoring markets. The Medical segment provides critical fluidic components used by medical diagnostics and original equipment manufacturers; laboratory devices and systems that provide information to understand patient health and enable providers to make decisions across the continuum of care; technologies and solutions to enable in-vitro diagnostic systems and life-science discoveries and development; and technologies that enable positive outcomes across clinical specialties. This segment serves the life sciences, health assessment, and therapeutic solutions market. The company was incorporated in 1894 and is headquartered in Amersham, the United Kingdom.
Entravision Communications Corporation operates as an advertising, media, and technology solutions company worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Digital, Television, and Audio. It reaches and engages Hispanics across acculturation levels and media channels. The company's portfolio encompasses integrated end-to-end advertising solutions, including digital, television, and audio properties. It also offers a suite of end-to-end digital advertising solutions, including digital commercial partnerships services, as well as advertising customers billing and technological and other support services, including strategic marketing and training; and Smadex, a programmatic ad purchasing platform that enables advertising customers or ad agencies to purchase advertising electronically and manage data-driven advertising campaigns through online marketplaces. In addition, the company provides a branding and mobile performance solutions, such as managed services to advertisers looking to connect with consumers on mobile devices; and digital audio advertising solutions for advertisers. Further, it sells advertisements and syndicated radio programming solutions through its Entravision radio network. As of March 3, 2022, the company had 50 television stations; and 46 Spanish-language radio stations. It serves advertisers from various industries, such as e-commerce, retail, entertainment, gaming, delivery services, financial technology, communications, lifestyle, and travel. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California.
Ford Motor Company is the second largest US auto manufacturer by market cap and market share and ranks 4th globally. The company was founded in 1903 by Henry Ford following a series of cars that led to the introduction of the Model T. The Model T revolutionized the automobile industry not only because it made vehicles affordable for the budding middle class but it changed the way manufacturing was done. The Ford factory features the worlds first moving assembly line, an introduction that not only improved the pace of production but lowered the cost of its vehicles.

Other prominent innovations made by Mr. Ford include the strict standardization of parts that allowed for easy construction and repair and the standardized workweek. Henry Fords switch to a $5 workday and 8-hour shifts allowed him to run 3 shifts per day and improve productivity while providing his employees with the power to buy their own products.

Today, Ford Motor Company makes and markets a large lineup of cars, trucks, SUVs, EVs, and Lincoln luxury vehicles globally. The companys iconic F-series of trucks is the worlds best-selling pickup truck for decades running and the new all-electric Lightning is on track to dominate the top spot in the EV market. Other iconic brands in the Ford lineup include the Thunderbird introduced in 1954, the Mustang in 1964, and the Transit work van in 1965. The Mustang, notably, was created for the Worlds Fair and expected to sell 100,000 in its first year but shocked the industry with 22,000 units sold on the first day.

The company operates through four segments including Ford Blue (ICE vehicles), Model e (EVs) Mobility, and Ford Credit. The Ford Blue and Model e segments sell Ford and Lincoln vehicles, parts, and accessories while the Mobility segment designs and builds advanced technologies including but not limited to self-driving autonomous car systems.

The Ford Credit segment primarily offers commercial and retail loans to auto dealers and car buyers. This segment not only provides financing for new purchases and dealer inventory but makes loans for new dealerships and expansions of old ones.

Ford has fully embraced the switch to EV and is planning for an all-EV future. To that end, the company pledged to spend up to $50 billion on EV infrastructure by 2026. The plans include the build-out of an entirely new campus dedicated to EV manufacture from batteries to motor platforms, manufacturing capacity, and new vehicles. In regard to total capacity, the company is targeting 2 million in total annual EV sales by that same year.
Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., through its subsidiaries, produces, markets, and distributes fresh and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Fresh and Value-Added Products, Banana, and Other Products and Services. It offers pineapples, fresh-cut fruit, fresh-cut vegetables, melons, and vegetables; non-tropical fruits, such as grapes, apples, citrus, blueberries, strawberries, pears, peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries, and kiwis; other fruit and vegetables, and avocados; and prepared fruit and vegetables, juices, other beverages, and meals and snacks. The company also engages in the sale of poultry and meat products; and third-party freight services business. In addition, it manufactures and sells plastic and box products, such as bins, trays, bags, and boxes. The company offers its products under the Del Monte brand, as well as under other brands, such as UTC, Rosy, Fruit Express, Just Juice, Fruitini, Mann's Logo, Arcadian Harvest, Nourish Bowls, Broccolini, Caulilini, Better Burger Leaf, RomaLeaf, and other regional brands. It markets and distributes its products to retail stores, club stores, convenience stores, wholesalers, distributors, and foodservice operators. Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. was founded in 1886 and is based in George Town, Cayman Islands.
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. Ltd., Duo Fast de Espana S.A.U., Duo-Fast Korea Co. Ltd., Duo-Fast LLC, E.C.S. d.o.o., E2M Production B.V.., E2M Technologies B.V.., E2M Technologies Inc.., ECS Cable Protection Sp. Zoo, ELRO Grosskuchen GmbH, ELRO Holding AG, ELRO-WERKE AG, Elro Group, Eltex-Elektrostatik-Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Envases Multipac S.A. de C.V., Eurotec Srl, Exhibit 21, FEG Investments L.L.C., Filtertek De Mexico Holding Inc., Filtertek De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Filtertek SAS, GC Financement SA, Gamko B.V., Gun Hwa Platech Taicang Co. Ltd., HOBART Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Hartness International, Hobart Andina S.A.S., Hobart Belgium B.V., Hobart Brothers International Chile Limitada, Hobart Brothers LLC, Hobart Dayton Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Hobart Food Equipment Co. Ltd., Hobart International Singapore Pte. Ltd., Hobart Japan K.K., Hobart Korea LLC, Hobart LLC, Hobart Nederland B.V., Hobart Sales & Service Inc., Hobart Scandinavia ApS, Hobart Techniek B.V., Horis, ILC Investments Holdings Inc., ITW AEP LLC, ITW AOC LLC, ITW Aircraft Investments Inc., ITW Ampang Industries Philippines Inc., ITW Appliance Components EOOD, ITW Appliance Components S.A. de C.V., ITW Appliance Components S.r.l.a, ITW Appliance Components d.o.o., ITW Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, ITW Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd., ITW Australia Pty Ltd, ITW Automotive Components Chongqing Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Components Langfang Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Japan K.K., ITW Automotive Korea LLC, ITW Automotive Parts Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Automotive Products GmbH, ITW Automotive Products Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Bailly Comte, ITW Befestigungssysteme GmbH, ITW Belgium B.V., ITW Brazilian Nominee L.L.C., ITW Building Components Group Inc., ITW CER, ITW CP Distribution Center Holland BV, ITW CS UK Ltd., ITW Canada Inc., ITW Celeste Inc., ITW Chemical Products Ltda, ITW Chemical Products Scandinavia ApS, ITW China Investment Company Limited, ITW Colombia S.A.S., ITW Construction Products AB, ITW Construction Products AS, ITW Construction Products ApS, ITW Construction Products CZ s.r.o., ITW Construction Products Italy Srl, ITW Construction Products OU, ITW Construction Products OY, ITW Construction Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Construction Products Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW Construction Services Manila Inc., ITW Contamination Control B.V., ITW Contamination Control Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Covid Security Group Inc., ITW DS Investments Inc., ITW DelFast do Brasil Ltda., ITW Denmark ApS, ITW Deutschland GmbH, ITW Diagraph GmbH, ITW Dynatec, ITW Dynatec Adhesive Equipment Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Dynatec GmbH, ITW Dynatec Kabushiki Kaisha, ITW EAE B.V., ITW EAE Mexico S de RL de CV, ITW EF&C France SAS, ITW EF&C Selb GmbH, ITW EU Holdings Ltd., ITW Electronic Business Asia Co. Limited, ITW Electronic Components/Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Electronics Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Epsilon Sarl, ITW Espana S.L., ITW European Finance Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance II Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance III Co. Ltd., ITW FEG Hong Kong Limited, ITW FEG do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW Fastener Products GmbH, ITW Fluids and Hygiene Solutions Ltda., ITW Food Equipment Group LLC, ITW GH LLC, ITW GSE ApS, ITW GSE Inc., ITW Gamma Sarl, ITW German Management LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones, ITW Global Investments Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Europe GmbH, ITW Global Tire Repair Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Japan K.K., ITW Graphics Asia Limited, ITW Graphics Thailand Ltd., ITW Great Britain Investment & Licensing Holding Company, ITW Group France Luxembourg S.ar.l., ITW HLP Thailand Co. Ltd., ITW Holding Quimica B.C. S.L. Sole Shareholder Company, ITW Holdings Australia L.P., ITW Holdings I Limited, ITW Holdings II Limited, ITW Holdings III Limited, ITW Holdings IV Limited, ITW Holdings IX Limited, ITW Holdings Inc., ITW Holdings V Limited, ITW Holdings VI Limited, ITW Holdings VII Limited, ITW Holdings VIII Limited, ITW Holdings X Limited, ITW Holdings XI Limited, ITW ILC Holdings I Inc., ITW IPG Investments LLC, ITW Imaden Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW India Private Limited, ITW International Holdings LLC, ITW Invest Holding GmbH, ITW Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, ITW Ireland Unlimited Company, ITW Italy Holding Srl, ITW Japan Ltd., ITW Korea LLC, ITW LLC & Co. KG, ITW Limited, ITW Lys Fusion S.r.l., ITW Materials Technology Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Meritex Sdn. Bhd., ITW Metal Fasteners S.L., ITW Mexico Holding Company S. De R.L. de C.V., ITW Mexico Holdings LLC, ITW Morlock GmbH, ITW Mortgage Investments II Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments III Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments IV Inc., ITW Netherlands Administration BV, ITW Netherlands Beta B.V., ITW Netherlands Finance Alpha BV, ITW New Universal LLC, ITW New Zealand, ITW Ningbo Components & Fastenings Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Novadan Sp. Z.o.o., ITW PPF Brasil Adesivos Ltda., ITW Packaging Technology China Co. Ltd., ITW Participations S.a r.l., ITW Pension Funds Trustee Company, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Japan Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Korea Limited, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids OOO, ITW Performance Polymers ApS, ITW Performance Polymers Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers and Fluids Group FZE, ITW Peru S.A.C., ITW Poly Mex S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Polymers Sealants North America Inc., ITW Pronovia s.r.o., ITW Pte. Ltd., ITW Qufu Automotive Cooling Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Real Estate Germany GmbH, ITW Residuals III L.L.C., ITW Residuals IV L.L.C., ITW Rivex, ITW SMPI, ITW SPG Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Simco-Ion Shenzhen Co. Ltd., ITW Slovakia s.r.o., ITW Spain Holdings S.L., ITW Specialty Film LLC, ITW Specialty Films France, ITW Specialty Materials Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Sverige AB, ITW Sweden Holding AB, ITW Test & Measurement Equipment Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Test & Measurement GmbH, ITW Test and Measurement Italia Srl, ITW Test and Measurement Services Industry and Trade Ltd., ITW Texwipe Philippines Inc., ITW Thermal Films Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW UK, ITW UK Finance Beta Limited, ITW UK Finance Delta Limited, ITW UK Finance Gamma Limited, ITW UK Finance Limited, ITW UK Finance Zeta Ltd., ITW UK II Limited, ITW Universal II LLC, ITW Welding, ITW Welding AB, ITW Welding GmbH, ITW Welding Products B.V., ITW Welding Products Group FZE, ITW Welding Products Group S. DE R.L. De C.V., ITW Welding Products Italy Srl, ITW Welding Products Limited Liability Company, ITW Welding Produtos Para Solgdagem Ltda., ITW Welding Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW de France, ITW do Brasil Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Illinois Tool Works Chile Limitada, Illinois Tool Works ITW Nederland B.V., Illinois Tool Works Inc., Impar Comercio E Representacoes Ltda., Industrie Plastic Elsasser GmbH, Inmobiliaria Cit. S.A. de C.F., Innova Temperlite Servicios S.A. de C.V., Innovacion y Transformacion Automotriz S.A. de C.V., Instron Brasil Equipamentos Cientificos Ltda., Instron Foreign Sales Corp. Limited, Instron France S.A.S., Instron GmbH, Instron Japan Company Ltd., Instron Korea LLC, Instron Shanghai Ltd., Instron Thailand Limited, International Leasing Company LLC, Isolenge - ITW Sistemas de Isolamento Termico Ltda., Itw Spraytec, KCPL Mauritius Holdings, Kester, Kleinmann GmbH, Krafft S.L., Loma Systems, Loma Systems BV, Loma Systems Canada Inc., Loma Systems sro, Lombard Pressings Limited, Lumex Inc., Lys Fusion Poland Sp. z.o.o., M&C Specialties Co., MAGNAFLUX GmbH, MEHB Holdings Limited, MGHG Property LLC, MTS 2 LLC., MTS 3 LLC., MTS China Holdings LLC, MTS Europe Holdings LLC, MTS Holdings France S.a.r.l., MTS Japan Ltd.., MTS Korea Inc.., MTS Systems China Co. Ltd., MTS Systems Corporation, MTS Systems Danmark ApS., MTS Systems Europe B.V., MTS Systems Finance C.V.., MTS Systems Germany GmbH, MTS Systems Holding B.V.., MTS Systems Hong Kong Incorporated, MTS Systems Limited, MTS Systems Norden Aktiebolag, MTS Systems S.r.l, MTS Systems., MTS Systems.., MTS Sytems Do Brazil, MTS Testing Solutions India Private Limited., MTS Testing Systems Canada Ltd., Manufacturing Avancee S.A., Meritex Technology Suzhou Co. Ltd., Meurer Verpackungssysteme GmbH, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC, Miller Insurance Ltd., NDT Holding LLC, NOVADAN APS, North Star Imaging Inc., Nova Chimica S.r.l., Orbitalum Tools GmbH, PENTA-91 OOO, PR. A. I. Srl, PT ITW Construction Products Indonesia, Pacific Concept Industries Limited Enping, Panreac Quimica S.L., Paslode Fasteners Shanghai Co. Ltd., Peerless Machinery Corp., Polyrey, Premark FEG L.L.C., Premark HII Holdings LLC, Premark International, Premark International LLC, Prolex Sociedad Anonima, QSA Global Inc., Quimica Industrial Mediterranea S.L., R&D Engineering A/S., R&D Prague s.r.o., R&D Steel ApS., R&D Test Systems A/S., R&D Tools and Structures A/S., RDGDK Engineering Private Limited, Ramset Fasteners Hong Kong Ltd., Rapid Cook LLC, Refrigeration France, S.E.E. Sistemas Industria E Comercio Ltda., ST Mexico Holdings LLC, Sealant Systems International Inc., Sentinel Asia Yuhan Hoesa, Shanghai ITW Plastic & Metal Co. 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. Ltd., Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Subsidiaries, Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek China Limited, Teknek Japan Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Kunshan Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta Global Limited, Vesta Guangzhou Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil South Africa Pty Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, and Zip-Pak International B.V..

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Biohaven Ltd., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focuses on discovering and developing therapies for patients with debilitating neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases in the United States. The company's pipeline products include BHV-7000, a potassium channel activator for the treatment of focal epilepsy; Troriluzole, a tripeptide prodrug that is in Phase 3 clinical trial for the treatment of neurological and neuropsychiatric illnesses; BHV-5500, a low-trapping glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist for neuropathic pain; and Verdiperstat, an irreversible myeloperoxidase enzyme inhibitor for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. It also offers Taldefgrobep Alfa, an anti-myostatin adnectin, which is in Phase 3 clinical trial to treat spinal muscle atrophy; and BHV-1100 that is in Phase 1a/1b clinical trial for multiple myeloma patients. The company was formerly known as Biohaven Research Ltd and changed its name to Biohaven Ltd. in Sept 2022. The company was incorporated in 2022 and is headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. Biohaven Ltd. is a subsidiary of Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company Ltd.
Maximus, Inc. provides business process services (BPS) to government health and human services programs. It operates through three segments: U.S. Services, U.S. Federal Services, and Outside the U.S. The U.S. Services segment offers various BPS solutions, such as program administration, appeals and assessments, and related consulting works for U.S. state and local government programs, including the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, child support programs, Preadmission Screening and Resident Reviews, and Independent Developmental Disability assessments. This segment also provides program eligibility support and enrollment; centralized multilingual customer contact centers, multichannel, and digital self-service options for enrollment; application assistance and independent health plan choice counseling; beneficiary outreach, education, eligibility, enrollment, and redeterminations; person-centered independent disability, long-term sick, and other health assessments; and specialized consulting services. The U.S. Federal Services segment offers centralized citizen engagement centers and support services; document and record management; case management, citizen support, and consumer education; independent medical reviews and worker's compensation benefit appeals; Medicare and Medicaid appeals; and federal marketplace eligibility appeals. This segment also provides modernization of systems and information technology infrastructure; infrastructure operations and support services; software development, operations, and management services; and data analytics services. The Outside the U.S. segment offers BPS solutions for governments and commercial clients outside the United States, including health and disability assessments, program administration for employment services, and other job seeker-related services. The company was incorporated in 1975 and is headquartered in Tysons, Virginia.
Kimco Realty Corp. is a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on open-air mall-style properties in the US and is among the largest mall REITs on the market. The firm has been in business since the post-war boom of the 1966 and trading on the public markets since 1991. The name is a blend of the founders names, Martin Kimmel and Milton Cooper, who merged their assets in order to form the larger company.

The stock was added to the S&P 500 in 2006 and has held its position ever since. Kimco is also know for being the first vertically integrated REIT meaning it is internally managed and advised, and provides its own asset and property management. The firm raised $120 million with its IPO and was worth $11.4 billion in October 2022.

As of October 2022, the company laid claim to more than 530 properties enclosing 92 million square feet of retail space. The properties are primarily located within grocery-anchored shopping centers and mixed-use assets in suburban areas. The tenant-focus is on a diverse blend of essential and/or necessity-based goods or services that drive multiple consumer trips per week and provide stable income.

Kimco Realty is headquartered in Jerico, N.Y., but does not limit its investments by geography. The companys properties are located in 1st-ring suburbs surrounding major metropolitan areas from coast to coast. One area of focus is high-barrier-to-entry coastal properties in population-dense vacation zones while another is the rapidly expanding Sun Belt.

The firm offers a variety of services and features apart from property rentals that include curbside pickup zones and many others that enhance the tenant and consumer experience. Other features include digital maintenance requests, Click Pay, and a Discount Program. Some of the markets served by Kimco Realty include New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami, and Atlanta.
The following companies are subsidiares of UnitedHealth Group: 1070715 B.C. Unlimited Liability Company, 1st Avenue Pharmacy Inc., 310 Canyon Medical LLC, 4C MSO LLC, 4C Medical Group PLC, 5995 Minnetonka LLC, ABCO International Holdings LLC, ACN Group IPA of New York Inc., ACN Group of California Inc., AHN Accountable Care Organization LLC, AHN Central Services LLC, AHN Target Holdings LLC, AMIL International S.a.r.l., APS  Assistencia Personalizada a Saude Ltda., ASC Holdings of New Jersey LLC, ASC Network LLC, ASC Operators-East Bay LLC, ASC Operators-San Francisco LLC, ASC Operators-San Luis Obispo LLC, ASC Operators-Santa Rosa LLC, ASC Operators-South Bay LLC, ASV-HOPCo-SCA Cornerstone LLC, ASV-HOPCo-SCA Florida LLC, AbleTo Behavioral Health Services P.C., AbleTo Inc., Accurate Rx Pharmacy Consulting LLC, Administradora Clinica La Colina S.A.S., Administradora Country S.A.S., Administradora Medica Centromed S.A., Advanced Surgery Center of Clifton LLC, Advanced Surgical Center LLC, Advanced Surgical Hospital LLC, Advocate Condell Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Advocate Southwest Ambulatory Surgery Center L.L.C., Advocate-SCA Partners LLC, Aliansalud Entidad Promotora de Salud S.A., All Savers Insurance Company, All Savers Life Insurance Company of California, Alliance Surgical Center LLC, Allina Health Heart and Vascular Surgery Center LLC, Allina Health Surgery Center-Brooklyn Park LLC, Aloha Surgical Center LLC, Ambient Healthcare Inc., Ambient Holdings Inc., AmeriChoice, AmeriChoice Corporation, AmeriChoice of New Jersey Inc., American Health Network of Indiana Care Organization LLC, American Health Network of Indiana II LLC, American Health Network of Indiana LLC, American Health Network of Kentucky LLC, American Health Network of Ohio Care Organization LLC, American Health Network of Ohio II LLC, American Health Network of Ohio LLC, American Physicians Inc., Amico Saude Ltda., Amil, Amil Assistencia Medica Internacional S.A., Angiografia e Hemodinamica Madre Theodora Ltda., Anne Arundel-SCA Holdings LLC, Anne Arundel-SCA Surgicenter LLC, Antelope Valley Surgery Center L.P., Analisis Clinicos ML S.A.C., Apothecary Holdings Inc., AppleCare Medical Management LLC, Aquitania Chilean Holding SpA, Arcadia JV Holdings LLC, Arcadia Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., ArchWell Health LLC, ArchWell Health MSO LLC, ArchWell Health Professional Services Holding Co., ArchWell Health Professional Services of Alabama LLC, ArchWell Health Professional Services of North Carolina P.C., ArchWell Health Professional Services of Oklahoma LLC, Archwell Health Professional Services of Arizona LLC, Archwell Health Professional Services of Nebraska LLC, Arise Physician Group, Arizona Physicians IPA Inc., Arlington Surgery Center LLC, Aspectus Inc., Associacao Lusiadas Knowledge Center  Health Education and Research, Audax Health Solutions LLC, Aurora Hospitalist P.C., Austin Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., Avella Specialty Pharmacy, Aventura Medical Tower Surgery Center LLC, Avery Parent Holdings Inc., Aveta Inc., AxelaCare Intermediate Holdings LLC, AxelaCare LLC, B.R.A.S.S. Partnership in Commendam, BOSC Holdings LLC, BSC Holdings LLC, Ball Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Banmedica Colombia S.A.S., Banmedica Internacional SpA, Banmedica S.A., Barranca Surgery Center LLC, Beach Surgical Holdings II LLC, Beach Surgical Holdings III LLC, Beach Surgical Holdings LLC, Beaver Medical Group P.C., Bedford Physicians Risk Retention Group Inc., Behavioral Healthcare Options Inc., Beltway Surgery Centers L.L.C., Benefit Administration for the Self Employed L.L.C., Benefitter Insurance Solutions Inc., Bergan Mercy Surgery Center LLC, Bergen-Passaic Cataract Laser and Surgery Center LLC, Bessler MD PLLC, Bind Benefits Inc., Bind LH Holdings Inc., Bind Re Inc., Birmingham Outpatient Surgery Center Ltd., Birmingham Outpatient Surgical Center LLC, Bloomfield ASC LLC, Blue Ridge Day Surgery Center L.P., Blue Ridge GP LLC, Blue Ridge Properties LLC, Boca Raton Outpatient Surgery & Laser Center LTD., Bordeaux Barbados Holdings I SRL, Bordeaux Barbados Holdings II SRL, Bordeaux Barbados Holdings III S.r.l., Bordeaux Holding SpA, Bordeaux International Holdings Inc., Bordeaux UK Holdings I Limited, Bordeaux UK Holdings II Limited, Bordeaux UK Holdings III Limited, Bosque Medical Center Ltda., Brandon Ambulatory Surgery Center LC, BriovaRx Infusion Services 102 LLC, BriovaRx of Florida Inc., BriovaRx of Maine Inc., BriovaRx of Massachusetts LLC, CCEC Anesthesia Management LLC, CDC Holdings Colombia S.A.S., CLISA  Clinica de Santo Antonio S.A., CMO  Centro Medico de Oftalmologia S/S Ltda., CMS  Central de Manipulacao e Servicos Farmaceuticos Ltda., COI  Clinicas Oncologicas Integradas S.A., Cabin Enterprises LLC, Cabin Holdings LLC, California Medical Group Insurance Company Risk Retention Group, Camp Hill Ambulatory Centers, Camp Hill-SCA Centers LLC, Capital City Medical Group L.L.C., Cardinal Holding Company LLC, Care Improvement Plus Group Management LLC, Care Improvement Plus South Central Insurance Company, Care Improvement Plus Wisconsin Insurance Company, Care Improvement Plus of Texas Insurance Company, Care Logistics LLC, CareMount Dental Member LLC, CareMount Health Solutions ACO LLC, CareMount Health Solutions Employer LLC, CareMount Health Solutions LLC, CareMount Holding LLC, CareMount Medical Foundation Inc., CareMount Value Partners IPA LLC, Carr PLLC, Casa de Saude Santa Therezinha Ltda., Castle Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Castle Rock SurgiCenter LLC, Catalyst360 LLC, Catamaran 2 Unlimited Company, Catamaran Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, Catamaran S.a.r.l., Cedar Park JV Partners LLC, Cedar Park Surgery Center LLC, Cemed Care  Empresa de Atendimento Clinico Geral Ltda., Center for Quality Improvement LLC, Center for Restorative Surgery at Maple Grove LLC, Center for Surgery of North Coast L.P., Central Indiana Care Organization LLC, Central Ohio Care Organization LLC, CentriHealth Corporation, CentrifyHealth LLC, Centro Medico Hospitalar Pitangueiras Ltda., Centro Odontologico Americano S.A.C., Centro de Entrenamiento Capacitacion en Reanimacion y Prevencion Limitada, Centro de Servicios Compartidos Banmedica SpA, Centromed Quilpue S.A., Centros Medicos y Dentales Multimed Ltda., Centura-SCA Holdings LLC, Centurion Casualty Company, Channel Islands Surgicenter L.P., Channel Islands Surgicenter Properties LLC, Charleston Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Charleston Surgery Properties LLC, Charlotte Surgery Center LLC, Charlotte Surgery Properties LTD., Charlotte-SC LLC, Chatham Orthopaedic ASC LLC, Childrens Surgery Center LLC, Citrus Regional Surgery Center L.P., Claims Management Systems Inc., Cleburne Surgical Center LLC, Clinical Partners of Colorado Springs LLC, Clinton Partners LLC, Clinica Alameda SpA, Clinica Bio Bio SpA, Clinica Ciudad del Mar S.A., Clinica Davila y Servicios Medicos S.p.A., Clinica Iquique S.A., Clinica Medico Cirurgica de Santa Tecla S.A., Clinica Portoazul S.A., Clinica San Felipe S.A., Clinica Santa Maria S.p.A., Clinica Sanchez Ferrer S.A., Clinica Vespucio S.A., Clinica del Country S.A.S., Coachella Valley Physicians of PrimeCare Inc., Coalition for Advanced Pharmacy Services Inc., Cobranzas Banmedica SpA, Cogent Healthcare IPA of New York Inc., Cogent Healthcare Inc., Cogent Healthcare Management of New York Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Arizona P.C., Cogent Healthcare of California Prof. Corp., Cogent Healthcare of Georgia P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Illinois LLC, Cogent Healthcare of Iowa P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Jackson MS LLC, Cogent Healthcare of Jacksonville LLC, Cogent Healthcare of Mississippi Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Missouri Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Montana P.C., Cogent Healthcare of New Jersey P.C., Cogent Healthcare of North Carolina P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Oregon P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Pensacola L.L.C., Cogent Healthcare of Tennessee P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Virginia Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Washington P.C., Cogent Medical Care P.C., Cogent Patient Safety Organization Inc., Cogent/Endion Medical Care of New York P.C., Collaborative Care Holdings LLC, Collaborative Care Services Inc., Collaborative Realty LLC, Colmedica Medicina Prepagada S.A., Colonial Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Colorado Innovative Physician Solutions Inc., Colorado Springs Surgery Center Ltd., Comfort Care Transportation LLC, Comprehensive Hospital Physicians of Florida Inc., ConnectYourCare Inc., ConnectYourCare LLC, Connecticut Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Connecticut Surgery Properties LLC, Connecticut Surgical Center LLC, Consorcio Regenero S.A., Constructora Inmobiliaria Magapoq S.A., Consumer Wellness Solutions Inc., Continuum Physicians Group Inc., Continuum Physicians Group of Washington PLLC, Cornell Surgicenter LLC, Cornerstone Surgery Center LLC, Cornerstone Surgicare LLC, Corpus Christi Endoscopy Center L.L.P., Country Scan Ltda., Critical Care Physician of New York P.C., Critical Care Physicians of Illinois LLC, Critical Care Physicians of New Jersey PC, Critical Care Physicians of Pennsylvania P.C., Cross Timbers Surgery Center LLC, Cypress Care Inc., DBP Services of New York IPA Inc., DSP Flint Real Estate LLC, DSP-Building C LLC, DTC Surgery Center LLC, DWIC of Tampa Bay Inc., Dallas Inpatient Specialist PLLC, Danbury Surgical Center L.P., Day-Op Surgery Consulting Company LLC, Definity Health, Dental Benefit Providers Inc., Dental Benefit Providers of California Inc., Dental Benefit Providers of Illinois Inc., Denton Endoscopy Surgery Center LLC, Denton Surgery Center LLC, Derry Surgical Center LLC, Diagnostico Ecotomografico Centromed Ltda., Diasnostico por Imagenes Centromed Ltda., Digestive Disease Center L.P., Dilab Medicina Nuclear Ltda., Diplomat Blocker LLC, Diplomat Corporate Properties LLC, Diplomat Pharmacy, Diplomat Pharmacy Inc., Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy Great Lakes Distribution Center LLC, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy of Chicago LLC, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy of Ft. Lauderdale LLC, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy of Los Angeles County LLC, Distance Learning Network Inc., Divisadero Holdings LLC, DocASAP Inc., DocASAP India Technologies Private Limited, DocASAP US LLC, Doctor + S.A.C., Dry Creek Surgery Center LLC, Dublin Surgery Center LLC, Duluth Surgical Suites LLC, Durable Medical Equipment Inc., E Street Endoscopy LLC, EM Orange Tree LLC, EP Campus I LLC, EPIC Health Plan, EPIC Management Services LLC, East Bay Endoscopy Center L.P., East Brunswick Surgery Center LLC, Echo Locum Tenens Inc., Electronic Network Systems Inc., Elual Participacoes S.A., Emerald Coast Surgery Center L.P., Emisar Pharma Services LLC, Emmaus Holdings LLC, Emmaus Surgical Center LLC, Empire Physician Management Company LLC, Empremedica S. A., Endion Hospitalist North P.C., Endion Hospitalist of Western New York P.C., Endion Medical Healthcare P.C., Endion Medical Services P.C., Endoscopy Center Affiliates Inc., Enterprise Life Insurance Company, Equian, Equian LLC, Equian Parent Corp., Esho  Empresa de Servicos Hospitalares S.A., Everett MSO Inc., Excelsior Insurance Brokerage Inc., Executive Health Resources Inc., Executive Surgery Center L.L.C., Eye Clinic Oftalmologia Clinico Cirurgica e Diagnostico Ltda., Eye Specialists Surgery Centers LLC, FMG Holdings LLC, Family Health Care Services, Family Home Hospice Inc., Ferrell Physician Services P.C., Fideicomiso Clinica Barranquilla Portoazul FA-517, First Coast Orthopedic Center LLC, First Family Insurance LLC, Florence Surgery Center L.P., For Health Inc., For Health of Arizona Inc., Fort Sutter Medical Building a California Limited Partnership, Fort Worth Endoscopy Centers LLC, Fortified Provider Network Inc., Foundation Surgery Affiliate General of Huntingdon Valley LLC, Foundation Surgery Affiliate of Huntingdon Valley L.P., Franklin Surgical Center LLC, Freedom Life Insurance Company of America, Freeway Surgicenter of Houston LLC, Frontier Medex Tanzania Limited, FrontierMEDEX Inc., FrontierMEDEX Kenya Limited, FrontierMEDEX US Inc., Fundacion Banmedica, GLBESC LLC, GRANTS PASS SURGERY CENTER LLC, Gadsden Surgery Center LLC, Gainesville Surgery Center L.P., Gainesville Surgery Properties LLC, Genoa, Genoa Healthcare Inc., Genoa QoL Wholesale LLC, Genoa Technology Canada Inc., Genoa Technology Inc., Genoa Telepsychiatry Inc., Genoa of Arkansas LLC, Gladiolus Surgery Center L.L.C., Glenwood Surgical Center L.P., Glenwood-SC Inc., Global One Ventures LLC, Golden Gate Endoscopy Center LLC, Golden Outlook Inc., Golden Rule Financial Corporation, Golden Rule Insurance Company, Golden Triangle Surgicenter L.P., Grandview Surgery Center LTD., Greater New Haven ASC LLC, Greensboro Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Greenville Surgery Center LLC, Greenway Surgical Suites LLC, Grossmont Surgery Center L.P., Grove Place Surgery Center L.L.C., H&W Indemnity SPC Ltd., H.I. Investments Holding Company LLC, HCP ACO California LLC, HCentive Technology India Private Limited, HFHS-SCA Holdings LLC, HMG Holding Corporation, HMG Holdings LLC, HMP of Baltimore  USH P.C., Harken Health Insurance Company, Harrison Endo Surgical Center LLC, Hawthorn Place Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., Hays JV Partners LLC, Hays Surgery Center LLC, Health Care-ONE Insurance Agency Inc., Health Inventures Employment Solutions LLC, Health Inventures LLC, Health Plan of Nevada Inc., HealthCare Partners ASC-LB LLC, HealthCare Partners Affiliates Medical Group, HealthCare Partners Management Services California LLC, HealthCare Partners RE LLC, HealthEast Surgery Center-Maplewood LLC, HealthFirst IPA Inc., HealthMarkets Group Inc., HealthMarkets Inc., HealthMarkets Insurance Agency Inc., HealthMarkets LLC, HealthMarkets Services Inc., HealthSCOPE Holdings Inc., HealthScope Benefits Inc., Healthcare Solutions Inc., Healthplex America LLC, Healthplex Dental Services Inc., Healthplex I.P.A. Inc., Healthplex Inc., Healthplex Insurance Company, Healthplex of CT Inc., Healthplex of DC Inc., Healthplex of MD Inc., Healthplex of ME Inc., Healthplex of NC Inc., Healthplex of NJ Inc., Healthplex of TX Inc., Heartland Heart and Vascular LLC, Help Seguros de Vida S.A., Help Service S.A., Help SpA, Hemonefro  Hemodialise e Nefrologia Ltda, Highlands Ranch Healthcare LLC, Home Medical S.A., Honodav SpA, Hospice Inspiris Holdings Inc., Hospitais Associados de Pernambuco Ltda., Hospital Alvorada Taguatinga Ltda., Hospital Ana Costa S.A., Hospital Santa Helena S.A., Hospital de Clinicas de Jacarepagua Ltda., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of Broome County PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Binghamton P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Buffalo P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Newburgh P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Nyack P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Patchogue P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alabama  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alabama  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alaska  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alaska  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Goodyear Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Nogales Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Phoenix II Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Phoenix Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Sierra Vista Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Tucson II Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Tucson Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arkansas  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arkansas  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Buncombe County PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Apple Valley PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Bakersfield PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Camarillo PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Crescent City PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Fairfield PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Fremont PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Grass Valley PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Jackson PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Oceanside PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Oxnard PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Salinas PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - San Bernardino II PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - San Bernardino PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - San Leandro PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Sonoma PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Stockton II PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Stockton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Thousand Oaks PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Vacaville PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado - Brighton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado - Denver PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut - Manchester LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut - Rockville LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut - Wallingford LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of DC PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of DC  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of DC  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Delaware  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Delaware  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Ft. Lauderdale LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Jacksonville II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Jacksonville LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Palm Coast LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Fredericksburg LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - Atlanta PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - East Point PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - Lavonia PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - Savannah PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Hawaii - Kealakekua Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Hawaii  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Hawaii  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Idaho - Nampa PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Idaho  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Idaho  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Downers Grove LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Elmhurst LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Rockford LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Winfield LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana - Clinton LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana - Mishawaka LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana - Terre Haute LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa - Cedar Rapids PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa - Mason City PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas - Topeka LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas - Wichita II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas - Wichita LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Alexandria Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Bossier City Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Lake Charles Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Shreveport Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine - Bangor PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine - Lewiston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Cheverly PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Cumberland PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Frederick PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Laurel PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Rockville PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Brockton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Dorchester PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Framingham PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Holyoke PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Natick PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Norwood PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Springfield PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Stoughton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Taunton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Worcester PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Alpena PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Dowagiac PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Escanaba PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Grand Blanc PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Grayling PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Kalamazoo PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Plainwell PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Port Huron PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Saginaw PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Tawas City PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Minnesota  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Minnesota  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Mississippi LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Mississippi  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Mississippi  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri - Bridgeton Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri - Richmond Heights Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Billings PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Butte PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Miles City PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Missoula PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Multiple Practice Sites LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nebraska  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nebraska  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Henderson Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Henderson II Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Las Vegas Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Las Vegas II Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada  TCG Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada  TCS Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Hampshire  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Hampshire  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey - Hackensack PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey - Paterson PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey - TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - Clovis LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - Rio Rancho LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New York PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Burlington PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Clyde PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Elizabeth City PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Jacksonville PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - New Bern PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Rocky Mount PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Dakota  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Dakota  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Akron Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Batavia Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Canton Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Cincinnati II Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Cincinnati III Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Cincinnati Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Circleville Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Columbus II Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Columbus Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Dover Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - East Liverpool Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Fairfield Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Martins Ferry Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Westerville Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Youngstown Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio  TCG Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio  TCS Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oklahoma - Oklahoma City LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oklahoma  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oklahoma  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oregon - Portland PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oregon  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oregon  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Pennsylvania P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Pennsylvania  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Pennsylvania  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Rhode Island  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Rhode Island  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Richland County Ltd., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of San Luis Obispo County Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina - Aiken LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina - Rock Hill LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Dakota  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Dakota  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  Columbia PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  Franklin PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Amarillo PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Atlanta PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Austin II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Austin PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Bryan PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Burnet PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Corpus Christi II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Corpus Christi PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Cypress PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Dallas PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - El Paso II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - El Paso III PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - El Paso PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Fort Worth II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Fort Worth PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Fredericksburg PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Houston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Humble PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Kerrville PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Kyle PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Livingston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Lubbock PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Lufkin PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Mount Pleasant PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Plainview PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Rockwall PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Round Rock PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio III PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio IV PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio V PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio VI PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio VII PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Marcos PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Texarkana PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Tyler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Utah  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Utah  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Vermont  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Vermont  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Alexandria LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Front Royal II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Front Royal LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Mechanicsville LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Midlothian LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Richmond II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Richmond LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Winchester LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Arlington PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Auburn PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Bellingham PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Bremerton PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Burien PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Coupeville PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Enumclaw PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Federal Way PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Gig Harbor PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Lakewood PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Mount Vernon PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Puyallup PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Tacoma II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Tacoma III PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Tacoma PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Vancouver PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington County LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  Martinsburg PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  South Charleston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  Wheeling PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wisconsin Ltd., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wyoming - Casper LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wyoming  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wyoming  TCS LLC, Hospitalists Management Group LLC, Humedica, Humedica Inc., Hygeia Corporation, Hygeia Corporation Ontario, IEC Holdings LLC, IHD Holdings LLC, INOV8 Surgical at Memorial City LLC, INSPIRIS of Texas Physician Group, Illinois Independent Care Network LLC, Imagen Technologies Inc., Impel Consulting Experts L.L.C., Impel Management Services L.L.C., InTouch Pharmacy LLC, Indiana Care Organization LLC, Indiana Endoscopy Centers LLC, Inland Surgery Center L.P., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo 3001 S.A., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo 3600 Ltda., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo S.A., Inmobiliaria Clinica Santa Maria S.A., Inmobiliaria Vinamed Ltda., Inmobiliaria e Inversiones Alameda S.A., Inpatient Services P.C., Inpatient Specialists of California P.C., Inspiris, Inspiris Inc., Instituto Radium de Cammpinas Ltda, Inter-Hospital Physicians Association Inc., International Healthcare Services Inc., Inversiones Clinicas Santa Maria SpA, Ironman Holdco Inc., Ironman Intermediate Holdco LLC, Isapre Banmedica S.A., JPM Healthcare LLC, Johnston Surgicare L.P., Joliet Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Jordan Ridge Family Medicine LLC, Joyable Inc., Kansal Inc. A Professional Corporation, Knox Diagnostic Imaging Center LLC, Kokomo Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, LDI Holding Company LLC, LDI Management Services LLC, LGH-A/Golf ASTC L.L.C., LHC Group, La Esperanza del Peru S.A., Laboratorio ROE S.A., Laboratorios Medicos Amed Quilpue S.A., Landmark Group Holdings LLC, Landmark Health Holdings LLC, Landmark Health LLC, Landmark Health NY IPA LLC, Landmark Health NY PO LLC, Landmark Health Technologies Private Limited, Landmark Health of California LLC, Landmark Health of Massachusetts LLC, Landmark Health of North Carolina LLC, Landmark Health of Oregon LLC, Landmark Health of Pennsylvania LLC, Landmark Health of Washington LLC, Landmark India LLC, Landmark Intermediate Holdings LLC, Landmark MSO LLC, Landmark Medical of Idaho PC, Landmark Medical of Massachusetts PLLC, Landmark Medical of Tennessee PC, Landmark Primary Care LLC, Laser Acquisition Holdings III LLC, Leehar Distributors LLC, Lemhi Ventures Fund I LP, Lemhi Ventures Fund II LP, Level2 Medical Services P.C. Alaska, Lexington Surgery Center Ltd., Liberty Anesthesia Services LLC, LifePrint Health Inc., LifeWell. Ltd. Co., Lifeprint Accountable Care Organization LLC, Limestone Medical Center LLC, Litomedica S.A., Logan Surgical Suites LLC, Lotten-Eyes Oftalmologia Clinica e Cirurgica Ltda., Louisville S.C. Ltd., Louisville-SC Properties Inc., Loyola Ambulatory Surgery Center at Oakbrook Inc., Loyola Ambulatory Surgery Center at Oakbrook L.P., Lusiadas - Parcerias Cascais S.A., Lusiadas A.C.E., Lusiadas Algarve S.A., Lusiadas S.A., Lusiadas SGPS S.A., Lutheran Campus ASC LLC, MAMSI Life and Health Insurance Company, MCNA Health Care Holdings LLC, MCNA Insurance Company, MCNA Systems Corp., MD Ops Inc., MD-Individual Practice Association Inc., ME AHS UC LLC, MGH/SCA LLC, MHC Real Estate Holdings LLC, MIAMI SURGERY CENTER LLC, MSLA Management LLC, Main Line Spine Surgery Center LLC, Managed Care of North America Inc., Managed Physical Network Inc., Mansfield Endoscopy Center LLC, March Holdings Inc., March Vision Care IPA Inc., March Vision Care Inc., March Vision Care of Texas Inc., Marin Health Ventures LLC, Marin Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Marin Surgery Holdings Inc., Marlin Holding Company LLC, Maryland Ambulatory Centers LLC, Maryland-SCA Centers LLC, Massachusetts Assurance Company Ltd. PIC, Massachusetts Avenue Surgery Center LLC, McKenzie Surgery Center L.P., MedExpress Primary Care West Virginia Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care Alabama LLC, MedExpress Urgent Care Inc. - Ohio, MedExpress Urgent Care Maine Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care New Hampshire Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care of Boynton Beach LLC, MedSynergies, MedSynergies LLC, Medical Clinic of North Texas PLLC, Medical Hilfe S.A., Medical Support Los Angeles Inc., Medical Surgical Centers of America Inc., Medical Transportation Services LLC, Melbourne Surgery Center LLC, Memorial City Holdings LLC, Memorial City Partners LLC, Memorial Houston Surgery Center LLC, MemorialCare Surgical Center at Orange Coast LLC, MemorialCare Surgical Center at Saddleback LLC, Mesquite Liberty LLC, Metro I Stone Management Ltd., Mid Atlantic Medical Services, Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of Tennessee, Midlands Orthopaedics Surgery Center LLC, Midwest Center for Day Surgery LLC, Mile High SurgiCenter LLC, Mississippi Medical Plaza L.C., Mobile Medical Services of New Jersey PC, Mobile-SC LTD., Modality Accountable Care Organisation Limited, Moen M.D. P.C., Mohawk Surgery Center LLC, Monarch Management Services Inc., Montgomery Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Monument Health LLC, Moore Orthopaedic Clinic Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Morris County Surgical Center LLC, Mt. Pleasant Surgery Center L.P., Multiangio Ltda., Murrells Inlet ASC LLC, Muskogee Surgical Investors LLC, Mustang Razorback Holdings Inc., My Wellness Solutions LLC, NAMM Holdings Inc., NPN IPA Washington PLLC, NSC Channel Islands LLC, NSC Greensboro LLC, NSC Greensboro West LLC, NSC Lancaster LLC, NSC Seattle Inc., NSC Upland LLC, Naperville Surgical Centre LLC, National Foundation Life Insurance Company, National Pacific Dental Inc., National Surgery Centers LLC, Navigator Health Inc., Nebraska Spine Hospital LLC, Neighborhood Health Partnership Inc., Netwerkes LLC, Nevada Pacific Dental, New Orleans Regional Physician Hospital Organization L.L.C., New West Physicians Inc., New York Proton Management LLC, Newton Holdings LLC, Niagara Hospitalist P.C., Nomad Buyer Inc., North American Medical Management California Inc., North Coast Surgery Center Ltd. a California Limited Partnership, North Dallas Surgical Center LLC, North Kitsap Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, North Puget Sound Oncology Equipment Leasing Company LLC, Northern Nevada Health Network Inc., Northern Rockies Surgery Center L.P., Northern Rockies Surgicenter Inc., Northern Utah Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Hills JV Partners LLC, Northwest Medical Group Alliance LLC, Northwest Spine and Laser Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Surgicare LLC, Northwest Surgicare Ltd. an Illinois Limited Partnership, OC Cardiology Practice Partners LLC, OCC MSO LLC, OSB  Tecnologia e Servicos de Suporte Lda., Omesa SpA, OmniClaim LLC, Oncocare S.A.C., One World Surgery, Ophthalmology Surgery Center of Dallas LLC, Optimum Choice Inc., Optum Bank Inc., Optum Biometrics Inc., Optum Care Inc., Optum Care Networks Inc., Optum Care Services Company, Optum Care of New York Management Inc., Optum Clinics Holdings Inc., Optum Clinics Intermediate Holdings Inc., Optum Compounding Services LLC, Optum Digital Health Holdings LLC, Optum Direct To Consumer Inc., Optum Financial Inc., Optum Frontier Therapies Holdings LLC, Optum Frontier Therapies II LLC, Optum Frontier Therapies LLC, Optum Genomics Inc., Optum Global Solutions Colombia S.A.S., Optum Global Solutions India Private Limited, Optum Global Solutions International B.V., Optum Global Solutions Philippines Inc., Optum Government Solutions Inc., Optum Growth Partners Holdings Inc., Optum Growth Partners LLC, Optum Health & Technology Holdings US Inc., Optum Health & Technology Hong Kong Limited, Optum Health & Technology India Private Limited, Optum Health & Technology Servicos do Brasil Ltda., Optum Health & Technology Singapore Pte. Ltd., Optum Health & Technology US LLC, Optum Health Plan of California, Optum Health Services Canada Ltd., Optum Health Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Optum Health Solutions UK Limited, Optum Health and Technology FZ-LLC, Optum Healthcare of Illinois Inc., Optum Hospice Pharmacy Services LLC, Optum Inc., Optum Infusion Services 100 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 101 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 103 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 200 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 201 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 202 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 203 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 204 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 205 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 206 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 207 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 208 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 209 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 301 LP, Optum Infusion Services 302 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 305 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 308 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 401 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 402 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 403 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 404 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 500 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 501 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 550 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 551 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 553 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 554 Inc., Optum Insurance of Ohio Inc., Optum Labs Inc., Optum Labs LLC, Optum Life Sciences Canada Inc., Optum Management Consulting Shanghai Co. Ltd., Optum Networks of New Jersey Inc., Optum Operations Ireland Unlimited Company, Optum Oregon MSO LLC, Optum Palliative and Hospice Care of Pennsylvania Inc., Optum Palliative and Hospice Care of Texas Inc., Optum Perks LLC, Optum Pharma Services Holdings Inc., Optum Pharmacy 601 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 700 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 701 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 702 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 704 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 705 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 706 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 707 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 800 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 803 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 805 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 806 Inc., Optum Public Sector Solutions Inc., Optum Rocket LLC, Optum SCA CS JV Holdings LLC, Optum Senior Services LLC, Optum Services Inc., Optum Services Ireland Limited, Optum Services Puerto Rico LLC, Optum Solutions UK Holdings Limited, Optum Technology LLC, Optum UK Solutions Group Limited, Optum Venture Global Partners II LP, Optum Venture Global Partners LP, Optum Venture Partners II LP, Optum Venture Partners III LP, Optum Venture Partners LP, Optum Washington Network LLC, Optum Women's and Children's Health LLC, Optum of New York Inc., Optum360 LLC, Optum360 Services Inc., Optum360 Solutions LLC, OptumCare ACO New Mexico LLC, OptumCare ACO West LLC, OptumCare Clinical Trials LLC, OptumCare Colorado ASC LLC, OptumCare Colorado LLC, OptumCare Colorado Springs LLC, OptumCare Endoscopy Center New Mexico LLC, OptumCare Florida CI LLC, OptumCare Florida LLC, OptumCare Holdings Colorado LLC, OptumCare Holdings LLC, OptumCare Management LLC, OptumCare New Mexico LLC, OptumCare New York IPA Inc., OptumCare Portland LLC, OptumCare South Florida LLC, OptumCare Specialty Practices LLC, OptumHealth Care Solutions LLC, OptumHealth Holdings LLC, OptumHealth International B.V., OptumInsight Holdings LLC, OptumInsight Inc., OptumInsight India Private Limited, OptumInsight Life Sciences Inc., OptumRx Administrative Services LLC, OptumRx Discount Card Services LLC, OptumRx Group Holdings Inc., OptumRx Health Solutions LLC, OptumRx Holdings I LLC, OptumRx Holdings LLC, OptumRx Home Delivery of Ohio LLC, OptumRx IPA III Inc., OptumRx Inc., OptumRx NY IPA Inc., OptumRx PBM of Illinois Inc., OptumRx PBM of Maryland LLC, OptumRx PBM of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumRx PBM of Wisconsin LLC, OptumRx PD of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumRx Pharmacy Inc., OptumRx Pharmacy of Nevada Inc., OptumRx of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumServe Technology Services Inc., Oregon Healthcare Resources LLC, Oregon Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Orlando Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., OrthoNet Holdings Inc., OrthoNet LLC, OrthoNet New York IPA Inc., OrthoNet West Inc., OrthoNet of the South Inc., OrthoWest MSO LLC, Orthology Inc., Orthopedic Center of Palm Beach County LLC, Orthopedic Surgery Center of Palm Beach County LLC, Orthopro Management LLC, Ovations Inc., Owensboro Ambulatory Surgical Facility Ltd., Oxford Benefit Management Inc., Oxford Health Insurance Inc., Oxford Health Plans CT Inc., Oxford Health Plans LLC, Oxford Health Plans NJ Inc., Oxford Health Plans NY Inc., P2P Link LLC, PCCCV Inc., PHC Subsidiary Holdings LLC, PHYSICIANS DAY SURGERY CENTER LLC, PMI Acquisition LLC, PMSI Holdings LLC, PMSI Settlement Solutions LLC, POMCO Inc., POMCO Network Inc., PPH Holdings LLC, PPH Management Company L.L.C., PPH-Columbia Inc., PPH-Gardendale Inc., PS Center LLC, PacifiCare Health Systems, PacifiCare Life Assurance Company, PacifiCare Life and Health Insurance Company, PacifiCare of Arizona Inc., PacifiCare of Colorado Inc., Pacific Cardiovascular Associates Medical Group Inc., Pacific Casualty Company Inc., Pacifico S.A. Entidad Prestadora de Salud, Panama City Surgery Center LLC, Park Hill Surgery Center LLC, Parkway Surgery Center LLC, Patient Care Associates L.L.C., PatientsLikeMe, Patrimonio Autonomo Nueva Clinica, Payment Resolution Services LLC, Peninsula Eye Surgery Center LLC, Penzo Enterprises LLC, Peoples Health, Peoples Health Inc., Perham Physical Therapy LTD, Perimeter Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., Pharmaceutical Technologies LLC, Physician Alliance of the Rockies LLC, Physicians Health Choice of Texas LLC, Physicians Health Plan of Maryland Inc., Physicians' Surgery Center of Downey LLC, Pinnacle III LLC, Plano de Saude Ana Costa Ltda., Plus One Health Management Puerto Rico Inc., Plus One Holdings Inc., Pocono Ambulatory Surgery Center Limited, Polar II Fundo de Investimento em Participacoes Multiestrategia, Polo Holdco LLC, Pomerado Outpatient Surgical Center Inc., Pomerado Outpatient Surgical Center L.P., Post-Acute Care Center for Research LLC, Practice Partners in Healthcare LLC, Preferred Care Network Inc., Preferred Care Network of Florida Inc., Preferred Care Partners Holding Corp., Preferred Care Partners Inc., Preferred Care Partners Medical Group Inc., PreferredOne, PreferredOne Administrative Services Inc., PreferredOne Insurance Company, Premier Choice ACO Inc., Premier Surgery Center of Louisville L.P., Premiere Medical Resources LLC, Presidio Surgery Center LLC, Prime Health Inc., PrimeCare Medical Network Inc., PrimeCare of Citrus Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Corona Inc., PrimeCare of Hemet Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Inland Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Moreno Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Redlands Inc., PrimeCare of Riverside Inc., PrimeCare of San Bernardino Inc., PrimeCare of Sun City Inc., PrimeCare of Temecula Inc., PrimeDoc St. Francis P.C., PrimeDoc of Richmond P.C., ProHEALTH Care Associates L.L.P., ProHEALTH Care Associates of New Jersey LLP, ProHEALTH Medical Management LLC, ProHealth Physicians ACO LLC, ProHealth Physicians Inc., ProHealth Proton Center Management LLC, ProHealth/CareMount Dental Management LLC, Procura Management Inc., Professional Coverage Services PLLC, Progressive Enterprises Holdings Inc., Progressive Medical LLC, Promotora Country S.A., Pronounced Health Solutions Inc., Prosemedic S.A.C., Prospero Benefits Management LLC, Prospero Care Management LLC, Prospero Management Services LLC, Providence & SCA Development LLC, Providence & SCA Off-Campus Holdings LLC, Providence & SCA On-Campus Holdings LLC, Providence & SCA Outreach Markets Holdings LLC, Pulse Platform LLC, QoL Acquisition Holdings Corp., R Cubed Inc., RABessler M.D. P.C., ROC Surgery LLC, ROCS Holdings LLC, RX Ricardo Campos Ltda., Rally Health Inc., ReMedics LLC, Real Appeal Inc., Redding Surgery Center LLC, Redlands Ambulatory Surgery Center, Redlands-SCA Surgery Centers Inc., Reliant MSO LLC, Reliant Medical Group Inc., Reliant Medical Group The Endoscopy Center LLC, Research Surgical Center LLC, Resonancia Magnetica de Colombia Ltda., Resonancia Magnetica del Country S.A., RightCare Solutions Inc., River Valley ASC LLC, Riverside Corporate Wellness LLC, Riverside Electronic Healthcare Resources Inc., Riverside Medical Management LLC, Riverside Surgical Center of Meadowlands LLC, Riverside Surgical Center of Newark LLC, Robert A. Bessler MD PLLC, Rockville Eye Surgery Center LLC, Rocky Mountain Health Maintenance Organization Incorporated, Rush Oak Brook Surgery Center LLC, SC Affiliates LLC, SCA AHN JV Holdings LLC, SCA Alaska Surgery Center inc., SCA Athens LLC, SCA Austin Holdings LLC, SCA Austin Medical Center Holdings LLC, SCA Aventura Holdings LLC, SCA BOSC Holdings LLC, SCA Bloomfield Holdings LLC, SCA Cedar Park Holdings LLC, SCA Clifton LLC, SCA Colorado Springs Holdings LLC, SCA Community Service Foundation, SCA Cottonwood Holdings LLC, SCA Danbury Surgical Center LLC, SCA Denver Holdings LLC, SCA Development LLC, SCA Duluth Holdings LLC, SCA Duncanville Holdings LLC, SCA Duncanville MSO LLC, SCA ESSC Holdings LLC, SCA Englewood Holdings LLC, SCA Global One Holdings LLC, SCA Greenway Holdings LLC, SCA Grove Creek Holdings LLC, SCA Guilford Holdings LLC, SCA Hays Holdings LLC, SCA Health Value Enterprise LLC, SCA Heartland Holdings LLC, SCA High Point Holdings LLC, SCA HoldCo Inc., SCA Holding Company Inc., SCA Holdings Inc., SCA IEC Holdings LLC, SCA Indiana Holdings LLC, SCA Lutheran Holdings LLC, SCA Maple Grove Holdings LLC, SCA Mohawk Holdings LLC, SCA Murrells Inlet LLC, SCA Northern Utah Holdings LLC, SCA Northwest Holdings LLC, SCA Outside New Jersey LLC, SCA Pacific Holdings Inc., SCA Pacific Surgery Holdings LLC, SCA Palisades Holdings LLC, SCA Pennsylvania Holdings LLC, SCA Pinnacle Holdings LLC, SCA Premier Surgery Center of Louisville LLC, SCA Providence Holdings LLC, SCA ROCS Holdings LLC, SCA Rockledge JV LLC, SCA Rush Oak Brook Holdings LLC, SCA SSSC Holdings LLC, SCA Sage Medical LLC, SCA Sage Medical MSO LLC, SCA San Diego Holdings LLC, SCA Skyway Holdings LLC, SCA South Ogden Holdings LLC, SCA Southwestern PA LLC, SCA Specialists of Florida LLC, SCA Specialty Holdings of Connecticut LLC, SCA Stonegate Holdings LLC, SCA Surgery Holdings LLC, SCA Surgicare of Laguna Hills LLC, SCA Teammate Support Network, SCA West Health Holdings LLC, SCA Westgreen Holdings LLC, SCA Woodbury Holdings LLC, SCA eCode Solutions Private Limited, SCA of Clarksville Inc., SCA-Albuquerque Surgery Properties Inc., SCA-Alliance LLC, SCA-Anne Arundel LLC, SCA-Applecare Partners LLC, SCA-Bethesda LLC, SCA-Blue Ridge LLC, SCA-Bonita Springs LLC, SCA-Brandon LLC, SCA-Castle Rock LLC, SCA-Central Florida LLC, SCA-Charleston LLC, SCA-Chatham LLC, SCA-Chevy Chase LLC, SCA-Citrus Inc., SCA-Colonial Partners LLC, SCA-Colorado Springs LLC, SCA-Connecticut Partners LLC, SCA-DRY CREEK LLC, SCA-Davenport LLC, SCA-Denver LLC, SCA-Denver Physicians Holdings LLC, SCA-Derry LLC, SCA-Doral LLC, SCA-Downey LLC, SCA-Dublin LLC, SCA-Encinitas Inc., SCA-Eugene Inc., SCA-First Coast LLC, SCA-Florence LLC, SCA-Fort Collins Inc., SCA-Fort Walton Inc., SCA-Franklin LLC, SCA-Frederick LLC, SCA-Freeway Holdings LLC, SCA-Ft. Myers LLC, SCA-GRANTS PASS LLC, SCA-Gainesville LLC, SCA-Gladiolus LLC, SCA-Glenwood Holdings LLC, SCA-Grove Place LLC, SCA-Hagerstown LLC, SCA-Hamden LLC, SCA-Hilton Head LLC, SCA-Honolulu LLC, SCA-Houston Executive LLC, SCA-IT Holdings LLC, SCA-Illinois LLC, SCA-JPM Holdings LLC, SCA-Kissing Camels Holdings LLC, SCA-MC VBP Inc., SCA-Main Street LLC, SCA-Marina del Rey LLC, SCA-Mecklenburg Development Corp., SCA-Memorial City LLC, SCA-Memorial LLC, SCA-Merritt LLC, SCA-Midlands LLC, SCA-Midway Management LLC, SCA-Mobile LLC, SCA-Mokena LLC, SCA-Morris Avenue LLC, SCA-Morris County LLC, SCA-Mt. Pleasant LLC, SCA-Naperville LLC, SCA-Naples LLC, SCA-New Jersey LLC, SCA-Newport Beach LLC, SCA-Northeast Georgia Health LLC, SCA-PORTLAND LLC, SCA-Palm Beach LLC, SCA-Palm Beach MSO Holdings LLC, SCA-Panama City Holdings LLC, SCA-Paoli LLC, SCA-Phoenix LLC, SCA-Pocono LLC, SCA-Practice Partners Holdings LLC, SCA-River Valley LLC, SCA-Riverside LLC, SCA-Riverside Partners LLC, SCA-Rockville LLC, SCA-Sacred Heart Holdings LLC, SCA-San Diego Inc., SCA-San Luis Obispo LLC, SCA-Sand Lake LLC, SCA-Santa Rosa Inc., SCA-Somerset LLC, SCA-South Jersey LLC, SCA-Sparta LLC, SCA-Spartanburg Holdings LLC, SCA-St. Louis Holdings LLC, SCA-St. Louis LLC, SCA-St. Lucie LLC, SCA-SurgiCare LLC, SCA-Swiftpath LLC, SCA-VERTA LLC, SCA-VLR Holdings Company LLC, SCA-Wake Forest LLC, SCA-Western Connecticut LLC, SCA-Westover Hills LLC, SCA-Winchester LLC, SCA-Winter Park Inc., SCA-Woodlands Holdings LLC, SCAI Holdings LLC, SCLHS-SCA Holdings LLC, SCP Specialty Infusion LLC, SHC Atlanta LLC, SHC Austin Inc., SHC Hawthorn Inc., SHC Melbourne Inc., SJ East Campus ASC LLC, SRPS LLC, SSSC Holdings LLC, SVHS-SCA Florida JV LLC, Sacred Heart ASC LLC, Saden S.A., Sage Medical Prof. LLC, Salem JV Holdings LLC, Salem Surgery Center LLC, Salveo Specialty Pharmacy Inc., San Diego Endoscopy Center, San Diego Sports and Minimally Invasive Surgery Center LLC, San Francisco Endoscopy Center LLC, San Luis Obispo Surgery Center a California Limited Partnership, Sand Lake SurgiCenter LLC, Santa Barbara Endoscopy Center LLC, Santa Cruz Endoscopy Center LLC, Santa Helena Assistencia Medica S.A., Santa Rosa Surgery Center L.P., Santos Administracao e Participacoes S.A., Sanvello Health Holdings LLC, Sanvello Health Inc., Sanvello Health Limited, Scanner Centromed S.A., Seashore Surgical Institute L.L.C., Seisa Servicos Integrados de Saude Ltda., Senate Street Surgery Center LLC, Senior Benefits L.L.C., Serquinox Holdings LLC, Servicios Integrados de Salud Ltda., Servicios Medicos Amed Quilpue S.A., Servicios Medicos Bio Bio Ltda., Servicios Medicos Ciudad del Mar Ltda., Servicios Medicos Santa Maria Ltda., Servicios Medicos Vespucio Ltda., Servicios de Entrenamiento en Competencias Clinicas Ltda., Serviclinica Inmobiliaria S.A., Serviclinica S.A. Ex Los Leones La Calera, Servisalud Inmobiliaria S.A., Servisalud S.A. Ex Los Carrera Quilpue, Shark Holdings P.C., Sierra Dental Plan Inc., Sierra Health Services Inc, Sierra Health Services Inc., Sierra Health and Life Insurance Company Inc., Sierra Health-Care Options Inc., Sierra Home Medical Products Inc., Sierra Nevada Administrators Inc., Sistema de Administracion Hospitalaria S.A.C., Small Business Insurance Advisors Inc., Sobam  Centro Medico Hospitalar S.A., Sociedad de Inversiones Santa Maria SpA, Solstice Administration Services Inc., Solstice Administrators Inc., Solstice Administrators of Alabama Inc., Solstice Administrators of Arizona Inc., Solstice Administrators of Missouri Inc., Solstice Administrators of North Carolina Inc., Solstice Administrators of Texas Inc., Solstice Benefit Services Inc., Solstice Benefits Inc., Solstice Health Insurance Company, Solstice Healthplans Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Arizona Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Colorado Inc., Solstice Healthplans of New Jersey Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Ohio Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Tennessee Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Texas Inc., Solstice of Illinois Inc., Solstice of Minnesota Inc., Solstice of New York Inc., Solutran LLC, Somerset Outpatient Surgery L.L.C., Sound Inpatient Physicians Inc., Sound Inpatient Physicians Medical Group Inc., Sound Inpatient Physicians of Ohio LLC, Sound Inpatient Physicians of Texas I Inc., Sound Inpatient Physicians  Michigan PLLC, Sound Intensivists of Nevada RBessler M.D. PLLC, Sound Kenwood Hospitalists of Cincinnati Inc., Sound Kenwood Hospitalists of Cincinnati LLC, Sound Physicians Advisory Services Inc., Sound Physicians Alaska Hospitalist Group LLC, Sound Physicians Anesthesiology of Texas PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Arizona Inc., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Georgia P.C., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Illinois LLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Kansas LLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Kentucky PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Louisiana Inc., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Michigan PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Nevada Bessler PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of South Carolina LLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Southern California P.C., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Texas PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Washington PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of West Virginia PLLC, Sound Physicians Holdings LLC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of Arizona Inc., Sound Physicians Intensivists of Georgia PC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of South Carolina LLC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of Virginia LLC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of Washington PLLC, Sound Physicians Palliative Care of Maryland P.C., Sound Physicians Telemedicine Inc., Sound Physicians of Florida IV LLC, Sound Physicians of Georgia III P.C., Sound Physicians of Hawaii Inc., Sound Physicians of Idaho PLLC, Sound Physicians of Illinois LLC, Sound Physicians of Indiana LLC, Sound Physicians of Iowa PLLC, Sound Physicians of Kankakee Illinois LLC, Sound Physicians of Massachusetts II P.C., Sound Physicians of Massachusetts Inc., Sound Physicians of New Jersey LLC, Sound Physicians of New York PLLC, Sound Physicians of North Carolina PLLC, Sound Physicians of South Carolina LLC, Sound Physicians of Wyoming LLC, South Arlington Surgical Providers LLC, South County Surgical Center LLC, South Sound Inpatient Physicians PLLC, Southern California Medical Practice Concepts LLC, Southland Hospitalists P.C., Southwest Medical Associates Inc., Southwest Michigan Health Network Inc., Southwest Surgery Center LLC, Southwest Surgical Center LLC, Space Coast Surgical Center Ltd., Spartanburg Surgery Center LLC, Specialists in Urology Surgery Center LLC, Specialized Pharmaceuticals Inc., Specialty Benefits LLC, Specialty Billing Solutions LLC, Specialty Surgical Center LLC, Spectera Inc., Spectera of New York IPA Inc., Sports and Spinal Physical Therapy Inc., St. Cloud Outpatient Surgery Ltd. a Minnesota Limited Partnership, St. Cloud Surgical Center LLC, St. Louis Cardiovascular Institute LLC, St. Louis Specialty Surgical Center LLC, Stonegate JV Partners LLC, Stonegate Surgery Center L.P., Summer Street ASC LLC, SunSurgery LLC, Surgery Center Holding LLC, Surgery Center at Cherry Creek LLC, Surgery Center at Cottonwood LLC, Surgery Center at Grove Creek LLC, Surgery Center at Kissing Camels LLC, Surgery Center at South Ogden LLC, Surgery Center at St. Vincent LLC, Surgery Center of Boca Raton Inc., Surgery Center of Colorado Springs LLC, Surgery Center of Des Moines LLC, Surgery Center of Easton LLC, Surgery Center of Ellicott City Inc., Surgery Center of Fairfield County LLC, Surgery Center of Fort Collins LLC, Surgery Center of Lexington LLC, Surgery Center of Louisville LLC, Surgery Center of Maui LLC, Surgery Center of Mt. Scott LLC, Surgery Center of Muskogee LLC, Surgery Center of Rockville L.L.C., Surgery Center of Southern Pines LLC, Surgery Center of The Woodlands LLC, Surgery Centers of Des Moines Ltd. an Iowa Limited Partnership, Surgery Centers-West Holdings LLC, Surgical Care Affiliates, Surgical Care Affiliates LLC, Surgical Care Affiliates Political Action Committee, Surgical Care Partners of Melbourne LLC, Surgical Caregivers of Fort Worth LLC, Surgical Center of Greensboro LLC, Surgical Center of San Diego LLC, Surgical Center of South Jersey Limited Partnership, Surgical Center of Tuscaloosa Holdings LLC, Surgical Eye Experts LLC, Surgical Health LLC, Surgical Health of Orlando LLC, Surgical Hospital Holdings of Oklahoma LLC, Surgical Management Solutions LLC, Surgicare LLC, Surgicare of Central Jersey LLC, Surgicare of Jackson LLC, Surgicare of Jackson Ltd. a Mississippi Limited Partnership, Surgicare of Joliet Inc., Surgicare of La Veta Inc., Surgicare of La Veta Ltd. a California Limited Partnership, Surgicare of Minneapolis LLC, Surgicare of Minneapolis Ltd. a Minnesota Limited Partnership, Surgicare of Mobile LLC, Surgicare of Mobile Ltd., Surgicare of Oceanside Inc., Surgicare of Owensboro LLC, Surgicare of Salem LLC, Surgicenters of Southern California Inc., Symphonix Health Holdings LLC, T.M. Carr M.D. P.C., THE SURGICAL CENTER OF THE TREASURE COAST L.L.C., THR-SCA Holdings LLC, TeamMD Holdings Inc., TeamMD Iowa Inc., TeamMD Physicians of Texas Inc., TeamUP Insurance Services Inc., Tecnologia de Informacion en Salud S.A., Texas Health Craig Ranch Surgery Center LLC, Texas Health Flower Mound Orthopedic Surgery Center LLC, Texas Health Orthopedic Surgery Center Alliance LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Alliance LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Bedford LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Chisholm Trail LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Irving LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Las Colinas LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Preston Plaza LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Rockwall LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Southwest Fort Worth LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Waxahachie LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Willow Park LLC, The Advisory Board Company, The Alaska Hospitalist Group LLC, The Chesapeake Life Insurance Company, The Eye Surgery Center of the Carolinas L.P., The Intensivist Group of Langhorne LLC, The Lewin Group Inc., The Outpatient Surgery Center of Hilton Head LLC, The Polyclinic MSO LLC, The Surgery Center of Easton L.P., The Surgical Center of Connecticut LLC, Thomas Johnson Surgery Center LLC, Three Rivers Holdings Inc., Three Rivers Surgical Care L.P., Tmesys LLC, Topimagem Diagnostico por Imagem Ltda., Touchpoint Health Plan, Trails Edge Surgery Center LLC, Trauma Surgery Affiliates LLC, Travel Express Incorporated, Treasure Valley Emerald Properties LLC, Treasure Valley Hospital Limited Partnership, Tri-City Medical Center ASC Operators LLC, Tri-County Surgery Center LLC, Trinity Cardiovascular Care PLLC, Tufts Health Freedom Insurance Company, Tufts Health Freedom Plans Inc., Tuscaloosa Surgical Center L.P., U.S. Behavioral Health Plan California, UCSD Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, UCSD Center for Surgery of Encinitas L.P., UCSD Surgical Center of San Diego LLC, UCSD-SCA Holdings I LLC, UCSD-SCA Holdings II LLC, UHC Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, UHC International Services Inc., UHC of California, UHCG Holdings Ireland Limited, UHCG Services Ireland Limited, UHCG  FZE, UHG Brasil Participacoes S.A., UHG Holdings UK IV Limited, UHG Holdings UK V Limited, UHG Holdings UK VI Limited, UHIC Holdings Inc., UMR Inc., UPHT-SCA Holdings LLC, USHEALTH Academy Inc., USHEALTH Administrators LLC, USHEALTH Advisors LLC, USHEALTH Career Agency Inc., USHEALTH Funding Inc., USHEALTH Group Inc., USMD ASC IV1 LLC, USMD ASC IV2 LLC, USMD Administrative Services L.L.C., USMD Affiliated Services, USMD Holdings Inc., USMD Hospital at Arlington L.P., USMD Hospital at Fort Worth L.P., USMD Inc., USMD PPM LLC, Unidad Medica Diagnostico S.A., Unimerica Insurance Company, Unimerica Life Insurance Company of New York, Unison Health Plan of Delaware Inc., United Behavioral Health, United Behavioral Health of New York I.P.A. Inc., United Group Reinsurance Inc., United Health Foundation, United HealthCare Services Inc., United Medical Park ASC LLC, United Resource Networks IPA of New York Inc., United in Advancing Health Equity Foundation, UnitedHealth Advisors LLC, UnitedHealth Group Employee Assistance Fund, UnitedHealth Group Incorporated, UnitedHealth Group International Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, UnitedHealth International Inc., UnitedHealth Military & Veterans Services LLC, UnitedHealthcare Benefits Plan of California, UnitedHealthcare Benefits of Texas Inc., UnitedHealthcare Children's Foundation Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of California Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Georgia Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Ohio Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Texas L.L.C., UnitedHealthcare Consulting & Assistance Service Beijing Co. Ltd., UnitedHealthcare Europe S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare Global Medical UK Limited, UnitedHealthcare Inc., UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of America, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of Illinois, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of New York, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of the River Valley, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Designated Activity Company, UnitedHealthcare Integrated Services Inc., UnitedHealthcare International Asia LLC, UnitedHealthcare International I B.V., UnitedHealthcare International II S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International III B.V., UnitedHealthcare International III S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International IV S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International VII S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International VIII S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International X S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare Life Insurance Company, UnitedHealthcare Parekh Insurance TPA Private Limited, UnitedHealthcare Plan of the River Valley Inc., UnitedHealthcare Service LLC, UnitedHealthcare Specialty Benefits LLC, UnitedHealthcare of Alabama Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Arizona Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Arkansas Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Colorado Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Florida Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Georgia Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Illinois Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Kentucky Ltd., UnitedHealthcare of Louisiana Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Mississippi Inc., UnitedHealthcare of New England Inc., UnitedHealthcare of New Mexico Inc., UnitedHealthcare of New York Inc., UnitedHealthcare of North Carolina Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Ohio Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Oklahoma Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Oregon Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., UnitedHealthcare of South Carolina Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Texas Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Utah Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Washington Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Wisconsin Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Mid-Atlantic Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Midlands Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Midwest Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Rockies Inc., Unity Health Network LLC, Upland Holdings LLC, Upland Outpatient Surgical Center L.P., Urgent Care Holdings Inc., Urgent Care MSO LLC, Urology Associates of North Texas P.L.L.C., VERTA MANAGEMENT SERVICES LLC, VPay Benefits Corporation, VPay Inc., VPay Intermediate Holdings LLC, Valley Hospital L.L.C., Valley Physicians Network Inc., Vascular Labs of the Rockies ASC LLC, Vascular Labs of the Rockies PLLC, Via Vitae MSO LLC, Vida Integra S.p.A., Vida Tres S.A., Virtua-SCA Holdings II LLC, Virtua-SCA Holdings LLC, Vivify Health Canada Inc., Vivify Health Inc., WESTMED Practice Partners LLC, Wake Forest Ambulatory Ventures LLC, Walnut Creek Endoscopy Center LLC, Walnut Hill Surgery Center LLC, Wauwatosa Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Wauwatosa Surgery Center LLC, Wayland Square Surgicare Acquisition L.P., Wayland Square Surgicare GP Inc., Waypoint Minnesota PC, WellMed Medical Management Inc., WellMed Medical Management of Florida Inc., West Coast Endoscopy Holdings LLC, WestHealth JV Holdings LLC, WestHealth Surgery Center LLC, Western Connecticut Orthopedic Surgical Center LLC, Westgreen Surgical Center LLC, Wilson Creek Surgical Center LLC, Winchester Endoscopy LLC, Winter Park LLC, Winter Park Surgery Center L.P., Woodbury Surgery Center LLC, XAS Infusion Suites Inc., XLHealth Corporation, XLHealth Corporation India Private Limited, divvyDOSE, divvyMED LLC, eCode Solutions LLC, gethealthinsurance.com Agency Inc., hCentive Inc., inPharmative Inc., naviHealth Care at Home LLC, naviHealth Coordinated Care LLC, naviHealth Coordinated Care SC P.C., naviHealth Holdings LLC, naviHealth Inc., naviHealth Michigan HBPC P.C., and naviHealth SM Holdings Inc..

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CNO Financial Group, Inc., through its subsidiaries, develops, markets, and administers health insurance, annuity, individual life insurance, and other insurance products for senior and middle-income markets in the United States. It offers Medicare supplement, supplemental health, and long-term care insurance policies; life insurance; and annuities, as well as Medicare advantage plans to individuals through phone, online, mail, and face-to-face. The company also focuses on worksite and group sales for businesses, associations, and other membership groups by interacting with customers at their place of employment. In addition, it provides fixed index annuities; fixed interest annuities, including fixed rate single and flexible premium deferred annuities; single premium immediate annuities; supplemental health products, such as specified disease, accident, and hospital indemnity products; and long-term care plans primarily to retirees and older self-employed individuals in the middle-income market. Further, the company offers universal life and other interest-sensitive life products; and traditional life policies that include whole life, graded benefit life, term life, and single premium whole life products, as well as graded benefit life insurance products. CNO Financial Group, Inc. markets its products under the Bankers Life, Washington National, and Colonial Penn brand names. The company sells its products through agents, independent producers, and direct marketing. CNO Financial Group, Inc. was founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Carmel, Indiana.
Newell Brands Inc. designs, manufactures, sources, and distributes consumer and commercial products worldwide. It operates in five segments: Commercial Solutions, Home Appliances, Home Solutions, Learning and Development, and Outdoor and Recreation. The Commercial Solutions segment provides commercial cleaning and maintenance solutions; closet and garage organization products; hygiene systems and material handling solutions; and home and security, and smoke and carbon monoxide alarms products under the BRK, First Alert, Mapa, Quickie, Rubbermaid, Rubbermaid Commercial Products, and Spontex brands. The Home Appliances segment offers kitchen appliances under the Crock-Pot, Mr. Coffee, Oster, and Sunbeam brands. The Home Solutions segment provides food and home storage; fresh preserving; vacuum sealing; and gourmet cookware, bakeware, cutlery, and home fragrance products under the Ball, Calphalon, Chesapeake Bay Candle, FoodSaver, Rubbermaid, Sistema, WoodWick, and Yankee Candle brands. The Learning and Development segment offers writing instruments, including markers and highlighters, pens, and pencils; art products; activity-based adhesive and cutting products; labeling solutions; and baby gear and infant care products under the Aprica, Baby Jogger, Graco, NUK, Tigex, Dymo, Elmer's, EXPO, Graco, Mr. Sketch, NUK, Paper Mate, Parker, Prismacolor, Sharpie, Waterman, and X-Acto brands. The Outdoor and Recreation segment provides outdoor and outdoor-related products under the Campingaz, Coleman, Contigo, ExOfficio, and Marmot brands. It serves warehouse clubs, department and drug/grocery stores, mass merchants, home centers, office superstores and supply stores, contract stationers, and distributors, e-commerce, sporting goods, specialty, and travel retailers. The company was formerly known as Newell Rubbermaid Inc. and changed its name to Newell Brands Inc. in April 2016. Newell Brands Inc. was founded in 1903 and is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Three charities will benefit from The Times Christmas Appeal launched last week.

The first is the Ellen MacArthur Trust for children suffering from cancer.

The trust has been helping young people come to terms with the impact of long-term cancer treatment so they can live a full life.

This charity, founded in 2003 by solo long-distance sailor Dame Ellen, takes young people aged 8-24 who are recovering from cancer on residential sailing trips to rebuild their self-confidence.

The Alzheimers Society works to help people with dementia carry on with their lives and remain connected to families and friends through its support programmes, its network of volunteers and with research to improve care and seek a cure.

The third charity is supporting Rohingya refugees who have fled to Bangladesh to escape ethnic violence in Burma.

Children on the Edge, set up by the late Dame Anita Roddick in 2004, has been helping the most vulnerable Rohingya in Bangladesh for the past seven years, providing education and protection in refugee camps.

Working with established local partners, this small charity has been providing humanitarian support since an upsurge in violence in recent months has led hundreds of thousands more refugees, many of them children, to make the perilous journey from Burma. It is providing clean water, latrines and food for these desperate people, says The Times.
The Progressive Corporation, an insurance holding company, provides personal and commercial auto, personal residential and commercial property, general liability, and other specialty property-casualty insurance products and related services in the United States. It operates in three segments: Personal Lines, Commercial Lines, and Property. The Personal Lines segment writes insurance for personal autos and recreational vehicles (RV). This segment's products include personal auto insurance; and special lines products, including insurance for motorcycles, ATVs, RVs, watercrafts, snowmobiles, and related products. The Commercial Lines segment provides auto-related primary liability and physical damage insurance, and business-related general liability and property insurance for autos, vans, pick-up trucks, and dump trucks used by small businesses; tractors, trailers, and straight trucks primarily used by regional general freight and expeditor-type businesses, and long-haul operators; dump trucks, log trucks, and garbage trucks used by dirt, sand and gravel, logging, and coal-type businesses; and tow trucks and wreckers used in towing services and gas/service station businesses; as well as non-fleet and airport taxis, and black-car services. The Property segment writes residential property insurance for homeowners, other property owners, and renters, as well as offers personal umbrella insurance, and primary and excess flood insurance. The company also offers policy issuance and claims adjusting services; and acts as an agent to homeowner general liability, workers' compensation insurance, and other products. In addition, it provides reinsurance services. The company sells its products through independent insurance agencies, as well as directly on Internet through mobile devices, and over the phone. The Progressive Corporation was founded in 1937 and is headquartered in Mayfield, Ohio.
Oshkosh Corporation designs, manufactures, and markets specialty vehicles and vehicle bodies worldwide. The company's Access Equipment segment provides aerial work platforms and telehandlers for use in various construction, industrial, institutional, and general maintenance applications. This segment also offers rental fleet loans and leases, and floor plan and retail financing through third-party funding arrangements; towing and recovery equipment; carriers and wreckers; equipment installation services; and chassis and service parts sales. Its Defense segment provides heavy, medium, and light tactical wheeled vehicles and related services for the department of defense. The company's Fire & Emergency segment offers custom and commercial firefighting vehicles and equipment; and commercial fire apparatus and emergency vehicles, such as pumpers, aerial platform, ladder and tiller trucks, tankers, rescue vehicles, wild land rough terrain response vehicles, mobile command and control centers, bomb squad vehicles, hazardous materials control vehicles, and other emergency response vehicles. This segment also provides aircraft rescue and firefighting, snow removal, and broadcast vehicles, as well as command trucks, and military simulator shelters and trailers. Its Commercial segment offers front-and rear-discharge concrete mixers for the concrete ready-mix industry; refuse collection vehicles and related components to commercial and municipal waste haulers; and field service vehicles and truck-mounted cranes for the construction, equipment dealer, building supply, utility, tire service, railroad, and mining industries. Oshkosh Corporation provides its products through direct sales representatives, dealers, and distributors. The company was formerly known as Oshkosh Truck Corporation and changed its name to Oshkosh Corporation in February 2008. Oshkosh Corporation was founded in 1917 and is headquartered in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Phoenix New Media Limited provides content on an integrated Internet platform in the People's Republic of China. The company operates through two segments, Net Advertising Services and Paid Services. It offers content and services through PC channel, mobile channel, and telecom operators, as well as transmits content to TV viewers, primarily through Phoenix TV. The company, through its website, ifeng.com, provides various interest-based content verticals, such as news, finance, video, automobiles, technology, entertainment, military, real estate, fashion, and sport; and offers interactive services, including comments posting and user surveys. Its mobile channel consists of ifeng News, a news application that provides newsfeeds and other contents in the form of text, image, live streaming, and video; ifeng Video, a video application, which offers video news, live broadcasting, Phoenix TV programs content, etc.; i.ifeng.com mobile Internet website; and digital reading applications. In addition, Phoenix New Media Limited offers mobile newspaper, mobile video, and mobile game services, as well as wireless value-added services. The company was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in Beijing, the People's Republic of China. Phoenix New Media Limited is a subsidiary of Phoenix Satellite Television (B.V.I.) Holding Limited.
Brazilian footwear seeks market penetration in China

Brazil/China

Abicalcados, the Brazilian Association of Footwear Manufacturers, has presented the results of an exploratory commercial mission to China, held at the end of September.

The results were presented during a meeting at Abicalcados headquarters in Novo Hamburgo (RS), Brazil, on November 30. Leticia Sperb Masselli, Commercial Promotion Coordinator at Abicalcados, said the missions visits to the cities of Shanghai, Hangzhou and Chongqing allowed for a mapping of the local retail, however, the countrys e-commerce model attracted the most attention. With over 700 million active buyers, "China consumes 25% of the world's footwear production, and much of this consumption takes place on digital platforms, especially through the so-called cross border e-commerce," said Masselli, adding that China is to surpass the U.S. and make the world's most digitised economy in 2018.

Given Chinas important geographical and demographic dimension, Masselli said that a Brazilian footwear entrance to the market requires high investments, such as in brand image and commercial promotion. Abicalcados aims to develop an insertion strategy that unites both the online and offline retail models in 2018.

With a population of 1.4 billion people, China is the largest consumer footwear market in the world, totalling close to 4 billion pairs in 2016. Since 2010, Abicalcados says it has helped Brazils shoe exports to increase by over 400%, from US$1.4 million to US$6 million in 2016, through its Brazilian Footwear programme. As reported by ILM, its latest trade mission took place in France; Brazils third biggest footwear buyer.
Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE: RHP) is a leading lodging and hospitality real estate investment trust that specializes in upscale convention center resorts and country music entertainment experiences. The Company's core holdings* include a network of five of the top 10 largest non-gaming convention center hotels in the United States based on total indoor meeting space. These convention center resorts operate under the Gaylord Hotels brand and are managed by Marriott International. The Company also owns two adjacent ancillary hotels and a small number of attractions managed by Marriott International for a combined total of 10,110 rooms and more than 2.7 million square feet of total indoor and outdoor meeting space in top convention and leisure destinations across the country. The Company's Entertainment segment includes a growing collection of iconic and emerging country music brands, including the Grand Ole Opry; Ryman Auditorium, WSM 650 AM; Ole Red and Circle, a country lifestyle media network the Company owns in a joint-venture with Gray Television. The Company operates its Entertainment segment as part of a taxable REIT subsidiary. * The Company is the sole owner of Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center; Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center; Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center; and Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. It is the majority owner and managing member of the joint venture that owns the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center.
KeyCorp operates as the holding company for KeyBank National Association that provides various retail and commercial banking products and services in the United States. It operates in two segments, Consumer Bank and Commercial Bank. The company offers various deposits, investment products and services; and personal finance and financial wellness, student loan refinancing, mortgage and home equity, lending, credit card, treasury, business advisory, wealth management, asset management, investment, cash management, portfolio management, and trust and related services to individuals and small and medium-sized businesses. It also provides a suite of banking and capital market products, such as syndicated finance, debt and equity capital market products, commercial payments, equipment finance, commercial mortgage banking, derivatives, foreign exchange, financial advisory, and public finance, as well as commercial mortgage loans comprising consumer, energy, healthcare, industrial, public sector, real estate, and technology loans for middle market clients. In addition, the company offers community development financing, securities underwriting, brokerage, and investment banking services. As of December 31, 2021, it operated through a network of approximately 999 branches and 1,317 ATMs in 15 states, as well as additional offices, online and mobile banking capabilities, and a telephone banking call center. KeyCorp was founded in 1849 and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.
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.
SunTrust Banks, Inc. operates as the holding company for SunTrust Bank that provides various financial services for consumers, businesses, corporations, institutions, and not-for-profit entities in the United States. It operates in two segments, Consumer and Wholesale. The Consumer segment provides deposits and payments; home equity and personal credit lines; auto, student, and other lending products; credit cards; discount/online and full-service brokerage products; professional investment advisory products and services; and trust services, as well as family office solutions. This segment also offers residential mortgage products in the secondary market. The Wholesale segment provides capital markets solutions, including advisory, capital raising, and financial risk management; asset-based financing solutions, such as securitizations, asset-based lending, equipment financing, and structured real estate arrangements; cash management services and auto dealer financing solutions; investment banking solutions; and credit and deposit, fee-based product offering, multi-family agency lending, advisory, commercial mortgage brokerage, and tailored financing and equity investment solutions. This segment also offers treasury and payment solutions, such as operating various electronic and paper payment types, which comprise card, wire transfer, automated clearing house, check, and cash; and provides services clients to manage their accounts online. The company offers its products and services through a network of traditional and in-store branches, automated teller machines, Internet, mobile, and telephone banking channels. As of December 31, 2018, it operated 1,218 full-service banking offices located in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. SunTrust Banks, Inc. was founded in 1891 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
Valvoline Inc. manufactures, markets, and supplies, engine and automotive maintenance products and services. It operates through two segments, Retail Services and Global Products. The company offers lubricants for passenger car, light duty, and heavy duty; antifreeze/coolants for original equipment manufacturers; functional and maintenance chemicals, such as brake fluids and power steering fluids, as well as specialty coatings for automotive and industrial applications; and oil and air filters for light-duty vehicles. It also provides batteries, windshield wiper blades, light bulbs, serpentine belts, and drain plugs. In addition, the company operates Valvoline instant oil change service centers. As of September 30, 2021, it operated and franchised approximately 1,594 quick-lube locations under the Valvoline Instant Oil Change brand in the United States and the Great Canadian Oil Change brand in Canada. The company also serves car dealers, general repair shops, and third-party quick lube locations, as well as through distributors and licensees. It has operations in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and Latin America. The company was founded in 1866 and is headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky.
Vesuvius plc provides engineering services and solutions principally to steel and foundry industries worldwide. It operates in two divisions, Steel and Foundry. The company offers foundry consumables and equipment, including binders, coatings, feeding systems, filtration and gating systems, melt shop refractories, metallurgical and pouring control systems, die dressings and coatings, melt treatment products, crucibles, and ceramics for the iron, steel, and nonferrous foundries. It also provides nonferrous metals, such as primary and secondary aluminum, copper, and other metals and alloys; cement and lime solutions, iron ore pelletizing and calcination products, and grains and powders; and process heaters, FCC units, hydrogen reformers, boilers, coke calciners, and thermal oxidizers, as well as sulphur, ethylene, and ammonia plants. In addition, the company offers solutions for power generation and incineration; glass products comprising artistic, display, float, hollow, and optical glass; glass tempering, and reheat and forming products; and solutions for solar multicrystal silicon ingots, thin film and cell processing, and feedstock. Further, it provides solutions for blast furnace stack repair; taphole clay, iron and slang runner, sampler and temperature, tilting runner, and torpedo ladle solutions; iron ladle solutions; lining, taphole system, bath agitation and tuyere system, electric arc furnace and BOF maintenance, and metallurgical sensor solutions; and ladle, ladle to tundish, and tundish solutions, as well as tundish to mold solutions for conventional slab, thin and slim slab, beam blank, flow control valve bloom or billet, and calibrated nozzle billet casters. Additionally, the company offers ingot casting solutions; and reheat furnace, steel hot forming, galvanized steel, and electrical and stainless-steel solutions. Vesuvius plc was founded in 1916 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.
The following companies are subsidiares of PPG Industries: AIPCF V Texstars Blocker Inc., AkzoNobel, Alpha Coating Technologies LLC, Alpha Coatings Inc., Broad Range Development Limited, CG Holdings Manufacturing Co., Centro de Investigacion en Polimeros S.A. de C.V., Chemfil Canada Limited, Chorlton Trade Paints Limited, Comercial Mexicana de Pinturas S.A. de C.V., Comex, Comex Industrial Coatings S.A. de C.V., Consorcio Comex S.A. de C.V., Cristacol S.A., Cuming Microwave Corporation, Deutek SA, Dexmet Corporation, Dexmet Holding Corporation, Distribuidora Kroma S.A. de C.V., EPIC Insurance Co. Ltd., Eberle Design Inc., Empresa Aga S.A. de C.V., Ennis Canadian Holding Company, Ennis Paint Canada ULC, Ennis Paint Netherlands Holdings LLC, Ennis Paint U.K. Holding Company Limited, Ennis Traffic Safety Solutions Pty Ltd, Ennis-Flint, Ennis-Flint Inc., Foshan Bairun Chemicals Co. Ltd., Fpu Industrial S.A. de C.V., Grupo Comex S.A. de C.V., Hemmelrath Automotive Coatings (Jilin) Co. Ltd., Hemmelrath International Trade (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Hodij Coatings B.V., Homax Products, Industria Chimica Reggiana I.C.R. SPA, Johnstones Paints Limited, Kalon Investment Company Limited, Kalon South Africa Proprietary Limited, Karl Woerwag Lack-und Farbenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG, Masterwork Paint, MetoKote Corporation, MetoKote Mexico Holdings Inc., MetoKote UK Limited, MetoKote de Mexico S. de RL de CV, Milamar Coatings LLC, OOO Tikkurila, PPG A P Resinas S.A. de C.V., PPG AC - France SA, PPG ALESCO Automotive Finishes Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., PPG Aerospace Materials (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PPG Architectural Coatings (Puerto Rico) Inc., PPG Architectural Coatings Canada Inc./PPG Revetements Architecturaux Canada Inc., PPG Architectural Coatings Ireland Limited, PPG Architectural Coatings Italy S.r.l, PPG Architectural Coatings UK Limited, PPG Architectural Finishes Inc., PPG Asian Paints Private Ltd., PPG Business Services S.A. de C.V., PPG COATINGS SINGAPORE PTE. LTD., PPG Canada Inc., PPG Cetelon Lackfabrik GmbH, PPG Cieszyn S.A., PPG Coatings (Hong Kong) Co. Limited, PPG Coatings (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., PPG Coatings (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Thailand) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Wuhu) Company Ltd., PPG Coatings (Zhangjiagang) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings B.V., PPG Coatings Belgium BV, PPG Coatings Danmark A/S, PPG Coatings Deutschland GmbH, PPG Coatings Europe B.V., PPG Coatings Nederland BV, PPG Coatings S.A., PPG Coatings South Africa (Pty) Ltd., PPG DYRUP S.A., PPG Deco Czech a.s., PPG Deco Polska sp. z.o.o., PPG Deco Slovakia s.r.o., PPG Deutschland Business Support GmbH, PPG Deutschland Sales & Services GmbH, PPG Distribution S.A.S., PPG Europe B.V., PPG Finance B.V., PPG Finland Oy, PPG France Business Support S.A.S., PPG France Manufacturing S.A.S., PPG Guadeloupe SAS, PPG Hemmelrath Lackfabrik GmbH, PPG Holdco SAS, PPG Holdings (U.K.) Limited, PPG Holdings Argentina USA LLC, PPG Holdings Latin America USA LLC, PPG Iberica S.A., PPG Iberica Sales & Services S.L., PPG Industrial Coatings B.V., PPG Industrial do Brasil - Tintas E. Vernizes - Ltda., PPG Industries (Korea) Ltd., PPG Industries (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PPG Industries (UK) Ltd, PPG Industries Argentina S.R.L., PPG Industries Australia PTY Limited A.C.N. 055 500 939, PPG Industries Colombia Ltda., PPG Industries Delfzijl B.V., PPG Industries Europe Sarl, PPG Industries France S.A.S., PPG Industries International Inc., PPG Industries Italia S.r.l., PPG Industries Kimya a Sanayi VE Ticaret AS, PPG Industries LLC, PPG Industries Lackfabrik GmbH, PPG Industries Lipetsk LLC, PPG Industries Middle East FZE, PPG Industries Netherlands B.V., PPG Industries New Zealand Limited, PPG Industries Ohio Inc., PPG Industries Poland Sp. Z.o.o., PPG Industries Securities LLC, PPG Industries de Mexico S.A. de C.V., PPG Investment (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PPG Italia Business Support S.r.l., PPG Italia Sales & Services S.r.l., PPG Japan Ltd., PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes Canada LP, PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes U.K. LLP, PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes U.S. LLC, PPG Luxembourg Finance S.aR.L., PPG Luxembourg Holdings S.aR.L., PPG Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Packaging Coatings (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PPG Paints Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Performance Coatings (Hong Kong) Limited, PPG Powder Coatings (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Refinish Distribution Limited, PPG Romania S.A., PPG Reunion SAS, PPG SSC Co. Ltd., PPG Switzerland GmbH, PPG Trilak Korlatolt FelelosseguTarasasag (PPG Trilak Kft.), PPG Vietnam Co. Ltd., PRC-DeSoto Australia Pty Ltd., PRC-DeSoto International Inc., PT. PPG Coatings Indonesia, Painter's Supply, Paintzen, Peintures de Paris SAS, Plasticos Envolventes S.A. de C.V., Polymeric Systems Inc., ProCoatings B.V., ProCoatings BV, Protec Pty Ltd, Reno A&E LLC, Revocoat France SAS, Revocoat Holding SAS, Revocoat Iberica SLU, Revocoat S.A.S, Road Infrastructure Investment Holdings Inc., SEM Products Inc., Sealants Europe SAS, Sierracin Corporation, Sierracin/Sylmar Corporation, Sigma Marine & Protective Coatings Holding B.V., SigmaKalon (BC) UK Limited, SigmaKalon Group, Sikar (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Spraylat International Ltd, Texstars LLC, The Crown Group Co., The Crown Group Inc, The Homax Group, Tikkurila Group, Tikkurila Oyj, Tikkurila Sverige AB, Traffic Safety Intermediate LLC, Traffic Safety Parent LLC, VF Specialty Products LLC, Vanex Inc., Vernisol S.p.A., VersaFlex Acquisition Corp., VersaFlex Inc., VersaFlex Intermediate Holdings LLC, Versaflex, Viasa S.A. de C.V., Whitford, Whitford B.V., Whitford Corporation, Whitford Jiangmen Ltd., Whitford Ltd. (HK), Whitford Ltd. (UK), Whitford Pte. Ltd., Whitford S.r.l., Whitford Worldwide Company LLC, and Worwag Coatings.

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Aetna Inc. operates as a health care benefits company in the United States. It operates through three segments: Health Care, Group Insurance, and Large Case Pensions. The Health Care segment offers medical, pharmacy benefit management service, dental, behavioral health, and vision plans on an insured and employer-funded basis. It also provides point-of-service, preferred provider organization, health maintenance organization, and indemnity benefit plans, as well as health savings accounts and consumer-directed health plans. In addition, this segment offers Medicare and Medicaid products and services, as well as other medical products, such as medical management and data analytics services, medical stop loss insurance, workers' compensation administrative services, and products that provide access to its provider networks in select geographies. The Group Insurance segment offers life insurance products, including group term life insurance, voluntary spouse and dependent term life insurance, group universal life insurance, and accidental death and dismemberment insurance; disability insurance products; and long-term care insurance products, which provide the benefits to cover the cost of care in private home settings, adult day care, assisted living, or nursing facilities. The Large Case Pensions segment manages various retirement products comprising pension and annuity products primarily for tax-qualified pension plans. The company provides its products and services to employer groups, individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans, health care providers, governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups, and expatriates. Aetna Inc. was founded in 1853 and is based in Hartford, Connecticut.
Yelp Inc. operates a platform that connects consumers with local businesses in the United States and internationally. The company's platform covers various local business categories, including restaurants, shopping, beauty and fitness, health, and other categories, as well as home, local, auto, professional, pets, events, real estate, and financial services. It provides free and paid advertising products to businesses, which include cost-per-click search advertising and multi-location Ad products, as well as enables businesses to deliver targeted search advertising to local audiences; and business listing page products. The company also offers other services comprising Yelp Reservations that provide online reservations for restaurants, nightlife, and other venues directly from their Yelp business pages; Yelp Waitlist, a subscription-based waitlist management solution that allows consumers to check wait times and join waitlists remotely, as well as businesses to manage seating and server rotation; Yelp Knowledge program that offers business owners local analytics and insights through access to its historical data and other proprietary content; and Yelp Fusion, which offers free and paid access to content and data for consumer-facing enterprise use through publicly available APIs. In addition, it provides content licensing, as well as allows third-party data providers to update and manage business listing information on behalf of businesses. Further, the company offers its products directly through its sales force; indirectly through partners; and online through its website, as well as non-advertising partner arrangements. It has strategic partnership with Grubhub for providing consumers with a service to place food orders for pickup and delivery. Yelp Inc. was incorporated in 2004 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
There are similar installations in Jamaica and China, but the one coming up in Anantapur will be the largest of its kind.

Anantapur: The worlds first ever solar-wind hybrid park is being planned in Anantapur district. The World Bank is funding the project, which is estimated to cost Rs 1,000 crore and will spread across 1,000 acres of land. The 160-MW park will also have battery back-up that will ensure that take the lag when the wind speed reduces at night, when there is no sun. This is also being promoted as a pilot project, where grid failures can be totally avoided.

There are similar installations in Jamaica and China, but the one coming up in Anantapur will be the largest of its kind. The Solar Energy Corporation of India, AP Solar Energy Corporation, AP Nedcap and APTransco will be jointly working on the park. Nedcap has identified about 2000 acres of government owned barren land in Muthavakuntla in Kanaganipalli mandal in Anantapur district.

Energy officials, led by Mr Ajay Jain, had to work out a new design concept following the sudden failure of the state grid a few months ago due to power fluctuations. Sources said about 2,000 MW of power was being generated through wind and solar sectors in the state.

A few months ago, this fell to 70 MW within a day, affecting the grid. "With the sudden grid failure, the state suffered a power cut and there was no immediate possibility of starting the thermal units that had shut down", a senior official recalled.

The grid failure forced the power sector to design an innovative concept to avoid similar incidents using solar and wind power. The solar-wind park is a part of this plan. The park will generate 120 MW of solar power and 40 MW of wind energy. It is associated with a 40-MVAH battery backup, Nedcap district official K. Kodandarama Rao said.
With external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj arriving in Tehran on Saturday in connection with the inauguration of the first phase of Irans Chabahar port, which is being built with Indian cooperation, what we are inaugurating, in effect, is a new geopolitical vista that goes beyond finding an alternative route for trade with landlocked Afghanistan, bypassing the land route through Pakistan, about which Islamabad has been obstreperous and negative.

But this will materialise only if India has the staying power beyond the 10-year lease period for two terminals at Chabahar it has got from Tehran. This will mean the adroit managing of regional ties with Iran, China and Russia, which have high stakes and an influential voice in Central Asia and West Asia, besides Afghanistan.

The first shipment of Indian wheat to Afghanistan via Chabahar went in October. By the end of 2018, if current projections remain valid, the port should be fully operational for Indian goods.

Once India completes building the 640-km railway line from Chabahar to Zahedan and link up with the Iranian railway there, Indian goods can branch out to the east to go to Afghanistan, and to parts of Central Asia (where they will face stiff competition from the Chinese), and carry on northward towards St. Petersburg in Russia (the North-South Corridor), along the way coupling with rail networks of over a dozen countries.

That is the true meaning of Chabahar. The sea-land route through the port is not a mere alternative to the surface route through Pakist-ans Khyber Pass; it is an example of far superior infrastructural topography. Unlike the Pakistani route through which only basic supplies could go through if it worked, the Iran route permits a wide array of goods. In addition, it slashes the 45-day time taken through the North-South Corridor by almost half, permitting even perishables to be traded through this alternative pathway.

Chabahar port couldnt be built for the past 12 years due to the US-led Western and UN sanctions against Iran. The agreement of the Western powers with Tehran in 2015 facilitated Indias engagement with Iran on Chabahar. US President Donald Trump has threatened to overturn that agreement. Even so, the indications so far are that Indias business dealings with Iran, and particularly insofar as trade with Afghanistan is concerned, will not be torpedoed by Washington.

Much diplomacy potentially rides on Indias shoulders in view of the Chabahar commitments. In addition to being flexible with China, Iran and Russia on the basis of mutual interests, it could be worth exploring if New Delhi can be a credible interface between Washington and Tehran.
Cooke is currently a key member of the senior management team, having joined in April 2016 as interim head of group clinical governance before becoming director of clinical governance & quality in a non-board capacity in July 2016.

In her new role as clinical quality director, she will be responsible for overseeing the implementation and establishment of systems and processes across the group, ensuring it meets all the required standards for quality and safety. She will also lead on all aspects of work relating to clinical regulation and clinical governance.

Cooke has had a forty year career within the NHS, initially in both adult and children's nursing, practising for ten years in A&E but ultimately as head of nursing for a large integrated service.

Chief executive officer Wendy Lawrence said: "We are delighted to welcome Gloria to the board. Her extensive and considerable experience in senior healthcare positions, both in the NHS and private practice, have proven to be a valuable asset to the company as we continue to grow. Gloria's experience of working at very senior levels within the NHS, along with the knowledge she has already gained by working as part of the Totally team to date, means she provides invaluable skills to the board as we add additional services to our already extensive portfolio."
European Union legislation to clamp down on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is expected withing coming weeks over concerns they are being used to launder money and evade tax.

HM Treasury intends to introduce regulation to force bitcon users and traders to reveal their identities and report any suspicious activity, according to reports on Monday.

Currently, bitcoin can be purchased anonymously by anyone who has set up an online 'wallet' to hold your digital currency and then set up a broker account using your real-world cash, prepaid card or even use a bitcoin ATM.

The Treasury now intends to begin regulating the virtual currency, the Guardian reported, to bring it in line with rules on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financial legislation.

Under a European Union plan, online platforms where bitcoins are traded will be required from 2018 to carry out due diligence on customers and report any suspicious activity.

Stephen Barclay, economic secretary to the Treasury, said in October that the government was "currently negotiating amendments to the fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive that will bring virtual currency exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers into anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing regulation, which will result in these firms' activities being overseen by national competent authorities for these areas."

He said the government "supports the intention" behind these amendments and expect negotiations to conclude at EU level in late 2017/early 2018.

Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of more than $11,800 overnight before making a steep drop took to around $10,600, according to Coindesk's index, as the currency's market capitalisation neared $200bn.

On Friday US exchanges CME Group Inc and CBOE Global Markets were given regulatory permission to list bitcoin futures contracts by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Spurred on by the unveiling by CME of its plans in to launch futures on the digital currency before the year was out sent bitcoin barreling from the mid $6,000 quickly above $10,000 in November and up to $11,000 last week. This volatility goes both ways, with drops of $1,000 in a matter of minutes not unknown.

In other digital currency news, Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend announced plans to launch an oil-backed cryptocurrency called the petro with the aim of bypassing US-led financial sanctions on the country.
Bitcoin hit a new record high of nearly $11,800 on Sunday breaking its last record of over $11,000 on Wednesday 29 November.

Although the currency broke its record on Sunday, it dropped 1000 within a few hours. Exchanges had trouble keeping up with the trading volume that this rise entailed.

It is still unclear why the rise in the currency was given. It is believed that it might be due to the fact that bitcoin has spiked interest not only in investors working in the financial sector but also in ordinary investors. Charles Hayter, founder of Cryptocompare said The price rises are triggered by continued media interest driven by the expectation of futures trading on CME,.

Sundays record high came as Nicolas Maduro, President of Venezuela announced the launch of a new cryptocurrency, petro. Maduro stated that the currency would be backed by its natural oil reserves and it would be used to dodge US sanctions. However the opposition leaders said that the currency would have to be previously approved by the congress.

This rise in Bitcoin has sparked concerns in the European Union and the UK, who suspect the currency is being used for money laundering. The European Union will clamp down on Bitcoin and other cryptocurencies with a new legislation expected within the following weeks.

Further concerns about bitcoin are appearing, high profile fund manager Michael Novogratz stated that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are going to be the biggest bubble of our lifetimes. He also claimed that Bitcoin could rise as much as $40,000 by the end of 2018.
He succeeds Jan du Plessis, who will step down as chairman and from the Rio Tinto board on the same date after almost nine years in the role. Thompson has over 20 years' experience working across five continents in the mining and metals industry. From 1995 to 2007, he held a number of senior positions at Anglo American group, including executive director of Anglo American plc, chief executive of the base metals division, chairman of the exploration division, and chairman of Tarmac.

Thompson has been chairman of 3i Group since 2015 and was chairman of Tullow Oil from 2012 to 2017. Earlier in his career, he held investment banking positions at S.G. Warburg and N M Rothschild.

Jan du Plessis said: "I am really pleased to be succeeded by Simon, especially given how closely we have worked together since he joined the board some three years ago. I wish him the very best. I am handing over the baton at a time when the business is in great shape and Rio Tinto has the strongest balance sheet in the sector."

Senior independent director Ann Godbehere said: "The Rio Tinto board would like to thank Jan for his significant contribution as chairman of Rio Tinto. He led the board during considerable transformation of the company.

"The board is delighted to have appointed Simon to chair Rio Tinto. He brings to the role a deep understanding of the mining industry, as well as a strong track record as a non-executive."

Also on Monday, chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques told investors at a seminar in Sydney that the company is targeting $1.5bn of annual additional free cash flow from 2021 to ensure it can continue to "lead the pack" in delivering superior cash returns to its shareholders.

Jacques said: "All the evidence shows that our value-over-volume strategy is working: delivering superior cash returns for our shareholders, including $8.2 billion announced in 2017. We returned to shareholders 40 cents in every dollar of cash generated by the business in the first half.

"Looking ahead, the $5 billion productivity programme will help drive value over the next five years. With our top-tier assets producing quality low-cost products in high demand, a strong growth pipeline and the best balance sheet in the industry, we have a strong platform for future growth."
MATTOON -- Its that time of the year for students to be thinking ahead for the spring 2018 semester at Lake Land College.

Registration for spring courses is in progress. The semester begins Jan. 8 and the preferred last day to register is Jan. 5.

Before students can register for spring classes, all students must meet with an adviser in order to be cleared for registration. This process differs depending on a students status and is required so that students can ensure they are taking the appropriate classes for their major or program of study.

Current Lake Land students must log in to the Laker Hub and select the Registration link, then click on Advisement Information on the left-hand side. This page will give current students the information they need for spring advisement.

Re-admit students must complete the Intent to Enroll form found by clicking on the Enroll Now button and then set up a meeting with a counselor in Counseling Services for spring advisement and clearance to register.

New students must also complete the Intent to Enroll form. Once that is processed, new students will be mailed a letter inviting them to schedule New Student Orientation, where they will meet with a counselor for spring advisement and registration.

Lake Land College assigns an academic adviser to each student based on his/her major or program of study. To ensure students get the best adviser for them, students must declare their academic program accurately. Students can check their major on the Advisement Information page in the Laker Hub. Students are encouraged to change their major if it is incorrect and they will be assigned a new adviser within three business days.

To view the courses offered during the spring semester, visit: lakelandcollege.edu/schedules/ and select the Spring 2018 Schedule link.

For more information about the advisement and registration process, call Counseling Services at 217-234-5232 or visit www.lakelandcollege.edu/counseling/.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has to European Union negotiating teams that no part of Ireland will be taken out of the single market and customs union after Brexit , Irish media reported on Monday.

According to RTE News, a draft text for an agreement said there will be no regulatory divergence on the island after the UK leaves the bloc.

Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar tweeted that, having spoken to European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and Juncker European Council President Donald Tusk about Brexit negotiations, his cabinet had met and he would make a statement about this later on Monday.

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier told MEPs on Monday that he felt a breakthrough was likely to be reached later in the day.

However, DUP leader Arlene Foster, head of the Northern Irish party on which May's fragile parliamentary minority government relies, later rained on the parade.

"We have been very clear: Northern Ireland must leave the European Union on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom and we will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separate Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the UK," she said in a statement to reporters.

May was in Brussels on Monday for key talks with EU leaders on how to proceed to the next stage of talks, with the Irish question seemingly the last main issue to be agreed before negotiations can move on to trade. Her diary included lunch with Juncker and then a meeting with Tusk later in the afternoon .

December will see a key meeting take place of top European representatives to take a decision on whether sufficient progress has been made during the exit negotiations to move on to the second phase.

The pound popped higher as news reports broke on Monday morning, topping $1.35 as traders took increasing confidence that a transition deal can be agreed.

While sterling is on the rise, it remained short of the level last week when markets reacted positively to progress on the financial settlement.

Analyst Neil Wilson at ETX Capital said "clouds of uncertainty" were parting over Britains future relationship with the EU, though the market was reacting to speculation and "scraps of information from the negotiating table".

He suggested a confirmed deal on Monday would be likely to lift sterling back above $1.36 and make an attempt on $1.37 in short order, adding $1.40 may not be out of the question, with fairly symmetric risks to the downside if no deal is done today.

PROBLEMS PRESENT THEMSELVES

As well as the cold water thrown by the DUP, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon questions how special dispensation could be agreed for Northern Ireland but not Scotland.

"If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others cant," she said on Twitter.

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, tweeted along similar lines: "Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it's possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market & customs union after Brexit. Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs."

ETX's Wilson said the main risk to May's apparent deal with Ireland would be from the DUP, but the ramifications would spread much wider.

"Regulatory alignment between north and south could amount to the effective breakup of the UK as we know it. This may open the door to renewed domestic political uncertainty and the prospect of fresh elections. While a transition may be net positive for the pound for now, its unclear at what price it comes for Mrs May and her government.
London's FTSE 100 was up 0.4% to 7,325.86 in afternoon trade on Monday as investors grew hopeful of a Brexit breakthrough and cheered the passing of the US tax reform bill.

Cruise operator Carnival, equipment rental firm Ashtead and building materials group CRH, which generate a large chunk of their revenues from the US, were higher after the passing of the US tax reform bill.

Broadcaster Sky was a high riser amid news that 21st Century Fox has restarted talks over a possible sale to Walt Disney.

RBS was up, recovering from losses at the end of last week when it announced the closure of 259 of its branches.

On the downside, precious metals miners Fresnillo and Randgold Resources lost their shine as gold and silver prices fell. Randgold fell despite an upgrade to 'sector perform' from 'underperform' by RBC Capital Markets, which said the stock's valuation looks more attractive after a pullback.

Consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser took a hit after AlphaValue downgraded its stance on the stock to 'add'.

Risers

Carnival (CCL) 4,897.00p 2.79%

Ashtead Group (AHT) 1,957.00p 2.78%

Sky (SKY) 955.50p 2.74%

Barclays (BARC) 194.30p 2.59%

Associated British Foods (ABF) 2,943.50p 2.56%

TUI AG Reg Shs (DI) (TUI) 1,387.00p 2.29%

Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 276.00p 2.18%

CRH (CRH) 2,599.00p 2.04%

Land Securities Group (LAND) 938.50p 2.01%

British Land Company (BLND) 640.00p 1.67%

Fallers

Fresnillo (FRES) 1,275.00p -2.52%

Babcock International Group (BAB) 678.00p -1.74%

Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 6,785.00p -1.45%

Next (NXT) 4,387.00p -1.02%

Mondi (MNDI) 1,730.00p -0.57%

Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 213.30p -0.56%

Reckitt Benckiser Group (RB.) 6,346.00p -0.50%

G4S (GFS) 249.90p -0.48%

British American Tobacco (BATS) 4,764.50p -0.42%

United Utilities Group (UU.) 803.50p -0.37%
CHARLESTON -- A gun found during a parole check meant a new prison sentence for a Charleston man.

Lewis A. Hays, 55, for whom court records list an address of 715 Eighth St., pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of a weapon by a felon accusing him of having the gun on Oct. 6.

Prison time was required and Hays was sentenced to the minimum of two years for the conviction that could have brought up to a seven-year term.

Records show that Hays was paroled from prison three days before the gun was found. He served the earlier sentence for a Vermilion County aggravated battery conviction, the records say.

The gun was found at Hays' residence during a parole check, according to case records. It was described as an air rifle but with a muzzle velocity sufficient for it to legally qualify as a firearm.

Coles County Circuit Judge Brien O'Brien also include payment of about $550 in fines and court fees in the sentence. The judge accepted a plea agreement that Assistant State's Attorney Rob Scales and Assistant Public Defender Jesse Danley recommended.

In other cases in court recently, O'Brien also accepted guilty pleas from:

Joshua D. Metcalf, 40, whose address on record is 2109 Marion Ave., Mattoon, to methamphetamine possession and aggravated domestic battery charges.

Metcalf was accused of having methamphetamine on March 31 and choking a woman on July 19. A charge alleging he also had methamphetamine on Sept. 12 was dsimissed and, for both convictions, he was placed on probation for 2 1/2 years.

He was ordered to undergo evaluations to determine substance abuse treatment and other counseling, including specific domestic violence treatment, and to follow the tests' recommendations.

Probation terms also included payment of about $1,900 in fines and court fees. Jail time was stayed, meaning Metcalf won't have to serve unless he violates his sentence's requirements.

O'Brien accepted a plea agreement that State's Attorney Brian Bower and Public Defender Anthony Ortega recommended.

Laci R. Ransom, 28, for whom records show an address in Metcalf in Edgar County, to a methamphetamine possession charge alleging she had the drug in Charleston on June 16.

Ransom was sentenced to 2 1/2 years of first offender probation, which allows for no record of a conviction if completed successfully. Terms included a substance abuse treatment evaluation, about $1,500 in fines and fees and stayed jail time.

Bower and Ortega recommended the plea agreement.

Records show that police found the methamphetamine while investigating a report theft at the Charleston Walmart. Ransom was in the theft suspect's vehicle while the theft took place, the records say.

Stephen E. Leonard, 62, whose address on record is in Kansas, was charged with misdemeanor theft and drug paraphernalia offense in connection with the incident.

Jerome D. Gray, 25, for whom records show a Milwaukee address, to a misdemeanor charge of possession of fraudulently obtained checks.

The checks were found in Gray's vehicle during a traffic stop in Charleston on Dec. 18, according to case records. A felony charge of possession of a stolen license plate was dismissed and Gray was fined about $2,000.

Assistant State's Attorney Tom Bucher and Danley recommended the plea agreement. Records show that Wisconsin authorities were to be notified of Gray's activities.
The impact of Google and Facebook across the media industry is being scrutinized in Australia.

The competition regulator in Australia said on Monday that it was directed by the countrys federal government to investigate if internet companies were hurting content creators, advertisers and consumers.

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As in other countries, the media industry in Australia has been hit hard by the rise of the digital platforms, while print newspapers have suffered for years from declining advertising revenue as businesses shift spending to online, much of it to giants in the industry, such as Google and Facebook.

Rod Sims, chairman of Australias Competition and Consumer Commission said that as the evolution of the media sector continues, growing concerns exist that digital platforms have and continue to affect traditional medias capacity to fund content development.

A spokesperson for Facebook said the social media giant would cooperate fully with the inquiry from the commission into the media market in Australia.

The spokesperson added that while news was just a small fraction of the content that is shared on its services, our role in todays media ecosystem is very important and we invest substantially in products that help publishers.

Australias inquiry becomes just the most recent probe into the increased role of worldwide internet companies.

Google and Facebook have been hit with much criticism in other countries due to their large influence across the media landscape with their critics question the efforts of the tech companies to police content shares on the platform of both.

U.S lawmakers questioned Facebook, Google, and Twitter executives in November over the way foreign nationals were able to use the social media platforms to disseminate misinformation during the presidential election of 2016.

In particular Facebook is up against questions across the U.S. over ads a troll farm in Russia purchased during the election. While in Britain, Facebook has been asked to give up information on any advertisements purchased by accounts on the social media platform that were Russian linked around the general election last June and the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Google has found itself in the U.S. Congress crosshairs over ads bought by Russians on the platform that were intended to spread misinformation as well, to divide America prior to the presidential election of 2016.

The probe in Australia appears as if it is focused on the effect the two tech giants have on market competition, but will examine as well the impact they have on the news industry in the country.
Even Lynk&Co didn't expect their product to be this successful. They immediately set up plans to launch after-sales operations through 150 stores across China, soon after.

Recommended Video Jeep Compass Price In India Variant-Wise - DriveSpark

Senior Vice President of Lynk&Co, Alain Visser said, "We announced the birth of Lynk&Co almost exactly one year ago. Now, just 12 months later, we start sales of our connected and shareable 01 SUV in record fashion. Whether you choose to join online or in store, we promise a unique and enjoyable experience."

Alain also added, "Online, it couldn't be more simple, we have replicated the in-store experience and simplicity of choice with our unique "explorator" carousel. Just stop on the car you like and subscribe online - it's as simple as that. As our Chinese customers demonstrated during the pre-sale,' he added We are immensely proud of the speed and scale of our launch."

The 01 SUV comes either with a 3-cylinder or 4-cylinder petrol engine, from Volvo (Electric powertrains to follow). The chassis is based on the same Compact Modular Architecture platform of the upcoming XC40.

The 01 will come in four variants and will also be available through a subscription process which includes various connectivity options, a dedicated app store for cars, a cloud platform for the driver, and a first-in-the-world share' button.

The in-car share button is a shareable digital key that allows owners to share their vehicles with other people for their personal use.

The Lynk&Co 01 is priced around Rs. 13.8 - 17.6 lakh in the Chinese market currently. The prices could be higher outside China, and we don't expect it to be on sale in India, maybe ever.

DriveSpark Thinks!

The Chinese car market, as we know it, is plagued with copycat products of reputed car manufacturers. But the Lynk&Co 01 isn't just any Chinese brand, that sells cars in high volume. It is a combination of the sophisticated technology and advanced connectivity. The Geely group has got a good profile of running Volvo, and we can expect Lync&Co to develop even better products in the future.
A three-pronged banking malware campaign has been infecting Android phones since the beginning of this year, according to security researchers.

Attackers have been stealing credentials, planting the Marcher banking Trojan on phones, and nicking credit card information. So far, they have targeted customers of BankAustria, Raiffeisen Meine Bank and Sparkasse, but the campaign could spread beyond Vienna.

The attack begins with a phishing message delivered by email to a phone, security researchers at Proofpoint explained in a Friday post. The message pretends to be from the targets bank and contains a link that often is obscured by a Web address shortener like bit.ly.

The link takes the victim to a bogus bank page where the bandits request the targets bank account or PIN information.

Once the hackers have that information, they instruct victims to log into their accounts using their email address and password. All the information entered at the fake banking site is harvested by the hackers.

Permission to Hijack

Instead of getting access to an account, banking customers get a popup message instructing them to install the banks security app. About 7 percent of targets have downloaded the security app, which is really the Marcher malware, Proofpoint estimated.

Once installed, the malware asks for extensive permissions  everything from receiving, sending, reading and writing SMS messages to opening network sockets, reading address books, changing system settings and even locking the phone.

In addition, when applications like the Google Play store are opened, the malware will ask for the users credit card information.

While banking Trojans and phishing are common fare for cybercriminals, combining the two in a focused campaign isnt, noted Patrick Wheeler, director of threat intelligence at Proofpoint.

In general, we dont see a lot of crossover between phishing actors and those who distribute malware, he told TechNewsWorld. The combination of the socially engineered banking Trojan download and multistep phishing attack that gathers credentials or financial information at each step, is fairly unusual.

Not Your Typical Email Attack

The Marcher campaign in Austria is significantly more coordinated than the standard email attack, noted Matt Vernhout, director of privacy at 250ok.

However, it may have limited impact, as the number of steps required to complete the attack may be more than most individuals are willing to complete, he told TechNewsWorld.

Marcher has been around for a long time, which is why its perpetrators may find it necessary to modify the way they create landing pages to ensnare victims.

This is likely because security vendors and domain hosts are hot on their heels shutting them down, said Armando Orozco, a senior malware intelligence analyst with Malwarebytes.

They need other avenues to keep their business model going, he told TechNewsWorld.

Future Expansion

The likelihood of the Marcher campaign spreading is very high, said Proofpoints Wheeler.

Marcher has been observed worldwide, and we have already seen a variety of schemes to distribute the malware, primarily via SMS, and increasingly sophisticated social engineering from actors associated with Marcher, he said.

Any attack such as this one is usually a canary in the coal mine, noted Rajiv Dholakia, vice president of products at Nok Nok Labs.

One should expect variations of this to continue to evolve and spread around the world, he told TechNewsWorld.

Its not unusual for malware to be released in a single country or region and then, depending on its success, expand to other countries, said Damien Hugoo, director of product marketing at Easy Solutions.

We have seen many banking Trojans start out in Europe in the past year and expand globally, he told TechNewsWorld.

Protect Yourself

What can consumers do to protect themselves from this kind of attack?

One defense is to use Android phones that are easy to keep current with the latest version of the operating system, like Googles Pixel and Nexus phones, suggested Daniel Miessler, director of advisory services at IOActive.

Pixel and Nexus stay updated constantly, he told TechNewsWorld.

Also, never use app stores other than the official Google Play store, Miessler advised, and for the highest security, refrain from installing apps that are not extremely well known and well-tested.

Consumers need to be vigilant.

As with phishing attacks on any platform, the onus is on consumers to beware of scams and look for red flags. Unsolicited emails or texts asking for information or giving extensive reasoning for why they should download an app are clear warning signs, advised Proofpoints Wheeler.

Apps that ask for extensive permissions or that do not come from legitimate app stores should also be avoided, he said, unless consumers are absolutely sure of the origin and necessity of the app.
1. Comments must not be racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted.

2. Comments must not involve little more than name-calling and insulting remarks.

3. Comments must not be made by "anonymous" or "unknown".

4. Comments must not try to sneak in some free advertising for themselves (like spam).

I invite anyone who wishes to comment on this blog to do so. I enjoy the comments, whether you agree with what I have said or not. But some people want to abuse the right to comment, and since this is my blog, I have decided to lay down the following rules. If your comment violates these rules, it will not be published.
David Attenborough is urging the world to cut

plastic waste to help save our oceans.

The revered British naturalist demonstrates how the ubiquitous material harms marine life in his

new BBC series, Blue Planet II, a sequel to the 2001 documentary The Blue Planet. One scene even shows an albatross accidentally feeding its young a plastic toothpicka moment that Attenborough

describes as heartbreaking, as the baby bird is shown dead after the feeding.

In a Radio Times column (via

The Independent), the 91-year-old broadcaster wrote about the eight million metric tonnes of plastic that enters our ocean every year.

Never before have we been so aware of what we are doing to our planetand never before have we had such power to do something about it, he wrote. Surely we have a responsibility to care for the planet on which we live? The future of humanity, and indeed of all life on Earth, now depends on us doing so.

However, Attenborough noted that all is not yet lost and is calling on all people to reduce the amount of plastic that we use in our everyday lives.

He also called on

President Donald Trump to reconsider his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement.

Let us hope that Trump will eventually recognise that the Paris agreement was not about Pittsburgh, or even Paris, but the entire planet, he said.

Attenborough speaks about the scene with the albatross feeding around the 1:30 mark in the video above. He says, There is a shot of the young being fed and what comes out of the beak of the adult? Not sand eels, not fish, and not squid, which is what they mostly eat, but plastic. Its heartbreaking. Heartbreaking.
By Tim Radford

German researchers have confirmed once again that a good forest is a mixed forest, a natural one, with a diversity of species. The more diverse the forest, the better it becomes at doing what forests do.

Forests with a greater number of species grow at a faster rate, store more carbon, and are more resistant to pests and diseases, according to a six-nation study of European woodlands.

But this safety-in-species-numbers approach may not offer quite the protection against climate change and its consequences that such a finding should predict. A second study by European researchers suggests that when conditions become extremely wet, or extremely dry, diversity may not confer automatic resilience.

The message is that healthy, diverse, natural forest systems remain important buffers against climate changebut also that climate extremes could diminish the capacity of the forest to absorb carbon and limit global warming.

At the heart of both studies is a deeper concern about the response of the natural world to human-induced change, in the destruction of habitat, the loss of the plants, birds, insects, mammals, amphibians and reptiles that depend on habitat, and in the steady increase in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, as a consequence of profligate combustion of fossil fuels.

Repeated studies have confirmed that the worlds forests are under threat. Repeated studies have confirmed that in overall rewards for humanity, undisturbed natural forests deliver a greater economic return. And repeated studies have confirmed that rising global temperatures offer a threat to plant diversity around the planet in general and to Europe in particular.

Researchers at the Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Germany reported in the journal Ecology Letters that they selected plots of forest in Germany, Finland, Poland, Romania, Italy and Spain.

Within these plots the numbers of species varied: there might be one species, or five. The German plot, for example was home to beech, oak, Norway spruce, birch and hornbeam.

The scientists then measured 26 functions in these plots that could answer questions about nutrients, carbon cycles, growth and resilience and forest regeneration. Those stands of timber with more species grew faster and withstood pests and disease assault better than those with fewer.

Our summers will be drier and longer as a result of climate change, said Christian Wirth, who directs the Cenre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and heads the department for systematic botany at Leipzig University. We are therefore presuming that in future, it will be even more important to manage forests in a way that they have a high diversity of tree species.

Mixed answer

But a study in the Journal of Ecology suggests that the answer may not be so simple.

Researchers led by Hans de Boeck from the University of Antwerp reported that they looked at a wide range of studies of what scientists call ecosystem stability and biodiversity during climate extremesthat is, unusual heat, drought or flooding.

The answer, they found, was mixed. A greater range of diversity in an ecosystem seemed to speed up recovery after an extreme climatic event, but if the event was extreme enough biodiversity alone might not offer much protection.

The relationship between diversity and resistance wasnt always obvious. Researchers, the scientists suggested, have more questions to resolve.

In the stilted language of sciencespeak, the researchers concluded that there are numerous and non-trivial exceptions to the purported general rule that biodiversity increases stability. This raises the question of whether existing concepts of biodiversity-stability derived from the context of mild fluctuations are readily transposable to extreme events.

Reposted with permission from our media associate Climate News Network.
President Donald Trump will visit Utah today to announce dramatic cuts to two national monuments in the state.

Trump is expected to speak at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City at 12:30 p.m. According to reports, he will announce the gutting of the 1.3 million acre

Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent and the slashing of the 1.9 million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by 50 percent. The move will be the largest elimination of protected areas in U.S. history.

National monuments can be designated by presidents under the Antiquities Act, which puts the lands off limits to drilling, mining, logging and ranching. Trump says former presidents abused the act.

Bears Ears was designated in 2016 by President Barack Obama. Grand Staircase-Escalante was created by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Trumps plan to shrink the two monuments came after a review by Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke that the president ordered in April. Fossil fuel-linked advocates have long targeted the areas for oil, gas and coal resources within and around the monuments boundaries. According to Zinkes leaked memo, Grand Staircase-Escalante sits atop several billion tons of coal. Coal and oil reserves also surround Bears Ears.

Trumps decision was made despite widespread public support of the designations.

More than 2.8 million people submitted comments to the Interior Department urging the administration to preserve protections for the lands.

Over the weekend, more than 5,000 people rallied at the Utah State Capitol to protest Trumps decision.

Flatly, Trump does not have the legal authority to gut our national monuments nor does he have the support of the people of Utah to do so. Thousands of Utahns raised their voices today, in recognition of the cultural, archaeological, and environmental significance of these areas, Sierra Club Utah Chapter Director Ashley Soltysiak said of Saturdays demonstration. Todays rally showed the strength of support for Tribal sovereignty and Utahs public lands.

A protest is also planned at the State Capitol during the presidents visit today.

Text UTAH to 52886 for details on Mondays protest when Trump arrives in SLC. #SaveGrandStaircase #StandWithBearsEars  SUWA (@SouthernUTWild) December 2, 2017

Monument supporters warn that reducing the lands borders and opening them up to drilling, mining and other development would destroy Native American cultural and archaeological sites and lead to loss of wildlife.

As Bruce Babbitt, the Secretary of Interior from 1993 to 2001 and the Democratic governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987, eloquently wrote in a

New York Times op-ed published Friday:

Mr. Trumps plans add up to the largest elimination of protected areas in American history. He is a vandal in our midst, coming in person to lay waste to the land. This theft of our heritage should awaken us to the damage being piled up across our public lands under this administration.

If he succeeds, tens of thousands of Native American sacred sites in southern Utah will be at renewed risk of looting. Red rock canyon lands will face the prospect of being stripped for coal and drilled for oil and gas. And the wild places where we hike and hunt and find solitude may not be there for future generations to do the same.

Native American tribes such as the Navajo, Hopi, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Mountain and Ute Indians that consider Bears Ears sacred territory have vowed legal action.

We will be fighting back immediately. All five tribes will be standing together united to defend Bears Ears, Natalie Landreth, an attorney for the

Native American Rights Fund, told

Reuters.

Reuters reported that Republican Congressman Rob Bishop of Utah, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, is expected to introduce legislation after Trumps announcement to carry out the cuts. However, the measures chance of passing the Republican-controlled body is unclear.

Senator Tom Udall from New Mexico promised he would try to stop Trumps cuts.

[President Trumps] ignorance and disrespect diminish the office of president of the United States, Udall said. He will be challenged in court, and I will fight him every step of the way in my capacity as democratic leader on Senate Indian Affairs and the Interior Department Appropriations Subcommittee.

Environmental groups as well as outdoor clothing company

Patagonia are also expected to fight Trumps action in court.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has abandoned its responsibility to protect Americas public lands for our children and our grandchildren, and theyve rejected the voices of millions of Americans, said Patagonia president and CEO Rose Marcario. Removing protections for federal lands could result in permanent destruction of these treasured places and could jeopardize access for all of us. As a result, Patagonia will continue our fight to protect Bears Ears National Monument in the courts.
A wide range of cybersecurity threats are sweeping through the education sector, sowing discord and costing public schools significant time, money, and trust.

Criminal hacking groups have terrorized and extorted school communities. Email scams have led to identify theft, fraudulent tax returns, and stolen public funds. Mistakes by district staff, third-party vendors, and other outside groups have left teacher and student information vulnerable.

Still, the countrys K-12 information-technology leaders are likely underestimating the dangers they face. Most dont see cybersecurity threats such as ransomware attacks, phishing schemes, and data breaches as a significant problem, according to a new survey by the Consortium for School Networking, or CoSN, and the Education Week Research Center.

Even more troubling, many school technology leaders are failing to take basic steps to secure their networks and data. Just 15 percent say they have implemented a cybersecurity plan in their own district, the survey found.

Thats not good enough, said Keith Krueger, the CEO of CoSN, a professional association for K-12 technology leaders.

The challenges are becoming more sophisticated, and everyone is at greater risk, Krueger said.

Many experts agree.

In February, for example, the Internal Revenue Service issued an urgent alert about scammers targeting school districts, with the aim of fraudulently obtaining employees federal W-2 forms, payroll information, or other data that could be used to steal money and file false tax returns. Dozens of districts fell victim to such attacks.

And last month, the U.S. Department of Education issued a fresh advisory, warning of criminal hackers seeking to take advantage of schools weak security by stealing or locking up their sensitive data, then holding them for ransom. The announcement followed hacks of schools in Iowa, Montana, and Texas believed to be perpetrated by an overseas criminal group known as Dark Overlord.

All told, at least 235 K-12 cybersecurity-related incidents have been reported by media outlets since January 2016, said Douglas A. Levin, the CEO of consulting group EdTech Strategies. Far more have almost certainly gone unreported, he said.

The threat is many-sided.

While often overlooked, staff and students are frequent sources of cyber mayhem, Levin saidsome because theyre out to cause harm, others because they dont know any better.

School districts have also done a poor job of ensuring that outside companies provide adequate cyber protections. The CoSN/Education Week Research Center survey, for example, found that nearly 3 in 4 district IT leaders say they are not adding security safeguards to vendor negotiations.

And while the K-12 sector has spent heavily on digital devices, software, and bandwidth, investments in cybersecurity have not kept pace. Thats left many district IT departments understaffed and under-resourcedjust as theyre being asked to fend off the types of attacks that have overcome such corporate titans as Equifax, Target, and Yahoo.

In general, our data and IT systems are under assault, Levin said. It would be negligence on the part of K-12 leaders to believe that somehow schools dont represent a big new target.

To better understand the cybersecurity challenges facing schools, Education Week talked with school leaders in Arizona, Connecticut, Montana, and Texas about the cybersecurity incidents they faced, and how they responded.

The Threat Is Real

Dark Overlord hackers attack Columbia Falls, Mont., schools

Steve Bradshaw was looking at another terrifying email message.

An overseas criminal hacking group known as Dark Overload had already compromised one of the servers used by the 2,100-student Columbia Falls, Mont., school district, where Bradshaw is the superintendent. The hackers had stolen reams of sensitive information, including special education and behavioral-health reports on children, and sent parents graphic messages threatening their children with violence. And in a seven-page ransom letter, the group had promised an immense and unfathomable amount of financial and reputational harm if Columbia Falls failed to meet its demand for $150,000 in a cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin.

Now, the hackers said they had breached the districts internet-connected security-camera systems. The message said they had been watching the law-enforcement officials outside the school, accurately describing their location and movements.

For the first time in his 42-year career, Bradshaw said, he started sleeping with his shotgun.It was a full-blown crisis, he said.

The attacks spread to 32 schools throughout Montanas Flathead Valley, affecting 15,000 students. The FBI got involved. Columbia Falls shut down for three days. When schools reopened, parents wanted to maintain armed patrols of the hallways.

After the threats of violence were deemed not credible, Bradshaws district decided not to pay the ransom. But two months after the attack, the threat of a massive release of sensitive student data still hangs over the area. And the Dark Overlord hackers have apparently branched out, claiming credit for similar cyberattacks of schools in Iowa and Texas.

Bradshaw attributes his districts vulnerability to a number of factors. Not long before the hack occurred, he said, the Columbia Falls IT director had retired, and the 2-person department had lost one of its part-time staff members.

During the prior years, Bradshaw said, the district had also neglected to upgrade its servers or purchase new cybersecurity software. The money instead went to buying digital devices for students, interactive white boards, virtual-reality science-lab software for classrooms, and better Wi-Fi access for schools.

The tech came on fast, Bradshaw said. And there were a lot of things we didnt really understand that you shouldnt do anymore, like leaving access to our servers through outside entry points.

That combination of more technology, new threats, and underinvestment in security is common inside many of the nations schools, said Keith Krueger, the CEO of the Consortium for School Networking.

Most districts dont have a staff member dedicated specifically to cybersecurity, CoSN recently reported. And many district IT leaders have been slow to grasp the severity of the threat they face. Just 27 percent said ransomware attacks similar to what happened in Columbia Falls are a significant problem, according to results from a new CoSN/Education Week Research Center survey.

K-12 is not a sector with huge technical capacity, Krueger said. The threat is real, and there needs to be more awareness.

We Should Have Known Better

Glastonbury, Conn., schools fall victim to phishing scam

In February, a new central-office employee in Connecticuts 6,000-student Glastonbury schools received an email that appeared to be from one of her colleagues. The message requested that she send W-2 tax information for all the districts 1,600 employees.

She obliged.

In August, however, federal prosecutors said the message was actually sent by Daniel Adekunle Ojo, a Nigerian citizen who had been living in North Carolina. In August, Ojo was charged with fraud and identify theft; authorities say he used a fake email address to steal Glastonbury school employees information, then file 122 false tax returns seeking a total of $596,897 in refunds. Ojo has pled not guilty to the charges.

Such scams are pervasive throughout K-12, said Douglas A. Levin of EdTech Strategies, who has been tracking cybersecurity incidents in schools for almost two years.

Among other districts where sensitive employee information was successfully phished: Manatee County, Fla., where hackers obtained the names, addresses, wages, and Social Security numbers of more than 7,700 school employees; and Atlanta, where scammers stole more than $56,000 from employees by successfully rerouting their direct-deposit payments.

Fake emails were also recently used to scam districts in Boulder, Colo., and Lake Ridge, Ill., out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in school construction funds.

Given such losses, Levin said, its surprisingand alarmingthat fewer than half of district information-technology leaders describe phishing attacks as a significant problem.

One contributing factor: With so much recent attention and legislation around student-data privacy, many schools have been focused on identifying what information is collected from students and how it is used, rather than on how to keep safe the full scope of sensitive information on their networks.

That was the case in Glastonbury, Superintendent Alan Bookman said in an interview with Education Week.

But after falling victim to the phishing scam, Bookman said, his district has revamped training to provide outside guidance to administrative staff in departments such as human relations and payroll, where sensitive employee information is kept. Protocols around staff-email use are stricter. And all Glastonbury employees are now required to pick up duplicate tax forms in person.

We should have known better, Bookman said of the mistakes Glastonbury made.Were living in a different world.

Nothing We Could Really Do

Pflugerville, Texas, schools compromised by others missteps

Victor Valdez is laser-focused on cybersecurity.

As the chief technology officer for Texas 24,000-student Pflugerville Independent school district, Valdez said he faces cyber threats every day. One of his responses: hiring a third-party company to come in and hack us, so we can find out where were vulnerable and clean things up. Another strategy is to constantly monitor Pflugervilles network, a tactic that last school year led Valdezs team to identify and staunch a sudden, unexplained surge of traffic from Europe.

Still, such vigilance hasnt been enough.

This past spring, an unknown number of the districts employeesincluding Valdez himselfhad their names and Social Security numbers compromised, as a result of a breach at the Texas Association of School Boards.

TASB is a statewide nonprofit group that, among other things, administers an unemployment-insurance program for Texas school employees. Spokeswoman Barbara Williams said TASB officials learned in May that personal information for more than half a million of those employees, in roughly 900 school districts across the state, had been posted publicly on the internet.

The association has spent months trying to notify everyone who may have been affected, offering a year of free credit monitoring and identify-theft resolution services, Williams said. The group has also stepped up its training, monitoring, and security procedures. There have been no reports that any of the compromised information was misused, according to Williams.

But for hundreds of other Texas districts, the breach is just another example of how even the best-laid K-12 cybersecurity plans cant cover everything.

Its tough, said Valdez. Short of communicating with our employees, theres nothing we could really do.

Struggling to Maintain Public Trust

Tucson, Ariz., loses control of its website

We dont mess around when it comes to security!

Thats the promise that Jupiter, Fla.-based company SchoolDesk, which creates and maintains websites for school districts, made in its $64,500-per-year contract with the 47,000-student Tucson, Ariz., schools.

Despite such assurances, though, hackers breached one of SchoolDesks servers earlier this month, temporarily redirecting roughly 800 school district websites around the country to Arabic-language messages in support of the militant Islamist group ISIS, as well as an image of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Tucson was one of the districts affected, leading to a spate of concerned news stories and social-media messages. A spokeswoman for the Tucson district said the site was restored to normal in a matter of hours. A statement from SchoolDesk said the company was cooperating with law enforcement to find the hackers responsible and user data is secure and unaltered.

Outside experts say the incident highlights a couple of the big cybersecurity challenges facing schools.

Sometimes, hackers mostly want to create mayhem, said Douglas A. Levin of EdTech Strategies. Thats what happened when outsiders recently took control of the official Twitter accounts of Floridas Fort Lucie school district and Nevadas Foothill High School, in Henderson.

And ensuring that vendors provide strong information-technology safeguards has proved particularly difficult for K-12 schools, said Missouri State Auditor Nicole Galloway, who has been examining school cybersecurity practices in her state.

Technology contracts should outline who is responsible for preventing and detecting breaches, and what steps will be taken if a problem occurs, Galloway said. But thats not typically what happens, leaving schools open to considerable risk.

If a school district is financially responsible for monitoring credit scores or hiring attorneys or forensic specialists, thats money that doesnt go into the classroom, Galloway said. And if a breach does happen, it can hurt parents perception of how their district is handling technology.
Handmaids IOM to hold protest in Douglas



Handmaids IOM protesting in St John's on Tynwald Day earlier this year.

A group calling for women to have safe and legal access to abortions on the Isle of Man will hold a protest outside Legislative Buildings today.

Handmaids IOM will be appearing on Prospect Hill at lunchtime in protest over a presentation being given to Tynwald by a pro-life group from the UK.

Ramsey MHK Dr Alex Allinson was given leave to introduce a Bill updating the Island's abortion laws earlier this year, which is expected to have its first reading in the House of Keys early next year.

The Handmaids insist the they won't stop until all women are able to undergo safe and legal terminations without travelling off Island.

87% of those who responded to a public consultation about the proposed changes agreed that women should be able to have an abortion up to 14 weeks into their pregnancy.
Chief Minister meets with MPs to dispel Paradise Papers "myths"



Chief Minister Howard Quayle MHK

The Chief Minister hopes meetings with MPs will help "dispel some of the myths" following the recent coverage of the Paradise Papers leak.

Howard Quayle described coverage of the Isle of Man by the UK media as one-sided.

Following a trip to Westminster to meet with MPs from all parties, Mr Quayle revealed he was able to highlight the Island's record of financial transparency and tax cooperation.

The Chief Minister believes defending the Island's position is key for future prosperity.

Mr Quayle insists the Isle of Man is a well-regulated, responsible international business centre that supports the British economy.
If a submarine volcano erupts and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 4, 2017 -- Most volcanoes erupt beneath the ocean, but scientists know little about them compared to what they know about volcanoes that eject their lava on dry land. Gabrielle Tepp of the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the U.S. Geological Survey thinks that with improved monitoring, scientists can learn more about these submarine eruptions, which threaten travel and alter the ocean soundscape.

During the 174th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, held Dec. 4-8, 2017, in New Orleans, Louisiana, Tepp will discuss the challenges and benefits of remote monitoring and what it can teach us about submarine volcanoes.

"It's very difficult to study underwater volcanoes because it's hard to put instruments in the water, especially long-term," Tepp said.

Depending on the size and depth of an underwater eruption, gas and ash may never break the ocean surface, or the gas and ash could create a volcanic plume with the potential to interfere with air travel. "The ocean is a big place so it's pretty unlikely that you're going to have a situation where a ship haphazardly wanders over an eruption, but there are a few that have come close," Tepp said. These unpredictable eruptions may also create a floating blanket of rocks, called a pumice raft, which can clog harbors and damage boats.

Tepp is presenting observations from two submarine volcanoes: Ahyi, a seamount in the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean, and Bogoslof, a shallow submarine volcano in the Aleutian Islands. The volcanoes made very different sounds, suggesting that different processes occurred during eruption. In 2014, Ahyi erupted for two weeks, with short, repetitive gunshotlike explosions every few minutes. In 2016 and 2017, Bogoslof had more sustained eruptions, lasting minutes to hours, which occurred every few days.

Evidence of these eruptions showed up on distant seismometers, which measure waves passing through the ground to record earthquakes, and hydrophone arrays that pick up underwater sound to detect covert nuclear detonations. When volcanoes erupt directly into the water, the sounds can travel for thousands of miles before dissipating.

Questions remain, however, such as if seismometers are sufficient for remote monitoring or if the more accurate information provided by cabled hydrophone arrays is worth the greater expense. Researchers are also interested in how the movement of waves from water into rock, and vice versa, affects signal detection.

Tepp and colleagues at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and USGS recently deployed a hydrophone array in the Northern Mariana Islands. They will collect the data next summer and hope to determine where and how often local volcanoes erupt to see if the area needs better hazard monitoring.

Due to the long distances that eruption signals travel, they likely show up as anomalies on far-off monitoring devices used to study earthquakes, land-based volcanoes or even whale songs.

"Eruptions that create a loud enough sound, in the right location, can travel pretty far, even from one ocean to another," Tepp said. "It makes you wonder, how many of these signals have we seen on distant instruments where nobody knew what they were, and it's a submarine volcano from halfway around the world?"

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Abstract: 1aAO5: "The Sounds of Submarine Volcanoes," by Gabrielle Tepp, Matthew Haney, John Lyons, Robert Dziak, Joe Haxel, Del Bohnenstiehl and William Chadwick, is at 9:05-9:20 AM CST, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Salon F/G/H in the New Orleans Marriott. https://asa2017fall.abstractcentral.com/s/u/OajXUcch9zc

MORE MEETING INFORMATION

USEFUL LINKS

Main meeting website: http://acousticalsociety.org/content/174th-meeting-acoustical-society-america

Technical program: https://asa2017fall.abstractcentral.com/index.jsp

Meeting/Hotel site: http://acousticalsociety.org/content/174th-meeting-acoustical-society-america#hotel

Press Room: http://acoustics.org/world-wide-press-room/

PRESS REGISTRATION

We will grant free registration to credentialed journalists and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend, contact Julia Majors (jmajors@aip.org, 301-209-3090), who can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips or background information.

LIVE MEDIA WEBCAST

A press briefing featuring will be webcast live from the conference Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017, in room Studio 1 at the New Orleans Marriott. Time to be announced. Register at https://www1.webcastcanada.ca/webcast/registration/asa617.php to watch the live webcast.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

The Acoustical Society of America exists to generate, disseminate, and promote the knowledge and practical applications of acoustics. Two society meetings are held each year throughout the U.S. and Canada where acousticians can exchange information with various other researchers. For more information: http://acousticalsociety.org/
A report released Monday says a potential U.S. withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement would harm Nebraska's agricultural industries.

The Nebraska Farm Bureau says its report, North American Free Trade Agreement and Nebraska Agriculture," provides a dollars-and-cents breakdown of the value of NAFTA to farmers, ranchers and Nebraska counties.

Today, nearly half of Nebraskas total agriculture exports are bound for Canada and Mexico, our NAFTA partners," Steve Nelson, Nebraska Farm Bureau president, said in a news release. "While weve known for years that NAFTA plays a critical role in providing underlying price support for Nebraska agriculture commodities, this economic analysis quantifies what this agreement means at the farmer, rancher, and county levels.

What it clearly shows is that withdrawing from NAFTA, or renegotiating in a way that harms agriculture trade, would be damaging.

The report identifies the 2016 export value of individual Nebraska agriculture commodities to both Canada and Mexico. Analysis in the report also assigns a dollar value of NAFTA on a unit basis for individual agriculture commodities, demonstrating how NAFTA supports commodity prices, but also what the loss of NAFTA could mean.

For example, the report shows that NAFTA exports of soybeans and soybean meal in 2016 were worth $1.28 per bushel of soybeans produced in Nebraska.

It also shows NAFTA exports are worth $38.22 per head of beef, $22.16 per head of pork, $0.21 per bushel of corn, and $0.75 per bushel of wheat, using 2016 NAFTA figures.

Theres no denying NAFTA is vital to providing price support for our agriculture products," Jay Rempe, Nebraska Farm Bureau senior economist and author of the report, said in the release. "Ultimately, that support has a positive ripple effect in supporting farm income, which works its way through in positively supporting our states overall economy.

The report also examines the per-farm/ranch and per-county implications of NAFTA, as well as examining the value of NAFTA on a commodity-by-commodity basis for each Nebraska county.

It concludes that Platte County has the highest value of NAFTA agricultural imports at $34.5 million, while Phelps County has the most at stake in NAFTA on a per farm/ranch basis, with the trade agreement estimated to be worth $55,468 to the average agriculture operation in that county.

The full report is available on the Nebraska Farm Bureau website, nefb.org.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A Brown University study provides new evidence that the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa may have plate tectonics similar to those on Earth. The presence of plate tectonic activity could have important implications for the possibility of life in the ocean thought to exist beneath the moon's surface.

The study, published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, uses computer modeling to show that subduction -- when a tectonic plate slides underneath another and sinks deep into a planet's interior -- is physically possible in Europa's ice shell. The findings bolster earlier studies of Europa's surface geology that found regions where the moon's ice shell looks to be expanding in a way that's similar to the mid-ocean spreading ridges on Earth. The possibility of subduction adds another piece to the tectonic puzzle.

"We have this evidence of extension and spreading, so the question becomes where does that material go?" said Brandon Johnson, an assistant professor in Brown's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and a lead author of the study. "On Earth, the answer is subduction zones. What we show is that under reasonable assumptions for conditions on Europa, subduction could be happening there as well, which is really exciting."

Part of the excitement, Johnson says, is that surface crust is enriched with oxidants and other chemical food for life. Subduction provides a means for that food to come into contact with the subsurface ocean scientists think probably exists under Europa's ice.

"If indeed there's life in that ocean, subduction offers a way to supply the nutrients it would need," Johnson said.

Subduction on ice

On Earth, subduction is driven largely by differences in temperature between a descending slab and the surrounding mantle. Crustal material is much cooler than mantle material, and therefore denser. That increased density provides the negative buoyancy needed to sink a slab deep into the mantle.

Though previous geological studies had hinted that something like subduction could be happening on Europa, it wasn't clear exactly how that process would work on an icy world. There's evidence, Johnson says, that Europa's ice shell has a two layers: a thin outer lid of very cold ice that sits atop a layer of slightly warmer, convecting ice. If a plate from the outer ice lid was pushed down into the warmer ice below, its temperature would quickly warm to that of the surrounding ice. At the point, the slab would have the same density of the surrounding ice and would therefore stop descending.

But the model developed by Johnson and his colleagues showed a way that subduction could happen on Europa, regardless of temperature differences. The model showed that if there were varying amounts of salt in the surface ice shell, it could provide the necessary density differences for a slab to subduct.

"Adding salt to an ice slab would be like adding little weights to it because salt is denser than ice," Johnson said. "So rather than temperature, we show that differences in the salt content of the ice could enable subduction to happen on Europa."

And there's good reason to suspect that variations in salt content do exist on Europa. There's geological evidence for occasional water upwelling from Europa's subsurface ocean -- a process similar to the upwelling of magma from Earth's mantle. That upwelling would leave high salt content in the crust under which it rises. There's also a possibility of cryovolcanism, where salty ocean contents actually spray out onto the surface.

In addition to bolstering the case for a habitable ocean on Europa, Johnson says, the research also suggests a new place in the solar system to study a process that's played a crucial role in the evolution of our own planet.

"It's fascinating to think that we might have plate tectonics somewhere other than Earth," he said. "Thinking from the standpoint of comparative planetology, if we can now study plate tectonics in this very different place, it might be able to help us understand how plate tectonics got started on the Earth."

Johnson's co-authors on the paper -- Rachel Sheppard, Alyssa Pascuzzo, Elizabeth Fisher and Sean Wiggins -- are all graduate students at Brown. They took a class Johnson offered called Ocean Worlds, which focused on bodies like Europa that are thought to have oceans beneath icy shells.

"This paper emerged as a class project we did together," Johnson said, "and it's exciting that we came up with some interesting results."

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(Boston) -- Black women are among those most likely to have insomnia, according to Lynn Rosenberg, ScD, associate director of Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center and a principal investigator of the Black Women's Health Study (BWHS). Rosenberg has been awarded a three year $2,225,495 grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to study this. The study will be using a self-administered internet program called SHUTi (Sleep Healthy Using the Internet), a web-tool based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

CBT is the most effective treatment for insomnia because it treats the underlying causes of the disorder, unlike medications that only treat the symptoms. Unfortunately, there are few healthcare providers in the United States that are trained to provide CBT. There also are other barriers for black women, such as not having adequate access to health care.

While SHUTi has been shown to improve insomnia symptoms, the program has not been tested adequately in black populations. Rosenberg and her team propose to adapt SHUTi to make it more effective for black women and to conduct a study comparing the usual care that most black women will receive if they go to their doctor to seek insomnia treatment (information on sleep hygiene), the standard SHUTi program, and the adapted SHUTi program that has been tailored to black women (SHUTi-BW).

"The SHUTi-BW program, if successful, could improve insomnia symptoms among many black women across the country, which in turn could lower their risk of the many health problems related to poor sleep," explained Rosenberg.

"This project was selected for PCORI funding not only for its scientific merit and commitment to engaging patients and other stakeholders, but also for its potential to fill an important gap in our health knowledge and give people information to help them weigh the effectiveness of their care options," said PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH. "We look forward to following the study's progress and working with Boston University to share the results."

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Boston University was selected for PCORI funding through a highly competitive review process in which patients, clinicians and other stakeholders joined clinical scientists to evaluate the proposals. Applications were assessed for scientific merit, how well they will engage patients and other stakeholders and their methodological rigor among other criteria.

Rosenberg's award has been approved pending completion of a business and programmatic review by PCORI staff and issuance of a formal award contract.

PCORI is an independent, nonprofit organization authorized by Congress in 2010. Its mission is to fund research that will provide patients, their caregivers and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed healthcare decisions. For more information about PCORI's funding, visit http://www.pcori.org.
Deep learning has brought about machines that can 'see' the world more like humans can, and recognize language. And while deep learning was inspired by the human brain, the question remains: Does the brain actually learn this way? The answer has the potential to create more powerful artificial intelligence and unlock the mysteries of human intelligence.

In a study published December 5th in eLife, CIFAR Fellow Blake Richards and his colleagues unveiled an algorithm that simulates how deep learning could work in our brains. The network shows that certain mammalian neurons have the shape and electrical properties that are well-suited for deep learning. Furthermore, it represents a more biologically realistic way of how real brains could do deep learning.

Research was conducted by Richards and his graduate student Jordan Guerguiev, at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, in collaboration with Timothy Lillicrap at Google DeepMind. Their algorithm was based on neurons in the neocortex, which is responsible for higher order thought.

"Most of these neurons are shaped like trees, with 'roots' deep in the brain and 'branches' close to the surface," says Richards. "What's interesting is that these roots receive a different set of inputs than the branches that are way up at the top of the tree."

Using this knowledge of the neurons' structure, Richards and Guerguiev built a model that similarly received signals in segregated compartments. These sections allowed simulated neurons in different layers to collaborate, achieving deep learning.

"It's just a set of simulations so it can't tell us exactly what our brains are doing, but it does suggest enough to warrant further experimental examination if our own brains may use the same sort of algorithms that they use in AI," Richards says.

This research idea goes back to AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton, a CIFAR Distinguished Fellow and founder of the Learning in Machines & Brains program, and program Co-Director Yoshua Bengio, and was one of the main motivations for founding the program in the first place. These researchers sought not only to develop artificial intelligence, but also to understand how the human brain learns, says Richards.

In the early 2000s, Richards and Lillicrap took a course with Hinton at the University of Toronto and were convinced deep learning models were capturing "something real" about how human brains work. At the time, there were several challenges to testing that idea. Firstly, it wasn't clear that deep learning could achieve human-level skill. Secondly, the algorithms violated biological facts proven by neuroscientists.

Now, Richards and a number of researchers are looking to bridge the gap between neuroscience and AI. This paper builds on research from Bengio's lab on a more biologically plausible way to train neural nets and an algorithm developed by Lillicrap that further relaxes some of the rules for training neural nets. The paper also incorporates research from Matthew Larkam on the structure of neurons in the neocortex. By combining neurological insights with existing algorithms, Richards' team was able to create a better and more realistic algorithm simulating learning in the brain.

The tree-like neocortex neurons are only one of many types of cells in the brain. Richards says future research should model different brain cells and examine how they could interact together to achieve deep learning. In the long-term, he hopes researchers can overcome major challenges, such as how to learn through experience without receiving feedback.

"What we might see in the next decade or so is a real virtuous cycle of research between neuroscience and AI, where neuroscience discoveries help us to develop new AI and AI can help us interpret and understand our experimental data in neuroscience," Richards says.

"Towards deep learning with segregated dendrites" was published in eLife on Dec. 5.

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About 40 percent of northern Malaysian Borneo's carbon stocks exist in forests that are not designated for maximum protections

Washington, DC -- About 40 percent of northern Malaysian Borneo's carbon stocks exist in forests that are not designated for maximum protections, according to new remote sensing and satellite mapping from Carnegie's Greg Asner and his colleagues.

Asner's flying laboratory, the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, was able to map carbon stocks that -- together with satellite imaging and other geospatial data -- will guide conservation efforts undertaken by the Sabah Forestry Department in Malaysian Borneo, the Southeast Asia Rainforest Research Partnership (SEARRP), the PACOS Trust, BC Initiative and other organizations.

"We are proud to be part of this groundbreaking endeavor in the state of Sabah, which sets us apart in accelerating the quest and capacity to protect, restore, and conserve more high-conservation and high-carbon forests in this country," said Sam Mannan, Chief Conservator of Forests. "We shall apply the information gathered for the common good of society, particularly, in mitigating against the worst effects of climate change. This project is of immense value to tropical forest management."

Why is measuring carbon stocks so important?

Because tropical forests like those in the Sabah have converted large quantities atmospheric carbon into organic material -- and they accomplish more of this than any other terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. But when this forest land is repurposed for agriculture, logging, or mining, carbon is released into the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change. Tropical deforestation and forest degradation account for about a tenth of the world's carbon emissions each year.

So, figuring out which segments of Sabah's forests contain the most carbon in the form of biomass is an important first step in helping the government of the Sabah meet its goal of increasing protected forests from 1.8 to 2.2 million hectares.

"The nearly 4 million hectares of Sabah's forests are a kaleidoscope of many different habitats and management histories, which required a wall-to-wall mapping effort to truly quantify the amount of carbon they contain," Asner explained.

Using the Carnegie Airborne Observatory's signature technique, called airborne laser-guided imaging spectroscopy, integrated with satellite imaging, and other geospatial data, Asner and his team were able to provide high-resolution maps of Sabah's forests. In addition to finding 50 trees of the tallest tropical trees ever measured, the CAO team pinpointed important targets for conservation efforts.

They found that about 40 percent of the state's carbon is contained in forests that are not protected at the highest designation. What's more, they discovered that Sabah could double carbon stocks by allowing previously logged forests to regenerate--a process that they estimate would take about a century.

SEARRP's Glen Reynolds said: "it's a rare opportunity to work with state-wide datasets of this quality. By integrating the CAO maps with ground-based biodiversity data and information on the use of forests by local people, we should be uniquely well placed to identify hundreds of thousands of new conservation areas in Sabah that not only protect key habitats, but also the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities".

"Forest carbon is an important factor in locating places where conservation efforts could make the greatest impact," Asner added. "But other data on canopy biodiversity and animal habitats, such as our work on Bornean orangutans, will also help inform decisionmakers."

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This study was supported by the UN Development Programme, Avatar Alliance Foundation, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, Worldwide Fund for Nature, Morgan Family Foundation, Natural Environmental Research Council, and the Rainforest Trust.

The Carnegie Institution for Science (carnegiescience.edu) is a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with six research departments throughout the U.S. Since its founding in 1902, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science.
WASHINGTON - (Dec. 4, 2017) - Cerebral blood flow (CBF) of key regions of newborns' brains is altered in very premature infants and may provide an early warning sign of disturbed brain maturation well before such injury is visible on conventional imaging, according to a prospective, observational study published Dec. 4, 2017 in The Journal of Pediatrics.

"During the third trimester of pregnancy, the fetal brain undergoes an unprecedented growth spurt. To power that growth, cerebral blood flow increases and delivers the extra oxygen and nutrients needed to nurture normal brain development," says Catherine Limperopoulos, Ph.D., director of the Developing Brain Research Laboratory at Children's National Health System and senior author of the study. "In full-term pregnancies, these critical brain structures mature inside the protective womb where the fetus can hear the mother and her heartbeat, which stimulates additional brain maturation. For infants born preterm, however, this essential maturation process happens in settings often stripped of such stimuli."

The challenge: How to capture what goes right or wrong in the developing brains of these very fragile newborns? The researchers relied on arterial spin labeling (ASL) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, a noninvasive technique that labels the water portion of blood to map how blood flows through infants' brains in order to describe which regions do or do not receive adequate blood supply. The imaging work can be done without a contrast agent since water from arterial blood itself illuminates the path traveled by cerebral blood.

"In our study, very preterm infants had greater absolute cortical cerebral blood flow compared with full-term infants. Within regions, however, the insula (a region critical to experiencing emotion), anterior cingulate cortex (a region involved in cognitive processes) and auditory cortex (a region involved in processing sound) for preterm infants received a significantly decreased volume of blood, compared with full-term infants. For preterm infants, parenchymal brain injury and the need for cardiac vasopressor support both were correlated with decreased regional CBF," Limperopoulos adds.

The team studied 98 preterm infants in the study who were born June 2012 to December 2015, were younger than 32 gestational weeks at birth and who weighed less than 1,500 grams. They matched those preemies by gestational age with 104 infants who had been carried to term. The brain MRIs were performed as the infants slept.

Blood flows where it is needed most with areas of the brain that are used more heavily commandeering more oxygen and nutrients. Thus, during brain development, CBF is a good indicator of functional brain maturation since brain areas that are the most metabolically active need more blood.

"The ongoing maturation of the newborn's brain can be seen in the distribution pattern of cerebral blood flow, with the greatest volume of blood traveling to the brainstem and deep grey matter," says Marine Bouyssi-Kobar, M.S., the study's lead author. "Because of the sharp resolution provided by ASL-MR images, our study finds that in addition to the brainstem and deep grey matter, the insula and the areas of the brain responsible for sensory and motor functions are also among the most oxygenated regions. This underscores the critical importance of these brain regions in early brain development. In preterm infants, the insula may be particularly vulnerable to the added stresses of life outside the womb."

Of note, compromised regional brain structures in adults are implicated in multiple neurodevelopmental disorders. "Altered development of the insula and anterior cingulate cortex in newborns may represent early warning signs of preterm infants at greater risk for long-term neurodevelopmental impairments," Limperopoulos says.

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Research reported in this news release was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, MOP-81116; the SickKids Foundation, XG 06-069; and the National Institutes of Health under award number R01 HL116585-01.
Researchers studying wild dwarf mongooses have provided insight into what happens when immigrants join a new group. The study in Current Biology on December 4 shows that, initially, recent immigrants rarely serve as lookout, which means they provide little information to help the rest of the group. Even when they do act cooperatively, their new groupmates tend to ignore what they have to offer. But, within five months, the new arrivals become fully integrated and valued members within mongoose society.

"A few months after arriving in a new group, former immigrants are contributing as often as residents and their information is used just as much, but to reach that stage requires a transition period," says Andrew Radford of the University of Bristol, UK.

That's probably because the dispersal process is tough on individuals, notes the lead author of the study, Julie Kern. "Recent immigrants are typically exhausted and run down, as evidenced by a loss of weight," she says. "Even if they tried, they couldn't contribute fully at first because other members don't yet know them."

The study is one of the first to explore the impact of dispersal events on social-information provision and use within groups. It also shows that the expected benefits associated with an increase in group size may not be as straightforward as scientists have often assumed.

Dwarf mongooses within a group depend on each other. For instance, individuals will stand guard, serving as sentinels that keep a watch for predators and call to warn the rest of the group when one is near. Sentinels also issue calls to announce that they're watching. By providing this social information, sentinels allow other group members to concentrate more on foraging. What the researchers wanted to know is how new group members contributed to these tasks and whether the information they provided was used by others.

Kern watched nine groups of wild dwarf mongooses living on Sorabi Rock Lodge, Limpopo Province, South Africa, for years, beginning in 2011. The groups, ranging in size from 7 to 12 individuals, have been habituated to the close presence of people. They are even trained to climb onto a scale to weigh themselves. Researchers can also identify the individuals based on small blonde dye marks or distinctive physical markings.

Of the 165 individually marked dwarf mongooses in the population, 35 dispersed into or out of the groups under observation. The researchers recorded dispersal events in all nine of the groups, with a total of 22 emigrations and 28 immigrations witnessed.

Kern and Radford found from the data that new immigrants rarely served as sentinels within the first month of arrival. But, by the time they'd been in their new group for five months, they acted in that role just as often as longer-term residents did. The researchers suggest that this shift in behavior might be a result of the challenges associated with dispersal.

Using a series of experiments in which they played back previously recorded mongoose calls, the researchers showed that foragers responded significantly less to the surveillance calls of recent immigrants compared to those from resident group members. When they heard the call of a new immigrant, they continued to spend more time looking around for predators themselves. But, those differences in response to new members also disappeared after a few months.

The findings show that an integration period is necessary after dispersers have joined a new group before the benefits of an increased group size can be fully realized. The dispersers need a period in which to recover before being able to contribute fully to cooperative sentinel duty, and residents need time to learn about new group members before relying on their social information.

"Given a chance, immigrants can become valued members of mongoose society," Radford says. "The increased group size that results is beneficial to all."

Kern says they will continue to study the mongooses' sentinel behavior in the wider context of cooperation within the species. "For example," she says, "we'd like to know whether the behavior is traded for other beneficial acts."

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This research was supported by a University of Bristol Science Faculty Studentship and a European Research Council Consolidator Grant.

Current Biology, Kern and Radford: "Reduced social information provision by immigrants and use by residents following dispersal" http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31382-9

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.
Weather--Precision de-icing

A precision approach to treating snow- and ice-covered roads, developed by an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led research team, aims to help cities effectively allocate resources and expand coverage on roadways. The combined software and hardware technology analyzes existing city data and uses high-resolution modeling to identify areas most vulnerable to drivers during hazardous weather conditions. The novel approach features a variable control mechanism designed for the spreader on salt trucks to optimize the amount of melting, or de-icing, agent applied to roads, which minimizes waste and increases the number of roads treated. "Across the United States, cities are collectively spending about $1.5 billion on winter road maintenance," ORNL's Olufemi (Femi) Omitaomu said. "Our goal is to give cities an intelligent approach to managing their resources effectively." [Contact: Ashley Huff, (865) 241-6451; huffac@ornl.gov]

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/01%20Weather-Precision_de-icing.jpg

Caption: An ORNL-led team developed a variable control mechanism to enable precision de-icing on urban roads, using roadway data from the City of Knoxville in Tennessee. Credit: Jason Richards/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcyzUstjuik

Video Caption: An ORNL-led team developed a variable control mechanism to enable precision de-icing on urban roads, using roadway data from the City of Knoxville in Tennessee. Credit: Jenny Woodbery/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Biology--Bacterial breakdown

An Oak Ridge National Laboratory-led team discovered a function of certain microbes that produces a new derivative of vitamin B12, which is crucial to a cell's ability to perform life-sustaining metabolic activities. Their findings could ultimately open avenues for novel environmental and water clean-up strategies. "Microbes used to break down contaminants require specific vitamins to function," said Frank Loffler, UT-ORNL Governor's Chair for Environmental Biotechnology, who led the research. While studying a specific vitamin B12 derivative, the team revealed modifications of an often-overlooked region of the vitamins' molecular structure, known as the lower base. This lower base structure determines the function of enzymes that break down toxic chlorinated solvents. "This discovery has potential to enhance the efficacy of current bioremediation approaches, plus it could open new opportunities to affect the progression of certain human diseases," Loffler added. The team's findings were published in Nature Chemical Biology. [Contact: Sara Shoemaker, (865) 576-9219; shoemakerms@ornl.gov]

Image #1: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/Biology-Bacteria_breakdown.jpg

Caption #1: While studying a specific vitamin B12 derivative, an ORNL-led team discovered a "helper molecule" (shown in red) in an often-overlooked region of the vitamin's structure, an area that critically determines how enzymes break down toxic chlorinated solvents. Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Image #2: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/Biology-Bacteria_breakdown2%20r1.jpg

Caption #2: A bacterial species known as Desulfitobacterium hafniense uses unsubstituted purine to form purinyl-cobamide, a "helper molecule" required to enzymatically break down environmental toxins. Credit: Frank Loffler/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Materials--When alloys attract

A multi-laboratory research team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutrons, x-rays and computational modeling to "see" the atomic structures inside a new class of aluminum-cerium alloys created for automotive and aerospace applications. The structures occur when alloy components that have a high reaction affinity, or likelihood to bond, are combined. The attraction helps create the materials' superior stability and strength. "The Al-Ce base alloy forms architectures that are inherently stable at elevated temperatures and under load," said ORNL's Orlando Rios, whose team also experimented with the alloy's composition. "We found that adding minute amounts of other elements, such as 0.4 percent weight magnesium, achieved significant increases in alloy strength." The research was conducted through the Critical Materials Institute, which has been developing high-value applications for cerium to boost the economics of mining rare-earth materials. The team's paper was featured on the cover of Materials Horizons. [Contact: Kim Askey, (865) 946-1861; askeyka@ornl.gov]

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/news/images/Materials-When_alloys_attract%20r1.jpg

Caption: A research team, including scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Ames Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, illuminated the mechanisms that create stability and strength in a new class of aluminum alloys. Credit: Orlando R. Rios, Scott K. McCall, et al. Mater. Horiz., 2017, 4, 1070.

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New York, Dec. 4, 2017 - This month marks the 50th anniversary of the world's firrst human heart transplant performed at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town by South African surgeon, Christiaan Barnard. He transplanted the heart of a 25-year-old woman into Louis Washkansky, a 53-year-old diabetes patient who was in severe heart failure. Today, over 5,000 heart transplants are performed each year globally, more than half of which are in the US. A special issue of The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation presents a chronicle of the major milestones in heart transplantation over the last 50 years.

The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation chronicles 50 years of ground-breaking advancements in heart transplantation

The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation: 50 years of heart transplantation progress

Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Mandeep R. Mehra, MD, FACC, FESC, FHFSA, FRCP, Brigham Health Center for Advanced Heart Disease and Harvard Medical School, comments that, "This 50-year journey has established heart transplantation as a pivotal life-extending choice in patients with advanced heart failure; yet, challenges remain with complications of immunosuppression and late complications limiting survival. The near future offers great hope in expanding the donor pool through use of donation after circulation death (DCD), new donor sources such as xenotransplantation, and competing technology such as artificial hearts and tissue regeneration."

Since 1967, more than 150,000 patients worldwide have benefited from heart transplantation, returning a nearly normal quality of life to those with end-stage heart failure while extending life by a median of 14 years. This issue presents ten editorials by the top experts in the field that highlight the evolution of heart transplantation and honor the pioneers responsible for these ground-breaking achievements.

It was the dream of many cardiac surgeons in the mid-20th century to transplant a healthy heart into a patient dying of end-stage heart disease. The technique Barnard used was established by Norman Shumway and colleagues at Stanford, and originally described by Russell Brock in London. Although Barnard's first patient died after 18 days, his second patient, Philip Blaiberg, lived a full and relatively active life for 19 months. His fifth and sixth patients lived for 12 and 23 years, respectively.

Barnard's successes and the pioneering operations of Norman Shumway and Richard Lower in the US kept alive the hope that heart transplantation would eventually become a routine form of treatment. David K.C. Cooper, MD, PhD, of the Xenotransplantation Program, Department of Surgery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Barnard's biographer, was a surgical colleague of Barnard for several years in South Africa and later in the US. In the issue's opening article, he writes, "Today, when heart transplantation has become a relatively routine and commonplace procedure, we may be inclined to underestimate Barnard's immense con?dence and courage in undertaking this ?rst operation. By any standard, it was a monumental step to take."

The first human heart transplantations in the US were performed by Norman Shumway and Edward B. Stinson in January 1968, and by Shumway's research fellow Richard Lower four months later. The results were disappointing. There were 150 transplants worldwide during 1968 and 1969 performed by 50 different teams with universally poor outcomes. Early cases showed the need for better technology for diagnosing rejection, better availability of donor hearts, and a better technique for recovering the donor heart short of waiting for cessation of electrical activity. The procedure became quite contentious, and in 1970 there was an unofficial moratorium on human heart transplantation.

In their article "Conquering the First Hurdles in Cardiac Transplantation: In the Footprints of Giants," Michael L. Hess, MD, formerly medical director of the cardiac transplantation program at the Medical College of Virginia, and Sharon Hunt, MD, medical director of the Stanford University program, explain the challenges facing the early heart transplant surgeons. They summarize the research advances leading up to the introduction of the new immunosuppressive agent cyclosporine in the early 1980s, which had been used successfully in the related field of renal transplantation. Other advances included validation of the endomyocardial biopsy to diagnose graft rejection and document its resolution after therapy, as well as validation of safe cold preservation of donor hearts to permit distant heart procurement and societal and legal acceptance of a definition of brain death.

"Thus, it was the dedicated initial giants of the field that broke the barriers to successful cardiac transplantation. The early research of Shumway and Lower, the first human case by Barnard, the development of successful cold organ storage allowing long distance transport, and the refinement of immunosuppressant protocols. All these culminated in the institution of the formal disciplines of cardiac transplant surgery and transplant cardiology and the formation of our society which has truly pioneered the rapid expansion in our field," write Hess and Hunt, who respectively worked with Lower and Shumway.

In his article "The Dark Early Years of Heart Transplantation: Some Lessons Learned," Sir Terence English, KBE FRCS FRCP, who was Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon at the Papworth Hospital and Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK from 1973-1995, describes the early years in the UK. Sir Terence led the team that performed the first successful heart transplant at Papworth in 1979 and went on to head up one of Europe's most successful heart-lung transplant programs. After the lifting of the moratorium on heart transplants and the introduction of a cyclosporine-based regime in 1982, the team reported an 80% one-year survival for the next 45 patients. By September 2017 Papworth had 15 patients who had either lived or were living more than 30 years after heart transplantation, the longest being three months short of 35 years. "This is something that I could never have imagined when we started our program 38 years ago," he writes.

The first bridge-to-transplant operation was performed in 1969 by Denton Cooley, MD, founder of the Texas Heart Institute, using a mechanical total arti?cial heart. From 1972 on efforts were directed towards long-term mechanical assist and replacement devices. O.H. Frazier, MD, of the Texas Heart Institute, Houston, provides perspective on how this evolved. "The introduction of cyclosporine dramatically expanded the use of heart transplantation and made bridging patients to transplant feasible," he explains. "It was also the single most important contribution to the advancement of mechanical cardiac support from animal experimentation to meaningful clinical application."

The ?rst multicenter immunosuppression trial was reported in early 1998. This study was pivotal in making mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) the antimetabolite of choice in heart transplantation. Jon Kobashigawa, MD, of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, Los Angeles, provides an overview of this and other clinical trials that shaped immunosuppression use in heart transplant medicine. "There is a ?ne balance between the numerous risks of life-long immunosuppression and the risk of rejection. As new agents are discovered, clinical trials will continue to guide clinicians and bene?t patients," he writes.

An accelerated form of atherosclerosis, now recognized as cardiac allograft vasculopathy, was first seen in the transplanted heart of the second transplant patient at Grote Schuur. "The advent of intravascular ultrasonography in the early 1990s allowed for an inside look early on in the transplant process to improve our understanding of this disease," explains Dr. Mehra. "However, we need a concerted strategy to decrease early immunologic events that initiate the inflammatory cascade and simultaneously to address the non-immune and inflammatory pathways that are responsible for propagation of the disease. Only then will long-term survival for cardiac transplantation be manifest, and I am hopeful that in 50 years, when this summary will be updated, that these ideas will have been entrenched in more focused and individualized therapy for cardiac allograft maintenance."

In the 1980s a debate on Medicare coverage of heart transplantation led to the establishment of the National Heart Transplantation Study (NHTS), designed to consider the patient selection process, the long-term social, economic, and ethical consequences of the procedure, and the potential for national expansion of the heart transplantation procedure. This had broad implications for insurance coverage of heart transplantation in the US. A once-experimental procedure had become standard therapy for end stage heart disease. "What started off as a narrow decision related to Medicare coverage of heart transplantation ultimately became the basis for what proved to be an extensive technology assessment," writes Roger W. Evans, PhD, of the United Network for the Recruitment of Transplantation Professionals, Rochester, MN, who was the project director.

Joren C. Madsen, MD, DPhil, of the Center for Transplantation Sciences and Division of Cardiac Surgery, Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, reviews the advances, or lack thereof, made in understanding the alloimmune response, immunosuppression, tolerance and xenotransplantation. Madsen predicts that advances such as xenotransplantation (transplantation of animal organs from one species into another) may be creatively integrated with advances in other emerging technologies, such as genome editing, synthetic biology, and bioengineering, in the next 50 years. "The result will be novel therapies that will combine with heart transplantation (or even replace transplantation) to provide a normal and productive life for all patients with end-stage heart disease," he concludes.

Kathleen L. Grady, PhD, MS, RN, Northwestern University Chicago, discovered a passion for understanding the quality of life of advanced heart failure patients treated with surgical therapies while nursing in the early 1970s. She chronicles the changes and developments in nursing care of heart transplant and mechanically-assisted patients and health-related quality of life (HRQOL), as transplantation and technology evolve. "It is incumbent upon us to base our practice on scientifically rigorous research, so that clinical care of these challenging patients, including shared decision making, self-care, adherence to the medical regimen, and enhancing HRQOL is grounded in evidence," she writes.

In 1991, Hamilton Naki retired from his position as a surgical laboratory assistant after 37 years of service to the profession of transplant surgery at the University of Cape Town. Despite his humble beginnings and the oppressive apartheid regime under which he lived for most of his life, he was honored with a Master of Science in Medicine degree by the University of Cape Town in 2003. Liesl Zuhlke, MBChB, PhD, Department of Child and Adolescent Health, University of Cape Town, and Bongani M. Mayosi, DPhil, head of the Department of Medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital and University of Cape Town, recount the story of how Naki became assistant, then anesthetist for the animals, and finally principal surgical assistant in the laboratory of Robert Goetz, Professor of Surgery, and later Christiaan Barnard, assisting in the training of scores of surgeons from all over the world who passed through the transplant unit. "Barnard described him as having incredible dexterity and finesse and is quoted as saying 'If Hamilton had had the opportunity to study, he would probably have become a brilliant surgeon,'" they write. The Hamilton Naki Clinical Scholarship was established in 2007 on the 40th anniversary of the first heart transplant.

In 2015, surgeons in Cambridge, UK achieved a significant advancement in the transplantation of non-beating hearts. In a Special Feature article, this team led by Consultant Surgeon Stephen R. Large, MS, FRCS, FRCP, reports the findings from a study comparing outcomes of donation after circulation death (DCD) heart transplantation against matched donation after brain death (DBD) heart transplants. Building on work previously done by teams in Denver, Colorado and Sydney, Australia, this is the largest single-center experience. Survival at 90 days was not significantly different between the two groups. However, the team acknowledges that the longer-term results are unknown. "The effects of prolonged warm ischemia and machine perfusion on the coronary endothelium and the development of cardiac allograft vasculopathy have yet to be determined," says Large.

"The pioneering activities by the team should be lauded and the entire team complimented for pursuing this inventive work, yet many issues will need to be considered as further work in this arena is entertained," comments Dr. Mehra in an accompanying editorial. "Perhaps one of the greatest challenges will be in scaling the technology across continents and geographic regions. This is so because the definitions of circulatory death vary greatly and the local tolerance for such a donor source is not consistent."

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Notes for editors

The articles are:

"Life's defining moment: Christiaan Barnard and the first human heart transplant," by David K.C. Cooper, MD, PhD

"Conquering the First Hurdles in Cardiac Transplantation: In the Footprints of Giants," by Michael L. Hess, MD, and Sharon Hunt, MD

"The Dark Early Years of Heart Transplantation: Some Lessons Learned

"Evolutionary perspective of mechanical circulatory support as a bridge to heart transplantation," by O.H. Frazier, MD

"Clinical trials in heart transplantation: The evolution of evidence in immunosuppression," by Jon Kobashigawa, MD

"The scourge and enigmatic journey of cardiac allograft vasculopathy ," by Mandeep R. Mehra, MD

"Insurance coverage of heart transplantation in the United States: The dilemma, the debate and the definitive decision that ultimately determined the future of transplantation," by Roger W. Evans, PhD (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healun.2017.10.004)

"Advances in the immunology of heart transplantation," by Joren C. Madsen, MD, DPhil (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healun.2017.10.003)

"The Role of Nurses In Understanding and Enhancing Quality of Life: A Journey from Heart Transplantation to Advanced Heart Failure ," by Kathleen L. Grady, PhD, MS, RN

"The Life and the Legacy of Hamilton Naki : Experimental Heart Transplant Surgeon and Teacher," by Liesl Zuhlke and Bongani M. Mayosi

"Outcome after heart transplantation from donation after circulatory-determined death donors," by Simon Messer, Aravinda Page, Richard Axell, Marius Berman, Jules Hernandez-Sanchez, Simon Colah, Barbora Parizkova, Kamen Valchanov, John Dunning, Evgeny Pavlushkov, Sendhil K. Balasubramanian, Jayan Parameshwar, Yasir Abu Omar, Martin Goddard, Stephen Pettit, Clive Lewis, Anna Kydd, David Jenkins, Christopher J. Watson, Catherine Sudarshan, Pedro Catarino, Marie Findlay, Ayyaz Ali, Steven Tsui, and Stephen R .Large

"Editorial: Challenges, diligence, and a breakthrough in donation after circulatory death in heart transplantation," by Mandeep R. Mehra, MD

They appear in The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, volume 36, issue 12 (December 2017) published by Elsevier and are freely available.

To obtain additional information regarding this special issue or to arrange an interview with the authors, contact Mandeep R. Mehra, MD, at 1-617-732-8534 or mmehra@partners.org.

About The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation

The official publication of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation brings readers essential scholarly and timely information in the field of cardiopulmonary transplantation, mechanical and biological support of the failing heart, advanced lung disease (including pulmonary vascular disease), and cell replacement therapy. Importantly, the journal also serves as a medium of communication of pre-clinical sciences in all these rapidly expanding areas. http://www.jhltonline.org

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a global information analytics business that helps institutions and professionals progress science, advance healthcare and improve performance for the benefit of humanity. Elsevier provides digital solutions and tools in the areas of strategic research management, R&D performance, clinical decision support, and professional education; including ScienceDirect, Scopus, Scival, ClinicalKey and Sherpath. Elsevier publishes over 2,500 digitized journals, including The Lancet and Cell, more than 35,000 e-book titles and many iconic reference works, including Gray's Anatomy. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a global provider of information and analytics for professionals and business customers across industries. http://www.elsevier.com

Media contact

Elizabeth Perill, Executive Publisher, Surgery

Elsevier

1-212-633-3833

hmsmedia@elsevier.com
WASHINGTON, DC and NEW YORK, NY (December 4, 2017) -- If the Community Health Center Fund is not restored, millions of patients served by community health centers may lose access to crucial health care and up to 161,000 jobs could be lost in communities across the nation. That's the conclusion of an analysis produced by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative at the George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH).

The analysis is the first to look at what might happen nationwide if Congress fails to renew the Community Health Center Fund, which expired September 30th. In 2016, these health centers served 26 million people at nearly 10,000 locations.

"The current delays in funding have already caused major problems for community health centers, which are the backbone of the nation's safety net for medically underserved communities," says Leighton Ku, PhD, professor of health policy and management at Milken Institute SPH and lead author of the report. "Further delays or loss of funding could be devastating, not only to community health centers and their patients, but to workers and businesses across the country."

The analysis addresses the state-level economic and employment consequences that would occur if the Community Health Center Fund is not renewed. Here are some findings of the report:

Community health centers' ability to provide care to underserved patients will be seriously compromised if the $3.6 billion cut in funding is not immediately restored. Nine million patients, a third of those currently served, may lose care.

As many as 76,000 to 161,000 jobs could be lost nationwide in 2018. About two-fifths of jobs lost would be in health care, but the majority would be workers in other sectors, such as retail, construction and other fields.

State economies would be shortchanged by $7.4 to $15.6 billion in 2018.

Because health centers are located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories, substantial losses would occur in all areas and could be especially severe in states that did not expand Medicaid. Community health centers are not-for-profit organizations that operate at low margins; without restored funding they would be forced to downsize staff, reduce their purchasing of goods and services, curtail services or even shut down clinical sites.

"Health centers are important anchors in their communities, and serve as economic engines," said Feygele Jacobs, DrPH, President and CEO of the RCHN Community Health Foundation. "Unless policymakers act now to restore the Community Health Center Fund, we are putting our communities at risk."

The harm to patients and communities could be especially serious in areas hard hit by the recent hurricanes, like Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Displaced community health center patients with no health insurance in those places-and in other parts of the country-will have fewer options for health care, the report warns.

The brief, "State Economic and Employment Losses If Community Health Center Funding Is Not Restored," can be accessed here.

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The Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health Policy, established in 2003 and named after human rights and health center pioneers Drs. H. Jack Geiger and Count Gibson, is part of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University.

The RCHN Community Health Foundation is the only foundation in the U.S. dedicated solely to community health centers. The Foundation's gift to the Geiger Gibson program supports health center research and scholarship.

The Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University is the only school of public health in the nation's capital.
Discoveries in plant and protein biology have earned Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigators Joanne Chory and Peter Walter Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences.

The prizes, announced by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation on December 3, 2017, honor transformative advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life. Life sciences is one of three scientific areas recognized by the Foundation, along with fundamental physics and mathematics.

"The Breakthrough Prize was created to celebrate the achievements of scientists, physicists, and mathematicians, whose genius help us understand our world, and whose advances shape our future," said Mark Zuckerberg, a founder of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and Facebook.

Chory and Walter, who have both been HHMI investigators since 1997, are among five scientists honored for the life sciences awards; each will receive an award of $3 million. Chory, a plant biologist and geneticist at Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, was honored for discovering how plants optimize their growth, development, and cellular structure to transform sunlight into chemical energy.

Work in Chory's lab has led to the discovery of a steroid hormone, brassinolide, which controls plant development in response to light, and has identified the plant steroid receptor and signaling pathway. Her work exploring plant hormones' roles in growth and development may help scientists understand how these processes are regulated in other organisms, too. It could also promote advances in agriculture.

Walter, a biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco, was recognized with Kazutoshi Mori of Kyoto University for elucidating the unfolded protein response, a cellular quality-control system that detects disease-causing unfolded proteins and directs cells to take corrective measures.

Inside cells, newly made proteins pass through a maze-like structure called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), where they are folded into their final shapes before being shipped to precise destinations. The ER enforces strict quality control standards to ensure that defective or misfolded proteins don't slip through. The unfolded protein response senses when misfolded proteins accumulate and spurs the cell to make more ER. This response "makes life-or-death decisions for cells," Walter said. "If misfolded proteins in the ER persist, cells kill themselves."

In addition to Chory, Walter, and Mori, the winners of the 2018 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences are:

Don W. Cleveland, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at University of California, San Diego: For elucidating the molecular pathogenesis of a type of inherited ALS, including the role of glia in neurodegeneration, and for establishing antisense oligonucleotide therapy in animal models of ALS and Huntington disease.

Kim Nasmyth, University of Oxford: For elucidating the sophisticated mechanism that mediates the perilous separation of duplicated chromosomes during cell division and thereby prevents genetic diseases such as cancer.

Walter and Chory join a distinguished group of HHMI investigators who have won Breakthrough Prizes in previous years. Last year, the Foundation recognized Stephen Elledge of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Roel Nusse of Stanford University, and Huda Zoghbi of Baylor College of Medicine.

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The Breakthrough Prize Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to advancing breakthrough research, celebrating scientists, and generating excitement about the pursuit of science as a career. The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Yuri and Julia Milner.

This year's winners will be honored at a gala awards ceremony - known as the "Oscars of Science" - at NASA Ames in Palo Alto.

To see a timeline of previous winners: http://www.hhmi.org/news/chory-and-walter-awarded-breakthrough-prizes
Combining scientific knowledge with stories of everyday life, the book History of the Basel Institute for Immunology provides a unique look back at the history of an important research institution in Basel, Switzerland. Founded in 1969 by the scientist Niels K. Jerne and financed by Hoffmann-La Roche the institute was well known in the Basel area and worldwide until its shutdown in 2002. In total over 500 scientists worked and were trained at the institute during the over 30 years of its ex-istence. Institute scientists were awarded 27 important international awards in immunology, includ-ing 3 Nobel Prizes for Georges J.F. Kohler, Niels K. Jerne, and Susumu Tonegawa. Professor Ivan Lefkovits, the author of the book and a former "permanent member" of the institute, has chronicled not only the scientific milestones but also the social life and society around the institution. Lean management, great freedom of decision-making for researchers, and a high turnover of young sci-entists due to short-term contracts created an innovative working environment.

"I was fascinated by how it took just a few components, a good idea, an outstanding scientist, fi-nancial support and the right environment to create something this great. This story needed to be told and I was happy to do so," says Lefkovits. "The aim of this book is to describe a scientist's life, work success and failures - all that is needed to provide a comprehensive picture of modern sci-ence." The publication is dedicated to researchers interested in scientific development as well as to readers interested in the history of a scientific institute in Basel.

The History of the Basel Institute for Immunology is more than a simple history book. Hundreds of QR codes in the margins expand the print pages into an online database. By following the QR codes, the reader discovers a lot of additional details like photos of former employees, speakers' lists of symposia held, or the full letter announcing one of the Nobel Prizes. "Nowadays simple cita-tions are not enough to capture the history of an entire institution. With the QR codes we have the opportunity to display more sources and information," explains Lefkovits. And the database is still growing. Family and friends of the Basel Institute for Immunology are invited to upload their own material and share their memories. The book was created with the help and support of the Roche archive, especially in regard to pictures and videos.

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Please note that the QR codes will most likely be working with the newest smartphones or QR code reading apps.

Further information:

Book website with free chapter excerpts: http://www.karger.com/Book/Home/276903

Book website The Immune System - The Present Festschrift in Honor of Niels Kaj Jerne, on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday: http://www.karger.com/Book/Home/220155

To request a review copy or cover image please contact Sophie Saberi: s.saberi@karger.com.

About the Author

Ivan Lefkovits was a researcher at the Paul Ehrlich Institute in Frankfurt when Niels K. Jerne was its director. In 1969 Jerne asked Lefkovits to join him at the newly founded Institute for Immunology in Basel. He worked at the Basel Institute for Immunology from 1969 to 2002. After having left the institute, he led the proteomics group at the University Hospital Basel amongst others.

About Karger Publishers

Karger Publishers in Basel, Switzerland, is a globally active medical and scientific publishing com-pany. Independent and family-run in the fourth generation by Vice Chairwoman & Publisher Gabri-ella Karger and Chairman Thomas Karger, the company is dedicated to serving the information needs of the scientific community with publications of high-quality content, covering all fields of medical science. The publication program comprises 50 new books per year and 108 peer-reviewed journals with a growing number of open access publications. Karger content is published predominantly in English, with a strong focus on basic and clinical research, and is generally availa-ble online. S. Karger AG consists of the publishing company Karger Publishers (est. 1890) and the International Subscription Agency Karger Libri (est. 1960).

Further information about Karger Publishers: http://www.karger.com
"Two-dimensional materials" -- materials deposited in layers that are only a few atoms thick -- are promising for both high-performance electronics and flexible, transparent electronics that could be layered onto physical surfaces to make computing ubiquitous.

The best-known 2-D material is graphene, which is a form of carbon, but recently researchers have been investigating other 2-D materials, such as molybdenum disulfide, which have their own, distinct advantages.

Producing useful electronics, however, requires integrating multiple 2-D materials in the same plane, which is a tough challenge. In 2015, researchers at King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia developed a technique for depositing molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) next to tungsten diselenide (WSe2), with a very clean junction between the two materials. With a variation of the technique, researchers at Cornell University then found that they could induce long, straight wires of MoS2 -- only a few atoms in diameter-- to extend into the WSe2, while preserving the clean junction.

The researchers contacted Markus Buehler, the McAfee Professor of Engineering in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who specializes in atomic-level models of crack propagation, to see if his group could help explain this strange phenomenon.

In the latest issue of Nature Materials, the King Abdullah, Cornell, and MIT researchers team with colleagues at Academia Sinica, the Taiwanese national research academy, and Texas Tech University to describe both the material deposition method and the mechanism underlying the formation of the MoS2 nanowires, which the MIT researchers were able to model computationally.

"The manufacturing of new 2-D materials still remains a challenge," Buehler says. "The discovery of mechanisms by which certain desired material structures can be created is key to moving these materials toward applications. In this process, the joint work of simulation and experiment is critical to make progress, especially using molecular-level models of materials that enable new design directions."

Wired up

The ability to create long, thin MoS2 channels in WSe2 could have a number of applications, the researchers say.

"Based on [the materials'] electrical properties and optical properties, people are looking at using MoS2 and WSe2 for solar cells or for water splitting based on sunlight," says Gang Seob Jung, an MIT graduate student in civil and environmental engineering and a coauthor on the new paper. "Most of the interesting stuff happens at the interface. When you have not just the one interface -- if there are many nanowire interfaces -- it could improve the efficiency of a solar cell, even if it's quite random."

But the theoretical explanation of the molecular mechanism underlying the nanowires' formation also raises the hope that their formation could be controlled, to enable the assembly of atom-scale electronic components.

"Two-D materials, one of the most promising candidates for future electronics, ultimately need to beat silicon-based devices, which have achieved a few nanometers in size already," says Yimo Han, a Cornell graduate student in chemistry and first author on the paper. "Two-D materials are the thinnest in the vertical direction but still span a quite large area in the lateral dimensions. We made the thinnest dislocation-free channels in 2-D materials, which is a big step toward subnanometer electronic devices out of 2-D materials."

Propagating polygons

In a 2-D crystal, both MoS2 and WSe2 naturally arrange themselves into hexagons in which the constituent elements -- molybdenum and sulfur or tungsten and selenium -- alternate. Together, these hexagons produce a honeycomb pattern.

The Cornell researchers' fabrication technique preserves this honeycomb pattern across the junction between materials, a rare feat and one that's very useful for electronics applications. Their technique uses chemical vapor deposition, in which a substrate -- in this case, sapphire -- is exposed to gases carrying chemicals that react to produce the desired materials.

The natural sizes of the MoS2 and WSe2 hexagons are slightly different, however, so their integration puts a strain on both crystals, particularly near their junction. If a pair of WSe2 hexagons right at the MoS2 junction convert into a hexagon matched with a heptagon (a seven-sided polygon), it releases the strain.

This so-called 5|7 dislocation creates a site at which an MoS2 particle can attach itself. The resulting reaction inserts a molybdenum atom into the pentagon, producing a hexagon, and breaks the heptagon open. Sulfur atoms then attach to the heptagon to form another 5|7 dislocation. As this process repeats, the 5|7 dislocation moves deeper into WSe2 territory, with a nanowire extending behind it. The pattern in which the strain on the mismatched hexagons relaxes and recurs ensures that the dislocation progresses along a straight line.

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The research was supported by the Office of Naval Research and the Department of Defense.

Additional background

ARCHIVE: How to build better silk http://news.mit.edu/2017/how-build-better-silk-1109

ARCHIVE: Researchers develop flexible, stretchable photonic devices http://news.mit.edu/2017/researchers-develop-flexible-stretchable-photonic-devices-1108

ARCHIVE: Material could bring optical communication onto silicon chips http://news.mit.edu/2017/ultrathin-films-semiconductor-optical-communication-silicon-chips-1023

ARCHIVE: Electrons go superballistic http://news.mit.edu/2017/electrons-superballistic-viscous-state-0306
Malaria*1 is one of three major infectious diseases*2 affecting approximately 300 million people every year, accounting for about 500,000 deaths, but effective vaccine development has not been successful. Among malaria parasites infecting humans, Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum)*3 causes especially severe disease. In addition, acquired immunity to malaria is inefficient, even after repeated exposures to P. falciparum, but the immune regulatory mechanisms used by P. falciparum remain largely unclear. Therefore, malaria parasites appear to have a mechanism to escape our immune system.

A research group led by Fumiji Saito, Kouyuki Hirayasu, Hisashi Arase at Osaka University found that proteins called RIFIN expressed on erythrocytes infected with P. falciparum help the parasite to suppress the host immune response, causing severe malaria (Fig. 1). These findings are expected to contribute to the development of effective vaccines and therapeutic drugs against malaria.

Malaria parasites infect mainly erythrocytes in the host and proliferate within infected erythrocytes. The team found that proteins called RIFIN*4 expressed on P falciparum-infected erythrocytes bind to a host inhibitory receptor LILRB1*5. Furthermore, RIFIN suppresses the immune response to malaria, resulting in severe complications of malaria.

This research disclosed for the first time in the world that P. falciparum has a new mechanism to suppress the host immune response by using an inhibitory receptor, contributing to the pathogenesis of severe malaria. The results of this research are expected to greatly contribute to the development of therapeutic drug and vaccine against malaria.

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*1 Malaria

Infectious diseases caused by malaria parasites

*2 Three major infectious diseases

Malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS

*3 Plasmodium falciparum

Malaria parasites infecting humans, and causing the most severe complications of malaria

*4 RIFIN

RIFIN proteins are encoded by the rif (repetitive interspersed family) genes of P. falciparum. There are about 150 rif genes per parasite genome. However, their functions have been still unclear.

*5 LILRB1

One of the immune inhibitory receptors that suppress the activation of immune cells and prevent autoimmune responses by recognizing self-molecules like major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I. Human cytomegalovirus is also known to have a viral MHC class I-like molecule (UL18) that suppresses the immune response via LILRB1 for immune escape.

Title: Immune evasion of Plasmodium falciparum by RIFIN via inhibitory receptors

Journal: Nature

DOI: 10.1038/nature24994

Authors: Fumiji Saito*, Kouyuki Hirayasu*, Takeshi Satoh, Christian W. Wang, John Lusingu, Takao Arimori, Kyoko Shida, Nirianne Marie Q. Palacpac, Sawako Itagaki, Shiroh Iwanaga, Eizo Takashima, Takafumi Tsuboi, Masako Kohyama, Tadahiro Suenaga, Marco Colonna, Junichi Takagi, Thomas Lavstsen, Toshihiro Horii, Hisashi Arase

*These authors equally contributed to this work.
In March 2017, the Cardiovascular Surgery Group at Osaka University successfully implanted a left ventricular assist device with an internal power cable tunneled through the neck to the head in a patient who was ineligible for a cardiac transplantation, destination therapy (DT) trial, a Japan first. The patient was recently discharged.

Under the system to provide medical treatment to end-stage heart failure patients, a group that is ineligible for heart transplantation, in response to their requests, Osaka University Hospital gained the nation's first approval for its use as a medical device on February 20, 2017.

A group of researchers led by Prof. Yoshiki SAWA implanted a left ventricular assist device with an internal power cable tunneled through the neck to the head in a patient with severe kidney disease who was ineligible for destination therapy (DT) for cardiac transplantation.

Thus far, patients with previous diseases such as irreversible kidney disorder were ineligible for a heart transplant or destination therapy. In addition, in Japan, the use of left ventricular assist devices was approved as just a bridge to a heart transplant and was not covered by National Health Insurance. Using this system upon request from a patient, it has become possible to treat the patient ineligible for a heart transplant or destination therapy and use this technique for tunneling the internal power cable through the neck to the head, which is approved overseas, but not in Japan.

Compared to currently approved treatment using an electrical cord connected at an abdominal site, this new method has a low risk of developing infectious diseases due to the power cable behind the ear and is anticipated to improve patients' quality of life; for example, patients with this new device can soak in a bathtub as most Japanese people do when taking a bath. This method will provide many people with difficult disease such as severe heart failure with a new option of therapy with left ventricular assist devices.

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INDIANAPOLIS - Nearly half of the 13 million older adults hospitalized annually in the United States are unable to make their own medical decisions and rely on surrogates, usually close family members, to make decisions for them. However little is known about how these surrogates respond to the demands put upon them. A new study from the Indiana University Center for Aging Research and the Regenstrief Institute explores predictors and frequency of surrogate decision-maker distress and has found high levels of both anxiety and depression.

The researchers report that provision of high levels of emotional support to surrogates during their family member's hospitalization was associated with more effective decisions and lower surrogate anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress.

While emotional support (such as, "hospital staff really listened to me when we talked") was associated with decision quality, surprisingly provision of information ("I [surrogate] received as much detail about my loved one's care as I needed") was less important.

The researchers note that their study provides a detailed look at the relationship between clinician communication and psychological well-being of the family member. While this observational study does not prove causation, it raises the question of whether improved emotional support of surrogates could lead to both better decisions for the patient and better psychological outcomes for the surrogate.

"Family decision makers face emotional, ethical and communication challenges that differ from personal decision making. It is not enough to provide good information; family members also need emotional support when making difficult decisions," said corresponding author Alexia Torke, MD, the IU Center for Aging Research associate director, Regenstrief Institute investigator and IU School of Medicine associate professor of medicine, who led the study.

"As the population ages and more and more family members are thrust into the role of surrogate decision makers, appropriately supporting these family members will become a public health imperative," she said. Dr. Torke is the associate division chief of general internal medicine and geriatrics at IU School of Medicine and is also affiliated with the IU Health Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics and Daniel F. Evans Center for Spiritual and Religious Values in Healthcare.

A total of 364 patient-surrogate pairs from three hospitals were enrolled in the study. The average patient age was 82. Six out of ten patients were female and nearly three out of ten were African-American. Surrogates' average age was 58 and 71 percent were female. Two thirds of surrogates were the patient's adult children; 17 percent were the patient's spouse.

As many as 15 percent of the surrogate decision makers were found to suffer from clinically high levels of anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress even six to eight weeks after the family member's hospitalization. Some of the surrogate distress experienced during the acute illness resolved, but remained high for over 10 percent of surrogates. Surprisingly, anxiety and depression was not significantly higher for those making decisions for ICU patients than for other inpatients.

"Even though high quality information is associated with overall satisfaction with the hospital stay, information without emotional support may be harmful to surrogates," said Dr. Torke. "Improved emotional support could lead to both better decisions for the patient and better psychological outcomes for the surrogate. Physicians, nurses, chaplains and social workers can provide emotional support to family members. This study points to the fact that this support is very important."

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"Communication Quality Predicts Psychological Wellbeing and Satisfaction in Family Surrogates of Hospitalized Older Adults: An Observational Study" is published online in advance of print in Journal of General Internal Medicine. The study was funded by the Research in Palliative and End-of Life Communication and Training (RESPECT) Center at IUPUI and The National Institute on Aging (R01 AG044408).

In addition to Dr. Torke, authors of the study are Christopher M. Callahan, MD, and Greg A. Sachs, MD, of the IU Center for Aging Research, Regenstrief Institute and IU School of Medicine; Lucia D. Wocial, PhD, RN, of the Fairbanks Center for Medicine Ethics and IU School of Nursing; Paul R. Helft, MD, of Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center; Patrick O. Monahan, PhD, and James E. Slaven, MS, of IU School of Medicine; Kianna Montz, MS, Emily S. Burke, BA, and Lev Inger, BS of the IU Center for Aging Research and the Regenstrief Institute.
HOUSTON -- (Dec. 4, 2017) -- The first clinical study of a low-cost, hand-held jaundice detector invented by Rice University students couldn't have come at a better time for NEST360, an international team of scientists, doctors and global health experts preparing for a Dec. 11 competition for $100 million from the MacArthur Foundation. The money would allow the team to carry out its visionary plan to halve the number of newborn deaths in African hospitals within 10 years.

"As the clinical study of BiliSpec shows, saving newborn lives in sub-Saharan Africa is achievable," said NEST360's Rebecca Richards-Kortum, a Rice bioengineering professor and study co-author who has worked for more than a decade to bring effective, affordable neonatal technologies like BiliSpec to Africa. "It simply requires the right tools in the right hands at the right time."

The clinical study, which is based on tests in February and March on 68 patients at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, will appear this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

BiliSpec is a low-cost, battery-powered reader designed to diagnose jaundice by immediately quantifying serum bilirubin levels from a small drop of whole blood. Jaundice, which is caused by the buildup of bilirubin in the bloodstream, affects about 60 percent of newborns and can cause severe, untreatable brain damage or death if it is untreated. Standard jaundice tests require multiple expensive disposables and laboratory equipment like centrifuges or spectrophotometers that African hospitals typically cannot afford.

Babies in sub-Saharan Africa are about 100 times more likely to die of jaundice than are babies in the U.S., partly because doctors diagnosing jaundice in sub-Saharan Africa have little to go on other than what their eyes tell them.

"Clinicians in sub-Saharan Africa typically diagnose jaundice by looking at a child and gauging the color of their skin or the whites of their eyes," said study co-author Pelham Keahey, a Rice applied physics graduate student who worked alongside clinicians at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital to gather data for the study.

The study showed that BiliSpec has comparable accuracy to the more expensive laboratory tests found in high-resource settings. Each BiliSpec test costs about 5 cents and can be performed in about two minutes right at the patient's bedside. The price is important because it could bring testing for jaundice within reach for cash-strapped hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa.

"The next step is a larger, two-year follow-up study of efficacy and usability that will be conducted at five hospitals in Malawi," Keahey said. Rice won funding for the follow-up study in August from Saving Lives at Birth, a joint undertaking by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the governments of Norway, Canada and South Korea.

BiliSpec is one component of a 17-piece neonatal package called NEST, short for Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies, that is designed specifically for African hospitals.

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Study co-authors include graduate student Mathieu Simeral, undergraduate student Kristofer Schroder and postdoctoral research associate Meaghan Bond, all of Rice; Dr. Queen Dube and Prince Mtenthaonnga, both of the Department of Pediatrics at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital; and Robert Miros of 3rd Stone Design in San Rafael, Calif.

The study was supported by USAID.

VIDEO is available at:

https://youtu.be/kxKk3g2zdjc

High-resolution IMAGES are available for download at:

http://news.rice.edu/files/2017/11/1113_BILISPEC_f06grp-lg-1x7fvi9.jpg

CAPTION: Rice University students (from left) Mathieu Simeral, Pelham Keahey and Kristofer Schroder helped complete the first clinical study of BiliSpec, a low-cost, battery-powered reader designed to diagnose jaundice by immediately quantifying serum bilirubin levels from a small drop of whole blood. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

http://news.rice.edu/files/2017/11/1113_BILISPEC_f25bsp-lg-wphz24.jpg

CAPTION: BiliSpec is a low-cost, battery-powered reader designed to diagnose jaundice by immediately quantifying serum bilirubin levels from a small drop of whole blood. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

The DOI of the Science Advances paper is: 10.1073/pnas.1714020114

A copy of the paper will be available at: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1714020114

MacArthur Foundation 100&Change home page: https://www.100andchange.org/

Rice 360's 100&Change: https://www.macfound.org/Rice360

Richards-Kortum, Oden, Palamountain: All babies deserve a chance to live -- Houston Chronicle, Nov. 18, 2016 http://www.rice360.rice.edu/single-post/2016/11/18/Richards-Kortum-Oden-Palamountain-All-Babies-Deserve-a-Chance-to-Survive

NEST 360: http://www.rice360.rice.edu/nest

How good design can save 1 million babies per year -- Rice Magazine, Winter 2017: http://magazine.rice.edu/2017/01/breathe-easy-repeat/

Rice 360 home page: http://www.rice360.rice.edu/

Related stories from Rice:

NEST360 is finalist for $100 million MacArthur grant -- Sept. 19, 2017 http://news.rice.edu/2017/09/19/nest360-is-finalist-for-100-million-macarthur-grant/

Rice 360? neonatal technology meets development Grand Challenge -- Aug. 1, 2017 http://news.rice.edu/2017/08/01/rice-360%CB%9A-neonatal-technology-meets-development-grand-challenge/

Rice 360 wins key funding for low-cost syringe pump -- Aug. 17, 2016 http://news.rice.edu/2016/08/17/rice-360o-wins-key-funding-for-low-cost-syringe-pump-2/

Rice device gently warms hypothermic infants -- April 9, 2015 http://news.rice.edu/2015/04/09/rice-device-gently-warms-hypothermic-infants/

Rice, Malawi Polytechnic partner to create innovative technologies -- April 7, 2015 http://news.rice.edu/2015/04/07/rice-malawi-polytechnic-partner-to-create-innovative-technologies-2/

UNICEF report features Rice's 'Nursery of the Future' -- Nov. 19, 2014 http://news.rice.edu/2014/11/19/unicef-report-features-rices-nursery-of-the-future/

This release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews

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.
Bottom Line: The practice of a single surgeon supervising two surgeries in different operating rooms at the same time was associated with increased risk for complications after hip surgery, although the practice of overlapping surgery was uncommon.

Why The Research Is Interesting: Overlapping surgery has come under scrutiny recently with questions raised about the quality of the practice and issues over informed consent from patients when a surgeon supervises multiple procedures. Concerns about overlapping surgery were summarized in recent JAMA and JAMA Surgery articles and include inadequate informed patient consent, compromised patient safety, and medical ethics. There is little evidence to support or refute these concerns.

Who and When: Two large patient groups in Ontario, Canada: patients older than 60 who had hip fracture surgery from 2009 to 2014 and patients over 40 who had elective total hip replacement for arthritis from 2009 to 2015.

What: Hip surgery overlapping with another surgical procedure by more than 30 minutes and performed by the same primary attending surgeon (exposure); complications of infection, hip dislocation and surgical revision within one year (outcome). Patients who had hip surgery that overlapped with another procedure were compared with patients who had the same surgical procedure by the same surgeon without an overlapping procedure.

How (Study Design): A population-based study using administrative patient data. A population-based study describes characteristics of health and disease in one or more large populations, typically without detailed information about underlying causes.

Authors: Bheeshma Ravi, M.D., Ph.D., of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Canada, and coauthors

Results: While overlapping surgery was uncommon, it was associated with an increased risk for complications in hip surgery, especially in a nonelective procedure for hip fracture. The risk appeared to increase along with the duration of the surgical overlap.

Study Limitations: Overlapping hip fracture surgery was relatively uncommon so the results may not be generalizable to hospitals where overlapping surgical procedures are more common and not generalizable to other surgical procedures.

Study Conclusions: Findings support including the possibility that a surgeon will supervise overlapping surgeries as part of the informed patient consent process.

Related Material: The commentary, "Overlapping Surgery-Perspective From the Other Side of the Table," by Alan L. Zhang, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco

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For more details and to read the full study, please visit the For The Media website.

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.6835)

Editor's Note: The article contains funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information.

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Want to embed a link to this study in your story?: Links will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.6835
The team of researchers behind a landmark study on predatory journals has now outlined the first concrete steps that stakeholders can take to combat the growing influence of these journals. Their pioneering work is published in Nature Human Behavior.

The team from The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa suggests:

Researchers need to be educated on how to identify predatory journals and avoid submitting work to these unscrupulous outlets.

Research institutions need to provide incentives for their researchers to publish in legitimate journals.

Funding agencies need to audit where research they are funding is being published and disincentivize further submissions to predatory journals.

Patients and participants need to apply pressure to other stakeholders to ensure clinical studies are published in the best possible outlets; they can also help identify publications in predatory journals that support 'fake' science.

"Predatory journals are corrupting science," said Dr. David Moher, senior author of the paper. "Relevant policies and actions need to be taken by funders and institutions to fight them." Dr. Moher is a senior scientist at The Ottawa Hospital and founder of the Hospital's Centre for Journalology , which studies the science of publication. He is also a professor at the University of Ottawa.

"Predatory journals will remain problematic unless all stakeholder take specific, coordinated actions against them, some of which we have proposed," said Larissa Shamseer, a PhD student at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa and co-author of the study. "Better monitoring of the system of scholarly publishing is needed."

"Data from millions of patients is being lost in predatory journals," said Dr. Manoj Lalu, associate scientist and anesthesiologist at The Ottawa Hospital, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa and co-author of the study. "Patient advocacy groups, as well as patient organizations that fund research need to be aware of this massive problem. Policies need to be developed and enforced to fight the growing problem of predatory journals."

The Centre for Journalology is a world-leader in understanding the importance of helping researchers publish their results transparently and avoid predatory journals. The Centre includes a full-time Publications Officer who provides training and consultations to researchers at The Ottawa Hospital.

"It can be difficult for researchers to stay up to date on publication best practices as the publishing landscape changes rapidly," said Dr. Kelly Cobey, Publications Officer at The Ottawa Hospital, adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa and co-author of the study. "Institutions need to have support systems in place to guide their researchers in responsible publishing."

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The team has also developed the following resources to help researchers with this issue:

Distinguishing features of predatory journals BMC Medicine



Characteristics of predatory journal invitations to submit BMC Medicine

Full reference: "How stakeholders can respond to the rise of predatory journals" is published in the December 4, 2017 edition of Nature Human Behavior by Manoj Lalu, Larissa Shamseer, Kelly Cobey, and David Moher. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0257-4

What are predatory journals and why are they a problem?

Largely unknown a decade ago, illegitimate or predatory journal journals collectively publish more than 400,000 studies each year. These journals offer to rapidly publish research findings, at a lower cost than legitimate journals, but do not provide quality controls such as peer-review. Predatory journals are also difficult to search, meaning that health-care providers and researchers can rarely learn from the data in these journals.

Recently, a landmark investigation from The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa, published in Nature, demonstrated that contrary to popular belief, a majority of papers in suspected biomedical predatory journals (57 percent) are from high or upper middle income countries, with many coming from prestigious institutions. In addition, tax-payer supported bodies such as the National Institutes of Health have funded a significant number of studies in these journals. Over 2 million patients participated and 8000 animals were used in the papers that were investigated.

The Ottawa Hospital: Inspired by research. Driven by compassion

The Ottawa Hospital is one of Canada's largest learning and research hospitals with over 1,100 beds, approximately 12,000 staff and an annual budget of over $1.2 billion. Our focus on research and learning helps us develop new and innovative ways to treat patients and improve care. We engage the community at all levels to support our vision for better patient care. See http://www.ohri.ca for more information about research at The Ottawa Hospital.

University of Ottawa: --A crossroads of cultures and ideas The University of Ottawa is home to over 50,000 students, faculty and staff, who live, work and study in both French and English. We are one of Canada's top 10 research universities--our professors and researchers explore new approaches to today's challenges. One of a handful of Canadian universities ranked among the top 200 in the world, we attract exceptional thinkers and welcome diverse perspectives from across the globe. http://www.uottawa.ca

Media Contact

Jennifer Ganton

Director, Communications and Public Relations

Ottawa Hospital Research Institute

Office: 613-798-5555 x 73325

Cell: 613-614-5253

jganton@ohri.ca

@OttawaHospital
The goal of this new development, presented at the ninth Conference on Railway Innovation, is to be able to recognize the good condition of train track elements in images taken by drones. The drones fly over the railroad corridor by means of new image recognition software created by SigmaRail in collaboration with the research group at the UC3M Intelligent Systems Laboratory.

Afterwards this information is integrated in SigmaQ, a platform that permits accessing the digitalized corridor. "It is like a kind of Google Maps for railroads that allows the geolocation of trains on the tracks," said Mario Fernandez Marin, one of the founders of SigmaRail. "For a train that travels at 300 kilometers an hour, it is very important to know whether a signal, a sign or a curve is 15 meters ahead or behind," he added. This system also detects possible incidences or obstructions on the tracks.

To be able to recognize the elements installed in the railroad corridor, it is necessary to manage a large quantity of information. For example, according to the company, a 20-minute flight for each drone entails 2 GB of data. If we consider that each unmanned drone operates for six hours a day, terabytes of data are generated every week. This is why processes that streamline and reduce costs are required. "The definition and refinement of our algorithm of image recognition permits automation of all these processes," said Norberto Gonzalez Diaz, another of the founders of SigmaRail.

This automation translates into a saving on costs and an increase in safety, for both users and workers. For example, workers will no longer need to access the railroad corridor to check the condition of the tracks, because the software would detect any modification.

This company was founded by three Spanish engineers who work abroad: one in Australia, one in Ivory Coast and one in England. "We decided to come to Spain to set up this project because we think it has a lot of potential," said a company spokesperson. In fact, they have already collaborated with multinational companies, and the company is the first to fly over the railroad corridor in Spain, thanks to a project with ADIF--Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias (Administrator of Railroad Infrastructures).

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SigmaRail participates in the ESA BIC Autonomous Region of Madrid-UC3M Node program, a company incubator project of the European Space Agency managed in Madrid by the madri+d Foundation with the support of the regional government. Its objective is to facilitate incentives for business projects and startups that use space technologies or develop applications based on the same to create new products and services. The Company Incubator of the UC3M Science Park is one of the four nodes that comprise the ESA BIC Autonomous Region of Madrid.
Trees in California communities are working overtime. From removing carbon dioxide and pollutants from the air, intercepting rainfall and increasing property values, California's 173.2 million city trees provide ecosystem services valued at $8.3 billion a year. However, according to a recent study, more benefits could be realized if the Golden State's urban forests didn't have the lowest canopy cover per capita in the nation.

"The structure, function and value of urban forests in California communities," recently published online in Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, reports that California's 109 square yards of city tree canopy per person lags behind other urban canopy-poor states, such as Nevada (110), Wyoming (146) and Montana (148). And there's no comparison with well-treed states, such as New Hampshire (1,514), Connecticut (1,214) or Alabama (1,182).

"There's no question that Californians are deriving significant benefits from their urban forests," said Greg McPherson, lead author of the study and a research forester with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station. "However, the fact remains that more can be done and will need to be done in light of the recent tree mortality epidemics plaguing some of our urban forests."

In southern California, for example, the invasive shot hole borer has killed thousands of city trees and poses a threat to 33 percent of the urban tree population in the region. More than 50 tree species there are reproductive hosts for the insect, making them vulnerable to the lethal fungus it transmits.

City tree population and species composition figures were generated through an analysis of 1,385 study plots located across the state. Costs and benefits of ecosystem services were derived through numerical models that factored in the tree's species, size and location across six climate zones within the state. Canopy cover estimates and state comparisons were calculated by analyzing aerial imagery from the 2012 National Agricultural Imagery Program.

"One of the factors driving the low per capita rating for California city trees could be the fact that 20 of the nation's 100 most densely populated cities are in California, meaning there's a higher volume of people in a confined space for trees," said Natalie van Doorn, study co-author and research urban ecologist with the Pacific Southwest Research Station. "California's arid summer climate also can suppress tree establishment and growth, which also could be a contributing factor for the results we observed."

Still, with about 236 million vacant tree sites within cities, van Doorn noted that Californians have ample room for new tree plantings.

"In fact, our study results are already being used by municipal and state agencies to identify priority areas for planting and tree conservation, as well as examining potential disparities in disadvantaged communities," she said.

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Headquartered in Albany, California, the Pacific Southwest Research Station is part of the U.S. Forest Service's Research and Development branch developing and communicating science needed to sustain forest ecosystems and other benefits to nature and society. Pacific Southwest Research Station scientists are engaged in research across a network of 14 experimental watersheds, ranges and forests and eight research facilities in California, Hawaii and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands. Research is organized into five research units: conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem function and health, fire and fuels, urban ecosystems and social dynamics, as well as Pacific Islands forestry.

For more information, visit fs.fed.us/psw.

USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender.
Prosecutors charged a former Nebraska State Penitentiary employee Friday with a felony, accusing her of sending an unauthorized letter to an inmate in October, according to court documents.

Aleasha Gutierrez, 27, of Lincoln, would face up to two years in prison if she's convicted of unlawful communication to a prisoner.

In an affidavit for her arrest, a Nebraska Department of Correctional Services investigator said Gutierrez began talking with the prisoner after he saw her crying at the prison one day and asked her about her personal life.

She wrote the letter to the inmate in mid-October, shortly before the inmate was paroled, the affidavit said.

Gutierrez had not been arrested as of Monday afternoon, but was wanted on a warrant.

She was hired in May as a corporal and fired by the department Oct. 23, spokeswoman Dawn-Renee Smith said.
The intensive, worldwide search for dark matter, the missing mass in the universe, has so far failed to find an abundance of dark, massive stars or scads of strange new weakly interacting particles, but a new candidate is slowly gaining followers and observational support.

Called SIMPs - strongly interacting massive particles - they were proposed three years ago by University of California, Berkeley theoretical physicist Hitoshi Murayama, a professor of physics and director of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) in Japan, and former UC Berkeley postdoc Yonit Hochberg, now at Hebrew University in Israel.

Murayama says that recent observations of a nearby galactic pile-up could be evidence for the existence of SIMPs, and he anticipates that future particle physics experiments will discover one of them.

Murayama discussed his latest theoretical ideas about SIMPs and how the colliding galaxies support the theory in an invited talk Dec. 4 at the 29th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in Cape Town, South Africa.

Astronomers have calculated that dark matter, while invisible, makes up about 85 percent of the mass of the universe. The solidest evidence for its existence is the motion of stars inside galaxies: Without an unseen blob of dark matter, galaxies would fly apart. In some galaxies, the visible stars are so rare that dark matter makes up 99.9 percent of the mass of the galaxy.

Theorists first thought that this invisible matter was just normal matter too dim to see: failed stars called brown dwarfs, burned-out stars or black holes. Yet so-called massive compact halo objects - MACHOs - eluded discovery, and earlier this year a survey of the Andromeda galaxy by the Subaru Telescope basically ruled out any significant undiscovered population of black holes. The researchers searched for black holes left over from the very early universe, so-called primordial black holes, by looking for sudden brightenings produced when they pass in front of background stars and act like a weak lens. They found exactly one - too few to contribute significantly to the mass of the galaxy.

"That study pretty much eliminated the possibility of MACHOs; I would say it is pretty much gone," Murayama said.

WIMPs -- weakly interacting massive particles -- have fared no better, despite being the focus of researchers' attention for several decades. They should be relatively large - about 100 times heavier than the proton - and interact so rarely with one another that they are termed "weakly" interacting. They were thought to interact more frequently with normal matter through gravity, helping to attract normal matter into clumps that grow into galaxies and eventually spawn stars.

SIMPs interact with themselves, but not others

SIMPs, like WIMPs and MACHOs, theoretically would have been produced in large quantities early in the history of the universe and since have cooled to the average cosmic temperature. But unlike WIMPs, SIMPs are theorized to interact strongly with themselves via gravity but very weakly with normal matter. One possibility proposed by Murayama is that a SIMP is a new combination of quarks, which are the fundamental components of particles like the proton and neutron, called baryons. Whereas protons and neutrons are composed of three quarks, a SIMP would be more like a pion in containing only two: a quark and an antiquark.

The SIMP would be smaller than a WIMP, with a size or cross section like that of an atomic nucleus, which implies there are more of them than there would be WIMPs. Larger numbers would mean that, despite their weak interaction with normal matter - primarily by scattering off of it, as opposed to merging with or decaying into normal matter - they would still leave a fingerprint on normal matter, Murayama said.

He sees such a fingerprint in four colliding galaxies within the Abell 3827 cluster, where, surprisingly, the dark matter appears to lag behind the visible matter. This could be explained, he said, by interactions between the dark matter in each galaxy that slows down the merger of dark matter but not that of normal matter, basically stars.

"One way to understand why the dark matter is lagging behind the luminous matter is that the dark matter particles actually have finite size, they scatter against each other, so when they want to move toward the rest of the system they get pushed back," Murayama said. "This would explain the observation. That is the kind of thing predicted by my theory of dark matter being a bound state of new kind of quarks."

SIMPs also overcome a major failing of WIMP theory: the ability to explain the distribution of dark matter in small galaxies.

"There has been this longstanding puzzle: If you look at dwarf galaxies, which are very small with rather few stars, they are really dominated by dark matter. And if you go through numerical simulations of how dark matter clumps together, they always predict that there is a huge concentration towards the center. A cusp," Murayama said. "But observations seem to suggest that concentration is flatter: a core instead of a cusp. The core/cusp problem has been considered one of the major issues with dark matter that doesn't interact other than by gravity. But if dark matter has a finite size, like a SIMP, the particles can go 'clink' and disperse themselves, and that would actually flatten out the mass profile toward the center. That is another piece of 'evidence' for this kind of theoretical idea."

Ongoing searches for WIMPs and axions

Ground-based experiments to look for SIMPs are being planned, mostly at accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, where physicists are always looking for unknown particles that fit new predictions. Another experiment at the planned International Linear Collider in Japan could also be used to look for SIMPs.

As Murayama and his colleagues refine the theory of SIMPs and look for ways to find them, the search for WIMPs continues. The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment in an underground mine in South Dakota has set stringent limits on what a WIMP can look like, and an upgraded experiment called LZ will push those limits further. Daniel McKinsey, a UC Berkeley professor of physics, is one of the co-spokespersons for this experiment, working closely with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where Murayama is a faculty senior scientist.

Physicists are also seeking other dark matter candidates that are not WIMPs. UC Berkeley faculty are involved in two experiments looking for a hypothetical particle called an axion, which may fit the requirements for dark matter. The Cosmic Axion Spin-Precession Experiment (CASPEr), led by Dmitry Budker, a professor emeritus of physics who is now at the University of Mainz in Germany, and theoretician Surjeet Rajendran, a UC Berkeley professor of physics, is planning to look for perturbations in nuclear spin caused by an axion field. Karl van Bibber, a professor of nuclear engineering, plays a key role in the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment - High Frequency (ADMX-HF), which seeks to detect axions inside a microwave cavity within a strong magnetic field as they convert to photons.

"Of course we shouldn't abandon looking for WIMPs," Murayama said, "but the experimental limits are getting really, really important. Once you get to the level of measurement, where we will be in the near future, even neutrinos end up being the background to the experiment, which is unimaginable."

Neutrinos interact so rarely with normal matter that an estimated 100 trillion fly through our bodies every second without our noticing, something that makes them extremely difficult to detect.

"The community consensus is kind of, we don't know how far we need to go, but at least we need to get down to this level," he added. "But because there are definitely no signs of WIMPs appearing, people are starting to think more broadly these days. Let's stop and think about it again."

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Murayama's research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Murayama is also collaborating with Eric Kuflik of Hebrew University, Tomer Volansky of Tel Aviv University and Jay Wacker of Quora Inc. in Mountain View, California, and Stanford University.
None of the techniques we use to offset worry have been shown to reduce the stress -- for the first time, a coping mechanism has been identified: Mindfulness meditation

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) - Popular music and cliches aren't the only evidence that the waiting is the hardest part. Research backs it up as well; waiting for potentially bad news can be at least as difficult as receiving the news.

try lots of things to mitigate the suffering that comes with waiting for exam scores, hospital test results, or the outcome of a job interview. They try to distract themselves. They try to stay positive. They brace for the worst.

Past research by UC Riverside "worry and waiting" expert Kate Sweeny has studied the effectiveness of those techniques. None of it works, her research has found. Those tactics not only fail to reduce distress - they can even backfire and make it worse.

But now, Sweeny's research finds something that can help: supplementing those ineffective strategies with "mindfulness" meditation. That is, focusing on the present using meditation.

In the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, research funded by the National Science Foundation asserts that mindfulness is a sort of antidote to the "curse" of waiting. That curse is a focus on the past or on the future, represented by questions such as "Why did I say that?" and "What if things don't go my way?"

"We try to predict our fate and regain a sense of certainty and control over our life," said Sweeny, who is an associate professor of psychology at UCR. "We know from lots of research that rumination (repetitive thoughts about the past) and worry (repetitive thoughts about the future) are quite unpleasant and even harmful to our health and well-being, so it's important to seek solutions to this painful form of mental time-travel."

Better to focus on the present, Sweeny said, and accept your thoughts and feelings as they arise rather than engage in tactics to avoid them. It means you'll process your emotions differently and - Sweeny argues - more effectively.

The study was performed using 150 California law students who had taken the bar exam and were awaiting the exam results. It takes four months after taking the exam before results are posted online. The students completed a series of questionnaires in that four-month waiting period.

There are few "waiting" scenarios more stressful than the potentially career-killing bar exam. The magnitude of the distress is represented in several sample statements Sweeny and her team collected. Among them:

I had a nightmare where I couldn't determine whether I had passed or failed the bar exam and I spent the entire dream trying to find out my results. I have these sort of bar exam nightmares once every couple weeks.

I got sick, like fever flu sick, and I think it's because my anxiety levels have slowly been building up to today!! I was constantly thinking and thinking about the results.

During the four-month waiting period, the students were asked to participate in a 15-minute audio-guided meditation session at least once a week.

Sweeny found the mindfulness meditation served to postpone the phenomenon of "bracing." Bracing is essentially preparing for the worst. Previous research by Sweeny and others shows bracing can be an effective technique for managing expectations, but its benefits erode when it occurs too early in the waiting process.

"Optimism feels good; it just does a poor job of preparing us for the blow of bad news," Sweeny said. "That's where bracing comes in. In a perfect world, we'd be optimistic as long as possible to get all the good feelings we can from assuming the best, and then we'd brace for the worst at the moment of truth to make sure we're prepared for bad news."

The benefits of mindfulness meditation have long been asserted, but Sweeny said this is the first research to demonstrate its effectiveness coping with waiting.

"We know that meditation is a great way to reduce everyday stress, but our study is the first to see if it also makes it easier to wait for personally significant news. This study is also one of the first to identify any strategy that helps people wait better, and it also shows that even brief and infrequent meditation can be helpful," Sweeny said.

Best of all, Sweeny said, the mindfulness tactic requires no training, no money, and minimal time and effort.

"Meditation isn't for everyone, but our study shows that you don't have to be a master meditater or go to a silent meditation retreat to benefit from mindfulness," she said. "Even 15 minutes once a week, which was the average amount of meditation practiced by our participants, was enough to ease the stress of waiting."

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Sweeny's research was funded by the National Science Foundation, and her collaborator on the project was Jennifer L. Howell, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Merced.
Five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health was awarded to the Delaware Center for Neuroscience Research

University of Delaware studies on the effects of traumatic stress in women and how connections in the brain help adults control their impulses are two of the projects supported by a new federal grant to the Delaware Center for Neuroscience Research.

The five-year, $10.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will support the continued work of the center, which is a partnership between the University of Delaware and Delaware State University (DSU), where it is housed.

The center was established in 2012 through a similar NIH grant to the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) at DSU, which is the lead institution. With that Phase I grant completed last year, the new funding for Phase II will continue to 2022.

Researchers at UD and DSU have worked on a variety of projects through the center, developing the state's capabilities in advanced brain imaging and training graduate students in neuroscience.

During the second phase of the grant, investigators expect to use non-invasive imaging techniques to explore brain function in living humans and laboratory animals.

"The overarching goal of our neuroscience center is to bring together and support neuroscientists working at multiple scales, from human subjects to rodent and invertebrate models, to improve our understanding of the dynamic function of the brain," said Melissa Harrington, DSU professor of biology and director of the Center for Neuroscience.

Jeffrey Rosen, professor of psychological and brain sciences at UD and co-principal investigator with Harrington of the grant, said the center will build on the success it's already had and expand its reach.

"Five years ago, our goal was to mentor young faculty [in the beginning stages of their research] and build interactions and collaborations," he said. "For Phase II, the focus is still on support for junior faculty but also on facilitating infrastructure development."

Funding in the second phase will help new faculty members prepare to pursue grant funding to establish their individual research programs, and will support the purchase of research instrumentation for UD's Center for Biomedical and Brain Imaging.

Investigators who will be part of Phase II are Michael Gitcho and Y. Hwan Kim, in DSU's Department of Biological Sciences, and Dayan Knox and Naomi Sadeh, in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at UD.

Knox conducts research on the effects of traumatic stress on women, who are more likely than men to develop anxiety disorders after exposure to such stress.

He uses a rat model--where the impact of stress tends to be the opposite from humans, with a stronger effect in males than females--to try to understand how different ovarian hormone cycles can confer resilience or susceptibility to stress.

Sadeh examines how the brain allows individuals to control their impulses in challenging situations, such as times of strong negative emotions and mental fatigue, when self-control can be difficult. Her research seeks to understand how different regions of the brain work together in networks to promote this self-control.

The results of the research, Sadeh said, could be used to pinpoint what goes wrong with these brain connections in cases of mental illness and harmful behavior such as violence and substance use.

At DSU, Kim is studying Parkinson's disease and working to develop potential combination therapies to treat it. Gitcho investigates how age, stress and changes in metabolism contribute to such diseases as Alzheimer's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

At an event this month celebrating the launch of Phase II, officials said the center is beneficial to researchers, students and the public.

"This NIH grant will allow our in-state institutions to continue their work at the Delaware Center for Neuroscience Research, and prepare the next generation of innovators, researchers and biomedical professionals," said Gov. John Carney. The two universities have "an impressive capacity for collaboration and innovation," he said.

U.S. Senator Tom Carper called the research critical. "Not only will this First State collaboration advance the study of the brain, but it will also attract talented students and scientists to our state," he said.

Overall, Knox said, the grant award is a win-win. "Investing resources in a state like Delaware will help fund the next best ideas in neuroscience," he said.

Earlier work at the neuroscience center

In 2012, Phase I established the Delaware Center for Neuroscience Research.

Over the next five years, it supported the projects of 13 investigators at the two universities and the renovation of a research facility at DSU. Some 85 journal articles were published by faculty affiliated with the center.

Also under Phase I, the two universities have established a mentoring program and an external advisory committee, and faculty members from both institutions have twice-yearly conferences and monthly meetings at which research is presented and critiqued, Rosen said.

In addition, he said, an agreement allows graduate students to take courses at either university--UD's focus is more on behavioral research while DSU's is more in the area of cell biology--expanding their educational opportunities.

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A research team at the University of Kent has established the first long-term cultivation system at a laboratory scale for the parasite Cryptosporidium, one of the world's worst and most common causes of diarrhea and death from diarrhea

A research team at the University of Kent has established the first long-term cultivation system at a laboratory scale for the parasite Cryptosporidium, one of the world's worst and most common causes of diarrhoea and death from diarrhoea.

Cryptosporidium causes the diarrhoeal disease Cryptosporidiosis, which is usually spread by contaminated water supplies. The important role of Cryptosporidium as a cause of diarrhoea has been established in recent years, and outbreaks feature regularly in news headlines. Cryptosporidium-caused diarrhoea is the second major cause of death from childhood diarrhoea. In addition, individuals with an impaired immune system are at great risk.

There are no treatments for Cryptosporidium and so far, research on it has been limited, because the parasite could not be cultivated at a laboratory scale. Research led by Dr Anastasios Tsaousis and Professor Martin Michaelis of the School of Biosciences has now established the first long-term cultivation system for Cryptosporidium parasites at a laboratory scale.

This new cultivation system will transform research on Cryptosporidium:

It will enable large-scale screening for anti-Cryptosporidium drugs

It will enable many laboratories all over the world to investigate the parasite.

It will enable the studying of the parasite biology in unprecedented detail.

It enables for the first time the long-term storage of the parasite.

It will dramatically reduce the number of animals needed for the investigation and production of the parasite. The team has already gained important new insights into the life cycle of the parasite.

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In addition to Dr Tsaousis and Professor Michaelis and their laboratory members, other scientists from the University of Kent have contributed to this research including Dr Jane Povey, Ian Brown, and Dr Wei-Feng Xue from the School of Biosciences and Dr Mark Price from the School of Physical Sciences.

The results are now published in the International Journal of Parasitology.

For further information or interview requests contact Sandy Fleming at the University of Kent Press Office.

Tel: 01227-823581/01634-888879

Email: S.Fleming@kent.ac.uk

News releases can also be found at http://www.kent.ac.uk/news

University of Kent on Twitter: http://twitter.com/UniKent

Note to editors

Established in 1965, the University of Kent - the UK's European university - now has almost 20,000 students across campuses or study centres at Canterbury, Medway, Tonbridge, Brussels, Paris, Athens and Rome.

It has been ranked 22nd in the Guardian University Guide 2018 and 25th in the Complete University Guide 2018, and in June 2017 was awarded a gold rating, the highest, in the UK Government's Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF).

In the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2015-16, it is in the top 10% of the world's leading universities for international outlook and 66th in its table of the most international universities in the world. The THE also ranked the University as 20th in its 'Table of Tables' 2016.

Kent is ranked 17th in the UK for research intensity (REF 2014). It has world-leading research in all subjects and 97% of its research is deemed by the REF to be of international quality.

In the National Student Survey 2016, Kent achieved the fourth highest score for overall student satisfaction, out of all publicly funded, multi-faculty universities.

Along with the universities of East Anglia and Essex, Kent is a member of the Eastern Arc Research Consortium (http://www.kent.ac.uk/about/partnerships/eastern-arc.html).

The University is worth 0.7 billion to the economy of the south east and supports more than 7,800 jobs in the region. Student off-campus spend contributes 293.3m and 2,532 full-time-equivalent jobs to those totals.

Kent has received two Queen's Anniversary prizes for Higher and Further Education.
An international team of scientists, led by the University of Leeds, has quantified the relationship between natural sources of particles in the atmosphere and climate change.

Their study, published today in Nature Geoscience, shows that the cooling effect of natural atmospheric particles is greater during warmer years and could therefore slightly reduce the amount that temperatures rise as a result of climate change.

Particles in the atmosphere can alter Earth's climate by absorbing or reflecting sunlight. These particles are often produced by human activities, such as from cars and industry, but there are also naturally occurring particles.

The team combined atmospheric measurements with a computer model to map the effects of two natural particle sources: smoke from forest fires and the gases emitted by trees that can stick together to form tiny particles.

Study lead author Dr Catherine Scott, from the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds, said: "Natural particles can alter the climate, but they are also strongly controlled by it.

"As the Earth warms, plants release more volatile gases from their leaves - these are the gases that, for example, give pine forests a piney smell. Once in the air these gases can form tiny particles. More particles in the atmosphere reflect away the Sun's energy, which helps to cool the planet.

"This cooling offsets some of the temperature rise and is known as a negative climate feedback. We can think of forests acting as giant air conditioners slightly reducing the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions."

Study co-author Dominick Spracklen, Professor of Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions at Leeds, said: "Overall the response of the climate to an initial warming is to amplify that warming, i.e., a positive feedback.

"This natural negative feedback might act to offset a small amount of warming due to climate change but it is not enough to counteract other strong positive feedbacks in the climate system. This means reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are still required to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

"Our research highlights the need for these complex interactions to be well represented in climate models. The latest generation of models being used for future climate projections include more detail about the way that the atmosphere and the land surface interact than ever before - but it's important that we can isolate the role that these processes are playing as the climate evolves."

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Further information

The research paper, "Substantial large-scale feedbacks between natural aerosols and climate", is published in Nature Geoscience 4th December 2017. (DOI: 10.1038/s41561-017-0020-5).

For additional information and to request interviews please contact Anna Harrison, Press Officer at the University of Leeds, on +44 (0)113 34 34196 or a.harrison@leeds.ac.uk

University of Leeds

The University of Leeds is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK, with more than 33,000 students from more than 150 different countries, and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities.

We are a top ten university for research and impact power in the UK, according to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, and are in the top 100 for academic reputation in the QS World University Rankings 2018. Additionally, the University was awarded a Gold rating by the Government's Teaching Excellence Framework in 2017, recognising its 'consistently outstanding' teaching and learning provision. Twenty-four of our academics have been awarded National Teaching Fellowships - more than any other institution in England, Northern Ireland and Wales - reflecting the excellence of our teaching. http://www.leeds.ac.uk
Researchers at Oxford University have discovered that peregrine falcons steer their attacks using the same control strategies as guided missiles.

The findings, which overturn previous assumptions that peregrines' aerial hunting follows simple geometric rules, could be applied to the design of small, visually guided drones that can take down other 'rogue' drones in settings such as airports or prisons.

The research, initially funded by the US Air Force Research Laboratory and published open access in the journal PNAS, may also give scientists greater insight into the pursuit behaviours of other predatory species - in the air, in water, or on the ground.

Principal investigator Professor Graham Taylor, of the Oxford Flight Group in Oxford University's Department of Zoology, said: 'Falcons are classic aerial predators, synonymous with agility and speed. Our GPS tracks and on-board videos show how peregrine falcons intercept moving targets that don't want to be caught. Remarkably, it turns out that they do this in a similar way to most guided missiles. Our next step is to apply this research to designing a new kind of visually guided drone, able to remove rogue drones safely from the vicinity of airports, prisons and other no-fly zones.'

The Oxford researchers used miniature GPS receivers to track peregrines attacking dummy targets thrown by a falconer or towed by a drone and were able to apply a mathematical simulation to these movements describing the dynamics of the guidance system used in intercepting the dummy prey.

The researchers collected on-board video giving a falcon's-eye view of the attacks and used this to back up their conclusions. Remarkably, they found that the terminal attack trajectories of peregrines follow the same law - known as proportional navigation (PN) - used by visually guided missiles, but with a tuning appropriate to their lower flight speed. This method does not require any information on a target's speed or distance, instead relying simply on information about the rotation of the attacker's line of sight to the target.

The researchers conclude that PN guidance optimised for low flight speeds could find use in small, visually guided drones designed to remove other drones from protected airspace. Recent publicity has revealed the growing problem of drones flying drugs and mobile phones into prisons, and of drones being flown in the vicinity of airports.

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Co-author Dr Caroline Brighton, from Oxford's Department of Zoology, said: 'We spent four field seasons flying falcons in the Welsh hills, working with an experienced falconer and a qualified drone pilot. It was very exciting to study these sleek, formidable aerial predators, and to watch them as they chased down our manoeuvring lure towed behind a small remote-controlled airplane - then, through our computer modelling, to reveal the secret of their attack strategy.'
Recently published research from the University of Southern Denmark and the Danish Cancer Society shows a connection between one of the most common medications for hypertension and skin cancer

Recently published research from The University of Southern Denmark and the Danish Cancer Society shows a connection between one of the most common medications for hypertension and skin cancer.

Once again, Danish researchers set their sights on antihypertensive medicine containing hydrochlorothiazide, in relation to an increased risk for skin cancer. The researchers have previously demonstrated that the medicine, which is one of the most commonly used drugs world-wide, can increase the risk of lip cancer.

In a new study, the researchers have identified another clear connection between the use of hypertension medicine and the chance of developing skin cancer. More specifically, this refers to drugs containing hydrochlorothiazide and squamous cell carcinoma.

Surprisingly high risk

The researchers have also looked at other commonly used hypertension medicines, but none of them increased the risk of skin cancer.

"We knew that hydrochlorothiazide made the skin more vulnerable to damage from the sun's UV rays, but what is new and also surprising is that long-term use of this blood pressure medicine leads to such a significant increase in the risk of skin cancer," says Anton Pottegard, Associate Professor, PhD, from the University of Southern Denmark, who is the initiator of the study.

The study, which is based on about 80,000 Danish cases of skin cancer, shows that the risk of developing skin cancer is up to seven times greater for users of medicine containing hydrochlorothiazide.

Risk of impairment

There are several types of skin cancer. And squamous cell carcinoma, which the blood pressure medicine is now associated with, can luckily be treated and has a very low mortality rate.

"However, both lip and skin cancer are typically treated with an operation that is associated with a certain risk of impairment as well as a small, but real, risk that skin cancer of the squamous cell type spreads," explains Anton Pottegard.

Hydrochlorothiazide is one of the most commonly used medicines to reduce blood pressure both in the US, where over ten million people use the drug annually, and in Western Europe. The side effects can therefore affect numerous people, and the researchers have calculated that about 10 percent of all Danish cases of squamous cell carcinoma may be caused by hydrochlorothiazide.

"You should not interrupt your treatment without first consulting your doctor. However, if you use hydrochlorothiazide at present, it may be a good idea to talk to your doctor to see if it is possible to choose a different medicine," says Anton Pottegard.

American cooperation

As part of the project, the Danish researchers partnered with Dr. Armand B. Cognetta Jr., Chief Division of Dermatology, Florida State University, who is the head of one of the largest treatment centres for skin cancer in the US. Dr. Cognetta has extensive experience in diagnosing and treating skin cancer patients in Florida, and he has noted that hydrochlorothiazide is suspiciously prevalent among his patients, particularly among so-called "catastrophic patients", who can have several hundred skin cancers each. He welcomes the new results.

"We have seen and followed many patients with different skin cancers where the only risk factor apart from exposure to sunlight seems to be hydrochlorothiazide. The combination of living and residing in sunny Florida while taking hydrochlorothiazide seems to be very serious and even life-threatening for some patients. Even though we knew that hydrochlorothiazide made you sensitive to the sun, the connection between this medicine and skin cancer has remained elusive. The study carried out by Pottegard and his colleagues will have great impact on skin cancer prevention and public health world-wide," he explains.

What now?

The researchers continue to work on studies that can shed additional light on the connection between hydrochlorothiazide and skin cancer. Furthermore, they have entered into a dialogue with relevant medical companies as well as the Danish Medicines Agency regarding their findings.

"The risk of skin cancer must, of course, be weighed against the fact that hydrochlorothiazide is an effective and otherwise safe treatment for most patients. Nevertheless, our results should lead to a reconsideration of the use of hydrochlorothiazide. Hopefully, with this study, we can contribute towards ensuring safer treatment of high blood pressure in the future," concludes Anton Pottegard.

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Facts:

About hydrochlorothiazide

Hydrochlorothiazide is a frequently used drug to treat hypertension, which is typically used in combination with other antihypertensive medicines. The drug was also previously used for water retention (oedema) and heart problems. Only medicines containing hydrochlorothiazide have been found to increase the risk of cancer. Certain other drugs contain "hydrochlor", which is not chemically related to hydrochlorothiazide and does not increase the risk of skin cancer.

Sunlight is harmful

When hydrochlorothiazide induces cancer, this is because hydrochlorothiazide belongs to a group of drugs with a so-called photosensitising effect. This means that hydrochlorothiazide enhances the harmful effects of sunlight in the skin and lips, and this can increase the risk of skin cancer.

Hydrochlorothiazide and skin cancer

Hydrochlorothiazide increased the risk of basal cell carcinoma, which is the least serious type of skin cancer, as well as of squamous cell carcinoma, which is more aggressive and in some cases manages to spread to other parts of the body. The risk of skin cancer increases the more hydrochlorothiazide you have taken throughout your lifetime, and the risk of squamous cell carcinoma was up to seven times greater for people who had taken hydrochlorothiazide in an amount corresponding to >10 years' use.

Collaboration of researchers

The new research was carried out in a collaboration between researchers from the University of Southern Denmark, the Danish Cancer Society, Odense University Hospital, Aarhus University Hospital, Copenhagen University, and Herlev-Gentofte Hospital. The project is funded by the Danish Cancer Society and the Danish Council for Independent Research.
December 4, 2017 - Incidental durotomy--small tears of the outer membrane of the spinal cord--are a common occurrence in spinal surgery, and may lead to litigation. Most malpractice cases associated with dural tear end in a ruling in favor of the surgeon, reports a study in the journal Spine, published by Wolters Kluwer.

But certain types of durotomy cases are more likely to be resolved in favor of the patient--especially when durotomy is detected late or causes more-severe injury, according to the new research. The lead author is Wesley M. Durand, ScB, a medical student at Brown University, Providence, R.I.

Durotomy in Malpractice Cases - What Factors Affect the Verdict?

In a search of three legal databases, the researchers identified 48 malpractice cases involving "incidental durotomy" during spinal surgery. Incidental durotomy refers to unintended tears or puncture of the dura mater: the tough outer membrane covering the spinal cord. Dural tears occur frequently during spinal surgery; when promptly recognized and repaired, they generally cause no long-term problems.

However, complications can ensue if the dural tear is not repaired, or if it reopens after surgery (dehiscence). The researchers evaluated the outcomes of malpractice cases involving incidental durotomy, and factors associated with which way the case was decided. All 48 cases were resolved by verdict or settlement.

The patients with incidental durotomy were 24 men and 24 women, average age 55 years. Allegations included the need for additional surgery, delayed diagnosis/treatment, and/or improper durotomy repair. Injury severity included weakness in about 60 percent of cases and paralysis, brain damage, or death in 20 percent.

Most cases--about 56 percent--resulted in a verdict in favor of the physician or surgeon (defendant). That included more than 80 percent of cases not involving neurologic complications, such as weakness or brain damage.

The remaining 44 percent of malpractice cases were settled or decided in favor of the patient or family (plaintiff). In cases involving a payment, the average amount was about $2.8 million (in 2016-adjusted dollars). Male plaintiffs were more likely to receive a favorable decision.

On its own, the need for further surgery to repair a dural tear did make it more likely that the patient would receive a favorable settlement or verdict. But a decision favoring the patient was more likely in cases with alleged delay in diagnosis/treatment, 62 percent; or improper repair, 73 percent.

The study helps to clarify the medicolegal aspects of durotomy-related malpractice verdicts and settlements. That's especially important because incidental durotomy is such a common--sometimes unavoidable--occurrence in spinal surgery.

The findings underscore that, from a legal standpoint, surgeons should not consider durotomy "an entirely benign event." Surgeons are more likely to prevail in cases where a dural tear is promptly recognized and treated, and when durotomy causes minor, non-neurological injuries. In contrast, a decision in favor of the patient is more likely if the durotomy goes unrecognized, results in more severe injuries, or reopens after repair. "These findings may be important for future tort reform," the researchers write.

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Click here to read "Medical Malpractice Claims Following Incidental Durotomy Due to Spinal Surgery."

DOI: 10.1097/BRS.0000000000002469

About Spine

Recognized internationally as the leading journal in its field, Spine (http://www.spinejournal.com) is an international, peer-reviewed, bi-weekly periodical that considers for publication original articles in the field of spine. It is the leading subspecialty journal for the treatment of spinal disorders. Only original papers are considered for publication with the understanding that they are contributed solely to Spine. According to the latest ISI Science Citation Impact Factor, Spine is the most frequently cited spinal deformity journal among general orthopaedic journals and subspecialty titles.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer N.V. (AEX: WKL) is a global leader in information services and solutions for professionals in the health, tax and accounting, risk and compliance, finance and legal sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with specialized technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2016 annual revenues of 4.3 billion. The company, headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands, serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries and employs 19,000 people worldwide.

Wolters Kluwer Health is a leading global provider of information and point of care solutions for the healthcare industry. For more information about our products and the organization, visit http://www.wolterskluwer.com/, follow @WKHealth or @Wolters_Kluwer on Twitter, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, or follow WoltersKluwerComms on YouTube.

For more information about Wolters Kluwer's solutions and organization, visit http://www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
The stampede came out of nowhere.

A whole herd of bison, headed toward a wagon train stopped to pick up supplies.

But the cowboys were ready.

Armed with pistols, rifles and shotguns, they moved with a marksman's grace, dropping a few of the charging bison and scaring off the rest.

No, it's not a scene out of a John Wayne movie. It's another re-enacted scenario at the "Shootout at Salt Creek" at the Nebraska Game and Parks Department education center near 44th and Superior streets.

Old West enthusiasts from around Nebraska meet at the range on the first Sunday of the month from October to April to shoot historical weapons in a friendly marksmanship competition.

The nearly 20 men who showed up Sunday played the part of an Old West gunslinger well.

Only guns designed before the year 1900 are allowed  Colt single-action pistols, Winchester rifles, double-barreled shotguns.

No sneakers either  everyone has to wear cowboy boots to match their wide-brimmed hats.

"I played cowboy when I was a little kid and I'm still doing that," said Lincoln resident Terry Lane Fitzgerald, who helps run the monthly competitions. "Only now I'm using real guns and real ammunition."

Each of the shooters, who meet in the morning and stay until "high noon," go by an alias that reflects their real-life background.

There's Platte Valley Kid, from Omaha, and Vino Maker, a winery owner from Raymond. Fitzgerald's alias was a little easier to select  his mother named him Terry Lane after a Texas ranger from a Zane Grey novel.

"Many say it's in an effort to avoid the authorities," joked Fitzgerald about the aliases.

Glen Bredthauer, who goes by Mesquite Ranger, comes in from Hastings for the monthly shootouts.

"We all grew up watching cowboys in the movies and on TV," Bredthauer said. "They were our heroes ... it brings everyone together."

Cowboy action shooting is one the fastest-growing shooting competitions in the world, according to Fitzgerald. In the United States, there are nearly 130,000 participants who meet at local clubs to shoot.

Players score points for how well they perform in the shooting scenarios, but the competition is usually just for bragging rights.

However, there are serious cowboy action shooting competitions on the regional, national and even worldwide level.

During the summer, participants in Nebraska will also meet at places around the state to shoot Old West guns.

But in the cold winter months, they drive to Lincoln to share their passion and stay in touch with the friends they've made.

"It's all about the fun and camaraderie in the end," said Bredthauer.
Monday, December 4, 2017

The American Marketing Association Baltimore Chapter (AMA Baltimore) is now accepting entries for its 33rd annual Marketing Excellence Awards. In-house and agency marketing teams who have conducted campaigns that show creativity, leadership and measurable results are invited to enter one or more of the 15 categories listed below. All organizations  large and small, for-profit and non-profit  in the AMA Baltimore chapter region of Maryland and south-central Pennsylvania are encouraged to share their proudest achievements of 2017 with the local marketing community.

The Marketing Excellence Awards is an exciting opportunity for area companies and agencies to receive recognition for their achievements of the past year, said Dov Hoffman, president of AMA Baltimore. Every year, we are always impressed with the quality and variety of the entries we receive, and we encourage marketing teams to share their stories with us.

Past winners include Acura, BGE, BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport, Carroll Hospice, Euler Hermes, Kiddie Academy, Maryland Auto Insurance, Maryland Health Benefit Exchange, Mindgrub and T. Rowe Price, among others.

Winners in each category, including an overall winner and first and second runners-up, will be selected based on a judging committee from the AMA New York Capital Region Chapter.

Categories:

Best Advertising Campaign

Best Branding Campaign

Best Collegiate Campaign

Best Digital Marketing Campaign

Best Direct Marketing Campaign

Best Email Marketing Campaign

Best Event Marketing Campaign

Best Integrated B2B Campaign

Best Integrated B2C Campaign

Best Integrated Non-Profit Campaign

Best Market Research Campaign

Best Marketing Technology Campaign

Best Public Relations Campaign

Best Social Media Campaign

Best Video Marketing Campaign

Entries are due January 12, 2018 and can be submitted via the entry form.

Awards will be presented at a gala reception on March 15, 2018 at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore Inner Harbor. For event sponsorship information, please contact Seth Geller at seth@amabaltimore.org.
By Other News

The little town of Linesville, located in northwestern Pennsylvania, hosted its annual lighted tractor parade Dec. 2. The event drew 52 entries and delighted an estimated crowd of 3,000 to 4,000 spectators. Lots of creativity in each of the entries, including the Tootsie Rolls that dropped out of the Gleaner combine auger. Enjoy some of the scenes from the parade in the slide show below.

(Photos by freelance photographer Megan Waddel.)

Linesville-parade-26 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) < > < > 1 View Linesville-parade-26 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 2 View Linesville-parade-39 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 3 View Linesville-parade-42 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 4 View Linesville-parade-48 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 5 View Linesville-parade-52 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 6 View Linesville-parade-60 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 7 View Linesville-parade-62 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 8 View Linesville-parade-65 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 9 View Linesville-parade-76 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 10 View Linesville-parade-78 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 11 View Linesville-parade-89 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 12 View Linesville-parade-90 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 13 View Linesville-parade-99 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 14 View Linesville-parade-103 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 15 View Linesville-parade-107 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 16 View Linesville-parade-112 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 17 View Linesville-parade-123 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy) 18 View Linesville-parade-24 Linesville, Pa., Lighted Tractor Parade, Dec. 2, 2017. (Photo by Megan Waddel for Farm and Dairy)
WOOSTER, Ohio  From novice shepherds to the experienced, and everything in between, the Buckeye Shepherds Symposium Dec. 2, in Wooster, hoped to have something for everyone, according to Roger High, executive director of the Ohio Sheep Improvement Association and the Ohio Sheep and Wool Program.

All eyes were on the center stage at the Shisler Conference Center at OARDC, Saturday afternoon, as awards were presented to farms, individuals and businesses who have made an impact on the Ohio sheep industry.

Master shepherds

Al Kin and his sons, Jim and Phil, proved they know a thing or two about raising quality sheep, as they were named the 2017 Charles Boyles Master Shepherd. Kin Brothers Corriedales, of Wyandot County, got its start as a 4-H project in the 1940s and includes a line of genetics that has influenced the Ohio sheep industry.

Along with their dedication to the breed, the Kins were also recognized for their service to their fellow sheep producers. During a video presentation announcing the award, friend of the family and fellow breeder Alex Wolf said the Kins, have always been good mentors of ours.

Wolf purchased a buck from the Kins which he said turned his own flock around. When it came time to show, the Kins were always willing to provide a helping hand to get Wolfs animals ready for the show.

High said what makes this award special is that it recognizes the entire family working together to make the farm a success. When you think of a family like the Kins, they are just really deserving of this award, he said.

Environmental stewardship

Dorsets and Daylilies Farm, owned by Jason and Kirsten Hatfield of Muskingum County, received the Environmental Stewardship Award. The farm was also named the Muskingum County Environmental Stewardship Award winner in 2016.

The Hatfields raise 150 head of registered Dorsets and have a flock of white Dorper and Dorper crosses. They also grow over 800 varieties of daylilies and are actively hybridizing daylilies of their own

Service to the sheep industry

Distinguished service awards were presented to individuals and businesses who have made a difference in the Ohio sheep industry.

Leah Amstutz served on the OSIA board of trustees for three terms and played a large role in the development of the revised OSIA Code of Regulations (approved in April 2013) and spearheaded the development of the OSIA LEAD Council during the dissolution of the Ohio Club Lamb Association.

Barnesville Livestock LLC, owned by Darryl Watson, was recognized for being one of the top sheep and lamb markets in the state and one of the largest markets in southeastern Ohio. Barnesville Livestock also opens its facilities for educational programs.

Roger Hunker, of Bellevue, Ohio, served on the OSWP board for nine years and is term-limited as of the end of 2017. His company BreedersWorld.com has been a major sponsor of the OSIA LEAD Council programs and activities.

The Friend of the Ohio Sheep Industry award was presented to Mike Dyer, a private coyote trapper who has been protecting flocks in eastern Ohio for decades. He also served as a speaker and educator at several workshops, including 2015 Ohio Sheep Day.

Youth awards

The Ralph Grimshaw Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Katie Frost of Fayette County.

Morgan Mazey, of Wood County, and Kierstyn Wood, of Wayne County, each received OSIA LEAD Council scholarships.

Jacob Wenner, of Delaware County, received the Dr. Jack Judy Memorial Scholarship Award.

Zack Parrott, of Morrow County, was recognized as the State FFA State Sheep Proficiency Award winner, and Brandon Zuercher, of Hancock County, was recognized for being the State 4-H Sheep Achievement Award winner.

Sessions

From 9 a.m.-4 p.m., producers had a full schedule of educational sessions and opportunities to network with producers across the state.

Break-out sessions included: novice and beginning sheep producer tracks; sheep reproduction to improve productivity including an afternoon session on artificial insemination; a marketing 101 targeting new ethnic and non-traditional markets; and a lamb cooking and cutting demonstration.

Young shepherds

New this year, a second day was added to the programing to incorporate the next generation of Ohio shepherds. The evening before the symposium, a Young Shepherds Program was held at Jakes Steakhouse in Wooster.

Christine Gelley, symposium planning committee member, said 19 young shepherds attended, ages ranging from 18-35, and listened to a panel of fellow young shepherds share their experiences in the sheep industry.

Gelley said decisions made within the organization have been primarily dominated by the older generation and there hasnt been an opportunity for the younger shepherds to jump in.

By having programs like the Young Shepherds College and the Young Shepherds Program, Gelleys hope is that more young producers will become active in the association and the sheep industry. Were trying to bridge that gap, she said.
News that dairy giant Muller are to slash the price paid to their farmers by 1.5p per litre has seen one farming union receive calls from angry farmers.

Muller has announced a January 2018 milk price decrease by 1.5p per litre to 29p.

The decline in price to its 700 Muller Direct suppliers comes amid a drop in the value of cream and butter in the UK over the last three months.

NFU Scotland said the scale of the price drop is "hugely disappointing "for Muller direct suppliers and could open the door for other milk processors to follow suit.

UK farming unions will now approach Muller with an urgent request for a joint face-to-face meeting in the next few days.

NFU Scotland Vice President Gary Mitchell said Muller has set an "appalling precedent", and farmers are now "left to pay the price".

At the first sign of cream and butter prices softening from what are historical highs, Muller has jumped at the opportunity to slash the price it pays to producers to shore up its own profits. Yet, when cream prices surged, it took Muller many months to return an extra 1.5p per litre to their suppliers, Mr Mitchell said.

Despite watching all dairy farmers in 2016 endure the lowest milk prices for a generation, Muller and others were slow to lift prices when the markets rose, arguing that their cautious approach was to avoid over production. Now, Muller has dropped the price like a stone at the first opportunity.

The reality is that November butter and cream prices of 4500 and 2100 per tonne respectively, while dipping from the highs of the summer, are still thousands of pounds per tonne higher than the trough seen in spring 2016.

'Walking away from dairy'.

Mr Mitchell said actions like that taken by Muller risks more farmers walking away from dairying.

NFU Scotlands Milk Policy Manager George Jamieson added the problems run deeper than this price cut. He said there has been a lack of "genuine collaboration" within the dairy supply chain for several years.

The problem is not just volatility and asymmetric pricing, but poor value transfer down the chain by retailers and processors. The good times for dairy farmers are neither long enough nor good enough to compensate for bad times, Mr Jamieson said.

NFUS is fully aware that we cant buck the market. Global supply and demand is out with our control and drives UK prices, but farm gate milk price should not be the safety valve for processors and end users to sustain their margins.

Given the way that Muller suppliers and its producer board have been ignored, there is an urgent need for them to consider the benefits of a properly constituted, professional Dairy Producer Organisation.

Many dairy farmers across Scotland, including all Muller producers, face a high cost winter where they are short of forage with soaring feed and bedding bills.

NFU Scotland said "no dairy farmer" will have seen their bank account recover from the dairy crisis in 2016.
A 1,200-strong signature letter from the veterinary industry has urged the government to enshrine the notion that animals are sentient into British law.

The 1,194 individual veterinary surgeons, veterinary nurses and veterinary students said there was no question that animals were sentient, in other words that they can feel emotions such as pain, hunger and fear.

The letter calls for the principle of Article 13 to be explicitly enshrined in UK legislation post-Brexit, which has been led by the British Veterinary Association (BVA) and British Veterinary Nursing Association (BVNA).

It urges the UK government to ensure there is a duty on the state to have due regard for animal welfare in the development and implementation of policy, as Article 13 of the Lisbon Treaty sets out.

Under the UKs Animal Welfare Acts, accountability for the treatment of an animal focuses on the animal keeper, but not on the state.

The coordinated letter from the veterinary professions follows widespread media attention after a House of Commons debate, wherein MPs voted down an amendment to include the principles set out in Article 13, which also states animals are sentient, in the EU (Withdrawal) Bill.

Since Article 13 has its origins in a treaty rather than a regulation, it did not qualify to automatically transfer into UK law as part of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill.

The widespread media attention triggered Defra Secretary Michael Gove to confirm that the UK government will continue to recognise animal sentience after the UK leaves the EU. He said the UK will become a world leader in the care and protection of animals.

'Lost in the noise'

The signatories of the letter span all areas of veterinary work including small and large animal practice, research, government and academia as well as including former UK Deputy Chief Veterinary Officers, Officers of BVA specialist divisions and the Chief Veterinary Officer of SSPCA, amongst others.

BVA Senior Vice President Gudrun Ravetz said: The public and professional response to the Article 13 vote was astonishing, but there was much misunderstanding borne from sensationalist headlines that suggested the MPs who voted the amendment down do not believe in animal sentience. The real crux of the debate got lost in this noise.

BVA supports the principle of Article 13, since it not only recognises that animals are sentient, but importantly puts a duty on the state to have due regard for animal welfare in the development and implementation of policy.

We exist to represent the views of our members, enabling one strong evidence-based voice that will be heard at national level, in government and the media  and thats exactly what this letter does, reaching more than 1.2 million people.

The BVA said it will continue to press the government to explain how and when the principle laid down in Article 13 of the Lisbon Treaty will be enshrined in UK law.
The overarching theme among 16 new agricultural studies released today is the adoption of change in the farming industry and the focus on long-term thinking.

A total of 16 Nuffield Scholars, a mixture of progressive farmers and industry professionals, were presented at this years annual Nuffield conference held in Bristol.

Following 18-months of travel and study, they individually reported on their studies, and presented their findings to enhance their respective sectors.

Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust award individuals each year with the opportunity to research topics of interest in either farming, food, horticulture or rural industries.

The conference is seen as an opportunity to hear about the challenges faced by global counterparts in the agricultural industry, and find out how theyre overcoming them.

These ideas are then brought back to the UK. The scholars said that positive change will only come about if these ideas are communicated to the wider UK industry.

All of the scholars brought back practical solutions from their global travels and many presented the latest innovations in technology, says Mike Vacher, Nuffield director.

An impressive array of subjects were covered during the two-day event with everything from social farming and food poverty, to farming in the media and blackgrass control, all discussed and debated.

Food poverty

Just one of the highlights of the event was Rob Mercers presentation on reducing food poverty in the UK.

He noted some worrying statistics, explaining that 8 million people in the UK alone are suffering from food insecurity.

Mr Mercer went on to explain that through his Scholarship, he has set up a charity, providing free, fresh food to local primary school families in deprived areas.

And while this is currently only benefiting a few communities, he hopes to gain support to roll out the initiative more widely.

Another insightful presentation came from Ben Taylor-Davies, whose Scholarship saw him set out in search of a sustainable system to tackle blackgrass.

He mentioned that in the last 20 years the cost of controlling the aggressive weed has risen by over 800%, and showcased how his own System BEN, comprising of block rotation and cultivation, can enhance natural selection and eventually neutralise blackgrass.

Farming in the mainstream media

Rural journalist and producer, Anna Jones, presented her ideas to improve disconnect between agriculture and the general public, addressing the issue of lack of trust between many farmers and the mainstream media.

She said that the public perception and narrative around agriculture is dominated by politics, and drowning out the individual farm-level messages.

To help resolve this issue, one of her key recommendations was for more farmers to openly speak out, championing their own systems with passion and without politics, on topical industry issues.

In addition to the presentations, the new cohort of 2018 Scholars were officially presented with their Scholarships by the Duke of Gloucester, patron of the Scholarship Trust, before they embark on their travels in the New Year.
A farmer came to the rescue on a popular Newquay beach after a driver got stuck on the sand in an attempt to turn around.

The elderly driver had gone onto Great Western Beach in Newquay, Cornwall in order to turn around, but was unable to get very far in the soft sand.

A local farmer arrived in the nick of time as the tide was lapping at the wheels of the car.

The Newquay Coastguard were also on the scene, and took the drivers elderly passengers, who were cold and had medical conditions, to a local hotel.

(Photo: Newquay Coastguard)

The Coastguard's role was to ensure no members of the public were at risk, and not to assist recovery of the car.

A spokesperson for Newquay Coastguard said: The team was paged at 2.22pm on Saturday, December 2, to a report of a vehicle stuck in the sand at Great Western Beach in Newquay.

The teams role was to ensure no members of the public were at risk, not to assist recovery of the car.

On arrival the team made sure everyone was safe and conveyed the drivers elderly passengers, who were cold and had medical conditions, to a local hotel where they were safe and warm.

The driver had gone onto the beach in order to turn around, but had got stuck in the soft sand.

He was put in touch with a local farmer and arrangements were made to tow his car out. The farmer arrived in the nick of time.

We remind people again, please do not drive onto beaches unless you are in a suitable vehicle and know it is safe.

In any coastal emergency, dial 999 and ask for the Coastguard.
Farmers took to social media on 1 December to showcase the best of British turkeys this Christmas.

Messages, photos and videos were posted on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using #BuyMyTurkey to remind the public to start thinking about the centrepiece of the Christmas dinner table  a traditional British farm fresh turkey.

The public were urged to support British farmers, and to choose a bird that has been reared locally.

Farmers urged the public to make it a British farm fresh turkey this Christmas (Photo: NFU)

Radio DJ Chris Moyles lent his support to #BuyMyTurkey live on air on his breakfast show to over one million listeners.

NFU poultry board member and turkey farmer Mike Bailey said: Turkey producers across the country are preparing for the busy festive period so millions of us can tuck into a traditional Christmas dinner.

Buying your turkey directly from the farm where it has been produced not only benefits a local farming business but provides you with a great tasting bird reared to the highest standards.

(Photo: NFU)

If youre going to the local supermarket then look carefully at the country of origin labelling and keep an eye out for the Red Tractor logo, which also provides a guarantee of traceability, environmental protection, food safety and hygiene and welfare standards.

Were hoping everyone  farmers, NFU members and the public - will get involved on social media today using the hashtag #BuyMyTurkey and share messages and even make a short video of why buying a local British turkey is important. It really is a great way to Back British Farming this Christmas.

Red Tractor logo

The NFU said the initiative was a "great way" to back British farming this Christmas. The farming union said that when shopping, consumers should look carefully at the country of origin labelling, and keep an eye out for the Red Tractor logo.

The Union Jack flag helps ensure consumers that they are purchasing fully-traceable food produced on British farms.

Minette Batters, NFU Deputy President, said: When shopping in retail stores we are encouraging consumers to get behind our campaign to support British farming.

One of the easiest ways this can be achieved is in buying produce displaying the Red Tractor logo, which also provides a guarantee of traceability, environmental protection, food safety and hygiene and welfare standards.

The festive season is a time when British produce such as roast potatoes, pigs in blankets and traditional turkey are treasured. And while Christmas dinner is the cornerstone of Christmas Day, British agriculture has a far wider part to play this time of year with the provision of British trees, plants and beers, to name but a few.
Christine Middlemiss has been appointed as the UKs next Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO), the government has announced.

She will take over from Nigel Gibbens who is stepping down at the end of February 2018 following 10 years in the post.

Ms Middlemiss will join Defra from her current high profile position in Australia, where she has been working as the CVO in New South Wales since August 2016. During her time there she led major improvements to biosecurity across many farming sectors.

She comes from a farming family in the south of Scotland, with a background in beef cattle and sheep.

Ms Middlemiss will be returning to Defra where she was Deputy Director for Animal Traceability and Public Health in 2016.

She is an experienced veterinarian and worked for a number of years in private practice in Scotland and the north of England, prior to joining the Animal Health agency (now part of the Animal and Plant Health Agency) in 2008 as a Divisional Veterinary Manager in Scotland.

During a decade as Chief Vet, Nigel Gibbens drove improvements in animal welfare both at a national and international level, and Ms Middlemiss will now build on that work.

Speaking about her appointment, Christine Middlemiss said: "I am delighted to have been appointed and it will be a privilege to lead my veterinary colleagues to support our farming and food industry in this hugely important role.

"I am very much looking forward to working again with the team at Defra, its agencies, the devolved administrations and all the individuals and groups which will contribute to meet future challenges across animal health and welfare.

"The UK Government has made no secret it wants to cement its place as a world-leader on animal welfare as they leave the European Union, and Im delighted to have an opportunity to play a part in that."

Welcoming the appointment, the governments Chief Veterinary Officer, Nigel Gibbens, said: "I would like to congratulate Christine on her success against a strong field of candidates and I am certain she will be a great addition to the department.

"Her breadth of experience from work within Government and in the private sector will enable her to provide excellent veterinary leadership to the Defra group to deliver governments ongoing commitment to maintaining our high animal health and welfare standards and to represent the interests of the whole of the UK internationally."

Christine will take up her new role as CVO for the UK on the 1 March 2018.
The decision to extend two derogations for organic pig and poultry for a further 12 months will provide "much-needed certainty" for the industry, farming organisations have said.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) and National Pig Association (NPA) said on Monday (4 December) they were "successful" in previous calls to the European Commission to extend the permissions.

Due to tight supplies of organic proteins, the extension allows farmers to continue feeding their pig and poultry up to 5% non-organic proteins.

The derogation also allows for farmers to buy in pullets of up to 18 weeks old, where organically-reared pullets are not available, provided they have been managed under the organic feed and veterinary standard.

NFU Deputy President Minette Batters said it is "incredibly important" for the organic pig and poultry industry that these derogations were extended, to provide certainty to producers.

The NFU, along with industry, called for these derogations to be extended and it is fantastic news that the European Commission has listened to our concerns, Ms Batters explained.

A failure to extend would not only have meant severe consequences to the organic sector, such as being unable to source the right nutrition, but could have also resulted in major welfare concerns.

While the extension does provide short-term certainty for producers, the long-term future of the industry is still up in the air.

The NFU will continue to work with Defra, the European Commission and the UK organic industry to further understand the long-term future, particularly regarding incoming organic EU regulation which does not allow producers to buy in pullets up to 18 weeks old.

NPA chief executive Zoe Davies said: This is a great result for organic pig producers and one that will ensure organic production can continue for the time being.

However, we will need to seek a more comprehensive and longer-term agreement shortly to avoid this situation reoccurring in 12 months time.
Summary

Company Announcement Date: December 03, 2017 FDA Publish Date: December 29, 2017 Product Type: Food & Beverages

Food & Beverage Safety Reason for Announcement: Recall Reason Description Potential mold contamination - Talaromyces penicillium Company Name: Kroger Company Brand Name: Brand Name(s) Comforts Product Description: Product Description Comforts FOR BABY Purified Water with Fluoride

Government Agency Partner Announcement

On this page:

What is the Problem and What is Being Done About It?

What are the Symptoms of Exposure to Molds and to Talaromyces penicillium?

Who is at Risk?

What Specific Products are in Question?

What Do Retails Need To Do?

What Do Consumers Need To Do?

Who Should be Contacted?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is alerting the public to a recall of Comforts FOR BABY Purified Water with Fluoride with certain sell by dates, sold by Kroger in various affiliated stores, due to potential mold contamination.

What is the Problem and What is Being Done About It?

The Kroger Company has recalled Comforts FOR BABY Purified Water with Fluoride Added 1 GAL (3.78 L) with sell by dates from 4/26/2018 to 10/10/2018, after receiving complaints about mold in the product. Testing by Kroger has identified the mold as Talaromyces penicillium. The water is sold in clear containers, but the mold may not be visible with the naked eye.

The FDA is issuing this consumer alert to reach parents and caregivers who may have bought the product, which is intended for infants.

The products were distributed to Kroger stores, including Food 4 Less, Jay C, Jay C Food Plus, Kroger, Kroger Marketplace, Owens, Payless Super Market, and Ruler stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The Kroger Company has instructed its stores to remove the recalled products.

The recalled products are labeled with the UPC Code 0 41260 37597 2 and the plant code 51-4140. The labels also state DISTRIBUTED BY THE KROGER CO, CINCINNATI, OHIO 45202.

The recalled products have sell by dates from 4/26/2018  10/10/2018.

If you have purchased this water return it to the store for a refund.

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What are the Symptoms of Exposure to Molds and to Talaromyces penicillium?

In general, inhaling or touching mold or mold spores may cause allergic reactions in some people. Allergic responses include hay fever-type symptoms, such as sneezing, runny nose, red eyes, and skin rash. Allergic reactions to molds are common and can happen immediately after touching or inhaling mold spores, or later. Molds can also cause asthma attacks in people with asthma who are also allergic to mold. Molds can irritate the eyes, skin, nose, throat, and lungs, even in people who arent allergic to them.

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Who is at Risk?

Drinking water or other products contaminated with Talaromyces penicillium may affect infants who have HIV or other conditions that cause immune compromise. Consult your health care professional if you believe your infant may be affected.

What Specific Products are in Question?

Comforts FOR BABY Purified Water with Fluoride Added

1 GAL (3.78 L)

UPC Code: 0 41260 37597 2

Plant Code: 514140

DISTRIBUTED BY THE KROGER CO., CINCINNATI, OHIO 45202

The recalled products have sell by dates from 4/26/2018  10/10/2018.

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What Do Retailers Need To Do?

These products are sold exclusively by Kroger and affiliated stores, which have been instructed by Kroger Company to remove the products from shelves.

What Do Consumers Need To Do?

If you bought this product, do not use it, return it to the store for a refund.

Drinking water or other products contaminated with Talaromyces penicillium may affect infants who have HIV or other conditions that cause immune compromise. These individuals may become infected and this may lead to serious health consequences. Consult your health care professional if you believe your infant may be affected.

Who Should be Contacted?

The FDA encourages consumers with questions about food safety to call 1-888-SAFEFOOD Monday through Friday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern time, or to consult the fda.gov website: http://www.fda.gov.

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Consumers

1-888-SAFEFOOD
Shashi Kapoor Never Wanted To Become An Actor

"I m a very lazy actor. My coming into films was kind of thrust upon me, not something I had wanted to do. Being thrust upon me, I did my duty and I worked."

He Never Used To Work On Sundays & Holidays

"I was on time, very disciplined but did not work Sundays, took six weeks off from work to be with my family. I did upset a lot of producers and directors, including my brother, Mr. Raj Kapoor, when I did Satyam Shivam Sundaram... I refused to work on Sundays, Christmas, New Year, Diwali and Holi. In the Hindi film world, there is no such thing as a holiday."

Shashi Was Not The Original Choice For Kalyug

"I got some of the best roles, like the one in Kalyug - which was a very difficult role and film - was thrust upon me. It was a role for Naseeruddin Shah. I came upon it by fluke."

A Shocking Confession

"My mum used to call me Fluky because I was unplanned. She had already had four boys (two between Raj ji and Shammi died young), and then my mum and my dad always prayed for a girl. In 1933, my sister Urmilla was born, that was a family and my parents were quite happy.

Unbelievable!

"Suddenly, after five years, my mother discovered that she was expecting and it was very embarrassing for her. She tried her best to get rid of me. Of course those were old times and there wasn't anything like abortion. She used to tell me that she would keep falling off bicycles, down steps, have quinine, but Shashi Kapoor was stubborn. There was a future. So I'm a fluke actor, a fluke star and a fluke person."

His Cute Revelation About Rishi Kapoor

"When Rishi was two to three years old, whenever he got hit by his mama, he would go straight in front of the mirror and cry, all the time looking at his expression. And Pappaji bolte the - yeh bahut achcha actor banega'.

He Used To Call Shammi Kapoor 'Santa Claus'

"The first time I flew to meet my girlfriend (Jennifer was then my girlfriend), I had to fly because there wasn't much time, so I asked Shammi to lend me the money. I used to call him Santa Claus. Jennifer had even told Geeta bhabhi about that!"

Too Funny!

"Shammi had an account at Colony Stores at Dadar Circle, where we got everything. Every month, he would get a bill for Rs 400, even though he hadn't been there! The bill would be signed Shashi Kapoor'. On his birthday, when I gave him a present, he got very emotional. He told everyone, My kid brother, he's in school and he gives me a present out of his savings. Next month, his secretary, Surinder Kapoor - Anil's father - showed him the bill!"

When Shashi Kapoor Threatened To Commit Suicide

"I wasn't feeling very happy about my Matric results and he realized that I was in an emotional mess. He took me to Matheran for a holiday. When I was sent to Barnes School in Deolali, it was Shammi ji who came to drop me there. Afterwards, I sent a suicide note: The food is not good. I don't like it here. If you don't get me out of here, I'll commit suicide'. My mother told Shammi to bring me back. Khanaa achcha hona chahiye. Shammiji was very soft with me."

Not So Shubh Aarambh

"When I signed my first film, I had been given the script and dialogues earlier. As in theatre, I memorized my lines and went earlier than the allotted time to the Centre Studio in Tardeo. The director chucked out the dialogues given to me and decided on a fresh idea. I now had reservations of being compared to my brothers. I may not come up to the mark and when they realized I am not able to deliver, they would mock me. When I arrived at the studio the next time, I discovered that I had been replaced by a wicked young actor - never mind who! The film didn't do well."

He Is Indebted To Nanda

"My break came with Char Diwari opposite Nanda, directed by Kishan Chopra. I enjoyed doing the film but it didn't run. But I have always been grateful to her for accepting a newcomer. That was the time when big stars would not act with newcomers and no female star would act with one, except Nanda."

He Was Tagged A 'Jinxed' Actor

"Initially, I was called a jinxed actor by the film Press. I remember the day after Char Diwari flopped, I had to return the money to AVM Studios because they had cancelled me from a film they had signed me for and paid me money. I was very, very unhappy and hurt and went to Raj ji. He assured me, This is only the beginning son. You're going to have this type of heartbreak all along. So don't pay attention to failures and don't pay much attention to successes."

On How He Bagged Haseena Maan Jayegi

"Prakash Mehra, who was then an assistant director (I had met him a couple of times), came to me out of the blue with a script. He was very honest saying I wasn't the first man approached, as he had done the rounds of the entire film industry. And all the heroes had turned it down. I told him that if I liked the script I would do it. I again had no fixations, that I had to do this or that to be a star. I never took it seriously. Jennifer and I would always giggle at all these nonsensical films. So I heard the script, it clicked immediately and Haseena Man Jayegi was a big success."

The Demise Of His Parents

"The entire Kapoor family got a shock in '72, - though we knew what was going to happen. The entire family was stunned and numbed by the sudden departure of our parents - Prithviraj Kapoor and Rama Prithviraj Kapoor. They died within a span of 16 days. It shook us all but also made us more mature.

Suddenly, R.K. Films which had been having a bad time after ...Joker, started to do well. Everyone in the family started doing well. Shammi ji was passing through that period of a hero to zero, Andaz was the last film and he was out of work. I was just getting out of that bad period. Then I got into films like Chor Machaye Shor, a big success, as also Fakira, Deewar, Kabhi Kabhie, and Trishul."

Subhash Ghai Compared Him To A Potato

"Subhash Ghai once said, Shashi Kapoor is like a potato. Usko by itself khaana chahiye, to kha sakhte hain. Usko kisike saath dal do - chicken ke saath, mutton ke saath - uske saath bhi chalega. You can do all these things with that aloo, so also with Shashi Kapoor'. He was, of course, referring to the films I had made - multistarrers, solo hero, two heros. I suppose I am a flukie aloo."
Good Father

Shashi Kapoor would always try to schedule his outdoor shoots to coincide with the children's school holidays, so that he can make his kids see new places and also spend time with him.

Down Memory Lane

His son Kunal Kapoor walked down memory lane by saying, "If he packed up early, we'd go out for lunches, long walks, shikara rides and even picnics."

Smile & Laugh

Kunal Kapoor revealed that when his father got the news that he'd be awarded the President's Golden Medal and Dadasaheb Phalke Award, he just "smiled and laughed a little," and that's about it. He never liked to overly show his emotions!

Lending A Helping Hand

Shashi Kapoor was the only actor who demanded alternative housing to the slum-dwellers in Colaba and directly spoke to the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Shankarrao Chavan to deal with the crisis and provide a safe housing for them all.

Cinema Comes First

Shashi Kapoor, despite being rich and famous, never liked to invest his money on any commercial businesses and put all his money only in theatre and cinema. He breathed and lived movies all throughout his life, be it profit or loss, he invested only on cinema and nothing else.

A Huge Fan

Shabana Azmi was a huge fan of Shashi Kapoor back in the 70s and revealed that she purchased his posters and postcards like crazy back in the day by spending her own pocket money.

Tears Of Joy

Few years later Shabana was approached to star alongside Shashi Kapoor and said that she "burst into tears in my make-up room."

From Russia, With Love!

Shabana Azmi revealed that during the Moscow Film Festival, she was strapped for cash and had just 8 dollars in foreign exchange and it was Shashi Kapoor who footed all the bills.

Thick Stick

Shashi Kapoor's directorial debut in 1991 saw an unusual side of him as he used to hold a thick stick in his hand and planned to use it on whoever misbehaved on the sets. However, Amitabh Bachchan revealed that he never used it on anyone as he "cared immensely for his artistes and technicians, on an equal plane."

Right From The Beginning

As a child artist, Shashi Kapoor was part of four films produced by his father Prithviraj Kapoor and was seen on the silver screen at the tender age of 4. His real debut as a hero was in 1961 in the film Dharmputra.
Bollywood stars Hrithik Roshan, Varun Dhawan and Sonakshi Sinha have said death threats being issued to fellow actor Deepika Padukone and Padmavati director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is "not right".

The actors, who were speaking on the sidelines of an award event over the weekend, called for strict actions against the people calling for such violent threats.

"It is a clear indication of our level of evolution. We are still evolving as a society and as individuals. It is a reflection of the fact that we still have a long way to go to evolve into beings, that bereft of these problems and issues of assumptions and attacks. It is not right," Hrithik said, who has worked with Bhansali in Guzaarish.

While Varun said India is a democracy and every one has the right to protest, but things should not turn violent.

"Protesting peacefully is fine. It is a democracy and everyone should be allowed to voice their opinion and we should totally respect that.

"But making a (death) threat should not be allowed in a democracy. And I believe in our judiciary, I am sure they will manage it," he said.

Sonakshi said the kind of protest film and the cast members are facing is not "correct". "... Whatever is happening is not right and it shouldn't happen. In our country, if threats are given openly, it is not a correct thing. I think strict action should be taken against it."

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Padmavati Controversy: Raveena Tandon slams Karni Sena | Filmibeat

Padmavati got caught in a controversy after several Rajput groups alleged that history has been "distorted" in the movie.

Bhansali has been accused of filming a romantic dream sequence between Rajput queen Padmini (Deepika) and Sultan Alauddin Khilji (Ranveer Singh), a claim repeatedly denied by the filmmaker.

The movie was earlier scheduled to be released on December 1. The makers deferred the release till they receive a certificate from the CBFC. Chief ministers of BJP-ruled states such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat have also called for a ban on the period drama.PTI
Much has been spoken and is still being discussed about a series of controversies surrounding the talented actor, Silambarasan a.k.a Simbu. It was Gautham Menon, the director of Vinnaithandi Varuvaya and Accham Enbathu Madamaiyada, who first reported about Simbu's indiscipline, lethargy and non-punctual behaviour on the sets followed by Pandiraj of Idhu Namma Aalu's fame.

The recent one to break the social media and even the Nadigar Sangam was a detailed written and visual complaint of the director and producer of Anbanavan Asaradhavan Adangadhavan (AAA), where the duo have shared their horrifying experiences with the actor.

As a response to Micheal Rayappan's (Producer of AAA) complaint, Simbu's camp lashed back at the producer a few days ago. Hariharan Naidu, a close aide of Simbu has fired back at Rayappan. He said "Just think this in another angle, why would a producer, who used the troublesome actor, use him to promote another venture, Kee, and once again lodge a complaint on him? What was favorable during the promotions time and what has changed now? Is it due to someone's compulsion?"

He said, the producer provided just the one side of the story as he said that Simbu didn't turn out for the Bangkok shoot schedule but he did not reveal the other side of the same that the actor didn't join sets because the producer failed to settle his salary.

Naidu also added that Rayappan claims to have paid the full amount of salary to Simbu which if real, can be proved by releasing the payment details made to the actor.

Naidu iterated that the producer claimed to have incurred a loss of Rs 20 Cr because of Simbu's reckless attitude. But he questions the producer as to what happened to the money he gained by selling the movie? Did the producer sell the movie for free? Naidu questions the producer.

Now, the 34-year-old actor himself has jumped into the foray and has responded to a segment of the allegation. The Vaalu actor said, "I cannot be answerable to a film which is done and is already released. Let the Nadigar Sangam intervene and help me in getting my remaining remuneration owed by Michael Rayappan which amounts to about Rs 3.5 Cr. This is a long pending issue as I had even lodged a complaint much before AAA's release."

Michael Rayappan alleged that Simbu's lack of professionalism led him suffer a huge setback which brings a nightmare to the producer who boasts of a career spanning 12 years in the industry. "After he was formally signed for the project, he hardly turned up for any discussion. Shooting was impossible for he hardly turned up."

"On many occasions, we had to pack up for the day without even canning a single shot', he said and added, 'I had been to his house and waited for over four hours to meet him and convince him to attend the shoot," exclaimed a disappointed Rayappan.

Simbu counter-attacked Rayappan's allegations, "If I had taken an advance for a film and if a problem arises while it's on floors, I am answerable for that. Why would I respond to anyone's claim when the movie has been already released? If the issue was taken upright during the shooting of AAA, the action would have been justified and carried more sense."

"That being the case, it's not fair on part of the Producers Council to question me about the issue now. I haven't received any official letter from panel. It is also to be noted that I had to forgo a part of salary to facilitate the release of the movie," Simbu said.
Medicinal cannabis producer Creso Pharmahas signed an exclusive commercial agreement with a Swiss pharmaceutical company for the marketing and distribution of its hemp-based food supplement product in Switzerland.The agreement with the Swiss pharmacy, Doetsch Grether, gives Creso access to 2,300 outlets in Switzerland and Lichtenstein in Europe, setting up global commercialisation for Creso.The hemp-based cannaQIX10 product which is designed to provide stress and anxiety relief, will be sold as a food supplement, compliant with Swiss Federal food law.The agreement will see marketing and distribution of the product over 10 years.The Swiss pharmacys CEO said there is strong demand for safe and reliable hemp-derived products in the Swiss market.Shares in Creso Pharmaare trading 0.49 per cent higher to $1.02.
Enbridge (ENB 0.15%) announced this week that it would increase its dividend 10% for 2018. This move will push the Canadian energy infrastructure giant's yield well past 5%. Furthermore, that increase continues the company's annual tradition of boosting its payout, which it has now done for a remarkable 23 straight years. These haven't been small nudges just to keep the streak alive, either, considering that it has increased its payout by an 11.2% compound annual growth rate over the past two decades.

Meanwhile, Enbridge has full confidence that it can keep its streak going for the next several years, since it also stated that it plans to boost the payout by a 10% annual rate through 2020. While that's at the low end of the company's initial dividend growth forecast when it bought Spectra Energy last year, it's still a top-tier plan and matches Canadian rival TransCanada's (TRP 1.17%) 10% annual dividend growth through 2020.

This high-growth, high-yield stock will grow safer in 2018

When Enbridge initially sealed the deal to acquire Spectra Energy, it anticipated that the combined company could increase the payout 15% in 2016 and at a 10% to 12% rate all the way through 2024. While Enbridge delivered the promised 15% increase last year, it now plans to increase the dividend at the low end of that range over the next three years. Driving that decision is the company's desire to shore up its balance sheet after leverage was a concerning 6.2 times debt-to-EBITDA this year, due in part to the volume of expansion projects the company had under construction, including 12 billion Canadian dollars ($9.4 billion) entering service in 2017. While the company expected that number to come down to a more comfortable 5.0 times by 2019 as its expansion projects started generating earnings, it has now decided to accelerate that timetable.

Enbridge now expects to hit that leverage target by the end of 2018, which it will accomplish by selling a minimum of CA$3 billion ($2.4 billion) of non-core assets, including some of its unregulated gas midstream and onshore renewable assets. Those sales and some other strategic financing transactions will ensure that the company maintains a solid investment-grade credit rating, so it has open access to the capital needed to finance its massive backlog of expansion projects. That will help firm up the long-term sustainability of the company's lucrative payout.

A leaner, meaner dividend growth machine

Enbridge expects to sell additional assets over the next few years and has identified CA$10 billion ($7.8 billion) in assets that are non-core to its three crown jewel businesses: liquids pipelines and terminals, natural gas transmission, and storage and natural gas utilities. By monetizing those assets and growing its dividend at the low end of its guidance range, Enbridge won't need to sell any more stock to finance the remaining CA$22 billion ($17.2 billion) of growth projects it currently has in development through 2020. That matches with TransCanada's forecast of no significant future stock sales to finance growth. Furthermore, it will push Enbridge's leverage ratio to an even more comfortable 4.5 times by 2020.

Meanwhile, Enbridge has ample growth potential beyond 2020. When it agreed to acquire Spectra Energy, it had already identified CA$48 billion ($37.6 billion) of development projects between the two companies. That's more than double the size of TransCanada's currently identified development backlog, which has taken a significant hit this year after it canceled two major large-scale pipeline projects. Enbridge has already secured nearly CA$4 billion ($3.1 billion) of its long-term opportunities this year and should continue locking down projects in the future, given the anticipated need for oil and gas pipeline infrastructure in the U.S. and Canada. According to one estimate, North America needs to build roughly $333 billion of new natural gas-related infrastructure through 2035, along with up to $190 billion in additional oil pipelines and storage tanks over that same time frame. While Enbridge has plenty of competition for these projects, it also will have a stronger financial profile, which puts it in a better position to pursue future growth opportunities.

An enticing combination

While Enbridge's decision to grow its dividend at the low end of its forecast range over the next three years might seem like a disappointment, it's a net positive for investors over the long term. That's because it will enable the company to firm up its balance sheet faster, which enhances the long-term sustainability of its dividend. Furthermore, it will eliminate the need to sell stock in the next few years, which could have weighed down shares. Enbridge's improving financial picture makes it an enticing income stock for the long term since the company offers investors an attractive combination of growth and income for even less risk.
The oil industry endured a brutal year in 2016, when crude plunged into the $20s. However, 2017 has been much better thanks to some help from OPEC, which, along with several non-member nations, cut production to drain off some of the market's excess supply. Those actions helped prop up oil prices, which are up about 10% on average this year to around $60 a barrel.

That rebounding price should have driven oil stocks higher. However, that hasn't proven to be the case in every instance, as several barely budged while others surprisingly declined in value this year, including big oil stocks Chevron (CVX -1.63%), Occidental Petroleum (OXY -3.36%), and ExxonMobil (XOM -1.07%). Investors might want to consider taking advantage of the opportunity to buy these top-tier oil stocks after their lackluster showing this year, since all are in the position where they can excel even if crude prices fall back a bit.

Running in place

Chevron's stock has risen only about 1.5% this year, which vastly trails the nearly 20% return of the S&P 500. That underperformance came despite the fact that Chevron has significantly improved its ability to operate on lower oil prices. After outspending cash flow by a whopping $11.4 billion in 2016, Chevron has spent $3.8 billion less than it pulled in through the third quarter of this year. Meanwhile, the company should continue generating significant free cash flow over the next few years because the bulk of its major projects are now in the rearview mirror. For example, Chevron estimates that by 2020 it can produce nearly $4 billion in free cash flow if oil averages $50 a barrel. Additionally, as crude rises so would Chevron's cash flow, with the company noting that at $60 oil it could generate as much as $8 billion in free cash flow in 2020, with that number potentially rising past $12 billion if crude is in the $70s.

Furthermore, Chevron also boasts a strengthening balance sheet. While the company's debt ratio hit 24.1% last year -- its highest level in years -- that was still less than the 32% average debt ratio of its big oil rivals. Meanwhile, the company expects this metric to remain at a comfortable level of 20% to 25% over the next few years even if oil falls back to $50 a barrel. Because of Chevron's balance sheet strength, the company could potentially start returning more cash to investors in the coming years in addition to its already generous 3.6%-yielding dividend by restarting a share repurchase program. That could provide the catalyst that finally restarts Chevron's stalled stock.

Almost at the pivot point

Occidental Petroleum's stock is down about 1% this year despite the company's meaningful progress toward achieving its goal of delivering steady production growth at lower oil prices. The company is working to get to the point where it can pay its 4.4%-yielding dividend and grow production by 5% to 8% per year within cash flow at $50 oil, which is a higher growth rate than most big oil companies. While Occidental still has some work to do before it reaches that level, it has a clear plan to get to that point, led by its strategy to boost output from its high-return Permian Basin acreage. Occidental currently produces 139,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOE/D) from its shale resources in that region and would have to grow this low-cost production to around 200,000 BOE/D to generate the cash flow it needs to break even at $50 a barrel. While that means it needs to outspend cash flow as it grows to that level, the company has ample cash and other financial resources to bridge the gap and continue funding its plan in the interim. (Though with crude well above $50 a barrel at the moment, Occidental might not need to tap any other sources to finance its strategy if that price holds.)

Occidental Petroleum's plan has the potential to create tremendous value for long-term investors. For example, once it hits its breakeven level, the company could deliver a double-digit total annual return through the combination of its attractive dividend yield and the incremental earnings from production growth -- even if crude falls back to $50 a barrel. Meanwhile, if oil stays at its current level or heads higher, the company would generate more cash than it needs, which it could use to repurchase shares. That blend of a high-yielding dividend with above-average production growth makes Occidental a compelling choice for investors looking for a low-risk, high-reward option.

Big oil on sale

ExxonMobil's stock has lost a disappointing 7.5% this year, vastly underperforming both the market and crude prices. It's hard to pinpoint any reason for the stock's poor performance since its underlying business continues to improve. In fact, the oil giant has produced a net $400 million in excess cash flow this year after paying its 3.7%-yielding dividend and investing in growth projects that have low production costs. Those expansions position the company for steady production and cash flow growth in the coming years even if oil prices slip. Like Occidental Petroleum, one of the main focuses of Exxon's strategy is to increase output from the low-cost Permian Basin, where the company plans to boost production 45% through 2020.

One other thing that's impressive about Exxon is that the company is generating so much excess cash at current oil prices that it has already started buying back shares, having repurchased $500 million in stock so far this year. That has enabled the oil giant to take advantage of its falling stock price and should create more value for investors down the road. Despite those repurchases and the improvement in Exxon's operations (as well as oil prices), investors still have the opportunity to pick up shares of this blue chip oil stock for a better price than at the start of the year. That value disconnect alone is one reason why Exxon deserves a closer look.

Great oil stocks for the long term

This trio of big oil giants has significantly improved the ability of their businesses to operate on lower oil prices over the past year. However, despite those efforts, their stock prices haven't followed suit, even though crude has also headed higher in the past year. As a result, investors have a unique opportunity to buy these top-tier oil giants for what appear to be excellent prices. That's what makes now a great time to consider adding one of them to your portfolio, as all three are on their way to prospering (even if crude prices slip).
ACLU of Nebraska filed a lawsuit Monday on behalf of death row inmates that claims the ballot initiative that stopped the state Legislatures 2015 repeal was illegal.

The complaint is an attempt to stop any executions, or even steps toward an execution, of the men on Nebraskas death row.

Sandoval told the Journal Star last week he intends to fight the execution. At that time, he had no ongoing legal actions or appeals in federal or state courts.

My reaction to the notice (of lethal injection drugs) was not a surprise. I've been expecting it for a year now," Sandoval said. "I intend to fight with the help of my attorneys -- Amy Miller and company.

The ACLU confirmed Sunday that Miller, its legal director, has been in contact with Sandoval, who was notified Nov. 9 of the states intention to execute him with four specified lethal injection drugs. The organization is preparing to announce the scope of its representation of Sandoval early this week, it said.

The four drugs in combination that would be used in Sandovals execution, if it takes place, have never been used to execute a person.

The complaint charged the ballot initiative violated the Nebraska Constitutions separation of powers. It said Gov. Pete Ricketts was the driving force behind the 2016 referendum, exploiting government staff, resources and his own elected position to raise money for the ballot initiative and to persuade voters to support it.

In Nebraska, our state Constitution ... establishes a strong tradition with a clear separation of powers, ACLU Executive Director Danielle Conrad said Sunday. The governor cant have it both ways and serve both as a member of the executive and legislative branches.

The petition drive got underway in 2015 and the sponsoring group, Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, gathered 167,000 signatures, enough to stop the repeal from being in effect until a vote in November 2016.

The Legislature had voted to repeal Nebraskas death penalty with a bill (LB268) that passed on a 32-15 vote. Ricketts vetoed the bill and then the Legislature voted to override the veto on a 30-19 vote that cut across party lines.

Shortly after that, Nebraskans for the Death Penalty was formed and raised just over $913,000, a third of it contributed by Ricketts and his father Joe Ricketts.

The governors actions pose important legal questions with grave consequences, Conrad said.

She said the end result of those actions was the restoration of a broken death penalty that is racially biased, risks execution of innocent people and raises constitutional concerns about the Eighth Amendments prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.

Ricketts' office responded in a statement issued Sunday evening.

The Governor's Office holds itself to a high standard and follows state law regarding the use of taxpayer resources," said Taylor Gage, the governor's spokesman. "This liberal advocacy group has repeatedly worked to overturn the clear voice of the Nebraska people on the issue of capital punishment and waste taxpayer dollars with frivolous litigation. The administration remains committed to protecting public safety and creating a safe environment for our Corrections officers."

The ACLU lawsuit  filed on behalf of death row inmates against Ricketts, Treasurer Don Stenberg, founders of Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, Attorney General Doug Peterson, the Department of Correctional Services and Director Scott Frakes  asked the court to immediately stop all preparations for executing Sandoval and the other 10 men on death row.

Peterson plans to ask the Nebraska Supreme Court for a death warrant after 60 days following the notification of drugs that would be used.

That ACLU complaint said that as the governor, Ricketts power over the repeal bill ended when the Legislature overrode his veto.

It claimed the subsequent ballot initiative should not stand, as it was the result of repeated, extensive and illegal abuses of the governors power. The states constitution reserves ballot initiatives as a legislative power for the people to use as a check on the legislature, and it further prohibits anyone in one branch of government from exercising powers over another branch, the ACLU said.

Ricketts encouraged or ordered members of the executive branch and his allies in the Legislature and local governments to work for the referendum campaign or to express public support for it, the complaint said.

For example, Stenberg was simultaneously a leader of the campaign in the first few months, serving as co-chairman with Sen. Beau McCoy, the ACLU charged. In the middle of the campaign, Ricketts rewarded Jessica Flanagain, the campaign manager and coordinator, with a publicly paid position in the government as special adviser to the governor for external affairs, with a salary of $130,000, the complaint alleges.

The lawsuit also noted that Nebraskans for the Death Penalty made an error that invalidated the referendum by failing to submit sworn statements from its sponsors, as required by law to assure the sponsors names arent fraudulent and assure transparency in the working of ballot campaigns.

Previous litigation more narrowly alleged the referendum petition was not legally sufficient because a list of sponsors filed with the petition did not include the name of Ricketts, who it claimed engaged in activities that established that he was a sponsor of the referendum. The district court dismissed the complaint. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding Ricketts alleged financial or other support of the referendum did not make him a person sponsoring the petition.
Nokia 3 leapfrog to Android 8.0 Oreo skipping Android 7.1.2 Nougat News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu

HMD Global has been doing an impressive job in the smartphone arena with the launch of the Nokia smartphones and the rollout of the timely software updates to these devices.

Though the company confirmed that all the Nokia smartphones launched this year including Nokia 8, Nokia 6, Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 will receive the Android Oreo update, the users of the entry-level Nokia 3 did not receive the Android 7.1.2 Nougat or the Android Oreo updates. Actually, the Nokia 3 was supposed to get updated to Android 7.1.2 Nougat in late October but the same did not happen until now. Also, the smartphone was claimed to receive the Oreo update by the end of this year along with the rest of the models.

Now a tweet by Juho Sarvikas, the Chief Product Officer at HMD Global reveals that the Nokia 3 will leapfrog to Android 8.0 Oreo skipping the Android 7.1.2 Nougat update. Though he has confirmed the rollout of the Oreo update to the device once again, he did not reveal any specific date for the update to hit the smartphone. One thing that we know is that the Oreo update will be rolled out to the smartphone by the end of this year as claimed earlier.

The Android 7.1.2 Nougat update for the Nokia 3 appears to be canceled as it was delayed because MediaTek could not provide the updated drivers in time. Such delays are not likely with the Oreo update as MediaTek recently joined Google GMS Express program allowing smartphones with MediaTek chipsets to get the security updates and OS updates quicker than earlier.

Though Nokia 3 is an entry-level smartphone launched by HMD Global, it is has been assured by the company that the device will get the Android P update that will be announced by Google next year. This is because HMD has already announced that the existing Nokia Android smartphones will get two years of OS update support.

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Samsung confirms there is no Microsoft Edition of Galaxy S8 or Galaxy Note 8 News oi -Samden Sherpa It has been concluded that the reports about Microsoft Edition of Samsung Galaxy S8 were actually part of a promotional campaign to get people to visit Microsoft stores.

While speculations have been going on regarding a Microsoft Edition of Samsung Galaxy S8, the South Korean handset maker has now refuted reports that a "Microsoft Edition" of its flagship devices Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+ exists somewhere on this planet.

"Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, and Galaxy Note 8 are available in the Microsoft online and retail stores with a unique Microsoft experience which ensures their customers a best-in-class productivity experience. There is no 'Microsoft Edition' brand of any Samsung Galaxy products," a Samsung representative told Windows Central.

The reports of the launch of a special "Microsoft Edition" Galaxy S8 surfaced for several days following their commercial debut. In November, Microsoft started selling SamsungGalaxy Note 8 from its online store that comes packed with pre-installed apps like virtual assistant Cortana, Word, Excel, OneNote, and Outlook.

However, it has now been concluded that the reports were actually part of a promotional campaign to get people to visit Microsoft stores. What do we think? It was nothing but part of a well-played PR stunt. All in all, we are not getting our hopes high as Samsung has made it clear that there is no such thing as a Microsoft Edition Galaxy S8.

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Samsung Galaxy S9 to arrive in Purple color hue: Is it true? News oi -Samden Sherpa Samsung Galaxy S9 Purple color is reportedly being added next year along with gold, black and blue colors.

The past few weeks have been interesting. We not only saw many smartphone launches typically the launch of OnePlus 5T but we've been hearing a lot about an upcoming device in 2018. And the device is from Samsung and yes we have been heard rumors and seen leaks about the South Korean manufacturer's upcoming flagship devices, the Galaxy S9 and S9+.

On an interesting note, the rumors have also suggested the company is gearing up to launch the devices soon. In fact, reports have said that the launch of Samsung handsets could possibly happen at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018 next month or in February before MWC 2018 ahead of a March release.

Previous rumors also hint that the Galaxy S9 will most likely be powered by Samsung's next-generation Exynos 9810 processor or the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. The phone will have either 4GB or 6GB of RAM, a dual-lens rear camera and it'll be costlier than its predecessors. Further, the reports have said that the handset will ship with a face recognition feature, an adjustable f/1.5 aperture camera, 64GB internal storage which will be expandable through a microSD slot.

While those details are all in speculation, a fresh rumor has now started doing rounds in the rumor mill. From what we have heard Samsung could launch the new smartphone in a purple color option. Sources speaking to SamMobile have said that this color will be added next year along with gold, black and blue colors. Furthermore, the publication reports that all four color options will be officially available from launch in all major markets across the globe.

A brand new color option will definitely give more choice to the consumers but how great impact is yet to be seen. It will be interesting to see how people will receive this change as well.

As it happened, the same color rumor was also started last year before the arrival of the Samsung Galaxy S8, but in the end, it didn't happen. Basically, there's no official confirmation from Samsung so it is better to take this information with a grain of salt for now.

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Vickie and Roger Lansman's 24-foot blue spruce arrived Monday morning to stand in state in the Nebraska Capitol Rotunda and serve as the official state Christmas tree.

It was hauled from the front yard of a house the Lansmans own at 34th and Dudley streets in Lincoln. The couple lives in Ord, but bought the house eight years ago for their children who attend college here.

The Lansmans' yard is modest, and another spruce tree resides there, so when Vickie Lansman read last year in the Grand Island Independent that the Capitol Commission was seeking a Christmas tree, she called.

State horticulturist Craig Kreiner accepted her offer, and the tree now awaits lights and decorations, which will be added Tuesday.

Many people passing through the Rotunda on Monday said the 20-year-old tree is one of the most fragrant in years.

"This is just a pleasure to have it here," Vickie Lansman said.

The governor's office and governor's mansion also have Christmas trees, already up and decorated. Those Canaan firs are from Windmill Pines Tree Farm in the Seward area, which is supplying trees for the fifth year in a row.
Queens Anniversary Prize for the Historical Thesaurus of English

There are 224 ways to call something excellent, according to the Historical Thesaurus of English

And now the University of Glasgow can use any of these stellar words to describe the announcement today (30 November 2017) that it has been awarded a Queens Anniversary Prize for Higher Education.

The prize, the highest accolade for any academic institution, was awarded to the University in recognition of its world-class research into the English language through the Historical Thesaurus. The Prize has been approved by Her Majesty The Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister following a very intensive period of assessment organised by the Royal Anniversary Trust which administers the scheme.

The Historical Thesaurus features 793,733 words arranged by their meaning, spanning more than a thousand years of the English language and is now available online for everyone to search at www.glasgow.ac.uk/thesaurus.

For example, searching the term excellent reveals a diverse range of adjectives including brave, bonzer, jelly, topgallant, splendid, pure merino, smick-smack, dandy and rad. Next to each word are the dates each word was used, telling us that topgallant was first used to mean excellent in 1613 and last found in 1849, while the Australian term bonzer was first used in 1906 and continues to this day.

Professor Marc Alexander is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Glasgow and is the third Director of the Historical Thesaurus of English after Professor Michael Samuels and Professor Christian Kay.

Professor Alexander said: Hundreds of researchers at Glasgow have spent over fifty years scrutinising the English language of today and of our ancestors, and we are delighted the prize recognises this extraordinary effort.

The result is that the gloriously messy and intricate evolution of English meanings over the last thousand years is laid out on every page of the Historical Thesaurus. This award is a well-deserved tribute to my predecessors Christian and Michael, and celebrates their hard work, intellectual rigour, and vision.

It took 44 years of work to produce our first edition, and in the eight years since then were proud that researchers at this University and around the world have used the hundreds of thousands of meanings the Historical Thesaurus holds to give us fresh, exciting, and profound insights into our culture, our history, our language, and ourselves.

We know there is so much more the Thesaurus can tell us, and I look forward to seeing how future generations of scholars here and elsewhere put it to work.

Professor Roibeard O Maolalaigh, Vice-Principal and the Head of the College of Arts at the University of Glasgow, said: This has been a massive undertaking over the last half century. The Historical Thesaurus is a wonderful example of the Universitys continued and ongoing commitment to support world-class research in the Arts and Humanities.

This award is well deserved recognition for the commitment of our staff and students in producing, over many years, this living historical treasury of the English language.

Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, said: I am delighted that the Royal Anniversary Trust has seen fit to honour the incredible work of the University of Glasgows Historical Thesaurus of English with this award.

It is testament to the outstanding scholarship and important work being carried out at our University which has spanned more than 50 years, three Directors, 230 linguists and compilation of nearly 800,000 words

The digital Historical Thesaurus helps to chart the development of English vocabulary and is a unique resource for the English-speaking world.

This is the 4th time that the University of Glasgow has won a Queens Anniversary Prize. Previously the University won in 1994, 1998 and 2013.

In total, 21 UK universities and further education colleges were awarded Prizes today (30 November 2017) recognising a wide range of innovative work across many different disciplines.

Work recognised in this round is wide ranging and includes rail and aviation engineering, costume design, vision problems of children with Downs syndrome, parent-infant sleep, climate change and environmental protection, womens health, the English language, agricultural engineering and dairy productivity, cancer drug discovery and drug safety, film and television training, photonics, food and nutrition for health and education for learners with special needs.

Sir Damon Buffini, Chairman of the Royal Anniversary Trust said: The focus of the Prizes on innovation and practical benefit to people and society is a great incentive to our universities and colleges to think critically about the direction of their work and its application and relevance in todays world.

The national recognition and prestige conferred by the Prizes also enables individual institutions to win support and leverage funding for their future plans.

The Prizes, unique in the honours system in being analogous to honours to individuals but granted to an institution as a whole (irrespective of the area of work recognised), will be presented in February 2018 by a member of the royal family at a ceremony to be held at Buckingham Palace. As a national honour the prize carries no cash value, consisting of a silver-gilt medallion and a Prize Certificate signed by The Queen.

Royalties from the printed Historical Thesaurus are used to fund more research into the English language at Glasgow, principally through undergraduate and postgraduate prizes and scholarships.

Since 15 January 1965, more than 230 linguists have worked to arrange every known word in English into the extensive system of categories which made up the first edition of the Historical Thesaurus, published in 2009.

In 2015, for its 50th anniversary, an enhanced digital version of the Historical Thesaurus was made available online. The second edition of the Historical Thesaurus is currently underway with almost 40% of the entries being updated this year. In the online version, people can either search for individual words or browse the full series of 235,249 categories.

Media Enquires: Contact Aine Allardyce in the University of Glasgow Communications and Public Affairs Office on 0141 330 7126 or email aine.allardyce@glasgow.ac.uk
National Security Advisor Hints at Basis of Trump's National Security Strategy

By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2017  During a speech to the Reagan National Defense Forum yesterday, President Donald J. Trump's national security advisor gave hints on what the president's national security strategy will contain.

Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the first active-duty national security advisor since Army Gen. Colin Powell, said the strategy would set the stage for the country to reclaim its strategic confidence.

Making the speech at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, was a tribute to the president who resurrected U.S. confidence when he took office in 1981. The 1970s were not a high point in American history. One president forced to resign, the loss in Vietnam, the Arab oil embargo and Iran breaking into the American embassy in Tehran and holding 55 American citizens hostage set the stage for Reagan's presidency.

Confidence in the United States and the nation's influence abroad were at a low point, McMaster said. "The Soviet Union appeared to be on the rise and America, it seemed, was in decline," he said. "President Reagan ushered in a dramatic rethinking of America's role in the world and a dramatic renewal of American confidence. America would not only triumph in the Cold War and beyond but reach a new height of influence and prosperity."

It was also fitting to discuss the Trump administration's national security strategy, which will be released shortly, since Reagan signed the first national security strategy in 1987, the general said.

Crossroads

"Today as we approach the unveiling of the Trump administration's national security strategy, we are at a similar crossroads," McMaster said.

Russia and China are subverting the post-World War II political, economic and security orders to advance their own interests at the expense of the United States and its allies, the national security advisor said.

Iran and North Korea are violating the sovereignty of their neighbors, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and exporting terror to other nations. "Jihadist terror organizations such as [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] threaten all civilized people in every corner of the world," he said.

"These national security challenges also require a dramatic rethinking of American foreign policy from previous decades," McMaster said.

The national security strategy "will focus on protecting our homeland, advancing American prosperity, preserving peace through strength  and finally enhancing American influence," he said.

McMaster said the administration is reclaiming the strategic confidence necessary for implementing the strategy through understanding in four areas. "First, the values that define our nation; second, the full instruments that define our power; third, the threats facing our nation; and fourth, the dynamic and competitive nature of our security environment," he said.

Instruments of Power

The values that define America are important. President Reagan called America "a shining city upon a hill" and spoke of the suffering of people living under fear and oppression. Americans believe in the value of every human life, McMaster said, and the world should know that is the case.

Trump's actions have reinforced this, the general said. He ordered attacks on the Syrian airfield from which aircraft laden with chemical weapons launched attacks on their own people. "The president further demonstrated his commitments to American values with changes in the policies toward Cuba, Iran and Venuzuela," he said.

Using all instruments of national power is at the heart of the strategy. "President Reagan understood that diplomacy and military force were both important and equally vital tools for national power," McMaster said. "President Trump is aligning diplomatic, economic, military, informational, intelligence and law enforcement efforts since the first days."

The South Asia strategy is a good example of this, he said. "We would no longer confuse activity with progress," the general said. "Our military efforts and operations in the region combined with the efforts of our partners would focus on what brought us to Afghanistan in 2001 -- to deny terrorists safe havens that they could use to threaten America and threaten our allies."

The administration is also clear about the threats facing America, McMaster said. These threats, he said, "emanate from revisionist powers, rogue regimes and jihadist terrorist organizations."

The approach adopts a realistic view of our security environment, the general said. "For this reason, we do not base national security decisions on rigid ideology, but instead on our core national interests and clearly defined objectives derived from those interests," McMaster said.

Finally, the approach seeks to understand the dynamic and competitive nature of the security environment. "We must acknowledge that the international system is, above all, characterized by competition, interaction and change," he said.

The United States wants all nations to develop and compete, "but the competition must be fair," McMaster said. "Our economic relationships will respect our partners sovereignty and their economic destinies, while ensuring American workers and American companies are not unfairly disadvantaged."

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Shanahan Makes Case for Budget Stability, Says Situation 'Is Not Normal'

By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2017  The Defense Department has clear orders from President Donald J. Trump "to build a stronger military, take care of our men and women, and excel in our business operations," Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan said yesterday.

Shanahan was the closing speaker at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, and he spoke how the department is putting the president's orders into effect.

The deputy secretary has been on the job for just under five months, and said he is most concerned with managing business practices to find money to make the military more lethal.

The deputy came to the department after 30 years at Boeing, where he shepherded the 787 Dreamliner to production. And while he says the transition from the aircraft manufacturer to DoD has been seamless, there have been some surprises. "I will say a couple of the department's behaviors strike me as abnormal," he said. "First, operating without a budget is not normal. Doing so every year for nine years, is really not normal."

Stopping the Abnormal From Becoming Normal

While this tongue-in-cheek statement was met with knowing laughs from the high-powered audience at the forum, it served to underscore the problems facing DoD. Shanahan continued his statement of the problem. "Airplanes are meant to fly," he said. "A service with significant number of its airplanes grounded and awaiting maintenance is not normal."

"Part of my job as a leader is guarding against normalization of abnormal behaviors within the department," Shanahan said. "A high level of performance is not only expected of our military, it is essential for America's security, no matter the restraints."

He noted that the U.S. military also faced obstacles to readiness and modernization in the years immediately preceding World War II. "While military leaders sought stable funding, political tensions and budgetary pressures stymied readiness efforts until the Second World War arrived on our doorstep," he said.

Today, artificial constraints once again hold the national defense hostage, Shanahan said. "From budget stresses like continuing resolutions and Budget Control Act caps to disagreements in Congress that affect timely decision-making, right now we have time -- one of our most precious resources. But we lack the stable budget needed to prepare for future fights," he said.

If a crisis appears, Congress will fund the military, the deputy secretary said, but there will be no time to prepare. "We cannot rely on a crisis to be the catalyst for solutions," he said. "The cost of global conflict is simply too high and we value our men and women in uniform far too much. The rapidly changing security environment and budgetary instability have forced our department into a risk management posture, the consequences of which are hard to calculate."

Limited Elasticity

The career engineer used an analogy from physics to illustrate his point. A material may be stretched in many ways and will return to form when the stresses upon it are released unless it is stretched too far. Then it will remain deformed. "The Department of Defense has its limits to elasticity," he said. "Excessive pressure in the form of budgetary instability has the potential to permanently distort the department's character, and lessen the lethality."

The department must get away from risk management and seize opportunities to remain competitive. "A risk-balanced, opportunity driven approach with spark innovation and help protect our hard-earned culture of excellence from the unintended distortion of instability," he said.

Long-term readiness and modernization will be embedded into the National Defense Strategy, the deputy secretary said. "We are building alignment across the department, the interagency, with industry and other partners and allies," he said. "We view all these efforts through the critical lenses of lethality and affordability. After all, we must remember the department's primary purpose is to be as lethal as possible, ensuring our diplomats speak from a position of strength.

"This is only possible when our enemies know with certainty that we are ready to fight and win our wars, and our allies know we stand steady alongside them," he continued.

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Release

No. NR-408-17 December 03, 2017

Secretary Mattis Attends Antiradicalization Conference in Aqaba

Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Dana W. White provided the following readout:

Today, Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis attended the Aqaba Process, a conference held in Aqaba, Jordan, focused on countering radicalization. The conference, hosted by His Majesty King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein of Jordan and in partnership with Nigeria, brought together leaders from Africa, Europe, Asia, South America, the United States and international organizations to discuss shared challenges and strategies to counter radicalization and terrorism in West Africa.

During the conference, Secretary Mattis discussed DoD's partnership-driven approach and emphasized the need for whole-of-government efforts to combat terrorism. Secretary Mattis also reiterated U.S. support for African-led regional security efforts in West Africa such as the Multinational Joint Task Force and the G5 Sahel Joint Force.

In addition, the secretary expressed appreciation to Jordan for supporting hosting this important forum, and for its strong security partnership with the U.S.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1386432/

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Transcript

Presenter: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis December 03, 2017

Press Gaggle with Secretary Mattis Enroute to Pakistan

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE JAMES N. MATTIS: Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Coming out of Aqaba, Jordan, where he had the Aqaba Conference. This process is one where the king, in this case ably assisted by the president of Nigeria, hosted an assembly of West African and associated -- and by associated I mean supportive countries organizations, international organizations.

And just King Abdullah has always been someone who represents a moderate form of Islam and a willingness to work with other countries in the region and worldwide, as we try to make a for a little more stable world.

And just a reminder, we were just talking about the spa and everything there at the hotel, this is a country that exists within a few dozen kilometers of four nations altogether -- Jordan and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel. But we all met there peacefully in that beautiful setting, and a reminder that when there's the political will to work together, countries with different domestic agendas, different foreign policies, can certainly work together when there's the political will.

And in a world which we focus often on how people don't get along, it's always interesting to see an example right there. We just take for granted. Of course it's that way. Well, no, it's not of course; it' because there's leaders willing to work with one another, and not simply be either cynical -- cynical or standoffish or combative with one another.

So it's a good reminder that they would -- that they could do that, because today's conference was about how we undercut or prevent the conditions that breed violent extremist organizations. And brought the other 44 senior officials and military leaders from various countries and international organizations, like African Union, European Union, plus other countries -- Italy, France, United Kingdom, United States -- I could go on -- Canada, Australia, and others.

This session this year focused on promoting West African regional security. It goes annually. This one is out to checkmate and reduce the threat of Boko Haram, ISIS in West Africa and Al Qaeda. And it, overall, for me, it was on opportunity to listen to them, because each area we operate is different from others. You don't simply -- you would take many lessons learned from one area to another, but you cannot take a template from one area to another, because the contributing factor is the aggravating conditions are always unique, at least in their scope, perhaps in their intensity, although oftentimes you find the same things -- economic -- a lack of a economic opportunity, a lack of educational opportunity, those kind of things.

So lessons learned can be shared, but at the same time you have to size it up for its individual local conditions. With the U.S. going -- with our approach to our military relations, we work by, with and through others, and in this case it is by, with and through African-led solutions to the instability of terrorism.

Some of you may have heard about, I think, yesterday we had killed innocent people, murdered and wounded in Nigeria, for example, by Boko Haram, a reminder why we get together, why we share intelligence, and why we work by, with and through the African nations, and their organizations unique in this area. That was the Multinational Joint Task Force, and also the G5 Sahel Organization, these are five nations in the Sahel who have grouped together.

So we'll continue to work by, with and through them. Our partners coordinate defense diplomatic and developmental support. We don't take a myopically military-only support. That's not the way you solve these things. It's got to be whole of government, and in this particular region we'll work through the Trans-Saharan Counter-terrorism Partnership to prevent the spread of violent extremism. And they're all very much aware right now that the physical caliphate is being taken down in Syria and Iraq.

They've seen some efforts, for example, by ISIS to move to Libya. You saw us push them on their back foot in January. We've done it again a couple of months ago. We're doing it as we speak now, and that's one of the reasons I met with the prime minister of Libya today before we all got on the airplane coming out to the region here.

So let me -- that's kind of where we're at right now. It was a very fruitful session this morning. I made some good contacts, people I can work with, and the contacts are not limited just to Africa. I also include contacts in Latin America and Asia, and of course our continuing efforts with the European Union and NATO countries.

So what questions do you have on your mind?

Q: Well, let me just -- I wanted to ask you a little bit about Pakistan since you're going there tomorrow. You touched on it briefly on -- when you talked to us on our way out, but as you get ready to go there tomorrow, are you going to ask the Pakistanis for anything specific? Do they have to do anything specific in there to help counter the safe havens?

SEC. MATTIS: The first thing I'm going to do is do some listening, like I always do. My goal is to find common ground. We know we have some common ground. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their troops killed and wounded by terrorists. They have lost hundreds, thousands of their innocent people murdered and wounded by terrorists, so we know that there is common ground. There is common ground between Afghanistan and Pakistan, because there are terrorist groups that try to move back and forth, that do move back and forth in order to live in one and attack in the other, that sort of thing.

So we know there's common ground; it's how much more common ground can we find by listening to one another without being combative with one another, listening to others perspective, but at the same time, as General Bajwa has said, he wants no havens for terrorists anywhere, so we will work together and we'll find that common ground, if we have the will to. And then we'll work on how we address the problems where we can work together.

Q: Are you going to prod them, though, to more on the border to step up...

SEC. MATTIS: That's not the way I deal with issues. I believe that we work hard on finding the common ground, and then we work together, so that's the approach I want to take.

Q: If I could just follow up, and this was asked yesterday as well, but why you think you can be successful, when all of your predecessors have failed over the past 16 years to change Pakistan's behavior?

SEC. MATTIS: Yes, I wouldn't characterize everything over the past 16 years as failures. There is clearly an abundance of areas where we have to double down, and I am optimistic at this point that because of what our adversaries, our mutual enemies are doing, that we can find ways to work together.

Q: What do you mean by double down, what kind of areas? What exactly does that mean?

SEC. MATTIS: I think it's very clear. As I said, both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistan military, the NATO-led militaries of 39 nations have all been in fights here. We've got to find a way to work together.

Q: No, but that's what you mean by doubling down? What's that mean?

SEC. MATTIS: Working together.

Q: In Egypt, there was a lot of stories that you were meeting with the Egyptians. Can you give us a sense of due outs, did you offer additional counter-terrorism capabilities and hardware?

SEC. MATTIS: Yes, when we spoke with the Egyptians, it's what more we can do in terms of intelligence sharing on ISIS in the Sinai, the ones who conducted the murderous attacks on a mosque where people at worship. We talked about border security and what we can do, what more we can do there, intelligence sharing and perhaps certain equipment, that sort of thing.

We also talked about training and sharing the lessons that we and others have learned in counter-terrorism. It doesn't mean we're the world's expert on it, but we've learned a lot of lessons. We want to share those. Egypt is wide open to that.

Q: And can I ask you, North Korea, we're here, but the world is fixated on North Korea. Was the ICBM...

SEC. MATTIS: Say that about...

Q: Was the ICBM that was launched last week...

SEC. MATTIS: Yes.

Q: ... was that a game -- would you consider that a game-changer, or does North Korea still have other capabilities they need to demonstrate before you can say that their ICBM force is an existential threat against the U.S.

SEC. MATTIS: We're still examining the latest ICBM test. That's all I can say at this point.

Q: Examining for what, from what they seem to have? They seem to have more they need to do to develop?

SEC. MATTIS: Well, we examine for range, for capability, for all -- we examine all aspects of it.

Q: Is it too early to say that launch was a game-changer?

SEC. MATTIS: I'm sorry?

Q: Is it too early to say that launch was a game-changer?

SEC. MATTIS: We'll, we're still examining it, Tony. I'm not going to say what it -- I like to know what I'm talking about before I talk about it, so we're going to examine, and then I can probably give a better answer to the question.

Q: We're hearing a lot about the by, with and through approach. What does a military footprint across the world look like for that? Are we going to see more troops go into Africa and other places?

SEC. MATTIS: OK, by, with and through, what does it look like, as it is seen and practiced around the world? And again, why I came to this conference is to hear the specific conditions here.

For example, if you need institutional reform, and if the military itself is not organized right, that breeds a certain requirement, certain types of people to come in. It may be more of my OSD policy people coming in, rather than uniform-wearing soldiers.

If it's something to do with, they've got a good military, it obeys civilian leadership, but it has not got the right skillset, because they enemy is very adaptive, they learn how they can hide among innocent people, then we may bring in people to show how to do intelligence like that. That may actually involve more police forces coming in to do it.

So it's got to be determined in each individual location. What is the specific problem they're trying to solve? So by, with and through will always be a whole-of-government effort.

No doubt you'll see in most cases, because of the conditions that spawn this sort of thing, you'll see USAID guys and gals there. You'll find U.S. diplomats clearly in the lead. Our policy people will have gone in, if not at first, depending on their security conditions, but certainly early, in order to craft the military support so it actually reinforces the development aid, which may have to do with education or something like this.

So I can't characterize it completely. I don't think it will be large numbers at any point. That's the whole point -- we do it by, with and through others -- but they'll probably be oftentimes more mature NCOs and officers, ones who've got a fair amount of experience. They won't be young troops so much.

At times you'll see it be tactical trainers, where we teach tactics, marksmanship, first aid, what I'd call the basics of military forces, but it would -- it would be shifted to whatever the specific problem is.

Also there's other nations doing this, in the area we were just talking about, the Trans-Sahel area. That is much -- France has a much larger footprint on the ground, thousands more troops than we'll ever have out there, as they lead the effort.

But there's also German troops. There's U.K. troops. All of us working together.

Again, it's not just by, with and through the one nation we're going into help; it's what other nations are there.

The Defeat ISIS Coalition would be another good example, where we have a lot of troops that are providing fire support for example and intel support, but the close combat is being fought by other nations.

At the same time we have dozens of nations, altogether 70 nations, on the Defeat ISIS Coalition, plus international organizations like Interpol, NATO, European Union -- there's another one, too -- Arab League -- are all engaged with that. So it's all tailored to the specific conditions.

Q: Would you call this a new initiative to fight extremism in Africa then?

SEC. MATTIS: No, it is not new. The -- these efforts have been going on for a long time now. In some cases, they've gotten larger. In some cases, they've gotten smaller. As certain missions are done and they're taught how to do the tactics, and we teach their trainers how to do it, and our trainers come out. Again, it's designed -- to use the old adage of give a man a fish, he can eat for a day; teach him how to fish, he can eat forever, you know. We're trying to teach them how to do this.

And in many cases, I might add, we're learning from them. We learn a lot from others on this, because they have ways of dealing with different organizational efforts -- local communities, tribal groups, religious groups in their countries. So our people come out of this with a broader framework for solving problems elsewhere as well.

Yes?

Q: On Pakistan you mentioned to U.S. lawmakers in October that you were willing to work one more time on the issue of militants. Is there an urgency...

SEC. MATTIS: I'm sorry -- say that...

Q: You mentioned to U.S. lawmakers in October that you were willing to work one more time...

SEC. MATTIS: Yes.

Q: ... on the issue of militants.

SEC. MATTIS: Yes.

Q: Is there an urgency to this as you head there now?

SEC. MATTIS: Pardon?

Q: Is there an urgency to this as you head to Pakistan?

SEC. MATTIS: There's always an urgency to something when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war, where causalities are being taken. These are 39 of the most economically powerful, generally speaking, most long-term democratic institutions in the world. These are powerful nations morally, economically and diplomatically, and certainly militarily.

So it's, I think, essential in South Asia that we all work together to restore the level of stability that allows for the economics to build. I mean, can you imagine a border between Pakistan and India where economic trade is not ongoing to the benefit of people on both sides of that border. We can not only imagine it; it's a reality right now.

So what we've got to do is all work together on this, and there's a sense of urgency about that. There's people who are living below the poverty line in both those countries.

So as you look at this problem, if you'll expand the problem you can understand the sense of urgency to -- to move beyond violence and get back to the normal order of things.

Q: But have you seen something by Pakistan recently that suggests to you they are open to do more, or that they're willing to change? Have you seen any indication?

SEC. MATTIS: Yes, Lita, I would look at visit of General Bajwa to Kabul here -- I forget the date. It's in the last couple of months. And I would look at General Bajwa's statements about Pakistan taking the lead on certain issues, and that he put forward there.

Q: So you think that's an opening for you?

SEC. MATTIS: I have no doubt it's an opening. General Bajwa is a mature officer with a deep background in not just military matters, but South Asia security issues, and we have got to find a way to move beyond this constant fighting that's characterized the area.

Q: Over the past week we've seen in Pakistan sort of this rise of Islamist hardliners taking hold in the mainstream. You know, there was this sit-in this was called off. There was a, you know -- a militant with 10 million bounty, he was released from house arrest just a week before you arrived. The White House said that could have repercussions for the relationship.

So given that you see a positive, there are a few things just in the past few weeks, that have really made here, that there is a slide towards extremism in the country. Is that something you're going to bring up?

SEC. MATTIS: Yes, first of all I need to talk to the leaders in the country and gain their understanding. I do not do foreign policy, military policy through what I read in the press. It is not to put anything down about the press. I'm not saying that. But I need to go -- this is why I go, to sit down and listen to them, start there, start by listening.

Q: I need to ask you an acquisition question.

SEC. MATTIS: Sure.

Q: connected with the...

SEC. MATTIS: (Laughter.), Tony.

Q: Last month you weighed in on the Air Force tanker issue. You were concerned that the Air Force might, based on...

SEC. MATTIS: The Air Force might?

Q: They might -- the Air Force might accept Boeing tankers that were less than compliant. You asked your staff to look into it.

SEC. MATTIS: I was concerned that Air Force might do what with Boeing?

Q: They may take Boeing tankers...

SEC. MATTIS: Right.

Q: They may accept Boeing tankers that were not compliant with all their contract specs.

SEC. MATTIS: No.

Q: You were concerned about that.

SEC. MATTIS: Let me correct that.

Q: Yes?

SEC. MATTIS: Tony, I think I understand where you're going here. I -- I reinforced that Air Force was not going to accept tankers that weren't completely compliant with the contract, and that -- and Boeing -- I think it was a self-imposed goal, that -- deliver their tankers by the end of this calendar year, and Boeing, I think, has come out and said they may not be able to, but Boeing has been an excellent -- there hasn't been any pushback on the -- they're working to fix things and make them aligned with the contract, which myself, Undersecretary Ellen Lord, the Air Force and Boeing are all aligned on, if that addresses the broader issue.

But what's your specific question?

Q: -- you've answered it basically.

SEC. MATTIS: Oh, OK.

Q: You sound like your satisfied with the pace the program is going now after you raised the concern.

SEC. MATTIS: We need the tankers, but I want the tankers done right. The Air Force needs tankers done right. The American taxpayer expects tankers done right, and Boeing is committed to delivering tankers that are done right.

So this is a team effort and I'm very, very comfortable that we're on the right track. We'll get there. It'll be the best tanker in the world.

Q: Thanks.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1386609/

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Palestine's Abbas warns against any change in US policy on Quds

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 06:55PM

The President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas has warned that any change in US policy on the occupied city of Jerusalem al-Quds would seriously undermine peace efforts and would harm Palestine's interests.

"Any American step related to the recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel, or moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, represents a threat to the future of the peace process and is unacceptable for the Palestinians, Arabs and internationally," Abbas said Sunday.

The entire Jerusalem al-Quds is currently under Israel's control while the regime also claims the city's eastern part which hosts the third holiest Muslim site and has been designated as "occupied" under international law since the 1967 Arab War.

US President Donald Trump vowed last year during election campaign that he would move the US embassy in Tel Aviv to the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds. Reports say he is planning to recognize the city as capital of Israel this week in an apparent bid to offset his embassy moving pledge.

Abbas has reportedly contacted Arab and world leaders to rally support against the possible Washington move. His spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeneh, said the Palestinian leader had been in touch with leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and France, to discuss potential countermeasures.

"We believe that such an American step, if it takes place, will enter the region in a new course, and a dangerous phase whose results cannot be controlled," Abu Rdeneh said.

Other Palestinian officials also reacted to the possible change of US policy on Jerusalem al-Quds, saying it would further isolate the US from international efforts aimed at reaching a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said the move would "promote international anarchy and disrespect for global institutions and law" while it could disqualify the US from playing "any role in any initiative toward achieving a just and lasting peace."

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Another wave of cholera may strike Yemen amid Saudi blockade: WHO

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 06:07PM

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against a fresh wave of cholera in war-torn Yemen, where a crippling blockade imposed by the Saudi-led military coalition has cut off fuel for medical centers, and vital aid supplies for starving children.

Nevio Zagaria, WHO's acting representative in Yemen sounded the grim warning on Sunday, saying despite a drop in new cases for the past 11 straight weeks, 35 districts across the country were still reporting the highly infectious disease with "high attack rates" in communities.

According to WHO figures, around 960,000 suspected cases of cholera and 2,219 deaths have been documented since the deadly epidemic broke out in April in Yemen, where 8 million people face famine.

Children account for almost a third of infections of the waterborne disease, spread by food or water contaminated with human feces. The disease causes acute watery diarrhea and dehydration and can kill within hours if left untreated.

A worsening economic situation and a dire shortage of clean drinking water, due to failing water sewage systems in many cities and the lack of fuel for water pumps, have compounded the humanitarian crisis, Zagaria added.

"This is a perfect mix to have a new explosion of a cholera epidemic at the beginning of the rainy season in March of next year," Zagaria said.

He further warned that 16 percent of Yemeni children, under the age of five, suffer from acute malnutrition, including 5.2 percent with a severe form of the alarming condition, which is life-threatening.

On November 5, Yemeni forces launched a missile against King Khalid International Airport, located 35 kilometers north of the Saudi capital Riyadh, in retaliation for Saudi's devastating aerial bombardment campaign against Yemen.

The Saudi authorities, however, said at the time that the kingdom's army had managed to intercept the missile, the fragments of which landed on the airport campus without inflicting any significant damage.

Following the missile launch, Saudi Arabia imposed a tight blockade on nearly all Yemen's air, land and sea ports, exerting further pressure on Yemeni people, who receive desperately needed humanitarian assistance through the western port city of Hudaydah and an international airport in the capital Sana'a, both under the crippling siege. The United Nations and numerous charity and human rights groups have already urged Riyadh to fully lift the tight siege of the poor nation, but all to no avail.

Zagaria further said that a ship carrying 35 tons of WHO surgical and medical supplies was being diverted to militia-held Aden after waiting weeks to offload at Hudaydah.

"We are waiting and hoping that the situation of the blockade will be resolved. We have an opening to the humanitarian blockade but the opening to the commercial blockade is only partial," he added.

Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate the former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of the regime in Riyadh.

Latest figures show that the war has so far killed over 12,000 Yemenis and wounded thousands more. The Saudi aggression has also taken a heavy toll on the country's facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

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Four winners have been named in the Nebraska college savings plan's Big Dreams $20,000 Giveaway.

The giveaway randomly selected four participants to each receive a $5,000 contribution to a NEST 529 College Savings Plan account for a beneficiary 10 years old or younger.

The Nebraska State Treasurer's office, which administers the plan, says the latest winners come from Minatare, Enders, Omaha and Sidney.

More than 2,400 eligible entries were received, including 158 from outside Nebraska, between Sept. 12 and Oct. 31. It is the second Big Dreams Giveaway in 2017. The first, held last spring, also awarded four winners with $5,000 contributions.

Since 2015, $90,000 has been given through the Big Dreams Giveaway. Funding for the scholarships is provided by First National Bank of Omaha.
Iran urges intra-Yemeni dialogue to foil enemies' plots

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 05:34PM

Iran says dialogue is the best way for various Yemeni groups to settle their disputes and prevent foreign enemies from taking advantage of the situation amid days of violent clashes between forces loyal to ex-president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Houthi fighters.

"Yemeni forces can eliminate any grounds, which can be exploited by foreign enemies of the Yemeni nation, through dialogue and the resolution of differences," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Sunday.

Referring to the continuation of brutal foreign aggression against Yemen, which has resulted in the destruction of the country's infrastructure, a complete blockade on Yemen, and mass killing of the Yemeni people, the Iranian diplomat expressed hope that all Yemeni groups and political and social parties would remain in solidarity and maintain a national united front against any foreign aggression.

The Iranian spokesperson called on all Yemeni forces to exercise self-restraint and calm in order to settle their differences.

The forces loyal to the former Yemeni president have been in an alliance with the Houthi Ansarullah fighters against a Saudi Arabian-led invasion. Their supporters have, however, become engaged in an armed conflict in the capital, Sana'a, over the past few days amid a strain in relations between the two sides.

Speaking in a televised address on Saturday, the leader of Yemen's popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, called on all Yemeni groups to work on maintaining peace and stability in the country, and urged Saleh to be wise and consider the national interests of Yemen.

He demanded that Yemeni parties focus on the Saudi aggression, noting that division among Yemeni factions only served the interests of the Saudi-led coalition, which has been bombing Yemen for more than two years killing over 12,000 people.

Earlier on Sunday, Yemen's Supreme Political Council, which runs state affairs, said the situation in Sana'a was back to normal following days of violent clashes.

Issuing a statement, the council's head, Saleh Ali al-Sammad, called on all the Yemeni people, political parties and tribes to exercise patience, counteract any act of aggression, and not contribute to the "conspiracies" meant to stoke tensions.

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Trump denies asking FBI to drop Flynn investigation

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 03:26PM

US President Donald Trump has denied having asked then FBI director James Comey to stop investigating former national security advisor Michael Flynn over his alleged contacts with Russian officials to alter last year's US presidential election.

"I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!" Trump said Sunday in a tweet.

After he was fired himself in May, Comey testified under oath before a Senate panel that, a day after Flynn's firing, Trump asked him to drop an investigation into the former national security advisor.

Trump fired Comey in May, citing the FBI chief's probe into the alleged links between the presidential campaign and Russian interference.

On Friday, Flynn pleaded guilty in federal court to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia.

In his Sunday Twitter messages, Trump also attacked his own FBI, saying the federal law enforcement agency's reputation is "in tatters."

The president was responding to reports that a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation about alleged Russian election interference because of anti-Trump text messages.

Trump also repeated his claim that he and his campaign had not colluded with Russia in last year's presidential election, and shifted blame on his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

"After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness," he said.

That comment about Flynn appeared to indicate Trump was acknowledging he knew at the time of Flynn's firing in February that he had lied to the bureau's agents.

White House officials, however, said that Trump was only referencing Flynn's guilty plea for lying to the FBI about his conversations with then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak over sanctions former US President Barack Obama slapped on Russia for election meddling.

A day earlier on Saturday, Trump defended the actions of his former national security advisor as "lawful."

Flynn was forced to resign after information surfaced about his communications with Kislyak.

Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, briefly served as US national security advisor for Trump from January 20 to February 13, 2017. His tenure of just 24 days was the shortest in the history of the office.

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Taliban commander killed in recent Helmand operation, Afghan intelligence sources say

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 02:34PM

A Taliban commander was killed last week during an operation by Afghan forces in the southern province of Helmand, intelligence sources say.

Afghanistan's main intelligence agency said in a statement on Sunday that Mullah Shah Wali, also known as Mullah Naser, was killed in an air raid.

The National Directorate of Security (NDS) added that Wali was killed alongside a bomber and two other commanders.

Wali became the commander of the Taliban's "Red Unit" as well as the deputy shadow governor of Helmand three years ago and was directly involved in the offensives of the militant group.

According to the Afghan military, the "Red Unit" is thought to be equipped with advanced weapons, including night vision scopes, 82mm rockets, heavy machine guns and US-made assault rifles.

Another commander was killed in an Afghan airstrike in the northeastern province of Kapisa on Friday. The strike in Nijrab district killed Dilawar Khan and five of his family members.

Last month, the Taliban launched several attacks on a number of checkpoints and military bases across the war-ravaged country, leaving more than 100 Afghan soldiers dead and dozens more injured.

Afghanistan is engulfed by violence and many parts of the country remain plagued by militancy despite the presence of foreign troops. The United States and its NATO allies invaded the country as part of Washington's so-called war on terror in 2001.

Over the past 16 years, the Taliban have been engaged in militancy across Afghanistan, killing and displacing government officials, security forces, and civilians.

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Yemen's Houthi fighters say missile attack launched at Abu Dhabi nuclear plant

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 10:21AM

Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement says it has fired a cruise missile at a nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates capital, Abu Dhabi.

"The missile force announces the launching of a winged cruise missile ... towards the al-Barakah nuclear reactor in Abu Dhabi," the Houthis' al-Masirah news website reported on Sunday, without providing further details.

Yemeni media reported that the cruise missile had successfully hit the Barakah nuclear reactor in Abu Dhabi.

Colonel Aziz Rashid, a spokesman for the Yemeni army, has told Lebanon's Al Mayadeen TV channel that the missile attack was a political and military response to the UAE's role in the destruction of Yemen. He insisted that the missile had hit the intended target.

The United Arab Emirates' state-run news agency has, however, denied reports of a Yemeni missile striking the under-construction nuclear plant. WAM said the UAE has air-defense systems that can protect it against such threats.

Yemeni forces regularly fire ballistic missiles at positions inside Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

Back in September, Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi warned that the UAE is no longer a safe country as missiles manufactured by the Yemeni group can now hit anywhere in the Arab country.

The UAE has been a key ally of Saudi Arabia in its military campaign against Yemen, which has killed over 12,000 people since March 2015.

The Emirati air force has played a significant part in the aerial assaults against Yemen. In addition to deploying its own troops on Yemeni soil, Abu Dhabi has been training pro-Saudi militants fighting on the ground against the Yemeni army and its allied forces.

The country has also come under scrutiny for running secret prisons in Yemen, where hundreds of inmates suffer mistreatment and torture.

Saudi Arabia and its allies launched the war in a bid to crush the Houthis and reinstate the former Riyadh-friendly regime, but the kingdom has achieved neither of its goals.

The protracted Saudi war, which has been accompanied by a land, naval, and aerial blockade, has left over 17 million Yemenis in need of food and caused a cholera epidemic.

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Talks progress between Venezuelan govt., opposition

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 08:35AM

Representatives of the Venezuelan government and opposition have made "significant advances" in negotiations aimed at resolving the country's political and economic crisis, scheduling a new round of talks.

Two-day reconciliation talks hosted by the Dominican Republic ended in the capital city, Santo Domingo, on Saturday evening.

The host of the talks, Dominican President Danilo Medina, said in a statement that the next stage of the negotiations would resume in Santo Domingo in two weeks' time.

Representative from both sides, who were joined by foreign ministers from Latin American countries acting as mediators, agreed to resume peace talks on December 15.

Venezuela, which is located on the northern tip of South America, was the scene of months-long violent protests earlier this year. That unrest was caused by political differences as well as acute shortages of food and medicine.

The opposition Democratic Union Roundtable (MUD) coalition says it wants the government to open a "humanitarian corridor" to allow food and medicine into the crisis-hit country and guarantee "fair" presidential elections in Venezuela next year.

The government, for its part, has called on the opposition to work for the lifting of US sanctions, which Caracas sees as a main reason for the shortages in the country.

Some 125 people died in the clashes and hundreds more were injured. The violence also led to arrests and caused widespread economic damage.

Leftist President Nicolas Maduro has repeatedly accused the United States of orchestrating a plot to topple his government. He accuses the US of sabotaging the economy of the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, causing shortages and dissatisfaction.

Maduro has also accused the US of inciting unrest by openly siding with the opposition.

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Hamas: Palestinian Authority refusing to lift Gaza sanctions

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 08:26AM

Hamas says the Palestinian Authority (PA) is preventing a landmark reconciliation deal between the resistance movement and its rival Fatah party which governs the PA from bearing fruit.

Hamas made the statement on Saturday, addressing the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

Fatah and Hamas have been at odds ever since the latter scored a landslide victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. Ever since, Hamas has been governing the Gaza Strip, while Fatah is headquartered in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Repeated attempts at rapprochement failed between the two sides until October, when they inked the historic deal in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Under the deal, the PA is to take control of Gaza, and end a string of punitive measures against the coastal enclave, including its refusal to pay Israel to provide the besieged territory with electricity.

The Palestinian Authority, however, has missed a deadline for the takeover of the Gaza Strip, which had been set for December 1, and continues to implement sanctions against the enclave.

"We demand that the government of Rami Hamdallah assume its responsibilities in full and lift the unjust sanctions imposed on our people in Gaza," the statement said.

The resistance movement said the Palestinian Authority had "made no effort to lift the sanctions and ease the sufferings of the people of Gaza."

The PA dismissed the charges as "irresponsible" in a statement of its own.

Sources close to both factions were also quoted as saying that the Authority was expected to take over Gaza's control on December 10 following talks between representatives of the two sides in Cairo later Saturday.

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Niger permits US military to fly armed drones: Official

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 05:55AM

The US military has received permission from the government of Niger to begin flying armed drones in the country from the capital Niamey, according to a report.

The agreement indicates an intensifying US military campaign against militants in Africa and is based on a recently signed government-to-government memorandum of understanding, The Associated Press reported on Friday, citing a US official.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, further stated that the armed drones could start flying as early as next week or at least by the end of December.

The arrangement limits the attack drones to "defensive missions," the official said without elaborating.

The drones are eventually to be moved to a desert base under construction near the central city of Agadez. The military base is expected to become operational by mid- to late-2018.

The US military maintains approximately 800 service members in the impoverished African country.

The development comes nearly two months after four US Special Forces troops were killed in Niger following an ambush by local militants.

FBI and US military investigators arrived in Niger last month to try to determine what happened in the October 4 assault on the 11-member Army Special Forces team and 30 Nigerien troops.

The case has received enormous attention in the United States because of conflicting accounts over whether the soldiers were on a low-risk patrol or had changed plans and set out in pursuit of local insurgents.

Questions also have been raised about why the team was lightly armed, given the danger in the area.

Pentagon officials have said the soldiers were on a routine reconnaissance mission. Under US military rules, American troops in Niger are not supposed to go on combat missions in the country, but they can "advise and assist" on missions with local forces where the chance of enemy contact is low.

It was not clear why a team mostly armed with rifles was ordered to assist in an operation to take into custody a dangerous militant.

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Situation under control in Sana'a: Yemen governing body

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 05:56AM

Yemen's Supreme Political Council which runs state affairs says the situation in the capital Sana'a is back to normal following days of violent clashes between forces loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh and Houthi fighters.

In a statement released on Saturday, the council's head Saleh Ali al-Sammad called on all the Yemeni people, political parties and tribes to exercise patience, counteract any act of aggression, and not contribute to the "conspiracies" meant to stoke tensions.

"The security services continue their efforts to enhance security and stability, and all those who try to destabilize the security are being dealt with seriously," Sammad said.

Preserving public tranquility and safety in Sana'a, which has become a symbol of the Yemenis' dignity, is a strategic issue for Yemen's Supreme Political Council, he added.

The Yemeni official also urged the "wise" Yemeni citizens to cooperate with the national and political forces on maintaining the country's stability.

He further expressed deep regret over recent developments in Yemen, which exacerbated people's suffering from a Saudi-led military aggression and siege.

"All figures, wise people and all citizens must exercise the highest degree of responsibility and discipline and bear the responsibility during the current stage to spare the country the scourge of strife and conflict," he concluded.

Speaking in a televised speech on Saturday, Saleh whose forces were allied with the Houthi fighters against Saudi Arabia made an overture to the alliance, which has been waging a deadly war on the impoverished nation since March 2015.

Saleh said he is open to talks with Saudi Arabia and ready to "turn the page" if Riyadh and its allies lift the blockade and halt airstrikes on Yemen.

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi described Saleh's stance as a "betrayal" and stressed that the former president must reassess his policies that are favored by Yemen's enemies.

Forces loyal to Saleh "continue to move toward chaos and disturbance of security and stability" in the Arab country, he said, describing the former president's move as a "coup" against the Yemeni alliance.

"We must continue to support the fighting fronts because this plot is the last card of the forces of aggression, through which they seek to facilitate their occupation of our country," Houthi pointed out.

Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen in an attempt to crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall ex-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, but the kingdom has achieved neither of its goals.

The Saudi war, which has been accompanied by a land, naval, and aerial blockade of Yemen, has so far killed over 12,000 people and caused one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in recent times.

Eight killed in fresh Saudi air raids

At least eight Yemeni civilians lost their lives early Sunday after Saudi warplanes bombed a residential area in Sa'ada Province. The strikes also injured several others.

'Internal divisions counterproductive'

Chairman of Conservative Arab Network, Wafik Moustafa, believes that all Yemeni factions must know that any division or internal conflict, be it a Saudi plot or not, would only aggravate the suffering of the country's population.

"Saudi Arabia no doubt plays the biggest role in what is happening. There is division within Yemen," Moustafa told Press TV, adding that Saudi efforts to take advantage of the divide between Saleh and the Houthis would be useless and there is no winner in that situation.

Meanwhile, director of Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, Catherine Shakdam, opined that Ali Abdullah Saleh is well aware of the problems that Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman are facing in their own country in terms of cementing their power. Therefore, she said, Saleh has decided to grab the chance and bring them to the negotiating table and end the war as soon as possible.

Also talking to Press TV, Shakdam said, "It is a very complicated [situation]. But you have to understand that Saleh is looking after his own political standing."

"Saudi [Arabia] has said no to the resistance movement and the resistance movement has said no to negotiation with the Saudis. Therefore, they are looking for someone to come and be this knight in shining armor to kind of save the day and Saleh is trying to be that," the analyst noted.

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US sends 6 stealth F-22 jet fighters for S Korea war games

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 03:32AM

The US military has dispatched six of its Air Force's advanced stealth fighter jets to South Korea to take part in joint war rehearsals and air drills scheduled for next week in yet another provocative show of force against North Korea.

The F-22 Raptor war planes arrived in South Korea on Saturday for the air drills alongside the South Korean Air Force just days after North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) described as Pyongyang's highest launch to date.

The US Defense Department is also expected to dispatch F-35A and F-35B stealth jet fighters, F-16C war planes, B-1B bombers and other aircraft to join the war games, according to a report by the South's Yonhap News Agency.

This is while the South Korean Air Force will deploy several models of its own fighter jets and support aircraft to participate in the war games, in which they will conduct aerial strikes on mock North Korean missile and nuclear sites, as well as missile transporters.

The drills will mark the first time that six of the stealth fighters fly over South Korea at once.

While US authorities verify that North Korea is capable of producing nuclear weapons and that the latest missile-launch had the capability of reaching the American east coast, they point out that it is not yet certain whether the new missile can deliver a heavy nuclear warhead.

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Tillerson Heads To Europe Following Reports Of Replacement

RFE/RL December 03, 2017

Rex Tillerson is set to embark on December 4 on a diplomatic mission to Europe, days after reports surfaced of a White House plan to force out the U.S. secretary of state.

Tillerson is scheduled to attend NATO, EU, and OSCE meetings and to hold bilateral talks with Belgian and Austrian officials in Brussels and Vienna on December 5-7. He is due to make a stop in Paris on December 8 for meetings with French officials.

An encounter with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is also planned on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the Austrian capital.

Ahead of his European tour, Tillerson stressed Washington's commitment to European security, especially as Russia continues what he called its "aggressive behavior."

Speaking at the Wilson Center think tank on November 28, Tillerson said Russia's military interventions in Georgia and Ukraine, and interference in European elections and politics were unacceptable.

Two days after the speech, U.S. media reported that the White House had a plan for CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson.

U.S. President Donald Trump rejected the reports as "fake news," while Tillerson called them "laughable."

Contradictory Statements

The president and the secretary of state have often contradicted each other in public statements regarding major international issues.

Tillerson has also been accused by Democrats and some Republicans of weakening U.S. diplomacy by not filling major positions at the State Department.

Meanwhile, some European leaders have expressed concern over Trump's "America First" rhetoric and mixed signals sent by U.S. officials regarding NATO and the European Union.

An EU official involved in diplomacy with White House officials told the Reuters news agency that "it seems [Tillerson] has no mandate, that the guillotine is hanging over his head."

"It leaves Europe just as doubtful as before about Trump," the official added.

"The chaos in the administration doesn't help in the current geopolitical climate," a French diplomat was cited as saying.

Ukraine 'On The Agenda'

In Brussels, Tillerson will participate in a December 5-6 NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting and will also meet with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and foreign ministers of the bloc to discuss "U.S.-EU cooperation on major global issues," the State Department said in a statement.

On December 7 in Vienna, he will attend the opening and first plenary sessions of the OSCE Ministerial Council -- the central decision-making and governing body of the organization.

Ukraine "will very much be on the agenda" during the OSCE talks, said a senior State Department official said on December 1, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The secretary really has a heart forthe safety and security of the Ukrainian people in the east in the occupied territories who continue to be the target of military operations with the encouragement and participation of forces from the Russian Federation," the official also said.

Fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.

Several cease-fire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords -- September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed at resolving the conflict -- have failed to hold.

The OSCE has deployed an unarmed Special Monitoring Mission to the country (OSCE SMM) to observe and report on the situation.

Peacekeeping Force?

Discussions about deploying a peacekeeping force have heated up since September, when Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed deploying UN peacekeepers along the line separating Ukrainian government forces and the Russia-backed separatists.

The plan swiftly drew criticism from both Kyiv and the West, largely because of concerns that deployment only along the front line would cement Russian control over separatist-held territory and do nothing to stop Russia from sending fighters and weapons into Ukraine. Putin later said he was open to adjustments to his initial proposal, but no agreement has been reached.

"It needs to be an outcome that would have a UN force encompassing the contested area and not just ratifying the gains that the Russians have made on the ground," the State Department official said.

The official said that a meeting between Tillerson and Lavrov was tentatively scheduled for December 7 on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting in Vienna.

"We have a fairly robust set of discussions under way with the Russians on a lot of global issues" including North Korea's missile and nuclear programs and the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, the official said.

Russia's Foreign Ministry confirmed on December 2 that preparations were under way for such talks.

Tillerson is also scheduled to meet separately with Austrian Foreign Minister Kurz to discuss "combating violent extremism, curbing nuclear proliferation, promoting democratic and economic reform in the Western Balkans, and deepening bilateral trade ties," according to the State Department.

It said Tillerson was set to travel to Paris on December 8 to discuss "our deep cooperation on issues of mutual concern" around the world, such as Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, and North Korea, with senior French leaders.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and TASS

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ tillerson-europe-trip-replacement- russia-ukraine/28893541.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice, a former prosecutor and Democrat of New York, has been extremely impressive, taking a stand on Democratic sexual predators in Congress, having the guts to call out members of her own Democratic Party.

Rice has even defied the boss Democrat, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. And any time a member of Congress takes such a stand, we should all take notice.

And Rice has also been adept at ridiculing a bad habit among members of Congress. They're talkers. And they talk and talk and talk and do nothing.

Congress loves to talk and talk about how we should all be treated equally. But Congress has a multimillion-dollar secret slush fund to pay settlements in Capitol Hill workplace disputes that include sexual harassment. The victims have to sign nondisclosure agreements to protect the identities of those accused of assault.

Rice and a few others, on both sides of the aisle, find this abhorrent and are offering legislation to change it.

Yet Democrat U.S. Rep. John "Shorts" Conyers is still in office. Sen. Al "Fish Lips" Franken is still in office. Both are alleged assaulters of women. Franken won't quit. Conyers won't quit, and the Congressional Black Caucus that he helped found is defending him.

Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who allegedly trolled shopping malls for high school girls when he was in his 30s, is still viable in his campaign.

And Congress talks and talks.

Rice gives me some small hope that, on issues that matter, tribalism isn't everything. And sexual harassment in the workplace matters to Democratic women and Republican women and men who love them.

She has publicly demanded the resignations of Franken and Conyers. And she's part of a bipartisan effort pushing a bill to release the names of the sexual predators who use the slush fund.

The other day, Rice had been in a Democratic caucus meeting chaired by Pelosi  who stupidly defended Conyers and called him an "icon"  and finally Rice had enough.

She walked out. All they were doing in there was talking.

"Let's talk about the big elephant in the room," Rice told reporters. "And that's why I was done with the meeting. I don't have time for conversations that are not real."

I wonder if her Irish grandfather had a similar saying.

Rice pointed out that in the real world  not Congress  sexual predators are dealt with differently. In the show-biz-heavy environment of celebrity broadcast journalism, people get fired.

NBC, for example, fired "Today Show" anchor Matt Lauer for a history of sexually preying on female subordinates. CBS and PBS fired the old liberal open bathrobe himself, Charlie Rose. Fox News fired boss Roger Ailes and family values anchor Bill O'Reilly.

And Minnesota Public Radio fired its own "icon"  and I use the word advisedly  Garrison Keillor, for inappropriate touching.

Holy liberal Lake Wobegon, is nothing sacred? It almost makes you long for the days when Brian Williams was exiled for making up stories about his heroic exploits.

As she left the Pelosi meeting, Rice talked about how news anchors were punished and that members of Congress were treated with deference.

That discrepancy, she said, breeds cynicism and hurts the nation. Of course she's right.

Congress makes the laws. There shouldn't be two sets of standards, one for congressmen with a tax-subsidized sexual harassment slush fund, and another for the rest of us.

"We show no moral authority whatsoever as a body," Rice said. "This is why only 6 percent of Americans think that Congress is doing a good job.

"You see the actions that CBS and NBC take when there are allegations of very well-known men in positions of power. And we don't do the same. And I think it's a disgrace."

Of course it is a disgrace. All of it is disgraceful.

Many Democrats want Conyers and Franken to stay right where they are to keep supporting liberal policies.

And many Republicans  including President Donald Trump  would rather have teen-trolling Republican Moore in the Senate than seat a liberal Democrat who'd vote in support of abortions and against a tax cut.

Didn't character count, once?

So how did we get to this disgraceful place where character doesn't count?

It goes back to President Bill Clinton, a Democrat who lied under oath in a sexual harassment case.

By today's Democratic political standards, Clinton was a sexual predator. But he was supported, vigorously, with much Democratic tribal outrage, and his female accusers were defamed and trashed by the cultural elites.

On Dec. 19, 1998, the day Clinton was impeached, congressional Democrats went in droves to the White House. They stood in a large group in a great show of partisan support.

Character didn't count. But tribalism sure counted.

So they talked and they talked and talked some more.
Yemeni Army Spokesman : The army continues its battle to defeat Houthi militias

Saudi Press Agency

Sunday 1439/3/15 - 2017/12/03

Aden, 15 Rabi'I,1439 AH, 03 December,2017 , SPA -- The spokesman of the Yemeni Army Brigadier Abdu Majli has confirmed that the army is continuing its battle to defeat Houthi militias.

Brigadier Majli said in a statement published on website 26 September of the Yemeni armed forces that the national army does not bet on recent conflicts between the militias of Houthi and former Yemeni president Saleh, but it bets on the Yemeni people and its army, noting that the evolution of the relationship between the allies of the coup is normal to reach the stage of fighting as Houthi militias do not accept the other.

The Yemeni army completed the liberation of Al-Hamra and Tabat Al-Saltaa mountain range last Friday and besieged the strategic Snipers' Tabat.

-- SPA

16:37 LOCAL TIME 13:37 GMT

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Argentine Navy Determines Two Possible Areas of Location of Missing Submarine

Sputnik News

17:50 03.12.2017(updated 20:07 03.12.2017)

Despite that Argentina's Navy has halted the operation to rescue 44 crew members of a sub that has been missing since November 15, experts are still trying to establish the possible location of the vessel.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The search for the missing Argentine submarine San Juan was complicated by bad weather conditions, adding to that experts are now examining two areas at "a depth of 700 and 950 meters (about 3,100 feet)," Argentine Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said Sunday at a press conference.

The first area was found by the US Atlantis research vessel, but currently it "cannot be examined due to bad weather conditions [Even though] nothing has been found [so far], we plan to return to this area and scan it with other sensors," the spokesman said, adding that Argentine Islas Malvinas ship with Russia's Pantera Plus submersible on board was sent to this area.

The second area was found by Norwegian and Chilean experts, who are searching the site despite the deteriorating weather conditions, according to Balbi.

The San Juan submarine fell off the radar en route from the port of Ushuaia to the city of Mar del Plata off Patagonia. According to media, the crew members reported some problems during their last established contact. One of the possible reasons for the sub to have disappeared is reportedly a battery fire caused by a leak, the recent evidence suggested.

On Thursday, the Navy announced that it had halted its weeks-long operation to rescue the crew of the missing submarine after the last hope caused by images of unidentified objects spotted on the seabed was dashed as it had been confirmed it was not the lost sub.

However, Balbi has previously commented on the end of the operation, saying that the search for the lost submarine would continue to focus on other signals of interest detected in parts of the South Atlantic where the vessel was last heard from.

About 28 ships, nine planes and 4,000 people from 18 countries were involved in the search efforts in an ocean area covering 557,000 nautical miles.

 Sputnik

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Suicide Bomber Kills Six Afghan Civilians

By Ayaz Gul December 03, 2017

A suicide blast killed at least six civilians in eastern Afghanistan Sunday and wounded 13 others.

The bomber was on a motorcycle and apparently wanted to reach the venue of a massive pro-government rally in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province. But Afghan security forces intercepted him far away from the event, prompting him to donate explosives strapped to his body.

A provincial government spokesman, Attaullah Khogyani, while confirming the casualties, told VOA one woman and a child were among the dead. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the violence.

The attack occurred a day after a suicide bomber killed two members of Afghan security forces in Jalalabad and wounded 10 more. Islamic State claimed responsibility for that violence.

The Middle East-based terrorist group calls its Afghan operations IS-Khorasan Province (IS-KP) and has lately increased attacks in the country, killing scores of people. The group is mainly active in several districts of Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan.

On Saturday, President Ashraf Ghani said Islamic State is on the run in Afghanistan in the face of stepped up air and ground military offensives against the terrorist group.

Afghan forces have until now conducted around 300 airstrikes and more 1500 military operations against Daesh, eliminating hundreds of its militants, Ghani told a security meeting in Kabul while defending his counterterrorism efforts. He used the local acronym for IS and said security forces have also cleared nine districts of Daesh militants.

The rise in IS-led violence and the emergence of the group's loyalists in new Afghan areas, particularly in northern provinces, however, have prompted lawmakers and political opponents to criticize and question the effectiveness of the ongoing military offensives against the group.

IS militants have also been engaged in fierce fighting with the Taliban, the main insurgent group waging attacks on Afghan forces and their U.S.-led international partners.

IS has made territorial advances in recent battles with the Taliban in Khogyani district of Nangarhar, according to residents and local Afghan officials.

The terrorist group's global propaganda media claimed on Saturday IS fighters captured 18 villages in the district that were previously held by the Taliban.

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Gunbattles Rage as Yemen's Rebel Alliance Unravels

By VOA News December 03, 2017

Gunbattles erupted in the Yemeni capital Sana'a Sunday as an alliance between the Iran-backed Shi'ite rebels known as the Houthis and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh appeared to have fallen apart.

The two sides joined ranks three years ago and swept across the capital, Sana'a, forcing the country's internationally recognized President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee the country and seek military intervention led by Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis' political office have accused Saleh of staging a "coup" against "an alliance he never believed in" after he offered to initiate talks with the Saudi coalition. In a televised speech, Saleh asked for an end to the siege on Yemeni ports and offered, in exchange, to "turn a new page" and "deal with them in a positive way."

Clashes between fighters loyal to Saleh and the Houthis first erupted last week when Saleh accused the rebels of storming his giant mosque in Sana'a and attacking his nephew, the powerful commander of the special forces, Tarek Saleh.

Both sides have set up checkpoints, placed snipers on rooftops and sealed off entrances to the city. But many state institutions, including the airport, state TV headquarters and the official news agency, remain under the control of the Houthis.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday urged warring parties in Yemen to stop all ground and air assaults. In a statement released Sunday, the U.N. said the sharp escalation of armed clashes and airstrikes in Sana'a has already resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries, including civilians.

Fighting is restricting the movement of people and life-saving services within Sana'a city. Ambulances and medical teams cannot access the injured and people cannot go outside to buy food and other necessities, it said. Aid workers are unable to travel and implement critical life-saving programs at a time when millions of Yemenis rely on assistance to survive.

Yemen is one of the Arab world's poorest countries. Since 2015, it has been locked in a devastating civil war pitting Saudi-backed government forces against Iranian-supported rebels.

Yemen has become a humanitarian catastrophe, with more than 10,000 people killed in the fighting and at least 2 million displaced. A cholera outbreak has infected nearly 1 million people.

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Thousands of Congolese Fleeing into Zambia to Escape Violence in DRC

By Lisa Schlein December 03, 2017

The U.N. refugee agency reports the number of refugees that have fled into Zambia to escape militia violence in Haut-Katanga and Tanganyika Provinces of Democratic Republic of Congo now has topped 12,000.

The agency reports more than 8,400 Congolese refugees have arrived in Zambia in just the last three months, indicating a worsening of the situation in south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Government forces reportedly are killing many civilians in response to the rebellion in Haut-Katanga and Tanganyika Provinces against the continued rule of the country's President, Joseph Kabila.

To put the increasing instability in the country in perspective, UNHCR spokesman, Babar Baloch, notes more than four million people are internally displaced in DRC. He told VOA within the past month alone, 200,000 more people have fled their homes.

"When you do the math, the rough total of internal displacement comes to around 6,500 people being displaced each day. Refugees who are arriving, they fear that as violence is intensifying, they fear that more people could be forced out from DRC into Zambia," said the spokesman.

Baloch said some 80 percent of the refugees are women and children, driven out by the extreme brutality of rampaging militias. He said civilians reportedly are being killed, women raped, property looted and houses torched.

He said the UNHCR and its partners urgently need more money to develop a new site in Zambia and provide life-saving assistance for the expanding refugee population. He said humanitarian activities in DRC and Zambia are hugely underfunded, noting less than one quarter of the $236 million needed to run this operation has been received.

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Abbas: Moving US Embassy to Jerusalem Could Threaten Peace Process

By VOA News December 03, 2017

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is warning a U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the embassy from Tel Aviv could destroy the Middle East peace process.

Reports say President Donald Trump may make an announcement as early as Monday. He could declare that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital but put off physically moving the embassy.

"He's still looking at a lot of different facts, and when he makes his decision, he'll be the one to want to tell you, not me," Trump Middle East advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner said Sunday.

Trump made designating Jerusalem as the Israeli capital one of his campaign promises.

Abbas has been actively speaking out against such a move.

An Abbas advisor says he spent much of Sunday working the phones, calling several world leaders to "explain the dangers of any decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem or recognize [Jerusalem] as Israel's capital."

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the U.S. is "playing with fire."

The militant Palestinian faction Hamas has called for a new intifada - an uprising - if the embassy is moved.

Former president Bill Clinton signed moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv into law in 1995. But a president can sign a waiver every six months if he feels a relocation would endanger U.S. national security.

Every president since Clinton - including Trump - has signed the waiver.

Israel seized control of Jerusalem in the Six Day War in 1967, and later annexed east Jerusalem - a move never recognized by the world community.

Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Israel contends the entire city is its undivided capital.

The United States has always said the future of Jerusalem must be settled as part of a Middle East peace deal.

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Trump Claims He Never Sought to Block Probe of Fired National Security Adviser

By Steve Herman December 03, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump, in a series of Sunday morning tweets from the White House, attacked his own Federal Bureau of Investigation and said he never asked then-FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating his one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to Washington.

The FBI's reputation is "in Tatters  worst in History," but the Trump administration will "bring it back to greatness," the president declared on Twitter.

In a separate tweet on Comey's sworn testimony before Congress that the president had asked him to stop the probe of Flynn, Trump said "Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie."

The tweets come two days after Flynn pleaded guilty in Washington to lying to FBI agents about conversations he had with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the weeks before Trump assumed power in January.

Trump, on Sunday on the same social media platform, also attacked the FBI amid revelations that an agent, who had written emails favoring Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, was dropped from the probe after the emails were discovered.

"Now it all starts to make sense!" Trump said.

"The president should have no comment whatsoever on either of these investigations," said Republican Senator Susan Collins on the NBC News "Meet the Press" program on Sunday. "And the only thing that he should be doing is directing all of his staff and associates to fully cooperate."

A tweet sent out Saturday on the @realDonaldTrump account is also attracting significant scrutiny.

Trump tweeted that he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

That suggests the president was aware that when he fired Flynn on February 13 -- after less than a month as his national security advisor -- the president was aware the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency had lied to the FBI when agents interviewed him weeks earlier.

The president's personal lawyer says he wrote that tweet and told the Axios news website on Sunday that it was "my mistake" that he passed along in a draft to White House social media director Dan Scavino.

"I'm out of the tweeting business," John Dowd said with a chuckle, according to Axios. "I did not mean to break news."

To many the tweet implies that the president is admitting obstruction of justice.

And many are questioning Dowd's explanation of it.

"It seems as implausible as it is convenient to President Trump," says Ned Price, who was a special assistant to President Barack Obama on the National Security Council staff.

"The idea that a lawyer would draft that  without any input from or clearance by Trump  doesn't strike me as believable," Price, a former CIA senior analyst and spokesperson, tells VOA. "Add that to the long list of cover-ups."

As part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's criminal investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow, he is looking into whether the president obstructed justice in asking Comey to curb his investigation of Flynn and then later by firing the FBI director.

Flynn faces up to five years in prison following Friday's guilty plea but has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel's investigation.

"I do believe he will incriminate others in the administration. Otherwise, there was no reason for Bob Mueller to give Mike Flynn this kind of deal," Congressman Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on ABC's "This Week" television program said, adding that, "whether that will ultimately lead to the president, I simply don't know.''

Mueller is formulating a case of obstruction of justice against the president, according to the ranking Democrat on the Senate's judiciary committee.

I think we see this in the indictments, the four indictments and pleas that have just taken place, and some of the comments that are being made. I see it in the hyper-frenetic attitude of the White House: the comments every day, the continual tweets," said Senator Dianne Feinstein on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"And I see it, most importantly, in what happened with the firing of Director Comey and it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation," according to Feinsten. "That's obstruction of justice."

Flynn was one of Trump's close confidants during last year's presidential campaign in which the Republican nominee pulled off a stunning upset over Clinton.

Flynn, who was also previously fired by President Barack Obama as DIA director, gained widespread public attention at the Republican National Convention when he led chants of "Lock her up," referring to Clinton.

Outside the Federal District Courthouse in Washington on Friday, where he entered his perjury guilty plea, Flynn was taunted with chants of "Lock him up."

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Trump Changes Story on Why He Fired Flynn

By VOA News December 03, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump seemed Saturday to change his story on why he fired Michael Flynn as his national security advisor. Initially, the president said he let Flynn go because Flynn was not honest with Vice President Michael Pence about his contacts with Russians during the presidential transition.

But then Trump tweeted Saturday: "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

The tweet suggested that the president knew Flynn had lied to the FBI, as well as the vice president, about his Russians contacts. Trump had not mentioned the FBI before in his tweets about Flynn and the Russians.

It is against the law to lie to the FBI.

Trump also tweeted Sunday morning that "I never asked (FBI director James ) Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!"

The president's tweets have resulted in a climate of confusion about what the president knew and when he knew it about Flynn's contact with the Russians.

An Associated Press report says that the president did not write the tweet about the FBI, but that it was instead written by John Dowd, one of Trump's attorneys.

Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to federal agents, and he has agreed to cooperate with investigators examining allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Earlier Saturday, in his first remarks since Flynn entered the guilty plea, Trump said there was "absolutely no collusion" between his presidential campaign and Russia.

"What has been shown is no collusion, no collusion," Trump told reporters as he left the White House for New York.

Appearing before a federal judge in a packed courtroom in Washington, Flynn, a 59-year-old retired army general, pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about a series of private conversations he had in December 2016 with Russia's then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak.

The charge carries a sentence of up to five years in prison, but under U.S. sentencing guidelines the average sentence for the offense ranges from zero to six months.

The guidelines are advisory, but prosecutors agreed to seek a reduced sentence if Flynn provides "substantial assistance" with the investigation being led by special counsel Robert Mueller. No sentencing date was announced.

Guilty plea

As part of his guilty plea, Flynn agreed to "cooperate fully" with Mueller's team of investigators, answering questions, providing written statements, taking polygraph exams, and "participating in covert law enforcement activities." In return, Mueller's office agreed that Flynn "will not be further prosecuted criminally."

Flynn is the fourth member of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to be charged by Mueller's team and the first former White House staff member to plead guilty in connection with the Russia investigation.

On Oct. 30, Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign chairman, and Rick Gates, another senior campaign official, were charged in a 12-count indictment unrelated to the Russia investigation.

Another Trump campaign surrogate, George Papadopoulos, secretly pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian government and is cooperating with the special counsel as well.

Flynn's decision to cooperate with a probe that could implicate others close to Trump marks a dramatic turnaround for a man who staunchly campaigned for the real estate mogul and promised a hard edge in U.S. foreign policy before being fired.

White House reaction

The White House sought to play down the significance of Flynn's guilty plea.

White House lawyer Ty Cobb said Flynn's plea does not implicate "anyone other than Mr. Flynn" and added Flynn was a "former Obama administration official" who served in the Trump White House for only 25 days.

But the plea agreement provided an indication that Mueller sees Flynn's cooperation as critical to his investigation.

"The trick is we won't know perhaps for some time how significant it is," said Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at the University of Texas who closely follows the Russia investigation. "But it's a strong sign that more is coming. And what's coming down the pipe probably involves more senior officials and individuals closer to President Trump himself."

In a statement released after his court appearance Friday, Flynn said, "The actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right."

Flynn was swept up in the Russia probe as the FBI began examining contacts between Russia and Trump campaign officials.

Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about the conversations he had with the Russian ambassador at the behest of senior Trump transition officials shortly after the election.

The conversations focused on two foreign policy issues the Trump transition team sought to influence before coming into office: a pending U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for its settlement activities in Palestinian territories and a possible Russian retaliation to sanctions imposed by then-President Barack Obama.

In two separate conversations  Dec. 22 and Dec. 23, 2016  Flynn, directed by a "very senior" member of the Trump transition team, called Kislyak to urge him that Russia "vote against or delay" the Security Council resolution. Kisliyak later called back to say Russia would not vote against the resolution.

'Very senior' member of transition team

Several U.S. news outlets have identified as the "very senior" member of the transition team as Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser who is leading the White House's Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

Five days later, on Dec. 28, after Obama announced punitive sanctions against Russia over its interference in the election, Kislyak called Flynn, according to prosecutors.

The next day, Dec. 29, Flynn contacted an unnamed senior transition official who was at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort to discuss what to tell Kislyak about the sanctions.

The two discussed the impact of sanctions on Trump's foreign policy. Immediately after the conversation, Flynn called Kislyak and urged him to "refrain from escalating the situation."

On Dec. 31, the day after Putin announced that Russia would not retaliate to the U.S. sanctions, Kislyak called Flynn to say that "Russia had chosen not to retaliate" in response to Flynn's request.

When confronted by the FBI four days after Trump's inauguration, Flynn, then the president's national security adviser, denied everything, according to court documents filed on Friday.

The filing also says Flynn falsely stated he did not remember Kislyak informing him the Kremlin had decided to "moderate its response to those sanctions" in response to Flynn's request.

The court document says Flynn also falsely claimed the Russian ambassador never described Moscow's response to that request.

Kushner is scheduled to make public comments about the administration's Middle East strategy on Monday in Washington, his first expected public remarks since Flynn pleaded guilty, according to VOA's Nike Chiang.

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Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh killed: Interior Ministry

Iran Press TV

Mon Dec 4, 2017 12:34PM

Yemen's Interior Ministry has issued a statement confirming the death of the country's ousted president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, during clashes in capital Sana'a.

The confirmation came after a Yemeni radio station announced earlier on Monday that Saleh had been killed during clashes in the Yemeni capital.

The Interior Ministry further said in its statement that Saleh had been creating "chaos" in the country through cooperating with "militias of aggression" and by providing help to "extremist militias."

The ministry added that the Yemeni forces, backed by fighters from the popular Ansarullah Houthi movement, were in full control of all positions previously held by Saleh's militias in Sana'a.

The statement also noted that conflicts, which had plagued Sana'a during past days, were actually over after death of Saleh.

"The Interior Ministry announces the end of the crisis of the treason militia and the killing of its leader and a number on his criminal partisans," it added.

Later in the day, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television quoted sources in Saleh's General Peoples Congress as confirming that he had been killed.

The news channel added that the sources had said Saleh was killed by sniper bullets.

A few hours later, officials in Ali Abdullah Saleh's General People's Congress (GPC) confirmed to Reuters that Saleh had been killed outside Sana'a, in what sources in the Houthi group said was an RPG and gun attack.

The GPC officials said Saleh was killed south of the capital Sana'a along with the assistant secretary-general of the GPC, Yasser al-Awadi.

Earlier on Monday, Saudi Arabia unleashed a fresh wave of aerial bombardments against targets in Yemen's capital in an apparent effort to support forces loyal Saleh.

Since November 29, armed clashes sparked by forces loyal to Saleh, have continued against Houthi forces that are at the forefront of a retaliatory war against the Saudi-led military coalition. Saleh loyalists accused the Houthi fighters of raiding their bases across Sana'a and beyond, an allegation that the Houthi leader has strongly denied.

Saleh stepped down following a 2011 uprising after being in power for 33 years. His resignation in 2012 paved the way for Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi to assume power as Yemen's president. Hadi, however, resigned in 2014 and fled the country to Saudi Arabia.

The Houthi movement assumed responsibility for running state affairs after Hadi's escape threw Yemen into a state of uncertainty and threatened a total security breakdown in the country, where an al-Qaeda affiliate was present.

Later on, Saleh joined forces with the Houthis and the Yemeni army to defend the country against the brutal Saudi aggression, which started in March 2015.

On Saturday, however, Saleh officially announced the end of his alliance with Houthis, claiming that the movement had imposed hunger on the country and worked as an ally of Iran.

Yemenis will resist until final victory: Ansarullah

In an interview with Yemen's Arabic-language al-Masirah television network on Monday, Houthi Ansarullah movement's spokesman, Mohammad Abdulsalam, said the people of Yemen would eventually come out victorious in the war of aggression inflicted on their country by Saudi Arabia.

He added that Yemen's Houthi fighters and forces affiliated with the allied Popular Committees had managed to uncover and foil a large evil plot, whose goal was to target Yemeni popular forces and to create rift within their ranks.

Abdulsalam further noted that the Houthi forces had no problem with members of Saleh's party except those "who have betrayed their motherland and cooperated with the aggressors."

He said members of Saleh's party were helping the Yemeni forces in defending the country against the enemy, adding, "We want to boost cooperation with them."

Abdulsalam further stated that the Saudi war machine was still pounding the country and "our nation must resist until the final victory." He said the Saudi-led coalition continued to bombard the Yemeni capital by conducting at least 50 airstrikes during the past few days.

The Houthi official also noted that the Yemeni nation must stay alert in the face of any similar plot made against the country.

Abdulsalam said the leader of Yemen's popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, had asked Saleh to correct his pro-Saudi policy and review his recent decision to break his alliance with the Yemeni forces, but "he declined to pay attention to Houthi's request with arrogance."

He said the Yemeni forces managed to foil the plot hatched by Saleh and his militia's to trigger civil war in the country.

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Yemen's Ex-President Saleh Reported Killed In Fighting

December 04, 2017

Yemen's rebel-controlled Interior Ministry says that ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former ally turned adversary of the Huthi rebel militia, has been killed.

The December 4 statement came as video footage emerged showing what appeared to be Saleh's corpse.

"The Interior Ministry announces the end of the crisis of militias and the killing of their leader and a number of his criminal supporters," an anchor said on the rebels' Al-Masirah television, referring to armed supporters of Saleh.

Media outlets Al-Arabiya and Reuters cited unnamed sources from Saleh's political party, the General People's Congress, as confirming that he was killed on December 4.

The party initially denied that its leader had been killed and said he was still leading forces in heavy fighting in Sanaa.

Unverified footage circulated on social media appeared to a show corpse resembling Saleh, wrapped in a floral-print blanket with a severe head injury.

Saleh on December 2 announced the end of his alliance with the Iran-backed Huthi rebels, with whom he has jointly ruled the capital, Sanaa, for three years.

Saleh, 75, ruled Yemen for more than three decades until his ouster under popular pressure in 2012.

Earlier on December 4, Huthi forces blew up Saleh's house in Sanaa and came under aerial attack by Saudi-led coalition warplanes for a second day, residents said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said at least 125 people were killed and 238 wounded in six days of fighting in Sanaa.

Based on reporting by Reuters, AFP, and dpa

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/yemen-ex-president-saleh -killed-fighting-sanaa/28896172.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Emboldened by the expediency of reconciliation, Republicans in Congress have begun their redemptive chants about tax reform. They are anointing our heads with the snake oil of corporate tax reduction as salvation for the middle class. As with all political prattle, scrutiny is essential.

Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary and current professor at Harvards Kennedy School of Government, asserts that tax reform requires restructuring the tax code, not simply reducing, reshuffling or reallocating tax funds.

The latter, however, is exactly what is being proposed. Despite the blather about simplifying our tax return and mailing it in on a postcard, the tax code will remain as byzantine as ever.

Republicans are pandering to the middle class with token crumbs of tax relief with one hand while preparing a veritable feast for their cronies and benefactors with the other. The reform to which they give lip service is actually a transfer  our money into their pockets, which will only exacerbate the economic apartheid in our country.

Adding insult to their smugly conceived sleight-of-hand, the Senate allows the meager individual tax cuts to expire in 10 years; yet, it keeps those cuts lavished on corporations and the privileged in perpetuity. Their plan requires examination with both microscope and telescope.

In their reckless haste for a solitary legislative accomplishment before years end, the $1 trillion-plus their bill would cost is re-forming the national debt  skyward. I realize their sacred cow of fiscal accountability was sent to the abattoir during the Reagan administration, but their current duplicity puts their irresponsibility on par with their hypocrisy.

Though Mr. Summers' well-credentialed opinion is compelling, REFORM has become merely an acronym for Rascals Eager For Our Remaining Money.

Larry McClung, Lincoln
U.K. Cybersecurity Agency Warns Against Using Kaspersky Software

December 03, 2017

British cybersecurity experts have warned U.K. government agencies not to use antivirus software produced by the Russian firm Kaspersky Lab.

The head of the National Cyber Security Center, Ciaran Martin, said in a letter dated December 1 that "Russia is acting against the U.K.'s national interest in cyberspace."

He cautioned that "a Russia-based provider should never be used" for the security of vital systems.

The statement stopped short of urging the public to stop using Kaspersky products.

In September, the U.S. government barred agencies from using Kaspersky products after expressing concern that the company could have links to the Russian government or Russian spy agencies.

In October, media reports linked a theft of information from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to Kaspersky software.

Kaspersky has denied any wrongdoing and has said it has no secret collaboration with Russian security agencies.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/kaspersky-u-k-cybersecurity -agency-warning/28893097.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Pyongyang Knocking: Pentagon to Install New California Missile Defense Shield

Sputnik News

22:37 03.12.2017(updated 22:45 03.12.2017)

In the wake of ongoing DPRK ICBM threats, the Pentagon is returning to the kind of work it focused on in the mid-20th century: building anti-missile sites to protect against a possible nuclear weapon attack.

The US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is scouting several sites on the western American coast that could serve as anti-missile defense installations to guard 24/7 against a possible attack from Pyongyang ICBMs topped with miniaturized nuclear warheads, a threat both the US and the People's Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) appear to be preparing for, although with radically different justification.

The installations would likely include the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile network, shown to be consistently more accurate than the existing US Ground-based Midcourse Defense system (GMD) or the US Navy's Aegis warship-based anti-missile system.

US House Armed Services Committee member and chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee Mike Rogers (R-AL) noted that the MDA was seeking to add additional missile defense sites in the western US coastal regions, although there is no byline in the 2018 Pentagon defense budget detailing the move.

"It's just a matter of the location, and the MDA making a recommendation as to which site meets their criteria for location," Rogers mentioned, adding that site studies would include addressing "the environmental impact" on sensitive coastal habitats of installing a high-tech defense arsenal, cited by Reuters.

The MDA deputy director, Rear Admiral Jon Hill was less inclined to speak about new anti-missile installations on the Pacific Ocean, bluntly asserting: "The Missile Defense Agency has received no tasking to site the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense System on the West Coast."

Lawmaker Rogers, however, would not detail which locations were being considered, although he did suggest that several coastal areas in the US were "competing" to have missile defense installations housed in their districts.

Lockheed Martin, which manufactures and sells the THAAD weapons, issued a standard public-relations statement about potential purchases of its product for use on the US coast, but did not address a specific installation.

A company representative asserted that the for-profit multinational weapons-making corporation "is ready to support the Missile Defense Agency and the United States government in their ballistic missile defense efforts," according to Reuters.

Several of the highly-mobile THAAD units are deployed in the continental US, but current locations of individual launch units are a closely-guarded secret.

 Sputnik

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Threat of War With North Korea 'Increasing Every Day' - Trump's Security Adviser

Sputnik News

10:05 03.12.2017(updated 12:02 03.12.2017)

The latest missile launch by North Korea has resulted in a new surge in tensions between Washington and Pyongyang. A security adviser to President Trump has called North Korea the "greatest immediate threat to the US" while the president has already called for new sanctions against Pyongyang.

The potential of an open military conflict between the United States and North Korea is growing, President Donald Trump's national security adviser said Saturday.

"I think it's increasing every day, which means that we are in a race, really, we are in a race to be able to solve this problem," Lt. Gen. Herbert McMaster said speaking at a defense conference in California, as quoted by CNN.

Calling North Korea "the greatest immediate threat to the United States," McMaster, however, said that President Trump remains committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

National Security Adviser Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster listens as U.S. President Donald Trump makes the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida U.S. February 20, 2017

Speaking further, McMaster said non-military ways still exist to the resolve the crisis, including calling on China to impose greater economic measures against North Korea, adding that Beijing has "tremendous coercive economic power" over Pyongyang.

"There are ways to address this problem short of armed conflict, but it is a race because [Kim Jong-un's] getting closer and closer, and there's not much time left," he said.

On Sunday, North Korea criticized the US policy on the ongoing crisis and called Washington a "warmonger," referring to the upcoming joint US-South Korean drills.

"It is an open, all-out provocation against the DPRK, which may lead to a nuclear war any moment," the North's ruling party Rodong newspaper said, using the official name of North Korea.

"The US and South Korean puppet warmongers would be well advised to bear in mind that their DPRK-targeted military drill will be as foolish as an act precipitating their self-destruction," the newspaper added.

A new joint US-South Korean military exercise is scheduled to kick off on Monday, December 4. The drills, known as Vigilant Ace, will involve 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor jets from the US Air Force, and some 12,000 US military personnel.

On Wednesday, the North launched a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) reportedly capable of covering 13,000 kilometers (8,077 miles). According to the South Korean Defense Ministry, the test was successful and the missile is believed to be capable of reaching Washington DC or any area of the continental US. Pyongyang commented on the launch, stating that it has completed its "nuclear force" with the development of the Hwasong-15 ICBM.

Commenting on the launch, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said that Pyongyang sees no obstacle to the further development of its nuclear program, the country's state media reported Sunday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C) guides the multiple-rocket launching drill of women's sub-units under KPA Unit 851, in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) April 24, 2014

Meanwhile, US media reported that North Korea's Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that US President Trump and his administration are "begging for nuclear war."

Trump is "staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula," the ministry said, as cited by CNN. According to the report, the statement also calls Trump a "nuclear demon" and a "disruptor of global peace."

After the North Korean missile test, Trump said Wednesday that "additional major sanctions will be imposed on North Korea," but did not provide details on what kind of sanctions would be imposed. In turn, US Envoy to the UN Nikki Haley reiterated the call, urging the international community to cut off ties with North Korea.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has responded to the demands, saying that Moscow is against the idea of increasing sanctions pressure on North Korea, emphasizing that the US leadership's latest actions were aimed at provoking Pyongyang.

As tensions on the Korean Peninsula have climbed to unprecedented heights this year amid an increased number of North Korean missile tests, Russia and China have proposed the so-called "double freeze" plan, which stipulates the simultaneous cessation of Pyongyang's nuclear tests and US-South Korea joint drills, which have repeatedly been called provocative by the North Korean leadership. Washington, however, has rejected the initiative.

 Sputnik

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Nationalists Surge in First Round of Corsica Elections

By Lisa Bryant December 03, 2017

Nationalist dominated the first round of local elections on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, winning more than 45 percent of the vote in preliminary results. The vote has been closely watched elsewhere, following Catalonia's independence moves in Spain.

The results mark a clear victory for the current ruling nationalist coalition in Corsica. Their Pe a Corsica list earned significantly more votes during this first round than two years ago, when they swept to an unprecedented victory in regional elections. A smaller nationalist ticket received far fewer votes. But should the two unite, they would capture the majority of seats in Corsica's assembly.

Speaking to French TV, nationalist leader Gilles Simeoni, who heads the winning ticket, said his group would represent all Corsicans, whether they supported their movement or not.

The nationalists took power in 2015, refueling, for some, long-held independence dreams on the island. Catalonia's independence struggle has added further juice.

University of Bordeaux Corsica expert Thierry Dominici said the results were a huge victory - and suggest nationalist sentiments touch everyone in Corsica. He credited the high abstention rate to a mix of factors - including that many are waiting for next Sunday's runoff.

Strikingly, France's main parties scored extremely low - including the far-right National Front party which faired strongly in Corsica during the presidential elections.

That meant, Dominici said, Corsican support for the far right reflects a protest vote, rather than real support.

The Corsican results mark yet another European region tilting to more autonomy. Unlike Spain's Catalonia region, however, Corsica's ruling coalition is not demanding independence - rather more local control of matters like taxation and education. More die-hard nationalists continue to hope for more.

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Iran acquires atomic battery technology

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun / 3 December 2017 / 16:42

Tehran (ISNA)  The special assistant to the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) announced that the Iranian experts had acquired the technology to build atomic batteries.

"Iran has joined the club of countries that produces nuclear battery by attaining this technology," AEOI's special assistant Ali-Asqar Zarean said.

"Following the signing of the nuclear agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), some obstacles have been removed in the scientific field in Iran and the country has been able to develop its scientific cooperation with certain countries," he added.

"The United States, the United Kingdom, France and Russia are the countries that enjoy the technology of building nuclear batteries, but fortunately, after four years of efforts day and night, today Iran is placed among these countries," Zarean continued.

"With the production of nuclear batteries, the battery life of cell phone, heart pacemaker, medical facilities and equipment and the oil and drilling industry which always needs to be charged, lasts for more than 5 to 50 years without charging," he went on to say.

End Item

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Iran Opens Extension Of Key Port

December 03, 2017

Iran has officially opened an extension of its southeastern port of Chabahar, which Tehran hopes will become a key transit hub for land-locked Afghanistan and Central Asia.

State TV said President Hassan Rohani attended the inauguration on December 3 along with dignitaries from India, Qatar, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries.

"Through this port, goods will be delivered to neighboring countries at cheaper prices and in a shorter time," Rohani said at the ceremony.

Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi said Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman will "soon become an important commercial hub for Iran."

The extension of Chabahar port, Iran's closest sea link to the Indian Ocean, more than tripled its capacity to 8.5 million tons of cargo annually, compared with the previous 2.5 million tons.

Construction was carried out by Khatam al-Anbia, a conglomerate owned by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and a number of subcontractors, including a state-run Indian company.

Rohani Downplays Rivalry

The extension required an investment of $1 billion, including $235 million from India.

Further stages of development are due to expand the port over the next 14 years.

New Delhi has committed up to $500 million for the development of the Chabahar port along with roads and railway lines in order to get access to the Afghan and Central Asian markets while bypassing rival Pakistan.

Analysts say the Chabahar port could challenge Pakistan's Gwadar port, some 80 kilometers from Chabahar, which is being developed with Chinese investment.

However, Rohani downplayed the rivalry in his speech, saying the port would bring "more engagement and unity" among regional countries.

"We should go after positive competition," he said. "We welcome other ports in the region, we welcome Gwadar's development."

In late October, India shipped its first consignment of wheat to Afghanistan from the western Indian port of Kandla. The shipment is to be taken by trucks to Afghanistan from Chabahar.

Pakistan has banned India from transporting goods through its territory to Afghanistan.

Iran is planning to link the Chabahar port with a railway to the northeastern city of Mashhad to further facilitate trade with Afghanistan and Central Asia.

However, the project has been slow to materialise.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-chabahar-port- extension-gwadar/28893298.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Half of Izadis kidnapped by Daesh still missing: Kurdish official

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 06:47PM

Around half of the members of the Izadi minority group kidnapped by the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group three years ago are still missing, Iraqi Kurdish officials say.

Khairi Bozani, a top official with the ministry of religious affairs of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, said some 6,417 Izadis had been abducted by Daesh terrorists since August 3, 2014.

Up until December 1, 2017, only 3,207 of them have been rescued or managed to escape, the official added.

Bozani said the remaining 3,210 Izadis were still either held by the terrorists or considered missing. The figures include 1,507 women or girls. In addition, 2,525 Yazidi children are now orphans while the parents of 220 others are still unaccounted for.

According to Bozani, nearly four dozen mass graves containing the remains of Izadi people have been found in recent years.

Iraqi pro-government fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units recently found two mass graves in the country's northern province of Nineveh, which contain the bodies of more than a hundred of Izadis believed to have been executed by Daesh terrorists.

Back in August 2014, Daesh overran the town of Sinjar, killing, raping, and enslaving large numbers of Izadi Kurds. The region was recaptured in November 2015, during an operation by Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Izadi fighters.

The Endowments and Religious Affairs Ministry of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government announced in early August that Daesh's genocide against Izadis had forced nearly 360,000 members of the minority group to flee their hometowns, and that another 90,000 had left Iraq and taken refuge in other countries.

It added that Daesh terrorists had kidnapped 6,417 Izadi Kurds, including 1,102 women and 1,655 children, since 2014.

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Iraqi commander rejects calls to disband popular forces

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 04:30PM

An Iraqi commander has rejected calls for the disbanding of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), also known by their Arabic name as Hashd al-Sha'abi, which have played a major role in pushing out the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

Ahmad al-Assadi, one of the PMU's leaders, was quoted by AFP as saying that "any such discussion is rejected and we do not accept interference in Iraqi affairs."

He added, "Asking for the dissolution of the Hashd is like asking for the dissolution of the Iraqi army, because the Hashd [forces] are a key element of Iraqi security."

On Saturday, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Iraq, calling for "a gradual demilitarization" of the forces and for all militias in Iraq to be "dismantled."

Reacting to Macron's call, Iraq's vice president and former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said in a Facebook posting that "Emmanuel Macron interfered unexpectedly in Iraq's internal affairs by calling for the dismantling of a legal institution, Hashd al-Sha'abi."

"We don't want any country to impose its will on the Iraqi government and the brave Iraqi nation," the leading politician said.

In October, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi strongly defended the Hashd al-Sha'abi after comments by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that militias in Iraq should "go home." The militias are officially controlled by Iraq's prime minister.

Responding to calls by the Western officials, a senior commander of Iraq's PMU recently said that American military forces must leave his country following the eradication of Daesh. In an exclusive interview with Press TV, Hadi al-Ameri, who heads Iraq's Badr Organization, said the popular forces would call on the parliament to draw up legislation to demand the US pull out all its troops from the Arab country.

Also in October, a top commander of the PMU had called for the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq after the elimination of Daesh.

Hashd al-Sha'abi is a group of Shia and Sunni fighters that was formed after the emergence of Daesh in Iraq in 2014. In the early days of the Daesh terror campaign, the then volunteer fighters played a major role in reinforcing the Iraqi army, which had suffered heavy setbacks in the face of lightning advances by the terrorists.

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Pompeo claims he 'sent a note' to warn Iran's Soleimani over Iraq

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 03:00AM

CIA Director Mike Pompeo says he has written a letter to Iran's Major General Qassem Soleimani, who commands the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) to warn him about US interests in Iraq.

The anti-Iran figure, who may soon replace US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, made the announcement on Saturday, asserting that the general refused to read it, The Washington Post reported.

"I sent a note. I sent it because he had indicated that forces under his control might in fact threaten US interests in Iraq," Pompeo claimed at a defense forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in Simi Valley, California. "He refused to open the letter  didn't break my heart to be honest with you."

Battered by foreign-backed militant groups such as Daesh, Iraq's central government has sought the assistance of its Muslim neighbor, Iran, to defend its borders and bring security back to the country.

Pompeo further added that, "What we were communicating to him [General Soleimani] in that letter was that we will hold he [sic] and Iran accountable ... and we wanted to make sure that he and the leadership of Iran understood that in a way that was crystal clear."

In a recent congratulatory message to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, General Soleimani hailed the "great victory" over Daesh Takfiri terrorists.

The Daesh terrorists were among the militants initially trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government.

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France's Macron Calls For Iraqi Dialogue, Dismantling of Iran-Backed Militia

RFE/RL December 03, 2017

French President Emmanuel Macron has called on Iraq to dismantle all militias -- including an Iran-backed military force  and for the government in Baghdad to open dialogue to ease tensions with Iraqi Kurdish leaders.

Macron on December 2 told a news conference in Paris that "France calls for a constructive national dialogue to engage in Iraq."

Macron made the comments in a joint news conference with Iraqi Kurdish leaders, including Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani.

The French president added that "it is essential that there is a gradual demilitarization, in particular of the [Tehran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces] that established itself in the last few years in Iraq, and that all militias be gradually dismantled."

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leaders have accused the mainly Shi'ite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) of abuses against Kurds in Iraq's ethnically mixed regions that are not part of the autonomous region in northern Iraq.

The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has denied that the PMF, which its supports, is engaged in abuses.

Tensions have risen between the KRG and Baghdad after Iraqi Kurds on September 25 held an independence referendum, which Iraqi leaders called illegal.

The United States and other allies also opposed the referendum, saying it endangered unity as the country attempts to battle Islamic State (IS) extremist fighters.

Abadi's office released a statement on December 2 saying he had spoken by phone to Macron, who had affirmed France's commitment to a unified Iraq but did not mention his call to dismantle the militias.

However, Iraqi Vice President Nuri al-Maliki, a former prime minister, assailed Macron's comments, saying the French leader was conducting "unacceptable interference" in Iraq's internal affairs.

"These positions from France are absolutely rejected and harm Iraq's sovereignty and its institutions," Maliki said.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/macron-iran-iran- militia-kurdistan/28892817.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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CIA Chief Sends Letter To Iranian General Over Threats To U.S. Forces In Iraq

RFE/RL December 03, 2017

The director of the CIA says he sent a letter to a top Iranian general warning him that Washington will hold Tehran responsible for any attacks on U.S. interests by Iran-backed forces in Iraq.

Director Mike Pompeo on December 2 told a defense forum in Simi Valley, California, that the letter to Major General Qassem Soleimani was never opened but that he wanted to send it because Soleimani had indicated his forces might threaten U.S. interests in Iraq.

"I sent a note. I sent it because he had indicated that forces under his control might in fact threaten U.S. interests in Iraq," Pompeo said. "He refused to open the letter -- didn't break my heart to be honest with you."

Soleimani is commander of the Quds Force, which carries out foreign operations for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

Iranian state-run news agency Fars quoted an Iranian military official as saying that "our commander refused to receive the letter, saying we don't have anything in common to talk about."

The official did not say when the letter was received, only that it arrived "recently."

Pompeo, an opponent of the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord, told the defense forum that Tehran remains in technical compliance with the agreement, which provided Iran with relief from sanctions in exchange for reining in its nuclear program.

U.S. forces are supporting the Iraqi government in its fight against Islamic State (IS) and other militant groups.

'Time For Militias To Go'

Iran-backed militias and IRGC forces are also supporting the Iraqi government, although the United States, France, and other allies have called for Baghdad to dismantle the militias.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on October 22 said it was time for Iranian military advisers and fighters "to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control."

"Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against [Islamic State] is coming to a close, those militias need to go home," Tillerson said.

A senior U.S. official said Tillerson's remarks referred to militia fighters known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and the Quds Force.

U.S. media have reported that Tillerson will soon be forced out by President Donald Trump and that Pompeo will be his replacement. The White House and Tillerson have denied the reports.

With reporting by AP, Rudaw, and IFP News

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/cia-pompeo-iran-iraq- quds-revolutionary-guard/28892816.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Days After Release, Alleged Terror Mastermind Announces His Party's Election Bid in Pakistan

By Noor Zahid, Jaleel Akhtar December 03, 2017

A Pakistani Islamist leader who has been accused of masterminding terrorist attacks in India says his group will take part in national and provincial elections in 2018.

Hafiz Saeed, leader of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) group, spoke to reporters in Lahore on Sunday. JUD has been designated a terrorist group by the U.S. He was recently released from a year-long house arrest and denounced electoral politics for many years.

But now Saeed says "This is the right time to enter the country's politics" and "highlight the Kashmir cause."

Saeed was released in November from months of house arrest for a lack of evidence. He has been accused of supporting militant groups that fight New Delhi's rule in the Indian-administered Kashmir and masterminding Mumbai's 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people, including six Americans. The U.S. government has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his arrest for plotting the Mumbai bloodshed.

Saeed's JUD bills itself as a humanitarian organization without links to terrorists, but it is widely considered a "front group" for Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was founded by Saeed and has been banned for terrorist activity since 2001.

The JUD organization recently launched a political party, Milli Muslim League, saying it wanted to make Pakistan "a real Islamic and welfare state."

In its first foray into electoral politics, JUD-supported contender came in third in a by-election August in Punjab, securing more votes than former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party did.

'A clever move'

"By entering electoral politics and becoming part of the mainstream politics, Saeed may be attempting to counter the 2008 Mumbai attacks allegations and charges against him, "Kamran Bukhari, a Washington-based Pakistan analyst, told VOA. "He wants to secure himself by using political and legal means as a camouflage. It is a clever move."

Bukhari added that Saeed's countrywide network of civil society and charity organizations that have provided humanitarian relief and education has helped him broaden his influence over the years.

"They even run schools and colleges and recently launched Milli Muslim League, their political wing, and that's their influence inside Pakistan. As you have seen, he has been repeatedly detained and then released," Bukhari said.

Arif Nizami, a Pakistan-based analyst, doubts that Saeed's group would change its ideology after entering electoral politics.

"Intolerance and extremist ideology are growing in this country. It is unclear what rhetoric they [Saeed and his party] will use in the election and whether their participation will increase extremism, but it is certainly not the agenda or the basis on which Pakistan was founded," Nizami said.

Saeed's release and recent political developments in Pakistan have triggered suspicions that the country and its powerful military are making concessions to religious extremists.

The U.S. government expressed serious concerns over Saeed's release, saying it "sends a deeply troubling message" about Pakistan's international counterterrorism commitment.

The U.S. has for a decade accused Pakistan of sheltering or having ties to terrorists, such as the Haqqani Network and the Afghan Taliban, which attack NATO coalition forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan has denied the allegations.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is expected to pressure Islamabad to end its alleged ties to militant groups when he visits the country as part of a four-nation tour that began Friday.

Shanaz Aziz from VOA's Urdu Service contributed to this report.

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Mattis Says Won't 'Prod' Pakistan During Visit

By William Gallo December 03, 2017

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says he does not plan to "prod" Pakistan, but expects it adhere to its promises to combat terrorism, as he embarks on his first visit to Islamabad as Pentagon chief.

Speaking aboard a military plane, Mattis said he does not expect to butt heads during his Monday meetings with Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa.

"That's not the way I deal with issues," Mattis said. "I believe that we [can] work hard on finding common ground and then we work together."

In October, Mattis warned the United States is willing to work "one more time" with Pakistan before taking "whatever steps are necessary" to address its alleged support for militants.

But on Sunday, Mattis said he is focused on trying to find "more common ground ... by listening to one another without being combative."

The United States has for a decade accused Pakistan of sheltering or having ties to terrorists, such as the Haqqani Network and the Afghan Taliban, which attack NATO coalition forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

Islamabad rejects the accusation, saying Washington is scapegoating Pakistan for its own failures in Afghanistan, where the United States remains in a stalemate after 16 years of war.

Tougher stance

Before Mattis' visit, other Trump administration officials are taking a harder public stance on Pakistan.

Speaking at a defense forum Saturday, CIA director Mike Pompeo said, "We are going to do everything we can to ensure that safe havens no longer exist," if Pakistan does not heed the U.S. message on militants.

Since 2004, the CIA has conducted drone strikes - mostly against al-Qaida and Pakistani Taliban targets - in northwest Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

The United States is considering expanding those strikes, along with several other measures, according to media reports.

Other options include downgrading Pakistan's status as a major non-NATO ally or sanctioning individual Pakistani leaders suspected having ties with the Taliban.

But any kind of punitive action wouldn't take place for at least a few weeks at minimum, predicts Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst with the Woodrow Wilson Center.

"I think [the administration] wants to give the Pakistanis a bit more time to see if they're responding to the various demands the United States made of them when it comes to cracking down on terrorists," said Kugelman.

One of the likelier U.S. responses, according to Kugelman, is expanding not only the geographic scope of the drone war, but also widening the type of targets the United States goes after.

"I think we could start seeing the U.S. trying to target more Haqqani Network and Afghan Taliban targets," especially in the sparsely populated Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, he said.

The Trump administration has also threatened cut off aid to Pakistan. Since 2002, the United States has given over $33 billion in assistance to Pakistan. But the aid has already been cut sharply in recent years.

Pakistani leverage?

If ties were to deteriorate, the United States also has much to lose. Pakistan controls U.S. military supply routes to landlocked Afghanistan, and could close them down, as they did in 2011. The United States would also like Pakistan to scale back its nuclear modernization, improve ties with India, and stay engaged in the broader fight against Islamic militants.

But despite the risks, Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, warns Washington appears to be running out of patience.

"For many years we were trying to hold out hope that the Pakistanis would change their mind about Afghanistan and our role there," he said. "But those kinds of hopes aren't as prevalent anymore. And on balance, therefore, I think we are closer to using some of those tougher methods."

Mattis, who is on a regional tour that also took him to Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait, wouldn't elaborate on any possible U.S. action. But he says the situation is pressing.

"There's always an urgency to something when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war where casualties are being taken," he said.

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Saudi Arabia and Jordan start Military Exercise "Sahab 2"

Saudi Press Agency

Sunday 1439/3/15 - 2017/12/03

Riyadh, Rabi'I 15, 1439, December 03, 2017, SPA -- Saudi Arabian Armed Forces and the Jordanian Armed Forces have started in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia today the military exercise "Sahab 2".

The ceremony started with the recitation of verses from the Holy Quran. Then, the trainer, Brigadier. Safah bin Ibrahim Al-Raffdi delivered a speech in which he praised the participation of the Kingdom of Jordan in the exercise, thanked the participants for their efforts in the planning and preparation stages for the pre-exercise.

Brigadier. Al-Raffdi said the exercise aims to enhance mutual cooperation, exchange of experiences between Saudi and Jordanian armed forces, raise the level of training of branches of the armed forces in the field of defense against weapons of mass destruction and activate common action.

-- SPA

22:25 LOCAL TIME 19:25 GMT



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Kurdish YPG forces recapture eastern Dayr al-Zawr countryside from Daesh: Report

Iran Press TV

Sun Dec 3, 2017 03:22PM

The US-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) say they have fully recaptured the eastern Dayr al-Zawr countryside from the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group with the help of airstrikes carried out by Russia's air force.

The YPG announced the news in a statement on Sunday, saying their fighters had managed to liberate the villages of Sweidan and Drenj in the eastern part of the Euphrates River earlier in the day.

The terrorist group has already lost all its urban strongholds in Syria but tries to maintain its staggering control over small pockets of rural areas.

According to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the YPG forces on Friday entered into an ongoing fierce battle with the remnants of Daesh, which still held the villages of Abu Hamam and Kashkiyeh in the Shaitat Desert in Dayr al-Zawr. The battle is reportedly underway.

According to the UK-based monitoring group, the YPG forces have managed to wrest control over the rural areas of al-Sekkeh and al-Awiziye during the past two days.

The YPG said in its statement that the so-called US-led military coalition and Russian forces in Syria had provided "air and logistical support, advice and coordination on the ground" and that it hoped this support would increase.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate. The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying Daesh.

The observatory said in its report that at least three civilians were killed and a number of others sustained injuries on Saturday in airstrikes carried out by the unwelcome coalition.

The YPG is the main part of a larger coalition of fighters  the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)  which has been engaged in operations aimed at liberating Raqqah, which served until recently as the main bastion of Daesh in the Arab country. The US considers the SDF, which also includes Arab militants, as its main proxy force fighting on the ground in Syria.

Washington's support for the YPG has infuriated Turkey, Syria's neighbor to the north, which views the Kurdish alliance as a terror organization linked to the homegrown Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has long been fighting for the establishment of an independent Kurdish state.

On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said all foreign forces, including those of the so-called US-led coalition that are present in Syria without the authorization from the Damascus government, have to leave the Arab country after the total defeat of Daesh, which started its campaign of terror against Syria in 2013.

Moscow is also involved militarily in Syria. It began targeting the positions of Daesh and other militant groups in September 2015 upon an official request from the Syrian government.

Different foreign-backed terrorist groups have been wreaking havoc in Syria since 2011.

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Netanyahu Says Israel Won't Allow Iran to 'Entrench Itself Militarily' in Syria

Sputnik News

05:39 03.12.2017(updated 10:07 03.12.2017)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has posted a video on his Facebook page, explaining his policy on Iran as well as the Syrian conflict.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Israel will not allow Iran to have military a presence in Syria or its own nuclear weapons, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed shortly after an alleged Israeli strike on a target in Syria.

"Let me reiterate Israel's policy. We will not allow a regime hell-bent on annihilation of the Jewish state to acquire nuclear weapons, we will not allow that regime to entrench itself militarily in Syria as it seeks to do for the express purpose of eradicating our state," Netanyahu said in a video message posted on his Facebook on Saturday.

According to local media reports that haven't yet been officially confirmed by either Damascus or by Tel Aviv, Syria has repelled an Israeli attack on a "military position" near Damascus. Some media outlets speculated that the possible target may have been an Iranian base and several Iranian troops may have been injured in the attack allegedly carried out by Israel.

Tehran has repeatedly denied reports of having a base in Syria as well as conducting military operations there, however, stressed its cooperation with the country's leadership in the fight against various terrorist groups, including Daesh, and acts as one of the guarantors of the ceasefire in the Arab Republic jointly with Russia and Turkey.

While Syria and Israel, which have never signed a peace treaty, have repeatedly exchanged multiple tit-for-tat attacks, Netanyahu

along with the country's defense minister stated that Tel Aviv is free to act in Syria for the sake of its security.

Netanyahu's video was reportedly taped on Thursday and is expected to be shown in full on Sunday at the Brookings Institution's annual Saban Forum in Washington.

 Sputnik

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Netanyahu Says Iran's Presence in Syria Won't Be Tolerated

By Jamie Dettmer December 03, 2017

Israel won't allow Iran to entrench itself militarily in Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Sunday.

His remarks, in a taped message to a forum in Washington, came just a day after Israeli aircraft attacked a suspected Iranian base outside Damascus and could suggest the Middle East is entering a new volatile phase in a confrontation between Israel and Iran.

"Let me reiterate Israel's policy," Netanyahu said. "We will not allow a regime hell bent on the annihilation of the Jewish state to acquire nuclear weapons. We will not allow that regime to entrench itself militarily in Syria, as it seeks to do, for the express purpose of eradicating our state," he told the Saban Forum, an annual gathering of American and Israeli leaders in Washington hosted by the Brookings Institution.

Citing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who recently described Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as "the new Hitler of the Middle East," Netanyahu likened Iran to Nazi Germany, arguing they share in common, "a ruthless commitment to impose tyranny and terror" as well as "a ruthless commitment to murder Jews."

Some cooperation

His criticism comes amid growing rumors a covert relationship is developing between Israel and Saudi Arabia, united in opposition to Iran and its growing clout in the region. Saudi Arabian officials have denied the claims. Saudi foreign minister Adel Jubeir told an Egyptian television station recently, "There are no relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel."

But CIA director Mike Pompeo said Saturday Saudi Arabia has been working directly with Israel and Sunni Arab nations in the fight against terrorism.

"We've seen them work with the Israelis to push back against terrorism throughout the Middle East," Pompeo told a security forum in California.

Last month, a senior Israeli minister, Yuval Steinitz, acknowledged publicly that joint enmity for Iran has pushed Israel and Saudi Arabia closer and that the two states, which do not enjoy formal diplomatic relations, had established "partly secret" ties to counter Iran's influence in the region. It was the first disclosure by a senior Israeli figure of long-rumored secret cooperation between the Jewish state and the Gulf Kingdom, although a top Israeli general had earlier said Israel stood ready to exchange intelligence about Iran with Saudi Arabia or any "moderate" Arab countries.

Israel sending message

On Saturday, Israeli warplanes flying over neighboring Lebanon fired several missiles at a military base Iran is said to be building in Syria close to the country's capital, Damascus, according to a state-run Syrian news agency and foreign media. The Israeli military has not commented on the missile strike targeting a military area near the southern suburb of Kiswah.

Sana, Syria's news agency, claimed Syrian air defenses had shot down two of the Israeli missiles. Other Syrian media said the airstrike killed a dozen Iranian revolutionary guardsmen.

As the Syrian civil war has drawn Iran deeper into the conflict to shore up its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, Israel has conducted airstrikes against convoys and bases in Syria in a bid, officials say, to prevent Syria and Iran, from transferring sophisticated weapons to Tehran ally Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese Shi'ite movement, which is also fighting in Syria in support of the Assad government.

Some analysts question why Israel decided to strike the base at Kiswah now. For more than a year, there have been claims Iran has been constructing permanent military bases in Syria. On November 10 the BBC broadcast three satellite images taken over several months showing new buildings being erected and other construction work at the site 50 kilometers from Israeli installations on the Golan Heights.

The Israeli airstrike appears to have upped the ante regarding Iran's military presence in Syria. Last week Israeli media reported that Netanyahu had sent a stark warning to President Assad, via a third party, warning Israel would target his regime if he grants Iran a permanent presence in his country.

The airstrike, say analysts, is to show Israel's willingness to enforce a red line, and that message may be directed to Assad's other big foreign backer, Russia. Israel and Moscow have been in negotiations for weeks about a buffer zone along the Israeli-Syria border with the Israelis demanding it extend at least 40 kilometers inside Syria. The Russians, according to Israel diplomats, have agreed only an off-limits zone 10 to 15 kilometers.

Last month, the chief commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, said Tehran will help rebuild Syria and bring about a lasting "ceasefire." Iranian state television quoted him as saying, "Hezbollah must be armed to fight against the enemy of the Lebanese nation, which is Israel. Naturally they should have the best weapons to protect Lebanon's security. This issue is non-negotiable."

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Ukrainian Opposition Holds Kyiv March In Support Of Presidential Impeachment Law

Crimean Desk, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service December 03, 2017

Thousands of Ukrainian opposition activists have rallied in central Kyiv, calling on parliament to adopt legislation on presidential impeachment.

Police said the demonstration organized by Mikheil Saakashvili's Movement of New Forces party attracted 2,500 people, but local reports said about 5,000 people participated.

Addressing the protest, Saakashvili urged Ukrainians to gather in Kyiv's central Independence Square on December 10 if lawmakers fail to deliver their demand.

The demonstrators dispersed peacefully after marching through the city center and holding a rally on European Square.

Following the demonstration, dozens of people in camouflage and with balaclavas blocked the entrance to the NewsOne television outlet with sacks of sand and barbed wires.

They demanded that the station change its editorial policies and that its owner, opposition parliament member Yevhen Murayev, apologize for remarks that they regarded as disrespectful of the Euromaidan protests, which pushed President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February 2014.

The broadcaster said it was targeted by "radicals" because it was the "only channel" that covered the rally organized by Saakashvili's party.

Antigovernment protesters set up a tent city outside the parliament building on October 17, calling for the cancellation of parliamentary immunity, the creation of an anticorruption court, amendments to election laws, and legislation on the impeachment of the president.

The protests were initially called by Saakashvili, a onetime ally of President Petro Poroshenko, but many of Ukraine's opposition political leaders have also joined the demonstrations.

From 2004 to 2013, Saakashvili was president of Georgia, where he is wanted on suspicion of trying to organize a coup there after his exit from office, allegations he denies.

In 2015, he was appointed by Poroshenko to be governor of the Odesa region and surrendered his Georgian citizenship to take the post.

However, Saakashvili resigned in November 2016, saying his reform efforts had been blocked by Poroshenko's allies.

Saakashvili was then stripped of Ukrainian citizenship by Poroshenko in June 2017 in a move he is challenging in court.

Poroshenko has said the real goal of the protest organizers is to destabilize Ukraine.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-saakashvili-kyiv-protest- poroshenko-impeachment-legislation/28893409.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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This letter is in support of Alderman John Tate II, as it pertains to his bid to occupy the 66th Assembly District seat in Madison. I have known Tate since he was a very young boy. In fact, he was raised three doors down form our house.

Upon returning to Racine after a few years away, imagine my surprise when I learned that the little guy from down the street had grown up, gotten a masters degree, became a social worker and an alderman. Over the last few months, I have come to see Tate as a natural leader who will have a great impact on the politics of this city and, if elected to the assembly, the state.

I think one of the most impressive parts of Tates personality is his incessant love for this city. If elected to the assembly, Tates insightfulness of, and astute reaction, to the issues facing the citizens of our district will provide solid political leadership for years to come. As a community activist who also loves Racine, I personally endorse John Tate II in his endeavor to represent Racine in the state legislature.

Chester Todd

Racine
Verizon has started pushing out a new update to Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 units on its network. Arriving as software version NRD90M.T827VVRU1AQJ3, the update brings along support for Netflix High Dynamic Range (HDR) video streaming.

A couple of other changes are there as well, including fix for a Fingerprint Setup Wizard issue as well as Android security fixes for the month of October. As is usually the case with OTA roll outs, it might take some time for the update to hit your device. So be patient.

Source




Haiti - News : Zapping...





Hijacked on the courtyard of the Lycee F. Soulouque

Friday, a delegation of the Ministry of National Education and teachers were stuck for several hours on the court of Lycee Faustin Soulouque of Petit-Goave... High school students, victims of the strike had closed the main barrier. The situation returned to normal around 4:00 pm, when some high school students decided to open another barrier, allowing people, hostages of this situation, to finally get out. IH/ iciHaiti / Guyto Mathieu (Correspondant Petit-Goave).



Payment of nearly 50 million monthly to political parties

The Monitoring Committee for the Financing and Institutionalization of Political Parties presented its working report to the public on Thursday. Submitted to the Executive, this document will facilitate the application of the law on political parties. The most representative political parties will collect more than 6.6 million gourdes per month from the Haitian state and nearly 100 thousand gourdes for the least representative. Each month the state will pay more than 47.65 million Gdes to 58 political parties in Haiti including the PHTK (6.62 million): Verite (4.49 million); KID (3.49 million); OPL (3.34 million); Lavalas (2.00 million); Pitit Dessalines (1.42 million) and LAPEH (1.40 million)...



Jacmel : evacuation operation

Following an operation of the town hall of Jacmel, of sanitation and eviction of the occupants of the sidewalks of the Main Street of the Market of Beaudouin, this street is again free of street vendors and motorcycles and the traffic has become fluid and clean again. Remember that the market extension works, street vendors had created a chaotic situation all along the main street, making traffic difficult.



Mirlande Manigat passes the torch

Mirlande Manigat during the 17 years of celebration of "Women in Democracy", passed the torch to Edmonde Supplice President of the Fusion of the Haitian Social Democrats (FUSION), as an honorary member of the organization "I will try to continue to provide my technical support as in the past," said the President of FUSION.



Haiti will chair the CARICOM

On Thursday, CARICOM Secretary General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, met with President Jovenel Moise who will assume the Presidency of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on January 1, 2018. President Moise will succeed Dean Barrow, Prime Minister of Belize who has been in this position since January 2016.



World AIDS Day

Friday at the Montana Hotel, under the patronage of the First Lady, Martine Moise, the Ministry of Public Health organized a morning of celebration as part of the World AIDS Day around the theme "La vi m, se sante m, se dwam !" in the presence of important personalities of the healthcare system in Haiti and international partners. "The challenge is to promote, in collaboration with the Ministry, effective programs that encourage young people to cope with HIV-AIDS in any way possible by combining Awareness, Training, Prevention," said Regine Lamur, Minister of Youth.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Second class of Walk of Fame honorees announced

The Henderson County Walk of Fame Committee announced 10 honorees on Monday for the second class of the figures who contributed in a significant and positive way to the county.

The committee received about 30 nominations, from which it selected 10 recipients of the honor. (A maximum of 10 was a change in the rules after the committee named 17 recipients in the inaugural class.)

If you look at the list, this year weve got some real heavy hitters, said Tom Orr, a retired theater teacher and county native who is the founding chairman of the Walk of Fame. Theres just a lot of very prominent people that were selected this year. The ones that have been notified have all responded very favorably. Theyre very excited about the whole thing.

Here are the 2018 honorees, with sketches provided by the Walk of Fame Committee:

Louise Bailey: Mrs. Bailey was a local historian and author. She wrote the column Along the Ridges for the Hendersonville Times-News for 42 years. Her lasting contribution to Henderson County was leaving a recorded history of our community for generations to come.

Georgia Bonesteel: Mrs. Bonesteel is an artist and author on quilting. She is a member of the

International Community of Quilters and host of her own television program Lap Quilting on North Carolina Public Television and PBS. Her lasting contribution to Henderson County was giving recognition and promoting the mountain arts and crafts.

International Community of Quilters and host of her own television program Lap Quilting on North Carolina Public Television and PBS. Her lasting contribution to Henderson County was giving recognition and promoting the mountain arts and crafts. A. S. "Bert" Browning, Jr.: Mr. Browning began and ran a dairy farm known as Kalmia Dairy. He went on to become a successful builder and contractor in our community. His lasting contribution to Henderson County was his work to establish the Hendersonville Housing Authority which continues to assist those in need of housing.

Dr. Kenneth Cosgrove and Eleanor Cosgrove: Dr. Cosgrove practiced internal medicine with a specialty in heart disease for over 50 years. His lasting contribution, in addition to his medical career, included founding the first Pardee Intensive Care Facility, Four Seasons Hospice, Blue Ridge Community Health Center and Carolina Village Retirement Home.

Mrs. Cosgrove served as Director Emeritus of The Blue Ridge Community College Education Foundation. Her lasting contributions to Henderson County included raising support funds and in leading the change from the Henderson County Technical Institute to The Blue Ridge Community College. She was also instrumental in the formation of the Henderson County League of Women Voters.

Mrs. Cosgrove served as Director Emeritus of The Blue Ridge Community College Education Foundation. Her lasting contributions to Henderson County included raising support funds and in leading the change from the Henderson County Technical Institute to The Blue Ridge Community College. She was also instrumental in the formation of the Henderson County League of Women Voters. Albert Edwards: Mr. Edwards was Hendersonville's longest serving mayor from 1932-1969. During this time he led our community through the Depression and World War II. His lasting contribution to Henderson County was his active support for the building of Pardee Hospital, the construction of Interstate 26, lighting for the city, and the creation of an airport.

Grace Etheredge: Mrs. Etheredge was a local artist who taught classes and encouraged art in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her lasting contribution to Henderson County was the founding of The Art League of Henderson County and helping to found the Opportunity House.

Frank Ewbank: Mr. Ewbank enlisted in the army in 1942 and after his military service ran a successful insurance business for many years. His lasting contribution was as a member of the Henderson County Board of Education. He also served as a founding trustee of Blue Ridge Community College which continues to educate students of Henderson County today.

Robroy Farquhar: Mr. Farquhar was a local actor, director, and member of the Professional

Actors Union in New York. His lasting contribution to Henderson County was the founding of The Flat Rock Playhouse, the State Theatre of North Carolina, which continues to train actors and entertain people today.

Actors Union in New York. His lasting contribution to Henderson County was the founding of The Flat Rock Playhouse, the State Theatre of North Carolina, which continues to train actors and entertain people today. Josiah Johnson: Mr. Johnson dedicated his life to agriculture and truck farming. His lasting contribution to Henderson County was paving the way for future farmers to grow, sustain and market crops in our community and across the country.

Robert Morgan: Mr. Morgan is a local author who has written books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction which have brought national attention to our community. His lasting contribution to Henderson County is through his writings depicting the southern Appalachians, the Green River area and the Blue Ridge mountains. His literary works will influence generations to come.

Orr announced the honorees to the Board of Commissioners and the Hendersonville City Council this week.

I want this to be representative of people from the beginning of our county to the present, Orr said.

On May 6 Carolina Village will again host a dinner honoring the recipients and the families of recipients.

Orr first presented the idea for a Walk of Fame to recognize outstanding contributors to the growth and development of Henderson County in March of 2013. After the City Council and Board of Commissioners endorsed the idea and appointed steering committee members, the committee organized in December 2015. It announced the first class of honorees in December 2016.

Orr rotates off the committee in June. Members elected Kaye Youngblood, a retired Hendersonville High School teacher, as chair-elect. Orr has two main goals in mind as he prepares to hand off the Walk of Fame leadership.

We need to get a financing mechanism in place that will ensure that this will continue, he said. The two boards gave some seed money of $1,500 each and the committee raised money. In the end of the year report, we had over $5,000 in the treasury. That showed we were solvent. We not only paid all our bills we exceeded that and since then weve gotten a donation from the Civitan Club and that makes it up to $6,000.

His second priority is education.

I think we need to let the residents and the visitors and the schoolchildren aware as to the importance of these people and what they have done in our county. he said. Thats what I want to get started. I want to take something to the school system that will help the schoolchildren know who C.M. Pace was and the importance of Georgia Bonesteel.

He hopes the Walk of Fame continues and that the community will continue to embrace the idea of honoring the leaders who shaped Henderson County.

Lets just hope it has wings to fly, he said. I think it does.
A convicted killer and three other former inmates of Mountjoy Prison's female wing are set to make explosive allegations that they were preyed upon sexually by a predatory prison officer.

The allegations against the officer, who served as a recruit guard at the Dochas Centre between 2012 and 2014, include the claim that he engaged in a full-blown sexual relationship with one inmate while she was behind bars.

Three other inmates have also alleged they were the subjects of inappropriate sexual behaviour in the Dublin prison.

Killing

The four inmates are Galway woman Una Black, who served an eight-year sentence for killing her neighbour in a row over a puppy; Kildare accountant Alix Long, who served a 16-month sentence for stealing 80,000 from her employer; Offaly woman Bernie Spain, who was jailed for shoplifting; and a woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, who served a sentence for child cruelty offences.

A long-running Sunday World investigation revealed:

- Black alleges the officer abused his position by conducting a two-year affair with her in the prison, beginning when "she felt most vulnerable".

- Locations where the officer allegedly orchestrated sexual liaisons were in Black's room in one of the jail's self-contained "houses" for trusted prisoners, and a cleaning supplies room.

- The recruit officer's contract with the Irish Prison Service was not extended and he is no longer employed by the IPS;

- The allegations of all four women are likely to be aired in the High Court as sources say the IPS is contesting their claims.

A source confirmed that solicitors for Black, who was pregnant when she arrived in the Dochas and gave birth while incarcerated, will allege the officer began the relationship in 2012, when she was in a vulnerable state having just been refused parole.

Black initiated legal proceedings against the IPS and the Dochas Centre Governor.

Informed

"Una didn't realise that there was anything wrong or there was an imbalance of power in the relationship," said a source.

"He put his arm around her when she was at a particularly vulnerable point and the relationship developed from there.

"It wasn't until another inmate approached her and told her she wasn't the only inmate with whom this officer was involved, that she says she realised this guy was a predator and made a formal complaint."

It was reported Black complained directly to the prison's highest authorities in December 2013 and the officer was subsequently removed from duty.
'Cody, of Rathgar Road, Rathgar, admitted assault and 19 other charges relating to public disorder and theft around Dublin' (stock photo)

An alcoholic hairdresser has been jailed for attacking an 82-year-old woman on Grafton Street.

The elderly shopper, who was using a walking frame after undergoing spinal surgery, was knocked to the ground, Dublin District Court was told.

Rosaleen Cody (46) grabbed the elderly shopper's hat, then struggled with her as she tried to take it back.

Judge Michael Walsh, who jailed Cody for a year, said it had been an "appalling and dastardly crime".

Cody, of Rathgar Road, Rathgar, admitted assault and 19 other charges relating to public disorder and theft around Dublin.

Gda Sgt Gail Smith said the victim cared for her elderly husband, who suffered from Alzheimer's.

She was walking on Grafton Street on October 19 when Cody pulled off her hat.

As the woman tried to get it back, they struggled and collapsed to the ground.

The victim suffered some bruising but no lasting injuries. Reading a statement, Judge Walsh said it seemed the victim had made light of her injuries.

Accident

As Cody was sentenced, she said it had been an accident.

The judge said the victim was shopping for the household when she was set upon by Cody.

She was partially disabled and needed a walking aid to get about, he said.

Separately, on August 26, Cody lunged at a female garda and tried to grab her by the face when she was arrested for drunken behaviour in Fleet Street.

The next day, when she was being released from Kevin Street Garda Station, she became aggressive and abusive and urinated in the public office, which had to be closed until it was cleaned.

On November 2, Cody was acting aggressively in a shop on Lower Rathmines Road.

When confronted by the manager, she threatened to stab her with a pen that the manager had in her hair.

The court heard that Cody had "racked up" 209 previous convictions.

Cody was a "tragic character" who had had a normal life but went "off the tracks," said Matthew De Courcy, defending.

His client was "genuinely remorseful" for the Grafton Street assault, he said.
Christmas shoppers are to benefit from falling prices, with retailers set for a bumper festive spending period.

The average household is set to shell out 2,654 on the festivities as the tills ring out for Christmas.

This is up almost 70 on last year, and 870 more than a normal month, according to Retail Ireland, part of the Ibec lobby group.

Intense competition in the retail sector is set to see shops continuing to cut prices.

Record

The signs are that this festive season will set a spending record for the Irish retail trade, director of Retail Ireland Thomas Burke said.

This is despite a rise in consumers crossing the Border in search of bargains due to the Brexit-induced fall in the value of sterling.

Mr Burke said retailers are approaching Christmas with an air of confidence not seen in many years.

"As we move into the busy Christmas shopping festival, intense competition within the market means Irish retailers will likely continue to cut prices to drive footfall and sales," he said in a report.

"These falling prices, combined with rising disposable income, means consumers stand to benefit from even greater spending power."

He said retailers have seen sales volumes rise all year.

However, at the same time, the value of sales has fallen. This is evidence of ongoing deep discounting and price competition in the Irish retail market, the report states.

Online sales are set to top 16bn for the year by the end of December, it predicts.

Internet sales are growing six times faster than those in physical retail outlets.

But e-commerce only accounts for 10pc of total retail sales.

Disposable

Consumers and shops were benefiting from a 5.4pc rise in disposable income in the first half of the year.

Shoppers are continuing to gain from falling consumer prices, which were down 2.2pc in the first 10 months.

Food, clothing and furniture prices are the main items seeing price decreases.
A revolutionary 'smart' pass system is set to offer billions of euro in savings for Irish healthcare.

The new system will eliminate all paperwork from hospitals, clinics and GP practices and offer patients the ability to instantly access their own health records via an app on their smartphone or tablet.

It will also allow patients to have their full medical records available at the touch of a button when they are overseas.

The system - being developed between the Mater Private Hospital Group, Apple and software firm JM Medical - is estimated to offer savings of 1m per month for an average 100-bed acute hospital.

It is expected the system will cost between 1m and 2m to implement at such a hospital. However, it would pay for itself within two to three months.

The system will also harness high-tech lifestyle devices such as smartwatches to allow doctors to conduct regular checks on patients' heart rate and exercise levels when they are not in the hospital.

It is so advanced that it will detect, via a patient's smart-phone, when they arrive at a hospital or clinic for an appointment - and will be able to offer real-time updates on how soon they will be treated.

However, the greatest advantage is that it eliminates paperwork, bureaucratic delays and time wasted on waiting for key patient records.

"It offers a seamless system for the entire healthcare system from beginning to end," said Mater Hospital Cork chief operating officer John Mulhern.

The system was outlined as Tanaiste Simon Coveney opened the Mater's new 2m orthopaedic unit in Cork.

Significant

Mr Coveney said such technology and capital investment will be utilised under the Government's ambitious Slainte healthcare strategy.

"We have an implementation plan which will be a new model of healthcare that we want to create over time," he said.

Mr Coveney said private facilities like the Mater Group will play "a very significant role".

"This is all about complete, open disclosure - transparency. The patient will see their own, full treatment record," said Mr Mulhern.

"For an average 100-bed hospital, it [offers] 1m in savings per month across administration, salaries etc."
How good are these two guys, Penn State fans? It may surprise you ...
A lot has healed but scars remain

Tikapur was a ghostly town when I last visited 27 months ago. I had arrived two days after eight police officers, including a senior superintendent of police (SSP), were killed by an angry mob of mostly-Tharu protesters, and a day after members of the Pahadi population retaliated by setting fire to properties they believed to belong to the Tharus.
Syed Jeff Hussain has been named the new Director of Food & Beverage at The Westin Atlanta Airport own & manages by Columbia Sussex Corporation. The Westin Atlanta Airport is one of the areas most popular & busiest hotels for business and leisure travelers. Jeff joined the Westin Atlanta Airport as an Assistant Director of Food & Beverage in October 23rd, 2017 and got promoted as a Food & Beverage Director within a month b ecause of his outstanding performance. Jeff is so far the youngest Director of Food & Beverage in the Atlanta hospitality Market. Under his leadership, F&B has the highest guest service score for the year in November. Jeff is 22 years old and began his career with The Oberoi, New Delhi as an Industrial Trainee. After completing his Bachelors Degree in Hospitality Management from India, he started his career as a F&B Intern at Chateau Elan Winery & Resort, GA (USA) in 2014. He has proven track at Chateau Elan where he became Beverage Purchase Supervisor then F&B MIT and finally became Asst. Manager of Outlets & Banquets within one & half year period. He moved to Hilton Hotel Atlanta, GA as a Food & Beverage Manager for a while. He got a breakthrough at the Sheraton Suites Galleria, Atlanta, GA as a F&B Operations Manager (Department Head) where he was overseeing the entire food & beverage department including the culinary department. Jeff holds a bachelors d egree in Hospitality Management from Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland. He also has bachelors in Hotel Management & Catering Technology and Diploma in Advance Hospitality Administration from International Institute of Hotel Management, Kolkata (India). In his career of 3 years experience in food & beverage he has numerous achievements, awards & recognition. He also represented Hilton Worldwide as a Panelist at GHLA-Millennial Program 2016.
CEO pay is a controversial topic as some executives have benefited massively from stock options even when their firms have not been performing well.

Over the past three decades or so, firms have increasingly looked to stock options as an incentive for executives to make decisions which will enhance the performance of businesses.

While there has been a great deal of adverse publicity and shareholders have expressed concerns about excessive pay, shareholders also want to make sure that the interests of management are aligned with their own.

In a recent article in Applied Economics, I analyze the effect of share price targets on executive compensation. Using data sets of forecasts about share price movements of U.S. firms, I explore the impact of such forecasts on the structure of CEO compensation.

Shareholders hire executives to act in their best interests but the personal interests of the firm's managers may not be fully aligned with those of the shareholders. In essence, they have access to information that the shareholders do not have and can exploit that information for their own benefit.

Boards seek to motivate executives and enhance the firm's performance by providing incentives to the senior management. In doing so, they should weigh the marginal cost of additional forms of compensation with the extra benefits to be gained from encouraging senior executives to make decisions which would be in the shareholders' interests.

Given the link to performance, managers who are more capable will be more eager to accept stock options tied to a firm's performance than less-skilled counterparts.

Among scholars, there are several opposing camps:

the 'arm's-length' bargaining model, by which boards try to maximise shareholders' interests, subject to constraints set by executives' pay;

the managerial-power model, by which boards seek the most favorable compensation for executives, subject to possible market penalties and costs;

and the 'perceived-cost view', by which managers ask for a risk premium for holding stock options.

While it is not necessary to go into detail about the models here, in the article I find that the managerial-power model more readily explains the CEO pay issue because senior executives will always seek to increase their income  either by trying to buy stock options when share prices are expected to rise, or by opting for cash when prices are likely to fall.

As stock options might end up underwater if the share price drops significantly, they are particularly risky for managers. On the other hand, if the share price soars, stock options would be particularly attractive and that in itself would be a greater incentive for the CEO to drive the share price as high as possible.

Other forms of compensation lack the same impact. Restricted stocks  unregistered shares which are not fully transferable  may still be profitable even if the share price falls and, in most cases, cash-based compensation is not linked to the share price.

No matter how much the managers' skills are worth, boards still need to align the interests of shareholders with those of the CEO. So boards need to determine the right amount of stock options that would maximize the CEO's incentives, while promoting the interests of shareholders.

My study shows that analysts' forecasts of share prices do affect the structure of CEO compensation. When share prices are expected to rise, CEOs will favor stock options as part of their compensation package. When share prices are forecast to fall, cash and restricted stock will be king.

To access the full article, click here

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Crowne Plaza Warsaw Hub Announced As Part Of IHG's First Dual-Branded Complex in Poland

Crowne Plaza Warsaw Hub will be built alongside Holiday Inn Express Warsaw Hub, IHGs first dual-branded hotel complex in Poland - 430-room dual hotel will be IHGs largest in the market

Crowne Plaza Warsaw Hub will be the first Crowne Plaza in Poland and will be built alongside Holiday Inn Express Warsaw hub, becoming IHG's first dual-branded complex in the market. The 430-room complex will be IHG's biggest in Poland and both hotels will be managed by IHG.

The site is in a prime location in the heart of Warsaw's bustling CBD, within walking distance to the National Museum, Warsaw Old Town and the Warsaw Zoo.

The 212-room Crowne Plaza Warsaw Hub will be located on floors 11 to 21 and will include a Sky Bar complete with terrace overlooking the city. With more than 2000 square meters of meeting space, a gym, spa and almost 900 square metres dedicated to dining, the hotel will be geared towards business travellers to Poland's capital.

The 218-room Holiday Inn Express Warsaw Hub will occupy levels three to 10 of the complex and will offer guests simple and smart accommodation at an affordable price. Guest rooms will feature the Holiday Inn Express Next Generation design and a 250 square metre dining facility on level three will serve the brand's signature Express Start breakfast, which will be included in the price.

According to the European Travel Commission's report into 2017 tourism trends, there's been solid growth in visitor arrivals across Eastern Europe, with inbound tourism increasing by 5.2% since the start of the year. Hotel occupancy rates grew by almost 6% with average RevPAR across the region almost 20% higher in 2017 compared to 2016. (Source: European Travel Commission).

Since the start of the year, IHG has signed a record 10 hotels across Eastern Europe  half of which have been in Warsaw, Poland. These have included Holiday Inn Warsaw Mokotow, Holiday Inn Express Warsaw Mokotow and Staybridge Suites Warsaw Ursynow  the first of IHG's extended stay brand to enter the market.

Miguel Martins, Director, Development Poland, IHG, commented, commented: "We are excited to be partnering with Ghelambo to bring the first Crowne Plaza to Poland and our first dual branded complex to the market. This will increase the number of rooms in our pipeline in Poland to over 2,000. Now considered a world-class business and leisure travel hub, we've seen a huge surge in demand for hotels in Eastern Europe and its exciting that our owner partners are recognising the huge opportunities and benefits of investing in the region."

There are 9 IHG hotels open in Poland (1,459 rooms) and 10 hotels (2,101 rooms) in the development pipeline.
Inspiration can strike anywhere. For entrepreneur, Niels Fennet, it was on a family vacation.

27 Years ago, while Niels was traveling with his family from Denmark to Norway on the ferry, he was impressed by the efficient and effective ferry cabin design. The cabin offered an innovative use of space while providing everything the guest needed. Niels took this concept and created Cabinn Hotels, a Danish low-cost hotel chain, with four different levels of cabin-style guest rooms.

Cabinns efficient low-cost offering appeals to a wide variety of customers, including businesspeople, millennials, families, and backpackers among others. Cabinn now has 10 properties across Denmark and continues to expand.

Its not surprising that Cabinn also took an innovative approach to technology.

Cabinn used Oracle Hospitalitys OPERA Hosted Service and enjoyed the benefits of having the latest functionality through automatic patches without dedicating IT resources for system and server maintenance. When OPERA Cloud Service launched, Cabinn quickly adopted it to enable a truly mobile solution at its properties. Mobility makes it possible for Cabinn to check in its guests from anywhere, improving its overall customer service experience.

Now you actually can have your PMS system in your pocket on a phone or tablet, said Cabinns CIO Teit Vangsgaard Sonne.

As Cabinn started implementing OPERA Cloud in its hotels, Sonne was pleasantly surprised by the uptime. The implementation with Opera Cloud went very well. It was much faster than we planned. We planned two days to train the staff, and after one day they felt like home with the system.

And as they build new hotels, they can get staff trained and using the system quickly, helping to support Cabinns expansion plans.

OPERA Cloud has also enabled a new level of service at Cabinn  complete mobile check-in. Imagine your flight has been canceled, how upset would you be if you go to the hotel and stand in line for two or three hours? With mobile check-in, our guests can check in at the airport, in the cab, or anywhere. So, when they arrive to the hotel, they go straight to the room using a mobile key, shares Sonne.

Now thats next generation customer service.
Though he has kept to himself and focused his energy on grinding out some studio work, Fetty Wap is about to hit the road again, dedicating this upcoming set of dates to his loyal fan base.

The rapper, who hails from New Jersey, will kick off the For My Fans Tour in Silver Spring, Maryland on January 14th and travel to other major cities like New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. His last date on this tour will be on February 18th in Raleigh, North Carolina.

At the moment, it seems like Fetty is all about that fan love, having recently released a mixtape project under the moniker For My Fans II. His supporters are still anxiously waiting his King Zoo LP, an endeavor that he has been teasing for more than a year and still has a specific timeframe for its release shrouded in mystery. Theres no telling if hell be debuting any new tracks during any of his live tour sets but, seeing as its called For My Fans, the optimism on that front should be pretty high.

Check out the full slate of upcoming concerts below.

Fetty Waps For My Fans Tour Dates

Jan. 14  Spring Silver Spring, Md.

Jan. 15  Philadelphia, Pa.

Jan. 15  Boston, Mass.

Jan. 18  Huntington, N.Y.

Jan. 19  Montclair, N.J.

Jan. 20  New York, N.Y.

Jan. 21  New York, N.Y.

Jan. 24  Detroit, Mich.

Jan. 25  Chicago, Ill.

Jan. 26  Indianapolis, Ind.

Feb. 1  San Francisco, Calif.

Feb. 2  Los Angeles, Calif.

Feb. 3  San Diego, Calif.

Feb. 5  Anaheim, Calif.

Feb. 12  Houston, Texas

Feb. 13  Dallas, Texas

Feb. 15  Charlotte, N.C.

Feb. 16  Atlanta, Ga.

Feb. 17  North Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Feb. 18  Raleigh, N.C.

Are you copping some tickets to go and see Fetty Wap in person? Let us know in the comments.

Fetty Wap
Barred from hiking prices, NOC slips into red

Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) has been in the red for the last two months after being barred from fully implementing the auto pricing system. The mechanism, which fixes fuel prices as per global trends, had allowed the perennially loss-making government company to roll in profits from the last three years.
A few weeks back, Jadakiss and Fabolous dropped off a New York hip-hop fans dream come true, the collaborative album Friday On Elm Street. While the project failed to capitalize on the titular horror-film themes (reserved exclusively for the highlight introductory cut), it remained a solid meeting of the minds from two of N.Y.s most stalwart and underrated emcees. Today, Fabolous shared a remix to the albums eighth track, the French Montana assisted All About It. And even though the remix doesnt feature new verses from Fabolous or Jadakiss, it does feature the added presence of the late Chinx, who holds it down with an unreleased verse.

You aint catch a double hommy, that was two attempts, raps Chinx, his melodic voice drenched in autotune. Pull up on a bitch crackin lobster eatin shrimp. Its hardly a reinvention of the song, but Chinx verse does add an extra, and welcome layer of menace to the affair. Rest in peace.

Quotable Lyrics

I know all about it

Hang a picture of your face and make a target out it

Got some cars and houses

They know we done come in here a hundred strong

If I called the pigs Id probably get the number wrong
Though the future of Netflixs former anchor for their original programming may have been in doubt, the streaming giant confirmed today that production will indeed resume on House of Cards, just without their disgraced male lead.

As per Variety, Netlfix has reached an agreement with the shows producers on a revamped timeline for the shows production, which will now begin in the early part of 2018. Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos confirmed that, while the show will be given one last season to wrap storylines up, the amount of episodes it will have at its disposal will dwindle significantly. The report states that, instead of the customary 13 episodes that prior House of Cards seasons have offered to viewers, this sixth and final go-round will only have eight.

Robin Wright will return to star as Claire Underwood, stepping into the spotlight as the shows sole core star, after the departure of Kevin Spacey via an unceremonious public firing from the show. The veteran actor, who was accused of sexually harassing another male actor who was underage at the time, has also been nixed from an upcoming Ridley Scott film All the Money in the World. Christopher Plummer has taken over Spaceys part in that movie.

We were really excited we could get to an agreement for the conclusion of the show, said Sarandos on Monday. This move signals the end of what has been an enormously successful run for Netflixs original critical darling. Are you sad to see the show go? Let us know in the comments.

House of Cards
Tory Lanez may be a Canadian-born rapper, but he actually comes from a diverse background in terms of his family roots. His father, Sonstar Peterson, is from Barbados and his mother, Luella, is from the Caribbean island of Curacao. These family roots have influenced Tory both musically and otherwise, but they also mean that hes got something in common with one of the biggest celebrities on the planet.

The LUV artist recently shared a picture of him posing with musics First Lady of Barbados, Rihanna, to his Instagram page. Clad in a black and white tracksuit and sporting some iced-out bling on his wrist and fingers, Lanez stands beaming next to RiRi, who stuns in a sea-themed print dress, her long black hair cascading down past her shoulders. You can check out the photo below.

We met in Barbados, Lanez remarked in the caption. Ironically, were both bajans, he added, referring to their island roots. Theres no telling whether or not this picture posing moment will lead to some sort of musical collaboration down the road, but Tory Lanez would surely welcome that kind of arrangement. The Canadian artist is looking to follow up with his recent success, with a new studio album that has been teased on the regular since September, but the fruits of that labor have yet to hit the open market.

Would you be down for a Tory and RiRi collab? Let us know in the comments.

Tory Lanez
This past Saturday, Yelawolf was scheduled for a performance in Minneapolis to a sold-out crowd where he ultimately performed one song before leaving the stage for the evening, TwinCitiesMedia reports. While some fans may have been confused, disappointed or even angry, Yelawolf has issued a statement as to why the performance got cut short.

Yelawolf took to Twitter today to explain why he only played one song before leaving the stage. After only performing one song and abruptly leaving the stage, one of his people came out to say the rapper was rushed to the hospital. According to the report, people in the crowd were yelling bullshit, to the claim and rumors started spiraling that said there was an altercation between the venues staff and his team. However, he put the rumors to rest after hitting Twitter to explain that he was suffering from exhaustion and that the show would be later rescheduled.

Unfortunately, after taking the stage last night, YelaWolf was forced to leave the stage due to exhaustion. He is currently resting and apologies to the fans for not being able to finish the show. The Minneapolis show will be rescheduled soon, the tweet read.

Right now, Yelas on tour in support of his most recent album Trial By Fire. The tour kicked off at the tail end of September and is set to wrap up in Lousville, KY this Thursday. Hes still scheduled for his performance this evening in Des Moines, Iowa.

Hopefully, the rest hes got since then has helped him get better.
Border points to close tonight

The transit point with India in Banke district will be closed from today midnight in view of the December 7 election to the House of Representatives and State Assemblies.
Mauritania National Day

Washington, DC - Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson: "On behalf of President Trump and the people of the United States of America, I am delighted to send my best wishes to the people of Mauritania on your 57th anniversary of independence on November 28.

"The United States looks forward to growing our strong relationship with Mauritania in the coming year. We will continue our longstanding partnership by working together to strengthen our economic ties, address terrorist threats in the region, and build Mauritanias democratic institutions.

"The United States supports all Mauritanians as you work to build a country that is peaceful, prosperous, and united."
Keith Urban's Interaction With Child Who Cannot Talk or Walk Will Melt Your Heart
EC confident of secure elections

While questions are being raised over the security situation amid a spike in violent activities, Chief Election Commissioner Ayodhee Prasad Yadav has said the Election Commission is confident of safety during the December 7 polls.
Theresa May pulled out at the last minute from a deal to break the Brexit logjam after meeting fierce resistance from the Democratic Unionist Party, Ireland's prime minister has claimed.

Crunch talks between Mrs May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker ended in Brussels without a deal after the DUP - which props up the minority Conservative Government in Westminster - made clear it would not accept any arrangement which saw Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK.

Irish Taioseach Leo Varadkar said he was "surprised and disappointed" by the break-up of talks just hours after all sides confirmed they were satisfied with a text which would guarantee "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and the Republic in order to prevent the imposition of a hard border.

Downing Street made no response to Mr Varadkar's claim.

But it is understood that, as well as the impasse over Ireland, disagreement remains over the role of the European Court of Justice in overseeing EU citizens' rights in the UK after Brexit.

Both Mrs May and Mr Juncker said they were "confident" of reaching agreement in time for a key summit of the European Council on December 14, when it is hoped that leaders of the remaining 27 EU states will give the green light for the start of trade talks.

The Prime Minister is expected back in Brussels for further talks before the end of the week, though sources declined to confirm reports that she would meet Mr Juncker and chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier on Wednesday.

European Council president Donald Tusk later disclosed that he had been preparing to move negotiations on to the second phase - dealing with trade and the transition to the post-Brexit EU/UK relationship - until the last-minute call for more time.

Mrs May arrived for her lunchtime talks with Mr Juncker with expectations high for a breakthrough on remaining "divorce" issues which might allow Brexit negotiations to move on to their second phase by Christmas, easing the pressure on businesses to activate contingency plans to move staff and activities outside the UK.

But Irish pronouncements over an imminent deal on the border sparked a firm response from the DUP, which has previously warned it could withdraw its support for Tories in Westminster if a deal is proposed which threatens the integrity of the United Kingdom by effectively establishing a customs border in the Irish Sea.

Speaking at Stormont, DUP leader Arlene Foster said: "We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom. We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom."

Her comments were swiftly followed by statements from the leaders of devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and London, making clear that any special status for Northern Ireland would prompt demands from other parts of the UK for their own tailor-made Brexit.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that if one part of the UK could stay in the single market, there was "no good practical reason why others cannot do the same".

Allowing Northern Ireland alone to retain regulatory alignment with the EU would put Scotland at " a double disadvantage when it comes to jobs and investment", she said.

Wales would "fully expect" to be offered the same deal as Northern Ireland to stay in the single market and customs union, said First Minister Carwyn Jones, while London's Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan said a "similar deal" could help preserve tens of thousands of jobs in the capital, which voted overwhelmingly to Remain in the EU.

Mrs May broke off from talks with Mr Juncker to speak by phone with Mrs Foster, and it was shortly afterwards confirmed that talks were ending without a deal.

The Prime Minister said "a lot of progress" had been made, with "a common understanding" on many of the divorce issues.

But she added: "On a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation."

Mr Juncker said that the EU and UK were "narrowing our positions to a huge extent", but that two or three issues remained "open for discussion".

In a press conference in Dublin, Mr Varadkar said that representatives of the UK Government and Mr Barnier's team informed Irish negotiators early in the day that a form of words had been found which might satisfy the Republic's demand for a "cast-iron guarantee" of no hard border after Brexit.

"The Irish negotiating team received confirmation from the British Government and the Barnier taskforce that the United Kingdom had agreed a text on the border that met our concerns," said Mr Varadkar, adding that he confirmed Ireland's support for the text to Mr Juncker and Mr Tusk.

"I am surprised and disappointed that the British Government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today," he said.

"I accept that the Prime Minister has asked for more time, and I know that she faces many challenges and I acknowledge that she is negotiating in good faith.

"Ireland wants to proceed to phase two - it's very much in our interests to do so. However we cannot agree to do this unless we have firm guarantees that there will not be a hard border in Ireland under any circumstances."

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the failure of talks showed Mrs May's Government was " completely ill-equipped to negotiate a successful Brexit deal for our country", while former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said she should "leave office now".

But Tory MPs and peers who attended a briefing at Westminster from the PM's chief of staff Gavin Barwell and Brexit minister Steve Baker voiced satisfaction that divisions between Northern Ireland and the mainland had been avoided.

Leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said that moves to "dismantle" the territorial integrity of the UK were "intolerable", while Remain-backing former minister Anna Soubry said that no Tories wanted different rules for different parts of the country and that the simplest way of avoiding this was for the whole UK to stay in the single market.
Nicola Sturgeon has said there is "no good reason" Scotland cannot "effectively" stay in the single market, after it appeared Britain and the European Union were close to an agreement on issues surrounding the Irish border.

Although no deal has been reached, European Council president Donald Tusk said Monday's Brexit talks with Theresa May had seen "significant progress".

It comes after Ireland's deputy premier Simon Coveney said the Dublin government's concerns over the post-Brexit border with Northern Ireland were set to be addressed fully.

Regulatory alignment could mean both sides of the island's border following the same rules governing trade, to ensure goods continue to move freely with no checks.

The First Minister has since welcomed the news and called for similar status to be granted to Scotland.

She said: "While I welcome the proposed commitment for Ireland and Northern Ireland - and while the particular circumstances in Scotland are distinct and separate from those in Ireland - today's developments show very clearly that if one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with the EU and effectively stay in the single market, there is no good practical reason why others cannot do the same.

"Indeed, any special status for Northern Ireland would make a similar solution for Scotland even more vital.

"For Scotland to find itself outside the single market, while Northern Ireland effectively stays in would place us at a double disadvantage when it comes to jobs and investment."

Both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain part of the EU in the referendum which was held in June 2016.

While Prime Minister Theresa May has previously insisted the entire UK will leave the single market, European Council president Donald Tusk made clear Brexit talks cannot move on to trade issues unless the UK can satisfy Dublin there will be no return to a strictly-controlled border in Ireland.

On Monday, Mr Coveney said : ''The indications we have is that we are in a much better place now than we have been in the negotiations to date.

"The legitimate concerns that Ireland has been raising for months are going to be addressed fully.

''These discussions are moving in the right direction.

"I hope we are in a place this evening where Irish people north and south will get reassurance from the wording that is very close to being finalised now.''

Mr Coveney told RTE Radio One he believed that the post-Brexit border will be ''invisible'' with ''no barriers'' and ''will look very much like it looks today''.

DUP leader Arlene Foster, whose party has agreed to support the minority UK Government in Parliament, spoke out after the comments.

Speaking at Stormont, she said: "We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom.

"We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

"The economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom will not be compromised in any way."

Ms May said the meeting with Mr Juncker had been "constructive", despite no deal being reached.

She added: "On a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation and those will continue.

"But we will reconvene before the end of the week and I am also confident that we will conclude this positively."
British Prime Minister Theresa May and her husband Philip during a visit to VFB the Florist in Twyford, Reading, at the weekend. Photo: PA

Ireland is sticking to a red-line position that there must be no change to cross-Border trade rules as the Brexit talks look set to miss today's deadline for a deal.

Intense negotiations went late into the night with senior Government sources in Dublin describing the odds on an agreement today as "less than 50pc".

"We're not viewing today as a 'drop dead deadline'," said one source.

British officials are also downplaying a crunch meeting between Prime Minister Theresa May and European Parliament President Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels this afternoon as "an important staging post" on the way to trade talks.

She was due to bring a formal proposal for the future of the Northern Ireland Border to the meeting but is instead expected to ask for more time to come up with the answer to the so-called 'Irish question'.

There are now just 10 days to go until the European Council summit, where EU leaders will decide whether trade talks can begin.

If the Irish Government isn't placated before December 14, it could completely derail the UK's timeline for Brexit.

Shortly after today's lunch meeting between Mrs May and Mr Juncker, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar will be briefed on progress from an EU perspective.

He will then have to make the biggest call of his political career when deciding whether to accept the wording of an agreement or further stall the troubled talks.

It is understood the Government has told the UK it does not require an in-depth plan for the future movement of people and goods between the Republic and Northern Ireland.

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However, it wants "a formal commitment" that there will be no "regulatory divergence" after Brexit.

It is understood that the text of an agreement, which was being worked on last night, only runs to a few pages.

"Essentially, the Irish Government is saying that when it comes to areas like agriculture, education and medicine, the status quo will remain," a source said.

This is proving difficult for Mrs May to put in writing without the support of the DUP, which fears such a move will effectively move the Border into the Irish Sea.

DUP leader Arlene Foster said yesterday that Brexit would involve "a comprehensive trade and customs agreement" between the EU and UK.

"What is not sensible is proposing isolating Northern Ireland from its largest market," she said.

"It makes no sense whatsoever to move the Border to the Irish Sea and make trade with our biggest market - the rest of the United Kingdom - more difficult."

Mr Varadkar and Mrs May were expected to speak by phone before he chaired a special Cabinet meeting at 9am today.

The Taoiseach and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney will seek opinions from ministers on how far to push the issue later in the day.

Sources say EU Council President Donald Tusk will phone the Taoiseach in the afternoon to discuss progress on a draft agreement.

Mr Tusk had set today as the absolute deadline for Mrs May to table firm proposals - but sources in Dublin say there will still be negotiating in the days ahead.

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"Everything is subject to change. We'll be looking for her to live up to the meaning of her Florence speech," said one source.

In that speech Mrs May pledged to protect the Good Friday Agreement and the common travel area, but most significantly she said that the UK "will not accept any physical infrastructure at the Border".

Ireland believes the only way this can be achieved is for Northern Ireland to maintain its "regulatory alignment" with the Republic. Speaking yesterday, Mr Coveney said: "We are looking for parameters within which a solution can be found in phase two - not unreasonable - we'd like a solution to Border issues [that] involves all the UK acting as one, but if that is not possible, both governments need to recognise that Northern Ireland has unique challenges."

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair has warned that the EU cannot allow the continued free flow of goods across the Border if Britain is outside the single market and the customs union.

He said only a "bespoke" arrangement on the island of Ireland would work, but this is unlikely to be accepted by the DUP.

Mr Blair is now actively campaigning for a second referendum on Brexit.

He told the BBC that the UK government's aims in the Brexit negotiations will fail because it wants to leave the single market, but retain all of the benefits.

"It's reversible. It's not done until it's done," he said. "When the facts change, I think people are entitled to change their mind."
British Prime Minister Theresa May is due to meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier today as they seek to outline a deal to pave the way for a breakthrough at this month's EU summit.

Euro-area finance ministers also meet today to discuss the future of the Euro area.

After a turbulent week in Irish politics, the Department of Finance is due to release Exchequer returns today. Particular attention will be on tax receipts, especially self-employed and corporation tax receipts.

Tomorrow sees unemployment figures for November published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), which will be followed by the release of the live register figures on Thursday.

In a busy week for data from the CSO, the industrial production and turnover numbers for October and the monthly services index are also released tomorrow.

On Friday, the CSO will release data on the number of vehicles licensed for the first time in November. Last month's figures showed a 10.4pc fall in the number of new cars licensed for the first 10 months of the year.
The statue of Edward Carson in front of Stormont. Dormant anxieties about pushing for a border poll and a united Ireland have been reignited and are likely to blame for some of the DUP's intransigence. Picture: PA

The countdown is now under way for a breakthrough between EU and UK officials over Brexit. There are just 10 days to go before a crucial summit of EU leaders takes place in Brussels to decide whether Britain has done enough to allow trade talks with the EU to begin.

In the first of a series of milestone meetings this week, British Prime Minister Theresa May will have lunch with president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker this afternoon.

She is expected to 'put something on the table' and present Britain's offering on the EU's three priority areas: safeguarding EU and UK citizens' rights; the UK's financial commitments; and resolving the Border issue.

Until there is sufficient progress in these areas, the EU will not agree to open negotiations on its future relationship with the UK.

Officials from both sides were locked in talks and there was close contact with representatives of the Irish Government all weekend.

If a deal materialises, the North will maintain 'regulatory alignment' on certain EU-related sectors, such as agriculture, energy, and packaging.

This would require Northern Ireland staying in a customs union arrangement which satisfies the EU's single market regulations.

However, a considerable impasse remains in getting this proposal over the line because of the highly sensitive political environment in Westminster and Northern Ireland.

According to sources, sides have only inched closer together. Dublin wants to see a logical plan and a concrete commitment from Britain, mapping out how it reconciles leaving the EU while protecting peace on the island of Ireland.

The Irish question remains the most complicated matter to overcome. Since Britain is adamant that it is leaving both the EU's customs union and single market, a solution which involves Northern Ireland being designated as a 'special' case is still being considered, in spite of threats from the DUP to withdraw its support for the Tory government.

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The DUP is against anything that will set Northern Ireland apart from the rest of the UK.

"Isolating Northern Ireland from its largest market" was not a "sensible" option, DUP leader Arlene Foster said yesterday. She also said the situation had turned into a "zero sum game", where protecting the "integrity" of the UK and having good cross-Border relations was, in the eyes of some, "mutually exclusive".

But it is impossible to ignore the fact that Northern Ireland is already a special case and cannot be exactly compared to the rest of Britain. The fundamental essence of the Good Friday Agreement allows for people in the North decide whether they wish to be British or Irish - and therefore citizens of the EU. This alone means particular consideration should be given to the North.

In recent weeks, harsh and factually incorrect commentary - mainly in the British press and among British politicians - has driven the sides further apart. Trust and confidence between the governments have therefore dwindled.

Dormant anxieties about pushing for a border poll and a united Ireland have been reignited and are likely to blame for some of the DUP's intransigence.

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney has tried to temper these fears by telling unionists the Government is simply seeking to defend the status quo.
Nigel Farage has been accused of hypocrisy after declaring he will take a taxpayer-funded EU pension.

It is estimated the former Ukip leader will get an annual pension of 82,000 when he reaches 63.

Aked on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show if he would accept it, Mr Farage (53) said: "Of course I would. I have said that right from day one. Why should my family and others suffer even more?"

Liberal Democrat Tom Brake said: "Nigel Farage is a shameless hypocrite. He rails against the so-called EU gravy train, but is happy to cash in when it suits him."

Responding to accusations of hypocrisy, Mr Farage said: "It is not hypocrisy.

"I've just voted to get rid of my job. I was the turkey that voted for Christmas. How is that hypocrisy? If it was hypocrisy, I'd have said we should have stayed in the EU."

Later in the BBC programme, Farage defended Donald Trump for retweeting Britain First last week by saying the US president "wouldn't have a clue" who the far-right group were.
Man killed in Dhading tipper accident

A man died in a tipper accident at Dhunibesi Municipality-6 in Dhading district on Monday.
Northern Irish sheep farmers like John Sheridan collectively transport more than 1,000 lambs a day over the Irish border for slaughter and shipment to shoppers across the European Union. At the moment, the process is seamless.

But Sheridan sees a threat to his lifes work, his familys future and even the settlement that ended years of violence in British-ruled Northern Ireland should checkpoints reappear after Brexit on the invisible frontier with the Irish Republic.

Its crazy, crazy stuff. It absolutely cannot happen here. There cannot be a border - and thats before even talking about the peace, said Sheridan, a 56-year-old Protestant brought up in the pro-British unionist tradition.

Almost 18 months after Britain voted to leave the EU, the future of the only UK land frontier with the bloc after Brexit - and its role in sustaining about 20 years of fragile peace in Northern Ireland - is a major hurdle in the divorce talks.

Armed with a power of veto, the Irish government says the negotiations cannot progress unless Britain agrees to keep customs regulations the same north and south. This, Dublin says, is the only way of avoiding a damaging return to border controls.

Only road signs mark the frontier between the two member states of the EUs single market, within which goods and people move freely. Trucks like those carrying Sheridans lambs rumble past the remains of disused checkpoints, built by the British army during three decades of political and sectarian violence that was settled by the 1998 peace deal.

For Sheridan, any change after Brexit in March 2019 to this smooth, tariff-free movement of livestock and common standards in both jurisdictions could spell ruin for the business he is in the process of passing on to his three children.

If theres a hard border, well be pulling out. It will become a wasteland here, said Sheridan, whose farm near the County Fermanagh village of Florencecourt lies only 3 km (2 miles) from the border.

Sheridan, who belongs to a campaign group called Border Communities against Brexit, has a warning for any politicians who upset the status quo. Do you think Im going to let them ruin my business that took blood, sweat and tears to build, and ruin my familys future in our country that we want to live in? Do you think anybodys going to put up with that?

The economy of Ireland, north and south, has become deeply integrated since the single markets creation in 1993. This, along with peace, has transformed previously neglected border areas such as rural County Fermanagh which depends largely on tourism and agriculture.

According to the Ulster Farmers Union, 40 percent of all Northern Irish lambs are processed in the republic. A quarter of milk output also moves south, the Dairy UK trade body says, and around 60 percent of Northern Irelands processing capacity is owned by dairy co-operatives from the republic.

If common standards cease in areas such as labelling and product traceability, business north and south will grind to a halt, Mike Johnston, Dairy UKs Northern Ireland Director, told a UK parliamentary committee earlier this year.

BREXIT MEANS BREXIT

The dismantling of military border posts was a vital aspect of the peace deal between Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland and Protestant unionists who wanted to keep Northern Ireland British. Over 3,600 died in the conflict.

Already the provinces government is suspended due to a row between the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the nationalist Sinn Fein, which vehemently opposes a hard border. The parties have shared power under the 1998 settlement, and any rupture over the issue risks seriously upsetting the peace process.

Britain says it will not contemplate the return of a hard border but a committee of UK lawmakers has found that this is inconsistent with its plans to leave the EUs single market and customs union.

Room for any special arrangements for Northern Ireland is further limited as the minority Conservative government relies on the pro-Brexit DUP to prop it up in Westminster.

The DUP has said it will not support any deal that makes the province operate under different rules from the rest of the UK or creates trade barriers between it and its biggest market.

North-South trade has doubled since 1995, but the British economy is 14 times larger than the Irish Republics. The Northern Ireland food and drink sector, for instance, relies on Britain for 73 percent of its sales.

Despite Sheridans misgivings, many of his fellow Protestants stand squarely behind the DUP. At the partys annual conference last month, supporters waving Union Jack flags belted out a rousing rendition of God Save The Queen.

Brexit means Brexit, so we are going out, William Gibson, a north Belfast businessman, said at the conference. We are an integral part of the UK and it is most important that we are treated the same way as the rest of the UK.

The DUP was the only Northern Irish party to campaign for Brexit in last years referendum, when 56 percent of voters in the province went against the national trend by opting to remain in the EU.

Many of the 10 DUP lawmakers who hold the balance of power in London suspect Dublins motives. They fear its proposals will boost the case for uniting the two sides of the border, as ultimately sought by their nationalist rivals.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney assured unionists on Friday that his government was only trying to maintain the status quo, and nothing else.

A DELICATE SOLUTION

The DUP, which also wants to maintain a soft border but has not spelled out how, has hinted it may withdraw its support for the government if Prime Minister Theresa May gives too much away.

A delicate solution is therefore needed if EU leaders are to agree at a summit on Dec. 14-15 - one described by Dublin as having historic significance for the island - that sufficient progress has been made to move the Brexit talks onto a trade deal, as London wants.

This can be achieved, a report prepared by Belfasts Queens University for the European Parliament found this week, but it added: This process is entirely dependent not on technical solutions but on political will.

Sheridan will be watching closely from his farm in the Fermanagh constituency of DUP leader Arlene Foster. Dublin, he says, must hold a firm line. There can be no turning back the clock.
Farmers, rural areas and farmland are being ignored in national plans to reduce flood risk, the IFA has warned.

A national strategy must be put in place to deal with the significant damage that has occurred on lands and property, IFA president Joe Healy told the National Flood Forum.

"Flood events on the River Shannon used to be a once in 100 year occurrence. The fact that two such events have occurred in the last seven years must spur action and lead to the implementation of major works," he said.

He said the draft Catchment Flood Risk Assessment and Management programme had addressed the protection of large towns and some villages but has ignored farmers and rural areas.

Mr Healy said it was positive that works were taking place at key points on the Shannon which have not been maintained for almost 100 years, but insisted that it must be accelerated.

Concerns were also raised that, due to the slow process of proposals and project planning, the money allocated in recent Budgets would not be spent on the capital works.

Meanwhile, some farmers in the west have heavily dipped into their winter forage stocks, with some reporting levels as low as 15-20pc of their requirements until May.

Teagasc advisor Tom Coll said some farmers who had to house stock early still have not budgeted ahead for a potentially long winter.

He said most farmers will be using concentrates at around 225/t to solve the problem of low fodder levels. Mr Coll pointed out if the farmer has 50pc of their fodder requirements they can top up with concentrates.

"Teagasc are currently working to get a better handle on what the situation is like," he said, with a fodder survey being carried out across the north-western counties.

Demands have been growing for a fodder aid package before Christmas, with INHFA president Colm O'Donnell warning that many farmers in the north-west will be facing into 2018 with most of their fodder supplies used up due to early feeding and problems taking a second cut of silage.

"Many farmers are facing into their fourth month of feeding with another five still to come and what they need to see is recognition from Agriculture Minister Michael Creed that there is a crisis and a plan in the form of a fodder scheme to help them," he said.

He suggested a meal voucher scheme, a transport haulage subsidy and a monitoring role for Teagasc.

This he said "can provide the basis for a fodder aid scheme" but "immediate action is required" to avert animal welfare issues in early 2018.

The INHFA will hold a national rally to call for action on fodder at 8pm on December 1 in the Sligo Southern Hotel.

The IFA president said the deepening fodder problems will have to be addressed by the minister, with difficult weather conditions since August leaving farmers with a severe crisis.

"There is no doubt that there is an urgent need for a scheme," said Mr Healy of an IFA meeting also on December 1 at 8pm in the McWilliam Park Hotel, Claremorris, Co Mayo.
Kepak Group has announced that it is to acquire the Moy Park Poppintree facility in Ballymun, Dublin 11.

The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of December.

The Poppintree factory was custom built in 1995 and has been the subject of significant investment in cooking processes that complement the Kepak Groups value added business interests.

The investment reflects the continued growth of the Kepak Group and is its fourth acquisition this year following the JV investment in Greene Farm Fine Foods in Westmeath, and the acquisitions of Country Park Foods (CPF), Huddersfield and Kepak Clare - a standalone abattoir.

As well as increasing Kepaks capability in added value cooked product for Food To Go, Foodservice, the acquisition will also facilitate the continued growth of its own consumer branded Rustlers products.

Rustlers is one of the largest Irish owned food brands with a significant presence in the UK, where it is now in the top 120 brands across FMCG, and in Europe where it has a strong and growing presence in Germany, Belgium and Holland.

The Poppintree facility also adds another innovation base to assist Kepaks expansion plans.

John Horgan, Managing Director, Kepak Group said that meeting the challenge of changing consumer tastes, increasingly competitive markets and the potential disruption from Brexit, requires an approach that plays to our strengths and invests strategically in acquisitions which deepen our offering, especially in the new markets we are developing.

"As an Irish company and one of Europes leading food innovators, engaged in processing and marketing a full range of meat proteins in varied formats and presentations, the addition of Poppintree to the Kepak family of facilities further enhances our capability in added value cooked products.

The facility is also the home of the Walsh Family Foods Spice Burger which has a very loyal customer base particularly in the greater Dublin area.

The site will be renamed Kepak Poppintree, and there are plans to reenergise the marketing of the iconic Spice Burger. There will be no negative impact on staff numbers (approx. 35) currently employed at the plant.
Agribusiness leaders have stressed the importance of fighting to maintain the UK market post-Brexit, at a conference on the future of Irish Agriculture today.

However, Kerry Group CEO Eamon Scanlon warned that his company while hoping for the best are preparing for the worst in relation to the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.

He was followed by John Horgan MD of Kepak one of Irelands largest meat processors who stressed that we should not forget and we should insist on maintaining our existing markets.

The most important focus we have should be to fight to retain our existing markets.

In the case of beef out of every ten animals produced in Ireland, nine are exported of which more than four go into the UK, he highlighted.

Horgan went on to say that we have all ready to say that Kepak has already had to make investments to Brexit proof the business.

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He further stressed that Ireland has already felt significant Brexit impact associated with a 15pc devaluation of sterling.

Both men were speaking at The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine major Food Wise conference in Croke Park today.

Speaking in advance of the conference, Minister Michael Creed said the theme of our conference is Food Wise  Challenge, Ambition, Opportunity  and the conference will hear from a range of speakers on these themes, including the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar TD; EU Commissioner Phil Hogan; Laura Burke, Director of the EPA; and John Moloney, who led the Food Wise 2025 committee in 2015.

There have been some calls for a moderation of the Food Wise ambition in the light of Brexit Minister Creed commented. However, I believe this is no time to step back. The targets set for 2020 in the previous iteration of our current agri-food strategy, are on course to be achieved well ahead of schedule, and they too appeared optimistic at the time.

Of course, while pursuing growth opportunities, we must recognise the challenges, including the very real environmental challenges, facing the sector and take positive steps to deal with them.

I hope that today will inspire all involved in the sector  farmers, processors and Government - to re-double our shared commitment to achieving the Food Wise 2025 vision for the sustainable growth of the sector.
Sterling jumped to a one-month high against the euro on Monday after a member of the European Parliaments Brexit group said there was a very good chance of a deal on an initial divorce package between Britain and the European Union.

Elmar Brok said he was astonished at how far the negotiations had come and that differences remained over just a few words.

British Prime Minister Theresa May will have lunch with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Union Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier on Monday in Brussels, where she will try to persuade them to start discussions on a new trade pact and a two-year transitional deal.

The European Parliaments Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt sounded a more cautious tone than Brok, telling reporters that the chances of a deal when stood at 50-50, with Parliament still pressing for more from London on guarantees for the rights of EU citizens in Britain

But traders were optimistic, with sterling reaching as high as $1.3525 after the comments, up from around $1.3440 beforehand.

To me, this is a Brexit breakthrough and it should be solid for the pound, said Neil Jones, Mizuhos head of hedge fund currency sales in London.

I sense that were moving towards a sign-off that will enable the UK to move into trade talks and thats only going to be a good thing for the pound.

Against the euro, the pound climbed 0.8 percent on the day to a 87.68 pence, up from 88.17 pence.

Earlier, better-than-expected economic data showing a modest rebound in British construction activity last month had little perceptible impact on the pound, with the Brussels talks stealing the limelight in London trading.

London has broadly agreed to many of the EUs divorce terms, including paying out something like 50 billion euros. But the issues of the rights of expatriate citizens and the UK-EU border on the island of Ireland remain fraught, diplomats say.

If a green light is provided today for talks to move on to future relations, including a timely transition arrangement, it would open the door for further pound gains in the near-term, said MUFG currency economist Lee Hardman.

A Reuters poll last week found economists believe the chance of a disorderly Brexit - where no deal has been reached when the two years of talks are scheduled to close in March 2019 - has declined over the past month.

Such optimism drove sterling to six-month highs on a trade-weighted basis last week. It traded around 0.4 percent below those highs on Monday.

Speculators bought back into the pound in the week up to last Tuesday, data showed on Friday, with positioning moving into positive territory - reflecting more bets that sterling will strengthen than that it will fall - for the first time since October.
Stronger action is required to address the dreadful problem of marauding dog attacks on sheep flocks, according to IFA National Sheep Chairman John Lynskey.

He said with the darker evenings and nights this time of year, dog attacks increase and recent cases have been reported in Wexford, Kildare, Offaly, Galway, Dublin and Roscommon.

Some of these attacks are vicious with defenceless sheep flocks savaged by marauding dogs inflicting terrible suffering and pain and in many cases death on the sheep.

John Lynskey said dog owners need to take a much more active and responsible approach towards ownership and towards ensuring that their pets are under control at all times.

He warned, Owners can be held responsible for any losses involved in dog attacks, with serious financial and legal consequences. Farmers have a right to protect their sheep flock and can shoot a dog worrying, or about to worry their flock.

The IFA sheep farmer leader said that 85pc of dogs are now microchipped, according to the Department of Agriculture.

He said a single database must be introduced with controls on change of ownership so as all owners are held accountable.

To make microchipping effective Minister Creed must pull together a single database and proper controls on ownership.

John Lynskey also encouraged all dog owners, including farmers, to make sure to get their dogs microchipped.

John Lynskey called on Minister Creed and the Department of Agriculture to launch a major publicity campaign on responsible ownership.

He said a major TV, radio and social media campaign is required to get the message across to the 800,000 people with dogs in Ireland.

Statistics collated by IFA indicate that the problem of dog attacks on sheep may be in the order of 300 to 400 attacks per annum, with 3,000 to 4,000 sheep injured and killed. Data on dog attacks gathered by the IFA shows an average of 11 sheep killed or injured per attack.
Attempts to swindle over 1.3m from businesses through this scam in the last month alone Stock image

Businesses have been advised to have robust procedures in place to combat fraud in the run-up to Christmas.

Gardai have warned owners and employers that invoice redirect fraud - which targets firms that conduct much of their financial transactions online - can result in substantial losses.

There have been attempts to swindle over 1.3m from businesses through this scam in the last month alone, with actual losses to firms over that period measuring 700,000.

As companies are entering the busy seasonal time, gardai have reminded them to treat any request to change supplier bank account details with "extreme caution".

Gardai have advised prompt reporting of any such activity as, while many transactions of this nature have been intercepted, it can be difficult to recover funds once they have left the jurisdiction.

Firms have been advised to ensure that there strict policies are adopted to deal with requests to change bank details, whether this involves the escalation of the decision to a supervisor or direct contact with a trusted known person at the supplier's company.

How does it work?

Emails, letters and phone calls containing an instruction to change bank account details are sent to businesses by fraudsters purporting to be one of the firm's legitimate suppliers

When the legitimate supplier next sends an invoice to the company (the victim), the funds are sent to the amended bank account (of the criminal) where the money is generally transferred or withdrawn immediately.

For the most part, the firms do not realise they are the victim of the crime until the real suppliers send a reminder invoice.
Irish companies with a substantial foothold in America could be hit hard by US President Donald Trump's $1.5trn (1.2trn) tax cut package, according to tax experts here.

Under the monumental tax reform plan, which is set to be signed into law by Christmas, America's corporation tax rate will fall from 35pc to 20pc - above Ireland's 'red line' corporation tax rate of 12.5pc.

However, a raft of changes, including to the treatment of valuable intellectual property assets - US firms will be taxed at a special low rate of 12.5pc on their IP in a bid to get them to bring those assets back to America - is set to affect Irish firms selling goods and services into the US. "Irish Plcs who have substantial operations in the US will be affected," said Joe Tynan, head of tax at PwC.

The two-way trade between Ireland and the US has increased in recent years and is now valued at more than $590bn (495bn).

Irish firms such as CRH and Glanbia have invested more than $85bn (71bn) in the US, and employ more than 80,000 people across 50 states.

Reforms

Mr Tynan said that while Irish companies with a presence in the US will benefit from the corporate rate reduction, they will be negatively affected by reforms that reduce the interest deduction that is allowed to a proportionate amount of their global interest payments.

"As most Irish companies borrow in the US rather than Ireland, due to the higher tax deduction, this will have a significant impact," said Mr Tynan.

"The US tax changes also reduces the payments that can be made by a US company to a connected company for services, royalties and in the House bill for goods. This could also negatively affect Irish companies selling into the US."

In the early hours of Saturday, the US Senate passed a sweeping tax overhaul bill notwithstanding concerns that it could generate a deficit of $1.5trn within a decade.

One Republican, Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, voted against it on deficit concerns.

Mr Trump repeatedly singled out Ireland in the run-up to the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2017. In October, he told reporters in the White House: "I hear that Ireland is going to be reducing its corporate rates down to 8pc from 12pc."

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who insists that the overall trade flows between Ireland and the US are "remarkably balanced", later told the Dail: "I can confirm that President Trump's claim that we are proposing to reduce our corporation profit tax to 8pc is indeed fake news".

Multinationals' tax avoidance strategies are a key issue for European lawmakers, including Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

However, it is a proposed EU-wide digital tax on internet companies, fiercely opposed by Ireland, that could prove to be the biggest threat to our FDI offering. The digital tax will be discussed by European finance ministers, including Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, in Brussels tomorrow.

Yesterday, Ireland received a "red card" from a new report examining the tax and transparency policies of the European institutions, 17 member states and Norway.

'Tax Games - the Race to the Bottom: Europe's role in supporting an unjust global tax system 2017', was produced by civil society organisations in countries across Europe, including Ireland.

Maeve Bateman, director of Debt and Development Coalition Ireland, which prepared the chapter on Ireland for the report, said Ireland still has tax structures that multinationals can use to avoid tax.
'Yesterday, the interim European Employees Representative Council (EERC), formed in the wake of Septembers flight cancellations at Ryanair, wrote to pilots urging them to sign up to the national pilot association' (stock photo)

Ryanair pilots remain "undaunted and even more committed" to their cause as they continue their push for unionisation and new pay agreements, a new representative body has told the cockpit crew.

Yesterday, the interim European Employees Representative Council (EERC), formed in the wake of September's flight cancellations at Ryanair, wrote to pilots urging them to sign up to the national pilot association.

"We are united and strong, stronger than the pilot body in this company has ever been in its history," said the EERC, which alleges that several pilots from its self-styled 'company councils' announced over the last three weeks have been subjected to some form of investigation or disciplinary procedure.

Last night, Ryanair said it does not comment on what it described as "false claims or speculation from pilot unions or their front, the 'so-called EERC'".

"Any statements from this 'so-called EERC' have no validity and are ignored by both Ryanair and our pilots, who continue to negotiate base agreements while these competitor pilot unions send letters to the media," said a spokesperson for the airline.

The latest EERC letter comes days after former Malaysia Airlines chief executive Peter Bellew started in his new role as chief operations officer for Ryanair.

Spanish pilot union Sepla is the latest European union to inform Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary that it has established a Ryanair Company Council.

Six Ryanair Company Councils have now been established in Europe within existing aviation unions, in Ireland, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Germany and Portugal.

The countries are home to some of Ryanair's biggest bases.
Publishing group Harmonia last year enjoyed profits of 370,440 before businesswoman Norah Casey moved to sell the bulk of the group's titles to a US digital media investor.

The strong performance recorded by Harmonia Ltd last year follows profits of more than 520,000 in 2015.

The profits of 2016 and 2015 came after two years of losses at the company.

Last month, Ms Casey announced she has agreed a deal that sees New York-based businessman Liam Lynch's Irish Studio acquire 'Irish Tatler', 'Irish Tatler Man', 'U Magazine', 'Food & Wine' magazine, 'Auto Ireland' and 'Ireland of the Welcomes' from Harmonia.

The accounts for Harmonia Ltd show that its accumulated profits of 1.52m increased to 1.89m in 2016. Shareholder funds at the end of December last totalled 2m.

In 2013, Ms Casey confirmed she was standing down from leading the business on a day-to-day basis to allow her to concentrate on new projects.

However, as part of the new deal, the former RTE Dragon will retain a role as chairwoman emeritus, and will continue to own and manage Harmonia's remaining brands, which include 'Woman's Way', in her own right. Harmonia is Ireland's largest magazine publisher, printing almost five million magazines each year.
Mastermind in police net

Police on Sunday made public Samirman Singh Basnyat, the alleged mastermind behind the murder of Sharad Kumar Gauchan, chairman of the Federation of Contractors Associations of Nepal.
Saudi Arabia needs Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) cuts to work, but not too well. The oil cartel last week agreed to extend cuts to production until the end of 2018. Its moderation so far has drained inventories and lifted prices off the floor for producers. Further cuts won't boost prices to the point where Saudi's budget is in balance. Then again, that gives Saudi's young crown prince a reason to continue reforms.

The (Opec) cuts, which started just shy of a year ago, took some time to show up in the numbers. By October, helped by healthy demand for oil, commercial inventories among OECD countries had fallen to just 140 million barrels more than the five-year moving average, draining more than half the previous glut. The cuts have helped push up Brent crude prices more than 10pc this year.

Saudi Arabia has become more disciplined in its spending, too. The kingdom gets the bulk of its oil revenue by taxing oil producer Saudi Aramco. A cut to the company's tax rate ahead of its initial public offering could reduce the state's haul, but so far, Saudi's finances are going in a helpful direction.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says the country's fiscal breakeven will fall almost a quarter in 2017 from the last year to $73.10 (61.43) per barrel.

Oil prices have hovered between $50 (42) and $60 (50) a barrel for most of the past two years.

Opec's restraint could push prices up more in the nearer term - on Thursday the price rose over 1pc to nearly $64 (53). But it helps Saudi's financial position only to a point. Shale drillers in the United States are stepping in to make up for some of Opec's declines, which will keep prices in check next year. Also, if cuts don't have a more visible effect, some Opec members might start to wonder what the point is. The IMF predicts oil staying around $50. The Energy Information Administration pegs the price slightly higher at $56 (47) a barrel.

This plays nicely into the narrative created by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. His grand vision of diversifying the country's economy away from oil has spawned plans for giant new cities in the desert, moderate social liberalisation, and a corruption purge that touched on several royal family members.

An elongated increase to oil prices - neither too fast, nor too slow - gives him the mandate, and the time, to get more done.
Accepting the Listener's Choice Book of the Year for he, his novel about Stan Laurel, John Connolly talked about "people who are in love with books" and last Tuesday night at the Irish Book Awards the Clayton Hotel was filled with them. Authors, agents, retailers, editors, librarians and publishers came together for what our elegant compere Keelin Shanley described as "some writers one and only Christmas party night out". Later, much later, leaving the after-party knee deep in bibliophiles, I couldn't help feeling they'd taken her very much at her word.

After Champagne, a poignant farewell from our wonderful headline sponsors Bord Gais Energy, and dinner, it was awards time. A strong London contingent included literary agents Ivan Mulcahy and Sallyanne Sweeney, both delighted that Darach O'Seaghdha whose career they have nurtured, won the Popular Non-fiction title for Motherfocloir, his engaging romp round the Irish language. And O'Seaghdha pointed out: "I beat Dustin."

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Ryan Tubridy paid eloquent testament to 'supernova' David Walliams who was presented with the Bord Gais Energy International Recognition Award for his exceptional contribution to children's writing. A happy Walliams was pleased with the plaudit and to be in Ireland, "home of great writers like Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Paul O'Connell".

The increasing importance of children's publishing was recognised, with their categories expanded to three. Sarah Webb, who has been an outstanding champion of this genre, picked up the laurel (junior) for A Sailor Went to Sea, Sea, Sea while Judi Curtin, who has written 25 books, was given the senior prize for Stand by Me. In teens, Tangleweed and Brine won: a dozen dark retellings of traditional fairytales, it was described by its author Deirdre Sullivan as "a book of my heart".

At this newspaper, we were very proud that Fergal Keane won Onside's Non-fiction award for his powerful and moving memoir of love and war - Wounds - while our sister publication, the Irish Independent gave the coveted crime gong to Julie Parsons, back after a decade with The Therapy House. Ballymaloe continued its domination with another member of the celebrated culinary clan Rory O'Connell (brother of Darina) getting the cobalt crystal for Cook Well, Eat Well, named Eurospar's Cookery Book of the Year.

Wonderful it was too in the week Patrick Kavanagh's work was celebrated, that poetry got so much attention. The Listowel Writers' Week award was won by Clodagh Beresford Dunne, and then Olivia O'Leary (currently presenting RTE's new poetry show) delivered an eloquent encomium for Eavan Boland - this year's recipient of the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award.

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Finally it was time for the biggie, Eason Book Club's Novel of the Year. This year's shortlist featured six literary heavyweights - the Johns Banville, Boyne and Connolly, Roddy Doyle, Molly McCloskey and Bernard McLaverty, who won for his beautifully nuanced portrait of a long marriage - Midwinter Break. Delighted with the acclaim that this, his first novel for 16 years, has been getting, McLaverty quipped, "when it comes to humility, I'm a master". Maestro, we salute you.
In the 18th Century, Edmund Burke famously wrote that, The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Fast forward three centuries and Im borrowing the essence of that sentiment to say, The only thing necessary for the triumph of casual racism and distasteful disloyalty is for good people to do nothing. Saoirse Ronan, Im looking at you.

Youd have to wonder what was going through the talented 23-year-olds head when she was in rehearsals for hosting Saturday Night Live? In case you missed it - and if so, lucky you - Saoirse took part in an Aer Lingus spoof that managed to insult, belittle and sneer at her homeland all in one fell swoop.

Did she genuinely think that suggesting that our national airlines name sounded like was cunnilingus was side-splitting stuff? Was she slapping her thighs with glee when the scriptwriters suggested that were a nation of peasants who only eat potatoes?

Its hilarious to poke fun at the reminder that a million of our ancestors died because the potato crop failed during the Famine, isnt it Saoirse? Gas that another million were forced to leave the country too, many of whom ended up in the US, where SNL is recorded.

It wasnt even an amusing gag. Weve got purple potatoes and weve got salmon, an attendant announced. Sorry I misread that. The salmon is also potatoes. Groundbreaking stuff.

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Who knows, maybe Saoirse found herself in an awkward situation that she felt powerless to address? Perhaps her desire to win over the powers-that-be ahead of award season was stronger than her desire to be a great ambassador for her home country that particular night.

Maybe she cringed as much as the rest of us at the passengers dressed in Aran jumpers and the toe-curling stage Oirish accents on the rest of the cast. Mind you, while dressed as a flight attendant called Colleen, Saoirses own accent was bafflingly Oirish too.

Perhaps she was as confused as we all were about the dogs that kept featuring in the sketch, although given the calibre of the rest of it, its surprising that it wasnt a set of donkeys or pigs that were trotted out to shore up the abysmal stereotypes.

Speaking of farm animals, its a pity that Saoirse is too young to remember the infamous 1997 episode of Eastenders. She was only three when the Fowler family visited these shores, where they were greeted by a cast of British-hating, dirty, rude Irish drunks. Not to mention the shots of farm animals roaming the streets of Dublin.

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Saoirse might have been more careful on SNL if she had recalled the brouhaha that arose over that particular piece of paddywhackery. Such uproar ensued, with everyone from ambassadors to tourism chiefs getting involved, that the BBC had to apologise. Complaints about the programme were upheld by the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, who said "the intention was positive rather than negative but the result was clumsy and irritating."

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Clumsy and irritating also describes the SNL sketch, as well as ill-advised and downright embarrassing for all involved. We still love Saoirse and are rooting for her to get the Oscar nomination for Lady Bird and win the thing, of course, but some of us are deeply disappointed at one of our own brightest stars reinforcing stereotypes that are outdated and insulting.

Dont be complicit in making us the butt of the joke again please Saoirse, and think before you throw us under the wheels of the bus just to further your award-season ambitions. Stand up to those who try to involve you in things that make you uncomfortable, and look to strong women in your profession like Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren, Anna Kendrick and Halle Berry, who fight for what is right and dont remain silent in order to get ahead.

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Were letting this one go on account of our genuine pride in you, but seriously, dont push us Saoirse. We could go off you very quickly!
Octagon films, which is embroiled in a court battle, produced RTE hit Love/Hate starring Ruth Negga and Robert Sheehan

Irish actor Robert Sheehan has been cast in a lead role in an upcoming series on Netflix.

The 29-year-old, who shot to prominence on RTE gangland drama Love/Hate, is now based in London and Los Angeles. It was announced that the Laois native would feature in the streaming service's new superhero series Umbrella Academy alongside Merlin's Tom Hopper and stage actress Emmy Raver-Lampman.

The show centres around a dysfunctional family of superheroes, while working together to solve their father's mysterious death. Sheehan plays Klaus, a charming drug addict, who is described as a "classic 'middle child' - a disarming pleaser who is seemingly everyones friend, but will rob you blind without thinking twice."

Netflx, which promised to produce even more original content over the next 12 months, seems to be playing off its success of small screen comic book adaptations from its Marvel roster like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.

The Umbrella Academy will be produced by Universal Cable Productions, with Fargo's Steve Blackman signed on as executive producer and showrunner.

While Sheehan has been busy working, he is set for a high profile 2018 with the new show and he's also set to appear in Peter Jackson's adaptation of Mortal Engines, based on the series of books by Philip Reeve.

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Sheehan is set to join former Moone Boy and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them star Ronan Rafferty. The books are set in a post-apocalyptic universe where cities have been turned into mobile machines that compete for resources.

He'll next be seen in the film, Bad Samaritan, in which he plays a burglar, alongside former Dr Who star David Tennant.
Normally, high-flying Brooklyn actress Saoirse Ronan cannot put a foot wrong.

But TV viewers were far from impressed when the Oscar nominee appeared in a less-than-funny parody of Aer Lingus.

The innuendo-filled skit on the US show Saturday Night Live has met with a decidedly mixed reaction on social media.

The 23-year-old star raised eyebrows when she dressed as an air steward called Colleen, complete with a bouffant hairstyle and a bottle green uniform, in the four-minute sketch.

In a mock pre-take-off safety announcement for passengers, there were plenty of cliches about potatoes and Shillelaghs - not to mention some seriously bad Irish accents.

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At one point, comedian Kate McKinnon comes on board to tell passengers that they cannot take off because there is a dog on the runway with "sad eyes and the soul of Oscar Wilde".

Aer Lingus yesterday responded to the sketch, seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers around the globe.

In a light-hearted poll, it asked people whether they found the skit funny. Unfortunately for Saoirse, a whopping 66pc of respondents gave it the thumbs-down.

The airline then sent out a Tweet in the style of US President Donald Trump.

"Just tried watching Saturday Night Live - unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Ronan impersonation just can't get any worse. Sad."

Ronan got a better response for a piece elsewhere in the show, where she tried to teach viewers how to pronounce her name.

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In her opening monologue, she said: "Yes, I am Irish, and I have an extremely Irish name, some would say too Irish.

"It's Saoirse, it means freedom but I've got a little problem - it's spelled wrong, the full typo.

"You can see why people have a hard time. If it was a Wheel Of Fortune puzzle, you couldn't afford it. There's too many vowels, God bless them.

"No one has been able to pronounce my name - not even close."

She wasn't the only Irish celebrity to appear on the show.

She introduced chart-toppers U2, who sang American Soul and Get Out Of Your Own Way from their new album, Songs Of Experience.
Mutually inclusive benefits

After more than a generation of false starts, Nepals highly touted hydropower sector has at long last taken its first stuttering steps towards realising its world beating 80,000 MW potential.
The utterly discredited allegations made by Garda Keith Harrison at are expected to cost the taxpayer thousands of euros in legal bills.

Gardai are facing a legal bill of "approximately 100,000" for defending its members from Mr Harrison's accusations over 19 days of the Disclosure Tribunal's hearings, according to a senior source. The figure does not include the cost of "thousands of work hours" spent on cooperating with the tribunal outside of court sittings.

Tusla, the child and family agency, also faces a huge legal bill. It was wrongly accused by Harrison and his partner, Marisa Sims, of being "leaned on" by gardai to intervene in Sims's family.

The agency expended considerable time and resources investigating the couple's allegations. A spokesperson for the agency was unable to provide a breakdown or an estimate of the legal costs last Friday. Legal sources said that Tusla's legal bill from fighting the false allegations are also expected to be "not short of" six figures. The bill will ultimately be picked up by the taxpayer.

The allegations made by Mr Harrison and his partner, Marisa Sims, were comprehensively rejected by Mr Justice Peter Charleton, the chair of the tribunal, in a scathing interim report delivered last Thursday. "They have claimed to be the victims of a malicious procession of events. This is not so," the judge concluded.

Meanwhile, new records show the Disclosures Tribunal is costing the taxpayer more than 53,000 a month in various charges. Past tribunals have posed a significant financial burden on taxpayers - the Planning Tribunal cost 159m, the Morris tribunal about 70m and the Moriarty tribunal 55m. Now, new figures obtained by the Sunday Independent reveal 111,000 has been spent on the Disclosures Tribunal's legal team.

Records show one of the country's leading lawyers is earning, on average, more than 13,000 a month.

Senior counsel Diarmaid McGuinness has received the largest individual payments, with his legal bills totalling 81,000. Practising in administrative and criminal law, his specialities include planning and local government law, as well as constitutional law.

Tribunal lawyers Lalita Morgan Pillay and Emma Toal have received 15,744 and 14,268 respectively.

Each week, an average of 457 is being spent on stationery and various office supplies.

Chaired by Supreme Court Judge Peter Charleton, the inquiry is examining allegations that senior gardai were involved in a smear campaign against the whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe.

From March to August, some 121,000 was the expenditure on administrative staff salaries and "related expenditure".

Separately, various "administration" costs have so far reached 89,645. In total, 11,900 has been allocated on "stationery and office supplies". Some 22,700 has been spent on computer equipment, as well as specialist IT training and software.

Spending on taxis totalled 246, with office cleaning costing 2,400. 'Security' expenses for shredding or tagging sensitive documents and folders stands at 820. A further 36,600 has been allocated for stenographers and costs associated with tribunal transcripts.

The tribunal's next public hearings will take place in early January, when it will examine the legal strategy employed by former Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan at the O'Higgins Commission.

The tribunal says a central part of the inquiry is attitudes to Sgt McCabe and whether that translated into malicious behaviour or inappropriate action.

The tribunal is also carrying out a scoping exercise on any other garda whistleblowers who feel they may have been targeted.
Nikita Murtagh from Mariners Port, Sheriff Street, Dublin 1, is charged with unlawful possession of a CZ model 70 semi-automatic pistol, two rounds of 7.65 Browning calibre ammunition and a shotgun cartridge

Gardai are objecting to a bail application at the non-jury Special Criminal Court by a 20-year-old woman charged with having a semi-automatic pistol and ammunition at Connolly train station in Dublin.

Nikita Murtagh (20), with an address at Mariners Port, Sheriff Street, Dublin 1, is charged with unlawful possession of a CZ model 70 semi-automatic pistol, two rounds of 7.65 Browning calibre ammunition and a shotgun cartridge.
AN APPEAL court has overturned a teenagers conviction for falsely imprisoning then-Tanaiste Joan Burton during the Jobstown water charges protests.

The youth had all charges arising from the demonstration dismissed on appeal.

He had been found guilty in October 2016 of falsely imprisoning Ms Burton and her special adviser Karen OConnell, who were allegedly trapped in two garda cars for three hours.

The protest happened at the Fortunestown Road in Jobstown, Tallaght, on November 15, 2014, when the youth was 15 years old.

He had denied the charges, but Judge John King had found him guilty after a Dublin Childrens Court trial and discharging the youth conditionally on good behaviour for nine months.

Today the 18-year-old brought an appeal against Judge Kings decision to Dublin Circuit Court.

A State solicitor told Judge Patrick Quinn the conviction had occurred in the district court. He did not contest it.

The appeal is to be allowed, Judge Quinn said.

Barrister Giollaiosa O Lideadha SC, for the defence, said it had been an unusual and complex matter which ran to a number of days in the district court.

Having regard to the amount of work that went into the preparation of the appeal, he asked Judge Quinn to reaffirm a legal aid order to cover senior and junior counsel.

The judge agreed to this. The youth was not required to address the court during the hearing, which lasted less than a minute.

During the original trial, the Childrens Court heard the Dublin West TD had been at a graduation ceremony at An Cosan education centre when a water charges protest took place outside.

Ms Burton told the court earlier that she was frightened and did not think she had the alternative of being able to get out of garda cars surrounded by people shouting abuse and banging on windows.

In closing submissions in the four-day trial the youth's legal team had argued that the prosecution was a recipe for totalitarianism.

Asking the judge to dismiss the charges, they had contended that the prosecution was not in accordance with Irish or European human rights laws and that the State had not made out a case to answer.

However, Judge King had found the personal liberty of Ms Burton and Ms OConnell was restricted and they were forcibly detained during the incident.

His finding has now been overturned by the apeal.

In June this year, Paul Murphy TD and five other men were found not guilty on all charges of falsely imprisoning former Tanaiste Joan Burton and her advisor Karen OConnell during the same protest.
A violent burglar who broke into a caravan in the middle of the night and "hacked" several people, including an 11-year-old child, with a machete, has lost an appeal against the severity of his 15-year prison sentence.

Michael Maughan (24), with an address at The Campsite, Moneen, Castlebar, Co Mayo pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary at the caravan of Martin and Winnie McDonagh on the Turlough Road, Castlebar on November 18, 2013.

He was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment at Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court by Judge Rory McCabe on February 19, 2016.

The Court of Appeal upheld Maughan's sentence today in a case involving photographs of injuries almost too awful to look at.

Giving judgment in the three-judge court, Mr Justice George Birmingham said the injured parties were asleep in their home, a caravan, at 1am on the date in question. The occupants were Martin McDonagh, his wife Winnie McDonagh and their two sons aged 18 and 11 as well as their 18-year-old son's girlfriend.

Mr Justice Birmingham said Maughan, along with another man, entered the caravan wearing balaclavas and attacked the occupants. Armed with a machete, Maughan attacked and slashed the two sons multiple times leaving them with multiple lacerations.

He said it was worth repeating that the youngest son was aged 11 and the photos of injuries sustained it has to be said, are almost too awful to look at.

Mr Justice Birmingham said that during the attack, Martin McDonagh fled but was chased by Maughan who slashed at him. During this encounter, Maughan's balaclava slipped and he was recognised.

Maughan was born in Yorkshire and had moved to Ireland as a young child. He had seven previous convictions including one for section 3 assault, one for section 2 assault, one for possession of a knife, one theft, one section 6 public order, one section 3 misuse of drugs and one for allowing himself be carried unlawfully in a car.

Maughan's barrister, Des Dockery SC, submitted that the case was at a high level but not at the highest.

While this case was serious, Mr Dockery said the notorious Tipperary aggravated burglary case from 2013 was even more severe and there were a number of aspects present in that case which weren't present here.

That case, known as 'Dean Byrne and Others', the court heard, was referred to by the sentencing judge as it had come before his colleague in Clonmel Circuit Criminal Court shortly beforehand.

Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Patrick Reynolds BL, said it was just plainly wrong to say the Tipperary case was much more serious than this aggravated burglary.

Mr Reynolds said the sentencing judge in the Tipperary case commented that that case shocked a nation.

This case didn't shock a nation. It didn't get much publicity. I'm not going to put forward why I think that is, but it's a fact.

Mr Reynolds said he couldn't imagine a more serious aggravated burglary than what happened here - where you're lying in bed and someone comes in and hacks you with a machete. The only thing that could have made this case more serious was if one of the victims died, he added.

He said the defence were trying to have it both ways, referring to the attack as occurring in the context of a feud when it suited them and then also referring to Maughan's use of drugs and his level of culpability.

Mr Reynolds said the death of Maughan's brother in the context of a feud had been put forward as some sort of catalyst for going off the rails but his brother was killed in December 2013  after the aggravated burglary was committed.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the Court of Appeal, which dealt with the Tipperary aggravated burglary case in May of this year, would simply observe that both cases were at the highest level of seriousness for aggravated burglary.

He said it was to be noted that Maughan was sentenced in respect of four bills of indictment on the same occasion - for two violent disorders and one robbery that were committed subsequent in time to the caravan attack. Judge McCabe imposed concurrent sentences made consecutive to the aggravated burglary sentence but suspended them in their entirety for a number of years.

The court heard that Judge McCabe may have wished to structure the sentences in that way so as not to dilute the message he wished to send out in respect of the aggravated burglary offence. In sentencing an offender on multiple bills of indictment, a judge must have regard to principles of totality and proportionality.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the sentencing judge might have chosen to structure the sentences differently. However, having imposed wholly suspended sentences for the violent disorders and robbery, the focus had to be on the appropriateness of the sentence imposed for the aggravated burglary.

In the Court of Appeal's view, the sentence of 15 years, viewed in isolation, was a severe one. However, it was such a serious offence, it had to be met with a very significant sentence.

Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice Alan Mahon and Mr Justice John Edwards, said the sentence imposed fell within the range available to the Circuit Court judge and no error in principle had been identified. The appeal was therefore dismissed.
Two more people have been killed on Irish roads. A cyclist was killed yesterday when he was in collision with a car in Co Waterford.

Meanwhile, a young woman was killed when she was struck by a car in Co Kerry on Friday evening.

The cyclist who died was named locally as Eric Rutter, aged in his 40s and from Woodview, Dunmore East, Co Waterford.

He died at the scene of the collision which happened at 7am at Kilcop, on the Dunmore Road near Woodstown.

Gardai appealed for witnesses to contact Waterford Garda station.

Mr Rutter was the 15th cyclist to be killed on Irish roads this year.

Cyclist deaths are up 60pc in Ireland this year so far, as 10 cyclists lost their lives last year.

The young woman killed as she crossed the road was Denise Crowley (26), of Gortdarrig, Rathmore, Headford, Co Kerry.

She died after she was struck by a car while crossing the road after getting off a bus in Glenflesk village at 7.15pm on Friday.

A computer science student at University College Cork, she was making her way to a meeting point where her mother was due to collect her to bring her home for the weekend.

Ms Crowley had dedicated her life to helping others, said Rathmore parish priest Fr George Hayes.

She had been a teenage member of the Social Action Group in Rathmore - where she devoted her spare time to visiting the elderly in her community.

She went on to offer assistance to young people in her community and beyond, as a woman with a skill for computing, he said.

The community has been plunged into "shock", according to former Killarney mayor Donal Grady, who labelled the road a "serious danger spot".

"This is a road we've campaigned tirelessly about where there's been numerous collisions but so far our campaign has fallen on deaf ears.

"It's especially sad given it's coming up to Christmas and now no Christmas will ever be the same for her loved ones," he said.

"We've tried hard to get the speed limit on this road lowered and it's now time something was done about this. 100kmh is too high for a small rural road.

"I believe it should have a 60kmh speed limit.

"It's running right through a village. Enough is enough. We don't want to see any more lives lost," he said.

The road death toll for 2017 so far has risen to 146.
A week ago today Richard Bruton launched a strategy to make Ireland a leader in STEM education.

Today the minister is unveiling an equally ambitious plan that aims to put Ireland in the European top 10 for teaching and learning foreign languages.

There is a lot there for schools and students to digest. Computer science for Leaving Cert coming on stream in 2018 - and Mandarin Chinese, and other 'new' curricular languages in 2020. If a 14-year-old today has the opportunity to take computer science and Mandarin, or both, when he or she starts fifth year, at what cost to traditional subjects?

There is no doubt that Ireland needs more school-leavers and graduates with STEM skills to meet the needs of the rapidly-changing workplace. The country lags behind in terms of foreign language proficiency, although the 11pc of immigrants in the population have improved that situation. The minister acknowledges that, in a post-Brexit Europe, it will be even more important for Ireland to be able to maximise opportunities with non-English speaking countries.

Meeting the targets for greater proficiency in foreign languages will require a national culture change, and Government resources to train teachers, at the same time that STEM is also a priority. There is a gap in foreign language teaching in primary schools, leaving pupils with no foundation. That is to be looked at now, but the way these things work it could be a few years before change is realised. There is a shortage of teachers at second-level in many subjects, including foreign languages. Now they must be found for more languages. The challenges should not be underestimated.
Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Lithuanian and Portuguese will be on the curriculum for Leaving Certificate students who enter fifth year in September 2020.

This means that pupils who are currently in second year will be able to take a Leaving Cert exam in one of the 'new' languages for Irish schools.

The initiative is among a number of commitments in the long-awaited Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education 2017-2026, which is launched today by Education Minister Richard Bruton.

The thrust of the plan is to create a new culture around foreign language learning and to increase the number of languages taught, with a greater sense of urgency driven by Brexit.

But the ambitious programme faces big challenges, including a lack of language teachers - and that is without the addition of the new subjects.

The strategy includes a detailed five-year implementation plan, setting out a series of 100 actions aimed at delivering on its many targets up to 2026.

Mr Bruton described it as a "road map to put Ireland in the top 10 countries in Europe for teaching and learning of foreign languages".

After Brexit, Ireland will be the only English-speaking country in the EU, apart from Malta. Mr Bruton said in that context, and the increasing importance globally of non-English speaking countries, there was a need to be well prepared for the challenges ahead.

"This strategy is crucial to ensuring that Ireland is prepared for a changed European dynamic," he said.

Much of the detail of the strategy is focused on second level, but it also addresses the need to focus more on foreign language learning in primary schools and at third level.

Key targets at second level include a 25pc increase in the number of schools offering two or more foreign languages by 25pc and the number of students sitting two languages at Junior Cert and Leaving Cert, while Lithuanian is being introduced as a junior cycle short course.

At third level, where only 4pc of students take a foreign language component in their degree, the ambition is to increase that to 10pc by 2022 and to 20pc by 2026.

And, similar to science, technology and engineering subjects, there will be consideration given to awarding CAO bonus points for a language subject for CAO applicants, where languages form part of their undergraduate studies.

Measures to improve the supply of teachers include upskilling and moves to identify teachers who are qualified to teach a language but who may not have had the opportunity to do so in their schools.

At primary level, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment will consider including foreign languages in senior classes in its curriculum review. Among ideas mooted in the plan is teaching some subjects through a foreign language.
The death has occurred of the former Chief Justice Thomas Finlay, who gave the lead ruling in the controversial X case in 1992.

The 95-year-old, who served as Ireland's top judge between 1985 and 1994 and as a TD in the 1950s, passed away peacefully at his home in Dublin yesterday.

His passing came just weeks after one of this daughters, Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan, followed in his footsteps by being appointed to the Supreme Court.

Tributes to Mr Justice Finlay were led by President Michael D Higgins.

"As a member of the Supreme Court and indeed as a member of Dail Eireann, Tom Finlay left a legacy of public service, including a robust defence of the Constitution and its provisions on parliamentary privilege and citizens' rights," Mr Higgins said.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said Mr Finlay left "an extraordinary legacy of public service" in the law and in the Oireachtas.

The chairman of the Bar Council, Paul McGarry SC, described Mr Justice Finlay as "a giant of the law".

"He was one of those people who devoted himself to public service and gave himself to the State," he said.

The former barrister and judge was involved in a number of high-profile cases during his career. He gave the lead judgment in the X case in 1992, where a 14-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped by a family friend was allowed to travel to England for an abortion, despite the constitutional guarantee that the State would protect the right to life of the unborn.

Other key decisions included another 1992 ruling, which held that the confidentiality of Cabinet discussions was absolute and a ruling in a case the following year, which found that TDs could not be sued over comments made under parliamentary privilege in the Dail.

The father of five was predeceased by his wife Alice.

Born in 1922, Mr Justice Finlay was educated at Clongowes Wood College, UCD and Kings Inns, before being called to the Bar in 1944.

He became a Fine Gael TD for Dublin South-Central in 1954 and but lost his seat in 1957. He was appointed a senior counsel in 1961 and became a High Court judge a decade later.

Mr Justice Finlay served as president of the High Court from 1974 to 1985, when he was elevated to the Supreme Court and appointed Chief Justice by the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government.

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said Mr Justice Finlay was "respected and popular among his peers and legal colleagues". He added that following his retirement, Mr Justice Finlay undertook a number of public inquiries, most notably the Hepatitis C tribunal of inquiry.

"Over the course of that long career, his fine skills of legal analysis and his humanity were always to the fore and were brought to bear in the many significant legal cases and inquiries of public importance in which he was involved," he said.

Mr Justice Finlay's removal will take place on Tuesday morning, arriving at the Church of the Sacred Heart, Donnybrook at 11.30am, follow by burial at Shanganagh Cemetery.
NA defuses bomb planted near PM's hotel in Dhangadhi

A bomb disposal squad of the Nepal Army has disposed a bomb planted near a hotel where Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has been staying.
Counter-terrorism officers on patrol in the aftermath of the London Bridge terror attacks in June. Picture: Getty

Gardai did not turn up to an international counter-terrorism course in the Curragh, which was attended by police and military forces from 15 countries.

It is the second time that Garda authorities have skipped the important course, having declined a similar invitation two years ago.

The absence of any Garda representative was notable during the event, which was organised by the Army ordnance school at the Defence Forces training centre in the Curragh, Co Kildare, last month.

Among those who did turn up were members of police organisations in the UK, the US and Australia.

Gardai blamed their absence from the course, which was deemed to be highly successful, on other training commitments and the Kinahan-Hutch feud in the capital.

The course centred on a table-top exercise, based on information gathered during military manoeuvres at two major shopping centres and a transport hub.

The intelligence was then used by participants to counter potential attacks by terrorists through low-tech and high-tech command and communications scenarios.

Explaining the force's decision to stay away, a Garda spokesman told the Irish Independent last night: "Not all exercise opportunities can be embraced.

"This can happen for a number of reasons, including conflicts with pre-determined, internal training schedules, operational resource demands and in cases where presented scenarios do not complement training objectives or operational deployment realities.

"Arising from these and other international training and operational commitments, including the ongoing crime feud within the Dublin metropolitan region, it would not have been practicable to attend the military exercise."

Other agencies which were represented at the course included emergency services, private sector security companies, and potential commercial targets.

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The organisers of the course told participants that their motto was 'Co-operation and co-ordination save lives'. They said the aim of the exercise was to make people more aware of their surroundings and, without creating an environment of fear, to help them observe tell-tale signs that could lead to preventative action.

The course involved a study of 17 terrorist strikes over the past decade and an examination of post-attack analyses, which concluded that all of them could have been prevented.

Marauding

The course also trained commanders in how to respond to marauding terror attacks under complex conditions when they face a blizzard of information and need to control a wide range of personnel to end an incident with minimal casualties.

The Garda said last night that as the policing and security service of the State, it takes its obligations in leading prevention, disruption and countering any terrorist attack within the State very seriously. The force participated in training and joint exercises on a regular basis with partners at home and abroad.

The spokesman said: "An Garda Siochana is fortunate to have the support of the Defence Forces in their capacity as the aid to the civil power in developing arrangements in the event of a terrorist attack.

"The experience and expertise of the Defence Forces is invaluable in supporting these duties and responsibilities."

As part of that preparedness, he said, gardai engaged bilaterally with the Defence Forces in training and scenario-based exercises and those interactions continue, arising from discussions in Cabinet Committee F, which provides overall advice on security to the Government.

He said gardai had participated in a rapid response group under Atlas, the network of EU member states' police tactical response units.
Locals have expressed their horror following reports of an acid attack in South County Dublin, which left a woman with life-changing injuries.

The attack on the 32-year-old victim occurred on Friday night - and gardai in Blackrock are following a "definite line of enquiry".

The incident occurred after the woman - a Chinese national - left her place of work shortly after 10pm on Friday night.

She was walking in an area close to Merrion Wood and Seamount Apartments in Stillorgan.

A man - believed to be wearing a hood or balaclava - ambushed the woman, before dragging her into a nearby laneway.

He then pulled the woman to the ground and poured acid over her face, before fleeing the scene.

The woman was rushed to hospital and has been receiving treatment for her injuries over the weekend.

A source close to the investigation said the victim's injuries are "life-changing" and gardai fear she may have been left blinded by the assault.

Booterstown local Clara Rose Thornton told Independent.ie that nothing like this has ever happened before in her community.

Its such a shocking and very upsetting thing to have happened. Im very surprised that a woman was attacked around here.

I never feel unsafe walking here at night, but this recent incident is very worrying.

The fact that this happened to a woman on her way back from work opens up a very dark slate of possibilities, she said.

A local man revealed that he saw a lot of sirens on Friday night.

I knew something serious must have happened, but I was really shocked and disgusted to find out that a woman was attacked with acid.

From what I read, it sounds like a premeditated attack so hopefully the guards will have a good idea who carried it out.

It just goes to show that violent attacks like these arent restricted to certain parts of Dublin, he said.

An elderly woman, who did not want to be named, said she is now a lot more vigilant walking in her neighbourhood.

I walk around Booterstown all the time, but this incident definitely has me very concerned, especially if it was a random attack.

I dont know the extent of this womans injuries but hopefully shell make a full recovery.

"Hopefully the guards are taking this very seriously and will soon catch the man who did this to her, she said.

Gardai do not believe this assault was a random attack and are following a definite line of enquiry.

Gardai are appealing to walkers, taxi drivers, delivery drivers or any persons who were in the vicinity of the following areas ,Rosemount Terrace, Fosterbrook, Merrion Woods and Seamount Apartments between 9.30pm and 10.30pm last Friday who may have observed anything suspicious and may have information or relevance dash camera footage.

Gardai are particularly interested in a lone male, heavy set wearing dark clothing who was in the area at the time. Members of the public can contact Blackrock Garda Station on 01-6665200, the Garda confidential line 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar arrives at Government Buildings in Dublin to attend an emergency cabinet meeting on Brexit. Photo: Laura Hutton/PA Wire

It appears that Leo Varadkar arrived at Monday's crunch Brexit talks straight from his morning run.

The known fitness fanatic was photographed arriving at Leinster House in his workout gear and clutching today's copy of the Irish Independent ahead of this morning's special Brexit Cabinet meeting.

The 9am emergency meeting saw the Taoiseach brief fellow Government ministers on the state of negotiations at the start of a crucial day for Brexit negotiations on the border issue.

The early morning meeting comes before Theresa May's lunchtime meeting in Brussels with the European commission president, Jean-Claude Junker.

A deal on how to avoid a Brexit hard border was expected to be announced today, however, Simon Coveney has said talks involving London, Brussels and Dublin were at a "sensitive place".

"There was progress made between the key negotiation teams on Thursday and we were looking at draft texts and this continued into the weekend", he told Morning Ireland on RTE Radio One.

"We need wording which makes it very clear for everybody on the island of Ireland that in the future there is not going to be a reemergence of a border on the island of Ireland.

"The Irish government wants top work with the British government here, not against them. We're not quite where we need to be.
A 10-year mystery has been solved after DNA evidence identified that a body washed up on a beach in Louth in 2007 was the remains of a man who went missing from Dublin in 2006.

The body has now been identified as that of Joseph Reilly, who disappeared in December 2006, according to RTE.

Mr Reilly had been living on Hatch Street in the city when he vanished 11 years ago.

In June 2007, a body washed up on Rockmarshall Beach in Louth.

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Whatsapp Joe Reilly was reported missing in 2006

He was buried in Lordship in north Co Louth later that year.

The remains were buried in the local cemetery and the grave was tended by members of the community over the years.

A recent initiative by gardai to gather DNA samples from family members of missing persons and check them against unidentified remains is reported to have led to this breakthrough.

His brother Gabriel told RTE that he and another brother had given DNA samples this year:

"It has been a big shock for us all and something we had come to terms with because he had disappeared into being a mystery," Gabriel told RTE. "There is a little bit of relief, of course as well as the mystery is now solved.

"We get the chance to bring and end to the situation and bring Joe home, so to speak.

"We've been searching for 10 years without success. We didn't seem to have something to grasp on to."

Gabriel was also full of praise for the community who buried and tended to the remains of his brother.

"The local community in Lordship have been quite stunning in terms of what they have done.

"They virtually adopted Joe and have taken great care of him since then," he said.

Forensic Science Ireland has appealed for people to come forward.

Gabriel was asked to supply a DNA sample in May of this year and his brother was asked in July.

Forensic Science Ireland was subsequently able to compare their samples to the remains of their brother Joe's and the Reilly family received the news of a positive match in September.

Speaking to RTE Radio One this morning, Dr Dorothy Ramsbottom from Forensic Science Ireland, said that they can now work on samples that they previously couldn't work on before because of a major advancement in DNA technology.

"The main reason why we have identified Joe Reilly is because we were able to investigate and compare DNA samples from siblings," she said.

"DNA samples were taken at the time he was found but the technology hadn't advanced to the possibility of making a match.

"We were able to generate a profile back in 2007 but it wasn't until the end of 2015 that our National DNA Database commenced.

"We put the profile from the unidentified remains up on the database, had it stored and had it compared against the profiles we were comparing against missing persons.

Ireland is one of the last countries in Europe to put a National DNA Database in place.

It can also be used in the investigation of crime by currently holding about 11,000 samples from suspects, crime scenes and people convicted of serious crimes.

However, the most positive aspect of the tool is retaining and comparing samples from missing persons.

"We're increasing the number every year," said Dr Ramsbottom.

"This week we're appealing for families of missing persons to come forward and give us their reference samples."

Families have been assured that the data will only be retained to compare against missing persons' DNA and for no other purpose.

Those who wish to submit a sample can contact their local garda station.
A devoted son has said his Christmas wish has come true after his mum was declared able to come home following a gruelling battle with cancer.

Ann Grassick was diagnosed earlier this year with a type of Leukemia, MDS (Myelodysplastic syndromes), after a nurse friend of hers begged her to be examined by doctors.

Her story captured the hearts of the nation when she told of how her younger son Colin (20) has Prader Willi syndrome and needs 24-hours care.

Her older son Conor (24) was forced to give up training to represent Ireland in Taekwondo in the next Olympics to become Colin's full-time carer, as well as looking after his mum and juggling his job as a Special Needs Assistant.

Conor revealed today that his beloved mother is now back in their home in Drumcondra, Dublin following chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant and they are excited to spend Christmas together.

He said: "A big thing was that every day I would wake up and know mam was in hospital but you can't actually help her whereas now I wake up and I know exactly where she is, Colin's with her and he's happy, it's unbelievable.

"We had no help at all, I was looking after Colin so I had to give up trying to qualify for the next Olympics to mind them both.

"I managed to get 98 hours of respite from the HSE, doctors weren't going to let her out if there were no supports for her to come home.

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"She came home about three weeks home for good, goes in twice a week for check-ups but St James' Hospital has played an absolute blinder.

"She has no immune system and is very open to getting viruses, she basically has to be wrapped in bubble wrap until she's a bit stronger.

"She's got the bone marrow transplant and while we have to see if it worked, her doctors have said she's absolutely flying it."

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Conor said that Christmas will be extra special for his family this year.

He said: "All we could do was keep believing that we'd get the right support to come home and Colin would be okay.

"The main goal was to get her home for Christmas but I would tell people they have no idea how determined my mam is, I just knew me, her and Colin would be together for Christmas in the house.

"Someone asked me the other day what I want for Christmas, all I wanted was my mam to come home for Christmas and I got that.

"To have us all back today is unbelievable."

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Conor also said that his family will be forever grateful for the financial support they received throughout their ordeal.

He said: "It's phenomenal that a random German person has more or less saved my mam's life and we don't even know him and we can't thank him.

"He's given up his time to give my mam a chance, it makes me so happy.

"A couple of months ago our whole lives changed overnight but the support we received has been unbelievable.

"We wouldn't have been able to get through this if it wasn't for everyone who helped us, we'll never be able to pay everyone back.

"It's been a tough few months and I've sacrificed a lot but to get mam home is unbelievable."

He also said how proud he is of how Colin adapted to their changing situation.

Conor said: "It's hard to take on board what happened but Colin has autism and he just changed, adapted and got on with things and kept going.

"I was looking up to him and thinking how well he's doing, it really kept me going."
Vera Twomey-Barry from Aghabullogue. co. Cork pictured with her daughter Ava, who suffers from Dravet's Syndrome. Pic: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision

Vera Twomey and her daughter Ava Barry are looking forward to spending Christmas at home with their family after they returned to Ireland.

Ava (8) suffers from a rare form of epilepsy called Dravat Syndrome and she moved to the Netherlands with her devoted mother Vera in June to begin medicinal cannabis treatment.

Vera was over the moon to announce last week that they were granted a licence that will allow Ava to continue her treatment back home in Ireland.

They were delighted to finally be reunited with Ava's father Paul and her siblings Sophia, Michael and Elvera Mae on Saturday in Cork Airport.

Vera said that medicinal cannabis has drastically improved life for Ava, who previously suffered up to 20 seizures per day.

She told TV3 News: "I've got a licence for medical cannabis to bring Ava back into the country, this is what we wanted all the time and we have it now...

"She hasn't been admitted to hospital since October 2016, previous to the medicinal cannabis our Ava would have spent at least five months of the year in hospital."

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Paul added that Ava now also has "way more words and she's got better balance."

They will have to travel to the Netherlands every three months now to collect Ava's prescription but for now they are looking forward to enjoying the festive season at home in Aghabullogue, Co Cork.

Vera said: "We'll have Christmas at home, it'll be good."

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin was there to greet Vera and Ava at the airport and said he is delighted to see them back in Ireland.

He told TV3 News: "It's a great relief for the family and it's a great advance as well in where we are in terms of Ava having access to this medicine.

"It's been a long journey and I think the impact of the Dutch neurologist, her willingness to observe for over ten weeks and to interact with doctors here was the key to unlocking this issue and the licence being granted once the application went in."
Police have charged a woman with common assault after tracking her down with the shoe she left at the crime scene.

A woman visiting Belfast was attacked out of the blue while enjoying a night out in the city on Saturday night.

Police said she was "savagely attacked by a boot wielding female".

"This attack was unprovoked and left her with heavy swelling," said Constable Gibson of Lisburn Road PSNI.

"Our victim required medical attention, her night totally ruined. The assailant had left this boot at the scene of the assault, Police took the boot, descriptions and went on the hunt."

The officer continued: "Our not so Cinderella suspect was located close by, minus her boot. There was no Prince Charming moment, no awaiting carriage, no castle and no fairytale ending.

"There was however an arrest for AOABH and possession of an offensive weapon, a waiting Police truck and a night in Musgrave Custody. She will have to answer for her actions in interview and ultimately court.

"Remember an offensive weapon doesn't have to be something made as a weapon like a knife, knuckle duster, club etc... If you pick something up and use it to hurt someone within the law it becomes an offensive weapon despite it not being originally intended as such."

The 23-year-old woman is scheduled to appear in court on December 29 and as is usual procedure, all charges will be reviewed by the Public Prosecution Service.
Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, Tanaiste, Simon Coveney and Minister Helen McEntee at a press conference on Phase I of the Brexit negotiations this evening at Government buildings. Pic:Mark Condren

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he was "both surprised and disappointed" after Brexit talks on the Northern Ireland border failed to reach a deal today.

A Brexit deal to solve the 'Irish question' was done until a last minute intervention from the DUP, the Irish Government has confirmed.

Hopes were high that the UK would sign off on commitment to maintain regulatory convergence in a post-Brexit era.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he was "surprised" by the UK's request for more time after initially being told an agreement had been reached.

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Whatsapp Taoiseach Leo Varadkar arrives at Government Buildings in Dublin to attend an emergency cabinet meeting on Brexit. Credit: Laura Hutton/PA Wire

Speaking this evening, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he was both "surprised and disappointed" to hear the deal would not be reached.

He has told an evening press briefing in Dublin that "substantial progress" had been made and Ireland was ready to sign off on the deal.

The agreed text between the UK and EU "gave us the assurance we need that even as an unintended consequences there would not be a hard border on the island of Ireland", he said.

However, UK Prime Minister Theresa May was on the verge of formally signing up to the deal but stepped back after a last minute intervention from the DUP.

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"It is evident that things broke down during the lunch in the Brussels," Mr Varadkar said.

"I am surprised and disappointed that the British government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier in the day."

"We did make substantial progress on a number of issues today," Taoiseach Varadkar continued.

"But the most difficult issue is to maintain the agreement that there will not be a hard border on the island of Ireland.

"This has been to the absolute forefront of Ireland's concerns since before the referendum.

"We do not want a border in the Irish Sea any more than we want a border between Newry and Dundalk, and Letterkenny and Derry."

The Taoiseach said it would not be useful to start pointing fingers.

At the same time he noted that the DUP are "just one party in Northern Ireland".

He said the Irish government was representing the attitude taking by the majority of people in the North.

Responding to suggestions from DUP representatives that the Irish government is driven by a republican agenda, Mr Varadkar said there is "no hidden agenda".

"The motivation of the Irish government have always been to try maintain the status quo on the island of Ireland," he said.

"The majority of people in Northern Ireland voted to Remain. And the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland voted for the Good Friday Agreement."

Mr Varadkar said he knows British PM Theresa May "faces many challenges" and is "negotiating in good faith".

"My position and that of the Irish Government is unequivocal and is supported by all parties in Irish Government," the Taoiseach continued.

"It is very much in our interest to go to phase two. We can't do this without a firm guarantee that there will not be a hard border in Ireland.

"Mr Juncker has said that Ireland's position remains Europe's position," he added.

Mr Juncker also spoke this evening, and said work will continue in the days ahead to reach a deal.

This is not a failure, he said, adding that Theresa May is a tough negotiator.

Talks

Discussions are set to resume later this week, with both Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker declaring themselves "confident" that a solution can be found in time for a key summit of the European Council on December 14.

Earlier today the Democratic Unionist Party has said it will not accept any Brexit deal that "separates" Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

Arlene Foster was speaking at a press conference in Stormont this afternoon in the aftermath of reports Ireland and Britain had reached a deal that will prevent the return of a hard Border between the Republic and Norther Ireland.

Hopes of that deal have now been scuppered for today.

Mr Juncker said the meeting was "friendly and constructive".

He went on: "I have to say that she's a tough negotiator, and not an easy one, and she's defending the point of view of Britain with all the energy we know she has, and this is the same on the side of the European Union.

"Despite our best efforts and significant progress we and our teams have made over the past days on the three main withdrawal issues, it was not possible to reach a complete agreement today.

"We now have a common understanding on most relevant issues, with just two or three open for discussion.

"These will require further consultation, further negotiation and further discussions.

"We stand ready to resume the negotiations with the United Kingdom here in Brussels later this week.

"But I have to say that we were narrowing our positions to a huge extent today, thanks to the British Prime Minister, thanks to the willingness of the European Commission to have a fair deal with Britain.

"I'm still confident that we can reach sufficient progress before the European Council of December 15.

"This is not a failure, this is the start of the very last round. I'm very confident that we will reach an agreement in the course of this week."

Earlier, Tanaiste Simon Coveney said he believed that the post-Brexit border will be "invisible" with "no barriers" and "will look very much like it looks today".

How to maintain a soft Irish border has emerged as the key sticking point to getting agreement from the EU to move on to phase two in Brexit negotiations, but European Council President Donald Tusk said on Monday that progress was "getting closer".

The exact details of the deal remain unclear. However, it is being suggested that under the terms, there would be "full alignment" of regulatory issues.

Regulatory alignment could mean both Ireland and Northern Ireland following the same rules governing trade, to ensure that goods can continue to move freely across a "soft" border with no checks.

Labour Party Leader Brendan Howlin responded to today's talks and said that the obvious solution to the Brexit talks now is for the UK as a whole to "accept the need to remain within the single market and customs union to maintain regulatory alignment".

"The Labour Party has consistently supported the position adopted by the Irish Government on the assurances required by the people of this island from the British Government to ensure Brexit does the minimum possible damage to our hard won political and economic stability," Mr Howlin said.

"We do so in full recognition of the rejection of Brexit by the people of Northern Ireland.

"So I share the disappointment expressed by the Taoiseach on the inability of the British Government to deliver upon the agreed position of this morning.

"I agree too that Ireland does not want to see a hard border between our island and Britain.

"The solution to this problem is obvious and involves the UK as a whole accepting the need to remain within the single market and customs union  a position supported by the political representatives of Wales, Scotland and London today.

"And an issue not determined by the Brexit referendum. This would achieve the regulatory alignment that is needed to avoid a hard border.

"The resiling by the British Government from a position it had agreed now means this process has reached a fundamental crisis.

"I remain hopeful that an agreement can be achieved, but as the Government has said, there has been no hidden agenda from Ireland both before the referendum and since on our objectives which is to secure the future of the Good Friday Agreement and avoid a hard border."
NC candidate Thapa discharged from hospital

Nepali Congress (NC) federal parliament candidate from Kathmandu constituency-4 Gagan Thapa, who was receiving treatment at the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) following a bomb explosion at Chapali height on Monday afternoon, has been discharged from the hospital.
The use of internet 'bots' to influence political debate will be punished with fines of up to 10,000 or five years' imprisonment under new laws tabled by Fianna Fail.

Ground-breaking proposals to be brought before the Dail this week will also make it an offence to actively promote 'fake news' using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The Bill comes on the back of claims that the election of US President Donald Trump was heavily influenced by Russian entities - but will have a major impact on the practices of political parties here.

It contains a number of restrictions on online political advertising and will require the purchasers of such ads to display a transparency notice stating their aim and target audience.

Fianna Fail's James Lawless, who has written the legislation, told the Irish Independent the law needs to start factoring in new media.

"We should not be naive in thinking Ireland will not be affected by the new form of hybrid information warfare which is underway on social media.

"Evidence suggests that an army of fake social media accounts is being amassed to disrupt the democratic process in the future, with journalists and prominent public figures highlighting an upsurge in the number of dubious accounts following them on social media platforms."

The Kildare North TD added: "It's highly likely these dormant accounts will spring into action during a future election or referendum campaign, as happened in Britain and the US."

For the purposes of the law, 'online platforms' will be defined as any website, including social networks or search engines, which has more than 10,000 unique monthly visitors.

A 'bot' would be recognised in Irish law as any item of software which uses 25 or more accounts or profiles online to run automated tasks.

Mr Lawless said there needs to be a clampdown on "numerous fake accounts" being used "in order to disseminate a political message".

The proposed law states that any person who knowingly uses a bot, or causes a bot to be used, in such a way as to cause multiple online profiles to act in a political way, will be guilty of an offence.

A low-level breach could result in a 500 fine or six months in jail, rising to 10,000 and up to five years in prison for a serious infringement.

Similar deterrents will be put in place for the purchase of online ads which purposely contain false or misleading information.

"It's important that we move swiftly to bring some transparency to political debate on social media platforms," Mr Lawless said.

"There is growing evidence which shows that manipulation is underway by various State actors aimed at undermining the democratic process. It's important that we do all we can to protect the integrity of our democratic process here in Ireland."

Mr Lawless said he will be looking for cross-party support for the measures because "social media platforms are playing a greater role in shaping political debate". "However, despite this, the same rigour and robustness does not apply to verifying online content as our laws are still playing catch up in this area."

He said the new laws would also keep tabs on Taoiseach Leo Varadkar's new strategic communications unit, to make sure that it was not used for party political ends.
Former justice minister Alan Shatter has claimed an inquiry which reviewed his handling of complaints by a Garda whistleblower was run in a similar fashion to a kangaroo court.

In a letter to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the ex-TD asks that taxpayers stop funding a Supreme Court case taken by barrister Sean Guerin.

Mr Guerin is seeking to overturn a Court of Appeal ruling which found that Mr Shatter's constitutional rights were in jeopardy by reason of "seriously damaging" conclusions he was proposing to include in his report, and Mr Shatter should have been allowed to respond before the report was given to the Taoiseach, who later published it.

The 2014 Guerin Report was heavily critical of Mr Shatter's dealings with whistleblower Sgt Maurice McCabe. However, the O'Higgins Commission which followed in 2016 found he acted reasonably and took a personal interest in Sgt McCabe's complaints.

In a letter to Mr Varadkar, seen by the Irish Independent, Mr Shatter notes he was not interviewed by Mr Guerin during his inquiry.

"The reality with regard to our client is that the approach of Mr Guerin resembled that of a kangaroo court," a solicitor for Mr Shatter wrote on September 26. The letter adds that the former Dublin-Rathdown representative was "condemned unheard" and notes the Government has made "pronouncements lauding the importance of fair procedures".

The wording of the letter will seem all the more significant given the recent importance put on the issue of "due process" by Mr Varadkar while defending Frances Fitzgerald against accusations of wrongdoing in her handling of whistleblowers.

Mr Shatter's letter also says he has spent in excess of 200,000 on legal fees already in a bid to clear his name.

A spokesperson for the Taoiseach said Mr Guerin was given a standard indemnity against legal costs "as is normal practice for persons carrying out a role such as he did". "As the proceedings are ongoing, the indemnity continues to apply in accordance with its terms."
The highest honour for bravery is being awarded to Garda Tony Golden, who was shot dead two years ago as he defended a young woman after she had been attacked by her partner.

A total of seven gardai will be awarded Scott gold medals at a special ceremony at the Garda College in Templemore, Co Tipperary, on Friday.

Gda Golden was in uniform and unarmed when dissident republican Adrian Crevan Mackin opened fire with a handgun, fatally injuring the garda and critically wounding the woman, Siobhan Phillips. Also being honoured is Dominick Hutchin, who was a detective garda when he confronted two armed raiders in North Cumberland Street, Dublin, in 1987.

Despite being shot in the face and body by the thugs, Det Gda Hutchin firmly stood his ground as the raiders approached him.

The other five are being given to gardai lured into a Provisional IRA ambush at a derelict house in Co Laois, where a bomb exploded, in October 1976.
Members of the Deely family Michele, Micheal, Pamela and Mark at Haddington Road, where Trevor was last seen. Picture: Collins

Trevor Deely's siblings have told how the recent dig for their missing brother was a "pretty horrendous" experience for them.

Gardai embarked on a five-week dig at a site in Chapelizod in west Dublin for Mr Deely (22). It concluded in September, with no trace of him found.

The Bank of Ireland worker disappeared nearly 17 years ago following a night out on December 8, 2000.

He was last seen in the Haddington Road area on the southside of the city centre.

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His brother Mark and sister Michele Deely appeared on RTE's 'Ray D'Arcy show' at the weekend and insisted that there was still hope.

"His name is known everywhere. That image of him, the ginger head on him. He wasn't actually that ginger at all, you know," said Mark, about the missing posters erected across Dublin following Mr Deely's disappearance.

In relation to the dig, which started last August, Michele said gardai searched there as someone had come forward with information. She described the dig as "a pretty horrendous experience to go through for us as a family. A dig has a very sinister connotation.

"Somebody did come forward with some information that gardai felt there was enough credibility for them to pursue. So they undertook an incredibly extensive search of that area; it was a big area and it was difficult for them to search.

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"It went on for what felt like infinity. It was six weeks, so it was a long search. But we got to the end of it - and nothing," she said.

Michele added: "We do this because we want to find Trevor. We do need to find Trevor and we'd like some peace in that regard."

Mark said: "The easy attitude is to say he's gone, but he deserves more than this. I want to know what happened."
You've probably heard that once you hit 40, it's all downhill when it comes to your weight.

That inexplicable force we call our metabolism does begin to grind a bit slower every year from age 30 onward.

Here's the good news: The rate at which your metabolism slows down is actually rather minimal. In reality, most weight gain that happens in midlife isn't the result of a slower metabolism at all.

Instead, it comes down to a simple but changeable truth: As we get older, we get less and less active.

While this might sound depressing, it's actually great news. There's plenty we can do to counteract the slow, seemingly inevitable onset of poundage. But first, here are some basics about what metabolism is  and what it isn't.

How your body burns energy

Our resting metabolic rate is a measure of how much energy we expend  or "burn"  when we're at rest. It's determined by a combination of factors, including your height, sex, and the genes you got from your parents, and it can't be altered much, no matter what you do.

Beyond that, our bodies appear to enter into three more distinct phases of calorie burning, depending on what we're doing. These three are the types of metabolism that most people are referring to when they say doing certain things, like eating spicy food or working out, can "boost" your metabolism.

Most of the things that people say will boost your metabolism won't

When we're eating, we burn a small number of calories (roughly 10% of our total calories burned for the day). This is called the thermic effect of food, and it's the first of those three phases I mentioned earlier. We can turn up the heat on this process a tiny bit (but not by a whole lot) by doing things like drinking stimulant beverages like coffee and eating large amounts of protein.

"Eating foods like green tea, caffeine, or hot chili peppers will not help you shed excess pounds," notes an entry in the ADAM Medical Encyclopedia, hosted by the National Institutes of Health. "Some may provide a small boost in your metabolism, but not enough to make a difference in your weight."

Instead, get active

Unsurprisingly, the most important calorie-burning activity we engage in is just that  activity.

Whether we're taking the stairs, stepping away from our desks for a coffee, or sweating it out in a hot yoga class, we're expending energy. Researchers call this second phase physical-activity expenditure.

After a strenuous workout, we continue to burn more calories than we would while at rest  and that's the third phase, or what's called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.

When it comes to counteracting weight gain, these two phases  the ones related to physical activity  are the most important. Your best bet for burning more calories throughout the day is to increase your levels of any kind of activity, be it running or walking.

Many people think strength training or weight lifting fits into this category, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

Weight lifting can only do so much for your metabolism. Why? Because muscles don't burn a whole lot of calories, as the NIH points out. As far as calorie-melting organs go, your brain is actually far more efficient than your bicep.

"Brain function makes up close to 20% of" resting metabolic rate, Dr. Claude Bouchard, a professor of genetics and nutrition at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of Louisiana State University, told The Los Angeles Times.

"Next is the heart, which is beating all the time and accounts for another 15-20%. The liver, which also functions at rest, contributes another 15-20%. Then you have the kidneys and lungs and other tissues, so what remains is muscle, contributing only 20-25% of total resting metabolism," Bouchard said.

So while strength training is a healthy habit that will certainly have a helpful effect on things like agility and balance, it won't change your metabolism a great deal.

"This idea that one pound of muscle burns hundreds of extra calories per day is a myth," Gary Foster, Weight Watchers' chief scientific officer and an adjunct professor of psychology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, told Business Insider.

And be mindful about eating

According to the NIH, in addition to getting less active as we get older, we also appear to become less perceptive about our body's nutritional needs over time.

Our natural appetite-control mechanism seems to dull. A good way to be more mindful of how full you're getting is to eat smaller meals and get more only when you're still hungry, rather than sitting down with a large plate of food, which might encourage you to overeat.

"By staying active and sticking with smaller portions of healthy foods, you can ward off weight gain as you age," the NIH website says.
My five-year-old son is blasting through the air on a broomstick.

A Nimbus 2001, to be precise. Or maybe it's a Firebolt. I can't tell for sure, because he's so swift and jiggy. His hair billows back as London whooshes by, as double-deckers are dodged and his tiny form soars out over the terrific turrets of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Where does this fantastic voyage take place?

Inside Warner Brothers Studios (wbstudiotour.co.uk; 101/137 family ticket) in Leavesden, of course. Set just outside London, The Making of Harry Potter experience here is a most magical day out, and one of the highlights is a chance to play Harry himself. A green screen and Gryffindor cloak are all it takes to send my son into the stratosphere.

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The 1:24 scale model of Hogwarts at Warner Bros Studios

This it our first trip to London with the kids. Like all boys and girls of their age, Rosa (9) and Sam (5) are big into their books and movies, so we decided to theme our city break around some of their favourites.

As a first stop, the Harry Potter studios were a no-brainer.

"All aboard the Harry Potter special!" shouted the attendant at London Euston, setting the scene from the get-go. A 16-minute train ride later, we were passing through Watford Junction (or 'Wexford Function' as Sam re-christened it) and en route to the movie sets.

We stepped into the Great Hall. We marvelled at Hagrid's actual hut and Dumbledore's actual office. We walked down the real Diagon Alley. We boarded the triple-decker Knight Bus. We spotted snitches, burped after butter beer (kind of like Lucozade, with a scoop of ice-cream on top), and were blown away by the 1:24 scale model of Hogwarts.

Naturally, the gift shop threatened to bankrupt us (Gryffindor capes for 75/102, anyone?). But the experience as a whole was produced with such delicious, Disney-esque detail, that we were completely won over. It felt like a lifetime memory, forming right in front of our faces.

Of course, you don't have to hotfoot it to Hogwarts (or even Wexford Function) to experience the magic of London. The beauty of bringing kids to big cities is the sheer naivety and wonder of it all. Sure, you move slowly. Sure, Soho gets the skip. But it's brilliantly liberating to see London for the first time all over again.

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Buckingham Palace at Dusk

Roald Dahl's The BFG prompts us to walk past Buckingham Palace (above) at night, for example, trying to spot the Queen's bedroom window. Having seen Night at the Museum 3 at the cinema, we check out the Egyptian mummies at the British Museum (britishmuseum.org; free). Sadly, there are no dinosaur skeletons like the thrashing triceratops in the movie here (for those, make haste to the Natural History Museum), but there are all kinds of other surprises along the way.

"You know daddies can be mummies too," as Sam confidently informs us.

We stop into Hamley's, with five floors of bubble-blowing, boomerang-throwing staff and every toy under the sun. We take a black cab. And a red bus. And the Tube (topping up two Oyster cards by 25/34 each takes care of travel for 48 hours). We walk the West End. We pause at the psychadelic heart of Piccadilly Circus.

I usually put the head down here and forge on. But tonight, we drink Piccadilly in. The flashing billboards. The teeming traffic. The life-size statue of Robert Pershing Wadlow (the world's tallest ever man, at 8ft 11in) standing outside Ripley's Believe It Or Not!

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Piccadilly Circus

Our base for this rollercoaster tour?

The Rubens at the Palace, a Red Carnation Hotel priding itself on the lengths it goes to for families. Set just down the road from Buckingham Palace, extras here include a separate check-in for kids and a fun pastry lesson with the chef.

As Roald Dahl fans, we're delighted to pop across to Red Carnation's Chesterfield Mayfair hotel too, where a Charlie at the Chesterfield afternoon tea (chesterfieldmayfair.com; 31.50/42.80pp) mashes up Willy Wonka and old-school London opulence with everlasting gobstoppers, fizzy lifting drinks and more delivered by a costumed Mr Wonka himself.

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Charlie at the Chesterfield Afternoon Tea

Our final adventure is the Tower of London (hrp.org.uk; 57.40/78 family ticket), where another of our favourite books, David Walliams' Gangsta Granny, sees a boy and his grandmother swim across the Thames before attempting to rob the Crown Jewels.

The queue is long, the tickets are expensive, but the chance to whip out our book, and once again read the chapter in which the unlikely thieves approach the treasure, is snapped up. Along the way, we watch archival footage of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.

"Finally they turned a corner, into the main room where all the jewels were kept," Walliams writes. "Like the sun bursting through the clouds on a grey day, the jewels illuminated Ben and Granny's faces."

They do the same to ours.

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The Crown Jewels (file photo: Getty)

Outside, we chat with costumed actors, spot the Yeoman guards, and wonder why ravens aren't called crows. The White Tower stands over our shoulders. In the distance, The Shard soars above London Bridge. Us Muggles may not be able to fly above it all on broomsticks, but our visit has lifted London right off the page.

Book the best value packages to London on travel.independent.ie.

What to pack

The usual advice about comfy walking shoes applies (it's amazing how quickly the kilometres rack up, even taking the Tube), but the best thing we brought were books related to the city - in our case, Gangsta Granny and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Get There

We flew with CityJet (cityjet.com), which offers nine flights a day from Dublin to London City Airport - the only airport actually within the city. One-way fares start from 35pp, with first checked bags and in-flight snacks and beverages included.

Get around

Kids under 11 go free on the Tube (tfl.gov.uk), so get those Oyster cards, adults! London City Airport is within Zone 3 of the network, too - with Docklands Light Railway (DLR) connections every 8-15 minutes. For more on what to see and do in London, see visitengland.com.

Where to stay

We stayed at The Rubens at the Palace, a Red Carnation hotel just a short walk from Buckingham Palace (rubenshotel.com). Rates for a classic double start from 233/316 per room per night, inc tax and breakfast. See also visitlondon.com.

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NC condemns attack on leader Thapa

Nepali Congress has condemned the incident of bomb attack on its federal parliamentary candidate from Kathmandu, constituency-4, Gagan Kumar Thapa, while he was in an election campaign at Chapali in Budhanilkantha Municipality-2 on Monday.
The rules around sexual relationships are now bewilderingly grey. What constitutes sexual consent? To what extent does a woman need to take responsibility to keep herself safe? And the blurred lines between sexual harassment and pitiful attempts at courtship have been thrashed out with little resolution.

Now another issue has come to the table. Psychological abuse and controlling behaviour in relationships is to become a criminal offence. Known as "coercive control", it will be included in the Domestic Violence Bill 2017. If a person is found guilty of it, they can be punished with up to five years in prison.

It was put forward by Minister of State for Justice David Stanton and it will come before the Dail before Christmas or in early January. But is a few short weeks enough to thrash out the realities of a law that will have massive repercussions on broken relationships which come before our courts?

Domestic violence campaigners have called it "hugely significant". They say it could save lives. In the most extreme cases of psychological abuse and controlling behaviour, this is a positive step. We all know domestic abuse is often a lot more than physical violence. But how do we ensure the law is not left open for misuse?

Many forms of behaviour defined as emotional or psychologically abusive are commonplace in unequal relationships.

For example, some domestic violence campaigners say psychological abuse and coercive control includes degradation, micromanagement, manipulation, checking up on a partner and controlling where they can go and who they see. All patterns in a toxic relationship that someone needs to leave? Absolutely. But abusive to the point that it is punishable by imprisonment?

In modern-day relationships, checking a partner's mobile phone is commonplace. Will this be defined as controlling behaviour? If so, many couples could be in trouble. Of more than 2,000 surveyed by Mobile Phone Checker in the UK, 62pc of men and 34pc of women snoop through a loved one's phone. And we are not talking about innocently perusing a photo album. The vast majority (89pc) said their sole motivation was to make sure their partner was not talking to anyone else in a romantic or sexual way.

The other concern is the problem of evidence. Even if controlling or coercive behaviour is introduced as a criminal offence, how easy will it be to prove in court? The Irish law is based on legislation in the UK, but across the water they are already coming up against problems.

Police forces in England and Wales have apparently been 'neglecting' to use the law, using it only 62 times in its first six months. Eight forces didn't use it at all. This is despite the fact that, prior to the introduction of the law, Citizens Advice reported involvement in close to 4,000 cases of financial and emotional abuse per year.

The vast majority of domestic abuse takes place behind closed doors, without independent witnesses, and it often comes down to one person's word against another. With the laws in place for physical abuse, research shows our legal system at every level is often failing those living with physical violence in their homes. So how will a law surrounding something as subtle and untraceable as psychological and coercive abuse have any impact?

There is also the fear it could be misused by a malicious spouse who wants to maintain custody of children. Niamh Farrell, general manager of Amen, a charity which deals with male victims of domestic violence, says she has serious concerns that some women, who are awarded custody in the vast majority of cases, will use claims of psychological abuse to give them even more power in the court system.

The same could, of course, also be said of a vindictive man.

In the UK, domestic abuse charity Refuge opposed the law, saying the solution to domestic abuse does not lie in enforcing more laws.

Chief executive Sandra Horley said: "The police don't even arrest when there is evidence of serious physical violence, so how are police and juries ever going to understand complex concepts like coercive control?

"We need to get back to basics. The police response to domestic violence is lamentable - forces across the country are failing in their most basic of policing duties towards victims of domestic violence."

There is much to be discussed. But whether or not there will be any serious debate on it in the Christmas countdown remains to be seen.
LIFE THRU A LENS: A candid shot of the late Katy French during a shoot with LIFE magazine

Katy was never shy about showing off her enviable body and unsurprisingly, became the most in-demand bikini photocall model in Ireland at the time. Here, she promotes the then-new Purty Kitchen.

Ten years ago this Thursday, Katy French crossed the narrow plank of the present into the ever after. It only seems like yesterday that she was running around Dublin, seemingly without a care in the world.

She was emblematic of a time in Ireland: a time of bright, breezy ambition, a time of boom and bust, an era of excess, of endless hope and endless bottles of Champagne.

The beautiful blonde personified all of that.

And her heart-breaking death - only 10 days after she had celebrated her 24th birthday in Krystle nightclub - personified all that, too.

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Reporting on her death, the BBC said: "In the space of less than two years, she had become one of Ireland's best-known models and socialites."

At her funeral in St Patrick's Church in Powerscourt, the grief was at once public and private.

Her mother Janet read extracts from an article in the Sunday Independent's LIFE magazine which Katy had written after spending some time with street children in Calcutta for the charity, Goal. "God doesn't require us to succeed, only to try."

We are only remembered for so long by the people who knew us; after friends and family are gone, we are forgotten.

I'd like to think Katy French will always be remembered for those words - God doesn't require us to succeed, only to try

The only slightly heartening aspect of the whole heartbreaking tragedy lay in a statement from her family that said Katy died in the arms of her sister Jill, with her mother Janet and father John alongside.

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*****

"From London to Cape Town, from Monte Carlo to Marbella, the Irish have been spending their new fortunes with an alacrity that would have made their forefathers blush," Alan Ruddock wrote in The Observer in July 2001.

"Eight years of a remarkable economic boom have transformed Ireland. Its people are young and wealthy and have shed the traditional inhibition to flaunt their wealth..."

For many, Katy French seemed to stand for all the youthful brashness of that time. Indeed, her face could have been on the coat of arms of the Celtic Tiger. She and her equally glam blond beau, restaurateur Marcus Sweeney became engaged on the beach in Dubai in 2006 - Marcus popped the question on bended knee with a "50 grand ring" in his hand. They planned to marry the following summer in a lavish ceremony in the Eternal City of Rome.

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Nothing was eternal about Katy and Marcus's relationship - their best-laid plans were torn asunder in January 2007 during Katy's photo shoot for the cover of the Sunday Independent's LIFE magazine at Marcus's former restaurant, No 10, on South William Street.

In a moment like a particularly imaginative passage from a Jackie Collins blockbuster, Katy was in mid-pose, in lingerie on a table top, when Marcus walked in, not happy, apparently.

Within 15 minutes, the spring wedding in Rome was off.

At 8pm that night, Katy moved her stuff out of their apartment in Citywest.

It was a fin de siecle moment in Irish so-called high society. It was certainly a metaphor for the beginning of the end of something in Ireland - something more than a engagement between two young people.

Even then, Katy's life seemed scripted by some Celtic Tiger ghostwriter.

After splitting with Marcus - who is, thankfully, now in a very happy place with his current partner - Katy continued to live the Celtic Tiger lifestyle.

She began seeing Jim Mansfield Jnr, son of the then super wealthy Jim Mansfield Snr. The late Jim Snr's property kingdom has long since been taken by Nama.

*****

Born in Basel, Katy moved with her family to Ireland when she was two. From the age of seven, she was privately educated and attended Alexandra College in Milltown, Dublin.

That a privileged girl like Katy, with so much going for her in life, died as she did is no more tragic or heart-breaking than a girl from a poor background who comes to the same sad end.

I am not trying to elevate Katy above the ordinary. It's just that because she was the subject of so much publicity, her life deserves to be put in context.

Or maybe it's that she deserves to have some dignity won back for her in death.

"Model buried as she lived - in media spotlight" was the gist of a lot of the reporting of her funeral.

"'I believe Katy is close by now, probably enjoying the show,' said her father, during an unconventional service," wrote Kathy Sheridan in The Irish Times on December 11. "He, Katy's mother Janet and sister Jill, all dressed in bright colours, attempted to reclaim their 'Katykins' from Brand Katy, the public persona she created for herself in the past 12 months."

In March, 2008, in an article headlined 'The French Connection: Cocaine in Ireland', the publication Irish America positioned Katy as a cautionary tale of a cokehead, while establishing Ireland as being in the midst of a drug Armageddon.

"The death of top model Katy French a few weeks ago from a cocaine overdose has finally woken Ireland up to the fact that we are in the middle of a cocaine epidemic. Cocaine use has now permeated all levels of Irish society, from the boardroom to the bar."

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Some nasty things were written and said about Katy after her death, which made us appear sometimes like a nation incapable of empathy, incapable of not judging. For many people who loved Katy French, and for some who didn't, it is maybe worth recalling that she was human like the rest of us.

And more importantly, that a young woman is lying in her lonely grave, gone long before her time, at the age of 24.

Katy made her own choices in life - of what she put into her body, of whom she chose to call friends, of those she chose to go home with.

Katy wasn't an angel. But neither was she an icon of drug addiction gone wrong, a girl gone bad. She had her flaws. She was happy to admit them herself.

But her life and her legacy (a lofty word maybe for a 24-year-old model) deserves more than to be reduced simply to the unspeakable manner of her death.

On December 3, 2008, the musician Eamon Keane posted something beautiful on katyfrench.ie that still rings true today.

"After death, we tend to turn people into saints or devils. Katy was neither, but stood out for the warmth of her heart, her lightning fast brain and her lovely dark sense of humour. The word honesty is bandied about a lot but Katy had it in buckets. It takes a certain moral courage to reveal your flaws as well as your assets. Katy had that courage. We all have many selves, the public, the private, the soulful, the playful while I am sometimes wary of revealing certain sides, Katy had no such fear," Eamon wrote, adding, crucially, that the reduction of Katy's life to the circumstances of her death do her and those who know her a massive injustice.

In her final interview, with the Sunday Independent's LIFE magazine, in the days before her death, Katy said she hoped to have kids one day.

It is devastating that Katy didn't get to realise that dream.

The inexpressible pain that Katy's own mother Janet feels must be a living hell. As it must be for Katy's father John and her little sister Jill.

Nothing can take away the agony the French family have gone through since Katy's death. Grief is the worst feeling in the world. It is worse than physical pain because it just keeps going on and on.

In Roland Barthes's Mourning Diary, which the French philosopher wrote after his mother Harriet's death in 1977, he recalls how "no sooner has she departed than the world deafens me with its continuance".

He added: "I seem to have a kind of ease of control that makes other people think I'm suffering less than they would have imagined. But it comes over me when our love for each other is torn apart once again. The most painful moment at the most abstract moment."

The New Yorker magazine's Ruth Margalit noted of loss that "grief keeps odd hours".

So it is when you lose someone you love. Grief keeps very odd hours.

So it must be for the French family every day. The tenth anniversary of Katy's passing will bring the pain flooding back again.

Katy French died in Our Lady's Hospital, Navan, on December 6, 2007, a number of days after collapsing at a friend's home. The inquest into her death found Katy died from hypoxic-ischemic brain injury due to cocaine and ephedrine. State Pathologist Marie Cassidy said the level of cocaine found was not particularly high or excessive. The coroner John Lacy delivered an open verdict. "There are gaps and unanswered questions," he said at the time.
When Milly Tuomey's mother first brought her to see her GP, the child stated clearly that she had thought about suicide.

On that visit of November 10, 2015, Fiona Tuomey heard her daughter Milly (11) tell the doctor she did not like how she looked.

"She clearly stated 'sometimes I think about killing myself'," Mrs Tuomey told the inquest into her daughter's death at Dublin Coroner's Court last week.

The doctor described the initial consultation as "very unusual" and said he had never seen a similar case in a child of this age.

"We would often see children with anxiety or low mood. This was a relatively young age to present with unhappiness of the physical appearance."

The GP told the court that Milly "admitted to no obvious trigger for these feelings".

He discussed two options with the family at this point: the clinical route, which would likely involve medication; or the 'talking route' which would involve cognitive behavioural therapy.

Talking therapy could help get to the root of the problem, the GP said. "There may have been something there that she wasn't willing to discuss with me, her parents or her friends," he said.

The Tuomeys were left to make the decision. They explored the public health route, which involved a waiting list and found the private route was faster.

Their GP recommended a clinical psychologist at a private clinic, An Cuan Centre for Psychological Services in Rathgar. Upon contacting the clinic, the Tuomeys were advised the recommended psychologist was not taking on any more patients and they were offered an appointment with the first available therapist.

They had an initial meeting with an art psychologist, who was not qualified to make clinical decisions, on November 17.

Asked what he intended for Milly by orally referring her to the private clinic, the GP replied: "A psychological assessment about where these thoughts were coming from and tools to deal with these thoughts."

However, the GP was not made aware that the art therapist was not qualified to conduct a clinical assessment. The family were left struggling to fathom the origin of their daughter's distress. "Milly had written notes about hating herself, about wanting to die," her mother told the inquest.

Asked by the coroner if Milly had ever been exposed to the concept of suicide, Mrs Tuomey replied no.

"There was no family member that died by suicide or had attempted it. There was no movie or information, celebrity or otherwise that put it in her head. This was a bolt out of the blue," she said.

Parents Fiona and Tim sat down with Milly and tried to explain the finality of death: "We explained to her the concept of dead being dead. That there was no coming back."

Milly began a course of hour-long weekly appointments with the art therapist on November 24.

The aim was to encourage the child to talk about her issues through verbal and visual means.

However, the 'talking therapy' process was overtaken by events as Mrs Tuomey made the terrifying discovery of a "suicide diary" under her daughter's bed. It contained entries about Milly's desire to die and details of different methods she had attempted.

Her mother learned that her daughter had cut her arms and legs with scissors and written in biro across her stomach the words, 'Beautiful girls don't eat.' The Tuomeys immediately contacted Milly's therapist, who advised they seek an appointment at the HSE's Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). The referral on December 8 saw an appointment scheduled for January 30, 2016. This was brought forward to January 5.

Milly had her last appointment with her art therapist on December 22.

"Her mood had lifted. She was still a little sad. But she was looking forward to Christmas," the art therapist told the inquest.

From December 22, the Tuomeys were facing a two-week period where their only option in a crisis situation was to bring their daughter to the emergency department. Six weeks on from Milly's initial Instagram post stating her intention to die on a certain date, there still had been no clinical assessment of her psychological state.

The coroner's expert witness, psychiatrist Dr Antoinette D'Alton, told the inquest that there are long waiting lists for many public and private services and most suicidal cases enter the health system through the emergency department.

"Years ago this would have been unimaginable. Now suicidal ideation is increasing in children as young as seven," she said.

Asked if it was fair to say the system hasn't kept up with developments, Dr D'Alton said the existing care pathway is under resourced. "There aren't existing resources to man an out-of-hours services. A nine-to-five service is not gold-standard," Dr D'Alton said.

On New Year's Day, 2016, Milly made a lethal attempt at self-harm. She died four days later at Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin. Her CAMHS appointment was scheduled for the following day.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, his Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney, and the team of diplomats pursuing Irelands case are entitled to a well done so far rating. But it would be seriously premature to begin any self-congratulations. Photo: REUTERS

It has been a long and painful 18 months since the British voters opted to leave the European Union on June 23, 2016. But at last a semblance of how things may be post-Brexit is beginning to take shape.

It looks like Ireland might be headed towards mitigating the worst of the resultant harm from the departure of our neighbouring island, and a major trading partner, with whom our fortunes are closely interlinked. But the Government and its team still has it all to do as we head into a vital 10 days of talks.

Today in Brussels, British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to outline how the Irish Border will be dealt with in a post-Brexit world. She needs to satisfy the policy-guiding EU Commission, and the 26 other member governments, on this issue of vital interest to Irish people all across the island.

Mrs May must also present satisfactory offers on the two other key issues: a money settlement to cover the UK's EU obligations as it leaves, and guarantees on the treatment of EU citizens in Britain after Brexit. Settlement of these issues is key to moving the separation negotiations on to the next stage, also of key interest to Ireland, the future EU-UK trading relationship.

The mood music at this stage suggests that a workable outcome for everyone might be in sight. But a large number of moving parts could still thwart a positive result at a key EU leaders' summit on Thursday and Friday of next week.

There are serious noises from more militant Brexit-supporting members of Mrs May's ruling Conservative Party. Some members of the Democratic Unionist Party are suggesting their support for Mrs May's shaky government is in doubt if emerging arrangements for Northern Ireland dilute the union with Britain. Many within the EU remain concerned that any special deal could undermine the single market and the customs union.

The signals from Brussels have been most encouraging, especially a message of solidarity from European Council President Donald Tusk on his visit to Dublin last Friday. Mr Tusk effectively said if the post-Brexit arrangements for the Irish Border are not acceptable to Dublin, they will not be acceptable to the EU.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, his Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney, and the team of diplomats pursuing Ireland's case are entitled to a "well done so far" rating. But it would be seriously premature to begin any self-congratulations.

Everything turns on finding a formula which would allow trade between the north and south of this island to continue as before. That must be done without damaging the links between the North and the rest of the UK. It also has to avoid damaging the overall integrity of the EU single market and customs union.

From Ireland's point of view, that tie-up cannot be so nebulous as to deprive it of concrete meaning. From both a British and EU point of view, some 'constructive ambiguity' has to be called into play.

It is also clear that whatever emerges at this stage will be heavily dependent on the outcome of the next phase of framing an EU-UK trade relationship after Brexit. Clearly, things are finely poised and are reminiscent of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in the North, when the text had in some ways to mean many things to people on different sides of the divide.

But all that said, citizens will require clarity of outcome.
I view with reservation the call from a number of charities to consider donating some, if not all, of the water charges refund money to a worthy cause.

I, like many, have some serious concerns regarding the running costs and salaries associated with some of these charities. Recent disclosures in the media have only increased these concerns.

It would appear that the salaries of many of the CEOs running at least some charities are well in excess of 130,000, which by any stretch is hard to justify.

Many of the genuine foot soldiers that spend hours collecting at church gates and supermarkets feel understandably aggrieved that high salaries of this nature are being paid, which would seem to undermine the very ethos of charities in general.

The Government could do much more to encourage retired business people back to run these organisations, placing the emphasis on the less fortunate and not financial reward. For those who want to volunteer, this could be achieved by way of tax concessions, a small expenses allowance or indeed a small payment top-up, in the case of a social welfare recipient.

Wouldn't it be a wonderful way of encouraging people back into the workforce, particularly those who are unemployed, allowing them to help others while gaining valuable work experience without losing any benefits? It would save millions and restore confidence in a sector badly battered by scandal.

For too long now, a cloak of secrecy has hung over the charity sector and I for one would be in a much more giving mood if I knew my money was not being squandered on administration, but going directly to the source of the problem, helping the unemployed on their journey.

Eugene McGuinness

Kilkenny, Co Kilkenny

It seems anyone can abort in UK

According to reports from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment, Dr Peter Thompson (consultant in foetal medicine, based in the UK) holds the opinion that a diagnosis of Down Syndrome would most likely constitute grounds for abortion under current UK law.

With the number of annual abortions in Britain close to 200,000, amounting to roughly one-in-five pregnancies being deliberately ended, it might be a much easier task to outline those situations where an application for abortion might be refused under the law as presently interpreted - assuming refusal is even a consideration. In other words, is any woman refused an abortion in the UK?

Margaret Hogan

Newpark, Kilkenny, Co Kilkenny

Playing 'hardball' with UK is foolish

The Government has now, albeit belatedly, engaged in direct discussions with the British on the status of Northern Ireland - and that's good. Unfortunately, it has now gone to the opposite extreme and is 'playing hardball' with Downing Street, with 'Team Europe' cheering from the sidelines - and that's bad.

The choreography is, of course, pure 'Brussels'. In a detailed analysis last April of the likely course of the Brexit negotiations ('The Power Brokers', Weekend, 'Financial Times', April 15/16), the authors opined that "When the history of Brexit comes to be told, [Martin] Selmayr, Mr Juncker's all-powerful chief of staff, will be a central figure". Mr Selmayr is a political and communications guru who was "confident that Britain will pay a price for leaving". In truth, as far as communications is concerned, Brussels has 'nudged' Britain right off the pitch. But it's the substance, and not the 'spin', that mostly matters.

The constitutional position of the North as part of the UK until such time as its citizens may decide otherwise - an outcome which the UK has committed not to oppose - is the beating heart of the Good Friday Agreement. It took enormous effort and time - and cost many lives - to negotiate the agreement.

I have some idea of these realities - I lived in Northern Ireland and worked at the University of Ulster for the six years prior to the agreement being signed. Negotiations pivoted first, and last, on trust-building between the Irish and British governments and the people of Northern Ireland themselves.

In all of these circumstances, the Government 'playing hardball' with Downing Street is exceedingly foolish and a serious miscalculation. The EU and UK have put forward 'proposals' on how best to address the underlying issues. The UK is at least as committed to avoiding a 'hard Brexit' as the EU but has had its good faith questioned.

Bear in mind that the UK is the counterparty to all of the agreements down the decades, bonding our two countries, in mutual trust. These agreements embrace trade, travel arrangements as well as a myriad of others, from labour mobility and residency to social security and health. By contrast, and as I have pointed out previously, the EU's manner of engaging with Ireland during the 'bailout', the nadir of EU-imposed austerity, was nihilistic, signifying something less than the trust which we might have expected. So much so, in fact, that it was left to the IMF to advocate against the harsh treatment of Ireland by the European institutions

So, if we are talking of 'playing hardball', the Government would be wiser to use its bargaining power for these few brief weeks to pressure the EU to forego the cheerleading to deliver the 'bespoke' resolution that's needed.

Professor Ray Kinsella

Ashford, Co Wicklow

Trial by jury isn't a panacea

Martina Devlin believes it is shameful that the Special Criminal Court exists (Irish Independent, December 2). The use of non-jury courts for trials in some serious criminal cases is allowed by the Constitution where there is a major risk that terrorists or gangland criminals would intimidate jurors.

I acknowledge that the men who were imprisoned for the Sallins train robbery, which was referred to by Ms Devlin, were wrongfully convicted, but miscarriages of justice have also taken place in many cases in which trial by jury took place in Ireland and in the UK.

Ciaran Masterson

Carrickane, Co Cavan

Leo putting CTA at risk

Britain's Labour government sought to impose passport controls for travel between the UK and Ireland in the 2009 Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill.

The bill was passed by the House of Commons but the clause was removed in the House of Lords.

This would have been the beginning of the end of the common travel area (CTA) between the two countries. The CTA is of enormous benefit for citizens of both countries but not a legally binding obligation.

Is Leo Varadkar putting this cherished privilege at risk by his threat to veto progress on the Brexit negotiations?

Dr John Doherty

Gaoth Dobhair, Co Dhun na nGall
Hollywood actress Blake Lively spotted with short black cropped hair filming The Rhythm Section at The Cliff Townhouse on St Stephens Green, Dublin

Hollywood actress Blake Lively looked barely recognizable on the first day of filming on her new movie called 'The Rhythm Section' on the streets of Dublin. Photo: John Dardis

Ryan Reynolds spotted wrapped-up warm exploring Dublin City on his own as his wife Blake Lively films The Rhythm Section in Ireland

Hollywood superstar Ryan Reynolds spotted wrapped-up warm exploring Dublin City on his own as his wife Blake Lively films The Rhythm Section in Ireland

Hollywood actress Blake Lively spotted with short black cropped hair filming The Rhythm Section at The Cliff Townhouse on St Stephens Green, Dublin

Hollywood actress Blake Lively spotted with short black cropped hair filming The Rhythm Section at The Cliff Townhouse on St Stephens Green, Dublin

Blake Lively is more of a chameleon than we gave her credit for.

The 30-year-old actress has been busy filming in Dublin for the last month, keeping more of a low profile in out-of-sight locations after causing a media storm during her first withered looking appearance on Talbot Street. After several weeks of shooting around Wicklow and Dublin, she was pictured again at Stephen's Green on Sunday night, where filming took place at the plush Cliff Townhouse.

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Lively is starring in spy thriller The Rhythm Section, which is set in London, but being filmed in various Irish locations. It's being produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli of EON Productions, who produced the last eight James Bond movies, while The Handmaid's Tale's Reed Morano is also involved.

She was wearing the chic attire we've come to expect from her both onscreen and off, but the Gossip Girl actress was unrecognisable in a black cropped wig, her character's latest transformation. And there wasn't much blending in as crowds continually gathered to catch a glimpse of the Hollywood superstar.

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Production has also taken place at the private country estate Clonwilliam House in Arklow, traditionally used as a wedding venue, but producers were said to be impressed by its set-up, including an indoor pool and extensive driveway to ensure privacy, and O'Connell Street.

Blake is joined in Ireland by her husband of five years Ryan Reynolds (40) and their daughters Ines (one) and James, who will celebrate her upcoming third birthday here. The couple are renting a plush home in Killiney to accommodate their young family and entourage and Reynolds has been spotted on daddy duty a number of times around town.

The Deadpool star shared a picture on Instagram last week of him enjoying the grounds at Powerscourt.
NC leader Thapa among 11 injured in Chapali IED explosion

Nepali Congress (NC) Kathmandu-4 candidate Gagan Thapa and 10 others were injured when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded at Chapali height in Narayansthan, Kathmandu on Monday.
The United States and South Korea have launched their biggest-ever combined air force exercise a week after North Korea test-fired its most powerful missile ever.

Called Vigilant Ace, the five-day drill is meant to improve the allies wartime capabilities, South Korea's defence ministry said.

The US Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets that include six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets for the annual training exercise in the Korean Peninsula and about 12,000 US military personnel are participating.

North Korea's state media said the joint drill pushes the Korean Peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war."

Such language is typical in North Korean propaganda because the country sees US-South Korean drills, which are held regularly, as preparation for invasion.

Always bad tensions are at a particularly dangerous point as North Korea edges toward its goal of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, and president Donald Trump uses aggressive rhetoric toward the North, threatening, for instance, "fire and fury" toward the country.

Pyongyang will "seriously consider" countermeasures against the drill, and the US and South Korea will "pay dearly for their provocations," the Korean Central News Agency said on Sunday before the start of the exercises.

While many South Koreans typically ignore North Korea's rhetoric, some senior American officials have expressed worry following the intercontinental ballistic missile test, North Korea's third.

On Sunday, Lindsey Graham, a US senator from the state of South Carolina, said he believes that it's time for American military families in South Korea to leave the country because conflict with North Korea is getting close.

The US government has not announced a formal decision to evacuate US citizens from South Korea, and there were no such signs in the diplomatic community in Seoul.

An evacuation of dependents by Seoul's closest ally and major military defender could prompt a panicked reaction by other countries, and among South Koreans.

In addition to American diplomats and other embassy workers, about 28,500 US troops operate in South Korea, and many come to their posts with their families, who often live on huge, well-guarded military bases.

Also on Sunday, the White House national security adviser said that Mr Trump will take care of North Korean threats by "doing more ourselves".

"The priorities that the president's given us to move as quickly as we can to resolve this crisis with North Korea," General Herbert Raymond McMaster told Fox News in an interview.

"If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it, because he has said he's not going to allow this murderous, rogue regime to threaten the United States."
The images of the men police are looking to speak with

Police are trying to track down two youths after a teenager was attacked on a train and forced to apologise for being gay.

The 19-year-old man was placed in a headlock and strangled until he eventually did what they said because he was struggling to breathe.

The incident occurred on a westbound Jubilee line train between West Ham and North Greenwich on October 21 at around 11.10am.

The victim and his friends were wearing fancy dress for an event they were attending when they were approached by the two youths who boarded at West Ham.

The two suspects verbally abused the victim for being gay and turned aggressive when they were challenged.

They forced him into a headlock, snatched his phone and threatened to stab him until he apologised for being gay.

Although they returned the phone, the two youths then got into a fight with the victim's friends in which a 25-year-old woman suffered bruising after being punched and pushed to the ground.

The victims left the train at North Greenwich.

The British Transport Police (BTP) released images of the two men on Monday and urged anyone who recognises them to come forward.

The BTP said in a statement: "Hate crime will not be tolerated by the British Transport Police. We believe everyone has the right to travel safely.

"We won't tolerate behaviour where someone is targeted because they are perceived to be different, or made to feel uncomfortable on their journey."
Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, left, shakes hands with then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2011 (AP)

FILE - In this April 8, 2011 file photo, then Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh attends a rally with his supporters, in Sanaa, Yemen. Saleh, Yemen's former president and longtime strongman, was killed Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, according to multiple Yemeni officials, as his loyalists and Shiite rebels battled for control of the capital. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen, File)

Ali Abdullah Saleh survived for decades as Yemen's strongman, the master of shifting alliances, playing both sides, or flipping sides freely, in the multiple guerrilla conflicts and civil wars that tore apart his impoverished nation throughout his life.

But his last switch proved his end.

Mr Saleh, who was Yemen's president for 33 years until he stepped down in 2012 amid an Arab Spring uprising, was killed on Monday by the Shiite rebels known as Houthis whom he had once allied with in hopes of a return to power but then turned against in recent months.

A video circulating online showed Mr Saleh's body, his eyes open but glassy, motionless, blood staining his shirt and a gaping wound In his head.

He was being carried in a blanket by rebel fighters chanting "God is great" who then dumped him into a pickup vehicle.

His grisly end recalled that of his contemporary, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, whose body was shown being abused by the rebels who killed him in that country's 2011 civil war.

During his rule, Mr Saleh was known as the man who "dances on the heads of snakes" for his ability to manipulate friends and enemies alike, using patronage, family bonds and brute force.

That skill enabled him to stay on top in the Arab world's poorest nation and one of its most unstable, where tribal and regional alliances and the sheer geography of mountains and deserts made central rule weak.

But the decades of manipulation, corruption and conflict under Mr Saleh left Yemen underdeveloped and dangerously fragile.

Now the civil war, in large part caused by his manoeuvring, has pushed it to near societal collapse.

With hospitals and food distribution networks in a shambles, hunger is widespread among its population of nearly 28 million and it faces a ferociously fast-spreading cholera outbreak.

In the 2000s, Mr Saleh was a vital ally of the United States in fighting al Qaida's branch in his country, a top priority for Washington after the branch tried to blow up a passenger jet an carry out other attacks on American soil.

Even while taking millions in US aid, Mr Saleh was suspected of striking deals with the militants and enlisting them to fight his battles.

Officials in his ally, Saudi Arabia, fumed privately to American diplomats that he was "corrupt, unreliable and largely ineffective", then rushed to help him fight civil wars and domestic conflicts because they needed him.

During one of those wars, a leaked US diplomatic memo suggested Mr Saleh tried to trick Saudi Arabia into killing his own military commander-slash-ally-slash-rival, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, by calling in a "mistaken" Saudi airstrike on his home.

Saudi Arabia realised what the target was and called off the strike.

After a popular uprising against his rule erupted in 2011, Mr Saleh cannily managed to hang onto power for months, even surviving a bomb that detonated in the presidential palace mosque as he prayed there, severely burning him.

Still, he stayed on, only finally resigning in early 2012 under a Saudi-brokered deal.

As president, Mr Saleh fought multiple wars against the Houthi rebels in their heartland in northern Yemen, each time failing to crush them completely.

Then after his fall, he allied with the Houthis against his own former vice president and successor, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, likely in hopes he could ride them back into power.

Mr Saleh's loyalist military units helped the Houthis overrun the capital, Sanaa, and much of the north and centre of the country.

Mr Hadi fled, his government moved to the southern city of Aden and Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a coalition air campaign in early 2015.

Then in recent months, Saleh's alliance with the Houthis fell apart as the rebels moved to weaken him and Mr Saleh flirted with switching to side with the Saudi-led coalition.

Mr Saleh rose to power in an era when Yemen was divided into two nations, north and south.

He was born into a small tribe allied with one of the country's mightiest clans, al-Ahmar.

He did not stay long in school, leaving before he was a teenager and enlisting in the armed forces.

His age was not known for sure.

His website gives his birth date as March 21 1946, but many in Yemen say he was born four years earlier.

On the other hand, he just happened to be 40 when he took power in 1978, when the constitution said the president had to be 40.

And in the 2006 election, official statements alternated between saying he was 64 or 65.

Whatever his age, Mr Saleh was ambitious and soon caught the eye of North Yemen's president, Ahmed bin Hussein al-Ghashmi, who appointed him military chief in the city of Taiz, south of Sanaa.

Mr Saleh's moment came after a bomb in a briefcase killed Mr al-Ghashmi in June 1978.

Within a month, Mr Saleh was North Yemen's president, backed by Saudi Arabia.

Among his first acts was to order the execution of 30 officers, some his former friends, convicted of being conspirators in Mr al-Ghashmi's assassination.

His reputation cemented as a tough leader, he also knew how to play Cold War politics.

Marxist South Yemen was a Soviet client state, so Mr Saleh reached out to Western leaders to leverage aid for North Yemen.

I n 1990, with the Soviet Union unravelling, Mr Saleh negotiated unity with the south, ensuring his place as the president.

On May 22 1990, he raised the flag of the Republic of Yemen at the southern port of Aden.

Four years later, he crushed an attempt by the south to break free.

His powerful nexus of the military and tribes made him virtually untouchable.

He also sought to harness a dangerous new force in the country.

Arab militants who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s needed a new home, and the deal apparently offered by Mr Saleh was sanctuary in exchange for respecting his authority.

In 2000 that legacy came back to haunt him when the Navy destroyer USS Cole was bombed in Aden harbour, killing 17 American sailors.

Washington demanded Mr Saleh to crack down on suspected Islamic militants.

Mr Saleh's efforts against extremist groups were widely criticised as ineffective.

In 2006, a band of al Qaida militants made a bold escape from a Sanaa prison that US and Yemeni officials believed had help from regime insiders.

The band went on to form al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror network's Yemen branch.

The group was linked to the attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009 and a shipment of explosive-rigged packages intercepted in Britain and Dubai in 2010.

Still, the US saw little choice but to partner with him.

Mr Saleh's tribal and political allies were growing impatient, complaining that he was ignoring widespread poverty and that corruption was undermining development.

Most disturbing to them, he was centralising power in his and his family's hands.

He put his sons and nephews in command of his strongest security units.

He appeared to be grooming his son Ahmed, commander of the elite Republic Guard, to succeed him.

When a popular uprising broke out against him in 2011, he responded with token promises of reform, then bloody attacks on the protesters.

He faced a stream of defections from his party, politicians, Cabinet members, tribal allies and military units.

Still, he managed to cling to power, then negotiate an exit deal that not only protected him from arrest and prosecution and let him stay in the country but kept many of his loyalists in place in the military.

That made Mr Saleh a player in the civil war between the Houthis and Mr Hadi.

But the Houthis succeeded in weakening him in recent months, reducing their alliance.

In the hours after his death, many of the Saleh loyalist units were reportedly pulling back from their positions in Sanaa.

AP
Kenya's main opposition group says police have detained one of its advisers ahead of a planned protest ceremony.

The ceremony is planned to be a mock inauguration of Raila Odinga as president.

Mr Odinga's National Super Alliance said in a statement that the detained man, economist David Ndii, was recently appointed chairman of a committee organising the protest event on December 12.

The statement said police arrested Mr Ndii on Sunday in Diani on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast.

A police official confirmed Mr Ndii was being questioned by detectives.

Mr Odinga successfully challenged President Uhuru Kenyatta's August re-election in court but then boycotted a rerun vote in October, demanding electoral reforms.

Mr Kenyatta won with 98% of the votes and was inaugurated last week.

AP
Britains competition watchdog is being urged to investigate the merger between SSE and the owner of Npower amid fears that the deal will spell bad news for energy consumers.

Rachel Reeves, chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee, has asked the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) to launch a full investigation to see if there is any risk to competition within the energy market.

The pair announced last month that they have reached an agreement to merge their operations, worth a combined 3 billion, to create a new energy supplier in the UK.

The deal will see SSE and Npowers parent company, Germanys Innogy, combine their household energy supply and services business in Britain, turning the Big Six energy suppliers into five.

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The MP said in her letter: The energy market isnt working for consumers.

The proposed merger between SSE and Npower risks damaging the development of a more competitive energy market, reducing consumer choice, and threatening to be a bad deal for energy consumers.

The CMA needs to look at the potential impacts of this merger and launch a full investigation if there is any risk to competition within the energy market.

It comes as Britains energy firms brace for a raft of regulatory changes after the Government announced earlier this year that a price cap will be imposed on poor-value energy tariffs.

SSE said that the merger will help the firms compete in a competitive and regulatory environment as well as realise efficiency savings.

SSE, formerly known as Scottish and Southern Energy, is Britains second biggest energy supplier and the merged group will serve around 11.5 million customers.

Centrica, Iberdrola (SocttishPower), E.On and EDF make up the remainder of the Big Six.
Peaceful election

An election boycott by radical communist groups, and the use of violence, especially through IED explosions, to enforce the boycott arent new phenomena in Nepal.
Nationwide has apologised after customers were unable to access their online and mobile banking services.

The building society said the outage was caused by a technical issue, which occurred on Monday morning, but did not specify the numbers of people affected.

We are currently experiencing a technical issue with our internet bank and mobile banking app and we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Customer service is the highest priority for Nationwide and the issue was identified quickly and we are working on restoring full service as soon as possible, the lender said.

Several Nationwide customers kicked up a fuss on social media, complaining of not being able to log in to their accounts and criticising the firm over its poor customer service.

One Twitter user wrote: problems with internet banking? accounts missing..failed logins when details are correct etc #nationwide

Another described the situation as absolutely shocking, adding: Its happening every week, a new problem. Their internet service is absolutely shocking! I have no accounts when I log in.

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British banks are regularly hit with IT outages, and earlier this year customers with HSBC, NatWest, RBS, Lloyds and Halifax also struggled with online glitches.

Some NatWest customers said cash appeared to have disappeared into thin air as attempts were made to transfer money in April.
US President Donald Trump launched a fresh attack on the FBI, saying its reputation "was in tatters".

He was responding to revelations that an FBI agent was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian election meddling because of anti-Trump text messages.

Mr Trump again denied he directed FBI director James Comey to stop investigating his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Democrats said the developments suggested growing evidence of co-ordination between Mr Trump's circle and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

"This president has been obsessed with this investigation, always saying there's nothing there, but each week, another shoe drops, where we see more evidence of continuing outreach from Russians and some response from the Trump campaign and Trump individuals," said Virginia Senator Mark Warner, top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Donald Trump by allowing his latest travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries to go into full effect even as legal challenges continue in lower courts.

The court, with two of the nine justices dissenting, granted his administration's request to lift two injunctions imposed by lower courts that had partially blocked the ban, which is the third version of a contentious policy that Trump first sought to implement a week after taking office in January.

Challengers, including the state of Hawaii and immigrant advocacy organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argue the ban is discriminatory and violates the U.S. Constitution. The Trump administration says it is necessary to protect the United States from terrorist attacks.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in San Francisco, will hold a hearing in Seattle, Washington on Dec. 6 and the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has its hearing on Dec. 8.

Soon after taking office in January, Trump signed an order temporarily barring all refugees and visitors from seven predominately Muslim countries. The decision led to chaos at airports and numerous legal challenges and the administration eventually replaced it with a second, somewhat narrower order.

When the second ban expired in September, Trump replaced it with a presidential proclamation indefinitely restricting travel from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad, North Korea and barring certain government officials from Venezuela.

The administration said the restrictions were put in place after a worldwide review of each country's ability to issue reliable passports and share data with the United States.

After the most recent order was issued, the same challengers who sued to stop the earlier bans went back to court. They said the new version still discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuits did not dispute the restrictions placed on Venezuela and North Korea.

All refugees were temporarily barred as part of Trump's first order but were not addressed in the latest ban. Instead, under a separate directive issued Oct. 24, refugees from 11 countries mostly in the Middle East and Africa now face additional security screening.

The 9th circuit appeals court on Nov. 13 ruled the ban could go partially into effect for everyone without close family relationships to people in the United States. The White House has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift those partial restrictions while the cases are moving forward in lower courts so that the ban would apply to everyone.

The government argues the president has broad authority to decide who can come into the United States, but detractors say the expanded ban violates a law forbidding the government from discriminating based on nationality when issuing immigrant visas.

The administration has repeatedly said the ban is not discriminatory and pointed out that many Muslim-majority countries are unaffected by it. Trump has made statements, however, that his legal opponents say reinforce their contention that his actions are based in anti-Muslim sentiments.

Last week, for example, the president shared on Twitter anti-Muslim videos posted by a far-right British party leader.

In response to the tweet, Neal Katyal, attorney for the State of Hawaii Tweeted: "Thanks! See you in court next week." The ACLU said in a letter sent to the Supreme Court on Monday that the group planned to file a motion that would expand the record to include the recent statements by the President.
'Trump wanted a victory, whatever it took; he fumes at being justly dubbed one of the least successful first-year presidents'

Congressional Republicans are about to pass - and US President Donald Trump is about to sign - a tax bill that violates Trump's campaign promises, does little for the middle class, ignores decades of party orthodoxy on tax cuts and is unpopular with voters.

Still, Republicans are celebrating one of their few achievements. They may be right to do so.

In the unlikely event they can't resolve differences between House and Senate tax legislation, Republicans would head to mid-term elections after a year in control of all the levers of power with just one achievement: the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. That would deprive Republican incumbents in 2018 of any positive argument for re-election.

"We can't afford to fail," said Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, articulating party leaders' conviction that passing a bill matters more than what's in it.

Trump wanted a victory, whatever it took; he fumes at being justly dubbed one of the least successful first-year presidents. Key provisions of the tax bills would also enrich him personally, along with his family - it's impossible to say by how much because he has refused to release his tax returns, but estimates have put the benefit to him at well over $20m (16.8m). If you believe his claim that the bill will cost him "a fortune" then you also probably believe he won the popular vote last year and drew the biggest inaugural crowd ever.

The bills violate some of Trump's main campaign promises. He vowed the rich would not get a tax cut, but they'll get a big one. He said tax cuts wouldn't increase the deficit; congressional analysts have determined that it would add $1trn to the national debt even after accounting for increased growth. He promised not to touch Medicare, but the tax bill will force reductions.

The tax legislation won't deliver much in the way of benefits to the white working-class voters whose ballots in key Midwestern states sent Trump to the White House. But it won't cost them significantly either. Hits to university scholarships, public transport and other subtler effects are less traceable to these latest tax cuts, or at least that's the calculation.

Both Trump and congressional Republicans want to believe their rhetoric about tax cuts generating an economic boom, though history suggests otherwise. But most economic forecasts already anticipated growth next year, which would give Republicans seeking re-election the chance to claim a connection.

There are some benefits for average Americans, including an increase in the child tax credit.

But there is potential political damage in one critical area: suburban communities with upper-middle-income professionals who politically often are evenly divided. Taking away the deduction for state and local income taxes could be a killer for more than a dozen Republican House incumbents in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California.

Many of these voters pay the top marginal tax rate of 39.6pc, which won't change much in the final product. Instead, the bulk of the cuts go to corporations and other businesses. The trickle-down economics tax cuts championed by Ronald Reagan in 1981 enjoyed strong public support at a time when individual rates were much higher. The 1986 bipartisan tax overhaul, a real systemic reform that lowered taxes for most individuals and raised them for many businesses, enjoyed plurality support. By contrast, most polls show the public opposed to this year's measure, which is seen as a sop to the rich.

Ask Republicans about that and their answer comes down to this: how many politicians have lost an election because they voted for a tax cut?
Under-fire Republican US Senate candidate Roy Moore led his Democratic opponent by six percentage points, according to a new poll, with most Alabama Republicans saying the allegations of sexual misconduct against him are false.

Mr Moore was leading Democrat Doug Jones 49 to 43pc among voters likely to cast ballots in the December 12 special election. The contest was even among registered voters, it said.

Republican lawmakers in Washington, including Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, have distanced themselves from Mr Moore and called for him to step down from the race after he was accused by several women of sexual assault and misconduct when they were teenagers and he was in his early 30s.

But Mr McConnell said yesterday that if Mr Moore was elected, the Senate would swear him in and then the Senate ethics committee would decide whether to investigate.

"We'll swear in whoever's elected and see where we are at that point," Mr McConnell said.

"We can't stop him from being seated," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. "If there was an (ethics) investigation and all six members of the committee said they believe he was a child molester, that would be a problem."

Two-thirds of Alabama Republicans say the allegations against Mr Moore are false.
On the eve of his trip to Europe, Rex Tillerson gave a speech last week that European allies had waited months to hear: an "ironclad" promise of US support to its oldest allies.

The relief in European capitals lasted barely a day as reports surfaced of a White House plan to oust the US Secretary of State, plunging America's friends back into confusion over President Donald Trump's foreign policy.

The uncertainty is particularly acute, given Washington's leading role in crises in North Korea and Syria.

"Just as Tillerson comes to Brussels to give a public statement of support that the EU and Nato have wanted all along, it seems he has no mandate, that the guillotine is hanging over his head," said an EU official involved in diplomacy with White House officials.

"It leaves Europe just as doubtful as before about Trump."

US sources claimed on Thursday that the White House had a plan for CIA director Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson but Mr Trump said on Friday he was not leaving and the Secretary of State said on Saturday the reports were untrue.

European leaders yearn for stability in US foreign policy. They are troubled by Mr Trump's 'America first' rhetoric and inconsistent statements on Nato and the EU.

In addition, Mr Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate change accord and his decision not to certify Iran's compliance with a nuclear deal undermine European priorities.

"The chaos in the administration doesn't help in the current geopolitical climate," said a senior French diplomat.

Early last week, Mr Tillerson, a former Exxon Mobil chief executive, delivered a long address in support of Europe in Washington more akin to traditional US policy.

"The United States remains committed to our enduring relationship with Europe. Our security commitments to European allies are ironclad," he told a think tank.

Convey

He said he would convey that message to the European Union and Nato. He is set to visit Brussels tomorrow and Wednesday, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday and Paris on Friday.

"If there were expectations that Tillerson might evolve into a counterweight to Trump, someone who could pass on messages from partners and exert moderating influence over American foreign policy - those expectations have been disappointed," said Niels Annen, foreign policy spokesman for Germany's Social Democrats in parliament.

Despite Mr Tillerson's pledge to reform the US foreign service, European governments take a dim view of how he has sought to cut costs at the State Department, with top diplomatic posts unfilled almost a year into the administration.

There is hope that if Pompeo is appointed he could rejuvenate the State Department after Tillerson, who is seen as ineffective, diplomats said. Pompeo is an unknown quantity in Europe but is viewed as closer to Trump.
Senior Congress party leaders welcome Rahul Gandhi as he arrives to file his nomination papers at party headquarters, in New Delhi, India, on Monday (AP)

Rahul Gandhi, a member of India's Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, has submitted nomination papers to succeed his mother as president of the main opposition Congress party.

Without a serious rival for the top party post, Mr Gandhi is likely to be elected on December 16.

He faces a challenging task of reinvigorating the once dominant party, which was ousted from power by prime minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014.

Mr Modi is expected to seek re-election for a second five-year term in 2019 national elections.

The task is even more formidable with the Congress party suffering humiliating defeats in recent state elections, notably in Uttar Pradesh state, despite Mr Gandhi's active campaigning to win back people's support.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh announced Mr Gandhi's nomination at party headquarters.

"This is yet another step in quest for serving the people through the Congress party," he said.

Mr Modi said Mr Gandhi's proposed elevation showed the Congress is a family-dominated party.

"We don't want this Aurangzeb rule," he said at a public meeting in western Gujarat state, referring to Mughal emperors who chose their successors.

Mr Gandhi entered politics in 2004, holding a parliamentary seat representing Uttar Pradesh state.

The seat was held by his mother, Sonia Gandhi, until she shifted to a neighbouring constituency.

He was appointed party vice president in 2013.

Sonia Gandhi has led the party for 19 years.

She has had health problems but the family and party have released little information about them.

She had surgery in the United States for an undisclosed reason in 2011, and has returned to the US for regular check-ups since then.

Rahul Gandhi will be the sixth member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to lead Congress.

His father Rajiv Gandhi, grandmother Indira Gandhi and great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru have served as prime ministers since India's independence from British colonialists in 1947.

Party workers have been demanding Rahul Gandhi's elevation since 2013.

His supporters argued he was rebuilding the party at the grassroots level and has taken a lead in Congress campaigns in state elections in Uttar Pradesh and in Bihar in recent years.

The party performed poorly in both states' elections last year.

AP
Poll body: Election quiz also has questions on CPN-UML

The Election Commission has clarified that questions in the Election Quiz currently being broadcast on 10 different television channels are fairly selected.
As a part of this campaign, customers will get a once-in-lifetime opportunity to drive home a Tata car at a down payment of INR. 1 and enjoy savings of upto 1 lakh, depending on the model and variant.



Tata Motors has tied up with leading financiers and banks to offer upto 100% funding through attractive finance schemes on the passenger vehicles. This will be a great opportunity for customers to exchange their cars and enjoy the benefit of huge savings.

According to Vivek Srivatsa, Head- Marketing, Passenger Vehicle Business, Tata Motors, Tata Motors continuously strives to understand customer needs and offers them a delightful experience. The customers gave an extremely encouraging response to all our cars during this festive season. We want to enhance this positive sentiment further through the end of the year Mega Offer Max Celebration campaign. This December, our customers can drive home a Tata Car at a down payment of INR. 1 through our attractive finance offers. At the same time they will enjoy huge savings on our cars upto INR. 1 lakh (depending on the variant) through our insurance scheme at INR. 1 and exchange bonus.
Kolkata, Dec 4 (IBNS): Sharmila Singh Flora of Kolkata has not only build an impressive brand in the beauty business but also has the capacity to empower others through her brand building, believes Tollywood's ace actor Prosenjit Chatterjee.

Talking at the 25th anniversary celebration of Flora's, one of Kolkata's popular beauty salon and skin clinic, Chatterjee said,For 25 years, Sharmila Singh Flora has empowered herself and built this strong brand Floras single-handedly. In the next 25 years, she will help many more to empower themselves through her brand Floras.

Sharmila Singh Flora completed her post graduation from Womens World, affiliated to England's International Therapy Examination Council, and trained under well-known beauty expert, Shahnaz Hussain.

Today, her brand Flora's runs salons for men and women, skin clinics and produces a vast range of beauty products.

According to Flora, her salons and clinics offer herbal-based therapies augmented by modern technology.

The Flora's brand offers franchisee for exclusive parlours for men and women as well as unisex parlours and beauty clinics with a renewable agreement five years; three-month beautician certificate courses, which includes an opportunity to be employed at Floras.



Image: Flora's website
New Delhi, Dec 4 (IBNS): Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will file nomination on Monday to elevate to the party's topmost post, media reports said.

Present Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh will be the proposers for Rahul's elevation.

Rahul's elevation is expected to be uncontested.

The Congress will be heading towards the polls in the Gujarat Assembly election in December as it is aiming to oust the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state.

Sonia, who took over the Congress helm in May 1998, is the longest serving president of the party.

Rahul took over as Vice President, the number two position, in January 2013.
New Delhi/ Ahmedabad, Dec 4 (IBNS) : Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Monday filed his nomination for the party president's post,coming close to his elevation which Prime Minister Narendra Modi jeered as :Aurangzeb Raj," reports said.

The 47-year-old leader is likely to take over the mantle from his mother, Sonia Gandhi, without contest.

Senior Congress leaders, including Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were present, when Gandhi filed his nomination paper at the party headquarters.

The last date for filing nominations is December 4.

According to reports, Rahul was the lone candidate till he filed his nomination.

Present Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are the proposers for Rahul's elevation.

Meanwhile, while addressing a rally in Gujarats Dharampur, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Rahul Gandhis nomination for the post of Congress president is an indication of Aurangzeb Raj.

"Mani Shankar Aiyar said that did elections happen during Mughal rule? After Jehangir, Shahjahan came, was any election held? After Shahjahan it was understood Aurangzeb will be the leader. So Congress accepts its a family party? We dont want this Aurangzeb rule," Modi said.

Earlier, while interacting with media in New Deli, Manmohan Singh had said: "Rahul's (likely) elevation is another step by the Congress party to serve the nation."

"Rahul will carry forward the tradition of the Congress party" the former PM added.

Sonia, who took over the Congress helm in May 1998, is the longest serving president of the party.

Rahul took over as Vice President, the number two position, in January 2013.

The Congress will be heading towards the polls in the Gujarat Assembly election in December as it is aiming to oust the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state.

twitter.com/OfficeOfRG
London, Dec 4 (IBNS) : Beleaguered business tycoon , Vijay Mallya will appear in a court in London on Monday in his extradition trial case.

According to media reports, the trial is to begin at 9 30 am GMT.

Mallya, who fled India in March 2016, owes Rs. 9,000 crore to banks and faces trial on different counts ranging from defaulting of loans and money syphoning.

The charges against him are being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate.

Indias bid to bring back Vijay Mallya will be carried out through the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of the British government in Westminster Magistrates Court in London.

A team of CBI officials, led by Special Director Rakesh Asthana will be present during the court proceedings.

According to reports, some key witnesses are likely to be produced during the trial for his extradition.

Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard over a fraud case but was later granted bail by fulfilling a a 650,000-pound bail bond.
Srinagar, Dec 4 (IBNS): At least one militant was killed in a ongoing gunfight with security forces in Bounigam area of Qazigund in South Kashmir's Kulgam district, officials said on Monday.

According to sources, fierce gunfight erupted after militants carried out an attack on an army patrol at Bounigam Qazigund, leaving three soldiers injured, and fled away from the scene.

They took shelter inside a building.

A police official told IBNS: "Soon after the firing, security forces, along with special task force, intensified searches to trace out the hiding militants. After the search party entered the building, the hiding militants fired upon force which triggered an encounter."

One militant was killed. While others are still inside the building, said police

When last reports came in the intermittent firing was going on.



(Reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri)
Kolkata, Dec 4 (IBNS): The Kolkata Police on Monday evening restored to lathicharge to disperse a large gathering of guardians, who have been protesting since morning in front of MP Birla school at Behala area , over alleged sexual assault of a 3-year-old girl student.

Family members of the nursery student alleged that their child was sexually abused by a school staffer inside the school in September and neither the school authority nor local police had taken any action against the accused in last two and half months.

Protesting the incident and demanding strict steps against the accused and the school, a large number of guardians gathered in front of MP Birla school on Monday and held a peaceful demonstration programme.

Due to the protests, traffic on James Long Sarani was disrupted for hours.

Amidst massive protest, principal of the school, who firstly denied all allegations, announced to suspended the accused employee, Manoj Singh, pending enquiry.

Later in evening, when MP Birla school's teachers and staffers were being evacuated by a school bus, protesting guardians tried to stop them and police restored to lathicharge.

"We had been protesting peacefully since morning and the school authority did not arrange any meeting with us," a protesting guardian told IBNS.

"In evening, police tried to evacuate school staffers safely by a school bus and when we tried to stop the bus, police suddenly attacked us without any provocation from our side," the guardian said.

"Police beat us with sticks and helmets and detained few protesters as well. Very few women cops were present here that time and male cops lathicharged and pushed protesting ladies," he added.

However, agitating parents said that their movement will be strengthened from Tuesday morning while no reaction on the lathicharge has been received from the city police officials so far.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)
Guwahati, Dec 4 (IBNS): A hardcore militant belonging to banned outfit NDFB (S) was killed during a fierce encounter with security forces in Assams Chirang district on Monday morning, officials said.

Chirang district Superintendent of Police (SP) Shankar Rai Medhi said that, on the basis of secret information about the movement of a group of NDFB (S) militant under the command of Batha at Ballambari Bagan Forest area near Indo-Bhutan border located at about 35 km North West from Runikhata police station, a search operation was launched by Chirang Police on the wee hours of Monday at the area.

At around 9 am, on sighting the police party the NDFB (S) militants opened indiscriminate fire at the police party. The police party also opened retaliatory fire, as a result of which one unidentified militant sustained bullet injuries. He was shifted to hospital for treatment where he was declared as brought dead, the Chirang district SP said.

Other militants of the group had managed to escape by taking advantage of dense jungles.

Police team had conducted search operation at the remote jungle area and busted a camp, which was used by the militants.

Security personnel had recovered one 9 mm Pistol, one magazine, 5 rounds 9 mm live ammunition, empty cases, camp materials, ration items, utensils, clothes, wearing apparels, medicines from the area.

The slain militant is yet to be identified.

Meanwhile, top police and army officials had rushed to the bordering area with Bhutan and launched massive combing operation to hunt the fled militants.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati, Dec 4 (IBNS) : While the people of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh fearing after sudden change in water quality of Siang river in Arunachal Pradesh and Brahmaputra in Assam becoming dirty and muddy, Arunachal Pradeshs Congress MP Ninong Ering reacted over the statement on the issue made by the Union Water Resources minister Arjun Ram Meghwal.

The Union minister said that a preliminary study has found that the water of Siang and Brahmaputra are turning black due to a recent earthquake in the Tibetan region.

Reacted over the Union ministers comment, Ninong Ering said the statement of the Union minister regarding the colour of the Siang river, the main tributary of Brahmaputra river which originates from Mansarovar flowing to the Tibet plateau known as Yarlung Tsangpo, could be a natural phenomenon is completely abused.

During the winter, the river flows crystal clear and since I was a child, I have always seen this river deep blue during this season. This phenomenon hasnt occurred in last 100 years, as stated by the senior local villagers. The construction of dams may not be very important to you (Arjun Ram Meghwal) as the North East may be of little concern to you. But the pollution of the river in the winter season where NTU permissible limit is 0.5. But as per the report by the Water Resources department has risen to 425 which is poisonous, Ninong Ering said in his letter sent to the Union Water Resources minister.

The Congress Lok Sabha MP representing from Eastern Arunachal constituency further said that, the river is contaminated and all aquatic life in this river has been destroyed.

It is also affecting the local livestock not only in Arunachal, but downstream Assam too, for which you (Arjun Ram Meghwal) may get reports soon. All the migratory birds, which were seen in this season in D Ering Wildlife Sanctuary, have not been seen this year, Ninong Ering said.

Ering urged the Union minister to take up the matter very seriously and said that it concerns the lifeline of the people of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Bangladesh also.

Earlier, the Arunachal Pradesh MP had sent a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 25 and raised the issue.

Ninong Ering appealed the PM to raise the issue in international forum.

The recent report said that, the Chinese government has constructed a 1000 km long tunnel  the worlds longest - to divert the Siang river (Tsangpo in Tibet) from Sangri in Sothern Tibet to the Taklamakan desert in Xinjiang is likely to be true though the Chinese government had denied it, Ninong Ering said.

In his letter sent to the PM on November 25 last, Ninong Ering said that, a few months back a report which was denied by the Chinese government is regard to the diverting a channel over Tsangpo (Siang/Brahmaputra) in Tibet has become an issue of concern.

After the report the river Siang has become muddy and slushy and it is already two months that, the river Siang is black contaminated. It is unusual phenomena and reason for the river dirty is unknown. I have already put questions and also under rule 377 to be discussed in the parliament but as it was not in session. I am requesting you to use your good office to seek the reason of the river being muddy in this season where the water is crystal clear. A 600 km long tunnel is already started in the Yunnan province as a rehearsal, Ninong Ering said in his letter.

The Arunachal Pradesh MP further said that, there is no other reason that, the mighty Siang river tributary of Brahmaputra should be dirty in the month of November, but has occurred due to heavy land excavation in the Chinese side which has to be verified by an international team to ascertain the international treaty.

When I saw the water, it looks like cement mixed water. It is a very serious issue and the Centre must to take it seriously, the Arunachal Pradesh MP said.

Ninong Ering said that, a large scale of fish had died in the Siang river in recent times and he got it confirmed from Tuting and Geling areas in Upper Siang district close to China border.

Meanwhile, Chinese media had recently refuted the countrys role in polluting Siang river in Arunachal and again claimed that Arunachal Pradesh is a part of Chinas Sothern Tibet region.

On the other hand, Assam government also concerned over the issue of polluting Brahmaputra river.

Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday said that, the state government is very concerned over the serious issue and the state government will raise the issue with the centre.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Kolkata, Dec 4 (IBNS): A POCSO court in Kolkata's Alipore on Monday extended the police custody term of two teachers of GD Birla school, who are accused of sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl student of the same school, by 12 days, reports said.

Earlier on Friday, after hour-long interrogation at Jadavpur Police Station, two physical education teachers of southern Kolkata's GD Brila school, Avishek Roy and Md. Mafizuddin, were arrested for their alleged role in sexualy abusing a lower nursery student inside the school premise.

According to police reports, they have been charged under sections 4 and 6 of POCSO Act.

The duo was produced before a special vacational court on Saturday and they were sent to two-day police remand.

As their police custody term ended on Monday, the accused teachers were produced in a POCSO court at Alipore and they were sent to police custody till Dec 15.

The court has also directed a forensic test of the victim child's school uniform and ordered to record her statement.

The duo, however, will be produced to the same court again on Dec 15.

Meanwhile, a special committee, comprising of representatives from West Bengal State Education department, West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights, ICSE Board Delhi and Kolkata Police, has been formed to look into the allegations of negligence and false representation of affiliation to ICSE board, reports said.

The incident occurred at the school named GD Birla Centre for Education, located in Ranikuthi, in the southern part of the city.

The parents have alleged that the child returned home crying and with blood stains on her dress; later the mother also found her bleeding from her private parts.

The child was allegedly abused inside a school toilet, media reported.

Meanwhile, commentng on the incident, Komal Ganotra, Director Policy and Advocacy at CRY said, The incident of child abuse in the Kolkata School clearly indicates at a huge lack of understanding as it comes to the issue of child safety in school premises, and an equally huge gap in showing the administrative will in terms of implementation of whatever child safety guidelines they have in place.

This is also a grim reminder of the fact that we, as a country, do not have proper prevention mechanism in place to address the issue, not are we keen on building more empathetic understanding and intervention plans adequately backed up by sustained investment on child security.



Child protection in our country cannot be ensured with just having legislations and numerous guidelines. We as country need to commit in cultivating a culture of zero tolerance to violence against children. We should be vigilant and cognisant of the fact that children are at risk with gaps in infrastructure, processes and systems as well as people. It is non-negotiable for school spaces to equip themselves in recognising these risks and put robust systems and processes to assess and eliminate risks.



(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)
Rautahat on high alert

A tight security arrangement has been put in place along the Nepal-India border area in Rautahat district ahead of the Thursdays elections.
Srinagar, Dec 4 (IBNS): Two terrorists and an army soldier were killed in a gunfight while three civilians were injured in ensuing clashes in Qazigund area of south Kashmirs Kulgam district on Monday.

An official said that a soldier of Sikh Li wounded in the gunfight succumbed at a hospital.

He said another soldier was injured in the firefight.

Director General of Police (DGP) S P Vaid said that the bodies of two militants were recovered from the site of gunfight.

The search operation is on, he said in a tweet.

Meanwhile, three civilians were injured in clashes near the site of the gunfight in Bounigamarea.

(Reporting by Saleem Qadri)
Kolkata, Dec 4 (IBNS): While the outrage over the sexual assault of a GD Birla school infant in Kolkata raged, the city police on Monday night arrested one person for his alleged involvement in sexually assaulting a 3-year-old girl student of another institution, the M P Birla School, officials said.

According to reports, a non-teaching staff of Behala's M P Birla Foundation Higher Secondary school, Manoj Singh, was held from Behala area.

"Manoj Singh, who is the primary accused in the case, was arrested today from Behala and he has been charged under few sections of POCSO Act," a senior official of Kolkata Police told IBNS.

"He will be produced before a POCSO court at Alipore on Tuesday and we will appeal for his police custody for further interrogation," the official added.

Days ago, family members of a student of M P Birla school's nursery section alleged that their child was sexually abused by school staffer Manoj Singh inside the school in September and neither the school authority nor local police had taken any action against the accused in last two and half months.

Protesting the incident and demanding strict steps against the accused and the school, a large number of guardians gathered in front of M P Birla school on Monday and held a day-long peaceful demonstration programme.

Due to the protests, traffic on James Long Sarani was disrupted for hours.

Amidst massive protest, principal of the school, who first denied all allegations, announced to suspended the accused employee, Manoj Singh, pending enquiry.

Later in the evening, when M P Birla school's teachers and staffers were being evacuated by a school bus, protesting guardians tried to stop them and police restored to lathicharge.

The protesting guardians, however, demanded a strict legal action against Manoj and the authority of M P Birla school.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)
After a gap of 18 years, the first phase of Provincial and Parliamentary Elections was held across 32 Hill Districts in six Provinces on November 26, 2017. 65 per cent of the 3.19 million voters cast their votes. Elections in the first phase took place for 37 federal Parliamentary and 74 Provincial Assembly seats. There are 165 seats in the House of Representatives and 330 in the Provincial Assemblies in total. The remaining seats are scheduled for elections on December 7, 2017, in the second phase covering 45 Districts, including Kathmandu valley and the southern plains of Nepal known as the Terai. The country must conduct the elections to the House of Representatives and Provincial Assemblies by the constitutional deadline of January 21, 2017. This is for the first time that elections for the Parliament and Provincial Assemblies are being conducted under the new Constitution adopted on September 20, 2015. The last parliamentary poll was held in 1999.

After the conclusion of the elections, the Election Commission (EC) claimed the first phase a "historic success" except for violent incidents in a few polling centers. Similarly, attributing the peaceful conduct of elections to the effective and good security arrangements by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), its Spokesman Narayan Prasad Sharma Duwadi noted "Due to the Ministry's security plans, the election was not disturbed anywhere."

Some violent incidents were reported on the polling day. Three persons sustained injuries in clashes that erupted among supporters of the Democratic Alliance and Left Alliance at the Deurali Primary School polling centre in Sindhupalchowk District; two Policemen were injured after an unidentified gunman shot them during a security check in Niradnama of Siraha District; a bomb exploded at the main gate of the Panchakanya Secondary School election centre while voters were casting their ballots at Chyangre in Pauwadung Rural Municipality-3 in Bhojpur District; a bomb exploded at Bhagawati Secondary School at Aatharai Tribeni Rural Municipality in Taplejung District, halting the election proceedings for two hours; a sutli (string) bomb went off at a polling station at Chyangre in Pauwadumma Rural Municipality-3 in Bhojpur District; voters loyal to the Left Alliance captured the Gaurishankr Rural Municipality-based Suri polling centre in Dolakha District and chased away Nepali Congress (NC)-aligned voters; Police arrested seven cadres of the Left Alliance after they tried to capture the Eklebari Ward Office polling centrer at Tamakoshi Rural Municipality-1 in Dolakha District. Meanwhile, Police Headquarters claimed that a total of 10 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were recovered during the election period from Jajarkot, Nuwakot, Darchula, Rupandehi, Rolpa, Dolakha, Kapilvastu, Baglung and Taplejung Districts.

Further, there was pre-poll violence in various Districts. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), 16 persons were injured in 13 incidents of bomb explosion and another 11 were injured in five incidents of clashes. Security fears were also triggered amid incidents of explosions targeting candidates and their campaigns in several parts of the country. As a result, compared to the average turnout during the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections on November 19, 2013 and three local level elections held on May 14, June 28, and September 18, 2017, respectively, voter participation in the present election, at 65 per cent, was lower. There was a 78.74 per cent turnout in the CA polls, and 74.16 per cent in the local level elections.

On November 12, 2017, concerned about pre-poll violence, the EC directed MoHA and security agencies to control incidents of violence in the run-up to the first phase of provincial and parliamentary polls slated for November 26. Further, as the incidents of poll-related violence increased, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Ayodhi Prasad Yadav addressing a high-level security meeting at the EC's central office in Kantipath, Kathmandu, on November 21, 2017, directed top officials of all security agencies - Nepali Army, Nepal Police, Armed Police Force and National Investigation Department - and the MoHA to ensure proper security for people.

Amidst the sudden rise in incidents of violence targeting candidates and election campaigns during the first phase, the National Security Council (NSC) in a confidential report on October 23, 2017, noted that the Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) was the major security threat to the elections scheduled on November 26 and December 7. The report stated that the Chand-led group had formed a parallel People's Government and People's Court. The group had mobilized its National Volunteer Organization, the youth wing of the party, which had decided to boycott elections. According to the NDC report, the Chand-led group decided to launch various activities to disrupt elections in coordination with other forces who are opposed to the New Constitution. The party also decided to 'expose' both the left alliance and democratic alliance, which are in favour of parliamentary democracy, through various activities. The group has been organizing closed-door training sessions and meetings, and has also expanded its organizational bases through conferences and cultural activities.

Meanwhile, according to the Chand-led CPN's secret circular obtained by Republica on November 18, 2017, the party had directed its organization to prepare plans to foil the polls: "Our party comrades should resort to small and medium scale physical action in a responsible fashion but avoid causing human casualties." The party instructed rank and file about the decision to continue the physical action until November 25, a day before the polls in 32 Hill Districts. The circular further states that the party has decided to protest against parliamentary polls in line with its stance against the parliamentary system of governance.

On November 24, 2017, MoHA instructed the Police to arrest top leaders of the Chand-led CPN including Chand, Khadga Bahadur Biswokarma and Dharmendra Bastola among others, as part of its intensified move to curb anti-election activities. The instruction came in line with MoHA's conclusion that the Chand-led CPN is a major security threat to the elections. 49 Chand-led CPN cadres were arrested from various Districts during the first phase, for anti-elections activities.

In a dramatic turn of events on October 3, 2017, the chiefs of three left political parties - Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre (CPN-Maoist Center) and Naya Shakti Party-Nepal (NSP-N) - formed an electoral alliance, the Left Alliance, to contest the upcoming Provincial and Parliamentary elections. Reading out the six-point agreement, CPN-Maoist Center leader Janardan Sharma observed that the three parties would merge and form a sole communist force after the elections. The agreement read: "An eight-member unification coordination committee would be formed immediately to facilitate preparations for the merger, which the party said would be held as soon as possible after the polls."

Responding to the move of the CPN-UML to forge a Left Alliance for the upcoming provincial and parliamentary elections, a meeting held at the Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's official residence at Baluwatar, Kathmandu on October 4, 2017, between the top leaders of NC, Rastriya Janata Party Nepal (RJPN), Federal Socialist Forum Nepal (FSFN), Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Democratic (RPP-D) and Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF), decided to forge an electoral alliance - the Democratic Alliance - for the upcoming elections. Reacting against the Left Alliance, NC Central Working Committee (CWC) on October 6, 2017, concluded that the Left Alliance was against national unity and the democratic system, and could affect Constitution implementation and the peace process.

Later, NC President Deuba, addressing a function organized at the party's headquarters at Sanepa in Lalitpur District to unveil the party's election manifesto on October 31, 2017, observed, "The communist alliance is trying to undermine democracy. Democracy has given people all sorts of rights. But under communism people's right to protest against injustice is usurped. There is not even right to cry in communism when there is injustice." Similarly, NC senior leader Ram Chandra Paudel while addressing an election rally at the Rainas Municipality in Lamjung District on November 20, 2017, stated, "Communists exercising in multi party system are trying to forge consensus to push the country toward anarchism, to stop the nation from being ruled by autocratic rules, the democratic forces should emerge victorious to safeguard democracy in the nation (sic)."

Despite sporadic disruptions at election rallies and around election candidates, with the completion of these elections, Nepal will have embarked on a new political course. The tortuous transition toward democratic consolidation in a federal structure and the building up of new institutions must need to be understood as deep deficits to be addressed in politics and the rule of law. The overriding hope is that these elections will move Nepal out of a protracted post-conflict transition into a period of stabilization. Amidst these hopes and fears, a general atmosphere of uncertainty persists, and much remains to be done.
Mumbai, Dec 4 (IBNS): Bollywood fraternity on Monday expressed their sadness over the death of actor Shashi Kapoor.

Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt said: "As the skies burst and it begins to rain in this part of Mumbai. My heart is filled with deep gratitude. Thank you Sir ! You touched our lives only the way you could have."

As the skies burst and it begins to rain in this part of Mumbai. My heart is filled with deep gratitude. Thank you Sir ! You touched our lives only the way you could have . YYY pic.twitter.com/IzRvKDOXM9  Mahesh Bhatt (@MaheshNBhatt) December 4, 2017

Minister of Textiles and Information & Broadcasting Smriti Zubin Irani, who had also worked in television serials, said: "Saddened by the demise of legendary actor Shashi Kapoor ji. His contribution to Indian Cinema is monumental. Shashi jis passing away marks the end of an era. My deepest condolences to his loved ones, colleagues and fans. May his soul rest in peace. Om Shanti!"

Veteran actress Shabana Azmi tweeted: "We will miss you."

Filmmaker Karan Johar said: "#RIPShashiKapoor ...the most charming and enigmatic actor ever...a gentleman movie star! His legacy in film and theatre is exceptional...thoughts and prayers with the family....his work will always live on."

#RIPShashiKapoor ...the most charming and enigmatic actor ever...a gentleman movie star! His legacy in film and theatre is exceptional...thoughts and prayers with the family....his work will always live on... pic.twitter.com/U9jsAGxGET  Karan Johar (@karanjohar) December 4, 2017

Filmmaker Sudhir Mishra mourned as he tweeted: "Totally at a loss for words."

Totally at a loss for words . https://t.co/eSicK1mxeE  Sudhir Mishra (@IAmSudhirMishra) December 4, 2017

Actor Jaaved Jaaferi said: "One of my favourites passed away today. A handsome charming gentleman who entertained us for 40+ years. His endearing smile will be embedded in my memories. RIP #ShashiKapoor."

Actress Bipasha Basu tweeted: "RIP Sir. You will be deeply missed by all #ShashiKapoor."

Expressing sadness, film critic Taran Adarsh posted: "#ShashiKapoor ji is no more... An era comes to an end... Thoughts and prayers with the family... RIP. "

Veteran Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor, who charmed his way into millions of hearts with his on screen persona playing the handsome romantic hero of the 1960s, 70s and 80s films, passed away in Mumbai. He was 79.

He died in a Mumbai hospital.

One of the foremost actors from the Kapoor clan of Bollywood, he had acted in a large number of Hindi films besides in a few English-language films. He also directed movies.

He acted in some of the superhit movies of 70s with co-actor and Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, often playing siblings.

His romantic paring with many Bollywood heroines led to several super hit films.

He was born as Balbir Raj Kapoor and was the youngest son of Prithviraj Kapoor and the younger brother of iconic superstars Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor. His wife Jennifer Kendal (sister of actress Felicity Kendal) had died in 1984. They had three children- Karan Kapoor, Kunal Kapoor, and Sanjana Kapoor.

He was conferred the Padmabhushan by the Indian government in 2011.

He acted in some of the superhits like Sharmilee, Kabhi Kabhie, Baseraa, Deewar, Jab Jab Phool Khile, Satyam Shivan Sundaram, A Gale Lag Ja, Suhaag, Kanyadaan among others romancing heroines like Sharmila Tagore, Zeenat Aman, Rakhee, Nanda and others.

He had also acted in films like Bombay Talkie by Merchant Ivory Productions.
He was the most handsome Kapoor with a cherubic smile and a dimpled cheek who could have just been happy serenading the most beautiful Bollywood heroines and basking in the hysteric female fan following. But Shashi Kapoor was more than just the charm and hotness he exuded.

He was as much a quintessential Bollywood hero as the one who forged an international connection with several Merchant-Ivory Productions collaborating with screenplay writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory, thus taking Bollywood beyond the shores to the highest platforms of world cinema and in the festival circuits.

So for every Bollywood superhit like Sharmilee, he had acted in Merchant-Ivory Productions like a marital discord comedy The Householder (1963) or a wistful romance like Shakespeare Wallah (1965) or some bold films like Bombay Talkie (1970) and Heat and Dust (1983). Shahi Kapoor in Junoon

He also did movies like Siddhartha (the 1972 American film based on the novel of the same name by Hermann Hesse, directed by Conrad Rooks) which courted controversy for the nude scenes with actress Simi Garewal.

The family's Prithvi Theatre was taken to new heights by none other than Shashi Kapoor and his late wife Jennifer Kapoor, thus paying their lifetime tribute to his father Prithviraj Kapoor and promoting professional theatre and Hindi Theatre primarily, by providing and managing a well-equipped Theatre space at very reasonable costs, with all technical facilities.

Shashi Kapoor, who had charmed generations by his handsome looks, gorgeous smile and electrifying screen presence, passed away on Monday at 79, ending yet another era in Bollywood that is the best and also offbeat.

Shashi, who was part of the iconic Kapoor dynasty, had worked in numerous Bollywood movies which included Sharmilee, Kabhi Kabhie, Baseraa, Deewar, Jab Jab Phool Khile, Satyam Shivan Sundaram, A Gale Lag Ja, Suhaag, Kanyadaan and Utsav among others. An intense Shashi Kapoor in Deewar

He was well-known for his partnership with Amitabh Bachchan as the duo had worked in several hit films and was considered as a successful twin hero pairing of the age. Often they played siblings.

The popular dialogue-'mere paas ma hai'- which was mouthed by Shashi in Deewar addressing Amitabh Bachchan is still an all time favourite. The dialogue is considered as one of the most iconic pieces in the history of commercial Indian cinema.

His romantic paring with many Bollywood heroines led to several super hit films.

He was born as Balbir Raj Kapoor and was the youngest son of Prithviraj Kapoor and the younger brother of iconic superstars Raj Kapoor and Shammi Kapoor. His wife Jennifer Kendal (sister of actress Felicity Kendal) had died in 1984. They had three children- Karan Kapoor, Kunal Kapoor, and Sanjana Kapoor.

He was conferred the Padmabhushan by the Indian government in 2011 but the crowning glory was just few years away. In 2015, he was awarded the 2014 Dadasaheb Phalke Award, making him the third member of his family to receive the highest award in Indian Cinema after Prithviraj Kapoor and Raj Kapoor.

Away from his world of films, Shashi Kapoor and his marriage with Jennifer Kendal was also a talk of the town in the past.

Actor Geoffrey Kendal's Shakespearean group was also present at the same time in Calcutta and Jennifer was Geoffrey's daughter. After their subsequent meeting, the couple fell in love and after facing initial opposition from the Kendals and support from sister-in-law Geeta Bali, they got married in July 1958.

The duo had worked in several films together.

They had three children: Kunal Kapoor, Karan Kapoor and Sanjana Kapoor. With wife Jennifer and actress Helen on the sets of Bombay Talkie

In an interview published in India Today, Shashi Kapoor had once said he regretted that his wife passed away a bit too soon.

"My wife going away, a bit too soon, and not being able to enjoy being a grandparent (Jennifer Kendall died in 1984). When my grandchildren come into my room each morning, I look up to wherever she may be, and say, 'See what joy they give me, if only you...'," he was quoted as saying in the interview by the magazine.

Born in the prestigious film family, Shashi considered his father Prithviraj Kapoor was his role model. With Rakhee in Baseera

Shashi told in the interview to the magazine: "My Dad (Prithviraj Kapoor). Until now, I have not met anyone I like better than my Dad and my wife."

.

(Writing by Supriyo Hazra and Sujoy Dhar)



(Images: Stills from his films from Internet)
Ottawa, Dec 4 (IBNS): Canada and US President Donald Trump's officials have discussed over the curbing phoney goods like fake iPhones and phoney Prada fashions, media reports said.

The US wants Canada to seize fake goods that are entering the US transit through Canada.

Canada has been asked to seize the goods even if they are coming from China.

According to a Canadian law, passed in 2015, officials can seize the fake imports entering the national market.

In last one year-time, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) have seized 31 shipments which amounted to a worth Rs. $600,000.

Canada, however, rebuffed several propositions made by the US including the former Obama government to seize not only fake imports transiting through Canada but also the ones meant for sale in the Canadian market.

James Moore, then Canadian Industry ministry, was quoted by CBC News: "It's a bit of a stretch for someone in the American administration  I made this clear to them  to ask the Government of Canada and the Canadian taxpayers to act as a border filter for all goods destined for the U.S. market."

The Trudeau government now on the other hand seems to compromise with the US though earlier rebuffed the latter's propositions.

Trump's trade office issued a report and it was quoted by CBC News: "The United States remains deeply concerned that Canada does not provide customs officials with the ability to detain, seize, and destroy pirated and counterfeit goods that are moving in transit or are transhipped through Canada."

(Reporting by Suman Das)




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Bry Cordell Smiley: 'Haskell is a place of inclusion'

Two-Spirit Powwow takes place February 24-25By Kevin Abourezk

Bry Cordell Smiley introduces himself in his traditional Navajo language.

He describes the clans to which he belongs, his birthright as a citizen of the Navajo Nation.

The 24-year-old is studying American Indian studies at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas.

He is learning his traditional language and culture, as well as the history of Native Americans.

His knowledge and love of his traditional tribal culture has guided him through the many challenges hes faced as a nadleehi, or two-spirit person. Born a male, Smiley now considers himself both male and female.

In some traditional Native American cultures, two-spirit people were considered healers and were vital in maintaining the balance between men and women because they carried the spirit of both genders inside them.

Today, they would typically be gay people, though not all two-spirit people are gay.

Smiley said he wants to share his understanding of two-spirit people, past and present, with others.

On February 24 and 25 in 2018 , the Haskell student plans to host a Two-Spirit powwow at the university. It will be Haskells first such powwow in its 133-year history, Smiley said.

I just want the powwow to be a celebration of inclusiveness and diversity, he said.

Two-spirit powwows have been held in other places, including in San Francisco and Montana.

A $5,000 grant from the American Indian College Fund will pay for the costs of the powwow. However, Smiley said, he doesnt plan to have dance or drum contests.

Rather, he wants the focus to be on social dancing.

When I dance, its a prayer in motion, he said. This is what I want the powwow to be.

For the two weeks prior to the event, the college will host two-spirit awareness events, including a poetry slam, open mic night and speeches. A drag show will be held the Friday evening before the powwow begins.

Smiley said the powwow wont seem much different than other powwows. However, because of the focus on two-spirit people, hes hopeful those who attend will bring a more open attitude about sexual orientation.

Its just a different demographic, he said.

Historic photo of a Navajo couple from the collection of the Museum of New Mexico, 1866. Photo: Bosque Redondo

* * *

Smiley has always identified more with females than males, and hes suffered because of that. Once, as a sophomore in high school, Smiley sent a letter to a boy who he liked who he thought was gay. In response, the boy called Smiley queer and "faggot," the latter considered an extremely derogatory term

Since then, Smiley has been called both names so many times its become humorous to him and hes usually quick to own those terms. He now challenges homophobic people who call him those names to come up with more creative insults.

Growing up in Coyote Canyon, New Mexico, Smileys parents taught him of the importance of culture and history and instilled in him a strong work ethic. Dont expect to get anything for free and work hard for the things you want, they would tell him.

Fighting for his rights and his identity came natural to him, and he now wants to help others find the courage to embrace their identities.

Smiley said hes talked to older teachers and staff at Haskell about how gay students were treated at the school in past years. Theyve told him attitudes about gay people were much different at the college 10 and 20 years ago, when most considered gay people abnormal.

But the gay students whove likely suffered the most were the schools first students, Smiley said. Those students likely were punished if they expressed their true identities, he said.

They couldnt have a voice, like how I have, he said. I just want this to be more of a celebration of those who came through (the school) who were stripped of their identity.

Even in later years, gay students lived in fear of having their true selves discovered, Smiley said. To compensate, gay students would drink a lot, and only then would they get the courage to hold hands in public, he said.

These days, gay students are much more accepted at Haskell, which has a significant population of gay students, he said. And other students have become much more informed about different types of sexual orientation, as well as more educated about the history of gay people in Native American cultures.

The Two-Spirit Powwow at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, takes place February 24-25, 2018. Image: Bry Cordell Smiley

Haskell President Venida Chenault has supported the idea for the powwow since she first learned of it, Smiley said.

When he was attending Dine College in Tsaile, Arizona, Smiley didnt wear womens clothes, but when he came to Haskell last year he immediately felt empowered to do so.

Its really nice to see that progress of people being more inclusive, he said.

He said everyone is invited to the powwow, including heterosexual people and non-Indians.

You dont have to be Indian, he said. Just come from a place of love.

Regi Black Elk, a 23-year-old Oglala Sioux student studying American Indian studies, said when he came to Haskell nearly three years ago, the school had a gay student club. However, the club ceased meeting not long after he arrived, and the school has been without such a club for nearly three years.

Black Elk, a two-spirit person, said he would like to see a gay student club once again established at Haskell.

He said hes looking forward to seeing gay people dancing at the powwow, something they dont always feel comfortable doing at other powwows.

We are relevant in todays society, he said. We will put ourselves out there in the spotlight.

Hes hopeful the two-spirit powwow in February will help generate greater awareness and acceptance of gay people.

Haskell is a place of inclusion, he said. Haskell is a safe environment, a traditional environment for our people to be who they always were.

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Apart from film promotions and events, there are a lot of things that our film stars do perfectly. From celebrating festivals to making generous donations for the betterment of the society, stars surely have their hearts at the right place.

To mark the Armed Forces Week, Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan lauded the countrys armed forces for their valor.

Agencies

SRK said that soldiers deserve our respect and gratitude.

They deserve our respect and gratitude. @RedChilliesEnt @KKRiders @vfx_redchillies @AnushkaSharma & @aanandlrai team supports them this #ArmedForcesWeek. Jai Hind!

SRK also shared a link where contributions for the Armed Forces can be made.The Raees star along with his team not only spoke about the sacrifices made by soldiers, but also the contribution of the armed forces in the well being of the country.

The Armed Forces Flag Day is celebrated on December 7. To commemorate the day, defense minister Nirmala Sitharaman launched the Armed Forces Week on Friday. She appealed the countrymen to wear armed forces flag to pay respect to the soldiers.
Security agencies intensify patrol

Security agencies have detained 284 people who were found carrying guns and explosive materials with an intent to disrupt the election process, from various parts of the country.
No matter how old we get, we are always up for a game of dumb charades, arent we? I realised this when I played a couple of rounds with my cousins last week. We decided NOT to enact popular or known movies, and went out of our way (*cough* Googled *cough*) and made sure we asked each player to enact offbeat and bizarre movies. And as it turned out, it was super fun. So here are 15 movies you can use the next time you play dumb charades. Thank us later!

1. Drohkaal

This Om Puri-starrer on fighting terrorism was even Indias entry to the Oscars a few years ago. It would take some world-class acting to make anyone guess this title.

Giphy

2. Hello! Hum Lallan Bol Rahe Hain

Rajpal Yadav is the lead in this off-beat flick and part of a complicated love triangle. A plot as complex as the title, methinks.

Inextive

3. Zulm-O-Sitam

This Shatrugan Sinha starrer was about a honest police officer accused of killing the Chief Minister. Acting it out with your friends will definitely produce more laughs than the movie did.

Giphy

4. Do Ladke Dono Kadke

This story about two petty thieves sounds an awful lot like Two Broke Girls with men in it. You could steal some serious points if you get this one right.

Giphy

5. Dilruba Tangewali

The plotline of this film is as vague as the name of this film. Were guessing it could be a spinoff of Sholay from Basantis eyes.

Giphy

6. Via Darjeeling

This movie stars the awesome Kay Kay Menonenough said!

Tablo

7. Bandook Dahej Ke Seene Par

Because f*** patriarchy.

Reaction Gif

8. Ghar Mein Ram Gali Mein Shyam

Everybody loves a rhyme and with a title like this, the laughs are guaranteed.

Tenor

9. Mehandi Ban Gayi Khoon

This Juhi Chawla-starrer got 2.5 stars out of 5. But we can guarantee that its entertaining to act out.

Giphy

10. Gyarah Hazaar Ladkiyan

Was this movie about female population in Haryana?

Tenor

11. Udhar Ka Sindoor

This Jeetendra starrer is high on melodrama and low on logic and sanity.

Giphy

12. Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai

This Naseeruddin Shah starrer has a huge cult following even today.

Imgur

13. Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana

Probably the only movie theres a slight chance you might have watched.

Tumblr

14. Murde Ki Jaan Khatre Mein

Seriously? How is that even possible?

Tenor

15. Saas Bahu Aur Sensex

Kitty parties, romance, and financial markets.This bizarrely named movie will make even the most seasoned players crash...well, like the Sensex.

Imgur
While we're all trying to make India a better country to live in, we can't deny that the ground reality is far from pleasant. Everyday women, children and even men are sexually assaulted and sadly, a huge chunk of these cases go unreported. The few times that they come to light, they make us think hard and long about the kind of society we're living in. Recently, the 67-year-old principal of Telaiya Public School in Koderma, Jharkhand sexually assaulted a 7-year-old girl.

The incident occurred on November 29th when he took the child to the washroom where he stripped her and touched her inappropriately. The victim has identified the accused from pictures shown by the detectives.

Reuters

The child was then admitted to SSKM Hospital where different tests were performed to confirm the alleged sexual assault on her. The report is awaited. After the incident, parents of other students held protests in front of the school gate today demanding immediate suspension of the accused teacher.

AFP

The worst part of this whole situation is the reaction the principal had to this incident. "Yes I did, but it wasn't such a big mistake. There was no sexual intercourse. Let me be frank, I could not even have done it, I'm old now. It was an accident."

The case has been registered under various sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).

AP

Crimes like these give us chills down our spines. We can't even begin to understand the trauma the 7-year-old girl must have undergone. It's disturbing that someone who is 67 years old doesn't understand the gravity of the situation. It's disheartening to see the future of our generations in the hands of such a callous principal. We hope that justice is served.
If you don't know what pure genius looks like, you're about to find out. A passenger travelling to Berlin filmed an easyJet engineer who was trying repair an aircraft's engine with tape. At Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Tuesday, the engineer was seen fixing the airplane, that was supposed to head for Berlin.

The pilot announced that there will be a delay in the flight and that it needs a quick fix for which a technician climbed up the engine shell and removed some tape that was already in place. He then cleaned the area to put fresh tape. It was reported that the tape had become loose during the flight due to its speed, and had rolled backwards.

Describing the video, the passenger said: "It really seems that the tape was there for mechanical reasons and not just for the looks."

The problem though was that the engineer was using speed tape to fix the issue which is used as a temporary repair material until a more permanent repair can be done.

Video Screen Grab From Newsflare

A spokesperson for the airline operator said, "EasyJet occasionally uses this high-speed metallic tape, which is always used in accordance with the approved aircraft manuals and repair processes, and in no way compromises the safety of the aircraft."
In order to create awareness about AIDS, three girls from Kerela's Malappuram performed a flash mob. Of course, the netizens had a reaction to it. It seems as though almost everything we do or don't do is being attacked by the social media police these days, and it was no different for these girls either.

Multiple videos and photos of these three dental college students dancing to the song Entammede Jimikki Kammal are being circulated on Facebook as well as Whatsapp. Needless to say, these are accompanied by comments strongly criticizing them for their public dance performance at Kottakkunnu, wearing burqas and jeans.

#WATCH: Three girls dance in a flash mob in Kerala's Malappuram (4.12.17) pic.twitter.com/niyNtIGXn5  ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2017

Just like every story, this story too has two sides to it. On one hand, people on social media are blaming and posting abusive comments, criticizing the girls, there are a few people, who are coming out in their support as well.

According to Times Of India, social media activist and medical officer in Manjeri, Dr Shimna Azees, said in an FB post that a small section of the minority is behind such absurd criticism denying individual freedom to girls. "It is very unfortunate that a section of people are considering women as only an 'object' and they should realise that abusing girls in public for the dance is also against their religious belief", she said.

ANI

Deputy District Medical Officer Malappuram, Dr Muhammed Ali said that the students performed the flash mob as a part of various AIDS awareness campaign program to educate the general public. "Not only the dental college students, but girl students from several other colleges and schools also participated in various public functions including street play and public rally organised in connection with the campaign", he said.

Nothing gives people the right to judge women - no matter what age, caste or religion - for what they choose to do or not do with their lives; be it online or offline.
In a world where the crime rate is skyrocketing, there's still some hope left, thanks to people like Martin Willis who go out of their way to save someone's life. Willis is a UK Police officer and his heroic effort to save the life of a lorry driver is what makes this story worth telling.

On Friday when Willis was on duty, he received a call about a road crash on the A1 highway in West Yorkshire. He was the first one to report at the site of the accident. The van had overturned as a result of the crash and was hanging off the bridge. The driver was inside the van and half of the lorry was swinging in the air, off the bridge.

WestYorkShirepolice.uk

"I walked on the hard shoulder to the incident and I as I did so a lorry driver, who was not involved in the incident, shouted across to say there was a chap upside down in the van," he said.

The highway was blocked and Willis constantly reassured the driver that it will all be okay.

"I told the victim not to panic and said 'we're going to get you out of there, whatever you do, don't move.' I then grabbed hold of the rear wheel and pulled inwards which helped to keep the van balanced. I was there for a good 15 minutes I think," the officer admitted.

The driver was rescued after pulling the van to safety. It took about two hours for the whole operation to be executed and the driver suffered leg injuries in the crash.

Unsplash

Twitter had the sweetest reaction and here are a few tweets:

#1

1st on the scene of this collision on the #A1M this morning and faced with a vehicle balancing over the edge of a bridge with the driver trapped! After holding on to the vehicle to stop it swaying in the wind I can't begin to desribe my relief when @WYFRS arrived on scene! pic.twitter.com/E8ilktlOl7  Motorway Martin (@WYP_PCWILLIS) December 1, 2017

#2

Hes in Leeds infirmary. Tom is my brother. Hes had both legs pinned and needs skin grafts. Hes got a long recovery but at least hes alive.  Simon (@sregan1971) December 3, 2017

#3

Your superman cape isnt in this photo though! Must have come off in the fracas!   PC Adam Pace (@PCAdamPace) December 2, 2017

#4

I beg to differ. You went well beyond your duty.  Simon (@sregan1971) December 3, 2017

Willis's spontaneity helped save the day and we can't thank him enough for proving that humanity still exists.
In a shocking incident, a school teacher in Andhra Pradesh beats up students with his slipper for not memorising a Telugu poem. The incident happened in a residential high school in the agency mandal of Addatheegala in East Godavari district.

Telugu teacher-cum hostel warden P Gandhi, who works in the residential high school in D Bhimavaram village, had told his students to memorise a poem on November 30. The next day, when Gandhi asked the students to recite the poem, they were not able to.

qz.com/Representational Image

Gandhi thrashed the students black and blue with his slippers. Following the incident, some of the teachers of the school complained to higher authorities against Gandhi.

On the direction of the authorities, assistant tribal welfare officer Jalli Shambudu visited the school and conducted an inquiry into the incident. A stern action is likely to be taken against the Telugu teacher after submission of Shambudu's report.

Representational Image

In written complaint to the East Godavari district collector, the parents of the schoolchildren said that Gandhi had beaten their wards indiscriminately with his slippers and had even threatened them saying that he will fail them in Class 10 examinations if they told anyone about the incident. The parents have also accused the headmaster of the school of taking the teacher's side with regard to the incident.
Even as Delhi Police on Saturday started an investigation into the case of a city hospital declaring two new-born babies dead when one was discovered later to be alive, the family filed an FIR making fresh allegations against the hospital.

The father of the twins, Ashish (26), states in the FIR that Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh told him that the two foetuses his six-month pregnant wife, Varsha, was carrying had only 10-15 per cent chances of survival. The hospital advised three injections costing Rs 35,000 and claimed later that the probability of survival had risen to 30 per cent. He also alleged that the hospital said the bill for keeping the surviving baby in the nursery till it was out of danger would be Rs 50 lakh.

PTI

"Max hospital made a big mistake in not carrying out proper treatment of my babies, declaring them dead while (one was) alive and packing them in a parcel," the father said in the FIR.

"On the basis of the father's complaint, we have registered the FIR under Section 308 of the Indian Penal Code for culpable homicide not amounting to murder," Dr Sagar Preet Hooda, joint commissioner (Northern Range) told TOI. "We will take the opinion of medical experts on whether the three injections were required. We are currently collecting relevant documents and checking the hospital records."

Asked by TOI for its response to the allegations, Max Healthcare stated late on Saturday night, "We have initiated a detailed enquiry, pending which the doctor concerned has been asked to proceed on immediate leave."

ALSO READ: Delhi Hospital Declares Newborn Twins Dead, Family Finds One Alive Just Before Cremation

Police sources confirmed that copies of the treatment documents were seized from Max Hospital and Aggarwal Hospital where the surviving baby is undergoing treatment. The cops have also obtained a copy of the death register of Max Hospital in which under serial number 2562, it reads: "Two foetuses of Ms Varsha were handed over to attendant family namely Praveen, a resident of Kirari, at 13.00 hrs on 30-1-2017."

PTI

Ashish, who runs a business of repairing water purifiers, said the family lives in Nihal Vihar and his 20-year-old wife suffered terrible pain on November 27. "I rushed her to the Attam Nursing home in Paschim Vihar. A day later, the nursing home referred Varsha to Max Hospital, where she was admitted around noon," he narrated.

Ashish claimed the doctors at Max told him that there were two foetuses in the womb and the chances of their survival were slim. "However, they started treatment and asked us to get three injections costing Rs 35,000, after which they said the chances had become 30 per cent," Ashish stated in the FIR.

On November 29, the doctors said Varsha needed to be operated upon after beginning to bleed. The father revealed that the first baby was delivered around 7.30am on November 30 and the second at 7.42. The first was alive at birth and the second, the doctors announced, had died.

ALSO READ: Fortis Hospital Charges Rs 18 Lakh From Family Of Dengue Patient Who Died After 15-Day Treatment

pregnancybirthbaby/Representational Image

"The doctors said that if they kept the surviving baby in the nursery, it would cost us around Rs 50 lakh. We were discussing this when the doctors informed me that the baby had died," said Ashish, according to the FIR. "They asked us for identity proof before handing over the bodies. Varsha's father, Praveen, give them his ID card." The bodies, wrapped in a polythene package, were handed over to them.

At Madhuban Chowk near Rohini, when the family was driving towards the crematorium, some members sensed movement in the polythene parcel. They opened the package to find one baby alive. "We immediately rushed to the nearby Aggarwal Hospital in Pitampura and had the baby admitted there," said Ashish. "We cremated the girl child as she was confirmed to be dead."

ALSO READ: After Fortis, Medanta Hospital Charges Rs 17 Lakh For 7-YO's Treatment Who Died After 22 Days
Vijay Mallya, who is out on a 650,000-pound bail bond over fraud and money laundering charges earlier this year, will return to Westminster Magistrates' Court in London on Monday as his extradition trial begins.

The 61-year-old businessman, who has been in self-imposed exile in the UK since March 2016 when he left India, is wanted in India on charges relating to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines defaulting on loans from various Indian banks amounting to Rs 9,000 crore.

AFP

The former Rajya Sabha member has claimed that he has "done nothing wrong" and described the allegations against him as "fabricated".

"We are keen to draw a line under all the material  evidential and non-evidential," barrister Clare Montgomery said during the last case management hearing on November 20.

The trial is set to open with opening arguments, followed by the witness statement of Dr B Humphreys, who is an aviation expert.

Others expected to give their statements for the defence include Margaret Sweeney, chief accountant at Force India Formula One racing team, Professor Lau as an expert on the Indian legal system, and Dr Alan Mitchell, a licensed medical practitioner and a former medical officer with the Scottish prison system.

ALSO READ: British Court Hearing Vijay Mallya Case, Rejects Two Extradition Requests By Indian Authorities

AFP

At a previous hearing in the Mallya case, Chief Magistrate Emma Louise Arbuthnot had also highlighted prison conditions as a concern that has been "raised in extraditions to India before.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), arguing on behalf of the Indian government, had told her that the Indian authorities have foreseen this as an issue and have been "engaged on the matter".

The CPS team, led by barrister Mark Summers who specializes in extradition cases, highlighted "excellent cooperation with the Indian authorities", who had provided detailed assurances and photographs by email relating to prison conditions where Mallya is to be held if he were to be extradited to India.

If the judge rules in favour of extradition at the end of the trial, UK home secretary Amber Rudd must order Mallya's extradition within two months. However, the case can go through a series of court appeals before the actual extradition order can be issued.

ALSO READ: UK Court To Hear Vijay Mallya Extradition Case Soon, But It Has Already Rejected 2 Indian Extradition Request

AFP

India and the UK have an Extradition Treaty dating back to 1992 but so far only one extradition has taken place from the UK to India under the arrangement, that of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel wanted in connection with the post-Godhra riots of 2002. But, unlike Mallya, he had submitted to the extradition order without a legal challenge.

Mallya, who has been based at his Hertfordshire estate called Ladywalk in the village of Tewin, around 30 miles from London, had responded with a firm "no" on being formally asked in court if he consented to be extradited to India on the charges relating to his collapsed Kingfisher Airlines.

ALSO READ: India Seeks Extradition Of Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, And Twelve Other Fugitives From The UK
India kick-started the process to build six nuclear-powered attack submarines, which will significantly boost the Navys overall strike capabilities in the face of Chinas growing military manoeuvring in the Indo- Pacific region.

It has kicked off and I will leave it at that. It is a classified project. The process has started, Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba said on Friday.

Also Read: 'Make In India' Scorpene-Class Submarine INS Kalvari Likely To Be Commissioned By November

He said the Navy will play its role in the Indo-Pacific region when the much talked about quadrilateral coalition among India, Australia, Japan and the US takes shape, reflecting the Navys readiness to play a much assertive role in the critical sea lanes.

bccl

In a major move, officials of the four countries earlier this month had set the ball rolling to pursue their common interests in the strategically important Indo-Pacific region where China has been aggressively expanding its military presence.

Also Read: Here Is Everything You Need To Know About INS Kiltan, The Latest Anti-Submarine Warship Added To The Naval Fleet

We are all aware of the prevailing security scenario in our maritime domain. The continued presence of both traditional and non-traditional threats in the maritime domain demand constant attention and robust mitigating measures, he told a press conference.

reuters

On Chinese presence in the strategically-important Gwadar port in Pakistan, he said it may be a security challenge for India in future.

It will be a security challenge. We will have to look at it and mitigate, he said.
Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba today said a request for proposal (RFP) is likely to be issued by mid-2018 for the procurement of 57 multi-role combat fighter jets for the Navy's aircraft carrier.

"Hopefully we will be able to issue the RFP by middle of next year," he said.

BCCL

Four aircraft manufacturers have shown interest in the project.

The Navy chief also said the first Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC I) will be ready by 2020 and the Navy was looking for deck based combat capable fighter aircraft for it.

He said the naval version of the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. cannot operate from deck and that is why the Navy was looking for other options.

"I need a deck based combat capable fighter by 2020 for IAC I. In present state, LCA Navy cannot be operated from deck," he said.

ALSO READ: Oldest Aircraft Carrier In The World, INS Viraat To Be Made A Tourist Spot In Andhra Pradesh

PTI

The Navy chief also said that the "form and fit" of the second indigenous aircraft carrier have been finalised and that it will be a 65,000-tonne vessel.

Replying to a question, he said there will not be any financial constraints in procuring 57 new deck based fighter jets.

At the same time, he indicated that declining capital budget for the Navy was a matter of concern. He said he had raised the issue with the defence ministry.

ALSO READ: US Just Agreed To Give India Electromagnetic Launch System For INS Vishal Aircraft Carrier
The national capital has recorded poor visibility in several parts on Monday as smog continues to engulf and choke Delhi, even as the mercury settled at 8.3 degrees Celsius. Read More

Here are the top stories of the day:

While H1B Visa Struggles Continue, US All Set To Implement A New 'Start-Up' Visa

A US district court judge ruled on Friday that the Trump administration cannot delay an Obama-era immigration rule, which enables eligible foreign entrepreneurs to temporarily stay in the US to nurture and grow their startups. Read More

Locals In This UK Village Where Vijay Mallya Is Living Consider Him To Be An Asset

Locals in the picturesque village where fugitive business-owner Vijay Mallya resides say they don't want him to be extradited. Read More

After 7 Years Of Ban, Google Returns To China To Help Chinese Companies

Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO on Monday made it clear that the search engine is returning to China. He also said that it is already helping Chinese companies gain global access. Read More

Senior Citizens Help Railways To Save Rs 40 Crore By Giving Up Subsidy On Tickets

In a bid to reduce burden over on the Indian Railways, around 8.60 lakh senior citizens have given up subsidy that was given to them. The 'Give it up' campaign was started in July this year in the wake of a huge loss of Rs 35,000 crore per year that railways had to suffer. Read More

Bihar Minister Sets Precedent By Setting Up An Organ Donation Stall Instead Of Lavish Food Counters At His Son's Wedding

At least 150 attendees at Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi's elder son Utkarsh's nuptial on Sunday pledged to donate their organs. Read More
Britains Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has discovered that fugitive billionaire Vijay Mallya whos on run after syphoning off nearly Rs 9,000 crore of Indian taxpayers bought the plush London residence, he calls Lady Walk with Indian taxpayers money.

In a story exclusively done by IndiaToday, the details of the deal have been accessed. Mallya paid a hefty amount of Rs 39.7 crore from the Kingfisher Airline's HSBC account in London to a British company, Continental Administrative Services, which, "Is having ownership interests in the property at Lady Walk, London, the present address of Mr Mallya", as per a confidential note prepared by the CBI.

The SFO have shared the details with CBI. Lady Walk is the plush Hertfordshire property that belonged to F1 champion Lewis Hamilton.
Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO on Monday made it clear that the search engine is returning to China. He also said that it is already helping Chinese companies gain global access.

In 2010, Google was shut down in China following a showdown with the government over censor policies. Since then Google, Gmail, Youtube and its other products are banned in the world's second-largest economy.

"A lot of work Google does is to help Chinese companies", the 45-year-old Google CEO, who has a BTech degree from IIT Kharagpur, said at a state-run global internet conference at the Chinese city of Wuzen.

reuters

The conference was also addressed by Apple CEO Tim Cook and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"Many small and medium-sized businesses in China take advantage of Google to get their products to many other countries outside of China," Pichai told the meeting, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

After the ban, Google subsequently shifted its operations to Hong Kong.

In its absence, Chinese firms like Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com emerged most powerful players in China and abroad.

reuters

Google and its products can be accessed in China through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) over which Beijing has stepped up a crackdown in recent times.

Apple this year agreed to the Chinese government's requests to remove dozens of virtual private network (VPN) apps services that allow Chinese users to access blocked websites from its local App Store.

Skype, the calling app, was removed from its mainland App Store this autumn.

reuters

Pichai's attendance at the state-sponsored internet meeting came after China recently lifted the ban on Google translation services.

Besides Google, a number of global social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter remain banned in China over fears that their presence would open-up to millions of China's social media users marginalizing the official media.

reuters

In his address, Cook said "the theme of this conference - developing a digital economy for openness and shared benefits - is a vision we at Apple share", adding that Apple "is proud to have worked alongside many of our partners in China to help build a community that will join a common future in cyberspace".

The World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, near Shanghai, is an annual gathering of mainly Chinese internet officials and internet company executives as well as bureaucrats from developing countries.

The previous three conferences in 2014, 2015 and 2016 were not attended by top US tech executives including Cook and Pichai, the Post report said.

The Chinese government uses the event to pursue its argument that its censorship and regulation of the internet does not harm the development of technology and business prosperity.

Cook is a frequent visitor to China and was last in the country five weeks ago.

reuters

The Apple chief executive's presence indicates the importance of the Chinese market for the iPhone maker, even though Apple's market share of China's smartphone market is shrinking.

In his address, Xi spoke of "cyber sovereignty".

Xi said that online developments were raising many new challenges to sovereignty and security, and China was "willing to work with the international community to respect cyberspace sovereignty and promote partnerships".
A US district court judge ruled on Friday that the Trump administration cannot delay an Obama-era immigration rule, which enables eligible foreign entrepreneurs to temporarily stay in the US to nurture and grow their startups.

America's doors are open again to foreign entrepreneurs under the International Entrepreneur Rule (IER), which in common parlance is referred to as the 'startup visa' route.

Finalised by the Obama administration, IER enabled qualified (based on prescribed criteria) entrepreneurs to obtain immigration 'parole'that is to temporarily enter and stay in the US despite not having a visa or green card.

ap/representational image

Commonly, IER is known as the startup visa, but it is actually a permit to foreign entrepreneurs to stay in the US for two and a half years with the possibility of a similar extension.

Also Read: US's Own Figures Refute Claims That H-1B Visas Applicants Are Not Highly Qualified

The IER was to come into effect from July 17, 2017; however, less than a week before that, the US Department of Homeland Security announced that it would be delayed to March 14, 2018 and that it intended to rescind the final rule.

As was reported by TOI in its edition dated October 6, this action of the DHS at the behest of the Trump administration prompted a group of entrepreneurs including some from India, along with the US-based National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) to file a lawsuit in the US Federal Court.

ap/representational image

The plaintiffs argued that because the DHS did not solicit advance comments from the public on the delay, it violated the clear requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. Hardships that the delay caused to the plantiffs were also pointed out. In addition, they contended that the US would miss out on the economic activity that would have been generated as result of these new businesses.

Also Read: IITians' American Dream Gets Shattered By Trump's New Visa Policy, As Job Focus Shifts To EU & Japan

The order pronounced by district judge James E Boasberg, on December 1, a copy of which is available with TOI, now compels the DHS (the Citizenship and Immigration Services wing falls in its ambit) to begin accepting applications from foreign entrepreneurs.

Paul Hughes, lead counsel for the plantiffs and partner at Mayer Brown, a law firm, told TOI: "The court's order confirms that while American administrations may change, basic legal requirements ensure agency transparency, guarantee public participation, and prevent reactionary, ill-considered policy changes. The court has held that the Trump administration's delay of the IER was unlawful."

bccl/representational image

The stakes were high for all foreign entrepreneurs and US investors and not just the plantiffs. Traditionally the US has been known to provide a conducive ecosystem for startups. To illustrate, a 2016 study by the National Foundation for American Policy pointed out that immigrants have started more than half (44 of 87) startups in the US that are valued at $1 billion or more. Fourteen of these startups were founded by Indians.

Also Read: Trump Takes War On H1B Visas Further, Makes Them More Difficult To Renew

As the recent order points out, since the US does not have any dedicated work visa for foreign entrepreneurs, the DHS had promulgated the IER to encourage them to set up and develop startup entities with high growth potential. Attracting foreign entrepreneurs would benefit the US economy through increased business activity, innovation and dynamism was the basis of formulating this rule.

In an official statement, Bobby Franklin, president and CEO of NVCA, referred to the order as a significant victory for talented foreign entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the US economy. "The facts speak for themselvesthe US economy has long thrived on the contributions and innovations of immigrant entrepreneurs and we are a better country as a result," he said.

reuters/representational image

"The order requires immediate implementation of the IER. We anticipate that qualified entrepreneurs will immediately begin applying for parole, so that they can get to work in the United States, build new businesses, and create new jobs for the economy as a whole," summed up Hughes.

What the plantiffs had contended

NVCA: The association had repeatedly urged the Trump administration to maintain the IER and expeditiously implement it. NVCA's members were harmed by the delay in IER. These members have invested, will invest or would consider investing in startups that have founders who could apply for entry and stay in the US under IER. The delay puts these investments in jeopardy and chills potential future investments.

Also Read: With Trump Making Visa Rules Tougher, Here's What You Should Do To Get Entry Into The US

Startups and their founders: Omni Labs, which provides digital platforms to its customers for data visualisation and analytics, had set up a US entity in 2015. However, two of its foundersNishant Srivastava and Vikram Tiwari (both Indians) who would have otherwise qualified under IER, were not able to operate from the US.

reuters/representational image

Thus an office had to be set up in Canada. In addition to operational challenges and increased costs, as the founders were not based in the US it could also result in difficulties in obtaining funds from US investors the company had contended.

Similar operational difficulties, including of not being able to launch their digital platform in the US and challenges relating to obtaining additional US investments were also expressed by Indian-origin brothers Atma and Anand Krishna, co-founders of LotusPay.

Conditions under International Entrepreneur Rule:

1. A new startup entity must be set up in US within 5 years of the application

2. The foreign entrepreneur can remain in the US for up to 30 months to grow his startup. A further stay of up to 30 months could also be granted

3. The applicant is required to have an ownership of at least 10% in the startup and also play an active role in the business

4. The startup needs to have substantial potential for rapid growth and job creation

5. A minimum investment of $250,000 is required from qualified US investors or at least $100,000 in grants from US government entities
While Bitcoins are currently making a lot of people rich, some are getting much richer than others. Particularly some like the notorious Winklevoss twins.

The two brothers, known for suing Mark Zuckerberg, who they claim stole their idea for Facebook years ago, just became the first Bitcoin billionaires thanks to the cryptocurrency shooting through an all-time high valuation of US $11,400 for each bitcoin. So here are a few things you need to know about the Winklevoss duo.

Reuters

ALSO READ: How One Tech Writer Threw Away $14.8 Million Dollars In Bitcoin Along With His Old Hard Drive

1. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (born Aug 21, 1981) considered themselves Internet entrepreneurs, while attending Harvard between 2000 to 2004. They say they had the first idea for a Facebook-like social network called Harvard Connect, an idea they later sued Zuckerberg for stealing later in 2004.

2. The two eventually won a $65 million payout from Facebook in 2008. In March 2013, they used $11 million of that to buy a huge cache of Bitcoin.

3. As part of a risky bet on the fledgling company, the Winklevii bought around 100,000 bitcoins roughly one percent of the entire worlds finite supply. At the time, each coin was worth $120.

4. The Winklevoss brothers were champion rowers, even competing on behalf of the US at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

5. When Bitcoins value grew to a staggering $11,395 last week, the two became the first high profile Bitcoin billionaires in the world. The only other known Bitcoin wallet with that amount belongs to the mysterious faceless creator of the cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto.

6. The twins have reportedly never sold any part of their Bitcoin hoard, instead reportedly preferring to hold out in the hopes of launching an exchange-traded fund in New York.

7. In March 2014 the twins reportedly purchased seats on the first flight of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic shuttle using their Bitcoin profits.

ALSO READ: Everything You Need To Know About Bitcoin, Now That It's Surged Past $10,000 Per Coin
This years Supercomputing Conference (SC17) in Denver included a very interesting keynote about the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project. Its now available online, and I highly recommend watching it. SKA is an extraordinary project that will stretch our ability to peer deeper into the universe thanks, in part, to the application of unprecedented computing power.

Optical telescopes date to 1608, but the first radio telescope didnt appear until 1931. The worlds largest single-aperture optical telescope is the GTC (Gran Telescopio Canarias), which has a total collecting area of a little less than 79 square meters. The worlds largest single-aperture radio telescope is the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). It has a total collecting area of 71,000 square meters.

The Square Kilometer Array is an international project that aims to have a collecting area of 1,000,000 square meters in the future. Construction is expected to take place through 2030, and observations are slated to start in the early 2020s. Instead of a single aperture design, the telescope will eventually use thousands of dishes and up to a million antennas to monitor the sky in unprecedented detail, and survey the entire sky much faster than any system currently in existence.

South Africas Karoo region and Western Australias Murchison Shire were chosen as co-hosting locations for many scientific and technical reasons, including the atmospherics above the desert sites (and because of radio quietness, these being some of the remotest locations on Earth). The Karoo desert will host the core of the high and mid-frequency dishes, ultimately extending over the African continent. The Murchison Shire will host the low-frequency antennas.

The bulk of the SKA will be built in two main phases, between 2019 and the late 2020s. The first phase (SKA1) will involve testing the full system in a proof of concept manner. For SKA1, Australia will host the low-frequency instrument with more than 500 stations, each containing around 250 individual antennas. South Africa will host an array of some 200 dishes, incorporating the 64-dish MeerKAT precursor telescope. SKA2 will see the completion of the telescope arrays at both sites and become fully operational in the late 2020s, by which time the SKA will consist of about 2,000 high- and mid-frequency dishes and aperture arrays and a million low-frequency antennas.

James Reinders

Comparing SKAs first phase (SKA1) with the ability of

other radio telescopes. Image credit: SKA Organization.

Its exciting to think about how radio telescopes let us see things weve never seen before. I cant help but think about the gravitational wave detection that I mentioned in my prior post mentioning the LIGO presentation, which helps measure another way to learn about the universe we live in. Both of these extraordinary projects rely on enormous computing power to make it possible to see more of the universe.

Download your free copy of Intel Parallel Studio XE here
Chart of the Day: PACCAR - Keeps on Truckin' Barchart - 5 minutes ago The Chart of the Day belongs to the truck manufacturer PACCAR (PCAR). I found the stock by sorting the Russell 3000 Index stocks first by the most frequent number of new highs in the last month and having... PCAR : 103.40 (+0.60%)

MH17 judgment day: Verdicts due against 4 suspects at trial AP - 1 hour ago A Dutch court is passing judgment on three Russians and a Ukrainian charged in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine and the deaths of all 298 passengers and crew on board $SPX : 3,958.79 (-0.83%) $DOWI : 33,553.83 (-0.12%) $IUXX : 11,699.09 (-1.45%)

Retail Sales Torpedoes Markets - huh? Market Tea Leaves - 1 hour ago Yesterday retail sales that was reported beat expectation, yet the markets faltered. Read on to learn why...

Elizabeth Holmes faces judgment day for her Theranos crimes AP - Thu Nov 17, 5:01AM CST A federal judge on Friday will decide whether disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes should serve a lengthy prison sentence for duping investors and endangering patients while peddling a bogus blood-testing... $SPX : 3,958.79 (-0.83%) $DOWI : 33,553.83 (-0.12%) $IUXX : 11,699.09 (-1.45%)
Although the number of physician dispensed prescriptions declined considerably from just a few years ago, the workers compensation industry continues to battle an adapting market seeking to maintain high prices by changing drug strength and formulations.

The effect of physician dispensed pharmaceuticals and drug compounding on workers compensation systems nationwide was highlighted recently during a session hosted by the National Conference of Insurance Legislators Workers Compensation Insurance Committee at its annual meeting held in Phoenix.

According to Kathy Fisher, assistant director of external engagement at the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI), a 2017 study examining physician dispensing across 26 states revealed that both prescribing frequency and pricing decreased in all the states with reforms and even some without reforms.

The study examined 2011-2014 data, an important time frame during which reforms were instituted in several states. Twenty-two states have reforms in place.

Fisher outlined the two types of reforms instituted:

Price-focused reforms  For high price, repackaged drugs, caps instituted at the wholesale price.

Limiting reforms  Institutes restrictions to a certain type of drug or for a certain time period.

According to Fisher, the study examined prices, frequency of prescribing and cost share, relative to all prescription drug costs to uncover trends. It compared data between reform and non-reform states, as well.

Some findings:

In Florida, the number of prescriptions of Ibuprofen/Naproxen increased due to the introduction of a new product.

Prices were static or increased in non or pre-reform states.

In all post-reform states, there was a reduction in physician dispensing. For example, in South Carolina, there was a 63 percent reduction. In Tennessee and Indiana, physician dispensing went down by 23 percent.

Fisher said there was a significant decrease in cost share of physician dispensed drugs to all prescription drugs in many reform states.

The states with the most physician dispensed drugs  California, Florida and Illinois  saw a significant increase in new drug strengths and formulations of certain existing drugs, Fisher said. This offset any other decreases. In these states, 54 percent to 64 percent of all total prescription payments were to physician dispensers. While many of the reforms were aimed at high-priced, repackaged drugs, its likely that costs didnt go down in these states, Fisher said, because manufacturers came up with new formulations and drug strengths.

Some examples of new drug strengths or formulations:

7.5 mg cyclobenzaprine HCL (Flexeril)

150 mg extended release Tramadol HCL (Ultram)

2.5-325 mg Hydrocodone- Acetaminophen (Vicodin) (2.5 -Lowest dose, highest cost)

Lidocaine-menthol (new formulation of a pain patch).

The changes in drug strength and formulations reveal just how adaptable the supply chain is, said Joseph Paduda, principal of Health Strategy Associates. The only solution, he said is to cut off repackaging. The manufacturer can set whatever price it wants, he added, noting the only reason they do that is to make money.

In states with limiting reforms, Fisher said there was a 12 percent decrease in opioid physician-dispensed drugs in Kentucky, with similar decreases noted in Indiana and Tennessee.

Because opioid prescriptions dropped dramatically after the reforms, Paduda said the narcotics should have never been considered.

What that said to me is they should have never been prescribed in the first place, said Paduda, a firm supporter of allowing employers the ability to direct injured workers to a specific network of pharmacies to combat physician dispensing and drug compounding issues.

Texas House Member Tom Oliverson, an anesthesiologist, commented that the problem is systematic and widespread, and much bigger than a bunch of greedy physicians. He said that because quality of care is measured based on lowering pain, work needs to be done to change that philosophy within the entire healthcare system.

Bad policy is what started all of this, Oliverson said.

Paduda focused on drug compounding. He noted that while physician dispensing and compounding are different issues, they are both driven by the same financial motivation.

He explained that drug compounding is the preparation, mixing, assembling, packaging or labeling of a drug. There are valid reasons for using compounding drugs  patients that may be allergic to a binder in standard medication, patients with swallowing issues and children who may require a smaller dose. According to Paduda, compounded drugs account for less than 1 percent of prescriptions in the country.

Although valid reasons may exist for their use, there is currently little testing or oversight of compounded drugs.

Workers compensation systems are seeing a rise in dermal absorption compounded drugs, something Paduda said is potentially dangerous and likely ineffective. He has seen prices range between $300 to $21,000 for compounded medication. Many states have no control over price or the number of scripts, he added. To get around bans and restrictions, compounding kits are being created for physicians to mix and dispense topical medication to patients.

Some possible solutions, he said, include placing reimbursement limits per script or per ingredient, capping the number of ingredients or the total cost per script. Other ideas include allowing employers a retrospective review, with the option to deny coverage for a medication, allowing preauthorization subject to certain requirements and allowing employers the ability to direct injured workers to a network of specified pharmacies.

Topics Workers' Compensation Drugs
Summit Airs plane lands in Manang

Remote Manang district has been reconnected by air after two years with Summit Air recently conducting a charter flight to Humde Airport. The Czech-made Let L-410 carried eight foreigners and two Nepalis.
A California insurtech startup with a new cyber product has launched to offer brokers and their clients what it calls redesigned insurance, with cyber security expertise at its core.

Mountain View, Calif.-based At-Bay launched out of stealth mode late last month along with the announcement that it has $6 million from a seed funding round led by LightSpeed Venture Partners, with the participation of Shlomo Kramer and LocalGlobe, and that the firm has the backing of The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co.

According to Rotem Iram, CEO and founder of At-Bay, the firm is offering a proactive risk management service to go along with insurance coverage. A company that buys a cyber policy will be scanned by At-Bay and monitored for weaknesses that hackers may be able to expose, he said.

We have expert security researchers who are assessing in real-time how risk is changing, said Iram, who was formerly the chief operating officer of the cyber security practice for K2 Intelligence.

He said the firm is constantly changing its algorithms to be able to price policies based on how they believe next years risk will look for a company instead of relying on past events like traditional insurance models do.

We believe were building the infrastructure for a risk organization for the 21st century to allow us to better understand risk, Iram said. The insurance product is only the start of the relationship.

The Hartford Steam Boiler provides the capacity and paper for the policy, and the product is sold through brokers to clients. They are selling up to a $10 million single-limit comprehensive standalone cyber policy, which has all the elements of standard cyber policy, like data breach, business interruption, financial fraud, extortion.

The firm is starting to offer polices in California, and its licensed to sell in Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Washington.

The focus is on middle-market companies with policies from $3 to $10 million in single limits.

Iram said premiums will vary depending on a companys cyber security measures in place, its software and its risk of an attack, and that the value-added risk management service doesnt necessarily mean companies will be paying higher premiums.

The firm already has a dozen clients in pipeline, with several policies set to be written, he said.

According to Iram, At-Bay uses software to scan companies from the outside in, then offers fixes to potential cyber issues, and supplies experts on demand to help.

The firm has built a reconnaissance engine that Iram said is equivalent to a nation states reconnaissance.

He said this software engine enables the firm to discover vulnerabilities in a manner thats similar to how sophisticated hackers probe cyberspace for victims.

The reconnaissance engine is contextualized to find the fingerprint of every company within information out there on the Internet, he said.

Its basically very much like what a hacker would do in the first reconnaissance phase of an attack, Iram added.

The firm is actively promoting the product to brokers as an intuitive, digital platform which combines its insurance product with risk insights to help them start a conversation with their clients on matters like security and financial exposure, and offer case studies and benchmark data.

We believe that brokers are the key to unlock the value of this for clients, Iram said.

He said brokers can input the name of a potential client and generate risk scores, and a financial exposure calculator they can share.

The product is free for brokers to use. Iram didnt offer details on the commission structure, but said it is standard for selling cyber products.

Market standard commissions for retail brokers, he said when asked to talk about commissions. Its not better or worse.

Iram said that with the initial research and development phase complete, the plans are to use the $6 million in seed funding to go to market and build up the firms sales force.

Topics Cyber Agencies InsurTech Tech
Florida insurance regulators have placed workers compensation carrier Guarantee Insurance Co. in receivership.

According to documents from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR), the company was materially under-reserved at year end 2016 and consented to being placed in receivership on Nov 13, 2017.

Guarantee Insurance Co. (GIC) provides workers compensation insurance in more than 31 states and D.C. and is based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

In a letter to the Florida Department of Financial Services (DFS) Division of Rehabilitation and Liquidation, Florida Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier said the companys assets were insufficient to pay its outstanding obligations by $236,775, as of June 30, 2017. OIR placed the company under administrative supervision on Aug. 18, 2017, and told Insurance Journal last month it maintained on-site staff to monitor operations during this time.

The appointed actuary working with GIC submitted a revised actuarial opinion to OIR in November, stating the company was materially under-reserved at year end 2016.

Altmaiers letter to DFS dated Nov. 17 states the companys insolvency renders its further transaction of insurance hazardous  .

OIR also claims in its letter that GIC knowingly filed a false financial statement with regulators when it reported collateral for unauthorized reinsurance as a liability for funds held by GIC under reinsurance treaties in the amount of $144.6 million as of Dec. 31, 2016. The letter states that GIC booked and availed itself of reinsurance credit at a time that it knew that it did not have sufficient cash and invested assets to cover this liability.

According to the letter, the company has systematically transferred funds in the amount of at least $15.7 million between 2016 and June 2017 to GIC owner Steve Mariano. OIR said the diverted funds could have otherwise been used by GIC to increase its surplus and be available for the payment of policyholder claims.

These transfers were made with no documented business purpose and no discernable benefit to GIC and [OIR] has deemed them detrimental to GIC, the letter states.

OIR added that it has identified other transactions involving parties with known association to Mr. Mariano that have been harmful to GIC.

Mariano is also the majority owner of Patriot National, a national provider of technology and outsourcing products for insurance companies also headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It owns various insurance-related enterprises, including Patriot Risk Services, Patriot Captive Management and Patriot Underwriters, Inc.  a national insurance program administrator. Patriot National is also an affiliate of workers compensation carrier Ashmere Insurance.

According to GICs June 30 quarterly statement included in OIRs receivership filing, GIC owns 2.8 million shares of Patriot National with an approximate investment of 10.56 percent of Patriot Nationals total outstanding shares, valued at $6 million.

Patriot National has had a tumultuous year as well. Mariano stepped down as its president, CEO and chairman of the board in July. The board said Mariano would still serve in a consulting role and work with its special committee of independent directors to explore and review strategic alternatives for Patriot National, which it announced it was exploring earlier this year.

At the end of 2016, a Delaware court issued a temporary restraining order against Patriot National after a class action stockholder lawsuit was filed by Hudson Bay, one of its largest shareholders. Before that, Patriot Nationals board rejected a $475 million buyout offer from Ebix Inc.

In September of this year, Patriot National was notified by the New York Stock Exchange that it was not in compliance with the NYSEs continued listing standards and was subject to suspension and delisting procedures. In October, the company received an extension for continued listing and trading of its common stock and has until March 15, 2018, to file its annual report for 2016 and the first six months of 2017.

Patriot National announced Nov. 17 it would lay off 250 employees because of its deteroriating financial condition in a forbearance agreement filed with the SEC.

Representatives of Patriot National did not respond to Insurance Journals requests for comment on GIC.

Karen Kees, OIR deputy director of Communications, said

OIR has been working with DFS, other state insurance departments and state guaranty funds on the GIC transition.

The primary goal of this multi-agency collaboration is to ensure the continued payment of claims to injured workers, Kees said in a statement to Insurance Journal.

Topics Carriers Florida Workers' Compensation
Ten people died and five were injured in a fire early Friday [Dec. 1] in a northern Chinese port city where scores were killed in an explosion two years ago.

The fire department in Tianjin said the blaze broke out at 4 a.m. in a mixed residential-office building and was extinguished in less than three hours. It said the cause was unknown but that one individual is being held as part of the investigation. The official Xinhua News Agency said materials used for interior decoration are believed to have contributed to the blaze.

At a briefing Friday, a city official expressed condolences to the families of the victims and said a city-wide inspection would be conducted to prevent similar accidents.

We feel great sorrow for such accident, and I, as the deputy mayor in charge of urban construction and management, have undeniable responsibility, said Sun Wenkui, deputy mayor of Tianjin.

In 2015, an explosion traced to improperly stored chemicals killed at least 173 people in Tianjin, which lies on the Bohai Sea coast about an hour east of Beijing.

China suffers frequent deadly fires and industrial accidents, often blamed on negligence.

Official safety crackdowns have improved conditions in some areas, but many companies still cut corners.

Related:

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Topics China
Britains cyber security agency has told government departments not to use antivirus software from Moscow-based firm Kaspersky Lab amid concerns about Russian snooping.

Ciaran Martin, head of the National Cyber Security Centre, said: Russia is acting against the U.K.s national interest in cyberspace.

In a letter dated Friday to civil service chiefs, he said Russia seeks to target U.K. central government and the U.K.s critical national infrastructure. He advised that a Russia-based provider should never be used for systems that deal with issues related to national security.

The agency said its not advising the public at large against using Kasperskys popular antivirus products.

Martin said British authorities are holding talks with Kaspersky about developing checks to prevent the transfer of U.K. data to the Russian state.

Kaspersky has denied wrongdoing and says it doesnt assist Russian cyber espionage efforts.

In September, the U.S. government barred federal agencies from using Kaspersky products because of concerns about the companys ties to the Kremlin and Russian spy operations.

News reports have since linked Kaspersky software to an alleged theft of cyber security information from the U.S. National Security Agency.

Britain has issued increasingly strong warnings about Russias online activity. Martin said last month that Russian hackers had targeted the U.K.s media, telecommunications and energy sectors in the past year.

U.S. authorities are investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and some British lawmakers have called for a similar probe into the U.K.s European Union membership referendum.

Prime Minister Theresa May said last month that Russia was weaponizing information and meddling in elections to undermine the international order.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics USA Cyber Russia Uk
CVS Health Corp. will buy Aetna Inc. for about $67.5 billion, creating a healthcare giant that will have a hand in everything from insurance to the corner drugstore.

CVS will pay $207 a share for Aetna, with $145 a share in cash and the rest in stock, the companies said in a statement Sunday. Thats a 29 percent premium to Aetnas share price on Oct. 25, the day before the companies were reported to be in talks.

The deal is among the biggest healthcare mergers of the past decade, combining the largest U.S. drugstore chain with the third-biggest health insurer. CVS also manages drug benefits plans for employers and insurers, a business that could help steer some of Aetnas 22 million customers into CVS drugstores when they fill a prescription. The deal will give Aetnas insurance plans a closer on-the-ground tie to where customers get care.

Including CVSs assumption of Aetnas debt, the deal will be valued at $78 billion. Its expected to close in the second half of 2018, the companies said.

We're bringing health care to where people live and work.

In a joint interview, CVS Chief Executive Officer Larry Merlo and Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said combining the companies would help CVS expand a variety of retail medical services, from vision care to nutrition advice to audiology, making basic care more convenient and less costly for consumers.

Aetna will be operated as a separate business unit, and any new services will be designed to appeal broadly to customers of other insurance companies as well, the executives said.

The immediate financial benefits of the deal are projected to be relatively modest. The companies said they expect $750 million in synergies, and profit improvements in the low-to-mid single digits the second full year after the merger is completed. The companies are betting on longer-term profit from reshaping how their customers get care, by creating what the executives are calling 10,000 new front doors for the healthcare system at CVSs stores and clinics.

Think of these stores as a hub of a new way of accessing healthcare services across America, Merlo said in the joint interview. Were bringing health care to where people live and work.

The deal will be financed with a mix of cash and debt. Barclays Plc, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. have committed to provide $49 billion of financing, the companies said.

Amazon Lurks

CVS and Aetna are joining hands as the health sector is looking over the horizon at Amazon.com Inc., and how the Internet retailer could shake up the business of buying, distributing and selling drugs and medical products if it gets into health care. The retail industry has been battered by the online giant. Amazon hasnt revealed its plans.

One of the problems with the healthcare system is its so fragmented and theres so little coordination, said Steve Kraus, who invests in health firms at Bessemer Venture Partners. A better vertically integrated, less-siloed system is a good thing in my mind.

Merlo, the chief executive of CVS, disputed the idea that the deal was a defensive move against Amazons possible entry into the pharmacy business.

This transaction is really about growth, it is about expansion, it is not about contraction, Merlo said.

The deal could also set off a new round of takeovers as CVS and Aetnas competitors look at the reshaped landscape. On Nov. 30, Express Scripts Holding Co.s top executive said the company would be open to a deal at the right price, though wasnt actively looking for one.

We dont need to sell to be very successful in the future, but we are always open to others who may all of sudden conclude they want what we have, Express Scripts CEO Tim Wentworth said in an interview. He also mentioned the possibility of partnering with Amazon on an online-pharmacy arrangement.

More Deals?

Express Scripts is just one company in a universe of independent drug plans, insurers and supply-chain middlemen.

WellCare Health Plans Inc., Humana Inc. and Centene Corp. could become merger targets after the CVS-Aetna deal, according to Matthew Borsch, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets. Drug distributors like Cardinal Health Inc. or McKesson Corp., and retailers such as Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. could also face pressure to find partners.

CVS, which operates about 9,700 retail stores and 1,100 walk-in medical clinics, has been moving beyond its drugstore roots for years. In 2007, it bought pharmacy-benefits manager Caremark Rx  a business that made up almost half of the Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based companys operating profit in the third quarter. In 2014, CVS stopped selling cigarettes and added Health to its name.

The biggest U.S. health insurer, UnitedHealth Group Inc., is also the most diversified. United owns doctor clinics and an outpatient surgery chain, and has a pharmacy-benefits management, called OptumRx, built on the acquisition of Catamaran Corp. in 2015.

Potential Obstacle

Consolidation is picking up among healthcare suppliers and administrators, as insurers seek more control over how their consumers get care. But two proposed megamergers among insurers  including a deal between Aetna and Humana Inc.  were blocked this year on antitrust grounds, leading the companies to look beyond rival insurers for potential deals.

The CVS-Aetna deals antitrust prospects may depend on which U.S. regulator is tasked with reviewing it, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jennifer Rie. The Federal Trade Commission has been less critical of tie-ups among companies in adjacent businesses, known as vertical consolidation. The Justice Department, on the other hand, last month sued to block the merger of AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Inc., a vertical deal.

Michael Newshel, an analyst at Evercore ISI, said the DOJ effort to block the AT&T-Time Warner deal does raises concerns but a CVS-Aetna deal does have a path forward. Aetna would likely need to divest some or all of its Medicare drug plan business, he said.

In the joint interview, the CVS and Aetna executives declined to comment on whether they might have to divest parts of the Medicare drug business. But Bertolini said the companies are prepared to work with regulators to do what it takes to get the deal approved.

We are obviously going to get some scrutiny. We are prepared to deal with whatever comes along to make this work, said Bertolini.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Carriers USA Medical Professional Liability Amazon Drugs
The Trump administrations proposed $12 billion initiative to reduce future flood damage met with skepticism in Congress, as lawmakers warned against diverting emergency funding away from hurricane survivors.

Weve got folks who are suffering, said Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican congressman from Florida and chairman of the House panel responsible for that funding. Weve got to deal with that right now.

That skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans on the House spending panel underscores the headwinds facing efforts to reform the countrys approach to disaster policy. Three months after Hurricane Harvey struck Texas, beginning one of the worst strings of storms and wildfires in U.S. history, the Trump administration has called for sweeping changes to storm recovery, flood insurance and other policies.

But theres little appetite in Congress for making changes. The administrations calls to overhaul the taxpayer-funded and heavily indebted National Flood Insurance Program have been largely ignored in the Senate, which has failed to act on a House bill passed last month. The program will lapse on Dec. 8 unless both chambers vote to reauthorize it.

As outlined by Trumps budget office last month, the $12 billion competition to curtail future flood risks would award money to communities that have been hit by floods and want to pursue new or unconventional approaches to reduce their exposure to future flooding. It was a concept first tried on a smaller scale under President Barack Obama.

The money would come from the administrations $44 billion emergency budget request for the recovery from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. The administration said examples could include large-scale buyouts of homeowners, disaster resistant building codes and elevating buildings.

HUD Mission

Members of a House Appropriations panel expressed concerns Friday to Neal Rackleff, assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which would award the money. Preventing flood damage is just not the mission at HUD, Diaz-Balart said.

Why would the White House ask for $12 billion to fund a nationwide competition when it had yet to address the unmet needs in Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands following Hurricane Maria, asked Nita Lowey, the New York congresswoman who is the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.

That complaint drew rare bipartisan agreement. It makes no sense to divert funds to long-term projects when those in Houston are still dealing with the flood damage from Hurricane Harvey, said John Culberson, a Republican who represents the Houston area.

Dont experiment with a new program on us please, he told Rackleff.

Shift Responsibility

Even the administration has hesitated to make reforms that dont require action by Congress. In August, Brock Long, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, expressed support for a regulatory change that would shift responsibility to state and local governments for preparing for extreme weather. FEMA has yet to unveil that plan.

Congress and the administration may yet decide to implement some reforms. On Thursday, the House infrastructure committee approved a bill to overhaul federal disaster recovery spending. And the Senate could still pass flood insurance reform before the Dec. 8 deadline.

Still, advocates for changing U.S. disaster policy say the obstacles are significant, even in a year when the costs of inaction were made so evident.

There is widespread recognition  and even agreement  on the need for reforms, Rob Moore, an expert on disaster policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said by email. And yet there are always those who dont want to change the status quo.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics USA Flood Hurricane
USI Insurance Services announced the closing on its acquisition of Wells Fargo Insurance Services USA (WFIS), formerly part of Wells Fargo & Co.

This purchase includes the commercial insurance brokerage and consulting, employee benefits and property/casualty insurance national practices of WFIS, along with its Safehold Special Risk, small business insurance, student insurance, individual health and private risk management business lines. Terms were not disclosed.

The plan to sell the business to USI was announced in June. In May, Bloomberg had reported that Alliant Insurance Services was also in the running along with USI to buy the business for as much as $2 billion.

Wells Fargo Insurance Services writes or places about $9 billion worth of premiums annually, according to its website.

USI, headquartered in Valhalla, New York, has more than $1.0 billion in revenue, employs more than 4,400 professionals and operates out of 140 local offices serving every state.

Wells Fargo has said it is exiting the insurance business to focus on its core banking business.

Wells Fargos personal lines insurance unit is not part of the sale to USI. However, Wells Fargo announced last week that it is winding down its personal insurance business. The company said the exit process should be finished during the first quarter of 2018.

On November 9, 2017, Wells Fargo Insurance agreed to sell its crop insurance broker business to Hub International Limited, a global insurance brokerage.

This is not the first transaction between Wells Fargo and USI Insurance Services. In 2014, Wells Fargo sold 42 of its smaller regional insurance locations representing about 40 percent of its insurance brokerage locations to USI. The remaining 55 locations are in larger markets that generate more than 90 percent of brokerage revenue, Laura Schupbach, head of Wells Fargo Insurance, said at the time of that transaction.

Wells Fargo has been dealing with several insurance-related probes, on top of its major scandal in which employees created fake bank accounts in order to achieve sales goals. The insurance probes have to do with alleged unwanted placement of insurance for car loan customers and sales of so-called gap coverage that covers the difference between what a customer owes on a car loan and the value an insurance company will give to the customer if the car is destroyed in an accident or stolen.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Agencies Commercial Lines Business Insurance
Nearly 894,000 people in Texas met this weeks deadline to register for federal disaster assistance to help them recover from Hurricane Harvey, with more than $1.4 billion in funding approved so far, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said.

But officials and nonprofit groups say more funding will be needed to help the state rebuild and reach those who live in the shadows and might not have easy access to resources to assist in their recovery.

There are thousands of people living in homes within our city that need to be quickly remediated, repaired or rebuilt. So we need more resources, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said.

After several extensions, FEMA had set Nov. 30 as the deadline for Texans affected by Harvey to register for federal help. By registering, residents will be eligible for a variety of assistance, including temporary housing and repair or replacement of damaged homes. Only residents in the 41 Texas counties included in the federal disaster declaration were eligible to apply.

Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 storm on Aug. 25 about 180 miles (290 kilometers) southwest of Houston. It damaged or destroyed around 200,000 homes and flooded much of Houston and smaller coastal communities with record amounts of rain and high winds.

By Thursdays deadline, 893,798 Texans had registered, with 356,553 applications having so far been approved. FEMA said it has also provided $2.6 billion in disaster loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration to 30,000 businesses and residents and more than $497 million to help the state and local governments with repairing infrastructure, removing debris and paying costs associated with first responders.

The passing of the deadline should not indicate that FEMAs work in Texas is done, said agency spokesman Bob Howard. Many residents remain displaced, with nearly 40,000 people still living in hotels paid for by FEMA.

Were going to be here as long as the need is here. Were here to support the state and the local communities, Howard said.

In comparison to the two other big storms that hit this hurricane season, more than 2.6 million people in Florida registered for federal disaster assistance after Hurricane Irma with $940 million in assistance so far being approved, while more than 1 million people have registered in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria with more than $276 million approved.

Not everyone who needs help after Harvey applied with FEMA, as many people, including low income individuals and immigrants, might not have known to apply, said Elena Marks, president and CEO of Episcopal Health Foundation, a Houston-based nonprofit.

There are a lot of people who are just in the shadows for one reason or another, Marks said.

The foundation is hoping to help agencies reach these individuals with an analysis it did last month of assistance applications submitted to FEMA that identifies the zip codes in the 41 counties in the federal disaster declaration that submitted the most applications.

The analysis found the zip codes with the most applications were spread out across Southeast Texas and included areas of Port Arthur, Houston and its suburb of Dickinson and Rockport, near where Harvey made landfall.

Theres a lot of pressure on the groups that have raised money to get the money out the door because people really are struggling, she said. The tension exists with knowing where that money is best spent and how do you know that if you dont have data.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Texas Hurricane
For more than three years, 3M Co. underreported its discharge of a class of potentially toxic chemicals into the Tennessee River by a factor of 1,000, according to a letter sent by a 3M official to regulators at the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.

The revelation comes amid a litany of legal challenges against the chemical company over its production of the chemicals known as perfluorochemicals, or PFCs.

At least one lawsuit alleges the presence of two PFCs, perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanic acid (PFOA), in the drinking water of West Morgan-East Lawrence Water and Sewer Authority caused cancer and other health problems for at least 24 water system customers.

Last year, the water authority, which draws its raw water 13 miles downstream from 3M, issued a temporary no-drink warning when levels of PFOS and PFOA in its finished drinking water exceeded federal safety guidelines for lifetime exposure in drinking water.

In an April 20 letter to ADEM, 3M Environmental Engineer Jennifer Brown wrote that, from the last quarter of 2012 though the first half of 2016, 3M inadvertently had reported its discharge monitoring reports in milligrams per liter instead of micrograms per liter, but ADEM had recorded the data as micrograms without conversion.

A milligram is equal to a thousandth of a gram as opposed to a microgram, which is equal to a millionth of a gram, resulting in ADEM recording significantly lower discharge outputs than actually occurred.

For example, in March 2013, when 3M reported a monthly average discharge for PFOS of 0.00573 micrograms per liter, it should have reported 5.73 micrograms per liter. The 0.00573 measurement would have been correct if the report were in milligrams per liter.

The letter said 3M had discovered the discrepancy as part of an internal review. The company provided updated data to ADEM for the effected periods.

In a statement Nov. 29, William Brewer III, legal counsel for Minnesota-based 3M, said the error occurred because ADEM moved to a different metric when it switched to an electronic system.

However, Browns letter to ADEM said, even before the switch, ADEM had taken monitoring data provided by 3M in milligrams per liter and recorded it as micrograms per liter without converting it.

When 3M recognized the issue, we advised ADEM and corrections were made to the underlying quarterly reports in question, Brewer said in a statement. This issue has nothing to do with any pending legal matters in Alabama. 3M disclosed this information, working in close cooperation with ADEM.

Carl Cole, an attorney for the water authority, said 3Ms underreporting of PFC output would likely make its way into the water authoritys federal lawsuit against 3M and other manufacturers.

I would absolutely expect that this becomes an issue, especially when you consider what 3Ms home state of Minnesota has done, Cole said.

In a court filing earlier this month, attorneys for the state of Minnesota accused 3M of covering up information for decades regarding the dangers of PFCs by funding friendly research, blocking the publication of other research and failing to report toxicology findings to federal regulators.

Cole said the underreporting revelation helped explain why PFC levels taken from the water authoritys raw water supply in the Tennessee River were higher than expected based on 3Ms previously reported output.

Water Authority General Manager Don Sims said PFC levels in the river typically peak this time of year as the water level in the river falls, concentrating pollutants. Some raw-water samples, he said, have measured in the hundreds of parts per trillion for PFOS and PFOA.

The EPA health safety guideline for lifetime exposure through drinking water is 70 parts per trillion. PFOS and PFOA are no longer in production in Decatur, but other PFCs are still in use. PFOS and PFOA do not break down easily in nature and tend to accumulate in animals, including fish and humans.

Sims said a temporary filtration system installed after last years no-drink warning is still functioning adequately with non-detectable PFOS and PFOA levels in finished water.

The water authoritys lawsuit against 3M seeks funding for a permanent filtration system and other relief, but 3M repeatedly has insisted the chemicals are not harmful at levels found in the local environment.

David Whiteside, president of the environmental group Tennessee Riverkeeper, which is also suing 3M and others over PFC contamination of the river, said the news that 3M was underreporting its emissions was not surprising.

Tennessee Riverkeeper has known all along that the 3M Company was discharging horrendous amounts of PFCs through their wastewater treatment plant and we were aware they were using a mixture of (micrograms per liter) and (milligrams per liter) to report this pollution, he said in a statement.

This clarifies the amounts of 3Ms PFC releases but doesnt change any of the objectives in Riverkeepers environmental lawsuit, which are to stop the discharges and clean this pollution from our public water supply.

An ADEM spokeswoman said the department would respond to questions regarding 3Ms underreporting of its discharge, but the response was not ready for release Wednesday.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Pollution Numbers Tennessee Minnesota Chemicals
Californias 53 U.S. House members are requesting $4.4 billion in federal aid to help the state recover from its deadliest wildfires ever.

Thats down sharply from the $7.4 billion originally sought by Gov. Jerry Brown and California Democrats last month. The state lowered its request to the U.S. Department of Agriculture from $3.1 billion to $150 million after a better evaluation of what damage is actually eligible for federal programs, said Kelly Huston, deputy director of the states Office of Emergency Services.

When the original estimates were made, it was essentially our best approximation of the overall impact, Huston said. But now, 40 days into the disaster, we know what is covered and where were at.

The 21 wildfires that ripped through Northern California last month were the deadliest in state history.

The Congressional letter, meanwhile, represents rare bipartisan agreement among Californias delegation. California Republicans initially didnt specify an amount when they asked President Donald Trump for federal relief last month. The new letter with all 53 signatures was sent to the House Appropriations Committee as it crafts supplemental disaster relief legislation.

The wildfires destroyed 8,800 structures and 245,000 acres and required 11,000 firefighters to battle the blazes that burned across eight counties.

We are united as a delegation to help our neighbors recover and rebuild from these tragic fires, U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield said in a statement.

These were the worst fires in Californias history and, as a result, they left unprecedented damage in their wake, said U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, a Democrat who represents some of the worst-ravaged areas. This funding is a vital first step in our long-term recovery.

The congressional delegation also asked for targeted tax relief for Californians dealing with fire losses, including penalty-free access to retirement funds, disaster-related employment relief and allowing non-itemized deductions for casualty losses.

The agricultural relief money requested by the state would go toward rehabilitating destroyed farm land and watersheds. The original $3 billion estimate took into account future economic and other long-term losses as well as the cost of mitigation measures, Huston said. Its now estimated federal programs can only provide $150 million in the upcoming fiscal year, but the state could ask for more money in the future, he said.

Some of the losses may be covered by state programs as well as private and non-profit programs, Huston said.

The federal programs are a major part of the recovery, but its not all of the recovery, he said.

Related:

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Topics California Catastrophe Natural Disasters USA Wildfire Agribusiness
Transitional justice cases will not be swept under the rug

The decade-long civil conflict resulted in a huge number of human rights abuses, forced disappearances, and civilian deaths. It has been 11 years since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accords (CPA),
A former Home Depot assistant supervisor in southwestern Idaho has filed a lawsuit against the company alleging sex and pregnancy discrimination.

The Idaho Statesman reported the lawsuit alleges the company violated federal law by refusing to allow the woman breaks to pump breast milk and store it for her newborn child while working for the company in Nampa. The woman also contends the company retaliated against her for asserting her rights.

Home Depot spokesman Matt Harrigan said the company disagrees with the claims in the lawsuit but declined to comment, saying the company would address them in court. The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court, seeks at least $75,000 in damages.

It is unfortunate that a company such as Home Depot has not taken the appropriate steps to make sure its female employees who are pregnant and nursing are treated fairly, attorney Shelly Cozakos, who is representing the woman, said in a statement to the newspaper. This is an important issue for all mothers who work outside the home, and their families.

The lawsuit also said that store director scheduled the woman to work 10-hour shifts for seven consecutive days. The woman had not been scheduled for shifts of this duration with no days off prior to going on her Family and Medical Leave Act leave and was surprised by the rigorous schedule placed her on, Cozakos wrote.

According to the complaint, the companys discrimination and repeated misconduct resulted in an intolerable work environment. The lawsuit also said the womans breast milk began drying up and she was unable to provide her child the quantity needed.

The woman resigned earlier this year, a few weeks after having returned to work.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits
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What Is a Mega Cap?

Mega cap is a designation for the largest companies in the investment universe as measured by market capitalization. While the exact thresholds change with market conditions, mega cap generally refers to companies with a market capitalization above $200 billion. Many of the companies boast strong brand recognition and operate in major markets around the world, such as Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META), formerly Facebook.

Key Takeaways Mega cap companies are those with market values well above the rest of the market, with valuations over $200 billion.

Due to the market value weighting of indices, mega-cap stocks have been in a unique position to sometimes lift or drop an entire index based on their stock performance.

Mega cap stocks in the past have predominantly been in the energy or transportation sectors such as those in oil or railroads. Today, many of the largest companies in the world are tech companies such as Tencent and Amazon.

Mega-cap stocks do have limitations, like any stock.

Mega-cap stocks are no longer confined to Japan, Europe, and the United States, but you can find their steady growth in emerging markets.

Understanding Mega Caps

Mega-cap stocks often wield significant influence in different industries due to the size and volume of goods and services sold during a given time period. Apple, for instance, holds a market cap north of $2 trillion as of December 2021 owing to continued strength in iPhone sales, whereas Amazon reached new highs on the success of retail operations and web services.

Today, there exist about a dozen companies traded in the United States that hold capitalizations over $300 billion, most of them now operating in the technology sector. In the past, blue-chip companies such as ExxonMobil (XOM) and General Electric (GE) held most of these seats as investors trusted them to deliver consistent dividend payments and steady returns.

In the 21st century, the surge in innovative and disruptive technology lifted the entire sector and many of its constituents to new heights.

Meanwhile, mega-cap stocks are no longer confined to the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Steady growth in emerging markets in the past decade has resulted in a greater representation of stocks from other nations. China, in particular, is now home to two of the largest global companies, Tencent and Alibaba (BABA).

On a sector basis, the commodity boom of the early 2000s led to many energy and resource companies achieving mega-cap status. On the other hand, the dramatic decline of U.S. and European banks following the 2008 credit crisis dragged some of the biggest banks below mega-cap status. Many of the largest companies in the US now have ties to cutting-edge technology but also boast significant returns.

Limitations of Mega Cap Stocks

The stock market, as measured by the S&P 500, is being led higher by a handful of mega-cap tech stocks. This concentrated leadership has investors worried about the potential for another tech bubble. If these select stocks were to experience a sustained downturn, it could have a significant impact on the broader market. This trend reflects investor's tendency to pile into one corner of the market, rather than following basic investing strategies of rebalancing and sector rotation.
In Person 88 Generation Student Leader Still Working for Democracy

Ko Mya Aye. / The Irrawaddy

Ko Mya Aye, a prominent leader of the 88 Generation studentsa term used to refer to the young leaders who took a prominent role in Myanmars pro-democracy uprising in 1988has resigned from the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society, a civil society organization formed by these student leaders.

The Muslim pro-democracy activist recently sat down with The Irrawaddys Htun Htun and talked about continuing his political commitments following his resignation.

What made you resign from the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society?

It is not because of disagreements. In certain cases, I wanted to talk more openly. As some members of the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society are establishing a political party, I thought I might have some difficulty in performing my duty, so I stepped down. This is not a departure from politics or due to bitter disagreements.

What are your priorities? Were there any restrictions on you in the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society?

I view the Rakhine problem as a very critical issue that directly concerns the sovereignty of the country. People are talking about harmonizing the two societies [Rohingya Muslims and Arakanese Buddhists]. We cant allow R2P [responsibility to protect]. We need to work together with the government to get rid of [religious and racial] extremism from society, which may cause some friction.

As for the peace process, we should think about how to start negotiations with the Northern Alliance [armed ethnic groups based in northern Myanmar] rather than ignoring it. Meanwhile, there have been setbacks in peace negotiations with the UNFC [United Nationalities Federal Council].

We need to express our views and take action to break this stalemate. It is time we question whether 21st Century Panglong is enough [to create peace] and if Myanmars peace process is really making progress.

How will you engage in ethnic issues after resigning from your organization?

I have reached an agreement with some people to work with them. It is important to have a straightforward approach toward ethnicities. To put it frankly, you can engage in ethnic issues if you are willing to think about how to bring about self-determination, fundamental rights and a federal Union for them. A lot of 88-Generation members, including those abroad, are willing to do so.

Will you join a political party?

No, I wont. There are many other 88 Generation students. Politics by its nature is not a single mans work. It is about cooperation and collaboration. It is not one mans show and it is difficult to handle alone. Ive talked with like-minded people about building a federal Union. I will continue engaging in the countrys peace process and Id like to create harmony in a divided society.

Ive got a lot of like-minded people to serve human rights, farmers rights and labor rights. Perhaps we may become an entity. Id like to engage in politics based on principle, but not a political party.

What is your view on the political party of your former comrade U Ko Ko Gyi?

Political parties are about taking and managing the States power. Everybody says a federal Union will be built. In fact, principle is important in building a federal Union. Though everybody is saying federalism, we will get nowhere if there are faults with the operation, even if we have a policy.

In my opinion, political parties should have coherent policies rather than the general policy of building democracy and a federal Union. I totally agree with Ko Ko Gyis party in principle though I chose not to join it. This is democracy and they have a right to do so. And the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society is cooperating in some areas.

You have come under more political attacks than other 88 Generation members because of your religion. Does that cause difficulties?

There are no difficulties, but there are pressures. There were pressures even when I was in the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society. There are attacks against me on the grounds of religion, but not on my activities. What can I do? I belong to a different religion. I am and will be subject to discriminatory attacks on the grounds of religion. But the warmth of some people can make up for all those attacks.

Political analysts suggest that the Rakhine issue has pushed Myanmar closer to China. What is your view?

That is true, especially because of our geopolitics. Our location necessitates maintaining ties with China. Previously, Myanmars government wanted to rebalance its ties with China and western countries. Unfortunately, that has failed. It is bad for our country. I am worried that we will have to rely completely on one country.

Do you think Myanmars closer ties with China will pave the way for the Northern Alliance to make peace with the Myanmar government?

Not necessarily. Perhaps, it may contribute to some extent. There is a need to find out the reasons that make them distance themselves from each other. Your question suggests that the Northern Alliance is under the thumb of China. We should not view it like that. Lets take the KIA [Kachin Independence Army] as an example. We need to understand its standpoints and feelings. Itd be better not to make suggestions if we are not sure about the connections between them and China.

What are your suggestions to solve the Rakhine issue?

R2P will bring more disadvantages than advantages. So, you would ask me if we should raise a serious objection then. We cant. The more we deny, the more we lose. We have to think delicately about how to handle international pressures and the current situation. [Former national security adviser] Minister U Thaung Tun has said we are in a red stage. Our country is at a critical point. While civil society and non-governmental organizations should think about how to create harmony between the two societies, the government should strictly enforce rule of law.

The government knows the causes of the problems. There are people who have served in the government since the time of the military government. The government should verify according to the 1982 Citizenship Law and immigration records, and grant [full] citizenship and naturalized citizenship accordingly. And it should implement this process in cooperation with western countries which are calling for R2P. If the government is acting honestly and justly, R2P will not be applied and international pressures will also reduce. I would like to urge those concerned to avoid provocative remarks.

What do you think of the NLD governments handling of the Rakhine issue?

I think the NLD government knows certain things about the Rakhine issue, but it seems to be quite difficult for it to handle. The 2008 Constitution is the major challenge. The country will pick up and well be able to see good results in 2020 if we can overcome this challenge.

The Rakhine issue has marred Daw Aung San Suu Kyis image on the international stage and she also has had some honors removed. Do you think it is related to her handling of the issue?

Everyone should be aware that our country will fall if Daw Aung San Suu Kyi falls. Once she falls, our country will not recover. We need to understand that she cant fail. Perhaps her image has been marred because of some misunderstanding under some circumstances. But I dont think her reputation will continue to suffer if she walks on rightly.

What is your political aspiration for the future?

As a citizen, I will continue to serve the interests of the country and people. My goal is to establish a democratic country conceptualized by the 1988 pro-democracy uprising. I will continue my efforts until such a country is built. I individually will not join parliamentary politics.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma Ethnic Language Teachers Missing Months of Govt Pay

Students pose at an ethnic Mon school in Arn Din village, in Ye Township, Mon State, on Nov. 28, 2017. / Lawi Weng / The Irrawaddy

Hundreds of ethnic language school teachers in Mon and Karen states have been missing out on their salaries for the past several months, according to local sources, despite a government promise to pay them at the end of each month.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy today, U Myo Tin Aung, the head of the Mon State Education Department, blamed the Union government for not yet allocating money for ethnic language teacher salaries to the state.

The Union government did not yet divide [the budget] for our expenses, so we could not give them their salaries, U Myo Tin Aung said.

We even asked them when they could give it to us. They told us they will give it, but we do not know when, the minister added.

There are 1,792 ethnic language school teachers in Mon State  including 595 teaching Mon, 445 teaching Sgaw Karen, 161 teaching Pwo Karen, and 67 teaching Pa-O  instructing more than 43,000 students.

Last year the state government agreed to a proposal from the Mon Literature and Culture Committee, a community group, to pay the language teachers a monthly salary of 30,000 kyat, due at the end of each month.

However, hundreds of language teachers have not been paid for the past six months, said Nai Mon Rai Jai, the Mon Literature and Culture Committees general secretary.

We want to know where their pay is. Our Mon teachers are civil servants; they should have the same rights as government school teachers, he said.

Nai Mon Rai Jai said his committee has asked the state government for the teachers salaries several times, to no avail, and he suggested officials meet with the teachers directly to explain to them why their salaries havent arrived.

He said the teachers had also gone unpaid for a nine-month stretch last year and that the repeated delays were a reflection of the Union governments overall lack of respect for ethnic groups and their languages, belying its pledges to give them equal rights.

Despite multiple requests by the Mon Literate and Culture Committee, the government does not allow ethnic language instruction during regular school hours.

I am not saying our ethnic teachers need money, but it is not normal to treat them like this, Nai Mon Rai Jai said.

The pay delays have also come up in the state Parliament.

I have talked about it a lot in Parliament. I have talked about it so much my mouth has gotten bigger. But the Parliament just says the Union government has not provided it [the salaries] yet, said U Tun Min Aung, the chairman of the Ethnic Affairs Committee of Mon State Parliament.

Similar delays are occurring in Karen State, according to its ethnic affairs minister, U Min Tin Win. He said the Union government might pay the salaries in January.

There are a total 21,000 ethnic language school teachers across the country teaching 51 languages.

Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly stated that U Myo Tit Aung was the education minister of Mon State. In fact, he is the head of the Mon State Education Department and his name is spelled U Myo Tin Aung. In the same story, U Tun Min Aung was wrongly stated as the ethnic affairs minister. Actually, he is the chairman of the Ethnic Affairs Committee of Mon State Parliament.
Burma Pope Reveals Details About Army Chief Meeting and Defends Avoiding Word 'Rohingya'

Pope Francis gestures during a news conference on board the plane during his flight back from a trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh, Dec. 2, 2017. / Reuters

YANGON  Pope Francis, who did not publicly use the word Rohingya during his recent visit to Myanmar, said he was still able to make his message clear during his meeting with Myanmar military leader Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing.

Pope Francis was in Myanmar last week as the first ever Head of the Vatican to visit the country.

During his four-day visit to Myanmar, the first person Pope Francis met upon his arrival was neither the countrys president U Htin Kyaw nor State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. It was the chief of Myanmars powerful military Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing, who has been internationally accused of his armys human rights abuses against the minority Rohingya Muslims.

Little was revealed of the details of the meeting between the two leaders until a press conference was held by Pope Francis on board the plane on his way back to Rome on Saturday.

In the wake of the meeting, Vatican Radio reported on Monday that they discussed the great responsibility of authorities of the country in this time of transition, quoted Greg Burke, the director of the Holy See Office as saying.

The Senior Generals Facebook post about the meeting said the Snr-Gen explained to the Pope that there was no religious discrimination in Myanmar as the country ensures religious freedom.

When asked about the meeting on Saturday, the Pope said Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing asked him for the meeting and it was a good and civilized meeting.

This general asked me to speak. And I received him. I never close the door..It was a beautiful conversation. I couldnt say because it was private but I didnt negotiate the truth, he said, according to a transcript of the press conference.

The meeting was initially scheduled for Thursday before the papal departure to Bangladesh. When asked about the change in schedule and if he felt he was politically manipulated by the general to show who was the most superior in the country, the Pope replied: I dont know the intentions but I was interested in dialogue.

The Vatican also acknowledged that the meeting breached protocol as Myanmars military chief met with Pope Francis before the pontiff met with the countrys civilian leadership.

When pressed if he used the word Rohingya during the meeting with the general, the Pope replied he used the words needed to get to the message.

When I saw the message was accepted, I dared to say everything I wanted to say, he said by using a Latin phrase meaning few words are enough for the one who understands.

During his stay in Myanmar, the Pope also met with the countrys president U Htin Kyaw, State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and leading senior Buddhist monks from Ma Ha Na, the State Sangha authority.

The pope was criticized for not using the word Rohingya while he was in Myanmar.

During the press conference on Saturday, the Pope said if he had said the word in official speeches, it would have been a door slammed in the face.

I was very, very satisfied with the talks that I was able to have because its true I havent had the pleasure of throwing the door in a face publicly with a denunciation, but I did have the satisfaction of dialoguing and letting the other speak and in that way the message arrived.
News Fake IEDs Found at Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok

Thai police at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok, Dec. 4, 2017. / The Irrawaddy

CHIANG MAI, Thailand  Two fake improvised explosive devices were found in a trash can near the entrance to the Myanmar Embassys visa section in Bangkok on Monday morning.

The area was closed while Thailands bomb squad investigated. Embassy services stopped for about three hours.

Myanmars Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) released a statement on Facebook that read: It was a fake bomb, in which the plastic pipes and watch were taped and inside the plastic was rice.

Myanmar authorities are cautious about the security of the embassy and its staff, the statement continued.

U Moe Aung Khine, the labor attache from the Myanmar Embassy, told The Irrawaddy that the device it was found around 9 a.m. and Thai police were informed. The bomb squad confirmed that it was an improvised device but that there was no need to worry just before noon.

Hundreds of Myanmar migrant workers had been in line for various services, some picking up passports or applying for visa extensions.

Ko Johny, a migrant worker from Chiang Mai who was at the embassy to pick up his passport, told The Irrawaddy: We were shocked. If something had exploded, many people inside and outside of the embassy could have been hurt.

He was relieved when police assured that everything was fine and back to normal, and continued to wait for his passport.

Thai police currently do not have any information regarding suspects, but said they would check CCTV footage and investigate.
Monday, Dec 4th, 2017 (9:35 am) - Score 4,906

Breaks in the high capacity fibre optic data cables that link countries around the world together and on the internet, many of which sit on the seabed, are not uncommon. Now a new report has warned that other countries and terrorists could potentially cripple the UK by attacking those.

The threat is by no means new, although today most cable breaks occur due to accidents by deep sea fishing trawlers, ships dragging their anchor over them or marine life deciding to take a nibble (smaller cables have been broken by hungry sharks in the past but modern cables tend to be more resistant). A whole industry exists to repair such cables and it usually takes a few weeks to fix a break, although this does depend upon the type of break, sea depth, weather conditions and various other factors etc.

Now a new paper from the Policy Exchange, which was authored by Conservative MP Rishi Sunak (Richmond), has woken up to what has been obvious for years by warning that when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, one of its first moves was to cut the main cable connection to the outside world. Similarly in 2007 an Al-Qaeda plot to destroy a key London internet exchange was foiled.

The report claims that US intelligence officials have similarly highlighted how Russian submarines have been seen aggressively operating near Atlantic cables as part of their broader interest in unconventional methods of warfare (potential threats from Iran and China are also highlighted). In addition, undersea cables come ashore in just a few remote (coastal) locations, which tend to be both public knowledge and softly protected (note: some military cables are not public knowledge).

Rishi Sunak MP said: A successful attack on the UKs undersea cable infrastructure would be an existential threat to our security. Yet the exact locations of these cables are both isolated and publicly available  jugulars of the world economy which are a singularly attractive target for our enemies. Since the first trans-Atlantic cable was laid in 1858, undersea cables have generally been owned and installed by private companies. Although this is good for taxpayers, it also means that most governments have not given undersea cables enough attention. As we debate our future defence priorities, protecting the freedom of the seas and all the lanes of communication on and under them is paramount. Britain and our NATO allies must ensure that our maritime capabilities get the investment they need.

However its worth noting that cutting lots of transatlantic fibre optic cables, while a risk, is something that would be very difficult to completely prevent and the same sort of attack could just as easily be used against an aggressor.

The fact that so much international trade is carried over the internet also means that other countries are likely to be harmed by such an activity, which may include the attacking state (i.e. directly or indirectly).

Overall 97% of global communications and $10 trillion (7.44tr at todays exchange rate) in daily financial transactions are transmitted by cables resting deep beneath the ocean.

Report Recommendations 1. Strategic Defence And Security Review A successful large-scale attack upon UK undersea cable infrastructure, whether at sea or on land, is an existential threat to our security. The next Strategic Defence Review should specifically consider the risks to Britains security from attacks on its undersea cable infrastructure and ensure steps are being taken to mitigate this risk and that our maritime assets are sufficient to the task. 2. National Risk Assessment and Risk Register The Cabinet Office runs a regular (every 2 years) National Risk Assessment process to identify risks to the UK. The public face of this is the National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies. The next National Risk Assessment should specifically consider the risk and mitigation strategy for disruption to our cables infrastructure. A cursory glance at Parliamentary records (Hansard) does not reveal any recent discussion of undersea cables at all. 3. Secure Landing Sites Given the high level of strategic importance attributed to particular UK landing sites by the US State Department and the potentially catastrophic consequences of a security breach, more must be done to enhance security at major UK landing sites. The government should instruct the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) to carry out a full review of how landing sites are protected. Consideration should be given to requiring a level of protection more in line with other critical infrastructure such as national power generating capacity. 4. Establish Cable Protection Zones Britain should establish Australian-style Cable Protection Zones (CPZs) around its coast in areas with high-value communication corridors. These CPZs ban certain types of anchoring and fishing, require greater disclosure by any vessels inside them, enjoy enhanced Coast Guard monitoring and carry significant penalties for breaches of rules. Working with international partners, Britain should also seek to encourage the establishment of CPZs in the Mediterranean and Suez, in order to safeguard connectivity in strategically important theatres such as the Middle East. 5. Deploy Better Monitoring Equipment on Cables Most attacks on underwater cables would likely require underwater vehicles. As it is very dark at the depths that cables are laid, these vehicles use high-frequency sonar to help them navigate. Cable laying companies could be required to place relatively cheap sensors that detect sonar frequencies near key undersea infrastructure and along cable routes. If the sensors were tripped, they could alert nearby coast guard or navy assets. 6. Broaden Geographic Diversity Whether at key international choke points like the Luzon Strait, or in the concentration of trans-continental cables in a small number of costal landing sites, the lack of geographic diversity in the worlds undersea cable network greatly increases its vulnerability to disruption. Britain should use its influence as a key geographic bridge between the US and Europe to work with the private sector and overseas governments to promote the greater geographic diversity of undersea cables. By increasing the number of landing sites and, where possible, avoiding overreliance on at-sea choke points the resilience of the worlds telecommunications network would be significantly enhanced. 7. Increase the Supply of Dark Cables Using tax incentives and working with private telecommunications companies, the government could also encourage building backup cable systems and redundant systems. This builds resiliency into the whole system from a national perspective, something individual private businesses have no incentive to do alone. 8. Strengthen International Law Protecting Cables The present piecemeal legal regime is deficient in ensuring the security of cables and such vital infrastructure requires a more comprehensive approach. The UK should push for the adoption of a new international treaty that protects submarine cables, making international interference with them an international crime, and include provisions for mutual cooperation on enforcement against such crimes. 9. Increase NATO Naval Exercises and Review Maritime Capabilities Undersea cables are the very definition of international infrastructure and an international response is needed if they are to be successfully safeguarded against military threats. The UK should press at the NATO level to promote the undertaking of naval exercises and war games to hone potential responses to an attack on undersea cable infrastructure. These exercises would work with the submarine cable industry to test protocols and defence strategies in an international setting. Furthermore, it may be necessary to increase NATO maritime capabilities to protect freedom of the seas and our sea lanes of communication.

Check out Telegeography for a useful map of such cables.
The Melbourne Shield, which launched earlier this year, uses BlackBerry's AtHoc system to provide communication with participating organisations' people in times of crisis such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks.

Operated by BlackBerry partner Crisis Shield (formerly Briggs Communications), The Melbourne Shield has attracted three participants.

Shopping centre operator Vicinity Centres, Deakin University and RMIT are now part of the programme.

The platform allows security managers and those with similar responsibilities to obtain and communicate accurate information with others in their organisation.

BlackBerry chief security officer Alex Manea told iTWire that The Melbourne Shield "is fairly unique right now".

"There's going to be a very strong network effect," he predicted, meaning that the more organisations join, the more attractive the arrangement becomes.

BlackBerry naturally uses AtHoc internally, so Manea is alerted of any events that may affect him or members of his team. For example, when typhoon-like conditions hit Mumbai in August, he was kept up to date about the safety of his people who were working there.

Crisis Shield managing director Allan Briggs said "We are only just getting started, so we are thrilled to see some of the city's most well-known institutions such as RMIT, Deakin University and Vicinity Centres be among the first to join The Melbourne Shield, which is a great example of public safety best practice for other cities to learn from."

"As we welcome more members in the future, it will equip a larger group of trusted individuals with good intelligence to enable better decisions during emergencies in the CBD. Ultimately, it can be used as a tool to help protect the entire Melbourne city area."

RMIT University facilities and asset management director Brad Costello said "As we face ongoing emergency challenges, ranging from fires, floods, cyber attacks to terrorism, having access to early credible information is invaluable. In the education industry, the safety of people, whether it be students, staff or visitors to our campus is paramount and providing the most secure environment possible is a priority.

Vicinity Centres operates the Emporium Melbourne centre in the CBD. Risk manager for crisis and emergency management Marc Klomp said "Emergency services can't be everywhere at once during a major incident and The Melbourne Shield is truly a way to ensure organisations and their people are secure in any situation that may occur.

"An example of this was a major incident in Melbourne Australia early this year on Bourke Street, during which there was a long a period of time where we could not obtain credible information to make the most informed decisions. For a company like ours that sits in the heart of the CBD, the safety of people has never been more important. This is why we didn't think twice about becoming part of the network."

Deakin University manager of security and transport Rick Lloyd said "Melbourne Shield is a terrific initiative which provides a secure network for businesses in Melbourne's CBD to connect, particularly in a critical incident, and share credible and trusted information in real-time. For Deakin, the ability to send and receive emergency alerts and make quick decisions is critical.

"Every moment counts. We want to account for our people and be equipped to send them early messaging to ensure their safety."

In related news, BlackBerry has announced a new crisis communications specialisation for its AtHoc solution parters, and Crisis Shield is on track to be the first partner to receive this accreditation.

"Crisis Shield is working with BlackBerry, combining our expertise in crisis communications with the BlackBerry AtHoc platform, including our Melbourne Shield people safety initiative," said Briggs.

"With our unique skill set, Crisis Shield will now be pursuing the accreditation to become BlackBerry's first crisis communication specialist partner."
Singapore telco and Optus parent company, Singtel, has inked agreements with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) to spearhead R&D efforts in emerging technologies.

And according to Singtel the research will support Singapores transformation into a smart nation and help enable the countrys digital economy.

Under a five-year partnership, Singtel, NTU Singapore and the National Research Foundation Singapore will establish a S$42.4 million corporate lab, to be called Singtel Cognitive and Artificial Intelligence Lab for Enterprises (SCALE@NTU), to develop applications for use in the areas of public safety, smart urban solutions, transportation, healthcare and manufacturing.

The partners say, through their collective expertise and resources, they aim to accelerate innovation in the fields of AI, advanced data analytics, robotics and smart computing.

This collaboration marks a significant step for Singtel to develop intellectual property in emerging technologies to support enterprises in their digital transformation and Singapores Smart Nation objectives, says Bill Chang, chief executive, Group Enterprise at Singtel,

Representatives from Singtel, NTU and A*STAR being instructed by Singtels Compass robot to sign their names electronically, as Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean (fourth from right) looks on.

As businesses face the rising threat of technological disruptions, companies are constantly seeking innovative ways to gain deeper insights through data analytics, better engage their customers and transform their operations through digitalisation. To help companies address these challenges, we are stepping up our R&D efforts to develop deep capabilities in these focused areas.

Professor Lam Khin Yong, NTUs Acting Provost, chief of staff and vice-president (Research), said, For Singapore to achieve its Smart Nation vision, we have to keep pushing the frontiers of AI and develop innovative ways to process, analyse and utilise big data.

This is how the collaborative effort between Singtel and NTU on cognitive computing will make a huge impact, improving productivity for businesses while making our cities smarter and more efficient.

Professor Khin Yong said, over the next five years, the partnership is expected to expand the product range of Singtel and its regional ICT subsidiary NCS.

Under the partnership, some 100 researchers from Singtel and NTU will work at SCALE@NTU, while another 200 research engineers, graduate and undergraduate students will also be trained in the lab.

George Loh, NRF Singapores director (Programmes), said, This latest collaboration between Singtel and NTU underscores the significance of developing research expertise and capabilities in advanced analytics for Singapore to be a leading provider of smart city solutions. The lab will provide a platform for researchers and engineers from both academia and industry to work together to translate cutting-edge research into digital solutions and offerings by our companies, while nurturing a pipeline of digital talent who can drive Singapores Smart Nation journey.

Singtel and A*STAR will also work together on projects including smart building automation systems, robotics and Internet of Things (IoT) applications that the partners say could help boost operating efficiencies in various industries.

Photo: courtesy Singtel
Online retail giant Amazon has finally announced that it will be kicking off operations in Australia today.

After months of speculation, the company said in a statement this morning that it would offer millions of products across more than 20 categories.

Free delivery is being offered on eligible orders above $49 and a one-day delivery service is available in select areas.

Focusing on customers and the long-term are key principles in Amazons approach to retailing, said Rocco Braeuniger, country manager of Amazon Australia (below, right).

"By concentrating on providing a great shopping experience and by constantly innovating on behalf of customers, we hope to earn the trust and the custom of Australian shoppers in the years to come."

Australian customers can also access Prime Video and Twitch Prime today.

Products on offer at Amazon's Australian website include millions offered by well-known Australian brands, as well as small and medium-sized Australian businesses selling on Amazon Marketplace.

Small businesses and retailers across the country should be excited about Amazon launching in Australia," said Adam Mills, chief technology officer and founder of Australian business KoalaSafe which has sold its products on Amazon Marketplace since 2015.

"While it can be a challenge to ensure potential customers find your website, Amazon already has hundreds of millions of customers around the world searching for new products. The visibility and access Amazon provides is an enormous opportunity for all businesses.

Customer orders will be processed at Amazons new fulfilment centre in Dandenong South.

Over time, we will create thousands of new jobs and invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Australia, said Braeuniger. The result will be an ever-improving customer experience driven by the regular introduction of new products and services that we hope customers will love.

Amazon Web Services launched an Australian region in 2012 and the Australian Kindle Store opened in 2013.
Apple and Ireland have reached a deal on terms for an escrow fund for a 13 billion (US$17.6 billion) fine imposed by the European Union in August last year, with the money to stay in the fund while both the tech firm and Dublin appeal the EU's verdict.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Irish Finance Minister Pascal Donohoe was expecting the money to begin flowing from Apple to the fund in the first quarter of 2018 after the tender was put out to decide who would operate the account and manage the fund.

Apple was ordered to repay the massive amount after the EU said it had found that a number of deals the company cut to do business in Ireland were illegal.

At the time, EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Apple's "selective treatment" in Ireland resulted in an effective tax rate of 1% on its European profits in 2003. This rate fell to 0.005% by 2014.

"The tax treatment in Ireland enabled Apple to avoid taxation on almost all profits generated by sales of Apple products in the entire EU single market," she said.

"Member states cannot give tax benefits to selected companies  this is illegal under EU state aid rules. The Commission's investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years."

In October, the EU warned Ireland that it would be issued a non-compliance action for not taking action to collect the money, which was initially due by 3 January.

The WSJ quoted Apple as saying in a statement: "We have a dedicated team working diligently and expeditiously with Ireland on the process the European Commission has mandated. We remain confident the General Court of the EU will overturn the Commissions decision once it has reviewed all the evidence.

The EU launched its investigation into Apple's tax arrangements in Ireland in 2014.

Graphic: courtesy European Union
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.
The future belongs to the tech company that best harnesses artificial intelligence. A.I. is vital to understanding what consumers want and thus better design products for them. It is crucial in attracting consumers by delivering them the most customized and attractive content at the point they want it. And it is essential to providing cloud services that help corporations increase their efficiency and improve the way they operate.

Microsoft, like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, is betting big on A.I. The company has some definite A.I. strengths. But it also is missing an important piece: widely used mobile technology. Without that, it will be tough or impossible for Microsoft to win the A.I. war.

Lets start off with the companys A.I. strengths. The most important one is data. Machine learning, A.I.s cutting edge, requires vast amounts of data, and Microsoft has plenty of it, thanks to its Bing search engine, its Windows and Office users and its LinkedIn social media site. Although Bing is a distant also-ran to Googles search engine, its an excellent foundation for A.I., because the second-most popular search engine still yields plenty of raw data. Larry Cornett, a former executive for Yahoo's search engine, says of Bing: Having hundreds of millions of queries a day is exactly what you need to power huge artificial intelligence systems.

Another strong advantage is Microsofts direct-to-consumer and direct-to-business outlets for its A.I. work: more than 500 million active Windows 10 devices with the A.I.-based personal assistant Cortana built in. And Microsoft Office, which remains the dominant suite on the planet, increasingly has A.I. built into it for things such as proofreading and automatic language translations. All this not only helps Microsoft deliver the benefits of A.I. to its customers

[ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ]

, but also lets the company fine-tune its A.I. algorithms by getting feedback on how well they work.

But Microsoft is missing something very big in A.I. as well: a significant mobile presence. Google and Apple, via Android and iOS, gather tremendous amounts of useful data for their A.I. work. And gathering the data is just the starting point. Hundreds of millions of people around the world use the A.I.-powered Siri, Google Assistant and Google Now on their mobile devices. So Google and Apple can continue to improve their A.I. work, based on how people use their devices. Given that the future (and to a great extent, the present) is mobile, all this means serious problems for Microsoft in A.I.

A.I. is likely a big part of the reason that Microsoft kept Windows Phone on life support for so many years, spending billions of dollars while it died a slow, ugly, public death. Just before Microsoft announced in October that it would no longer continue development of the mobile operating system and only release bug fixes and security updates for it, the company had a 1.3% share of the smartphone market in the U.S. and lower than that in most other places around the world, including 1% in Great Britain and Mexico, 1.2% in Germany and 0% in China.

Because of the utter failure of its mobile efforts so far, Microsoft is struggling to find ways to include mobile in its A.I. work. It has developed Cortana for iOS and Android, though few people will bother to give up Siri or Google Assistant for it. Microsoft has also made an attempt to get into the home A.I. market (which is a form of mobile) by partnering with hardware companies to develop Cortana-powered speakers. The first one, Invoke by Harman Kardon, hasnt gotten particularly good reviews. Its likely not selling well, either: After its initial late-October release, its price dropped 50%, from $200 to $100.

To make up for its mobile woes, Microsoft has signed a deal with Amazon to connect Cortana to Alexa, Amazons A.I.-powered digital assistant. The idea is that when someone issues a command to do something that Cortana does best  such as set up an appointment in Outlook  Cortana would do the work, but that when Alexa would be better suited for a task, such as searching Amazon, Alexa would take over. Initially, the cooperation will be a kludge. If youre using Alexa, youll have to say, Alexa, open Cortana before issuing your command, and on Cortana, youll have to say, Cortana, open Alexa. In the long run, theyre expected to work more seamlessly.

But that will only go partway toward helping solve Microsofts mobile A.I. problem. After all, Amazon failed dismally when it tried to muscle its way into the smartphone market with its ill-fated Amazon Fire Phone.

The upshot of all this? Microsoft likely wont become dominant in A.I., thanks to its failure in mobile. Windows and Office users, as well as enterprises that use Microsofts cloud-based services, will be the companys primary market for its A.I. capabilities. But without a serious mobile presence, the company will remain an A.I. also-ran.
Germany's 38th Annual Christmas Rock Night Returns Dec 8 and 9

December 3, 2017

The 38th annual Christmas Rock Night in Germany approaching once again. The 2-day indoor festival takes place in Ennepetal (near Dusseldorf) on Dec 8 and 9, 2017.

12 Christian rock bands from the United States will be flying over to Europe for Christmas Rock Night next week. The 2-day indoor festival on Dec. 8+9 will present The Letter Black, Sleeping Giant, Disciple, Wolves At The Gate, Theocracy, Spoken, Flatfoot 56, Random Hero, Convictions, To Speak of Wolves, Comrades and Earth Groans. Plus one band each coming from Denmark (Unseen Faith), Slovakia (Signum Regis) and from Germany (Normal Ist Anders).

For more info, visit http://www.christmasrocknight.de/

###

For more info on these artists, visit the JFH Artists Database.


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By Erin L. Thompson | ( Tomdispatch.com) |  

We spent the day at a beach in Brooklyn. Skyscrapers floated in the distance and my toddler kept handing me cigarette filters she had dug out of the sand. When we got home, I checked my email. I had been sent a picture of a very different beach: deserted, framed by distant headlands with unsullied sands and clear waters. As it happened, I was looking not at a photograph, but at a painting by a man imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Of the roughly 780 people once imprisoned there, he is one of 41 prisoners who remain, living yards away from the Caribbean Sea. Captives from the Bush administrations Global War on Terror began to arrive at that offshore prison in January 2002. Since Guantanamo is located on a military base in Cuba and the detainees were labeled alien enemy combatants, they were conveniently to be without rights under either United States or international law and so open to years of whatever their jailers wanted to do to them (including torture). President Barack Obama released 197 of them in his years in office, but was unable to fulfill the promise he made on his first day: to close Guantanamo.

The man whose painting I saw has been held for nearly 15 years without trial, without even having charges filed against him. The email came from his lawyer who had volunteered to defend a number of Guantanamo detainees. Some had been released after she helped them convince a military tribunal that they were no longer threats to the United States. The others remain in indefinite detention. Many of her clients pass their time by making art and, of all the unexpected things to come into my life, she was now looking for a curator who wanted to exhibit some of their paintings.

Collecting the Art of Guantanamo

Im a professor at John Jay College in New York City. It has a small art gallery and so one day in August 2016 I found myself in that lawyers midtown Manhattan office preparing, however dubiously, to view the art of her clients. She was pushing aside speakerphones and notepads and laying out the artwork on a long table in a conference room whose windows overlooked the picturesque East River. As I waited, I watched from high up as the water cut a swath of silence through the city. When I finally turned my attention to the art, I was startled to see some eerily similar views. Painting after painting of water. Water trickling through the reeds at the edge of a pond. Water churning into foam as it ran over rocks in rivers. Calmly flowing water that reflected the buildings along a canal.

But above all, there was the sea. Everywhere, the sea. In those paintings in that conference room and in other work sent to me as word spread among detainees and their lawyers that I was willing to plan an exhibit, I found hundreds of depictions of the sea in all its moods. In some paintings, storms thrashed apart the last planks of sinking ships. In others, boats were moored safely at docks or scudded across vast expanses of water without a hint of shore in sight. Clouds bunched in blue midday skies or burned orange in mid-ocean sunsets. One detainee had even made elaborate models of sailing ships out of cardboard, old T-shirts, bottle caps, and other scraps of trash.

Puzzled, I asked the lawyer, Why all the water? She shrugged. Maybe the art instructor at the prison, she suggested, was giving the detainees lots of pictures of the sea. The detainees, it turned out, could actually take art classes as long as they remained compliant. But when there was a crackdown, as there had, for instance, been during a mass hunger strike in 2013, the guards promptly confiscated their art  and that was the reason the lawyers clients had asked her to take it. They wanted to keep their work (and whatever it meant to them) safe from the guards.



Muhammad Ansi, Untitled (Pier), 2016.

As it turned out, the art doesnt leave Guantanamo that much more easily than the prisoners themselves. Military authorities scrutinized every piece for hidden messages and then stamped the back of each work, Approved by US Forces. Those stamps generally bled through, floating up into the surface of the image on the other side. The lawyer had even nicknamed one of the model ships the U.S.S. Approved because the censors had stamped those words across its sails.

So I found myself beginning to plan an exhibition of a sort I had never in my wildest dreams imagined I would curate. And I began to worry. A curator makes so many choices, judgments, interpretations of art. But how could I make them with any kind of accuracy when I was a woman, a non-Muslim, and a citizen of the very nation that had detained these men for so many years without charges or trial? Wasnt I, in other words, the ultimate Other?

Greek to Me

By training, Im a classical art historian. I expand fragments. If I show my students a broken ancient Greek vase, I use my words to mend it. I pour in more words to fill it with the memory of the wine it once carried, yet more to conjure up the men who once drank from it, and still more to offer my students our best guesses at what they might have been talking about as they drank.

This mode of dealing with art was known to the ancient Greeks. They called it ekphrasis: the rhetorical exercise of describing a work of art in great detail. For them, ekphrasis was a creative act. The speaker often explained things not shown by the artist, such as what happened just before or just after the illustrated moment. The maiden in this painting is smiling because she has just received a declaration of love, they would say.

But faced with this art from Guantanamo, ekphrasis seemed somehow inappropriate. These artists are still alive, even if entombed. Their artworks are as they intended them, not the fragmentary remains of some past world that needs a framework of interpretation. And whatever interpretation these might need, how in the world was I to provide it? Who was I to pour my words over them?

And yet I knew that they needed help or why would that lawyer have come to me? The detainees certainly couldnt curate their own exhibit in New York because they would be barred from entering the United States even after being released from Guantanamo. So I told myself that I would have to help them realize their desire for an exhibit without inserting my own judgments. I told myself that I would instead be their amanuensis.

From the Latin: a manu, servant of the hand, the term once referring to someone who aided in an artistic project by taking dictation. Consider, for instance, John Miltons daughters, Mary and Deborah, who took down his seventeenth century epic poem Paradise Lost after he had gone blind. They were his amanuenses. He composed the verses in his head at night. Then, in the morning, as a contemporary of his wrote, he sat leaning backward obliquely in an easy chair, with his leg flung over the elbow of it while they wrote down what he recited. If they dawdled coming to him, he would complain that he needed to be milked.



Ghaleb Al-Bihani, Untitled (Red and Purple Boats), 2015.

I would similarly let the artists speak for themselves through me, or so I thought. I wrote out a list of questions for their lawyers to ask them, including What do you like about making art? and What would you like people to think about when they are looking at your art? Then I waited for those lawyers to pose them during their Guantanamo visits in the midst of conferences about legal matters.

The answers were strikingly uniform and seemingly unrevealing. They wanted people to see their art, they said, and through it know that they are actual human beings. Really? I didnt get it. Of course, theyre human beings. What else could they be?

At first, I wasnt too concerned that their answers didnt really make much sense to me. Thats part of the role of an amanuensis. Miltons daughters were ten and six when he began Paradise Lost. It would take them all nearly a decade to finish it. In those years, their father also taught them to read books aloud to him in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, of which they couldnt understand a word.

I was used to being an amanuensis myself. When I was a year and a half old and my mother was still pregnant with my sister, my father had an accident and broke his neck. The fractured edge of a vertebra sliced into his spinal cord, leaving his arms and legs paralyzed. As soon as we were old enough  and I cant remember a time when we werent considered old enough  my sister and I would spend hours a day being his hands. We opened mail, paid bills, slid computer disks in and out of the desktop that he operated by stabbing at the keys with a long pointer held in his mouth. Through us, two daydreamy little girls, he did all the work of a stereotypical man of the house  fixing broken appliances, hanging Christmas lights, grilling steak.

To be an amanuensis is, by the way, anything but a passive act. After all, there wouldnt be enough time in the world if you had to tell your own hands what to do in every situation: reach for the coffee cup, close that finger around its handle, bring it to your mouth. In the same way, an amanuensis must anticipate needs, prepare tools, and know when somethings missing.

And this sense that something was missing  honed from my years with my father  was growing in me as I looked at the artwork and thought about those responses. It was the midsummer of 2017 and the exhibit was set to open in the fall. The file cabinets in my office were filled with paintings, overflowing into piles on the floor that came up to my shins. After the struggle to pry those artworks out of Guantanamo, I didnt know how to say that one piece should be seen by the world and another should stay a prisoner in some dark drawer.

Freedom of the Seas

So I asked again  this time by emailing Mansoor Adayfi, a former detainee working on a memoir about his time at Guantanamo. He explained that the cells of detainees were right by the sea. They could smell and hear the surf, but because tarps blocked their view, they could never see it. Only once, when a hurricane was coming, had the guards removed those tarps from the fences that separated them from the water. A few days later, when they went back up, the artist-inmates began to draw pictures of the sea as a substitute for what they had glimpsed during that brief moment of visual freedom.

Suddenly, those endless visions of water  that is, of freedom  made sense to me. And I understood something else as well. Guantanamo is a system designed to paint the men it holds as monsters, animals, sub-humans who dont deserve basic rights like fair trials. That was the reason those prisoners were speaking, but not speaking, in their art. Why would they say anything that risked a further fall from whatever precarious hold on humanity they still had?

They hoped someday to be released, which was unlikely to happen if the authorities became convinced that they bore any anger towards the United States. And even release would not mean freedom of speech, since they would be sent to countries that had agreed to host them. Dependent on the good graces of these governments, they would continue to live constrained lives in constrained circumstances, needing never to offend these new sets of authorities either.



Khalid Qasim, Untitled (Fins in the Ocean), 2016.

I was indeed the Other. I might misinterpret and misrepresent, but so undoubtedly would anyone else in our world speaking for those artists. And they were incapable of speaking for themselves.

So I added an essay of my own to the catalog, becoming ekphrastic. I pointed out what was movingly missing in their artwork. It wasnt that there werent people in their paintings. It was that those works had invisible holes where the people should have been. All those unmanned boats, sailing across those open waters, were carrying invisible self-portraits of the artists as they hardly dared to imagine themselves: free. Even when there were no boats, the famously mutable sea served as the perfect disguise. Its winds and waves and rocks represented the all-too-human emotions of the artists without ever making them visible to the censors.

It was, of course, so much less dangerous for me to interpret what they were saying than for them to say it directly. I had held many doors open for my father when I was his amanuensis, running ahead to make sure the path was clear and that there were no surprising flights of stairs. If there were, it was up to me to find a new way.

This is what I wanted to do for the artists. Open doors, scout out paths  but their choice of doors, their choice of paths, not mine. They had told me they wanted people to see them as human beings and that was the case I tried to make for them.

As it turned out, I evidently succeeded a little too well. After the exhibit opened and received a surprising amount of media attention, the artists lawyers noticed that the authorities were taking longer and longer to clear artworks to leave Guantanamo. Then, three weeks ago, the Department of Defense declared that all art made at Guantanamo is government property. Detainees reported that their guards then told them any art left behind if they were ever released would be burned and works in their cells deemed excess would simply be discarded.

As with so many policy decisions about Guantanamo, the true rationale for this one remains hidden. My guess: the U.S. authorities there were surprised that the artwork they had been scrutinizing so carefully for hidden messages had a unifying one they had missed: that its makers were human beings. Which is precisely the realization the authorities need to stop the rest of us from having if Guantanamo is to remain open.

Erin L. Thompson, co-curator of Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantanamo with Charlie Shields and Paige Laino, is an assistant professor of art crime at John Jay College. Her book, Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors from Antiquity to the Present, was an NPR Best Book of 2016. Follow her on Twitter at @artcrimeprof.

[Note: The exhibit Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantanamo is on display in New York City at the Presidents Gallery of John Jay College, 899 10th Avenue (6th Floor) until January 28, 2018.]

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Alfred McCoys In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, as well as John Dowers The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, John Feffers dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardts Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2017 Erin L. Thompson

Via Tomdispatch.com
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By Elias Ghazal | (The Conversation) |  

When the prime minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, suddenly resigned from office while visiting Saudi Arabia on November 4, the Lebanese people and their leaders struggled to make sense of it. First they were shocked when they watched Hariris deeply unsettling eight-minute resignation video, which was broadcast on Saudi satellite network al-Arabia instead of being submitted to the Lebanese president. Hariri then went silent for a week before returning to Lebanon on the eve of Independence day. He has now announced that he may withdraw his resignation after all.

So far, no detailed explanation for this bizarre sequence of events has emerged. But many in Lebanon and beyond agree on the reason behind Hariris resignation: Saudi alarm at Irans increasingly confident meddling in wider Middle Eastern affairs. Above all, Lebanon is under Saudi pressure because it remains home to one of Irans strongest allies, a powerful force that engages in conflicts beyond the Lebanese border: the militant shia and Iranian-allied group Hezbollah.

Hezbollah began life in the 1980s as a resistance movement formed to defy the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon. After Israel withdrew in 2000, Hezbollah, unlike other armed groups fighting in the Lebanese civil war, retained its arsenal of weapons as a deterrent. Since then, the group has formed an official political party and has joined successive Lebanese governments and filled several cabinet posts.

Hezbollah contended for years that its growing arsenal was solely for defence in case of an Israeli attack. But in July 2006, after 34 days of battle between Hezbollah and Israel, a ceasefire was accepted by both warring parties. That Hezbollah was not defeated militarily by Israel was considered a victory for the former and became a cause for celebration across the Arab world. But at the same time, it marked Hezbollah out as a potential threat to regional stability, a status the group retains to this day.

Muscling in

Hezbollahs political and military power grew throughout the ensuing years, but it was soon put to the test. As reverberations of the Arab Spring hit the streets in Syria, Bashar al-Assads government worked with Hezbollah to fend off militant groups trying to topple the regime. Fighting alongside the regimes forces, Hezbollah came to play a critical role, helping win the strategic battle of al-Qusayr in 2013.

In the years since the Syrian conflict began, Hezbollahs military power has grown disproportionately to its size; it secured unhindered access to arms supplies and valuable field experience. Politically, however, the group has been under constant pressure from within the Lebanese government to withdraw from Syria, because of concerns it might entangle the country in a war it wants to avoid at all costs.

Lebanons official position towards the complex conflict across its border is to stay out of it. The country is too weak, both politically and militarily, to engage in a conflict that was quickly becoming a Saudi-Iranian proxy war. Nonetheless, Hezbollah was not going to sit idle and watch Iran  its closest ally and regional sponsor  fight alone to save the Assad regime, whose assistance guarantees Hezbollahs own survival.

With boots on the ground in Syria, Hezbollah became something much more than a mere resistance movement against Israel or a political party with a military wing. It possesses power that is typically reserved for states rather than political parties or resistance movements: the power to help regimes rise or fall.

Thin ice

If Hezbollah wants to stay in Lebanon and maintain its power base there, it needs the Lebanese governments political cover. That means it cannot afford to push its boundaries. Hariri has failed to curb the groups words and actions against Saudi and its interests, and that would explain why Riyadah invited itself to interfere so boldly and directly in Lebanon. By detaining Hariri and orchestrating his resignation, the Saudis sought to pull the political rug from underneath Hezbollahs feet.

At minimum, they must have hoped to see an outraged Lebanese public  particularly sunnis  take to the streets and pressure Hezbollah to rein in its transnational activities for fear of reprisal. The intended message is that the Saudis can restrain Hezbollah, even at the expense of destabilising Lebanon.

Hariri insists that his resignation was self-motivated, meant as an alarm bell to call his government back to the principle of disassociation. But the president, Michel Aoun, is not convinced  and he refused to accept the prime ministers resignation before speaking to Hariri. Aoun, who is a political ally of Hezbollah, considered Saudi detention of Hariri an act of aggression against his country. For his part, Hezbollahs general secretary, Hasan Nasrallah, called for patience and for measures to deescalate the situation.

Hezbollah is now in a critical position. If the group ignores Hariris entreaties, it risks giving up its popular support. But should it heed the prime ministers advice it will jeopardise its relationship with its allies. Whatever it does, with Saudi Arabia and Iran both watching closely, Hezbollahs next move puts hundreds of thousands of Lebanese in Lebanon and the Gulf at risk.

Elias Ghazal, PhD Candidate in Middle Eastern Studies, Lancaster University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Al Jazeera English: Hariri, Hezbollah dominate talks on Lebanons regional role
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 4, 2017) - Bluestone Resources Inc. (TSXV: BSR) ("Bluestone" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of David M. Cass as the Company's new Vice President of Exploration. Mr. Cass will lead Bluestone's exploration team focusing on both the Cerro Blanco gold and Mita geothermal projects in Guatemala. In addition, Stephen Williams has joined as the new Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Mr. Williams will manage Bluestone's capital markets activities.

Bluestone's President and CEO, Darren Klinck, commented, "We are very pleased to welcome both David Cass and Stephen Williams to the Bluestone team. David's broad range of experience globally including many years in Latin America, combined with a strong focus on epithermal gold systems over his career significantly strengthens our team." Mr. Klinck went on to say, "Since we acquired the Cerro Blanco and Mita projects a few months ago, the recommencement of exploration activities for the first time in more than four years is increasing our understanding of the significant potential of this high-grade gold system and underdeveloped geothermal project. David's leadership on further advancing this understanding and firming up the geological aspects of the project for the Cerro Blanco feasibility study will be a key focus over the coming months and I am excited to be working with David on this exciting aspect of our business. Additionally, Stephen's strong capital markets experience and technical background add further depth to our capabilities as we advance Bluestone's activities associated with the Cerro Blanco and Mita projects."

David Cass, P.Geo., M.Sc.

Mr. Cass is a geologist with over 25 years of international experience in mineral exploration and mining for precious and base metals, with most of this time focused in Latin America. David has spent 15 years of his career with major international mining company Anglo American plc, where he held positions of increasing responsibility in jurisdictions including South and Central America, Mexico, Canada, Turkey, Iran and Eastern Europe. Mr. Cass' time at Anglo also include four years as Senior Geologist in Peru, and six years as Exploration Manager for North America, where he was responsible for Anglo's exploration programs throughout Canada, Central America, Mexico, mainland USA and Alaska. More recently, Mr. Cass has managed junior exploration companies with projects in Peru, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico and Colombia.

Mr. Cass holds a Masters of Science degree in Mineral Exploration and Mining Geology from the University of Leicester, UK (1990) and a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology from London Metropolitan University. He is a practicing member (P.Geo) of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia and Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists.

Stephen Williams, P.Eng, MBA

Mr. Williams was previously a Director at Canaccord Genuity Corp. in the metals and mining investment banking team. He provided strategic advice to clients on acquisitions, mergers, and equity financings. Stephen is a professional engineer by background and worked for Freeport-McMoRan in an operational and process development capacity. He holds a B.A.Sc. in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of British Columbia and an MBA from the W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University.

About Bluestone Resources

Bluestone Resources is a mineral exploration and development company that is focused on advancing its 100% owned Cerro Blanco gold and Mita geothermal projects located in Guatemala. The Cerro Blanco Project economics, as disclosed in the Company's Cerro Blanco Preliminary Economic Assessment which is available at www.sedar.com, and updated mineral resource estimate for Cerro Blanco indicates a robust project with an expected nine-year mine life producing 952,000 ounces of gold and 3,141,000 ounces of silver. Initial capital expenditures estimated in the PEA to fund construction and commissioning is estimated at US$170.8 million with all-in sustaining cash costs (as defined per World Gold Council guidelines, less corporate general and administration costs) estimated to be US$490 per ounce of gold produced. The Company trades under the symbol "BSR" on the TSX Venture Exchange.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 4, 2017) - Sienna Resources (TSXV: SIE) (FSE: A1XCQ0) (OTC Pink: SNNAF) is pleased to announce it has entered into an exploration and option agreement (the "Agreement") with EMX Royalty Corporation (NYSE: EMX (American) TSXV) to acquire the Slattberg Cobalt-Nickel-Copper Project in Sweden (the "Project"). The Project consists of two adjacent exploration permits comprising approximately 9513 contiguous acres.

Slattberg is located 25 kilometers northwest of Falun, Sweden. Slattberg is a historic mining camp hosting cobalt-nickel-copper rich massive sulfide mineralization that occurs within a two kilometer belt of historic nickel-copper mines. The Project contains drill defined massive sulfide mineralization that extends to ~100 meters in depth, and remains open for expansion at depth and along strike. The Project is accessible year round, with nearby rail, power and 5 smelters in the Nordic region. At least 12 historic mines are located on the property, with historic operations dating back to the late 1800's.

Mineralization at Slattberg is hosted by 1.8-1.9 Ga (Svecofennian) supracrustal rocks (metavolcanics and metasediments) located along the southwestern flank of a large gabbroic intrusive complex. The historic mines are positioned along an east-west trend of massive sulfide occurrences developed in and around a similarly oriented body of "leptite". This is a local term used to describe rhyolitic/felsic tuffaceous rocks commonly associated with sulfide mineralization in Bergslagen. Mafic and ultramafic rocks also occur in and around the mine workings.

Sweden is at the forefront of an exploration and development boom in the mining industry. The country's favorable business environment includes a low corporate income tax rate, a proactive geological survey, and broad public support for export-led resource extraction. Sweden has a long history of mining, and is host to some of Europe's largest active mines.

Jason Gigliotti president of Sienna states, "We are very pleased to have the opportunity to have access to this project. We are positioning Sienna 'at the forefront of the battery metals revolution.' This new project lies within one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world with significant mining history. The infrastructure is as good as any drill target I have seen. There are paved roads within metres of planned drill targets and this prospect is accessible year round. This new cobalt-nickel-copper prospect houses 12 past mines and we are optimistic about what new mining techniques could achieve. We expect to be drilling this property early in 2018. When you couple this new project with our 'Clayton Valley Deep Basin Lithium Brine Project' in Nevada, it is clear that Sienna is focused on the battery metals space. Management is looking forward to a very active 2018 season and we are very optimistic about the future growth of the company."

Northvolt is planning to be the largest battery factory in Europe at roughly the same size as Tesla's Gigafactory. Jason Gigliotti states "Northvolt wants to locally source as much battery material as possible such as cobalt and nickel. There are now more than 20 mega battery factories currently being planned or constructed globally, creating a massive demand on the battery metals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel. Sienna is focused on exploring and developing projects that will meet this insatiable demand."

Pursuant to the Agreement, Sienna can earn 100% interest in the Project through the issuance of shares to EMX and conducting exploration work during the one-year option period, as described below (all dollar amounts in CAD):

On signing the Agreement, Sienna will issue to EMX 3 million common shares of Sienna stock.

As a condition to the exercise of the option, Sienna must spend at least $500,000 in exploration expenditures on the project, including drilling of at least 750 meters.

Upon exercise of the option, Sienna will issue to EMX an additional 3 million shares of Sienna stock, and EMX will receive a 3% NSR royalty on the properties comprising the Project. Within six years of the execution of the Agreement, Sienna may purchase 0.5% of the NSR royalty for $1.5 million, leaving EMX with a 2.5% NSR royalty.

After exercise of the option, Sienna will use commercially reasonable efforts to raise $3,000,000 for development of the Project and other activities. Once Sienna has raised that amount, Sienna will issue an additional 4 million shares to EMX. Thereafter, EMX will have the right to participate pro-rata in future financings at its own cost to maintain its interest in Sienna. All terms laid out here are subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval.

The technical contents of this release were approved by Greg Thomson, PGeo, a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Dec. 4, 2017) - Trevali Mining Corporation ("Trevali" or the "Company") (TSX:TV) (LMA:TV) (OTCQX:TREVF) (FRANKFURT:4TI) announces results from its 2017 exploration program where directional diamond drilling continues to intersect multiple zones of high-grade zinc mineralization within and below the Santander Pipe target at its Santander Zinc Mine in Peru (Table 1, Figures 1 & 2).

Hole ID Depth From - To

(metres) Core Length

Interval* (metres) Zn (%) Pb (%) Cu (%) Ag (g/tonne) SAN-0224-17 792.45 - 803.40 10.95 7.45 0.01 0.15 7.45 incl. 792.45 - 795.70 3.25 14.75 0.01 0.33 14.1 incl. 801.40 - 803.40 2 12.92 0.01 0.15 8.26 SAN-0225-17 556.95 - 621.55 64.6 7.26 0.04 0.10 12.24 incl. 557.80 - 567.35 9.55 11.31 0.05 0.14 20.52 incl. 615.05 - 621.55 6.5 20.38 0.01 0.43 18.48 SAN-0225B-17** 550.70 - 551.75 1.05 3.05 0.30 0.01 29.86 556.45 - 583.45 27 6.06 0.02 0.10 6.37 incl. 561.80 - 574.20 12.4 10.07 0.01 0.17 7.40 783.00 - 789.90 6.9 17.2 0.01 0.17 7.07 SAN-0225C-17 543.60 - 547.85 4.25 2.20 1.43 0.05 31.60 556.55 - 590.50 33.95 6.35 0.01 0.13 8.03 incl. 565.50 - 579.40 13.9 10.36 0.01 0.23 8.40 767.40 - 769.65 2.25 6.01 0.01 1.08 61.14 SAN-0226-17 349.70 - 379.40 29.7 7.94 0.31 0.25 33.01 incl. 370.15 - 379.40 9.25 10.36 0.04 0.32 25.60 SAN-0226B-17 348.35 - 364.05 15.7 3.54 3.82 0.12 22.44 incl. 358.20 - 364.05 5.85 7.31 7.58 0.22 38.72 375.05 - 386.20 11.15 3.18 3.21 0.07 16.14 396.75 - 410.55 13.8 3.96 0.65 0.24 41.69 incl. 396.75 - 401.65 4.9 8.34 0.97 0.29 54.71 423.85 - 468.00 44.15 3.26 0.08 0.26 31.89 Table 1: Summary drill hole assay results - Santander Pipe; *length and specific gravity weighted composites. True width is estimated at approximately 70-90% of reported interval. ** 0XXB-XX designates a daughter hole wedged off respective parent / mother hole.

"From our initial discovery drill hole in February 2008, Trevali has enjoyed almost 10-years of accretive resource growth and replacement at Santander. Given the coarse style of the mineralization, absence of significant amounts of barren sulphide and location immediately adjacent to the mine infrastructure, the Santander Pipe forms a compelling high-priority target," stated Dr. Mark Cruise, Trevali's President and CEO. "The exploration team currently has two surface and two underground drill rigs expanding the mineralized system which remains to be fully delineated."

Map of the Santander property showing the Magistral deposits, the Santander Pipe target and a portion of Trevali's 17-km long, prospective exploration trends)





Longitudinal Section (Looking East) of Magistral Deposits, Puajanca and Santander Pipe targets)





SANTANDER PIPE TARGET SUMMARY

The Santander Pipe was continuously mined between 1957 and 1991 to a vertical depth of 480 metres below ground surface. Based on historical mine records the Pipe produced 7,993,105 tonnes of ore grading 10.88% Zn, 0.98% Pb, 0.31% Cu and 2.1 oz/t Ag during this period. Due to a combination of low commodity prices coupled with a general lack of development, mining ceased in high-grade mineralization and remains open for expansion at depth.

In 2011 Trevali completed five drill holes to compare and confirm the presence of mineralization versus historic drill results at the mid-levels of the Pipe. All holes intersected broad zones of mineralization (up to approx. 100 metres at 2.73% Zn) adjacent to and within the historic workings, within which are shorter high-grade intervals (See News Release TV-NR-11-19 June 21, 2011 for details):

11.25 metres grading 7.24% Zn, 0.49% Pb and 94.9 g/t Ag

9.5 metres grading 8.88 % Zn, 0.64% Pb and 41.4 g/t Ag

7.1 metres grading 14.15% Zn, 0.74% Pb and 135.9 g/t Ag

The Santander Pipe target, as currently defined, is a roughly cylindrical body with a diameter of approximately 120 metres. Mineralization in the upper half of the Pipe, from 0-to-230-metres below ground surface, is hosted within the Jumasha and Pariatambo limestones while the lower half occurs within more favorable and reactive limestones of the Chulec Formation (Figure 3).

In the upper half of the Pipe, massive to semi-massive sphalerite with accompanying silver-rich (argentiferous) galena, pyrrhotite and minor chalcopyrite mineralization occurs as an annular ring 6-20 metres thick surrounding a central stock of lower grade garnetiferous skarn and disseminated sulphides that typically range from 0.5 to 4.0% Zn and 0.4 to 1.5 oz/t Ag. Sulphide mineralization in the lower half of the Pipe (from 230 to plus-440 metres below ground surface) occurs as manto replacement bodies between 5 to 25 metres thick, similar to those reported here (Figure 3).

The high-grade mineralization within the Pipe is defined as robust and is controlled by an interplay of structure, favorable host lithology (clean and/or porous limestone units), and proximity to the primary fluid pathways. Based on results to date it represents a very attractive target capable of rapidly adding significant tonnages at relatively high zinc grades.

Schematic diagram of mineralization in former Santander Pipe mining operation)





DETAIL

The first two holes testing the Pipe, SAN-0224 and SAN-0225, were designed to test the southern and central portions of the target respectively. As anticipated both holes intersected intense skarn alteration prior to intersecting broad zones of disseminated to massive zinc rich replacement mineralization.

SAN-0225B and SAN-0225C are daughter holes branching off the parent hole SAN-0225. They were designed to provide resource definition and confirm continuity of the mineralization encountered in SAN-0225 in the central portion of the currently defined Pipe.

SAN-0226, and daughter hole SAN-0226B, were designed to test the mineralization within the lower mine levels of pipe target, at similar vertical levels to currently defined Magistral mineralization, which also remains open for expansion (Figure 4).

Sections (N-S and W-E) through the Santander Pipe highlighting significant intersections as discussed in the text





Mineralization intersected in these holes is primarily sphalerite (+/- chalcopyrite) hosted within an intense garnet alteration halo. The relatively low quantities of barren sulphide gangue (pyrite and pyrrhotite) is anticipated to result in high recoveries and to produce a very clean zinc concentrate making the Pipe target metallurgically attractive. Several of the drill holes have also intersected late, lead and silver rich veins that cut earlier zinc mineralization. Additional drilling is required to understand the importance and geometry of these vein systems but as seen at the Magistral deposits they can form attractive high-grade targets in and of themselves.

ONGOING & FUTURE WORK

For the remainder of 2017 additional exploration drilling will continue to test targets in and around the Santander Pipe. Surface drilling will also follow up on a variety of near-mine high priority targets along the two primary mineralization trends on the property (Figures 1 and 2). The underground drill program is advancing well at the Magistral bodies and is anticipated to expand the inferred resource in addition to upgrading inferred tonnages to measured and indicated status for future mine planning as part of Santander's rolling mine plan strategy.

HALFMILE-STRATMAT PEA STUDY FILED ON SEDAR

On November 6, 2017 Trevali announced the results of a Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") for Halfmile-Stratmat massive sulphide zinc-lead-silver deposits in the Bathurst mining camp of New Brunswick, Canada.

Under the base case PEA both the Halfmile and Stratmat deposits are fed to a new 3,000-tonne-per-day concentrator plant located at the Stratmat site. Results indicate positive economics with a preproduction capital expenditure of $231-million, a post-tax internal rate of return (IRR) of 19 per cent, post-tax net present value (NPV) of $99-million at an 8-per-cent discount rate, a mine life of 13 years with peak annual payable production of approximately 117 million pounds zinc, 35 million pounds lead, two million pounds copper and 766,000 ounces silver. The alternative case PEA examined the feasibility of transporting preconcentrated dense media feed (DMS) to the company's Caribou concentrator plant. This study indicates economic results with an estimated preproduction capital expenditure of $156-million, a post-tax IRR of 25 per cent, post-tax NPV of $116-million at an 8-per-cent discount rate.

Trevali has filed, both on SEDAR and its website, the technical report entitled "Technical Report on Preliminary Economic Assessment for the Halfmile-Stratmat Massive Sulphide Zinc-Lead-Silver Integrated Project Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada" completed by SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. and dated effective October 26, 2017.

Qualified Person and Quality Control/Quality Assurance

EurGeol Dr. Mark D. Cruise, Trevali's President and CEO and Daniel Marinov, P.Geo, Trevali's VP Exploration, are qualified persons as defined by NI 43-101, have supervised the preparation of the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for this news release. Mr. Marinov is responsible for all aspects of the work, including the quality control/quality assurance programs. Dr. Cruise is not independent of the Company, as he is an officer, director and shareholder. Mr. Marinov is not independent of the Company as he is an officer and shareholder. Drill core samples were processed and assayed in the Santander mine onsite laboratory. Zinc, lead and silver, assays were obtained by Aqua-Regia dissolution followed by Atomic Absorption measurement. Values of lead and zinc over 15% are assayed by volumetric method. Analytical accuracy and precision are monitored by the analysis of reagent blanks, reference material and replicate samples. Quality control is further assured by the use of international and in-house standards. Blind certified reference material is inserted at regular intervals into the sample sequence by Trevali personnel in order to independently assess analytical accuracy. The onsite laboratory is outsourced and managed by SGS-Peru personnel. SGS-Peru's quality system complies with the requirements for the International Standards ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 17025: 1999. Finally, representative blind duplicate samples are routinely forwarded to an ISO compliant third-party laboratory for external quality control.

ABOUT TREVALI MINING CORPORATION

Trevali is a zinc-focused, base metals mining company with four commercially producing operations.

The Company is actively producing zinc concentrates from its wholly-owned Santander mine in Peru, the wholly-owned Caribou mine in the Bathurst Mining Camp of northern New Brunswick, its 80% owned Rosh Pinah mine in Namibia and its 90% owned Perkoa mine in Burkina Faso.

The common shares of Trevali are listed on the TSX (symbol TV), the OTCQX (symbol TREVF), the Lima Stock Exchange (symbol TV), and the Frankfurt Exchange (symbol 4TI). For further details on Trevali, readers are referred to the Company's website (www.trevali.com) and to Canadian regulatory filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.
Karen Pedersen joining university as dean of K-State Global Campus





Monday, Dec. 4, 2017

MANHATTAN  Following a national search, Kansas State University has named an expert in online learning for higher education as its new dean of the university's Global Campus.

Karen Pedersen will provide strategic vision, oversight, leadership and management in all aspects of Global Campus operations, including program development, workforce and professional development programming, faculty and staff development, and conferences.



"I am excited to welcome Dr. Pedersen as the next dean of Kansas State University's Global Campus," said April Mason, provost and senior vice president. "She brings significant experience leading distance and online learning initiatives that reflects a focus on global engagement and international outreach. Her experiences demonstrate innovative and visionary leadership and she will help K-State continue and grow as a leader in Global Campus outreach."

Pedersen is currently the chief knowledge officer for the Online Learning Consortium, a collaborative community of higher education leaders advancing quality digital teaching and learning experiences. She envisioned and leads the consortium's work in five key areas: learning innovation; quality enhancement; community engagement and development; publications, research, and policy; and product development leadership.



Pedersen has extensive experience building and implementing online education programs. She was associate vice president for Extended Campuses at Northern Arizona University; vice president for professional studies at Southwestern College, Winfield; and dean of Upper Iowa University's Extended University. She also was an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska, Kearney.



"I am so impressed by the dedication and commitment of the Global Campus team and am excited to be joining K-State," Pedersen said. "I look forward to working with all stakeholders to further innovate and take Global Campus to new heights."



Pedersen earned a doctorate in home economics from Oklahoma State University and master's and bachelor's degrees in textiles and apparel from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.



Pedersen will take over as dean on Feb. 1, 2018, reporting directly to Mason and serving on the Academic Council of Deans.
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Eat what you kill.

Sounds like a mantra from a survival reality show, right? Akin to eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. Its also a common reference to the prevailing business model in our American scarcity-minded, competition-driven, fee-for-service health care culture. How ironic, the application of these words to this profession. It was explained to me essentially as: Every man for himself, and youre a minion. You are expected to be productive in this business to justify your compensation and contribute to the bottom line. We measure productivity by a number of patients seen and accompanying charges. Pull your own weight, or there will be consequences.

Of course, from a capitalist business standpoint, this makes sense. I provide a service that others require. I should offer it widely, accommodate customer expectations and demands, expand my suite of offerings early and often, and charge for everything. The more I can get customers to consume and pay, the better off my business. I have a fundamental problem with this approach when the practice of medicine focuses on business first and patient care second. Nobody admits to this attitude, of course, its about patients first everybody says. Then my colleague suggests patient care improvement, or I express concern about conveyor belt medicine burning doctors out. Inevitably, the primary response from leadership is something along the lines of that costs too much, and thats the only way to keep the lights on. I understand the math. I despise the premise.

Medicine and health care delivery should always transcend the detached, transactional and ruthless nature of the free market. Chris Ladd, a conservative thinker and writer, describes this idea eloquently. It occurred to me today, replying to Stacey Holleys comment on my post about spending time with patients, that even those who profit from our flawed American system are also terminally distressed by it. Insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and their executives live in a constant state of fight-or-flight defensive posturing, fearing for their livelihoods in market share, revenue, solvency, and survival. How tragically ironic.

Personally, I have difficulty envisioning a single-payer, government-run health care program as the primary delivery system in the United States. Our culture is simply far too individualistic, too fundamentally ingrained with every man for himself. However, I think we can still work with the concept of universal health care, wherein all people have access to basic preventive and catastrophic care, regardless of income or status, without risk of bankruptcy. A strong argument can be made that the only entity who could or should be truly invested in the health and well-being of all of us, throughout our lifespan, is our government, particularly in the realms of prevention and health maintenance. We just need to loosen our societal grip on thats just how it works, and I need to get mine, and allow ourselves to be led more by our collaborative, altruistic and humanitarian leanings. In my experience, diverse groups of intelligent and energetic people, working toward ambitious and aspirational goals, generate synergy. This kind of cooperation fosters passion, joy, inspired creativity, and magnificent innovation. Who knows what novel solutions we may invent, if we only put down our spears and work together? And isnt that the hallmark of American ingenuity?

Medicine and health should be a heartening, collaborative, communal effort wherein we all do our best to help ourselves and each other reach our highest potential. We are better than our current system, in which truly everybody suffers more than necessary. I refuse to accept Eat What You Kill as any kind of descriptor for my work or that of my colleagues. We can do better, imagine and create more for ourselves and one another, than this primitive notion. I know theres a healthier mantra inside me somewhere 

What can you think of?

Catherine Cheng is an internal medicine physician who blogs at Healing Through Connection.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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When is the right time to have a baby? This question plagues professional women across industries. It takes on more significant importance for women training as physicians. Medical training is long and coincides with a womans late 20s, often stretching into her 30s. Waiting to have children until completing training is not always biologically feasible.

Medical schools and residency training programs still lag behind in developing formal parental leave policies. Outside of hospital-based practices, unpaid maternity leaves are commonplace. Add to this resentful colleagues left to pick up the slack and low pay during training, and the right time to have a baby can seem to be never.

When I began medical school, I was almost 28-years-old and newly married to a man 12 years my senior. Neither I nor my husband wanted to wait until I had finished medical school, residency, and fellowship, when we would be 36 and 48 respectively, to start a family.

Rather than perseverate over the right time, we focused on finding better times. I had four children over eight-and-a-half years: one during medical school, one during residency, one during fellowship and one 18 months after joining private practice.

I faced different challenges at different stages of training. In medical school, I worried that I missed out on educational experiences because I was perceived to be uninterested. As a resident, the lack of control over my time meant I missed many firsts, including my eldests first day of nursery school. As a fellow, I worried that the time I missed for doctors appointments and maternity leave unfairly burdened my co-fellows. As an attending, I worried that ten weeks of maternity leave set me back nine months in building my practice.

The biggest challenge I faced in every pregnancy was negotiating unclear or non-existent maternity leave policies. Each school, hospital, and employer had its own policies (or the case of my small private practice, no policy. I was the first employed physician to give birth). In each case at least some of my leave was unpaid. In medical school, residency and fellowship my leave was a cobbled together mix of vacation, sick days and elective time. My shortest leave was six weeks after baby number two during internal medicine residency. I was lucky! Other residents have far shorter leaves. My longest leave was 11 weeks.

Similarly, ACGME requirements vary. I would not have been board eligible immediately after my residency if I had taken a longer leave during my residency. I chose to space my children 30 to 36 months apart. As a result, I never took two leaves during any step in my training to avoid prolonging my training (I was already six years behind many of my peers).

I largely encountered deans and program directors used to pregnant students and house staff. They supported my requests to adapt my training schedule with good humor. However, other supervising physicians were not always so tolerant. I had my first child seven weeks into my third year of medical school. My leave was created by cannibalizing all my time off from my fourth year and pushing some third-year rotations into my fourth year. I began my first clerkship 30 weeks pregnant. I finished my last required clerkship after I had already Matched into another specialty.

Clerkship directors and attending physicians felt free to comment that I was showing a lack of commitment to their specialty when I arrived 30 weeks pregnant. I was assigned to less interesting cases. My written evaluations all included qualifications: she performed her duties well for a pregnant woman.

Another clerkship director threatened to fail me if I missed my duties in his clerkship to attend Match Day festivities, despite the school administration deciding Match Day was an excused absence and approving of my completing this required clerkship near the end of medical school. He felt allowing students to complete his clerkship so late in medical school was a snub from the administration. He vented his frustrations on me.

Most surprising to me was the resentment that seemed to bubble up among my classmates and co-residents. One co-resident remarked that it was unfair of me to take a spot from a man or an unmarried woman since he assumed I would work part-time after graduation and that men or unmarried women would work full-time. He said it wasted resources to train me.

Like many professional women, I was not truly off during maternity leave. I have prepared for and taken required exams, met with mentors, written research papers and Institutional Review Board applications, and put together a research presentation that was given within days of returning to work. Once back to work, I left in the morning before my children got up and came home after bedtime more times than I can count. I have raced home from 30-hour shifts to pick my children up from nursery school. I have missed dance recitals, recorder concerts, and Christmas pageants.

Looking at my brood  now 10, 7, 4 and the youngest at 21 months  the struggle of having children during medical training has faded. The medical student scrubbed on a kidney transplant 12 hours before going into labor, the pregnant resident sleeping on a spare stretcher, the pregnant fellow racing through the hospital to see 12 new diabetes consults in one day all seem like someone else. That physician in training has grown and solidified into a caring endocrinologist and loving, confident mother.

Everyone faces challenges becoming a parent. There is no right time, only better times. In hindsight, I wouldnt do anything differently. I have a profession I love and a family I adore. My children dont remember the most strenuous days of my training and being a mother has made me a better physician. I hope my children see me as the strong, empathic, dedicated physician they helped me to become and who works hard to give them a full and joyful home.

Gillian Mueller Goddard is an endocrinologist.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
What are you hiding?/Points on the curve
Stuff reports:

The Director-General of Health, Chai Chuah, has announced his resignation, stepping down from the role as health boss two-and-a-half years into a five-year term. The new Government, and in particular Health Minister David Clark, have been highly critical of Chuah from the Opposition benches and Chuah said it was important for the sector to operate in a unified way. Chuah had informed State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes in July, he was considering stepping down.

I have little doubt that the reason for the departure is that the new Minister would have expressed a lack of confidence in him. When this occurs, the State Services Commissioner will normally arrange a departure. It isnt tenable to have a CEO who doesnt have the confidence of their Minister.

So its a early win for Clark. Chuah was controversial in the sector and had very strained relations with some DHBs. This will make things smoother for Clark.

Finding a replacement may be difficult though. It is arguably the worst job in the public sector because the demand for spending in health will always outstrip supply. There are always new technologies, new drugs, more procedures, more staff needed. The DG of Health has to try and get efficiencies of a system that is often resistant to them.

Of interest is this announcement:

Health Minister Dr David Clark has announced the urgent establishment of a new Ministerial Advisory Group on the Health System. Dr Clark has appointed Sir Brian Roche as chair of the group. Professor David Tipene-Leach, Muriel Tunoho, Dr Karen Poutasi and Dr Lester Levy have also been appointed members for a term of two years. They will report directly to the Minister of Health. These five individuals are extremely experienced and highly regarded in the health and disability sector. Ive asked them to advise me on lifting the Ministrys performance and leadership, strengthening relationships across the sector, and helping to deliver the Governments strategic direction for health. This work is critical to improving the quality of our health services.

I dont know all the members but Roche, Poutasi and Levy are well regarded and could well play a good role in improving the performance of the Ministry of Health.

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By Choe Chong-dae





We know Normandy as the site of the Allied D-day landings on June 6, 1944. There are World War II commemorative sites throughout the region. The military cemeteries, war memorial museums, and D-Day landing beaches, including Omaha and Utah attract many visitors from France as well as from the whole world.



Having been engaged in the international cotton business, I had the pleasure of participating in professional dinners and seminars a couple of times held at the Hotel Barriere Le Royal and the Casino in the elegant city of Deauville, located in the heart of Normandy. A joint seminar focusing on genetically modified raw cotton was organized by the French Cotton Association.



Strolling along the boardwalk with the sea as the only horizon, I was fascinated by a great variety of architectural styles which blend the extravagance of the Second Empire, the golden age of Anglo-Norman design and the striking buildings of the 1890s, architecture which is well preserved in the resort.



Deauville is regarded as the "Queen of the Norman beaches" and one of the most glamorous seaside resorts in France as well as in the world. As the closest seaside resort to Paris, the city and its region of the Cote Fleurie (Flowery Coast) have long been home to romantic seaside houses.



What impressed me most in Normandy was the magnificent Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel as well as other castles, splendid churches, and picturesque ancient towns such as Rouen and Cean. Along the Channel coast, remarkable lime stone cliffs drop into the ocean, while lower Normandy is characterized by verdant, peaceful valleys. An idyllic pastoral area called the "Suisse Normande" ("Norman Switzerland") beckons nature lovers.



Recently, a special Normandy networking luncheon was held at Lotte Hotel, Seoul, on Oct. 30. It was hosted by Herve Morin, President of the Normandy region and former French Minister of Defense (2007-2010) with the support of the French-Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI), Business France Korea and Atout France. Many Korean and French guests including French Ambassador to Korea Mr. Fabien Penone participated in the event. Ms. Ida Daussy, a French born Korean broadcaster (Professor of French Language and Culture at Sookmyung Women's University) officiated at the event in fluent Korean, and French, featuring presentations about the Normandy region

With its unique cultural heritages, worldwide famous sites, romantic breathtaking coastal landscapes, picturesque harbor towns such as Honfleur or Trouville, a strategic location, famous food products and a business and innovation friendly environment, Normandy has a considerable number of assets to develop tourism, business and investment to a worldwide scale.



Morin visited Korea in late October along with officials of 10 companies of the Normandy region to promote products, firms with high-end know-how as well as international initiatives of the region to attract tourists, investors, researchers and young talent.



Remarkably, the Normandy region is renowned worldwide for the excellence of agri-food industry, (high quality cheese, butter, cream meat, fish and shellfish, vegetable and cider apples) its enormously huge marine energy potential (over 600km of coastline), its optimum logistics facilities (logistics warehouses, river and seaports) and its R&D clusters in aeronautics, secure electronic transactions, cosmetics and fine horses.



It is a region which has all the abundant resources and potential to be both today and tomorrow, the realization of a new model of development, responding to the hopes and wishes of the youth who flourish in an open, agile and interconnected world.



I wish Normandy would promote itself on becoming a world-recognized territory for peace, reconciliation and humanism as its history has been related with peace, liberty and human rights.





Choe Chong-dae (choecd@naver.com) is a guest columnist of The Korea Times. He is president of Dae-kwang International Co. and director of the Korean-Swedish Association.


A spectacular public light show this Friday and a civic ceremony will officially mark the end of Sligos year as European Volunteering Capital.

The Spirit of Sligo light show, which is open to the public, will take place at Sligo City Hall in Quay Street on Friday, December 1, at 6pm.

The building will be illuminated at an event and some of the illuminations will showcase the inspiring story of the volunteer community across Co Sligo.

The light show, organised by Dublin company Avtek, will continue each night for 7 nights on the hour for 10 minutes. Avtek is responsible for illuminating Dublin's New Years Eve Festival.

Invited guests will earlier attend a formal civic ceremony in City Hall to close the EVC Year and to witness the handover of the European Volunteer Capital 2018 title to the Danish city of Aarhus.

In addition, the three candidate cities for the 2019 EVC competition will be announced.

Foreign Affairs Minister Charles Flanagan will attend the civic ceremony with 150 guests including invited European dignitaries and Sligo County Council Cathaoirleach Sligo Cllr Seamus Kilgannon

They will watch a video presentation by Sligo Volunteer Centre Manager Ciara Herity called Sligo EVC 2017: The Story.

The Spirit of Sligo Lightshow will take place at 6pm sharp on City Hall. The public is invited to gather from 5.30pm.

Sligo County Council CEO, Ciaran Hayes said, "Sligo's designation as European Volunteering Capital has been a wonderful opportunity to highlight Sligo's unique volunteering strategies. The year has had a significant impact on the volunteer community, but also the wider business community with numerous events and conferences coming to Sligo on the occasion of the unique designation.

"This Friday's events include the official civic ceremony followed by a very special light show on City Hall at 6pm. We encourage everyone to join us for this event which will showcase some of the highlights from the year in a spectacular creative light show projected on City Hall."

Sligo Volunteer Manager Ciara Herity said Friday would mark a momentous event as Sligo's designation as European Volunteering Capital draws to a close.

"It's been an eventful year for the volunteers, organisations, businesses and the wider community who engaged with and supported our programme. We welcome European delegates to Sligo this week as the official handover from Sligo to Aarhus in Denmark takes place, and the announcement of the 2019 winners is announced."
The Leitrim Sculpture Centre presents the ninth annual North West Christmas Open Exhibition with works in all mediums that celebrate the diverse talent and energy of artists from across the North West of Ireland.

The opening reception will be held this Friday, December 1 from 12pm-5.30pm at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton.

There is something for everyone in this exhibition, with works that are unique, striking and beautiful. All works are for sale at reasonable prices.

Admission is free and everyone is welcome.

The gallery is also open for a special viewing on Sunday, December 3 to coincide with the Bee Park Community Centre Christmas Market.

In addition, the exhibition includes a special guest showing of works from pupils at the Gaelscoil Chluainin on Friday, December 15, for one day only. The exhibition continues until January 11.

Gallery opening times: Tuesday to Saturday - 11am to 4pm. Friday and Saturday - Doors open at front of house. Tuesday to Thursday - Go first to central reception at the side of the building.
Leitrim Youth Theatre Company Carrigallen will be performing the world renowned Irish classic, The Field, written by stage genius John B. Keane in the Corn Mill Theatre, Carrigallen on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, December 1, 2 and 3.



The Friday and Saturday shows are at 8.30pm, doors 8.00pm, and Sundays show is at 3pm, doors 2.30pm. Group and family rates at the door.



LYTC Carrigallen member David Rawle, bursting with skill and excitement from his experience rehearsing and performing with the National Youth Theatre, has taken on the role as director of this re-enactment of this Irish classic, assisted by artistic director of LYTC Carrigallen, Maura Williamson.



The Field is a play written by John B. Keane, first performed in 1965. It tells the story of the hardened Irish farmer "Bull" McCabe and his love for the land he rents. Rugged individualist Bull McCabe has spent five hard years of labour cultivating a small plot of rented land, nurturing it from barren rock into a fertile field.



When the owner of the field decides to auction it, he believes that he has a claim to the land, letting nothing stand in his way to that claim at whatever cost.



This young skilled energetic theatre company's version of this Irish classic will stand out from others you've seen, and will have you morally torn until the very end.



Further details on LYTC Carrigallen facebook page and inquiries and booking at cornmilltheatre@gmail.com



Leitrim Youth Theatre Co. is part funded by arts development programme Leitrim County Council, Creative Ireland Call, Youth Theatre Ireland, and the Arts Council. Currently there are senior and junior groups at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, and The Glens Centre, Manorhamilton. LYTC Carrigallen is booked out for the next year.
An interesting talk on Holy Wells  Customs, Cures and Curses by Tamlyn McHugh is taking place in Mohill Library on Wednesday, December 6 at 7pm.



Visiting holy wells forms part of our culture and heritage and were once places of pilgrimage or pattern days.



They were seen as holy places where people gather to recite prayers and the water in them was believed to be pure and life giving. Many people went to a holy well in order to be granted a cure for various ailments.



Tamlyn McHugh is a Sligo based licensed archaeologist and a member of the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland.



She has worked as a professional archaeologist in Ireland for 15 years since graduating from University College Cork with a BA in Archaeology and an MA in Methods and Techniques of Archaeological Practice. Tamlyn has a wide variety of archaeological experience working both in the public sector as an archaeologist for Mayo County Council and as a senior archaeologist in the commercial sector.



She is a lecturer in archaeology at St. Angela's College Sligo.



This talk is forming part of the Leitrim County Library programme of events for The Creative Ireland Project 2017  2022. To book your place, please telephone (071) 9631360.
Digital Champions

The School Digital Champion Programme is a unique opportunity for second level students to take part in an exciting and innovative programme that has the potential to involve learning at many levels.

This exciting programme enables students to develop their creativity, critical-thinking and communications skills.

Carrick-on-Shannon Community Schools 2018 Digital Champions are Con Doyle, Jack Foley, Conor Lyons and Daniel Wynne. This years Digital Champions will teach their grandparents to be smarter on their smartphone during January 2018. Training will be provided. The Digital Champions will also visit a tech industry site.



Coding

Carrick-on-Shannon Community School has been chosen as one of fifty Irish schools to complete the Junior Cycle short course in Coding. First Year students will complete classroom-based assessments in Second and Third Year.



Hour of Code

The Hour of Code takes place each year during Computer Science Education Week in December. First Year students will complete activities using the BBC Microbit computer for the Hour of Code.



Safer Internet Day Ambassador

Congratulations to Leaving Cert student Paul Woods, who has been selected as the school's Safer Internet Day Ambassador.

To coincide with Safer Internet Day, which takes place in February 2018, Paul will mentor First Year students on cyber security. Paul will receive online training and will attend a training day in Facebook headquarters Dublin in January 2018.



Film Francais

Fifth Year students recently attended a French film in the Dock theatre, Carrick-on-Shannon. Merci to Paul from The Dock, who welcomed the students in French. "Ma vie de courgette" tells the story of an orphan, and the adventures he has with his new friends in a foster home.

This Swiss-French comedy-drama film, "Ma vie de courgette" deals with many themes on the current Leaving certificate syllabus. The students then went to Philippe, the French baker in the market in the Market Yard.

Students ordered croissants in French and spoke French to the baker.
LifeStyle

The best LifeStyle shows are right here, from Australia and around the world. Catch up with the experts on home design and interiors, food and cooking, the property market, and get fresh ideas with the savviest of renovators. Whether you need inspiration for cooking up a storm, to refresh a tired room, or tips to sell your property, Foxtel LifeStyle will always something new for you to watch. Enjoy your favourite experts like Andrew Winter and Neale Whitaker, or Deb Hutton and Jamie Oliver live or On Demand.

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The internet is awash with extreme videos, but footage of lava barreling toward and then melting the lens of a GoPro camera may be one of the hottest (literally) recordings online.

The fiery affair happened on Aug. 10, 2016, when Kilauea EcoGuides tours owner and lead guide Erik Storm took a group of tourists from San Francisco to Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, according to National Geographic (opens in new tab). The video resurfaced this month after Erez Marom, an Israeli photographer, accidently melted a drone camera when he flew it too close to lava flows in Hawaii, renewing interest in flaming-hot lava footage.

Storm captured the recording when he showed the tour group a fast-moving lava flow in the park that day. Storm put his GoPro Hero4 Black camera into a crevice to capture a recording of the molten rock, but he made what he now calls "a $400 mistake"  he didn't pull out the camera in time, National Geographic reported. [50 Amazing Volcano Facts]

At least Storm has a good excuse for losing his GoPro to a molten blob. He was busy telling the tourists a story about Pele, the Polynesian fire goddess, he told National Geographic. After the scorching incident, he set to work retrieving the camera.

Don't drop your GoPro in the searing lava. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

"I had a geologist rock hammer with me, and that is how I was able to get it out of the now cooling rock," Storm wrote on Storyful, a video site. "When I got home, I hammered all the hardened rock off of the camera and was amazed to see the blue Wi-Fi light still blinking!"

Amazingly, the camera could still turn on, although the lens had melted, rendering it unusable. "The SD [secure digital] card popped right out and the footage was intact," he told Storyful. "At the end of the video, you can see me with the rock hammer."

It's no wonder the lava melted Storm's camera. Crawling, dark-red lava on Hawaii can reach temperatures of 895 degrees Fahrenheit (479 degrees Celsius), according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Live Science previously reported.

Bright-red lava flows are even hotter, reaching upward of 1,165 degrees F (629 degrees C), and glowing, orange lava indicates the molten rock is a steaming 1,600 degrees F (871 degrees C) or so, Live Science reported.

Despite the great footage, Storm doesn't recommend that other people mess with lava: Many native Hawaiians consider lava to be sacred.

"No one should ever poke the lava with anything, cook with the lava or throw anything into or in front of the flowing lava to 'see what happens,'" Storm told Storyful. "I respect the place where I work to the fullest and work hard to make sure people understand that this is a very sacred place that commands respect."

Original article on Live Science.
A page from the Coptic translation of the First Apocalypse of James from the Coptic Museum in Cairo, Egypt.

The oldest known copy of a text claiming to be Jesus' teachings to his brother James has been discovered in an ancient Egyptian trash dump, scattered among piles of fifth-century papyrus, ancient tax receipts and bills of sale for wagons and donkeys.

The manuscript is a rare, Greek-language edition of an apocryphal New Testament story called The First Apocalypse of James, that, until now, was thought to only be preserved in the Coptic language (an indigenous Egyptian language evolved from hieroglyphics), according to a statement. The text was likely written in the fifth or sixth century, said Brent Landau, a religious studies lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, who presented the findings along with Geoffrey Smith, a religious studies scholar at UT Austin, at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Boston in November. The findings have not yet been subject to peer review.

The find belongs to a collection of more than 200,000 papyrus documents housed at Oxford University in England, first excavated from a rubbish heap in the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus in the late 19th century. Smith and Landau pieced together the document from six different papyrus fragments in the collection earlier this summer. The two had been studying the Oxyrhynchusfindings for more than two years. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

A rare find

The manuscript is significant for a few reasons, Landau said.

For one, he said, it's written in Greek.

"Greek was the earliest language that the original Christian writings were composed in because it was sort of the universal language of the Roman empire at that time," Landau told Live Science. "It's extremely rare to find [apocryphal texts] in Greek  it was definitely the original language."

That means while this is not the first copy of the First Apocalypse of James ever found, it is likely the oldest. The only other known version of the text was discovered in the Nag Hammadi library  a collection of 13 Coptic Gnostic books excavated in Egypt in 1945. Buried in jars underground, the Nag Hammadi books were likely hidden for safekeeping sometime after A.D. 367 when Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, defined the canon of 27 books known today as the New Testament. All other stories, like those found in the Nag Hammadi collection, were deemed heretical. [Who Was Jesus, the Man?]

Considering the manuscript's forbidden status, another surprising aspect is that it appears to be a teaching edition.

"Nearly all of the syllables are divided with these little mid-dots  little dots right in the middle of the line," Landau said.

Manuscripts of the time were often written in a fluid, continuous script. To see syllables so clearly divided like this suggests that the book was a teacher's tool produced to help students learn how to read and write in Greek.

"By the time this text would have been used in somebody's school in the fifth or sixth century, this text was effectively banned," Landau said. "So clearly, this instructor, whoever he or she was, was quite fond of The First Apocalypse of James."

Forbidden text

Gnostic texts like The First Apocalypse of James were likely banned because of their "different understanding" of what Jesus' importance was, Landau said.

"They understood Jesus much more in terms of being a revealer of human wisdom than as a messiah," Landau said. "According to these Gnostic texts, Jesus taught people that the material world was actually a prison crated by an evil god  a lot like the movie 'The Matrix,' essentially."

In The First Apocalypse of James, Jesus describes this prison to his brother. He reveals that the world is guarded by demonic figures called archons, who are blocking the path between the material world and the afterlife. "What James needs to get by them when he dies are passwords  sort of like cheat codes in a video game," Landau said.

"You can see how this is pretty counter-cultural."

Landau and Smith are currently working to publish their findings in an upcoming series of the "Oxyrhynchus Papyri," an ongoing catalog of the Oxyrhynchus discovery first published 120 years ago.

Originally published on Live Science.
It's not often that a sentiment expressed in a tattoo would influence a person's medical care, but that's what happened to a man in Florida who had the words "do not resuscitate" tattooed across his chest.

The 70-year-old man arrived at the hospital unconscious with an elevated blood alcohol level, according to a recent report of the case. He had a history of several chronic diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes and an irregular heartbeat.

The "do not resuscitate" tattoo was written in all capital letters and with the word "not" underlined. This tattooed statement was also accompanied by what appeared to be the man's signature, which has been blurred in the photograph.

"Do not resuscitate" (DNR) is a legal order, which usually requires written paperwork, that prevents doctors from performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CRP) or providing advanced life support if a patient's heart stops beating.

His doctors were at odds over how to handle the case. They initially decided not to honor the tattoo because they were uncertain if the tattoo truly expressed the man's wishes. Indeed, there is at least one previous report of a man with a "DNR" tattoo (opens in new tab) that did not reflect his wishes. In that case, which was reported in 2012, the man did want to be resuscitated, but he got the DNR tattoo because he lost a bet. [5 Weird Ways Tattoos Affect Your Health]

But in the new case, the man's doctors were conflicted about the decision not to honor the tattoo, because of "the patient's extraordinary effort to make his presumed advance directive known."

So they consulted a medical ethics expert, who advised the doctors to honor the patient's tattoo. The expert "suggested that it was most reasonable to infer that the tattoo expressed an authentic preference," the report said.

Later, the hospital found that the man actually did have an official DNR order with the Florida Department of Health. The man's doctors were "relieved" to find that their decision matched this official request.

The man's condition soon deteriorated, and he died without undergoing CPR or invasive life-support methods.

The doctors conclude that "this patients tattooed DNR request produced more confusion than clarity," and that the case "neither supports nor opposes the use of tattoos to express end-of-life wishes."

The report was published Nov. 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Original article on Live Science.
A 23-year-old construction worker used a woodworking blade to remove what he called a pimple on his lower lip, developing a rare fungal infection afterward, a recent report of the man's case revealed. The infection was likely caused by his unusual choice of tools to zap his zit, the report said.

Doctors said they suspect the woodworking blade directly transferred the spores of a fungus called Blastomyces to the man's skin. This resulted in a large, painful, blood-encrusted lesion on the skin beneath the man's lower lip, according to the case report, which was published Nov. 21 in the Journal of Emergency Medicine.

The Blastomyces fungi usually live in moist soil and in decomposing wood or leaves, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC). In the United States, the fungus is primarily found in Midwestern, South-Central and Southeastern states, the CDC says. [10 Bizarre Diseases You Can Get Outdoors]

People typically become infected with Blastomyces  which causes an infection called blastomycosis  by inhaling the fungal spores, rather than through a cut on the skin. Inhaling the spores leads to a lung infection called primary pulmonary blastomycosis. ("Primary pulmonary" means that the infection started in the lungs.) One common cause of the infection is breathing in spores of the fungus while doing outdoor activities that disturb the soil. Pets, especially dogs, can also get blastomycosis.

The fungal infection usually first causes flu-like symptoms, including fever, cough and muscle aches. From the lungs, the infection can spread to other organs, the most common of which is the skin, where the fungus causes crusty lesions, according to the case report.

But in the recent case, the man did not experience any of these flu-like symptoms, because the fungal spores entered his body through his skin rather than his lungs. His only symptom, in fact, was the noticeable patch of inflamed skin just below his lower lip.

Rare fungal infection

The construction worker told doctors that his skin lesion had first appeared seven months earlier, not long after he used a woodworking blade to snip what he called a "pimple" off his lower lip.

Although the man described the blemish as a pimple, it could have been any type of skin lesion, such as a cold sore or canker sore, said lead case report author Dr. Barry Ladizinski, a dermatology resident at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago who treated the man.

The infection occurred because the woodworking blade that the man used had likely come in contact with soil that contained Blastomyces spores, Ladizinski told Live Science. When the man used the blade on his lip, the tool transmitted the organisms into the cut in his skin, he said.

By the time the man came to the hospital, the entire bottom edge of his lower lip had a raised area of blood-encrusted skin with warty lesions on it and a rolled, hardened border, according to the case report.

The 23-year-old told doctors that the lesion had expanded in size since it first appeared on his face and was painful. He had no other symptoms, and his blood tests were normal, according to the case report.

The doctors performed several skin tests, which showed signs that the man had the rare fungal infection.

He was diagnosed with primary cutaneous blastomycosis, which is when an injury to the skin  in this case a cut, but it can also be an animal bite or scratch  transfers Blastomyces into the body causing an infection. ("Primary cutaneous" means that the infection started in the skin.) It's a very rare form of the fungal infection, with fewer than 50 reported cases in the medical literature, according to the case report.

Most of the reported cases of primary cutaneous blastomycosis have been seen in dog handlers, who may pick up the infection from animal bites or scratches, and scientists, who may be accidentally exposed to the fungus while studying it, Ladizinski said. The infection tends to stay on the skin and does not spread to other organs, he noted.

The man in the case study was given an antifungal medication to treat the infection, and his skin cleared up considerably after two weeks of taking the drug, according to the report.

Originally published on Live Science.
Thousands of people gathered at Utah's State Capital building today (Dec. 4) to protest the reduction in size of two national monuments in the state.

President Donald Trump shrank the size of two national monuments  Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante  in Utah today (Dec. 4) after signing proclamations that cut the protected lands by more than 1.1 million acres and 800,000 acres (445,000 and 323,000 hectares), respectively.

The two proclamations constitute the largest rollback of federally protected land in U.S. history, according to USA Today (opens in new tab), and will allow miners and ranchers access to the previously protected land.

In a speech today, Trump said that previous administrations had violated the spirit of the American Antiquities Act on 1906, which mandates that monuments be made with "the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected." [5 Fossil Hotspots: National Parks to Visit]

The new proclamations are the result of an executive order Trump signed in April that authorized a review of national monuments designated since Jan. 1, 1996, that were either more than 100,000 acres (40,400 hectares) in area, or that were "made without adequate public outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders," Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said, in a previous report by Live Science.

However, reducing the size of these monuments could imperil countless scientific sites and fossils, including those of dinosaurs, crocodilians, turtles, lizards and mammals, P. David Polly, president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and a professor of sedimentary geology at Indiana University, wrote in an op-ed for Live Science last week.

"These two monuments were set aside specifically under the American Antiquities Act to protect their paleontological and archaeological resources from damage by mining and other mineral extraction," Polly wrote. "Both monuments protect exquisite fossil sequences that tell us about crucial intervals in the history of our planet."

Almost 40 previously unknown animal species have been discovered at Grand Staircase-Escalante, which was established as a national monument in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton. This includes 13 newfound dinosaur species, such as Diabloceratops eatoni, a distant relative of Triceratops, and Teratophoneus, a meat-eating tyrannosaur related to Tyrannosaurus rex, Polly said.

Researchers also found a small creature known as Paranyctoides, which was the oldest animal with a placenta (an animal that gives birth to live young) on record at the time, he noted.

"We're never done finding new fossils and filling in those gaps," Michelle Stocker, a paleontologist at Virginia Tech University, told Polly.

Shrinking these monuments is "a loss to science and the American public," Polly said. "The paleontological science at Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears was one of the primary justifications for turning these wilderness lands into national monuments so that coal mining, petroleum extraction and other damaging activities would not ruin the scientific value they provide to us all."

The monuments "also provide homes for hundreds of species of birds and other wildlife, David Yarnold, president and CEO of the National Audubon Society, said in a statement.

Moreover, "more than 100,000 archaeological sites within the Bears Ears National Monument require conservation, including rock art dating back at least 5,000 years as well as cliff dwellings and other remnants of past cultures that have existed in the region for millennia," the Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization headquartered in Philadelphia, said in a statement.

Thousands of people protested the new proclamations at the Utah State capital today. Several tribes, including the Navajo Nation, and conservation and outdoor industry groups say they will challenge Trump's decision in court, according to The New York Times.

Original article on Live Science.
A new 3D-printed mask helped a puppy in California heal after its face was severely wounded in an attack by another dog.

The puppy, a 4-month-old female Staffordshire bull terrier named Loca, arrived at the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine with a fractured cheekbone and jawbone  the result of a severe dog bite. In addition, she had a damaged temporomandibular joint (or TMJ, which connects the jawbone to the skull), and puncture wounds on her face and neck, according to a statement from the University.

Loca's doctors saw her case as an opportunity to use a new approach for treating facial fractures  a 3D-printed "exoskeleton" mask for dogs. Work on such a mask, known as the Exo-K9 Exoskeleton, was already underway at the university, as part of a collaboration between the veterinary hospital and the U.C. Davis College of Engineering.

The mask works much like a traditional cast for the arms or legs, meaning it holds the affected bones in place while they heal. [7 Surprising Health Benefits of Dog Ownership]

The engineers used a CT scan of Loca's skull to design a custom-fit mask, which was then printed with a 3D printer. Loca was the first patient to try the Exo-K9 mask, the university said.

After 1 month of wearing the mask, a CT scan showed that new bone was forming. Loca was then allowed to eat hard kibble to help her new TMJ become a functional joint  otherwise, it might fuse with her skull, the statement said. Another CT scan performed 3 months later showed that her TMJ healing was "progressing nicely," and that she is continuing to recover from her injuries.

Original article on Live Science.
by Thom Forbes @tforbes, December 4, 2017

After weeks of negotiations, CVS Health announced yesterday that it is buying Aetna, the health insurance giant based in Hartford, Conn., for $69 billion in cash and stock in a deal CVS CEO Larry J. Merlo claims will remake the consumer health care experience.

Indeed, if the acquisition passes the scrutiny of antitrust regulators intact, it could ignite additional mergers in health care. Amazon is poised to enter the drug business in some fashion, leading to further disruption and uncertainty in the industry, as Edward C. Baig points out for USA Today. CVS is based in Woonsocket, R.I.

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A key component of CVS's business is its CVS Caremark pharmacy benefit management subsidiary. The deal could help CVS encourage Aetna's health plan participants to use the CVS/Caremark mail order prescription system and shop at the pharmacy company's retail stores, which will be able to offer more in-store health services, Baig continues.

The mere possibility that Amazon will soon begin selling drugs has shaken the stocks of companies up and down the drug supply chain, from wholesalers to pharmacies, observes Carolyn Y. Johnson for the Washington Post. The deal would expand CVSs business beyond the business of selling drugs and negotiating drug prices, to managing all aspects of a patients health  and could shift its storefronts to become medical hubs, rather than aisles stocked with consumer goods that people can easily buy in other stores or online.

At the same time, Johnson writes, it should make Aetna more competitive with UnitedHealth Group, which expanded into pharmacy care services, clinics and surgery care centers itself.

I think it will create more consolidation among the insurers and retailers, blurring the lines, Leerink Partners analyst Ana Gupte tells her. Gupte recently pointed to retail giants Walgreens Boots Alliance or Walmart as potential dark horse acquirers of the health insurer Humana.

As CNBC.coms Lauren Hirsch and Bertha Coombs report, For Aetna, the deal marks a change in strategy after its attempted tie-up with Humana was blocked by a federal court on antitrust grounds. The two, like others in the insurance industry, had sought out scale to better negotiate costs with hospitals and PBMs.

A CVS deal would be a so-called vertical integration  an acquisition along a company's supply chain  rather than a horizontal acquisition of a direct competitor. Such deals are thought to be less threatening to antitrust authorities.

Although critics worry that customers could also find their choices sharply limited, yesterday the two companies emphasized their ability to transform CVSs 10,000 pharmacy and clinic locations into community-based sites of care that would be far less expensive for patients, Michael J. de la Merced and Reed Abelson write for the New York Times.

We think of it as creating a new front door to health care in America, CVSs Merlo tells them.

The merger would establish a new way of delivering care, with nurses, pharmacists and others available to counsel people about their diabetes or do the lab work necessary to diagnose a condition, Mr. Merlo said. We know we can make health care more affordable and less expensive, they continue.

In a joint interview with the Wall Street Journal, Merlo and Aetna CEO Mark T. Bertolini also emphasize cost savings.

These costs are growing at an unsustainable rate, Merlo says. The combined company can meet an unmet need in terms of improving access and reducing cost and helping people achieve their best health, write Sharon Terlep, Anna Wilde Mathews and Dana Cimilluca.

Combining Aetnas vast trove of data with CVSs retail expertise will enable better treatment of costly chronic diseases, Bertolini tells them. This is about how to get the payer more involved at the local level. As we look at 50% of the population driving 80% of cost, we need to find a more convenient and more effective way to meet customers needs.

In a piece that analyzes myriad potential winners and losers if the merger plays out, Fortunes David Z. Morris writes: Participants in other comprehensive health-care programs, such as HMOs, sometimes complain that limited access to services  or even denial of care  can be a negative consequence of the push to cut costs. So whether patients wind up better off is a bit of a toss-up, and even years from now it may be in the eye of the beholder.

That said, CVS has made some meaningful decisions recently that genuinely seem to put their customers health first. Most notably, they stopped selling tobacco products in 2014, and it may have actually helped people quit. So maybe  just maybe  we can expect them to prioritize patient care as they take greater responsibility for it.

Alas, just maybe seems to be the new standard we live by.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, December 4, 2017

A federal judge has rejected Backpage's request for an order prohibiting Missouri Attorney General Joshua Hawley from proceeding with an investigation into whether online classifieds site violated state consumer protection laws.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Cohen in St. Louis said in a decision issued last week that the federal court lacked grounds to get involved in the battle between Backpage and Hawley. "In this case, there are (or were) adequate opportunities for Backpage to present its federal claims in the state-court action," Cohen wrote.

The decision marks a setback for Backpage, which is fighting several lawsuits alleging that the company facilitates sex trafficking through its online ads.

Earlier this year, Backpage asked Cohen to issue an injunction blocking Hawley from enforcing a "civil investigative demand" that would require Backpage to turn over seven years' worth of records relating to operations and editorial practices. Hawley's office said the investigation centered on whether Backpage violated a state consumer protection law that bans unfair and deceptive practices.

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Backpage said the investigation should be blocked, because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects web sites from prosecution for illegal ads posted by users.

Hawley countered that Backpage may not be entitled to immunity, due to evidence that the company "has played a direct and active role in creation, soliciting, and promoting advertisements for illegal commercial sex on its website."

But Backpage noted that the federal Communications Decency Act trumps state laws, including Missouri's consumer protection measure. The company also said the only relevant question is whether the ads were created by users -- as opposed to factors such as whether the site promoted the ads. "Section 230 immunity cannot be evaded by attacking a websites overall design and operation or by claiming it invited or solicited unlawful content," Backpage argued. "The issue is who authored, created, and posted the particular content that allegedly caused harm."

Cohen dismissed Backpage's request without ruling on whether the company was entitled to immunity for ads relating to sex trafficking.

In January, Backpage said it would shutter its "adult" ads section, which observers said mainly contained prostitution ads. But since then many of those ads appear to have migrated to other sections of the site.

Congress is considering amending the Communications Decency Act by allowing sex-trafficking victims to pursue civil lawsuits against some websites that ran prostitution ads, and enabling state officials to prosecute businesses that violate federal sex-trafficking laws.
by Melynda Fuller , December 4, 2017

Following the firing of almost 80 employees in November, Conde Nast announced that veteran GQ creative director Jim Moore would be stepping down from his role in January 2018.

Will Welch, who currently serves as GQ Styles editor-in-chief, will play a dual role, taking on Moores title in the new year.----------

Moore, who has been with the publication for nearly four decades, is credited with creating the GQ look associated with the mens fashion magazine, often running style stories that were educational and instructive.

Rather than shy away from a tutorial voice, Moore embraced it. As a result, he helped transform mens fashion. He is known for his legendary work with photographers such as Bruce Weber, Cass Bird, and Mario Testino. Moore also championed American designers like Ralph Lauren.

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Moore had been the publications creative director since 1998.

Following his exit, he will become creative-director-at-large and continue to work with the brand and Conde Nasts publications. His transition to a new role has been compared to Grace Ceddingtons reduced role at Vogue in January 2016.

In a profile with Business of Fashion, Moore noted he was looking forward to collaboration: I am really loyal to this magazine and this company. Ill always have that GQ thing inside of me.
by Sara Guaglione , December 4, 2017

While many publishers, like Conde Nast, are reducing the frequencies of a number of its print titles next year, Bauer Media Group is increasing the number of print issues for four titles in 2018.

Life & Style will print 53 issues next year, up from 51, and Closer, In Touch and Womans World will go up from 52 to 53 issues, according to Folio, which first reported the news.

Bauer earns a positive margin on every issue from single copy sales, Bauer CEO Steven Kotok told Folio. So the more issues we publish, the more money we earn, unlike an ad-dependent model in which fewer ads each year are spread over the same number of issues.

Last week, WWD reported Conde Nast would reduce the frequency of W magazine from the 10 issues printed this year to eight collectible volumes in 2018, as well as increase its newsstand price by $2 to $9.99 an issue.

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Conde Nast also ended Teen Vogues print product this fall and plans to drop the frequencies of GQ, Glamour, Allure, Architectural Digest, Conde Nast Traveler and Bon Appetit.

Kotok explained to Folio that Bauer Media activates a majority of its readership at retail point of sale, meaning its brands have very low duplication from all our competitors whose readers are overwhelmingly served subscriptions in their homes.

Bauer also increased the number of its ad pages this year. A special holiday issue of Womans World on newsstands this week upped the number of its ad pages from seven per issue to nine, as well as increased its page count to maintain its edit-to-ad ratio.

Bauer Media Group USA also publishes J-14. This summer it launched Teen Boss, a new, print-only brand for teenagers aspiring to be in business.
by Sarah Mahoney @mahoney_sarah, December 4, 2017

The outdoor industry is coming out swinging after President Donald Trump announced dramatic reductions in two national monuments in Utah, including a potential lawsuit from industry leader Patagonia.

With adsand its entire homepagescreaming The President Stole Your Land, Patagonia says Trumps move is illegal and promises legal action. Outdoor retailer REI also reacted swiftly, asking its followers to change their social-media profile pictures to a We (Hear) Our Public Lands photo.

President Trumps announcement new came amid a tense morning, with the Salt Lake City Tribune reporting hundreds of protesters, including many from Native groups, facing off against police in riot gear. Many knelt in the streets and blocked traffic, before backing off to boo Trump as he departed, chanting, Whose land? Our land! (Protest signs included Trump: A monumental mistake, #What would Teddy do? and Keep your tiny hands off our public lands.)

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The Administrations unlawful actions betray our shared responsibility to protect iconic places for future generations and represent the largest elimination of protected land in American history, says Patagonias president and CEO Rose Marcario, in a statement. Weve fought to protect these places since we were founded and now well continue that fight in the courts.

The Outdoor Industry Association, which had encouraged members to come to Salt Lake City and protest, characterized President Trumps order as part of a long pattern of attacks on public lands. It says the announcement is detrimental to the $887 billion outdoor recreation economy and the 7.6 million American jobs it supports, adding that it will hurt hundreds of local Utah communities and businesses, and stifle millions of dollars in annual economic activity and threatens thousands of jobs in the region.

This is a blow for anyone who loves the outdoors, REI says on its Facebook page. We are not alone in this view. Since April, 2.8 million Americans have spoken directly to the Department of the Interior to advocate for protecting our national monuments. These voices have fallen on deaf ears.REI will not retreat from our strong belief that there is common ground in the outdoors. (This summer, REI made a video addressed to Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, and urging people to contact the department to urge protection of the new monuments.)

The decision to shrink the monuments is seen as a positive among energy industry advocates, and for conservative politicians who view former President Barack Obamas national monument designation as federal overreach. On Twitter, Sen. Orrin Hatch says Trumps move gives Utahns a voice in the protection of Utah lands, calling it a balanced solution and a win for everyone on all sides of this issue.
by Ray Schultz , December 4, 2017

Roman Valeryevich Seleznev was sentenced on Friday to 14 years in prison for his role in a $50 million cyber fraud ring and a $9 million bank-hacking scheme.

The purported Russian cyber-criminal, aka Track2, Bulba and Ncux, pleaded guilty to one count of participating in a rackeetering enterprise and one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, receiving 168 months in jail in each case. These pleas were entered on Sept. 7.

The racketeering case was prosecuted in the District of Nevada, and the banking case in the Northern District of Georgia.

Seleznev has also been convicted in the state of Washington for his role in a scheme to hack into point-of-sale computers. For that, he was sentenced of 27 months. All the sentences will run concurrently

In addition, Seleznev was sentenced to three years of supervised release in each of the two new cases by U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones, of the Northern District of Georgia.

And, Seleznev was ordered to pay $50.8 million in the racketeering case, which was filed in the Northern District of Nevada, and $2.1 million in the bank case, which took place in the Northern District of Georgia.

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According to prosecutors, Seleznev admitted an association with the Carder.su identity theft and credit card fraud ring. Members of the group communicated through chatrooms, private messaging systems, encrypted email, proxies and encrypted virtual private networks, they said.

Seleznev also admitted that he sold compromised credit card account data and other personal identifying information to fellow Carder.su members. His automated website allowed ring members to log in to and buy stolen data, the prosecutors state.

In the banking case, Seleznev worked with hackers to defraud a company that processed credit and debit card transactions for financial institutions. In 2008, hackers accessed 44.4 million debit card numbers, and used them to withdraw $9.4 million from 2,100 ATMS around the world in 12 hours, the prosecutors allege.

In addition to Seleznev, 55 individuals have been indicted in Operation Open Market, a federal probe of Carder.su, and there have been 22 convictions to date.
Sleep apnea is estimated to affect 1 in 5 American adults, and there are currently no drugs available to treat it. But a large-scale clinical trial now offers hope, proving that a drug that uses a synthetic version of the main psychoactive substance in cannabis is effective for treating the disorder.

Share on Pinterest A synthetic version of purified THC  the active substance found in marijuana  could be effective for treating sleep apnea.

The drug is called dronabinol, and it is based on a synthetic version of Delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)  the main psychoactive compound responsible for the high in cannabis use.

The randomized clinical trial is the longest and largest of its kind, and the results are from its second phase. Dronabinol is already in use for the treatment of nausea and vomiting in patients undergoing chemotherapy.

David W. Carley, a professor of biobehavioral health sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), jointly led the study with Dr. Phyllis Zee, professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and director of the Northwestern Medicine Sleep Disorders Center, both in Chicago, IL.

At least a mild form of sleep apnea is thought to affect 1 in 5 Americans, and treatment options are limited. Obstructive sleep apnea  the most prevalent form of the condition  is usually treated mechanically with a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device. However, treatment adherence to this mechanical option is very poor.

Recurrent, untreated sleep apnea may lead to cardiovascular problems, such as heart disease and stroke. There is a tremendous need for effective, new treatments [for] obstructive sleep apnea, says Prof. Carley, who is also the first author of the paper.

The drug tested in this trial  results of which are published in journal Sleep  works by targeting the brain. Dr. Zee explains, The CPAP device targets the physical problem but not the cause.

The drug targets the brain and nerves that regulate the upper airway muscles. It alters the neurotransmitters from the brain that communicate with the muscles.

When people take a pill to treat apnea, they are treated for the entire night, adds Prof. Carley.
An analysis of international data on more than a million people who were followed over time confirms two links between BMI and dementia  one ties midlife obesity to higher risk, and the other ties being underweight near disease onset to higher risk. Share on Pinterest New research clarifies how both obesity and lower-than-average BMI are linked to dementia. A report on the longitudinal study, which was conducted by researchers across Europe and led by University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom, is published in the journal Alzheimers & Dementia. The findings may explain the mixed evidence on the relationship between higher body mass index (BMI) and dementia risk; there is some that points to higher BMI being tied to raised risk, and there is some that suggests the opposite. The reason for the confusion is because there are two things going on, says lead study author Mika Kivimaki, who is a professor in UCLs Institute of Epidemiology & Health. One is an adverse effect of excess body fat on dementia risk, he notes. The other is weight loss due to preclinical dementia. This might explain why those who develop dementia tend to have above-average BMI two decades before disease symptoms appear, but nearer the time of onset, their BMI is lower than healthy counterparts who do not develop it.

Dementia numbers rising Worldwide, there are around 47 million people living with dementia, an irreversible, deteriorating brain disease that progressively diminishes ability to remember, think, and live independently. The risk of developing dementia rises with age, and because of the rising number of elderly people in the world, global numbers of the disease are soaring. As there is currently no cure for dementia, or even treatments that slow it down, the already huge impact that the disease has on individuals, their families, communities, health systems, and costs will become overwhelming. Estimates suggest that by 2030, there will be 75 million people living with dementia worldwide, rising to 132 million by 2050. Alzheimers disease  a condition that gradually destroys cells and tissue in the brain  is the main cause of dementia, accounting for around 65 percent of cases. While estimates vary, it is thought that there are around 5 million people living with Alzheimers disease in the United States, where dementia is a leading cause of death among older people.

High midlife BMI means higher dementia risk For their new study, Prof. Kivimaki and colleagues pooled and analyzed data from 39 longitudinal population studies. Altogether, the data covered a total of 1,349,857 individuals from France, Finland, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S. All were free of dementia when they enrolled and underwent measurement of weight and height to assess their BMI. By searching hospital and prescription records and death registries, the studies had established that 6,894 of the participants developed dementia over 38 years of follow-up. When they analyzed the data, the team found that having higher BMI 20 years before onset of dementia was linked to higher risk of the disease. In addition, they found that the risk of dementia rose by between 16 and 33 percent for each five-unit rise in BMI. Five units of BMI are roughly the difference between normal and overweight and the difference between overweight and obese on the BMI scale. For a person of height 5 feet 7 inches (170 centimeters), this is equal to 14.5 kilograms (32 pounds).
Officials at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, did not properly report criminal information to the civilian authorities about Texas church shooter and former airman Devin P. Kelley, a preliminary service investigation has found.

"The Air Force's review of its reporting processes to civilian law enforcement in the Devin P. Kelley case has prompted immediate actions to correct reporting deficiencies and prevent future occurrences," Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said in a statement on Tuesday.

She said that based on initial findings in the case's chain, the Air Force Inspector General confirmed that "the [Office of Special Investigations] and Security Forces personnel then assigned at Holloman did not report required information."

"The review also found the error in the Kelley case was not an isolated incident and similar reporting lapses occurred at other locations," Stefanek said. "Although policies and procedures requiring reporting were in place, training and compliance measures were lacking," she said.

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Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein have directed OSI and Security Forces officials to conduct reviews of all airmen with "reportable offenses" dating back to 2002, the statement said. Two tasks forces of 30 members from each organization are working the action -- which could result in a review of some 60,000 records.

"The Air Force has reported and corrected several dozen records since the review began and is reviewing approximately 60,000 cases involving serious offenses over the 15-year period to ensure full compliance," Stefanek said in a follow-up email.

The revelation about training failures has prompted the Air Force to take corrective actions in what will be a months-long process as the broader Defense Department review proceeds.

Aside from the task force, one of the new procedures is to establish a leadership requirement at the field, regional and headquarters levels "to verify that information from applicable cases is registered with the FBI's National Crime Information Center's Interstate Identification Index," Stefanek said.

"Additionally, supporting software, checklist and training changes were made to support the new procedures," she said.

Earlier this month, the service said it was likely that Kelley's domestic violence offense was not entered into the NCIC database -- an electronic clearinghouse of crime data that can be tapped into by virtually every criminal justice agency, according to its website.

Because the agency wasn't aware of his criminal record, Kelley was able to buy an assault rifle-style weapon used in the mass shooting on Nov. 5, described as the deadliest ever to occur in Texas.

Armed with a Ruger AR-556 rifle and wearing black tactical gear, Kelley -- who served in the Air Force from 2010 until May 2014, when he was court-martialed -- entered First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs around 11:20 a.m. that Sunday and started shooting congregants during the service, killing at least 26 people and wounded numerous others.

NCIC lapse

Kelley's time in the service was cut short due to domestic abuse, including accusations he repeatedly pointed a loaded firearm at his then-wife, which led to a court-martial and bad-conduct discharge.

Charles McCullough, a lawyer and partner at Tully Rinckey, said that officials who were leading this case -- regardless of how the case developed -- should have considered the ramifications of Kelley's violent past.

"What's surprising here frankly is again these are done case by case, totality of the circumstances, you make these assessments, but anytime you've got violence and firearms, everybody's antenna should be up," said McCullough, formerly an intelligence community IG and FBI special agent.

"The fact this wasn't in NCIC -- NCIC is the best known database for criminal information in the country. It's what all of law enforcement uses, federal or state," McCullough said in a recent interview with Military.com.

"There are a lot databases that deal with specific things [such as] public source information, just financial information, [Department of] Treasury has their own database, but NCIC is what everyone uses. And so to not enter something like this into NCIC -- if that is indeed what happened -- that's a fairly significant lapse from a law enforcement standpoint.

"Just without knowing the specific details of the case, just with knowing you have a mixture...of firearms and violence -- the violence is bad enough, where we know that children are getting hit, and a wife getting hit, but then we have firearms, that is something that I would at least want further inquiry and it appears that the Air Force IG is doing that, and I expect the DoD IG to do that [as well]," he said.

Stefanek said that is now the goal of the review going forward.

"Air Force officials are correcting all identified deficiencies as they are discovered and reporting them to civilian law enforcement," Stefanek said. "The Air Force will continue to take steps to identify and remedy shortfalls as the review continues," she said.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
A colonel forced into retirement after court-martial proceedings last year has just been arrested again on new charges. But the most recent allegations against him detail criminal misbehavior dating back to 2002, Military.com has learned.

Todd Shane Tomko, 54, was arrested in Quincy, Illinois, on Nov. 22 on seven outstanding felony warrants from the Virginia Beach Police Department.

A 33-year Marine officer and former commander of the Wounded Warrior Regiment, he was sentenced to two months in the brig last year after pleading guilty to sending sexual text messages to a female enlisted subordinate, obtaining and using testosterone without a prescription, and driving drunk to his own arraignment aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.

Master Police Officer Linda Kuehn, a spokeswoman for the department, told Military.com Tuesday that the charges against Tomko include three counts of aggravated sexual battery, three counts of indecent liberties with a child, and one count of felony cruelty to children.

The crimes were alleged to have been committed in Virginia Beach from the year 2002 to present, Kuehn said. The allegations involve three juvenile victims "who were known to the suspect," she added.

The warrants, Kuehn said, were obtained Nov. 21. Tomko is expected to be transferred soon from Quincy to Virginia Beach so the warrants can be formally served and the adjudication process can begin.

The newly revealed scope of the allegations also raises questions about whether the military will opt to be involved in Tomko's prosecution moving forward. The military has the right to call service members out of retirement to face court-martial, whether or not the alleged offenses occurred during or after the service member's time in uniform.

This is an extraordinarily rare move, and typically reserved for high-profile officers and cases. But the measure was taken earlier this year in the case of James Grazioplene, a 68-year-old retired major general who was made to face court-martial after 12 years of retirement on allegations that he raped a child while on active duty in the 1980s. Grazioplene's trial has yet to take place.

A Marine Corps spokesman, Maj. Brian Block, said Naval Criminal Investigative Service officials were still learning the details of Tomko's case.

"It's probably to early to say one way or the other" whether the military will take action, Block said.

If Tomko is prosecuted in a civilian court alone, he may still stand to lose some military benefits. While retired pay is generally unaffected by a felony conviction, VA benefits can be reduced if a retiree is convicted and spends more than 60 days behind bars.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Here are five news stories and events to start your week:

F-22 Stealth Fighters Fly to South Korea Amid Tensions With North

A half-dozen U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets over the weekend arrived in South Korea for a joint exercise, "Vigilant Ace," set for this week. The move marks the first time so many of the fifth-generation stealth jets flew into the country at one time, according to the South's Yonhap News agency. The U.S. also plans to dispatch F-35A and F-35B stealth fighters, F-16C fighters and an unspecified number of B-1B conventional bombers. North Korea, which last week launched its biggest ICBM to date, called the drills a "dangerous provocation" bringing the region "to the brink of a nuclear war."

Senator: US Military Families Should Leave South Korea

Via Associated Press: Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Sunday called for the spouses and children of the nearly 30,000 U.S. service members stationed on South Korea to leave the peninsula amid the rising tensions with the North. "I'm going to urge the Pentagon not to send any more dependents to South Korea," he told CBS. "South Korea should be an unaccompanied tour. It's crazy to send thousands of children to South Korea, given the provocation of North Korea. So, I want them to stop sending dependents, and I think it's now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea."

Iwo Jima Flag Raiser's Name Is Wrong in Government Brochure

Via Richard Sisk at Military.com: "Another mistake in one of history's most extraordinary cases of mistaken identity was made in a Nov. 21 ceremony at the Iwo Jima Memorial. Brochures on the epic battle for Iwo Jima handed out by the National Park Service at the ceremony attended by Gen. Robert Neller, the Marine Commandant, still listed Navy Corpsman John "Doc" Bradley as one of the six flag raisers captured in the iconic photo and now immortalized in bronze at the memorial."

US Troops to be Trained on Reporting Child Sex Abuse by Afghans

Via Richard Sisk at Military.com: "As part of the new strategy in Afghanistan, U.S. troops will get training on reporting child sex abuse by the Afghan army and police. The new policy will be aimed at the practice of "bacha bazi," or "boy play," in which boys dressed as women dance at parties and are passed around among warlords and other authority figures.Army Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and the NATO Resolute Support mission, said that the new policy "sets out procedures for monitoring, reporting and investing violations by any [Afghan] Ministry of Defense personnel" suspected of child abuse."

Navy: Aviators Who Drew Sky Phallus Have Been Punished

Via Hope Hodge Seck at Military.com: "Two U.S. Navy aviators who caused a stir by skywriting a giant phallus over Washington State have been disciplined, the Navy has confirmed. Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker, commander of Naval Air Forces, convened a Field Naval Aviator Evaluation Board to address the matter and hand down discipline, said Cmdr. Ronald Flanders, a command spokesman. While the specific punishment was not made public as it was meted out in an administrative proceeding, an official told Military.com that the individuals were permitted to retain their status as aviators."

-- Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Brendan_McGarry.
Officials say the device was known as an "unexploded ordnance," or an explosive weapon that did not explode and still posed a...
Drive-through scanners and other gear provided by the U.S. to Afghanistan in an effort to curb drug and arms trafficking has never been used or fallen into disrepair, according to a government watchdog agency.

In a report last Friday, the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said the total cost to the U.S. since 2006 "to procure, operate, maintain, and train Afghan government officials in the use of the equipment" was between $59 million and almost $63 million.

The Non-Intrusive Inspection, or NII, equipment was installed at the Kabul airport and at least four other locations but inspections last spring found the program paid for by U.S. Central Command and managed by the Department of Homeland Security was mostly broken or never used.

"In March and April 2017, SIGAR found that only one location, the Kabul airport, had any functional Central Command-purchased NII equipment that was being used for its intended purpose. None of the equipment, valued at $9.48 million, at any of the other four locations was operational," the SIGAR report said.

"Our inspections showed that, outside of Kabul, the equipment became inoperable nearly as soon as [U.S] Border Management Task Force mentors left the border locations and the equipment was turned over to the Afghan government," the report said.

The drive-through scanners were intended "to assist in the interdiction of illicit narcotics, precursor chemicals, and other illicit goods at border locations throughout Afghanistan and at the Kabul airport," the report said.

"Without the use of the NII equipment, there is little to prevent the rampant commercial smuggling and cross-border narcotics trade that has continually plagued Afghan borders," the report said.

The program began in 2006 deteriorated in 2014, when the U.S. ended its combat mission and began withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, the report said.

"While Afghan officials at most locations stated that they or their staff received training on the use of the equipment, at one location an official noted that they had not been trained to maintain or troubleshoot even minor problems," the report said.

"Unfortunately, at this point, it appears that the Afghan government has been unable or unwilling to sustain" the initial U.S. investment, the report said.

"Worse, without the use of the [inspection] equipment, there is little to prevent the rampant commercial smuggling and cross-border narcotics trade that has continually plagued Afghanistan," SIGAR said.

In its response to the SIGAR report, CentCom blamed the problems on the lack of oversight caused by the U.S. troop withdrawals, and also took a swipe at the Kabul government.

The program could have been successful and "would likely have continued to develop and professionalize the Afghan customs and border security institutions" if U.S. policy had not directed withdrawal in 2014, the command said in a statement.

The command also charged that the SIGAR report reflected "the lack of Afghan government will or capacity to sustain the program."

Commenting on the SIGAR report, Ahmad Reshad Popal, director of customs at the Afghan Finance Ministry, said, "A number of these scanners are damaged, and recently we have been trying to contract a company to repair the scanners and to re-use them," Afghanistan's Tolo News reported.

The Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries [ACCI] suggested the scanners were deactivated to stop corruption at the border crossings from being exposed.

"At a number of the custom posts, the equipment has been intentionally deactivated to prevent corruption from being revealed," Khan Jan Alokozay, deputy chief of ACCI, told Tolo News.

At the Torkham post in the Khyber Pass on the Pakistan border, "there was a scanner which was working properly and our problems were solved. But after a month it was deactivated and has still not been reactivated," Alokozay said.

The SIGAR report underlined the problems ahead for the on-again, off-again efforts of the U.S. and its coalition partners in the course of the 16-year-old war to curb Afghanistan's flourishing poppy trade that funds the Taliban and provides much of the world's heroin.

The U.S. has from time to time funded crop substitution programs for Afghan farmers, but the programs have struggled against the fact that there is more money to be made from growing poppies.

In a "profoundly alarming" report last month on Afghanistan's booming drug trade, the United Nations Office On Drug And Crime (UNODC) said a record poppy harvest this year had resulted in an 87 percent increase in the cultivation and production of opium compared to 2016.

"It is high time for the international community and Afghanistan to reprioritize drug control, and to acknowledge that every nation has a shared responsibility for this global problem," UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov said in releasing the report.

In a sign of the urgency of combating the drug trade, Army Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and the NATO Resolute Support mission, last month used a B-52 bomber and an F-22 Raptor advanced fighter normally assigned to the Iraq/Syria theaters to bomb suspected drug havens in Afghanistan.

The bombing of drug traffickers was an indication of the waning conventional strength of the Taliban, Nicholson said in a briefing from Kabul to the Pentagon last week.

Nicholson said the Taliban had given up on trying to seize provincial capitals and was now focused on guerilla warfare at the district level. He said that shift "represented a lowering of ambition by the enemy."

"Increasingly, they are principally interested in making money" from the drug trade, Nicholson. "They are fighting to protect their revenue stream" and have essentially transformed from a jihadi movement into a 'narco-terrorist' drug cartel," he said.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
The U.S. Air Force has awarded a nearly $60 million contract to Raytheon Co. to integrate a new laser-guided smart bomb -- the GBU-49 Enhanced Paveway II -- onto the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter.

The contract includes 1,200 guidance kits for the munition -- designed to strike moving targets -- as well as test hardware, logistics and engineering support and technical data, the Air Force said in a release on Friday.

"The F-35 is operational and combat ready, and integrating the GBU-49 with the aircraft makes the F-35 even more lethal than it already is," Brig. Gen. Todd Canterbury, director of the Air Force F-35 Integration Office, said in the release.

Raytheon's Paveway II would enable the F-35 to strike moving targets when integrated with the aircraft's software Block 3F, which is scheduled to be incorporated onto the aircraft in 2018.

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The software will enable the aircraft to effectively "search, detect, track, ID and engage multiple stationary and moving surface targets in clear and adverse weather," members of the F-35 Joint Program Office told Defense News in March.

Officials anticipate the GBU-49 will fill a capability gap in the Joint Strike Fighter until GPS-guided joint direct attack munitions, or JDAMS, and laser-designated Small Diameter Bomb II munitions can be integrated in future software releases.

Flight testing of the GBU-49 with the F-35A is scheduled to begin this month. The Air Force will receive the initial 400 guidance kits by the end of January, the release said.

"This contract award represents great teaming across the entire government and industry enterprise," said Brig. Gen. Anthony Genatempo, Air Force program executive officer for weapons.

A dozen F-35s are currently deployed to Kadena Air Base, Japan, as part of the first-ever F-35A theater security package, or TSP, which are forward-deployed aircraft units that conduct missions to reassure partner and ally forces and to maintain security and stability across a region.

In April, the Air Force dispatched a handful of F-35As overseas to Europe for several weeks in the aircraft's first training deployment to the continent.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
The Legion Reaches Out to New Mexico Vets

The American Legion is sponsoring a membership and veterans outreach effort Dec. 9 in both Grants and Albuquerque, N.M. Veterans and active-duty military in both areas are invited to get information about American Legion programs, and Department of Veterans Affairs and other veteran benefits. Both efforts will take place from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. At Malpais American Legion Post 80, 121 Third St., Grants; and at Albuquerque American Legion Post 99, 540 Louisiana Blvd. NE, Albuquerque. A veterans service officer will be available at both locations to assist with VA claims and other benefits questions.

For more on veteran health care benefits, visit the Military.com Benefits section.
Stonebwoy has described working with Sean Paul on his upcoming album as amazing, as he eyes a major breakthrough with his fourth studio project.

The 24-track album, titled 'Epistle Mama', is a tribute to Stonebwoy's mother, Catherine Satekla, who passed in 2015.

It has 12 reggae songs on one side and 12 Afrobeat songs on the other side, which makes it a double CD album.

It will officially be released on December 12 and launched on December 22 at the Bhim Nation Concert in Accra.

The album features both Ghanaian and foreign great artistes like Sarkodie, Efya, Kofi Kinaata and Joey B. The rest include Sean Paul, Chronixx, I Octane, Agent Sasco and others.

The songs on the album are 'Hakuna Matata', 'Same God' and 'Most Original' featuring Sean Paul.

According to Stonebwoy, he has high expectations for the album and getting Sean Paul on it is amazing.

Amazing! It's being amazing. Sean Paul is being a lovely brother; Me and him have personal rapport. He was on tour actually and he asked that when he got to Jamaica."

"So immediately he got to Jamaica on the 24th and then on 25th he finished and sent his vocals and we have a beautiful song."

"I pray that .that sound should go beyond our expectation because we are ready to push this album, he told NEWS-ONE on Thursday.

We are not just going to leave this wandering about. I hope to spend enough time on it, since I took time to produce and to promote it. As time goes on, we will be re-releasing some of the songs. You will be hearing remixes, he added.

Songs on the upcoming album were unveiled for the Ghanaian media at an album listening ceremony at Zylofon Media offices in Accra on Thursday evening.

My favourite song on the album is not even what we have played for the media. My favourite is 'Same God'. It is like a gospel song, he stated.

Stonebwoy has reiterated his commitment to pushing the 'Epistle Mama' album to the highest level because he believes it is unique.

What is unique about this album is the fact that an artiste is daring to complete two albums and release them at the same time. When I say complete two albums: when I pick the reggae album it is complete because out of 12tracks, I featured five international reggae artistes, which makes it only seven solo songs if you break it down."

"On the Afrobeat side I think only eight of the songs have features as well. So these are the unique things about the album, he revealed.

Stonebwoy is one of the few Ghanaian reggae dancehall artistes hoisting the country's flag high globally. He has been nominated for the 2018 reggae group of the year at the Grammys with Morgan Heritage.

He was featured on Morgan Heritage's 'Avrakadabra', which got nominated for best reggae album alongside 'Chronology' by Chronixx, 'Lost In Paradise' by Common Kings, 'Wash House Ting' by J Boog and 'Stony Hill' by Damian Marley.
04.12.2017 LISTEN

After successful premiere of her new movie Potato Potahto which received a massive turnout in South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, the Zuly land seems not to get enough of the Ghanaian screed goddess.

In an instagram post, the actress and TV personality Joselyn Dumas shared screenshots of her been featured in 2 of South Africas famous magazines.

The Durban based Sowetan Newspaper delved into how Miss Dumas is gradually warming her way into the South African Market.

It talked about her interview with Lesley Mofokeng, News Editor/writer of the newspaper about how much she loves the Durban City and showed appreciation of the hospitality showed to her by fans and lovers of her craft.

In the article, Joselyn Dumas also talked about the Premiere of Potato Potahto in South Africa & her new Talk Show Keeping It Real with Joselyn Dumas and her TINFF Award for Best Actress Africa for her role in Potato Potahto.

As If that is not enough, Johannesburgs Saturday Live newspaper also went to put a chat she had with the papers Liam Karabo Joyce about her strides and decision to add up movie production aside her acting and TV Presentation.

The newspaper article goes on to talk about how South Africans have grown to love her and waiting to host her again.

Joselyn Dumas 1
It's well known that searching for a room or an apartmenT in Accra could be a daunting task characterized by dissapointmments, frustrations and sometimes fraud.

Because we are in a hurry to rent and move in to the appartment, we overlook certain key things that are really crucial in the process of renting. Below are essential factors you should consider before renting a house in Accra.

I. Have a budget - Before you venture out searching for a room or an apartment to rent, ensure you have a budget you are working with and stick to the budget. Do not be forced to rent an apartment above your budget.

2.Have extra money for agent fee - If you are searching for a room, an apartment or a house ensure to factor in an agent fee in addition to your budget for rent. Some agent would charge each time you have to see an apartment or room you show interest in although, you may not eventually rent that particular room or apartment. Some housing agent even charge 10% of the amount you would pay to the landlord when you settle for a particular apartment.

3. Know kind of apartment you want - Knowing the type you want would speed up the searching process as you are able to identify the kind of apartment you want immediately one is up for grabs.

4. Seeing the apartment- This is very important in the hunting process. In Accra where some landlords/ladies fail to provide toilet facilities in the buildings, you need to ensure that the apartment you are intrested in has a place of convenience, flowing tap, gutters, space for drying line and so on.

5. More often than not Landlords/ladies woul request that you pay for the rent so they can use the money to renovate the apartment or build a toilet facility for you. I'll advice that you give a careful thought about such offers before giving out the money. There's been several instances where people have been dissapointed with such agreements.

6. Do not pay for the rent while the one occupying the apartment you have shown interest in still lives in there. Most people have fallen victim to this scheme where after payment, they never get to live in the room because the occupant still lives in.

7. Ensure that the day you pay for the apartment is the day you are handed the keys to it.

8. Do well to ask people living around where the apartment is situated about the landlord/lady and how the people live in the apartment.

9. Ensure that you park in immediately the keys are handed over to you. This is because most landlords or ladies take money from more than one person for one apartment so if you don't move in early, another person will and trust me when that happens, it will take a miracle for you to retrieve your money back. I guess you don't want to find yourself in such a situation, right?

Copyright (2017) Modern Ghana

All rights reserved. This article, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, paraphrased or used in any manner whatsoever without giving full credit to modernghana and the author of the article. However, it could be used in brief quotations and in reviews.
The Member of Parliament for Tema West Constituency, Hon. Carlos Ahenkorah, has donated a cheque Of GHC40,000 cedis to the Tema Polyclinic in fulfillment of a pledge made during the 2016 Election Campaign.

During his visit to Tema Polyclinic, he promised among other things to upgrade and equip the Polyclinic with modern equipment when elected as MP.

The cash is meant to get the hospital a modern incinerator and also refurbish the Maternity Theatre for women who go through Surgery during Labour.

Addressing the polyclinic staffs, he further promised to improve facilities at the Weighing Center and Chip compounds in the Tema West constituency.

The MP, who doubles as deputy of trade and industry minister commended workers of the Tema Polyclinic for their tremendous work for the people of Tema and its environs.

He urged them to serve the people with love and make the polyclinic a place people would always love to access healthcare.
04.12.2017 LISTEN

Mr. Abraham Ossei Aidoo, a Former Majority Leader and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs has appealed to women loyalists of the New Patriotic Party in Tema West constituency to work hard to bring more people on board.

According to him, Ghanaian women were on the verge of a new dawn with President Akufo-Addo's intents at affirmative Action, set to empower women even more.

Mr Aidooh, who is credited with introducing and nurturing the NPP in Tema West stated this during the commemoration of the first anniversary of the Tema West Noble Ladies in Tema Community 5.

He pointed out that the Noble Ladies would also benefit a lot from the plans of President Akufo-Addo who has already won an international award for his pro women policies.

He said government was keen on getting the Affirmative Action Bill passed, even as President Akufo-Addo had consciously appointed women to high profile positions in his government, including Chief Justice and Attorney General.

He urged the members of the group to re-dedicate themselves to the ideals of the NPP and work extra to win the 2020 election with an even bigger margin in Tema West and the country as a whole.

In 2012, the NPP won the Tema West seat with 900 vote margin, but widened the gap in the 2016 polls by 16, 000 votes.

According to the renowned lawmaker, who is now a board member of the Ghana Gas Company, the increase in the margin was due to hard work that the party loyalists, including the Noble Ladies put into the campaign and urged them to work extra hard so that in 2020, the margin of the win for the NPP would further widen.

Also in attendance was Felix Mensah Nii Annang-La, the Tema Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), Mr Edward Mantey, Constituency NPP Chairman, Mr Henry Osei Owusu, former constituency secretary, the NPP's Greater Accra Women's Organizer, Joyce Dampaare and Kwesi Poku Bosompem, Assemby Member for Halcorow Electoral Area, among others.

Madam Dampaare, who was one of the main speakers at the event re-echoed the promise of Lawyer Abraham Aidooh to the effect that President Akufo-Addo and the NPP had good intentions for Ghanaian women.

Felix Mensah Nii Annang-La, the Tema MCE donated GHE2,000.00 to the Noble Ladies group and also urged them to maintain their loyalty to the party and work harder for greater victory in 2020.

Madam Gloria Naa Adarkwa Darku, an executive member of the Noble Ladies thanked Lawyer Abraham Ossei Aidooh for accepting to host the programme as Chairman.

On his track record, she said the Noble Ladies were humbled to have the respected former MP for Tema West, who had represented the Constituency for three terms in Parliament on the NPP's ticket and they would take his advice in good faith to win more votes for the NPP in the 2020 election.

GNA
French President Emmanuel Macron made a surprise announcement during his recent African tour, saying in Burkina Faso's capital that one of his priorities was to restore African cultural treasures.

African cultural heritage "should be highlighted in Paris, but also in Dakar, Lagos, Cotonou", Macron told a crowd of students at a university in Ouagadougou.

"This will be one of my priorities. In five years, I want the conditions to be met to return African heritage to Africa."

Delivered at the end of his speech, this sentence resonated especially in Benin, which in July last year called for France to return treasures taken during French colonial rule from the end of the 19th century.

President Patrice Talon -- who railed against French influence in its former colony during the election campaign that brought him to power last year -- made a formal request to France's foreign ministry in September.

He said the repatriation of such treasures would allow people "to get to know better our cultural and historic assets" and also allow the tiny west African nation to develop tourism as "an important cornerstone of the Beninese economy".

France ruled the country, then called Dahomey, until 1960, when it was granted independence and changed its name to Benin. Dahomey included the kingdom of the same name that dates back to about 1600.

France's stockpiling of treasures from Dahomey happened during colonial fighting between 1892 and 1894, but it was also carried out by missionaries who "robbed communities of what they considered to be charms", said Irenee Zevounou, Benin's ambassador to UNESCO, the UN's cultural body in Paris.

Most of the artefacts have not been documented, but Zevounou said he believed 4,500 to 6,000 items are in France, including in private collections.

Many are now on display in French museums, including the Quai Branly in Paris, which exhibits indigenous art from around the world.

'Historic break'

"This is the first time a French president has tackled the issue head-on and expressed his willingness for restitution," Marie-Cecile Zinsou, creator of the Zinsou Foundation in Cotonou, wrote afterwards on her Facebook page.

"The Ouagadougou speech may mark a major turning point in future proceedings," the French-Beninese art historian said.

France's stockpiling of treasures from Benin occurred during colonial fighting between 1892 and 1894, but was also carried out by missionaries to the country

Others who support Benin's call for the return of its treasures -- which include royal thrones, statues and swords -- have since spoken up as well.

Louis-Georges Tin, president of a coalition of associations representing black French people known as CRAN, has urged the UN Human Rights Council to participate in negotiations between the two countries.

In an editorial, Tin described Macron's speech as a "historic break".

"Indeed, it is a question of culture, but also a question of rights," wrote Tin, who regularly presses the French government over the issue.

But the main stumbling block is legal.

France's foreign ministry has relied on "the legal principles of inalienability and imprescriptibility... of public collections" in its refusal to return the cultural assets, which are now considered French treasures.

For Yves-Bernard Debie, who specialises in art sales law, Macron's speech broke with French legal tradition established in 1566 by the "Edict of Moulins".

"Since that time, the royal domain became public property, which is inalienable and imprescriptible," he said. "It is forbidden, except under rare exceptions, for the prince, king or president of the republic, to dispose of this property".

"Heads of state change, the public domain remains".

A restitution would require a change in the law but Macron has formalised negotiations and the Beninese authorities are expected to reiterate their demand shortly.

"It may be a bit naive on my part, but I hope that relations are improving between France and its African partners," Ousmane Aledji, director of the Benin cultural centre Artisttik Africa, said.
Some twenty-six (26) outstanding farmers were on Friday December 1, 2017 presented with awards at the 33rd National Farmers' Day at Mpataba in the Jomoro District of the Western Region with Mr. John Kwasi Adingrah of Nvenlenu emerging as the overall District Best Farmer.

Mr. Kwasi Adingrah, was presented with a certificate, a T-shirt, a wellington boot, a shoe, eight cutlasses, one wall clock, a radio, a chargeable torchlight, six pieces of cloth, and a motorbike.

Mr. Kwasi Adingrah owes 15 acres of mango plantation, 10 acres each of coconut and cocoa plantations, 21 acres of rabbit farming, 3 acres of cassava, 2.5 acres of plantain, 2 acres of pineapple, 1 acre of tea tree.

The rest are, 120 pigs, 4 fish ponds, 300 snails, two grass cutters, and 10 ducks.

Mrs. Agnes Akru Assorkor from Tweakor-Navrongo went home with a certificate, a T-shirt, a wellington boot, a shoe, 8 cutlasses, one wall clock, a radio, a chargeable torchlight, 2 pieces of cloth, and a deed-freezer.

She also owes 780 acres of mahogany trees, 3 acres of cocoyam, half acre of pepper farmer, 120 birds, 34 sheep, and produces gari and has so far employed four permanent workers and six temporal workers.

The Second District Best Runner-Up whose hails from New Ankansah, Mrs. Amina Siedu, also went home with the same items the 1st Runner-up had plus table-top fridge.

Speaking at the event, the District Director of Agriculture, Mr. Kenneth Addae Buadu, said the theme for this year's, "Farming for Food and Jobs" was rightly chosen and urged government to invest more into food business to raise the food security and foreign status of the country.

He disclosed that under the government's flagship "Planting for Food and Jobs" program, total number of 64 farmers had been registered and only one farmer is cultivating rice.

He therefore added that the District has a lot wetlands which cab be used for rice production and appealed to the farmers to venture into rice production.

Mr. Buadu said the "Planting for Food and Jobs" in Jomoro faced a lot of challenges and attributed it to lack of information hence going forward next year, the information would be intensified.

"So far 12 communities are involve in the Planting for Food and Jobs and this is not encouraging", he added.

He thanked the District and Member of Parliament for the area, Hon. Paul Essien for the unflinching support given to the Agricultural Department.

He encouraged the award winners to put up their best and win a national award in future.

Mr. Ernest Kofie, District Chief Executive (DCE) for Jomoro expressed his profound gratitude to the farmers in the District, saying despite the many challenges associated with farming, the farmers never ceased to ensure all-year-round food production.

He said agriculture plays a vital role in the transformation of the economy and the nation as a whole and added that besides tourism and oil and gas, agriculture has the potential to totally transform the the nation and make it a prosperous one.

According to him, "Majority of the people can feel a change in their lives when we develop agriculture rapidly... therefore particularly excited that this year's National Farmers Day Celebration is under the theme, " Farming for Food and Jobs", there could not have been a better theme for today's event".

Admittedly, he revealed that the farmers suffered some setbacks, including land disputes, financial difficulties, technical issues and lack of ready markets for farm produce hence these challenges undoubtedly make the agriculture as a profession undesirable and attractive to many people, most especially the youth.

He added that it is in light of these challenges that the NPP government is making frantic effort to modernise and diversity agriculture in Ghana and ensured the farmers and fisher folks that the agriculture sector would be made more attractive, productive and efficient.

Speaking on the NPP government flagship program "Planting for Food and Jobs", he said the program will transform agriculture sector.

He disclosed that the under the program, a total of 8.95 tons of NPN fertilizer and Urea and some vegetable seedlings have been supplied to farmers in the District.

"Over hundred farmers have also been trained and connected to various financial institutions in the District under the program", he added.

He told the gathering that, the government has started implementing a 5-year capacity building project and under the project, extension officers and farmers would be trained for the period, 2017-2021.

He used the occasion to acknowledge the good effort of the Member of Parliament for the area, Hon Paul Essien for providing the award winners with items and also thanked the rural banks in the and District among others.

On his part, the Member of Parliament for the area who doubles as a Deputy Minister for Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Hon. Paul Essien thanked the distinguished farmers for the total contributions they have contributed towards achieving food security in the District and Ghana as a whole.

He therefore urged the teeming youth in the District to involve themselves into agriculture.

"We shouldn't always think of getting white-colour job to do but involving yourself into agriculture will make your life better", he encouraged the youth.

He revealed at the event that, on the December 19, 2017 and as part of his commitment to agriculture sector very lucrative in the District, farmers in the District will be awarded on their hard work.

He also disclosed that, at the end of four years, the overall District Best Farmer would be awarded with a brand new car.

Speaking to Daniel Kaku after the celebration, the overall District Best Farmer, Mr. Kwasi Adingrah, appealed to the youth in the District to initiate farming ventures to help increase food production and also earn a decent living.

It was revealed at the event that, the Member of Parliament donated Apsonic motorbike, deep freezer, table-top fridge, sewing machine, Nasco Digital TV with Dish among others to the three District Best Farmers.

Source: Daniel Kaku

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04.12.2017 LISTEN

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has reiterated that the Free Senior High School Policy will be sustained and is here to stay.

According to President Akufo-Addo, I know, and I am sure I am not the only one who has heard, the people who are mounting political platforms, speaking on television and radio, and putting up posts on social media, hoping and praying for this policy to collapse.

He continued, We know those who have a record for scrapping pro-poor policies  nursing and teacher trainees will bear testimony. I wish to assure them that Free SHS will be sustained, that Free SHS is here to stay. The overwhelming majority of Ghanaians support the choice that I have made in implementing Free SHS.

President Akufo-Addo made this known on Saturday, 2nd December, 2017, when he delivered a speech at the 60th Anniversary Celebrations of the Kumasi Academy, in Kumasi.

The President stressed that there is no part of Ghana that does not recognise the importance of education, adding that we have all accepted that education is the best route to moving out of poverty.

It is for this reason that, on 12th September, 2017, he launched the Free Senior High School policy, to ensure that one of the biggest obstacles that stood in the way of access to secondary education, and that is cost, is removed.

This has already led to an increase of over 90,000 children, who have entered secondary school this academic year, who would otherwise have dropped out at this stage. Free SHS has lifted the financial burden off parents, and the heart-rending anxiety that accompanies the beginning of every school term, he said.

President Akufo-Addo was, thus, surprised that, because of political expediency, some would wish and pray for this policy to fail.

Nonetheless, the President reiterated that my government believes that we have a sacred duty to our children, and the generations beyond in ensuring that, irrespective of their circumstances, whether of birth, status, class, ethnic or religious affiliations, their right to an education is preserved.

On the teething challenges confronting the Free SHS policy, the President acknowledged that there would be with any new, bold initiative.

He told the gathering that he was inspired by the famous Chinese adage which says a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, explaining that we have taken that first step in Ghana, and we shall deal with the challenges.

In dealing with the teething challenges, President Akufo-Addo stated that Government has ordered thousands of mono-desks and bunk beds, as well as furniture for dining halls, staff rooms, computer labs and markers for classroom.

In commemoration of Kumasi Academys 60th Anniversary, the President announced that, through the Ministry of Education, the construction of a vocational centre, and the completion of the Library and ICT Centre, will be done.
04.12.2017 LISTEN

A Lebanese national has been arrested for allegedly raping his 19-year-old househelp at Airport Hills residential area in Accra.

Four policemen from the East Legon District Police Command arrested Haddad Rabih, around 11:45 pm on Sunday.

The suspect, Graphic Online gathered forcibly had sex with the victim around 5 pm on Saturday in the absence of his wife and other occupants of his household after subjecting her to severe beatings for resisting his demands.

The incident happened at Airport Hills residential area.

The Commander of the East Legon District Command, Superintendent Cephas Arthur, told Graphic Online in an interview that investigations were ongoing.

He said the suspect would be processed for court after investigations.

The Ordeal

Narrating her ordeal to Graphic Online, after seeking medical care, the victim (name withheld), who speaks only Ewe and French, said the suspect beat her up mercilessly after she refused to accede to his demands for the second time.

He slapped her twice on the face, finally overpowered her and dragged her to his bedroom to rape her.

According to the victim who could barely turn her neck, she had been in the employment of the suspect from the month of November but was persistently harassed by him for sex anytime his wife was not at home.

She said last Saturdays event was the fourth time the suspect had raped her in a total of two separate encounters.

Narrating how it happened, she said the suspect directed her to have her bath after his wife, another househelp and his children had left home.

After her shower, the suspect allegedly directed her to his kitchen, which was close to the master bedroom to prepare him coffee.

She obliged after he refused to allow her to dress properly after bathing.

On reaching the kitchen, he locked the door but her attempt to escape was not successful.

The victim said Rabih threw her out of the room after raping her twice. She bled after the act.

Help

The victim said she sought help from some police officers on duty at a nearby house.

The police officers, she noted, apprehended the suspect and took him to the Airport Police Station but on reaching there, a policewoman on duty led the team back to the suspects home.

On reaching the house, the policewoman allegedly took GH350 being her [victim] salary for the month of November 2017, from the suspect and handed it over to her.

The victim said the policewoman stayed on until she had packed her belongings out of the suspects home.

Assistance

A good Samaritan directed the girl and her relatives to report the matter to the East Legon District Police Command a day after the incident.

The Police Command issued her with a medical report on Sunday to undergo medical examination.

Summon

Additional information gathered by Graphic Online indicates that the Airport Divisional Police Command has summoned officers who were on duty on Saturday, December 2, 2017, for an emergency meeting to explain why the victim was not taken through standard protocol.

Victims Father

The victims father ,said he was home around 10 pm on Saturday when a policeman in the company of another woman dropped off the victim.

He said it was after they left that his daughter told him of her ordeal.
The directive by the Ghana Education Service (GES) banning corporal punishment in schools has been condemned by a Kumasi based Man of God.

The directive, according to him, is devilish and against the principles of God.

The GES has banned canning in educational institutions, public or private, the disregard of which could attract sanctions for any teacher who flouts it.

But Apostle Kofi Nkansah-Sarkodie, General Overseer of Open Arms Ministry/ Jesus Chapel in Kumasi who claims to be God's representative on earth has said in Kumasi that the GES ban and directive are against God's divine principles for upbringing children.

The man of God who dwelt on a range of issues at the meeting says the directive is devilish because it would encourage waywardness of non God-fearing children and thus produce clever devils in society.

He said besides the directive not being divine, it is also culturally unacceptable not to correct waywardness of a child.

Quoting extensively from the Bible to buttress his position, the Servant of God who also answers Brother Saint Sark said it would be a disservice to the nation for the GES to encourage upbringing of children without correction when they go astray.

Speaking from the biblical point of view on the premises that the bible is Gods manual for mankind as a manufacturer would for a product, Apostle Nkansah-Sarkodie pointed to the word of God and advised that the instructions therein should be taken seriously

He referred to Proverbs 22: 6 which indicated that Gods instruction to train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it and further pointed to Proverbs 22:15 which stated that  Folly is tied up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.

Apostle Nkansah-Sarkodie also referred to the Bible in Proverbs 19-18 which called on parents (in this case teachers) to  Discipline your son, for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to his death.

The GES was also reminded of Proverbs 23:13-14 which Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod he will not die. 14. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.

Apostle Nkansah-Sarkodie, a veteran radio and TV evangelist spanning 30 years, has therefore called on the GES to reverse the directive immediately without any further delay to uphold God's principle.

According to him, the GES will be contributing to the institution of an ungovernable society if the ban continues to be in force saying there is no law that benefits all the people.

Brother Saint Sark called on the government and Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) to encourage Apostle Kwadw Safo to produce the Kantanka Weed Slasher, on a large scale to cut down on the importation of weedicides which are mostly poisonous and injurious to health.

Kantanka Weed Slasher another handy work of Apostle Dr. Kwadwo Safo, is used for slashing down weeds.

Instead of using weedicide to kill the weeds on the farm which will lead to poisoning of the land, Kantanka Weed Slasher, made of high quality materials and works at great speed.

He suggested that the COCOBOD embarks on the training of farmers on the use of the Kantanka weed slasher.

The church leader also recommended that leadership considers strategies to export refuse for development. He said it is time solid waste is recycled for electricity and fertilizers and foreign exchange.

He also frowned on the craze of advertisement on alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages on the Ghanaian market which he said encouraged promiscuity, immorality and social decadence.

According to the concerned Man of God, both alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks are poisonous to human health and called on the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and the Ministry of Health to regulate manufacturers of these products.

The Minister of the Gospel said he was prepared to advertise wholesome products of manufacturers who did the right thing to protect health needs of consumers.

Similarly, the Open Arms Ministry founder has called on the government to emulate the steps of European Union and ban the importation of inferior goods into the country because Ghanaians deserve better products.

The Open Arms Ministry/ Jesus Chapel General Overseer suggested that Kumasi city and traditional authorities should create enabling environment for commercial activities to boom.

The Kumasi pastor said timing of the relocation of traders at the Kejetia by the city authorities was wrong because the exercise has brought untold hardships on the residents of Kumasi following the current situation at the Kejetia.

He has therefore called on the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) , traditional leaders, the Police Command and National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to create pathways and exit points at the Kejetia and suggested that regulations and rules should be human centred because the Sabbath was made by man and not man for the Sabbath

The Minister of God said tossing traders up and down , back and forth from the Race Course over the years was demeaning and called on the authorities concerned to think through plans and make the Race Course a permanent resettlement for traders.
Hon. Lawrence Kwami Aisle, Jasikan District Chief Executive

04.12.2017 LISTEN

Management of the Jasikan District Assembly has revealed that the assembly has wooed investors for the establishment of four factories in the district in fulfilment of the New Patriotic Party government's One District One factory Initiative.

The factories made up of two cassava and one ginger processing and floor tiles manufacturing respectively according to the District Chief Executive are expected to be fully operational within the next three years.

Hon Lawrence Kwami Aziale made the disclosure when addressing audience at the this year's Farmers Day celebration at Akaa in the Jasikan District in the Volta region.

He disclosed that a total of about 35,000 acres of land have already been released by the various chiefs in the district for the construction of the factories and the cultivation of cassava and ginger as raw materials to feed the factories.

Hon. Aziale noted that the district has gone extra mile of the central governments vision of providing each district with a factory thereby increasing theirs to four factories .

The DCE said the Jasikan district is endowed with both material and human resources that can support the president's initiative to create jobs for it's citizens especially the youth.

He indicated that the assembly has responsibly tapped into the Presidents vision of developing the country through industrialisation with the one district one factory initiative.

He stated that the leadership of the Assembly in this regard is partnering with four investors to vigorously go into cassava and ginger cultivation and processing as well as floor tile manufacturing in the district.

The Chief Executive said the project when materialized will create over five thousand direct jobs and give residents of the district several economic benefits.

He he pointed out that the geographical demarcation of the District, thus Eastern, Central and Western Jasikan is strategic for the siting of the factories in each location according to their respective natural resources.

Hon. Aziale further disclosed that management has been able to form five hundred farmer groups with ten members in each group in Western Buem alone ready to kick start cultivation of cassava and ginger in commercial quantity to feed the respective factories.

Hon. Lawrence Kwami Aziale noted that agricutural activities especially farming has left to the aging population, a development he described a detrimental to the socio-economic development of the people.

He advised the youth to take advantage of the numerous programs and policies of the NPP administration and go into commercial farming instead of tracking to urban centres for non-existent jobs.  We are encouraging the use of modern farm equipment such as tractors and combined harvesters as well as new farm technologies for improved yield in order to make farming attractive venture for the youth," the DCE advised.

He assured that the government will continue to create an enabling environment in the agricultural sector to change the lives of rural folks.

Hon. Lawrence Kwami Aziale commended all gallant farmers in the country especially those in the Jasikan district for their hard work and dedication to the state and urged them to continue their good and selfless service to the nation.
4th November 2017, Accra, GH; Nairobi, Kenya - Pan-African entrepreneurial training program, seed fund, and incubator MEST today announced a partnership with Moringa School to offer Moringa School's world-class technology training courses in all regions where MEST operates. Moringa courses will be offered at MEST Incubators in Cape Town, Lagos and Accra. With Moringas entry into the new markets, aspiring technologists will receive access to their 20-week program and career placement services.

MEST recently launched Incubators in Lagos and Cape Town, as part of a larger Pan-African expansion initiative, and, for the first time, startups that have not gone through the MEST program can apply to join the Incubators as community members. The partnership comes after Moringa ran a successful Moringa Prep (fundamentals of programming) course at the MEST Accra campus in September 2017.

Moringa is a market leader in developing tech talent in Africa, and we are excited to work with them as they continue with a Pan-African expansion, says Aaron Fu, MEST Africas Managing Director. Our mission is to to unlock resources within the African tech space through a Pan-African network, and working with Moringa to develop tech talent in various parts of the continent is right in the middle of that.

Moringa, which started operations in April 2014 in Nairobi, has expanded its offering in Hong Kong and Ghana, and recently launched in Pakistan through a partnership with the World Bank. The MEST partnership will enable the program to gain a foothold in West, and Southern Africa, and get to leverage both current and future MEST facilities to expand its courses across the continent.

"We are excited to launch across Africa with an incredible partner like MEST, says Audrey Cheng, Co-Founder and CEO of Moringa School. With this partnership, we will be able to train more world-class developers and continue to transform economies across the continent."

In the partnership, MEST will also receive access to the Moringa alumni network and community to recruit for its Accra-based Entrepreneurial Training Program. Every year, MEST selects 60 aspiring entrepreneurs from Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Ivory Coast to apply to join the program, and this partnership will help maintain a strong recruitment pipeline of highly skilled and motivated individuals interested in building globally successful software companies.

Moringa School is a world-class learning accelerator seeking to provide young, talented Africans with digital and professional skills training. Moringa programs are divided into two courses: Moringa Prep, a five-week intensive program that introduces students to the fundamentals of programming including Javascript for web. Upon successfully completing Moringa Prep, students progress to Moringa Core, a fifteen-week program where they dive deeper into programming languages and select a focus in Android or full-stack development. As a result of the market-driven content and learning experiences, 95% of Moringa School graduates have been successfully placed with reputable companies like Safaricom , Barclays, BRCK , Cellulant , and have recorded a 350% average salary increase after graduation.

About MEST

Launched in 2008 by Meltwater Founder & CEO Jorn Lyseggen, MEST is a Pan-African training program, seed fund, incubator and hub for technology entrepreneurs in Africa, providing critical skills training in software development, business and communications, as well as seed funding and incubation. Headquartered in Accra, Ghana, MEST is funded by the Meltwater Foundation, the non-profit arm of Meltwater, a global leader in media intelligence and Outside Insight.

About Moringa

Moringa School is a Nairobi, Kenya-based multi-disciplinary learning accelerator committed to providing young Africans with digital and professional skills training. Through experienced teachers and mentors, a blended learning model, and a market and outcomes-driven curriculum, Moringa Schools mission is to transform higher education throughout Africa and enable its graduates to be globally competitive with their peers. The school has placed more than 95% of its graduates into leading companies throughout Africa and the world. Moringa School was awarded Financial Times and IFC's "Finalist - Achievement in Sustainable Development, With a Focus on Education, Knowledge and Skills."
04.12.2017 LISTEN

In both 2008 and 2012 I warned the world and particularly Africa and the Middle East about the evil of Barack Obama. No-one listened.

In 2011 I warned the world about the consequences of removing Muammar Gadaffi for Africa and the Middle East. No-one listened.

In 2015 I warned the world and Nigeria about supporting and electing Muhammadu Buhari as President of our country. No-one listened.

In 2016 I warned Nigeria and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) about making Ali Modu Sheriff National Chairman of our party. No-one listened.

In 2015 I told the world that Donald Trump would win the nomination as flag-bearer for the Republican party and that he would go on to win the American presidential election in 2016. No-one listened.

In 2016 I warned Nigeria and the world that Buhari's health would present a major challenge for the rest of his tenure. No-one listened.

In each of these cases I have been proved right.

Now I shall give two more warnings and whether anyone listens to me or not takes absolutely nothing away from me. Mine is to pass on the message and it is left for those that hear it to accept it or not.

The first is that if Nigeria makes the mistake of bringing back Buhari in 2019 that will be the end of our country as a viable, cohesive, tolerant, medium-power democratic nation-state where the rule of law, the principle of equality and the most fundamental civil liberties, human rights and basic freedoms for the individual are guaranteed and respected. Worse still she may NEVER recover.

The second is that if those of us in the PDP, Nigeria's leading opposition party, fail to make the right choices for the Presidential and Vice Presidential ticket of our party for the 2019 election we will not only lose woefully but the country will suffer the consequences of our abysmal error and lack of good judgement for the next 50 to 100 years. In short future generations of our people will suffer for it.

Think about that and let it sink in.

We should stop listening to what those that believe that they are the gods of Nigeria and those that we consider to be the "big" and "untouchable" men in our country say.

We should stop sheepishly accepting their self-seeking and self-centred choices, we should stop allowing them to impose their will on our future and our nation and we should stop following them like mesmerised and bewitched zombies.

Instead, like the great 19th century poet William Ernest Henley counseled, we must be "the master of our soul and the captain of our ship".

We must understand and appreciate the importance of the prophetic, seek the face of God, listen to what He says, be guided by His leading and accept only His choices.

The result of our consistent subtefuge, ignorance, folly and sheer obstinance over the last 57 years in Nigeria is that our people have suffered immeasurably.

We were once the giant of Africa but over the last two years we have been reduced into a weak, impoverished and inconsequential vassal state made up of quislings, cowards and slaves and whose people are bought and sold in distant foreign lands for as little as $200.

Consider what is happening to Nigerians in Libya and yet there are no consequences. That is what we have now been reduced to: a nation whose people can be castrated, murdered, enslaved, caged, bought and sold like cattle and whose organs can be removed and harvested for ungodly gain and profit.

Nothing can or will change until we get the right leaders. Nothing can or will change until we reject the counsel and leading of the devil and his human agents that hold sway in our country and instead listen to and courageously enforce the counsel of God.

The choice is ours.

Permit me to conclude this contribution with the following.

I watched a video of a press conference that President Nana Akuffo-Addo of Ghana and President Emmanuel Macron of France gave a few days ago and I was not surprised by Akuffo-Addo's sheer courage and refreshing eloquence because I have known him for at least 45 years.

In his speech, which touched on the issue of African slavery in Libya and the migration problem, he did not just do Ghana proud but the whole of Africa.

No other African leader has been able to articulate the issue as cearly and succintly as he did on that occassion and I urge every Nigerian to google the speech on Youtube and listen to him carefully.

He brings hope to a continent that is stark, dark, poor, weak, corrupt, cowardly, self-destructive and plagued with tyrants, despots and ignorant and incompetent leaders who delight in shooting down bright young stars, shattering dreams and destroying the future and destiny of their own people.

Akuffo-Addo is the exception and his words in that short press conference inspired millions of black people all over the world.

This is what happens when you have a brilliant, British public school-educated, Oxford University graduate as your President.

In that intervention he was profound, insightful and incisive and I am proud of the fact that we went to the same prep school (Holmewood House in Langton Green, Kent) many years ago.

He attended the school a number of years before I did and went on to Lancing College in Sussex and when I finished there I went on to Harrow School in Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex.

The only mistake he made was that he went to Oxford and not Cambridge but I guess we can live with that!

I am very proud of him and what he is doing for his people in Ghana. Even Emmanuel Macron was clearly surprised and impressed with his foresight, knowledge and understanding

Sadly in Nigeria we don't have people like this as Presidents and leaders.

Instead we have ancient dinosaurs, heartless buffoons, rnen of questionable paternity, provincial bastards, court jesters, village idiots, ill-bred manipulators, genocidal meglomaniacs, unconsciable mass murderers, sociopathic narcissists, ill-educated gutter snipes and sadistic slave-dealers who kow tow and bow to the western world, who tremble and quiver before the Arabs, who are agents, spies and informants of western intelligence agencies and who have gladly and willingly sold the future, destiny and fortunes of their people for a mess of pottage and a pittance.

Those that I am referring to know who they are. These are men who play God and who believe that they must impose their will on our nation and our people until the day that they die.

Yet thankfully all hope is not lost. We must not despair because our future and destiny lies in our hands. If we make the right choices I have no doubt that we shall achieve our full potentials and take our rightful place in the comity of nations.

I say this because despite all our challenges and mind-bending viscititudes and in spite of our dearth of good quality leadership, we remain a nation of proud and noble souls and great and beautiful people.

Nigeria is a lion. She is powerful and resilient. She is enduring, long-suffering, irresistable and irrepressable. She is more than a nation. She is an inexplicabe monuement of irreconcilable contradictions.

She comprises of many countries all wrapped up in one awesome mighty mega-nation. She is a life-force. She is both a tangible and an intangible entity all at once. She is a living spirit and a powerful soul.

She is the only country on the African continent that has a true identity and whose people yearn for her when outside her shores. Everyone on the continent looks up to Nigeria. She is their heart and their hope.

Even if she is restructured or if she breaks up tomorrow and goes under a thousand different names we shall still see ourselves as first and foremost Nigerians. Nothing can take away the strength and essence of a mighty and roaring lion.

We are many nations within a nation. We are a mega- nation of believers. We are the pride of Africa, the hope of the black man and the beloved of the Lord.

We shall endure, we shall excel and by the grace of the Living God, we shall rise again.
The tourism sector in Africa, which according to UNWTO saw an 8% increase in international arrivals in 2016, is progressively becoming prominent largely due to the increased commitment from governments. Possessing massive potential to foster positive change and transformation, it is timely that most heads of states and governments are seeing the urgency to prioritize the sector now directly accounting for 10.2% of the worlds GDP (US$2.3 trillion).

Following Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyattas directive after taking the oath of office for the second term on the 28th of November, 2017, Africans visiting the country will henceforth receive a visa on arrival, in a move to further enhance collaboration between Kenya and her African counterparts.

The freer we are to travel and live with one another, the more integrated and appreciative of our diversity we will become, emphasized President Uhuru during his inaugural speech. To underscore Kenyas commitment, this shall not be done on the basis of reciprocity, he added, referring to the issuance of the visa on arrival.

Kenya, joins 21 other African countries that have scrapped or lessened visa restrictions for Africans, among them Ghana, Seychelles, Mauritius, Benin, and Rwanda. These efforts by African governments to adopt visa liberalization policies are towards the African Union (AU) Agenda 2063 policy document, that outlines seamless borders and could increase Africas tourism revenues by about 25%.

The visa challenge has in most cases hindered Africans who wish to tour the continent. Such a move by the Kenyan government as well as other African governments that have already implemented the policy is a major endorsement on the tourism sector. After a significant drop in performance during the electioneering period, we believe this will boost tourism numbers especially during this festive season, says Jumia Travel Kenyas Country manager, Cyrus Onyiego.

East Africans will now only require an identity card to travel, do business, and live in Kenya. Like her East African compeer, Rwanda also recently announced that from 1st January 2018, travelers from across the world will receive a 30-day visa on arrival from the previous policy that was only open to Africans. This will no doubt enhance Rwandas trade relations with the rest of the world, but also further grow tourisms prominence both in the country and within the East African region.

With a margin of US$ 35 billion in international tourism receipts in 2016, the continent is set for impressive performance by the end of this year and 2018 going forward. With improved investment and aggressive positioning in both the public and the private sectors growth agenda, the sky - for destination Africa - is just the limit.
The CEO of Surfline Communication, David Rottmayer said recent media reports that Vodafone is making moves to acquire Surfline is false.

A local news website recently alleged that Vodafone was making moves to acquire Surfline, citing supposed sources close to the negotiation.

But the Surfline boss told Adom News "We are not in discussion concerning acquisition at this time...the information out there is flawed."

He rather confirmed earlier reports by Adom News that Surfline and Vodafone were in service partnership talks, saying that they have made progress towards realizing an arrangement that would see Vodafone customers enjoy Surfline 4G services.

"We have had joint conversation concerning Surfline providing them (Vodafone) with White Label service thus allowing users (of Vodafone) to partake in our excellent 4G network," Rottmayer said.

He suspects that those speculating about Vodafone making moves to acquire Surfline, may have heard about the white label discussion and then made some leaps into the meaning.

It would be recalled that more than a year ago Adom News reported that Vodafone and Surfline presented a partnership proposal to the National Communications Authority (NCA) but their plans were stalled for "lack of regulatory framework for such partnerships".

But Rottmayer said they have since made progress with the NCA, adding that both companies have had fruitful discussions with the NCA on the planned white label partnership and many other opportunities.

He however noted that there are a few technical and commercial obstacles they need to work through to secure the green light from NCA and then rollout Surfline 4G services to a wider Ghanaian population on Vodafone.

"We are all very sure that these minor issues will be resolved and we can move forward to expand the 4G offering to a larger Ghanaian base," he said.

Industry watchers believe this partnership would be one of Vodafone's main strategies to counter the threat of the AirtelTigo merger. It is also a major move for Surfline to rekindle investor confidence in Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) sector.

Whereas the Surfline-Vodafone partnership promises to widen 4G accessibility, it is also faced with a possible opposition from market leader MTN, which acquired a 4G license for a whopping $67.5 million just two years ago.

All other telcos, particularly Vodafone, have been very vocal on the point that the license cost was way too high, and they are not in the position to even acquire the license for half that price.

MTN has also made the point that it would not sit by and watch any telco enter the 4G space through the "backdoor" in the form of partnerships.

"If they want to come in they must also cough $67.5million and acquire a license to ensure a fair playing field," an official of MTN said on grounds of anonymity.

It is however unclear how MTN will practically respond to this Vodafone-Surfline partnership, which is nearing realization.

But an industry expert said there are a number of options available to MTN - either they would seek to get some refund from NCA, which is very unlikely, or go to court and stop the "backdoor" entry by Vodafone.

Rottmayer, however, believes the Surfline-Vodafone partnership will be a game changer in the 4G space, and if MTN believes in their 800MHz 4G network, then they should welcome the partnership and encourage the competition.
In the round up to the 2016 elections, there was an opposition-sponsored campaign intelligently targeted at labelling John Mahama as corrupt. Ghana was adept at occupying the top slot of the anticorruption index, at least, that was the impression created by the opposition, particularly the NPP. John Mahama was seen as someone smelling with corruption and monopoly of incompetence on planet earth. He was accused of increasing the fortunes of his brother through illegal and dishonest means.

I wish to go on record that corruption in whatsoever form must not be countenanced as it deprives the village folk of things that make life both lively and enjoyable. That said, one would have expected pragmatic steps in dealing with this monster from this administration and not utterances and actions that are lily-livered.

Prior to the passage of the office of the special prosecutor bill, the deputy attorney general, Joseph Kpemkah, was on record to have said with candor that progress has been made in the preparations of dockets for nation wreckers who were going to be arraigned before a court of competent jurisdiction for their respective involvements in ripping off the country millions of Cedis through various corrupt enterprises. He added in October that, when government start prosecuting corrupt officials of the past administration, there that the Ghanaian public will know that government is serious about fighting the menace and uprooting it once and for all.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt only to be disappointed bigtime at the end of October as there was no show. It turned out to be a political chicanery. Can you imagine he just blew hot air? Well, it goes a long way to cement the long held view that politicians are ingenious in engineering false promises into the public domain. Except the BOST of-spec product corruption saga that rocked us as a nation, no living soul was sent to court and charged with corruption.

One would have expect of them to quit speaking big grammar that is yet to receive the blessing of Queen Elizabeth in the media and live up to expectation, unfortunately, the fruitless public pronouncements is still on a spree. The said prosecution of the corrupt officials was postponed to November. Once again, it will shock you to know that the same outcome was produced. No one- this bears repeating, No one was prosecuted, not even those who diverted premix fuel that was meant for the fisher folk.

How possible can it be to divert subsidized fuel meant for outboard motors by unscrupulous people into the mainstream market? A government which sought to prosecute corrupt officials of the erstwhile administration is neck-deep in cornucopia of corrupt practices and allegations of corruption. It suffices to say that they campaigned with poetry and now governing in prose. In like manner, it stands to reason that the politician is professionally dishonest and a professional teller of white lies aimed at concealing unvarnished truths from citizens.

This administration is gradually becoming a worthless one. They are only specialists in convicting and sentencing people on both the traditional media and social media. What they can do best is the granting of interviews that can cause citizens to express righteous indignations at what they spit afterwards. Change is here, I hope you are feeling it?

Let it be known to NPP that implementing a fractured SHS policy and establishing a legally challengeable OSP cannot in anyway guarantee an automatic comfortable lead in election 2020. Establishing the office is a giant step towards the fight of corruption and you deserve plaudits for such a milestone, however, it is not a magic wand. A recent report by CDD revealed a stark reality that, about 64% of Ghanaians are still of the perception that Akufo-Addo's Ghana is still corrupt, with most of the respondents pointing at the executive, legislature and judiciary as the most corrupt institutions.

Your Excellency, you have got too much on your table in contrast to providing unnecessary answers to needless interview questions from a controversial interviewer. My heart bleeds to see your administration pays lip service to the prosecution of alleged corrupt officials or those corruption stories were strategically cooked to make John Mahama appear as a cacodemon in the eyes of the guileless Ghanaian voter?

The of-repeated empty threats within the media circles is gradually becoming a nuisance, making you an element of distrust in the public eye. Too much talking backed by less action has proven to be the Achilles heel of this administrations fight against graft.
There is no denying or hiding the fact that a section of the NDC Party loyalists hold Ex-President Mahama in high esteem regardless.

It is also absolutely true that we can locate some disengaged brassbound NDC Party followers who do not wish the Ex-President Mahama well.

Take, for example, the courageous George Boateng would have threatened Ex-President Mahamas 2016 NDCs flagbearerships position if the party had not controversially blocked his presidential ambitions.

But despite the disqualification of George Boateng, the disgruntled NDC delegates went ahead and voted against Ex-President Mahama, who bizarrely failed to convince nearly 6% of the delegates. Indeed, the unhappy 6% of the delegates voted for MR Zero. How bizarre?

Apparently, the aggrieved NDC Party supporters action did not end at the presidential race, but they rather took their protest to the 2016 general elections.

More troublingly, the unenthused NDC supporters uncharacteristically withdrew their support for Mahama, which resulted in the humiliating defeat in the 2016 general elections.

Given the circumstances, I would like to believe that it is going to be extremely difficult for the disengaged NDC Party supporters to forgive Ex-President Mahama over his catastrophic errors in judgement.

So it was somewhat out of order when the ten Regional NDC Chairmen recently convened at the Cantonments office of Ex-president Mahama and gleefully, albeit carelessly issued a statement which sought to beseech him (Mahama) to consider joining the flagbearership race for the 2020 election (See: NDC Regional Chairmen beg Mahama to lead the party in 2020 election; 3news.com/ghanaweb.com, 09/11/2017).

[We have] called on HE John Dramani Mahama to consider the request of teeming supporters of the NDC and Ghanaians to lead the party to the 2020 General Elections, the statement said.

To be quite honest, I do not want to accept that there are teeming Ghanaians who will jump up and down over the return of Ex-President Mahama, with the exception of a few NDC Party apparatchiks who probably laid hands on big chunks of the national cake.

Obviously, the praise singing bandwagon never experienced the harsh socio-economic standards of living their Messiah Mahama wilfully brought upon the nation. So, what do you expect? They will definitely clamour for the return of their Father Christmas.

In fact, I am struggling to get my head around how and why any real patriot would seek the return of someone who disastrously collapsed the countrys economy to the detriment of the impoverished Ghanaians.

So the Mahama loyalists would want us to believe that every single Ghanaian was oblivious to the happenings in the country prior to the 2016 general elections?

The fact of the matter is that the diehard NDC supporters were living in a denial about the harsh economic conditions prior to the 2016 general elections.

Back then, the vast majority of Ghanaians struggled to make a living or eke an income. The dreadful errors in decision-making, the incompetence and the unbridled corruption culminated in untold economic hardships.

Clearly, one cannot help, but to agree with those who insist that former President Mahama lacks the needed effective leadership skills to lead a nation like Ghana.

The sceptics rightly argue that it was due to former President Mahamas poor leadership qualities that a GH9.5 billion debt in 2009 rocketed to an incredible GH122.4 billion in just eight years.

Besides, the critics rightly maintain that former President Mahamas irrevocable errors in decision-making accounted for Ghanas economic downslide. For example, Ghanas GDP shrunk from $47 billion to $37 billion in just five years.

Somehow, Ex-President Mahamas decision-making came under sharp scrutiny when he abysmally dragged an economic growth of around 14 per cent in 2011 to a nauseating 3.6 per cent as of December 2016.

Moreover, the critics have been arguing forcefully that former President Mahama and his governments woeful errors in judgement and alleged corrupt practices resulted in excessive public spending, less efficient tax system , needless high public deficit and destabilization of national budgets, heightened capital flight and the creation of perverse incentives that stimulate income-seeking rather than productive activities.

On the whole, the critics rightly contend that former President Mahamas government remains the worst ever in the history of Ghana politics.

However, the loyalists of former President Mahama, such as the ten Regional Chairmen, are ridiculously holding a faint hope that they could bring Ex-President Mahama back and recapture power from the NPP in 2020.

Well, I am not in a position to offer any advice to NDC delegates on their choice of a suitable flagbearer. But all that I could disclose is that, judging from the harsh economic conditions Ghanaians experienced during Mahamas maladaptive administration, it will take a miracle for discerning Ghanaians to easily forgive and vote Ex-President Mahama in 2020.

K. Badu, UK.
In recognition of its contribution towards the development of the Ashanti Region and Ghana's cocoa industry, Manhyia Palace presented Gold Award to Agro-Ecom over the weekend.

Ashanti Business Excellence Awards, organized under the auspices of Manhyia Palace  seat of the Ashanti monarch -conferred the award on Agro-Ecom Ghana Limited for its continued assistance to Cocoa Marketing Board.

Agro-Ecom Ghana is part of the Ecom Group  a Switzerland-based commodity merchant and sustainable supply chain management entity, with operations in over 40 countries.

The company is a member of Cocoa Buyers' Association of Ghana (LICOBAG) and works with over 140,000 farmers.

It is the leading private licensed cocoa buying company in Ghana; it also buys and sells other crops such as cashew and sesame.

It also runs a large logistics business with a fleet of almost 150 modern trucks, among other functions.

We constantly innovate, create efficiencies and empower our farmers to grow their businesses. This has positioned us at the forefront of changing the industry, driving a unique business model that safe-guards the future of cocoa and other crops in Ghana whilst building prosperity in rural community, Muhammadu Muzzammil, Country Manager of Ecom Group, underscored.

He continued, Some of our competitors are Cargill, OLAM, Produce Buying Company (PBC), Cocoa Merchant, Federated Commodities, Adwumapa Buyers, Transroyal Ghana Ltd, Kuapa Cocoa and other commodity buying and trading companies in Ghana.

We have 500 full time employees at Agro-Ecom Ghana and individual engagements with 5,000 stakeholders and over 140,000 farmers.

The Administrative Manager of Agro-Ecom, Seth Hammond, who received the award on behalf of the company, pledged the commitment of the company to continue with its vision of ensuring that cocoa farmers in the country get the best support from Agro-Ecom.
04.12.2017 LISTEN

God has favoured many different people as the bible is teaching us, the sick, the converted sinners, the simple hearted, the children, the rich that had a good heart and mindset like Abraham and others.

But what about me: the Intellectual?

The Disciples of Jesus Christ were either simple fisher folks, craftsmen, farmers or wealthy merchants besides tax collectors. He had surrounded him with people of that class wherever he went and walked. The bible is not explaining to us through which means rich people were rich, only demonstrating of what their fortune consisted, gold, silver or life-stock and people they owned of had made working for them. The Bible does not speak about The three intellectual Kings as wisdom can be accomplished outside formal/intellectual education. As Jesus Christ was the healer, records about Medical Doctors are missing.

As Jesus Christ was the teacher, mentioning of Writers, Philosophers and Inventors are missing. Instead records about money, poverty and power and justice, or the misuse of it, are prominent in the Holy Scriptures.

Looking around Men of GOD in Africa and the rest of the world it is striking that GOD has chosen the most talented Prophets and Teachers of his Kingdom among men and women that cannot be described as Intellectuals. Even some hold a PhD degree, this they do in Theology mostly, not in any field of Sciences. Men of GOD do not hold Patents or Marketing Rights. The most gifted Prophet are simple people in their intellectual capacity and capability, while most astonishing the Best in understanding bible revelations and the ability to change human lives to better them from level to level.

It seems that a simple minded person in heart, spirit and soul is most suitable, gifted and capable to listen to the word of GOD and act on his words with no doubt in simple understanding and believe, while more complicated constructed people find it harder to hear and see simple truth from GOD being trained to doubt anything and everything with the inbuilt requirement to ask for scientific evidence at any given level of a scientific process defending an idea against an old well establish conviction to find the very last truth of lifes matters.

Medical Doctors finding vaccination against HIV/AIDS, healing cancer, transplanting hearts and kidneys, modelling faces and bottoms of blond coloured L.A. Hollywood Beauties, Rocket Scientist pushing the man on the moon and beyond, engineers finding solutions to transmit TV signals into all homes across continents, Aircraft Specialist helping people move from country to country in faster ways, Car engineers working on environmental friendly movement of masses, Authors, Poets and Philosophers helping people to gain a deeper understanding of the spectrum of life and entertain them to become more civilized from generation to generation, are not reflected in the Bibel or around Jesus Christ, yet without the touchable intervention of Intellectuals many people would die of illnesses, have no work to do and no challenge to move their brain capacity and capability.

Honourable rewards like Noble Prizes or Ghana Club 100 and many more are given to Intellectuals as a recognition for their outstanding performance and service to mankind. Societies take great pride and complete across cities, states and nations to compete for the best Intellectuals and put competitive measures in place to produce a community of Intellectuals great in numbers understanding that, not only in our century but more so than in any century before, intellectual capacity and capability is key for economic and society success as modern technology makes it possible that Know-How is available in the shortest time around the globe ready to be copied and improved on to be a back clash for the original inventor to see and feel the pain to be honest and simple minded in business while others are ruthless and fast in money making.

It seems that societies depend on Intellectuals more than ever, while GOD pushes simple minded people into his Kingdom to work for him, teach to others his message and unveil revelations to heal the needy and change the world to be a better place for all, one by one.

Does this mean, GOD has no regard for Intellectuals, only for businessmen and hard-working craftsmen even their work is so much needed and cherished among humans never been mentioned in the Scriptures? Does this not lead to avoidable- jealousy and injustice of the Intellectuals against others, especially Men of GOD, an unfair imbalance?

This justified question leads to interesting insight and discussions for which I myself have no real answers but look for input from outside knowing that everyone is born for a reason and once discovered and standing on its GOD given talents, has no reason not to be felt loved by GOD nor jealous of other peoples talent, especially Men of GOD that know not Sciences, but lifes principles that lead each of us to his or her destination and assignment. GOD has not neglected us, he needs us Intellectuals, but gives as a sound foundation to perform on his given mandate as long as we all have respect for each others values; after all, humans are humans in which form they might walk on earth for the glory of GOD that is above ALL.

Author: Dipl.-Pol. Karl-Heinz Heerde, Sakumono, Tema West, Ghana, phone +233(0)265078287, [email protected] , 03.12.2017
Scores of foreign investors have started arriving in Ghana for a conference being organized by the Ministry of Railways Development to bring government and players in the private sector together to discuss the development of the Eastern railway and Boankra Inland Port projects.

The government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Railways Development, headed by Joe Ghartey, is seeking Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to construct the Eastern railway from Tema through Accra to Kumasi, as well as the Boankra Port project.

The conference, slated for December 6, 2017 and expected to be held at the Alisa Hotel in Accra, seeks to encourage the private sector to partner government to undertake the proposed Boankra Inland Port and Eastern Railway Line projects in a Public Private Partnership (PPP), among others.

The conference dubbed, 'Market Sounding Event' also seeks to understand the key considerations of the private sector regarding their potential involvement in the proposed projects and to obtain feedback from potential private sector players.

Speaking to the media over the weekend ahead of the event, Donald B. Kress, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Railnet International, a US company, which is in the country to bid for the Eastern Railway project, lauded the efforts of government in revamping the country's dormant rail sector.

One reason why we are here is that Ghana wants to build the rail system. They have realized the economic viability of having a solid rail system, he said.

He said the Eastern rail project has the potential of boosting Ghana's economic growth and creating about 17,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Mr Kress, however, urged the government of Ghana to learn from the best practices in the rail sector of North America.

He also appealed to Ghanaians to support government's vision of redeveloping the country's rail sector.

About the projects

The Eastern Railway Line links Accra to Kumasi with a branch line from Achimota to Tema Port.

The total track length is 330 km, and the gauge is 1,067 mm.

The existing Eastern Railway Line was built in 1923 with narrow gauge standards. It was designed for an axle load limit of 13 tonnes.

Some sections of the railway line have been rendered unusable.

In these affected areas, there must be a complete overhaul of the railway formation in order to give it the requisite capacity to hold new tracks and axle load, if the existing alignment is to be maintained.

The Right of Way (RoW) has been encroached upon by developers and other people. Human resettlement and commercial activities along the rail pose a major threat to the efficient running of the rail system.

Several permanent and temporary structures have developed within the RoW, which may present social challenges to the development of the line in Tema, Achimota, Amasaman, Koforidua and other areas.

In most rural sections, the tracks are overgrown with weeds.

The Boankra Inland Port, strategically located near Kumasi, was initiated in 1990 by GPHA and GSA in order to create an inland extension to the Tema Port. Currently, the Boankra Inland Port has been partially developed with an administration block, access roads and utility connections.

There are plans for further development of the Inland Container Depot (ICD), shippers and freight forwarders offices, warehouses and commercial buildings.

Meanwhile, the sector ministry has set up a call centre with the following phone numbers: 030294840, 0302904855, 0302904841 and 0302904850, for businesses in the country who want to attend the event to register.
Ken Ofori Atta, Finance Minister and Kojo Graham, an investment banker, have been awarded for their immense contributions to the growth of the securities industry in the country.

They were honoured at the Ghana Securities Industry Association (GSIA) Awards night for founding members held at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel last Saturday.

The event, which was organized by the Ghana Securities Industry Association, in partnership with Premier Networking Club, was used to recognize personalities, who have contributed to the growth of the securities industry in the country.

The two gentlemen, Ken Ofori- Atta and Lawyer Graham, blazed the trail in securities in the early 1990s.

The Finance Minister established Databank, which became the leading investment house at the time until Lawyer Graham came on board with his company NTHC Limited, which came from the bottom to be the leading investment house.

The two gentlemen have mutual respect for each other in spite of their 'fierce' rivalry in the industry in the early nineties.

Mr. Graham's role in influencing the securities industry over the years was duly recognized.

We do recognize the critical roles you played, collectively and severally in founding the association and for ensuring that structures were put in place for the industry to build upon, a letter from GSIA stated.

Lawyer Graham, who is currently a social entrepreneur and human rights advocate, is a respected criminal lawyer in addition to his investment banking profession, which he practiced with utmost perfection.

He was the first Ghanaian to be appointed lead counsel at the United Nations International Criminal Court from 2005 to 2008

Lawyer Graham is a member of the immediate past board of the National Lottery Authority (NLA).

His vast knowledge of financial and investment matters helped transformed the NLA into a profitable revenue organization.
Koforidua secondary technical school properly known as SECTECH held its golden jubilee anniversary over the weekend with memorable series of events.

The anniversary was on theme re-defining educate for service to meet current and future economic demands in Ghana, the guest speaker Barima Ba Dr. Samuel Yaw Annor, CEO of National Health Insurance Authority and on the theme said that, it doesnt look good for Ghana not being among the top technological nation in Africa after 50 years of secondary technical education.

He said that Ghanaians needs to change their appetite for praising everything foreign so that we can keep using our products as we keep perfecting them.

It is by only this means that scientist and technologist trained through our sectech and other higher learning institution will be motivated go the extra mile to invent means to solve the myriad of challenges facing mother Ghana.

The Headmaster, Barima Ba Mr. Samuel Prince Foli, was thankful to God for bringing Koforidua sectech this far.

He used the occasion to share with parents, old students, and guests about the successes of the school.

He made a passionate appeal to GETFUND to come and complete the new dormitory so to ease congestion in the four dormitories.

He used the occasion to thank PTA for the continued support, he was full of praise of the old students association for constructing a new state of the art entrance for the school, as well as efforts to renovate the school Pantry and work in progress on the multi-purpose assembly hall.

He said that he and his staffs will work hard to keep the school among the best in the country not only in academics but also in the matter of discipline.

The association President Barima Ba Scofray Nana Yaw Yeboah in his speech made a passionate call on government and corporate bodies to come to the schools aid towards the construction of the multi-purpose assembly hall (MPAH).

He said after the completion, it will be the first of its kind in Ghana for a second cycle school to have such an edifice that is designed for indoor sporting activities which can accommodate close to 4000 seats.

He said to maintain the status of the sectech as a hybrid of mini military academy and Massachusetts Institute of Technology thus providing high standards of discipline and practical technological knowledge, all stakeholders especially Ministry of Education, Ghana Education Service, PTA etc. must join forces with the association to implement their 20-year development.

He said with this the fiercest challenge of overpopulation and lack of state of the art laboratory, lack of logistics etc will be a thing of past.

The ceremony was graced by Hon Asibe Yeboah, chaired by Barima Ba Ing. Jonathan Amoako Baah CEO GRIDCO, Barima Ba Ing. Samuel Appiah Boakye CEO of ECG, Barima Ba Rev Prof. Charles Ansah Pro-vice Chancellor of KNUST, Barima Ba Prof. Samuel Odai immediate past Pro VC of KNUST, Barima Ba Rev Christian Koramoah Financial Controller of GES as well as the Regional Director of Education, Municipal Director of education and many well-wishers.

On Friday afternoon, Barima Ba Rev Prof. Charles Ansa was the guest speaker for the anniversary dialogues on the theme, 50 years of sectech in Ghanas development; the gains, challenges and the way forward which took place at the Capital View hotel, with powerful attendance by old the students.

In the evening the occasion was used to commission the new entrance of the school after a powerful candlelight procession through the principal streets in Koforidua with electronic candles. The fireworks display was simply unprecedented and indescribable; Hy-Skull Band were simply exceptional on a Friday evening not forgetting the beautiful 48 car convoy that drove from Accra to Koforidua on Thursday evening.

Saturday morning was the climax and over 3000 old students were present. In the evening the old students held a fundraising dinner dance and it was just beautiful to see sectechans in their traditional wear or suit and tie.

The first generation honoured Scofray Nana Yaw Yeboah the president of the alumni, Chairman Essien (Stephen Essien) the vice president, Ken McKenzie Acquah the Organizing secretary, Felix Osae Larbi the financial controller and Capone Richard Nii Armah Aryeetey an executive member for their selfless service to the association for the past 7 years.

Barima Ba Apostle Samuel Yaw Antwi, preached at the Sunday service on the theme, Building Your House On The Rock.

He challenged the young students to take their studies and life seriously so that when the storms of life visit them, their successes will be assured.
The regent of Bimbilla, Nyelinboligu Naa Yakubu Andani Dasana, has cancelled this year's Damba festival upon an order from the Northern Regional Security Council (REGSEC), banning drumming and dancing in the area.

Information gathered by DAILY GUIDE indicates that a combined team of military and the police have been deployed to the area.

Following the burial of the late Bimbilla Naa, REGSEC issued a statement banning drumming and dancing at Bimbilla.

However, as the Damba festival is fast approaching, drumming and dancing activities have been heard from the family of the Nakpa Naa, contrary to the order of REGSEC.

According to Nyelinboligu Naa Yakubu Andani Dasana, he was calling off this year's festival to ensure peace and the security of the people in accordance with the REGSEC order.

The regent has urged all Nanumbas to remain calm and keep to the positive development of the kingdom.

It will be recalled that the Inspector General of Police (IGP), David Asante-Apeatu, warned Bimbilla residents not to engage in any activity that would disturb the peace of the area.

According to him, for far too long, free movement had been restricted and that had hampered economic activities and growth.
A group of Ghanaian investors have initiated plans to set up a polyethylene plant at Esiama in the Ellembelle District of the Western Region in partnership with the Ghana Gas Company to manufacture plastics and plastic-related products under the government's flagship 'one district, one factory' (1D1F) policy.

The project which has had the support from the local people of Esiama and its surrounding communities would help create thousands of jobs and add to government's revenue mobilisation.

The project developers and partners also seek to roll out the landmark industry for the rapid economic development and diversification of the local economy.

The District Chief Executive (DCE) for Ellembelle, Kwasi Bonzoh, who disclosed this mentioned that the market for plastics and plastic-related products keep growing and stressed the need for the country to delve into the opportunity.

The DCE spoke to journalists in an interview during the final Public Hearing on Draft District Medium Term Development Plan 2018-2021 organised by the Ellembelle District Assembly at Anyinase in the district.

We need to create a petrochemical industry here and we have realised that a polyethylene plant will be appropriate since the Ghana Gas Company located in the district produces high component of ethane needed for the manufacturing of plastics, he indicated.

Kwasi Bonzoh added, The current gas production of the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant has about six to 10 percent of ethane, and that will constitute the main raw material for the plant. The polyethylene plant will adopt a splitting decomposition technology.

The DCE continued, Our preliminary discussions with key stakeholders revealed that the project is a priority because of the opportunity to take the raw materials directly from Ghana Gas and the number of jobs it will create.

He explained that the implementation of the initiative could go a long way to make the Ellembelle District the hub for the export of plastics and plastic products to other countries.

Kwasi Bonzoh explained that the project would provide the opportunity to enhance local content, employment, economic diversification and the application of advanced technologies in the growing oil and gas industrial chain.

The creation of this allied industry of the oil and gas industry will be beneficial to the economy of Ghana and is in line with the government's industrialisation plans boldly outlined under the 1D1F initiative, he explained.

Cassava Factory

The DCE mentioned that the Ellembelle District is an agrarian area and that coconut used to be the mainstay of the people but the coconut trees have been destroyed by the Cape St Paul wilt disease.

So now many of the farmers had gone into the planting of food crops particularly, cassava farming. But unfortunately, when the farmers produce the crop there is no ready market for it, he disclosed.

The DCE, therefore, indicated that the district would establish a cassava processing plant for the production of industrial starch and would serve as a ready market for the farmers' produce at a good price.

He was very hopeful that the move would help motivate the farmers to produce more to feed the factory and for domestic use.

Upon completion, the cassava processing plant is expected to create over 1,000 direct and indirect jobs for the youth of the district, he pointed out.

Free SHS

On the government Free Senior High School (SHS) policy, the DCE called on Ghanaians to put away their partisan interests and support the policy to succeed since it is benefiting all Ghanaians irrespective of their political affiliations.

He disclosed that majority of parents and students in the district are excited about the Free SHS and so the assembly had begun using parts of its internally generated funds (IGF) to support some of the SHSs in the area to help surmount some of the challenges they are currently facing.

Every new initiative from successive governments faced initial challenges and the current challenges confronting the Free SHS policy is nothing different and I believe that with the challenges will be over, he added.

According to him, activists of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) saw the policy as a big threat to their chance of winning political power and had allegedly decided to just criticise it.
Samira Bawumia has donated books to pupils from six basic schools in the Lower Manya Krobo District in the Eastern Region of Ghana.

The kind gesture, according to the wife of the vice president, is to ensure that school children cultivate the habit of reading.

It is our goal to make sure that every child in Ghana cultivates the habit of reading through the SEHP School Library in a Box initiative, she indicated.

This adds to the many social intervention projects she has been embarking on since the New Patriotic Party took over power.

The schools received the books on Wednesday with excitement as they also took the opportunity to take pictures with the beautiful woman.
President of the Ghana Consulting Engineers Association (GCEA), Albert Ogyiri, has confirmed that all is set for the Ghana Consulting Engineers Week celebration slated for December 6 to December 8 at the Engineers Centre, Roman Ridge, Accra.

The celebration is under the theme: 'the role of consulting engineers and the development agenda of Ghana'.

It is expected to attract over 200 participants, including government officials, local administrative authorities, and directors of member consulting engineering firms in the country.

GCEA is made up of legally constituted indigenous Ghanaian firms and individuals practicing consulting engineering in Ghana.

It is committed to the development of the capacity of consulting engineering firms to effectively harness the human resources for the development and sustenance of Ghanas infrastructure.

The GCEA is also a member association of FIDIC and GAMA.

The guest speaker for the programme is the Minister for Railway Development, Joe Ghartey, and in attendance will be the President of Ghana Institution of Engineers, Ing. Mrs. Carlien Bou-Chedid, GAMA president, Major of Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Mohammed Adjei Sowah and sister bodies in the built environment.

Activities include technical sessions, workshops, annual general meeting, and exhibition.
The Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo, has reiterated that persons found to have engaged in acts of corruption will soon be prosecuted.

He said it has taken long for investigations to be conducted because the Akufo-Addo-led administration does not want to jump into prosecuting people when facts and evidence to back what they are alleged to have done have not been established.

Speaking at the launch of the Anti Corruption and Transparency Week in Accra Mr. Maafo said I have a message from the president  he told me that when you go emphasise the point that we are certainly going to make people who have wronged this nation through corruption suffer for their deeds.

But we dont want to do this in a hurry, we must do thorough investigation we must do it in such a way that people who have wronged the system are identified through thorough investigation and they will answer for their crimes, he added.

In the absence of proper investigations, prosecuting anyone would be seen as a witch hunt, especially of the current administrations political opponents.

The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been criticised by a section of the public, especially supporters of the New Patriotic Party for not taking action against people in the previous government they perceived as corrupt.

They say although the president promised during the 2016 electioneering campaign to deal with such people, nothing concrete has been done aside from the passing into law of the Special Prosecutors Bill.

Mr. Maafo acknowledged their disappointment but said not much can be done if there is no evidence against such people.

People are impatient with Akufo Addos government because they think that we spoke a lot about corruption in the past, but till date, nothing is happening to those who are supposed to have wronged the system.

We have the laws of this land not to punish anybody [only] because he or she is an opponent, but because they have wronged the system and they have been corrupt in the system, he added.

He assured, however, that Investigations are still going on and very soon the results will be out for every Ghanaian to hear and to see.

To mark the 2017 UN World Anti-Corruption Day, stakeholders working towards anti-corruption in Ghana are collaborating to implement the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Week from December 04 to 07 2017.

The objectives for this years celebration to be held under the theme NACAP: Strengthening Public, Private and Civil Society Partnership in the fight against corruption, seeks to discuss the implementation of the 2016 NACAP report.

It also hopes to, among other things, raise awareness of the NACAP and mobilize resources and effort for its implementation and bring stakeholders and partners together to plan and fight corruption.
KWADWO AMOATENG, the Progressive People's Party (PPP) 2016 parliamentary candidate for Offinso South in the Ashanti Region, is struggling for his life after he was allegedly shot by some suspected armed robbers in his house.

The robbers reportedly had laid ambush in the PPP parliamentary candidate's house at Offinso, whilst he (Amoateng) was at work on Thursday, and they opened fire at him when he returned home around 8pm.

The robbers, who were fully-armed, asked Mr Amoateng to surrender the money on him and before he could even utter a word, they shot at him several times and absconded with his bag containing money.

The PPP parliamentary candidate was rushed to the St Patrick Hospital at Offinso and was later referred to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) due to the enormity of his injuries.

A top PPP member in Kumasi, who made the disclosure to DAILY GUIDE on condition of anonymity, explained that Mr Amoateng, a teacher of Namong Senior High School (SHS), is presently responding to treatment.

She disclosed that Mr Amoateng owns about six mobile money joints within the Offinso South area. She mentioned that she suspect the robbers wanted to rob him of the sales that he made at his mobile money joints during that fateful day.

She indicated that unknown to the PPP parliamentary candidate, three robbers who were armed with offensive weapons had laid ambush in his house whilst he was busy working in town during daytime.

Mr Amoateng, she added, was about opening the door to his room when from behind the three robbers asked him to surrender everything on him and before he will say a word, they opened fire at him.

According to her, the unknown robbers who are still at large, shot the PPP parliamentary candidate seven times, and the bullets hit his chest and his right arm.

She revealed that Mr Amoateng is responding to treatment at KATH, adding that the police had been informed about the shooting incident and they are yet to arrest the perpetrators of the crime.
On the evening of 14th November 2017, elements of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces gathered around Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, and seized control of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and other important installations within the city in what senior members of military describe as ''acting in the best interest of the Zimbabwean people.

Mugabe's reign increasingly and seemingly/clearly was coming to and end unfortunately in a rather bizarre fashion full of drama and needless spectacle.

Everything looked new and strange in Zimbabwe at that time...

This kept students of politics, security, intelligence and international relations wondering what actually happening in Zimbabwe.

But alas...

Whilst Africa and the rest of the world was struggling to understand what was going on in Mugabe's Zimbabwe with regards to rumors of a possible coup in that country following attempts by Mr Mugabe to handover power to his wife Grace Mugabe, the military made it categorically clear at the time that their action was one that was aimed at preventing some criminal elements within the Zanu PF party from taking undue advantage of the existing political situation to steal.

They insisted that they were not staging a coup to overthrow president Mugabe's government"

In fact, they promised the Zimbabwean people and the international community that the security of president Mugabe and his family was guaranteed, reiterating that no one was going to do anything on toward to them.

Things didn't look too clear and kept agitating the minds of people...

Then the hour came for the strange announcement on ZBC that left the world even more confused and wondering what was going on in Zimbabwe.

The announcement was...

"To both our people and the world beyond our borders, we wish to make it abundantly clear that this is not a military takeover of government" General Moyo

This particular announcement was received by many watchers of international politics, international relations and security as both strange and novel considering that it defied all the definitions of a coup.

Some sections of the media that reported the overthrow of Mugabe did not know which exact terminologies to employ in reporting the situation. Some described it as a takeover, others called it a coup or palace coup whilst others were torn between the middle and didn't just know how to call it.

"It was a coup - it wasn't a coup"

What then is a coup d'etat or coup?

The Merriam Webster defines a coup as "a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics; especially : the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group"

A coup d'etat also known simply as a coup, a putsch, golpe de estado, or an overthrow, is the illegal and overt seizure of a state by the military or other elites within the state apparatus" Wikipedia

Also, Wikipedia defines the other type of coup which is called a palace coup as "a non-violent overthrow of a sovereign or government by senior officials within the ruling group"

In a palace coup, elements of the same junta takes over from an existing leadership of the same junta like it happened in the Ghana example with Supreme military council SMC 1&2.

It worthy to note that the period of the SMC in the Ghanaian political history can be divided into two eras. These are :

Acheampong era - SMC - 1 (October 9, 1975 - July 5, 1978)

Akuffo era - SMC 2 - (July 5, 1978 - June 4, 1979)

Clearly, looking at the events that culminated in the ousting of president Robert Mugabe and the subsequent formation of the new cabinet by the the current president whose sacking and forced exile into South Africa triggered the events that eventually led to overthrow of the longest serving president in Africa - president Robert Mugabe, one is tempted to believe that the situation in Zimbabwe although novel, was a classical form of a palace coup.

My reasons for arriving at this conclusion is the fact that this coup in Zimbabwe largely had the support of trusted elements of Mugabe within the government, Zanu PF and of course the military.

This explained why Mr Mugabe himself was so comfortable to the extent that he was able to move about in the capital and also took part in the graduation ceremony of the Zimbabwean university.

The end they usually say justifies the means and with my little understanding of what makes "a coup a coup" that is; the ingredients or elements so to speak of a coup; I will like to submit without any fear of equivocation and contradiction that the Zimbabwean political situation that saw the overthrow of Mugabe had all the elements of a coup especially coming towards the end leading to the formation of the new cabinet by President Emerson Mnangagwa that saw many of the military elements being named as part of the cabinet.

If the military had not taken part in sharing of the spoils of the coup by way of accepting cabinet positions in Mr Mnangagwa's government, it would have been very difficult for any observer to reach the kind of conclusions I have made herein.

Although many of the ingredients of a typical African coup were absent in the Zimbabwean situation, it still does not defeat the fact that this was a coup.

The Zimbabwe coup was a coup was a coup because the end has finally justified the means and we are having the Zimbabwean military that announced to the world that they were not interested in a coup now queuing to take up key cabinet positions as their reward for outing Mugabe.

It is extremely important for me to insist once again that the fact that the Zimbabwe coup did not have all or perhaps any of the ingredients of a typical African coup, it is still important to recognize that it is a coup because the military leaders who managed the whole episode of the overthrow of Mugabe have left barracks and they are now in the government house as civilian employees of the state.

Because this coup was largely occasioned by Mr Mugabe's own confidants in government and the Zanu PF party with the tacit support of the military actors all of whom are also Mugabe's right hand men cum confidants, it is safe to conclude that it was a palace coup situation especially as all these various groups are now in government as a result of the coup.

Abdul Hanan Mohammed EL-Saeed
The President Akufo-Addo has applauded the contribution of Zenith Bank to the deepening of financial intermediation in the country.

Describing it as a pan-African Bank, the President said institutions like Zenith Bank with encouragement and support can bring the African continent together for the future prosperity of her people.

The President made these comments at the commissioning of the new headquarters of Zenith Bank at Ridge in Accra.

Explaining the rationale for his presence at the ceremony, the President said, what is going on here [at Zenith Bank] ticks of so many boxes that are important to me, and I thought I should come here and show my solidarity with what is going on here.

The President noted that, in the example of Jim Ovia, founder of Zenith Bank, we have, first of all, the example of a dynamic entrepreneur, who has built this company, which has gone global. It is in South Africa, England, China, and several places in Africa.

President Akufo-Addo in a handshake with Zenith Bank's founder Jim Ovia

The initiative and sense of risk-taking and entrepreneurship that Zenith Bank represents is what, I believe, will drive our country and our continent forward. We need many more Jim Ovia. The more the merrier, he added.

President Akufo-Addo also congratulated Zenith Bank for paying attention to another important aspect of Ghanas development  education of young people  through its scholarship facility at the Ashesi University.

He described the initiative as tremendous, and I applaud him very much for it.

The President assured the bank of governments maximum support and wished all those associated with Zenith Bank the best of luck in the coming years.
04.12.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Dec. 4, CDA Consult  The African Court on Human and Peoples Rights will undertake sensitization mission to Praia, the Republic of Cape Verde, from December 13 to 15, 2017.

The sensitisation mission forms part of the on-going efforts of the African Court to interact with different stakeholders in order to deepen their understanding of the Continental Courts mission and importance.

It is also to encourage African Union (AU) Member States to ratify the Protocol establishing the African Court and deposit the declaration under Article 34(6) which allows direct access to the Court by Non-governmental Organisations and individuals.

In a statement issued and signed by Dr Robert Eno, the African Court Registrar and copied to the Communication for Development and Advocacy Consult (CDA Consult) in Accra said so far, 30 out of 55 AU Member States have ratified the Protocol.

But only eight of countries have signed and deposited the declaration recognizing the competence of the African Court to receive cases from NGOs and individuals. The eight States are: Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote dIvoire, Malawi, Mali, Tanzania and Tunisia.

According to the Dr Eno, the African Court delegation would include three Judges and Registry Staff. The team would hold a seminar for stakeholders and also pay courtesy calls on the President, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, among others.

Justice Sylvain Ore, African Court President explained in an interview that this is the fourth sensitisation visit undertaken by the African Court in 2017 and such efforts would continue into 2018.

He said for the African Court to achieve its objectives and further strengthen the African human rights system, a greater number of countries must ratify the Protocol and make the declaration under Article 34(6).

The countries visited this year were: Arab Republic of Egypt and the Republic of Tunisia, both in April, and the Republic of Guinea Bissau in August.

The African Continental Court was established by virtue of Article 1 of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Establishment of an African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, to complement the protective mandate of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights with a view to enhancing the protection of human rights on the continent.

The success of the African Court as a human rights protection mechanism requires much wider ratification of the Protocol by the Member States, as well as their acceptance of the competence of the Court by making the declaration under Article 34(6).

This universal ratification will give the Court the legitimacy it needs to effectively discharge its mandate.

Since December 2010, the Court has carried out continent-wide promotion programmes which have so far seen it undertake 28 sensitization visits and held 12 regional seminars and conferences.

The main objective of the sensitization visits is to enhance the protection of human rights in Africa.

Specific objectives include raising public awareness about the Court; encouraging the ratification of the Protocol and deposit of the Declaration that allows individuals and NGOs direct access to the African Court.

It also educates would-be applicants on how to access the African Court and the procedures before the African Court; encourages the public to utilize the African Court in settling human rights disputes and encouraging the utilization of the African Court for advisory opinions.
04.12.2017 LISTEN

State Of The Nation In Kenya 2017-2018: Philosopher Dr. Swa; Constitutional Modern Presidential Elections Theory

REF: TO ALL PATRIOTIC CITIZENS, STATE AUTHORITIES, MPs, SENATORS, MCAs, PROFESSIONAL BODIES, ACADEMICS, FBOs, CSOs, MEDIA HOUSES, POLITICAL PARTIES, INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES AND REPRESENTATIVES. (THE KENYAN CITIZEN CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM AGENDA 2018)

CONCEPT: UNEARTHING A NEW DAWN TO POLITICAL STAND-OFF IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN KENYA (AFRICA).

AIM/OBJECTIVE: CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 2018; A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL OXYGENERAL ELECTIONS PRINCIPLE.

COUNTING VOICES OF THE PEOPLE: PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS WE WANT.

Constitutional Presidential Elections Minimum Standards Reform in Kenya

The most urgent salvaging concise to Kenyas most common chronic problem to presidential elections likely to tear asunder the beloved nation of Kenya is the contemporary call for the constitutional reforms to be upheld by all patriotic citizens of this nation as hereunder;

i) The proposed constitutional amendment will require the sitting president seeking re-election in the office to resign from the office and state house when parliament is closed, to pave way for a level playground for presidential campaigns and elections to all presidential candidates free from the traditional state authority abuse commonly experienced from the sitting presidents in Kenya.

ii) The sitting president not seeking re-election will not be required to resign.

Once the sitting president resigns;

The state function will be taken over by the judicial president i.e. the Chief Justice, as the acting president as provided by the constitution. The Chief Justice shall hand-over power to president elect at the swearing in within the constitutional time frame. The acting president will operate within the constitutional threshold. He/she shall not support/fund/favour biasedly any candidate.

If the acting president refuses to hand-over power to president elect unconstitutionally;

He/she shall be charged with treason. He/she shall be convicted to life imprisonment if found guilty. All his/her benefits shall be forfeited Freeze all his/her bank accounts by the state or vide private action.

Future Presidential Elections Process Harmonization

Q: is the formation of a Coalition Government or Government of National Unity as a remedy to presidential elections disputes ever a good undertaking by the political class?

Ans: Yes

Q: Is it an absolute cohesive grand solution to presidential elections disputes?

Ans: No

As regards to the above two questionnaires and answers, I wish to register my humble quencher to ask every good citizen, concerned person, and keen observers with mankind, to assume having no presidential contender in mind and take a pause and look at it beyond the time of Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga political reign and forget about the story of anybody coming into power, and measure the abundant importance of the proposed constitutional amendment for the long-term making of a better future of this nation and any country to follow suit.

I wish not to hear any patriotic citizen linking this process with the present presidential contenders for all of us will in the open circumstances lose positive insight to diagnose and nurse the political burning wounds facing Kenya today.

I still urge every concerned person, never link this process with any current presidential hopeful for you to see this reasoning adequately for the better future Kenya. Look at the proposal and its supportive grounds with open mind and assume you dont see Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila Odinga, William Rutto, Kalonzo Musyoka, Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetangula or any other candidate in the presidential race and or you dont picture yourself in the process as a Kikuyu, Luo, Kalenjin, Luhya, Kamba or any other tribe, but as an independent minded Kenyan Citizen who loves his/her country in everything to happen in the country to remain a builder and defender of patriotism and that is called a True Naturalist or Oxygeneral Reform. Remain and be like a giraffe and see beyond your tribal-line and the head-point of these astute personalities mentioned above as they have included themselves in the process mutually. Thus, never be a defeatist nor a diehard citizen to salvage Kenya from continuous political mess encountered in every electioneering period.

Contemplating Chronic Presidential Fallacy Cure in Kenya

Consequently, the evolution of the constitutional threshold fundamental principles of upholding the constitutional presidential fair elections in the terms of Democratic Presidental Oxygeneral Elections is the supreme statehood and nationhood demarcation for the future of Kenya accrued from natural justice and defender of patriotism and constitutionalism by the executive. It stands extra miles away in the present world of executive power genocide elections experienced all over the world much so in Kenya and African countries as the dominant remedial constitutional precedent to the most common presidential elections, historical injustices, fraud and commanded corruptions in every presidential elections over the past years. It is a fundamental key backup to the experience of natural justice and democratic fairness in all presidential elections by all candidates to breathe an equally clean quantity of the same oxygen in their campaigns, election conducts, and decision making processes unlike the incumbent presidential elections commonly held in Kenya and in the rest of African countries.

Consistent with the current applicable constitution, the Democratic Presidential Oxygeneral Elections principle will out rightly reduce or eliminate future presidential elections petitions, fears, chaos and nationhood divisive corruption, fraud and irregularities associated to electioneering dispensations where all stakeholders freely participate and concede on decision-making consequential to statehood.

What is most remarkable about the achievement is the basis of equally likely level playing ground and consent on which this fundamental constitutionalism rests. The Democratic Presidential Oxygeneral Elections clause has compulsory powers. Its method of work is aptly described in the constitution of Kenya by the naturally mooted bills of rights as being that of continuous and concerted constitutional and nationhood effort in which all the presidential candidates in a political general or by-election, enjoying equal status as holding no government post to influence or corrupt the process, join with them free campaigns, discussion and democratic election with a view to promoting patriotism, nationalism, statehood and constitutionalism of the common welfare of the state. The clause binds all political candidates in the electioneering contest with free hands. It is a clause of standards, evolved by the will and the hearts of the natural justice for a strong constitutional substantial nationhood.

Constitutional Naturality vs- Autocracy

Fundamentally, all human beings are regarded as the most social animals which live and co-exist at per social and natural justice neighborhood. All that they do and plan to do are all measurable to fairness and justifiable by a democratic constitution.

When can a constitution be held a natural constitution? This is the most critically technical question. But then, let us go back to history. From the ancient times of the Athens to the stone age in Africa, contemporary leadership appointment or anointments were determined by the source and magnitude of wealth, power and wisdom a person was wielding towards social and natural collateral in his life. The process was wholesome socially and naturally guided all times. Remember by then there was no written constitution by the whole society was guided by inherently principle called the Natural Constitution arose from inherent fundamental principles of natural and social justice which bound the citizenship of all traditions from one society to the other all over the world. This was the natural era when people never lived under the fear of autocratic regimes. Leaders were guided by the natural universal spirit which used to cause item undergoing lot of consultations at times of victories and calamities. During this era of Natural Constitutionality, leaders mostly feared God and were divinely wise to rule and explore good governance. This was one symbol of upholding the Natural Constitutionalism.

When did rain start beating us in a wrong corner of state leadership? Everyone ought to take a pause to grasp a universal answer to this question. Go back to the prime time of B.C. (Before Christ). This was the time when the sons of Jacob broke into tribal welfare which was the genesis of the written constitution to protect their interest over other brothers and tribes. The brain of man got confused and autocratic power came into being mostly with people wielding executive power all over the world. We must dig deep in our search for excellent governance and leadership to understand the whole process. And we must be too honest in our search. Honestly this will grind general elections related to presidential election chaos, fear, genocide and rigging to immeasurable fortune of the nation stability. Our pursuit for free and fair presidential democratic elections should not be at the expense of humanity rather should be more humane as we scale up the ladder of a free and fair presidential elections today in Kenya, Africa and the rest of the world. In this way everyone emphasizes lesson learnt on principles of social and natural justice, unity, patience, patriotism, constitutionalism and wisdom against the ruthless political chest-thumping competition, war mongering and autocracy against proliferation of great ideas and political policies. However, every citizen must be vigilant on the upcoming risk of presidential elections likely to burn and torn asunder the future of our countries in Africa, Kenya being the reliable country and other countries all over the world.

Presidential 0xygeneral Elections Principle

Entrenching a Democratic Presidential Oxygeneral Elections principle in our constitution would definitely change the status quo in Kenya and many African countries engulfed with autocratic regimes and will make lives of the common citizen matter. One of the biggest leadership danger this days is between vision and execution. Leaders have vision but never execute. Thus, vision does not drive execution. It is a pity leaders are totally faulty today. Know how to inspire people, motivate people, and unite people as a nation. These are just some of few contemporary fundamental principles of a motivating Democratic Presidential Oxygeneral Elections phenomenon.

Sir James Madison once argued during the American Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that if you want to know the true colour, character, and quality of a leader, just test him/her with power. You will find some are accountable, honest and transparent, while others are extremely autocratic, brutal and dictatorial. In other words, never trust a person with power. Design and Monitor that power with measurable constitutional tool to keep it balancing with human high expectations and the terms and conditions to serve the citizen at all times.

It simply means constitution is the living part of the human being. It is our life. It forms parts of our lives. It lives with us. It derives and measures our daily lives. It is natural. Constitution is not circumstantial nor situational to our lives.

Fundamentally, constitution begets nature in power that the clear conceptual reasoning of the making of power in leadership shall always goes in connotation with nature. So anything contrary to nature on the desire of the citizens is often unpredictable to human rights. For example, extreme power works in arbitrary to this conceptual reasoning of holding a Democratic Presidential Oxygeneral Election which will quantify the successes of the future of a nation and the lives of her citizens.

Legal Supremacy of the Principle

As the standards set out in legal construction by Professor Howfield in Legal Conceptual Reasoning justifies this new principle in shaping up the legal threshold in the future presidential elections in the new digital world order today.

In essence, the principle is literally;

Constitutional, Jurisprudential, Justifiable, Equitable, Law backing, Sacrificial, Humanocratic, Anti-power corrupts, Human Rights lnclusivity, and Ensure Humility is respected, recognized and upheld in leadership at all levels.

Motivating Constitutional Amendment on Presidential Elections

This clause once incorporated and adapted will give the Kenya constitution one of natural enumerated powers that leadership and governance may be naturalized subject to contemporary natural equality enshrined to the conduct of the holding a Democratic Presidential Oxygeneral Elections in the country. The constitution shall contemplate the office of the president and his election, natural statehood, being the supreme example of the constitution of the land, but earlier, natural law or some derivative concepts of social and natural justice took the part of the kind in the ancient tradition. Hence the purpose of this discourse-which is to demonstrate how very large a Democratic Presidential Oxygenated Election once adapted in the constitution will always naturally dispense naturality in the person of a presidential candidate of a statehood officer to make the process inspiring, motivating and inclusive and to owe the whole process inspiring, motivating and inclusive, and owe the whole process to natural law genesis of the past.

So far I wish to quote a few passage from the 13th edition: Elements of Jurisprudence;

Notably, Aristotle fully recognizes the existence of a natural equality as well as a legal justice. He mentions as an ordinary devices of rhetoric the distinction which may be drawn between the written law and the common law which is in accordance with nature and immutable.

The Stoics were in the habit of identifying nature with law and human character in higher sense, and of opposing both of these terms to law which is such by mere human appointment to an office similar to the traditional presidential election in Kenya and other countries all over the world precipitating bad regime elections. Justice be it social and natural, they say, is by nature and not by imposition. It proceeds from Zeus and the common nature, which call for a common level playground for all presidential candidates to breathe the equally clean oxygen to campaigns and elections conduct at all levels.

The same view finds expression in the Roman Lawyers. Law, says Cicero, is the highest reason, implanted in nature, which commands those things which ought to be done and prohibit the reverse, The highest law was born in all the ages before any law was written or state was formed. We are by nature inclined to recognize, respect and love mankind, which is the foundation of the law so is in leadership.

St. Thomas Aquinas:-participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura ex naturalis dicitur. 

Grotius:-Jus naturale est dictatum rectae rationis.

However, for the purposes it is not essential to choose nicely among these definitions of what Cicero and St. Thomas call lex naturalis and Grotius term, Jus naturale. We as natural citizens of kenya, we are concerned mainly with certain juristic connotations of the concept: firstly, that naturality leadership delivered from natural law as enshrined in the constitution to recognize, respect , promote and protect human rights and democracy is entitled by its intrinsic excellence to prevail over any law and mischief against any form of human rights which rest solely on human authority to dictate the state power; second, that Natural principles may be appealed to by human beings or citizens against injustices sanctioned by human authorities in the state corridor.

In the famous passage in the rhetoric, Aristotle advised advocates that when they had no case according to the law of the land, they should appeal to the law of nature, and, quoting from Antigone to Sophocles, argued that an unjust law is no law. Thus, an unjust state authority is no authority.

What is more, popular sovereignty in the constitutional principles is itself a derivative from the natural rules postulate, being neither more or less than a sort of ad-hoc consolidation of the natural right of human beings who the main subject to the constitutional dispensation to choose their own governing institutions on equally a level ground positions of all candidates.

Natural doctrines have helped fill successfully autocratic gaps in most of the written constitutions of the superpower nations in the world. This is mostly experienced in the bills of rights; a good example is the rights to presidential elections as observed in the case of the call of a constitutional review in Kenya today.

Quantitative Merital Impact

If the review is adapted in the constitution as called for, it will have the following universal reliefs to the citizen and the nation all together:

It will ensure checks and balances to manage state of the nation of credible election processes of inclusivity, stability and sustainability for national peace, unity and development to be experienced all over the country. It will reduce the dumping of the some of the brilliant party ideas and campaign policies as the tradition in Kenya. It will incorporate an inclusive electoral process to reduce high chances of the commonly experienced electoral abnormalities and irregularities. It will reduce some of the unnecessary repeat polls taking away lots of tax payers money. It will reduce formation of coalition governments. It will help check and control election malpractices which are very common in Kenya in every electioneering period. It will strengthen the integral part of the electoral institution. It will reduce high chances of the traditional doctrine of power corrupts as experienced in all presidential elections in Kenya and African countries.

Conclusion

We have learnt from this philosophy that leadership is all about giving back to the community by our leaders. Leaders are not our bosses. We are their bosses as the citizens. 0ur lives walk with them, live with them, eat with them, sleep with them and pray with them at all times. When they do good to the citizens and meet their aspirations and expectations, they do for their own good and the goodness of the future of their families.

And when we talk about giving back to the society we simply mean women, children, the aged, the needy and service to justify humanity. Leadership is God given not an imposition as the tradition today. Women, children, the old aged and the poor need peace and not wars of political power hungry as experienced mostly in Kenya and the rest of African countries. That is to mean no presidential election should cause political animosities, police or military brutality and tribal/racial division at all. Holding a Democratic Presidential 0xygeneral Elections is the long-term solution to Kenya and African countries.

Personal Details

Philosopher Dr. Odhiambo Swa Makaduol : BSc.Sociology-Atlantic International University; MBA Student Scholar- Unicaf University; Honorary Doctorate Degree-Religion Studies-USA, Dip. Law-ICM

Business Consultant,

Jomscama Investments Group Ltd, Nacha plaza, Nakuru town.

Coordinator,

LUCODE Society Worldwide.
In response to the death threats made against Aunicio da Silva, an investigative journalist and editor of Ikweli, a weekly publication in Nampula City in the north of Mozambique, Amnesty Internationals Regional Director for Southern Africa, Deprose Muchena, said:

Aunicio da Silvas life has been threatened simply because he was doing his job as an investigative journalist: holding the powerful to account.

This incident represents yet another attack on media freedom in Mozambique and sends a chilling message to journalists across the country to stay silent or face the consequences.

Journalism is not a crime. Mozambican authorities must protect the profession by urgently investigating these threats against Aunicio. Anyone found to be criminally responsible for threatening and harassing journalists must be brought to justice in a fair trial.

Background

Late on Saturday, 2 December 2017, a gunman threatened to kill Aunicio da Silva, an investigative journalist and editor of Ikweli, a weekly publication in Nampula City in the north of Mozambique. He accused da Silva of publishing articles that tarnished the image of Carlos Saide, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) candidate for the Nampula City mayoral by-election scheduled to take place on 24 January 2018.

On 4 October, the mayor of Nampula City, Mahamudo Amurane, was assassinated by unidentified gunmen. This followed his disagreements with the leadership of the MDM for insisting on clean governance and his fight against corruption.
The platform you know and love is evolving and is getting ready to deliver more thought-provoking content to its growing audience of discerning readers. On Saturday, December 9th 2017 join us for the launch of siro360, a new and invigorating content experience.

Our new name hints at our mission. Siro means Voice in Guan, a dialect of one of Ghanas tribes. At siro360 our mission is to give voice to the authentic African story and our vision is to create a space to express African stories that transform a generation.

Many people including many Africans have an opinion of the continent that has been shaped by media, politics, events and interests that dwell outside the African continent. We have been told who we are and mostly been prescribed what others believe we deserve.

Its time to start boldly telling the often hidden stories everyone is afraid of telling and having confronting discussions that challenge preconceived notions, grow our appreciation of our diversity and raise our tolerance of each other. The mainstream news does not tell the entire story. There are too many voices, opinions, opportunities and realities that are lost and ignored because they are not easy to consume or house ideas that could be considered taboo, embarrassing or just too niche to deserve an audience. These are stories we believe deserve our attention and this is where siro360 will focus her energy to shine light and look for answers to some of our most pertinent questions.

What to expect

At siro360.com you can expect to find analytical, opinionated, realistic and bold content under our Spotlight, Voices, Inside, Happening, and Explore tabs.

Connect with siro360

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04.12.2017 LISTEN

The International Labour Organization (ILO) office in Ghana is set to launch Phase III of its flagship Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises (SCORE) Programme on 6 December, 2017.

During the successful implementation of Phases I and II, the ILO worked with the Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations (MELR), Score Training Solutions Ghana, Sekondi-Takoradi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI), Ghana Hotels Association(GHA) and the Trade Union Congress with a view to embed the SCORE Training methodology in national strategies for enterprise development. Due to the great successes achieved, the donors, in collaboration with the ILO have agreed to continue the global programme into a third phase,andconsolidate the gains across the 11 partner countries.

Since inception in 2011, 48 potential trainers have been trained in the SCORE Training methodology, with 24 certified, and BDS services offered to over 180 enterprises, representing more than 12,800 employees in Ghana.Many of these SMEs have recorded major improvements in their operations, including up to 50% increased productivity, 35% reduction in waste, better workplace cooperation, 27% reduction in defects, 50% reduction in accidents, increased profits and the mainstreamingof gender.

SCORE Ghana is now working with the Skills Development Fund/DANIDA to train Grantees of the Fund in Management, Technical and Vocational Skills through SCORE Training to be able to utilise the grants effectively for increased production and growth.

SCORE Phase III aims to help consolidate the gains in SCORE Training being experienced in Ghana, and to expand in to the Hotel and Tourism Sector, as Ghanahas exhibited the necessary capability to sustain the programme after the exit of the ILO and the Donor Partners.

During Phase III (2017-2021), the global SCORE Programme will operate in China, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Myanmar, India, Ghana, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, with funding from the Governments of Switzerland (SECO) and Norway (NORAD), and support from the global team in ILO Headquarters in Geneva and Project Managers in all countries. Under the new phase, ILO will bolster efforts to engage with private sector partners, in a bid to integrate SCORE Training in supplier development strategies.

The official launch will take place at an event under the theme,Developing SMES for Employment Generation: The Roles of Government, Private Sector and the Donors.Guest speaker H.E Markus Niklaus Paul Dutly, Swiss Ambassador to Ghana; will join guest of honour, Hon. Ignatius Baffour Awuah, Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, ,at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Airport City, Accra, on 6 December, 2017. Chairman for the event is Dr Yaw Adu Gyamfi, CEO of Danadams Pharmaceutical Company Ltd, AGI President and Chairman of the Alumna of enterprise CEOs trained by SCORE Ghana.

The Minister of Trade and Industry and the Minister of Tourism will participate in the Launch as honourable guests representing the Stakeholders organizations and make statements to support SCORE Training in Ghana. ILO traditional partners: the Employers and Workers,will be represented by the Ghana Employers Association (GEA) and the Ghana Trade Union Congress. All enterprises trained during 2016/17 will be issued with their certificates of training by ILO.

The SCORE Programme is a global ILO Development Cooperation projectthat promotes productivity, competitiveness and decent work in emerging economies. The programme assists governments, industry associations and trade unions in Africa, Asia and Latin America to develop export and domestic industrial sectors, with a particular focus on small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The main intervention is SCORE Training, a practical training and in-factory consulting programme that improves productivity and working conditions in SMEs. SCORE Training demonstrates best international practice in the manufacturing and service sectors and helps SMEs to participate in global supply chains.

The programme also works with governments, employers and workers organizations to address key constraints that hamper growth in specific industries and advises partners on best practices in vocational, technical and management skills in the development of SMEs.
The head of the UN's AIDS agency on Monday urged African countries to protect young women and children who are bearing the brunt of the continent's AIDS epidemic.

A sharp rise of people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has now slowed, "but now is not the time to drop our guard," Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAIDS, told the start of a six-day conference on HIV/AIDS and sexually-transmitted diseases in Africa.

"The many changes under way in our world should not threaten the sustainability of our great achievements in the AIDS response," he warned.

"We cannot afford to lose our gains. If we want to end this epidemic, we must act now and act differently."

About 36.7 million people in the world lived with HIV in 2016, compared with 36.1 million in 2015 and 35.5 million in 2014, according to UNAIDS figures.

AIDS-related deaths have declined by almost 50 percent since a peak of 1.9 million in 2005, to one million last year, helped by the rollout of HIV drugs, which repress the virus but do not eliminate it.

However more than two-thirds of those infected -- 25.2 million -- live south of the Sahara.

And, among the 1.16 million new infections in Africa last year, more than one in 10 occurred among children aged under 14.

For this highly vulnerable group, "prevention efforts must be stepped up," said Sidibe.

In some parts of east Africa, he said, girls aged 15-19 account for 74 percent of new teenage infections -- a figure that rises to more than 90 percent in southern Africa, he said.

Researchers have pointed the finger in particular at cases in which young girls are married to older, infected men.

The consequences of child marriages are "tragic," said Sidibe. In this group, the infection rate is 50 percent higher than among young girls who are not married.

'Fight to live'

Assita Ouedraogo, who was born with the HIV virus, called on Africa's young people to "fight to live" in the face of AIDS

Around 10,000 people are attending the conference, known by its initials as ICASA, in Ivory Coast's capital Abidjan.

The event, held every two years, was launched to a powerful speech by 20-year-old Asseta Ouedraogo, infected at birth through her mother, who died in 2003.

Ouedraogo called on Africa's young people to "fight to live" in the face of AIDS, telling them that treatment and prevention could help them live a normal life and realise their dreams.

"Our generation must commit itself to being the last to be affected by HIV," she said, to rousing applause.

Ouedraogo, speaking to AFP, said she was training to be a pastry chef as she had no money to take up university studies.

"Until now, my friends didn't know that I had HIV, but I wanted to speak, to get this message across, to persuade those who have the virus to take their treatment," Ouedraogo said.

"You must not give up, there is hope, we have a life expectancy, we can have children and work," she said.
The rate at which some Nigerians are going abroad to give birth is becoming alarming that it calls for serious attention on the Nigerian health sector.

With the high rate of Nigerians going abroad to give birth, questions like what happens to the General Hospitals in the country still remains unanswered question by the Nigerian government.

Some days back we reported to you about pretty Nollywood actress, Ajanigo Simeon, who welcomed her first child with hubby a baby girl, well, she joined the league of some of her colleagues as she put to bed in a London hospital.

Sharing her happiness with her fans, she wrote, Welcome the world my little Miss PERFECT you are in good hands I'm a believer that Dreams come through and you are to me my child a proof by God that indeed all my dreams can come through in their due season.it feels so unreal and i have been trying so hard to digest d fact that dis is not a movie set but that am now truely a mum....I can't believe I made u do a professional photo shoot on your first day on earth. lol well thats how much mummy can't wait for u grow up...how blessed am I to be called a mother because of dis precious tiny little perfect gift handed over to me by God himself to take care of... Dear lord mummy and daddy promise to do a good job.

Giving birth abroad is good because of the attention they give to both mother and child but we are only helping them boost their country and health sector while ours still remain in its poor state. Well, we dont blame the people going there but the government.
Review of CI.133 will aid in ...
The Financial Times, The Times, and (hat tip PlutoniumKun) RTE all are giving positive signals on the state of Brexit negotiation on the eve of a critically important deadline. On Monday, Theresa May is to meet with the European Commmissions Jean-Claude Juncker and then European Council chief Donald Tusk. She will present her offers on the three critical issues on which the talks must be deemed to have made sufficient progress for the parties to get a green light to move to the next phase of negotiations, which would include, critically, discussing the shape of future trade relations.

As well see, even though these press outlets are putting a positive spin on where things stand, they still contain plenty of weasel language and say at best that a deal is close. Close is not good enough for the meeting tomorrow, nor is is good enough for the European Council to make its go/no go decision on December 14-15.

The most likely outcome of the meeting tomorrow is that the UK gets an extension of a day or at most a few days and whatever is cooked up is not going to be deemed to be adequate. And the reason for the EU relenting on its deadline of having May give her offer by midnight today would be purely optical: to look as if theyd bent over backwards on being accommodating, not based on a view that a deal was nigh and they just needed to tie down critically important loose ends.

Mind you, this is not any great surprise; the odds of a deal have seemed remote. What has been surprising is that May was willing to capitulate on what had been loudly presented as a Tory red line, of not stumping up to settle the Brexit divorce tab, and in the range the EU deemed to be adequate.

Despite the upbeat tone from some quarters, if you read carefully, the UK is no closer to an answer on Ireland than it ever was. Consider this section from RTE:

It is understood that the Irish Government is seeking assurances on a transition period; the retention of a common travel area; the protection of the Good Friday Agreement, and a commitment to avoid a hard border.

Help me. I hate to oversimplify the negotiations over the Irish border, but this is all you need to know. When the UK exits the EU for good, there will be a hard border with the Republic of Ireland somewhere, whether on the current border with Northern Ireland or at sea, with Northern Ireland either formally getting a special status with respect to trade or some sort of wink and nod that is a functional equivalent.

Narrowly, no hard border to the Irish government means no customs and other checks at the now almost entirely ignored Ireland/Northern Ireland border. But the no hard border turn of phrase seems to reflect the same sort of denialism that afflicts how UK commentators and pols discuss hard Brexit. To them, hard Brexit, which means departing without a trade deal, is the worst case scenario. But it is impossible for the UK to have a trade pact with the EU by March 2019, or even after a two year transition period. And as much as these observers recoil in horror as to what that actually means, and bizarrely avert their eyes and assume it will magically not come to pass, that is not the most dire possible outcome. A disorderly Brexit, as in leaving with no agreement at all, would be even worse.

Not only is the EU not going to accept a porous Irish border as a way for goods that dont comply with EU regulations to pour into the EU, but (without going into the gory details), its not on as far as WTO rules are concerned either. There are no fudges here, there are only choices to be made. But the UK had tried to avoid making them.

Any deal that avoids customs checks on the Ireland/NI border will result in the DUP abandoning the Tories, since they see a arrangement that has Northern Ireland complying with EU trade standards and rules (which means EU regulations and jurisdiction of the ECJ) as too close to Irish integration, which is a red line for them. Similarly, one of the big rallying cries of Brexit was that the Brits needed to escape the supposedly stultifying EU bureaucracy. The press barons and Tory ultras wont stand for Northern Ireland being under EU jurisdiction as far as trade is concerned.

So May faces a choice of opting for a workable solution that would almost certainly lead to the fall of her Government. Not hard to see that she wont go for that.

That makes the Torygraphs take on where things stand more credible than the cautiously upbeat accounts:

Theresa May will go into a crunch meeting with EU leaders on Monday admitting she is yet to find a solution to the Irish border problem, as a Cabinet minister suggested for the first time that Brexit might not happen. Mrs May has until Monday night to meet an EU deadline for Britain to make satisfactory progress on the issues of money, citizens rights and the border in order to trigger trade talks this month.Government sources were highly pessimistic about the prospect of a breakthrough, leaving the entire Brexit timetable in jeopardy.

And the Independent flags another potential sticking point: the fact that one of the three key issues, that of the treatment of EU and UK emigres post Brexit, has been finessed rather than solved. Recall that Barnier got ahead of his principals over the summer in trying to push them to discuss trade with the UK sooner rather than later. He was slapped down. The kick the can to the next phase non-resolution of the status of citizens hasnt gotten much coverage in the press. However, it appears directly affected individuals and businesses have taken note and have made a stink, with the result that MEPs may also petition the European Council to demand that this be resolved sooner rather than later. From the Independent:

The future rights of EU citizens in the UK  and of British nationals in the EU  are being forgotten as a deal to break the Brexit deadlock gets closer, MEPs and campaigners say. Key issues will be shunted into phase two of the talks, rather than being settled before the negotiations move onto future trade terms between the UK and the EU, MEPs and citizens fear.

And soem European politicians are not prepared to back some of the concessions Barnier is apparently willing to make:

Seb Dance, a Labour MEP and a member of the Parliaments EU Citizens Taskforce, said: Michel Barnier did not go far enough. There are concerns that the EU is ready to dilute its stance on citizens rights  but we wont sit back and let that happen. Family reunification is one of the areas that the EU may be ready to compromise on. We cant move on just for the sake of moving on. We should only move on when we are certain that nobody will suffer as a result because of a decision they had no part in. Jean Lambert, a Green MEP and taskforce member, agreed, saying: It looks as if issues may be shunted into the second round of negotiations. The issue of family unification is crucial. We cant have children born after Brexit with different legal status, thats not going to be satisfactory. Ms Lambert said the ECJ must have a role that runs through these peoples lives, adding: We want to see these things cleared up in the first stage of the negotiations Meanwhile, British In Europe, an alliance of groups representing more than a million British citizens living in the EU, have written to European leaders urging them to block Brexit negotiations from moving forward.

So while it would be better if I were proven wrong, there does not seem to be any reason for optimism about an EU-UK breakthrough in December. The only upside is the UK press is beginning to bring up the formerly verboten idea of somehow backing out of Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn actually dared to say, in response to a question, that he would not rule out a second Brexit referendum if the Government were to fall and Labour came into power. But Tony Blair rising from his crypt to campaign for reversing Brexit is a great way to discredit the idea.

As always, stay tuned. Well know a lot more in a few hours.
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
General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, visited Bulgaria on 30 Nov-2 Dec. During his visit, General Pavel met with HE Mr Rumer Radev, President of Bulgaria, HE Mr Boyko Borisov, Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Lieutenant General (ret) Zapryanov, Deputy Minister of Defence, and Lieutenant General Andrey Botsev, Chief of Defence. The Chairman also gave a lecture at the National Defence College.

Taking a moment to pay his respects to those soldiers who serve their country and have paid the ultimate price for peace and security, General Pavel, accompanied by Lieutenant General Andrey Botsev, Chief of Defence of Bulgaria, laid a wreath at the Memorial for the Unknown Soldier.

After the wreath laying, the generals had a focused discussion on Bulgarias active involvement in NATOs Operations, Missions and Activities, including NATO's tailored Forward Presence in the land, air and maritime domains across the Black Sea Region. The Chairman highlighted that NATO is paying great attention to the security situation in the Black Sea region, because we all understand that it is not an easy region and it will not be easy in the future. So NATO will keep supporting Bulgaria the same way as Bulgaria supports NATO.

General Pavel also met with Lieutenant General (ret) Zapryanov, Deputy Minister of Defence. During this meeting, General Pavel thanked Bulgaria for the very commendable effort to increase defence spending and especially focus on increasing defence capabilities of Bulgaria. NATO is only as strong and capable as are its members. We need well equipped, modern and capable militaries for the whole NATO to be effective, to protect our populations and to ensure they will be living in peace and prosperity.

Lieutenant General (ret) Zapryanov awarded General Pavel the St. George Medal of Honour of the Ministry of Defence. This is a military decoration awarded to both national and foreign military and civilians in recognition of outstanding merit in the field of security and defence as well as for contributions to strengthening cooperation in the military field. General Pavel expressed his deepest gratitude for this honour, while stressing that the work I do is only the reflection of the work and decisions by the 29 NATO Nations, so the credit really goes to the whole of the Alliance.

The Chairmans meeting with HE Mr Boyko Borisov, Prime Minister of Bulgaria focused on the current threat landscape. General Pavel highlighted Bulgaria's important role in increasing regional stability through cooperation with the partner countries of the Western Balkans. It is an overall NATO interest to have this region stable. And we are taking all efforts to have really good relationships with all the countries of the region, added General Pavel.

General Pavel concluded his visit with a meeting with the Bulgarian President, HE Mr Ramen Rudev, emphasising the very enriching meetings held throughout the visit. He thanked the President for "the great privilege of being received by the highest political leadership, which demonstrates Bulgaria's commitment to NATO, alongside the country's commitment to increase defence spending, capability modernisation plans and contributions to regional and overall Transatlantic security."

While in Sofia, General Pavel also took some time to address the Bulgarian National Defence College on how evolving security challenges may also mean new opportunities for NATO and answer questions from the students.
NATO foreign ministers are to hold two days of talks beginning Tuesday (5 December 2017) to discuss the Alliances continuing adaptation in the face of diverse and evolving security challenges.

Speaking at a press conference at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said ministers would explore means of expanding cooperation between NATO and the European Union. That cooperation, which is already at an unprecedented level, will help the two organisations respond to challenges such as cyber attacks, terrorism and the need to improve military mobility.

The Secretary General also said that ministers would discuss global threats like that posed by North Koreas weapons programmes. North Korea is undermining the global non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament regimes, he said, and the whole world needs to apply maximum pressure.

Also on ministers agenda will be NATOs role in projecting stability and fighting terrorism. Acknowledging what the Alliance has already done  including boosting its training mission in Afghanistan, and working with partners like Jordan and Tunisia to strengthen their defences  Mr. Stoltenberg said ministers would consider how NATOs role in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS should evolve, as the Global Coalition moves from combat operations to stabilisation efforts.

In addition, the Alliance will hold a meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission, giving ministers the opportunity to exchange views with one of the Alliances closest partners, the Secretary General said  including on areas where we could cooperate even more closely, such as Black Sea security.

The Ministerial meeting will conclude with a discussion on NATOs Open Door policy and how best to support those countries which aspire to join our community of shared security and shared values.
On Tuesday, 5 December 2017, the NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg will attend an event at the Palais dEgmont organized by the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Harmel Report.

On that occasion, Mr. Stoltenberg will deliver keynote remarks.

Still and video images of the event will be available on the NATO website afterwards.

Follow us on Twitter (@NATOPress and @jensstoltenberg)
The NATO Deputy Secretary General, the Honourable Ms. Rose Gottemoeller will contribute to a panel discussion about Women, Peace and Security at the Canadian Mission to the European Union on Tuesday 5 December 2017 at 10h. The event is organized by the Government of Canada, Women in International Security, and the German Marshall Fund.

Ms. Gottemoeller will discuss this topic with the Honourable Ms. Chrystia Freeland, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ms. Helga Schmid, Secretary General of the European External Action Service, and Mr. Simon Gimson, Vice President of the International Crisis Group.

Still and video images of the event will be available on the NATO website afterwards.

Follow us on Twitter (@NATOPress and @Gottemoeller)
(As delivered)

Good morning. This week, NATOs Foreign Ministers will address, along a wide range of different issues, they will address how NATO can continue to adapt and thats part of our preparations for the upcoming Summit here in Brussels next July.

We will begin tomorrow with a meeting on NATO-EU cooperation and European defence. Joined by High Representative / Vice President Mogherini, and ministers from Finland and Sweden. On the margins of the NATO Summit in July last year, President Juncker, President Tusk and I signed a Joint Declaration on how to strengthen NATO-EU cooperation. We followed up with a package of 42 concrete measures, which has brought our cooperation to an unprecedented level. We have never worked together as closely and systemically in so many different areas. For instance, we have increased our efforts to counter cyber attacks. We exchange warnings about attacks and malware in real time. And last week the EU participated in NATOs Cyber Coalition exercise, one of the biggest in the world.

We have also stepped up our cooperation on hybrid threats. Federica and I recently inaugurated the Hybrid Centre of Excellence in Helsinki. And at sea, our cooperation has also been strengthened, our operation Sea Guardian is supporting the EUs Operations Sophia in its important work.

At this weeks Ministerial, our aim is to take a step further, with a new package of measures. Today, negotiations on this package are still ongoing. But I hope that we will agree to do even more with the EU. And in more areas. Our aim is to make military mobility a new flagship for our cooperation. In an unpredictable security environment, our troops and our equipment must be able to move quickly whenever we need them to. This is vital for our security.

And NATO needs the support of national governments and of the European Union to be able to do it. We also intend to strengthen our cooperation on countering terrorist threats. This is of deep concern to our publics, both in Europe and in North America. And we will do more to raise awareness of womens role in peace and security in our organisations and our operations.

Later on Tuesday, we will discuss global challenges, including North Korea. It is worth remembering that events on the Korean peninsula have shaped NATO profoundly. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 triggered the complete remodelling of the Alliance. It literally put the O in NATO. With the creation of a permanent military headquarters, and the positions of Secretary General and SACEUR.

Today our security is also linked to events in East Asia. Last weeks launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile showed that all Allied nations could be within range. Our partners in the region are at risk. And North Koreas actions are also undermining the global non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament regimes. So the whole world needs to apply maximum pressure on North Korea. In order to achieve a peacefully negotiated solution. Allies have been clear and consistent in their condemnation. And in pressing for full compliance with international sanctions. NATO has faced ballistic missile threats for decades.

Our response has always been credible deterrence. We have the capabilities and the resolve to deter any attack. Our military strength is what makes diplomatic efforts possible.

On Wednesday, we will address NATOs role in projecting stability and the fight against terrorism. We are adding three thousand more troops to our training mission in Afghanistan. And we are working with partners like Jordan and Tunisia to strengthen their defences. NATO is contributing to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS with AWACS surveillance flights. And by training Iraqi soldiers. But our work will not be done, even when ISIS no longer controls any territory. Ministers will consider how NATOs role should evolve. As the Global Coalition moves from combat operations to stabilisation efforts.

On Wednesday, we will hold a meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission. Georgia is one of the Alliances closest partners. And through the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package, we are working together on issues ranging from cyber defence to operational planning. Through our Joint Training and Evaluation Centre. And through the NATO-funded Defence Institution Building School, which has already trained around a thousand students. We will look into areas where we could cooperate even more closely, such as Black Sea security.

We will conclude the ministerial meeting with a meeting on NATOs Open Door policy. As Montenegros recent accession has shown, membership in the Alliance is possible for countries which make real progress in reform and modernisation. So we will discuss how best to support those countries which aspire to join our community of shared security and shared values.

We are now just seven months away from NATOs next Summit, here in Brussels and tomorrow, I will have the pleasure of unveiling the Summit logo, together with Belgian Prime Minister Michel.

So with this, I am ready to take your questions.

Moderator: Okay. Well start with Washington Post, second row.

Michael Birnbaum (Washington Post): Hi. Thank you. Michael Birnbaum from the Washington Post. Secretary General, there have been a number of reports in recent days that Secretary Tillerson will soon be out of the State Department. Does that limit the value of any assurances or agreements he makes here this week? And more broadly, I wanted to ask how youre adjusting NATO to deal with a United States that continually facing political turmoil in the Trump era? Thank you.

Stoltenberg: Im very much looking forward to welcoming Secretary Tillerson to NATO tomorrow. United States is our biggest ally, and of course it always matters what United States does. And Im looking forward to welcoming Secretary Tillerson to discuss a wide range of important issues, fighting terrorism, NATOs role in fighting terrorism, Afghanistan, NATO-EU cooperation, and also for instance, open door policy.

I also highly value Secretary Tillersons strong personal commitment to the transatlantic bond and to NATO, something he expressed very clearly in a speech just last week where he expressed an ironclad commitment of the United States to NATO and to the transatlantic bond. And this is a commitment we dont not only see in words from Rex Tillerson and from the U.S. administration, but we see it also in actions. Because the U.S. is now increasing their military presence in Europe with more troops, with more equipment, and more supplies, and the funding for the European the European deterrence initiative has been significantly increased.

So Ill look forward to having Secretary Tillerson here for two days meeting and once again to confirm the strong transatlantic bond. NATO is the framework for transatlantic cooperation.

Moderator: Okay, well go to NPR.

Teri Schulz (NPR): Teri Schulz with NPR and Deutsche Welle. You didnt really answer Michaels question. Does it distract from the meeting to have all of these rumours swirling around ahead of it, us asking you about that instead of about NATO-EU cooperation? And dont you think then that allies will be perhaps reluctant to get into to believe that the United States can make any solid confirmation of any policy here at this meeting? Thanks.

Stoltenberg: I think we have seen again and again that NATO and NATO ministers are able to focus on the core task, on the job we have to do despite any speculations and rumours. And Im absolutely certain that will be the case also now. Because we have so much important work ahead of us. For instance, addressing how can we respond to a more challenging and dangerous security environment? How can we make sure that the transatlantic bond remains strong in times of turmoil? And especially when we see more uncertainty, more unpredictability, and more threats. Then we need strong institutions like NATO.

And Im absolutely certain that all ministers, and of course including also Minister or Secretary Tillerson, will focus on that task and be able to make important decisions, for instance, on how can we strengthen NATO-EU cooperation regardless of rumours and speculations?

Moderator: Okay, we have a gentleman over there. First seat.

Mohammad Ghazal (Jordan Times): This is Mohammad with the Jordan Times from Jordan. With the recent opening of the MSDS hub and the victories against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and reports warning of the rise of the terrorist group in North Africa, what plans do you have for increased cooperation with and support to southern partners, including Jordan? And would that be on the agenda of the meeting? Thank you.

Stoltenberg: Yes, that will be on the agenda of the meeting because we will discuss what we call projecting stability and the fight against terrorism. And of course working with a partner like Jordan is something we highly value in NATO, and Jordan is an important partner. Jordan provides infrastructure, for instance, some of our training programs. We have trained Iraqi officers in Jordan at the King Abdullah Training Centre, and NATO is helping Jordan with modernizing their armed forces. We are focused on many different areas, including the role of women - the position of women in the armed forces of Jordan.

And we also welcome the fact that Jordan has played a key role in the progress we have made in the fight against ISIS. So I appreciate the partnership. It is a strong partnership, and also appreciate the commitment and the focus of the king to the partnership with NATO. King Abdullah has visited NATO several times. He had met the North Atlantic Council, and I visited also Jordan not so long ago, and we will continue to strengthen our partnership.

Moderator: The lady over here.

Assia Atrous EP Bouguerra: Thank you. This is Assia from Dar assabah, Tunisia. You just mentioned Tunisia and I would like to know more, if you can give us more details about the cooperation between Tunisia and NATO. And also, we come from a region thats very concerned about terrorists and would like to ask about NATOs role in the Mediterranean region, and mainly in whats going on in Libya. Is there any clear strategy to fight terrorists in that region? Thank you.

Stoltenberg: When it comes to Libya we are working with the government of national accord, with Prime Minister al-Sarraj, on how we can support him in building defence and security institutions. I met Prime Minister al-Sarraj some a couple of months ago, and we agreed that our experts have to sit down and  they have met several times to look into how we can provide practical support, helping Libya with building security and defence institutions. NATOs a strong supporter of course of the UN-led efforts to find a peaceful solution and to make sure that the government of al-Sarraj has the possibility to make to stabilize the country, and we are ready to help them with that.

When it comes to Tunisia, Tunisia is a partner. We are working  both NATO and several NATO allies are working with Tunisia to help them build capacity, both in the fight against terrorism with special operation forces and with intelligence. So we are looking into how we can scale that up, but I think that what we already do, especially when it comes to intelligence and special operation forces, is helping Tunisia to become more resilient to fight terrorism, which is important for Tunisia, but of course thats also important for NATO allies.

Moderator: Okay. Geo TV, Pakistan, first row.

Geo Television News: Secretary General, today James Mattis is in Pakistan with warning and threat, and CIA Director also issued threat to Pakistan to deal with the terrorism and Haqqani network. Despite that Pakistan already made agreement with the U.S. that U.S. can destroy their hideouts along the borders. So Pakistan permitted in fact drone attacks within the Pakistani territory to destroy Haqqani network, but situation seems that not going to resolve because Pakistani and American controversy on that particular issue. Where are we on regarding this question that  how much Pakistan is really cooperating? We see that situation is not going there and there is a lot of visits taking place. Tillerson was in Pakistan and then again Mattis is there, but also warning and threats coming from the U.S. Thank you very much.

Stoltenberg: I welcome the fact that Secretary Mattis recently visited Pakistan. I think its important to have close dialogue with the countries in the region because we need their support to fight terrorism, to fight the Haqqani network, and to help to stabilize Afghanistan. And I had also the pleasure of travelling together with Secretary Mattis. He visited India and then we went together to Pakistan [Afghanistan] recently. And NATO and United States, we have decided to strengthen our presence in Afghanistan with more trainers, with more troops in our train assisted advice mission. And we have also then to engage in dialogue with neighbours, including Pakistan, to make sure that there are no sanctuaries, no safe havens for international terrorists outside Afghanistan, which help and support insurgents inside Afghanistan.

Moderator: Okay. We go to AP. Gentleman in the maroon sweater over there.

Lorne Cook (Associated Press): Yes, Lorne Cook, Associated Press. A question on North Korea. You said NATO has faced ballistic threats for decades and has capabilities. I know youve been in the region. Do you plan to use these capabilities? Is there something concrete you could do in the face of North Korea or does it have to stay as support right now and political rhetorical pressure?

Stoltenberg: The purpose of deterrence is to convey a message, which is so clear, so strong that you dont have to use military force. So the purpose of deterrence provided by resolve, military capabilities, military strength is not of course to provoke a conflict, but it is to prevent a conflict. And this is the way NATO has prevented the military conflicts for decades, and also responded to ballistic missile threats and nuclear threats for decades. So thats also the reason why we are so focused on the need to adapt, to strengthen, and to communicate clearly that NATO is strong, NATO is united, and NATO is able to respond to any attack, including ballistic and nuclear attacks, to prevent that from happening. Thats the reason why we have deterrence. And deterrence has been the main response for decades and it still is. Also, when it comes to threats, for instance, from North Korea.

I visited the region last month, or actually in October, and it was a good visit because I appreciate that we have close partners, South Korea and Japan. They also very much welcomed the strong pressure, which is supported by NATO and NATO allies. The fact that the UN was able to agree on strengthening the economic sanctions in September, also including sanctions and restrictions on the export of oil and refined oil products, and also the fact that we see that the sanctions are implemented to a higher degree now than before. And I think also it is important to remember that Russia and China, they have a special role and a special responsibility, partly because they are permanent members of the UN Security Council, but also of course since they are neighbouring countries. So we will continue to put maximum pressure on North Korea. We will continue to deliver credible deterrence, and then we will work with our partners in the region, and the purpose is of course to reach a peaceful and negotiated solution because war in that region will be catastrophic and it will have global consequences, not only for the region but for the whole world.

Moderator: Okay. We go to Le Soir. Gentleman over there.

(Journal Le Soir): Meanwhile in North Korea there have been some assessments these last hours from U.S. high-ranking officials, including General McMaster that the pre-emptive war against North Korea is more and more likely days after days. So do you share this assessment or is it also kind of a message of deterrence? Thank you.

Stoltenberg: What we have seen is that tensions are increasing because of North Koreas reckless and irresponsible behaviour. They are testing nuclear weapons. They are testing new missiles, and we see that the range of the missiles makes it possible to reach Europe and North America. Thats the reason why we need to put maximum pressure on North Korea with diplomatic means, with political means, but especially with the full and transparent implementation of the economic sanctions. Because we have to prevent an armed conflict. But we need deterrence because thats the best way to prevent an armed attack on us. The United States  NATO has of course the right to defend itself, and United States has of course the right to defend itself and all allies. And this has been clearly communicated to send a clear message of deterrence.

Moderator: Gentleman in the first row.

Q: I just would like to ask about Iran. There were some reports a few days ago that one of the senior officials in Iran threatened to increase the missile range that they can reach Europe. So how do you respond to this threat, taking into consideration the argument now especially from the U.S. about the Iran nuclear deal and the concerns in the region, especially from Saudi Arabia?

Stoltenberg: I think we have to make a clear distinction between nuclear weapons and missile capabilities. The Iran nuclear deal addresses the ability of Iran to develop nuclear weapons. And NATO welcomed and supported the deal when it was agreed, and our focus now is to make sure that the deal is fully implemented, because that will directly affect the security of NATO allies. At the same time we have seen that Iran is continuing to develop their missile capabilities. They are continuing to test new missiles, and this of course is of concern for all NATO allies, especially allies in Europe, because they are within reach  at least more and more of those allies are within reach of the Iranian missiles.

And thats also one of the reasons why it is important that NATO is adapting and responding to also these kind of threats. NATO is now developing and strengthening our missile defence. I participated in the inauguration of our missile defence site in Romania last year, and we are building a new missile site in Poland, and we also have ships deployed with interceptors and advanced radars, which are strengthening our missile defence, which is a response to missile threats we see from outside the Euro-Atlantic area, including to the south of the Alliance.

Moderator: Europa Press, lady in the fifth row.

Ana Pisonero (Europa Press): Thank you, Secretary General. Ana Pisonero from the Spanish News Agency Europa Press. Two quick questions if I may. The first one on cooperation on counter-terrorism with the EU. Will this be limited to intelligence exchange or is there room for any kind of more operational cooperation between the EU and NATO on counter-terrorism? And a second quick question on the North Korea threat and from Iran as well. So have NATO allies decided that we need changes to the NATO missile system or were not there yet? I mean you say that were reinforcing the system, but that was planned a long time ago before all these threats have become more acute, both from North Korea and maybe Iran as well. So is there are NATO already allies engaging in the discussion? Is there clarity on whether we need these extra changes? Thank you.

Stoltenberg: First on the cooperation with the European Union. One of the areas we now are looking into how we can step up our cooperation is fighting terrorism. But as I said, negotiations are still going on, so I cannot go into the details about the different measures because thats something I hope that we can agree by the meeting tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. So we have an agreement at the ministerial meeting.

But of course areas where we are looking into how we can work closer together is for instance, when we operate in the same countries, like we have the same partners in North Africa or the Middle East. NATOs present in Iraq. The European Union is also increasing their presence in Iraq, so any coordination of presence in the same countries will strengthen our joint efforts to fight terrorism. Cyber and hybrid is also at least partly relevant for strengthening our resilience, including against potential terrorist threats.

The NATO missile defence system is something we decided several years ago. Its aimed at protecting NATO allies against threats coming from outside the Euro Atlantic area. And we develop that system according to plans we agreed several years ago. So thats not something which is affected by the recent developments in North Korea.

Moderator: Gentleman over there.

Ratko Femic: My name is Ratko Femic, Kurir Daily from Serbia. You have mentioned NATO open door policy. So you have already met with our President Aleksandar Vucic, ex Secretary General, met our Prime Minister and President, so I wonder are there any talks about Serbia joining NATO? And also, do you have any problems, I mean NATO with the Russian Humanitarian Centre in Serbia? Because we have some analysis that that centre can evolve in military base. Thats all.

Stoltenberg: No, there are no talks about Serbia joining NATO, and the reason is that Serbia has clearly stated that they are not aiming, they dont want membership in NATO. And NATO fully respects that decision of Serbia. Serbia has decided they would like to stay a neutral country. They are aiming for membership in the European Union. We respect that. And we welcome progress in Serbias efforts to join the European Union, but at the same time Serbia is a sovereign independent country, and Serbia has decided that they dont aim for membership in NATO.

It is important to understand that for NATO its absolutely possible to have a good friendly working partnership with countries that dont aspire for membership in NATO. We have excellent cooperation with countries like Sweden, Finland, Austria, and other neutral countries. So we welcome the strong partnership. I met President Aleksandar Vucic several times recently. He visited the NATO headquarters. We will continue to strengthen our partnership. And its for Serbia to decide, for instance, on this humanitarian centre of Russia. I know that Serbia, they conduct military exercises with Russia, but they also conduct many military exercises with NATO troops. We respect the sovereign decisions of Serbia because Serbia is a sovereign nation, and we welcome the strong and close partnership with Serbia.

Moderator: Okay. UNIAN. Lady over here.

Arina Sommer: Thank you. Irina Somer, News Agency UNIAN, Ukrainians agency. We will have a NATO Georgia commission. Why dont we have NATO Ukraine commission? Is it means that Ukraine not on the agenda anymore and war at the east? And second question is, if I may, recently you had meeting with President Poroshenko, and because it was really very little information about it, can you please tell us what did you discuss? Thank you.

Stoltenberg: I had a very good meeting with President Poroshenko last week. He was actually in my house, so it was interesting. We had a good discussion addressing the challenges Ukraine is facing and the continued efforts of Russia to destabilize especially eastern Ukraine. And I reiterated my strong support for Ukraines territorial integrity, sovereignty. And that we will continue to provide political support to Ukraine and practical support to Ukraine. The North Atlantic Council recently visited Kiev, Ukraine. We had a NATO Ukraine Commission meeting there. We have many meetings at different levels. We will have a NATO Ukraine Commission meeting soon here at NATO. So there are ongoing dialogue. There is a strong partnership; NATO and NATO allies are providing support for Ukraine in many different areas, including command and control training, cyber defensive work, including fighting terrorism. So we have a very close cooperation with Ukraine and well continue to strengthen that cooperation.

Moderator: Okay, AFP.

AFP: Thank you, Secretary General. About Ukraine, Ukraine has voted to organize a referendum soon on changing the law to see if they could become an aspirant again to join NATO. And there is this (inaudible) with the open door countries. Is there gonna be a message about the timeline for joining countries for joining NATO to those countries? Recently your colleague, Jean-Claude Juncker at the EU has said Serbia and Montenegro, who are also in this process to join the EU, would in his view should join EU within 2025. Is there something similar to be expected from NATO in the coming days or before the summit next year? Thank you.

Stoltenberg: It is for Ukraine to decide whether they again would like to become aspirant country or apply for membership in NATO. Thats of course for Ukraine to decide, and whether they do that through a referendum or in other ways, thats for Ukraine to decide. Thats a national Ukrainian decision. Then of course whether NATO is going to enlarge and whether there are going to be more members of NATO, thats not only for the aspirant country to decide but thats for also 29 allies to decide, and we make that kind of decision by consensus. What we have seen with the enlargement with Montenegro this year shows that NATOs door is open for those countries. When there is an aspirant country and 29 allies agree.

I think that the important thing now, and I also welcome the fact that Ukraine is focused on reform, because regardless of the question of membership, reform of the Ukrainian defence and security institutions, modernizing their armed forces, all the practical cooperation that NATO and NATO allies provide is important. That will strengthen Ukraine. It will make Ukraine more resilient, and will be something which is important regardless of the question of membership, and therefore we will continue to provide support for these kind of reforms.

Moderator: And okay, gentleman here. Third row. Thanks.

NRK: Regarding of North Korea, how precarious do you think the situation is with joint air force exercise between South Korea and the U.S. going on? And also, how important has Secretary of State Rex Tillerson been in calming down the heated situation, his role within the Trump administration regarding North Korea?

Stoltenberg: The exercises are a part of the deterrence. They are sending a clear message that United States is there, that United States has the capabilities and the resolve to defend its allies. And the exercises have once again proven important because exercises are sending a message of resolve and that United States, together with the partners in the region, have the capabilities which enable them to respond to any attack.

What NATO is doing is that we are sending the same message. We are sending a message of deterrence, of resolve that we are ready and capable of responding to any attack at any NATO ally. And also the fact that we are working with South Korea and Japan, I recently visited the region, on how we can strengthen our partnership with the countries in the region, and we are also supporting the international community puts maximum pressure on North Korea, especially with the economic sanctions, to reach a peaceful negotiated solution. Because we have to understand that a war in the region will be disastrous.

Secretary Tillerson has played a key role, both in sending the message of deterrence, the unity and the resolve of the whole Alliance, but also when it comes to the need for continuing to work for a peaceful solution. And for me there is no contradiction between deterrence, defence and hard work for a peaceful negotiated solution. Actually the fact that we have strong deterrence, that we have the military capabilities, that provides the foundation for a political negotiated solution.

Moderator: Okay. Kabul Times. Lady over there.

Kabul Times: Thank you, Secretary General. A few days ago General John Nicholson said Taliban have three options. They will join to peace process or they will be they will go in isolation or they will be killed. With this strong statement, whats the response of the NATO for this point? And do you support these three points or what do you response that? Thank you.

Stoltenberg: I support the message from United States, from NATO, which we convey together, and that is that we need to strengthen our military presence with more trainers, with more advice, strengthen our trainer system, advice mission in Afghanistan to break the stalemate, to enable the Afghan Forces to regain territory, to send a clear message to the Taliban and to the terrorists that they will not win on the battlefield. So they have to sit down at the negotiating table and find a negotiated solution.

So again, we see this link between the military strength and the ability to reach a peaceful negotiated solution. The situation in Afghanistan is difficult. We see violence. We see terrorist attacks. The Afghan National Security Forces have suffered casualties. But at the same time we see some progress. We have for instance seen that this year the Taliban has not been able to gain control or take control over any of the provincial capitals, despite that that was one of the declared strategic goals of the Taliban this fighting season. And we have also seen that the Afghan National Security Forces are able to respond every time the Taliban and insurgents are attacking.

Moderator: Thank you very much. This concludes this press point, but of course well have time for more questions tomorrow and the day after.

Stoltenberg: Thank you so much.
(Natural News) If the biotech industry has taught the world anything, its that they just cant leave well enough alone. The number of foods being targeted for genetic modification continues to grow and now, the industry has set its sights on a popular adult beverage: Wine. Researchers from the VIB Institute in Flanders, Belgium have isolated the gene in yeast that promotes rosy- and honey-like flavors in wine and beer  and they are totally prepared to start taking advantage of it via genetic modification.

The Belgian research team says that injecting the modified DNA into batches of beer and wine could yield new flavors at an unprecedented pace. They say their genetic modification will make developing new beers and wines a breeze and turn the laborious process of flavor development into a cakewalk. According to the team, flavor refinement can be made cheaper, faster and easier with genetic modification  but what about the cost to human health?

As Natural News has consistently reported over the years, GMOs are not as innocuous as their creators purport them to be. While industry-funded, short-term studies may proclaim that there is no risk when it comes to GMOs, independent research has often yielded far different results.

According to Daily Mail, the Belgian scientists used DNA analysis to study genes in a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or brewers yeast and were able to identify two genes that are responsible for producing the highest amount of the sweet-flavor compound, phenylethyl acetate. And by using the highly controversial CRISPR/Cas9 technology, the team was able to capitalize on these genes, TOR1 and FAS2.

The Belgian team isnt the first looking to utilize CRISPR tech to make better beverages. Scientists at the University of Illinois have been using the same method to develop drinks that wont give you a hangover, too.

CRISPR/Cas9 is often referred to as a cut-and-paste technology, which allows scientists to cut away certain genes and replace them with another. Proponents of this technology claim that it is a faster, more streamlined version of the time-honored tradition of cross-breeding. Cross-breeding plants by selecting certain traits was once a mainstay of farming, but now science has taken over.

The researchers behind it all claim that CRISPR technology allows them to seamlessly cut away and replace traits, without affecting other parts of the yeast DNA. However, scientists have been warning about the potential unintended consequences of using CRISPR-Cas9 technology  namely, the risk of unforeseen mutations that can occur. There is indeed a great risk, especially since scientists are not always able to turn off the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing sequence; off-target mutations are a top concern of this new technology.

Despite assurances that CRISPR makes gene editing safer, faster and more efficient, the truth is that this budding technology is not nearly as well-understood as its purported to be. Much like the sham of GMOs, there are many unknowns that seemingly go ignored in the name of innovation.

The Cas9 portion of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology is where many of these concerns lie. CRISPR is used to identify the unwanted gene, while Cas9 is used to snip it away. But, Cas9 doesnt always cut away the intended target. And further, Cas9 has the potential to remain active for up to 24 hours  which means it has plenty of time to engage in other, unintended alterations. Earlier this year, researchers from Columbia University Medical Center examined genes altered with CRISPR technology and found 1,500 single-nucleotide mutations and more than 100 bigger deletions and insertions when they examined the genomes of two of the subjects in depth.

While the prospect of tastier beers and wines that wont give you a hangover may sound great, it may not hold up so well in practice. Alcohol is known for being hazardous to the human body in certain amounts to begin with  is it really such a good idea to go around playing with fire?

Sources for this article include:

DailyMail.co.uk

HealthFreedoms.org
(Natural News) Kratom, the popular plant-based opioid alternative from Southeast Asia, was the subject of an advisory from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday, November 14, after the group called the substance troubling and blocked hundreds of kratom shipments to the U.S. In their statement, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb reported that there are significant safety issues associated with kratom use. The FDA has estimated around 36 deaths to be caused by the substance. In particular, the FDA hints that continued use of kratom could widen the opioid epidemic.

This is the latest blow for Kratom, a substance slowly gaining a following in the U.S. as an alternative treatment for chronic pain, as well as anxiety, depression, and opioid addiction. The American Kratom Association (AKA) has since challenged the claims, stating that the FDA advisory is based on inaccurate scientific data and will lead to more bans on kratom across America. The AKA has also argued that the deaths the FDA blamed on kratom-related incidences were incorrect, as toxicology tests found that other subjects were found to have taken other drugs or were suffering from preexisting medical conditions upon death.

An uphill battle

One of the possible reasons for why kratom is facing an uphill battle is its accessibility. In a report by the Huffington Post, people revealed that they only started using it after failing to find any effective medicine by conventional means. For the most part, people turning to kratom include those who wish to alleviate symptoms of chronic pain due to accidents, or injury, or health issues, or as a replacement for opioids. People who use kratom do not report experiencing negative side effects after use, a common occurrence for users of prescription medicine. At most, people only experience nausea or vomiting upon ingesting too much. An important factor that users highlight is that kratom costs less than prescription medicine, is all-natural, and does not leave users with withdrawal symptoms afterwards. A pack of kratom costs as little as $50 for a pack that can be used for a month.

The FDA set forth in its advisory that there is no reliable evidence to support the use of kratom as a treatment for opioid use disorder. However, there have been studies conducted regarding the use and effects of kratom. In a study published by Columbia University, mitragynine, the main alkaloid found in kratom, was found to activate opioid receptors in the brain without triggering any side effects such as respiratory depression. The AKA has also published its analysis which illustrates that kratom has multiple benefits such as reliving pain and fatigue, enhanced outlook and well-being, improved interactions, and increased performance at work. The study also explains that kratom has a low toxicity and has no adverse reactions such as liver damage.

Additionally, a patent application filed for kratom by the University Of Massachusetts Medical School and the University Of Mississippi identified the plant as a remedy for opioid withdrawal by individuals who self-treat chronic pain and/or generalized substance abuse.

One of the alkaloids found in kratom, Speciofoline, was even patented by to Smith Kline & French Laboratories, which is now part of the pharmaceutical megacompany GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The patent, which was filed on August 10, 1964, states that the alkaloid has useful pharmacodynamic activity, particularly analgetic and antitussive activity.

With the advisory, the FDA has since placed restrictions on imports of products containing kratom and has seized and destroyed products that have kratom. (Related: FDA, DEA running massive conspiracy to criminalize Kratom in order to protect Big Pharmas obscene opioid profits.)

To learn more about how the FDA is preventing the use of alternative medicine, read the articles at FDA.news.

Sources include:

FDA.gov

AmericanKratom.org

HuffingtonPost.com 1

HuffingtonPost.com 2

Google.com/Patents 1

Google.com/Patents 2
The red carpet rolled out Sunday night in Silicon Valley, and while there were plenty of celebrities on hand, the real stars were scientists.

The sixth annual Breakthrough Prizes, known as "the Oscars of science," took place at NASA Ames in Mountain View, celebrating achievements in math, science and medicine.

Morgan Freeman hosted the ceremony, and he was joined by many other stars, including Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Wiz Khalifa and Kerry Washington.

Twelve men and women were honored for their work with a total of $22 million in prize money.

Co-founder of the ceremony, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, said the goal is to bring awareness to scientific and innovative achievements, which "shape our future."

The world needs their inspiration and their reminder that, even though it doesnt always feel that way, we are making steady progress toward building a better future for everyone," he said.

Each Breakthrough Prize came with a $3 million check, and the New Horizon winners took home $100,000 each.

More than 11,000 entries from 178 countries were received in the 2017 installment of the global competition.

The awards show aired live on the National Geographic channel.

The 2018 Breakthrough Prizes winners:
One lane at the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge toll plaza remains closed Monday following a grisly weekend crash that wiped out a toll booth, killing a toll taker working inside.

Caltrans on Sunday had warned that four toll lanes would remain closed during the Monday morning commute two days after a rented box truck hit several vehicles and then slammed into toll both No. 14, but three of the impacted lanes and booths reopened around 4:30 a.m.

It is not clear when the destroyed toll booth will reopen, according to Caltrans spokesman Bob Haus.

"Toll booth No. 14, that will have to remain closed for awhile because that's going to require some substantial repair," he said.

Gov. Jerry Brown said in a statement that the victim was 46-year-old California Department of Transportation employee Si Si Han. Han worked for Caltrans for more than a decade.

Haus indicated that toll workers are having a rough time dealing with the "nightmare" that unfolded.

"A lot of them witnessed it," Haus said. "They're not doing very well right now, and they're coping as best they can. This is just an awful experience for everyone involved."



The driver of a truck that crashed into the booth remains hospitalized with serious injuries.

California Highway Patrol Officer Matthew Hamer said 32-year-old Daniel Berk could face charges for driving under the influence and vehicular manslaughter.

Berk is expected to be in the hospital for several days, according to the CHP.

NBC Bay Area's Sergio Quintana and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
What to Know Senate leaders begin the process Monday of selecting an independent special investigator to look into sexual misconduct allegations.

Four men told the Boston Globe Senate President Stan Rosenberg's husband, Bryon Hefner, sexually assaulted and harassed them.

Rosenberg said Monday that he will relinquish his responsibilities as Senate leader during the investigation.

Majority Leader Harriette Chandler says she expects to serve as acting Massachusetts Senate President during an upcoming investigation into sexual misconduct allegations surrounding the husband of Sen. Stan Rosenberg.

The announcement came late Monday after a nearly eight-hour Democratic caucus held behind closed doors at the State House. Rosenberg announced earlier Monday he would take a leave of absence from his responsibilities as Senate President during the investigation. He has not been accused of wrongdoing.

"I wish I could look at this wonderful election that you have given me with joy rather than the way I feel," Chandler told her colleagues. "The circumstances that have led to this election are unprecedented and they're unfortunate."

Originally, Rosenberg had said he would recuse himself only from any matters related to the investigation or the allegations against Bryon Hefner. He informed senators just prior to a closed-door Democratic caucus earlier Monday that he would step aside temporarily, though he would remain in the Senate.

"I believe taking a leave of absence from the Senate Presidency during the investigation is in the best interest of the Senate," Rosenberg said in a statement. "I want to ensure that the investigation is fully independent and credible, and that anyone who wishes to come forward will feel confident that there will be no retaliation."

"What's most important right now is we work toward a swift and resolute conclusion to this whole sad event," said Chandler.

"The investigation needs to take as long as it takes," said Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, a Republican from Gloucester. "And it needs to go where the facts take it."

Rosenberg, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, expressed shock over the allegations reported last week by The Boston Globe. The Democrat maintained that his husband had no influence over his policy decisions or actions by the Senate.

Several men told the Globe that Hefner sexually assaulted or harassed them, including three men who said Hefner grabbed their genitals. The men, who were not named by the Globe, said they did not report the alleged incidents partly because they did not want to alienate the powerful Senate leader.

Attorney General Maura Healey and Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, both Democrats, said Monday they are prepared to launch an investigation and said anyone with information should feel free to contact either of their offices.

The two said in a written statement Monday that they are committed to providing every survivor of sexual assault "a safe, respectful, victim-centered environment."

"I wish to reemphasize that the most important thing is to make sure that anyone who may have been hurt has every assurance that they can turn to whatever authority they feel comfortable with, with absolutely no fear of retribution, and to restore confidence in the Senate," Rosenberg said in a statement after Chandler's announcement. "During my leave of absence from being Senate President, I look forward to a thorough, fair, and independent investigation. I thank my colleagues for providing this opportunity and have every confidence that the Acting President will help the Senate focus on a robust agenda for 2018."



Most Democratic senators were grim-faced and refused comment as they entered the caucus, which ran well into the afternoon, with reporters staked outside the room.

After six hours behind closed doors, State Senator Barbara L'Italien gave reporters a brief update  as did Chandler, who described a very intense and open conversation regarding the sexual harassment charges against Hefner.

"We are meeting with Senate legal counsel right now in the clerks' office and trying to fashion the order," said L'Italien. "The Republicans are going to come in to be part of all of that."



Lawmakers were expected to vote later Monday on a plan to appoint an independent investigator whose focus likely would be on whether Rosenberg knew about Hefner's alleged behavior, or if Hefner had any clout when it came to matters before the chamber.

Gov. Charlie Baker, who has been paying close attention to the process, said the investigator the Senate picks must have "big-time standing."

"I really do think its incumbent on the Senate to make sure that whoever they pick here has big time standing and the independence that is going to be required to do this in a way ensures that others who come forward, can do so without repercussions," he said.

A Globe editorial Monday had called on Rosenberg to take a temporary leave from the Senate presidency, saying a "thorough and credible investigation" can't happen with him in place.

"Ensuring a safe workplace is more important than any one politician  even one as powerful and well-liked as Rosenberg," the editorial read. "Senators should insist on an investigation thats beyond reproach, and that wont be possible unless Rosenberg takes a leave from the presidency."



L'Italien publicly called on Rosenberg to step aside "for the sake of the institution" until the investigation is completed.

L'Italien told reporters she did not see how alleged victims could come forward during the investigation if Rosenberg was still presiding over the Senate. She also said it would be difficult for the Senate to conduct normal business under the circumstances.

Another Democrat, Sen. Michael Barrett of Concord, said it was unfair to ask Rosenberg to step aside over allegations against his spouse.

Democrat Karen Spilka is just one of the senators said to be making calls asking for support to temporarily replace him.



Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren also weighed in Monday, telling reporters "the charges against the Senate president's husband are disgusting and the people who have leveled these charges have a right to be heard and to be respected and protected."

The scenario unfolding on Monday was without modern precedent in the Senate, leaving many questions as to who would preside over the Senate and how business would operate during Rosenberg's leave from the presidency.

Rosenberg said Friday that Hefner would soon enter treatment for alcohol dependency.
Mayors from around the world will gather in Chicago Monday as they prepare to sign a first-of-its-kind international agreement after President Donald Trumps Administration decided to walk away from the Paris climate accord.

The more than 50 mayors and global climate leaders will converge on the city for the North American Climate Summit, part of a commitment to addressing climate change on the local level.

On Tuesday, they will sign the Chicago Climate Charter, which aligns with the Paris agreement.

"From closing coal plants, to investing in electric vehicles and public transportation, to reducing electricity usage in our buildings, to updating streetlights across the city, Chicago is showcasing to the world the impact that cities can have on climate change for their residents and for people around the world, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. I am proud to stand together with the leading global city climate networks including the Global Covenant of Mayors, Climate Mayors and C40 to take decisive action to improve our environment while bettering our communities, and that begins right here.

Earlier this year, Trump declared that the U.S. would no longer be a part of the landmark 2015 accord with 196 countries, claiming the non-binding agreement imposed unfair standards on American businesses and workers. His decision marked a major setback to worldwide efforts to combat climate change and placed the U.S. in opposition to the stance of some of the country's closest foreign allies.

Among those attending the Chicago summit are the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo; Mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee; Mayor of Mexico City, Miguel Angel Mancera; Mayor of Montreal, Valerie Plante; Mayor of Vancouver, Gregor Robertson; Mayor of Phoenix, Greg Stanton; and dozens of others.

Former President Barack Obama, who enacted the deal, is expected to make an appearance at the Tuesday event, City Hall sources told NBC 5.
State police have arrested a man who is accused of robbing an elderly Windham woman in her driveway Sunday evening.

The victim was just getting home around 6 p.m. Sunday after going to an ATM at a bank in Willimantic when a man a approached her. Police said he pointed something at her that she believed was a gun and demanded her money. He then grabbed the womans purse from her shoulder and pushed her to the ground.

The victim sustained minor injuries and was treated at the scene.

A witness told officers that the robber was wearing a light-color hooded sweatshirt and fled in a black 2012 Honda Accord with a Connecticut plate.

Police said they later found the suspect outside of his Willimantic residence and a witness identified him as the person who assaulted the elderly woman.

Police identified the suspect as 28-year-old Danny Vazquez, of Willimantic. He was charged with third-degree robbery, second-degree larceny, third-degree assault and assault on an elderly person.
A 62-year-old man who was reported missing from Stamford, Connecticut was found dead in the driveway of a mansion in Pound Ridge, New York.

The owner of a home on Long Ridge Road was returning home Saturday when he found a man dead next to a vehicle, according to New York State Police.

Police identified the man as 62-year-old Matthew Klein, who was reported missing from Stamford Friday

There were no signs of foul play at the scene, according to police. The cause and manner of death are pending autopsy.

Anyone with information is asked to call the New York State Police, at (914) 769-2600 and reference SJS# 7945913.
CVS Health wants to do much more than fill your prescription or jab your arm with an annual flu shot.

The second-largest U.S. drugstore chain is buying Aetna, the third-largest health insurer, in order to push much deeper into customer care. The evolution won't happen overnight, but in time, shoppers may find more clinics in CVS stores and more services they can receive through the network of nearly 10,000 locations that the company has built.

"They'll be pretty much a soup-to-nuts health company ... except for the hospital part of it," said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consulting and research firm.

Patients also may find the CVS-Aetna combination much more involved in managing their care, especially for those with expensive chronic conditions like diabetes. The bulked-up company also may gain more negotiating leverage over prescription drug prices, but it's far too early to say how much or whether that benefit will trickle down to customers.

The $69 billion deal announced Sunday evening will push the drugstore chain more forcefully in a direction it has been heading for years, according to Wall Street analysts. The company, which stopped selling tobacco products in 2014 to further burnish its image as a care provider, already runs about 1,100 clinics and has been steadily expanding the health care it offers.

The clinics started off as a place to treat basic health care needs like sinus infections or strep throat. Gradually, CVS added services like blood draws or monitoring of chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Expect that trend to continue as the drugstore switches more from selling products in its stores to services that can't be bought online, where retailers face formidable competition from the likes of Amazon.

"I think over time you're going to see less of that front-store retail and more health care services in their stores," said Jeff Jonas, a portfolio manager for Gabelli Funds who follows drugstores.

The mammoth acquisition pairs a company that runs more than 9,700 drugstores with an insurer covering around 22 million people. CVS Health Corp. is also one of the nation's biggest pharmacy benefit managers, processing more than a billion prescriptions a year for clients like large employers and insurers including Aetna Inc.

Analysts say the combined company could add more clinics and expand in-store services to include eye care or maybe centers for hearing aids. That could gradually turn CVS into a one-stop-shop for health care, a place where patients can get a hearing aid checked, then see a nurse practitioner and pick up prescriptions.

"If you think about it, we actually don't have anything like that," said Jefferies analyst Brian Tanquilut said.

Clinics aren't especially profitable, but they are important because they draw people into the stores and help build deeper customer relationships, analysts say.

The clinics have become an attractive option for customers in need of basic health care because they are usually open longer than the family doctor's office. A clinic visit also can be cheaper than a $100 doctor visit for someone who doesn't have insurance, but they have drawbacks. Family doctors say they know their patients better and can check on their overall health during a visit rather than dealing with just the one issue that brought that person in.

Some CVS shoppers also are skeptical about getting their health checked in a retail store.

Jessy Tatenco, 23, buys household items and over-the-counter medications for his three children at CVS. But he said would be reluctant to get medical services there. He feels more comfortable in a doctor's office or traditional clinic setting.

"I wouldn't trust them with my health care. They sell toys," he said after leaving a CVS store Sunday in downtown San Diego.

CVS isn't the only health care giant delving into clinical care. The deal will help it compete with others like UnitedHealth Group Inc. The nation's largest health insurer also runs clinics and doctor's offices. Like CVS, it also has one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefit management businesses.

CVS and Aetna also want to go beyond just clinic visits to help patients and customers.

Aetna Chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini has talked frequently about how most of a person's life expectancy is determined by genetics and location and not by clinical care, which is where health care spending is focused.

"Our conventional operating model is not effective," Bertolini said earlier this year. "People are angry at this model. It doesn't work effectively in controlling costs."

He has talked about the need to get into patients' homes to gauge what they need, like whether they have enough food or may need transportation.

CVS can help through its home infusion business, which sends nurses to patients' homes to deliver complex drugs for people with hemophilia among other conditions. The clinic and drugstore locations could also give patients with chronic conditions like diabetes more convenient options to get their blood monitored or counseling on their condition.

Over time, health care experts say that can help keep these conditions from growing worse and stave off expensive hospital stays.

CVS will pay about $207 in cash and stock for each share of Aetna. The boards of both companies have approved the deal, and the companies expect the deal to close in the second half of next year.

But ant-trust regulators still need to evaluate it.

The Justice Department said last month that it is suing AT&T to stop its $85 billion purchase of Time Warner. Regulators also sued to stop the Aetna's approximately $34 billion purchase of rival Humana Inc.  a deal that fell apart earlier this year.

Hartford, Connecticut-based Aetna and Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based CVS both manage Medicare prescription drug coverage. Some of that business may have to be sold to address antitrust concerns. But otherwise, Leerink analyst David Larsen thinks a CVS-Aetna combination has decent odds of getting past regulators, in part because the businesses have little overlap.

AP Writers Elliot Spagat and David Koenig contributed to this report.
Yemeni rebels killed their erstwhile ally Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country's former president and strongman, as their forces battled for control of the capital, Sanaa, officials said. The collapse of their alliance throws Yemen's nearly 3-year-old civil war into unpredictable new chaos.

The circumstances of Saleh's death were unclear but Houthi officials said their forces caught up with him as he tried to flee Sanaa.

A video circulating online purported to show Saleh's body, his eyes open but glassy, motionless with a gaping head wound, as he was being carried in a blanket by rebel fighters chanting "God is great" who then dump him into a pickup truck. Blood stained his shirt under a dark suit.

It was a grisly end for a figure who was able to rule the impoverished and unstable country for more than three decades and remained a powerhouse even after he was ousted in a 2011 Arab Spring uprising. His death recalled another Arab leader killed in the midst of his own country's uprising, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, whose body was shown in a video being abused by rebels who killed in him 2011.

Saleh's death was announced by the rebels, known as Houthis, who have been fighting Saleh's forces for the past week. Two of Saleh's associates have confirmed his death and a third official from the government of Yemen's internationally recongnized president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, has also confirmed the death.

"The leader of treason has been killed," Houthis' TV network al-Masriah said.

Saleh allied with the Houthis, and the support of his loyalist military units was key to helping the Houthis overrun the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, driving out Hadi's government. But in recent months, the alliance frayed amid Houthi suspicions Saleh was leaning toward the Saudi-led coalition backing Hadi.

Hadi's forces, trying to take advantage of the collapse of the alliance, announced they would march on Sanaa.

But even without Saleh's loyalists, the rebels remain a powerful force and it is unclear how much the break with Saleh weakens them. Over the past year, the Houthis had steadily undermined Saleh and reduced their need for him, winning military commanders over to their side and boosting their own forces.

A major question now will be whether Saleh's loyalists  and tribes that support him  can rally to fight the Houthis after his death.

Several Houthi military officials said Saleh was killed as he headed along with top party leaders from Sanaa to his hometown of Sanhan, nearby. Houthi fighters followed him in 20 armored vehicles, attacked and killed him and almost all those with him, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press. A Houthi media official, Abdel-Rahman al-Ahnomi told the Associated Press that Houthi fighters killed Saleh as he tried to flee to Saudi Arabia though the province of Marib, to the east of the capital.

The Saudi-led coalition had hoped that Saleh's break with the Houthis would be a turning point, isolating the rebels. Over the past days, fighter jets from the Saudi-led coalition pounded Houthis positions, throwing support behind Saleh and fueling divisions with Houthis. Hadi's government had expressed willingness to turn "a new page" with whoever stands against the rebels.

The fighting left Sanaa divided. The Houthis dominate the northern part of the city, while Saleh's forces hold the southern part, with much of the current fighting concentrated around the Political District, home to ministries and foreign embassies. The Houthis appeared to be targeting the homes of Saleh's family, political allies and commanders.

Civilians living in the area are largely cut off from the outside world.

Yemenis huddled in basements across Sanaa overnight as airstrikes echoed across the city. Suze van Meegen, Sanaa-based protection and advocacy adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council, said the violence left aid workers trapped inside their homes and was "completely paralyzing humanitarian operations."

"No one is safe in Sana'a at the moment. I can hear heavy shelling outside now and know it is too imprecise and too pervasive to guarantee that any of us are safe," she said.

"The night was tough," Robert Mardini, the regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross, posted on his Twitter account. "Massive urban clashes with heavy artillery and airstrikes. Yemenis stuck in their homes, too scared to go out. Reduced access to water, health care, food and fuel."

In southern Sanaa's Fag Attan neighborhood, the Houthis used tanks, artillery, and anti-aircraft guns to try to take out snipers loyal to Saleh, damaging or destroying several buildings.

Residents said the night was shattered by the sounds of gunfire and children screaming.

"It's like horror movies," said Bushra, a local woman who asked that her last name not be published for fear of retribution. "I have lived through many wars but nothing like this."

Witnesses said the bodies of slain civilians and fighters littered the streets, as no ambulances were able to reach the area. The ICRC says at least 125 people have been killed and some 240 wounded in Sanaa since the fighting began Wednesday.

Jamie McGoldrick, of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, described the fighting in Sanaa as "another dark chapter of life here." Speaking from Sanaa, McGoldrick said that humanitarian agencies are close to the front lines and that aid workers are also sheltering in basements. He called for a humanitarian pause to the fighting to allow civilians to escape.

During his more than 30 years in power, Saleh was known as the man who "dances on the heads of snakes" for his mastery of shifting alliances, playing both sides or flipping sides in the multiple conflicts tearing apart Yemen.

In the 2000s, he was a key ally of the U.S. in the fight against al-Qaida, taking millions of dollars in American aid to hunt down the group's branch  even as he was accused of striking alliances with the militants and using them against his own enemies. During his rule, he fought multiple wars against the Houthis in northern Yemen, only to side with them against his own former vice president-turned-successor, Hadi, after he lost power.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Mattei says he's running for attorney general, switching gears from a possible gubernatorial run.

The Democrat announced his intentions Monday on the steps of the Connecticut Supreme Court building. It comes a week after Democratic Attorney General George Jepsen announced he will not seek a third term in 2018.

A native of Windsor, Mattei served as chief of the financial fraud and public corruption unit for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Connecticut. He said it's "an unsettled time" in the U.S. and that's why he's running "to protect our rights, our values and our future here in Connecticut."

The Republican Attorneys General Association said Connecticut "does not need an activist attorney general," but rather someone who will create "a climate of regulatory certainty."
There's now just one day left in the NBC 5  Salvation Army Angel Tree campaign and more than 5,100 angels are still in need of a gift this year.

In this season of giving, many have done just that.

Several men, women and children walked up to the Salvation Armys table near the Angel Tree at Hulen Mall in Fort Worth Sunday evening carrying red plastic bags full of gifts for perfect strangers.

But the remaining need is great.

Shoppers like Sophia Yabut walked around the Christmas tree reading the hanging paper ornaments representing angels, children and special needs adults across DFW and what items they need and wish for Christmas.

Deadlines around the corner, Christmas is around the corner and theres still so many people on this tree, she said looking the tree over.

As of Sunday morning, the Salvation Army said more than 6,300 angels were still in need of being adopted. That number was updated Monday afternoon to reflect 5,100 angels in need of adopting.



Angels 13-years-old. He wants an MP3 player, said Yabut, reading one of the cards. I believe Benny, 45, wants a wallet.

I know for me, when I was a kid, I was one of the angel tree kids, said Sheila Bostic, of Fort Worth.

She remembers it well.

One of my favorite things that I got was an Easy Bake Oven, she said with a smile. Its kind of an emotional thing, but I remember just kind of going through a hard time and just when you wake up  you just had gifts there to open up.

She and Melanie Bostic donated two gifts, including a baby car seat.

We want to make sure that baby doesnt go without, said Bostic.

For information on how you can adopt an angel online, CLICK HERE.



You can adopt angels and donate gifts through The Salvation Army Angel Tree -- Nov. 10 to Dec. 6 -- at the following participating malls. Gifts must be returned by Dec. 6.


Southern Methodist University campus police are investigating "abhorrent" signs and a banner hung on the schools campus over the weekend by a white supremacist group identifying itself as Texas Vanguard.

The group, which was named on the flyers, also posted photos online of masked men giving the Nazi salute while standing in front of one of the banners, which read: White men save your people. Reject the opioid beast.

Also posted were signs warning about opioid deaths in the white community and another sign denouncing Gay Pride.

The pictures were tweeted with the caption, We had a great night at @SMU.

https://twitter.com/TexasVanguard/status/937448760992550912

SMU said Monday "the group has targeted other universities in Texas for its abhorrent messages."

Southern Methodist University campus police are investigating "abhorrent" signs and a banner hung on the school's campus over the weekend by a white supremacist group identifying itself as Texas Vanguard.

The Dallas university on Monday afternoon released photos taken from surveillance video of five people investigators believe may be behind the signs. They're hoping someone can help identify the men.

SMU Police Department

The video, recorded at Park Cities Plaza, shows five individuals exiting a dark-colored, full-sized pickup truck at about 11:20 p.m. Saturday. Two individuals later were recorded carrying a banner at about 12:20 a.m. Sunday.



Anyone with information concerning the identity of the individuals, the pickup or the fliers is asked to contact SMU Police at 214-768-3333. Information also may be reported anonymously through the SMU Police Departments Silent Witness Program by calling 214-SMU-2TIP or online at smu.edu/2TIP.

SMU President R. Gerald Turner sent a letter to students and faculty about the signs.

"While SMU strongly supports freedom of speech and expression, the outside group featured on these signs promotes an abhorrent message that is opposite to SMU values," Turner said.

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Turner said the signs were not authorized and SMU police initiated an investigation.

NBC 5 News

"Any person who hangs unauthorized signs or defaces University property is subject to prosecution, Turner said. Any campus community member found responsible for violating SMU policy will be held accountable under the Universitys conduct review process.

An SMU spokesperson said the people responsible for the signs may be subject to a criminal tresspass warning, if it's a first offense. Individuals who have already received a criminal trespass warning from SMU and return to campus may be charged with criminal trespass.

SMU Student Sen. Reuben Beckett responded to the group tweeting, Cowards. Dont come back to our campus. You are not welcome.

Southern Methodist University campus police are investigating controversial signs and a banner found on the schools campus over the weekend.

Other students told NBC 5 they were appalled.

"It was horrific. That was something terrifying and I would hope that this kind of judgmental and crude behavior would not be tolerated," said Lauren Floyd, sophomore. "Ive gotten to meet a lot of people here who are from different cultures and backrounds that I cherish very, very deeply, and the fact that they have to come to school and see that kind of just trash posted on campus is really heartbreaking."

"It obviously makes me mad that people think that, that people think that white people are somehow better than the rest of us," said Gabriela Ponce, sophomore.



Arthur Fleming, with the Dallas NAACP, said the group is using the signs, banners and publicity to "galvanize everybody to move their cause forward."

Rafael McDonnell of Resource Center, an LGBTQ community center in Dallas, said SMU should continue to condemn messages of hate to assure students they are safe.

"It goes to a pattern. This group is trying to stir up dissent and trouble and if we are aware of it then we know how to fight back," said McDonnell.

A student journalist who broke the story about the signs said it was clear the group was looking for attention. Kylie Madry, Editor-in-chief of the SMU Daily Campus student newspaper, said she began hearing about the signs early Sunday morning. By Sunday night, Madry easily found photos of the signs on Twitter after the group tweeted them to SMU.

"Everybody expected them to be much more secretive about their actions," said Madry. "We're seeing that these guys are feeling emboldened and they're feeling willing to post these things online for the attention."

"At this point, I'm almost desensitized to it ... It was less shock and more, 'What can we do to change now moving on, moving forward,'" said Tahj Roy, sophomore.



NBC 5's Kevin Cokely contributed to this report.


For years, city leaders have pledged to reduce poverty in Dallas. Yet, currently more than 30 percent of Dallas children live in poverty.

Within that 30 percent, almost all of those children live in concentrated poverty  neighborhoods isolated from opportunities.

The problem is multi-layered, but a report researched by the nonprofit Opportunity Dallas reveals poverty is rooted in segregation.

"We live and learn separately by race and income. We are a diverse city in Dallas, but we don't live diversely," said Mike Koprowski, founder of Opportunity Dallas.

Koprowski recently announced the results of a report to Dallas City Council members and proposed suggestions to reverse systematic inequality within the city.

The Fair Housing Act, which prohibited housing discrimination, was enacted in 1968. His study shows the city of Dallas has made little progress in terms of housing segregation.



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Opportunities for growth, such as jobs, health care facilities, transportation and quality grocery stores are also concentrated within high income areas of Dallas.

According to Koprowski, "neighborhood quality is a critical determinant of life outcomes. Mixed-income, racially diverse communities include houses and apartments which are accessible and affordable to households across the full income spectrum. We can't do this without drafting new housing policies."



Opportunity Dallas proposed new housing policies that targets four areas: revitalization with a holistic approach, reducing barriers that make it hard for families in low-income areas access housing in high opportunity areas, developing more affordable mixed income housing around the city, and developing a model of inclusive gentrification.

A report researched by the non-profit Opportunity Dallas reveals poverty in the city is rooted in segregation.

Inclusive gentrification would place protective barriers around the poor when investors and developers begin building in their communities. New regulations and policies would protect them against involuntary displacement.



The city council committees on Economic Development and Housing, and Human and Social Needs will meet Monday at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. City leaders will hear the results of a "Market Value Analysis" study, which will help determine real estate development and growth opportunities.



According to city council members new housing policies are expected to be solidified by 2019.


The so-called sanctuary city debate was once again brought to the forefront of nation's conscious when a jury found a Mexican man not guilty of murder following the 2015 shooting death of a woman on a San Francisco pier.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, who had been deported five times and was awaiting deportation for a sixth time, had been released by the San Francisco Sheriff's Department weeks before Kate Steinle was shot and killed, despite a request from federal authorities to detain him.

More than two years after the shooting, a 12-member jury acquitted Garcia Zarate of first- and second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, as well as assault with a semi-automatic weapon. He was found guilty of illegal firearms possession, which carries a sentence of 16 months to three years.

Legal analyst Dean Johnson spoke with NBC Bay Area to offer his insights on the verdict and what he believes will happen next to Garcia Zarate:

Why is there so much shock with this verdict?

It's a case where somebody died and where the defendant we know had a gun in his hand, and that gun caused a death. And I think people expect that that has to be some sort of crime and there has to be a conviction, but that's not necessarily true. There are a lot of ways that somebody can be holding a gun and not have any sort of mental state to commit a crime.

What happens next for Garcia Zarate?

Well the immigration authorities have what's called a detainer, which is effectively a warrant for Mr. Zarate's arrest. They have to execute that warrant. They have to go and arrest him, but where he's going to be and when is really a mystery to everyone including the immigration authorities. San Francisco is a sanctuary city. San Francisco employees, including the sheriff, are prohibited from assisting ICE in executing that warrant, so ICE is going to have to be on its toes and find Mr. Zarate, arrest him and then put him through the immigration process to have him deported.

Can San Francisco let Garcia Zarate go again?

Absolutely. In fact right now, technically, Mr. Zarate is being held in jail in violation of his own civil rights because he has now served more than his maximum sentence on the charge on which he stands convicted. He could technically, theoretically, walk out of the jail right now, but I have a feeling that Mr. Zarate probably doesn't want to walk out of the San Francisco jail onto the streets of San Francisco.

Do you think San Francisco officials will cooperate with immigration authorities?

No. San Francisco officials can't cooperate with immigration authorities because the due process for all ordinance, the sanctuary city law says that they cannot cooperate. To do so would be an improper use of San Francisco funds and a violation of the ordinance.

Can the Trump administration do anything legally here?

Yeah. Actually there is some recourse for the Steinle family and for people like the attorney general and the president who apparently think that this was an injustice, and that is a civil rights prosecution in federal court. If the Trump administration really thinks that an injustice was done here, it can simply put its money where its mouth is, call the US attorney for the northern district of California and say, 'We want you to look into to prosecuting Mr. Garcia Zarate.'

Has that happened before?

Absolutely. There is a long history in federal law of people who have committed heinous crimes and have been acquitted in the state courts being then been prosecuted successfully in the federal courts for violations of their victim's civil rights. That happened many, many times in the days of the civil rights movement when Klansmen would routinely be acquitted and then would be prosecuted successfully in federal court.

Do you think the politics of the case crept into the minds of the jurors?

One of the most important things to understand about this case is that it is not a referendum on immigrants, illegal immigration or immigration policy. These jurors were insulated from all of those political issues from the moment they walked into the courtroom. They were all vetted to swear under penalty of perjury that they would not be motivated by any sort of bias, prejudice, political position or anything else, and they were warned every time they broke from the court proceedings that they should not listen to any broadcast, they should not discuss the case. So they've been thoroughly insulated from all of those political issues. Obviously this case has huge political implications, but the jurors did not and could not take that into consideration in their deliberations.
The California State Assembly's point person investigating sexual harassment at the state capitol called on victims rights advocate and Democratic National Committeewoman Christine Pelosi Sunday to notify police if she believes a lawmaker has committed a violent sexual assault.

Assemblywoman Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) says she was shocked to hear Pelosis claim that there are "rapists in this building" during a hearing of her committee Tuesday at the state capitol.

"If I knew that there was one of my colleagues or anyone in the building who was a rapist, I would go to law enforcement right away  even if i heard it as a rumor  thats a very serious and frightening thing to hear."

Friedmans comments were broadcast Sunday morning on NBC4s "News Conference" program.

Pelosi, the daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and chair of the California Democratic Partys Womens Caucus, said earlier in the broadcast that she had heard stories from victims involving a variety of sexual harassment and assault, including forced oral copulation and rape. She said naming the perpetrators was up to the victims.

"If you just look at the blowback I got for saying there are rapists in the capitol you can just imagine the blowback that someone would get for naming one  we have to have whistleblower protections  let's put in some ability for people to tell their story and be protected."

Also appearing was lobbyist Pamela Lopez who spoke of how one current member of the legislature exposed himself and masturbated in front of her in a restroom. She also discussed being groped and of "quid pro quo" sexual harassment with lawmakers appearing to pledge to help her clients in exchange for sex. Lopez called requests for her to provide names of alleged abusers a form of "victim blaming."

"It is the perpetrators fault and its our fault as a community for not taking action to make sure workspaces are safe for women," she said.

On a related issue Assemblywoman Friedman took issue with a constituent letter posted by State Senator Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) which appeared to blame accusations of inappropriate behavior against him on the news media. The letter, posted on the lawmakers Facebook page, stated that "some media look to capitalize on the national climate" to generate news stories "to gain ratings shares." Mendoza has denied the allegations.

"It left a bad taste in my mouth," Friedman told NBC4. "To basically call her [the accuser] a liar in whats supposed to be a holiday email to his constituents didnt seem like the appropriate response."
Two women went public Monday with sexual harassment allegations against Democratic Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, with one accusing him of forcing her into a bathroom during a party last year and masturbating in front of her.

Dababneh, 36, strongly denied the allegations.

"I affirmatively deny that this event ever happened -- at any time," he said. "I am saddened by this lobbyist's effort to create this falsehood and make these inflammatory statements, apparently for her own self-promotion and without regard to the reputation of others. I look forward to clearing my name."

Pamela Lopez, a lobbyist, filed a complaint with the Assembly Rules Committee detailing her accusation, which she said occurred during a January 2016 party in Las Vegas attended by a variety of "political professionals."

After filing her complaint, Lopez held a news conference Monday in Sacramento alongside another woman, Jessica Yas Barker, who worked under Dababneh when he was a district chief of staff for Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, in 2009-10. Barker said Dababneh was known for his sexually charged comments in the office and inappropriate conduct.

"It was pretty much an open secret in the San Fernando Valley that this is how Matt behaved," Barker said. "Unfortunately, it was largely brushed off.

"Just this last weekend, I met a woman who told me that her daughter is interning in Matt's office," she said. "All I could think to tell her was to get her out of there as quickly as possible."

The most damaging accusations, however, came from Lopez, who had previously discussed her allegations but did not name the legislator involved. She went public following a call by the Assembly Rules Committee for alleged victims to come forward and name names.

"There are other women who have been sexually harassed by Matt Dababneh," Lopez told reporters. "And I can't have it on my conscious that this may happen again."

In her complaint letter, Lopez says she and Dababneh both attended an engagement party for mutual friends at a Las Vegas hotel. She said the crowd included political professionals, many of whom she knew.

"When I went to the bathroom after being at the party for a few hours, I felt the weight of a body push me into the restroom," she wrote. "I heard the door slam behind us. When I turned around, I saw Matt Dababneh. He stood blocking the door and began to masturbate and move toward me, urging me to touch him.

"It was a terrifying experience," she wrote. "During the time he blocked me in that room, my instincts were focused on escaping without any physical contact and in a way that would not cause a scene. Before the ordeal ended, he told me not to tell anyone." Lopez told The Times the encounter lasted less than five minutes.

A friend of Dababneh, Ken Maxey, told The Times he was with the assemblyman at the party for a "majority" of the night, and does not recall him ever using the bathroom.

He noted that the layout of the room where the party was held would make it difficult for any such incident to go unnoticed. Lopez's business partner, however, told the paper that Lopez told him about the encounter within days of her return to Sacramento after the Las Vegas party.

A friend of Lopez's also told The Times that Lopez described the encounter to her several weeks after the party. As it has in Hollywood and across the country, sexual harassment has become a hot topic in Sacramento, with legislative leaders vowing to crack down on misconduct.

Last week, Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, D-Pacoima, resigned in response to harassment allegations by a series of women. Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia, was stripped of his legislative leadership positions pending an investigation into harassment allegations.
A data breach affecting hundreds of thousands of drivers was at the center of a lawsuit against a rideshare company Monday.

Uber acknowledged the 2016 data breach that affected some 600,000 drivers in a statement released Nov. 21.

City Attorney Mike Feuer was at the helm of the suit.

The lawsuit claims the company neglected to notify customers of the breach and instead choose to pay the hackers to destroy the data and pressuring them to enter into nondisclosure agreements to keep quiet about it.

Uber announced the breach in November, 13 months after it occurred.

"We allege Uber violated California law, and public trust, when it hid this massive data breach,'' Feuer said. "If any company should know better, it's Uber, which reached a previous settlement after allegedly failing to provide timely notice to its users about an earlier security breach. Uber and other companies holding vast amounts of private data need to safeguard it -- and immediately come clean if the information is compromised.''

Uber's CEO released a statement prior to the suit, saying forensic experts believed the following information about drivers was not hacked:

trip location history

credit card numbers

bank account numbers

Social Security numbers

dates of birth

But, the hackers were able to download information on U.S. drivers including the drivers' names and license numbers.

Any U.S. drivers concerned they may be affected can learn more here.

About 57 million Uber app users around the world were also affected by the breach, with hackers getting hold of names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers. Uber users can learn more at this site.

The site indicated that users did not need to take any action.

Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said two people had been fired over the incident.

The company was also notifying drivers individually whose license numbers were hacked.

Khosrowshahi acknowledged that the company was taking steps to address why users and drivers were not notified when the breach occurred a year prior.

City News Service contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump on Monday took the rare step of scaling back two sprawling national monuments in Utah, declaring that "public lands will once again be for public use" in a move cheered by Republican leaders who lobbied him to undo protections they considered overly broad.

The decision marks the first time in a half century that a president has undone these types of land protections. Tribal and environmental groups oppose the decision and began filing lawsuits Monday in a bid to stop Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Trump made the plan official during a speech at the State Capitol, where he signed proclamations to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. Both monuments encompass millions of acres of land.

State officials said the protections were overly broad and closed off the area to energy development and other access.

Environmental and tribal groups say the designations are needed to protect important archaeological and cultural resources, especially the more than 1.3 million-acre (2,030-square-mile) Bears Ears site featuring thousands of Native American artifacts, including ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.

Trump argued that the people of Utah know best how to care for their land.

"Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington," Trump said. "And guess what? They're wrong."

Roughly 3,000 demonstrators lined up near the State Capitol to protest Trump's announcement. Some held signs that said, "Keep your tiny hands off our public lands," and they chanted, "Lock him up!" A smaller group gathered in support, including some who said they favor potential drilling or mining there that could create jobs. Bears Ears has no oil or gas, Zinke told reporters, though Grand Staircase-Escalante has coal.

"Your timeless bond with the outdoors should not be replaced with the whims of regulators thousands and thousands of miles away," Trump said. "I've come to Utah to take a very historic action to reverse federal overreach and restore the rights of this land to your citizens."

Bears Ears, created last December by President Barack Obama, will be reduced by about 85 percent, to 201,876 acres (315 square miles).

Grand Staircase-Escalante, designated in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, will be reduced from nearly 1.9 million acres (nearly 3,000 square miles) to 1,003,863 acres (1,569 square miles).

Both were among a group of 27 monuments that Trump ordered Zinke to review this year.

Zinke accompanied Trump aboard Air Force One, as did Utah's Republican U.S. senators, Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee. Hatch and other Utah Republican leaders pushed Trump to launch the review, saying the monuments designated by the former Democratic presidents locked up too much federal land.

Trump framed the decision as returning power to the state, saying, "You know and love this land the best and you know the best how to take care of your land." He said the decision would "give back your voice."

"Public lands will once again be for public use," Trump said to cheers.

Hatch, who introduced Trump, said that when "you talk, this president listens" and that Trump promised to help him with "federal overreach."

Earthjustice filed the first of several expected lawsuits Monday, calling the reduction of Grand Staircase-Escalante an abuse of the president's power that jeopardizes a "Dinosaur Shangri-la" full of fossils. Some of the dinosaur fossils sit on a plateau that is home to one of the country's largest known coal reserves, which could now be open to mining. The organization is representing eight conservation groups.

Native American leaders said they expect to file a lawsuit challenging the Bears Ears decision soon.

Patagonia President and CEO Rose Marcario said the outdoor-apparel company will join an expected court fight against the monument reduction, which she described as the "largest elimination of protected land in American history."

No president has tried to eliminate a monument, but some have reduced or redrawn the boundaries on 18 occasions, according to the National Park Service. The most recent instance came in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy slightly downsized Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico.

Trump's move against Bears Ears, covering lands considered sacred to tribes that long pushed for protections, marks his latest affront to Native Americans.

Trump overrode tribal objections to approve the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines. He also used a White House event honoring Navajo Code Talkers to take a political jab at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat he has nicknamed "Pocahontas" for her claim to have Native American heritage.

"One week ago today, our Code Talkers were disrespected. And one week later, we get this," said Navajo Nation Vice President Jonathan Nez, referring to the monuments.

Trump signed an executive order in April directing Zinke to review the protections, which Trump is able to upend under the 1906 Antiquities Act. The law gives presidents broad authority to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use.

Zinke has also recommended to Trump that Nevada's Gold Butte and Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou monuments be reduced in size, though details remain unclear. The former Montana congressman's plan would allow logging at a newly designated monument in Maine and more grazing, hunting and fishing at two sites in New Mexico.

Democrats and environmentalists accuse Trump and Zinke of engaging in a secretive process aimed at helping industry groups that have donated to Republican political campaigns.

Superville reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Brady McCombs, Michelle L. Price and Lindsay Whitehurst in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.
Lobbing new criticism at the special counsel's Russia investigation, President Donald Trump said Monday he feels "very badly" for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who last week pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about reaching out to the Russians on the president's behalf.

"I think it's a shame," Trump said of Flynn's situation, adding that it's "very unfair" and that Flynn had "led a very strong life."

Trump tried to contrast Flynn's treatment with that of his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, whom he said, without providing any evidence, "lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened."

"Flynn lied and they destroyed his life," Trump said.

Flynn is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

James Comey testified as FBI director in 2016 that the bureau had "no basis to conclude that [Clinton] lied to the FBI."

Even as Trump sought to minimize Flynn's misdeeds, the Kremlin insisted that Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. had not influenced Russian President Vladimir Putin's response to sanctions imposed by Trump's predecessor.

Flynn was forced to resign in February following reports that the Obama administration officials had informed Trump's team that Flynn had discussed sanctions on Russia Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, a fact at odds with the public assertions of Vice President Mike Pence. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday it was "absurd" to suggest that the phone conversation could have influenced Putin's decision and added that "such requests couldn't have been passed on" to him.

Trump, who spoke to reporters Monday as he left the White House to head to Utah, unleashed a string of tweets over the weekend in which he criticized the FBI and raised questions about the federal investigation into Russian election meddling and possible ties to his campaign.

In one of his messages, Trump again denied that he directed FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

Trump questioned the direction of the federal law enforcement agency and wrote that after Comey, whom Trump fired in May, the FBI's reputation is "in Tatters  worst in History!" He vowed to "bring it back to greatness." The president also retweeted a post saying new FBI Director Chris Wray "needs to clean house."

Former Attorney General Eric Holder tweeted in response: "Nope. Not letting this go. The FBI's reputation is not in "tatters". It's composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. You'll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now."

Trump seized on reports that a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was removed from special prosecutor Robert Mueller's team last summer after the discovery of an exchange of text messages that were viewed as potentially anti-Trump. The agent, Peter Strzok, had also worked on the investigation of Democrat Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, said Mueller removed Strzok from the team "immediately upon learning of the allegations." He would not elaborate on the nature of the accusations. The person who discussed the matter with The Associated Press was not authorized to speak about it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump tweeted Sunday: "Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI 'agent's role in Clinton probe under review.' Led Clinton Email probe." In a separate tweet, he wrote: "Report: 'ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE' Now it all starts to make sense!"

Strzok's removal almost certainly reflected a desire to insulate the investigators from any claims of political bias or favoritism. Trump and many of his supporters have at times sought to discredit the integrity of the investigation, in part by claiming a close relationship between Mueller and Comey and by pointing to political contributions to Democrats made by some lawyers on the team.

Following the tweets, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned the president to tread cautiously. "You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril. I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I'd watch this," Graham said.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

The tweet suggested that Trump was aware when the White House dismissed Flynn on Feb. 13 that he had lied to the FBI, which had interviewed him weeks earlier. Comey has said Trump the following day brought up the Flynn investigation in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could "let this go."

With questions raised by the tweet, Trump associates tried to put distance Saturday evening between the president himself and the tweet. Trump's personal lawyer John Dowd told NBC News that he drafted the tweet and sent it to the president's social media director Dan Scavino to publish.

When asked for the original email he sent to Scavino, Dowd said he dictated it orally.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel is beginning to see "the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice" against Trump.
What to Know President Donald Trump criticized the FBI and raised questions about the special prosecutor's investigation into Russian election meddling

Flu season is off to a fast start and early indications suggest that it may be more severe than the previous season, NBC News reported

The Met Opera has suspended its relationship with James Levine while it investigates "multiple" allegations of sexual misconduct against him

Get the top headlines of the day in your morning briefing from NBC 4 New York, Monday through Friday. Sign up for our newsletter here.

Trump Takes to Twitter to Criticize FBI, Special Prosecutor

Amid a rush of weekend tweets taking aim at targets old and new, President Trump criticized the FBI and raised questions about the special prosecutor's investigation into Russian election meddling and possible ties to his campaign. The Twitter storm  more than a dozen tweets  came after his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. In one his messages, Trump again denied that he directed FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Trump questioned the direction of the federal law enforcement agency and wrote that after Comey, whom Trump fired in May, the FBI's reputation is "in Tatters  worst in History!" He vowed to "bring it back to greatness." The president also retweeted a post saying new FBI Director Chris Wray "needs to clean house." Former Attorney General Eric Holder tweeted in response: "Nope. Not letting this go. The FBI's reputation is not in "tatters". It's composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. You'll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now."

Billy Bush Reaffirms Trumps Access Hollywood Comments Are Real

Former "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush confirmed again that it was Donald Trump's voice on the famous 2005 video that recorded Trump bragging about crude and degrading behavior toward women. The New York Times reported that Trump has told at least one U.S. senator and other people that he didn't believe the voice on the tape was his  even though he directly confirmed the remarks and apologized for them a month before the presidential election last year. The video shows Trump, who was the star of "The Apprentice," riding on an "Access Hollywood" bus with then-host Bush. At one point, Trump describes trying to have sex with a married woman. He also brags about women letting him kiss and grab them because he is famous. The recording of the lewd conversation between Bush and Trump emerged during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump later said he never did any of the actions described on the tape, and dismissed his words as locker room talk.

U.S., S. Korea Fly Stealth Jets in Combined Air Force Exercise

Hundreds of aircraft including two dozen stealth jets have begun training as the United States and South Korea launched a massive combined air force exercise. The war games come a week after North Korea test-fired its most powerful missile ever, an ICBM that may be able to target the eastern seaboard of the United States. The five-day drill, which is called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies' wartime capabilities and preparedness, South Korea's defense ministry said. The U.S. Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets, including an unusually large number of the latest generations of stealth fighter jets, for the annual training in the Korean Peninsula. They include six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets. About 12,000 U.S. military personnel are participating. In total, 230 aircraft will be flying at eight U.S. and South Korean military installations in the South. An official at the South Korean Defense Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of office rules, corrected his earlier statement that the exercise was the biggest ever.

Flu Is Spreading Fast This Season, Officials Say

This years flu season is off to a fast start and early indications suggest that it may be more severe than the previous season, NBC News reported. Widespread flu activity is currently in four states where last year there were none at this time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A doctor, who is involved in the CDCs flu surveillance network in Tennessee, has noticed cases of influenza picking up "dramatically" in the last week. Even worse, it appears the dominant strain will be H3N2, which can produce more severe illness, said the doctor, an infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Unfortunately, the flu vaccine available in the United States this year was only 10 percent effective in preventing illness from H3N2. However, while vaccinated people can still get sick, generally they get a milder and less dangerous form of the illness. Also, the vaccine protects against other flu strains.

CVS Agrees to Buy Insurance Company Aetna in $69B Deal

Drugstore operator CVS is making a $69 billion offer for insurer Aetna as it tries to position itself as a one-stop shop for Americans' health care needs with prescription drugs, clinics and insurance plans to cover those goods and services. The companies announced that CVS Health Corp. will pay about $207 in cash and stock for each share of Aetna Inc., a 29 percent premium over Aetna's stock price before the first report about a possible deal in October. The mammoth acquisition pairs a company that runs more than 9,700 drugstores and 1,100 walk-in clinics with an insurer covering around 22 million people. CVS Health Corp. is also one of the nation's biggest pharmacy benefit managers, processing more than a billion prescriptions a year for insurance companies, including Aetna. The deal's impact on prescription drug prices is uncertain.

Met Opera Suspends Ties to Conductor James Levine Over Sexual Abuse Allegations

The Metropolitan Opera has suspended its relationship with longtime conductor James Levine while it investigates "multiple" allegations of sexual misconduct against him. Peter Gelb, the opera's general manager, made the announcement in a statement. The Met says it's hiring a former U.S. attorney to lead a "full and complete investigation." The allegations against Levine took place from the 1960s to the 1980s, which included part of Levine's conducting career at the Met. Levine served as music director there from 1976 to 2016, when he assumed the position of music director emeritus. The suspension means Levine won't be involved in any Met activities, including conducting scheduled performances at the Met this season. Levine has struggled with health problems including Parkinson's disease in recent years but was scheduled to conduct several productions this season.
A man reported missing from Connecticut last week has been found dead in the driveway of a mansion in Pound Ridge, New York, state police say.

The owner of the home on Long Ridge Road was returning home Saturday when he found a man dead next to a vehicle, according to police.

The dead man was identified as 62-year-old Matthew Klein, who was reported missing from Stamford last Friday.

There were no signs of foul play at the scene, according to police. The cause and manner of death are pending autopsy.

Anyone with information is asked to call the New York State Police, at (914) 769-2600 and reference SJS# 7945913.
A California teen turned himself in to police Saturday and allegedly confessed to molesting upwards of 50 children during the past eight years in different cities where he had lived, including Riverside.

The arrest came after the suspect's mother told police that during a phone call the suspect admitted to recently sexually assaulting an 8-year-old male and a 4-year-old male that he had befriended at a Simply Home Inn & Suites in the 9800 block of Magnolia Avenue, Riverside police spokesman Officer Ryan Railsback said.

The children had been staying in the motel with their parents but had been allowed to go into the suspect's room where the molestation occurred, police said.

After speaking with investigators, the suspect's mother picked her son up and drove him to the Magnolia police station where he was taken into custody.

During an interview with officers, Joseph Hayden Boston, 18, of Lakewood allegedly confessed to the motel molestations and additionally to molesting about 50 children since the age of 10 in different cities where he had lived, Railsback said.

"The suspect has been staying in Riverside since early Nov. 2017, but also resided in the cities of Lakewood and Buena Park in Southern California,'' Railsback said.

Boston was booked into the Robert Presley Detention Center on suspicion of two counts of oral copulation on a child under the age of 10. He remained jailed in lieu of $1 million bail.

The County of Riverside Child Protective Services took custody of both juvenile victims, Railsback said.

An investigation was ongoing and police believe Boston has victimized other children who have not yet come forward.

Police urged anyone who may have information about the suspect to contact Detective Paul Miranda at 951-353-7945.
President Donald Trump is indeed on the shortlist for Time Magazine's Person of the Year, the "Today" show revealed, two weeks after he tweeted he was turning down the title.

Trump, the reigning person of the year, said in the tweet that the magazine "called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named" person of the year, if he agreed to an interview and photo shoot. "I said probably is no good and took a pass."

Trump is joined by nine others on the 2017 shortlist, including some people he's feuded with: special prosecutor Robert Mueller, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former San Francisco 49ers player Colin Kaepernick. The #MeToo movement also made the list.

Each year, Time picks the person, group or concept that has most influenced the news and the world "for good or ill."


A veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian election meddling after the discovery of an exchange of anti-Trump text messages, a spokesperson for the Special Counsel's Office said.



The removal of the agent, who also had worked on the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, occurred this summer.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, told NBC News that Mueller removed the agent, Peter Strzok, from the team "immediately upon learning of the allegations."



The swift removal almost certainly reflected a desire to insulate the investigators from any claims of political bias or favoritism. President Donald Trump and many of his supporters have at times sought to discredit the integrity of the investigation, in part by claiming a close relationship between Mueller and fired FBI Director James Comey and by pointing to political contributions to Democrats made by some lawyers on the team.

The existence of the text messages was brought to the attention of Mueller's office by the Justice Department inspector general's office, which has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation of the FBI's handling of the Clinton email case.

Trump responded to the agent's removal on Sunday and suggested the agency needs a dramatic overhaul under new FBI director Christopher Wray.

The president tweeted: "Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI 'agent's role in Clinton probe under review.' Led Clinton Email probe."

He continued: "Report: "ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE Now it all starts to make sense!"

Mueller has been investigating whether Trump campaign associates coordinated with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, and Strzok's background in counterintelligence would have been seen as particularly valuable for a secretive FBI probe examining foreign contacts.

So far, four people have been charged as a result of Mueller's investigation. The most recent criminal case was brought Friday when former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. He has agreed to cooperate with the investigation.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

The tweet suggests that Trump was aware when the White House dismissed Flynn on Feb. 13 that he had lied to the FBI, which had interviewed him weeks earlier. Comey has said Trump the following day brought up the Flynn investigation in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could "let this go."

The content of the messages Strzok exchanged and the person with whom he communicated were not revealed either by the FBI or the Justice Department. But in his statement, Carr noted that an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, had briefly been detailed to Mueller's team but left "before our office was aware of the allegations."

Phone numbers for Strzok and Page could not immediately be found.

The FBI said in a statement Saturday night that the bureau "has clearly defined policies and procedures regarding appropriate employee conduct, including communications."

"When the FBI first learned of the allegations, the employees involved were immediately reassigned, consistent with practices involving employee matters," the statement said.

The New York Times first reported the reason for the agent's removal. ABC News had reported in August that Strzok had left the team.

Strzok was present during Clinton's July 2016 interview with the FBI about her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, according to an unclassified summary of the interview commonly referred to as an FBI 302 form. Several other FBI agents and officials from the Justice Department also attended. The investigation was concluded without criminal charges days later.

On Saturday, the Justice Department's inspector general's office released a statement confirming that it was continuing to review unspecified allegations made about the department's and the FBI's actions "in advance of the 2016 election."

"The OIG has been reviewing allegations involving communications between certain individuals, and will report its findings regarding those allegations promptly upon completion of the review of them," the inspector general's office said.

The statement didn't refer to any agents or officials by name.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Saturday night that the allegations confirmed by the inspector general's office, "if proven to be true, would raise serious questions of public trust. I look forward to receiving the Inspector General's report. We will ensure that anyone who works on any investigation in the Department of Justice does so objectively and free from bias or favoritism."

Sessions, who recused himself in March from the Russia investigation, also said he had directed the FBI director to conduct a review and "promptly make any necessary changes to his management and investigative teams consistent with the highest professional standards."
A Philadelphia judge denied an emergency bail petition in a probation violation case against embattled rapper Meek Mill.

In the opinion filed Friday and released Monday, Common Pleas Judge Genece Brinkley called him a "danger to the community" and a flight risk. It also detailed years of drug use and several probation violations dating back to 2007.

"The defendant is not entitled to this sort of special treatment simply due to his 'celebrity status,'" Brinkley wrote.

In response, lawyers for the rapper filed a new appeal with Pennsylvania's Superior Court on Monday.



Mill's legal team filed appeals to have him freed on bail last month, and asked Brinkley to recuse herself after a nearly 10-year legal battle with the rapper. They cited an FBI investigation into her relationship with Philadelphia music mogul Charlie Mack, with whom she allegedly asked Mill to sign.

Brinkley also allegedly asked Mill to record a BoyzIIMen song and include a reference to her, according to the investigation.

The FBI says it does not confirm or deny investigations. The judge has had no comment.



"As stated on multiple occasions, he has never missed a previous court date in this case and poses absolutely no threat to the community, which makes him an ideal candidate for bail  a conclusion the Commonwealth did not oppose," Mill's attorney Joe Tacopina said in a statement Monday.

"We intend to immediately appeal this decision, so Mr. Williams can be released from prison on bail while we continue to work to overturn this wrongful and unjust."

Mill's attorneys tried to side-step Brinkley, who they claimed failed to respond to their motions, late last month by filing an emergency appeal with Pennsylvania Superior Court. The court quickly denied the motion saying the lower court needed to rule first, but did require Brinkley to quickly decide on the bail motion.

Brinkley sentenced Mill in November to two to four years for violating his probation despite prosecutors recommending no jail time. His defense team alleged Brinkley made the case personal and assumed an "essentially prosecutorial" role.

Since the ruling, Mill has skyrocketed to national fame and become a symbol for critics of the criminal justice system, which they say unfairly targets African-Americans.

Mill was first arrested in 2007 on charges that included carrying a firearm without a license and selling crack cocaine to a police informant. He was found guilty two years later and sentenced to 11 to 23 months in prison with five years of probation.

He was released after eight months for good behavior and then arrested several times in subsequent years for violating his probation, mostly for leaving the state of Pennsylvania without the court's approval.

Recently, the Philadelphia native has become a national symbol for critics of criminal justice system. Celebrities such as Jay Z and several Sixers players have come out in his defense. On Friday, Embiid, Ben Simmons and Justin Anderson were photographed holding t-shirts that read "Stand with Meek Mill" at the Jay Z concert at the Wells Fargo Center.

Jay Z's Roc Nation management company paid for billboards, which can be seen throughout Philadelphia and other nearby cities, calling for Mill's release from prison.
U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican who helped craft the Senate tax bill passed in the dead of night Saturday, called it a "tremendous legislative accomplishment" that will benefit "virtually all lower- and middle-income taxpayers."

"We fundamentally restructured the tax code so American workers and businesses can compete in a global economy," he said while speaking from his Old City Philadelphia offices Monday morning.

Toomey touted the finer points of the bill, which would double the standard deduction for the first $24,000 of earned income, eliminate the individual mandate on Obamacare and lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent.

"Our [corporate tax code] is a glaring outlier that makes the U.S. less competitive," he said.

In Pittsburgh, demonstrators gathered ahead of Toomey's news conference in protest over the bill, which passed while most Americans slept.

The Senate bill inched forward strictly on party lines with just one Republican, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, voting against it. Meanwhile, Democrats decried the bill, saying none of them had time to read the proposed legislation before voting late Friday night into early Saturday morning.

"The Democrats can say what they want," Toomey shot back Monday.

The nearly $1.5 trillion tax bill gave President Donald Trump a major push towards fulfilling one of his biggest campaign promises. It offers the boldest rewrite of the nation's tax system since 1986.

But Toomey has come under fire for pushing an endowment tax change that would largely benefit just one institution - Hillsdale College, a private Michigan school that has a reputation for being unfriendly to LGBTQ students and refusing to follow Title IX rules aimed at protecting students against sexual assault.

The two-term Republican spoke at the college in 2008 and defended his amendment by saying that it would benefit any private college that does not accept federal funds for tuition aid, like Hillsdale.

When asked by NBC10 why he focused so much energy on the small provision, which failed to be included in the final Senate bill, Toomey said the amendment had been "wildly mischaracterized."

Instead, colleges like Hillsdale are "saving American taxpayers" by not accepting federal funding.

"It's all the more important the endowment ... be used to off-set the cost of tuition," he said. "My hope is that more colleges pursue this."

With the Senate bill passed and a House version pending, legislators must now reconcile the two before Trump can sign into law.
San Bernardino County is marking the second anniversary of the Dec. 2, 2015, terrorist attack that killed 14 people and wounded 22 others.

Officials called on residents to join in a moment of remembrance at 10:55 a.m. Saturday.

That's the time that husband-and-wife assailants opened fire at a gathering for health services workers at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino.

The county posted photographs of the victims on its social media sites, asked residents to lower flags to half-staff, and a 14-mile memorial bike ride was held.

County Board of Supervisors Chairman Robert Lovingood says in a statement that there's been progress in the effort to create a permanent public memorial.

The attackers, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, were killed in a shootout with authorities.
A San Diego judge removed the city of San Diego from a lawsuit filed by a woman whose attorney argued city officials were responsible for protecting the public from vehicles driving off the Coronado Bridge into Chicano Park.

The lawsuit, filed by a victim in the October 15, 2016 crash of a pickup into a park filled with people, claimed the city allowed a car show to be scheduled for the park knowing that cars falling from the bridge overhead posed a threat to people below.

An active duty U.S. Navy sailor stationed in Coronado drove up the northbound Interstate 5 onramp at approximately 81 mph.

Prosecutors also said the sailor was on his phone texting before he veered off the ramp. The defense claims the pickup was forced off the road by another vehicle.

The pickup hit a guardrail and fell 60 feet into Chicano Park below, instantly killing four people at a festival: Cruz Elias Contreras, 52; AnnaMarie Contreras, 50; Andre Christopher Banks, 49; Francine Denise Jimenez, 46.

San Diego police said two people suffered major injuries and at least seven other people suffered minor injuries.

One of the injured, Annette Trujillo, filed the complaint against the city.

On Friday, Superior Court Judge Judith F. Hayes dismissed the complaint against the City of San Diego because nothing the City did contributed to the incident, and the plaintiff did not allege that a physical condition of City property caused the incident or injury, according to the San Diego City Attorneys Office.

The driver, Richard Sepolio, is still named as a defendant in the case along with the State of California.

Sepolio has pleaded not guilty to four counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and driving under the influence causing injury or death.

If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of 23 years in prison.
More than 100-people gathered in Balboa Park for a candlelight vigil to honor a couple who died in Hawaii.

Gladys Novinger, 62, of Spring Valley was on a river outing with her husband George Novinger on Saturday, Nov. 25.

While crossing the Wailuku River above Rainbow Falls, Gladys Novinger was swept over the waterfall.

She was found in the pool below the falls and was airlifted to Hilo Medical Center where she died.

Hawaii Fire Department Search and Rescue looked for George Novinger for five days. Heavy rain and flash flooding hampered the search efforts.

On Friday, a body was discovered approximately 35 feet down a cliff line along the coastline.

It was identified only as an adult male, police said.

The Novingers were reportedly in Hawaii to visit family in the area. The couple own Vineyard Hacienda in Spring Valley.

Gladys Novinger helped to found the House of Peru, which is in the process of having its own cottage built at the International Cottages in Balboa Park.

George Novinger recently retired as a diplomat for the U.S. State Department's Foreign Service. He also served as the Chairman of the International Cottage Committee and spoke last year to NBC 7 about the group's efforts to expand the International Cottages to include more nine additional nations including Mexico, India, Palestine and Peru.

Dozens gathered to honor the couple at the House of Pacific Relations in Balboa Park Monday Night.

Friends and family of the Novinger's said the couple was passionate about life and willing to give so much back to the community.

"We are deeply saddened to lose Gladys, wonderful Gladys and our son George. And we are very appreciative of all the people coming today to honor their memory," George Novinger's mother Anne Marie said.

Gladys Novinger's son spoke and held back tears as he told the gathering how fortunate he was to be a part of their lives.

"They were the best of the best, they were loving, they were giving, fun, beautiful, wonderful people," said Joseph Harmes.

Board members of the House of Peru who worked very closely with the Novingers spoke and vowed to carry on their legacy.

Groundbreaking for the cottage is set for next month and the board members said it will be named in the couple's honor.

The Rainbow Falls waterfall stands about 80 feet high and is a popular tourist attraction located on the northwest border of Hilo.

With a viewing area just east of the falls, people can walk out onto the rocks and get a close view of the waterfall from above.
The military pilot who averted disaster by steering a crippling fighter jet away from a Maryland neighborhood before it crashed was awarded Sunday.

Cpt. Jonathan Morgan was doing a training exercise over the D.C. area on Wednesday, April 5 when he took a sharp turn to avoid restricted airspace above D.C. and quickly realized something was wrong with his engine.

"As I'm trouble shooting that, I'm over Old Town Alexandria. My engine gives out on me," Morgan said.

His training told him it was time to drop his external fuel tanks.

"I decided not to drop those over Old Town, but instead drop them over the Potomac," he said.

But Morgan and his jet -- which quickly became a multimillion-dollar glider -- weren't out of trouble yet. Flames then started coming out of the back of the jet's engines.

At that point, he was back over the suburban sprawl of Prince George's County, Maryland, and he wasn't going to make it back to Joint Base Andrews.

"Fortunately, I was able to find an open field to put the aircraft in," he said. "When I realized I couldn't make the field I was looking outside the craft trying to find a place to put it that would cause the least harm."

The plane crashed in a wooded area in Clinton, Maryland, about 600 feet from the nearest home. Morgan ejected himself from the jet at the last possible moment -- a violent procedure that set off little rockets underneath his seat.

"It's a 14 G explosion basically straight up," he said.

Morgan parachuted to the ground and walked out of the woods unscathed. No one on the ground was hurt.

The D.C. National Guard honored Morgan Sunday with the Brigadier General Howard W. Kacy Flying Safety Award.
A man accused of killing two Maryland teens the night before their high school graduation appeared in court Monday and waived his right to a bond hearing.

Rony Alexander Galicia, 25, of Germantown, is the fourth man to be arrested in the deaths of 17-year-old Shadi Adi Najjar and 18-year-old Artem Ziberov, Montgomery County police announced Friday.

Galicia has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Najjar and Ziberov were found shot to death on June 5 in a blue Honda Civic in Montgomery Village, the night before they were supposed to graduate from Northwest High School.

Police said Galicia was arrested Friday after investigators determined his DNA was found at the crime scene.

"There is some new evidence, some DNA that was attached to a shell casing," said Ramon Korionoff of the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office.



Three other suspects were arrested in June: Jose Canales-Yanez, 25, Roger Garcia, 19, and Edgar Garcia-Gaona, 24. They were each charged with two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Garcia and Garcia-Gaona are brothers, police said.

Ziberov's father, William Tewelow, said he doesn't want anyone involved in his son's death to get away with it.

"The lesser in our society decided to snuff his life out," he said.



Manger said Najjar had been shot four times and Ziberov 10 times. Amid the shattered window glass police found numerous shell casings, including some Glaser .40-caliber shells.

"We believe there were 30 rounds fired," he said.

Manger said investigators learned that Najjar was rumored to have committed a robbery in late 2016. They linked the rumor to a report filed by Canales-Yanez's then-girlfriend who told police on Dec. 14 that the passenger in a blue Honda Civic had grabbed her iPad and dragged her about 50 feet with the car. He said an informant told investigators Najjar was killed in revenge for that robbery.

He said an informant identified the three suspects to investigators.

He also said that just before Najjar died, he texted someone saying he was going to sell a graduation ticket to Roger Garcia, who was identified as a Northwest High School student.

"We're certainly working on the strong possibility that this was a ruse to get the two victims to that location," Manger said.

He said a partial box of Glaser .40-caliber ammunition was found at Garcia-Gaona's house. He also said the suspects took Najjar's cellphone.

He said the investigation is ongoing and said he hoped the release of the suspects' names would spur others with knowledge of the case to come forward.

"We think there's more information that folks out in the community have that can move us even further along with this case," he said.

"I am glad they caught them and I hope they rot in hell," Najjar's father, Adi Najjar, told News4 after news of the arrests.

Ziberov was an Eagle Scout who planned to attend the University of Maryland.

"I put a lot of hope in him for his future," his father said. "In fact, I'd like to say I think Artem could've solved many of the world's problems when he grew up."


Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has just six weeks left in his term, but he is staying very busy with the upcoming final state budget.

His twin goals of creating new businesses and new roads were his targets when he took office four years ago. He hoped he would be remembered for transforming transportation, adding dozens of miles of express lanes in Northern Virginia.

It's not that I want to be known for the tolls, McAuliffe said. I want to be known that I've opened up and finally came up with a solution to move more people, increase capacity.

He was also proud of the expansion of economic development in Virginia with the growth of craft breweries to luring corporate giants, like Nestle.

Today, Virginia is open and welcoming, the governor said. A record amount of investment of $19.5 billion, $6 billion more than any governor of state.

McAuliffe said his best and most memorable day was April 22, 2016, when he signed an executive order restoring voting rights to tens of thousands of felons who'd serve their time.

Three people already today have stopped me, (saying) thank you, governor. You restored my rights on Election Day, McAuliffe said. On Facebook and Twitter, grown men crying, saying, first time I've voted.

He said his darkest day as governor came in August in Charlottesville when a white supremacists rally lead to violence and death. He remembered learning just before speaking on that day that two state troopers there had died in a chopper crash.

My pilot and former member security gone down.I knew I had to go out and do what I had to do, but no question, that hour was the hardest hours, McAuliffe said. One of the hardest hours I've ever experience in my life.

His term will end on a high note as he helped Democrats sweep statewide office and flip 15 House of Delegates seats. Governing magazine recognized his work at the chief executive, making McAuliffe the Public Official of the Year.
Another generous donor recently left more than loose change in a Salvation Army red kettle in downtown Boston.



Salvation Army officials said an anonymous donor dropped a diamond-and-gold fish pin brooch in a kettle at Downtown Crossing on Nov. 29. The 18K gold brooch with 32 diamonds, valued at nearly $5,000, is the first such gift to the Salvation Army this season.

"The kind soul that donated this brooch is emblematic of the generosity and charity we see in Massachusetts every holiday season," said Major David B. Davis, The Salvation Armys Massachusetts Divisional Commander.

Anonymous donors have been leaving jewelry in red kettles since 2014 when a local widow dropped her valuable wedding ring into one.

The trend continued for the next two holiday seasons, with a Rolex watch and dozens of precious jewelry items donated across the state. According to the Salvation Army, nearly $70,000 in proceeds were collected from jewelry donations since 2014.

The Salvation Army said the brooch, along with any other jewelry they receive this year, will be auctioned off with proceeds going to provide vital programming and services for thousands of children, families and seniors in the region.

The Salvation Army is hoping to meet their statewide Red Kettle Campaign goal of $3.5 million this year.
President Donald Trump gave embattled GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore a vigorous formal endorsement Monday, looking past allegations of sexual misconduct with Alabama teenagers as Republican leaders in Washington, once appalled by Moore's candidacy, began to come to grips with the ever-clearer possibility of his victory.

Buoyed by the taste of his own success in Congress as the Republican tax bill inches closer to passage, Trump telephoned Moore to offer encouragement as well as support and also argued in a pair of tweets that Moore's vote was badly needed to push the president's policies forward. The Republican National Committee quickly followed suit, announcing they were returning the support they had pulled last month.

In addition, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was initially among several national Republicans to urge Moore to drop out of the race, said Sunday it was up to Alabama voters to decide whether the former state Supreme Court chief justice should be elected.

Weeks ago, when accusations of sexual misconduct with teenagers first surfaced, Trump's spokesman had said the president believed Moore would "do the right thing and step aside" if the allegations were true.

Top Republicans vowed to expel him from the Senate if he won his Dec. 12 special election. And, publicly and privately, GOP leaders described the allegations against Moore as credible and insisted there were no circumstances under which he should serve in the Senate.

Trump's tweets on Monday showed his thinking has evolved as Moore has rejected his party's appeals and doggedly remained in the race.

In the phone call, Moore said, Trump offered "his full support and said he needs a fighter to help him in the US Senate."

Moore tweeted that the president told him: "Go get 'em, Roy!"

Trump's move was somewhat symbolic: He had already all but endorsed Moore, repeatedly criticizing Democratic rival Doug Jones on Twitter and planning a campaign-style rally in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday, less than 20 miles from the Alabama border and just four days before voters head to the polls.

Still, Trump's decision to do away with any pretense of distance made clear he is increasingly confident in Moore's chances of victory despite the continued unease of some other Republican leaders.

And the RNC quickly followed his lead. An RNC official confirmed late Monday that the committee would once again be supporting Moore, after severing its fundraising ties to his campaign last month. It was not immediately clear what that support would entail. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm the reversal, which was first reported by Breitbart News.

A Moore victory would set up a potentially explosive clash with fellow Republicans in Congress, some of whom have resoundingly called on him to quit the race. While some have softened their rhetoric recently, others have said they still will try to expel him if he is elected.

Moore's campaign was wounded by accusations this fall of sexual misconduct, decades ago, made by women who were then teenagers. One of the women alleges he initiated sexual contact when she was 14.

Moore denies it all, saying "I do not know any of these women. I did not date any of these women I did not engage in any sexual misconduct with anyone."

Trump, who has repeatedly noted Moore's denials, took a more political stance on Monday.

"Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama," Trump tweeted. "We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more."

In that same vein, longtime Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby said Trump's endorsement didn't surprise him. He said of the president, "I think he's interested, a lot of us are, in the numbers, being a Republican."

And Sen. Orrin Hatch, who traveled with Trump on Monday to Hatch's home state of Utah, said he realistically didn't have any choice. Hatch said, of Moore, "That's the only Republican you can possibly get down there at this time."

Trump first appeared to back Moore after his first choice, Sen. Luther Strange, lost the GOP primary for the seat once held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. But the president went silent after The Washington Post reported on the allegations of sexual misconduct with two teens, ages 14 and 16, and efforts to date several others while Moore was a local prosecutor in his 30s.

By late last month, however, with pressure mounting from his former chief strategist Steve Bannon and other corners of his base, Trump was making clear that he preferred Moore, raising doubts about the candidate's accusers and criticizing Democrat Jones as the "liberal puppet" of Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

Meanwhile, Moore himself was strongly criticized by top Republicans, including Cory Gardner of Colorado, chairman of the Senate GOP campaign apparatus known as the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

"If he refuses to withdraw and wins, the Senate should vote to expel him, because he does not meet the ethical and moral requirements of the United States Senate," Gardner said three weeks ago. He said last week he stood by that statement.

Jones, the Democrat, sidestepped questions about Trump's endorsement while suggesting the support of national Republicans like McConnell could do more harm than good in Alabama.

"Our campaign is going straight to the people of the Alabama because that's who my voters are. It's not the president, it's not Mitch McConnell," Jones told reporters outside a steel mill in suburban Birmingham. "Obviously Mitch McConnell has very little credibility in this state anyway, so I'm not worried about him at all."

Expelling a senator is no easy task. The Senate Ethics Committee would have to investigate, and a recommendation of expulsion could take years.
A Norwich church has changed its name for the fourth time in its 170-year history transforming from Surrey Chapel into CityGates Church Norwich.

A Norwich church has changed its name for the fourth time in its 170-year history transforming from Surrey Chapel into CityGates Church Norwich.

Blues concert fundraiser for Stalham Baptists There will be a free concert at Stalham Baptist Church next Saturday to raise funds towards the refurbishment of premises at the church. Read more

Norwich church moves to wrestling ring A Norwich church has temporarily relocated to a boxing ring where self professed 'hard men' will tell their stories of finding faith. The first Tough Talk event is set for November 20. Read more

How can we help feed those in need? 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. Read more

Latest Norfolk Christian community events Events of interest to the Norwich and Norfolk Christian community happening over the next few weeks are listed. Read more

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
Recently published research from The University of Southern Denmark and the Danish Cancer Society shows a connection between one of the most common medications for hypertension and skin cancer.

Once again, Danish researchers set their sights on antihypertensive medicine containing hydrochlorothiazide, in relation to an increased risk for skin cancer. The researchers have previously demonstrated that the medicine, which is one of the most commonly used drugs world-wide, can increase the risk of lip cancer.

In a new study, the researchers have identified another clear connection between the use of hypertension medicine and the chance of developing skin cancer. More specifically, this refers to drugs containing hydrochlorothiazide and squamous cell carcinoma.

Surprisingly high risk

The researchers have also looked at other commonly used hypertension medicines, but none of them increased the risk of skin cancer.

"We knew that hydrochlorothiazide made the skin more vulnerable to damage from the sun's UV rays, but what is new and also surprising is that long-term use of this blood pressure medicine leads to such a significant increase in the risk of skin cancer," says Anton Pottegard, Associate Professor, PhD, from the University of Southern Denmark, who is the initiator of the study.

The study, which is based on about 80,000 Danish cases of skin cancer, shows that the risk of developing skin cancer is up to seven times greater for users of medicine containing hydrochlorothiazide.

Risk of impairment

There are several types of skin cancer. And squamous cell carcinoma, which the blood pressure medicine is now associated with, can luckily be treated and has a very low mortality rate.

"However, both lip and skin cancer are typically treated with an operation that is associated with a certain risk of impairment as well as a small, but real, risk that skin cancer of the squamous cell type spreads," explains Anton Pottegard.

Hydrochlorothiazide is one of the most commonly used medicines to reduce blood pressure both in the US, where over ten million people use the drug annually and in Western Europe. The side effects can therefore affect numerous people, and the researchers have calculated that about 10 percent of all Danish cases of squamous cell carcinoma may be caused by hydrochlorothiazide.

"You should not interrupt your treatment without first consulting your doctor. However, if you use hydrochlorothiazide at present, it may be a good idea to talk to your doctor to see if it is possible to choose a different medicine," says Anton Pottegard.

American cooperation

As part of the project, the Danish researchers partnered with Dr. Armand B. Cognetta Jr., Chief Division of Dermatology, Florida State University, who is the head of one of the largest treatment centers for skin cancer in the US. Dr. Cognetta has extensive experience in diagnosing and treating skin cancer patients in Florida, and he has noted that hydrochlorothiazide is suspiciously prevalent among his patients, particularly among so-called "catastrophic patients", who can have several hundred skin cancers each. He welcomes the new results.

"We have seen and followed many patients with different skin cancers where the only risk factor apart from exposure to sunlight seems to be hydrochlorothiazide. The combination of living and residing in sunny Florida while taking hydrochlorothiazide seems to be very serious and even life-threatening for some patients. Even though we knew that hydrochlorothiazide made you sensitive to the sun, the connection between this medicine and skin cancer has remained elusive. The study carried out by Pottegard and his colleagues will have great impact on skin cancer prevention and public health world-wide," he explains.

What now?

The researchers continue to work on studies that can shed additional light on the connection between hydrochlorothiazide and skin cancer. Furthermore, they have entered into a dialogue with relevant medical companies as well as the Danish Medicines Agency regarding their findings.

"The risk of skin cancer must, of course, be weighed against the fact that hydrochlorothiazide is an effective and otherwise safe treatment for most patients. Nevertheless, our results should lead to a reconsideration of the use of hydrochlorothiazide. Hopefully, with this study, we can contribute towards ensuring safer treatment of high blood pressure in the future," concludes Anton Pottegard.

Facts:

About hydrochlorothiazide

Hydrochlorothiazide is a frequently used drug to treat hypertension, which is typically used in combination with other antihypertensive medicines. The drug was also previously used for water retention (edema) and heart problems. Only medicines containing hydrochlorothiazide have been found to increase the risk of cancer. Certain other drugs contain "hydrochlor", which is not chemically related to hydrochlorothiazide and does not increase the risk of skin cancer.

Sunlight is harmful

When hydrochlorothiazide induces cancer, this is because hydrochlorothiazide belongs to a group of drugs with a so-called photosensitizing effect. This means that hydrochlorothiazide enhances the harmful effects of sunlight in the skin and lips, and this can increase the risk of skin cancer.

Hydrochlorothiazide and skin cancer

Hydrochlorothiazide increased the risk of basal cell carcinoma, which is the least serious type of skin cancer, as well as of squamous cell carcinoma, which is more aggressive and in some cases manages to spread to other parts of the body. The risk of skin cancer increases the more hydrochlorothiazide you have taken throughout your lifetime, and the risk of squamous cell carcinoma was up to seven times greater for people who had taken hydrochlorothiazide in an amount corresponding to >10 years' use.
First look - Han Solo's first "wife" Sana Starros in her first solo series

The Marvel Comics' original character Sana Starros gets her own series
The official story was clear: Saudi forces shot down a ballistic missile fired by Yemens Houthi rebel group last month at Saudi Arabias capital, Riyadh. It was a victory for the Saudis and for the United States, which supplied the Patriot missile defense system.

Our system knocked the missile out of the air, President Trump said the next day from Air Force One en route to Japan, one of the 14 countries that use the system. Thats how good we are. Nobody makes what we make, and now were selling it all over the world.

But an analysis of photos and videos of the strike posted to social media suggests that story may be wrong.

Instead, evidence analyzed by a research team of missile experts appears to show the missiles warhead flew unimpeded over Saudi defenses and nearly hit its target, Riyadhs airport. The warhead detonated so close to the domestic terminal that customers jumped out of their seats.

Estimated trajectory of warhead Trajectory of missile body The warhead appeared to explode near an airport terminal. RIYADH NORTH Airport This side is 38 miles. Missile defense The missile body landed downtown. Estimated trajectory of warhead Trajectory of missile body The warhead appeared to explode near an airport terminal. RIYADH NORTH This side is 38 miles. Airport Missile defense The missile body landed downtown. Estimated trajectory of warhead Trajectory of missile body The warhead appeared to explode near an airport terminal. RIYADH NORTH Airport This side is 38 miles. The missile body landed downtown. Missile defense Estimated trajectory of warhead Trajectory of missile body The warhead appeared to explode near an airport. RIYADH NORTH Airport This side is 38 miles. Missile defense The missile body landed downtown. Satellite image from DigitalGlobe via Google Earth

Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment. Some U.S. officials cast doubt on whether the Saudis hit any part of the incoming missile, saying there was no evidence that it had. Instead, they said, the incoming missile body and warhead may have come apart because of its sheer speed and force.

The findings show that the Iranian-backed Houthis, once a ragtag group of rebels, have grown powerful enough to strike major targets in Saudi Arabia, possibly shifting the balance of their years-long war. And they underscore longstanding doubts about missile defense technology, a centerpiece of American and allied national defense strategies, particularly against Iran and North Korea.

Governments lie about the effectiveness of these systems. Or theyre misinformed, said Jeffrey Lewis, an analyst who led the research team, which shared its findings with The New York Times. And that should worry the hell out of us.

The Missile

Shooting down Scud missiles is difficult, and governments have wrongly claimed success against them in the past.

SYRIA IRAQ IRAN JORDAN SAUDI ARABIA EGYPT Riyadh OMAN Missile 610 miles Red Sea SUDAN YEMEN ERITREA Est. launch location Arabian Sea SYRIA IRAQ IRAN JORDAN SAUDI ARABIA EGYPT Riyadh OMAN Missile 610 miles Est. launch location YEMEN Arabian Sea

The missile, seen in this video released by the Houthis, is believed to be a Burqan-2, a variant of the Scud missile used throughout the Middle East. It traveled about 600 miles.

Saudi and American officials have accused Iran of supplying the Houthis with the missile, a charge that Tehran denies. A recent United Nations report found evidence that the missile had been designed and manufactured by Iran, according to a Security Council diplomat. Reuters first reported the U.N. findings.

Mr. Lewis and the other analysts, based mostly at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, Calif., were skeptical when they heard Saudi Arabias claim to have shot it down.

Governments have overstated the effectiveness of missile defenses in the past, including against Scuds. During the first Gulf War, the United States claimed a near-perfect record in shooting down Iraqi variants of the Scud. Subsequent analyses found that nearly all the interceptions had failed.

Had it failed in Riyadh as well? The researchers scraped social media for anything posted in that area and time frame, looking for clues.

The Debris

The pattern of missile debris littering Riyadh suggests missile defenses either hit the harmless rear section of the missile or missed it entirely.

Just as the Saudis fired off missile defenses, debris began to fall in downtown Riyadh. Video posted on social media captured one particularly large section, which landed in a parking lot next to the Ibn Khaldun School.

Other videos show scraps that fell at a handful of other locations clustered in a roughly 500-yard area along a highway.

Saudi officials said the debris, which appears to belong to a downed Burqan-2, showed a successful shootdown. But an analysis of the debris shows that the warhead components  the part of the missile that carries the explosives  were missing.

Engine Missile body Possible guidance kit Engine Missile body Possible guidance kit Engine Missile body Possible guidance kit Composite image by Jeffrey Lewis

The missing warhead signaled something important to the analysts: that the missile may have evaded Saudi defenses.

The missile, in order to survive the stresses of a roughly 600 mile flight, was almost certainly designed to separate into two pieces once near its target. The tube, which propels the missile for most of its trajectory, falls away. The warhead, smaller and harder to hit, continues toward the target.

Burqan 2-H Engine Missile body Warhead was missing from debris Missile body Burqan 2-H Engine Warhead was missing from debris Burqan 2-H Missile body Engine Warhead was missing from debris

This would explain why the debris in Riyadh only appears to consist of the rear tube. And it suggests that the Saudis may have missed the missile, or only hit the tube after it had separated and begun to fall uselessly toward earth.

Some U.S. officials said there was no evidence the Saudis had hit the missile. Instead, the debris may have broken up under the pressures of flight. What the Saudis presented as evidence of their successful interception may have simply been the missile ejecting its tube as intended.

The Location of the Explosion

A blast 12 miles away at Riyadhs airport suggests the warhead continued unimpeded toward its target.

At around 9 p.m., about the same time debris crashed in Riyadh, a loud bang shook the domestic terminal at Riyadhs King Khalid International Airport.

There was an explosion at the airport, a man said in a video taken moments after the bang. He and others rushed to the windows as emergency vehicles streamed onto the runway.

Another video, taken from the tarmac, shows the emergency vehicles at the end of the runway. Just beyond them is a plume of smoke, confirming the blast and indicating a likely point of impact.

A Houthi spokesman said the missile had targeted the airport.

Theres another reason the analysts think the warhead flew past the missile defenses. They located the Patriot batteries that fired on the missile, shown in this video, and found that the warhead traveled well over the top of them.

Saudi officials have said that some debris from the intercepted missile landed at the airport. But it is difficult to imagine how one errant piece could fly 12 miles beyond the rest of the debris, or why it would detonate on impact.

The warhead passed over the Saudi missile defense unit. Estimated trajectory of warhead Estimated trajectory of missile body Missile defense The warhead passed over the Saudi missile defense unit. Estimated trajectory of warhead Estimated trajectory of missile body Missile defense Trajectories estimated by David Wright, Union of Concerned Scientists

The Impact

Smoke and ground damage suggest the warhead struck near the airports domestic terminal.

Imagery of the emergency response and a plume of smoke also reveal information about the nature of the impact.

A photo of the plume taken from a different location on the tarmac appears consistent with plumes produced by similar missiles, suggesting the explosion was not an errant piece of debris or an unrelated incident.

Riyadh airport Daraya, Syria

By identifying buildings in the photo and video, Mr. Lewiss team was able to locate the spots from which the images were taken, revealing the precise location of the plume: a few hundred yards off of runway 33R, and about a kilometer from the crowded domestic terminal.

King Khalid International Airport Emergency vehicles seen on runway Dark areas indicate ground damage from vehicles Domestic terminal Direction of missile NORTH Emergency vehicles seen on runway Airport Dark areas indicate ground damage from vehicles Domestic terminal Direction of missile NORTH King Khalid International Airport Emergency vehicles seen on runway Dark areas indicate ground damage from vehicles Domestic terminal Direction of missile NORTH Image courtesy of Planet

The blast was small, and satellite imagery of the airport taken immediately before and after the blast is not detailed enough to capture the crater from the impact, the analysts said.

But it does show ground damage from the emergency vehicles, supporting the finding that the warhead hit just off the runway.

While the Houthis missed their target, Mr. Lewis said, they got close enough to show that their missiles can reach it and can evade Saudi defenses. A kilometer is a pretty normal miss rate for a Scud, he said.

Even the Houthis may not have realized their success, Mr. Lewis said. Unless they had intelligence sources at the airport, they would have little reason to doubt official reports.

The Houthis got very close to creaming that airport, he said.

Laura Grego, a missile expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, expressed alarm that Saudi defense batteries had fired five times at the incoming missile.
OBU Photo by Jeremy Scott.

BGCOs Jordan to Deliver Winter Commencement Address on Bison Hill Dec. 15 December 4, 2017

Dr. Anthony L. Jordan, executive director-treasurer of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, will deliver OBUs Winter Commencement address Friday, Dec. 15, at 2 p.m. in Raley Chapels Potter Auditorium. The event will combine commencement ceremonies for graduate students from OBUs College of Graduate and Professional Studies and students from OBUs six undergraduate colleges.

Following more than 28 years of experience as a pastor, Jordan was elected executive director-treasurer of the BGCO in 1996. Jordan earned a Bachelor of Arts from Southwest Baptist University and both a Master of Divinity and a Doctor of Ministry from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. In 2010, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Divinity from OBU.

Jordan visited Bison Hill in October 2016 to deliver OBUs Gaskin Lecture on Baptist History. His lecture focused on the contribution of Falls Creek to Oklahoma Baptist history. In September of this year, OBU presented Jordan with the Herschel H. Hobbs Award for Distinguished Denominational Service during the Falls Creek 100th anniversary celebration.

Jordan recently announced his plans to retire from his role as executive director-treasurer of the BGCO, effective in early 2018. His tenure of nearly 22 years stands as the longest of any to hold that role in Oklahoma.

Jordan is married to the former Polla Crutchfield. They have two children, Adrian and Alisha, as well as a daughter-in-law, Janae, and a granddaughter, Lydia.
Measles in Mumbai: Toddler dies, 126 children infected in 2022 so far

Aamir Khan announces break from acting, wants to spend time with family

1993 Mumbai blasts case: SC stays death sentence of Mohammed Tahir Merchant

India

oi-Madhuri

The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the death sentence of convict Mohammed Tahir Merchant in connection with 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case which killed 257 people and injured over 700.

The court had earlier convicted and sentenced all the seven accused under various laws including Indian Penal Code, TADA, Explosives Act, Explosive Substances Act, Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act and others.

Merchant was convicted for conspiring, facilitating and knowingly commissioning acts of terror.

All the seven accused were facing multiple charges which included criminal conspiracy, waging war against the Government of India and murder. However, they were acquitted of the serious charge of "waging war against the nation".

On March 12, 1993, Mumbai was shattered by a series of 13 blasts in quick succession at various locations in the city and suburbs, creating the worst unprecedented mayhem in the country, killing 257 and injuring 700 others.

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Story first published: Monday, December 4, 2017, 17:28 [IST]
TTV Dhinakaran says he will soon begin 'revolutionary journey'

Actor Vishal files nomination for RK Nagar bypoll

India

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By Deepika

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R K Nagar bypoll : Tamil actor Vishal enters the poll fray | Oneindia News

Tamil actor Vishal filed his nomination as an independent candidate for the RK Nagar bypoll on 4 December.

Filing the nomination Vishal said that "I want to be the voice of RK Nagar. I want to be the representative of the people and I'm not going to be a full-time politician. I have no long-term plan. It is just a gut feeling and I want to contest the election."

Vishal said he draws inspiration from Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and late President, APJ Abdul Kalam.

"I look up to these two people. I haven't met Arvind Kejriwal but he is a people's leader. I'm not going to be a politician and will remain a commoner, " he added.

Actor Vishal, who filed his nomination papers for the RK Nagar bypoll on Monday paid his respects to late AIADMK Supremo J Jayalalithaa, at her memorial before filing his nomination at the RK Nagar election office on Monday.

He also paid respects to former Tamil Nadu chief ministers CN Annadurai, K Kamaraj and MG Ramachandran (MGR).

The by-election for the assembly seat was necessitated after the death of legislator and chief minister J Jayalalithaa.

Besides opposition DMK, ruling AIADMK's E Madhusudhanan and the party's sidelined leader T T V Dhinakaran are contesting for the prestigious seat.

Last year, Vishal was elected general secretary of SIAA, an actors' body, in a bitterly fought election. Later, he was also elected as the head of the TFPC and has been actively campaigning against piracy, one of the major issues in Tamil cinema.

OneIndia News
Caught on cam: AIADMK MLA distributes money, liquor to cadres

India

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An AIADMK MLA has been caught on camera distributing money and liquor to party cadres. MLA Kanakaraj is seen in the video purportedly distributing money to cadres ahead of the MG Ramachandran birth centenary celebrations. While the origin of the video is unclear, it shows the AIADMK MLA's conversation with a party worker entrusted with the responsibility of gathering people for a public address.

Kanakaraj, AIADMK MLA from Sulur is seen in the video handing over 8-10 notes of Rs 2,000 denomination to a party worker along with a carton box said to be of liquor. The leader is seen telling the party worker that people would be taken to a public address and given food and water and will be allowed to leave the venue only after the 'minister' leaves.

Kanakaraj is infamous for scaling the wall of Koovathur resort earlier this year when Sasikala Natarajan had herded AIADMK MLAs after a spilt in the party. Kanakaraj was also caught in the eye of a storm after he confessed about money and gold being offered to MLAs to support either camp of the AIADMK in a sting operation conducted by a private television channel.

When asked about the video footage showing him distributing money, the MLA remain unfazed and claimed that the practice was 'common' among all political parties. No official word has come from the AIADMK if any action will be taken against the MLA.

OneIndia News
Congress leader Chidambaram accuses BJP of playing communal card in Gujarat

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Dec 4: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram accused the BJP of playing communal politics for terming Gujarat leaders Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani as "HAJ" and said there was no reason why the youths of the state not accept Congress after Punjab.

In a series of tweets, Chidambaram said Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti leader Hardik Patel, OBC leader Alpesh Thakore and SC/ST leader Jignesh Mevani were articulating the demands of Gujarati youths for jobs and development and their campaign should not be "trivialised".

"Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakor and Jignesh Mevani are sons of the soil of Gujarat. To call them HAJ is playing the communal card and divisive politics," he tweeted. Chidambaram's comments come after a poster was released on the social media showing upcoming Gujarat elections as a face-off between "HAJ" and "RAM", which stands for (Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay) Rupani, BJP chief Amit (Shah) and (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi.

The former union finance and home minister said large sections of youth of Gujarat have rallied behind Patel, Thakor and Mevani and they have not accepted the BJP. "Youth of Punjab accepted Congress. So did youth of Goa and Manipur before the elections were stolen by the BJP. Why would the youth of Gujarat not accept Congress?," he asked.

The two-phase assembly elections for the 182-seat Gujarat assembly will be held on December 9 and December 14. The counting of votes will take place on December 18.

PTI
Cyclone Ockhi: Rescue ops to continue till all fishermen brought back

India

pti-PTI

Thiruvananthapuram, December 4: Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said search and rescue operations in high seas would not be stopped or diluted till all fishermen, who are missing since Cyclone Ockhi hit Kerala shores, were brought back safe.

Naval ships, helicopters, Coast Guard vessels and Air Force planes are engaged in the rescue and relief operations to track down the 100 odd missing fishermen.

Talking to reporters after a meeting with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to review steps taken by the Centre and the state, Sitharaman said, "Search and rescue operations will continue...There will not be any dilution of operations."

"We want to make sure that each and every fishermen who had gone from Kerala comes back safe," the Minister, who had earlier visited Vizhinjam and Poonthura fishing hamlets, from where most of the fishermen have been reported missing, said.

Through proper channel, Kerala can send its recommendations with regard to hike in compensation to families of fishermen who had lot their kin and equipment, she said adding she would brief Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Agriculture Minister, on the ground realities here. "They (fishing community) are in deep distress.. I can see it," she said.

Sitharaman said fishermen who had gone much before the cyclone warning, probably 15 days ago, had been spotted in the sea and were given food and water.

"So I will not lose hope even for a minute.. If boats that had gone 15 days ago had come back with fishermen alive, we will make every attempt to bring everybody back," she said.

The demand of the fishermen to include some of their men in the rescue team has been accepted and already 11 of them have joined the Navy boats and helicopters, she added. "This is the time to keep my focus on rescue operations," she said.

Earlier, addressing the fishermen, Sitharaman assured them that there would be no laxity in the search operations.. However, the local fishermen alleged that there was lack of coordination in rescue operations.

It was an emotionally charged atmosphere at the two fishing villages as women wailing and weeping for the safe return of their husbands and brothers came together to hear the minister, while the menfolk raised slogans.

"I speak with folded hands...Please listen to me peacefully...The warning was given on November 29...We started search operations from November 30...The Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force began their work. Many people were saved," she said.

"Many people have come back to their families...We have not stopped searching for them even now," she said, adding warships are also engaged in search operations.

So much efforts, not even witnessed when the tsunami had hit the Indian coast, were being taken now, the minister, who arrived here from Kanyakumari this morning, said. State Fisheries minister, Mercykutty and Devaswom minister, Kadakampally Surendran accompanied Sitharaman.

Pastor of a local church at Vizhinjam said the search operations should continue intensively and the compensation should be disbursed by state and central governments in a time-bound manner. In a tweet yesterday, she had said the Navy rescued 121 fishermen from Kerala and Air Force rescued 15.

While the Coast Guard saved 114 from Kerala, merchant vessels and trawlers saved 36 off the coast of Kerala and Lakshwadeep islands.

PTI
PM Modi should admit that demonetistion a failure: Owaisi on cash seizure in UP

Demonetisation baby, Khazanchi, turns 1, Akhilesh joins the birthday bash in UP

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Lucknow, Dec 4: Saifai in Etawah, Uttar Pradesh on Sunday celebrated an unusual birthday. The birthday bash was also joined by Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, as Saifai is considered to be a stronghold of the party.

It was the first birthday of Khazanchi Nath, the boy who was born while his mother was standing in a bank queue in Kanpur, UP, last year following demonetisation.

The baby boy after his birth was named Khazanchi, which in Hindi means cashier, to stress on the fact that he was born under extraordinary circumstances when the entire nation was facing cash crisis after the announcement of demonetisation.

The demonetisation or note ban was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8 last year to fight against black money, corruption and terror funding. Due to demonetisation, high-value currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 were scrapped immediately which led to massive cash crunch across the country for several months.

"Etawah: Birthday of a child Khazanchi Nath, born while his mother was standing in a queue outside a bank last year, celebrated by Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav in Saifai," tweeted ANI.

Etawah: Birthday of a child Khazanchi Nath, born while his mother was standing in a queue outside a bank last year, celebrated by Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav in Saifai. pic.twitter.com/5rTlvGmAUi  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) December 3, 2017

The irony is that although Khazanchi's name stands for cashier, the boy's family is very poor. In fact, his mother is a polio patient and his father died a few months before his birth due to tuberculosis. Khazanchi also has four elder siblings.

After the boy's birth, Akhilesh, the then CM of UP, announced a financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh for Khazanchi's family.

On Sunday, during the birthday celebrations, Akhilesh once again attacked the Narendra Modi government for ignoring the plight of the poor people like Khazanchi's family and failing to fulfill the promises made by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the betterment of underprivileged section.

            ,         .               .  -            . pic.twitter.com/c15VjlBsCi  Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) December 3, 2017

On December 2, 2016, Khazanchi was born on the stairs of a bank in Kanpur, UP, after his mother, Sarvesha Devi waited for over five hours to collect cash following demonetisation.

The opposition parties, including the Congress and the SP, have been constantly targeting the Modi government for hastily imposing the demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) that have allegedly led to massive problems for the commoners and failed to bring about the positive results as promised by the BJP government while announcing the twin economic measures.

OneIndia News
Farooq Abdullah dubs 'politics of hate' as biggest threat to country

India

pti-PTI

Jammu, Dec 4: Urging the propagators of "politics of hate" to stay away from Jammu and Kashmir, National Conference (NC) chief Farooq Abdullah cautioned the people of the state against "communal polarisation" ahead of the scheduled panchayat polls.

"There is no threat to any religion. If there is a danger at all, it is the politics of hate, which has been serving as a shield to the communal elements," Abdullah said at a meeting of senior party leaders at the NC headquarters in Jammu on Sunday.

He asked the "believers of hate politics" to keep off Jammu and Kashmir, which he described as a "shining example of amity and communal harmony". Seeking the participation of the people in the panchayat polls, the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister cautioned them against the "machinations of the divisive forces, which may try to vitiate the atmosphere by engineering a communal divide".

Terming the panchayat polls crucial for strengthening democracy at the grassroot-level in the state, Abdullah exhorted the NC cadre to gear up for the "big challenge".

"Notwithstanding that the spirit of the Panchayati Raj system had been trampled by the PDP-BJP dispensation (in the state), which amended the Panchayati Raj Act, 1989, the NC believes that the panchayats are the engines for political empowerment of the people," he said.

Referring to the amendment in the statute with regard to an indirect election of a "sarpanch" (village head), Abdullah said it would weaken the system and lead to manipulations.

PTI
Exclusive Interview: Find out more about Fametick Media and First HelpCare founder Afzal Anis

Digital India: The four pillars of 5G Era listed out by PM Modi

Govt calls inputs for White Paper on Data Protection

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

The Government of India has invited inputs from people to ensure the growth of a safe and secure Digital India. 'White Paper of the Committee of Experts on Data Protection Framework for India' headed by Justice B.N. Srikrishna will Incorporate citizens' ideas in the document.

The Committee of Experts has been to study various issues relating to data protection in India, make specific suggestions on principles underlying a data protection bill and draft such a bill. The objective is to "ensure the growth of the digital economy while keeping personal data of citizens secure and protected."

People can share their ideas under four different parts:

Scope and Exemptions

Grounds of Processing, Obligation on Entities and Individual Rights

Regulation and Enforcement

General Comments

Who is on the expert committee?

Chairman

Justice B.N. Srikrishna

Members

Smt. Aruna Sundararajan

Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey

Dr. Ajay Kumar

Prof. Rajat Moona

Dr. Gulshan Rai

Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan

Dr. Arghya Sengupta

Smt. Rama Vedashree

The submission made through the Web Form is preferred. The deadline for submission of responses is 31st December 2017. Click here: https://innovate.mygov.in/data-protection-in-india/

OneIndia News
Cong for Muslims, BJP for Hindus: Did Rahuls temple visits in Guj help to bust the myth?

Gujarat elections: PM Modi congratulates Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj'

India

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By Chennabasaveshwar

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PM Modi attacked Congress party for following dynastic politics | Oneindia News

Prime Minister Narendra Modi likened Congress party's dynastic politics to 'Aurangzeb Raj' during an election rally in Valsad's Dharampur.

Invoking Mani Shankar Aiyar's justification of dynastic politics, PM Modi said "Mani Shankar Aiyar said that 'did elections happen during Mughal rule? After Jehangir, Shahjahan came, was any election held? After Shahjahan, it was understood Aurangzeb will be the leader'. So Congress accepts its a family party? We don't want this Aurangzeb rule."

"I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj.' For us, the well being of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," PM Modi said.

He alleged that the Congress is spreading disinformation against BJP, saying Gujarat people are not naive to believe what they are told.

PM Modi said, "Disinformation like BJP does this and that against Muslims has been spread. This family party made it their main agenda to spread disinformation about BJP. But Gujarat people are not so naive, they have now become sensitive and aware of disinformation."

"Congress can't either tolerate or accept leaders from Gujarat. They have always defamed Gujarat," he added. He further said that Muslim community knew the real nature of Congress party's secularism.

In a veiled attack against Rahul Gandhi's visits to temple in Gujarat, PM said, "Congress would go out of the way to show their secularism but now we are all seeing what they are doing in this election, where they are going. Unfortunately for them, Muslims know their real nature."

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Portals of Gangotri shrine close for winters, devotees can worship at Mukhba village now

Anand Mahindra's tweet about UPI at country's 'last tea shop' is every Indian's emotion

India stepping-up road construction near China border, work to link Lipulekh Pass to begin in a week

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

With China stepping up road construction work near border adjoining India, the Border Roads Organization has also decided to speed up the work so that India does not lag behind.

The construction work of a road in Uttarakhand's Pithoragarh district is likely to be completed in four months.

Improving infrastructure in border areas is vital as it greatly bolsters India's strategic position in the region. It enables quick movement of troops and artillery equipments in the event of hostilities.

Some two-and-a-half months back, India forces were locked in a stand-off at Doklam near Sikkim. The stand-off began after Indian troops stopped the Chinese from constructing a road in disputed region which is a trijunction of India, China and Bhutan borders.

The road in Uttarakhand is being constructed from Ghatiabagar to the Lipulekh Pass. Lipulekh Pass is the last Indian post near the China border in Uttarakhand.

"The track that links villages in the valley with the rest of the district, will remain closed from Monday until April 3, 2018, for the Border Road Organization to finish constructing the 6km rocky stretch of the route that will link the state to the last security post on the India-China border," Pandey was quoted as saying by HT.

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Story first published: Monday, December 4, 2017, 17:54 [IST]
Is Gujarat model flawed? Sam Pitroda stresses on 'bottom-up development'

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Gandhinagar, Dec 4: In the run-up to the Gujarat Assembly elections, the opposition Congress has been continuously targetting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the alleged failure of the much-talked-about "Gujarat model of development", which is one of the main reasons behind Narendra Modi becoming the Prime Minister of the country in 2014.

Joining the criticism against the "Gujarat model of development", touted to be the success mantra behind the state's all-round development under then chief minister Modi, is Sam Pitroda, who is known as the father of Indian telecom.

In fact, Pitroda, who was instrumental in launching India's telecom revolution in the mid-1980s under then PM Rajiv Gandhi, debunked the "Gujarat model of development" propagated by the BJP.

Pitroda said Gujarat "needs a bottom-up approach" discarding the top-down method that favours only big corporates at the cost of poor and marginalised sections.

"Gujarat needs a Gandhian model of bottom-up development. Development should not be assessed in terms of how many lakhs or crores of rupees you can bring in an investment at global investors' conferences. It doesn't mean you dislike big corporates. But what will transform Gujarat is what do you do for the poor," Pitroda told IANS.

The telecom inventor and entrepreneur is said to have played a major role in drafting the Congress manifesto for the Gujarat Assembly elections. The elections in the state are scheduled on December 9 and 14. The results of the Gujarat Assembly elections and the Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections, held on November 9, will be declared together on December 18, stated the Election Commission (EC).

Pitroda, the former Telecom Commission chairperson, questioned the growth figures. "The growth figures in terms of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) look good, but what does it translate into for the ordinary Gujaratis?" he asked.

The telecom inventor and entrepreneur, who is known to be close to the Gandhi family, is said to have played a pivotal role in organising Rahul Gandhi's recent visit and engagements in the United States (US). He has recently toured Gujarat extensively to talk to various groups.

Pitroda stated that Gujarat needs a new design of development as the gap between the haves and the have-nots have increased.

He added that in the alternative narrative of governance in Gujarat, if the Congress comes to power, would be the creation of a Gujarat Advisory Council on the lines of the National Advisory Council, which was initially formed during the time of the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA-I) government in 2004 and continued during UPA -II (2009-14) to properly guide the government for an egalitarian development model.

During his interaction with farmers, Dalits, women, fishermen, traders, and NGOs in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Rajkot, Surat and Jamnagar, 75-year-old Pitroda said there is a tremendous discontent among the people of Gujarat.

He stressed on the need to end privatisation of education and provide access to healthcare to one and all. "We need to make medical education affordable. We need doctors in rural areas so that the health system does not collapse," he said.

Pitroda alleged that women are facing a lot of trouble in the state as most often victims of crimes don't get justice.

He added traders and small and medium entrepreneurs were groaning under the adverse impact of demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

"Overall I found youth, women, farmers, Dalits, and Muslims dissatisfied," Pitroda said.

As the campaigning in the poll-bound state has reached its zenith, both PM Modi and Congress vice-president Rahul are busy attacking each other in rallies.

OneIndia News
Is Rahul Gandhi Congress darling or devil?

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Dec 4: Probably in years, for the first time, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has managed to steal the limelight from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the all-time favourite of the media.

On Monday, it's Rahul, Rahul, Rahul...all over the media. Be it his supporters or critics, everyone, for a change, forgot about Modi and were all chanting RaGa's (as Rahul is also known as) tunes, literally.

It was a 'big' Monday for Rahul, as the scion of the Gandhi family filed his nomination papers for the election to the Congress president's post. Reports say by Monday evening, Rahul will be crowned as the Congress chief unopposed, ending the 19-year-old party presidentship of his mother Sonia Gandhi.

While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and critics of the Congress have called the presidential polls in the Congress a "farce", the grand old party maintains the entire election process is "democratic".

All the drama surrounding Rahul's elevation has come at a time when both the BJP and the Congress are fully engrossed in campaigning for the Gujarat Assembly elections 2017. The elections in Modi's home turf are scheduled on December 9 and 14.

Just minutes after Rahul filed his nomination papers for the Congress presidential elections in the national capital, Modi took a dig at the Congress and its would-be chief at an election rally in Dharampur, Gujarat.

Modi called the Congress a "family party", where the Gandhi family members always enjoy the top posts. In fact he compared the Gandhi family with the Mughal dynasty where the sons had always inherited their father's kingdom, taking a jibe at Rahul becoming the head of the Congress in a few hours from now.

"I congratulate the Congress on their 'Aurangzeb Raj'. For us, the well-being of the people matters and 125 crore Indians are our high command," said Modi.

PM Modi has often addressed Rahul as a "shehzada" (prince) of the Congress and alleged that the party follows dynastic politics. Taking a cue from Modi, Congress rebel leader Shehzad Poonawalla, who is openly opposing Rahul's elevation as the Congress boss, has also called the Congress VP a "shehzada".

Poonawalla had alleged that the party president's election is rigged to favour Rahul.

Amid protests and allegations over Rahul's elevation as the Congress chief, staying true to "family values" like a Bollywood sanskari drama, the Gandhi scion was seen with veteran and top Congress leaders as he filed his nomination papers.

Rahul, who has been the Congress' VP for almost five years, filed nomination papers at the party's 24 Akbar Road headquarters in Delhi on Monday morning with a bevy of leaders surrounding him.

Before filing his nomination papers, Rahul met former PM Manmohan Singh and former President Pranab Mukherjee, to seek their blessings, party sources said. At the party office, he was seen hugging veteran Congress leaders Sheila Dikshit and Mohsina Kidwai.

"Rahul is a darling of the Congress and he will carry forward the great traditions of the party," said former PM Singh.

In fact, the former PM is the first proposer in one of four sets of nomination papers that the 47-year-old leader has filed. Sonia is the first proposer in another set.

As Singh called Rahul a "darling", Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath lashed out at the Congress calling the party a "burden to the nation". He also made fun of Rahul stating that the Congress VP might help to bring an end to the Congress' existence in future as the party is witnessing one poll defeat after another since the Lok Sabha elections of 2014.

"The Congress has become a burden to the nation. It would be good if after Rahul ji's elevation once and for all this (the Congress) burden is removed," Yogi was quoted as saying by ANI.

Now, only time will tell whether Rahul would be able to prove himself a "darling" of the Congress by regaining its lost glory or his tenure as the party president would prove "fatal" for the grand old party.

OneIndia News
Navy Day 2017: PM Modi extends greetings

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

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Navy Day 2017 : PM Modi greet brave hearts of Indian Navy Oneindia News

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday greeted Indian naval personnel on the occasion of Navy Day 2017. "On Navy Day, greetings to all navy personnel and their families," Modi tweeted.

Navy Day in India is observed on 4 December every year to celebrate the achievements and role of the naval force. The Indian Navy is the marine branch of the Indian Armed Forces and is led by the President of India as Commander-in-Chief. The Maratha Emperor, Chhatrapati Shivaji Bhosle of the 17th century is considered as "Father of the Indian Navy".

Navy Day in India is celebrated to commemorate the courageous attack on the Karachi harbor during the Indo-Pakistan war (on 4 December 1971) by the Indian Naval Missile boats as well as to reverence all the martyrs of that war. Recently a movie was also released in the name "The Ghazi Attack" that is about the Indian Navy's brave attack on Pakistan's Submarine Ghazi during the Indo-Pak War of 1971.

On the occasion of Navy Day, award-winning innovations by the force will be on display at the "Innovation Pavilion" put up at the Navy House in New Delhi. These include the innovations by Indian Naval Ships 'Kuthar' and 'Vikramaditya', which have been selected as the winner and runner-up respectively in the 'Operational Units' category.

The innovations by the Weapons Electronic Systems Engineering Establishment (WESEE) and Naval Aircraft Yard, Kochi were selected as the winner and runner-up respectively in the 'Shore Establishments' category.

Armed forces chiefs at Amar Jawan Admiral Sunil Lanba Chif of Naval Staff , General Bipin Rawat COAS and Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa pay homage at the Amar Jawan Jyoti India Gate on the occasion of Navy Day.

Courtesy: @indiannavy Admiral Sunil Lanba interacts Admiral Sunil Lanba CNS interacting with school children at India Gate on the occasion of Navy Day. Courtesy: @indiannavy Operation 'SAHAYAM' Boeing P8i located Fishing Vessel Jehova (with 8 crew on board) at sea off Kerala coast. All fishermen rescued by INS Chennai on Sunday around 6 pm. Courtesy: @indiannavy Naval officers march during rehearsal Naval officers march during rehearsal for the beating the retreat ceremony as part of the Navy Week celebrations, in Mumbai on Saturday. PTI Photo Naval personnel in anchor formation Happy Navy Day......Indian

Navy.....Anytime, Anywhere, Everytime......Combat Ready Force for

National Security. Courtesy: @indiannavy OneIndia News
Newborn found alive after being declared dead: Max Hospital sacks two doctors

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Delhi's Max Hospital has sacked two doctors in connection with the horrific case where one of the newborn twins was declared dead but was later found alive.

A woman delivered twin extreme pre-term babies on Thursday after which the hospital in Delhi's Shalimar Bagh declared one of them dead. When the family members were taking the baby to a cremation ground, they noticed movement and took the newborn to another hospital where it was declared alive.

"While inquiry by the expert group which includes external experts from IMA is still in process, we have decided to terminate the services of the two treating doctors, Dr. A P Mehta and Dr. Vishal Gupta in the case relating to the twin extreme pre-term babies," news agency ANI quoted Max Hospital.

The lady's brother-in-law Deepak said that the twins were allegedly wrapped in plastic sheets and handed over to the family.

[Delhi hospital declares twins dead, family finds boy alive just before last rites]

The police had registered a case against the Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh.

The Delhi government's health department has also launched a probe into the matter and will release a detailed report later. Delhi's Health Minister Satyendra Jain on Saturday said that the hospital's license could be cancelled, if found guilty of medical negligence.

OneIndia News
#RaGaPollFarce: Protest against Rahul becoming Congress president gains momentum

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Dec 4: First, it was Rahul Gandhi himself who was reluctant to wear the "crown" of the Congress president. Now, when he is 'mentally' prepared to don the hat of the party chief and is all set to file his nomination papers for the election to the Congress president's post on Monday, a mini-rebellion is brewing within and outside the grand old party to stop the "dynast" from holding the top post in his party.

The protest over Rahul becoming the Congress chief started a few days ago when Maharashtra Congress secretary Shehzad Poonawalla openly attacked the Congress VP.

In fact, Poonawalla also wanted to contest the election for the Congress president's post but was not given a chance to do so allegedly by his party. Poonawalla had alleged that the party president's election is rigged to favour Rahul.

After Sunday when Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised Poonawalla for exposing the rigging that is taking place in the Congress presidential poll, the voices of dissent against Rahul's elevation gained more momentum.

On Monday, the hashtag--#RaGaPollFarce--was trending on Twitter. According to the critics of the Congress and Rahul (who is also known as RaGa), the grand old party practices dynastic politics as always a "Gandhi" gets a chance to become the party head.

Here are some of the tweets opposing Rahul's elevation to the party's top post:

Out of 132 years of Congress Party Nehru Gandhi Family has been at helm for 41 years (excluding RaGa ) ,he is the 6th member of family to be party President. #RaGaPollFarce  MAHESH (@gochermahesh) December 4, 2017

The whole country knows that Congress functions as a family party: GVL Narasimha Rao, BJP #RaGaPollFarce pic.twitter.com/HGVHQJgwRC  TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) December 4, 2017

#RaGaPollFarce Great change ahead in Congress. 

The fifth generation of Nehru family is going to rule their private enterprise again. Raga will definitely finish this tradition as well as congress.

Big good luck to @INCIndia @ShivrajKeSipahi @prafull07sharma @sanyogs  Dr Piyush Saxena (@DrPiyushSaxena1) December 4, 2017

"A youngster Shehzad has exposed the rigging that is taking place in the Congress president poll. And Shehzad is a senior Congress leader in Maharashtra. The Congress Party has tried to muzzle his voice and wants to even remove him from their social media groups. What tolerance is this?" the PM said at an election rally in Surendranagar, Gujarat, on Sunday.

"Thank you @PMOIndia (Prime Minister's Office). I will continue my fight against dynasty politics -- I will not be cowed down by attempts to silence me," said Poonawalla on Twitter.

Rubbishing the allegations that the election has been rigged, Congress party spokesperson Sushmita Dev said, "There has been criticism on whether the Congress election is democratic or not. I would say that this is such an election which is being supervised by the Election Commission of India (ECI)."

Dev said when one talks about electoral democracy, here is full transparency in these polls as they are held as per rules prescribed by the Election Commission (EC).

OneIndia News
If Cong is elected in HP, decision on 1 lakh govt jobs, pension scheme in 1st cabinet meet: Rahul

Rahul's 6th query to Modi takes a dig at rise in youth unemployment under BJP rule

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Dec 4: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is diligently posting one question after another to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a daily basis on Twitter in the run-up to the Gujarat Assembly elections 2017.

The Assembly elections in Modi's home turf are scheduled on December 9 and 14. The counting of the votes will take place on December 18, as stated by the Election Commission (EC).

On Monday, before he went to file his nomination papers for the election to the post of Congress party's president, Rahul on Twitter asked Modi his sixth question.

In his sixth question, Rahul criticised the Modi government for the rise in unemployment among youth and non-implementation of recommendations by the 7th pay commission in regard to the salary of fixed and contract workers.

"BJP ki doohori maar, ek taraf yuva berozgar, dusri taraf fixed pagar aur contract karamchari bezaar (The BJP's twin blow, on the one hand, the youth are unemployed, on the other, the fixed and contract workers are suffering)," he wrote on Twitter.

"Saatve vetan aayog mein Rs 18, 000 maasik hone ke bawajood fixed aur contract pagaar Rs 5,500 aur Rs 10, 000 kyun? (Despite the 7th pay commission recommendations suggesting Rs 18,000 per month as minimum pay, why is the pay for the fixed and contract workers at Rs 5,500 and Rs 10,000?)" Rahul questioned Modi on Twitter.

The Congress leader also tweeted a video of an elderly lady speaking about the poor pay scale of teachers.

22   #__



- 6 :



   

   

  

     



7    18000         5500  10000 ? pic.twitter.com/KngeBgLlVp  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) December 4, 2017

Rahul has sought accountability from the ruling BJP for the promises the saffron party made to the state in previous polls. "22 salon ka hisaab, Gujarat mange jawaab (Gujarat demands answers for 22 years of the BJP rule)," is the tagline of Rahul's posers to the PM.

The Congress VP previously asked Modi why the people of Gujarat should pay up for the "financial mismanagement" and publicity by him.

He also asked whether it will take 45 more years to provide new houses to Gujaratis as the incumbent BJP government in the state has provided only 4.72 lakh houses in the last five years against the promised 50 lakh.

Rahul asked the PM why public money was "squandered" in purchasing power at higher rates from private companies. Asking the third question in the series "a question a day", Rahul asked Modi why the coffers of four private firms were filled between 2002-2016 by buying the power of Rs 62,549 crore.

Although Rahul has already asked six questions to his main rival, Modi, till now the PM did not reply to any of his queries. The election campaign in poll-bound Gujarat has really turned ugly as both Rahul and Modi are engaged in a war of words and thus trying to stay away from discussing main issues concerning the voters.

OneIndia News
'Religion before political career,' says BJP MP Pratap Simha day after clashes in Mysuru

India

oi-Anusha

Recommended Video

BJP MP's arrest sparks off violent clashes in Mysuru, 'religion first,' says Simha | Oneindia News

A day after his arrest led to violent clashes in Mysuru, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP and Yuva Morcha chief Pratap Simha said that protecting his religion came first. Simha was arrested on Sunday at Bilikere by the Mysuru rural police after he attempted to breach police barricade to take part in a religious procession at Hunsur.

Pratap Simha who was travelling by his official car to Mysuru was stopped at a check-post. Angry at not being allowed to proceed and take part in Hanuman Jayanti celebrations, which was already prohibited by the police, the MP took the wheel and rammed his vehicle into a barricade. He proceeded another 20 kms when his vehicle was stopped once again by the police. Simha was arrested and booked under IPC sections 353 for assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of duty and 279 for rash driving or riding in a public way and violating police orders. He was released hours later.

Released. But protecting my religion n tradition is much more important and above than my political future.  Pratap Simha (@mepratap) December 3, 2017

His arrest led to violent protests in Mysuru where his supporters gathered at a temple and shouted slogans against the police and Siddaramaiah led Congress government in the state. The MP was to led a Hanuman Jayanti celebration but was arrested en route. Police took to mild lathi-charge to disperse the protesting crowds when they retaliated by pelting stones.

Protesters damaged two buses and attacked policemen on duty. Violent clashes were witnessed at various places but the situation was brought under control. The bone of contention was how the police allowed Eid-Milad celebrations on Saturday including processions but refused to grant permission for Hanuman Jayanti rally.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah maintained that there was no discrimination but only preventive measures since the BJP wanted to take a rally along a certain route that could lead to tension. He added that Simha was only attempting to politicise the issue but the state government was not in a position to remain a mute spectator.

OneIndia News
Shabir Shah's PMLA case: Court denies bail to hawala dealer

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Dec 4: Alleged hawala dealer Mohammad Aslam Wani was denied bail by a Delhi court in a decade- old money laundering case which also involves Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah.

Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma dismissed the bail application filed by the accused, saying the allegations levelled against him were serious and the stage was not fit for the grant of relief. In the order, the court also considered the arguments advanced by the ED's special public prosecutor N K Matta, who had said that the only link to unearth the entire terror conspiracy the agency had were Shah and Wani, both currently in judicial custody, and if granted the relief, Wani will vanish and never be caught.

Opposing the application, Matta had also claimed that the allegations against Wani were of very serious economic offences which "could disturb the financial condition of the country". In his application filed through advocate M S Khan, 36- year-old Wani has claimed that the probe regarding him was complete and he was not required for further investigation. "They (ED investigators) have been investigating the case for a decade and still they are seeking more time. During this entire period, the accused was always available," Khan said.

The advocate said a 2010 trial court judgement clearing Wani of terror funding charges in 2005 case, based on which the current money laundering case was lodged in 2007, was confirmed by the Delhi High Court on October 31. "The effect of confirmation of acquittal of the applicant (Wani) is that there is no material left to connect him with the co-accused (Shah) as it was not proved that money was recovered or was meant to be used for any illegal purpose (hawala)," he said.

The ED had in September filed a charge sheet against Wani and Shah, whose bail application in the case was also dismissed on August 22. Wani was arrested by the ED from Srinagar on August 6 with the help of the state police and is currently in judicial custody. Shabir Shah was arrested by the agency from Srinagar on July 26.

The ED action against the two was in pursuance of an August 2005 case in which the Delhi Police's Special Cell had arrested Wani, who is alleged to have claimed he had passed on Rs 2.25 crore to Shah. In 2010, a Delhi court had cleared Wani of terror funding charges but convicted him under the Arms Act.

The ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act against Shah and Wani. On August 26, 2005, Wani was apprehended, with the ED claiming to have recovered Rs 63 lakh from him. It was also alleged that the funds were received through hawala channels from the Middle East, along with a large cache of ammunition.

PTI
Only women to walk with Rahul Gandhi in Bharat Jodo Yatra on Indira Gandhi Jayanti

'Shehzad hoon, shehzada nahin': Poonawalla attacks Rahul, thanks Modi for praises

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Recommended Video

Shehzad Poonawalla calls Rahul Gandhi 'Shehzada', slams Congress party | Oneindia News

New Delhi, Dec 4: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's elevation as the party president seems to be a jinxed one.

It has been a while since we have been hearing about Rahul taking over as the Congress chief. After much dilly-dallying on his part, now when Rahul is ready to formally take all the responsibility of the Congress as its head, his elevation to the party's top post has been mired by controversy after Maharashtra Congress secretary Shehzad Poonawalla openly attacked the Congress VP.

According to reports, Rahul will file his nomination papers for the election to the Congress president's post on Monday, accompanied by a host of senior leaders including Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Continuing his attack against the Gandhi scion, on Sunday, Poonawalla called Rahul "shehzada". The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and critics of Rahul often call him "shehzada" (Prince), to highlight the fact that the Congress VP is enjoying position and power, not because of his talent or leadership quality, but as he belongs to the Gandhi family.

The critics of the Congress and the Gandhi family accuse them of practicing "dynastic politics" by promoting members of the Gandhi family.

Talking to reporters in the national capital, Poonawalla said that the Congress had "no place for Shehzad (himself), but for shehzada (Rahul Gandhi)."

"I have been trying to raise the most important issue of dynastic politics and fair opportunity to the non-dynasts within the party for the past six to eight years. I also wrote to Rahul ji on this.

"Instead of answering my claims about delegates being fixed and one family one ticket rule--they are making baseless allegations against me that I am a BJP agent. I have to become a whistle-blower. I am not spineless like the other Congress leaders," the 30-year-old was quoted as saying by ANI.

"Main Shehzad hoon, shehzada nahin (I am Shehzad Poonawalla, not a prince like Rahul Gandhi). They don't have a place for me," he added.

In fact, Poonawalla also wanted to contest the election for the Congress president's post but was not given a chance to do so allegedly by his party. Poonawalla had alleged that the party president's election is rigged to favour Rahul.

The rebel leader also accused the Congress of lying about stating that Poonawalla was not a party leader.

Poonawalla said, "If I was not a member of the Congress Party, why does my name appear in a letter signed by Ashok Chavan in April 2016 appointing me as Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee secretary?" He showed the letter to the media as the proof.

In the same press briefing, Poonawalla thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for praising him for his "bravery".

"The person whom I criticised (PM Modi) is supporting me, while the party (Congress) for which I gave my life is criticising me and saying that I am not a member of it."

During a rally in Gujarat on Sunday, Modi praised Poonawalla for exposing the Congress for its lies.

"A youngster Shehzad has exposed the rigging that is taking place in the Congress president poll. And Shehzad is a senior Congress leader in Maharashtra. The Congress Party has tried to muzzle his voice and wants to even remove him from their social media groups. What tolerance is this?" the PM said at a rally in Surendranagar.

"Thank you @PMOIndia (Prime Minister's Office). I will continue my fight against dynasty politics -- I will not be cowed down by attempts to silence me," said Poonawalla on Twitter.

"Sardar Patel was denied his due years ago. I contacted @OfficeOfRG (Rahul Gandhi's office) even today (Sunday) asking his office to meet me so I could give them proof about the rigged election of Rahul Gandhi -- they insulted me just like Patel must have been insulted," he added.

Poonawalla wrote: "Tomorrow, voters of the Congress will give a befitting reply to Shehzada for denying us Shehzads the right to challenge the Crowning of the Prince -- will give details tomorrow morning -- hope not eliminated like Safdar Hashmi -- will avenge Sardar Patel's insult too."

"Analyse the truth friends: Even today I criticised @PMOIndia (like always) yet @Narendra Modi ji praised me and dynasty slaves of @OfficeOfRG who I served selflessly for 8-9 years (who cheer for Yashwant, Shourie) removed me!! Emergency has returned to dynasty's DNA?" he tweeted.

Analyse the truth friends: even today I criticised @PMOIndia (like always) yet @narendramodi ji praised me & dynasty slaves of @OfficeOfRG who I served selflessly for 8-9years (who cheer for Yashwant,Shourie) removed me!! Emergency has returned to dynasty's DNA? https://t.co/srpte76NlS  Shehzad Jai Hind (@Shehzad_Ind) December 3, 2017

The protest by rebel leader Poonawalla is likely to cause some serious damage to the Congress during the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections, scheduled on December 9 and 14.

OneIndia News
We cannot wait longer now: SC to hear Vijay Mallyas contempt case in January for final disposal

UK court says Vijay Mallya has case of fraud to answer

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

The extradition trial of Vijay Mallya, wanted in India on charges of Rs 9,000 crores fraud and money laundering, on Monday began at a UK court here, with the prosecution asserting that the embattled liquor baron had a "case of fraud" to answer.

Mallya has arrived at the London's Westminster Magistrates Court for the hearing in extradition case on Monday. The trial will last until December 14, with December 8 marked a non-sitting day.

As per latest reports, the hearing has been delayed because of a fire alarm at the Westminster court. The court has been evacuated due to the alarm.

A special CBI director Rakesh Asthana along with three other senior officials would also attend the trial.

When confronted by the media personnel, Mallya said, "I did not escape from India...All allegations against me are fabricated."

The 61-year-old businessman, out on bail on an extradition warrant executed by Scotland Yard earlier this year, was released by the judge on the same bail conditions and was asked to appear at court on December 4.

The UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which is arguing the case against Mallya on behalf of the Indian authorities, had presented additional "supplemental" charges of money laundering to the previous charges of fraud at the last hearing in the case on October 3.

The previous fraud charges relate to Mallya's now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines owing more than Rs 9,000 crore to various Indian banks. The UB Group chief has been in a self-imposed exile in the UK since he left India on March 2, 2016. The CPS said it was technically re-filing its extradition request in court after the new charges "superseded" the previous ongoing case.

The judge, Chief Magistrate Emma Louise Arbuthnot, agreed to formally re-open a fresh case while keeping the same time-table as set before. However, she had concurred with Mallya's defence team that if further evidence keeps coming in it could put the December 4 trial date at "risk" before releasing him on the same bail conditions as before.

OneIndia News
In regular touch, trying for consular access: MEA on detention of 8 Indians in Qatar

Amid boycott, Emir of Qatar to attend Gulf Cooperation Council summit

International

pti-PTI

Doha, December 4: Doha's foreign minister Monday said Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani will attend a crucial summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council this coming week.

Speaking at a forum, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al- Thani said Qatar's leader had accepted the invitation to attend, amid the region's worst political crisis in years.

"I will attend the ministerial council tomorrow and the emir will attend the summit," said the minister. He added that Qatar had not yet seen the summit agenda, but the current crisis would be discussed at the meeting. "It is important that the GCC system remains alive," said the minister.

The emir received an invitation from Kuwait at the end of last month to attend the GCC summit. It was the first such invitation during the ongoing and increasingly bitter Saudi-led diplomatic boycott of Doha.

The summit will start on December 5, the six-month anniversary of the start of the crisis. It was unclear who would represent the other members of the GCC at the gathering. On June 5, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt abruptly cut all ties with Qatar over accusations Doha supported extremism and was close to Shiite Iran.

Qatar denies the allegations. Since the beginning of the crisis, all diplomatic communication between Qatar and the boycotting countries has been stopped. Founded in 1981, the GCC is a political and economic union that includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as Oman and Kuwait.

Kuwait and Oman have not taken part in the boycott of the tiny gas-rich emirate, and Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah has acted as a mediator in the crisis.

PTI
Terror in Islamabad: A top secret mission, all for the nation, all for the truth

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Islamabad HC dismisses Sharif's plea to club 3 graft cases

International

pti-PTI

The Islamabad High Court on Monday dismissed ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs plea to club three corruption cases against him.

A two-member bench issued a short order turning down his appeal and said that a detailed judgment would be issued later.

The cases were registered by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on September 8 against Sharif, his family in the Accountability Court Islamabad, following a verdict by Supreme Court in the Panama Papers case.

The accountability court in Islamabad had on November 8 rejected a plea by 67-year-old Sharif to club his cases, which he challenged in the Islamabad High Court.

The IHC had completed the hearing and reserved the judgment on November 23, which it announced today.

The three cases against the Sharif family are related to the Al-Azizia Company and Hill Metal Establishment, Flagship Investment Ltd and the Avenfield (London) properties.

Earlier, the accountability court postponed hearing of graft cases against Sharif until this afternoon due to the expected verdict of the high court.

Sharif along with his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar appeared in the court.

His lawyer Khawaja Harris requested Judge Mohammad Bashir to suspend proceedings and wait for the Islamabad High Courts (IHC) decision on a petition by Sharif to club his three graft cases into one, as all were related to his alleged amassing of assets beyond the known sources of income.

The court after hearing the argument from the NAB prosecutor postponed hearing till 1 pm and allowed Sharif to go home but ordered him to be present when the hearing would restart.

Sharif and his sons, Hassan and Hussain, have been named in all the three NAB cases, while Maryam and her husband Safdar have been named only in the Avenfield case.

Maryam on November 23 had requested exemption from personal appearance from December 5, 2017 to January 5, 2018, while Sharif sought exemption from December 5-12.

Last month, Sharif was indicted in all three cases while his daughter Maryam and her husband Safdar, co-accused with Sharif in only one case, were also indicted along with Sharif.

Sharifs sons Hassan and Hussain have failed to appear in the court despite repeated summons which prompted the court to separate their cases.

Heavy security arrangements were made and hundreds of security personnel deployed around the court premises.

The cases are based on July 28 verdict by the Supreme Court which disqualified Sharif and ordered to launch three corruption cases against him and his family, and one case against finance minister Ishaq Dar in the Panama Papers case.

Dar had been relieved of his duties after the ailing politician, who was declared a proclaimed absconder by a court in the case, requested leave for three months.

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

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Islamophobia in US: Six-year-old says 'Allah', teacher calls police

International

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

A teacher at an elementary school in Texas, US, called the police after a six-year-old boy, suffering from down syndrome, kept repeating "Allah" in the classroom, said reports.

The incident has left six-year-old Mohammad Suleiman's father fuming and he said: "this is discrimination".

The incident took place at a school in Pearland, around 20 miles south of Houston, in Texas. The Pearland Police Department, however, concluded that no further action was needed, according to a PTI report.

The police were informed about the boy by a substitute teacher as the regular teacher had left.

Mohammad's father said that his son was born with Down Syndrome and he has intellectual difficulties.

He said that his son did not speak at all and had the mental capacity of a one-year-old, but the teacher is said to claim that Mohammad could talk.

"They claim that he's a terrorist. This is so stupid, this is discrimination actually. It's not implied discrimination, it's a hundred percent discrimination," a PTI report quoted the father as saying.

OneIndia News
Middle East peace envoy Kushner sets stage for Trump's Jerusalem decision

International

pti-PTI

Washington, December 4: US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and Middle East peace envoy Jared Kushner said Trump is close to a decision on whether to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Palestinian leaders are lobbying desperately against such a move, fearing it could provoke such fury in the Arab world it could sink peace hopes for a generation. But Kushner, the 36-year-old head of a small and tight-knit White House negotiating team, made a rare public appearance to put an optimistic face on his efforts.

"The president's going to make his decision," Kushner told the Saban Forum, choosing not to deny reports Trump will declare Jerusalem Israel's capital on Wednesday. "He's still looking at a lot of different facts and when he makes his decision he'll be the one who wants to tell you. So he'll make sure he does that at the right time."

Tomorrow, Trump must decide whether to sign a legal waiver that would delay plans to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for another six months.

Every US president has done this since 1995, judging the time not ripe for such a move, and Trump is expected to begrudgingly do so for a second time this week. But, according to diplomats and observers, he is also now expected to announce in a speech on Wednesday that he supports Israel's claim on Jerusalem as its capital.

This will likely provoke fury among Palestinians and the wider Arab world and may hamper Kushner's long-shot effort to revamp the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Palestinians have been lobbying regional leaders to oppose the decision and the armed Islamist movement Hamas has threatened to launch a new "intifada".

But Kushner, addressing a sympathetic audience at an annual meeting of Israeli and US policy-makers hosted by businessman Haim Saban, sees grounds for optimism. The real estate developer turned presidential adviser is working closely with Israeli officials and has developed ties with the young Saudi and Emirati monarchs.

He sees an opportunity for peace if the Sunni Arab countries of the region align themselves with Israel in opposition to the threat of Iran. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shares this hope, although he dares hope an accommodation with Arab countries could precede any Palestinian deal.

Kushner, in common with US official thinking under previous administrations, sees an Israeli-Palestinian settlement as coming before any great re-alignment. "You've got to focus on solving the big issue," he told a friendly but frankly skeptical Saban, and an audience of dignitaries and policy experts.

"The regional dynamic plays a big role in what we think the opportunities are because ... a lot of these countries look and say they all want the same thing. "And they look at the regional threats and I think that they see Israel, who is traditionally their foe, is a much more natural ally to them than it was 20 years ago."

"You've a lot of people who want to put this together, but you have to overcome this issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order for that to happen," he said.

Earlier, Netanyahu also addressed the forum by video link from Israel, and also spoke of the opportunity for reconciliation in the region. But his focus was firmly on the threat of Iran, which he again compared to Nazi Germany in its alleged determination to "murder Jews."

His address barely touched on the Palestinian issue but did speak of regional peace, under a longer timeframe than the one Kushner has in mind. "And that's just one reason why I'm so hopeful about the future.

Today Israel is more welcomed by the nations of the world than ever before," Netanyahu said. "When I look forward 50 and 100 years I believe Israel will be embraced openly by its Arab neighbours rather than in secret in the way it's done today."

Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was less optimistic, warning a change in the US stance on Jerusalem would spell disaster.

In a statement, he warned the United States would "be disqualifying itself to play any role in any initiative towards achieving a just and lasting peace."

PTI
Trump keenly watching progress of South Asia strategy: US official

International

pti-PTI

Washington, Dec 4: A senior US official has said that President Donald Trump is closely monitoring the progress in his new South Asia Strategy, which gives a major role to India.

Trump had sought a major role for India in bringing peace in Afghanistan and ruled out a hasty withdrawal of troops from the war-torn nation while announcing his new Afghanistan and South Asia policy in August.

"The president has been very closely monitoring the progress of the South Asia strategy. He's very interested in any progress that has been made," a senior administration official told PTI.

Trump had a meeting with his Defense Secretary Jim Mattis before he left on his visit to Pakistan. The defense Secretary is again likely to brief the president on his return. On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly Session in New York in September, Trump met the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

"That was a good opportunity to hear from President Ghani on how the strategy was being received in Afghanistan," the official said.

Observing that Trump has been getting updates from his national security team on what's happening in Afghanistan, the official said the president is very much engaged and interested in how this strategy is progressing. Asserting that the things are signs of encouragement in the implementation of the South Asia strategy, the official said it is moving in the right direction.

"We need to give more time for the strategy to take root," the official said.

"It's a multifaceted strategy. We're using all the tools that the US has its disposal  military, economic, diplomatic. All these parts of the strategy are important. They all need to work in tandem together. The president is very interested in keeping track of how the strategy is going. And he is receiving regular updates," the senior administration official said.

In his August 21 speech, Trump had said that terrorists who slaughter innocent people will find no glory in this life or the next.

"They are nothing but thugs, and criminals, and predators, and -- that's right -- losers. Working alongside our allies, we will break their will, dry up their recruitment, keep them from crossing our borders, and yes, we will defeat them, and we will defeat them handily," he had said.

"In Afghanistan and Pakistan, America's interests are clear: We must stop the resurgence of safe havens that enable terrorists to threaten America, and we must prevent nuclear weapons and materials from coming into the hands of terrorists and being used against us, or anywhere in the world for that matter," Trump said.

Announcing his strategy, Trump said a core pillar of his new strategy is a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions.

"Another fundamental pillar of our new strategy is the integration of all instruments of American power -- diplomatic, economic, and military -- toward a successful outcome," he said.

Describing Pakistan as an important part of his strategy, Trump had said the US can no longer be silent about Pakistan's safe havens for terrorist organisations, the Taliban, and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond. Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan. It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists, he had said.

PTI
PA Legalization of Online Gambling Spurs Bipartisan Backlash

Published December 4, 2017 by Elana K

Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wrote a letter to Deputy Director Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein warning him of the sire consequences of online gambling.

Earlier this month, Pennsylvania became the fourth state to legalize online gambling. The triumph of Pennsylvanias online gambling supporters, however, seems to have awakened the wrath of industry opponents. This rude awakening came in the form of a letter from Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) addressed to Deputy Director Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

The letter warns the deputy director attorney general about the dangers of online gambling and calls on him to take away the states power to legalize it and give that power only to the federal government.

Currently, each state has the power to legalize online gambling, or not; this power was given to them from the DOJ in 2011. Currently, only 4 states have taken advantage of legalizing online gambling: New Jersey, Nevada, Delaware, and now, Pennsylvania.

This is not the first letter that Senators Feinstein and Graham have penned in opposition to online gambling; 3 years ago they wrote a similar letter to the DOJ, warning of the dangers of online gambling

Excerpts From the Letter

Here are some excerpts from the senators' recent letter:

Internet gambling takes gambling too far. It preys on children and societys most vulnerable. The FBI has concluded that online casinos are vulnerable to a wide array of criminal schemes, including money laundering and ventures by transnational organized crime groups...We fear that unless DOJ promptly revisits its 2011 opinion, our prediction that online casinos could sweep across our country could come to pass.

An Overturned Ruling Unlikely.

The likelihood of the attorney general to act on this letter is low. If the DOJ would consider overturning its 2011 ruling, the 4 states that have already legalized online gambling would quickly file lawsuits, and the issue would spend a long, long time in court before any resolution could be reached.

So or now, it seems that online gambling remains safely in the hands of the states, despite the efforts of online gambling opponents who would trample on states rights just to prove a point.
From Truthdig



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The press, trumpeting the lurid and salacious details of the sexual assault charges brought against powerful men, has missed the real story -- the widespread popular revolt led by women, many of whom have stood up, despite vicious attacks and the dictates of legally binding nondisclosure agreements, to denounce the entitlement of the corporate and political elites. This women's revolt is not solely about sexual abuse. It is about fighting a corporate power structure that institutionalizes and enables misogyny, racism and bigotry. It is about rejecting the belief that wealth and power give the elites the right to engage in economic, political, social and sexual sadism. It challenges the twisted ethic that those who are crushed and humiliated by the rich, the famous and the powerful have no rights and no voice. Let's hope this is the beginning, not the end.

"Women are carefully choosing the men who are at the pinnacles of power to address race and class and sex," the feminist Lee Lakeman told me when I reached her by phone in Vancouver. "[These women] know what they are doing. You can't take down someone like Harvey Weinstein without affecting a whole industry. Feminism has never been just about protecting our individual self. It is a collective resistance. It has a vitality we need to use to deal with these hierarchies."

"We need to get ourselves behind these women who are taking on the potentates," she said. "... We need to draw attention to the structures of power. Clearly, women don't want only an end to sexual harassment on the job. They want meaningful, secure jobs. They want respect for their work. They want to be believed when they speak. They want credit for their ideas. There is a focus now on the jobs. There was a moment when we focused on husbands. Now we are focused on our place in the public sphere. This is a structural attack. And this is an alliance of younger women and older women. This alliance sends men a message. It may take us 20 years, but we will get to you. It says this behavior will not go unmonitored. We may not get every guy, but you could be the one we get. It allows women to experience an uprising, what it feels like. This feeds the revolt."

The pathology of men who force women to watch them masturbate in the shower or who close their office doors so they can drop their pants or grope terrified and humiliated job applicants, interns or co-workers is emblematic of the narcissism and unbridled self-adulation that come with excessive power. These assaults are expressions of the widespread objectification of women mainlined by a pornified culture. Eroticism is not mutual in pornography or prostitution. The men get off by humiliating, degrading, insulting and physically violating women. The current revelations are not, in the end, even about sex. They are about the solipsistic auto-arousal that the humiliation and physical abuse of women, a staple of porn and prostitution, have conditioned many men to confuse with sex.

Those who engage in this behavior, and Donald Trump is the poster child for this cultural sickness, are so atomized and narcissistic that to themselves they alone exist. They are stunted, deformed human beings. They are incapable of genuine relationships. They lack the capacity for empathy or self-reflection. Their abuse of women, however, is only one example of the myriad abuses they feel entitled to carry out in their professional and personal interactions. And, sadly, surrounding them are many enablers, including some women, who bow before the same idols of power and wealth to perpetuate this cruelty.

"All men benefit from this gender hierarchy and these systems of oppression," Alice Lee, the co-founder of Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution, based in Vancouver, told me. "Individual men collude in this oppression together, knowingly or unknowingly. The public discussion has yet to acknowledge this. 'Nice' men, or 'progressive' men, are trying to ignore their own complicity. This makes it harder to institute real systemic change. We will have to fight harder. Women are revolting and supporting each other to expose this collusion. They are demanding systemic change. But those men in power will never give up power unless they are forced to do so. [Women and the men who genuinely support them] need to work together to make systematic change in the workplace, in the justice system, in civil society and at home."

Women activists have mounted a campaign to pressure NBC to release outtakes from Trump's reality television show "The Apprentice" in which he allegedly repeatedly used racial or ethnic slurs, including against African-Americans and Jews. He also is accused in a defamation lawsuit of sexually harassing Summer Zervos, who appeared on the show as a contestant.

Trump was host of the show and one of its executive producers for 14 seasons. Those who worked on the series, which created the fictional public persona that Trump used to get elected to the presidency, signed nondisclosure agreements forbidding them to detail Trump's behavior or remarks.

Trump's attorneys on Tuesday will attempt to have the Zervos suit dismissed in the New York State Supreme Court. Zervos has accused Trump of "very aggressively" kissing her, groping her breasts and thrusting his genitals at her during a 2007 meeting at The Beverly Hills Hotel. She brought the defamation action after Trump called her and more than a dozen other women "liars" after they said he had sexually assaulted them. Presidents, according to the 1997 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Clinton v. Jones, are not immune from civil law litigation for actions carried out before they assumed office.

The powerful men engaging in sexual predation live in a rarified universe where they own everyone around themselves. They demand unquestioned obedience. They must be the center of attention. Their opinions alone count. Their feelings alone are important. They cannot discern right from wrong and lies from truth. They are modern slave masters. Those who work for them are forced to sing, dance and provide physical pleasure or get the whip. And they have the power, granted to them by corporate and political institutions, to persecute and discredit any who defy them. This pathology captures not only the bleak inner core of Trump but also many of his political rivals, including Bill Clinton.

"We have been told for over 25 years that all that matters is wealth," said Lakeman. "All that matters is what neoliberalism says matters. We have been told our movements are ineffective. They can't make anything happen, whether that is peace on a global scale or peace between men and women. What's going on right now tells women maybe we can make a difference."

"This is a particular kind of politics," Lakeman said. "It is women saying the left has not taken sexism seriously, has not taken women's oppression seriously, and it won't get away with this. Women are leading. It would be smart for anyone who wants transformation in the world to help us, help us fight class and race and sex bigotry."

College fraternities are breeding grounds for sexual harassment and the objectification of women. The fraternities often ship their men-children straight into corporate offices and other institutions that wield power. The cult of the self defines corporate culture. It celebrates the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and an inability to feel remorse or guilt.

The higher one rises in the corporate hierarchy, the more power and money one amasses, the more these traits are pronounced and rewarded. Hedonism and greed become insatiable. There is no sense of proportion, propriety or limits. It is a culture in which you use others or be used, where you seize as much as you can as fast as you can and ignore the consequences to yourself, those around you, your community and the planet. It is at once infantile and evil. It is also a path to collective self-destruction.

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(This is a reprint from NewsBred).

While India celebrates its Navy Day (December 4) today, let's do a remembrance to The Royal Indian Navy (RIN) Mutiny of 1946 which left colonial masters Britain with no choice but to leave India.

That there is little mention of this momentous event in Indian historiography is a striking indictment of establishment run by Congress who had turned its back on this spectacular mass uprising in that heady week of February (18-23).

British Prime Minister Clement Attlee accepted three weeks later that "the tide of nationalism is running very fast in India ." Britain had always feared united mass movements in India and RIN Mutiny was one such where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Parsees had come under one banner. Indian masses came out on streets in support and hundreds spilled their blood on the street.

Salman Rushdie's 1995 novel The Moor's Last Sigh describes these momentous events on the streets of Bombay , through one of its character, thus:

"In February 1946, when Bombay, that super epic motion picture of a city, was transformed overnight into a motionless tableau by the great naval and landlubber strikes, when ships did not sail, steel was not milled, textile mills neither warped nor woofed, and in the movie studios there was neither turnover nor cut--the 21-year-old Aurora began to zoom around the paralyzed towns in his curtained Buick, directing her driver Hanuman to the heart of the act, or rather of all that great inaction, being set down outside factory gates and dockyards, venturing alone into the slum city of Dharavi, the rum-dens of Dhobi Talao, and the neon flesh pots of Falkland Road, armed only with a folding wooden stool and a sketchbook.

"Opening them both up, she set about capturing history in charcoal."

Remember your history books and historians, your glorified political leaders and their progenies, all your Independence and Republic Day celebrations and after you've read of this great betrayal, don't muffle but air-rend your full-throated cry which sends shockwave through this land of ours and warn these enemies "Not now and never again."

And tell your children: "you would read history as it happened and not as it was doctored to your parents."

THE BACKGROUND

The World War II had caused RIN to expand massively. It was 10 times larger than in 1939. Young men were enlisted in tens of thousands. Moving around the world, they could see the fire of nationalism against colonialism sweeping around the world. As these young men were hailed as liberators in Greece , Burma , Indo-China , Indonesia , Italy . It was logical they asked themselves: Why not India be free now?

The myth of British supremacy was receding. These young men could see how European forces were wilting across Asia under the Japanese aggression. The Indian National Army (INA) of Subhas Chandra Bose had captured their imagination. The trials of those arrested brethrens and their humiliation had filled the natives in armed forces and on streets with revulsion and anger.

In January 1946, the airmen of Royal Air Force mutinied as a harbinger to the eventually bigger revolt. They seized the signaling equipment and spread their message to other servicemen. From Karachi, the agitation spread to places as far as Kanpur to Singapore. The navymen were demanding delisting from the services. They were unwilling for fresh battles in Indonesia on behalf of the Dutch government as well as war in Vietnam, then under the rule of the French colonial government. The hands of British government were forced.

Meanwhile, trials of INA officers were on at the Red Fort. A young naval Rating (enlisted officer), Balai Chandra Dutt, posted on HMIS Talwar in Bombay , began painting the ships and dockyard walls with messages in its support. HMIS Talwar had 1500 officers and ratings and was the second largest training center in the whole of British Empire . In the recollections, titled "Mutiny of the Innocent", the mutineers detailed the squalor on board, the poor quality of food and the racism of British officers.

The mutineers first took out peaceful processions in Bombay, holding an image of Subhas Bose aloft. Chief Commanding Officer (CO) King called the rebellious "you son of bitches" and "sons of bloody junglees." Rebels responded by deflating his car. The events of dockyards in Mumbai spread like a wildfire across the country. Ratings set up a INA Relief Fund and posted letters against CO King. On February 17, when the ratings again pressed their demand for good food, British officers called them "beggars." This was the last straw.

On February 18th morning, 1500 ratings staged a protest in the mess. They also declared: "This is not a mere food riot. We are about the create history"a heritage of pride for free India." A Naval Central Strike Committee (NCSC) was formed which decided to take over the RIN and place it in the command of national leaders. (That's right!, they wanted India 's political class to be their guide and guardians).

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From Smirking Chimp

In December 2016 the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution reaffirming that Israel's Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are illegal and calling on Israel to stop settlement activities in the OPT. Resolution 2334 says the settlements have "no legal validity," calls them "a flagrant violation under international law," and demands Israel "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities."

Nine months earlier, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in Resolution 31/36, had ordered the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights to "produce a database of all business enterprises" that "directly and indirectly, enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements."

The database was scheduled for release in December 2017. Meanwhile, the Israeli and US governments have been trying to prevent that list -- which reportedly includes at least 150 local and international companies -- from becoming public. "We will do everything we can to ensure that this list does not see the light of day," Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon told The Associated Press. US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said, "We just view that type of blacklist as counterproductive."

The UNHRC has reportedly delayed the release of the list until "early next year."

"[Israeli] officials say they are taking the so-called 'blacklist' seriously, fearing its publication could have devastating consequences by driving companies away, deterring others from coming and prompting investors to dump shares of Israeli firms," AP reported.

An Israeli official told The Washington Post that the companies include Israeli banks, security firms, supermarkets, restaurant chains, bus lines, and multinational corporations that provide services and equipment to build and maintain the settlements.

Resolution 31/36 also called on states to take "appropriate measures to help to ensure that businesses domiciled in their territory and/or under their jurisdiction, including those owned or controlled by them, refrain from committing or contributing to gross human rights abuses of Palestinians."

Publication of the list of companies would make the UNHRC "the world's biggest promoter of BDS," Danon opined. In a statement, Danon said, "The Human Rights Council has turned into an accomplice of the BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] movement and its conduct is both anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic."

In fact, the BDS movement is not anti-Israeli, as it targets the policies, not the people, of Israel. And actions against Israel's policies, including BDS, do not equate to anti-Semitism, as I explain elsewhere.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)

Representatives of Palestinian civil society launched the BDS movement in 2005. They called upon "international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era ... [including] embargoes and sanctions against Israel."

The call for BDS specified that "these non-violent punitive measures" should last until Israel fully complies with international law by (1) ending the occupation and colonization of all Arab territories and removing the barrier wall; (2) affirming the human rights of Israel's Arab-Palestinian citizens to full equality; and (3) affirming the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their land as required by UN General Assembly Resolution 194.

Israel seeks to suppress the identities of the companies that support the settlements because it is feeling the pinch of the BDS movement. The United States thinks publication of the list would be "counterproductive" because it would fuel BDS, thereby negatively impacting Israel, the leading US client state and biggest recipient of US foreign aid.

BDS was a major factor behind the 46 percent decrease in foreign direct investment in Israel in 2014, according to a UN report. A World Bank report revealed that Palestinian imports from Israel dropped by 24 percent in the first quarter of 2015.

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Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"Rob Kall's book Bottom-Up: Tapping the Power of the Connection Revolution is both a welcomed manifesto and a guide for rethinking the power of human agency, understanding the connections that both make us human and legitimate human planetary relations. Moreover it is a powerful call for providing the ideas, social practices, and relations that make human connections possible, enable them to work together from the bottom up, and to transform such connections into a powerful movement in which people take control of their lives and create a better future for everyone."



Henry Giroux, Director of the McMaster Centre for Research in the Public Interest, author of Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism, Americas Education Deficit and The War on Youth, and dozens more.


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Americans need to stop being so complacent about the tax cut scam that President Trump and Republicans are attempting to impose on them. We must earn our freedom. We cannot keep it with an apathetic attitude.

When your local Progressive organizations (Indivisible, Our Revolution, etc.) put out actions, you must participate, with your body if possible. Forget the Republican spin on their tax cut scam. It isn't even about the deficit. It is deeper than that. It is about the theft of our country's treasure.

It is false that expanded economic activity will pay for the tax cut. Not even Republicans believe that lie. How do we know that? When Senator Corker asked to put in an amendment that will reverse the taxes if there wasn't sufficient economic activity to pay for the tax cut, Republicans rejected it. Why refuse said change if one believes the increased economic activity would occur. No competent economist agrees with Republicans. And guess what, they tried this to a lesser extent in the Reagan years, and he exploded the deficit like no previous president.

But Republican politicians show their lack of morality and the evil behind the tax cut scam in other ways. The tax cuts for corporations are permanent. But the tax cuts for the middle-class and poor, for those who are lucky to get them, are temporary.

Even more draconian, states throughout the country have been cutting education budgets. For decades, teachers have been supplementing these cuts by purchasing supplies for their classrooms. They were able to deduct these on their taxes. But now, while Republican-led states continue to cut education spending with impunity, they also want to prevent underpaid teachers from deducting their classroom expenses. Do remember, at the same time, the wealthy can deduct the costs associated with their airplane if not for the plane itself.

Closer to home, Republicans are eliminating the sales tax deduction that affects all Americans. But here is the caveat, if you are rich and arrange your work as a particular kind of corporation or passthrough organization, (a stockbroker, a doctor, a lawyer, an investment banker, etc.), you get to deduct your sales taxes.

One could go on and on. One will lose any savings in taxes with the increased cost of health care and the loss of many deductions and more. Americans must not fall for the tax cut scam.

This tax bill will not generate economic activity. If you give rich people money, they do not spend it to buy things which is what increases economic activity. And they will not invest in America because there isn't the spending power necessary to generate the economic activity to justify spending and creating new jobs. Supply-side economics, trickle-down, voodoo economics are all the same. And they have decimated the American poor and middle-class.

To attain the same living standard, most in homes need everyone in the household working long hours as the titans of finance benefit from our labor. Are you not tired of this voluntary slavery?

The wealthy are doing the working class no favors. It is us who fight the wars to maintain their command of assets around the world. It is us who purchase the products their investments are used to produce. It is us, the working class, who build, design, and create. The capitalists just throw capital around, and for that feel, they deserve particular merit. There is a significant imbalance when we allow wealth to rule -- workers get screwed.

Once Republicans pass tax cuts, it is complicated politically to repeal. What usually happens instead is a reduction in the social safety net. In other words, when the deficit explodes from this irresponsible and evil bill, Americans will be forced to accept draconian cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, programs that affect the working class, the middle-class. Isn't this post I wrote a few weeks ago terrifying enough?

So again, why aren't most of you on the streets ensuring your politicians do not vote for this travesty as described by a wise Republican? If you are reading this, this is not the time to be apathetic. Now is not the time to feel you don't have the power to change things because you do. Start with the Indivisible Movement in your area. They can be found in every corner of the country. Many other organizations are responding as well. What they need are your bodies in the field when possible, whatever funds you have available to help them, you contributing to independent media that's telling the truth, you spreading the word, and your help in getting others engaged.
From Reader Supported News



Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.)

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Editor's Note: "This article was written while Leeann Tweeden was the only accuser against Al Franken. On the day it was scheduled to run, a second accuser came forward and I made the decision to forgo publication at that time. It is now two weeks later and there appear at this point to be perhaps six accusers, three of whom remain anonymous. The allegations, however, seem to not necessarily paint a conclusive portrait of events. The matter appears still somewhat unsettled. Accordingly and belatedly, this is the piece I held back on November 20, 2016."

Consent is the key. Consent is the cornerstone, the foundation of all sexual assault statutes in the U.S. and likely all nations. Although certainly not interpreted or applied uniformly across the wide spectrum of jurisdictions in equal measure.

What Leeann Tweeden did say was that the photograph Senator Al Franken staged 12 years earlier with him pretending to, or lightly touching her breasts as she slept and a kiss during a rehearsal of a scene, in the same time frame, in which a kiss was part of the script, were non-consensual.

What Al Franken said in part in a handwritten letter to Leeann Tweeden was, "Dear Leeann, I want to apologize to you personally. I don't know what was in my head when I took that picture. But that doesn't matter. There's no excuse. I understand why you can feel violated by that photo." Franken expresses culpability and regret. That in effect settles the matter of consent as it relates to the Tweeden allegations.

There are however two questions that these statements do not address. Why Al Franken, and why now?

On its website, Playboy magazine presents a brief bio sketch for Leeann Tweeden, who has appeared on its pages. Presumably the characterizations are Playboy's rhetorical enhancements and do not necessarily, or even accurately, represent Leeann Tweeden's true character.

Nonetheless, the Playboy bio presents as resume points associations with rather noteworthy entities that have clearly defined track records. They include Playboy itself, Hooters Restaurants, Frederick's of Hollywood, and Fox Broadcasting. Yes, there is a common thread. These organizations are all patently, demonstrably exploitive of women and women's sexuality. Fox Broadcasting has arguably the worst reputation of all, with scores of accusations of workplace sexual harassment it has had to negotiate in recent years.

Given that list of employment and professional associations, Leeann Tweeden would necessarily, without any doubt, have been subject to routine exploitation and on many occasions to varying degrees likely significant personal harassment. None of which abridges her right to withhold consent -- in any way -- or justifies Al Franken's conduct. It does not. But it does make her decision to go public with an 11-year-old grievance against a sitting U.S. senator stand out somewhat.

In a statement responding to Al Franken's apology letter, Leeann Tweeden spoke of a desire to "stand on the shoulders of these other women" in coming forward with her story. The other women she referred to were those who had shown the courage to speak out against sexual assaults committed against them and, we are left to read, which inspired her.

One such woman upon whose shoulder Leeann Tweeden's foot might rest could well be that of former Fox News anchorwoman Megyn Kelly. Kelly chronicled and helped expose not just the sexual harassment she endured at Fox but a pervasive, systemic, organization-wide pattern affecting a mind-boggling number of female colleagues. Leeann Tweeden was at Fox during the height of it, yet she utters not a word about the conditions and abuses there, and not a word in support of Kelly's assertions or those of the other women who showed the courage to come forward at Fox, and on whose shoulders she now purports to stand.

Beverly Young Nelson is yet another woman on whose shoulders Leeann Tweeden's weight might now be said to rest. Nelson accused Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore of having sexually assaulted her as a 16-year-old. Nelson felt it was necessary to dispel any implication of political motive. She was clear, asserting that both she and her husband were Republicans and Trump supporters. Leeann Tweeden, on the other hand, left those boxes blank on the form.

Leeann Tweeden is a woman who could have reasonably and legitimately named a long list of abusers. Why Al Franken, why now?

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
"Industrial Gas Regulator" by Regulator Type, Geography, Application with Annual Growth Rate (CAGR %)

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"Industrial Gas Regulator Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.. .Description-' '-- Global Industrial Gas Regulator Market: OverviewThe report provides an in-depth analysis of the global industrial gas regulator market for the period 2017 2025, wherein 2016 is the base year, data for the year 2015 is considered as historical information and the years from 2015 to 2025 is the forecast period. The report also provides compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) from 2017 to 2025 for all the segments in the scope of study. The report covers key trends prevailing in the global industrial gas regulator market over the forecast period. The report also describes various factors impacting the global industrial gas regulators market growth during the forecast period including market drivers, restraints, and opportunities. .Get Sample Report With TOC @' 'The study provides a holistic perspective on global industrial gas regulator market growth in terms of revenue estimates (in US$ Mn) and volume (in Mn Units) globally. The market estimates have been analyzed by taking into account the impact of various economic, political, technological, social, and legal and the existing market dynamics influencing market growth. The report would also include executive summary, providing the overview of the global industrial gas regulator market. The report also provides industry development and key market indicators for the global industrial gas regulator market. Furthermore, report provides market attractiveness analysis, for each segment based on their CAGR and market share. 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The global Industrial Gas Regulator Market has been segmented as follows:-- Global Industrial Gas Regulator Market, by Gas TypeInertToxicCorrosive-- Global Industrial Gas Regulator Market, by Regulator TypeSingle StageDual Stage-- Global Industrial Gas Regulator Market, by ApplicationOil & GasChemicalSteel & Metal ProcessingFood & BeveragesOthers-- Global Industrial Gas Regulator Market, By GeographyNorth AmericaThe U.S.CanadaRest of North AmericaEuropeThe U.KGermanyFranceRest of EuropeAsia Pacific (APAC)ChinaJapanIndiaRest of APACMiddle East and Africa (MEA)GCC CountriesSouth AfricaRest of MEASouth AmericaBrazilRest of South America. .Report Enquiry and Other Query @ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. 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"Glycine: Asia Pacific and Europe Anticipated to Witness Significant" By Grades, Application, Company Profiles with Research Methodology

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"Global Market Study on Glycine: Asia Pacific and Europe Anticipated to Witness Significant Growth Between 2016 and 2024" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.. .Description-' '-- The U.S is a large consumer of glycine, while the largest producer of glycine is China. Persistence Market Research highlights that the cost of glycine depends largely on the cost of chemicals and energy. In addition, analysts of this market research company have also observed that volatile raw material prices are affecting the prices of glycine. While targeting different geographies in the drafting of a new report titled Glycine Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast, 20162024, Persistence Market Research analysts have come to a conclusion that the North America regions demand for glycine is very high, which creates opportunity for market players from different countries in the region.-- On the other hand, Asia Pacific holds a high market share and is expected to create high incremental opportunity in the global glycine market. Another observation is that by importing tech grade from countries where the cost of production is low and purifying it into food grade will help in significant reduction of cost. The analysts have also noticed further that importing glycine at low rates from China to the U.S. and routed through Canada can avoid anti-dumping duties.. .Get Sample Report With TOC @' '-- The principal objective of this report is to present insights into the many advancements that have already been made in the global glycine market. The report provides updates on drivers, restraints, opportunities and trends in the global glycine market. The report demarcates market dynamics that are predicted to influence the current market situation and the future status of the global glycine market over the forecast period.-- Inclusion of primary verbatim data is the uniqueness of this report-A highly placed official in one of the key glycine companies in Eastern Europe has stated that prices of cheap drugs from the list of vital medicines may significantly increase in Russia this year due to a recent decision by the Russian government to refrain from implementing further state regulation of prices for drugs from this segment. This means that the government will allow pharmaceutical companies to set their own prices for such vital and cheap drugs as aspirin, ibuprofen, glycine, and water for injection.Another official from a leading glycine company from the APAC region has explained that the Chinese glycine industry has always witnessed overcapacity in the past few years, but the capacity of glycine in China will keep increasing in the coming five years. Another official further stated that glycine and glyphosate manufacturers already have their own ambitions in the global glycine market.-- Report DescriptionThe report commences with a market overview that highlights the market scenario and provides key insights into the global glycine market. The report further discusses market dynamics including market drivers, restraints, opportunities, trends and key regulations in the global glycine market. This is followed by a comprehensive analysis of value and supply chain analysis along with the highlighting of key participants and associated process components. In addition, location analysis, production vs. consumption analysis and the listing of key producers, consumers and traders has been provided across all regional levels. The report provides detailed market share analysis, Y-o-Y growth and market attractiveness analysis on the basis of various segments. In the final section of the report, a competitive landscape has been provided to present the business operations of some of the key players along with a dashboard containing market share and competitive analysis. Detailed profiles of some of the manufacturers have also been included within the scope of the report to estimate their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats along with long-term and short-term strategies, recent developments and offerings in the global glycine market.-- Market Segmentation-- -- By GradesTech GradeFood GradePharmaceutical GradeFeed Grade-- -- By ApplicationChemicalFeedFoodPharmaceuticalOthers-- -- By RegionNorth AmericaLatin AmericaEuropeAsia PacificMiddle East and Africa-- Research MethodologyA detailed analysis has been provided for every segment in terms of market size for the global glycine market. It is important to note that in an ever changing economy, the report not only conducts forecasts in terms of CAGR but also analyzes the market based on key parameters like Y-o-Y (year-on-year) growth to interpret the predictability of the market as well as to identify the right opportunities for market players operating in the global glycine market. Another key feature of this report is that it includes the analysis of all key market segments in terms of absolute dollar opportunity.Absolute dollar opportunity analysis is critical in evaluating the level of opportunity that a provider can look to achieve in the global market. Absolute dollar opportunity analysis of the global glycine market will help identify potential resources from a sales and delivery perspective in the global glycine market. The report also provides strategic recommendations and key success factors for new entrants in the global glycine market.-- Company ProfilesChattem Chemicals, Inc.,GEO Specialty Chemicals, Inc.,Ajinomoto North America, Inc.Evonik Industries AGAMINO GmbHOthers. .Report Enquiry and Other Query @ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. 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Land Freight Forwarding 2017 Global Industry Key Players - Kuehne + Nagel , DHL Group , DB Schenker Logistics , GEODIS , Panalpina , DSV , Bollore Logistics , Expeditors Market Analysis and Forecast to 2022

Global Land Freight Forwarding Market

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Global Land Freight Forwarding MarketThis report studies the global Land Freight Forwarding market, analyzes and researches the Land Freight Forwarding development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeKuehne + NagelDHL GroupDB Schenker LogisticsGEODISPanalpinaDSVBollore LogisticsExpeditorsNippon ExpressCEVA LogisticsPantos LogisticsAgility LogisticsHellmannDamcoKWEHitachi TransportSankyuKerry LogisticsLogwinC.H.RobinsonYusen LogisticsRequest a Sample Report @Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, the product can be split intoFull Container Load (FCL)Less-than container load (LCL)Market segment by Application, Land Freight Forwarding can be split intoAutomotiveBeverageElectronicOtherEnquiry for buying report@Table of Contents-Key Points CoveredGlobal Land Freight Forwarding Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Land Freight Forwarding1.1 Land Freight Forwarding Market Overview1.1.1 Land Freight Forwarding Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Land Freight Forwarding Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Land Freight Forwarding Market by Type1.3.1 Full Container Load (FCL)1.3.2 Less-than container load (LCL)1.4 Land Freight Forwarding Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Automotive1.4.2 Beverage1.4.3 Electronic1.4.4 Other2 Global Land Freight Forwarding Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Land Freight Forwarding Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Kuehne + Nagel3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Land Freight Forwarding Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 DHL Group3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Land Freight Forwarding Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 DB Schenker Logistics3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Land Freight Forwarding Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 GEODIS3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Land Freight Forwarding Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Panalpina3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Land Freight Forwarding Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 DSV3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Land Freight Forwarding Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Bollore Logistics3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Land Freight Forwarding Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Expeditors3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Land Freight Forwarding Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 Nippon Express3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Land Freight Forwarding Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 CEVA Logistics3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Land Freight Forwarding Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.10.5 Recent Developments3.11 Pantos Logistics3.12 Agility Logistics3.13 Hellmann3.14 Damco3.15 KWE3.16 Hitachi Transport3.17 Sankyu3.18 Kerry Logistics3.19 Logwin3.20 C.H.Robinson3.21 Yusen LogisticsContinued..Buy Report@Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
"Large Format Ceramic Panel" North America, Europe, APAC, G.C.C, RoW (Actual Period: 2014-2016, Forecast Period: 2017-2025)

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"Global Large Format Ceramic Panel Market: Analysis By Type of Application (Flooring, Interior Wall, Exterior Wall Cladding, Countertop), By Thickness (3mm & below, 5-9 mm, 9.1-12 mm, 20 mm & Above), By Region, By Country: Opportunities and Forecast (2014-2022)" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.. .Description-' '-- A comprehensive research report created through extensive primary research (inputs from industry experts, companies, stakeholders) and secondary research, the report aims to present the analysis of Global Large Format Ceramic Panel Market- By Volume and Value; By Application (Flooring, Interior Wall, Exterior Cladding and Countertops), By Thickness (3mm &below,5 to 9mm, 9.1 to12mm and 12mm & above ), By Region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, G.C.C and ROW) and By Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Spain, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE).. .Get Sample Report With TOC @' '-- Large format ceramic panel also known as extra-large size ceramic tile is a new craftily designed product segment in ceramic tile market. On the grounds of continuous dynamic innovations and developments of manufacturing process in ceramic tile industry, additionally with the change in incremental demand of seamless ceramic tiles gave birth to the Large Format ceramic panels.On account of perfect flatness, extremely low weight and excellent physical and mechanical properties, Large Format ceramic panels are widely used in architecture and interior design. These versatile solutions are becoming increasingly popular both for traditional applications and for uses that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. This success is a result of recent technological advances in the manufacturing and decoration processes, which allow excellent technical performance to be combined with a modern, sophisticated design.Availability of ceramic panels in wide range of dimensions from 100cm*300cm to 160cm*480cm of length and breadth respectively with thickness from 3mm to 30mm facilitates the growth of ceramic panels in different applicability.According to Azoth Analytics research report, Global Large Format Ceramic Panel Market: Analysis By Type of Application (Flooring, Interior Wall, Exterior Wall Cladding, Countertop), By Thickness (3mm & below, 5-9 mm, 9.1-12 mm, 20 mm & Above), By Region, By Country: Opportunities and Forecast (2014-2022), global Large Format Ceramic Panel market is projected to display a good growth of over 15.68% by volume and 10.69% CAGR by value during 2017  2025, chiefly driven by advancement in construction sector, strong established distribution channel, innovation and technological development in manufacturing process and inclination of consumer behaviour towards Large Format seamless ceramic tiles due to its unique features.During year 2017-2025, demand growth for large format ceramic panel market is expected to exhibit the maximum advancement, owing to high applicability in varied end-user applications. Large format ceramic panels are increasingly being used in floorings, interior and exterior walls and countertops in several high-end commercial and residential buildings. Among the regions, Europe accounts for the largest regional share of around 65%, in the total market in 2016, and is predicted to advance at a significant rate, owing to the soaring growth in construction sectors, economic development and changing consumer preference.The report titled, Global Large Format Ceramic Panel: By volume and value, Analysis By Application (Flooring, Interior Wall, Exterior Cladding and Countertops), By Thickness (3mm &below,5 to 9mm, 9.1 to12mm and 12mm & above), By Region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, G.C.C, ROW) , By Country ; (2014-2022) has covered and analysed the potential of Global Large Format Ceramic Panel Market and provides statistics and information on market size, shares and growth factors. The report intends to provide cutting-edge market intelligence and help decision makers take sound investment evaluation. Besides, the report also identifies and analyses the emerging trends along with major drivers, challenges and opportunities in the global large format ceramic panel market. Additionally, the report also highlights market entry strategies for various companies across the globe.-- Scope of the Report-- -- Global Market (Actual Period: 2014-2016, Forecast Period: 2017-2025)Large Format Ceramic Panel Market- By Volume and ValueLarge Format Ceramic Panel Market- By Application (Flooring, Interior Wall, Exterior Cladding and Countertops)Large Format Ceramic Panel Market- By Thickness (3mm &below,5 to 9mm, 9.1 to12mm and 12mm & above).-- -- Regional Markets  North America, Europe, APAC, G.C.C, RoW (Actual Period: 2014-2016, Forecast Period: 2017-2025)Large Format Ceramic Panel Market- By Volume and ValueLarge Format Ceramic Panel Market- By Application (Flooring, Interior Wall, Exterior Cladding and Countertops)Large Format Ceramic Panel Market- By Thickness (3mm &below,5 to 9mm, 9.1 to12mm and 12mm & above).-- -- Country Analysis - U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Spain, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE - (Actual Period: 2014-2016, Forecast Period: 2017-2025)Large Format Ceramic Panel Market- By Volume and ValueLarge Format Ceramic Panel Market- By Application (Flooring, Interior Wall, Exterior Cladding and Countertops)Large Format Ceramic Panel Market- By Thickness (3mm &below,5 to 9mm, 9.1 to12mm and 12mm & above).Other Report Highlights-- -- Market Dynamics  Trends, Drivers, ChallengesSWOT AnalysisPorters Five Forces AnalysisPolicy and Regulatory LandscapeProduct BenchmarkingPricing AnalysisProduction AnalysisCompany Analysis - Laminam Spa, Neolith, Granitifiandre, ABK Group, Levantina, Florim, RAK Ceramics-- Customization of the ReportThe report could be customized according to the clients specific research requirements. No additional cost will be required to pay for limited additional research.. .Report Enquiry and Other Query @ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074
"4G Devices" with To Grow At A Cagr Of 8.67% During The Period 2017-2021

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"Global 4G Devices Market 2017-2021" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.. .Description-' '-- About 4G Devices4G devices are devices that can support 4G networks and provide greater data processing speed than the previous generation mobile telecommunication technologies such as 2G and 3G. 4G is seen as a remarkable evolution over 3G due to faster data transfer rate, high-frequency bands, and high download and upload rate. International Telecommunications Union-Radio (ITU-R) communications sector has set up standards for 4G, namely, International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced (IMT-Advanced). However, there are no networks available in the market that meet the specifications set by ITU-R. Therefore, technologies that are more advanced than 3G are sold by service providers as 4G.. .Get Sample Report With TOC @' '-- -- Technavios analysts forecast the global 4G devices market to grow at a CAGR of 8.67% during the period 2017-2021.-- ---- Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global 4G devices market for 2017-2021. The report presents a detailed picture of the market by way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources.-- The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global 4G Devices Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.-- Key vendorsAppleHuawei TechnologiesLenovoLGNETGEARNovatel WirelessOPPOSamsungSonyVivo Communication TechnologyXiaomiZTE-- Market driverGrowing use of InternetFor a full, detailed list, view our report-- Market challengeHigh tariff plansFor a full, detailed list, view our report-- Market trendOnline distribution of devicesFor a full, detailed list, view our report-- Key questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?-- -- You can request one free hour of our analysts time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.-- --. .Report Enquiry and Other Query @ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074
Why Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy Market Will Witness a Staggering Growth During 2015 - 2023

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Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) is a most common non-invasive treatment for kidney stones and ureter stones. The lithotriptor applies external high-intensity acoustic pulse to crush the stone causing minimal damage to the normal tissue. The shock waves break the stones into small fragments. ESWL is widely used by physician worldwide due to characteristics such as non-invasiveness, reduced pain and recovery time and reduced hospital stay. The developing health care infrastructure by and availability of technically developed equipment to carry out the procedure are the vital drivers for the extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy market.In addition, the rising prevalence and incidences of kidney stones and ureter stones are expected to fuel the extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy market. Furthermore, the rising prevalence of obesity and patient awareness about the latest technological advancements will contribute to the growth of the market. However, failure of crushing large stones through ESWL is the challenging factor for the extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy market.Report Overview and TOC @The extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy market can be segmented into technological, applications and end-user. Technologically, the market can be further segmented into electrohydraulic technique, piezoelectric technique, and electromagnetic technique. Electrohydraulic technique is the oldest and the original method of shockwave generation. Thus, it hold the largest share and is the most accepted technique in the extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy by physicians and doctors. However, piezoelectric technique has the highest growth rate during the forecast period. On the basis of applications, the extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy is used for kidney stones, uretic stones, pancreatic stones and salivary stones.Request brochure @Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy for kidney has the largest market share and continue to show uniform growth during the forecast period. Depending on the end-user, extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy is segmented into hospitals, clinics, radiology labs and others. Hospitals held the largest share in the extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy market by end-user. However, the growth of clinic providing extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy is boosting due to technological growth and reduced recovery time and early discharge after the treatment.Geographically, North America held the largest share in the extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy throughout the forecast period. Presence of large number of obese patients susceptible to the development of kidney stones is expected to surge the market. Investment in medical device technology research and development have coursed in the recent past as well as collaborations have led to recent advances in the technique. Europe is the second largest extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy market due to increased government investment fueling the market growth.for Specific and Customized requirements@However, the fastest growing region is expected to be Asia Pacific due to emerging health care infrastructure, and development of technological facilities. Rising population, changing lifestyle and high acceptance to novel technology are the major market drivers in this region. Japan, China and India are the fastest growing economies in Asia Pacific. South American countries such as Brazil and Mexico are the regions that have significant potential for growth due to developing medical infrastructure, and high disposable income.Globally, the extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy market is dominated by players such as Boston Scientific Corporation, C.R. Bard Inc., Lumenis LTD, Cook Group Inc., Siemens AG, Medtrue Enterprise Co. Ltd., Karl Storz Gmbh and Co. KG, Olympus Corporation, Sainty Pharma, and Dornier MedTech GmbH.Pre Book full report@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.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:TMR Blog:
Western Europe Hot Drinks Sector Market 2017- Revenue, Price and Gross Margin Research Report 2021

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SUMMARYWiseGuyReports published new report, titled Opportunities in the Western Europe Hot Drinks Sector"Opportunities in the Western Europe Hot Drinks Sector: Analysis of opportunities offered by high growth economies", report brings together multiple data sources to provide a comprehensive overview of the region's Hot Drinks sector. It includes market overview, high growth country analysis, top brands, key distribution channels, packaging formats and case studies.The hot drinks sector in Western Europe was estimated at US$36,017.4 million in 2016, making the region the second largest market in the global hot drinks sector. Of the three markets, hot coffee held the largest share, accounting for 73.4% of total value sales in 2016, while hot tea, the second largest market, held a value share of 19%. Belgium was valued at US$1,172.6 million in 2016 and is forecast to reach US$1,511.1 million by 2021, witnessing the fastest CAGR of 5.2% during 2016-2021. Hypermarkets & supermarkets emerged as the leading channel for distribution of hot drinks in Western Europe with 54.5% share in 2016, followed by convenience stores with 17.2% in the same year.GET SAMPLE REPORT @ScopeThis report brings together multiple data sources to provide a comprehensive overview of the hot drinks sector in the region. It includes analysis on the following - Sector overview: Provides overview of the sector size, value and volume growth analysis, across regions- Change in consumption: Analysis on the shift in consumption of hot drinks by markets across the key countries in the region.- High potential countries: Provides Risk-Reward analysis of top 4 high potential countries in the region based on market assessment, economic development, socio-demographic, governance indicators, and technological infrastructure- Country analysis: Provides deep-dive analysis of high potential countries covering value growth during 2016-2021, key challenges, consumer demographics, and key trends supported with product examples. It also includes analysis of the key challenges faced and future outlook for the region.- Brand analysis: Provides an overview of leading brands in the region, besides analyzing the growth of Private Label products in the region.- Key distribution channels: Provides analysis on the leading distribution channels for hot drinks across the key countries in the region, in 2016. It covers these distribution channels - hypermarkets & supermarkets, convenience stores, food & drinks specialists, dollar stores, which include variety stores & general merchandisers and others, which includes cash & carries & warehouse clubs and others.- Preferred packaging formats: The report provides percentage share (in 2016) and growth analysis (during 2011-2021) for various packaging materials, container, closure, and outer types based on the volume sales (units) of hot drinks.Key points to buy- Manufacturing and retailers seek latest information on how the market is evolving to formulate their sales and marketing strategies. There is also demand for authentic market data with a high level of detail. This report has been created to provide its readers with up-to-date information and analysis to uncover emerging opportunities of growth within the sector in the region.- The report provides a detailed analysis of the countries in the region, covering the key challenges, competitive landscape and demographic analysis , that can help companies gain insight into the country specific nuances- The analysts have also placed a significant emphasis on the key trends that drive consumer choice and the future opportunities that can be explored in the region, than can help companies in revenue expansion- To gain competitive intelligence about leading brands in the sector in the region with information about their market share and growth ratesTable of Contents1 Executive summary2. Market size and growth analysis (Regional analysis)3. Identifying high potential countries in Western Europe4. Market size and growth analysis (High potential countries in Western Europe)5. Country Profiles (High potential countries in Western Europe)6. Success Stories7. Company and Brand Analysis8. Key Distribution Channels9. Key Packaging Formats10. Challenges and Future Outlook11. Appendix..CONTINUEDFor 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 checkFor updating knowledge or for thoroughly understanding various terminologies, we also have vast list of seminars for your reference, for more information cordially checkWise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
North America Adulticide Market Outlook 2021 | Revenue Models

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North America Adulticide Market was worth USD XX.XX billion in 2016 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of X.XX%, to reach USD XX.XX billion by 2021. The simplest definition of an Adulticide is a chemical or insecticide used to kill adult insects. Although adulticides come under insecticides, a recent boom in the adulticide segment has meant that it is now considered as a separate market.Whereas a pesticide controls pests by inhibiting their life cycle, most often in the larvae stage, adulticides function by killing the pests after they have reached adult stage. Adulticides are the cure whereas pesticides are the preventive measure. The recent boom in the adulticide industry is due to the decrease in effectiveness of pesticides targeted at larvae. Pests have started developing resistances to most pesticides and have no problem reaching adulthood. In order to tackle this problem, use of adulticides to kill adult pests is the preferred method.View full report @The major factors affecting the Adulticide market includes the obvious reason for increased demand for agricultural products. The increased demand for food production due to rising populations means maximum efficiency needs to be maintained in farms. Loss of crops to pests is not acceptable and on the off chance that normal pesticides fail, adulticides need to maintain crop productivity. As for the restraints of the market, as with any agrochemical, costs associated with its usage and ecological concerns are the main restraints.The North America Adulticide market is broadly classified by Type into Synthetic, Natural and Biological Adulticides and based on End Users they are classified into Government, Residential and Commercial Usage. Based on geography, the North America market is analysed under USA and Canada. The North American market has the largest market share globally inspite of the having a low growth rate in recent years. This is expected as the scope for development in the region is quite low and the entrant of new players into the market is not encouraged by the presence of major market players native to the region.Market Segmentation:1 Type1.1 Introduction1.2 Synthetic1.3 Natural1.4 Biological1.5 Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By Type1.6 Market Attractiveness Analysis, By Type1.7 Market Share Analysis, By Type2 End Users2.1 Introduction2.2 Government2.3 Residential2.4 Commercial2.5 Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By End Users2.6 Market Attractiveness Analysis, By End Users2.7 Market Share Analysis, By End UsersGet free sample report @The Adulticide market is highly competitive with a large number of players. Key market players dominating the market with their products include Bayer Environmental Science, Valent BioSciences, Clarke Central Life Sciences, BASF, Summit Chemical, Univa, UPL, Kadant GranTek, Babolna-Bio, MGK, Westham and AllPro Vector.About Market Data Forecast:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, they cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. From all-encompassing umbrella markets to extremely specific niche markets covering all the major regions across the globe as part of the research scope, their research services offer one of a kind specialities with competitive pricing options. For more information, kindly visit,5th floor, Road No-1, Phase No-1, Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, Hyderabad-500072.Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-8887029626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail: abhishek@marketdataforecast.comVisit Market Data Forecast Blog @View latest Press Releases of MDF @
Companion Diagnostics Market Projected to be Resilient at 18.0% CAGR During 2013-2019

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A new Transparency Market Research report states that the global companion diagnostics market stood at US$1.8 bn in 2013 and is predicted to reach US$5.6 bn by 2019. It is predicted to expand at a whopping CAGR of 18.0% between 2013 and 2019. The title of the report is Companion Diagnostics Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 - 2019.As per the report, the increasing demand for personalized medicines is the key factor fuelling the growth of the market for companion diagnostics. In addition, the rising occurrence of cancer globally and the reducing costs of drug development are also augmenting the growth of the market.Factors such as the rising focus on targeted therapies and the focus of pharmaceutical companies on the in-house advancement of companion diagnostics are also augmenting the growth of the market. Furthermore, the increasing new indication areas have emerged as a key opportunity in the market.Read Report Overview @On the other hand, the increasing duration of the approval process and the prolonged development time of companion diagnostics may impede the growth of the market in forthcoming years. The unfavorable reimbursement scenario globally may also have a negative impact on the growth of the market in the coming years, as stated in this report.Companion diagnostics are various procedures or tests utilized by healthcare professionals in making enhanced treatment decisions for patients as per the patients response to particular ongoing treatments. Companion diagnostics aid a health care professional to determine the effects of a specific therapeutic product on patients and any potential risks or side effects associated with its usage. The healthcare professional then adjusts his treatment to achieve enhanced effectiveness and safety.On the basis of indication, the report segments the companion diagnostics market into lung cancer, breast cancer, gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, melanoma, and others including HIV and thalassemia. Amongst these, in 2012, the segment of breast cancer led the market on the basis of revenue. However, in forthcoming years, the segment of lung cancer will dominate the market, expanding at a CAGR of more than 20% between 2013 and 2019. This is owing to the discovery of myriad relevant companion diagnostics as well as the discovery of lung-cancer-specific biomarkers.Request Sample Report @In terms of geography, the report segments the market into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW). Amongst these, in 2012, the market for companion diagnostics was dominated by the region of North America and this region held a share of over 35% in the market on the basis of revenue. This is because of the increasing consumer base due to the increasing count of cancer patients, rising affordability, increasing awareness about personalized healthcare, and the presence of sophisticated medical equipment in this region. On the other hand, the increased adoption of innovative medical procedures, the rising disposable incomes of consumers, and the rising healthcare infrastructure will also fuel the Latin America and Asia Pacific companion diagnostics markets.According to the study, the chief players operating in the market are Roche Holdings AG, Qiagen N.V., Agilent Technologies, Inc., Agendia N.V., Abbott Laboratories, Genomic Health, Inc., GE Healthcare Ltd., and Life Technologies Corporation, among others.ABOUT US:Transparency 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:Transparency Market ResearchState Tower90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-345
Dec, 4 2017: Helixchanger Market Forecast 2023 Vahterus Oy, SPX Corporation, Hamon Group, API Heat Transfer

Helixchanger

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Helixchanger Market Research 2017A market study "Global Helixchanger Market" examines the performance of the Helixchanger market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Helixchanger market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Helixchanger market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Helixchanger Market 2017 report includes Helixchanger market Revenue, market Share, Helixchanger industry volume, market Trends, Helixchanger Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Helixchanger Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Helixchanger Market 2017 : SPX Corporation Balcke-Durr GmbH SPX Cooling Technologies API Heat Transfer Vahterus Oy GEA Heat Exchangers Group Hamon Group Harsco Industrial Air-X-ChangersFirstly, the report covers the top Helixchanger manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Helixchanger report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Helixchanger industry, Helixchanger industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Helixchanger Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Helixchanger 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 Helixchanger market revenue worldwide.Finally, Helixchanger 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
Dec, 4 2017: Height Gauges Market Forecast 2023 ProTec, Alpa Metrology, Wenzhou Weidu Electronics, Moore & Wright

Height Gauges

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Height Gauges Market Research 2017A market study "Global Height Gauges Market" examines the performance of the Height Gauges market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Height Gauges market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Height Gauges market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Height Gauges Market 2017 report includes Height Gauges market Revenue, market Share, Height Gauges industry volume, market Trends, Height Gauges Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Height Gauges Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Height Gauges Market 2017 : Alpa Metrology MITUTOYO ProTec GmbH SYLVAC Tesa Moore & Wright MICROTECH Wenzhou Weidu ElectronicsFirstly, the report covers the top Height Gauges manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Height Gauges report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Height Gauges industry, Height Gauges industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Height Gauges Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Height Gauges 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 Height Gauges market revenue worldwide.Finally, Height Gauges 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
Trend of UPS Market in Global Industry : Market Development, Analysis and Overview 2017

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Albany, NY, 4th December : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "UPS Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025" globally.The report provides analysis of the UPS Market for the period 20152025, wherein the years from 2017 to 2025 is the forecast period and 2016 is considered as the base year.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Data for 2015 has been included as historical information. The report covers all the major trends and technologies playing a major role in the UPS Market growth over the forecast period. It highlights the drivers, restraints and opportunities expected to influence the market growth during this period. The study provides a holistic perspective on the markets growth in terms of revenue (in US$ Mn) across different geographical regions, namely North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa and South America. Report highlights the key trends affecting the market on a global scale. Furthermore, region wise prominent countries/regions covered in the report includes - The U.S, Canada, Germany, France, the U.K., India, China, Japan, GCC, South Africa and Brazil.Global UPS Market: Market DynamicsThe market overview section of the report showcases the market dynamics and trends which includes drivers, restraints, opportunities that influence the current nature and future status of this market. It also provides an overview about the key market indicators given across the five geographical regions. Under the key trends, various trends adopted by players are described. Under the porters five forces analysis section, a brief analysis of the level of competition within the UPS industry is given and business strategy is provided in order to determine the competitive attractiveness and intensity of the UPS Market. The report also includes key industry developments covering significant advances made by leading market players over the period of time.View Complete TOC with tables & Figures @Global UPS Market: Competitive LandscapeThe report provides competitive landscape of the UPS Market, thereby listing out all the major players according to their geographic presence, market attractiveness and recent key developments. The competitive landscape section of the report gives an overview about the market share of several key players for the year 2016. The UPS Market data estimates are the result of our in-depth secondary research, primary interviews and in-house expert panel reviews. These market estimates have been analyzed by taking into account the impact of different political, social, economic, technological, and legal factors along with the current market dynamics affecting the market growth. Factors including market position, offerings and R&D focus are attributed to companys capabilities. This section also identifies and includes various recent developments carried out by the leading players. Moreover, key takeaways section provided at the end of competitive landscape section would help the operating companies to make the best move in the market.Eaton Corporation Plc, Schneider Electric SE (APC), Emerson Electric, Legrand, Uninterruptible Power Supplies Ltd., Vertiv Co., Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, ABB Ltd, Riello Elettronica are few of the key players which have been profiled in this study. Details such as financials, business strategies, SWOT analysis, and other such strategic information pertaining to these players has been duly provided as part of company profiling.The UPS Market has been segmented as below:The UPS Market, By ApplicationData Centre & Facility UPSIndustrial UPSMarine UPSNetwork, Server & Storage UPSPC, Workstation & Home UPSOthersThe UPS Market, By kVA RangeLess than 5 kVA5.1-20 kVA20.1-60 kVA60.1-200 kVAAbove 200 kVAThe UPS Analysis, By Country/RegionNorth AmericaThe U.S.CanadaRest of North AmericaEuropeThe U.K.GermanyFranceRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaIndiaJapanRest of Asia PacificMiddle East & AfricaBrowse Report @GCCSouth AfricaRest of Middle East and AfricaSouth AmericaBrazilRest of South AmericaResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on :
Professional Growth of Smart Baggage Handling System Market in Global Industry 2017-2025

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Albany, NY, 4th December : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Smart Baggage Handling System Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025" globally.The report provides analysis of the smart baggage handling system market for the period 20152025, wherein the years from 2017 to 2025 is the forecast period and 2016 is considered as the base year. Data for 2015 has been included as historical information.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @The report covers all the major trends and technologies playing a major role in the smart baggage handling system market growth over the forecast period. It highlights the drivers, restraints and opportunities expected to influence the market growth during this period. The study provides a holistic perspective on the markets growth in terms of revenue (in US$ Mn) across different geographical regions, namely North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa and South America. Report highlights the key trends affecting the market on a global scale. Furthermore, region wise prominent countries/regions covered in the report includes - the U.S, Canada, Germany, France, the U.K., India, China, Japan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina.Global Smart Baggage Handling System Market: Scope of StudyThe comprehensive smart baggage handling system market estimates are the result of our in-depth secondary research, primary interviews, and in-house expert panel reviews. These market estimates have been analyzed by taking into account the impact of different political, social, economic, technological, and legal factors along with the current market dynamics affecting smart baggage handling system market growth.This report provides all the essential information required to understand the key developments in smart baggage handling system market, growth trend of each segment and strategy of each company that helps them to efficiently compete in the market. Also, the report provides insights related to trends and its impact on the market. Furthermore, Porters Five Forces analysis explains the factors which are currently affecting the smart baggage handling system market.View Complete TOC with tables & Figures @Global Smart Baggage Handling System Market: Market DynamicsThe market overview section of the report demonstrates the market dynamics such as the drivers, restraints, opportunities, trends that is expected to influence the current nature and future status of this market. Key indicators mentioned in the report, provide a robust view about the vital factors that led to the strong adoption of smart baggage handling systems around the globe. The key indicators also provide significance of the factors which are capable of changing the market scenario. These indicators are expected to define the market position during the forecast period. An attractiveness analysis has also been provided for every segment in the report, in order to provide a thorough understanding of the overall scenario of smart baggage handling system market. Moreover, the report provides an overview of various strategies adopted by the key players present in the market. The report also includes key industry developments covering significant advances made by leading market players over the period of time.Global Smart Baggage Handling System Market: Market SegmentationThe report segments the market on the basis of type of transportation, technology, solution and region. The transportation mode segment includes airport and railway station. Airport segment includes two sub segments which are international and domestic. Technology segment is divided into barcode system and radio frequency identification system (RFID). The solution segment includes sorting, conveying, tracking and tracing, diverting and other.Global Smart Baggage Handling System Market: Competitive LandscapeThe report also highlights the competitive landscape of the global smart baggage handling system market, thereby positioning all the major players according to their presence in different regions of the world and recent key developments initiated by them in the smart baggage handling system market.Daifuku Web Seimens Group, SITA, Vanderlande Industries, Beumer Group, Pteris Global Limited, G&S Airport Conveyor, Alstef Automation S.A., Scarabee Systems & Technology B.V., Fives Group are some of the major players operating within the smart baggage handling system market profiled in this study. Details such as financials, SWOT analysis, business strategies, recent developments, and other such strategic information pertaining to these players have been duly provided as part of company profiling.Global Smart Baggage Handling System MarketBy Type of TransportationAirportInternationalDomesticRailway StationBy TechnologyBarcode SystemRadio Frequency Identification (RFID)By SolutionSortingConveyingTracking and TracingDivertingOtherBy RegionNorth AmericaThe U.S.CanadaRest of North AmericaEuropeU.K.GermanyFranceRest of EuropeAsia PacificIndiaJapanChinaAustraliaRest of Asia PacificBrowse Report @Middle East and AfricaUAESaudi ArabiaSouth AfricaRest of MEASouth AmericaBrazilArgentinaRest of South AmericaResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on :
Graves Orbitopathy Market: Global Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012-2016 and Forecast 2017-2023

Graves Orbitopathy Market

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Graves ophthalmopathy is also called as thyroid-associated orbitopathy (TAO) and thyroid eye disease (TED), Graves orbitopathy (GO) is autoimmune inflammatory disorder of the tissues of periorbit and orbit that is characterized by the retraction of upper eyelid, lagging, swelling and redness of lid, bulging of eyes and conjunctivitis. Most commonly occurs in the individuals having Graves disease, and less commonly in the individuals having Hashimotos thyroiditis, or in the people with euthyroid. It is a part of systemic process of variable expression in skin, thyroid and eyes that is caused by the autoantibodies which binds to the tissues of these organs. Autoantibodies targets the fibroblasts in the eye muscles and fibroblasts can be differentiated into the fat cells (adipocytes). Muscles and fat cells expands and gets inflammation.Increase in incidence and prevalence of thyroid disorders, availability of appreciative reimbursement policies for the treatment, and growing awareness regarding the complications related to thyroid disorders are some of the factors driving Graves disease market. Side effects associated with drugs are one of the restraints for the graves orbitopathy market.A sample of this report is available upon request @The global graves orbitopathy market is segmented on the basis of drug class, distribution channel and geographical regions.Based on the drug class, the graves orbitopathy market is segmented as: Iodine and Iodides Ionic Inhibitors Radioactive Iodine Beta Blockers Thioamides CorticosteroidsBased on the distribution channel, the graves orbitopathy market is segmented as: Hospital Pharmacies Retail Pharmacies OthersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @As per Wickham study in England, in 2016, Graves disease is accounted for 0.5 cases per 1000 persons, with high incidence rate in people with age of 40 to 60. Graves disease is the high prevalent autoimmune disorder in U.S After Hashimoto thyroiditis. In 2016, as per research study of PREGO (presentation of Graves orbitopathy), incidence of Graves orbitopathy in Europe was 10-30/10,000 human annually. However, severity and the incidence of the Graves disease in Europe was observed to decline to 2.10/10,000/year. Iodine-131 is used in radioactive iodine ablation (RIA) used to remove whole or a part of thyroid gland, which results in preventing the excessive production of thyroid hormone. Subtotal thyroidectomy used for the removal of thyroid gland is the most invasive treatment option.Need more information about this report @On the basis of geographical regions, the graves orbitopathy market is segmented as Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, and Middle East & Africa. North America is expected as major market for the disorders related to thyroid gland followed by Europe. Asia-Pacific is expected to be as a rapidly growing market due to rise in thyroid gland disorders, rise in health care investments, growing awareness regarding hyperthyroidism, and different alternative treatments availability.Some of the players in the graves orbitopathy disease market are GlaxoSmithKline plc (U.K.), Allergan, plc.(Ireland) Abbott Laboratories (U.S.) RLC LABS (U.S.), AbbVie, Inc.( U.S.), Mylan N.V.( U.S.), Pfizer, Inc. (U.S.), and Merck & Co.,Inc. (U.S.).Get access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Contact to Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXContact Phone: +1-866-598-1553Email: sales@precisionbusinessinsights.comWebsite @
Aquaponics Market By Production Type, Components, Equipment, End User and Regions - Global Industry Analysis and 2025 Forecasts

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Aquaponics is a combination of hydroponic and aquaculture systems, which grows plants and fish together in one unified system. The cycle of aquaponics includes the waste produce by fishes which is being used as organic food for plants and then these plants will naturally filter the water, which will be used for the fishes again. The rise in the demand of organic fruits and vegetables, and these systems permit agriculture to take substantial steps toward environmental sustainability are the drivers of aquaponics market.The factor that can act as a restraint in the growth of the market is the high cost of initial setup of aquaponics system and the high investment for technological system installation especially in emerging economies may hamper the aquaponics market. However, the increasing demand of enhancement in urban farming methods and off-season availability of fruits & vegetables will create new opportunities in the market of aquaponics in the forecast period.Request Sample is Available atThe Global Aquaponics Market Analysis to 2025 is a specialized and in-depth study of the aquaponics industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of global aquaponics market with detailed market segmentation by production type, components, equipment, end user, and geography. The global aquaponics market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the leading market players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.The report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global aquaponics market based on production type, components, equipment, and end user. It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall aquaponics market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM). The market by each region is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report covers analysis and forecast of 16 counties globally along with current trend and opportunities prevailing in the region.Inquire before Buying atBesides this, the report analyzes factors affecting market from both demand and supply side and further evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend. The report also provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions namely; North America, Europe, APAC, MEA and South America after evaluating political, economic, social and technological factors effecting the market in these regions.Also, key aquaponics market players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years. Some of the key players influencing the market are Ultrasonics Canada Corporation, Aquaponic Lynx LLC, Backyard Aquaponics Pty Ltd, ECF Farmsystems GmbH, Nelson & Pade Inc., Urban Farms AG, Greenlife Aquaponics, The Aquaponic Source, My Aquaponics, and Colorado Aquaponics among others.Complete Report is Available atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.comAbout Us:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.533, 5th Floor, Amanora Chambers,Amanora Township, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Prosperity of Industrialization to Drive Cluster Munitions Market During 2017 - 2025

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Cluster munitions is a type of ground launched or air dropped explosive weapon that ejects smaller sub munitions. More commonly it is also known as cluster bomb that releases explosive bomb to destroy electric power transmission lines, runways or to scatter land mines and to disperse chemical weapons. These weapons were first used in 1940 and were delivered in massive numbers over wide area and have killed thousands of civilians in war torn countries. Basic cluster bomb comprises a hollow shell and more than two thousand sub munitions within it. Some of the cluster munitions are dispensers that are designed to be engaged by the aircraft after releasing the munitions. The sub munitions are attached with small parachutes that allows the bomb to descend slowly thereby allowing the aircraft to escape the blast area in a low altitude attacks.The cluster munitions market is primarily driven by the introduction of sensor based munitions globally. Sensor based munitions is likely to help the cluster munitions to guide the munitions to the target and helps them to detect the target. These bombs are getting smarter through the implementation of sensors into it. They can recognize the moving object and decide whether or not to engage it while spinning through the air at high RPM.Another important driving factor is the Cost-effectiveness of cluster munitions. Since cluster of bombs are confined into a single bomb thus acting as a container can actually disperse itself after it is released from air which help in targeting multiple targets in one go. This is helping in achieving cost effectiveness as one bomb is used to aim several targets.Competition pushes the cost down to a nominal amount since only one or two facilities in the locality can handle such energetic materials.Increasing deployment in extremist-dominated regions is also bolstering the demand of cluster munitions market globally. With the increasing extremist dominated regions, demand of cluster munitions in the global market.A sample of this report is available upon request @The cluster munitions market is restrained by the increasing risk of unexplored ordnances. The failure rate of varioussub munitions means that a single attack can leavehundreds or thousands of small unexploded, but lethal devices.The high number of unexplodedsub munitionstainting an area and significantly increases the probability of anaccidental encounter, compared with other types of ordnance.The cluster munitions market is bifurcated into two types ground based cluster munitions and air based cluster munitions. The ground based cluster munitions comprises mortar bombs, artillery projectiles and rockets. Whereas, the air based cluster munitions includes bombs, rockets and missiles. Based on regions, the cluster munitions market is bifurcated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. Unlike most types of ordnance, sub munitions are often light and small enough to be picked up by children, who cannot recognize them as dangerous munitions. Higher death rate of civilians is also one of the major restraining factors in the global cluster munitions market. Due to wide areaeffects and difficulties in accurately targeting sub munitions, civilians may fall victim to the weapons during an attack despite strict efforts to target only military objectives. Moreover, low failure ratecan result in a huge number of unexploded sub munitions because of the often highquantities delivered.Prominent use of Alternative Warhead Program in the coming years is acting as one of the major opportunities in the global cluster munitions market during the forecast period. These are the advanced versions of cluster munitions that aims at elimination of unexploded ordnances completely. Some of the major players in the global cluster munitions marketcompriseTextron Systems, NORINCO, IMI Systems, Lockheed Martin, L-3 Fuzing and Ordnance Systems, Orbital ATK, and Aeroteh among othersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.About USTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Abhishek BudholiyaState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Website:Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Instrument Transformer Market is set to exceed 50 thousand units by 2024

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Rising demand for electricity owing to rapid urbanization across the globe have instigated concerns pertaining to grid stability, which in turn will drive the instrument transformer market size. Ongoing urban migration adhered by rising infrastructural investments will further complement the deployment of effective monitoring and control T&D systems. Sustainable economic proliferation along with revamping lifestyles have led to an exponential rise in the peak load demand for energy. Hence, accruing energy demand across the globe subject to the ongoing economic and social reformation will appreciable augment the industry outlook.France instrument transformer industry size is set to exceed USD 100 million by 2024. Stringent regulatory reforms pertaining to emissions coupled with rapid technological transitions to sustain an energy efficient grid infrastructure will comprehensively thrust the business. Inclination towards clean energy adhered by rising investments across the renewable sector will further escalate the product penetration across the country. In 2017, the French government has led forward its plan to invest over USD 20 billion toward its energy transition plan. The framework lays grounds for a segregated investment mechanism catering towards energy efficiency, renewable integration and cleaner vehicle development.Oil immersed in 2016, accounted for over 50% of the instrument transformer market share. Effective insulation and di-electric strength when compared to its counterparts makes its adoption preferable. Applicability across high voltage applications coupled with economical cost structure will further escalate the product penetration. The technology since inception has witnessed sheer progression owing to its higher voltage output and operational flexibility with its prime application across utility and commercial electrical networks.Request for Sample Copy of this research report @Rising rural electrification demand across Asia Pacific & Africa supported by accruing investments by financial institutions including the World Bank, and Asian Development Bank (ADB) will foster the market size. Re-structuring of electrical grids across war affected nations including Iraq, Syria, and Sudan will further boost the industry growth. In addition, large scale grid integration of sustainable energy sources coupled with rapid expansion of T&D networks to sustain security of supply concerns will further proliferate the industry expansion. In 2017, the World Bank declared an investment worth USD 4 million towards expansion of an effective grid infrastructure across the Pacific Island.The U.S. instrument transformer market is projected to witness sustainable growth owing to rising demand for the upgradation of existing grid infrastructure along with rapid expansion of effective T&D networks. The transformer industry across the nation has witnessed significant upsurge on account of favorable regulatory reforms pertaining to energy efficiency and grid stability.Ongoing trends subject to the adoption of sustainable technologies along with briskly advancing monitoring & control technologies will further embellish the business outlook.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Asia Pacific instrument transformer market is set to grow over 7% by 2024. The industry in the recent years has witnessed an appreciable escalation on grounds of favorable renewable integration reforms coupled with increasing rural electrification demand. Large scale migration across urban areas along with rapid expansion of utility based electricity networks to cater the rising energy demand will comprehensively thrust the business growth.Eminent players across the instrument transformer market include ABB, GE, Siemens, Crompton Greaves, Amran Inc, ITL, Weidmann, Raychem RPG, Meramec, ITEC, Schneider Electric, KONCAR, HEYI Electrical, EATON, Toshiba, TRENCH, BHEL, Mitsubishi, DENT Instruments, Mehru, Celme and Ruhstrat.Browse Related ReportDry type Transformer Market Size By Core (Closed, Shell, Berry), By Technology (Self-air, Air-blast), By Insulation (Class R, Class H, Class F, Class B, Class A), By Product (Open Wound, Cast Resin, Vacuum Pressure Impregnated, Vacuum Pressure Encapsulated), By Phase (Single, Three), By Installation (Outdoor, Indoor), By Winding (Two-winding, Auto-transformer), By Rating (< 5 MVA, 5 MVA to 30 MVA, > 30 MVA), By Mounting (Pad, Pole, PC/PCB), By Application (Industries, Inner-city Substations, Indoor/Underground Substations, Renewable Generation), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Austria, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, China, Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, New Zealand, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Turkey, South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, Brazil, Peru, Argentina), Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017  2024About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary researchContact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:
Future of Critical Communication Size 2022 marketMotorola, Ascom, Ericsson, Nokia

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MarketStudyReport.com Add New Global Critical Communication Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 to its research database. The report presents a deep study of the market growth factors and drivers. The report spread across 118 pages with table and figures in itIn this report, the global Critical Communication market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022. The growth of this market can be attributed to the increasing need for modernization and replacement of old equipment with new equipment, growing application of critical communication in diverse industries, and advance features of critical communication.Request a Free sample PDF of this research to evaluate more:The competitive landscape of the Critical Communication market profiles the key players participating in the global business space. These include marketMotorola, Ascom, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, Huawei, AT&T, Harris, Hytera, Cobham Wireless, Leonardo, Mentura Group, Inmarsat, Zenitel, Telstra.The industry is analyzed in terms of products, applications, regions, and the key manufacturers holding a prominent share of the global revenue.The product landscape of the Critical Communication market comprises Land Mobile Radio, Long-Term Evolution.Each product has been analyzed in terms of its production, capacity, and consumption. The report further details the market share to be procured by each of these products over the coming years.Request a discount on global Critical Communication research report @In terms of end-user or applications, the report is segmented Public Safety, Transportation, Utilities, Mining. A detailed analysis of the contribution of these application segments to the overall market revenue and volume has been included in the report.The regional segmentation of the report includes United States, China, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, India. Detailing the consumption and production rate of Critical Communication in these regions, the report outlines the growth curve of this industry in terms of market volume and share over 2017-2022.Major Points in Table of ContentsGlobal Critical Communication Market Research Report 2017Global Critical Communication Market OverviewGlobal Critical Communication Market Competition by ManufacturersGlobal Critical Communication Industry Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionGlobal Critical Communication Industry Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionGlobal Critical Communication Market Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeGlobal Critical Communication Market Analysis by ApplicationGlobal Critical Communication Industry Manufacturers Profiles/AnalysisCritical Communication Manufacturing Cost AnalysisIndustrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersMarketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersMarket Effect Factors AnalysisGlobal Critical Communication Market ForecastResearch Findings and ConclusionAppendixRelated Reports: -Global (North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa) Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) Market by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022Scope of the Report: This report focuses on the Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa.Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter
Europe Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration Market Growth and Outlook 2021

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Industrial approaches for the channelling of substances betwixt two segments by the use of permeable membranes is covered by membrane technology. In general, membrane technology is used in machine-driven separation processes aimed at separating gaseous or liquid streams. Membrane separation processes utilize less energy as compared to straight thermal separation processes such as distillation, sublimation or crystallization due to their functioning without heating. Either segments (permeate and retentate) can be utilized for separation which is purely physical. Readily acceptance of the nanofiltration technology, steadily rising biopharmaceutical industry, as well as rapid growth in generics production are the factors driving this market. Stringent regulatory requirements and high prices are hindering the growth of this market.Request free sample report atThe Europe Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration market can be categorized into three categories: by product, by technique, and by application. On the basis of product, Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration market is classified into MCE Membrane Filters, Coated Cellulose Acetate Membrane Filters, Nylon Membrane Filters, PTFE Membrane Filters, PVDF Membrane Filters and Other Membrane Filters. The MCE membrane filters category is estimated to account for the biggest market share in 2016. This is majorly attributed to the high adoption rate of membrane filtration products.If we go by technique, Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration market is segmented into Microfiltration, Ultrafiltration, Nanofiltration, Cross filtration, Reverse Osmosis and Ion Exchange. The microfiltration category is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR during the aforementioned forecast period. This can be attributed to the high rates of production of pharmaceutical products and drugs. Further, on the basis of application the market can be categorized into Final Product Processing, Raw Material Filtration, Cell Separation, Water Purification and Air Purification. The final product processing category is estimated to growth at the highest rate during the aforementioned forecast period.By geography, the Europe Pharmaceutical Membrane Filtration market has been categorized into Germany, U.K, France, Spain, and Italy. It is the second largest in terms of market share.Major companies in the pharmaceutical membrane filtration market are Merck KGaA (Germany), General Healthcare Company (U.K.), Pall Corporation (U.S.), Sartorius Stedim Biotech Group (France), Alfa Laval (Sweden), Graver Technologies, LLC (U.S.), Koch Membrane Systems Inc. (U.S.), GEA Group (Germany), and Novasep (U.S.)About Us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, we cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. Our analyst team comprises expert professionals in market research, who with their collective knowledge and skillset dedicatedly serve clients from various industries and regions.Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail: abhishek@marketdataforecast.com
Mobile Augmented Reality Market by Components, Solutions, Application, Regions and End User - Global Industry Analysis and 2025 Forecasts

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Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) using digital content over real world. It converts the way people interact with everyday objects. Hence, increase socialization among users. Users can even try any product before they plan to buy. Major driver for the market is increasing investment and development in digital services as demand for smartphones, tablets, and smart glasses is increasing day by day. Also, give a platform to view on multiple product before purchasing. Added to this, demand for gaming is rising which is giving companies to develop more AR related apps, games.Factors restraining Market is navigation becomes inaccurate due to limited user interface which affects functioning of applications. More to it, privacy issues as there are chances of hacking because of information entered in application. Nevertheless, acceptance of AR in various sectors like healthcare, factories, manufacturing sites, retail will give more create opportunities for the market.Request Sample is Available atThe Global Mobile Augmented Reality Market Analysis to 2025 is a specialized and in-depth study of the Mobile Augmented Reality industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of global Mobile Augmented Reality market with detailed market segmentation by components, solutions, application, end user and geography. The global Mobile Augmented Reality Software market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the leading market players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.The report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global Mobile Augmented Reality Software market based on components, solutions, application and end user. It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall Mobile Augmented Reality Software market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM). The market by each region is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report covers analysis and forecast of 16 counties globally along with current trend and opportunities prevailing in the region.Inquire before Buying atBesides this, the report analyzes factors affecting market from both demand and supply side and further evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend. The report also provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions namely; North America, Europe, APAC, MEA and South America after evaluating political, economic, social and technological factors effecting the market in these regions. Also, key Mobile Augmented Reality market players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years. Some of the key players influencing the market are the list of companies for Mobile Augmented Reality Software Market are Wikitude GmbH, Blippar, Infinity Augmented Reality Inc., Aurasma (Hewlett-Packard Development Company. L.P.), Atheer, Inc., Augmented Pixels Inc., Daqri, Metaio GmbH (Apple Inc.), Vuzix and Catchoom Technologies among others.Complete Report is Available atContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.comAbout Us:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.533, 5th Floor, Amanora Chambers,Amanora Township, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Dermatology Devices Market is Expected to be Valued at US$ 5,307.6 Million by the End of 2026

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Dermatology devices market is a billion dollars market accounting for a substantial proportion of healthcare expenditure globally. In a new report titled Dermatology Devices Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 20162026 Future Market Insights offers a 10-year forecast for the global dermatology devices market and provides insights on the drivers, restraints, opportunities, and trends likely to govern the global dermatology devices market during the forecast period (2016  2026). According to Future Market Insights analysis, the global dermatology devices market is expected to reach US$ 2,708.4 Mn in terms of revenue by 2016 end, witnessing a year-over-year growth of 6.2%.Read Report Overview @Factors such as rising prevalence of skin problems including acne leading to scars, increasing obesity, and growing aesthetic awareness among people are likely to contribute to the revenue growth of the global dermatology devices market over the forecast period. Economic factors such as growing healthcare expenditure, increasing disposable income per capita, and rising government support in developed economies are expected to boost the growth of the global dermatology devices market over the forecast period.The global dermatology devices market is segmented on the basis of Product Type (Lasers, RF Devices, Microdermabrasion Devices, Others); Application (Vascular Lesions, Tattoo Removal, Hair Removal, Wrinkle Removal, Scar Removal, Acne Removal, Others); and End User (Hospitals, Specialty Dermatology Clinics, Private Clinics).Request Sample Report @The global dermatology devices market is segmented into the seven key regions of North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ, Japan, and MEA. The demand for non-invasive cosmetic correction procedures has been significantly high in the U.S. market in the recent years, making North America the most lucrative market globally. In addition to North America, demand for non-invasive cosmetic procedures has been significantly growing in Western Europe and APEJ. Western Europe is expected to account for 20.3% revenue share of the global dermatology devices market by 2016 end.Buy Full Dermatology Devices Market Report @The global dermatology devices market report profiles some of the leading companies operating in the global dermatology devices market such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., Cynosure Inc., Lumenis, Syneron Candela Ltd., Avita Medical Ltd., Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co. Ltd., Cutera, Lutronics Corporation, and Beijing Toplaser Technology Co. Ltd. Major market players are adopting different strategies such as product launches and acquisitions to maintain their market share. For instance, in November 2015, Lumenis acquired Pollogen to strengthen and expand its aesthetic products portfolio. Similarly, in May 2016, Alma Lasers launched Accent Prime that combines ultrasound and unipolar radio frequency technologies to provide enhanced body contouring and skin tightening treatments.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Canada Home Healthcare Market is Estimated to Be USD 10,449.1 Million

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Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) has been serving as an active source to cater intelligent research report to enlighten both readers and investors. This research study titled Canada Home Healthcare Market Get Free Sample Report @The home health care market includes a wide range of medical devices and services that are used by patients to treat, diagnose, and monitor a variety of chronic diseases. These devices and services play an important role in providing cost-effective health care to the patients. The home health care market offers lucrative business opportunities in Canada due to increased acceptance of home health care, technological advancements, and cost-effective alternatives compared to other modalities (i.e. hospital visits). Factors such as aging population and increasing number of people diagnosed with chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiac disorders, and respiratory diseases are driving the growth of the home health care market in Canada. The Public Health Agency of Canada estimated that three individuals out of five in Canada (aged 20 years and above) suffer from chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, mental illness, and cardiovascular diseases, and four out of five are at risk of developing chronic conditions. Moreover, several organizations, such as the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities Canada, offer accreditation programs to the home care service providers to improve their home care business operation and quality of patient care, which in turn would contribute to the growth of the market. Other factors fueling the growth of the home health care market are aging population, rising government spending on home care services, and cost effectiveness However, the high cost of professional health care services and home medical devices is likely to restrain market growth.This report encompasses a detailed study of various home medical devices and home health care services in Canada. Home health care devices have been segmented into diagnostic and monitoring devices, therapeutic devices, home mobility assist devices, and medical supplies. The diagnostic and monitoring devices segment includes blood glucose monitors, blood pressure monitors, sleep apnea monitors, pregnancy test kits, pulse oximeters, heart rate monitors, temperature monitors, pedometers, and coagulation monitors. The therapeutic devices segment comprises insulin delivery devices, nebulizers, ventilators and CPAP devices, IV equipment, and dialysis equipment. The home mobility assist devices segment has been further categorized into wheelchairs, cranes and crutches, and other mobility assist devices. The market size and forecast for each device type has been provided for the period from 2012 to 2020, considering 2013 as the base year. The report also provides the compound annual growth rate (% CAGR) for the forecast period from 2014 to 2020 for each segment.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Based on services, the home health care market has been segmented into rehabilitation services, respiratory therapy services, tele-health and telemedicine services, infusion therapy services, and unskilled home health care services. The market size and forecast in terms of USD million for each service has been provided for the period from 2012 to 2020, considering 2013 as the base year. The report also provides the compound annual growth rate (% CAGR) for the forecast period from 2014 to 2020 for each segment.The home health care market in Canada has been segmented into four major regions: Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and Rest of Canada. The market size and forecast for each province has been estimated for the period from 2012 to 2020 in terms of revenue (USD million), considering 2013 as the base year. The report also provides the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020 for all the provinces mentioned above.The market overview section of the report discusses the market dynamics with respect to the market drivers, restraints, and opportunities. This section also covers market attractiveness analysis of the home health care market in Canada. A list of recommendations for new players planning to enter the market and for existing players to enhance their market shares is also presented in the report. The report concludes with company profiles of key players operating across various segments of the market. Each company profile includes business overview, financial overview, product portfolio, business strategies, and recent developments. Some of the prominent players in the home health care market in Canada that have been profiled in the report include 3M Health Care, Abbott Laboratories, Inc., Cardinal Health, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, GE Company, Invacare Corporation, and Medtronic, Inc.Send an Enquiry @About Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE)Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Iot Platform Market Growing Penetration Of Mobile Phones And Various Other PDA

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Transparency Market Research (TMR) observes that competitive landscape in the global Internet of Things (ToT) platform market is moderately competitive.With a handful number of players, the market is still said to be in its nascent stage. Analysts anticipate that the competition is likely to intensity in the coming years due to increasing investment in research and development and introduction of intellectual property such as patents. Some of the leading players in the global market are Microsoft Corporation, Google Inc., PTC Inc., and IBM Corporation.Obtain Report Details:According to the research report, the global IoT platform market is likely to be worth the global IoT platform market was worth US$1,786.8 mn in 2016 as is expected to reach a valuation of US$ 10,064.0 mn by the end of 2025.During the forecast years of 2017 and 2025, the global market is estimated to surge ahead at a CAGR of 21.0%. Out of two types of deployment, the on-premise segment held the leading share in the global market as of 2016.However, cloud-based platform is expected to gain momentum in the coming years as well. From a geographic point of view, North America is expected to lead the pack as it touched revenue earnings worth US$709.5 mn in May 2017.Demand for Better Connectivity Opens Up Tremendous Opportunities for Global IoT Platform MarketThe growing demand for internet and seamless connectivity has been driving the global IoT platform market in recent years. The markets growth has also been supported by the improved connection speed over the last few years. Today, IoT platforms have become an integral part of the industrial as well as domestic setups.Improved accessibility to information and actions through cloud has accelerated the uptake of IoT platform over the years. The biggest advantage of cloud is that data can be accessed from anywhere and at any time.Furthermore, the fact that it requires minimal investment is likely to propel markets growth in the coming years. The decreasing cost of internet has made it affordable to many. This trend has especially supported the rise of the global IoT platform market.Make Enquiry @The growing penetration of mobile phones and various other PDAs have also made a fair contribution to the soaring revenue of the global IoT platform market. These devices have enabled greater flexibility while controlling other devices on the IoT platform.Features such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and infrared have enabled an inherent connectivity for smartphones and other PDAs. Owing to these reasons, IoT platforms have been able to penetrate at a rapid rate in recent years. The terrific advancement in production of IoT sensors, their increasing affordability, and their optimum size are also expected to support market growth in the coming years.Threat of Cyber-attacks Dampens Market SpiritDespite the advantage of using IoT platform, the global market continues to face certain challenges such as the high possibility of losing data to cyber-attack.The growing concerns about software, network, or encryption are expected to restrain the growth of the overall market in the coming years. The lack of awareness about IoT platforms, especially in the developing regions, is also expected to dampen the spirit of the market in the near future.Get TOC @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.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Portable Oxygen Concentrators Market Projected to Be Valued at US$ 2637.7 Million by 2026 End

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According to a latest report published by Future Market Insights titled Portable Oxygen Concentrators Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 20162026, the global portable oxygen concentrators market is anticipated to register a CAGR of 7.8% between 2016 and 2026 in terms of value.Read Report Overview @Portable oxygen concentrators supply oxygen to patients suffering from respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. The concentrator separates nitrogen and oxygen from air in the environment and then supplies 95% pure oxygen to patients. POCs are easy to carry as they are smaller in size compared to stationary concentrators. Moreover, POCs are of great use to mountaineers and travellers in places where oxygen is inadequate.According to Future Market Insights, the global portable oxygen concentrators market is likely to witness substantial growth owing to increasing prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, growing consumer awareness for oxygen therapy devices, and a changing consumer lifestyle. Further, adoption of new technologies in medical devices, increasing government expenditure towards healthcare and medical devices development and production, and a rise in investment by companies manufacturing homecare products is likely to boost the growth of the global portable oxygen concentrators market during the forecast period (2016  2026). However, high product costs and stringent FDA regulations pertaining to medical devices are some of the factors likely to restrain the growth of the global portable oxygen concentrators market during the forecast period.The global portable oxygen concentrators market has been segmented on the basis of Product into Continuous Flow Portable Oxygen Concentrator and Pulse Flow Portable Oxygen Concentrator; and on the basis of End User into Hospitals, Homecare, Ambulatory Surgical Centres, and Travel Agents.Request Sample Report @The global portable oxygen concentrators market is segmented into the seven key regions of North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ, MEA, and Japan. Growing geriatric population consequently increasing the requirement for homecare settings particularly in high income countries with increasing number of patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases is expected to result in significant growth of the North America portable oxygen concentrators market. The North America region is expected to report incremental opportunity of US$ 781.7 Mn between 2016 and 2026. Evolution of health insurance system is expected to contribute largely to the revenue generation potential and attractiveness of the Eastern Europe portable oxygen concentrators market. Rising adoption of portable oxygen concentrators in chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases patients for better care is expected to fuel revenue growth in the Japan portable oxygen concentrators market over the forecast period. High product cost of portable oxygen concentrators is expected to hamper sustainable adoption in the APEJ region. Lack of product awareness is expected to hamper market growth in the APEJ and MEA regions.Buy Full Portable Oxygen Concentrators Market Report @The report profiles some of the top companies operating in the global portable oxygen concentrators market such as Koninklijke Philips N.V., Inogen Inc., Chart Industries Inc., Resmed Inc., Invacare Corporation, Drive DeVilbiss Healthcare, Precision Medical Inc., Besco Medical Co. Ltd., Oxus America, Inc. (Oxus), Foshan Keyhub Electronic Industries Co. Ltd., O2 Concepts LLC, and GCE Group. Key strategies adopted by leading market players in the global portable oxygen concentrators market include product approvals and commercialisation, efficient entry into markets in emerging countries, and adoption of latest innovative technologies in healthcare, thus strengthening regional proficiency and addressing customer needs effectively. New product launches, product innovation, and geographical expansion are anticipated to form the core of these strategies during the forecast period.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Farm Management Software Market 2017 Industry Key Players -Deere & Company, Trimble, AgJunction, Raven Industries, AG Leader Technology,..

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Farm Management Software Market:WiseGuyReports.com adds Farm Management Software Market 2017 Global Analysis, Growth, Trends and Opportunities Research Report Forecasting to 2022reports to its database.Executive SummaryThis report studies the global Farm Management Software market, analyzes and researches the Farm Management 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, likeDeere & CompanyTrimbleAgJunctionRaven IndustriesAG Leader TechnologySST Development GroupDICKEY-johnTopcon Positioning SystemsThe Climate CorporationIterisDeLavalBouMaticConservisFARMERS EDGEGEA GroupRequest Sample Report @Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, Farm Management Software can be split intoPrecision FarmingLivestock MonitoringFish FarmingSmart Greenhouse FarmingMarket segment by Application, Farm Management Software can be split intoWeb BasedCloud BasedIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.For further information on this report, visit -Table of ContentsGlobal Farm Management Software Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Farm Management Software1.1 Farm Management Software Market Overview1.1.1 Farm Management Software Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Farm Management Software Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Farm Management Software Market by Type1.3.1 Precision Farming1.3.2 Livestock Monitoring1.3.3 Fish Farming1.3.4 Smart Greenhouse Farming1.4 Farm Management Software Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Web Based1.4.2 Cloud Based2 Global Farm Management Software Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Farm Management Software Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Deere & Company3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Farm Management Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Trimble3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Farm Management Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 AgJunction3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Farm Management Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Raven Industries3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Farm Management Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 AG Leader Technology3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Farm Management Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 SST Development Group3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Farm Management Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 DICKEY-john3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Farm Management Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Topcon Positioning Systems3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Farm Management Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 The Climate Corporation3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Farm Management Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 Iteris3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Farm Management Software Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.10.5 Recent Developments3.11 DeLaval3.12 BouMatic3.13 Conservis3.14 FARMERS EDGE3.15 GEA Group4 Global Farm Management Software Market Size by Type and Application (2012-2017)4.1 Global Farm Management Software Market Size by Type (2012-2017)4.2 Global Farm Management Software Market Size by Application (2012-2017)4.3 Potential Application of Farm Management Software in Future4.4 Top Consumer/End Users of Farm Management Software5 United States Farm Management Software Development Status and Outlook5.1 United States Farm Management Software Market Size (2012-2017)5.2 United States Farm Management Software Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)6 EU Farm Management Software Development Status and Outlook6.1 EU Farm Management Software Market Size (2012-2017)6.2 EU Farm Management Software Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)7 Japan Farm Management Software Development Status and Outlook7.1 Japan Farm Management Software Market Size (2012-2017)7.2 Japan Farm Management Software Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)8 China Farm Management Software Development Status and Outlook8.1 China Farm Management Software Market Size (2012-2017)8.2 China Farm Management Software Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)9 India Farm Management Software Development Status and Outlook9.1 India Farm Management Software Market Size (2012-2017)9.2 India Farm Management Software Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)10 Southeast Asia Farm Management Software Development Status and Outlook10.1 Southeast Asia Farm Management Software Market Size (2012-2017)10.2 Southeast Asia Farm Management Software Market Size and Market Share by Players (2016 and 2017)11 Market Forecast by Regions, Type and Application (2017-2022)11.1 Global Farm Management Software Market Size (Value) by Regions (2017-2022)11.1.1 United States Farm Management Software Revenue and Growth Rate (2017-2022)11.1.2 EU Farm Management Software Revenue and Growth Rate (2017-2022)11.1.3 Japan Farm Management Software Revenue and Growth Rate (2017-2022)11.1.4 China Farm Management Software Revenue and Growth Rate (2017-2022)11.1.5 India Farm Management Software Revenue and Growth Rate (2017-2022)11.1.6 Southeast Asia Farm Management Software Revenue and Growth Rate (2017-2022)11.2 Global Farm Management Software Market Size (Value) by Type (2017-2022)11.3 Global Farm Management Software Market Size by Application (2017-2022)12 Farm Management Software Market Dynamics12.1 Farm Management Software Market Opportunities12.2 Farm Management Software Challenge and Risk12.2.1 Competition from Opponents12.2.2 Downside Risks of Economy12.3 Farm Management Software Market Constraints and Threat12.3.1 Threat from Substitute12.3.2 Government Policy12.3.3 Technology Risks12.4 Farm Management Software Market Driving Force12.4.1 Growing Demand from Emerging Markets12.4.2 Potential Application13 Market Effect Factors Analysis13.1 Technology Progress/Risk13.1.1 Substitutes13.1.2 Technology Progress in Related Industry13.2 Consumer Needs Trend/Customer Preference13.3 External Environmental Change13.3.1 Economic Fluctuations13.3.2 Other Risk Factors14 Research Finding/ConclusionContinuousBuy this Report @Contact Us:Norah Trentsales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US); +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About Us:Wise Guy Reports Is Part Of The Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. And Offers Premium Progressive Statistical Surveying, Market Research Reports, Analysis & Forecast Data For Industries And Governments Around The Globe. Wise Guy Reports Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Addres:WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone :+91 841 198 5042
Future of Capecitabine Size 2022 Roche, Teva, Mylan, Hikma, Hengrui Medicine, Cipla

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MarketStudyReport.com Add New Global Capecitabine Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 to its research database. The report presents a deep study of the market growth factors and drivers. The report spread across 121 pages with table and figures in it.Capecitabine Market is an orally-administered chemotherapeutic agent used in the treatment of metastatic breast and colorectal cancers. Capecitabine is a prodrug, which is enzymatically converted to fluorouracil (antimetabolite) in the tumor, where it inhibits DNA synthesis and slows growth of tumor tissue.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Capecitabine in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Request a sample copy of Capecitabine Market Research Report @Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers  Roche, Teva, Mylan, Hikma, Hengrui Medicine, Cipla, Reliance Group, Hetero.Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers:North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Table of Contents: Global Capecitabine Market Overview Global Capecitabine Market Manufacturers Profiles Global Capecitabine Market Competition, by Manufacturer Global Capecitabine Market Analysis by Regions Global Capecitabine by Countries Global Capecitabine Market Segment by Type Global Capecitabine Market Segment by Application Capecitabine Market Forecast (2017-2022) Sales Channel, Distributors, Traders and Dealers Research Findings and Conclusion AppendixMarket Segment by Type, covers  500 mg 150 mgMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided into  Breast Cancer Colorectal Cancer Stomach CancerEnquire For Discount on Capecitabine Market Research Report @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Capecitabine market.Chapter 1, to describe Capecitabine Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Capecitabine, with sales, revenue, and price of Capecitabine, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Capecitabine, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the market by countries, by type, by application and by manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Capecitabine market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Capecitabine sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceRelated Reports: -Global Bone Grafts and Substitutes Market Professional Survey Report 2017This report studies Bone Grafts and Substitutes in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.Centralize market research purchases across your entire organization in one place.Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:Connect with us: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter
Europe Compound Feed Market Growth and Outlook 2021

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The Europe Compound Feed market is developing at a significant rate due to the increase in the livestock. Compound feed is a mix of raw materials and supplements, sourced from either plants or animals, fed to the livestock orally. Most generally used raw materials are soybean, corn, barley; wheat and sorghum. Most common additives to form compound feed are, minerals, amino acids, antibiotics and colorants. Compound feed has become an essential part of the globally increasing livestock industry and meat production industry. The end customers of the compound feed are poultry, pig, ruminants, fish etc.The growth of the Europe Compound feed market is mainly due to the growth in the meat consumption and increasing population. Increase in consumer awareness regarding benefits of organic food and meat led to increase in consumption which in turn led to increase in demand for organic feed. Complex regulatory bodies in the European Union and increasing cost of operations are the main factors hindering the growth of this regional market. The European governments have imposed a ban on the use of antibiotics as a growth promoter. The ban has led livestock producers in these regions to identify new ways to stimulate production and deliver the same benefits provided by antibiotic growth promoters at an affordable price.Free sample of the report is available @The Europe Compound feed market is segmented based on Ingredients, Supplements and Animal type. The market for Compound feed, on the basis of Ingredients, is classified into Cereals, Cereals by-Product, Oilseed Meal, Oil, Molasses, Supplements and others. On the basis of Supplements, the Europe Compound feed market is segmented into Vitamins, Antibiotics, Antioxidants, Amino Acids, Feed Enzymes, Feed Acidifiers and others. On the basis of Animal category, the Europe Compound feed market is segmented into Ruminant, Swine, Poultry, Aquaculture and others. Poultry, pork, and cattle are the largest consumers of compound feed in this region accounting for the major share of the overall compound feed market. Cereals are the most widely used ingredients in compound feed whereas Vitamins are the most widely used additives, accounting for around 25% of the total feed additives market.The Europe market has been geographically segmented into Germany, U.K, France, Spain, and Italy. U.K leads the market in this region. The poultry segment is evolving as the foremost livestock segment for the consumption of Compound feed, trailed by swine and cattle, because of the increase in demand for poultry meat, consumer taste predilections.Some of the major companies dominating this market in this part of the world are Cargill Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Company, Land o lakes, Inc., Nutreco, ALLTECH, INC, Charoen Pokphand Foods, New Hope Group Co. Ltd, Wens Group, ForFarmers B.V., Kyodo Shiryo Company, Sodrugestvo Group S.A., DeKalb Feeds, Inc., De Heus B.V, Agribusiness Holding Miratorg, Ballance Agri-Nutrients Ltd., Kent Feeds, Weston Milling Animal Nutrition, J.D. Heiskell & CO, EWOS GROUP.About Us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, we cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. Our analyst team comprises expert professionals in market research, who with their collective knowledge and skillset dedicatedly serve clients from various industries and regions.Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail: abhishek@marketdataforecast.com
Electronic Cleaning Wipes Market 2017 Global Analysis By key Players: ITW, Electrolube, ZESTRON, 3M, Cox Industries, Walter Surface Technologies etc. Market and Forecast to 2022

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In this report, the global Electronic Cleaning Wipes market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Electronic Cleaning Wipes in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesEUChinaJapanSouth KoreaTaiwanRequest a Sample Report @Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingITWElectrolubeZESTRON3MCox IndustriesWalter Surface Technologies...On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoLarge sizeSmall sizeOn the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, includingSemiconductorSolar EnergyOpto-electronicMEMSOthersMake an enquiry of this Report @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of ContentsGlobal Electronic Cleaning Wipes Market Research Report 20171 Electronic Cleaning Wipes Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Electronic Cleaning Wipes1.2 Electronic Cleaning Wipes Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Large size1.2.4 Small size1.3 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Segment by Application1.3.1 Electronic Cleaning Wipes Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Semiconductor1.3.3 Solar Energy1.3.4 Opto-electronic1.3.5 MEMS1.3.6 Others1.4 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 EU Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 South Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Electronic Cleaning Wipes (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Electronic Cleaning Wipes Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Electronic Cleaning Wipes Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Electronic Cleaning Wipes Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Electronic Cleaning Wipes Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.4 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 United States Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.6 EU Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.7 China Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.8 Japan Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.9 South Korea Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.10 Taiwan Electronic Cleaning Wipes Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)4 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)4.1 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Consumption by Region (2012-2017)4.2 United States Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 EU Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.4 China Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.5 Japan Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.6 South Korea Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.7 Taiwan Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)5 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.2 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.3 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Price by Type (2012-2017)5.4 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Production Growth by Type (2012-2017)6 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Consumption and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)6.2 Global Electronic Cleaning Wipes Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/CountriesContinuedPurchase Report @ABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRES:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Global Theranostics Market to Register Substantial Expansion by 2016  2024

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Theranostics is considered as a fusion of diagnostics and drug therapy. It helps in optimizing safety, effective results, and streamlining of overall drug development. The combination of advanced diagnostic tests and effective medical drugs has been given several names, such as pharmacodiagnostics, integrated medicine, Dx/Rx partnering, and companion diagnostics. Research activities in this field are contributing extensively towards the growth of the market, as this is considered as a highly emerging field and is projected to generate strong growth opportunities from regulatory bodies and the healthcare industry. This market is expected to focus on developing specific analysis in order to predict the use of the most effective drug for patients.Request for Brochure @The research report on global theranostics market offers a thorough overview, emphasizing on the promising growth opportunities and challenges in the market. The research study, with the help of analytical tools, helps in determining the latest trends and key growth prospects that are estimated to encourage the growth of the global theranostics market in the forecast period. In addition to this, the product segmentation, key applications, geographical segmentation, technological advancements, and the competitive landscape of the global market have been discussed at length in the scope of the research study.As this field is considered to hold immense growth potential, the global theranostics market is projected to register a progressive growth rate in the next few years.The improved co-operation between diagnostics companies and drug manufacturers is one of the important reasons estimated to fuel the growth of the global theranostics market in the near future. In addition, the effective communication with physicians in order to understand theranostics penetration in the market is likely to result in commercialization in the global market.On the other hand, the regulatory timelines and cost of theranostics products are some of the primary factors anticipated to restrict the growth of the global market in the forecast period. Nonetheless, the leading companies emphasizing on the theranostics with licensed drugs are projected to play a crucial role in reaching out to a large number of pharmaceutical companies. In addition, the increasing number of strategic collaborations and partnership are projected to accelerate the growth of the overall market in the coming years.The global theranostics market can be categorized in terms of geography into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Rest of the World. Among these regions, North America is expected to lead the global theranostics market and account for a key share throughout the forecast period. The rising incidence of serious medical conditions, such as neurological disorders and cancer and the rising awareness among patients regarding the benefits of these treatments are expected to encourage the growth of the theranostics market in North America. In addition, the availability of advanced healthcare infrastructure in the U.S. is expected to contribute extensively towards the development of the overall market.Furthermore, Europe is expected to follow North America and grow at a substantial pace throughout the forecast period.The high awareness among consumers and health providers concerning the theranostics devices is one of the important factors projected to fuel the growth of this region in the coming years. The rising focus of key players on the expansion of product portfolio and the research and development activities are projected to supplement the growth of emerging nations across the globe.Request for TOC @Some of the prominent players operating in the global theranostics market are National Health Service, European Medicines Evaluation Agency, Pfizer, Myriad Genetics, National Genetics Institute, Monogram Bioscience, Enterix, Food and Drug Administration, Abbott Laboratories, ViroMed Laboratories, Dickinson & Company, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Becton, Vermillion Diagnostics, Genetics & Public Policy Center, Litholink Corporation, World Health Organization, Roche, 23andMe, Prometheus, Cellestis, Oxford Immunotec, US LABS, Laboratory Corporation of America, Home Access Health, and EntroGen.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
RGB Laser Modules Market by Application, Growth, Analysis and Forecast to 2023

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RGB lasers are show laser systems with exactly three-color modules: red, green and blue. Commonly used wavelengths of semiconductor laser diodes for RGB laser manufacturing are 635-660nm for red color, 520nm for green color and 445-460nm for blue color lasers.The global RGB Laser Modules 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 RGB Laser Modules 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:Opt Lasers (Tomorrow's System)Sumitomo Electric IndustriesSwissLasKvant LasersElite OptoelectronicsRGB Laser SystemTriLite TechnologiesAten LaserCQ Laser TechnologiesFor More Information About This Report:Application Coverage:Laser ProjectorLight SourceOthersProduct Type Coverage:Below 1W1W to 5W5W to 10WAbove 10WRegion Coverage:North AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaRequest Sample Copy At:Table of Content1 Industry Overview2 Industry Environment3 RGB Laser Modules 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 published RGB Laser Modules from its database. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
ShieldApps Software Innovations Deploys the first standalone Webcam and Microphone Blocker for Windows

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Following up on the webcam blocking features overwhelming popularity with the recent launch of its Identity Theft Prevention product, ShieldApps quickly responds with a standalone product, available for Windows and Android devices..Los Angeles, California November 20, 2017 . ShieldApps Webcam Blocker, ShieldApps most recently deployed product, prevents and blocks any attempt to breach a computers webcam and microphone  a phenomenon with a worrying growth in popularity among hackers and information-phishing 3rd parties.The newly added software provides the users with a single click protection option, effectively blocking any access attempt to the webcam and microphone both externally and by locally installed applications.The digital black markets and forums on the Dark Web sell access to compromised webcams for as little as $1. Furthermore, 3rd party advertisers and analytics companies are utilizing security breached apps and advanced technologies to listen-in on users activity, gather data  and provide a more user-tailored advertising and experience. Our customers cant have that, and will settle or nothing less than complete privacy.- said Moshe Layani, ShieldApps Software Innovations President.ShieldApps Webcam Blocker is available at:About ShieldAppsShieldApps has over ten years of experience in the software development and distribution markets. ShieldApps has established a spotless reputation within the tech industry by not only supplying multiple national and international companies with its products but also by providing countless consumers with top-tier products while maintaining its core values and vision at all times.ShieldApps portfolio includes antivirus and antimalware software, ransomware protection software, identity theft protection software, privacy enhancement applications, password management and recovery tools and hard disk maintenance tools.Contact ShieldApps5042 Wilshire Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90036+1 949 207 9949contact@ShieldApps.com
Wearable Devices Global Market 2017: Key Players Apple, Inc., Google, Inc., Garmin, Ltd. And more

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Pune, India, 4th December 2017: WiseGuyReports announced addition of new report, titled Global Wearable Devices Sales Market Report 2017.This report studies sales (consumption) of Wearable Devices in Global market, especially in United States, China, Europe and Japan, focuses on top players in these regions/countries, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player in these regions, coveringApple, Inc.Google, Inc.Garmin, Ltd.Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.Sony CorporationFitbit, Inc.Pebble Technology Corp.Qualcomm, Inc.Xiaomi Technology Co., Ltd.Jawbone, Inc.LG Electronics Inc.Nike, Inc.Adidas AGGET SAMPLE REPORT @Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with sales (consumption), revenue, market share and growth rate of Wearable Devices in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanKoreaTaiwanSplit by product Types, with sales, revenue, price and gross margin, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoWristwearEyewearFootwearNeckwearBodywearOtherSplit by applications, this report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Wearable Devices in each application, can be divided intoConsumer ElectronicsHealthcareEnterprise & IndustrialOtherTable of Content: Key PointsGlobal Wearable Devices Sales Market Report 20171 Wearable Devices Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Wearable Devices1.2 Classification of Wearable Devices1.2.1 Wristwear1.2.2 Eyewear1.2.3 Footwear1.2.4 Neckwear1.2.5 Bodywear1.2.6 Other1.3 Application of Wearable Devices1.3.1 Consumer Electronics1.3.2 Healthcare1.3.3 Enterprise & Industrial1.3.4 Other1.4 Wearable Devices Market by Regions1.4.1 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.2 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Wearable Devices (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Wearable Devices Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Wearable Devices Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 Global Wearable Devices Competition by Manufacturers, Type and Application2.1 Global Wearable Devices Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1.1 Global Wearable Devices Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Wearable Devices Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Wearable Devices (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Wearable Devices Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Global Wearable Devices Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Global Wearable Devices (Volume and Value) by Regions2.3.1 Global Wearable Devices Sales and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)2.3.2 Global Wearable Devices Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)2.4 Global Wearable Devices (Volume) by Application3 United States Wearable Devices (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 United States Wearable Devices Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 United States Wearable Devices Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 United States Wearable Devices Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.3 United States Wearable Devices Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)3.2 United States Wearable Devices Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers3.3 United States Wearable Devices Sales and Market Share by Type3.4 United States Wearable Devices Sales and Market Share by Application.15 Research Findings and Conclusion16 AppendixMethodologyAnalyst IntroductionData SourceContinuedACCESS REPORT @Get in touch:LinkedIn:Twitter:Facebook:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants analysis Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
U.S. Dry Aging Beef Market Growing $11,176 Million By 2020

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U.S. Dry Aging Beef Market was valued at $10,605 million in 2016, and is expected to reach $11,176 million by 2020, supported by a CAGR of 1.3% during the forecast period. The aging of beef is done through two processes, namely wet aging and dry aging. Dry aging is a process wherein beef is hung in open air, followed by refrigerated for several weeks. The meat slowly loses moisture and changes its texture and flavor. However, in wet aging process, beef pieces are vacuum-packed in plastic containers, and shipped in the market. Most of the food service companies offering dry aging beef order beef as individual steaks from loin butcher companies.For More Info, Get Sample :Dry aging process is widely used in the food industry, as the end product has a highly concentrated, saturated natural flavor and tenderized texture of meat. Increase in consumer preference towards protein-rich food products and rise in disposable income are expected to boost the demand for dry aging beef in the U.S. This process can be executed in home settings using dry age bags. However, the major concern with the production of dry aging beef at home is the requirement of large space for storage and refrigerators. In addition, dry aging process requires precise monitoring of temperature and humidity to ensure proper drying. This process requires humidity level of 80-85% to ensure minimal water loss and concentration of the flavor. In addition, distribution of dry aged beef in the international markets is a challenging task, owing to the logistics and access issues associated with the export of red meat.The report includes the study of the U.S. dry aging beef market in terms of value and volume for the period, 2014-2020. The market overview provides trends about dry aging beef production, distribution channels, and sales through retail shops, and restaurants.The report includes a comprehensive analysis of the dry aging beef packaging business. The market analysis and forecast of the U.S. dry aging beef packaging is provided in the report. A detailed analysis about the U.S. dry aging beef manufacturing companies and clients is included in the report. In addition, the challenges associated with the production and distribution of dry aging beef, and expansion of the dry aging beef packaging business are discussed.Enquire About Report :The profile analysis of DrybagSteak, LLC., also known as Umai Dry, along with the detailed analysis of the net sales of Umai Dry bags for home and commercial applications is provided in the report. Major companies have adopted agreement, product launches, expansions, mergers, and agreements to sustain the intense competition in this market. The key players detailed in the report include:KEY BENEFITS OF U.S DRY AGING BEEF MARKET: In-depth analysis of the dry aging beef market and estimations for the U.S. between 2014 and 2020 are provided in the report. Competitive intelligence of leading manufacturers and distributors assists in understanding the competitive scenario in U.S. The market analysis for the factors that drive and restrain the growth of the market are provided. Extensive analysis of the beef industry is conducted by following key product positioning and monitoring the top competitors within the market framework. Key market players are profiled and their strategies are analyzed thoroughly, which provides a competitive outlook of the market. In addition, dry aging beef production market share by key producers (meat processors, distributors, loin butcher companies, and end users) is also provided in the report.Key players in the value chain include DeBragga The Ventura Meat Company Buckhead beef Chicago Steak Company American Grass Fed Beef Fairway Packing Company West Coast Prime Meats DryAgePro Henkelman Creek Bed Country Farmacy, LLCAlso Request For Discount :*Profiles of these players are not included. The same will be included on requestTable Of Content CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CHAPTER 3 MARKET OVERVIEW CHAPTER 4 U.S. BEEF MARKET CHAPTER 5 U.S. DRY AGING BEEF MARKET BY KEY PACKING/ MANUFACTURING COMPANIES AND CLIENT, 2015 CHAPTER 6 U.S. DRY AGING BEEF PACKAGING MARKET (2014-2020) CHAPTER 7 U.S. DRY AGING BEEF MARKET, (2014-2020) CHAPTER 8 SALES TREND OF DRYBAGSTEAK, LLC. (UMAI DRY) CHAPTER 9 KEY PRODUCERS AND USAGE ANALYSISAbout UsWe have a large database of quality and precise market research reports that will be very beneficial for your organization. Reports that we sell our authentic in nature and from reputed publishers, hence it can definitely help you with your growth opportunities. Research Beam will always make sure to bring most ethical and high quality reports. We value your relationship with us and look forward for a long term relation.Contact UsGlobal Head Quarters5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220United States+1 (800) 910-6452help@researchbeam.com
Coronary Stents Market is estimated to be valued at US$ 11.32 Bn by 2026

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A coronary stent is a small cylindrical device used during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Coronary stents help relieve the symptoms of coronary heart disease by reducing blockages and improving blood flow to the heart. They are beneficial for patients suffering from coronary artery diseases such as myocardial infarction and unstable angina. The global coronary stents market is estimated to be valued at US$ 11.32 Bn by 2026, registering a CAGR of 6.6% over the forecast period.Request For Free Sample Report @Increasing prevalence of cardiovascular diseases expected to drive overall market growthThe global coronary stents market is driven by an increasing occurrence of lifestyle diseases such as obesity and cardiovascular diseases such as angina pectoris and ischemic heart disease especially in developed countries. Also, an increasing meditech progress in the cardiovascular field is expected to drive the growth of the global coronary stents market during the forecast period. Cardiologists the world over prefer advanced stenting procedures and this is another important factor boosting market growth. However, various complications and risks associated with stenting procedures and high costs of drug eluting stents is expected to adversely affect the revenue growth of the global coronary stents market over the forecast period.Market segmentationBy Product TypeDrug Eluting StentBare Metal StentBioresorbable Vascular StentBy Raw MaterialCobalt ChromiumStainless SteelPlatinum-ChromiumNickel-TitaniumPolymerBy End UseHospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CentresCardiac Catheterisation LaboratoriesBy RegionNorth AmericaLatin AmericaWestern EuropeEastern EuropeAPEJMEAJapanBrowse Full Report With TOC @Drug Eluting Stent product type segment estimated to account for significant market share by 2016 endThe Drug Eluting Stent segment is anticipated to account for 75.6% value share of the global coronary stents market by the end of 2016. This segment is expected to register a CAGR of 6.8% in terms of value over the forecast period. The Bioresorbable Vascular Stent segment is projected to register a CAGR of 9.4% between 2016 and 2026 and reach a market valuation of US$ 1,617.6 Mn by 2026.Polymer raw material segment likely to be the most lucrative segmentThe Polymer segment is expected to register high Y-o-Y growth throughout the forecast period and is expected to be valued at US$ 4,215.6 Mn by 2026, registering a CAGR of 9.2% during the forecast period. The Cobalt Chromium segment is estimated to account for 21.4% market share of the global coronary stents market by the end of 2016.Hospitals end use segment expected to dominate the global coronary stents market in terms of valueThe Hospitals segment is estimated to be valued at US$ 7,851.8 Mn by 2026, registering a CAGR of 6.3% during the forecast period. The Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratories segment is estimated to account for 19.8% revenue share by 2016 end.APEJ market likely to register significant Y-o-Y growth throughout the forecast periodThe APEJ coronary stents market is expected to hold 36.8% revenue share of the global coronary stents market by 2026. The APEJ market is expected to witness a CAGR of 8.0% during the forecast period. The North America market is anticipated to account for 29.2% market share of the global coronary stents market by 2016 end. Revenue from the North America market is projected to register a CAGR of 6.9% during 20162026, to reach a market valuation of US$ 3,426.0 Mn by 2026.Global coronary stents market players are focussing on product innovation and geographical expansion to augment market shareTerumo Corporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, Medtronic, Vascular Concepts, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Biotronik SE & Co. KG, Abbott Laboratories, Biosensors International Group, Ltd., Hexacath, and Stentys SA are some of the top companies operating in the global coronary stents market. Key market players are focussing on increasing their footprints in emerging markets such as Asia Pacific and are expanding their manufacturing facilities and distribution network to gain a larger share of the global coronary stents market.Abbott Laboratories, Medtronic, and Boston Scientific Corporation emerged as the market leaders in the global coronary stents market for both the Drug Eluting Stent and Bare Metal Stent segments in 2015. The top three market players are estimated to hold more than 70% revenue share of the global coronary stents market in 2016. Abbott Laboratories accounted for the largest share in the global coronary stents market in 2015. Boston Scientific Corporation held maximum revenue share in Brazil in 2015. The company has a strong foothold in the domestic market of Latin America, particularly in the rapidly growing cardiovascular devices market in Brazil and other emerging countries.Make An Enquiry @About UsMarket Research Reports Search Engine(MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of market intelligence reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.ContactState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United StatesTelephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite :Read More Industry News At:
Leather Chemicals Market will Register a CAGR of 6.1% through 2020

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The growth of the leather chemicals market is directly proportionate to the development of the automotive and footwear industries, states Transparency Market Research in its latest report. The report, titled Leather Chemicals Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020, indicates that recording a 6.1% CAGR during the forecast period, the global leather chemicals market is anticipated to rise from US$5.43 billion in 2013 to US$8.19 billion by 2020.Leather chemicals are used in different stages of leather production and help enhance features such as water resistance, appearance, flexibility, and heat resistance. The rapidly developing footwear and automotive markets around the world are the primary forces driving the growth of the leather chemicals market. The introduction of less harmful chemical substitutes holds significant potential for growth, according to the report. However, strict environmental regulations may restrain the leather chemicals market over the course of the forecast period.Browse the full Leather Chemicals (Tanning & Dyeing Chemicals, Beamhouse Chemicals, and Finishing Chemicals) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2020 report atOn the basis of product, the market for leather chemicals is divided into beamhouse chemicals, tanning and dyeing chemicals, and finishing chemicals. Tanning and dyeing chemicals held the largest share of the leather chemicals market in 2013, accounting for a 40% share of the overall market. Chemicals such as cyanides, calcium hydroxide, and amines are used to protect leather from decomposing and it also increases the durability of the material. With surging demand for leather products such as garments and handbags from the emerging economies of Brazil, India, and China, the market for leather tanning and dyeing chemicals is bound to grow.Beamhouse operation chemicals such as swell regulating agents, biocides, chromium sulfate, soda ash, and formic acid are used in the process of leather production. As the demand for leather from end-use industries such as apparel, footwear, and automotive increases, so does the demand for beamhouse chemicals.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Geographically, the leather chemicals market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. In 2013, Asia Pacific dominated the global leather chemicals market, followed by Europe, with a 40% share in terms of volume. Growth in footwear and automotive industries in APAC has been the primary factor boosting the leather chemicals market in the region. In addition, leading manufacturers of leather chemicals have been focused on expanding production capacity in Asia Pacific owing to increased demand, rise in disposable income, and recent economic growth. This is sure to fuel the development of the leather chemicals market in this region. Europe has several tanneries that engage in the processing of raw leather. This, coupled with the rise in demand for leather chemical products is estimated to boost the European market by 2020.The prominent players operating in the global leather chemicals market include Wei Tai Leather Co. Ltd., Clariant International Ltd., BASF SE, Rock Chemie Co., DyStar Singapore Pte Ltd., Bayer AG, Stahl Holdings b.v., Elementis plc, Schill + Seilacher GmbH, TFL Ledertechnik Gmbh & Co. KG, Heim Leather Chem. Gmbh, and Lanxess AG.Request for Customization @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Smart Parking Systems Market worth US$ 1099.4 Million USD by 2025

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In the present scenario, world is facing critical issues of traffic cramming with a significant rise in the vehicle population and congestion in cities, and this has become an ongoing challenge for municipal councils and the traffic authorities to track and manage vehicular traffic. Numerous efforts have been made to improve countrys parking and traffic management systems. A number of private-public joint initiatives such as ParkIndy, SFpark and LA Express Park have adopted and implemented smart parking in order to effectively utilize unused parking spaces. These make use of real-time, smart, sensor-based parking information. Smart parking solutions such as online parking reservations, and mobile parking payment are expected to boost the smart parking systems market worldwide during the forecast period. In the coming years, P2P parking might generate new opportunities globally for myriad commercial parking lots, garages and residents to rent out their parking spaces with the aid of online marketplaces like ParkingPanda, JustPark, ParkMe and the social media.The global Smart Parking Systems Market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 12.9% during the forecast period 2015  2025 and accounts for US$ 1099.4 Mn in the year 2025. Furthermore, the market is categorized into parking site, components, end-user industry and regions. The parking site segment comprises of off-site parking and on-site parking, where the off-street parking sites are predicted to capture the majority of market, due to increasing adoption of smart parking systems in commercial and corporate infrastructure. Smart parking systems comprises of three main components which are; Hardware, software and services the hardware components are anticipated to lead the components market during the forecast period. The end-user industry is fragmented into transport facilities, government and municipalities, commercial institutions and corporate institutions. The government and municipalities sectors is predicted to generate massive opportunities for the smart parking systems market.Request Sample Copy @On the basis of geographies the regional market is distributed into Europe, North America, South America, Middle East & Africa and Asia Pacific. Here, North America dominates the Smart Parking systems regional market share but in coming years APAC is expected witness fastest YoY growth rate of 16.4% during the forecast period. Rising demand rate in the Asian countries, specifically India and China are impelling the growth of this market.A detailed analysis on the growth trends, market shares on various dimensions, driving and restraining factors for smart parking systems, opportunities in the future for these systems is provided in the report. A few leading players in the Smart Parking domain have also been profiled in the report. The profiling of the market players acquaints the reader with their financial information about revenues as well as segment revenues, a competitive SWOT analysis for each player and the recent developments by the player in the Smart Parking domain. The key developments are related to the mergers and acquisitions by the players in the recent past.Browse market data tables and in-depth TOC of the Smart Parking Systems Market to 2025 @Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.comThe Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.533, 5th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Microcrystalline Cellulose (MCC) Market CAGR to Grow at 5.8%

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Transparency Market Research announces the release of a new research report, titled Microcrystalline Cellulose Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020. According to the report, the global microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) market is forecast to reach a value of US$936.3 million by 2020.Browse the full Microcrystalline Cellulose (MCC) Market for Food and Beverage, Pharmaceutical, Personal Care and Other End-users - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020 report atThe MCC market was pegged at US$632.9 million in 2013 and is anticipated to grow at a 5.8% CAGR from 2014 to 2020.The global MCC market is primarily driven by factors such as growth of the pharmaceutical excipient industry and surge in demand for low-fat foods. The use of eco-friendly raw materials for the production of MCC has been identified as an opportunity for manufacturers to capitalize on. In contrast, the MCC market is hampered by high cost of production and comparatively low yield.Request Sample Copy of the Report @MCC finds application in industries such as pharmaceutical, food and beverages, personal care, and paints and coatings. Pharmaceutical was the largest application segment in 2013, accounting for a share of over 35% that year. The industry is also projected to be the fastest developing end-use segment from 2014 to 2020, according to the research report. MCC has been declared suitable as an excipient in pharmaceutical applications owing to properties such as efficient binding ability, significant compressibility, and high internal porosity. The pharmaceutical segment is also driven by rise in global geriatric population and development of innovative products. After the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved MCC as a safe food ingredient, its demand from the food and beverages industry has grown. The developing market for low-fat foods is also expected to further the demand for MCC by 2020.Geographically, the global market for MCC is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. Accounting for a 30% share of the overall market, North America dominated the worldwide MCC market in 2013 owing to the roaring demand for MCC from the food and beverages and pharmaceutical industries and the slow yet steady recovery of the U.S. economy. Rising demand for MCC from the Middle East and Latin America is likely to boost the MCC market in the Rest of the World region.Asia Pacific has been identified as the most rapidly developing region in the global MCC market. This spurt in growth can be attributed to increasing demand from emerging economies such as Vietnam, Malaysia, China, Thailand, and India.Some of the key manufacturers of MCC in the global market are Asahi Kasei Corporation, MINGTAI CHEMICAL CO., LTD., J. RETTENMAIER & SOHNE GmbH + Co KG, BLANVER FARMOQUIMICA LTDA, Accent Microcell Pvt. Ltd., FMC Corporation, JUKU ORCHEM PRIVATE LIMITED, DFE Pharma GmbH & Co. KG, Libraw Pharma, Sigachi Industrial Pvt. Ltd., and Avantor Performance Materials, Inc.Request for Customization @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
`Global Market for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is Grow USD 1,206.9 Million by 2023 End

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A new report added to the repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine Global Market Study on Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: Large AUVs Dive Deepest in the High Seas is a comprehensive repository of information, providing market share, size, and forecast.Request for Sample Report @Autonomous underwater vehicles, sometimes called unmanned underwater vehicles are extremely useful to perform a diverse array of tasks such as mapping submerged wrecks, obstructions, and rock formations that can be hazardous to recreational or commercial vehicles. In the upcoming report Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Market Forecast, Trend Analysis & Competition Track  Global Review 2017 to 2022, Persistence Market Research has taken an in-depth look at autonomous underwater vehicle market. The report provides an analysis for the historical period compared and contrasted with the forecast period from 2017 to 2022 to present an accurate image of autonomous underwater vehicle market to readers. The study covers market dynamics across all the profiled regions viz. Japan, APEJ, Europe, Latin America, MEA, and North America giving readers an idea of the prospects that can be tapped in autonomous underwater vehicle market, both existing and potential.Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Market TaxonomyProduct TypeShallow AUVs (DepthMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.State Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Oral Cancer Treatment Market Shares Analysis, Key Development Strategies and Forecasts Till 2022

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The Global Oral Cancer Treatment Market is one of the steady growing worldwide markets. The factors that influence the growth of the oral cancer treatment market include increasing consumption of tobacco, smoking, excessive consumption of alcohol and many others. Many people in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and others parts of the world chew betel quid, a leaf from the betel plant wrapped around areca nut and lime. Chewing gutka, a combination of betel quid and tobacco, is also common. Both of these substances are associated with an increased oral cancer risks.Get Sample Copy @Characterized by the presence of several major well-established players, the global Market of Oral Cancer Treatment appears to be highly competitive. Players operating in the global Oral Cancer Treatment markets are focusing upon optimized situational awareness for customers and ensure their mission success. Well established players increasingly seeking market expansion through various strategic mergers and acquisitions, innovation, increasing investments in research and development of innovative treatments. Strategic partnerships between Key players support the growth and expansion plans of the key players during the forecast period. These players possess state of art R&D labs which have helped them to gain leadership position in the market.The Worldwide Oral Cancer Treatment Market is one of the consistent developing markets. The elements that impact the development of the oral disease treatment showcase incorporate expanding utilization of tobacco, smoking, unreasonable utilization of liquor and numerous others.The Global Oral Cancer Treatment Market Key Players are:Bristol Myers Squibb,Pharma Laboratories Inc,Qilu Pharmaceutical Co.,Limited, TEVA,Eli Lilly And Company,Engeneic Ltd, F. Hoffmann-la Roche AG,Merck & Co., Inc.,Novartis, Pfizer Inc. and others.Treatment of oral cancers is ideally a multidisciplinary approach involving the efforts of surgeons, radiation oncologists, chemotherapy oncologists, dental practitioners, nutritionists, and rehabilitation and restorative specialists. The actual curative treatment modalities are usually surgery and radiation, with chemotherapy added to decrease the possibility of metastasis, to sensitize the malignant cells to radiation, or for those patientsOral Cancer Treatment Global Market  Segmentation:The Oral Cancer Treatment Market can be segmented in to 3 key dynamics for the convenience of the report and enhanced understanding;Segmentation By Types: Comprises Squamous Cell Carcinoma, Verrucous Carcinoma, Minor Salivary Gland Carcinomas, Lymphomas and other.Segmentation By Drugs: Comprises Cisplatin, Carboplatin, 5-Fluorouracil, Paclitaxel, Docetaxel and Other and other.Segmentation By Regions: Comprises Geographical regions - North America, Europe, APAC and Rest of the World.Segment Squamous Cell Carcinoma by Cancer type accounts for the largest market share.Order a Copy @Major TOC Oral Cancer Treatment Market:1 Introduction1.1 Definition1.2 Scope of Study1.3 Research Objective1.4 Assumptions & Limitations1.4.1 Assumptions1.4.2 Limitations2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Process2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research3 Market Dynamics3.1 Introduction3.2 Growth Drivers3.3 Growth Barriers3.4 OpportunitiesContinued.Ask to Expert @About US:Market Research Future (MRFR), enable customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact Us:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone: +1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Nostalgia: Why we crave a past that never was

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VIENNA, 1 December 2017  This month, METROPOLE, the magazine with an international eye on Vienna feels a pang of bittersweet Nostalgia. In the cover story, Eternally Alt Wien (p 18) we look at the different versions of old Vienna that have been imagined over centuries. Every generation has their personal favorite, from the imperial grandeur of the Habsburgs to the wonder years of the 1950s or Bruno Kreiskys era of change and progress in the 1970s.The cover was inspired by The Saturday Evening Post and illustrated by Peter Diamond.In this issue, you will findCustodians of Memory p 28, Profiles, Janima NamMETROPOLE interviewed four Viennese gentlemen about nostalgia, our collective consciousness and their roles in preserving the past: Florian Kaps, savior of polaroid photography and founder of the analog concept store Supersense, Oliver Braun, the director and CEO of legacy hospitality brand Gerstner, Matti Bunzl, director of the Wien Museum, and beloved childrens book author Thomas Brezina, the inventor of Tom Turbo.Nostalgia on My Mind p 38, Science, Roxanne PowellNostalgia was once dismissed as sentimentality, but science is beginning to show that it can help us heal psychological wounds and strengthen relationships through shared memories. Today, nostalgia-based therapies tackle clinical depression, post-traumatic stress, and early-stage Alzheimers disease. We look into the science of reminiscing.Mazel & Mishpocha p 43, Special Report, Sara Friedman & Benjamin WolfVienna was once home to the largest Jewish community in Central Europe. Of the 200,000 Viennese Jews, only about 2,000 were left after WWII, yet today it counts once again over 10,000. Its really several communities, spanning food and nightlife, like the restaurants Miznon and Neni and the Kibbutz Klub events, as well as culture and a young entrepreneurial generation to keep it growing.Lenny and Vienna p 46, City Life, Michael BernsteinLeonard Bernsteins nephew explores the maestros complicated relationship with Vienna. The Wahlwiener (Viennese by choice) overcame Austrias Nazi past and cold war politics to build a love affair with Vienna as the city of music.Quotes from the issueThere have been a lot of Alt-Wiens; every generation has one, or more. Christian Rapp, cultural historian and co-coordinator of the exhibition Alt-Wien p. 21, Cover Story Eternally Alt WienAttending a ball lets you decelerate a bit. You prepare for it, decide who to go with, what to wear and where to get it. Will you go to dinner beforehand? Its in contrast to our everyday life, like a retreat to another time. Maria Grobauer, Opera Ball Director, p. 15, MelangeI think theres a big misconception about Viennese people and the city itself. I have met some amazing people and have experienced the depth of this city in such a way that I strongly disagree with the negative impression some people have. Sagi Jay, Founder of Secret Vienna, p 45, Special report, Mazel & MishpochaThere are so many sad memories here; one deals with so many ex-Nazis (and maybe still Nazis); and you never know if the public that is screaming bravo for you might contain someone who 25 years ago might have shot me dead. But its better to forgive, and if possible, forget. The city is so beautiful, and so full of tradition. Everyone here lives for music, especially opera, and I seem to be the new hero. Leonard Bernstein, 1966, letter to his parents, p. 48, City Life, Lenny and ViennaFounded in October 2015, METROPOLE is a magazine for expats and global citizens living inVienna, Austria. Published in English, it gives its readers everything they need to make the most of the city.The magazine is available on newsstands and online starting Nov 1, 2017. For a complimentary press copy, please contact Catherine Hooker at pr@metropole.at.Departments:Current Events, Opinion, Quotes & Stats, Austrian News Briefs, Weird News, Cover Story, International news analysis, Interviews, Guides, Science & Technology, Business, City life, Gratzl (neighborhood guide), Music, Art, Theatre, Cinema, Books, Lifestyle, Fashion, Wine, Night Life, Restaurants, Recipes, Travel, Sports, Events Calendar, Jobs, Classifieds, and the Last WordHome Town MediaMariahilferstrae 49/15, 1060 ViennaCatherine Hooker, Head of Communications+43 (0) 664 551 92 58pr@metropole.at
CHARMES Offers Amethyst Stone and Other Precious Stone Jewelry at Pocket-Friendly Prices

https://www.charmes.in/

CHARMES, one of the top gemstone jewelry companies in India, is offering top quality amethyst stone and other precious stone jewelry at competitive prices. Its the first virtual store to provide natural gemstone jewelry in India, and they strive to provide only excellent pieces of jewelry while making sure that their buyers get the highest level of satisfaction from purchasing and using their products. Unlike their competitors, CHARMES team is consistent when it comes to the provision of top-grade products which include necklaces, earrings, bracelets, pendants, and rings that can be worn on different occasions.While talking about the precious stones on offer, one of the top executives at CHARMES said, We provide our clients with the latest international designs in precious stone jewelry that have been inspired from a popular designer from all over the world. Our experts present you with more than 1000 designs. These experts deliver top quality craftsmanship and stylish designs. Therefore, if you intend to get precious stone jewelry online, then, you can consider contacting CHARMES.CHARMES also offers amethyst, one of the popular types of gemstones used to make precious jewelry. Its violet color makes an adorable item for anyone wishing to make a fashion statement. Amethyst is more of quartz, and its glowy appearance makes it an excellent option for jewelry. Its believed that the gemstone originated from the ancient Greece and its associated with many ancient stories and beliefs. One of these common beliefs is that this precious stone can protect the wearer or user from drunkenness. Most people believe that this is the main reason amethyst is used to decorate drinking vessels used by people of ancient Greece as they believed that this weird practice would prevent them from overdrinking.While offering more information about the color of amethyst, the executive added, in addition to its famous purple color, amethyst is also available in purple color. It equally appears as secondary hues of red and blue. People who collect amethyst prefer obtaining varieties of the gemstone that have red flashes and deep coloration. Its worth mentioning that the products color display forms a major factor that should be put into consideration when it comes to determining its value. Currently, the Deep Russian is the highest grade of amethyst though this variety is rare as compared to other varieties of the gemstone. If you intend to purchase this item, you can consider checking the amethyst stone price online or contact our client support team for help.Ladies around the world wear jewelry each day to enhance their beauty and make a fashion statement as well. CHARMES provides top quality ruby earrings and other forms of jewelry that perfectly match with ones style. Clients can choose the jewelry that matches their interest at CHARMES.CHARMES is the leading virtual jewelry store offering excellent products at unbeatable prices. The company presents its clients a chance to choose the jewelry they desire and get it when they need it.S4 Mahaveer Nagar,Opp. Eurasia Hotel, Tonk Road,Jaipur, Rajasthan, Indiainfo@charmes.inWebsite-
Conductive Ink Market Numerous Applications Make Silver Conductive Inks Dominant Type Segment

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/conductive-ink-market.html

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As per the findings of a new publication by Transparency Market Research (TMR), the global conductive inks market is competitive with players upping the ante against each other primarily through price differentiation and product innovation.Among the key players in the market to name a few are E.l. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, Nova Centrix, Vorbeck Materials Corporation Inc., Intrinsiq Materials Inc., Heraeus Holding GmbH, Johnson Matthey plc, and Sun Chemical Corporation.Obtain Report Details:A report by TMR forecasts the global conductive inks market to rise at a CAGR of 6.9% between 2017 and 2025 for the market to reach a valuation of US$4,275.4 mn by 2025 increasing from US$2,340.0 mn in 2016.Numerous Applications Make Silver Conductive Inks Dominant Type SegmentDepending upon type, the global conductive inks market is segregated into silver conductive inks, copper conductive inks, conductive polymers, conductive nanotube ink, and graphene/carbon ink among others.Among these, the segment of silver conductive ink led the market in 2016 in terms of value. The growth of the segment is primarily attributed to the standard formulations of silver conductive inks and their large-scale applications in energy, medical, and consumer electronics industries.The displays and photovoltaic cells application segments held the leading share in 2016 vis-a-vis value, and going forward too these segments are predicted to hold on their dominant share.Make Enquiry @Geography-wise, the key segments of the global conductive inks market are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and South America. In 2016, Asia Pacific registered the leading share in the market. The enormous growth of the conductive inks market in Asia Pacific is mainly because of ceaseless demand for consumer electronics.Demand for Increased Functionality of Miniature Electronic Devices Catalyzes GrowthIncreasing application of conductive inks in advanced medical devices is the key growth driver of the global conductive inks market. Application of new advanced 3D printed electronic equipment in the medical field is opening up vast opportunities for the conductive inks market.Besides this, flexible displays, thin film transistors, OLEDs, OPV and smart textiles, and radio frequency identification are some other key application areas acting as a driver for the market.The ever-rising demand for efficient electronic devices that are equipped with high quality and low cost electronic components, which require fabrication techniques for their economic viability, is also working in favor of the conductive inks market globally.In the present scenario, electronic devices that need to display enhanced functionality in less space is fuelling the requirement for advanced upgraded manufacturing techniques that integrate electronic circuitry along with physical packaging.Growing application of printed circuit boards, circuit antennas, biosensors, sensors, touch screens, printed heaters, and touch switches in several industries are also acting as a major growth driver for the conductive inks market.Additionally, silver conductive inks are widely used in displays, which includes television sets, smartphones, smart wearable devices, smart gadgets, medical monitors, LEDs, and laptops and computers. This is also having a positive bearing on the markets growth.Get TOC @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.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.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
A degree of excellence - Tilhill Forestry seeks quality graduates

www.tilhill.com

www.tilhill.com

www.bsw.co.uk

High-achieving forestry graduates, or those studying for a degree or about to graduate in forestry or related subjects such as land management, environmental studies or horticulture, will be ideally placed to join Tilhill Forestrys three-year graduate programme. Successful applicants are assigned to a district office or business stream where they learn every aspect of that area, including shadowing highly experienced colleagues. Graduate trainees are offered mentoring and are paired with a experience manager during their training period.Tilhill Forestry Managing Director George McRobbie said: This is a very exciting time to join the forest industry and Tilhill Forestry is a superb company to work for with a wide variety of roles across the UK on offer. There is the added benefit of being part of the BSW Group  BSW is the UKs largest sawmill company.We are looking for graduates with drive, enthusiasm and passion for managing and creating forests and working outdoors.Tilhill Forestry offers all its employees a friendly and challenging work environment with good personal and career development opportunities. The company operates a unique management development programme that starts by building up your management skill sets in order to give them all the tools required to be our managers of the future.Applications open in December with placements starting in June 2018. If youre a recent graduate or studying for your degree, you can find out more about our graduate opportunities by visiting the careers section atApplications should be emailed to careers@tilhill.com and the process closes on 28th February 2018.Read about some graduates who have joined the Tilhill Forestry programme:Mike Page BA BSc (Hons)Mike Page is proof that its never too late to start a career in forestry.The 34-year-old former commando army officer decided to leave the forces after five years and start a two-year arboriculture foundation degree at Askham Bryan College in York. He then attended the University of Cumbria for his third year where he converted his foundation degree into a Forestry degree.Mike said: I was living in York so it was convenient to study arboriculture at Askham Bryan College but it was always my ambition to get my Forestry degree and apply to work for Tilhill Forestry.I had a choice between working for the public or the private sector but after a forester friend gave me the advice that I should start my career in a commercial environment Tilhill was my first choice.Mike is now an Assistant Forest Manager for the Central Scotland District based in Dunblane. He supports two senior forest managers and covers a large area stretching from Perthshire to Aberdeenshire. Mikes role so far has involved carrying out beat up surveys which check the establishment rates of new trees, GIS mapping, applying for grants and supervising contractors. He has also been on a number of courses including health and safety management, the safe use of quad bikes, pesticide training and a first aid course.Mike added: Some of the things I learned in the army have certainly come in handy such as navigation skills and working to tight deadlines. The job really suits me as I was really keen to work outside some of the time.My best advice for people thinking of applying for the Tilhill Forestry graduate scheme is to get some work experience. It gave me lots to talk about in the interview and it is a useful way to offer evidence that you have engaged with the sector. So do a placement as part of your degree, or do work experience or even voluntary work during your studies.My job with Tilhill is everything I had hoped it would be and Im delighted to be here. Changing career and going back into further education can be daunting but Im so glad I did it and I feel really well supported in my new vocation.Hannah Richardson BScAfter finishing a degree in Environmental Science at Nottingham Trent University, Hannah Richardson joined Tilhill Forestrys graduate scheme and hasnt looked back since.She is now an Assistant Forest Manager for the South West Scotland District with a wide ranging role that includes overseeing work in forests such as monitoring and supervising contractors, marking out sites, applying for grants and managing budgets.Hannah said: Half of the work is indoors and half is outdoors which is perfect for me and I am working in such a beautiful part of the country which is a real bonus.My degree was quite open in terms of specialising and I just happened to attend a talk by Tilhill at my university. Forestry particularly started to appeal to me when I realised I wanted a job where you get to spend a lot of time outdoors.I feel lucky that despite not having any direct forestry experience I was given a job with Tilhill. Im so pleased I was given the opportunity. As a graduate trainee you are constantly learning on the job. You get involved in such a variety of work and it changes on a daily basis which makes it challenging but enjoyable. I highly recommend people to consider forestry as a career.Jude Fielding BA MScFor Jude Fielding, studying forestry was a natural progression from his previous career in countryside estate management, and offered him a chance to follow in his fathers footsteps who has been working in Forestry for nearly 30 years. Jude joined Tilhill Forestrys graduate scheme last year after completing an MSc in Forestry at Aberdeen University. He is now an Assistant Forest Manager based at Tilhills Devon office.In my previous job I enjoyed being able to work outside managing new planting schemes for the renewable energy industry. Having grown up in rural North Wales with a forester as a father, I was given many opportunities to spend time outdoors. However, to follow in my fathers footsteps, I realised I needed to be qualified and doing a Masters at Aberdeen University was a logical choice, Jude explained.He says that he chose Tilhill Forestry as it seemed one of the best graduate programmes in the forestry industry.Joining a graduate scheme is one of the best ways to get into this industry, allowing me instant management experience and responsibility, as well as the potential to gain further on the job training and qualifications that would be difficult elsewhere. Tilhills training plan aims to give you the necessary training and experience within a few years to graduate to become a fully-fledged forest manager.Judes role so far has involved timber measurements, harvesting supervision, planting scheme design and implementation including managing and supervising contractors. He has also been writing his first management plan, with a second soon to follow and has had the opportunity to try his hand at mapping, producing hazard and biodiversity maps for the management plan he is currently writing.He says: I am really enjoying it. I get to spend on average two to three days a week in the woods, in all types of weather. The woodlands I am helping to manage become your second office, and they are wonderful places to be.Judes advice for anyone considering joining Tilhill Forestry: Its a great company that will invest time in training you. The support you get in the office is fantastic and its one of the best graduate schemes Ive seen in the industry. There are lots of opportunities to learn and visit other offices that might be carrying out other types of woodland management not available in your area, and this helps expand your experiences. The difference with Tilhill is that its a large company compared to most competitors and this offers a unique range of opportunities and experiences within the forestry industry.Alex Flinn BSc HonsAlex Flinn is now an Assistant Forest Manager at Tilhill Forestrys Bala office in North Wales. He was appointed last year after graduating from the University of Cumbria with a BSc Honours in Forest and Woodland Management.Alex applied to join the Tilhill Forestry graduate scheme after researching potential employers on line and then deciding he wanted to work in the private sector.He said: From my first approach, Tilhill staff were very friendly and good at answering questions which all contributed to me wanting to apply. There was also an office in Needham near to where I grew up which appealed to me.Currently, Alex is involved in site visits, talking to sub-contractors, writing out work instructions, using GIS to map out sites and filling out felling licences among other work. He started in June 2016.Alex added: I really like the amount of work outside. There is a good balance with work inside and I am finding everyone extremely friendly and helpful. I feel like I am trusted with lots of responsibility but Im never scared to ask questions.Unusually for a graduate, Alex left school with just a few GCSEs. He worked as a tree surgeon and carried out contract felling. It was this experience that helped him secure a place at the University of Cumbria. Alex says he would definitely recommend forestry to others especially if you like working outdoors. He also advises potential applicants to get some experience during their studies such as a placement.He says he definitely made the right choice about joining Tilhill Forestry. There are so many opportunities to learn more and progress your professional portfolio. I particularly like the trust managers have in you as a recent joiner. For instance I represented the company in a meeting after only five months in the job.Jamie Adcock BScJamie Adcock joined Tilhill Forestry after graduating with a BSc in Forestry from Bangor University.He says he chose Tilhill because he knew the company is the leader in the private sector and also came into contact with Tilhill during his third-year placement with the Forestry Commission. He was also attracted to the Company after learning that investment in training and staff is taken very seriously.Jamie, 27, worked as a ski instructor in Canada and New Zealand after leaving school so he is pleased that he was assigned to Tilhills Dunblane office which means he can head to the mountains after work.Originally from the Midlands near Loughborough, Jamie is an Assistant Forest Manager with a broad role and lots of responsibility.He explains: Ive been planning and supervising forest operations with a mix of new planting and re-stocking operations. When Im in the office, which is about half of the time, I am working on GIS mapping and grant applications along with organising contractors and materials. Its very rewarding when I get on site to see work progressing and to see that Ive helped to make an impact. Im really glad I joined Tilhill as there is huge potential for career development.Asked whether he has any advice for potential applicants: Make sure you have a driving licence and do a mid-year placement. All of the students on my course who did placement have managed to secure work.Richard Hartley PGdRichard Hartley joined Tilhill Forestrys graduate programme after studying for a Post Graduate Degree in Forestry at Harper Adams University.Richard, aged 35, was an army officer in the Royal Logistic Corps but has always been interested in forestry. He heard about Tilhill Forestrys graduate scheme through his universitys careers fair and was also impressed when he visited a number of Tilhill-managed sites as part of his studies.He explains: I wanted a job that got me outdoors more. My father was a horticulturalist so that type of work is in my blood.Originally from Nottingham, Richard is now based at Tilhill Forestrys Jedburgh office and is enjoying a varied role as an Assistant Forest Manager that involves new woodland creation schemes, supervising site preparation, pest and weed checks, wildlife surveys and timber measurement.Richard said: I am finding the job very rewarding and Ive been given lots of responsibility in a short time. Its pretty incredible to be involved with helping to change landscapes in a positive way. Ive been involved with a site called Larriston near Newcastleton where we have been transforming a 600 hectare sheep farm into forest.I highly recommend Tilhill Forestrys graduate scheme as its a great way to gain knowledge in a supportive environment. The company as a whole has so much to offer in terms of opportunities to work in forest management, on the harvesting side of the business, or with the investment team, and at different locations around the UK.ENDSFor further information contact Suzi Christie PR Consultant for Tilhill Forestry on 07590 591140 ore-mail suzi@blueberry-pr.co.ukTilhill Forestry Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the BSW Timber Group, was established more than 65 years ago. It is a national company operating from a network of offices throughout the UK. The company provides a full range of consultancy and contracting services to the forest owner and forestry investor. Further information is available atBSW is the most technologically advanced sawmill company in the UK employing over 1,200 people. The Companys roots date back to 1848, and with seven sawmills in the UK and one in Latvia, has a production capacity of more than 1.2 million m3 of sawn timber which is distributed throughout construction, fencing and landscape marketsTogether, BSW and Tilhill Forestry form a strong partnership in the forest industry that will deliver quality from beginning to end - from creating new forests through to producing timber end products.2, Danecroft PlaceHellinglyHailshamEast SussexBN27 4ES
Cresols Asia-Pacific Market Top Manufacturers - Sasol Phenolics, Lanxess, SABIC, Mitsui Chemicals, Atul

Cresols Market

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The report Cresols Market 2017 presents a widespread and fundamental study of Cresols industry along with the analysis of subjective aspects which will provide key business insights to the readers. The Asia-Pacific Cresols Market 2017 research report offers the analytical view of the industry by studying different factors like Cresols market growth, consumption volume, market trends and Cresols industry cost structures during the forecast period 2017-2022.In this report, the Asia-Pacific Cresols market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split Asia-Pacific into several key Regions, with sales (K MT), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Cresols for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), including like China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Southeast Asia and Australia.Get a Sample Report @Asia-Pacific Cresols market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Cresols sales volume, price, revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingSasol PhenolicsLanxessSABICR?TGERS GroupMitsui ChemicalsAtulNanjing Datang ChemicalArdisonsHisunny ChemicalHonshu ChemicalNippon CrenolOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volum, revenue, product price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoMeta-cresolsPara-cresolsOrtho-cresolsOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate for each application, includingPlasticsPesticidesPharmaceuticalsOthersAsk Query @Table of Contents -1 Cresols Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Cresols1.2 Classification of Cresols by Product Category1.2.1 Asia-Pacific Cresols Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Types (2012-2022)1.2.2 Asia-Pacific Cresols Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Meta-cresols1.2.4 Para-cresols1.2.5 Ortho-cresols1.3 Asia-Pacific Cresols Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Asia-Pacific Cresols Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Applications (2012-2022)1.3.2 Plastics1.3.3 Pesticides1.3.4 Pharmaceuticals1.3.5 Others1.4 Asia-Pacific Cresols Market by Region1.4.1 Asia-Pacific Cresols Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 South Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.8 Australia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Asia-Pacific Market Size (Value and Volume) of Cresols (2012-2022)1.5.1 Asia-Pacific Cresols Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Asia-Pacific Cresols Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)10 Asia-Pacific Cresols Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales Data10.1 Sasol Phenolics10.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.1.2 Cresols Product Category, Application and Specification10.1.2.1 Product A10.1.2.2 Product B10.1.3 Sasol Phenolics Cresols Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.2 Lanxess10.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.2.2 Cresols Product Category, Application and Specification10.2.2.1 Product A10.2.2.2 Product B10.2.3 Lanxess Cresols Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.3 SABIC10.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.3.2 Cresols Product Category, Application and Specification10.3.2.1 Product A10.3.2.2 Product B10.3.3 SABIC Cresols Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.4 R?TGERS Group10.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.4.2 Cresols Product Category, Application and Specification10.4.2.1 Product A10.4.2.2 Product B10.4.3 R?TGERS Group Cresols Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.5 Mitsui Chemicals10.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.5.2 Cresols Product Category, Application and Specification10.5.2.1 Product A10.5.2.2 Product B10.5.3 Mitsui Chemicals Cresols Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.6 Atul10.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.6.2 Cresols Product Category, Application and Specification10.6.2.1 Product A10.6.2.2 Product B10.6.3 Atul Cresols Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.7 Nanjing Datang Chemical10.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.7.2 Cresols Product Category, Application and Specification10.7.2.1 Product A10.7.2.2 Product B10.7.3 Nanjing Datang Chemical Cresols Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.8 Ardisons10.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.8.2 Cresols Product Category, Application and Specification10.8.2.1 Product A10.8.2.2 Product B10.8.3 Ardisons Cresols Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.9 Hisunny Chemical10.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.9.2 Cresols Product Category, Application and Specification10.9.2.1 Product A10.9.2.2 Product B10.9.3 Hisunny Chemical Cresols Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.10 Honshu Chemical10.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.10.2 Cresols Product Category, Application and Specification10.10.2.1 Product A10.10.2.2 Product B10.10.3 Honshu Chemical Cresols Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.11 Nippon CrenolAsk for Discount:About Us:QY Research Groups is a company that simplifies how analysts and decision makers get industry data for their business. Our unique colossal technology has been developed to offer refined search capabilities designed to exploit the long tail of free market research whilst eliminating irrelevant results. QY Research Groups is the collection of market intelligence products and services on the Web. We offer reports and update our collection daily to provide you with instant online access to the world's most complete and current database of expert insights on Global industries, companies, products, and trends.Contact us:Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb-
Complex Co-Cultured Spheroids to Validate Tumour Models in Microfluidic Devices

3D Cell Culture 2018

http://www.3D-CellCulture.com/pr

http://www.smi-online.co.uk

Following on from recent reports that suggests spheroids could serve as a testing ground to help scientists zone in on personalised treatments for cancer, SMi Group are delighted to have Post-Doctoral Researcher, Tudor Petreus from AstraZeneca, presents on "Complex co-cultured spheroids to validate tumour models in microfluidic devices" at the next annual conference on 3D Cell Culture next February.Tudor Petreus is currently responsible for development of complex 3D tumour models in microfluidic devices and their use to evaluate the therapeutic index of drug combinations.As well as providing an overview on the tumour-on-chip models, his talk will discuss current progress and optimization in the development of in vitro prevascularized mini-tumours. Highlights will also include a case study example on applying prevascularized tumour models to cancer research.Other presentations in the featured spotlight on Organ-on-a-chip technologies will include: The Overlap of 3D Bioprinting and 3D Cell Culturing in Cancer Research presented by Nicolas Leslie, Professor from Heriot-Watt University Multi-Organ-Chip Technology: A Completely New Approach to Predictive Substance Testing presented by Reyk Horland, Head of Business Development, TissUse GmbHFurther information including a full speaker line-up and detailed agenda is available online at3D Cell Culture 2018 is sponsored by Integra Biosciences, Jellagen and Nexcelom. It will take place on 21st and 22nd February at the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum in Central London, UK.---end---About SMi Group:Established since 1993, the SMi Group is a global event-production company that specializes in Business-to-Business Conferences, Workshops, Masterclasses and online Communities. We create and deliver events in the Defence, Security, Energy, Utilities, Finance and Pharmaceutical industries. We pride ourselves on having access to the worlds most forward thinking opinion leaders and visionaries, allowing us to bring our communities together to Learn, Engage, Share and Network. More information can be found at2 Floor Harling House47-51 Great Suffolk StreetContact Information:For media enquiries contact Teri Arri on Tel: +44 (0)20 7827 6162 / Email: tarri@smi-online.co.ukFor all other enquires contact the team on Tel: +44 (0)20 7827 6000 or email events@smi-online.co.uk
Automotive Interior Material Market Trends and Global Forecast to 2027

Automotive Interior Material Market

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Market Scenario:The automotive interiors typically refer to the interior components that are present in the cabin of a vehicle. This includes components such as cockpit, dashboards, door panels and seats. Visual appearance of a car has become a dominant influencer on buyers perception of vehicle quality, in recent times. Due to this, the automotive interiors are increasingly gaining importance. There is a common OEM goal, of providing vehicles with good interior quality, feel and finish across the sector. Increasing incidence of personalization in automobiles by individuals has contributed towards the growth of the market.The automotive industry is one of the most competitive industries, across the globe. Major manufacturers across various continents often compete against each other to expand their customer base resulting in intense competition. This results in a high quality product being delivered to the customers, which drives the Automotive Interior Material market. The market is further expected to be driven by the rising level of income of individuals and the booming global automotive industry and is expected to reach valuation of USD 149.6 billion by 2027 growing at a CAGR of 8.72%.Request for a Sample Copy @Key Players:The key players of global Automotive Interior Material markets are Toyoda Gosei Co. Ltd (Japan), Toyota Boshoku Corporation (Japan), Lear Corporation (U.S), NTF India Pvt Ltd (India), Sage Automotive Interiors. Inc (U.S), BASF Automotive Solutions (Germany), and Faurecia S.A (France).Brief TOC:1 Introduction1.1 Definition1.2 Scope of the Study1.3 Assumptions1.4 Market Structure2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Process2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Market Size Estimation2.5 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Drivers3.1.1 Rising Income level of Individuals3.1.2 Booming Automotive Industry3.1.3 Cut throat competition in the Automotive Industry3.2 Restraints3.2.1 Capital Intensive Market4 Market Factor Analysis4.1 Supply Chain Analysis4.2 Porter's Five Forces Analysis4.2.1 Threat of New Entrants4.2.2 Bargaining Power of Suppliers4.2.3 Bargaining Power of Buyers4.2.4 Threat of Substitutes4.2.5 RivalryContinueBrowse Full Report @Regional Analysis:The Asia-Pacific region had been holding the largest share of the automotive interiors material market in 2015. The demand for automobiles in these regions are driven by the growing population in countries such as China and India, as the demand for automobiles in these countries is high at all times. Government initiatives for promoting growth have been reflected upon the increasing demand for automobiles, in this region. In the European regions, the regulations are made mandatory to improve counter measures and crash performance to keep the passengers safe. This factor is estimated to drive the market for interiors in the region. Also, recently automotive interiors material market have gained significance, with manufacturers pushing high end interiors even in entry level automobiles.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Market Development Trends and Forecast 2017-2022

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The Military Aerospace Simulation And Training market can be split based on product types, major applications, and important regions.Major Players in Military Aerospace Simulation And Training market are:MoregetBAE SystemsTextronBoeingCSTS DinamikaNorthrop GrummanCAEBlueskyRheinmetallThalesL-3 CommunicationsLockheed MartinKratosFlightSafetyRockwell CollinsGet sample copy @Major Regions play vital role in Military Aerospace Simulation And Training market are:North AmericaEuropeChinaJapanMiddle East & AfricaIndiaSouth AmericaOthersMost important types of Military Aerospace Simulation And Training products covered in this report are:Full Flight SimulatorFlight Training DeviceComputer Based TrainingMost widely used downstream fields of Military Aerospace Simulation And Training market covered in this report are:Fixed-wing AircraftRotary-wing AircraftCharacteristics of Military Aerospace Simulation and TrainingBrowse complete report @Table of Content1 Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Introduction and Market Overview2 Industry Chain Analysis3 Global Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Market, by Type3.1 Analysis of Market Status and Feature by Type3.2 Global Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Value ($) and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)3.3 Global Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)3.4 Global Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Value ($) and Growth Rate by Type (2012-2017)3.5 Global Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Price Analysis by Type (2012-2017)4 Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Market, by Application5 Global Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Production, Value ($) by Region (2012-2017)6 Global Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)Discount @7 Global Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Market Status and SWOT Analysis by Regions8 Competitive Landscape9 Global Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Market Analysis and Forecast by Type and Application10 Military Aerospace Simulation And Training Market Analysis and Forecast by Region10.1 North America Market Value ($) and Consumption Forecast (2017-2022)10.2 Europe Market Value ($) and Consumption Forecast (2017-2022)10.3 China Market Value ($) and Consumption Forecast (2017-2022)10.4 Japan Market Value ($) and Consumption Forecast (2017-2022)10.5 Middle East & Africa Market Value ($) and Consumption Forecast (2017-2022)10.6 India Market Value ($) and Consumption Forecast (2017-2022)10.7 South America Market Value ($) and Consumption Forecast (2017-2022)11 New Project Feasibility Analysis11.1 Industry Barriers and New Entrants SWOT Analysis11.2 Analysis and Suggestions on New Project Investment12 Research Finding and Conclusion13 AppendixBuy now @About UsWe provide best in class customer 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, 5th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Argentina: Market Consolidation Paired with Converged Multiplay Services to Intensify Competition in Telecom Markets

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"Argentina: Market Consolidation Paired with Converged Multiplay Services to Intensify Competition in Telecom Markets", a new Country Intelligence Report by GlobalData, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Argentina today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2022. Published annually, the report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type and technology/platform across the fixed telephony, broadband, and mobile, as well as a review of key regulatory trends.The Argentina telecom market will generate $10.6bn in service revenue in 2017, 5.1% less than the previous year. In local currency terms, it will expand by 8.2%.For more information about this report atScope:--Revenue from voice services is on the decline in the 2017-2022 period. Fixed and mobile data services revenue will grow at a CAGR of 3.2%, driven by the growing coverage of 4G LTE and the expansion of fiber networks. In fact, LTE networks reached more than 154 cities in 2016.-The 3G family of technologies will have the largest share of the market in Argentina in 2017. We expect LTE subscriptions will take over 3G by 2020.-We expect broadband lines to reach 11.0m by year-end 2022, for a population penetration of 24.2%, owing to operators' initiatives to offer more attractive pricing packages and the expansion of their fixed broadband coverage to rural areas in line with the government's National Broadband Strategy.The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following--Regional context: telecom market size and trends in Argentina compared with other countries in the region.-Economic, demographic and political context in Argentina.-The regulatory environment and trends: a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to spectrum licensing, national broadband plans, number portability and more.-A demand profile: analysis as well as historical figures and forecasts of service revenue from the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, and mobile data markets.-Service evolution: a look at changes in the breakdown of overall revenue between the fixed and mobile sectors and between voice, data and video from 2017 to 2022.-The competitive landscape: an examination of key trends in competition and in the performance, revenue market shares and expected moves of service providers over the next 18-24 months.vIn-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, and mobile data services: a quantitative analysis of service adoption trends by network technology and by operator, as well as of average revenue per line/subscription and service revenue through the end of the forecast period.-Main opportunities: this section details the near-term opportunities for operators, vendors and investors in the Argentina telecommunications markets.Request a sample copy atReasons to buy:--This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of Argentina's telecommunications markets, service providers and key opportunities in a concise format to help executives build proactive and profitable growth strategies.-Accompanying GlobalData's Forecast products, the report examines the assumptions and drivers behind ongoing and upcoming trends in Argentina's mobile communications, fixed telephony, broadband markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares.-With more than 20 charts and tables, the report is designed for an executive-level audience, boasting presentation quality.-The report provides an easily digestible market assessment for decision-makers built around in-depth information gathered from local market players, which enables executives to quickly get up to speed with the current and emerging trends in Argentina's telecommunications markets.-The broad perspective of the report coupled with comprehensive, actionable detail will help operators, equipment vendors and other telecom industry players succeed in the challenging telecommunications market in Argentina.Companies Mentioned:-ClaroMovistarTelecom ArgentinaCablevisionDirecTVTelecentroSupercanalPersonalTelefonica ArgentinaTelpinInquire for Report atAbout ReportsWeb:ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer Bauxite Mining and our customer support Bauxite Mining is always available to help you on your research queries.Contact Us:505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028Phone : +91-20-67278686E-Mail : info@reportsweb.com
Away from Home Tissue Products Market By Analysis of Major Industry Segments 2017 - 2022

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The growing awareness on hygiene in the area of hotels, restaurants, and catering sector world over is a key trend driving the evolution of the away from home tissue products market. A sustained focus on the importance of hygiene and sanitation across communities in public places such as hospitals, hotels, and offices is a primary factor that has propelled the demand for different away-from-home tissue products such as napkins, toweling, toilet papers, facial tissues, and sanitary napkins. In several developing and developed regions, the adoption of active prevention measures against a number of diseases, notably contagious ones, has boosted the demand for these products as they are found to be more effective than traditional hand dryers and cloth towels. Substantial technological advances in the packaging machinery and the advent of more affordable and environmental-friendly products are recent developments favorably impacting the market.Read Report Overview @The global away from home tissue products market is projected to rise from a valuation of US$25,566.3 Mn in 2017 to reach US$31,449.9 Mn by end of 2022. The market is forecast to rise at a CAGR of 4.2% from 2017 to 2022.An insight into notable trends and factors influencing the growth of the global away from home tissue products market is offered here:The rising focus on hygiene, sanitation, and comfort in the area of healthcare, hospitality, food service, and retail is a key factor driving the demand for various away from home tissue products. The growing demand for better protection products against contagious diseases in hotels and catering services, commercial institutions, healthcare institutions, and public places is bolstering the adoption of away from home tissue products. A burgeoning hotels, restaurants, and catering sector, coupled with improving consumer spending in several developing and developed countries, is a prominent trend accentuating the market.The intensifying demand for environmentally preferable options and recyclable napkins and facial tissue products is a key factor expected to fuel the away from home tissue products market. The advent of tissue products in various sizes, weight, and color in order to meet the specific criteria of end users is a key factor accentuating the market. However, the availability of lower quality away-from-home tissue products is a notable factor likely to hamper the market in some regions. In addition, a low hotel room occupancy in some countries still recovering from the adverse effects of global recession of 2009 is also likely to affect the profitability of players. Nevertheless, the rising demand for towel and tissue products in the food service industry has opened up lucrative avenues for market players.Request Sample Report @Geographically, currently North America is the leading market holding the major revenue share in 2016. However, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is projected to rise at major CAGR during 20172022 and outpace North America by contributing the leading revenue of US$8,841.4 Mn by the end of 2022. The growth is expected to be fueled by a rapidly rising demand for away from home tissue products in the hotels, restaurants, and catering sector, especially in several emerging economies. Of all product types, the toweling segment is anticipated to dominate the market in 2017 and is expected to hold the major share of 45.3%, by the end of the forecast period.Competitive DynamicsA number of established players are focused on offering higher-quality recyclable hygiene products to meet diverse needs of end users, especially in workplace, healthcare and hotel environments. Emerging players are focused on launching affordable products in order to gain a competitive edge over others. Some of the leading players operating in the global away from home tissue products market are Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Georgia-Pacific LLC, Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget, Cascades Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., Sofidel Group, Weifang Lancel Hygiene Products LTD, Asia Pulp and Paper, Kruger Inc., and MPI Papermills.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring Market is growing globally with the rapid pace and Forecast to 2024

Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring Market

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Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring is used in treating patients suffering from severe brain injury. In this process a sensor device is been used and placed inside the head to measure the pressure inside the skull and send it to a recording deviceIntracranial pressure monitoring Market can be performed in following three waysIntraventricular Catheter: is the most accurate method. In this method Intraventricular Catheter is inserted through a hole in the skull and place in the lateral ventricle.Subdural Screw: In this method hollow screw is placed in the skull. It is placed between a membrane that protects the spinal cord and the brain.Epidural Sensor: The Epidural Sensor is placed between the skull and dural tissue by drilling a hole in the skullIntracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring market major players:Natus Medical Inc. (U.S.), Nihon Kohden Corporation (Japan), Philips Healthcare (Netherlands), GE Healthcare (U.K.), Siemens Healthcare (Germany), Compumedics Ltd. (Australia), Electrical Geodesics Incorporated (U.S.), Medtronic Inc. (Ireland), CAS Medical Systems, Inc. (U.S.) and Advanced Brain Monitoring (U.S.)Intracranial pressure monitoring (ICP) market Application:Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring is mainly used in hospitals for patients suffering from brain injury, meningitis and intracerebral hemorrhage. There are multiple ICP products that have been used in hospitals such as Surgical Instruments, IAP-Monitoring, Hydrocephalus, CSF drainage and many more.The microtransducers and ventriculostomy is included invasive method whereas tympanic membrane displacement, transcranial Doppler, CT scan/ MRI, optic nerve sheath diameter, and fundoscopy is included in noninvasive methodsIntracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring market segmentation:ICP monitoring market segmentation can be done by method, market, Instrument, applications and End-users.ICP monitoring market by Method: Invasive and Non- invasiveICP monitoring market by Market: external ventricular drain, fiber optic monitor, strain gauge transducer and air-pouch device market.ICP monitoring market by Instrument: Devices and accessoriesICP monitoring market by Applications: Traumatic Brain Injury, Intracerebral Hemorrhage, Meningitis, and Subarachnoid HemorrhageICP monitoring market by End-users: Trauma centers, hospitals, clinics and diagnostic laboratories.Get Sample copy atIntracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring market growth influencer:The major growth drivers of Intracranial pressure monitoring market is increasing global incidence and prevalence of neurological disorders, rising awareness about neurodegenerative diseases, technological advancements in brain monitoring devices and growing incidence of traumatic brain injuries.The shortage of trained professionals, high cost of complex brain monitoring devices, unfavorable reimbursement policies and concerns regarding the accuracy of diagnostic devices are the major restraints of ICP market.Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring market regional analysis:The regional analysis comprises of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and rest of the world.North America:North America dominates the ICP monitoring market due to large number of traumatic brain injury cases. Also, the growing number of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) cases and need for continuous ICP monitoring of the patients suffering from TBI are the factors driving the intracranial pressure monitoring devices market in the U.S. Additionally, Increasing Awareness About Neurodegenerative Diseases and Rising Government Initiatives are also propelling the market towards growth.North America market is broadly classified into product and applications. Based on product the market is segmented into Extra Ventricular Drainage (EVD) and ICP Monitors whereas based on applications market is segmented into Traumatic Brain Injury, Intracerebral Hemorrhage, Meningitis and Others.Asia:Asian countries is showing highest growth rate in the upcoming years. The growing neurological complications and government initiatives for raising the awareness in people towards the neurological complications and its treatment is driving the ICP Monitoring market. Japan, China, and India are relied upon to be among the highest developing markets for the intracranial pressure devices because of different ventures and research offices.The reports also covers brief analysis of Geographical Region includes:Americas North Americao USo CanadaEurope Western Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo Spaino U.Ko Rest of Western Europe Eastern Europeo Polando RussiaAsia Pacific Asiao Chinao Indiao Japano Rest of Asia Pacific Countrieso Australiao New Zealand The Middle East& AfricaGet discount atTable of content1 INTRODUCTION1.1 DEFINITION1.2 SCOPE OF STUDY1.2.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE1.2.2 ASSUMPTIONS & LIMITATIONS1.2.2.1 ASSUMPTIONS1.2.2.2 LIMITATIONS1.3 MARKET STRUCTURE:2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY2.1 RESEARCH PROCESS:2.2 PRIMARY RESEARCH2.3 SECONDARY RESEARCH:3 MARKET DYNAMICS3.1 DRIVERS3.2 RESTRAINTS3.3 OPPORTUNITIES3.4 MACROECONOMIC INDICATORS4 MARKET FACTOR ANALYSIS4.1 PORTERS FIVE FORCES MODEL4.2 BARGAINING POWER OF SUPPLIERS4.3 BARGAINING POWER OF BUYERS4.4 THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTSContinuedAbout 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.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.comMRFR has the distinguished objective of providing the optimal quality research and granular research to 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 answer your most important questions.Our Research Analysts are eager to share their knowledge and assist you in refining market research parameters, choosing right market studies, and evaluating both the market scope and the research methodologies of varied segments.We bridge the gap between our clients and their clients by identifying and decoding just the target group, while generating leads with the highest accuracy.Years of research into diverse fields of work has ingrained within us, a proficiency so distinguished that our industry-specific specialists identify with your business ideas and feel the pulse of your challenges and opportunities. This enables us for providing assistance, through our consulting and strategic consulting services, in informed managerial decision making. In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industries, WantStats Research and Media often conducts industrial visits for its research analysts. Relevant inputs from various established market participants, help our clients make significant contribution in respective markets are a huge motivation for all of us to endlessly furnish quality. We depend greatly on profound insights into complex realms of our study.Pune, India
Operational Database Market Estimated to Flourish by 2024

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A database is collection of data, organized in digital form. There are several databases available in the market which are differentiated based on their functions. Examples of such databases are document-oriented database, embedded database, graph database, hypertext database, Operational Database and distributed database. An operational database is a data warehouse, containing data related to an organization, which can be used to run the day to day operations and can generate huge amount of data related to customers, inventory, purchases, transactions and financials. The operational database can be easily modified depending upon the requirements and can store and supply information for ongoing calculations.As technology advances, the need for more agile and prompt solutions is growing. Enterprises have also turned toward real-time information for more efficient and effective decision making. As operational databases meet these needs, they are expected to find sustained growth in the market during the coming years. Furthermore, they offer better integrity, reduced data repetition and independence from application programs. They are also cost efficient as compared to traditional databases. Additionally, these databases can be easily modified based on the business rules. There are numerous customizations offered by operational databases including data formatting, error tracking, and validation of data. Operational databases also allow multiple users to edit data simultaneously, which is an important factor driving the growth of operational database market.Request to view ToC of Report -Databases are integration of complex hardware and software systems. Designing and development of databases is a complex undertaking. Building a suitable database architecture keeping in mind the future needs is very crucial for an organization. Additionally, the cost associated with customizing the database is high and may require frequent changes in the system making it difficult for small organizations to adopt these changes. Data breaches, security threats and reluctance of small and medium-sized enterprises to invest in IT systems are some of the factors hindering the growth of operational database market.With growing understanding toward the importance of data for decision making, database providers are offering solutions which are intuitive in nature. Moreover, trends such as Internet of Things (IoT) and analytics are likely to boost the market for database in coming years. Emergence of database-as-a-service (DBaaS) is a key trend in database market.Request to view Brochure of Report -The key players in operational database market include Amazon Web Services, Oracle Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, IBM Corporation, SAP SE, EnterpriseDB Corporation, InterSystems Corporation, MarkLogic Corporation, MongoDB, Inc., DataStax, Inc., Cloudera Inc., and Redis Labs, Inc. Some additional players are Fijitsu Ltd., Couchbase Inc., MemSQL Inc., NuoDB Inc., MapR Technologies, Inc., and Altibase Corporation.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Server Software Market foreseen to grow exponentially over 2024

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Servers are classified into various types such as application servers, web servers, database servers, cloud computing servers and file servers. Application servers are designed to install, operate and host applications for the end users. Web server is a system that uses network protocols such as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) to deliver the HTML files requested by the end user through its Internet browser. Database server is the backend system of the database application which is used to perform functions such as data analysis, data manipulation, storage and archiving.Cloud computing servers are remotely accessed servers, built, hosted and delivered through a cloud platform over the Internet. File server is a computer or device that handles the request for files and transfers the files as requested by the end user. Server Software is specifically designed for operating, managing and increasing server computing power. Server software is built to interact with servers hardware, which includes processor, memory devices, input/output devices and other communication ports. Server software is installed on the server and could be accessed by multiple users on the network.Request to view ToC of Report -The deployment of server in the organization enables the centralization of data and installed applications. This factor would significantly help in the growth of server software market. Extensive usage of computers, laptops and smartphones is the major factor driving the growth of server software market. Rising Internet penetration in emerging economies such as India and Brazil has created huge demand of web servers which supports the growth of web server software market. Growing demand from developers to create applications for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets supports the growth of server software market. Growth of cloud based applications and development in Internet of Things (IoT) applications are likely to create immense opportunities for server software market. However, integration and compatibility issues with processors/storage devices servers pose a challenge to server software market.Server software market is broadly segmented on the basis of server type, deployment and geography. On the basis of type, the server software market is segmented into application server software, web server software, database server software, cloud computing server software and file server software. On the basis of deployment, the server software market is segmented into on-premise and cloud deployment. Moreover, in terms of geographies, the global server software market is segmented into North America; Europe; Asia Pacific; Middle East and Africa; and Latin America. North America is one of the leading regions in terms of adoption of server software due to huge adoption of cloud services in the region. Server software market in Asia Pacific is anticipated to grow significantly during the coming years due to high rate of growth in Internet penetration and digitalization in the region.Request to view Brochure of Report -The major participants of the server software market include Microsoft Corporation, Dell Corporation, International Business Machine (IBM) Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Red Hat Inc., SAP SE, Apache Software Foundation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LLC, CodeLathe LLC, and Aprelium.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Online Advertising Market Poised to Expand at a Robust Pace Over 2024

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Global Online Advertising Market: OverviewAlso known as web advertising and Internet advertising, online advertising refers to the use of the Internet for marketing and advertising of products and services. Finding new customers, promoting new products, and diversification of revenue streams becomes easy with the use of online advertising. Paid search or pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is perhaps the most widely used type of online advertising. Paid search enables a person to find relevant terms and phrases (keywords), which form the basis of this type of advertising. Paid social advertising is another way of advertising via the Internet. It is also possible to combine the two types of advertising, in order to reap maximum benefits of these platforms.Based on type, The Global Market For Online Advertising can be segmented into email marketing, banner marketing, social media optimization (SMO), online video advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), and local online advertising.Request to view ToC of Report -Global Online Advertising Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe switch from traditional print media to online advertising is influenced by recent technological advancements in communication technologies. The increasing number of smartphone users worldwide, growing number of broadband service providers, and extensive usage of the internet by innumerable users are triggering the growth of the global market for online advertising.As the creation of appealing banners and advertisements via online sources promises more attention from the customers, this platform is increasingly preferred by innumerable businesses over the globe. Also, online advertising can be more convenient and cost-efficient, at the same time offering a broader platform, when compared to traditional advertising using the television and the print media. Alarming degree of addiction to smart devices such as tablets, laptops, and smartphones has also been aiding market growth.On the contrary, the presence of ad blockers aimed at eliminating advertisements form users webpages might limit the growth of the global market for online advertising. Moreover, several companies are grappling with the problem of transitioning from desktop to smartphone ads. This might also impede market expansion. However, the increasing dependence of people on Internet will ensure that the market for online advertising progresses rapidly, counteracting the negative impact of this restraint.Companies mentioned in the research reportThe global market for online advertising appears to be highly fragmented in terms of competition, owing to the presence of a large number of market players. A number of companies have been adopting mergers and acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships to boost their profits.Some of the major companies operating in the global market for online advertising are Google Inc., Adobe Systems Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Yahoo! Inc., AOL, Inc., MobGen B.V., eBay, Inc., LongJump CRM, Hulu, LLC, Facebook Inc., Percussion Software Inc., Twitter Inc., 6s Marketing, Salesforce.com Inc., Netsuite Inc., Zoho CRM Inc., Aplicor LLC, SAP AG, Single Grain LLC, Apple Inc., and Pandora Media.Request to view Brochure of Report -Global Online Advertising Market: Regional OutlookBased on geography, the global market for online advertising can be segmented into Asia Pacific, Latin America, Western Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Eastern Europe, and North America. North America is likely to emerge as a prominent market for online advertising, with the U.S. contributing a significant share. High proliferation of online content, increasing consultation of online sources by purchasers, and significant amount of time spent online are driving the growth of the market in this region.Asia Pacific is slated to exhibit substantial growth over the forecast period, promising a major chunk of share in the global market. India and China are the major markets in this region, on account of their increasing adoption of technology, extensive urbanization and industrialization, and encouraging government initiatives. As a number of market players are entering terrains such as food and beverage industry, the growth of the market in this region is further strengthened.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Barcode Technology Market to receive overwhelming hike in Revenues by 2024

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A barcode is a predefined format of white spaces and dark bars. Barcodes are defined as an optical, machine readable representation of data codes that includes a specific piece of data or information. Barcode Technology is an automatic identification technology that can retrieve data through specially designed scanners. It can be generated using different barcoding techniques, called symbologies, classified into 2D and linear matrix. On a white background, the bars are typically black, and their quantity and width vary according to application. The symbologies technique determines the interpretation and mapping of the encoded data or information. The barcode scanner technology uses its own software that converts barcode information into a digital signal. Barcode readers contains a fixed auto discrimination feature which have the capacity to detect the symbology used and decodes respectively. This auto discrimination feature makes data entry more accurate by allowing the readers to map the combinations to the correct character.Todays barcodes have replaced the traditional pricing of products and become a very convenient way of reading and storing information. The barcode technology helps to eliminate the possibility of human error, increase efficiency in business operations and offers a reliable way to accurately read encoded information. Also, manual data entry, spreadsheet, repetitive task and paper logs have been replaced by barcoding technology. Apart from this, combination of barcode technology with system and application software improves productivity, performance and profitability.Request to view ToC of Report -The barcode technology market is experiencing growth owing to the factors such as real time data collection, accuracy of data unit, cost efficient, labour saving by avoiding manual system and presents unique identity of a product. Also, measurement of work in progress throughout the factory, explosion of e-commerce, rapid access to total production costs, more precise dispatch, and changing consumer habits have led to the increasing growth of this market. Barcodes have been extensively adopted in hospitals for certain applications which includes barcode medication administration systems for shots and drops, medicines, variable workflows, and control of the dispensing of drugs with in a hospital.The barcode technology market can be segmented on the basis of types and applications .On the basis of type, the market has been segmented into linear (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) barcode systems. The linear barcodes are thick and thin black bars represented on a white background while, 2D matrix uses complicated patterns of blocks and arrangements instead of lines .Further, the application segmentation includes healthcare applications, inventory management, laboratories, library management, quality control, pharmaceutical tracking and attendance system. In quality and inventory management, the functions which are easily completed using barcode technology includes warehouse management, inventory control software and package tracking. Similarly, in mobile data collection industry, barcodes provide best solution for wireless data collection, market activity tracking and batch data collection which needs high level of accuracy and efficiency.Request to view Brochure of Report -The major players in the global barcode technology market includes OCR Canada Ltd., General Data Company Inc., Honeywell International Inc., SATO, Zebra Technologies, Bluebird Inc., DENSO ADC, Opticon Sensors Europe B.V., Datalogic S.p.A., Motorola solutions, ZEBEX INDUSTRIES INC., and NCR Corporation.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Next Generation Data Storage Technologies Market Set to Surge Significantly During 2024

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Next generation data storage technology includes technologically advanced data storage products and solutions to deal with increasing file sizes and huge amount of unstructured data. The Next Generation Data Storage Technology manages large data securely and enables reliable, secure and fast recovery of data in a cost-efficient manner. It has enabled scalable storage and handling of large data generated by big enterprises.The factors favoring the growth of the next generation storage technologies market include ubiquity of input and output devices in every sector and the ever-increasing need for managing, analyzing and storing huge amount of data. Consequently, the demand for next generation data technologies is expected to increase at a quick rate over the forecast period. This growth is expected to be backed by the growing demand for advanced time saving technologies including automated systems, smart technologies, online shopping, and internet of things etc. which require handling of large data generated by the enterprises.Request to view ToC of Report -There are various challenges restraining the growth of the next generation data storages technologies market. This includes technological complexity, repair and restore issues, lack of security etc. Furthermore, high level of data consistency is required in the data storage. Future growth in the market is projected to come from emerging need for data storage in small and medium enterprises.The next generation data storage technologies market is segmented on the basis of technology and application. By technology, the market is classified as into all-flash storage arrays, hybrid array, cloud based disaster recovery, holographic data storage and heat assisted magnetic recording. Of these, hybrid array is a form of hierarchical storage management contains solid state drives and hard disk drives for input and output speed improvements. Holographic data storage is the high capacity data storage technology whereas hybrid array and all flash array are standard data storage techniques.By application, next generation data storage technologies market is divided into the enterprise data storage, big data storage and cloud based storage.Request to view Brochure of Report -North America is the dominating the next generation data storage technologies market. The Asian Pacific countries including China, Japan and India are expected to grow at a significant rate as compared to other regions. The presence of a large number of IT industries in the Asia Pacific region is one of the key factor driving growth of the next generation data storage technologies market in the region. Asia Pacific countries are speculated to make huge investments in the data storage sector to provide their existing infrastructures with new data storage technologies and solutions to improve the production process. Japan, which is one of the technology advanced nations, is anticipated to be a big market for next generation data storage technologies. The country is already using these data storage technology across its various industry verticalsSome of the key players in the next generation data technology market are Dell Inc., Avago Technologies, EMC Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., HGST, Inc., - Hitachi Data Systems, IBM Corporation, NetApp, Inc., Avago Technologies, Drobo, Inc. and Micron Technology Corporation.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Advanced Semiconductor Packaging Market to Reflect Impressive Growth Rate During 2024

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During the final stages of development in a semiconductor, silicon wafer, logic board and memory are wrapped in a supporting case that prevents corrosion and physical damage of the chips that are to be connected to the circuit board. This process is known as packaging in a semiconductor industry. Packaging has evolved during the last ten years from chip-scale package, system in package and package on package to wafer-level package, 2.5D integrated circuits to 3D integrated circuits.The major challenge of an integrated-circuit (IC) manufacturer is that changes in wafer sizes and node migrations are slowing down even as capital expenditures are increasing. One way to preserve their edge of the manufacturers on their circuits high performance, small size and low costs is to incorporate newer chip-packaging options such as 3-D integrated circuits (3.0DICs) and 2.5-D integrated circuits (2.5DICs) into their production processes. These advanced-packaging technologies, which are still in their infant stage, promise lower power consumption and greater chip connectivity compared with traditional packaging configurations. Application memory and processor chip manufactured using advanced packaging solutions such as 2.5D and 3D technologies is about two to three times faster and 30 to 40 percent smaller than chip based packaging using older technologies. These advanced packaging technologies is dependent upon various factors such as thriving demand for low end tablets, smart phones and wearables and other consumer goods.Request to view ToC of Report -The need of the hour is compact, flexible and scalable ICs that allow for design changes at minimal cost. There is an increasing focus of the industry on SoC technologies which are migrating to 40nm and 28 nm process technologies. According to industry sources, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and MediaTek are migrating to 28nm process and this adds complexity to the chip design and development. Thus reduction of board space and miniaturization electrical and thermal performance improvement, cost reduction and simplification of logistic for OEMs of devise has led towards the development of advanced packaging technologies in semiconductor devices.Existing 2-D IC (2.0DIC) wafer-level and flip-chip technologies have shown a robust growth during the last five years and are been used for many main-stream applications, generally used in high end smart phones and tablets which should meet power management and stringent size requirements. Emerging 3.0DIC and 2.5DIC packaging technologies extends the wafer-level and flip-chip packaging technologies by adding multiple dies to stacked up vertically together through the use of through silicon via (TSV) technology and interposers. This technology allows the manufacturers to pack more functionality in a single chip without increasing its size.The major drivers influencing The Advanced Semiconductor Packaging Market globally is miniaturization of electronic devices and proper thermal dissipation has led towards the growth of advanced semiconductor packaging technologies during the forecast period from 2016  2024.Some of the major restraints of the advanced semiconductor packaging market globally are high adoption time by different electronic devices manufactures and the high cost associated with its manufacturing.Request to view Brochure of Report -The advanced semiconductor packaging market can be distinguished by technology type and application type. In the technology outlook, there are generally two types; through silicon via (TSV), and interposer technology. The application type segment can be bifurcated into consumer electronics, industrial, and memory products.Asia Pacific being the largest semiconductor manufacturer globally also posses the largest market for advanced semiconductor packaging industry. Moreover huge demand for electronic devices from Asia pacific region due to its low labor cost and cheap raw material availability has led towards the growth of advanced semiconductor packaging market in this region. North America led the second largest market for advanced semiconductor packaging market followed by Europe and West of the World.The major players in this industry are Texas Instruments (U.S.), Infineon Technologies (Germany), Nordson Corporation (U.S.), KLA  Tencor (U.S.), Amkor United States (U.S.), and ASE Group (Taiwan) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Back End of the Line Semiconductor Equipment Market to Reflect Impressive Growth Rate During 2024

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Back End of Line Semi-Conductor Equipment is the second part of semiconductor devices where single devices such as capacitors, transistors and resistors, among others are interconnected by wires on wafer which are made by pure silicon and metal layers to form required electrical circuits. Common metal that forms layers are aluminum interconnect and copper interconnect. Back end of the line in semiconductor equipments is started when the wafer gets deposited by the first layer of metal. Back end of line consists of metal levels, insulating layers (dielectrics), and bonding sites for chip to package connections. In back end of the line the formation of interconnect wires, contacts (pads), and dielectric structures takes place. Ten metal layers or more are added in back end of the line stage in semiconductor electronics.Steps of back end of line includes silicidation of the polysilicon region, drain regions and source, addition of dielectric and its processing, making holes in PMD in order to make contacts in them, adding the first metal layer, addition of second dielectric, connection of lower metal with higher metal by making vias through dielectric and passivation layer addition in order to protect the micro chip. Back end of the line semiconductor equipment market can be segmented by product type into CVD, coater developer, CMP, metal etching, PVD, wet station and stepper. The stepper market dominated the overall back end of the line semiconductor equipment market with more than 40% of the total market share in 2015. In terms of end-user, the global back end of the line semiconductor equipment market is segregated into memory, foundry and integrated device manufacturers (IDM). Foundry held the largest market share in 2015 and accounted close to 60% of the market share.Request to view ToC of Report -Major drivers driving the global back end of the line semi conductor equipments includes increasing demand for advanced packaging technologies and flip chips. With rising use of smart packaging technologies use of the same has also increased among consumers. In addition, increasing technological functionalities in mobile devices is a major driver driving the global back end of the line semi conductor equipments market. Increase in the number of advanced consumer electronic equipments is also a major driver driving the global market. Major restraints faced by the global back end of line semi conductor equipment market includes availability of few vendors in the global market which makes availability of the equipments a challenge and also increases cost. In addition, high investment by the end user is a major restraint towards market growth for companies in their initial stages. Proliferation of advanced semiconductor devices is acting as a big opportunity to the global back end of the line semi conductor equipment market. In addition, increased use of semiconductor memory devices also acts as a good opportunity of the global market. Growing application of IoT is also a major opportunity of the global back end of the line semiconductor equipment market.In terms of geography, the back end of the line semiconductor equipments global market is segregated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. Asia Pacific is the largest market accounting to more than 50% of the market share of the back end of the line semiconductor equipment global market. With the presence of large number of manufacturers in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan is the major region of dominance of this region in the global back end of the line semiconductor equipment market.Request to view Brochure of Report -Major players of the global back end of the line semiconductor equipments include Applied Materials (California, U.S), ASML (Veldhoven, Netherlands), KLA-Tencor (California, U.S), Lam Research (California, U.S), Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co., Ltd. (Kyoto, Japan), Hitachi Global (Tokyo, Japan), Nikon Corporation (Tokyo, Japan) and Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) (Tokyo, Japan) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
By Emma Ainebyoona

Government is considering plans by the health ministry to import 200 medical doctors from Cuba

The proposal mooted at the height of the doctors industrial action also includes plans to hire retired Ugandan medical professors to plug man power gaps in the health sector.

Cabinet has now constituted an adhoc committee chaired by health minister Dr Jane Achieng to work out the finer details of the deal.

The committee is among other things expected to clarify the terms of engagement of the Cuban doctors, the expertise required, remuneration and relations with Ugandan peers in order to inform cabinets final decision.

Dr Acheng confirms that indeed the matter has been discussed by cabinet but uickly adds that the Cuban doctors are not coming to replace Ugandan medics but rather to complement health care delivery.

However, Dr. Mukuzi Muhereza, the Uganda Medical Association General Secretary says the government has not consulted the association on its said plans.

The doctors suspended their strike on November 25th to give government time to fulfill its promises to improve both their pay and welfare, giving it upto December 16th when they will decide on the next course of action.
Bulk-Acoustic-Wave Filters Market to Register Substantial Expansion by 2024

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Increasing usage of tablets and smartphones are one of the key reasons behind the growing demand for Bulk- Acoustic-Wave Filters Market globally. The growing proliferation of smart gadgets is fueling the market for BAW filters market across different regions. The market is segmented into by type into solid mounted bulk acoustic resonators and thin-film bulk acoustic resonator or FBAR. The market has been segmented into by application which includes smartphones, Wi-Fi hotspots, tablets, USB sticks among others. The market by geography has been segmented into, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa and South America.With rising research activities in the field of Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) devices, the application of BAW filters are growing in the high-end industrial, military and consumer wireless application segments. Different types of materials and substrates have been used for BAW filters with the demand more driven by general fabrication constraints and economics. The rising demand for advanced wireless technology, for instance LTE, has made the application of new RF features mandatory in tablets and smartphones. Therefore, the growing shipments of the smart gadgets such as smartphones and tablets segments over the forecast period, 2015 - 2024 is anticipated to create a rapid demand for bulk-acoustic-wave (BAW) filters owing to their growing proliferation of LTE/4G networks and compatibility with frequencies of higher bandwidth. Furthermore, BAW filters have a small form factor and deliver improved and advanced performances which primarily lead to its augmented adoption in the near future.Request to view ToC of Report -The growing application of automation technology across automotive field is one of the prime factors behind the spurring growth of for bulk-acoustic-wave (BAW) filters globally. Major automobile companies such as Audi, Mercedes and Toyota are investing huge amount in research and development for better application of latest technologies to cope up with the consumer demand. The demand for many embedded semiconductor chips is increasing in order to carry out various functions which include car display and navigation, infotainment, GPS, collision detection technology, driving automation and anti-lock braking systems. The major automobile companies primarily focus on research and development activities for better market penetration in terms of product upgradation.Bulk-Acoustic-Wave (BAW) filters also helps in establishing a mobile connection with network to ensure an optimum driving experience. The growing demand for connected vehicles is fueling the market for BAW filters globally. In addition, the growing demand for semiconductor components such as RF filters is boosting the market for BAW filters over the forecast period.BAW filter require complicated fabrication methods. Hence, they are expensive in comparison with compare to SAW filters. Moreover, BAW filters generally have sharper frequency responses and hence it is known for its sharp filtering effect on RF signal. BAW filters can implement lattice filters.Request to view Brochure of Report -North America and Asia Pacific is dominating the Bulk-Acoustic-Wave (BAW) filters market worldwide. Rapid usage of smartphones and tablets and other smart electronic devices in economies such the U.S., Japan, China, South Korea, Brazil and India are expected to witness positive growth over the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. With increasing advancement in the consumer electronic field, the application of BAW filters is increasing the mobile communication devices. There are various applications of BAW filters which include data transfer (Bluetooth, WLAN), cellular mobile systems (GSM, UMTS, CDMA) and satellite communications.Research and development along with merger and acquisitions and partnership agreements are some of the prime business strategies adopted by the companies operating in this industry in order to strengthen its presence globally. Avago Technologies (The U.S.), Qorvo (The U.S.), TDK (Tokyo, Japan), Skywork Solutions (The U.S.), Akoustis Technologies (The U.S.) among others are some of the major players operating in the Bulk-Acoustic-Wave (BAW) filters market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Dot Matrix Display Market Pegged for Robust Expansion During 2024

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Dot-Matrix Display is primarily a display device which helps in displaying information on clocks, machines, railway departure indicators and many other devices which generally require a simple display device with limited resolution. A 2-dimensional patterned array is known as a dot matrix, which is primarily used to show symbols, numerical, images and characters. Almost every sort of advanced technology primarily applies the dot matrices for display of data or information which includes televisions, printers, clocks, smartphones and computers. Furthermore, it is also used in textiles with knitting, weaving and sewing. The market is segmented into by size which includes 12816 (Two lined), 12832 (Four lined), 12864 (Eight lined) among others. The market has been bifurcated into by application which includes smartphones, computers, televisions, medical monitors, printers, and clocks among others. The market by geography has been segmented into, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa and South America.With rising research activities in the field of dot  matrix display devices, the application of dot-matrix displays are growing in the medical devices, consumer electronics application segments.Request to view ToC of Report -The display primarily comprises of a dot matrix of mechanical indicators or lights sorted in a rectangular configuration (mostly rectangular but other different shapes are also possible) such that by switching on or off selected lights, graphics or texts can be displayed. Moreover, a dot matrix controller primarily transforms instructions from a particular processor into definite signals which generally turns off or on lights in the matrix so that the desired display is generated. Display devices are electrically operated and have developed from electromechanical systems primarily for text display. Furthermore, primarily all sort of electronic devices are capable of full-motion 3D color graphic displays. With rising technological advancement, the market for dot  matrix display is anticipated to witness positive growth over the forecast period from 2016  2024. Furthermore, With the advent of microelectronic and microprocessors devices, many more individual pixels (picture elements) could be combine into one display device, allowing video and graphic displays.Seven-segment indicator or seven-segment display (SSD) is generally a form of electronic display device which primarily helps in displaying decimal numerals. This is an easy alternative option to the complicated dot matrix displays. This display technology is primarily used in electronics meters, calculators, digital clocks and monitors among others. Rising demand for advance gadgets and latest devices is fueling the market for dot-matrix displays globally. Major global companies are focusing on new technology development through research for better display quality and market penetration. With the growing demand for high definition smartphones, calculators and monitors, the application of dot-matrix displays is on high rise. Furthermore, rising demand for high definition televisions with latest display technology is also contributing in the positive growth of this market and is expected to fuel its demand in near future.Request to view Brochure of Report -North America and Asia Pacific is leading the market for dot-matrix display Market globally. Rising demand for smartphones, laptops, computes, calculators, tablets, digital clocks and other smart electronic devices in economies such the U.S., Germany, U.K. Japan, China, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina, U.A.E and India are expected to witness positive growth over the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. With growing advancement in the consumer electronics, industrial, commercial and medical field, the application of dot-matrix display is rising rapidly.Company acquisition, merger, strategic business alliances and partnership agreements are some of the major business strategies apart from research and development is adopted by the companies operating in this industry in order to strengthen its presence globally. Avago Technologies (The U.S.), Halma Plc (U.K.), Ligitek (Taiwan), Cree, Inc. (The U.S.), OSRAM (Germany), Digi-Key Corporation (The U.S.) among others are some of the prime players operating in the dot-matrix display market globally.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Internet of Thing (IOT) Microcontroller Market Estimated to Expand at a Robust CAGR over 2024

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With the importance interconnectivity increasing, Internet of Things is also gaining a good view and demand in the market. Microcontroller is also known as MCU alternatively. It is a SoC or system on chip that consists a memory, programmable output and input peripherals, and a core processor. In several cases, a little portion of a random access memory is also integrated in a microcontroller for enhanced performance. At present, microcontroller is employed substantially across many automated Internet of Things products and devices such as power tools, remote controls, office machines, automobile engine controls, and medical devices.The robust enhancements in the application fields of Internet of Things is expected to meet the demands of technologically advanced products of a wide consumer base. This factor is expected to have a long term positive impact on the growth of the market. The deployment of smart meter across several residential and commercial sectors for closely monitoring the total consumption of energy is further expected to have a positive impact on the growth of The Global Internet Of Things Microcontroller Market in the years to come. However, the power that is consumer by these microcontrollers is extremely high, thus hindering the growth of the market to some extent. Developing regions are expected to present market players enhance their consumer base and production units at the same time.MCU, alternatively known as microcontroller is a system on chip (SoC) consisting of a memory, processor core and programmable input and output peripherals. In many cases, small amount of random access memory (RAM) is embedded in a MCU for better performance. Currently, microcontroller is used extensively across various automatically controlled Internet of Thing (IoT) devices and products such as medical devices, automobile engine control systems, office machines, remote controls, power tools and other portable devices.Request to view ToC of Report -In order to provide detailed analysis of the global microcontroller market, the market has been segmented on the basis of product type, application and geography. By product type, the global microcontroller market can be bifurcated into 8-bit MCU, 16-bit MCU and 32-bit MCU. IoT microcontroller also finds its application across various consumer electronic devices, automotive, medical devices, smart home products and smart grid among others. On the other hand, geographically the market can be classified into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America among others.Rapid advancements in Internet of Thing (IoT) application in order to provide technologically advanced smart devices to various consumers, is the primary factor predicted to boost the demand of microcontroller at an exponential rate in the coming years. In addition, rising demand for automation across various application segment is also anticipated to accelerate the demand of smart devices during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. This in turn is also predicted to affect the market of microcontroller positively. Moreover, rapid installation of smart meter across different commercial and residential sectors in order to monitor overall electric energy consumption and to report the information back to the utilities for automatic billing purposes is anticipated to trigger the demand of microcontroller during the forecast period.However, high power consumption of microcontroller is one of the primary factor anticipated to affect the demand of microcontroller negatively. Microcontroller embedded in smart devices rely on batteries to consume required power for its efficient operation. This in turn decreases the lifecycle of batteries and is expected to increase the overall operating cost. In addition, security related issues of IoT devices is another important factor predicted to limit the demand of microcontroller in the coming years.Request to view Brochure of Report -Based on product type, the 32-bit IoT microcontroller held the largest market share in 2015. The main reason behind this segments dominance is attributed to the extensive use of 32-bit IoT microcontroller across various IoT applications owing to its high RAM size and better performance. In addition, the price difference between 32-bit, 16-bit and 8-bit microcontroller is also very low. Thus, consumers incline towards 32-bit variant, there by anticipated to affect the market positively.By application, the global market of IoT microcontroller is majorly driven by the consumer electronics segment. Increasing demand for technologically advanced consumer electronic devices across the globe such as smart wearable, mobile phones, tablets and computers among others, is anticipated to create an optimistic market for various microcontroller manufacturers during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.Across various regions, North America is anticipated to dominate the market of IoT microcontroller in the coming years owing to the presence of large number of manufacturers and rapid technological advancements taking place in the field of smart devices. However, Asia Pacific region is predicted to experience the fastest growing market during the forecast period. Rapid advancement taking place in the automotive industry in this region in terms of vehicle connectivity and interactive safety system is anticipated to leverage the demand of IoT microcontroller extensively in the coming years. In addition, increasing demand for various consumer electronic devices such as smart phones, tablets, smart television and smart watches among others is also predicted to propel the demand of microcontroller in this region.Some of the major players operating in the IoT microcontroller market includes, Atmel (U.S), Freescale (U.S.A), Infineon (Germany), ST Microelectronics (Switzerland) and Texas Instruments (U.S) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Lithium Polymer Battery Market Estimated to Expand at a Robust CAGR over 2024

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Lithium Polymer (LiPo) Battery or more accurately known as lithium ion polymer battery is a rechargeable battery found in a pouch format. LiPo battery uses polymer electrolyte instead of commonly used liquid electrolyte. This battery primarily works on the principle of de-intercalation and intercalation of lithium ions from positive electrode materials to negative electrode materials. For the purpose of providing detailed analysis, global lithium polymer battery market can be segmented on the basis of power capacity, application and geography. Based on power capacity, the market has been bifurcated into 525 Wh, 1828 KWh, 4895 Wh, 100250 KWh and more than 300 KWh. On the other hand, Lithium polymer battery finds its application across various consumer electronic devices, automotive and energy grid system among others. In addition, cross sectional analysis of all the above mentioned segment is provided in this report across various regions including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Latin America.Lithium polymer battery is expected to see adoption at a large scale in the hand-held electronic devices such as laptops, mobiles, and cameras among others. Any electronic devices that requires frequent burst of power for a long period of time can be powered with a lithium polymer battery. The features such as video calling, cameras, wireless communications, GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation and high-fidelity audio found in consumer electronic products today can be operated efficiently for a longer period of time with the help of lithium ion batteries.Similarly, the other industrial hand-held devices such as RFID (Radio-frequency identification) communications, bar code scanners, display refreshes, GPS chips and audio amplifiers can also be operated more efficiently with the help of Lithium polymer battery. In addition, lithium polymer battery offers competitive advantage over lithium ion battery in terms of durability, utility and flexibility. Lithium polymer battery can be shaped as per the various requirements of different end users. This in turn is also anticipated to boost the demand of lithium polymer battery from various application segments during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.Request to view ToC of Report -However, high manufacturing cost is one of the primary factor predicted to deter the market growth of lithium polymer battery in the coming years. Increased manufacturing cost of battery increase the overall price of the end products, thereby affecting the demand negatively. This in turn is predict to limit the demand of lithium polymer battery from various application segments. Moreover, safety concern involved with the usage of lithium polymer batteries coupled with increasing demand of its substitute, lithium ion battery owing to high energy density and low self-discharge cycle is another important factor expected to restrain the demand of lithium polymer battery across various regions.On the basis of power capacity, low power lithium polymer battery held the largest market share in 2015 owing to its extensive application in portable consumer electronic devices such as smart phones, tablets and smart watches among others. On the other hand, by application, consumer electronic devices held the largest market share of the global lithium polymer battery market in 2015. Increasing demand of sleek consumer electronic devices having relatively long battery life is the primary factor responsible for the accelerating demand for lithium polymer battery. However, demand for lithium polymer battery from the automotive segment is anticipated to experience the fastest growth during the forecast period. Increasing consciousness among the consumers and automotive manufacturers regarding clean fuel coupled with declining availability of natural resources and frequently fluctuating fuel prices is the key factor predicted to drive the demand of lithium polymer battery in the coming years.Request to view Brochure of Report -Geographically, lithium polymer battery market is majorly driven by the Asia Pacific region with highest predictive growth rate. Rapid expansion of manufacturing facility in this region owing to huge capital investment by the leading lithium polymer battery manufacturers results a fall in the average selling price of LiPo batteries. This reduction in price in line up with increasing demand of power efficient consumer electronic devices and electric vehicles (EVs) in this region is the primary factor anticipated to trigger the demand of lithium polymer battery in the coming years.Some of the leading players operating in the lithium polymer battery market are, Panasonic (Japan), Celgard LLC (U.S.A), DuPont (U.S.A) and LG Chem (South Korea) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Variable Valve Timing (VVT) Market: Industry Analysis And Detailed Profiles Of Top Industry Players

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Variable Valve Timing (VVT) process is used in internal combustion engines to vary the valve timings. It is the next step forward in appropriate utilization of an engine, post development of the multi-valve technology. VVT aides in improving performance of the engine and also reduces emissions, apart from decreasing fuel consumption. Thus, it helps in increasing the power and torque also. VVT process varies the timing of opening and closing of the inlet valve and exhaust valve of an engine. Overlapping of the two events, namely opening the inlet valve and closing of the exhaust valve is optimized by the VVT process which leads to the difference in power generated by the engine. At faster speed, VVT ensures maximum overlapping while at moderate or slow speed it tunes the overlapping of opening the inlet valve and closing of the exhaust valve as per the requirement. VVT aides in reducing fuel consumption by optimizing exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). VVT can ensure that some of the exhaust gas is re-circulated in the engine by delaying the opening of the exhaust valve while the fuel-air mix inlet valve is kept open. Thus the recirculation leads to less consumption of the fuel-air mixture which ultimately leads to lesser consumption of fuel.Sample With Latest Advancements @The global market demand for VVT is constantly increasing primarily due to the increasing demand for fuel economy of engines, combined with power and torque. Various regulations related to emissions have also been positively impacting the demand for better VVT technology since it plays a crucial role in reducing emissions.Various law enforcements are requiring auto makers to ensure that the lowest possible emissions are created from their engines, thus leading to advancements in the VVT technology. Additionally, the global increment in automobile sales has also been boosting the growth of the VVT market. However, competing technologies such as start-stop system can pose threat to the VVT technology. Also, difficulty in fault recognition of VVT and high cost of replacement has been hindering the growth of this market. Additionally, after-market supply of VVT systems is still quite limited. Several automobile manufacturers are engaging in serious research and development to fully computerize the process for varying the valve timing infinite times and also for better engine output. Also, position and angles of cam shaft are being experimented with regularly for bettering the system.Browse Our ToC @By technology, the global VVT market can be segmented into cam-changing VVT, cam-phasing VVT, cam changing & cam phasing VVT and others. The market can be segmented by fuel type into diesel VVT system and gasoline VVT system. Furthermore, VVT market can be geographically segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC) and rest of the world (ROW).View Report @Some of the key companies leading the VVT market are Aisin Seiki Co. Ltd. (Japan), Continental AG (Germany), Denso Corporation (Japan), Hilite International, Inc. (U.S.), Hitachi Automotive Systems (Japan.), Johnson Controls, Inc. (U.S.), Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan), Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany), Schaeffler AG (Germany) and Valeo SA (France) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Residential Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market: Industry Analysis And Detailed Profiles Of Top Industry Players

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Residential Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market: OverviewWith the launch of Trilobite by Electrolux in the late 1990s, the global market for robotic vacuum cleaners has since exhibited persistent development in terms of technological advancements, improved product designs, and availability of a vast array of product options. Typical residential robotic vacuum cleaners available in the market these days use a variety of sensors to track the area to be cleaned, dirt, hair, and other rubble on hard surfaces and carpeted floors. The small sizes of these devices, combined with the numerous rotating brushes featured in their designs, make them effective for cleaning hard-to-reach areas.Other crucial elements of a residential robotic vacuum cleaner include mobile base, programmable software, batteries, and other accessories. Advanced products have features such as laser vision, room mapping, cleaning coverage tracking, stair detection abilities, enhanced battery life, and intelligent navigation capabilities.Sample With Latest Advancements @The idea of having self-operational, digitally advanced, effective, and innovative devices act as housecleaning helpers is one of the most intriguing factors for the present-day tech-savvy global population. As the automated housecleaners become increasingly more intelligent and precise in effectively cleaning nooks and corners of a house, their demand will rise significantly in the coming years.Global Residential Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe report on residential robotic vacuum cleaners presents detailed insights into product portfolio of leading players. It provides a detailed overview of the scope of further developments on technological and marketing fronts. Additionally, the report very closely explores the trajectory of technological advancements in the market over the past years.Apart from the factors mentioned above, the report predicts that the global residential robotic vacuum market is also likely to benefit from the rising disposable incomes and the rising inclination of consumers toward automated and digitally advanced products, especially in developing regions. However, high-cost of these cleaners will limit the markets expansion across cost-sensitive regions to a certain extent.Browse Our ToC @Nevertheless, declining prices of electronic sensors and other hardware parts will enable residential robotic manufacturers to manufacture low-cost products to better cater to the vast untapped growth opportunities in developing regions.The market currently includes products that can be differentiated according to criteria such as modes of charging, price-range, area of usage (in-house and outdoor), and features.Global Residential Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market: Region-wise OutlookThe report examines the global residential robotic vacuum cleaner market on the basis of geographical segmentation. It examines the current state and future growth prospects for the global residential robotic vacuum cleaner market across regional markets such as North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World (RoW).Owing to the presence of major manufacturers in developed regions, North America and Europe are presently the dominant regional markets for residential robotic vacuum cleaners. High disposable incomes of the population in these regions increase the adoption of technological innovations. Nevertheless, strengthening economies and rising disposable incomes in developing regions are making the population more receptive toward digital innovations. Thus, the residential robotic vacuum cleaners market in developing countries in Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness fastest growth over the reports forecast period.View Report @Global Residential Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Market: Competitive LandscapeThe global residential robotic vacuum cleaners market is characterized by the presence of a few dominant vendors. These companies mainly focus on the development of innovative and advanced products. Rising research and development activities are expected to make the competition more intense in the market in the years to come.Some of the major vendors in the market are Yujin Robot, Co., Ltd., Neato Robotics, Inc., Dyson Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Hayward Industries, Inc., Ecovacs Robotics, Inc., Philips Electronics, and N.V, Pentair plc.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Inkjet Coders Market: Industry Analysis And Detailed Profiles Of Top Industry Players

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The inkjet technology is a reliable and cost-effective method used to mark and code a whole range of products. Inkjet coders are most commonly used in the packaging industry to differentiate products. These are a non-contact printing coders that can generate dates and batch numbers, and time any information to a variety of packaging products including containers, cartons labels, etc. Inkjet coders are used in industries, such as food and beverages, automotive, personal care products, pharmaceuticals, and electronics, for marking purpose. The inkjet coders cost less but have higher maintenance cost, whereas laser coders have high cost and low maintenance cost. Inkjet coders are cost effective and are recommended for economical color printing. The substitute for inkjet coder is laser coder. Inkjet coders comprise different chambers containing different colors of ink. Recently, Videojet Technologies Inc., a manufacturer of coding, marking, and printing products, launched six new inks for larger inkjet printers. Making an innovation in coding solution, Hitachi America, Ltd. recently developed its latest generation of continuous ink jet printers, the UX Series.Sample With Latest Advancements @Drop on Demand (DOD), Continuous Inkjet (CIJ) and Thermal Inkjet (TIJ) are the three types of ink-jet technologies used in the packaging industry for coding applications. The drop on demand technology uses aqueous or UV curable inks to print on a wide range of products; it has a number of chambers which contains ink. Continuous ink jet is a non-contact coding and durable method. The small characters of CIJ coders generate expiry dates, lot codes, graphics, and bar codes on a variety of primary packaging and the large character of CIJ coders generate same for secondary packaging, i.e. for cartons, etc. Thermal ink jet coders make use of print cartridges. They contain a series of small electrically heated chambers, which can be controlled by a flex-circuit, and involve high speed coding for serialized data. (TIJ) technology is usually for generating high-quality graphics and high-grade two-dimensional symbologies such as DataMatrix codes. Generally, industries such as pharmaceuticals, tobacco, health, and beauty make use of TIJ coders.Browse Our ToC @The global inkjet coder market is segmented based on product technology, end user, and geography. By product technology, the global inkjet coder market is segmented into Drop on Demand (DOD), Continuous Inkjet (CIJ), and Thermal Inkjet (TIJ). By end user, the global inkjet coder market is categorized on the basis of different industries, including food and beverages, cosmetics, personal and home care, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, tobacco, automotive and aerospace, building materials, chemicals, commercial printing and addressing, electrical components and electronics, and wire, cable and pipeTechnological developments in inkjet coders, such as advancement in software that controls and monitors ink viscosity and automatic flush systems that help save time by stopping and cleaning daily print head, are anticipated to create excellent growth opportunities for the inkjet coder market. Rise in demand for minimization of solvent evaporation and reducing mixing of air with ink are the major factors expected to drive growth of the inkjet coders market over the forecast period. However, factors such as high running cost and low quality of marks that result in non-permanent mark are expected to hinder the market growth. Also, inkjet coders spill some tiny droplets of ink while printing; therefore, their resolution is lower than the laser printers. Significant factors that influence the demand for ink jet coders are reduced downtime, which helps customers expand the visual and functional coding capabilities. Currently, increasing number of manufacturers are seeking high performance printing and coding equipment, thereby creating significant growth and investment opportunities for players in the inkjet coders market.View Report @By geography, the global inkjet coder market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), the Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Latin America. Currently, North America and Europe dominate the market, accounting for the highest share of the global inkjet coders market in terms of volume. However, most of the major manufacturers in the market are from China, in view of the low capital cost required in the country, advancements in technology, and changing trends and requirements of players in the market. The global commercial and industrial markets play an important role in the development of the overall ink jet coder market.Some of the key players in the global inkjet coding market are Videojet Technologies, Inc., FoxJet, an ITW Company, Hitachi America, Ltd., ID Technology, LLC., KGK Jet India., Linx Printing Technologies, Domino Printing Sciences plc, Shanghai Rottweil Handyware Printing Technology Co., Ltd, Media Data Systems Pte Ltd, Elmark Packaging, Koenig & Bauer AG, Squid Ink Manufacturing, Inc., Markem-Imaje, a Dover Company, and Xaar plc.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Pediatric Neurology Devices Industry Supply Chain Relationship, Key Companies Profile and Forecast to 2021

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Pediatric Neurology Devices Market Global report right off the bat presented blasting development. Pediatric Neurology Devices including characterization, application and industry chain diagram; at that point we profoundly investigated worldwide development figure pointers by the and additionally the territorial economic situations that includingGet Sample Report @The item value, benefit, use, supply, request and industry development rate and so forth. It is a profundity investigate consider on Global Pediatric Neurology Devices.At last, the report presented therapeutic suction gadget advertise SWOT investigation, PEST examination, piece of the pie investigation and focused scene, organization profiles by dissecting the significant players.The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different markets segments and regionsWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Global Pediatric Neurology Devices. Industry chain related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.Table of Contents:1 Introduction1.1 Definition1.2 Scope of the study1.2.1 Research Objectives1.2.2 Assumptions & Limitations1.3 Market Structure2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Process2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Forecast Model3 Report Excerpt4 Forecast Indicators4.1 Introduction4.2 Growth Drivers4.2.1 Rising Awareness4.2.2 Increasing Research Related Activities4.2.3 Government Initiatives4.3 Growth Barriers4.3.1 Limited Number of Approved Pediatric Neurology Devices4.5 Macroecnomical Indicators5 Market Analysis5.1 Porter's Five Force5.2 Regulatory Framework6 Global Pediatric Neurology Devices Market, By Type6.1 Deep Brain Stimulation Devices6.2 Hydrocephalus Shunt6.3 EEG6.4 Cranial Orthosis6.5 Others7 Global Pediatric Neurology Devices Market, By Region7.1 Introduction7.2 North America7.3 Europe7.4 Asia7.5 Rest of the World 8 Competitive LandscapeBrowse Report @The report for Pediatric Neurology Devices Market of Market Research Future contains broad essential research alongside the itemized examination of subjective and additionally quantitative viewpoints by different industry specialists, key conclusion pioneers to pick up the more profound knowledge of the market and industry execution.The report gives the reasonable picture of current market situation which incorporates authentic and anticipated market estimate as far as esteem and volume, innovative progression, large scale practical and administering factors in the market.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.Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Luxury Vehicles Market Report for Period 2017 till 2023 Bentley, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini and Others

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Global Luxury Vehicles Market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Bentley, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2023, etc.Luxury vehicles is the vehicle of luxury brands, like Mercedes-Bens, Audi, BMW, Volvo, Lexus and so on.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Luxury Vehicles Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:Mercedes BenzBMWAudiLexusVolvoLand RoverMINICadillacPorscheInfinitiAcuraJaguarSmartLincolnTeslaMaseratiBentleyFerrariRolls-RoyceLamborghiniMcLarenOthersGlobal Luxury Vehicles Market: Key Product TypeCompact CarMid-size CarFull-size CarLarger CarSUV/CrossoverSuper Sport CarOthersGlobal Luxury Vehicles Market: Key ApplicationOil & Gas IndustryChemical TransportationOthersThe Global Luxury Vehicles Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Luxury Vehicles Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Luxury Vehicles Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 Compact Car1.1.2.2 Mid-size Car1.1.2.3 Full-size Car1.1.2.4 Larger Car1.1.2.5 SUV/Crossover1.1.2.6 Super Sport Car1.1.3 Market by Application1.1.3.1 Oil & Gas Industry1.1.3.2 Chemical Transportation1.1.3.3 Others1.2 Global and Regional Market Size......................Continue (Global Luxury Vehicles Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Flame Retardants Market Report for Period 2017 till 2023 The Dow Chemical Company, Nabaltec AG, Lanxes AG, Italmatch and Others

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Global Flame Retardants Market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely The Dow Chemical Company, Nabaltec AG, Lanxes AG, Italmatch and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2023, etc.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Flame Retardants Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:AlbemarleICLChemtura CorporationClariantThe Dow Chemical CompanyNabaltec AGLanxes AGItalmatchHuber Engineered MaterialsAkzo NobelOthersGlobal Flame Retardants Market: Key ApplicationElectrical & ElectronicsTransportationConstructionConsumer GoodsAutomotiveOthersGlobal Flame Retardants Market: Key RegionAsia-PacificNorth AmericaEuropeSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaThe Global Flame Retardants Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Flame Retardants Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Flame Retardants Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Global Market Overview1.1 Scope of Statistics1.1.1 Scope of Products1.1.2 Scope of Manufacturers1.1.3 Scope of Application1.1.4 Scope of Regions/Countries1.2 Global Market Size2 Regional Market2.1 Regional Production2.2 Regional Demand2.3 Regional Trade3 Key Manufacturers3.1 Albemarle3.1.2 Company Information3.1.2 Product Specifications......................Continue (Global Flame Retardants Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United StatesWiFi Wireless Speakers Market Report for Period 2011 till 2023 Amazon Samsung Sony Denon Edifie and OthersGlobal Flame Retardants Market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely JBL, Sonos, Bose, Amazon, Sony, Denon, Edifier, YAMAHA, Terratec, Pioneer, Samsung and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2023, etc.Wireless speakers are loudspeakers which receive audio signals using radio frequency (RF) waves rather than over audio cables. The two most popular RF frequencies that support audio transmission to wireless loudspeakers include a variation of WiFi IEEE 802.11 while others depends on Bluetooth to transmit audio data to the receiving speaker.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Flame Retardants Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:SonosBoseAmazonSamsungSonyDenonEdifierJBLYAMAHATerratecPioneerOthersGlobal Flame Retardants Market: Key Product TypePortableStationaryOthersGlobal Flame Retardants Market: Key ApplicationHome ApplicationCommercialAutomotiveOthersGlobal Flame Retardants Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Flame Retardants Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Flame Retardants Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Flame Retardants Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Objectives of Research1.1.1 Definition1.1.2 Specifications1.2 Market Segment1.2.1 by Type1.2.1.1 Portable1.2.1.2 Stationary1.2.2 by Application1.2.2.1 Home Application1.2.2.2 Commercial1.2.2.3 Automotive1.2.2.4 Others1.2.3 by Regions.......................Continue (Global Flame Retardants Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
By Shamim Nateebwa

The Rotary District Governor for Uganda and Tanzania (9211), Mr. Kenneth Mugisha has underscored the need to intensify tree planting efforts as one of the ways to prevent some Non Communicable Diseases like Cancer.

Cancer is the biggest killer disease in Uganda but most people do not know that deforestation and climate change are responsible for these deaths. Trees have a very good effect on the environment, by cutting them down take away that protection and the carbon emissions come directly to our bodies, Mr Mugisha says in interview with KFM.

Mr. Mugisha tells KFM that through his signature Mission Green project, Rotary plans to work with groups and communities that destroy forest cover the most.

These include prisons and refugee communities with whom memoranda of understanding have already been signed to ensure that over 20m trees are planted every year over the next five years..

We are working with people who destroy trees most like the refugees who use biomass fuels in the camps. we also plan to plan fruit trees in refugee camps starting with Nakivale to improve nutrition, he says.

He says the project has already registered tremendous progress with 1 million trees planted so far and received international recognition at a recent conference by the Zonal Institute in Johannesburg.

Through massive afforestation Rotarians plan to bring back what has been destroyed by the older generation.

He says they have already signed memoranda of understanding with various stake holders like the National Forestry Authority, the Officer of the Prime Minister and others to support this initiative.

They also plan to work with the Uganda national Roads Authority to plant trees along high ways and are encouraging schools to interest children in coming with atleast one tree seedlings every term as a contribution to the mission green project.
RO Membrane Market Report for Period 2017 till 2023 Avista Technologies, King Lee Technologies and Others

RO Membrane Market

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Global RO Membrane Market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Avista Technologies, King Lee Technologies and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2023, etc.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global RO Membrane Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:Ampac USAGE WaterAXEONLenntechKroff.Koch Membrane SystemsEcolabAvista Technologies.King Lee TechnologiesOthersGlobal RO Membrane Market: Key ApplicationMembrane CleaningMembrane Fouling ControlMembrane Scale ControlOthersGlobal RO Membrane Market: Key RegionAsia-PacificNorth AmericaEuropeSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaThe Global RO Membrane Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global RO Membrane Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global RO Membrane Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Global Market Overview1.1 Scope of Statistics1.1.1 Scope of Products1.1.2 Scope of Manufacturers1.1.3 Scope of Application1.1.4 Scope of Regions/Countries1.2 Global Market Size2 Regional Market2.1 Regional Production2.2 Regional Demand2.3 Regional Trade3 Key Manufacturers3.1 Ampac USA3.1.2 Company Information3.1.2 Product Specifications.......................Continue (Global RO Membrane Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Alkylamines Market Report for Period 2017 till 2023 P&G Chemicals, Global Amines, Kao Chemical, Shandong Kunda Biotechnology, Tosoh and Others

Alkylamines Market

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Global Alkylamines Market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely P&G Chemicals, Global Amines, Kao Chemical, Shandong Kunda Biotechnology, Tosoh and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2023, etc.An alkyl amine is a compound that has an alkyl group attached to the nitrogen atom of an amine. Alkyl amines arise when one of the three hydrogen atoms in ammonia is replaced by an alkyl. These amines are classified on the basis of the number of alkyl groups present in it by replacing one, two or all three hydrogen atoms in ammonia. Depending on which such alkyl amines are called as primary alkyl amines, secondary alkyl amines, and tertiary alkyl amines. Cyclic amines comprise of secondary or tertiary amines.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Alkylamines Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:EastmanBASFShandong Hualu-Hengsheng ChemicalDowZhejiang Jiangshan ChemicalAkzo NobelZhejiang Xinhua ChemicalSolvayHuntsmanZhejiang Jianye ChemicalP&G ChemicalsGlobal AminesKao ChemicalShandong Kunda BiotechnologyTosohMitsubishi Gas ChemicalArkemaEvonikKoei ChemicalOthersGlobal Alkylamines Market: Key Product TypeMonoaminesDiaminesPolyaminesOthersGlobal Alkylamines Market: Key ApplicationAgricultureChemicalsSurfactantsPharmaceuticalsOthersGlobal Alkylamines Market: Key RegionAsia-PacificNorth AmericaEuropeSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaThe Global Alkylamines Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Alkylamines Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Alkylamines Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 Monoamines1.1.2.2 Diamines1.1.2.3 Polyamines1.1.3 Market by Application1.1.3.1 Agriculture1.1.3.2 Chemicals1.1.3.3 Surfactants1.1.3.4 Pharmaceuticals1.1.3.5 Others1.2 Global and Regional Market Size......................Continue (Global Alkylamines Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Military Aerospace Engine Market Report for Period 2011 till 2023 Pratt & Whitney, Rolls Royce, Safran Aircraft Engines and Others

Military Aerospace Engine Market

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Global Military Aerospace Engine Market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Pratt & Whitney, Rolls Royce, Safran Aircraft Engines and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2023, etc.Military Aerospace Engine refers to the engine used in military aerospace. Military aircraft are heavy-duty machines - built for extreme stresses and breathtaking maneuvers. Accordingly, the requirements imposed on engines are very stringent.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Military Aerospace Engine Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:GE AviationPratt & WhitneyRolls RoyceSafran Aircraft EnginesKlimovMTU Aero EnginesITPOthersGlobal Military Aerospace Engine Market: Key Product TypeJet EnginesTurbine EnginesOthersGlobal Military Aerospace Engine Market: Key ApplicationFighter AircraftTransport AircraftHelicoptersOthersGlobal Military Aerospace Engine Market: Key RegionAsia-PacificNorth AmericaEuropeSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaThe Global Military Aerospace Engine Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Military Aerospace Engine Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Military Aerospace Engine Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Objectives of Research1.1.1 Definition1.1.2 Specifications1.2 Market Segment1.2.1 by Type1.2.1.1 Jet Engines1.2.1.2 Turbine Engines1.2.1.3 Others1.2.2 by Application1.2.2.1 Fighter Aircraft1.2.2.2 Transport Aircraft1.2.2.3 Helicopters1.2.3 by Regions2 Industry Chain2.1 Industry Chain Structure......................Continue (Global Military Aerospace Engine Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Shipbuilding Market Report for Period 2017 till 2023 Hyundai Samho, Mitsubishi Heavy Industry and Others

Shipbuilding Market

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Global Shipbuilding Market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Hyundai Samho, Mitsubishi Heavy Industry and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2023, etc.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Shipbuilding Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:Hyundai Heavy IndustryDaewoo ShipbuildingSamsung Heavy IndustryHyundai SamhoMitsubishi Heavy IndustryTsuneishi shipbuildingOshima ShipbuildingHyundai MipoImabari ShipbuildingShanghai WaigaoqiaoSingapore Technologies EngineeringTextronNorthrop Grumman CorpLockheed MartinDCNS S.AFinmeccanica S.p.A.General Dynamics CorpOthersGlobal Shipbuilding Market: Key Product TypeBulk cargo shipContainer vesselAFRAMAXVLCCFPSOWarshipOthersGlobal Shipbuilding Market: Key ApplicationICTransistorOthersGlobal Shipbuilding Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Shipbuilding Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Shipbuilding Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Shipbuilding Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 Bulk cargo ship1.1.2.2 Container vessel1.1.2.3 AFRAMAX1.1.2.4 VLCC1.1.2.5 FPSO1.1.2.6 Warship1.1.2.7 Others1.1.3 Market by Application1.1.3.1 IC1.1.3.2 Transistor1.1.3.3 Others1.2 Global and Regional Market Size......................Continue (Global Shipbuilding Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Boyne Golf first to join E-Z-Go green ambassador program

Boyne Golf is the first to join the E-Z-Go Green Ambassador Program aimed at bringing together leaders in sustainability in the golf industry.
The 10-year anniversary edition of the Unibet Open has crowned a champion in the 1,100 Main Event and it was Marius Pertea who defeated Robert Vukovic in heads-up to ensure consecutive victories for Romanians in the Grand Ballroom of the luxurious JW Marriott Bucharest Grand Hotel.

Pertea followed in the footsteps of Traian Bostan to keep the trophy on home soil and become the third Romanian to win a Unibet Open Main Event title in ten seasons. Dan Murariu, who already has two titles and three further final table appearances on the very same tour to his name, made a deep run again and busted in 30th place.

The biggest cash to date for the 37 year old general manager from Buzau was an 11th place in the 2017 PokerStars Champion Monte-Carlo Main Event for 44,280 and he more than shattered that with the payday of 90,925. Having spent most of the final table with a short stack, Pertea went three times from almost zero to hero and lifted the trophy with a big smile on the face.

Thirty-one-year old Vukovic earned his entry to the Main Event through the loyalty program of Unibet Poker by mostly playing cash games and turned that into 56,500, his partner and young daughter were on the rail to follow the progress. It was the second-biggest score of Vukovic after a runner-up finish in the 2012 Eureka Prague Main Event for 75,000.

Fellow Croatian poker player Pavao Veza, who also made the trip to Bucharest after racking up enough points on the cash game tables on Unibet Poker, finished in third place for 38,965 and another online qualifier reached the final table in Bojan Zidar, who finished 5th for 22,200.

Three players from Israel, who had some 100 participants in the event, made it all the way to the last nine but came short of victory: Dor Lan (9th place for 9,100), Guy Ohayon (6th place for 17,080) and Avi Cohen (4th place for 28,860). The other finalists included Bogdan Ionescu (10th place for 7,920), Henrik Tellving (8th place for 10,930) and Christopher Heidelbacher (7th place for 13,665).

Final Result 1,100 Main Event

Place Winner Country Prize (in EUR) 1 Marius Pertea Romania 90,925 2 Robert Vukovic Croatia 56,500 3 Pavao Veza Croatia 38,965 4 Avi Cohen Israel 28,860 5 Bojan Zidar Slovenia 22,200 6 Guy Ohayon Israel 17,080 7 Christopher Heidelbacher Romania 13,665 8 Henrik Tellving Sweden 10,930 9 Dor Lan Israel 9,110

Marius Pertea wins the 2017 Unibet Open Bucharest Main Event

The 2017 Unibet Open Bucharest 1,100 Main Event to end season 10 saw a total of 502 entries and the top 71 players took home a share of the 486,940 prize pool. Among the players to cash were Ran Azor (70th place for 1,880), eSports Star Kevin "Papaplatte" Teller (66th place for 1,880), Tudor Purice (61st place for 2,105), Unibet Poker ambassador Dara O'Kearney (55th place for 2,105), Stephane Allard (45th place for 2,355), Eric Wasylenko (37th place for 2,640), two-time Unibet Open champion Dan Murariu (30th place for 3,310), Jean-Serge Baril (18th place for 4,650), Yasen Dichev (14th place for 5,990), and Tom Vogelsang (11th place for 7,405).

Other highlights of the festival included a 2,200 High Roller, in which Dutchman Olvedo Heinze emerged victorious in heads-up against Katsuhiro Muto. Heinze, who entered the final table as the chip leader, took home the lion's share of the 192,060 prize pool in a field of 99 entries. Others who cashed included Mateusz Moolhuizen, Unibet Ambassador Dara OKearney and Romanias Dan Chisu.

High Roller Champion Olvedo Heinze

The nine-handed eSports Battle Royale VII was won by Fredrik dbergie Bergmann, who took home 5,000. Thijs Thijs Molendijk finished 2nd for 3,000 and Andrey reynad Yanyuk took third for 2,000.

Adrian Constantin came out on top of the 433-entry strong 150 Monsterstack after cutting a deal three-way deal with fellow Romanians Dumitru Adrian Pora and Alexandru Farcasanu, and each of them took home 8,094.

The Ladies Event hosted by Unibet Poker ambassador Daiva Byrne was won by Carmen Zainescu, while Swedens Linus Hjulstrom won the 200 NLH 6-Max for 6,485 after beating a 125-entry field. Back in 2013, Hjulstrom finished runner-up to Quentin Lecomte in the Unibet Open Cannes Main Event.

Action of the 1,100 Main Event Final Day

The ten remaining players returned to the same seats as they bagged up with the previous night and it took 40 minutes to reached the official nine-handed final table. It was Bogdan Ionescu who missed out on the group shot over on the feature table after losing a flip with ace-king against the pocket nines of fellow countryman Christopher Heidelbacher.

Dor Lan started well on the final table and managed to bump up his stack with several all in moves. One of them came at the worst possible time, though, when he jammed for more than 30 big blinds with pocket nines and Robert Vukovic in the small blind called with pocket aces. Another ace on the turn left Lan drawing dead and Vukovic went from shortest stack with nine left to the top spot.

Henrik Tellving slowly but surely lost most of his chips and eventually three-bet all in with an ace-trey off suit out of the big blind. Robert Vukovic called with jack-ten suited and flopped a pair, turned two pair and that left Tellving drawing dead in 8th place.

Christopher Heidelbacher three-bet shoved for 20 big blinds out of the small blind with king-ten suited and Avi Cohen looked him up with pocket nines. An ace-high board provided no help for the Romanian and he was eliminated in 7th place as a result.

Next on the list of casualties was Guy Ohayon, who four-bet all in with king-jack suited and Robert Vukovic snap-called with pocket aces. Ohayon picked up some hope with a jack on the flop, but an ace followed right away on the turn and that was it.

Only a few moments later, Ohayon was joined at the payout desk by 26-year-old student Bojan Zidar. Robert Vukovic picked up a second premium hand in consecutive hands and sent Zidar to the rail with pocket jacks versus pocket nines.

Four-handed play lasted for quite some time and Avi Cohen was on top of the counts almost exclusively. However, that changed when Pavao Veza doubled through him and Cohen would join the rail a few hands later. He shoved from the small blind with ace-eight and Marius Pertea snap-called with ace-queen to immediately connect with a queen on the flop.

Pavao Veza's second shove in quick succession with the king-queen was called by fellow Croatian Robert Vukovic with ace-six. Ace-high ended up as the winning hand after the ten-high board and Vukovic entered heads-up with a narrow lead, declining a possible deal before cards went back in the air.

What followed was a roller coaster of emotions for both Robert Vukovic and local crowd favorite Marius Pertea. Vukovic had all but locked up the victory when he doubled into a commanding lead with ace-six suited versus king-queen, but back-to-back doubles in the next two hands brought the stacks back to even. Eventually the stack of the Croatian plummeted and his triple barrel bluff with ace-queen for a busted gutshot went wrong as Pertea called with king-six suited for flopped two pair to let the Romanian rail erupt in applause.

This marks the end of the PokerNews coverage here in Bucharest and the Unibet Open have confirmed their next stop from February 22nd to 25th 2018 in London, online satellites are expected to begin soon via Unibet Poker.
If you want your work to have any value in such a chaotic world, says a cartoonishly proportioned art critic at the onset of the First World War, youre going to have to engage with it. Comment, criticize it, take it apart, and remake it in your own image. The words appear in a translucently white talk balloononly one of the innovations Black Dog introduces to the graphic novel form as artist Dave McKean actualizes his characters apocalyptic advice.

Comics fans likely know McKean from his The Sandman covers, though his collaborations with Neil Gaiman began earlier with their 1988 Black Orchid mini-series and arguably peaked in 1989 with the graphic novel Signal to Noise. McKean also famously paired with Grant Morrison for Arkham Asylum the same year, before venturing into his solo series Cages. Black Dog: the Dreams of Paul Nash is an even more successful solo venture, one commissioned by the UK to commemorate 100-year anniversary of the First World War. Paul Nash enlisted at the start of the war, served two and half years, was injured, and returned home to become a Modernist painter renowned for his surreal battlefield landscapes. The Tate recently featured an exhibition of his four-decade career.

While no imitator, McKean shares kindred tastes, creating a fictionalized memoir and dream journal of Nashs experiences. The 15 chapters range from 1904 to 1921, pivoting in time between Nashs childhood and the war years, while always opening with a photo-based frontispiece on the left-hand page. Though chapter lengths vary, they average five pages before later chapters intensify the use of two-page spreads. The orderly structure is welcome. McKean often follows standard comics layouts, but the effects of his arrangements are strikingly non-standard. This is partly due to the books 129 inch dimensionsatypically large for a comic but common for an art bookas well as McKeans eclectic approach to image-making.

The novel incorporates pencil sketches, full-color paintings, paper cut-outs, photographs, digital artoften transforming at chapter breaks, but at other times with page turns, within a single page, and even within a single panel. When McKean writes the scene shifts, the literal fabric of reality shifts too. While expressing the world-altering chaos of the Great War, the continually changing multi-media styles also suggest Nashs own search for the right materials to realize or at least evoke the otherness of his dreams.

The novel opens with a first-person account of Nash waking from his earliest dream and attempting to draw it as the impressions fade and are replaced by a succession of later sketches that inevitably both refine and distort. McKeans images accordingly shift in levels of refinement and distortion too. After two opening chapters of finely textured gestural paint strokes and flat Matisse-like cut-outs, he shifts to a fittingly cartoonish mode as the third chapter begins with Nashs fathers attempt at dream analysis (Well, I should have thought it was obvious. YOU are the black dog), as the two sport slightly enlarged heads and features.

Human figures grow grotesquely disproportionate as German bombing interrupts Nashs wedding and a two-page zeppelin morphs into a painterly precise fish above a cityscape devolving into gray-green abstractions. McKeans figural exaggerations peak with a violent bully of a teacher who literally towers above the adolescent Nash before slapping him into a sequence of blood-red panels suggesting the war carnage yet to come. When Nash falls injured into a trench, his body combines cartoonish proportions with the fine detail of naturalisma discord that defines the novel if not McKeans style generally.



(Dark Horse)

After a sniper attack, a young soldiers corpse morphs panel by panel into Picaso-esque abstraction While McKean depicts the warfare along widely fluctuating stylistic spectrums, a middle chapter juxtaposes panels of warped but largely naturalistic images with the pure abstraction of watercolor strokes in adjacent columns. Because the superimposed text describes grass growing between the sandbags in the trenches, the otherwise non-representative green swirls and splashes evoke new life. According to Nashs narration, even nature is dynamic, constantly changing, fluxing, complex chaos.

While digitally rendered words are another of the novels media, Nash states in the second chapter: words fail me, suggesting that language cannot capture his nightmares either. The books words are also appropriately dwarfed by the artwork surrounding them, as if the pages but not their print expanded to fit the books dimensions. When he doesnt incorporate printed text directly into the art, McKean frames it in translucently colored talk balloons and caption boxes that dont fully block the images digitally layered underneath. While visually effective, the technique also suggests that even when literally forwarded, words are not the novels primary language.

When Nashs brother imagines the skull of a German soldier speaking to him, its talk balloons are computer-rendered outlines; when his brother dies and his jawless skull speaks to Nash, the outlines become roughly hatched circles; and when Nash next turns to look at a skull in a war-ravaged dreamscape, McKean gouges an empty circle above it, its paradoxical silence speaking volumes.

Some graphic novels read like illustrated narration, but Black Dog is comfortable with an eight-page wordless sequence, and though words appear on the vast majority of pages, their meanings mingle with the artwork, as when a roughly cross-hatched Nash balances uncertainly along a trench boardwalk and his narration describes the artists balancing act and the danger of tipping into metaphorical mud. When he later describes feeling the texture of the air in his childhood woods, the referent is also the imagined texture of the collaged image beneath the words.

McKeans image-texts are examples of the hybrids and collisions that also describe Nashs dreams. His pages often feature two worlds, two styles, colliding. When Nash dreams during his recovery, he wanders from the subdued greens of his hospital room into the thorny reds of an internal forest of capillary-like tendrils. When Nash recounts his first dream about his future wife Margaret, their figures are composed of different elements; though Nashs cut-out self holds Margarets finely detailed hand, the image also suggests their separation, the impossibility of the two ever fully coming together. When Nash dreams of his estranged parents, McKean evokes their literal and emotional distance through an exponentially expanding chessboard, the black and white squares combining and dividing a puzzle of family fragments.

The novel creates the sensory overload that a war vet describes as shellshock. It is also its own cure, expression as catharsis, as when Nash brother takes up sketching to cope with life in the trenches. When you draw, he says, or just look at the world with an artists eye, you detach, you abstract.

Ultimately, Nash chooses to abandon the abstractions of his dreamscapes and awaken from a coma to rejoin post-war life. His reunion with his wife concludes the narrative wellbut as narrative, Black Dog is less fully realized. Though we follow Nash through his vacillating dreams, as he in turn follows the black dog of his nightmares, an evolving metaphor for himself, the war, and his isolation, the cast of mostly unnamed characters dont achieve the psychological depth of narrative realism. That flatness arguably suits Nashs broken psyche, while further emphasizing the novel as a tour de force of McKeans artworkthat is a sequence of self-consciously constructed images on paper. I only wish that, for a work responding to a painters rich body of art, Black Dog included an afterword to discuss and reproduce several of Nashs actual paintings.
In John Lee Hancocks The Founder (2016), the turning point for anti-hero Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) occurs two-thirds of the way through the film, when Kroc and financial consultant Harry J. Sonneborn (B.J. Novak) sit in a cramped office and concoct a classic business innovation. At that point in the narrative, Kroc has comfortably settled into his role as the head of franchising for McDonalds, a former single location hamburger stand hes helped grow into a multi-location business spanning several states.

Despite his successes, the purposefully restricting contract he signed with the restaurants eponymous founders, the McDonald brothers (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch), is hindering his ability to expand at the accelerated rate he craves and turn a reasonable profit for himself. As a result, he finds himself out of capital and on the verge of financial ruin, having already mortgaged personal assets to jumpstart his ambitious expansion plans.

Sonneborn has just the solution. He encourages Kroc to establish his own real estate company, Franchise Realty Corporation, and use the entity to lease land to new franchisees. Doing so would give him a proprietary income stream and the opportunity to attract outside investors to his new corporation. It would also give him a desired level of autonomy, since oversight of Franchise Realty would fall outside of the purview of the McDonald brothers, who retain final say over all business decisions regarding new McDonalds locations but have no such authority over outside ventures. Kroc bites, and the rest is soon history.

The establishment of Franchise Realty Corporation represents Krocs greatest innovation in that it doesnt invent something new so much as take advantage of a technicality not covered in his original contractKroc is free to create a separate corporation and use that entity to do business with McDonalds, the company that employs himto create a bountiful revenue stream for himself. It doesnt improve how the business is run or enhance the product it provides but it eventually makes Kroc far wealthier than the McDonald brothers, giving him the power to buy the brothers out of their own company and take McDonalds in the direction he sees fit.

Though the word innovative is spoken only once in The Founder, this particular plot point is just one example of how the film deftly skewers the hollow nature of American Innovation, a meretricious form of late capitalist creativity that currently exerts outsized influence on American society. A biographical drama about Kroc, a one-time milkshake machine salesman who, in 1954, stumbled across a thriving hamburger stand in San Bernardino, California and was so taken by both the quality of the food and the efficiency of the kitchen that he joined the companyand subsequently wrested control of the business before transforming it into a global fast food empireThe Founder may strike some as just another entry into the dog-eat-dog / greed is good genre of filmmaking about business, where the greatest spoils always end up in the hands of the pettiest person. While thats not an inaccurate description of the films primary narrative threadKrocs desperate hunger for success coupled with his willingness to stoop to any means necessary is revisited time and again throughout the storywhat makes the film more interesting than other entries in this particular sub-genre is the way it deftly shows how Krocs business innovations ultimately trump the McDonald brothers facility for ingenuity, thus allowing him to remake someone elses business in his own image.



(IMDB)

Ingenuity is not as common a word as it once was, whereas innovation has become a recurring part of the American lexicon and a favorite watchword of the thought leaders and tech doyens who use the Ideas Festivals/TED Talk circuit to salivate over corporate Americas latest game-changing trends. The decline in cultural value of ingenuity marks a break from Americas past, when it was not uncommon for people to place the word after the term Yankee to connote a somewhat vague yet clearly identifiable combination of technical inventiveness and can-do spirit. Yankee Ingenuity was said to be a defining trait of 19th century New Englanders and, much later, the American troops who helped win World War II. In more recent times, the concept of ingenuity has receded from mainstream culture, while the snazzier sounding innovation gets bandied about by entrenched private sector elites and the acolytes who wish to join them at the top of the late capitalist pyramid.

Trying to differentiate between ingenuity and innovation may, upon initial consideration, seem like a pointless rhetorical exercise or a quintessential illustration of a distinction without a difference. After all, the two words hold similar meanings: both suggest a creative approach to either solving problems or creating something new. Merriam-Webster defines innovation as the introduction of something new and a new idea, method, or device; it defines ingenuity as skill or cleverness in devising or combining and cleverness or aptness of design or contrivance. The words historic usages differ in subtle yet important ways, and each word says something essential about the ethos of their respective eras.

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On account of its historic linkage with New England Yankees and the role this subset of early Americans played in the countrys industrial revolution, as well as its later association with World War II combat troops, whose penchant for coming up with resourceful solutionslike affixing hedgerow cutters to tanksearned them great renown, ingenuity has long connoted the creation of tangible, often tactile solutions to pressing, real world problems. The products and inventions that tend to fall under the category of ingenuity serve as a reminder that America rose to the status of superpower on account of its manufacturing prowess and engineering creativity. Most importantly, ingenuitys past usage has always implied a sort of can-do communal spirit put in service of creating material things or inventions that benefit the greater good as opposed to a select subset of individuals.

Innovation, on the other hand, became a vogue descriptor of the business class during the 90s and 00s, a time when the American economy took more cues from the still burgeoning tech sector as opposed to manufacturing titans of yore. As Jill Lepore noted in a much remarked upon New Yorker article Clayton Christensens 1997 tome The Innovators Dilemma helped cement the words place in American culture and linked it to the concept of disruption. Lepore writes Innovation began to seep beyond specialized literatures in the nineteen-nineties, and gained ubiquity only after 9/11. This was an era in which American business was enamored with globalization and synergy, similarly cunning phrases that relished the creative destruction aspect of capitalism while barely paying lip service to the idea that a free market should, in theory, benefit all members of society.

Innovation continues to be the buzzword of the tech industry, as well as every industry and corporation that seeks to emulate the profitability and significant power big tech now enjoys. Although the tech industry admittedly manufactures tangible products that require incredible engineering prowess to come to fruition, it also seems more interested in disrupting specific market segments, consequences be damned, than fortifying the greater economy. The innovations achieved by contemporary tech titans often comes at the expense of others; the financial windfall achieved by the Apples and Facebooks and Amazons of the world tend to trickle upwards rather than outwards.

Indeed, while the tech worlds products can represent manufacturing ingenuity at its finest, many of these products do little more than provide flashy updates to existing ideas rather than offer revolutionary solutions to vexing problems. As Lepore writes, the concept of innovation skirts the question of whether a novelty is an improvement: the world might not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer. Higher resolution cell phone cameras and more effective social media sites certainly offer users innovative experiences. But whether these innovations constitute real progress is the sort of question past inventions tagged with the ingenuity label were rarely, if ever, askedbecause the answer was always assumed to be yes.

The Founder depicts the original McDonalds as a model of Yankee Ingenuity. When Kroc first eats there, hes amazed by the speed with which he receives his food and the quality of the food itself. The restaurant is nothing like the mediocre fast food joints his gig selling milk shake machines has forced him to patronize. Its fast and clean and serves a higher quality product. Kroc is so wowed by the experience that he takes the McDonald brothers, Richard Dick (Offerman) and Maurice Mac (Lynch), out to dinner just so he can learn more about how they came to create such an ingenious restaurant.

Page 2 (link below): The Value of Community and Values

The Value of Community and Values

The brothers happily reveal the secret to their success: a proprietary food preparation method they have dubbed the speedee service system, which applies principles of assembly line manufacturing to a kitchen. In one of the films most memorable scenes, the McDonalds recount the origin of the speedee service system, which, according to the film, involved drawing a model of the restaurants kitchen on a tennis court so that the staff could simulate the process of preparing burgers and fries and the brothers could test modifications to the process to see whether or not they would increase efficiency without sacrificing quality. The exercise resulted in a reconfigured kitchen layout complete with the specially made tools required to make the speedee system possible.

Moments like these portray the McDonalds brothers as personifications of Yankee ingenuity and the earnest, homely, gosh-darn American integrity so lovingly associated with post-World War II America. Theres something slightly yokel-ish about their aww-shucksy demeanors and the clear pleasure they take in simple virtues like hard work and casual politenessnot to mention their willingness to share trade secrets with a complete stranger like Kroc. But they never come across as fools. Instead, <i>The Founder</i> depicts the McDonalds as two Americans with above average intelligence and a profound appreciation for the rewards making an honest living affords a person. They use their gift for ingenuity to parlay a series of humble ambitions into a thriving local business, which provides customers with better food and shorter wait times and offers stable employment to a staff the brothers cant help but shower with paternal fondness.

Kroc, on the other hand, is a character that trades in pure business innovation. As played by Keaton, he comes across as a hybrid of Willy Loman and Gordon Gekko. At the start of the film, hes just an unsuccessful milkshake machine salesman far more interested in crafting the perfect pitch than understanding how the product hes peddling works. After his initial visit to McDonalds and subsequent dinner with the brothers, he implores them to let him franchise the restaurant. They inform him theyve already ventured down that path but decided not to pursue it aggressively for the simple reason that it became too difficult to maintain quality control in dispersed locations. This concern doesnt even register with Kroc. All he sees is money to be made.

He eventually sells the brothers on his idea by convincing them that by opening franchises throughout the country, the McDonalds Golden Arches, a bombastic architectural flourish concocted by Dick, could become ubiquitous symbols of American community and values. But its clear from the onset that all he wants to do is make money and achieve influence and that his marketing spiel is only intended to sell the McDonald brothers on his franchise scheme. For Kroc, community and values are nothing more than buzzwords to be used in an effective presentation.

Once he becomes head of franchising, Kroc begins examining new ways to make an extra buck. He asks the McDonald brothers if he can sell sponsorship space on the menu boards, but is rebuked by Dick, who emphatically tells him that he and his brother have no interest in indulging in that sort of crass commercialism. When one of his franchisees tells him that all McDonalds locations could significantly reduce operating costs by making milkshakes using a powdered mix that doesnt require refrigeration, Kroc is gung ho on the idea. He floats the new strategy past Dick, the brother who clearly calls most of the shots, only to be told, If phony powdered milkshakes is your idea of progress, you have a profound misunderstanding of what McDonalds is about.

To his credit, Kroc makes a legitimately brilliant managerial decision early-on: rather than try and sell wealthy retirees on the benefits of investing some of their disposable income in a McDonalds franchise, he recruits working class people with a real desire to better themselves to run the new restaurants. This results in a series of truly dedicated franchise owners. But every other contribution he makes does nothing to improve the product his franchises are selling and everything to put more money in his pocket and more control in his corner.

The Founder ends on a stridently depressing note, with Kroc buying the McDonald brothers out of their own company and charting a course that will take the business in a direction never imagined by its creators. Krocs willingness to substitute powdered milkshake mix for real ice cream prefigures the well-detailed shortcuts the chain would later take in pursuit of greater profitability. In one of the final scenes, Dick asks Kroc why, after his initial visit to McDonalds and ensuing dinner with the brothers, he didnt just take the speedee system concept Dick and Mac had shown him and open his own restaurant. Kroc tells him that the reason he chose to pursue a takeover of McDonalds instead is that what he really wanted was the name, McDonalds, a name he says emanates such a warm, welcoming, all-American vibe that affixing it to any business would just about guarantee success.

The answer contradicts everything Kroc has previously said makes McDonalds special while proving he truly does believe the idea that innovative marketing rather than ingenious production processes is the real key to success. Soon after, Kroc hands a reporter a business card that lists him as the founder of the company. And in one sense, Krocs new title is not a lie: he is the founder of the new McDonalds, which will quickly cease to resemble the original hamburger stand from whence it sprung.



John Carroll Lynch as Mac and Nick Offerman as Dick McDonald (IMDB)

Like all films based on real events, The Founder takes great liberties with the historical record. The fictionalized McDonald brothers are portrayed as exemplars of a painstakingly virtuous strain of capitalism; they are upright citizens, defenders of food purity, restaurateurs whose top priority never extends beyond maintaining their original locations lofty standards. They turn the keys of the franchise operation over to Kroc early in the film but dont in any way share his relentless quest to boost the bottom line through any means necessary.

The real McDonald brothers were not quite as commerce averse. Prior to meeting Kroc, they had already pursued franchising with significant aggression, suggesting they too had a desire for maximizing profits. But the disconnect between the historical record and The Founders fictional portrayal is not nearly as interesting as the way the film subtly uses its main characters to depict how the Yankee Ingenuity of the McDonald brothers fell prey to the business innovations of Kroc, while implying the former never stood a chance of triumphing in this battle of competing ideals.

The McDonald brothers exemplify the engineering ingenuity and dedication to pioneering techniques that yield perceptible improvements and better quality. Kroc prefers the sort of innovative gimmicks that result in ideas and processes that are different but not necessarily better. Kroc is the anti-hero to the heroic McDonald brothers. His innovations, unlike their ingenuity, arent concerned with achieving real progress so much as rehashing something new out of existing parts and extracting as much money as possible.

To say American culture currently truckles before the alter of innovation would be a gross understatement. Publications as different as Time, Better Homes and Gardens, and Fast Company, just to name a few, have published entire issues devoted to innovation. We now have the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, courtesy of our former technocrat-in-chief Barack Obama. Even the National Endowment of the Arts has embraced the innovation agenda, informing past grant applicants that innovative projects are strongly encouraged. The last three decades have brought the proliferation of neat financial innovations like credit defaults swaps and derivatives, as well as various technologies, from iPhones to the social media sites their users crave, that arguably do little more than accelerate convenience. Recent examples of Yankee Ingenuity are much harder to come by, and those that exist tend to be much less publicized and celebrated.

What The Founder does so well in the course of its two-hour run time is argue that America has transformed itself from a society of ingenuity to a morass of innovation. Were no longer a country that underwrites pioneering public works projects like the interstate highway system or sends its best and brightest to work on truly ingenious initiatives like the space program; ivy league grads are more likely to end up working for the tech sector or on Wall Street then in the halls of NASA. Americans today seem more concerned about higher resolution smart phone screens and better network connectivity than easily affordable zero emissions cars or faster and more efficient airplanes.

The Yankee Ingenuity practiced by the fictionalized McDonald brothers is simply not as fashionable as the American Innovation favored by Keatons Kroc. (And no, the swell of artisanal foods and farm-to-table restaurants, tactile as those establishments and their fare may be, does not represent a resurgence of Yankee Ingenuity.) The tangible, progress-abetting ingenuity of years past has been replaced by the buzzy, empty, stylized innovations of the contemporary tech and financial services dependent economy. As The Founder makes clear, this shift in cultural mores favors the less scrupulous among us at the expense of those who would use their talents to create things of lasting value. Whether or not America will ever revert to its previously ingenious ways is an open question. But at the moment innovation is kicking butt and taking names, while ingenuity has faded into the margins.
Olive Films is simultaneously releasing no-frills Blu-rays of two 40s-era B horror cheapies made within a year of each other. One lives up to the low expectations people generally have of the genre, although it packs star power. The other is the type of gem we indefatigable fishers in these minor waters hope to catch.

The star power, or at least the favorite character players we like to think of as stars, can be found in Monograms Return of the Ape Man ( Phil Rosen,1944), entitled to mislead people into thinking its a sequel to Bela Lugosis 1943 item The Ape Man. Lugosi plays the allegedly brilliant Professor Dexter, who utters lines like Murder is an ugly word. As a scientist, I dont recognize it. The redoubtable John Carradine plays his colleague, Professor Gilmore, nominally the stuffier and more law-abiding of the two, though he happily collaborates with Dexter in freezing a homeless bum for two months before sending the revived wino on his none-the-wiser way with five bucks in his pocket.

The equally ubiquitous George Zucco is billed third, supposedly as one of two actors (the other being ex-boxer George Moran) playing the Ape Man, but squint as we might, that never looks or sounds like Zucco and research tells us he dropped out of the project.

Gilmore sensibly believes that the cryogenic stunt is remarkable enough to announce to the world, but Dexter wants to spend ages in the Arctic on the off chance of finding a frozen Pithecanthropus. How one project relates to the other isnt clear, but after several months and some stock footage of glaciers, they succeed in bringing home an iced Ape Man who proves easy to revive. Surely this is enough to stop the presses, and it was enough for a much later movie like Iceman (1984), but still Dexter has other ideas about partial brain transplants to make the grunting creature tractable so Dexter doesnt have to keep waving torches at the lunk and locking him in a handy cage. They dont think to feed him.

The fact that the post-transplanted monster promptly aims to strangle his human donors unsympathetic wife in favor of carrying off a pretty young heroine (Teala Loring, billed as Judith Chapman) implies something about his previously repressed libido, and thats as interesting as it gets. Directed by Phil Rosen and shot in a stony, clodhopping manner with people gabbing on stagy sets and a little balcony-climbing in the last act, this is mostly a stilted bore that depends entirely on our affection for the charm of its main players. That doesnt include a dull Tod Andrews (billed as Michael Ames) as the standard-issue handsome hero.

The description sounds like a lot happens in an hour, but its a longer hour than it should be. Were not surprised to realize that the writers credit is absent, and that may have been his smartest decision. He worked without credit while Zucco got credit for not appearing; who had the better deal? Anyway, the package identifies the writer as an obscurity named Robert Charles.



John Abbott and Peggy Stewart in The Vampires Ghost (IMDB)

Now compare with an almost equally cheap Republic item: The Vampires Ghost (Lesley Selander, 1945), devoid of stars and saddled with a senseless title. From the opening moments this draws the audience in with a dynamic style of camera movement and design. The first thing we see is a stereotypically costumed African native beating on a huge drum, which will be a continual motif, even becoming central to the plot.

Then we hear an elegant narrator speaking poetically as the camera creeps across a nighttime village, the shot culminating in a closeup of a hand with a distinctive ring just as the narrator makes it clear hes the villain of the story and not just a disembodied voice. Wait  the Voice of Authority is the bad guy? Hold that thought.

Then we cut to an attractively coiffed young African woman, fresh from Hollywood makeup, waking up and screaming in terror at her visitor. The sociologically inclined may pause to consider the implications of a black woman waking to a predatory white man in a movie with a colonial setting.

We quickly learn that this fictional village in the middle of a fictional African country in the middle of nonfictional Africa is populated by primitive black people who dress in beads and towels and also by a few white foreigners who run the place, apparently for the facility of the Liberty Rubber plantation  a beautifully subtle detail. The rash of violence is an economic crisis because the natives arent showing up for work. There are some old white fuddy-duddies in authority, including a Catholic priest (Grant Withers) who knows too much about evil to dismiss native beliefs.

In fact, the African characters are the ones who understand the nature of what oppresses them throughout this picture and consistently take the most active and effective steps against it. Their cooperation and local system of communication (the drums) prove crucial in this screenplay by veteran pulpist John K. Butler and the illustrious Leigh Brackett (one year before she co-wrote The Big Sleep), with Brackett getting the story credit. According to Wikipedia, she updated John Polidoris The Vampyre, a story originating in the same weekend Mary Shelley created Frankenstein.

If the white colonists are there to exploit local labor, the louche British expatriate Webb Fallon (John Abbott, excellent), at once effete and down-at-heel, runs a nightclub and gambling joint to exploit the white sailors as well as feeding on the native populace and all young and beautiful people in his path, for he wears the ring we saw in the opening scene.

By calmly announcing himself as a weary adventurer from the reign of Elizabeth I, he handily symbolizes centuries of British expansion. His predatory and non-discriminatory nature, willing to vamp anyone for his perverse unquenchable thirsts, is the real evil. Its not clear whether his semi-girlfriend and exotic dancer, Lisa (Adele Mara), is mulatto, but the implication is there if you sniff for it. In his web, Webb Fallon quickly enslaves the handsome he-man hero (Charles Gordon) with his hypnotizing domination  the sap is sapped  and next on the agenda is the heros superstition-scoffing girlfriend (Peggy Stewart).

This is heady stuff, shot with vivid style as is always clear on this perfect print, in much better shape than the Lugosi picture. Prolific director Lesley Selander mostly made B westerns; this is one of two intriguing noir-ish horrors he made in the mid-40s, the other being The Catman of Paris (1946). While both films seem like knock-offs of more popular items, they offer their own handsome virtues.

You have to love Lugosi and Carradine, as do we all, to sit through Return of the Ape Man. We can only hope the lack of stars and reputation dont prevent viewers from discovering the attractions of The Vampires Ghost.
Budapest Metro workers may give strike for Christmas

The Trade Union of Retail Employees (KASZ) has held wage talks with the management of Budapests metro lines, but the offer was far from what the union demands, hence the negotiating delegation rejected it, the union announced on Friday.

Metro consequently withdrawn its wage hike offer and has created a new one for today. Although this was somewhat different than the original one, it still shows no meaningful progress, and so the Trade Union of Retail Employees (KASZ) turned this one down too.

As it is clear that the talks will not yield results, the KASZ has formed a strike committee.

The company is legally bound to continue talks with the union within seven days, and come up with an acceptable wage hike offer.

Should that fail to happen, there will be a strike, and it will be staged at a time when it hurts the company," the union has threatened.

The KASZ said it would soon publish its demands, but the company insists to share its own wage hike proposals with the employees therefore the union stressed that it does not find the offer acceptable.The headline of the union's statement reads "Strike committee formed at Metro! Will there be a strike at Christmas?"
Watchdog and Public Service reporter

Thad Moore is a reporter on The Post and Couriers Watchdog and Public Service team and a graduate of the University of South Carolina. To share tips securely, reach Moore via ProtonMail at thadmoore@protonmail.com or on Signal at 843-214-6576.
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Snow this morning will taper off and give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High around 30F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 22F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph.
A Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner is parked in front of an Emirates Airline plane during the opening day of the Dubai Air Show in November. Emirates, one of Boeing's biggest customers, is among the carriers targeted by proposed U.S. tax legislation designed to financially penalize Middle East airlines. File/AP
The trial for Russell Laffitte, a former top executive for Palmetto State Bank, continues this week in Charleston's U.S. District Court. He stands accused of helping Alex Murdaugh defraud his former law clients, while using money from his family's bank to prop up the disbarred attorney's shaky finances. Read moreBank official reported Russell Laffitte's handling of Murdaugh client checks as suspicious
Protecting the health and safety of our students has always been my top priority as your state superintendent of education. Our commitment to safety begins when the school bus arrives each morning and ends when it drops students off. Read moreSpearman: Electric vehicle investments help transform SC's once-ancient school bus fleet
First Free Church in Onalaskas Set Me Free Shop will host its Christmas open house Saturday, Dec. 9, from 5 to 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 10, from 8 a.m., to 12:30 p.m.

Located in the lobby of the church at 123 Mason St., in Onalaska, the store sells merchandise from around the world. Survivors of human trafficking make most of the creations and proceeds go back to the anti-trafficking organizations.

Newly appointed General Manager and former San Diego native Asha Bianca is the author of four books including Sex Esteem, a book for young women that compares secular and Biblical views of sexuality. Bianca is a veteran of mission trips to Columbia, Mexico and Haiti.

With poverty as the major contributor to human trafficking, Bianca sees the Set Me Free Shop on the cutting edge toward finding a solution to the problem. Impoverished families of third world countries often unknowingly sell their children to traffickers to support the rest of the family, Bianca says. The Set Me Free Shop offers an alternative.

Im very passionate that we provide options for individuals, that there is another way, Bianca said.

To that end, she and Barb Johnson of Onalaska will make the rounds of Southeast Asian safehouses early next year, purchasing more merchandise that allows survivors to support themselves and in some cases their families as well.

If we buy $3000 worth of merchandise, that will sustain a community of women for a long time, said Johnson. Johnson cited a recent communication indicating that five women and seven children were recently rescued from a notorious red-light district. The women now support themselves through creating merchandise at a safe-house.

First Free Church currently supports three safe-houses that provide room, board and jobs for 90 women. A fourth house is currently under construction.

As one of the fastest growing crimes in the world Human trafficking generates an estimated $150 billion in revenue, ensnaring 45 million slaves, mostly women and children.

But Bianca also sets her sights on the local problems, partnering with the La Crosse Task Force Against Human Trafficking and Fierce Freedom of Eau Claire to help educate the community and interface with law enforcement. The store is normally open 30 minutes before and after each service. Alternate times can be made by appointment through the church office.
WASHINGTON  Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday urged the Pentagon to start moving U.S. military dependents, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea is getting close.

Its crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea given the provocation of North Korea, Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBSs Face the Nation.

So I want them (the Pentagon) to stop sending dependents and I think its now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea, Graham said. The United States has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.

On Wednesday, North Korea tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can fly over 13,000 km (8,080 miles), placing Washington within target range, South Korea said on Friday.

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Graham said this development showed conflict is approaching.

Were getting close to military conflict because North Korea is marching toward marrying up the technology of an ICBM with a nuclear weapon on top that can not only get to America, but deliver the weapon. Were running out of time, Graham told CBS.

The Pentagon referred questions to the Pacific command, which was not immediately available for comment.

White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster told Fox News Sunday that President Donald Trump is prepared to take action against North Korea but is working to convince China, Russia and other nations to use more economic pressure to help curb its nuclear ambitions.
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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Alix Resources Corp.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Alix Resources Corp. (TSX Venture:AIX). has issued a press release with the following headline:Alix Resources Corp. to Change Name to Infinite Lithium Corp.To view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Alix Resources Corp., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Alix Resources Corp.Source: Alix Resources Corp. (TSX Venture: AIX, FWB: 37N, WKN: A12GQ2, ISIN: CA01642R3009)Date: December 04, 2017Time: 5:27 PM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Alix Resources Corp. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
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The Global Hemophilia Management Market was worth $985 million in 2015 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 1.78%, to reach $1.08 billion by 2020. Hemophilia is a genetic disorder which impairs body`s ability to control blood clotting.Hemophilia usually occurs in males it is estimated that about 1 in 5000 males born each year contains some form of hemophilia. Hemophilia is characterized into three levels depending upon on its severity as severe, moderate and mild. Around 80% of the patients suffering from hemophilia are considered to be severe. The worldwide incidence of hemophilia is estimated at more than 400,000 people.View full report: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-hemophilia-management-market-313/ Asia Pacific Hemophilia Management Market is driven by factors such as growing prevalence of the disease and increasing usage of recombinant product. Advancements in technology and rising investments into Research and developments are also fuelling the market growth.However lack of awareness about the disease and limited access to the medication are the key factors hindering the market growth. Advancements in gene therapy which help in the treatment of hemophilia also provide immense growth opportunities. Asia Pacific Hemophilia management market is segmented on the basis of type of hemophilia and type of drug.Free sample of the report is available at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-hemophilia-management-market-313/request-sample By type of hemophilia it is further sub segmented into Hemophilia A and Hemophilia B. On the basis of drug type it is further sub segmented into Octocogalfa, Nonacogalfa, Desmopressin and other drugs. Hemophilia A is the largest segment accounting for approximately XX% due to elevated incidence of the condition.Based on geography Asia Pacific Hemophilia management market is analyzed under various regions namely China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Asia-Pacific region is estimated to be the fastest growing region owing to its high population base and increasing healthcare expenditure.Buy now: https://www.marketdataforecast.com/cart/buy-now/asia-pacific-hemophilia-management-market-313 Within Asia-Pacific, Japan is a major market for hemophilia management due to high government support and wide spread awareness about the treatment options for hemophilia. India is estimated to grow at highest CAGR due to increasing incidence of the hemophilia. Some of the major companies discussed in the report are Biogen, Baxter International Inc., Pfizer Inc., Bayer Pharma AG, Novo Nordisk A/S, Grifols International SA, CSL Behring, Octapharma and Swedish Orphan Biovitrum ABAbout Market Data Forecast:The publisher of this report is Market Data Forecast whose forte lies in Market research and Business Intelligence. Handling both individual and corporate clients across multiple business domains they offer syndicated/customized research to suit the clients research objective. Their research reports section offers a wide variety of market studies ranging from all-encompassing comprehensive market studies to product specific niche markets covering North America among other regions of the global market as well. For more info kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail: abhishek@ marketdataforecast.com Visit MarketDataForecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
Asia Pacific Vascular Closure Devices Market is expected to reach USD 165.75 Million by 2021  135 page report by Market Data Forecast

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The Asia Pacific Vascular Closure Devices Market was worth USD 105.3 Million in 2016 and is estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 9.5%, to reach USD 165.75 Million by 2021. A small puncture is made to the femoral artery to conduct some diagnostics like angiogram. This puncture is sealed immediately to stop the blood flow using a metallic clip or collagen. These devices are called vascular closure devices.Browse Market data tables and in-depth TOC of the Asia Pacific Vascular Closure Devices Market to 2021 @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-vascular-closure-devices-market-3539/ Vascular closure devices are preferred over manual compression due to the reduction in time and human effort required to conduct MC. VCDs increase the comfort levels for the patients and result in early discharge time. Recent developments introduced materials for VCDs which dissolve after certain period of time.Rising preference for minimally invasive surgeries and developing medical imaging are the major factors propelling the vascular closure devices market. Increasing adoption of radiotherapy which requires use of medical imaging and the ease of use and reduced access site complications also drive the VCDs market. Increasing costs of invasive VCDs and less adoption of technologies in developing countries are hindering the growth of the market.Free sample of the report is available @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-vascular-closure-devices-market-3539/request-sample The Asia Pacific vascular closure devices market is categorized based on the type, access, procedure, end user and by region. Based on the type of devices, the market is categorized into passive approximators, Active Approximators and External Hemostatic Devices. Active approximators segment is projected to hold the largest share in the VCDs market due to their high efficiency. Passive approximators are again categorized into Sealant or Gel based devices, Collagen plugs and Compression assist devices. Active approximators are again categorized into Suture based devices and clip based devices. Based on access to the artery, the market is categorized into Femoral and radial access. Femoral access the largest market share because it is largely adopted by physicians around the globe. Based on procedure involved, the market is categorized into interventional cardiology and interventional radiology or vascular surgery. Based on end user, the market is categorized into acute care facilities, hospitals and clinics. Acute care facilities are the largest market segment due to the increase of emergency cases in cardiovascular diseases.Asia Pacific vascular closure devices market is categorized into China, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea. The VCDs market in this region is rapidly growing due to the increase in expenditure on healthcare in countries like China and India, huge patient base and increasing cardiovascular diseases.Avail discount @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-vascular-closure-devices-market-3539/request-discount Some of the major companies in Asia-Pacific are VCDs market are W L. Gore & Associates, Merit Medical Systems, Inc., Abbott Vascular, Biotronik GMBH & CO.KG , St. Jude Medical, Cardinal Health, Medtronic, Boston Scientific Corporation, Cardival Medical, Inc., Essential Medical, Inc., TZ Medical, Inc. and Scion BioMedical.About Us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, we cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. Our analyst team comprises expert professionals in market research, who with their collective knowledge and skillset dedicatedly serve clients from various industries and regions.Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail:abhishek@ marketdataforecast.com Visit MarketDataForecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
Global Chromatography Instrumentation market has been estimated at USD 7.50 Billion in 2016 and is projected to reach USD 10.04 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 6.0% during the forecast period from 2016 to 2021.

Chromatography Instrumentation market

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Chromatography is a technique of separation of mixtures into organic and inorganic compounds. The main types of chromatography are liquid chromatography, gas chromatography, thin layer chromatography, and paper chromatography. Increasing use of chromatography techniques is creating rise in demand in global chromatography instrumentation market as well.View Full Report @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-chromatography-instrumentation-market-2211/ The market for Chromatography Instrumentation is mainly driven due to increasing spending on pharmaceutical R&D, growing food safety concerns, availability of public and private funding for life science research, and continuous technological advancements in analytical instruments. But, the market growth can be hindered due to presence of alternative analytical technologies, high cost of instruments, and dearth of skilled professionals.Free sample of the report is available @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-chromatography-instrumentation-market-2211/request-sample Global market for Chromatography Instrumentation is segmented based on System, Consumable and Application. By System, the market is further sub-segmented into Liquid Chromatography (LC) Systems (High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) Systems, Ultra-High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC) Systems, Flash Chromatography (FC) Systems, Medium-Pressure Liquid Chromatography (MPLC) Systems, Other Liquid Chromatography Systems), Gas Chromatography (GC) Systems, Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC) Systems, Thin-Layer Chromatography (TLC) Systems, Other System Components (Autosamplers, Detectors, Pumps, Vials). By Consumable, the market is further sub-segmented into Columns, Syringe Filters, Vials, Tubing, Other Consumables. By Application, the market is further sub-segmented into Life Sciences, Food & Beverage Testing, Environmental Testing, other applications. The columns segment accounts for the larger share of the chromatography consumables market. Other application areas accounts for the largest share of the chromatography instruments market, while, Environmental testing is the second large application area.Inquire before buying @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-chromatography-instrumentation-market-2211/inquire Geographically, Global market for Chromatography Instrumentation is segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, and Middle-East and Africa. North America is the biggest market in terms of market share across the globe, followed by Europe. The market in North America is highly driven due to factors like increasing usage of chromatography in the purification of monoclonal antibodies, growing use of chromatography in proteomics, and green chromatography. The Chromatography Instrumentation market in the Asia-Pacific region is projected to grow at the highest CAGR, which is greatly due to increasing disposable incomes, rising food security awareness and increasing government funding on biochemical research in countries.Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Agilent Technologies, PerkinElmer, Inc., Shimadzu Corporation, Waters Corporation, Novasep Holding S.A.S., Pall Corporation, JASCO, Inc, GL Sciences, Inc., Phenomenex, Inc., GE Healthcare, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Life Technologies Corporation, Pall Corporation, Regis Technologies, Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, Helena Laboratories, Phenomenex, Inc., Tosoh Corporation are the major players of Global Chromatography Instrumentation market.Scope of the Report Regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the major countries/regions in which this industry is blooming and to also identify the regions that are still untapped Segment-level analysis in terms of technology, component, and type along with market size forecasts and estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of the effect of exogenous and endogenous factors that affect the global market; which includes broadly demographic, economics, and political, among other macro-environmental factors presented in an extensive PESTLE Analysis Study the micro environment factors that determine the overall profitability of an Industry, using Porters five forces analysis for analysing the level of competition and business strategy development A comprehensive list of key market players along with their product portfolio, current strategic interests, key financial information, legal issues, SWOT analysis and analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies An executive summary, abridging the entire report in such a way that decision-making personnel can rapidly become acquainted with background information, concise analysis and main conclusions Expertly devised analyst overview along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketAbout Us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, we cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. Our analyst team comprises expert professionals in market research, who with their collective knowledge and sksillset dedicatedly serve clients from various industries and regions.
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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Erin Ventures Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Victoria, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Erin Ventures Inc. (TSX Venture:EV). has issued a press release with the following headline:Erin Ventures Issues Common Shares in Satisfaction of Interest Payment to Convertible Debenture HoldersTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Erin Ventures Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Erin Ventures Inc.Source: Erin Ventures Inc. (TSX Venture: EV, WKN: A0CAFT, ISIN: CA29570H1010)Date: December 04, 2017Time: 4:30 PM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Erin Ventures Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
Europe Open MRI Systems Market, published by Market Data Forecast, the Europe market is projected to reach USD 920 million by 2022, at a CAGR of 6.7% from 2017 to 2022.

Open MRI Systems Market

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MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. It takes pictures of the internal organs of the body using pulses coming from radio wave energy generated by the utilization of magnetic field. Usually MRIs are closed but some are open hence the name Open MRI. They do not enclose the body entirely.Get a comprehensive overview of the Europe Open MRI Systems Market: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-open-mri-system-market-2341/ Europe Open MRI Systems Market: Drivers & RestraintsRapid advancements in technology in MRI technique, rising geriatric population, rising applications of software, open architecture, and latest innovations like pacemakers compatible with MRI are the primary drivers of market growth.Depleting helium gas reserves, hefty costs, reduced reimbursement rates, intricate machinery and lack of trained professionals are the primary restraints of market growth.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Europe Open MRI Systems Market. Request a sample to stay up-to-date on the main trends affecting this market: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-open-mri-system-market-2341/request-sample Europe Open MRI Systems Market: SegmentationBy Field Strength Low to Mid fieldBy Application Brain Spine Abdominal Breast CardiacBy Geography Europeo Chinao Indiao Japano Australiao South KoreaFrom simple data collation through secondary and primary research to ad-hoc research requests relating to specific information, we provide our services via customization. Get customization at http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-open-mri-system-market-2341/customize-report Europe Open MRI Systems Market: OverviewBy application, brain market segment is the market leader and is anticipated to retain its position. It is because of the augmenting geriatric population.Europe is a moderately developed market. Its growth is going to be sluggish in the aforementioned forecast period mainly due to the debt crisis looming in Europe and countries like Greek crumbling under it.Europe Open MRI Systems Market: Key PlayersKey players in the market include Toshiba Medical Systems (Japan), GE Healthcare (U.K.), Siemens Healthcare (Germany). Other players in the market include Hitachi Medical Corporation (Japan), and Philips Healthcare (Netherlands).Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail: abhishek@ marketdataforecast.com Visit Market Data Forecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Frontier Lithium Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Sudbury, Ontario (FSCWire) - Frontier Lithium Inc. (TSX Venture:FL). has issued a press release with the following headline:Frontier Lithium Raises $907,180 in FinancingTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Frontier Lithium Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Frontier Lithium Inc.Source: Frontier Lithium Inc. (TSX Venture: FL, OTC Bulletin Board: HLKMF, FWB: HL2, WKN: A2ANKZ, ISIN: CA35910P1099)Date: December 04, 2017Time: 4:20 PM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Frontier Lithium Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
Generic Drugs Market

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Generic drugs market growth is buoyed by increasing number of expiries of patented drugs each year. According to the IMS data small-molecule products worth US$ 121 Bn are expected to lose patents in developed markets, such as U.S ad Europe between 2014 and 2018. The IMS also forecasts that biologic products valued at US$ 48 Bn are expected to lose patent protection over the next three years i.e from 2017 and 2020, which is expected to drive growth of the generic drugs market. Competition has increased significantly in the global generics market with many Asia Pacific companies entering the developed markets such as the U.S., Germany, France, and UK. The last couple of years has witnessed as spurt in mergers and acquisitions between generic drug manufacturers, with major players focusing on enhancing their product portfolio through such inorganic strategies. For instance, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Pvt. Ltd., Pfizer, Inc., Mylan, Sun Pharmaceutical, and Fresenius Kabi entered into acquisitions to increase their revenue share in the generic drugs market.Request For Sample Copy@Competitive Analysis- Top 10 generic drug manufacturers, in terms of revenue, in 2016, are as follows:1. TEVA PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIES2. MYLAN N.V.3. NOVARTIS INTERNATIONAL AG4. PFIZER, INC.5. ALLERGAN PLC6. SUN PHARMACEUTICALS7. FRESENIUS KABI8. ENDO INTERNATIONAL9. LUPIN LIMITED10. SANOFITeva Pharmaceuticals Industries strengthened its pole position in the generic drugs market through acquisition of the generic segment of Allergan, plc for US$ 40.5 billion in August 2016. This resulted in significant growth in revenue contribution of its generic drug segment, pegged at US$ 9.5 billion in 2016.Mylan ranks second in the list of generic drug manufacturers, and this is due to the acquisition valued at US$ 7.2 Bn of Swedens Meda by Mylan, in year 2016. This also aided Mylan to increase its sales of over-the-counter drugs and expand its presence in new emerging markets such as China, Southeast Asia, Russia, and the Middle East.SandozNovartis Groups business segment dealing in generic medicinesreported rampant growth of 9% Y-o-Y in 2016, in sales volume, with revenue pegged at US$ 9 Bn. However, it was partially offset by a 6% erosion in price. Pfizer is at the fourth position (US$ 4.6 Bn revenue in 2016). Pfizer acquired Hospira in 2015, in order to increase its product portfolio of both generic and branded products. Pfizer offers over 220 injectable medications, plus other off-brand products, which is expected to aid in gaining high revenue in near future. Patent loss of Viagra in 2017, will lead to significant generic competition from Teva and Mylan.Allergan though ranked at fifth position, sold its generics assets to Teva in 2015, and the deal closed in August 2016, which takes the company out of the race for generic drug manufactures for 2017, till the company receives new approval for generic drug manufacturing. This can favor Aspen Pharma to enter the top 10 generic drug manufacturers league in 2017. Sun Pharmaceuticals Ltd., headquartered in Mumbai, India, generated over US$ 3.6 Bn in generic sales in 2016. Sun Pharmaceutical doubled its size by the acquisition of Ranbaxy Laboratories in 2015, thus expanding its product portfolio. However, growth was hampered when the FDA issued a warning letter in 2015 for the Halol, India, API plant, which supplies the generic products in the U.S. Owing to this, Sun Pharmaceuticals is unable to receive new generic drug approvals.Fresunius Kabi, a generic arm of the Fresenius German Healthcare Group, reported a 4% growth in revenue from the U.S. in 2016 driven by strong sales of sterile injectable drugs. In 2017, the company entered into agreement to buy Akorna generic drugs manufacturerfor US$ 4.5 Bn, further strengthening its position in the market. For Endo Pharmaceuticals, till 2014, the generic segment did not generate significant revenue. However, following its acquisition of Par Pharmaceutical in 2015, revenue of Endo Pharmaceutical increased by 12.2% from 2012-2014. Following the acquisition, Endo enhanced its product portfolio with the addition of around 100 products, which also included profitable generic products.Lupin, in 2016, completed acquisition of U.S.-based Gavis and obtained its first manufacturing site in the U.S., along with 60 ANDA filings pending approval with the FDA. This aided the company to increase its footprint in the highly lucrative U.S. market.Increase in number of competitors for generic drugs market put the pressure on manufacturers of pricing. Moreover, price celling actions by respective governments is further aggravating the profit margins of generic drug manufacturers. Considering the challenges of pricing pressure as generics outfits feel the pinch with thin margins, the market is expected to exhibit steady growth in the future.Being a very lucrative market with a number of patent expiries in the near future, it is essential for competitive analysis for market players. This could aid one in devising a unique strategy and process to sustain in this highly competitive generic drugs market.Get More Details On this Report:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Coherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@ coherentmarketinsights.com Visit our news Website: http://www.coherentnews.com
Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market by diagnostics test, by methods, by therapies, by end-users, and by Region - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecasts (20162021)

Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market

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According to the report Global Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market, published by Market Data Forecast, the global market is projected to reach USD 4411.48 Million by 2021, at a CAGR of 4.5% from 2016 to 2021.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Global Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market. Request a free sample to stay up-to-date on the main trends affecting this market http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-cervical-cancer-diagnostics-and-therapeutics-market-829/request-sample Cervical cancer is generally characterized by the abnormal growth of cancerous cells in the tissues of the cervix, and it may manifest itself as a squamous-cell carcinoma or adenocarcinoma. More than 15% of cases of cervical cancer are found in women over 65. The first step in finding cervical cancer is often an abnormal Pap test result.Cervical cancer is generally characterized by the abnormal growth of cancerous cells in the tissues of the cervix, and it may manifest itself as a squamous-cell carcinoma or adenocarcinoma. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cervical cancer accounts for the death of more than 270,000 women annually, primarily in the developing countries. With the increasing use of cervical cancer diagnostic tests such as pap smear tests, HPV testing, and colposcopy for early detection, the market is highly competitive with a high growth rate.Get a comprehensive overview of the Global Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-cervical-cancer-diagnostics-and-therapeutics-market-829/ Global Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe factors that are driving the global market for Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics are rising prevalence of cervical cancer, increasing public awareness about cancer and also developing technologies in treating cancer. However, the market growth is constrained due to uncertain regulatory guidelines and high costs of screening test.Global Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market: SegmentationBy Diagnosis test Pap smear test HPV testing Colposcopy Cervical cancer biopsyBy methods Molecular method Cytopathological method Physical methodBy therapies Surgery Radiation therapy Chemotherapy Other therapiesBy end-users Hospitals Laboratories Independent physicians Clinics Other end-usersFrom simple data collation through secondary and primary research to ad-hoc research requests relating to specific information, we provide our services via customization. Get customization at http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-cervical-cancer-diagnostics-and-therapeutics-market-829/customize-report Global Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market: OverviewPap smear test segment dominated the market by Diagnostic test, holding a 45% share in the global market for cervical cancer diagnostic tests. The high growth rate of this segment can be attributed to the high efficiency of the test, low cost of the test in comparison with other tests available in the market, and rising awareness regarding cancer diagnosis.Market analysis with region-specific assessments and competition analysis on a global and regional scale. Identification of factors instrumental in changing the market scenario, rising prospective opportunities and identification of key companies that can influence the market on a global and regional scale. Extensively researched competitive landscape section with profiles of major companies along with their strategic initiatives and market share.Global Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market: Region-wise OutlookGeographically, Global market for Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics is segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, and Africa & Middle-East. North America holds the largest share of the global market, followed by Europe. A number of factors such as rising prevalence of cervical cancer, growing awareness of cervical cancer screening programs, and government support are driving the growth of the HPV testing market in the North American region. Asia Pacific market is growing at very high rate, due to rising consumer market, favorable government support for enhanced healthcare infrastructure, and rising awareness for healthcare among the population in developing nations of the region.Global Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market: Key PlayersAbbott Diagnostics, Alere, Beckman Coulter, Clinical Genomics, Companion Dx, EDP Biotech, Epigenomics AG, Exact Sciences, Fujirebio, Genomic Tree, Metabiomics, Oncocyte (Biotime), Quest Diagnostics, Randox Laboratories, Siemens Healthcare, Volition Rx, are the major players of Global Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics market.Reasons to buy Global Cervical Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics Market Report: Global, regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the geographical areas in which this industry is prospering Segment-level analysis on basis of product type, application, colour along with market size forecasts and y-o-y estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of macro and micro environmental factors that affect the market presented in an extensive strategic analyses section containing PESTLE and Porters Five Forces Analyses A comprehensive listing of key market players along with company overview, product portfolios, key financial information (subjected to availability), SWOT analysis and Analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies Expertly devised Market Outlook along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketCheckout other related studies in the Therapeutics Segment:Lung Cancer Therapeutics Market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-lung-cancer-therapeutics-market-893/ Medical Tourism Market: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-medical-tourism-market-1855/ About Market Data Forecast:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, they cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. From all-encompassing umbrella markets to extremely specific niche markets covering all the major regions across the globe as part of the research scope, their research services offer one of a kind specialities with competitive pricing options.For more information, kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail: abhishek@ marketdataforecast.com Visit Market Data Forecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
Coulee Region Schools celebrated the release of the Wisconsin Department of Instructions annual district report cards last week.

Onalaska, Bangor, Holmen and West Salem school districts all exceeded state expectations under the states new grading system, which takes into account enrollment, racial diversity, students with disabilities and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Districts are scored based on their performance in four categories including student achievement, district growth, the ability to close achievement gaps and college readiness.

According to the DPIs latest report, Onalaska scored the highest of any district in the county at 81.4 out of 100. Onalaska Director of Instructional Services Roger Fruit said the district is excited to use the data to improve the curriculum and help students succeed.

Were proud of the work that our students do, he said, adding behind every student are a group of teachers and a community that is spending money to support their education. There is a lot to celebrate and theres a lot of room to improve.

Fruit, while pleased with the results, questioned the usefulness of the report card for comparing school districts.

Its a good tool for schools and districts to analyze whats going on with student achievement, Fruit said adding the DPI hasnt refined its method enough to make accurate comparisons with other school districts.

Until you get to an overall score of 100 youre missing kids, he said.

The Bangor School District followed close behind Onalaska with the second highest score of 80.5 out of 100.

Were pleased with the results, Superintendent Dave Laehn said, crediting the teachers for the districts strong performance in the latest report. Our teachers work really hard.

Laehn echoed Fruits concerns saying the report card is just one measure of academic success the district uses to track student performance and educator effectiveness.

Holmen and West Salem didnt fare any worse, tying with a score of 79.9 out of 100.

Holmen, however, made one of the largest gains when compared to last years scores. The district boosted its overall score by nearly three points to tie with West Salem.

Where Holmen made gains, West Salem, which significantly exceeded the states expectations on last years report card, was the only district slip backward. West Salems overall score fell four points from 83.9 to 79.9 out of 100.

This drop came as no surprise to West Salem Superintendent Troy Gunderson, who said the district still met its strategic goal of exceeding state expectations in all buildings.

The DPI model favored school districts with fewer free or reduced (lunch) kids or special education students, he said. The way in which they were assigning a score was favoring people with demographics like us.

As a result, West Salem received a higher score in its 2015-16 report card than other districts.

Gunderson said once the DPI had corrected its model to more appropriately accounted for these populations West Salems score fell closer to other districts in the county.

He said the district is looking at the results of the 2016-17 report card positively.

The bottom line is its good for everyone, Gunderson said. By counting it more appropriately, you can even the playing field for better comparison.

According to the DPI, many school districts statewide experienced fluctuations in their scores.

Many of the 2016-17 school and district report card scores have fluctuated since last year. These fluctuations appear in both overall scores and particularly in the growth priority area, reads the DPI statement. Although volatility in value-added scores may decrease with another year of Forward testing, score fluctuations are likely to continue, especially for smaller schools and districts.

Laehn, however, expects these fluctuations to continue in Bangor.

Laehn said he said the districts scores will likely rise and fall with student populations, despite the changes to how the DPI reports the data.

Youd always like to say your results will be better next year, but in a small school it can fluctuate if one or two students do poorly, he said.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 20:03:02

WESTCHESTER, Ill., December 4, 2017 - Ingredion Incorporated (NYSE: INGR), a leading global provider of ingredient solutions to diversified industries, announced today that its board of directors has unanimously approved changes to the Company's executive leadership team to fill vacancies created by the promotion of Jim Zallie to president and CEO on January 1, 2018. Zallie is currently executive vice president, global specialties and president, Americas.

Effective February 5, 2018, Jorgen Kokke will be promoted to executive vice president, global specialties, and president, North America. Pierre Perez Y Landazuri will be promoted to senior vice president and president, EMEA effective January 1, 2018. He and Ernesto Pousada, senior vice president and president, South America, will become officers of the company and members of the executive leadership team, effective January 1, 2018.

Kokke will be responsible for leading the $3.5 billion North America business, overseeing all operational and strategic management decisions. Additionally, he will lead the global specialties focus for the Company. Kokke joined Ingredion in 2009 as vice president and general manager of EMEA. He served as senior vice president and general manager, Asia-Pacific, from 2014 - 2016, and has been senior vice president and president, Asia-Pacific and EMEA since January 2016. Prior to Ingredion, he was vice president, Corbion (formerly CSM), a producer of sustainable ingredient solutions, where he was responsible for the global food and nutrition business. Kokke has a master's degree in economics from the University of Amsterdam.

Perez Y Landazuri joined Ingredion in 2016 as vice president and general manager EMEA, a position he continues to fill until his promotion. Before Ingredion, he had been with CP Kelco, a producer of hydrocolloids, as vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific, and has held executive positions with Hercules, BASF and Rohm and Haas. He holds a master's degree in chemical process engineering from ENSCP Graduate School of Chemistry (now Chimie ParisTech) in Paris, France.

Pousada joined Ingredion in February 2016 in his current role from Suzano Papel e Celulose, a pulp and paper company based in Brazil, where he served as chief operating officer. Prior to Suzano, he held various positions with Dow Chemical for 15 years. Pousada holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Instituto Maua de Technologia in Brazil and a specialization in business administration from Fundacao Instituto de Administracao in Brazil.

A successor to Kokke as senior vice president and president Asia-Pacific will be announced at a later date.

"Ingredion's success is driven by our people. We have an excellent leadership team and I look forward to working with them as we implement Ingredion's long-term strategy and continue to create shareholder value," said Zallie, Ingredion CEO elect.

ABOUT INGREDION

Ingredion Incorporated (NYSE: INGR) is a leading global ingredient solutions provider with 2016 revenues close to $6 billion. We turn grains, fruits, vegetables and other plant materials into value-added ingredients and biomaterial solutions for the food, beverage, paper and corrugating, brewing and other industries. Serving customers in over 100 countries, our ingredients make crackers crunchy, yogurts creamy, candy sweet, paper stronger and add fiber to nutrition bars. Visit Ingredion.com to learn more.

###

CONTACT:

Investors: Heather Kos, 708-551-2592

Media: Claire Regan, 708-551-2602





This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: Ingredion Incorporated via Globenewswire


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PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 10:06:47

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Market Data Forecast

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Abhishek Shukla

Sales Manager (International Business Development)

+1-888-702-9626

email

http://www.marketdataforecast.com/





# 481 Words

USASales Manager (International Business Development)+1-888-702-9626

The Latin America Veterinary Healthcare Market is currently estimated at $2.97 billion market in 2016 and is expected to reach $4.38 billion by 2021 with a CAGR of 8.1% in the forecast period. Veterinary medicine can be defined as the science associated with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases in animals. The scope of Veterinary medicine is broad covering various animal species both domestic and wild. The increasing importance for the production of livestock animals is generating growth in the animal healthcare market. Ever increasing population, stable economy is expected to result in increased demand for protein rich foods, especially in the developing countries.Full report at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-veterinary-healthcare-market-1017/ There is an upsurge in the number of animal ownerships as a result of increased love towards pets. Rising awareness among individuals regarding animal health and few requirements for drug approval of animals are the primary driving factors for Veterinary healthcare market. Rising number of foodborne diseases is also aiding the growth of animal healthcare market. However, there a few restraints the market has to overcome in order to prosper in the future which include rising regulations on antibiotics and high costs related to animal testing.Latin America Veterinary Healthcare market is segmented based on the animals type into companion and farm animal. Farm animals are again segmented into poultry, swine, fish, cattle and sheep.Companion animals are sub segmented into dogs and cats. On the basis of product, the market is segmented as vaccines, pharmaceuticals and additives. Feed additives are further categorized as nutrition and medical feed additives. Nutrition feed additives includes hormones, enzymes, prebiotics, probiotics and immune-modulator. Pharmaceutical products includes ectoparasiticides, antibiotics, endectocides, endoparasiticides, anti-inflammatories, and medicines for reproductive problems. Based on the geography, Latin America veterinary healthcare market is segmented into various regions of Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.Request sample: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/latin-america-veterinary-healthcare-market-1017/request-sample The key players in the market are BoehringerIngelheim GmbH, Sanofi S.A., Merck & Co., Novasep, Ceva Sante Animale, Koninklijke DSM N.V, SeQuent Scientific Ltd., Zoetis Inc., Nutreco N.V., Vetoquinol S.A., Bayer AG, Cargill, Inc., Eli Lilly, Novartis AG and Virbac S.A.About Market Data Forecast:The publisher of this report is Market Data Forecast whose forte lies in Market research and Business Intelligence. Handling both individual and corporate clients across multiple business domains they offer syndicated/customized research to suit the clients research objective. Their research reports section offers a wide variety of market studies ranging from all-encompassing comprehensive market studies to product specific niche markets covering North America among other regions of the global market as well. For more info kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail: abhishek@ marketdataforecast.com Visit MarketDataForecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
Lipase Market By Source (Microbial Lipases, Plant Lipases, Animal Lipases), By Application (Animal Feed, Dairy, Bakery, Confectionery, Others), By Functions (Frozen Food And Beverage Additives And Food And Beverage Texturants) And By Region - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, And Forecasts (20162021)

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PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 12:33:53

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email

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# 872 Words

USASales Manager (International Business Development)+1-888-702-9626

The Global Lipase Market was worth USD 457.2 million in 2016 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.6%, to reach USD 629.3 million by 2021.View report: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/lipase-market-3596/ Lipase is an enzyme produced by pancreas which catalyzes biochemical reactions in which hydrolysis of fats take place. It also hydrolyzes ester bonds in triglycerides to form mono glycerides and free fatty acids and also helps in formation of fatty acids. Lipases are also involved in inflammation and cell signaling.Absence or inadequacy of lipase in body results in high cholesterol, high risk towards diabetes, decreased cell permeability, muscle spasms and high levels of triglycerides in the body. Lipases are used in industries for yogurt and cheese fermentation. Recombinant lipase enzymes are being used in applications such as laundry detergents, baking and as biocatalysts in converting vegetable oil into fuel.Download free sample report: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/lipase-market-3596/request-sample Increase in pancreatic disorders and number of patients undergoing pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy, use of lipases in cosmetics industry, changing food habits and increase in consumption of dairy products are driving the lipase market. Use of lipase in food and beverages industry as flavoring agent and to increase shelf life of food products is also expected to drive the market. Uncertainties in patent protection laws are restraining the market growth.The global lipase market is segmented on the basis of source, application, functions and region. Based on source of lipase, the market is segmented into microbial lipases, animal lipases and plant lipases. Microbial lipases produced from bacteria and yeast account for the largest market share as they are most preferred in enzymes industry due to the low cost and high effectiveness compared to that of plants and animals. Based on applications, the market is segmented into Animal Feed, Dairy, Bakery, Confectionery and Others. Animal feed application leads the market in this segment due to increase in livestock production and increasing meat consumption. Dairy products applications are the fastest growing segment due to the changing eating habits and rise in disposable incomes of people. Based on functions the market is segmented into Frozen Food and Beverage Additives and Food and Beverage Texturants.Inquire before buying: http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/lipase-market-3596/inquire On the basis of geography, the global market is analyzed under various regions namely North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific region is the largest market segment due to the increase in demand for bakery and processed dairy products in this region. Latin America region is projected to be the fastest growing segment due to the increase in food and beverage industries.Major players in the lipase market are E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company, Associated British Foods PLC, Amano Enzymes Inc., Novozymes A/S, Advanced Enzymes, Enzyme Development Corporation, Renco New Zealand, Koninklijke DSM N.V., Chr. Hansen Holdings A/S, and Clerici-Sacco Group.Market SegmentationSource Introduction Microbial Lipases Plant Lipases Animal Lipases Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By Source Market Attractiveness Analysis, By Source Market Share Analysis, By SourceApplication Introduction Animal Feed Dairy Bakery Confectionery Others Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By Application Market Attractiveness Analysis, By Application Market Share Analysis, By ApplicationFunctions Introduction Frozen Food and Beverage Additives Food and Beverage Texturants Other Functions Y-o-Y Growth Analysis, By Functions Market Attractiveness Analysis, By Functions Market Share Analysis, By FunctionsThe scope of the report: Global, regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the major countries/regions in which this industry is blooming and to also identify the regions that are still untapped Segment-level analysis in terms of technology, component, and type along with market size forecasts and estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of the effect of exogenous and endogenous factors that affect the global market; which includes broadly demographic, economics, and political, among other macro-environmental factors presented in an extensive PESTLE Analysis Study the micro environment factors that determine the overall profitability of an Industry, using Porters five forces analysis for analysing the level of competition and business strategy development A comprehensive list of key market players along with their product portfolio, current strategic interests, key financial information, legal issues, SWOT analysis and analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies An executive summary, abridging the entire report in such a way that decision-making personnel can rapidly become acquainted with background information, concise analysis, and main conclusions Expertly devised analyst overview along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketAbout Us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, we cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. Our analyst team comprises expert professionals in market research, who with their collective knowledge and skillset dedicatedly serve clients from various industries and regions.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 11:12:02

Loxam Acquires Swan Plant Hire

LOXAM press contact

Yannick Duverge, Tel : 01 71 70 38 38

yannick@relationpresse.com

www.delprat-relationpresse.com

Loxam Group (Loxam) is pleased to announce that it has acquired the Irish construction equipment rental company Swan Plant Hire (Swan) from its founding private shareholders.

Swan was founded more than 45 years ago and operates two branches located in Dublin. It has developed a loyal and well-diversified client portfolio, as well as a strong expertise in general plant hire.

Gerard Deprez, President of Loxam said: This acquisition will allow Loxam to strengthen its position in the Dublin area alongside its Loxam Access branch, and to diversify and complete its equipment range. We are happy to extend our footprint in this dynamic country where Loxam has been operating an equipment rental business for 18 years, and we are pleased to welcome the Swan employees to Loxam. We look forward to working together.

Brian Connolly, Managing Director, added: We are convinced that the acquisition of Swan by Loxam is a great opportunity for our employees to join the European leader in the equipment rental industry. We trust that this acquisition will allow Swan to benefit from Loxam expertise and global growth prospects. We will keep following Swans further development with interest.

About Loxam:

LOXAM is the leading equipment rental Company in Europe with unaudited pro forma consolidated revenue of 1,330 million in 2016 and approximately 7,200 employees. LOXAMs network of more than 725 branches extends over 13 countries in Europe (France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway) as well as in the Middle East, Morocco and Brazil.

More information: www.loxam.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201712040053
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 13:04:02

TORONTO, Dec. 04, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NextSource Materials Inc. (TSX:NEXT) (OTCQB:NSRC) ("NextSource" or the "Company") has received numerous inquiries from stockholders regarding how to vote their respective shares in their efforts to support the Company's intention to move the corporate domicile of the Company to Canada (the "Redomicile") so that it may operate under the Canada Business Corporations Act ("CBCA"). The Company is currently incorporated under the laws of Minnesota.

Redomiciling to Canada from Minnesota will provide the Company a significant reduction in operating cost related to administrative and legal fees, as well as logically aligning our corporate domicile to where the head office and executive management reside. There will be no change in how NextSource conducts its business. It will conduct the same business as it conducted prior to the Redomicile and will continue to be traded on the TSX under the symbol "NEXT" and on the OTCQB under the symbol "NSRC".

TODAY AT MIDNIGHT IS THE DEADLINE TO VOTE YOUR SHARES. PLEASE VOTE TODAY.

HOW TO VOTE

The majority of stockholders will be "non-registered". This means that your shares were either:

i) purchased through a broker or bank, or

ii) currently held with a broker or in a trading account at a broker or bank, or

iii) purchased by you through an online discount broker

If any of the above conditions apply to stockholders, you will need to call your broker, bank or the online discount broker where you currently hold your shares and inform them you wish to vote your shares today for NextSource's 2017 Annual and Special Meeting (the "AGM") of stockholders.

Non-registered stockholders will most likely be provided with a "control number" to allow you to vote online or will provide you with other instructions to vote your shares.

Your vote is important regardless of the number of shares you own. If any stockholders have not yet voted their respective shares, the Company encourages them to do so.

The Board of Directors unanimously recommends that stockholders vote "FOR" this proposal and support the Company's continuing efforts to operate in the most efficient manner and reduce operating expenses wherever possible.

STOCKHOLDER QUESTIONS

Stockholders of NextSource who have questions regarding the Redomicile or may still have questions on how to vote may contact the Company's Senior Vice President directly by email at brent@nextsourcematerials.com.

MAJORITY STOCKHOLDER APPROVAL REQUIRED

In order for the Company to complete its proposed corporate Redomicile to Canada, it is required to obtain majority approval (50-percent plus one) from existing stockholders.

A Proxy Statement was mailed to all stockholders on or about November 13, 2017 ahead of its upcoming 2017 AGM of stockholders, which will be held on December 5th at 10:00am at the Company's Toronto offices.

YOUR VOTE IS IMPORTANT. VOTE TODAY.

Board of Directors and Management UNANIMOUSLY recommend that Shareholders vote IN FAVOUR of the Redomicile.

ABOUT NEXTSOURCE MATERIALS INC.

NextSource Materials Inc. is a mine development company based in Toronto, Canada, that is developing its 100%-owned Molo Graphite Project in southern Madagascar to expected production in 2018. The Molo Graphite Project is a feasibility-stage, shovel-ready project and ranks as one of the largest-known and highest quality flake graphite deposits in the world and the only project with SuperFlake graphite.

For further information contact: +1.416.364.4911

Brent Nykoliation, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development at brent@nextsourcematerials.com or Craig Scherba, President and CEO at craig@ nextsourcematerials.com

Safe Harbour: This press release contains statements that may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this press release relates to the anticipated benefits of the Redomicile, the approval of the Redomicile by our stockholders, the holding of the AGM, trading of our shares on the TSX and OTCQB, and the continued conduct of our business. These are based on current expectations, estimates and assumptions that involve a number of risks, which could cause actual results to vary and in some instances to differ materially from those anticipated by the Company and described in the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Readers are encouraged to review the Company's 10-K as well as the Proxy Statement, especially the risk factors contained therein. No assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur or, if any of them do so, what benefits the Company will derive there from. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as at the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. This communication does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy our securities or the solicitation of any vote or approval. In connection with the proposed Redomicile, on October 30, 2017, the Company filed with the SEC an amendment to its registration statement on Form S-4 (Registration No. 333-220899) that includes a preliminary prospectus/preliminary proxy statement of the Company, which registration statement was declared effective on November 1, 2017. The Company filed the definitive proxy statement/prospectus with the SEC on November 2, 2017, which is being mailed to shareholders of the Company on or about November 13, 2017. INVESTORS ARE ADVISED TO READ THE DEFINITIVE PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS (INCLUDING ALL AMENDMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTS THERETO) CAREFULLY AND ANY OTHER MATERIALS IF AND WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN AND WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED REDOMICILE AND THE COMPANY. Investors may obtain a free copy of the definitive proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant documents (when available) filed and to be filed with the SEC from the SEC's web site at www.sec.gov or at the Company's web site at www.nextsourcematerials.com. Investors will also be able to obtain, without charge, a copy of the definitive proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant documents (when available) by directing a request by mail or telephone to Investor Relations, NextSource Materials Inc., 145 Wellington Street West, Suite 1001,Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5J 1H8, telephone 1.416.364.4911 ext. 305 or by email at info@nextsourcematerials.com. The Company and its directors and officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the Company's shareholders in connection with the proposed Redomicile. Information about these persons is set forth in the definitive proxy statement/prospectus and in documents subsequently filed by its directors and officers under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Investors may obtain additional information regarding the interests of such persons, which may be different from those of the Company's shareholders generally, by reading the definitive proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant documents regarding the proposed redomicile transaction filed and to be filed with the SEC.

This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: NextSource Materials Inc. via Globenewswire


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PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 10:35:20

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Market Data Forecast

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Abhishek Shukla

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+1-888-702-9626

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# 499 Words

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The North America Hemophilia Management Market was worth $1.81 billion in 2015 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 1.52%, to reach $1.96 billion by 2020. Hemophilia is a genetic disorder which impairs body`s ability to control blood clotting.Hemophilia is categorized into three levels depending on its severity as severe, moderate and mild. About 80% of the hemophilia patients are considered to suffer from severe type. CDC estimates that in United States one in every 5000 newborn children is affected by Hemophilia A and one in every 30,000 is suffering from hemophilia BView full report: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-hemophilia-management-market-311/ North America hemophilia management market is driven by key factors such as growing prevalence of the disease; increasing usage of recombinant product, technological advancements. Rising investments in Research and developments for hemophilia products is also a major factor fuelling the growth of the market. However lack of available medication, stringent regulatory approvals and high cost of treatment are the key factors hindering the market growth.North American market for Hemophilia management is segmented on the basis of type of hemophilia and drug. By type of hemophilia it is analysed as Hemophilia A and Hemophilia B. On the basis drug the market is segmented into Octocogalfa, Nonacogalfa, Desmopressin and other drugs. Hemophilia A is the largest segement and also estimated to be the fastest growing segment during the forecast period due to large number of patients suffering from hemophilia AFree sample of the report is available at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-hemophilia-management-market-311/request-sample Based on geography North America hemophilia management market is analyzed under two regions namely United States and Canada. North America is the largest market for hemophilia management accounting for approximately XX%. With North America, United States is the largest market for hemophilia management due to high government support and the increasing number of patients suffering from hemophilia. Canada is estimated to be the fastest growing region due to high growth potential due to increasing usage of available medication.Some of the major companies discussed in the report are Biogen, Baxter International Inc., Pfizer Inc., Bayer Pharma AG, Novo Nordisk A/S, Grifols International SA, CSL Behring, Octapharma and Swedish Orphan Biovitrum ABBuy now: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/cart/buy-now/north-america-hemophilia-management-market-311 About Market Data Forecast:The publisher of this report is Market Data Forecast whose forte lies in Market research and Business Intelligence. Handling both individual and corporate clients across multiple business domains they offer syndicated/customized research to suit the clients research objective. Their research reports section offers a wide variety of market studies ranging from all-encompassing comprehensive market studies to product specific niche markets covering North America among other regions of the global market as well. For more info kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail: abhishek@ marketdataforecast.com Visit MarketDataForecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 14:00:12

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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Organto Foods Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, B.C. (FSCWire) - Organto Foods Inc. (TSX Venture:OGO). has issued a press release with the following headline:Organto Launches New WebsiteTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Organto Foods Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Organto Foods Inc.Source: Organto Foods Inc. (TSX Venture: OGO, OTC Pink: OGOFF)Date: December 04, 2017Time: 8:00 AM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Organto Foods Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 13:00:34

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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for PPX Mining Corp.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCWire) - PPX Mining Corp. (TSX Venture:PPX). has issued a press release with the following headline:PPX Drills 3.0m at 9.71 gpt Au, 45.1 gpt Ag (10.31 gpt Au Eq) and New Ag Zone: 2.7m at 1.73 gpt Au and 752 gpt Ag (11.76 gpt Au Eq) at CallanquitasTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on PPX Mining Corp., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/PPX Mining Corp.Source: PPX Mining Corp. (TSX Venture: PPX, WKN: A2APYX, ISIN: CA69354U1003)Date: December 04, 2017Time: 7:00 AM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of PPX Mining Corp. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 13:00:46

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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Renaissance Gold Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---White Rock, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Renaissance Gold Inc. (TSX Venture:REN). has issued a press release with the following headline:Renaissance Gold Completes Earn-In Agreement with Coeur Explorations Inc. on Cine Mountain ProjectTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Renaissance Gold Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Renaissance Gold Inc.Source: Renaissance Gold Inc. (TSX Venture: REN, OTC Bulletin Board: RNSGF, FWB: 4RG, WKN: A1C7Z0, ISIN: CA75971J1057)Date: December 04, 2017Time: 7:00 AM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Renaissance Gold Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
Global PEGylated Proteins Market was worth USD 690.6 million in 2016 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 10.50%, to reach USD 1.137 billion by 2021.

PEGylated Proteins Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 13:51:48

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Market Data Forecast

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The market is showing great potential in the forecast period, i.e. till 2021. PEGylation is a process of attachment of covalent or non-covalent bond of PolyEthylene Glucol (PEG) polymer chains to molecules and macrostructures, like protein in case of PEGylation of proteins. PEGylated Proteins have become very important because PEGylation of proteins help to protect protein against enzymatic dehydration and it also increases the half-life of drugs.View Full Report @ http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/pegylated-proteins-market-3355/ Increasing R&D investments on pharmaceuticals and healthcare sector, high risk of diseases, increase in adoption of protein based drugs over non-protein based drugs and increased half-life of drugs due to PEGylation are the major driving factors of this market. On the other hand, the unpredictable accumulation of high molecular weight compounds in liver might lead to inclusion bodies with no known consequences. Furthermore, chain length of these compounds can change which might lead to unexpected clearance times in vivo. These concerning matters are challenging this market.Free sample of the report is available @ http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/pegylated-proteins-market-3355/request-sample The Global market for PEGylated Proteins is broadly categorized into Protein Type, Services, Applications, consumable and by end-users. On the basis of Protein types, it is further sub-categorized into Interferons, erythropoietin and mAbs. On the basis of Applications, It is sub-categorized into Chronic Kidney Disease and Cancer treatment applications. On the basis of consumables, it is segmented into Reagents and PEGylation kits. On the basis of End-Users, it is analysed under Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies, CROs and academic research institutes. On the basis of End-Users, Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Companies are the biggest sector for this market.Inquire before buying @ http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/pegylated-proteins-market-3355/inquire Geographically, this market has been sub-categorized into North America, Latin America, Middle East & Africa, Asia-Pacific and Europe. On the basis of market share, North America is leading the charge with more than 30% of the global PEGylated Proteins Market. Asia-Pacific region is growing at the fastest rate in terms of CAGR followed by Latin America.Some of the major companies dominating the market, by their products and services include Laysan Bio, Ltd., Iris Biotech GmbH, Biomatrik Inc., Quanta BioDesign Ltd., Cealares GmbH, Creative PEGworks, Jenkem Technology USA Inc., NOF Corporation, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., and Merck Millipore.Scope of the Report Regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the major countries/regions in which this industry is blooming and to also identify the regions that are still untapped Segment-level analysis in terms of technology, component, and type along with market size forecasts and estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of the effect of exogenous and endogenous factors that affect the global market; which includes broadly demographic, economics, and political, among other macro-environmental factors presented in an extensive PESTLE Analysis Study the micro environment factors that determine the overall profitability of an Industry, using Porters five forces analysis for analysing the level of competition and business strategy development A comprehensive list of key market players along with their product portfolio, current strategic interests, key financial information, legal issues, SWOT analysis and analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies An executive summary, abridging the entire report in such a way that decision-making personnel can rapidly become acquainted with background information, concise analysis and main conclusions Expertly devised analyst overview along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketAbout Us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, we cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. Our analyst team comprises expert professionals in market research, who with their collective knowledge and sksillset dedicatedly serve clients from various industries and regions.
Single Cell Analysis Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 10:49:19

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Single cell analysis is an emerging technology that helps sequence whole human genome at a single cell level. This particularly includes genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, epigenomics, and metabolomics with its sensitivity improved to single cell level. In genomics, new generation methodologies such as next generation sequencing and third generation sequencing play crucial roles. The aim of single cell analysis is mainly to measure and analyze cellular heterogeneity. Single cell analysis interpret life at fundamental level and find immense applications in the field of medicine. Single cell analysis over conventional standard cell numbers sequencing method enable the discovery and investigation of unknown micro-organisms. A study published in the Journal of Single Cell Analysis 2014, stated that a variety of technologies that are powerful and less expensive, such as Multiple Annealing And Looping-Based Amplification Cycle (MALBAC) and Multiple Displacement Amplification (MDA), find great progress in uncovering somatic mutations in human genome and detection of copy number variation. But in human single-cell genomics, Whole Genome Sequencing or Whole Exome-Sequencing (WGS or WESseq) finds great potential in clinical applications, especially in screening, diagnosis, and monitoring. It is popular in academic research because mRNA helps bridge genome structure and epigenomics modification with phenotype, reveals gene functions and regulatory network, and most importantly it is easier to perform than proteomics.Inclination toward single-cell technology by biologists is mainly because many samples including stem cells, immune cells, neurons, cancers, and other tissues exhibit a stochastic nature with heterogeneity factor. Conventional methods cannot provide transcriptomic profile in highly heterogeneous cell population. Even if cell population is less, single cell analysis can enable the identification of biomarkers of delicate phenotypes or disorders (e.g. cancer stem cells). In addition, this analytical technique also helps classify different cell types in different physiological and pathological conditions, in very rare events of any somatic mutation, epigenetic modification of regulatory gene expression, and its function.Request For Sample Copy@Global Single Cell Analysis Market TaxonomyThe global single cell analysis market is segmented on the basis of product, types of cells, type of technique, application, and end user.By product:Consumables (beads, microplate, reagents, assay kits, etc.)Instruments (PCR, NGS system, spectrophotometers, etc.)Automated,Manual10x Genomics, in 2017, launched the chromium single cell V(D)J solution for profiling full length paired V(D)J transcripts from hundreds to millions of lymphocyte. It is a reagent system, which has the ability to completely identify and characterize T and B cells by single cell sequencing. This will reveal true clonality and diversity in adaptive immune system. This product will have an impact on research based single cell analysis market.By Types of cells:Human,Animal,MicrobialBy Type of technique:Mass Spectroscopy (MS),Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR),Next-Generation Sequencing,Flow Cytometry,MicroscopyBy Application:Research,Diagnostic applications,Noninvasive Prenatal Diagnosis (NIPD),In Vitro Fertilization (IVF),Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCsBy End User:Academic & Research Institutes,Biotechnology and Biopharmaceutical Companies,Hospitals and Diagnostic Laboratories,Cell Banks and IVF CentersAdoption rate of treatment options, for instance, stem cell therapy and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is increasing significantly.Long shelf life of single cell analysis products and consumable products is another driver for the growth of single cell analysis market.However, high cost of instruments may have a negative impact on market growth in future.Global Single Cell Analysis Market  Trends and OpportunityA study by the Journal of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry in 2014, stated that Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS) and ICP Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) are applied using metal atoms such as nanoparticle for investigation of cell-to-cell variance or cellular uptake of drugs and other elements. Single-cell genomics find many clinical applications such as genetic diagnosis of embryo-related diseases and to study blood-borne Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs). These applications may be further employed for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of cancer.Major key players in the global single cell analysis market include 10X Genomics, Abcam Plc., Agilent Technologies, Fluxion Biosciences, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Bio-Techne Corporation, Bruker, Danaher Corporation, Fluidigm Corporation, GE Healthcare, and Illumina, among others.Get More Details On this Report:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Coherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@ coherentmarketinsights.com Visit our news Website: http://www.coherentnews.com
PR-Inside.com: 2017-12-04 19:25:02

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HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA - 08837Partner Relations & Marketing Manager+1 (206) 317 1218 (US)

HTF MI comprehensive and detailed 124-page research study on Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate provides a significantly expanded scope with deeply analyzed conclusions and content that includes an industry relevant database of major existing Sodium Thiocyanate manufacturers/players in each region, analysis of 11 leading national markets, important regions [China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Southeast Asia & Australia], a description of major geopolitical trends, analysis of the influencing factors and regulatory policies leading to the volatile dynamics.If you are involved in the Sodium Thiocyanate industry or intend to be, then this study is for you. Its vital you keep your market knowledge up to date. If you have a different set of players/manufacturers according to geography or needs regional or country segmented reports we can provide customization accordingly.Get Access to Sample of Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate Market Report 2017 @: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/sample-report/499772-asia-pacific-sodium-thiocyanate-market The research document will answer following questions such as: How is the Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate market evolving? What are the key next-generation Sodium Thiocyanate technologies/applications? What are the main applications of Sodium Thiocyanate ? How do the Sodium Thiocyanate fit into the market? At what stage of development are the key Sodium Thiocyanate ? Are there any planned, existing or successful demonstration and pilot projects going? What key challenges do Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate have to overcome to become fully commercially viable? Is their development and commercialization dependent on cost reductions or seeks technological/application wise breakthroughs? What is the outlook for key emerging Sodium Thiocyanate ? What difference does performance characteristics of Sodium Thiocyanate creates from those of established entities? Which companies, organizations are involved with Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate growth story? Which market spaces are the most active in the development of Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate market? How do the conditions for the development and deployment of differ in key regional markets? What is driving and restraining factors affecting the development and commercialization?Briefing about some major insights that are included in the study are Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate Sales (K Units) and Revenue (Million USD) by Top manufacturers that includes Liaoyuan Chemical, Boshan Shuangtian Chemical, Shuguang Chemical, Puyang Chenlong Biotechnology, Yindu Chemical, Tianshui Chemical & Xintian Huanbao for forecasted period 2017-2022. Each player highlighted in the research study contains companies Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors, in-depth business overview, geographic footprint and contact information. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to SWOT Analysis.Get customization & check discount for report @ https://www.htfmarketreport.com/enquiry-before-buy/499772-asia-pacific-sodium-thiocyanate-market Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate (Thousands Units) by Application (2017-2022)Market Segment by Application 2012 2017 2022 Market Share (%)2022 CAGR (%)(2017-2022)Propylene Fiber xx xx xx xx% xx%Film Irrigation xx xx xx xx% xx%Plants xx xx xx xx% xx%Other xx xx xx xx% xx%Total xx xx xx 100% xx%Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with Sales, revenue, Market Share (%) and Growth Rate (%) of Sodium Thiocyanate in regions/countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Southeast Asia & Australia, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast).Market Segment by Regions 2012 2017 2022 Share (%) CAGR (2017-2022)China xx xx xx xx% xx%Japan xx xx xx xx% xx%South Korea xx xx xx xx% xx%Taiwan xx xx xx xx% xx%India xx xx xx xx% xx%Southeast Asia xx xx xx xx% xx%Australia xx xx xx xx% xx%Total xx xx xx xx% xx%Buy Single User License of Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate Market Report 2017 @ https://www.htfmarketreport.com/buy-now?format=1&report=499772 In addition to this Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate Market Split by Product Type such as 50-55% & 97-98% and also presented nicely through graphs and tables.Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate (Thousands Units) and Revenue (Million USD) Market Split by Product Type such as 50-55% & 97-98%Market Segment by Type 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 202250-55% xx xx xx xx xx Xx xx-Change (%) xx% xx% xx% xx% xx% xx% xx%97-98% xx xx xx xx xx Xx xx-Change (%) xx% xx% xx% xx% xx% xx% xx%There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate market.Chapter 1, to describe Sodium Thiocyanate Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Sodium Thiocyanate , with sales, revenue, and price of Sodium Thiocyanate , in 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2017;Chapter 4, to show the Global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate , for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Southeast Asia & Australia;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application [Propylene Fiber, Film Irrigation, Plants & Other], from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Sodium Thiocyanate market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Sodium Thiocyanate sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.This brand new research report with title Asia-Pacific Sodium Thiocyanate Market Report 2017 provides 100+ in-depth tables, charts and graphs that will help you make better informed strategic decisions.Browse for Full Report synopsis at: https://www.htfmarketreport.com/reports/499772-asia-pacific-sodium-thiocyanate-market Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.Contact Us:CRAIG FRANCIS (PR & Marketing Manager)sales@ htfmarketreport.com Ph: +1 (206) 317 1218Connect with us at
The Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, on Monday reassured the investing public of continued stability of the Nigerian capital market following last weeks suspension of its Director General, Mounir Gwarzo.

The Commission gave the assurance while announcing the appointment of Abdul Zubair as acting Director General.

Investigations revealed Mr. Gwarzo may have come under official hammer over his alleged refusal to call off the forensic audit the Commission ordered into the messy financial records of the embattled indigenous oil company, Oando PLC.

Mr. Gwarzo was directed by the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, to proceed on compulsory suspension to allow an unimpeded investigation into several allegations of financial impropriety leveled against him.

Specifically, he was accused of pocketing about N104.85 million as severance package while still in service, apart from his involvement in the award of contracts to companies, including Medusa Investment Limited, in which he was alleged to be a director.

He was suspended along with two other top management staff of the Commission, Abdulsalam Naif Habu, Head of Media Division, and Anastasia Braimoh, Head of Legal Department, for their alleged involvement in various financial improprieties contrary to Public Service Rules, PSRs, 03405 and 03406.

Following Mr. Gwarzos suspension, the Federal Government on Monday named Mr. Zubair as his successor with immediate effect, albeit in an acting capacity.

Until his appointment, Mr. Zubair was the Director in charge of External Relations in the Commission.

In the statement announcing his appointment, SEC management said despite fears of a possible disruption in the operation of the capital market, investors should rest assured of continue stability.

SEC Nigeria wishes to assure the investing public and all stakeholders, local and international, of its commitment to ensuring an uninterrupted and orderly operation of the market and the regulation thereof. The Commission is poised to continue sustaining the all-time high level of investor confidence, the statement said.

We will not allow recent developments to disrupt the regulatory effectiveness and efficiency of the Commission as the statutory regulator of the capital market and by extension, the smooth running of the market, it added.

The Commission said while it awaits the outcome of the assignment of the Administrative Panel of Inquiry set up by the Minister of Finance to investigate allegation of financial impropriety against the suspended DG and other officials, it would not allow the operational independence of the Commission to be compromised.

The SEC management said the resolve to uphold the integrity of its regulatory mandate was strictly in line with the objectives and principles of securities regulations as set out by the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), to which Nigeria is a signatory.

Also, the Commission said it would, without let or hindrance, continue to remain faithful to its developmental mandates as enunciated in the Investments and Securities Act, ISA.

While assuring of market efficiency, accountability and transparency, SEC said it would proceed with all regulatory matters currently before it with all sense of objectivity and fairness, with the best interest of investors at the core of all considerations.

Apart from promptly making public its decisions on matters before it, the Commission said it would maintain capital market role in economic stability and growth, and would not abandon its regulatory and developmental responsibilities.

The acting SEC DG is an alumnus of the Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, Zaria, where he received the Bachelor of Science, B.Sc. degree in Economics; Master of Business Administration, MBA, Master of Science, M.Sc. and PhD in Business Administration.

Mr. Zubair holds post graduate diplomas, PGDs (Mathematics & Computer Science) and Education from other universities.

He has over 25 years cognate experience in the financial industry and the academia, with his career traversing banking, private and public service and the academia.

Prior to joining SEC Nigeria, Mr. Zubair served on the board of Intercity Bank Plc, Nigeria and Minna Pharmaceutical and Surgical Company Limited.

He was also Group Managing Director, Niger State Trust Fund and NST Finance Limited as well as a Fellow of the Institute of Corporate Administrators and Marketing Academy of Nigeria.

He is also a member of the Institute of Management Consultants, a certified Commodity Broker and Certified member of Pension Institute of Nigeria.

Mr. Zubair attended several local and international courses at middle, executive and top management levels. He is married with children and has been contributing to academic journals worldwide.
Qatar has accepted the invitation by Kuwait to attend the upcoming summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC, in Kuwait, Qatars English newspaper Gulf Times reported on Monday.

Speaking at a forum organised by the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, Qatars Foreign Minister, Mohamed Al-Thani, stated that Qatar has accepted the invitation to attend the summit, amid the regions worst political crisis in years.

I will attend the ministerial council tomorrow and the emir will attend the summit, Mr. Al-Thani said.

It is important that the GCC system remains alive, he added.

Mr. Al-Thani commented on the accusations of supporting terrorism by its neighbours, saying they are baseless.

These accusations have been only claims and nobody has submitted any proof yet.

Earlier, Kuwait sent out invitations to the GCC member states, but it was not clear whether the other leaders would attend the summit.

The GCC council is a political and economic alliance of countries in the Arabian Peninsula.

Its scheduled to hold the ministerial meeting Monday evening and the leaders meeting on December 5.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and imposed a land, air and sea blockade on their Gulf neighbour.

The Gulf accused it of financing terrorism and maintaining too close of ties to their regional rival, Iran. Doha denies the allegations.

(Xinhua/NAN)
The ongoing campaign for an urgent shutdown of the police Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, appears to have thrown the Force Headquarters into a state of confusion.

At least two conflicting statements emerged from official spokespersons of the police on Sunday when the social media push entered its second day.

While assistant police spokesperson, Aliyu Giwa, conveyed the sympathies of police leadership to the campaigners on Twitter Sunday afternoon, his principal, Jimoh Moshood, said complaints about widespread allegations of criminality by SARS officers were misplaced.

Theres absolutely no doubt that SARS operatives have conducted themselves well over the years, Mr. Moshood told PREMIUM TIMES by telephone Sunday night. You could see that theyve been able to curb the alarming rate of armed robbery across the country, thats why you hardly see reports about any robbery operation in the media lately.

The statement marked a sharp contrast from what Mr. Giwa had earlier stated when he became the first police officer to respond to this social media outcry on Sunday afternoon.

It is disheartening seeing some officers acting uncivilised and unruly. I sympathise with Nigerians who must have found themselves in such situations and believe me the authority is not happy about it! Assistant police spokesperson, Aliyu Giwa, wrote on Twitter.

Trust me the authority have (sic) taken actions on this issue, he added.

Allegations of extra-judicial killings, torture, wanton arrests for bribes and other menacing conducts have flooded the social media since Saturday, with citizens taking their rage to the Internet and demanding action.

The coordinators of #EndSARS, a hashtag many Nigerians have adopted to amplify the issue, told PREMIUM TIMES their aim is to compel the National Assembly and President Muhammadu Buhari to scrap SARS.

They argue that the department, which was launched in early 2000s to combat armed robbery and other criminal activities, has become too contaminated to be reformed.

But Mr. Moshood disagreed with the campaigners and said that SARS should be allowed to continue operating as it is currently constituted.

All the necessary reforms have been concluded including training sessions by rights activist like Joe Okei-Odumakin, Mr. Moshood said.

That is not to say that citizens cannot report excesses of errant personnel, which you can easily find in any profession, he added.

Mrs. Okei-Odumakin did not immediately respond to PREMIUM TIMES enquiries about the scope of training she conducted with the SARS operatives and if the sessions had sufficiently repositioned the embattled department.

Mr. Moshoods statement that SARS personnel are doing fantastically well may just be an attempt to save face and keep the morale of SARS operatives high at a time public condemnation and ridicule, said a senior police officer who pleaded anonymity because he was not authorised to speak for the force.

If a child is doing terribly bad, you dont expect to see the mother openly condemn such a child, the source added. But that does not mean the mother is not seriously punishing the child behind closed doors while working to shape the childs future.

This seemed to have played out last year when Amnesty International accused SARS of torturing detainees in its custody to extract confession or lucrative bribes under duress.

Although the police publicly denied the allegations and accused the rights group of exaggeration, Inspector-General Ibrahim Idris convened an emergency meeting a day after the report was published to demand that SARS commanders turn a new leaf in their conduct.

You have to correct this impression .This is a new beginning to give the nation a new anti-robbery squad, Mr. Idris told SARS commanders from across the country in the September 27, 2016, emergency meeting at Force Headquarters, Abuja.

You dont have the right to take life of anybody or change civil offence to criminal offence. Please dont fail us. This management has the hope in you, I dont want you (SARS) to fail us, he added.

Mr. Idris promised to send the commanders on further training to enable them manage their subordinates in their respective domains.

But Segun Awosanya, one of the lead campaigners to #EndSARS, said the matter has gone beyond what the police leadership could address alone.

Mr. Awosanya and others are planning a nationwide protest as part of the citizen-led initiative to end impunity in the police.

A security analyst, Mike Ejiofor, warned on Sunday that scrapping SARS as demanded by the campaigners could complicate insecurity challenges in the country.

He, however, admitted that a sweeping reform is necessary to make SARS operatives more civil, effective and professional in their conducts.
The Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal, has said the 19 northern states of Nigeria are not afraid of the proposed restructuring of Nigeria.

Mr. Tambuwal stated this on Monday in Jos, Plateau State, at the annual Law Week and memorial lecture by the Nigerian Bar Association, Jos Branch for Justice Dauda Azaki, who died 20 years ago.

The statement came after a remark by his Borno State counterpart, Mr. Shettima, dismissing the clamour for restructuring elicited widespread condemnation especially from eminent southern Nigerians and groups from the southern half of the country.

I can confidently say here that we in the northern part of Nigeria are not afraid of restructuring, Mr. Tambuwal said.

The Sokoto governor, who is a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, said contrary to insinuations that northern Nigerians were opposed to restructuring of Nigeria, saying those saying so were merely raising a false alarm.

Governor Tambuwal stressed that northerners were not afraid of the economic implications of restructuring, stating that most states in the north have enough mineral deposits to be self-sustaining.

He added that Nigerians from all parts of the country desire true federalism.

Speaking in the same vein, the Governor of Bauchi State, Mohammed Abubakar, said restructuring is a welcome development as long as the proposed restructuring will not ignite rancour in the country.

Mr. Abubakar urged that Nigerians to be properly educated on the issue to allay fears among some of them.

On his part, Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong, also called for caution on the issue.

Mr. Lalong said the agitation for restructuring almost caused the country another round of unrest.

A misunderstanding of the concept of restructuring among the younger generation has also undoubtedly given rise in some quarters to the provocative and inciting calls for seccession and the dissolution of the Nigerian state, he said.

Governor Lalong said while he supported the policy of restructuring, he however lamented that some of the agitations for restructuring had veered into hate speeches.

Returning to the topic of Mondays event, Mr. Tambuwal admonished Nigerian judges and lawyers to adjudicate speedily on cases to avoid prolonging stay of persons awaiting trial in prisons

Earlier, chairman of the Jos branch of the NBA, Ralph Monye, criticised the prosecution of some judges in Abuja for alleged corrupt practices.

I had strongly condemned that despicable act and in solidarity with their Lordships, I had predicted that the Judiciary, which seemed at that time to be under intense fire would surely come out unscathed. The dust has since settled and mist of the judges have since resumed in their places of primary assignments.

Mr. Monye said practitioners of other professions were not being questioned for doing wrong, and call for the prosecution of some security operatives for inhuman treatment of citizens.

The DSS (State Security Service) is still one of the security outfits in Nigeria with no one calling for its disbandment, he said.

The thme of the 2017 Law Week of the association was: Restructuring: A Panacea for Nigerias Development and Cohesion.
Following growing outrage against the activities of the police special anti-robbery squad, SARS, the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, has ordered the immediate reorganisation of the notorious unit.

A statement from the Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood, said Mr. Idris also ordered the immediate investigation into the activities of SARS, with the aim of prosecuting cases of human right abuses.

The Inspector General of Police, IGP Ibrahim K. Idris NPM, mni concerned with public interest and the need to reposition the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) for more efficiency and effective service delivery to all Nigerians and ensure that the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) operates based on International Core Value of Policing with integrity and make sure the rule of law prevails in the operations and activities of the outfit, the IGP has directed the immediate re-organization of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) nationwide and instant investigation into all the allegations, complaints and infractions levelled against the personnel of the Special Anti Robbery Squad across the country by the IGP X-Squad of the Force, the statement said.

In the new arrangement, a Commissioner of Police is now the overall head of the Federal Anti-Robbery Squad nationwide under the Department of Operations, Force Headquarters Abuja.

The Police Zonal Commands, State Commands and Divisions will continue to operate anti-crime units/sections, crime prevention and control squads and teams imperative to prevent and detect crimes and criminalities in their Area of Responsibilities, and other crack squads necessary to sustain law and order and protection of life and properties in their Area of responsibilities (AOR).

Federal Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS) will now exist and operate in the State and Zonal Commands under the Commissioner of Police (F-SARS) at the Force Headquarters.

Other changes were also made which include the following:

A Federal SARS Commander of a Rank of Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) and not below Superintendent of Police (SP) will be in charge of FSARS in State and Zonal Commands across the Country. All Commissioners of Police have been directed by the Inspector General of Police to comply with this directive with immediate effect and warn their personnel not to pose as SARS operatives. The IGP X-Squad has been mandated to go round the Commands and Police Formations nationwide to ensure strict compliance and apprehend any erring police officer.

Furthermore, a new training program to be organized by the Force in collaboration with some Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), Local and International NGOs, and other Human Rights Organizations on core Police Duties, Observant of Human Rights and Handling, Care and Custody of Suspects have been directed by the Inspector General of Police for all Federal SARS personnel nationwide with immediate effect,

The statement urged aggrieved members of the public to register their complaints through various channels.

However, aggrieved members of the public who have any complaint in the past or present of violation of their rights by any Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) personnel anywhere in the country are to report through any of the following channels for investigation and further actions

GP X-Squad: 0902 690 0729  Calls 0903 227 8905  SMS 0903 562 1377  whats app

Email:integrityxsquad@gmail.com

FORCE PUBLIC COMPLAINT BUREAU

07056792065 Calls/SMS/whats app

08088450152 Calls/SMS/whats app Email: bailisfree@gmail.com,pressforabuja@gmail.com Twitter: @Policing www.facebook.com/ngpolice

PUBLIC COMPLAINT RAPID RESPONSE UNIT (PCRRU)

08057000001  Calls Only

08057000002  Calls Only

08057000003  SMS & whatsapp only

Twitter: @PoliceNG_PCRRU

www.facebook.com/PolicePCRRU
The Adamawa State police command has confirmed fresh outbreak of violence between farmers and herdsmen in some areas of Numan in the southern part of the state.

A source said many deaths had been recorded while other residents were fleeing.

The attacks are suspected to be reprisals for the killing of dozens of Fulani residents allegedly by their Bachama neighbours.

Confirming the development, police spokesperson in the state, Othman Abubakar, said the crisis started in Dong in Demsa Local Government Area following a misunderstanding between farmers and Fulani herdsmen.

For now, more security were deployed, including soldiers and are on top of the situation.

I cant confirm if it was reprisal but there was dispute, said the police spokesperson.

A fleeing resident of the Bachama dominated area, Gregon Daniel, said his house was burnt in Dong. Herdsmen have sacked our villages of Lawaru and Dong in Demsa Local Government Area.

They stormed the two villages a few hours ago, killing and setting houses ablaze.

Fighting is presently going on as many villagers including women and children are running into the bush for safety, he said.

Both villages are less than 10 kilometres from Numan.

Details later.
Anti-SARS campaigners have rejected the directive of the Inspector-General of Police for the reorganisation of the embattled anti-robbery department, saying it is a measure a little too late.

Ibrahim Idris issued the directive on Monday afternoon for all police commissioners to cease issuing orders to SARS operatives at state level across the country, three days after Nigerians flooded the social media with grievous allegations of criminal conducts by SARS personnel.

Under the new arrangement, SARS officers will now be controlled by officers between the rank of a superintendent of police to chief superintendent of police at state level, according to details of the directive distributed by police spokesperson, Jimoh Moshood, Monday afternoon.

A commissioner of police will have the overall supervision of the department from the Force Headquarters, Abuja.

The squad has also been moved from Force Criminal Investigation Department to Department of Operations. All changes are effective immediately, Mr. Moshood stated.

All complaints against SARS officers will be investigated and errant officers will face disciplinary action, the directive promised.

But Segun Awosanya, one of the lead campaigners against alleged infractions by SARS, welcomed the move, but said it fell short at satisfying their demand.

We thank the IGP for at least showing that he has the ears of the masses, Mr. Awosanya told PREMIUM TIMES by telephone Monday afternoon. But he should realise that the police cannot be the judge in its own case and this matter is beyond him.

Mr. Awosanya said Nigerians have long suffered a myriad of brutal assaults by SARS personnel, and nothing but an absolute closure would make up for its alleged atrocities.

Based on all the evidence weve gathered over the years, its very clear that SARS cannot be redeemed, he said. You cant just reshuffle men whose only approach to policing is brutality and expect them to change overnight.

A new special squad that would tackle armed robbery should be formed and new personnel with modern training be put in charge, he added.

Mr. Awosanya and his team met with Speaker Yakubu Dogara in September to submit a petition which contained alleged abuses by SARS operatives. A copy of the petition was also delivered to Senate President Bukola Saraki.

Both men have promised action, Mr. Awosanya said.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar weighed in on the campaign on Sunday, expressing his sympathies for Nigerians, especially the youth, who have fallen victims of SARS operatives alleged uncivilised conduct.

On Monday, Mr. Abubakar, a 2019 presidential hopeful, said he had looked into all complaints which citizens raised on social media and vowed to take drastic measures if elected president.

I spent last night reading the stories on this #EndSARS hash tag. I am deeply saddened and will do everything I can to help, Mr. Abubakar said.

Mr. Awosanya said the National Assembly and President Muhammadu Buhari must address the matter before the #EndSARS campaign would be relaxed.

Mr. Awosanya and others are planning a nationwide protest as part of the citizen-led initiative to end widespread impunity in the police.

In their statement Monday, the police rejected some of the allegations as untrue, insisting that SARS cannot be scrapped as demanded by citizens.

A security analyst, Mike Ejiofor, warned on Sunday that scrapping SARS as demanded by the campaigners could complicate insecurity challenges in the country.

He, however, admitted that a sweeping reform is necessary to make SARS operatives more civil, effective and professional in their conducts.
Jackson Countys Steve Kling has received the highest award Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation bestows upon its members.

Kling was presented the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federations Distinguished Service to Farm Bureau award during the organizations 98th Annual Meeting in Wisconsin Dells Dec. 3.

It is because of his selfless dedication to others and agriculture that I am extremely proud to recognize Steves distinguished service to Farm Bureau, said WFBF President Jim Holte.

Kling has been an active member of Farm Bureau for 39 years and served in key leadership roles at county and state levels.

Steve is an advocate for Farm Bureau and has devoted countless hours during his years as Jackson County Farm Bureau president, said Holte. His leadership and experience are assets to our organization.

Klings history in Farm Bureau runs deep. His grandfather Walter was a founding member of the Jackson County Farm Bureau and his father Bob served on the board of directors. Kling served on the county board of directors for all but two years since 1977 and now his son Nathan is serving on the board of directors with him.

He has attended the Farm Bureau leader trip to Washington, D.C. and makes it a point to attend Ag Day at the Capitol. Kling has also served on the WFBF Dairy Committee and Policy Development Committee. He has been a Farm Bureau Proud Club (formally Producer Club) member numerous times and has signed more than 35 new Farm Bureau members.

Kling was instrumental in the creation of the annual District 4 policy development meeting. In the mid-2000s, with the help of Todd Quarne of Trempealeau County, they brought county Farm Bureau leaders together to discuss policy resolutions as a district for the first time.

Steve truly embodies what Farm Bureau is about, said Darby Sampson, Jackson County Farm Bureau promotion and education chair. He is a member at a local level making an impact in Farm Bureau that reaches all the way to the top of our organization. He is paving the way for generations to come.

Kling and his wife, Pat, have hosted the Jackson County Dairy Breakfast twice. They were the 2016 Jackson County Farm Family of the year and 2012 Farm Family of the La Crosse Farm Show. In 2005, they received the Jackson County Land Conservation Department Watershed Farmer Award and were finalists for the 2012 Leopold Conservation Award.

The couple has hosted more than eight foreign exchange students through 4-H and DFA programs.

Sampson added, To Steve Kling, Farm Bureau isnt just an ordinary organization; its an organization made up of neighbors, friends and family from across the state and nation that come together for a common cause.
The Police Command in Nasarawa State on Monday said two of its officers were killed by gunmen along the Akwanga-Keffi federal highway.

The Public Relations Officer of the command, Kennedy Idirisu, confirmed the incident to the News Agency of Nigeria in Lafia.

According to Mr. Idrisu, the police officers were stationed at Kubere village, some few kilometres away from Gudi, along the Akwanga-Keffi highway, when the gunmen attacked them from the bush, killing two of them.

He said the command had deployed officers from the Special Anti-Robbery Squad and the mobile police detachment alongside the vigilance group to comb the forest for the suspected assassins.

He said the spot had been identified as a flashpoint for kidnapping and other nefarious crimes, hence the decision by the command to station its officers in the area.

The police spokesperson said the command would not be deterred by the sad incident in its resolve to perform its constitutional responsibility of protecting lives and property.

The hoodlums, by this act, wanted to dampen the morale of the police as we approach the Yuletide so that they can have their way.

However, the command remains resolute and determined to tackle crime head-on as the state Commissioner of Police, Muhammad Uba-Kura, has ordered the deployment of more officers and men to identified flash points across the state, he said.

Mr. Idirisu appealed to members of the public to always provide the security agencies with useful information that would help in curbing crime and criminality in the state.

He said that crime fighting was a collective responsibility, and not for security agencies alone.

(NAN)
There is confusion and uncertainty over the kidnap of former senator and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Ayo Arise, as security agencies have no clue about his kidnap.

Mr. Arise was reportedly kidnapped while on his way to Abuja on Sunday evening, after attending some political meetings in Ekiti.

PREMIUM TIMES investigations revealed that police commands in the four states of Edo, Ekiti, Ondo and Kogi which share a common border along the area the politician was said to have been kidnapped, are yet to account for any kidnap incident involving Mr. Arise.

Ekiti State Police Public Relations Officer, Alberto Adeyemi, who earlier confirmed the incident, however, said he could not make comments because it did not happen within his jurisdiction.

Asked where it happened, he said, I cannot say, I am not allowed to comment on incidents that did not happen within my jurisdiction.

Efforts to get a response from the Ondo State Police Command also met a brick wall as it had no idea where the senator was kidnapped.

Police spokesperson in the state, Femi Joseph, said the incident did not take place within the Ondo State jurisdiction. He however promised to do more to get clearer details of the incident.

In Kogi State where it was thought the kidnap took place, the police formation sad it was yet to get any information or report of kidnapping in the state.

William Aya, the Kogi Police Public Relations Officer, told PREMIUM TIMES that the command was yet to receive any report of the kidnap of the senator.

I dont think it happened within Kogi State, he said. We have not received any report on that for now.

The Edo State Police Command also had no information on the whereabouts of the senator, as the command claimed no report had been made about him.

We do not have any report on the kidnapping of Senator Ayo Arise, I am not sure we have any such report, Edo State Commissioner of Police, Babatunde Kokumo, said.

Maybe it happened in Ondo or Kogi state, but there is no report of any kidnapping of the senator in Edo.

When PREMIUM TIMES correspondent informed him that the states mentioned had already denied knowledge of the incident, he said he would do some investigation and get back to the reporter.

Meanwhile, it was earlier gathered that the abductors of the senator had contacted the family with a demand of N80 million ransom.

The APC in Ekiti State has reacted to the situation, calling on security agencies to help in not only locating the whereabouts of Mr. Arise, but rescue him unhurt as soon as possible.

The spokesperson of the party, who said Mr. Arise was last heard of Sunday evening, noted that the party was worried that the rate of kidnapping of Ekiti citizens had been on the increase.

According to him, the Arise incident would be the third in a series of kidnapping of Ekiti citizens, allegedly targeting members of the APC.

He said the information on the incident was still scanty and efforts were underway to get a clearer picture of what happened.
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has welcomed the return of the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, to its fold on Sunday.

Mr. Abubakar took to facebook to announce that he is joining the PDP after resigning from the governing All Progressives Congress, APC, last week.

In a statement by its spokesperson, Dayo Adeyeye, late on sunday, PDP said  we are indeed glad that he has realised the unbridled lies/deceit of his former Party, the All Progressive Congress, APC.

The PDP remains his home; a house he was part of building and which he helped to nurture. We believe his return will add value in the process of rebuilding our Party to greater heights.



The PDP described Mr. Abubakars decision to rejoin it as another milestone recorded by the current leadership of our party in its quest to reconcile, rebuild and restructure the PDP ahead of the 2019 General Elections and beyond.

We will continue to remain transparent and dedicated to the service of this party. Again, we want to use this opportunity to call on all our members that are still in the APC or other parties to return home. 

We are equally extending our invitation to all those in the APC who are frustrated by the partys failure to deliver the goods. Anyone who is desirous of a return to the era of abundance and freedom under the PDP administration is welcome. The umbrella is big enough to accommodate all.

We enjoin our members nationwide to come together as one family, as we march to Eagle Square, Abuja on Saturday 9  Sunday 10, December 2017 to elect our new leaders who will manage the affairs of our party at the national level, the statement said.
The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has expressed happiness over the return of a former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. He described his action as a welcome development not only for the party, but also for the nations democracy.

Mr. Ekweremadu said this in a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media, Uche Anichukwu.

The lawmaker said the move represented a massive vote of no confidence in the leadership capacity of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, first, by the masses, and now by the cream of its hierarchy and founding members.

Nigeria is in dire need of a rescue mission to rekindle hope in our democracy, restore her on the path of prosperity, and halt the worsening divisiveness that threatens our corporate existence, he said.

Mr. Ekweremadu called on other PDP members who left to return and reunite under the umbrella.

I, therefore, enjoin all former PDP faithful who left for various reasons as well as other progressive-minded Nigerians to emulate Alhaji Atiku, to reunite under the umbrella to salvage the nation because I see a new and better Nigeria coming in 2019.

I see a country where corruption will be eradicated, a nation that will be a pride to Africa and admiration of the international community, and a nation where no man will be oppressed, intimidated, persecuted or sidelined on account of ethnicity, religion or political persuasion. No amount of desperation will stop the will of God for Nigeria in 2019, he said.

Mr. Abubakar had last week announced his exit from the ruling party, APC, citing the inability of the party to meet the expectations of the citizens and worsening suffering of youth in the present dispensation.

He announced on Sunday he was joining the PDP.
Nigerians have expressed mixed reactions to the exit of a former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, from the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

Mr. Abubakar had on November 24 announced his exit from the APC giving several reasons as to why he made that decision.

While other parties have purged themselves of the arbitrariness and unconstitutionality that led to fractionalisation, the All Progressives Congress has adopted those same practices and even gone beyond them to institute a regime of a draconian clampdown on all forms of democracy within the party and the government it produced, he said in his statement.

He went ahead to criticise the APC, stating that the party has not only failed the Nigerian youth but also failed to take their welfare as priority..

Barely a week later, Mr. Abubakar announced his return to the PDP on Facebook Live, adding that he would focus more on job creation and youth development in his speech. The ex-official has not hidden his desire to contest for the presidency in 2019.

Creating jobs is something I know about as I have created over 50,000 direct jobs and 250,000 indirect jobs in my own state of Adamawa, he said.

Amidst the debate generated by Mr. Atikus move, many Nigerians have expressed diverse views.

A senator, Ben-Murray Bruce earlier tweeted, Just watched @atiku, the next President of Nigeria, #Atikulately announcing he would return to my party, the @OfficialPDPNig. We in the PDP already have a good retirement package for President @MBuhari. Time to #ChangeTheChange

Just watched @atiku, the next President of Nigeria, #Atikulately announcing he would return to my party, the @OfficialPDPNig. We in the PDP already have a good retirement package for President @MBuhari. Time to #ChangeTheChange pic.twitter.com/N697uEz5ye  Ben Murray-Bruce (@benmurraybruce) December 3, 2017

Below are some other reactions:

Tayo, leadership is like business. I say my product is the best because I believe it is. You say your product is the best because you believe it is. We leave the customer to make the buying decision. https://t.co/GwVxMfZKHl  Atiku Abubakar (@atiku) December 4, 2017

https://twitter.com/SKSolaKuti/status/937430702118850560

Mr @atiku is over 71yrs presently and he's going to be around 73yrs if elected to be the president of Nigeria in 2019. Where are the youths?  Apex Predator (@CallMeBiola) December 4, 2017

If money and major electoral malpractice do not come into play, Atiku can't even win Adamawa against Buhari  Mr. Aye Dee (@MrAyeDee) December 3, 2017

So let's talk about @Atiku and final bus stops pic.twitter.com/vieqqEkwsC  Mr. Aye Dee (@MrAyeDee) December 3, 2017

Dear PDP, Now that @atiku has joined your fold, please make him your presidential candidate. He is your best chance at winning in 2019. His pocket is deep. Money wont be a problem. We need his/our money to boost our economy Do this for Nigerians with good conscience Regards  Bankole Akintunde Adebayo (@AdeBanqie) December 3, 2017

https://twitter.com/AdeBanqie/status/937335606526595072

Someone just said @atiku is better than @MBuhari and I just laughed. Everybody is better than Buhari.  Comrade Deji Adeyanju (@adeyanjudeji) December 3, 2017

At least @atiku has his SSCE certificate, while @MBuhari has his . certificate.  Bart Samuel (@EngrBarth_Sam) December 3, 2017

Hopefully Atiku's decamp to PDP will stir a vibrant opposition and get @MBuhari to wake up from his slumber and tackle issues decisively in the manner millions of Nigerians who invested their all to get him into power expected him to do.  Souljah (@jeffphilips1) December 3, 2017
The Anglican Bishop of Wusasa Diocese in Zaria, Ali Lamido, said despite the challenges confronting Nigeria, the countrys unity is still non-negotiable.

The clergyman said even if the nation breaks up as being advocated by some regional groups, it will still have to navigate numerous challenges.

He made this known on Saturday at the Anglican Diocese 20th anniversary celebration held in Zaria, Kaduna State.

He said Nigeria is extremely polarised along ethnic, sectional and tribal lines to the extent that, the white on the National flag which signifies unity makes no sense.

If Nigeria splits into many parts the prevalent problem of today will still remain. If we dont learn how to live in unity as Nigeria we will never be able to live in unity even if Nigeria splits into a hundred parts, he added.

Mr. Lamido noted that the several calls about restructuring by different agitators will assist in addressing some of the challenges facing the country.

Many reasons have been advanced for this (restructuring) according to the agitators and this will help us to address our challenges politically, economically, socially and religiously.

However there are those who oppose the restructuring and think that we should emphasise on what keeps us together rather than divide us. We feel that there should be a point of convergence where we put Nigeria ahead of our individualistic and primordial interest, he said.

The bishop commended the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, for his efforts in developing education, health and job creation in the state.

However, he appealed to the state government to reconsider its plan of sacking about 22,000 teachers for their incompetency.

He suggested that the government organise training and retraining for the teachers rather than fire them.

Speaking on insecurity in the state, the bishop raised concerns about the worsening kidnapping activities along the major highways that link the state.

Kaduna state has reached a frightening proportion where kidnapping has become a daily thing. Anybody plying Kaduna Abuja road or Kaduna Birni-Guwari road does so with his heart in his mouth, he said.

The bishop gave awards to a former minister of defence, Theophilus Danjuma; former vice chancellor of University of Benin, Adamu Baiki and also a posthumous award to a former minister of external affairs, late Ishaya Audu. Humanitarian awards were also given to selected persons.

The event ended on Sunday with a thanksgiving service at the cathedral.
These are the major reports that trended in the health sector last week.

54 babies born HIV positive in Nasarawa- Official

Fifty four babies delivered in Nasarawa state between January to September, tested positive to HIV.

Zakari Umar, the Executive Director of Nasarawa State Aids Control Agency, NASACA, said 54 out of 1,194 pregnant women who keyed into the Prevention of Mother- to- Child Transmission (PMTCT) HIV programme in 2017, transmitted the virus to their babies.

According to him, records from 2016 indicated that 66 babies were born with HIV and the cases of transmission recorded were due to lack of adherence to medical advice and refusal to take prescribed drugs.

Health insurance advocated for persons living with HIV

The federal government has been urged to adopt healthcare insurance schemes for people living with HIV/AIDS to reduce dependency on donor funds for its treatment and prevention.

Kema Onu, the Site Coordinator, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), a non government organisation who spoke on the sidelines of events commemorating the 2017 World AIDS Day celebration said that adopting the insurance scheme for people living with HIV would create a sustainable means of funding its treatment and reduce the dependency on foreign donor agencies.

He said the Nigerian Government needs to show more commitment to ownership and sustainability of HIV response by developing strategies that would scale up funds.

He said out of over 3.2 million people living with the virus in Nigeria, only about 800,000 people are on treatment and out of the 800,000 on treatment, 750,000 of them are being funded by foreign partners.

10,000 Nigerians die of cancer annually  Minister

The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole said 10,000 Nigerians die annually due to agony and lack of basic equipment for treatment of cancer.

Mr. Adewole at the inauguration of the National Hospitals Radiotherapy Centre with new Multilleave Linear Accelerator for cancer treatment attributed the number of deaths to lack of necessarily equipment and resources to attend to cancer patients in the country.

He said: based on the review of International Atomic Energy Agencies of all countries conducted in 2013 only South Africa and Egypt have the capability of treating cancer in Africa.

Consumer council seeks to enforce patients rights in Nigerian hospitals

The Director General of the Consumer Protection Council, Babatunde Irukera, has said the agency has concluded plans to introduce a Patients Bill of Rights, in Nigerian hospitals to govern the relationship between health practitioners and their patients.

Mr. Irukera said the Nigeria Medical Association, NMA as well as pharmacists bodies and other stakeholders in the health sector, had bought into the initiative.

We are proposing a Patients Bill of Rights, just a statement of the rights of patients and the responsibility of healthcare providers to let both the people who should know their rights and those who have a duty to respect those rights, see it every day. We intend to translate it into different languages and make it mandatory that its pasted in public hospitals and private hospitals, he said.

Global response to malaria at crossroads due to reduced funding  WHO

The global fight against malaria may suffer a setback following reduction in funding by international donors and governments of high burdened countries across the world.

According to the World Health Organisation, the 2017 World Malaria Report, indicated that global progress in malaria control has stalled as 216 million people in 91 countries were infected with malaria in 2016, an estimated five million more cases than in 2015.

The report also shows that Africa bore an estimated 90 per cent of all malaria cases and deaths worldwide in 2016 and 15 countries, all but one of them in sub-Saharan Africa, carry 80 per cent of the global malaria burden.

Borno: 16,000 die of HIV in 3 years

The Borno chapter of the Network of Persons Living with HIV and AIDS in Nigeria, NEPWAN, says more than 16, 000 of its members died in the past three years in state.

The Chairman, Hassan Mustapha, said that the victims died due to the activities of Boko Haram, which made it difficult for patients to access Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) and other support services.

He explained that more than 27, 000 persons were registered for ART between 2011 and 2014, in various designated centres in the state, lamenting that the number dropped to 11, 303 clients in 2017.

Researchers launch two studies in Africa on new HIV vaccine

Researchers announced the launch of two big studies in Africa to test a new HIV vaccine and a long-acting injectable drug, fuelling hopes for better ways to protect against the virus that causes AIDS.

The start of the three-year vaccine trial involving 2,600 women in southern Africa means that for the first time in more than a decade there are now two big HIV vaccine clinical trials taking place at the same time.

The new study is testing a two-vaccine combination developed by Johnson and Johnson (J&J), the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Lagos State Chapter of the PDP on Sunday night endorsed Olabode George as its preferred candidate for the national chairmanship position during the forthcoming December 9 national Convention of the party.

Moshood Salvador, the state chairman of PDP, gave the certification at a meeting between Mr. George and members of the party, held at the partys secretariat in GRA, Ikeja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr. George had been on campaign in the Southern states of the country to seek support for votes ahead of the National Convention.

There are about eight aspirants jostling for the National chairmanship seat of the party from the south.

They include: the former Governor of Ogun State, Gbenga Daniel, former Minister of Education, Tunde Adeniran.

Others are: the former Minister of Youth Development, Taoheed Adedoja and former Lagos State PDP governorship candidate, Jimi Agbaje, Uche Secondus, a former acting National Chairman of PDP, and Raymond Dokpesi.

Mr. Salvador said:  On behalf of Lagos PDP, we must vote for Chief Bode George come Dec. 9; the South west is the rightful region to have the chairman of our great party.

In the last dispensation, Ekiti produced the Vice- Chairman while Osun and Oyo states took the highest office. It is only Lagos that is left and what we want is the chairman.

The South-east and the South-south have produced a chairman before that is why it is our turn to have the chairman of PDP, he said.

Earlier, Mr. George assured members that if given the opportunity to serve, he would re-establish the culture and tradition put in place by the founding fathers of the PDP.

If I am given the opportunity, I will not be new to the management of this party because the partys constitution is not going to be new to me; I know its provisions as I know the back of my hand.

We grew up with the party and the founding fathers handed over the culture of the party to us and that is what we would re-establish.

Just check out, from the end of our convention to the national election is a very short time, it is not a time where you can do experimentation, it is not a time you can bring a green horn to be the chairman of the party.

If you are desirous that you want to win that election, on that day before you cast your votes search your consciences and think very carefully.

Secondly, it is not a matter of life and death, if I dont believe that I have anything to offer, I will not be here.

I will not compromise on things that are not right and are not in the constitution.

I will do things the way they should be done and everybody will be happy. That was how our founding fathers were moving the party forward , Mr. George said. (NAN)
A former vice president of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, has said that political leadership is like a business, and therefore the decision to choose whom to buy from in 2019 was entirely that of the customer.

Mr. Abubakar on Sunday declared via Facebook that he was returning to his former party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, after resigning from the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, last month.

He has repeatedly accused the APC of letting Nigerians down.

Mr. Abubakar, since his declaration, has been using the social media to engage Nigerians over his ambition to run for president in 2019.

On Monday, a Twitter user, by name Tayo Oviosu (@oviosu), tweeted at the former vice president, Dont you think Nigeria needs fresh young leaders vs leaders who have been there before? You have been VP and served well. Can we not make room for new up and coming leaders?

Mr. Oviosu asked Mr. Abubakar to be candid in his response if he wanted his vote.

Mr. Abubakar (@atiku) responded: Tayo, leadership is like business. I say my product is the best because I believe it is. You say your product is the best because you believe it is.

We leave the customer to make the buying decision, he said.

Mr. Abubakars return to the PDP has stirred some excitement within the party. Ben Murray-Bruce, a PDP senator from Bayelsa State, on Sunday, excitedly called the former vice president the next president of Nigeria.

Mr. Abubakar had previously boasted that he could easily defeat President Muhammadu Buhari if both men contest against each other in 2019.
Popular Nigerian comedian, I go dye, has advised former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, not to use sentimental empathy with the Nigerian youth to drive his political ambition.

Mr. Abubakar had on November 24 announced his exit from the All Progressive Party, APC, stating among his reasons that the ruling party has not only failed the Nigerian youth but also failed to take their welfare a priority.

Barely a week later, Mr. Abubakar announced his return to the Peoples Democratic Party on Facebook Live. Dropping hints of running for president in 2019, he said he would focus on job creation and youth development.

Creating jobs is something I know about as I have created over 50,000 direct jobs and 250,000 indirect jobs in my own state of Adamawa, he said.

Reacting, however, I go dye took to his Instagram page to write an open letter to the former Vice President asking him to advocate process that will produce a youthful leadership in the 2019 election.

The letter reads:

Dont use sentimental empathy on the youths to express your political ambitions.

Sir, you are one of those that have immensely benefited from Nigeria since your birth in 1946.

Having worked for 20years with the Nigeria Customs where you retired at the age of 43 in 1989 as Deputy Director, your bucket list sure looks good because you were obviously employed at youth 23.

In 1999 you became governor of Adamawa and ultimately the Vice President, all of these you achieved at 53.

What did you do during your time in that exalted position? When will the youths like in your time get a chance? am motivated to speak, based on your statement : A party that does not take the youths into account is a dying party.The future belong to young.Please which of the future?

Remarkably, between 1999 and 2007 that you were the Vice president of Nigeria, it is recorded that tertiary institutions witnessed several strikes that wasted seventeen months ,three weeks and three days.Within this period, what did you do?

If social support were given to youths then,their children will be between 18 and 20 years during the 2019 elections,obviously they would have willingly voted for you or anyone that you endorse in 2019.

This is the essence of making sacrifices for the future generation.

You cannot be credited to have been a philanthropic to the youths.

The recent revocation of the NPA contract with Intel,your company,is the major issue.

As a company either, the people in the region you operated cannot accredit Intel to have provided credible support for the youths or built skills acquisition centers to curb unproductivity as part of its cooperate social responsibility , which has resulted to many youths embarking on the sub- Sahara deserts route trekking to Europe,which has claimed many lives.

Your excellency,sir Atiku Abubakar, please dont use sentimental empathy on the youths to express your political ambitions,because by 2019 the youths are preparing to substantiate the real economical,political and progressive change.

I kindly recommend that you should advocate for process that will afford us

the opportunity of a youthful leadership in the 2019 election.

Thanks Amb Francis.
Click here for real-time updates from the La Crosse County Courthouse for the sentencing of Todd Kendhammer. Kendhammer, 47, of West Salem fatally beat his wife, Barbara, early Sept. 16, 2016, and then tried to cover up her murder by staging a traffic crash in the town of Hamilton. She died the next day.
The National Union of Air Transport Employees, NUATE, is to picket Kenya Airways from December 5 over poor treatment of Nigerians employed by the airline.

The General Secretary of NUATE, Olayinka Abioye, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, in Lagos on Monday.

Mr. Abioye explained that the picketing would be indefinite until the management of the airline acceded to the unions demands.

He said that the patience of Nigerians working with Kenya Airways had been exhausted, noting that Nigerians would no longer continue to suffer in the company.

Notice is hereby given by the union to all intending passengers on Kenya Airways that with effect from 12 midnight on Tuesday, December 5, all operations of Kenya Airways in Nigeria shall be grounded.

Mr. Abioye appealed to intending passengers on Kenya Airways to bear with the union during the protest.

He described disgruntled workers as accidents waiting to happen, stressing that this was what the union was trying to prevent.

(NAN)
A six-year-old victim of Boko Haram violence, Ali Ahmadu, has returned to Nigeria after undergoing a surgery in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, UAE.

Young Ahmadu was flown to Dubai on September 10 this year under the umbrella of GIPLC, a non-governmental organisation that coordinated the appeal for help to enable the young boy walk again, after he was attacked and maimed by insurgents.

Following the appeal, the Dickens Sanomi Foundation provided over N17 million for the hospital fees as well as transportation and other services in Dubai.

Ali returned to Abuja aboard Ethiopian airline accompanied by his aunt and Nuhu Kwajafa, the coordinator of GIPLC, who were by his bedside during the period of treatment and rehabilitation.

An official of the foundation, who received Ali at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Goodluck Hayi, in a brief address to journalists said the foundation will be working with Alis family through GIPLC to support his post-surgery life.

I am authorised to announce that an educational scholarship will be provided for Ali until he gets to University by the Taleveras Foundation.

Mr. Hayi recalled that about three months ago, we all witnessed at the same airport Ali Ahmadu being taken away on a wheel chair, today to the Glory of God we are here to receive Ali Ahmadu, walking handsomely into our arms.

He said what started as a painful journey for Ali after the Boko Haram attack in Chibok, four years ago that confined him to a wheel chair, has transformed into a journey of hope, love and care.

Dickens Sanomi Foundation is backed by the principle of love and care, one that was practised and preached by the late assistant inspector general of police, Mr Dickens Sanomi. Today, we demonstrate these principles by being our neighbours keepers and teaching love by showing it, he said.

The coordinator of GIPLC, who also spoke upon arrival from Dubai said young Ali suffered excruciating pains all over his body, brought upon him by the senseless marauders, when they invaded his village of Chibok in 2014.

Mr. Kwajafah said Boko Haram terrorists crushed everything/everyone in their path, severely damaging his still-forming vertebral column in the process but the hand of God preserved Ali, so we may give glory to

His name.

He added that since that incident, the little boy never accessed any form of orthodox medication.

He was at the mercy of traditionalists, in highly unpredictable and perilous times. Obviously, during this period, access to education, nutrition, psychosocial tuning, water, sanitation or hygiene, was very limited, if not non-existent.

He was immobile and fast detoriating, physically and mentally, from that period until the 1st quarter of this year, 2017, when GIPLC made contact with him, he said.

He also said the organisation facilitated the relevant examinations & digital/lab tests, for assessment and proper medical attention.

After duly assessing the various options open to us, from all over the world, we resolved to take him to the UAE. After almost 6 hours of extremely delicate surgery, about a week in ICU and a month in recovery, Ali took his first steps into a brighter future, he said.

Mr. Kwajafah said GIPLC is committed to Alis post surgery well-being and have received confirmation from Dickens Sanomi Foundation to support his settling in the society, while the Taleveras Foundation will provide him with a scholarship.

Mr. Kwajafah said GIPLC will also organise an end of year party for orphans and vulnerable children, targeting over 3,000 of them.
The Concerned Citizens for Atiku on Monday congratulated former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, on his return to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

The group in a statement by Henry Oqua said the move is one that it has looked forward to with keen interest.

We hope that the struggle to rescue Nigeria from the hands of incompetence and corruption can now move to the next gear.

A lot has been said about Alhaji Abubakars dumping of the All Progressives Congress, APC, but one thing that hasnt been denied by the party is the failure of its government.

This group hopes that the opposition Peoples Democratic Party has learned from its terrible mistakes in the last general elections, and is willing to let one of its founders point it in the direction it should have headed years ago.

The group urged the PDP to maintain a clear and level playing field for all aspirants under its umbrella, adding that impunity must be put away from the party, and as it claims, the PDP must ensure it returns power to the people.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Atiku, our preferred candidate for the 2019 presidential election, has picked key areas which the PDP must wrap itself around if it intends to claim victory at the polls. These areas are the youth and fresh negotiations on the future of Nigeria.

The CC4ATIKU wishes to stress that the PDP must not shy away from having these conversations and must ensure to follow the lead of Nigerians in issues that pertain to how they want to be led.

Nigeria must never be allowed to remain in the shackles of poverty, waste, nepotism, bigotry and crass governance, it said.

While endorsing Mr. Abubakar for president come 2018, the group added that Atiku Abubakar is the man we need to break those chains and set this wonderful country called Nigeria free to attain heights befitting of her natural endowments and ever hopeful people.
A Nigerian musician and leader of the Our Mumu Don Do movement, Charles Oputa, on Monday led a group of protesters to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand that the Nigerian government do more over the plight of Nigerians allegedly sold as slaves in Libya.

The protest which was peaceful had the protesters bound in chains and handcuffs and also sealed their mouths.

The spokesperson of the protesting group, Raphael Adebayo, urged the federal government to take urgent steps to ensure that the sale of Nigerians into slavery in Libya is brought to an end.

Our message to the federal government today is very simple and clear: that issuing press statement is not enough to give respite to the Nigerians who are suffering in Libya. Concocting and fabricating phone numbers is not enough to give respite to the Nigerians suffering in Libya.

What we are demanding is that decisive and genuine actions are taken to repatriate Nigerians who are in Libya and give them a reason to want to be Nigerians. We hope that they are going to act on these demands of ours, he

said.

Top government officials in the ministry including the Nigerian Charge DAffaire to Libya, Iliya Danladi Fachano, while receiving the protesters, said the government is already repatriating Nigerians, detained in Libya.

Speaking on behalf of the government officials, Mr. Fachano said that the federal government is currently having a series of engagements at various levels to fashion out the best ways address the issue.

By rule as civil servants, we do not speak on what we do but let me tell you what the Nigerian embassy has been doing in Tripoli.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) usually informs us of the detention camps where Nigerians are kept by the Libyan authorities who refer to them as illegal migrants.

Upon the receipts of the IOM intelligence reports, we visit the detention camps to identify our people. After we properly identify them, we issue them emergency travel certificates and schedule a date for their flight

home. The IOM finance the flights.

We also forward the names of the returnees to Nigeria where officials of our consular department and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) will expect to receive them for rehabilitation and resettlement upon their return to the country.

So far, we have registered over 3,000 Nigerians in Libya and repatriated about 2,000. On Tuesday 5th December, 2017, we are expecting a batch of 250 returnees by 7pm in Lagos.

On the global level, migration is not an issue. It is only an issue when it is illegal. Illegal migration is like terrorism. Our duty is to protect both Nigerians that run afoul of the law and those that are legal migrants

because we exist in Libya to serve the interest of all Nigerians.

He added that for those sold as slaves, we request for their freedom and take up cases against Nigerians in Libya who are found culpable in cases of alleged slave auction in Tripoli and other parts of Libya.

Last week, Charly Boy also led a protest to the Libyan Embassy to protest the alleged inhuman treatment of Nigerians by the Libyan authorities.
The Nigerian government has initiated a N28 billion health fund that will target the revitalisation of at least one primary health Centre in each of the 774 local government areas.

The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, on Monday inaugurated the special intervention which he said would be formally rolled out in 2018.

According to the minister, part of the interventions would include Tertiary

Health Institution Project alongside the revitalisation of 774 primary healthcare centres located in each local government area in the country.

A recent investigation by PREMIUM TIMES mirrored the terrible state of Primary Health Centres across the nation.

The federal government in January this year said it had concluded plans to

engage 200,000 voluntary health workers to improve delivery of immunisation, antenatal care and other health services in rural areas.

The announcement followed the flag-off of a scheme to revitalise about 10,000

healthcare centres across Nigeria.

But about 10 months later, all the eight primary health care centres PREMIUM TIMES visited in Niger, Benue and Nasarawa states in North Central Nigeria had no doctors, drugs or equipment.

The few health workers seen at the centres were outnumbered by patients.

1 PHC per LGA would be revitalised, the minister noted on Monday.

Mr. Adewole added that the project would also include the purchase of additional anti-retroviral drugs for 20,000 Nigerians living with HIV/AIDS.

According to him, it will also include the conduct of a nationwide screening of common cancers such as cervix, breast and prostate.

He said that the scheme would carry out free surgeries for 10,000 persons suffering from cataract adding that at least 250 cataract surgeries would be performed in each state.

The minister said the project would also cover free treatment for 800 patients with confirmed diagnosis of hepatitis C infection.

The tertiary hospitals are designed as facilities at the peak of the healthcare system where most complicated medical conditions are handled.

Unfortunately these facilities are today faced with numerous challenges

including inadequate equipment for tertiary care services.

Other challenges are under-funding arising from budgetary and fiscal

constraints and dilapidated infrastructure amongst others, he said.

He noted that in spite of governments special interventions and annual

budgetary appropriations, the delivery of healthcare services face, critical

operational challenges.

The minister said the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has designed

the tertiary health institution intervention as a means to address some of these critical challenges as enshrined in the act establishing it.

He added that one of the core objectives of NHIS was to ensure the availability of fund to the health sector for improved services.

Besides this, the scheme is to ensure equitable patronage at all levels of

healthcare facilities within the federation,the minister added.

Mr. Adewole said 21 Federal Teaching Hospitals, 31 Medical Centres and 4

Specialist Hospitals including 14 Fistula and Cleft lip and palate centres across the six geopolitical zones would benefit from the intervention.

Under the project, each of the teaching hospitals will receive N300 million, while the specialist hospitals will receive N200 million each.

The Federal Medical Centres and the Fistula Centres will each receive N150

million respectively, the minister said.
A suspected armed robber was on Monday involved in an accident while making away with the car he allegedly snatched from the owner.

The suspect had stolen the ash coloured Toyota Camry with registration number KTU 765 DV, and was driving along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway when he had an accident.

The Ogun State Commander of Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, Clement Oladele, who confirmed the development said a motorist, who passed by the accident scene reported to some officials of the corps who were stationed nearby.

A motorist, who stopped by the FRSC team had reported a crash at Ramona Trailer park Ogere and the team quickly moved to the scene, he said.

On getting to the scene, the FRSC patrol team were able to secure the driver, who was the only occupant of the vehicle, the commander added.

The FRSC team subsequently contacted MTD Iperu for a tow vehicle to remove the vehicle but while interrogating the driver the FRSC team noticed an inconsistency in his statement which became reasonable to suspect foul play.

The commander said the team leader quickly put a call to the number found on a Union Bank teller in the car, a move the driver resisted.

Mr. Oladele said the officials call was answered by a lady, who claimed to be a naval officer and who confirmed that the car belonged to her.

He said an identity card also found in the car corresponded with the name given by the lady on the phone, who also said the car was snatched from her.

The victim said she had already reported the case to Shogunle Police Station in Lagos.

Mr. Oladele said the recovered vehicle and the suspect have been handed over to the police officers at the Iperu Police Station.
A former spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party, Olisah Metuh, has been instructed to present his next defence witness, besides former President Goodluck Jonathan at his ongoing trial.

The order was made on Monday during the trial of Mr. Metuh at an Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, for alleged diversion of N400 million from the office of the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki.

Mr. Metuh had earlier asked the court to compel Mr. Jonathan to appear as a defence witness, alongside Mr. Dasuki, in a bid to prove his (Metuhs) innocence.

Although the court presided by the judge, Okon Abang, initially refused the application to subpoena Mr. Dasuki, it later consented to the request, after an Abuja division of the Appeal Court overruled Mr. Abang.

Consequently, the court ordered its bailiff to issue a subpoena on Messrs.

Dasuki and Jonathan, in October.

Mr. Dasuki appeared in November, in compliance with the writ of summons.

Mr. Jonathan, on the other hand, asked the court to direct Mr. Metuh to pay N1 billion as cost of logistics for himself and his aides to travel from the former Presidents hometown in Otuoke, Bayelsa state.

The court refused the application, made by Mr. Jonathan on the grounds that the said request was not ripe for hearing.

After three attempts to serve Mr. Jonathan, the court bailiff on Monday read an affidavit in court, explaining that he was told by Mr. Jonathans security officer to return on December 11 and serve the former President with the subpoena, in person.

Following the explanation by the bailiff, Mr. Metuhs lawyer, Emeka Etiaba, asked for more time to allow the bailiff effect the service.

Responding, however, the prosecution counsel, Sylvanus Tahir, submitted that the defence counsel should have asked for a chance to serve the subpoena through substituted means, than request for a further adjournment till a date after December 11.

After Mr. Tahir, concluded his submission, Mr. Abang drew the attention of the prosecution counsel to the fact he (Abang) had informed the defence of their right to apply for service of the subpoena through substituted means.

Mr. Abang added that the decision of the counsel to demand an adjournment suggests that the defence was not ready to request for substituted means of service on the proposed witness.

What should I do with the subpoena? asked Mr. Abang, who wondered whether the prosecution was suggesting that he continues despite writ of summons present in court.

Subsequently, Mr. Tahir urged the court to set aside the writ of summons and compel the defence to either produce their next witness or close their case.

Mr. Tahir cited section 250 (2) (b) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act to support his submission.

Reacting to the submissions of Mr. Tahir, Mr. Etiaba accused the judge of instigating the submission of Mr. Tahir saying that Mr. Abang elicited a particular response from Mr. Tahir.

Counsel to the second defendant, (Destra Investment) Tochukwu Onwubufor, also responded to the submissions of Mr. Tahir, saying that the court lacked the powers to upturn its own orders, including a writ of summons.

Mr. Onwubufor also reiterated a point earlier made by Mr. Etiaba that Section 250 of the ACJA, cited by Mr. Tahir was not applicable to the case at hand.

In a ruling on the matter, Mr. Abang agreed with the submission of the defence that the Section 250 cited by Mr. Tahir was inapplicable in the current state of the matter.

I have dispassionately listened to the arguments of counsel. Regarding the submission of counsel to the first defendant that the court, in raising an issue-sue motto, guided the prosecution in his response, I think this submission is greatly misconceived, said Mr. Abang who added that the court rightly raised the issue to help counsel with necessary clarifications.

No counsel is prejudiced, he added.

Though I agree with the submission of the first defendant that section 250 does not apply with the current case in court; if the defence counsel is reluctant to make the necessary step to effect service of a subpoena, the counsel to the prosecution has a right to make the submissions made by prosecution, Mr. Abang said.

The judge also refused the submission of the defence that the court lacked powers to set aside its previous order.

Citing the two earlier attempts made by the court bailiff to effect service of the subpoena on October, 26 and 30, respectively, Mr. Abang stated thus: there is yet another affidavit deposed to on December 4 that the bailiff also attempted service on November, 30. Based on this, I agree entirely that the three attempts made by the bailiff constitute due diligence in his attempt to serve the former president with the subpoena.

The defendant, ought to have taken steps to effect service of summons by substituted means since the last adjournment on November 3.

Contrary to the submission of the first defendant that the court has no power to set aside its writ of summons, the court has the power to set it aside, if the defendant fails timeously to effect service of the proposed witness with the sermons personally or by substituted means.

Mr. Abang further said the submission of Mr. Etiaba that the defence depended on the testimony of Mr. Jonathan to determine whether or not the Mr. Metuh would testify in his trial; was contrary to the provisions of law.

He, however, noted that although his court had powers to set aside the subpoena, he (Abang) would reluctantly avoid doing so.

Having regards to the issues raised above, this matter will be adjourned, then the question is, when will this case be adjourned to?

The matter is hereby adjourned till December 5 and 6 to allow the defendant present any other defence witness on December 5 or testify himself, while the court will decide on the next date for the service of the subpoena on December, 6.
Stakeholders in the health sector on Monday called for more sensitisation of the public on the need to stop stigmatisation of people living with HIV/AIDS.

The participants, including health experts, spoke at the World AIDS day event organised by the Public Affairs Section of the United States Consulate General, Lagos.

The event, themed Increasing Impact through Transparency, Accountability and Partnerships, was held at the Lagos State University College of Medicine, Ikeja.

Speaking at the event, Kevin Krapf, the Acting Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Consulate General Lagos said the theme of the programme reflects the U.S. governments longstanding leadership in addressing global HIV/AIDS and increasing impact of epidemics.

According to him, it also highlights the historic opportunity to accelerate progress toward controlling, and ultimately ending, the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a public health threat in countries around the world.

According to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Nigeria has the second largest HIV epidemic in the world and has one of the highest new infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

Many people living with HIV in Nigeria are unaware of their status due to insufficient recommended number of HIV testing and counselling centres. Low access to antiretroviral treatment remains an issue for people living with HIV in Nigeria and I welcome the new commitment of the federal government of Nigeria to use domestic funds to provide antiretroviral drugs to an additional 50,000 people living with HIV each year.

Through the event, he said, the United States Mission in Nigeria brought together relevant HIV/AIDS stakeholders in Nigeria to share innovative strategies, successes attained, lessons learned, and challenges confronting the fight against HIV/AIDS.

We are at an unprecedented moment in the global HIV/AIDS response. For the first time in modern history, we have the opportunity to change the very course of a pandemic by controlling it without a vaccine or a cure.

Controlling the pandemic will lay the groundwork for eliminating or eradicating HIV, which we hope will be possible through the future scientific breakthroughs which lead to an effective HIV vaccine and cure.

He said, In Nigeria and around the world, we are closer to controlling the HIV/AIDS pandemic than ever before  binding communities, scientists, and political leaders together to envision a very different future. What once seemed impossible is now possible. But our work is far from done.

Emmanuel Olaoti, an official of the Society for Family Health, addressed numerous misconceptions and myths surrounding HIV/AIDS. He added that the rights of most people living with the virus are often violated in Nigeria.

He explained that some family members lock up the people and deny them access to some basic facilities in the home. He also sounded a note of caution to the media, saying reportage of HIV/AIDS-related issues should be done with responsibility.

Oluseyi Temowo, Chief Executive Officer of the Lagos State Aids Control Agency, LASACA, n his address, said awareness, testing and strategy must be increased among the people.

It is our responsibility to ensure that we have AIDS-free generation, AIDS-free Nigeria and AIDS-free Lagos, he said.
The Ekiti state Governor, Ayodele Fayose has waded into the ongoing call for the scrapping of the Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS.

The governor in a tweet on Monday night said rather than scrapping the police unit, a reform would be a better alternative.

I wont say #EndSARS. Rather I will say #ReformThePolice such that someone will not sit in Abuja and be in charge of resolving robbery issue in Abakaliki. he said.

The campaign which started Saturday with the hashtag #EndSARS has seen many Nigerians raise allegations of extra-judicial killings, dispossession of properties, and other forms of intimidation against SARS officials.

The campaign which became one of the most discussed topics on social media drew the attention of various prominent Nigerians, celebrities and other concerned citizens.

The action propelled a directive by the Inspector-General of Police to call for the reorganisation of the police unit.

According to a statement issued by police spokesperson, Jimoh Moshood, Monday, SARS operatives will now be controlled by officers between the ranks of a superintendent of police to chief superintendent of police at state level.

The changes according to Mr. Moshood is to take immediate effect.

A former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, on Sunday praised Nigerians for rising in unison to openly criticise the alleged cruelty by the SARS.

Though the police have debunked some of the allegations levelled against them as untrue, the #EndSARS organisers are planning a nationwide protest as part of the citizen-led initiative to end the widespread impunity in the police.
The need for humanity to unite and defeat terrorism is urgent and Muslims all over the world must unite to lead the battle, the senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, has said.

Mr. Sani said this while addressing lecturers and students at the International University of Africa, Khartoum on Thursday.

He lamented that the trend of terrorism does not only represent a 21st century threat to global peace and stability but also Muslims and Islam.

The lawmaker charged Muslims to take the lead in fighting the menace and redeeming the image of the religion.

Islam is confronted by two dangers on two fronts, from the inside and from the outside, he said. The inside forces are those who manipulate and misuse the religion in furtherance of their extremist or political or violent agenda. And the outside are those with a mind-set set and conditioned to hate Muslims and anything associated with Islam.

The need for humanity and the world to unite and defeat terrorism is urgent and necessary but its the Muslims that must lead the battle with common courage, common focus and collective determination.

Terrorists are anarchists. Their cruel actions and atrocious violence creates bad perception and impression for the faith they falsely lay claim to.

Muslim intellectuals and scholars and students must lead the battle to retrieve their faith and cast the light of peace and tolerance in the hearts of all believers in the faith.

Mr. Sani said the strategic position of Sudan as a bridge between North Africa and sub Saharan Africa, and bridge between East Africa and West Africa saddles on its citizens the responsibility to promote and enhance unity and continental peace.

While recounting recent terrorist attacks globally and in Nigeria, he emphasised the dangers of silence among Muslims.

He said further, Any ideology that promotes mass murder of innocents souls in the mosques, churches and schools are forces of evil we must collectively resist and defeat.

Those who attacked airport in Brussels, train stations in London, theatre in Paris, streets in New York, malls in Nairobi, mosques in Nigeria does not represent Islam. But we must stop them from their false claims.

Muslim intellectuals must spearhead the neutralisation and liquidation of knowledge and school of thoughts that encourages extremism and terrorism.

Nigeria my country has suffered from terror violence that murdered tens of thousands and displaced millions.

The dangers of silence, neutrality and cowardice is that the forces of darkness will be left unchallenged to define our present and dictate our future.
A federal judge in Lagos has issued a bench warrant for the arrest of Chimaroke Nnamani, a former governor of Enugu State.

Justice Chuka Obiozor while delivering a ruling said the defendants lawyer had not given any reasonable evidence as to why his client was absent in court.

Mr. Nnamanis lawyer had told the court the former governor had undergone a heart surgery in the U.S but the prosecution said the photographs brought by the lawyer were taken in 2014.

Details later
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has warned politicians to desist from making absolute statements about which party Nigerians will choose to entrust with their mandate in 2019.

The former vice-president said only a hubris could drive politicians to grandstand about future realities that they have no control over, adding that no man is equal to God.

Nobody knows the future other than God and to dictate what the future will be is not within mans purview,Mr. Abubakar said.

The former vice-president was responding to a question from a live audience when he declared his formal return to the Peoples Democratic Party on Facebook Sunday afternoon.

The audience, identified only as Ikechi, had asked Mr. Abubakar to explain why he returned to the PDP, a party which the Minister of Information Lai Mohammed, had reportedly ruled out of Nigerias power equation forever.

But it is about Nigeria not about power. Power for powers own sake breeds arrogance and arrogance makes men say things like that, Mr. Abubakar responded.

Media reports quoted Mr. Mohammed as saying during a visit to Jigawa State towards the end of November that the PDP will never come back to power, especially since the current administration has done well.

The PDP was in control of Nigerias political centre from 1999 when the country returned to democracy after years of military rule until 2015 when Goodluck Jonathan became the first incumbent president to be defeated in the countrys history.

Neither Mr. Mohammed nor his spokesperson, Williams Adeyemi, immediately returned PREMIUM TIMES requests for comments Monday morning.

But the minister is not the only politician reported to have made sweeping statements about Nigerias political future.

In February 2015, Ekiti governor, Ayo Fayose proclaimed that Muhammadu Buhari of the then-oppositon All Progressives Congress will never be elected president.

I wish they can see spiritually what I am talking about that Buhari, despite the hullabaloo, will never be president, the Ekiti State governor said, adding that God had purportedly given him supernatural powers of prescience.

On Sunday, Mr. Abubakar returned to the PDP for the third time since 2007 when he left the party after serving eight years on its platform as a vice president. The move came a little over a week since he resigned from the APC.

Hes expected to slug it out with Mr. Buhari in 2019, if the incumbents recent signals of a possible re-election bid becomes reality.
A judge, Chuka Obiozor of a Lagos Division of the Federal High Court on Monday issued a bench warrant for the arrest of Chimaroke Nnamani, a former governor of Enugu State.

Mr. Nnamani, who was governor between 1999 and 2007, is facing a 10-count charge of laundering N5.3 billion instituted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

The judge also ordered the arrest of Mr. Nnamanis aide and co-accused, Sunday Anyaogu.

There is no evidence shown to the court as to why the defendants are absent, there is no justification for the the continued absence of the defendants, said the judge.

In the absence of any convincing evidence, it is hereby ordered that a bench warrant be issued against the defendants and summons to their sureties to show cause.

Mr. Obiozor adjourned till December 14th for the re-arraignment of the defendants.

Both defendants were first arraigned in 2007 alongside their companies: Rainbownet (Nig) Ltd; Hillgate (Nig) Ltd; Cosmo FM; Capital City Automobile (Nig) Ltd; Renaissance University Teaching Hospital; and Mea Mater Elizabeth High School.

In 2015, all the companies pleaded guilty to the charges but the trial of Messrs Nnamani and Anyaogu continued to stall due to the formers frequent travels abroad to treat an heart ailment.

On Monday, Mr. Obiozor, the fourth judge to handle the matter, made it clear to the defence lawyer that he would not tolerate any attempt to further delay the trial.

It is not a case of more haste, less speed, the visibly angry judge began.

The defendant may not be guilty but the matter must be heard in court. After ten years, we are still talking about arraignment and re-arraignment and tomorrow well see the headline that the judiciary is to be blamed.

Earlier, Shamsudeen Abubakar, counsel to Mr. Nnamani told the court that his client, who is severely sick, had just had a heart surgery in the United States and is still recuperating in hospital.

We received the hearing notice to appear before you in respect of this matter just last Thursday, Mr. Abubakar, a lawyer from Ricky Tarfa Chambers, informed the judge.

Unfortunately, the first defendant (Mr. Nnamani) is bedridden in a hospital in America. When this matter came up on 30th November, we tried to reach out to the family.

I was reliably informed that the defendant had a heart surgery and we wanted to get a medical report but unfortunately we could not.

Mr. Abubakar noted that his client had regularly attended his trial and that his absence was not a deliberate act.

Asked by the judge why Mr. Nnamani stopped attending trial since 2015 when his surgery was only last month, the defence lawyer said it was the period the companies pleaded guilty to the charges.

The first and second defendants are appearing in this case on their personal capacities and have nothing to do with the companies guilty plea, the judge said.

Im not for or against anybody. You tried to reach the family of the first defendant and could not but you were aware he went to surgery.

Kelvin Uzozie, counsel to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, informed the court that the photographic evidence by the defence lawyer to prove Mr. Nnamanis recuperation in a US hospital had been in circulation since 2014.

I dont need to tell the defence lawyer what to do, the (defendants) sureties are supposed to be here to show cause as to why the defendants are not here.
A former senator and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State, Ayo Arise, has been abducted by unidentified gunmen.

The incident was said to have occurred in the early hours of Monday while he was on his way to Abuja.

PREMIUM TIMES could not at press time confirm the actual area where he was kidnapped as the police in Ekiti and Ondo did not give details of the kidnap.

Ekiti State Police Public Relations Officer, Alberto Adeyemi, who confirmed the incident, however said he could not make comments because it did not happen within his jurisdiction.

It was however gathered that the kidnappers have contacted the family of the politician and had made a demand of N80 million before he could be released.

Details later
A counsel representing a former National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Olisah Metuh, has alleged threats to his life for demanding the appearance of former President Goodluck Jonathan in court as defence witness.

Mr. Metuh is facing trial at an Abuja Division of the Federal High Court for alleged diversion of N400 million from the Office of the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki.

His lawyers led by a senior Advocate of Nigeria, Onyeachi Ikpeazu, had asked the court to compel two major witnesses, Mr. Dasuki and former President Goodluck Jonathan to appear as witnesses for the defence.

Following that request, Mr. Dasuki appeared in court in November but testified that he did not have details of the connection of Mr. Metuh with the fund he was accused of diverting.

Mr. Dasuki said he needed to consult his documents to give the details.

The court had in the last sitting ordered its bailiff to serve a subpoena on Mr. Jonathan at his Abuja residence in Abuja.

The court also noted that inability to serve Mr. Jonathan directly would cede responsibility to the defence to apply for service of the court order by substituted means.

On Monday, the court bailiff read an affidavit wherein he confirmed making another attempt to serve Mr. Jonathan but was told by his (Jonathans) security official that Mr. Jonathan would be available to receive the subpoena on December 11.

After hearing from the court bailiff, a counsel to Mr. Metuh, Emeka Etiaba, drew the attention of the court.

I want to bring two facts before this court. The first is that when we wanted to serve Dasuki with our subpoena, the attempt by the bailiff was not that smooth. As at that time, there were insinuations that we did not indeed want Dasuki to come and testify in this court.

But eventually he was served and has since come and testified and we are very satisfied with his evidence.

The second is that before this court is yet another issue, relating to the execution of another subpoena on no less a person than the former president of this country.

This subpoena is one that has generated quite a lot of controversy and threats not just to our clients but to myself. The threat goes to the lives of the first defendants, myself and Dr. Onyeachi Ikpeazu, Mr. Etiaba said.

This will not make us change our mind as to whether His Excellency will come and testify or not, he added, asking for extended time to allow the bailiff issue the subpoena on Mr. Jonathan on December, 11.

But we shall only plead with the honorable court to allow the bailiff make another attempt to serve the notice on December 11.

We make this application on the believe of the fact that we dont want to turn this witness into an adversary, but we want him to come to court as a witness who was freely subscribed to as a witness and a witness who decided on his own to obey the order of court to come and testify.

We ask that the bailiff be given an opportunity to serve the subpoena on His Excellency Dr. Goodluck Jonathan even as we can infer from the affidavit that he will allow him.

Asked whether the defence had another witness to call or if the first defendant (Mr. Metuh) would not testify in his own defence, Mr. Etiaba said the defence planned to listen first to Mr. Jonathan before determining to either allow Mr. Metuh testify or not.

He further stated that since the defence had already planned out its procedure for presentation of witnesses, any attempt by the court to alter the plan would result in Mr. Etiabas withdrawal as Mr. Metuhs counsel.

Responding, however, counsel to the Federal Government, Sylvanus Tahir, asked the court to compel Mr. Metuh to serve Mr. Jonathan through substituted means.

Mr. Tahir said although section 123 (a) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act allowed for personal service of court orders, the law also provides for substituted means of service, where there is a challenge in ensuring personal service.

In an attempt to secure a clear reaction from the prosecution regarding the subpoena, the trial judge, Okon Abang, asked Mr. Tahir to react to the application for time by the defence counsel.

Mr. Abang noted that he had informed the defence during the previous sitting that it was entitled to requesting to serve Mr. Jonathan through substituted means.

Mr. Tahir responded by asking the court to set aside the subpoena if the defence was unwilling to apply for substituted means of service to Mr. Jonathan.

Mr. Tahir also asked the court to direct the defence team to either present its next witness or invoke section 250 (2) (b) of the ACJA by determining the first defendant has closed his case.
A prosecution witness, Ishaya Dauda, told an FCT High Court in Gudu how a former Abuja minister, Bala Mohammed, allegedly received a house as bribe.

Mr. Dauda also told the court that in the course of investigations, no government money was traced to Mr. Mohammeds account.

Mr. Dauda, a Senior Detective Superintendent with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Monday said these during cross examination by the defence counsel, Chris Uche.

Mr. Mohammed is being prosecuted by the commission on a six-count charge bordering on false declaration of assets and graft to the tune of N864 million.

The witness admitted that the former minister was arraigned based on an intelligent report by the commission and not on a petition.

He said though the work of the commission was based on petitions and intelligence reports, the petition against the minister came first, adding that investigation had not been concluded in respect of the petition.

Upon further questioning on the source of the intelligence report, the witness said he would not disclose the source.

Earlier, while the witness was led in evidence by the EFCC counsel, Ben Ikani, he said that the defendant received a property at Asokoro as a bribe by Aso Savings and Loans.

Mr. Dauda alleged that the former minister on the request of Aso Savings, had relocated Abuja Urban Mass Transit from their plot at Mpape area along Kubwa express.

The witness gave evidence that Aso Savings and Loans Ltd had stood as guarantor to Abuja Urban Mass Transit when they obtained a loan of N1.8 billion from the former Oceanic bank for the acquisition of new buses.

He said Abuja Urban Mass Transit had defaulted in repayment of the loan which led to Aso Savings being made to clear the debt.

For Aso Savings to be able to recover their money from Abuja Mass Transit, they requested from the then FCT minister to relocate Abuja Urban Mass Transit to another place.

This was to enable Aso Savings and Loans Ltd take over the land. They now bought the Asokoro property for the defendant in appreciation, the witness said.

He said that to confirm that, they had invited the former Managing Director of Aso Savings, Hassan Usman, and the former Executive Director, Marketing, Maimuna Aliyu, to make statements.

He said they also invited the seller of the said Asokoro property, Ifeanyi Ihejirika, and Ogechi Nwaduke who also gave statements in their office.

Mr. Dauda said that when the defendant was questioned about the property, he initially refused to make statements.

Other properties allegedly belonged to the former minister which he did not declare in the Asset Declaration Form given by the EFCC include a property at the Three Arms Zone, Abuja, and a plot of land in Kaduna.

So far, the prosecution tendered the statements made by the defendant to the EFCC in court which was admitted and marked as exhibit A.

The other exhibit tendered, marked and admitted as exhibit B was the EFCC Asset Declaration Form.

Justice Abubakar Talba adjourned hearing in continuation of the trial to February 12, 2018.
President Muhammadu Buhari has returned to Abuja after participating in a two-day counterterrorism retreat, co-hosted by Jordan and Nigeria.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the presidents aircraft which left the King Hussein International airport at 9.38a.m local time, landed at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, at about 2.p.m.

While in Aqaba, President Buhari met with King Abdullah II of Jordan where both leaders discussed bilateral issues concerning Nigeria and Jordan.

President Buhari, during the meeting, stressed the need for inter-regional cooperation and information sharing towards tackling terrorism across the world.

According to him, these factors are important in checkmating the threat of violent extremism to global peace and security.

The president used the opportunity to thank the Jordanian King for his support and assistance to Nigeria especially with the recent donation of armoured vehicles and other military equipment to fight terrorism and insurgency in Nigeria.

In his remarks, King Abdullah advocated broader measures especially the use of cyber security in checking the influence of terrorists.

He pledged the continued support of the Kingdom of Jordan to Nigeria in its war against violent extremism.

President Buhari, who also spoke at the counter-terrorism retreat, urged leaders to speak up against the violent extremism committed by deranged people in the name of Islam.

According to him, all nations, irrespective of religion should partner effectively in implementing national, regional and global action plans to counter violent extremism.

Mr. Buhari reiterated the commitment of Nigeria to playing a leading role in bringing together countries of the West African subregion in a collective security arrangement.

He said that Nigeria was ready to share its experiences with a view to fashioning out comprehensive action plans in tackling the scourge of violent extremism in the region.

He, therefore, called for a stronger collaboration among the member countries of the Aqaba Initiatives to check violent extremism across the world.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that President Buhari and other visiting heads of state from Ghana, Mali and Guinea Conakry were hosted to a royal dinner by King Abdullah II.

(NAN)
Hearing into various applications on the ownership of a major oil block, OPL 245, was stalled on Monday, following inability to serve counsel the hearing notice.

Separate applications regarding the internal structure of OPL 245 came up on Monday at the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, venue of the matter.

Counsel representing the son of former Nigerian dictator, Sani Abacha, requested an adjournment of the matter to allow for service of hearing notices on the first, second, third, sixth and seventh defendants.

Mr. Abacha had approached the court to stop the sale of a $13.5 billion deep water Zabazaba project located in the controversial oil block, OPL 245.

The counsel, Reuben Atabo, who noted that several adjournments had been granted on the matter, however craved the indulgence of the court for a further postponement on the ground that the other defendants may not have been informed of the December 4 date for hearing of respondents briefs.

To allow for fair hearing, a further adjournment should be granted, Mr. Atabo said.

The case was adjourned till February 13, 2018 for hearing of respondents briefs.

BACKGROUND

The OPL 245, regarded as one of Africas richest oil blocks with an estimated over 9 billion barrels of crude, was controversially awarded to Malabu in 1998 by the then petroleum minister, Dan Etete, who partly owned the company through a fictional character, Kwekwu Amafegha.

Mohammed Abacha owned 50 per cent shares of the company at inception.

The block was controversially sold to oil giants, Shell and ENI, in 2011 with a large chunk of the $1.1 billion paid ending up in private pockets including those of Mr. Etete.

The matter has already led to indictments of shell, ENI, Mr. Etete and others in Italy and Nigeria while investigations are ongoing in other countries.

While Mr. Etete negotiated the 2011 deal on behalf of Malabu, and received about $801 million of the payment; he did so without the consent of the majority shareholders of Malabu including Mohammed Abacha, who since inception when his father, Sani Abacha, was Nigerias military dictator, owned 50 per cent of the block.

PECOS, a company believed to be owned by businessman Oyewole Fasawe, owns another 20 per cent of the company while Mr. Etete using his pseudonym, Amafegha, owns the remaining 30 per cent.
The Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism has concluded a three-day intensive training on agriculture reporting for Nigerian journalists.

The boot camp, which ended last Thursday, was supported by Notore Chemicals Industries Limited. It had in attendance over 40 journalists selected across the country. Nine facilitators trained participants on understanding the agriculture sector and how to achieve better agriculture reporting.

The journalists were trained on diverse issues relating to agriculture reporting such as solution journalism, accountability media, investigative interviewing, generating story ideas, data gathering and crunching, statistic for journalists, writing and editing skills; communication ethics; and media and agribusiness trends.

Joshua Olufemi, the programme director of PTCIJ, said the training was planned to build the capacity of journalists on agriculture reporting so that more newsrooms across the country will have the requisite skills and capacity to effectively report the agriculture sector.

Mr. Olufemi expressed gratitude to the funders of the boot camp, Notore Chemical Industries Plc., for supporting the rejuvenation of the agriculture sector through effective capacity building. He asked other key stakeholders in the industry to follow the example of Notore Chemical Industries Plc.

Speaking on the training, Dapo Olorunyomi, the Executive Director of PTCIJ said participants at the training have tapped and drank from the ocean of knowledge from seasoned and experienced professionals which has afforded them the skills to use data to tell stories and communicate effectively.

The participants said the training afforded them an opportunity to learn new skills in agriculture reporting.

Blaize Itodo of 3PLE EYE IMAGES described his experience as really enlightening.

Journalism for me before this training was more of see something, say something. This agricultural solution boot camp has changed my notion and perspective and I have learnt to search for the truth using data and not just hearsay.

Gbenga Ogundare of Report Abuse, Africa said, The PTCIJ has just scored another first in offering solutions to an apparent crisis in journalism which is the low reportage of the agriculture sector. I believe the training will deepen journalists understanding of the beat, improve how we report to the sector and cover under-reported aspects of the sector.

Oge Udegbunam, another participant from UNIZIK FM, said the training has given an insight on journalism not just agricultural journalism but journalism in general. Many thanks to PTCIJ for putting this together, I have indeed been transformed from a novice.
The Zamfara State governor, AbdulAziz Yari, on Monday presented the 2018 budget proposal of N130.7 billion to the state House of Assembly for deliberation.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the proposed budget has an increase of N23 billion over the 2017 budget.

Presenting the budget, Gov. Yari said out of the proposed amount, N46.4 billion which represents 35.5 per cent was for recurrent expenditure while N84.3 billion which represents 64.5 per cent was for Capital expenditure.

By the end of August, the 2017 Budget performance in both revenue and expenditure stood at 57.39 per cent and this indicates that the sum of over N66.2 billion was expended from January to August, 2017.

Within the same period under review, the recurrent expenditure to the tune of over N34.8 billion was carried out, while the capital expenditure to the tune of over N30.6 billion was also carried out, he said.

Mr. Yari said the economic sector which consists of agriculture, livestock, forestry, manufacturing, power-supply, transport, commerce, cooperatives and finance received N33.4 billion with transport having the highest sum of N20.8 billion.

While the social sector which included education, health, information, youth and social welfare got N21.34 billion, education receive the highest allocation of N13.32 billion followed by health with N5.1 billion, he said.

The governor added that the environment Sector was allocated N22.1 billion to carter for water, drainages, housing, town planning and community development with town planning taking the highest allocation of N15.8 billion.

Let me clarify that in the course of implementation of the 2018 budget, we expect refund of the monies expended by Zamfara State Government for reconstruction of Federal Roads across the state, spanning over 610 kilometres. The road projects cost the State Government a total sum of N56.97 billion,he said.

In his remarks, the Speaker of the state assembly, Sanusi Rikiji, assured the executive arm of government of speedy passage of the bill for the proposed budget.

Mr. Rikiji said that the state assembly would continue to cooperate with the executive arm of government for the development of the state.

(NAN)
The Olubadan of Ibadanland, Saliu Adetunji, says the controversial chieftaincy reform under which the Oyo State government enthroned 21 new kings is reversible.

A statement by the monarchs Director of Media and Public Affairs, Adeola Oloko, said the monarch dismissed the Oyo State Governments position that the reform was irreversible, saying there is nothing irreversible under the sun.

Oba Adetunji who spoke while receiving hundreds of local chiefs from Isale Osi, Igbonna, Akuro, Gbodu, Bode and other parts of Ibadanland, noted that he had lived long enough to know that God can reverse the irreversible and return Ibadan chieftaincy system to the path of peace and harmony.

The statement said the legal tussle over the controversial law between the state and diverse stakeholders in Ibadan is alive.

He, however, advised all parties to the dispute to respect the rule of law and allow the court adjudicate without interference.

Some people erroneously believe that the chieftaincy crisis is a personal conflict between Governor Ajimobi and Oba Adetunji, the statement said.

This is wrong. There are at least five suits in respect of the chieftaincy crisis in the Oyo State High Court as we speak. What this shows is that the generality of our people believe that the issue at stake is a matter of great public interest as well as the outcome.

As the Olubadan, I am merely a custodian of the tradition and customs of Ibadan people. With an oath before our forebears, I do not see how as a monarch I will compromise the tradition and customs of Ibadan people.

The Ibadan chieftaincy review has been a subject of controversy in recent week.

The Oyo state government has however vowed to stick with the reform.
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




JERUSALEM, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With the goals of fostering technological innovation and boosting bilateral academic research and exchange opportunities, the presidents of top U.S. universities and colleges are visiting Israel this week with AJC Project Interchange.

Meeting with their Israeli counterparts, the delegation will exchange ideas on innovation and learning and explore opportunities for bilateral academic collaboration. Past PI seminars for U.S. university presidents have contributed to innovative academic partnerships, including the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, the University of California and Israel Innovation Authority Partnership, and the Miami-Dade College-Tel Aviv University MOU.

Campuses represented on the delegation include California State University Northridge (CSUN), Georgia State University, Hunter College, New College of Florida, San Jose State University, and Wake Forest University.

"The world-class research and educational facilities at Israeli universities and colleges, a number of which this delegation will visit, provide a fitting setting for great minds to share best practices, discuss potential research collaboration and partnerships, and explore opportunities for mutually-beneficial cooperation and innovation," said AJC Project Interchange Executive Director Robin Levenston-Kudisch.

The university presidents will meet with leadership at Israel's Bar Ilan University; Ono Academic College; Shenkar College of Engineering, Design, and Art; the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and the University of Haifa.

These higher education leaders will gain a first-hand understanding of Israel, its vibrant democracy, diverse society, and regional challenges. During their visit, the university presidents will engage a variety of perspectives from Israeli Jewish and Arab experts across the political and social spectrum.

Sessions with renowned experts and site visits throughout Israel will provide analysis of an array of complex issues facing Israel and the region. Discussions with academic and civil society leaders will focus on Israel's high-tech and entrepreneurial landscape, security challenges, diversity in Israeli society, and Israel's approach to global humanitarian aid.

The delegation also will travel to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian experts on society, higher education, and entrepreneurship in the Palestinian Authority.

About AJC Project Interchange: For 35 years, Project Interchange, a nonprofit educational institute of AJC (American Jewish Committee), has brought nearly 6,000 influential figures to Israel from 100+ countries and all 50 U.S. states, offering them broad exposure and firsthand understanding of the complex issues facing Israel and the region. Projectinterchange.org

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org


SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, at an event hosted by Code.org to kick off Computer Science Education Week, 8 states, 76 school districts, and 102 organizations worldwide made new pledges to expand access to computer science for millions of students, focusing on diversity. Today's news was announced and celebrated by some of the most powerful women in technology, including Melinda Gates, Peggy Johnson of Microsoft, Sheryl Sandberg, and Susan Wojcicki, as well as Governors Steve Bullock of Montana, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Eric Holcomb of Indiana, and Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom of California.

Code.org also announced a new milestone of 10 million girls with student accounts on its learning platform and $12 million in new philanthropic funding from donors including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Infosys Foundation USA, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Impacting every industry, computer science is essential to education in the 21st century. A priority with rare bipartisan backing, computer science in schools is also supported by 90% of parents. Yet most schools don't offer it, leaving most students without access, and females and students of color are greatly underrepresented in the field. Female students constitute only 18% of university computer science graduates in the US.

Fortunately, awareness of the need for computer science education and equitable access is increasing, and the global movement continues to grow. The Hour of Code campaign has reached 10% of all students globally, and the Code.org platform now has over 22 million student accounts, of which over 10 million are girls. One percent of the girls active on Code.org last year in the US would make up the difference in the computer science gender gap at US universities.

Pledging to bring computer science into schools

While over half the schools in the US don't currently offer a single course that teaches computer science, at today's event, states and school districts made pledges and announcements to address this issue in their own schools. Other organizations made additional pledges to accelerate the progress of changing this educational landscape. And to reflect the global momentum behind computer science in schools, 20 countries and global partners made similar commitments.

A full list of pledges is detailed in a separate document. Highlights include:

Florida Governor Rick Scott pledged a one-time $15 million investment to expand opportunities for middle and high school students to learn coding and computer science.

Governor pledged a one-time investment to expand opportunities for middle and high school students to learn coding and computer science. Arkansas pledged $500,000.00 towards the creation of a first-of-its-kind computer science stipend program specifically for K-8 teachers.

pledged towards the creation of a first-of-its-kind computer science stipend program specifically for K-8 teachers. California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom announced the launch of Computer Science for California , a new campaign to make computer science education available to all California students by 2025, which already includes commitments from 20 districts to offer computer science at all of their comprehensive high schools, reaching over 1.1 million students.

announced the launch of Computer Science for , a new campaign to make computer science education available to all students by 2025, which already includes commitments from 20 districts to offer computer science at all of their comprehensive high schools, reaching over 1.1 million students. Governor Kay Ivey (AL), Governor Steve Bullock (MT), Governor Tom Wolf (PA), and Governor Eric Holcomb (IN) announced today that each will join the Governors Partnership for K-12 Computer Science, thus committing to working toward developing rigorous K-12 computer science standards, funding professional learning for K-12 computer science teachers, and putting computer science in every high school in the state.

(AL), Governor (MT), Governor (PA), and Governor (IN) announced today that each will join the Governors Partnership for K-12 Computer Science, thus committing to working toward developing rigorous K-12 computer science standards, funding professional learning for K-12 computer science teachers, and putting computer science in every high school in the state. The Hawaii State Department of Education will collaborate with key stakeholders to review K-12 computer science standards and expand computer science learning opportunities.

76 urban, suburban, and rural school districts have pledged to expand access and diversity in computer science including pledges by the Austin TX , Boston MA , Compton CA , Fresno CA , Houston TX , Lincoln NE , Los Angeles CA , and Riverside CA school districts to offer computer science in every high school.

, , , , , , , and school districts to offer computer science in every high school. Over 80 nonprofits and universities have pledged to prepare over 4,500 teachers to begin teaching computer science to over 200,000 students in U.S. middle and high schools.

Ecuador launched the Digital Education Agenda which includes establishing computer science as a foundational subject in the national curriculum as a major component.

launched the Digital Education Agenda which includes establishing computer science as a foundational subject in the national curriculum as a major component. The United Kingdom has committed 100 million in its 2018 budget to train 8,000 new computer science teachers in secondary schools and establish a new National Centre for Computing Education.

has committed 100 million in its 2018 budget to train 8,000 new computer science teachers in secondary schools and establish a new National Centre for Computing Education. 20 other international organizations have pledged to expand computer science to programs reaching 20,000 teachers and over 2 million students.

"Since 2015, Arkansas has led the nation in computer-science education," said Governor Hutchinson. "I'm proud of the work we've done, and this new K-8 stipend reinforces our commitment to provide students access to computer science education in the best possible way, starting with the early years."

"I am excited to join the efforts to expand access to computer science education for all students in Alabama," said Governor Ivey. "We live in a technology-driven world so I want to ensure our educational system teaches in a technology-driven way."

"Our students need all of the tools available to be prepared to succeed in our ever-changing world, and that includes opportunities to learn computer science. That's why I'm initiating efforts to require all K-12 schools in Indiana to offer computer science by 2021," said Governor Holcomb.

"We know that the jobs of the future will demand new skills and savvy with computers and technology," said Governor Wolf. "My goal is to ensure that every school in our state offers a rigorous computer science course, and the first step towards that is working with the State Board of Education and Legislature to endorse computer science standards for all students."

"California is the tech capital of the country and home to Silicon Valley, but we don't teach our students the foundational skills to access the jobs of the future. Right now most schools in California don't offer any computer science classes and sadly, that disparity is punctuated by striking gender and racial gaps," Lt. Governor Newsom said. "I'm thrilled to announce the launch of CSforCA to make sure every California student has access to high-quality computer science education."

"PwC is excited to announce a grant to Code.org to fund a middle-school curriculum and support the training of computer science teachers over the next three years. This commitment is a cornerstone of our Access Your Potential initiative, which is dedicated to closing the opportunity gap," said Colleen Kipfstuhl, Director, Responsible Business Leadership, PwC.

Recognition of progress and work to be done

Also at the event today, Code.org partnered with the Computer Science Teachers Association to recognize and award the 2017 Champions for Computer Science: the students, teachers, schools, districts, and organizations making a tangible impact  from students developing a wristband and app to help parents monitor their young children to educators creating a hub to expand computer science to rural communities statewide. 16 winners were recognized, but close to a thousand were nominated, each making their own impact on the movement.

"While significant work remains ahead, today's pledges, dedication, and support reflect unprecedented global momentum behind the vision that every student in every school deserves the opportunity to learn computer science," said Hadi Partovi, Code.org founder.

SOURCE Code.org

Related Links

http://Code.org


Eight M1 regional shopping centres with GLA ranging from 30,000 m to 55,000 m which attract more than 40 million annual visitors, and

Four retail power parks with GLA ranging from 20,000 m to 35,000 m.

All the properties are single level and fully leased, grocery anchored and are situated on large motorway fronting sites which total over 195 hectares. All of the centres are anchored by Auchan Hypermarkets as well as a variety of international and domestic brands such as MediaMarkt and fashion retailers, TK Maxx, H&M and C&A. The average rental rate across the portfolio is a low 9.10 per m per month and the average rent to sales ratio is below 9%. The entire portfolio is subject to a master lease from Metro AG which expires in April 2024.

"This deal is based on a 'up to 30 minute drive time' measurement, which will treble our portfolio catchment to 34% of Poland's total population, increasing to 39% after Mociny in Warsaw is opened," says Dean. The transaction will also boost EPP's annual portfolio footfall 61% from 76 million to 122 million. "These stats speak to EPP becoming a derivative of Poland's burgeoning consumer market."

Dean said that EPP as well as the consortium are happy to enjoy the benefits of the income from Metro AG's head lease until 2024. Auchan acquired from Metro the 'Real' supermarket business in Poland in 2014 and the 28 properties that will now be owned by the consortium and EPP represent approximately 35% of the number of stores that Auchan have in Poland. The properties being acquired by EPP have significant extension opportunities and also have asset management initiatives as the line shops are on average paying below market rentals. The entire portfolio was secured at a yield of 7,1%. The transaction will be closed in 3 tranches:

Tranche 1 ( January 2018 ) 358.7 million GAV comprising M1 Czeladz, M1 Krakow, M1 odz and M1 Zabrze totalling collectively 194,400 m GLA and NOI of 25.1 million.

) 358.7 million GAV comprising M1 Czeladz, M1 Krakow, M1 odz and M1 Zabrze totalling collectively 194,400 m GLA and NOI of 25.1 million. Tranche 2 ( June 2019 ) 222.5 million GAV comprising M1 Bytom, M1 Czestochowa, M1 Radom, PP Kielce, PP Olsztyn and PP Opole collectively 184,000 m GLA and NOI of 16.3 million

) 222.5 million GAV comprising M1 Bytom, M1 Czestochowa, M1 Radom, PP Kielce, PP Olsztyn and PP Opole collectively 184,000 m GLA and NOI of 16.3 million Tranche 3 ( June 2020 ) 110.9 million GAV comprising M1 Poznan and PP Tychy collectively 68,100 m and NOI of 7.6 million.

Tranche 1 is being financed by way of 62% debt and the redeployment of some of the capital to be received on the sale of the offices previously announced, as well as the subscription by funds managed by Oaktree and LVS II Luxembourg II S.a r.l for 112.5 million of EPP shares at 1.27 per share. As a result there will be no need for EPP to raise capital from the market. This direct investment in EPP by LVS II Luxembourg II S.a r.l and funds managed by Oaktree reflects their confidence in our platform. Redefine's holding in EPP will reduce to +/- 35% but Redefine have undertaken to invest a further 40 million for future acquisitions in order to restore their holding to circa 40%.

On completion of the first tranche the return on equity pre-tax and transaction cost will be 13,5%. In the short term the acquisition results in a small increase in EPP's LTV from 51% to 54% but this is being addressed and the company is committed in the medium term to reducing the LTV to below 50%.

Hadley Dean concludes, "This acquisition fits perfectly with our strategy. The M1 portfolio has substantial expansion opportunities which we will develop over time and which will serve to further grow the NOI and strengthen each property's competitive position."

EPP's advisor in the deal was Dentons law office.

EPP (Echo Polska Properties) is a Dutch dual listed real estate investment company that follows the REIT formula, investing in retail properties throughout Poland. With a current portfolio that includes 14 retail projects, 6 offices, and two retail development sites in Warsaw, our initial portfolio is highly diversified. The buildings are located in 17 cities across the country, characterized by their strong economy and purchasing power, and ability to attract international investment interests. Our goal is to create Poland's leading, cash-generating platform of well-performing office, retail, and industrial assets that will deliver consistently high returns to our shareholders.

SOURCE Echo Polska Properties (EPP)
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Before Congress approves a final package of tax cuts estimated to add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt over 10 years -- in addition to the $10 trillion already projected under current law -- The Concord Coalition urges President Trump and all lawmakers to consider George Washington's advice on debt and taxes delivered as part of his Farewell Address.

Concord today launched a social media campaign with a series of tweets calling attention to Washington's wise words.

In a passage that could serve today as a principled tweet of moral guidance, Washington warned against "ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear."

He further reminded his fellow countrymen, and by extension today's citizens and policymakers, that "towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant."

This "choice of difficulties," he noted, "ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate."

In modern times, we would call this a "pay-as-you-go" philosophy. It is a philosophy that is now very much at risk.

When Washington said we should "cherish public credit," he was not saying that we should pile it on but that we should "use it as sparingly as possible" to avoid "the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned."

Washington also called for citizen engagement and understanding of budgetary issues, observing: "The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate."

Washington's advice wears well over time. Will it be read, understood and followed?

To read more tweets from George Washington about fiscal responsibility, follow the Concord Coalition on Twitter and Facebook.

Here is the full passage on debt and taxes from Washington's Farewell Address:

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit.

One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.

The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate.

To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.

The Concord Coalition is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to fiscal responsibility. Since 1992, Concord has worked to educate the public about the causes and consequences of the federal deficit and debt, and to develop realistic solutions for sustainable budgets. For more fiscal news and analysis, visit concordcoalition.org and follow us on Twitter: @ConcordC

SOURCE The Concord Coalition
"As an industry leader with a strong commitment to ethics, we are honored to be a finalist for this year's BBB Torch Awards," said AAG Chief Executive Officer Reza Jahangiri. "This really is a reflection of AAG's core values  caring, driven and ethical  and our commitment to doing the right thing for the seniors who call us every day for financial solutions."

In educating and qualifying customers for government-insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECMs), also known as reverse mortgage loans, AAG uses a highly personalized, consultative process designed to give older homeowners the best outcome for their financial situation. The process involves extensive education for customers which helps them determine if the HECM product is the right fit.

AAG has a comprehensive internal ethics program, which starts with the recruiting process and continues through new hire orientation and ongoing training programs. A unique feature of AAG's onboarding process is a "generation swap" exercise designed to encourage empathy for AAG's main demographic, older Americans. During the training, employees are given a physical ailment and asked to attempt everyday tasks. AAG also encourages employees to participate in community outreach programs, like Meals on Wheels, through the AAG Foundation, giving employees eight hours of volunteer-time-off per year. AAG employees also have the ability to recognize co-workers who make a positive impact and demonstrate "awesome" behavior through the AAG Spotlight Awards.

In addition to his role as Founder and CEO of AAG, Jahangiri serves as co-chairman of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA), the national voice of the reverse mortgage industry. NRMLA members agree to adhere to a strict Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility.

About American Advisors Group

American Advisors Group (AAG) is the nation's leader in reverse mortgage lending. We are dedicated to helping American seniors convert a portion of their home equity, a largely untapped asset, to help fund their retirement needs.

AAG is a proud member of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA). To learn more about American Advisors Group and reverse mortgage loans, please visit the company's website at www.aag.com.

For media inquiries, please contact: [email protected]

American Advisors Group, NMLS #9392, 3800 W. Chapman Avenue, Orange CA 92868

SOURCE American Advisors Group

Related Links

http://www.americanadvisorsgroup.com


AUSTIN, Texas, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Verady, a blockchain accounting and audit technology company, has announced the launch of VeraNet and its partnership with Acuity, a modern accounting organization based in Atlanta, GA. This newly established relationship was developed to converge cryptocurrency wallet data with traditional accounting tools people need to run their business and gather tax information. With the VeraNet platform, any size company can account for its Bitcoin, Ether, and digital token holdings with confidence, precision, and transparency via a turnkey integration with their existing technology stack.

Recently, Verady has been working alongside Acuity, a Xero XPAC member, to integrate VeraNet using Xero's API, with plans to add API integrations to Quickbooks Online, Netsuite, and Intaact in the coming months. The VeraNet platform will allow companies to easily keep track of and account for cryptocurrency or tokens they may be using for their business.

Acuity has started to see more and more clients facing accounting challenges when dealing with cryptocurrency and digital tokens. "Crypto companies preach transparency, but few people know what to do when it comes to accounting. Crypto protocols are so different from legacy bank access and fiat transactions that most accountants are stumped and can't get past the decimal place issues," said Matthew May, COO of Acuity. "We are combining our accounting know-how and Verady's technology acumen to create a simple solution for companies to meet all of their accounting compliance requirements."

"Our platform is a proven solution, for the past four years Verady's solution has assisted a top accounting firm in auditing the financials of a major cryptocurrency company," said Verady CEO Kell Canty. "The VeraNet platform is the next evolution of this technology and will allow non-technical bookkeepers to easily and correctly account for cryptocurrency and tokens."

About Verady: Verady provides cryptocurrency accounting and audit technology services through VeraNet, where financial institutions, corporations, and individuals can audit, account, and report on blockchain assets. Verady believes traditional accounting systems, firms, and standards are currently lacking functionality around cryptocurrencies. VeraNet will be the bridge between cryptocurrencies and traditional financial accounting which is needed to further their acceptance and growth. For more information about Verady please visit verady.com or follow @veradyinfo on Twitter.

About Acuity: Acuity is a modern day accounting and finance department that helps build scalable accounting processes for growing businesses. Whether a business needs basic bookkeeping or dedicated CFO services, Acuity's expert team of U.S.-based professionals serve as partners in financial growth, giving business owners the confidence and support needed to scale smarter.

Learn more about accounting and bookkeeping for cryptocurrency here - https://bookkeeping.acuity.co/cryptocurrency/ by Matthew May at Acuity.

Media Contact Verady:

Chris Rodgers

[email protected]

Media Contact Acuity:

Matthew May

[email protected]

SOURCE Acuity
BOGOTA, Colombia, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 70 leaders from Jewish communities in Latin America, Spain and Portugal, joined by AJC leaders and Latino Jews living in the United States, gathered in Colombia, from November 30 to December 3, for the annual strategic forum of AJC's Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs (BILLA).

This signature event was cohosted by AJC's institutional partner, the Confederacion de Comunidades Judias de Colombia, and commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and 70 years since UN General Assembly resolution 181, which recommended a two-state solution in British-governed Palestine.

A highlight of the weekend gathering was the presentation of the AJC Gesher Award to Colombian President and 2016 Nobel Peace Laureate, H.E. Juan Manuel Santos, during a private reception at Casa Narino, Colombia's governmental palace, on December 1. The award, which means "bridge" in Hebrew, was presented by AJC CEO, David Harris, in recognition of the president's tireless efforts to build bridges among his country, the United States, and Israel, and between Colombia and its long-time enemies.

"You are truly deserving of our Gesher Award, President Santos," said Harris. "You are a courageous peace-maker, a powerful advocate of our shared causes, and a true and steadfast friend." In 2016, Santos signed a peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas, putting an end to an armed conflict that lasted more than five decades and resulted in hundreds of thousands of victims.

In his address, Santos spoke about his admiration of the Jewish people and for Israel: "I express my gratitude to the Jewish community and the American Jewish Committee for their support of the peace process in Colombia and their contribution to the Colombia-U.S. link. We value our strong relationship with Israel, and we want to learn how to create more opportunities for our people from Israel."

On Saturday evening, diplomats from the United States, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Guatemala, as well as representatives from Colombia's Ministry of Interior, the Municipality of Bogota and the armed forces, attended a reception celebrating Latin America's vital support for the establishment of the State of Israel.

In an emotional moment, Araceli Garcia Granados paid tribute to her grandfather, Jorge Garcia Granados, who was the Guatemalan Ambassador to the UN in 1947 and persuaded several countries to support the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. Pedro Correa do Lago also remembered his grandfather, Osvaldo Aranha, the late Brazilian Ambassador to the UN and President of the General Assembly in 1947, for his crucial role in the historic vote.

During the four-day event, Forum attendees discussed the opportunities and challenges facing Latin America, as well as strategies to advance the well-being of their Jewish communities. Israeli ambassadors to Colombia, Marco Sermoneta, and Mexico, Jonathan Peled, addressed the significantly improved relations between Latin America and Israel, and the new opportunities created following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the region earlier this year.

One of the programmatic highlights was a session with Tal Becker, senior member of the Israeli peace negotiation team, and Frank Pearl, former Colombian High Commissioner for Peace and an AJC Project Interchange alumnus, about the similarities and differences between pursuing a peace process in the Middle East and Colombia.

Another noteworthy session involved a discussion among several Latin American political leaders and media personalities, all of whom participated in AJC Project Interchange seminars in Israel, about the image of Israel in the continent.

For decades, AJC, the premier global Jewish advocacy organization, has engaged with the governments and Jewish communities of Latin America, Spain and Portugal, as well as with Latino leaders in the United States. Since its establishment in 2005, BILLA has strengthened AJC's active role in promoting Latino-Jewish alliances in the U.S. and strengthening the relationship among the United States, Israel, and each of the Ibero-American countries.

BILLA is chaired by Mario Fleck of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and directed by Dina Siegel Vann, a native of Mexico, in Washington, D.C.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org


NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Two months after acquiring Lake Norman Publications, growing local media company American Hometown Publishing Inc. announced today it has acquired the Lake Norman Citizen newspaper, setting the stage for a merger of the two hyperlocal publishers located just outside of Charlotte.

American Hometown Publishing CEO Brad Dennison said this week's editions of the products will be merged: "We're working to preserve the best content both publishers have to offer, plus we'll be adding some exciting new twists in the weeks and months to come. I think our readers and advertisers will be very pleased with the new products."

Lifelong Lake Norman-area resident and Citizen majority owner Irv Hager said he sold because he felt the time was right for a merger of the Lake Norman newspaper titles.

"AHP is a skilled local media company with all the tools necessary for the opportunities presented by a merger," Hager said. "I look forward to reading the consolidated products and I'm confident the new ownership will be a force for good in our communities."

Based in Davidson, N.C., Lake Norman Publications consists of three weekly newspapers and one monthly, as well as a website covering the region. American Hometown Publishing acquired this group about two months ago. The Lake Norman Citizen, which American Hometown Publishing acquired today, publishes one weekly newspaper and was based just a few miles away in Huntersville, but will immediately move to the Davidson office.

"We have fallen in love with these communities surrounding Lake Norman," Dennison said. "We see a wonderful opportunity to build amazing products for our readers and advertisers."

In addition to its North Carolina holdings, American Hometown Publishing owns and operates community newspapers, websites and magazines in Virginia, Tennessee, Florida and Oklahoma. AHP also operates its proprietary digital marketing services platform, Hometown Digital Solutions, which launched in 2016.

American Hometown Publishing was acquired by Nashville-based West End Holdings LLC in July 2017. Charlotte small business broker Joe Vagnone represented the Lake Norman Citizen.

About American Hometown Publishing Inc.

Formed in 2005, AHP is an independent media company that operates newspapers, websites and magazines in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Oklahoma.

For more information, visit www.americanhometownpublishing.com

About West End Holdings LLC

West End Holdings LLC is a special-situation private equity firm focused on acquiring non-strategic assets that are under-nourished from either a capital or leadership perspective. WEH solves problems for business owners by acquiring their under-performing assets, enabling them to re-focus their limited management attention and financial resources on their more profitable businesses.

For more information, visit www.westendholdings.com

SOURCE American Hometown Publishing

Related Links

http://www.americanhometownpublishing.com


RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Following a substantial decrease in U.S. travelers planning to spend their holiday in Paris last year, the City of Lights projects a 16.3 percent increase in U.S. visitors for the 2017 season, according to part two of Allianz Global Assistance's Top 10 Holiday Destination Report. Despite this increase, parts of the United Kingdom, including London and Manchester, will experience a decrease from 2016 levels.

Allianz Global Assistance reviewed more than 760,000 Americans' travel plans* during the peak holiday travel season, Thanksgiving through New Year's, and found that while Paris saw a significant decrease in American travelers during last year's holiday season (down 12.8 percent from 2015), the city has risen for 2017 and remains as the second most popular European destination.

London continues to be the most prevalent European destination for U.S. travelers despite London Heathrow Airport expecting a 10.9 percent decrease in U.S. holiday travel from 2016. Manchester also saw a significant decrease in holiday travel this year, dropping 26.6 percent since 2016.

Rome, Frankfurt and Amsterdam rounded out the top five European travel destinations for 2017, with Rome showing the biggest increase in travel (56.4 percent increase from 2016). Rome's shift in ranking from eighth to third is the second most drastic shift in the review's findings, following Reykjavik, Iceland, which jumped in ranking from 24th to 11th, a 143.9 percent increase in number of travel plans.

In addition to Rome and Reykjavik, the cities that benefited most from the redistribution of American travelers interested in visiting Europe include: Geneva, increased by 36.8 percent; and Athens, increased by 32.4 percent.

Overall, Europe recorded an impressive 9.2 percent increase of American travelers.

"We're pleased to see that Americans' confidence in European travel, particularly to Paris, is returning this holiday season," said Daniel Durazo, director of communications at Allianz Global Assistance USA. "While world events including terrorism continue to impact travelers' interest in traveling to the United Kingdom, London remains the top holiday travel destination, and many other cities like Rome, Reykjavik and Athens are enjoying nice gains in popularity this year."

A video highlighting the review's findings is available for review.

Allianz Global Assistance offers travel insurance** through most major U.S. airlines, leading travel agents, online travel agencies and directly to consumers. For more information on Allianz Global Assistance and the policies offered for travelers, please visit: http://www.allianztravelinsurance.com or like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/AllianzTravelInsuranceUS.

*Methodology: The data of U.S. travelers' booking intent to purchase flights to European airports was gathered by analyzing the number of customers that went through the online booking process of airfare and package paths for partners offering Allianz Global Assistance travel insurance from June 1 to October 15, 2017 to generate itineraries for travel to Europe from the US during peak Holiday travel season (11/22/2017  1/08/2018), compared to the same purchasing in 2016 to peak 2017 Holiday travel dates (11/23/2016  1/09/2017).

Destination (Airport Code) % Change In U.S. Visitors

2016-2017 2016 Rank 2017 Rank Rank Change

2016-2017 London, United Kingdom (LHR) -10.9 percent 1 1 0 Paris, France (CDG) 16.3 percent 2 2 0 Rome, Italy (FCO) 56.4 percent 8 3 5 Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) 8.9 percent 3 4 -1 Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS) 19.6 percent 4 5 -1 Madrid, Spain (MAD) 16.9 percent 5 6 -1 Barcelona, Spain (BCN) 6.0 percent 9 7 2 Munich, Germany (MUC) -0.5 percent 7 8 -1 Dublin, Ireland (DUB) -3.9 percent 6 9 -3 Zurich, Switzerland (ZRH) 13.9 percent 10 10 0 Reykjavik, Iceland (KEF) 143.9 percent 24 11 13 Brussels, Belgium (BRU) 26.6 percent 13 12 1 Milan, Italy (MXP) 15.6 percent 14 13 1 Lisbon, Portugal (LIS) 37.4 percent 17 14 3 Vienna, Austria (VIE) -5.9 percent 12 15 -3 Berlin, Germany (TXL) 12.1 percent 15 16 -1 London, United Kingdom (LGW) 77.3 percent 25 17 8 Athens, Greece (ATH) 32.4 percent 20 18 2 Geneva, Switzerland (GVA) 36.8 percent 21 19 2 Manchester, United Kingdom (MAN) -26.6 percent 11 20 -9

Allianz Global Assistance USA

Allianz Global Assistance USA (AGA Service Company) is a leading consumer specialty insurance and assistance company. We provide insurance to 25 million customers annually and are best known for our Allianz Travel Insurance plans. In addition to travel insurance, Allianz Global Assistance USA offers tuition insurance, event ticket protection, registration protection for endurance events and unique travel assistance services such as international medical assistance and concierge services. The company also serves as an outsource provider for in-bound call center services and claims administration for credit card companies.

To learn more about Allianz Travel Insurance, please visit allianztravelinsurance.com or Like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/AllianzTravelInsuranceUS.

**Terms, conditions, and exclusions apply to all plans. Plans are available only to U.S. residents. Not all plans are available in all jurisdictions. For a complete description of the coverage and benefit limits offered under your plan, carefully review your plan's Letter of Confirmation/Declarations and Certificate of Insurance/Policy. Insurance coverage is underwritten by BCS Insurance Company (OH, Administrative Office: Oakbrook Terrace, IL), rated "A-" (Excellent) by A.M. Best Co., under BCS Form No. 52.201 series or 52.401 series, or Jefferson Insurance Company (NY, Administrative Office: Richmond, VA), rated "A+" (Superior) by A.M. Best Co., under Jefferson Form No. 101-C series or 101-P series, or Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company and Affiliated Companies (One Nationwide Plaza, Columbus, OH 43215-2200), under Form Nos. SRTC 2000 and NSHTC 2500, each rated "A+" (Superior) by A.M. Best Co., depending on state of residence. Allianz Travel Insurance products are distributed by Allianz Global Assistance, a brand of AGA Service Company. AGA Service Company is the licensed producer and administrator of these plans and an affiliate of Jefferson Insurance Company. The insured shall not receive any special benefit or advantage due to the affiliation between AGA Service Company and Jefferson Insurance Company. Non-insurance benefits/products are provided and serviced by AGA Service Company.

SOURCE Allianz Global Assistance USA

Related Links

https://www.allianztravelinsurance.com


State taxpayers in 2015 paid $75,000 to a former lawmakers aide who complained of sexual harassment and discrimination and filed a complaint alleging she was wrongfully fired from her job, records show.

Jana Harris first filed a complaint against former Sen. Spencer Coggs, D-Milwaukee, in 2009  one of four complaints of sexual harassment filed in the state Legislature in the last 10 years, according to its chief clerks.

One other complaint was brought in the state Senate in 2011, while two complaints were filed in the state Assembly, in 2014 and 2017, Senate Chief Clerk Jeff Renk and Assembly Chief Clerk Patrick Fuller said in response to requests by the Wisconsin State Journal.

Neither provided details about the complaints nor released any documents related to them aside from the six-page 2015 settlement agreement between the Legislature and Harris, who went by Jana Williams at the time. Renk said he was releasing the settlement agreement because it was reached through the Department of Workforce Developments Equal Rights Division complaint process, which is public, although the initial complaint was filed with his office. Harris filed the complaint in 2011 after she was fired from her job in Coggs office.

Deborah Little Cohn, an administrative law judge who oversaw the complaint proceedings, found in 2015 that there was probable cause to believe Coggs discriminated against Harris and sexually harassed her, according to documents obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal.

In one case, Coggs asked Harris if she was showing more cleavage lately and said her breasts were a distraction in the office. Coggs also said Harris should cover up by wearing a jacket because she worked with men, according to Little Cohns findings.

He noted that anyone who came in would not know the color of her eyes, Little Cohn wrote.

In another instance, Coggs asked Harris if she had a taste for white meat when she and a white co-worker both asked to take the same day off. Coggs also criticized Harris appearance  once saying she was not black enough.

Harris reported her concerns in 2009 to the Legislatures human resources office. Staff from the office met with Coggs, who reportedly said Harris should have kept her concerns in-house. When Harris told the HR official Coggs was upset by the complaints, the official said Coggs was formulating a plan to address her concerns but declined to reveal details because the meeting with Coggs was confidential.

Coggs eventually began to exclude Harris from staff meetings, Little Cohn wrote, and Harris began to experience hives and difficulty sleeping because of stress.

When Republicans took control of the Legislature in 2010 and Coggs needed to downsize staff, Harris told Coggs how important her job was to her. According to the report, Coggs responded by saying: You cant create an adversarial situation and then come back and ask me for something.

Little Cohn concluded Coggs both tolerated and contributed to the creation of a hostile work environment in his office and that there was probable cause to believe the Legislature permitted sexual harassment.

Innocent of all claims

Coggs, who is now Milwaukee city treasurer, did not return a phone call seeking comment but said in a statement he is innocent of all claims regarding the case and has never engaged in or condoned harassing or discriminatory behavior. He said Harris was fired because her position was eliminated. He said he had no part in the settlement.

In over 35 years in public office, at no time have I engaged in or condoned behavior which could be viewed as harassment or discrimination with respect to the complainant or anyone else who has worked for me, he said.

Harris did not respond to a request for comment.

Harris filed another complaint in 2011 with the now-defunct Government Accountability Board alleging a Coggs staffer used his taxpayer-funded job to work on Coggs unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor. She also alleged Coggs used Capitol staff members to take care of personal matters for his family.

Coggs also denied the allegations to reporters then.

Nationally, dozens of women and some men have come forward in recent months to report alleged sexual harassment, assault and misconduct by powerful men, bringing fresh scrutiny to state legislatures and Congress over how such behavior is being addressed.

Assembly and Senate leaders have said they will not release complaints about such behavior because doing so could have a chilling effect on employees confidence that their complaints would remain confidential. Renk and Fuller declined to provide the records with the victims identifying information blacked out, and Fuller also has denied State Journal requests for records of any taxpayer-funded settlements resulting from such complaints.

Wolves at henhouse

The scrutiny also comes at a time when the Legislature is working to improve its system for reporting harassment and training to deter it.

In the Legislature, fear of retaliation is underscored by the fact that staff work on an at-will basis for lawmakers and can be fired for any reason. Lawmakers also have a say in the employment of legislative staff in charge of receiving complaints.

The fear of retaliation often keeps staff from reporting sexual harassment involving their bosses, experts say.

This is like the wolves guarding the henhouse, said Jennifer Drobac, a sexual harassment law professor at Indiana University. The legislative staff work directly for the lawmaker, so if they had a problem with the lawmaker they would have to go to human resources staff who also work for the lawmakers  so both sets of subordinates are going to have to worry about losing their jobs if the person that they are complaining about is the lawmaker.

In other states, like Minnesota and Illinois, staff work for legislative caucuses instead of individual lawmakers.

Amanda Jorgenson, who oversees the Legislatures human resources office, said she was hired about a year ago and since then has been working to overhaul the Legislatures employee manuals and hiring process. Jorgenson said she also started working with legislative leaders this spring to create regular training for all staff and lawmakers.

She said any staff members who share concerns with her office are assured retaliation from supervisors or co-workers wont be tolerated and is illegal. She also emphasized that her office is independent and that no lawmakers were involved in her hiring.

Leadership did approve of hiring an HR Manager but was not involved in the hiring process, she said. In addition, the Legislative Human Resources Office is an arm of the Chief Clerks Offices but is a completely separate office.

Some legislative staff say they have felt unwilling to come forward, or were unaware of protections the HR office could provide.

Historically we tell our stories to each other over lunch or drinks. We dont go to HR, we dont file complaints, said one female staff member who spoke on condition she not be named because of concerns over her employment. I think this is getting better as people are learning more about the HR process and the protections from retaliation and the privacy that we have.
PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Armis, the enterprise IoT security company, today announced that CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, has named Armis to its 2017 Internet of Things 50 list, which recognizes companies whose innovative offerings are helping connect objects, computing devices, infrastructure, data storage and data analytics that will transform our everyday lives.

The IoT era is a reality for enterprises, and this the fast growing, dynamic ecosystem of connected devices presents a complex security challenge. Traditional cybersecurity solutions are not designed to protect these new connected, IoT devices -- known or unknown to IT. Armis is the only technology platform that lets enterprises see and control compromised and unmanaged devices and rogue networks accessing their systems, effectively eliminating the IoT security blind spot that exists in all businesses today.

"When we founded Armis, we were immediately able to see companies aren't aware of 40 percent of the devices in their environment. Since then, we discovered that more than five billion IoT devices with BlueTooth capability are at risk for BlueBorne, an airborne security vulnerability. This evidence is a call to action for enterprises to address the very real and immediate security risk that IoT poses," said Yevgeny Dibrov, CEO and co-founder of Armis. "We are proud to be recognized by CRN for our contributions to bring IoT security visibility and control to all enterprises that are at risk, whether they are aware of it or not."

"The vendors on this year's Internet of Things 50 list are brilliantly exploiting the deep creative potential of the IoT landscape and uncovering its most promising business opportunities, demonstrating what is possible and inspiring others to innovate," said Robert Faletra, CEO of The Channel Company. "These 50 companies are at the vanguard of the IoT revolution, developing technologies that are set to transform the way we live and work."

The Internet of Things 50 list will be featured in the December issue of CRN and on CRN.com at crn.com/iot50.

Tweet This:

@TheChannelCo recognizes @ArmisSecurity in 2017 @CRN #CRNIOT50 crn.com/iot50

About Armis

Armis eliminates the IoT security blind spot, protecting enterprises from the threat of unmanaged or rogue devices and networks. Customers, including Samsung Research America and IDT Corporation, trust Armis' agentless IoT security platform to see and control any device or network. Armis is a privately held company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with an office in Tel Aviv.

https://www.armis.com/

About the Channel Company

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequaled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelco.com

Follow The Channel Company: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook

Melanie Turpin

The Channel Company

(508) 416-1195

[email protected]

Contact:

Kelsey Dannels

Bateman Group

451-697-2561

[email protected]

SOURCE Armis

Related Links

https://www.armis.com


HELSINKI, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascend Capital Partners today announced an investment of over Euro 24 million in four early stage Finnish technology companies. This investment round is part of Ascend's major investment in European markets and follows its previous investing success in the auto sector in Luxembourg. Ascend is in the midst of negotiating additional investments with Finnish and German technology companies which it plans to complete before the end of the year.

Sino Track Goes Slush - Investment checks Sino Track Goes Slush - Group photo

This investment round in high-tech companies in Finland focuses on the healthcare and automotive industries. In the healthcare sector, Ascend has invested in Grundium OY, a digital imaging technology company producing a portable digital microscope scanner, and Fimmic OY, which uses deep learning AI technology to provide diagnostic support for researchers and healthcare professionals in image analysis. In the automotive sector, Ascend has invested in Canatu OY, which develops and manufactures 3D formable and stretchable films and touch sensors, and TactoTek OY, which produces Injection Molded Structural Electronics that integrate printed electronics and traditional electronic components into 3D molded structures. Fimmic and Canatu are based in Helsinki and Grundium and Tactotek are based in Tampere and Oulu, respectively.

Ascend's unique "cluster" strategy is to invest in companies that have synergies with their other portfolio companies so they provide a complete end-to-end solution for customers. With the help of Ascend's extensive business connections, these companies will be able to expand internationally across Europe, China, and the US.

"We are very excited to close these deals. Finland became a serious interest for us starting back in Slush 2016. We recognized that there are many hard working and smart people in Finland and companies with enormous potential in international markets. We knew that Ascend could help these companies grow. I look forward to working with our portfolio companies and continuing this relationship with Finland," said Monita Mo, CEO Ascend Capital Partners.

These new investments were officially announced at the highly popular startup and tech conference, Slush, held annually in Helsinki, Finland. Ascend made the public announcement at a China-specific event sponsored by COMB+ called Sino Track Goes Slush. Event invitees included Chinese and Finnish government officials, investors, and startup companies. The session highlighted the synergies between Finland and China, and featured Ascend as leading one of the first major Chinese-backed investments in Finland.

The founder CEOs of Ascend and COMB+ have known each other for nearly two decades, and have had a working relationship since Slush in 2016. They have formed a strategic partnership and are in discussions to establish an investment fund together, with the goal of investing in and bringing more innovative technologies globally.

More information

Ascend: Ascend PR Contact, Elaine Mo, [email protected], Tel: +1 973-978-1719

COMB+: COMB+ Assistant to the President, Amy Wang, [email protected], Tel: +86 186-1155-3455

About Ascend

Ascend Capital is a leading international venture capital and financial advisory firm committed to providing world-class corporate financial services and investment opportunities to innovative companies who have potential to grow and expand internationally, especially in Europe, China, and the United States. With extensive regional and international networks, and insight into Chinese and Western capital market worlds, Ascend has set itself apart from other pure advisory firms and pure private equity funds. For more information, please visit www.ascend-cp.com

About COMB+

COMB+ is a full-lifecycle entrepreneurship service platform based in Beijing, China. COMB+ is dedicated to creating an ecosystem for global entrepreneurs and startups to realize their dreams. As a new-generation innovation incubator, COMB+ has a unique "platform + investment" business model. COMB+ focuses on providing entrepreneurship services to and investing in early-stage startups in the technology and cultural industries. www.combplus.com

Media contact:

Juhani Polkko

[email protected]

+1-415-439-0825

SOURCE Ascend Capital Partners

Related Links

http://www.ascend-cp.com


SAO PAULO, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Banco BTG Pactual S.A., a sociedade por acoes incorporated under the laws of the Federative Republic of Brazil (the " Bank "), acting through its Luxembourg branch, hereby announces the expiration of its previously announced offer to purchase for cash (the " Tender Offer ") up to U.S.$390,000,000.00 aggregate principal amount (the " Maximum Tender Amount ") of its 8.750% Perpetual Non-Cumulative Junior Subordinated Notes (the " Notes "), upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the Offer to Purchase, dated November 1, 2017 (the " Offer to Purchase ") and its accompanying Letter of Transmittal, dated November 1, 2017 (together with the Offer to Purchase, the " Tender Offer Documents ").

The Tender Offer launched on November 1, 2017 and expired on the previously announced expiration date and time of 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on December 1, 2017 (the " Expiration Date "). As of the Expiration Date, a total of U.S.$497,912,000 aggregate principal amount of Notes had been validly tendered by registered holders of the Notes (the " Holders ") and not validly withdrawn or rejected in the Tender Offer, representing 38.30% of the aggregate principal amount of the Notes. Withdrawal rights for the Notes expired at 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on December 1, 2017.

The Bank expects to accept for purchase on December 6, 2017 (the " Settlement Date "), on a pro rata basis, all Notes that were validly tendered and not validly withdrawn or rejected up to the Maximum Tender Amount, applying a proration ratio as to each tendering Holder equal to the ratio of the Maximum Tender Amount to the full amount of Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn or rejected, with further adjustments upward to avoid purchases of Notes in a principal amount less than their minimum authorized denominations.

Notes held by the Bank or by its affiliates (excluding any Notes that are held by the Bank in custody for other Holders) are not considered to be "outstanding" for purposes of the indenture governing the Notes, but were nevertheless eligible for tender pursuant to the Tender Offer, and were counted for purposes of calculating the Maximum Tender Amount as well the proration ratio to be applied on the Settlement Date, in the same manner as Notes held by parties unaffiliated with the Bank, as more fully described in the Tender Offer Documents.

Following the Settlement Date, U.S.$910,000,000 in aggregate principal amount of the Notes are expected to remain available for trading on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange's Euro MTF market, of which U.S.$231,946,000 in aggregate principal amount of the Notes are expected to be deemed "outstanding" for purposes of the indenture governing the Notes. Holders who have not tendered their Notes at or prior to the Expiration Date, or whose Notes have not been accepted in the Tender Offer (by virtue of applicable proration or otherwise), will continue to hold their Notes. For a description of certain consequences to Holders who have not tendered their Notes or whose Notes were not accepted for purchase, see "Certain Significant ConsiderationsThe Tender Offer may adversely affect the market value and reduce the liquidity of any trading market of the Note" in the Offer to Purchase. The Bank will have no obligation to offer to purchase any remaining Notes in the future, and any decisions by the Bank as to whether to redeem or repurchase any remaining Notes in the future will be made on an economic basis and in compliance with the Bank's legal and regulatory obligations.

This press release is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to buy, or the solicitation of an offer to sell, any of the Notes. Neither the delivery of this announcement, the Tender Offer Documents nor any purchase pursuant to the Tender Offer shall under any circumstances create any implication that the information contained in this announcement or the Offer to Purchase is correct as of any time subsequent to the date hereof or thereof or that there has been no change in the information set forth herein or therein or in the Bank's affairs since the date hereof or thereof.

Neither the Offer to Purchase nor any of the Tender Offer Documents have been filed with or reviewed by the federal or any state securities commission or regulatory authority of any country, nor has any such commission or authority passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the Offer to Purchase or any of the Tender Offer Documents relating to the Tender Offer. Any representation to the contrary is unlawful and may be a criminal offense.

None of the Bank, its board of directors, the tender and information agent for the Tender Offer or the trustee for the Notes or any of their respective affiliates have made any recommendation as to whether Holders should tender any Notes in response to the Tender Offer. Holders were encouraged to make their own decision as to whether to tender any of their Notes and, if so, the principal amount of Notes to tender.

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are identified by terms and phrases such as "anticipate," "believe," "intend," "estimate," "expect," "continue," "should," "could," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "will" and similar expressions and are mainly based on the Bank's current expectations and estimates of future events that affect or may affect the Tender Offer, all of which are subject to several risks and uncertainties that may change from time to time. It's impossible for the Bank to predict how forward-looking statements may be affected by such risks and uncertainties, and the Bank does not have any duty to, and does not intend to, update or revise the forward-looking statements in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

Any questions or requests for assistance or for additional copies of the Tender Offer Documents may be directed to DF King & Co., Inc., the tender and information agent for the Tender Offer, at its telephone number set forth below.

D.F. King & Co., Inc.

48 Wall Street

New York, NY 10005

Banks and Brokers: +1 (212) 269-5550

Toll free (U.S. only): +1 (866) 796-3419

[email protected]

By Facsimile (For Eligible Institutions only): +1 (212) 709-3328

Confirmation: +1 (212) 269-5552

Attention: Andrew Beck

Copies of the Offer to Purchase, the other Tender Offer Documents and all press releases issued in connection with the Tender Offer will also be available, until the Settlement Date, at www.dfking.com/btgpactual. A Holder (or a beneficial owner that is not a Holder) may also contact the Bank at its telephone number set forth below or its nominee for assistance concerning the Offer Documents.

Banco BTG Pactual

(acting through its Luxembourg branch):

Praia de Botafogo, 501, 5th and 6th floors,

Rio de Janeiro, RJ22250-040, Brazil

+55 21 3262-9717

SOURCE Banco BTG Pactual S.A.
KIPP is the nation's largest charter school system, and has a strong track record of moving low-income children to and through college at a much higher rate than traditional public schools. In the Houston area, 10.6 percent of low-income eighth-graders have graduated from college within six years, whereas 50 percent of KIPP Houston students do so. The new campus is opening hundreds of seats in KIPP Houston, which currently has a waiting list of more than 10,000, underscoring BBVA Compass' commitment to Houston and to creating opportunities in underserved communities.

"BBVA Compass' investment in KIPP Houston marks our largest ever education investment, and there's a reason we chose KIPP," said BBVA Compass President and CEO Onur Genc. "Whenever you see an organization that's having such a transformative effect on lives, especially children's lives, you want to do whatever you can to help it go farther and create even more opportunities."

Mike Feinberg, who co-founded KIPP in 1994 in Houston with fellow Teach For America teacher Dave Levin, said he hopes the partnership with BBVA Compass can serve as a model of public-private cooperation.

"KIPP is preparing our kids not just to do well in school, but to do well in life," he said. "This partnership is an example where business and K-12 can work directly together. BBVA Compass knows a lot about growing organizations and supporting businesses, and it can help give direction on how to shape the workforce of the future, how to give our kids both the hard academic skills and the soft skills  skills like teamwork, perseverance, self-control  that they're going to need to both get their foot in the door and also become future leaders."

The bank announced at the ribbon-cutting, which was delayed from earlier in the year due to Hurricane Harvey, that it was giving each KIPP NEXUS student a $25 voucher to open a Young Savers account with the bank. The bank's volunteers, meantime, have already spent time at the school teaching financial education to kindergarteners.

"One of the great things about the partnership with BBVA Compass has been the financial literacy class that's been offered to our youngest students, our kindergarteners," said KIPP NEXUS School Leader Lisa McClinton. "Many of our families are not aware of what it takes to really get to college and to sustain in college financially, and so this particular course was a way to start the conversation with our families here at KIPP NEXUS."

Hundreds get 'that awesome phone call'

KIPP launched a growth campaign in 2014, with a goal of adding 10 new schools in Houston to increase its total number of area students to 18,000 by 2024. The BBVA Compass Foundation became the lead corporate investor in the campaign, committing $1.8 million over five years and earning it the naming rights to one of KIPP's campuses for 10 years. The BBVA Compass Opportunity Campus is home to KIPP NEXUS Primary School and KIPP NEXUS Middle School. It currently boasts 91 kindergarteners and 110 fifth-graders, and plans to add first-grade and sixth-grade classes for the 2018-2019 school year.

KIPP Houston is a public charter school system, and it gets most of its operating dollars from the State of Texas. It was prohibited from using that funding for new facilities, however, until the Texas legislature voted to change that for the 2018-2019 school year. Now the state's charter schools will get $60 million for facilities funding, which charter-school advocates say covers only a fraction of the current facilities needs.

"The bottom line is this commitment from BBVA Compass is enabling us to open up a school in Northwest Houston, where we didn't have any schools and yet there were thousands of kids nearby on the waitlist," Feinberg said. "It allowed hundreds of families that were praying they could somehow get a seat in a KIPP school to get that awesome phone call saying, 'Guess what, good news, your child has a seat in our school.'"

A history of commitment

Over the past five years, BBVA Compass has invested more than $7 million in education, much of it in underserved areas. In 2015, for instance, the bank teamed up with the Houston Symphony and the Houston Independent School District to launch the Houston Symphony School Residency at Crespo Elementary, which has a student population that's 95 percent economically disadvantaged and 97 percent Hispanic.

As part of the program, two of the symphony's Community-Embedded Musicians lead classroom interactions designed to enrich the lives of every third-, fourth- and fifth-grade student at Crespo. BBVA Compass funded the program, the first of the kind in the city, which is structured around lessons, instrument demonstrations and performances.

The effort was designed in part to support the bank's drive to help build a pipeline of the kinds of creative thinkers Houston needs to sustain its lead in some of the most demanding disciplines that would seem to have nothing to do with the arts  medicine, space exploration, energy, to name a few. Studies have found that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were significantly more likely to excel in math if they'd had music education, for instance, and non-native English speakers are also able to pick up the language faster through the use of music.

"After Harvey, it's worth saying: We believe in Houston's bright future, we're committed to it, and we're paying close attention to what it needs to continue to be a model city in this 21st century," said BBVA Compass Director of Corporate Responsibility and Reputation Reymundo Ocanas, who played a prominent role in organizing the bank's relief efforts after the storm. "One of the best ways we can help ensure Houston's future is to give its children  all of its children  the education they need so they can one day step up and lead it into the 22nd century."

It's a sentiment KIPP's Feinberg echoes.

"Houston is such an entrepreneurial city with so many opportunities with so many industries, which means there's a need for a lot of talent here," Feinberg said. "But we're not going to get there if only 20 percent of all of our children wind up getting college degrees. It's simply not enough in this global economy, so we need to increase that level. And if we do, then the race to the top is won right here in Houston."

To learn more about BBVA Compass, visit: www.bbvacompass.com

For more news visit: www.bbva.com and newsroom.bbvacompass.com

About BBVA Group

BBVA (NYSE: BBVA) is a customer-centric global financial services group founded in 1857. The Group has a strong leadership position in the Spanish market, is the largest financial institution in Mexico, and has leading franchises in South America and the Sunbelt Region of the United States; it is also the leading shareholder in Garanti, Turkey's biggest bank for market capitalization. Its diversified business is focused on high-growth markets and it relies on technology as a key sustainable competitive advantage. Corporate responsibility is at the core of its business model. BBVA fosters financial education and inclusion, and supports scientific research and culture. It operates with the highest integrity, a long-term vision and applies the best practices. More information about BBVA Group can be found at bbva.com.

About BBVA Compass

BBVA Compass is a Sunbelt-based financial institution that operates 649 branches, including 336 in Texas, 89 in Alabama, 63 in Arizona, 61 in California, 45 in Florida, 37 in Colorado and 18 in New Mexico. BBVA Compass ranks among the top 25 largest U.S. commercial banks based on deposit market share and ranks among the largest banks in Alabama (2nd), Texas (4th) and Arizona (5th). BBVA Compass has been recognized as one of the leading small business lenders by the Small Business Administration (SBA) and ranked 5th nationally in the total number of SBA loans originated in fiscal year 2016. Additional information about BBVA Compass can be found at www.bbvacompass.com. For more BBVA Compass news, follow @BBVACompassNews on Twitter or visit newsroom.bbvacompass.com.

About KIPP Houston Public Schools

KIPP was founded in Houston in 1994 and has since grown to 209 public charter schools in 20 states and D.C. educating more than 88,000 children. Houston is KIPP's largest region and educates 14,500 students in 28 schools and serves an additional 2,300 alumni in college and beyond. While only 10.6 percent of students from low-income communities in Houston graduate from college, 50 percent of KIPPsters, tracked from the 8th grade, graduate college. www.kipphouston.org

SOURCE BBVA Compass

Related Links

http://www.bbvacompass.com


COLUMBUS, Ohio, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Big Lots, Inc. (NYSE: BIG) announced today that David Campisi, its president and CEO, took medical leave after he was hospitalized on Friday, December 1st, shortly after the Company's third quarter earnings call. Mr. Campisi is now recuperating at home. In connection with Mr. Campisi's temporary leave of absence, the Big Lots Board of Directors has assigned Mr. Campisi's executive responsibilities to Lisa M. Bachmann, Executive Vice President, Chief Merchandising & Operating Officer, and Timothy A. Johnson, Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative & Chief Financial Officer, effective immediately.

Ms. Bachmann and Mr. Johnson will continue to work closely with the other members of the Company's Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and the Board during Mr. Campisi's medical leave. In addition, James R. Chambers, the Company's non-executive chair of the Board, intends to spend additional time in Columbus with the leadership team during the duration of the medical leave.

"We have complete confidence in Lisa and TJ and the rest of the leadership team at Big Lots to continue the Company's strategic initiatives. David Campisi is an inspirational leader, and we look forward to his return to good health and to leading the Company again," said Mr. Chambers.

Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Big Lots, Inc. (NYSE: BIG) is a community retailer operating 1,430 BIG LOTS stores in 47 states, dedicated to friendly service, trustworthy value, and affordable solutions in every season and category  furniture, food, decor, and more. We exist to serve everyone like family, providing a better shopping experience for our customers, valuing and developing our associates, and creating growth for our shareholders. Big Lots supports the communities it serves through the Big Lots Foundation, a charitable organization focused on four areas of need: hunger, housing, healthcare, and education. For more information about the Company, visit www.biglots.com.

Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and such statements are intended to qualify for the protection of the safe harbor provided by the Act. The words "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "objective," "goal," "project," "intend," "plan," "believe," "will," "should," "may," "target," "forecast," "guidance," "outlook" and similar expressions generally identify forward-looking statements. Similarly, descriptions of our objectives, strategies, plans, goals or targets are also forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements relate to the expectations of management as to future occurrences and trends, including statements expressing optimism or pessimism about future operating results or events and projected sales, earnings, capital expenditures and business strategy. Forward-looking statements are based upon a number of assumptions concerning future conditions that may ultimately prove to be inaccurate. Forward-looking statements are and will be based upon management's then-current views and assumptions regarding future events and operating performance, and are applicable only as of the dates of such statements. Although we believe the expectations expressed in forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions within the bounds of our knowledge, forward-looking statements, by their nature, involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, any one or a combination of which could materially affect our business, financial condition, results of operations or liquidity.

Forward-looking statements that we make herein and in other reports and releases are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those discussed in such forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, current economic and credit conditions, the cost of goods, our inability to successfully execute strategic initiatives, competitive pressures, economic pressures on our customers and us, the availability of brand name closeout merchandise, trade restrictions, freight costs, the risks discussed in the Risk Factors section of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, and other factors discussed from time to time in our other filings with the SEC, including Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. This release should be read in conjunction with such filings, and you should consider all of these risks, uncertainties and other factors carefully in evaluating forward-looking statements.

You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date thereof. We undertake no obligation to publicly update forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. You are advised, however, to consult any further disclosures we make on related subjects in our public announcements and SEC filings.

SOURCE Big Lots, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.biglots.com


BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Aerolineas Argentinas today celebrated the delivery and commercial debut of the first 737 MAX airplane for the airline and for Latin America.

Aerolineas took delivery of the airplane, a MAX 8, in late November and flew the first commercial flight about a week later from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, becoming the first in the region to operate the new and improved 737 airplane.

"Adding the 737 MAX to our fleet is yet one more example of the growth we are envisioning for our company," said Mario Dell Acqua, President of Aerolineas Argentinas. "We feel both proud and responsible to continue working to deliver enhanced connectivity and an elevated experience to our passengers."

Aerolineas Argentinas is experiencing strong growth, with a 15 percent increase in passenger traffic in the past year, and a 22 percent increase since 2015. To support that growth, the airline plans to take delivery of 12 MAX airplanes and use them on flights regionally and, later in 2018, to the Caribbean.

"The 737 MAX 8 is a significant addition to Aerolineas' fleet. The MAX will enable the airline to continue to grow and win market-share in the competitive single-aisle marketplace," said Ricardo Cavero, vice president, Latin America sales, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. "It is a tremendous honor that Aerolineas Argentinas will be the first Latin American carrier to fly the 737 MAX, and we're confident the airplane's efficiency and reliability will help meet their goals."

The 737 MAX is the fastest selling airplane in Boeing history, surpassing 4,000 total orders to date. The MAX family incorporates the latest technology CFM International LEAP-1B engines, Advanced Technology winglets and other improvements to deliver the highest efficiency, reliability and passenger comfort in the single-aisle market.

The Aerolineas Argentinas MAX 8 is configured for 170 passengers and fly 3,515 nautical miles (6,510 kilometers).

About Aerolineas Argentinas

Founded in 1950, Aerolineas Argentinas is one of the leading companies in South America. From its bases in the Aeroparque Jorge Newbery and Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires, Aerolineas Argentinas flies to 22 international destinations in America and Europe. Along with Austral Lineas Aereas, Aerolineas operates flights to 37 destinations in Argentina, flying to more cities in the Argentine territory than any other airline. Aerolineas provides dynamic links between Argentina and the region through its relaunched hub in Aeroparque Jorge Newbery. The Airlines Group is carrying out an ambitious fleet renewal program, which consists of Airbus 330, Airbus 340, Boeing 737-700 / 800 and MAX and Embraer 190. Aerolineas Argentinas is a member of the SkyTeam global alliance since September 2012.

http://www.aerolineas.com.ar/

Contact:

Elizabeth Bieri

Communications

Boeing Commercial Airplanes

+1 206-465-2438

[email protected]

SOURCE Boeing

Related Links

http://www.boeing.com


LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: BR) today announced that it is increasing its collaboration efforts with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate digital innovation across financial services and other industries to drive efficiencies and improve the customer experience.

In market today, the Broadridge Communications CloudSM solution set, powered by AWS, delivers personalized, dynamic customer communications across channels, leveraging the power of a first-of-its-kind network to increase digital adoption. The solution helps companies transform static documents into personalized, interactive communications to increase engagement and build brand loyalty. Additionally, it extends digital reach by helping companies communicate with customers on 10 new digital banking and cloud storage channels of their choosing. The Broadridge Communications Cloud has over 200 customers today across Asset Management, Cable/Satellite, Capital Markets, Consumer Finance, Healthcare, Insurance, Retail Banking, Telecom, Utilities, and Wealth Management.

Broadridge is now working on the next generation of data management and archival platforms, to move beyond traditional solutions that primarily store static documents to meet regulatory obligations and facilitate presentment. The new solution will store documents, data and other objects in a repository where organizations can leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence and structured/un-structured querying to turn archives into actionable information.

"By combining Broadridge's managed services expertise with the breadth of services offered by AWS, we have been able to innovate at a pace that simply can't be done on legacy infrastructure," said Doug DeSchutter, President of Broadridge Customer Communications. "We are helping our clients be ready for what's next in a cloud-ready, digital-first world, and our new data archival offering will enable clients to access, and unlock the value of data in real-time."

"Broadridge has proven expertise in, and a rich history of, providing technology-driven solutions for the financial services industry," said Scott Mullins, Head of Worldwide Financial Services Business & Market Development at Amazon Web Services, Inc. "We are delighted to collaborate with them in architecting new digital solutions to help financial institutions and other enterprises accelerate the transformation of their industries and enrich the end-consumer experience."

About Broadridge

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR), a $4 billion global fintech leader, provides investor communications and technology-driven solutions for broker-dealers, banks, mutual funds and corporate issuers globally. Broadridge's investor communications, securities processing and managed services solutions help clients reduce their capital investments in operations infrastructure, allowing them to increase their focus on core business activities. With over 50 years of experience, Broadridge's infrastructure underpins proxy voting services for over 90 percent of public companies and mutual funds in North America, and processes more than $5 trillion in fixed income and equity trades per day. Broadridge employs approximately 10,000 full-time associates in 16 countries.

For more information about Broadridge, please visit www.broadridge.com.

Investors:



W. Edings Thibault

Head of Investor Relations

+1 516-472-5129

[email protected]



Media:



Gregg Rosenberg

Corporate Communications

+1 212-918-6966

[email protected]

SOURCE Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.broadridge.com


To Respect Layer One is to ensure that layer one cabling infrastructure provides the quality and performance necessary to make a company's technology investments worthwhile. For example, you wouldn't drive a Lamborghini on a bumpy gravel road, and you shouldn't buy sub-standard cabling to serve large-scale networking equipment. It's imperative for companies to protect the investments they make in technology.

"The technology solutions that we provide can help lower operating costs, reduce installation time and save physical space," said Lisa Ross, vice president and general manager of CABLExpress." "We know our customers' end goal is to strengthen their business processes through technology, so we always strive to ensure our solutions will protect and improve the functionality of their critical processes."

For 36 years CABLExpress has made a difference in serving large-scale networking equipment with its innovative cabling solutions that ensure networks operate at optimum speeds and performance levels. The company has technology experts that provide, deliver, and understand not just on their own extensive product offering, but also latest trends and industry standards. CABLExpress products lead the market in quality and performance. The company is consistently manufacturing cables, modules, and enclosures that exceed industry specifications.

Meet the CABLExpress technology experts:

Dave Fredricks is a data center infrastructure architect with more than 20 years of experience in fiber optic and structured cabling solutions. He's authored a half-dozen white papers on structured cabling, his latest, "Meeting 40/100G Ethernet and 32GFC, 128 GFCp Light Budgets with a Structured Cabling Design." His "Race to 400G Ethernet Part 4" blog post is due out later this month.

Josh Taylor, director of product management, has more than 20 years of experience and has authored a half-dozen white papers on Spine and Leaf, including his latest, "Spine-and-Leaf Architecture and Your Cabling." He has also produced 50+ Respect Layer One videos.

Rick Dallmann, senior data center infrastructure architect, has more than 20 years of experience in the design and implementation of fiber optic cabling and structured cabling solutions. He recently published the whitepaper, "Multi-Path System Offers a New, Standards-Based Fiber Optic Cabling Migration."

Rob Jordan is a data center infrastructure architect for CABLExpress. He has more than 20 years of experience in the fiber optic cabling industry. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. One of his latest blog offering examined, "What's New in the World of Telecommunications Standards: Fibre Channel, IEEE 802, and TIA."

"We want to be an extension of your company's IT team," said Fredricks. "We'll work directly with you to tailor solutions that are ideal for your specific circumstances and we'll take your needs and insight into account to help drive and inspire our innovative product solutions."

"Through our partnerships, our technology solutions, and business value, our customers realize the benefits associated with Respect Layer One - and the difference the CABLExpress experience can make for their organization," said Renee Duffy, vice president of marketing, for CABLExpress.

We encourage you to schedule a risk-free consultation with one of our technology solution experts by visiting CABLExpress.

About CABLExpress: CABLExpress, a division of CXtec, has manufactured high-performance cabling and data center infrastructure products and structured cabling solutions for more than three decades. The CABLExpress Skinny-Trunk Solution is a high-density, fiber optic product line that helps organizations maximize business value and prepare their layer one infrastructures for future generations of upgrades. For more information, visit www.cablexpress.com.

For more information, contact:

Pat Spadafore, CABLExpress

[email protected]

315-883-3874

SOURCE CABLExpress

Related Links

http://www.cablexpress.com


WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a New York Times profile the Sunday after Thanksgiving, California's Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the philosophy of the Democratic Party leaders should be, "If you work hard and play by the rules, we've got your back." Becerra doesn't believe the Trump Administration has been following the rules and since becoming Attorney General he's been pushing back against the White House. California has filed roughly two dozen lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration's efforts to make changes that affect immigrant rights, civil rights, environmental standards and consumer protections. Becerra will discuss these legal actions and other issues at a National Press Club Headliners Newsmaker news conference at 10 a.m., Wed., Dec. 6 in the club's First Amendment Lounge.

The news conference will be moderated by Los Angeles Times reporter Chris Megerian, and is open to credentialed media and National Press Club members free of charge, with advance registration required. Please click here to register.

Prior to being nominated as California's Attorney General by Gov. Jerry Brown late last year, Becerra served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 24 years, 10 of those years he was in the House leadership. He also was the first Latino to serve on the Ways & Means Committee.

The son of immigrants, Becerra attended Stanford University for both his undergraduate and law school education. He worked as a Deputy Attorney for the State of California and was elected to the State Assembly before running for Congress.

The National Press Club is located on the 13th Floor of the National Press Building at 529 14th St., NW, Washington, D.C.

Contact: Lindsay Underwood, [email protected], (202) 662-7561

SOURCE National Press Club

Related Links

http://www.press.org


OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Under landmark legislation to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour over time, California's minimum wage will increase on January 1 to $11 per hour for employers with 26 employees or more and $10.50 for employers with 25 or fewer employees.

State law requires that most California workers be paid the minimum wage. Some cities and counties have a local minimum wage that is higher than the state rate. Workers paid less than the minimum wage are urged to contact the Labor Commissioner's Office in their area to file a wage claim.

Employers must post information on wages, hours and working conditions at a worksite area accessible to employees. Notices for the wage orders in English and Spanish can be downloaded and printed from the workplace postings page on the DIR website.

Governor Brown signed landmark legislation on April 4, 2016 making California the first state in the nation to commit to raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour statewide by 2022 for large businesses, and by 2023 for small businesses. The legislation increases the minimum wage over time, consistent with economic expansion, while providing safety valves to pause wage hikes if negative economic or budgetary conditions emerge.

Schedule for California Minimum Wage rate 2018-2023. Date Minimum Wage for Employers with 25 Employees or Less Minimum Wage for Employers with 26 Employees or More January 1, 2018 $10.50/hour $11.00/hour January 1, 2019 $11.00/hour $12.00/hour January 1, 2020 $12.00/hour $13.00/hour January 1, 2021 $13.00/hour $14.00/hour January 1, 2022 $14.00/hour $15.00/hour January 1, 2023 $15.00/hour



The Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) today also posted its 2017 legislative digest, which summarizes new laws that impact workers and employers. Most of the chaptered bills included in the digest are slated to take effect on January 1, 2018.

The Labor Commissioner's Office, officially known as the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, is a division of DIR. Among its wide-ranging enforcement responsibilities, the Labor Commissioner's Office adjudicates wage claims, inspects workplaces for wage and hour violations, investigates retaliation complaints and educates the public on labor laws.

In 2014, Commissioner Julie A. Su launched the Wage Theft is a Crime multilingual public awareness campaign. The campaign defines wage theft, educating workers on their rights and employers on their responsibilities under California labor laws. It also provides information on the resources available to workers to help them recover unpaid wages or report other labor law violations.

DIR protects and improves the health, safety and economic well-being of over 18 million wage earners, and helps their employers comply with state labor laws. DIR administers and enforces laws governing wages, hours and breaks, overtime, retaliation, workplace safety and health, apprenticeship training programs, and medical care and other benefits for injured workers. DIR also publishes materials and holds workshops and seminars to promote healthy employment relations, conducts research to improve its programs, and coordinates with other agencies to target egregious violators of labor laws and tax laws in the underground economy.

Employees with work-related questions or complaints may contact DIR's Call Center in English or Spanish at 844-LABOR-DIR (844-522-6734).

Members of the press may contact Peter Melton or Paola Laverde at (510) 286-1161, and are encouraged to subscribe to get email alerts on DIR's press releases or other departmental updates.

The California Department of Industrial Relations, established in 1927, protects and improves the health, safety, and economic well-being of over 18 million wage earners, and helps their employers comply with state labor laws. DIR is housed within the Labor & Workforce Development Agency. For general inquiries, contact DIR's Communications Call Center at 844-LABOR-DIR (844-522-6734) for help in locating the appropriate division or program in our department.

https://www.facebook.com/CaliforniaDIR

https://twitter.com/CA_DIR

http://www.youtube.com/CaliforniaDIR

http://www.dir.ca.gov/email/listsub.asp?choice=1

SOURCE California Department of Industrial Relations, California Labor Commissioner's Office

Related Links

http://www.dir.ca.gov


CINCINNATI, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to strong interest from Asian pharmaceutical companies seeking access to U.S. markets, Cincinnati-based Camargo Pharmaceutical Services' Chief Executive Officer, Ken Phelps, will be traveling to Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, and Mumbai throughout December 2017. In each city, Phelps will hold seminars on 505(b)(2) drug development and meet with leading companies. Phelps' trip to the region follows a prior trip to China, during which Camargo held a seminar with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on American regulatory issues, and builds on the global nature of Camargo's clients.

"I am honored to be visiting Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and India on this trip," said Phelps. "I look forward to sharing the benefits and impact of the 505(b)(2) pathway and meeting with forward-thinking companies."

Co-founded in 2003 by Phelps and Dr. Ruth Stevens, Camargo is the world's leading strategic consultancy specializing in helping clients navigate the 505(b)(2) FDA approval pathway and global equivalents, from concept to approval. The 505(b)(2) approval pathway allows sponsors to leverage scientific data from existing studies and publications not conducted by or for the sponsor. By utilizing and bridging to existing data, a 505(b)(2) drug development program can result in a much less expensive and faster route to approval and market. The 505(b)(2) pathway brings to market new, differentiated products with tremendous commercial value.

"The US 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway has spurred innovation and helped bring quality products to market at affordable prices, impacting the lives of countless patients worldwide," said Phelps, widely regarded as one of the world's foremost experts on 505(b)(2) development.

With its industry-leading expertise and multi-disciplined approach, Camargo helps to design development strategies to navigate the scientific, medical, regulatory, and commercial aspects of the 505(b)(2) drug development, and to position a drug for market success. The more than 35 PhDs on Camargo's staffexperts in pharmacokinetics, toxicology, formulation development, and Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controlshave led more than 1100 FDA meetings, and hold up to eight pre-IND meetings a month across all divisions of the FDA.

Camargo's integrated team approach moves partner-clients' products forward through each step of the 505(b)(2) pathway for generics, pharmaceutical, biotech, active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturers, and medical device sector companies in 25 countries.

About Camargo Pharmaceutical Services

Camargo Pharmaceutical Services is the most experienced team of experts providing comprehensive drug development services specialized for the 505(b)(2) approval pathway and global equivalent processes. By assessing the scientific, medical, regulatory, and commercial viability of product development opportunities, Camargo systematically builds and executes robust development plans that align with business strategies and ensure Agency buy-in every step of the way. With alignment through pre-Investigational New Drug (pre-IND) meeting planning and preparations, Camargo maintains and ensures consistency throughout the drug development program, which increases the likelihood of NDA and future market success. Routinely holding three to six pre-IND meetings a month, Camargo works with product developers across more than 25 countries. For more about Camargo Pharmaceutical Services, visit http://camargopharma.com

SOURCE Camargo Pharmaceutical Services

Related Links

http://camargopharma.com


IRVING, Texas, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Caris Life Sciences, a leading innovator in molecular science focused on fulfilling the promise of precision medicine, today announced the acceptance of three abstracts, including a spotlight poster discussion and two poster sessions, for presentation at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) annual meeting, being held December 5-9, in San Antonio, Texas. Two of the studies were conducted in collaboration with industry-leading academic and clinical institutions employing the company's proprietary Caris Molecular Intelligence Comprehensive Genomic Profiling Plus (CGP+) tumor profiling platform, and it's revolutionary and unbiased profiling platform, ADAPT Biotargeting System.

"The studies presented at SABCS further highlight the need for more informative biomarkers associated to immune checkpoint inhibitors to increase the effectiveness of immunotherapy in advanced breast cancer, and that our ADAPT Biotargeting system has demonstrated the ability to identify tumor profiles that would not respond to the standard of care," said David Spetzler, M.S., Ph.D., M.B.A., President and Chief Scientific Officer of Caris Life Sciences. "Our platforms help both clinicians and biopharmaceutical companies better understand cancer biology and ultimately increase the chances for successful outcomes for cancer patients. We are excited to be presenting a multitude of supporting data during this year's SABCS."

Distribution of microsatellite instability, tumor mutational load, and PD-L1 status in molecularly profiled invasive breast cancer



Spotlight Session 6: Immuno Oncology: Immune Metastatic / Poster Discussion



Abstract #1416, Poster #PD6-03



Thursday, December 7, 5:00  7:00 p.m. CST



Stars at Night Ballroom 3 & 4 - 3rd Level



Summary: Following FDA approval of the immune checkpoint blocker agent pembrolizumab for all MSI (microsatellite instability)-high solid tumors, this study aimed to explore the incidence of three biomarkers  MSI, PD-1 ligand (PD-L1) status and tumor mutational load (TML)  in possible relationship to ICB activity in invasive breast cancers. A total of 9,627 breast cancer cases were queried from the Caris Life Sciences database. Cases were identified with elevated PD-L1 and either MSI-H or high TML tumors, indicating a population of breast cancer patients who may be strong candidates to benefit from pembrolizumab. Notably, these cases were seen most often in triple-negative breast cancer, the subtype most in need of new therapeutic agents.

Polyligand profiling differentiates cancer patients according to their benefit of treatment



Poster Session 2: Prognostic and Predictive Factors: Predictive Biomarkers for targeted therapies



Abstract #1382, Poster #P2-09-09



Thursday, December 7, 7:00  9:00 a.m. CST



Hall 1



Summary: Caris' ADAPT Biotargeting System outperformed the standard immunohistochemistry (IHC) assay for HER2 status in differentiating patients who did or did not benefit from trastuzumab therapy. These results represent a promising step toward the development of a diagnostic adjunct that may be used in conjunction with standard HER2 testing to refine patient selection for anti-HER2 targeted therapies.

Polyligand profiling and target identification from formalin-fixed- paraffin embedded HER2+ breast cancer specimens



Poster Session 5: Tumor Cell and Molecular Biology: Systems Biology of Breast Cancer



Abstract #1412, Poster #P5-08-03



Friday, December 8, 5:00  7:00 p.m. CST



Hall 1



Summary: The study reports extended capabilities of the ADAPT Biotargeting System for target identification directly from formalin-fixed-paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues using aptamer libraries enriched toward HER2+ breast cancer. Proteins with known roles in HER2+ breast cancer along with several potentially novel targets not previously associated with HER2 positivity were identified. By nature of its extreme molecular complexity and its ability to be iteratively or "trained," toward phenotypes of interest, the ADAPT Biotargeting System can be deployed to advance precision medicine by identifying predictive biomarkers and drug targets in complex interactomes in FFPE tissue.

About Caris Life Sciences 

Caris Life Sciences is a leading innovator in molecular science focused on fulfilling the promise of precision medicine through quality and innovation, and the world's leading immunotherapy diagnostic expert. Caris Molecular Intelligence, the company's Comprehensive Genomic Profiling Plus (CGP+) molecular testing service, assesses DNA, RNA and proteins, including microsatellite instability (MSI), total mutational load (TML) and PD-L1, to reveal a molecular blueprint to guide more precise and personalized treatment decisions. The ADAPT Biotargeting System, the company's revolutionary and unbiased profiling platform, is currently being utilized for drug target identification, therapeutic discovery and development, fixed tissue-based companion diagnostics, blood-based cancer screening and biomarker identification. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Caris Life Sciences offers services throughout the U.S., Europe and other international markets. To learn more, please visit www.CarisLifeSciences.com.

Media Inquiries:

The Ruth Group

Kirsten Thomas / Joanna Zimmerman

[email protected]

Tel: +1-508-280-6592 / +1-646-536-7006

SOURCE Caris Life Sciences

Related Links

http://www.CarisLifeSciences.com


VANCOUVER, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Carl Data Solutions Inc. (CSE:CRL, FSE:7C5, OTC:CDTAF) ("Carl Data" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce that, further to its press releases dated January 17, 2017, March 9, 2017 and October 20, 2017, it has completed the acquisition (the "Acquisition") of certain intellectual property assets, tangible assets, and intangible assets from AB Embedded Systems Ltd. ("AB Embedded") pursuant to the asset purchase agreement dated November 30, 2017 between Carl and AB Embedded.

This acquired combination of hardware design and development tools, and source code give Carl Data the tools to provide custom devices for their clients. The board prototyping and micro manufacturing equipment also allows complete in-house product development with the shortest possible time to market. This manufacturing equipment are an essential part of any Industrial IoT (IIoT) work.

In connection with the Acquisition, Carl:

agreed to allot and issue AB Embedded 400,000 common shares of Carl at a deemed price of $0.32 per share (issued on November 30, 2017 ); and

per share (issued on ); and agreed to allot and issue AB Embedded 400,000 common shares of Carl at a deemed price of $0.32 per share on November 30, 2018 , if (A) AB Embedded has not terminated an independent contractor agreement dated July 1, 2017 (the "Independent Contractor Agreement") between Carl, AB Embedded and Attila Bene, the founder and CEO of AB Embedded, before November 30, 2018 and (B) Carl has not terminated the Independent Contractor Agreement for cause before November 30, 2018 .

Also in connection with the Acquisition, Carl officially terminated its securities exchange agreement dated March 3, 2017 with AB Embedded and its shareholders.

Greg Johnston, Carl Data CEO, commented, "The AB Acquisition is in line with Carl's commitment to acquire complimentary companies and technology. In the case of AB, this acquisition will allow our company to be more turn key when implementing our solutions. Complimentary hardware and telemetry solutions will mean faster integration of our SaaS based applications for customers at a very competitive price point."

About Carl Data Solutions Inc.

Carl Data Solutions Inc. is an Industrial IoT (IIoT) company focused on providing next generation information collection, storage and analytics solutions for data-centric companies. Building on its recent acquisitions, Carl helps its clients analyze and understand all forms of environmental data through a powerful platform of data collection, monitoring, reporting, and predictive analysis tools.

Carl Data continues to develop applications to work with new cloud-based mass storage services and analytics tools (Big-Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS) to provide scalability for municipalities, utilities and other industrial verticals. These data collection and storage methods allow the company to build smart Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based applications that can collect data from many diverse sources and provide deep insight for decision-making purposes. More information can be found at www.CarlSolutions.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors:

Greg Johnston

President, Chief Executive Officer, Director

Carl Data Solutions Inc.

The Canadian Securities Exchange (operated by CNSX Markets Inc.) has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release.

SOURCE Carl Data Solutions Inc.
STAMFORD, Connecticut and LUCCA, Italy, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Finance executives will have the opportunity to see a live demonstration of Swarovski's integrated platform; Speakers from PwC, SAP, and Wolters Kluwer will discuss how integration can facilitate predictive analytics and expedite digital transformation

CCH Tagetik, part of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting and a leader in global performance management software solutions, today announced that it will host "Managing the Future of Business with CCH Tagetik on SAP HANA," an informational event open to finance executives. The event will be held from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. CET on Tuesday, December 5, at the Park Hyatt Zurich.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/492891/Tagetik_Logo.jpg )



The event is designed to introduce finance executives to the potential opportunities and benefits that can be gained through the integration of CCH Tagetik 5, a market-leading corporate performance management (CPM) solution, with SAP HANA, a market-leading in-memory data and application development platform that allows for the processing of massive amounts of data in near real-time. CCH Tagetik is an SAP partner offering Tagetik 5, which is certified as powered by SAP HANA, and is one of the few CPM providers with customers that have implemented an integrated solution.

"The integration of CCH Tagetik's unified financial and analytics platform with SAP HANA is a revolutionary step toward near real-time CPM," said Bani Brandolini, vice president of channel sales for Wolter Kluwers and one of the event's speakers. "CCH Tagetik powered by SAP HANA opens up exciting new opportunities for predictive and prescriptive analytics and adds significant incremental value to data assets."

"According to our market research, CCH Tagetik offers the best overall fit for consolidation, planning and management reporting," said Thomas Bode, director of corporate business intelligence for Swarovski, a company best known for its high-quality crystal jewelry and accessories. "Its product integration with SAP HANA brings new ways to maximize data from our ERP system and data warehouse for financial planning, analytics and more detailed reporting." Bode will present a live demonstration of Swarovski's integrated solution, which went live earlier this year, during the event.

Other event speakers include Roger Kunz-Brenner, partner and head of financial consulting for PwC, and Bertrand Patigny, senior partner advisor for SAP. Kunz-Brenner, who has more than 20 years of business and finance consulting experience, will discuss how finance can facilitate digital transformation and respond more quickly to business demands with an agile financial platform. Patigny will review SAP HANA technology and discuss how its capabilities support real-time results, predictive analytics, and on-the-fly aggregation.

For more information and to register for the event, click here. For details on CCH Tagetik's product integration with SAP HANA, download the brochure here.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer (AEX: WKL) is a global leader in professional information services and solutions for professionals in the health, tax and accounting, risk and compliance, finance and legal sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with specialized technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2016 annual revenues of 4.3 billion. The company, headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands, serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries and employs 19,000 people worldwide.

Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting is a leading provider of software solutions and local expertise that helps tax, accounting and audit professionals research and navigate complex regulations, comply with legislation, manage their businesses and advise clients with speed, accuracy and efficiency. CCH Tagetik , a part of the Tax and Accounting division, provides solutions to CFOs for Corporate Performance Management.

For more information about our solutions and organization, visit www.wolterskluwer.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

SAP, SAP HANA and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. See for additional trademark information and notices.

Media Contacts:



Greta Bartoli

CCH Tagetik

+39-058-396-811 office

[email protected]



Linda Galloway

insidHR Communications

+1-303-863-8620 office

+1-203-733-7446 mobile

[email protected]



SOURCE CCH Tagetik
Awarded every two years, the CertainTeed Gypsum US Trophy Awards recognize excellence in design, drywall installation and finishing. The competition judges building professionals for their gypsum-related skills in the following categories: Drywall, Plaster, Innovation & Sustainability, Residential, Non-residential, (Gypsum) Ceilings.

Sears Contract, Inc. and Michael's Homes will proudly represent the United States at the 11th Saint-Gobain Gypsum International Trophy Awards ceremony this March in Lisbon, Portugal. Selected from nine top Regional projects that represented outstanding work using CertainTeed Gypsum products, the two contractors were honored at the second CertainTeed Gypsum North American Trophy event in Austin. They will join Canadian contractors Smith Brothers Contracting Corp. and DonMor Drywall as the four North American honorees attending the prestigious international ceremony.

Showcasing its outstanding craftsmanship and artistry, Sears Contract, Inc. was selected for its work brought to the Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina. Featuring a unique Romanesque design and built with modern construction materials, the project required careful attention to detail with its challenging vast open spaces and specialized decoration.

Michael's Homes was selected based on the strength of its outstanding work building the River Watch home in Soddy Daisy, TN. This custom 2,900 square foot single family home is a great showcase of not only quality construction and attention to detail but how home builders like Michael's Homes look beyond the aesthetic to build their homes with features that run deeper than the surface aesthetics. The River Watch home utilized AirRenew, SilentFX, Habito and No-Coat corners to create a living space that improves the quality of life for the occupant in the areas of indoor air quality, noise transmission and lasting durability. AirRenew is standard on all Michael's Homes projects.

"As a leader in North American gypsum, it is our honor to recognize the best in the industry  in both residential and commercial projects," said Steve Hawkins, Vice President, Sales at CertainTeed Gypsum, Inc. "We have the utmost respect for the top talent among building professionals who balance the complexity of material performance specifications, delivering outstanding and notable designs, all while staying on time and on budget. Congrats to all finalists and of course, the winners."

The CertainTeed Gypsum National Trophy's overall winning projects will go on to compete on the global stage at the Saint-Gobain Gypsum International Trophy event in Lisbon in March 2018 where almost 90 projects from 35 countries will be showcased.

"These professionals continue to push the limits of construction and exemplify innovation and craftsmanship to the highest degree," added Hawkins.

CertainTeed Gypsum has served the North American Building industry for more than 80 years and is a subsidiary of Saint-Gobain, the world's leading producer of gypsum products. This, in combination with the full range of affiliated CertainTeed Corporation building products, provides architects, contractors, builders and dealers one partner to provide service and support for commercial and residential building projects. For more information, visit www.certainteed.com/gypsum.

About CertainTeed

Through the responsible development of innovative and sustainable building products, CertainTeed, headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania, has helped shape the building products industry for more than 110 years. Founded in 1904 as General Roofing Manufacturing Company, the firm's slogan "Quality Made Certain, Satisfaction Guaranteed," inspired the name CertainTeed. Today, CertainTeed is a leading North American brand of exterior and interior building products, including roofing, siding, fence, decking, railing, trim, insulation, drywall and ceilings.

A subsidiary of Saint-Gobain, one of the world's largest and oldest building products companies, CertainTeed has more than 6,300 employees and more than 60 manufacturing facilities throughout the United States and Canada. The company had total sales of approximately $3.4 billion in 2016. www.certainteed.com.

For more information contact:

Victoria Gallagher, CertainTeed

(610) 893-6002

[email protected]

www.certainteed.com/pressroom

SOURCE CertainTeed

Related Links

http://www.certainteed.com


DUBLIN, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Non-GMO Processed Food Market in China 2017-2021" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

The non-GMO processed food market in China to grow at a CAGR of 17.40% during the period 2017-2021.

Non-GMO Processed Food Market in China 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. To calculate the market size, the report considers the value of overall and product wise non-GMO market in China.

According to the report, one of the major drivers for this market is Health and food safety concerns regarding genetically modified (GMO) foods. In the recent past, there has been a lot of research in the field of genetics. Experiments are being conducted on plants and animals by changing their gene mutations. The GMO crops has several benefits like increased yield, specific features, and much more. However, it poses significant risks to the health of living beings and environment. The genetic modification of a crop changes its natural behavior towards various stimuli. The genetic simulation of crops can lead to the formation of toxic substances that can cause significant health hazards. Studies conducted by several health organizations have found the adverse effects of consumption of GMO foods when experimented on rats.

The latest trend gaining momentum in the market is Demand for transparency in labeling. Consumers are becoming aware of the composition of food items they consume and have started to pay attention to the nutritional value and ingredients mentioned on the product labeling. When it comes to non-GMO processed products like beverages; edible oils; and others, there are several other ingredients that are also added in the product. To validate the finished good as a non-GMO food, it is necessary that all only non-genetically modified ingredients are used in the making.

Further, the report states that one of the major factors hindering the growth of this market is Premium pricing of non-GMO foods. One of the major challenges for the adoption of non-GMO and organic food products is their premium pricing. This is majorly due to the imbalance between demand and supply of non-GMO foods. There are very few farmers and producers of non-GMO crops and their yield is low in comparison to that of GMO crops. The dismal production and heavy demand increase the prices of non-GMO foods, not just in China but worldwide.

Key vendors

China Beijing Organic and Beyond Corporation (OABC)

Epermarket

Beijing Noah Agricultural Development

Tony's Farm

TooToo Organic Farm

Other prominent vendors

Beijing Green Yard Ecological Agriculture Development

Carrefour China

China Dalian Xinglongken Organic Products

FIELDS CHINA

Helekang.com

Naturz Organics China

Shanghai Food

Shanghai Yung State Investment Management

Vert

Walmart China

Key Topics Covered:



Part 01: Executive Summary



Part 02: Scope Of The Report



Part 03: Research Methodology



Part 04: Introduction



Part 05: Market Landscape



Part 06: Market Sizing



Part 07: Five Forces Analysis



Part 08: Market Segmentation By Product



Part 09: Market Segmentation By Distribution Channel



Part 10: Decision Framework



Part 11: Drivers And Challenges



Part 12: Market Trends



Part 13: Vendor Landscape



Part 14: Key Vendor Analysis



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/sjkl37/nongmo_processed





Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

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NORTHRIDGE, Calif., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Contemporary Services Corporation held a ribbon cutting ceremony on December 1st, 2017 to commemorate CSC employee, Erick Silva, who was fatally shot during the attack on the Route 91 Harvest Festival. The CSC Las Vegas employee training center will be renamed in his honor.

Erick Silva joined CSC Las Vegas on September 18, 2014. He was a graduate of Las Vegas High School and upon his graduation wanted to pursue a profession in the security field. After obtaining his Nevada Private Investigators Licensing Board work card, Erick started his career with several security companies before finding his home with CSC.

Erick was one of the 58 victims who died as a result of the incident. Erick was posted in front of the main stage barricade when the first round of shots were fired. He was among the event's first responders to assist concert patrons to safety until he himself was slain. Erick is survived by his mother, stepfather, brothers and sisters.

"Eric was the epitome of integrity, service and excellence that all our CSC employees strive for. He is a hero who gave the ultimate sacrifice so that others could live." Jay Purves, Vice President CSC Nevada.

CSC is proud to dedicate its Las Vegas employee training center in Eric's honor.

SOURCE Contemporary Services Corporation

Related Links

www.csc-usa.com


NOVI, Mich., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cooper Standard (NYSE: CPS) was recognized at the 4th Annual Best of MichBusiness Awards ceremony for its work to inspire student achievement and interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers. The global supplier's effort is an extension of the Cooper Standard Foundation's focus on education, especially as it relates to preparing the next generation for STEM-related careers.

"This is a well-deserved honor for our STEM Affinity Group, who have been working throughout our communities to help accelerate interest in STEM careers," said Sharon Wenzl, senior vice president, corporate communications and community affairs, Cooper Standard. "As a Company, Cooper Standard is committed to engaging the next generation of students to pursue STEM-related jobs, a key component for innovation, manufacturing sustainability and global competitiveness."

Cooper Standard's STEM Affinity Group has grown to include approximately 300 Cooper Standard volunteers around the world, all trained in STEM education and includes members from many different areas within the Company. To date, the STEM Affinity Group has achieved the following in Michigan:

Joined forces with S.A.Y. Detroit and The Dow Chemical Company to open an interactive science center called Science in the DEEP at the S.A.Y. Detroit Play Center for inner city Detroit youth.

and The Dow Chemical Company to open an interactive science center called Science in the DEEP at the S.A.Y. Detroit Play Center for inner city youth. Supported the FIRST  (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics program though Livonia, Mich. United Schools' FIRST  Robotics tutoring for the FIRST  Robotics programs at the S.A.Y. Detroit Play Center.

(For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics program though United Schools' FIRST Robotics tutoring for the FIRST Robotics programs at the S.A.Y. Detroit Play Center. Hosted a STEM program at the CAR Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City for attendees' children in 2016 and 2017.

for attendees' children in 2016 and 2017. Launched a partnership with Junior Achievement of Southeast Michigan to deliver STEM programing to an estimated 3,000 Detroit public school students annually.

to deliver STEM programing to an estimated 3,000 public school students annually. Supported the Company's facilities participating in Manufacturing Day, an annual event produced by the National Association of Manufacturers, The Manufacturing Institute, Fabricators and Manufacturers Association International and Manufacturing Extension Partnership, during which companies showcase modern manufacturing and foster interest in manufacturing careers.

Joined Kettering University Alumni to raise donations to sponsor high school students from underserved areas, including Detroit , Jamaica and Mexico , to attend a Kettering pre-college summer program.

The Best of MichBusiness Awards honor companies and individuals that make Michigan a great place to explore, connect and thrive in over a dozen categories ranging from The CEO of CEOs to the Technology Gurus. The 2017 winners were honored on Nov. 30 at the MGM Grand Detroit.

About Cooper Standard

Cooper Standard, headquartered in Novi, Mich., is a leading global supplier of systems and components for the automotive industry. Products include rubber and plastic sealing, fuel and brake lines, fluid transfer hoses and anti-vibration systems. Cooper Standard employs approximately 30,000 people globally and operates in 20 countries around the world. For more information, please visit www.cooperstandard.com.

CPS_G

Contact:

Sharon S. Wenzl

Cooper Standard

(248) 596-6211

[email protected]

SOURCE Cooper Standard

Related Links

http://www.cooperstandard.com


WOONSOCKET, R.I. and HARTFORD, Conn., Dec. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CVS Health (NYSE: CVS), a company at the forefront of changing the health care landscape, and Aetna (NYSE: AET), one of the nation's leading diversified health care benefits companies, today announced the execution of a definitive merger agreement under which CVS Health will acquire all outstanding shares of Aetna for a combination of cash and stock. Under the terms of the merger agreement, which has been unanimously approved today by the boards of directors of each company, Aetna shareholders will receive $145.00 per share in cash and 0.8378 CVS Health shares for each Aetna share. The transaction values Aetna at approximately $207 per share or approximately $69 billion1. Including the assumption of Aetna's debt, the total value of the transaction is $77 billion.

This transaction fills an unmet need in the current health care system and presents a unique opportunity to redefine access to high-quality care in lower cost, local settingswhether in the community, at home, or through digital tools.

CVS Health President and Chief Executive Officer Larry J. Merlo said, "This combination brings together the expertise of two great companies to remake the consumer health care experience. With the analytics of Aetna and CVS Health's human touch, we will create a health care platform built around individuals. We look forward to working with the talented people at Aetna to position the combined company as America's front door to quality health care, integrating more closely the work of doctors, pharmacists, other health care professionals and health benefits companies to create a platform that is easier to use and less expensive for consumers."

This is a natural evolution for both companies as they seek to put the consumer at the center of health care delivery. CVS Health has steadily become an integrated health care company, and Aetna has moved beyond being a traditional insurer to focus more on consumer well-being.

"This is the next step in our journey, positioning the combined company to dramatically further empower consumers. Together with CVS Health, we will better understand our members' health goals, guide them through the health care system and help them achieve their best health," said Mark T. Bertolini, Aetna chairman and CEO. "Aetna has a proud tradition of continually innovating to address unmet consumer needs and providing leading products and services to the marketplace."

Bertolini continued, "Aetna has a talented and dedicated group of employees working to build a healthier world every day. Our combined company will be more competitive in the marketplace and accelerate progress toward achieving this mission."

Today, increasing numbers of consumers are taking on more and more responsibility for paying for their health care as the burden of costs is being shifted to them. Together, CVS Health and Aetna will be a trusted community partner who will help consumers better manage the cost of the health care they need. The combined company will also be well positioned to more effectively meet the health needs of many more people, especially the 50 percent of Americans with chronic conditions that account for more than 80 percent of all health care costs. Finally, capabilities developed following this transaction will directly benefit clients of both companies and enable them to better manage their health care costs.

BENEFITS FOR CONSUMERS

Uniquely Integrated, Community-Based Health Care Experience

Consumers will benefit from a uniquely integrated, community-based health care experience. The combined company will also be able to better understand patients' health goals, guide them through the health care system, and help them achieve their best health. There will be expanded opportunities to bring health care services to consumers every day. CVS Pharmacy locations will include space for wellness, clinical and pharmacy services, vision, hearing, nutrition, beauty, and medical equipment, in addition to the products and services our customers currently enjoy. An entirely new health services offering available in many locations will function as a community-based health hub dedicated to connecting the pathways needed to improve health and answering patients' questions about their health conditions, as well as prescription drugs and health coverage.

This personalized health care experience will be delivered by connecting Aetna's extensive network of providers with greater consumer access through CVS Health. This includes more than 9,700 CVS Pharmacy locations and 1,100 MinuteClinic walk-in clinicsas well as further extensions into the community through Omnicare's senior pharmacy solutions, Coram's infusion services, and the more than 4,000 CVS Health nursing professionals providing in-clinic and home-based care across the nation. As a result, there will be a better opportunity to utilize local care solutions in a more integrated fashion with the goal of improving patient outcomes.

More Integrated Data and Analytics

The entire health care system will also benefit from broader use of data and analytics, leading to improved patient health at substantially lower cost. This will be achieved, for example, by helping patients avoid unnecessary hospital readmissions. Twenty percent of Medicare patients are readmitted to the hospital soon after being discharged at significant annual costs, much of which is avoidable. Readmission rates can be cut in half if patients have a complete review of their medications after discharge from the hospital to help them manage their care at home. In addition, home devices to monitor activity levels, pulse, and respiratory rates can be used to prevent readmissions. Rather than feeling lost and confused, selected high risk patients discharged from the hospital, or their caregivers, will be able to stop at a health hub location to access services such as medication evaluations, home monitoring and use of durable medical equipment, as needed. All of these services will complement and be integrated with the care provided by their physician and medical team.

Opportunity to Better Fight Chronic Disease

The combined entity will be able to help address the growing cost of treating chronic diseases in important ways. For example, there are 30 million Americans suffering from diabetes, costing the health care system approximately $245 billion annually. Patients with diabetes will receive care in between doctor visits through face-to-face counseling at a store-based health hub and remote monitoring of key indicators such as blood glucose levels. When needed, patients can receive text messages to let them know when their glucose levels deviate from normal ranges. As a follow up, patients can receive counseling on medication adherence, pick up diabetes-related supplies and engage ancillary services such as counsel on weight loss and programs designed to reverse diabetes through nutrition. This will result in better control of their blood sugar levels and better health, which should be appreciated by both patients and their doctors.

"These types of interventions are things that the traditional health care system could be doing," commented Merlo, "but the traditional health care system lacks the key elements of convenience and coordination that help to engage consumers in their health. That's what the combination of CVS Health and Aetna will deliver."

BENEFITS FOR SHAREHOLDERS

As a result of this transaction, shareholders are expected to benefit from a number of outcomes, including enhanced competitive positioning; low- to mid-single digit accretion in the second full year after the close of the transaction, including the ability to deliver $750 million in near-term synergies; and a platform from which to accelerate growth. The combination over the longer term has the potential to deliver significant incremental value as it will spur the development of new products and generate significant new growth opportunities as a uniquely integrated retailer, pharmacy benefits manager and health plan. Aetna shareholders will receive attractive value from the transaction, including $145 per share in cash, and the ability to participate in the future success and high growth potential of the combined company.

TRANSACTION DETAILS

Transaction Terms

Under the terms of the merger agreement, each outstanding share of Aetna common stock will be exchanged for $145.00 in cash and 0.8378 shares of CVS Health common stock. Upon closing of the transaction, Aetna shareholders will own approximately 22% of the combined company and CVS Health shareholders will own approximately 78%.

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2018. It is subject to approval by CVS Health and Aetna shareholders, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Financing of the Transaction

CVS Health intends to fund the cash portion of the transaction through a combination of existing cash on hand and debt financing. The transaction is not contingent upon receipt of financing. Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are providing $49 billion of financing commitments.

Governance Details

Upon the closing of the transaction, three of Aetna's directors, including Aetna's Chairman and CEO Mark T. Bertolini, will be added to the CVS Health Board of Directors. In addition, members of the Aetna management team will play significant roles in the newly combined company. Aetna will operate as a stand-alone business unit within the CVS Health enterprise and will be led by members of their current management team.

Advisors

Barclays and Goldman Sachs are serving as financial advisors to CVS Health, and Centerview Partners also provided financial advice to the CVS Health Board of Directors. The company was advised on legal matters by Shearman & Sterling LLP, Dechert LLP, and McDermott Will & Emery LLP. Lazard and Allen & Company LLC are serving as financial advisors to Aetna and Evercore is serving as financial advisor to Aetna's Board of Directors. Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP is acting as Aetna's legal advisor.

Joint Conference Call and Webcast

CVS Health and Aetna will be holding a joint conference call for the investment community tomorrow, December 4, at 8:30 a.m. ET. To access the call, please dial (800) 926-4425 (in the U.S. or Canada) or (212) 231-2913 (internationally). A replay of the call will be available as soon as practicable following the end of the call until 11:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, January 3, 2018, by dialing (800) 633-8284 (in the U.S. or Canada) or (402) 977-9140 (internationally), and entering reservation number 21876084. An audio webcast of the call will be broadcast simultaneously for all interested parties through the Investor Relations section of the CVS Health website at http://investors.cvshealth.com as well as Aetna's Investor Information website at www.aetna.com/investor. This webcast will be archived and available on these websites for a one-year period following the conference call.

About CVS Health

CVS Health is a pharmacy innovation company helping people on their path to better health. Through its 9,700 retail locations, more than 1,100 walk-in medical clinics, a leading pharmacy benefits manager with nearly 90 million plan members, a dedicated senior pharmacy care business serving more than one million patients per year, expanding specialty pharmacy services, and a leading stand-alone Medicare Part D prescription drug plan, the company enables people, businesses and communities to manage health in more affordable and effective ways. This unique integrated model increases access to quality care, delivers better health outcomes and lowers overall health care costs. Find more information about how CVS Health is shaping the future of health at https://www.cvshealth.com.

About Aetna

Aetna is one of the nation's leading diversified health care benefits companies, serving an estimated 44.6 million, at September 30, 2017, people with information and resources to help them make better informed decisions about their health care. Aetna offers a broad range of traditional, voluntary and consumer-directed health insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmacy, dental, behavioral health, group life and disability plans, and medical management capabilities, Medicaid health care management services, workers' compensation administrative services and health information technology products and services. Aetna's customers include employer groups, individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans, health care providers, governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups and expatriates. For more information, see www.aetna.com and learn about how Aetna is helping to build a healthier world. @AetnaNews

Contacts:



IR contact for CVS Health: Mike McGuire, 401.770.4050, [email protected]

Media contact for CVS Health: Carolyn Castel, 401.714.6904, [email protected]



IR contact for Aetna: Joe Krocheski, 860.273.0896, [email protected]

Media contact for Aetna: T.J. Crawford, 212.457.0583, [email protected]



Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "Reform Act)" provides a safe harbor for forward-looking statements made by or on behalf of CVS Health or Aetna. This communication may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Reform Act. You can generally identify forward-looking statements by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "can," "continue," "could," "estimate," "evaluate," "expect," "explore," "forecast," "guidance," "intend," "likely," "may," "might," "outlook," "plan," "potential," "predict," "probable," "project," "seek," "should," "view," or "will," or the negative thereof or other variations thereon or comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond CVS Health's and Aetna's control.

Statements in this communication regarding CVS Health and Aetna that are forward-looking, including CVS Health's and Aetna's projections as to the closing date for the pending acquisition of Aetna (the "transaction"), the extent of, and the time necessary to obtain, the regulatory approvals required for the transaction, the anticipated benefits of the transaction, the impact of the transaction on CVS Health's and Aetna's businesses, the expected terms and scope of the expected financing for the transaction, the ownership percentages of CVS Health's common stock of CVS Health stockholders and Aetna shareholders at closing, the aggregate amount of indebtedness of CVS Health following the closing of the transaction, CVS Health's expectations regarding debt repayment and its debt to capital ratio following closing of the transaction, CVS Health's and Aetna's respective share repurchase programs and ability and intent to declare future dividend payments, the number of prescriptions used by people served by the combined companies' pharmacy benefit business, the synergies from the transaction, and CVS Health's, Aetna's and/or the combined company's future operating results, are based on CVS Health's and Aetna's managements' estimates, assumptions and projections, and are subject to significant uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond their control. In particular, projected financial information for the combined businesses of CVS Health and Aetna is based on estimates, assumptions and projections and has not been prepared in conformance with the applicable accounting requirements of Regulation S-X relating to pro forma financial information, and the required pro forma adjustments have not been applied and are not reflected therein. None of this information should be considered in isolation from, or as a substitute for, the historical financial statements of CVS Health and Aetna. Important risk factors related to the transaction could cause actual future results and other future events to differ materially from those currently estimated by management, including, but not limited to: the timing to consummate the proposed transaction; the risk that a regulatory approval that may be required for the proposed transaction is delayed, is not obtained or is obtained subject to conditions that are not anticipated; the risk that a condition to closing of the proposed transaction may not be satisfied; the ability to achieve the synergies and value creation contemplated; CVS Health's ability to promptly and effectively integrate Aetna's businesses; and the diversion of and attention of management of both CVS Health and Aetna on transaction-related issues.

In addition, this communication may contain forward-looking statements regarding CVS Health's or Aetna's respective businesses, financial condition and results of operations. These forward-looking statements also involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, some of which may not be presently known to CVS Health or Aetna or that they currently believe to be immaterial also may cause CVS Health's or Aetna's actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, adversely impact their respective businesses, CVS Health's ability to complete the transaction and/or CVS Health's ability to realize the expected benefits from the transaction. Should any risks and uncertainties develop into actual events, these developments could have a material adverse effect on the transaction and/or CVS Health or Aetna, CVS Health's ability to successfully complete the transaction and/or realize the expected benefits from the transaction. Additional information concerning these risks, uncertainties and assumptions can be found in CVS Health's and Aetna's respective filings with the SEC, including the risk factors discussed in "Item 1.A. Risk Factors" in CVS Health's and Aetna's most recent Annual Reports on Form 10-K, as updated by their Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and future filings with the SEC.

You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on CVS Health's and Aetna's forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are and will be based upon management's then-current views and assumptions regarding future events and operating performance, and are applicable only as of the dates of such statements. Neither CVS Health nor Aetna assumes any duty to update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, as of any future date.

No Offer or Solicitation

This communication is for informational purposes only and not intended to and does not constitute an offer to subscribe for, buy or sell, the solicitation of an offer to subscribe for, buy or sell or an invitation to subscribe for, buy or sell any securities or the solicitation of any vote or approval in any jurisdiction pursuant to or in connection with the proposed transaction or otherwise, nor shall there be any sale, issuance or transfer of securities in any jurisdiction in contravention of applicable law. No offer of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of Section 10 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and otherwise in accordance with applicable law.

Additional Information and Where to Find It

In connection with the proposed transaction between CVS Health and Aetna, CVS Health and Aetna will file relevant materials with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), including a CVS Health registration statement on Form S-4 that will include a joint proxy statement of CVS Health and Aetna that also constitutes a prospectus of CVS Health, and a definitive joint proxy statement/prospectus will be mailed to stockholders of CVS Health and shareholders of Aetna. INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS OF CVS HEALTH AND AETNA ARE URGED TO READ THE JOINT PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS AND OTHER DOCUMENTS THAT WILL BE FILED WITH THE SEC CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. Investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of the registration statement and the joint proxy statement/prospectus (when available) and other documents filed with the SEC by CVS Health or Aetna through the website maintained by the SEC at http://www.sec.gov. Copies of the documents filed with the SEC by CVS Health will be available free of charge within the Investors section of CVS Health's Web site at http://www.CVS Health.com/investors [or by contacting CVS Health's Investor Relations Department at 800-201-0938. Copies of the documents filed with the SEC by Aetna will be available free of charge on Aetna's internet website at http://www.Aetna.com or by contacting Aetna's Investor Relations Department at 860-273-8204.

Participants in Solicitation

CVS Health, Aetna, their respective directors and certain of their respective executive officers may be considered participants in the solicitation of proxies in connection with the proposed transaction. Information about the directors and executive officers of CVS Health is set forth in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016 ("CVS Health's Annual Report"), which was filed with the SEC on February 9, 2017, its proxy statement for its 2017 annual meeting of stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on March 31, 2017, and its Current Report on Form 8-K, which was filed with the SEC on May 12, 2017. Information about the directors and executive officers of Aetna is set forth in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016 ("Aetna's Annual Report"), which was filed with the SEC on February 17, 2017, its proxy statement for its 2017 annual meeting of shareholders, which was filed with the SEC on April 7, 2017 and its Current Reports on Form 8-K, which were filed with the SEC on May 24, 2017 and October 2, 2017. Other information regarding the participants in the proxy solicitations and a description of their direct and indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, will be contained in the joint proxy statement/prospectus and other relevant materials to be filed with the SEC when they become available.

1 Based on 5-day Volume Weighted Average Price ending December 1, 2017 of $74.21 per share.

SOURCE CVS Health

Related Links

http://www.cvshealth.com


SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Madison Reed, a prestige hair color brand, today announced David Stanko has accepted the newly created role of Vice President, Technical Design and Education. Prior to Madison Reed, Stanko was a master colorist and brand ambassador for Redken 5th Avenue NYC, a division of L'Oreal. For more than 21 years, Stanko played a pivotal role in Redken's global product launches, including educating and inspiring hair color professionals around the world.

David Stanko, Vice President, Technical Design and Education, Madison Reed

Stanko is a major talent acquisition for Madison Reed and the latest milestone in the company's momentum. Madison Reed recently announced $25 million in venture capital funding  led by Comcast Ventures  to fund the national expansion of Madison Reed Color Bars.

"We are at a pivotal moment in our company," said Madison Reed CEO and Founder Amy Errett. "It is a huge honor to have an educator of David's caliber join us full-time. He will ensure our clients continue to have a phenomenal, prestige experience while we quickly grow the company. Meanwhile, David's formula acumen and artistry are incredible resources for our team as we expand our product portfolio."

Stanko is a hair color visionary, popular with celebrities and salon-industry insiders. As Vice President of Technical Design, he will travel globally to work with the company's manufacturers and suppliers. In his educational role, he will direct the training of Madison Reed's Color Crew, a team of certified colorists who provide color services at Madison Reed Color Bars and consult with clients in multiple ways: in person and via phone, email, online chat, and Facebook Messenger.

"The deep relationship between colorists and their clients is based on trust, communication and education," said Stanko. "You can have the best products in the world, but for the customer to have success, she has to learn about the product. Education is in my DNA, and I can't wait to bring my experience to Madison Reed."

"This company is such an interesting disruptor," Stanko continued. "Women have always wanted to take control of their beauty, but no one was truly focused on that in the hair color industry. Not only is Madison Reed serving these women, they are celebrating them. The traditional boundaries between at home and the salon are disintegrating, and Madison Reed is at the epicenter of a new way to think about color and beauty. I couldn't be more thrilled to be joining this company at such an exciting time."

Stanko is relocating to San Francisco, but he will return frequently to New York to continue his longstanding relationship with Licari Cutler Salon on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.

About Madison Reed:

Based in San Francisco, Madison Reed is a beauty company revolutionizing the way women color their hair. The fast-growing startup uses technology in conjunction with a team of licensed colorists to help women find their perfect color, and have salon-quality hair color delivered for under $25. Founded in 2013, Madison Reed started with a simple mission: To create a luxurious prestige hair color made with ingredients you can feel good about. Madison Reed's conditioning, multi-tonal formula is crafted without ammonia, parabens, resorcinol, PPD, phthalates, and gluten. The entire color and hair care line is enriched with argan oil, keratin, and ginseng root to protect and pamper hair. Products can be found online, on mobile, and through select retailers including Sephora, QVC and Ulta Beauty. For fast, fabulous color applied by a professional, visit Madison Reed Color Bars in New York and San Francisco. For more information, visit www.madison-reed.com, click here for a company overview, or click here for digital assets.

Media contact:

Nora Murray

[email protected]

419.250.0016

SOURCE Madison Reed

Related Links

http://www.madison-reed.com


NEW YORK and HONG KONG, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Exiger, the global regulatory, financial crime, risk and compliance company, announced the appointment of Dean Ward to the post of Vice President and Head of Business Development for the Asia Pacific region based in Exiger's Hong Kong office.

Mr. Ward joined Exiger from Thomson Reuters, where he led the Risk Solution Sales Specialist team in Hong Kong and North Asia. An established risk and compliance technology business leader, Mr. Ward has held senior business development roles, overseeing regional sales teams throughout the Asia Pacific region, with deep experience in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, and Australia. Prior to Thomson Reuters, Mr. Ward held management and research positions with IntegraScreen and Hill & Associates Ltd.

"Dean is a recognized leader in the due diligence space in the Asia Pacific region, having spent the last decade helping the world's largest banks, software companies, energy giants, and pharmaceutical manufacturers develop robust anti-money laundering (AML), anti-fraud, and know your customer (KYC) programs," said Arun Banerjee, Exiger Managing Director and Chief Revenue Officer. "Dean will play a critical role in helping us build out our regional sales team and driving the expansion of our business in the Asia Pacific region."

As Vice President and Head of Business Development, Mr. Ward will be responsible for growing and expanding Exiger's due diligence, technology, global investigations and financial crime compliance businesses in the Asia Pacific market.

"The rapid growth trajectory Exiger has already demonstrated in the Asia Pacific region has made it clear that the company's unique mix of superior technology and deep domain expertise is striking a chord with risk and compliance professionals in every industry," said Mr. Ward. "I look forward to the opportunity to help the company dramatically increase its Asian footprint as we demonstrate the value of our capabilities to ever-larger numbers of customers."

Mr. Ward holds a BA in Development Studies from the University of London.

About Exiger

Exiger is a global regulatory and financial crime, risk and compliance company. Exiger arms financial institutions, multinational corporations and governmental agencies with the practical advice and technology solutions they need to prevent compliance breaches, respond to risk, remediate major issues and monitor ongoing business activities. Exiger works with clients worldwide to assist them in effectively managing their critical challenges while developing and implementing the policies, procedures and programs needed to create a sustainable compliance environment. A global authority on regulatory compliance, the company also oversees some of the world's most complex court-appointed and voluntary monitorships in the private and public sectors, including the monitorship of HSBC. Exiger has four principal business units being: Exiger Advisory; Exiger Diligence; Exiger Government Services; and Exiger Tech, including AI-based automated due diligence solutions DDIQ and Insight 3PM. Exiger operates through offices in New York City, Silver Spring (DC Metro), Miami, Toronto, Vancouver, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Contacts:

U.S.

John Roderick

[email protected]

631-584-2200

Europe

James Rossiter

[email protected]

44 0203 195 3240

SOURCE Exiger

Related Links

http://www.exiger.com


"Mark is a demonstrated sales leader in the industry with a history of growing brands," said Indelicato. "He will build upon the great sales team we have in place, help us continue to foster strong distributor and retailer partner relationships, and implement the right systems to continue growing our company and our portfolio."

Merrion joins Delicato with more than 25 years of industry experience on the supplier and distributor side. Most recently, he held the position of senior vice president - US sales & trade marketing for Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), accountable for delivering annual sales revenue and gross profit growth. Prior to TWE, Merrion held senior sales roles at Wilson Daniels, a fine wine importer and marketer in St. Helena, and Diageo Chateau & Estates in Napa. Merrion also brings valuable industry experience from his previous positions with Young's Market Company, The Boston Beer Company, Heublein Wines, and E.&J. Gallo Winery.

Merrion will be based in Napa Valley at Delicato's Napa offices.

About Delicato Family Vineyards

Delicato Family Vineyards is a family-owned company founded in 1924. Four generations of the Indelicato family have overseen vineyard operations and winemaking at their California properties, maintaining the unparalleled standards for which they are known. The Delicato portfolio includes a unique range of brands such as Bota Box, Gnarly Head, Noble Vines, Black Stallion Estate Winery, Z. Alexander Brown, Diora, Irony, Brazin, and Earth Wise. For more information, visit www.delicato.com.

SOURCE Delicato Family Vineyards

Related Links

http://www.delicato.com


BELMONT, Mass., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dianne Georgian-Smith, M.D., is recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Pinnacle Lifetime Member in the field of Medicine in recognition of her role as Radiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

A global healthcare institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital has been a pioneer in medical innovations for years. An internationally serving healthcare facility, Brigham and Women's specializes in various aspects of medicine including cancer, cardiology and heart surgery, gynecology, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopedics, and rheumatology.



Amassing over thirty years of experience in the industry and ten years of experience in her current role as a Radiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dr. Georgian Smith has had extensive experience throughout the years. In this capacity, Dr. Georgian-Smith has specialized in the areas of breast imaging and pathologic correlations.



Originally inspired to become a veterinarian, Dr. Georgian-Smith states, "Both of my parents were prominent organic chemists and I watched their work. My father, Dr. Vlasios Georgian, worked with the Nobel Laureate, Dr. Robert Woodward at Harvard for the synthesis of Penicillin. My father also holds patents with Edwin Land at Polaroid for work during WWII I've adopted my parents' key to success, which is simply, perseverance."



Throughout the course of her education and training, Dr. Georgian-Smith earned her undergraduate degree at Yale University. She then went on to complete her Medical degree from Case Western University School of Medicine in 1983. Board Certified in Diagnostic Radiology, she completed her residency in Radiology from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in 1988, as well as her Fellowship in Breast Imaging at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center in 1989.



To further her professional development, Dr. Georgian-Smith is a Fellow of the American College of Radiology, the Society of Breast Imaging, and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute of Harvard Medical School.



In recognition of her outstanding accomplishments, she earned a Silver Medal for her Scientific Exhibit from the American Roentgen Ray Society in 2004; as well as the Cum Laude Award from the RSNA Education Exhibit in 1992, 2009 and 2011.



A renowned published author, Dr. Georgian-Smith has published several articles and chapters in prominent medical journals and textbooks, and has presented endless posters and abstracts at various medical conferences. In addition, she is the co-author of Breast Imaging and Pathological Correlations: A Pattern-Based Approach, which hit #72 on Amazon's Top 100 best sellers list in radiology six months after its publication.



When not working, Dr. Georgian-Smith enjoys traveling, specifically to Florida and Maine, and watching her daughter compete in equestrian competitions.



She dedicates this recognition to her father, Vlasios Georgian; to the loving memory of her mother, Guadelupe Torres Guzman; and to William E. Shiels II, D.O., who was a Pediatric Radiologist, and passed away a few years ago. For 25 years, they paired to teach radiologists all over the world the skills of performing ultrasound guided procedures using the tissue phantom, the turkey breast.



For more information, visit www.brighamandwomens.org.

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who

Related Links

http://www.continentalwhoswho.com


OR AKIVA, Israel, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Expanding Orthopedics Inc. (EOI), a privately held medical device company focused on developing and commercializing innovative expandable devices for spine surgery, is proud to announce that Dr. Adam Lewis of Jackson MS is the first surgeon in Mississippi to adopt the FLXfit 3D Expandable Cage as his treatment of choice for MIS TLIF procedures. Dr. Lewis is a prominent neurosurgeon and founder of the Jackson Neurosurgery Clinic in Jackson MS. He is a pioneer in MIS spine surgery and leads the shift to less invasive fusion procedures.

Dr. Lewis stated "The spine market is shifting towards MIS outpatient care. Instrumentation, implants, and techniques need to rapidly evolve to enable this revolution." He commented, "I am a great believer in expandable cages, especially for MIS procedures where surgical access is limited. A low profile implant which can be easily inserted and expands in-situ is critical to obtain the best outcome." Dr. Lewis noted, "Most expandable cages I have used provide only a partial solution as they have a small footprint and expand only in one plane. They don't offer sufficient support and sagittal balance restoration."

Dr. Lewis further explains, "The FLXfit family of expanding TLIF cages are ideal for MIS fusion surgery as they enable a best in class expandable cage through a small tube. The unique articulation feature allows me to place a traditional linear shape cage through a tube and achieve an ALIF like footprint. This minimizes blood loss and surgical trauma while offering the best possible outcome." He concluded, "The initial observations on my first series of patients show very promising results. I now have the ability to dial-in up to 15 degrees of lordosis and significantly restore the natural lumbar curve. Additionally, patients have a much larger, more stable implant which reduced pain and provide faster return to normal daily activities."

Ofer Bokobza, CEO of Expanding Orthopedics, commented "We are honored to work with Dr. Lewis. Engaging with a leading MIS surgeon like Dr. Lewis provides us with a collaborative expertise that enhances our ability to continuously improve the system". Ofer noted "Dr. Lewis' choice to employ FLXfit for his MIS fusion surgery helps validate our mission to restore and retain lumbar lordosis and be a prominent leader in addressing sagittal balance.

About Expanding Orthopedics Inc.

Expanding Orthopedics Inc. is medical device company developing and marketing innovative products designed to address unmet clinical needs for spine care and improve long-term patients' outcome. The Company is spearheaded by a seasoned management team, and is advised by a prominent team of spine surgeons. EOI owns a broad patent portfolio around anatomically fit, expandable devices for enhanced stability through a minimally invasive approach.

Contact info:

David Elkaim, VP Marketing and Sales

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: (347) 3219683

SOURCE Expanding Orthopedics Inc.

Related Links

http://www.xortho.com


ATLANTA, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Equifax Inc. (NYSE: EFX) today announced that Jeff Dodge and Doug Brandberg of Investor Relations will meet with investors in San Francisco on Thursday, December 7th and in Denver on Friday, December 8th.

Dodge and Brandberg will discuss the company's third quarter 2017 performance as well as the strategic outlook for 2017.

An archive of the presentation is available at investor.equifax.com.

About Equifax

Equifax is a global information solutions company that uses unique data, innovative analytics, technology and industry expertise to power organizations and individuals around the world by transforming knowledge into insights that help make more informed business and personal decisions.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., Equifax operates or has investments in 24 countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. It is a member of Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 Index, and its common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol EFX. Equifax employs 10,100 employees worldwide.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Marisa Salcines

Media Relations

[email protected]

SOURCE Equifax Inc.
ATHENS, Greece, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- An EY report, disclosed today at the American Hellenic Chamber of Commerce 28th annual The Greek Economy Conference in Athens, concludes that Greece has among the best government financial reporting in the Eurozone.

The report is titled "Quality and Availability of Information on State's Budget Execution Monthly Reports." The report uses the New Zealand government's reports, which are universally recognized as the best globally, as the benchmark for comparison. Germany and France were included in the study, given their financial leadership in the Eurozone. Greece and Portugal were also included in the study given that early research showed both countries to be far more advanced in government monthly reporting than other member states in the Eurozone.

With a potential score of 350, New Zealand confirmed its global leadership with a score of 312. Greece received an impressive 152 followed by Portugal at 118. Both Germany and France lagged significantly with scores of 74 and 48, respectively.

The report utilized 34 criteria in four equally weighted scores: Foundation Criteria Score, Data Disclosures Criteria Score, Quality of Disclosure Criteria Score, and Comparative Data Criteria Score.

Carlos Lobo, Government and Public Sector Leader of EY Portugal, commented that, "monthly reporting is one of the six components of a full system of public financial management (PFM); and both Portugal and Greece have earned leadership roles in the Eurozone on government monthly reporting."

Paul B. Kazarian, Chairman of the Kazarian Center for Public Financial Management, stated, "We at the Center congratulate both Greece and Portugal on their impressive success in leading the Eurozone in government monthly financial reporting as part of a full system of public financial management (PFM)."

The report was staffed with over ten professionals and required almost six months to complete. The next stage of the study will be to include the remaining Eurozone countries, which is expected to be concluded in January, 2018.

A summary of the report can be found at www.mostimportantreform.info. The report was delivered to the Kazarian Center for Public Financial Management based in Lisbon, Portugal.

EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. The insights and quality services EY delivers help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. EY develops outstanding leaders who team to deliver on their promises to all of their stakeholders. In so doing, EY plays a critical role in building a better working world for its people, for its clients, and for its communities.

The Kazarian Center for Public Financial Management (the Center), based in Lisbon, Portugal, focuses on bringing the best practices of the full system of public financial management (PFM) to governments worldwide and educating citizens on the importance of PFM best practices for both government and their personal finances. The Center was established by the Charles & Agnes Kazarian Foundation.

For more information contact: Stacy Dimakakos, Public Worldwide [email protected]

SOURCE EY
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- To leap ahead of an ever evolving media landscape, Peter Mayer has added former Facebook Creative Shop Global Lead of Creative Partnerships Desmond LaVelle as Vice President, Executive Creative Director.

LaVelle brings more than two decades of national & international brand experience, award-winning creative excellence and thought leadership to Louisiana's largest full-service marketing firm. He will oversee Peter Mayer's creative, studio and development departments, and he will report to Josh Mayer, the agency's Chief Creative Officer.

Peter Mayer VP, Executive Creative Director Desmond LaVelle

"Adding an outstanding executive creative director signals our commitment to bringing our clients the best and most contemporary creative solutions available," said Agency President Mark Mayer. "We are dedicated to developing work that is socially engaging and merges both creative and media fields."

In addition to six years with Facebook Creative Shop working to co-create the future of brand storytelling with the global creative community, LaVelle was a senior vice president and creative director with two leading marketing firms  Leo Burnett and FCB San Francisco. He has led award winning and needle-moving campaigns for major national brands, including Esurance, Coca-Cola, Target, Samsung, Budweiser, Altoids, Corona, Kellogg's, Proctor & Gamble, Hallmark and the Dockers brand for Levi's.

"The trend has been that leading creative talent has been moving from agencies to clients or to digital platforms," said Michelle Edelman, chief strategy officer for Peter Mayer. "Desmond's move to our agency from Facebook shows agencies can still be creative engines to create content that reaches all of the platforms that comprise today's media landscape."

As to why he was interested in joining a mid-sized agency in New Orleans from a global giant like Facebook, LaVelle said, "Peter Mayer is the perfect size, has a great history, and has a roster of clients that would give me the opportunity to make a difference in the creative world. And, the City of New Orleans is a big cultural draw that inspires my creative passion."

"Desmond's experience elevates the agency's already sharp focus on developing outstanding creative work for our clients and prospective clients," said Josh Mayer. "As we mark 50 years in business, having an outstanding creative mind from Silicon Valley join the Peter Mayer team is an exciting signal for marketing in New Orleans and the region."

Since opening in 1967, Peter Mayer has employed about 1,300 people and worked with more than 1,000 clients. The firm specializes in creative development, public relations, media planning and placement, digital communications, social media management, research and analytics and strategic planning.

About Peter Mayer

Peter Mayer is an independent, integrated marketing agency founded in 1967. Today it is one of the largest full-service advertising, marketing and public relations agencies in the Gulf South. Today the agency has 87 employees and $56 million in annual client billings. Peter Mayer uses cultural insights to connect brands with people and create powerful results for clients. Its client list includes local, regional and national accounts, such as: Ochsner Health System, Zatarain's, Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Hancock Bank/Whitney Bank, Delaware North Companies and Asheville Tourism. Visit peteramayer.com for more information.

Contact: Larry Lovell

Director of Public Relations

Peter Mayer

[email protected]

504-289-7713 (mobile)

SOURCE Peter Mayer

Related Links

http://peteramayer.com


WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Tuesday, December 5, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins will address a rally outside the United States Supreme Court in support of Colorado Baker Jack Phillips. The rally sponsored by the Radiance Foundation marks the start to oral arguments for the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Travis Weber, FRC's Director of the Center for Religious Liberty will attend the oral arguments and speak at the news conference following.

"The U.S. Supreme Court now has an opportunity to issue a ruling that makes clear the government has no authority to force Americans like Jack Phillips to use their artistic talents to celebrate events with which they have a moral and/or religious disagreement," said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. "As Americans, our consensus on religious freedom has historically recognized the God-given right of Americans to live all aspects of their lives according to their faith. This is no different today. Attempting to restrict religious conviction to the four walls of a church is not freedom, that is tyranny," concluded Perkins.

Travis Weber, Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council added the following comments:

"What needs to be understood in the case of Jack Phillips is that over Jack's career he happily served countless customerswhether they identify as LGBT or not. When he was asked to make a wedding cake for a gay couple he offered to make any other type of cake for the customers, but explained that he could not in good conscience make a cake celebrating a same-sex ceremony."

"At the center of this case is the question of whether the government can force an individual to proclaim a message against their religious beliefs. The answer to that question should be an obvious 'no' and we hope the Court makes this clear by strongly affirming that all Americans' First Amendment free speech and creative expression rights are protected against government coercion," concluded Weber.

WHO:

Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council

Travis Weber, Director of the Center for Religious Liberty, Family Research Council

Patrina Mosley, Assistant Director, Family Research Council Action

WHAT: Radiance Foundation Rally supporting Jack Phillips

WHERE: Supreme Court of the United States, 1 First St NE, Washington, DC 20543

WHEN: December 5, 2017, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm Eastern

SOURCE Family Research Council

Related Links

http://www.frc.org


More than a year ago, the ACLJ issued requests for public records to both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI , under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), seeking documents concerning the June 27, 2016 tarmac meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The Obama DOJ failed to comply with FOIA, so the ACLJ took them to federal court . The then-Comey-led FBI responded to our FOIA request and indicated that it had "[n]o records responsive to your request."

As part of our litigation against the DOJ, we obtained more than 400 pages of responsive documents. Those DOJ documents confirmed that the FBI did, in fact, have responsive documents which it failed to produce to ACLJ. After we exposed the FBI's lie, the bureaucratic bureau reopened our case, and informed us that "records potentially responsive to your request may exist."

Nonetheless, and even after the FBI promised to search for responsive documents and respond appropriately, the FBI drug its feet and failed to produce any such documents in the timely manner required under FOIA. Thus, we were forced to file a lawsuit in federal court to obtain access to them.

Several weeks ago, in a federal court-ordered filing in our lawsuit, the FBI agreed to turn over those documents to us by November 30th.

We have just received those documents consisting of twenty-nine pages. While the documents provide little information about the meeting itself, or how it came to be, they do contain several important revelations.

In a blog post by ACLJ Executive Director Jordan Sekulow, new and revealing information about the communications surrounding that tarmac meeting:

"First, an email under the subject line "Bill Clinton meeting?", dated June 28, 2016 (just minutes after the DOJ spin team began taking action to respond to the media firestorm surrounding the Clinton-Lynch meeting), senior DOJ officials first informed the FBI of the DOJ's attempts to 'deal with this' situation. To be more precise, the AG's office was communicating directly with FBI officials about the matter 8 minutes after DOJ received the first media inquiry about the clandestine meeting.

Importantly, this email should have beenbut was notincluded in the DOJ's production of responsive documents on this topic.

This means that just like the FBI lied, the DOJ also withheld key documents about this meeting from us in clear violation of FOIA. This begs the obvious questions: was the DOJ intentionally hiding this information and, if so, why?"

The documents released also show a troubling pattern of behavior by Comey and top officials at the DOJ. You can read the entire post and the disturbing details that have been unearthed here.

Led by Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), focusing on constitutional law, is based in Washington, D.C. and is online at www.aclj.org.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

For Print: Gene Kapp (757) 575-9520

For Broadcast: Anna Hutsell or Janna Dawson (770) 813-0000

SOURCE American Center for Law and Justice

Related Links

http://www.aclj.org


SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- University of Utah Health today announced results of the Value in Health Care Survey, a landmark study that examines the viewpoints of patients, physicians and employersthree stakeholder groups that receive, provide, and pay for health care. The study explores how these groups perceive value and prioritize quality, service and cost.

The national survey of 5,031 patients, 687 physicians and 538 employers, commissioned by U of Utah Health and conducted by Leavitt Partners, indicates that while most stakeholders agree our health care system must deliver valuewhat that means concretely is unclear. Several key misalignments and surprising points of convergence were revealed, begging the question: Without clarity on how patients, physicians and employers define "value", how can we move forward?

"If we agree as a country that we must provide higher quality health care, a better patient experience, and at a lower cost, then we all need to understand these different viewpoints and definitions," said Dr. Bob Pendleton, U of U Health's chief medical quality officer. The Value in Health Care Survey makes clear some of the specific ways we lack shared perspectives but also suggest points of convergence that can be used to map a path forward to achieve a value-focused health care system."

Following are key findings of the Survey:

For patients, there was one clear top value statement and it related to cost: "My out-of-pocket cost is affordable."

One-third of patients assigned responsibility for keeping out-of-pocket costs low to themselves while another third assigned responsibility to insurers/brokers. Only a handful of patients chose physicians or employers. Physicians, by contrast, held insurers/brokers most responsible and patients the least, while a third of employers selected themselves. The remaining two-thirds selected insurers and health systems.

Across the value statements, neither patients, physicians nor employers assigned responsibility to the employer, suggesting they don't recognize the impact that employers have on employees' health via the medical benefits plans they offer.

This is one example demonstrating that better understanding of how value in health care is perceived differently across groups is imperative to achieving a value-focused health care delivery system. The results of the Value in Health Care Survey should prompt valuable conversations that will help advance health care transformation in a meaningful way.

Learn more: https://healthcare.utah.edu/publicaffairs/news/2017/11/value-survey.php

SOURCE University of Utah Health

Related Links

https://healthcare.utah.edu


Before joining Ford, Swan held several high-level executive roles at Morgan Stanley, most recently serving as Managing Director and Co-Head of its Global Sustainable Finance team, which has committed over $13 billion in community development investments since 2010. Swan also served as the bank's Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Officer, CEO of Morgan Stanley Impact SBIC, and Trustee of the Morgan Stanley Foundation.

"Roy brings such a wonderful balance of corporate investment and social impact experience to the foundation," said Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation. "We are truly fortunate to have him lead our growing team and push forward our commitment to mission investments."

Swan's extensive corporate experience also includes investment banking at The First Boston Corporation, Salomon Brothers, and JPMorgan/Hambrecht & Quist; corporate law at Skadden Arps; and financial management at Time Warner.

"Although we are sad to see Roy go, we are excited for him to continue to use his extensive experience with community development in this new opportunity," said Audrey Choi, Chief Sustainability Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Morgan Stanley. "We wish him all the best and look forward to seeing the great work to come out of the Ford Foundation in this important area."

Throughout his career, Swan has been committed to enhancing the quality of life in low-income neighborhoods. Before Morgan Stanley, Swan was the founding Chief Investment Officer of New York City's Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (EZ), a federal initiative designed to bring new resources to distressed urban communities. He partnered closely with chief executive Deborah Wright to develop and execute the EZ's $250 million investment fund, which played a key role in Harlem's remarkable economic rebirth. Swan later became Chief Financial Officer at Carver Bancorp, Inc., a Harlem-based publicly-traded financial institution and the nation's largest African-American managed bank.

The foundation's overall goals with its mission-related investments are to deliver significant mission impacts over the long-term while seeking to achieve a total return consistent with prudent risk taking. With vast investment experience, success in managing portfolios, and a commitment to social returns, Swan is perfectly suited for this position.

"I am honored that the Foundation has entrusted me to help it generate positive community impact through its historic mission investments initiative," said Swan. "I'm excited to join an immensely talented team and bring with me the successful lessons learned at Morgan Stanley to contribute to Ford's Mission Investments efforts."

Swan received his bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he was an editor on the Stanford Law Review. He serves on several nonprofit boards including The Dalton School, Enterprise Community Partners, Low Income Investment Fund, and the Partnership for After School Education. He also serves on the advisory boards of several private equity funds including Brightwood Capital, HCAP, and the NEF Multifamily Affordable Rental Housing Preservation Fund.

"We're delighted to have Roy on board," said Xavier Briggs, vice president of Economic Opportunity and Markets at Ford. "He has immense experience and leadership ability, and with our partners in this exciting field, he's so well positioned to innovate  to help the market grow with integrity and produce meaningful impact on people's lives."

SOURCE Ford Foundation

Related Links

http://www.fordfoundation.org


The base date of this valuation was December 31, 2016 and valid until December 31, 2017. This valuation involves financial data, industry & commerce information, brand history and cultural connotation, R&D and innovation ability, quality and service level, brand stability, customer relation strength, enterprise credit, legal protection and other elements. To be specific, in terms of quality and service level and innovation leadership, Fu Shou Yuan brand has obtained the high scores of 100 and 115 respectively, and its ultimate brand index score has reached 518.

Listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) on December 19, 2013, Fu Shou Yuan became a leader among Chinese death care service providers to enter the capital market. In December, 2016, Fu Shou Yuan was formally covered within the scope of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect Program. Since its listing four years ago, Fu Shou Yuan International Group's businesses have covered different fields such as cemetery, funeral service, death care equipment, pre-need funeral contract, planning and design, and life education, and its presence has been expanded to more than 20 cities in 11 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities including Shanghai, Henan, Chongqing, Anhui, Shandong, Liaoning, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Guangxi.

Since being listed, Fu Shou Yuan International Group has undertaken more social responsibilities, invested more in charity projects, introduced various forms to guard social and cultural values, guide social thinking about life and death, and led and upgraded reforms at ideological level. In addition, the Group has established the Life-Service Academy to cultivate talents, and its soft power and brand reputation have seen continuous and significant improvement in the past four years. Fu Shou Yuan has won a number of honors and awards such as Top 10 Most Investment Value Brand in Asia, Forbes' Top 100 Listed Chinese Companies with Great Potentials, New Stock with the Greatest Growth Momentum of 2015 Top 100 Hong Kong Stocks, 2016 Listed Company of the Year, 2016 Charity Group Award and Charity Innovation Award at the 6th China Charity Festival, and 2017 Top 100 Innovative Brands of Listed Companies in China, and The 5th National Civilized Unit.

According to Yi Hua, Chief Brand Officer of Fu Shou Yuan International Group, this brand valuation represents a full affirmation of the past brand development and future development potential of Fu Shou Yuan International Group. In the future, Fu Shou Yuan will continuously keep a beginner's mind, further expand and upgrade its brand culture, inherit traditional culture, promote life education, promote changes in social values and attitude towards life and death, and better satisfy the pursuit of the people after better life.

About Fu Shou Yuan International Group

Founded in 1994, Fu Shou Yuan is China's largest death care service provider and the leader and integrator of the Chinese death care service industry. It is also a place where memories and emotions are preserved and enshrined, a culture-oriented company that is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the quintessence of traditional value, and a corporate citizen with a deep sense of responsibilities. Over the past more than 20 years, Fu Shou Yuan has been in the forefront of innovations in the industry and committed to achieving breakthroughs in concept, product, service, culture, art and technology to facilitate and lead the development and reform the modern Chinese death care industry. At present, Fu Shou Yuan International Group's businesses have covered different fields such as cemetery, funeral service, death care equipment, pre-need funeral contract, planning and design, and life education, and its presence has been expanded to more than 20 cities in 11 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities including Shanghai, Henan, Chongqing, Anhui, Shandong, Liaoning, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Guangxi.

Listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) on December 19, 2013, Fu Shou Yuan became a leader among Chinese death care service providers to enter the capital market. In December, 2016, Fu Shou Yuan was formally covered within the scope of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect Program, and has won a number of honors and awards such as Top 10 Most Investment Value Brand in Asia, Forbes' Top 100 Listed Chinese Companies with Great Potentials, New Stock with the Greatest Growth Momentum of 2015 Top 100 Hong Kong Stocks, 2016 Listed Company of the Year, 2016 Charity Group Award and Charity Innovation Award at the 6th China Charity Festival, and 2017 Top 100 Innovative Brands of Listed Companies in China, and The 5th National Civilized Unit.

SOURCE Fu Shou Yuan International Group
NEW YORK, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As fully insured health plans emerge from six years of continued policy and market turbulence surrounding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), financial data analysis indicates a mixed financial performance. Two hundred and thirty-eight U.S. fully insured health plans experienced significant revenue increases over the past six years, though those gains were tempered by declining margins and growing underwriting losses. That was one of several important findings from a new "Health Plan Financial Trends 2011-2016" study by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. It is first of a series looking at the U.S. fully insured plans market.

"A key takeaway is: While the three largest plans accounted for a large portion of the total underwriting gain in the industry, there is a strikingly large number of smaller players with more challenging financials. They hover in the uncomfortable zone right around breaking even," said Greg Scott, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and U.S. health plan leader.

Key findings

The Deloitte study found that fully insured health plan revenue increased 55 percent between 2011 and 2016, with enrollment also increasing from 143 million to 184 million members. But underwriting gains in 2016 were 29 percent below 2011 results.

The industry also saw a significant increase in the number of plans with annual losses, a steep decline in average margins, and widening performance variation among plans. These unfavorable trends emerged largely in 2014, the initial year of major coverage expansions under the ACA.

Another important discovery was that the largest national health plans captured a disproportionate, and growing, share of all underwriting gains. Their margin share was due in part to the number and magnitude of losses suffered by other health plans, particularly in ACA commercial individual products.

The study also found that for-profit health plans grew faster and posted significantly higher margins than not-for-profit health plans. For-profit plans saw revenue jump by 60 percent between 2011 and 2016, while not-for-profit plans had a revenue increase of 49 percent during the same period. For-profit plans had an average margin in 2016 of 2.5; the non-profit margin was 0.8 percent in 2016.

Lastly, the study revealed state insurance markets experienced increased volatility. There was a marked increase in the number and variety of states with unfavorable swings in insurance market performance, with the performance of health insurance markets in many states deteriorating significantly.

What's next

This fully insured health plan study is the first installment in a series of Deloitte reports on health plan financial trends. Future installments in this series will also examine government-sponsored health insurance market trends, as well as trends in the commercial group and commercial individual segments.

To access the first installment of this series, on overall fully insured health plan trends, please visit the Deloitte website.

About Deloitte

Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world's most admired brands, including more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500 and more than 6,000 private and middle market companies. Our people work across more than 20 industry sectors to make an impact that matters  delivering measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in our capital markets, inspire clients to see challenges as opportunities to transform and thrive, and help lead the way toward a stronger economy and a healthy society. Deloitte is proud to be part of the largest global professional services network serving our clients in the markets that are most important to them.

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the "Deloitte" name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms.

SOURCE Deloitte

Related Links

http://www.deloitte.com/us


SAN DIEGO, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Shareholder rights law firm Johnson Fistel, LLP has launched an investigation into whether the board members of General Cable Corporation ("General Cable") (NYSE: BGC) breached their fiduciary duties in connection with the proposed sale of the Company to Prysmian Group ("Prysmian"). General Cable develops, designs, manufactures, markets, and distributes copper, aluminum, and fiber optic wire and cable products for the energy, industrial, construction, specialty, and communications markets.

On December 4, 2017, General Cable announced that it had signed a definitive merger agreement with Prysmian. Under the terms of the agreement, Prysmian will acquire each share of outstanding common stock of General Cable in exchange for $30.00 in cash.

The investigation concerns whether the General Cable board failed to satisfy its duties to the Company shareholders, including whether the board adequately pursued alternatives to the acquisition and whether the board obtained the best price possible for General Cable shares of common stock.

If you are a shareholder of General Cable and believe the proposed buyout price is too low or you're interested in learning more about the investigation or your legal rights and remedies, please contact lead analyst Jim Baker ( [email protected] ) at 619-814-4471. If emailing, please include a phone number.

About Johnson Fistel, LLP:

Johnson Fistel, LLP is a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm with offices in California, New York and Georgia. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in shareholder derivative and securities class action lawsuits. For more information about the firm and its attorneys, please visit http://www.johnsonfistel.com . Attorney advertising. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

Contact:

Johnson Fistel, LLP

Jim Baker, 619-814-4471

[email protected]

SOURCE Johnson Fistel, LLP

Related Links

http://www.johnsonfistel.com


SHANGHAI, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 22, The Securities Intelligence Summit, co-hosted by Shanghai Finance Association, Association of Shanghai Internet Financial Industry and Guotai Junan, was held in Shanghai. Leaders of the competent departments, experts in securities institutions, representatives from technology giants and scholars attended the summit to discuss the future development trend of artificial intelligence in securities industry. The brand new online intelligent service image "Junhong lingxi" created by Guotai Junan was released during the summit.

According to Guotai Junan, "The Junhong lingxi is different from other ordinary intelligent investment products in the market. We are committed to creating a platform with a full range of investment decision-making support during different investment stages and investment decision-making processes, including stock selection, data solutions, intelligent diagnosis, trading timing selection, accounts analysis, financial planning, etc."

The opening ceremony of Guotai Junan & NetEase Big Data Laboratory was also held during the summit. In the future, the two sides will integrate data resources and advantages, focusing on various cooperation including releasing Securities Investors Insight White Paper, establishing big data information product and releasing "Jun Yi" Market Index, etc., to together enhance the application depth of big data resources.

SOURCE Guotai Junan Securities
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gustafson Nicolai pc, a Los Angeles-based law firm, has filed a sixth lawsuit against Apple, Inc. and related entities stemming from exploding Apple iPhone 6 products that injured its clients.

Seontaik Kim; Mina Choi; Hwiram K., a minor v. Apple Inc. and Verizon Communications, Inc., Santa Clara County Superior Court Case No. 17CV319298, was filed on November 16, 2017.

Gustafson Nicolai pc previously filed similar complaints against Apple and related parties (Romero v. Apple Inc. and AT&T Corp., Los Angeles Superior Court Case No. BC658648, filed April 20, 2017; Morley v. Apple, Inc., Santa Clara County Superior Court Case No. 17CV310047, filed May 12, 2017; Speaks v. Apple Inc. and Verizon Communications, Inc., Santa Clara County Superior Court Case No. 17CV312922, filed July 12, 2017; Jalaycia T., a minor v. Apple Inc. and AT&T Corp., Santa Clara County Superior Court Case No. 17CV314575, filed August 16, 2017; and Umeh v. Apple Inc. and Airtouch Cellular, Inc., Fresno County Superior Court Case No. 17CECG03499, filed October 11, 2017).

Each of the Complaints sets forth claims for general negligence and products liability in connection with Apple iPhone 6 products that exploded and injured the Plaintiffs. The Complaints seek damages for personal injury, wage loss, loss of use of property, hospital and medical expenses, general damage, property damage, and loss of earning capacity. The Complaints further seek punitive and exemplary damages.

Gustafson Nicolai pc continues to investigate the matter and is interested in speaking to others who may have suffered similar injuries due to iPhone explosions.

Gustafson Nicolai pc is a full-service law firm that specializes in civil litigation, including personal injury matters. The firm can be contacted through its principals, Adam C. Nicolai and J. Ryan Gustafson (www.gnlawpc.com; 310.361.0787; [email protected] or [email protected]).

A copy of each Complaint filed to date can be found here:

http://www.gnlawpc.com/gustafson-nicolai-pc-files-lawsuit-against-apple-inc-and-verizon-inc-in-kim-et-al-v-apple-inc/

http://www.gnlawpc.com/gustafson-nicolai-pc-is-representing-iphone-user-against-apple-att/

http://www.gnlawpc.com/gustafson-nicolai-pc-is-representing-iphone-user-against-apple-verizon/

http://www.gnlawpc.com/gustafson-nicolai-pc-is-representing-another-iphone-user/

http://www.gnlawpc.com/gustafson-nicolai-pc-announces-lawsuit-against-apple-and-att/

http://www.gnlawpc.com/gustafson-nicolai-pc-files-new-lawsuit-against-apple-inc-in-umeh-v-apple-inc-et-al/

SOURCE Gustafson Nicolai pc

Related Links

http://www.gnlawpc.com


AUDUBON, Pa., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- According to Robert Toporek, the power and importance of touch in human growth development cannot be overstated. Neuroscience is now verifying that from conception through about age 6 human brain growth is at its peak. Science has also shown that human touch is an essential part of our cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development.

Hands-On Parenting, Written by Bestselling Author Robert Toporek Robert Toporek

Toporek's new book, Hands-on Parenting, provides an easy to follow, step-by-step approach to massage for babies and children of all ages. A partial list of the benefits of massage for babies and young children includes: improvement in motor skill development, circulation, breathing, agitation, gas pain, constipation, social development, poise, bodily growth, and most importantly, increased bonding between parent and child.

In addition to imparting profound lessons, the book explains that massagealong with its vast emotional and physical benefitsis fun for both massage givers and recipients. "When you see your baby laughing and gurgling during and after his massage, you'll understand this," Toporek says.

Of course, Toporek points out other reasons to begin massaging your baby or child todayno matter what their age. "Massage is one of the most important and crucial developmental tools you can use as a parent. It will help your child growin mind and bodymore rapidly and significantly than if he were raised without the joy of massage. It will help prevent many of the physical and emotional tensions that many people accept as 'normal,' and most importantly, will keep your family in touchliterally," Toporek says.

Toporek explains how massage is your child's best defense against the damages that can be caused by tension, stress, and life's traumas. It is up to you to counteract tension right from the start by providing your child with the tools to effectively and positively deal with the stressors of life. In addition, you will be giving them positive messages about their worth and well-being while fostering a healthy relationship.

Each chapter in the book ends with simple, commonsense, but not commonly practiced, methods a parent can do to nurture their child's neurological, cognitive, and social development.

Hands on Parenting is must-reading for every parent, grandparent or anyone working with babies and children.

About Robert Toporek

Hands on Parenting is based on Robert Toporek's experience of working with babies, children, and their families since 1966. That experience began when he started working with children in a refugee village in Vietnam. In 1975, he received training as a Rolf practitioner from Dr. Ida P. Rolf, the creator of Rolfing, and her son, Dick Demmerle. Toporek has worked with kids and their parents from the top of mountains to low-income, inner-city neighborhoods.

For more information, contact Robert Toporek, 484-744-1868;

[email protected]; www.teamchildren.org

SOURCE Robert Toporek

Related Links

http://www.teamchildren.org


WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a panel at the National Press Club by the Washington Office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI-US), human rights experts called for accountability for Iranian regime's human rights abuses.

Referring to NCRI's newly released book, "Iran, Where Mass Murderers Rule, The 1988 Massacre of 30,000 Political Prisoners and the Continuing Atrocities," former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Kenneth Blackwell, called for accountability into the 1988 massacre to "put pressure on the regime to give access so that we might shine light on the evils that were done [to give] hope to [those] inside Iran." Blackwell added, "our delegation at the U.N. [should] continue to be a leading voice, not only on international terrorismby the regime, but to bring justice to a regime  that is a threat to the basic fabric of humanity across the globe."

Former Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, Linda Chavez, referred to the role of women in the opposition. "It is no accident," that Iran's opposition movement "is led by a woman, Madame Maryam Rajavi. She stands as a real affront to this regime. The regime hates and fears the MEK [Mujahedin-e Khalq] because in the MEK women  are allowed to lead others. And men are willing to listen and to follow them; a major threat to a regime that wants to imprison half its people."

NCRI's U.S. Representative, Soona Samsami said, "why the regime continues to perpetrate such atrocities and continuing? The answer is simple; it fears its population. Despite harsh crackdown, Tehran has been unable to extinguish the Iranian people's yearning for change, freedom, and human rights."

Former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco, Marc Ginsberg emphasized, "The violation of human rights has become an inconvenient truth to those who have decided that the Iran nuclear agreement is what begins and ends our engagement with Iran We need to begin holding Iran accountable."

Former U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain, Adam Ereli, said, "Many of the perpetrators of this crime are in positions of high authority and this has produced a culture of impunity that Iran's rulers exploit to continue arresting, torturing, and murdering at will and without consequences or penalty The only way to stop rogue regimes from using terror and murder as tools of their rule is to hold them accountable for their crimes."

CONTACT: 202-747-7847

SOURCE NCRI-US

Related Links

http://www.ncrius.org


RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Iggbo, a modern care coordination platform, and DNA Diagnostics Center (DDC), one of the world's largest private DNA testing companies, have announced a strategic partnership to empower consumers with valuable information contained in their own DNA. Since 1995, DDC has handled over 10 million DNA samples from 168 countries, offering tests for paternity, immigration, and other family relationships; ancestry; health and beauty; forensics, and genetic traits of animals. Leveraging Iggbo's technology, DDC can now digitally dispatch specimen collection specialists to a patient's home, a physician's office, or to Iggbo's network of care locations around the country.

"Iggbo's partnership with DNA Diagnostics Center makes it possible to access their science in the most convenient, user-friendly way possible. Our technology coordinates point of care so that it occurs at the right time and place," said Nuno Valentine, co-founder and CEO of Iggbo.

Since its launch, Iggbo has delivered on-demand specimen collection and other care in locations selected by patients around the country. Iggbo also operates a growing network of brick-and-mortar care locations in over 40 major markets.

This new partnership allows DDC to leverage Iggbo's network of on-demand specialists and its brick-and-mortar network as a way to offer their customers personalized care. In addition, Iggbo's award-winning Procedure Intelligence technology will help improve the efficiency and logistics of every care experience.

"To be an industry leader in genetic testing for over 20 years requires continual improvement. DDC has been the first to adopt leading technology to find ways to improve the quality and efficiency of handling every DNA sample," said Connie Hallquist, CEO of DNA Diagnostics Center. "Our partnership with Iggbo is an example of our relentless pursuit of the best processes for our customers."

About Iggbo

Iggbo is a healthcare technology company that makes personalized medicine possible for everyone. Our award-winning care coordination platform enables healthcare companies to aggregate their healthcare solutions, services, and labor in one place. Using Iggbo's technology, our partners can automate their process for procuring, dispatching, tracking, and paying their labor. Any healthcare organization can digitally manage their own internal workforce on our platform, or they can discover and connect with trusted, high-quality labor groups to complete their services in a range of convenient settings, including mobile, in-office (where permitted), events, or in our brick-and-mortar care locations around the country. Iggbo puts a thousand healthcare solutions at the fingertips of our customers. www.iggbo.com

About DNA Diagnostics Center

DNA Diagnostics Center (DDC) is one of the world's largest private DNA testing companies with offices in Fairfield, Ohio and London, England. Since 1995, DDC has expertly handled over 10 million DNA samples from 168 countries offering tests for paternity, immigration, and other family relationships; ancestry; health and beauty; forensics, and genetic traits of animals. DDC's accredited ISO 17025 laboratory uses state-of-the-art technology, robotics, and bioinformatics to ensure high quality results, and is certified by CLIA, CAP, AABB, NATA, and the Ministry of Justice. www.DNACenter.com

SOURCE Iggbo

Related Links

http://www.iggbo.com


PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CloudMine, a HIPAA-compliant Enterprise Health Cloud platform, has been cited in Forrester's report, "Predictions 2018: Digital Will Disrupt Siloed Healthcare Ecosystems." The report was released on November 10 by Forrester Research, Inc., a leading global research and advisory firm, to predict what patients will want in 2018 and how successful firms will use enterprise health clouds (EHCs) and robots to deliver it.

"CloudMine is honored to be referenced by Forrester as they assess key trends shaping the healthcare industry in 2018," said CloudMine CEO Steve Wray. "At CloudMine, we firmly believe that accelerating digital transformation will produce an improved healthcare experience for patients and providers alike. As healthcare influencers such as HIMSS and HHS reiterate the urgency of improved interoperability, we will support their call to action with Connected Health Cloud solutions that combine security with technology innovation."

Until now, healthcare has been slow to adopt cloud-based solutions, believing on-premises solutions to be more secure. The Forrester report states that in 2018, "the drive to connect with other healthcare businesses and customers to share information and deliver efficient care anywhere will finally squash the 'if I can see it, it's secure' mentality."

Forrester also predicts that CIOs will divert funds from enterprise health records (EHRs) and other systems that aren't delivering on their promises into enterprise health clouds. Offsetting the pain points of traditional EHR and claim systems, Forrester asserts that a mix of tech giants and smaller upstarts, such as CloudMine, "have come to the rescue with enterprise health cloud platforms to break down healthcare silos."

CloudMine's Connected Health Cloud provides the interoperability, digital health development tools, and out-of-the-box security to empower precision medicine and tailor healthcare to individuals. The three pillars of the Connected Health Cloud are the Interoperability Engine, connecting to health data sources such as pharmacy benefit managers, sensors, wearables, and electronic health records; Developer Tools, which simplify web, mobile, and IoT app development with front and back-end tools to quickly and seamlessly build digital health apps; and Data Security, allowing customers to build robust applications and interface between a variety of systems without compromising patient data. To learn more about CloudMine, visit www.cloudmineinc.com.

"Predictions 2018: Digital Will Disrupt Siloed Healthcare Ecosystems," is available to Forrester subscribers or for purchase at Forrester online.

About CloudMine

CloudMine is the leading HIPAA-compliant Enterprise Health Cloud platform. CloudMine empowers healthcare organizations to rapidly and confidently develop connected digital health experiences by reducing complexity, enabling data mobility, and ensuring compliance. Recognized by industry analysts for their vision, collaboration, and ability to scale, CloudMine is partnering with a diverse portfolio of customers, such as the American Heart Association and Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, to successfully address many of the biggest challenges in the digital transformation of healthcare. For patients, providers, clinical investigators and digital innovators, connected healthcare is better healthcare. For more information, visit http://www.cloudmineinc.com, call (855) 662-7722, or follow @cloudmineinc on Twitter.

CONTACT: Elysse Ciccone

(215) 600-0050

[email protected]

SOURCE CloudMine

Related Links

http://www.cloudmineinc.com


DUBLIN, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market Outlook to 2022 - Rising Vehicle Sales and Implementation of Stringent Emission Norms to Foster Future Growth" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the diesel direct, gasoline port and direct fuel injection systems market in India.

The report focuses on the major products preferred by vehicle manufacturers across the country. The report covers aspects such as overall fuel injection systems market by its key segments including preferred automotive, OEM and Aftermarket sales, technology, fuel injection systems components, and organized and unorganized.

The publication also includes competitive landscape, which discusses the major market players along with the detailed discussion about the organizations, their respective market share and end user analysis for purchasing fuel injection systems. The future analysis of overall India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market has also been discussed along with recommendations from analyst view.

The OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) market is entirely organized with car manufacturing companies procuring fuel injection systems from their developers or manufacturing it themselves. Therefore, OEMs had a strong market share in both gasoline and diesel based injection systems. Bosch was by far the largest player operating in both OEM and aftermarket segment.

Replacement demand for defective common rail diesel injection systems, especially from light and heavy commercial vehicles, coupled with steady replacement of carburetors in two wheelers has resulted in substantial market share of aftermarket sales, as of FY'2017.



The market for fuel injection systems in India is expected to be driven majorly by the rise in production and sale of automobiles including two wheelers, four wheelers, light and heavy commercial vehicles coupled with replacement demand of carburetors and fuel injection systems to comply with stricter regulatory norms in the next five years.



Moreover, exports have been on a rising curve owing to companies manufacturing injection systems in India for better economies of scale. As a result, export of fuel injection system is expected to continue to incline at least in the short-midterm and aid in the growth of automotive fuel injection systems market in India.

Key Topics Covered:



1. Executive Summary



2. Research Methodology



3. India Automotive Fuel Injection Market Overview and Genesis



4. Value Chain Analysis of India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market



5. India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market Size, FY'2012-FY'2017



6. India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market Segmentation



7. Snapshot on Comparison of Fuel Injection Systems with Carburetors



8. Pricing Scenario for Automotive Fuel Injection Systems



9. Trade Scenario for Automotive Fuel Injection Systems in India



10. Trends and Developments in India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market



11. Snapshot on Emission Norms in India



12. Issues and Challenges in India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market



13. Porter Five Forces Analysis in India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market



14. End User Analysis for Purchasing Fuel Injection Systems



15. Competitive Landscape of Major Players in India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market



16. Market Share of Major Organized Players in India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market



17. India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market Future Outlook and Projections, FY'2018-FY'2022



18. Analyst Recommendations



19. Macroeconomic Factors Affecting India Automotive Fuel Injection Systems Market



Companies Mentioned



Bosch

Cummins Technologies

Dellorto India Pvt. Ltd

Delphi-TVS

Denso

Stanadyne

UCAL Fuel System Limited

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/976fp4/india_automotive





Media Contact:

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

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DURHAM, N.C., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Infinia ML, an advanced machine learning company that delivers transformative automation solutions and predictive analytics to Fortune 500 businesses, announced today that the company's chief scientist, Lawrence Carin, Ph.D., published ten papers at this year's Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS). This makes Carin the most prolific researcher at the event, which brings together machine learning experts from institutions like Google, Microsoft, IBM, MIT, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon. In fact, Carin and his co-authors contributed more papers than AI-focused organizations such as Amazon, Tencent, and OpenAI.

Carin's papers help advance the field of machine learning by showing that deep learning has important applications across a large range of domains, with important new ideas presented in text analysis, image synthesis, and analysis of dynamic local field potentials in the brain.

"This body of work underscores our commitment to leading this field in cutting-edge research," explained CEO Robbie Allen. "Lawrence is one of the most respected ML scientists in the world, and the team he brought to Infinia ML is unparalleled. Their research, covering areas including generative adversarial networks (GANs), deep learning, and neuroscience, is on display at NIPS this year, showing the exceptional capabilities of our growing team," added Allen.

Carin's work helps Duke University contribute a total of 14 papers, which is a comparable number of papers as IBM, Facebook, and Harvard. Infinia ML founding member Ricardo Henao co-authored four papers with Carin for NIPS.

"With only 21% of papers accepted this year at NIPS, publishing ten is a fantastic achievement and we are very proud to have Dr. Carin and Dr. Henao on our Infinia ML team," said Mike Salvino, Executive Chairman of Infinia ML. "The talent of the team and the published research allows us to quickly deliver business impact to our Fortune 100 clients, specifically helping them decrease costs or increase their revenue."

About Infinia ML

Infinia ML empowers companies to make smarter decisions and automate complex business processes by leveraging the latest breakthroughs in machine learning. Infinia ML has a team of leading AI researchers and deep learning experts that have published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers through top machine learning conferences and journals. Backed by noted private equity firm Carrick Capital Partners, the Durham, North Carolina company is led by CEO Robbie Allen, an experienced AI entrepreneur, and Chief Scientist Lawrence Carin, Ph.D., the Duke University Vice Provost for Research and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Learn more online at www.InfiniaML.com.

SOURCE Infinia ML

Related Links

http://www.InfiniaML.com


ATLANTA, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockton's southeast team welcomes Cheryl Jennings as their new southeast Commercial Insurance Department (CID) practice leader. Jennings joins Lockton the world's largest privately held insurance broker after a 35 year career with Marsh, Chubb, Hartford and most recently Wells Fargo Insurance Services.

"Cheryl is well known and respected in the insurance industry and we are happy to welcome her to the Lockton family," said Manoj Sharma, chief operating officer of Lockton's southeast series. "Cheryl's experience in the industry has equipped her to provide the best service and expertise to clients and Associates."

In addition to her 25 year career with Marsh, she worked on property and casualty underwriting with Chubb and Hartford where she held leadership positions. Jennings will work with leadership to develop strategies for commercial insurance growth as Lockton continues to expand in the southeast. Additionally, she will mentor and develop Associates as they handle client relationships and progress in their own careers.

Furthermore, Jennings will manage carrier relationships and stay current on the latest market trends. She will be based in Lockton's Atlanta office, but will serve as the leader for commercial insurance for the southeast series which encompasses offices in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

She is a graduate of the University of Georgia  Terry College of Business. The Atlanta office is located at 3289 Peachtree Road NE, Suite 250, Atlanta, GA 30305 and can be reached by calling 404-460-3600.

About Lockton

Lockton is a global professional services firm with 6,500+ Associates who advise clients on protecting their people, property and reputations. Lockton has grown to become the world's largest privately held, independent insurance broker by helping clients achieve their business objectives.

For nine consecutive years, Business Insurance magazine has recognized Lockton as a "Best Place to Work in Insurance." To see the latest insights from Lockton's experts, check Lockton Market Update.

SOURCE Lockton

Related Links

http://www.lockton.com


IRVINE, Calif., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Integrity Housing is pleased to welcome Michael Tayefeh, Senior Acquisitions Analyst to its team. Mr. Tayefeh brings highly valued experience in Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). As part of a rapidly growing team, Mr. Tayefeh will help Integrity Housing serve a critical role of identifying, developing and sustaining affordable housing for low-income seniors and families. Earlier this year, Integrity Housing opened Olivera, a "triple bottom line" development, whereby investors provide an asset to the community with triple benefits: profitability for investors; social impact services for the residents; and a valuable, sustainably developed property for the region.

As Integrity Housing's newest Senior Acquisitions Analyst, Mr. Tayefeh brings five years of experience in multifamily LIHTC and a strong desire to grow his career in the development arena. He graduated from California State University, Fullerton in 2008 with a BA in Business Finance, and began his career in syndication at WNC & Associates, followed by Credit Capital LLC. Most recently, he gained experience from a homebuilding perspective at K. Hovnanian Homes. At Integrity Housing, he will be involved in property acquisitions and finance, including sourcing, underwriting, negotiations, purchase agreements, due diligence, closing, and development.

Phil Wood, President and Director of Integrity Housing, states, "Mike was a perfect fit for this position with his syndicating experience in Low Income Housing Tax Credits, and his desire to grow a team. He's enthusiastic about the new challenge of working in acquisitions for a developer, and the ability to identify opportunity and contribute to the due diligence. His knowledge will be a great asset to Integrity Housing as we continue to expand."

About Integrity Housing

Founded in 1993, Integrity Housing creates and sustains quality affordable communities for low-income seniors and families by bringing together people, partners and resources. Integrity Housing's goal is to enrich the lives of the residents, and respect the culture of those they serve. The Integrity Housing Team has developed, owned and operated thousands of affordable multi-family housing units throughout the United States. The organization specializes in deal sourcing and structuring, asset acquisition and management, financial analysis, investor and lender relations, governmental relations, project design, construction management, property operations, and resident services. For more information, visit: www.integrityhousing.org.

Media Contact: Beth Binger

BCI

Mobile: (619) 987-6658

[email protected]

SOURCE Integrity Housing

Related Links

http://www.integrityhousing.org


DENVER, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Fast growing technology company and digital workplace provider Invotra is pleased to announce their appointment by Sierra Club, one of the most prestigious environmental organizations in the United States. Sierra Club have selected the innovative SaaS platform to provide a flexible digital workplace to all staff & volunteer supporters.

Founded in 1892, the Sierra Club is now the nation's largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization - with 64 regional chapters, 500 staff, 70,000 active volunteers, and more than 3,000,000 members and supporters across all 50 states. To date, Sierra Club have protected tens of millions of acres of land across the US, secured commitments by 50 U.S. cities to move to 100% clean energy, and retired over 260 coal-fired power plants.



Invotra will enable Sierra Club's national headquarters, based in Oakland, CA, to communicate out to staff and volunteers by targeting timely, Chapter specific communications. In addition, it will also enable staff and volunteers to communicate amongst each other to share the critical information needed to do their work, collaborate, and communicate toward meeting Sierra Club's mission to protect and preserve the environment.

Invotra's people directory will allow Sierra Club's staff & volunteers to find and engage one another. The directory seamlessly integrates with Salesforce, a leading CRM platform, & will update nightly to ensure all data is completely accurate.

Invotra Portal, a brand new platform, will allow Sierra Club's volunteers & leaders to access portions of content that are specifically of interest & relevance to them, as well as collaborate with other supporters and deepen their involvement with Sierra Club.

Chris Thomas, Chief Innovation Officer of Sierra Club said of the new partnership, "Invotra's experience as a leader in the Drupal arena was a key selling point for us, as was the flexibility & scalability of the application itself. It easily integrates with our other applications, and allows us the flexibility to scale as future demands require. I'm really impressed with the platform and with the working relationship our teams have established. We're excited for Invotra to bring our staff, volunteers, and supporters further along on their journey with us, and strengthen their relationship with the Sierra Club."



Sinead Hunt, Board Director at Invotra, based out of Denver, "For an organization with such a rich and longstanding heritage, Sierra Club have a really innovative vision when it comes to digital communications and leveraging the latest technologies. We're very excited to help them realize their & improve communications and collaboration to both internal & external audiences."

When fully operational, the Sierra Club's intranet platform will be accessible by up to 70,000 users.



SOURCE Invotra
NEW YORK and BOSTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading global communications firm Ketchum and Boston University's (BU) College of Communication today introduced the Kotcher-Ketchum Scholarship and Internship. The program, created in collaboration between BU, Ketchum, and Ray Kotcher, former Ketchum chairman and CEO and current BU professor, supports BU's and Ketchum's objective to increase racial and ethnic diversity among students majoring in communications and entering the public relations workforce.

The endowed scholarship will be awarded to one African American Boston University College of Communication undergraduate PR student each year for the next 100 years, and will include both tuition assistance and a paid, for-credit summer internship at Ketchum.

Recognizing the inter-relationship between college programs and employers in creating and nurturing a diverse workforce, the scholarship is designed to help bring more diverse candidates to the public relations industry where cultural diversity and diversity of thought is valued among client organizations and agencies, alike.

"I am filled with great excitement and hope as we announce the creation of this scholarship and internship," Kotcher said. "The percentage of African American professionals in the communications and public relations field is not nearly large enough and there is great need for additional programs that will attract, develop and retain these professionals. I'm grateful to BU and Ketchum for partnering with me to support African American students as the possibilities for a career in PR open up for them. As we look forward, I hope that other organizations will create additional needed programs and I am optimistic that together, we will realize the promise that diversity holds for our industry."

This scholarship builds on Ketchum's ongoing programs to create a more diverse workforce in the industry. Through the development of new initiatives such as the Mind Your Bias unconscious bias training program, Launchpad, the agency's "blind" internship and recruitment program that increased racial and ethnic diversity in Ketchum's 2017 internship class to 42 percent, and the creation of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion councils across its network, Ketchum is committed to ensuring the PR industry reflects the communities that clients want to reach.

"Both BU and Ketchum recognize that we have a long way to go before our student population or our workforce mirrors the diverse U.S. population. We need to do better, and we have a responsibility to do more. And while we readily admit that this is a small step, our hope is that this small step inspires others looking to pursue similar solutions. If that happens, all of us will be winners," said Ketchum partner, CEO and chairman Rob Flaherty.

Thomas Fiedler, Dean of Boston University's College of Communication added, "Neither of us will improve unless both of us improve together. BU's College of Communication won't be able to attract more students of color into our PR program unless they see the possibilities that are open to them and see more role models they can relate to. This program will help meet that challenge."

Applications for the Kotcher-Ketchum Scholarship will open at Boston University for the fall semester of 2018.

About Ketchum

Ketchum is a leading global communications firm with operations in more than 70 countries across six continents. The winner of 45 Cannes Lions and an unprecedented five PRWeek Campaign of the Year Awards, Ketchum partners with clients to deliver strategic programming, game-changing creative and measurable results that build brands and reputations. For more information on Ketchum, a part of Omnicom Public Relations Group, visit www.ketchum.com.

About Omnicom Public Relations Group

Omnicom Public Relations Group is a global collective of three of the top global public relations agencies worldwide and specialist agencies in areas including public affairs, marketing to women, fashion, global health strategy and corporate social responsibility. It encompasses more than 6,000 public relations professionals in more than 330 offices worldwide who provide their expertise to companies, government agencies, NGOs and nonprofits across a wide range of industries. Omnicom Public Relations Group is part of the DAS Group of Companies, a division of Omnicom Group Inc. that includes more than 200 companies in a wide range of marketing disciplines including advertising, public relations, healthcare, customer relationship management, events, promotional marketing, branding and research.

About Boston University's College of Communication

Boston University's College of Communication (COM) was originally established as the School of Public Relations in 1947 and granted the world's first public relations degrees. Today, as a comprehensive College of Communication, COM offers students degrees through its departments of Journalism, Film & Television, and Mass Communication, Advertising and Public Relations. COM's student population exceeds 2,000, including undergraduates, graduate students and PhD candidates. The College integrates a strong liberal arts core with a heavy focus on preparing students for careers as communication professionals. Our faculty is a blend of noted academicians and researchers and widely-respected, experienced professionals.

SOURCE Ketchum

Related Links

http://www.ketchum.com


CINCINNATI and BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- QFC, a division of The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR), today announced it is offering home delivery at a majority of its stores in both Puget Sound and Portland, through a partnership with Instacart, a nationally-recognized on-demand retail delivery service. The partnership supports two key drivers of the company's Restock Kroger Plan: Expand Partnerships to Create Customer Value and Redefine the Food and Grocery Customer Experience.

"By offering home delivery in addition to in-store shopping and online ordering for curbside pickup, we are listening to our customers who are telling us they want the convenience of shopping anyway they choose," said Suzy Monford, president of QFC. "We know that our customers are busier than ever but still want to feed their families fresh, healthy foods that are available at low prices. This new partnership allows our customers to have their groceries delivered to their doorsteps as soon as two hours after placing an order."

QFC delivery powered by Instacart will be offered in addition to its ClickList store locations that offer online ordering for curbside pickup.

"Instacart customers prefer doing their online grocery shopping from local stores, where they know the products," said Andrew Nodes, Vice President, Retail Accounts for Instacart. "We are thrilled to partner with QFC to give our customers in Portland and Seattle a new convenient option for shopping at their favorite local QFC store."

How does QFC home delivery work?

Customers place their orders through the "Delivery" link at www.qfc.com. The customer enters the zip code where the delivery will be scheduled then chooses from 40,000 offered products, including perishables, which are categorized and sorted for easy viewing and selection. The customer builds a digital cart by clicking and adding products. Once the customer has completed building the online basket, a preferred delivery time between 9 a.m. and midnight can be selected. An Instacart shopper then hand-picks the items and delivers the order within a preferred one-hour time window. The home delivery fee will be waived for first-time customers.

About Instacart

Instacart helps people cross grocery shopping off their to-do lists with just a few clicks. Customers use the Instacart website or app to fill their virtual shopping cart with items from their favorite, local stores and Instacart connects them with shoppers who hand pick the items and deliver them straight to their door. Founded in San Francisco in 2012, Instacart has quickly scaled to over 160 markets and partnered with retailers across North America, including popular national chains as well as local, regional grocers. By combining a personal touch with cutting-edge technology, Instacart offers customers a simple solution to save time and eat fresh food from the most trusted grocery brands. Instacart is the only grocery service that can meet today's on-demand lifestyle by delivering in as little as one hour. First delivery is free at www.instacart.com.

About Kroger

At The Kroger Co., we are dedicated to our purpose: to Feed the Human SpiritTM. We are 450,000 associates who serve nearly nine million customers daily in 2,793 retail food stores under a variety of local banner names in 35 states and the District of Columbia. Our Family of Companies operates an expanding ClickList offering  a personalized order online service  in addition to 2,258 pharmacies, 783 convenience stores, 307 fine jewelry stores, 222 retail health clinics, 1,472 supermarket fuel centers and 38 food production plants in the United States. Our Company has been recognized as one of America's most generous companies for our support of more than 100 Feeding America food bank partners, breast cancer research and awareness, the military and their families, and more than 145,000 community organizations including schools. As a leader in supplier diversity, we are a proud member of the Billion Dollar Roundtable.



SOURCE The Kroger Co.

Related Links

http://www.kroger.com


TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ChemomAb, the bio-pharmaceutical start-up, has completed a $10 million fund raising round led by OrbiMed Israel and Peter Thiel. SBI Japan-Israel Innovation Fund and Milestone Venture also participated in the round. This was the second round of investment for ChemomAb which had previously raised $5 million from OrbiMed Israel and private investors.

ChemomAb, established in 2011, develops monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of inflammatory and fibrotic diseases.

Dr. Adi Mor, ChemomAb CEO, said that the current funding round will enable the company to move forward with its clinical program for the product while examining its efficacy and safety profile in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NASH). The investment will also support continued development of the product for additional fibrotic orphan indications and test its effectiveness in these diseases. "The funds raised from leading international ventures represent important recognition of the potential of the product's novelty and effectiveness and its ability to help in the treatment of patients with fibrotic-inflammatory diseases in general, and the treatment of NASH, in particular. Cooperation with leading international funds is of strategic importance in leading the company in the international arena," Dr. Mor declared.

Dr. Nissim Darvish, senior managing director at OrbiMed Israel, noted that the decision to invest in the company in both funding rounds grew out of recognition of the real need to find an effective treatment for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and which affects the population with high prevalence. "I believe that the product's efficacy and unique anti fibrotic properties, together with the scientific capabilities and professionalism of the ChemomAb team, will enable the company to rise its potential as a company developing a breakthrough product," said Dr. Darvish.

ChemomAb's leading product, which is currently in phase 1 clinical trials in Israel, is a first in class monoclonal antibody, directed against a key protein in the control of cellular response in a disease state. The protein was first identified by ChemomAb as being crucial to the progression of fibrotic as well as inflammatory mechanisms in disease state and in being significantly overexpressed in diseased tissue.

The antibody is designed to treat patients with fibrotic and inflammatory diseases through a novel dual mechanism of action that interferes with fibrosis processes directly as well as attenuates the inflammatory process that supports the fibrotic milieu and disease progression. The first of such diseases to be targeted by ChemomAb is nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a chronic liver disease associated with steatosis, or accumulation of fat within the liver, that can lead to inflammation, progressive fibrosis and cirrhosis. The company is also planning to examine the product's efficacy in several fibrotic orphan indications in humans, following proof of concept data from animal studies that revealed highly efficacious results with the drug.

About ChemomAb

ChemomAb (http://chemomab.com) was founded in 2011. The area of the company's focus is monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of inflammatory and fibrotic disease. The company's offices are located in Ramat HaChayal, Tel Aviv and employs seven professionals.

The company was founded by Dr. Adi Mor, who serves as the CEO. To date, the company has raised $15 million in two fund-raising rounds from venture capital funds and private investors.

Contact:



Dr. Adi Mor

Chief Executive Officer

ChemomAb

[email protected]

Ido Atiya

CEO

Global Image Communications

Tel: 972-3-688-0908

[email protected]

SOURCE Chemomab

Related Links

http://chemomab.com/


SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- LendingHome  the largest, fastest-growing mortgage marketplace lender  today announced it has originated more than $2 billion in mortgage loans for homeowners and real estate investors. The first billion of originations occurred over the course of 30 months, while it took just 12 months for the company to originate its second billion. In the process, LendingHome crossed the major milestone of financing more than 10,000 homes nationwide.

"Based on these numbers and our fast acceleration, we can confidently say we've identified a very real problem for home buyers in the U.S., and our solution is resonating with them," said Matt Humphrey, co-founder and CEO of LendingHome, who was recently named a HousingWire 2017 Vanguard award winner.

"We built  from scratch  a high-tech way for customers to get a mortgage, and internally we've gotten far more efficient every single quarter," Humphrey continued. "That means our customers get a simple, fast, 100% online experience. By comparison, traditional lenders are still asking customers for paper applications and to visit physical branches. So LendingHome clearly presents a preferable, credible alternative."

In October, LendingHome announced a $57 million Series C-2, bringing the total equity raise to $166 million, to extend its market leadership by investing in technology and adding key personnel to its 300-person team. By the end of 2017, LendingHome will have almost doubled in size since 2015.

To accommodate the expansion of its team in San Francisco, the fintech startup recently relocated its headquarters to 315 Montgomery Street. It also opened an office in Pittsburgh, Pa., to grow its core mortgage operations teams and recruit top talent from the area's technology and startup ecosystem, which includes Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

In recognition that LendingHome stands above other tech startups as a great place to work, investment advisor Wealthfront added the company to its sixth annual "Career Launching Companies List," published in October, which identifies "ideal places for young people to start their careers." To qualify for this designation, Wealthfront stipulates that companies must be: "privately held, have a revenue run rate by year end of between $20 million and $300 million, be on a trajectory to grow at a rate in excess of 50% for at least the next three or four years and have compelling unit economics."

"When we look back, 2017 will have been a defining year for our company's history," said Humphrey, who was named a 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30featured honoree in the finance category. "We've doubled the business since Q1, and have set ourselves up for a big year ahead. In 2018, we are looking for more smart individuals who may never have considered working in fintech or mortgage. It's not sexy, but it's a whole lot of fun disrupting one of the largest markets in the world and helping customers use technology to make the biggest purchase of their lifetime."

About LendingHome:

LendingHome has reimagined  top to bottom  a better way for people to buy a home. Its built-from-scratch technology has transformed a slow, painful, paper-based process into a fast, transparent, online experience. At the same time, LendingHome is a marketplace lender: institutional and individual investors have access to attractive, high-yield real estate assets. Since it started lending in mid-2014, LendingHome has funded more than $2 billion in mortgage loans. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company has over 300 employees and raised $166 million in equity financing. To learn more, go to www.lendinghome.com or www.lendinghome.com/careers, or click here for a company overview.

Media contact:

Nora Murray

[email protected]

419.250.0016

SOURCE LendingHome

Related Links

https://www.lendinghome.com


WASHINGTON  At least three people must have celebrated the news that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversation with a Russian ambassador.

First to pop a champagne cork was surely Matt Lauer, whose Icarus imitation put to shame all others recently accused of sexual misconduct in the workplace. Accused of dropping his drawers and locking unsuspecting women in his office with a remote control button under his desk, Americas boy-next-door suddenly vanished from the airwaves, suffering what must have been an excruciating few days of humiliating ruin.

For two decades, Lauer had managed to present himself as a non-threatening, essentially neutered male presence on NBCs Today, nabbing consequential interviews and taking home around $28 million a year in exchange for never being controversial. All that bottled up bad-to-the-bone-ness must have driven him to over-compensate by using his status to seduce and control at least some of the women around him.

It appears that if the viewing audience would be denied access to his inner toro, then his female minions would at least cow to his sexual fantasies. Acting out doesnt come much plainer.

Thus, it was a source of some vicarious relief when Flynn hijacked the news cycle Friday, giving Lauer  and, presumably, all concerned  a respite from the nightmare that wasnt just a bad dream, after all.

For different reasons, another person who might have had reason to skip along Fifth Avenue, pausing now and then for a Stoli shot and a surprisingly well-executed pirouette, is Hillary Clinton. What irony, what glee, what perfect justice for the man who led delegates at the 2016 Republican National Convention in chanting, Lock her up, lock her up, lock her up! No stranger to schadenfreude herself, Clinton must be enjoying an extra helping of sweet revenge with her just deserts.

Indeed, as Flynn left the federal courthouse where he entered his plea, protesters could be heard calling, Lock him up, lock him up.

Flynns plea means he traded felony jail time for his cooperation in helping special investigator Robert Muellers team as it continues its investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Which brings us to a third individual who must have at least allowed himself a smirk if not a smile: James Comey, whom Trump fired as FBI director, specifically because of his Russia investigation, by the presidents own words. Especially memorable from those first few weeks of Trumps occupation of the White House was his Feb. 14 meeting with Comey, during which he asked the director to consider letting Flynn go.

Comey subsequently testified during a congressional hearing that he interpreted those words to mean that the president was pressuring him to, well, let Flynn go. It seemed obvious then  and is explicitly clear now  that the president was pressuring the head of the FBI to end his investigation of the national security adviser  or else. The else came soon thereafter.

A relatively alert 4-year-old would have been able to deduce Trumps meaning, even as congressional Republicans try to see other reasons for his private conversation with the FBI director. Do they really think that Trump was merely concerned that Flynn  a former general known for disruptive behavior  couldnt handle the heat?

Of course Trump was worried about what Flynn might divulge under pressure from investigators. About whom? About what? Apparently, we and Trump are about to find out.

The questions raised by Flynns guilty plea are titillating as well as disturbing: What else was Trump worried about? What was the content of Flynns conversation with the ambassador that made him feel it was necessary to lie?

If Trump was worried 10 months ago  and we havent even mentioned his own alleged sexual misconduct  by now he must be wishing he had lost the election, as he had expected. With a 60 percent disapproval rating, a majority of Americans apparently agree with him.
DALLAS, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Lennox International Inc. (NYSE: LII) will host an investment community meeting in New York City on Wednesday, December 13, 2017, beginning at 9:00 a.m. Eastern time. The presentation materials and webcast will be accessible on the company's website at www.lennoxinternational.com.

Lennox International Inc. is a global leader in the heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration markets. Lennox International stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and traded under the symbol "LII". Additional information is available at www.lennoxinternational.com or by contacting Steve Harrison, Vice President, Investor Relations, at 972-497-6670, or [email protected]

SOURCE Lennox International Inc.

Related Links

http://www.lennoxinternational.com


MERIDEAN, Idaho, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Lynn Ge-Zerbe, M.D., M.P.H., is recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Pinnacle Professional Member in the field of Medicine in recognition of her role as Endocrinologist at Boise Thyroid-Endocrinology, PC.

Dr. Ge-Zerbe serves as a founder and Endocrinologist at a direct, concierge care practice, Boise Thyroid-Endocrinology, P.C.. The company offers expert specialized services in endocrine, weight / nutrition management, and age-management issues. Offering quality services to her clients, Dr. Ge-Zerbe ensures that her patients spend sufficient time with her, and receive the best care utilizing the latest innovations in the medical industry. Dedicated to the needs of her clients, Dr. Ge-Zerbe offers direct communications with her patients via cell phone and emails. The practice was established because Dr. Ge-Zerbe wanted to avoid the limitations placed on her by insurance companies and government, as they interfere with her ability to give patients the time and care they deserve.



Amassing over thirty years of experience in the medical field, Dr. Ge-Zerbe specializes in the treatment of conditions including but not limited to; thyroid disorder, thyroid cancer, autoimmune disorders, adrenal/pituitary disorder, diabetes, metabolic syndrome/obesity, dyslipidemia, male and female hormone disorders, calcium, metabolic disorders, and osteoporosis. She also provides nutritional counseling, Hormone Replacement Therapy, Thyroid Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy, genomic testing, oriental medicine, and more. Throughout the course of her career, Dr. Ge-Zerbe has hosted international conferences, conducted Keynote speeches, clinical seminars and grand rounds in regards to Endocrinology, as well as facilitates clinical trials as a principal investigator for new endocrinology drugs.

At a young age, Dr. Ge-Zerbe was inspired to be a doctor by following the example of excellence demonstrated by her grandfather in China, who was a traditional Chinese doctor. Throughout the course of her education and training, Dr. Ge-Zerbe attended the prestigious Peking Union Medical College, where she obtained her Medical degree in 1987. She then went on to obtain education and training in Epidemiology, and Molecular Medicine, and she holds a Master of Public Health degree. She completed her internal medicine internship at Howard University, followed by a residency at Leigh Valley Hospital and then an endocrinology fellowship at Vanderbilt University. She is dual Board Certified as an Internist and Endocrinologist. She also completed training of age management by AMMEF.



To further her professional development, Dr. Ge-Zerbe is an affiliate of several organizations including the American College of Physicians, the Endocrine Society, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and the American Thyroid Association.

In addition to her work in practice, Dr. Ge-Zerbe is the author of more than 18 published medical papers.

In her spare time, Dr Ge-Zerbe enjoys painting, travel, reading, interior decorating.



Dr. Ge-Zerbe dedicates this recognition to the loving memory of her mother, Hu Miaohui who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2013.



For more information, please visit www.boisethyroid-endocrinology.com

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who

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SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Marcato Capital Management LP ("Marcato"), a San Francisco-based investment manager which manages funds that beneficially own approximately 8.5% of the outstanding common shares of Deckers Outdoor Corporation (NYSE: DECK) ("Deckers" or the "Company"), is today sending a letter to Deckers' stockholders announcing that it has modified its slate of highly-qualified director nominees for election at the Company's 2017 Annual Meeting of Stockholders to include Kirsten J. Feldman, Steve Fuller, and Anne Waterman.

The full text of the letter Marcato sent to Deckers' stockholders is below.

December 4, 2017

Dear Fellow Deckers Stockholder,

Deckers Outdoor Corporation's ("Deckers" or the "Company") 2017 Annual Meeting is rapidly approaching and every vote counts in this important election. As stockholders, the true owners of Deckers, we must hold Deckers' directors accountable for the Company's persistent failures, including chronic underperformance, missed margin targets and corporate governance abuses.

We remain highly concerned that the status quo will produce the same shortfalls to the Company's targets that stockholders have suffered through for years on end. CHANGE IS URGENTLY NEEDED to break this pattern . After significant consideration, we have determined the best chance to affect meaningful change at Deckers and protect the value of each stockholder's investment, is to reduce the number of nominees on our slate to three. Accordingly, we believe Marcato nominees Kirsten J. Feldman, Steve Fuller, and Anne Waterman, if elected, will bring the right mix of fashion, apparel, retail, marketing, finance, and capital allocation expertise to improve the Deckers Board of Directors (the "Board"). Notably, our three nominees are independent from both management and Marcato and will further enhance diversity in the boardroom.

ISS RECOGNIZES THAT BOARD CHANGE IS NECESSARY AND OFFERS SUPPORT

FOR MARCATO NOMINEES

ISS ALSO HIGHLIGHTS DECKERS' PERSISTENT UNDERPERFORMANCE RELATIVE TO PEERS, REPEATED MISSED FINANCIAL TARGETS AND BOARD'S LACK OF URGENCY

In its December 1, 2017 report, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. ("ISS") suggested Deckers' stockholders vote on the GOLD proxy card for Marcato nominees Fuller and Waterman. ISS also stated:

Marcato "makes a strong case that the company's prolonged underperformance, retreating cost and investment discipline, and the board's lack of urgency in the face of significant industry disruption to address these issues suggests that some degree of board change is necessary."

Deckers "could certainly benefit from new director perspectives on marking strategy and capital discipline. Dissident nominees Fuller and Waterman seem particularly well positioned to add value to the board from day one, given both parties' skillsets in marketing strategy and brand management, particularly Waterman's experience brand-building on a global scale at Michael Kors and Fuller's experience transitioning iconic outdoor apparel brand L.L. Bean's direct-to-consumer model away from traditional catalogues toward ecommerce."

"While the company's operating performance on an absolute basis shows mixed results for the company, the company clearly underperformed the peer group on a relative basis. Specifically, the company underperformed in terms of changes in total revenue, SG&A, adjusted EBITDA, and net income on both a 5-year and a 1-year basis. Although the Sanuk write-down is a central factor in driving the company's underperformance, Deckers remains underperforming even after removing its effects. For instance, annualized growth rates for adjusted EBITDA trailed peers by 9.2 and 11.7 percentage points on a 1- and 5-year basis, respectively."

Deckers "has demonstrated a track record of failing to meet goals that have been articulated as actual targets, not as stretch goals. One of the more egregious examples is Deckers' perpetually under-target operating margin which, after falling short for a number of years, has been lowered, after which the company has continued to come in below-target for multiple years."

"an early-stage revival does not erase the many value-destructive years of prior underperformance overseen by the board."

"Overall, while shoe and apparel designers and distributors have been facing headwinds in the face of ecommerce disruption as evidenced by worsening metrics over recent years, it appears that Deckers has worsened to a greater degreethe company seems to have fallen from a leading position and landed somewhere near the middle of the pack in terms of performance."

"The board has not embraced its own role in the choices and missteps that led the company down a years-long path of lagging performance. The board has not demonstrated a proportionate sense of urgency in enacting change"

"it is somewhat disconcerting that, in the face of clear investor demand for the information, the company would not commit to continue to break out more granular detail regarding store and individual brand results, especially given that this is a key criticism raised by the dissidentSuch disclosure shortfalls seem to substantiate the dissident's skepticism as to whether the company's senior management team possesses a balance of both operational and capital markets acumen."

MARCATO NOMINEES KIRSTEN J. FELDMAN, STEVE FULLER, AND ANNE WATERMAN HAVE THE RIGHT MIX OF FASHION, APPAREL, RETAIL, MARKETING, FINANCE AND CAPITAL ALLOCATION SKILLSETS AND EXPERTISE DESPERATELY NEEDED ON THE DECKERS BOARD

Marcato's three highly-qualified nominees are:

Kirsten J. Feldman

Kirsten J. Feldman was employed by Morgan Stanley from 1984 through 2008. Ms. Feldman began working in Morgan Stanley's mergers and acquisitions department. From 1992 to 2001 she served as a Managing Director and head of Morgan Stanley's Global Retail Group during which time she was responsible for Morgan Stanley's worldwide investment banking activities in the retail industry. From 2001 to 2008, Ms. Feldman was an Advisory Director in the Investment Banking Division of Morgan Stanley and a member of Morgan Stanley's Retirement Plan Investment Committee.

Steve Fuller

Steve Fuller served as Senior Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer for L.L. Bean, Inc. ("L.L. Bean") from 2004 until his retirement in 2016. In this role, Mr. Fuller led all marketing functions for L.L. Bean, including branding, advertising, customer satisfaction, ecommerce, partnerships, database analytics and marketing operations.

Anne Waterman

Anne Waterman spent 15 years at Michael Kors where she served in various senior positions responsible for public relations, communications, media and marketing, including Senior Vice President, Global Image. Prior to that, she worked in the Public Relations department at Gucci, and managed sponsorship and fundraising activities for the Council of Fashion Designers of America ("CFDA") as part of the team that created 7th on Sixth. Ms. Waterman is currently an independent consultant advising brands on strategy, creative and product development.

VOTE GOLD TODAY TO PROTECT THE VALUE OF YOUR INVESTMENT

As stockholders we deserve a Board that believes in the future success of Deckers  a Board that is transparent, provides proper oversight of management, whose interests are aligned with our own, and who most importantly can execute a long-term strategy that creates meaningful value for the benefit of all stockholders.

We urge stockholders to protect the value of your investment by voting GOLD today in support of Marcato nominees Kirsten J. Feldman, Steve Fuller, and Anne Waterman who, if elected, pledge to act with urgency  providing the independent perspectives, experience and oversight required to put Deckers back on a path to success.

You can vote by Internet, telephone or by signing and dating the enclosed GOLD proxy card or GOLD voting instruction form and mailing it in the postage paid envelope provided. We urge you NOT to vote using any white proxy card or voting instruction form you receive from Deckers. Please discard the white proxy card.

If you have any questions about how to vote your shares, please contact our proxy solicitor, D.F. King & Co., Inc., at (800) 761-6521.

Sincerely,

Mick McGuire

Managing Partner

Marcato Capital Management LP

*Marcato has neither sought nor obtained consent from ISS to use previously published information in this press release.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

The information herein contains "forward-looking statements." Specific forward-looking statements can be identified by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts and include, without limitation, words such as "may," "will," "expects," "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "estimates," "projects," "targets," "forecasts," "seeks," "could," "should" or the negative of such terms or other variations on such terms or comparable terminology. Similarly, statements that describe our objectives, plans or goals are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties and assumptions. There can be no assurance that any idea or assumption herein is, or will be proven, correct. If one or more of the risks or uncertainties materialize, or if Marcato's underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, the actual results may vary materially from outcomes indicated by these statements. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by Marcato that the future plans, estimates or expectations contemplated will ever be achieved.

Certain statements and information included herein have been sourced from third parties. Marcato does not make any representations regarding the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of such third party statements or information. Except as may be expressly set forth herein, permission to cite such statements or information has neither been sought nor obtained from such third parties. Any such statements or information should not be viewed as an indication of support from such third parties for the views expressed herein.

CERTAIN INFORMATION CONCERNING THE PARTICIPANTS

Marcato International Master Fund, Ltd. ("Marcato International"), Marcato Capital Management LP ("Marcato") and the other Participants (as defined below) have filed a definitive proxy statement and accompanying GOLD proxy card with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") to be used to solicit (the "Solicitation") proxies for, among other matters, the election of its slate of director nominees at the 2017 annual stockholders meeting (the "Annual Meeting") of Deckers Outdoor Corporation ("Deckers" or the "Company"). Stockholders are advised to read the definitive proxy statement and any other documents related to the Solicitation because they contain important information, including information relating to the Participants in the Solicitation. These materials and other materials filed by Marcato with the SEC in connection with the Solicitation are available at no charge on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. The definitive proxy statement and other relevant documents filed by Marcato with the SEC are also available, without charge, by directing a request to Marcato's proxy solicitor, D.F. King & Co., Inc., 48 Wall Street, 22nd Floor, New York, New York 10005 (Call Collect: (212) 269-5550, Call Toll Free: (800) 761-6521 or Email: [email protected]).

The participants in the proxy solicitation are Marcato International, Marcato, MCM Encore IM LLC ("Marcato Encore LLC"), Marcato Encore Master Fund, Ltd. ("Marcato Encore Fund"), Richard T. McGuire III, Kirsten J. Feldman, Steve Fuller, and Anne Waterman (collectively, the "Participants"). As of the date hereof, Mr. McGuire, Marcato, Marcato International, Marcato Encore LLC and Marcato Encore Fund may be deemed to beneficially own the equity securities of the Company as described in Marcato's statement on Schedule 13D in respect of the Company initially filed with the SEC on February 8, 2017 (the "Schedule 13D"), as it may be amended from time to time.

SOURCE Marcato Capital Management LP
WALTHAM, Mass., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Compassion & Choices praised the Massachusetts Medical Society for dropping its longtime opposition to legislation giving terminally ill patients the option of medical aid in dying to peacefully end unbearable suffering. The society's House of Delegates voted to adopt a new position of "neutral engagement" on Saturday, one day after the release on Friday of a survey of the society's members which showed they supported medical aid-in-dying legislation the state legislature is considering by a 2-1 margin.

Dr. Roger Kligler, a retired internist in Falmouth who has stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer and supports the Massachusetts End of Life Options Act.

"If medical aid-in-dying is legalized, the MMS [Massachusetts Medical Society] will support its members with clinical and legal considerations through education, advocacy and other resources, regardless of whether the member physician chooses to practice medical aid-in-dying," said the Massachusetts Medical Society news release announcing the decision.

"I am excited about this decision because the legislature greatly respects the medical society's positions on healthcare issues and its previous opposition to medical aid in dying was a serious roadblock to passing legislation authorizing this end-of-life care option," said Dr. Roger Kligler, a retired internist in Falmouth living with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by Compassion & Choices asserting the Massachusetts constitution and existing state law already authorize medical aid in dying. "I'm extremely grateful for the society's change of heart."

The District of Columbia Council and Colorado voters passed a medical aid-in-dying law in 2016 and the California legislature did so in 2015 after their local American Medical Association chapters dropped their opposition to this end-of-life care option and adopted neutral positions.

"This decision definitely improves the chances of passing the End of Life Options Act (H.1194/S.1225)," said Marie Manis, Massachusetts campaign manager for Compassion & Choices. "Now our job is to redouble our efforts to urge lawmakers to take action on behalf of their constituents who want the option of medical aid in dying."

The Joint Committee on Public Health held a hearing on the End of Life Options Act on Sept. 26 when it heard from more than 25 supporters, including family members of loved ones who died with needless suffering, faith and legislative leaders, hospice and medical professionals, social workers, and people living with disabilities. The legislative deadline for the committee to take action on the bill is Feb. 7.

The Massachusetts Medical Society is the 10th American Medical Association chapter that has dropped its opposition to medical aid in dying and adopted a neutral stance on the practice, including nine of them in the last two years. The others are the California Medical Association in 2015, Colorado Medical Society in 2016, Maryland State Medical Society in 2016, Medical Society of the District of Columbia in 2016, Maine Medical Association in 2017, Minnesota Medical Association in 2017, Nevada State Medical Association in 2017, Oregon Medical Association in 1997 and Vermont in 2017.

"Massachusetts' 'neutral engagement' position is even better than a simply neutral position," said Rebecca Thoman, M.D., campaign manager for Doctors for Dignity for Compassion & Choices. "It means if Massachusetts enacts a medical aid-in-dying law, the medical society will offer education and guidance to physicians who want to incorporate medical aid in dying into their practices."

Six states have explicitly authorized medical aid in dying California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, along with the District of Columbia. Collectively, these seven jurisdictions represent 18 percent of the nation's population and have 40 years of combined experience of safely using this end-of-life care option.

Numerous national and state polls show strong support for medical aid in dying among both U.S. physicians and Americans across the ethnic, political and religious spectrum.

Compassion & Choices is the oldest nonprofit working to improve care and expand options for the end of life in the United States, with 450,000 supporters nationwide. For more information, visit: www.CompassionAndChoices.org.

Media Contact : Sean Crowley, 202.495.8520, [email protected]

Latino Media Contact : Patricia A. Gonzalez-Portillo, (310) 819-0310, [email protected]

SOURCE Compassion & Choices

Related Links

http://CompassionAndChoices.org


LANSING, Mich., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- McLaren Health Care today announced it will consolidate its two current Lansing hospital facilities into a new $450 million campus adjacent to Michigan State University in South Lansing. Additionally, the health care system and MSU announced they will expand partnerships on research, education, and clinical services.

"We intend to redesign the traditional hospital and ambulatory care settings to build the safest, most efficient health care campus in the world," said Tom Mee, President and CEO, McLaren Greater Lansing. "This project isn't just about bricks and mortar; this is about reinventing health care delivery. The campus and the actual processes of care will be designed by our nationally recognized researchers, clinicians, nurses, technicians, physicians, the people who support the delivery of health care, andmost importantlyour patients. Our goal is to provide such outstanding health care services that no one needs to seek treatment outside of the Greater Lansing area."

The new health care campus will be developed on land purchased from the MSU Foundation in its University Corporate Research Park, located between Collins Road and US 127. The campus will house a 240-bed state-of-the-art hospital, cancer center, ambulatory care center, and other facilities to support health care delivery, educational opportunities, and medical research. When fully complete, this comprehensive health care campus will be home to more than 1,000 physicians, researchers, educators and other members of the academic and medical team. The current estimated timeline to open the facilities is late 2021.

"This is truly a defining moment in McLaren's growth as the leading statewide clinical and insurance enterprise. This is an extraordinary opportunity to collaborate with MSU to redesign and elevate health care for a region and the state for generations to come," said Philip A. Incarnati, President and CEO of McLaren Health Care. "Our partnership will transform health care delivery to support a world-class medical experience and advance pioneering medical research."

MSU and McLaren agreed to collaborate on a number of initiatives to advance the university's academic, research, and clinical care missions including:

Access to data to accelerate clinical research efforts of MSU and McLaren,

Recruitment of researchers, physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants to the MSU HealthTeam and University,

Support for team-based learning philosophies in the design and workflow of the facilities to create a world-class medical education experience,

Cooperation on clinical trials through MSU's Institutional Review Board to provide patients with the latest clinical therapies and treatments,

Collaboration on multiple clinical service lines to bring higher quality, more efficient care to the community, and more.

"MSU has long enjoyed a close relationship with McLaren, and this new collaboration allows us to explore additional partnerships to jointly deliver health care services, further medical education, and advance medical research," MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said. "Working with McLaren, this new facility will help us recruit top physicians and researchers to our region by providing access to tools and data that will build a healthier society and develop new life-saving therapies and treatments."

An estimated 2,500 jobs will be created to construct the health care campus. McLaren expects to add approximately 80 employees to its workforce when the campus opens, in addition to filling about 75 current full- and part-time openings at the hospital.

Mee stated McLaren is committed to using union labor and Lansing-based organizations to construct the facilities whenever possible. "Part of McLaren's dedication to our community on this project is to provide opportunities for Lansing companies and workers to help build a community resource for generations to come," said Mee.

Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero noted the project represents one of the largest investments in the City of Lansing ever and will stimulate significant regional economic growth. "McLaren's nearly half billion dollar investment in South Lansing is one of the largest investments ever made in our city and comes at a time when more and more businesses are looking hard at locating in our region," Mayor Bernero said. "This project will not only create thousands of jobs for Lansing-area residents, but it will also act as a catalyst for significant regional economic development and attract talent from around the globe."

McLaren's current facilities along Pennsylvania Avenue and on Greenlawn Avenue, some of which date to the 1930s, will be redeveloped as part of the project. Additional details concerning this redevelopment will be provided over the next several months. "McLaren is committed to finding solutions to redeveloping our existing campuses for the betterment of the community," said Mee. "We are already working with the Lansing Economic Area Partnership to identify innovative ways and new partners to help redevelop the campuses, create additional jobs for the city, and improve the region."

The University Corporate Research Park offered an ideal location for McLaren's investment, according to Daniel Medrano, Vice President of Facility Management for McLaren Health Care. "The University Corporate Research Park property is unique because it is situated at the crossroads of South Lansing and Michigan State University," Medrano said. "It's not often that a development of this magnitude can have such a positive impact on so many municipalities and organizations. McLaren's investment will be a tremendous benefit to the City of Lansing, Lansing Township, the City of East Lansing, the MSU Foundation, Michigan State University, and the entire region."

University Corporate Research Parks serve the communities in which they reside in unexpected ways, linking thinkers, innovators, and researchers to the marketplace of ideas.

"It is right here where tomorrow's solutions take root and grow," said David Washburn, executive director for the Michigan State University Foundation. "This collaboration between Michigan State University and McLaren is illustrative of how Research Parks serve the common good in uncommon ways. We are proud to be part of creating dynamic spaces and building relationships that generate value for our community."

"McLaren is driven by its mission statement: 'To be the best value in health care, as defined by quality outcomes and cost,'" said Mee. "McLaren Greater Lansing is already recognized as one of the safest, most efficient hospitals with an outstanding patient experience. This project will update facilities and allow us to continue to be a leader in health care value for our patients in Greater Lansing and beyond."

Owner's representative services have been provided by the Kramer Management Group. Preconstruction programing and planning has been provided by the design-build team of Barton Malow/Christman Joint Venture and CallisonRTKL.

More information about the project can be found at www.mclaren.org/redesignhealthcare.

About McLaren Health Care

McLaren Health Care, headquartered in Grand Blanc, Michigan, is a fully integrated health network committed to quality, evidence-based patient care and cost efficiency. The McLaren system includes 12 hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging centers, a 450-member employed primary care physician network, commercial and Medicaid HMOs covering more than 620,000 lives in Michigan and Indiana, home health and hospice providers, retail medical equipment showrooms, pharmacy services, and a wholly owned medical malpractice insurance company. McLaren operates Michigan's largest network of cancer centers and providers, anchored by the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, one of only 47 NCI-designated comprehensive centers in the U.S. McLaren has 24,000 employees and more than 52,000 network providers. Its operations are housed in more than 350 facilities serving the entire Lower Peninsula along with a portion of the Upper Peninsula. Learn more at www.mclaren.org.

About Michigan State University

Michigan State University has been advancing the common good with uncommon will for more than 160 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU pushes the boundaries of discovery and forges enduring partnerships to solve the most pressing global challenges while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.

About the Michigan State University Foundation

Established in 1973 as an independent non-profit corporation, the Michigan State University Foundation fuels economic development initiatives through the commercialization of cutting-edge technologies invented by Michigan State University faculty, staff, and students. At its core is an extensive program that focuses on the support of research, invention, and entrepreneurship. The Michigan State University Foundation also operates the East Lansing Technology Innovation Center, Michigan Biotechnology Institute, Red Cedar Ventures, Spartan Innovations, and the University Corporate Research Park. More information on the Foundation's notable achievements, services provided, key leadership, and history are available at www.msufoundation.org.

SOURCE McLaren Health Care
HARFORD, Conn., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockton, the world's largest privately held, independent insurance broker, announces that Michael Garner has joined Lockton's employee benefit team as a vice president and producer in the Hartford operation. Mike has more than 10 years of experience as an employee health and benefits producer and consultant, working with companies to help them attract and retain employees through market-leading benefit programs.

"Mike brings a high level of passion and energy to the constantly evolving healthcare and employee benefits landscape," said Bill Husic, executive vice president in Lockton's Hartford office. "We see him as a significant contributor to Lockton's future growth, and our clients are sure to benefit from his experience. We are excited to add him to our Lockton Northeast Practice."

Mike will be responsible for generating new client relationships and will provide oversight and leadership to ensure client satisfaction and overall retention. While his primary focus will be employee benefits, he will aim to broaden his client relationships by facilitating introductions to Lockton's property & casualty and financial service practices.

Prior to joining Lockton, Mike was a principal with Ovation Benefits, (now OneDigital Health and Benefits). He has also been a sales representative at Rogers Benefit Group and at Liberty Mutual Insurance. He has a bachelor's degree in liberal arts and business from the University of Connecticut.

Lockton's' Hartford office is located at 76 Batterson Park Road, 3rd Floor, Farmington, CT 06032. The office number is 860.678.4000.

About Lockton

More than 6,500 professionals at Lockton provide 50,000 clients around the world with risk management, insurance, employee benefits consulting, and retirement services that improve their businesses. From its founding in 1966 in Kansas City, Missouri, Lockton has attracted entrepreneurial professionals who have driven its growth to become the largest privately held, independent insurance broker in the world and 9th largest overall. For eight consecutive years, Business Insurance has recognized Lockton as a "Best Place to Work in Insurance." To see the latest insights from Lockton's experts, check Lockton Market Update.

SOURCE Lockton

Related Links

http://www.lockton.com


LONDON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Inner London-East, with its dynamic economy, flourishing information and communication technology sectors, and skilled international workforce is Europe's Best-Performing City, according to the Milken Institute's inaugural Best-Performing Cities Europe Index. In fact, three of London's component regions classified by Eurostat's Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics ranked among the top tier of 279 regions evaluated in the report released today.

Stockholm, with its thriving tech community and advanced manufacturing sector, ranked a close second, while Budapest, which has been creating new jobs at an unparalleled pace, came in third. Overall, five U.K. cities/regions ranked in the top-20 while four were in Poland.

Best-Performing Cities-Europe 2017 Rankings Rank Large Cities/Regions 1 Inner London-East, United Kingdom 2 Stockholm, Sweden 3 Budapest, Hungary 4 Pomorskie, Poland (includes Gdansk) 5 Nord-Vest, Romania 6 Dolnoslaskie, Poland (includes Wrocaw) 7 Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire, United Kingdom 8 Oberbayern, Germany (includes Munich) 9 Outer London-West and North West, United Kingdom 10 Yugozapaden, Bulgaria (includes Sofia) 11 Ostra Mellansverige, Sweden 12 Jihovychod, Czech Republic 13 Berlin, Germany 14 Leicestershire, Rutland, and Northamptonshire, United Kingdom 15 Eastern and Midland, Ireland (includes Dublin) 16 Bucuresti, Romania (includes Bucharest) 17 Wielkopolskie, Poland (includes Poznan) 18 Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom 19 Hovedstaden, Denmark (includes Copenhagen) 20 Malopolskie, Poland (includes Krakow)

"Inner London-East is among the most dynamic economies in Europe, leading all large metro areas in job growth over the last five years," said Minoli Ratnatunga, Milken Institute director of regional economic research and co-author of the study. "We trace its economic rejuvenation to a combination of direct policy implementationincluding the Big Bang that aided financial services and related growth in Canary Wharfand organic entrepreneurial-led growth in a variety of digital content and technology areas." She notes, however, the majority of the data was drawn prior to the Brexit vote and the economic impact of that upcoming transition is yet to be fully assessed.

"Being recognised as the best performing city in Europe by the Milken Institute is testament to London's economic dynamism, diversity, and position as a global investment hub," said Jasmine Whitbread, CEO of London First. "East London's particular success shows how political will can underpin entrepreneurial zeal to create growth, investment, and jobs across a number of major sectors. But, as we navigate Brexit, we will have to work hard to keep our capital at the topand that means Government delivering the right policies for continued access to talented people and building the homes and transport links they need. Not just in London, but across the whole of the U.K."

The Milken Institute's Best-Performing Cities (BPC) Europe index provides an objective benchmark for examining which regional strategies are succeeding. Based on the Milken Institute's long-standing evaluation of U.S. metropolitan areas (www.best-cities.org), BPC Europe uses outcomes-based metrics including job creation, wage gains, manufacturing, and skilled service industry concentration to evaluate the relative performance of European regions.

"While global politics and business cycles are key external forces acting on regional economies, top performing regions invest in strategies that capitalize on competitive advantages and weather challenges better than their peers," explains Kevin Klowden, executive director of the Milken Institute's Center for Regional Economics. "Our goal is to help businesses, investors, industry associations, development agencies, government officials, academics, and public-policy groups monitor and evaluate how well their region is adapting to and planning for both current and future economic trends."

The full report, including tables of all 279 large and small regions evaluated, is available online at www.milkeninstitute.org.

About the Milken Institute

The Milken Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank determined to increase global prosperity by advancing collaborative solutions that widen access to capital, create jobs, and improve health. We do this through independent, data-driven research, action-oriented meetings, and meaningful policy initiatives. For more information, visit milkeninstitute.org

Contact

Geoffrey Baum

Director, Media Relations

(310) 570-4689; [email protected]

SOURCE Milken Institute

Related Links

http://www.milkeninstitute.org


A licensed Customs broker and certified Customs specialist, Holsing replaces Kenton Grimes, who has been promoted to Business Development Manager.

For more information about Nate Holsing, visit http://mohawkglobal.com/about-us/executive-team/nate-holsing/.

About Mohawk Global Logistics

Mohawk Global Logistics is a freight forwarder and Customs broker with offices in New York, Illinois, Ohio, and New Jersey. The company is headquartered in Syracuse, NY. For more information, visit http://mohawkglobal.com, connect with us on LinkedIn, and follow us on Twitter (@MohawkGlobal).

Contact

Mike Kuhn

Chief Operating Officer

Mohawk Global Logistics

(315) 552-5443

[email protected]

SOURCE Mohawk Global Logistics

Related Links

http://www.mohawkglobal.com


Jintide is an innovative secure and controllable solution developed by Montage Technology for data centers, which combines Montage Technology's Hybrid Security DIMM (HSDIMM) technology, TU's reconfigurable computing processor (RCP) module, and standard, high-performance Intel Xeon processors to meet the critical application requirements in China. During the event, Montage Technology and TU jointly introduced the RCP and HSDIMM based dynamic CPU security checking technology of the Jintide platform. Lenovo showcased the first secure and controllable Jintide based commercial server with uncompromised performance and introduced the roll-out plan. Byosoft released the dedicated BIOS designed for the Jintide platform.

The technical launch event was held at Wuzhen Internet International Conference & Exhibition Center. Joining Montage, TU, Lenovo and Byosoft are important Jintide ecosystem partners including Intel, H3C, CEC Great Wall, Power Leader, Samsung and SK Hynix. Representatives from government and National Research Institutions also joined the event.

Montage, TU and Intel have been collaborating on the joint development of Jintide platform since April 2016. This technical launch is another significant achievement of the three-party collaboration after the successful power-on of the Jintide SDV (Software Development Vehicle) in April 2017. By working closely with BIOS vendors, system software vendors and DIMM vendors, Montage has developed the complete Jintide CPU based solution and expects to launch the first Jintide server product in 2018 through comprehensive collaboration with Lenovo and Byosoft. Montage is currently working with more leading server OEMs to lay a solid foundation for the mass commercialization of Jintide server products.

"We applaud Montage, Tsinghua University, and Jintide ecosystem partners for this successful technical launch. We are looking forward to the forthcoming mass commercial deployment of Jintide. Intel will continue to work with Chinese partners through collaboration and joint innovation to promote local solution research and development so as to meet the needs of Chinese market." said Ian Yang, Intel Corporate Vice President and President of Intel China.

"As a leader of customer digital transformation with security and control, Lenovo is working closely with Jintide ecosystem partners to develop a security server based on the Jintide platform. This product will be launched in the China market in 2018, addressing urgent requests from our customers for secure and controllable IT infrastructure. We are looking forward to a successful commercialization on the Jintide platform," said Bin Wu, General Manager of Lenovo DCG China BU.

"Montage's Jintide Server CPU & Platform offers a unique and innovative solution for system security and data protection to meet the critical application requirements in China. Along with Lenovo and Byosoft Montage will attain mass commercial deployment of Jintide based server products in 2018 by leveraging the mature X86 ecosystem. We sincerely look forward to the open and comprehensive collaborations with more partners to make breakthroughs in core technologies and achieve commercial success," said Dr. Howard Yang, Chairman and CEO of Montage Technology.

SOURCE Montage Technology
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- With 6.5 Million pets entering shelters each year and only 50% getting adopted while 1.5 Million get euthanized, the team at nail & bone has developed a nail polish for people that helps get dogs off the streets, out of shelters, and into loving homes by donating 20% of its proceeds to pet rescue and adoption organizations. The polish is 8-free, cruelty-free, vegan, and made in the USA.

nail & bone collaborated with hallewood for an exclusive Holiday Collection. The Collection will be sold online at nailandbone.com, several boutiques in Los Angeles, and at various pop-ups.

"My pets are a special part of my family and I'm so happy to partner with nail & bone on the hallewood holiday collection inspired by my dog, Jackson to support pet charities and adoption centers around the world," said Halle Berry, Founder and Creative Director, hallewood.

The Collection features 3 colors hand-picked by Halle and named in honor of her former pets:

"Playdough" (pearly gray) was an Orange Tabby who started off as a movie cat and did tricks for treats! He sat next to Halle when he wasn't supposed to on the set of Catwoman, and ever since that moment, they were inseparable.



"Bumper" (confetti red) was a Toy Maltese who was Halle's very first dog. She started her career with Bumper and even lived in a homeless shelter with him early on. Bumper eventually became a world traveler and was able to explore the globe with her!



"Willie" (black cherry red) was a Toy Maltese Halle remembers as her "shy guy." He was a afraid of his own shadow and wouldn't even get his feet wet! He was sensitive and quirky, but his favorite thing was music. Halle always left music on for him whenever she was out of the house.

The hallewood holiday gift collection sells for $30 and is packaged in a beautiful box with an adorable photo of Halle's new puppy, Jackson on the inside flap. It's the perfect holiday, hostess and teacher gift; stocking stuffer, gift under $50, and gift that gives back.

"We are thrilled and honored to launch the hallewood holiday collection. We hope that it inspires fans to think about the little things they can do to help. No matter how small a nail polish purchase may seem, it's still beautiful to contribute to the cause," said co-founders Steve Wiseman and Melissa Bowden.

We are encouraging dog and manicure fans everywhere to share photos of their nails on Instagram using #hallewood and #nailandbone.

For more information, please visit nail & bone and www.instagram.com/nailandbone.

SOURCE nail & bone

Related Links

http://www.nailandbone.com


HOUSTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Two Colorado companies designing, manufacturing and testing flight hardware for NASA's Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in support of human missions near the Moon and into deep space will open their facilities to media Monday, Dec. 11.

EnerSys Advanced Systems (EnerSys) in Longmont, and SEAKR Engineering Inc. (SEAKR) in Centennial are among the thousands of businesses across the 50 United States and Puerto Rico that support NASA's deep-space exploration programs. Colorado is home to about 250 of these businesses.

Visits to key suppliers are an opportunity for leadership from NASA and Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin to share progress on flight hardware in production and recognize employees making significant contributions to human spaceflight.

Media are invited to attend an employee event, a facility tour and interview NASA astronaut Nicole Mann along with other NASA, Lockheed Martin, EnerSys and SEAKR officials at either of the supplier locations.

U.S. media interested in participating must contact Laura Rochon at 281-483-0229 or [email protected] by noon EST on Friday, Dec. 8.

EnerSys supplies the high- and low-voltage lithium-ion batteries that power the thrust vector control  or steering  on Orion's Launch Abort System, the part of the spacecraft that can carry the crew module to safety in the event of an emergency during launch or ascent to space. EnerSys also provides lithium-ion batteries for both the core stage and exploration upper stage on the SLS rocket, critical components for a successful launch.

SEAKR provides space-qualified electronics for Orion including the Vision Processing Unit, the spacecraft's back-up flight computer and data recorder which helps process imagery taken in space and stores or sends it back to Earth during missions.

NASA is leading the next steps of human space exploration with a series of deep space missions to the vicinity of the Moon, beginning with the first integrated mission of Orion  America's spacecraft for the next generation of explorers  and the new heavy-lift Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket in the world.

The first integrated flight test of Orion and SLS will launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a three-week uncrewed mission beyond the Moon and back. A second mission will follow with the system's first crewed mission, which will take humans farther in space than ever before. These missions will help NASA build a flexible, reusable and sustainable infrastructure that will last for decades and support missions of increasing complexity, including to Mars.

Learn more about Orion at:

http://www.nasa.gov/orion

Launch into details about the Space Launch System at:

https://www.nasa.gov/sls

Get information, photos and videos of NASA's deep space exploration systems at:

www.nasa.gov/journeytomars

NASA Johnson Space Center news releases and other information are available automatically by sending an Internet electronic mail message to [email protected]. In the body of the message (not the subject line) users should type "subscribe hsfnews" (no quotes). This will add the email address that sent the subscribe message to the news release distribution list. The system will reply with a confirmation via e-mail of each subscription. Once you have subscribed you will receive future news releases via e-mail.

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Nashville attorneys A.J. Bahou and Sam Miller announce the opening of Bahou Miller PLLC. Bahou is experienced in trials, mediations and is a registered patent attorney who practices in electrical and computer engineering technologies, blockchain, data privacy, SaaS agreements, cryptocurrencies and intellectual property law, including litigation of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. Miller, who left his positions as equity shareholder and chair of Baker Donelson's Intellectual Property Litigation team to found Bahou Miller, has been lead counsel on behalf of a wide range of clients from individuals to Fortune 500 companies in nearly 150 patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, online defamation, right of publicity and technology-related cases in state and federal courts throughout the United States. The new firm will have three attorneys initially, including new associate Nick Valenti. The firm plans further expansion for the new year in 2018.

Both Bahou and Miller are excited about the prospects of growing their practice in Nashville.

"We are thrilled to be expanding our law practice with a legal team to serve the 'IT City,'" Bahou said. "Sam and Nick's arrival strengthens our IP litigation, prosecution and business counseling for clients who need IP lawyers in high-stakes cases and international IP protection."

"A.J. and I have been friends for a long time. We share a deep breadth of technical, business and litigation experience solving intellectual property, technology and business problems for clients," Miller said. "Our new firm affords us the opportunity to achieve our clients' objectives in unique, efficient and creative ways."

The new firm has extensive experience in all aspects of intellectual property, business litigation and advising. Bahou and Miller have represented and continue to represent clients in a variety of areas and technologies, such as consumer products, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, blockchain, smart meters, virtual reality, computer hardware, software, oil and gas equipment, pet products, obstacle course racing, Internet security systems and music.

Bahou earned an M.S. with honors in Electrical and Computer Engineering (focusing on Networking and Data Security) from The Johns Hopkins University. He is an M.B.A. graduate of Middle Tennessee State University and holds a B.S. in Engineering from Tennessee Tech University. He earned his J.D. and L.L.M. in Intellectual Property Law from the Franklin Pierce Law Center at the University of New Hampshire. Originally from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Bahou practiced in Washington, D.C., for several years at a 1,400-attorney international law firm representing Fortune 500 companies. Bahou is a board member of LaunchTN, chair of the Tennessee Bar Intellectual Property Law Executive Council and past president of the Tennessee Intellectual Property Law Association.

Miller earned a B.A. with honors in History from Xavier University and J.D. with honors from the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University. He has received many accolades for his work in intellectual property, including being named an "IP Star" in Managing Intellectual Property's IP Handbook (20132017), being listed in The Best Lawyers in America in Intellectual Property Litigation (20152018) and Patent Litigation (2018) and being named a Mid-South Rising Star in Intellectual Property in 2008 and in Intellectual Property Litigation six times by Super Lawyers magazine. He served as the chair of the Intellectual Property Section of the Tennessee Bar Association from 20092010, 20112012 and 20152016. After moving to Nashville from Fort Wayne, Indiana, Miller practiced with Stites & Harbison prior to elevation to shareholder at Baker Donelson.

Both Bahou and Miller now live in Brentwood.

Bahou Miller PLLC is a boutique intellectual property and litigation law firm located in Nashville and Brentwood, Tennessee. For additional information, please visit www.BahouMiller.com.

Related Links

Bahou Miller PLLC

SOURCE Bahou Miller PLLC

Related Links

http://www.BahouMiller.com


The Good Fight captures the sporadically violent, often triumphant, always risky struggles of Americans who have experienced hatred, oppression or bigotry because of their gender, skin color, country of origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability or beliefs over the past 100 years. It includes many stories that are illustrated by more than 180 memorable photographs and nearly 60 embedded videos.

"Given the events of this past year when we experienced a resurgence of anti-Semitism, racism and prejudice across America, this book couldn't be more timely," says Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, "This book reminds us that the hard fought battles in this country to achieve true civil rights for all Americans came at a tremendous price, and we need to defend those hard-won victories to ensure a brighter future for our children."

The book's featured contributors and essayists include: Bret Stephens, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times; Todd Brewster, an award-winning journalist, best-selling author and historian; Bryan Stevenson, best-selling author and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Jonathan Broder, award-winning journalist, formerly of NPR and Newsweek, Ray Suarez, best-selling author and former correspondent for PBS News Hour and NPR's Talk of the Nation and Tiffany Shlain, Emmy-nominated filmmaker and founder of The Webby Awards.

"When Jonathan and I first conceived The Good Fight,, we envisioned it as a retrospective, a book of history to remind every American of the inspiring progress made over the past century and to acknowledge how much further we as a nation still need to go," says Smolan. "We hope this book will prompt readers to appreciate how much work remains to be done."

"'The Good Fight' comes at a pivotal moment in our country when the struggle for equal rights remains not just a legacy of history, but is very much a current event," says Greenblatt. "We cannot attain true civil rights in America without knowing and remembering our history and the struggles of our forbearers. This amazing retelling of America's civil rights story highlights the many moments that transformed America. These are the stories of the achievements that moved us closer to the goal of a society free of prejudice and hatred, and where all people have access to a life of freedom, equality and dignity."

More information can be found at www.thegoodfightbook.org

The Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all. Today it is the world's leading organization combating anti-Semitism, exposing hate groups, training law enforcement on hate crimes, developing anti-bias curricula for students, countering cyber-hate and relentlessly pursuing equal rights for all. Follow us on Twitter: @ADL_National

Rick Smolan, CEO of Against All Odds Productions, is a #1 New York Times best-selling author with more than five million copies of his books in print. A former Time, LIFE, and National Geographic photographer, Smolan is best known as the co-creator of the "Day in the Life" book series. More than a million people have watched Smolan's "Natasha's Story" on TED.com (www.NatashaStory.com). Fortune magazine describes Against All Odds Productions, as "One of the 25 Coolest Companies in America." www.AgainstAllOdds.com

Contact: MEDIA CONNECT

Brian Feinblum [email protected] 212-583-2718

SOURCE Anti-Defamation League
Criticizes Country's Default On Sovereign Land Bonds, Poor Financial Reporting, Weak Rule Of Law, And Adherence To OECD "Core Values"

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A report attacking Peru's candidacy for membership in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was released this week, saying the country's conduct with respect to its longstanding selective default on sovereign land bonds should preclude it from joining the exclusive club of global economic leaders.

The 37-page report written by a former top economist at the OECD, concluded that "Peru should not be considered a viable candidate for full OECD membership" and cited numerous reasons, including:

Peru's decades-old selective default on sovereign Agrarian Reform Bonds and its "refusal to provide fair compensation" for those bonds, "despite the fact that such repayment appears far from impossible for Peru ";

decades-old selective default on sovereign Agrarian Reform Bonds and its "refusal to provide fair compensation" for those bonds, "despite the fact that such repayment appears far from impossible for "; Peru's failure to properly report the default to international organizations and regulators, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange; and

failure to properly report the default to international organizations and regulators, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange; and Peru's "shortcoming in public integrity.in particular its commitment to the rule of law, human rights and transparency." The report criticized President Kuczynski's recent and continued reliance on a forged 2013 Peruvian Constitutional Tribunal decision on the defaulted bonds that is currently under criminal and Congressional investigation.

"Peru's conduct generally demonstrates a lack of readiness by Peru with respect to its ability to take part in the OECD accession process, in particular is ability to promote the OECD core principles," the report said. "Despite Peru's economic progress, the country does not meet some of the key requirements for OECD membership, due to long-standing debt obligations that it has repeatedly failed to address or disclose."

The report was written by Dr. Hans J. Blommestein, who was head of Public Debt Management at the OECD from 2001 to 2016 and supervised the organization's Financial Affairs Division from 1998 to 2000.

The report centers on Peru's expropriation of 23 million acres of land from citizens between 1969 and 1979 and the Agrarian Reform Bonds the citizens were forced to accept in exchange for their land. In many cases the bonds were never repaid, and as many as 20% of the outstanding bonds are now held by international investors, including about 200 U.S. pension funds.

The report was commissioned by Peruvian-American Bondholders for Justice (PABJ) and the Agrarian Debt Bondholders Association (ABDA). They and six other bondholder groups sent the report and an accompanying letter to OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria. Together, the bondholder groups represent thousands of Peruvian and Peruvian-American bondholders. Copies of the report and letter were delivered yesterday to more than 60 OECD officials, ambassadors to the OECD in Paris, OECD member-nation Ambassadors in Peru, and Peruvian Finance Minister Claudia Cooper Fort.

"We fully expect Peru to issue blanket denials and attempt to label this issue as a 'valuation dispute' with a few select bondholders, as opposed to an ongoing bond default impacting thousands of bondholders (aided by criminal action by the highest levels in the judiciary and executive branch) and a willful and purposeful attempt to not report the Agrarian Reform Bond debt," the bondholder letter to Gurria said. It urged him to conduct "an unbiased and objective analysis" of the issue and a full review of the report, adding "Peru has failed to meet OECD standards of transparency and has instead done everything possible to sweep this issue 'under the rug.'"

For further information, please contact:

Ramon Remolina

Agrarian Debt Bondholders Association

or

Peruvian-American Bondholders for Justice

[email protected]

SOURCE Peruvian-American Bondholders for Justice (PABJ)
BELFAST, Northern Ireland, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Leading economic development and trade advisory firm, OCO Global (OCO), has been selected as the exclusive partner for the UK's Department for International Trade (DIT) to support UK companies as they explore expansion opportunities in North America.

OCO will provide a wide range of trade support services to both new and experienced exporters, as it works with DIT to help boost the UK's overall export target.

As part of the programme, which is nationwide and across all sectors, OCO will also travel to UK regions to highlight the opportunities in North America to UK companies.

CEO of OCO Global, Mark O'Connell said: "Helping UK businesses to export has never been more important and we're delighted to be working with DIT to make it easier for companies to reach new opportunities for growth in the United States and Canada. There is significant untapped potential in these markets and growing demand for UK goods and services."

North America is currently the UK's most significant export market outside of the EU, and OCO expects it to become more important in the context of the emerging post-Brexit landscape.

Mark continues: "We are seeing an increase in UK businesses looking to expand to North America across multiple sectors including ICT, education, media and consumer, and we expect to see this trend continue."

OCO, which uses its global network to make it faster and easier for SMEs to set up new operations overseas, has a specialist team of 10 in the US and plans to add capacity to meet increased demand.

Minister for Trade and Export Promotion, Baroness Rona Fairhead said: "Our partnership with OCO global will give UK businesses the tools they need to seize exciting opportunities in the United States and Canada - from export advice and industry connections, to visit programmes and events. The USA is already the top destination for British goods and services and as an international economic department, we will continue to support businesses in exporting across the Atlantic as part of our mission to become a global Britain."

Through its work with DIT to date, OCO has assisted more than 400 UK businesses looking to expand to North America and connected more than 650 UK exporters to opportunities.

Notes to editors

About OCO Global

OCO Global is the leading advisory firm in Europe for Trade and Investment Services and works with businesses to guide their expansion internationally through export and FDI. OCO offers a one stop, full service solution for companies working with a range of trusted business partners to make it fast and easy to set up new operations and expand quickly. The company is the appointed provider of the UK Government to support UK businesses entering the European market. OCO Global also works with many US companies supporting their expansion into Europe and Asia. OCO Global is a leading specialist provider of Trade and Investment services including Market Entry Support, business intelligence for Trade and Investment, trade mission support, business development, advisory, trends analysis and software solutions. Headquartered in Northern Ireland, OCO has offices in leading markets globally including UK, Germany, France, Japan, the UAE and the US. OCO's clients include leading national, state and regional economic development organizations as well as private companies seeking to enter new markets or grow their domestic base.

About the Department for International Trade

The Department for International Trade (DIT) secures UK and global prosperity by promoting and financing international trade and investment, and championing free trade.We are an international economic department, responsible for: bringing together policy, promotion and financial expertise to break down barriers to trade and investment, and help businesses succeed

delivering a new trade policy framework for the UK as we leave the EU

promoting British trade and investment across the world

building the global appetite for British goods and services

There have been more than 2.4 million visits to great.gov.uk and more than 3,300 UK businesses have already registered on the government's Find a Buyer service to match UK businesses to worldwide demand. The Exporting is GREAT (EIG) campaign inspires and supports UK businesses to sell their goods and services overseas. At great.gov.uk UK businesses can apply for real-time global export opportunities, access expert advice, trade services, training and events.

SOURCE OCO Global
LONDON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Payza, an award-winning payment processor, today announces the launch of its latest cryptocurrency service: Buy Altcoins. This new feature enables verified members to buy the most popular cryptocurrency alternatives to Bitcoin using funds in their Payza account, either fiat or Bitcoin.

The initiative follows the company's June release of the Sell Altcoins feature that allows members to sell altcoins to Payza, such as Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, Dash, Monero and Zcash. Currently, Bitcoin and over 30 altcoins can now be bought or sold directly through Payza's online platform.

The Buy Altcoins and Sell Altcoins services both feature simple interfaces and instructions to make the experience as comfortable as possible for cryptocurrency neophytes.

"We're excited about the potential of this new technology and want to share our excitement with as many people in as many places as possible by providing a service that's easy to use even for those just getting started with cryptocurrencies," said Firoz Patel, Payza's CEO. "That doesn't mean our services are just for beginners, I think that dedicated cryptocurrency enthusiasts will also appreciate our range of services, unique model, and competitive pricing."

While verified Payza members are presently able to hold Bitcoin in their e-wallets, they will need their own external wallet to hold any altcoins bought through Payza. The company is already developing the next cryptocurrency feature that will enable members to hold altcoins (the first of which will be Dash) within their Payza e-wallets as well.

To learn more about Payza's Buy Altcoins service, including steps, fees and processing times, visit: https://blog.payza.com/payza-updates/announcements/buy-altcoins-payza-introducing-altcoin-withdrawals/

To learn more about Payza's other cryptocurrency services available to verified members, visit:

Exchange Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin and More: Sell Altcoins to Payza

How to Use Payza's New Bitcoin Features

Payza Now Lets You Accept Payments with Bitcoin

About Payza

Payza is an award-winning online payment processor. The highly secure platform provides businesses around the world practical solutions for processing online payments and disbursing payouts and remittances, both in traditional currencies and Bitcoin. Payza supports 26 currencies and serves over 14 million Business and Personal members in more than 190 countries.

Payza offers a wide range of built-in tools including: Online payment processing, online global money transfers, fraud screening, subscription billing, transaction dispute resolution, cryptocurrency exchange services, global payouts, and much more. Payza accounts can be managed through the desktop website or using the Payza App for Android and iOS.

More information is available about Payza on its website (http://www.payza.com), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the company's blog.

Media Contact:

Pola Hallquist

Apothecary Communications for Payza

[email protected]

1-866-213-9210 x801

SOURCE Payza

Related Links

http://www.payza.com


HOUSTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Reynolds associates and their families gathered at the Houston offices of Reynolds and Reynolds for an annual tradition Saturday, Dec. 2, as they assembled more than 100 bicycles for the children of Texas-based military personnel.

Reynolds also held a Bike Build Dec. 2 at the company's headquarters in Dayton, Ohio.

"The Bike Build is an opportunity to recognize military families and to involve our families in the spirit of giving," said Jim Wright, vice president at Reynolds who was on hand at the Bike Build. "It's become one of the highlights of the holiday season at Reynolds."

Receiving the bikes this year: the United States Marine Corps Reserve 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion, based out of Galveston, Texas.

The 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion operates Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAVs) to carry Marines from ship to shore during an assault on an enemy-held beach, as well as to transport infantry inland. Members of the 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion assisted in rescue and recovery operations in the Houston and Beaumont areas following Hurricane Harvey in August and September.

"These are the same service members who were called up from the Galveston base during Hurricane Harvey," Wright said. "They helped Houstonians during and after the storms, and we are proud to give back to them in this small way for the holiday season."

Each year, Reynolds purchases and donates the bikes for the Bike Build. Reynolds employees and their families assemble all the bikes, which can range from 12-inch bikes with training wheels to 26-inch multi-speed bicycles.

About Reynolds

The Reynolds and Reynolds Company is one of the automotive industry's leading providers of software, services, and document solutions to help automotive retailers improve business results. With 4,300 associates worldwide, Reynolds is headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, with major U.S. operations in Houston and College Station, Texas, and Celina, Ohio, as well as operations in Canada, in the U.K., and across Europe. (www.reyrey.com)

SOURCE The Reynolds and Reynolds Company

Related Links

http://www.reyrey.com


"We are excited to welcome John Davis as our CFO," stated CEO Harold Hofer. "John brings decades of high-level accounting and audit experience, specifically focused on SEC-reporting REITs. John's presence on our team will promote seamless interaction with our outside audit firms, and his long track record in real estate ownership and finance will add further value to our REITs."

Mr. Davis comes to Rich Uncles after more than four decades with KPMG LLP, one of the world's four largest accounting firms, where he had served as a partner since 1988. In addition to his experience with public companies, including REITs, Mr. Davis is also a licensed certified public accountant in Colorado, and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the California CPA Society and the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. He received his bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and his master's degree in business administration from De Paul University.

Ms. Ho joined Rich Uncles, LLC in 2016 as the company's chief financial officer, where she has helped lead the acquisitions of 29 commercial properties across two Rich Uncles-sponsored REITs: Rich Uncles Real Estate Investment Trust I and Rich Uncles NNN REIT, Inc. Prior to joining Rich Uncles, LLC, Ms. Ho held positions as chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Soteira Capital, LLC, chief financial officer of MKA Capital Advisors, LLC, and with KPMG LLP, where she specialized in real estate, financial services, and high net wealth personal financial and estate planning. A certified public accountant since 2002 and a member of the California State Bar since 1996, Ms. Ho received her bachelor's degree in economics from UCLA, Juris Doctor, cum laude, from California Western School of Law and an LL.M. in taxation from University of San Diego School of Law. She is also an adjunct professor for the Graduate School of Finance at California State University, Fullerton.

In addition to the appointments of Mr. Davis and Ms. Ho, today Rich Uncles also announced that it has moved into its new corporate headquarters at 3090 Bristol Street in Costa Mesa. "The move is an exciting development for Rich Uncles," stated Hofer. "Our company has significantly grown in scale over the last three years, and our larger facility will allow for continued expansion and innovation across all departments."

About Rich Uncles

Rich Uncles was founded in 2012 with one purpose: to make access to commercial real estate investing available to everyone. Through its on-line, direct-to-consumer platform, Rich Uncles has achieved this by offering non-millionaires the opportunity to own commercial real estate with low barriers to entry, including $500 initial investment amounts. Five years later, Rich Uncles, LLC now manages 38 revenue-producing commercial properties which comprise over $261 million in value (as of September 30, 2017, 17 properties comprising approximately $126.6 million in assets are owned by Rich Uncles NNN REIT, Inc., and 21 properties comprising approximately $134.4 million in assets are owned by Rich Uncles Real Estate Investment Trust I). The investor response to Rich Uncles' technology platform has been remarkable; men and women from all origins have used Rich Uncles' platform as a means of investing in commercial real estate for the very first time, while seasoned investors have regarded Rich Uncles as the best possible complement to their already diversified, professionally managed portfolios.

3090 Bristol Street, Suite 550, Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Office: 1-855-Rich-Uncles

http://www.richuncles.com/

Follow Rich Uncles on Social Media at Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn: @RichUncles

Contact:

Lauren Rugge

Marketing Operations Manager

(949) 835-4310

[email protected]

SOURCE Rich Uncles, LLC

Related Links

http://www.richuncles.com


NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP, today filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee against the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority ("MNAA") on behalf of Robert Wigington, the Airport Authority's former President and Chief Executive Officer. The Complaint alleges MNAA refused to allow Wigington to resume his job duties and responsibilities when he returned to work after recovering from liver transplant surgery.

Wigington requested and was granted leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act ("FMLA"), which he began on July 24th, 2017. On September 5th when Wigington returned from medical leave, MNAA told Wigington that they had decided to go in a "different direction" and that he was being relieved of his duties. MNAA did not provide Wigington an explanation for his termination, did not give him the required notice, and did not give him the opportunity to return to his former position, which is a violation of federal law. On October 18th, MNAA voted to terminate Mr. Wigington's employment and attempted to justify its decision with a bogus account of his "reported behaviors."

The Complaint debunks each of the so-called "reported behaviors" and alleges that the evidence does not support the Board's claim that reinstating Mr. Wigington would cause "substantial and grievous" economic injury to the Airport Authority's operations.

The Complaint also alleges that MNAA improperly perceived Mr. Wigington as having a disability and being unable to fill the role of President and CEO. Prior to Wigington's medical leave, Board Chair Bobby Joslin commented that Mr. Wigington should no longer speak on behalf of the Airport Authority because he looked "too sick." Later, after Mr. Wigington notified the Board that he was medically cleared and could return to work soon, MNAA insisted that his doctor certify a second time that Mr. Wigington was able to perform the duties of the President & CEO and questioned whether he presented "undue risks of harm to himself or others" after having undergone "major surgery with significant post-operative risks."

Kevin H. Sharp, Managing Partner of Sanford Heisler Sharp's Nashville office, and Hannah M. Wolf, an Associate at Sanford Heisler Sharp, represent Wigington in the lawsuit.

The Complaint notes that Wigington has been an effective aviation executive and that his leadership over the past six years has helped Nashville International Airport earn numerous industry accolades and honors, including recognition as one of the "Best Airports in the World." Mr. Wigington has also received honors for his leadership at the MNAA.

"It's clear that the Airport Authority was very satisfied with Robert's performance until he had the misfortune of developing liver cancer and notified the Board that he was having transplant surgery," said Sharp. "That apparently flipped a switch for some members of the Board who essentially turned on Mr. Wigington and then retaliated against him for taking medical leave. The law simply does not allow that and the Board knows it. MNAA's egregious and unlawful actions have caused Rob significant harm and cannot go unchallenged."

According to the Complaint, the MNAA Management Committee held a non-publicly noticed meeting six days after Wigington's liver transplant surgery, even though all MNAA's committee and Board meetings require public notice. Three days after this meeting, MNAA's Human Resource Department informed Wigington he was eligible for leave under the FMLA. While on medical leave, he received no notice of a change in his eligibility determination. Wigington expected that he would be reinstated upon his return from medical leave as required by law, but he was not allowed to do so.

"It's clear that none of the reasons given by the Board for terminating Mr. Wigington were valid and their illegal termination was simply in retaliation for him taking legally sanctioned medical leave and because they perceived him to have a disability. This is a violation of state and federal law, and a breach of Mr. Wigington's employment contract," said Hannah Wolf. "Given his stellar performance record, it's truly perplexing why the Board would pursue this illegal action."

In addition to demanding a jury trial, the Complaint charges include unlawful interference and denial of his FMLA benefits; discrimination and retaliation for requesting and taking FMLA leave; violation of the Tennessee Disability Act; retaliatory discharge; breach of contract; and, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The suit asks for a declaratory judgment that MNAA's employment practices are unlawful, for nominal damages, and for Defendants to pay attorneys' fees and costs.

About Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP

Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP is a public interest class-action litigation law firm with offices in New York, Washington, D.C, Nashville, San Francisco, and San Diego. Our attorneys have graduated from the nation's top law schools, clerked for judges throughout the United States, and amassed extensive experience litigating and trying cases that have earned over one billion dollars for our clients.

The Firm specializes in civil rights and general public interest cases, representing plaintiffs with claims of employment discrimination, labor and wage violations, predatory lending, consumer fraud, and whistleblowing, among other claims. Along with a focus on class actions, the Firm also represents individuals and has achieved extraordinary success in the representation of executives and attorneys in employment disputes.

For more information go to www.sanfordheisler.com or call (202) 499-5200 or email [email protected]. For the latest news, visit our newsroom or follow us on Twitter at @sanfordheisler.

For more information, contact Jamie Moss, newsPRos, (201) 788-0142, [email protected]

SOURCE Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP

Related Links

http://www.sanfordheisler.com


CHICAGO, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Shapiro+Raj, a leading strategic brand and marketing insights company, is pleased to welcome Dr. Robert A. Hart, Jr. as Senior Vice President of Research and Analytics. Robert will be responsible for leading the organization's research, analytics and data science capabilities.

Robert has spent his career as a leader at the forefront of the research industry. In addition to starting his own market research company, he has led teams at Harris Interactive, Ispos, Hall & Partners and most recently, NPD Group. There he was responsible for defining growth strategy, optimizing team structure and providing thought leadership for methodology development.

"Robert is a unique talent. Not only does he have a deep understanding of research, analytics and data science, he has a vision for where the industry is going and a strong track record of delivering innovations grounded in scientific rigor. This makes him a great fit for Shapiro+Raj as we continue to grow and build an insights and ideas company of the future," said Zain Raj, Chairman, and CEO of Shapiro+Raj.

As SVP of Research and Analytics, Robert is tasked with finding new and more efficient ways to deliver powerful and compelling insights to clients. He will also be responsible for driving methodological innovations that integrate social and behavioral sciences across qualitative and quantitative methods.

"Shapiro+Raj is a different kind of research and insights company. Their focus on finding insights that inspire ideas to help grow client business truly aligns with my passion. I am honored and excited to join this diverse group of professionals on their journey," said Robert. "I look forward to contributing to the organization's growth."

In addition to Robert's professional accomplishments, he has a number of published works and frequently presents at leading industry conferences. Robert holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Political Science from Florida State University and a B.A. in Political Science from Rice University.

About Shapiro+Raj

Shapiro+Raj is a new strategic brand and marketing insights company built for the Insight Economy. By connecting Shapiro's 60-year leadership in research, insights and analytics with new-world brand strategy capabilities, Shapiro+Raj delivers powerful insights that move people to action. We help Fortune 500 clients improve the value of their brands while driving profitable growth of their business. Headquartered in Chicago, the independent firm also has offices in New York, Dallas and Pune, India. For more information, visit www.shapiroraj.com.

SOURCE Shapiro+Raj

Related Links

http://www.shapiroraj.com


NEW YORK, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Naspers Limited ("Naspers" or the "Company") (OTC-PINK: NPSNY). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at [email protected] or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

The investigation concerns whether Naspers and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here to join a class action]

On December 1, 2017, the Company reported that its wholly-owned television unit MultiChoice had initiated an investigation into whether improper payments were made to ANN7, a South African news channel owned by the politically-connected Gupta family. According to local media, citing leaked emails, MultiChoice substantially increased its annual payment to ANN7 from 50 million rand to 141 million rand ($10 million) over the past two years.

On this news, Naspers' American Depositary Receipt price fell $3.05, or 5.58%, to close at $51.60 on December 1, 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.

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

[email protected]

SOURCE Pomerantz LLP

Related Links

http://www.pomerantzlaw.com


CLEVELAND, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Demand for silicone liquid-applied roof coatings is forecast to rise 5.1% annually to 2.44 million squares in 2021. This above average growth rate will be spurred by rapid gains for cool roofing applications as roofing professionals opt for coatings that meet CRRC cool roofing guidelines while also offering superior performance properties. Silicone roof coatings offer the benefit of more moisture resistance compared to acrylic and asphalt products. A shortage of trained roofing installers will also impact growth, as silicone coatings can be completely installed in a few days using only moderately skilled crews. These and other trends are presented in Liquid-Applied Roof Coatings in the US, a new study from The Freedonia Group, a Cleveland-based industry research firm.

For more information on the study, see the following link: https://www.freedoniagroup.com/industry-study/liquid-applied-roof-coatings-in-the-us-by-product-and-subregion-3584.htm

Demand for silicone liquid-applied roof coatings in the South  the largest regional market for these products in 2016  is forecast to advance at the most rapid pace of all US regions, rising 5.9% annually to 960,000 squares in 2021. In this region, the South Atlantic subregion will see the most rapid gains due in part to the application of silicon coatings to existing roofs in the large Florida market to minimize roof damage in case of future hurricanes and tropical storms.

As a whole, liquid-applied roof coatings are forecast to advance 3.2% annually through 2021 to 13.9 million squares. Gains will be promoted by:

rising interest in coatings that meet cool roofing criteria to improve buildings' energy efficiency

increasing use of coatings to rejuvenate older or worn roofs, rather than engaging in more costly reroofing projects

contractors applying coatings to newly installed roofs to greatly extend the lifespan of primary roofing materials

Related studies include:

About The Freedonia Group, a division of MarketResearch.com  The Freedonia Group is a leading international industrial research company publishing more than 100 studies annually. Since 1985, we have provided research to customers ranging in size from global conglomerates to one-person consulting firms. More than 90% of the industrial companies in the Fortune 500 use Freedonia Group research to help with their strategic planning. Construction & Building studies can be purchased at www.freedoniagroup.com, www.marketresearch.com, and www.profound.com.

Press Contact:

Corinne Gangloff

+1 440.684.9600

[email protected]

SOURCE The Freedonia Group

Related Links

http://www.freedoniagroup.com


COMMERCE, Calif., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Smart & Final Stores, Inc. (NYSE: SFS), the value-oriented food and everyday staples retailer, today announced that David Hirz, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Richard Phegley, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will participate in the Barclays Eat, Sleep, Play Conference to be held December 6 -7, 2017 in New York City. Management is scheduled to participate in a fireside chat on Wednesday, December 6th at 10:00 am ET.

The fireside chat will be webcast live and hosted on the Investors section of the Company's website at http://www.smartandfinal.com/events and will be archived and available for 30 days following the event.

About Smart & Final

Smart & Final Stores, Inc. (NYSE: SFS), is a value-oriented food and everyday staples retailer, headquartered in Commerce (near Los Angeles), California. The Company offers quality products in a variety of sizes, saving household, nonprofit and business customers time and money. As of October 8, 2017, the Company operated 316 grocery and foodservice stores under the "Smart & Final," "Smart & Final Extra!" and "Cash & Carry Smart Foodservice" banners in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana and Utah, with an additional 15 stores in Northwestern Mexico operated through a joint venture. In business for over 145 years, the Company remains committed to giving back to local communities through employee volunteer opportunities and Company donations to local nonprofits.

SOURCE Smart & Final Stores, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.smartandfinal.com


NEW YORK, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Fashion and textiles are the world's 4th largest value creator in the world. The Nordic fashion scene is exploding, becoming one of the fastest growing export industries and growing three times faster than the total export. However, the impact that the industry has on the climate is vast, with fashion ranking among the highest polluting industries on a global scale.

This initiative recognizes that producers of pollution-intensive goods must change drastically. The Nordic countries seek to systematically change the global fashion system by utilizing innovative technology, a respect for nature, Nordic heritage, and sustainable practices.

Although geographically small, Nordic countries represent some of fashion's largest and most crucial global players. Focusing on sustainability and responsible innovation, the Nordic fashion companies shared pioneering solutions. The Nordic Fashion Association presented Nordic innovations around fashion tech and initiatives, focusing on moving towards a circular production system. Among the presented tactics were climate positive fibers, carbon farming, near-market manufacturing, tax systems for rental services, baby clothes on rent prescription, jeans connected to dating apps, zero cotton denim, and much more.

Speakers/contacts:

Gisle Mariani Mardal is the chairman of the Nordic Fashion Association. A designer, entrepreneur, and advocate for sustainable practices, he brought together the following panelists for a conversation for a better fashion future. "As we see an increasing desire for Nordic Fashion we need to make sure that our companies can deliver products based on sustainable practices for a better future of fashion," says Gisle Mariani Mardal.

Elin Frendberg presented "Powered by Technology." As the CEO of the Swedish Fashion Council, a behavioral scientist and a business developer, Frendberg discussed how innovative technology, sustainability, and sociology can combine to refresh and rethink the fashion industry. Frendberg urged during her talk, "We're going from a linear to a circular economic model, which means using better fibers, more strategic design, new business models and technology, and a better planned end of life. We must make a systemic change."

Johan Arn Kryger presented "Powered by Sustainability." As the Chief Learning Officer at the Danish Fashion Association, Kryger's mission is to overcome the cultural and communication divide that impairs industry-academia partnerships. Kryger presented on the efficacy of programs such as Youth Fashion Summit and the Educators Summit to instruct designers, buyers, and industry leaders on sustainable practices. Johan emphasized during the talk that "We're creating a global language on how to measure sustainability."

Gunni Hilmarsson presented "Powered by Heritage." Hilmarsson is an Icelandic designer, board member of NFA, and a fervent advocate of sustainable practices. "We cant afford not to act now  we all have to take responsibility for what we produce into this world and adapting old local techniques can help us be more sustainable," says Gunni Hilmarsson.

"Fashion Talk" w/ Kris Goojha

SOURCE Nordic Fashion Association
ALBANY, New York, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The global spinal fusion devices market is a competitive one with presence of several small as well as large players, says Transparency Market Research (TMR) in a new report. The primary growth strategy adopted by key players include strategic acquisitions and product launches to establish their presence in this competitive market. For instance, in October 2017, NuVasive obtained U.S. FDA 510 (k) clearance for Tlx interbody system employed in Tlif procedures. Following this, in the same month, the company launched Lateral ALIF, XLIF, Crestline, and Lateral MAS Fixation devices to make a mark in lateral single-position surgery offerings.

As per a report by TMR, the global spinal fusion devices market is estimated to become worth US$10,965.7 mn by 2025 vis-a-vis revenue expanding at a CAGR of 4.65% between 2017 and 2025.

View Report at https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/spinal-fusion-devices-market.html

Prominent participants in the global spinal fusion devices market include Stryker Corporation, NuVasive Inc., Globus Medical Inc., Orthofix International N.V., Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc., Medtronic plc, K2M Group Holdings Inc., Alphatec Holdings Inc., Exactech Inc., Depuy Synthes, B. Braun Melsungen AG, , and Titan Spine LLC.

Among the key product type segments, thoraco-lumbar fixation devices led the market in 2016; going forward the segment is anticipated to lead in terms of revenue over the forecast period. In terms of surgery, open surgery dominated the market in 2016. However, minimally-invasive surgery is likely to surpass open surgery in terms of CAGR over the forecast period. Geography-wise, North America emerged as a lucrative market holding the leading market share in 2016. The region is anticipated to hold on to its dominant position in terms of revenue over the forecast period.

Request to View Sample Copy of Report - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=32045

High Incidence of Spine Disorders in the U.S. Benefits Market

The key growth drivers of the global spinal fusion devices market include increasing number of people suffering from back pain and the rising incidence of spinal disorders which is mainly age-related and due to sedentary lifestyle of individuals. According to statistics of the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of individuals above the age of 65 years in the U.S. is estimated to be over 16.7% of the total population in 2050. The rising obesity due to sedentary lifestyles and high consumption of foods made of refined flour also account as significant factors for spinal disorders. This requires spinal fusion devices for correction of these disorders either through invasive or non-invasive procedures.

Request Spinal Fusion Devices Market Report Brochure @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=32045

Further, according to World Health Organization, more than 80-90% of American population is affected by degenerative spine diseases, which is expressed in the form of minor to severe mobility limitations. This has led to a considerable rise in the number of spinal fusion procedures that are performed annually in the U.S.

Extensive Efforts for Product Innovation a Boon for Market

Technological advances and strong focus of market players on research and development to introduce new products are also key factors acting in favor of the market's growth.

Global Spinal Fusion Devices Market Report is available @ US$ 5795

About TMR

Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The company's exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.

Contact

Transparency Market Research

State Tower

90 State Street,

Suite 700,

Albany NY - 12207

United States

Tel: +1-518-618-1030

USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453

Email: [email protected]





Website: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

TMR Blog: http://www.theglobalhealthnews.com/

SOURCE Transparency Market Research
TRUE BLUE, Grenada, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, St. George's University announced a new partnership with Peterborough, Ontario-based Trent University to provide qualified Trent undergraduates with direct admission to its Schools of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine.

The two universities commemorated the partnership at a signing ceremony on Trent's campus. Canadian consultants Sandra Banner and Charles Furey were on hand to represent St. George's.

"This partnership offers passionate and engaged Trent students a direct pathway to a top-notch post-graduate education in medicine or veterinary medicine," St. George's University President Dr. G. Richard Olds said. "We're excited to welcome aspiring doctors and veterinarians from Trent to St. George's."

To qualify, Trent University students must complete the Medical Professional Stream, a four-year program designed to guide students into careers in medicine and public health.

St. George's medical students may spend their first two years studying in Grenada, or choose to complete their first year at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom as part of the Keith B. Taylor Global Scholars Program before returning to Grenada for their second year. During the third and fourth years, students will complete clinical rotations in the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada. In recent years, SGU students have completed over 300 electives in Canadian hospitals.

Veterinary students spend their first three years studying in Grenada. They then complete their final year at one of the many veterinary schools throughout the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Ireland affiliated with SGU. After sitting the North American Veterinary Licensing Exam, students can begin practicing in the United States or Canada.

St. George's new partnership with Trent is one of over 30 it maintains with institutes of higher learning in 12 different countries. This will be the fifth partnership for St. George's with a Canadian institution.

"St. George's offers a globally focused education, and our partnerships with universities like Trent support that mission," Dr. Olds said. "We look forward to helping Trent graduates realize their dreams of becoming doctors and veterinarians."

About St. George's University

St. George's University is a center of international education, drawing students and faculty from 140 countries to the island of Grenada, in the West Indies, to its programs in medicine, veterinary medicine, public health, science, social science, IT, and business. St. George's is affiliated with educational institutions worldwide, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Ireland. The University's over 17,000 graduates include physicians, veterinarians, scientists, and public health and business professionals across the world. The University programs are accredited and approved by many governing authorities and repeatedly recognized as the best in the region. For more information, visit www.sgu.edu.

Media contact:

Yael Wollstein

[email protected]

202-471-4228 ext. 118

SOURCE St. George's University

Related Links

http://www.sgu.edu


WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A new LifeWay Research study, sponsored by Chosen People Ministries and New York Times bestselling author Joel C. Rosenberg, released today reveals that the overall support of Evangelicals for Israel will drop significantly in the next decade if the younger generation is not educated now about its biblical importance.

The survey, "Evangelical Attitudes Toward Israel and the Peace Process," for which results were unveiled during a press conference today at the National Press Club in Washington, found that although more than 3 in 4 Evangelicals (76 percent) say Christians should support Israel, 4 in 10 younger Evangelicals (41 percent) have no strong views about Israel. Additionally, fewer younger Evangelicals (58 percent) have an overall positive perception of Israel than older Evangelicals (76 percent), and they are less sure Israel's rebirth in 1948 was a good thing for the Palestinians.

"In spite of growing opposition to Israel resulting from the growth of various anti-Israel movements active in the United States, it is encouraging that the survey confirms most Evangelicals continue to support the nation of Israel," said Dr. Mitch Glaser, president of Chosen People Ministries and one of the sponsors of the poll. "Still, I am concerned for the obvious decline in support for Israel among Millennial followers of Jesus, who either do not know what they believe or do not seem to care."

As the debate continues regarding a two-state vs. one-state solution for Israel and Palestine, the survey shows Evangelicals are uncertain of the answer. Forty-six percent of respondents are not sure that the State of Israel should sign a peace treaty that allows Palestinians to create their own sovereign state.

Still, according to the survey, Evangelicals care deeply about the security of the State of Israel, but they also care about the security of the Palestinian people and believe Christians should demonstrate more love and concern for Palestinians. Although 73 percent agree that Christians should support Israel's defense of itself against terrorists and foreign enemies, 59 percent agree that Christians should do more to love and care for Palestinian people. This viewpoint is even more prevalent among Millennials, ages 18-34, of which 66 percent are more likely to agree that Christians should do more to care for the Palestinians than older generations, including individuals aged 50-64 (57 percent) and 65+ (54 percent).

"I think Millennials are sending the Church a sobering message," said author Joel C. Rosenberg, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen and another sponsor of the survey. "Right now, they're not against Israel. But the survey makes it clear that many of them really don't understand Israel's place in the biblical narrative, and thus their support for Israel is nearly 20 points less than their parents and grandparents."

"Extrapolate that going forward," Rosenberg added. "Unless the Church gives younger believers a healthy, balanced, solidly biblical understanding of God's love and plan for Israel, overall Evangelical support for the Jewish State could very well plummet over the next decade as Millennials represent an ever-larger percentage of the overall Church body."

In order to help bridge the gap of understanding among Evangelicals, key faith leaders, scholars, authors and pastors today announced the formation of the Alliance for the Peace of Jerusalem, an organization dedicated to facilitating a better public understanding of the complexities of the Middle East including its roots in history and the Bible. The group will strive to educate Millennials and others about Israel's role in the biblical narrative; past, present and future while also affirming God's concern for Palestinians and all people's of the Middle East.

"If we ask why Millennials are less certain about Israel, it may be because most Middle Eastern events in their lifetime have not involved Israel as much as other areas of the Middle East, so Israel is a missing puzzle piece for them," said Darrell L. Bock, New Testament professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. "The terror attacks on 9/11 changed the Middle East equation, and young people just aren't sure where Israel is supposed to fit."

LifeWay Research conducted the "Evangelical Attitudes Toward Israel and the Peace Process" study Sept. 20-28, 2017. The survey asked 2,002 Americans with Evangelical beliefs about a wide range of issues involving Israelfrom its place in the Bible to its treatment of Palestinians. The survey focused on Americans with Evangelical beliefs rather than self-identified Evangelicals.

For the full survey results, visit http://lifewayresearch.com/2017/12/04/support-of-israel-among-younger-evangelicals/.

About LifeWay Research

LifeWay Research is a Nashville-based, evangelical research firm that specializes in surveys about faith in culture and matters that affect churches. For information, visit LifeWayResearch.com.

About Chosen People Ministries

Chosen People Ministries exists to pray for, evangelize, disciple and serve Jewish people everywhere, and to help fellow believers do the same. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in New York City, the organization serves in 18 countries across the globe. For additional information, visit ChosenPeople.org.

FOR INFORMATION, CONTACT:

A. Larry Ross 972-267-1111

Kristin Cole 615-289-6701

[email protected]

SOURCE Chosen People Ministries

Related Links

http://www.chosenpeople.com


BROWN DEER, Wis., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Traffic & Parking Control Company Co., Inc. (TAPCO), manufacturer, distributor and service provider of traffic and parking control products, announced today the opening of the new Minnesota Service Center located at 4463 White Bear Lake Parkway, Suite 105, White Bear Lake, MN 55110.

The new location allows TAPCO to better serve their growing customer base in the area, specifically within the company's parking division, while offering the same portfolio of world-class traffic and parking control products and services.

"We have seen significant growth as a company but particularly in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul and western Wisconsin area," announced Andrew Bergholz, TAPCO Co-Owner and Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "The decision to increase our presence in the area was a necessary next step for our business growth strategy. The Minnesota Service Center provides us the opportunity to expand our customer support and service departments, as well as strengthen our ability to service current and future markets."

The facility includes warehouse and office space for customer product demonstrations and training. The Minnesota Service Center is TAPCO's second brick-and-mortar location, joining company headquarters in Brown Deer, Wisconsin.



About TAPCO:

As an industry-leading innovator, TAPCO manufactures and distributes a wide portfolio of traffic and parking safety solutions designed to increase safe travels for all. Since 1956, we have set the standard for delivering reliable, cutting-edge traffic safety enhancements. From our world-renowned line of LED-enhanced BlinkerSign solutions to our pedestrian crossing products, safety is at the heart of all TAPCO innovations.

Contact: Steve Paulus

Phone: (262) 649-4459

Fax: (800) 444-0331

[email protected]

5100 Brown Deer Road

Brown Deer, WI 53223

(800) 236-0112

www.tapconet.com

SOURCE TAPCO

Related Links

https://www.tapconet.com


DALLAS, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TeamSupport, one of the industry's top B2B customer support software apps, today announced that ServiceNow's IT support management tool is natively integrated with TeamSupport. That means agents can get real-time ServiceNow updates to streamline internal communications while using TeamSupport to deliver great customer service. The integration eliminates the need to create duplicate tickets, allowing agents to track internal and external issues in TeamSupport.

The TeamSupport-ServiceNow integration is particularly helpful for companies that work with managed service providers (MSPs), or IT groups that manage provisioning. Support agents often need to closely track internal incidents that affect customer tickets, and with the integration, they can manage both issues in one system, receiving updates on incidents without having to manage separate tickets. Agents can simply click a button on the TeamSupport ticket to create and update incidents.

"We get our best ideas from our customers, and ServiceNow users let us know this integration would streamline their internal communications and make it easier for agents to track internal incidents while handling customer issues with TeamSupport," said Robert C. Johnson, CEO of TeamSupport. "Actions and comments are synced in real-time to create a comprehensive account of all activities, and by eliminating the need to create tickets in two systems, the TeamSupport-ServiceNow integration saves agents time."

The integration links ServiceNow incidents with multiple TeamSupport tickets as appropriate and agents can sync public and private actions from TeamSupport to ServiceNow as well as customize how ticket and action types sync.

"ServiceNow works great for IT service management as it relates to customer support, helpingagents who work with MSPs and IT teams manage internal communications, and TeamSupport is the best B2B customer support tool on the market," Johnson explained. "This integration brings it all together in one place, enabling agents to easily keep track of internal incidents that affect customer tickets on a single system. That will allow agents to keep their focus where it should be  on delivering a great customer experience, every time."

TeamSupport was designed from the ground up by B2B support professionals especially for organizations that provide external customer support. The TeamSupport solution offers an array of tools that make it simple for teams to work together, share information, and access their collective knowledge to solve customer challenges. TeamSupport makes it easier 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. Built by a team of veteran software company executives, TeamSupport has won many industry awards, including recently being ranked to CRM Magazine's elite list of 2014 Rising Stars recognizing the industry's most innovative and growing CRM-related software solutions. 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.

Contact: Emma Teirnon, 1-260-458-4260, [email protected]

SOURCE TeamSupport

Related Links

https://www.teamsupport.com


TEL AVIV, Israel, December 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Financial services companies usually shy away from cloud-based solutions for a variety of security and compliance reasons. The Phoenix Insurance Company Ltd., one of the largest insurance companies in Israel, decided to break that mold.

Picking TestCraft, a codeless test automation SaaS platform as its next-generation software testing platform, The Phoenix signals its desire to lead the technology forefront. This breakthrough move by The Phoenix coincides with Gartner's prediction that "By 2020, a corporate 'no-cloud' policy will be as rare as a 'no-internet' policy is today."

The Phoenix will use TestCraft to automate much of its manual software testing operations. This forward-thinking move will allow The Phoenix to develop its applications faster and better relying on modern agile development and deployment methodologies. Further automation of testing also results in safer applications, reducing risks of breaches. To clear the hurdle, TestCraft had to provide substantial security proofs and certifications, including an ISO 27001 certification.

After a detailed POC, The Phoenix reports that the implementation has been successful and it is now in the process of expanding test automation gradually to other organizational arms. The Phoenix is already showing a dramatic improvement in testing and application monitoring productivity.

"The efficiency potential of TestCraft is so promising, that we are looking now to implement TestCraft's codeless automation across a wide variety of our systems and expect to triple the efficiency of our quality operations. Chen Halio, who leads the QA team and IT innovation in our organization has proven that seeking groundbreaking innovative solutions pays off," says Shlomo Shamai, The Phoenix's Chief Information Officer.

The Phoenix has a 45-strong team of QA testers (a considerable number for a non-tech company) that until now has largely operated manually. It has built over the years a sprawling, user-facing network of websites that require constant testing, monitoring, and upgrading. The reliance on manual testing has been a burden for the insurance giant, holding back their efforts to optimize and improve their online presence.

Most of The Phoenix's QA testers come from an insurance background, not a technical one, due to the complex nature of their business. The solution they were looking for had to abide by specific requirements in regards to testers background and offer a non-technical, codeless interface with simple maintenance that is applicable to different business scenarios. On top of that, the chosen solution had to apply to the strict security standards of the insurance industry. TestCraft's platform answered all their needs.

Dror Todress, TestCraft's Co-Founder and CEO says that, "Winning The Phoenix contract is a testament to the strength of our platform and the validity of our offerings. We are looking forward to continuing our fruitful cooperation with The Phoenix. Chen Halio's team has been a source of inspiration for us as they drove us to further develop our platform."

With TestCraft's codeless test automation platform The Phoenix is looking to expedite its development process and be able to update its websites on an ongoing basis. The Phoenix has already cleared its first hurdle on the way to test automation by getting the TestCraft cloud solution approved by their strict security regulation, a breakthrough approval in the Israeli insurance industry.

About TestCraft

TestCraft is a SaaS test automation platform for regression and continuous testing, as well as functional monitoring of web applications. With TestCraft testers can visually create automated, Selenium-based tests using a drag-and-drop interface, and run them on multiple browsers and work environments, simultaneously. No coding skills required.

TestCraft allows for faster test creation, execution, and maintenance, as it creates a dynamic test model that can be easily updated to reflect changes to your app.

About The Phoenix

The Phoenix is a leading insurance company, established in 1949 in Israel. The company has extensive operations in all major insurance lines: long-term savings and life insurance, health insurance, and general insurance. In addition to its flagship insurance subsidiary, The Phoenix group owns a number of non-insurance subsidiaries including Excellence - one of the largest investment houses in Israel, and several major insurance agencies. Since its establishment, Phoenix has consistently emphasized its close customer relationship and has faithfully provided for their financial security.

SOURCE TestCraft
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Board of Directors for the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. has elected three new members to the Board: Susan Baran, CFP, Ed Moore, CFP and Martin Schamis, CFP.

"We are pleased to have these three extraordinary CFP professionals join our Board of Directors," said Richard Salmen, CFP, 2017 Chair-elect and Chair of the Nominating Committee. "Each one of these professionals has shown a dedication to the financial planning profession and serving the public. I look forward to working with them to carry out CFP Board's mission as we increase Americans' access to ethical and competent CFP professionals."

The new Board members are:

Susan Baran, CFP: An experienced non-profit executive and estate attorney, Baran serves as a Vice President and Senior Wealth Strategist at PNC Wealth Management. Previously, Baran worked for a variety of non-profit organizations as a development professional. In this capacity, she collaborated with a team of legal, tax and financial advisors to help donors make informed and prudent charitable contributions. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Planned Giving Council of Eastern Wisconsin and is a member of the planned giving committee of the Medical College of Wisconsin. She earned her BA and MS degrees from the University of Wisconsin and her JD from Marquette University School of Law. Baran earned the CFP certification in 2016.

Ed Moore, CFP: With more than three decades of financial planning experience, Moore has a profound understanding of financial planning and its benefit to the public. Moore currently serves as president at Edelman Financial Services, a firm that he helped build from a six-employee enterprise to a planning practice with 575 employees and 160 financial planners. During his career, Moore has worked to elevate financial planning into an established and recognized profession and educate the public about making wise financial decisions. He earned his BS from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research prior to earning his CFP certification in 1991.

Martin Schamis, CFP: An innovator in developing ways to integrate technology into his firms' financial planning practices, Schamis is vice president and head of wealth planning at Janney Montgomery Scott, LLC. In this position, Schamis is responsible for leading the overall strategic direction of financial planning services for the firm's retail clients. Throughout his professional career, he has led initiatives to improve and manage processes, policies and procedures to achieve business goals. He has also been affiliated with The Vanguard Group and Morgan Stanley prior to joining Janney. He earned his BA in Physics and Art from University of Delaware, his MBA in Finance from St. Joseph's University and is currently working on his PhD in Financial Planning from the American College. He earned the CFP certification in 2003.

The new Board members' four-year terms start January 1, 2018. With the three new board members elected in November, the Board will have 15 voting members. CEO Kevin R. Keller, CAE, will continue as a non-voting member, bringing the total number of Board members to 16.

ABOUT CFP BOARD

The mission of Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. is to benefit the public by granting the CFP certification and upholding it as the recognized standard of excellence for competent and ethical personal financial planning. The Board of Directors, in furthering CFP Board's mission, acts on behalf of the public, CFP professionals and other stakeholders. CFP Board owns the certification marks CFP, Certified Financial Planner, CFP (with plaque design) and CFP (with flame design) in the U.S., which it awards to individuals who successfully complete CFP Board's initial and ongoing certification requirements. CFP Board currently authorizes nearly 80,000 individuals to use these marks in the U.S.

SOURCE Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cfp.net


SAN DIEGO, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Tioga Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced today that its selective oral kappa opioid receptor agonist, asimadoline, significantly reduced nighttime itching and improved disease-related quality of life in a randomized, placebo-controlled, double blind clinical trial (RCT) of subjects with atopic dermatitis (AD).

This proof-of-concept study was performed at 25 sites across the U.S. After a one-week, placebo run-in period, subjects with moderate to severe pruritus and an established diagnosis of atopic dermatitis for at least 6 months, were randomly assigned to oral asimadoline, 2.5 mg twice daily, or identical placebo. The four-week double-blind treatment period was followed by a four-week open-label period. In both periods, subjects could increase the dosage of asimadoline from 5mg to 10 mg/day after meeting standardized criteria.

A total of 221 subjects, aged 18 to 82 years, were dosed and completed the RCT. All data analyses performed were pre-planned and specified in the Statistical Analysis Plan. The primary endpoint of safety was met, with no drug-related serious adverse events, and an excellent overall safety profile for asimadoline. Treatment-emergent adverse events, typically mild, were similar in drug and placebo groups. Safety data were reviewed on an ongoing basis by an independent Safety Review Committee. Among secondary endpoints, efficacy, measured by visual analogue (VAS) scores, recorded in electronic diaries, were significantly improved for nighttime VAS in asimadoline-treated subjects compared with placebo (p=.048). Supporting these findings were results from Skindex-10 disease domain questions, measuring the degree to which subjects are bothered by recurrent itching and their skin appearance from scratching. Asimadoline-treated subjects improved significantly compared with controls (p=.023).

"We are extremely pleased by the impact of asimadoline on nighttime itching, typically the hardest symptom to treat, and one strongly associated with poorer general health. We are especially encouraged that there were no 'hangover' effects such as daytime somnolence associated with this improvement in itching. Our principal investigators also observed a significant reduction in redness and scratch marks, as measured by the Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI), among asimadoline-treated subjects with severe pruritus, providing objective confirmation of benefit. We look forward to asimadoline's development, particularly for the control of nighttime itching and scratching in AD and other pruritic conditions," commented Eric Simpson, MD, Professor of Dermatology, Oregon Health and Sciences University and a lead investigator in the study.

About Atopic Dermatitis:

Atopic Dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that has been increasing in prevalence over the past 30 years. AD is associated with reduced cutaneous immune responses, defective skin barrier function and increased susceptibility to skin infections. Subjects with AD are especially susceptible to skin colonization and infections, scratching increases risk of infection by further compromising the skin barrier to microbes. Skin infections often result in exacerbations of AD. Pruritus is one of the most disabling and stigmatizing features of AD, and adequate treatment represents a large unmet need.

About Asimadoline

Asimadoline is a proprietary new chemical entity small molecule, originally discovered by Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany. Tioga Pharmaceuticals Inc. purchased asimadoline from Merck and acquired by assignment all worldwide rights. Asimadoline is an investigational drug that is not currently approved for use in any indication.

Asimadoline is an orally active, selective and potent kappa-opioid receptor agonist with approximately 500-fold greater affinity for human kappa, as compared with either delta- or mu-opioid receptors. Asimadoline has been evaluated in 30 clinical studies across the U.S., Europe, and Japan in over 2,000 patients with an excellent safety profile. Kappa-opioid receptors mediate the sensation of itch in animals and humans and kappaopioid agonists such as asimadoline have been shown to reduce scratching in animal models.

About Tioga (http://www.tiogapharma.com)

Tioga Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a privately-held pharmaceutical company headquartered in San Diego, CA. Tioga is funded by Forward Ventures, New Leaf Venture Partners, BB Biotech Ventures, Genesys Capital, and Thomas, McNerney & Partners.

SOURCE Tioga Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.tiogapharma.com


LAKE CITY, S.C., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Boston-based Tucker Naturals, LLC. announced today that it has initiated a letter of intent to acquire land in the Godley Morris Commerce Center, Lake City, SC, according to its investment partner Caropar Investments. Tucker Naturals plans to build and manage an industrial hemp processing and extraction facility that will support South Carolina farmers participating in the state's industrial hemp pilot research initiative.

Under SC House Bill 3559 which was signed into law by Governor Henry McMaster on May 23, 2017, it is now legal for industrial hemp to be grown for research purposes in South Carolina, in accordance with the 2014 Federal Farm Bill. The South Carolina Department of Agriculture (SCDA) is administering the application and permitting process. The legislation allows for up to 20 farmers to receive permits to grow industrial hemp. The farmers who receive permits will each be allowed to grow up to 20 acres of the crop.

After an overwhelming response by South Carolina farmers, the initial permit holders have been identified and are working with the SC Department of Agriculture to finalize the permitting process.

The Tucker Natural facility, which will be located at 800 West Main Street in Lake City, will provide consulting services to farmers, as well as processing, extraction, manufacturing and other go-to-market aspects of the initiative. In addition, Tucker Naturals has partnered with two additional companies, Massachusetts-based ProVerde Laboratories and Caropar Investments, LLC, based in Lake City, SC.

ProVerde Laboratories, Inc., an ISO 17025-2005 accredited analytical testing laboratory specializing in providing potency and safety testing for the hemp/CBD industry worldwide, is going to build a world class third party ISO 17025 testing facility in the commerce center to support the needs of the hemp farmers as they bring their products to market. Science based testing and consulting is the hallmark of the services they provided to the industry from helping states develop good testing standards, helping farmers with cultivation practices, extraction, processing and formulation methods to ensure the safety and potency of the products produced.

Caropar President William C. "Billy" Morris commented, "We have been working with Tucker Naturals for about a year now, and we have jointly hosted several hemp symposiums to educate the farmers on the administrative and growing aspects of the initiative. Tucker Naturals has been great to work with, and they bring vast expertise that will help our farmers and create a successful industry in South Carolina."

"Having ProVerde Labs locate here in South Carolina also provides a tremendous scientific resource for our farmers as we work to create this new industry in our state."

"Lake City, which was the main hub of the South Carolina tobacco industry, is an ideal location for Tucker to locate this facility. I believe Tucker Naturals will be a great asset for our state. We have also been contacted by several other industry-related and research companies interested in locating in our commerce park, which could prove to have enormous economic impact on Lake City, Florence County, and the entire Pee Dee Region."

Media Contacts:



Caropar Tucker Naturals William C. "Billy" Morris Steve Angelo 843-374-3586 (office) (843) 636-3780 843-373-1150 (mobile) [email protected] [email protected]



DISCLAIMER:This release contains certain forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as "subject to," "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "intends," "estimates," "projects," "may," "will," "should," and "can". The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forwardlooking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Related Images

image1.jpg

Tucker Naturals, LLC.

image2.png

Proverde Laboratories, Inc.

Related Links

Godley Morris Commerce Center

Tucker Naturals

SOURCE Tucker Naturals, LLC.
HONOLULU, Dec. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02) released the following statement reiterating her call for a diplomatic solution with Kim Jong Un after this morning's test of a wailing attack warning siren across the state of Hawai'i designed to alert residents and guests of an impending nuclear attack by North Korea. The warning tests will continue to be conducted on the first business day of every month.

"December 1, 2017, will forever mark a dark day for Hawai'i, for our country, and the world. Today marks the first day of a new era, in which the lives and future of the people of our state have indelibly changed, as they'll be reminded every month with nuclear warning siren tests that at any moment, we, our children, our families, and our precious 'aina will be vulnerable to a nuclear attack from North Korea  with mere minutes notice.

"I've been raising the issue of the increasing threat from North Korea ever since I came to Congress because the people of Hawai'i have long known that North Korea's continued growing capabilities put us squarely within range of their intercontinental ballistic missiles.



"It is a travesty and a total failure of leadership, by both Republican and Democrat administrations, that their short-sighted policies over the last 40 years have left the people of Hawai'i and this country, our homes and communities, and generations to come, under the dark cloud of a nuclear threat from this point forward.

"The only possible option to remove this dark cloud will come through the pursuit of serious diplomacy, and that will only be successful if two things happen. First, we must negotiate directly with North Korea and Kim Jong Un. Second, we have to understand why he is holding on so tightly to their nuclear weapons  it is because he sees them as his only deterrent from the U.S. coming in and trying to topple his regime.

"Kim Jong Un looks back to the U.S.' track record, and how we overthrew Saddam Hussein in Iraq because of false intelligence that he had weapons of mass destruction. He sees how even after Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was promised by the U.S. that if he gave up nuclear weapons we wouldn't go after him, we went after him anyway and took him out. He looks at what we have been and are still doing in Syria, trying to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad. He sees how the Trump administration and some in Congress are increasing their rhetoric to go after Iran and overthrow their government.

"In order for serious negotiations to have a chance, our country must actually end our regime change war policies. This is necessary for North Korea to see that we are serious when we say we are not interested in toppling their regime, and that we are serious about achieving peace, stability, and prosperity in a denuclearized Korean Peninsula."

Background:

Tulsi Gabbard has served as the U.S. Representative for Hawaii's Second Congressional District since 2013. She is a Major in the Hawaii Army National Guard and has served on two Middle East deployments. She is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

More Updates from Tulsi Gabbard can be found here:

https://www.votetulsi.com/tulsi-gabbard

https://twitter.com/tulsigabbard

https://www.facebook.com/VoteTulsi

https://medium.com/@TulsiGabbard

https://www.youtube.com/user/VoteTulsi



Media Contact:

Erika Tsuji

(808) 861-0793

[email protected]

Related Links

Tulsi Gabbard on DNC

Makers Video

SOURCE Tulsi Gabbard

Related Links

https://www.votetulsi.com/tulsi-gabbard


DALLAS, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Trial law firm Hamilton Wingo welcomes attorney Fabiola Segovia, a member of the inaugural graduating class of UNT Dallas College of Law, to the Dallas firm.

Born and raised in Arlington, Texas, Ms. Segovia joins the firm to practice civil litigation in wrongful death and personal injury cases.

"Fabiola has all the qualities to be a great advocate for clients," said Managing Partner Chris Hamilton. "She is passionate about finding the right solutions for people involved in legal disputes. We take pride in finding homegrown talent that shares the same passion for justice as every other member of our firm."

During law school, Ms. Segovia served as a judicial intern for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the 68th Judicial District Court in Dallas County and Probate Court No.1 in Dallas County. She also worked with U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorneys. Ms. Segovia, a native Spanish speaker, is a former board member of UNT Dallas Law Review's multimedia journal Accessible Law where she produced articles for the Spanish speaking community. She was also a Teaching Fellow for the Legal Writing Department at UNT Dallas College of Law.

Ms. Segovia realized her passion for fighting for people's rights while earning her undergraduate degree from the University of North Texas and working for law firms to pay her way through college. The desire to help others with their legal issues led to a career in the legal industry and eventually to Hamilton Wingo.

"Hamilton Wingo consists of attorneys with their own unique legal expertise," said Ms. Segovia. "Each lawyer has a wealth of trial experience and each fights for what they believe in  from their daily activities for the firm to their pro bono work. I am honored to learn from them; I feel at home."

The trial lawyers at Hamilton Wingo, LLP, are devoted to representing people in high-stakes, complex litigation, on a contingent fee basis. They have obtained more than $100 million in verdicts and settlements for their clients. For more information, visit hamiltonwingo.com.

Media Contact

Sophia Reza

800-559-4534

[email protected]

SOURCE Hamilton Wingo, LLP

Related Links

http://hamiltonwingo.com


The space assets of Deimos Imaging and Space View include Deimos-1, Deimos-2 and the satellite SuperView constellation, of which currently 2 satellites have been launched, with the next two to be launched at the end of 2017, resulting in a wide portfolio of medium, high and very high-resolution satellites. These assets are complementary and are expected to provide customers with an exceptional level of decision making data, and to create unique and valuable benefits across a diverse group of sectors while strengthening the positions of both companies in their respective markets.

This collaboration will ensure a daily global imaging capability, with multiple revisit opportunities per day over any target. This is key for a wide range of applications, especially those requiring a frequent monitoring over the same area of interest and a real-time response, such as emergency services, border and maritime surveillance and defence and security.

"We are very excited about the strategic cooperation with UrtheCast to expand our international reach, and for new users to explore the potential of our large multi resolution constellation," said Lily Xu, CEO of Space View. "Together with Urthecast's Earth Observation company, Deimos Imaging, I fully believe our combined experience, history and future strategic ambitions align to support both our upcoming constellations."

"We are delighted to join Space View in a collaboration that, we believe, can significantly accelerate strategic decision making for a wide range of end users," said Fabrizio Pirondini, CEO at Deimos Imaging. "This agreement confirms the importance of partnerships and alliances with other stakeholders to provide our customers with fast, ready to use solutions tailored to their needs. Focusing our greatly expanded scale of Earth Observation imagery data on our customers' needs, will rapidly expand the potential to create unique value-added products for our clients."

About Beijing Space View Technology Co., Ltd Located in Beijing, Space View is a leading provider of Earth Observation satellite data and geospatial information services in China. The company business covers optical and SAR satellite imagery, data processing, value-added products, solutions, software and GIS platform. As the operator of SuperView constellation from space to ground, not only does Space View manage the imaging services, but also promotes construction of direct-receiving and virtual stations around the World. SuperView constellation is named as "16+4+4+X" constellation, consisting of 16 0.5m PAN & 2m MS resolution satellites, 4 higher-performed optical satellites, 4 VHR SAR satellites and a fleet of video & hyper-spectral satellites. Space View is also the authorized global distributor of Chinese satellite data collected by GF, ZY and HJ satellites.

About UrtheCast

UrtheCast Corp. is a Vancouver-based technology company that serves the rapidly evolving geospatial and geoanalytics markets with a wide range of information-rich products and services. The Company operates Earth Observation (EO) sensors in space, through its subsidiary Deimos Imaging, including two satellites, Deimos-1 and Deimos-2, to produce imagery data for partners and customers in multiple markets. UrtheCast processes and distributes imagery data and value-added products on behalf of the PanGeo Alliance, a network of seven satellite operators with a combined 13 medium- and high-resolution EO sensors. Additionally, UrtheCast is developing and expects to launch the world's first fully-integrated constellation of sixteen multispectral optical and SAR satellites, called OptiSAR, and a satellite constellation designed to capture high-quality, medium- resolution optical imagery of the Earth's entire landmass (excluding Antarctica) every day, called UrtheDaily. Common shares of UrtheCast trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange as ticker "UR".

For more information, visit UrtheCast's website at www.urthecast.com.

Forward Looking Information

This release may contain certain "forward-looking statements" and certain "forward-looking information" as defined under applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements and information can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "will", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "plans" or similar terminology. Within this release forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements with respect to UrtheCast's future plans, strategies and objectives, timing of milestones, including in respect of the planned OptiSAR and UrtheDaily satellite constellations; the potential precursor program to the OptiSAR Constellation; Space View's plans; projected revenues, future trends, opportunities and growth in UrtheCast's industry; UrtheCast's ability to maintain and enhance its competitive advantages within its industry and in certain markets; new product functionality and suitability; projected operating expenses and capital expenditures. Forward-looking statements and information are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the ability of the Company to control or predict, that may cause the Company's actual results, performance, timing, milestones or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied thereby, and are developed based on assumptions about such risks, uncertainties and other factors set out herein, including, without limitation, any delays or failures in the design, development, construction, launch and operational commissioning of the proposed UrtheDaily and OptiSAR constellations and Space View satellites; the Company being unable to adequately finance the development, building, launch and commission of the UrtheDaily and OptiSAR constellations, uncertainty on whether any unused capacity from the precursor SAR satellite will be available to UrtheCast; interruptions to or failures of UrtheCast's or Space View's infrastructure; legal and regulatory changes or the prevention of the export of certain technologies related to the OptiSAR Constellation by government regulators with jurisdiction over UrtheCast; the ability of UrtheCast to obtain qualified employees, contractors and subcontractors, as well as those factors and assumptions discussed in UrtheCast's annual information form dated March 27, 2017, (the "AIF"), which is available under UrtheCast's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information is developed based on assumptions about such risks, uncertainties and other factors set out herein, in the AIF, and as disclosed from time to time on UrtheCast's SEDAR profile. UrtheCast undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by Canadian securities laws. Readers are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information except as required by applicable law. Such forward-looking information represents management's best judgment based on information currently available. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed and actual future results may vary materially. Accordingly, readers are advised not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information.

SOURCE UrtheCast Corp.

Related Links

www.urthecast.com


CLEVELAND, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- US demand for renewable energy is forecast to reach 12.6 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2021, according to Renewable Energy: United States, a report recently released by Freedonia Focus Reports. Demand for solar energy is forecast to rise 20% per year, the fastest among the resource segments. Government incentives and renewable portfolio mandates will propel rapid expansion in solar energy production capacity and demand. In addition, falling component prices and suppliers' improving installation experience are deflating project costs.

More information about the report is available at https://www.freedoniafocusreports.com/Renewable-Energy-United-States-FF45041/

Demand for wind energy is forecast to expand 7.2%, the second fastest among resource segments. Heavy investment in the segment  spurred by government incentives and technology developments  will continue to drive the expansion of wind energy capacity for electricity generation.

These and other key insights are featured in Renewable Energy: United States. This report forecasts US renewable energy demand and production in Btu to 2021. Total demand is segmented by resource in terms of:

wood and waste biomass

hydropower

biofuels

wind

solar

geothermal

Total demand is also segmented by market as follows:

electric power

industrial

transport

residential

commercial

To illustrate historical trends, total demand, production, and the various segments are provided in annual series from 2006 to 2016.

About Freedonia Focus Reports

Each month, The Freedonia Group  a division of MarketResearch.com  publishes over 20 new or updated Freedonia Focus Reports, providing fresh, unbiased analysis on a wide variety of markets and industries. Published in 20-30 pages, Focus Report coverage ranges from raw materials to finished manufactured goods and related services such as freight and construction. Additional Energy and Resources reports can be purchased at Freedonia Focus Reports or MarketResearch.com.

Analysis is intended to guide the busy reader through pertinent topics in rapid succession, including:

total historical market size and industry output

segmentation by products and markets

identification of market drivers, constraints, and key indicators

segment-by-segment outlook in five-year forecasts

a survey of the supply base

suggested resources for further study

Press Contact:

Corinne Gangloff

+1 440.684.9600

[email protected]

SOURCE The Freedonia Group

Related Links

https://www.freedoniagroup.com


LOS ANGELES, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- This month the Moustache Coffee Club debuted an artificial intelligence program that recommends specific coffees to its members based on their taste. The A.I. evaluates coffee based on attributes like flavor notes, production methods, and area of origin before selecting and shipping subscribers a coffee that best fits each subscriber's individual preferences.

Moustache Coffee Club: Premium Single Origin Coffee by Subscription

The Moustache Coffee Club's new A.I. continually learns subscribers' taste in coffees to provide an ever-increasing level of personalized service. After each delivery, the program adjusts subscribers' taste profile based on their reactions to the coffee they received. It uses this profile to make a new selection for the subscriber's next shipment of coffee, automatically refining selections to reflect the subscriber's preferences.

The artificial intelligence system was introduced in conjunction with the Moustache Coffee Club's new Classic Profiles: a series of coffees that emphasize smoother, chocolatey flavors and lower acidity. Speaking about the new features, Moustache Coffee Club founder Sean Reilly described a high-tech solution to the expanding world of specialty coffee: "Specialty coffee covers a wide range of flavors, and many people have trouble knowing which ones they're going to enjoy ahead of time" Reilly said. "Since we added even more options to the subscription, we needed a way to help our subscribers get the most out of their membership. The A.I. plugs right into our existing process, and helps tailor our deliveries to each customer. The goal is great coffee, every time"

About Moustache Coffee Club:

In 2013, Sean Reilly founded the Moustache Coffee Club by combining the lower overhead of a direct-to-consumer, e-commerce model with discriminating raw coffee bean selection and a data-driven/craft-guided roasting process. Today, Moustache Coffee Club delivers fresh, premium coffee to a growing club of thousands of subscribers world-wide.

Contact:

310-895-1254

[email protected]

Press Kit:

https://www.moustachecoffeeclub.com/media-and-pr

SOURCE Moustache Coffee Club
As one of Fortune's Fastest Growing Companies , Walker & Dunlop continues to expand across the United States and is dedicated to increasing the presence of its Capital Markets platform. The acquisitions of certain assets from George Elkins Mortgage Banking Company in November 2016 and Deerwood Capital in February 2017, as well as strategic new hires like Gregory Krafcik, have contributed to a significant increase in the Company's brokered loan originations. In the first three quarters of 2017, the Capital Markets team closed a record $5 billion in total brokered volume, up 22 percent from the full-year 2016 figure.

Walker & Dunlop Senior Vice President & Chief Production Officer for the Eastern Region of the Capital Markets group, Bill Wein, remarked, "We are thrilled to welcome Greg to Walker & Dunlop's Capital Markets team. He brings extensive knowledge, strong customer relationships, and vast experience from working in the Southeast commercial real estate market for over a decade. With his addition, we look to continue the growth and success of our Capital Markets platform, which has had outstanding performance this year."

Mr. Krafcik has over 12 years of experience in the commercial real estate industry and has completed over $4 billion in loan originations utilizing life insurance, CMBS, and Agency capital sources. Prior to joining Walker & Dunlop, Mr. Krafcik served as managing director at Greystone & Co. where he was head of CMBS originations for the Southeast. Before Greystone & Co., Mr. Krafcik served as a director at Prudential Mortgage Capital Company (PMCC) where he was head of originations for the Southeast.

About Walker & Dunlop

Walker & Dunlop (NYSE: WD), headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, is one of the largest commercial real estate services and finance companies in the United States providing financing and investment sales to owners of multifamily and commercial properties. Walker & Dunlop, which is included in the S&P SmallCap 600 Index, has over 600 professionals in 28 offices across the nation with an unyielding commitment to client satisfaction.

SOURCE Walker & Dunlop, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.walkerdunlop.com


COLUMBUS, Ohio, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- White Castle, America's first fast-food hamburger chain, invites its customers to stop by their local participating White Castle restaurant for the beloved Lunch with Santa event. Santa Claus will be at select White Castle locations from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, December 10. Contact your local White Castle for additional details and information regarding restaurant participation.

This is the sixth consecutive year White Castle welcomes Santa to its restaurants to provide families a free, fun, casual way to celebrate this special time of the year.

"We hear great stories from our Cravers about their families sharing Sliders and memories at White Castle, and there is no better time to create new memories with family than the holidays," said Jamie Richardson, Vice President at White Castle. "We know the holidays can be a busy and expensive time for everyone. We are excited to offer this deal and to host every family to make sure every child has a chance to meet Santa. It's an early present for everyone."

In addition to meeting Santa Claus, families will also receive a gift to satisfy everyone's Crave at participating locations  Free My Size Meals for little Cravers when they visit Santa, limit four children per adult. Visiting Cravers will have the choice of:

The Original Slider, Cheese Slider, Savory Grilled Chicken Slider or 3 pc. Chicken Rings

A side of Motts  Applesauce or kids size French fries

Applesauce or kids size French fries A Motts 100-percent Apple Juice Box, milk or a kids size soft drink

No reservations are required. Families are encouraged to bring cameras to capture every memorable moment with Santa Claus.

Contact your local White Castle restaurant for participation and additional details.

About White Castle

White Castle, America's first fast-food hamburger chain based in Columbus, Ohio, has been making Bold Moves as a family-owned business for more than 96 years. Cravers on-the-go can access sweet deals and place a pick-up order any time in the official White Castle app (iTunes App Store or Google Play) or in the frozen aisle at a grocery store near you. www.whitecastle.com

SOURCE White Castle

Related Links

http://www.whitecastle.com


IWATA, Japan, Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

- Autonomous 2- and 4-wheelers, Robotic Rider, Drone and Unmanned Helicopter -

Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (Tokyo:7272) announced on December 4 that it will exhibit a wide-ranging lineup of five models at the CES 2018 tradeshow in Las Vegas, U.S.A., including autonomous-drive 2- and 4-wheelers, a motorcycle-riding robot, and a drone and an unmanned helicopter, both for industrial use. CES 2018, the world's largest consumer electronics tradeshow, will take place from January 9 to 12, 2018. This will be Yamaha Motor's first appearance in the show.

(Image: Rendering of Yamaha Motor Booth at CES 2018

http://prw.kyodonews.jp/img/201711308516-O1-tP8aK3MA)

(Photo: http://prw.kyodonews.jp/opn/release/201711308516/?images)

The MOTOROiD motorcycle incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) to assess its rider's biometrics, movements, etc. and then drive the person autonomously (at low speed), which attracted much attention at the recent Tokyo Motor Show. The MOTOBOT Ver.2 is a robot that can actually drive a basically stock motorcycle autonomously using the very latest motorcycle and robotics technologies. The Public Personal Mobility is a multi-passenger four-wheel last-mile "mobility system" designed for autonomous-driving services. Rounding out the lineup are the YMR-01 prototype industrial drone and the new FAZER R industrial unmanned helicopter, both equipped with advanced technologies for enhanced operational efficiency and accuracy.

The Yamaha Motor booth, under its theme "Expanding the possibilities of mobility with advanced technology," will showcase the exciting results of Yamaha Motor's research and development through demonstrations of control, autonomous-driving and AI technologies. In addition, Yamaha Motor hopes to meet new partners during the tradeshow and explore opportunities for collaboration in technological innovation and new business development.

Yamaha Motor Participation in CES 2018

- Period: Tuesday, January 9, to Friday, January 12, 2018

- Venue: Sands Expo and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A

- Booth: South Hall 2 (size: 225 sq. m)

Yamaha Motor's Exhibit Lineup at CES 2018

MOTOROiD

- Motorcycle using AI to sense rider characteristics for autonomous driving - Offering an all-new Kando* experience, this proof-of-concept model employs artificial intelligence in a new form of personal mobility that functions harmoniously with the rider. MOTOROiD senses its rider's biometrics, movements, etc. to interact with the person like another living creature as it transports the rider autonomously at low speed. By undertaking challenges such as MOTOROiD, Yamaha is developing advanced technologies that will translate someday into all-new value for customers.

*Deep satisfaction and intense excitement experienced when encountering exceptional value

MOTOBOT Ver.2

- Autonomous motorcycle-riding robot -

This autonomous motorcycle-riding robot combines the latest in motorcycle and robotics technologies based on unprecedented research and development. Operating like a rider without any fundamental modification to the motorcycle, MOTOBOT can ride around a racetrack at high speed. The next goal is to safely exceed 200 kilometers per hour and then challenge MotoGP star Valentino Rossi to a battle of lap times. The underlying technologies and knowledge gained with MOTOBOT are expected to yield new value in Yamaha Motor's existing businesses and pioneering new businesses as well.

06GEN Automated Public Personal Mobility

- Last-mile multi-person autonomous mobility system -

Envisaged for use in an environment shared with pedestrians covering a few kilometers, the 06GEN is a new-generation last-mile mobility system that provides safe, comfortable and convenient on-demand low-speed mobility autonomously. Designed to invigorate personal mobility in towns, resorts, etc., the 06GEN uses road image-recognition technology integrated with a cloud-based server. Low-cost and highly scalable, it is expected to be incorporated in Mobility as a Service (MaaS) initiatives using web application programming interfaces (APIs).

YMR-01

- Industrial drone with coaxial rotors for efficient spraying -

Combining coaxial rotor technology with the latest weight-reduction technology, the YMR-01 offers high spraying performance, ease of use and reliability to meet the demanding requirements of today's farmers. Two of its six rotor axes (on the left and right) use vertical coaxial rotors for a total of eight rotors to create ideal downward air currents regardless of travel direction. Spraying nozzles placed near these coaxial axes achieve consistent agrochemical application down to crop roots.

FAZER R

- Industrial unmanned helicopter for highly precise spraying -

In addition to offering all the features of existing unmanned helicopters, the FAZER R high-end industrial-use unmanned helicopter boasts "Turn Assistance." The new technology realizes improved controllability and spraying performance by turning to maintain fixed spacing for spraying, holding evenly spaced flying paths, and maintaining flying speed. Operated simply by turning the spraying switch on or off, this new function achieves improved spraying accuracy without relying on the operator's flying skill.

SOURCE Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.
BURLINGAME, Calif., Dec. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Proterra, the leading innovator in heavy-duty electric transportation, announced that Yosemite National Park will add two Proterra Catalyst buses to its fleet. Situated in California's iconic Sierra Nevada Mountains, Yosemite represents the first U.S. National Park to permanently add zero-emission buses to its shuttle fleet, offering its visitors a modern, ecologically-friendly transportation option.

Last year, the National Park Service (NPS) recorded 331 million visits. This August alone, the parks attracted 40 million people nationwide with 609,676 visitors at Yosemite. With millions of visitors coming to Yosemite each year from around the world, Yosemite has relied heavily on their shuttle program to encourage park visitors to park once and use a bus to circulate among lodges, waterfalls and trailheads.

With more than five million visitors each year, Yosemite has seen its free shuttle service travel annually 436,000 miles with 3.8 million boardings. In 2001, the park began replacing its diesel bus fleet with diesel-electric hybrid vehicles. Yosemite is now taking the next steps toward a state-of-the-art clean transportation system with the adoption of Proterra zero-emission, battery-electric buses. The new Catalyst buses are expected annually to reduce 887,000 lbs. of greenhouse gas emissions and save approximately $150,500 on maintenance and operating costs. They will begin service in late 2018 and will operate year-round, transporting up to 1,480 visitors per day through the park's Yosemite Valley.

"Our mission has always been to preserve our nation's natural and cultural heritage for future generations, and Proterra's zero-emission vehicle technology will be indispensable as we continue to work toward this goal," said Chip Jenkins, acting superintendent, Yosemite National Park. "Since its establishment in 1890, airborne pollutants have steadily degraded Yosemite's resources. Deploying Proterra's battery-electric buses will help with this ongoing challenge and will greatly improve local air quality."

In addition, the U.S. General Services Administration has committed to greening the federal fleet, including our National Parks, working with businesses to make cleaner, quieter transportation readily available and affordable to partner agencies. Citing Proterra for its innovative technologies and best practices, the GSA added the Proterra Catalyst to federal fleet acquisition options.

"Yosemite was the first wildland protected in the United States, by President Abraham Lincoln, over 150 years ago. Of Yosemite, John Muir once said, 'It is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter,'" said Ryan Popple, CEO of Proterra. "The Proterra team is especially proud to directly contribute to the preservation of Yosemite National Park. We believe that upholding the environmental integrity of our nation's most precious resources is of paramount importance, and we are honored to partner with the National Park Service to provide clean, quiet transportation to the millions of visitors who love to visit our National Parks."

About Proterra

Proterra is a leader in the design and manufacture of zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles, enabling bus fleet operators to significantly reduce operating costs while delivering clean, quiet transportation to local communities across the United States. With more than 490 vehicles sold to 61 different municipal, university, airport and commercial transit agencies in 29 states, Proterra is committed to providing state of the art, high performance vehicles to meet today's growing market demand. The company's configurable Catalyst platform is capable of serving the full daily mileage needs of nearly every U.S. transit route on a single charge. With unmatched durability and energy efficiency based on rigorous U.S. certification testing, Proterra products are proudly designed, engineered and manufactured in America, with offices in Silicon Valley, South Carolina, and Los Angeles. For more information, visit: http://www.proterra.com and follow us on Twitter @Proterra_Inc.

SOURCE Proterra

Related Links

http://www.proterra.com


Dark Horse an equestrian-inspired vineyard, with a luxe cellar door along with a well regarded wine brand, has been listed for sale at Lovedale.

The 25 acre Hunter Valley wine country offering is an award-winning boutique vineyard with around 7.5 acres under vine with Semillon and Chardonnay, which were first planted in the 1960's.

The wines are small batch and hand-picked.

An American-style barn - the Dark Horse cellar door - comes set behind the estate's Wilderness Road sandstone gates amid post and rail fencing.

Vendors Martin and Olivia Pukanic combined their love for wine and horses since their 2014 purchase.

James Halliday had included the property in 2011 as one of his top ten "darkhorse wineries" under its previous name Noonji Estate when owned by Drew Gibson.

The couple had plans for barnstyle accomodation with private pools. The low-yielding and high quality grapes that produce arounds 1300 bottles a year is being sold on a walk in walk out basis by Cain Beckett at Jurds. The price guidance is $1.5 million to $1.6 million.

There are tax advantages to owning a winery with recent changes likely to give smaller local operators a competitive boost against larger wine producers.

Last year the total vineyard area in Australia was tallied at over 135,000 hectares. Shiraz totalled 30 percent, while Chardonnay was the largest white with 16 percent.

The total winegrape crush was 1.8 million tonnes, of which South Australian regions accounted just over 50 percent.
The Rocksia Hotel in the Sydney inner west Sydney has been sold for $36 million.

It sold after less than two weeks on the market with Feros Hotels selling the property to Oscars Hotels, which is led by brothers Bill and Mario Gravanis.

The hotel at 299 Princes Highway in Arncliffe sold on just less than 8% yield.

The former car showroom and sale yard was converted into hotel 10 years ago after the 4218 square metre site was bought for $5.6 million by Nick and Chris Feros with long-time business partner Bob Richards.

More than $900 million in pub transactions have occurred across NSW in the past 18 months.
Thomas Foods International has bought the South Australian sheep and cattle station, Mt Schanck for more than $50 million.

The Evans family, whose patriarch is former AFL chairman Ron Evans, sold the 2870 hectare property set south of Mount Gambier.

The deal was negotiated by CBRE a week before its expression of interest campaign was set to close. The ABC reported in 2016 that Thomas Foods was a South Australian-based company that had emerged to become the largest family-owned processor in the country, the third-biggest processor in the country behind corporate giants JBS and Teys Australia. Ron Evans and his wife Andrea purchased Mt Schanck off-market from the Clarke family in 2002, according to Fairfax Media. The Clarke family owned Mt Schanck for more than 140 years, having purchased it in 1861 from the Arthur brothers of Van Diemen's Land.

It includes an 1860s four-bedroom homestead and an 1870s six-stand shearing shed.

It came with close to 5000 megalitres of water entitlements.

The Adelaide-based Thomas Foods has annual revenue of more than $1 billion.
Proposed poultry standards leave Australia trailing behind other industrialised countries

Clive Phillips, The University of Queensland

Battery cages will not be phased out of Australias chicken farms, according to a draft of industry guidelines released this week.

The proposed Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Poultry, currently open for public consultation, will if approved form the basis of federal and state legislation on poultry welfare.

A supporting paper to the standards argues that extra cage space does not guarantee better welfare for hens. Further, it claims that battery cages allow better inspection and more efficient management of the birds, the biosecurity risks and the environmental impact.

Read more: How to know what youre getting when you buy free-range eggs

But continuing battery farming flies in the face of a global trend, as both countries and consumers turn against small cages.

Why do we battery farm?

In the latter half of the last century, a system of restraining laying hens in rows of small cages (like the cells in a battery), with up to five in each, became popular as a means of maintaining good health and high productivity in large numbers of birds.

This was introduced to meet a growing demand for national self-sufficiency in food production after two world wars which threatened, and at times delivered, widespread famine. Now the world has moved on and global trade is flourishing, but the battery cage remains.

Read more: What comes first: the free-range chicken or the free-range egg?

It was not long before the poor welfare of birds in these battery cages became a concern for consumers. In 1964, Ruth Harrisons Animal Machines described the restriction on birds behaviour; their inability to forage for food, flap their wings, preen and dust-bathe; and the strange, injurious plucking of other birds feathers that is so common in these small spaces.

Scientists then proved that birds had a strong motivation to perform many of the behaviours that were rendered impossible in the cages, such as laying eggs in a nest. They also found that birds in small cages are more fearful than those in more spacious accommodation.

Research has also shown that hen dont adapt to the cages, because the longer they are confined the more they compensate by flapping and stretching when released.

Moving away from battery farming

In 1999 the European Union announced a ban on battery cages from 2012, 20 years after Switzerland became the first country in the world to phase them out. New Zealand and Canada are now in their phase-out period, ending all battery cage egg production in 2022 and 2032, respectively.

In the United States, a state-by-state ban has been progressing, often stimulated by the requirements of retail outlets. So far three states, California, Michigan and Ohio, have taken action to end the production of eggs in battery cages. Several major retailers have now committed to cage-free eggs.

While Australias draft standards conclude that birds in battery cages have an acceptable level of welfare, many Australians dont agree. The proportion of caged eggs sold in supermarkets has fallen from 75% to 49% over the past decade.

Read more: Double standards in animal ethics: why is a lab mouse better protected than a cow?

The supermarket chains recognise their customers concerns and are phasing out eggs from battery cages: Coles from their own brand from 2013, and Woolworths and Aldi applying the ban to all eggs from 2025.

The European Union has developed and supported furnished cages, which are much larger than previous cages and specifically provide necessary enrichment items such as perches, nests, and litter for pecking and scratching.

The Australian standards argue that these are only required for the birds mental state, not their biological functioning. This view implies that a hens mental suffering is unconnected to its welfare, a claim that has been steadily eroding in the face of research into animal consciousness.

For example, my research group recently discovered that hens vocalisations are more informative to other hens than thought possible, demonstrating their capacity for rich communication.

To deny the significance of an animals mental state is to deny the premise of animal welfare at all. Without this consideration, animals would basically have the same rights as plants.

Read more: We have animal welfare laws but they dont stop the suffering

Despite this, the proposed standards accompanying paper relies on narrowly restricted studies, such as a report from industry body Australian Egg that claims there are no difference in the stress levels of birds in battery cages, barns and free-range farms.

Only 12 flocks in total were studied. The stress hormone cortisol was used as the basis of comparison between farm types, even though little enters the egg and confounding variables are likely to affect cortisol levels.

These limitations are why much animal science today looks at welfare in terms of behaviour, disease and lifetime measures as well as biological markers.

Its disappointing to see Australias welfare standards trail behind much of the world and the clearly expressed attitude of many Australians. With the standards open for consultation until February 26, it is to be hoped that consumer advocate groups, researchers and members of the public register their concern.

The public consultation period runs until February 26.

Clive Phillips, Professor of Animal Welfare, Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics, The University of Queensland

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The Sydney and Melbourne property boom is fading thanks to APRAs tightening measures (higher rates for investors and interest only borrowers, etc), rising supply and weakening expectations.

Sydney auction clearance rates have already fallen into the mid-50s a level that points to price declines on an annual basis on the back of the experience in 2008 and 2012. (This didnt happen in 2016 because the auction slowdown then was too brief.)

Source: CoreLogic, AMP Capital

Our view remains that average residential property prices in Sydney and, with a lag, Melbourne will fall 5-10% into 2019. Perth is bottoming and should start to see moderate price gains by 2019, with Darwin following too.

Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra are likely to see continuing moderate gains over the next few years with some acceleration possible and Hobart will remain strong.

Source: Domain, CoreLogic, AMP Capital

However, for those worried about what will keep the economy growing after the Sydney and Melbourne property boom ends there was good news over the last week.

First, after years of disappointment the business investment cycle in Australia is finally on the mend. Not only did investment rise in the September quarter (providing a boost to September quarter GDP growth) but investment plans for the current financial year are up on those made a year ago for the first time since 2012-13 (see the next chart). While business investment intentions point to a further 20% of so fall in mining investment its now close to where it was as a share of the economy before the mining boom started and its drag on growth has collapsed to around 0.4% from around 1-1.5% a few years ago. More significantly non-mining investment plans point to a gain of around 12% this financial year with even the manufacturing sector looking to boost investment. The diminishing drag from falling mining investment and the improving outlook for non-mining investment (along with ongoing strength in export volumes and public infrastructure spending) has come just in time to offset the downturn in the housing cycle and the weak consumer.

Second, manufacturing conditions PMIs from both the AIG and CBA surveys were strong in November adding to evidence that manufacturing is doing well.

Finally, while building approvals are down from their 2015-16 highs they remain strong suggesting a slowing in housing construction but not a collapse (at least for now).

SHANE OLIVER is head of investment strategy and economics and chief economist at AMP Capital and is responsible for AMP Capital's diversified investment funds.
The Bank of Queensland chairman Roger Davis has indicated he remained wary about the Brisbane apartment market.

Speaking at the banks annual general meeting on Thursday, Davis said cooling markets on the east coast of Australia were being watched closely.

BOQ takes some comfort from moderating east coast housing prices and risk conditions, especially in Sydney, and sees no evidence of any systemic weakness in its housing portfolio or substantive increases in its mortgage arrears, Davis said.

We do remain wary of conditions in the residential apartment market, especially in Brisbane, where the RBA is warning that this financial year is crunch time given the oversupply, low rental increases, tightening credit conditions and ongoing targeted macroprudential regulations, Domain Media reported.

REIQ chief executive Antonia Mercorella said the banks warning to shareholders was fair, but said the medium to long term outlook was much more positive.

Weve been dealing with concerns about the oversupply for the past two years, she said.

Theres really no evidence at the moment theres a great cause for alarm. From our perspective, its better to take a long term view of the issue."
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Monday, December 4, 2017

A stayed six-month suspension is summarized on the web page of the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers.

After his 2004 Connecticut admission

In July 2004, the respondent took the Massachusetts bar examination and in November 2004, he was notified by the BBE that he had passed the examination.

He failed to disclose a alcohol-related driving arrest that occurred in Mashpee prior to his swearing in to Massachusetts.

Then

In December 2011, the respondent applied for admission to the Supreme Court of New York and as a result from an inquiry of the New York admissions office, disclosed the Mashpee arrest. On July 9, 2012, the respondent self-reported the above described Mashpee arrest and conviction in writing to the BBE and the Board of Bar Overseers and on July 12, 2012, the BBE referred the matter to bar counsel.

At some point, the respondent applied for admission to the New Jersey bar, disclosing the Mashpee arrest and the conviction and a lengthy and exhaustive vetting process ensued. The proceedings disclosed a long history of legal difficulties involving alcohol when the respondent was young. On March 12, 2014, a New Jersey panel on character and fitness recommended admission, subject to four enumerated conditions. The recommended conditions were then appealed in part by the respondent. On December 7, 2016 the Supreme Court of New Jersey adopted the recommendations of the panel and certified the respondent for admission, subject to conditions to be in effect for two years including abstinence, attendance at one AA or LCL meeting per month, continuing treatment with a therapist and a requirement that he not engage in solo practice without associating with experienced counsel.

Agreed sanction

The parties also agreed that the respondent be suspended for six months, with the suspension stayed for two years, subject to the conditions for admission imposed by the New Jersey Supreme Court.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/12/a-stayed-six-month-suspension-is-summarized-by-the-massachusetts-supreme-judicial-court.html
Content distributor JKN Global Media has begun trading on the main stock market of the Stock Exchange of Thailand, after raising funds in an initial public offering (IPO).





The company, which produces and distributes content from CNBC among other providers, plans to operate CNBC Thailands television channel if it receives a positive response from investors. JKN is also licensed by NBC of the US to produce CNBC-branded content, edit, translate and dub in Thai internationally produced CNBC-branded content.Jakkaphong Jakrajutatip, chief executive officer of JKN, has announced the company registered its shares on the mai at the end of November, after the public sale offering of 140 million IPO shares with par value of 0.50 bhat and subscription price of 8 baht per share a week earlier.In the nine months to September 2017, JKN had total revenues of 873.6 million baht, a 47.25% increase on the same period of 2016. Content sales accounted for 95.24% of the total revenue from January to September 2017. Net profit during this period amounted to 176.11 million baht, an increase of 39.96 million baht on the same period a year earlier.In the second quarter of 2017, JKN sold CNBC branded content to digital TV broadcasters including Channel 3 and Bright TV.We are confident in CNBC branded content production plans which are to expand its content distribution business and television business. This will drive JKN to be the leader in distributing and internationally importing global contents in order to distribute in Thailand and the CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam) country group, as well as being the manufacturer and holder of quality contents for sale and distribution through both domestic and international channels, said JKNs Jakkaphong Jakrajutatip.
Israel fired missiles at a base near Damascus, Syria, over the weekend. According to Syrian news agency SANA, two Israeli missiles were shot down. Arab media reported that the target was an Iranian military base. After the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel would not tolerate Iranian forces in Syria. Israel previously had chosen not to conduct airstrikes on this reported Iranian base as it had done against other targets  mostly Hezbollah weapons convoys  in Syria. Israel obviously knew this site was well protected, proven by the fact that it had anti-missile capabilities.

Israel has had very limited involvement in Syria. In fact, it has had limited involvement in much of the upheaval that has been sweeping the Middle East. Given Netanyahus statement and the substantial public coverage of this airstrike, it would seem that the Israelis are on the threshold of changing this policy. And in changing the policy, Israel is adding to the complexity of a rapidly changing Middle East.

Irans Rising Power

Last week, I wrote about the fact that since the defeat of the Islamic State, Iran has emerged as a major power in the region, with the potential of becoming the dominant power. Historically, Iran has been a defensive power, hemmed in by Russia, Turkey and the leading global powers, Britain and then the United States. As a result, for example, Iran was divided between Russia on one side and Britain and the U.S. on the other during World War II. It has also faced powerful Sunni forces in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. In the 1980s, it fought an eight-year war with Iraq that cost it a million casualties and ended in a military draw and a strategic victory for Iraq. Iraq had room for maneuver, invading Kuwait, but Iran had little.

To increase its security, it needs to break out of its encirclement. It has long desired, since before the Islamic Republic emerged, to become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, both to secure its western frontier against another war with Iraq and to dominate the oil fields. Given the opening that the collapse of the Islamic State provided, Iran must try to take advantage. The goal is to achieve a fait accompli against great powers like the United States and regional powers like Turkey, Israel and Russia.

One of the focuses of Irans power is Lebanon, where Iranian-supported Hezbollah is based. Hezbollah also operates in Syria, but a substantial number of Iranian advisers are also there, supporting the Syrians. The Russians are pressing for a peace settlement, based on their reasonable assertion that the Assad regime, with Russian and Iranian support, has effectively won the civil war. The Americans have not rejected the idea out of hand, but its not clear what the terms might be.

Whether or not there is a peace agreement, the fighting is declining, and the need for Iranian advisers has declined as well. Bashar Assad reportedly opposes a large Iranian presence in Syria after a settlement, but if Iran wants to create substantial infrastructure to permanently base Iranian forces, then now is the time to do it: The heavy fighting is over, but the Syrians cant afford to do without the Iranians yet.

This is not as easy as it sounds, since the logistics of basing large numbers of troops in Syria is complex. But if the Iranian goal is to be the dominant power between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, this is a move it would have to make. It would lock in Assad as an ally and put Iran in a position of dominating Lebanon and surrounding western Iraqs Sunnis from the west and the east. Iran would also have forces near the Turkish border, also in the west and the east.

The Israeli Dilemma

Whether Iran intends to engage Israel is not clear. From the Israeli point of view, a large, permanent presence of troops in Syria could recreate a strategic problem Israel hasnt had to cope with since after 1973. Israel has had to deal with Hezbollah, but there has been no substantial threat from Syria. Rocket fire from the war there has occasionally landed in Israel, but there has not been a conventional threat that would require permanent deployment of substantial Israeli forces on the Golan. But the situation may not stay this way forever.

The attack over the weekend was designed to tell the Iranians that their more ambitious plans will be met by pre-emptive Israeli strikes. Since the Iranians had to have anticipated this, they likely wont be deterred. The opportunity is too great. Ideally, the Israelis would use air and missile strikes to destroy Iranian facilities before they are in place. But if Iran will accept the cost, it can surge forces in, presenting Israel with too many targets to destroy.

At a certain point, air power alone isnt going to be enough. The Israelis faced this in the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel launched primarily an air campaign, which ultimately failed to neutralize Hezbollah. Some missions still require large-scale ground forces. In 2006, the Israelis didnt think the prize was worth the price. But if the Iranians manage to create a large presence in Syria, airstrikes might not be sufficient in the event of war. And launching ground operations would mean potentially heavy Israeli casualties.

Israel must somehow block an Iranian presence from emerging. But if Iran is determined, Israels efforts will not be enough. Israel then must decide on a strategy for dealing with a strong Iranian force in both Syria and Lebanon while also avoiding a costly ground war. This may not be possible. In that case, Israel will need to strengthen Saudi Arabia, and above all to reach an understanding with Turkey. Turkey has historically been uncomfortable with a powerful Iran, and having an Iranian presence on Turkeys western border in force will make the Turks even more uncomfortable. Israel and Turkey, whose relations now are pretty good, could have a common interest in containing Iran, and a Turkish-Israeli coalition would force Iran to be very careful.

The Iranians have broken out of their box, and now all of the players in the region need to consider how this affects their strategy. What we saw this weekend seemed to be the start of Israels response. But the Israelis have not shown their full hand yet, and it seems to me that they dont like the hand they are going to have to play.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced her intent to appoint Dr. A Wayne Johnson as Chief Operating Officer of Financial Student Aid, according to a Department of Education press release.
Business models are moving more and more towards startup companies and college students are taking notice. Turnover in Fortune 500 companies is expected to increase for the next 10 to 20 years, according to Jon Birdsong, a University of Georgia alumnus who works for WideAngle, an Atlanta-based startup.
How many steps will it take to walk off Thanksgiving dinner?
On the increasingly crowded battlefields of Afghanistan, a feared, commando-style Taliban unit is gaining attention for a series spectacular, deadly attacks on Afghan security forces.

Known as "Sara Kheta" -- Red Unit or Danger Unit in Pashto -- it is said to be the Taliban's elite special-forces group. Unlike regular Taliban fighters, analysts say the outfit is better trained and armed and is sent on special operations targeting bases and posts of the Afghan National Army and police force.

The so-called Red Unit's rise has raised concerns among government forces struggling to fend off the Taliban since the withdrawal of NATO troops in 2014 and suffering record casualty rates on the battlefield.

When did it emerge?

The first mention of a Taliban "special-forces unit" was in June 2015, when Taliban fighters published photos on social media purportedly showing a training camp where recruits were being trained on heavy machine guns and antiaircraft guns.

In December 2015, the Taliban said it was unleashing its special forces to eliminate fighters allied with the militant group Islamic State (IS) that had emerged in Afghanistan earlier that year.

In August 2016, Afghan military officials confirmed the existence of the Taliban's Red Unit in the southern province of Helmand.

But the unit has fought its way to greater prominence in the past month or so. On November 1, the Taliban uploaded photos of the unit on its official Telegram account. The photos show members of Red Unit in new uniforms and armed with the kind of tactical assault gear worn by soldiers and law enforcement teams around the world.

Weeks later, Afghan officials blamed it for a spate of attacks on November 13 and 14 during which dozens of Afghan security personnel were killed in the southern province of Kandahar and the western province of Farah.

On December 3, Afghanistan's intelligence agency said the commander of the new unit, Mullah Shah Wali, also known Mullah Naser, was killed in an air operation in Helmand Province the week before.

How is it different from other Taliban units?

"What distinguishes this force from other fighting units is its intensive and longer training, the degree of vetting, its tactics, weapons and equipment, and structure," says Borhan Osman, senior Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG).

"The unit is mainly used for quick interventions, high-value targets, special operations, or offensives such as capturing a highly strategic area, breaking major sieges of regular Taliban forces, jailbreaks, and escorting important leaders," Osman adds.

Military analysts estimate the size of the unit at anywhere from several hundred to up to 1,000 fighters.

Those tactics and capabilities were on show in the November attacks when Afghan officials said the unit, equipped with lasers and night-vision gear, attacked police checkpoints and army bases and rapidly left the scene to avoid NATO air strikes. On November 14, the unit drove a pickup truck loaded with explosives into a police checkpoint point and then launched attacks on 14 nearby posts, killing over two dozen police officers.

In Farah Province the same day, Taliban units with night-vision scopes killed eight police officers in their beds early in the morning. Three police officers in the province were also killed in night attacks around the same time.

The U.S. military has equipped many Afghan soldiers with night-vision equipment, but police forces rarely possess them.

"The Red Unit and regular Taliban forces use the same types of weapons: small arms, RPGs, and machine guns," says Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of the Long War Journal. "Typically, the Red Unit has newer weapons, and is occasionally seen with night-vision devices that have been seized from Afghan forces."

The unit is believed to equipped with the Taliban's most advanced weaponry, including 82-millimeter rockets, laser pointers, heavy machine guns, and U.S.-made M-4 assault rifles. They are also known to have used and possess dozens of armored Humvees and Ford Ranger pickup trucks stolen from Afghan forces.

Ahmad K. Majidyar, a South Asia and Middle East expert for the Washington-based Middle East Institute, says it is misleading to call the unit a special-forces outfit because it lacks elite commando capabilities of even the Afghan Special Forces, let alone advanced elite commando units such as the U.S. SEAL Team Six.

"The Red Team is more a heavily armed group used in surprise attacks against vulnerable Afghan security check posts," he says. "It also has well-trained snipers that aid ordinary Taliban militants in their attack against the Afghan forces."

The unit has also spread from southern Afghanistan, where it was established, and has expanded into eastern and western regions.

How much of a threat is it?

"The Red Unit poses a significant threat to Afghan forces," Roggio says. "It has had great success on the battlefield when going head to head with Afghan units."

Roggio says the unit operates like shock troops, often leading assaults on Afghan district centers, military bases, and outposts.

The NATO-led mission in Afghanistan has said it has not seen any evidence of the Taliban possessing advanced weaponry like night-vision equipment, which Afghan officials say the militants have purchased on the black market or have accumulated after overrunning Afghan army bases.

But Afghan military officials have confirmed the unit's capabilities.

Kandahar's powerful police chief, General Abdul Raziq, has said the Red Unit is part of the Taliban's "new approach and new tactics," adding that it was "well equipped and highly armed."

Majidyar says he expects the Red Unit to come under increasing pressure if President Donald Trump relaxes U.S. rules of engagement.

"The Taliban will suffer more significant losses on the battlefield in the coming months," he predicts.
The European Union's enlargement commissioner has urged Bosnia-Herzegovina to implement concrete reforms if it wants to join the bloc, warning that the window to becoming a member could close.

Johannes Hahn said on December 4 that Bosnia had not made any of the reforms or changes agreed with the EU and international creditors since the bloc accepted the Balkan state's membership application in September 2016.

"It is absolutely high time now to deliver on what has been agreed. Otherwise, the window can be closed again and this is not something we all would like to see," Hahn told a news conference after meeting political leaders in Sarajevo.

Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic said he hoped that the country's political leaders will reach a compromise on outstanding issues by early January.

The ethnically divided country has so far not responded to the European Commission's questionnaire on its readiness to join the bloc.

The questionnaire is used by the commission as a tool to gather information necessary for forming an opinion on a country's capacity to comply with EU membership criteria.

Hahn urged government and opposition leaders to stop appealing to ethnic nationalism, and said the bloc would be looking for evidence of European values.

"Without that understanding one cannot make any progress," he said.

Since the Bosnian war ended in 1995, Bosnia has been split into two entities -- the ethnic Serb-dominated Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosniaks and Croats.

The two entities are linked by joint state-level institutions, including a tripartite presidency that must reach consensus before decisions can be made.

Hahn said he understood the "complexity" of the situation, but insisted that there was no more time for any "excuses."

With reporting by Reuters
Welcome back to the China In Eurasia briefing, an RFE/RL newsletter tracking Chinas resurgent influence from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. Im RFE/RL correspondent Reid Standish.

Before we get started, a few announcements: The newsletter is now biweekly, rather than going out only on the first and third Wednesdays of each month. To subscribe, click here.

And I will also be launching Talking China In Eurasia, a new podcast. Im joined by the Royal United Services Institutes Raffaello Pantucci to talk about Xi and Putin. Listen to the first episode here or below.

Xi Gets Pragmatic About Russia At The G20

It was light on optimism, but U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping injected a healthy dose of pragmatism back into the U.S.-China relationship with their meeting in Bali at a time when global anxiety is rising over Russias war against Ukraine.

Finding Perspective: The meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit was far from a breakthrough, but it did repair some damage from the recent backslide in relations between both countries and send some signals that the world isnt necessarily destined for Cold War 2.0.

The more than three-hour talks saw some blunt exchanges over contentious issues like Taiwan and North Korea, but the two leaders also pledged more frequent communications and decided that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Beijing for follow-up talks in 2023.

Of particular note, Biden raised Russias invasion of Ukraine and threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons. Both leaders reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war should never be fought, according to a White House readout.

While far from a sea change for Chinese policy, thats notable. The credibility of Beijings claims to be neutral on the Ukraine war continue to come under scrutiny, and China has shown discomfort of late with the Kremlins nuclear saber-rattling.

Xi made similar comments after a November 4 summit with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and during another G20 meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, according to the French readout.

Why It Matters: Xi is not abandoning Putin, but this marks the latest shift for Beijings balancing act over Russias invasion of Ukraine.

Four Chinese officials briefed on the February 4 meeting between Xi and Putin, where they declared a no-limits partnership, told the Financial Times that Putin didnt tell Xi the truth about the invasion and that Beijing was caught off guard by it.

What Xi knew about Putins war plans has been a topic of debate, and there is evidence to support both the idea that Xi was aware and that he was caught off guard.

Many analysts are of the opinion that Xi knew about Putin's decision to invade but expected a quick victory, which perhaps was what Putin believed at the time.

Others point to a steady stream of dismissals from Chinese officials and experts about the likelihood of an invasion in February and the fact that Beijing did not evacuate its citizens from Ukraine  like Western nations did  as evidence that China was not expecting a war.

China certainly has its own interests in keeping a distance from Moscows war and using that space to do some upkeep with the West. But perhaps the most important point here is that even if Putin did blindside Xi, China has stuck with Russia despite its battlefield failures, political isolation, and the atrocities its troops are accused of committing.

Again, this is pragmatism more than anything else. As Chinese experts often say, even if Russia is looking unattractive these days, why would Beijing abandon its main anti-Western partner as China continues to be in the crosshairs of rising American pressure?

Read More

 Want to hear more about Russia and Chinas complex relationship amid the Ukraine war? Then tune in to the debut of Talking China In Eurasia today at 2 p.m. CET/ 8 a.m. EST. You can listen live here and find the episode on RFE/RLs website and wherever you listen to your podcasts.

 Condemning Russias invasion of Ukraine and its global fallout is shaping up to be the key theme of the G20, with the Financial Times reporting that a joint communique from the summit takes aim at Moscow.

Expert Corner: The Future Of The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)

Readers asked: Did Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharifs recent trip to Beijing breathe new life into the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)? How do Islamabad and Beijing really feel about the project after all these years?

To find out more, I asked Filippo Boni, an expert on China-Pakistan relations at the Open University in Britain:

Shehbaz Sharif's visit to China was high on symbolism and relatively low on substance. While the two sides were keen to reaffirm and emphasize the strength of their strategic partnership, no significant new commitment was made. Apart from a few memorandums of understanding and attempts from the Pakistanis in the run-up to the trip to address some of CPECs issues  including payments to Chinese independent power producers  nothing major came from the visit. This is despite Sharif's attempts at revitalizing CPEC since April and the very close ties he enjoys with the Chinese leadership.

The outcome of this visit is not entirely surprising, especially if interpreted against the backdrop of Pakistan's current domestic predicaments. The security situation for Chinese nationals has deteriorated, the economy is struggling, and political instability is at one of its highest points in recent years. All these dynamics, coupled with the global scaling down of Belt and Road Initiative financing, have likely impacted Beijing's lack of commitment to new projects.

After almost 10 years and $25 billion worth of projects, there seems to be a general consensus on both sides that the first phase of CPEC  the one focused primarily on energy projects  was largely successful. The same cannot be said for the second phase, including the slow progress on the development of Special Economic Zones, and for the port of Gwadar, where little progress has been made for the ports full commercial functioning.

Do you have a question about Chinas growing footprint in Eurasia? Send it to me at StandishR@rferl.org or reply directly to this e-mail and Ill get it answered by leading experts and policymakers.

Three More Stories From Eurasia

1. 'Sweep It Under The Rug'

Recent allegations of China operating 54 overseas police stations have fueled controversy around the world and sparked investigations, but in Hungary and Serbia the new findings are being met with swift denials by authorities, despite growing evidence.

The Details: My colleagues Akos Keller-Alant from RFE/RLs Hungarian Service, Mila Durdevic from RFE/RLs Balkan Service, and I reported on the fallout from these revelations and the slew of probes launched in many European countries recently.

The stations are overseas operations of the public security bureaus from two Chinese provinces and are used to persuade citizens to return to China, including through pressure on family members at home. While most of those involved appear to be suspected of crimes such as telecommunications fraud or corruption, dissidents have also reported that the stations have been used to monitor and threaten them.

Fourteen governments have already launched investigations into the overseas police stations, and the Dutch and Irish governments have ordered China to shut down the facilities in their countries.

But in Hungary and Serbia  two countries where Beijing is said to operate such facilities and whose governments prize their warming political and economic ties with China  officials appear to be trying to sweep it under the rug, as one analyst characterized it, despite growing scrutiny from opposition lawmakers in each country.

2. Global Ripples Hit Central Asia

Political and economic shocks from Moscows war in Ukraine, coupled with added strains from tensions between Beijing and Washington, are taking their toll around the world, especially in Central Asia, where countries in the region are closely tied to both China and Russia.

What It Means: As RFE/RLs Uzbek Service reported, Vladimir Norov, the countrys foreign minister, warned about geopolitical tensions affecting stability in the region and beyond while addressing his counterparts at an Organization of Turkic States meeting in Samarkand.

The breakdown in global cooperation is felt particularly strong in Central Asia. While some economies have been able to benefit by becoming a new home for businesses and capital relocated from Russia, others are seeing investment dry up and their economies coming under strain.

World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia Anna Bjerde recently warned that Uzbekistan needs to continue with its market reforms in order to withstand the global economic shocks that are to come.

RFE/RLs Kyrgyz Service also reported that the countrys government is trying to court more investment but that questions remain from investors about Kyrgyzstans stability and investment climate. According to official statistics from January to June of this year, China is the leading source of foreign investment, with $129 million during that span.

3. The Tech In Moscows Iranian Drones

A new investigation by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, looked into electronic components underpinning Tehran's production of the Mohajer-6 drone, which Russia has used in its war in Ukraine, and found that theyre far from homegrown.

What You Need To Know: The Mohajer-6 drones contain components produced by companies from the United States and the European Union, both of which have sanctions restricting the export to Iran of technology that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

The investigation also found drone components produced in China, including a real-time mini-camera made by a Hong Kong firm.

The drone also contains a microchip bearing the logo of a California technology company and a thermal-imaging camera that Ukrainian intelligence says may have been produced by a firm based in Oregon or China.

The international tech in the drone not only highlights the complex ecosystem that allows firms and buyers to circumvent sanctions slapped on both Iran and Russia, but also the close networks between Chinese and Western tech companies that still exist, despite a recent push to break some of those linkages.

Across The Supercontinent

On The Mainland: The watchdog group Freedom House recently launched a new project called the China Dissent Monitor, which tracks protests and other forms of dissent inside China. Read it here.

Censored: Chinese authorities behind a major trade expo in Shanghai pulled an opening ceremony address by European Council President Charles Michel that was set to criticize Russia's illegal war in Ukraine and call for reduced European dependency on China, Reuters reported.

Backtracking: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has softened his countrys stance toward China, moving away from his predecessor Liz Trusss decision to label it a threat.

One Thing To Watch

How long will Chinas stringent COVID policies stay in place?

New infections are rising as a winter wave hits and popular frustration continues to boil over inside the country as investor confidence stays dented over the measures. New footage also showed crowds of residents in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou escaping a compulsory lockdown and clashing with police.

Thats all from me for now. Dont forget to send me any questions, comments, or tips that you might have.

Until next time,

Reid Standish

If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition, subscribe here. It will be sent to your in-box on the first and third Wednesdays of each month.
ZARECHNY, Kazakhstan -- The former chief of the Kazakh Journalists' Union, Seitqazy Mataev, who was sentenced to six years in prison last year for embezzlement and tax evasion, has been released from a penal colony after serving less than 20 months of his prison term.

Mataev told journalists upon leaving the penal colony in Zarechny, near Almaty, on December 4 that he hopes his son Aset Mataev, who was sentenced to five years in prison in the same case, will soon be released as well.

The Qapshaghai City Court in Kazakhstan's southeastern Almaty region granted Mataev early release on November 16.

Mataev, 63, and his son were arrested in February last year. They were sentenced in October after a court found them guilty of tax evasion and embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars from Kazakhstan's Communications Ministry.

Both have denied the charges. Rights groups say Seitqazy Mataev was prosecuted on trumped-up charges in response to his work as head of the journalists' union.

In April, Seitqazy Mataev's prison term was shortened by two years and eight months, in accordance with an amnesty that was announced in December last year to mark the 25th anniversary of Kazakhstan's independence.
WASHINGTON -- An American stockbroker who made a fortune in the Russian market in the 1990s and 2000s and later co-founded a posh Moscow nightclub before leaving the country died of blunt force injuries suffered as a result of a fall from a Washington, D.C. building.

The findings, released on November 16 by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), confirm that Dan Rapoport died on August 14 after falling from a height, but do not conclusively explain the circumstances leading up to his death.



Washington police told RFE/RL that an investigation into his death had ended and declined further comment. Earlier this year, a police spokeswoman told RFE/RL that foul play was not suspected, but that final conclusions were pending the autopsy.

Rapoport's untimely death triggered much speculation because he had voiced support for ardent Kremlin foe Aleksei Navalny before leaving Russia and, while living in Kyiv in recent years, had been a vocal supporter of Ukraine and an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.



Washington metropolitan police found Rapoport's body on August 14 on the sidewalk outside 2400 M Street, a nine-story apartment building in the northwest part of the city.



The medical examiner's report said Rapoport, 52, died of multiple blunt force injuries due to fall from height and described the death as sudden/unexplained. The report also said the manner of his death was undetermined.



The OCME said no other information would be immediately released.



A preliminary police report said officers responded to a report of a jumper on the evening of August 14, and the man, later identified as Rapoport, was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was declared dead.



The apartment building has an open rooftop with a pool, running track, and seating area for residents.

The police report said officers found $2,620 in cash on Rapoport when they discovered his body on the sidewalk, along with headphones, a cracked cell phone, a Florida drivers license, and other items.



He was wearing flip-flops, perhaps indicating he had been at the pool on the roof prior to falling.



Brianna Burch, a police spokesperson, told RFE/RL in August that there did not appear to be anyone with Rapoport at the time and there were no listed witnesses. In follow-up correspondences with RFE/RL through early November, the police continued to say they did not suspect foul play.



Rapoport had recently moved back to Washington after spending several years working in finance in Ukraine. He told RFE/RL in an interview in Washington in June that business had been tough due to the countrys high political risk and war with Russia.



While some friends said they did not believe he would have committed suicide, others said he had appeared depressed.



Go-To Location



A native of Latvia and a fluent Russian speaker, Rapoport emigrated with his family to the United States in 1980. After graduating from a U.S. university, he moved to Russia in the early 1990s as a wave of privatizations swept across the country.



The sale of former state-owned companies created a booming stock market, minting a new generation of millionaires, Russian and foreign.



Rapoport was respected within Russian financial circles, where he worked for more than a decade at a local brokerage called CenterInvest, making his way up to managing partner. He claimed his clients included some of the nation's wealthiest tycoons.

In 2007, he opened a swanky nightclub in downtown Moscow called Soho Rooms, which became the go-to location for Moscows elite.



In 2012, he left Russia and returned to the United States, saying the stock brokerage industry that had made him a fortune "had died" as commission fees shrunk with improvements in technology.

But in a media interview prior to his departure, he also criticized the direction Russia had taken under Putin and expressed support for Navalny, who was jailed last year on what Western governments say were trumped-up charges.

It has really become unbearable to live in Russia, Rapoport told media outlet FinParty in June of that year. We are all now dependent on one ruler. If this person decides that you will give birth to his child, then you will give birth, and if he decide to put you in prison, then you will serve time.

He told FinParty that he would give up his American citizenship and return to Russia if Navalny became president, saying the opposition leader was sincere in his desire to fight corruption.

He is a real hero of our time and deserves respect, Rapoport said of Navalny.

Rapoports frustration with Russia and his decision to leave may have been triggered by pressure on his businesses, friends and family have said.

Under Putin, the raiding of profitable businesses by -- or with the help of -- the nations security services has flourished. Rapoport allegedly lost his stake in Soho Rooms when his partners teamed up with security officials.

"Our flight to Washington is in 12 hours. It's sad to leave Russia, but for thoughtful people, living here has become unbearable and disgusting," Rapoport wrote on his Facebook page on June 13, 2012.

When Rapoport moved to Washington, where he said his parents lived, he set up a company called Rapoport Capital to advise and assist technology startups as well as venture capital funds on fundraising options.

In 2016, four years after leaving Russia, Rapoport set up an office in Kyiv and opened a private equity fund. It was tough going. Ukraines economy struggled amid an ongoing war with Russia-backed separatists in two eastern regions and the slow implementation of Western-backed reforms.

In social-media posts over the ensuing years, he was a vocal supporter of Ukraine and an outspoken critic of Putin.

Rapoport gained a degree of publicity in January 2017 after The New York Times reported that the daughter and son-in-law of newly elected President Donald Trump had purchased a mansion owned by him and his first wife. The mansion was located in an exclusive neighborhood of the U.S. capital.

In 2018, the open-source investigative organization Bellingcat reported that Rapoport, who was Jewish, had been the creator of a fictional persona named David Jewberg, who was frequently quoted in Ukrainian media as a senior Pentagon analyst.

With reporting by Todd Prince in Washington, D.C. and Mike Eckel in Prague
During a visit to Islamabad, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has reiterated a call on Pakistani leaders to "redouble" efforts to go after militants and terrorists operating within the country, the Pentagon says.

Mattis met on December 4 with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and other top officials amid U.S. complaints that Pakistan is not doing enough to thwart insurgent groups within its borders. Islamabad denies that.

After the meetings, the U.S. Defense Department issued a statement saying Mattis "recognized Pakistan's sacrifices in the war on terrorism."

The defense secretary also "emphasized the vital role that Pakistan can play in working with the United States and others to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that brings stability and security to the region," it added.

Meanwhile, Abbasi's office quoted the prime minister as assuring Mattis of Pakistan's cooperation in the fight against terrorism, saying that "no country benefits more from peace and security in Afghanistan."

"Both Pakistan and the United States have common stakes in securing peace and security in Afghanistan for the long-term stability of the border region," a statement quoted Abbasi as telling Mattis.

Ahead of his arrival in Islamabad, Mattis said on December 3: "We have heard from Pakistan leaders that they do not support terrorism. So I expect to see that sort of action reflected in their policies."

However, he said he wanted to work with the Pakistanis and not to exert pressure on the countrys leaders in the counterterrorism fight.

"That's not the way I deal with issues. I believe that we work hard on finding the common ground and then we work together," he said.

Washington in the past has complained about what it sees as Pakistani efforts to provide "safe havens" for Taliban militants who stage attacks in neighboring Afghanistan.

U.S. officials say militants have crossed the mountainous and ill-defined Pakistani border to attack U.S., Afghan, and allied forces in Afghanistan.

The officials say insurgents then return to the safe havens in Pakistan, aided by the ISI, Islamabad's intelligence agency. Pakistan has denied the allegation.

U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Islamabad of harboring "agents of chaos" and vowed to get tough with Pakistan unless it changes its behavior.

Mattis told reporters in Kuwait before his departure to Pakistan that he will be "reinforcing President Trump's call for action against terrorist safe havens."

U.S. General John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, expressed disappointment last week about the lack of progress, saying there had been no change in Pakistan's support for militant networks.

The United States in August said it would hold up $255 million in military assistance for Pakistan until it cracks down on the extremists threatening Afghanistan.

Islamabad is the final stop of Mattis's trip after stops in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait.

With reporting by AP, Dawn, VOA, The Hindu, and Geo News
The Moscow City Court has upheld a lower courts decision to extend the house arrest for renowned Russian theater director Kirill Serebrennikov, whose detention on fraud charges stunned the Russian artistic world and elicited support internationally.

According to Moscow's Basmanny District Court's October 17 decision, Serebrennikov should remain under house arrest until January 19.

The 48-year-old director of Moscows famed Gogol Theater was arrested in August and accused of embezzling some $1 million in state funds. He has called the charges absurd.

In addition to his theatrical work, Serebrennikov is a respected filmmaker.

Before his arrest, he clashed with Russias Culture Ministry over the staging of a ballet about legendary Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who defected to the West in 1961.

Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky suggested that production might violate a 2013 "gay propaganda" law.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax


MOSCOW -- Russian prosecutors have recommended a 10-year prison term for former Economy Minister Aleksei Ulyukayev for extortion, while the defendant asked the court to acquit him and called for perjury charges against the head of state oil giant Rosneft.

The developments came as the sides delivered their closing arguments in the high-profile Moscow trial and Ulyukayev, accused of demanding and taking a $2 million bribe from a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, made his final statement before the verdict.

"I ask you to find Aleksei Ulyukayev guilty of bribe-taking," prosecutor Boris Neporozhny told the court, which adjourned until December 7 after the proceedings.

In addition to a 10-year prison sentence, he asked the court to fine Ulyukayev 500 million rubles ($8.5 million), strip him of all state awards, and bar him from holding government positions.

The prosecution said in its closing argument that it had been proven that Ulyukayev demanded and accepted $2 million in cash from Rosneft CEO Sechin in exchange for Ulyukayev approving the sale of state-controlled oil company Bashneft to Rosneft.

Ulyukayev repeated what he had said earlier: that he was framed. He asked the court to acquit him and urged the authorities to prosecute Sechin for what he claimed was "false reporting to law enforcement."

Ulyukayev's lawyer, Timofei Gridnev, also called for an acquittal in the case.

"Ulyukayev could not demand a bribe from Sechin because he could not in any way influence the decision on Bashneft's privatization," Gridnev said.

Ulyukayev, the highest official to be arrested in Russia since Putin came to power in 2000, has maintained throughout that he is innocent.

Sechin was summoned to the trial four times but never showed up, saying that he was busy with work connected to Rosneft. At hearings, the prosecution used his written statements given to investigators.

Sechin's failure to appear in court has attracted additional attention to the case, which has highlighted rifts between members of Russia's ruling elite ahead of a March 2108 election that is expected to hand Putin what could be his last Kremlin term.

Sechin is a longtime former deputy Kremlin chief of staff and is seen as one of Putin's closest allies.

Prosecutors said the bribe was paid on November 14, 2016, at Rosneft's compound in Moscow. They contend that Ulyukayev was caught red-handed, with $2 million found in a locked bag in the trunk of his car.

Ulyukayev was immediately arrested, and he was fired the next day by Putin. He is under house arrest pending a verdict and sentence.

Ulyukayev contends that he was set up, saying he believed the bag contained a gift of wine from Sechin. In his final statement, he repeated his argument that the bribery case was "a provocation" and that he was framed by Sechin.

He asserted that Sechin's behavior -- including his persistence in inviting Ulyukayev to Rosneft's offices and his failure to report to court despite four summonses -- proved that the case is unfounded.

With reporting by Current Time TV, RFE/RL's Russian Service, Interfax, and TASS
The Kremlin says that Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to hold off on retaliating against new U.S. sanctions last year was made "absolutely independently," without any influence by Michael Flynn.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the comments on December 4, three days after Flynn -- who briefly served as U.S. national security adviser under President Donald Trump -- pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia.

Flynn also agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the actions of Trump's inner circle during the 2016 U.S. election campaign and after he took office on January 20.

U.S. prosecutors said Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States, in December 2016 discussed sanctions that President Barack Obama's administration had imposed on Moscow for alleged interference in the election.

The United States at the time accused two leading Russian security agencies of involvement in cyberespionage, and ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and the seizure of two Russian diplomatic country retreats.

That was followed in January by a U.S. intelligence-community report saying that the Russian government undertook a concerted effort to influence the 2016 election in favor of Trump.

Putin said on December 30 that he would wait to see how relations developed under Trump -- who was president-elect but was weeks away from taking office -- before responding to the new sanctions.

After U.S. lawmakers passed a bill imposing additional sanctions on Russia, Moscow went ahead and took what it said were retaliatory measures in July, ordering a drastic cut in U.S. diplomatic personnel.

In his comments on December 4, Kremlin spokesman Peskov insisted that Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador did not influence Putin's response to the U.S. sanctions.

He said the Russian president didn't know of Flynn's alleged request to refrain from an immediate response.

Flynn was not in a position to ask Kislyak to do anything, Peskov said, calling the idea "absurd."

The spokesman insisted that Putin's decision not to respond immediately to the U.S. sanctions "could not have been connected to any requests or recommendations."

Also on December 4, Trump renewed criticism of Mueller's investigation and said that he felt "very badly" for Flynn.

"He's led a very strong life, and I feel badly about it," Trump said before heading off on a trip to the state of Utah.

Flynn faces up to five years in prison for the charge of lying to the FBI, but his sentencing could also depend on the extent of his cooperation with investigators.

He was forced out as national security adviser in February, after just 24 days in the post, amid revelations that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Kislyak.

Flynn is the fourth person to be criminally charged in connection with the investigation.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate, Rick Gates, were indicted in October on charges that included conspiracy and lying to federal agents.

Former foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents and is cooperating with Mueller's investigators.

Russia denies it meddled in the U.S. election, despite what U.S. intelligence officials say is powerful evidence, and Trump denies there was any collusion between his associates and Russia.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP
U.S. consulates in three Russian cities will resume interviews for nonimmigrant-visa applicants next week, less than four months after those operations were suspended following Moscow's order for deep cuts in U.S. diplomatic staff.

In a statement on December 4, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said the consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Vladivostok "will begin to offer limited interviews for nonimmigrant visas" on December 11.

"As Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr. has said, we want Russians to travel to the United States, experience our culture firsthand, study at our universities, and do business with U.S. companies," it said.

"So we are pleased to resume these limited operations. We believe that people-to-people interactions and U.S.-Russian business ties are the bedrock to stability in the bilateral relationship."

However, it said that visas services "will not return to the level we maintained prior to the Russian Federation's unwarranted demand that we dramatically reduce the number of personnel at the U.S. Embassy and our three consulates," and that the embassy and three consulates "continue to operate with a significantly reduced staff" and the limited operations were "an unfortunate consequence of Russia's decision."

The United States suspended all nonimmigrant-visa operations in Russia on August 23, one step in an exchange of diplomatic restrictions that followed findings by the U.S. intelligence community that Moscow used cyberattacks and other methods in an "influence campaign" ordered by President Vladimir Putin in an effort aimed to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Intelligence officials also said Moscow developed a clear preference for Donald Trump over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

After the U.S. Congress passed a bill imposing new sanctions on Russia and making it harder for Trump to ease or lift existing measures, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on July 28 that Washington must reduce its diplomatic staff at the U.S. Embassy and consulates to 455 people by September 1. Putin later said that meant the United States must cut 755 staff members at the missions.

Limited nonimmigrant-visa operations resumed at the embassy in Moscow in September.

With ties continuing to deteriorate, Huntsman handed his credentials to Putin on October 3.

Russian officials initially voiced confidence that Trump's election would help improve relations, but those hopes appear to have faded substantially as the U.S. Justice Department and congressional committees investigate Moscow's alleged interference in the election and seek to determine whether associates of Trump colluded with Russia.

Putin denies that Russia meddled in the election despite what U.S. officials say is powerful evidence. Trump, who repeatedly indicated during the campaign that he wanted relations with Russia to improve, denies any collusion.

Russian officials have appeared careful to avoid blaming Trump for the persistent strains in ties.

'Foreign Agents' In Media

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on December 4 that in a broad sense, "our relations with the United States" were "aimed at cooperation."

However, she asserted in remarks to Russian lawmakers that "there are very many political forces in the West, including in the United States," that wanted to "return us to the era of the Cold War."

Zakharova was speaking about tension between Russia and the United States over allegations of interference by media outlets in politics.

A Russian bill enabling the government to designate any foreign media outlet a "foreign agent" sailed through parliament and was signed by Putin on November 25.

Russia says the law is a "symmetrical response" after state-funded channel RT -- which U.S. authorities accuse of spreading propaganda -- was required to register its U.S. operating unit under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

U.S. officials say it is not symmetrical, arguing that the U.S. and Russian laws are different and that Russia uses its "foreign agent" legislation to silence dissent and discourage a free exchange of ideas.

The new Russian media law leaves it up to the Justice Ministry to determine which foreign media outlets will be designated as foreign agents. Russian officials and lawmakers have indicated outlets that could be targeted include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Voice of America (VOA), CNN, and German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

The Justice Ministry has published a list on its website indicating that its first targets under the law may be nine media outlets connected with RFE/RL and VOA.

Zakharova said that media outlets designated as foreign agents would not be stripped of their accreditation with the ministry.

"I would like to point out that we shall by no means annul the Foreign Ministry accreditation of the U.S. media in question," Zakharova said at a meeting of the rules committee in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. "They will be able to go ahead with journalistic activity in Russia calmly and without any hindrances."

Zakharova also said that "nine or 10" U.S. media outlets would probably be barred from the Duma, adding that it was "those that are financed by the State Department" that would be subject to the ban.

Duma rules committee chief Olga Savastyanova said last week that all U.S. media could be barred, and that the lower chamber would discuss the issue on December 5-6. But Savastyanova said on December 4 that only media outlets that were designated as foreign agents will be barred.

The Duma's threat to ban U.S. media from the building came after the organization overseeing media access to the U.S. Congress stripped RT of its press credentials for the legislature.

The U.S. Justice Department required the RT affiliate to register in the wake of a January finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that RT and Russia's Sputnik news agency spread disinformation as part of the alleged Russian effort to influence the U.S. presidential election.

With reporting by Interfax, TASS, RIA Novosti, and REN TV
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has praised Rex Tillerson for what he called a "strong personal commitment" to the alliance and said "rumors" that the U.S. secretary of state could lose his job would not affect meetings this week in Brussels.

Stoltenberg spoke on December 4, ahead of Tillerson's expected arrival for a December 5-6 NATO foreign ministers meeting and talks with Belgian officials.

The NATO chief said that the Western military alliance "and NATO ministers are able to focus on the core tasks of the job we have to do despite any speculation and rumors."

He praised what he said was Tillerson's "strong personal commitment to the transatlantic bond and to NATO."

Tillerson's December 4-8 trip to Europe comes days after The New York Times and other media published reports, citing unnamed sources, of a White House plan to force him out as secretary of state.

Tillerson is scheduled to attend NATO, EU, and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meetings and to hold bilateral talks with Belgian and Austrian officials in Brussels and Vienna on December 5-7. He is due to make a stop in Paris on December 8 for meetings with French officials.

An encounter with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is also planned on the sidelines of a meeting of the OSCE in the Austrian capital.

Ahead of his European tour, Tillerson stressed Washington's commitment to European security, especially as Russia continues what he called its "aggressive behavior."

Speaking at the Wilson Center think tank on November 28, Tillerson said Russia's military interventions in Georgia and Ukraine, and interference in European elections and politics were unacceptable.

Growing Cloud Or 'Fake News'

Two days after the speech, U.S. media reported that the White House had a plan for CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace Tillerson.

U.S. President Donald Trump rejected the reports as "fake news," while Tillerson called them "laughable."

Ahead of Tillerson's arrival, U.S. envoy to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said that "there has been no change whatsoever" in planning for two days of talks between Tillerson and his NATO counterparts on December 5-6.

The president and the secretary of state have often contradicted each other in public statements regarding major international issues.

Tillerson has also been accused by Democrats and some Republicans of weakening U.S. diplomacy by planning staff cuts and not filling major positions at the State Department.

Meanwhile, some European leaders have expressed concern over Trump's "America First" rhetoric and mixed signals sent by U.S. officials regarding NATO and the European Union.

An EU official involved in diplomacy with White House officials told the Reuters news agency that "it seems [Tillerson] has no mandate, that the guillotine is hanging over his head."

"It leaves Europe just as doubtful as before about Trump," the official added.

"The chaos in the administration doesn't help in the current geopolitical climate," a French diplomat was quoted as saying.

In Brussels, Tillerson will participate in a December 5-6 NATO foreign ministers meeting and will also meet with EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini and foreign ministers of the bloc to discuss "U.S.-EU cooperation on major global issues," the State Department said in a statement.

On December 7 in Vienna, he will attend the opening and first plenary sessions of the OSCE Ministerial Council -- the central decision-making and governing body of the organization.

War In Ukraine

Ukraine "will very much be on the agenda" during the OSCE talks, a senior State Department official said on December 1, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The secretary really has a heart for...the safety and security of the Ukrainian people in the east in the occupied territories who continue to be the target of military operations with the encouragement and participation of forces from the Russian Federation," the official also said.

Fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.

Several cease-fire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords -- September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed at resolving the conflict -- have failed to hold.

The OSCE has deployed an unarmed Special Monitoring Mission to the country (OSCE SMM) to observe and report on the situation.

Discussions about deploying a peacekeeping force have heated up since September, when Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed deploying UN peacekeepers along the line separating Ukrainian government forces and the Russia-backed separatists.

The plan swiftly drew criticism from both Kyiv and the West, largely because of concerns that deployment only along the front line would cement Russian control over separatist-held territory and do nothing to stop Russia from sending fighters and weapons into Ukraine. Putin later said he was open to adjustments to his initial proposal, but no agreement has been reached.

"It needs to be an outcome that would have a UN force encompassing the contested area and not just ratifying the gains that the Russians have made on the ground," the State Department official said.

The official said that a meeting between Tillerson and Lavrov was tentatively scheduled for December 7 on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting in Vienna.

"We have a fairly robust set of discussions under way with the Russians on a lot of global issues" including North Koreas missile and nuclear programs and the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, the official said.

Tillerson is to meet with Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz to discuss "combating violent extremism, curbing nuclear proliferation, promoting democratic and economic reform in the Western Balkans, and deepening bilateral trade ties," the State Department said.

It said Tillerson was set to travel to Paris on December 8 to discuss "our deep cooperation on issues of mutual concern" around the world, such as Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, and North Korea, with senior French leaders.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, AP, and TASS
TASHKENT -- Murod Juraev, a prominent Uzbek opposition figure who was released in 2015 after more than 21 years in prison, has died aged 65.

Tashkent-based independent journalist Abdurahmon Tashanov told RFE/RL that Juraev died on December 4 after a long illness.

According to Tashanov, Juraev had been expected to travel to Germany to receive medical treatment there.

Juraev, an ethnic Turkmen, used to be an opposition lawmaker in the early 1990s.

In September 1994, he was arrested and charged with planning to forcibly overthrow the government.

His supporters say the case was politically motivated.

In 1995, Juraev was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

But Uzbek officials extended his prison terms on at least four occasions, saying that Juraev "violated" internal order within the prison.

His release in November 2015 from a penitentiary in the town of Chirchiq near Tashkent was welcomed by international human rights organizations.
Another year, and The Grand Tour season two is ready to be aired beginning on December 8. Follow the episodes on every subsequent Friday.

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May made a quick shift from the former show to the internet based Amazon Prime Video platform. The latest teaser, titled Making of The Grand Tour Season 2: Celebrities points at one more segment undergoing change. Following the travelling tent, and The American (Mike Skinner) exiting, it now seems Celebrity Brain Crash segment too is no longer going to be part of the regular format. The travelling tent was dropped keeping in mind the health of the trio through their adventurous sojourns.

The latest behind the scenes video sees Jeremy Clarkson confirm that Amazon Prime Video has decided to do away with Celebrity Brain Crash. The celebrity segment saw every celebrity character killed off, and thereby unable to make it to the show.

Whether or not theres a celebrity presence will only be unearthed when the adventure begins.. While Clarkson saws off an Alfa Romeo in half and attempts to make people drive it, theres plenty of celeb hints with Clarkson putting crew members behind the wheel of the half Alfa Romeo as representative of Hollywood A-listers, Dakota Fanning, and Michelle Pfeifer.

Theres hope cause the adventurous half car driving stint ends with the idea  this time with celebrities (that dont die). And if its half a car going for lap times, rest assured you can forget any scope of reversing, or car control. Its wheels pulling a metallic sled with a mind of its own designed to make drivers accept defeat.

With the Celebrity Brain Crash segment being entirely staged, something in its place could jolly well keep up with the rest of the show that sees the trio travel and drive cars to breaking point whenever possible.

Back in June, Richard Hammond had to be airlifted to hospital from Hemberg Hill Climb in Switzerland. Hammond was driving the Rimac Concept One electric supercar, and crashed following which the car went up in flames. Were soon going to see how that went down once Grand Tour season two goes live.
Back home at Southold, first Black director aims to broaden reach

Sarah Taylor performed in "The Nutcracker" as a girl and now as a "party parent." She's trying to get more kids exposed to ballet.
Neptune's original family of satellites may have been destroyed when its largest moon, Triton, entered the picture. New research suggests that the massive moon may have tossed some of the original satellites into the ice giant, kicked others out of orbit and swallowed up the rest, creating a new family that doesn't look much like those surrounding the other giant planets.

For years, scientists have suspected that Triton wasn't part of Neptune's original collection of moons. The massive moon has a backward orbit, and makes up over 99 percent of all the mass orbiting the planet. Instead, they thought it was a captured object whose orbit was circularized by debris disks created by impacts.

New research suggests that the crashing primordial moons wouldn't have built up enough material to slow down Triton. [Living on Triton: Neptune's Moon Explained (Infographic)]

"We find that the mutual impacts between satellites are not disruptive enough to create the desired debris disk," Raluca Rufu, a doctoral student at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, told Space.com by email. Working with co-author Robin Canup, a researcher and associate vice president at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado who models solar system evolution and collisions, Rufu is lead author on new research that suggests Triton likely sent Neptune's original satellites flying.

A homewrecker

The moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are all well-behaved compared with those of Neptune. The other three gas giants have a wealth of satellites  Jupiter has 70 to Neptune's 14, for instance  traveling in nearly circular paths around their equators. While Triton's path is circular, it travels backward compared with Neptune's rotation, and spins backward, besides.

And Triton is not the only outlier at Neptune. Nereid, one of the planet's outermost moons and the third largest, has one of the most stretched out, or eccentric, orbits of any moon in our solar system. It takes 360 Earth-days for the tiny moon to make one loop around its planet.

The unusual combination of moons led scientists to suggest that Triton was part of a pair of objects from the edge of the solar system that burst into the Neptunian system.

An enhanced view of Neptune's largest moon, Triton, the homewrecker that may have tossed out several of the planet's original satellites. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS)

"The leading theory of Triton's capture is that Triton was part of a binary system, similar to Pluto and Charon," Rufu said. "Triton was captured while the secondary body escaped Neptune's gravitational pull."

Rufu and Canup modeled a Neptunian family similar to the other gas giants, then had Triton crash the party. Over time, the extended orbit of a captured satellite should settle into the more circular orbit seen today, through interactions with other moons and small objects.

Previous studies had shown that Triton's irregular orbit needed to settle down within a hundred thousand years, or irregular satellites like Nereid would have been tossed out, the researchers said. Rufu and Canup found it wasn't enough for Triton to just collide with the small satellites after it was capturedit had to throw some of the moons out, as well.

Instead of modeling an interloper that settled in smoothly with its new family, they crashed Triton into other, smaller satellites, sending many of them flying. The energy from the impacts knocked the rough edges off Triton's orbit, allowing it to succumb to Neptune's gravitational tugs and become more circular.

Voyager 2 looks back at Neptune (top) and Triton (bottom) in an image taken in August 1989. (Image credit: NASA)

While some of the original satellites were hurled into space or swallowed up by Neptune, others may have been absorbed by Triton itself.

"If we want to look for the primordial Neptunian satellites, my best guess would be to look inside Triton," Rufu said. She warned that the energetic impacts could melt the satellites, removing any observable craters and making the primordial pieces more challenging to identify.

It's too bad for Neptune's original satellites that the ice giant didn't start out with more moons. Rufu and Canup found that a more massive primordial family could have meant doom for Triton. As long as the mass of the original satellite system was comparable to Uranus, which has only 27 moons, Triton would dominate, wreaking havoc as a homewrecker. But if the original system had contained a more massive moon, Triton may not have stood a chance. According to Rufu, a collision with a large enough satellite in a prograde orbit, along the same path as the planet's rotation, would have thrown Triton into Neptune.

"A massive prograde moon [could] decrease Triton's speed too much, and lead to Triton's fall," Rufu said.

The research was detailed Nov. 6 in The Astronomical Journal.

Follow Nola Taylor Redd at @NolaTRedd, Facebook, or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
WASHINGTON  Rising military powers like Russia and China have built an elaborate network of sensors to monitor regions of the world that are of strategic importance to the United States. A mix of military and commercial surveillance and targeting technologies is helping both Russia and China extend the reach of their long-range weapons, undermining U.S. access and influence in regions such as Eastern Europe and the South China Sea.

That was the takeaway from a year-long wargame funded by the Defense Department and Pentagon contractors

The research concluded that Russia's and China's sophisticated long-range sensor and weapon networks along their borders and in occupied lands create a "strategic problem" for the United States, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who participated in the wargame. [The Most Dangerous Space Weapons Concepts Ever]

The wargame shed light on the increasing sophistication and availability of satellite imagery as a trend that is playing in favor of U.S. adversaries. Both Russia and China have high-frequency radars that can see well over the horizon, as well as underwater sensor networks that can hear some types of submarines. With the newer constellations of electro-optical satellites, they get unprecedented visibility. "They can tap into commercial satellite networks, which are growing pretty dramatically, for visual and infrared indication," Clark said Wednesday during a briefing at the Association of Old Crows annual conference.

Adversaries' ability to closely monitor strategic regions makes it less likely the United States can prevail in so-called "gray zone" conflicts, Clark said. Russia's annexation of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine, and Chinese activities in the South China Sea are examples of gray zone conflicts  protracted, ambiguous operations that create a situation that makes it almost impossible for the United States to respond effectively.

Clark and fellow CSBA analysts Mark Gunzinger and Jesse Sloman detailed their findings in a study titled "Winning in the Gray Zone: Using Electromagnetic Warfare to Regain Escalation Dominance.

Russia's and China's homeland defense sensor networks in fact are more advanced than U.S. systems, simply out of necessity. Protecting their territory from nearby threats is "something they worry about," said Clark. "It's not necessarily that their technology is better than U.S. technology. They've invested in this area and we haven't."

In a confrontation, China and Russia would likely first use their widest-area search sensors, such as land-based high frequency over-the-horizon radars and passive space-based electronic or signals intelligence receivers to rapidly locate and identify enemy forces. These sensors can continuously survey an entire region such as the South China Sea or the Baltics but generally do not provide target-quality data. The emerging generation of commercial satellite constellations with electro-optical infrared sensors "will soon provide another search sensor with near-continuous surveillance of important regions," said the CSBA report. These commercial systems were designed to supply imagery to customers like farmers and climate change researchers, but they could support military operations for only the cost of a subscription.

CSBA cites one prominent company, BlackSky, that is developing a constellation over the next decade that will provide two-to-three images per hour of the most populated latitudes. Other companies and rival militaries are pursuing similar constellations.

The bottom line for U.S. forces is that they will not be able to avoid detection by this combination of RF, visual, and IR search sensors. What they can do, Clark suggested, is "make U.S. operations difficult to attribute or, more likely, slow an enemy's ability to identify and classify potential U.S. targets."

Old school decoys, jammers, camouflage and smoke to obscure their location would increase the time needed to find U.S. targets. "If the enemy desired to engage U.S. forces quickly, it would need to use more sorties and weapons, the CSBA report said, potentially resulting i a larger attack that may be inconsistent with the gray zone approach.

Clark said BlackSky is one of many companies that are advancing imagery technology and "providing almost ubiquitous coverage." The United States has access to the same technology but it wouldn't necessarily help in conflicts where "we are the away team," Clark told SpaceNews. "We're out there moving around, trying to exploit our mobility to avoid being detected. Both sides have access to commercial sources of imagery but it's more of a problem for the U.S. because we're generally the ones trying to stay hidden." [Military Space: The Tech, Spacecraft and Weapons]

The United States may have to think about resurrecting time-tested military deception techniques. "Satellites are here to stay . But I can put out decoys. Old school camouflage works really well, obscurants, smoke. Stuff that is fairly low tech can be really effective," he added. "I'm trying to create more targets for the enemy so he's forced to think about a larger operation than he's comfortable doing. In this gray zone fight, that's enough to cause him to bail out."

In the wargame, a "blue team" from U.S. Pacific Command became frustrated by the lack of options to respond to aggressions such as intentional jamming of U.S. GPS and communications satellite signals, Clark said. "The blue teams eventually just kind of threw up their hands and said, 'Either I have to escalate and start the war, or I have to sit back and not do a whole lot of anything.'"

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
T he sun-kissed beaches of Barbados were in the sights of investors today as speculation broke out over the potential for a 100 million-plus hotels deal.

Elegant Hotels, which owns and operates seven luxury properties on the Caribbean island, confirmed that it had been the subject of interest from Spains Melia Hotels but that discussions have now ended.

It is thought the approach valued Elegant at 110p a share, or 98 million, which Liberum described today as highly opportunistic. The broker said the price did not reflect the groups unique assets or its high market share on Barbados.

Shares in Elegant, whose directors include the leisure tycoon Luke Johnson, were 3p higher at 86.5p today.

There was relief for the wider London market as the FTSE 100 shook off recent losses to climb 55.82 points, or 0.7%, to 7356.31.

The mood across Europe was lifted by the US Senates decision on Friday night to approve President Trumps plans for sweeping reform of the US tax code, which investors hope will add further momentum to equity markets.

JPMorgan Cazenove believes its too early to turn bearish on global equities despite a 21% rise this year.

In its look ahead to next year, the bank noted that positives still outweigh the negatives as theres likely to be further support from corporate earnings while central bank tightening on monetary policy is still in early stages.

The positive mood was also seen in the FTSE 250, which rose 107.35 points to 19,961.75. Improving stocks in the second tier included oil and gas engineering firm Weir with a gain of 33p to 1995p. This was after the business unveiled the appointment of Stephen Young, the boss of components firm Meggitt, as a new board member.

Digital identities firm Intercede received a much-needed boost after a second major contract award in the space of a week for its MyID product, which protects employee login details from cyber criminals.

The agreement with an unnamed Whitehall department will generate revenues of around 250,000 in the present financial year and up to 500,000 the year after. Shares rallied 2.5p, or 8%, to 32p, helping to put back some of the losses seen after a profits warning in early November.

The spectacular rise in the price of Cheltenham-based materials technology firm Versarien continued today after it announced a contract with a major US-based chemicals supplier.

Neill Ricketts, the chief executive, said the agreement was a further sign that Versarien is now a leading supplier of high-quality graphene and other potentially industry disruptive two-dimensional materials. Shares jumped 16p, or 26%, to 76p, having been as low as 13p in mid October.
I nternational buyers are still aiming to pump as much as 40 billion into central London property despite the shadow of Brexit and new taxes hanging over the capital, experts said on Monday.

Bullish commercial property agents said the majority of demand for West End and City buildings is from overseas funds, including Asia and the Middle East. There is also a queue of private investors from China, Europe and the UK.

Plans to invest come despite fears that Britains vote to leave the bloc has forced some businesses to delay office move decisions.

There are also concerns about plans revealed in last months budget to force overseas investors to pay capital gains tax in the UK on commercial property.

Data compiled for the Standard by agent Cushman & Wakefield shows that year-to-date sales of office and retail property in the City and West End have reached 16.37 billion.

In addition, there are a number of deals in lawyers hands and due to complete imminently, which means full-year sales will comfortably surpass the total 16.96 billion spent in 2016, according to Cushman & Wakefields Fergus Keane.

He said: Whilst the recent budget changes to commercial real estate capital gains tax have been unwelcomed by investors, in reality it does bring the UK in line with the majority of other jurisdictions, and it is expected that Londons appeal will outweigh these concerns in 2018.

Keane claimed Londons safe-haven status, legal structure and the weaker pound since Brexit remain attractive to buyers.

Sales agreed since the November Budget include a Bond Street retail property being sold for 140 million to Italys Maramotti family, which is behind fashion label Max Mara.

Brian Bickell, the boss of West End landlord Shaftesbury, confirmed demand is holding up particularly for smaller buildings and those close to Crossrail. They offer security and long term growth prospects and are unlikely to be affected by Brexit worries.

Gregor Wallace, of property investment group Coldwell Banker Commercial, said: Worries of political stability overseas mean that London is still seen as a safe place to diversify if you are from places like the Gulf states.

CBREs Stephen Pearson said: As we enter the final month of 2017, there is evidence that the level of investor demand focussed on Londons commercial real estate market remains high.

Buildings expected to sell before the end of the year include Great Portland Estates 30 Broadwick Street.
R ussian metal tycoon Oleg Deripaskas EN+ had some cheer for the City on Monday after impressing with maiden results.

The company, which launched in London and Moscow, is chaired by former energy minister Lord Barker and manages Deripaskas power and aluminium businesses.

Shares have ground lower since a month ago when its bottom-of-the-range float raised $1.5 billion (1.1 billion), the biggest listing by a Russian firm since 2012.

But shares picked up 2% today as higher aluminium prices helped to boost underlying profits by 43% to $2.3 billion in the first nine months of the year.

Revenues rose 21% to $8.7 billion.

The firm used the float proceeds to repay its $942 million loan from Russian bank VTB.

Deripaska owns 66% of the company but is trying to mollify concerns by pledging that six of the board of EN+ are independently appointed.

Chief executive Maxim Sokov said EN+ had delivered outstanding results, driven by positive trends in the global aluminium markets.
F und managers one, mining industry egotists nil.

To investors, rumours last month that Mick the Miner Davis was set for a stunning return to the stock market at Rio Tinto were shocking in the extreme.

Putting one of the industrys brashest dealmakers atop a firm only just recovering from the crazed M&A party of the commodities boom seemed like handing an AA meeting the keys to the booze cupboard.

Yet, until some vocal opposition from investors, that is what Rios recruitment team led by director Ann Godbehere, was planning.

Dealmaking runs through Daviss blood like the coal in the hills of New South Wales that made Xstrata so many billions.

Yes, in the good years, he created fortunes for his investors (and himself), but Rio needs a chairman with an air of stability and calm about him; a City steward who will leave the chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques to do his stuff without interference.

J-S has been battening down the business, selling assets and returning cash to shareholders. It may not be swashbuckling, but its what the investors want. Strong and stable, as Daviss Conservative party might say.

Its not just Daviss love of the deal that made him inappropriate for this gig. In the past year, Rio has lost director John Varley to the Barclays fraud investigation, seen its former chief executive and finance director accused of fraud by US regulators and fired its energy and legal chiefs over alleged bribery in Guinea. All deny allegations against them.

Having a thrillmaker such as Davis in the chair would have sent the message that investors wanted more excitement.

They really dont.

Im told that they informed Rios board of this when Davis emerged as a possible frontrunner, yet his name stayed in the frame. Thats when they decided to team up through The Investor Forum, to get a better outcome.

In fairness to Rios board, they did the right thing in the end. Simon Thompson seems to fit the bill. So, on this occasion, did The Investor Forum, which proved to be more than just a talking shop.

But Godbehere and her fellow directors presided over a messy process at a company that really didnt need more turmoil.

Dont be surprised if Thompson brings in some new boardroom blood next year.

Swiss off guard?

Within weeks of the Saudi leadership locking up allegedly corrupt princes, Swiss banks have suddenly noticed their Riyadh clients may have been laundering cash for years. They had no clue of this until the new regime started asking questions. Honest, guv.
L ondon-listed miner Rio Tinto plumped for the safety first candidate as its new chairman on Monday, picking industry veteran Simon Thompson to succeed outgoing Jan du Plessis.

Thompson was seen as the safer bet by the board after recent speculation linking Mick the Miner, former Xstrata chief executive Sir Mick Davis, with the post.

That caused alarm among investors looking for consolidation after a period of buccaneering dealmaking in the sector followed by a commodity crash. The Investor Forum wrote to the board voicing concerns last month.

Shore Capital analyst Yuen Low said: We see Mr Thompson as a conservative response in the face of investor backlash to the earlier consideration of former Xstrata boss and Conservative party chief executive Mick Davis for the position.

In our view, this signals a continuation of capital discipline and emphasis on shareholder returns over active M&A. Thompson, who has previous experience at Anglo American and began his career as an investment banker, was also chairman of Tullow Oil during a traumatic five-year spell when shares fell more than 80% and it wrestled with debts of almost $5 billion (3.7 billion).

But under his chairmanship the miner will have to respond to bombshell charges recently unveiled by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. It charged Rio and two former top executives with fraud for allegedly inflating the value of Mozambique coal assets it bought in 2011 for $3.7 billion and sold three years later for $50 million. All parties are vigorously fighting the claims.
A s the Prime Minister sat down for lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker, how she must have wished she could take back control of the Brexit negotiations.

Ever since the EU insisted that our permanent trading relationship couldnt be discussed until we agreed to the divorce settlement, Britains future has been in the hands of others.

Everyone from the EU Commission and Parliament to the national governments in Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Dublin has had a veto on progress towards talks vital to Britain.

First, to avoid the eastern Europeans blocking agreement, we had to concede to all the demands on the future status of EU citizens living here.

Remember the Prime Ministers attempt to use the status of those four million EU citizens as a bargaining chip? That backfired.

Instead their status was used as a bargaining chip against us. So not only have we given them permanent residency rights (as we should have a year ago) but also accepted involvement of the European Court of Justice  crossing one of Mrs Mays supposed red lines.

Then came the money. The Foreign Secretary said the Europeans could go whistle.

Those in Whitehall closer to the negotiations said cash was the ace of spades, which we would only play in the endgame to secure a favourable trade deal.

Instead, 50 billion has been thrown onto the pile before the talks about trade have even started.

Then there was the Irish border. While the Brexiteers were publicly telling everyone it was a trivial issue which a clever camera could solve, the Irish government was privately using the border question to secure for itself a decisive say over its neighbours future.

Now we are all awaiting the pronouncements of the Irish Dail  its an assertion of parliamentary sovereignty, as the Brexiteers promised us; it just turns out to be another countrys parliament and not our own.

Now the European Parliament has weighed in, with Manfred Weber MEP (leader of the EPP conservative group) today warning Britain that he still isnt happy with the divorce terms.

The Evening Standard pointed out six weeks ago that Mr Webers views could be a problem. So now we will have to satisfy his demands too.

The British Government describes the past few months as a negotiation  but the only negotiation has been the internal one with the hardline Brexiteers, persuading them to go along with a series of surrenders to the demands of EU institutions and foreign governments.

Downing Street assumes that once we offer up the divorce deal, we can get into a more even-handed conversation with the Europeans about our future trading relationship.

But there is no evidence that Britain will have any more say over that.

Weve only been offered two choices, both of which Mrs May in her Florence speech categorically dismissed membership of the customs union/single market or a Canadian-style free trade deal (with nothing extra for services, including finance, as weekend reports out of Paris made clear). On the basis of recent months, we can see who is likely to win that coming fight.

And whichever option Britain chooses for the long term, we will have gone from participating in the rule-making to accepting rules made by others. It turns out Brexit does mean taking back control  for the Europeans, at least.

High drama

Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2017 highlights

The Evening Standard theatre awards ceremony last night was, as ever, a high-glamour affair.

But the awards served to make a serious point: the big winner, The Ferryman, is about the Irish border; the shortlisted Ink raised the power of the media; Albion, also shortlisted, dealt with national identity  and Polish builders.

As ever, theatre is a way to deal with contemporary problems and to understand ourselves better.

It matters.
T he Brexit debate has encouraged assertions about who we are and how much more prosperous and greater Great Britain will be once freed from Brussels. A glorious future awaits as a trading nation whose long-term inability to match Germany and France (or many others) in exporting to places such as China will be overturned by going it alone. We live in hope that the Chinese are not only prepared rapidly to strike a deal with us but that we will benefit from it.

In the meantime, Brexiteers and Remainers can celebrate some things that Britain does well. The V&A has just opened a gallery and exhibition in Shenzhen in southern China  a 45-minute drive from Hong Kong  as a central part of a sparkling new museum dedicated to design. It is the first UK museum to open a site on this scale outside the country.

But this is a venture that goes beyond a gallery. The Chinese, as passionate about self-improvement as they are about commerce, are opening museums at a fantastic lick  about 400 a year  but this one is particularly ambitious and strikingly international.

Three and a half years ago the company putting up the money, the state-owned China Merchants Group, was looking for help with the project. It had no reservations about going outside China to get it and asked the V&A to form a partnership.

And here it is  built on land reclaimed from the bay and an emphatic statement of Chinas desire to have more goods and services created in China rather than merely made in China.

The choice of the V&A reflects a tremendous two decades for our great museums, with audience numbers climbing and reputations embellished by magnificent exhibition programmes.

The V&As gallery in China Values of Design  enhanced by recent acquisitions from Shenzhen itself , challenges the Chinese audience to think about design as part of a debate not simply as an agent of economic progress. There are object descriptions that encourage reflection about needless waste, poor manufacturing conditions and regulatory systems that cant always keep pace. There has been no objection from the authorities.

Throughout the opening ceremonies it was palpable that the many Chinese involved in the venture admired not only the V&A, but aspects of Britain. They used familiar words such as maturity and experience  I write to report and not pass judgment  it was not hard to detect Brexit bafflement. You should be leading the EU, not leaving it, they said.

Mark Damazer, CBE, is Master of St Peters College, Oxford, and a V&A trustee
T he stars of stage and screen celebrated long into the night at the Evening Standard Theatre awards, where Glenda Jackson and Andrew Garfield reigned supreme.

Keira Knightley, Cate Blanchett and Cressida Bonas were among those who joined them at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, to celebrate a stunning year of theatrical success.

Jackson, whose surprise return to the London stage as King Lear after almost two decades in politics won her the Natasha Richardson Award for best actress, said the role was too good an opportunity to turn down.

She said: Ive been away a long time, I dont move in those kind of circles so it was surprising and very moving.

Evening Standard Theatre Awards Winners 2017 - In pictures 1 /20 Evening Standard Theatre Awards Winners 2017 - In pictures Andrew Garfield and Ruth Negga Dave Benett Glenda Jackson accepts the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress i Zendaya awards Amber Riley for Best Musical Performance Dave Benett Andrew Polec and Christina Bennington accept the Evening Standard Radio 2 Audience Award for Best Musical for "Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical" Dave Benett Jez Butterworth accepts the Best Play award for "The Ferryman" Dave Benett Glenda Jackson and Cate Blanchett Dave Benett Zendaya and Amber Riley Dave Benett Cush Jumbo and Tom Glynn-Carney Dave Benett Sam Mendes and Helen McCrory Dave Benett Allison Williams, Andrew Polec, Christina Bennington and Jeremy Irvine Dave Benett Andrew Polec and Christina Bennington Dave Benett Brande Jacobs-Jenkins and Jez Butterworth Dave Benett Andrew Garfield Dave Benett Glenda Jackson Dave Benett Bunny Christie Dave Benett Bunny Christie winner of the Best Design award Dave Benett Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Dave Benett Jez Butterworth presents the Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Dave Benett Glenda Jackson accepts the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress Dave Benett Andrew Garfield accepts Best Actor award Dave Benett

The double Oscar-winner, 81, hopes to tread the boards in the capital again once she has completed her next play in New York. She said: Every time I say, Yes Ill do it, I immediately think I cant do it  so it is a kind of sadomasochism but I hope somebody will offer me something I want to do.

Garfield, who was named best actor for his performance in Aids drama Angels In America at the National Theatre, said he was moved to tears by his win. Its very hard to absorb, its very hard to process, he said. But I just feel very, very lucky that I get to work as an actor and get to work on something that the world is crying out for.

So when the opportunity came along to do this, with phenomenal people who you admire, everything becomes a bit surreal. It becomes a little bit like an acid trip, you cant quite absorb it  its too sweet. Its like icing, on top of icing, on top of icing.

All theatre will have a place in my heart. The stage is the place where I feel most like myself, I can be who I am  and thats never going away. Its very consoling to know that Ive got a home to come back to. The former Spider-Man actor, 34, added: I love making films but theres something that cant compete with doing it live. Theres nothing more transformational in the arts, for me personally.

Amber Riley wins Best Musical Performance at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2017

The pair were among dozens of stars who gathered for the event, which has been a landmark in the theatrical calendar for more than half a century.

Other winners included Dreamgirls star Amber Riley, who took the award for best musical performance. The US actress said: The hardest thing for me was coming to a new city by myself and being by myself  luckily the Dreamgirls team have become like a family.

I just felt like everyone in the theatre community here welcomed me with open arms. It literally was the most amazing experience of my life. Ive grown so much as a person, as an actor and as a vocalist.

Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2017 After Party - In pictures 1 /28 Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2017 After Party - In pictures Keira Knightley Dave Benett Suki Waterhouse, Savannah Miller and Cressida Bonas Dave Benett Vanessa Nadal, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Cate Blanchett Dave Benett Ruth Negga and Andrew Scott Dave Benett Andrew Garfield and Stefanie Martini Dave Benett Cate Blanchett and Roksanda Ilincic Dave Benett Andrew Polec and Christina Bennington Dave Benett Arizona Muse, Suki Waterhouse and Elena Perminova Dave Benett Annabelle Wallis and Dominic Cooper Dave Benett Doina Ciobanu Dave Benett Andrew Garfield and Stefanie Martini Dave Benett Annabelle Wallis, Dame Shirley Bassey and Ophelia Lovibond Dave Benett Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Cate Blanchett Dave Benett Billie Piper Dave Benett Elena Perminova Dave Benett Annabelle Wallis and Ruth Negga Dave Benett Ophelia Lovibond and Annabelle Wallis Dave Benett James Righton and Keira Knightley Dave Benett Glenda Jackson and Andrew Garfield Dave Benett Wallis Day Dave Benett Charlotte Hope Dave Benett Dave Benett Annabelle Wallis and Dominic Cooper Dave Benett Ruth Negga, Evgeny Lebedev, Jon Hamm, Dominic Cooper, Ophelia Lovibond, Dame Shirley Bassey and Annabelle Wallis Dave Benett mmy Waterhouse and Suki Waterhouse Dave Benett Jon Hamm and Phoebe Waller-Bridge Dave Benett Christopher Kane and Laura Carmichael Dave Benett Alan Carr and Melanie Sykes Dave Benett

Jez Butterworths play The Ferryman, set in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles, dominated the night. It picked up three awards including best play, best director for Sam Mendes and the emerging talent award for actor Tom Glynn-Carney. Mendes, who said he was flattered and surprised to win, dedicated his award to his baby daughter Phoebe in the hope and expectation that she and her friends will make a slightly better job of looking after the world than we are doing.

Last nights ceremony was hosted by Evening Standard proprietor Evgeny Lebedev, American Vogue editor-in-chief Dame Anna Wintour, Blanchett and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, and presented by Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Other winners included Bunny Christie for best design and Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical, which won the Radio 2 Audience Award for best musical.

The Charles Wintour Award for most promising playwright was presented to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who joined a list of previous winners including Sir Tom Stoppard, for his play An Octoroon at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond.
P hoebe Waller-Bridge stood up for victims of sexual harassment in a searing opening speech at last nights Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

The Fleabag actress and writer presented the event at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, which saw The Ferryman take home three of the four awards it was nominated for.

After acknowledging the achievements of the productions on the shortlist, Waller-Bridge turned to the wave of recent allegations that have rocked the arts industry.

For all the glory, in many ways its been a tough year for morale in our business, with a series of dramatic revelations. Lots of men were shocked and saddened to discover that they were sexual predators, she said.

Evening Standard Theatre Awards Winners 2017 - In pictures 1 /20 Evening Standard Theatre Awards Winners 2017 - In pictures Andrew Garfield and Ruth Negga Dave Benett Glenda Jackson accepts the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress i Zendaya awards Amber Riley for Best Musical Performance Dave Benett Andrew Polec and Christina Bennington accept the Evening Standard Radio 2 Audience Award for Best Musical for "Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical" Dave Benett Jez Butterworth accepts the Best Play award for "The Ferryman" Dave Benett Glenda Jackson and Cate Blanchett Dave Benett Zendaya and Amber Riley Dave Benett Cush Jumbo and Tom Glynn-Carney Dave Benett Sam Mendes and Helen McCrory Dave Benett Allison Williams, Andrew Polec, Christina Bennington and Jeremy Irvine Dave Benett Andrew Polec and Christina Bennington Dave Benett Brande Jacobs-Jenkins and Jez Butterworth Dave Benett Andrew Garfield Dave Benett Glenda Jackson Dave Benett Bunny Christie Dave Benett Bunny Christie winner of the Best Design award Dave Benett Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Dave Benett Jez Butterworth presents the Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Dave Benett Glenda Jackson accepts the Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress Dave Benett Andrew Garfield accepts Best Actor award Dave Benett

She described 2017 as a year of no apologies, in which men and women are no longer apologising for being victims of systemic abuse in this industry. And the abusers are still not apologising despite admitting to it.

Waller-Bridge praised Royal Court boss Vicky Featherstone for a fearsome response which has changed history at the Sloane Square theatre. Her No Grey Area campaign saw her coordinate a special code of behaviour for working in the theatre and turned her stage into a platform for the voices of the victims.

Heres to the other theatres who have followed suit. A change is coming. And for all you creepy b*****ds who think you got away with it, you know who you are, and we will find you, she said, to rapturous applause.

Waller-Bridge also poked fun at the ways roles played by women are often described, turning the tables on the best actor shortlist.

Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2017 After Party - In pictures 1 /28 Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2017 After Party - In pictures Keira Knightley Dave Benett Suki Waterhouse, Savannah Miller and Cressida Bonas Dave Benett Vanessa Nadal, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Cate Blanchett Dave Benett Ruth Negga and Andrew Scott Dave Benett Andrew Garfield and Stefanie Martini Dave Benett Cate Blanchett and Roksanda Ilincic Dave Benett Andrew Polec and Christina Bennington Dave Benett Arizona Muse, Suki Waterhouse and Elena Perminova Dave Benett Annabelle Wallis and Dominic Cooper Dave Benett Doina Ciobanu Dave Benett Andrew Garfield and Stefanie Martini Dave Benett Annabelle Wallis, Dame Shirley Bassey and Ophelia Lovibond Dave Benett Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Cate Blanchett Dave Benett Billie Piper Dave Benett Elena Perminova Dave Benett Annabelle Wallis and Ruth Negga Dave Benett Ophelia Lovibond and Annabelle Wallis Dave Benett James Righton and Keira Knightley Dave Benett Glenda Jackson and Andrew Garfield Dave Benett Wallis Day Dave Benett Charlotte Hope Dave Benett Dave Benett Annabelle Wallis and Dominic Cooper Dave Benett Ruth Negga, Evgeny Lebedev, Jon Hamm, Dominic Cooper, Ophelia Lovibond, Dame Shirley Bassey and Annabelle Wallis Dave Benett mmy Waterhouse and Suki Waterhouse Dave Benett Jon Hamm and Phoebe Waller-Bridge Dave Benett Christopher Kane and Laura Carmichael Dave Benett Alan Carr and Melanie Sykes Dave Benett

She described Andrew Scott as gorgeous as the feisty little upstart in Hamlet, praised Andrew Garfield for his portrayal of a strong, sassy young man in Angels in America and described Bertie Carvel as majestic, playing a bubbly, bossy little businessman called Rupert Murdoch.

The awards, now in their 63rd year, were co-hosted by Evening Standard owner Evgeny Lebedev, American Vogue Editor-in-Chief Dame Anna Wintour, Cate Blanchett and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Andrew Garfield took home the award for best actor for Angels in America, and Glenda Jackson was greeted with a standing ovation after her best actress win for King Lear. The Ferryman was named Best Play, with Jez Butterworth giving the award to its star Laura Donnelly.
A single mother who fled domestic abuse today told how she found a lifeline through a charity helping the children of homeless families.

Doorstep, based on the ground floor of a hostel in north London, offers displaced children from across Camden breakfast  without which they would go to school hungry  after-school clubs, snacks and activities, as well as providing learning opportunities and a space to socialise.

Its aim is to rebuild a sense of community and help families  including parents fleeing domestic abuse and those fighting long-term illness  get back on their feet.

Writer and TV personality Victoria Coren Mitchell is a patron and it is funded through StreetSmart, which has partnered with the Standards Christmas Appeal.

Help a Hungry Child: The Evening Standard campaign with The Felix Project

Chloe (her surname has been withheld to protect her identity) has lived in London for 10 years. She left an abusive relationship while pregnant with her second child. Chloe has since been living with her children, aged four and two, in hostels and has struggled to keep a roof over their heads despite working as much as she can on a zero-hours contract.

Doorstep director of 27 years, Vicky Fox, said: Chloe is run absolutely ragged. We were so concerned about her having a breakdown one day when her pram with her weekly shop got pinched from outside. We contacted a donor who came down and bought her a new pram and food.

She often says the only way she can keep going is because of us and the friendship and the support she has here. She cries her eyes out and is so grateful to receive help.

Chloe said: Doorstep have helped with food when I have had no money, with clothes for the children, with childcare and me being able to use the laundry. It has got everything under one roof and has been a great support.

Doorstep have been my heroes. They helped me with practical things like food, laundry and activities for my child. But most importantly provided me with emotional support when I needed it most.

Readers can now support mothers like Chloe through a restaurant partnership that is now helping to raise funds for Londons most deprived adults and children.

Until the end of this month, 390 of the capitals finest restaurants will add an optional 1 to diners bills in a scheme that will fund both StreetSmart  which entirely supports Doorstep  and the Felix Project, which is ensuring disadvantaged primary school children across London have access to nutritious food at the end of the day.

Among those participating are Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Chiltern Firehouse and Clarkes, plus the restaurants at Fortnum & Mason and Selfridges.

Ms Fox added: Chloes situation is becoming more and more frequent because its not that there are holes in the safety net, there arent any safety nets anymore.

Doing laundry costs tens of pounds [in a launderette] and the only people who need to use them are people who dont have washing machines  the poorest.

Without charities like this you would have children stuck in their rooms at the end of the day, every day. A woman with really young children who is working, living in a room that is damp and receiving no help unless voluntary organisations like Doorstep step in to give her what she needs. And its not just practical support, its some love and its some care.

Auction's last days Last chance to support our Christmas Appeal through a special auction Time is running out to bid in our Christmas Appeal online auction  packed with prizes that would make ideal Christmas gifts, including a week-long stay in a luxury health retreat in the foothills of the Himalayas, five-star getaways in Europe, a private dinner catered by a celebrity chef, and chances to take home merchandise from Londons top football teams. Britains Got Talent fans can snap up tickets to the semi-final in the spring, complete with a chance to snap a selfie with Simon Cowell, while ethical fashionistas can bid for limited-edition Stella McCartney clothing and accessories. Also on offer is an original cartoon by the Standards Christian Adams. Proceeds from the auction will go to our Help a Hungry Child appeal. Readers have four days left to bid. Our auction is powered by Givergy, an award-winning fundraising technology company which offers a range of cutting-edge platforms to help charities raise more at fundraising events and online. The auction closes at 10pm on December 8.

To bid in the Christmas Appeal auction, visit givergy.com/charity/the-felix-project.

Here are the other ways you can donate to our Christmas appeal:

Call  08000 639281 (freephone)

Text  FELIX 5 TO 70700

Tap  www.standard.co.uk/helpahungrychild

Post  Freepost HELP A HUNGRY CHILD
I f the measure of a good recipe is how often you repeat it, then the following dishes - each taken from the recipe books Ive tried out this year as part of my Cookbook Challenge series - are all contenders in the best of the year category.

Some, such as the citrus ice cubes, arent so much recipes as simple cooking and storage tips, but are so useful I wonder what I did before I followed them.

I should also say that in a stellar year for cookbooks, some of which Ive admired and enjoyed reading, some Ive cooked a little from, its these here that Ive gone back into. That said, I reckon that even if you get one or two dish ideas from a book and you can use over and over again, youve got your moneys worth.

From On the Side by Ed Smith:

Purple sprouting broccoli with tarragon

I forget poor old tarragon. I think of having it with chicken, and almost nothing else - which is mad, given that tossing veg in it alongside a little olive oil and lemon as Ed suggested here, made the flavour of the broccoli really come alive. Ive done it a handful of times. Its the simple things, eh?

Zaatar mushrooms with curd

Victoria Stewart

In total contrast to the tarragon and broc, this is luxurious in its richness and creaminess. But my, my, its good. So much so that I made it once, made it immediately the following evening to have just on its own, and then straight away the following week.

Read the full article here

On The Side: A sourcebook of inspiring side dishes by Ed Smith (20, Bloomsbury). Buy it here.

From Elly Pear Lets Eat by Elly Curshen:

Satay tofu

Yumyumyum. The satay sauce takes no time at all, and will then act like the little devil that sits on your shoulder saying eat me, eat me, because its so addictive. Having not been that into tofu, Elly here convinced me to buy some and mix the two. Ive done in about four times since then, and lets just say I now like tofu.

Lentil, tomato and coconut dhal

Victoria Stewart

Ellys keen to get us into batch cooking and thinking ahead, something Ive not been hugely consistent with. However, Im including this recipe as I made it once, ate it that evening as well as the following one, and then stored it up and had it for lunch a following three times that month. If anything, itll make your kitchen smell delicious.

Read the full article here.

Elly Pears Lets Eat: Simple Delicious Food for Everyone, Everyday by Elly Curshen is out now (20, Harper Thorsons). Buy it here.

From Citrus by Catherine Phipps

Frozen citrus cubes

This is literally just that. Do you like gin and tonic? Do you like lemon in your water? Do you hate throwing away leftover scraps of lemon or lime because youre heading away for a few days? Well, chop them up and freeze them and use them instead of ice cubes. These have worked a treat for me all year.

Lemon, cardamom, coriander seeds, ginger rub

This is another long-lasting one, because you can make lots using peel from a lemon youve just squeezed (or know youre about to), cook with it, and then store it in your spice rack until you want to use it again. Granted, the follow-ups aret quite as fresh as the first time - but the flavours continued to work really well for me on chicken and fish.

Read the full article here.

Citrus, Recipes that Celebrate the Sour and the Sweet, by Catherine Phipps is out now (20, Quadrille). Buy it here.

From Zoes Ghana Kitchen by Zoe Adjonyoh

Zoe Adjonyoh, author of Zoe's Ghana Kitchen / Nassima Rothacker

Pan-fried okra

So okras a funny one. Ive eaten it a lot, mostly in Indian curries, but Ive never really got on with its slimy texture. In her cookbook, Zoes Ghana Kitchen, Zoe, however, was on a small mission to change that perception, by suggesting I fry it with lime and chillies and so on. The result was something that convinced both flatmates and me that you can be original with okra and itll be a star. Now I make a point of buying it from the market, and Ive made it this way loads of times both as a snack or side dish. [This wasnt strictly a cookbook challenge, but I started cooking from Zoes book in preparation for an interview I did with her earlier this year].

Read the full article here.

Zoes Ghana Kitchen: Traditional Ghanaian Recipes Remixed for the Modern Kitchen (Mitchell Beazley, 25)

From Healthy Baking by Jourdan Bourke

Miso tahini

Miso tahini / Victoria Stewart

I love this book for its slow and soothing approach to baking things at home, and I both love and hate this dressing for being so delicious. I have lost count of how many times I threw this over a salad this year, and how many friends went: oh my god, whats IN that? and asked for the recipe. Enough said.

Chia oatcakes

Oat cakes / Victoria Stewart

I couldnt live without oatcakes and while I know there are lots of recipes for making them, this was the one I jumped on and decided to bake my own with. My dad, a fellow oatcake fiend, really appreciated these as a birthday present. I actually use medium ground oatmeal, because I like a crunchier texture, but you could probably try all sorts.

Read the full article here.

Health Baking: Nourishing Breads, Wholesome Cakes, Ancient Grains and Bubbling Ferments by Jordan Bourke (Orion, 20); buy it here.

From Good + Simple by Hemsley and Hemsley

At it again: the Hemsley sisters

Green eggs

I had to slightly pick my way through this cookbook [which I admit wasnt out this year, but last] but these two incredibly useful recipes I have followed countless times. This one is essentially an omelette made with spinach, garlic, Parmesan, and whatever herbs you have lying around, and it makes a more interesting brunch. The first time I stuffed it with avocado and salad but found they fell out, so now I just make the omelette and eat that on its own.

Orange and chocolate slice with clementines

Ive had a few non-dairy-eating friends over for dinner this year so this has come in pretty handy, the only downsides being that a) it lasts about five minutes outside the fridge so you really do have to get everyone to eat it immediately and b) its worryingly moreish. The trick is to use good coconut oil - I once used an old one and it left an acrid taste in my mouth afterwards - and instead of putting whole segments of clementines, cut them up so you have a higher chance of having one with each bite you make.

Read the full article here.

Good + Simple by Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley is available now (Ebury Press, 25); buy it here.

From Lisboeta by Nuno Mendes

Almond cream triangles (Jesuitas)

Almond cream triangles / Victoria Stewart

If you dont want an excuse to eat pastries, look away now. Otherwise, make these. Buy shop-bought pastry and once youve mixed up the lemony almond cream, just fill up little parcels with it. I made a huge batch which lasted for no time at all by the time my friends had discovered the loot, so made another one a few days later with leftover cream. Scrumptious.

Read the full article here.

Lisboeta: Recipes from Portugals City of Light by Nuno Mendes (26, Bloomsbury); buy it here.
T hink there is no such thing as a perfect job?

Think again.

If youve been comforting yourself by saying that everyone has to deal with some kind of negative in a job, were sorry to tell you but, youre wrong.

Sorelle Amore, 28, is the proof.

After beating 17,000 other applicants all competing for ThirdHome Best Job On The Planet, Amore won the chance to be paid $40,000 to travel the world in three months, staying at 12 luxury properties in 12 different destinations.

The travel influencer started her journey in July in a five-star Scottish castle and ended it on the sunny waterfront in Sydney. In between she visited the likes of Fiji, Bali, Croatia, Spain and Morocco.

Her three favourite experiences included swimming with turtles and sharks in the Bahamas, staying in a 12-bedroom, five-storey mansion with eight staff in the Costa Rican rainforest, and staying close to the Great Wall in China.

Amore says this was quite literally a dream come true having previously written down the goal of visiting 12 countries and being paid to do it. It was only after her brother pointed out an ad for the competition that she realised it could actually be a reality.

It matched so perfectly to my goals, I was sure it was going to be me. I made sure I was truly vulnerable and honest in my video entries, pouring my heart into every single one. [ThirdHome] told me later that they liked how real I was. I was a goofball, but I guess normal, and people could relate. I think thats what stood out  just me being me.

Originally from New South Wales, Australia - Amore first amassed an Instagram following after she moved to Iceland on a whim and started posting travel tip videos.

Shortly after she had thousands of Youtube subscribers and over 100,000 followers on Instagram which no doubt helped her in the competition.

Following the end of her 12 week trip, Amore says shes going to keep travelling and make it her business. I plan on doing what Im doing and actually teaching people how to be a travel influencer because I discovered this is a really great way to live. Why would you not want to have a job like this?

Why not indeed.
A Britain First supporter who gave a Nazi salute before he tried to run over an Asian restaurant owner on the first anniversary of the Brexit vote is facing jail today.

Marek Zakrocki, 48, had a Nazi coin in his pocket and was armed with a knife as he mounted the curb and drove at Kamal Ahmed, hitting the window of his South Harrow restaurant.

The attack, labelled a hate crime by the Met, was carried out on June 23, a year to the day since the UK voted to leave the European Union.

The Old Bailey heard Polish-born Zakrocki had performed a Nazi salute while abusing members of the public in Harrow town centre just before the attack on Mr Ahmed.

After his arrest, Zakrocki signed his name "white power" and had earlier told people "I'm doing this for Britain", prosecutor Denis Barry told the Old Bailey.

Police discovered two magazines from extremist group Britain First, as well as flyers and a donation form to the far right organisation.

"During his interview, he said he had in the past made a donation to Britain First", said the prosecutor.

The court heard Zakrocki had drunk a bottle of wine earlier in the day before attacking his own wife, sparking a visit from the police.

He then told an officer: "I'm going to kill a Muslim, I'm doing this for Britain. This is the way I will help the country, you people can't do anything."

Zakrocki had also told his daughter "I'm going to kill people and kill myself, I love you and you will never see me again."

He left his home in South Harrow in his white van, driving "erratically" towards Harrow town centre where he started abusing strangers.

"Shortly after getting out of the vehicle, he appears to make a Nazi salute, he pushes an unknown Asian individual and chases him round the shopping centre", said Mr Barry.

He said Zakrocki then drove towards the Spicy Nights restaurant in Alexandra Parade, close to his home, where he got into a row with Mr Ahmed's brother.

Zakrocki had wielded a torch in the argument and when Mr Ahmed tried to intervene, he angrily got into his van, mounted the curb and twice drove into the front window of the restaurant.

"He was not aiming at the restaurant, he was aiming at Mr Ahmed", said the prosecutor, adding that Zakrocki was later found with a Nazi Germany coin in his pocket.

The court heard police performed a "hard stop" on Zakrocki after the incident, as tensions ran high in the wake of attacks in London Bridge, Westminster, and Finsbury Park.

The incident happened on the Brexit anniversary and just over a year since Britain First supporter Thomas Mair killed MP Jo Cox in her constituency of Batley and Spen.

Jonathan Lennon, mitigating, said Zakrocki appeared to have mental health problems and was "utterly and truly ashamed" of his actions.

He argued Zakrocki drove into the restaurant, having vowed "look what I'm going to do", and was not aiming for Mr Ahmed.

"What is clear is he was carrying out his threat", he said.

Zakrocki was due to face trial today but pleaded guilty this morning to battery of his wife and dangerous driving.

Judge Anthony Leonard QC has adjourned the sentencing until this afternoon for Zakrocki to be assessed by a psychiatrist.
A moped gang snatched thousands of pounds worth of watches after storming into a City store armed with a samurai sword, knives and iron bars this morning.

The gang used a moped to crash through the glass front door of the Chronext shop on Fleet Street shortly before 11am.

Terrified staff ran for cover as the gang burst in, one of them waving a huge samurai sword while others brandished a knife and iron bars.

One of the gang members armed with a large knife

Dressed in dark clothing and black helmets the gang snatched bundles of expensive watches in a raid that lasted a just a few minutes.

One witness said : There was a Vespa inside the shop because they drove it through the front door.

One of the gang appeared to be brandishing a samurai sword

I saw about five mopeds parked up on the pavement and the street outside and thwere three guys walking up and down, one with a machete and two others with what looked like long sticks.

There were others inside the store smashing the cabinets and grabbing loads of watches and stuffing them into bags.

One guy came out of another shop as if to confront them but the bloke with the machete threatened him and he backed off.

"They all jumped on their scooters and punched the air with their fists in a victory punch before driving off towards the Law Courts. It was seriously organised.

The raid took place in broad daylight in front of shocked bystanders / @marcneedoff

The witness, who did not want to be named, added: It took the police at least 13 minutes to get here which is a bit lame in this day and age.

Another witness said: "A man came out of a shop, looking as if he was going to try to intervene, and one of the guys came out and raised a knife and tried to intimidate him. He was waving his hand over his head, going towards him.

"They came outside with bags.

"Then they made off towards the Royal Courts of Justice, pumping their fists in the air like some kind of victory.

"There are about 40 people here in my office. It was very frightening  people were crying in the office.

"It was like something you see on Netflix or in the movies."

Video posted on Twitter shows the raid with one of the mopeds patrolling the road outside to spot for police cars while others armed with knives and the sword stand guard.

The raid comes as police are battling an epidemic of moped robberies, snatches and smash and grab raids across London.

Chronext said in a statement that they are "working with the London Metropolitan police to recover stolen watches and bring the perpetrators to justice."

"Chronext will continue to safeguard its customers and stock. Our focus now is on our shop staff who are thankfully unharmed," said a spokeswoman.

A City of London police spokesman said : City of London Police were called at 10.52am on Monday 4 December to reports of suspects on mopeds entering a jewellers on Fleet Street. The suspects smashed their way into the jewellers brandishing weapons, including knives, before making off on mopeds.

Officers are on scene. No one was injured during the incident. 

There have been no arrests.
T he girlfriend of a designer stabbed in the head as he walked his puppy in a south London park today said a sense of justice had been served as his attacker was jailed for 13 years.

Italian furniture designer Sinuhe Pianella, 31, remains in hospital eight months after being attacked with a screwdriver by mugger Jermaine McDonald, 26, in Dulwich Park.

He had been walking his spaniel Pinot when the thug stopped him and demanded his wallet and phone before unleashing an unprovoked attack. Mr Pianella suffered head injuries so severe he was placed in an induced coma and spent six weeks in intensive care at Kings College hospital.

He was later transferred to Orpington hospital for extensive rehabilitation following secondary brain damage.

Mr Pianellas girlfriend Emilie Hobday, a solicitor, today said the jail term went beyond what she expected.

Jailed: Jermaine McDonald has been sentenced to 13 years for the attack with a screwdriver

She said: This sad chapter in our lives is closed now and we can all carry on focusing on the most important thing which is Sinuhes recovery. The sentence brought closure and a sense of justice. The sentence is severe.

Im not glad about this. Someone will spend part of their life in prison and I would not wish that on anyone. But when I told Sinuhe about the sentence, he just said good.

Mr Pianella has been on a slow road to recovery since the attack on April 27. He is able now to leave hospital at weekends. Ms Hobday said: Sinuhe has defied what the doctors expected of him. We are hopeful because he is continuing to make progress. He is getting stronger and stronger. He is still in a wheelchair but is able to walk with people supporting him.

McDonald, of no fixed address, was convicted at Inner London crown court of wounding with intent, robbery and attempted robbery. He had admitted one count of theft. He was jailed on Friday for 13 years with an extended licence period of five years.

Ms Hobday, is working with friends and family to raise money for a new critical care unit at Kings College hospital, where Mr Pianella spent the early part of his recovery.

For details: tinyurl.com/kchappeal
A teenager was strangled and forced to apologise for being gay during a sick homophobic attack on a Tube train, police said.

The 19-year-old's attackers allegedly threatened to stab him and placed him in a headlock until he struggled to breathe during the attack on a Jubilee line train.

One of the victim's female friends, 25, was punched and pushed to the ground when she came to his defence, police said.

British Transport Police said officers were treating the incident as a hate crime and were searching for two men in connection with the attack.

The victims left the train at North Greenwich station / AFP/Getty Images

Police said the victim and his friends were dressed in fancy dress for an event they were travelling to on a westbound train between West Ham and North Greenwich stations on Saturday, October 21.

His attackers boarded the train at West Ham and began verbally abusing them and using homophobic language, police said.

The two suspects allegedly became more aggressive when their behaviour was challenged.

One of the men then put the victim in a headlock and began to strangle him, while the other took his phone and threatened to stab him, according to police.

A BTP spokesman said: "They demanded the victim apologise for being gay which eventually the victim did as he was struggling to breathe. They then let him go and handed back his phone and a fight ensued between the victims friends and the offenders. One of the victims friends, a 25-year-old woman, was punched and pushed to the ground. She sustained bruising."

The 19-year-old victim did not suffer from any physical injuries.

At North Greenwich, the victims left the train.

British Transport Police (BTP) detectives have released CCTV images of two men they want to trace in connection to the incident.

A BTP spokesman said: Hate crime will not be tolerated by British Transport Police. We believe that everyone has the right to travel safety.

We wont tolerate behaviour where someone is targeted because they are perceived to be different, or made to feel uncomfortable on their journey.

If you recognise them, please call BTP on 0800 40 50 40 or text 61016, quoting reference number 273 of 1/12. You can text us on 61016 to report non-emergency incidents.
T he family of a pedestrian killed when he was hit by a police van on an emergency 999 call today demanded answers over his death.

Suleyman Yalcin, 44, had just got off a bus on his way to a family meal at his brothers house when he was struck yesterday evening in Tottenham.

He was crossing Seven Sisters Road road when he was hit by the marked police vehicle at around 6.45pm.

Police officers and paramedics battled in vain to save him at the roadside and he died a short while later.

His brother Sinasi, 37, a graphic designer, said the family were devastated.

He said: He was on his way to eat with us. When he didnt arrive we kept trying his phone. Then we discovered there had been in a fatal accident involving the police, we are heartbroken.

We understand he had just got off the bus. How could this have happened? We want answers - the police have told us nothing yet.

The family, originally from Turkey, were today consoling each other at the family home near the scene of the collision.

Mr Yalcin said his brother had lived in Wood Green, adding: He was a lovely, kind and gentle person. We cant believe he has gone.

A local shop worker said: The man had got off the bus and was crossing the road. I saw a police van passing then there was a massive bang. I went outside and the man was laying on the ground.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has been informed and has launched an investigation.

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: Officers in a marked police vehicle were en route to an emergency call when their vehicle was involved in a collision with a pedestrian in Haringey.

The collision happened at approximately 6.45pm on Seven Sisters Road close to the junction with Elizabeth Road.

Officers immediately provided first aid. The London Ambulance Service and Londons Air Ambulance attended.

The pedestrian was pronounced dead at the scene at 7.20pm.

The Mets Directorate of Professional Standards and the Independent Police Complaints Commission have been informed.
T he Royal Brompton hospital is to leave Chelsea under 800 million plans to safeguard its future by creating a global powerhouse for heart and lung disease.

Hospital chiefs have been given two years to develop credible plans to relocate the Brompton to beside St Thomas hospital, on the south side of Westminster Bridge.

The proposal was backed by NHS England last week as it backed away from axing child and adult congenital heart surgery at the Brompton, a move that campaigners said would have crippled the countrys biggest heart and lung hospital.

Instead it endorsed ambitious collaboration plans with Kings Health Partners that will see the Brompton partner with Evelina London childrens hospital to provide paediatric services, and with St Thomas and Kings College hospital to provide adult services.

However NHS England warned that much, if not all of the cost will have to be found by the trusts themselves  with the sale of the Brompton site in Sydney Street, potentially one of the most lucrative property transactions in the capital, key to generating funds.

Dr Richard Grocott-Mason, the Bromptons medical director, said that the relief among staff had been palpable at NHS Englands decision to offer the hospital a lifeline.

He said the collaboration plan enabled the upheaval sparked by the nationwide review of congenital heart surgery to have a positive outcome.

Dr Grocott-Mason told the Standard: This is not just a response to congenital heart disease. This is a much bigger solution for heart and lung patients.

Its about transforming the way we deliver healthcare, something that is future-proof. This does give a ray of hope of something within the NHS that would be a real global powerhouse for heart and lung patients.

He added: This is something which is really exciting and a real opportunity, and something I think will be fantastic not just for London but the UK and the NHS.

Congenital heart disease is the most common birth anomaly, and affects 3,500 to 6,300 babies in England and Wales each year.

Many will need life-saving surgery and specialist care for the rest of their lives.

The review was designed to ensure that children undergoing congenital heart surgery have other specialities such as renal and gastroenterology, and general surgery, on the same site.

The Bromptons paediatric services have to be co-located by April 2022, with adult services by late 2020s.
offs, doff your top hats: Kate Reardon, editor of Tatler and the queen of the Sloanes, has resigned from the magazine.

Reardon, who started her career as a fashion assistant at American Vogue, joined Tatler at the age of 21. She returned there to take her place at the editors desk in 2011. The well connected editor says she is moving on to pastures new  further details are yet to be announced. She will leave at the end of this year.

Reardon has jollied up the mag since she took over, filling it with pictures of bunny rabbits in jewels, and overseeing a hilarious social media revamp, proving the aristos arent just retro.

Ive had the time of my life and will be forever grateful to Jonathan Newhouse for the extraordinary experience of being a Conde Nast editor, Reardon says. Ive also had the immense good fortune to work with some mind-blowingly talented, hard-working and funny people, it really has been a joy. I will share the news of my new venture when its appropriate.

Nicholas Coleridge, chairman of Conde Nast Britain, says: Kate has been a first-class editor of Tatler, producing a magazine of wit, mischief and glamour. She has an instinctive understanding of her readers, you feel her personality on every page.

Reardon hinted that change was afoot earlier this year at the magazines Restaurant Awards, when she introduced herself to guests as currently the editor of Tatler. It is the latest change at the magazine, which recently said farewell to several members of staff, and she follows her fellow Conde Nast editor Alexandra Shulman, who left Vogue earlier this year.

Who will take charge of the posh Bible? Watch this space...
T heresa May appeared to make major concessions in talks with the European Union today, triggering anger and alarm among Conservative Brexiteers.

Britain was reported to have given ground on both the Northern Ireland border and the powers of the European Court of Justice in return for a start to trade talks.

Details were emerging as Mrs May sat down to a working lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission. In a sign of the high stakes, Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, cleared his diary, cancelling a Middle East trip, to be available for more talks.

No 10 would not confirm that further concessions were on the table and the Prime Ministers officials said they were in no hurry to strike a deal before next weeks summit of European leaders.

Follow the latest on this story LIVE here

However, other countries were saying they regarded today as a deadline, putting huge pressure on Mrs May to bend.

On the Northern Ireland border, a draft agreement was reported to have been inserted at the last minute to say that Britain would guarantee continued regulatory alignment between the North and the Republic of Ireland.

This wording replaced the Irish demand for no regulatory divergence, allowing both sides to claim victory. The apparent concessions set alarm bells ringing among both the Democratic Unionist Party, who are propping up Mrs Mays Government in the Commons, and Tory Right-wingers.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, said Mrs May should walk out rather than surrender to Irish government demands that would drive a wedge between the mainland and Northern Ireland.

I dont see what we have got to sign up to, he told the Standard. We have given them all the reassurances they have asked for. If Ireland wants to block us from going on to discussing trade, we will just get on and leave on World Trade Organisation terms.

Owen Paterson, a former Northern Ireland secretary and another Brexit-backer, added: If this is true, it will be totally unacceptable for a large number of people in Northern Ireland to have a different regime to the rest of the UK.

Some Tories predicted Brussels would pocket any concessions now but still give us a rotten trade deal.

Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian Green MEP, said he had been shown a 15-page draft statement giving the border concession. He called it the only solution if you want to keep the Good Friday Agreement. Period.

Brexiteers fear that Northern Ireland would effectively remain in the customs union and the single market  taking rules from Brussels  while the rest of the UK leaves.

Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar was in contact with Mr Juncker and Mr Tusk before their meeting with Mrs May today. Mr Tusk tweeted: Tell me why I like Mondays! Encouraged after my phone call with Taoiseach ... getting closer to sufficient progress.

Sammy Wilson, DUP MP for East Antrim, said: I suspect this is either the Irish (government) are looking for weasel words that help them to get out of the corner they have painted themselves into.

Or else they are trying once again to bounce the British government into breaking its commitment of making sure that the union of all of the countries in the UK leaves the EU on the same basis.

He said it would risk inflaming calls from Scotland for it to get a special pro-EU deal. Its a very dangerous game, Mr Wilson said.

On the ECJ, Britain was reported to have accepted that the court would rule on the rights of EU citizens in the UK. EU sources confirmed that there had been good progress on Ireland, with a final text still to be signed off as the Standard went to press.

The Irish cabinet met earlier today. Deputy prime minister Simon Coveney insisted his country would not soften its opposition to trade talks without a written guarantee on the border.

Dublin fears checkpoints will be erected if Northern Ireland adopts different rules to the Republic, endangering 20 years of peace since the Good Friday Agreement.

Mrs May, Mr Juncker and Mr Tusk were due to discuss whether sufficient progress has been made in separation talks for the other 27 EU countries to agree to start Phase 2 talks, which will cover UK hopes of a trade deal and a two-year implementation period.

No 10 sought to play down the significance of the talks. Officials on both sides think that agreement is close on the so-called divorce bill, estimated at up to 50 billion, plus the rights of EU citizens.
T he UK and EU failed to reach a deal on Monday as Theresa May faced a furious backlash over proposed Brexit concessions for Northern Ireland.

Following a day of talks, the Prime Minister said she was still confident of a positive outcome despite differences on "a couple of issues".

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said "significant progress" had been made and added that he was confident a breakthrough deal would be reached in the coming days.

It comes after Mrs May faced anger from politicians in London, Scotland and Wales amid reports she had conceded Northern Ireland would keep the bloc's trade rules after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.

The live blog has now ended, but you can read back over our coverage as it happened.
I reland and Brussels tightened the screws on Theresa May today as Brexit talks went to the wire.

The Irish deputy prime minister Simon Coveney insisted his country would not soften its opposition to trade talks without a written guarantee on the border with Northern Ireland.

At the same time, Manfred Weber, an ally of Angela Merkel, declared that the biggest grouping in the European Parliament would vote against any agreement that broke their red lines.

The warnings came as Theresa May travelled to Brussels for two crunch meetings to decide whether sufficient progress has been made in separation talks for the other 27 EU countries to agree to start Phase 2 negotiations, which will cover UK hopes of a trade deal and a two-year implementation period.

Follow our live coverage of all today's Brexit news here.

Downing Street sought to play down the significance of the talks, describing them as a staging post rather than a deadline.

EU officials including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and head of Brexit negotiations Michel Barnier meet in Brussels on December 4 / AFP/Getty Images

Mr Coveney told Irelands RTE radio that his Government would continue to block talks on trade unless given a reassurance that there would be no re-emergence of a hard border with Northern Ireland. Hopefully well find a way forward today but if we cant do that, well then the Irish government position on Ireland is not going to change, Mr Coveney said. He agreed the detail could only be worked out during future talks, but said Ireland needed a fallback guarantee.

Dublin fears that border checkpoints will be erected if Northern Ireland adopts different rules to the South, endangering 20 years of peace since the Good Friday agreement. Helen McEntee, Irelands minister for EU affairs, said the UK had not responded sufficiently, saying: We need to have something very much clearer than we have had to date.

German MEP Mr Weber, who heads the biggest centre-right grouping in the European Parliament, warned: We will not change our red lines. The lives of millions of families are at stake.

Mrs May was due to lunch with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and have a separate meeting this afternoon with Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council. Officials on both sides think that agreement is close on the so-called divorce bill, estimated at up to 50 billion, plus the rights of EU citizens.

But the Irish border issue is fraught because of warnings from Mrs Mays allies in the DUP and Conservative right-wingers that no part of Britain can stay inside the rules of the EU.
P olitical leaders in London, Wales and Scotland have demanded the same Brexit concessions granted to Northern Ireland that would allow them to effectively remain in the single market.

In a remarkable political fallout, Prime Minister Theresa May faced a furious backlash from politicians in Scotland, Wales and London on Monday amid reports she had conceded Northern Ireland would keep EU trade rules after the UK leaves the bloc in March 2019.

Scotlands First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that if a Brexit deal can be done that effectively keeps Northern Ireland in the single European market, there is surely no good practical reason why others should not benefit from such an arrangement.

Both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain part of the EU in the referendum in June 2016.

The SNP leader stated: "Right now, Ireland is powerfully demonstrating the importance of being independent when it comes to defending your vital national interests."

Follow all the latest on Brexit developments LIVE here.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said: "Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it's possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market and customs union after Brexit."

The capital - which has a population of 8.8 million - voted by a margin of 59.9 percent to remain within the EU. Turnout was high by local standards at nearly 70 percent and Mr Khan campaigned to stay in the EU.

Juncker and May remain 'confident' of Brexit deal

Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones called for Wales to be allowed to continue to participate in the single market if other parts of the UK could.

He said: We cannot allow different parts of the UK to be more favourably treated than others. If one part of the UK is granted continued participation in the Single Market and Customs Union, then we fully expect to be made the same offer.

Theresa May shakes hand with Jean-Claude Juncker / EPA

After a working lunch on Monday, Mrs May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that their latest round of Brexit talks had broken up without a deal but that progress had been made.

Discussions are set to resume later this week, with both declaring themselves "confident" that a solution can be found in time for a key summit of the European Council on December 14.

Britain and the European Union appeared to be moving closer to agreement on key issues, including the status of the Irish border.

Arrangements which would effectively allow Northern Ireland to remain part of the European single union would prevent the return of a hard border between the North and the Republic of Ireland.

While Mrs May has previously insisted the entire UK will leave the single market, European Council president Donald Tusk made clear that Brexit talks cannot move on to trade issues unless the UK can satisfy Dublin there will be no return to a strictly-controlled border in Ireland.

Sadiq Khan has called for London to remain in the single market and customs union / PA

Politicians in Scotland, Wales and London have campaigned for Britain as a whole to stay in the EU's single market to smooth trade relations. But Mrs May has ruled that out so far, saying Britain needed the freedom to make its own rules and trade deals.

They had rallied to the cause again on Monday after Irish government sources said that Mrs Mays government had agreed to maintain EU "regulatory alignment" for Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK but shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state.

Irelands deputy premier Simon Coveney had said Dublin government's concerns over the post-Brexit border with Northern Ireland were set to be addressed fully, amid reports the UK would allow "regulatory alignment" between north and south.

Nicola Sturgeon said if Northern Ireland gets a special Brexit deal 'there is surely no good practical reason why others can't' / PA

Mrs May said there had been no overall agreement.

Regulatory alignment could mean both Ireland and Northern Ireland following the same rules governing trade, to ensure that goods can continue to move freely across a "soft" border with no checks.

But making an exception of Northern Ireland may make it difficult for Mrs May to argue others cannot have the same. So far, she has argued that Brexit should follow a one-size-fits-all pattern for the whole of the United Kingdom.

Arlene Foster Makes A Staement On The Impact Of Brexit On Ireland

The DUP has said it will not accept any Brexit deal that separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

DUP leader Arlene Foster said the party, which props up Mrs May's Tory minority Government, would not allow "any form of regulatory divergence" from the UK.

Ms Foster made clear the DUP would oppose the deal if it meant the effective drawing of a new border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK if the Westminster Government decides it wants to diverge from EU rules.

The PM broke off from negotiations with Mr Juncker for urgent telephone talks with the DUP leader after her statement.

Earlier, Mrs May's official spokesman said any agreement on the Irish border would protect the "territorial and economic integrity" of the UK.

Ahead of the meetings in Brussels, he told a regular Westminster briefing: "The PM has been clear that the UK is leaving the European Union as a whole and the territorial and economic integrity of the United Kingdom will be protected."

Responding directly to questions about the report of agreement on regulatory alignment by Irish broadcaster RTE, he said: "RTE also reported this morning we were holding a Cabinet meeting and I missed that if it occurred."
S adiq Khan has called for London to be given a similar deal to Northern Ireland that would allow the city to stay in the single market and customs union after Brexit.

As news broke that Theresa May appeared to make major concessions to Northern Ireland in EU talks today, a post to the Mayor of London's official Facebook page wrote that it had implications for London.

It said: "Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it's possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market & customs union after Brexit."

Mr Khan noted that the majority of the capital's residents who voted in the referendum did not want Brexit to happen.

"Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs," said the post.

Theresa May appeared to make major concessions in talks with the European Union today that triggered anger and alarm among Brexiteers that Northern Ireland would stay in the single market and continue taking direction from Brussels.

A draft agreement was reported to have been inserted at the last minute to say that Britain would guarantee continued regulatory alignment between the North and the Republic of Ireland.

This wording replaced the Irish demand for no regulatory divergence, allowing both sides to claim victory.

The apparent concessions set alarm bells ringing among both the Democratic Unionist Party, who are propping up Mrs Mays Government in the Commons, and Tory Right-wingers.

Meanwhile there was confusion over exactly what "regulatory alignment" amounts to.

It has been widely viewed as a way to avoid customs and other infrastructure changes that could jeopardise peace in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement.

A tweet by Nicola Sturgeon hinted that she saw the wording as paving the way for Northern Ireland to staying in the single market.

She wrote: "If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others cant."

However, others have said regulatory alignment did not automatically mean an agreement that Northern Ireland will stay in the single market.

Bruno Waterfield, Brussels correspondent for The Times, wrote in reply to Mr Khan: "She [Mrs May] hasn't.

"Text says: In absence of agreed solutions UK will ensure that there is continued regulatory alignment from those rules of internal market and customs union which, now or in the future, support North South co-operation and protection of the Good Friday agreement."
A leading critic of religious extremism today claimed excessive political correctness may push some people towards hate-filled views.

Dr Uamsa Hasan, head of Islamic studies at the Quilliam Foundation, said stifling debate was dangerous.

He said open discussions were the key to fighting extremism among young people - and he urged against a retreat to safe spaces as seen at some university campuses.

Dr Hasan was speaking at Turing House free school, in Teddington, as part of a unique nationwide debating programme.

An outspoken critic of Islamist extremism, he has previously received death threats for advocating evolution within the religion.

He argued that in recent years sensitive topics such as the causes of Islamist terror have been stifled, leading to extreme views being pushed to the darkest corners of the internet: If you push these issues to one side then it will explode," he said. "That is where political correctness went too far.

Stifling debate is dangerous. We know these ignorant or dangerous views exist, but if you ignore them they dont go away. They fester. People feel a sense of frustration that they dont have the freedom to express their views, which can lead to even more extreme views.

He added: I disagree with no-platforming and safe spaces for universities. They are adults not children. There is a middle ground between political correctness going too far and the other side of the coin which is inciting hatred. You have to balance the two.

Dr Hasan spoke to pupils alongside a former Taliban fighter, Hanif Qadir, who is now the chief executive of anti-extremism group the Active Change Foundation.

"Other speakers were behavioural psychologist Nick Daines and Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Tell MAMA, which records incidents of anti-Muslim violence and abuse.

As part of the VotesForSchools initiative 100 pupils at Turing House took part in discussions and were asked to answer whether they understood why someone would become a terrorist.

The panel of speakers talked about the dangers of fundamentalist ideology and how to spot signs of radicalisation among their school friends.

Across Britain 175,000 pupils held debates at 235 schools. VotesForSchools provides debating topics for students to use every week. Pupils vote and the organisation collects the data.

Previous debates have included gender-neutral bathrooms and the impact of the BBCs Blue Planet 2 on environmentalism.
T he volcano rumbling on in Bali has again begun spewing out greyish-white plumes of ash, continuing a weeks-long period of activity.

Mount Agung had calmed down in recent days and was emitting jets of steam, before Friday brought a return to the ash cloud that continues today.

The ash was shot as high as 1.3 miles into the air, the Indonesian Disaster Mitigation Agency said.

The volcano, which is capable of very violent eruptions, has shown a marked increase in activity in the last few weeks, stoking fears of a repeat of an eruption in 1963 that killed more than 1,000 people.

This blog is currently paused, but check back soon for the latest updates from Bali.
T en people have been arrested over the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was killed in a car bomb attack.

The blogger was a public critic of the government in Malta and her work led to investigations into the Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

She was killed close to her home on October 16 when her car was blown up.

On Monday, Mr Muscat announced in a press conference that eight people had been arrested following a major police operation involving Maltese forces and foreign help.

He then later tweeted that an additional two people had been arrested.

He said the suspects were arrested Monday morning in an operation coordinated among the Police Corps, the Armed Forces of Malta and the Security Services.

Mr Muscat said investigators have 48 hours to question the suspects to decide whether to seek charges. He provided no other concrete information about the arrests or suspects, citing concerns that anything he says could derail any prosecution.

Europol, the European Union's police agency, sent a team of organized crime experts to help Maltese police investigate the assassination, joining the FBI and Dutch forensic experts.

Just before her death, Caruana Galizia, 53, had posted on her closely followed blog, Running Commentary, that there were "crooks everywhere" in Malta.

The island nation has a reputation as a tax haven in the European Union and has attracted companies and money from outside Europe.

The journalist focused her reporting for years on investigating political corruption and scandals, and reported on Maltese mobsters and drug trafficking.

She also wrote about Maltese links to the so-called Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.
A multi-million pound foreign aid scheme has been suspended by the Government after an investigation claimed some of the money had been used to fund jihadis in Syria.

The Foreign Office has halted funds going to the Free Syrian Police (FSP)  a civilian police force  amid fears officers were being controlled by extremists groups.

According to a BBCs Panorama, police officers in Aleppo province were being paid in cash and were forced to hand over funds to the extremist group in control of the area, Nour al-Din al-Zinki.

Evidence also showed that the Syrian branch of al Qaida, Jabhat al-Nusra, had handpicked police staff.

Aid: The money was being sent to the civilian police in Syria / AFP/Getty Images

And some officers working in the FSP, which was set up by six countries including Britain after the Syrian uprising, were working with courts accused of torture and summary executions.

Adam Smith International (ASI), the British company that runs the project, said it had managed taxpayers' money "effectively to confront terrorism".

The programme claims dead and fictitious people were on the FSP's payroll. Documents revealed not one single officer could be found during a visit to a police station, which was supposedly the base for 57 officers.

But ASI said it accounted for the officers on subsequent visits and that it had found very few instances of dead officers remaining on the salary list in Syria.

It said it used cash because there was "no practical alternative" and that officers imposed by Jabhat al-Nusra were detected within two months.

Payments to the stations funding the extremist group Nour al-Din al-Zinki were stopped in August 2016, it added.

Islamic State areas of control in Syria and Iraq

Kate Osamor, Labour's shadow secretary of state for international development, said that if the allegations were true, British taxpayers would be "rightly outraged".

She said: "This investigation is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg: the Government must now open up its books so the public can understand the true extent of the problem."

And the chief executive of the Taxpayer's Alliance, John O'Connell, said: "Taxpayers will be shocked that it appears they have been funding terrorism."

He added: "Whilst it is welcome news that this arrangement has now stopped, arbitrary increases in aid since 2015 will inevitably mean more instances like these occurring.

"The aid budget should be cut significantly, with the focus solely being on humanitarian relief."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We take any allegations of co-operation with terrorist groups and of human rights abuses extremely seriously and the Foreign Office has suspended this programme while we investigate these allegations.

"We believe that such work in Syria is important to protect our national security interest but of course we reach this judgment carefully given that in such a challenging environment no activity is without risk.

"That is why all our programmes are designed carefully and subject to robust monitoring."
D onald Trump launched an extraordinary attack on the FBI, declaring it a biased institution and that's its reputation is in tatters.

In a series of more than a dozen tweets, the US president said the law enforcement agencys makeup is currently the worst in history.

His Twitter rant came after his former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

It also came as fresh questions were raised about his decision to fire James Comey, the bureaus former director, and on the impartiality of the team handling the Russia inquiry.

Mr Trump tweeted: After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters  worst in History!

He hinted that he was preparing a move to reform the agency, adding: But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.

The US leader also retweeted a demand from a conservative commentator that the current head of the FBI, Chris Wray, needs to clean house.

Mr Trump was reacting to news that Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in last years election, removed a senior FBI agent from his team for sending anti-Trump text messages to a colleague over the summer.

Peter Strzok, the agent in question, last year worked on the FBI investigation into whether Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information.

The president wrote: Anti-Trump FBI agent led Clinton email probe. Now it all starts to make sense!

His supporters argued that Mr Mueller, who is a long-time colleague of Mr Comey, is incapable of conducting a fair investigation.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, told news agency Associated Press Mueller removed Strzok from the team "immediately upon learning of the allegations."

Following the tweets, Senator Lindsey Graham, warned the president to tread cautiously. He said: "You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril. I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I'd watch this.
A US rapper struck up an unlikely friendship with a pensioner after they played more than 300 games of Words with Friends.

Spencer, also known as High Class Filth, bonded with 81-year-old Roz after they started competing against each another on the multiplayer word finding game.

The pair played 324 games on the Scrabble-like app since meeting online last summer.

Last weekend they finally met in real life as Spencer, 22, flew from New York City to Florida to visit Roz in her home state.

Heartwarming pictures shared on his feed showed the duo's elation as they met for the first time.

He wrote: "So last summer I randomly met this 80 y/o woman on words with friends. we played 300+ games together and she actually ended up becoming a good friend of mine.

"Today I got to go to Florida and meet her in person."

The rapper, from Silver Springs, Maryland, also posted their game results in a follow-up tweet, and was keen to stress that he was the all-time champion.

He won 210 times against the 81-year-old, with a high score of 354.

He wrote: "And to clear the air, she was not crushing me."

Spencer was joined by a pastor from The Riverside Church in Manhattan, Amy Butler, who arranged the trip, Sky News reported.

Ms Butler said has referenced their friendship in sermons, the news channel reported.

She shared her excitement on route to Florida by posting an image of herself and Spencer on the plane.

After their meeting, she wrote: "Sweet day today with Spencer and his #wordswithfriends friend, Roz, watching them bond in person for the first time. #Relationshipschangeus."
A tiny village in the Swiss Alps has voted to pay people nearly 19,000 (25,000 Swiss Francs) to come and live there.

The new scheme was proposed by the municipal council in Albinen, which lies in the southwest alpine canton of Valais, to try and entice new residents to bolster the town's waning population.

More than 70 per cent voted in favour of the initiative on November 30, which will offer financial assistance to young adults and families who wish to move there but there are strings attached.

Eligible applicants must be under the age of 45, agree to live in the municipality for a minimum of 10 years, either build or invest in property worth at least 150,000 (200,000 Swiss Francs), and must be a Swiss citizen or a settled foreign national.

The vote was passed by 71 votes in favour to 29 against and one blank vote, 20 Minutes reported.

Successful applicants will receive a cash sum of 18,814 (25,000 Swiss Francs) per single adult, 37,628 (50,000 Swiss Francs) per couple and 7,526 (10,000 Swiss Francs) per child.

A fund of 75,258 (100,000 Swiss Francs) will be set up to finance the project.

The mountain village, which has a current population of 240, has seen an exodus of people in recent years.

After the village lost three families, the school was forced to close, leaving remaining children to go to schools in the nearby towns of Leuk and Leukerbad, 20 Minutes reported.

The move came after a group of young citizens launched a petition demanding the municipal council offer a cash incentive to combat the declining population.

The council is expecting applications from between five and 10 young families, which they said would "have to be regarded as a major success of active housing and family support".
T he US and South Korea have joined forces to launch their biggest ever air force exercise just days after North Korea test fired its most powerful missile yet.

Hundreds of aircraft, including two dozen stealth jets, began the annual training session on Monday.

It commenced a week after Kim Jong Un fired his latest intercontinental ballistic missile but the US Seventh Air Force insisted it was not in response to the incident.

The five-day drill, called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies' wartime capabilities and preparedness, South Korea's defence ministry said.

Air exercise: US Air Force F-15 fighter jet touching down at Gwangju Air Base / AFP/Getty Images

The US sent several stealth fighter jets and around 12,000 military personnel for the annual training exercise in the Korean Peninsula.

Some local media report that B-1B bombers will also join aerial drills, but officials did not confirm their participation.

Missile: North Korea'sHwasong-15 missile which is capable of reaching all parts of the US / AFP/Getty Images

The training, which is held each year in late autumn, is described by North Korean state media as pushing the Korean Peninsula "to the brink of nuclear war".

Tensions are at a particularly dangerous point as North Korea edges toward its goal of nuclear-tipped long-range missiles whilst Donald Trump ramps up threats to unleash "fire and fury" against the country.

North Korea TV shows video of ballistic missile launch

Pyongyang will "seriously consider" counter-measures against the drill, and the US and South Korea will "pay dearly for their provocations", the Korean Central News Agency said on Sunday before the start of the exercises.

While many South Koreans typically ignore North Korea's rhetoric, some senior American officials have expressed concern following the ICBM test, North Korea's third.

Jets: Hundreds of aircrafts including two dozen stealth jets began training Monday / AP

On Sunday, Lindsey Graham, a Republican US senator from the state of South Carolina, said he believes it is time for US military families in South Korea to leave the country because conflict with North Korea is getting close.

The US government has not announced a formal decision to evacuate American citizens from South Korea, and there were no such signs in the diplomatic community in Seoul.

On Sunday, the White House's national security adviser said Mr Trump will take care of North Korean threats by "doing more ourselves".

"The priorities that the president's given us to move as quickly as we can to resolve this crisis with North Korea," General HR McMaster told Fox News.

"If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it, because he has said he's not going to allow this murderous, rogue regime to threaten the United States."
K ez Dugdale has become the second celebrity to leave the Im A Celebrity jungle.

In her exit interview, the Scottish MP told hosts Ant and Dec that she was delighted to be going.

I woke up feeling great this morning. I would have been happy to stay but Im delighted to go as well. Yeah, feels good.

Im hungry. I want a bacon roll. I want a nice cup of coffee, she said.

The build-up to her appearance on the show was surrounded in controversy, with some of her fellow Scottish Labour MPs criticising her decision to participate.

She explained her reasons for heading to the Australian Outback, saying: Its the biggest show in the UK. I wanted to come on and talk about the things that are important to me.

Despite the debate around her entrance to the jungle, Dugdale didnt have the most memorable time on the competition and she was slated by viewers as boring.

I'm a Celebrity .. Get Me Out of Here! 2017 - In pictures 1 /89 I'm a Celebrity .. Get Me Out of Here! 2017 - In pictures ITV Rex Rex Features Rex Rex Features Rex Rex Features ITV/REX REX ITV Challenge: Stanley Johnson and Iain Lee take on Aerial View ITV/ Rex Rex Features 'Cruel': Jennie McAlpine holds a witchetty grub in her mouth James Gourley/ITV/Rex Controversial: Vanessa White takes part in Car Cruel Karaoke James Gourley/ITV/Rex Campers wave goodbye to Shappi Khorsandi. ITV Shappi Khorsandi becomes the first celebrity to leave the jungle. Rex Features ITV/ Rex Iain Lee speaking in the bush Telegraph ITV/Rex Tearful: Iain Lee can't take part ITV/ Rex Shappi Khorsandi is the first star evicted from the jungle. Rex Features ITV/ Rex ITV Rex Rex Features Rex Features Rex Features ITV/REX/Shutterstock Amir Khan ad Vanessa White in the Live Bushtucker Trial: Ant vs Dec ITV/Rex Amir Khan speaking in the bush Telegraph ITV/Rex Stanley Johnson ITV/Rex Jamie Lomas, Rebekah Vardy, Vanessa White, Amir Khan, Iain Lee, Dennis Wise and Jennie McAlpine after the Temple of Gloom Bushtucker Trial ITV/Rex Iain Lee and Amir Kha after the Temple of Gloom Bushtucker Trial ITV/Rex Kezia Dugdale ITV Kezia Dugdale and Iain Lee ITV Bushtucker Trial: The Battle For 10 Downing Creek - (top row) Amir Khan, Jamie Lomas, Dennis Wise, (middle) Shappi Khorsandi, Rebekah Vardy, Vanessa White, (front) Jennie McAlpine, Georgia Toffolo and Stanley Johnson in 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!' ITV/Rex Rebekah Vardy during her Bushtucker Trial: Worst Dates ITV/Rex Rebekah Vardy and Georgia Toffolo during their Bushtucker Trial: Worst Dates ITV/Rex Rebekah Vardy and Georgia Toffolo during their Bushtucker Trial: Worst Dates ITV/Rex Rebekah Vardy during her Bushtucker Trial: Worst Dates ITV Rebekah Vardy and Georgia Toffolo during their Bushtucker Trial: Worst Dates ITV/Rex Vanessa White takes a bath in Camp ITV/Rex Features Rebekah Vardy ITV/Rex Features Rebekah Vardy at Camp in 'I'm a Celebrity .. get me out of here!' ITV Amir Khan in the Bushtucker Trial: Flushed Out ITV/Rex Amir Khan in the Bushtucker Trial: Flushed Out ITV/Rex Jack Maynard ponders whilst in his hammock at Camp ITV Jennie McAlpine, Rebekah Vardy and Vanessa White in the pool ITV/Rex Features Amir Khan in the Bushtucker Trial: Critter-Cal Rex Features Geiorgia Toffolo in the Bushtucker Trial: Critter-Cal ITV Kezia Dugdale arrives ITV/Rex Iain Lee arrives ITV/Rex Jamie Lomas, Amir Khan and Jack Maynard ITV/Rex The girls are awarded the meal tickets ITV/Rex Jamie Lomas ITV/Rex Georgia Toffolo hits the shower ITV/Rex Features Amir Khan during Camp dinner ITV/Rex The camp mates settle into their new home ITV/Rex Walk the Plank: Jamie Lomas, Vanessa White, Jack Maynard, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly ITV/Rex Walk the Plank: Jack Maynard and Georgia Toffolo ITV/Rex Ant and Dec explain the rules ITV/Rex The Focus Tower ITV/Rex Rebekah Vardy and Stanley Johnson get up close to some creepy crawlies ITV/Rex Jack Maynard in the Bush Telegraph ITV/Rex Feeling the cold: Stanley Johnson in the jungle shower ITV/Rex Jamie Lomas, Georgia Toffolo, Rebekah Vardy, Vanessa White and Stanley Johnson ITV/Rex Dennis Wise, Shappi Khorsandi, Amir Khan, Jennie McAlpine and Jack Maynard ITV/Rex

It was also reporte that producers were disappointed she hadnt had more disagreements with former Tory politician, and father of Boris, Stanley Johnson after paying her a 'six figure fee'.

Elsewhere in the programme, Strawberrygate rumbled on as Amir Khan and Iain Lee continued to bicker over their decision to steal a treat and eat it earlier in the week.

Meanwhile Vanessa White and Jennie McAlpine impressed the rest of the group by winning eight out of 10 stars in a Bushtucker Trial which saw them hold insects and animals in their mouths while humming songs for each other to guess.

Im A Celebrity continues Monday, December 4 at 9pm on ITV.
S trictly Come Dancing favourite Alexandra Burke reportedly suffered a meltdown backstage after she found herself in the bottom two for the second week in a row.

The singer, 29, was pitted against Davood Ghadami in Sunday nights dance-off despite topping the leader board with her Charleston to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins.

The judges voted unanimously to save her, but Burke was said to be inconsolable after filming finished.

Alexandra was sobbing and shaking in the green room after the dance-off, a source told The Sun.

Dance-off: Alexandra Burke and partner Gorka Marquez / BBC / Guy Levy

She couldnt understand why the public had voted her into the bottom two for the second week in a row despite getting great scores.

She had to be reassured by Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman, she seemed inconsolable.

Strictly stars greet fans outside Blackpool Tower

Burke and Ghadami received the fewest public votes a week after Burke was forced to compete against Susan Calman in the dance-off.

Out: Tess Daly with Davood Ghadami and Nadiya Bychkova / BBC / Guy Levy

But some viewers were left angered by the judges decision to save her once again, with some claiming the show is being fixed in favour of the former X Factor winner.

On leaving, Ghadami said starring in the BBC ballroom competition had been a real gift.

Strictly star Alexandra Burke surprises students at her former school

He said: There have been so many highlights Ive had the best time and this is why Im smiling because I never thought Id get this far. Ive never done anything like this before. Im going to spend the next two weeks dancing with my two beautiful girls at home.

The EastEnders actor took on the Argentine Tango to Phantom of the Opera but was heavily critiqued, with head judge Shirley Ballas slating his stumbling while Craig Revel Horwood accused him of not leading the dance.

Strictly Come Dancing 2017 - In pictures 1 /18 Strictly Come Dancing 2017 - In pictures Mollie King and her dance partner AJ Pritchard Guy Levy/PA Chizzy Akudolu and her dance partner Pasha Kovalev Guy Levy/PA Aston Merrygold and his dance partner Janette Manrara Guy Levy/PA Gemma Atkinson and her dance partner Aljaz Skorjanec Guy Levy/PA Debbie McGee and her dance partner Giovanni Pernice Guy Levy/PA Joe McFadden and his dance partner Katya Jones Guy Levy/PA Alexandra Burke and her dance partner Gorka Marquez Guy Levy/PA Charlotte Hawkins and her dance partner Brendan Cole Guy Levy/PA Rev Richard Coles and his dance partner Dianne Buswell Guy Levy/PA Davood Ghadami and his dance partner Nadiya Bychkova Guy Levy/PA Susan Calman and her dance partner Kevin Clifton Guy Levy/PA Simon Rimmer and his dance partner Karen Clifton Guy Levy/PA Brian Conley and his dance partner Amy Dowden Guy Levy/PA Jonnie Peacock and his dance partner Oti Mabuse Guy Levy/PA

Strictly Come Dancing is on BBC One, Saturday at 6:45pm
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The German effort to rebuild some of its Cold War era Leopard 2 tank force has encountered problems. It has gotten so bad that currently Turkey, Chile, Greece, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and Poland each have more operational Leopard 2 tanks than Germany (which had over 2,000 in the early 1990s). This odd situation was revealed in November 2017 when it was discovered that 53 Leopard 2s were unavailable while undergoing upgrades and 86 were inoperable because of spare parts shortages. That meant Germany only had 95 Leopard 2 tanks that were combat ready. Thats 39 percent of the 244 Leopard 2s currently available to the army.

This was all attributed to a 2015 program to expand and upgrade the tank force. That involved taking 104 retired (in the 1990s) Leopard 2A4 tanks and putting them back into service after refurbishing the older tanks and upgrading them to the A7V standard. The 104 reactivated Leopard 2A7Vs wont begin arriving until 2019 and it will take until 2023 to complete the process. There may be further additions to the active tank force depending on how much of a threat Russia continues to pose. As of the end of 2017 the actual German tank force has been reduced to fewer than a hundred operational tanks. How could this happen?

Most Germans believed peace would last after the communist governments Russia had imposed on most East European nations after 1945 suddenly collapsed in 1989 followed by the Soviet Union dissolving in 1991. That marked the end of the Cold War. On top of that Germany was reunited in 1990 and the Russian equipped East German military was largely scrapped. At that point the German Leopard 2 fleet shrank over 85 percent (from 2,000 to 225). Germany also retired over older 2,200 Leopard 1s. Most of the retired Leopards were sold off or scrapped. But nearly a thousand Leopard 2s were put in storage just in case. Until 2014 Germany believed that those retired Leopard 2s would eventually be sold off or used for spare parts. A minority of Germans thought there was still a risk of a renewed Russian threat and so plans were made to keep upgrading Leopard 2s for foreign customers (who were now operating most of the remaining Leopard 2s) and the 225 Germany kept on duty.

Continuing to encourage Leopard 2 upgrades made business sense because back in the 1990s the two most modern (and effective) tanks were the American M1 and the Leopard 2. In many respects the Germans were just trying to stay competitive with the M1 upgrades. For example in 2014 Germany, Canada and Denmark agreed to upgrade over a hundred of their Leopard 2A6 tanks with ATTICA thermal imaging systems used by the tank commander and gunner. In most modern tanks both the commander and the gunner have high tech sights, usually with thermal (heat imaging) capability. The ATTICA sight is 3rd generation and that means images are sharper, more easily linked with other systems and the equipment is more reliable and easier to maintain. Third generation also means the engineers have added more wish-list items they have been receiving from earlier users over the years. The upgrade costs about $100,000 per sight and give Leopard 2 users something most M1 users already have. .

In 2009 Germany began upgrading its few active duty Leopard tanks from the 2A6 to the A7+ standard. That would include more armor on the sides and rear (especially to protect against RPGs), more external cameras (so the crew inside could see anything in any direction, day or night), a remote control machine-gun station on top of the turret, better fire control and combat control computers and displays, more powerful auxiliary power unit and better air conditioning, and numerous other minor improvements to mobility (engine, track laying system, wheels and related gear), sound proofing and the thermal sights. This would increase the weight of the tank to nearly 70 tons.

The Leopard 2A7+ also got more effective ammunition for the 120mm gun. This included fragmentation shells that detonate above or behind a target. Non-lethal ammo has also been developed for the Leopard 2A7+. The manufacturer also announced it was beginning work on Leopard 3 (a major upgrade of the Leopard 2) before the end of the decade.

In 2016 the Leopard got its latest upgrade; the A7V. This added a few features to the A7+ including a 20 KW auxiliary power supply so the stationary tank could continue to operate all its electronics when the main engine was shut down. The other addition was the ability to easily add additional armor modules.

The 55 ton Leopard 2A6 was introduced in 2006, is still the most commonly used model, and is a contemporary of the American M-1. The 2A6 model has a stabilizer (for firing on the move) and a thermal imager (for seeing through night, mist and sand storms.) Germany has been selling less capable (but refurbished) 2A4s since the 1990s. This enabled many nations to inexpensively upgrade their aging armored forces. Since 2000 many nations have upgraded to the A6 standard. Most users prefer to continue upgrading their Leopards, mainly because there are no new tanks to buy. Thus the appeal of an upgrade to the Leopard 2A7+ standard.

Until the 1980s, the German Leopard I was considered one of the best tanks available. Entering service in the late 1960s, it was the first post-World War II German tank design. Although a contemporary of the American M-60A3, the German tank was considered superior. For this reason, Germany was able to export Leopards to many nations. Most of the 4,744 produced (plus 1,741 Leopard chassis adapted to other uses, like recovery and anti-aircraft) have since been retired (in storage) or scrapped. Many owners may have to melt down theirs Leopard Is, for there's not much of a market left for 44 ton tanks, even those equipped with a lot of nifty upgrades. The original buyers of Leopard I have already flooded the market but now only Leopard 2s are wanted.

The German Leopard 2 appeared in 1979 and was an immediate export hit, especially to replace elderly U.S. M-60 tanks (a 1960s design.) But when the Cold War ended in 1991 many Leopard 2 users looked to sell off many of their Leopard 2s. Most of the original 3,500 Leopard 2s have been sold as second-hand vehicles to Austria, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Singapore, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Portugal, Greece, Chile, Turkey and Spain. Originally, West Germany bought 2,125 new Leopard 2 tanks, the Netherlands 445, Switzerland 370, Sweden 120, Spain 219 and Greece 170. Although a contemporary of the U.S. M-1, many consider the 62 ton Leopard 2 a superior tank, even though the M-1 has much more combat experience and subsequent upgrades based on the experience in battle.

In 2003 both Germany and the United States believed the usefulness of heavy tanks like the M-1 and Leopard 2 were over. Then came Iraq and Afghanistan where it was found that these traditional designs were still very useful, especially with the most modern accessories (like thermal sights, vidcams for all-round visibility from inside the tank and modern air-conditioning systems that can withstand tropical heat). Thus upgrading the Leopard 2s remains a big business.
In late 2017 a UAE (United Arab Emirates) firm (NIMR Automotive) made its first sales outside the Arab world by obtaining an order from Turkmenistan for an undisclosed number of its new LRSOV (Long Range Special Operations Vehicle) 4x4 armored vehicle. LRSOV was designed for cross country operations and is an update of the Ajban armored version of the popular NIMR military truck. This Ajban SOV (Special Operations Vehicle) entered service in 2016 and featured an open top vehicle meant for reconnaissance, border patrol or any mission that required the mobility of a 4x4 military vehicle plus some armor protection. Ajban SOV is a 7.5 ton vehicle with a 2.5 ton payload. That can vary depending on the degree of armor protection carried. In 2017 the LRSOV showed up. It was an upgraded Ajban SOV. There here various technical improvements as well as a higher (three ton) payload. The LRSOV is an eight ton vehicle with a longer range (700 kilometers over relatively flat terrain at speeds of up to 100 kilometers an hour). It has four seats with option for a fifth one. Standard equipment includes tires that can change configuration to deal with different terrain and run-flat inserts. Optional equipment includes armor add-ons (like a belly armor kit) and electronic options for battery monitoring and additional sensors.

The SOV vehicles are based on the original 2005 NIMR military truck. This is a 4x4 vehicle similar to the American hummer and designed to cope with the high heat and abundant sand and dust found in the Middle East. The original NIMR weighs 4.4 tons, can carry 1.5 tons (or up to eight people), and can be equipped with a RWS (remote weapons station) 12.7mm machine-gun turret. Top speed is 140 kilometers an hour on roads. This version costs about $82,000 each. There is a larger 6x6 version for carrying cargo. There is also an anti-aircraft version armed with four Mistral missiles ready-to-fire and four more as reloads. An anti-tank version comes equipped with four Milan ATGM (anti-tank guided missiles) ready to fire and four more as reloads. All NIMRs are equipped to take a variety of armor kits (providing different degrees of protection against bullets and explosions). The SOV models can mount a machine-gun and comes in configurations for carrying cargo.

NIMR development began in the late 1990s and production began in 2005. NIMR was designed with the help of Russian automotive company GAZ, which also helped set up the manufacturing operation and supplies some of the components. The original MIMR is basically a variant of the GAZ Tigr, which is very much a Russian version of the American hummer. The UAE has so far sold over 2,000 NIMR vehicles, mainly for the UAE armed forces. Some sales have been made to Libya, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Algeria. NIMR, SOV and the new RIV vehicle are produced in an assembly plant in Jordan with another plant being built in Algeria.

NIMR and several other manufacturing operations are part of an effort by oil-rich Arab countries to develop their economies and not just be dependent on exporting oil and gas. This is difficult because most Arab countries, especially the oil-rich Gulf States, dont have much industrial infrastructure or a population with the motivation or skills to create one. The UAE is an exception in that it has much less corruption and has always been more entrepreneurial.

Earlier in 2017 NIMR revealed a new special operations ATV (all-terrain vehicles) vehicle. This market has long been dominated by American and British firms. The NIMR RIV (Rapid Intervention Vehicle) is four ton vehicle with a 1.5 ton payload. RIV is a 4.9 meters (15.6 feet) long four seater that can mount a 12.7mm machine-gun atop the roll bars.

The RIV is similar in layout to the existing (and very popular with Western troops MRZR4 which weighs 1.5 tons (loaded with nearly 700 kg of fuel, passengers, and cargo). MRZR4 is a 4x4 vehicle that is 3.6 meters (11.8 feet) long and has no doors, four seats, and a steel framework on top which is usually left open for maximum visibility. The vehicle is optimized for cross country operations and powered by an 88 horsepower engine. Fuel capacity is 7.25 gallons (27.4 liters) and range depends on what sort of terrain is being crossed. MRZRs can tow a load of up to 680 kg. Cost per vehicle varies depending on accessories. MRZR can be equipped various electronic navigation and night movement equipment. The latest versions have improved electronic automatic power steering. There are a lot of accessories for storing different types of cargo on a MRZR.

RIV has a more powerful 300 horsepower engine giving it a top speed of 160 kilometers an hour on roads. RIV is built to use quickly attached lightweight bullet proof panels and comes standard with a blast resistant bottom. RIV is appealing to the special operations and special (SWAT type) police units in Moslem countries where special operations capability is often part of regular police work. Thus RIV is built to operate on paved roads and at high speed while still capable of cross country patrols.

The vehicles NIMR has produced so far show the company pays attention to its target market, but must still compete with foreign firms in the West and Far East (Japan and South Korea) that have a head start and have established reputations and customer loyalty. That is why the Turkmenistan sale is so important (although it may simply be a political gesture of encouragement). Nevertheless the symbolism is important, as is the new NIMR plant in Algeria.
The military government is learning again why military governments never last long in Thailand. Paying attention to what people want wins elections, not just ordering people to do what some generals and their cronies think is best. Eventually the coup must end or face the risk of a nationwide insurrection. As with past coups there will be elections (in 2018) and the generals want to ensure that a vindictive elected government doesnt get power and seek revenge. So the generals are paying more attention to popular opinion rather than their personal preferences. The generals realize how unpopular some of their decisions were and are scrambling to deal with the damage. The most obvious error was changing the constitution to give the military more power permanently. The other bad errors were depending on China (for weapons and investment) and not reviving the economy sufficiently.

All of these are linked, in the minds of many voters, to the need to maintain the alliance with the United States. 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 but instead Thai GDP growth has fallen behind all of the neighbors since the latest coup. 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. The annual GDP growth rate is now four percent, but everyone else in the region is doing better and the military cannot hide that or explain it away.

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 suffers when it fails here. 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.

In the Moslem south the military governments efforts to improve the economy has often backfired. For example new regulations on fishing are seen as costing most southern fishermen more money without any benefit and government plans to build a coal fired electricity generating plant are not popular, not when so many other countries are using natural gas or nuclear powered plants.

Another annoying change in the south has been the growth in Chinese tourism. Many of the Chinese tourists are troublesome and, worse yet, on budget tours and dont spend much money. Tourism accounts for 11 percent of GDP and the big spenders tend to cause less trouble. Thus while Chinese tourism accounts for nearly 30 percent of tourist income it seems a wise move to change the visa rules to block the low budget Chinese tourists. The government also continues to demand better performance from Chinese investors and Chinese arms sales efforts. The Thais have a reputation for being tough negotiators, even with powerful nations they want to (or must) cooperate with. The Chinese, like the Americans and Japanese (especially during World War II) learned it was better to negotiate with the Thais than try to bully them.

The military also continues to have problems with families suspicious of how their sons died while undergoing military training. There are currently two cases of this in the news. One involves a teenage officer cadet who died from apparently being bullied by fellow cadets. This case is still active. Another incident involved a conscript who died during training. Further investigation concluded the death was from natural causes (perforated ulcers) not a beating.

November 23, 2017: Outside the capital a farmer reported an arms cache in a flooded rice field. Police recovered 32 grenades and several hundred rounds of rifle ammo in equally rusted AK-47 magazines. The recovered material had been buried about three months ago and was damaged by the water. The government accused pro-democracy groups of owning the ammo but there was no proof of that. In fact it was more likely that these weapons belonged to some smuggler that supplies the many criminal gangs in the capital.

November 22, 2017: Wanna Suansan, a suspect in the August 2015 bombing of a Hindu temple in Bangkok, was arrested as soon as she arrived back from Turkey (where her husband is still jailed). She and her Turkish husband had flown to Turkey after the 2015 explosion and Turkish police arrested the two when Thai officials presented the evidence against the couple. But since then the Thai prosecutors have not been able to come up with enough evidence to justify an extradition. Wanna Suansan came back because she had a child in prison and was willing to talk after returning voluntarily.

November 21, 2017: In the south (Yala province) a roadside bomb killed one policeman and wounded another. This incident is believed to be retaliation for the recent arrest of a man involved in bombings like this.

November 20, 2017: In the south (Songkhla province, just north of the three Moslem provinces and also bordering Malaysia) 25 Chinese Uighurs who had been arrested for illegally entering Thailand escaped from a migrant detention center near the Malaysian border. Within a week six were recaptured, one of them across the border in Malaysia. China demanded that the six recaptured Uighurs be returned to China but the 25 escaped Uighurs all denied they were Chinese and popular opinion in Thailand (especially the Moslem south) is against automatically sending illegal migrants in Thailand back to China. Few of these Uighurs migrants have had anything to do with Islamic terrorism and ignoring that when China demands automatic expulsion back to China of Uighurs is seen as Thailand surrendering to Chinese bullying. That sort of thing is very unpopular. Nevertheless there has been some Uighur involvement in Islamic terrorism.

In 2015 Police released a picture of a Chinese Uighur many named Ishan who was described as the suspected organizer of the August 17th Hindu temple bombing. One of the bombing suspects under arrest was also a Uighur. Several other Uighurs were believed involved in the bombing. At first the attack was seen as revenge by Uighur separatists for the Thai government sending 109 Uighurs back to China a month earlier. China had been pressuring the Thai government since 2014 to send back Uighurs who had illegally fled China. Uighurs are a Turkic people living in northwest China and many have been moving through Thailand to get to exile in Turkey or the West. People smugglers frequently use Thailand as a way station for getting people (for a large fee) out of the region and to more distant and hospitable destinations (preferably Europe or North America.) China says the Uighurs it is after are criminals (Islamic terrorists). The Thai government refused to act promptly to the Chinese requests. This delayed but did not stop the eventual return of the 109 Uighurs to China. Meanwhile in 2015 police issued arrest warrants for a dozen other suspects, some who appear to have fled the country. The government was reluctant to describe the 2015 attack as Uighur related the evidence pointed in that direction. By the end of 2015 the government concluded that the attack was about people smugglers seeking revenge and not Uighurs. Two of the suspects had confessed, but before the two could be brought to trial they withdrew their confessions claiming they had been coerced by torture. So far no one has been convicted for the bombing.

November 15, 2017: The government announced that it would set up a joint Thai-Chinese vehicle maintenance center in the northwest (Khon Kaen province). This will be for the hundred tanks and other armored vehicles Thailand has ordered from China. The joint maintenance center is largely funded by the Chinese as a good will gesture and to encourage the purchase of more Chinese military vehicles and weapons.

November 8, 2017: In the south (Pattani province) police killed two Islamic terrorist suspects and arrested a third after attempts by local religious and political leaders to get them to surrender failed. The three were wanted and police were called when locals spotted them.
As powerful men drop like flies due to their inability to resist abusing their authority, its clear that the problem is widespread. Similarly, its likely that well find the problem of alleged industrial espionage is not limited to Uber. You see, when people misuse authority  and the sexual harassment problem is a massive misuse of authority  folks typically dont just misuse it in one area.

For some time, Ive suspected that the harassment issues were just one aspect of a bigger problem. The allegations that Uber aggressively moved to steal intellectual property from Google and colluded to cover up evidence of the theft may be indicative of another area in which executives have been abusing their authority.

Rather than wait for the next scandal to surface, I thought it would be interesting (since Im an ex-internal auditor who has been through a cycle like this before) to look at the other areas where we likely will find that executives and others who wield authority have been doing scandalous things. Ill close with my product of the week: one of the few security offerings that could prevent against a significant amount of this immoral behavior, Varonis.

Connecting the Dots

It appears that one reason sexual harassment claims have gotten out of control is that human resource departments have been acting more to cover up problems like this than to correct them. This is largely because HR has the responsibility to make problems like this go away, but it currently lacks the authority either to fire or correct a misbehaving executives behavior. Even if it were possible, its likely that the career of the poor HR person who took such an action also would be over.

HR is hardly alone in terms of losing authority to do its job. Whenever you have a mismatch of authority and responsibility, you have a crucible for wrongdoing. Currently, a lot of staff organizations  like security, HR and internal audit  are so far below what should be minimal staffing standards that I expect there are a lot of companies that are just as unaware theyre bleeding as Google was.

Industrial Espionage

The last time I saw the rise of industrial espionage was in the early 1980s, when many Japanese technology firms made illegal moves to try to compete better with IBM. They were caught, and the monetary cost in terms of damages and penalties was massive  enough so that it mostly wiped out the practice outside of government-sponsored efforts from countries like China, North Korea and Russia.

Over time, the security organizations that once were staffed and missioned to catch and stop this kind of activity were defunded. They went from being staffed by ex-spooks (basically specialists in catching or being spies) to being run by hourly workers who, in far too many cases, couldnt even be hired as a beat cop.

There is a lot of money in selling intellectual property. There is a huge advantage if you can get hold of it, in terms of meeting your objectives, advancing, and getting a huge bonus. The incentives are massive. There are state-level players active again with far greater resources and cyberhacking capabilities, along with a ton of employees who havent seen a raise since Carter was president.

Expense Abuse

Weve seen a hint of this in the new Trump administration. Some members of his cabinet massively abused expense policies and either used government jets inappropriately or booked seats on private jets at huge premiums.

These were treated as isolated cases, but the people involved came out of the private sector, and behavior like this is typically learned. It is very likely that this practice of abusing expense accounts and company assets came from the firms where they were working prior to joining the Trump administration.

This suggests these practices are widespread, but because internal audit has been defunded, unlike government oversight, it likely isnt being caught yet. Much like it has been with sexual harassment, I expect that all we are waiting for is the right post on social media to be picked up by a reporter, and suddenly well have another wave of firings, and the firings for expense abuse likely will be far wider and deeper than the sexual harassment firings have been so far.

This is because accounting and finance, unlike HR, have retained a great deal of power. Boards watch expenses far more aggressively than they do things like sexual harassment (though, if things continue on the sexual harassment front, that likely will change, and it should).

Wrapping Up: Abuse of Power

The key element in all of this is abuse of power. Whether we are talking about jail guards or executives, there are a lot of people who dont do well when given power. Their limiters dont work, and the result is that they push the envelope until a catastrophe occurs and they are fired.

There should be controls and oversight to offset this behavior, but it is abundantly clear that those controls in many firms and government agencies currently arent doing the job. While we are focused on sexual harassment, we likely are missing other bad behaviors  like selling company assets or expense abuse  that go along with abuse of power.

Ill leave you with one more example of common power abuse, and that is carrying out vendettas: using your power to get revenge on someone you believe has done you harm, either inside or outside the company. This is extremely common among folks who abuse power, and it can create a vicious cycle and even escalate to violence.

There is a good chance you may not be able to affect change in others, but  and trust me on this  abuse of power is a career ender, regardless of the path you take. Making sure you and your employees (if you are a manager or executive) dont abuse power increasingly will be critical to preserving your career. In this age of social media, keeping such abuse secret soon may become impossible.

Im bringing back Varonis as my product of the week, because intellectual property theft almost cost me my job, and it is a company killer. Varonis has the best protection against IP theft (including customer and employee confidential records).

What Varonis does is provide a solution that ensures that people who shouldnt have access to internal data dont have access, and that any attempt to violate the related policies, either by internal or external actors, are caught and stopped quickly.

While much of the focus of late has been on protecting customer records, Varonis capability to both identify an attempted breach and ensure that it will fail is largely unmatched in the segment.

Given Ubers alleged theft of Googles intellectual property was the basis for this column, and that it allegedly was an inside job  something Ive argued is likely far more common than most firms realize  focusing on a product that could have prevented this theft or provided stronger evidence of it is why Im making Varonis my product of the week.
Virtual Reality is now more popular among consumers than ever before, partly due to the headsets' price cuts. But given the nature of VR, some people are still uncomfortable with spending hundreds of dollars on something that may have lasting appeal. For Playstation 4/Pro owners, Sony's PSVR free trial program let them try before they buy. It turned out to be so popular that the registration list filled up almost straight away.

US PlayStation Plus members had the opportunity to try a PSVR unit in their homes, for free, for two weeks. The package was made up of the headset, a necessary PlayStation camera, two move controllers, a copy of Skyrim VR, and a demo disk. The only thing not included was the PS4 itself.

Those who signed up had to provide Sony with their credit card number. If they decide to hold on to the VR package after 14 days, they're charged $299.99 and get to keep everything. It's a pretty great deal, considering the Skyrim package, which launched on November 17, usually retails at $449.99.

Despite Sony's plan to keep registrations open until December 14, the 1400 available demo units were snapped up very quickly, at which point the company shut down registrations. But given its success, don't be surprised to see a similar promotion arrive sometime in the future.

While the PlayStation VR might not be able to match the PC-powered Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, it made up almost half of the record one million VR headsets sold in the third quarter of this year.
Samsung, Qualcomm, Apple, how do these tech giants keep track of all the patent-related disputes they have with each other? BlackBerry and Nokia are currently engaged in such a battle, one which has just seen Nokia win a significant victory; a court has ordered BlackBerry to pay the Finish firm $137 million for failing to make certain payments under a patent license agreement.

While precise details of the patent contract are unknown, we do know that the International Court of Arbitration has ordered BlackBerry to pay the huge sum. The company said it accepts the decision, but is disappointed that the court did not agree with its arguments.

It's not all bad news for BlackBerry, though. The Canadian firm said it would continue pursuing an unrelated patent infringement case against Nokia, so maybe it'll be able to get some of that cash back. This relates to filings by BlackBerry in February 2017, which allege that Nokia infringed on 11of its patents in the company's base stations and related software. Nokia has called the claims "without merit."

"BlackBerry is disappointed that the Court of Arbitration did not agree with our arguments in the case but we accept their decision. This ruling does not change BlackBerry's assertion that Nokia is infringing on our intellectual property and we are continuing to vigorously pursue legal remedies in both the US and Germany," said BlackBerry, in an official statement.

The two companies may have fallen from their lofty positions in recent years, but there was a time when they were the dominant forces in the phone market. Between them, BlackBerry and Nokia were responsible for 70 percent of smartphone operating systems back in 2009.

It's not as if BalckBerry's doesn't have enough money to pay Nokia; in April, it was awarded $815 million in an arbitration dispute with Qualcomm over patent royalties.

Back in September 2016, BlackBerry confirmed it would no longer manufacture its own devices, focusing instead on software and services.
Many still think that when it comes to skyscrapers, taller is always better. But Google is taking a very different approach with its London headquarters---and others may follow in its footsteps. Rather than touching the clouds, the search giant's UK HQ will be just 11 storeys tall when complete but have a length of over 1000 feet.

The $1 billion structure will boast one million square feet of floorspace and be home to 7000 employees. The unusual design is being referred to as a "landscraper" by its architects---Bjarke Ingels Group and Heatherwick Studios.

While this will be the first landscraper, it's thought that the effects of climate change combined with advancing technologies could see more companies opting to use the design.

"Landscrapers will create entirely new city footprints that we just haven't seen yet in the US, and could make life easier and more realistic," said futurist Amy Webb, in a briefing published by What The Future Housing.

Webb added that migration from denser states like New York to cities with underdeveloped land like Austin, Texas, means landscapers will thrive in these areas, which have more room for building large structures,

Webb also points to advancements in cable-less technology that will make it easier to travel through these buildings in Willy Wonka-style elevators that move vertically as well as horizontally. Moreover, landscrapers' low heights and large roofs make them ideal for drones; an area that more companies are focusing on. Drones landing on the roof of Google's HQ will have to watch out for the solar panels, though, which provide a combined annual output of almost 20MWh.

"Buildings could be built to be longer and lower, and drones could buzz overhead, delivering goods and performing services," added Webb. "We're going to have more things flying overhead. The challenge is that the overhead airspace is not regulated, but it will wind up becoming regulated. We'll have invisible highways in the sky."

Construction is set to start on Google's London HQ next year.
Fans of Netflix's popular political drama House of Cards may have been disappointed to hear that the company wouldn't be renewing the show for a sixth season. This news came in the wake of sexual assault allegations against one of the show's leading actors, Kevin Spacey.

However, it seems that Netflix has changed their mind regarding the future of the show - to a degree. While the streaming platform will likely not be inviting Spacey back on set for any further filming, Variety reports that the show's producers are still eager to move forward with a shorter eight-episode sixth season in the star's absence.

Netflix will start production on last season of House of Cards next year. Will be a "good creative conclusion" says content boss Ted Sarandos. --- Peter Kafka (@pkafka) December 4, 2017

Writing a character as memorable as Frank Underwood out of House of Cards will certainly be no small task but it seems producers are already thinking of ways to do just that, with one possibility under consideration being the potential death of Spacey's character. Doing so could result in the focus of the show shifting to Claire Underwood, played by co-star Robin Wright.

As nice as it would be for fans to see a satisfying conclusion to House of Cards, Variety reports that contractual obligations between Netflix and Spacey may prove to be a difficult hurdle for the show to overcome. Specifically, producers seem uncertain as to whether or not they will legally be able to move forward without Spacey's involvement on the show.
The Peruvian president considers that this complaint represents the beginning of a new type of coup d'etat. | Read More
Barack Obama. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Like the rest of us, former President Barack Obama has noticed that some men in power have had a few  issues as of late. And so, during a weekend speech, the street-style star stressed the importance of electing more women in politics.

As AFP reports, Obama didnt specifically reference any of the many, many, many allegations surrounding powerful men during his Saturday speech in Paris. But he did address the importance of more focus on putting women in power, because men seem to be having some problems these days.

Obama made the remark in response to a question about future leaders at an invite-only event hosted by a group known as Les Napoleons. The attempted juror also added, Not to generalize, but women seem to have a better capacity than men do, partly because of their socialization.

Luckily women already figured this out long ago.
A Prison Chief With a Dark Past Purged in Chinese Regimes Anti-Corruption Campaign

The latest sacking of a top Chinese official reveals human rights abuses that are part of Chinas politics

A provincial official responsible for persecuting the spiritual practice of Falun Gong was taken down last week.

On Dec. 1, the Hubei Province anti-corruption watchdog agency announced that Cheng Ying, deputy director of the Social and Legal Affairs Committee within Hubeis Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), was given shuanggui, an abusive interrogation of Party members that resulted in his being stripped of his position and Party membership. Having been purged, his case is being referred for prosecution in Chinas judicial system.

Most of the crimes that the watchdog agency accused him of committing were during his time as director of the provinces Prison Management Bureau: accepting bribes and failing to stop repeated violations of Party discipline within the prison system.

Chengs downfall may appear to be a routine part of Chinese leader Xi Jinpings ongoing anti-corruption campaign to root out bad apples. However, while punishing Cheng, the Chinese authorities failed to address some of Chengs more serious crimes: his responsibility for the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners incarcerated at Hubei prisons who remained true to their faith.

Cheng had a long political career in Hubei, located in northeastern China. He got his start in Xianyang City in Hubei Province, working as a deputy party office director in 1985. In December 2008, he began working for the Hubei provincial authorities, where, aside from being the prison chief, he was also the deputy party secretary and deputy director of the provinces Department of Justice.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient Chinese spiritual discipline with meditative exercises and moral teachings. The practice quickly grew in popularity during the 1990s. In 1999 an official estimate put the number of adherents at 70 million, while Falun Gong practitioners say 100 million had taken up the practice.

Then-Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin feared that the teachings of Falun Gong were proving more attractive than the Partys own ideology. He ordered a nationwide persecution of the group beginning on July 20, 1999. Since then, millions of adherents have been subjected to torture, detention, brainwashing, and forced labor, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center. Researchers have found that Falun Gong practitioners are the principal source of organs for Chinas extensive transplantation establishment.

The World Organization to Investigation the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), a New York-based non-profit organization, has called out Cheng for his role in the persecution.

WOIPFGs investigation has reported that the Fanjiatai Prison in Shayang County of west-central Hubei Province was a concentration camp for holding Falun Gong adherents. Since the prisons establishment in 2002, it has illegally imprisoned over 200 adherents who often faced torture and brainwashing, while some were forcefully injected with unknown drugs.

According to Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that monitors the persecution in China, Falun Gong practitioner Li Yuankai was severely beaten and locked up in an isolation room in March 2012. Later that month, prison guards used electric batons to beat and shock practitioner Cheng Zipeng. He was thrown into an isolation room for two months.

At another Hubei prison, the Hongshan Prison, Kang Youyuan, 65, also a Falun Gong practitioner, is currently serving his three-year sentence since October 2014, after he was found guilty of possessing Chinese cash with the words Falun Dafa is Good written on them.

In September 2009, Zheng Yuling, 57, a practitioner who worked at the business bureau of the Chibi (a city within Hubei) municipal government, died at the Hubei Womens Labor Camp after being subjected to brainwashing and physical torture for a month. According to Minghui.org, her husband said her nose was disfigured and there were multiple needle marks on her hands.

Chengs right-hand man, Wu Shunfa, was the deputy director of the Prison Management Bureau. Wu was also given shuanggui in July, according to the Central Commission of Discipline and Inspection (CCDI), Chinas central anti-corruption watchdog agency. Among his litany of crimes, he was found guilty of accepting bribes from a criminal to assist him in obtaining parole sooner than allowed.

Wu also has connections to the persecution of Falun Gong. Chu Yuan Groups, a conglomerate established by Hubeis Prison Management Bureau, according to the bureaus official website, listed Wu as the companys general manager beginning in May 2012. Minghui.org found that the company, which does business in diverse sectors such as cotton oil, construction design, and labor services, has hired prisoners in Hubei for labor, including Falun Gong adherents who were forced to work long hours, without pay, to polish jade jewelry and make disposable chopsticks.

The handling of Chengs case follows a pattern that has developed in Xis anti-corruption campaign: those responsible for persecuting Falun Gong are taken down for other crimes. For instance, former head of the security apparatus Zhou Yongkang, a driving force behind the nationwide persecution, was sentenced for bribery, abuse of power and leaking state secrets. Li Dongsheng, the former head of the Gestapo-like 610 Office, formed for the purpose of eradicating Falun Gong, was sentenced for bribery.
Angelina Jolie Wannabe Mocked as Zombie for Botching 50 Operations Now Reveals Real Number

Recently numerous media reported on an Iranian Instagrammer who allegedly underwent 50 plastic surgeries to look like Angelina Jolie but botched the job and resembles a zombie.

Post udostepniony przez Francisco Campelo ? (@colunadocampelooficial) 1 Gru, 2017 o 4:01 PST

Mocked as Corpse Bride and zombie by fans and press alike, Sahar Tabar, a social media personality from Teheran, Iran, fired back at critics in a Nov. 28 post.

You and your family will pay, said Sahar Tabar on her official Instagram channel sahartabar_official, pay for it by being judged and accused and very soon.

The social media phenom also denounced biased foreign media coverage.

Foreign sites and channels were very biased in the way they talked about my photos, said Tabar, who also appeared to set the record straight on whether the look she creates is through surgery, or makeup and Photoshop.

I thought these people are probably living in the 18th century, said Tabar, and they havent seen or heard of technology or makeup.

Tabar also set the record straight on the number of plastic surgeries. Posting in Farsi she said:

I must say Ive only had one, not 50 surgeries.

A full English translation of her post:

Hello relatively dear followers, the picture that youre scrutinizing, even though I didnt like it, I kept it in  I must say I only had ONE surgery, not 50 surgeries, and foreign sites and channels were very biased in the way they talked about my photos. I thought these people are probably living in the 18th century and they havent seen or heard of technology or makeup and they are really surprised.

What has been said on some pages about me and my family is a sign of jealousy and is spreading rumors. My dear friends, you keep casually accusing others and mercilessly judge others. Without a doubt on your path of life you and your family will pay for it by being judged and accused and very soon. The name of Sahar Tabar, unlike what you think, will become known in the world [in a good way] and many will regret saying things without thinking. Please respect my taste and dont forget who you are.

The Epoch Times previously reported that Tabar had taken body modification to a staggering extreme.

Teen EXTREME surgery to look like Angelina Jolie! https://t.co/CykdnA2akp  DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) November 30, 2017

The Epoch Times reported that Belgian media Sud Info reported that Tabar has allegedly undergone 50 procedures to look like her idol, but that some fans said Tabars extreme look is all makeup and clever prosthetics and her natural look is considerably more toned.

Post udostepniony przez ?sahartabar_official   (@sahartabar.original) 3 Gru, 2017 o 1:33 PST

We also pointed out that Tabars official Instagram account is packed with photos that challenge onlookers with extreme Angelina-esque features.

Post udostepniony przez Jawn (@jawnofficial) 1 Gru, 2017 o 3:19 PST

But The Epoch Times also aimed to portray the real Sahar Tabar behind all the characterization, and referred readers to her other Instagram profiles for another perspective.

An early photograph that she posted of herself is this pre-surgery selfie featuring her in a traditional hijab.

Post udostepniony przez sahar tabar (@tabarsahar) 19 Kwi, 2017 o 3:47 PDT

Here she is without the traditional adornment.

Post udostepniony przez sahar tabar (@tabarsahar) 19 Kwi, 2017 o 3:49 PDT

The Tehran teens foray into cosmetic surgery beginswith a single nose job.

Post udostepniony przez sahar.-.tabar (@sahar.tabar2017) 17 Sie, 2017 o 5:31 PDT

Heres post-op Tabar recovering from a rhinoplasty procedure.

Post udostepniony przez sahar tabar (@tabarsahar) 20 Kwi, 2017 o 2:27 PDT

Tabar has shared numerous selfies on social media, many of which have sparked controversy and debate among her followers.

You were gorgeous! stated one comment.

You are pretty! Stay this way, said another follower.

You was [sic] a very beautiful girl  and now you look horrible, said a third.

Many of Tabars followers are calling on her to tone down her look, saying her current, extreme look resembles a zombie.

Post udostepniony przez Cheryl Nugent (@ciaofoxy) 30 Lis, 2017 o 10:17 PST

But Tabar can tone it down, as this post shows.

Post udostepniony przez sahar.-.tabar (@sahar.tabar2017) 1 Gru, 2017 o 4:12 PST

As comments on the photo below suggest, many of her fans like Tabars original look best.

She was so beautiful before, reads one.

Stunning Gorgeous, says another.

Post udostepniony przez sahartabar_ (@sahartabar_) 14 Sty, 2017 o 1:05 PST

What do you think?

Share this article with your friends and tell them what you think of this Iranian social media starlet.
Antifa Extremists Being Investigated by FBI

Group classified as domestic terrorists has record of violent attacks, political intimidation, and terror plots

The FBI is investigating individuals associated with the far-left extremist group Antifa, which frequently advocates for the use of violence and sparks riots to block conservative speakers and events.

At a House homeland security committee hearing on global terror threats on Nov. 30, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray on whether the agency was investigating Antifa extremists.

Antifa operates across the U.S. in ways that involve at least potentially criminal interstate activities, such as inciting a riot and conspiracy to incite riot, as well as behavior, said Perry, who went on to ask Wray whether the FBI was doing anything to counter Antifa.

Wray said, We are investigating a number of what we would call anarchist-extremist investigations, where we would have properly predicated subjects of people who are motivated to commit violent criminal activity on kind of an Antifa ideology.

He added, We have a number of active investigations in that space all around the country, and said the funding sources behind Antifa are also something were keenly interested in.

According to Wray, Antifa is regarded by the FBI as an ideology and not as a single movement. The extremist organization has numerous affiliate organizations across the United States and in various countries around the world.

Antifa was allegedly classified as a domestic terrorist organization by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration. According to classified documents obtained by Politico, Antifa was described in April 2016 as the primary instigators of violence at public rallies against a range of targets.

These left-wing groups, like Antifa, represent the greatest threat to law enforcement since the 1970s and the Weather Underground.  Ed Klein, former editor-in-chief, The New York Times Magazine

The New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness lists Antifa under its domestic terrorist section as a group of anarchist extremists.

Antifa originated in Germany with Antifaschistische Aktion (Antifascist Action) as a United Front program of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Russia in the early 1920s. It functioned as the violent wing of the Communist Party of Germany, where the Soviets believed the next communist revolution would take place, and branded all political rivals as fascists, including the democratic socialists.

The movement continues using fascism as a political label to justify violence against its targets. According to a 2016 report from Germanys domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the left-wing extremist groups use of the term fascism does not refer to actual fascism. Instead, the group uses it as a label for capitalism.

Antifa also continues to act as the violent arm of communist revolutionary groups, particular in the United States, according to the documentary America Under Siege: Antifa, released on Sept. 25 by the Capital Research Center and Cohesion Films.

Antifa Violence

The Antifa extremist group has been praised by several legacy news outlets for its violent attacks on conservatives, and its masked, black-clad followers were recently featured by The New York Times as a fashion symbol.

However, the group is frequently tied to acts of violence, censorship, and political intimidation.

Ed Klein, former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, published FBI documents revealing that Antifa is colluding with the terrorist organization ISIS, in his new book All Out War: The Plot to Destroy Trump.

In a Nov. 19 interview with investigative website USA Watchdog, Klein stated, In the FBI report that I have reproduced in full in my book, it says that these violent left-wing groups traveled to Europe, met with representatives of al-Qaida and the Islamic State, or ISIS. They also went to Syria and got bomb-making instructions and toxic chemical instructions.

Klein said the FBI believes that Antifa may become increasingly violent as the 2018 mid-term elections near. These left-wing groups, like Antifa, represent the greatest threat to law enforcement since the 1970s and the Weather Underground, he said.

On Nov. 12, Florida police arrested Christopher Langer, who allegedly supported Antifa affiliate Occupy Wall Street. He was found with explosive devices and 200 containers with unknown powders, acids, bodily fluids, and other substances.

According to local news outlet Click Orlando, Langer was an anti-government heroin addict who allegedly wanted to get even by attacking first responders.

In Olympia, Washington, on Nov. 27, an Antifa affiliate group used jumper cables on a train track to protest fracking. The group described its actions in a short post on the Puget Sound Anarchists website, stating, We temporarily shutdown [sic] train lines throughout the larger oakland [sic] area by shorting the track circuits with jumper cables.

Soon after, on Nov. 29, police raided and broke up a nearby Antifa encampment. According to local news outlet The Olympian, the protesters had established the camp and a street blockade on Nov. 17. The predawn raid almost two weeks later ended with 12 arrests.

In the Netherlands, an alleged Antifa member was arrested for injuring a police officer and killing a police horse during a Nov. 26 protest.

The incident was reminiscent of the March 2016 violent Antifa protest in Kansas City, where 29-year-old April Foster was arrested for assaulting a police horse.

There have been numerous other attacks and incidents involving Antifa extremists in recent weeks. In Berkeley, a leader of Antifa affiliate By Any Means Necessary is being sued for filing a restraining order to inhibit free speech. In Philadelphia, an armed Antifa affiliate, the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement, is promoting an anti-police workshop that praises a police killer. In Boston, an organizer of free speech rallies was recently hospitalized after sustaining multiple fractures in his face during an attack by Antifa extremists.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten during House of Representatives question time at Parliament House on May 11, 2017 in Canberra, Australia. According to a media report, Shorten asked wealthy Chinese political donor Huang Xiangmo for money after his party was warned by ASIO of the billionaires ties with the Chinese Communist Party. (Stefan Postles/Getty Images)

Australian Political Leader Sought Funds From Beijing-Linked Donor

The leader of Australias opposition party  and the countrys next possible leader  has come under scrutiny for visiting the home of a Chinese political donor months after his party was warned about the donors ties with Beijing.

Fairfax Media has reported that Bill Shorten, leader of the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP), visited the home of wealthy Chinese Communist Party-linked political donor Huang Xiangmo in March 2016.

The report said Shorten and his family visited Huang at his affluent Sydney suburb of Mosman to seek donations for an advertising campaign.

The report said that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) in 2015 warned the countrys three main political parties about Beijings interference in Australian politics using considerable financial donations. At the briefings, the head of ASIO Duncan Lewis reportedly told party officials  including the then ALP national secretary George Wright  that the countrys security service was alarmed about Huangs murky ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

It is not clear if Wright told Shorten of these details before his visit to Huangs home. ASIO personally briefed Shorten on their concerns over CCP interference in Australian politics in late 2016, months after he visited Huangs home, reported Fairfax.

Shorten has not denied the report published Monday, Dec. 4, and sources told the newspaper that the ALP leader requested a significant amount from Huang.

The newspaper stated that since the 2015 ASIO briefing, the ALP has taken AU$141,000 (US$107,000) in donations from companies and associates linked to Huang. The coalition parties  the Liberal Party and the Nationals who currently run government  had also reportedly taken money. The Liberal Party took AU$122,960 (US$93,500) and the Nationals AU$15,000 (US$11,400) from those suspect sources.

Huang is a person of interest to Australian intelligence services because of his connections to the CCP, including how he was, until very recently, the head of a Sydney organization associated with the United Front Work Department  a CCP political lobbying and propaganda agency. Huang is also on record telling a Communist Party newspaper that political demands and political donations should be linked.

Sam Dastyari Under Fire

Mondays report comes on the heels of other reports about one of Shortens party members, senator Sam Dastyaris links with Huang. In those reports, Dastyari allegedly visited Huang at his home last year and warned the Chinese billionaire that his phone was likely being tapped by intelligence services, including those of the U.S. government.

Dastyari  who is seen as a factional ally and confidante of Shortens  has denied the allegations. The senator also received negative press last week over a 2016 speech he gave where he backed Beijings aggressive moves in the South China Sea went public. His comments were the complete opposite of his partys policy on the issue.

At a press conference for Chinese language media, Dastyari made his remarks while standing next to Huang. Fairfax reported that Dastyaris comments occurred a day after ALP defense spokesman Stephen Conroy openly castigated Beijings territorial claims in the South China Sea. Conroys criticism resulted in Huang informing the ALP that he was withdrawing a promised AU$400,000 (US$303,900) donation for their 2016 election campaign.

Other aspects of the relationship between Dastyari and Huang were exposed last year as part of an in-depth investigation carried out by Fairfax and the ABC that revealed the extent of CCP interference in Australias political system and within the Chinese-Australian community.

The government will soon release new laws banning foreign donations and laws aimed at deterring foreign interference and espionage activities.

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People leaving their homes on the outskirts of Beijing, after receiving eviction notices, in a photo taken on November 27, 2017. (Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images)

Beijing Eviction of Low-Class Population Spreads to Other Chinese Cities

Fear of unrest may drive the emptying of poor neighborhoods

As Beijing authorities have begun evicting laborers, migrant workers, and other low-income residents out of the citys suburbs in the past few weeks, the trend of clearing out what the Chinese regime calls the low-class population has spread to other cities. One expert believes the regime fears this population could be a threat to authorities during hard economic times.

Following a deadly fire that broke out in Daxing District, an area in Beijing where many factory workers live in low-rent apartments, the local authorities took advantage of the disasterwhich happened in a building without proper fire safety measuresas an excuse to kick out residents.

On Nov. 29, the Hong Kong Economic Times reported that such eviction efforts have extended to Ningbo, a city on Chinas eastern coast; as well as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, on Chinas southern coast. Local authorities have begun demolishing buildings with for-rent apartments that they say violate building codes. The publication also obtained photos of eviction notices in Shenzhens Longhua District.

Meanwhile, the Beijing eviction has unexpectedly affected delivery companies. Many delivery workers have lost their homes in the eviction and are scrambling to find somewhere to liveand have not showed up for work as a result.

One deliveryman told The Epoch Times, There arent enough workers right now. We need more delivery guys. The deliveryman added that some delivery hubs have been demolished in the eviction sweep, with the authorities citing violation of construction codes.

Jiemian News, a Chinese publication, also reported that several major delivery service companies like SF Express, ZTO Express, and China Post (a state-owned firm) have had their warehouses and distribution centers inspected and shut down in recent days.

An owner of a Chinese online business, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Epoch Times that many of his customers have complained that they could not receive their packages. Many of his deliverymen are currently busy scouting for a home, so he has temporarily stopped taking orders from customers in the Beijing and surrounding Hebei Province area.

In recent days, there have been numerous posts from Guangzhou netizens on the Baidu search engines online forum, who said their packages are still missing. Online shopping is very popular among Chinese consumers; the annual Singles Day shopping festival on Nov. 11 generates billions of yuan in sales for Chinas online retailers.

Delivery companies and retailers have inadvertently suffered as a result of mass evictions.

An economic scholar, Qin Weiping, told Voice of America his theory about why the Beijing authorities have carried out this eviction despite widespread public outcryconcern that has expressed itself in protests and rallies held by Chinese in Hong Kong and the United States.

Qin noted that many of the low-class population have low wages and dont have social welfare, owing to Chinas household registration, or hukou system, which limits the government benefits non-city-residents can enjoy. In Chinas current unstable economy, these workers risk losing their livelihoods. Thus, the Chinese regime considers this group of people unstable elements.

[The regime] is afraid they will start a riot, so it is clearing them out to put an end to things, Qin told Voice of America.

If a large group of them suddenly lose their jobs, and they cannot make a living, they will become a threat to the Chinese authorities, he added.

Xiao Lusheng and Xu Jian contributed to this report.
Greyhounds make their way around the track during a race at Songzhuang Village of Tongzhou District on Sept. 16, 2006 in Beijing, China. (China Photos/Getty Images)

British Greyhounds Exported to China, Turned to Meat

British and Irish greyhound trainers are cashing in on old racing dogs by exporting them to China, where they face being boiled alive for their meat.

These are the claims of campaigner Kerry Elliman, who has rescued over 758 racing dogs at her two centresone in Birmingham, the other in Beijing.

Other campaign organisations have made similar findings.

The use of dogs for meat in China, and the cruelty towards the animals is well known to many dog lovers outside of China.

However, there are no UK laws against exporting to China, so once racing dogs can no longer turn a profit in races or breeding, owners are selling them to China, says Elliman.

Its very upsetting but we cant hide from the reality of whats happening to these gentle creatures while we turn a blind eye, she said.

Ive seen videos where dogs are being boiled alive. I saw one the other day when a meat wagon was being hosed down with scalding hot waterwith the dogs still in it. You could hear them screaming.

The location of where a dog has been bred can be identified from tattoos on their ears, and, if it still exists, the paperwork.

On Dec 1., Kerry posted a picture to her campaign page of a dog called Frankie, who she said was for sale, along with eight of her puppies,

Sadly, by the time Frankie was rescued by Candy Cane Rescue, her centre in Beijing, four of the puppies were found next to her, dead.

She was rescued by Candy Cane rescue, as she was for sale for a pitiful amount of money, she wrote in the post.

Frankies paperwork revealed that she originated from Irish breeders, according to Elliman.

I hope these greedy vile people are happy with what they have done and the problems and suffering they have created for these noble dogs. Its about time the racing industry is brought down.

Frankie was one of nine greyhounds rescued from Beijing, according to the Mirror. All nine were reduced to skin and bone and infected with viruses such as scabies.

It cost 9,000 ($12,000) to fly the nine dogs to Paris.

Three of the pups she brought home to the UK, where they are now settling in, have British or Irish heritage, said Elliman.

It upsets me that animals there are treated with so little respect, she told the Mirror.

But why do we have to participate in it? Trainers claim they are being exported to countries with welfare.

She added, The UK is supposed to be a nation of animal lovers yet dogs are being sent to such a cruel fate.

Another organisation, Caged, is campaigning for all exports of greyhounds to be banned.

They said that after an investigation in May that they had identified 30 greyhounds which have been exported to China from the UK.

Chinese breeders are advertising these dogs as stud for up to 6000 Yuan which is around 750-800 ($1,014-$1,082). Due to China having a zero animal welfare policy and the increase of greyhounds being found within the dog meat trade, we are extremely concerned for any dog that has been exported there, said a statement on their website.

 When no longer fit to race (due to age, injury, etc.) the dogs become surplus to requirements, resulting in many being poisoned, bludgeoned, hung, or even slowly cooked to death as greyhounds are at present being found within the Chinese dog meat trade, states the text of their petition calling to ban all exports

But whilst some of the dogs can be bought back and rescued for as little as 15, some of the best dogs can command a price of 300,000 said Elliman.

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Hoodlums and vagabonds are being scared away from areas of the Gold Coast, Australia, by classical music. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Classical Music Helps Keep the Peace in Australian City

Speakers playing classical music in selected parts of an Australian tourist city have proven to be an overnight success in driving out anti-social elements.

Since mid-November, classical music has played in targeted areas of the Gold Coast once frequented by hoodlums and vagrants, reported the Courier Mail.

Local officials say they are glad of the affect the music has had on these notorious hangout areas in the Southport CBD.

Its quite loud and it irritates them so they cant do what theyre trying to do there, said Dawn Crichlow from the local council.

Obviously theyre not fans of classical music, said Crichlow.

The soothing music played on the speakers include those composed by Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Bach. By all accounts, Mozarts Sonata No. 16 in C Major in well known for its soothing, relaxing qualities.

The councillor said the community had problems associated with people loitering around alleyways and vagrants sleeping in stairwells near the court precinct.

After the scheme was introduced, the Sunday Mail observed that the number of vagrants and loiterers in the area vanished practically overnight.

What the council is now doing is an extension of something they tried a number of years ago.

About eight years ago we were having major problems with youths and thugs at the bus stops, and I made a flippant remark about blasting them with classical music, but we looked in to it and it worked, Crichlow said.

Lately we have been having issues with people loitering around the alleyways and sleeping in stairwells near the court precinct, so I thought why dont we try the music again? she said.

The councilor told the newspaper that there was no great science behind what they were doing but it worked very well.

The newspaper said that move by the council isnt the first of its kind, with some McDonalds restaurants around the world playing classical music at night to try and stop antisocial behavior.

In August, police in London said that they were playing classical music from a speaker system into a notorious housing estate as a way of addressing crime rates and disperse troublemakers while keeping residents relaxed, reported The Times.

Psst @Police_Now  Why not combine classical music and dancing cops to disperse rioters? pic.twitter.com/qC6nUgIlv0  Bullshire Police (@BullshirePolice) August 7, 2017

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Rep. Todd Rokita (L) during a press conference with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R) at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 7, 2017. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Congressman Introduces Bill to Penalize Officials Over Sanctuary Policies

WASHINGTONRep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.) introduced a bill to the House on Monday that would punish officials who implement sanctuary policies in their jurisdictions.

Violators of the law, Stopping Lawless Actions of Politicians (SLAP) Act of 2017, could be sentenced to 5 years in federal prison and be fined up to $1 million.

Sanctuary policies often curtail or outright forbid local law enforcement to cooperate and communicate with federal immigration authorities, even when it concerns a convicted criminal alien in local custody.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) place detainers on illegal immigrants who are in jails and ask law enforcement to hold the inmate for up to 48 hours longer so ICE can take custody. Often a detainer is placed on an inmate well before the inmate is due to be released, meaning local jails would not need to hold the inmate longer, but would just need to alert ICE of the planned release date.

The sanctuary debate has been growing in the United States, especially after the fatal shooting of Kate Steinle in June 2015 by an illegal immigrant who had been released from a San Francisco jail despite a detainer request being placed on him.

On Nov. 30, a San Francisco jury acquitted Steinles killer, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, on all but a gun possession charge. Zarate, a Mexican national, had prior felony convictions and had been deported five times previously.

Americans are dying because politicians sworn to uphold the law refuse to do so, Rokita said in a statement on Dec. 4. Politicians dont get to pick and choose what laws to comply with. Its time the federal government gets serious about enforcing immigration laws and holding politicians accountable who conspire to break them.

California passed a new sanctuary law on Oct. 5 that will make the whole state a sanctuary for illegal aliens. Senate Bill 54 is slated to take effect on Jan. 1, 2018, and forbids local and state law enforcement from communicating with immigration authorities about when an inmate will be releasedexcept under special circumstances.

Rokita also said he also supports Kates Law, named after Steinle. The law seeks to increase the penalties for illegal aliens who attempt to re-enter the United States after deportation.

Kates Law passed the House over the summer and is on Majority Leader Mitch McConnells (R-Ky.) desk waiting to be introduced to the Senate.

Text of the Proposed Bill

The bill proposes to amend title 18, United States Code, to provide penalties for certain obstructions of the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Chapter 73 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding:  1522. Certain obstructions of enforcement of immigration laws.

Whoever, being a state or local official having custody of an individual, knowingly ignores a request from the federal government for the custody of that individual, if the requesting authority has designated that individual as a violator of the immigration laws, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

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Healthy Mom Dies Suddenly Hours After Flu Develops Into Pneumonia

A young mom-of-two from Phoenix Arizona died suddenly just one day after contracting the flu on Tuesday, Nov. 28.

Alani Murrieta, 20, went home from work early on Sunday because she felt unwell. Her sister took her to the hospital where she was diagnosed with the flu, given medication and sent home to rest, reported Fox News.

Hours later Murrietas condition continued to deteriorate and she started to struggle to breathe. Her mother then rushed her to the hospital.

Doctors said her flu had developed into pneumonia and everything went downhill from there. She was placed on a ventilator but her heart stopped and she passed away shortly afterward.

They were trying to resuscitate her, and they tried for several minutes and they told my sister there was nothing else they could do, that she was gone, Alanis aunt Stephanie Gonzales told Fox.

Gonzales said Murrieta had no pre-existing condition.

Her family and friends are still coming to terms after her sudden death.

Never in a million years would we have thought that we would have lost her that day like this, Gonzales said.

Murrietas aunt has set up a GoFundMe page to help the family raise money for the funeral.

Murrieta was a mother of two young boys, 2-year-old AJ and 6-months-old JR.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 50,000 people in the United States die from pneumonia each year.

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A Florida man was arrested last week for drawing what was believed to be threatening images on an elementary school student's homework. (Gulf County Sheriff's Office)

Man Arrested for Allegedly Drawing Picture on Students Homework

A 33-year-old man in Florida was arrested and charged after staff contacted a school resource officer about a drawing that showed a school on fire and people being shot.

Robert Paul Alexander Edwards, of Mexico Beach, was arrested Friday for the picture, which was found on a students homework assignment, the Gulf County Sheriffs Office said in a news release.

They found that Edwards drew the picture, which also includes the words, Pew, Pew, Pew next to an individual with a gun. Another person can be seen saying, AHHH! It burns!

There also appears to be a pool of blood, according to the sheriffs office.

Edwards faces charges of a written threat to kill or inflict bodily harm on others.

Our country has been affected one too many times with horrific school tragedies. We take matters like this very seriously, Gulf County Sheriff Mike Harrison said in the release.

Harrison, however, said that he doesnt think that Edwards had a plan to carry out the threat.

Its not clear how Edwards knew the student or how he was able to draw a picture on the students homework.

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Man Killed After Trying to Protect His 72-Year-Old Mom During Armed Robbery

A man from Albany, New York, was killedafter he tried to protect his elderly mother during an armed robbery on Sunday morning, Dec. 3.

Thomas Anthony Dixon, 50, died from a single bullet wound to his torso according to Dougherty County Coroner Michael Fowler.

He was shot on Willis Drive just after 9:30 a.m., NBC affiliate WALB reported. Dixon died at the scene.

I was in shock. I really couldnt believe it because even though he drank he didnt bother nobody, his cousin Jerry Gibson told WALB.

According to The Associated Press, the suspect escaped on foot after the shooting. Albany police are currently searching for him but as of writing on Monday, the identity of the attacker was still unknown.

Police said that Dixon was trying to protect his 72-year-old mother from an armed robbery. At the time the motherWillie Mae Dixonwas walking to her car to go to church, Fox31 reported.

The mother told officers that as she was walking, the attacker, a male, pointed a gun at her and demanded her purse. She said she was thrown to the ground as the man tried to steal her purse and keys, and she started yelling for help.

Thats when her son who lived next door, came running over and confronted the attacker before getting shot, according to Fox31.

I mean out of the 50 some years on this street weve never had a situation like this before, Gibson told WALB.

Gibson called Dixon a hero for his actions. He said they grew up together in the same home and that Dixon was like a brother to him.

He was a good guy. Everyone in the community knew him, Gibson told WALB. He was aggravating at times, but he was a lovable guy. And for somebody to take his life. I cant wake up on a first Sunday knowing that this would be happening.

A reporter for WALB posted a video of the shooting scene.

The cousin said now he can only cherish the memories they had together.

For many years he played Santa Claus with me for my kids, for all my kids. Theyre grown now, but for many years we played Santa Claus together, Christmas Eve together, spent Christmas together. We shared everything together. And for somebody to take his life is just devastating, he said.

Police said the suspect is a black male with a medium to dark skin complexion. He is about 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs about 160 pounds and was last seen running west, then north on Willis Drive wearing a dark gray hoodie with large gold letters.

Another cousin of Dixon, Aquarius Queen, was still coming to terms with his death on Sunday.

In a message to the public, Gibson pleaded with others not to resort to violence.

We cant. We killing each other, man. This is our community. This is our streets. This is our homeAlbany, he told WALB.

The death of Dixon marks the 22nd homicide case in Albany for 2017, according to WALB. However one of the cases was a victim whose remains were only recently identified, as the crime took place years ago.

If anyone has information on the shooting, please call CrimeSTOPPERS at (229) 436-TIPS.

WALB.com, South Georgia News, Weather, Sports

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Newborn Baby That Was Declared Dead Comes Back to Life on the Way to His Funeral

UPDATE: The Hospital Max Healthcare has confirmed that the two doctors involved have had their employment terminated. The strict action does not represent findings of fault against the physicians, but are a reflection of our commitment to higher standards of care.

A newborn baby that was declared dead has been discovered alive in a plastic bag on the way to his funeral.

The boy was one of a twin and was born prematurely at Max Hospital in Delhi, India, on Nov. 30. The other twin, a girl, was stillborn.

Doctors pronounced the boy dead after a spell on life support for arrhythmiaa condition in which the heart beats with an irregular rhythm.

Due to arrhythmia, there might have been a lapse in checking the pulse of the newborn. But we need to ascertain the reason behind it, a source told The Indian Express.

It was only when the babies were being taken to their funeral that the boys grandfather noticed the boy was moving inside a plastic bag.

He immediately opened the cover and discovered that the baby was still breathing, the boys uncle told the news outlet.

The family rushed him to a nearby hospital where doctors confirmed the baby was still alive. His condition remains critical, with the hospital saying he has a severe infection, according to the uncle.

The hospital called us in the morning, he said. They said there is no negligence on their part; instead, a senior hospital official told us it is a medical miracle. We told them we want an explanation from doctors, but they did not let us talk to them.

Max Hospital said in a statement that they were shaken and concerned at this rare incident.

We have initiated a detailed inquiry, pending which, the doctor concerned has been asked to proceed on leave immediately. We are in constant touch with the parents and are providing all the needed support.

Chief Minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal said via Twitter that the incident is being investigated.

State Health Minister Satyendar Jain described what happened as shocking criminal negligence.

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Search for Missing Florida 4-Year-Old Ends in Tragic Discovery

A massive search effort came to a tragic conclusion on Sunday night when the body of 4-year-old Chelsea Noel was found in a retention pond two blocks from her parents Port St. Lucie home, Sun Sentinel reported.

A U.S. Marshal in a kayak spotted a small body submerged in water at around 11 p.m. on Sunday. By 1 a.m. Monday, divers had recovered Chelseas body, TC Palm reported.

I believe they did everything. People came from everywhere, the girls father, Remy Noel, told TC Palm. But Its Gods will.

Noel described his daughter as a sweet and kind girl who always gave him hugs when he came home from work. She would hold him and wouldnt let him go until he picked her up.

I would wake her up for school every morning. My phone alarm is programmed for 7:30 a.m., Noel said. You know how I feel this morning at 7:30? My phone rang. I have nobody. I have nobody.

Noel said that the community and the police department have been there for him to provide love and support during the difficult time.

It is a tremendous tragedy, Police Chief John Bolduc told TC Palm after informing Chelseas parents. The family is very distraught  It is the biggest tragedy I can think of.

Chelseas father reported her missing at 10 p.m. on Saturday after she walked out of her home. The report sparked a round-the-clock search effort by city, state, and federal law enforcement personnel.

Law enforcement used divers, a helicopter, and search dogs, Police spokesman Sgt. Frank Sabol told TC Palm. A local resident used a drone to aid in the search effort.

The FBI, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and Martin County Sheriffs Office assisted in the effort and went door-to-door looking for Chelsea. The also looked through vacant lots and ponds.

Members of the local community also joined in to help the effort.

I cant say enough about the cooperation of the community and law enforcement, Bolduc said.

Police used sniffing dogs to try and find the girls trail, but the dogs could not track down where she went.

SLCSO search and rescue dive team checked body of water at SW Becker/SW Lackawanna. Nothing found search continues pic.twitter.com/D844rkXc5S  Port St. Lucie PD (@PSLPolice) December 3, 2017

The search team finally got a clue about where the girl headed after reviewing surveillance footage in the area. The boats searched the area until dark. When the sun went down, a glow of a flashlight eventually illuminated a part of the girls clothing near the shoreline.

The girls body was recovered from a pond on SW Hallmark Street and SW Abacus Avenue.

Police say an autopsy will be performed.

Noel, the girls father, issued a tearful plea to the public when police were still searching for the girl.

Please I want everybody to know, I want everybody to help me to find my baby, he told WPBF 25 News. I want her back home. Shes only four years old. I want my baby to come home.

Father of missing 4 year old Port St. Lucie girl pleading for help in the search for his daughter. Story tonight at 5/530/6.@WPBF25News pic.twitter.com/1EqZJquhrz  angelarozier (@wpbf_angela) December 3, 2017

Officers stopped cars entering and leaving the area to show drivers pictures of the girl.

Police stopping cars entering and leaving search area to show missing girls pic pic.twitter.com/3K3l5dFxoa  Port St. Lucie PD (@PSLPolice) December 3, 2017

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The logo of Australian casino giant Crown Resorts Ltd in Melbourne, Australia, June 13, 2017. (Jason Reed/Reuters)

Shareholders Sue Australias Crown Resorts Over China Marketing

SYDNEYAustralian casino operator Crown Resorts Ltd was slapped with a class action lawsuit on Monday for allegedly failing to inform shareholders of a marketing campaign in China that resulted in staff arrests and a slump in the share price.

The company, part-owned by billionaire businessman James Packer, said it would defend itself against the allegations contained in the suit, filed on behalf of shareholders who invested between Feb. 6, 2015 and Oct. 16, 2016.

On Oct. 17, 2016, Crown shares fell almost 14 percent on the news that almost 20 employees had been arrested in China for marketing gambling trips to Macau. While gambling is legal in the southern Chinese territory, it is illegal on the mainland.

Shareholders should have been apprised of the risks that Crown was taking in China and the threat they posed to the companys revenue streams, Andrew Watson, national head of class actions at Maurice Blackburn, said in a statement.

The arrests triggered an abrupt reversal in Crowns offshore ambitions and an admission from Packer that his global strategy had failed. Australias biggest casino company quit Macau and Las Vegas to focus on Australia.

Trading volumes at Crown resorts have slumped in the fall-out of the arrests, as profits generated from high rollers plummeted.

All of the Crown employees who were detained in China have now been released.

Crown said in a statement it would vigorously defend itself against the shareholders allegations.

Crown shares fell as much as 1.2 percent in midday trading on Monday while the benchmark index edged higher.

By Paulina Duran
The South Korean army's K-55 self-propelled artillery vehicles take part in a military exercise near the demilitarised zone separating the two Koreas in Paju, South Korea, Nov. 29, 2017. (Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji)

South Korea, U.S. Kick Off Largest Air Exercise Amid North Korean Warnings

SEOULSouth Korea and the United States launched their largest-ever joint aerial drills on Monday, Dec. 4, officials said, a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced missile as part of a weapons program that has raised global tensions.

The annual U.S.-South Korean drill, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday, with six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part. The exercises have been condemned as a provocation by the isolated North.

F-35 fighters will also join the drill, which will also include the largest number of 5th generation fighters to take part, according to a South Korea-based U.S. Air Force spokesman.

Around 12,000 U.S. service members, including from the Marines and Navy, will join South Korean troops. Aircraft taking part will be flown from eight U.S. and South Korean military installations.

South Korean media reports said B-1B Lancer bombers could join the exercise this week. The U.S. Air Force spokesman could not confirm the reports.

The joint exercise is designed to enhance readiness and operational capability and to ensure peace and security on the Korean peninsula, the U.S. military had said before the drills began.

The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile ever in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation.

Pyongyang blamed U.S. President Donald Trump for raising tensions and warned at the weekend the Vigilant Ace exercise was pushing tensions on the Korean peninsula towards a flare-up, according to North Korean state media.

North Koreas Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country called Trump insane on Sunday and said the drill would push the already acute situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war.

The Norths KCNA state news agency, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, also said on Saturday the Trump administration was begging for nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea regularly uses its state media to threaten the United States and its allies.

By Christine Kim
A copy of bitcoin standing on PC motherboard is seen in this illustration picture, Oct. 26, 2017. (Reuters/Dado Ruvic/File Photo)

UK Pushing to Include Bitcoin Under Money-Laundering Rules

LONDONBritain wants to increase regulation of bitcoin and other digital currencies by expanding the reach of European Union anti-money-laundering rules that force traders to disclose their identities and report suspicious activity.

With demand for bitcoin surging, fuelling a 1,000 percent rally in its value so far this year, the British finance ministry said it expected negotiations over changes to the EU rules would conclude later this year or in early 2018.

Stephen Barclay, economic secretary to Britains Treasury, told parliament in a notice dated Nov. 3but only reported by media on Mondaythat the amendments bring virtual currency exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers into Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing regulation.

That would mean those companies would be overseen by national competent authorities, the statement said.

The main U.S. derivatives regulator said on Friday it would allow CME Group Inc and CBOE Global Markets Inc to list bitcoin future contracts, opening the door to added regulation.

Australia has also said it would strengthen its money-laundering laws by bringing bitcoin providers under the governments financial intelligence unit.
TWIN FALLS  Beef and dairy cattle producers alike are culling cows but herd size seems poised to increase again this year.

John Nalivka, a beef analyst from Vale, Ore., expects cow slaughter in the U.S. to be up 6 percent over 2016 to total 5.9 million head of both beef and dairy cows. Beef cow slaughter is up 12 percent through mid-November, while dairy culls are up 4 percent.

But while the percentages look strong, when Nalivka looks at the numbers relative to the overall size of the herd, the impact isnt as large. In fact, he expects the overall U.S. cow herd inventory to be up 3 percent over last year, which was up 2.7 percent from 2015. He is projecting a Jan. 1, cow inventory of approximately 96 million head compared to around 94 million head on Jan. 1, 2017.

Beef cow slaughter was up sharply during April, May and June as ranchers culled more open cows than usual following the harsh winter. When cull cow prices remained strong, ranchers continued to cull older cows going into the fall.

Seasonally, cull cow slaughter peaks in the fall quarter as ranchers identify open cows. Nalivka expects that seasonal peak wont be as large this fall because of how rigorously ranchers have been culling all year. Based on his numbers, he expects 9 percent of the total beef cow herd to be slaughtered this year, up slightly from 8.6 percent in 2016.

Ranchers culled herds hard between 2010 and 2012, shedding around 11 percent of the herd annually until the herd dropped to 29 million head in 2014, a 60-year low. If his numbers are right, the U.S. beef herd will be 32 million head on Jan. 1, just below the high of 32.1 million.

When you look at cow slaughter, you have to look at the other side of the equation  heifers, Nalivka said. He spoke by phone from his office. At the beginning of 2017, ranchers expected 4 million heifers to calve. Thats the highest number of heifers expected to calve since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began reporting the number in 2000.

USDA also reports the number of heifers ranchers intend to use as herd replacements. Most ranchers keep more heifers back to breed than they ultimately breed. Often a heifer doesnt turn out that the way a rancher had hoped in the fall when she was initially kept back and will be put in the feedlot in the spring.

Bred heifers represent 62 percent of the intended herd replacement number, thats higher than last year.

Even though we slaughtered quite a few heifers, we brought quite a few into the herd, Nalivka said. Overall, beef heifer replacement is just under 14 percent, right where we were last year.

Trends are similar on the dairy side with cull cow slaughter up 4 percent over last year but overall dairies turned over 32 percent of their cows compared to 31.5 percent the previous year. The numbers are relatively stable, Nalivka said. He is pegging dairy cow inventory to be down just 0.5 percent compared to last year, despite falling milk prices.

Nalivka believes the herd liquidation that both beef and dairy producers went through in 2009 has left the nations cow herd more efficient and productive. Cow slaughter numbers, while appearing to be high, do not impact overall beef and dairy production as much as slaughter did 15 or 20 years ago.

And thats a good thing, Nalivka said. Keeping more cows running through the new packing plant in Kuna is good for southern Idaho producers. Cull cows and bulls represent 10 to 15 percent of revenue for beef and dairy operations.

Rex Hoagland buys cattle for CS Beef Packers. The new state-of-the-art plant opened in May.

He told Idaho Cattle Association members at their annual convention in Sun Valley that the industry has done a good job of moving cattle to support prices.

But even with cull cow slaughter strong, beef imports are also strong.

All of us want to cuss imports, Hoagland said. But the U.S. is lean-deficient. We cannot produce enough hamburger to meet demand. A steak is a steak but a pound of burger has so many uses.

Cutter cows yield 46 to 47 percent (meat) and 90 percent lean. Fed cattle yield closer to 58 percent. But Hoagland has noticed over the years that Limousine cattle can yield close to 60 percent with 90 percent lean. He encouraged ranchers to consider how cutter cows yield when making their breeding decisions.

The plant will take drop-offs, Hoagland said, but its better to call ahead so slaughter can be scheduled and the cattle dont shrink while they wait.

We want to pay you for what is going out the back door.
Update: Missing 13-Year-Old Girl Who Ran to Mexico, Found

A missing 13-year-old girl from Katy, Texas, was found Sunday night on Dec. 3after her worried parents said she ran away to Mexico.

The search for Ashlee Hattermann gained national attention as the FBIs San Antonio Laredo office offered its services as well.

Both authorities and the teens parents believe Ashlee was heading to Mexico to meet up with a man she met online who lived there.

The Harris County Sheriffs Office announced the news in a Twitter post saying that Ashlee was found safe in Mexico.

BREAKING: Ashlee Hattermann, 13, has been found safe in Mexico with cooperation from authorities there. Thank you @FBISanAntonio and all who helped in this search. #hounews  HCSOTexas (@HCSOTexas) December 4, 2017

Big thanks to @ICEgov and @DHSgov for their work helping recover Ashlee Hattermann in Mexico City this evening. #hounews  HCSOTexas (@HCSOTexas) December 4, 2017

On Sunday afternoonbefore the teen was foundthe FBI was asking for the publics help.

Surveillance of #missing 13 year-old Ashlee Hattermann from Katy, TX shows she was wearing jeans, blue shirt, jacket, brown boots and glasses on 12/1/2017. Please contact FBI 210-225-6741 or the nearest US Embassy or Consulate with any information. pic.twitter.com/cbaOAcCcCJ  FBI SanAntonio (@FBISanAntonio) December 3, 2017

Earlier on Saturday, the girls frantic parents told WFAA that their daughter left school yesterday and didnt come home. Whats worse, the family said, is that they believe Ashlee was on her way to meet a man she had been talking to online and on the phone in the past year.

We found a note in her room, said Ashlees father Keith Hattermann. She calls the guy daddy and herself baby girl. [The note read] Daddy owns my body and my soul, over and over and over again down this sheet of paper.

Surveillance footage from a Greyhound bus stop in Katy, Texas, shows the teenager with an unknown woman.

The woman, who wishes to be anonymous, told WFAA that Ashlee talked to her on Friday and lied to her about her age before buying a bus ticket to Laredo.

I asked her how old she was; she said 18, the woman told WFAA. She told me she was here all week, visiting her boyfriend. She told me that [her parents] lived in Laredo and that she had been up here to visit her boyfriend and she was trying to get back to her family.

The unnamed woman said she is emotional over the incident.

Im just devastated, Im so upset, the woman said. Im devastated for this little girl. Im devastated for her family.

The parents, Keith and Tiffany Hattermann, told WFAA they also found their daughter exchanging sexual images and messages through apps on her phone last May. They do not know how Ashlee purchased the phone.

We just feel helpless, Keith Hattermann said. We just want her back. We just want her safe.

The mother, Tiffany Hatterman, said her daughter told her last spring that she was communicating with a 29-year-old man who lives in Mexico.

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Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation Nikki Haley (C) arrives to speak to reporters at the United Nations headquarters, in New York City, on March 27, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

US Tells the UN It Will Forge Its Own Path on Immigration

The U.S. pulled out of a global pact on migration and refugees Saturday, informing the United Nations that it will make decisions independently about who is allowed to come to the U.S.

The U.S. will no longer participate in the Global Compact on Migration, a result of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, which was unanimously adopted last year as a non-binding agreement to protect the rights of refugees, help them resettle, and facilitate access to education and employment, according to Voice of America.

President Donald Trumps administration has expressed concerns, suggesting that the accord poses a threat to U.S. national security. Our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said Saturday. We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asserted Sunday that the original agreement was based on a declaration that contains a number of policy goals that are inconsistent with U.S. law and policy, adding, We simply cannot in good faith support a process that could undermine the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders.

The United States supports international cooperation on migration issues, but it is the primary responsibility of sovereign states to help ensure that migration is safe, orderly, and legal, he further explained.

U.N. General Assembly president Miroslav Lajcak expressed regret, arguing that the U.S., as home to largest number of migrants, has the experience and expertise to lead on these issues.

The withdrawal comes just days before the start of a global conference on migration in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Trump has reportedly decided to boycott the talks, according to Foreign Policy.

The Trump administration has emphasized the importance of sovereignty, national security, and immigration control from the beginning, downplaying the role of large international agreements and institutions.

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  A few years ago, ranchers in northern New Mexico were in a contentious dispute with environmental groups and the U.S. Forest Service over access to grazing land in the Jemez Mountains, all because of a tiny mouse.

In 2014, the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse, a rarely seen subspecies in hibernation for most of its short lifespan, was recognized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an endangered species requiring habitat protection.

That led to nearly 15,000 acres of riparian areas along rivers and streams in Arizona and Colorado, but mostly in New Mexico  including acreage along the Rio Cebolla and tributaries in the Jemez  being designated as critical habitat for the mouse.

Areas were fenced off, preventing ranchers  some whose families have grazed cattle on the Santa Fe National Forest for four generations  from gaining access.

But that dispute has been defused since each side sat down and started talking to each other in what Toner Mitchell of Trout Unlimited described as a newfound spirit of cooperation.

Conflict was getting us nowhere, he said. So we decided to try collaboration over conflict and work together in the spirit of cooperation and partnership. I wont speak for the ranchers, but I think its worked out to where were now seeing results.

Mike Lucero confirms the collaboration has produced results in the eyes of ranchers. He is president of the San Diego Cattlemens Association, one of two such groups with allotments in the Jemez. The two groups graze 576 head of cattle on 160,000 acres of public land permitted for grazing.

Were working good together now, said Lucero, who has been critical of the U.S. Forest Service in the past. Starting with these projects, were benefiting not just the cattlemen, but everyone using the land  and the watershed and forest, too.

Were watering wildlife

Lucero was referring to projects complete, underway and on the horizon that are designed to bring water to areas that have been left dry, as well as improve environmental conditions in meadows, wetlands and the forest.

The first project replaced a well that had been out of commission for about eight years. Lucero said about 17 miles of water lines run from the well to the mesa tops where the cattle normally are.

Water is pumped through the lines that run along mesa ridges to feed several drinkers, or water troughs, spaced a mile or two apart.

With access to water on the mesa tops, the cattle dont need to venture into the valley to drink from the Rio Cebolla, a part of the mouses protected habitat.

As a result of that, the riparian areas have never looked as good as they do right now, Lucero said.

A second project involved burying 8,500 feet of water line running into a canyon ranchers lost access to when the Forest Service decommissioned a road leading into the canyon about 15 years ago and ripped out the water line in the process.

Lucero said ranchers have been trying to regain access to that area for years.

It took a while to get through the lengthy (National Environmental Policy Act) process to make sure nothing is negatively affected, he said, adding that the water system is designed to be wildlife friendly.

Were not just watering livestock, were watering wildlife.

That includes elk and bear.

Lucero said cameras have caught bears bathing in the water tanks.

That project involved many weekends of work by the ranchers, but all came together on a dedicated field day last summer organized by Mitchell, Trout Unlimiteds public lands coordinator in the state. He helped assemble volunteers on a day trenches were dug and pipeline was laid. TU also kicked in $5,000 for the project.

Other possible projects in the future include more waterline extensions, purchasing portable corrals to assist ranchers in moving cattle from one area to another to prevent overgrazing, installation of rain-capturing stations, restoration of eroding areas in meadows and stream channels, forest thinning and creating cattle/wildlife gateways that also aims to eliminate problems ranchers have with people  often recreational ATV riders  cutting fences.

Another partner is The Nature Conservancy  a national group that works to conserve lands and waters  which has committed $72,000 to the Forest Service to pay for projects that improve the water-holding capacity of meadows and increase forage as part of a comprehensive approach to restoring the Rio Cebolla and other tributaries of the Jemez River and Rio Grande.

The health of the land that is supporting grazing is as important as the grazing itself, said Laura McCarthy, associate state director of The Nature Conservancy. They have to go hand in hand.

Ranchers, who work to maintain the 30 miles of water lines that help provide water to the San Diego and Cebolla-San Antonio grazing allotments at their own expense, have provided in-kind contributions in the form of labor and the use of equipment.

Moving forward

Playing a crucial role in the collaboration is the U.S. Forest Service, which in addition to being charged with managing national forest land also provides the bulk of the funding.

When plans for closing off riparian areas were announced, Lucero had harsh words for the agency, which he said at the time acted in haste and irresponsibly in erecting 8-foot-tall fences around habitat protected areas in 2014.

What it was, was Fish and Wildlife was pushing the Forest Service to deal with it immediately, he said, adding that the federal agencies were under the threat of lawsuits by environmental groups if they didnt act to protect the mouses habitat. We were fighting with each other and we werent making any progress. It caused a lot of friction and didnt result in a darned thing.

Now, he has nothing but praise for the Forest Service from the regional office all the way on down.

A fresh face may have helped the situation. It was about the time Mitchell and Lucero started talking again that Brian Riley came on board as ranger for the Jemez district. He had no part in the previous dispute and that was probably a good thing, Riley said.

I was lucky not to be there when the controversy happened, said Riley, who came in with a clean slate. But now the sides are talking, weve got some collaboration and hopefully that will build synergy that will allow everyone to achieve their goals.

The collaboration started when Mitchell and Lucero decided to get together and talk about two years ago. They made acquaintances during the heat of the battle over protected areas, but then fell out of touch. They crossed paths again more than a year later and found common ground in agreeing that nothing would change if they didnt start talking.

I just saw an opportunity there, Mitchell said. I personally believe that grazing can be a tool to improve the land and I knew that Mike really wants to make it work.

We just felt that theres got to be a way for everybody to get what they want out of the deal, Lucero said. We brought the Forest Service in and then things started moving forward.

Riley said the alliance is a bit unusual.

Id say its not common for a governmental agency and environmental groups to be working with grazing permitees on anything like this, but we think it makes a lot of sense, he said. Its required a few compromises, but thats OK. Were talking now, and were working together.

Mitchell said Trout Unlimited got involved partly because it would like to see more Rio Grande Cutthroat  the state fish  running in streams in the Jemez, but also because TU tries to do its part to be good land stewards and to work cooperatively with others.

For trout people, it was coming to grips with the fact that we have to share lands and streams with grazers. Kicking out cattle for the trout was not going to be a long-term solution, he said.

Lucero said part of what riled ranchers was that over the years, theyve felt they were already giving more than their fair share and werent being listened to.

The permittees were upset because they were constantly giving things up and were getting backed into a corner, he said. But you have to listen to us because we know the land.

Lucero, whose family has been ranching in the area for four, going on five, generations, said hed ultimately like to see the fences protecting the meadow jumping mouses habitat taken downnot because he wants to stop protecting the mouse, but because theyve found solutions that render fences unnecessary.

This has been a good experience being able to move this forward and hopefully we can keep moving it forward, he said. If we can make it so well be ranching for another four generations, Ill be satisfied. And I think we can do it.
Noem tells NYT former President Trump doesn't offer 'best chance' for GOP

In an interview with The New York Times, Gov. Kristi Noem spoke about her reservations about former President Donald Trump announcing his bid for re-election.
HONG KONGThe high-profile attendance of the leaders of Apple and Google at a Chinese conference promoting Beijings vision of a censored internet highlights the dilemma for Western tech companies trying to expand in an increasingly lucrative, but restricted, market.

The event in Wuzhen, a historic canal town outside Shanghai, marked the first time chiefs of two of the worlds biggest tech companies have attended the annual state-run World Internet Conference.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told the gathering as the conference opened Sunday that his company was proud to work with Chinese partners to build a common future in cyberspace.

His and Google CEO Sundar Pichais presence along with other business leaders, diplomats and other experts, some analysts say, helped bestow credibility on Beijings preferred version of an internet sharply at odds with Silicon Valleys dedication to unfettered access.

Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed, in remarks to the conference conveyed by an official, that Chinas door to the world will never close, but will only open wider.

As in previous years, organizers allowed attendees unrestricted access to the internet, contrary to official policy under which internet users face extensive monitoring and censorship and are blocked from accessing many overseas sites by the so-called Great Firewall of China.

Since Xi came to power in late 2012, he has tightened controls and further stifled free expression, activists say.

Beijings restraints also extend to Western companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook, which have largely been shut out from the market, leaving it to homegrown internet giants like Tencent.

Apple has a large production base in China, which is one of its biggest markets, though domestic smartphone makers are catching up.

It has been criticized by some app developers for complying with Chinese censorship demands. In July, companies that let people get around the governments internet filters  known as virtual private network providers  said their programs had been removed from Apples app store in China. One such company, ExpressVPN, said Apple was aiding Chinas censorship effort.

Apple said that China began requiring this year that developers of virtual private networks have a government license. The California-based tech giant said it had removed apps in China that do not meet the new regulations. Two Apple spokespeople couldnt be reached by phone for comment.

The problem is that these companies are between a rock and a hard place, said Rogier Creemers, a China researcher at Leiden University who attended the conference. They covet Chinas huge market but if they do make it in, as in Apples case, local law requires things that Western observers generally are uncomfortable with, he said.

Cooks speech drew a big crowd. He said the company supports more than 5 million jobs in China, including 1.8 million software developers who have earned more than $17 billion (U.S.) building apps available through Apples App Store.

Its Apples responsibility to ensure that technology is infused with humanity, he said. He avoided direct mention of any sensitive topics, though he hinted at them by stressing the need for safeguards to keep everyone protected: Privacy. Security. Decency, according to a transcript.

Google shut the Chinese version of its search engine in 2010 over censorship concerns. Pichai has talked about wanting to re-enter China, and he told a panel discussion in Wuzhen that small and mid-sized Chinese businesses use Google services to get their products to other countries, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.

Spokespeople for Apple and Google declined to comment.

The tech giants may have chosen to appear at the conference because the current political climate in the United States encourages a pragmatic approach in pursuing business regardless of other concerns, said Jonathan Sullivan, director of the University of Nottinghams China Policy Institute.

There has never been a time when an American company is less likely to be called out by the White House for pursuing a business-first approach, said Sullivan.

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Dozens of people were gathered on a Manhattan rooftop, nibbling on appetizers, sipping drinks and toasting author Emma Johnson and her new book, The Kickass Single Mom.

Johnsons pink dress matched the cover of her book as she drifted through the gathering. The rooftop was festooned with strings of lights, and featured a spectacular view of the Empire State Building.

The October party was held at the offices of Worthy, a company that buys and sells jewelry, particularly diamond engagement rings, and markets itself to divorced women. That no longer useful ring, it tells them through tools like blogs and partnerships such as this book party, may not only bring in some cash but also set them on a new road to personal freedom.

It is a message of empowerment that Worthy hopes will translate into more customers.

They have taken an industry with a generally negative connotation and spun it into a positive experience, said John Lincoln, chief executive officer of Ignite Visibility, a search engine optimization and social media marketing company.

Read more:

Dating market heats up as first marriages end in divorce

Tainted love: rings from failed relationships fetch less

What to do with souvenirs from past relationships

Founded by an Israeli businessman Benny De-Kalo, the company serves as middleman between customers and buyers, who are usually small diamond dealers or jewelry designers. Worthy takes a sellers and buyers fee starting at 20 per cent for a $5,000 (U.S.) ring, less for the more expensive ones. The seller sends the ring to the company, which values it and offers to let the customer auction it off on its website; the seller can pull out of the auction at any point before receiving a minimum bid.

An auction typically lasts two days, said Gil Gadot, Worthys chief operating officer. About 20 per cent of rings dont sell because they dont meet the sellers minimum. If the item doesnt sell at auction, there is no fee.

From the way the companys executives talk, it could be easy to think Worthys mission was therapy for divorced women rather than selling jewelry. The staff has been trained to understand the journey that customers have been on, spokesperson Judy Herbst, said. Roy Albers, the companys chief gemologist, will often get on the phone with a potential seller to explain why a diamond may be worth  or not worth  a certain price.

The recently divorced have been through fire. They may have been lied to, cheated, said Albers, who was formerly chief gemologist for Tiffany & Co. We do a lot of hand-holding here.

Stacey Freeman, 45, a divorced single mother of three children, is lifestyle editor for Worthy. She writes three to five articles a month for the companys site and for outside publications.

I am that person who went through that divorce, she said. She hasnt sold her engagement ring, however. Her mother had it made into a necklace.

Its an insurance policy, she said. If I need to, its saleable.

Her articles and others by writers for the companys blog almost all focus on life after divorce. There are posts on saving money, dating, travelling and empowerment through living as a single woman.

Its a whole emotional campaign, said Anthony DeMarco, founder of Jewelry News Network, a website about jewelry and watches.

Worthy has also hired the company Outbrain, which helps populate webpages with the ubiquitous Around the Web advertisements that can seem like news articles. The articles that Outbrain places on sites can range from straightforward sales pitches to tawdry clickbait, but Worthy has found success with pieces like What to Do With Your Engagement Ring After Divorce?

Maura Enright, 49, of Oxford, Conn., is a typical Worthy customer. She was married for 11 years before a divorce in 2012. She held on to her ring for a while, and then decided to see what she could get for it.

Every time I thought I would get it priced, I felt like I was getting ripped off, she said. I didnt think it was worth it to give it up for a few thousand dollars. She found Worthy online and reached out, and someone from the company called her back.

That was key because Im so busy, she said. She sold her ring through Worthy for $7,000. Now, she said, Ive told all my divorced friends about it.

The company also runs contests, like the one recently in which women could vie for a chance to be flown to Manhattan for the book party. The winner, Janelle Johnson, 34, of Milwaukee, was awarded airfare and hotel costs for her and a friend, after describing how she is trying to start her own business after the dissolution of her marriage of one year. Worthy even paid for child care for Johnsons two children while she was in New York.

She sold her engagement ring through Worthy and got about $350, roughly a quarter of its original price. I was more than satisfied, she said, noting that the money helped pay for a few dinners during her trip to Manhattan.

Gadot said the company had tripled its business, to more than 100 auctions a day from fewer than 30 a year ago. And Lincoln, of Ignite Visibility, said Worthy had caught up to major players like WP Diamonds, in terms of keyword ranking and traffic in Google.

I assume Worthy began by testing a number of different channels and found that blogging, content and partnerships proved to be the most effective, said Kevan Lee, director of marketing for Buffer, a social media management platform. Given that early signal, Id expect them to stay on this path until it becomes less fruitful.

Johnson, whose book was being celebrated at Worthys offices, represents the marketing effort at its purest. Worthy has interviews with Johnson on its website and promotes her book. Johnson has written about Worthy on her site, wealthysinglemommy.com, and advertises the company on her home page. She also has an affiliate partnership: If Worthy gets a customer through her site, she receives a fee.

My audience is their audience, Johnson said. Its like a perfect marriage.

Without the ring.

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House of Cards will resume production in 2018 without Kevin Spacey, according to Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer of Netflix.

The sixth and final season of the popular series will feature a lead role for Robin Wright, who plays the wife of Spaceys character.

Production on the sixth season of House of Cards came to a halt Oct. 31 following bombshell sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey, who starred in the series for five seasons as politician Frank Underwood and also served as an executive producer. Spacey was officially suspended from the show early last month.

The allegations include an accusation from actor Anthony Rapp, who claimed that Spacey made an unwanted sexual advance decades ago when Rapp was still a minor. Spacey has also been accused by eight current and former House of Cards employees of creating a toxic work environment with his behaviour. The allegations include one former production assistant who said Spacey sexually assaulted him during one of the shows early seasons.

Sarandos said Monday at the UBS 45th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference that the final season of House of Cards will consist of eight episodes. Previous seasons consisted of 13 episodes each.

It remains unclear how Spaceys character will be written out of the show, which films in Maryland. Sarandos said that he was glad that Netflix was able to reach a deal for the 2,000 people in Baltimore who work on the series.

Media Rights Capital produces House of Cards and licenses the show to Netflix. The 200-member crew of the hit drama has been on a paid hiatus since early November as Netflix and Media Rights Capital tried to sort out the future of the show without its star.

House of Cards was Netflixs first hit series when it debuted in 2013. But the show is now regarded as past its prime. Creator and showrunner Beau Willimon left the series last year after four seasons.

Netflix had also worked with Spacey on a movie in which the actor stars as the late writer Gore Vidal. But the streaming service said last month after Spaceys sex scandal broke that it will no longer release the feature.

Kevin Spacey has been accused of making sexual advances on actor Anthony Rapp when he was a teenage boy in 1986. (The Associated Press)

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ICELANDUntil now, my volcano expertise has been slightly limited. I know that a volcano is a rupture in the earths crust which allows hot lava to escape from magma chambers beneath the surface. But thats about it. I thought that a fumarole was a type of food (its actually a gas-leaking opening in the earths crust) and that scoria was a girls name (its a type of lava).

All this changed when I set foot in Icelands Lava Centre, a new museum dedicated to the islands geology.

The flat, low building, which reminds me of a space station, is in the town of Hvolsvollur. Its surrounded by vast expanses of dark, volcanic rock and three active volcanoes (including Eyjafjallajokull, which brought flights to a standstill when it erupted in 2010). Inside, its all about interaction.

Read more:

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As tourism booms, Iceland waits for its next volcanic eruption

Getting a taste of Icelands icebergs

The first section, known as the Volcano Corridor, is a bright red, glowing tunnel. I cant help but think that this must be how it feels to be inside a womb, but I distract myself by turning my attention to the information panels, which detail every major eruption in Iceland since 1900.

In the next room theres an enormous globelike device demonstrating how the movement of tectonic plates creates volcanoes. A huge, interactive wall map highlights the main areas of seismic activity. Im able to experience the latter for myself in the next section: a narrow corridor fitted with a panel which simulates an earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale.

As it judders from side to side, hidden speakers emit the same low rumbling Icelanders heard when Eyjafjallajokull blew its top. Ive never experienced an earthquake, but 3.5 will do me just fine, thanks.

Equally unsettling is the ash cloud corridor, designed to recreate the thick layer of ash which blanketed Iceland in 2010. Less unnerving and infinitely more spectacular is the room containing a model of the lava stream beneath Iceland: a glowing tower which rises from the floor and twists upward, finishing just beneath an outline of Iceland, high above.

Barriers surround the structure, and when I lean over them, I notice that mirrors have been used to create the impression Im actually peering into a lava-filled, bottomless hole. I also love the collection of different types of lava rocks which visitors can touch, and the room with floor-to-ceiling screens depicting Icelands different volcanoes. When I stand on a floor panel and point at a certain one, information about its size, history and previous eruptions appears.

And when the real thing happens, visitors can head outside to a viewing platform to watch the action unfold.

Both Hekla and Katla are due for an eruption soon and the platform is the best spot to see them in action, says Asbjorn Bjorgvinsson, the centres marketing director. I cant help but think Ill be running for my car rather than teeing up a volcano selfie.

I leave the Lava Centre imbued with a new, deeper understanding of the forces which have shaped Iceland over thousands of years.

Later that day, I don my helmet and clamber into the depths of the cathedral-like Raufarholshellir lava tube, created when a river of hot lava forced its way to the earths surface thousands of years ago.

Thanks to the Lava Centre, Im slightly less baffled when the guide points out frozen drips of lava, some of which are still bright red. Im able to understand why the light-absorbing qualities of volcanic rock mean that, when we flick off our head torches, theres not a single pinprick of light, even though, just around a bend in the tunnel, is a natural skylight created when a section of the lava tubes roof caved in.

When I visit the Geysir, which shoots boiling hot water into the air every few minutes, Im less perplexed by its almost clockwork-like regularity, and I know that the startling, deep blue hue of the bubbling, steaming water is caused by the silica, and the way it reflects sunlight.

Iceland has a way of taking visitors by surprise.

Our final stop is the Krysuvik geothermal area, a maze of bubbling mud pits and hissing pools of boiling water, all surrounded by sulphur-stained hills. A boardwalk winds between pools of deep, bright green water and craters puffing out gusts of noxious steam. The sensation that Ive stepped onto the moon is heightened by the large footprints I notice.

But its not the dusty imprint of Neil Armstrongs moon boots, but a hiking boot-sized print, well beyond the sign which clearly warns visitors not to veer off the path. Depressingly, Im sure this particular person wasnt the first to put his or her foot straight through the paper-thin crust between themselves and a pool of bubbling, boiling hot water.

I might have Iceland figured out, but human beings? Not yet.

Tamara Hinson was hosted by Promote Iceland, which didnt review or approve this story.

When you go:

Get there: Wow Air flies from Toronto to Reykjavik, with a stopover in Reykjavik.

Stay: I stayed at the Hotel Ranga (hotelranga.is), a luxury resort about an hour from Reykjavik near Hella.

Do your research: inspiredbyiceland.com

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BEIJINGPrime Minister Justin Trudeau chose the flashy new headquarters of Chinas social media giant Sina Weibo as the first stop on his trade-focused official visit Monday, where he pumped up Canada as a tourist destination and later highlighted an emerging green tech connection between the Chinese capital and a company in Mississauga.

Trudeau strode onstage at the Weibo headquarters to applause from a youthful crowd, who strained to snap photos as he sat under a giant cylindrical plasma screen for an armchair chat with young Chinese social media stars who had recently travelled to Canada.

We have to learn as a planet not to be afraid of someone who is different, Trudeau said, waxing philosophical about the self-discovery he experienced travelling in China as a young man in the early 1990s.

Its a great path forward for friendship, he said of discovering new cultures. I hope to see you all in Canada very soon.

Trudeau arrived in Beijing on Sunday night with a contingent of ministers and staff, and was greeted at Beijings airport by a ceremonial military guard and police escort.

Later Monday, Trudeau was set to meet with Premier Li Keqiang, one of the highest-ranking officials in the Chinese government, for bilateral talks and a private dinner. It is widely expected that Trudeaus visit could mark the start of formal free trade talks with the worlds second-largest economy, after more than a year of exploratory discussions between the two countries.

Canada would become the first G7 country to seek a free trade deal with the authoritarian economic giant. A government consultation this year found Canadians have mixed feelings about the prospect, with many acknowledging economic opportunities of expanded trade, and others skeptical of labour and environmental regulations in China, as well as about whether Canadian firms would be treated fairly next to the gigantic state-owned enterprises that dominate the Chinese economy.

But Trudeau has also underscored his hope that closer economic ties with China can yield tighter connections through tourism and co-operation on international issues such as climate change. Accompanied by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, who has said the push for lower greenhouse gas emissions can go hand in hand with economic growth, Trudeau on Monday highlighted a Canadian success story that lends support to that argument.

After his roundtable at Sina Weibo, Trudeau rushed off to test an emissions-free bus with Canadian technology that could help this countrys megacities deal with choking smog problems.

The company behind the technology is Mississauga-based Hydrogenics, one of two Canadian firms that specialize in hydrogen energy storage technology.

Daryl Wilson, president and chief executive officer, said he has struck four contracts with Chinese companies since he came here on a trade mission with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne two years ago.

Thats when Chinas central government shifted its support for battery buses to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which prompted Chinese bus makers to seek out the Canadian technology, he said.

Now his firm is en route to providing 1,000 of the hydrogen fuel cell batteries to a Chinese research company that uses them to replace diesel-powered buses in cities like Beijing, with the first 200 units set to be installed this month, Wilson said.

The market in China is probably our largest market opportunity because of the very serious concern over air quality and the urgent need to get diesel off the road, Wilson said.

Wilson added that whats unique about this technology is it can put a lot more energy on the bus than you can with a battery.

It takes the same amount of time to fuel up with hydrogen as it does with diesel, in contrast to battery buses that take five to six hours to charge, he said.

We use hydrogen gas and hydrogen fuel cells, which generate electric power and then drive an electric motor on a bus, Wilson told the Star. So its an electric bus, but its not a battery electric bus; its a hydrogen fuel cell electric bus.

Reducing the smog and acrid air that routinely chokes cities like Beijing has become a priority for government officials here. In January, the countrys energy agency announced it would spend $361 billion (U.S.) in 2017 to create more energy from wind, hydro, solar and nuclear sources.

While it remains far and away the worlds largest consumer of coal  responsible for almost 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2015  China committed to closing 500 coal-fired power plants in 2017 alone. The government also wants to multiply its solar production by five times by 2020.

The moves mark a significant shift from Chinas past stance on climate change. As recently as 2009, during high-stakes climate negotiations in Copenhagen, China skirted efforts by the nascent Obama administration in the United States to reach a global climate pact.

Chinas position started to change when the country inked a landmark climate deal with the U.S. in 2014, and then signed on to to the Paris Agreement the following year, pledging to reach peak emissions between 2025 and 2030, after which they will begin to drop.

In October, Chinese President Xi Jinping proclaimed that the country had taken a driving seat in international co-operation to respond to climate change. The statement came at a time when the U.S. under President Donald Trump has scaled back environmental regulations and announced its intention to drop out of the Paris Agreement.

Wilson, meanwhile, applauds the Canadian governments efforts to position itself closer to China. It has helped him support a workforce of about 200 people in Mississauga, and with the Chinese central government and big cities as catalysts, the business has grown faster than Wilson expected.

I said it would be $10 million in the short term, and it turned out to be $15 million. And $100 million in the medium-long term  were on track to see that kind of target, Wilson said.

He said visits like Trudeaus can highlight priorities to the benefit of Canadian firms like his.

Its especially important to China, Wilson said. They like to see that our own government knows and respects what we do.

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A stray dog in southern Afghanistan was the emotional balm that got a British soldier, Sgt. Pen Farthing, through a seven-month deployment a decade ago in the remote village of Now Zad.

But when it came time to return to England, the Royal Marine officer organized a stealth operation to smuggle the animal, nicknamed Nowzad, out of Helmand province to Kabul and from the Afghan capital to England.

Abandoning the canine to the conflict was not an option.

Id just sit there and stroke the top of his head and I could pretend that I wasnt in Afghanistan, Farthing recalled in an interview from Kabul.

I realized after Id been with him for several months and he had helped me get through this tour of duty that I was going to have to throw him back out on the streets . . . I could not just leave him behind.

He set out to provide the same assistance to other soldiers once he was back on British soil. Farthing created a charity  named Nowzad, in honour of that first dog  which operates the countrys first dog and cat shelter. It also operates a veterinary clinic in Kabul that employs and trains Afghan veterinarians.

But Nowzads impact can also be felt half a world away by western soldiers, civilians and regular dog lovers whose hearts have been captured by Afghanistans stray animals and who brought the animals into their homes in Canada, the U.S. and Britain.

In many cases, the dogs and cats have wandered into besieged combat outposts and captured the hearts and minds of coalition troops. In 2011, a 24-year-old American army cook in Afghanistan died of rabies contracted from a dog bite in Afghanistan.

In its annual report to the U.K. Charity Commission, Nowzad claims to have arranged for vaccination, neutering and travel for more than 1,000 dogs to seven different countries.

Isabelle Allard, a retired naval officer who lives near CFB Trenton, adopted Thor, who was one of four dogs living at the combat outpost in Masum Ghar during a 2010 deployment to Kandahar.

The decision was made under duress, following orders to destroy all the stray animals. She contacted Nowzad, which arranged for a local man to pick up the dog and transport it by bus to Kabul.

I was crying so badly because I didnt know if I was going to see him alive again. With the Afghan people and dogs, its not a big love story, she said.

It was different with Thor, who was first obtained by a Canadian reservist from the Afghan police in exchange for a case of water. Thor lived at the Masum Ghar base with soldiers from CFB Petawawa before Allard took him on, administering the rabies vaccination and even having a blue dog blanket and dog food sent over from Canada.

But Thor also gave back, protecting the base from jackals and hyenas and serving as an emotional outlet for soldiers.

Youre scared even if no one says so because there are roadside bombs everywhere and everything is booby trapped, Allard said. Those who wanted to talk would sometimes come to see the medics, but its easier to go see the dog who says nothing.

Onne de Boer, a civilian military contractor from Fredericton, N.B., near CFB Gagetown, has taken in four Afghan rescue dogs over several years.

This is a way that we can help those animals, a way that we can help the soldiers who decide to try and rescue an animal from Afghanistan and give those cats and dogs a better life, de Boer said.

It is a complex and costly endeavour, and Nowzad relies almost entirely on donations.

It costs about $5,000 to fly de Boers dogs from Kabul to Dubai, Dubai to Europe and Europe to Canada. On top of the airfare, there are kennel fees incurred at each layover.

The Afghan dogs tend to carry mental scars of the conflict. They are more alert than other dogs and sensitive to loud noises.

Farthing recalled the warning sounds of incoming mortar fire alerting him and his fellow soldiers to a Taliban assault.

We could handle that because we knew what was happening but I knew that these dogs were absolutely petrified, and after an attack it would take a couple of hours for them to stop shaking, he said.

Even today, Farthing turns up the volume on the television or radio and shuts the curtains tight when there are fireworks in his hometown of Essex to protect his current Afghan rescue dog, Tali.

The echoes from the firing range that reach Allards home on humid days put Thor on alert. And one of de Boers dogs, Murphy, reacts to low-flying helicopters, particularly large Chinook CH-147 aircraft, coming to and from CFB Gagetown.

I think there are some memories of things that have gone on but it hasnt been a difficult thing for us with the dogs that weve had, he said.

The adopted dogs get respite and western comforts in leaving Afghanistan, but they also bring benefits to war-weary soldiers.

Farthing said that operating his charity, which employs three female Afghan veterinarians, trains students and contributes to public health by tackling the spread of rabies, gives him a sense of achievement.

The marine part was helping to stabilize the country, but now I feel like Im finishing the job I started 10 years ago.

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Saying the government is committed first and foremost to family reunification, Liberal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen announced Sunday that his department will process 80 per cent of the backlogged permanent resident applications from those who came to Canada through the former Live-in Caregiver Program by the end of next year.

While many live-in caregiver applicants have faced long delays and family separation, they can rest assured that they will soon receive a positive decision on their application, Hussen said at a news conference at Christinas Panciteria, a Filipino restaurant in North York.

But caregiver advocates say the government is still not doing enough to address inherent inequalities in the program, which allows caregivers to apply for permanent residency after they have worked in Canada for two years.

Anna Malla, an organizer with the Caregivers Action Centre, said caregivers should be granted permanent residency upon arrival, like other classes of economic immigrants.

If (the Liberals) were really committed to family reunification, they would be looking at some of these bigger issues, Malla said, adding that granting caregivers permanent residency upon arrival is the only way to ensure they can assert their rights. Care work is real work; its important work. Minister Hussen said its important work, so we want to see a commitment on that same note.

Caregivers, who come to Canada primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and the Caribbean, are barred from bringing their families with them while they take care of Canadian children, the elderly or people with disabilities. After two years they are eligible to apply for permanent residency, at which point their families can join them. But under the former Live-in Caregivers Program, which was overhauled in 2014, a massive backlog accumulated, creating wait times of several years before applications were processed. Approximately 30,000 caregivers are currently in the backlog.

On Sunday, Hussen mentioned the case of Jocelyn Godroy, whose story was featured in the Star this summer. Godroy, the mother of three children, spent seven years waiting for her application to be processed. She was finally granted permanent residency last month.

Too many families have been apart for too long, Hussen said. And for this heart-wrenching story and many others, we are truly sorry and we hope to do much, much better.

Hussen blamed the previous Conservative governments mismanagement for the unreasonable delays, saying the Liberals inherited the backlog.

Under current rules, caregivers are no longer required to live in the home of their employer, and they are split into two different streams: caring for children and caring for people with high medical needs.

Hussen said in future, all caregiver applications will be processed within one year.

Michelle Villanueva hopes thats true. She said she arrived in Canada from the Philippines in 2014 under the current program and applied for permanent residency in August 2016. Sixteen months later, shes still waiting. She says she hasnt seen her 8-year-old daughter in three years. Im very frustrated.

While Sundays announcement focused on the immediate increase in permanent residency granted to caregivers, the Liberals are planning to dramatically reduce those numbers in the next three years.

This year, as a result of more efficient processing of applications, the government will grant permanent residency to 20,000 caregivers, the high end of their target for this specific class. But the target for caregivers drops to 17,000 in 2018, 14,000 in 2019 and just 5,000 in 2020.

When they say were getting rid of the backlog, theyre kind of closing up the pathway (to permanent residency), Malla said.

Jenny Kwan, the NDP immigration critic who for several years lobbied the government to deal with the caregivers backlog, said Sundays announcement was welcome news.

But Kwan said the system remains fundamentally unfair.

Other economic classes, they get to bring their families here right from the get-go, she said. They dont have to be separated from their families. They dont have to work for two years before they can even make an application.

If youre good enough to work here, arent you good enough to stay?  The minister has got to realize the pain and agony and hardships that caregivers have to go through being separated from their families.

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Maureen Prinsloo, the former longtime Scarborough city councillor who championed community-based policing while serving as Torontos police services board chair in the mid-1990s, has died. She was 79.

Her family said she died peacefully Saturday in a Toronto palliative care facility after a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer earlier this year.

Prinsloo was chair of the preamalgamation Metro Toronto police services board, now known as the Toronto Police Services Board. She also served as deputy chair of Metro council, which governed Torontos six municipalities, and chaired the Board of Governors of Exhibition Place.

On Sunday, friends and former colleagues remembered Prinsloo, who was born in South Africa and came to Canada in 1965, as a no-nonsense, honest, and conscientious politician whose willingness to speak truth to power sometimes worked against her.

She was very open and trustworthy. Maureen played it straight, said longtime friend and former colleague Carol Ruddell, who served with Prinsloo on Scarborough council in the 1970s.

Ruddell said Prinsloo always studied meeting agendas and did her homework. She always had the facts. She was diligent, and that almost doesnt sound like a good enough word.

Former Liberal MP and Metro Toronto chair Alan Tonks, who worked closely with Prinsloo in the 1990s while she was deputy chair of Metro, praised his former colleagues loyalty, sense of humour and dedication  attributes that commanded respect from political friends and foes.

You always knew you were getting the straight goods when she would partake in debate. People would listen to her, Tonks recalled Sunday. She wasnt standing up to hear herself talk. She was up there to deliver a message and her message was usually one of inclusiveness and strengthening a sense of community.

It was that care for her community that got Prinsloo started  rather unexpectedly  in politics. Following a torrential rainstorm in 1976 that resulted in widespread basement flooding in Prinsloos Scarborough neighbourhood of Bridlewood, she resolved to find the cause and make sure it never happened again, recalled her son Wayne Prinsloo.

Following countless meetings with Scarborough officials, the city finally agreed to build a nearby water retention pond to divert water away from basements. Her persistence and passion impressed then city of Scarborough councillor Ron Watson, who encouraged her to run in the next municipal election in 1978.

So she did, and she won on her first try.

After serving a decade on Scarborough council, Prinsloo made the jump to Metro council, where she served before making a run for mayor of Scarborough in 1994. Prinsloo lost, coming in third behind Marilyn Mushinksi and Frank Faubert, who served as mayor until amalgamation.

She was disappointed, because she was well respected in the neighbourhood and wanted to do more, said her son, Wayne, on Sunday. But she just moved on because she was very positive. She took things as they came.

It turned out her run for mayor wasnt to be the end of her involvement in municipal politics.

In 1995, Prinsloo got a call from then premier Bob Rae, asking if she would like to be appointed to Metro Torontos police board to replace outgoing chair Susan Eng? Prinsloo jumped at the chance and was promptly elected chair.

Former metro councillor Brian Ashton, who served with Prinsloo on the police services board, said Prinsloo was an ideal choice at that time, given the boards recent tumultuous relationship with former police chief Bill McCormack.

I thought it would be nice to get a chair that could consolidate gains and provide stability. And in my mind, that was Maureen Prinsloo, Ashton said.

Tonks credits Prinsloo with putting community policing on the agenda, a practice that has become a hot-button issue today.

She was totally dedicated to making policing reflect the values and strengths of an integrated and non-discriminatory society, Tonks said.

But after only three years, political machinations resulted in Prinsloo being ousted to make way for longtime board member Norm Gardner, a friend of then mayor Mel Lastman.

On Sunday, Lastman called Prinsloo a wonderful woman who just wanted to do good.

I know shes going to be terribly missed by her family, Lastman told the Star. She was just a very nice kind woman who would come down tough on nonsense. Its tough love, and thats important.

After her stint on the police services board, Prinsloo retired and threw herself into various community initiatives, serving on the boards of charities and retirement homes.

Most recently she was the chair of the board of Scarboroughs Jack Goodlad senior citizen residence.

Prinsloo leaves behind three sons, Mark, Ian and Wayne, and seven grandchildren. Her husband, Christo Prinsloo, died in 1990.

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A Shelburne, Ont. firefighter has arrived in Trinidad and Tobago to support his mother after his father was killed while vacationing there.

Global Affairs Canada confirmed a Canadian man was killed in Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday. Further details about the victim or how he died have not been released.

The Orangeville Banner learned the son of the deceased is a two-year member of the Shelburne Fire Department. The firefighter boarded a plane on Friday to support his mother and family in Trinidad.

Our whole department is deeply saddened, Shelburne Fire Chief Brad Lemaich posted on Twitter Sunday night.

Media reports from Trinidad indicate the man was found dead in the streets of Ste. Madeleine Friday morning. The Trinidad Express reported that police said the Canadian mans body bore marks of violence.

Global Affairs Canada sends its deepest condolences to the family and friends of the Canadian killed in Trinidad and Tobago, Global Affairs Canada spokesperson Brittany Venhola-Fletcher told The Banner.

Consular services are being provided to the family of the Canadian citizen who has died, she added. Due to the provisions of the Privacy Act, further details cannot be disclosed at this time.

Lemaich has been in contact with the firefighter since he left. A funeral is scheduled to be held on Wednesday.

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The criminal probe of fraud and forgery allegations at a Progressive Conservative nomination will continue into the election year, police say.

Hamilton police also emphasize that no one has been ruled out as a suspect in their investigation of unnamed Conservative officials.

With an Ontario election set for June 7, the Tories are anxious for the matter to be resolved sooner rather than later.

We can anticipate the investigation will take us into the New Year, Hamilton police Const. Lorraine Edwards said Monday.

Asked by the Star if any Progressive Conservative official, up to and including the leader, the party president, and the executive director, has been ruled out as a suspect, Edwards replied: No one has been ruled out during our investigation.

The controversy is heating up at Queens Park; NDP House Leader Gilles Bisson urged Liberal Attorney General Yasir Naqvi to refer it to federal prosecutors as has been done in past cases.

Will the attorney general hand the Conservative party nomination scandal case over to the public prosecution service of Canada before any potential charges are laid? Bisson asked during the legislatures daily question period.

But Naqvi said its too premature to start speculating about an ongoing investigation.

If the actual charges are laid, Im fairly confident we will take the same step and make sure that the public prosecution service of Canada is the one dealing with that matter, he said.

At issue is a disputed Conservative candidate nomination from May 7 in Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas.

After the riding meeting, Vikram Singh, a Hamilton lawyer and runner-up in the four-contestant election, launched a civil action against the party alleging wrongful insertion of false ballots.

In that suit, he named Tory Leader Patrick Brown, party president Rick Dykstra, PC executive director Bob Stanley, and senior Brown aide Logan Bugeja.

The Conservatives have denied any wrongdoing in the civil case and the allegations have not been proven in court.

Singh also filed a complaint with police. The criminal investigation is separate from the continuing civil action.

On Friday, Brown stressed that the Tories are co-operating with police.

Weve offered full disclosure. Our office disclosed everything that was asked, he said, referring to two bankers boxes of documents handed over to police on Oct. 27.

I would note that no one in my campaign, no one in my office or headquarters is under investigation.

When asked during a news conference at Toronto city hall if Stanley or Dykstra were under investigation, Brown was firm.

No one in my office, no one on my campaign team, no one in our headquarters, is under investigation. Those individuals would fall under that broad definition, the Tory leader said.

Brown was not available on Monday, but his office underscored that he meant that no one in his circle had been interviewed by the police.

According to court documents filed by police two weeks ago, Det. Const. Adam Jefferess obtained an order of detention to allow for additional time to examine material obtained from the partys lawyer.

The following items were turned over to me: two brown cardboard boxes (box one  Ontario PC Party ballots; box two  Credential Referrals Forms, two binders containing emails including a selection of emails that were stapled together), and two USB drives containing digital copies of the same emails, Jefferess said in a report to a justice filed at the Hamilton courthouse on Nov. 22.

Between Oct. 28 and Nov. 16 I searched these items for evidence of fraud and utter forged documents which relates to an ongoing criminal investigation into an allegation of fraud that took place on May 7, 2017 during an Ontario PC Party nomination meeting, the detective said.

Under the justice of peaces order, police can keep the seized items until Dec. 27 or until the completion of all proceedings, as charges have been laid.

However, detectives can apply to the court for an extension if need be.

Criminal fraud and forgery are serious charges; a conviction can lead to a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

With files from Ben Spurr

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For women with uterine factor infertility who want to be mothers, the calculus has always been heartbreakingly simple: No uterus means no pregnancy.

The equation changed drastically in 2014, when Swedish doctors delivered a healthy 3.9-pound baby that was the result of a successful uterus transplant.

Now, doctors at Baylor University say a woman born without a uterus has delivered a baby after a successful transplant, the first time the surgery has worked outside of the Swedish hospital that pioneered the procedure.

The success marked another step forward for transplant surgery aimed at improving a persons life, not just saving it. Doctors have performed penis transplants for wounded troops, given a young boy two new hands and given a new nose, lips, palate, eyelids and jaw to a woman who was gruesomely disfigured after she was shot in the face.

The fact that the uterus transplant success in Sweden can be replicated is a promising sign for thousands of women who have been unable to conceive. And doctors at Baylor have sought to expand the limits of the procedure, using donated uteri that didnt come from family members and, in some cases, organs that came from cadavers.

To make the field grow and expand and have the procedure come out to more women, it has to be reproduced, said Liza Johannesson, a uterus transplant surgeon who left the Swedish team to join Baylors group, told the New York Times. It was a very exciting birth. Ive seen so many births and delivered so many babies, but this was a very special one.

Baylors clinical trial was designed to include 10 women. Eight, including the new mother, have received the transplants so far. One recipient is pregnant, and two are trying to conceive. Four others had transplants that failed, and the organs had to be surgically removed.

The surgeries differ from other transplants in one major way: Theyre not intended to be permanent. Instead, they give a woman enough time to conceive a child. In vitro fertilized eggs are transferred to the womans womb, and after the baby is born, the uterus is removed via surgery.

Read more:

First woman to have a baby after receiving a womb transplant used her mothers uterus

Groundbreaking in utero heart surgery saves babys life at Sick Kids Hospital

Yes, a human head transplant is possible, but 

That means the patient doesnt have to spend a lifetime taking powerful drugs that suppress her immune system, which would put her at risk for dangerous long-term complications.

The university hasnt released the names of the mother or the baby, saying they chose to remain anonymous.

But according to Tech Times, the donor uterus came from Taylor Siler, a Dallas nurse who has two children. She said she wanted to offer another woman a chance to give birth.

While this most recent birth is a step forward, uterine transplantation surgery is still in its very early days, and doctors conceded that there had been setbacks, particularly with the earliest volunteers.

In February 2016, Lindsey McFarland became the first woman to receive a uterus transplant in America. The organ came from a dead donor and was implanted during a nine-hour surgery.

Her story gave a sense of just how tenuous the nascent surgery is. She had to have her transplanted uterus removed after coming down with a yeast infection.

According to Newsweek, most of the women in Baylors trial had Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, which makes pregnancy and giving birth impossible.

And for most of their lives, many had been told that they wouldnt be able to have children.

We do transplants all day long, Giuliano Testa, who heads the uterus transplant clinical trial at Baylor University Medical Center, told Time magazine. This is not the same thing. I totally underestimated what this type of transplant does for these women. What Ive learned emotionally, I do not have the words to describe.

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When robbing a bank, ones choice of stationery for the demand note is of utmost importance. Does it convey a tone of seriousness? Will it retain fingerprints or other latent evidence? The prudent bank robber sometimes retrieves his note after passing it, in the interests of discretion and eluding prosecution.

Rashad Harris did, in fact, retrieve two of his demand notes during a series of holdups in the Hampton Roads area of southeast Virginia earlier this year. And he often requested no exploding dye packs be placed with his cash, the sign of an experienced stick-up man. But in his holdup of a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Chesapeake, Virginia, he wrote his demand note on a blank starter cheque actually issued by Wells Fargo, court records show. A bank employee ran the account number through the Wells Fargo database, found the customers name, and then looked him up on Facebook. There was Rashad Harris, the man with the gun, the note and $2,701 (U.S.) of Wells Fargos money.

Harris, 26, was arrested. He admitted committing five robberies and one aborted robbery, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced last week in federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, to 15 years in prison. The case was first reported by the Virginian-Pilot.

And while using a blank starter cheque as a holdup note may be comical, federal prosecutors would remind us that having a gun pointed at you during a robbery is not.

The branch manager of the Wells Fargo bank was eight months pregnant when Harris walked in that day last January, which not only ruined the baby shower planned for later that day, but caused her such anxiety that she took off the last three weeks of work prior to giving birth, prosecutors wrote in a court brief. The stress of coming to work, the woman told prosecutors, and being afraid to stand in my lobby or with my tellers without having a panic attack became unbearable.

Harris could not be reached for comment. His lawyer, assistant federal public defender Rodolfo Cejas II, did not return a message seeking comment. But in a memorandum to the court, Cejas said Harris was very sorry for his criminal conduct and was eager to prove to the Court, and to himself, that he can turn his life around.

Prosecutors noted that Harris had a lengthy criminal history beginning at age 16 with a robbery, followed in adulthood by grand larceny, burglary, and attempted carjacking. This perhaps contributed to U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jacksons decision not to reduce Harriss potential sentence, but to impose eight years for conspiracy and robbery, and seven years for using a gun in said crimes.

Harriss robbery rampage lasted less than two weeks. On Jan. 2, court records show, he and a friend entered a Title Max store in Portsmouth, Virginia, where both brandished guns and escaped with $7,200. Two days later, they entered another Title Max in Portsmouth, handed over an unspecified demand note, and escaped with $2,200. And two days after that, a woman walked into a third Title Max in Portsmouth, pretended to be interested in obtaining a title loan, then handed a title to an employee which had a note taped to it reading, Dont push the panic button and dont call the police. Harris admitted to being the getaway driver, and that robbery netted only $100.

One week later, on Jan. 13, Harris walked into a cash advance store in Portsmouth and handed over a note which stated, Stay calm dont hit the panic button and give me the $$. The employee handed over money to Harris but said she needed to keep his paperwork. Harris pulled out a gun and demanded his paperwork back, the court records state. His note was returned to him and Harris fled with $240.

The next day, Harris moved up from title companies to banks. At 10:40 a.m., he went into a BB&T Bank branch in Chesapeake, Va., and passed a note on a blank check which read, Stay calm do not hit any alarms gimme all the $$ no one gets hurt and everyone goes home and no dye packs. But before Harris could get the money, he spotted a police car outside so he scooped up his demand note and walked out without any cash, an FBI affidavit stated.

But less than two hours later, Harris entered the Wells Fargo branch on Portsmouth Boulevard in Chesapeake and handed the teller his ill-fated note on the starter check:

Stay calm dont hit no alarm gimme the $$ no dye packs no one gets hurt everybody goes home.

Demanding yet reassuring, slightly amended from the note earlier in the morning. Or, more likely, the exact same note Harris had passed and withdrawn from the earlier robbery, with the earlier tellers memory of the wording just slightly off. The Wells Fargo teller complied, and Harris escaped with the aforementioned $2,701, and no messy dye pack.

However, this time he left the note behind. A sharp-eyed employee recognized the starter check from their bank, and the dominoes soon fell.

Harris was arrested in Portsmouth three days later, with a .40-calibre pistol in his car. He confessed to the robberies, and told police that the gun was the one hed used in the crimes.

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BRUSSELSThe European Union and Britain ended a flurry of top-level diplomacy on Monday without a deal on the terms of divorce. But they said they were within striking distance of such an agreement that would allow the EU to broaden the talks to the topic of future relations.

On a day that see-sawed between hope and disappointment, the leaders fell just short of reaching what the EU considers sufficient progress on the divorce issues: the exit bill, rights of citizens on each others territories and guarantees for a transparent border on the island of Ireland.

EU leaders want a deal on these issues in time for them to agree at a summit on Dec. 14-15 whether to move the negotiations on to the next stage of talks, including on topics like trade. The lack of progress so far has raised concerns that Britain may not have a deal on key issues by the time it officially leaves on March 29, 2019.

Read more:

Failure to set up U.K.s new customs system before Brexit could be catastrophic: lawmakers

U.K. Parliament will get to vote on final Brexit deal, but will face limited choices

Irish deputy PM will quit to avoid snap election, reports say

Despite our best efforts and the significant process we and our teams have made over the past days on the remaining withdrawal issues, it was not possible to reach an agreement, said EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

This is not a failure, Juncker added after a long negotiating lunch with British Prime Minister Theresa May.

I am also confident we will conclude this positively, said May.

EU Council President Donald Tusk had earlier said he was encouraged by last-minute progress in the effort to break the impasse, especially in the thorny issue of the Irish border.

The Irish breakthrough under discussion would allow for the border between the EUs Ireland and the U.K.s Northern Ireland to remain transparent for trade. Both sides would promise to keep the trading rules compatible.

Basically the British government would commit to maintain the full alignment of legislation where pertinent, said Belgian member of the European Parliament Philippe Lamberts.

Lamberts said he was optimistic that the European (summit) can now agree to move discussion on to the UKs future relationship.

It seems the British government is now coming to terms with reality, he said.

Mays government has long said there will be no hard border with Ireland once Britain leaves the EUs tariffless single market and the customs union, a looser trading bloc that includes non-EU states like Turkey. Ireland and other EU countries are insisting the U.K. provide details of how customs checkpoints and other border obstacles can be avoided.

One solution would be to allow Northern Ireland to stay in the customs union when the rest of the U.K. leaves. But that would be unacceptable for Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party  upon which Mays minority government relies on to stay in power.

Diplomats have been negotiating relentlessly over the past days to meet an EU-imposed deadline of Monday to find sufficient progress on the divorce issues.

The European Parliaments chief Brexit official said it was 50/50 to have something. Guy Verhofstadt added that a financial settlement on the divorce was as good as done  it seems, yes  while the talks on citizens rights and Irelands border still had outstanding issues to solve.

Yet Monday was still fraught with difficulties. Juncker first met with Brexit experts from the European Parliament, which will eventually have to endorse any departure deal.

And Verhofstadt warned that unless all issues are solved there will be no green light in October 2018. A decision on any new deals with Britain would have to be reached by the fall of next year to give individual member states enough time to approve all the measures in their parliaments before the final date on March 2019.

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WASHINGTONLobbing new criticism at the special counsels Russia investigation, U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he feels very badly for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who last week pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about reaching out to the Russians on the presidents behalf.

I think its a shame, Trump said of Flynns situation, adding that its very unfair and that Flynn had led a very strong life.

Trump tried to contrast Flynns treatment with that of his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, whom he said lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened.

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Flynn lied and they destroyed his life, Trump said.

The FBI didnt conclude that Clinton lied to agents, however. Former FBI director James Comey testified last year that agents found Clinton to be truthful in her interview, telling a House committee, we have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI.

Flynn is co-operating with special counsel Robert Muellers investigation.

Trump Twitter tirade

Flynn was forced to resign in February following reports that the Obama administration officials had informed Trumps team that Flynn had discussed sanctions on Russia Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, a fact at odds with the public assertions of Vice-President Mike Pence.

Trump, who spoke to reporters Monday as he left the White House to head to Utah, unleashed a string of tweets over the weekend in which he criticized the FBI and raised questions about the federal investigation into Russian election meddling and possible ties to his campaign.

In one of his messages, Trump again denied that he directed Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

Trump questioned the direction of the federal law enforcement agency and wrote that the FBIs reputation is in Tatters  worst in History! He vowed to bring it back to greatness. The president also retweeted a post saying new FBI Director Chris Wray needs to clean house.

Hours later, Comey quoted his own words from his June 8 testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent, Comey tweeted, along with a collage of photographs of various FBI teams.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, former acting attorney general Sally Yates, and others jumped to the FBIs defence as well.

The FBI is in tatters? No. The only thing in tatters is the Presidents respect for the rule of law, said Yates, who has been a frequent recent critic of Trump on Twitter. The dedicated men and women of the FBI deserve better.

Trump fired Yates in January for refusing to defend his ban on travel from six majority-Muslim countries. In May, Yates testified that she expected White House officials to take action on her January warning that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn could be blackmailed by Russia.

Holder, who served as attorney general under the Obama administration, also fired back at Trump, saying, Youll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now.

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Trump seized on reports that a veteran FBI counter-intelligence agent was removed from special prosecutor Robert Muellers team last summer after the discovery of an exchange of text messages that were viewed as potentially anti-Trump. The agent, Peter Strzok, had also worked on the investigation of Democrat Hillary Clintons use of a private email server.

Peter Carr, a spokesperson for Mueller, said Mueller removed Strzok from the team immediately upon learning of the allegations. He would not elaborate on the nature of the accusations. The person who discussed the matter with The Associated Press was not authorized to speak about it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump tweeted Sunday: Tainted (no, very dishonest?) FBI agents role in Clinton probe under review. Led Clinton Email probe. In a separate tweet, he wrote: Report: ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE Now it all starts to make sense!

Strzoks removal almost certainly reflected a desire to insulate the investigators from any claims of political bias or favouritism. Trump and many of his supporters have at times sought to discredit the integrity of the investigation, in part by claiming a close relationship between Mueller and Comey and by pointing to political contributions to Democrats made by some lawyers on the team.

Following the tweets, Sen. Lindsey Graham warned the president to tread cautiously. You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril. Id be careful if I were you, Mr. President. Id watch this, Graham said.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that he had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice-President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!

The tweet suggested that Trump was aware when the White House dismissed Flynn on Feb. 13 that he had lied to the FBI, which had interviewed him weeks earlier. Comey has said Trump the following day brought up the Flynn investigation in private at the White House and told him he hoped he could let this go.

With questions raised by the tweet, Trump associates tried to put distance Saturday evening between the president himself and the tweet. Trumps personal lawyer John Dowd told ABC News that he drafted the tweet and gave it to the presidents social media director, Dan Scavino. Dowd had declined to comment when reached by the AP on Saturday night.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel is beginning to see the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice against Trump.

With files from The Washington Post

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SALT LAKE CITYPresident Donald Trump arrived in Utah on Monday to announce that he is scaling back two sprawling national monuments, a move that is welcomed by the states top Republican officials but opposed by tribes and environmental groups.

Trump travelled west to announce his intention to shrink the Bears Ears and the Grand-Staircase Escalante national monuments. Both were among a group of 27 monuments that Trump ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review earlier in the year in response to what the Republican president has condemned as a massive federal land grab.

Trump also met with leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and toured Welfare Square, a church-run complex in Salt Lake City that aids the poor.

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Zinke accompanied Trump aboard Air Force One, as did Utahs Republican senators, Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee. Hatch and other Utah Republican leaders pushed Trump to launch the review, saying the monuments declared by Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton locked up too much federal land.

Trump exited the plane with Hatch and was greeted by cheers from a crowd assembled for the arrival. Hatch joined the president on a rope line, where Trump engaged in some small talk and signed someones hat before he was driven to his next stop.

Trump said Monday while leaving the White House that the monument announcement is something that the state of Utah and others have wanted to be done for many, many years. He said it is so important for states rights and so important for the people of Utah.

Trumps plan to curtail the strict protections on the sites has angered Native American tribes and environmental groups that have vowed to sue to preserve the monuments. He was making the announcement at the state capitol, where hundreds of people who oppose the announcement had lined up in Mondays wintry weather hours before Trump was scheduled to arrive.

In December, shortly before leaving office, Obama irritated Utah Republicans by creating the Bears Ears National Monument on 1.35 million acres of land sacred to Native Americans and home to tens of thousands of archeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings.

Trump signed an executive order in April directing Zinke to review the protections. Trump is able to upend the protections under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives the president broad authority to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use.

The president said in April that his order would end another egregious abuse of federal power and give that power back to the states and to the people where it belongs.

Trump said at the time that he had spoken to state and local leaders who are gravely concerned about this massive federal land grab. And its gotten worse and worse and worse, and now were going to free it up, which is what should have happened in the first place. This should never have happened.

The move marks the first time in a half century that a president has attempted to undo these types of land protections. And it could be the first of many changes to come.

Demonstrators at the Capitol held signs that said Utah stands with Bears Ears and Keep your tiny hands off our public lands. A smaller group gathered in support of Trumps decision, including some who said they favour potential drilling or mining there that could create jobs.

Zinke has also recommended that Nevadas Gold Butte and Oregons Cascade-Siskiyou monuments be reduced in size, though details remain unclear. The former Montana congressmans plan would allow logging at a newly designated monument in Maine and more grazing, hunting and fishing at two sites in New Mexico.

Democrats and environmentalists have opposed the changes, accusing Trump and Zinke of engaging in a secretive process aimed at helping industry groups that have donated to Republican political campaigns.

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Greater Toronto and the entire region have big transit problems, and to tackle them properly were going to have to think big.

The Toronto Region Board of Trade has come up with just such a big idea  creating a new provincial agency that would take over the planning, financing, construction and operation of public transit across the whole fast-growing Toronto-Waterloo corridor.

A bold idea like this presents a host of obvious problems that would have to be worked through. But it goes in the right direction: if we want a comprehensive, integrated 21st-century transit network we cant rely on a dozen local municipalities to deliver it. Thats a recipe for failure  as weve seen now for far too many years.

Naturally, the first reaction of the politicians was to dump on the idea when the board of trade proposed it last week. It would trample on local democracy, they said. It makes no sense for the province to fiddle with local bus routes. We should focus on building projects that are already underway.

That would be fine if the existing system was delivering the kind of transit that a burgeoning city-region of six-million-plus people needs. But it isnt.

As everyone knows, were choking on traffic and we arent building the right kinds of transit fast enough. Were throwing big money at politically driven projects like the $3.35-billion one-stop Scarborough subway while commuters elsewhere fume on clogged highways.

The City of Toronto alone has $20 billion in unfunded transit projects while the province vetoes funding sources like road tolls. Businesses say theyre struggling to recruit people in key areas because they cant commute easily from affordable neighborhoods to work. Meanwhile, local politicians squabble endlessly and mostly fail to get things done.

If we keep going along this path, board of trade president Janet De Silva told the Stars editorial board last week, Were going to look up in 10 years and still have a fragmented system. Were already trying to play catch-up with our competitors.

In "The Streets of Toronto" Christopher Hume takes an in-depth look at how our city's streets have evolved. For almost a century we've been told they belong to cars and trucks. But that's all starting to change.

The board of trades proposal is for a new provincial agency it dubs Superlinx, more powerful than the existing Metrolinx agency that is supposed to coordinate transit planning across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area.

The idea, says De Silva is to break the logjam on funding. Instead of municipalities traipsing cap in hand to Queens Park for transit money or begging unsuccessfully for the right to impose new levies, the province would take over the whole system. It has a lot more money than the cities and, in principle, should be able to take a big-picture view of whats needed across the entire region.

Importantly, the Superlinx model proposed by the board of trade would integrate land-use planning with building transit. It would have greater powers than Metrolinx, for example, to take advantage of the rising value of land near transit stations. Instead of building standalone stations (which are, amazingly, still being constructed along the new Eglinton LRT), it would develop new housing and commercial centres on transit routes.

This is the kind of super-agency that plans transit in major cities like London, Paris and Hong Kong, three models examined by the board of trade. Big, well-funded agencies are better equipped to plan far into the future  and to stick with their plans regardless of changing political winds.

Thats especially important when transportation is about to be disrupted by such revolutionary developments as self-driving cars and big data. We need to develop a network that lets users travel across the region as seamlessly as possible, using one fare system.

At the moment, the Wynne government says it isnt interested in such an agency and the Progressive Conservatives propose just a half-measure (having the province take over responsibility for the Toronto subway system as it expands into neighbouring municipalities).

Thats not surprising, especially so close to an election. But the idea of a super-agency to coordinate and finance transit is now firmly on the agenda.

Its a regional problem, and it calls for a regional solution.

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It's war.

Broadcom Ltd. (AVGO) - Get Free Report on Monday, Dec. 4, took its hostile $130 billion bid to buy Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) - Get Free Report to the chipmaker's shareholders by launching a total boardroom takeover effort intended to help propel its deal effort.

The semiconductor company's boardroom battle was expected as Qualcomm last month said it was rejecting Broadcom's unsolicited offer of $70 in cash and stock. The deal, should it ever be consummated, would represent the largest ever technology combination.

Qualcomm, which is in the midst of completing a $47 billion acquisition of NXP Semiconductors NV (NXP) - Get Free Report , on Monday reiterated that Broadcom's offer "dramatically undervalues" the business. In a statement, Qualcomm said Broadcom's directors are conflicted because they are seeking seats to propel Broadcom's undervalued offer.

Broadcom didn't raise its offer, though it is possible that such a move could emerge in the coming weeks. Instead it sought to nominate 11 dissident director candidates to Qualcomm's board in a move that would totally replace the semiconductor company's existing director base.

The move was expected shortly because Qualcomm's Dec. 8 deadline for nominating dissident director candidates for its 2018 annual meeting was approaching quickly.

Broadcom's Hostile Bid Was Timed To Execute Boardroom Battle

A person familiar with the strategy noted that Broadcom's hostile bid was timed in part so that if Qualcomm rejected the offer it could follow up with a boardroom director fight. The director candidates all have relevant experience. For example, one nominee, Samih Elhage, is the former president of the Mobile Networks Business for Nokia Group. However, the board wouldn't spend a lot of time in power. Once elected, their primary responsibility would be to agree to sell the business to Broadcom.

Expect a Higher Premium to Appease Shareholders

In a statement, Broadcom President Hock Tan said he has heard from many Qualcomm shareholders who have said they want his company to engage. Now that Broadcom has nominated its director slate, expect Tan and his team to start traveling around the U.S. to start negotiating with shareholders directly. One activist investor who has been involved in this kind of situation suggested that shareholders will always want a higher price, above the premium Broadcom has already offered up. Once Broadcom receives the feedback the question will be whether it will succumb to shareholder pressure and hike its offer. He added that in these type of situations the ultimatel premium paid is usually substantial.

In addition, shareholders will need to receive some sort of assurance that once Broadcom's directors are installed that it won't change the price or in some way alter the terms of the deal. If Qualcomm's board believes it is facing a boardroom defeat, it may grudgingly decide to negotiate with Broadcom so that directors can assure shareholders that the deal will be a binding contract.

Broadcom May Need to File a Lawsuit in Delaware

Qualcomm, which is incorporated in Delaware, is likely to seek to delay its annual meeting, which will buy it time as it seeks to engage its own shareholders. In a statement Monday, Qualcomm said Broadcom's directors are conflicted because they are seeking seats to propel Broadcom's offer, which "dramatically undervalues" the company. Qualcomm also said the bid would "foreclose" Qualcomm's options for over a year given the "magnitude of regulatory issues" around the deal.

The comments suggested that Qualcomm will seek to delay its meeting and fight the offer for months to come. However, there are only so many months it could delay before a Broadcom Delaware lawsuit could compel Qualcomm to hold its meeting. One person familiar with Delaware law suggested that Broadcom will file a lawsuit if Qualcomm postpones its meeting by 13 months from its previous meeting. He added that the lawsuit will likely take three months, which means the meeting and boardroom battle will take place by June at the latest.

Alternatively, Qualcomm could seek to find a so-called white knight acquirer, which may be considered friendlier and willing to pay more than Broadcom. For example, in 2014, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. joined forces with Bill Ackman's Pershing Square to employ a boardroom election effort in a bid to buy botox-maker Allergan PLC. However, Allergan fended off Valeant by agreeing to be acquired for a premium by White Knight Actavis in a defensive move.

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Exxon Mobil (XOM) - Get Free Report has reportedly held talks with Egypt's petroleum minister and may consider a move into the Middle East country's offshore oil and gas as it look to increase its reserves.

In 2016, Egypt had reserves of 3.5 billion barrels of oil and 1.8 trillion cubic meters of gas, noted BP's Statistical Review of World Energy.

Exxon investment would be in oil and gas production, or upstream operations, according to Petroleum Minister Tarek El Molla, reports Reuters.

"We have been discussing with them, visiting them. They've visited us... We are exploring all opportunities for having more and further upstreamers in Egypt," Molla said to Reuters on the sidelines of an OPEC meeting in Vienna.

Shares of Exxon were higher in premarket trading on Monday. The company had no comment.

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Apple Inc. (AAPL) - Get Free Report chief Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai both spoke at a state-run internet conference in China for the first time ever on Sunday, marking Silicon Valley's latest attempts to curry favor with regulators there.

Cook gave a keynote speech at China's World Internet Conference on Sunday, during which he spoke about the importance of an open internet and detailed how Apple has contributed to the Chinese economy. Top members of the Chinese Communist Party also attended the conference, now in its fourth year, which promoted the idea of cyber sovereignty -- the idea that individual states should be allowed to govern and regulate their own citizens' usage of the internet.

"The theme of this conference, 'developing a digital economy for openness and shared benefits,' is a vision we at Apple share," Cook said at the conference. "We are proud to have worked alongside many of our partners in China to help build a community that will now join a common future in cyberspace."

Apple's CEO has many reasons to stay in the Chinese government's good graces. China is Apple's third-largest market, behind North America and Europe, and accounted for roughly 20% of its revenue in fiscal 2017. The iPhone maker also faces tough competition from local smartphone vendors in China such as Huawei, Oppo and Vivo, as well as from local tech giants such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA) - Get Free Report , Tencent Holdings Ltd. (TCEHY) and Baidu (BIDU) - Get Free Report , who together control a huge proportion of the Chinese internet market.

China has also become an increasingly important player in Apple's app developer ecosystem. Chinese developers have already earned more than 112 billion yuan ($16.9 billion) on Apple's App Store platform, Cook noted, more than any other country in the world.

Despite fierce competition that has slowed its growth rate considerably in recent years, Apple has seen its outlook improve in China. During the most recent quarter ended Sept. 30, revenue in Greater China increased 12% year-over-year to $9.8 billion. Wall Street has also become increasingly bullish about Apple's prospects in the region, including Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, who wrote in a note on Friday that the iPhone's "best days in China are still ahead."

"Even after recent smartphone user base share gains, we believe that Apple is just turning the corner in China and growth will meaningfully accelerate in quarters to come, due to a litany of factors," Huberty said. "If we are correct, then we believe China could grow over 70% and account for 25% of Apple revenue in fiscal 2018, similar to the last iPhone supercycle in fiscal 2015."

Like many Silicon Valley giants, Apple has been walking a fine line between meeting Chinese regulators' demands and appeasing human rights watchdogs who argue that doing so could set a dangerous precedent.

In July, Apple was forced to bow to regulators and remove some apps from China's App Store. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently issued stricter rules to regulate virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow users to bypass China's "Great Firewall" that restricts access to many internet websites. Apple, which has sought to build better relations with China, removed many of VPN apps from the App Store, saying they included content that's illegal in China.

Apple also faced issues with Chinese regulators in October limiting the connectivity of the Apple Watch in China, in addition to criticism for removing the New York Times' English-language and Chinese-language news apps from its App Store in China earlier this year.

Google, for its part, has also been striving to repair its relations with Chinese regulators. The company shut down its local search engine in China in 2010 rather than continuing to be subject to censorship, although the Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) - Get Free Report unit still sells ads there. In addition to search, Gmail and YouTube also are not available in mainland China. Recently, however, CEO Pichai has spearheaded efforts by Google to regain a presence there, saying he wants "to be in China serving Chinese users."

"A lot of work Google does is to help Chinese companies," Pichai told delegates at the World Internet Conference on Sunday. "Many small and medium-sized businesses in China take advantage of Google to get their products to many other countries outside of China."

Cook closed out his keynote address by emphasizing the importance of openness and security in technologies such as the internet and artificial intelligence.

"Much has been said about the potential downsides of artificial intelligence, but I don't worry about machines thinking like humans. I worry about people thinking like machines," Cook explained. "We all have to work to infuse technology with humanity, with our values."

Apple and Alphabet are holdings in Jim Cramer'sAction Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells AAPLor GOOGL? Learn more now.

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Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has announced the launch of a sovereign cryptocurrency "petro" which could bypass the U.S.-led financial sanctions, according to a market commentator.

It is no surprise that digital currencies have become more popular as reports have been emerging that Venezuela's economic crisis is triggering increased use of Bitcoin due to its currency -- the bolivar -- plunging in value.

Earlier this year, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration signed an executive order that prohibits dealings in new debt from the Venezuelan government or its state oil company.

According to Reuters, the cryptocurrency announcement was made on Sunday, Dec. 3, in a televised broadcast by Maduro who said that Venezuela would create a cryptocurrency, backed by oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves.

David Coker, a lecturer in accounting, finance, and governance at Westminster Business School and former vice president of global risk management at Deutsche Bank, said Venezuela's president Nicolas announcing the launch of a sovereign cryptocurrency could bypass U.S.-led financial sanctions.

Coker said: "The Maduro regime's announcement of the 'Petro,' a sovereign cryptocurrency, seems more of a distraction than a solid policy proposal. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies thrive because they are free of government control. In other words, the value of each Bitcoin is determined by forces largely outside the remit of any single government. One of the cryptocurrency's fundamental design principles is the idea that no entity can arbitrarily increase the supply of Bitcoin and thus dilute its value. Backing this government-sponsored cryptocurrency by a basket of commodities is no guarantee of value either because the Maduro regime can alter the formula at any time."

One thing to note is that in Maduro's cryptocurrency plan, there is no mention of convertibility.

Coker explained: "Generally, currencies backed by commodities may be exchanged for the underlying assets, in this case, oil, gold, and diamonds. So, will the Maduro regime allow holders of the Petro to exchange their virtual currency for real assets? Presently convertibility is not clear. But what is clear is that this proposal seems more intended to distract rather than solve Venezuela's pressing domestic problems."

He concluded that even if the "petro" does launch, there is no fundamental reason to hold the currency except as a tool of outright speculation.

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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.
United Technologies Corporation provides technology products and services to building systems and aerospace industries worldwide. Its Otis segment designs, manufactures, sells, and installs passenger and freight elevators, escalators, and moving walkways; and offers modernization products to upgrade elevators and escalators, as well as maintenance and repair services. The company's Carrier segment provides heating, ventilating, air conditioning, refrigeration, fire, security, and building automation products, solutions, and services for commercial, government, infrastructure, residential, and refrigeration and transportation applications. This segment also offers building services, including audit, design, installation, system integration, repair, maintenance, and monitoring. Its Pratt & Whitney segment supplies aircraft engines for commercial, military, business jet, and general aviation markets; and provides aftermarket maintenance, repair, and overhaul, as well as fleet management services. The company's Collins Aerospace Systems segment provides electric power generation, power management, and distribution systems; air data and aircraft sensing systems; engine control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems; engine components; environmental control systems; fire and ice detection, and protection systems; propeller systems; engine nacelle systems; aircraft lighting, seating, and cargo systems; actuation and landing systems; space products and subsystems; avionics systems; flight controls, communications, navigation, oxygen, and training systems; food and beverage preparation, and storage and galley systems; and lavatory and wastewater management systems. The company offers its services through manufacturers' representatives, distributors, wholesalers, dealers, retail outlets, and sales representatives, as well as directly to customers. United Technologies Corporation was founded in 1934 and is headquartered in Farmington, Connecticut.
Kirby Corporation operates domestic tank barges in the United States. Its Marine Transportation segment provides marine transportation service and towing vessel transporting bulk liquid product, as well as operates tank barge throughout the Mississippi River System, on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, coastwise along three United States coasts, and in Alaska and Hawaii. It also transport petrochemical, black oil, refined petroleum product, and agricultural chemicals by tank barge; and operates offshore dry-bulk barge and tugboat unit that are engaged in the offshore transportation of dry-bulk cargo in the United States coastal trade. As of December 31, 2021, it owned and operated 1,025 inland tank barge, approximately 255 inland towboat, 31 coastal tank barge, 29 coastal tugboat, 4 offshore dry-bulk cargo barge, 4 offshore tugboat, and 1 docking tugboat. Its Distribution and Services segment sells after-market service and genuine replacement part for engine, transmission, reduction gear, electric motor, drive, and control, electrical distribution and control system, energy storage battery system, and related oilfield service equipment; rebuild component parts or diesel engine, transmission and reduction gear, and related equipment used in oilfield service, marine, power generation, on-highway, and other industrial applications; rents generator, industrial compressor, high capacity lift truck, and refrigeration trailer; and manufactures and remanufactures oilfield service equipment, including pressure pumping unit, as well as manufacturers electric power generation equipment, specialized electrical distribution and control equipment, and high capacity energy storage/battery systems for oilfield customer. It serves to various companies and the United States government. The company was formerly known as Kirby Exploration Company, Inc. and changed its name to Kirby Corporation in 1990. Kirby Corporation was founded in 1921 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
The following companies are subsidiares of American Tower: 10 Presidential Way Associates LLC, 3267351 Nova Scotia Company, 3286208 Nova Scotia Company, 3298099 Nova Scotia Company, 52 Eighty Partners LLC, 52 Eighty Tower Partners I LLC, ACC Tower Sub LLC, AT Atlantic Holding LLC (1), AT Iberia C.V. (2), AT Kenya C.V., AT Netherlands C.V., AT Netherlands Cooperatief U.A., AT Rhine C.V. (2), AT Sher Netherlands Cooperatief U.A., AT South America C.V., ATC Africa Holding B.V., ATC Africa Shared Services (Pty) Ltd, ATC Antennas Holding LLC, ATC Antennas LLC, ATC Argentina Cooperatief U.A., ATC Argentina Holding LLC, ATC Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., ATC Atlantic C.V. (2), ATC Atlantic I B.V. (2), ATC Atlantic II B.V. (3), ATC Atlantic IV B.V. (2), ATC Backhaul LLC, ATC Brasil  Servicos de Conectividades Ltda., ATC Brazil Holding LLC, ATC Brazil I LLC, ATC Brazil II LLC, ATC Burkina Faso S.A., ATC CSR Foundation India, ATC Chile Holding LLC, ATC Colombia B.V., ATC Colombia Holding I LLC, ATC Colombia Holding LLC, ATC Colombia I LLC, ATC EH GmbH & Co. KG (2), ATC Ecuador Holding LLC, ATC Edge LLC, ATC Ethiopia Infrastructure Development Private Limited Company, ATC Europe B.V. (2), ATC Europe C.V. (1), ATC Europe Cooperatief U.A. (2), ATC Europe LLC, ATC European Holdings Inc., ATC Fibra de Colombia S.A.S., ATC France Holding II SAS, ATC France Holding SAS, ATC France Reseaux SAS, ATC France SNC, ATC France Services SAS, ATC GP GmbH, ATC Germany Holding I B.V. (3), ATC Germany Holding II B.V., ATC Germany Holdings GmbH, ATC Germany Munich GmbH, ATC Germany Services GmbH, ATC Ghana ServiceCo Limited, ATC Global Employment B.V., ATC Green Grass LLC, ATC Heston B.V., ATC Holding Fibra Mexico S. de R.L. DE C.V., ATC IP LLC, ATC Iberia Holding LLC (3), ATC India Infrastructure Private Limited (1), ATC Indoor DAS Holding LLC, ATC Indoor DAS LLC, ATC International Cooperatief U.A., ATC International Financing B.V., ATC International Financing II B.V., ATC International Financing II Holding LLC, ATC International Holding Corp., ATC Iris I LLC, ATC Kenya Operations Limited, ATC Kenya Services Limited, ATC Latin America S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., ATC MIP III REIT Iron Holdings LLC, ATC Managed Sites Holding LLC, ATC Managed Sites LLC, ATC MexHold LLC, ATC Mexico Holding LLC, ATC Niger Wireless Infrastructure S.A., ATC Nigeria Cooperatief U.A., ATC Nigeria Holding LLC, ATC Nigeria Wireless Infrastructure Limited, ATC On Air + LLC, ATC Operations LLC, ATC Outdoor DAS LLC, ATC Paraguay Holding LLC, ATC Paraguay S.R.L., ATC Peru Holding LLC, ATC Polska sp. z o.o., ATC Ponderosa B-I LLC, ATC Ponderosa B-II LLC, ATC Ponderosa K LLC, ATC Ponderosa K-R LLC, ATC Rhine Holding LLC (3), ATC Scala Operations S.L. (3), ATC Scala Spain Holding S.L. (2), ATC Sequoia LLC, ATC Sitios Infraco S.A.S., ATC Sitios de Argentina S.A., ATC Sitios de Chile S.A., ATC Sitios de Colombia S.A.S., ATC Sitios del Peru S.R.L., ATC South Africa Investment Holdings (Proprietary) Limited, ATC South Africa Services Pty Ltd, ATC South Africa Wireless Infrastructure (Pty) Ltd, ATC South America Holding LLC, ATC South LLC, ATC TRS I LLC, ATC TRS II LLC, ATC TRS III LLC, ATC TRS IV LLC, ATC Tanzania Holding LLC, ATC Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited, ATC Tower (Ghana) LTD, ATC Tower Services LLC, ATC Uganda Limited, ATC Uganda ServiceCo (SMC) Limited, ATC Watertown LLC, ATC WiFi LLC, ATS-Needham LLC, ActiveX Telebroadband Services Private Limited, Adquisiciones y Proyectos Inalambricos S. de R. L. de C.V., Agile Airband Ohio LLC, Agile Connect LLC, Agile IWG Holdings LLC, Agile Network Builders LLC, Agile Networks Indiana LLC, Agile Networks Site Development LLC, Agile Towers LLC, Alternative Networking LLC, American Tower Asset Sub II LLC, American Tower Asset Sub LLC, American Tower Charitable Foundation Inc., American Tower Chile I S.A., American Tower Chile II S.A., American Tower Delaware Corporation, American Tower Depositor Sub LLC, American Tower Espana S.L.U. (3), American Tower Guarantor Sub LLC, American Tower Holding Sub II LLC, American Tower Holding Sub LLC, American Tower IB Participacoes Imobiliarias Ltda., American Tower Inmosites S.L.U., American Tower International Holding I LLC, American Tower International Holding II LLC, American Tower International Inc., American Tower Investments LLC, American Tower LLC, American Tower Latam SLU, American Tower Management LLC, American Tower Peru S.A.C., American Tower Servicios Fibra S. de R.L. de C.V., American Tower T. Torres do Brasil Ltda., American Tower Tanzania Operations Limited, American Tower do Brasil - Cessao de Infraestruturas Ltda., American Tower do Brasil  Communicacao Multimidia Ltda., American Towers LLC, Appleseed Holdco LLC, BR Towers, Blue Sky Towers Pty Ltd, Blue Transfer Sociedad Anonima, Broadcast Towers LLC, CNC2 Associates LLC, California Tower Inc., Cell Site NewCo II LLC, Cell Tower Lease Acquisition LLC, Central States Tower Holdings LLC, Colo ATL LLC, Colo Atl, Communications Properties Inc., Comunicaciones y Consumos S.A., Connectivity Infrastructure Services Limited, CoreSite Real Estate 12100 Sunrise Valley Drive L.L.C., CoreSite Real Estate 1656 McCarthy L.P., CoreSite Realty Corporation REIT Qualification Trust, Coresite, DCS Tower Sub LLC, Digital Access Ohio LLC (1), Eaton, Eaton Towers Ghana (M) Limited, Eaton Towers Ghana Limited, Eaton Towers Holdings Limited, Eaton Towers Kenya Limited, Eaton Towers Limited, Eaton Towers Uganda Limited, Essar Telecom Infrastructure, GTP Acquisition Partners I LLC, GTP Acquisition Partners II LLC, GTP Acquisition Partners III LLC, GTP Costa Rica Finance LLC, GTP Infrastructure I LLC, GTP Infrastructure II LLC, GTP Infrastructure III LLC, GTP Investments LLC, GTP LATAM Holdings B.V., GTP LatAm Holdings Cooperatieve U.A., GTP Operations CR S.R.L., GTP South Acquisitions II LLC, GTP Structures I LLC, GTP Structures II LLC, GTP TRS I LLC, GTP Torres CR S.R.L., GTP Towers I LLC, GTP Towers II LLC, GTP Towers III LLC, GTP Towers IV LLC, GTP Towers IX LLC, GTP Towers V LLC, GTP Towers VII LLC, GTP Towers VIII LLC, GTPI HoldCo LLC, Ghana Tower InterCo B.V., Global Tower Assets III LLC, Global Tower Assets LLC, Global Tower Holdings LLC, Global Tower LLC, Global Tower Partners, Global Tower Services LLC, Gondola Tower Holdings LLC, Grain HoldCo LLC, Grain HoldCo Parent LLC, GrainComm I LLC, GrainComm II LLC, GrainComm III LLC, GrainComm LLC, GrainComm Marketing LLC, GrainComm V LLC, Haysville Towers LLC (1), IW Equipment LLC, IWD Equipment LLC, IWG Holdings LLC, IWG II Holdings LLC, IWG II LLC, IWG Towers Assets I LLC, IWG Towers Assets II LLC, IWG-TLA Australia Pty Ltd., IWG-TLA Canada Corp., IWG-TLA Encanto 1 LLC, IWG-TLA Encanto 3 LLC, IWG-TLA Holdings LLC, IWG-TLA Media 2 LLC, IWG-TLA Media LLC, IWG-TLA Telecom LLC, InSite (BCEC) LLC, InSite (MBTA) LLC, InSite Borrower LLC, InSite Co-Issuer Corp., InSite Guarantor LLC, InSite Hawaii LLC, InSite Issuer LLC, InSite Licensing LLC, InSite Tower Services LLC, InSite Towers Development 2 LLC, InSite Towers Development LLC, InSite Towers International 2 LLC, InSite Towers International Development LLC, InSite Towers International LLC, InSite Towers LLC, InSite Towers of Puerto Rico LLC, InSite Wireless Development LLC, InSite Wireless Group, InSite Wireless Group LLC, Invisible IWG Holdings LLC, Invisible Towers LLC, JT Communications LLC, Kirtonkhola Tower Bangladesh Limited (1), LAP Inmobiliaria Limitada, LAP Inmobiliaria S.R.L., LL B Sheet 1 LLC, Lap do Brasil Empreendimentos Imobiliarios Ltda, Lease Advisors-AU PTY LTD, Loxel SAS, MATC Digital S. de R.L. de C.V., MATC Infraestructura S. de R.L. de C.V., MATC Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., MC New Macland Properties LLC, MCSU Properties LLC, MHB Tower Rentals of America LLC, MIP III U.S. Iron LLC, Microwave Inc., Mountain Communications LLC, Municipal Bay LLC, Municipal-Bay Holdings LLC, New Towers LLC, PCS Structures Towers LLC, R-CAL I LLC, RSA Media Inc., Repeater Communications Group I LLC, Repeater Communications Group II LLC, Repeater Communications Group III LLC, Repeater Communications Group IV LLC, Repeater Communications Group LLC, Repeater Communications Group V LLC, Repeater Communications Group VI LLC, Repeater Communications Group of New York LLC, Repeater IWG Holdings LLC, Richland Towers LLC, Signum/IWG Tower Corp., Southeast Network Access Point LLC, SpectraSite Communications, SpectraSite Communications LLC, SpectraSite LLC, T8 Ulysses Site Management LLC, TLA PR-2 LLC, Telecom Lease Advisors Management 2 LLC, Tower Management Inc. (4), Towers of America L.L.L.P., Transcend Infrastructure Holdings Pte. Ltd., Transcend Towers Infrastructure (Philippines) Inc., Turris Sites Development Corp., Turris Sites IWG Corp, Tysons II DAS LLC, U.S. Colo. LLC, UNIsite, Uganda Tower Interco B.V., Ulysses Asset Sub I LLC, Ulysses Asset Sub II LLC, UniSite LLC, UniSite/Omnipoint FL Tower Venture LLC (1), UniSite/Omnipoint NE Tower Venture LLC (1), UniSite/Omnipoint PA Tower Venture LLC (1), and Viom Networks.

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Juniper Networks, Inc. designs, develops, and sells network products and services worldwide. The company offers routing products, such as ACX series universal access routers to deploy high-bandwidth services; MX series Ethernet routers that function as a universal edge platform; PTX series packet transport routers; wide-area network SDN controllers; and session smart routers. It also provides switching products, including EX series Ethernet switches to address the access, aggregation, and core layer switching requirements of micro branch, branch office, and campus environments; QFX series of core, spine, and top-of-rack data center switches; and juniper access points, which provide Wi-Fi access and performance. In addition, the company offers security products comprising SRX series services gateways for the data center; Branch SRX family provides an integrated and next-generation firewall; virtual firewall that delivers various features of physical firewalls; and advanced malware protection, a cloud-based service and Juniper ATP. Further, it offers Junos OS, a network operating system; Contrail networking, which provides an open-source and standards-based platform for SDN; Mist AI-driven Wired, Wireless, and WAN assurance solutions to set and measure key metrics; Mist AI-driven Marvis Virtual Network Assistant, which identifies the root cause of issues; Juniper Paragon Automation, a modular portfolio of cloud-native software applications; and Juniper Apstra to automate the network lifecycle in a single system. Additionally, the company provides software-as-a-service, technical support, maintenance, and professional services, as well as education and training programs. It sells its products through direct sales, distributors, value-added resellers, and original equipment manufacturers to end-users in the cloud, service provider, and enterprise markets. The company was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
BEIJING -- China said Monday that the proposed name change of the Diaoyu Islands by a Japanese mayor would not change the fact that they belong to China.

Ishigaki Mayor Yoshitaka Nakayama plans to submit a proposal to the city assembly Monday to change the islands' name from "Tonoshiro, Ishigaki City" to "Tonoshiro Senkaku, Ishigaki City," according to Japanese media.

"The Diaoyu Island and its adjacent islets have always been an inherent part of Chinese territory, and China has unshakable will to protect its own sovereignty," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said at a regular news briefing. "Whatever tricks Japan plays, it will not change the fact that the Diaoyu Islands belong to China."

He urged the Japanese side to "face up to history and reality, stop stirring up trouble on the issue and avoid harming the improvement of bilateral ties."
The following companies are subsidiares of Pfizer: AH Robins LLC, AHP Holdings B.V., AHP Manufacturing B.V., Agouron Pharmaceuticals LLC, Alacer, Alpharma Holdings LLC, Alpharma Pharmaceuticals LLC, Alpharma Specialty Pharma LLC, Alpharma USHP LLC, American Food Industries LLC, Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Anacor Pharmaceuticals Inc., Angiosyn, Array BioPharma, Ayerst-Wyeth Pharmaceuticals LLC, BIND Therapeutics Inc., BINESA 2002 S.L., Bamboo Therapeutics, Bamboo Therapeutics Inc., Baxter International - Marketed Vaccines, BioRexis, Bioren, Bioren LLC, Blue Whale Re Ltd., C.E. Commercial Holdings C.V., C.E. Commercial Investments C.V., C.P. Pharmaceuticals International C.V., CICL Corporation, COC I Corporation, Catapult Genetics, Coley Pharmaceutical GmbH, Coley Pharmaceutical Group, Coley Pharmaceutical Group Inc., Continental Pharma Inc., Covx, Covx Technologies Ireland Limited, Cyanamid Inter-American Corporation, Cyanamid de Argentina S.A., Cyanamid de Colombia S.A., Distribuidora Mercantil Centro Americana S.A., Encysive Pharmaceuticals, Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc., Esperion LUV Development Inc., Esperion Therapeutics, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals Inc., Farminova Produtos Farmaceuticos de Inovacao Lda., Farmogene Productos Farmaceuticos Lda, Ferrosan A/S, Ferrosan International A/S, Ferrosan S.R.L., FoldRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Foldrx Pharmaceuticals, Fort Dodge Manufatura Ltda., G. D. Searle & Co. Limited, G. D. Searle International Capital LLC, G. D. Searle LLC, GI Europe Inc., GI Japan Inc., GenTrac Inc., Genetics Institute LLC, Greenstone LLC, Haptogen Limited, Hospira, Hospira (China) Enterprise Management Co. Ltd., Hospira Adelaide Pty Ltd, Hospira Aseptic Services Limited, Hospira Australia Pty Ltd, Hospira Benelux BVBA, Hospira Chile Limitada, Hospira Deutschland GmbH, Hospira Enterprises B.V., Hospira France SAS, Hospira Healthcare B.V., Hospira Healthcare Corporation, Hospira Healthcare India Private Limited, Hospira Holdings (S.A.) Pty Ltd, Hospira Inc., Hospira Invicta S.A., Hospira Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, Hospira Ireland Sales Limited, Hospira Japan G.K., Hospira Limited, Hospira Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Hospira NZ Limited, Hospira Nordic AB, Hospira Philippines Inc., Hospira Portugal LDA, Hospira Produtos Hospitalares Ltda., Hospira Pte. Ltd., Hospira Pty Limited, Hospira Puerto Rico LLC, Hospira Singapore Pte Ltd, Hospira UK Limited, Hospira Worldwide LLC, Hospira Zagreb d.o.o., ICAgen, Idun Pharmaceuticals, Industrial Santa Agape S.A., InnoPharma, InnoPharma Inc., International Affiliated Corporation LLC, JMI-Daniels Pharmaceuticals Inc., John Wyeth & Brother Limited, Kiinteisto oy Espoon Pellavaniementie 14, King Pharmaceuticals Holdings LLC, King Pharmaceuticals LLC, King Pharmaceuticals Research and Development LLC, Korea Pharma Holding Company Limited, Laboratoires Pfizer S.A., Laboratorios Parke Davis S.L., Laboratorios Pfizer Ltda., Laboratorios Wyeth LLC, Laboratorios Wyeth S.A., Laboratorios Pfizer Lda., MTG Divestitures LLC, Mayne Pharma IP Holdings (Euro) Pty Ltd, Medivation, Medivation Field Solutions LLC, Medivation LLC, Medivation Neurology LLC, Medivation Prostate Therapeutics LLC, Medivation Services LLC, Medivation Technologies LLC, Meridian Medical Technologies Inc., Meridian Medical Technologies Limited, Monarch Pharmaceuticals LLC, Neusentis Limited, NextWave Pharmaceuticals, NextWave Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, P-D Co. LLC, PAH USA IN8 LLC, PF Americas Holding C.V., PF Asia Manufacturing B.V., PF PR Holdings C.V., PF PRISM C.V., PF PRISM Holdings S.a.r.l., PF Prism S.a.r.l., PFE Holdings G.K., PFE PHAC Holdings 1 LLC, PFE Pfizer Holdings 1 LLC, PFE Wyeth Holdings LLC, PFE Wyeth-Ayerst (Asia) LLC, PHILCO Holdings S.a r.l., PHIVCO Corp., PHIVCO Holdco S.a r.l., PHIVCO Luxembourg S.a r.l., PN Mexico LLC, PT. Pfizer Parke Davis, Parke Davis & Company LLC, Parke Davis Limited, Parke Davis Productos Farmaceuticos Lda, Parke-Davis Manufacturing Corp., Parkedale Pharmaceuticals Inc., Peak Enterprises LLC, Pfizer, Pfizer (China) Research and Development Co. Ltd., Pfizer (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Pfizer (Perth) Pty Limited, Pfizer (Thailand) Limited, Pfizer (Wuhan) Research and Development Co. Ltd., Pfizer AB, Pfizer AG, Pfizer AS, Pfizer Africa & Middle East for Pharmaceuticals Veterinarian Products & Chemicals S.A.E., Pfizer Anti-Infectives AB, Pfizer ApS, Pfizer Asia Manufacturing Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Asia Pacific Pte Ltd., Pfizer Atlantic Holdings S.a.r.l., Pfizer Australia Holdings B.V., Pfizer Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Pfizer Australia Investments Pty. Ltd., Pfizer Australia Pty Limited, Pfizer B.V., Pfizer BH D.o.o., Pfizer Baltic Holdings B.V., Pfizer Biofarmaceutica Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Pfizer Biologics (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd, Pfizer Biologics Ireland Holdings Limited, Pfizer Biotech Corporation, Pfizer Bolivia S.A., Pfizer Canada Inc., Pfizer CentreSource Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Chile S.A., Pfizer Cia. Ltda., Pfizer Colombia Spinco I LLC, Pfizer Commercial Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Commercial Holdings TRAE Kft., Pfizer Commercial TRAE Trading Kft., Pfizer Consumer Healthcare AB, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare GmbH, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare Ltd., Pfizer Consumer Manufacturing Italy S.r.l., Pfizer Corporation, Pfizer Corporation Austria Gesellschaft m.b.H., Pfizer Corporation Hong Kong Limited, Pfizer Croatia d.o.o., Pfizer Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Development LP, Pfizer Development Services (UK) Limited, Pfizer Domestic Ventures Limited, Pfizer Dominicana S.R.L, Pfizer ESP Pty Ltd, Pfizer East India B.V., Pfizer Eastern Investments B.V., Pfizer Egypt S.A.E., Pfizer Enterprise Holdings B.V., Pfizer Enterprises LLC, Pfizer Enterprises SARL, Pfizer Europe Finance B.V., Pfizer Export B.V., Pfizer Export Company, Pfizer Export Holding Company B.V, Pfizer Finance Share Service (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Pfizer Financial Services N.V./S.A., Pfizer France International Investments, Pfizer Free Zone Panama S. de R.L., Pfizer GEP S.L., Pfizer Global Holdings B.V., Pfizer Global Supply Japan Inc., Pfizer Global Trading, Pfizer Group Luxembourg Sarl, Pfizer Gulf FZ-LLC, Pfizer H.C.P. Corporation, Pfizer HK Service Company Limited, Pfizer Health AB, Pfizer Health Solutions Inc., Pfizer Healthcare Ireland, Pfizer Hellas A.E., Pfizer Himalaya Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Holding France, Pfizer Holding Ventures, Pfizer Holdings Corporation, Pfizer Holdings Europe Unlimited Company, Pfizer Holdings G.K., Pfizer Holdings International Corporation, Pfizer Holdings International Luxembourg (PHIL) Sarl, Pfizer Holdings North America SARL, Pfizer Hungary Holdings TRAE Kft., Pfizer Inc., Pfizer Innovations AB, Pfizer Innovations LLC, Pfizer Innovative Supply Point International BVBA, Pfizer International LLC, Pfizer International Markets Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer International Operations, Pfizer International S. de R.L., Pfizer International Trading (Shanghai) Limited, Pfizer Investment Capital Unlimited Company, Pfizer Investment Co. Ltd., Pfizer Investment Holdings S.a.r.l., Pfizer Ireland Investments Limited, Pfizer Ireland PFE Holding 1 LLC, Pfizer Ireland PFE Holding 2 LLC, Pfizer Ireland Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer Ireland Ventures Unlimited Company, Pfizer Italia S.r.l., Pfizer Italy Group Holding S.r.l., Pfizer Japan Inc., Pfizer LLC, Pfizer Laboratories (Pty) Limited, Pfizer Laboratories Limited, Pfizer Laboratories PFE (Pty) Ltd, Pfizer Leasing Ireland Limited, Pfizer Leasing UK Limited, Pfizer Limitada, Pfizer Limited, Pfizer Luxco Holdings SARL, Pfizer Luxembourg Global Holdings S.a r.l., Pfizer Luxembourg SARL, Pfizer MAP Holding Inc., Pfizer Manufacturing Austria G.m.b.H., Pfizer Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Pfizer Manufacturing Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Manufacturing Deutschland Grundbesitz GmbH & Co. KG, Pfizer Manufacturing Holdings LLC, Pfizer Manufacturing Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Manufacturing LLC, Pfizer Manufacturing Services, Pfizer Medical Technology Group (Belgium) N.V., Pfizer Medicamentos Genericos e Participacoes Ltda., Pfizer Mexico Luxco SARL, Pfizer Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pfizer Middle East for Pharmaceuticals Animal Health and Chemicals S.A.E., Pfizer New Zealand Limited, Pfizer Norge AS, Pfizer North American Holdings Inc., Pfizer OTC B.V., Pfizer Overseas LLC, Pfizer Oy, Pfizer PFE ApS, Pfizer PFE AsiaPac Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Australia Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Australia Pty Ltd, Pfizer PFE B.V., Pfizer PFE Baltic Holdings B.V., Pfizer PFE Belgium SPRL, Pfizer PFE Brazil Holding S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE CIA. Ltda., Pfizer PFE Chile Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Colombia Holding Corp., Pfizer PFE Colombia S.A.S, Pfizer PFE Commercial Holdings LLC, Pfizer PFE Croatia Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Eastern Investments B.V., Pfizer PFE Finland Oy, Pfizer PFE France, Pfizer PFE Global Holdings B.V., Pfizer PFE Ireland Pharmaceuticals Holding 1 B.V., Pfizer PFE Italy Holdco 2 S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Italy Holdco S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Pfizer PFE Limited, Pfizer PFE Luxembourg S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Mexico Holding 3 LLC, Pfizer PFE Netherlands Holding 1 C.V., Pfizer PFE New Zealand, Pfizer PFE New Zealand Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Norway Holding S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE PILSA Holdco S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Peru Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Peru S.R.L., Pfizer PFE Pharmaceuticals Israel Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Pharmaceuticals Israel Ltd., Pfizer PFE Private Limited, Pfizer PFE S.R.L, Pfizer PFE Service Company Holding Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer PFE Singapore Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Singapore Pte. Ltd., Pfizer PFE Spain B.V., Pfizer PFE Spain Holding S.L., Pfizer PFE Sweden Holding 2 S.a.r.l., Pfizer PFE Sweden Holding S.a.r.l., Pfizer PFE Switzerland GmbH, Pfizer PFE Turkey Holding 1 B.V., Pfizer PFE Turkey Holding 2 B.V., Pfizer PFE UK Holding 4 LP, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 1 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 2 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 3 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 4 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 5 LLC, Pfizer PFE spol. s r.o., Pfizer PFE Ilaclar Anonim Sirketi, Pfizer Pakistan Limited, Pfizer Parke Davis (Thailand) Ltd., Pfizer Parke Davis Inc., Pfizer Parke Davis Sdn. Bhd., Pfizer Pharm Algerie, Pfizer Pharma GmbH, Pfizer Pharma PFE GmbH, Pfizer Pharmaceutical (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceutical Trading Limited Liability Company (a/k/a Pfizer Kft. or Pfizer LLC), Pfizer Pharmaceuticals B.V., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Global B.V., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Israel Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Korea Limited, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals LLC, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Pfizer Pigments Inc., Pfizer Polska Sp. z.o.o., Pfizer Private Limited, Pfizer Production LLC, Pfizer Products Inc., Pfizer Products India Private Limited, Pfizer Research (NC) Inc., Pfizer Romania SRL, Pfizer S.A., Pfizer S.A., Pfizer S.A. (Belgium), Pfizer S.A. de C.V., Pfizer S.A.S., Pfizer S.G.P.S. Lda., Pfizer S.L., Pfizer S.R.L., Pfizer SRB d.o.o., Pfizer Saidal Manufacturing, Pfizer Sante Familiale, Pfizer Saudi Limited, Pfizer Seiyaku K.K., Pfizer Service Company BVBA, Pfizer Service Company Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Services 1, Pfizer Services LLC, Pfizer Shared Services Unlimited Company, Pfizer Shareholdings Intermediate SARL, Pfizer Singapore Holding Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Singapore Trading Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Spain Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Specialties Limited, Pfizer Strategic Investment Holdings LLC, Pfizer Sweden Partnership KB, Pfizer TRAE Holdings Kft., Pfizer Trading Polska sp.z.o.o., Pfizer Transactions Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Transactions LLC, Pfizer Transactions Luxembourg SARL, Pfizer Transport LLC, Pfizer Ukraine LLC, Pfizer Vaccines LLC, Pfizer Venezuela S.A., Pfizer Venture Investments LLC, Pfizer Ventures LLC, Pfizer Worldwide Services Unlimited Company, Pfizer Zona Franca S.A., Pfizer spol. s r.o., Pharmacia, Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Inc., Pharmacia & Upjohn Company LLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn LLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn S.A. de C.V., Pharmacia Brasil Ltda., Pharmacia Hepar LLC, Pharmacia Holding AB, Pharmacia Inter-American LLC, Pharmacia International B.V., Pharmacia LLC, Pharmacia Limited, Pharmacia Nostrum S.A., Pharmacia South Africa (Pty) Ltd, PowderJect Research Limited, PowderMed, Purepac Pharmaceutical Holdings LLC, Redvax, Renrall LLC, Rinat Neuroscience, Rinat Neuroscience Corp., Roerig Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Roerig S.A., Sao Cristovao Participacoes Ltda., Searle Laboratorios Lda., Serenex, Servicios P&U S. de R.L. de C.V., Shiley LLC, Sinergis Farma-Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Site Realty Inc., Solinor LLC, Sugen LLC, Tabor LLC, The Pfizer Incubator LLC, Therachon, Thiakis Limited, Treerly Health Co. Ltd, US Oral Pharmaceuticals Pty Ltd, Upjohn Laboratorios Lda., Vesteralens Naturprodukter A/S, Vesteralens Naturprodukter AB, Vesteralens Naturprodukter AS, Vesteralens Naturprodukter OY, Vicuron Holdings LLC, Vinci Farma S.A., W-L LLC, Warner Lambert, Warner Lambert Ilac Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Warner Lambert del Uruguay S.A., Warner-Lambert (Thailand) Limited, Warner-Lambert Company AG, Warner-Lambert Company LLC, Warner-Lambert Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Warner-Lambert S.A., Whitehall International Inc., Whitehall Laboratories Inc., Wyeth (Thailand) Ltd., Wyeth AB, Wyeth Australia Pty. Limited, Wyeth Ayerst Inc., Wyeth Ayerst S.a r.l., Wyeth Biopharma, Wyeth Canada ULC, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare LLC, Wyeth Europa Limited, Wyeth Farma S.A., Wyeth Holdings LLC, Wyeth Industria Farmaceutica Ltda., Wyeth KFT., Wyeth LLC, Wyeth Lederle S.r.l., Wyeth Lederle Vaccines S.A., Wyeth Pakistan Limited, Wyeth Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Company, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals FZ-LLC, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals LLC, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Limited, Wyeth Puerto Rico Inc., Wyeth S.A.S, Wyeth Subsidiary Illinois Corporation, Wyeth Whitehall Export GmbH, Wyeth Whitehall SARL, Wyeth-Ayerst (Asia) Limited, Wyeth-Ayerst International LLC, and Wyeth-Ayerst Promotions Limited.

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Mountain lion captured doing well at rescue shelter

The cougar roamed through areas on the west side of Springfield before he was captured Oct. 28.
Editors' Note:We originally posted this hands-on on Dec. 4. Huawei has since announced pricing and availability for the phone, and we've updated this story with that information.



The $250 Honor 6X instantly became one of our favorite budget phones when it arrived earlier this year. But Huawei's Honor brand is already preparing a successor. Called the Honor 7X, the $199 phone is now available for pre-order, and we've had the chance to play around with it.



While the Honor 7X doesnt look radically different from the handset it succeeds, Honor has lavished the most attention on the phone's little details. First off is that big 5.9-inch display on the 7X, which is noticeably larger than the 5.5-inch panel in the 6X. Because of the reduced bezels on the new phone, though, the 7X is just a hair longer than the previous model.

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Honor has also one-upped the design of the 6X around the back too, by moving to an all-aluminum design rather than just cladding the center portion of the phone in metal. The dual cameras now sport a horizontal orientation at the top-left and are broken up by the antenna lines  a similar look to the Asus ZenFone 4 Max. Its not very original, but still more tasteful than the 6Xs approach, which made the vertically-stacked shooters look like a tacked-on afterthought. In the center youll find a recessed fingerprint sensor, which feels a little smaller than most sensors, though it's very easy to locate thanks to its pronounced edge.

Thankfully theres a headphone jack on the lower edge of the 7X. Curiously, though, Honor has opted for a microUSB port rather than USB Type-C. This isnt a deal-breaker when you factor in the phones sub-$200 price, but this older port is still odd to see on an otherwise premium-feeling handset. The speaker to its right is the only one on the device, sadly, and the 7X isn't rated water resistant.



As for the screen itself, its a 2160 x 1080 LCD panel that certainly looks bright, though Honor hasnt opted for an oversaturated color profile or provided an assortment of display modes, at least on our pre-production model. Powering the phone is a 3,340 mAh battery which Honor claims will keep the device humming along for a little less than a day-and-a-half. Dont expect the 7X's battery to top up very quickly, as there is no fast-charging technology to speak of.

Turning to photography, the 7X pairs an f/1.8 16-megapixel main sensor with a 2-megapixel secondary camera that mostly concentrates on depth. Around the front, theres an 8-MP shooter for selfies.

The rear cameras utilize phase detection for faster autofocus, and the camera app features an assortment of shooting profiles, including Portrait and Pro modes. I had trouble getting Portrait Mode to apply a bokeh effect to the photos I was taking, but otherwise, the 7X captured a crisp, colorful shot of the New York skyline on a beautiful fall afternoon.

Tying everything together is Huaweis in-house midrange processor, the Kirin 659, mated to 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage you can expand by up to another 256GB through microSD. Thats a step up from the Kirin 655 chipset in the 6X, and while other territories will be able to choose a more expensive variant of the 7X with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, stateside customers will miss out on that configuration. Overseas regions will also get a gold colorway, in addition to the black and blue finishes on offer in the U.S. Unfortunately, all models omit NFC, which means the 7X cannot be used for tap-and-pay transactions with Android Pay.

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The hardware seemed adequate in my brief time with the device so far, navigating Huaweis EMUI interface swiftly. The 7X launches with version 5.1 of EMUI paired with Android 7.0 Nougat, though Honor tells us the phone will receive both EMUI 8.0 and Android 8.0 Oreo at a later date. Interestingly, the upcoming Huawei Mate 10 Pro already uses the newer software, though it must be said its not a significant departure from what the 7X launches with, outside of the addition of a couple features here and there like one-button navigation.

On paper, the 7X seems as respectable as the device it replaces, but the market is flooded with respectably-appointed smartphones. So its success or failure will likely come down to price. And Huawei has made that feature particularly attractive.

At $199, Huawei costs $30 less than the Moto G5 Plus, one of our favorite budget phones. Considering that the 7X offers dual cameras and the G5 Plus does not  you'd have to pay up for the $279 Moto G5S Plus for that feature  Huawei's phone gets a feature edge on paper, though we're reserving final judgment until we have the chance to compare how the camera perform in a faceoff.

Huawei is already taking orders on the Honor 7X, promising that phones will ship around Dec. 15.



Honor 7X

At first glance, the latest Honor phone may not seem particularly thrilling in a world dominated by phones with edge-to-edge screens. But the kind of value the Honor 7X promises may be more than enough for this phone to make a splash. You can look forward to our full review in the coming days.

Photo Credit: Adam Ismail/Tom's Guide


Bahrain has awarded the multi-billion-dollar engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning (EPCC) contract for the Bapco Modernisation Programme (BMP) to a consortium led by TechnipFMC, the Kingdoms Oil Minister Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa has revealed.

The contract is believed to be worth $4.2-billion.

The project is located on Bahrains eastern coast and entails the expansion of the capacity of the existing Sitra oil refinery from 267,000 barrels per day (bpd) up to 360,000 bpd, improve energy efficiency, valorisation of the heavy part of the crude oil barrel (bottom of the barrel), enhancing products slate and meeting environmental compliance.

The project will be executed on lump sum turnkey basis and includes the following main units: residue hydrocracking unit, hydrocracker unit, hydro desulphurisation unit, crude distillation unit, vacuum distillation unit, saturated gas plant, hydrogen production unit, hydrogen recovery unit, sulphur recovery unit, tail gas treatment unit, sour water stripper unit, amine recovery unit, bulk acid gas removal unit, sulphur solidification unit and sulphur handling facilities. Utilities and offsites are also part of the scope.

The project will also include a delayed coker unit, said the minister in his welcome address at the Bottom of the Barrel Technology Conference (BBTC 2017) organised by Euro Petroleum Consultants.

The unit is intended to produce coke from heavy refining residues (tar, fuel oil), which is a raw material in electrodes production for the aluminium industry. The coke produced can be used by the nearby Aluminium Bahrain's (Alba) calcine unit. Alba will be able to use all the coke produced by the delayed coker, he said.

We also have new technologies coming from technology providers including converting LC-Fining technology to LC-MAX technology or Hybrid Slurry, Shaikh Mohammed said. LC-Fining efficiently hydrocracks residuum to high-quality fuel oils and transportation fuels.

LC-Fining is ebullating bed residue hydrocracking process, which provides high conversion of residues selectively to liquid products and high removal of metals, sulphur and CCR from difficult feedstocks. LC-Fining provides this superior performance with ease, safety and reliability at the best economics.

We also have the option of the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) and Resid FCC (RFCC) processes which have long been trusted workhorses in the refining industry, he said.

Bapco has to look at all these technologies to see which will deliver the optimum value, he said.

In view of the International Maritime Organisations decision to implement the 0.50 per cent sulphur limit in 2020, refineries are planning changes in their production profiles in response to the impact of regulation. Therefore, it is important to focus on capital investment and tailor one's products to meet the new environmental standards, the minister said.

Refineries sometimes go through severe cycles. There are times when the margins are good, but there are times when we have lost money refining. The last few years, despite the low oil prices, we enjoyed good margins, but it doesn't mean it will be the case all the time. We dont want to go back that era where we lost money refining. To avoid it we should focus on capital investment and technology, he said.

Talking about technology, catalysts have emerged as some sort of game-changer in the refining industry. The technology has come to the region and Bapco's new hydrocracking units will see more of its use, he said.

Meanwhile, TechnipFMC also said it won the contract along with Korea's Samsung Engineering and Spanish general contractor Tecnicas Reunidas.

The Bapco Modernisation Programme is slated for completion in 2022.

Nello Uccelletti, the president of TechnipFMCs Onshore Offshore business, said: "We are honoured to be the leader of this joint venture entrusted for the execution of this prestigious contract that represent a testimonial of the long-term partnership with Bapco and strengthen our leadership in the refining sector."

"This award is one of the strategic 'early engagement' achievement, following the successful completion by TechnipFMC of the Feed contract," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) has signed an agreement with MVM Hungarian Electricity Groups develop researches in the field of electric energy generation, traditional and renewable energy, training and developing projects.



The cooperation agreement was signed in Riyadh by Khalid bin Abdulrahman Al-Tuaimi, executive vice president for Power Generation at the Saudi Electricity Company, and from Hungarian side, by Dr Janos ZSUGA, chief executive officer of MVM Groups, in the presence of Lehil Sezarabca, CEO of MVM Groups for International Relations



The ceremony was also attended by Khalid Al-Rashid, executive president of Saudi Electricity Company for Project Development, a subsidiary of SEC.



Al-Tuaimi highlighted that the aim of the cooperation agreement is to set out a comprehensive framework of international cooperation for both the giant companies in relation to all technical, research, development, generation of traditional and renewable energy and training.



This will also include development of leadership skills, project development inside and outside Saudi Arabia and ways to take advantage of engineering services between the two companies, as well as experience exchange and application of the best technologies and international practices.



Al-Tuaimi also said that the cooperation agreement comes within the efforts and plans of the ambitious generation processes activity in application of the accelerated strategic transformation programme launched by the Saudi Electricity Company since the beginning of the year 2014.



Moreover, this agreement, and the other similar agreements, also boosts cooperation in technical and training fields between the Saudi Electricity Company and the leading international companies in line with orientation and aspiration of KSA vision of 2030 and to serve expectations and ambitions of this vital sector which will contribute at raising reliability of the electricity sector in the Kingdom.



SEC has signed many agreements and partnerships related to research and training with various international companies in the field of electric energy industry with the aim to transfer experience and modern technologies. The company also sends national cadres of engineers and technicians to many specialized companies and scientific institutes in the US, Europe and others.  TradeArabia News Service
Kenyas exports to the East African region dropped in the first eight months of this year, with the largest decline being registered exports to Tanzania.

New data shows that Tanzania cut imports from Kenya by more than $40.5 million to $134.2 million from $174.7 million, as a trade war simmered between the two countries.

Kenya has complained about products like cement, edible oils, textiles, lubricants and products manufactured by industries outside the Export Processing Zones that have been denied preferential market access to Tanzania, because of issues related to the rules of origin.

Nairobi has protested Tanzanias decision to impose a higher local content requirement of 75 per cent of total input in export tobacco, contrary to the EAC agreement.

Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics shows that exports to Uganda, which has been the largest market for Kenyas goods, declined marginally in the eight months to August to $323 million, from $327.9 million, whereas Rwanda imports from Kenya increased to $93.64 million from $92.96 million.

Pakistan overtook Uganda as the largest buyer of Kenyan goods, importing goods worth $394 million, as Kenyas High Commissioner to Pakistan, Julius Bitok, said there are huge business and trade opportunities that need to be explored between the two countries.

A Kenyan delegation has already attended four trade fairs in the Pakistani cities of Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore and Islamabad, organised by Kenyas High Commission in Pakistan in association with the Pakistani Business Association.

Decreased exports

The report by KNBS also shows that Kenyas exports to major destinations like the UK and Egypt decreased whereas those to the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Netherlands increased.

Kenyas main exports to these countries are raw tea, coffee, pyrethrum, horticultural products and fruits and flowers.

This comes even as the ratification of the Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU has stalled with countries like Tanzania saying the deal is skewed as it favours Europeans, threatening the local manufacturing base.

US market

Buoyed by the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), and driven by a rise in clothing and apparels exports, earnings by Kenya from the US grew to $313 million from $268.7 million.

The KNBS figures show that imports from China rose to $2.6 billion in the eight months to August, from $2.12 billion over the same period last year, making it the leading source of imports in the Asian region.

Analysts have attributed the trade down turn in East Africa to encroachment in key market segments by Chinese products, local factors like taxation, new competing industries in export markets and instability in South Sudan.

Even as Kenya relies on Africa to absorb more than 40 per cent of its manufactured exports, goods from China have flooded the regional market, making the Asian giant the biggest exporter to the region.

Kenya exports edible oil, fabric, food, animal products, tobacco and cement to the region, but the growing push by local firms to set up subsidiaries in East Africa has also seen a decline in the supply of these goods.
An intense four weeks of CFTA negotiations, including meetings of the Technical Working Groups, the Negotiating Forum, and the Senior Trade Officials, culminated in a pivotal meeting of the African Ministers of Trade (AMOT) on 1-2 December. Substantial progress was made, paving the way for legal scrubbing to begin on the CFTA text and an African Union Heads of State and Government Summit to adopt the CFTA Agreements in March.

The Agreements are essentially made up of three main parts (1) the Agreement Establishing the Continental Free Trade Area (2) the Protocol on Trade in Goods and (3) the Protocol on Trade in Services. It is envisaged that phase 2 of the CFTA will include further protocols on investment, competition policy and intellectual property rights.

All remaining brackets were removed on the Agreement Establishing the Continental Free Trade Area  this is the institutional framework with the objectives, principles and scope of the CFTA and horizontal issues such as the governance and institutional arrangements; details on entry into force, ratification, and amendment procedures; and a rendez-vous clause.

In particular, the AMOT agreed to an autonomous CFTA Secretariat headed by a Director-General / Secretary General. The AUC is to prepare technical note on this structure, detailing how it would work with the AU system and its budgetary and financing arrangements. The AMOT also agreed that an article on accession to the CFTA would be worked on and added to the Agreement.

The Protocol on Trade in Services was also agreed to and requires only legal scrubbing to ensure consistency with all parts of the Agreements. Services liberalization is to be targeted on nine priority sectors through a request and offer approach.

Several of the remaining sticking points on the Protocol on Trade in Goods were resolved. It was agreed that charges having an equivalent effect would be progressively eliminated on trade between African countries, pending a review of the implications for existing charges such as the ECOWAS community charge. Provisions were decided on for Special Economic Zones, Export Duties, Balance of Payments, and Infant Industries.

As anticipated, more work is needed principally on the rules of origin and application of the agreed modalities for the liberalization of trade in goods and in particular, how sensitive products and exclusions are to be treated.

During the next two months, work will continue on a small number of remaining issues in the annexes associated with the Protocol on Trade in Goods. These include finalizing guidelines on the treatment of infant industries and guidelines on trade remedies.

Legal scrubbing will begin in January for the Framework Agreement, the Protocol on Trade in Services and various sections of the Protocol on Trade in Goods. During this time work will proceed with the remaining issues in the Protocol on Trade in Goods with the aim of finalizing this by March, 2018.

The AMOT also received an update on the state-of-play in the Geneva discussions on MC11 from the AU Permanent Representative in Geneva and took note of the Geneva African Group paper on the issues.

This update has been supplied by David Luke, Coordinator of the African Trade Policy Centre, and Jamie Alexander Macleod, Trade Policy Fellow, at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
French line is one of the hardest 4wd tracks you can do- the wAA one is harder though. It traverses hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of sand dunes.

Im not sure of any hire companies who would let their vehicles go there.

http://www.traveller.com.au/dune-busters-crossing-the-simpson-desert-go0wjx

If I was you I would stick to the Stuart Highway and have your experiences around there. Places like Flinders Ranges, AarkaroolA are great, Coober Pedy maybe up the Oonadatta Track or just straight up the HIghway and do some side trips.

Sure the French line is interesting - but if you have no experience, its not a place to practice in . You will be able to get your desert fix other places.

The desert is also greener, due to lots of rain
Hello. We are a family of four landing in HCMC around Christmas time. We will make a trip to Cambodia and come back to Vietnam for a few more days, before we depart to US. The US travel website does not advocate VOA agencies and is recommending either evisa or traditional visas. I don't feel comfortable sending the passports by mail and also would prefer to avoid VOA. So I am thinking of getting two single entry e-

visas with the correct validity dates. Has this worked for anyone? Is there a possibility of visa getting rejected?
I am currently in Hai Phong. Was just walking around and looking at google maps, I wandered past this construction site and before I know it this dog bite me on the bottom of my calf. The wound isn't overly big, It didn't bleed but it's broken the skin and there's an obvious bite wound, looks like a small cut slightly deep and not painful.

I drove straight to the main hospital in Hai Phong. The triage nurse didn't seem interested and sent me to a vaccination clinic a few km away. I went there and she said they are closed and to go to a completely different clinic tomorrow. I went back to the hospital and explained via google translate and they said there is nothing they can do.. finally I bumped into a nurse or orderly in the emergency department and he said to come back at 8am tomorrow and someone will see me. At this stage I have little confidence in a smooth process here.

I am incredibly worried about contracting rabies and want to get any preventative injections asap. I can get to Hanoi tomorrow if need be as it's a few hours away, can someone please give me a some advice on what to do. Thank you
We are going on a 3 week trip to Vietnam/ Angkor Wat in February/March. I need to cut a day out of either the 3 nights we have in Siem Reap, Hoi An or Ninh Binh. In addition to Hoi An we have 2 nights at the intercontinental in DaNang for some beach time. In Ninh Binh I want to go to both Van Long Preserve and the Cuc Phuong Park. Any thoughts on which area to cut a day out of?

We will also be in Sapa, Hanoi and Halong Bay. Thanks for the input.
Re: Vietnam visa when return flight to US is out of Thailand

1. Re: Vietnam visa when return flight to US is out of Thailand

Your visa gives you 1 month to enter and leave the country. You can enter or leave the country anytime WITHIN the 1 month date and its not flexible

When you decide to move onto the next country, they just stamp your passport to show you have left the country.

On a 1 month visa they do not ask you for proof of onward travel arrangements (unlike the 15 day free visa Europeans can get).

Edited: 4 years ago
Hi All,

As a couple(no kids accompanying with us), we are planning to visit Vietnam from Singapore and the trip we are planning is for around 6-7 days.

My choice is Singapore to Hanoi and spend three days there and then travel to Ho Chi Min and spend three days there. and return to Singapore.

But not sure whether my choice is good or not. If not please let me know any other place to cover include or exclude in the itinerary.

Thanks in advace.
Uniqlo heattech is ok for everyday use, to school, to work and so on.

If I'm going to spend longer time outside, especially in Hokkaido, or in other cold places, I choose Montbell.
Agree with post #1. Besides, better spend more time in Kyoto if you're interested in history/culture, maybe drop Nagoya.

Koyasan is indeed easiest to be accessed from Osaka/Namba by Nankai rail. Consider its World Heritage ticket which saves.

http://www.nankaikoya.jp/en/stations/index.html

D19 - while it's doable, Sapporo is no different from other large modern cities in Japan, except that it'd be slightly cooler in August. I'd recommend the countryside of Hokkaido instead, but that'd take a few days.

August is usually the hottest month in Japan, especially in Honshu and Kyushu, with high humidity.

Beware of your travel if it might coincide with Obon festival when lots of locals travel.

https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2286.html
Hi all,

Just bought tickets and booked a hotel for a weekend in NYC in January (from Toronto so the weather doesn't worry me lol!). This is our second trip and we are flying from Buffalo to LaGuardia on Delta. Came into JFK last time and used the Airtrain and LIRR thanks to this forum. I've read the faq's and googled mapped LGA to our hotel area (we are staying at the Bernic). I put Grand Central as the destination but anywhere near the hotel is fine, we are ok with walking a bit to the hotel.

So looks like we start at LGA on the Q70 but looks like we can transfer from that to the 7, E or F. Can anyone advise the best route? Or does it not matter which we take? And I still have my metrocard from our trip a couple of years ago, can I reload it still? I originally thought the NYC Airporter bus would be the easiest option but that seems to get negative reviews? thx!
We're planning to spend a Sunday morning around Dumbo before walking back across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan.

Can anyone recommend anywhere nice around there for breakfast?

We were going to stop at Russ & Daughters and then jump on the subway across but it seems kind of pointless just to stop for food if we could go all the way to Brooklyn and then get something there.

Preferably something that opens early (at least 8am), we don't have a preference for style but nothing too fancy. I think the plan is to have a quick bite then keep moving.

Thanks!
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BURLEY  A crash on a cold November night 14 years ago changed a 3-year-olds world forever, but the kindness hospital staff offered afterward inspired him to find a way to encourage other children to be brave when faced with scary circumstances.

Burley High School student Paytan Fairchild, 17, developed comfort kits with a soft blanket, fuzzy teddy bear, bottle of water, ChapStick and a toothbrush and paste in a little bag to donate to Mini-Cassia hospitals, fire and police stations for children involved in car crashes or other traumatic events as part of his senior project on accident prevention.

A card attached to the bag explains why.

It was dark and snow lay on the ground Nov. 14, 2003, when Paytans father, Corey, his mother, Desiree, and his 8-month-old brother, Breyden, drove from Burley to their Rupert home in their soft-top Jeep Wrangler.

As Corey drove along a canal bank near Minidoka Memorial Hospital a tire came off the Jeep. The vehicle rolled three times into the canal landing on its top. Corey was killed, and Desiree thrown from the Jeep into the snow, a spinal injury paralyzing her.

I could hear the baby crying, Desiree said Wednesday, as Paytan delivered the first batch of a total of 160 kits to Cassia Regional Hospital.

The remaining kits will be delivered to Minidoka Memorial Hospital, Rupert Police Department and Burley Fire Department.

Sending her toddler off into the night by himself to find help was their only hope.

Desiree zipped up Paytans little coat and asked him to bring her the baby, which she cuddled on her chest.

At first Paytan, who was afraid of the dark, was reluctant to go.

There were no lights anywhere, it was pitch black, and when he stepped away from the headlights I couldnt see him anymore, Desiree said. I didnt have any idea which way to even tell him to go or if the road was to the left or the right of us.

Somehow he made his way up and out of the canal and traversed several hundred yards through snow to tap on Freddy and Stacie Cantus door.

Desiree met the Cantus for the first time on Wednesday when they arrived at the hospital to witness Paytans donation.

There was this light knock and we opened the door and saw this little guy standing there, Stacie Cantu said.

Freddy said Paytan just walked right in the house and said his mom needed help.

He just pointed to a dark field covered in snow, Freddy said.

Stacie said they couldnt see the Fairchilds vehicle upside down in the ditch.

Paytan refused to go back outside so he stayed with the Cantus children while the Cantus went to investigate.

When they found the Jeep, the battery was wearing down and they could barely see Desiree lying in the headlights. No one knows for sure how long shed been there or how long it took Paytan to find the house.

The baby was really cold, Freddy said.

Burley Firefighter and first responder Justin Jensen said it was one of those calls he cant forget.

He has been Paytans mentor for his senior project.

If he hadnt gone for help, it would have been a very different situation, Jensen said. They probably wouldnt have been found until morning.

Cantu said it was unbelievable that a child so young was able to do what he did.

He told us his father brought him to the house, Cantu said, prompting tears to cascade down Desirees cheeks as she listened.

Ive never heard their story, she said. Today has been so good for us. We are able to finally put the pieces together.

For Paytan, many of the memories of that night faded but he vividly recalls the hospital staff afterwards as they rallied around the family providing kindness and a Christmas that year.

Maria Hoggan, emergency room and EMS manager at CRH said providing a bit of comfort can really help a child cope with a trauma.

It especially helps when a child has been in an accident and their belongings were thrown out into the road. It is really nice for them to have a little blanket or something, Hoggan said.

Stephanie Curtis, spokeswoman at CRH, said the hospital gets many donations.

But this one is probably one of the most meaningful, she said.

For Paytan the project means more than just a grade.

I remember how I felt, he said. I knew I would be fine but I had help from a lot of people.

After graduation he plans to attend Brigham Young University  Idaho and become a physical therapist.

I tell him all the time that hes my hero, Desiree said. He saved both of us.
- Kenya's top KCPE girl Goldlyn Kakuya has received her letter of admission to Form One

- The girl who lives with albinism will join the prestigious Kenya High after scoring 455 marks in the 2017 standard eight final examination

- This was made clear during the launch of the Form One selection by Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i

Top KCPE 2017 student Goldalyn Kakuya has been handed her first letter of admission to Secondary school from one of the most prestigious Secondary schools in the coun try.

TUKO.co.ke has learnt that Kakuya, who is living with albinism, has been courted by Kenya High school.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

READ ALSO: Bintiye Raila Odinga awakabili polisi waliotaka kumkamata mkewe David Ndii

The letter of offer from Kenya High school was made public on Monday, December 4 during the launch of Form one selection by Education CS Fred Matiangi.

Top KCPE girl Goldlyn Kakuya admitted to Kenya High. Photo: Isaac Mwaura/Facebook

READ ALSO: Senator Isaac Mwaura's wife dresses family of the top KCPE candidate and the transformation is unbelievable

Speaking during the launch on Monday, Matiangi also revealed that sub county schools would be much busier in Form one admission this year.

63% of our children will be placed in county and sub county schools and consequently we will increase infrastructure funding to these schools, The CS said.

Goldalyn Kakuya emerged top in KCSE 2017.- Photo: Courtesy

READ ALSO: Remove Goldalyn Kakuya from media limelight-Kenyans now advise parents to top KCPE girl

Kakuya will join about 1 million other candidates who look set to join High school in 2018.

Both Public and Private secondary schools have made adjustments in preparation to accommodate all candidates who sat the exams.

Goldalyn Kakuya beat the odds to score a record 455 out of a possible 500 to become the best student in the country.

Her achievement was met with massive recognition countrywide, with the 15-year old getting the chance to meet the President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Uhuru Kenyatta met top KCSE performer Goldalyn Kakuya. Photo: Uhur Kenyatta/Facebook

READ ALSO: Top KCPE girl Goldlyn Kakuya meets Kenya's judge living with albinism

Nominated Senator Isaac Mwaura who is the National Coordinator of the Albinism Society of Kenya had earlier said the girl had been granted full scholarship at the Safaricom's M-PESA Foundation Academy

Students fitting Kakuyas academic caliber will join National schools from as early as January 8 2018.

Have anything to add to this article or suggestions? Share with us on news@tuko.co.ke

NASA coalition breaths new life into the people's Assembly forums:

Source: TUKO.co.ke
- Amani National Congress has sent a stern warning to nominated MP Godfrey Osotsi

- ANC accused the MP of creating tensions in the party by his controversial remarks

- The ANC leaders vowed to take action against the nominated MP

Musalia Mudavadi's led party ,Amani National Congress has sent a stern warning to nominated Member of Parliament,Godfrey Osotsi.

The party,through its Secretary General Barrack Muluka and Nambale MP John Bunyasi threatened to take action against MP Godfrey Osotsi over his recent controversial remarks.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

READ ALSO: Wakenya washambulia kampuni ya maziwa ya Kenyatta - Brookside Dairy

As reported by a cross section of the Kenyan media earlier,Godfrey Osotsi had claimed to be ANC's Secretary General,contrary to the truth on the ground.

Mudavadi's party warn MP over creating divisions in the party. Photo: Nation

READ ALSO: Sonko blames Uhuru's campaign for not fulfilling his pledges to Nairobians in 100 days

According to ANC's leadership,Godfrey's remarks meant no good since they only painted the party and its leadership in bad light.Both Muluka and Bunyasi held that Osotsi was wrong on all levels and had completely gone against the party's regulations.

Godfrey Osotsi made the remarks on Sunday,December 3 2017,while speaking to journalists in Busia County.

READ ALSO: Wiper leader sharply disagrees with NASA on Raila's planned swearing-in

Mudavadi's party warn MP Godfrey Osotsi over creating divisions in the party. Photo: Citizen TV

READ ALSO: We will not be intimidated by the arrest of David Ndii - Raila

Well,his remarks,rather declaration rubbed ANC's leadership the wrong way.

''Mr Osotsi should stick to being a nominated MP.He cannot be a nominated MP and be the ANC Secretary General at the same time.''Muluka said.

NASA coalition breaths new life into the people's Assembly forums - on TUKO TV

Source: TUKO.co.ke
TWIN FALLS  Its been five years since the city last declared what it wanted to achieve by 2030, and its time for an update.

The City Council on Monday will have a roundtable discussion on what its priorities are for an updated strategic plan.

It governs every single action we take, City Manager Travis Rothweiler said.

The city has used the plan in its budgeting process and in prioritizing items for the next five and 10 years. For example, one goal it made five years ago was to reinvest and reinvigorate downtown. The reconstruction of Main Avenue and the new City Hall are a result of that commitment.

The plan will also help the city look forward with regard to the need for pedestrian and bicycle access and open space. The main eight focus areas will not change, but the goals and objectives beneath them will be reviewed every five years, Rothweiler said.

The Council meets at 3 p.m. Monday at Council Chambers, 305 Third Ave. E. The mayor will decide whether to seek public input at the meeting. Phil Kushlan with Kushlan Associates will lead the discussion and present the city staffs requests  as well as the results of more than 200 conversations with citizens.

The collaborated strategic plan updates will come up at a future City Council meeting with opportunity for public input.

This is not the final step, Rothweiler said.
One Ukrainian soldier was killed, another three soldiers were wounded, and one more was injured in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) area in eastern Ukraine over the past day.

Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesperson for ATO Oleksandr Motuzianyk said this at a press briefing on Monday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"One Ukrainian serviceman was killed in the enemy shelling of our positions near Shyrokyne [20km east of Mariupol] as a result of explosion of mortar ammunition. One more soldier was wounded. Another two soldiers were wounded in the enemy shelling of Troitske [69km west of Luhansk]. One soldier was injured in grenade launcher shelling near Vodiane [16km north-west of Donetsk]. The servicemen were taken to medical institutions where they are provided with the necessary medical assistance," Motuzianyk said.

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The tourism potential of Ukraine will be represented at the international fair Travel TURKEY Izmir 2017 in Turkey, according to Ivan Liptuha, an advisor to the first vice prime minister - minister of economic development and trade of Ukraine.

We continue the series of presentations about Ukraine's tourism opportunities in the world! Ukraine will be represented in the two cities of Turkey - Istanbul and Izmir at the tourism fair Travel TURKEY Izmir 2017," he said.

According to Liptuha, 250,000 tourists from Turkey visited Ukraine in 2017, and the number of Ukrainians visited Turkey total over a million.

He noted that the absence of administrative barriers between Ukraine and Turkey creates favorable conditions for the development of tourism industry.

The tourism fair Travel TURKEY Izmir 2017 will take place on December 7-10, 2017.

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The absence of a regulated and transparent land market does not allow Ukraine to develop properly and prevents investment in the country.

IMF Resident Representative for Ukraine Goesta Ljungman said this at the conference devoted to land reform in Ukraine, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The absence of a land market does not promote economic development, does not allow investment to enter the country," Ljungman said.

The Resident Representative noted that the IMF support program aimed to assist Ukraine in conducting reforms and achieving structural changes in the economy.

The moratorium on the sale of agricultural land operates in Ukraine until the law on land circulation is adopted. The abolition of the moratorium is one of the requirements of the International Monetary Fund for Ukraine.

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The Infrastructure Ministry of Ukraine will next year receive additional UAH 400 million from the European Union to improve safety on Ukrainian roads. Taking into account the funds received from the launch of the Road Fund, a total of UAH 1.9 billion will be allocated for security measures.

Infrastructure Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Omelian said this at the briefing, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We plan to spend a new tranche of UAH 400 million, received by the Ministry, on qualitatively new measures, namely road safety, in 2018. The European Union will provide these funds to reduce the traffic-related death rate," the minister said.

Thus, according to the official, a total of UAH 1.9 billion will be allocated for road safety in Ukraine next year.

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Canada will focus on Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea at a meeting of the foreign ministers of the OSCE member states, according to the Canadian Foreign Ministry, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Minister [Chrystia Freeland] will be in Vienna, Austria, from December 7 to 8, to attend the 24th Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The Minister, participating in her first Ministerial Council, will advance Canada's priorities in international security and human rights, focusing attention on Ukraine and Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea," the ministry reported.

Freeland said that she would defend in Vienna "a rules-based international order."

"In a world where our values and interests are increasingly challenged, Canada's partnership with its European allies is more essential than ever. I look forward to reaffirming Canada's continued commitment to a rules-based international order, democratic freedoms, and transatlantic cooperation and security," she said.

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U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman believes that improvement of Russian-American relations is possible in case of progress in settlement of the situation in Ukraine.

"The situation in Ukraine presents certain difficulties, especially because we do not see any noticeable progress here. However, Ukraine is, perhaps, the only crucial topic that could breathe new life into the bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington. The United States believes so at least," Jon Huntsman said, Ukrainian 24 TV channel reports.

According to the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, the situation of Ukraine is constantly covered by the American media outlets, and it is the key to lifting of sanctions, at least partially.

"Ukraine is crucial for restoration of our relations with Moscow," the U.S. Ambassador said.

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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said that there is an agreement on a meeting with Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto.

He stated this in Uzhgorod on December 1, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We have a preliminary agreement on a meeting with colleague Szijjarto. It will take place a few days before or a few days after the Venice Commission's opinion [on the language article of the law on education]," Klimkin said.

However, responding to journalists' questions, he said that the so-called Hungarian issue was artificially politicized and that the road to its solution lied in an open dialogue with the community. "The introduction of the law on education is our, Ukrainian affair, we care about the Hungarian community in Ukraine, as we have to give the Ukrainian Hungarians a chance for the future, including through the possession of the state language," Klimkin said.

As Ukrinform reported, Klimkin met with representatives of the Hungarian community in places of compact residence of ethnic Hungarians in the town of Berehove during his working visit to Zakarpattia region. He also spoke with students of two colleges, teachers and representatives of the Hungarian community, discussed the education law with representatives of the Hungarian minorities and inspected the state border with Hungary.

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Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman has offered signing of a Memorandum that will become an action plan for further implementation of decentralization reform launched in 2014.

He stated this during the II All-Ukrainian Forum of United Communities "Life-Changing Initiatives," an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Now we should sign the Memorandum with all participants (in decentralization reforms), representatives of local government. We should develop a clear action plan," Groysman said.

He stressed that the first stage of the reform had already took place. Local government bodies now have needed powers and financial resources.

Groysman thanked the president, MPs, international partners for their support in carrying out this reform and added that further actions include the formation of a regulatory framework for the administrative and territorial system, the creation of a system of self-government based on the basis of united communities.

Our ultimate goal is a widespread local self-government with self-sufficient and strong communities. We should draw up a stable strategy for our state development, based on a strong local self-government that is focused on citizens and their needs, the prime minister stressed.

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Ukraine and other countries should move to a wider format of negotiations to settle the conflict in Donbas, particularly, to Geneva format (Ukraine, Russia, European Union, United States).

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said this in an interview with Polska The Times media outlet, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We propose moving to a wider format, for example the Geneva format, which would also include the United States. However, the Americans are not interested in it. Meanwhile, Germany and France assure Kyiv that the Minsk format will bring results," Waszczykowski said.

As the Polish Foreign Minister stated, the open war stopped in Donbas after the Minsk agreements had been signed, but the casualties occur daily.

"It is difficult to reach peaceful agreements in this way. The Geneva format would give a chance for this," Waszczykowski noted.

In his opinion, Ukrainians "made a mistake" when they relied exclusively on the Normandy format, i.e. focused on cooperation with Germany and France.

Waszczykowski added that the previous Polish governments had made a number of mistakes, in particular, having refused to participate in the negotiations in Minsk. Waszczykowski stressed that President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei had invited Polish politicians to take part in Donbas peace talks in Minsk.

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The OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine and the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine have consolidated and coordinated efforts to advance reforms in key areas.

As an Ukrinform correspondent reports, the corresponding letter on cooperation has been signed on December 4 by OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine Vaidotas Verba and Chairman of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine Marten Ehnberg.

"At the moment, the OSCE implements about 40 different projects in Ukraine a year, starting from constitutional and judicial reform and ending with assistance in mine clearance in eastern Ukraine. This format of cooperation will enable us, together with the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine, to plan, implement, monitor, and offer some initiatives in Ukraine," Verba told a briefing.

He noted that cooperation of the OSCE and the Council of Europe in providing assistance for Ukraine has been lasting for more than 10 years, but from now on the organizations will carry out a constant exchange of information on their current projects and hold joint events.

According to Marten Ehnberg, today there is a significant potential for expanding the cooperation of these organizations as the mandates of the Council of Europe and the OSCE largely coincide.

"Our organizations have already reached a certain level of cooperation in Ukraine. Synergy will help obtain better results," he stressed.

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Seniors wellness

The Twin Falls Senior Center will host three presentations this week for senior citizens. All the programs will begin at 12:15 p.m. at the senior center, 530 Shoshone St. W., Twin Falls.

On Monday, University of Idaho Extension Service staff will discuss healthy snacks.

An Idaho Home Health and Hospice representative will speak Wednesday on beating the winter blues and depression.

On Friday, Heritage Health Services staff will discuss winter fall-risk preparation.

Free; 208-734-5084.

Hepatitis C support

Hepatitis C Support Group, 6 p.m. Monday at Magic Valley Fellowship Hall, 801 Second Ave. N., Twin Falls.

The meeting offers support for those who have been diagnosed with the Hepatitis C virus. A medical professional will speak about HCV and options for treatment.

Information: Cathy Shaddy, 208-410-2768.

Bariatric support

Magic Valley Bariatric Support Group, 7 p.m. Monday in Oak Room 1 on the lower level of St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls.

The meetings are facilitated by licensed bariatric health-care professionals.

Registration isnt required. Information: 208-381-3641.

Recovery support

Recovery For Life groups meet at 7 p.m. Monday at Twin Falls Reformed Church, 1631 Grandview Drive N. A free meal begins at 6 p.m.

Groups and classes include Cancer Support, Hope 12-Step, Parenting Skills, Codependency, GriefShare, Cooking Matters, Womens Word for Life Bible Study, and Special Parents Special Kids. Veterans Christian Fellowship also meets on Mondays.

Free child care and transportation. Information: 208-733-6128.

Parenting, coping support

Voices Against Violence is offering support groups at 212 Second Ave. W., No. 200, Twin Falls.

Parenting Group, 6 to 7:30 p.m. Mondays, to help improve parenting skills as well as learn rewards and consequences.

Mas alla de mi, Empoderando a las Mujeres domestic violence group in Spanish, 6 to 7:30 p.m. Mondays, for those who have been involved in an abusive or traumatic relationship, and also helps women develop a support system.

The Power to Change Group, 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesdays, provides information and support to women 18 and older, who have experienced difficulties in coping with past experiences.

Domestic Violence Support Group, 6 to 8 p.m. Thursdays, provides information and community to individuals 18 and older, who have experienced domestic abuse or gender violence.

Information: 208-733-2558.

Victims support

Support group for victims of domestic violence, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. every Tuesday at the Mini-Cassia Shelter Haven of Hope, 323 First St., Rupert.

Information: Rachel, 208-312-7021.

Brain injury support

Traumatic Brain Injury Group meeting, 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday in the College of Southern Idahos Taylor Building, room 276.

The group is hosted by Michael Howell, with an objective to provide informational sessions, speakers and other local resources to those suffering from traumatic brain injury. Howell experienced this type of injury after being in an ATV accident that led to brain injuries.

Individuals of all injury levels are welcome to attend. The group meets on the first Tuesday of each month.

Information: Amy Barker, CSI office specialist, 208-732-6800.

Grief support

Visions of Hope Support Group program, Navigating Your Grief During the Holidays, 5 p.m. Thursday at Hospice Visions, 1770 Park View Drive, Twin Falls.

This grief support group is open to everyone in the community. Information: 208-735-0121.

Mental health support

Mental Health Support Group will meet at 5:30 p.m. Thursdays at 826 Eastland Drive in Twin Falls.

The free support group is open to Magic Valley residents. Information: 208-539-7492.

Grief support

Griefshare meeting, 6:30 p.m. Thursdays at Lighthouse Church, 960 Eastland Drive, Twin Falls.

Anyone who has lost a loved one or friend is welcome to attend. A separate class for pre-teen and teens will meet at the same time. Participants can attend any session. Enter through the east doors at the rear of the building.

Information: 208-737-4667.

Rides for treatment

The American Cancer Societys Road to Recovery program provides free transportation to and from treatments for people with cancer who do not have a ride or are unable to drive. Several volunteer drivers in the Mini-Cassia area donate their time and the use of their car so patients can go to their treatments.

To schedule a ride to treatments, call the American Cancer Society at 1-800-227-2345 to be matched with a volunteer driver.

CPR, first aid

St. Lukes Magic Valley Education Department is offering a Heartsaver CPR, First Aid and AED class, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Learning Center, 840 Meadows Suite 2, Twin Falls.

The course provides training for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and first aid and using an automated external defibrillator.

Cost is $60 and pre-registration is required: 208-814-9050.

Breastfeeding

Free Breastfeeding 101 class, 7 p.m. Dec. 11 in Oak Room 4 on the lower level of St. Lukes Magic Valley, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls.

The class is for new mothers and breastfeeding mothers wanting to review their skills. Babies and your support person are welcome.

Free; pre-registration is required, 208-814-0402.

Childbirth

St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Centers prepared childbirth classes, 6:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays, Dec. 12 through Jan 9, in Oak Rooms 2-4 on the lower level of St. Lukes, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls.

Topics: Wellness during pregnancy; labor and delivery process with relaxation and breathing techniques; caesarean birth; postpartum care for mother and newborn; infant CPR; car seat and home safety; and a tour of the maternal and child units. Bring a labor-support person if possible.

Cost is $25 for a five-week session. Pre-registration is required: 208-814-0402.

CPR, infant safety

Infant safety and cardiopulmonary resuscitation class, 6:30 to 9 p.m. Dec. 13 in Oak Rooms 2-4 on the lower level of St. Lukes Magic Valley, 801 Pole Line Road W., Twin Falls.

New parents, grandparents and caregivers learn CPR and what to do if an infant chokes. The class isnt a certification course.

Free; no registration required. 208-814-0402.

CPR

St. Lukes Magic Valley Education Department is offering a Heartsaver CPR and AED class, 6 to 10 p.m. Dec. 14 at the Learning Center, 840 Meadows Suite 2, Twin Falls.

The course provides training for cardiopulmonary resuscitation and using an automated external defibrillator.

Cost is $50. Pre-registration is required: 208-814-9050.
Three Russian citizens applied to the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service for the status of refugees last week, the service's press office reported on December 2.

"Last week alone, at the state border, three Russian citizens, aged 45, 38 and 27, who are persecuted in the Russian Federation, applied to employees of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine for refugee status," the statement reads.

It notes that one of them arrived at the Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky checkpoint early on December 2 and, at the time of registration, verbally asked to be declared a refugee or a person in need of additional protection. According to the Russian, he participated in rallies against corruption and in support of the Russian opposition, in particular, Alexei Navvalny, and therefore he is subject to persecution in Russia.

Another Russian citizen, also at this checkpoint, asked for refugee status last Wednesday. The Russian said that he was forced to flee and seek asylum in Ukraine in connection with his persecution by Russian law enforcement agencies for taking part in rallies against the Russian authorities.

One more Russian citizen asked for protection in connection with his persecution by Russia at a checkpoint in Chernihiv region last Tuesday.

Employees of the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service explained to Russian citizens the procedure for applying for protection in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine and sent them to the State Migration Service of Ukraine.

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NATO recognizes and respects the intentions and the right of Ukraine to hold a referendum on joining the North Atlantic Alliance.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this in Brussels on Monday, an Ukrinform correspondent in Brussels reports.

"It is for Ukraine to decide whether they would like to become an aspirant country or apply for membership in NATO. That's, of course, for Ukraine to decide whether they do that during a referendum or in another way. That's a national Ukrainian decision," he said.

He recalled that the issue of NATO enlargement depends not only on countries seeking to join the organization, but also on all 29 allies.

"I welcome the fact that Ukraine is focused on reform, because regardless of the question of membership, reform of the Ukrainian defense and security institutions, modernizing the Armed Forces, practical cooperation with NATO and NATO allies is important to strengthen Ukraine and make Ukraine more resilient. It will be something which is important regardless of the question of membership, and NATO will continue to provide support for this kind of reforms," Stoltenberg said.

As Ukrinform reported, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced an initiative to hold nationwide referendums in Ukraine on the state's accession to NATO and the European Union.

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Kyiv hopes for the release of 74 hostages from the occupied Donbas before the New Year, a representative of the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk, Iryna Gerashchenko, has said, according to Espreso.TV.

According to Gerashchenko, if this happens, it will be the most extensive prisoner swap over the past period.

"If nothing is disrupted, we will release our 74 heroes. If all this works out, this will be the biggest release. We have to free and transfer 306 people as part of the agreements that are being discussed," Gerashchenko said.

She specified that details of the exchange, including names and dates, would remain unclassified so that the exchange could take place.

Gerashchenko also said that, along with organizing the exchange of hostages from the occupied Donbas, she was working on the release of political prisoners held in Russia.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the issue of hostages with the leaders of the "DPR/LPR" militants.

"DPR/LPR" agreed to review the lists of prisoners for exchange after talks with Putin.

The head of the "DPR" terrorist organization, Alexander Zakharchenko, reported the readiness for the exchange of prisoners, which should take place before the New Year.

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Over 400 civilians were killed and injured as a result of hostilities in eastern Ukraine in 2017.

Principal Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (OSCE SMM) Alexander Hug said this at a briefing on Monday, the press service of the organization reported on Twitter.

"Over 300,000 ceasefire violations recorded in east Ukraine this year, and over 400 civilians killed or injured," he said.

Hug recalled that OSCE member Joseph Stone had also been killed in Donbas.

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Washington, DC (UroToday.com) Dr. Woldu and colleagues presented their results of a study assessing the impact of hospital case volume on testicular cancer outcomes. For other complex procedures, for example abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, Whipple procedure and radical cystectomy, there has been a call for centralization of these procedures to tertiary centers of excellence. Given the rarity of testicular germ cell tumors (TGCTs) and the complex aspects of management, the objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of hospital TGCT case volume on overall survival (OS) outcomes and practice patterns.The authors used the National Cancer Database (NCDB) to query for patients diagnosed with seminoma or non-seminomatous germ cell tumor (NSGCT). Hospitals were classified by case volume as high (99th percentile, > 26.1 cases annually, high-intermediate (95-99th percentile,14.6-26.0 cases annually), intermediate (75-95th percentile, 6.1-14.5 cases annually), low-intermediate (25th-75th percentile, 1.8-6.0 cases annually), and low (25th percentile, <1.8 cases annually). The median (IQR) number of TGCT cases per institution per year was 3.4 (1.8-6.1).There were 33,417 patients with TGCT diagnosed from 1,239 institutions that met inclusion criteria. Low, low-intermediate, intermediate, high-intermediate, and high-volume hospitals accounted for 5.0%, 36.8%, 35.6%, 15.9%, and 6.8% of the cases, respectively. As such, the highest volume hospitals took care of a disproportionate number of patients with the top 5% of hospitals by case volume caring for 22.7% of all patients. Despite worse disease characteristics of patients treated at higher volume institutions, hospital volume was positively associated with survival outcomes in more advanced cases of TGCT. In the overall cohort, compared to the high-volume hospitals, patients treated at high-intermediate, intermediate, low-intermediate, and low volume hospitals the hazard ratio for overall mortality was 1.28, 1.45, 1.48, and 1.83, respectively (p<0.05). A statistically significant association between survival and hospital volume was not apparent for seminoma or stage I NSGCT. Patients treated at higher volume hospitals were more likely to undergo surveillance for stage I seminoma, primary retroperitoneal lymph node dissection (RPLND) for stage I NSGCT, and post-chemotherapy RPLND for stage II/III NSGCT.Dr. Woldu concluded that based on this analysis of a nationwide cancer registry, increased hospital TGCT case volume was associated with significant differences in management strategies and improved survival outcomes, in particular for more advanced disease. Particularly for patients with >stage 1 NSGCT, they should be referred to tertiary centers of excellence in order to receive appropriate treatment and ongoing post-treatment surveillance.Presented by: Solomon L. Woldu, MDCo-Authors: Justin Matulay MD, Nirmish Singla MD, Timothy Clinton MD, Laura-Maria Krabbe MD, Ryan Hutchinson MD, Yuval Freifeld MD, Arthur Sagalowsky MD, Yair Lotan MD, Vitaly Margulis MD and Aditya Bagrodia MDAffiliation: UT Southwestern Medical Center ; Columbia University Medical Center NY, NYWritten by: Zachary Klaassen, MD, Society of Urologic Oncology Fellow, University of Toronto, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre @zklaassen_md at the 18th Annual Meeting of the Society of Urologic Oncology, November 20-December 1, 2017  Washington, DC
Chinese companies last week pledged some $7 billion in new investment in Cambodia following a meeting with Chinese leaders and Prime Minister Hun Sen in Beijing.

Hun Sen was visiting China alongside more than 100 world leaders for high-level political talks.

Executives of the Greenland Holding Group and Henan Transport Investment Group reportedly told Hun Sen the new projects would include an expressway from the capital, Phnom Penh, to the coastal port city of Sihanoukville. Also on the table is the construction of another satellite city near Phnom Penh, the construction of a tourism center, and the launch of a new commercial bank.

A statement released by the government said Hun Sen welcomed the decision, which would be followed by a series of formal agreements to pave the way for the investments when Chinas prime minister, Li Keqiung, visits Cambodia in January.

It added that Hun Sen expected the investment would create an additional 20,000 jobs for Cambodians.

China has backed a crackdown on Hun Sens political opponents, independent media outlets and civil society in recent weeks that has seen the countrys main opposition party banned amid a growing paranoia that foreign interests have plotted to overthrow him.

Cambodia relies heavily on China as a source of aid and loans, as well as private investment. In 2016, Chinese firms spent about a third of all capital invested in Cambodia.

Political analyst Lao Monghay called the investment pledge good news but warned that the Kingdom would need to ensure it did not rely too heavily on China.

What Im worried about is that, if we rely on one superpower when it comes to our source of investment, the country would likely come under [a form of] colonialism in the future, he said.

Seang Thay, commerce ministry spokesman, said Cambodia did not discriminate when it came to sources of funding for development.

We cannot say which country should come or with how much investment. We welcome everyone and we have no discrimination when it comes to trade, the economy, and investment, he said.
President Trump's opioid commission is calling for more federal funding to battle addiction and deadly opioid drug-related overdoses in the United States. More than 175 Americans are dying every day and the Trump administration has declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. VOA's Chris Simkins takes us to a hard hit Philadelphia neighborhood where the opioid epidemic is on open display.
U.S. President Donald Trump has not yet decided whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and whether to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as promised during his campaign. The president's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner said Sunday that the president is still considering various facts. Trump has until Monday to make a decision. VOA's Zlatica Hoke has more.
Governments must do far more to include the needs of young people in the global fight against HIV and AIDS, according to a new report. Despite progress in tackling the disease, it is estimated that 1,700 new HIV infections occur every day among young people around the world, and the problem is particularly acute in Africa.

It is time policymakers recognized that HIV-positive adolescents face unique challenges, says the report from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, alongside the charity Sentebale.

Among the recommendations are that young people receive adequate psychosocial support; a human rights-based approach to testing and care, and finding ways to sensitively discuss sex and relationships for adolescents living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Professor Rashida Ferrand, who co-authored the research, says too many barriers are in place.

We really need to be thinking about all the barriers at every step in that broad environment, both at facility level in clinics et cetera, but also recognizing the fact that most of the time young people do not spend in facilities. So, we have to think of modifying the environments and the barriers that those environments place, Ferrand said.

Campaigners say many adolescents in Africa are unaware of their HIV status and are afraid to get tested.

Every single day I face stigma

Twenty-three-year-old Masedi Kewamodimo was born with HIV. Both her parents died from AIDS. Growing up in her native Botswana, Masedi grew frustrated with the barriers she faced and decided to reveal her HIV status in order to campaign for better treatment.

It is one of the most difficult things I have faced in my whole life. Every single day I face stigma. People talk about it because one they fear it; two, they assume certain people within our society have it; and three, they feel like they cannot welcome people who are living with HIV and AIDS, Kewamodimo told VOA.



The charity Sentebale, which helped put together the policy recommendations, was co-founded by Prince Harry, who is newly engaged to American actress Meghan Markle. She has also campaigned on health issues in Africa.

Earlier this year, the prince chaired a meeting in London on adolescents with HIV, titled "Let Youth Lead," and called for a change in global education on the disease.

Young people, the first time they know of the first time they hear anything about HIV and AIDS is probably by the time it is too late. Whether it is in the education system here in the UK, whether it is across Africa, whether it is across the world, HIV needs to be treated exactly the same as any other disease, Prince Harry said.

Campaigners hope the royal couples star power will help them spread the vital message that young peoples needs and fears must be addressed in the global drive to tackle HIV and AIDS.
Britain and the European Union failed Monday to reach a Brexit divorce deal, but their leaders remained optimistic that they would reach an accord within days.

British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker met in Brussels, trying to set terms for Britain's exit from the EU on March 29, 2019.

They had previously agreed that Britain would pay somewhere between $51 billion and $63 billion to leave the 28-nation pact. But they have yet to agree on other complex issues, including whether British-governed Northern Ireland would continue to have single market rules within the EU, under what terms could people cross the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland and what the rights would three million Europeans living in Britain have.

"Despite our best efforts and the significant progress we and our teams have made in the past days on the remaining withdrawal issues, it was not possible to reach a complete agreement today," Juncker said at a news conference with May.

"This is not a failure...," he said. "I am very confident that we will reach an agreement in the course of this week."

May said differences remained on a "couple of issues. But we will reconvene before the end of the week, and I am also confident we will conclude this positively."

The Irish broadcaster RTE said Britain was prepared to let Northern Ireland keep EU customs provisions and single market rules with the EU, to meet Ireland's demand that Britain's departure from the EU would not result in a "hard border" with Northern Ireland.

But Northern Irish unionists objected, with party leader Arlene Foster saying, We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Conversely, if Northern Ireland is granted special treatment, the leaders of Scotland, Wales and the mayor of London said they also wanted a similar deal with the EU.
3 Anti-government protesters gather around barricades in protest during a government imposed dawn-to-dusk curfew in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Dec. 3, 2017. Opposition leaders called for a mass march against the purported election fraud on Sunday and for the presidential election to be held again after the country erupted in deadly protests over the delayed vote count.
Faced with a growing threat from terrorists, Egypt needs a better approach to combat the issue, some leading Washington-based anti-terrorism experts told VOA.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi last week ordered his security forces to use "all brute force" to restore "security and stability" in the troubled Sinai Peninsula in three months.

The order came after a deadly terrorist attack on a crowded Sufi mosque last month that left more than 300 worshippers dead in the northern Sinai village of al-Rawdah  the deadliest assault by Islamic extremists in Egypt's modern history. Among the 305 dead were 27 children; another 128 people were wounded.

El-Sissi's government has been engaged in a bloody war against an increasingly violent insurgency in northern Sinai, where several militant groups, including Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, have been active for the last few years. The militant groups regularly target police, security forces and the minority Coptic community in the region.

The militant campaign in the peninsula accelerated after the Egyptian military overthrew elected Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. Since then, nearly 1,000 security personnel have been killed in more than 1,700 terror attacks across the peninsula, according to the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

Analysts say the attack on the Sufi mosque indicates that the government's current approach to eradicating terrorism is not successful and the country needs a comprehensive strategy rather than setting a time limit for defeating the growing militancy.

"It is almost exactly the opposite of what you want to do; in an insurgency, setting a time limit might play well politically back in the home office, but it almost never works. It usually emboldens the rebels," David Des Roches, an associate professor at the National Defense University in Washington, told VOA. "What it basically says to the insurgents is all you have to do is lay low for three months, then you can come back with strong force."

Des Roches added that giving a deadline to security forces, and allowing them to use brute force, tends to push aside the judgment and discretion needed to tackle insurgents, as well as alienating local populations, which could intensify the insurgency.

Excessive force

Local Bedouin in Sinai have accused government forces of indiscriminately bombing their villages as militants frequently hide among the local population.

Des Roches said poorly designed campaigns hurt civilians "that may be passively supporting the insurgency or may be neutral" and these people "tend to be pushed over into the insurgents' side."

Michael O'Hanlon, a defense and foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, echoed Des Roches's views and said setting a deadline could be counterproductive in the fight against insurgents.

"You give young men weapons and give them a sense that they are being asked to use all means necessary to brutally root out a problem and they will sometimes overdo it," O'Hanlon told VOA, adding that the excessive and indiscriminate use of force in population areas where insurgents might be residing could create more problems for the government instead of eradicating militancy.

As part of the government's counterinsurgency measures, hundreds of houses in the Rafah region, which borders the Gaza strip and Israel, have been razed by the Egyptian military, displacing more than 10,000 people, according to media reports.

"What you have to do is to be patient in developing intelligence, and you have to build networks of informants; you have to build trust with the local population to provide you information," O'Hanlon added. "The application of force is the easier part; the harder part is developing intelligence and the better your intelligence, the less you will do in the way of collateral damage."

Concerns of locals

Analysts believe that besides the military measures, combating the insurgency requires addressing the economic, religious or political concerns of local people.

"To create, first of all, a sense of fair political participation, representation, have some of their own people in the government listen to those people," O'Hanlon said. "Same thing for the security forces; they have to be balanced, include some of the people from whatever region that is an issue, then it has to be some sense of economic hope and a sense of a future worth working for."

Analysts say the conflict is causing worsening conditions for civilians in the region, which already is one of the most underdeveloped in Egypt and has largely been neglected by the central government in Cairo.

Jobs and economic opportunities are scarce and the government's counterinsurgency measures have effectively cut off communication, imposed long curfews, and blocked chat and internet calling applications in the region. An entry to the major city of Arish, for instance, requires proof of residency there.
Former Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Shafik, who returned home from the United Arab Emirates after announcing his bid for Egypt's presidency, appeared in Cairo on Sunday to say he was still considering his run in next year's election.

Shafik's comments on a private Cairo television station came a day after his family said he had been taken from their home in the Emirates and deported back to Egypt, where they said they had lost contact with him until late on Sunday.

Shafik, a former air force chief and government minister, has been seen by critics of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi as the strongest potential challenger to the president, who is expected to run for a second term next year.

Details about what happened to Shafik between his leaving the UAE on Saturday and his declaration on Sunday were unclear.

He made a surprise announcement from the UAE last week that he planned to run in the 2018 election.

"Today, I am here in the country, so I think I am free to deliberate further on the issue, to explore and go down and talk to people in the street," he said on Sunday. "There's a chance now to investigate more and see exactly what is needed ... to feel out if this is the logical choice."

The interview on Dream TV was Shafik's first public appearance since leaving the UAE on Saturday. His family said earlier they feared he had been "kidnapped". Sources said he had been picked up by Egyptian authorities at Cairo airport.

Shafik dismissed reports he had been kidnapped. His lawyer, Dina Adly, wrote on her Facebook page that she had been able to see him at a Cairo hotel and said he was not subject to any investigations. She did not confirm whether he was able to leave the hotel or country.

"I had a meeting with Shafik an hour ago at one of the hotels in New Cairo and confirmed his health," Adly wrote on Facebook, referring to a suburban area of Cairo.

"He confirmed that his health was good and that he was not subjected to any investigations," she wrote. Shafik's family said earlier he had been taken from their home on Saturday by UAE authorities and flown by private plane back to Cairo.

"We know nothing about him since he left home yesterday," Shafik's daughter May told Reuters on Sunday before his reappearance.

"If he was deported he should have been able to go home by now, not just disappear. We consider him kidnapped."

UAE authorities confirmed he left the Emirates but gave no details.

A source at the Egyptian Interior Ministry said: "We do not know anything about Shafik. We did not arrest him and we did not receive any requests from the prosecution to arrest him or bring him back."

Gulf allies

Shafik's abrupt departure from UAE came weeks after Lebanese officials accused Saudi Arabia of meddling by forcing Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri to resign by holding him against his will.

Saudi Arabia denied those charges but the case prompted a crisis and pushed Lebanon back into the center of a regional struggle between Riyadh with its Sunni Gulf allies and Iran.

Sissi is an ally of UAE and Saudi Arabia and his supporters say he is key to Egypt's stability. Critics say he has eroded freedoms gained after a 2011 uprising that ousted former leader Hosni Mubarak and jailed hundreds of dissidents.

Sissi has won backing from Gulf states and has presented himself as a bulwark against Islamist militants since, as army commander, he led the overthrow in 2013 of former president Mohamed Mursi of the now banned Muslim Brotherhood.

After four decades in the military, Shafik touted his military experience as one of his strengths in the 2012 vote. But he fled to the UAE to escape corruption charges in June 2012. He dismissed the charges as politically motivated and was taken off airport watchlists last year.

In UAE, his family said he had round-the-clock security at home and informed authorities about his whereabouts. Soon after his announcement on Wednesday, he claimed he had been blocked from travelling, but his family later said he had been given assurances he could travel.

Sissi has yet to announce his own intentions for the election. His supporters dismiss criticism over rights abuses and say any measures are needed for security in the face of an Islamist insurgency that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers.

His government is struggling to crush the insurgency in the North Sinai region and has enacted painful austerity reforms over the last year which critics say have eroded his popularity.
The U.N. is working with the governments of Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad to encourage communities to reintegrate rehabilitated ex-Boko Haram fighters and people held captive by the militant sect. The initiative faces continued resistance.

Two hundred women and children said to be ex-Boko Haram militants are in a makeshift camp here at Kolofata on Cameroon's northern border with Nigeria.

The women say most of them were captured and kept in the Sambisa forest where they served as cooks and were subjected to rape and sexual slavery. They were eventually forced to join Boko Haram as fighters, spies and suicide bombers. Their sons were trained to fight and daughters became suicide bombers.

Among the ex-militants is Mamouni Adji, a 34-year-old mother of three. She said they were saved from Boko Haram training camps after troops from Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria operating under a multi-national joint task force attacked Sambisa for three consecutive weeks in May 2017.

She lost her remaining daughter in the attack. Two others went as suicide bombers and have never returned.

Adji said she returned home hoping to find peace, but instead met violence from people who consider the returnees Boko Haram militants. She said her nightmare is not over.

Adji said if she had not gone to buy food two weeks ago, she would have been killed in the fire that burned her house. She said she is left with nothing but a copy of her identity card that proves that she is a citizen of her village.

Boko Haram forcibly recruited thousands of youths in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger in its effort to create an Islamic state in West Africa.

Muhammad Djamil, president of Nigerian Muslim youths, said communities should accept the returning fighters and stop stigmatization, which may make them more radical. He said the military should also stop persecuting them as if they were still fighters.

"The law enforcement agents are using excessive force on these people such that even the innocent people are being killed alongside the militants and that is giving the innocent citizens the thinking that the government is not for us, it is against us and now they lend more support to the extremist. Give them cover, so we should reduce the force that we use in curtailing this. Dialogue, inclusive dialogue is what will solve this and not force," said Djamil.

Villagers said the ex-fighters and captives may be returning with Boko Haram ideology or be spies.

Mohammed Chambas, the U.N. special representative in West Africa, said the worries of the population are legitimate.

But Chambas said Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad should promote deradicalization centers to help re-integrate the former fighters and victims.

"They have succeeded in pushing Boko Haram back. So on that security front there has been good success and we all commend the military efforts that have been taken. At the same time let us address issues of governance, of bringing on board women and youth to tackle the root causes of violent extremism in central Africa, in west Africa, in the Sahel," he said.

Cameroon and the U.N. have been distributing seeds, goats, sheep and pigs to the returnees and asking their communities to welcome them.
Facebook is coming for your kids.

The social media giant is launching a messaging app for children to chat with their parents and with friends approved by their parents.

The free app is aimed at kids under 13, who can't yet have their own accounts under Facebook's rules, though they often do.

Messenger Kids comes with a slew of controls for parents. The service won't let children add their own friends or delete messages  only parents can do that. Kids don't get a separate Facebook or Messenger account; rather, it's an extension of a parent's account.

A kids-focused experience

While children do use messaging and social media apps designed for teenagers and adults, those services aren't built for them, said Kristelle Lavallee, a children's psychology expert who advised Facebook on designing the service.

"The risk of exposure to things they were not developmentally prepared for is huge," she said.

Messenger Kids, meanwhile, "is a result of seeing what kids like," which is images, emoji and the like. Face filters and playful masks can be distracting for adults, Lavallee said, but for kids who are just learning how to form relationships and stay in touch with parents digitally, they are ways to express themselves.

Lavallee, who is content strategist at the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University, called Messenger Kids a "useful tool" that "makes parents the gatekeepers." But she said that while Facebook made the app "with the best of intentions," it's not yet known how people will actually use it.

As with other tools Facebook has released in the past, intentions and real-world use do not always match up. Facebook's live video streaming feature, for example, has been used for plenty of innocuous and useful things, but also to stream crimes and suicides.

Hooked on Facebook

Is Messenger Kids simply a way for Facebook to rope in the young ones?

Stephen Balkam, CEO of the nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute, said "that train has left the station."

Federal law prohibits internet companies from collecting personal information on kids under 13 without their parents' permission and imposes restrictions on advertising to them. This is why Facebook and many other social media companies prohibit younger kids from joining. Even so, Balkam said millions of kids under 13 are already on Facebook, with or without their parents' approval.

He said Facebook is trying to deal with the situation pragmatically by steering young Facebook users to a service designed for them.

Facebook said Messenger Kids won't show ads or collect data for marketing. Facebook also said it won't automatically move users to the regular Messenger or Facebook when they get old enough, though the company might give them the option to move contacts to Messenger down the line.

Messenger Kids is launching Monday in the U.S. on Apple devices  the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Versions for Android and Amazon's tablets are coming later.
After shaking the halls of Congress, network newsrooms, and Hollywood, a sex abuse scandal has now reached the epitome of high culture -- grand opera.

New York's Metropolitan Opera has suspended famed longtime conductor James Levine because of allegations he sexually abused as many as three teenage boys more than 30 years ago.

"This is a tragedy for anyone whose life has been affected," Met general manager Peter Gelb said Sunday.

Gelb says the opera company has hired former U.S. attorney Robert J. Cleary to lead its investigation and that Levine has denied the accusations.

The New York Post first reported the allegations against Levine. The newspaper says according to a Lake Forest, Illinois police report, the conductor allegedly molested a 15 year old boy in 1985 when Levine was a conductor with a summer music festival near Chicago.

According to Post, the unidentified victim told police the encounters with Levine "nearly destroyed my family and almost led me to suicide."

The New York Times reports two other men allege Levine sexually molested them when they were teenagers -- one case in 1968 and another in 1986.

The 74 year-old Levine is known for his stocky build and wild frizzy hair and was the face of the Metropolitan Opera for decades.

He retired last year as the Met's music director, but still conducts occasional performances. He was preparing to conduct the Met's new production of Tosca when his suspension was announced.

Levine is the latest public figure to fight for his professional and political life after allegations of sexual misconduct.

Just last week, NBC news fired Today show host Matt Lauer because inappropriate behavior toward women.

CBS and PBS also fired longtime newsman Charlie Rose for alleged sexual advances toward coworkers.

Democratic Senator Al Franken says he is "embarrassed" by a picture showing him grinning and holding his hands over the breasts of a sleeping woman in 2006, when he was a television comic. Other women have also leveled accusations against him.

Congressman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, is under pressure to resign after allegations of sexual misconduct -- a charge he denies.

Others confronted with charges include actor Kevin Spacey, comedian Louis C.K., former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, and Republican Senate candidate from Alabama, Roy Moore.

About 16 women have accused President Donald Trump of sexual harassment and worse. He has labeled the accusations fake news.
Airstrikes struck Yemen's capital, Sana'a, overnight and into Monday with witnesses saying the bombings hit Houthi rebel positions.

A Saudi-led coalition that has launched airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen since March 2015 is the only force known to conduct strikes on Sana'a.

Robert Mardini, Middle East regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said "the night was tough" in the city with massive clashes that included airstrikes and artillery. He reported Yemenis were trapped in their homes and that an ICRC medical warehouse was hit.

The violence comes as an alliance between the Iran-backed Houthis and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh appears to have fallen apart.

The two sides joined ranks three years ago and swept across Sana'a, forcing the country's internationally recognized President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi to flee the country and seek the military intervention led by Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis' political office accused Saleh of staging a "coup" against "an alliance he never believed in" after he offered to initiate talks with the Saudi coalition. In a televised speech, Saleh asked for an end to the siege on Yemeni ports and offered, in exchange, to "turn a new page" and "deal with them in a positive way."

Clashes between fighters loyal to Saleh and the Houthis first erupted last week when Saleh accused the rebels of storming his giant mosque in Sana'a and attacking his nephew, the powerful commander of the special forces, Tarek Saleh.

David Mack, a former U.S. diplomat, has dealt with Saleh who was removed in 2012 after more than 30 years in office. Now with the Middle East Institute, Mack described Saleh as "one of the smartest political operatives in the Arab world," and someone who felt he was unjustly pushed from power by members of the Gulf Cooperation Council backed by the United States.

"He still wanted to have one chance to restore his reputation, which has been terribly, terribly damaged during the past decade," Mack told VOA. "Hes gone from having the reputation of being this supremely capable political operator within Yemen to being somebody who was just out for personal power and was prepared to see tremendous suffering of Yemeni people in the process."

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday urged warring parties in Yemen to stop all ground and air assaults. The U.N. said the sharp escalation of armed clashes and airstrikes in Sana'a has already resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries, including civilians.

Fighting is restricting the movement of people and life-saving services within Sana'a city. Ambulances and medical teams cannot access the injured and people cannot go outside to buy food and other necessities, the U.N. said. Aid workers are unable to travel and implement critical life-saving programs at a time when millions of Yemenis rely on assistance to survive.

Yemen is one of the Arab world's poorest countries and has become a humanitarian catastrophe with more than 10,000 people killed in the fighting and at least 2 million displaced. A cholera outbreak has infected nearly 1 million people.
Ten suspects were arrested Monday over the October 16 car bomb murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Malta's prime minister announced.



Joseph Muscat said eight Maltese citizens were arrested on Monday morning, given a reasonable suspicion of their involvement in Caruana Galizia's slaying. Shortly afterward, he tweeted that two others had been arrested, but didn't cite their nationality.



Police sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case, said the other two are also Maltese.



Overall, Muscat gave almost no details, citing concerns any information could compromise prospects to prosecute the case.



The investigation appeared to be continuing, as police and armed forces had cordoned off an area in Marsa, a small town close to Valletta, the capital.



The arrests, made in an operation coordinated among the Police Corps, the Armed Forces of Malta and the Security Services, were the first known break in the murder that has drawn widespread outrage and condemnation.



Investigators have 48 hours to question the suspects to decide whether to seek charges, in accordance with Maltese law.



Caruana Galizia, whose reporting focused heavily on corruption on the EU island nation, was killed when a bomb destroyed her car as she was driving near her home.



Europol, the European Union's police agency, sent a team of organized crime experts to help Maltese police investigate the assassination, joining the FBI and Dutch forensic experts.

Crooks everywhere

Just before her death, Caruana Galizia, 53, had posted on her closely followed blog, Running Commentary, that there were crooks everywhere in Malta.



The island nation has a reputation as a tax haven in the European Union and has attracted companies and money from outside Europe as well.



Just last week, a visiting delegation of European Parliament lawmakers left the island expressing concerns over the rule of law in the tiny EU member country and issued a warning that the perception of impunity in Malta cannot continue.



Low tax rates and a popular government program that allows wealthy foreigners to buy Maltese citizenship has made the country an attractive place for investment, financial and other companies. Authorities, including anti-Mafia investigators in nearby Italy worry that Malta is in the eye of criminals on the lookout for money-laundering schemes.



The journalist focused her reporting for years on investigating political corruption and scandals, and reported on Maltese mobsters and drug trafficking. She also wrote about Maltese links to the so-called Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis urged Pakistan on Monday to redouble its efforts to confront militants and terrorists operating within the country, emphasizing "the vital role" Islamabad can play to work with Washington to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan.

Mattis arrived in Pakistan on a day trip and went into meetings with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and the military chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Top Cabinet members and the country's spy chief, as well as national security adviser, also attended.

Mattis came away from the visit "confident and optimistic," according to a senior U.S. defense official who characterized the meetings as "straightforward" and "focused on rebuilding trust."

"Rather than present a list of charges," Mattis focused on finding common ground, the official said. "The secretary has too much respect for Pakistan's military to believe they can't or won't" address U.S. concerns about militants, he added.

A U.S. statement issued after the talks said Mattis recognized Pakistan's sacrifices in the war against terrorism and called for increased efforts toward regional stability and security.

"The Secretary emphasized the vital role that Pakistan can play in working with the United States and others to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that brings stability and security to the region," it said.

U.S. and Afghan officials allege the Taliban and the Haqqani Network are using sanctuaries on Pakistani soil for orchestrating attacks on the Afghan side of the border.

'Committed to its resolve'

Abbasi's office also issued its own statement that quoted the prime minister as telling Mattis that counterterrorism operations have improved national security and Pakistan would continue the campaign to consolidate the gains it has achieved over the past four years.

"The Prime Minister reiterated that there are no safe heavens in Pakistan and the entire nation was committed to its resolve on eradicating terrorism once and for all in all its forms and manifestations," it said.

Earlier, Abbasi, while opening the meeting with Mattis, said "nobody wants peace in Afghanistan more than Pakistan." He added that the United States and Pakistan "share the same common objectives."

Before his visit to Islamabad, Mattis said he did not plan to "prod" Pakistan, but expected it to adhere to its promises to combat terrorism. He also expressed hope for a collaborative approach.

"I believe that we [can] work hard on finding common ground and then we work together," Mattis said.

In October, Mattis warned the United States is willing to work "one more time" with Pakistan before taking "whatever steps are necessary" to address its alleged support for militants.

Islamabad denies supporting militants, saying Washington is scapegoating Pakistan for its own failures in Afghanistan, where the United States remains in a stalemate after 16 years of war.

Tougher stance

Before Mattis' visit, other Trump administration officials took a harder public stance on Pakistan.

Speaking at a defense forum Saturday, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said, "We are going to do everything we can to ensure that safe havens no longer exist," if Pakistan does not heed the U.S. message on militants.

Since 2004, the CIA has conducted drone strikes  mostly against al-Qaida and Pakistani Taliban targets  in northwest Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

The United States is considering expanding those strikes, along with several other measures, according to media reports.

Other options include downgrading Pakistan's status as a major non-NATO ally or sanctioning individual Pakistani leaders suspected having ties with the Taliban.

But any kind of punitive action wouldn't take place for at least a few weeks at minimum, predicts Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst with the Woodrow Wilson Center.

"I think [the administration] wants to give the Pakistanis a bit more time to see if they're responding to the various demands the United States made of them when it comes to cracking down on terrorists," said Kugelman.

One of the likelier U.S. responses, according to Kugelman, is expanding not only the geographic scope of the drone war, but also widening the type of targets the United States goes after.

"I think we could start seeing the U.S. trying to target more Haqqani Network and Afghan Taliban targets," especially in the sparsely populated Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, he said.

The Trump administration has also threatened cut off aid to Pakistan. Since 2002, the United States has given over $33 billion in assistance to Pakistan. But the aid has already been cut sharply in recent years.

Pakistani leverage?

If ties were to deteriorate, the United States also has much to lose. Pakistan controls U.S. military supply routes to landlocked Afghanistan, and could close them down, as they did in 2011. The United States would also like Pakistan to scale back its nuclear modernization, improve ties with India, and stay engaged in the broader fight against Islamic militants.

But despite the risks, Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, warns Washington appears to be running out of patience.

"For many years we were trying to hold out hope that the Pakistanis would change their mind about Afghanistan and our role there," he said. "But those kinds of hopes aren't as prevalent anymore. And on balance, therefore, I think we are closer to using some of those tougher methods."

Mattis, who is on a regional tour that also took him to Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait, wouldn't elaborate on timing for any possible U.S. action.

However, following the meetings, a U.S. defense official warned: "Our patience is not unlimited."
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis made a visit Monday to Pakistan where he said he did not plan to "prod" the government, but expected it to adhere to its promises to combat terrorism.

Speaking aboard a military plane ahead of his first visit to Islamabad as Pentagon chief, Mattis said he did not expect to butt heads during his meetings with Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa.

"Thats not the way I deal with issues," Mattis said. "I believe that we (can) work hard on finding common ground and then we work together."

In October, Mattis warned the United States is willing to work "one more time" with Pakistan before taking "whatever steps are necessary" to address its alleged support for militants.

But on Sunday, Mattis said he is focused on trying to find "more common ground ... by listening to one another without being combative."

The United States has for a decade accused Pakistan of sheltering or having ties to terrorists, such as the Haqqani Network and the Afghan Taliban, which attack NATO coalition forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

Islamabad rejects the accusation, saying Washington is scapegoating Pakistan for its own failures in Afghanistan, where the United States remains in a stalemate after 16 years of war.

Tougher stance

Before Mattis visit, other Trump administration officials are taking a harder public stance on Pakistan.

Speaking at a defense forum Saturday, CIA director Mike Pompeo said, "We are going to do everything we can to ensure that safe havens no longer exist," if Pakistan does not heed the U.S. message on militants.

Since 2004, the CIA has conducted drone strikes - mostly against al-Qaida and Pakistani Taliban targets - in northwest Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

The United States is considering expanding those strikes, along with several other measures, according to media reports.

Other options include downgrading Pakistans status as a major non-NATO ally or sanctioning individual Pakistani leaders suspected having ties with the Taliban.

But any kind of punitive action wouldnt take place for at least a few weeks at minimum, predicts Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst with the Woodrow Wilson Center.

"I think (the administration) wants to give the Pakistanis a bit more time to see if they're responding to the various demands the United States made of them when it comes to cracking down on terrorists," said Kugelman.

One of the likelier U.S. responses, according to Kugelman, is expanding not only the geographic scope of the drone war, but also widening the type of targets the United States goes after.

"I think we could start seeing the U.S. trying to target more Haqqani Network and Afghan Taliban targets," especially in the sparsely populated Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, he said.

The Trump administration has also threatened cut off aid to Pakistan. Since 2002, the United States has given over $33 billion in assistance to Pakistan. But the aid has already been cut sharply in recent years.

Pakistani leverage?

If ties were to deteriorate, the United States also has much to lose. Pakistan controls U.S. military supply routes to landlocked Afghanistan, and could close them down, as they did in 2011. The United States would also like Pakistan to scale back its nuclear modernization, improve ties with India, and stay engaged in the broader fight against Islamic militants.

But despite the risks, Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, warns Washington appears to be running out of patience.

"For many years we were trying to hold out hope that the Pakistanis would change their mind about Afghanistan and our role there," he said. "But those kinds of hopes aren't as prevalent anymore. And on balance, therefore, I think we are closer to using some of those tougher methods."

Mattis, who is on a regional tour that also took him to Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait, wouldnt elaborate on any possible U.S. action. But he says the situation is pressing.

"Theres always an urgency to something when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war where casualties are being taken," he said.
NATO's chief says he's looking forward to talks with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and that the military alliance is too focused on security issues to be distracted by rumors about Tillerson's future.



Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that the alliance "and NATO ministers are able to focus on the core tasks of the job we have to do despite any speculation and rumors."



Stoltenberg praised Tillerson's "strong personal commitment to the trans-Atlantic bond and to NATO."



President Donald Trump denied Friday that he wants to oust Tillerson, calling reports to that effect "fake news."



U.S. envoy to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said that "there has been no change whatsoever" in planning for two days of talks between Tillerson and his NATO counterparts starting Tuesday.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said Monday at the start of talks with visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that Pakistan is committed to the war against terror.

"Nobody wants peace in Afghanistan more than Pakistan," Abbasi said.

He added that the United States and Pakistan "share the same common objectives."

Monday's meeting in Islamabad also included Pakistan's interior minister, national security adviser and the Inter-Services Intelligence chief.

Mattis did not offer any public comment on Monday's talks.

Ahead of his visit to Islamabad he said he did not plan to "prod" Pakistan, but expected it to adhere to its promises to combat terrorism. He also expressed hope for a collaborative approach.

"I believe that we (can) work hard on finding common ground and then we work together," Mattis said.

In October, Mattis warned the United States is willing to work "one more time" with Pakistan before taking "whatever steps are necessary" to address its alleged support for militants.

But on Sunday, Mattis said he is focused on trying to find "more common ground ... by listening to one another without being combative."

The United States has for a decade accused Pakistan of sheltering or having ties to terrorists, such as the Haqqani Network and the Afghan Taliban, which attack NATO coalition forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

Islamabad rejects the accusation, saying Washington is scapegoating Pakistan for its own failures in Afghanistan, where the United States remains in a stalemate after 16 years of war.

Tougher stance

Before Mattis visit, other Trump administration officials are taking a harder public stance on Pakistan.

Speaking at a defense forum Saturday, CIA director Mike Pompeo said, "We are going to do everything we can to ensure that safe havens no longer exist," if Pakistan does not heed the U.S. message on militants.

Since 2004, the CIA has conducted drone strikes - mostly against al-Qaida and Pakistani Taliban targets - in northwest Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

The United States is considering expanding those strikes, along with several other measures, according to media reports.

Other options include downgrading Pakistans status as a major non-NATO ally or sanctioning individual Pakistani leaders suspected having ties with the Taliban.

But any kind of punitive action wouldn't take place for at least a few weeks at minimum, predicts Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst with the Woodrow Wilson Center.

"I think (the administration) wants to give the Pakistanis a bit more time to see if they're responding to the various demands the United States made of them when it comes to cracking down on terrorists," said Kugelman.

One of the likelier U.S. responses, according to Kugelman, is expanding not only the geographic scope of the drone war, but also widening the type of targets the United States goes after.

"I think we could start seeing the U.S. trying to target more Haqqani Network and Afghan Taliban targets," especially in the sparsely populated Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, he said.

The Trump administration has also threatened cut off aid to Pakistan. Since 2002, the United States has given over $33 billion in assistance to Pakistan. But the aid has already been cut sharply in recent years.

Pakistani leverage?

If ties were to deteriorate, the United States also has much to lose. Pakistan controls U.S. military supply routes to landlocked Afghanistan, and could close them down, as they did in 2011. The United States would also like Pakistan to scale back its nuclear modernization, improve ties with India, and stay engaged in the broader fight against Islamic militants.

But despite the risks, Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, warns Washington appears to be running out of patience.

"For many years we were trying to hold out hope that the Pakistanis would change their mind about Afghanistan and our role there," he said. "But those kinds of hopes aren't as prevalent anymore. And on balance, therefore, I think we are closer to using some of those tougher methods."

Mattis, who is on a regional tour that also took him to Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait, wouldn't elaborate on any possible U.S. action. But he says the situation is pressing.

"Theres always an urgency to something when 39 nations plus Afghanistan have their troops in the midst of a long war where casualties are being taken," he said.
Anthony walks the streets of Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood looking for two competing things: His next heroin fix  and help in what he says is his struggle to end addiction.

He traces the habit to one fateful day.

I shattered my leg and I was on oxycodone pain medication prescribed through my doctor, recalls the 28-year-old, who asked for anonymity to share his story. I withdrew so bad, a friend put me on heroin and its been a slippery slide for five years.

He ended up in Kensington, a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood where drug users can find some of the cheapest and purest heroin in the country. The area is also home to unscrupulous healthcare providers who continue to over-prescribe opioid medications.

Open drug use occurs within easy view of storefronts. Teenagers riding their bikes pass addicts in zombie-like states on the sidewalks and porches. Kensington is a destination for heroin users from afar. Many end up staying to feed their addiction.

We have not only people from other parts of the state, we have people from other parts of the country who come here, said Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Special Agent Patrick Trainor. Unfortunately, its sparked a heroin tourism industry,

The drug epidemic is not a new phenomenon for Kensington. For decades, its contended with addicts. More than half the population lives below the poverty line, 2.5 times the rate of the rest of Philadelphia. The wide availability of prescription opioids from healthcare providers, along with the influx of individuals from outside the community, has made matters dramatically worse.

In 2017, a deal was reached by city officials to clear out an open air heroin market known as El Campamento, or The Tracks.

It existed beneath sunken train tracks, hidden from street level. The property was riddled with syringes and all kinds of drug paraphernalia.

People in the area regularly died from drug overdoses. At times, 75 to 125 opioid addicts lived there in makeshift homes.

It was contained, said Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez, who represents the Philadelphia district that includes Kensington. But now its out in the open and people are kind of struggling about dealing with the problem. What are we going to do with it? Because this problem is not going to go away in the next six months or in the next year, said Sanchez.

Pure Heroin Fills the Streets of Kensington

The attraction of Kensington is simple: cheap and powerful heroin primarily piped in by Mexicos Sinaloa cartel. And in the streets of Kensington, drug dealers compete with one another to sell heroin, some laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.

In order to compete, you have to have the purest stuff on the street, we've seen purity levels in Philadelphia around 93% at times, and thats street purity level, said (Drug Enforcement Administration) DEA Special Agent in Charge Gary Tuggle. So in order to compete with that, many groups have started to adulterate that 50% [of heroin] or so with fentanyl. Often not recognizing the fact that fentanyl is 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, 50 to 80 times more powerful than heroin.

Davey, a 31-year-old heroin addict knows firsthand how strong, and dangerous, the fentanyl laced drug can be. I had a good friend, the bag was empty, I scraped an empty bag for him, some grains, and just a tiny amount and he overdosed, Davey said. That's just how powerful it is.

Philadelphia recorded over 900 overdose deaths in 2016. Officials say the city is on track for at least 1,200 deaths in 2017. Overdoses are the number one cause of death in Philadelphia for every age group from 25 to 44, the number two cause from age 45 to 54, and the number three cause from age 55 to 64.

Its extraordinary to have an epidemic like this appear on leading causes of death, said Dr. Thomas Farley, Philadelphias Health Commissioner. The problem is not only not slowing down, but its accelerating. There are not enough beds for addicts he said.

I lived through the worst drug epidemics in the countrys history. The post-Vietnam heroin epidemic, the crack cocaine epidemic of the 80s and early 90s and then theres this particular opioid epidemic that dwarfs the other two, Tuggle said.

It has a feeder system to it that the others didn't have. And thats the misuse and abuse of prescription opioids, Tuggle said.

We still have a major focus on the enforcement piece, but we also engage with the community in prevention and education to try to drive down that insatiable demand for opioids that exists in this country, said Tuggle. The engagement includes non-traditional partnerships within the public health sector such as treatment providers and medical examiners where they analyze data to assist in explaining the drug epidemic trends.

Councilwoman Sanchez wants all sectors working together to ensure those who understand what is happening are the ones leading the fight. We now have to have the political will to sit all of those actors at the table and say, 'OK, how do we work our way backwards, she said.

The biggest obstacles are lack of treatment facilities and housing for addicts and others. Estimates suggest that 30,000 heroin addicts are in Philadelphia, currently, only half would have access to proper treatment.

Not all people who are drug users have housing, and housing is often a part of treatment. It's hard for people to get treatment if they are living on the street, said Dr. Farley.

A Community Connected beyond the Drug Epidemic

On a recent walk down Kensington Avenue, Sanchez recalls growing up in the neighborhood and her commitment to the people.

All I see is people who survive despite circumstances that are sometimes created outside of their control, and those are the folks that I represent, she said. And so my job is to be the cheerleader for those folks who work really hard and despite all the situation, whether its the teacher, principal, the librarians, you know, the folks that are here.

Convenience store owner Sam Kuttab said things have improved some. He plans to stay in Kensington.

About 10 years ago we had a big fire here and the insurance company paid us good money, Kuttab said. We could have just taken the money and moved on. But we felt there is a community here, theres a community here that really appreciated our services, and we appreciated them. So we put our money back into this neighborhood, and its paid off, he said.

Officials recognize there are obstacles, but unless they do something impactful more people will die in Kensington and Philadelphia.
Eighteen-year-old secondary school student Yvonne Kevia pours a clear liquid into a burette, watching the bubbles flow down the long, glass tube. After mixing and measuring, the liquid turns bright pink.

Kevia writes down measurements in her notebook.

The aspiring chemical engineer has just performed a titration, but we are witnessing more here than just a simple laboratory procedure. Rwanda is making a push to equip girls for science-related careers and is creating a model for other African governments to follow.

Kevia's classmate Keza Marie Aimee is planning on becoming a pilot. Her backup plan is to be a pharmacist.

The first thing that came to my mind before choosing this school was that I wanted to live with girls who know what they want. The reason why I want to become a pilot is because were having just few girls that are pilots and I want to show people that yes, we can as girls, Aimee says.

The FAWE Girls School, where Aimee has been a student for the past three years, is part of a proliferation of STEM-focused schools in Rwanda over the past decade. FAWE is considered one of the best. The boarding school admits girls from impoverished backgrounds. On national exams, FAWE students overwhelming score in the top percentile.

Its a belief of many that girls cannot perform as good as boys, but that is not correct. So believing that they have that potential of doing sciences as well as boys, I think its very good for them because with sciences, one can do many things, says Pascale Dukuzi, a chemistry instructor at FAWE Girls school.

WATCH: Girls in STEM

Rwandas Ministry of Education reports that the number of females studying STEM in school continues to rise. The latest statistics from the Ministry of Education say in 2015, 55.1 percent of girls in secondary schools opted to enroll in science classes, up from 48.7 percent in 2011.

It is no accident. The government has been on a mission to transform the economy by 2020, in part by promoting careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM fields.

Africa faces a dire deficit in skilled workers in the applied sciences, engineering and technology (ASET) fields. There is one or less scientist or engineer per 10,000 people, compared with 20 to 50 in industrialized countries, according to a 2015 World Bank report.

Rwanda leads the way

The World Bank cites Rwanda as one of a handful of African countries leading the way in working to boost STEM education at tertiary and vocational schools.

The country came in third in a 2017 report that ranked the capacity of African governments agendas to developing science and technology, commenting on the governments effective policies to encourage the expansion and development of STEM with initiatives that include establishing a science ministry, research institutions, partnering with private groups and awarding scholarships.

The Ministry of Education has seen its budget climb nearly 10 percent from last year to 240.9 billion Rwandan francs [$280 million] in 2017, of which 14 percent is allocated for STEM projects, including developing smart classrooms equipped with computers and internet connectivity and building a building a center for theoretical physics. The government wants to double the current budget allocation for STEM education at the university level. Currently, 80 percent of students in Rwanda receiving government scholarships pursue STEM programs.

When it comes to getting more girls and women into STEM, advocates say the younger, the better. Exposure to science in primary school matters.

Jeannette Gahunga, who graduated from university three years ago with a degree in computer programming, is now a volunteer teacher at a public primary school in Kigali.

She stands in the front of the classroom, displaying a screen to the students. They watch her and turn to their laptops to create interactive animations using scratch programming.

Half the students in this classroom are girls, and Gahunga says she keeps a close eye on them. Mentorship is key to keeping girls on the STEM track.

They're able to make innovation, and they are not as shy as before. Now they are really learning very hard. The girls in my class are doing the same as boys. They are as hardworking as others and they are following very well, Gahunga says.

Cultural and historic barriers are still a challenge. Girls and young women in Rwanda face cultural expectations to prioritize getting married and raising a family.

Culturally, African girls and women were the people to stay in the backdoors and never on the front line. So, even when education came and people embraced education, they were educating men, and women were only educated to take care of the children and that was the end of the story, says Josephine Kobusingye, an education activist.

A serious challenge is the aftereffects of the genocide. Some of these girls are orphans. Some of them come are living with step parents who do not support their education because again, many fathers were killed during the genocide and women remarried. Some of the girls have HIV-infected parents. These girls are dealing with so much, poverty. They have my contact and they call me sometimes saying they dont know how to keep going. Life becomes too much. But there is an array of hope with STEM and I dont want anything to shake that hope in them.

Kobusingye takes part in support group meetings in Kigali, where female science students from various schools meet to interact and talk about their professional goals.

Support comes in other ways as well.

On a rare visit to see her family, Yvonne Keza embraces her mother with a smile. Her mother is a domestic house helper. Her father is still recovering from being violently attacked during the 1994 genocide.

Keza is the only one in school and the family is counting on her.
South Sudanese activists and opposition politicians say they welcome the decision by the United States, the United Kingdom and Norway to support a revitalization forum on South Sudans 2015 peace agreement, set to start later this month Addis Ababa.

The troika -- as the three countries are known -- says if the forum is going to be successful, it must be inclusive.

The three countries funded and facilitated the 2015 peace deal. But just days after its signing, the cessation of hostilities agreement was violated by both government forces and opposition fighters.

In its statement, the troika called on all parties to recommit to the deal and participate in the high-level revitalization forum, which U.S. officials have said is the last chance for President Salva Kiir's administration to restore peace and stability in South Sudan.



Jame David, executive director of the Foundation for Democracy and Accountable Governance, told VOA's South Sudan in Focus the troika should assert itself more in the implementation of the peace agreement.



The troika should not jump away from this process and entirely push [it] to the South Sudanese people because they were part of the agreement, they have the resources, they have every opportunity to pressure these parties to the agreement to move the process forward, said David.



He said its also important for there to be a mechanism to hold all parties accountable, such as the East African regional bloc IGAD. Western sanctions imposed on government and rebel leaders have not been effective, he said.

We believe that most of these guys are people who do not have interest of going to Britain, to Washington or even to any of these European cities, but if we move towards a process of creating regional sanctions I think it will be very effective, David told VOA.



The revitalization forum was proposed by IGAD heads of state in June as a last-ditch effort to revive the 2015 peace agreement.

Joseph Ukell Obango is the leader of the opposition United South Sudan African Party. Obango says his party agrees with the troika that the government and armed opposition must declare a permanent ceasefire before engaging in the revitalization forum.

By declaring a cease-fire, Obango said, all warring parties would demonstrate their commitment to reaching a compromise at the forum.



You cannot go for any negotiation while people are fighting. The government has actually declared a unilateral declaration of ceasefire and this is not working, said Obango.



He added opposition parties in South Sudan want to see the warring parties commit to respecting the cessation of hostilities agreement they signed in 2015.



But if we come with a position that 'I cant compromise,' then this is where we are going... into what people are calling us now, a failed state, said Obango.



Steward Soroba Bubudia, chairman of the United Democratic Party, welcomes the troika statement but said he doubts that threats to impose more sanctions on those blocking the peace process will make a difference.

Soroba said previous sanctions slapped on leaders from both warring parties in the past have not worked.



Sanctions are there, but they are not implemented and nobody on the ground can implement these sanctions. They are defied. The only solution is the international community should grab who is an obstacle to this and take steps towards him or her, said Soroba.
It will take years to remove improvised explosive devices left behind by Islamic State fighters who fled Raqqa, the Syrian city that served as the capital of the terror group's self-declared caliphate.

A coalition official involved in the U.S.-led anti-IS campaign estimated "tens of thousands" of unexploded IEDs remain in Raqqa, which was captured by U.S.-backed forces in October after nearly three years of Islamic State rule.

"The scale of this is unprecedented," the official said Monday. "These are high-end, factory-made" IEDS. Many of the bombs are disguised as common household items such as vacuum cleaners, and some houses have six to seven bombs each, he said.

But officials are optimistic about the progress against Islamic State. A total of 7.7 million people in Iraq and Syria have been "liberated" from the terror group, according to a U.S. military handout.

"The physical caliphate has been destroyed ... but I don't want to confuse this with the ultimate defeat of ISIS. We're a long way from that," the coalition official told reporters in Kuwait who are traveling with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.

In the past year, U.S.-backed forces have captured Raqqa and Mosul, the group's former stronghold in Iraq. But pockets of resistance remain, especially along the Euphrates River.

"There are still some pockets able to provide some resistance," said the coalition official, citing as an example a 200-person Islamic State "counterattack" on coalition forces just days ago.

A major concern is that many of the underlying causes of the conflict, such as Sunni grievances against Shiite policies or the continued rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, have not been fully addressed.

"I absolutely have a concern" about those unresolved issues, the official said, stressing there's no guarantee of peace. "A lot depends on the actions of the [Syrian regime]," he added.

The official declined to say how many U.S. troops are in Syria. Officially, there are 503 U.S. troops there, but a recent quarterly report by the Pentagon's personnel agency suggested there may be nearly three times that many.
In the short space of just a few weeks, Pakistan, Nepal and Myanmar have canceled or sidelined three major hydroelectricity projects planned by Chinese companies. The rejection of the three projects, worth nearly $20 billion, comes as a serious jolt to Chinas ambitious trade-linking project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Pakistan cited tough financing terms imposed by China as its reason for canceling the $14 billion Diamer-Bhasha Dam project.

Nepals deputy Prime Minister recently announced a decision to scrap a $2.5 billion contract for a hydroelectricity project, accusing the Chinese company of financial irregularities. And Myanmar, which halted a $3.6 billion Chinese-backed dam three years ago, declared last month that it no longer is interested in big hydro-electric power projects.

The decisions by Chinas neighbors could mean a serious loss of image for BRI, which involves plans to build infrastructure across the globe, including in developed countries like the United States and those in Europe.

While there are also diverse local political and economic reasons behind the three decisions, there is a growing realization among poorer countries that Chinese proposals to build massive infrastructure projects come at an extremely high price, analysts said.

Asked about these decisions by Pakistan and Nepal, the Chinese foreign ministry said it was not aware of it. I am not aware of this information, Geng Shuang, foreign ministry spokesman, said at a media briefing. China and Nepal have sound relations and bilateral cooperation covers a wide range of areas.

Against our Interests

According to the local media accounts, Muzammil Hussain, chairman of Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) in Pakistan told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of parliament that the Chinese company involved in the project there had imposed very difficult financing conditions, which included pledging the new dam, as well as an existing dam, as loan security.

Chinese conditions for financing the Diamer-Bhasha Dam were not doable and against our interests, Hussain said.

Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator at the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, a New Delhi based NGO, said, For Pakistan, the biggest ally has been China. They [Pakistanis] would not take out this project without consulting them [the Chinese].

Indeed, China and Pakistan frequently describe their relationship as all-weather and iron brothers.

As far as Pakistan is concerned, they really want financing for this project, Zorawar Daulet Singh, an analyst at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi said. Singh said he would not take the Pakistani officials statement at face value. Islamabad had approached the World Bank and Asian Development Bank for funding but was turned down, he pointed out.

It is the Chinese, which do not want to go ahead with the project in the face of Indian protests, he said. India has been objecting to the Chinese constructing projects in the sensitive Kashmir area, which it claims as its own, because that amounts to backing Islamabads view of the Kashmir issue.

They are probably wanting to sort of put this on the backburner for the moment, Singh said adding, I think there is some sort of policy debate within the Beijing establishment on how can they modify feedback to make it somewhat more acceptable to rest of the subcontinent, particularly India, of course.

China even tried to save face for Pakistan he said.

They [Chinese] gave the Pakistanis sort of face-saver, that okay, we let you withdraw this but we actually dont want to get into this now, Singh said.

Salvo from the Himalayas

In Nepal, deputy prime minister Kamal Thapa recently took to Twitter to announce, The agreement [with China], marred by irregularities with the Chinese company - Gejuwa Group regarding the construction of Budhi Gandaki hydropower project, has been scrapped in a cabinet meeting as directed by the parliamentary committee.

Thapa said the agreement had been signed with the Chinese company illegally and haphazardly.

Both the awarding and cancellation has resulted in political controversies in Nepal. The cancellation came immediately ahead of an election, which will take another two weeks to complete.

The contract for 1200 MW dam project was awarded to a Chinese company some six months ago by the coalition government comprising [the] Maoist Party and the Nepali Congress, but in a manner that was not clearly transparent, said Yubaraj Ghimire, an analysts of the Nepal political scene.

"There were questions raised about the transparency. You know it was quite a controversial deal. That was six months ago. Then, a parliamentary committee recommended that this deal be scrapped, but nothing happened."

Talking about the latest decision to scrap the contract, Ghimire said, What has caused controversy now is that this is a election [time] government which is not expected to take major decisions. It has generated debate and criticism.

One of Nepals political leaders and a contender for prime ministership has even said he would reverse the decision if he comes to power.

Chinas Reasons

Some analysts said there is also some rethinking in Beijing in favor of scrapping projects that offer a poor return on investments. China has come a long way with its BRI plans since it tried to sell projects to neighbors like Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.

It is now looking at a large part of Europe and the Americas as potential markets.

China is also keen on exporting its hydroelectricity related machines and construction services across the globe. But it is taking a different view in the case of projects in neighboring countries which are mired in political conflicts and instead focusing on other markets like Latin America and Africa.

They [Chinese] are looking for markets in Africa, Latin America and South East Asia, those regions where neighboring considerations are not very strong, they are looking for industry and machine [exports], Thakkar said.

Incidentally, it is the same Chinese company, Gezhouba Water and Power (Group) Co Ltd. (CGGC), which won the contracts and was consequently rejected by Pakistan, Nepal and Myanmar.

I am not sure we can blame the company for this. They are more [due to] investment and political considerations, Thakkar said.

The recent project cancellations also show a growing realization among governments that the cost of per unit electricity produced in hydropower projects is a lot more than those coming from other sources of renewable energies like solar and wind power, Thakkar said.

In the case of Myanmar, the countrys Construction Minister told Reuters in an interview last month that big hydropower projects are no longer a priority in tackling the problem of power shortages.

Instead, Construction Minister Win Khaing said Myanmar is looking to LNG and smaller dams as an alternative solution.
For the first time since 2011, a United Nations official is slated to visit North Korea, which has ramped up its nuclear and ballistic missiles tests this year.

The U.N. said that Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman is expected to visit Pyongyang from December 5 to 8.

The visit is a response to a long-standing invitation from the authorities in Pyongyang for policy dialogue with the U.N.," U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Monday, stating that the invitation was extended on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September.

"It will be a wide-ranging policy discussion," Dujarric said.

Feltmen has confirmed meetings with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and Vice Minister Pak Myong Guk. He will also meet with members of the diplomatic corps and the United Nations Country Team in Pyongyang.

Last week, Pyongyang launched new intercontinental ballistic missile  the Hwasong-15 - which it claims could reach a target in the continental United States.

Following the launch, Japan's U.N. ambassador announced that his country's foreign minister will preside over a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on December 15 to discuss North Korea's nuclear program.

The last visit by a U.N. official to North Korea was in October of 2011 by then-U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos.
U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed Republican Roy Moore on Monday in next week's Senate election in Alabama, rebuffing calls by other prominent Republicans that Moore drop out of the race because of accusations that he sexually abused teenage girls four decades ago when he was in his 30s.

In a pre-dawn Twitter comment, Trump said, Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama.

Later, the White House said Trump also called Moore to offer his support in the Dec. 12 election. Moore quoted Trump as saying, Go get em, Roy!

The U.S. leader added that Republicans need his vote to stop crime, thwart illegal immigration, construct a wall along the Mexican border, advance military spending, fight against abortion, promote gun rights and other issues.

No to Jones, Trump said of Moores opponent, Democrat Doug Jones, a former federal prosecutor, whom he said was a puppet of the top two congressional Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Trump told voters in the southern state that Putting Pelosi/Schumer Liberal Puppet Jones into office in Alabama would hurt our great Republican Agenda of low on taxes, tough on crime, strong on military and borders ... & so much more. Trump said people in Alabama should consider the likely increases in their savings accounts since he was elected a year ago. Highest Stock Market EVER! Jobs are roaring back! Trump said.

A short time later, the 70-year-old Moore, expressed his appreciation, saying, Thankful for President Trumps support. The America First agenda will (Make America Great Again.) Cant wait to help him Drain The Swamp.

Trump has said he will not go to Alabama to campaign for Moore, but is heading Friday to Pensacola, Florida, a short distance from Alabama, for a political rally. Trump has not said whether he believes the womens accusations against Moore, but noted that Moore has denied them.

He says it didn't happen, the president told reporters recently. You have to listen to him, also.

Until Monday, Trump had contended that Jones, 63, would, if elected, be beholden to Schumer and Pelosi. But Trump had not explicitly endorsed Moore, who twice was deposed from the Alabama Supreme Court for failing to adhere to federal court rulings.

On one occasion, Moore refused to take down a 2,400-kilogram granite monument at the Alabama court with the Ten Commandments written on it and another time ordered state officials to refuse to sanction same-sex marriages in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing them.

Polls still split on whos ahead

The sexual misconduct allegations against Moore are playing a major role for voters in the campaign, but two major polls are split on who is ahead in the contest.

A CBS News/YouGov poll on Sunday said Moore is leading by a 49-to-43 percent margin among likely voters. A day earlier, The Washington Post-Schar School survey showed Jones ahead, 50-47.

The contest has been roiled by accusations from two women who alleged that Moore, when he was a local prosecutor in his early 30s, sexually abused them when they were teenagers, while other women, now also in their 50s, said that Moore pursued them for dates when they were teens.

The CBS poll said Republicans, by a 71-17 percent margin, think the allegations are false and they believe Democrats and the media are behind the accusations. One of the accusers, who was 14 at the time she said Moore accosted her, first told her account in the Post, while a second woman held a news conference. The Posts poll similarly showed Republicans disbelief about the allegations, with fewer than one in six Republican-leaning likely voters believing that Moore made unwanted sexual advances against the girls.

The CBS poll said half of Moores supporters are backing him because they want a senator who would cast votes for conservative causes, rather than because they think he is the best candidate in the election. The Post said its survey showed that a quarter of voters say moral conduct will be the deciding factor if how they decide to vote, with Jones winning such voters over Moore by a 67-30 margin.

The election is for the last three years of the seat once held by Jeff Sessions, who left it to join Trump's Cabinet as attorney general, the country's top law enforcement official.

While Trump is supporting Moore, other key Republicans have called for him to drop out of the race, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan and two former Republican presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and Senator John McCain.

Some Republicans say that Moore, if he wins and is seated in the Senate, should then be immediately expelled because of the sexual misconduct allegations. McConnell on Sunday said it is up to Alabama voters to decide the election and that should Moore win, it would be up to the Senate Ethics Committee to consider the womens accusations.
The White House's chief lawyer told President Donald Trump in January he believed then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled the Federal Bureau of Investigation and lied to Vice President Mike Pence and should be fired, a source familiar with the matter said Monday, reported CNN.



White House counsel Donald McGahn, however, according to the source, did not tell the President that Flynn had violated the law in his FBI interview or was under criminal investigation, CNN reported.



Trumps personal lawyer, John Dowd, said Sunday that the president knew in late January that Flynn had probably given FBI agents the same inaccurate account he provided to the vice president about a call with the Russian ambassador, according to the Washington Post.



Sally Yates, who was acting attorney general, has testified before Congress that she declined to answer when McGahn asked her how Flynn did in his FBI interview, adding she informed told him that the national security advisors conduct was problematic in itself and the lawyer could visit the Justice Department to read for himself the underlying information.

In Congressional testimony, James Comey has stated Trump asked him to go easy on Flynn before the president fired Comey as director of the FBI, the lead domestic intelligence and law enforcement agency in the United States.

If the reporting is true, and if Comey's testimony about what occurred at the February 14th meeting is credible, the President's actions meet the plain definition of obstruction of justice, according to attorney Bradley Moss, who is deputy executive director of the James Madison Project, which promotes government accountability. Such behavior could destroy his presidency.



Moss tells VOA he expects Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the probe into alleged ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia, will likely ultimately conclude that any action against the president can only be handled by Congress through impeachment. If the evidence is damning enough, will the Republicans turn on Trump? No one really knows.

But Trump lawyer John Dowd contends a president cannot technically be charged with obstructing justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case, according to the Axios online news site.

Former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz agrees. You cannot charge a president with obstruction of justice for exercising his constitutional power to fire Comey and his constitutional authority to tell the Justice Department who to investigate and who not to investigate, Dershowitz said in comments to Fox News.

Trump again expressed sympathy on Monday for Flynn, saying the former Defense Intelligence Agency director had been treated unfairly by investigators looking into Russias influence on the 2016 presidential election.



I feel badly for General Flynn. I feel very badly," Trump told reporters. "Hes led a very strong life. And I feel very badly.



Flynn, last Friday, entered a guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador  a conversation that occurred weeks before Trumps inauguration.



The president compared Flynns lies with comments made by his presidential rival Hillary Clinton when asked by federal investigators about her emails.

Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI. Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and they destroyed his life. I think its a shame," Trump said Monday as he departed the White House on a trip to Utah.

The president noted Clinton was not under oath when she spoke to the FBI, while Flynn was.

Comey testified in July before the House Oversight Committee that "We have no basis to conclude she lied to agents investigating her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

Trumps comments come as legal experts and investigators are also parsing a tweet that appeared over the weekend on his Twitter account.



Trump tweeted that he "had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

Dowd says he drafted the tweet himself, calling it "my mistake, explaining that he then passed it to White House social media director Dan Scavino, who posted it to the @realdonaldtrump account.



Ned Price, who was a special assistant to President Barack Obama on the National Security Council staff, questioned whether Trumps seemingly incriminating tweet could have been written by someone else. "It seems as implausible as it is convenient to President Trump," Price told VOA.

"The idea that a lawyer would draft that  without any input from or clearance by Trump  doesn't strike me as believable," said Price, a former CIA senior analyst and spokesperson. "Add that to the long list of cover-ups."
A series of tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump about the investigation into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia prompted concerns on Sunday among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham saying Trump could be wading into "peril" by commenting on the probe.

"I would just say this with the president: There's an ongoing criminal investigation," Graham said on the CBS program "Face the Nation." "You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril," he added.

On Sunday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that he never asked former FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, the president's former national security adviser - a statement at odds with an account Comey himself has given.

That tweet followed one on Saturday in which Trump said: "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President (Mike Pence) and the FBI."

Legal experts and some Democratic lawmakers said if Trump knew Flynn lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then pressured Comey not to investigate him, that could bolster a charge of obstruction of justice.

Trump's attorney, John Dowd, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday that he had drafted the Saturday tweet and made a mistake when he composed it.

The mistake was I should have put the lying to the FBI in a separate line referencing his plea, Dowd said. Instead, I put it together and it made all you guys go crazy. A tweet is a shorthand."

Dowd said the first time the president knew for a fact that Flynn lied to the FBI was when he was charged.

Dowd also clouded the issue by saying that then-acting U.S. attorney general Sally Yates informed White House counsel Don McGahn in January that Flynn told FBI agents the same thing he told Pence, and that McGahn reported his conversation with Yates to Trump. He said Yates did not characterize Flynns conduct as a legal violation.



Dowd said it was the first and last time he would craft a tweet for the president.

"Ill take responsibility, he said. Im sorry I misled people.

Yates did not respond to an email seeking comment, and a lawyer for McGahn did not respond to requests for comment.

The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

'Continual tweets'

The series of tweets came after a dramatic turn of events on Friday in which Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations last December with Russia's then-ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak, just weeks before Trump entered the White House.

Flynn also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russia before the president took office.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she believed the indictments in the investigation so far and Trump's "continual tweets" pointed toward an obstruction of justice case.

"I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey. And it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. That's obstruction of justice," Feinstein said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"The president knew [Flynn] had lied to the FBI, which means that when he talked to the FBI director and asked him to effectively drop this case, he knew that Flynn had committed a federal crime," Adam Schiff, senior Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told the ABC program "This Week."

The Russia matter has dogged Trumps first year in office, and this weekend overshadowed his first big legislative win when the Senate approved a tax bill.

Flynn was the first member of Trumps administration to

plead guilty to a crime uncovered by Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and potential collusion by Trump aides.

Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion.

Comey, who had been investigating the Russia allegations, was fired by Trump in May. He told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in June he believed his dismissal was related to the Russia probe, and said Trump asked him to end the investigation of Flynn.

"I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!" Trump said on Twitter on Sunday.

On CBS, Graham criticized Comey, saying he believed the former FBI director made some "very, very wrong" decisions during his tenure. But Graham also said Trump should be careful about his tweets.

"I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I'd watch this," Graham said.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday sharply shrunk the size of two massive wilderness monuments in the western state of Utah, condemning what he has described as a "massive federal land grab" by the government.

They dont care for your land like you do, Trump told a crowd in Salt Lake City, the state capital. He said his action would reduce federal overreach and return the rights to this land to your citizens. Public lands will once again be for public use.

The Republican Trumps order undid edicts signed by two former Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, that created the 526,000-hectare Bears Ears National Monument and the 769,000-hectare Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Trump's order would cut the size of Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand Staircase by half, but must be ratified by Congress. Trump's aim is to open up the monuments to more recreational use and development, including drilling, mining and cattle grazing.

As he left Washington, Trump said, Were going to be doing something that the state of Utah and others have wanted to be done for many, many years. It will be one of the great, really, events in this country for a long time. So important for states rights and so important for the people of Utah."

But Native American and environmental groups immediately vowed to file legal challenges to block Trump's action, saying the designations of the vast lands as monuments need to remain unchanged in order to protect wildlife, sacred sites and centuries-old artifacts.

The president of the Audubon Society, one of the country's oldest conservation groups, calls Trump's move an "unprecedented perversion" and a "national stain on a record that goes back more than 100 years."

David Yarnold also said the Trump ignored the more than 98 percent of the millions of Americans who submitted comments that support keeping protection for the national monuments.

"Reversing a century of conservation foresight to cater to extreme interests leaves everyone poorer," Yarnold said.

The two Utah monuments were among 27 that Trump earlier this year ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review. Utah Republican leaders are among those who had urged Trump to launch the review, saying the orders by Clinton and Obama creating the monuments had locked up too much land in the state from development.

In ordering the review of federal control of lands, Trump said it would eventually end "another egregious abuse of federal power" and "give that power back to the states and to the people where it belongs."

The Utah changes are the first time in a half century that a U.S. president has tried to scale back one of his predecessors' protection of vast lands.

But Zinke has recommended that monuments be pared in at least four other states as well.
For security reasons, Turkey is ratcheting up its threat to intervene militarily against Kurdish forces in Afrin, a Syrian region on Turkeys border.

Analysts say doing so could potentially bring Turkish forces into a confrontation with the United States and Russia, which back the Kurdish fighters, known as the YPG. Ankara considers the YPG militia, which controls Afrin, of being affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which is waging a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.

Afrin is an obsession at this stage with Turkey, says political columnist Semih Idiz of Al Monitor website. Because of its proximity to the Turkish border, and if it remains in the Kurdish hands, it enables the Kurds to have a kind of corridor, which could eventually link with northern Iraq and then have a way to the sea, he added.

Whenever a threat is posed to Turkey from Afrin or another region, we will enter without hesitation. We will clean out the terrorists, warned Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu Wednesday. The warning is backed by the steady buildup of Turkish forces on Afrins Turkish and Syrian borders.

Ankara tightened its grip around Afrin following a deal with Russia and Iran.

The agreement allowed Turkish forces to enter the nearby Syrian Idlib enclave, controlled by rebel forces fighting the Damascus regime as part of an effort to create a de-escalation zone. Idlib borders Afrin, giving the Turkish forces a key strategic advantage.

The movement into Idlib, Turkeys primary aim, is to control Afrin, from the west-southwest, observes Haldun Solmazturk, head of the 21st Century Turkey Institute, an Ankara-based research group. "Turkish military action and deployments have only served to this aim." Many of the Turkish forces deployed in Idlib are massed on hills overlooking Afrin.

Ankara, however, faces major diplomatic obstacles before it can launch any military operation against Afrin.

The Kurds are supported by the U.S. and to some extent Russia, observes columnist Idiz, if you recall when Turkey acted against the Kurds in Afrin. Russia immediately sent in observers, and deployed them between the Kurdish and Turkish forces.

Washingtons backing of the YPG forces has been a major point of contention with NATO ally Turkey.

On the issue of the YPG,Turkey does have a case; at the end of the day this is a security threat for an ally, and the United States at least publicly did not seem to care much about it and at the end of the day that may be really the core matter (of tensions), notes international relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbuls Kadir Has University.

Following a conversation last month between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump, Ankara said Washington was ready to change its policy of arming theYPG. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis suggested Washington will move away from arming Syrian Kurdish fighters as part of a wider shift from a military-led to a diplomatic-led approach in Syria.

Ankara opposes the U.S. arming the YPG, which bore the brunt of the fighting to clear Islamic State forces from their self-proclaimed capital in Raqqa, Syria.

Despite the U.S. comments, Erdogan has continued his attacks on Washington. In using an Arabic term to describe Islamic State, Erdogan Sunday told supporters, Whoever established Daesh and armed them, and wreaked carnage in the country (Syria), is now arming and controlling and guiding YPG. The comments were widely interpreted as an indirect reference to the U.S.

Analysts suggest Ankara is pressuring Washington in order to gain a freer hand against the YPG; but, even if such pressure succeeds, Moscow remains.

I dont really see Russians at least at this juncture letting the Turks enter Afrin and breaking the rule of the YPG there, said international relations expert Ozel. Russian forces continue to be deployed in the Afrin region. Both Washington and Moscow are continuing to court the Syrian Kurdish forces, which control around a quarter of Syrian territory.

Questions also remain over whether the Turkish military is capable of launching an offensive into Afrin.

AKP is very open about invading Afrin, said political consultant Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. But the Kurdish canton, which is heavily fortified, I am sure, is going to be valiantly protected, which could turn into a bloodbath, he said.

Much of Afrin is mountainous and the YPG forces have had many years to build up fortifications.

Its not feasible at all; there is no legal ground, there is no political ground, says Solmazturk, who was a former general in counterinsurgency operations. Militarily, I believe the Turkish army is currently overstretched to intervene militarily into Afrin; the Turkish army is already involved in Iraq, in Syria, in two to three places in Syria.

Ankara maintains its forces are more than capable of intervening in Afrin. Analysts say the rhetoric may be a way for the ruling AK Party to gain votes as elections are due in two years.
The United Nations says it regrets the Trump administrations decision to pull out of the Global Compact on Migration, but that there is still time for the United States to re-engage in the process.



This should not disrupt the clear, unanimous outcome of the New York Declaration for such a global compact  which will be non-legally binding, grounded in international cooperation and respectful of national interests, U.N. Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday.



U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement that the compact is not consistent with American immigration policies.



"While we will continue to engage on a number of fronts at the United Nations, in this case, we simply cannot in good faith support a process that could undermine the sovereign right of the United States to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders," Tillerson said.



He said the United States supports international cooperation on migration issues, but it is the primary responsibility of sovereign states to help ensure that migration is safe, orderly, and legal."

Compact



The New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants was adopted on the margins of the U.N. General Assemblys annual leaders gathering in September 2016. It is the beginning of a process to draft a multilateral agreement that covers all aspects of safe, orderly and regular migration.



The U.S. announcement came just before the start Monday of a global conference on migration in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The meeting participants will discuss their recommendations and shape their vision for the global compact.

A State Department spokesperson on Tuesday clarified the U.S. has only decided to end its participation in the U.N. process to develop a Global Compact on Migration and that "the Global Compact on Refugees is a separate process with separate intended outcomes."



U.N. Special Representative for International Migration Louise Arbour spoke with VOA from Mexico on the U.S. decision.



I think it is unfortunate not to have the benefit of the experience  the very long, positive experience of the United States with migration -- but the process very much has its own momentum and is moving forward very nicely, she said.

Arbour said the U.S. delegation had engaged in preliminary topical discussions for the past six months and gave her no advance warning that it would withdraw from the process.



The U.N. estimates that there are about 244 million migrants in the world  or just over three percent of the worlds population. The U.N. considers a migrant to be anyone who changes their country, regardless of the reason.



Arbour says migration is an overwhelmingly positive story that is often misunderstood.She notes migrants contribute billions of dollars to the economies of their home countries.



Its a huge tool of development and a great contribution to every country thats been hosting migrants in history," she said.



Divided administration



The U.S. mission to the U.N. said in a statement Saturday that the declaration contains numerous provisions that are inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies and the Trump Administrations immigration principles.



Foreign Policy magazine reported that President Donald Trumps decision to pull out of the negotiations highlighted the enduring influence of Stephen Miller, the 32-year-old senior White House policy advisor who has championed the Trump administrations efforts to sharply restrict immigration to the United States.



The magazine said White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions strongly backed a pullout," while U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley opposed it.



Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, reportedly took the position that Washington could influence the global negotiations on migration if it participated in the Mexico meeting, but she was ultimately overruled by the president.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi says he told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of the "dangerous consequences" that would follow if the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"Such a decision would trigger anger across Arab Muslim worlds, fuel tension and jeopardize peace efforts," Safadi said on Twitter.

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to make an announcement this week concerning his administration's policy on Jerusalem.

Trump's son-in-law and senior aide Jared Kushner said at an event Sunday the president had not yet made up his mind.

"He's still looking at a lot of different facts," Kushner said.

U.S. officials said last week that Trump was expected to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, but put off deciding to move the U.S. embassy to there from its current location in Tel Aviv.

WATCH: Jared Kushner on Trump's decision

Israel seized control of Jerusalem in the Six Day War in 1967, and later annexed east Jerusalem -- a move never recognized by the world community. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, while Israel contends the entire city is its undivided capital.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned Sunday that either moving the embassy or the recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital would be a threat to the Middle East peace process.

An Abbas advisor said he spent much of Sunday calling several world leaders to "explain the dangers of any decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem or recognize (Jerusalem) as Israel's capital."

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the U.S. is "playing with fire."

Hamas has called for a new intifada -- an uprising -- if the embassy is moved.

A law enacted under former President Bill Clinton calls for the U.S. Embassy to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem unless the current president signs a waiver every six months to block the move in the name of national security. Every president has signed the waiver since the law was created in 1995, including Trump.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday gained more powers over the OPEC member's oil contracts, as a deepening purge looks set to strengthen the leftist leader's control of the key energy sector amid a debilitating recession.

A months-long crackdown on alleged graft in Venezuela's oil industry has led to the arrest of some 65 former executives, including two prominent officials who used to lead both the oil ministry and state oil company PDVSA.

Corruption has long plagued Venezuela, home to the world's biggest crude reserves, but the socialist government usually said "smear campaigns" were behind accusations of widespread graft.

Maduro has recently changed his tack, blaming "thieves" and "traitors" for the country's imploding economy.

PDVSA's new boss, former housing minister Major General Manuel Quevedo, said on Sunday that all oil service contracts and executive positions would be reviewed by Maduro as of Monday.

"There aren't going to be any more contracts backed by the board to keep pillaging, as has happened in some instances," said Quevedo during a visit to the ailing Paraguana Refining Center.

Further details were not immediately available. PDVSA did not respond to a request for information.

Maduro said former energy minister Ali Rodriguez had been appointed honorary president of PDVSA and had met with Quevedo for six hours over the weekend.

Art, wine, gold chess set

The most recent high-profile sweep saw Diego Salazar, a relative of former oil czar Rafael Ramirez, detained on Friday on charges of helping launder some around 1.35 billion euros to Andorra.

During his Sunday television program, Maduro flashed a painting by Venezuelan painter Armando Reveron and pictures of luxury goods, including bottles from an alleged 300,000-euro wine cellar and a gold chess set, he said belonged to Salazar.

"Thieves!" said Maduro, banging his fist on the table, during the near five-hour broadcast. "All your assets must be expropriated," he added, stressing that the money should go to state coffers.

Reuters was not able to confirm Maduro's accusations or contact a representative for Salazar.

His detention has spurred speculation that authorities are after Ramirez, who was the powerful head of PDVSA and the oil ministry for a decade before Maduro demoted him as an envoy to the United Nations in 2014.

A protracted rivalry between Maduro and Ramirez has increased in recent weeks, insiders say, especially after Ramirez wrote online opinion articles criticizing Maduro's handling of Venezuela's economy.

Maduro fired Ramirez last week and summoned him back to Caracas, according to people familiar with the clash.

When asked by Reuters on Whatsapp whether Ramirez was being investigated, chief state prosecutor Tarek Saab on Sunday replied there were "no exceptions" in the investigation.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says his government will launch a cryptocurrency, or digital currency, to circumvent what he called a financial "blockade'' by the U.S. government.

The new currency will be called the "petro," the leftist leader said in his TV address Sunday. It will be backed by the socialist-run OPEC nation's oil, gold and mineral reserves.

That will allow Venezuela to advance toward new forms of international financing for its economic and social development, Maduro said.

"Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency  the petro-currency, the petro  to advance in monetary sovereignty, to make its financial transactions, to overcome the financial blockade," he explained. "This will allow us to move toward new forms of international financing for the economic and social development of the country. And it will be done with a cryptocurrency issue backed by reserves of Venezuelan riches of gold, oil, gas and diamonds."

Maduro did not give any details what the new currency's value will be, how it will work or when it will be launched.

The government also announced the creation of a "blockchain observatory" software platform for buying and selling virtual currency.

Opposition leaders objected to Maduros announcement, saying the currency would need congressional approval. Some questioned whether the digital currency would even be introduced in the midst of turmoil.

Venezuela's traditional currency, the bolivar, has significantly declined in recent weeks as U.S. sanctions make it harder for the country to stay current on its foreign debt.
Vietnams 10-year sentence for a blogger who questioned her governments response to a toxic chemical flap joins a pack of actions that point to growing official impatience with online criticism of graft and perceived inefficiency.

A Vietnamese appellate court Thursday upheld the sentence for blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who wrote under the name Mother Mushroom." Quynh had written 18 Facebook posts that constituted propagandizing against the state, the lower court found during a one-day trial in June.

"I think the sentence serves as intimidation for other bloggers, said Trung Nguyen, international relations dean at Ho Chi Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities. I think that the government wants to scare other bloggers. If they continue blogging against the government, they have to pay a very heavy price.

A steady stream of arrests since at least 2016 shows the state's sensitivity to public perceptions of graft and government inefficiency, experts say. But some say the internet criticism may eventually prod officials to run a cleaner government.

Crackdown without censorship

Vietnam lacks an internet censorship effort on Chinas scale, though nations have one-party, Communist rule. Unlike China, the Southeast Asian country neither filters websites nor blocks foreign social media networks such as Facebook.

But Vietnamese authorities watch online content for posts that conduct propaganda against the state in violation of the penal code.

In June the Ministry of Public Security proposed a 'Law on Cybersecurity' to give it more power over prohibited content and anti-government activities.

Owners of the countrys ever-popular internet cafes were already required to install monitoring software and make customers show ID for checks by inspectors.

"Vietnam has been taking determined steps, passing a cyber-law before the National Assembly, (and) they brought in draconian restrictions on coffee shops having to monitor people, said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialized emeritus professor at The University of New South Wales in Australia. So its always tightening up.

Bloggers smelled something fishy

Corruption and perception of government inefficiency have become widespread concerns among common Vietnamese, according to a business consultant in Ho Chi Minh City. Land contracts and procurement deals as well as routine traffic stops invite graft.

Transparency International, a nonprofit that tracks graft worldwide, ranked Vietnam at 113th worst of 176 countries and regions evaluated last year for perceptions of corruption.

Quynh fell into a net of high-profile bloggers who were covering perceptions that the state didn't handle a massive toxic chemical discharge well enough last year, scholars believe.

About 80 tons of fish carcasses washed up in four central coast provinces in April 2016, paralyzing the fishing industry. Taiwanese-owned Formosa Ha Tin Steel accepted responsibility in June for discharging toxic industrial waste into the sea. It agreed to pay $500 million for cleanup.

At least 16 other Vietnamese bloggers and pro-democracy activists had been arrested this year as of November, Thayer said.

Some quibbled online with how long it took to resolve the toxic discharge problem and the level of compensation offered people who depended on fishing in the contaminated area.

Last year, Vietnamese authorities arrested 21 internet commentators, Thayer said. Human Rights Watch also logged 36 incidents from January 2015 to April this year of unidentified men in civilian clothes beating rights campaigners and bloggers.

The risk of arrest is growing for prominent dissenters to government policy, Nguyen said.

Also last week, a court sentenced 22-year-old blogger and journalist Nguyen Van Hoa to seven years in prison and three years of house arrest on charges he had disseminated propaganda against the state.

Mother Mushroom case

Quynh, who has her own blog and writes for websites run by overseas Vietnamese, often covers human rights issues with an emphasis on the country's high number of deaths in police custody, according to the New York-based advocacy group Committee to Protect Journalists.

The 38-year-old activist has also written about land confiscation and freedom of expression, the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch said in a statement Thursday. She had been put under house arrest previously, the group said.

Quynh said during the trial she was innocent.

Mandate to change?

Rather than intensifying surveillance of blogs and social media, Vietnam shows signs of tolerating mild dissent, said Dustin Daugherty, senior associate in business intelligence with the consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates in Ho Chi Minh City.

Local governments may let criticism pass if its true, constructive and not too political, he added. Eventually officials might act by cleaning up graft, he said. It would be tough to build up internet policing as extensive as Chinas, he said.

"They can try to police Facebook and arrest people for every small thing, but thats just not practical, Daugherty said. I think (pressure to end corruption) will prompt them in order to stay in the peoples good graces, to be seen as doing a good job to keep morale high.
It was a bitter end for the former president who had ruled the north of Yemen and then a united north and south for nearly 34 years. His death came at the hand of Houthi militiamen who were pursuing him and a number of close aides as they attempted to flee fighting inside the capital Sanaa. Amateur video released by Houthi media show the former president with an apparent gunshot wound to the head, being carried off in a blanket.



Members of his political party claimed Saleh had been killed at point-blank range, after his three-vehicle convoy was stopped by Houthi militiamen. One of his sons was also reportedly shot and taken captive by the Houthis.



Arab media claimed Iranian drones detected the former president's motorcade leaving Sanaa and alerted the Houthis, who said Saleh was fleeing to territory under control of the Saudi-led coalition. He had broken with the pro-Iranian militia group on Saturday by offering to negotiate with the coalition.

In a televised speech Monday, Houthi leader Abdel Malek al Houthi declared victory against Saleh.



He said the Houthis have put a stop to a massive plot, which represented a serious threat to the country and to its stability and security, as well as the unity of its people, by handing it over to its enemies, after they had failed to capture it in nearly three years of battle.



Houthi went on to blast Saleh for betraying the loyalty of those he had worked with and claimed the ordinary people of the capital could not understand how he had changed sides after three years of denouncing the Saudi-led coalition.



The rebel leader claimed many ordinary Yemenis were shocked by (Saleh's) calls for strife, combat, upsetting peace and security, and he says he tried in a fraternal and peaceful way to avoid the current conflict by talking (with Saleh).

As president of Yemen, Saleh had fought the Houthis in five conflicts between 2005 and 2012, before allying with them in 2014 after the Saudi-led coalition launched a military operation to restore the internationally-recognized president, Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi, after the Houthis had deposed and arrested him.



Former U.S. Diplomat David Mack, now with the Middle East Institute, told VOA Saleh was "one of the smartest political operatives in the Arab world," and the former president believed he had been unjustly driven from office by countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, in accord with the United States.



Mack told VOA, before news of Mr. Saleh's death, the former president "wanted to have one chance to restore his reputation, which has been terribly, terribly damaged during the past decade.



"He has gone from having the reputation of being this supremely capable political operator within Yemen, to being somebody who was just out for personal power and was prepared to see tremendous suffering of the Yemeni people in the process," Mack said.



The whereabouts of Saleh's son, and political heir, Tareq, who was leading the fight against the Houthis in the capital at the head of the Presidential Guard regiment remain unclear. The former president's supporters have suffered serious military setbacks during the past 48 hours.
Zimbabwe's new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has sworn in his Cabinet. He immediately called for unity as his government attends to the broken economy.

It is the first time in Zimbabwes 37-year history the oath is not being led by Robert Mugabe.

The 75-year-old Mnangagwa answered some questions following the ceremony.

The new Cabinet is just to finish the term of the former president [Robert Mugabe] which is a period of six to seven months. It has been hectic and I believe that my team will withstand the challenge. I want them [Zimbabweans] united, we must grow our economy, he said.

Mnangagwa took power last month in a military-led coup after the 93-year-old Mugabe fired him as vice president.

The new president has not indicated if he will seek a fresh term in elections expected by middle of next year.

A few meters from the State House, street vendor Vengai Muhwahwa commented about the new Cabinet.

He said he hopes the government addresses the problem of cash shortages at banks instead of relying on plastic money, and he said it must create jobs. He said street vendors want to be chased by employers so that we get off the streets.

Next to him is another street vendor, Silas Mawera.

He said the composition of the new Cabinet is OK, and Zimbaweans are expecting it to quickly address the economy so vendors do not have to remain in the streets.

Besides attending to the economy, Zimbabwes new president must unite his own ZANU-PF party, which was divided for years over who should succeed Mugabe.

Many party members backed Mnangagwa, but others supported Mugabe's wife Grace. The Mugabes have been granted immunity from prosecution and remain in Zimbabwe, living as private citizens.
In his two years in office, President John Magufuli has brought many changes to Tanzania, though critics say not all of them are for the better.

Magufuli has been criticized for being arrogant and autocratic when dealing with opponents, either perceived or real.

In this speech, the Tanzanian president warned those who looted public money.

They should be careful. I can decide in two or three days to change the currency, he said.

During five years as minister of works, Magufuli earned his nickname, the Bulldozer, for his habit of pushing aside any obstacle in order to get what he wants.

As president, he often takes a similar approach. In April, he fired more than 9,000 government workers over fake education certificates.

His no-nonsense ways can get results. For instance, the government is building a railway, roads, and pipelines to connect the country to neighboring Uganda.

But his methods leave activists and the opposition concerned.



Opposition lawmaker Zitto Kabwe said Magufuli's approach is shortsighted.

We have a president who hates multiparty democracy. He might be developmental, he would like to see the country going forward, but he hates democracy, and without democracy, development is not sustainable, because without democracy the institutions of accountability, the inclusive institutions that will enable the country to move forward will not develop, said Kabwe.

Human rights groups have accused the government of using repressive legislation to muzzle the media and civil society.



The laws have been used against Maxence Melo, the co-founder of Jamii Forums, a whistle-blowing website.

The website was dedicated to exposing corruption in Tanzania. But Melo was accused of obstructing an investigation and failing to register the website with the state.



Melo said the authorities need to stop seeing critics as enemies.

You need the media to fight corruption. Whatever fight he [Magufuli] is trying to fight, the anti-corruption kind of drive, it is the same thing as we the media revealed. We are the ones who made sure this thing is getting to the parliament, said Melo.

Political analyst Azaveri Luwaitama said the ruling CCM party is afraid of losing power, after 56 years of rule.

The reality on the ground between 2010 and 2015 was that this party had lost its legitimate appeal to being inclusive. So they organized an election and made sure that they won, but there is uncertainty. So they are trying to crush the opposition so that they can sort out things within themselves, said Luwaitama.

In the 2015 election, President Magufuli received 58 percent of the vote, a big drop from previous elections in which 80 percent of Tanzanians voted for the CCM party.
African Union Ambassador to the United States, Dr. Arikana Chihombori Quao, says there was no coup in Zimbabwe as the military used a provision of the nations constitution to avert a political crisis.

Dr. Chihombori Quao, who made these remarks at a townhall meeting titled Zimbabwe: The Way Forward convened by VOA Studio 7 in Washington DC last Thursday, said the Zimbabwe Defence Forces did not violate the constitution when they forced the removal of former President Robert Mugabe.

They acted within the constitution to do that. So, there was no coup but there was a provision within the constitution for the army to do that because of the conditions on the ground at that time and they moved in swiftly according to the constitution and address the issue, she said.

Dr. Chihombori Quao stressed that the Africa Union is proud of Zimbabweans, who ensured that there was peace while power was being transferred from Mugabe to current president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who fled to South Africa after he was sacked by the then president for alleged disloyalty.

We are so glad that Zimbabwe has set an example for Africa how we dont kill each other. There was no looting, there was no killing. It was a peaceful transition and its a good day, its a new day in Zimbabwe  From the African Union side we are very proud and pleased that Africa in general and Zimbabwe is leading the way  that we have matured as communities from a political point of view. So, yes Zimbabwe is a success story and I reiterate there was no coup.

Her views were echoed by Zanu PF activist, Dr. Frenk Guni, who said his party is pleased that President Mnangagwa is the new leader of the party following serious internal divisions pitting the so-called Generation 40, which wanted former First Lady Grace Mugabe to succeed her husband and another one said to be led by the current president.

Dr. Guni, who was a panelist together with Dr. Chihombori Quao, Den Moyo of the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai and Rutendo Mudzamiri of Women to Watch Network, said the military acted diligently in averting a national crisis.

There were some people who were supporting Grace Mugabe and when we realized that the people in the G40 led by Dr. Grace Mugabe were diverting from the fundamental principles of our party we took corrective measures and that has been addressed. Its going to be a thing of the past. We are democratizing our party (and) even people who were in the G40 they are being welcomed back into the party provided they are willing to tow the party line.

Some G40 members, including former Finance Minister Ignatius Chombo, Zanu PF Youth League secretary Kudzanyi Chipanga and several others are appearing in court facing various charges ranging from corruption to undermining the authority of General Constantino Chiwenga, who masterminded the military intervention.

Others like former Higher Education Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo and former Local Government Minister Saviour Kasukuwere, who are said to be architects of the G40 succession plan, are in exile.

The Zimbabwe Defence Force cited Section 211 of the countrys constitution for interfering in the political processes of the ruling Zanu PF party, which it claimed were likely to spark public discontent.

Section 211 stipulates that the function of the Defence Forces is to protect Zimbabwe, its people, its national security and interests and its territorial integrity and to uphold this Constitution.

You can see the change as it happening right now. The way forward for Zimbabwe from a Zanu PF perspective is number one economic recovery, addressing our economic fundamentals to ensure that we put in place sound economic policies that attract investment and ensuring that things like property rights are protected and investors are welcome in Zimbabwe to do business  Improve the issue of doing business with Zimbabwe.

The second thing that the new government and the new Zanu PF is going to do is to ensure that there is affordable access to health care for all Zimbabweans. We are no longer going to see a situation where Zimbabweans have to go to board planes and cross borders to look for health care.

But Moyo immediately shot back saying Zanu PF is always fond of making such statements, which were not beneficial to Zimbabweans.

We have held these conferences over and over for a very long time and every time the Zanu PF people come here and say we will do this, we will do that and then drink tea and walk away and nothing happens, its always been the same. When are we going as Zimbabwean as a people going to accept that this is not working. We cannot continue doing the same thing all the time over and over and expect a different result. Einstein called that insanity.

Mudzamiri chided both MDC-T and Zanu PF for not fully engaging youth in Zimbabwe saying young people want to participate in political processes without coercion.

We need to know the power of our voice and we need to be willing not to be all talk but to be open to what MDC has to offer, to what Zanu PF has to offer and take everything with a pinch of salt  At least take everything with an open mind so that we are not just going to say yes to everything because we have seen and attended Africa Union meetings, we have seen what SADC (Southern African Development Community) can do, we have seen what the United Nations can do but as young people are we willing to be that change that we want to see and not take everything at face value because its not going to be enough for us to take what unfortunately I see as a sided view where African Union is concerned. Its true that there have more factual things Arikana is saying but its also not true to push propaganda because for so many years that what we have received as young people.

She said young people should be respected if Zimbabwe, other nations and the African Union have to work hand in hand with them.

I am saying we are tired, we are frustrated, we are angry and we dont want to be taking that (propaganda)  All talk no action, everything good on paper  As young people we just need a progressive administration whether its Grace Mugabe, President Mnangagwa, whether its Zanu PF, whether its MDC or anybody. We just need progressive administrations. Why do I say so? We need respect where rule of law is concerned, we need respect where human rights are concerned, we need free and fair elections, we need to make sure there is freedom of the press. Our platform as young people is social media. Are we having that freedom?

Several people took turns at the townhall meeting to question the panel with some expressing reservations over the current government led by Mnangagwa, saying it looks like an appendage of the Mugabe regime, which has been blamed for ruining a once vibrant economy.

Mugabe always blamed the West for the southern nations economic downturn claiming that sanctions imposed on him and his inner circle were to blame for the serious social, economic and political problems in Zimbabwe.
14 Dec. The American University of Rome brings the Italian and American Playwrights Project (IAPP) to Rome thanks to a partnership with Umanism and 369 Gradi.

The project fosters an exchange between contemporary Italian and American playwrights by bringing together authors, producers and audiences, and supporting theatrical performances to cultivate an open dialogue between artists in Italy and the US.
A man walks by a poster depicting a version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter at the Berlin Security Conference in Germany last month. Experts call Lockheed Martins combat aircraft a flying computer, saying it is as much a sensor in the skies as it is a fighter jet. (John MacDougall/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

The Pentagon is increasingly focused on the notion that the might of U.S. forces will be measured as much by the advancement of their algorithms as by the ammunition in their arsenals. And so as it seeks to develop the technologies of the next war amid a technological arms race with China, the Defense Department has steadily increased spending in three key areas: artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, according to a recent report.

Investment in those areas increased to $7.4 billion last year, up from $5.6 billion five years ago, according to Govini, a data science and analytics firm, and it appears likely to grow as the armed services look to transform how they train, plan and fight.

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence  and the vastly improved autonomous systems and operations they will enable  are pointing toward new and more novel warfighting applications involving human-machine collaboration and combat teaming, Robert Work, the former deputy secretary of defense, wrote in an introduction to the report. These new applications will be the primary drivers of an emerging military-technical revolution.

The United States can either lead the coming revolution, or fall victim to it, he added.

In an interview, Work, who serves on Govinis board, said the advancements in technology are transforming war just as the advent of the rifle, telegraph and railroad did generations ago. Much of the current work is being driven by companies with large presences in the Washington area, including Leidos, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, CACI and SAIC, according to the report.

Service members are using virtual reality to simulate battle conditions in training. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been investing in better computing power designed to handle vast amounts of data, including quantum computing and whats known as neuromorphic engineering, helping develop incredibly complex computing systems designed to mimic biological systems.

There are signs that AI and human-machine collaboration are already making their way into American weaponry and its intelligence apparatus. The Pentagon is working toward using drones as the wingmen of fighter jets and ships, which can probe into enemy territory on their own. The Marine Corps has been testing cargo helicopters that can fly autonomously and that would allow Marines, using a tablet, to easily request supplies even to austere or dangerous environments, according to the Office of Naval Research.

The stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, with 8 million lines of code, is called a flying computer that is as much a sensor in the skies as it is a fighter jet, officials say. As an example, officials point to how F-35s communicate with one another on their own. If one jet in a sortie detects an enemy fighter on its radar that is out of the range of the other F-35s along with it, that information is automatically relayed to the other jets.

Another example is Project Maven, a computing system being designed to sift through the massive troves of data and video captured by surveillance and then alert human analysts of patterns or when there is abnormal or suspicious activity.

The technology in robotics is fast improving, as well. In 2015, when DARPA sponsored a challenge to test how robots could navigate certain obstacles, many of the semiautonomous machines tumbled and fell, crashing in sometimes comical fashion. But last month, Boston Dynamics released a stunning video that showed a humanoid robot doing a back flip off a raised platform and landing on its feet.

But despite those advancements, the Pentagon and others are worried that the United States is not moving fast enough.

The bad news is our competitors arent standing still, Work said.

China in particular has been investing heavily in AI, defense analysts say.

China intends to seize the initiative to become the premier global AI innovation center by 2030, potentially surpassing the United States in the process, according to a recent report by the Center for a New American Security.

That should serve as a call-to-arms "Sputnik moment," Work said. "I personally believe that a national challenge like this has to be met with a national response," he said.

For the past several years, the Pentagon has been wooing Silicon Valley firms that have driven much of the innovation, but have traditionally been loath to work within the Pentagons plodding and cumbersome bureaucracy.

In September, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan wrote in a memo that he was directing aggressive steps to establish a culture of experimentation, adaptation and risk-taking to ensure we are employing emerging technologies to meet our warfighters needs and to increase speed and agility technology development and procurement.

He also signed a directive to accelerate the development of cloud computing for the Pentagon, which he said is critical to maintaining our militarys technological advantage.
The 2018 Audi SQ5 is a good buy if you have $65,800 to buy a fully optioned model without discounts, Warren Brown writes. (Audi)

It is not enough to tell consumers theyve been waiting for a product that is all new from a vehicle manufacturer once considered exotic in the U.S. market, or waiting because it is a new model in a vehicle segment long crowded with many of its type, or waiting because, yes, it is stunning in outside appearance but easily bested by the interiors of competitively priced and less expensive models.

I am writing partly about the 2018 Alfa Romeo Stelvio SUV, visited in this space on Aug. 6 but resident of an uncomfortable share of my mind since then.

The problem is marketing, the attempt to attract would-be buyers of luxury compact SUVs. This is a fierce battle  fought by Cadillac, Lincoln. Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Jeep, Audi, Alfa Romeo and many more, including entrees from Infiniti, Lexus and Hyundai.

The Alfa Romeo Stelvio is the latest to arrive. It is not the best one in either price or manufacturing quality. It is, overall, a good vehicle, interesting  a new product of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which owns the brand.

The problem is that it is arrayed against models such as the 2018 Audi SQ5 3.0 T Quattro SUV.

Heres the thing: I had long forgotten about the Stelvio, largely thanks to a few preproduction problems experienced on a sampled 2018 model. Then, I saw the TV commercials. To wit: Youve been waiting for this one . . .

No, I havent! I shouted back at the TV. The competition among compact SUV models is so intense and varied, so marked by technological additions and changes, that I havent been waiting for anything in that rapidly changing arena, let alone for anything priced at $48,900 (the base price for the Stelvio Ti Sport all-wheel-drive sport-utility model).

No one needs to spend nearly $49,000 to get a top-notch SUV. Nor must anyone part with nearly $66,000 for something as nice as this weeks 2018 Audi SQ5 3.0 T Quattro SUV. You spend that kind of money because you want to, because you are trying to buy something more than what is being offered in the given product.

Good luck with that. You are shopping for what car dealers and manufacturers call blue sky. You might have been waiting for something actually provided long ago by one of the Alfa Romeo rivals, probably at a more reasonable price or at a higher cost that makes you feel the wait was justified because of where you are in your mind at the time of purchase.

The truth is more prosaic. Most modern Jeep, Hyundai sport or Mercedes-Benz sport-utility vehicles are equipped with advanced electronic safety measures and other items. Most have done away with what we once called dashboards and instrument panels and replaced them with touch screens. South Korean automobile manufacturers are using technology to reduce prices and increase product value. Stalwarts, such as Audi, rapidly are improving already superior products, such as the 2018 SQ5 3.0 T Quattro.

Look at it  much revised for 2018, with a new turbocharged gasoline engine (3.0-liter, 354 horsepower, 369 pound-feet of torque). Yes, you still drive it, but, like most modern rivals, it actually drives and thinks for you: automatic stop-go to conserve fuel; blind-spot warning; rear cross-traffic alert; forward-collision mitigation and other items to reduce the risk of crashes and injury or death.

The vehicle badge really doesnt matter. The equipment and build quality does. The 2018 Audi SQ 5 has it all.


I dont care about ideology, said Williams, a confidant of Ben Carson and Clarence Thomas. I just like to surround myself with the best. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

Armstrong Williams sat in his Capitol Hill office with a pistol on his hip and a plan for buying Washington City Paper on his desk.

Why hed need either is anybodys guess. But Williams has always been a bit of an enigma.

Over the years, his roles have included: protege of former segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond; Clarence Thomass most vocal defender; a conservative black pundit whom many called a rising star, while he himself preferred Meteor Man; a scandal-plagued newspaper columnist; the subject of sexual harassment lawsuits; a successful television station owner; and, recently, Ben Carsons most trusted adviser and business manager.

And yet, if he decides to go through with purchasing City Paper  a once-thriving, now-struggling alternative weekly with a history of progressive politics and avant-garde arts coverage  it might just be Williamss unlikeliest move yet. Not that he sees it that way.

Watch this, Williams said grabbing the landline. Nancie, what percentage of people disagree with me here?

100 percent, Nancie Dorsey, Williamss chief of staff, said on the other end, laughing through the speaker. Theyre liberal.

You see? Williams said. I dont care about ideology. I just like to surround myself with the best.

Which is why, he claims, he wants to own City Paper  it was once, he says, the best  and why he says he has no intention of inflicting his worldview upon its pages.

You cant have an agenda, he said. Youll just lose your audience.

Williams is a small man with endless energy. His head is always freshly shaved, he keeps trim with early morning visits to the gym, and when hes not glowering at a political opponent hes flashing a broad, toothy grin. He speaks without a filter  something that made him a go-to for reporters for much of the 2016 campaign  which gives the impression that he always means what he says. Even if thats not always the case.

He volunteers that he's 55, though public records suggest he is 58. "Either one works," Williams says graciously, noting that at various times in his life it has been convenient to appear older or younger than he actually is. (Carson once said of his close friend that he's "not necessarily the epitome of truth . . . He doesn't speak all things that are correct.")



Williams at his desk in 2005, amid the controversy over his Department of Education payments. (Lucian Perkins/The Washington Post)

And so, despite his professed desire to leave the alt-weekly mostly alone, news of Williams's interest  first reported by Mother Jones  has rattled City Paper employees past and present. A number of current staffers have discussed the possibility of quitting.

Some particular causes for concern: Williams was once called out for taking consultancy payments from the George W. Bush Department of Education while writing editorials promoting its policies. In recent years he has battled with the press on behalf of Carson's presidential campaign, been accused of sexual misconduct by a young man, and watched election returns with President Trump.

It seems to me like it would be a real culture clash, says Michael Schaffer, a former City Paper editor who is now the editor of Washingtonian magazine. The core of the City Papers identity has always been an in-your-face opposition and desire to stick it to the powerful. Does anyone know why he wants to buy it anyway?

A quick tour through Williamss office reveals a man who tends to collect without rhyme or reason. Hes got a life-size cutout of Barack Obama and one of John McCain wearing a Draft Ben Carson T-shirt. Theres what appears to be a perpetual-motion toy spinning on his back wall, a bejeweled knife hanging by his door, and a large model of a Coast Guard ship patrolling his bookshelf. And the gun he has holstered?

Its a Remington, he said. One of the best guns you can own. Like I said, I always want the best.

And now Williams has City Papers scattered across his desk as he decides to pull the trigger on yet another collectors item.

And if he does? Will D.C.'s alternative paper go the way of LA Weekly, which was bought last month by a group of investors who then slashed the staff to the nub? Will it become a vehicle for his ideological views, as some press critics worry might happen to the newly sold Time magazine if the Koch brothers increase their minority owner status?

My goal, Williams said in his interview with The Post, is to make the City Paper so good people will be saying, Are you sure Armstrong Williams is the owner of this paper? That would be a success.



William with his mentor and former boss, the late Sen. Strom Thurmond R-S.C.), at the Florida Avenue Grill, in 1996. (Annie Groer/The Washington Post)

It took a major sexual harassment scandal  someone else's  to put Armstrong Williams on the map.

After growing up on a family farm, he went to South Carolina State University and then climbed the ranks with help from a network of prominent conservatives  a job with Thurmond, then one at the USDA secured with the help of GOP strategist Lee Atwater, and finally his position under Clarence Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

It was during Thomass contentious Supreme Court nomination process in 1991 that Williams made a name for himself, working both publicly and behind the scenes to defend his friend against Anita Hills claims that he sexually harassed her in the workplace. (Williams infamously said of her, to the Wall Street Journal, Sister has emotional problems.)

To this day, Williams maintains his friend did nothing wrong. Talk of pubic hair or Long Dong Silver may well have happened, but as he sees it, that kind of banter can arise between two consenting adults.

Thats, he said, where this all started: a national conversation about sexual harassment that is only really coming to a head today. It also shot Williams into the conservative stratosphere, earning him gigs on radio, television and op-ed pages. And that, in turn, caught the attention of none other than Washington City Paper.

The first major profile of Williams graced its cover in 1995 with the headline: Mr. Righteous.

They really launched me here, Williams said.

Williams has tried and failed to get his hands on at least two print properties recently, making efforts to buy both the Hill newspaper and Essence magazine. Then a friend told him City Paper was for sale, and could be acquired cheaply.

It was heartwarming to be in a position to buy a paper that has always treated me fairly, he said. Ive been on the cover of more City Papers than you can imagine.

The actual number of cover stories written about Williams is two.

And the second one was an in-depth look at a sexual harassment lawsuit levied against Williams, in which a former employee of his claimed, among other things, that "at least once a week, the Defendant Williams would grab Plaintiff's buttocks or penis when Plaintiff was least expecting it."



Williams with Steve Forbes, then a GOP presidential candidate, at a fundraising dinner in 1996. (Rich Lipski/The Washington Post)

Williams settled that case out of court, but last year another man accused him of similar behavior. Charlton Woodyard, a former employee of a Jos. A. Bank men's clothing store filed suit claiming Williams grabbed him by the penis through his pants and said, "you got small feet, small hands . . . and an oversized weapon. How does that work? How is that possible?"

Williams admits he said these things but claims they were taken out of context  that it was all just talk between two consenting adults. (He also claims nothing sexual ever happened between them; this case, too, was settled out of court). To him, it felt like the situation his old friend Justice Thomas went through.

But Williams says he recognizes that the world has changed.

My mentor, Strom Thurmond, grabbed a senator in an elevator, he said. If he and those guys were around today, there would be nothing but sexual harassment claims. Thats what they would do, they would grab them, they would laugh about it, it was no big deal. Ive been in the office with Sen. Thurmond when he would put his arm around a woman and squeeze her. I seen it firsthand! I seen it from my man! He laughed, the girl laughed, I chuckled!

Because his character was forged in the Thomas hearings, and because hes been accused himself, Williams said he now feels empathy for the slew of prominent men who have lost jobs and reputations over claims of sexual misconduct. He condemns such behavior, he said, but that doesnt mean he cant forgive. Consider his thoughts on the Roy Moore candidacy for Senate.

To me there is no statute of limitations on abusing kids, exploiting kids, raping, he said. I dont care if its 30 years ago, there is no statute of limitations. Its just morally bankrupt.

And yet, if he were an Alabama voter, he might still pull the lever for him.

I could, he said. Why? Because it was 30 years ago and the mentality was different.

For more than 30 years, Washington City Paper has been a destination for arts coverage, withering profiles of local officials, and investigative reports on the city's finances. For most of that time, it was a cash cow, raking in advertising dollars from local businesses, a go-to place for apartment and concert listings. But the alternative weekly industry took a hit in the age of Craigslist. The Village Voice in New York no longer has a print edition. The Boston Phoenix closed in 2013. And in 2008 the then-owner of City Paper filed for bankruptcy, putting the paper in a hole it's been trying to claw its way out of ever since.

Today, City Paper is owned by a Nashville company called SouthComm, which has said it would like to sell by the end of the year. If not, the company may shut the paper down entirely.

Williams won't disclose the asking price but says the money is not an issue. In recent years, initially with the help of Sinclair Broadcasting Network, Williams has become the owner of more television stations  seven  than any other black person in the country.

He would be partnering with Steve Kalifa, an obscure local businessman who runs something called Bethesda Healthcare Advisors. When reached by phone to elaborate on what he does for a living, Kalifa said, Give me a week and I can answer that.



Williams at his office on Capitol Hill. My goal, he said, is to make the City Paper so good people will be saying, Are you sure Armstrong Williams is the owner of this paper? (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

Williams said hes not looking to make money as an alt-weekly owner. There are much better ways to make money. Instead, its about collecting something that was once great and trying to make it great again.

His plans include a possible change to glossy print, an increased focus on celebrities, distribution to places like Philadelphia and New York, and more human-interest stories  he specifically suggested some soft-focus takes on prominent Trumpites, such as Hope Hickss hobbies or Stephen K. Bannons charitable works.

He says he wants City Paper to be what it once was but obviously has plans to change it entirely. For years the essence of the paper has been relentlessly local and often confrontational. What are the odds this could work?

The vanity mogul always catches the rake in the face, said Jack Shafer, a City Paper editor in the 1980s and 90s, now a media critic for Politico. They always think they are smarter than the guy before them.

He added that historically, sainthood has not been a requirement for newspaper ownership and that hed like to see a couple of issues before judging Williamss performance.

But lets, for a moment, take Williams at his word that he doesnt want to turn the paper into a vessel for his worldview. What then could he possibly want with a newspaper that loses money?

He was somebody who clearly wanted influence, who wanted to be seen as important, said David Plotz, who in 1995 wrote City Paper cover story on Williams and is now the head of the online magazine Atlas Obscura. He wants to be recognized. He wants to be name-dropped. He wants to be in the public eye.

Do I think if he buys it, it will survive him? Plotz continued. I doubt it.

But then again, will it survive if he doesnt?
An earlier version of this article used the incorrect name for the Woodlawn Estate in Mount Vernon, Va. That property, part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is called Woodlawn & Pope-Leighey House, and is not related to the Woodlawn Manor House museum in Sandy Spring, Md.



The aging neighborhoods along Richmond Highway in Fairfax County, north of Mount Vernon, are slated for a major transformation that could bring tens of thousands of new residents and workers. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

The aging neighborhoods near George Washington's Mount Vernon estate are witnessing the start of a massive overhaul that over the next decade could add as many as 13,000 homes, plus restaurants, office buildings and new street grids.

The plans are part of an effort in Virginia's largest jurisdiction to revitalize a stretch of Richmond Highway long known for run-down motels, car-title loan shops and traffic congestion, and generate more tax revenue to fund schools and other services.

For the past decade, new development in Fairfax County has been concentrated in Tysons Corner, Reston and Merrifield. Now officials say a state road-widening project, plans for a $500 million county bus rapid transit route and a $40 million levee under construction that includes a park near the Cameron Run waterway will focus attention on the county's eastern edge.

A planning amendment unveiled in November and headed for a January public hearing envisions mixed-use developments, hotels and parks surrounding nine county bus rapid transit stations along Richmond Highway between Metrorail's Huntington Station and Fort Belvoir  currently a canyon of shopping plazas and fast-food restaurants.

The plans also include a 3.1-mile extension of the Yellow Line that would connect the Huntington station to the Hybla Valley section of Richmond Highway, in hopes of creating a pedestrian-friendly urban neighborhood akin to nearby Shirlington.

In the end, the area's population would nearly quadruple, to about 40,000 residents, county officials say.

These are not dreams anymore; theyre expectations, said Supervisor Dan Storck (D-Mount Vernon), whose district includes Richmond Highway. We know that this kind of public investment is essential to increasing the amount of private investment that we need.





So far, there have been varied reactions to the plans in surrounding communities, a mixture of working-class, mostly Latino and African American enclaves and subdivisions of wealthy professionals whose palatial homes offer stunning views of the Potomac River.

Advocates for affordable housing worry that land values in the area will skyrocket, displacing low-income residents and blue-collar businesses, especially since the state says it will need to acquire portions of about 175 residential and commercial properties as part of the Virginia Department of Transportations plan to widen a three-mile stretch of Richmond Highway between Jeff Todd Way and Napper Road.

But some residents see a more livable community forming.

"Right now, you have to get in your car to go anywhere," said JanaLee Sponberg, 71, who since 1980 has lived inside the 364-unit Huntington Club condominium apartment complex near the Huntington station. The 19-acre site is slated for a redevelopment that will result in 1,565 condominiums, apartments and townhouses, plus 500,000 square feet of retail space. The project, spearheaded by the condominium association, will allow residents to move into the new units or sell their stakes in the property when it's finished.

Nearby, another project approved by the county Board of Supervisors in October will add 767 apartments and a boat launch to Cameron Run. Several smaller developments are also in the works.

County officials are trying to market the area based on the corridor's rich American history. Besides Mount Vernon, the area includes Woodlawn Estate  once owned by Washington's nephew and step-granddaughter  and the Pope-Leighey House, designed by legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Down the road at the Fort Belvoir complex, the 80-acre National Museum of the U.S. Army is scheduled to open in 2019.

Its always been my dream to create this cultural corridor, said Storck, stopping during a recent tour of the highway in front of a mostly vacant office building near Woodlawn that he thinks would be an ideal site for a full-service hotel. We need more tourists to come here.

Advocates say they will push hard during the county approval process for requirements to include moderate and low-priced housing in the new projects. New, higher-end homes along some stretches of Richmond Highway have already driven up land prices, they say, and caused landlords in older, cheaper buildings to raise the rent.

They have not analyzed the potential land values and rent impacts, said Stewart Schwartz, director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. And they have not proposed new ideas to improve inclusionary zoning for affordable units where the new development takes place.



Dana Richardson, center, embraces fellow congregants during a morning service at First AME Church of Alexandria last month. At right is Layla Leavette, 12. The church has decided to move to a less expensive area after learning that a road-widening project would take a portion of its parking lot. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Supervisor Jeff McKay (D-Lee), who also represents a portion of Richmond Highway, said those concerns will be addressed after the county approves the revised land plan, which it must do to boost its chances for federal funding needed for the bus rapid transit route that county officials consider crucial to the areas revitalization. A vote is expected in the spring.

McKay said the corridor might benefit from the removal of some low-income apartments that are in disrepair. The county needs to strike a balance, he said, between luring development that draws more tax revenue and ensuring that current residents can stay.

There are a lot of moving parts here, and were going to put in strict housing guidelines and strict environmental guidelines, McKay said. But I dont want to waste any more time applying for the federal grant money. Without the grant money, we dont have a BRT.

Alison DeCourcey, director of United Community Ministries, said residents in the five mobile home parks along Fairfaxs portion of Richmond Highway are particularly vulnerable. There is a real fear that those are going to be the first to go because they are the easiest, she said.

Residents of Audubon Estates, one of the parks tucked behind a small development of new townhouses, seem resigned to the possibility of being uprooted.

Theres nothing you can do about it, said Hernan Fernandez, an auto mechanic who pays an $870 monthly lot fee for the mobile home he shares with his wife and two children. When they tell us to go, we have to go. The person who has all the rights is the owner.

Some in the area are preparing to leave. Abe Smith, pastor of the First AME Church on Richmond Highway, said his mostly African American congregation is looking to buy property elsewhere after 12 years of running ministries for neighborhood youngsters and the hungry.

The church recently learned from VDOT that part of its parking lot would be needed for the road-widening project, making it impossible to accommodate a congregation of 125 people, Smith said. With nearby land too expensive, the church is looking at other options.

Weve been doing great work in the community, Smith said. I dont know where well end up.
Bethesda-Chevy Chase sophomores Sophia James, left, and Natasha Greenstein paint an aquatic scene of mermaids as part of a positive-body-image theme in a pop-up museum space at a former location of Tako Grill in Bethesda. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

Inside the shell of an empty suburban restaurant in Maryland, three students paint murals one afternoon. Others work on exhibits that capture aspects of their lives: college admission pressures, social media influences, binge drinking.

In a matter of days, their efforts will come together as a pop-up museum made by and about teenagers.

The Museum of Contemporary American Teenagers (MoCAT), in downtown Bethesda, is expected to open Wednesday with 30 exhibits, 150 ceramic selfie sculptures, expansive wall murals and a stage for performances.

Its creators are mostly students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, exploring the world they inhabit  its stresses, stereotypes, struggles, humor and hopes. The idea is to explain teen life and culture. Their project may be a first nationally, they say.



Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School senior Gregory Pfaf consults his smartphone as he paints a teenager in the ocean taking a selfie beside a shark, seemingly oblivious to the danger. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

When we were researching it, we couldnt find anything that was done like this, said David Lopilato, the teacher overseeing the project.

One exhibit will depict a storefront for Brandy Melville, a clothing company criticized for catering to wafer-thin teenage girls, offering most items in a single size. The facade will be inviting but the door so narrow few can enter, said Camille Devincenti, 17, a senior who wants to show the toll of unrealistic body expectations.

Another will explore the political divisions and heightened fear that have followed mass shootings. Using a playlist of 911 calls and other sounds from those deadly events, it will show violence has become all too real for those growing up with it, said Yasmin Ranz-Lind, 17, a Bethesda-Chevy Chase senior who worked on the exhibit with two classmates.

The museum includes a forest of six-word poems and a basement called the tunnel of teen fear.

A mural painted by art students shows a teenager in the ocean, snapping a selfie beside a menacing shark, seemingly oblivious to the danger. Kiara Coleman, 17, paint brush in hand, explained the mural pokes a little fun at her phone-attached generation, though she emphasizes the devices are an important form of connection and help us deal with the stress around us.

Most of the project has taken form in the past two to three months, and  in a generation that has embraced the ephemeral quality of Snapchat  few seem bothered by the idea that the museum space is temporary.

One recent day, three students brainstorm about an exhibit exploring changing views of masculinity in their generation. They had conducted surveys and interviews of fellow students, drawing nuanced answers about the hookup culture, the objectification of women and the stereotypically muscular body associated with manhood.

They hoped to represent what they had learned by creating a toy replica of a male doll in a box, with labeling that reflected the ideals and expectations of being a man today. One possibility was a tag that would read: 20 percent more empathy.

My hope is that adults understand how people in my generation think about these issues, Owen Bonk, 16, said.

Just a few feet away, Emma Lopus, 17, was focused on the phenomenon called FOMO  fear of missing out  which many teens experience as they check social media feeds to learn of parties and events they have missed or been excluded from.

This shows how it makes you feel: depressed, she said, gesturing toward a wall mural painted in dark colors. You just want to be where people are.

Her mural was painted just above a pit she said will be filled with social media posts attached to foam pieces  a FOMO pit that visitors can jump into. Its supposed to be like youre kind of sinking in it, she said. You cant get out.

Hana Zherka, 17, weighed in about the effects of stress on teenagers, particularly when it comes to college applications. One exhibit she is working on will show photos of stressed-out teenagers, surrounded by flags naming top colleges.

There isnt any room to fail anymore, she said.

The museum highlights a range of topics  gender fluidity, girl power, concussions, autism, women in sports, teen pregnancy, drug dealing in an affluent community. Students came up with ideas according to their interests.

[B-CC High School adopts gender-neutral homecoming court, so there might be no king or queen]

When my parents heard about it and their friends, they were very excited, said Malaika Bhayana, 16, a junior involved through classes and as the organizer of a Dec. 14 debate planned at the museum. A lot of people have negative stereotypes about our generation, and a whole museum put up by students is really awesome.

Developing a major exhibit typically takes at least three years, which makes the projects turnaround of just a couple of months absolutely remarkable, said Joanne Gernstein London, a former curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum who has a student at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High and volunteered to help with the project.

The museum is expected to be open Wednesday through Saturday and Dec. 14-16, with themes that change day-to-day, including changing the world, literature, music, and gender and sexuality.

The project was sparked after Lopilato, a teacher at the high school, assigned his International Baccalaureate anthropology classes last year to design a museum exhibit that would help people understand teen culture.

He was so impressed by students work he wondered whether there was a way to do more. He looked for spaces outside of school that could be borrowed, raised the idea with this years anthropology students and worked with a real estate company.

Then he remembered a major construction project along Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda that will one day be Marriotts new headquarters and a hotel.

Lopilato said he contacted the president of Marriott, Arne Sorenson, and Sorenson put him in touch with Davin Driskill, a senior vice president at the Bernstein Cos., a longtime D.C. real estate firm that owns the property being developed, which includes the old site of the Japanese restaurant Tako Grill, now relocated.

It has not affected the timeline of the Marriott project.

We were happy to support the school and the students with donating the space, Driskill said. It seems like a great venue for their vision.

Students took the idea and ran with it, Lopilato said. Once I had a place, they did not need more cajoling, he said.

[Struggles of minority students in Montgomery: I, Too, Am B-CC]

Students from other classes have joined in  art, theater, English, technology, Spanish  and Lopilato estimates a few hundred are involved.

Funding has come from donations made by students, parents, the PTSA and crowdsourcing, said Narek Grigorian, 17, the projects business manager. The museum is expected to cost about $2,500, largely for construction materials, sound equipment, projectors, digital picture frames and a first-night reception, he said.

Grigorian and others say they would love to see the project become something bigger and inspire teenagers around the country  perhaps even as a traveling exhibition that would grow as students from other places added their own creations.

That would be amazing, Devincenti said. It would be cool because we could start a new movement.
Columnist

Star Myshay Bennett has transformed her life in some extraordinary ways. She has gone from running with a street gang to running a clothing store. From brawling in and around Metro subway stations to being featured in Metros campaign against sexual harassment.

And life, in a manner as mysterious as it is dramatic, has transformed her. From feeling trapped in the male body she was born in, to embracing the woman she is now.

I had been interviewing Bennett about the first two changes, which were miraculous enough for me. As for her physical transformation, I had planned to steer clear of that. My only question was what pronoun to use.

Im trans, said Bennett, 27. But you can use she. I used to be a boy but Im transitioning to a girl.

Just hearing her say that, with a smile and a hint of relief in her voice, made me happy for her. And I smiled back, even though I didnt have a clue about what she meant.

For a man raised in the South in the 1960s, transgender was not part of my world. Even though I live in a very progressive region, no one in my circle of friends is transgender.

But lately there has been a whirlwind of news about transgender people, most notably the election of at least five transgender candidates to public office on Nov. 7. The victories have been hailed as a repudiation of the homophobic and the hateful, and a huge step toward the understanding and inclusion of a much-maligned group.

Im on the side that repudiates the hate but is also on a steep learning curve toward understanding. Figuring out disparate definitions and identities has been a challenge.

Transgender refers to a diverse group of people who cross or transcend culturally defined categories of gender, according to a D.C. Department of Health website glossary; increasingly used to encompass a family of gender-variant identities and expressions, but opinions of the term may vary by individual or geographic region. The glossary even makes reference to Two Spirit, a term used by some Native American tribes to describe people in their community who represent a third gender.

That can be difficult for some people to wrap their heads around. In the Bible Belt, they can quote you chapter and verse about how God molded man out of clay and fashioned woman from mans rib. Two sexes  thats it. No one dare question that.

But the human experience is anything but simple. A summary of transgender research by Katherine J. Wu, a graduate student at Harvard, refutes a lot of misconceptions: "While the list of causes for transgender identity continues to grow, it has become quite clear that it is not a conscious choice," Wu wrote.

Bennett told me that at age 13, she became a founding member of a notorious gay street gang, called Check It. The group had banded together to ward off attacks by other gangs that targeted gays.

I used to fight all the time, get locked up all the time, Bennett said. It was crazy. I never thought I would still be alive.

Bennetts success is all the more remarkable because of just how vulnerable her life is. In the past five years, 88 transgender women in the United States have been victims of homicide  and nearly all of them were black or Hispanic, according to a report released Nov. 17 by the Human Rights Campaign.

Most of them  55  had been killed in the South. Nearly three-quarters were under age 35, including four minors, the report found.

Wu said, At least 63 percent of transgender individuals experience debilitating acts of discrimination on a regular basis, including incarceration, homelessness and physical assault.

Yet, in the face of such hate, Bennett was feeling good about what was happening to her.

The gang she used to run with, Check It, is now Check It Enterprises, a clothing store and LGBTQ advocacy center in Southeast Washington. Bennett is chief executive, and ex-Check It members serve on the board of directors.

What Bennett was doing had nothing to do with trying to get into the womens bathroom to leer at girls, as some have claimed. She did not strike me as having any psychological issues, unless you consider anger over so many transgender people being killed to be one.

The last time somebody tested me, it was three months ago. I was on the subway going to work and this man came up to me, acting all wrong, Bennett said. He was saying faggy this and faggy that. I had my can [of Mace] and wanted to spray him.

She didnt spray the man. Bennett said she realized how far she had come, and I had too much going for me to go back now. So I just ignored him.

She knows who she is now, and she just wants to live her life.

To read previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/milloy.
Thomas D. Homan, deputy director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is being criticized by the union that represents ICE officers. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Thomas D. Homan and a vocal labor union that represents part of the agency's workforce are both big fans of President Trump's tough deportation policies. But they are increasingly at odds with each other.

Tensions spilled over in November when Trump nominated Homan to serve in the role permanently. The National ICE Council went public with allegations that the agency is "grossly mismanaged" and urged Trump to investigate. An ICE spokeswoman called the union's claims "baseless" and said agency morale has increased nationwide since Homan took the helm in January.

Seeking to quell the controversy, Trump reached out to union president Chris Crane to set up a meeting. But the White House also says it steadfastly supports Homan, who is awaiting a Senate confirmation hearing and has backing from Republicans in Congress.

The president nominated Tom Homan for his decades of experience and steadfast commitment to enforcing the law, said Raj Shah, a White House spokesman. He has earned the strong support of the rank-and-file ICE officers and will make an outstanding director.

The dispute pits two of Trump's loyal supporters against each other  the union that endorsed him for president and the top ICE official who defends his hard-line views. It is erupting as the White House is urging Congress to significantly expand the agency.

Critics dismiss the unions complaints as part of a long-running power struggle and say the allegations are either unsubstantiated or amount to isolated incidents in the sprawling federal agency. But union leaders, who represent 6,000 employees, say they are frustrated by what they call a failure by Homan and other top managers to stem misconduct in an agency that has little public oversight.

Christopher Shanahan, who retired as a deportation field office director in late 2016, said that the union is notoriously difficult and that Homan is widely admired. Homan stands up for people when they deserve to be stood up for, Shanahan said. He can be tough when he needs to be tough.

Union officials and other critics point to an array of issues nationwide. An internal ICE review last year found that employees at Newarks deportation office complained that managers offered promotions and other assignments based on personal friendships and sexual relationships. In San Diego, union leaders say employees have filed more than 20 discrimination complaints since fiscal 2015. Felix Luciano, an ICE officer and president of the unions local in San Diego, said Homan has turned a blind eye to report after report of problems in that office.

ICE officials said that Homan has responded to issues in both offices and that the latest employee survey shows that morale increased 10 percent this year. They said discrimination complaints in San Diego have declined.

The union is also highlighting allegations of officer misconduct. In one case, in December 2014, federal immigration agents in San Diego accidentally left an immigrant locked inside a van for more than 30 hours. The union did not name the man when it described the incident on its website, but The Washington Post obtained documents identifying him as Gregorio Villasenor, a Mexican national who is now 66.

ICE agents released Villasenor without taking him to a hospital or filing immigration court charges against him, which the union says amounts to a coverup because it ended his case.

Villasenor said in an interview that he declined to go to a hospital. He also said some agents told him before they released him that he could sue the agency and possibly obtain his legal papers. He said he consulted with a lawyer but was unable to find a way to obtain legal residency.

ICE spokeswoman Liz Johnson said the agency had medical personnel examine Villasenor before releasing him and investigated the incident. Officials said that the missing court case was an oversight, and that they plan to file charges against Villasenor.

Johnson said ICE now requires agents in San Diego to fill out a checklist after each transport and have supervisors inspect vehicles at the end of each shift.

In another San Diego case from 2014, union officials criticized local managers for promoting deportation officer Thomas Malandris after he struck and injured a pedestrian in a crosswalk with his government car and told his supervisors it was the pedestrians fault. Malandris had previously been suspended for misusing a government credit card.

Johnson said that the Privacy Act bars them from commenting on personnel matters, but that promotions are merit-based and decided by local managers.

Malandris declined a request for comment.

Watchdogs not connected to the union have raised broader issues with ICE management. A Homeland Security Inspector Generals report based on inspections last year found that deportation officers had overwhelming caseloads and inadequate training.

Homan ran deportation operations from 2013 until Trump named him ICE acting director in January. (His title was recently changed to deputy director so that Trump could nominate him to the directors post, which is not allowed for acting directors under federal law.)

Johnson said Homan is addressing the inspector generals findings, but pointed out that the issues occurred during the Obama administration.

Under President Barack Obama, officers were told to focus on serious criminals and other high-priority cases. In January, Trump lifted those restrictions. Since then, arrests and deportations from the nations interior have soared.
Ali Abdullah Saleh, the authoritarian president of Yemen who steered his impoverished Middle Eastern nation for more than three decades, was forced from office after a violent uprising but remained a powerful and divisive figure in the countrys ongoing civil war, was killed Dec. 4 in Yemen amid escalating fighting. He was 75.

Members of his political party as well as a Yemeni rebel group reported his death, but the exact circumstances could not immediately be confirmed. Pictures circulated on social media showed Mr. Salehs body cradled in a floral blanket, with what appeared to be a large head wound.

In November 2011, several months after he was nearly assassinated in a bomb attack, Mr. Saleh bowed to protests against his rule that were part of the Arab Spring uprisings and reluctantly agreed to leave office. The protests had focused on Mr. Saleh's inability to address rampant unemployment, virulent corruption and the security challenges in Yemen, a bastion of Islamist militancy that fell further into chaos as the protests raged.

But for Mr. Saleh, who once described his job as dancing on the heads of snakes, the resignation was hardly his final chapter.

He evaded pressure from Western and regional allies pushing him to leave Yemen. Instead, Mr. Saleh, who retained the loyalty of powerful security forces, struck up an unlikely alliance with a Yemeni rebel group known as the Houthis, and together they drove the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi  Mr. Salehs vice president and handpicked successor  into exile in Saudi Arabia in 2015.



From left, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2010 at a summit in Sirte, Libya. (Asmaa Waguih/Reuters)

The bloody civil conflict that followed had the elements of a regional proxy war, drawing in Saudi Arabia, its nemesis Iran as well as the United States. The conflict has killed more than 10,000 people and sparked a vast humanitarian crisis.

A former military commander, Mr. Saleh ascended to office in 1978 and proved an unusually resilient president for much of his time in power. His two immediate predecessors, one of whom had been his mentor, were assassinated within months of each other.

As wily as he was ruthless, Mr. Saleh had long ruled by carrot and stick, letting patronage and crucial tribal alliances determine key political appointments. He mercilessly quashed coup attempts and once ordered the execution of 30 military officers for their suspected role in a plot to overthrow him. Support from the United States, which considered Mr. Saleh a key counterterrorism partner against a potent al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, helped cement his grip on power.

With unrepentant violence, he dismantled secessionist schemes to undo the strategic unification he had brokered years earlier between North and South Yemen. Soon after unification in 1990, Mr. Saleh helped arrange a deal to tap a newly discovered oil field that pumped cash into the nations budget. He oversaw the creation of a new constitution and the first democratically elected parliament.

For a brief period, Yemen was lauded as a model emerging democracy in the Middle East, but it remained a republic in name only. Although Mr. Saleh cultivated a reputation as a consensus builder, he alone dominated the political scene.

Yemen, on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula and a gateway to the Red Sea, became a stronghold of Islamist militancy and international terrorism during Mr. Salehs tenure.

The U.S. government showered hundreds of millions of dollars on Mr. Saleh to equip and train Yemens army and special forces. Mr. Saleh also approved a deal to allow U.S. forces to fly Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles over Yemen.

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Yet, despite anti-terrorism efforts, Yemen became home to one of al-Qaeda's most sinister affiliates. The terrorist group's late leader, Osama bin Laden, had Yemeni roots on his father's side. The U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaqi, a top-ranking al-Qaeda leader, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. U.S. officials considered the affiliate  al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula  the terrorist network's most dangerous threat to the United States. The group sent parcel bombs on flights into the United States in 2010 and orchestrated a foiled plot to bomb an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

In 2000, terrorists detonated a bomb in Yemen's Aden harbor that killed 17 Americans aboard the USS Cole, a Navy destroyer. Some of the 9/11 hijackers reportedly trained and lived in Yemen for a time.

Mr. Saleh had for years tolerated the militants and used their tribal links to maintain peace in his fractured country. Critics said Mr. Saleh frequently exaggerated the reach of al-Qaeda to attract financing from the West and to solidify his authority.

Ali Abdullah Saleh was born on March 21, 1942, in Bayt al-Ahmar, about 20 miles southeast of Sanaa. His family was part of the powerful Hashid tribal confederacy.

With only minimal schooling, he received a prestigious commission to the North Yemen army with the help of tribal patrons. One of Mr. Saleh's early mentors in the military was Ahmad al-Ghashmi, an officer who became army chief of staff and president of Yemen. Mr. Saleh climbed in rank and became more involved in political affairs.

After Ghashmi, then the president, was killed by a briefcase bomb in 1978, Mr. Saleh maneuvered to succeed him. A month later, Mr. Saleh was elected leader of North Yemen, an Arab nationalist country that he united with the Marxist-oriented South Yemen in 1990 after the end of the Cold War. South Yemen had once been a British protectorate, focused on the valuable southern port of Aden.

Soon after taking office, he sought to "coup-proof his regime" by placing close family and tribal kin into high-profile positions in the military, according to April Alley, a senior Arabian Peninsula analyst at the International Crisis Group.

Mr. Saleh had five children and installed his son Ahmad as chief of Yemens special forces. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Saleh established close relations with Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to counter the influence of wealthy neighbor Saudi Arabia. Mr. Saleh sided with Hussein when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 to set off the Persian Gulf War.

The move proved financially disastrous for Mr. Saleh and Yemen. The United States dropped all foreign aid to Yemen, and Saudi Arabia expelled more than 800,000 Yemeni workers. At the time, Mr. Salehs government was dependent on U.S. aid money and remittances from Yemenis working in Saudi Arabia.

To maintain his grip on the presidency, Mr. Saleh kept a robust network of cronies happy by stuffing their pockets with cash from Yemens oil profits. He was an expert at co-optation, divide-and-rule politics and managed chaos, Alley said. He was able to gradually consolidate power over time by including these powerful constituencies in networks of patronage and privilege.

Ultimately, Mr. Salehs network failed him. Yemen remained one of the worlds poorest countries and had one of the highest rates of malnutrition, according to the U.N. World Food Program. During Mr. Salehs tenure, Yemens stark rate of illiteracy and unemployment remained among the regions worst.

In early 2011, Yemenis were inspired by the revolutionary fervor that ignited in Tunisia and Egypt. Pro-democracy demonstrators gathered daily in the streets of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, to demand Mr. Salehs ouster.

Instead of democratic change, the protesters pleas were met with bullets and tear-gas canisters from Mr. Salehs loyalist army and special forces. Mr. Salehs legitimacy dissolved after more than 150 Yemeni citizens were killed in clashes throughout the country. Yemeni diplomats left their posts to protest the bloody crackdown, and army generals defected to the opposition.

On June 3, 2011, a bomb exploded inside Mr. Salehs presidential compound, killing four of his bodyguards and injuring several key members of his government. Mr. Saleh suffered burns and shrapnel injuries. After leaving Yemen for treatment, he returned in September, wearing special gloves and with his face badly scarred.

Frustrating human rights groups, Mr. Saleh reneged three times on offers to resign in exchange for immunity. In the end, faced with pressure from the United States and its Western allies, as well as regional powers, Mr. Saleh stepped down. But it was not before he managed to snag a major concession: He would be allowed to remain in Yemen, residing at one of his numerous homes in Sanaa.

In the months after Mr. Saleh left office in 2012, Yemeni factions loyal to the former president skirmished with government forces. Amid the simmering civil war, al-Qaeda terrorists raided towns in southern Yemen, released suicide bombers on missions to attack government installations and American targets, and ruled over swaths of the country.

By late 2014, Mr. Saleh had joined forces with the Houthi rebels as they entered the capital. During his rule, he had fought six civil wars against the deeply religious northern rebels. They, in turn, viewed his regime as corrupt. But in a marriage of convenience, they pushed out Hadi and seized control over the capital and much of northern Yemen.

By last week, the tensions had boiled over, triggering fierce clashes between the Houthi fighters and Mr. Saleh's loyalists. And Mr. Saleh, the master tactician who ruled a fractious Yemen through tumult and despair, became the civil wars most well-known casualty.

Shapiro is a former Washington Post staff writer. Kareem Fahim and Sudarsan Raghavan contributed to this report.
John B. Anderson during his presidential campaign in 1980, speaking before a Chamber of Commerce group in New Hampshire. (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post)

John B. Anderson, an Illinois Republican who cultivated a freethinking reputation during his 20 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and mounted a serious independent bid for the White House in 1980, died Dec. 3 at a retirement home in Washington. He was 95.

The cause was not immediately known, said his son, John B. Anderson Jr.

After entering Congress in 1961, Mr. Anderson spent many years in lockstep with Republican Party orthodoxy and was a supporter of ultraconservative Sen. Barry Goldwaters presidential bid in 1964.

But Mr. Anderson, who had voted against many of President Lyndon B. Johnsons Great Society economic and social programs, gradually came to embrace them. As part of his incremental political evolution, he spoke of being deeply moved while attending funerals for civil rights activists. He began to travel more widely, seeing the effects of housing discrimination and racism.

His signature legislative achievement came in April 1968, days after riots sparked by the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. tore through Washington. Kings death, and the unrest so close to the Capitol, prompted Congress to take up the Fair Housing Act, which, as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, would prohibit racial discrimination in housing.



Mr. Anderson at a Bethesda, Md., fundraiser for his presidential campaign. (Lucian Perkins/The Washington Post)

Under pressure from both parties, Mr. Anderson broke with his fellow Republicans on the House Rules Committee and cast the deciding eighth vote to send the bill to the House floor. During debate in the House, he gave a rousing speech that championed the bill and led to its passage.

We are not simply knuckling under to pressure or listening to the voices of unreasoning fear and hysteria if we seek to do that which we believe in our hearts is right and just, he said on the House floor. I legislate today not out of fear, but out of a deep concern for the America I love. We do stand at a crossroad. We can continue the Gadarene slide into an endless cycle of riot and disorder, or we can begin the slow and painful ascent toward that yet-distant goal of equality of opportunity for all Americans, regardless of race or color.

The vote heralded Mr. Andersons arrival as a voice on national affairs. He remained a fiscal conservative but sided with liberals on social issues.

He supported the Equal Rights Amendment, freedom of choice on abortion and food-stamp programs. His reversal of support for the Vietnam War by the early 1970s and his early call for President Richard M. Nixons resignation during the Watergate scandal placed him in sharp relief against a growing conservatism in the Republican Party.

He asked the president to spare the nation one last agony by resigning, which Nixon did a few months later, in August 1974.

A campaign of ideas

In 1978, conservative political action committees backed Don Lyon, a former fundamentalist minister, in a bid for Mr. Andersons House seat. Mr. Anderson secured reelection with 58 percent of the vote, but the experience pained and provoked him.

"I was almost destined to make the decision, which I did in 1980, that rather than continue to fight a local war with right-wing conservatives, I would bring my broader viewpoint on where the Republican Party should be positioning itself as we entered the decade of the '80s," Mr. Anderson told the Harvard Law Bulletin in 2002.

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In a field that included Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Mr. Anderson campaigned in the Republican presidential primaries in 1980. His second-place finishes in the Massachusetts and Vermont primaries in March and his announcement of an independent bid in April drew media curiosity.

His campaign of ideas, as he called it, crystallized the independent movement and fired up disenchanted voters who wanted a choice other than Reagan, a former California governor who won the GOP nomination, or the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter.

With his mound of thick, white hair and his dark-rimmed glasses, the scholarly Mr. Anderson was an unconventional rebel. His booming voice, knowledge of policy and commanding oratory appealed to disaffected liberals and college students.

Mr. Andersons best-known campaign proposal was a national 50-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax that would be used to reduce employee Social Security taxes. The federal gas tax at the time was 4 cents, and Mr. Andersons talk of sacrifice often irked voters who had struggled through the stagflation of the Carter years.

When Mr. Anderson persisted in telling a New Hampshire gun owners group why he supported gun control in 1980, the members booed him, and some shouted death threats.

James Gannon, the editor of the Des Moines Register, memorably encapsulated the congressmans strengths and weaknesses. He once described Mr. Anderson as a silver-haired orator with a golden tongue, a 17-jewel mind and a brass backbone but whose Achilles heel is a passionate attachment to the issues and a willingness to argue his viewpoint when it would be shrewder to shut up.

As an independent, Mr. Anderson faced an uphill battle to get on the ballot in all 50 states, to secure campaign funding and to capture continued media attention, especially during the major parties national conventions. In the end, he and his running mate, Patrick J. Lucey, a Democrat and former governor of Wisconsin, received 7 percent of the popular vote and no electoral votes. Reagan won the election.

"I had no great sense of failure," Mr. Anderson told political scholar Jim Mason for his 2011 book about Mr. Anderson's White House bid, "No Holding Back." "I didn't come out of the campaign with the sense that I'd thrown my career away or thrown my life away on what was a fruitless, feckless endeavor. I felt that I had made my mark on the pages of history and laid down some markers for others possibly to follow."

From Illinois to Germany

John Bayard Anderson was born in Rockford, Ill., on Feb. 15, 1922. As a child, he worked in the grocery store of his father, a Swedish immigrant. He also attended services several times a week at an evangelical church and went to tent meetings held by traveling preachers, he wrote in his 1970 memoir, "Between Two Worlds."

The valedictorian of his high school class, Mr. Anderson was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the debate team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from which he graduated in 1942.

After Army service in Europe during World War II, he completed a law degree at Illinois in 1946, earned a master of laws degree from Harvard in 1949 and practiced law in his home town.

In 1952, as he was about to leave for an assignment with the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany in West Berlin, his 19-year-old passport photographer, Keke Machakos, joked to coax him to smile. They traded telegrams across the Atlantic and were married in West Berlin in 1953. They returned to Rockford two years later.

Besides his wife, survivors include five children and 11 grandchildren.

In 1956, Mr. Anderson was elected states attorney for Winnebago County. Four years later, he won the seat of retiring congressman Leo Allen.

He spoke of the sweeping social transformations of the 1960s as a pivotal era of his own growth. He attributed his changing outlook to his religious faith, once explaining, The Great Commandments simply mean that given an interdependent society, we are all accountable for whats around us.

Mr. Anderson became an advocate for governments role in aiding the disenfranchised. He supported the Department of Education and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, which protected more than 100 million acres in that state. He opposed the development of the B-1 bomber and the MX missile, further construction of nuclear power plants, and discrimination on the basis of handicap or sexual orientation.

He became chairman of the House Republican Conference, making him the GOPs third-ranking party member, but his increasing distance from party positions began to cost him support from colleagues.

I detest Johns views, then-Rep. Robert Bauman, a Maryland Republican, told the New York Times in February 1980, but what I detest even more is his effectiveness at espousing them.

After his career in elective office, Mr. Anderson taught constitutional law for many years at Nova Southeastern University near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where he had a home.

In the early 2000s, Mr. Anderson was president and chief executive of the World Federalist Association, now known as Citizens for Global Solutions, a group formed to promote strengthening the United Nations and forming an international court to try crimes of terrorism or genocide.

As chairman of the Center for Voting and Democracy and its program FairVote from 1996 to 2008, Mr. Anderson backed a constitutional amendment to dissolve the electoral college. He also proposed automatic voter registration for all high school seniors.

Since 1996, Mr. Anderson was affiliated with the Washington law firm of Greenberg & Lieberman.

Mr. Anderson was mostly remembered for his presidential bid and the flurry of excitement that it sparked. At one campaign stop shortly before the general election, he referenced Theodore Roosevelt, a former Republican president whose Bull Moose campaign for the White House on a Progressive ticket in 1912 was the most successful third-party attempt of the 20th century.

The credit belongs to the man, he said, who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion and spends himself in a worthy cause, who if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Hearst Newspapers correspondent Marianne Means waits for President Lyndon B. Johnson in the mid-1960s. She later published a widely syndicated political column. (Francis Miller/The Life Picture Collection via Getty Images)

Marianne Means, a journalist who switched from copy editing to reporting because she was told that editing was no job for a woman, and who broke up another old boys club as one of the earliest female White House correspondents, covering the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, died Dec. 2 at her home in Washington. She was 83.

The cause was complications from colon cancer, said a son-in-law, Peter Dunning.

Ms. Meanss career was marked by an astounding rise from newspapers in Nebraska, where she made a crucial connection with then-Sen. Kennedy as a student, to the halls of the White House and Congress, where for five decades she covered politics and policymaking in a twice-weekly, widely syndicated Hearst Newspapers column.

She was a common-sense, middle-of-the-road liberal, said journalist Charles Lewis, a former Washington bureau chief for Hearst who edited Ms. Meanss columns and recalled her sprawling  and stolen, out of sight since 1998  collection of more than 250 historical political campaign buttons.

Her political views, as well as a sense of glamour that led some publications to comment on her "chic Parisian styles" and brief foray into modeling, helped her establish a close rapport with Democrats such as Kennedy. The president reportedly sought to help Ms. Means, then a reporter for Hearst, one-up her male colleagues in the press corps.



Ms. Means in 1998 with her husband, conservative commentator James J. Kilpatrick. (Annie Groer/The Washington Post)

"Give her some stories," the president told one aide, according to journalist Carl Sferrazza Anthony's book "The Kennedy White House." "Give her all the help you can."

Ms. Means was in the lead press bus in Dallas, reporting on Kennedys reelection campaign, when the president was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. Every detail of the day will be imprinted on my mind forever, she later said, recalling the bloodstained cushions of Kennedys Lincoln Continental convertible.

She then covered the Johnson administration for two years, joining the president on diplomatic trips abroad and to his ranch in the Texas Hill Country, where she filed stories as a fast-driving Johnson raced around in an old fire engine and proclaimed, "This is why Barry Goldwater wanted to be president."

She also wrote a book about first ladies, "The Woman in the White House" (1963), which featured interviews with Kennedy and former presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, who discussed their wives' largely unheralded roles in shaping public policy.

Ms. Means acquired a national profile as she began writing her column in 1965, appearing on news programs as well as the Tonight show with Johnny Carson and the CBS game show Whats My Line?

Her column did not typically break news, Lewis said, but summarized the goings-on of Washington for readers at scores of newspapers across the country  and did so with a distinctively female perspective, keen to observe differences in the way she and colleagues such as reporter Helen Thomas were treated in comparison to men covering national politics.

"President Harry Truman once warned me he would 'spank' me if I didn't write nice things about the 'madam,' " first lady Bess Truman, Ms. Means wrote in her farewell column in 2008. "At my first presidential press conference, in December 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower failed to recognize my wildly flaying arm and call on me, although I was the only woman in the press contingent (or maybe because I was). If I had worn a red dress, it probably wouldn't have helped."

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Separately, she offered this advice to women trying to break into journalism: Act like a lady; work like a dog.

Marianne Hansen was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on June 13, 1934. Her father was a farmer, according to Dunning. She received a bachelors degree from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1956, and that year married a classmate, Cecil Paul Means. She graduated from George Washington Universitys law school in 1977.

Ms. Means was managing editor of the Nebraska student paper, and said she had always wanted to be a journalist but initially planned to work as a copy editor. Her ambitions changed in part because of a move to Washington  after working at papers in Nebraska, she joined the Northern Virginia Sun in Arlington in 1957, where she said she was pressed to become a reporter  and because of a chance meeting with Kennedy.

While studying at Nebraska, she and a sorority sister, a sibling of Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen, were tasked with driving the Massachusetts senator from the airport to a speaking engagement on campus. The two struck up such a connection that Ms. Means was assigned to cover his presidential campaign for Hearst, which she joined in 1959. Kennedy reportedly asked Hearst if she could stay on as a White House correspondent.

Marriages to Means, Emmet Riordan and Edward DeHart ended in divorce. Her husband of 21 years, the New York Times political reporter Warren Weaver Jr., died in 1997. She married the conservative columnist and "60 Minutes" commentator James J. Kilpatrick, a longtime friend who had also recently lost his spouse, in 1998. He died in 2010.

Survivors include four stepdaughters from her fourth marriage, Carolyn Fenn near Topeka, Kan., Sally Weaver of Narberth, Pa., Melissa Weaver Dunning of Berryville, Va., and Annie Buck of Underhill, Vt.; two stepsons from her fifth marriage, Michael Sean Kilpatrick of Decatur, Ga., and Kevin Kilpatrick of Fairfax County, Va.; nine grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. A stepson from her fifth marriage, Chris Kilpatrick, died in 2015.

Three decades into her political column, Ms. Means was asked by a University of Nebraska journalism student if she ever struggled to generate ideas and material. "The Lord always provides," she quipped. "Some politician always screws up."

Correction: An earlier version of this obituary incorrectly described Marianne Means's location during the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. She was in the lead press bus in Dallas that day but she was not in the lead press car, which included a smaller group of national reporters that was closer to the president. The story has been updated.
This story was changed to correct the location of the incident and to reflect that the sentencing occurred in D.C. Superior Court, not federal court.

He had beaten his 81-year-old mother with his fist, a wooden stick and an iron in the summer at the apartment they shared in Northeast Washington after smoking crack earlier in the day. His mother later died, and a judge has sentenced the man  52-year-old Derek Cook  to 20 years in prison.

Authorities said the killing occurred Aug. 12 when Cook was talking to his mother  Ann Alfredia Cook  in a bedroom at their apartment in the 5200 block of Fourth Street NE.

The two got into an argument about him smoking a cigarette inside, officials said. He started to hit his mother with a closed fist. She yelled for help. He also hit her with an iron and a wooden stick.

[District man admits fatally beating 81-year-old mother with iron, stick, police say]

At the time, officials said, his mother was not armed and was in bed.

Cook had also admitted to smoking crack twice earlier that day, according to court documents.

When police arrived, Cook would let them only into the building and not into the apartment. Officers had to ram down the apartment door, and they found his mother severely injured. She was taken to a hospital, where she died later that night.

Cook had his mothers blood on his shirt when police arrived, according to court papers. He was arrested and has been in custody since.

[D.C. man pleads guilty to fatally beating 81-year-old mother after argument over smoking]

In September, Cook pleaded guilty in D.C. Superior Court to second-degree murder while armed. Prosecutors said the plea called for an agreed-upon sentence of 20 years in prison. Cook was sentenced Friday.

Once he finishes his prison term, Cook will be placed on five years of supervised release.

This story has been updated. An earlier version gave the incorrect name of the court and the hundred block location of the incident. It is D.C. Superior Court and the incident happened in the 5200 block of 4th Street NE.
Police tape do not cross. Shallow depth of field image taken of yellow law enforcement line with police car and lights in the background. (iStock)

D.C. police arrested a suspect Monday in the fatal stabbing of a 46-year-old man who was attacked three months ago near the Eckington neighborhood of Northeast Washington.

Gregory Williams, 42, of Northwest Washington was charged with first-degree murder while armed. He could make an initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court on Tuesday.

The stabbing occurred about 11:20 p.m. Sept. 23 in the 1700 block of North Capitol Street NE. The victim, Andrew A. Cook III, 46, of Northeast Washington was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Daniel Helsel, a Prince George's County firefighter, with the baby he delivered on his birthday and her mother. Helsel was born in the back of ambulance 42 years ago. (Brian Goldfeder )

After Daniel Helsel and his colleague were dispatched to help a woman in labor at her home Monday morning, the two firefighters joked about the coincidence of the call landing on his birthday.

Wouldnt it be funny if Helsel, who was born in the back of an ambulance, wound up delivering a baby on the way to the hospital just as he had come into the world 42 years ago?

It turns out that is exactly what happened minutes after Helsel and his colleagues loaded the mother-to-be in the back of an ambulance heading to Prince Georges Hospital Center.

As soon as she got in the ambulance, the babys head appeared, Helsel said Monday. Everything was good with the delivery, albeit in the back of an ambulance.

Helsel said he was born on the side of the Beltway when his mother was on her way to Holy Cross Hospital in 1975. His mother had been in labor for 15 minutes, called 911 and was in the back of an ambulance from Landover Hills when he was delivered by a medic working his first night on the job.

Helsel said his delivery of the baby girl must have been fate. The 17-year-veteran of the Prince Georges County Fire Department said he had never worked on his birthday until Monday.

We were just trying to get her to the hospital, Helsel said. In the moment, youre just trying to do your job.

About 12:17 a.m., Helsel and his colleague at the station in Largo were called to help a pregnant woman in her apartment. After they arrived, they discovered the womans contractions were less than two minutes apart.

They brought her from her third-floor apartment and loaded her into the ambulance.

We got in the back of the unit; I happened to be at the foot of the stretcher, Helsel said.

The baby girl quickly arrived crying and breathing, delivered at 12:38 a.m. After the infants umbilical cord was cut, she was cleaned up and handed to her mother.

We placed the baby on moms chest and continued bouncing down the road to the hospital, Helsel said.

Mark Brady, a spokesman for the Prince Georges Fire Department, says at least 24 babies are born in county ambulances on the way to the hospital each year.

It used to be a big thing when it occurred, but as time goes on and the population grows, it happens more often, Brady said.

But the fact that one of the departments firefighters delivered a baby in an ambulance much as he was born 42 years ago, Brady said, is a remarkable and amazing coincidence.

Hours after delivering the baby, Helsel said he planned to spend his birthday in the firehouse with a visit from his parents, his wife and his children.
The moon that rose over Washington Sunday night was dubbed a Supermoon The term is applied to a full moon that is seen as the moon makes its closest approach to Earth on a given orbit. Photo by JIM LO SCALZO/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock (9254959e)

A few minutes after midnight on Monday morning in Washington, with the bright full moon almost directly overhead, it seemed necessary to stake out a position somewhere between those who scoffed at the idea of a supermoon, and those who marveled at the sight of it.

This was the first, last and only supermoon of 2017. The title is bestowed when the moon becomes full at the time of its closest approach to Earth on a given orbit.

When full, the moon is obviously brighter than when part of it lies in shadow. And it is not knowledge of astronomy so much as common sense that ordains that a moon that is closer to the earth is a moon that is brighter.

So when the brightness of a full moon coincides with the brightness of a closer-than-usual moon, why not call it a supermoon?

Well the debate, such as it is, entails appreciation of the numbers involved. How much larger does the moon appear when it is at its closest point of approach? How much brighter is a full moon when seen as it makes a close approach on its orbit.

It is not so much a question of the actual amounts. Those can be measured, and most people seem likely to accept them. The moon on Sunday has been described as appearing about 7 percent larger, as a result of its proximity.

And a moon with a diameter about 7 percent larger, should appear about 14 percent brighter. The brightness will depend on the moons illuminated area. That depends on the square of its radius.

Even if a 7 percent increase in radius or diameter is perhaps hard to spot, can a 14 percent increase in brightness be detected with the naked eye?

Some would probably say yes. Others might be less confident. Some subjectivity is inevitably involved.

Several people posted their responses on Twitter Sunday night. They seemed to be impressed by the supermoon. Perhaps this was at least in part because they had seen the moon relatively soon after it began to rise.

The moon looks larger when lower.

A tweet posted under the name Donna Claycomb Sokol seemed unequivocal.

Stop whatever youre doing, it read, and please go outside to see the moon.

Its magnificent.

In another tweet, this one appearing under the name of Alana Alsop, was clear and succinct in its appraisal of the lunar spectacle. Georgeous, it read.

Another tweet, posted under the name Dionisios Favatas described the supermoon as brightening up skies.

In addition, the tweet indicated that the sight might have value beyond the merely esthetic.

Something to distract us from all the political news, it read.

Still another tweet wryly demonstrated the moons ability to stimulate the imagination.

In a tweet published under the name of Jacob Harris, a tongue-in-cheek warning was issued: Remember that a supermoon means superwerewolves. it said.Be careful tonight.

Anyone who missed Sunday nights supermoon can see a fairly similar replay on Monday night, experts said.

Meanwhile, as seen above K Street early Monday morning, the moon may not have appeared that much bigger than usual. However it was bright. If you knew nothing about any supermoon, you might have wondered how they increased the brightness.
Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) unveiled her long-awaited Metro bill on Monday, proposing to increase federal funding for the transit agency by 50 percent in exchange for creating a temporary reform board, adopting tough measures to hold down labor costs and other changes.

Comstocks 77-page bill, which she took more than a year to draft in consultation with regional business groups, may have more impact than numerous other recent Metro restructuring plans. Thats because the Northern Virginia lawmaker is the only Republican in the GOP-dominated Congress who represents Washington suburbs served by Metro.

The legislation echoes some proposals already pushed by Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld and former U.S. transportation secretary Ray LaHood.

But it differs by requiring that the Metro Compact, or governing document, be amended to create the five-member reform board. It would block federal funding to Metro until the District, Maryland and Virginia enacted such legislation.

[Read Rep. Comstocks bill]

Comstocks bill aims to pry additional funding for Metro from a skeptical Congress to help cover an estimated $500 million a year to ensure safety and reliability. In return, it would overhaul the much-criticized board and adopt long-term changes designed to improve the agencys governance, finances and operations.

The bill also calls for further revisions of the compact, which would ultimately lead to creation of a permanent, nine-member governing board to replace the current 16-member board. It would give the U.S. transportation secretary additional authority over the board and funding.

Both Wiedefeld and LaHood have resisted revising the compact, because it is a cumbersome process that typically requires years to accomplish. They say Metro can't afford to wait that long to make reforms and increase funding.

The reform board proposed by Comstock would have the authority to unilaterally revise union agreements and contracts with suppliers. Her bill would weaken pension guarantees, cap overtime and freeze Metros personnel-related expenses for five years.

[2 U.S. lawmakers want to fix Metro by rewriting its governing charter]

The attraction for Metro would be the potential, significant increase in federal funding. If the changes were made, Comstocks bill would increase the federal subsidy for Metro from $150 million a year to an average of $225 million a year over 10 years.

The U.S. transportation secretary would have the discretion to delay granting the additional $75 million a year in federal funds if Metro wasnt making sufficient progress in specified areas such as finances, safety and efficiency.

The money is the leverage to get the significant reforms that are needed, Comstock said. We want good business practices put in place.

The federal grant, which covers capital costs such as the purchase of new rail cars, would continue to be matched by the three local jurisdictions. That means the District, Maryland and Virginia would each increase their match from $50 million to $75 million a year.

Comstock said the support from the business community  including from Democrats such as former District mayor Anthony Williams  showed that her bill represented a consensus.

Everybody has to come to the table and compromise, she said.

[LaHood report on Metro urges dedicated funding, bus fare hike, trim in pension costs]

More than 30 business and nonprofit groups in the Metro Reform Coalition  including the Greater Washington Board of Trade, Federal City Council and Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce  signed a statement welcoming Comstocks bill.

"We strongly believe that comprehensive reform to Metro's governance and funding will lead to operational improvement across the system," the three-paragraph statement said.

But the bill's labor provisions effectively guarantee that the Washington region's Democratic-dominated congressional delegation would be split over the legislation, which does not have a co-sponsor.

What looks like reform in one mind can be perceived as deliberate union-busting and anti-labor to another persons view, said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.).

He also expressed reservations about the bill on grounds that reopening the compact would be difficult and said Comstocks bill would die without bipartisan support from the region.

For this to have a fighting chance, you need to have the Democrats of the national capital region on the bill, Connolly said. You can have all the boards of trade and all of the Republicans . . . it will not become law because the other side of this coin is conservative Republicans, who dont want to help anyhow, [and] are going to point to that deficiency.

Connolly said he is drafting his own bill, which would not reopen the compact and would provide a more substantial funding increase than Comstocks.

Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), who already has submitted a bill, endorsed a bipartisan approach but did not take a specific stand on Comstock's legislation.

Two other Democratic congressmen from the Maryland suburbs  Reps. Anthony G. Brown and Jamie Raskin  recently proposed legislation to strengthen protections for Metro workers in a bill drafted in coordination with the transit agencys principal union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689.

Tom Davis, the former Republican congressman from Northern Virginia who led the fight to win the federal subsidy for Metro a decade ago, said Comstocks bill offered the only chance for extending the program, which is scheduled to expire in the next fiscal year. This is the only game in town, said Davis, who has advised Metro in his current job as a managing director at Deloitte. With Republicans controlling both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and [federal] funding running out next year, this is our only shot.

Comstock said she hoped to have hearings on her bill as soon as possible in the new year. She said the funding proposal may be included as part of a broad transportation bill that could come before the House in the spring.

Her bill includes several measures to hold down labor costs, partly to win support from the GOP. It would adopt a recommendation from Wiedefeld to amend a federal law known as the Wolf Act to strengthen managements hand in labor disputes that go to arbitration. But it stops short of ending mandatory binding arbitration, as Comstock and other Republicans have supported in the past.

It also follows a Wiedefeld recommendation providing that future Metro hires would have defined contribution pensions, which are less generous than the defined benefit pensions now given to many workers.

Comstocks bill comes on the eve of the official release Tuesday of a Metro plan from LaHood, who was commissioned by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to craft a regionwide consensus for reforming the agency.

Like Comstock, LaHood called for a five-member reform board to replace Metros 16-member panel. But Comstocks plan would give more authority to the U.S. Transportation Department.

Comstocks bill provides that the reform board would be in place for at least three years, while the District, Maryland and Virginia draft a new compact.

That new compact, which would require approval by Congress, would set up a permanent, nine-member board. The District, Maryland, Virginia and the federal government would each have two members. The ninth, who would be chair, would be selected jointly by the two governors and mayor.

Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this story.
FLORIDA

Former representative gets 5-year sentence

Former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, once a powerful Florida Democrat, was sentenced Monday to five years in prison for fraud and other crimes related to a purported charity for poor students that she used as a personal slush fund.

Brown, 71, listened stoically in a Jacksonville courtroom as U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Corrigan read her sentence. She was ordered to turn herself in to prison authorities in January. Her attorney said she plans to appeal the sentence.

Brown, who in 1992 became one of the first three African Americans elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction, was convicted by a federal jury in May on 18 of the 22 charges against her, which included fraud and lying on her tax returns and congressional financial disclosures.

Corrigan alluded to Browns long history of public service before handing down the sentence, which could have been as long as nine years. The judge also cited her history of overcoming obstacles as a black woman in the South as she built a trailblazing career.

However, Corrigan said Brown succumbed to entitlement and greed in siphoning money from the One Door for Education Foundation of Leesburg, Va., for personal use. Prosecutors said the pattern of fraud by Brown and her top aide included using hundreds of thousands of dollars from the foundation for lavish parties, trips and shopping excursions.

 Associated Press

MASSACHUSETTS

Senate leader putting down gavel for now

The president of the Massachusetts state Senate changed course Monday and agreed to relinquish his leadership responsibilities during an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations involving his husband.

Sen. Stan Rosenberg (D) had originally said he would recuse himself only from any matters related to the investigation or the allegations against Bryon Hefner.

Rosenberg informed senators just before a closed-door Democratic caucus that he would step aside temporarily, though he would remain in the Senate.

Rosenberg, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, expressed shock over the allegations reported last week by the Boston Globe. The Democrat maintained that his husband had no influence over his policy decisions or actions by the Senate.

Several men told the Globe that Hefner sexually assaulted or harassed them, including three men who said Hefner grabbed their genitals. The men were not named by the Globe.

Attorney General Maura Healey and Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley, both Democrats, said Monday they are prepared to launch an investigation and said anyone with information should feel free to contact either of their offices.

 Associated Press

Pilot dies as plane crashes into home: A single-engine airplane crashed into the deck and back yard of an Ohio house, and residents of the dwelling discovered when they returned home that the wreckage containing the deceased pilot. The plane went down sometime Sunday near Ravenna in Shalersville Township, roughly 30 miles southeast of Cleveland, investigators said. Authorities said the pilot, Stephen Paulus, 60, of Rootstown, may have crashed while returning to the nearby Portage County Regional Airport.

 Associated Press


Darlene Summerville, carrying daughter Ka-mia, and other residents call Lemmon Street the Forgetabout Neighborhood. (Doug Kapustin for Kaiser Health News)

 Keyonta Parnell has had asthma most of his young life, but it wasn't until his family moved to the 140-year-old house here on Lemmon Street two years ago that he became one of the health-care system's frequent customers.

"I call 911 so much since I've been living here, they know my name," said the 9-year-old's mother, Darlene Summerville, who calls the emergency medical system her "best friend."

Summerville and her family live in the worst asthma hot spot in Baltimore: Zip code 21223, where decrepit houses, rodents and bugs trigger the disease and where few community doctors work to prevent asthma emergencies.

Residents of this area visit hospitals for asthma flare-ups at more than four times the rate of people from the city's wealthier neighborhoods, according to data analyzed by Kaiser Health News and the University of Maryland's Capital News Service.

Baltimore paramedic crews make more asthma-related visits per capita in 21223 than anywhere else in the city, according to fire department records. It is the second-most-common Zip code among patients hospitalized for asthma, which, when addressed properly, should never require emergency visits or hospitalization.





The supreme irony of the localized epidemic is that Keyontas neighborhood in southwest Baltimore is in the shadow of prestigious medical centers  Johns Hopkins, whose researchers are international experts on asthma prevention, and the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC).

Both receive massive tax breaks in return for providing community benefit, a poorly defined federal requirement that they serve their neighborhoods. Under Marylands ambitious effort to control medical costs, both are supposed to try to improve residents health outside the hospital and prevent admissions.

But like hospitals across the country, the institutions have done little to address the root causes of asthma. The perverse incentives of the health-care payment system have long made it far more lucrative to treat severe, dangerous asthma attacks than to prevent them.

Hopkins, UMMC and other hospitals collected $84 million over the three years ending in 2015 to treat acutely ill Baltimore asthma patients as inpatients or in emergency rooms, according to the news organizations analysis of statewide hospital data. Hopkins and a sister hospital received $31 million of that.

Executives at Hopkins and UMMC acknowledge that they should do more about asthma in the community but note that there are many competing problems: diabetes, drug overdoses, infant mortality and mental illness among the homeless.

Science has shown its relatively easy and inexpensive to reduce asthma attacks: Remove rodents, carpets, bugs, cigarette smoke and other triggers. Deploy community doctors to prescribe preventive medicine and health workers to teach patients to use it.

Ben Carson, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who saw hundreds of asthmatic children from low-income Baltimore during his decades as a Hopkins neurosurgeon, said that the research on asthma triggers is unequivocal. Its the environment  the moist environments that encourage the mold, the ticks, the fleas, the mice, the roaches, he said in an interview.

As the leader of HUD, he says he favors reducing asthma risks in public housing as a way of cutting expensive hospital visits. The agency is discussing ways to finance pest removal, moisture control and other remediation in places asthma patients live, a spokesman for HUD said.

The cost of not taking care of people is probably greater than the cost of taking care of them by removing triggers, Carson said, adding, It depends on whether you take the short-term view or the long-term view.



In a house containing mold, mice and other asthma triggers, Keyonta Parnells medications didnt keep his symptoms under control. (Doug Kapustin for Kaiser Health News)

The long view

Asthma is the most common childhood medical condition, with rates 50 percent higher in families below the poverty line, who often live in run-down homes, than among kids in wealthier households. The disease causes nearly half a million hospital admissions in the United States a year, about 2 million visits to the emergency room and thousands of deaths annually.

That drives the total annual cost of asthma care, including medicine and office visits, well over $50 billion.

Keyonta lives in a two-bedroom rowhouse on the 1900 block of Lemmon Street, which some residents call the Forgetabout Neighborhood, about a mile from UMMC and three miles from Hopkins.

Reporters spent months interviewing patients and parents and visiting homes in 21223, a multiracial community where the average household income of $38,911 is lower than in all but two other Zip codes in Maryland.





To uncover the impact of asthma, the news organizations analyzed every Maryland inpatient and emergency room case over more than three years through a special agreement with the state commission that sets hospital rates and collects such data. The records did not include identifying personal information.

For each emergency room visit to treat Baltimore residents for asthma, according to the data, hospitals were paid $871, on average. For each inpatient case, the average revenue was $8,698. In one recent three-year period, hospitals collected $6.1 million for treating just 50 inpatients, the ones most frequently ill with asthma, each of whom visited the hospital at least 10 times.

Hopkins's own research shows that shifting dollars from hospitals to Lemmon Street and other asthma hot spots could more than pay for itself. Half the cost of one admission  a few thousand dollars  could buy air purifiers, pest control, visits by community health workers and other measures proven to slash asthma attacks and hospital visits by frequent users.

We love these ideas, and we think its the right thing to do, said Patricia Brown, a senior vice president at Hopkins in charge of managed care and population health. We know who these people are. . . . This is doable, and somebody should do it.

But converting ideas to action hasnt happened at Hopkins or much of anywhere else.

One of the few hospitals making a substantial effort, Childrens National Health System in Washington, has found that its good work comes at a price to its bottom line.

Children's sends asthma patients treated in the emergency room to follow-up care at a clinic that teaches them and their families how to take medication properly and remove home triggers. The program, begun in the early 2000s, cut emergency-room use and other unscheduled visits by those patients by 40 percent, a study showed.

While recognizing that it decreases potential revenue, hospital managers fully support the program, said Stephen Teach, the pediatrics chief who runs it.

 Asthma visits and admissions are down again, and its all your fault!  Childrens chief executive likes to tease him, Teach said. And half his brain is actually serious, but the other half of his brain is celebrating the fact that the health of the children of the District of Columbia is better.





The close-up view

Half the 32 rowhouses on Summervilles block of Lemmon Street are boarded up, occupied only by the occasional heroin user. Late last year at least 10 people on the block had asthma, according to interviews with residents.

All three of Summervilles kids have asthma. Before moving to Lemmon Street two years ago, she remembers, Keyontas asthma attacks rarely required medical attention.

But their house contained a clinical catalogue of asthma triggers.

The moldy basement has a dirt floor. Piles of garbage in nearby vacant lots draw vermin: mice, which are one of the worst asthma triggers, along with rats. Summerville kept a census of invading insects: gnats, flies, spiders, ants, grasshoppers, "little teeny black bugs," she laughs.

Often she smokes inside the house.

The state hospital data show that about 25 Marylanders die annually from acute asthma, their airways so constricted and blocked by mucus that they suffocate.

Keyonta missed dozens of school days last year because of his illness, staying home so often that Summerville had to quit her cooking job to care for him. Without that income, the family nearly got evicted last fall and again in January. The rent is $750.

About a third of Baltimore high school students report they have had asthma, causing frequent absences and missed learning, said Leana Wen, Baltimores health commissioner.

With numbers like that, West Baltimores primary-care clinics, which treat a wide range of illnesses, are insufficient, as is the city health departments asthma program, whose three employees visit homes of asthmatic children to demonstrate how to take medication and reduce triggers.

The program, which an analysis by Wens office showed cut asthma symptoms by 89 percent, is chronically underfunded, she said. Were serving 200 children [a year,] and there are thousands that we could expand the program to.



Lemmon Streets trash piles and vacant homes harbor rodents and insects that can set off asthma flare-ups. (Doug Kapustin for Kaiser Health News)

Were a business

The federal government paid for $1.3 billion in asthma-related research over the past decade, of which $205 million went to Hopkins, records show. The money supports basic science as well as many studies showing that modest investments in community care and home remediation can improve lives and save money.

Getting health-care providers to pay for home-based interventions is going to be necessary if we want to make a dent in the asthma problem, said Patrick Breysse, a former Hopkins official, who as director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is one of the countrys top public health officials.

Other factors can trigger asthma: outdoor air pollution and pollen, in particular. But eliminating home-based triggers could reduce asthma flare-ups by 44 percent, one study showed.

Perhaps no better place exists to try community asthma prevention than Maryland. By guaranteeing hospitals' revenue each year, the state's unique rate-setting system encourages them to cut admissions with preventive care, policy authorities say.

But Hopkins, UMMC and their corporate parents, whose four main Baltimore hospitals together collect some $5 billion in revenue a year, have so far limited their community asthma prevention to small, often temporary efforts, often financed by somebody else's money.

UMMC's Breathmobile program, which visits Baltimore schools dispensing asthma treatment and education, depends on outside grants and could easily be expanded with the proper resources, said its medical director, Mary Bollinger. "The need is there, absolutely," she said.

Hopkins runs Camp Superkids, a week-long, sleep-away summer session for children with asthma that costs participants $400, although it awards scholarships to low-income families. It's also conducting yet another study  testing referral to follow-up care for emergency-room asthma patients, which Children's National long ago showed was effective.

But no hospital has invested substantially in home remediation to eliminate triggers, a proven strategy supported by the HUD secretary and promoted by Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, a Baltimore nonprofit that works to reduce asthma and lead poisoning.

We either go forward to do what has been empirically shown to work or we continue to bury our heads in the sand and kids will continue to go to the hospital instead of the classroom, said Ruth Ann Norton, the nonprofits chief executive.

Hopkins and UMMC say they do plenty to earn their community benefit tax breaks.

Its always a challenge to say, Where do we start first?  said Dana Farrakhan, a senior vice president at UMMC whose duties include community health improvement.

Among other initiatives, UMMC takes credit for working with city officials to sharply reduce infant mortality by working with expectant mothers. The organization's planned outpatient center will include health workers to help people reduce home asthma triggers, Farrakhan said.



Living with people that got asthma  its really scary, said Darlene Summerville, here with son Keyonta Parnell and daughter Ka-niya. (Doug Kapustin for Kaiser Health News)

Hopkins officials point to their health fairs and charity care as well as work in school and neighborhood clinics to help low-income families prevent asthma attacks.

What we do is perhaps not sufficiently focused, Brown of Hopkins said. At the same time, we have to have revenue, she said. Were a business.

After months of waiting, Summerville considered herself lucky to get an appointment with the city health departments asthma program.

One of its workers came to the house late last year, bearing mousetraps and mattress and pillow covers to control mites and other triggers. She helped force Summervilles landlord to fix holes in the ceiling and floor.

She urged Summerville to stop smoking inside and gave medication lessons, which uncovered that Summerville had mixed up a preventive inhaler with the medicine used for Keyontas flaring symptoms.

The asthma lady taught me what I needed to know to keep them healthy, Summerville said of her family. That was late in 2016. Since then, Summerville said last month, she hadnt needed an ambulance.

 Kaiser Health News

Naema Ahmed, Douglas Birch, Helen Lyons and Talia Richman contributed to this report.

Methodology: Kaiser Health News and Capital News Service obtained data held by the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission on every hospital inpatient and emergency room case in the state from mid-2012 to mid-2016  some 10 million cases. The anonymized data did not include identifying personal information.

The news organizations measured asthma costs by calculating total charges for cases in which asthma was the principal diagnosis. Maryland's hospital rate-setting system ensures that such listed charges are very close to equaling the payments collected.

To determine asthma prevalence, reporters calculated the per capita rate of hospital visits with asthma as a principal diagnosis  a method frequently used by health departments and researchers. This may exaggerate asthma prevalence in low-income Zip codes because of those communities' tendency to use hospital services at greater rates.

However, other data also point to high asthma rates in 21223 and other low-income Baltimore communities  for example, asthma prevalence among hospital patients in a given Zip code.
SPAIN

4 Catalans kept in jail as campaigning begins

Political parties in Catalonia started campaigning Monday for the early regional election that was called by the Spanish government in hopes of quashing the regions independence movement and features candidates who are either in jail or living abroad to avoid detention.

The Dec. 21 parliamentary election is shaping up as a plebiscite between Catalans who support secession and those who favor remaining in Spain. Voters are choosing regional lawmakers and top officials to replace the ones the central government removed from office in October.

Hours before pro-secession parties held rallies to launch their bids for seats in the Catalan Parliament, a judge in Madrid ruled that four prominent members of Catalonias independence movement must remain jailed without bail.

They include former regional vice president Oriol Junqueras, who is heading up the slate of the ERC party in the election. He was unseated with Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan president, and the rest of Puigdemonts cabinet after regional lawmakers passed a declaration of independence that Madrid deemed illegal.

Six other Catalan politicians jailed with Junqueras were released Monday.

Meanwhile, Puigdemont and four allies learned Monday that a decision on Spains request for their extraditions from Belgium will be made Dec. 14. That is one week before the regional election, in which Puigdemont is his partys presidential candidate.

The five Catalans face possible rebellion, sedition and embezzlement charges in Spain.

 Associated Press

HONDURAS

Incumbent holds lead as vote count concludes

President Juan Orlando Hernandez held on to a lead of more than 52,000 votes in Hondurass disputed presidential race as the long-delayed count wrapped up Monday.

Hernandez had 43 percent of votes compared with 41.4 percent for opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla, according to the results published on the electoral tribunals website.

Tribunal President David Matamoros said that 100 percent of the ballots had been tabulated but that the court was not declaring a winner yet.

We will do that later, Matamoros said, adding that parties will have 10 days to challenge the results.

The last ballot boxes that presented inconsistencies were examined without the presence of Nasralla and his alliance. They have called for a far broader recount and a redo of the vote.

Hernandezs government is enforcing a 10-day curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. to quell protests. Clashes have killed at least one person.

Both candidates have claimed victory. Nasralla had led in initial returns before a lengthy interruption in vote tabulation, feeding opposition complaints of irregularities.

 Associated Press

U.S. to resume some visa operations in Russia: The U.S. Embassy in Moscow said consulates in several Russian cities will resume interviews for nonimmigrant visas, more than three months after they were suspended amid a U.S.-Russian diplomatic tug of war. The U.S. consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok will begin to offer limited interviews for nonimmigrant visas starting Dec. 11, the embassy said.

10 arrests made in Maltese journalist's killing: Ten Maltese suspects were arrested in the car-bomb slaying of a prominent investigative journalist, authorities in Malta said. Daphne Caruana Galizia, who focused on corruption in the European Union nation, was killed Oct. 16. Just before her death, Caruana Galizia, 53, had posted on her blog that there were "crooks everywhere" in Malta, which has a reputation as a tax haven. The journalist had also written about Maltese links to the Panama Papers leaks about offshore financial havens.

More bodies wash up on Japan's shores: Three bodies believed to be of North Koreans washed ashore in northern Japan, the coast guard said. Officials are investigating whether the bodies were from a boat that washed ashore Saturday. Winds and water currents push dozens of boats onto Japan's coasts annually. Rickety North Korean fishing boats are particularly vulnerable. Twenty-eight "ghost boats" were detected in November. Coast guard officials have recovered at least 18 bodies this year.

 From news services
Editorial page editor, 2000-2021

Raja Krishnamoorthi was born in New Delhi 44 years ago and moved to the United States three months later. His family lived in public housing and needed food stamps to get by.

Today he is a freshman congressman from Illinois  and a conversation with him can leave you feeling hopeful, even at this often unhopeful time, about the future of our democracy.

Even if what Krishnamoorthi really wants to discuss, rather comprehensively, is his bipartisan bill on career and technical education.

Not that Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat, is complacent about our problems or tepid in opposing the administration. The tax bill being rammed through Congress is redistribution, not reform, he told a colleague and me during a visit to The Post last week.

He is amazed that the Republican majority would target higher education, and especially graduate students, given all the talk about the need for more scientists and engineers.

Hes dismayed by how the House operates. Theres a lot of good, bipartisan legislation that passes in committee and then gets bottled up, he said. As a businessman, it surprised me. Why not start with the stuff we agree on, build up trust and make progress? Its not happening, and thats really sad to me.

Krishnamoorthi studied mechanical engineering at Princeton University; became a lawyer at Harvard Law School; was introduced to politics in Barack Obama's first, losing congressional campaign in 2000; took on a series of state government jobs, including helping to start an anti-corruption unit in the state attorney general's office ("Business was very good"); and then went into the solar-energy business.

But much of his motivation goes back to his familys early struggles in this country, which Krishnamoorthis father never let him and his brother forget.

Every night at dinner, my father would say something about the greatness of the United States  and tell us to make sure the government is there for the next people who come along and need it, he said.

Is that promise at risk? Krishnamoorthi said that President Trump has connected with the angst of people who feel left behind  but hes saying, the reason for your problem is that brown-skinned guy over there.

Its the challenge for people in my party to address these people and appeal to their better angels and say, Heres how we can get to a better place. 

Which brings him back to, yes, career and technical education, known (of course) as CTE. Working with a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, Glenn "GT" Thompson, Krishnamoorthi managed to win unanimous approval in the House for an authorization bill on the subject, now awaiting Senate action. It would spend only a little more than $1 billon per year, but the congressmen say that would spur a lot more private investment.

Given that some two-thirds of Americans don't have four-year college degrees, Krishnamoorthi said this kind of training is essential, and his constituents understand that well. "It's giving them hope that their children can do as well or better than they do," he said.

As he talked about working with a Republican on the seemingly prosaic task of reauthorizing CTE, I thought back to a compelling lecture I had just heard from Brookings Institution scholar William A. Galston on "the populist challenge to liberal democracy." Galston talked about the need to "forget about economic aggregates and focus on inclusive growth" and to make democratic institutions work because "gridlock frustrates ordinary citizens."

Krishnamoorthi told us he worries that Trump has unleashed xenophobia and fear of the foreigner and fear of the other, and not only among Republicans. He said that one of his primary opponents last year circulated materials showing the twin towers exploding next to Krishnamoorthis picture with an airplane flying overhead, implying he was a terrorist.

But he also was amazed, when he went to O'Hare International Airport to help people caught up in Trump's travel ban in January, to find thousands already there, he said. In his district, there are Muslims, Hindus (like Krishnamoorthi), Jews, Sikhs and other groups who have been at odds with each other pretty much forever. "But I say, you have to set that aside, because this is an existential threat," he said. "And they're doing it. So that's positive."

In the House, he has been struck by how many new members, of both parties, like him want to get beyond paralysis and partisanship.

I think with the right leadership on both sides and the right president, we can get a lot done, he said.

Yes, those preconditions may seem impossibly distant right now. But circle back to one more piece of Galstons wisdom.

"Liberal democracy is fragile, constantly threatened, always in need of repair," he said, delivering the 14th annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World at the Canadian Embassy. "But liberal democracy is also strong, because, to a greater extent than any other political form, it harbors the power of self-correction."

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President Ronald Reagan, center, waves to the crowd as he stands with West Berlin Mayor Richard von Weizsaecker, left, and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in the American Sector at Checkpoint Charlie in West Berlin on June 11, 1982. (Associated Press)

Columnist

In his soon-to-be-unveiled national security strategy, President Trump intends to claim the foreign policy mantle of Ronald Reagan and frame his presidency as a tribute to Reagans worldview and an extension of his legacy. But Trumps words, actions and policies reveal how far we have drifted from Reagans vision for Americas role in the world.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster laid out the argument that Trump is a modern-day Reagan over the weekend at the Reagan National Defense Forum, an annual convening of hundreds of top military officials, diplomats, lawmakers and mostly Republican foreign policy thinkers. He began by declaring that Trump would lead a renaissance in Americas international standing and a resurgence of American national confidence, as Reagan did a generation ago.

We are at a similar crossroads to when Reagan produced Americas firstnational security strategy in 1987, McMaster said. When the Trump administration issues its document, it will represent a dramatic rethinking of American foreign policy from previous decades based on principled realism.

The Trump administration realizes that revisionist powers Russian and China are subverting the post-WWII political and security orders at our expense, McMaster said. The new strategy focuses on protecting the homeland, advancing prosperity and influence, and preserving peace through strength.

At first blush, that sounds perfectly Reaganesque. But as McMaster ticked through his list of ways in which Trump is similar to Reagan, he unintentionally laid bare how fundamentally different the two presidents really are.

The first area where McMaster said Trump is just like Reagan is in promoting American values abroad.

President Reagan described America as a shining city upon a hill and boldly spoke truth about the sufferings of people living under fear and oppression, he said. Today, we are reclaiming this confidence in American values.

That claim not only contradicts what Trump regularly boasts as his commitment to noninterference in other nations affairs based on the principle of sovereignty. It also is belied by the Trump administrationsintentionally downgrading human rights advocacy in dealing with countries ranging from China to Syria.

McMaster pointed to Trumps speech against Islamist extremism in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and his criticism of North Korean human rights as evidence of the presidents commitment to American values. But that kind of situational application of values reveals the very lack of the sustained commitment Reagan showed on the issue. America first is simply not a values-based approach.

Second, McMaster claimed that Trump was standing up for Reagans vision of promoting diplomacy alongside defense as a pillar of national security.

President Reagan understood that diplomacy and military force were both important and equally vital tools of national power, he said. President Trump is focused on aligning our diplomatic, economic, military, informational, intelligence and law enforcement efforts since the first days of his administration.

The Trump administrations record shows the opposite. Trump has proposed slashing the budgets for diplomacy and development, presided over a hollowing out of the diplomatic corps and pushed for more hard-power funding in its place. Meanwhile, Trump alienates allies on a regular basis while shunning multilateral agreements and organizations. The Trump foreign policy is anything but balanced.

The third area where McMaster said Trump would follow Reagan was in understanding and stating the threats and security challenges the United States faces.

President Reagan had a clear-eyed view of the national security threats facing America during his tenure, he said. President Trump and his national security team have also clearly described the threats that emanated from revisionist powers, rogue regimes and terrorist organizations.

While its true that McMaster and many other top officials are clear-eyed in their description of the threats from Russia and China, the president has not joined them. Trump has consistently played down Russias anti-American strategy and painted a rosy picture of Chinese intentions vis-a-vis the United States. Trumps national security team seems to hold the pen in writing the new strategy, but it will be of little use if the commander in chief is not on board.

McMasters fourth Trump-Reagan comparison was based on what he called Trumps understanding of the dynamic and competitive nature of the world environment. He said Trumps trade policies were meant to protect core interests. But Reagan believed in free trade and rejected the kind of protectionist measures Trump supports.

The forum was held at Reagans presidential library, where his remains are interred. Above his grave a quote is inscribed: I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.

Reagan believed America should stand as a moral example, a beacon for humanity, and that his actions and words must meet that standard. President Trump, you are no Ronald Reagan.

.

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Columnist

Dec. 1, 2017, will be remembered as the day when the vast majority of Americans fully grasped the consequences of the 2016 elections. They installed a man in the White House "likely to be under investigation for criminality for a very, very long time to come." And they gave power to a Republican Party whose only purpose is to comfort the already extremely comfortable.

The quotation above, from Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric against Hillary Clinton, is now a better fit than ever for his own circumstances. The day after Michael Flynn's guilty plea on Friday, Trump compounded his legal jeopardy with a tweet suggesting that (contrary to what he had said before) he knew Flynn, his onetime national security adviser, had lied to the FBI.

Trump's lawyers will keep trying to explain his tweet away, but his overall vulnerability on obstructing justice has increased exponentially.

But it's almost as important that Friday was also the day Senate Republican leaders brought forth a tax bill heralding the death of anything resembling a populist form of conservatism within the Republican Party. Plutocracy will now be the GOP's calling card. Facing one of the most scandalous special-interest tax bills in a long history of such measures, even supposedly moderate members of the party caved in before the power of big money when the votes were counted early Saturday morning.

Republicans proved one other thing: What they say when they are out of power should never be believed again. Their progressive opponents, in turn, should never feel constrained in the future to limit their own ambitions out of deference to empty slogans about the superiority of bipartisanship.

When President Barack Obama was in office, conservatives waxed hysterical about the horrors of deficits by way of limiting governments ability to help the needy or expand health insurance coverage. They spoke over and over about how terrible it was to pass bills on a partisan basis and how their foes should govern from the center.

Now that the GOP has the votes, all those statements are inoperative. The party is running roughshod over democratic accountability and falling short of even minimal expectations of congressional decorum.

The leaders of the worlds greatest deliberative body, as the Senate pretentiously calls itself, no longer feel any obligation even to provide legible copies of complex legislation. The chicken scratches scribbled on the margins of their tax giveaway signed away any legitimacy these politicians can claim for their political project.

And deficits? Ah, deficits. They matter not a whit when there is money to pass out to corporations, rich heirs, private jet owners and the beer lobby represented by the son of one of our fine senators. But deficits will matter again soon, when Republicans will insist that they have no choice but to slash programs for the elderly, the sick and the poor.

One salutary outcome of this episode is that Trump showed how nonsensical were the widely repeated assertions that he was outside the Republican mainstream. We now know he is just a flamboyantly clownish and unconscionably mean version of an old-fashioned corporate conservative.

There is not an authentically populist bone in this billionaires body. He regularly demonstrates his utter contempt for working people by treating them as rubes. He seems to think that racist gestures and malicious comments about immigrants and Muslims will distract working-class voters from how far he is tilting government away from their interests and toward those of his family and his rich friends.

Trump and his party will learn how many of the Americans they are taking for granted are much smarter than this and know when someone is selling them out  because, sadly, its something they are familiar with.

This is why the coincidence of the tax bill's passage and Flynn's decision to cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is so dangerous to Trump: The president's populist mask is slipping at the very moment when he most needs to rally the troops. Flynn, who cherished the phrase "lock her up," came face to face with the slammer himself and decided that loyalty to this most unfaithful of leaders was not worth the price. About this, at least, Flynn is right.

But dont count on Republican politicians abandoning Trump quickly now that their tax victory is in sight. They and the president have a lot more in common than either side wants to admit. The primary loyalty they share is not to God or country or republican virtue. It is to the private accumulation of money, and this is a bond not easily broken.

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Columnist

At first, it was all so simple. The Trump White House said there were no contacts  zero, zilch  between Trumps campaign and Russia. But in time this elegant defense encountered a formidable opponent: reality.

And so for a year now, Trump and his advisers, facing mounting evidence of their campaigns entanglement with Russia, have redrawn lines of defense and revised talking points with such daring that it has amounted to a veritable Marshall Plan for the moving of goal posts.

As details of campaign contacts with Russia piled up, Trump and his officials instead said there had been no collusion. As more evidence came in showing attempts at high-level collusion, the White House retreated to another line of defense: Trump himself didnt collude. Nothing about the actual facts published to date suggests that the president . . . colluded with anybody, was White House lawyer Ty Cobbs careful phrasing.

Now, with four Trump campaign officials indicted and two of them, including Trumps former national security adviser, pleading guilty, even that distinction no longer seems safe.

One of Trump's attorneys, Jay Sekulow, just told the New Yorker that it doesn't matter whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, because "there is no crime of collusion." Another Trump attorney, John Dowd, told Axios that technically the president "cannot obstruct justice, because he is the chief law enforcement officer."

A year after the Trump team debuted its no contacts defense, the attenuated new White House position amounts to this: Who cares whether Trump colluded with Russia and obstructed justice?

It has been quite a journey. Lets recall some scenic vistas.

Original position: "There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign."

Revised position: Carter Page traveled to Russia when he was a Trump campaign adviser, but he was only "a low-level volunteer." Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians, but he was only in a "voluntary position." Former campaign manager Paul Manafort was indicted in the Russia probe, but this doesn't count because "he was replaced long before the election."

Original position: Attorney General Jeff Sessions "did not have communications with the Russians."

Revised position: Sessions "did meet one Russian official a couple of times." But Sessions conducted no "improper discussions with Russians."

Revised position 2: Sessions does "not recall any discussions" with Russians "regarding the political campaign." But he does recall that he had no conversations with Russians "concerning any type of interference with any campaign."

Original position: Donald Trump Jr. did not set up meetings with Russians, or if he did he wasn't "representing the campaign in any way, shape or form."

Revised position: The campaign meeting he set up with Russians was about "adoption of Russian children."

Revised position 2: The "adoption" meeting was with a Russian attorney promising Russian government dirt on Clinton. But Trump Jr. received "no meaningful information."

Original position: President Trump was "not involved" in the false Trump Jr. statement alleging the meeting was about adoption.

Revised position: Trump "weighed in, as any father would."

Original position: When Michael Flynn, incoming national security adviser, called the Russian ambassador during the transition, they "did not discuss anything having to do with" Russia sanctions.

Revised position: Flynn "couldn't be certain that the topic never came up."

Revised position 2: Flynn "inadvertently briefed the vice president elect and others with incomplete information."

Revised position 3: Flynn "lied to the vice president and the FBI."

Original position: A report that Jared Kushner suggested a secret, secure "communications channel" with Russia was based on "a lot of facts that are not substantiated."

Revised position: Kushner asked the Russian ambassador whether he had a "communications channel" that could be used to relay information from the Kremlin.

Original position: FBI Director James Comey's firing "had zero to do" with Russia investigation.

Revised position: Trump cited "this Russia thing" in firing Comey.

Original position: "I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does."

Revised position: The Trump campaign did not have "constant contacts with Russian spies."

Revised position 2: "There were no Russians in our campaign."

But there is one position on the scandal Trump hasnt changed  his reluctance to accept what the entire intelligence community and his own CIA director do: That Russia meddled in the election.

Position: Election hackers could have been "somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."

Position: U.S. intelligence agencies were led by "political hacks" and employ "the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."

Position: Vladimir Putin "said he absolutely did not meddle in our election" and "I really believe that when he tells me that he means it."

Thats the exception that proves the rule.

Twitter: @Milbank

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THE TRUMP administration likes to justify its multi-front crusade against immigration and immigrants as a revival of the rule of law, or a recalibration of the rules to favor disadvantaged American workers. In fact, it is largely a resurrection of xenophobia that coincides with a spike, nearly 50 years in the making, in the number of foreign-born residents living in the United States.

"For decades," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a speech in October, "the American people have been begging and pleading . . . for an immigration system that's lawful and serves the national interest. Now we have a president who supports that."

Mr. Sessions's claims are specious. An embrace of legality is not the driving force behind the president's decision to slash the admission of refugees to levels unseen in nearly 40 years. It is not what compelled Mr. Trump to endorse Republican legislation that would cut the annual allotment of green cards by a half-million, mainly by barring relatives of existing legal permanent residents of the United States. It is not why the Pentagon has considered ending a recruitment program that put skilled foreigners on a fast track for citizenship if they served in this country's armed forces. And it is not why the administration favors ending the so-called diversity visa lottery program, under which immigrants are admitted from nations underrepresented in other programs.

Those programs were all legally enacted and, by and large, carried out in compliance with the law. The animating force in targeting them, as the administration is now doing, is an effort to turn back the tide of foreigners in our midst and exorcise what the president evidently sees as the demon of diversity.

The administrations goal is not to reshape Americas immigration policy but to prune immigration itself. While Mr. Trump backs a GOP plan that would give preference to immigrants with skills rather than family connections in the United States, the effect would be not simply to shift the mix while maintaining the current level of legal immigration but to drastically reduce overall numbers of admissions.

Most Americans oppose open borders; so do we. At a moment when immigrants are at their highest share of the population in a century  they now represent more than 13 percent of residents  it is legitimate to debate the numbers and types of people we should welcome to American shores. It is fair to examine whether current levels of immigration have depressed wages for lower-income Americans in some places and sectors of the economy. It should be possible to ask "how much is too much?" without inviting accusations of bigotry.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trump has poisoned the debate on immigration so thoroughly that he has twisted the frame through which many Americans see the issue. His slurs  labeling Mexican immigrants as rapists and Muslim immigrants as terrorists  form the context from which the administration's policies arise. They are affronts to U.S. tradition and values.

They're also an assault on what Mr. Sessions refers to as "the national interest" and specifically the United States' economic well-being. Legions of employers dependent on immigrant workers, especially to fill low-skilled jobs for which native-born Americans are too well educated and in short supply, will be harmed by choking off the flow of immigrant labor. With unemployment at a 16-year low and approaching levels unseen in a half-century, the Trump policies threaten to sap the economy by depriving it of the energy of striving newcomers who have fueled this nation's ambitions since its founding.

It is within the president's discretion to intensify efforts at deportation, though the humanitarian price  in shattered communities and families, including those whose children, born in this country, are Americans  is high. It is reasonable to take steps to tighten border security, though with illegal crossings already at a 40-year low and the Border Patrol's staffing having already been doubled since the George W. Bush administration, a significant new investment along those lines faces the risk of diminishing returns. The administration may arguably have had a valid legal basis for ending the Obama-era program granting deportation protection for "dreamers"  undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children, often brought by their parents  though only a smallish minority of Americans believes they should be removed from this country.

But what value, other than sheer bigotry, is served by reducing the resettlement of refugees in the United States at a time when the number of displaced people worldwide has soared to staggering levels? In a country founded and in many respects shaped by refugees  a country that has resettled some 3 million refugees since 1980, more than any other nation  why does the Trump administration insist on turning its back on them now, when some 17 million people have been displaced from their homes across international borders around the world due to conflict or persecution, the highest number in a quarter-century?

It is clearly jarring to some Americans that the foreign-born portion of the overall population has nearly tripled since 1970. Many communities, towns and cities have been transformed culturally and socially by that surge, about a third of which was driven by illegal immigrants.

In some places, local government budgets have strained to provide services for immigrants, particularly public education, and the economic dislocation felt by many working-class Americans is a fact. But that dislocation is not mostly caused by immigrants. The United States is a more prosperous place today than it was before the surge in immigration, and immigrants have fed that prosperity  by helping to harvest Americas crops, build its cities, care for its young and elderly, and found some of its most buoyant companies.

A highly abbreviated list of companies founded or co-founded by refugees and other immigrants includes Kraft, eBay, Tesla, Google, Kohl's, Chobani, Yahoo and Intel. Immigrants, documented and undocumented, make up more than a third of the labor force of California, the nation's biggest state economy, according to the American Immigration Council. The Trump administration's crusade against immigration and immigrants is not just a quest to diminish the influence of the "other"; it is an assault on the nation's future and prospects.
In this 2005 frame from video, Donald Trump prepares for an appearance on Days of Our Lives with actress Arianne Zucker (center). He is accompanied to the set by Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. (Obtained by The Washington Post)

Quinta Jurecic, an associate editor for the Lawfare blog, is currently serving as a member of the Post editorial board.

What does President Trump believe? New reporting from The Post and the New York Times tells us that he has made a habit of suggesting privately that the "Access Hollywood" tape of his vulgar comments about women was faked. This is even though Trump acknowledged himself its authenticity  and apologized for his "locker room talk"  when the tape surfaced more than a year ago.

This astonishing reversal has raised concerns over Trumps connection to reality. Once again, we return to the unresolvable puzzle of whether the presidents attacks on the truth are a sign of a deteriorating mental state or a plan to distract, confuse and sow distrust. But whether or not theres method behind Trumps untruths, one thing is certain: They are antidemocratic in effect and instinct.

A year after Trumps election, its become almost cliche to fret over alternative facts and fake news. The presidents Access Hollywood turnabout is only the most recent example of the truths irrelevance in the age of Trump. Whats interesting about his denial of the tapes veracity isnt his familiar disregard for the truth, but that this disregard coincides with a cultural moment in which women are speaking up and being believed about their experiences of sexual assault and harassment. Each charge of assault raises in miniature the same questions that Trump has forced us to grapple with on the national stage. Did that really happen? Is someone lying? Whom should we believe?

In the words of the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt, Trump is not a liar but a "bullsh---er"  a person who acts not to obscure the truth but rather speaks without regard for the distinction between truth and falsehood. The liar must operate with respect for the truth in order to reject it. A person such as Trump goes through the world glibly rejecting the existence of knowable facts. He knows (or should know) that the "Access Hollywood" tape is real; he was there, after all. It's just that the reality of the tape is irrelevant. Truth is beside the point.

Every media critic worth their salt has spent the past few months quoting the mid-20th-century German thinker Hannah Arendt, who made the case that this unmooring from the truth is a foundational tactic of totalitarian regimes. In Arendt's view, a dictator's flood of untruths is harmful partly because it makes us lonely. It erodes our trust in our own experiences of the world we share (was it really Trump's voice on that tape?) and eventually destroys that "common world" altogether. We end up cloistered in our own cynicism and doubt.

Likewise, people  usually women  who experience harassment or assault are often isolated by their trauma. If they report the harassment, theyre told that they must be misremembering or lying. If they dont report, they live in a separate world with a secret knowledge that cant be shared. The mantras of the moment  me too, believe women  insist on forcing public acknowledgment of private realities that have long been disregarded.

Beverly Young Nelson, who alleges that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore tried to assault her when she was 16, says Moore told her afterward: "You're just a child and I am the district attorney of Etowah County, and if you tell anyone about this, no one will believe you." This delight in power sounds a lot like Arendt's dictator, who rejects the experiences of others in order to reshape the world as he wishes, through pure force of will. In Moore's case, the effort to rewrite history through brute force extends to his insistence that his signature in Nelson's yearbook  like Trump's voice on the "Access Hollywood" tape  must have been faked.

Our national reckoning with sexual harassment has the feeling of a mass uprising. In bringing their experiences forward, victims and survivors are making a profoundly democratic request: that we recognize what happened to them as part of our common world, rather than allowing men in power to decide whats real.

For this reason, Trump is a paradox. While allegations mount against others, the most powerful man in the world  whom at least 13 women have credibly accused of harassment  somehow remains untouchable. The position of congressional Republican leadership that Moore should exit the race depends on a nonsensical willingness to trust in the credibility of the women accusing Moore but not the women accusing the president. Likewise, Trump crows over the accusations against Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) while simultaneously insisting that the "Access Hollywood" tape is a fake.

So what does the president believe? Whatever his intention, its worth remembering that his muddling of the truth  the very fact that we cant answer so basic a question about him  is in his advantage. Its strangely appropriate that Trumps immunity from the post-Harvey Weinstein moment depends on an inconsistent and selective approach to the truth. His watchword is not believe women or dont believe women. Its believe the women whose stories happen to be convenient for me.
The Nov. 28 Metro article "A chance for equity at black colleges" did a good job of explaining why leaders of historically black colleges and universities in Maryland believe they have not been allowed to develop academic programs that will attract a wide array of students. Institutions such as Morgan State University have done important work providing African American students with a good college education that prepares them for important professional jobs.

Nevertheless, a court finding mandating the creation of academic programs cannot place institutions such as Morgan State on an equal footing. Transformation from above must be matched with transformation from below. Today, faculty at Morgan State work within an authoritarian political culture that restricts their autonomy and creativity. There is no faculty senate, and professors and advanced graduate students do not receive sufficient research funding. To live up to their potential, historically black colleges and universities must revitalize faculty governance so that the real pedagogical and scholarly experts of these institutions can help shape their future.

Mary Ann Fay, Washington

The writer was an associate professor of history at Morgan State University.
The Supreme Court on Monday granted President Trumps request to fully enforce his revised order banning travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries while legal challenges to it proceed in lower courts.

It was a victory for the White House, which has seen the courts trim back various iterations of the travel ban, and it bodes well for the administration if the Supreme Court is called upon to finally decide the merits of the presidents actions.

Two lower courts had imposed restrictions on Trumps new order, exempting travelers from the six countries who had bona fide connections with relatives  such as grandparents, aunts or uncles  or institutions in the United States. Those exemptions to the presidents order, issued in the fall, were along the lines of those imposed by the Supreme Court last summer on a previous version of the travel ban.

But in an unsigned opinion Monday that did not disclose the courts reasoning, the justices lifted the injunctions, which had been issued by federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor noted that they would not have lifted the restrictions. The new ban also bars travelers from North Korea and Venezuela, but they were not affected by the injunctions.

The justices said they expected the federal judges reviewing challenges to the order  based on what challengers say are Trumps animus toward Muslims and lack of authority under immigration laws  to handle the cases with appropriate dispatch.

The courts move is a substantial victory for the safety and security of the American people, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a written statement. We are pleased to have defended this order and heartened that a clear majority Supreme Court has allowed the Presidents lawful proclamation protecting our countrys national security to go into full effect. The Constitution gives the President the responsibility and power to protect this country from all threats foreign and domestic, and this order remains vital to accomplishing those goals.

The justices acted just after the American Civil Liberties Union, which is leading one of the lawsuits, sent a letter to the court Monday morning pointing out that Trump last week tweeted links to anti-Muslim videos.

Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLUs Immigrants Rights Project, reacted to the courts order with disappointment.

President Trumps anti-Muslim prejudice is no secret  he has repeatedly confirmed it, including just last week on Twitter, Jadwat said. Its unfortunate that the full ban can move forward for now, but this order does not address the merits of our claims. We continue to stand for freedom, equality, and for those who are unfairly being separated from their loved ones.

[Trump retweets inflammatory and unverified anti-Muslim videos]

The latest iteration of the travel ban, the third Trump has issued, bars various people from eight countries: Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela. Six of the countries have Muslim-majority populations.

But federal judges in Maryland and Hawaii blocked its implementation for "foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States." They said such people include grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the United States.

The language was drawn from a Supreme Court decision in June that exempted such foreign nationals from Trumps second version of the executive order, which expired this fall.

The orders from the two district judges will be reviewed this week. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is set to consider the Hawaii case Wednesday, and the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond will consider the Maryland judges decision Friday.

Lawyers for Hawaii had told the Supreme Court that there was no reason to back away from the equitable determination, dutifully adhered to by the court below, that it had already made. If anything, Hawaiis lawyers said, the governments case deserves even greater scrutiny than before, as compared with the earlier temporary travel bans.

The president now "has imposed an indefinite one, deepening and prolonging the harms a stay would inflict," said the brief submitted on Hawaii's behalf by Washington lawyer Neal K. Katyal.

But Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco, representing the Trump administration, argued that there was no reason for the injunctions.

The new executive order, he wrote, followed a comprehensive, worldwide review of the information shared by foreign governments that is used to screen aliens seeking entry to the United States. Based on that review, the Proclamation adopts tailored entry restrictions to address extensive findings that a handful of particular foreign governments have deficient information-sharing and identity-management practices, or other risk factors.

The cases are Trump v. Hawaii and Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project.
President Trump makes his way to board Air Force One Saturday before departing from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to return to Washington. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

President Trumps personal lawyer said Sunday that the president knew in late January that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had probably given FBI agents the same inaccurate account he provided to Vice President Pence about a call with the Russian ambassador.

Trump lawyer John Dowd said the information was passed to Trump by White House counsel Donald McGahn, who had been warned about Flynns statement to the vice president by a senior Justice Department official. The vice president said publicly at the time that Flynn had told him he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian diplomat  a statement disproved by a U.S. intelligence intercept of a phone call between Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Trump was aware of the issue a couple of weeks before a conversation with then-FBI Director James B. Comey in which Comey said the president asked him if he could be lenient while investigating Flynn, whom Trump had just fired for misleading Pence about the nature of his conversations with the Russian.

According to notes kept by Comey, Trump asked if he could see his way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. Trump fired Comey in May.

In a pre-dawn tweet Sunday, Trump issued a fresh rebuttal to Comey, writing: I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie! The tweet was part of a running commentary from Trump that began Saturday, a day after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and indicated he would cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is probing Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trumps Saturday tweets stoked controversy, as he wrote that I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. Previously, the White House had cited only the false statements to Pence as a rationale for dismissing Flynn.

Dowd confirmed Sunday that he had drafted the tweet for Trump and acknowledged that it was sloppily worded. He said it was inaccurate to say the president was told that Flynn had lied to the FBI. Dowd said Sunday that Trump knew only what acting attorney general Sally Yates had told the White House counsel: that Flynns accounts to the agents interviewing him were the same as those Flynn gave Pence, and that the [Justice] Department was not accusing him of lying.

People familiar with Yatess account say she never discussed any part of the FBI investigation with the White House.

Dowd played down the significance of Trumps tweet. He said he did not intend to make news and declared, Im out of the tweeting business.

[Graphic: Heres what we know so far about Team Trumps ties to Russian interests]

But several legal experts said the tweet, and some of Dowds comments about what the president may have known, could increase the presidents legal exposure.

If Trump knew that Flynn might not have been accurate with the FBI, it could provide motivation for any alleged effort to obstruct justice, said Barak Cohen, a former federal prosecutor who does white-collar defense work at the Perkins Coie law firm. It bolsters the intent for committing obstruction, he said.

Even if Dowd wrote the tweet, Cohen said, if President Trump sends it, then Trump has adopted it. Its his statement. . . . The bottom line is the tweet is still bad for Trump  it makes things worse for him.

A person close to the White House involved in the case termed the Saturday tweet a screw-up of historic proportions that has caused enormous consternation in the White House.

The person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said that White House officials quickly realized the tweet could significantly assist Mueller if he chooses to pursue an obstruction case. The development sparked particular concern because others around Trump were not certain that Trump knew Flynn had made a false statement to the FBI at the time he fired him, the person added.

Democrats were quick to pounce on the development during appearances on Sunday mornings public affairs shows.

In an interview, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said it looked to her that what were beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice.

Appearing on NBCs Meet the Press, Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she based her assessment on the indictment of Flynn on Friday and three other Trump associates previously, as well as the hyper-frenetic attitude of the White House: the comments every day, the continual tweets.

And I see it, most importantly, in what happened with the firing of Director Comey, and it is my belief that that is directly because [Comey] did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation, Feinstein said. Thats obstruction of justice.

Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Trump should have taken action against Flynn sooner if he knew his then-national security adviser had lied to the FBI.

Well, if he knew that then, why didnt he act on it earlier? Warner said on CNNs State of the Union. It raises a whole series of additional questions.

Flynn, who had been one of Trumps closest and most trusted aides during the campaign and transition, admitted lying to the FBI about pre-inauguration communications with Kislyak, regarding efforts to blunt the Obama administrations Russia sanctions and a U.N. resolution on Israel  potential violations of a rarely enforced law.

Dowd told The Post that Trump knew generally that Flynns account to the FBI and Pence were similar because of a conversation with McGahn on or about Jan. 26. Dowd said McGahn relayed what he had learned from Yates.

According to Dowd, Yates told McGahn on Jan. 26, in a meeting she requested, that Flynn appeared to have misled Pence about the nature of his call with Kislyak and that could compromise him, Dowd said. Yates also indicated that the FBI had interviewed Flynn on Jan. 24 about his contacts with Kislyak, Dowd said.

Dowd said Yates did not say that Flynn misled the FBI but suggested that Flynn had given FBI agents the same story he gave the vice president.

For some reason, the [Justice] Department didnt want to make an accusation of lying, Dowd said. The agents thought Flynn was confused.

Past descriptions of those events by Yates and others are at odds with Dowds account.

According to several current and former law enforcement officials who spoke to The Post in February, Yates told McGahn that Flynn had discussed sanctions against Russia in his phone calls with Kislyak, was compromised because he had lied about this to the vice president, and could be vulnerable to blackmail, according to the officials.

She also told McGahn that Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI two days before, the officials said. When McGahn asked her how he did in the interview, Yates did not respond, according to the officials who spoke to The Post. She later testified the same thing at a Senate hearing in May.

Mr. McGahn asked me how he did, and I declined to give him an answer to that, Yates said at the hearing.

Yates did tell McGahn that she was concerned about Flynns underlying conduct  the calls with the Russian ambassador and the fact that he was not telling the truth to the vice president, according to officials who spoke to The Post in February.

Yates offered to show McGahn the underlying evidence regarding the phone calls, and she said the FBI could pull the material together for him to see, the officials said.

McGahn was told Jan. 30 that the material was ready for his review, the officials said. On that night, Trump fired Yates over her refusal to defend his travel ban.

A person familiar with McGahns account says the White House counsel did not give Trump any indication in January that Flynn had violated the law in his FBI interview or tell the president that he believed Flynn was under criminal investigation.

When Yates met with McGahn on Jan. 26, it is McGahns account that she told him that Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI but that she declined to characterize the interview. She also would not say whether Flynn was under investigation, according to the person familiar with McGahns thinking.

That person said McGahn also recalls that Yates added that Flynn had told the FBI something similar to what he had told Pence, based on Pences public comments about the issue at the time.

According to the person familiar with his thinking, McGahn informed the president of those facts and told him that if Yates was accurately describing the content of Flynns contact with Kislyak, then Flynn should be fired.

People familiar with Yatess version of events dispute that she characterized what Flynn told the FBI in any way.

A former senior administration official said Sunday that there was no widespread discussion in the White House of Flynn having lied to the FBI.

There was never a meeting I was in when someone said, Oh, Flynn lied to the FBI; we have to deal with it, said the official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. It was, We dont know if hes telling the truth or not. And then, Okay, hes not telling us the truth.

As controversy built Sunday about Trumps actions, he sought to focus attention on news that Peter Strzok  the former top FBI official assigned to Muellers probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election  was taken off that job this summer after his bosses discovered that he and another member of Muellers team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging Trump and supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Strzok was also a key player in the investigation into Clintons use of a private email server, which ended without charges against her.

Report: ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE Now it all starts to make sense! Trump wrote. He also criticized the FBI and promised to bring it back to greatness under his administration.

After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! Trump wrote on Twitter. But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.

Sari Horwitz, Rosalind S. Helderman and Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.
President Trump on Monday drastically scaled back two national monuments established in Utah by his Democratic predecessors, the largest reduction of public-lands protection in U.S. history.

Trump's move to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by more than 1.1 million acres and more than 800,000 acres, respectively, immediately sparked an outpouring of praise from conservative lawmakers as well as protests by activists outside the White House and in Utah. The changes plunge the Trump administration into uncharted legal territory, as no president has sought to modify monuments established under the 1906 Antiquities Act in more than half a century.

His decision removes about 85 percent of the designation of Bears Ears and nearly 46 percent of that for Grand Staircase-Escalante, land that potentially could now be leased for energy exploration or opened for specific activities such as motorized vehicle use.

Trump told a rally in Salt Lake City that he came to reverse federal overreach and took dramatic action because some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what? Theyre wrong.

They dont know your land, and truly, they dont care for your land like you do, he said. But from now on, that wont matter.





The two proclamations are the first in a series of major changes Trump intends to make to numerous monuments, which range from a forested patch of the Pacific Northwest to a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean off New England.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who has reviewed more than two dozen sites established by Democratic and Republican presidents under an executive order Trump signed in April, said he would release his report on the study Tuesday.

Zinke has recommended downsizing Oregon's Cascade-

Siskiyou and Nevada's Gold Butte national monuments and shifting the way several others are managed, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post. If these revisions are successfully sustained in court, they would redefine not only how existing public lands are protected but the extent to which future presidents could dictate that they remain untouched.

Conservatives have long sought to curb a presidents unilateral power to safeguard federal lands and waters under the law, a practice that both Democrats and Republicans have pursued since it was enacted under Theodore Roosevelt. The issue has been a particular flash point in the West, where some residents think the federal government already imposes too many restrictions on development, and others, including tribal officials, believe greater protections of ancient sites are needed.

Even before Trump made the announcement as part of a day trip to the state, National Cattlemens Beef Association President Craig Uden was hailing the resized designations. While grazing has continued on both monuments, as well as on others, Uden said ranchers could not have greater input into how the areas are managed.

We are grateful that todays action will allow ranchers to resume their role as responsible stewards of the land and drivers of rural economies, he said.

Republicans at the president's rally applauded him and his deputies for heeding their concerns. "President Trump listened to us," Utah House Speaker Gregory Hughes (R) said. "We are not a flyover state."

Gov. Gary R. Herbert (R) characterized the action as an opportunity to push a reset button on these areas and derided as myth this idea that somehow there will be some wholesale development on lands removed from the designation. There is a lot of scaremongering about future oil derricks and natural gas wells, he said, but the only thing that smacks of energy is the uranium that will now become available near Bears Ears and coal near Grand Staircase-Escalante.

[Meet the nations most endangered national monuments]

Protests that opponents began over the weekend, attracting thousands, continued Monday at the Utah Capitol. About 300 demonstrators gathered before Trump arrived and, against the backdrop of the dome and snowy grounds, chanted "Lock him up!"

Conservation advocates and tribal representatives have for months been preparing legal briefs that aim to block the monument changes in federal court.

After Trump signed the two proclamations, the Ute Indian Tribe, Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Pueblo of Zuni announced they would file suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to challenge the action on Bears Ears. A coalition of eight environmental groups, represented by Earthjustice, sued late in the day over Grand Staircase-Escalante.

Were going to fight this, Jonathan Nez, Navajo Nation vice president, told reporters Monday.

Douglas Wheeler, a partner at the firm Hogan Lovells who represents the Conservation Lands Foundation, Utah Dine Bikeyah and other groups, said the watershed moment on the issue came with the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act. Congress made very clear, as a matter of law, that they intend to delegate only that which has been expressly delegated in terms of management of federal lands, he said  which would mean a president can establish a monument under the Antiquities Act but not rescind or substantially reduce a site.

Yet Todd Gaziano, executive director of the Pacific Legal Foundation's office in Washington, D.C., argues that Trump can act unilaterally: "There are many hard or uncertain questions in the law, but this is not one of them," Gaziano said in a statement.

Despite this legal uncertainty, Trump and his deputies have worked to address the concerns raised by Utah politicians such as Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R) and executives in the mining, ranching and oil and gas industries.

Zinke held public events at multiple locations, but the review decision-making process was largely contained to a handful of top staffers at Interior and the White House. Zinkes aides have had only minimal consultations with Bureau of Land Management field office staff members in Utah, according to individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

While both Utah monuments have drawn criticism, they have simultaneously boosted local tourism. Grand Staircase-Escalante also has spurred significant scientific discoveries.

[How a sacred tribal site in Utah got the attention of the Obama White House]

Grand Staircases Kaiparowits Plateau ranks as one of the most important examples of the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs roamed the area, according to David Polly, president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Nearly half of the plateau falls outside the new boundaries, Polly noted in an interview  including nearly all of the Tropic Shale, a roughly 94 million-year-old swath of rock that the new proclamation identifies as a protected object.

Bears Ears, by contrast, is best known for tens of thousands of relatively intact archaeological sites and petroglyphs within its boundaries. Some date from the ancestral Pueblo era, and many tribal members continue to visit the area regularly to conduct rituals as well as to gather herbs and firewood.

A senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the push to change the monument designations was driven by Hatch; Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee; and Zinke.

Hatch has raised the issue of the two Utah sites repeatedly with both the president and his eldest son, not just during the 2016 campaign but also during his visit to the Oval Office on Trump's fifth day in office.

Trump "really likes" Hatch, the White House official said, because he supports his agenda, defends him on TV, praises his children and has a sense of humor. He appreciates his work on the Senate's tax overhaul bill, the aide added, and is hoping the 83-year-old incumbent will run for reelection next year rather than provide an opening for Trump political rival Mitt Romney.

The president, who updated Hatch personally on the process, brought him along on Monday's trip on Air Force One and agreed to meet with leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City at Hatch's request.

Both Trump and Zinke implied Monday that monument designations had impeded public access. "Our public land is for the public to use, not special interests," Zinke said.

But Amy Roberts, executive director of the Outdoor Industry Association, said in an interview that the notion "is flat-out wrong" and that business has thrived in the 20 years since Grand Staircase-Escalante was created as a monument.

Unfortunately, theres a risk now that those peoples livelihoods are going to be threatened as people hear the monuments cut in half and wonder whether its worth visiting, she said.

[Rockefeller and the secret land deals that created Grand Teton National Park]

San Juan County Commission Chairman Bruce Adams, who opposed the Bears Ears designation, said last week that he hoped the tourism boost his county had experienced in the past year would continue. "Whoever's in charge of managing the monument will come up with some places for people to visit, and visit respectfully."

Even less clear is whether changing the monuments' boundaries will spur extractive activities. The BLM was in the process of drafting an environmental-impact statement on opening up a coal mining operation on public land near Kanab when Clinton established Grand Staircase-Escalante. At the time, the bureau found it would be difficult to transport the coal to market given the site's remoteness and the fact that it included hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness study areas that prohibited road construction.

And while there are nearly two dozen existing oil and gas leases within the Bears Ears boundaries that Obama designated, a well hasn't been drilled there for a quarter of a century.



According to two senior administration officials, the question of how to treat existing monuments has not received significant attention in the White House, which has been focused on taxes. White House official Ty Cobb, who served as the president's attorney and once served as chairman of the Grand Canyon Trust, has opposed the reductions.

Eilperin reported from Washington.
Debbie Wesson Gibson was in her attic hauling out boxes of Christmas decorations last week when she noticed a storage bin she said she had forgotten about. Inside was a scrapbook from her senior year of high school, and taped to a page titled "Those Who Inspire" was a graduation card.

Happy graduation Debbie, it read in slanted cursive handwriting. I wanted to give you this card myself. I know that youll be a success in anything you do. Roy.

The inscription, Gibson said, was written by Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican nominee for U.S. Senate who in recent days has repeatedly denied the accounts of five women who told The Washington Post that he pursued them when they were teenagers and he was an assistant district attorney in his 30s. Since those allegations were published last month, four more women have come forward to allege that Moore made unwanted sexual advances. The accounts in The Post included those of Leigh Corfman, who said she was 14 when Moore touched her sexually, and Gibson, who said that she publicly dated Moore when she was 17 and he was 34, a relationship she said she "wore like a badge of honor" until she began reevaluating it in light of the accounts of other women, and now, Moore's own denials.

Shortly after the allegations first surfaced, Moore said in a radio interview with Sean Hannity that he did not know Corfman but that he remembered Gibson as well as Gloria Thacker Deason, who had told The Post that she dated Moore when she was 18. He called each one a good girl and said that he did not remember dating them.

But at two campaign events in recent days, Moore has backtracked.

At a Nov. 27 campaign event in the north Alabama town of Henagar, Moore said: The allegations are completely false. They are malicious. Specifically, I do not know any of these women.

At a Nov. 29 rally at a church in the south Alabama town of Theodore, Moore said, Let me state once again: I do not know any of these women, did not date any of these women and have not engaged in any sexual misconduct with anyone.

Gibson said that after finding the scrapbook, she was not sure whether to make it public given the threats she received after publication of the original story. Then she heard what Moore said last week, she said, and contacted The Post.

He called me a liar, said Gibson, who says she not only openly dated Moore when she was 17 but later joined him in passing out fliers during his campaign for circuit court judge in 1982 and exchanged Christmas cards with him over the years. Roy Moore made an egregious mistake to attack that one thing  my integrity.



A photo of Debbie Wesson Gibson when she was a high school senior, as seen in a scrapbook she kept during her senior year at Etowah High School. (Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)

The Moore campaign did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this article.

Two of the other women named in The Post article have also pushed back in recent days against Moore.

In an open letter to Moore published on the Alabama news site Al.com after Moores Nov. 27 speech, Corfman wrote that I am done being silent.

You sent out your spokesman to call me a liar. Day after day. Finally, last night, you did the dirty work yourself . . . she wrote. What you did to me when I was 14-years old should be revolting to every person of good morals. But now you are attacking my honesty and integrity. Where does your immorality end?

In a statement to The Post after Moores Nov. 29 speech, Paula Cobia, an attorney for Deason, recounted Deasons vivid memories of dating Moore, including specific restaurants she says they frequented and the velvet-collared dress Deason says she wore when she says Moore took her to a social function at a Ramada Inn.

No matter what lies Roy Moore may choose to tell now, Cobia said, the truth was the first thing out of his mouth when it came to remembering Gloria.

Gibson, 54, now lives in Delray Beach, Fla., is a registered Republican and is the founder of a company that provides sign language interpretation. Though she said the bulk of her work is in educational, medical and legal settings, her clients have included Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and Republicans such as the mayor of Miami. She said that despite requests from dozens of media outlets, she had very carefully said absolutely nothing after her account was first published in The Post, because of a barrage of threatening hate mail she received, prompting her to notify her local police department. She and the other women have been accused by Moores surrogates of lying, or being paid to spread false stories, or being part of a larger political conspiracy to defeat Moore.



Debbie Wesson Gibson shows what she says is a graduation card from Roy Moore. She says he handed it to her during her high school graduation ceremony in 1981. Underneath is Gibsons own note about what Moore meant to her at the time. (Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)

Then she found the scrapbook and the graduation card with the slanted, cursive handwriting, which she said immediately reminded her of another woman, Beverly Young Nelson, who had come forward after the Post article was published. In an emotional news conference with the attorney Gloria Allred, Nelson accused Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was 16, and produced what she said was her high school yearbook with an inscription to her from Moore.

I just couldnt imagine him doing something like that, Gibson said. And then when I saw the interview from Beverly, and I saw his handwriting in her yearbook, my heart just sank. And when I saw what I knew to be Roy Moores handwriting, I just began to sob openly.



Beverly Young Nelson shows her high school yearbook, and an inscription she says was written by Roy Moore, at a news conference on Nov. 13. (Richard Drew/AP)

Mark Songer, a former FBI forensic examiner now with the firm Robson Forensic, examined an image of the graduation card at The Posts request and said that it appears to be naturally prepared. Songer also compared an image of the yearbook inscription to the image of the graduation card and said that the style of writing, as well as certain letter features, appear to be similar. He stressed the need for a full and comprehensive handwriting examination to arrive at a final conclusion.

Gibson said she remembers Moore handing the card to her at the Etowah High School graduation ceremony in Attalla, Ala., where Gibson grew up about 10 miles from Moores home. She remembers reading the inscription and writing below it: Roy Moore inspires me because he is such a successful man himself. Also, he is about the only person I know of who seriously believes in me. I appreciate that. Hes got to be one of the nicest people I know.

As she flipped through the scrapbook last week, Gibson said, she realized it contained other indications of her relationship with Moore, which she says began in March 1981, after he came to speak to her high school civics class.

On a page titled commencement, under My own guests, she had written Roy S. Moore, just above mom and dad.

On a page titled remembrances, she had listed her graduation gifts line by line, including $10, card from Roy S. Moore, and a check mark indicating she had sent a thank-you card.



Debbie Wesson Gibson points to an entry in her high school scrapbook, where she noted what she says was her first date with Roy Moore. (Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)

On a page titled the best times, she had written: Wednesday night, 3-4-81. Roy S. Moore and I went out for the first time. We went out to eat at Catfish Cabin in Albertville. I had a great time. She had underlined great twice.

The scrapbook also contained a photo of Gibson as a high school senior, and when she saw it, she said, she thought to herself, Thats the age I was when I dated Roy Moore, because my braces were off.

As Gibson previously told The Post, she said that she and Moore dated for a couple of months. She said he kissed her by the swimming pool concession stand at a local country club, that he played his guitar and read his own poetry to her, and that things ended when she went off to college in another part of Alabama, though they still kept in touch.

She said she helped Moore when he was campaigning for circuit court judge in 1982, and remembers tucking fliers under windshield wipers at the Kmart parking lot.

She said that when she became engaged, Moore insisted on meeting her fiance to make sure he was good enough for me. She said that when Moore was first appointed as a circuit court judge in 1992, she sent him a gavel engraved with his name and a congratulatory note and that her family and his exchanged Christmas cards some years.

She said that she held Moore in high esteem, despite political differences with him, until she began hearing stories from other women who alleged that Moore pursued them as teenagers. She said that at first she did not want to believe the women.

It takes what I thought was a very lovely part of my past, and it colors it, and it changes it irrevocably, she said. It changes it permanently.

What made her decision to share the documents easier, she said, was watching and re-watching a video she has on her cellphone of Moore speaking last week and deciding that supporting the women who have come forward was more important than staying silent.

At 34 minutes and 56 seconds into the video, he says, unequivocally, I did not know any of them, Gibson said. In that moment, it changed my perspective. I knew he was a liar.

Read more:

Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32

Two more women described unwanted overtures by Roy Moore at Alabama mall

A woman approached The Post with a dramatic  and false tale about Roy Moore
Ultra-Orthodox Jews walk in Jerusalem on Monday with the Dome of the Rock mosque visible in the background. (Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images)

Arab nations and Palestinian officials have warned of dire consequences if the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital, including potential unrest and an end to the peace process, amid last-minute lobbying to prevent President Trump from making the move.

In a late-night call Sunday, Jordans foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that such a decision could trigger anger across the Arab and Muslim world, fuel tension and jeopardize peace efforts, according to Jordans state news agency.

Egypts foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, also discussed with Tillerson the possible negative impacts on peace, according to a ministry spokesman. He asked that Tillerson avoid taking decisions that could stir tensions in the region.

Turkey said a change in policy would be a major catastrophe. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki, meanwhile, called for an emergency meeting of the 22 members of the Arab League, which is expected to take place Tuesday.

Any U.S. announcement on the status of Jerusalem prior to a final settlement would have a detrimental impact on the peace process and would heighten tensions in the region, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Khalid bin Salman, said in a statement, the Reuters news agency reported. The kingdoms policy has been and remains in support of the Palestinian people, and this has been communicated to the U.S. administration.

[Kushner says Mideast peace is essential to thwarting Iran and Islamist extremism]

For more than two decades, successive U.S. presidents have signed a waiver every six months that allows them to delay a move of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on national security grounds. During his campaign, Trump vowed to relocate the U.S. Embassy but reluctantly signed the waiver six months ago as his administration attempts to broker a peace process.

The White House was expected to let Mondays deadline for the next signing pass unmentioned, a signal that a shift is likely to be in the works. Trump is likely to outline a new policy on Jerusalem and the embassy in a speech Wednesday, an administration official said.

Israel claims Jerusalem in its entirety as its eternal and undivided capital, but Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Despite the critical statements by Jordan and Egypt, Palestinians may find it hard to coordinate genuinely robust opposition at a time when Arab states increasingly see their security interests aligned with Israels against their shared enemy, Iran.

In the Knesset on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed an unprecedented shift in the Arab states attitude to Israel.

Jared Kushner, President Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, said Sunday that Trump is close to making a decision on Jerusalem but is still looking at a lot of facts. Israel captured the eastern part of the city from Jordan in 1967 in the Six-Day War, later annexing it in a move considered illegal by the United Nations.

Palestinian officials have warned that recognition of the city as Israels capital will end U.S.-brokered peace efforts, which they have already complained appear biased toward Israel. Calling it Israels undivided capital would mark an even more dramatic step, effectively recognizing Israels annexation of East Jerusalem.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last month expressed surprise after the United States threatened to shutter the Palestine Liberation Organization's Washington office unless the Palestinians engaged in meaningful peace talks.

Recognizing Jerusalem as Israels capital is offensive and contrary to the role of the U.S. administration as a mediator and sponsor of the peace process, the Palestinian deputy premier, Ziad Abu Amr, told the U.S. consul general for Jerusalem, Donald Blome, in a meeting in Ramallah on Monday, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. It closes every door to the continuation of a serious peace process, and pushes the entire region into more tension and instability.

The status of Jerusalem and Temple Mount have been determined by international agreements, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said after a cabinet meeting on Monday, according to Reuters. It is important to preserve Jerusalems status for the sake of protecting peace in the region.

Eran Lerman, vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, said threats of violence amounted to a toy gun.

These are attempts to manipulate the American administration, he said on a conference call organized by the Israel Project, a pro-Israel media advocacy organization. They are actually counterproductive. I dont think this administration responds very well to crude threats.

The State Department has warned embassies of potential unrest and anti-American protests this week related to an announcement, according to U.S. officials.

Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report.

Read more:

Inside the Trump administration debate over declaring Jerusalem to be Israels capital

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, on his first visit to Pakistan in that role, called on its top military and civilian officials Monday to "redouble" efforts to prevent Islamist militants from using the country as a refuge and a launchpad for attacks on Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But Mattis seemed to tone down the sharp language he has used in congressional hearings and other settings to accuse Pakistan of harboring Afghan Taliban fighters. Instead, he adopted a milder, more diplomatic approach aimed at finding common ground.

Statements from the Pakistani prime ministers office and the Pentagon late Monday, after Mattis had left the country, described his interactions with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the defense minister, and military and intelligence chiefs in positive, bland terms.

The U.S. Embassy said he praised Pakistans sacrifices in the war against terrorism while insisting that it must redouble its efforts to confront militants within its borders.

Abbasi was even more upbeat, saying in a statement that both countries share a commitment to the war against terrorism and asserting that there are no safe havens for militants in Pakistan. He emphasized Mattiss comments about continuing the long-term relationship between the former Cold War allies and deepening cooperation for the common goal of eliminating terrorism from the region.

[The U.S. says Pakistan must work with Afghanistan on terrorism. It wont be easy.]

There was no public mention from either side of the repeated threats by President Trump and other top U.S. officials that Washington will take strong action against Pakistan if it fails to stop sheltering militants. The punitive measures could include significant cuts in military and economic aid, retracting Pakistan's status as a "major non-NATO ally," and declaring it a state sponsor of terrorism.

Pakistani army officials said they told Mattis that Pakistan has done much more than its due share despite capacity constraints. They said Mattis told them that his aim was not to make demands. In a statement, the officials said the U.S. defense chief expressed concern that a few elements use Pakistani territory to promote terrorism in Afghanistan, and they said they are prepared to look into the possibility that such miscreants may be taking cover in Afghan refugee communities.

But other U.S. officials have continued to assert that Pakistan has not taken sufficient action, despite repeated meetings with U.S. military officials and a visit from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in late October.

[Trumps new Afghanistan policy has Pakistan angry and alarmed]

"We have been very direct and very clear with the Pakistanis. . . . We have not seen those changes implemented yet," Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said at a news conference in Kabul last week. But he, too, said the United States is "hoping to work together with the Pakistanis" to eliminate cross-border terrorism and did not mention any sanctions.

In Washington on Saturday, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the United States will do "everything we can to ensure that safe havens no longer exist" if Pakistan does not do so. One of the measures would be an expansion of U.S. drone strikes deeper into Pakistan's heartland. Such a move would alarm the populace and provoke the government, which has quietly cooperated with U.S. drone strikes in tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.

Afghan officials have repeatedly accused Pakistan of allowing the Taliban and other militant groups, especially the Haqqani network, to take shelter and launch attacks from sanctuaries on its side of the border. They also accuse Pakistan's military and its intelligence services of orchestrating attacks in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan. Pakistan has always denied the accusations.

[Once-fringe Islamist radicals are making their way into Pakistani politics]

Despite the cordiality of the Monday meetings, the previous threats from the Trump administration were very much on the minds of Pakistani officials and analysts in the capital as Mattis arrived at midday for a brief stop before flying to Kuwait. The U.S. demands that Pakistan do more have angered many Pakistanis, who insist that Washington should put pressure on Afghanistan to stop sheltering militants on its side of the 1,700-mile border.

Some commentators suggested that an enormous bomb dropped in August by U.S. warplanes just over the border in eastern Afghanistan, which had no apparent immediate purpose and fell on a deserted former militant hideout in the mountains, was actually intended as a warning to Pakistan.

Syed Talat Hussain, a longtime Pakistani media analyst, wrote Monday that the Trump administration has decided to "bring Islamabad to its knees" and is only "going through the motions of engagement" with polite visits like those by Tillerson and Mattis, who will be followed shortly by Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Public "niceties and contrived bonhomie," Hussain added, are for show.

Read more:

The U.S. begins bombing Taliban drug labs as Trumps Afghanistan strategy takes hold

Scores of attorneys among the dead in suicide bombing in southwestern Pakistan

Pakistan is making concessions to religious extremists. Whats the cost?

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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British and European Union leaders said they were nearing a divorce deal even as divisions within fractious Britain kept them just short of a final bargain in negotiations Monday.

The elements of the deal  which would be the most significant step in Britains exit from the European Union since it filed papers in March  appeared to signal an acknowledgment by British negotiators that they have scant leverage in the negotiation. On issues such as what Britain will pay before exiting and a special status for Northern Ireland, British leaders were being pushed toward Europes demands after long vowing otherwise.

A bargain would pave the way for London to start negotiating its future trade relationship with the remaining 27 E.U. nations. But the emerging terms of the agreement raised questions about how British Prime Minister Theresa May would convince her own divided public about the best way forward. On Monday, she was forced to leave a day of Brussels meetings with no deal in hand following sharp objections from political forces back home. She promised consultations in London.

[Rising alarm in Britain over Russian meddling in Brexit vote]

The defeat was a reminder that May is negotiating the exit not just with the Europeans but also within her own party and with Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and the London mayor.

The Brexit bill of up to $65 billion will anger pro-Brexit leaders who want Britain to crash out of the bloc without paying a cent, for example. A floated pledge that Northern Ireland would be kept in regulatory alignment with the E.U. to avoid rekindling sectarian violence there raised immediate questions from pro-E.U. leaders in Scotland and London who asked why they could not have similar deals.

We were narrowing our positions to a huge extent today thanks to the British prime minister, said European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in brief remarks following the inconclusive lunchtime bargaining session. This is not a failure; this is the start of the very last round. Im very confident that we will reach an agreement in the course of this week.

May also tried to put a good face on the talks, which she had to interrupt for phone calls with furious political factions in London.

Both sides have been working hard in good faith, May said. I am also confident that we will conclude this positively.

If Britain is to move on to negotiating its trade deal with Europe before the end of the year, the divorce bill needs to be approved by the 27 remaining E.U. leaders at a summit in Brussels that begins Dec. 14.

But that first depends on May being able to sell it at home. Following an electoral wipeout in June, she leads a minority government that depends on the support of a tiny but influential Northern Ireland party that on Monday appeared to veto any possibility of a special status for Northern Ireland. Irish leaders want to avoid imposing a hard border to preserve the Good Friday Agreement that quelled decades of violence.

[Conservatives complain that May bungled election and is now bungling aftermath]

Mays partner there, Arlene Foster, the head of the Democratic Unionist Party, offered a blunt warning: We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the E.U. on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom. We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Still, if May gives ground, she opens the door to other regions of Britain wanting the same deal.

"If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can't," wrote Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Twitter. English and Welsh leaders asked the same question.

At the center of the negotiations to this point has been the Brexit divorce bill, settling the tab of what Britain owes the E.U. before talks can begin on future trade agreements.

Europe has insisted that the U.K. honor its financial commitments for budgets and spending going forward even after it leaves the union in March 2019. As a member of the European Union, Britain made commitments both toward short-term expenses and for long-term items such as the pensions of E.U. bureaucrats and building projects that are funded over many years.

Europe has insisted that Britain cannot just walk away. Juncker compared it to ordering a round of drinks and then walking out of the bar.

Independent analysts have estimated that the Brexit divorce bill falls between $30 billion and $80 billion, depending on how generously one assesses the obligations.

May and her government have been loath to name a figure, both because they are still in negotiations and because whatever the price, it wont be popular at home.

Many Brexit supporters have insisted London shouldnt pay a penny, calling the demands a form of extortion. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said this summer that Brussels could go whistle if it expected to see large sums of money.

But the reality is that if Britain wants a deal on trade, E.U. leaders say, it has to settle its affairs first.

European and British negotiators have also squabbled about the rights of the roughly 3 million E.U. citizens living in Britain. E.U. leaders want guarantees that citizens who moved to Britain will have the same rights as before the breakup  and they want the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to have the final word to make sure Britain keeps that pledge.

The courts oversight would be a bitter pill for British anti-E.U. campaigners who long chafed under its jurisdiction and said it was a loss of sovereignty to hand over decisions to judges in another country.

The last of the three main issues is the question of what to do about the border between the Irish Republic in the south, an independent nation that will remain in the European Union, and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom that will exit the European bloc along with England, Scotland and Wales.

After the Good Friday Agreements in 1998 brought a semblance of peace between unionists and republicans, the badlands between the two entities  once a perilous place of gunrunning and violence between Irish Republican Army cells and British soldiers  calmed down.

Today, the border between north and south is wide open. More than 180 formal roads cross the border  many more if you count farmers' lanes and foot trails.

Irish leaders in Dublin said they did not want to derail Brexit  but they have been insistent that the border remain relatively open and soft.

On Monday, that push appeared to break down the negotiations. Both sides said they hoped to conclude the talks by the end of the week.

Booth reported from London.

Read more

Britain furious, Trump unapologetic as fallout swells from anti-Muslim videos

Britain releases massive report on disparities between nations races

Frustrated foreign leaders bypass Washington in search of blue-state allies

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Michael Flynn leaves federal court in Washington on Friday. Prosecutors say Kislyak called him on Dec. 31 and informed him that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to Flynns request. (Susan Walsh/AP)

The Kremlin issued several sharp, successive denials Monday to questions about whether then-President-elect Donald Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, persuaded Russian President Vladimir Putin not to retaliate for sanctions issued by President Barack Obama.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a daily conference call that the answer was no, and for several reasons.

The Kremlin does not know anything about the talks with Flynn because they were conducted by the Foreign Ministry, he said.

Anyway, Flynn was not in a position to be making proposals to Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador, the spokesman continued, and they certainly would not have been passed along to the president.

And finally, Putin makes decisions on his own, he added, guided only by Russias national interests.

In conclusion? It is completely absurd, Peskov said.

When Flynn pleaded guilty Friday, however, prosecutors asserted that Kislyak had called him on Dec. 31 and informed him that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to Flynns request.

Prosecutors said that Flynn then spoke with senior transition officials about the conversation and Russias decision.

[Flynn pleads guilty to lying to FBI on contacts with Russian ambassador]

There was little doubt that the Kremlin would deny having any information about the allegations against Flynn, even as the special investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, led by Robert S. Mueller III, closes in on an inner circle of advisers surrounding Trump.

In Russia, the accusations of meddling are treated with scorn as spurious and politically motivated, a way for Trumps enemies to gin up political anger at the embattled president.

Still, Flynn's phone calls fit into a timeline in which Putin reacted leniently after the Obama administration expelled 35 Russians described as "intelligence operatives," ignoring recommendations from his own Foreign Ministry to immediately expel 35 American officials in retaliation.

In late December 2016, Flynn called Kislyak to argue that Russia should not retaliate against the expulsion of the 35 Russians. The expulsion came in response to a U.S. intelligence assessment that Russian-backed hackers stole information from the Democratic National Committees email servers and sought to swing the election to Trump.

[Obamas secret struggle to punish Russia for Putins election assault]

Later that day, Putin issued a surprise directive: Russia would not respond immediately to the expulsions. Eventually, once efforts to repair U.S.-Russian relations stalled under Trump, Putin did cut the staff of U.S. diplomats and other government interests in Russia.

Peskovs remarks came as Russian lawmakers prepared to ban American media outlets from the premises of the lower house of the legislature, the State Duma.

A Duma committee Monday recommended a ban on American media organizations that the Russian government deems foreign agents. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who attended the deliberation, said that could include nine or 10 U.S. media outlets.

Earlier reports had said lawmakers could ban all 23 accredited U.S. media companies in retaliation for a decision to relieve the Russian state-funded television station RT, formerly known as Russia Today, of its accreditation to cover the U.S. Congress.

What the American authorities are doing reminds us of the Soviet Union, Zakharova told reporters. Not the best parts . . . but the interrogations, repression.

A Duma official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the proceedings said he hoped that the ban would affect only companies that spread propaganda in Russia and not established media like the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN. He named Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which receive their funding from Congress, as organizations the Duma would probably ban.

Russia amended its law on foreign agents last month to include media outlets, in retaliation for the U.S. government's registration of RT as a foreign agent under a 1938 U.S. law.

David Filipov in Moscow and Rosalind Helderman in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Trump lawyer says president knew Flynn had talked to FBI and vice president

Michael Flynn pleads guilty to lying to FBI on contacts with Russian ambassador

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Jared Kushner, senior White House adviser, listens during the Brookings Saban Forum in Washington on Sunday. He is President Trump's chief negotiator for brokering a Middle East peace agreement. (Alex Wroblewski/Bloomberg News)

President Trumps push for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians stems from a belief that his broader goals of stopping Iranian aggression and Islamist extremism will not be possible without it, presidential adviser Jared Kushner said in a rare public appearance Sunday.

"If we're going to try to create more stability in the region as a whole, you have to solve this issue," Kushner told Middle East experts gathered at the Brookings Institution's Saban Forum. Trump, he said, "sees this as something that has to be solved."

But nearly a year after Trump named Kushner, his son-in-law and senior White House aide, as point person for what he called "the ultimate deal," there has been no public indication of where the initiative is heading.

Presumed participants in the plan  described by officials as a comprehensive package including Israel, the Palestinians, Arab governments and international backers  have been kept similarly in the dark, leading to widespread speculation and anxiety.

If two states are in there, a major part of the [Israeli] coalition will object, a senior Israeli official said last week. Any attempt to establish a Palestinian state in any form, the official said, could bring down the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There are just rumors, but we hear there are moves to bring the Arabs on board and provide Israel with rewards and give the Palestinians pressure and threats and extortion, said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Reports that Trump plans this week to declare U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the undisputed capital of Israel have elevated anxiety to panic in some quarters.

[Inside the Trump administrations debate over declaring Jerusalem to be Israels capital]

This move will promote international anarchy and disrespect for global institutions and law, PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat said in a statement Sunday. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as their capital. By taking sides on an issue long considered part of final status negotiations, he said, the United States will also be disqualifying itself to play any role in an initiative towards achieving a just and lasting peace.

Jordans King Abdullah II, whom Kushners team considers a key regional partner, warned last week that a U.S. decision to move the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv must come within a comprehensive solution that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side with Israel.

Any move at this point, said Abdullah, who was in Washington to consult with Congress, could be potentially exploited by terrorists to stoke anger, frustration and desperation in order to spread their ideologies.

Monday is a deadline for Trump to either announce the embassy move  as required by 1995 legislation  or issue the same six-month waiver that he signed in the summer, as has every president before him over the past two decades. Administration officials have indicated that Trump will again sign the waiver, but he will make a midweek speech recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

Kushner declined to comment on the embassy issue, saying that Trump was still looking at a lot of different facts.

The president is going to make his decision. . . . Hell be one who will want to tell you, not me, he said. Haim Saban, the Israeli American media billionaire who heads the forum, an annual dialogue between U.S. and Israeli leaders, said he would call Kushner for the answer on Thursday  the day after Trump is expected to speak on the issue. Perfect, Kushner replied.

Kushner has stayed away from public view in recent months, as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has investigated ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. The format of Kushners Sunday appearance was an on-stage interview with Saban, a major donor to the Democratic Party, who said the two had established a relationship in discussions about the Middle East. But Saban made little headway in excavating details of the peace plan.

After Kushner explained that the Iranians, with their nuclear ambitions and their expansive regional mischief, along with the threat from the Islamic State and extremist ideology could best be addressed after the distraction of the Israeli-Palestinian issue was resolved, Saban responded with the question many experts on the region have posed.

I understand that. But to achieve that, Saban said, the team has in it an entrepreneurial real estate lawyer, a bankruptcy lawyer  I dont know how youve lasted eight months in this lineup. . . . Its impressive that its still going. Theres not a Mideast macher in this group. Macher is a Yiddish word for a mover and shaker.

How do you operate with, with all due respect, a bunch of Orthodox Jews who have no idea about anything? he asked. What are you guys doing? Seriously, I dont understand this.

Amid audience laughter, Kushner responded: Ill definitely say its not a conventional team. . . . Its a perfectly qualified team. How is that?

Three members of Kushner's team, including him, are Orthodox Jews. Jason Greenblatt, the White House special representative for international negotiations, came to the administration after serving as executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organization. David Friedman, Trump's bankruptcy lawyer and, like Kushner, a financial contributor to the Israeli settlement movement in the past, is the administration's ambassador to Israel.

The fourth team member is Dina Powell, deputy national security adviser and an Egyptian American who is a Coptic Christian. The State Department, which led decades of failed Mideast peace efforts under previous administrations, has been kept largely out of the Trump initiative.

According to administration officials willing to discuss the process but not the contents of the peace package, the plan is to release a comprehensive, final document covering all aspects of a deal. Rather than previous attempts to move from one issue to another in search of compromises between Israel and the Palestinians, the hope is that each party will find enough it likes in the overall document that it will be more amenable to those aspects it might previously have rejected.

One administration analogy for both the process and its final presentation is to a dinner party in which the host, rather than asking guests what each would like to eat when they sit down at the table, has already prepared a several course, take-it-or-leave-it meal.

To reach a bottom line, Kushner and his team have met repeatedly with leaders and negotiators in countries throughout the region. Weve tried very hard to do a lot of listening, he said, to learn what their red lines are . . . to find areas of mutual agreement, to find reasons to do things rather than not do things.

He brushed off publicly expressed Israeli and Palestinian concerns, and insistence that there is no wiggle room on what he acknowledged were the elephants among the issues that have dogged previous efforts, including establishment of a Palestinian state and its borders, Israeli settlements, and Jerusalem.

Weve solicited a lot of ideas from a lot of places, Kushner said. There is obviously a lot of speculation. . . . There is a plan, what is it? Are these four points in or out?

We all kind of laugh and say, okay, were just not going to play the guessing game. . . . We know whats in the plan. The Palestinians know what discussions weve had with them, the Israelis know.

None of the parties have been told what the others have discussed, according to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the undertaking that, as Kushner noted, has had no leaks.

Underlying all of Kushners calculations are what he called the regional dynamics, which the administration believes have brought the Saudis and other countries influential with the Palestinians to find common cause with Israel  and the administration  against Iran and extremism. The region, he said, is unifying against Irans aggression.

Officials insisted that while Arab partners  including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates  have a role to play, the main focus of the plan is on Israel and the Palestinians.

But Kushner sidestepped questions about the administration's especially close ties with Saudi Arabia, and his own tight relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely known as MBS.

Some experts attribute what appears to be a delay in release of the administrations plan, initially believed set for the end of this year, to overreaching by MBS, who in recent weeks has arrested more than 200 members of the Saudi royal family and leading business persons, stepped into domestic politics in Lebanon and has been held responsible internationally for a humanitarian disaster in Yemen.

Kushner insisted that there was no delay, because there had never been a deadline.

Were businesspeople, were not politicians, he said. Weve been very deliberate about not setting time frames. Were not trying to do this the way its been done before.

Morris reported from Jerusalem.
Senior Congress party leaders welcome their party vice president Rahul Gandhi, center, with flowers as he arrives to file his nomination papers at party headquarters, in New Delhi on Dec. 4. (Manish Swarup/Associated Press)

Rahul Gandhi, a scion of India's most enduring political dynasty, will take the helm of his family's party, enshrining his role as chief opponent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on India's political stage.

Gandhis promotion to leader of the Indian National Congress, or Congress party, will officially happen later this month, but his upcoming elevation became clear Monday after no one filed nomination papers to challenge him. The move was long expected and comes as the party is at a nadir in its fortunes, losing a series of state elections and struggling to counter Modis widespread popularity and his upbeat message of development and economic prosperity for all.

Gandhi, 47, a three-time member of Parliament, is the descendant of towering figures in Indian history, including his grandmother Indira Gandhi and his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, who helped lead the countrys movement for independence from Britain.

Modi, who is campaigning in state elections in his home state of Gujarat against the Congress party, took a dig at the political ascension, comparing the Gandhi dynasty to Muslim Mughal kings of the past.

When Shahjahan came after Jahangir, or Aurangzeb came after Shahjahan, were there any elections for that? he said.

I congratulate the Congress on their Aurangzeb Raj,  he added, comparing Gandhi to the widely unpopular 17th-century king.

Gandhi, dubbed the Reluctant Prince by the Indian media, had long appeared ambivalent about his familys business, and critics have charged that he is effete and out of touch, despite leading a party that has historically championed Indias poor and found its strength in its villages. In 2014, he led the Congress partys campaign in a national election in which the party won just 44 seats in the lower house of Parliament, the worst showing in its history.

Gandhi briefly disappeared from the scene in 2015  when he reportedly attended a meditation retreat to contemplate his future  and has appeared re-energized in recent months, analysts say, touring colleges, criticizing Modi with new vigor and hiring new staff members to increase his presence on social media.

People are taking him more seriously now, said Sudha Pai, a fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science Research. He has played a more sustained role in politics and has not disappeared in between or kept quiet  that was his style earlier. He was seen as a very reluctant politician.

People are prepared to wait and watch, she added. But what use he will make of it post becoming [the Congress partys] president is something one has to wait and see.

As a child, Gandhi lived a fairly sheltered existence in New Delhi, especially after his father, Rajiv, who served as prime minister from 1984 to 1989, was assassinated by a Sri Lankan separatist in 1991. He went on to graduate from Cambridge University and work as a management consultant before winning his father's former seat in Parliament in 2004.

He declined to serve in a cabinet post during his partys decade-long tenure, leaving himself open to criticism that he has no administrative experience, said Shekhar Gupta, a columnist and editor in chief of the news website ThePrint.

Rahul has never had any responsibility, Gupta said. My own view is that hes been pampered too long and allowed himself to be protected for too long. Now hes out there and his necks on the line.

Gandhi will replace his mother as party president. Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, 70, has been a powerful leader in her own right, serving 19 years as party president and leading the party to two national general-election victories, in 2004 and 2009.

Members of Modis Bharatiya Janata Party view Gandhis appointment as a positive, analysts say, because they can continue to target him as the spoiled child of a fading dynasty who has no acumen for politics.

I dont think he has matured in the sense that he can stand up and say, I am my own man and I make my own decisions for better or worse,  said Kanchan Gupta, a journalist and political analyst. Unfortunately, the Congress has internalized the fact that only a dynast can lead the party.

Read more

Can Indias most famous political scion, Rahul Gandhi, get his act together?

It once dominated Indian politics. Now the Gandhi dynasty risks being sidelined

Rahul Gandhi returns home after mystery absence

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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The U.S. and South Korean air forces on Monday began a huge combat exercise that will include simulated strikes on mock North Korean nuclear and missile targets.

North Korea denounced the exercises as dangerous when insane President Trump is running wild, while analysts warned that they sharply increase the chances of miscalculation and accidental conflict.

More than 230 warplanes  including six U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors and an additional six F-35A stealth fighters deployed to the peninsula especially for the exercises  are taking part.

Two B-1B Lancer bombers are also expected to participate in the five-day-long drills, called Vigilant ACE, along with about 12,000 American troops, including Navy and Marine Corps personnel.

The realistic air combat exercise is designed to enhance coordination between the United States and South Korea and increase the allies combat effectiveness, the U.S. 7th Air Force said in a statement.

They will practice for a range of wartime scenarios, including enemy infiltration drills and precision strikes on mock North Korean nuclear and missile targets, the statement added.

The drills will take place in all weather, both day and night, so the forces are ready for any situation, South Koreas Defense Ministry said.

However, the drills got off to an inauspicious start when one of the Raptors touched down at a South Korean base in Gwangju on Monday morning but then could not move and had to be towed, a South Korean official told the Stars and Stripes newspaper. The Yonhap News Agency published photos of an F-22 being towed.

[North Korea has shown us its new missile, and its scarier than we thought]

The third annual drills were scheduled long before the recent increase in tensions between North Korea and the outside world, and they are comparable in size to those in previous years, although fifth-generation stealth jets are involved for the first time this year.

Still, the environment could hardly be more tense.

After detonating a hydrogen bomb in September, North Korea last week launched its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile yet, one that puts all of the United States within range. Kim Jong Un's regime proudly announced that it had now completed its nuclear goals.

This prompted an angry reaction from Washington and a threat of further sanctions.

But it has also led to another spate of warnings that, if sanctions do not change North Koreas calculus, military action might be needed.

H.R. McMaster, the presidents national security adviser, said over the weekend that the possibility of war with North Korea was increasing every day that the nuclear crisis wasnt solved.

The priorities that the presidents given us [are] to move as quickly as we can to resolve this crisis with North Korea, McMaster told Fox News in an interview Sunday.

If necessary, the president and the United States will have to take care of it, because he has said hes not going to allow this murderous, rogue regime to threaten the United States.

[Trump pledges new wave of major sanctions on North Korea after call with Chinas Xi]

Separately, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said U.S. military families in South Korea should leave because a preemptive attack on North Korea is becoming more likely.

"We're getting close to a military conflict because North Korea's marching toward marrying up the technology of an ICBM with a nuclear weapon on top that can not only get to America but deliver the weapon. We're running out of time," Graham said Sunday on CBS News's "Face the Nation."

Before these comments and the start of the exercises, North Korea said the drills showed that the United States and South Korea were aggressors and provocateurs and that Pyongyang was right to develop its deterrent nuclear program.

The projected war rehearsal is just a grave military provocation which will push the already acute situation on the Korean Peninsula to the brink of nuclear war, the Norths Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, which handles relations with South Korea, said in a statement carried by the official news agency.

The exercises will only invite more terrible retaliation and precipitate their self-destruction, the committee warned the United States and South Korea.

Read more:

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

North Korean soldiers survival is truly a miracle, says American rescue crew

Could North Koreas missile test lead to talks? Some see a slight opening.

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/12/2017 (1809 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipegs downtown development agency plans to unveil a new strategy early in the new year to help artists and art studios find and retain space in the historic Exchange District.

We at CentreVenture are concerned about rising prices and rents in the Exchange impacting art galleries and spaces for artists in general, who occupy a lot of buildings in the Exchange, said CentreVenture Development Corp. president and CEO Angela Mathieson.

Mathieson said that in addition to artists and art galleries, there are non-profit arts organizations leasing space in the Exchange, and CentreVenture is worried rental rates could become unsustainable for them.

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press files CentreVenture CEO Angela Mathieson said she wants art galleries to be able to afford to stay in the Exchange District.

We do want buildings (in the Exchange) to rise in value, and we do want other people to move into the district

But we have to have to do it in such a way that it makes sure were also keeping some of what is really the essence of the Exchange District, which are artists, she said.

So in this business plan, well be rolling out some strategies to support them.

Mathieson said the new business plan is expected to be presented to city council early in the new year, and she cant disclose any details until then.

But we do have some ideas.

Mathiesons comments are music to the ears of David Pensato, executive director of the Exchange District Business Improvement Zone, and to Dani Finch, an entrepreneur who hopes to find a new, long-term home in the Exchange for her fledgling art gallery  Finch Gallery Workshop.

Pensato said the Exchange needs to retain a vibrant mix of tenants, which should include artists, art galleries and arts organizations.

When I look at the Exchange District and whats exciting about it and how its evolved, its that you do have a mix and a balance, he said. You do have arts groups and art galleries, youve got interesting entrepreneurial businesses, and youve got lots of offices, too.

He said there was a time not that long ago when there were lots of live-music venues in the Exchange. Now, about the only one left is the Kings Head Pub on King Street.

Thats another part of the ecosystem that weve already lost, so it would be a shame to lose the gallery ecosystem on top of that, he added.

It would be very easy for it to slip into a space where we dont have these galleries anymore.

BIZ records show there are 35 public art galleries and studio spaces in the Exchange.

If private art studio spaces are included, the number is likely double that.

Finch got a taste of whats its like to operate an art gallery in the Exchange after participating for the past three months in CentreVentures Pop Up Shop Hop program.

The program pairs up-and-coming local entrepreneurs who want to try their hand at running a brick-and-mortar store downtown with vacant retail spaces in the area.

CentreVenture also provides rent subsidies and other assistance in hopes the program participants will go on to find downtown spaces of their own, and that the participating landlords will also attract longer-term tenants for their spaces.

Finch said her gallery has received tremendous support from the local arts community since opening on the main floor of a three-storey heritage building at 74 Princess St. in September.

She said the response has convinced her she has a viable business.

But the buildings landlord  Business Professionals Inc.  made it clear from the outset it might end up renting the space to someone else at the end of Finchs four-month tenure if the right offer came along.

And unfortunately for Finch, thats exactly what happened.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Entrepreneur Dani Finch runs an art gallery in the Exchange District, but shell have to move at the end of the month because her landlord got a better offer.

Ryan Dalgleish, Business Professionals chief operating offer, said Finch and three other parties submitted offers to lease the 3,500-square-foot space for the longer term, and the company chose one of them  an office tenant  over Finch. So at the end of December, she has to move.

While she tries to be philosophical about it, she admitted shes disappointed at having to find a new home.

I really love that space. Its really conducive to what we are doing as a gallery and as an event space and workshop space. Its also main-floor space, and there is lots of foot traffic in the area.

She said a number of local artists even wrote letters urging the landlord to let her gallery stay, but it was to no avail.

I get it. At the end of the day, you cant throw darts at somebody for making what they feel is a sound business decision for them, she said. But it blows for me.

She said Tara Davis, another Exchange District shop owner who was instrumental in helping her get her gallery up and running and has been a wonderful mentor for her, is letting her set up a pop-up gallery in her McDermot Avenue shop  Tara Davis Studio Boutique  until she can find a new home.

Finch would prefer to stay in the Exchange, but she knows it wont be easy.

I dont want to settle for any space just because its a space. I want to be in a space where I can stay long term and grow.

Pensato, Mathieson and Dalgleish all said theyd like to see Finchs gallery remain in the Exchange.

I think what Dani was doing there was super cool, Dalgleish said.

If we had another building with space in it, we would by all means like to rent it to Dani.

He said there are a lot of factors that go into deciding who to rent a space to, and the office tenant won out with the best overall offer.

There were a lot of good (offers), but it comes down to the point where youve got to make a decision. And our decision was to go with someone else.

Pensato said whats ironic is that when Finch fixed up the vacant space and opened her gallery there, it made the space more attractive to other prospective tenants. Had she not done that, it would likely still be vacant, he added.

She almost deserves some kind of finders fee.

Know of any newsworthy or interesting trends or developments in the local office, retail, industrial or multi-family-residential sectors? Let us know at the email address below.

business@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/12/2017 (1809 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Flood-prone Lake Manitoba may be in store for normal levels for a change, and the rest of the province isnt looking bad either.

Today, we have mostly good news to report, at least at this juncture, Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler said while releasing the first flood forecast for 2018.

The forecast has some cause for optimism for Manitobas third largest lake, which has flooded numerous times since 2011, including last year.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS A cyclist rolls down the Riverwalk along side the Red River at The Forks on Nov 21.

At this time last year, the lake was at 812.8 feet above sea level and soils were completely saturated, which contributed to flooding in spring and summer of 2017. The lakes maximum operating level is 812.5 feet.

Lake Manitoba is currently at 812 feet above sea level surrounded by land with mostly below normal moisture content. Thats still at the upper end of its operating range, but an improvement over previous years.

That system has so much water it takes a long time to drain, said provincial flood forecaster, Fisaha Unduche.

While the situation for Lake Manitoba is looking more optimistic, its volume of water is still above normal for this time of year. Thats the same as most lakes in the province, with the exception of Lake Winnipeg, which is at the normal level, the province said.

Lake Manitoba has been flooded in recent years due to natural causes plus the rerouteing of waters from the Assiniboine River via the Portage Diversion. The province also confirmed the dam at Fairford River where the lake drains is fully open to allow maximum drainage.

As well, the water level in the Shellmouth Reservoir is being lowered to create storage space for spring run-off.

Across the province, soil moisture is normal to below normal. Its a different story in southern Saskatchewan where soils have not been so dry in a century.

Some Winnipeg residents maintain the Assiniboine River is alarmingly low and perhaps a harbinger of a shortage of water. The province said thats not the case.

The Assiniboine is exactly where its supposed to be. People are just used to it being higher because its been at above normal levels for so many years, said Unduche.

The province said flows on many rivers, including the Assiniboine, Red, Souris and QuAppelle, are normal for this time of year. Rivers with above normal flow include the Saskatchewan, Carrot, Waterhen, Dauphin and Fairford rivers.

The province cautioned theres still a long way to go before the flood season begins, and many factors contribute to flooding, including snowfall. For example, southeast Manitoba was expected to receive 40 centimetres of snow on Monday, with five to 10 centimetres falling in Winnipeg, and 10 to 20 centimetres in the Red River Valley.

However, low soil moisture means less run-off into lakes and rivers as soils are able to sponge up more water.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/12/2017 (1809 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Drafted in the late 18th century in an era of hereditary monarchs, the United States Constitution was revolutionary. Still, in many respects, it is also an imperfect document, written in vague and ambiguous language that has led to modern political and legal interpretations not predicted or intended by its framers or creators.

Consider, for instance, that the U.S. president, representing the executive branch of the government, has the power  in theory, at least  to launch a nuclear attack without the consent of the legislative branch  the Senate and the House of Representatives. On the other hand, the president  despite what the current holder of the office has declared  cannot single-handedly withdraw the U.S. from the North American Free Trade Agreement. He needs congressional approval.

Thats right: U.S. President Donald Trump cant end a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico alone. Yet he could conceivably launch a nuclear strike against North Korea.

Andrew Harnik / The Canadian Press Files President Donald Trump can unilaterally order a nuclear strike, but he can't pull the U.S. out of NAFTA.

Blame for such an absurd anomaly goes back to the framers short-sightedness. In 1787, the framers debate about the presidency had George Washington  one of their own  in mind as the archetypical president. The revolutionary war general was greatly respected for his leadership abilities, wisdom and calm demeanour. So what was there to worry about?

In their wildest dreams the framers never would have conceived that one day in the distant future, the U.S. and its president would be able to employ a weapon of mass destruction.

In an attempt to control executive power, Congress passed the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which requires presidents to request a congressional declaration of war before they act, explains Washington-based journalist Christina L. Lyons.

But the reality is that an attack on the U.S. by another nuclear power would have to be responded to immediately. Moreover, it has not taken a nuclear assault for presidents to flex their authority as commander-in-chief. As Lyons further notes, past presidents  employing various justifications  have declared war without first consulting Congress. As recently as 2011, Barack Obama  acting with the approval of the U.N. Security Council but not the U.S. Congress  sanctioned military strikes against Libya, which was then still ruled by Moammar Gadhafi.

Trumps erratic behaviour, thin skin, unpredictable temperament and early-morning Twitter tirades naturally have made many Washington politicians nervous. Last April, in one of his first real acts as commander-in-chief, he unilaterally ordered a cruise-missile attack on a Syrian government airbase in retaliation for the regimes probable use of chemical weapons. Nuclear weapons, however, are another matter entirely.

Several weeks ago  and for the first time since 1976, the Senate foreign relations committee-held hearings to debate the presidents authority to launch a nuclear attack. Addressing this issue at the recent International Security Forum in Halifax, Gen. John Hyten, the current head of Strategic Command and one of two key officials involved in enabling a nuclear strike, declared that he would refuse a launch order from a president if he believed that order to be illegal.

In such a scenario, the president would have a range of options, including firing Hyten and finding a general who would obey his command.

As for pulling the U.S. out of NAFTA, Trump could use his executive power to enforce an article of the agreement that automatically gives Canada and Mexico six months notice of the Americans intent to withdraw from the trade deal. However, the consensus among constitutional scholars is that Congress would have the final say on ending U.S. participation in NAFTA.

At the moment, a good number of Republicans and Democrats (as well as influential members of the American business community) support maintaining the trade agreement. Nonetheless, the potential for presidential manipulation is great. Senators and House representatives must be vigilant against the unwarranted exercise of presidential power  especially with Trump in office.

That shouldnt be too difficult for the Republicans. In late 2014, after Obama decided to relax the United States 5-decade trade and travel ban on Cuba, Republicans were seething. Many claimed that his action went beyond his executive authority. As Steve King, a Republican congressman from Iowa, asserted, We cannot have a president of the United States that believes that he can make up the law as he goes.

Thats putting it mildly.

Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 04/12/2017 (1809 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There have been few initiatives undertaken by the government of Premier Brian Pallister that have been more confusing, and ultimately more destructive, than the various value-for-money audits being used to guide expenditure decisions.

One might remember, from the 2016 provincial election campaign, that the commitment to hire outside consultants and undertake these audits was hailed by Mr. Pallister and his candidates as an unprecedented examination of government spending, the likes of which had never been undertaken by previous governments.

Mr. Pallister said the audits would inform an entirely new approach to spending, with a focus on those things that bring real value and an elimination of duplication, waste and ineffective programming.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said administrative reductions covered the entire 0.25 per cent budget cut to personal health-care homes.

Its not clear that the audits have done any such thing, largely because the Pallister government has only revealed bits and pieces from some of the various audits. That has left critics, journalists and members of the public unable to get a fix on exactly what, if anything, the audits have done to improve the operation of government.

More bits and pieces are reportedly going to find their way into the public realm this week, as sources have told the Free Press that significant portions of a KPMG review on health-care sustainability will be released. This news comes just 60 days after Finance Minister Cameron Friesen said the audit would not be revealed until next spring.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said the release of portions of the health audit, which apparently will only deal with initiatives currently underway, are in line with our governments commitment to transparency. That statement would be hilarious if it werent so tragically ironic.

The Pallister government has been sorely lacking in transparency, and a partial release of an audit that was supposed to be revealed months ago does nothing to change that. The decision to withhold the rest of the audit is, in and of itself, more proof that this is a government that remains a stranger to transparency.

Why all the confusion and deception? Its possible the Pallister government believes releasing portions of the audit in a seemingly random way will prevent anyone from getting a clear picture of the value taxpayers are getting from these value-for-money assessments. Some of the bits and pieces released to date have demonstrated there has been little real value.

It was KPMG, for example, that convinced Mr. Pallister to cut back on communication and political staff, and make major reductions in the amount of advertising it purchases. That was curious advice for a government that is very bad at communication, has suffered numerous self-inflicted wounds from politically naive decisions and continues to do a very poor job of letting the citizens of Manitoba know exactly how it intends to keep major pledges from the 2016 election campaign.

That is not the only revelation. It seems pretty clear now that Mr. Pallister did not hire KPMG to identify ways to run a better government. He hired an accounting firm to tell him how to run a cheaper government. And there isnt much value in that.
The planned visit of President Donald Trump to Britain early next year has been cancelled by the US, deepening a rupture with Prime Minister Theresa May over his retweeting of videos from the fascist organisation Britain First.

According to a Daily Telegraph report, US diplomats have dropped plans for Donald Trump to conduct a visit to Britain in January amid a war of words between the two countries leaders.

Trump was set to arrive on a working visit, including formally opening a new London embassy. This was envisaged, said the Telegraph, as a scaled down version of a state visit with no meeting with the Queen intended to allow Mr. Trump to come to the UK while avoiding the mass protests a full state visit would likely trigger.

On Wednesday, Trump retweeted three anti-Islamic videos originally posted by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First. The small fascist group specialises in mosque invasions and Christian patrols in urban areas with large Muslim populations. During the Brexit referendum campaign last year, Thomas Mair shot and stabbed to death Labour MP Jo Cox while shouting Britain First.

Trump openly associating himself with Britain First is part of a deliberate political strategy aimed at inciting and encouraging far-right and fascist forces. His tweets provoked a wave of denunciations in the UK, and Downing Street responded with a statement that they were wrong. Sir Kim Darroch, the UK's ambassador to Washington, lodged a formal protest with the White House.

Trump countered with a tweet to May stating, Theresa May, don't focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine.

During a press conference in Oman Thursday, May again criticised Trump, stating, The fact that we work together does not mean that we are afraid to say when we think that the United States have got it wrong and to be very clear with them. I am very clear that retweeting from Britain First was the wrong thing to do.

Downing Street nevertheless insisted that the US is one of our longest, closest and most trusted allies. The offer of a state visit has been extended and accepted. Further details will be set out in due course.

May was forced to respond because politicians from all parties, including within her own ruling Conservatives, were denouncing the US President in unheard of terms as a racist and fascist, who was not welcome in Britain. This was backed up with newspaper front pages attacking the tweets.

During an emergency debate held in parliament, Commons Speaker John Bercow, a Conservative, told MPs he wanted urgently to express support for the victims of racism and bigotry and to denounce their purveyors.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid, who is of Pakistani descent, said Trump had endorsed the views of a vile, hate-filled racist organisation that hates me and people like me He is wrong and I refuse to let it go and say nothing.

Another minister, Sam Gyimah stated on the BBCs Question Time that he was deeply uncomfortable about the prospect of Trump coming to the UK.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable declared Trump an evil racist.

Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said the tweets represented a betrayal of the special relationship between our two countries and called for the cancellation of Trumps planned visit. Labour MP Naz Shah said Trump should be banned from Britain for promoting the hate-filled ideology of fascism, while two other Labourites, Paul Flynn and Chris Bryant, said Trump should be arrested for inciting racial hatred if he comes to the UK.

May became prime minister at the head of a crisis-ridden and deeply divided government following the Brexit vote.

To the extent that she ever had a Brexit strategy, it was based on deepening Britains orientation to the US and other markets to counter economically a potential loss of trade with Europe. With the subsequent and unexpected election of Trump as president, May saw an opportunity to capitalise on his declared hostility to the EU, which he decried as a German-dominated protectionist opponent of the US, and his support for Brexit, to place maximum pressure on the EU for favourable trading access to the Single European Market.

Just seven days after Trump's inauguration in January, May became the first foreign leader to visit him at the White House, during which they were photographed holding hands as she offered a series of eulogies to the special relationship.

Following Trumps unprecedented public attack on the prime minister, the alliance between the two countries has never been shakier, with Britains entire foreign policy orientation called into question.

Trump has made clear once more that his administration is concerned only with carrying out the interests of the US corporate elite, based on a policy of America First. The foreign policy objectives of the Trump administrationthreats of trade war with the EU, calling into question the US commitment to NATO, targeting China by threatening war against North Korea and now threatening Iranendanger Britains commercial interests.

With tensions between the imperialist powers escalating amid a fracturing of the global economy and a retreat to protectionist policies, British imperialism confronts an existential crisis. Any conception that Britain can maintain a beneficial relationship with the US while at the same time seeking a stable trading relationship with the European Union has become clearly untenable.

It is over these fundamental issues of strategy and orientation that the contending factions of the British ruling elite are fighting. The Trump/May conflict only confirms that her days are numbered.

In the last month, May has seen the resignation of two of her senior cabinet ministersSir Michael Fallon and Priti Pateldue to scandals. The resignation of a third minister, which could prove fatal to Mays premiership, is now threatened. First Secretary of State and de facto deputy prime minister, Damian Green, is under investigation based on allegations dating back to 2008 that he viewed pornography on his House of Commons computer.

The campaign against Green escalated Friday when former Metropolitan Police detective Neil Lewis told the BBC that "thousands" of pornographic images were found on Green's computer during the 2008 inquiry into government leaks. Green, who denies the claims, was previously accused by another police officer, Bob Quick, the former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. However, Quick was forced to stand down in 2009 after a scandal.

A Cabinet Office investigation is currently underway into Green based on allegations that he made inappropriate advances to a political activist. The inquiry is also looking into the claims that he accessed pornography. The report will likely be handed to May early next week or even sooner.

Were Green to resign or be forced to stand down, it could also lead to the resignation of Brexit Secretary David Davis, who is tasked with leading the governments fraught negotiations with the European Union. On Friday, the BBC reported that Davis warned Downing Street not to sack Damian Green as a result of a wrongful attempt by former officers to do him down. A source close to Davis told the BBC that he would consider resigning if Green, who worked under him when Davis was shadow home affairs minister in 2008, were sacked.
Canadas federal government is coming under increased pressure from indigenous peoples groups to comply with a 2016 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) decision that found the federal government is discriminating against indigenous children on reservations by underfunding services and failing to provide the same level of services made available to other Canadian children.

On Thursday, the Liberal government withdrew its legal challenge to the ruling by the CHRT, which has issued three compliance orders since its decision, which have to date been ignored. While the Liberal government cited its decision to drop the suit as a major step forward, it involves no commitment to additional government spending, let alone the resolution of the terrible social conditions facing indigenous children and their families across the country.

The governments own documents show that if sufficient money and adequate services were provided, many of the children in foster care could remain with their families, according to Cindy Blackstock, the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. Blackstock launched the human rights case almost a decade ago.

They get less funding for education, less funding for health care, less funding for basics like water and sanitation and less funding for child welfare to recover from the multigenerational impacts of residential schools, she said.

Prior to his election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed that a Liberal government would correct the underfunding of indigenous childcare services, but his government ignored the decision for close to 18 months. Similarly, the Liberals much-trumpeted pledge to bring about reconciliation with the Native peoples has turned out to be a sham.

The federal governments flagship project in this area, an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW), has been plagued by resignations of high-profile officials and accusations from First Nations groups and residents of lack of progress and incompetence.

Even in the unlikely event that the Liberals granted Blackstocks demands, indigenous childrens services would continue to be hopelessly inadequate. Childrens services for all Canadians, regardless of their background, have been slashed to the bone, along with other social services, by successive governments, which have been determined at all costs to balance federal and provincial budgets. The more than three decades of cutbacks have produced ruinous results for the working class, which includes Canadas indigenous population as one of its most vulnerable and exploited sections.

In the 2016 census data, Canada had 1,673,785 indigenous people, representing 4.9 percent of the population, up from 3.8 percent in 2006 and 2.8 percent in 1996. Less than 8 percent of all Canadian children aged 4 and under are First Nation, Metis or Inuit, but indigenous children accounted for 51.2 percent of preschoolers in foster care in 2016. That was up by more than two percentage points from 2011.

The situation is aggravated by the legacy of a century-and-a-half of exploitation and discrimination by the Canadian capitalist state. The residential school system, which existed from the 1840s to 1996, tore 150,000 children from their familial homes and inflicted physical and emotional abuse on successive generations. Thousands of children died in these schools, but the exact number is unknown. Starting in the 1960s, systematically apprehending indigenous children and placing them with non-indigenous families was the norm, a practice known as the 60s Scoop.

First Nation communities on reservations struggle with inadequate, overcrowded housing and water that is not safe to drink. There are 16 boil water advisories on Alberta reservations alone. Mental health services are sorely lacking, while youth suicide rates are 10 times higher for First Nation males and 21 times higher for females compared to their non-indigenous counterparts.

In most cases, children are not taken from their parents because of outright abuse, but because of neglect, a condition more accurately described as poverty, which often includes a lack of permanent housing or day care. Working class parents who reach out to child services for social assistance often see their children simply taken from them.

The inaction of the federal Liberal government is compounded by the cost-cutting policies of provincial governments of all political stripes.

In October, the Manitoba Tory government of Premier Brian Pallister announced it was cutting funding to indigenous child welfare programs. Families Minister Scott Fielding told a news conference, For sure, theres too many children in care. Theres too much money being spent on intervention.

Fielding said the province would in future emphasize customary care, a system in which indigenous communities play a significant role in deciding how to deal with children and families in their own community, as a cost-cutting measure. Manitoba will switch from paying agencies per child and per day for each child in care to a system of block funding. The Tories also announced a legislative review to look at all elements of child welfare legislation, including writing new legislation that will clarify how social workers take children into care. In Manitoba, with one of the highest rates of children in care in the world, 10,000 of the 11,000 children in care are indigenous.

Successive Conservative and New Democratic Party (NDP) governments in Alberta have pursued a similar agenda. Under Tory Premier Ralph Klein, social spending was cut and the child welfare system was contracted out to agencies, not-for-profit groups, regional offices and underfunded First Nations bands. The Tories also pushed kinship-care, i.e., keeping children together with extended families, a cheaper cost model that they could sell on the basis of identity politics as politically correct. The policy frequently caused children to be placed in homes that were not properly screened, with caregivers who were insufficiently trained and unequipped for the tasks of being foster parents.

Currently, substantial numbers of child care workers are private-sector contractors who are paid the minimum wage and have little to no training or experience working with children in difficult situations.

Between 1999 and 2013, 741 Alberta children died while in care or while receiving child welfare services. Reports of deaths or serious injuries to such children have more than tripled in the last five years. Between April 1 and Sept. 30 this year, the office received 49 reports of deaths or serious injuries.

One of the most horrific examples of the treatment of foster children was the death of four-year-old Serenity on September 26, 2014. At the time of her death, no one from Alberta Child Welfare had checked on Serenity or her two siblings for 11 months. The hospitals examination of Serenity showed signs of significant physical and sexual abuse, severe brain trauma, a fractured skull, severe hypothermia and malnutrition.

At the end of 2016 there were more than 10,000 children receiving child intervention services in Alberta and more than 7,000 children in care of the province, including 3,500 in foster care and 2,000 in kinship care homes. Indigenous children made up 59 percent of all children receiving such services, despite Albertas indigenous population being just 6 percent of the total population.

A steady stream of reports going back years demonstrates that, contrary to its stated mission of shielding vulnerable children from neglect and abuse, the Alberta government has failed to protect them. Vulnerable children are often being sexually exploited, with uninspected foster homes becoming feeding grounds for sexual predators, violent crime, drug trafficking and prostitution.

In the more than two years since it came to power, Rachel Notleys NDP government has established a dismal record of failing to provide adequate help to children in care, housing them in unsafe conditions with no supervision and ignoring their relatives complaints.

In July, child and youth advocate Del Graff criticized the NDP governments failure to respond to his recommendations on child care. Graff made the comments as he released a report documenting the deaths of three indigenous children, whose families lost specialized care support after the children were returned to them from government care.
In the wake of the guilty plea filed Friday by retired General Michael Flynn, former national security advisor in the early days of the Trump administration, Trumps opponents among congressional Democrats, the media and the intelligence apparatus have stepped up pressure on the White House.

Several leading Democrats suggested on Sunday television interview programs that the investigation into alleged Russian intervention in the 2016 US presidential election, headed by Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller, was likely to conclude that Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice, an impeachable offense.

The lenient character of Flynns guilty plea to a single felony count of lying to the FBIwith the promise of a sentence of no more than six months in prison and a $9,500 finehas been universally interpreted to mean that Mueller plans to use Flynns testimony against higher-ranking officials in the White House and the Trump campaign: Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trumps eldest son Donald Trump Jr. and the president himself.

Senator Diane Feinstein of California, one of the wealthiest and most influential Democrats in the upper house, appeared on the NBC program Meet the Press, where she discussed the investigations by Mueller and by the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which she is the ranking Democrat. She declared, I think what were beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice. I think we see this in the indictments, the four indictments and pleas that have just taken place, and some of the comments that are being made.

Feinstein was referring to the step-by-step ratcheting up of the Mueller investigation: the guilty plea by a lower-level campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, to charges of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials; the indictments of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Richard Gates on charges of money-laundering, conspiracy and filing false statements; and now the guilty plea by Flynn, the first former White House official to be charged in the investigation.

The alleged obstruction of justice took place when Trump importuned then-FBI Director James Comey to drop the ongoing investigation into Flynns contacts with Russian officials during the transition period following Trump's election. In the course of that investigation, as Flynn now admits, he lied to FBI agents in an interview on January 24, 2017, four days after Trumps inauguration. He was fired two weeks later, allegedly for telling the same lie to Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump repeatedly urged Comey to go easy on Flynn, and when it became apparent the investigation was continuing, he fired the FBI director. This triggered a political uproar that led Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to name Mueller, himself a retired FBI director, as a special counsel to run the Russian investigation, now expanded to include the actions of the Trump White House in seeking to block the probe.

Despite the hysterical allegations of treason and Russian takeover of the Trump administration, voiced by columnists at the New York Times and Washington Post, among others, no section of the political establishment seriously believes that the Kremlin is in charge of the White House. These sentiments are voiced to channel popular opposition to the Trump administration in a right-wing and pro-war direction.

The real concern in sections of the ruling elite is that Trumps effort to establish a more collaborative relationship with Moscow cuts across the confrontational posture adopted by the Obama administration and the military-intelligence apparatus, beginning with the effort to subvert the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, the lone Russian ally in the Middle East, and intensifying with the US-backed ultra-right coup that removed a pro-Russian government in Ukraine.

It is significant that Feinstein, long one of the most cautious Senate Democrats on the question of potential impeachment of Trump, is now hinting at support for an effort to remove him, mainly citing his impact on foreign policy. Weve got major problems in the world with our allies now, in the Middle East, with North Korea, she said on Meet the Press. It goes on and on. And I think that this president is just precipitating more and more angst thats going to lead to serious discord.

In response to a direct question from interviewer Chuck Todd, When do you hit your enough is enough moment, Feinstein replied, Well, it happened about a month ago, and I cant give you any particular event, adding that it was the accumulation of reports of Trumps increasingly erratic statements and actions.

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, adopted a similar stance in an interview on CNNs State of the Union program. Asked about Trumps latest tweet, in which he denied telling FBI Director Comey to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn, Warner said, I believe FBI Director Comey. I think he was very credible in his testimony and his private meetings with us.

CNN interviewer Jake Tapper cited another tweet in which Trump said he had fired Flynn because he had lied to both Pence and the FBI: That would seem to suggest that President Trump knew that Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI, which is, of course, a crime, when he fired Flynn and also when he, according to Comey, asked Comey to back off. That seems to be in the territory of obstruction of justice.

Warner concurred, saying, And, again, thats why I think youre going to see much more coming from the special prosecutor.

He continued, We also have mounting evidence, almost every week, of additional contacts between the Russian government or Russian officials and officials connected to the Trump campaign, under the guise of trying to improve relations... there has never, there has never been, in modern American history, a political campaign that had this much outreach to a foreign government, and a foreign adversary in this case, throughout the campaign and throughout the transition.

Warner is, like Feinstein, a charter member of the Democratic political establishment. A former telecommunications mogul, he is personally the wealthiest member of Congress, represents the state of Virginia, home of the CIA and Pentagon, and has the closest ties with the military-intelligence apparatus. He flirted with a presidential candidacy in 2008 before pulling back and is expected to explore a 2020 candidacy as well.

Representatives of the super-rich like Warner and Feinstein are not targeting Trump because of his racist attacks on immigrants and Muslims, his gigantic tax-cut for American corporationsto be paid for through savage cuts in social spendingor his readiness to use US American military power around the world. Instead, they regard Trump as a destabilizing factor, in both domestic and international politics, whose provocative behavior undermines the long-term interests of the capitalist ruling class.

A handful of House Democrats have begun raising the possibility of impeachment, more as a campaign slogan for the 2018 elections than as a practical possibility, given the current Republican majority in the House of Representatives. But the Mueller investigation seems more tailored to put pressure on Trump to resign to avoid legal measures against his own family as well as himself.

There is no sign at this stage of Trump acquiescing to such demands. On the contrary, the right-wing media outlets aligned with the White House, including Fox News and Breitbart News, have unleashed a fusillade of counterattacks against his critics. Some of their missiles have struck their targets.

Special counsel Mueller was compelled to reassign an FBI official playing a major role in his investigation after it became known that he and another member of the investigative team had exchanged anti-Trump emails. Peter Strzok, deputy head of counterintelligence at the FBI, has been demoted to a human resources position.

The top investigative reporter for ABC News, Brian Ross, was suspended without pay by the network Friday after he made a false report that Trump had told Flynn to contact Russian officials during the election campaign rather than during the transition, when such contacts between foreign governments and those about to assume office in Washington are routinely carried out.

However, the White House is increasingly bogged down in the response to the investigation and sinking deeper into crisis. According to press reports, over the past ten weeks at least two dozen campaign or White House aides have been questioned by FBI agents and attorneys working as part of the Mueller probe. These include Jared Kushner, former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, former press secretary Sean Spicer, former foreign policy adviser J. D. Gordon, White House communications director Hope Hicks and Gen. Keith Kellogg, chief of staff of the National Security Council. Trumps White House lawyers, Donald McGahn and James Burnhamwho do not represent him as a personal client but as presidenthave also been summoned to testify.
Olafs Frozen Adventure, one of Disneys less lauded short films, will soon be leaving theaters after screening in front of Pixars Coco, the animated film inspired by Mexicos Day of the Dead. Yet while some have suggested its a direct response to poor audience reactions, EW has learned that isnt the case.

Olafs Frozen Adventure was always promoted and scheduled as a limited run, EW has confirmed, with its theatrical play slated to conclude next week, as has recently been reported.

Mashable was the first to report that Olafs Frozen Adventure would end its theatrical run Dec. 8. The outlet reported that Disney had directed theaters  to remove the deeply unpopular 22-minute Frozen short from future screenings.

In addition, a user on Reddit, identifying as a movie theater worker, claimed to have received a note from Disney regarding the decision. Please note that the run of Olafs Frozen Adventure playing before Coco will end after 12/7, the alleged note stated. Starting on Friday 12/8 no more Olaf shorts should be up on screen. With the extra 22 minutes of running time back, we would appreciate if you could get in an extra show if possible.

In light of the information provided to EW, the alleged note appears to be more of a reminder and less of a notification of removal. This was always promoted as a limited run so its not really a story  the end of our Olaf theatrical play is coming next week, a Disney representative told EW. All our ads and messaging called it as such.

Featuring the return of Olaf (voiced by Josh Gad), the short  which is the first from Walt Disney Animation to be screened in front of a Pixar film  sees the snowman from Frozen on a search for holiday traditions for Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel). While most Pixar shorts run around 10 minutes, this Disney Animation work runs for more than 20 minutes.

Mashable called the pairing of Olafs Frozen Adventure with Coco, which received glowing reviews and recently won Best Animated Film from the New York Film Critics Circle, culturally tone-deaf. Other critics have echoed the sentiment.

We are creatures of habit, and Olafs Frozen Adventure eventually feels like the grinning house guest who wont leave, even though the party was supposed to clear out long ago, reported The Washington Post. As each successive song in the four-tune reel cues up, moviegoers reactions can be heard to switch from laughing irritation to growing mockery to outright anger.
Two of late-nights renowned comedians shared a stage on Saturday night in New Jersey, opening up about the almost daily barrage of earth-shaking political news.

Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee joined together to discuss how nimble they must be when creating their shows in the year since the election of President Donald Trump.

When Colbert recounted how an already-delivered monologue had to be hastily rewritten the day FBI director James Comey was fired, Bee replied, You just felt like that gut punch, that happens every day. Insane. It happens to all of us we are all getting socked in the stomach, all day.

The alumni of The Daily Show spoke to an audience at The New Jersey Performing Arts Center for Montclair Films annual fundraiser for Montclair Film Festival. (Colberts wife, Evelyn, is president of the groups board.)

The pair have both been openly critical of Trump, and did not hold back on Saturday night.

When Colbert asked Bee, the host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, if the presidency is better or worse than she imagined, she replied, So much worse. I could not have imagined this.

Colbert agreed and said with seriousness that the administration is also dismantling the institutions necessary for stability around the world.

The talk, however, was not all politics. Colbert segued into the recent deluge of sexual harassment and assault charges against a slew of powerful men, saying, Guys are getting busted for whipping out their d-.

Bee replied that while it is a tsunami of penises, its not surprising probably to most women I know.

When Bee does her next show, she noted that it will include the latest on Matt Lauer, who was fired by NBC following sexual harassment allegations that came to light earlier this week.

I mean the button under his desk? said Bee, referring to reports that Lauers office had a button to remotely lock his doors from his desk. I wish I had a button under my desk, and sexual harassers would just like fall, slide into a pit of crocodiles.

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The hosts also spoke of their careers on The Daily Show, as Bee reminisced about her life doing sketch comedy in Toronto and working at an advertising agency before she got her big break as a correspondent on the show in 2003.

I was literally two weeks away from giving up comedy forever, she recalled.

Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee

In the last year, both Colbert and Bee traveled to Russia for their shows. Bee meet with Russian trolls  reportedly responsible for spreading much of the fake political news on websites and social media.

One was a mom with two kids, Bee said. The woman told Bee that she would come on Facebook all the time and pose as a housewife from Philadelphia and talk about Hillary Clinton and what a b- she is, said Bee. It was incredible.

Both hosts urged the audience not to become discouraged, to keep up activism with marches and get involved with their local communities.

Local organizations, such as Montclair Film, said Colbert, are part of the answer to healing a broken and broken-hearted country right now.

It is the way our country will endure, he said, through community events like this, where we all come together.
A large majority of Republicans in Alabama say they do not believe the allegations of sexual misconduct with underage girls against Senate candidate Roy Moore, according to a new CBS poll.

Seventy-one percent of likely Republican voters in the state say the allegations first detailed in an extensive story in the Washington Post are false, while 17% said they were true, the poll from CBS News and YouGov found. Ninety-two percent of those who said they do not believe the allegations say it is because Democrats are to blame for them, while 88 percent said the media was, according to the CBS poll.

Moore has repeatedly denied all claims against him and blamed national media for stirring up the claims.

Allegations against Moore emerged as he faces Democrat Doug Jones in a special election to replace the Alabama Senate seat that was vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. According to the poll, 49 percent of voters expressed support for Moore, while 43 percent did so for Jones. The poll slightly differs from another one conducted by the Washington Post, which found Jones lead with 50 percent of voters, over Moores 47 percent.

Both polls put Moore at a statistical dead heat with his Democratic rival.

The poll also found that more Republicans said they planned to vote for Moore because he will cast conservative votes in the Senate, compared to fewer who said he would be the best person for the job.

Last month, several women came forward alleging Moore had pursued relationships with them when they were teenagers.

In one case, Moore allegedly met a young woman when she was 14 years old, asked for her phone number and, days later, drover her to his house, where he kissed her. On a different date, Moore allegedly took off her shirt and pants, touched her over her underwear and pulled her hand to touch him over his underwear, according to an accuser. The incidents would have allegedly occurred when Moore, now 70, was in his 30s.

The allegations, which were corroborated by the Post with a number of interviews with those who knew the accusers at the time of the incident, drew immense scrutiny, with a number of politicians urging Moore to step aside from the race. Several Republicans said Moore should step down if these allegations are true, including President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Moore has denied the allegations, and several more women have came forward with stories since the Post report was published.

The CBS/YouGov poll surveyed 1,067 registered voters in Alabama between Nov. 28 and Dec 1, with a margin of era of 4.8 percent.
Brian Ross speaks on

ABC News on Saturday suspended investigative reporter Brian Ross for four weeks without pay for his erroneous report on Michael Flynn, which it called a "serious error."

Ross, citing an unnamed confidant of Flynn, had reported Friday that during the presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump had directed Flynn to make contact with the Russians.

Hours later, Ross clarified the report on the evening news, saying his source had actually said that Trump asked Flynn to contact the Russians as president-elect  not before the election  about issues including working together to fight ISIS.

The network was widely criticized for not immediately correcting the report. It issued a correction later in the evening.

Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and papers should do the same with their Fake News!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

"We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error we made yesterday," ABC News said in a statement Saturday from Heather Riley, its vice president of communications.

"The reporting conveyed by Brian Ross during the special report had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process. As a result of our continued reporting over the next several hours ultimately we determined the information was wrong and we corrected the mistake on air and online.

"It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience  these are our core principles. We fell far short of that yesterday." It said the four-week suspension of Ross, 69, was effective immediately.

Flynn, who is the former national security adviser, pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russians.

Ross joined the network in 1994. He has won a slew of journalism awards, including, according to his ABC bio, six George Polk awards, six Peabody awards and two Emmys, among others.

He also, though, has drawn criticism for previous errors. In just one example, ABC had to apologize in 2012 when Ross reported on "Good Morning America" that James Holmes, the suspect in the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, might be connected to the tea party, based on a name listed on a web page. It turned out to be a different "Jim Holmes." Ross was criticized for politicizing the story with the error.
Washington (AFP) - The US news network ABC announced Saturday it had suspended its chief investigative correspondent for four weeks without pay after he was forced to correct a bombshell report on ex-Trump aide Michael Flynn.

Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI over his contacts with Russia, a dramatic escalation of the sprawling investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump's campaign team and Moscow.

Brian Ross, a longtime ABC reporter, said during a special report shortly thereafter that Flynn would testify that the president ordered him to reach out to Moscow during the campaign -- news that sent Wall Street shares tumbling.

ABC later issued a clarification, saying its source had in fact indicated that the orders from Trump came during the presidential transition, after the November 2016 election.

"We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error we made yesterday," ABC said in a statement, adding that the special report "had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process."

"It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience - these are our core principles," the statement continued.

"We fell far short of that yesterday."

Trump quickly jumped on Twitter to praise ABC's move: "Congratulations to @ABC News for suspending Brian Ross for his horrendously inaccurate and dishonest report on the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt. More Networks and 'papers' should do the same with their Fake News!"

Flynn's guilty plea, on a federal charge of making false statements to investigators, came with a pledge to cooperate with special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Mueller's focus goes beyond possible collusion with Russia to shady business dealings and whether Trump himself tried to thwart the investigation.

The White House rejected the idea that Flynn could implicate "anyone" else, as the inaccurate ABC report had suggested.

Ross also took to Twitter to comment on the blunder: "My job is to hold people accountable and that's why I agree with being held accountable myself."
7 The company said they witnessed a sighting of what is suspected to be the re-entry of the recent DPRK [North Korea] test missile, the Guardian reports.

Flight trackers place the plane close to Japan around the time of North Koreas Hwasong-15 missile test on Nov. 29. The missile, which Pyongyang claims to be its most powerful, crashed into the Sea of Japan.

South Koreas military says the missile flew ten times higher than the International Space Station. Though the flight was far from the event location, the crew advised Japan [air traffic control] according to procedures. Cathay Pacific told the Guardian.

According to a report in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the companys general manger of operations Mark Hoey told Cathay Pacific staff in a message that the crew of CX893 reported, Be advised, we witnessed the DPRK missile blow up and fall apart near our current location.'

He added, according to SCMP, that one of their cargo planes may have been even closer to the missile. North Korean tests post a potential risk to planes as it rarely issues warnings of the launches or its missiles intended flight path.
From left, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Vice President Mike Pence, and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley on Nov. 6. (Photo: DIA Public Affairs)

As the tense confrontation with North Korea has escalated over the past four months, Vice President Mike Pence has visited four different U.S. intelligence agencies, the nations top counterterrorism coordination body, and the North Dakota Air Force base that houses Minuteman missiles and B-52 bombers.

Pence went to the Defense Intelligence Agency on Nov. 6, the Central Intelligence Agency on Nov. 1, Minot Air Force Base on Oct. 27, the National Reconnaissance Office on Sept. 29, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on Sept. 13, and the National Counterterrorism Center on Aug. 24. He has also visited or met with Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats on several occasions, according to knowledgeable sources.

Based on a review of Pences public schedule, it appears that he has visited these kinds of agencies more in the past four months than he did in the preceding seven  reflecting the mounting sense of alarm inside the administration about the Stalinist Asian regime in Pyongyang.

A knowledgeable source said Pences briefings at the various agencies centered on North Korea and the campaign against ISIS.

Theres nothing particularly unusual about the visits  vice presidents sometimes attend the presidents daily intelligence briefings and visit relevant agencies. Pence has played a central role in the administrations foreign policy, including trips to Europe and Asia and an upcoming swing through the Middle East.

And the Trump administration faces an array of national security challenges  including North Koreas ballistic missile and nuclear programs, Russias continued occupation of parts of Ukraine, Syrias civil war, the collapse of Venezuelas economy, and Chinas efforts to control parts of the South China Sea over the objections of its neighbors and U.S. allies.

Briefed at @CIA by top officials. Thanked the men & women of the CIA for their service in defending the U.S people & our freedoms every day. pic.twitter.com/yaNdXcsqSy  Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) November 2, 2017

Most of Pences outreach has been noted on his public schedule, but closed to the news media. At times, the vice president has tweeted about his visits, saying that he thanked CIA officers for their service, or praised the hardworking staff at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and posted photos.

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Briefed by Dir. Dan Coats & Dir. Robert Cardillo earlier @ Natl Geospatial-Intelligence Agency & met w/ hardworking staff serving US people pic.twitter.com/1KqrCV087i  Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) September 13, 2017

In a speech at Minot Air Force Base, Pence directly mentioned the standoff with the secretive regime of Kim Jong Un.

In the face of ongoing threats and provocations by the regime in North Korea, I can assure you the United States will continue to marshal economic and diplomatic pressure to demand that North Korea abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, Pence said, warning that all options are on the table.

At the CIA, Pence told officials that he and President Trump had the utmost confidence in all of you  because you are Americas elite, and your best is unbeatable by anyone, at any time, according to the Washington Examiner, which cited prepared remarks not made public by the White House.

That made his visit sound, at least in part, like a corrective to Trumps frequent disparagement of American intelligence agencies  like his very public skepticism of their finding that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, or his mocking reference to the botched case for war in Iraq, or his pre-inauguration comparison of American spies and Nazi Germany.

The Trump Administration is fully committed to the success of the U.S.s intelligence capabilities that are uniquely suited to respond to the changing world we live in, Pences press secretary, Alyssa Farah, told Yahoo News.

The Vice President is committed to doing all he can to support President Trumps efforts to keep the homeland safe from threats both foreign and domestic, Farah said by email. Everyday across the world, U.S. intelligence officials work to undermine our adversaries capabilities, combat their propaganda, and prevent acts of terror that endanger our citizens.

While Pences Nov. 6 visit to the DIA was closed to the media, the agencys in-house public affairs division provided considerable detail in a post on its official website.

Mike Pence poses with attache spouses participating in the Defense Intelligence Agency Defense Attache program during his visit to DIA headquarters on Nov. 6. (Photo: DIA Public Affairs)

The vice president received classified all-source intelligence briefings on foreign military capabilities from a diverse array of subject matter experts that included specialists in human intelligence (HUMINT), satellite and imagery collection, space/counterspace operations, and clandestine operations, it said. He also met with students in several of the agencys training programs, including analytic tradecraft training and a course focused on the agencys Defense Attache program.

Pence praised the vital role DIA analysts play and underlined that as analysts, your job is not to advocate, but to present facts.

Read more from Yahoo News:
Washington (AFP) - As the US Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments Tuesday in the highly anticipated "gay wedding cake" case, all eyes are once again on Justice Anthony Kennedy, the fulcrum upon which the bench has turned for a decade.

The case, which pits Christian conservatives against progressives and the LGBT community, concerns a Colorado baker who, due to his religious beliefs, refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

The court will have to decide between three constitutional rights -- sexual equality, freedom of religion and freedom of expression.

The stakes are high, and could open the door for conservative businesses to spurn gay couples.

Eighty-one-year-old Kennedy, who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1987 and is the court's longest serving judge, is widely expected to provide the decisive vote.

Kennedy is to the Supreme Court what swing states are to elections.

Conservative on firearms and election financing, he can be more progressive on issues such as abortion and affirmative action.

On a bench comprising four progressive and four conservative judges, his view often tips the balance.

An example of this came in 2015, when, thanks to him, same-sex marriage was legalized across the United States.

The judge, of Irish origin, then drafted the landmark ruling -- just as he drafted the decision in "Lawrence v Texas" in 2003, which declared a state law forbidding sodomy illegal.

- 'A clash of interests' -

But will the elderly judge, a practicing Catholic, vote in favor of the LGBT community in this latest case? It's a question currently frustrating experts.

The Trump administration, around twenty American states, dozens of members of Congress and countless Christian and conservative pressure groups have backed Jack Phillips, the baker.

These supporters have sent the Supreme Court many arguments, which seem to directly address Kennedy.

Steven Schwinn, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, told AFP he believes the judge will "struggle" with the decision.

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"I think he'll see this case as a clash of interests: the dignity and equality interest of the same-sex couple, on the one hand, and the religious freedom and free-speech interests of the cake-baker, on the other," he said.

"I imagine that he'll probably struggle with how to balance these."

"I think he's going to be torn," was the view of Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"He's distracted by the deep faith of Jack Phillips. Jack Phillips is a person of faith and runs his bakery consistent with his faith, he has a small family business. We know that Justice Kennedy will care about that, there is no question," she said.

"On the other hand, Justice Kennedy cares deeply about the LGBT community," Melling added.

- Moral rigor -

Another question is how Kennedy can vote in Phillips' favor, without opening "the floodgates for discrimination against gays and lesbians in marriage services and beyond," says Schwinn.

"I do not think he wants to open that door," Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of Berkeley Law and constitutional law expert, told AFP.

During the hearing on Tuesday, every word uttered by Anthony Kennedy will be under scrutiny -- with supporters from both sides searching for signs of his position.

Reassuring Christian conservatives will be the Harvard Law School graduate's days as a choir boy in California -- not to mention his marriage of over half a century to the same woman, with whom he has three children.

Indeed, Kennedy has a reputation for moral rigor sometimes regarded as prudishness.

While he was a university student, he traveled Europe in a red Volkswagen.

His father offered him a bottle of whiskey for the trip -- but he did not drink it, instead using it only to gargle when he had a sore throat.
Sen. Lindsey Graham is calling for the families of American military personnel to be moved out of South Korea amid rising tensions in the region. Grahams comments come after North Korea successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, on Nov. 28.

Its crazy to send spouses and children to South Korea, given the provocation of North Korea, Graham, a Republican Senator from South Carolina, said Sunday on CBS Face the Nation. So, I want them to stop sending dependents, and I think its now time to start moving American dependents out of South Korea.

The U.S. has 27,123 military personnel stationed in South Korea, including 23,635 on active duty, according to the Defense Manpower Data Center.

Experts believe North Koreas latest ICBM is capable of traveling over 8,000 miles, a range that would put Washington, D.C. and other major American cities within reach. However, North Koreas November test involved a high-altitude volley using what was likely a dummy warhead; its unclear how far the missile might be able to travel on a flatter trajectory while carrying an actual weapon.

Were getting close to military conflict because North Korea is marching toward marrying up the technology of an ICBM with a nuclear weapon on top that can not only get to America, but deliver the weapon. Were running out of time, Graham added.

Graham also warned last week that the U.S. would go to war against North Korea if it had to. I hope the regime understands that if President Trump has to pick between destroying the North Korean regime and the American homeland, hes going to destroy the regime, Graham said hours after the missile test. I hope China understands that also, he added.
John Dowd originally said he erroneously wrote in Trumps name on Twitter that the president knew Flynn lied to the FBI  a claim met with scepticism

John Dowd joined Donald Trumps legal team in June 2017. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

The attorney for Donald Trump who sought to take the blame for a tweet that could signal the president took part in the obstruction of justice has offered a new defence of Trumps actions: the president cannot obstruct justice.

The president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the constitutions Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case, John Dowd told the Axios website.

Dowd spoke after legal experts voiced surprise and concern over his original claim. On Monday, he said any suggestion the Trump tweet had admitted obstruction of justice, whoever wrote it, would be an ignorant and arrogant assertion.

Axios quoted Bob Bauer, a New York University law professor and former White House counsel to Barack Obama, as saying: It is certainly possible for a president to obstruct justice.

The case for immunity has its adherents, but they based their position largely on the consideration that a president subject to prosecution would be unable to perform the duties of the office, a result that they see as constitutionally intolerable.

Under pressure as the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the election accelerates,Trump said in a tweet on Saturday that he fired Michael Flynn as national security adviser in February because he lied to the vice-president and the FBI about his discussions with Russias ambassador to the US last December.

Flynn pleaded guilty in court on Friday to lying to FBI agents. Experts told the Guardian that the wording of his plea agreement suggested he may already have been wearing a wire or recording conversations with other figures in the investigation.

If Trump did fire Flynn for lying to the FBI, that would mean the president knew the retired general had committed a serious crime when, according to the former FBI director James Comey, the president asked Comey the next day to halt an FBI investigation into Flynn.

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On Sunday Trump, who later fired Comey, again denied making such a request.

In an attempt to contain the fallout from the Saturday tweet, Dowd took the blame, saying he had composed the post and that it was sloppy. He elaborated in an interview with Reuters, saying he had drafted the tweet and made a mistake when he composed it.

For more news videos visit Yahoo View.

The mistake was I should have put the lying to the FBI in a separate line referencing his plea, Dowd said. Instead, I put it together and it made all you guys go crazy. A tweet is a shorthand.

Dowd said the first time the president knew for a fact that Flynn lied to the FBI was when he was charged. It was the first and last time he would craft a tweet for the president, he said.

Ill take responsibility, he said. Im sorry I misled people.

Talking to NBC, Dowd said: Im out of the tweeting business. I did not mean to break news.

However, the suggestion that he wrote the tweet was met with incredulity by Democrats and legal experts.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, wrote: Anyone who buys Trumps lawyers alibi for his corruptly treacherous client is a complete fool.

Richard Painter, who was chief ethics lawyer in the White House of George W Bush, said: A lawyer who writes a tweet like that incriminating a client should be disbarred. He can tell Mueller he wrote it.

To some critics, Dowds denial that the president can obstruct justice carried echoes of Richard Nixons assertion, to David Frost in an interview in 1977, that when the president does it, that means it is not illegal. Others pointed out that the articles of impeachment against Nixon opened with the charge that he obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice.

Dowd joined Trumps legal team in June 2017, as investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller began heating up.

The White House has yet to comment.
President Donald Trump said Monday that he sympathizes with Michael Flynn, his former National Security Adviser who on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI regarding an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

I feel badly for Gen. Flynn. I feel very badly, Trump said Monday. Hes led a very strong life, and I feel very badly about it. I will say this. Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and it destroyed his life, and I think its a shame.

White House Special Counsel Robert Muellers office announced Friday that Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his Dec. 2016 conversation with Russias then-ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak. Flynn has since agreed to cooperate with the Special Counsels ongoing investigation into Russias election meddling. (Prosecutors also said Flynn was guilty of making false statements when he filed documents pertaining to the Foreign Agent Registration Act, though he does not face charges over that matter.)

Trump responded to Flynns guilty plea Saturday, tweeting that he had fired Flynn because Flynn had lied to both Vice President Mike Pence and the FBI regarding his contact with Kislyak. The tweet made headlines, as the White House previously said Flynn had been fired solely because he lied to Pence, not because he lied to the FBI.

Some legal experts argue that Trump openly acknowledging that he was aware Flynn lied to the FBI when he fired Flynn could constitute obstruction of justice, as Comey previously said Trump asked him to halt investigations into Flynn.

I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

Trump on Sunday denied that he had ever asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn, calling the allegation just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!

I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Former FBI Director James Comey told Congress last year that Clinton did not lie to the FBI regarding her private email server and the use of classified information. We have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI, Comey told then-Congressman Jason Chaffetz in July 2016, according to video from the hearing.
Alec Baldwin was back as Donald Trump on Saturday Night Lives cold open with plans to skip out with $5 million, his passport and a bucket of chicken (about to be fetched for him by Kate McKinnons Kellyanne Conway).

But cold, ghostly reality intrudes with partner Michael Flynn (Mikey Day) in chains, the ghost of witnesses flipped. Trump, like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, wonders what he has to atone for: Calling Mexicans rapists? Draft dodging? The birther stuff? Pocahontas? Making fun of the handicapped reporter? So much to choose from.

Then he has to face his demons. Theres the ghost of Christmas past, Billy Bush (Alex Moffatt), who complains he was fired for that Access Hollywood tape, Russian President Vladimir Putin (Beck Bennett) who sees everything, and ... Trumps ghoulish future, Hillary Clinton (McKinnon again).

Hillary gloats about the sexual gratification shes getting watching your slow demise. You have no idea how long Ive waited to say this: Lock him up!

Trumps solution? Erase episodes of The Apprentice and fire Robert Mueller.

Check it out in the clip above.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Orlando (AFP) - Cristina Sanchez is one of thousands of Puerto Ricans fleeing their hurricane-ravaged island for Florida, a mass migration set to shape the southern US state as much as migrants from communist Cuba in the late 20th century.

Sanchez left the island with three suitcases, her small dog -- and no plans to return.

As her flight departed the capital San Juan, she glanced out the window at what she was leaving behind: a sun-drenched Caribbean island turned into a hellhole by Hurricane Maria.

On September 20, powerful Maria tore across Puerto Rico, destroying homes, shattering the island's rickety power grid and phone network, and leaving its 3.4 million residents in the dark and incommunicado. Many remain so today.

"It's a relief to be off the island and to be away from where everything is so difficult," said Sanchez, a 43 year-old bilingual school teacher.

Chico, her Shih Tzu, was given a sedative and slept at her feet during the flight.

After the hurricane, Sanchez's home was left without running water or electricity. A diabetic, she could not keep her life-saving insulin refrigerated without power.

"I'm literally fleeing to get away from it, from everything that's going on there," she told AFP.

"It takes its toll emotionally and mentally."

The official hurricane death toll in Puerto Rico stands at 58, though large areas were isolated for weeks after the storm -- and news reports now place the toll as high as 500.

Since Puerto Rico is a US possession, its residents -- known as 'boricuas' -- are US citizens and have no immigration obstacles.

- Destination: Orlando -

Sanchez headed to Orlando, a central Florida city best known for its amusement parks, including Disney World and Universal Studios.

Central Florida, especially the Orlando area, has long attracted Puerto Rican immigrants fleeing the island's economic woes.

Since the hurricane struck, at least 212,000 people have traveled from Puerto Rico to Florida -- mainly central Florida, according to figures from the State Emergency Response Team (SERT).

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Around one million Puerto Ricans now live in Florida, mostly in the central Tampa-Orlando corridor.

At Orlando's airport Sanchez went straight to one of three special "Welcome Centers" set up by the state government for Puerto Rican immigrants.

There she received information on how to start her new life, how to get a temporary Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) housing subsidy, and how to get a job.

Sanchez was optimistic that she'd be able to find a fresh start before the FEMA hotel subsidy ends in January.

- 'Lost their homes' -

However Debora Oquendo, another 43 year-old Puerto Rican refugee, is anything but optimistic.

"I hope to have work by January," she said, speaking in a listless tone.

Oquendo said she doesn't know what will happen then, when her federal housing subsidy runs out. With a 10-month old baby she can't go to job interviews, let alone work.

Maritza Sanz, president of Latino Leadership, a group that helps Puerto Rican immigrants, worries about the future once FEMA housing subsidies expire.

The first and biggest challenge is to find housing for the new arrivals.

"Employment will be the second one. And schools and resources for the family," she said.

"We have been serving families that have been living in the car with the kids," she said.

What makes this wave of migrants unique is that they are fleeing a disaster zone, often bringing little beyond what they can carry, said Luis Martinez-Fernandez at the University of Central Florida.

There is a sense of desperation among these migrants, who have "lost their homes, with no possibilities of rebuilding anytime soon. They've lost their jobs overnight as well," he told AFP.

Also, he noted, there is "an over-representation of elderly people from the island, people who need medical attention."

This is likely to put a strain on services for the elderly in Florida, already a popular destination for US retirees.

- 'Puerto Ricanization' -

"The so-called 'Puerto Ricanization' of Orlando and even Florida could have a larger impact than that of the Cuban immigrants to Miami since '59," said anthropologist Jorge Duany, referencing the year that Cubans began arriving in Florida in droves as they fled the island's communist regime.

The heavy flow of Cuban migrants, mainly to south Florida, lasted into the 1980s. Since then, Cubans have continued to trickle in but migrants from places like Haiti and South America have diversified Miami.

That diversification, however, "is not taking place in Orlando," said Duany, a Florida International University specialist on Puerto Rican migration.

"The growing presence of Puerto Ricans in central Florida is redefining the culture of the area, which used to be mostly Anglo-American," he said.

There is also a political aspect, which could have tremendous national consequences: as US citizens, Puerto Ricans can vote.

Florida is a delegate-rich swing state in US electoral politics, a state that can hold the key to who wins the White House or which party controls Congress.

And Puerto Ricans are overwhelmingly Democrats.
Lidiane Leite went on the run when the allegations first surfaced in 2015: Instagram

A Brazilian mayor who governed her town via WhatsApp has been jailed for at least 14 years for embezzling millions from its education budget.

Lidiane Leite went on the run in August 2015 when she was accused of taking the money form the town of Bom Jardim in Brazils north-west.

The 27-year-old directed local officials using WhatsApp while she lived a life of luxury in Sao Luiz, the state capital of Maranhao, around 180 miles away.

She eventually gave herself up after 39 days on the run.

Following a two-and-a-half year legal battle, Leite was sentenced to 14 years and one month in prison followed by six years of house arrest after she was found guilty of taking R$20m (4.5m) from an education fund.

She is still able to appeal the decision, the TNH1 news channel reported.

The saga began in 2012 after her former boyfriend, Humberto Dantas dos Santos, who was also known as Beto Rocha, was banned from serving as mayor of the town in 2012 due to corruption allegations.

Shortly afterwards, Leite ran in his place and appointed the 44-year-old as her chief advisor. He was responsible for most of the towns day-to-day management.

Meanwhile Leite lived a lifestyle full of expensive champagne and fast cars in Sao Luiz as she communicated with her deputies via a special Task Force WhatsApp group.

Dos Santos is still on the run but was also sentenced to 17 years and nine months in prison followed by seven years and four months of house arrest in absentia.

At the start of 2015 the couple broke up and Dos Santos resigned. This is when the corruption scheme started to unravel

Bom Jardim is a poor town of around 40,000 people in one of the countrys poorest states.

Many families rely on the local school to give their children at least one decent meal a day. Locals told the BBC that during Leites tenure they never had food at the school which first prompted the investigation into the mayor and her associates.

The authorities began to look at Leites social media feeds where she repeatedly bragged about her glamorous life of luxury.

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One post on Instagram wrote: Before I became mayor, I was poor. I had a Land Rover, now I drive a [Toyota] SW4. Maybe I should buy a more luxurious car, because  thank you God  I have enough money to do it.

I can buy whatever I want. Im going to spend money on what I want and I dont care what people say about me.

Once Brazilian authorities announced her arrest she went on the run  all the while sending WhatsApp messages to her deputies insisting she was still the mayor and forbidding them from talking to prosecutors.

Fabio Santos de Oliveira said she and around 10 others had pilfered millions from the state coffers  especially the health and education budgets.

He said: In one case, she contracted fake companies to rebuild three schools in Bom Jardim, that way she could steal money from the budget.
(Reuters) - A California teenager charged with sexually assaulting two young boys, admitted to molesting as many as 50 children over the past eight years in the state, according to police. Joseph Hayden Boston, 18, was arrested on Saturday when his mother brought him to a police station after he allegedly told her he had molested two boys, ages in 8 and 4, in his room at a Riverside motel just hours earlier, the Riverside Police Department said in a statement. The suspect had been staying at the motel, where he befriended the male victims who were staying there with their parents, police said. Boston called his own mother stating what he had done shortly after molesting the boys. The County of Riverside Child Protective Services responded and took custody of both victim children, police said. "Officers interviewed the suspect and he confessed to sexually assaulting the two juvenile victims in his motel room. He also admitted to molesting upwards of 50 children since he was 10 years old in different cities where he had lived," police spokesman Ryan Railsback said in the statement. Boston was charged with two counts of oral copulation on a child under the age of 10 and booked into the county jail with bail set at $1 million, according to the Riverside Sheriff's Department website. It could not be determined if Boston had an attorney on Sunday. Police are investigating and believe the suspect, who had previously resided in Lakewood and Buena Park in Southern California, has victimized other children, police said. (Reporting by Chris Kenning in Louisville; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Crew members aboard a Hong Kong-bound Cathay Pacific flight from San Francisco saw what they suspected was a North Korean ballistic missile re-entering the Earths atmosphere last week, the airline has confirmed.

A spokesman said on Monday that the flight crew of CX893 had reported a suspected sighting of Pyongyangs latest missile test.

Though the flight was far from the event location, the crew advised Japan [air traffic control] according to procedures, the airline spokesman said, noting that flight operation wasnt affected by the suspected sighting.

Flight trackers place the plane near Japan when the missile was launched on November 29. The missile spent more than 50 minutes in the air before falling into waters off the coast of Japan. Pyongyang boasted that the weapon was capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

In a message to staff, Cathay Pacifics General Manager of Operations Mark Hoey relayed what crew members had reported seeing of the suspected missile.

Today ... the crew of CX893 reported, Be advised, we witnessed the [North Korean] missile blow up and fall apart near our current location, Hoey said, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.

Hoey added that flight CX096  one of the airlines cargo planes, which had been en route from Hong Kong to Alaska at the time  may have been even closer to the missile.

Two South Korean aircraft also reported witnessing the missiles launch, said the BBC.

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Cathay Pacific said on Monday there were no current plans to alter its flight routes in the region despite the suspected missile sighting.

We remain alert and review the situation as it evolves, the airline spokesman said.

The suspected sighting has, however, renewed fears that North Koreas missile testing could put commercial aircraft at risk.

CNN aviation safety analyst David Soucie said that the odds of an unaimed missile striking a plane are billions to one. However, experts told the network that it would be impossible for crew on a commercial jet to detect the approach of a ballistic missile.

In August, Air France said one its planes carrying more than 300 passengers may have come as close as 60 miles to a ballistic missile launched by North Korea.

The airline said at the time that it was expanding its no-fly zone over North Korea following the close-call.

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Beijing (AFP) - Visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed three trade agreements on Monday as Ottawa tries to diversify commercial ties amid tough NAFTA negotiations with Washington.

At a ceremony in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, the two leaders signed an action plan on energy cooperation as well as two memoranda of understanding on food products and a "Canada learning initiative."

The details of the agreements are unclear.

The two sides also agreed that Canadian beef and pork will have greater access to the Chinese market and will continue to work on new standards for Canadian exports of canola to China.

"Canada is and always has been a trading nation, but the landscape of trade is shifting and we need to adjust," Trudeau told reporters after the signing ceremony.

"China will soon be the largest market in the world. It's home to one billion potential customers for the high-quality goods and services that Canadians deliver every day."

Li told Trudeau it was rare for China to have such a "close, intimate relationship" with another nation.

"China and Canada are entering ... a golden age in our relationship. We have a lot to offer each other. We are ready for closer cooperation," Li told reporters.

The premier visited Ottawa in September last year, when the two sides agreed to double bilateral commerce by 2025.

During his December 3-7 official visit, Trudeau will meet government and business leaders as part of Canada's push to diversify its trade, the bulk of which is currently with the United States.

Trudeau has said he also plans full and frank discussions on "issues like good governance, human rights, and the rule of law".

The visit to China is Trudeau's second since he came to power two years ago, and comes as trilateral talks with the United States and Mexico to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement appear to be headed towards deadlock.

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Canada and Mexico staunchly oppose US proposals for a NAFTA sunset clause, minimum US content in car parts and nixing of the pact's trade dispute mechanism.

The US has adopted a more protectionist tone under President Donald Trump and his "America First" policy.

Beijing, meanwhile, has openly courted increased trade with Canada. Li said the two countries would continue exploratory talks and feasibility studies on a free trade agreement.

China is currently Canada's second-largest trading partner, far behind the United States, with annual bilateral trade worth more than Can$85 billion ($67 billion).

During the visit to Beijing and Guangzhou, Trudeau will also meet President Xi Jinping and Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, or legislature.

The prime minister is popular in China, where citizens have affectionately nicknamed him "Little potato", as his surname sounds similar to the word "potato" in Mandarin.

His father, who established diplomatic ties with China in 1970, was named "senior potato".

Internet users on domestic social media platforms focused on Trudeau's appearance, with one commentator hailing him as "the most handsome foreign leader".
KABUL (Reuters) - The commander of the Taliban's "special forces" branch, known as the "Red Unit," was killed last week in Helmand province by Afghan forces, according to Afghanistan's main intelligence agency. The National Directorate of Security (NDS) said Mullah Shah Wali, also known as Mullah Naser, was killed in an air operation in Helmand. The province is a Taliban stronghold in the heartland of Afghanistan's lucrative drug trade. Wali became the commander of the Taliban's "Red Unit" as well as deputy shadow governor of Helmand province three years ago and was directly involved in Taliban offensives, the statement said. The "Red Unit" is thought to be equipped with advanced weapons, including night vision scopes, 82mm rockets, heavy machine guns and U.S.-made assault rifles, according to the Afghan military. Wali was killed alongside a suicide bomber and two other Taliban commanders in Helmand's Musa Qala district, according to the NDS. The United States has worked hard to build up Afghan air support and attack capabilities since they were found inadequate after most foreign forces withdrew three years ago. (Reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Girish Gupta; Editing by Mark Potter)
The body of a missing North Carolina toddler was found in a creek just hours after her mothers live-in boyfriend was charged for allegedly hiding her body.

Onslow County Sheriff Hans Miller said divers recovered Mariah Woods body at 5:30 p.m. Saturday from the Pender County Creek, 25 miles from the toddlers home.

Police did not reveal any other details about the case.

Mariah, 3, was reported missing Monday by her mother, Kristy Woods, who claimed she last saw her daughter when she put her to bed Sunday night.

Police issued an Amber Alert and Woods made emotion-filled pleas for the childs safe return.

On Friday, however, police had determined the 3-year-old was dead and arrested Woods boyfriend, 32-year-old Earl Kimrey, in connection with her disappearance the next day.

Kimreys arrest warrant said Mariahs body was moved from where she had died and that he allegedly knew she did not die of natural causes, ABC News reported. The warrant, however, did not say how the girl was killed.

"It was too late to save Mariah the moment the 911 call came in," said FBI agent Stanley Meador. "The arrest warrants are public record and the records speaks for themselves. We will not discuss any details related to the homicide investigation."

Mariahs biological father, Alex Woods, expressed suspicion about what Mariahs mother said happened during the search for his daughter.

Somebody just walks right in there, grabs a 3-year-old out of the bed, she didnt cry, she didnt scream? he told WTVR. Nobody heard nothing? Four people in the house, two adults and two babies and somebody just comes, snatches the baby up and walks out?

Kimrey, 32, has been charged with obstruction of justice, second-degree burglary, felony larceny and possession of stolen property.

Additional charges are pending, reports said.

He is being held on $1,010,000 bond.

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Ajaccio (France) (AFP) - Nationalists seeking greater autonomy for France's Corsica on Monday ruled out an imminent independence bid but demanded greater freedoms for the island after winning the first round of regional elections.

The governing Pe a Corsica (For Corsica) alliance, which groups the pro-autonomy Femu a Corsica (Let's Make Corsica) and pro-independence Corsica Libera (Free Corsica), won 45.36 percent of the vote in Sunday's election to the regional assembly.

Local rightwing party La Voie de l'Avenir (Future Path) came second with 14.97 percent, ahead of France's main opposition conservative Republicans in third with 12.77 percent.

President Emmanuel Macron's centrist Republic on the Move (LREM), which has failed to make inroads on the Mediterranean island of 330,000 people, trailed in fourth with 11.26 percent.

The result puts the nationalists on course for a thumping victory in the second and final round of voting on December 10, two years after their breakthrough win in regional elections.

"I think that today Corsica is sending a very strong signal to Paris and that a large majority is saying: we want peace, we want democracy, we want to build an emancipated island," Femu a Corsica's leader Gilles Simeoni declared, calling it "a democratic tidal wave".

The leader of Corsica Libera, Jean-Guy Talamoni, said that the result surpassed the nationalists' own expectations and showed that "for Corsicans, Corsica is a nation".

- Autonomy, not independence -

Both men however ruled out an imminent bid for independence.

"The question of independence is not on the cards today," Simeoni, whose party is dominant in the alliance, told France's Europe 1 radio. "We want autonomous status," he added.

Talamoni, who has been nicknamed Corsica's Puigdemont after Catalonia's separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, said the question of independence would only come up "in 10 or 15 years."

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"If a majority of Corsicans want (independence), in 10 or 15 years, nobody will be able to oppose it," he told France Inter radio.

Corsica, a mountainous island with its own language and special administrative status, has had an at times troubled relationship with the wealthier mainland.

The separatist National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC) waged a nearly four-decade bombing campaign targeting mainly state infrastructure before announcing a ceasefire in 2014.

The worst nationalist attack claimed the life of France's top official on the island, Claude Erignac, who was assassinated in 1998.

The situation has stabilised over the past decade.

In June 2014, the FLNC announced a permanent ceasefire, in favour of a political process.

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The Dalai Lama sat down in India with his old trusted friend, former U.S. President Barack Obama, to discuss promoting peace in a world torn by strife and violence.

The 82-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader met with Obama at a New Delhi hotel on Friday. He later shared a photograph on Twitter showing them in mid-discussion.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama meeting with former US President Barack Obama in New Delhi, India on December 1, 2017. (Photo by Tenzin Taklha) pic.twitter.com/zGECQLJLcF  Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) December 1, 2017

It was very good, the Dalai Lama said of the meeting, according to a report by the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), the official organ of the Dalai Lamas government in exile. I think we are really two old trusted friend[s]. I mentioned to him that now time has come for us to promote the sense of oneness among seven billion human beings. It is sad to see there are so much differences among people.

As CNN noted, the meeting marked the sixth time the Dalai Lama and Obama, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates, have met. The last time was at the White House in June 2016, when Obama was still president.

Kasur Tempa Tsering, a representative for the Dalai Lama, said that during Fridays 45-minute meeting, the two men dwelled on various topics pertaining to promoting peace in todays world torn by strife and violence.

To Obama, His Holiness said, You are not only a former U.S. president but you are a Nobel laureate, you are young and you can do a lot. We should fulfill our aspiration for world peace. Maybe my generation will not see the results, but your generation will definitely see the results, Tsering said.

The meeting comes about two months after the Dalai Lama expressed concern about the U.S. becoming more selfish and nationalist under President Donald Trump.

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The present president, in the very beginning he mentioned America first. That sounded in my ear not very nice, he said at a conference in October, according to the Washington Post.

It was a pleasure to meet, once again, former President @BarackObama, and learn about the new initiatives being taken forward under his leadership at the @ObamaFoundation and his perspectives on further strengthening India-US strategic partnership. pic.twitter.com/fvoGgF6CZM  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 1, 2017

Obama concluded a five-day world tour on Saturday, during which he also stopped in China and France. In India, he also met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and appeared at a leadership summit hosted by the Hindustan Times.

At the summit, Obama appeared to take a dig at Trump while discussing social media.

I actually have more [Twitter followers] than other people who use it more often, Obama said, prompting laughter from the audience who viewed the comment as a a jibe against Trump. (As Sunday, Obama had 97.5 million followers on Twitter; Trump 44 million).

Dont say the first thing that pops into your head, just have a little bit of an edit function, thats wise for life generally, Obama later advised social media users. You see people getting in all kinds of trouble because they sent out some tweet and then theyre trying to erase it afterwards but somebodys screenshot it and theyre getting embarrassed.

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John Dowd, Donald Trump's chief lawyer, admitted he had drafted the tweet and given it to the President's social media director: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

A top White House ethics lawyer who worked for George W Bush has said Donald Trump's lawyer should be disbarred if he wrote the President's tweet implying he knew his National Security Adviser had lied to the FBI.

"A lawyer who writes a Tweet like that incriminating a client should be disbarred. He can tell [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller he wrote it," Richard Painter tweeted.

John Dowd, the Mr Trump's chief lawyer, admitted he had drafted the tweet and given it to the President's social media director.

A lawyer who writes a Tweet like that incriminating a client should be disbarred. He can tell Mueller he wrote it. https://t.co/FSE51u3fqw  Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) December 3, 2017

The tweet suggested Mr Trump was aware Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI when the White House dismissed him on 13 February.

Then FBI-Director James Comey said Mr Trump brought up the investigation into Mr Flynn the following day and told him he hoped he could "let this go."

I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

"I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies," the tweet, sent from the US President's account, said.

"It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

In an interview with Axios, Mr Dowd said he "did not mean to break news."

He said "the tweet did not admit obstruction," which he labelled "an ignorant and arrogant assertion."

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I dare you to tell Mueller you logged into POTUSs Twitter account and wrote pled and the rest of that, John Dowd. I dare you. https://t.co/gDBnISywGS  Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) December 3, 2017

Mr Painter went on to retweet a post by Walter Shaub, the former director of the US Office of Government Ethics, who challenged Mr Dowd to admit to Mr Mueller he wrote the tweet.

"I dare you to tell Mueller you logged into POTUSs Twitter account and wrote 'pled' and the rest of that, John Dowd," he wrote. "I dare you."

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Arch Canyon within Bears Ears National Monument in Utah - The Salt Lake Tribune

President Trump has announced plans to slash the size of two US national parks, provoking fury from environmentalists, native american tribes and conservationists.

Mr Trump called for the 1.3 million acre Bears Ears National Monument to be cut back to 228,784 acres split into two separate areas.

He also called for Grand Staircase Escalante Monument to be slashed by half to just under one million acres and split into three areas.

Both parks, or monuments as they are called, are in the dramatic Southern Utah red rock country.

The changes will make way for oil and gas drilling, mining and other resource extraction activities in the beauty spot.

Unlike national parks that can only be created by an act of Congress, national monuments can be designated unilaterally by presidents under the century-old Antiquities Act, a law meant to protect sacred sites, artifacts and historical objects.

Mr Trump travelled to Salt Lake City to make the announcement at a rally on Monday. A protest is being organised by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and on Saturday, thousands of demonstrators holding signs with messages like "Protect Wild Utah" converged on the steps of the Utah State Capitol.

The Upper Gulch section of the Escalante Canyons within Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Credit: AP

The president had previously called for a review of more than two dozen national monuments that had been created over the past few decades to address the complaints of some politicians and local people who had objected to their designations which protected the areas from development.

A supporter of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments dances with a headdress during a rally Saturday Credit: AP

Before President Barack Obama left office he designated more than 1.6 million acres of land in Utah and Nevada as national monuments, protecting two areas rich in Native American artifacts from mining, oil and gas drilling.

Mr Trump called the move an "egregious abuse of power".

President Donald Trump signs a Presidential Proclamation shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City Credit: AFP

Republican Rob Bishop of Utah, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, is expected to introduce legislation after Mr Trump's announcement to carry out the cuts. It is unclear if the measure would have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

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Mr Trump will also ask Congress to look at the areas that are being removed from the current monuments to consider designating some as a national conservation or national recreation areas, and create a co-management structure for tribes.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told reporters the changes were supported by Utah's Republican Governor Gary Herbert, along with Utah's congressional delegation, the state legislature, and the local county Commissioner Rebecca Bennally.

A man holds a sign as he waits at the Kanab Airport to protest U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke in Kanab, Utah Credit: Getty

But tribal leaders representing the five tribes that pushed for the creation of the monument, and who now manage it, said they will take the Trump administration to court.

They include the Navajo, Hopi, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Mountain and Ute Indians who consider Bears Ears sacred.

"We will be fighting back immediately. All five tribes will be standing together united to defend Bears Ears, said Natalie Landreth, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, which believes the cut would violate the Antiquities Act.

Protesters gather before a visit by President Donald Trump to announce that he is scaling back two sprawling national monuments Credit: The Salt Lake Tribune

Utah has gone well beyond any other in the region in trying to pry the federal government's hands off land it sees as belonging to its residents.

In 2012, its Legislature passed a law demanding the federal government give 30 million acres (121,000 square kilometers) of the land it owns in Utah to the state government - a measure other Western states have balked at replicating, even deeply conservative ones like Idaho.

Earlier this year, a Utah congressman introduced a bill to sell more than 4,600 square miles of Western federal land to private entities but pulled it after a backlash.

"Utah's certainly on the tip of the spear," said state Congressman Mike Noel, who represents south-central Utah, where some residents have fought to shrink or eliminate Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument since President Bill Clinton created it in 1996.
A 14-year-old Guatemalan girl traveling alone waits for a northbound freight train with other Central American migrants, in Arriaga, Chiapas state, Mexico, in June 2014. (Photo: Rebecca Blackwell/AP)

The Trump administrations crackdown on immigration across the southern U.S. border may drive a new wave of youngsters from Central America to attempt a dangerous and illegal journey through Mexico to escape rampant gang violence in their home countries.

By the end of the next month, the U.S. Department of State plans to officially terminate a program that allows parents lawfully residing in the U.S. to request refugee resettlement for certain children who face threats of violence at home in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The Central American Minors, or CAM, refugee program was established in 2014 in response to an influx of unaccompanied children fleeing those three countries, among the most dangerous in the hemisphere  or, in the case of El Salvador, the world.

The State Department already stopped accepting new applications for the CAM program earlier this month, but immigration rights advocates expressed concern Monday about the nearly 7,000 applications from young people currently awaiting a response.

The Trump administration has a responsibility to process those 7,000 children waiting for their interviews, Bishop Minerva G. Carcano, chair of the United Methodist Churchs Immigration Task Force, told reporters on a conference call Monday. Anything short of this would be heartless.

More than three years before the Trump administration announced its plans to terminate the program, President Obama had been faced with an unprecedented dilemma: teenagers and children from Central America were crossing the southern U.S. border in large numbers and turning themselves over to Border Patrol agents in hopes of being reunited with their parents in the U.S.

Central American immigrants travel on top of a freight train in Ixtepec, Mexico, Aug. 6, 2013. (Photo: John Moore/Getty Images)

The majority were coming from gang-ridden Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Desperate to escape the constant threat of violence at home, they embarked on dangerous journeys through Mexico, often paying smugglers exorbitant fees and risking kidnapping, extortion or worse to reach the U.S.. Between 2013 and 2014, the number of unaccompanied children from these countries apprehended at the southwest border had more than doubled, each surpassing the number of child migrants from Mexico.

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During the summer of 2014, the Obama administration launched a number of initiatives in collaboration with the governments of these three countries in an attempt to stem the flow of children along this treacherous path. They included millions of dollars for USAID programs for education, crime prevention and combating gangs. U.S. Customs and Border Protection launched a campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of migrating to the U.S. through Mexico, commissioning billboards, television commercials and even an original song to broadcast a warning to people in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as well as Central American communities in the U.S.

But the continued trafficking prompted the Obama administration in December 2014 to establish the CAM program, offering certain children in these specific countries a safe and legal means of reuniting with their parents in the U.S. The CAM program also included a parole aspect, allowing some at-risk children deemed ineligible for refugee status to be considered for parole entry to the U.S. on a case by case basis.

In a statement last October, then Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson promoted the CAM refugee and parole program, writing, Border security alone cannot overcome the powerful push factors of poverty and violence that exist in Central America. Walls alone cannot prevent illegal migration.

This August, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke announced that parole would no longer be offered to those denied refugee status under the CAM program. Three months later, the entire refugee program for Central American minors was on track to be terminated.

A State Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on whether the thousands of applications already submitted will be considered before the January 31 deadline. There was also no indication whether the Trump administration plans alternative measures to prevent at-risk children from turning to illegal smugglers to reach the U.S., once the legal pathway has been eliminated.

Children from El Salvador at a shelter for displaced people, Sept. 26, 2016. (Photo: Jose Cabezas/Reuters)

Daniella Burgi-Palomino, a senior associate at the nonprofit Latin America Working Group, told Yahoo News that while its hard to predict whether eliminating CAM will create a resurgence of unaccompanied children over the border, one thing is clear: The deadly levels of violence and corruption that led so many young people to flee El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala in 2014 have not abated.

According to a 2017 article in the Economist, El Salvador was the most violent country in the world in 2015 and 2016, with the capital, San Salvador, holding the title of worlds most murderous city. And as of last year, all three countries were well above the rate of 10 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants that the United Nations considers to constitute an epidemic. The rate in El Salvador was eight times higher (PDF).

At the same time, Burgi-Palomino noted, asylum applications from these countries have significantly increased over the past three years.

The Trump administration has talked about not driving people into the hands of smugglers, but if they terminate [the CAM program] thats exactly what theyre doing, she said.

Read more from Yahoo News:
GADSDEN, Ala.  There were stories told around the courthouse, lawyer gossip about Roy Moore. All word-of-mouth, with nothing ever in writing.

There was small stuff that maybe doesnt seem as small now. Like the story about Moore supposedly getting thrown out of a Pizitz department store for hanging around the undergarments section. Three people in legal circles said theyd heard that one. This wouldve been in the late 1970s, when Pizitz was still a going concern; a few years later, the Gadsden Mall reportedly banned Moore for chasing teenage girls.

There wasnt much anyone could do, one longtime criminal defense lawyer in town said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Certainly there was nothing to be done about the alleged Pizitz ejection. Youve got to have some sort of written document that says what happened, the lawyer said. Everybody kinda knows that. Him getting kicked out was verbal  it was never in writing.

And of course there were the bigger things, of the kind the rest of the country is learning about now. The defense attorney had heard about Moores prowling for teenagers. But in that case, too, nothing couldve been done, the attorney said.

Well, for one, you couldnt do anything to help these girls, unless a girl comes forward, he said. If I [as an attorney] wanted to say something in 1980, I would have made him a hero because I could not have proved anything. The only way you can prove what was going on with the girls, is that they have to come forward.

Everyone knew. Thats been the mantra over the past few weeks. Lifelong residents knew. Mall employees knew. Area reporters knew. And most distressing of all, even the lawyers and law enforcement types working in and around the courthouse  the people responsible for bringing sexual predators to justice  knew.

A retired officer knew that Moore had a thing for young cheerleaders. One of Moores own colleagues told CNN it was common knowledge he dated high school girls. A Gadsden cop previously told The New York Times: It was treated like a joke. Thats just the way it was.

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For its part, the Moore campaign has repeatedly denied the multiple sexual misconduct allegations against the judge. His office didnt immediately return calls for comment on this story.

Moore was untouchable during his time as a prosecutor in Gadsden, from 1977 to 1982. Even if someone wanted to take him on legally, there was no tangible, actionable evidence against him. Three local lawyers HuffPost spoke to characterized Moore as invincible back in the day.

You cannot stop him, the defense attorney said. He honestly thinks he is doing Gods work. He has no shame, no embarrassment. He will not stop until he dies.

How shameless and unembarrassed? A lifelong resident, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, recalled the judge signing copies of the Bible for fans. This was in the early 2000s, when he was chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and proudly and defiantly displaying a monument of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Judicial Building. Some would even come to the courthouse to bow and pray in front of the monument, the resident said, first commandment be damned.

I was like, are we worshiping God, or are we worshiping Roy Moore? said the resident.

There were still whispers amid all this idolatry. A Montgomery Advertiser story from 2002 reported:

If you ask about Roy Moore in Gadsden these days, youll find hes not as universally admired and respected as he is in his little hometown of Gallant. At the Etowah County Courthouse, some of those who worked with Moore roll their eyes when asked about him but keep their mouths shut. There are plenty of stories to tell, the longtime secretaries, parole officials and lawyers said, but not on the record and not now, while Moore sits atop the state court system and controls its purse strings.

To this day, those stories are hard to tease out for the same reasons. Moores reputation still makes him powerful in Alabama, and Gadsden residents who knew about his behavior dont want to go on the record for fear of retaliation. Others who have been close to the story, like the reporter who wrote the above paragraphs, have since died.

Moore got his reputation after hed come back from West Point to work as a prosecutor in the late 1970s. It was in 1979 that he started taking 14-year-old Leigh Corfman out on dates, she told The Washington Post.

For three years he was known to locals as the larger-than-life law man who was standoffish and relatively introverted, except when it came to hanging out at the Gadsden Mall and, according to some, approaching younger women. The New York Times and Washington Post have each published exhaustive accounts of those stories.

But for years the whispers never became anything more than that in large part thanks to Moores stature. Nothing could be done unless a girl came forward.

At the time, hes with the district attorneys office, which prosecutes these cases. They work real closely with the police department. So why would I as a young girl, at 14 or 16, say anything about this? I for one would be terrified to go to the police, much less tell my parents, said Laura Payne, a former Trump delegate in the state, speaking about the difficulty a young girl would have faced.

Payne told HuffPost that she decided to vote against Moore in the Dec. 12 Senate special election  likely with a Republican write-in candidate  after she saw the first Washington Post story detailing the allegations against him.

She said she believes the accusers, and scoffs at those who say women like Corfman could easily have come forward back then. They were victims, and in Gadsden, they didnt have many people to turn to.

Youre ashamed, she said. And you think, I probably shouldnt have done this, I probably shouldnt have smiled or said hello, I shouldnt have gotten in that car. Youre just embarrassed. And Roy Moore runs everything. Youre not going to the police.

Its hard for anyone to come out against Moore. Conservative Christians in Gadsden said it would be career suicide to speak publicly about the man whos been celebrated for his God-and-country politics over the years. Almost all of the local Republicans HuffPost spoke to refused to give their identity for fear of retaliation.

But many of them have also gotten fed up with the leeway Moore has been given statewide. Female supporters of Moore have attacked his accusers rather than believing the victims. Men question the timing or shrug off the allegations altogether. Outside of town, youll hear any number of excuses for Moores alleged behavior, including that he came from a different time and that a lot of men chased women half their age back then.

One resident, a Republican, shook her head when asked about it.

It was just Roy Moore, she said. Alabamians are not like that. But everybody knew about Roy. And he was just so powerful. He was invincible.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News: photos; AP (2), Steven Senne/AP, AP)

President Trumps assertion that former FBI Director James Comey destroyed the bureaus reputation isnt sitting well with Comey and other former members of the Justice Department.

After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters  worst in History! Trump tweeted on Sunday. But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.

After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters  worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017

Comey responded with a quote from his June 8 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I want the American people to know this truth, Comey said then. The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.

The former FBI directors tweet included a collage of photos showing federal investigators at work.

I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.

Me (June 8, 2017) pic.twitter.com/OZ1ZiBrMNL  James Comey (@Comey) December 3, 2017

Eric Holder, Barack Obamas attorney general, tweeted that he would not allow Trumps disparaging tweet slide.

Nope. Not letting this go. The FBIs reputation is not in tatters, Holder wrote on Twitter. Its composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. Youll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now.

Nope. Not letting this go. The FBIs reputation is not in tatters. Its composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. Youll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now  Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 3, 2017

Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general, also bristled at Trumps assertion.

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The FBI is in tatters? No, Yates tweeted. The only thing in tatters is the Presidents respect for the rule of law. The dedicated men and women of the FBI deserve better.

The FBI is in tatters? No. The only thing in tatters is the Presidents respect for the rule of law. The dedicated men and women of the FBI deserve better.  Sally Yates (@SallyQYates) December 4, 2017

Both Comey and Yates were fired by Trump. The president dismissed Yates in January after she refused to defend his travel ban. The White House has had shifting explanations for firing Comey, initially accusing him of being too publicly critical of Hillary Clinton while investigating her, but Trump later said he terminated Comey for being a showboat. Comey has said that he believes he was fired because of the FBIs investigation into whether the Trump campaign worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

At the time, the White House also said that Comey left the FBI disorganized and with low morale, though then-acting Director Andrew McCabe contradicted that claim. Trump ultimately appointed Christopher Wray to replace Comey, and the Senate confirmed him.

Comeys firing also came after he said Trump asked him to drop the FBIs investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. In May, Yates testified that she warned White House counsel Don McGahn in late January that Flynn essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians.

Thomas OConnor, president of the FBI Agents Association, also bristled at Trumps characterization.

Each and every day, FBI special agents put their lives on the line to protect the American public from national security and criminal threats, OConnor said in a statement. Agents perform these duties with unwavering integrity and professionalism and a focus on complying with the law and the Constitution. This is why the FBI continues to be the premier law enforcement agency in the world. FBI agents are dedicated to their mission; suggesting otherwise is simply false.

Read more from Yahoo News:
The Messenger Kids app lets users send text-based messages, video chat, tack on virtual stickers and masks, but has stricter rules and parental controls in place. Source: Facebook

If your kids are going to message friends and family, wouldnt you rather have them do it safely and securely?

Thats the thinking behind this Mondays launch of Messenger Kids from Facebook (FB), a new standalone, ads-free messaging app aimed at young kids ages 6 to 12, available for iOS devices this week, with Android and Kindle versions coming in a few months. Messenger Kids users can do many of the same things users of the regular Messenger app can do  send text-based messages, video chat, tack on virtual stickers and face masks  but with stricter rules and parental controls in place.

Setting up a Messenger Kids account for a child requires their parent to sign in at first with their Facebook accounts. Once the Messenger Kids account is set up, a child can only chat with people on the app their parents have approved. Both parents and kids can report inappropriate content and block other users; parents are notified from their standard Messenger apps when their kids report other users or if their kids are reported by others. Finally, users of Messenger Kids cant delete any messages theyve sent or received inside the app  another safeguard, in case parents want to check what their children have been up to.

Like any business, Facebooks goals shouldnt be viewed as entirely altruistic, even if Messenger Kids is free to download and use. Although Facebook remains the largest social network  and Messenger has grown into one of the most popular messaging platforms in the world  signing up new users now presents a new challenge, given how mature and wide-reaching they already are. Messenger Kids presents another way to tap into a subset of the younger demographic.

According to Head of Messenger David Marcus, offering Messenger Kids is another way to give parents more control over what their children read, see and hear on smartphones and tablets, which have become commonplace inside and outside the home. According to Facebook, 93% of 6- to 12-year-old children in the U.S. have access to smartphones and tablets, with about 80% of children in that same age range getting their first taste of social media, too.

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So it comes as little surprise then that Facebook says the majority of parents with young children are concerned about their kids potentially interacting with strangers online.

We understand that this is extraordinarily frightening, explained Facebook Head of Global Safety Antigone Davis. Parents care tremendously, obviously, about their children, and we have an opportunity and an obligation really, as one of their largest social media companies to get this right and to help parents answer their needs.

Channelling Sesame Street

Messenger Kids is the product of over 12 months of development by the Messenger team, which also spoke to thousands of parents and experts, primarily in the U.S., as well as the UK and Australia. Facebook also set up and consulted a youth advisory committee with experts specializing in child development and online safety.

Dr. Lewis Bernstein, former executive vice president of Education, Research and Outreach for the Sesame Workshop, compares the development of Messenger Kids over the last 18 months to those early years of developing Sesame Street, the long-running, iconic show that now airs on HBO and re-airs on PBS. The goal with Sesame Street, which aired its first episode in 1969, was to educate children by taking advantage of their infatuation with the powerful medium of television.

Bernstein says Facebooks development of Messenger Kids is a way of reaching todays young internet-infatuated children so they can connect with friends and family safely with parental oversight and collaboration.



JP Mangalindan is the Chief Tech Correspondent for Yahoo Finance covering the intersection of tech and business. Email story tips and musings to jpm@oath.com. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

More from JP:
Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who is now investigating Russian meddling in the US election - AP

A FBI agent who sent text messages to a friend which were critical of Donald Trump has been removed from his senior role in the investigation into Russian interference in the US election.

Peter Strzok, described by The New York Times as being considered one of the most experienced and trusted FBI counterintelligence investigators, was removed from the investigation headed by Robert Mueller this summer.

On Saturday it emerged that the reason for his removal was the discovery of text messages critical of Mr Trump.

The exact content of the messages is not known, but the paper reported that people briefed on the case said Mr Strzok and a colleague reacted to news events, like presidential debates, in ways that could appear critical of Mr Trump.

Immediately upon learning of the allegations, the special counsels office removed Peter Strzok from the investigation, said Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsels office.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the investigation into Russian meddling in the election

Mr Strzok is now working in the FBI's human relations department.

He was previously one of their most senior officials, and helped lead the investigation into whether Hillary Clinton had mishandled classified information on her private email account. He then played a major role in the investigation into links between Mr Trump's campaign and Russia.

Mr Mueller's decision to reassign Mr Strzok is seen as evidence of his wish to avoid having the investigation characterised as a political witch hunt.

FBI. regulations allow agents to express opinions as an individual privately and publicly on political subjects and candidates.

Mr Strzok has not commented on his reassignment.
2017 is in dire need of heartwarming tales, so here's one about a dog that fell into a frozen creek and was successfully rescued by a team of firefighters.

Last week, Denis Pilon, a fire chief at Swift Current Fire Department in Canada, shared a video on Facebook of several firefighters and members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police rescuing someone's pet dog.

SEE ALSO: This add-on will make your truck a snowmobile monster

"STAY OFF THE ICE!!" Pilon wrote, explaining that the dog wandered onto the ice and fell through after its owners let him run off-leash.

To bring the dog back to shore the team secured one of the firefighters with a rope and sent him out onto the frozen water. The ice was so thin that the firefighter also fell through, but thanks to the rope he was able to recover the dog and pull it to safety.

"Quick action calling the fire department helped save their pet," Pilon said, reminding people to proceed with caution near ice and "keep pets and children away from the creek."

Canada's CBC News notes that ice freezes at varying thicknesses and the should always be measured before travelled on, according to the Government of Saskatchewan.

"There should be at least 10 centimeters of ice to walk on, 20 centimeters to drive a snowmobile or ATV on, 30 centimeters to drive a car or light truck on, and more than 30 centimeters for a heavy truck," the publication reports. Though in times of doubt it's probably best to steer clear of frozen water all together.
By Shenequa Golding

The Founder & CEO of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill was found dead inside in his Bronx factory Saturday evening (Dec. 2) in what authorities are reporting as a suicide.

According to reports, Lowell Hawthorne, 57, shot himself inside the Park Avenue building near E. 173rd Street. in Claremont at about 5:30PM. Employees who worked closely with Hawthorne expressed a range of emotions from shock to sadness.

He was a good boss, humble and a good businessman, Pete Tate, a former employee said. He never seemed sad. This is just terrible news right now.

Hawthorne opened the first Golden Krust restaurant in 1989 on E. Gun Hill Road and later went onto build a chain of stores selling Jamaican beef patties along with other cuisine intrinsic to the island. In total, Hawthorne owned and operated 120 stores in nine states.

One of Hawthornes longest employees Pat Russo spoke with The New York Daily News and didnt quite know how to wrap his mind around the surprising death.

It doesnt make any sense. He had everything to live for, Russo, who is president of the Chefs Choice food company, said. He was a brilliant business guy. The perfect American success story.

Upon learning of Russos death, Jamaicas Prime Minister Andrew Holmes took to Twitter to express his grief.

My condolences to the friends, family and employees of Jamaica-born Lowell Hawthorne, CEO of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill. He headed the largest Caribbean franchise chain in the US, with more than 120 stores. pic.twitter.com/PX9MpD2Mkg  Andrew Holness (@AndrewHolnessJM) December 3, 2017

Along Holmes there were others who took to social media to express their sadness.

Golden Krust has been an integral part of my life and as a Jamaican, always promised some remnant of home. Im really sad to hear about the suicide of the founder. People are saying, it doesnt make sense, he had everything, but suicide is a result of internal pain.  Chantal (@Chantaljs13) December 3, 2017

Golden Krust was good because you never had to walk in and hear, we nuh ave dat. They always aved.  Professor Sexavier (@notmadjustmean) December 3, 2017

RIP to the Founder of Golden Krust.. Blessings and Respect to him family  Suicide is real Reach out to people, learn how to just listen and not judge.  ShayNast. (@MissssShay) December 3, 2017

This post Founder And CEO Of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill Commits Suicide first appeared on Vibe.
Baker Jack Phillips decorates a cake in his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado. September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

The Supreme Court will hear one of its most politically charged cases on Tuesday, when it takes on the case of a self-described cake artist who refused to design a wedding cake for two men.

That case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, takes aim at a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on perceived sexual orientation in places serving the public. Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, says the law violates his free speech rights by forcing him to create expression that violates his sincerely held beliefs about marriage.

The dispute has attracted a lot of attention from the business community, including an amicus brief signed by 35 companies including Amazon (AMZN), Pfizer (PFE), and Apple (AAPL), which asked the court to rule against Phillips. Another group with an interest in the business community also weighed in on the case  34 law professors who contend that Phillips argument runs counter to longstanding principles of corporate law.

Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA, pointed out that brief as one of the more interesting ones filed in the case. This is not just a case about a baker. This is a case about a commercial enterprise  a business that wants to discriminate, he said.

The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act and the corporate veil

The corporate law professors argument turns on a concept known as the corporate veil  the notion that companies possess legal interests separate from their owners. This concept often protects owners from liability related to their businesses (except for some circumstances where a court decides its appropriate to pierce the corporate veil and hold shareholders personally liable for the misdeeds of their company).

The first principle of corporate law is that for-profit corporations are entities that possess legal interests of their own and a legal identity separate and distinct from their shareholders, the brief argues. This legal personhood holds true whether the for profit corporation has two, two hundred, or two million shareholders.

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In the case of Masterpiece Bakeshop, Jack Phillips and his company cant have their cake and eat it too, the professors noted, perhaps intending the pun. That is, Phillips has benefited in a number of ways from having his corporation be separate from him. But now Phillips is asking the court to disregard the notion of corporate separateness, the professors argue.

The professors note that Phillips states the case involves his artistic expression and his personal religious beliefs  not those of Masterpiece Bakeshop. The sole incorporator of the cake shop is actually an attorney, the law professors brief points out  and its not even chartered as a religious organization.

While corporations can sometimes have First Amendment rights, this case conflates Phillips free speech rights with that of his company, the professors argue.

Petitioners [Phillips and Masterpiece Bakeshop] want to argue, in effect, that the corporate veil is only a one-way ratchet, the brief states. Its shareholders can get protection from tort or contract liability by standing behind the veil, but the corporation can ask a court to disregard the corporate veil whenever the company is required by law to act in a way that offends a shareholders beliefs.

A case that pits free speech against gay rights

The wedding-cake dispute goes back to 2012, when Charlie Craig and David Mullins visited Masterpiece and asked Phillips to design and make a cake for their wedding.

After Phillips declined, citing his religious beliefs, the couple filed charges of discrimination with the Colorado Civil Rights Division under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. An administrative law judge sided with Craig and Mullins, and the Civil Rights Division issued a cease-and-desist order requiring the cake shop to comply with the states anti-discrimination law. Colorados court of appeals affirmed that order, spurring Phillips to ask the Supreme Court to take on the matter. The high court agreed to hear the case and will specifically answer this question: Whether applying Colorados public accommodations law to compel the petitioner to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the free speech or free exercise clauses of the First Amendment.

As is often the case, the fate of this case could very well rest with Justice Anthony Kennedy, the courts most reliable swing voter. Kennedy has written seminal opinions in favor of gay rights, including the 2013 opinion that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and the 2014 decision that legalized same sex-marriage across the U.S. (the latter of which was memorably incorporated into wedding vows for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples).

Despite this record on gay rights, Kennedys vote is far from a sure thing in Masterpiece Cakeshop. Thats because Kennedy has a very, very long steady stream of supporting people who claim their First Amendment rights were infringed, as Winkler, the UCLA law professor, noted. Kennedy also wrote the controversial decision in Citizens United v. FEC, affirming the First Amendment rights of corporations to spend freely on candidate elections.

This case could pit Kennedys commitment to gay rights against his devotion to the First Amendment, particularly as it applies to businesses. Asked how the Supreme Court might ultimately rule on the matter, Winkler quipped, What did Justice Kennedy have for breakfast this morning?

Erin Fuchs is deputy managing editor at Yahoo Finance.

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BERLIN (Reuters) - German authorities investigating the delivery of a package containing powerful firecrackers, wires and nails to a pharmacy near a Christmas market in the city of Potsdam said on Sunday it was criminal activity rather than "terrorism." Karl-Heinz Schroeter, interior minister of the state of Brandenburg where Potsdam is located, told a news conference criminals were behind the package which they had used to try to extort millions of euros from logistics firm DHL, which had delivered the package. Police said it was highly likely that the package could have exploded. Staff at the pharmacy in Potsdam, just outside Berlin, called the police on Friday after they discovered the suspicious package. The Christmas market was evacuated and the package was made safe by a police robot. DHL warned the public not to open packages if they did not recognize the sender's address or if the sender's address was suspicious. "As we find ourselves approaching Christmas, which is not only a time of peace, but also a time when many presents are sent, such an act of extortion is reprehensible," Schroeter told the news conference. He said all efforts were being made to catch those who sent the package. Authorities said the people who sent the package most likely lived in Berlin or in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds the German capital. They did not say how much money they had demanded, but said they had told DHL they would send more packages that could kill or injure if DHL, owned by Deutsche Post, refused to pay up. Brandenburg police chief Hans-Juergen Moerke said that a QR barcode that can be read using a smart phone was found on a piece of paper inside the package. The extortion letter addressed to DHL was found in the barcode. (The story was refiled to remove the reference to the police search after the news conference) (Reporting by Thomas Seythal in Berlin and Olaf Brenner in Munich.; Writing by Joseph Nasr. Editing by Jane Merriman)
By Holger Hansen and Jorn Poltz BERLIN/MUNICH (Reuters) - The leaders of Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) agreed on Monday to enter talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives on forming a government that could end political deadlock in Europe's largest economy. The center-left SPD set the contours of its demands in coalition talks with the conservatives expected to start next year in a document seen by Reuters, with proposals on issues like the economy and immigration likely to cause friction. Merkel turned to the SPD after she failed to form a three-way alliance with the left-leaning Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, plunging Germany into a political impasse and raising doubt about her future after 12 years in power. On the highly divisive issue of immigration, one of the main reasons for the collapse of Merkel's first effort, the SPD said it opposed a conservative plan to extend a ban on the right to family reunions for some asylum seekers that expires in March. "Family reunions and the cohabitation of a family lead to good integration," the SPD document said. "That's why we are against the extension the suspension of family reunions." Merkel could also face complications emanating from her own conservative camp. Her arch-conservative allies in Bavaria on Monday named a right-winger to be their candidate for the premiership in a regional election next year. The move raises the risk of disputes in Merkel's conservative bloc and weaken her hand as she negotiates with the SPD. Markus Soeder will be the Christian Social Union (CSU) candidate for premier in a vote in the rich state of Bavaria next autumn where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is set to enter the regional parliament for the first time. MACRON OR MERKEL'S EUROPE? Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their sister party CSU bled support to the AfD in the general election on Sept. 24 and the Bavaria-based CSU fears the far-right party will steal conservative voters angry with the chancellor's decision in 2015 to open Germany's door to more than a million asylum seekers. The future of current Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer had been in question since the election. After the election losses, Merkel reluctantly accepted a CSU demand to put a limit on the number of asylum seekers Germany will accept each year. The SPD did not stake out a position on the conservatives' upper limit on refugees in their document. The SPD, which has governed in coalition under Merkel since 2013, suffered its worst election result in postwar history and is reluctant to join another "grand coalition". It dropped its pledge to sit in opposition after Merkel failed to form a government, bowing to pressure from President Frank-Walter Steimeier to unwind the impasse. The SPD will hold a party congress in Berlin on Dec. 7-9, where it is expected to debate its position in coalition talks. The future of the European Union and euro zone reforms championed by French President Emmanuel Macron are another policy issue that could complicate life for Merkel. The SPD said during the election that Germany should embrace Macron's proposals. In its position document, the SPD said Germany should work with Macron on strengthening the European project through economic policies geared to fight high youths unemployment. It did not mention key elements of Macron's demands that the euro zone should have its own budget and finance minister but it did mention his plan for closer cooperation in defense. On the economy, the SPD's proposals for more rights for workers and employee-friendly regulation of the large temporary work sector could draw fire from the CSU. (Additional reporting by Michael Nienaber and Riham Alkousaa in Berlin; Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Toby Chopra)
A young teen whose suicide attempt has left her on life support penned her parents a heartbreaking note.

"Sorry, Mom and Dad. I love you," read the note left by 13-year-old Rosalie Avila last week. "Sorry, Mom, youre gonna find me like this."

The family, from Yucaipa, Calif., said they plan to take Rosalie off life support Monday night and donate her organs.

Rosalie's parents, Charlene and Freddie Avila, who recalled the wrenching note to reporters, believe their daughter was the victim of bullying before her decision to attempt to end her own life.

"They told me I was ugly today," her father Freddie said the eighth grader wrote in her journal. "They were making fun of me today about my teeth."

According to CBS Los Angeles, the parents have turned Rosalies journal over to the police.

Meanwhile, the Avilas say the bullying has been turned on them.

The couple says they received a received a message on social media after Rosalie's attempted suicide with photos of Rosalie saying, "Hey mom. Next time dont tuck me in this," over a bed alongside the words "Tuck me in THIS," with an arrow pointing to an open grave.

"For you to do that, I mean, youre heartless. Youre a very heartless person, and you have no compassion," Charlene Avila said, addressing whoever is behind the message.

As her organs help those in need, Rosalie's father says he hopes her tragedy will be a wake-up call to schools.

"I did everything Im supposed to do as a father, and these people did not respond, because those bullies are still at the school," Freddie Avila said. "Theyre still there, and my daughters gone."

A memorial GoFundMe page has been established to help with costs of Rosalies burial. On the page, the heartbreaking message from Rosalie's mom reads:

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My daughter is a victim of bullying. She was a beautiful person inside and out. She was a great artist, very lovable & loving. Her smile would light up the whole room with her laughter. Shes very smart and always had good grades. She loved the beach & liked going out to the snow. Rosalie had a great personality and was very funny. She enjoyed reading and liked dressing up as her favorite characters like Belle from Beauty and the Beast & Stitch. She liked watching The Walking Dead," Stranger Things & Meet the Fosters. She always remembered her friends' birthdays and would go out of her way to get them a gift. She truly cared about people. She loved to drink hot cocoa while she watched her favorite shows or movies. Shes loved by so many people & by her family. She was daddys girl and mommys princess. She wanted to be a lawyer and wanted to help the world to be a better place. The world lost a treasure. We ask kindly with any donations from anyone willing to help us to bury our beloved daughter and with medical expenses for Rosalie Avila, From an unexpected tragic lost. We thank you all for your support and blessings.

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The CEO of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill, who built a nationwide business after moving to the United States from Jamaica, is being mourned after he reportedly killed himself in his New York City factory on Saturday.

Lowell Hawthorne, 57, who was born in Jamaica, opened the first Golden Krust storefront in the Bronx in 1989. The bakery, known for its beef patties, later grew into a franchise that now includes more than 100 stores in nine states.

Hawthorne died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Bronx factory on Saturday, according to The Journal News.

It doesnt make any sense. He had everything to live for, longtime friend and business associate Pat Russo, the president of Chefs Choice food company, told the New York Daily News. He was a brilliant business guy. The perfect American success story.

Current and former employees described Hawthorne as a good man, a smart leader and a humble boss.

Look how far he reached. Hes known from here to Jamaica, family friend Wayne Muschamb told the Daily News. Im kind of lost for words, man. This has got me shocked.

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness shared condolences with Hawthornes family, friends and employees on Twitter.

My condolences to the friends, family and employees of Jamaica-born Lowell Hawthorne, CEO of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill.



He headed the largest Caribbean franchise chain in the US, with more than 120 stores. pic.twitter.com/PX9MpD2Mkg  Andrew Holness (@AndrewHolnessJM) December 3, 2017

In May 2016, Hawthorne appeared on the CBS show Undercover Boss.
Lowell Hawthorne, founder and CEO of Caribbean restaurant chain Golden Krust, was found dead at his Bronx factory on Saturday due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He was 57.

Hawthorne arrived to the states from Jamaica at age 21. In 1989, he launched his restaurant. He started by selling beef patties, jerk chicken and cocoa bread and expanded his business into a national franchise with 120 locations over the next 28 years.

New York Daily News reported that authorities discovered a note left by Hawthorne, but did not disclose its contents.

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness shared his condolences with Hawthornes loved ones and employees on Twitter.

My condolences to the friends, family and employees of Jamaica-born Lowell Hawthorne, CEO of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill.



He headed the largest Caribbean franchise chain in the US, with more than 120 stores. pic.twitter.com/PX9MpD2Mkg  Andrew Holness (@AndrewHolnessJM) December 3, 2017

Queens City Councilman I. Daneek Miller also issued a statement, per CBS New York.

We are at a loss to conceive the notion that Lowell Hawthorne, the bakers son from the Jamaican hilltop community of Border, whose culinary gifts and can-do spirit gave birth to a surging restaurant and food retail enterprise that employs several hundred people in locations across America, is now gone to us, Miller wrote.

Since its creation, Golden Krust has always been more than a franchise, he continued. It is both an expression of cultural pride and devotion to community. I wish to extend my condolences to the Hawthorne Family for the sudden and untimely passing of their beloved Lowell. We will not soon forget the many contributions of the man who took the taste of the Caribbean to the world.

In his 2012 book, The Bakers Son, Hawthorne details his rise to success before and after immigrating to United States. He also appeared in a 2016 episode of Undercover Boss.

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Hawthorne is survived by his wife and four children, who all work for the company.

At the time of his death, Golden Krust was planning on building a $37 million headquarters in Rockland County, New York. New York Daily News said that Hawthorne was deep in tax debt and facing a lawsuit from a former employee.

Correction: A previous version of this story inaccurately stated that Hawthorne founded Golden Krust at age 21. Its been updated to state that Hawthorne moved to the United States at 21 and started his business seven years later.

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Jim Nabors

Jim Nabors, the actor and singer who was best known for playing Gomer Pyle on "The Andy Griffth Show," died on Nov. 30, 2017. He was 87.

David Cassidy

Actor and musician David Cassidy, who starred in the hit TV sitcom "The Patridge Family," died on Nov. 21, 2017 at the age of 67.

Della Reese

Actress and gospel singer Della Reese, who starred on the long-running CBS series "Touched by an Angel," died on Nov. 19, 2017. She was 86.

Charles Manson

Charles Manson, the infamous cult leader of the Helter Skelter gang, died on Nov. 19, 2017. He was 83.

Richard Gordon

Former Apollo 12 astronaut Richard Gordon, 88, one of a dozen men who flew around the moon but didnt land there, died on November 6, 2017.

Fats Domino

Fats Domino, 89, the rhythm-and-blues singer who recorded more than three dozen Top 40 pop hits and became one of the biggest stars of the early rock n roll era, died on October 25, 2017.

Robert Guillaume

Emmy Award-winning actor Robert Guillaume, who was best known as the title character in the TV sitcom Benson, died on Oct. 24, 2017 at 89.

Tom Petty

Tom Petty, the Grammy Award-winning lead singer of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, died on October 2, 2017. He was 66.

Monty Hall

Monty Hall, who hosted Lets Make a Deal for almost three decades, died on Sept. 30, 2017 at 96.

Hugh Hefner

Playboy magazine founder and legendary ladies man Hugh Hefner died on Sept. 27, 2017 at the age of 91.

Jake LaMotta

Jake LaMotta, the boxing legend whose life story became the basis of Martin Scorseses classic film Raging Bull, died on Sept. 19, 2017. He was 95.

Harry Dean Stanton

Character actor Harry Dean Stanton, who broke out of obscurity in his late 50s for his work in "Alien" and "Escape From New York," died on September 15, 2017. He was 91.

Edith Windsor

Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the 2013 United States Supreme Court case that struck down a federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, died on September 12, 2017 at 88.

Don Williams

Legendary country music singer Don Williams, who was known as the "Gentle Giant," died on September 8, 2017 at 78.

John Ashbery

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Ashbery, who published more than 20 books of poetry and was known for the complexity of his style, died on September 3, 2017 at 90.

Jay Thomas

Jay Thomas, 69, Emmy Award-winning actor on "Murphy Brown" and "Cheers," died on August 24, 2017.

Jerry Lewis

Jerry Lewis, the legendary entertainer and longtime host of the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, died on Aug. 20, 2017. He was 91.

Dick Gregory

Dick Gregory, comedian and civil rights crusader, died on August 19, 2017. He was 84.

Glen Campbell

Glen Campbell, the beloved Rhinestone Cowboy, international TV star and country music singer-songwriter, died on August 8, 2017. He was 81.

Jeanne Moreau

Award-winning French actress Jeanne Moreau, 89, who was best known for thriving in the French New Wave cinema, died on July 31, 2017.

Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-nominated actor, died on July 27, 2017. He was 73.

George Romero

Horror legend and "Night of the Living Dead" director George Romero died on July 16, 2017. He was 77.

Martin Landau

Martin Landau, a star of the 1960s television series Mission: Impossible who made a late-career comeback with an Academy Award-winning performance in the 1994 film Ed Wood, died on July 15, 2017 at age 89.

Maryam Mirzakhani

Maryam Mirzakhani, the 40-year-old Iranian who won the Fields Medal, maths most prestigious prize, died on July 15, 2017.

Liu Xiaobo

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and political dissident Liu Xiaobo died on July 13, 2017 after almost a decade of imprisonment by the Chinese government. He was 61.

Helmut Kohl

Helmut Kohl, former chancellor who reunified Germany after 45 years of Cold War antagonism, died on June 16, 2017. He was 87

Adam West

Actor Adam West who was best known for playing the title role in the campy 1960s TV series, "Batman," died on June 9, 2017, at the age of 88.

Gregg Allman

Gregg Allman, a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, the incendiary group that inspired the Southern rock and jam-band movements, died on May 27, 2017. He was 69.

Manuel Noriega

Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who spied for the CIA until the U.S. invaded and toppled his corrupt government, died on May 29, 2017 at the age of 83.

Frank Deford

Frank Deford, one of the finest sportswriters of his generation for his detailed psychological profiles of athletes and coaches, died on May 28, 2017. He was 78.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carters national security adviser, died on May 26, 2017 at the age of 89.

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In an astonishing defense of dropping death taxes for individual estates worth more than $5.5 million, GOP Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley implied that people not currently affected by that tax are spending every darn penny ... on booze or women.

I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing  as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether its on booze or women or movies, Grassley told the Des Moines Register in an interview published Saturday. Grassley, who serves on the Finance Committee, made the remark when asked about the Senate tax reform measure which would double the exemption for estates to $11 million for an individual and $22 million for a couple. Heirs would inherit the estates tax-free.

Grassleys comment triggered a wave of criticism on social media. Many complained that the working class is, in fact, spending every darn penny on raising their kids, caring for elderly parents, health care and putting food on the table. One Twitter user complained that the GOP was turning America into a version of The Hunger Games.

You forgot those that are "spending every darn penny" on raising their kids and giving them a decent education.  Patricia Farrell (@drpatfarrell) December 3, 2017

Indeed. The Hunger Games is starting to look like a Best Case Scenario.  Nancy (@planetscape) December 3, 2017

This is the GOP belief system; They believe that anyone who works hard and plays by the rules should be wealthy, and those that do not achieve wealth are lazy, alcoholics and drug addicts.  Maurice Ross (@MauriceMichael) December 3, 2017

He's a pleasant man, isn't he? I spend every penny I make and it sure isn't on women, booze or movies. Fun stuff like electricity, house payment, insurance, etc. etc. What the hell? I guess the rich don't drink, date or go to movies? That must be how they got rich! Wow!  Madlyn Stewart (@MadlynStewart1) December 3, 2017

No the rich get rich by stealing from the poor!  John Harmer (@DeltaRambler) December 3, 2017

The Grassley interview was part of the Des Moines Registers examination of how the tax reform measure radically reducing estate taxes will affect Iowans. Grassley has long argued that estate taxes, which currently must be paid on individual estates worth more than $5.5 million ($11 million for a married couple), hurt farms and small businesses in the state. Now, the Iowa senator apparently sees the tax change as a way to reward those who have accumulated millions of dollars by investing.

The newspaper found that the estate tax break will affect only dozens among 1.4 million Iowa taxpayers, according to IRS data, because almost all estates fall under the current exemption cap. The newspaper noted that the number of Iowans owing estate taxes was just 32 of 1.4 million taxpayers in 2012  or .002 percent of the total. Sixty-one people  .004 percent of all Iowa taxpayers  filed estate taxes in 2015. Only a fraction of those were farmers or small business owners, the newspaper reported.

Currently, only .2 percent of Americans pay estate tax and will benefit from the changes. The House measure would eliminate the tax on all estates of any size by 2024. The Senate and House measures will have to be reconciled.

Rep. David Young (R-Iowa) and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) both applauded the changes in the estate tax and emphasized how the changes would help farms and small businesses. Young insisted in a newsletter Friday that it is a myth that repealing the estate tax is a massive giveaway to the wealthiest Americans.

Grassley said earlier this year that the federal estate tax may force family members to liquidate to pay the death tax.

Related coverage

Problems Of The Super Rich

The Toxic Tax Bill

Senate Republicans Don't Care If Their Tax Bill Is Unpopular

Here Are 6 Of The Most Radical Aspects Of The GOP Tax Bill

House Republicans Pass Tax Bill

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Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which controls Gaza called Saturday for a new "intifada" if Washington recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or moves its embassy to the disputed city.

Reports in Washington have suggested US President Donald Trump may on Monday fulfil a campaign pledge on the American embassy, which like all other foreign missions is currently located in the coastal city of Tel Aviv.

"We warn against such a move and call on the Palestinian people to revive the intifada if these unjust decisions on Jerusalem are adopted," Hamas said in a statement.

Any decision to move its embassy there would be "a flagrant attack on the city by the American administration" and give Israel "a cover for continuing its crime of Judaising the city and emptying it of Palestinians," it said.

The status of Jerusalem is a key issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Both Israelis and Palestinians claim the city as their capital and previous peace plans have stumbled over debates on whether, and how, to divide sovereignty or oversee holy sites.

The last Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which claimed the lives of some 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis, was sparked by right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the city's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in 2000.

The Palestinian president's office told AFP on Friday that American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would "destroy the peace process".

Since 1995 it has been US law that Washington's embassy in Israel must be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as demanded by the Jewish state.

But every six months since the law was passed a succession of US presidents have signed a waiver to hold off on a switch which would enrage Palestinians and their Arab supporters.

Trump has signed the waiver once, and grudgingly, after vowing to Jewish-American supporters that he would be the president to finally make the switch permanent.

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The next deadline comes on Monday, and some in Washington suggest that Trump is planning a speech on the issue next week, before his deputy Mike Pence heads to Jerusalem.

The White House has described reports he may refuse to sign the waiver as premature -- but sources told AFP they expect Trump to formally declare Jerusalem Israel's capital.

The international community has never recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or its unilateral annexation of a band of territory around the city's eastern sector, which it captured in the 1967 Six-Day war.
Aerial view of the Honolulu skyline. (Photo: rebelml via Getty Images)

HONOLULU  A real estate developer in Hawaii is under scrutiny for its plans to build a residential high-rise that has two separate entrances: one for high-income residents and another for low-income earners.

ProsPac Holdings Group is developing the 41-story residential building in the Ala Moana neighborhood of Honolulu.

The high-rise will include 78 affordable rental units for people earning 80 percent or less of the area median income, as required by Honolulus affordable housing strategy. The other 351 units will be market-priced condominiums. If things go as ProsPac plans, the units will be separated with two entrances.

This separate door has become known as the poor door, and it drew criticism in 2014 when developers in New York, London and West Hollywood proposed similar ideas.

ProsPac Holdings' virtual depiction of its "mixed-use residential project" in the Ala Moana area of Honolulu. (Photo: ProsPac Holdings)

Daniel Simonich, an assistant project manager for ProsPac, told Honolulu Civil Beat the segregated entrances are necessary because the affordable housing renters and the condo owners will be managed by different companies and will have separate housing associations.

But the entrances and associations arent the only things segregating the groups.

The condo owners will be able to enjoy the propertys pool, cabanas, dog park, fitness center and theater, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. The renters will be barred from using those amenities.

Simonich told Civil Beat this separation will make the costs bearable for renters.

The renters wont have to face the burden of maintaining all those amenities because they will be separated, Simonich told the nonprofit investigative news site.

Social justice advocates dont see it that way.

Ultimately this will be the first time we will have approved a mixed-use residential project with separate entrances, Victor Geminiani, co-director of the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice, told Hawaii News Now.

That sends messages to all of us.

Tom Dinell, a professor of urban planning at the University of Hawaii, told Civil Beat the separate physical entrances could stigmatize the people who qualify for affordable units.

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Affordable units and market units should be identical from the outside, including the entrance way.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo did away with poor doors in 2015 after the New York Post, The New York Times and West Side Rag published stories on a luxury building that had proposed a separate entrance for its lower-income renters years earlier, inciting local outrage.

Its such a visual separation, state Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal told The New York Times in 2014. It gets at people when they see two separate doors. Its no longer theoretical. It looks and smells like discrimination.

New York blocked the entrances by taking tax breaks away from affordable housing developers who separate residents by income in their projects. Buildings under construction at the time  like the Lincoln Square tower  were grandfathered in.

Tenants in Lincoln Squares affordable housing felt the effects of the segregated entrances, as Rosenthal had predicted.

The thing I dont like most is we dont have the same amenities, Christina Figueras, a single mother of two, told the New York Post in 2016.

Eric Olm, a low-income renter in the same building, told the Post his windows overlook a courtyard that is restricted to only the wealthier condo owners. It would be nice to actually get to enjoy it, he told the newspaper.

State officials have struggled to solve Hawaiis affordable housing crisis brought on by the island states high cost of living and a shortage of housing options. In May, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell unveiled a strategy to address the crisis, offering developers a $1 year lease and help with infrastructure if they build affordable housing options.

William Chen, assistant director for ProsPac in Honolulu, said their upcoming Ala Moana building actually brings together low-income and high-income earners rather than separating them.

While most developers create a market rate tower in one location and an affordable tower in another location, our solution allows both projects to exist on the same block in the heart of Honolulus Ala Moana neighborhood, Chen said in a statement to Hawaii News Now.

This approach is a response to international best practices in space management and forward thinking about the kind of urban density that will work best for transit-oriented community planning.

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Dr Christian Barnard demonstrating the first heart transplant at a press conference 50 years ago - Bettmann

Heart transplants are likely to become obsolete within 10 years, because they help so few people, a leading heart surgeon has said.

On the 50th anniversary of the first human heart transplant, carried out by South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard, Professor Stephen Westaby said it was time to switch to artificial pumps and stem cell therapy, which could help thousands more people in Britain each year.

Currently around 15,000 people under 65 each year in Britain could benefit from a heart transplant, but there are only around 150 organs available annually.

New figures released today from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) also show that the number of patients waiting for a heart transplant has risen by 162 per cent in a decade, because of the growing population and improvements in medicine.

Prof Stephen Westaby, of the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford: I am a great supporter of cardiac transplantation. Some patients live for 20 years with excellent quality of life, but we can only treat one per cent of people.

How does a society value a treatment that needs another young person to die first and is applicable to less than one per cent of those who might benefit?

I think within ten years we wont see anymore heart transplants, except for people with congenital heart damage, where only a new heart will do.

I think the combination of heart pumps and stem cells has the potential to be a good alternative which could help far more people.

15,000 people could benefit from a heart transplant in Britain each year but only 150 hearts are available Credit: Shutterstock

Prof Westaby has already shown it is possible to reverse scarring of heart tissue, and improve quality of life, by injecting stem cells into the hearts of people undergoing coronary bypass operation.

Further trials to test out bone marrow stem cells on bypass patients is due to begin at the Royal Brompton in London in January. The hope is that stem cells injections could stop patients ever progressing to the stage where they would need a transplant.

Prof Westaby is also developing a titanium mechanical heart pump which would be cheaper and more widely available than current models, which are currently cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.

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In the meantime, the BHF is urging people to talk to their loved ones about organ donation. Although around eight in 10 people support organ donation, fewer than 50 per cent of people have talked to family members about their wishes.

More than half of families refuse a donation when they dont know what their loved one would have and the NHS must respect their decision, even if the dead individual was signed up to the donor register.

Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, Medical Director of the BHF said; On the 50th anniversary of the first heart transplant, we can look back and see how cardiovascular research has turned this fledgling procedure into a life-changing, life-saving operation.

The BHF continues to fund research into organ rejection and other approaches to help improve success rates, sa well as into regenerative medicine to try and repair the heart without the need for surgery,

The hope is that, one day, this research, will help to make heart transplant operations- and waiting lists for a new heart - a thing of the past.
Baghdad (AFP) - Iraqi officials have blasted calls to disband a Shiite-dominated militia coalition that has been key in battling the Islamic State group, after French President Emmanuel Macron said it should disarm.

The 60,000-strong Hashed al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces, was formed in 2014 after IS routed government forces to seize swathes of northern Iraq, and it played a central role in helping push back the jihadists.

Calls have grown from the West for the Hashed, an umbrella group dominated by Iran-backed Shiite militias that is officially controlled by Iraq's prime minister, to be dismantled as the IS "caliphate" has been reduced to a few pockets of desert.

"Any such discussion is rejected and we do not accept interference in Iraqi affairs," said one of the group's leaders, Ahmad al-Assadi.

"Asking for the dissolution of the Hashed is like asking for the dissolution of the Iraqi army because the Hashed are a key element of Iraqi security."

Macron called at a press conference with Iraqi Kurdish leaders on Saturday for "a gradual demilitarisation" of the Hashed and for all militias in Iraq to be "dismantled".

"Emmanuel Macron interfered unexpectedly in Iraq's internal affairs by calling for the dismantling of a legal institution, Hashed al-Shaabi," vice president and former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki wrote on Facebook Saturday.

"We don't want any country to impose its will on the Iraqi government and the brave Iraqi nation," the leading Shiite politician said.

The Hashed is deeply divisive inside Iraq and among the country's international backers, and has been accused both of promoting Iranian interests and carrying out a wave of abuses.

In October, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi strongly defended the Hashed after comments from US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Iranian militias in Iraq should "go home".
Kushner listens on as Trump speaks to Lebanese PM Saad Hariri - AP

US President Donald Trump is close to a decision on whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, his son-in-law and Middle East peace envoy Jared Kushner said Sunday.

Palestinian leaders are lobbying desperately against such a move, which the Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit said would boost fanaticism and violence while sinking hopes for peace.

But Kushner, the 36-year-old head of a small and tight-knit White House negotiating team, made a rare public appearance to put an optimistic face on his efforts.

"The president's going to make his decision," Kushner told the Saban Forum, choosing not to deny reports Trump will declare Jerusalem Israel's capital on Wednesday.

"He's still looking at a lot of different facts and when he makes his decision he'll be the one who wants to tell you. So he'll make sure he does that at the right time."

On Monday, Trump must decide whether to sign a legal waiver that would delay plans to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for another six months.

Donald Trump giving a joint conference with PM Netanyahu Credit: AP

Every US president has done this since 1995, judging the time not ripe for such a move, and Trump is expected to begrudgingly do so for a second time this week.

But, according to diplomats and observers, he is also now expected to announce in a speech on Wednesday that he supports Israel's claim on Jerusalem as its capital.

- New intifada? - Arab League leader Abul Gheit meanwhile said his organization was closely following the issue and is in contact with the Palestinian authorities and Arab states to coordinate the Arab position if Trump takes the step.

"It is unfortunate that some are insisting on carrying out this step without any regard to the dangers it carries to the stability of the Middle East and the whole world," he told reporters in Cairo on Sunday.

"Nothing justifies this act... it will not serve peace or stability, instead it will nourish fanaticism and violence," said Abul Gheit.

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Palestinians have been lobbying regional leaders to oppose the decision and the armed Islamist movement Hamas has threatened to launch a new "intifada."

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas spoke to Hamas leader Ismail Haniya late Sunday, a Hamas statement said, with the two sides agreeing their opposition to any shift in US policy.

The rare call between the two comes as attempts at implementing a reconciliation deal have faltered in recent days.

Graffiti depicting Trump on the Israeli wall separating the West Bank town of Bethlehem from Jerusalem

But Kushner, addressing a sympathetic audience at an annual meeting of Israeli and US policy-makers hosted by businessman Haim Saban, sees grounds for optimism.

The real estate developer turned presidential adviser is working closely with Israeli officials and has developed ties with the young Saudi and Emirati monarchs.

He sees an opportunity for peace if the Sunni Arab countries of the region align themselves with Israel in opposition to the threat of Iran.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shares this hope, although he dares hope an accommodation with Arab countries could precede any Palestinian deal.

Kushner, in common with US official thinking under previous administrations, sees a Israeli-Palestinian settlement as coming before any great re-alignment.

"You've got to focus on solving the big issue," he told a friendly but frankly skeptical Saban, and an audience of dignitaries and policy experts.

"The regional dynamic plays a big role in what we think the opportunities are because... a lot of these countries look and say they all want the same thing.

"And they look at the regional threats and I think that they see Israel, who is traditionally their foe, is a much more natural ally to them than it was 20 years ago," Kushner added.

"You've a lot of people who want to put this together, but you have to overcome this issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order for that to happen."

Kushner was speaking just two days after Trump's ex-national security advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russia's ambassador during the presidential transition.

Kushner reportedly directed him to speak with Moscow's envoy to sway a United Nations Security Council vote on a resolution condemning Israeli settlements shortly before Trump took office.

Newsweek reported that Kushner had failed to disclose to the Office of Government Ethics his role as co-director of a foundation that funded an illegal Israeli settlement.
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN (Reuters) - A state security court in Jordan on Monday sentenced one Syrian militant to death and handed life sentences to three others for their role in a suicide bombing attack on a Jordanian military border post that killed seven guards last year. Military judge Colonel Mohammad al-Afif said the men, in their early twenties, were involved in helping the Islamic State militant group stage the suicide bombing that shook the kingdom in June last year. Afif said the four had provided photos and intelligence about the Jordanian military post to an Islamic State leader in the former de facto capital of the militants, Raqqa in Syria. The Islamic state leader then sent the suicide bomber. The military outpost was located a few hundred meters away from Rukban camp in a no-man's land where thousands of Syrian refugees were stranded and near where the frontiers of Iraq, Syria and Jordan meet. The court found the four, who were residents of the camp, guilty of "abetting terrorist acts that led to the death of human beings" and other charges of committing "terrorist acts using automatic weapons". A fifth defendant was acquitted. They had all pleaded not guilty when the trial began last March. Officials said at the time the suicide bomber drove an explosive laden car at full speed from behind a berm and evaded troops to reach the Jordanian post and detonate his car. The blast, for which Islamic State claimed responsibility a few days later, also left 15 soldiers wounded, officials said. The area was later declared a closed military zone and the incident disrupted aid to tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. Jordan, which has kept tight control of its frontier with Syria since the outbreak of war in its neighbor, is a partner in a U.S.-led coalition fighting militants in Syria and Iraq, and has been the target of attacks before. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing violence and Russian air strikes in the eastern Homs desert had sought shelter at Rukban, a remote desert camp. King Abdullah had said there were militants among them and Jordan refused to allow them to enter on security grounds. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Peter Graff)
By Greg Lacour

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors said on Monday that a white former South Carolina policeman caught on video shooting an unarmed black man in the back committed murder, while defense lawyers argued their client did not deserve to go to prison for life for his crime.

Michael Slager, 36, pleaded guilty in May to a federal civil rights charge of using excessive force when he killed 50-year-old Walter Scott in 2015. Slager, then a North Charleston police officer, fired eight shots at Scott's back after he fled a traffic stop, hitting him five times.

A bystander's cellphone video of the shooting was widely seen and drew national attention to the case, which exacerbated concerns about how police treat minorities in cities across the United States.

At the sentencing hearing on Monday in U.S. District Court in Charleston, prosecutor Jared Fishman said Slager's actions constituted second-degree murder, punishable by life in prison.

Prosecutors have said Slager showed malice, obstructed justice by moving his stun gun closer to Scott's body after the shooting and lied to investigators.

The shooting was "deliberate, calculated and not driven by emotion," Fishman said.

Slager's lawyers have said his underlying offense was voluntary manslaughter, punishable by 10 to 13 years in prison, according to federal sentencing guidelines. The officer feared for his life when Scott took his stun gun during a struggle, they said.

Defense lawyer Andy Savage disputed that Slager lied about Scott trying to take his Taser or that racism drove Slager's actions.

During Slagers more than five years on the police force, "every ticket he wrote, every stop he made, had not the slightest indication of racial animus," Savage said.

However, Feidin Santana, 26, who took the video of the shooting on his way to work at a barber shop on April 4, 2015, testified that he never saw Scott try to assault Slager, charge at him or reach for his stun gun.

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As part of Slager's plea agreement, prosecutors dropped two other federal charges and a pending state murder charge. A state trial last fall ended with a hung jury.

Convictions of U.S. police officers charged in on-duty fatal shootings are rare.

Scott family lawyer Chris Stewart said before the hearing that Slager deserved life in prison.

"You've got to send an example to the whole nation that this kind of stuff can't happen," he said in a telephone interview.

(Reporting by Greg Lacour; Additional reporting by Harriet McLeod; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Dan Grebler)
By Gabriela Baczynska and Elizabeth Piper

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May failed to clinch a deal on Monday to open talks on post-Brexit free trade with the European Union after a tentative deal with Dublin to keep EU rules in Northern Ireland angered her allies in Belfast.

The British leader had sat down to lunch with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker hoping that a last-minute offer to the Irish government of "regulatory alignment" on both sides of a new UK-EU land border would remove a last obstacle to the EU open talks next week on future trade.

Yet as May and Juncker spoke in Brussels and the pound rose on prospects of free trade and perhaps a very "soft Brexit", Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) issued an uncompromising reiteration of its refusal to accept any "divergence" from rules on the British mainland.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar cancelled a news conference and the pound fell back, losing a cent against the dollar, as May and Juncker emerged to say there was still not "sufficient progress" on divorce terms to move ahead.

May agreed with Juncker that a deal could be reached in a few days before the EU summit on Dec. 14-15, but that promise did little to stem recriminations at home, where Brexit campaigners want Britain to become what one called a "free agent" and set its own rules.

Varadkar shared the view of some officials in Brussels that it was an opportunity missed.

"I'm surprised and disappointed that the U.K. government appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today," he told a news conference in Dublin.

"I accept that the British prime minister has asked for more time and I know that she faces many challenges and I acknowledge that she is negotiating in good faith but my position and that of the Irish government is unequivocal."

HARD BORDER

The Irish border has emerged as a defining issue for Brexit, one of the thorniest of three main issues, which include how much Britain should pay to leave and protections for expatriate citizens rights, to be settled before moving talks forward.

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With time running down after Britain triggered the two-year divorce process in March, May is keen to push the talks to a discussion of future trade to try to offer nervous businesses some certainty over their investment decisions.

All sides say they want to avoid a return to a hard border between EU member Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland, which might upset the peace established after decades of violence.

But they have found it difficult to find the right wording on guaranteeing the unguarded border as set out in the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement that will suit all sides.

Dependent on the support of lawmakers in the DUP for a majority in parliament, May must keep them on board and has repeated that she wants to maintain the economic integrity of the United Kingdom in any Brexit deal.

By suggesting May would settle for continued regulatory alignment if there was no alternative way, some in the DUP and in her own party fear Northern Ireland could get a kind of special status that could draw it away from the mainland.

A DUP source said the party's leader, Arlene Foster, had spoken to May while she was in Brussels. The phone call took place shortly after Foster told supporters she would not allow a Brexit deal that created "regulatory divergence".

The leaders of Scotland and Wales, and the mayor of London, also announced that they would want to follow suit if special terms were agreed for Northern Ireland.

"We haven't decided to dismantle the United Kingdom and give in to the demands of the Irish government," said pro-Brexit lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg after a Conservative Party meeting in London.

May's aides were sanguine, saying expectations had been too high for what some had billed as a crunch meeting in Brussels, and they played down any involvement of the DUP in sinking the deal.

One EU official even said the last-minute hitch may have been stage-managed to give the British prime minister some scope for saying she had fought hard for her position with the EU.

Juncker hailed May as a "tough negotiator".

May added: "We will reconvene before the end of the week and I am also confident that we will conclude this positively."

But European Council President Donald Tusk, who met May and who will chair next week's summit in Brussels, said that he had been ready to send draft negotiating guidelines for a free trade pact to EU leaders on Tuesday.

"It is now getting very tight but agreement at December (summit) is still possible," Tusk tweeted.

(Additional reporting by William James, Andrew MacAskill, Estelle Shirbon and Kate Holton in London, Alastair Macdonald, Lily Cusack and Jan Strupczewski in Brussels and Conor Humphries in Dublin, writing by Alastair Macdonald and Elizabeth Piper,; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Sydney (AFP) - Inspired by a dual citizenship crisis plaguing politics in Australia, the term "Kwaussie" -- a mix of Kiwi and Aussie -- was Monday picked as word of the year.

It had been used sparingly in the past to describe a dual citizen of Australia and New Zealand, but took on a new lease of life when Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce found out he also had Kiwi citizenship in August.

He was the highest profile scalp of a constitutional provision barring dual citizens from serving in federal parliament, with eight lawmakers forced to resign so far.

"In a time of covfefe, fake news, and tweetstorms, the Australian National Dictionary Centre has looked for a word of the year that is both lexically interesting and Australian," the centre's director Amanda Laugesen said in a statement.

Laugesen said "Kwaussie" was first used in 2002 to describe actor Russell Crowe.

"He was described as a Kwaussie -- what you get when you cross a Kiwi who can't decide whether they're a Kiwi or an Aussie," she said.

"Subsequent evidence suggests its use is predominantly Australian, found chiefly in social media, and also found with spelling variants including Kwozzie and Kwozzy.

"Thanks to the two Kwaussies identified as ineligible to sit in parliament -- Barnaby Joyce and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam -- the term is now becoming better known."

Joyce automatically acquired New Zealand citizenship through his father, and was forced to contest a by-election at the weekend, which he won comfortably.

The citizenship crisis has engulfed a number of MPs who claim to have unknowingly held dual citizenship, and threatens more with politicians given a deadline of this week to come clean about their status.

The Australian National Dictionary Centre is a major centre for lexicographical research, conducting research into Australian English and editing dictionaries.
Valletta (AFP) - Maltese authorities on Monday arrested 10 people in connection with the killing of a whistle-blowing journalist that turned an international spotlight onto crime and corruption on the Mediterranean island.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, who died when her car was blown up on October 16, was one of Malta's most prominent public figures, thanks to a widely read blog she used to expose the murky underbelly of the economically booming island nation.

Her most explosive reports included allegations that members of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's inner circle benefited from kickbacks from major business deals and a controversial passports-for-investment scheme.

But the 53-year-old also focused on alleged dubious behaviour by prominent opposition and business figures, fuelling speculation she could have been the victim of mobsters as easily as a political vendetta.

Muscat said all the suspects were Maltese and some were known to the police. The Times of Malta identified two of those arrested as brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, describing them as members of a criminal gang.

Muscat said a joint team of police, military and security services made the arrests following a nearly seven-week investigation carried out with help from the FBI, Europol and Finnish intelligence.

Caruana Galizia's murder led to an outpouring of grief on Malta and an international outcry.

Sven Giegold, a German Greens lawmaker who was part of a European Parliament delegation which visited the island last week, welcomed the arrests as "good news," but warned on Twitter they must not be used as "a fig leaf for not investigating cases of corruption and money laundering in Malta."

The MEPs left Malta expressing serious concern over the rule of law in the EU's smallest member state.

- PM's biggest adversary -

Muscat announced the arrest of eight of the suspects in a statement and then added in a Twitter post that two more had been detained.

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The statement said the suspects had been arrested on the basis of "reasonable suspicion in connection with involvement in the murder" of Caruana Galizia.

Under Maltese law, they can be interrogated for 48 hours before a decision must be made to prosecute or release them.

Muscat would not comment on whether the detained men were suspected of carrying out the killing or instigating it, or if a motive had been established, saying he could not risk prejudicing a potential trial.

The premier, who had described Caruana Galizia as his biggest adversary, reiterated his commitment to bringing her killers to justice.

"As I stated as soon as I learnt about this barbaric act, we will leave no stone unturned to get this case solved," he said.

- 'Mafia-style killing' -

Muscat's Labour Party government had offered a one million euro ($1.2 million) reward for information leading to a conviction of Caruana Galizia's killers.

Her sons denounced the reward as a publicity stunt and called on Muscat to resign over the state's failure to protect their mother and his attempts to silence her through legal suits when she was alive.

In her final post on Running Commentary, the blog she had written since 2008, Caruana Galizia voiced despair over the cronyism and sleaze she saw engulfing Malta.

"There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate," she posted minutes before the fatal blast.

Much of her recent work had been centred on what the huge Panama Papers data leak revealed about corruption at the highest levels in Malta.

Since her death, an Italian prosecutor investigating suspected mafia fuel smuggling from Libya to Italy via Malta has suggested the murder could be linked to his case, which Caruana Galizia had written about.

Antonio Di Pietro, a veteran of Italy's anti-corruption battles, has described the journalist's killing as "a classic mafia-style homicide" designed to send a warning signal.
A recent New York Times profile of a Holocaust denier was criticised as overly sympathetic but journalists face tough decisions when covering the far right

A counter-demonstrator attempts to shout down white nationalist Matthew Heinbach as they are surrounded by journalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, on 14 August. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When Alfred Munzer, a 76-year-old Holocaust survivor, read a major newspaper profile of a young Nazi sympathizer next door, he was shaken.

The New York Times profile, which focused on a 29-year-old Holocaust deniers pop culture tastes and listed items in his wedding registry, has been criticized as painting a neo-Nazi in an overly sympathetic light. Many readers argued it should not have been published at all.

Munzer, who volunteers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, thought the profile lacked some crucial context. But he also believed it told an important story.

The fact that there are really ordinary people who have beliefs that are really so reminiscent of Nazi Germany is absolutely frightening, said Munzer, whose two older sisters and father died in Nazi concentration camps. This is not just a crazy fringe.

Munzer has been increasingly disturbed by what he has seen in the US over the past two years: a presidential campaign driven by racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic rhetoric and policies; hundreds of neo-Nazis and white supremacists marching openly through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in August; a president who had to be prompted to explicitly condemn those neo-Nazis, rather than casting blame for violent clashes on many sides.

Then on Wednesday, as Americans debated the ethics of giving media attention to hate groups, Donald Trump tweeted three pieces of anti-Muslim propaganda from a fringe Islamophobic group, Britain First.

To me, its incredible that an American president would retweet hate messages like that, Munzer said. Its just totally incredible.

Trumps tweets sparked international headlines about a racist group with a few hundred members which is best known for harassment campaigns. A rightwing terrorist shouted Britain first before killing MP Jo Cox last year. The partys deputy, found guilty last year of religiously aggravated harassment, received just 56 votes in her last run for parliament. Britain First was recently deregistered by the UK election watchdog, after failing to update its paperwork.



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Like neo-Nazi groups in the US, Britain First has used stunts, harassment and digital provocation to attract attention and build its profile, despite having a tiny membership and no political power. Covering such groups, which try to weaponize even negative media coverage as a recruiting tool, has been a constant challenge for journalists. Critics have questioned whether the prominence and volume of such coverage has only served to make fringe groups more powerful.

In the US, neo-Nazi leaders have rejoiced at the coverage they have received, with three prominent far-right racists gushing on a podcast a year ago that the coverage had been very good, all the things theyre doing are so good.

The coverage only has one effect, which is the normalization of our ideas. And it doesnt take a political scientist to figure that out. If it isnt purposeful, then it is absurd incompetence, said one neo-Nazi internet troll.

I think in a weird level the left, like, secretly wants us to rise, said Richard Spencer, who was profiled in 2016 as Americas blazer-clad, dapper white nationalist.

Such profiles of Spencer, who has degrees from elite American universities, sparked the first major wave of public outrage at news articles about white supremacists that portrayed them as bizarre and fascinating characters rather than dangerous threats.

Americans of color have been quick to raise concerns about this kind of coverage, said Whitney Phillips, a digital media scholar who studies trolling, conspiracy theories and hate groups. Some coverage of white supremacists is implicitly filtered through a white perspective, she said, providing white audiences with shocking stories of wayward white folks rather than focusing on the danger or anxiety faced by communities of color.

Part of the problem with the New York Times profile of the Nazi next door was that they didnt talk to that guys black neighbors, Phillips said. They werent asking questions of the groups that these ideologies create a hostile environment for.

Neo Nazis take part in a Ku Klux Klan demonstration at the state house building on 18 July 2015 in Columbia, South Carolina. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

The crucial question when profiling a neo-Nazi is who have they harmed, she said.

Heidi Beirich, who leads the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups and individual extremists, said white supremacist groups must be covered by the media because they are a threat to democracy, a threat in terms of domestic terrorism and hate crime.

Despite criticisms of the volume of media coverage of white supremacist groups, white supremacist violence is not covered well, Beirich said. It tends to treat white supremacist killers as individuals, rather than portraying their violence as inspired by a single ideology and the result of a process of radicalization, as coverage of Islamic State-linked terrorism tends to do.

Its like theyre all one-offs, Beirich said. We are very reluctant to look at ourselves, our own culture, as a font for this violence. It is a lot easier to point the finger at something coming from Iraq or Syria.

Some Americans on both left and right continue to ask why fringe hate groups are being covered by the media at all, arguing that their views are ludicrous. Beirich, like other experts who study racist extremists, contested such assumptions.



The US, people have to remember, was founded on white supremacy and slavery, and it didnt dismantle white supremacy as its form of government until the mid-1960s, she said. Black people and people of color were legally discriminated against. Hate groups  their views, most of them, would have been considered totally normal in 1965.

A reverberating effect

Joan Donovan, a researcher at the Data and Society institute who studies how white supremacist groups manipulate the media, says articles about hate groups should be treated with the same caution as articles about suicide, where the wrong kind of coverage runs the risk of causing real harm.

News coverage of extremist groups may have a similar kind of reverberating effect, Donovan said, adding that white supremacist activists run media-based movements and no matter how ostensibly negative news coverage might be, any mainstream attention provides validation and fodder for their activism.

Donovan recommends that journalists use strategic silence when covering hate groups.

If there is no newsworthy event compelling you to cover this, its not a good idea to go searching for these stories, she said. Local neo-Nazi rallies, like a recent one in Shelbyville, Tennessee, should primarily be covered locally and not as a major national story, she argued.

Police officers from throughout middle Tennessee prepare for a White Lives Matter rally in Shelbyville, Tennessee, on 28 October. Photograph: Bryan Woolston/Reuters

Phillips, who has interviewed 50 journalists for a project on the difficulties of covering conspiracy theorists and hate groups, studies the way media coverage can amplify dangerous lies and hoaxes, helping them spread and become entrenched. Media coverage of bigotry and falsehood is not a neutral force, she said. A news article about a harassment campaign, for instance, will prompt even more harassment of the original target, and it will increase the likelihood that those tactics will be used in the future.

The way news coverage can amplify harassment, rather than put an end to it, was clear earlier this year during a campaign of neo-Nazi abuse directed towards Jewish residents of Whitefish, Montana, a town where Richard Spencers family owns a vacation home. Whitefish residents said each wave of news coverage seemed to spark a new round of abuse. Neo-Nazi trolls used lurid claims  suggesting they bus in skinheads to hold an armed hate march in the middle of January  to prompt continued press attention and international coverage.

But Phillips said that simply not covering harrassment may not be the right choice, either. If you have a rise in far-right extremism, you cant just turn away, she said.

In an onstage interview on Thursday, the New York Times editor, Dean Baquet, defended the papers neo-Nazi profile, saying the degree of outrage it had inspired was the most ridiculous overreaction to a story and that the piece had been right to provide a portrait of modern extremism that was not driven by guys who live in the hills of Alabama smoking pipes.

Playing with fire

Munzer, the Holocaust survivor, did not express particular interest, as the Times articles author had done, in the obscure soul of one neo-Nazi and how he had gone astray. He thought the the article should have pushed more into questions of collective responsibility.

Where did these feelings come from? he asked. What did we do wrong? How does this represent a failing of the schools? Or the failing of the way we teach history? A failure really to communicate what happened or the dangers of Nazis and the danger of racism  and that they can lead to murder?

It was not news to him that citizens with otherwise normal-seeming lives could become Nazis. It was an ordinary man, and a secret member of the Dutch Nazi party, who turned in Munzers sisters, eight-year-old Eva and six-year-old Leah, to the authorities. The two girls were sent to Auschwitz. The mans wife, who had tried to protect the girls, was also sent to prison.

Munzer said journalists should focus more on ordinary heroes willing to confront the rise of fascism. When Munzer grew up in hiding in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, it was a Dutch Indonesian family who took him in and a Muslim nanny who served as the Jewish babys surrogate mother. There were people of five religions in the household that risked their own safety to protect him. The Muslim woman who cared for him slept with a knife on her pillow, ready to defend his life.

Hatred, whether its directed against Jews, against Muslims, against anyone who is perceived as the other, is dangerous, and can really be a prelude to murder, he said. I think this is really playing with fire. Its stoking the fires of hatred.

At the same time, he said: Im seeing more people willing to stand up and speak up. People are beginning to really confront the hate. I see that among young people, and thats very encouraging.
The Metropolitan Opera said Saturday that it has launched an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse against longtime conductor James Levine.

We are deeply disturbed by the news articles that are being published online today about James Levine, the Met said in a tweet on Saturday night. We are working on an investigation w outside resources to determine whether charges of sexual misconduct in the 1980s are true, so that we can take appropriate action.

A man, who has not been publicly identified, accused Levine of sexual abuse that began in 1985, when he was 15, and continued for years, according to a police report obtained by the New York Times and New York Post. The man originally met Levine at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Ill. He told police that he visited Levine on multiple occasions at a nearby hotel, where Levine asked him to remove his clothes.

On various occasions he would ask me how I touched myself and then he would touch me the way I touched myself, the man wrote in a statement to police, according to the Times. I was never able to be aroused by this. But then he would masturbate himself at his bed or in the bathroom.

We are deeply disturbed by the news articles that are being published online today about James Levine. We are working on an investigation w outside resources to determine whether charges of sexual misconduct in the 1980s are true, so that we can take appropriate action.  Metropolitan Opera (@MetOpera) December 3, 2017

Levine did not immediately respond to requests for comment made through the Met and his manager on Sunday.

This first came to the Mets attention when the Illinois police investigation was opened in October of 2016, Peter Gelb, general manager of the Met, said in a statement to the Times. At the time Jim said that the charges were completely false, and we didnt hear anything further from the police.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra, where Levine was a conductor from 2004 to 2011, also called the accusations deeply disturbing in a statement on Sunday.

Dozens of men in Hollywood, media, politics and business have been accused of sexual assault and harassment in recent weeks, following reports of sexual misconduct by producer Harvey Weinstein.
ATHENS (Reuters) - A Greek court on Monday ordered the detention of nine Turkish citizens pending trial for terrorism-related offences, including links to a banned militant group behind a series of suicide bombings in Turkey. Greek police arrested the eight men and one woman in dawn raids in central Athens last week. Officials say there is no link between the arrests and a planned state visit by President Tayyip Erdogan to Greece, the first by a Turkish head of state in 65 years, on Dec. 7-8. Greek police are investigating the suspects' alleged links to the leftist DHKP/C, a far-left group blamed for a string of attacks and suicide bombings in Turkey since 1990. The nine suspects have been charged with setting up and belonging to a criminal organization, terrorist-related acts of supplying explosive materials, and with illegal possession of firearms, smoke bombs and fire crackers, court officials said. They said the suspects had denied the charges in a statement that also read: "Solidarity with people who are fighting for their rights and freedom is not terrorism." Their lawyers said the defendants had not been fully briefed on the case against them and that the charges were vague. Police have released the names and photographs of the suspects, who are aged between 20 and 64. One of the detainees had been wanted by Greek police in connection with an arms and explosives haul off the Greek island of Chios, close to the Turkish coast, in 2013. Under Greek law, individuals can be held pending trial for up to 18 months. Some of the defendants will apply for asylum in the meantime, their lawyers said. Based on Greek legal practice, an investigating magistrate will now take over the investigation and a judicial council will finally decide if there is enough evidence to proceed to trial. Greece and Turkey, though NATO allies, have often been at loggerheads over issues including Aegean territorial rights and the ethnically divided island of Cyprus. (Reporting by Constantinos Georgizas; writing by Renee Maltezou, editing by Michele Kambas and Gareth Jones)
Bravo

Larsa Pippen is known for her eye-catching, body-baring looks, from formfitting minidresses to thigh-high boots to luxurious lingerie. During The Real Housewives of Miami Season 4 reunion, the jewelry designer shut down speculation about possible cosmetic procedures and noted how she keeps herself in such stellar shape. I literally work out seven days a week, she explained at the time. If I show you my photos from five years ago, I was less than 100 pounds. Im 140 pounds now, so yeah, my leg
With the Puerto Rican sun shining bright, these two said "I do" in front of friends and family and got ready to dance the night away. Their smiles never faded and Love & Light Photographs captured every beautiful moment, from the Bride and her merry maids getting ready earlier in the day to endless sweet moments between the new Mr. and Mrs. Let's kick off the week in a wonderful way with this gorgeous gallery and you can thank me later for that grin that just won't go away.

From the Bride... After my husband and I got engaged in Greece, we didnt really have an idea as to where we wanted to get married; all we knew was that we wanted to plan the best party to celebrate our love with our favorite people. Finding the perfect venue was probably that hardest part, and after endless searching, my husband was actually the one who suggested we go back to our favorite courtyard in Puerto Rico, which was at the Hotel El Convento. And then just like that Puerto Rico seemed the obvious choice for many reasons but the main reason was that it was the first place we traveled to together, fell more in love with each other, and fell in love with the island. Old San Juan was the perfect place to encapsulate our vision for our wedding which was: timeless, romantic, and a day youll never forget!There was so much love that went around all weekend, between our friends and our family. From the ceremony at La Rogativa  my mom walking me down the aisle while my cousin sang the acoustic version of Empire of the Suns, Walking on a Dream (it was so hard to hold back tears); Will and I sharing our own written vows, to the reception at El Convento  both of us sharing special dances with our moms; Wills family belting out the German toast, Ein Prosit, every hour; everyone letting loose and ripping up the dance floor; being thrown up in the air more times than I can count; surprising everyone with a five person Puerto Rican band called, Pleneros, to liven up the party, and the vejigantes to dance the evil spirits away, AND last but not least everyone belting out Bohemian Rhapsody (from memory) even after the DJ was gone! It was a complete whirlwind and we both wish we could re-live it again and again. Puerto Rico will always have a special place in our hearts!More recently its hard to look back without crying because of the devastation Hurricane Maria caused to everyone on the island, including our friends and family. We ask that everyone please help our fellow Americans by donating in any way possible.

Photography: Love & Light Photographs | Floral Design: Angel Vasquez Vega | Wedding Dress: Maggie Sottero | Invitations: Marlie Vodofsky | Hair + Makeup: Unik Stuio | Band: In-Sync Wedding DJ Cuquitin | Wedding Venue: Hotel El Convento
President Donald Trump is headed to Utah Monday, where he is expected to announce he is scaling back two national monuments in the state.

Trump is expected to announce he is reducing the size of the Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase Escalante national monuments, the Associated Press reports. The two monuments constitute millions of acres of land in Utah and protect land considered sacred by local tribal leaders.

Former President Obama declared Bears Ears a national monument in his final weeks in office, a decision met with opposition by Republican lawmakers. Trump initiated a monument review in April, and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended the Bears Ears monument be downsized, setting up a controversy between environmentalists, Native American groups and mining companies.

The outcome he is planning to announce strikes an excellent balance where everyone wins, said Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who invited Trump to Utah.

The announcement begins at 2:40 P.M. ET. Watch on the livestream above.
(WASHINGTON)  President Donald Trump suggested Saturday he may be willing to negotiate changes to a significant portion of the tax overhaul, the corporate tax rate, injecting an element of uncertainty into the tax plan only hours after it cleared the Senate.

Trump told reporters at the White House before a trip to New York City that he would consider setting the corporate tax rate at 22 percent, compared to a 20 percent rate that he has pushed for with House and Senate Republicans during the fall.

Pointing to expected talks between House and Senate negotiators this month, Trump predicted something beautiful is going to come out of that mixer and the business tax would come all the way down from 35 to 20. It could be 22 when it comes out, but it could also be 20. Well see what ultimately comes out.

Trump spoke after the Senate approved a $1.5 trillion tax bill early Saturday that would rewrite the nations tax code, cut individual rates and slash the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent beginning in 2019. If enacted, the bill would provide the most sweeping changes to the tax system in three decades and help Trump deliver the first major legislative win of his presidency.

Trumps suggestion of a higher corporate tax rate than what has been included in legislation approved by the House and Senate represented an about-face after the president and administration officials maintained a hard line that a corporate rate higher than 20 percent was a nonstarter.

Vice President Mike Pence said in a speech to the Tax Foundation in mid-November that the administration would cut the corporate tax rate from one of the highest in the developed world down to 20 percent  and not a penny more.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who accompanied Trump to New York for fundraisers on Saturday, said in September that the 20 percent corporate rate was not negotiable.

The shift perplexed some Republicans. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tried to pare back the proposed cut in corporate tax rates to 20.94 percent to provide a more generous increase in the child tax credit. But he was rebuffed.

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Senate leaders & White House fought hard to defeat expanded #ChildTaxCredit b/c of 20.94% rate but now 22% is ok? Rubio tweeted Saturday.

White House officials did not immediately respond to questions seeking clarity on Trumps views of the proposed corporate tax rate.

Senate and House Republicans now head into a new phase of seeking to reconcile differences in the legislation passed by both chambers, a behind-closed-doors process that could move quickly. Trump has said he wants to sign the tax package into law before Christmas.

Republicans have pointed to the tax bill as crucial to retaining its House and Senate majorities in next years midterm elections. Democrats have said the bill will solely help the wealthy and corporations at the expense of more modest-earning workers.

Democrats have noted that while the corporate tax rates would be permanently reduced under the plan, it would only offer temporary tax cuts to individuals, lasting until 2026.
The couple, who announced their engagement on Monday, are planning on marking their big day with a wedding cake made from bananas, a source said - Getty Images Europe

Thirteen months ago, Meghan Markles cryptic Instagram post of two bananas "cuddling" signalled the start of her whirlwind romance with Prince Harry.

The picture - accompanied by the message "sleep tight" and two kisses - sent fans into overdrive as they speculated that it was likely a symbol of their long-distance love.

Now, it seems, the fruit is set to play a central role in their wedding too.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal that the couple, who announced their engagement last week, are planning on marking their big day with a wedding cake made from bananas.

This will be the first royal wedding cake made from bananas, a source close to the couple told The Telegraph.

As well as acting as a symbol for their affection, Prince Harry is said to love "anything with banana".

His former royal chef, Darren McGrady, has previously spoken about making the young Prince a caramel and banana cake.

Sleep tight xx (Update: Thanks so much to those who shared the photo cred :) I didn't know, and I love it! Credit where credit is due: I'm bananas for this @percxption)  A post shared by Meghan Markle (@meghanmarkle) on Oct 31, 2016 at 7:19pm PDT

He cooked for the Prince and his brother until the death of their mother Princess Diana in 1997, liaising with her about what he was serving up on a daily basis.

In a separate interview with Hello! magazine, he said Prince Harry along with his brother, the Duke of Cambridge, "loved banana flan, anything with banana really, banana ice cream".

Former royal chef Darren McGrady has previously revealed how Prince Harry loves "anything with banana" Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc

Wedding tradition dictates that the top tier of the cake is a fruit cake, because it is long lasting and is then served at the christening of the couple's first child.

Their apparent decision to go with a banana cake, instead of the typical fruit cake, is similar to the Duke and Duchess.

They had a groom's cake made of chocolate biscuits for their reception at Buckingham Palace as well as a traditional eight-tiered cake.

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But award-winning wedding cake designer Rosalind Miller said traditional fruit cakes were no longer the typical choice for couples, who are instead increasingly opting for flavoured sponges largely influenced by American preferences.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's royal wedding cake Credit: WPA Pool/ Getty Images Europe

A traditional wedding cake is a rich fruit cake, like a Christmas cake, where all the cake is soaked in alcohol first, she said.

But with Meghan being American, they are more used to having sponge cakes. We find that in actual fact, most couples that come to us also want sponge cakes these days. The traditional rich fruit cake is not very popular now.

Ms Miller said the Prince and Ms Markle were far from the only couple opting for a different taste, with banana, vanilla, lemon and even lavender as popular choices. People are becoming more aware of different flavours, she said.

The Prince and Ms Markle, 36, have been tight-lipped about their wedding preparations so far, with much of it still in its very early stages.

Prince Harry and Ms Markle announced their engagement to the world last week Credit: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/ AFP

Royalists are waiting in anticipation for any fresh announcements beyond what we already know - that the ceremony will take place at St Georges Chapel in Windsor on a date in May.

In a statement, the couple added that it would be a "moment of fun and joy that will reflect the characters of the bride and groom".

The Sunday Times reported that Prince George, 4, and Princess Charlotte, 2, will join their aunt-to-bes wedding party after being given the roles of pageboy and bridesmaid.

The children have both met Ms Markle on many occasions, but Kensington Palace - where the Royal couple will reside at Nottingham Cottage - are yet to confirm any further details.

The wedding will be a family event. You can expect the family to be involved, a spokesman told the paper.

St Georges Chapel last hosted a Royal Wedding in May 2008, when Peter Phillips - son of The Princess Royal - married Autumn Kelly. Prince Edward also wed Sophie, the Duchess of Wessex, there in June 1999.

Kensington Palace said it would not comment on speculation about the cake.
New York (AFP) - It's a case that has captivated Turkey and rattled Ankara: Reza Zarrab has become the star witness in a New York trial over alleged subversion of US economic sanctions against Iran, implicating a former Turkish minister and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Turkish-Iranian gold trader -- who was arrested in March 2016 en route to a family trip to Miami -- this week revealed in Manhattan federal court that he paid more than 50 million euros in bribes to former Turkish economy minister Zafer Caglayan between 2012 and 2013.

This allowed him to become a key intermediary of a complex but lucrative regional trade circuit that enabled Iran, via the Turkish public banking institution Halkbank, to inject billions of euros of hydrocarbon revenues into the international banking sector, all the while circumventing US sanctions prohibiting trade with Tehran.

The 34-year-old Zarrab -- who recently pleaded guilty to seven charges and is now being held at a secret FBI-guarded location -- then implicated Erdogan.

In front of dozens of engrossed Turkish journalists, the elegant prisoner donning a black jacket and white shirt affirmed that Erdogan, then prime minister, had given "instructions" that two other public banks would participate in the multibillion-dollar gold-for-oil scheme.

Speaking in Turkish via an interpreter, he implied Erdogan was fully aware of the circumvented sanctions, though the president insists he is not at fault.

Just 28 years old when he entered the scheme, the flashy gold trader nicknamed "Mr Riza" has given three days of testimony pinning himself as the ringleader of a vast network of Iranian, Turkish and Emirati companies, mounted thanks to his business savvy and ample Turkish and Iranian government contacts.

- Business acumen -

Born in Iran and brought to Turkey as a child, Zarrab testified that he began working in the tea trade at just 16, before working for two years for a foreign exchange company his father owned in Dubai.

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He then launched his own business, with companies in construction, shipping and foreign exchange.

The idea of helping Tehran circumvent US sanctions came from a Turkish jeweler, who had begun converting Iranian money into gold and then trading it for foreign currency, thereby concealing the Iranian origin of the funds.

In his bid to enter that business, Zarrab, a regular on Turkey's celebrity circuit known for his lavish lifestyle and pop star wife, used his high society rank to pull some strings.

He wrote a letter to Iran's then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying he wanted to help his "beloved homeland" in its "economic jihad" to loosen the grip of sanctions then strangling Tehran, citing his family's "half a century of experience in exchange and moving of currency."

His sanctions-busting commerce really took off in 2012, when he did business with Halkbank and the Iranian bank Sarmayeh -- with aid from Caglayan, then economy minister, helped along by bribes.

His business -- conducted with gold-filled suitcases transported to Dubai when US sanctions specifically targeted gold sales -- thrived, via a fictitious trade of food and medicine.

- 'Top exporter' -

But the world Zarrab built came tumbling down in December 2013, when he became a key figure in a Turkish corruption scandal in which he allegedly bribed four ministers including Caglayan to facilitate sanctions-busting trade and other deals.

He was held for 70 days until prosecutors dropped all charges.

Later that year, Zarrab received a "top exporter" award in the presence of Turkish government officials.

But that did not take into account the parallel investigation stateside.

US authorities arrested Zarrab in March 2016 as he traveled with his superstar wife Ebru Gundes and their daughter to Miami for a Disney World holiday.

Caglayan and eight others were subsequently charged with carrying out hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions benefiting Iran and Iranian entities in violation of US sanctions.

Zarrab for some time and hoped for his release, hiring top-flight lawyers including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The case has angered Erdogan, who has urged Washington to free Zarrab and denounced the trial as a "political plot" hatched by his enemy Fethullah Gulen, the US-based Muslim cleric blamed by the Turkish government for last year's failed coup.

US media also said Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn was under investigation for alleged talks with Ankara on deporting Zarrab and Gulen in exchange for money -- negotiations both Turkey and Flynn's lawyers have denied.

After 20 months of incarceration -- during which Zarrab admitted bribing his guards for alcohol and other favors -- the father of a six-year-old girl ultimately decided to cooperate, hoping for a lighter punishment than the 95-year prison sentence he risked if convicted by a jury.

Turkish prosecutors have ordered the seizure of Zarrab's assets. His testimony is set to continue Monday.
Sanaa (AFP) - Fresh clashes forced schools shut and shops shuttered in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Sunday, as residents warned a three-year rebel alliance was crumbling into a "street war".

Witnesses said forces loyal to powerful ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh had cut off a number of streets in central Sanaa and deployed heavily in anticipation of a possible attack by the Huthi rebels.

Loyalists of the former strongman renewed a bid to seize control of Al-Jarraf district, a stronghold of the Iran-backed Huthis, while the rebels fortified their positions with dozens of vehicles mounted with machine guns.

Residents of various neighbourhoods said they had barricaded themselves in their homes to avoid snipers and shelling as clashes flared up around key ministries where the two sides had been working together just days before.

The education ministry cancelled classes Sunday, normally the start of the school week, out of concern for students and teachers.

Witnesses said some of the bodies from previous days' clashes were still strewn in the capital.

Iyad al-Othmani, 33, said he had not left his house for three days because of the clashes and tensions.

Mohammed Abdullah, a private sector employee, said his street had been cut off by militiamen and he was staying home to avoid checkpoints.

"Sanaa is becoming like a ghost town. There is a street war and people are holed up in their houses," according to a local activist who works with the International Organisation for Migration in Sanaa.

"If the confrontation continues, many families will be cut off" and stranded in their homes, he warned.

Yemen's rebel alliance controlling Sanaa has unravelled in recent days with security forces reporting some 60 combatants killed in clashes between the two sides across the capital, including at the international airport.

On Saturday, Saleh reaching out to a Saudi-led coalition that launched a military intervention against the Huthis in 2015, offering to "turn the page" if the coalition lifts a crippling blockade on the country.

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Sanaa airport and rebel-held sea ports have been under a tightened blockade since a missile fired by the Huthis was intercepted near Riyadh last month.

Saleh's sudden about-face sparked warnings of retribution by the Huthis, who accused him of staging a "coup against our alliance".

The coalition carried out dawn air raids against Huthi positions in the hills south of Sanaa on Sunday, but it was not clear if the strikes were meant to benefit Saleh's forces.

A coalition spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Yemen war has claimed more than 8,750 lives since Saudi Arabia and its allies joined the internationally recognised government's fight against the rebels in 2015. The country is now facing what the United Nations has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein revealed Sunday that the Senates investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election includes a potential obstruction of justice case against President Donald Trump.

I think what were beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice, said Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, on NBCs Meet the Press.

WATCH: @SenFeinstein talks the latest on the Russia investigation, sees "obstruction of justice" in Comey firing. #MTP pic.twitter.com/idaz7VVx90  Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) December 3, 2017

Feinstein pointed to the indictments and pleas of former Trump advisers that have come as a result of Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation. In late October, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Gates were indicted on a number of charges. Both former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Feinstein also cited behavior she has seen from the White House and the presidents dismissal of former FBI Director James Comey earlier this year.

I see it in the hyper-frenetic attitude of the White House, the comments every day, the continual tweets, she said. And I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey, and it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. Thats obstruction of justice.

Obstruction of justice is defined as when someone purposefully disrupts or intervenes with an ongoing investigation. In this case, Feinstein points to Trumps dismissal of Comey as a cause for alarm.

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Along with Muellers probe, Feinsteins committee is one of the Senate groups investigating Russian election interference and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

Trump has repeatedly said that he does not believe he is personally under investigation relate to the FBIs Russia probe.

Following Flynns plea earlier this week, Trump tweeted on Saturday that he had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.

I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

This explanation shifted from Trumps original statement on why he fired Flynn, which he said had to do with his communication with Vice President Mike Pence about his contact with Russian officials.

On Sunday, he also tweeted that he had never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn  another denial of a New York Times report, confirmed by other news outlets, from early this year alleging that he had done so.

The president has repeatedly denied any collusion with his campaign and Russia, as well as reports that he is being investigated for obstruction of justice. In June, a lawyer for the president has challenged reports that Trump was being investigated on those grounds.
Freetown (AFP) - Sierra Leone's opposition on Monday said it welcomed the replacement of the country's police chief following his sacking amid accusations of institutional political bias and endemic corruption.

Former Inspector General of Police Francis Munu was reassigned to an ambassadorial post in neighbouring Liberia after being removed from duty last week, and replaced with Richard Moigbe, his deputy.

The decision by President Ernest Bai Koroma -- who has not commented on the matter -- came after pressure by the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) over the arrest of their party spokesman Lahai Lawrence Leema and the detention of several more supporters.

"We are satisfied with the decision to relieve the former police boss who was unprofessional in handling political matters," SLPP chairman Prince Alex Harding told AFP.

Harding alleged that Munu gave orders to police officers to fire tear gas at their party office last month, causing injuries and leading to multiple arrests.

The decision comes with tensions over demonstrations and political activity spiking in the lead-up to March 2018 presidential elections, when Koroma will step down from office.

Data from Sierra Leoneans reporting incidents of corruption to a British-backed anti-bribery platform via mobile phone found the police force to be the country's most graft-riddled institution.

Beyond corruption, the force is also dogged by accusations of using excessive force.

The Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone revealed in a report that police used live ammunition in an August 2016 protest in the town of Kabala, killing two people and wounding several more.

Meanwhile the majority of the police detention facilities in Sierra Leone are overcrowded and have deplorable sanitation, increasing the risk of diseases spreading among inmates.
Tokyo (AFP) - Japanese officials said Monday they were investigating a group of North Korean fishermen after items reportedly including a fridge, a TV -- and an anime poster -- disappeared from a remote island where they had taken shelter.

The Japanese coastguard first spotted the group of ten's rickety vessel off the northern island of Hokkaido on Wednesday as it struggled during poor weather.

The fishermen -- who identified themselves as North Korean -- briefly landed on an uninhabited island to take refuge.

But soon after the group left, officials noticed items from buildings on the island had vanished.

"There are solar panels at the lighthouse on the island and some of them are missing," a spokesman told AFP on Monday.

A TV, a fridge, a washing machine, an anime poster and blankets were also missing from a shelter facility for local fishermen, according to state channel NHK.

Government top spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters that police and the coastguard were "conducting necessary investigations" such as question the crew, who are still in Japanese waters.

Dozens of North Korean fishing vessels wash up on Japan's coast every year, sometimes with dead bodies aboard.

Separately, three bodies were found off northern Yamagata prefecture, according to the coastguard.

The coastguard also found a wooden boat nearby, but it is not confirmed whether the three came from North Korea.

NHK reported that one of the three wore a badge with a photograph of Kim Il-Sung, who founded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 1948.

Experts say some North Korean fishermen travel far out to sea in order to satisfy government mandates for bigger catches.

But their old and poorly equipped vessels are prone to mechanical and other problems, including running out of fuel, and there are few ways for them to call for rescue.

Last year, 66 boats that appear to have come from North Korea were found floating in Japanese seas.

More than 50 have already been discovered this year, according to the coastguard.
Turbulence seems like it ought to be simple enough to understand. After all, just about anyone who has ever flown in a plane has experienced it firsthand: that sudden, violent airflow that turns your pleasant flight into a teeth-rattling ordeal.

But as for how the underlying physics of turbulence work, well, nobody really knows. Its long been recognized as one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in physics. The legendary quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg said it best:

When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.

(Except Werner Heisenberg might never have said that. Maybe it was actually Horace Lamb, a British mathematician and expert on fluid dynamics. In all probability, the entire quote is apocryphal, and no one ever actually said it.)

The view from an airplane, with clouds all around raising the possibility of turbulence.

That quote sums up the whole problem with turbulence. The big picture is simple enough to understand  a plane bucking up and down  but if you want hard facts, it gets murky.

Turbulence is chaos

Heres the basic problem: Turbulence is chaos. Its what happens when a burst of kinetic energy enters the air through which a planes flies. That energy in turn causes sudden, unpredictable changes in the pressure and velocity of a fluid. This is the result:

Maybe the word unpredictable gives you pause, but why should a process as familiar and unremarkable as that flummox physicists for more than two centuries? In that time, scientists have come up with tons of equations to describe the motion of fluids.

Sir Isaac Newton

Many of those equations are derived from Isaac Newtons laws, which are deterministic  as opposed to Albert Einsteins, which are rather famously relativistic. Deterministic means it should be possible to plug in data about speeds and times and yield out a precise model of whats going to happen as the fluid (or gas, like air through which a plane travels) becomes turbulent. Alas, things quickly spin out of control. Chaos is actually baked into the very structure of the equations, and theres no getting around it.

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On the ground, you can see turbulence on display as the water of a river flows around a bridges support legs. If the river is flowing gently, its easy enough for the water to flow smoothly around the unexpected disturbance.

But if the river is running fast and fierce, some of the water molecules will unavoidably start colliding with the beam and, in turn, with one another. Before you know it, the water molecules around the beam are moving at all speeds and in all directions. Thats turbulence.

Water running over a weir.

And good luck trying to model that! Sure, only a relatively small section of the river is actually experiencing turbulence, but each drop of water has about 1.5 sextillion  thats 1.5 followed by 20 zeros  molecules in it. And thats just the start of the problem: Dont forget you have to calculate all the utterly incalculable number of collisions between those 1.5 sextillion molecules in every drop.

We wouldnt need to model all of that to say we had cracked the turbulence problem. But were dealing with the unpredictable motion and interaction of countless particles  how far can you zoom out before all meaningful accuracy is lost? And how far does modern technology allow us to zoom in? Supercomputers can crunch the numbers of those fiendishly complex equations in ways past generations of scientists could only dream of, but even now the most cutting-edge research is only beginning to hint at solutions to turbulences mysteries.

In the meantime, we have made little progress in the half-century since Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman made this observation: There is a physical problem that is common to many fields, that is very old, and that has not been solved. It is not the problem of finding new fundamental particles, but something left over from a long time ago  over a hundred years.

Nobody in physics has really been able to analyze it mathematically satisfactorily in spite of its importance to the sister sciences. It is the analysis of circulating or turbulent fluids.

At least, unlike that first quotations, we know Feynman actually said this one. With turbulence, take whatever certainty you can get.

Photos via Flickr / MichaelCover, Flickr / The Public Domain Review, Flickr / oatsy40, Flickr / STC4blues, Unsplash / Gary Lopater

Photos via Flickr / MichaelCover, Flickr / The Public Domain Review, Flickr / oatsy40, Flickr / STC4blues, Unsplash / Gary Lopater

Written by Alasdair Wilkins

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(Photo: Claire Bangser for HuffPost)

Julie Comeauxs 17-year-old son, Matthew, is a student with special needs. He has tuberous sclerosis, epilepsy and autism, but that hasnt stopped him from being ambitious at school. He has worked hard to keep up with his peers despite his difficulties.

So when administrators at Matthews Louisiana high school suggested last year that he forgo getting a regular high school diploma and start working on a watered-down alternative diploma, Julie Comeaux was appalled.

The alternative diploma, attained through the LEAP Alternate Assessment, Level 1 (LAA1) graduation pathway, allows students with severe disabilities to forgo typical academic expectations and requirements, and it doesnt end with the high school diploma.

Its like school administrators wanted Matthew to either sink to the level of getting a LAA1 diploma or swim with the big fish and fail, said Comeaux, who lives in New Iberia, a small city near Lafayette. My favorite comparison I see a lot is about asking a fish to climb a tree. Im not asking Matthew to climb a tree. Im asking him to swim a river, though it might be upstream.

As of 2016, Louisiana and 23 other states had alternative diploma or certificate options specifically for students with disabilities, each state with its own system. On its face, this process seems to make sense. It gives students with special needs another option for coursework if they have trouble keeping up with the typical requirements.

In practice, this process is more complicated and sometimes relegates capable students into diluted settings, stunting their ability to not only learn in school but also to achieve later in life.

The stakes for these students are high. Diplomas, specifically for students with disabilities, usually fall short of what is required for college entrance. Employers often require a standard diploma for jobs. Even worse, not all parents are aware of these pitfalls when they agree to place their student on an alternative graduation track, causing them to unwittingly set their child up for years of low expectations.

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However, there is not much research on the life outcomes of students with disabilities who attain high school diplomas versus those who get alternative exit documents.

An alternative diploma or certificate track might work for many students, especially students with specific academic needs who have severe cognitive disabilities. It would not work for Matthew, Comeaux suspected. Her suspicion was confirmed when she eventually obtained sample LAA1 curricula from school leaders and saw that they would be remedial for Matthew.

Julie Comeaux and son Matthew begin their home-schooling lesson for the day. Matthew has been home-schooled for the last year. (Photo: Claire Bangser for HuffPost)

Comeaux, who has made it a point to educate herself about the intricacies of special education policy, told administrators she would not be taking her child off the regular diploma track.

But most parents do not have the expertise to make such a decision.

When parents and kids hear the word certificate, to them that means its a document that is similar to a regular diploma and has the same value. And thats not the case, said Candace Cortiella, the director of The Advocacy Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that works on behalf of people with disabilities. A lot of times kids dont find that out until way too late.

Throughout his time in school, Comeaux always felt that Matthew might be overlooked if she didnt stay vigilant on his behalf. Her fear is well-founded. Although an estimated 90 percent of students with disabilities should be able to meet the same graduation standards as their peers, the national graduation percentage for students with disabilities lingers in the mid-60s.

The accuracy of these numbers, though, is fuzzy. States have been known to calculate these rates in disparate ways. States sometimes count students with disabilities who receive a regular diploma through alternative requirements, and sometimes they do not. It is unclear how many students with disabilities leave high school with an exit document other than a regular diploma, according to Martha Thurlow, the director of the National Center on Educational Outcomes at the University of Minnesota, a group that researches students with disabilities.

Theres no way of monitoring how often kids are tracked inappropriately, Thurlow said.

We dont even know how often kids are tracked, period.

Louisiana, where Matthew has always attended school, has its own specific challenges. The state has one of the lowest graduation rates for students with disabilities in the country and one of the largest gaps in graduation rates between students with disabilities and other students. As recently as 2011, more students with disabilities in Louisiana dropped out than graduated.

Future improvement is unclear. The Every Student Succeeds Act  a federal education law passed in 2015  allows states to create a state-defined alternative diploma thats aligned with regular requirements.

Comeaux conceded that administrators concerns about Matthew did not arise in a vacuum. Matthews condition is intense. Tuberous sclerosis causes non-cancerous tumors to develop in the brain. A few years ago, he also started having stress-induced seizures, causing him to miss large chunks of middle school, putting him at a disadvantage for his freshman year. He is also autistic and has some cognitive delay, Comeaux said.

While Matthew is outgoing  he has memorized the schedules of his favorite cashiers at the grocery store and loves to visit them  he had a poor experience with school staff in middle school, and in high school he became increasingly anxious and prone to outbursts. The low score on a psychiatrist-conducted evaluation of his behavior meant he qualified for the LAA1 path.

But Comeaux felt that none of these issues precluded her son from achieving in an academically rigorous environment.

They didnt bring up his ability to do the work, Comeaux said of that January 2016 meeting. Hes not a child were teaching to push a broom.

Julie and Matthew high-five during a home-school lesson. (Photo: Claire Bangser for HuffPost)

Comeaux eventually decided to pull Matthew out of New Iberia Senior High School and try home-schooling. Matthews behavior, happiness and academics have all improved. He will eventually graduate with a regular diploma, and Comeaux hopes to see him go on to attend a two-year college.

District officials did not respond to requests for comment on Matthews experience.

Still, Comeaux wishes there had been a middle ground to address the challenges Matthew was facing. In this ideal world, Matthew would be able to stay in school and graduate with a regular diploma but advance through the curriculum at a slower pace than his peers.

The desire for more  or at least better  options is one that parents of children with disabilities understand well.

Gena Mitchells 15-year-old daughter, Devin, is on the certificate track at school in Maryland. She placed her daughter, who has Down syndrome, on this track during the sixth grade. Shes just now beginning to realize what this decision might mean for Devins future.

Devin spends her days in an inclusive, general education environment but receives modified work. Its a system that has generally worked well for Devin. She takes pride in showing improvement on assignments while thriving socially with her peers.

But this year, once assignments started counting for college, Devin stopped receiving grades on her report card. The document simply says, No grade.

Mitchell always assumed that Devin would go on to college. Shes just realizing how this lack of grades could affect these plans.

Thats my next step: to look and see, what does this mean for her in the long term? What does this mean for what is possible for her? Mitchell said.

Mitchell knows her daughter would never be able to follow the same curriculum as her peers. But she also knows that her daughter has achieved strong gains and works hard. Her daughter takes classes including Spanish and astronomy. She can read the same books as her peers  even if theyre in a modified format. That has to be worth something.

It was the best information I had, Mitchell said of putting her daughter on the certificate track. If I lived in other parts of the country, my daughter could graduate with a diploma with modified work.

Indeed, for students with disabilities, different areas of the country can have vastly different expectations.

There are states holding students with disabilities to just about the same graduation requirements as their non-disabled peers, and then there are other states allowing all kinds of funny business in the name of trying to be accommodating, Cortiella said. We have kids leaving high school with diplomas they think are worth something, and in many cases they actually arent.

But in the world of special education, more options dont always mean better options. There are limited data on the issue. It is unclear whether states with only one diploma track produce more successful students with disabilities. There is a dearth of research on the topic.

Does a state with only one diploma mean people work harder to make sure [students with disabilities] get that diploma rather than saying, Oh well, we can get them a certificate? I just dont think we have good data, Thurlow said.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in partnership with HuffPost. Read the whole series, Willing, Able and Forgotten: How High Schools Fail Special Ed Students, here. Sign up for our newsletter.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled Matthews condition. It is tuberous sclerosis.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Three men will face the Supreme Court of the United States on Dec. 5 to settle a dispute over a wedding cake. David Mullins and Charlie Craig met Jack Phillips when they walked into his Colorado bakery, Masterpiece Cakeshop, five years ago and asked him to bake a cake for their wedding reception. Phillips refused, arguing that he morally opposed gay marriage. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission sued Phillips for discrimination. But Phillips appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

Phillips wedding cake case has become somewhat of a cause celebre for conservative Christians across the country.

The religious right lost its cultural fight against gay marriage the day the Court legalized it nationwide in 2015. But social conservatives like Phillips are working to carve out a legal exception for their right to object. The Alliance Defending Freedom, a top conservative Christian legal firm in Washington, has backed Phillips wedding cake case, and is making the argument that it is fundamentally not about LGBTQ discrimination but about free speech.

The religious rights protest has reached a tipping point. Social conservatives have long rallied around the theoretical idea of a Christian wedding vendor standing up against what it sees as a liberal gay marriage crusade. Now, they have their chance. Phillips wedding cake case is the next push for a religious exemption after Hobby Lobbys successful protest of the Affordable Care Acts contraception mandate. And since the Department of Justice sided with Phillips in September, they have the Trump Administrations backing.

It is the other side that is engaged in campaign litigation, says Kristen Waggoner, the ADF lawyer representing Phillips. They made a very poor choice here.

The conflict may have risen organically, but it has become central to the religious rights trajectory. Phillips argues his case is not about gay marriage, but about freedom of expression, as he refuses to create cakes for all things he morally opposes, including Halloween, anti-America events and bachelor parties. He represents the religious rights strategy to find the most sympathetic victim of government action that is assaulting religious belief and conscience and put a compelling face on it, says Ralph Reed, Faith and Freedom Coalition founder.

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You dont have to necessarily buy into the religion argument, says Reed. You can just believe that you are compelling people to participate in a form of expression that is not their own.

The left has been building a compelling story around its plaintiffs too. Craig and Mullins are arguing for protection under anti-discrimination laws, and they fall in the line of recent Supreme Court gay rights giants. Edith Windsor overturned a key section of the Defense of Marriage Act. Kris Perry struck down Californias same-sex marriage ban. Jim Obergefell made gay marriage legal nationwide.

A loss at the Supreme Court could open the door to many forms of discrimination that have long been outlawed in our society, Mullins says. Could a hotel owner refuse to rent a room to an interracial couple because their religious belief believes that the races should not mix, or could a business owner refuse to hire a single mother because their religion believes that mothers should be married?

Religious objectors have bubbled up across the country over the past decade. None have been victorious, as lower courts have routinely ruled objection to be sexual orientation discrimination. The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled against a wedding photographer who refused to shoot a same-sex wedding in 2006. Oregon ordered a Christian cake baker to pay $135,000 in damages after it refused to sell a wedding cake to a lesbian couple in 2013. The ACLU sued a florist in Washington in 2015 for refusing to sell an arrangement for a gay customers wedding.

Phillips wedding cake case comes at a new cultural moment in America. He has the backing of white conservative Christians, whose political power has been rising with Trump. Half of white evangelicals favor allowing small businesses to refuse services to gay people, according to a June survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, unlike three in ten Americans overall. Evangelist Franklin Graham urged evangelicals to pray for Phillips to win. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee touts Phillips on his Trinity broadcasting network show. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has said he is more optimistic that Phillips will win with Trumps justice Neil Gorsuch on the bench. ADFs public financial support has jumped from $36 million in 2011 to $50 million in 2015.

The right has also learned from the lefts success.

Those on the left have been overall more effective at telling stories to illustrate principles, Waggoner says. At ADF, we are very intentional about telling the stories of our clients because they matter.

Phillips legal strategy is to make the wedding cake case about speech and artistic expression. Artists cannot be compelled to make art for a religious ceremony, ADF says, and its case defends a lesbian printer who doesnt want to print an anti-gay shirt. There is a campaign to not just have same sex marriage recognized, but to crush those who disagree, Waggoner says.

Gay rights advocates say all that misses the point. For the ACLU, Phillips is arguing for a constitutional right to discriminate. At periods of cultural change, as during the Civil Rights Act and legal advances for women, arguments for exemptions routinely emerge, says ACLUs Louise Melling who is representing Mullins and Craig.

The question is whether you can show someone to the door, she says. This time, she says, the sign would be, Wedding cakes for heterosexuals only.

The Court wont likely decide the wedding cake case until next summer, and court watchers expect a split bench. When the court hears the case on Dec. 5, most eyes will be trained on Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose majority ruling in the Obergefell case legalized gay marriage in 2015. For now, both sides can agree on one thing: constitutional rights are at stake. Its just a matter of whose.
President Trump displays an executive order after announcing big cuts to Utahs sprawling wilderness national monuments, at the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Dec. 4, 2017. (Photo: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

President Trump flew to Utah Monday to announce that he is cutting some two million acres from two national monuments in the state to make way for oil drilling, mining, and other development.

Trump signed two presidential proclamations during his appearance, one removing protection from about 85 percent Bears Ears National Monument, which covers 1.3 million acres and was created by Barack Obama in late 2016. Grand Staircase Escalante, which covers 1.9 million acres and was created by President Bill Clinton in 1996, will be cut by roughly half.

With the action Im taking today, we will not only give back your voice over the use of this land; we will also restore your access and your enjoyment, Trump said during a speech in Salt Lake City. Public lands will once again be for public use. Because we know that people who are free to use their land and enjoy their land are the people most determined to conserve their land.

In a moment reminiscent of Trumps campaign rallies, the Rolling Stoness You Cant Always Get What You Want blasted through the sound system after he signed the proclamations.

The Upper Gulch section of the Escalante Canyons within Utahs Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument features sheer sandstone walls, broken occasionally by tributary canyons. (Photo: AP/Douglas C. Pizac)

The Republican president touted the decision as a victory for states rights and economic development. He has accused his predecessors of undermining the oil and gas industries by blocking off unnecessarily large swathes of land. But critics say the move shows a lack of concern for combating climate change, protecting the environment and preserving Americas natural beauty for future generations. Indian tribes say the Bears Ears land includes sites of religious and archaeological importance.

Trump argued that residents of Utah know how to take care of their land far better than bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. He said Americans should put their national treasures to great and wonderful use.

Your timeless bond with the outdoors should not be replaced with the whims of regulators thousands and thousands of miles away, he said. They dont know your land and truly they dont care for your land like you do.

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Introducing Trump, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that he had been blindsided by Obamas national monument designation of Bears Ears: So I asked for [Trumps] help in fixing this disaster. Without hesitation, he looked at me square in the eye and said, Well fix it. For the next several months, I worked closely with the president and the White House on a plan to reign in the federal overreach at Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase.

Arch Canyon in Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. On Dec. 4, President Trump signed legislation to shrink Bears Ears National Monument as well as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. (Photo: Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP)

Native American communities were outraged by the announcement because several tribes consider Bears Ears sacred. The Hopi, Navajo, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni tribal governments have already organized to save Bears Ears  arguing that at the very least, Trump should have consulted with their tribes.

Natalie Landreth, an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, said in a statement that the core issue surrounding Bears Ears is tribal sovereignty and self-determination.

The Five Tribes that advocated tirelessly to create this monument did so to protect their ancient and modern cultural and spiritual importance, Landreth said. The fact that it is being revoked without any consultation, or even concern, for the Tribes is offensive.

Anticipating this controversy, Trump expressed gratitude to members of the local Navajo community who attended his speech: Really appreciate it. We are profoundly honored by your presence here today.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke rides a horse in the new Bears Ears National Monument near Blanding, Utah, this past May. (Photo: Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via AP)

National monuments protect public land of historic, scenic or environmental significance from certain kinds of development. Congress establishes national parks, but the president can designate national monuments under the Antiquities Act, which was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican and ardent environmentalist, in 1906.

These abuses of the Antiquities Act have not just threatened your local economies; theyre threatened your very way of life. Theyve threatened your hearts, Trump told the crowd. He asserted that a national monument designation prevents local communities from hunting or fishing or grazing livestock on the land. But the U.S. Forest Service says that hunting, fishing and grazing is already permitted throughout most of the monuments area.

Back in April, Trump ordered the Interior Department to review the 27 national monuments designated by previous presidents to see which designations he could overturn or reduce. A key item on Trumps agenda is reversing any steps taken by Obama to protect the environment.

As many of you know, past administrations have severely abused the purpose and spirit and intent of a century-old law, Trump said.

The Moonhouse in McLoyd Canyon is part of Bears Ears National Monument, near Blanding, Utah. (Photo: AP/Rick Bowmer)

Before the announcement, Rhea Suh, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, condemned the Trumps plans as unprecedented and illegal. She said presidents use the Antiquities Act to create national monuments so special lands and bodies of water can be protected for future Americans.

This president thinks he can use it to destroy them, grabbing the iconic landscapes and marine areas all Americans own, and handing them over to polluters and private interests. He does not have that authority. We will stand up for the millions of people whove asked the Trump administration to preserve  and not rip apart  our national monuments, Suh said. Whats next, President Trump  the Grand Canyon? See you in court.

Similarly, Gene Karpinski, the the president of the League of Conservation Voters, condemned Trumps actions as the biggest attack on parks and public lands in U.S. history. He said in a statement that the administration is going beyond its legal authority, ignoring public outcry over archaeological treasures and undoing the hard work of Native American groups to protect their sacred sites.

By opening up these national monuments to oil, gas and coal speculators, the Trump administration is proving once again that they only care about padding the pockets of their polluter allies, Karpinski said. An attack on one national park or monument is an attack on them all, threatening our outdoor recreation economy and undermining our nations commitment to protecting our natural heritage for future generations.

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A cache of emails from President Donald Trump's transition team has raised questions about Michael Flynn acting as a "rogue" agent, with one national security advisor quoted in an email saying Russia "has just thrown U.S.A. election to him," according to a report in The New York Times . The Times story suggests former national security advisor Michael Flynn acted with the knowledge of other senior members of the Trump team. In a series of electronic communications, Flynn kept key transition figures in the loop before and after conversations he had with a Russian diplomat, the publication reported. In one email sent on Dec. 29, K.T. McFarland addressed Trump advisor Tom Bossert, about President Barack Obama 's decision to impose sanctions on Russia for election interference. At the time, McFarland was transition advisor; she later became deputy national security advisor under Michael Flynn."If there is a tit-for-tat escalation, Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him," she wrote.However, the report also stated that it was unclear whether McFarland meant "thrown" literally. A White House lawyer told the Times that McFarland was not saying she believed the election had been thrown. The attorney said she only meant that that was what Democrats were saying at the time.Trump was scheduled to have a call at 5 p.m. that day with McFarland shortly after the email was sent, but it is not clear whether that meeting actually happened, the Times wrote.Bossert forwarded the exchange to six other White House staffers. The Times said they included Reince Priebus, the appointee to become chief of staff, senior advisor Stephen Bannon and Sean Spicer, who would become press secretary. Bossert also forwarded the exchange to Flynn. The same day that McFarland sent the email, Flynn called McFarland to discuss what he should communicate to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the sanctions . That conversation was first disclosed in court papers filed by special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday, and sheds new light on Flynn's surreptitious dealings with the Russian ambassador. Those allegations ultimately led to his resignation only 24 days into his White House tenure, and appeared to be known among the president's inner circle.Flynn on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and said he would be cooperating with the investigation into contacts between the president's top aides and Russia, including possible collusion. "It would have been political malpractice not to discuss sanctions," the president's lawyer Ty Cobb told the Times. "The presidential transition guide specifically encourages contact with and outreach to foreign dignitaries."Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that he believes McFarland "needs to come in" and testify about the email exchange to the special counsel and congressional investigators.Warner is the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is leading an investigation into ties between Trump and the Kremlin. That probe is independent of the special counsel's office.The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said that she would push for her committee to interview McFarland as well.Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, said on NBC's "Meet The Press" that "the Democratic side, I can assure you, will" request an interview with McFarland.Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with the Russian government and called the accusations a "witch hunt."I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the vice president and the FBI. He has plead guilty to those lies. It is a shame, because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!McFarland is now the White House's nominee to become ambassador to Singapore. She told Congress in a hearing that she believes Russia interfered in the election, an assessment shared by the intelligence community.The Times' full report can be found on its website. A cache of emails from President Donald Trump's transition team has raised questions about Michael Flynn acting as a "rogue" agent, with one national security advisor quoted in an email saying Russia "has just thrown U.S.A. election to him," according to a report in The New York Times . The Times story suggests former national security advisor Michael Flynn acted with the knowledge of other senior members of the Trump team. In a series of electronic communications, Flynn kept key transition figures in the loop before and after conversations he had with a Russian diplomat, the publication reported. In one email sent on Dec. 29, K.T. McFarland addressed Trump advisor Tom Bossert, about President Barack Obama 's decision to impose sanctions on Russia for election interference. At the time, McFarland was transition advisor; she later became deputy national security advisor under Michael Flynn. "If there is a tit-for-tat escalation, Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown U.S.A. election to him," she wrote. However, the report also stated that it was unclear whether McFarland meant "thrown" literally. A White House lawyer told the Times that McFarland was not saying she believed the election had been thrown. The attorney said she only meant that that was what Democrats were saying at the time. Trump was scheduled to have a call at 5 p.m. that day with McFarland shortly after the email was sent, but it is not clear whether that meeting actually happened, the Times wrote. Bossert forwarded the exchange to six other White House staffers. The Times said they included Reince Priebus, the appointee to become chief of staff, senior advisor Stephen Bannon and Sean Spicer, who would become press secretary. Bossert also forwarded the exchange to Flynn. The same day that McFarland sent the email, Flynn called McFarland to discuss what he should communicate to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the sanctions . That conversation was first disclosed in court papers filed by special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday, and sheds new light on Flynn's surreptitious dealings with the Russian ambassador. Those allegations ultimately led to his resignation only 24 days into his White House tenure, and appeared to be known among the president's inner circle. Flynn on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and said he would be cooperating with the investigation into contacts between the president's top aides and Russia, including possible collusion. "It would have been political malpractice not to discuss sanctions," the president's lawyer Ty Cobb told the Times. "The presidential transition guide specifically encourages contact with and outreach to foreign dignitaries." Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that he believes McFarland "needs to come in" and testify about the email exchange to the special counsel and congressional investigators. Warner is the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is leading an investigation into ties between Trump and the Kremlin. That probe is independent of the special counsel's office. The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said that she would push for her committee to interview McFarland as well. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, said on NBC's "Meet The Press" that "the Democratic side, I can assure you, will" request an interview with McFarland. Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with the Russian government and called the accusations a "witch hunt." I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the vice president and the FBI. He has plead guilty to those lies. It is a shame, because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide! McFarland is now the White House's nominee to become ambassador to Singapore. She told Congress in a hearing that she believes Russia interfered in the election, an assessment shared by the intelligence community. The Times' full report can be found on its website.



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If President Donald Trump knew for months that Michael Flynn lied to the FBI, is he guilty of obstructing justice? His lawyer doesnt think so.

John Dowd reportedly told The Washington Post this weekend that Trump likely knew about Flynns erroneous reporting of his conversations with the Russians as early as January, months before he fired then-FBI Director James Comey.

But Dowd has shot down any speculation that his client obstructed justice, saying Trump is president and therefore above the law.

The President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitutions Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case, Dowd told Axios in an interview published Monday.

Its a claim reminiscent of one made in 1977, when former President Richard Nixon said the presidents can essentially behave as they wish.

Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal, Nixon said at the time, in a TV interview with David Frost.

Trump raised questions on Saturday about the timeline of his knowledge, tweeting, I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI the day before.

The implication that Trump had known his former national security adviser had lied to the FBI set off alarm bells. The White House had previously said Flynn was fired over false statements he provided to Vice President Mike Pence.

I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017

Dowd said he actually drafted the tweet about Flynn being fired, but did not admit obstruction. That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion.

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Im out of the tweeting business, Dowd told ABC News. I did not mean to break news.

Trump and Comey met a few weeks after the president found out about Flynn, according to the Post. It was during that meeting that Comey has said that the president asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn.

That led to speculation that Trump fired Comey to punish him for not giving up on his probe, which may also constitute obstruction of justice.

The question over whether a president is constitutionally capable of obstructing justice has no clear answer, according to legal scholars.

The claim that the president can commit such a crime faces a powerful objection rooted in the Constitution, two University of Chicago Law School professors, Daniel Jacob Hemel and Eric Posner, explained in a California Law Review article from July.

Obstruction of justice laws are normally applied to private citizens  people who bribe jurors, hide evidence from the police, or lie to investigators, they wrote. The presidents control over law enforcement is sometimes regarded as a near-sacred principle in our constitutional system.

Yet this conflicts with the constitutional principle that no person can be above the law. Thats why, according to Hemel and Posner, Congress holds the ultimate key to impeachment.

The impeachment charges for both Nixon and former President Bill Clinton involved obstruction of justice. However, Nixon resigned before he could be impeached, and the Senate vote on Clintons impeachment resulted in a 50-50 tie. A two-thirds vote from the Senate is needed for a conviction.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump denied Sunday having asked then FBI director James Comey to stop investigating ex-national security advisor Michael Flynn, as the Russia meddling probe darkened what would otherwise have been a victorious week for the Republican president.

Trump appeared to be backtracking furiously from a tweet Saturday that deepened suspicions that he engaged in obstruction of justice -- an impeachable offense -- in the Russia scandal haunting his presidency.

In that Twitter post, Trump said he had fired Flynn in February for lying not just to the vice president but also to Comey's FBI, which was probing Flynn over his pre-inauguration contacts with the Russian ambassador about US sanctions imposed by Barack Obama against Russia for interfering in the US election.

Comey has testified under oath to lawmakers that a day after firing Flynn, Trump asked him to drop the Flynn probe.

If Comey is to be believed, the Saturday tweet suggests Trump asked the FBI to lay off someone in his administration that Trump now acknowledges he knew had committed a felony -- lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But on Sunday, Trump insisted, "I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!"

Trump fired Comey in May and has said he did so with the Russia probe in mind.

Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, said Sunday suspicions of obstruction of justice by Trump are growing.

Schiff argued that if the evidence shows that Trump knew about and directed Flynn's Russia contacts, and then asked Comey to drop the matter after his lies to the FBI came to light, "Then you get the case of obstruction of justice."

"I think that's the significance of this context in which the president was intervening," he said on ABC's This Week.

Senator Diane Feinstein told NBC: "I think what we are beginning to see is a case of obstruction of justice."

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"Clearly he is making progress," Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

And in the wake of Trump's seemingly self-incriminating Twitter post on Saturday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a said he had advice for him.

"You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril. I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I'd watch it," Graham told CBS.

In an ominous turn for the president, Flynn on Friday pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and pledged to cooperate with Mueller.

White House officials told The New York Times that in his tweet Saturday Trump was only referencing Flynn's guilty plea for lying to the FBI about his conversations with then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Trump's personal lawyer John Dowd told ABC News that he had drafted the tweet and had done so in a "sloppy" manner.

- What the president knew, and when -

Mueller's focus goes beyond possible collusion with Russia to business dealings and whether Trump himself tried to thwart the investigation.

Trump also expressed anger Sunday over word that a senior FBI counterintelligence official, Peter Strzok, was removed from the Russia investigation over the summer for sending text messages critical of Trump.

Strzok had also worked on the probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state.

"ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE" Now it all starts to make sense!" Trump wrote.

As he left for a day trip to New York on Saturday, Trump again insisted his team had not plotted with Moscow to sway the election in his favor over Clinton, who won the popular vote but lost the all-important electoral college count.

"What has been shown is no collusion. There's been absolutely no collusion. So we're very happy," Trump said.

Comey himself seemed to be addressing the latest developments in an Instagram message: "To paraphrase the Buddha -- Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun; the moon; and the truth."

- Tax win overshadowed -

The explosive new developments in the Russia probe have overshadowed a major legislative win for Trump: the Senate's passage of the most significant US tax overhaul in 31 years.

Both the Senate and House versions lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, and include more modest tax cuts aimed at individuals across all income levels.

Democrats argue that the plan is too expensive and will accommodate only the rich, and that it could ultimately impact cherished US entitlement programs like Medicare.

The Senate bill was, just 24 hours earlier, on the brink of collapse when a handful of Republican deficit hawks balked at the plan's $1.5 trillion price tag for 10 years.

Trump hopes to sign a final bill before Christmas. That would be a much-needed victory for the president, who has delivered on hardly any of his major legislative promises, including repealing the health care law known as Obamacare.

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WASHINGTON  Flanked by a group of Utah officials at the Capitol in Salt Lake City, President Donald Trump on Monday signed a pair of proclamations to dismantle two of the states national monuments  a move that opens the door for oil, gas and other development on public land that has been protected.

The boundary of Bears Ears National Monument, a 1.35 million-acre landscape named after a pair of buttes and home to thousands of Native American archeological and cultural sites, will shrink by about 85 percent. The 1.87 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the largest land national monument in the country, will be cut roughly in half.

Ive come to Utah to take a very historic action to reverse federal overreach and return the rights of this land to your citizens, Trump said during his speech.

President Donald Trump holds up a pen after signing the hat of Bruce Adams, chairman of the San Juan County Commission and a vocal opponent of Bears Ears National Monument. (Photo: SAUL LOEB via Getty Images)

The action  the largest reduction of national monuments in history  follows an administrative review of recent monument designations that Trump launched in April. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said early on that there is no predetermined outcome on any monument, but the criticism he and Trump have made in regard to several recent designations left many wondering whether the review was mostly for show.

The president will no doubt face a slew of legal challenges over the new proclamations, most notably from the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. The group of five Native American tribes petitioned for Bears Ears to be given monument status.

Ethel Branch, the attorney general for the Navajo Nation, told reporters in a call ahead of Trumps trip to Utah that the looming announcement was absolutely shocking and totally disrespectful of the decades of work that went into establishing Bears Ears.

There was absolutely no consultation with our nation in advance of this decision. We were greatly upset by that, Branch said. And ultimately, the president doesnt have authority to take the steps he seeks to take on Monday. We plan to challenge that in court.

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Presidents have reduced the size of monuments before  in 1915, for instance, Woodrow Wilson trimmed more than 300,000 acres from Mount Olympus  but there is no legal precedent that establishes a presidents authority to abolish, shrink or otherwise weaken national monuments.

Congress, not the president, has the sole legal power to rescind or weaken protections for monuments designated under the Antiquities Act, four legal scholars concluded in June. Sixteen presidents have used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate 157 monuments.

The area known as Bears Ears, near Blanding, Utah, was designated a national monument by President Barack Obama in 2016. (Photo: TIM PETERSON/BEARS EARS INTER-TRIBAL COALITION)

Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante have been at the center of a fiery debate over the size and scope of such protected sites.

Members of Utahs Republican delegation and other local officials who have a reputation for attacking public lands have blasted the establishment of monuments in their state, referring to them as federal land grabs by Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. And they were quick to call on Trump to overturn or drastically shrink the sites.

Trump signed a pair of executive orders in April that threatened the future of 27 national monuments. At the signing ceremony, he said the designation of Bears Ears should never have happened and praised Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) for his never-ending prodding on the issue. And Trump boasted that he would end another egregious abuse of federal power, put states back in charge and open up protected areas to tremendously positive things.

Mondays proclamations reduce Bears Ears to 201,876 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante to 1,003,863 acres  a collective loss of more than 2 million acres. Additionally, they divvy up both monuments into several smaller units.

According to maps distributed Monday, Bears Ears will consist of two disconnected areas called Indian Creek and Shash Jaa. Grand Staircase-Escalante will consist of three units: Grand Staircase, Escalante Canyons and Kaiparowitz.

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During his speech Monday, Trump railed against recent administrations for abusing the Antiquities Act and against far-away bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., for thinking they know more about managing Utah lands than local residents do.

These abuses of the Antiquities Act have not just threatened your local economies, theyve threatened your very way of life, Trump said. Theyve threatened your hearts.

Public lands will once again be for public use, he added.

In a tweet on Monday, former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the decision would solidify Trumps place as the most anti-conservation president in our history.

Mr Trump, some promises are worth keeping, she wrote in an opinion piece for The Guardian. Some places should remain forever.

Pres. Trumps expected actions today will make him the most anti-conservation, president in our history. He will be challenged by tribes and thoughtful citizens that recognize that some places are too special to develop. https://t.co/92XNaAQ3H2  Sally Jewell (@sallyjewell) December 4, 2017

Environmental groups were quick to condemn Trumps proclamations, and several promised to sue.

This is a shameful and illegal attack on our nations protected lands, Jamie Rappaport Clark, president the conservation nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. National monuments are designated for their scientific, cultural and conservation value  because they are too important to damage and degrade. Teddy Roosevelt is rolling in his grave.

Roosevelt  of whom Zinke calls himself an unapologetic admirer and disciple  signed the Antiquities Act into law in 1906 and used it to designated more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon as a national monument. He also designated the 20,629-acre Chaco Canyon National Monument and the 610,000-acre Mount Olympus National Monument.

While Native American tribes are expected to lead the legal battle against Trumps decision to shrink Bears Ears, Earthjustice announced Monday that it is representing eight conservation groups in a lawsuit to protect Grand Staircase-Escalantes boundaries.

President Trump has perpetrated a terrible violation of Americas public lands and heritage by going after this dinosaur treasure trove, Heidi McIntosh, a managing attorney at Earthjustice, said in a statement. While past presidents have used the Antiquities Act to protect unique lands and cultural sites in America, Trump is instead mangling the law, opening this national monument to coal mining instead of protecting its scientific, historic, and wild heritage. We will not let this stand.

Zinke has recommended Trump shrink or otherwise modify at least 10 other existing national monuments, according to a leaked copy of the report that the interior secretary submitted to the White House in late August. Zinke has also recommended Trump create three new national monuments, including a 130,00-acre monument in the Badger-Two Medicine area of his home state of Montana  a move many see as hypocritical.

Its certainly encouraging to see Secretary Zinke advocating for permanent protect of the Badger-Two Medicine, but he cant have it both ways, Kate Kelly, public lands director at the Center for American Progress, told HuffPost. Its unacceptable to propose monument protection of the Badger in his own backyard of Montana, while at same time stripping protections from Bears Ears and other sacred places for Native Americans. With President Trump attempting to render monument protections as impermanent, Zinkes proposal rings as hollow and politically self-serving.

Mondays announcement notably comes a week after Trump proved unable to get through an event at the White House to recognize Native American Code Talkers  largely Navajo Marines who transmitted commands over the radio to soldiers overseas in their native language during World War II  without resurrecting his favorite insult for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

You were here long before any of us were here, Trump told Code Talkers during the event. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.

This article has been updated with addition details from Trumps speech on Monday, and with reactions to his proclamations.

Also on HuffPost

Basin and Range National Monument, Nevada

Bears Ears National Monument, Utah

Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, California

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Colorado

Carrizo Plain National Monument, California

Cascade Siskiyou National Monument, Oregon

Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho

Giant Sequoia National Monument, California

Gold Butte National Monument, Nevada

Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, Arizona

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Utah

Hanford Reach National Monument, Washington

Ironwood Forest National Monument, Arizona

Mojave Trails National Monument, California

Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, New Mexico

Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, New Mexico

Sand to Snow National Monument, California

San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, California

Sonoran Desert National Monument, Arizona

Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, Montana

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, Arizona

Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, Maine

Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands/Pacific Ocean

Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, Atlantic Ocean

Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, Pacific Ocean

Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, Hawaii/Pacific Ocean

Rose Atoll Marine National Monument, American Samoa/Pacific Ocean

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
(Adds quotes, background)

By Valerie Volcovici and Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON/SALT LAKE CITY, Dec 4 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Monday shrank two wilderness national monuments in Utah by at least half in the biggest rollback of public land protection in U.S. history, drawing praise from pro-development lawmakers and threats of lawsuits from tribes and environmentalists.

Trumps announcement followed months of review by the Interior Department after he ordered the agency in April to identify which of 27 monuments designated by past presidents should be rescinded or resized to give states and local governments more control of the land.

"Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what? Theyre wrong," Trump said in the state capitol alongside Utah's Republican Governor Gary Herbert, the Utah congressional delegation and local county commissioners.

Unlike national parks that can only be created by an act of Congress, national monuments can be designated unilaterally by presidents under the century-old Antiquities Act, a law meant to protect sacred sites, artifacts and historical objects.

Trump said former presidents abused the Antiquities Act by putting unnecessarily big chunks of territory off limits to drilling, mining, grazing, road traffic and other activities  a headwind to his plan to ramp up U.S. energy output.

Trump signed two proclamations after his speech. One would reduce the 1.3-million-acre (0.5 million hectare) Bears Ears National Monument, created in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama in southeastern Utah, by more than 80 percent split into two areas.

The other would cut the states 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, designated by President Bill Clinton in 1996, nearly in half. The landscape of canyons, ridges and rock formations would be split into three zones.

While a handful of monuments have been resized in the past, none has been cut back to such an extent, putting the president's proclamation in uncharted legal territory. Previous presidents including Woodrow Wilson and William Howard Taft reduced some monuments but were never challenged in court.

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Trump will ask Congress to look at the areas that are being removed from the current monuments to consider legislation designating some as a national conservation or national recreation areas, and create a co-management structure for tribes, an administration official said.

He said in his speech that the move was aimed in part at helping local communities access the land for hunting and grazing.

"Here, and in other affected states, we have seen harmful and unnecessary restrictions on hunting, ranching, and responsible economic development," Trump said. "We have seen grazing restrictions prevent ranching families from passing their businesses and beloved heritage on to the children."

Grazing and hunting were already permitted in both the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase monuments

The results of the Interior Department's broader review of U.S. national monuments will be published on Tuesday and is expected to outline changes to a number of other sites.

"FIGHTING BACK IMMEDIATELY"

Leaders representing the five tribes that pushed for the creation of the Bears Ears monument and who now manage it, said they will take the Trump administration to court. They include the Navajo, Hopi, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Mountain and Ute Indians who consider Bears Ears sacred. "We will be fighting back immediately. All five tribes will be standing together united to defend Bears Ears, said Natalie Landreth, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, which believes the cut would violate the Antiquities Act.

Jonathan Nez, vice president of the Navajo Nation, said the president was ignoring the treaty rights of sovereign Native American nations and that the Interior Department did not listen to tribal leaders who fought to create the monument.

"Its a sad day in Indian country," said Nez.

Obama created Bears Ears  an area bigger than the state of Delaware and named for its iconic twin buttes - days before leaving office after lobbying by the tribes.

Conservation groups and outdoor clothing company Patagonia have also said they plan to file a legal challenge, arguing the administration ignored public support for the monuments.

Others, however, welcomed Trumps announcement as a chance to boost the economy in one of Americas most remote areas.

"Reducing the size of monument would help free up a lot of land that has been under oppression," said Mike Noel, a state representative from Kane County, more than half of which is occupied by Grand Staircase.

Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who led the push by the state's congressional delegation to shrink the monument, introduced Trump at his speech on Monday and thanked the president for the proclamation.

I appreciate his willingness to listen to my advice and even more importantly, to give the people of Utah a voice in this process," he said. (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Roberta Rampton and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Cynthia Osterman)
I can still identify those moments during the presidential race when my stomach churned, among them the first night of the Republican convention during a speech by Michael Flynn. I was on the floor, just in front of the stage, as he spoke. I was startled; a retired three-star general, he was goading the delegates into a rolling chant of Lock her up. They meant Hillary, of course.

As news broke this Friday of his entering a guilty plea in a Washington DC court for lying to the FBI about contacts he had had with Russia during the transition following Donald Trumps victory, I was surely not alone in thinking about that night. Flynn could theoretically get five years for his single count. (Martha Stewart was given five months for lying about stock dealing.)

Thats right  lock her up, Flynn declared, his neck arteries fairly swelling with righteousness. Damn right... And you know why were saying that? Were saying that because, if I, a guy who knows this business, if I did a tenth  a tenth  of what she did, I would be in jail today.

The greater irony is what he said in that same speech about America confronting its enemies, something Barack Obama, he inferred, had failed to do. We should clearly define our enemies ... face them head-on ... and then defeat those that seek to threaten our country and our way of life. Enemies like Russia, perhaps, which at that very moment, we are now all agreed, was trying to do precisely that, if you count being a democracy as part of a nations way of life.

Flynn actually served in the last administration as Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2104 until he was fired by President Obama, who, we were later to learn, personally cautioned Trump against giving him any kind of important position because he was not be trusted. So Trump made him his National Security Adviser, thumbing his nose at Obama.

Big mistake. We knew that even in February, when Flynn, barely a month into the job, found himself fired again for lying to others in the White House, including Vice President Pence, about the nature of contacts hed had with the Russian ambassador to the US. If we hadnt already grasped how big a problem Russia was going to become for Trump before, we did on that day.

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Just how big a mistake keeping Flynn will turn out to have been for Trump we are yet to find out. Clearly, his guilty plea is the single most shocking public development in the Russian meddling probe to date, not least because the implication of it is that he will now be cooperating with the investigators. Flynn may be spilling the beans as we speak. Or maybe he has been for weeks.

Since the first day I took office, all you hear is the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia,Russia. Despite this I have the economy booming and have possibly done more than any 10 month President. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017

It would be hard for anyone to spin this one. When Robert Mueller, the special counsel, revealed he was charging Paul Manafort in the case, the White House evinced a shrug. Yes, Manafort had been campaign manager, and principle architect of the convention, but only for a short time. As for George Papadopoulos, the foreign policy adviser whod plead guilty also to lying to the FBI about Russia, well, his role had been so tiny, hardly anyone could remember the man.

None of that will work with Flynn and not just because he was so close to Trump during the campaign, in the transition and for the few weeks when he ran the National Security Council. The greater problem with what happened in court on Friday is this: documents released as part of the plea-bargain state that Flynn was talking to the ambassador, Sergey Kysliak, at the behest of a very senior member of Trumps presidential transition team.

Who was that? We dont know, but officials who were in a position to give him directions during the transition period included the Presidents son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was also recently interviewed by Muellers team. More urgently: was Trump aware of what had been going on?

It matters a great deal also that we know, thanks to FBI wire-tapping, the content of the contacts between Flynn and Kysliak during the transition. They spoke first about a pending UN resolution to condemn Israel for building new settlements in the Occupied Territories and second about US sanctions that Obama had imposed on Russia precisely for its supposed attempts to meddle in the elections. Court documents now show that on 29 December Flynn contacted members of the transition at Trumps Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian ambassador about the US sanctions.

Those of us who were disgusted by Flynns 2016 antics, at the convention but also as a warm-up act for countless Trump rallies out on the trail, may have taken a smidgen of pleasure from the 45 minutes he found himself before a judge on Friday, his wife at his side. The one-time three-star general was truly humiliated. And they havent even passed sentence on him yet.

But on to the bigger picture. There is nothing in the public domain yet to prove collusion between Trumps campaign and Russia to help him defeat Hillary Clinton and become US president. That, after all, is what lies at the heart of all of this, so it remains important to say that. The White House will doubtless be repeating it over and over all this weekend.

But that said, if there has been a cloud over this White House for the past several months, it has now become many shades more ominous. At this point it has swallowed four associates of Trump, including his former National Security Adviser, each charged with felony crimes related in some way or another to Russia. (The fourth is Rick Gates, a close associate of Manafort.) That is bad enough. But this an incubus that is on the move and very soon it may settle over others. The question is when. And whom.
A Syrian child is taken for treatment at a hospital following a reported airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Arbin, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Photo:Abudlmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images

Five hundred critically ill Syrian patients, including scores of young children, are trapped with dwindling access to medical supplies in a besieged rebel-held district northeast of Damascus in what some aid workers are calling a humanitarian catastrophe.

In recent weeks, drawing relatively little international press coverage, forces of the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad have pounded the area with airstrikes  including cluster bombs  as part of a ferocious assault on eastern Ghouta, just 12 miles from the countrys capital. The region is the larger of two Damascus suburbs still under the control of rebels who have been fighting Assads regime for the past six years.

As the government offensive escalates, hundreds of patients in the district who suffer from malnutrition, cancer, kidney failure and other diseases have been unable to receive treatment or evacuate, the aid monitors say, warning that siege conditions verge on famine. The UN declared the situation a humanitarian emergency on Thursday after its top humanitarian advisor, Jan Egeland, called situation a catastrophe.

Siege conditions in Eastern Ghouta are at their worst point since the siege began in 2013, said Valerie Szybala, director of the Syria Institute, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that is monitoring the crisis. Since this summer, we have seen a growing number of civilian deaths due to the lack of access to medical care and malnutrition. With winter beginning, the conditions will only grow worse, as people do not have electricity or fuel to make fires.

A Syrian man carries the body of a child who was killed in a reported airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Hamouria, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Photo:Abudlmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)

Of the 502 patients who are at most serious risk, 63 are children younger than 5, Dr. Mohamed Katoub of Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), a nonprofit medical relief organization, told Yahoo News in an interview from Gaziantep, Turkey. In the past, Katoubs organization was able to treat patients with supplies smuggled in through tunnels connecting the area to the opposition-controlled neighborhoods of Barzeh and Qaboun.

But the Syrian military shut the tunnels in May, and basic medical supplies such as anesthetics and surgical gloves are quickly running out  and the patients have nowhere else to go. Now we dont have access for patients to go to Damascus. We dont have access to medicines to bring inside, so we started seeking evacuation, said Katoub.

A Syrian child receives treatment at a hospital following a reported airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Arbin, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Photo:Abudlmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)

Doctors began requesting evacuations in July. Since then, Katoub says, only eight patients have been evacuated and 11 have died, because diseases that usually can be treated or managed have become fatal. Local doctors must wait for the government to approve aid convoys and ambulances to evacuate patients. Yet only ten aid convoys have passed through the regime checkpoint this year, each delivering barely enough supplies for a month, says Katoub. The regime removes surgical items from the convoys as well, he added  even from caesarean section kits.

One of the families Katoub is most concerned about is in Irbin and has four boys younger than 12 who have hemophilia. Hemophilia, a congenital failure of blood-clotting, was once frequently fatal but now be managed with clotting factor replacement therapy.

But in siege conditions, without treatment, any wound might be a killer, said Katoub. This disease is not killing in other places. Any medical procedures that can cause bleeding, such as dental work, can become catastrophic.

For Katoub, the frustration is compounded because adequate medical care can be accessed just a few miles away. But evacuation does not guarantee safety for residents from the longstanding opposition stronghold. A 5-year-old boy with a suspected case of polio was one of the few patients moved to Damascus. Born after the siege of Ghouta began, he had no official identification papers. After the hospital told the boys father to obtain certain papers, he headed to the civil records office. There, he was arrested.

A Syrian man looks after his son, who is receiving treatment at a hospital after he was injured and his sister was killed in a reported airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Hamouria, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Photo: Abudlmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)

Though relatively unknown to foreigners before the war, eastern Ghouta has been permanently inked on the map in blood. The agricultural periphery of Damascus emerged as a key battleground against the regime, led by rival rebel groups that eventually came under the control of the Saudi-backed Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam). These opposition factions built and operated the tunnels for smuggling that helped sustain the resistance to Assad in his backyard. Rebel groups competed not only with each other, but also with regime-backed war traders running goods and supplies through the Wafideen crossing point into eastern Ghouta.

Eastern Ghouta has paid dearly for its resistance. Residents have endured a grueling siege punctuated by chemical-weapon attacks that horrify the international community but fail to spur action. The population has declined by more than half  from 1.2 million to about 400,00. Since the tunnels were closed, the price of goods has skyrocketed. Last Sunday, the government imposed an exorbitant tax of 2,000 Syrian pounds (a little less than $4) on every kilo of food coming through the regime crossing point.

Eastern Ghouta is one of several de-escalation zones negotiated between Russia, Iran and Turkey in September during the Astana ceasefire talks. Under the agreement, a cessation of hostilities would allow for unimpeded access to humanitarian aid. Instead, the Syrian regime has launched a final campaign to crush the remaining rebel resistance in eastern Ghouta, recalling the brutal offensive to recapture eastern Aleppo last year.

A Syrian man grieves over the body of his son following a reported airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Arbin, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on Dec. 3, 2017. (Photo:Abudlmonam Eassa/AFP/Getty Images)

But unlike the outcry that met the regimes onslaught then, Assads final play for eastern Ghouta is unfolding with impunity and in silence. The Trump administration recently ceded to Russia political and military authority to end the war, further closing the door to Western aid and support. If something is not done immediately, thousands of innocent civilians will die, said Szybala. Unfortunately, based on the lackluster response from international actors it seems quite clear that nothing will be done.

The pattern of political cover repeated last week: Russia proposed a ceasefire, which the Syrian government accepted. Syrian forces bombed eastern Ghouta the next day.

Shilpa Jindia is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who specializes in Mideast affairs.

Read more from Yahoo News:
By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations' political affairs chief will visit North Korea this week, making the highest-level visit by a U.N. official in more than six years as tensions grip the region over Pyongyang's nuclear and weapons programs.

Jeffrey Feltman, a former senior official of the U.S. State Department, will visit from Tuesday to Friday and meet with officials to discuss "issues of mutual interest and concern," the United Nations said.

He will meet with North Korea Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho and Vice Minister Pak Myong Guk, said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, adding that the visit was in response to "a long-standing invitation from the authorities in Pyongyang for a policy dialogue with the U.N."

"He will also meet with the United Nations Country Team and members of the diplomatic corps, as well as visit U.N. project sites," Dujarric told reporters, adding that Feltman was also visiting China.

Feltman will be the first senior U.N. official to travel to North Korea since his predecessor Lynn Pascoe visited in February 2010 and former U.N. aid chief Valerie Amos visited in October 2011, the United Nations said.

The visit comes at a time of high tension over North Korea's program to develop nuclear tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States, including the test of Pyongyang's largest intercontinental ballistic missile last week.

An official of the U.S. State Department said it was "aware" of the planned trip, when asked in Washington backed the initiative.

"The United States will continue to work with other countries, including the members of the U.N. Security Council, to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on (North Korea) to convince the regime to abandon its illegal nuclear weapons and missile development programs," the official added.

"It is imperative that the countries of the world present North Korea with a unified, unambiguous response to its unlawful provocations."

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The official said the U.S. focus remained on finding a peaceful diplomatic solution to the crisis, but "the reality is that the regime has shown no interest in credible negotiations."

While stressing that it favours a diplomatic solution, President Donald Trump's administration has said it will never accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and has warned that all options, including military ones, are on the table.

On Monday, the United States and South Korea went ahead with large-scale joint aerial drills, a move North Korea had said would push the Korean peninsula to "the brink of nuclear war." Russia and China wanted the drills called off.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its missile and nuclear programs.

At a U.N. Security Council meeting last week to discuss the missile test, U.N. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said that while Washington does not seek war with Pyongyang, "if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed."

Dujarric said North Korea issued the invitation for Feltman to visit on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York in September, but the visit was confirmed only late last week.

When asked if Feltman was paving the way for a visit by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Dujarric said: "We hope to have more afterwards."

There are about 50 international staff working for six U.N. agencies in North Korea - the U.N. Development Programme, the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.N. Population Fund.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington; editing by Frances Kerry and Cynthia Osterman)
By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations is trying to evacuate at least 140 aid workers from the Yemeni capital amid fighting that has cut off the airport road, but is awaiting approval from the Saudi-led coalition, U.N. and other aid officials said on Sunday.

Coalition aircraft bombed Houthi positions in Sanaa overnight, residents and local media said, aiming to shore up supporters of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh as they battle the Houthi group, which is aligned with Iran.

It was the fourth day of clashes in which dozens have been killed, the Red Cross said.

"There is a plane on stand-by in Djibouti for 140 international staff," a U.N. official in Sanaa told Reuters. About half were from non-governmental organisations, he said.

"Fighting is moving towards the airport and the situation is very tense. We can't even evacuate staff," he said.

United Nations staff have been confined to their living quarters in Sanaa since clashes erupted on Thursday, he said.

Shells were falling near the UN compound in Sanaa on Siteen Street on Sunday, with one source on the scene saying stray bullets had hit the compound. The compound is empty as staff had been told to stay at home and not report to work.

Another aid worker with an independent agency in Yemen, who declined to be identified, said the U.N. was planning to evacuate as many as 180 U.N. and other aid workers, but U.N. officials considered the airport road was not safe enough.

Russell Geekie, a U.N. humanitarian spokesman in New York, said the U.N. planned to reduce the number of non-essential staff in Sanaa, but they could not yet safely move, and exact numbers were unclear due to the fluidity of the situation.

"Were very concerned by the clashes in Sanaa city, which have reportedly resulted in civilian deaths and have negative implications for the humanitarian response," Geekie said in an emailed response to Reuters.

"At present, fighting is restricting movement within the city, including on the airport road. The airport remains closed with Sanaa residents holed up in their homes."

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Clearance to land at Sanaa airport has yet to be received from the coalition, who control the skies over the Houthi-controlled capital, aid workers said.

Saleh said on Saturday he was ready to turn a "new page" in ties with the coalition fighting in Yemen if it stopped attacks on Yemeni citizens, in a move that could pave the way to end nearly three years of war.

The apparent shift in position came as Saleh's supporters battled Houthi fighters in Hadda, a district in southern Sanaa where members of Saleh's family, including his nephew Tareq, live.

In Geneva, spokeswoman Elodie Schindler of the International Committee of the Red Cross said: "In light of the current chaotic situaton, the ICRC is looking to downsize staff presence in Yemen to a core team".

(Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Tom Miles)
By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States has quit negotiations on a voluntary pact to deal with migration because the global approach to the issue was "simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty," said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. In a statement released late on Saturday, the U.S. mission to the U.N. noted that President Donald Trump made the decision. "No country has done more than the United States, and our generosity will continue," said Haley, whose parents are immigrants from India. "But our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone." "We will decide how best to control our borders and who will be allowed to enter our country," she said. Trump campaigned last year on a promise to deport large numbers of immigrants and build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico to help tackle illegal immigration and crime in the United States. Since he took office in January, he has also moved to ban U.S. entry by people from select Muslim countries. With a record 21.3 million refugees globally, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly adopted a political declaration in September last year in which they also agreed to spend two years negotiating the pact on safe, orderly and regular migration. Former U.S. President Barack Obama's administration backed the resolution, known as the New York Declaration, which also asked U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi to propose a global compact on refugees for adoption in 2018. "The global approach in the New York Declaration is simply not compatible with U.S. sovereignty," Haley said. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres regretted the U.S. decision, his spokesman said on Sunday, but expressed hope the United States might re-engage in the talks. "The positive story of migration is clear: it needs to be better told. Equally, the challenges it throws up need to be tackled with more determination and greater international coordination," U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said. Three days of preparatory talks begin in Mexico on Monday ahead of the start of formal negotiations in February over the non-binding pact. Haley's predecessor Samantha Power mocked the U.S. move. "How to further insult your Mexican neighbor, turn your back on humanity's most desperate, and make America irrelevant on a hugely destabilizing global crisis in one easy step," she posted on Twitter. While former U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said on Twitter: "On migration, national solutions logically do not exist ... Going it alone is a lose-lose proposition." (The story was refiled to correct the name of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to Filippo Grandi from Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein in paragraph 7) (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Islamabad (AFP) - US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Pakistan Monday as Washington pressures its wayward ally to eliminate militant safe havens, days after Pakistani authorities freed an alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Mattis landed at an air force base in the garrison city of Rawalpindi bordering Islamabad, according to a pool report, before heading to the US embassy.

During the brief stopover in the capital, he is set to hold talks with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and the powerful military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Mattis's first visit to the country as defense secretary of defense comes as the US pushes its longtime ally to do more to combat insurgents who allegedly use bases in Pakistan's tribal belt to target NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Relations suffered a further blow after a Pakistani court ordered the release of firebrand cleric Hafiz Saeed in late November, prompting a furious response from the White House.

Saeed heads the UN-listed terrorist group Jamaat-ud-Dawa and has a $10 million US bounty on his head. He had been under house arrest but was released after a court in Lahore said officials had not provided any evidence of his role in the days-long assault on India's capital which killed more than 160 people.

The decision to release Saeed coincided with the beleaguered government's capitulation to Islamist protesters holding a sit-in in the Pakistani capital.

The deal, which the military helped broker, saw the federal law minister resign over blasphemy allegations.

It sent shockwaves through the country, sparking fears that the military was doing little to keep extremism in check after supporting the demands of a small group of hardliners.

President Donald Trump first signalled that the US was reassessing its fractious relations with Pakistan during a televised speech in August, launching a blistering attack on Islamabad for harbouring "agents of chaos".

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The remarks triggered a series of high-level diplomatic meetings in the US and Pakistan, but Islamabad has given few signs of concessions to Washington.

Pakistan has consistently rejected claims it supports Taliban-allied forces, insisting it maintains contacts with insurgents only as a means to bring them to the table for peace talks.

Pakistan, which has long harboured fears of encirclement by arch-rival India, has also bristled at Trump's calls for an increased Indian role in rebuilding Afghanistan.

Last week the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, said Islamabad had not carried out the "clear" demands made by Washington.

"We have not seen those changes implemented yet," he told reporters.

But en route to Pakistan Mattis told reporters he would not use pressure as a tactic and insisted he would do "some listening".

When asked if he would "prod" Islamabad to take more action, he replied: "That's not the way I deal with issues. I believe that we work hard on finding the common ground, and then we work together, so that's the approach I want to take."
The United States and South Korea went ahead with large-scale joint aerial drills on Monday, a move North Korea had said would push the Korean peninsula to "the brink of nuclear war", ignoring calls from Russia and China to call them off.

The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States as part of a weapons programme that it has conducted in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was "regrettable" that all parties had not "grasped the window of opportunity" presented by two months of relative calm before the North's most recent test.

China and Russia had proposed that the United States and South Korea stop major military exercises in exchange for North Korea halting its weapons programmes. Beijing formally calls the idea the dual suspension proposal.

The annual US-South Korean drill, called Vigilant Ace, will run until Friday, with six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to be deployed among the more than 230 aircraft taking part.

North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country called US President Donald Trump "insane" on Sunday and said the drills would "push the already acute situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war".

US Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth jets are seen at a South Korean air base in Gwangju on December 4 Credit: AFP

F-35 fighters will also join the drills, which will include the largest number of 5th generation fighters ever to have taken part, according to a South Korea-based US Air Force spokesman.

Around 12,000 US service members, including from the Marines and Navy, will join South Korean troops. Aircraft taking part will be flown from eight US and South Korean military installations.

South Korean media reports said B-1B Lancer bombers could join the exercise this week. The US Air Force spokesman could not confirm the reports.

Mr Trump said last week that additional major sanctions would be imposed on North Korea after Pyongyang's intercontinental ballistic missile test.

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Vigilant Ace - US and South Korea begin joint air drills

Earlier last month, Mr Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that allows the United States to impose more sanctions.

Russia has accused the United States of trying to provoke North Korean leader Kim Jong Un into "flying off the handle" over his missile programme to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country.

US Air Force F-16 fighter jets fly over the Osan US Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, Monday, Dec. 4 Credit: Ahn Young-joon/AP

Speaking at a news briefing in Beijing, Wang said China consistently opposed any behaviour that elevated tensions.

"And measures that don't abide by or are outside the UN Security Council resolutions lack basis in international law and damage the rights of United Nations members," Wang said when asked about the prospect of further US sanctions against North Korea.

China's Air Force said on Monday that its surveillance aircraft had in recent days conducted drills in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea to "improve combat-readiness and safeguard the country's strategic interests".

The aircraft took a flight path not previously flown to regions they had never previously operated in, and coordinated with fighter jets, alert aircraft and guided missile forces, spokesman Shen Jinke said, according to a post on the Air Force's official microblog.

The joint exercises between South Korea and United States are designed to enhance readiness and operational capability and to ensure peace and security on the Korean peninsula, the US military had said before the drills began.

The North's KCNA state news agency, citing a foreign ministry spokesman, said on Saturday the Mr Trump administration was "begging for nuclear war by staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula".

US Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-35A Lightning II (R) fighter jets taxiing at Kunsan Air Base in the southwestern port city of Gunsan Credit: AFP

North Korea regularly uses its state media to threaten the United States and its allies.

North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

It has said its weapons programmes are a necessary defence against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention.
Seoul (AFP) - An airplane crew flying over Japan saw North Korea's missile as it plunged back through the atmosphere last week, their airline said Monday, as South Korea and the US kicked off their largest ever joint air exercise.

Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific released a statement saying the crew of flight CX893 spotted "what is suspected to be the re-entry" of the missile as they flew from San Francisco to the southern Chinese city.

In a separate message to staff, Cathay general manager Mark Hoey said the crew described seeing the missile "blow up and fall apart", the South China Morning Post reported.

Pyongyang sent tensions soaring on the Korean Peninsula five days ago when it announced it had successfully test fired a new ICBM, which it says brings the whole of the continental United States within range.

Analysts say it is unclear whether the missile survived re-entry into the earth's atmosphere or could successfully deliver a warhead to its target -- key technological hurdles for Pyongyang.

The isolated and impoverished North has staged six increasingly powerful atomic tests since 2006 -- most recently in September -- which have rattled Washington and its key regional allies South Korea and Japan.

On Monday the US and South Korea started their largest ever joint air exercise, an operation Pyongyang has labelled an "all-out provocation".

The five-day Vigilant Ace drill involves 230 aircraft, including F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters, and tens of thousands of troops, Seoul's air force said.

Pyongyang over the weekend blasted the drill, accusing US President Donald Trump's administration of "begging for nuclear war".

As tensions surged, US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican and foreign policy hawk, warned that the US was moving closer to "preemptive war" with the North.

"If there's an underground nuclear test (by the North), then you need to get ready for a very serious response by the United States," Graham told the CBS show "Face the Nation".

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In recent years Pyongyang has accelerated its drive to develop nuclear and missile technology capable of threatening the US, which it accuses of hostility.

"The preemption is becoming more likely as their technology matures," Graham said.

His remarks echoed those of Trump's National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who told a security forum on Saturday that the potential for war with the North "is increasing every day".

As well as featuring the latest generation of stealth fighters, this year's wargames involve simulated precision attacks on the North's military installations, including its missile launch sites and artillery units, Yonhap news agency said, citing unnamed Seoul sources.

- Risks of war -

The North has boasted that the Hwasong 15 ICBM tested on Wednesday is capable of delivering a "super-large" nuclear warhead anywhere in the US mainland.

Analysts agree the latest test showed a big improvement in potential range, but say it was likely achieved using a dummy warhead that would have been quite light.

They say a missile carrying a much heavier nuclear warhead would struggle to travel as far.

They are also sceptical that Pyongyang has mastered the sophisticated technology required to protect such a warhead from the extreme temperatures and stresses encountered as the missile hurtles back to Earth.

The latest launch, which saw the missile drop into Japan's economic waters, was condemned by Tokyo's parliament Monday, which slammed the North's rogue weapons programme as an "imminent threat".

Washington has called on China, the North's major ally, to do more to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

On Monday China's foreign ministry on Monday warned that the Korean peninsula remained "highly sensitive" and called on all sides to "do more things to ease the tension and avoid provoking each other".

The North's leader Kim Jong-Un has presided over significant progress in the country's widely-condemned nuclear and missile programmes since taking power in 2011.

A nuclear standoff between Kim and Trump in recent months has seen the pair trade personal insults.

The tensions have fuelled concerns of another conflict, more than six decades after the 1950-53 Korean War that left much of the peninsula in ruins.

But even some Trump advisers say US military options are limited when Pyongyang could launch an artillery barrage on the South Korean capital Seoul -- only around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the heavily-fortified border and home to 10 million people.

Estimates on the potential casualties from another war vary widely.

The North has thousands of conventional artillery units along the border with the South that analysts say could kill tens of thousands.

In one of the latest estimates, Scott Sagan, senior fellow at the Centre for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said the toll could be as high as one million people from just the first day of a conflict.
Donald Trump's travel ban applies to visitors from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen - AP

The US Supreme Court handed a legal victory to Donald Trump, ruling that his travel ban can be fully enforced pending an appeal.

Mr Trump's ban, now in its third iteration, bars travel to the US by residents of six predominantly Muslim countries - Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Seven of the court's nine justices agreed to lift two injunctions imposed by lower appeal courts two months ago that had partially blocked the ban while legal challenges to it continue.

The ruling meant the open-ended policy could take full effect while those legal challenges are resolved. It was not a final ruling.

A White House spokesman said: "We are not surprised by today's Supreme Court decision permitting immediate enforcement of the president's proclamation limiting travel from countries presenting heightened risks of terrorism.

"The proclamation is lawful and essential to protecting our homeland. We look forward to presenting a fuller defence of the proclamation as the pending cases work their way through the courts."

In a statement, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the Supreme Court's action "a substantial victory for the safety and security of the American people."

Mr Sessions said the Trump administration was heartened that a clear majority of the justices "allowed the president's lawful proclamation protecting our country's national security to go into full effect."

There have been protests against the ban Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Two of the Supreme Court's liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, said they would have denied the Trump administration's request to lift the injunctions.

Mr Trump announced the latest version of the ban in September, which led to immediate challenges in US appeals courts in Virginia and California.

Opponents in those cases argued that the measure targeted Muslims in violation of the US Constitution, and did not advance security goals as the government claimed.

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They convinced the two appeals courts to put implementation of the ban on hold while they and government lawyers argued out the case.

But the Trump administration has now secured support from the Supreme Court to move ahead with implementing it while the appeals in Virginia and California continue.

Hearings are expected in both those cases this week, meaning the ban could wind its way back to to the Supreme Court again in a matter of months.

Ahead of the Supreme Court's decision on Monday lawyers for the Trump administration had argued the policy was crucial to protect US national security, and that it was based on a "comprehensive" worldwide review.

Donald Trump's travel ban

The US Justice Department argued that it "justifies the presidents finding that the national interest warrants the exclusion of certain foreign nationals, and conclusively rebuts respondents claims that the entry restrictions were motivated by animus rather than protecting national security".

The state of Hawaii and the International Refugee Assistance Project, which had opposed the ban, argued to the Supreme Court that "the presidents third travel ban, like his first and his second, is irreconcilable with the immigration laws and the Constitution".

"President Trump's anti-Muslim prejudice is no secret - he has repeatedly confirmed it, including just last week on Twitter," American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Omar Jadwat said, referring to the president re-tweeting anti-Muslim videos posted by a far-right British party leader.

"It's unfortunate that the full ban can move forward for now, but this order does not address the merits of our claims. We continue to stand for freedom, equality and for those who are unfairly being separated from their loved ones," Jadwat added.

At a glance | Donald Trumps immigration ban

It had also previously been ruled in lower appeal courts that people from the six predominantly Muslim nations who had a "bona fide" relationship with someone in the US could not be kept out of the country under the ban.

Grandparents, cousins and other relatives were among those the lower courts said could not be excluded.

Now, those relationships will no longer provide a blanket exemption from the ban, although visa officials can make exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

The new policy was not expected to cause the same kind of chaos that ensued at airports when Mr Trump rolled out his first ban without warning in January.

He subsequently issued a revised ban in March after the first was blocked by the courts.

The second version, which was temporary, expired in September after a long court fight and was then replaced with the present, third version.

Mr Trump's latest ban also covers people from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, but its main focus is travellers from the six predominantly Muslim countries. Refugees were unaffected, as a temporary ban on refugees expired in October.
Twitter knows quite a few strong and powerful women besides Taylor Swift. (Photo: @xnulz via Twitter)

Powerful women are at the forefront of Twitter today, all thanks to one Taylor Swift fan.

Swiftie @xnulz tweeted Name a bitch badder than Taylor Swift with a still of Swifts power pose from the Look What You Made Me Do music video. Her original tweet was simply an attempt to compliment Swift. (I think we can all agree that between her mesh top and her dark lipstick, Swift does look pretty fierce in this photo.)

But fortunately for anyone interested in womens history, the tweet took on a life of its own. The internet took her words quite literally, and commenters started to name women of all ages and backgrounds who are all, in fact, badass.

Shauna, aka @goldengateblond, may have started off the meme with her perfect response. At 15, Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban for insisting that girls had the right to an education. At 17, she became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Price in history. At 18, she opened a school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon, she wrote. Bad bitch isnt the first phrase that comes to mind when we think of Malala Yousafzai, but we have to admit, the term definitely applies.

At 15, @Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban for insisting that girls had the right to an education. At 17, she became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in history. At 18, she opened a school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon. https://t.co/UjPdnoqc0o  shauna (@goldengateblond) December 3, 2017

Others followed Shaunas lead and turned the tweet into an impromptu history lesson. People honored women who fought in wars, raised families alone, upended the status quo, and many more.

Elizabeth Freeman was the first enslaved Black person to sue for freedom & win. She ended slavery in Massachusetts. https://t.co/kAi4vxzrLY  Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) December 3, 2017

frida kahlo was disabled from polio at age 6, suffered a bus accident at 18 where she was impaled by an iron rail, spent months bedridden, had chronic pain all her life, had an unstable marriage and YET managed to paint and is now one of the most famous surrealist painters ever https://t.co/YtRcQg2jLN  albin (@rrrroux) December 2, 2017

Ida B Wells Barnett. Orphaned at 16, she raised her younger siblings by teaching schooland writing for a local newspaper. After jealous whites lynched 2 successful Black store owners, she wrote an editorial that sparked the migration West of 100s of Memphis's Black residents. https://t.co/LBqhAYnuGH  Lee in Iowa (@Lee_in_Iowa) December 4, 2017

Some chose to post a shout-out to their own mothers and grandmothers. It turns out that Twitter users have some truly rad, Nazi-fighting, boundary-breaking women in their families.

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During WWI my grandmother chased a German soldier out of her kitchen by repeatedly hitting him over the head with a frying pan. https://t.co/erk7rtCUOZ  Luc Sante (@luxante) December 3, 2017

My Mom was raising two kids by herself without a college education and a disability, cerebral palsy. She went back to school, attained her Masters in social work/counseling & worked in child protective services until she passed from cancer 3 years ago. https://t.co/KZwLLVwW1C  Nada Bakos (@nadabakos) December 3, 2017

My mom escaped the Vietnam War at age 23 when the city around her was being bombed, was forced to leave her parents and 12 siblings behind with no notice, then spent the next 20 years raising money and bringing them slowly one by one to the US https://t.co/vyoiws7NCl  Haku @ Comic Fiesta (@hakuku) December 3, 2017

Others used the tweet as an opportunity to post shout-outs about themselves. I work, live, and raise my kids on my own, have done for 8 years, live with two mental illnesses that nearly literally killed me and made me unemployable, wrote @TheRestlessQuil.

me. i work, live, and raise my kids on my own, have done for 8 years, live with two mental illnesses that nearly literally killed me and made me unemployable. https://t.co/LFeTIPrONN  Sandhya (@TheRestlessQuil) December 4, 2017

The entire thread should be required reading for any woman who needs a little morning inspiration  and that includes Taylor Swift fans.

taylor swift, who so bravely took her attacker to court and smashed the idea that sexual assault survivors should be the ones to blame for their traumas. https://t.co/nz8sMimXiq  amanda lovelace  (@ladybookmad) December 4, 2017

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Ali Abdullah Saleh was reportedly killed after his forces turned against their Houthi rebel allies - REUTERS

Yemens former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was killed Monday after he appeared to switch sides against his former rebel allies and join with a Saudi-led military coalition, plunging the complex war into further chaos.

Mr Saleh held power for 33 years until he was ousted in 2011 but he remained a central figure in the country and spent two years battling alongside the Houthi rebels against Saudi Arabia and the man who replaced him as Yemens president.

The alliance between Mr Saleh and the Houthis collapsed last week and he began to make public overtures towards Saudi Arabia as his troops fought the Houthis in street battles in Saana, the rebel-held capital.

The 75-year-old former president was reportedly shot as he tried to flee the city and Houthi fighters joyfully paraded his bloody corpse before the cameras, much as Libyan rebels did after killing Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Abdul-Malek al-Houthi, the Houthi leader, said Mr Saleh had been killed for treason and warned the Saudi-led coalition they would not succeed in Yemen. "Today is the day of the fall of the conspiracy of betrayal and treason. It's a dark day for the forces of the coalition, he said.

Saleh timeline Yemen

His death is a blow for Saudi Arabia and its UAE allies, who had reportedly wooed Mr Saleh through his son in the hope of bringing an end to the war, which has so far been a frustrating stalemate for Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

More than two years of fighting has killed more than 10,000 people, destroyed the countrys infrastructure and left another seven million people on the brink of starvation.

Saudi Arabia has been heavily criticised for killing civilians in airstrikes and for its tight blockade of the country. It accuses Iran of arming the Houthis and supplying the rebels with missiles which they have fired into Saudi territory.

The Red Cross and other humanitarian groups said their operations in Sanaa had been paralysed by the fighting and by heavy Saudi bombardment against the Houthis, prompting the UN to appeal for a ceasefire.

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Mr Saleh had been one of the Arab worlds wiliest and longest-reigning dictators and once described his more three decades in power as like dancing on the heads of snakes.

He was part of a young group of military officers who seized power in North Yemen in 1962 and then became the countrys president in 1978. In 1990 North and South were reunited and Mr Saleh became the ruler of the entire country.

He was forced from power in late 2011 after mass protests inspired by the Arab Spring and only narrowly survived an assassination attempt. He handed power to Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, his vice president.

At a glance | Yemen

But when Houthi forces rose up against Mr Hadi in 2015, Mr Saleh and his loyalists joined with them and seized control of much of North Yemen. Soon after Saudi Arabia began air raids against the Houthis in support of Mr Hadi.

Tensions between Mr Saleh and the Houthis had been growing since the summer and in a speech on Saturday he forcefully denounced his one time allies and said he was ready to turn a new page with Saudi Arabia and Mr Hadi.

His gamble backfired badly as Houthi forces overran his fighters in Sanaa over the weekend. He was reportedly trying to flee the city when his armoured vehicle was struck by an RPG. Houthi fighters then allegedly killed him on the side of the road.

Mr Hadi appealed to Mr Salehs followers to join him against the Houthis and said he was ordering an offensive against Sanaa.

Residents of the city said the fighting appeared to be calming on Monday night as news of Mr Salehs death spread. We are just waiting in the house expecting something bad to happen. For three days we have been at home because of street fighting, said Najla al-Sonboli, a doctor.

The Red Cross said one of its medical warehouses had been hit during the fighting but it had been unable to check the extent of the damage because of the chaos in the city. A spokeswoman said the group had been unable to deliver supplies to hospitals and that at least 125 people had been killed.

Jamie McGoldrick the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, appealed for a ceasefire so humanitarian aid could be delivered. The streets of Sanaa city have become battlegrounds and people are trapped in their homes, unable to move out in search of safety and medical care and to access basic supplies such as food, fuel and safe water, he said.
Sanaa (AFP) - Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh was killed by Huthi rebels on Monday as he fled heavy fighting in Sanaa after the collapse of his alliance with the Iran-backed insurgents.

Saleh, who ruled with an iron fist for three decades, had joined forces with the Shiite Huthi rebels in 2014 when they took control of large parts of the Arabian Peninsula country including the capital Sanaa.

But that alliance unravelled over the past week, with heavy fighting across the capital, and Saleh was shot dead by Huthi fighters after he fled the city.

Speaking later on television, President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, the leader of the internationally recognised government, called on Yemenis to unite against the Huthis.

"Let's join hands to end the control of these.. criminal gangs and... open a new chapter to rid our beloved Yemen of this nightmare," Hadi said from Saudi Arabia, where he lives in exile.

Saleh was forced to step down in 2012, after his forces waged a bloody crackdown on peaceful Arab Spring-inspired protests calling for his ouster.

The 75-year-old had survived civil war, rebellion in the north, an Al-Qaeda insurgency in the south and a June 2011 bomb attack on his palace that wounded him badly.

His death could mark a major turning point in a conflict that has left thousands dead, led to one of the world's worst humanitarian crises and deepened tensions between Middle East rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

As the first reports of Saleh's death came in, the Saudi-led coalition that has waged devastating air strikes against the Huthis since September 2015 warned residents to evacuate rebel-controlled areas.

"We ask civilians to remain at least 500 metres (yards) away from Huthi military vehicles and gatherings," it said.

The Huthis announced Saleh's death on the rebels' Al-Masirah television station.

A statement declared "end of the crisis of militias", referring to Saleh's armed supporters, and "the killing of their leader and a number of his criminal supporters".

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- Heavy fighting in Sanaa -

A video provided to AFP by the rebels showed what appeared to be a dead Saleh with a severe head injury, his body wrapped in a floral-print blanket. Armed men could be seen loading the body into the back of a pick-up truck in an empty, sandy lot.

Saleh's General People's Congress party confirmed his death and blamed the rebels.

"He was martyred in the defence of the republic," said Faiqa al-Sayyid, a GPC leader.

Sayyid said Saleh and other top party officials had came under Huthi gunfire as they fled Sanaa.

A military source said the Huthis stopped their four-car convoy about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Sanaa and shot dead Saleh and two other senior GPC officials.

The collapse of the alliance between Saleh and the rebels saw at least 100 people reported dead in fighting, accusations of betrayal and the former leader reaching out to the Saudi-led coalition.

The fighting continued on Monday, with reports of heavy clashes and coalition strikes against Huthi-controlled government buildings and around Sanaa airport.

The government, which has operated out of southern city Aden since being ousted from the capital, ordered an offensive to advance on Sanaa.

"The president has ordered Vice President Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who is in Marib (east of Sanaa), to activate military units and advance towards the capital," a presidency official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Military and government sources said the army would advance on Sanaa from the east and northeast, with at least seven battalions ordered to move forward.

The government also reached out to Saleh's supporters with an offer of amnesty.

"The president will soon announce a general amnesty for all those who collaborated with the Huthis in recent months and who have retracted that allegiance," said Prime Minister Ahmad Obaid bin Daghr.

- Fears for civilians -

The Saleh-Huthi alliance had been fraught since its inception in 2014, when the two ended decades of enmity and joined ranks to capture Sanaa from Hadi's government.

Saudi Arabia, accusing Iran of backing the rebels, intervened in Yemen on behalf of the government the following year.

Saleh on Saturday announced he was open to talks with Saudi Arabia and its allies on condition they ended their crippling blockade of Yemen's ports and airports.

That dealt a serious blow to his already fragile alliance with rebel chief Abdul Malik al-Huthi.

In a televised speech on Monday, Huthi made no mention of Saleh's death but expressed his satisfaction at the day's events.

"Today marked the failure of the conspiracy and treason, a black day for the forces of aggression," he said on Al-Masirah.

The fresh violence has increased fears for civilian victims of Yemen's war, which has claimed more than 8,750 lives since the Saudi-led coalition intervened.

The conflict has pushed Yemen to the brink of mass starvation and triggered what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

International aid groups warned Monday they were losing the ability to reach civilians in Sanaa.

"Ambulances and medical teams can't access injured, people can't buy food and other supplies," UNICEF's Rajat Madhok tweeted.

"Aid workers can't travel and implement critical life-saving programmes. This latest violence couldn't come at a worse time."
Rohina Bhandari sustained severe bites to her legs in the attack off the coast of Costa Rica - Patrick McMullan

A New York financier has been killed in a shark attack while scuba diving off the coast of Costa Rica, the country's Environment Ministry announced.

Rohina Bhandari, 49, a senior director at WL Ross & Co. LL, was identified by friends as the American tourist who was fatally attacked last Thursday.

She was dragged from the Pacific Ocean after sustaining severe bites to her legs but could not be saved. Her 26-year-old diving instructor was also badly injured.

The male instructor, who was conscious and in relatively stable condition, told officials that the shark attacked when his group was surfacing at the tail end of the dive in pristine waters close to Cocos Island, about 300 miles from the country's mainland.

According to the Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion, the guide noticed the shark approaching his group underwater and tried to scare it away.

Rohina Bhandari was pulled from the water but could not be saved Credit: Getty

But as they surfaced, the shark went for Ms Bhandari, tearing at her legs. Tiger sharks, which have dark stripes on their body when young, are predators often found around Pacific islands. Unlike many other species of shark, they can be aggressive and account for a large proportion of attacks on humans.

Authorities said two park rangers and several doctors who were part of the diving tourism group of 18 people on the island trip organised by Undersea Hunter Group, offered first aid in a desperate bid to save her.

The group regularly organises tours to the national park reportedly known for its abundance of sharks.

Alan Steenstrup, the tour companys sales manager, said they were "in shock" because of the incident and added they were now focusing on working with the victims family and the authorities.

Friends paid tribute to the Manhattan resident on Facebook.

"Unbelievably sad and heartbreaking news that Rohina has died," wrote Julie Walker. "She was such a wonderful person who loved life. I will always remember her kindness, friendship and our adventures together."

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Another unnamed friend wrote: "Your kindness and genuine warmth to those of us lucky enough to call you 'friend' was a blessing to behold."

About | Shark attacks

The environment ministry stressed the attack was "an isolated incident" and was the most serious one it had seen. The Central American country's economy relies heavily on the tourism industry.
US President Donald Trump is expected Monday to sign a waiver delaying plans to relocate the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, just like previous presidents have done since Congress passed a law in 1995 mandating the embassys relocation, arguing that such a move could harm US security.

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Unlike his predecessors, however, Trump is expected to declare on Wednesday that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israels capital.

While this expected declaration has a clear symbolic value, nothing will actually change. Nor should it be seen as a sign that the trucks are heating up their engines to lead the US Embassys equipment to Jerusalem. The election campaign statements about the embassys relocation will remain on paper.

Trump at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Seems to be handling every diplomatic issue like a pyromaniac (: AP)

In general, it seems Trump is handling every diplomatic issue like a pyromaniac who forces the people around him to put out the fire. This week, it will be done by General James Mattis, the US secretary of defense, who arrived in Cairo on Saturday evening in a bid to ease the concerns of the regions leaders and explain that there is no actual change in the American policy on Jerusalem. In other words, the presidents declaration wont include a recognition of Israels rule over united Jerusalemin other words, east Jerusalem.

Trumps expected declaration on Jerusalem could turn into a match that would ignite a major fire in the violent region we are living in. But despite Hamas call for an intifada in response to Trumps expected declaration, I believe we are not facing an uprising in the territories any time soon.

Nevertheless, we should listen to the voices coming from Amman and Ramallah: The Palestinians have warned the American president that he is playing with fire and that the declaration would put an end to the effort to renew peace negotiations. Jordans King Abdullah rushed to Washington to present the administration heads with his own warning signs: An American recognition of Israels sovereignty in Jerusalem, without an agreement that would include the holy sites on the Temple Mount and without the establishment of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, could put the Hashemite Kingdoms actual existence in danger. The international community likely wont adopt the declaration either.

And back to us: Those who seek international recognition of Israels sovereignty in Jerusalem must initiate far-reaching moves for an agreement. Any change in the existing status quo could only take place as a result of negotiations that would force all parties to make painful concessions. There appears to be no willingness for such concessions, however, both on the Israeli side and on the Palestinian side, which has insisted on missing opportunities for an agreement all these years (they rejected proposals from two Israeli prime ministers for far-reaching agreements that brought them closer to an independent state and to a partnership in running he holy sites in east Jerusalem).

Despite his close friendship with Trump, Netanyahu has chosen not to do a thing that might jeopardize his seat (Photo: Reuters)

This was implied several days ago by former Foreign Minister David Levy, as he made a rare appearance at an event marking 40 years since Egyptian President Anwar Sadats visit to Israel. Its time to take the initiative, he said in a clear hint at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The important thing is not to survive (in power) but to initiate. One doesnt have to be prime minister to state the dangers Israel is facing, he added. Its enough to be a journalist.

In other words, during his long time in office Netanyahu chose not to do a thing that might jeopardize his position. His years in power can be defined, if you like, as lost years. His supporters on the Right are satisfied with the no-policy policy: Very good, we have all the territories of the Greater Land of Israel in our hands. His opponents are saying that, during these years, we have raced towards a binational state solution and to a defeat of the Zionist vision.

Netanyahu boasts a close friendship with the Oval Office tenant, and theres no doubt he could have used his deep connections with him to raise initiatives for a regional agreement, focusing on a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians. So far, he has failed to do so.

In one of his recent speeches, the prime minister expressed his disappointment over the fact that he doesnt see a leader of Sadats stature on the Palestinian side. It would be only fair to ask if the Israeli side has a leader of the late Menachem Begins stature, who would be willing to risk his seatand even bid farewell to his greatest supporters over the yearsfor the supreme goal of achieving peace.

Knowing David Levy, I can assume he meant to say that Netanyahu doesnt possess these qualities of a leader. At best, he is a commentator warning of the dangers we are facing. Or in Netanyahu's words, a holocaust, a holocaust andonce againa holocaust.
Four days after the incident in which a group of boys on a Bar Mitzvah hike were attacked by a stone-throwing mob near the Palestinian village of Qusra, activists of the far-right Otzma Yehudit Party are planning an expedition to the area.

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Among those set to participate are former Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari and far-right activist Baruch Marzel. Members of Otzma Yehudit stated that the motive for the expedition is to display a Jewish presence at the location and they have no intention of requesting authorization from the military, only to notify them of the trip.

Emergency services outside Qusra (Photo: EPA)

This will be the second time that settlers are returning to the site of the incident. On Friday, some youth from the settlement of Yitzhar visited the area and even danced near the cave where the children were attacked.

"We arent afraid and we dont need permission to tour the land of Israel," said a message publicized by Otzma Yehudit. "In response to the children's lynching near Qusra, and the IDF Spokesperson's announcement that all hikes in Judea and Samaria require authorization, we will are arranging a hike tomorrow (Monday) to the cave in which the children hid. We will update the military but we will not ask for permission. We are mindful of the army's failings during the incident. We will demonstrate a Jewish presence at the site and we will let everyone know that the area will become a preferred destination for trips."

Injured being treated by medics near Qusra (Photo: EPA)

"The abandonment of the Bar Mitzvah children is an ongoing failure of the defense establishment, since the abandonment of Madhat Yusuf (A Druze soldier killed in 2000 at Joseph's tomb near Nablus) by those who have chosen to surrender to terrorism. We want to change the direction and move from defeat to victory," said Doctor Ben-Ari.

"We do not need to justify walking around our country. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has to deal with the rioters, not the Jews."

"The fact that instead of discussing the army's failures and the massacre that was almost done to the children on the trip they are demanding of us to fight to obtain permission to travel in the center of the country. Qusra should become a symbol of what happens to an enemy that harms children, so that deterrence will return to Israel," added Baruch Marzel.

Settlers and Palestinians clash (Photo: EPA)

Last Thursday, during a bar mitzvah excursion taken by several settlers, they encountered dozens of Palestinians throwing stones at them. One of the parents serving as escorts fired on and killed a Palestinian in the skirmish.

After the incident, the father who shot was interrogated on suspicion of causing death by negligence and released on bail. Anger has soared among the settlers, largely directed against the police for interrogating the shooter.

The crowd that witnessed the attack have maintained that he acted as expected and his actions were carried out to protect the children.

The mothers of the children have also emphasized the severity of the attack, inisisting that without the decisive response, the incident would have ended with injury or worse to the chidlren.

Qusra incident (Photo: EPA)

"My son came home traumatized, he said: 'mom, we were about to die.' It's a disgrace that the army and the police treat these heroes who saved the children as criminals. Distorting the facts and turning the victim into the attacker," said Naomi Ofen, whose son was among those attacked.

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman posted on Facebook after the incident: "The use of weapons for self-defense is a moral value which the law in every democratic regime protects"

Yossi Dagan, Head of the Samaria Regional Council, announced that he will present certificates of honor to the parents who protected the children. "These are heroes who must be thanked, for protecting the children with their bodies and doing all that was necessary to bring them home safely."

Dagan accompanied the parents to the police station and waited with them in the hospital. He called for "establishing an investigative unit to catch the terrorists from Qusra who attempted to lynch the children."
Jets believed to be Syrian and Russian struck heavily crowded residential areas in a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus, killing at least 27 people and injuring dozens in the third week of a stepped-up assault, residents, aid workers and a war monitor said on Monday.

Civil defence workers said at least 17 were killed in the town of Hamoriya in an aerial strike on a marketplace and nearby residential area after over nearly 30 strikes in the past 24 hours that struck several towns in the densely populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta.

Four other civilians were killed in the town of Arbin, while the rest came from strikes on Misraba and Harasta, the civil defence workers said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said the casualties on Sunday were the biggest daily death toll since the stepped-up strikes began 20 days ago. The monitor said nearly 200 civilians were killed in strikes and shelling, including many women and children, during that period.
The foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt warned US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of the apparent American move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi tweeted that he had spoken to Tillerson about the dangerous consequences of such a move.

"The results of such a decision will be seen in the form of great anger throughout the Arab and Muslim world, further tension and destruction of efforts to establish peace," he wrote.
The foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt, the only Arab states to sign a peace treaty with Israel, warned against the reported decision by the Trump administration to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

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Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi tweeted that he had spoken to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson about the dangerous consequences of such a move.

Worshippers at the Dome of the Rock, Temple Mount, Jerusalem

"The results of such a decision will be seen in the form of great anger throughout the Arab and Muslim world, further tension and destruction of efforts to establish peace," he wrote.

Meanwhile, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri stressed to Tillerson the ramifications that such a decision would entail and the negative effects it would have on efforts to renew the peace process.

"The legal status of Jerusalem and its religious and historical status require caution in dealing with this sensitive issue, which has to do with the national identity of the Palestinian people and the status of Jerusalem among the Arab and Muslim peoples," Shukri said, expressing hope that the issue would be handled "with the necessary wisdom," and that the US would not make any rash decisions that could "inflame tensions in the region."

L to R: Shukri, Safadi and PLO chief Saeb Erekat (Photo: Reuters)

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit also addressed the issue, telling journalists upon his return to Cairo from Rome that the move will not serve peace and will only lead to further strife in the region.

"It is unfortunate that some insist on trying to carry out this move without paying minimal attention to its great dangers to the stability of the Middle East and the world in general," he said.

Aboul Gheit added in a statement published on the Arab leagues website that contacts are being held with the Palestinian Authority and Arab countries in order to coordinate the Arab position regarding any development on this issue.

"Today we say very clearly that taking such action is not justified ... It will not serve peace or stability, but will fuel extremism and resort to violence," he wrote.

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit (: EPA)

Last week, reports surfaced that US President Donald Trump was planning to announce on Wednesday, December 6, that the US recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and is giving serious thought on how to fulfill his election campaign pledge to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Hopes were raised in Israel when US Vice President Mike Pence later said that Trump is actively considering "when and how" to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

US President Donald Trump (Photo: EPA)

Pence made the comment in remarks at Israels Mission to the United Nations in Queens, at an event celebrating the 70th anniversary of the United Nations vote calling for the establishment of a Jewish state.

"President Trump is actively considering when and how to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," stated Pence, after receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.
Benjamin Netanyahu is not a prime minister who tends to give up, compromise or surrender. But the man who arrogantly brags that when I want something, I get it, raised a white flag on Sunday and waived one of the most important bills as far as hes concerned, the Bibi billor in its euphemistic name, the recommendations bill.

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This surrender was imposed on Netanyahu. Did it happen because the cries from the spontaneous protest of thousands on Tel Avivs Rothschild Boulevard had reached the Prime Ministers Residence on Jerusalems Balfour Street? Or was it Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlons last-minute threat to castrate the law? Or did Justice Minister Ayelet Shakeds criticism tilt the scales? Or was it actually Knesset Member Benny Begins echoing statement?

The answer is: All of the above. The accumulated mass of revulsion and bad tasteand its not even a matter of opposition or coalition, of Right or Leftmanaged to subdue even a strong leader like Netanyahu.

The accumulated mass of revulsion and bad taste managed to subdue even a strong leader like Netanyahu (Photo: Emil Salman)

The bills ending was expected. According to a senior Likud source, Netanyahu was under immense public and political pressure, and sensibly decidedalthough somewhat lateto put an end the devils dance around this delusional bill.

Even his two loyal ministers, Yariv Levin and Zeev Elkin, abruptly stopped a Ministerial Committee for Legislation meeting on Sunday to go down to the prime ministers bureau and inform him that we should just let it go.

But the significant story in Netanyahu's surrender statement is not the headline but the fine print. "It is obvious to all that the police recommendations about me have no meaning anyway, he wrote on Facebook. It appears their conclusions were determined at the beginning of the investigation, were leaked throughout, and haven't changed despite the clear facts being presented time after timewhich prove there was nothing."

Make no mistake. The recommendations campaign is still on the agenda. It has simply moved from the parliamentary arena to the public and political arena. Netanyahu is well aware of what hes in for in Case 1000 which involved illicit gifts allegedly receive by the prime minister and his wife, so he has launched a new campaign indicating that the recommendations bill is unnecessary because the police recommendations are meaningless, which is why he can remain in office even if the police conclude his investigation with a recommendation to indict him on serious charges like bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

In other words, he can seek reelection as prime minister even with a cloud of a certain recommendation hovering over his head.

The there will be nothing because there is nothing campaign has been replaced with a new, updated version: It doesnt really matter if I carry a small hump of a recommendation for an indictment on my back. This will be Netanyahu's narrative from now on. And by the way, this is the same Netanyahu whoas opposition leadercalled on his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, to resign before his police investigation was even concluded.
Residents of Golan Heights returned to routine after a Code Red siren was sounded across a number of communities at around 10:30am Monday morning.

Farmers were asked to take cover in bomb shelters for 10 minutes.

The IDF launched an investigation, but it was not immediately clear whether or not a rocket had be fired at Israel and no residents reported hearing an explosion.
The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last month that a future peace agreement would strip away hitherto ironclad Palestinian preconditions for any deal, among them the inclusion of eastern Jerusalem as a future capital and the uprooting of most settlements, according to a Sunday report in The New York Times.

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The new plan, reportedly presented to Abbas during a low profile trip to Riyadh, lay out the basic foundations upon which any future Palestinian state would hinge, and suggested that the suburb of east Jerusalem, Abu Dis, could be a future Palestinian capital.

It would not make provisions for a Palestinian right of return, would carve out non-contiguous borders in the West Bank and will cater for limited Palestinian sovereignty. In addition, the proposal will leave the majority of Israeli settlements intact.

Mahmoud Abbas and Muslims praying at the al-Aqsa mosque (Photo: Yael Friedson, AFP)

The report claimed that both Arab and European officials had heard Abbass version of the meeting with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salmanwho last month was reported to be preparing to succeed his father, Salman bin Abdulaziz, as kingand deduced that the US peace push would be more tilted toward the Israelis than any ever embraced by the American government, one that presumably no Palestinian leader could ever accept.

Citing a senior Lebanese official and a Lebanese politician, Abbas had been given, the report added, two months to sanction the deal or face pressure to resign. Furthermore, a Palestinian official in Lebanon allegedly suggested that the loss of territory in the West Bank be compensated in land in the Sinai Peninsula, that would append the Gaza Strip.

The New York Times also stressed that the White House had denied the veracity of the report, insisting that months lay ahead before a final framework would be fully fleshed out. Moreover, the Saudi government said that it did not support the plan.

According to the report, Joshua Raffel, a White House spokesman, dismissed the claims as more speculation about to what cards the Trump administration is keeping close to its chest on the peace talks.

There is constant speculation and guessing about what we are working on, and this report is more of the same, Raffel was quoted as saying in The New York Times. It is not reflective of the current state of the plan we are working on or the conversations we have had with regional players.

In addition, the content of the plan was apparently repudiated by the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Khalid bin Salman, in an email that sought to reiterate the countrys commitment to the Arab peace initiative that subscribed to the fundamental preconditions laid down by the Palestinians.

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Photo: Reuters)

The Kingdom remains committed to a settlement based on the Arab peace initiative of 2002, including East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. To suggest otherwise is false, the email read.

Indeed, speculation has thus far been a common theme of the Trump administrations peace initiative, with senior officials involved offering only ambiguous comments, notably light on details.

Last month, for example, the New York Times also reported that President Donald Trump and his Middle East advisors had begun to formulate the basic framework of a renewed peace initiative to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

We have spent a lot of time listening to and engaging with the Israelis, Palestinians and key regional leaders over the past few months to help reach an enduring peace deal, said US Special Middle East Envoy Jason Greenblatt.

On Sunday, Trumps other special Middle East advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner said that the US president was still examining moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but that no decision had been finalized.
Hundreds of aircraft including two dozen stealth jets began training Monday as the United States and South Korea launched a massive combined air force exercise. The war games come a week after North Korea test-fired its most powerful missile ever, an ICBM that may be able to target the eastern seaboard of the United States.

The five-day drill, which is called Vigilant Ace, is meant to improve the allies' wartime capabilities and preparedness, South Korea's defense ministry said.

The US Seventh Air Force sent major strategic military assets, including an unusually large number of the latest generations of stealth fighter jets, for the annual training in the Korean Peninsula. They include six F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighter jets. About 12,000 US military personnel are participating. In total, 230 aircraft will be flying at eight US and South Korean military installations in the South.

An official at the South Korean Defense Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of office rules, corrected his earlier statement that the exercise was the biggest ever.

Some local media report that B-1B bombers will also join aerial drills, but officials did not confirm their participation.

The training, held each year in late fall, is not in response to any incident or provocation, the Seventh Air Force said in a statement.
A Palestinian was shot and seriously wounded Monday during clashes between residents of the Palestinian village of Qusra near Nablus and far-right wing Jewish activists who visited the area.

The group, the Otzma Yehudit Party, visited the area four days after an incident in which a group of boys on a Bar Mitzvah hike were attacked by a stone-throwing mob near the village. The incident resulted in the death of a Palestinian man, who the IDF said was involved in the attack on the Jewish children.

In the latest clashes on Monday, dozens of Palestinians pelted the group with rocks. In a bid to calm tensions, the IDF has barred the activists from entering the area.
A Palestinian was shot and seriously wounded Monday after clashes broke out between residents of the Palestinian village of Qusra near Nablus and far-right wing Jewish activists who visited the area, sparking riots that forced roit-dispersal personnel to move in.

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In a partial recording of the violence, Palestinians can be seen standing atop a hill as a large rock is rolled down a slope in the direction of the Jewish activists.

Palestinians roll rock down slopes at Jewish right-wing activists (:   TPS)

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Matters escalated when Palestinians began hurling rocks at the security forces and burning tires.

The group, the Otzma Yehudit Party, visited the area four days after an incident in which a group of boys on a Bar Mitzvah hike were attacked by a stone-throwing mob near the village.

I would expect the police to deal with the Palestinian rioters throwing rocks and boulders, said right-wing activists Itamar Ben Gvir. When dozens of Palestinians throw massive rocks intended to kill, the army should be opening fire.

The incident resulted in the death of a Palestinian man, who the IDF said was said to be involved in the attack on the Jewish settlers and children. The Palestinians claimed that the man was toiling the land and shot for no reason, but the settlers maintained that they had encountered an attempted lynch, in which he was involved.

(Photo: Hillel Meir/TPS)

In the latest clashes on Monday, dozens of Palestinians pelted the group with rocks, as IDF soldiers subsequently attempted to calm tensions by barring the activists from entering the area.

Members of Otzma Yehudit stated that the motive for the expedition was to display a Jewish presence at the location. They also added that they have no intention of requesting authorization from the military, but would notify them of the trip.

(Photo: Hillel Meir/TPS)

"We arent afraid and we dont need permission to tour the land of Israel," said a message publicized by Otzma Yehudit. "In response to the children's lynching near Qusra, and the IDF Spokesperson's announcement that all hikes in Judea and Samaria require authorization, we will are arranging a hike tomorrow (Monday) to the cave in which the children hid.

According to a statement from the IDF Spokespersons Unit, violence erupted after around 50 Palestinians began rioting in the area.

(Photo: Gil Yohanan)

The settler who shot the 47-year-old Palestinian Mahmoud Zaal Odeh in Thursday's incident was questioned by police, and is suspected of causing death by negligence.

"Dozens of Palestinians threw stones and rocks at us, we were in a life-threatening situation, and we were trying to protect the children," said the man, whose son was among the group.
Fighting in Yemen's capital has intensified, with the known toll from three hospitals reaching at least 125 killed and 238 wounded in the past six days, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday.

Saudi-led coalition warplanes struck at Houthi militia positions in Yemen's capital Sanaa for a second day on Monday in support of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former Houthi ally who has now renounced his alliance with the Iranian-backed group.

"We are supporting the main hospitals in Sanaa who urgently need war-wounded kits," ICRC spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said. "We are also looking at donating dead body bags to hospitals which are actually asking for them, and we hope to donate fuel to the main hospitals because they depend on generators."

The ICRC "relocated" 13 international staff to Djibouti from Sanaa on Monday, she said.
Security forces arrested last week two Negev residents on suspicion of involvement in a terror attack carried out last Thursday, in which Sgt. Ron Yitzhak Kokia was fatally stabbed in Arad, it was cleared for publication Monday.

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During the investigation, one of the suspects implicated himself in the attack and informed his interrogators where the Tavor assault rifle was taken after being stolen from the 19-year-old Kokia in the murder.

Sgt. Ron Kokia

The two suspects, both Bedouin, were arrested on Friday night, 24 hours after the attack, by the Shin Bet, which determined during the investigation that the stabbing was nationalistically-motivated.

The two were arrested, the Shin Bet said, after intense intelligence operations and a widescale manhunt.

On Sunday, one of the suspects took the security forces to the scene of the stabbing, where he reconstructed exactly how it took place.

A gag order was placed over the identities of the suspects.

Kokia, who served in the Nahal Brigade, was stabbed to death while waiting for the bus outside a mall in Arad on Thursday night in what police believed from the outset was likely a nationalistically-motivated murder.

He was laid to rest Sunday afternoon at Tel Aviv's Kiryat Shaul military cemetery, with some 2,000 people in attendance.

(Photo: Motti Kimchi)

A family member of one of the suspects dismissed the possibility that the two were responsible for the murder. No way could they murder a soldier. I dont believe the polices version. Its possible that pressure was put on them, the family member said.

I think they arrested them only because they were in the area, he added, So far, we have not met with them. We are waiting to be allowed to speak to them so we can understand the picture. In any event, we all condemn the murder of the soldier and there is no one in our family thinking about harming Jews or Arabs.

The father of the slain soldier, Boaz Kokia, praised the security forces for swiftly apprehending the suspects.

I am pleased that the security forces caught the murderer of my son. They updated us that there was a development in the investigation but I didnt know they had been caught. I also didnt know they found the gun. That means maybe they prevented another attack on Israeli civilians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later praised the Israeli security forces for the arrests.

I praise the swift actions actions of the Shin Bet and civilian counter-terrorism units for capturing the despicable terrorists who murdered Ron Kokia, Netanyahu said.

The intelligence and military missions by the security forces led to quickly solving the terror attack and the rapid capture of the terrorists by the night after the attack.







Yoav Zitun, Ilana Curiel and Hassan Shaalan contributed to this report.
A video by Yemen's Houthi rebels allegedly shows the slain body of the country's former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Officials from various sides, including the Houthis' opponents, have confirmed that the video shows the former powerful president.

Abdel-Rahman al-Ahnomi, a top Houthi media official, told The Associated Press that Saleh was killed near Marib, the eastern province bordering Saudi Arabia. "He was trying to flee to Saudi," he said.

The video, apparently shot by one of the attackers, showed a Houthi crowd picking up Saleh's dead body, wrapped in a colorful blanket, off the ground and lifting it onto a pickup truck. Saleh's eyes appear wide open, the back of his head badly injured, and his shirt blood stained under a dark suit.

A senior Yemeni government official affiliated with Houthis' rivals and some of Saleh's associates, such as Nabil al-Soufi and Ali al-Bukhiti, confirmed his death on social media and TV interviews.
The Facebook page of the Palestinian village of Qusra posted Sunday a photo of the Israeli father who shot and killed 47-year-old Palestinian Mahmoud Zaal Odeh, a resident of the village, in last week's violent incident that took place near the village.

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The photo, in which the father is marked in a red circle, is captioned: "The one in the red circle shot Mahmoud Zaal Odeh." It further noted that Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan had decided to award him a medal of valor.

It didn't take long for people to start posting comments wishing him ill, with some even calling for his death.

The pictur in the Facebook post

"Allah will take the greatest revenge on him," posted one, with another writing: "His day will come soon enough."

In response to the comments, the settler's attorney Menashe Yado of the Honenu organization sent an urgent letter to the commander of the police's Judea and Samaria District, demanding him to act to have the inflammatory post removed as it was inciting in nature.

"The page was flooded with murderous reactions against the shooter, and I therefore ask you to act immediately to remove the dangerous post and to bring the posters to justice," Yado wrote.

Odeh was among a group of Palestinian rioters throwing rocks at a group of some 20 Israeli children who were on a bar mitzvah trip in the area last week.

The shooter is now suspected of negligent homicide, which incensed the hikers' families.

The families claimed the incident was extremely severe and might have ended in disaster if not for the father's swift response. "My son came back traumatized. He said they were going to die. He's still suffering from anxiety and it's shameful the army and police are treating the heroes who saved the children as criminals and distorting the picture by turning the assaulted into the assailant," said Naomi Ofen, whose son was among the hikers.

Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman also commented on the incident, writing on Facebook, "Using a weapon for self defense is a moral value protected by law in all democratic countries."
SANAA - Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's former president and longtime strongman, was killed Monday, according to multiple Yemeni officials, as his loyalists and Shiite rebels battled for control of the capital.

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A video circulating online purported to show Saleh's body, his eyes open but glassy, motionless with a gaping head wound, as he was being carried in a blanket by rebel fighters chanting "God is great" who then dump him into a pickup truck. Blood stained his shirt under a dark suit.

Circumstances of his death remained unclear but some officials said rebels killed him as he tried to leave the capital.

Ali Abdullah Saleh (Photo: AFP)

Saleh's death was announced by the rebels, known as Houthis, who have been fighting Saleh's forces for the past week. Two of Saleh's associates have confirmed and a third official from the government of Yemen's internationally recongnized president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, has also confirmed.

His death and the fighting between his supporters and the Houthis puts the civil war on an unpredictable path.

Saleh allied with the Houthis in the years after he was ousted from power in 2011, and the support of his loyalist military units was key to helping the Houthis overrun the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, driving out Hadi's government.

But in recent months, the alliance frayed amid Houthi suspicions Saleh was leaning toward the Saudi-led coalition backing Hadi.

Houthis (Photo: Reuters)

Hadi's forces, trying to take advantage of the collapse of the alliance, announced they would march on Sanaa. But even without Saleh's loyalists, the rebels remain a powerful force.

"The leader of treason has been killed," Houthis' TV network al-Masriah said.

Several Houthi military officials said Saleh was killed as he headed along with top party leaders from Sanaa to his hometown of Sanhan, nearby.

Houthi fighters followed him in 20 armored vehicles, attacked and killed him and almost all those with him, the officials said.

A Houthi media official, Abdel-Rahman al-Ahnomi told the Associated Press that Houthi fighters killed Saleh as he tried to flee to Saudi Arabia though the province of Marib, to the east of the capital.

Saleh ruled Yemen for more than 30 years. He was forced to resign after months of protests against him during an Arab Spring uprsing in 2011.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Monday the Israeli security forces for arresting two Bedouin suspects believed to have carried out the fatal stabbing last Thursday night of Sgt. Ron Yizthak Kokia.

I praise the swift actions actions of the Shin Bet and civilian counter-terrorism units for capturing the despicable terrorists who murdered Ron Kokia, Netanyahu said.

The intelligence and military missions by the security forces led to quickly solving the terror attack and the rapid capture of the terrorists by the night after the attack.
Images taken by the EROS B satellite on Monday of the Iranian base bombed in an attack attributed to Israel show the destruction of the base.

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Based on the satellite images, it appears most of the structures in the base were hit in the strike, but only few of them were completely destroyed.

Three weeks ago, the BBC network aired satellite footage of alleged construction work that was done between January and October of this year on the base near al-Kiswah.





(Photo: ImageSat International (ISI))

The site, which includes over 20 buildings presumably meant to house soldiers and store military vehicles, is located 50km from the Israeli border and only 15 kilometers south of Damascus.

(Photo: ImageSat International (ISI))

While it has not been definitively determined that Iran's military is the one behind the buildings' construction, one source told the network that high-ranking Iranian army officials have visited the site in recent months.

(Photo: ImageSat International (ISI))

According to the BBC, over the past few months several new buildings have been constructed there, while others have been renovated. It is unclear whether the base was manned.

(Photo: ImageSat International (ISI))

Arab media outlets reported Saturday that Israeli fighter jets attacked the base. Media outlets affiliated with Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and with Hezbollah reported the jets attacked a weapons cache belonging to the Syrian Army's First Division between the towns of Sahnaya and al-Kiswah.

The attack was reportedly carried out using five missiles, whereas antiaircraft systems deployed in a military airport in the Mezzeh neighborhood of the Syrian capital were able to shoot down three of them. The remaining two missiles detonated near the cache.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman stressed Monday that his Yisrael Beytenu party has no intention of quitting the coalition government over the so-called "supermarkets bill."

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The bill would give the interior minister the authority to cancel municipal bylaws, including ones concerning the opening of businesses on Shabbat. It will not apply, however, to existing bylaws approved by the High Court, such as the ones allowing supermarkets to remain open in Tel Aviv.

Lieberman and his fellow Yisrael Beytenu party member Minister Sofa Landver were the only ones to vote against the bill at the government meeting on Sunday. The bill nevertheless passed in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation as well.

Defense Minister Lieberman (Photo: AFP)

"We don't think it's right at this time to drag the country to early elections. At the current sensitive security situation, it's wrong for someone in the current coalition to bring down the right-wing government," Lieberman said during an Yisrael Beytenu party meeting on Monday.

He added that "if this government does go to early elections, it would be because of the Haredi parties who made unilateral declarations about the Shabbat, the draft law, and the supermarkets bill."

Lieberman announced last week that his party would vote against the bill proposal in the Knesset. On Monday, he took credit for the fact the legislation, which was supposed to be brought to a vote in the Knesset, has been removed from the lawmakers' agenda.

"I hope we will be able to stop the legislation in the future as well, as it truly is a blatant violation of the status quo, a blatant violation of everything we've gotten used to in recent years," Lieberman said.

"The interference of the national government in the affairs of the local government is undesirable," he added. "Any mayor in any city knows better (what would benefit their city). There is no reason to open a convenience store on Shabbat in Bnei Brak, and there is no reason to close one in Rosh Pina. Each place (should decide) based on the nature and character of the community."
The defense establishment halted on Monday a complex test of the Arrow 3, which was part of the development of the next generation of long-range missile defense weapons systems.

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In what was supposed to be the highest altitude missile test for any Israeli weapons system so far, the launching of the exoatmospheric Arrow 3 interceptor missile at Palmahim Air Force Base was canceled after the Sparrow target missile, launched into space from an F-15 fighter over the Mediterranean Sea, did not behave according to plan.

"The target did not meet the predefined safety standards and the project engineers announced 'no test,'" said a source in the defense establishment. "We will investigate why the target behaved erratically. In an interception at such an altitude, there is a high chance of debris falling and therefore safety is the highest priority."

Arrow 3 (Photo: Ministry of Defense)

The defense establishment is looking into the behavior of the Sparrow missile which was launched from an IAF fighter jet. The missile is supposed to act like a long-range ballistic target that could pose a threat to Israel.

The investigation of the canceled test will likely last a few weeks, and only then will a decision be made regarding further interception testing of the Arrow 3the present model having been commissioned by the IAF early this year

In preparations for the test, air traffic routes were altered early Monday morning. Departing flights took off facing north, parallel to Highway 6, and turned west over the Sharon region. Incoming flights began their descent north of Herzliya and flew over the Samaria mountains before landing.

Arrow 3  intercepting Iranian missiles

The current version of the Arrow 3 is intended to take on long-range ballistic missiles, which are capable of carrying nuclear payloads, such as those currently in development in Iran.

Since being commissioned in early 2017, the Ministry of Defense, together with Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI) and in partnership with the United States, have been working on modernizing the weapons system with the latest updates in response to any future threats emanating from the Islamic Republic.

The integration of the Arrow 3 system into the IAF completes the four-tier defense coverage of Israel: the Arrow 3 defends against exoatmospheric, long-range threats; Arrow 2 covers missiles flying within the atmosphere; David's Sling deals with medium-level threats, such as heavy rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV); and finally, the Iron Dome system defends against lower range rockets, with ranges of up to 90 km.

The Iron Dome system is also being subject to a battery of tests meant to improve its ability to deal with heavy barrages of dozens or hundreds of rockets fired simultaneously from various directions and at multiple altitudes.

In addition to these weapons systems, the older Patriot batteries are still proving useful to the Israeli Air Force, especially against the threat of enemy aircraft infiltrating Israeli airspace, such as the UAVs from Syria that have strayed over the Golan Heights.

naval version of the Iron Dome was recently declared operational. It is meant to protect the gas drilling rigs at sea from enemy missile boats.

In March, an Arrow 2 battery successfully intercepted a Syrian anti-aircraft missile that was launched against IAF bombers attacking in Syria.
PARIS - Lebanon's prime minister and top world diplomats are expected to gather in Paris this week to show international support for Lebanon amid regional jockeying over its political future.

A French official said that Friday's meeting will be co-chaired by the United Nations and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, aiming at "reiterating the international community's commitment to supporting Lebanon's stability, integrity and security" and to encourage cooperation among rival Lebanese factions.

The official said Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri will attend. A guest list was not released, but the meeting comes when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is scheduled to be in Paris.

French President Emmanuel Macron has sought to settle tensions in Lebanon after Hariri tried to resign last month.
CAIRO - Egyptian security forces killed five suspected militants in a shootout in a province about 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of Cairo, the country's Interior Ministry said Monday.

Police have arrested another six militants in follow up raids on a desert area in the Sharqiya province.

Police also found bomb-making materials, assault rifles and ammunition at the site.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation on Monday called for a summit of Muslim nations if the United States takes the controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

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US President Donald Trump faces a key decision this week over Jerusalem's status, potentially breaking away from years of US policy and prompting a furious response from the Palestinians and the Arab world.

The Palestinian Authority has formally notified the US government of its opposition to any plan to move the US embassy to Jerusalem or recognize the city as the Israeli capital.

An aerial photo of the Temple Mount (Photo: Andrew Shiva)

The 57-member OIC sought to amplify concern over the possible move in an emergency meeting on Monday in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah.

"If the United States takes the step of recognizing Jerusalem as the so-called capital of Israel, we unanimously recommend holding a meeting at the level of council of foreign ministers followed by an Islamic summit as soon as possible," the pan-Islamic body said in a statement.

The OIC also warned that recognizing Jerusalem or establishing any diplomatic mission in the city would be seen as a "blatant attack on the Arab and Islamic nations."

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Most of the international community, including the United States, does not formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved through final-status negotiations.

Central to the issue of recognition is the question of whether Trump decides to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

All foreign embassies are located in Tel Aviv with consular representation in Jerusalem.

US President Trump at the Western Wall in Jerusalem (Photo: Reuters)

Israelis and Palestinians are eagerly watching to see whether he again renews a waiver delaying the move, as his predecessors have done.

There are suggestions that Trump will sign the waiver and decline to move the embassy for now, but later this week declare Jerusalem as Israel's capital

The move has been condemned by both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza, as well as Jordan, Egypt and Turkey.

Ziad Abu Amr, the deputy Palestinian prime minister, officially informed US Consul General Donald Blome on Monday of their opposition.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has been speaking to foreign leaders to lobby against such a recognition.

Abu Amr "informed the US Consul General Donald Blome that moving the American embassy to Jerusalem or the US administration recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is unacceptable," a statement said, after a meeting in Ramallah.

It said any such move would be "disrespectful" and "contrary to the role of the US administration as a mediator and sponsor of the peace process."

The statement said doing so "disqualifies it from this role, and closes every door to continuing a serious peace process."

Israel, which seized the largely Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, claims both halves of the city as its "eternal and undivided capital."

But the Palestinians want the eastern sector as capital of their promised state and fiercely oppose any Israeli attempt to extend sovereignty there.

Several peace plans have come unstuck over debates on whether, and how, to divide sovereignty or oversee the city's sites holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday that US President Donald Trump has a "historic opportunity" as he weighs whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

"I think there is a historic opportunity to rectify the injustice," Lieberman told members of his Yisrael Beytenu party.

"I very much hope that President Trump's decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem is the final decision, and I hope to see an American embassy here in Jerusalem next week or next month," Lieberman said.

Lieberman said that Israel was prepared to deal with any fresh unrest over the issue. "If someone tries to provoke difficulties or riots around the transfer of the embassy, we will cope with it," he said.
UNITED NATIONS - United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman will visit North Korea from Tuesday to Friday to meet with officials to discuss "issues of mutual interest and concern," the United Nations said on Monday.

"He will also meet with the United Nations Country Team and members of the diplomatic corps, as well as visit UN project sites," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters, adding that Feltman was also visiting China.

It was not immediately clear which North Korean officials Feltman, a former senior US State Department official, would meet.
Senate President Koko Pimentel on Monday cited the need to strengthen the party system in the Philippines, noting that there is no consistency in the government policy and institutions are weakened, leading to many of the problems that the country now face.

Politics in other countries are based on ideology and policy, as put forward by political parties. In our country, our politics is still personality-based, said Pimentel. We must strengthen the party system in the Philippines.

During his trip to China, Pimentel also visited the CPC Central Party School, which trains top government officials and CPC members in matters of governance and public administration.

During the visit, Pimentel expressed hopes of looking to the school as an example of how to train party members on issues of governance and party ideology. Macon Ramos-Araneta

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Pimentel II was in Beijing over the weekend to represent both the Philippines and the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino  Lakas ng Bayan (PDP Laban) in the World Dialogue of Political Parties organized by the Communist Party of China (CPC).

It was the first and largest gathering of political parties around the world, with representatives of political parties from 120 countries present.

This is an excellent forum for international cooperation in bringing about a better future for all mankind. Political parties are sources of policy. When political parties around the world meet, we can determine the direction/policies of the world, said Pimentel.

The PDP Laban President met with Chinese President and CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping on Friday, where he relayed the message of President and PDP Laban Chairman Rodrigo Duterte congratulating the former for the successful hosting of the dialogue, thanking him for his support of the Philippines ASEAN chairmanship, and congratulating him for the successful and historic staging of the CPC 19th National Party Congress.

Other dignitaries who met with Pimentel included Zhang Dejiang, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress and a member of the CPCs policymaking Politburo Standing Committee; Wang Huning, First Secretary of the CPCs Central Secretariat and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, and Song Tao, the head of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee.

Pimentel delivered a speech during the Welcome Banquet of the event on Friday.

Our constituents support us because of [our] principles and values. To me, this means we are not here to represent our governments. We are here to represent the ideals of our peoples, Pimentel said in his speech.

Discussing the need for political parties to adapt and cooperate with the phenomenon of the global village, Pimentel said, We can no longer be insular and limit our activities to our own countries. Events in one country will have ripple effects on others. Our nations are in different stages of development, yet are facing common problems.

PDP Laban as a party advocates Theism, Humanism, Enlightened Nationalism, Democratic Socialism, Participatory and Consultative Democracy, and Federalism, Pimentel said.

A strong party system begins with the individual members of the party. I will report to the Party leaders on my observations in this trip so we can determine how to produce more quality members and instill party discipline among our members. The change to better Philippine politics will begin with PDP Laban, he added.

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Violence erupted between Jewish and Arab students at the Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus on Monday, after students from the right-wing Im Tirtzu club set up an Israeli flag draped table in memory of Sergeant Ron Yitzchok Kokia , who was stabbed to death last week while Arab students set up their own stand draped in a Palestinian flag in response.

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Within minutes, a fight broke out between the two sides and campus security had to be called to break it up.

According to director of Im Tirtzu, Matan Peleg, the Arab students are activists of the Arab Joint List Knesset party.

Campus scuffle

"The increasing violence by these students does not surprise anyone," said Peleg. "They sow hatred and violence. The university allows them to call for the destruction of the State of Israel on campus in the name of free speech; this paves the way for more drastic actions. The responsibility for the violence is on the president of the university, and we are calling on Minister of Education Naftali Bennet to urgently summon him for a hearing. The writing was on the wall."

Students fight over symbols

The university released a statement saying, "We allow freedom of expression for a variety of beliefs and opinions, so long as they are not against the law. The various campus clubs are requested to adhere to the rules and refrain from any sort of violence, verbal or physical. Campus security broke up the scuffle in order to protect the safety of the students."

The Student Union expressed sadness that "the pluralistic venue of the Hebrew University was taken advantage of and that differences of opinion on campus deteriorated into violence. We support open dialogue that tolerates all sorts of opinions acceptable by the university and we condemn any violence between these walls."
State Attorney Shai Nitzan has instructed the police to open an investigation into corruption allegations made against Israel's Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.

Among other things, he is accused of paying millions of shekels to Likud activists and their families in return for supporting him.

The Ministry of Justice said the decision to open an investigation was made by the Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit.
Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman asserted Monday that "the murder of Sergeant Ron Kokia proves the necessity of the death penalty for terrorists."

Posting on his Facebook page, Lieberman added: "I congratulate the security forces for swiftly apprehending the murderer."
Israel reportedly attacked a Syrian military site in the Jamariya area on the outskirts of Damascus late Monday night, according to media affiliated with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

According to Al Mayadeen, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, Israel fired six missiles, with three of them intercepted by Syria's aerial defense systems.

So far, there have been no reports of casualties or damage.
Israel reportedly attacked a military scientific research center in the Jamraya area on the outskirts of Damascus late Monday night, according to media affiliated with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

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According to Al Mayadeen, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, Israel fired six missiles, with three of them intercepted by Syria's aerial defense systems.

So far, there have been no reports of casualties or damage.

Alleged Israeli attack in Jamariya

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Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported "violent explosions" shaking Damascus and its surrounding area caused by missiles fired by Israeli warplane and targeting places near Jamraya. The Observatory, which cited unnamed sources, said there were also "flashes in the shelling area believed to be caused regimes air defense launching its missiles to intercept." The Observatory, which cited unnamed sources, said there were also "flashes in the shelling area believed to be caused regimes air defense launching its missiles to intercept."

This is the second attack in Syria attributed to Israel in recent days. On Friday night, Arab media reported Israel had attacked an Iranian military base in the al-Kiswah area.

The Jamraya area contains many military facilities as well as what is likely a chemical weapons production and storage site. Footage from strike in the Jamraya area
Legal authorities have detained a senior army official Saturday after he announced on social media his intention to run for next year presidential elections, likely against army commander and President al-Sisi.

Colonel Ahmed Konsowa according to his lawyer Asaad Heikal was arrested Saturday on suspicion of behavior that harms the requirements of the military following a video post in which he stated his political views.

The colonel, 42, announced last Wednesday in his posts that he would enter next year presidential elections race to improve the countrys education, health, economic policy, respect of human rights, global values of citizenship and transparency, as well as the rule of law.

I proudly declare that I have decided to unlock the current political deadlock by running in the election, Konsowa said in his post.

Konsowa will remain in custody for 15 days on preventive measures pending investigations.

Lawyer Heikl told AFP that his client emulated President al-Sisi who announced in 2014 his candidacy when he was still a military and defense minister.

Sisi won the 2014 election, one year after he toppled elected President Mohamed Morsi.

Konsowa also said he has sought through legal means to resign from the military for more than three years to take part in political activities but has failed.

Consequently, this time I have decided to put the whole thing in front of the people through this simple announcement, he added.

Also on Saturday, former Premier and army general Ahmed Shafiq returned from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where he has been living since losing to Morsi in 2012.

The former statesman who was appointed Prime Minister following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011 has also announced his intent to run for presidency.

I said my intention was based on the information and the general idea I had about the current situation, Shafiq told talk-show host Wael El Ebrashy by phone in his first comments since Saturday.

President al-Sisi has not clarified whether he will run for next year election but it is in the cards that the army general turned into President will be part of the race.
Saudi Arabia has approved a US Peace Plan, which is reportedly detrimental to Palestinians and favorable to Israel, Now York Times report.

The Times bases its report on accounts by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, several Palestinians, regional and western figures following Abbass last month unplanned visit to Riyadh.

The Palestinian leader travelled urgently last month to Riyadh to meet with the 32-year old Crown Prince. The gist of the meeting was not made public but Palestinian, Arab and Western officials note that Abbas was presented the US Peace Plan, which could grant Palestinians a state in the limits of the West Bank as opposed to 1967 borders. The Palestinian would also have limited sovereignty over the territory.

Israeli illegal settlements in West Bank will remain in place. The plan excludes East Jerusalem as the future capital of the Palestinian state and there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, New York Times notes.

Abbas who has not made public the proposal is said to have received pressure from the Crown Prince to accept the plan or be replaced by another Palestinian official who is more favorable.

Washington has denied the existence of the plan, saying the US is still working on its own peace initiative plan.

Palestinian officials from Hamas and its rival Fatah, and other Arab officials have expressed astonishment over the proposal, which opposes the Arab League stance on the Palestinian cause.

If the Palestinian leadership were to accept any of the above, the Palestinian people would not let them remain, said Hassan Yousef, a senior Hamas leader in the West Bank who is also a member of the Palestinian legislature.

Many questions have emerged as to the role of the Saudi Crown Prince in the decades-long conflict.

The Timess report also came as speculations whether President Trump will declare Jerusalem as Israels capital are mounting.

The Crown Prince has been rumored to be cozying up to Israel recently as the kingdom seems moving to build an alliance with Israel against Iran.
France and the UNESCO partnered in a project aiming to promote reconciliation and peaceful coexistence in Kurdistan and Iraq through community radio programs.

the project, dubbed: Voices of Peace: Promoting Peaceful Coexistence in the Liberated Areas of Iraq through Community media, will support community radios in developing innovative and creative reporting on communities engagement in favor of coexistence, social cohesion and inclusion.

The project will focus on culturally diverse regions of Iraq, which host different ethnic and religious segments of its society. These include Nineveh, Kirkuk and the three governorates of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, namely Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaymaniyah.

The project was unveiled at a ceremony hosted by the Iraqi Communications and Media Committee, Bruno Aubert, Ambassador of France to Iraq, and Louise Haxthausen, UNESCO Director and Representative to Iraq.
The Iran-backed Houthi rebels announced that they have killed former President Ali Abdallah Saleh.

Al Masirah TV cited a statement of the interior ministry saying that Saleh was killed, while Iranian news agencies say that Saleh was killed on his way to the city of Maarib in Yemen.

Media controlled by the rebel Houthi movement quoted officials as declaring the end of the crisis of the treason militia and the killing of its leader.

Footage have circulated on pro-Houthi social media pages appearing to show Salehs body and a fractured skull due to a fire shot.

The reports on Salehs death come few days after he made an overture to the Saudis as his alliance with the Iran-backed Houthis has de facto disintegrated.

Fighting has lately intensified in the capital Sanaa between Saleh and Houthi forces backed by Saudi air strikes against Houthi positions.
In a flipflop a union leader described as a "fiasco," the provost's office at the University of Montana rescinded its termination notices to lecturers Friday, just hours after it issued them.

UM communications director Paula Short said President Sheila Stearns plans to call every single lecturer to explain the situation.

"We regret the understandable stress this process has caused," Short said in a statement. "President Stearns will be reaching out individually to each of the lecturers who received the notice and rescission to arrange one-on-one meetings."

The reversal Friday mirrors the turnabout Main Hall made earlier in the year when it first tried to cut lecturers, who are faculty members with annual contracts.

In August, the administration changed course after the University Faculty Association alleged contract violations in the attempted terminations.

Monday, faculty union president Paul Haber said the provost's office rescinded its notice this time because it learned the union was going to file an unfair labor practice complaint. The union planned to allege a different breach of the collective bargaining agreement.

"These people do not deserve to be treated this way," Haber said of the lecturers. "They have now been let go twice this year by administration."

UM had emailed notices of nonrenewal to roughly 30 lecturers in an ongoing effort to address budget challenges.

In her statement, communications director Short shared the reason UM finds itself in the same predicament it did a few months ago.

"We thought the issues that prompted the earlier grievance were resolved, and we wanted to proceed as expeditiously as possible to give lecturers as much notice as we could," Short said.

"However, a couple of technical questions were raised that merited another look, so we took a step back and rescinded the notices to review these new concerns."

Short did not address whether legal counsel reviews correspondence related to union negotiations. But she provided the single-sentence email sent to lecturers late Friday at the direction of Provost Beverly Edmond.

"Good evening, I have been instructed to inform you that the notice of non-reappointment sent to you earlier today has been rescinded until further notice."

***

In a statement, the faculty union also called into question the competence of interim leadership at UM and requested further changes be deferred to "the new administration of President (Seth) Bodnar."

Currently, the top two leaders of UM are serving in interim capacities. Bodnar is slated to take the reins in the middle of January from interim President Stearns. Provost Edmond, who issued the termination notices, is also an interim official.

"The interim administration's inability to deal with lecturers in a way that respects their contributions to the University of Montana and the collective bargaining agreement has further undermined any confidence we have in their ability to make strategic decisions," read the union statement.

Haber said the union would prefer to collaborate with the administration, but its members don't believe that can happen anymore. Main Hall officials have assured the union they will work together, he said, yet "the interim administration has repeatedly failed to honor that understanding."

"I am really unhappy that it's come to this turn of events where I've given up essentially on the ability to meaningfully collaborate," Haber said.

Short, though, noted UM has been clear that it's spending too much of its budget on personnel, and in notifying lecturers, it aims to adhere to the union contract and reduce temporary faculty first. UM officials have said cuts to tenured and tenure-track faculty are not off the table.

"The university has been very forthright regarding its financial situation and the fact that were spending close to 90 percent of the budget on personnel," Short said.

"UMs collective bargaining agreement with faculty  of which lecturers are a part  requires us to look first at temporary faculty when planning reductions. Weve been trying to do that.

"This is far more complex than a 'yes' or 'no' decision. The intent has been constant: This university cannot continue to encumber its present-level financial obligation with a significant number of temporary faculty."

Short did not comment on whether the administration attempted to consult with union leadership before issuing another blanket notification to lecturers.

In an email, incoming President Bodnar said Stearns remains president and responsible for UM.

"With regard to the lecturers, I am aware that President Stearns and the team are working through some difficult decisions right now," Bodnar said.

"However, while I'm working hard to learn about the university and prepare for the transition, Sheila remains the president and is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the university. I look forward to officially joining the team next month and working closely with our shared governance leaders and the campus community to chart the course ahead."

Although he hasn't started yet, Bodnar launched the search for a new provost earlier this semester, noting the chief academic officer will be a key partner in his administration. Bodnar is an executive at General Electric and steps into the presidency from outside academia, albeit with prestigious academic awards.

"As soon as possible after my selection, we launched a provost search with an aggressive timeline, and we're working to bring on our new, non-interim provost as quickly as we can. Provost Edmond is going to stay on board and help through the transition," Bodnar said.

The search committee aims to bring provost finalists to campus in March 2018 and have one seated by June or July.

***

Although lecturers don't have tenure, many have worked at UM for years, some more than a decade. Many have become fixtures on campus and some are heads of programs, such as David Gilcrest, director of literature and the environment in the English Department.

William Hess, a graduate student under Gilcrest, was among at least eight students who protested the termination of lecturers with a sit-in at the provost's office Monday. Hess earlier said he may leave UM if it offers Gilcrest a position as an adjunct instead of a full lecturer contract.

"It makes no sense for me to come back to this institution that would consider making an adjunct of the director of my master's program," Hess said earlier.

In the faculty union's statement, the association noted "lecturers" are one of five types of non-tenurable appointments negotiated in the collective bargaining agreement and in a UM policy reaffirmed this spring. The notice to lecturers noted UM "will be discontinuing use of full-year contracts for lecturers," but the union questioned the wholesale discontinuance.

"Clearly, one interim administrator is not authorized to make this declaration on behalf of the institution," said the faculty union letter. The letter also states that the notice is "out of accordance with good faith bargaining practice" and that the administration's approach demonstrates a lack of understanding of lecturers' contributions.

"For more than 15 years, the contract and the policy have served both students and the people of Montana by offering critical courses to students in a sustainable and affordable way," notes the statement. "The contract and policy were unilaterally disregarded by an interim leadership that we feel fundamentally misunderstands the role these faculty play within their departments and for the students."

***

In a phone call, Haber said he was "flabbergasted" the union was facing yet another botched effort by Main Hall to cut lecturers.

Haber has been among those on campus calling for shared governance, and he reiterated Monday the union's commitment to helping UM through its budget challenges. He said the union will fight attempts to discharge its members that violate the union contract, but the union does want to collaborate with the administration.

"They're ultimately responsible, and they ultimately have the power to make those management decisions, but it would behoove them to meaningfully collaborate with all the shared governance groups, including but not only the faculty union," Haber said. " ... And I don't feel that that has occurred. In the important decisions that have been made, there has not been that kind of prior meaningful consultation."

At the end of a discussion, Haber said the union and administration could stand together behind a decision  or respectfully agree to disagree: "But you can't do either of those if you don't have meaningful consultations."

In its statement, the faculty union described three instances in which the administration hadn't worked with the union in advance of a decision, including the couple of rounds of notification to lecturers and a decision to "radically shrink" sabbaticals. Haber, though, said he's hopeful UM will usher in a new atmosphere of cooperation come January.

"I have no reason to doubt that Seth Bodnar is sincere when he says that meaningful collaboration will be a hallmark of his leadership. And I'm down for that," Haber said.

UM's budget challenges won't disappear overnight, though, and Bodnar will face many of the same financial problems the current administration is trying to fix. Stearns has said UM needs to decrease the amount of its budget going to personnel from close to 90 percent by even a couple of percentage points in order to put money to other needs such as the library.

So it's possible lecturers again will receive termination notices about next school year.

The collective bargaining agreement notes nontenurable faculty on a one-year appointment have "no expectation of reappointment" and contracts "automatically expire (without notice) at the end of the contract term unless renewed prior to expiration."

But UM's procedures for academic appointments protect longer-term lecturers: After the third consecutive year of service, lecturers ... shall have the right to one semesters notice of the intention to terminate the relationship.
President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, John Dowd, told CNN on Sunday that he wrote a tweet for the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account about the firing of former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn.

"I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI," the Saturday tweet reads. "He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

Dowd said he drafted the tweet and believes White House social media director Dan Scavino posted it online. He declined to answer additional questions about whether Trump reviewed the tweet before it was posted.

"Enough already," he said in an email. "I don't feed the haters."

The Washington Post reported Saturday that Dowd drafted the tweet, citing two people familiar with the Twitter message. NBC News' Chuck Todd also reported Sunday on "Meet the Press" that Dowd confirmed he authored the message.

Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with Russia's ambassador to the US during the transition and disclosed that he is cooperating with the special counsel Robert Mueller's office.

Dowd previously said the tweet paraphrased White House special counsel Ty Cobb's Friday statement on Flynn's guilty plea.

"The tweet was a paraphrase of Ty Cobb's statement yesterday," Dowd told CNN. "I refer you to (former FBI Director James) Comey's testimony before Congress about FBI view of Flynn's answers."

However, Cobb's statement on Friday does not say anything about Flynn's lies to the FBI being a factor in his firing.

Pressed about whether the tweet signaled Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI before firing him, Dowd rejected the assessment.

"At the time of the firing no one including Justice had accused Flynn of lying," Dowd told CNN. "Yates had reported he told the (agents) the same things he told VP. He was not accused of lying until last week."

In May, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates told a congressional panel that she had a meeting with White House counsel Donald McGahn on January 26 to tell him that she had information that statements by Vice President Mike Pence, based on his conversations with Flynn, were false. She was joined in the meeting by a senior career official in the Justice Department.

"We weren't the only ones that knew all of this, that the Russians also knew about what General Flynn had done and the Russians also knew that General Flynn had misled the vice president and others," Yates said, relating the contents of her conversation with McGahn.

Saturday's @realDonaldTrump tweet raised immediate questions on whether Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when he fired him in February.

"...just couldn't resist commenting on Flynn," Walter Shaub, the former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics, tweeted. "Are you ADMITTING you knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when you asked Comey to back off Flynn?"

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted, "If that is true, Mr. President, why did you wait so long to fire Flynn? Why did you fail to act until his lies were publicly exposed? And why did you pressure Director Comey to "let this go?"

Comey said in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June that Trump pressed him to end the investigation into Flynn. Trump continues to deny this, and on Sunday morning sent a tweet calling it a "Comey lie."

CNN's Jeremy Diamond and Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.
Jake Power's most distinguishing feature was his bright blue eyes.

"It's the first thing anyone noticed about him," said Ashley Power, his mother, who described the boy's eyes as a clear, sky blue.

The 8-year-old boy from Jordan died in an accident in 2013. Afterward, Ashley was approached by doctors at the hospital asking if she would donate his corneas. She said yes.

"It really wasn't a decision. I didn't even have to think about it," she said. "He was the most giving kid. It's what he would have wanted to do."

It seemed particularly appropriate to Ashley and those who loved him that Jake's most distinguishing physical feature would be what lived on after his death.

"I'm glad we decided to donate his corneas," she said.

Donation

Before Jake's accident, Ashley had never given the practice of organ donation a thought. She certainly wasn't aware that corneas could be donated. That's not uncommon, said John Martinez, an area representative for SightLife, a global nonprofit that specializes in corneal transplants.

The cornea is the transparent tissue that covers the front of the eye, sitting over the iris and pupil. Damage to the cornea or disease that causes it to inflame or become cloudy can result in varying degrees of blindness. A cornea transplant is often the only way to treat damaged or diseased corneas and restore sight.

Cornea transplants are a relatively new development in the world of organ transplantation. Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s Byron Smith, with the Eye Clinic Surgicenter in Billings, was a young eye surgeon completing his residency at Trinity Lutheran Hospital in Kansas City.

At the time, if a patient needed a new cornea, it was the doctor who hustled to find one and perform the transplant. There was no organized system of recovering corneas from those who had died and then connecting them with the patients who needed them.

"So I would take it upon myself," Smith said.

Smith took every cornea transplant procedure he could; no specific training for cornea transplantation existed, he said.

"It took me nearly 10 years to learn," he said. Smith figures during the past 30 years he's performed between 1,500 and 2,000 cornea transplants.

In the early days, the corneas themselves deteriorated quickly. Doctors usually had 12 hours to transplant the cornea after it had been recovered, Smith said.

That changed in the early 1990s. A medical company created a liquid solution in which doctors could store the corneas, preserving them for up to 10 days, Smith said. The development allowed groups like SightLife to expand their operations.

These days, SightLife has trained representatives that work closely with hospitals and meet with grieving families to discuss the option of donating corneas. The group also has a stable of technicians specially trained to work with hospitals and morgues to recover the corneas.

It's one of the ways cornea recovery and transplants are unique. The recovery of all other organs from the body requires a surgeon.

Improving sight

In 1984, Herman Corletto was a toddler in Honduras walking through a crowded marketplace with his family on Christmas Eve. He's not sure how it happened, but he and his sister were walking through a fireworks stand when the whole place erupted in sparks and flame.

He was surrounded by exploding fireworks as the stand burned. He ended up on the ground, and his father found him by recognizing his shoes. When he pulled his son out, Corletto had burns all over his hands and face. His eyes were badly damaged.

"I should probably be blind," he said.

His father was a neurosurgeon and had a colleague in Colombia who was pioneering cornea transplantation. The family flew down and stayed in the country while they waited for the operation. Both eyes needed cornea transplants, but it was his left eye that was most damaged.

Those early surgeries were successful at the time, but were rudimentary. For most of Corletto's childhood he wore "Coke bottle glasses" to see. He moved to New Orleans as a teenager and then to Cody, Wyoming, four years ago, after completing college. Two years ago, he received a third cornea transplant on his left eye.

"A third transplant is it," he said. "You don't really go for a fourth."

Cornea transplants change the shape of the eyeball; they're literally sewn on, requiring 24 tiny sutures. After a third transplant, the eye has changed shape enough that the cornea no longer fits.

Corletto is confident he won't need anymore. His sight is the best its ever been and it's allowed him to work in his chosen field. Corletto is a manufacturing engineer at Cody Laboratories.

As a child he wasn't really aware that his eye operations  that a cornea transplant  meant someone had died so that he could have the procedure that improved his sight. Now, it's something he thinks about all the time.

"You have a tiny piece of another person with you," he said. "It weighs on you."

Connecting

SightLife arranged Corletto's more recent cornea transplant. The group offers to anonymously connect the donors' families and the recipients, usually through notes or letters that they exchange. It was something Corletto wanted to do, but it took him a while before he found he could do it.

His last transplant came from an Iraqi war veteran who, after he had returned home, was killed in a carjacking.

"It took a while, but I finally sat down and wrote a letter," he said.

He heard from the family. They wrote to Corletto, explaining that donating their son's corneas had brought them comfort as they worked through their grief.

Being able to correspond has helped Corletto process it all emotionally.

"It's a feeling of just being grateful," he said. "More than anything I feel grateful."

Ashley Power knows she'll write those letters when she's ready.

"There's so many things to be thankful for, to be grateful for," she said.

Jake was a helper. His classroom teachers would always comment about it and Ashley saw it all the time at home. Once, when they were at a rodeo in town, Jake noticed a stadium employee cleaning up the garbage dropped by the spectators.

Jake walked over and asked if he could help her clean up.

"He was sweet," she said. "He was so sweet."

After the accident, Jake's corneas were given to a 19-year-old and a 40-year-old. Ashley thinks about them a lot. She wonders what their lives are like and how they've changed because of the donation of Jake's corneas. She likes the notion that their lives are better now because of her son.
As a court battle over Montanas school choice tax credit program drags out, not many people are signing up for the $150 break.

In 2016, the program's first year, 246 people and two corporations donated to the state's only scholarship fund for private school students, Big Sky Scholarships, claiming $32,129 in tax credits, according to the Department of Revenue. Another donation pool for innovative public school programs totaled $7,851 in tax credits.

Thats only 1.3 percent of the $3 million yearly cap for the program.

So far this year, the program doesnt look to have gained steam; a running tracker of donations on the Department of Revenue website shows that only about $7,500 in tax credits have been qualified for through scholarship donations. Another roughly $3,000 in tax credits could reimburse donations to innovative public school programs.

Three million isnt very high, said Kevin Welner, a university of Colorado professor who authored a 2008 book on tax credits. When its a one-to-one tax credit, its not that hard to get the donations.

It seems especially odd considering that some people may be able to make a buck on the program.

A 2016 report from the left-leaning Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy and The School Superintendents Association lays out how some taxpayers in Montana and eight other states can get a full reimbursement through a state tax credit for a donation amount, plus save money on federal taxes by claiming the donation as a deduction.

When the impact of state tax credits is combined with federal tax deductions (and sometimes state tax deductions as well), some taxpayers in nine states can actually turn a profit, the report reads.

Montanas $150 cap, or $300 for couples filing jointly, means that even if taxpayers use both mechanisms they dont stand to make much, as the deduction likely wont make a major dent in federal taxes.

ITEP projects that a joint filing subject to the federal alternative minimum tax, making between $200,000 and $500,000 per year, could make $105 dollars off a $300 donation.

Higher caps

The report was criticized by pro-school choice group EdChoice, which has exchanged dueling blog posts with ITEP about the validity of the analysis. The ITEP report includes plugs from scholarship organizations promoting the tax credit in Alabama, Georgia, Virginia and Arizona as a way to ultimately come out ahead on donations.

ITEP is largely critical of tax credits, describing the system as the legalized laundering of public funds.

South Carolina, Virginia, and Arizona have no caps on individual tax credit donations, although they do have total caps on credits statewide. States that cap total credits set limits ranging from millions of dollars for businesses to Montanas $150 individual limit.

Its unclear how tax reform proposals under consideration in Congress could affect the tax credits.

The program in Montana works like this: a taxpayer can make a donation to a student scholarship organization, which in turn provides scholarships to students attending private schools. Up to $150 of that donation is eligible for a one-to-one tax credit in Montana, slicing 100 percent of the eligible donation off a tax bill.

A breakdown of 2016 donations, submitted to the state in a required audit by Big Sky Scholarships, showed that 246 individuals contributed $37,365 and two corporations added $6,500. That shows that at least some entities donated above the $150 threshold, more than what they would get reimbursed.

Some entities also donated below the threshold; if all 248 qualifying entities donated the full $150, the total credits doled out would exceed the $32,129 used in 2016.

The audit also shows that the group doled out 20 scholarships worth of $500 each in 2016. The law requires 90 percent of money raised to go toward scholarships within three years of its donation.

Legal tests

In addition to the scholarship organization audit, Montanas law has some academic strings attached. Schools participating in a scholarship organization are required to administer a nationally recognized standardized test to eighth-graders and high school juniors, and to report classwide scores.

So far that information hasnt been posted.

We received a bunch of information from the SSO just recently within three weeks, said Lee Baerlocher, the administrator for the Department of Revenues business and income taxes division. The department is processing the information and will eventually post scores on its website.

Baerlocher said there was not really a delay in reporting scores.

I liken this to growing pains, to be honest, he said.

The law still has more growing pains to go through.

The ITEP report notes that most courts have said that this small degree of separation between public coffers and religious schools is enough to resolve the constitutional issues involved.

The Department of Revenue, which initially tried to exclude religious schools from the tax credit program, lost round one of a lawsuit filed by three women in the Flathead Valley who said they would apply for scholarships funded through the program if they were available. Their children attend Stillwater Christian School, a private school in Kalispell.

The state appealed to the state supreme court and filed its opening salvo last week. Its likely to force the court to address questions that other cases have touched on, but havent directly considered.

The taxpayers' standing implicates some of the same issues, but its not the same, said Welner. The legal dispute in Montana does raise issues that are different than other places.

Stillwater Christian's website plugs the tax credit program, with an additional note: "For this program to expand, however, Montana taxpayers need to participate."

Learn more about the tax credit program court case, and why it could break new ground on school choice:
We have much for which to be thankful for in Montana  vast landscapes, stunning mountain ranges, crystal-clear lakes and blue-ribbon trout rivers that are the envy of anglers worldwide.

But one thing we shouldnt and cant be thankful for is the double standard by which our society and its so-called regulatory agencies treat corporate polluters compared to private citizens. Proof positive is the recent announcement that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has yet to fine anyone for the deaths of more than 3,000 snow geese on Buttes Berkeley Pit last year. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is supposed to be protecting our public wildlife, had no comment.

The EPA/Fish and Wildlife Service could have levied fines of up to $5,000 per dead snow goose on BP-ARCO and Montana Resources, the two private corporate entities that own the toxic disaster known as the Berkeley Pit. Mind you, these two scions of multi-national corporate giants are far from broke.

The real name of BP-ARCO is British PetroleumAtlantic Richfield Company. BP is a London-based corporation and the sixth-largest oil and gas company in the world. In 2016 alone, BP brought in $183,000,000,000 (thats billion) in revenues and its CEOs salary was a stunning $11.6 million, down from his 2015 salary and benefits of $19.6 million after a shareholder revolt.

Montana Resources is owned by Dennis Washington, who has an estimated personal net worth of $6.2 billion, making him the richest person in Montana and the 75th richest person in the U.S. as ranked by Forbes, which added: He spent an estimated quarter of a billion dollars fixing up his yacht.

These are the corporations and individuals sitting at the top of their industrial and social ladders, living lavish lifestyles and accumulating vast wealth on a daily basis. Dennis Washingtons net worth rose by $100 million in the last year alone. Yet Trumps EPA and Fish and Wildlife Service doesnt feel justified to fine these companies for the destruction of more than 3,000 publicly-owned snow geese  and make no mistake, in the United States, wildlife is owned by the public, not by the government, not by individuals and certainly not by the corporations that so regularly degrade their habitat, threaten their very existence and all too often are responsible for their fatalities.

Rather than levying the $15 million in fines they could have collected from these corporate polluters, the regulatory agencies that are supposed to be protecting our environment and wildlife decided to settle for nothing. Sorry Americans, but despite the destruction of your assets, we simply cant bring ourselves to hold the private corporations financially responsible for the carnage.

Those fines could make a huge difference in addressing the perpetual problem of the Berkeley Pit, especially since the EPAs budget is being cut a whopping $538 million in the latest House bill  about 30 percent. But instead of the fines, the agency and the corporate polluters agreed to set up an advisory committee to find a minimal-cost solution to the deadly pit.

One might wonder where are the voices of our elected officials, the people we pay to protect our publicly owned resources. But the silence from the governor and our congressional delegation is deafening  and that speaks volumes about whom these public servants actually serve.

If any citizen illegally killed a fraction of that many snow geese, theyd be charged, fined, and lose their hunting and fishing privileges. But since those responsible for the mass goose slaughter were corporations, they dont even get a slap on the wrist.
During this season of gratitude, we are reminded of the many reasons we can be thankful for the freedom and opportunity to travel.
Recently named Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, Cari Coe originally couldn't get far enough away from her hometown.

After graduating from Butte High in 1993 and earning a degree in anthropology from the University of Oregon, she went to Vietnam. She never expected to return to Butte.

Instead, she was "obsessed" with Vietnam and kept finding ways to return. She called her experiences there  riding a motorcycle across the countryside and interviewing villagers for academic research  life changing. She became fluent in the language.

Later, after several extended trips to Vietnam, she pursued a doctorate degree at the University of California-Los Angeles in political science so she could study political economy and development in Vietnam.

Expecting to spend her life in academia, Coe found it "very hard" when Lewis and Clark College in Portland denied her tenure in 2015, effectively ending her life as a professor of political science.

Now she calls that incident a "blessing in disguise."

"I really struggled with the stress to publish in academia," she said in a recent interview with The Montana Standard. "It didn't come that naturally to me. I thrive more in my current circumstances."

She opted out of a college teaching career because she was "tired of the limits" of academia and wanted to decide where she would live rather than go where another academic job might take her, she said. After a year in a real estate career in Portland, Coe realized she wanted to come home.

"With my academic career ending, I had to decide who I want to be. There was no place more meaningful to me than living in Butte," she said.

The day she moved back in July 2016, she contracted to buy the building at 101-105 E. Broadway St. in Uptown Butte. Major improvements to the building prompted the Butte Local Development Corp. to bestow upon her the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award last month.

Her middle name, An, means "peace" in Vietnamese. Her parents  her dad, Douglas Coe, is a Montana Tech dean and chemistry professor, and her mother is Anna Coe, who works at the Butte Public Library  had protested the Vietnam War. Coe was born in 1975, the year the war ended. Elated to see the conflict end, they gave her that middle name, she said.

Coe uses her middle name as part of her company's name  An Meo Enterprises. "Meo" is also a Vietnamese word, meaning "cat." Coe has three of them, who soak up the sunshine in her window-filled apartment on the second floor of her building.

But when she received word of the BLDC award, her immediate reaction was, "I'm not an entrepreneur."

"I'm not driven by profit mode. I'm driven by my heart," Coe said.

BDLC executive director Joe Willauer said selecting Coe to be the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year was a "no-brainer."

"We don't have a lot of female entrepreneurs taking on Uptown building projects," Willauer said. "We like to see cool, creative, unique entrepreneurs, and there was nothing else like her project, especially by a woman in town."

Willauer also, in particular, noted that Coe had attracted a gym, called Kinetic Fitness, as a commercial tenant on the first floor.

"We strive to see mixed-use buildings in Uptown," Willauer said.

Coe turned away a few other tenant possibilities before signing a lease agreement with Kinetic Fitness because of the large windows on the street-level floor.

"I wanted something people could look in at through the window, something in character with the building," Coe said. That meant she went without a street-level tenant until this past summer.

The second floor has five apartments. Coe lives in one of them and rents the other four.

Purchase of the 1895 building came with major repairs. That included lifting a corner of the structure to reinforce the foundation and replacing the roof, among other projects. To help offset roof and foundation expenses, a grant from the Urban Revitalization Agency paid 25 percent of those costs and helped with other repairs.

Karen Byrnes, URA director, called Coe a "wonderful, positive influence" on Butte.

"She is a great steward of historic preservation in Uptown Butte," Byrnes said. "She's investing in her hometown, and we're ecstatic."

Butte, Coe says, has taught her to play hard and "framed" her aesthetic.

Now the 42-year-old works part-time at the Butte Public Library as well as a part-time public relations coordinator for Butte Citizens for Preservation and Revitalization, which advocates for Butte's historic architecture. Coe also sells real estate with Homestead Real Estate and volunteers as a DJ for community radio station KBMF 102.5 FM.

"There's no pressure (in Butte). I can let my creative mind be what it is. It's freeing to let myself be who I am," Coe said.
The union-supporting Butte Bystander newspaper cheered the election of James B. Furey as president of the Butte Miners Union in 1897. As they reported Dec. 18, 1897, he was into his second term in that important office, re-elected with virtually no opposition. He ultimately served four terms as president.

Furey was born July 6, 1854, in Quebec, Canada, to parents who had emigrated from Derry, Ireland. By age 18, he was working in mines in New York, and he headed west about 1878 to the Coeur dAlene area of Idaho for several years before relocating to Butte in 1893. Furey was elected Silver Bow County sheriff in 1900 as a member of the Labor Party. He belonged to the Order of Elks as well as the Ancient Order of United Workmen, whose initials embellished the facade of the Miners Union Hall on North Main in 1900.

When Furey was elected sheriff, all of Silver Bow Countys elected officials were either from the Labor Party or were Democrats or Populists. District Judge William Clancy, for example, was a Populist, while the county was represented in the state legislature by five Democrats, five from the Labor Party, and two Populists. Mary Mullins, a Democrat, was the Superintendent of Schools.

Fureys salary as sheriff was $375 a month, a rather princely sum at a time when most miners made less than $100 a month. County commissioners in 1901 received $192 a month as per diem pay.

The Bystander, W. Mitchell, editor, was published by the Standard Manufacturing and Printing Company with offices at No. 3 E. Park St., within the Owsley Block (Medical Arts Building when it burned in 1973). The paper cost $2 per year (in advance) or 5 a copy. The paper was the official organ of the Silver Bow Trades and Labor Assembly.

Sheriff Furey traveled to San Francisco in late 1902 to bring back to Butte one Ruth LaBonta, alias Eva Hart, alleged murderer of Dr. H.A. Cayley on Oct. 11 in Butte, one of the most notorious cases during Fureys tenure.

Furey, age 53, died at his home at 34 W. Copper St. in April 1908 following a stroke. His home, an apartment in a six-flat complex, was at the site of todays parking lot at Copper and Alaska Streets. The Anaconda Standard recalled him as as good a sheriff as the county ever had.
Fred Burr Creek looks pristine.

The clear water flowing down the gentle slope of a mountain 6 miles east of Philipsburg gurgles its way along, as meandering and sun-kissed as any blue-ribbon waterway in Montana.

But its not.

Fred Burr Creek, part of the Clark Fork River watershed, contains a form of mercury, called methyl mercury, that is dangerous for people to consume. Methyl mercury moves up the food chain and resides in fish tissue. Fish, Wildlife and Parks has a fish consumption advisory for Fred Burr Creek. (See information box.)

Fred Burr Creek is not the only drainage causing a mercury problem in a valley heavy on charm and beauty, filled as it is with peaks and valleys covered in conifers and gently rolling farmland and the honey-aired quiet that blankets Montanas rural landscapes. (See information box.)

But Fred Burr Creek contributes nearly ten times more mercury to the Clark Fork River than any other tributary, according to a report compiled by a local group, Granite Headwaters.

Made up of ten board members, a technical advisory board of nine, and one part-time contract person, Granite Headwaters is trying to tackle the problem caused by an old silver stamp mill that operated more than 100 years ago. They have support from multiple partners, including Trout Unlimited, which is supplying $36,450 through in-kind support, and the Granite County Conservation District, which is acting as a fiscal sponsor and also providing some in-kind support. Granite Headwaters even has a sizable chunk of money  $500,000  from a state agency.

But what the group, based out of Philipsburg, doesnt have is access to the old mill site itself, which Granite Headwaters and state officials say is the likely cause of the problem. The site sits on Town Pump co-owner Dan Kenneally's land.

Kenneally said the Environmental Protection Agency already took action years ago and he sees this new effort as unnecessary.

EPA already cleaned it. It seems like a waste of time, effort, and money to regurgitate the whole thing, Kenneally told The Montana Standard last week.

Trout Unlimited project manager Rob Roberts, whose time TU is donating to the project, said EPA came in to clean up a water-quality problem in the early 2000s that stemmed from a developer digging up tailings on what is now Kenneallys land. EPA confirms this. But that work was not about cleaning up the Rumsey Mill site.

The problem is some people in the community thought, because EPA signed off on this cleanup activity, that that was the Rumsey Mill cleanup. Now we know thats nowhere near the case, Roberts said.

All that's left of the old mill site now is a round, somewhat barren area where some yellow grass patches mix with bald spots. Just below it, the soft tinkling of Fred Burr Creek slices the forested silence.

Between the road and the round, slightly denuded area are clearly posted 'No Trespassing' signs. The only thing remaining to indicate the empty spot's former life as a mill that processed silver ore is a large wall of rocks built like a skirt surrounding the drop-off leading to the creek.

Kenneally is not willing to give Granite Headwaters permission to take samples, much less potentially excavate and remove mill waste and mercury pools that might still be buried underneath the smooth round grass-patched surface.

Kenneally told the Standard that recent testing indicated hot spots were near the highway, not near his land.

But an EPA assessment, done in 1999, showed contamination of both the old mill site and the property around it. EPA did not order a cleanup of the former mill. Clark Fork Coalition science director John DeArment worries that there could be pools of liquid mercury buried at the site. When uncovered, that creates mercury vapor, which is also toxic.

Due to major flooding on Fred Burr Creek in 2016, Roberts said it is "entirely and certainly possible" that the mercury has moved around, but FWP water pollution biologist Trevor Selch said that sampling on bug larvae at the creek below Kenneally's property just before the 2016 flood showed the average mercury levels in the larvae were 77 times higher than what should be there. Because larvae are newborn, they don't move much, so the larvae represent what is present at that place in the stream.

What's the danger?

Selch says an angler can eat the fish in Fred Burr Creek but shouldn't eat too many.

Selch said a major concern would occur if an angler were consistently eating the fish out of Fred Burr Creek. But Dick Hoehne, who's lived in nearby Philipsburg his entire 62 years and fished in Fred Burr Creek when he was young, said, "Theres lots better fishing spots around."

"It wouldn't be my first choice," he said.

Selch said swimming in the water is also not likely a concern. Hoehne remembers taking a dip in a popular swimming hole along Fred Burr Creek. Hoehne still sees signs of life  in the form of a diving platform and campfire debris  around the water pocket, indicating people still swim there.

"The mercury is an issue when it's methylated," Selch said. "The elemental mercury is in such low concentrations, you don't detect it in the water. But getting it through eating the fish, that's the greatest concern."

Selch said mink and osprey are the only two mammals likely to stick to that one vicinity and eat the fish and thus potentially be at risk. University of Montana professor Erick Greene spearheads research on osprey along the Clark Fork River through a program called The Montana Osprey Project.

Greene told The Missoulian in 2015 that toxin research indicated heavy metals in tested birds was relatively low, except for mercury, which was disturbingly high. Greene identified Flint Creek, which Fred Burr Creek drains into, as the primary source of the problem. Greene did not respond to the Standards request for comment.

Hoehne believes there are people who fish in nearby Flint Creek. But Hoehne points to the fish advisory.

The truth of the matter is, the fishings fine. You want to be careful about how many you eat, he said.

Even so, Hoehne acknowledged that if he knew back when he was young what he knows now he probably wouldnt have fished Fred Burr Creek.

A big part of the problem is that the mercury in Fred Burr Creek is in turn contaminating both Flint Creek and the Clark Fork, which is critical habitat for endangered bull trout.

What's the group to do?

Federal and state agencies are usually the ones to step in to test for contamination, determine the extent of the problem, design a way to remedy the issue, and then excavate and remove the hazardous waste. Its a big job and frequently requires considerable amounts of money  usually millions  to get the job done.

For a group of volunteers  ordinary concerned citizens  to take this on themselves is breaking new ground, Granite Headwaters board member Chuck Stokke said.

One of the things Granite Headwaters lacks is enforcement ability. But what the group does now have is a responsibility. They have accepted public money  the $500,000 came from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation  to sample the soil and water and to get Fred Burr Creek cleaned up. The DNRC already gave $50,000 previously as a planning grant for the cleanup.

The group has approval from the agencies  both EPA and DEQ are aware of Granite Headwaters plans. And many locals who live along Fred Burr Creek downstream of the former mill site have granted access. The group has about 20 landowners  about 70 to 75 percent of the people who live along Fred Burr Creek downstream of the old mill site  on board with the sampling, Roberts said.

Landowner Jim Flynn, who lives just downstream of Kenneally, wants to see the mercury removed.

Its the knowledge its there, Flynn said. Its the feeling of responsibility were all in this together. If something needs to be addressed, it needs to be addressed.

Stokke and others involved in the project say Granite Headwaters is getting to work with or without Kenneally. So far, that means sampling soil and creek water downstream of Kenneally's property.

We have enough (landowners on board) to capture whats going on there, Roberts said.

But the question of how to proceed once the testing is done is likely to prove to be a key point  Kenneally told the Standard he does not intend to grant access.

Roberts said there is no plan B.

Were trying to develop that relationship (with Kenneally), Roberts said.

Additional hurdle

The issue surrounding Kenneallys land is not the only potential problem Granite Headwaters faces. In addition to the $500,000 the DNRC is supplying the group, DEQ promised matching funds of $458,550 as well. Of that, $450,000 was expected to go toward actual on-the-ground work. The remaining $8,550 was expected to be in-kind money for personnel, travel, or other project expenses.

But DEQ spokesperson Karen Ogden said that due to the state's recent budget cuts, that $458,550 is in jeopardy.

The budget cuts were a response to a projected $227-million hole in the states budget. Lower-than-projected state revenue and one of the worst fire seasons in Montanas history are to blame for the gap. Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, reached a compromise with the Republican-dominated Legislature in mid-November to patch the problem. To fix at least a portion of the hole, Bullock shaved off $76 million from the state budget. That puts DEQs matching funds in peril.

The question of whether or not the budget cuts will affect the $458,550 in matching funds is a question of timing, Ogden said in a written statement. Thats something we wont be able to assess until the scope of the cleanup is understood. It will be dependent upon the budget situation at that time.

But Roberts, who is working on other mine reclamation projects in the Little Blackfoot for Trout Unlimited, is "not very worried we'll find the money through DEQ or a federal program."

"This is a very important project, Roberts said. This is one of the major sources of mercury in the entire basin. I don't think DEQ will leave us hanging.

Wheres EPA?

EPA got involved in the late 1990s because a developer digging ponds for a planned future subdivision uncovered mine waste  called tailings  which caused turbidity in the stream. The work was completed in 2006, according to EPA Denver-based spokesperson Rich Mylott.

EPAs work involved physically removing tailings near Fred Burr Creek to reduce the amount of contaminated soil entering the stream. EPA also stabilized the soil to reduce the amount of tailings that was eroding into the stream. Overall, about 60 cubic yards of soil were removed and about 12 acres of soil were treated and stabilized.

When asked why EPA didn't remove the mercury at the old mill site, Mylott said, in a written statement, EPA response actions are intended to ensure quick action to target and address high-priority sources... The states provision of resources for additional cleanup at the Rumsey Mill is based on recent information and investigations that EPA has assisted with and supported.

Roberts, who is experienced in mine site cleanup work, has a little bit of a different take on EPAs actions at Fred Burr Creek.

This is one mine site among dozens in western Montana. Theres simply not enough capacity to tackle them all, so EPA and myself have to make tough decisions and prioritize the sites. Sometimes its pure economics. If we had all the money in the world, wed be happy to go after all of them. Many times people are doing the best they can with limited resources, Roberts said.

Wheres DEQ?

There are 3,866 abandoned hard rock mine sites across Montana. In addition, there are 3,137 abandoned coal mines in the Treasure State, according to DEQ.

DEQ Abandoned Mine Program supervisor Autumn Coleman echoed Roberts's comment about prioritization and the lack of money to address all the problems out there.

Coleman said DEQs known about the site since the 90s, but with only $3 million to $4 million each year to work with from the 1990s through 2012, the agency hadnt gotten to Fred Burr Creek. Then in 2012, the Surface Mine Control Reclamation Act shifted DEQs priority away from hard rock abandoned mines and back to abandoned coal mines in the eastern side of the state. DEQ had been exclusively focused up until the 1990s on abandoned coal mine sites.

A law passed in 2015 which set aside funds from the metal mine tax for abandoned hard rock mine work will mean DEQ will have $600,000 to resume efforts on abandoned hard rock mining again starting in 2018. But when water's involved in a cleanup project, as it is with Fred Burr Creek, the costs can really go up, Coleman said.

Theres another reason why Granite Headwaters is taking the front seat and DEQ the back seat on the Fred Burr Creek cleanup. Granite Headwaters board president Jim Dinsmore says DEQs nearby work on the Black Pine Mine site raised ire in the community.

Dinsmore said that the way DEQ left the Black Pine Mine site, it looked like a bomb went off.

Black Pine Mine cleanup

Located just 15 miles west of Fred Burr Creek, the Black Pine Mine was another old silver mine and mill site. Thanks to a $17.5-million bankruptcy settlement with Asarco in 2009, DEQ excavated 400,000 cubic yards of metal-contaminated waste across 50 disturbed acres, which included both Mill Creek; Flint Creek; and, predominantly, South Fork Lower Willow Creek.

DEQ found elevated levels of mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, antimony, and manganese at the historic site.

Selch previously told the Standard the old mine was the cause of the highest mercury concentrations in fish in the state. South Fork Lower Willow Creek also has a fish advisory on it. That cleanup job is mostly done.

But what left Dinsmore and others upset was the way DEQ left behind what looks like a wasteland of felled trees, placed willy nilly everywhere over the land DEQ dug up to get the waste out of there.

This wood will be here 75 years from now, Dinsmore said.

U.S. Forest Service project manager Sonny Thornborrow said the Forest Service, which owns some of the land where DEQ did the work, agrees, saying the trees will be there for many years.

Decades is probably correct, Thornborrow said.

But the Forest Service does not have a concern with that and said leaving the felled trees was an economic decision.

The cost could come to as much as $10,000 per acre for tree removal, Thornborrow said. There weren't enough trees to make a timber sale, and DEQ would have had to pay to bring in erosion control products. So leaving the trees was deemed by all the decision-makers as the right thing to do.

DEQ says there are restoration benefits to leaving the trees, but Dillon-based plant ecologist Richard Prodgers calls the tree debris "more fad than science." He predicts the area will become a haven for weeds. He also thinks ungulates, such as deer and elk, wont travel through that area because they could not flee easily. But theres also another problem Prodgers points out.

It was a very tidy landscape, very clean and tidy, and thats the local people's idea of what good stewardship is, Prodgers said.

Several people The Montana Standard spoke with for the purpose of this story expressed concern that Kenneally wont budge on allowing Granite Headwaters onto his land because he saw the tree debris at the Black Pine site.

Kenneally confirmed that theory.

One of my concerns is the way Black Pine was left, Kenneally said.
What little tenuous high ground the Democrats in Congress had when it comes to recent sexual harassment and assault has all but evaporated in what continues to be a shocking string of elected officials engaged in reprehensible behavior.

Sure, the Democrats want to keep focused on alleged child predator and Senate hopeful Roy Moore  and that's a good thing. If these accusations prove to be right, then Moore doesn't belong in Congress, he belongs in a courtroom or a jail cell. There can be no explaining or defense for preying on minors. This isn't a matter of politics, it's a matter of protecting children.

And, we're all familiar with President Donald Trump's remarks about grabbing women's genitals. Unfortunately, his election has seemed to provide cover to those who have read his victory as proof that molestation and harassment need not be a disqualification for public office.

That's a shame and a dangerous message to send.

What little high ground the Democrats had was ceded last week when Minnesota Sen. Al Franken was exposed by an awful photo of him pretending to grope a woman while she slept. The victim also said he had forced himself on her with unwanted kissing. Franken didn't deny the accounts, apologized and pledged to work with a Senate ethics investigation.

Though many in his home state of Minnesota thought that what he did was decidedly Minnesota not-nice, Franken rejected calls to resign, and pledged to continue on. Many members of the Democrat Party were either silent or side stepped the issue. The righteous criticism they've aimed so squarely at folks like Trump and Moore has seemed to evaporate when turned internally.

Commenting on Franken, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said,"Sexual harassment is never acceptable and must not be tolerated."

And yet, Schumer hasn't called for Franken's resignation. Schumer's words ring hollow and insincere. What the photographic evidence shows is proof of sexual harassment. Groping at a woman while she sleeps is harassment. And yet even when confronted with photographic evidence, Schumer would not stand by his own words. Allowing Franken to continue on in the Senate appears to be acceptable and tolerated.

We'd point out that when the brave women who came forward to confront Moore, even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, stood opposed to Moore. Even McConnell did more than Democratic leadership.

We're also proud that Montana Sen. Steve Daines, after hearing of the depth and seriousness of the charges against Moore, pulled his support of the candidate.

Montana Democratic Jon Tester donated the amount of money that the Franken campaign gave to him to the Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. That's a good move.

Tester also called Franken's actions "inappropriate and unacceptable," but seems to be content with the Minnesotan senator's continued service.

During the weekend, another congressional sex scandal broke when the public learned that longtime Rep. John Conyers of Michigan would step aside from his leadership post after it was revealed that two cases of sexual harassment had been settled against him, including one in which taxpayers were left holding the $27,000 severance bill for his actions.

Instead of condemning this sort of inexcusable and all-too-common behavior, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi revealed the same entrenched attitude on NBC's "Meet The Press," with Chuck Todd. Here's the transcript:

TODD: John Conyers. What does that mean for him? Right now. In or out?

PELOSI: We are strengthened by due process. Just because someone is accused  and was it one accusation? Is it two? I think there has to be  John Conyers is an icon in our country. He has done a great deal to protect women  Violence Against Women Act, which the left  right-wing  is now quoting me as praising him for his work on that, and he did great work on that. But the fact is, as John reviews his case, which he knows, which I dont, I believe he will do the right thing.

TODD: Why dont you?

PELOSI: Excuse me. May I finish my sentence?

TODD: Sure, sure.

PELOSI: That he will do the right thing.

Instead of condemning what Conyers did, Pelosi sounded exactly like so many conservatives who have rushed to Moore's defense. In the case of Conyers, due process is one thing  a settlement is quite another.

By Thursday, Pelosi had changed her tune and called for Conyers' resignation. But she failed to immediately respond to the accusations.

For too many years, those elected to the serve have used their power and status as icons and leaders to prey upon others. Leaders have spent plenty of time with mealy-mouthed promises of zero tolerance, but have done little more than a light tongue lashing, usually via press release.

There is one very faint silver lining in this otherwise black cloud of terrible behavior. Neither political party has the upper hand when it comes to tolerating the cancer of sexual harassment. Because of that, we hope there is enough outrage aimed at leaders in both parties that Congress completely overhauls the rules of ethics and investigations.

Because members of Congress got to write their own rules as lawmakers, they made ethics violations and sanctions cumbersome and secret. The process is almost completely outside of the public purview, and therefore, without scrutiny, there is no accountability.

Instead, we call for a complete overhaul. Congress must fully fund and permanently protect an office for ethics investigations. It must be non-partisan and claims that are proven must be fully and widely disclosed. Congress must not be able to bury information that may tarnish the reputation of one of its members.

Without making these changes immediately, it not only leaves the public out of the loop, it also sets up a situation where members can continue to prey on staff members and others without the fear of being caught.

-- The Billings Gazette
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 []
Two San Francisco women were arrested Friday in connection with a Toyota Camry that had been reported stolen out of San Francisco, Police Chief Oscar Ortiz reported.

Police said Marquilla Coleman-Williams, 25, approached an officer at 7011 Main St. shortly after 8 a.m. to say she was looking for her brother who had been involved in a fight.

Noting that she was driving an older model vehicle with paper plates, the officer discovered that her car had been reported stolen, Ortiz said.

Coleman-Williams was arrested for investigation of vehicle theft. Her companion in the car, Danielle Edwards, 36, was arrested for investigation of receiving stolen property, he said.

Edwards was on probation in another county for stolen vehicle charges, Ortiz said.
The arrival of the Christmas holiday season is driving a host of Napa County programs to assist those in need, including underprivileged families and children as well as veterans and troops serving overseas.

Local residents, businesses and other groups have a variety of ways to donate or deliver food, toys and other contributions to struggling Napans in time for the holidays. Here are some of the ways to offer aid.

Toys for Tots and the Napa County Holiday Assistance Program

Organizers in Napa County are seeking thousands of toys for the annual Toys for Tots drive, a centerpiece of an annual effort to bring food and gifts to low-income families for the December holidays.

Drop-off boxes for toys have been set out at various locations and donations will be collected Friday, according to Valerie Aguirre, chairwoman for the Napa County Holiday Assistance Program.

Families who registered for the program in October will receive their gifts Dec. 16 and are entitled to one large and one small toy per child, plus a family gift and one or more boxes of non-perishable foods.

The Holiday Assistance Program is run by a coalition that includes Toys for Tots, the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, the Napa Food Bank, Queen of the Valley Medical Center, American Canyon, Calistoga and Yountville Family Services, and various churches, charities and volunteers in Napa County.

For information on toy drop-off locations or to volunteer, contact Valerie Aguirre at 707-266-4586 or valnmike2@gmail.com. Check donations to pay for toys can be sent to Toys for Tots at 6468 Washington St. (Space 209), Yountville, CA 94599.

Those wishing to volunteer with program also can register online at volunteer.cvnl.org, where candidates can view the available tasks and their dates and times.

CHiPs for Kids toy drive

The California Highway Patrol is gathering toys across Napa County to give to children and teenagers during its annual Christmastime donation drive, CHiPs for Kids.

New and unwrapped toys can be dropped off at the CHP Napa station, at 975 Golden Gate Drive, on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Donation bins also have been set up at the following businesses:

Supercuts, 1806 Soscol Ave. (Suite B), Napa

Jax White Mule Diner, 1122 First St., Napa

Loose Caboose, 820 Third St., Napa

Kellys Filling Station and Wine Shop, 6795 Washington St., Yountville

For details, contact CHP in Napa at 707-253-4906 or email Officer Marc Renspurger at mrenspurger@chp.ca.gov.

Operation: With Love from Home

Entering its second decade in Napa, Operation: With Love from Home is again rallying volunteers to create 1,200 care packages as holiday gifts for U.S. troops abroad.

Cash donations are being accepted toward postage for the care packages, which organizer Liz Alessio said will run to $13.45 for each 9-pound box. Each package will contain a variety of items such as snacks, beverage packets, toiletries and batteries collected during a donation drive that ran from Nov. 1 until Monday.

Volunteers are invited to join a sorting party to organize the donated items, scheduled for 5:30 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Napa Senior Activity Center, 1500 Jefferson St.

The Christmastime gift drive culminates in a packing bee Saturday in the Napa Valley College gymnasium at 2277 Napa-Vallejo Highway. Packing will take place from 9:30 a.m. to about noon, and volunteers are asked to arrive before 9 to sign in.

The packing party will open with a Boy Scouts display of colors and the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner, and volunteers are encouraged to bring photos of active and retired members of the military to be included in a Wall of Honor at the event.

For details, call 707-363-0043, send email to info@opwithlove.org or visit opwithlove.org.

Napa Elks food collection for homeless veterans

Napa Elks Lodge No. 832s food drive for homeless and at-risk veterans is continuing through Dec. 15, with boxes set out at the lodge at 2840 Soscol Ave. The group is accepting gifts of nonperishable food items as well as soaps, shampoos and toiletries, according to organizer Sandy Silveira.

Food donations will be distributed by the Napa branch of Veterans Resource Centers of America, which opened earlier this month at 1835 First St., according to site director Jeff Baker. Donated goods are taken to the center every Monday for distribution.

The resource center also is accepting gifts of blankets, sleeping bags, warm clothing, shoes, boots and toiletries, Baker said.

For details, call the Elks Lodge at 707-255-4522.

Adopt a Family (Napa, St. Helena and Calistoga)

Some 75 needy families in Napa, St. Helena and Calistoga will receive gift cards for the holidays from Adopt a Family, a partnership of Grace Episcopal Church and local family service groups.

Adopt a Family is accepting money donations that will be used to purchase gift cards at Safeway, Target and Wal-Mart, according to organizer Shirley Swanson. Cards purchased with the contributions will be distributed by the COPE Family Center and the UpValley Family Center to households that have registered in advance.

Contributions can be mailed to Grace Episcopal Church at 1314 Spring St., St. Helena, CA 94574 and must be postmarked by Dec. 11. Checks should be labeled Adopt a Family on the memo lines.

For details, those in Napa can contact Swanson at 530-320-1833 or sswanson@foothill.net. St. Helena and Calistoga residents can contact Martha Meals at 707-695-9816.

The Giving Tree

The Napa County Office of Education has set up its third annual Giving Tree to encourage the donation of holiday gifts to local students, the agency announced. The program directed presents to more than 275 families in 2016, the office said in a news release.

A tree was set up Nov. 15 in the lobby of the departments headquarters at 2121 Imola Ave., Napa. Hung from its branches are Santa Claus ornaments marked for students of Early Childhood Services, as well as Joy ornaments for those attending Camille Creek Community School. Visitors can choose an ornament and check its number against folders at the front counter, which will list possible gifts matching each number. The donor can then buy a toy or clothing item for each person listed on the form, wrap the items and attach gift labels, and add the name and ornament number to each present.

All gifts are due, wrapped and labeled, back at the Office of Educations General Services department by Friday. Gifts will be distributed at Early Childhood and the Camille Creek school during the week of Dec. 11.

For details, contact General Services at 707-253-6828.

Be a Santa to a Senior

For the 14th consecutive year, Home Instead Senior Care is organizing Be a Santa to a Senior, a Christmastime gift drive benefiting seniors living alone without friends or relatives nearby.

Holiday shoppers are invited to support the program by visiting Napa stores where Be a Santa to a Senior is displaying special trees through Dec. 18. Those trees will be decked with paper ornaments bearing seniors first names and their desired gifts. Visitors can choose an ornament, buy the requested gift and return it to the store with the ornament attached. Community volunteers will then wrap the presents and deliver them to local seniors ahead of the holidays.

Be a Santa to a Senior giving trees can be found at three CVS pharmacies in Napa, at 291 S. Coombs St., 1558 Trancas St. and 675 Trancas St. Another tree is on display at Kaiser Permanente Health Education, 3285 Claremont Way in Napa.

For details, call 707-252-3322 or visit beasantatoasenior.com.

One Warm Coat

One Warm Coat is a group that works with local businesses and groups to provide free coats to those in need during the winter.

The nonprofit supports people and organizations across the U.S. by providing tools and resources to hold local coat drives. The clothing is distributed in the communities where they were collected, to children and adults in need, without charge, according to One Warm Coats website.

In Napa County, clothing donations are being accepted at the following businesses:

The UPS Store, 952 School St., Napa

The UPS Store, 4225 Solano Ave., Napa

Big O Tires, 442 Soscol Ave., Napa

The UPS Store, 101 W. American Canyon Road, American Canyon

For details, visit onewarmcoat.org.
Napa may go on the path toward legal sales of medical marijuana after a City Council review of its cannabis ordinance, four years after an earlier effort to open a dispensary broke down amid legal concerns.

Tuesday night, council members will vote on a policy to allow sales for medicinal purposes in parts of the city zoned for medical offices, light industry and office parks. The ordinance also would allow Napa residents to grow up to six pot plants for personal use outside their homes as well as inside, a response to users who have described outdoor cultivation as safer and less wasteful of energy.

A move to open Napa to a cannabis dispensary would come nearly seven years after passage of the citys never-launched 2010 law to allow sales for medicinal purposes. The council repealed that law in December 2013, amid concerns that an open conflict with federal laws banning marijuana could open the city to a lawsuit.

The package of cannabis laws marks a loosening of some standards compared to earlier drafts offered by city staff. Many of the changes were floated in late October by the Planning Commission, which recommended relaxing standards on the siting and background inspection requirements for future sellers.

While medical marijuana dispensaries would be required to be at least 1,000 feet from schools and other youth-oriented sites, some properties near Highway 29 could host stores within that radius if the freeway cuts off pedestrian access. A cannabis retailer also may continue operating even if a youth-oriented activity, such as a day care center, later opens within the 1,000-foot limit.

Other restrictions suggested by Napa staff, however, remain in the cannabis policy.

The ordinance limits permits to sell cannabis products to one year, and permit holders would be required to renew them annually and could not transfer them. Also, Napa staff kept in place a requirement of criminal background checks for all people connected to a dispensary  including employees, consultants, contractors and volunteers  despite planners suggestion to limit such inquiries to owners and managers only.

Napas ordinance would not technically legalize sellers of marijuana products within city limits but instead would decriminalize them, providing retailers with immunity from the citys nominal ban so long as they obey local and state law.

Those selling to patients and caregivers with a doctors recommendation would be eligible for city immunity, as would existing food businesses planning to sell cannabis-infused edibles as a sideline. Commercial growing, warehousing and testing would not be allowed.

Whether to allow personal-use marijuana growers to use their yards as well as their homes to grow the plant will be the Napa councils decision. California law guarantees the right to grow up to six cannabis plants inside ones home, but leaves it to local governments to allow or forbid outdoor cultivation.
There are only two countries in the world whose citizens have fought alongside American troops in every single war since World War I: Britain and Australia. No other American ally, friend, or partner can make that claim. Not surprisingly, the "special relationship" with Britain has been of the closest cooperation and trust that could ever take place between two independent nations.

Volumes upon volumes have been written about the ties between Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; a new movie only underscores the close connections between the greatest Briton who ever lived and his American partners, even when they bitterly disagreed.

Similarly, there is a burgeoning literature that addresses the very close personal ties between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The two shared a commitment to democracy and free markets that was both deep and genuine.

It should therefore come as no surprise that it was the United States, specifically the Pentagon, that rushed to Britain's aid during the Falklands War. I should know; I was personally responsible for ensuring that London received every bit of kit it felt it needed to prosecute the war, even if that meant running down our own stocks.

More recently, it was Britain that stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States not only in the aftermath of 9/11 - other countries did the same - but in launching and prosecuting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Whatever one thinks of that war, or of Tony Blair's decision to throw his country fully behind the operation, one must contrast Britain's response with those of America's other major European allies: Germany, France, and Canada all deliberately stood on the sidelines; at times their pronouncements sounded no different from those of Russia and China.

Even when relations between Washington and London were at low ebb, due to Prime Minister Harold Wilson's opposition to the Vietnam War, Britain continued surreptitiously to support the U.S. war effort. Britain provided regional intelligence (as the United States did during the Falklands War), supplied military hardware through back channels, and offered paid training in jungle warfare to U.S. Special Forces.

Moreover, although Britain refused to commit land forces to that war, some 2,000 soldiers resigned from the British Army and served in the Australian or New Zealand units that were fighting alongside the Americans. It has also been reported that U.S. bombers took off from a British air base in Thailand to conduct bombing raids over Laos. Finally, British ships supported U.S. commando river missions into Cambodia. The special relationship simply trumped politics.

Britain and America have shared intelligence for decades. They have shared strategic nuclear secrets and have worked together on strategic programs; the British deterrent even employs America's Trident missiles. Britain and America share space on Ascension Island; the United States has complete use of Wideawake airfield there.

Similarly, the United States has free reign at Diego Garcia, which is a British possession. And when all of Europe refused to have anything to do with missile defense, Britain quietly signed an agreement (I was the American signatory) that opened the door for the possibility of its hosting a missile defense radar.

Now comes President Donald Trump to wreck this decades-old relationship. It is bad enough that he retweeted anti-Muslim videos pushed by British extremists. It is more damaging that Trump seems to gloat over the fact that Britain has suffered from terrorist attacks while America has not. Far worse yet is his unconscionable personal attack on Theresa May. Whatever her political troubles, she continues to be a staunch supporter of her country's intimate ties to the United States. She even is prepared - at least as of the time of writing - to welcome Trump on a state visit to Britain.

It is true that Britain is not the power it once was. Its steady decline in military power, the result of years of budget cuts, have certainly lessened Britain's importance as a military partner. London needs to take note.

Nevertheless, in all other respects Britain remains America's most reliable ally west of Australia. Donald Trump has stated that too many allies are free-riders. But Britain is not one of them. His treatment of that country and its leader is nothing short of despicable. He owes the United Kingdom and Theresa May a personal apology.
Walmart wants to sell you everything you'd ever want to buy. Until Thursday, that included a T-shirt that read "Rope. Tree. Journalist. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED."

The company pulled the offending item, which first surfaced at a Trump rally, almost immediately after an advocacy group complained. Teespring, the third-party seller that posted the shirt on Walmart's marketplace, did the same.

"As soon as we were alerted to this content promoting violence against journalists, we removed the content, added this content to our automated scanning systems, and kicked off a human sweep of the site to find and remove any similar content," Teespring told the Associated Press.

That's a fine idea, but this isn't the first time Teespring has run into trouble. In August, the apparel platform offered T-shirts decorated with swastikas alongside words such as "love," "peace" and "zen" on rainbow backgrounds. This was part of an effort by a designer to "share the beauty of this symbol detached from the Hatred associated with it."

The "master plan," as the company described it, did not go over well. Teespring yanked the shirts, only to catch more criticism the same week for garments featuring slogans such as "Hitler did nothing wrong ever" and "We're all Hitler now." Teespring removed those, too.

Then there were the "Keep Calm and Rape A Lot" T-shirts that appeared on Amazon back in 2013. (Amazon's founder, Jeffrey P. Bezos, also owns The Washington Post.) Wholesale clothing company Solid Gold Bomb blamed a "scripted computer process" designed to riff on the classic "Keep Calm and Carry On" World War II posters. The rape advocacy shirt, along with its companions "Keep Calm and Hit Her" and "Keep Calm and Knife Her," slipped through the algorithmic cracks. And Amazon missed them in turn.

Teespring's statement after the latest mistake points to the trouble that caused all these PR crises. Retailers that rely on third-party sellers, or sites that rely on third-party distributors of any kind, need some method of monitoring the content that makes it onto their platforms. Automated scanning systems, apparently, aren't up to the task on their own - at least not as they're built today.

That's a narrow threat when only apparel is at stake. The rainbow swastika T-shirt was at worst cruelly disrespectful to Holocaust victims. The "Keep Calm and Rape A Lot" slogan may normalize sexualize violence, but it's unlikely it actually inspires men to go on an assault spree. And although the rope-tree-journalist shtick is similarly inflammatory (it's not just anti-reporter; it's also racist), the concrete danger to newspaper staff seems slim.

But the algorithm question goes beyond Teespring or Walmart and Amazon. Social media platforms also run on content that doesn't come from their employees. These platforms have all missed things, too, and do every day: Russian propaganda, beheading and burning videos by terrorist organizations, old-fashioned harassment, and hate speech. Facebook's and Google's representatives even blamed algorithms for some of the nefarious ad targeting on their sites during the 2016 election.

With so much to sort through, companies can't possibly pay the number of people they need to distinguish the acceptable from the awful. That's why, even as today's algorithms fail, tomorrow's are heralded as our future saviors - and someday, they probably will be. But at this point, it's not responsible to throw human input entirely to the wayside and rely on automation alone. The recurring problem of the outrageous T-shirt is a small-scale example of a larger truth: For now at least, humans are going to have to keep coming to their own rescue.
Honoring alumni: SIU Carbondales aviation program recently honored the efforts of alumni who raised more than $250,000 in pledges for Federal Aviation Administration-mandated ADS-B transponders in the universitys training aircraft. Alumnus and United Airlines Capt. Barry D. Batson, Jr., (right) discusses the naming of a conference room in the programs Transportation Education Center in his honor with Michael Burgener (left) interim aviation management and flight chair and aviation technologies chair. The program also renamed three planes in honor of alumni. The planes honor Joseph Messina II, Gregory N. Cook, Paul D. Sarvela and the Flying Salukis. (Photos by Steve Buhman)

Alumni, friends step up to support life-changing aviation degree

by Pete Rosenbery

CARBONDALE, Ill.  The Federal Aviation Administration handed down a mandate, and SIU aviation program alumni responded in 14 months with more than $250,000 in pledges toward installing Automatic Dependence Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) transponders in 36 aircraft.

The alumni came through for us as they always do, Michael Burgener, interim chair of the Department of Aviation Management and Flight and chair of the Department of Aviation Technologies, said.

Burgener said crews are installing the transponders and preparing to receive three new Piper Arrows for commercial pilot certification and certified flight instructor training. The planes will replace three Cessnas built in the 1970s and 1980s.

Aviation program recognizes alumnuss 30-year career

The program christened the Barry D. Batson, Jr. conference room within the Transportation Education Center. Batson is a 1990 aviation management graduate whose career with United Airlines now spans nearly three decades. Batson credits David NewMyer, professor emeritus and former department chair, and aviation alumnus William R. Norwood, a retired United Airlines captain, with helping develop his career.

Im extremely grateful because of the opportunities this program has given me. This program was life changing for me, Batson said. I have always felt like Ive had to stay attached to this program to make sure I was part of something that gave to me. I want to be here for these kids who are trying to get through this program.

Namesake planes honor distinguished aviation alumni

Alumni and friends also renamed three planes in honor of notable contributions to the aviation degree program:

Joseph Messina II, influenced his son, Joseph Messina IIIs love of flying, and he founded the Air Explorers in 1970 to help young people interested in aviation. The program awards a Joseph A. Messina III Aviation Explorers Scholarship for Aviation Students annually. Capt. Joseph Messina III, who earned his bachelors degree in aviation maintenance technology in 1976, is a pilot for Delta Airlines.

Gregory N. Cook, a Carbondale native and 1976 graduate of Carbondale Community High School, attended SIU Carbondale from 1977 to 1979, majoring in aviation technology and business administration. Cook has been a member of the SIU Foundation Board of Directors since 2006, including serving as president from 2013 to 2015. He is the Foundations representative to the SIU Alumni Associations Board of Directors. Cook uses his flying skills as a volunteer pilot for SIU, the Veterans Airlift Command, Special Olympics athletes for the Citation Special Olympics Airlift, and the Corporate Angel Network. The same plane also honors the nine-time National Intercollegiate Flying Association champion Flying Salukis, who have created their own legacy over nearly five decades. The team has finished in the top three in the nation for seven straight years, with recent titles in 2011, 2014 and 2015. The teams nine national titles date back to 1977, and the squad has qualified for national competition in 48 out of the last 49 years.

Paul D. Sarvela served SIU and the university system for 28 years, including as interim chancellor until his death in November 2014. A tenured professor of health education and clinical professor of family and community medicine, Sarvelas leadership positions included serving as dean of the College of Applied Sciences and Arts for six years before becoming vice president for academic affairs for the university system. He also served as chair of the then-Department of Health Care Professions, and director of the Center for Rural Health and Social Service Development.

The nine-time National Intercollegiate Flying Association champion Flying Salukis have created their own legacy over nearly five decades. The team has finished in the top three in the nation for seven straight years, with recent titles in 2011, 2014 and 2015. The teams nine national titles date back to 1977, and the squad has qualified for national competition in 48 out of the last 49 years.
Artists gift to benefit graduate students

by Rebecca Renshaw

CARBONDALE  Artist Jimmy Wright, who earned a master of fine arts degree from Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 1971, is providing a $1 million gift to fully fund fellowships for graduate students in art at SIU.

The Jimmy Wright Fine Arts Fellowship endowment, announced by SIU Chancellor Carlo Montemagno, will assist graduate students who need financial support as they pursue their graduate studies in art. Such a gift mirrors Wrights experience at SIU.

My graduate school years at SIU Carbondale were an incredibly rich time of education, studio practice and friendship, Wright said. Im pleased to know that future young artists educated at SIU will, in some part, be my heirs.

A deans fellowship provided Wright with the additional financial assistance he needed to complete his degree. He also received other important help along the way, including art department research and teaching fellowships.

During my time in Carbondale, my home caught fire, destroying all of my equipment, clothing, household goods and artwork, Wright said. I was devastated. It was only through the generosity of students and faculty members from the art department who donated their artwork in an auction that I was able to get back on my feet.

Wright left SIU to teach in New York State in 1973. Moving to New York City in 1974, today he is an accomplished oil and pastel artist and is represented by the DC Moore Gallery in New York City and Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago. His works hang in many public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Wright is also a member of the 1910 Society at Ox-Bow, the School of the Art Institutes summer home in Saugatuck, Michigan, where he has served as a guest faculty member for eleven years.

Mr. Wrights commitment to our university is clear, Montemagno said. This gift will benefit graduate students for generations, and Mr. Wrights legacy will extend far beyond this university.

The estate gift, which was made as part of the Forever SIU fundraising campaign, furthers the universitys mission of providing the best experience for students across disciplines, including the arts and humanities. For more information about the campaign, visit www.foreversiu.org.

To learn more about Wright and his work, visit www.jimmywrightartist.com, http://www.corbettvsdempsey.com/artists/jimmy-wright/, http://www.dcmooregallery.com/artists/jimmy-wright.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 01:40:41|Editor: yan

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HANGZHOU, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- China and six other countries along the Belt and Road launched an initiative to strengthen cooperation on digital economy during the ongoing Fourth World Internet Conference in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province Sunday.

The initiative includes deeper collaboration to improve broadband access and quality, digital transformation and e-commerce cooperation as well as to enable more support for Internet start-ups and innovation.

It also aims to promote transparent digital economy policies and establish multi-layer communication mechanism to create a more open, orderly and safer cyberspace.

Digital economy has become an important drive for global economic growth. It can help improve productivity, foster new markets and industries as well as promote sustainable growth, according to the initiative.

"The initiative will become a guide for us to push forward cutting-edge technological cooperation, optimize innovation environment and gather innovative resources," said Lin Nianxiu, deputy head of China's National Development and Reform Commission.

Bounsaleumsay Khennavong, Vice Minister of Laos' Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications said the initiative offered all member states new opportunities for closer cooperation and would lower the development gap in digital economy between participating countries.

Majed Almesmar, Deputy Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of the United Arab Emirates said the proposal could help their digital reform and transformation as well as deal with challenges in the new area of big data and cloud computing.

The Fourth World Internet Conference opened Sunday and is themed on "Developing digital economy for openness and shared benefits -- building a community of common future in cyberspace."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 02:05:49|Editor: yan

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AMMAN, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Jordan on Sunday condemned Israeli violations in Al Aqsa Mosque and the provocations against the worshippers in the holy site, the state-run Petra news agency reported.

Jordan's Minister of State for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani said breaking into the yards of Al Aqsa Mosque by Israeli radicals under the protection of the Israeli police is provocative.

He added that Jordan sent a letter of protest to the Israeli foreign ministry in this regard.

The minister added that such acts are irresponsible and provocative and condemned, noting that they represent a stark violation of the international humanitarian law and international conventions and accords.

He stressed on the need to respect places of worship, adding that such measures hamper efforts to reduce tension.

The minister added that allowing radicals to storm the yards of the mosque and seeking to alter the status quo in the city is rejected.

He called for the immediate cease of such measures and respecting Jordan's historic role in protecting the holy sites in the city.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 02:05:50|Editor: yan

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BEIJING, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- The top anti-graft body of the Communist Party of China (CPC) released 16 animated gifs on the eight-point frugality code to mark the fifth anniversary of the code's release on Sunday.

The CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) published the gifs on its website, featuring the content and the significance of the code.

The gifs are intended to explain the code to the public in a way catering to popular taste, and close the distance between the people and the authority, said CCDI in a statement.

The gifs can also be downloaded on the instant messaging app WeChat.

On Dec. 4, 2012, the central authorities issued the frugality code, requiring government officials to strictly practice frugality and clean up undesirable work styles such as formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance.

Practices such as the use of public funds to buy gifts, hold banquets and pay for holidays have since been strictly banned.

The CCDI has a monthly reporting system on the implementation of the rules within the provincial-level governments, central Party and government agencies, centrally-administered state-owned enterprises and central financial institutions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 02:05:51|Editor: yan

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by Ronald Njoroge

NAIROBI Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative will assist partner countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a United Nations official said on Sunday.

Jamil Ahmad, head of intergovernmental affairs at the UN Environment Program (UNEP), told Xinhua in Nairobi that the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road initiative and the SDGs are complimentary.

"The Belt and Road Initiative provides a good example on how to begin implementation work for the SDGs whose aim is to improve the lives of all citizens of the world," Ahmad said.

"The SDGs are exactly talking about the types of development that have been identified in the projects of the Belt and Road Initiative," he said during a forum on greening China's Belt and Road Initiative, which is part of the UN Science Policy Business Forum on the Environment.

The initiative, comprising the overland Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, aims to build a trade, investment and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes.

Ahmad noted that both the Belt and Road Initiative and the SDGs focus on five pillars which will improve the quality of lives of global citizens.

He noted that the Belt and Road Initiative is an enormous project and so various UN agencies are working toward greater and broader partnerships with the Chinese government and partner countries to ensure successful implementation of the project.

The UN Environment Program's role will be to ensure that environmental sustainability is incorporated into all aspects of the projects and programs, he said.

Ahmad said that the very basis of the Silk Road Economic Belt is to promote partnerships among governments and the private sector.

UNEP has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese government to provide expertise on green economy and financing for sustainable development for projects on the Belt and Road Initiative.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 02:30:59|Editor: Zhou Xin

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by Peter Mutai

NAIROBI, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- African ministers on Sunday launched a new initiative aimed at involving women directly in the energy sector.

The Africa Women Energy Entrepreneurs Framework (AWEEF), which was launched in Nairobi by the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), seeks to galvanize political commitment from governments and development partners to attract investment in tackling issues of access to clean and affordable energy in the continent.

"Unlocking the potential of women entrepreneurs in sustainable energy is critical to the achievement of multiple Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union Agenda 2063," said Kenya's Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Natural Resources Judi Wakhungu at the launch.

Wakhungu noted that AMCEN will provide necessary support to this initiative and urged other partners to join in.

AMCEN is committed to finding innovative environment solutions to many environment problems that affects Africa, she said.

AWEEF was proposed during the 16th session of the AMCEN in Libreville, Gabon, in June.

The meeting agreed to bring women entrepreneurs as change agents and main stakeholders in the energy sector, given their vast engagement in the collection and use of biomass that ranges several decades in the absence of access to electricity and renewal energy.

The initiative includes a comprehensive set of policy recommendations, creating access to finance and market as well as developing technical and business skills to enhance women's empowerment and promote gender equality in situations of sustainable energy development.

AWEEF will also play a leading role in strengthening political will and commitment from governments and development partners to attract investment.

"Women disproportionately bear the burden of energy poverty and face significant health and safety risks from household air pollution, from carrying heavy fuel loads, and from the lack of lighting," said Juliette Biao Koudenoukpo, director and regional representative of UN Environment in Africa.

"UN Environment hope that AWEEF will enable African women play a leading role across the energy value chain," Koudenoukpo said.

According to the UN, over 600 million people in the continent still do not have access to electricity while over 600,000 people, 60 percent of them women, die each year as a result of household air pollution.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 03:16:07|Editor: Zhou Xin

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LONDON, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Theresa May was dealt a major blow Sunday when the entire board of a flagship social mobility commission resigned.

Former Labour Party government minister Alan Milburn announced he was quitting his role as chairman of the commission, saying there was zero prospect of May's government tackling social mobility.

His decision was followed by the three other commissioners, one of them the vice chair, a former Conservative minister, also saying they were resigning.

In his resignation letter, Milburn told May that government ministers were preoccupied with Brexit.

Last week the commission published a major report warning that that London and its commuter belt appeared to be a different country to the rest of the country. In one of its reports, the commission said the aspiration gap between Britain's rich and poor will take 80 years to close.

Saying he was quitting with immediate effect, Milburn said he had little hope of the current government making progress necessary to bring about a fairer Britain.

He said in his letter to May the government is understandably focused on Brexit and does not seem to have the necessary bandwidth to ensure that the rhetoric of healing social division is matched with the reality.

"I do not doubt your personal belief in social justice, but I see little evidence of that being translated into meaningful action," he told May.

Milburn described social mobility as one of the biggest challenges facing Britain today, saying "It is not just the poorest in society who are losing out. Whole communities and parts of Britain are being left behind."

He told May he plans to establish a new social mobility institute, independent of the government and political parties, to take forward the practical work needed to make a reality a fairer, more open, more mobile society in Britain.

The Social Mobility Commission was established as an advisory public body to monitor progress towards improving social mobility in Britain and promote social mobility in England.

A Downing Street spokesperson said Milburn's turn of office as chairman was due to end in 2018, and the government intended to hold an open process for a chairperson. The spokesperson added the government was committed to fighting injustice and ensuring everyone has the opportunity to go as far as their talents will take them.

The process of appointing a new chairperson and commissioners would begin as soon as possible, added Number 10.
British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. President Donald Trump gesture towards each other during their joint news conference at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 27, 2017. (REUTERS/File Photo/Kevin Lamarque/Files)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's latest social media posts, which triggered a heated quarrel between Washington and London, have put strain on bilateral ties.

Trump sparked global controversy in recent days after re-posting what critics say are anti-Muslim social media posts from a Britain-based far right group that allegedly depict violence carried out by Muslims. The authenticity of the videos in the posts has not been verified.

"Trump's (re-posting) of anti-Islamic videos has put a great strain on U.S.-UK relationships," Brookings Institution senior fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.

"He took material from a far-right organization and gave it great legitimacy at a delicate time as Britain is negotiating its exit from the European Union (EU)," West said, referring to England's break-off from the EU, a matter of controversy underscored by tensions between classes in England.

"The British Prime Minister has condemned Trump's actions and reprimanded him for giving extreme voices an international platform," West added.

The videos were originally posted by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of British far right group Britain First, who said the videos were from the Internet and did not provide the context under which the videos were shot.

The group has allegedly posted several misleading videos in the past, and the ones Trump shared on Twitter were called "Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!" "Muslim destroys a statue of Virgin Mary!" and "Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!"

"In (re-posting) those anti-Islamic posts, President Trump raised the profile of a radical far-right political group in the UK, and furthered the argument of radicals on both sides that Islam and the West are in a clash of civilizations," said Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of Congress and the Presidency.

Indeed, Trump's tweets have sparked a row between the White House and British Prime Minister Theresa May, who said Trump was "wrong" to re-tweet material from a group she described as spreading "hateful narratives."

"British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far-right which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents: decency, tolerance and respect," the prime minister's statement said.

Trump shot back via social media saying, "Don't focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine," referring to recent Islamist terror attacks on locations within England.

The back-and-forth represents a rare spat between Britain and the United States, which are normally close allies, particularly in global activities against terrorism and Islamist radicalism.

"I don't think this will hurt U.S.-UK relations in the long run because the two countries have strong ties. But Trump has to be careful not to create problems for his friends in other countries," West said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 07:43:35|Editor: Zhou Xin

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A motorcyclist dressed in Santa Claus' costume rides through the city with new toys for donation in Chicago, the United States, on Dec. 3, 2017. Motorcyclists take part in the 2017 Chicagoland Toys for Tots Motorcycle Parade on Sunday. (Xinhua/Wang Ping)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 07:36:59|Editor: Zhou Xin

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CARACAS, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday announced the creation of a crypto currency, backed by the world's largest oil reserves, to counter U.S. sanctions that choke off his country's access to dollars.

"Venezuela is going to create a crypto currency, a petro currency, to make progress in the area of monetary sovereignty," Maduro said during his regularly scheduled weekly broadcast.

"This is going to allow us to move towards new forms of international financing for the country's economic and social development," said Maduro.

In addition to oil, the petro currency will be backed by Venezuelan gold, gas and diamond deposits, he added.

To get the project off the ground, the government has put together a "multidisciplinary" team of specialists in technology, economy and finance, law and currencies, among others.

In August, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that "prohibits dealings in new debt and equity issued by the government of Venezuela and its state oil company" and also prohibits "dividend payments" to the South American country's government.

In announcing the sanctions, the White House said the measures were "carefully calibrated to deny the Venezuelan government a critical source of financing."
Annual Santa Claus parade held in Vancouver on December 3, 2017. The parade is the largest Christmas parade celebrated in Western Canada with about 2,000 marching participants and 42 floats perform on streets that attracted around 300,000 spectators to see. (Xinhua Photo/Liang Sen)

by Evan Duggan

VANCOUVER, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Approximately 300,000 people gathered in downtown Vancouver on Sunday afternoon for the city's 14th annual Santa Claus Parade.

The parade has become the unofficial launch to the Christmas season here in the West Coast Canadian city.

The parade marches its way around the downtown core, with roughly 3,500 participants, including 50 marching bands, choirs, dancers, community groups - and Santa Claus, of course.

Before the parade, hundreds gathered around a massive Christmas tree in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery at a Christmas festival waiting for Santa to arrive in the parade.

Among them were Vancouver resident Joe and his two sons, Aidan and Eason, who sat down at a Canada Post tent set up for kids to write letters to Santa Claus.

"We saw it on the internet that there was a parade going on," Joe told Xinhua. "It's our first time ever."

He said his kids were eager to add their letters to Santa to the post and to get a glimpse of Santa Claus.

"It's bringing the family together," he said.

Canada Post worker Fred Danelles stood by, inviting children to write their letters, which the youngsters would then slip into a small, red Canada Post box.

Danelles told Xinhua that Canada Post handles about 1.5 million letters to Santa from kids in Canada and around the world, each year.

"He answers each and every one," Danelles said. "He gets his mail through Canada Post."

Canada Post's Santa letter program has been around for more than 35 years, and has responded to 26 million letters in more than 30 languages, including Braille.

"All the mail in the world of course has to come to Canada Post, and we get his mail and when he answers the letters each and every one is replied to," Danelles said. "We get Canada Post to deliver his letters back to all the children."

He said they were expecting kids to write and post about 450 letters at the parade on Sunday.

Along the parade route, thousands of people hoisted children up on shoulders, getting a glimpse of the marching bands, dancers and a Grinch in a Vancouver Police Department cage. The biggest cheer came for Santa Claus himself, who brought up the rear of the parade.

Dozens of red and white Santa hats could be seen as the parade marched past along Vancouver's Howe Street.

The Greater Vancouver Food Bank leads the parade each year with a float and a donation campaign.

"I would say (the parade) is the official kick-off of the fundraising season in December," said Aart Schuurman Hess, a spokesman for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. "This weekend is huge... it creates the awareness. Hunger is around 365 days a year."

He said for every dollar the food bank raises through donations, three dollars can be spent on healthy food for local families in need.

"I love those smiling kids along the parade route because it's all about community," he said.

"This is a very important community event," he said. "You can see the entire community coming out and for us to be part of the Santa Claus Parade is a big thing. It creates awareness."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-12-04 10:12:37|Editor: Yang Yi

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BEIJING, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government's unusual step of initiating an investigation into Chinese aluminum products is sounding an alarm for healthy and stable bilateral economic relations.

The U.S. Commerce Department recently launched anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations into Chinese common alloy aluminum sheets without a request from a U.S. company or industry.

Although only affecting a small fraction of the two-way trade, it is the first time in the past 25 years that such a "self-initiated" tactic has been used and it is rare in the history of international trade.

U.S. President Donald Trump made it clear from day one that unfair trade practices would not be tolerated by this administration.

However, it seems to be the U.S. government wielding the sledgehammer of protectionism in a more aggressive way which may keep it away from fair trade, rather than moving toward it.

Chinese and U.S. aluminum industries are complementary and aluminum trade between the two countries is two-way. The new move has overlooked the interests of American consumers and employment in the processing industry, hurting both Chinese and U.S. interests by artificially impeding the normal order of bilateral aluminum trade.

It is normal for the world's top two traders to have frictions. China has shown sincerity in addressing the unbalanced trade with 253.5 billion U.S. dollars of deals inked during Trump's recent visit to China.

However, the U.S. government is going in the opposite way. It should have used the dispute settlement mechanism under the World Trade Organization (WTO). Instead, it opted for a unilateral approach, taking on the dual roles of the plaintiff and the arbiter, which might lead to a lack of impartiality in the investigations.

Take a look into the trade remedy cases this year: the U.S. government has launched nearly 80 anti-dumping and countervailing investigations into Chinese imports so far, an increase of 65 percent from a year ago.

The recent move is not reasonable from an economic and trade perspective, but makes sense in the political scale since U.S. domestic politicians and lobby groups might be happy to see the Trump administration's hard line on trade with China.

Such moves will undermine mutual trust and trigger retaliation, allowing no party to emerge unscathed.

It is important to remember the big picture of bilateral trade relations. Over the past three decades, bilateral goods trade surged from 2.5 billion to 524.3 billion U.S. dollars. Low-cost and high-quality Chinese products have helped raise the living standard of Americans.

While much of the U.S. political campaign rhetoric focused on jobs leaving the United States, Chinese investment is supporting more jobs on that side of the Pacific.

According to a recent report by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and Rhodium Group, employment by Chinese-owned firms across America jumped nine-fold since 2009 to 140,000 last year.

It is also a fact that cooperation has expanded from traditional manufacturing and farm produce into new areas such as new energy car manufacturing, solar power, sharing economy and virtual reality technology.

While it is good to see the Trump administration has abandoned many of the sensationalist tough rhetoric on trade with China from the campaign trail, an all-out trade war is avoidable. A host of high-level dialogues between two sides have facilitated mutual understanding and fortified the basis of stable and healthy bilateral ties in the future.

Getting tough on China is a bipartisan stance held by a handful of U.S. politicians, and hardliners on trade with China typically win congressional support. However, U.S. politicians should meet China halfway to support healthy and stable trade ties for the benefit of their people.